We eventually wandered around the ruins for a little longer. But eventually my father had to go back, or people would notice that he was gone.
As it turned out no one believed him when he said that he had seen me. And he knew that his superiors would try to stop him if they knew that he would wander out on his own. That was why he came back alone without telling anyone. If he found enough evidence, he could send a more advanced search party.
I myself thought that something like that was rather stupid. Since I could check his memories if I wanted to, I could find out on my own that no one knew where he was. Therefore, it would not have been a problem for me to actually kill him. He would just be a missing person with no connection to any place that they needed to check. He was basically a walking lunchbox.
When he left, he promised me that he would come back when he had the time. Since his schedule was random and mainly based on the rumours that floated around Atlantis, he had no idea when that would be exactly.
So, I mostly just minded my business in the ruins. So now and then my friends came to visit me and sometimes my father.
In the span of those few weeks, I noticed how the headache sometimes faded until noting was left and sometimes felt like it was about to split my skull. But it was not completely random. It had some kind of rhythm to it, like it was not a natural occurrence.
But since I had no way to figure it out, I tried to ignore it as much as possible.
I had just returned from a short flight with Quetzalcoatl when I noticed that Beatrice was in the area. I found that this was weird since she mostly came to me in the evening, and when she did, she always had Noah by her side.
I immediately ruched over to see if everything was alright.
But as soon as I landed in front of her, I noticed what was wrong. She had managed to come here with a broken ancle and a broken arm. but the most worrying of all was that she smelled of another demon.
She fell on her knees, partially because she wanted to respect me and partially because her ancle could not support her anymore.
"please, my lord. Please protect me."
She was quite obviously on great pain as she managed to mutter those words trough her sobs.
At this moment I regretted not taking the time to learn healing magic, so I just carefully picked her up to bring her to the dwarf. I had to walk all the way since I could pay more attention to not accidentally cutting her than when I would fly.
But because she was not bleeding, and her life did not seem to be in immediate danger I figured that I had that extra time.
When I finally reached the room where the dwarf was currently finishing his new detection device Beatrice had already fallen asleep.
The dwarf sighed when the circular object started to emit a clear humming noise.
"I am not a doctor, nor am I a healer. How many times are you going to bring wounded people here?"
"You are better at it than I am, so please just help her."
The dwarf sighed. "Alright bring her here."
I brought Beatrice over and he treated the most severe of her wounds. After that we waited until she woke up again. This took several hours, by that time the dwarf was nearly finished with his detection device and wanted to see what it would do if there was no demonic presence nearby.
As soon as she opened her eyes she wanted to stand up. But I stopped her. Moving to much now would only hinder her recovery.
"Can you please tell me what happened?"
She slightly nodded. "Yes, my lord."
Once again, she tried to get up, but soon realised why I had stopped her in the first place. looking a little defeated, she gave up.
"I currently own a small business in weapons together with Noah on the edge of Atlantis. He makes them and I sell them. I was doing my job as usual, but I eventually got approached by a strange one-eyed man. He asked me to come out of the shop, because he had an offer that I couldn't deny. So, I followed him until we were nearing these ruins."
She stopped and squirmed in pain as she tried to breath. This made me wonder if she might have also broken a rib.
"Once we were out of sight from everyone, he revealed himself to be a demon. In his true form he did have two eyes, but he still was a lot smaller than you. He told me that he could teach me the seven arts. In return he would get my soul once I die. I of course declined and he became furious. He tried to kill me by dropping me from a great hight. But after I survived the drop, he made up his mind and told me that he would be there if I changed my mind."
It made sense that that demon would go after her. It was probably an even lesser demon than that I was when I was first summoned. So, it might not be able to go after souls in the same way I did and had to resort to deals instead. And among all the people Noah and Beatrice were most alluring for a demon that had trouble collecting souls. Tough they were only a little corrupted, those souls would give much more energy than regular ones.
A dark grin grew on my face as I realised that I might have found a solution to most of my problems.
"If you encounter that demon again. tell him that you want to make the deal here."
"Why? I could just report him, and a search party would probably deal with him. You should not have to be involved in all of this. I just need to get back alive."
"No, I need to know how he got in and I also need him alive for something else. Don't worry for as long as I am m close, he won't be able to lay a hand on you again."
She nodded. "As you please. I will lure him here."