It has been less than a week but here's chapter 03. I'm uploading this so that patrons can read two chapters ahead instead of one.

Chapter 3: The Decision

Voices woke her up.

They came from just outside the tent, two men trying to argue quietly and failing. Tanya lay still with her eyes shut and kept her breathing slow. Two lifetimes had taught her how to listen while looking asleep.

"The court won't forgive it," said a heavy voice. "You're hiding something nobody in history has ever seen."

"I'm keeping a kid alive," said the Hero.

"You can't know what she'll turn into."

"Nobody can know that about anyone." He sounded tired, and it was the first time she had heard that in him. "I found her in the dirt. If I walk away and she grows into what you're afraid of, that's on the people who made her. If I walk away and she grows into nothing, that's on me."

The wind pushed at the canvas. A horse snorted somewhere in the camp.

"There's another reason," the heavy voice said slowly. "Isn't there?"

The Hero gave no answer.

Whatever passed between them in that silence, Tanya could not read it through a wall of canvas. When the commander spoke again he was short and gruff, like a man closing an account book whose total he disliked.

"Fine. Take her to your house. I'll deal with the report."

Boots squelched away through the mud. A second pair lingered outside the flap for a moment and then went the other way.

Tanya opened her eyes and looked at the dark roof.

Another reason. She turned the words over and liked them less each time. A man with nothing to gain needed no second reason, and a man who had a second reason had a first one too. If the commander knew about it, it was something with weight behind it, far more than a private kindness.

Interesting, she thought. And pretty dumb of you, old man, to talk next to a canvas wall.

She tucked it away with everything else she had collected and made herself sleep. Tired people made mistakes, and she intended to make none.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Dawn.

The Hero ducked in with a bowl of porridge and a spoon. He sat on the crate and held out the bowl, and Tanya reached for it. Her hands shook so badly that the spoon rattled against the rim.

"Easy," he said.

"Thank you, sir. I only need a moment." Her voice came out in a stiff croak, and she glared at the spoon as if it had insulted her.

"Take it."

He didn't help. He leaned on a tent pole and watched, patient and a little amused, until she got half a spoonful into her mouth without spilling it. The porridge was thick and salty and plain, and she wanted to cry again. She finished the bowl one shaky bite at a time.

"Can you stand?" he asked.

"I believe so, sir."

She could not.

She got as far as bracing both palms on the dirt before her legs wobbled and folded, and she landed on her backside with a thump. A furious little sound escaped her throat.

"That's what I figured," said the Hero.

"With your permission, I would like to try again."

"Tomorrow, we'll see." He bent down and picked her up like a sack of flour. "Today you ride."

Useless piece of junk, Tanya thought, as her head bumped his shoulder. Weakest body I've ever owned. At least the soldiers will feel sorry for me. That's something.

He carried her out into the pale light. Men hauled bundles through the mud, and smoke from the burned stable still hung on the wind. A few soldiers watched her pass in the Hero's blue cloak, and they dropped their eyes whenever she looked back. By the supply wagons, a cluster of them made a sign against evil.

At the edge of camp the boy with the lance stood alone, staring at her like a man looking at a cut he had made himself.

Tanya gave him a small, polite nod. His shoulders loosened.

One nod, she thought. That's all it takes. Humans will forgive nearly anything if you let them feel forgiven.

A carriage waited at the end of the line with two horses stamping in the cold. The Hero laid her on the bench and sat across from her. The driver clicked his tongue, and the wheels began to turn.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

In the first hour nobody spoke.

Tanya wedged herself into a corner with the cloak around her and her legs stretched out in front like a doll's. Through the open flap she watched the country go by. It was grim land, with burned fields and fallen barns and now and then a farmer standing in a ruined doorway to watch them pass.

She could not say why she knew the words for any of it. Barn, field, road. The language sat in her head solid as a floor, a gift she had not earned and didn't understand. It bothered her more each hour.

"You've got questions," the Hero said. “I believe,” 

She turned. He sat across from her with his chin in his hand, his two swords lying in his lap.

"A few, sir."

"You can ask."

She lined them up. The big one, why, would make him wary, and a wary man closes up. So she picked a smaller one that sounded innocent.

"What am I, sir?"

"A girl."

"With horns," Tanya said. “That's not normal,”

"That's the second part."

"I would appreciate a proper answer, if it isn't too much trouble."

"You're human. I can see it in your mana." He shifted in his seat. "Everybody has a signature, and yours has a core in the middle that's as human as mine. Somebody wrapped a layer of demon mana around it, like a coat. I don't know how. The researcher in that stable was working on something, and you were it."

"And the horns?"

"Part of the coat. They'll probably stay."

"May the coat be removed?"

"Maybe. Beatrice might know."

"Who is Beatrice, sir?"

"Someone you'll meet." The corner of his mouth moved. "You'll like her, or you'll be scared of her. Most people manage both."

Tanya filed that away with a note to treat Beatrice as a threat until proven otherwise.

