Scarlet

“Scarlet Wolf?” the guy says, his tone slightly gritty as he narrows his eyes at my shifted arm, then glances at the blood soaking my clothes that I very quickly remember to clean. “Looks like your reputation proceeds you.”

I blush at that comment as I realize he’s talking about the people online who are calling me some sort of berserker. Which is a really unflattering thing to call a girl, but… I mean… I guess it’s not too far off the truth?

“What do you mean ‘I guess’? It’s perfectly true,” Tar comments, making me frown. “You go around not caring at all about small wounds and just letting them heal up on their own while burning your own blood like a maniac, and you’re trying to convince yourself you aren’t some sort of berserker?”

Okay, fine. So maybe I am.

“And you are?” I ask the guy, my internal conversation with the rude fae over with for now.

He looks surprised for a second, then turns grumpy the next as he answers, “Warden.”

No one says anything for a few seconds.

Right as the man looks like he’s about to speak again, his partner cuts him off by saying, “So can we go kill some more demons now? Because this talk is boring.” All while still hopping from one foot to the other and repeatedly looking at a couple stores on the other end of the VIP section.

The man grunts before nodding his head at us and saying, “Guess we’ll meet again at the university?” Then after seeing me nod my head in confirmation towards his words, he turns around and begins to leave with the girl running far ahead of him in the process.

And once they’re both out of earshot, Denise mutters, “They didn’t even seem to notice the rest of us…”

I glance at her to find the girl glaring at their backs, and even Michael seems to be a little annoyed by their utter disregard for him. Meanwhile Emily just seems glad to be away from the large groups of people.

“Why didn’t they talk to you? Aren’t your parents really important?” I ask, genuinely curious as we begin to head in the direction of the main area of the mall.

While we run, Michael answers, “It’s because we haven’t really been in any unproctored combat with the demons till now. Except for our first Fractures, of course. So the other Guardians don’t know or care about us much. If they even know who we are in the first place.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s just plain rude,” Denise grumbles as we begin to near the end of the VIP section.

She has a point. Although I kind of wonder how that guy would’ve treated me if he knew I was an orphan?

Orphans are treated rather poorly for multiple reasons. For one, we are a constant reminder of the cities and people lost during Fractures. For two, we cause a large strain on the budgets that the cities have, making most of the Tier 2 cities and all of the Tier 1 cities basically kick all orphans to Tier 3 cities. A rather unfortunate development caused by the emergence of Demonic Assaults in the world.

People really don’t like being reminded that even with their ‘heroes’ the Guardians, they still aren’t absolutely safe. Even in a Tier 1 city, no one is absolutely safe.

But the main reason is of course the changelings, who are completely undetectable since they don’t enter Earth through Fractures and only come through gates from the island known by some as old world Japan.

It’s a pretty shitty world we live in nowadays, one where any random Joe could end up dead the next week due to a Fracture. And where orphans are treated as lower class citizens by a large majority of the populace. But it’s how things are.

Depressing.

I do wonder how the people would take finding out that I was an orphan though, since from my understanding, they either ignore that part entirely for a Guardian, or dislike them even more depending on how popular the Guardian is and how much they fight in the Fractures. Although I’m pretty sure the government is also kind of censoring my status as an orphan, so there’s that too. Otherwise the populace would’ve already figured it out by now.

My thoughts return to the present situation once we reach the edge of the balcony we passed by earlier overlooking the main area of the mall and find the place to be extremely chaotic. Demons everywhere, all fighting over half a dozen Guardians, with a few groups of humans gathered together in a few corners slowly being escorted by one Guardian each to bunkers.

|Demon Spawn – Subspecies: Canine – Level 51|

|Demon Spawn – Subspecies: Canine – Level 54|

|Demon Spawn – Subspecies: Canine – Level 56|

|Demon Huntsman – Subspecies: N/A – Level 51|

|Demon Huntsman – Subspecies: N/A – Level 61|

|Demon Huntsman – Subspecies: N/A – Level 60|

|Demon Knight – Subspecies: N/A – Level 70|

|Demon Knight – Subspecies: N/A – Level 74|

|Demon Breeder – Subspecies: N/A – Level 56|

|Demon Captain – Subspecies: Salamander – Level 100|

I can’t help but shiver slightly from fear as the System plays out messages for each of the demons I look at until I ask Tar to turn the messages off for now, making them stop playing out every time I look at a different demon. But my eyes stay locked onto the last one that I had looked at anyways, making it unnecessary.

The demon captain has scales similar to armor, just like the demon knights. But the ‘armor’ it has looks a lot fancier despite the captain being overall smaller than the knights. It has spiked shoulder plates, with no helmet, revealing the creature’s scale covered head with slit crimson eyes that are looking across the battlefield with a gleam of intelligence, and a very ‘dark lord’ type of armor that you’d see in a video game.

And it’s also the only demon in a Class I Fracture that has sapience.

This one in particular seems to be a salamander, which is a type of demon that can breathe fire. But all demon captains have a single weakness known to the people.

My eyes narrow in on its chest, where it has a random ring of cloth without any scaled armor there, showing a weak point that will lead directly to one of its three hearts that – if destroyed – will half its fighting capacity.

As if sensing the gaze of me and the others up here who had also started staring at him, the captain turns its head to stare at us, sending shivers down my spine in the process.

For some reason this creature frightens me even more than that Class II wraith did.

Is it because it’s sapient?

But then it turns its gaze onto a Class II Guardian that is approaching it. One that also happens to be wearing Lion’s Heart’s uniform.