When Serphia finally stepped out of the back bedroom again, she found herself face to face with a marauder. She let out a groan as she scanned him up and down and he did the same to her. Of course the wizard couldn’t handle the mercenary. The whole reason they were in this mess was so he could get a spellbook and her weapons and armor. Speaking of armor, her eyes settled on the armor the man wore. It would be large on her, to say the least, but the more flexible pieces could work for her. A dark grin crossed her face as she pulled the dagger from her waist. One simple mortal man was not a problem for her. Thankfully, the second one had tried to follow Malcador, leaving this one alone to forage through the house. With a click of her tongue, she got to work.

Armed to the teeth, well more like tooth. She would rather have more weapons than the, now, three she currently had on her belt and in her grip, but those three would be more than enough for now. She had taken the shoulder pieces off the man, along with his gauntlets. She had even managed to strap his skin guards onto her legs. She was sure she looked a fool with her mismatched outfit and armor pieces but she didn’t much care. She may look like she didn’t know what she was doing as she stepped out of the longhouse but the armor and weapons made her deadly as she slipped through the shadows of the town like a reaper of souls. Devils and humans alike fell under her blade before they understood what the stickiness was that had covered their nose and filled their mouth. She didn’t even bother trying to hide the bodies as she went. The longer she took to find the wizard, the more likely she would find him dead or captured. She needed to move quickly. 

Up ahead, there was a large group of mercenaries. She stepped into a shadow of a building, pulling it around her to hide and her Arloke as she watched the group parade down the town street like a morbid celebration of slavery and slaughter. She saw children, women, and barely able to walk men chained along in a line, being led by a few mercenaries and a devil or two. For a moment, she considered freeing them from their fate but then chastised herself. Bothering to try and free them would only end up getting her killed or worse, captured. If she ended up getting captured by the end of all this, her pride would never survive it. Who were these people to her anyways? She was here to find a weapon or two along with getting a spellbook for the wizard. That was all this little mission was supposed to be. So she remained hidden in the shadows, watching as the parade made its way past and turned down the street to vanish behind buildings. 

She moved quickly through the shadows, her indigo eyes ever scanning her surroundings as she went. She had no idea how she was going to find this damn wizard. If she could just find any sign of where he went, then she could start tracking him but at the moment, all she saw were devils, mercenaries, and dead villagers. When a squad of marauders came down the street she was currently on, instead of picking a fight, she slipped into the broken window of the building next to her. Her bare feet crunched down on the broken glass as she quietly dropped into the house. She froze against the wall when a devil’s head snapped up from his meal. A disemboweled man lay dead at the feet of the devil and the creature had his arm in its mouth, chewing lightly as its dark eyes scanned the room for the source of the sound. This devil’s body was completely covered in spines and its sharp claws were covered in blood from the person it was using as food just a moment before. 

When its eyes locked on Serphia, she snarled. One of these days, she was going to be able to get through an area without having to fight to the death against one of these damn creatures. 

She held out an arm, allowing Arloke to remove himself from her back and finding a place on the wall behind her. She flipped her dagger in one hand while bringing the sword up in defense. She considered running. The vicious spines along this creature was going to make fighting it a huge pain, especially for her dagger attacks, but if she fled, it would most likely only follow her and track her down. So she prepared for another fight as she wondered for only a moment if Malcador was facing such frustrating situations and surviving.