"What exactly is mana?" 

"You don't know?"

"I do not recall being told."

Every word was true, in a way. She was not told about anything in this body. The Hero studied her with those dark, steady eyes that always seemed to look a little too far, and then he shrugged.

"It's the energy in everything alive. Humans have it. Demons are made of it, plants and nature had it, nothing else. Mages shape it into spells."

"And if a demon's mana is cut off?"

"It dies.”

"I see." The carriage hit a rut, and her teeth clicked. "They had kept people in the villages, didn't they? Like a cattle."

"They did,"

"Why, sir?"

"Food, dominance and research." He said it flatly. "Demons don't think like us. They've got no use for emphaty, so they only see what's useful. People are useful."

"That is almost reasonable," said Tanya, and then caught herself. "I mean to say, it's horrible."

The Hero gave her a long look.

Careful, she told herself. He's observant. Keep the child's face on.

"Who were the short bearded men in the camp?"

"Dwarves. They fight with us, great craftsmen." He glanced at her sharply. "You pay a great deal of attention, great."

"There was nothing else to do, so I thought why not observe."

“I see,”

“Also… are there any elves?”

"Beatrice is an elf, in case you wondered."

What the hell... 

She had heard of enough fantasy in her first life to know what the word promised: long lives, live in the forest and indifferent, or in some media… They are portrayed scandalously.

Great, she thought. I get to live with a thousand-year-old nature fairy.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

"Tell me what that is," the Hero said, pointing out the window.

"A tree, sir."

"That?"

"A cart. A horse. A farmhouse." She glanced at him. "Is this a test?"

"Sort of." He rubbed his chin. "Can you read the sign on that post?"

She looked. It was a flat board with some marks on it, black on grey. They meant nothing to her at all.

"No, sir. They are only shapes."

"But you know every word I say."

"Yes, sir. I cannot explain that."

"Neither can I." He sat back, frowning at the road. "Most kids pick up speech over years. You came out of that tank talking."

"Does that trouble you, sir?"

"A little." He glanced at her sidelong. "Should it?"

"If I knew why I could speak, I would tell you." That was true, and she let him see that it was true. "I only know that the words were there when I woke. The letters were not."

He nodded slowly. She had given him a piece of honest confusion, and she watched him weigh it.

Interesting, she thought. He isn't surprised. He's thinking of something else. He has already decided it doesn't matter.

That bothered her more than suspicion would have.

"What was your name before the tank?" he asked.

"I do not remember anything before it, sir. I only know that I am called Tanya."

"Tanya Degurechaff."

"So I told your soldiers."

"Degurechaff is an odd name."  The corner of his mouth moved. "It suits you. It sounds like somebody who files complaints."

“I can't even read yet…"

He laughed, short and surprised, and the carriage rattled on.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

By midday they stopped at a crossroads inn to change the horses. The Hero carried her in and propped her at a corner table with a mug of warm milk, and she watched the other customers while he spoke to the innkeeper.

They watched her back.

A stout woman at the next table kept glancing over with a worried frown. An old man by the fire made a sign with two fingers when Tanya looked at him. A little boy pointed, and his mother slapped his hand down and hissed something that turned him pale.

The hood had slipped. The horns were showing.

They're tiny, so cringe, Tanya thought. Two chewed pencil stubs. And they've made a whole room nervous.

That was humanity for you. They ran on instinct and fear and grudges, and they called it wisdom. A creature with two small bumps on its head had done nothing to anyone in that room, and they had already decided what it was. Logic never entered into it. It rarely did. Though if used properly, she can exploit her appearance. 

She pulled the hood up and lowered her eyes. Looking afraid came easily once she remembered the veteran's sword.

The Hero came back with a plate of bread and cheese. She ate, and the bread was soft and the cheese was sharp, and she had to stop herself from eating it all in two bites.

"Now," he said when she had finished. "I'm going to tell you something and I want you to think before you answer."

She set down the bread. "Yes, sir."

"The court would have wanted you, if they knew. They'd have taken you to the capital, and one of two things would have happened. They'd have executed you, because people in charge hate what they can't explain. Or they'd have used you. A child with demon mana is a weapon, and weapons don't get to go home."

"I understand."

"I told the commander you died in the fire. He wrote it down." The Hero rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't want to decide the rest of your life for you. I've got a house up north where I stay between fights. Beatrice keeps it. You can live there. Or I can find you a family in some quiet village far from the war. You'd have to hide the horns."

Tanya paused and began thinking.

A quiet village was close to what she had wanted for two lifetimes, and she had not even had to ask. She could grow up in some tiny farming town and learn a trade, and in time she could open a shop.

It was also a trap, and an accident of her ignorance. She knew nothing about this world and had no money and no allies. A child with horns among strangers was one nosy neighbor away from a mob with pitchforks. The Hero's house was unknown, but he could protect her there. A village could not.

And there was still the second reason.

"May I ask something first, sir?"

