"Hey, why the hell are you guys following me!?" A tall and muscular demon with a great sword strapped to his back asked with annoyance. And the source came from a beautiful elf with green hair and a longbow around her shoulder, a woman with orange hair, fox ears and a fox tail, and finally, a young man in all black with only his eye being visible.
"You know the way around, so we're following you." The elf said with a shrug as if it was very obvious.
"I have no obligation to help any of you." The demon said with a threatening tone.
"Our strength is roughly the same, and it's three against one, you think you can beat us?" The guy in all black said with folded arms.
"Hey we're all running for the same reason, so why are we fighting!" The fix girl said with exasperation when she saw that a fight was about to break out. Obviously, these people were Baal, Draven, Sia and Lin, just much younger.
"Tch, fine, but don't follow me after we're out of the kingdom." Baal said firmly and the others just shrugged. Not like they wanted to.
The three of them followed Baal closely as he led them through the large demon kingdom. There were numerous times were they had to escape from members of their own race to avoid being captured, and the number of times they fought together was not small, after all, it took them a year to get out.
They didn't realize it, but each time they fought with one another, they slowly but surely began to get comfortable with each other, slowly trusting each other's backs with the other, coordinating their attacks.
They started building trust with each other the moment they decided to leave the kingdom. And when they eventually got out of the kingdom, they had unknowingly become friends.
"Heads up!" Lin shouted and Baal immediately ducked his head down just as two arrows made of wind whizzed over before striking a large green or in its eyes.
"Phew, that was the last one." Draven said as he cleaned green blood of his dagger.
"We've left the perimeter of the kingdom, so we'll start encountering more and more monsters. I'm really surprised by how they didn't straight up create a defense line to prevent us from escaping." Draven wondered and the others nodded in agreement.
"Well, we've gotten out of the kingdom, so I guess the is where we're meant to part ways." Lin stated, but the unwillingness in her voice was tangible.
"Y- Yeah, I guess so." Sia said with reluctance.
Baal didn't say anything, but clearly, he looked conflicted. It was then that Draven spoke up.
"Alright even a blind person could see that we don't want to part, so let's just stay together. None of us can go back to our home kingdoms until we're strong enough, and we have nowhere else to go, so let's just gather our strength in the wilderness." Draven said with a tone that said 'It is not that hard.
Hearing Draven's suggestion, the eyes of the others lit up. Of course, it really wasn't hard to do that. Besides, parting would make their survival chances much slimmer.
"D- Don't think I'm agreeing because of what Draven said, I just don't want to die." Lin said with a faint blush on her face and the others snickered. Obviously she was shy.
Time passed quickly and the party made their way deep into the wilderness and slowly increased their strength. There were many close calls were they nearly died. But they all managed to pull through. And one day when the group was passing through a canyon area.
*RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE*
The ground shook and before the group realized it, they were surrounded by thousands of rock golems.
"What the?!" Baal exclaimed as he immediately drew his great sword which was then coated in purple flames. The others drawing their weapons while Sia was surrounded in her orange fire.
The group was rushed by the golems and they immediately began to take them out, but as time passed, they began to wear down.
"We won't last much longer like this." Lin said as she blasted dozens of golems with her arrows, sweat covering her head.
"We need to find the caster, but where can he be?" Draven muttered as he cut through the golem lines line butter, but he wasn't in any he shape.
Meanwhile, Sia closed her eyes and focused entirely on her hearing. She drowned out the sound of the golems and listened to the sounds coming off the walls of the canyon.
*GRACK*
The sound of something cracking caused her ears to twitch and she immediately opened her eyes and turned towards the source of the sound. High up on one of the canyon walls, she could make out the silhouette of something standing on a platform and without hesitation, created a spear of orange flames and fired it towards the figure.
*BOOM*
A large explosion sounded and dust flew about followed by a grunt.
"He's over there!" Sia shouted as she conjured dozens of more spears and rained them on the position.
The others didn't waste time and immediately began to rain down ranged attack towards the direction Sia pointed at and very soon, the entire side of the cliff had crumbled.
"Hey hey hey, chill!" A voice cried out with urgency as the golems crumbled and fell to the ground. And then from the dust of the rubble, a figure emerged.
"Woah."
"What the heck?"
"Damn." The group exclaimed when they saw who, or rather what it was. Body made of stone, no facial features. It was Teran.
"An earth elemental?" Baal asked wearily.
"Terra elemental actually, sine I can control entire landscapes and not just earth. Hi, my name is Teran." Teran introduced himself and was immediately met with cold stares.
"Oof, so cold. Well I guess I did just attack you guys. But I'm impressed that y'all actually found my position." Teran said with a voice of praise.
"Hey, why did you attack us? Did someone send you?" Draven asked as his daggers were coated in sharp water.
"To your second question, no. As for your first question, I was interested in your group and decided to see whether or not you guys were strong. That and I was bored." Teran said shamelessly and the rest looked like him as if he was an idiot.
"Anyway, since you guys are strong. Wanna become friends." Teran suddenly asked catching the others off guard.
"You try to kill us and now you wanna become friends? Do elementals lack common sense or what." Lin said with annoyance and the others agreed.
"Hey I gained a consciousness 22 years ago and have been living on my own since then. It's not my fault that I have bad social skills." Teran retorted and the others shook their heads.
"Either way, we have no reason to become you friend, so move." Baal said threateningly.
"Oof, so mean. Well, I have nothing better to do, so I'll just keep on following you guys until you accept me. It's not like y'all can kill me anyway." Teran said in a matter of fact tone that caused the rest to frown.
*BOOM*
Baal unleashed an attack that shattered Teran's body into dust.
"Woah, your pretty impulsive." Teran's voice rang in their ears as an identical body appeared, much to the group's shock.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"And after that, we eventually just let him be. And after a long time, he eventually grew on us and became our friend. So that's how we all met. Cool right?" Baal finished and the siblings eyes widened in amazement. Cool indeed.