Subaru sat on a tree branch. The wood pressed against her legs, rough and uneven, but she had found a spot that almost felt comfortable. Her back rested against the trunk, and her feet dangled in the air, swinging slightly with the breeze. The forest around her stood quiet, the trees tall and dark, their branches creating a ceiling of shadows above her head.
She was getting a very strong feeling of familiarity. Not exactly a memory, more like the ghost of a memory. The way the soldiers waited in the woods, hidden among the trunks and undergrowth, their eyes fixed on the path below. The way the wind moved through the leaves, carrying sounds from far away. It reminded her of something she had watched a few years ago, in her old life, sitting on a couch with a bowl of something warm in her hands.
Attack on Titan. The scene where the Female Titan attacked the Levi Squad.
She gulped. Hopefully demons were not like that. Hopefully they did not have regeneration powers or the ability to harden their skin or the kind of blank expression that made your blood run cold. Hopefully they were just regular monsters who died when you hit them hard enough.
The soldiers below moved quietly, checking their weapons, adjusting their positions, speaking in low murmurs that did not carry far. Despite seeing her outclass their general in the spar that day, they treated her as if she were fragile glass. A young soldier with a thin mustache brought her a cloth to wipe her hands. Another offered her a piece of dried meat, which she politely declined. A third asked if she needed help climbing down from the branch, even though she was clearly fine where she was.
They occasionally talked to her, their voices careful, almost gentle. They asked if she needed anything. Water. A blanket. A different position with a better view. Subaru politely replied each time, saying no, thank you, she was fine, they did not need to worry about her.
Internally, she found it both touching and frustrating. Touching because they cared. Frustrating because she could feel their concern pressing against her like a hand on her shoulder. They saw a young woman in a dress, small and slender, and their instincts told them to protect her. They did not see the demon underneath the turban, the creature that soldiers across the continent had been trained to kill on sight. They did not know how many times she had died. They did not know that she had stabbed their commander in the arm and drawn blood.
One of the soldiers, a young man with freckles and a nervous laugh, looked at her hands and then at the empty space beside her. He frowned, his brow furrowing.
"Where is your staff?" he asked.
Another soldier, older, with a scar across his forearm, answered before Subaru could speak. "She has some sort of conjuring magic. She does not need a staff."
The younger soldier blinked. He had apparently not seen her fight in the spar. His eyes widened, and his mouth formed a small circle of surprise. "Conjuring magic? Like summoning things out of thin air?"
"Yes," the older soldier said. "Like that."
The younger soldier leaned forward, his expression a mix of curiosity and something that looked like forced enthusiasm. He was either genuinely amazed or pretending very hard to be. Subaru could not tell which.
"Could you demonstrate?" he asked.
The older soldier reached over and bonked him on the back of the head. Not hard, but enough to make a point. "We are on a mission," he said. "No demonstrations. No distractions. We wait, and we fight when the time comes."
The younger soldier rubbed his head and looked down at the ground, chastened.
Subaru felt a small drop of sympathy for the guy. She knew what it was like to be curious, to want to see something new, to ask questions that annoyed the people around her. She had been that person, once. Maybe she still was.
"It is fine," she said. "Check this out,"
The older soldier looked up at her. His expression was skeptical, but he did not argue.
Subaru closed her eyes and focused on the familiar pull of Erfassen. The magic stirred inside her, responding to her will, waiting to take shape. She let her mind drift through possibilities, through weapons she had seen and remembered, through images that lingered in the corners of her thoughts.
What could she summon? Not an axe again. She had shown them the axe during the spar. Something different. Something that would impress them without revealing too much.
Her memory settled on an image. A curved blade, large and elegant, with a guard that wrapped around the wielder's hand. A saber. Single edged, with a knuckle bow that connected the guard to the pommel. She had seen it in an anime a long time ago, carried by a character who wore a straw hat and spent a lot of time grinning.
The sword appeared in her hand.
Eclipse. That was its name, or at least the name she had always associated with it. The materialization was smooth, almost silent. One moment her hand was empty. The next, the saber rested in her grip, its weight familiar despite the fact that she had never held it before in her life. The blade caught the faint light filtering through the trees, gleaming with a dark shine. The round guard and the knuckle bow gave it an elegant look, more refined than the brutal simplicity of an axe.