"Go ahead."

"Why are you helping me?"

His face went still. She had seen that look on negotiators who had been handed a question they expected and didn't like.

"Because it needs doing."

"That tells me nothing, sir."

"It's what I've got."

"You gain nothing from this?"

"Perhaps."

"Nobody does something for nothing," she said, folding her hands in her lap.

"Maybe not." He smiled, small and tired. "It's still what I've got."

She studied him. Too smooth, too practiced. Whatever sat behind it, he had polished that front for a long time. Pushing would only make him dig in, and a cold feeling crept up the back of her neck that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

"I will accept the house, sir."

"You're sure?"

"I believe I can learn more from you than from a village."

That was true in its way. It was also the kind of thing a clever child might say, and the Hero gave a dry puff of a laugh.

"Good." He stood and held out his arms. "Come on. Long way to go."

She could not stand, so he picked her up again. She laid her head against his shoulder and watched the inn shrink behind them. He might be an agent of Being X. He might be a lunatic, or a liar, or a man who would drop her next week or die in the next battle and leave her stranded.

But he had stopped a sword with two fingers to save her. He had put porridge in front of her and waited. He had looked her in the eye and said she was human, and he had meant it.

I'll take the risk, she decided. For now.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The carriage hit a pothole, and Tanya, who had been trying to sit up on her own, slid sideways into the Hero's lap.

"Careful."

"I was attempting to stand, sir."

"In a moving carriage."

"It seemed an efficient use of the time."

"It seemed like a good way to crack your skull." He set her back on the bench with one hand, as lightly as he would move a cat. "You'll get your legs back. Give it time."

"How much time, sir?"

"Weeks. A month, if you're stubborn."

"I will not disappoint you, sir,”

“...”

She scowled at her knees. A month meant being carried like a potato and spoon-fed like a baby and bathed by a smiling elf. It meant she could not run or hide if he changed his mind.

I hate being helpless, she thought. I always have. That fucking Being X…

"For someone who gained consciousness a day ago," the Hero said, watching her with his head tilted. “You are quite prideful,”

"I beg your pardon?"

"Being carried. It's all over your face."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

"Sure you don't." He smiled crookedly. "Tell you what. When we get to the house, I'll give you something to work on. A little each day."

"What kind of something?"

"You'll see."

She narrowed her eyes. He was grinning like a man holding a very good secret.

"Is that a threat, sir?"

"It's a present."

He leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed. And Tanya, to her enormous irritation, found she was smiling too, a little, at one corner of her mouth.

Stop that, she told herself. Right now. He's a stranger, and you don't know what he wants.

She stopped. It took effort.

They stopped for the night at a roadside camp where the soldiers had set up fires and tents. The Hero lifted her down and sat her on a log with a blanket around her shoulders. The soldiers kept their distance. They ate in small knots with their backs half turned, and now and then one glanced across the fire and looked away.

Two soldiers sat on a fallen tree a little way off, close enough that she could hear them if she kept her face turned to the fire.

"I'm telling you, it's not right," one muttered. "A thing like that in the carriage. We ought to leave it at the next village."

"The Hero said she's human."

"The Hero says a lot."

"He's killed more demons than you've had hot dinners."

"That's my point. He's one man. What does he know about what's in her head?"

"What do you know?"

"I know what a horn means."

"You know what you've been told a horn means." The other man spat into the fire. "My mother had a mole on her face the size of a coin. The whole village said she was a witch. She wasn't. She was just ugly."

The first soldier said nothing.

Tanya kept her eyes on the flames.

There it was again. Not a single fact in either man's argument, only feeling and old stories, and each of them dug in as if the whole world depended on it. If she had been the one in command, she would have sorted the two of them out in a minute with a pencil. But nobody had ever won a debate with a pencil. People believed first and reasoned afterward, if they reasoned at all.

It's the single most reliable thing about them, she thought. And the most useful.

The Hero brought her a bowl of stew and sat beside her. For a while they ate in silence. Sparks drifted up into a sky full of stars, more than she had ever seen in either of her lives, and she tilted her head back and looked.

"They're staring," she said at last, quietly.

"They'll stop."

"How can you be sure, sir?"

"They always do." He tore a piece of bread in half and handed her the larger piece. "People get used to anything if you give them long enough."

"That is a hopeful way of looking at things."

"I've had practice." He glanced at her. "Eat. Then sleep."

She ate. When she finished, the Hero took the bowl without being asked and carried her to the carriage. She lay on the bench with the blanket up to her chin and listened to the low murmur of the soldiers around the fire.

Through the gap in the canvas she could see him sitting on the log with his back to her, a dark shape against the flames, a sword across his knees. He didn't sleep. He sat with his head a little lifted, as though listening to something far off.

I'll find out, she thought, drifting. Whatever it is you're hiding, I'll find out.

She was asleep before the fire burned down.

Join my Discord Server: https://discord.gg/X7sphRUsxJ

Next chapter: Sunday.