"I don't know why in Asuka's name you dragged us down here."

"I would have thought you'd love it here. Plenty of demons for you to attack, after all."

"But it's Zenite-be-damned hot!"

"That's not my fault. Besides, it's... it's better than getting in... heat."

Ketvia laughed heartily at the blush that gave Chiya's cheeks a rosy glow under their iridescent fur. She still seemed so young, to be blushing at such a natural, if annoying, part of life. "It is, at that," she admitted. "Though I regret having to come back to this gods-forsaken rock when there's still a war going on back on Tris'Hath."

"Well, I'm glad to be away from it," Chiya retorted with a shudder. She hated war, and she had grown up swiftly in the nine months they spent fighting to protect the world of Avengaea's allies. Ketvia, though, hadn't really changed at all, other than adding several new scars to her already battle-hardened body. Scars hidden by her thick, rust-red fur. 

"Of course you are," Ketvia agreed. "You're rather boring that way." She ducked a swat from her smaller companion's wing, laughing. "But you're right, sticking around now would mean having to go into season in the fall, and I want nothing less than I want a brat trailing around after me everywhere I go, or some moon-eyed young buck professing his undying love while all I'm trying to do is make said brat. No, mating season, males, and kits are not for me."

Chiya, who had always thought of the idea of children and love as something of an ideal to be wished for, despite her embarrassment surrounding it all, didn't answer directly, changing the subject instead of possibly provoking an argument. "I suppose we could have picked a better place to wait out the next couple weeks, though," she admitted. "It's not really very pretty."

In all honesty, it wasn't pretty it all. It was, in fact, rather ugly. Everything was in shades of brown, black, red, or gray, and the heat of late spring put a shimmer of malicious unreality over it all. The ground was too gritty to hold anything but the toughest of plants, and those were very rarely attractive, and rocks jutted up randomly to tear at the hazy blue sky. They were at the north-western foot of massive mountain range that dominated the southern continent, the Tuisk Mountains. This barren, forbidding place was only the beginning: they were barely into the foothills. There were very few settlements here, probably in large part because it simply wasn't safe to live so close to the demon mountains, and very little wildlife cared to loiter between stone and sun.

"Well, you're the one who brought us here," Ketvia remarked, looking around with distaste mingling with curiosity. She had no idea why Chiya had led them south, least of all to this awful part of the south.

"I know."

The problem was, Chiya didn't know why they were here, either. Something was drawing her, the same way danger or strong emotion always drew her, but she couldn't make out what it was or where it was coming from. Still, there was no resisting it, not without suffering horrible nightmares and acute distraction; Chiya could only guess it was the goddess' will that she follow it, so follow it she did. Ketvia only came because she refused to be separated from her friend, and to keep her safe, for it was Ketvia who was the demon-hunter, not her small, delicate Light companion.

Huffing, Ketvia angled for a patch of shade under a thrust of rock, ducking into the questionable shelter there. "Well, I say we take a breather," she announced. "It's too hot at midday to make any sort of headway in this wasteland!"

Torn between hilarity, relief, and a nagging sense of unfinished business, Chiya chuckled and followed, leaning her back against the cool stone and willing it to suck the excess warmth from her fur and flesh. "For a little while," she acceded. "At least we're not black. I don't know how demons would be able to stand it."

"Oh, they live underground and come out mostly at night," Ketvia said knowledgeably. "Or in the winter, when it's cooler, or in places farther south where it isn't so hot. No, here we would need to worry more about Earth and Fire demons than black ones."

"And those are bad enough," Chiya murmured, glancing around where they could see as if afraid a demon would leap out at them at that very moment. "This whole place puts me on edge."

"You and me both, girlie," Ketvia rumbled, shutting her eyes and leaning back against the stone just how Chiya was.

Then, with a yelp of surprise, she leapt away from the stone and whirled. Chiya followed instinctively, surprised and afraid, spinning around to face where her friend was staring in puzzlement. There didn't seem to be anything there, nothing to have startled Ketvia so badly, not even a small animal there that could have bitten her.

Then the stone changed. With a rumble and a cloud of dust, cracks appeared-- regular, straight cracks, forming a very small door. The dragons stared, not at all sure what to make of this-- Chiya had a protective spell hovering at the fore of her thoughts, and Ketvia was tensed to leap into battle, but neither knew just what they were expecting to come out of that door.

Then the door swung open with a groan, revealing its single secret, and whatever the dragons had thought it might be, this was not it. A tall, sturdy looking woman, half-starved and bloodied, staggered into the sunlight, blinked blankly, and collapsed.