>>5153228“Maybe we should call it?” Zi suggests. “Can always try again tomorrow night… I mean, if you’re sticking around and seeing this through.”
You quietly seethe. You don’t have time to waste like this! There are two more demons to acquire to complete your pact, so you can return in glorious triumph to your Reptilian overlords. Worse yet, if they are captured by the Inquisition… Well, who knows what they could learn.
‘And there’s still your gramps to kill,’ Irinnile notes, as if you weren’t already feeling overwhelmed.
It is by earliest light of dawn, when you have almost consigned yourself to failure and delay, that fate or fortune brings you welcome relief. You smell it before you see it, placing a hand upon Zi’s shoulder and drawing her back. She immediately goes silent as well, sensing the same scent or else taking your lead.
There, across the street, a flame smoulders unattended in a dark and shadowed corner. It flits away, vanishing, and appearing in a corner across the street. It is like a will o’ th’ wisp, a mote of flame, but you know its true identity by the smell like a diabolic barbecue: the hellhound, laying low, avoiding sunlight and scrutiny as it returns to its hiding place. It brings you no small satisfaction to realize it is likely headed back to where you were first looking for it—you were not wrong! It must have been hunting… Maybe even successfully.
Luckily for you, though, a hellhound’s hunger is never sated. Like Irinnile in her way, they always <WANT> for more.
‘I just have a healthy appetite,’ Irinnile grouses. ‘I’m a growin’ girl!’
You push Zi forward gently, and she looks at you in terror and distress. You offer a reassuring, tusky smile. Trusting you—Zithra—she gulps and strides out into the open, making a show of not noticing the mote as she strides into the pitch-black, within easy reach.
The mote—the hound—stops moving and flickering so rapidly. Instead, it stays put, separating into two… Two orbs. Two eyes, now watching Zi. Zi begins to whistle and to rock ‘innocently’ and quasi-ignorantly on her heels, as if idle or awaiting someone. It would be plainly obvious as a trap to anyone else, but… Well, hellhounds are barely more than doglike in their intelligence, and they are ruled by their appetite.
‘Really startin’ to resent that comparison the more I think about it,’ Irinnile grumbles.
