Patricia gave me a firm, playful pat right on the back of my cloak, only for her hand to bounce off with a dull thud.
"See? Your wings are rock hard," she chuckled.
Since my wings were constructed from highly dense, crystallized and solidified blood, hitting them through the fabric felt like slapping a slab of solid armor plating. I just smirked under my hood, letting out a soft laugh as we stepped through the front doors of the Bureau building and out onto the open courtyard.
Looking up at the sky, I noticed the sharp Mediterranean sun had finally dipped below the horizon, casting the world in the cool, purple-and-gold hues of twilight. Between feeding little Cliff earlier, riding across districts with Friedrich, and catching up with Patricia, the day had completely slipped away. The deadly sunlight was officially gone.
Patricia stretched her arms, her plated pauldrons clinking softly in the crisp evening air. She looked over at me, completely casual and informal.
"Hey Eirene, where are we heading first? Should we go grab a carriage down at the main depot to Lulu City, or..."
"Carriage? A carriage to the mountain pass takes way too long, Patricia. Let's fly." I cut her off, turning to face her with a sharp-fanged grin.
Patricia blinked, pausing mid-step as she stared at me.
"Fly...?"
"Don't worry, This girl can do anything." I said, my voice rich with unbothered confidence.
With the sun completely gone, I grabbed the edges of my heavy dark cloak and casually tossed it off, letting the fabric fall into my hand. My massive, brilliantly crimson wings unfurled into the open night air, stretching wide with a powerful, crystalline sheen.
Because of the Sovereign Decree of Royal Sanction issued by the King himself a year ago… a magically binding royal document bearing the royal signet in golden wax… I didn't have to hide anymore.
The decree explicitly recognized me as a normal person, overriding the Bureau's old anti-demon laws and extending inviolable protection to me and my entire bloodline. Anyone drawing a blade against me would be executed for high treason.
Nearby Bureau soldiers and guards walking through the courtyard glanced over, saw the brilliant crimson wings, and simply kept walking without raising a single alarm. They knew the law. The Crimson Phantom was no longer a hunted demon; she was a sanctioned asset of the realm.
Patricia looked at my fully revealed wings, then glanced at the completely unbothered soldiers, before flashing me a massive, golden-toothed grin.
"Man, having the King's personal seal really turns some heads, doesn't it? Alright, wings it is! But you'd better hold onto me tight, Eirene. I'm wearing fifty pounds of solid steel, and I'd really prefer not to test my paladin fall damage today!" Patricia said, chuckling as she adjusted the heavy straps of her paladin armor.
"Relax, I've got you, Next stop: Lulu City mountains!"
Patricia didn't hesitate. She clambered right onto my back, locking her heavy, steel-clad arms around my shoulders in a firm piggyback ride.
"Alright, drive carefully!" she joked in my ear.
Even with her, her massive paladin greatsword, and fifty extra pounds of solid plate armor weighing down my back, it barely made a difference. After a full year off from active service… spending my months resting, recovering, and taking care of baby Cliff… I was running at absolute peak condition. My strength had fully returned, and my wings were practically itching for a high-altitude workout.
"Hold on tight," I smirked.
With a single, powerful sweep of my crystallized blood wings, a shockwave of air kicked up dust across the courtyard. We launched straight into the twilight sky, shooting up like a crimson streak over the stone battlements.
Below us, the city guards stationed along the grand walls of Caria looked up at the sudden gust. In the old days, an archer unit would have immediately sounded the alarm and aimed a dozen ballistas at a pair of giant red wings. But tonight, they just casually raised their lanterns, recognized the sanctioned silhouette in the sky, and gave a brief, respectful nod before returning to their patrol.
No alarms, no demonic hunting parties, and best of all… no slow, irritating toll booths at the city gates. Flight was strictly free of charge.
"Hah! Look at that! No paying the highway gates, no waiting in line for three hours behind grain wagons... I could definitely get used to traveling like this!" Patricia called out over the rushing wind, her hair whipping behind her as the sprawling lights of Caria shrank into the distance.
"Told you," I laughed, cutting through the crisp night air as we cleared the outer walls entirely.
Thanks to my past experience hunting down Don Anthony's networks, navigating to Lulu City from the air was second nature. I locked onto our heading, the sharp, cool night wind slicing past us as we soared high above the dark wilderness.
Out of nowhere, Patricia leaned closer to my ear, her tone shifting from her usual boisterous self to something hushed and tense.
"Um, Eirene... I have a word for you."
"What is it?" I asked, keeping my focus on the horizon while my wings beat steady rhythm against the thermal currents.
"I have a secret to tell. It's... about my past," she said quietly.
I tilted my head back slightly.
"Wait, your past? Like back at Rebelbub Village? Where you told us about that whole personal vendetta against your father?"