The soldiers below stared. Their eyes went wide. Their mouths opened slightly. Even the older soldier, the one who had scolded the younger man, looked impressed. He had seen her use the axe during the spar, he had witnessed her fight against Wirt, but he had assumed that was the only thing she could conjure. A single weapon. A specific tool. The axe was brutal and simple, the kind of weapon a warrior used when they wanted to end a fight quickly. This saber was different. It was beautiful.
"Can it actually cut?" the young soldier asked.
Subaru grinned. She turned her body slightly, positioning the blade toward a low hanging branch within reach. She swung.
The blade moved through the air, fast and clean, and the branch fell. The cut was smooth, the wood parting without resistance, as if the blade had not touched it at all. The branch hit the ground with a soft thud, and the soldiers stared at it, then at the sword, then at Subaru.
The praise came quickly. Words of admiration, of surprise, of genuine wonder. Even the older soldier, who had tried to maintain his stern expression, let his mask slip. His eyes widened. His lips parted. He looked at the severed branch, then at the saber in Subaru's hand, then back at the branch.
He cleared his throat. He straightened his back. He tried to look like he had not been impressed, but the effort was weak, almost playful.
"That was reckless," he said, his voice light, almost soft. "You could have hit someone."
Subaru grinned. She lifted her free hand and scratched the back of her head, a sheepish gesture that she had used many times before, in a different body, in a different world. "Sorry," she said. "I got carried away."
The soldiers laughed. Not loudly, but enough to break the tension that had been building in the woods.
Subaru focused on the saber and let it dissolve. The blade faded, breaking apart into particles of mana that drifted upward like smoke and disappeared. The weight left her hand, and she felt the familiar drain of energy that came with conjuring.
Despite being a sword, she had to put quite a bit of mana into creating it. More than the axe. More than the bow she had used against the birds. Eclipse was larger, more detailed, more complex in its design. The effort left her feeling slightly lighter, as if she had spent something she could not immediately measure.
But something else happened too. As the sword vanished, she felt a small trickle of mana returning to her. Not all of it. A stream flowing back into her core, replenishing what she had spent.
It looked like Erfassen followed the law of energy conservation. Some part of her mana was wasted during the conjuring, lost to the process, turned into heat or light or something else she did not fully understand. But she regained the spent amount she had used to maintain the sword. Not all of it. Just the part that had not been lost in the creation.
Interesting, she thought. Very interesting.
A soldier cleared his throat. He was older than the others, with gray in his beard and a face that had seen too many battles. He looked at Subaru with something like respect, but also something like caution.
"Miss," he said, "have you ever fought a demon before?"
Subaru hesitated. She probably should lie. But something about the soldier's tone, his honest curiosity, made her want to tell the truth.
"No," she said. "I have not."
The soldier nodded slowly. He looked out at the forest, at the path below, at the gray sky visible through the gaps in the branches.
"Then you should know what you are facing," he said. "Demons are not like humans. They do not feel the way we feel. They do not think the way we think. They mimic emotions, they pretend to care, they laugh and cry and smile, but it is all an act. A mask. A tool to fool humans into lowering their guard."
Subaru listened. Her hand moved without her permission, reaching up to touch the edge of her turban. Her fingers brushed the cloth, feeling the shape of the horns beneath. She tugged slightly, making sure everything was still in place, still hidden.
"They are emotionless monsters," the soldier continued. His voice was hard, cold, the voice of someone who had seen things he could not forget. "They will lie to you. They will beg for mercy. They will promise to change. And the moment you hesitate, the moment you believe them, they will kill you."
Subaru gulped. Her throat felt dry. The turban felt heavy on her head, the horns pressing against the cloth, invisible but present. She looked at the soldiers around her, at their faces, at the hatred that burned behind their eyes.
They despised demons. Not disliked. Not distrusted. Despised. With a depth that she had not fully understood until this moment.
If they knew, she thought. If they knew what I am, they would turn on me in a second. They would not hesitate. They would probably not ask questions. They would just kill.
She looked down at her hands. Small hands. Slender fingers. Hands that had conjured a blade and cut a branch in half.
"Regardless," she said to herself, whispering, of course. "I have to be swift. I have to execute any and every demon that crosses my path."
The soldiers turned back to their positions, checking their weapons, scanning the forest, waiting for a fight that had not yet arrived.
Subaru sat on her branch, alone with her thoughts, her turban tight around her head, her heart beating a rhythm she could not quiet.
Emotionless monsters, she thought. Mimicking humans. Pretending to be real.
She did not feel like a monster. But then again, according to the soldier, that was exactly what a monster would want her to feel.