Lyall was woken abruptly from a soft voice in the distance. It sounded much too regal to be addressed to him but as he looked up, he saw the Princess of Esper before him in a simple dress though her speech and delicate features betrayed her royal origins. Grasping her hand tentatively with his own, he drew himself up from his seat with his doctor’s bag slung over his shoulder. He looked at the blue liquid offered before him before he gently refused it with a kind naiveté. Putting his hand over the stopper of the open bottle, he looked at the young princess before him.

“Save the liquid for yourself... Lillith,” he said before he awkwardly paused. He was not used to referring to royalty in such a laissez faire way. “You’re the one who has to make it through this alive,” he commented without a hint of contempt or superiority, just in a dreary matter of fact way. He stood up and stretched his arms for a brief moment before he remembered he was in the presence of royalty. “My name is Lyall Bookchild, a man with a soul as strong as his back and a tenacious demon to all that oppose, and it is an honor to be your escort! Let us be off then before the day goes to waste.” 

He thought that his machismo boast would of sounded cooler when he said it but instead he just felt like he had made an extravagant fool of himself. He had read it once in a book and thought it sounded extraordinarily cool when the protagonist said it in the face of certain death. He didn’t afford to let his doubts show on his face however and kept up the show of bravado lest the princess call his bluff. Truth was that Lyall wasn’t much of a fighting demon, or even a man. Before anyone could question it however, he began the trek from the town gates with the young princess in tow towards the grim dark valley that loomed ominously from the distance.