As Andrew made his way around Aspen checking the meticulous list tasked on him, he begins to feel just how much there is as bags just seem to appear in his hands until he's finally lugging multiple heavy bags stuffed with all sorts of items. He doesn't break a sweat, but he still finds it grueling -enough that he remembers the days where he was still in the military college.
The military college was the response Mires made against the 1000-year-old declaration of war made by a witch against the Churches. With the coming times, nobody that is human remembers who that witch is as the true name passed around and the true reason had changed over time, but there is an image that persisted for over 50 years now that is still revered and Andrew is hearing and seeing that witch's epithet everywhere he turns. He could also see some black rats with beady red eyes lurking in the alleyways.
"The Church Sect in Marstadt was swallowed into the ground, I hope my relatives there didn't get caught in-between the firefight," said a man to an older fellow who had the paper discussing the Burning Witch.
Under the man's breath, he curses why a war like this has continued for generations without end.
"Why was witchcraft even created? Just how pitiful were they as a person to not accept being normal," The man continued to rant while growing more concerned for his relatives.
"Don't speak about witches like they're human," the older fellow spoke up as he begins educating the young man, "My old man told me that ever since the Burning Witch made a contract with a devil, all witches born thereafter are Helfiends."
Andrew clenches his fists and continues walking. He does his best to shutout the stories he's hearing, all miserably construed to give witches a terrible reputation. He doesn't care about the stories, as he has his own belief -his reason for being an Anti-Mage, and that reason is to root out all evil and protect those he loves. He doesn't understand why people need to make up tales to justify their hate for witches, maybe it's their reason and if it was, he finds it shallow.
It gets on his nerves because those with actual reasons to hate witches are fed lies, and now that he's met witches who are nothing like the Burning Witch, he begins to silently loathe the people who do nothing but stoke the fire and complain why a church is burning.
The news about the Burning Witch spread like wildfire and the entire city seemed to be talking about it, but gradually the veil of nonchalance was being pulled to show fear and concern.
"I heard from the Aspen guards that they're going to be on high alert tonight. Strange isn't it?" A man blurted out which snapped Andrew back to reality. He eavesdrops on the conversation while buying the last item on his list.
He could hear worry begin to sound in the man's voice as he continued. It's however brushed off by the shopkeeper he's talking with.
"Pretty ominous when the laidback drunkards we call the city guards start doing their actual jobs!" The shopkeeper replied, laughing boisterously as he continued to take jabs at the laziness of the guards.
"That's because they got word from Vindictus about a witch fleeing to Aspen -or was it a demon? I forgot." Another man chimed in to the conversation and it became the topic of the people around them.
From his observer's perspective, Andrew slowly starts to see people prepare for the worst, rush buying to the point that each shopping tent now had people pushing to be serviced. They feared the end of the world, after all the Burning Witch had just made her way into the newspaper and now a rumored demon-witch was making its way to Aspen. Andrew was worried too and he hurried his way back to the forest, only to bump straight into someone. That person turned out to be Basil who he can clearly see is stressed out.
"What's going on? Is there an emergency?" Drew asked and it got some attention from those with sensitive ears.
"E, -Everything's fine! Just get to your houses now -wait! Aren't you with that redhead?!" Basil replied and looked around, seeing the concerned citizens eyeing him as they want to know what the situation really is.
"… Listen! The maire had declared a state of emergency! Everyone is to return to their homes immediately, no questions asked!"
The inexperienced squire wanted the unreasonable, for the people to calm down despite the looming threat that they knew so little of. The rumors about a demon and a witch, now muddled together, painted the image of the Burning Witch making her way to Aspen. The citizens scrambled without any cohesive thought that would corral them. Some wanted to flee to the capital while others wanted to lock themselves up in their homes. It became a sea of madness that Drew and Basil were caught in. In this stampede of people, the chances of someone being trampled over by others is guaranteed. Drew wanted to avoid that and prepared himself to get the crowd to listen to him, only for something else to get their attention. A large explosion went off in the distance and the sound of rubble falling was heard right-after. Now Andrew was torn between saving the people and confronting what he knew was the threat that Aspen was preparing for. It's abysmally obvious as its presence made Andrew feel like the air was cold sludge that weighed on him. Some perceptive people in the terrified crowd who also felt its presence panicked even more, as if they saw the threat was right in front of them.
"Basil, can I ask you to do something for me?"
"What're you saying at a time like this?! Get back -Agh!? Are these, groceries?! Why didn't you make back-to-back trips!?" Basil complained as he was forced to hold onto Drew's heavy grocery bags, leaving him encumbered.
"Take these back to Melissa and Aranea for me, will you?" With a smile Drew offhandedly waved goodbye to Basil as he disappeared into the crowd.
Finding it difficult to push through the crowd to get to where the site of the explosion was, Andrew decided it was better to use the alleyways and as he rushed through the dark passages of Aspen he notices that it was teeming with black rats that weren't there before when he and Melissa hid from the city guards. It was hard not to notice something obvious as a red-eyed black rat, even when its dingy black fur blended well with the alleyways, its jewel-like red eyes were hard to miss –especially when Andrew was disturbed from seeing all the rats staring at him, ready to maul him instead of scurrying away to hide.
He tries to push the experience to the back of his mind to focus on the matter at hand, confronting the demon that suddenly appeared in the city and caused pandemonium.
Andrew comes out of the alleyways to see a vacant market plaza. It was a completely different feeling for him since last he checked there were a bunch of people here. They all left in a rush when the emergency was announced, leaving a lot of the tents for the rats to snack on.
But without any people, it made things easy for Andrew to run to where the smokes are. But he then notices that in one of the four main roads to the market plaza, the one that that'll lead him to the chaos, looked as though a storm of blades had just passed through it.
The sudden sweet yet eerie melody of a flute blends into the air around Andrew and he just notices now the silence of danger. Something was stalking him and it was now about to pounce.
It happened only for a moment in his eyes, the silence breaking into discord as something charged at him through the market tents, ripping through rows of stalls like they were made of sticks and paper. It slammed straight to Andrew and even when he had the time to react by pulling his sword and using it to guard his left side, the demon had more than enough momentum to throw him across the plaza. Andrew crashes into a market stall that shattered into pieces upon impact, turning into rubble that the renegade Anti-Mage laid down on.
The trauma of the crash leaves Andrew hacking up blood that he wipes off with his right arm as his left got dislocated from the tackle. He tries to stand over the rubble of the stall and looked in front of him to see the demon and to his surprise, it was nothing like he had thought.
Andrew sees a woman in a tattered blue dress a few meters from where he once stood. What he thought was a large demon was no taller than him, but she clearly is a demon from what he can see. Two pairs of black segmented horns protruded from the sides of her head, one growing upwards and the other pair growing on the sides of her face. She also has long, chaotic, and flowing white hair. Her forearms were large, plated with the same hard black chitin that made up her horns and ending in sharp claws.
While Drew analyzed the demon under the pressure of her presence in front of him, he begins to acknowledge that there's a possibility that he'll die. But running away wasn't an option, both because he knows there's no point in trying to escape and if he does it would be on his conscience if he succeeds and lets this she-demon continue her carnage go uninterrupted.
"You definitely caught me by surprise, but don't think you'll get lucky again," Drew says to the demon who only glared at him with her glowing blue eyes with black crosses.
The blue she-demon made a full-sprint towards Andrew and this time he was able to strafe to the side to avoid her from crushing him against the wall behind the stall. Drew sees that the she-devil had her foot embedded into the wall. She wasn't trying to ram him with her entire body -no she wanted to eviscerate Drew.
She lets out an unhinged howl and instead of just taking her foot out she razes the wall her foot was in, kicking large rubbles towards Andrew. The moment she did, she also lunges towards where Drew was going to strafe, her claws ready to skewer him. Even though she's lost in her instincts, her intelligence in combat remained.
However, Drew could see through the demon's tactics, and as he strafes out of the danger of the rubble and into the demon's claws, he leaps towards her and he narrowly avoids getting skewered. Drew locks eyes with the demon who frowned at him as he throws a head-butt at her. She could've bitten his face off but the idea of a human leaping into what could be their death stunned the demon enough that she couldn't make that decision.
But the head-butt wasn't enough to knock the demon out as her arms were ready to crush Andrew with a bear hug. Once again though, Andrew scrapes away from the she-devil's clutches by ducking down and then strafing to the demon's right side where he was about to swing his sword to cut her head off.
The infuriated she-devil lets out a tormented wail and from her back, she instantly grew vestigial wings made of the same black chitin, and that catches Drew's sword. A black bony tail also sprung out of her back and it whipped at Andrew, slashing him across the torso and throwing him away from her. The end of her tail ended in a sharp blade, now dripping with Drew's blood.
Because of the adrenaline, Andrew managed to keep himself on his feet despite the gash across his torso that bled profusely. He wasn't going to last though and he knows this himself, the blood loss hasn't kicked in but when it does his reactions are going to get slower.
"Once that happens, then I'll surely …" He pictures himself in the worst-case scenario, his death. "Before that, I need to at least do something about this demon."