"No... not that, It's completely different. Honestly... I lied about that back then so you guys would just believe me and stop asking questions." Patricia admitted, a bit of awkward sheepishness in her voice.
I raised an eyebrow, my curiosity spiked.
"Alright. I'm listening."
"Touch my neck," she instructed.
"I can't, Patricia, I'm literally flying us through the sky right now," I protested with a sharp laugh.
Without warning, she shifted her fifty-pound armored body right on my back to reach forward.
"Hey! Woah, stop moving! You're gonna make us crash-land into a pine tree!" I yelped as the sudden weight shift made us wobble mid-air, her heavy pauldrons almost throwing off my aerodynamic balance.
"Look! Just look right here!" she pleaded, adjusting her posture just enough to pull down the neck guard of her chainmail.
From my angle, I glanced sideways at her exposed neck. Etched into her skin were four distinct, arched lines that looked like deep, faded scars at first glance. But as I stared, the flesh actually rippled. The slits parted slightly, expanding and contracting in a rhythm that looked eerily like... breathing.
"I'm a half-human, half-mermaid," Patricia confessed, looking me dead in the eye as the night wind caught her hair.
"Huh?"
A half-mermaid?
My mind scrambled through the archives of my mother's old bedtime stories. From what she'd taught me as a kid, full mermaids lived far across the ocean on the Milky Way continent… the massive expanse populated by demi-humans and beastkin.
Unlike the vicious, flesh-eating sirens of the deep, mermaids were a peaceful aquatic race.
They had long fish tails instead of legs, delicate finned ears, and gills to breathe underwater, acting as guardians of the marine ecosystem. They couldn't walk on land at all.
Looking at Patricia now, it all clicked. She didn't have a tail, finned ears, or full aquatic features because she was a hybrid. She had human legs, walked in heavy steel armor, and breathed air just fine… except for those hidden, breathing gill slits beneath her collar armor.
It stunned me. Elias's elite party… the ultimate holy squad of human champions… had a secret half-beastkin riding piggyback on a vampire right now. But more than that... what was a half-breed doing all the way here on the Andromeda continent? Humans and demi-humans on the Milky Way continent were notoriously hostile toward each other.
"Okay, holding up a second, how the hell did you end up on this side of the world then? Humans and beastkin aren't exactly exchanging friendship bracelets over on the Milky Way continent."
Patricia let out a heavy, bitter sigh against the back of my cloak, her voice dropping into a somber, raw tone.
"Well... it's a long story, back before I was born, my mother was a full mermaid living off the coast of the Milky Way continent. She told me the truth before she passed. My father was a human pirate… in fact, he was the captain of the infamous Gunpowder Pirates, a brutal crew made up almost entirely of wolf beastkins." Patricia explained quietly.
She gripped my shoulder guards a little tighter, her tone hardening.
"One day, while my father's ship was out dragging nets, my mother got tangled in the line. Those pirates weren't merciful. Instead of killing her or letting her go, they dragged her onto the deck and used her. My father and his crew tortured and raped her, using her like a toy. When they were finished with her, they just threw her back into the ocean like garbage..."
Patricia leaned in closer, her voice carrying over the sound of the night air.
"Hey, that's only the appetizer."
She took a slow breath before continuing.
"Mother realized she was pregnant shortly after. Keep in mind, my mother wasn't just any mermaid… she was the leader of the Tuna tribe. I was born underwater, deep below the surface, just like any mermaid child. But instead of a full mermaid, I came out a hybrid. A single human cell from that attack made its way into me. The rest of the tribe was completely shocked when they saw me… a mermaid leader's daughter born with human feet instead of a tail."
She paused, her grip on my shoulders steady.
"My mother didn't care about the shock. She ignored their whispers and loved me as her daughter regardless. Because my gills were fully developed, I could breathe underwater, but my lungs meant I could breathe air too. The downside? Without a tail, my swimming was terrible compared to the rest of them, and I didn't have finned ears to sense vibrations underwater. Growing up, I was a total outcast. The other children excluded me because of these stupid human genes. I was too weird, too slow, and couldn't join in their games."
"So what did you do?" I asked, keeping our altitude steady as the dark outline of the Lulu mountains loomed closer on the horizon.
"In my free time, when I wasn't helping my mother tend to the coral reefs, I'd swim up to the surface, I'd dress in land clothes, hiding any trace of my hybrid nature, and taught myself to read and write the human language… Alatist. I tried to make a life for myself in secret. But the Mirage Sea was a completely lawless place. Pirates ran everything, and the local authorities were basically just paid thugs in uniforms."
Her tone hardened, the warmth completely gone from her voice.
"When I was ten, my mother got into a land dispute with a group of pirates whose heavy anchors were completely destroying our tribe's coral reefs. They were the Furry Tailed Pirates… a branch made up entirely of cat beastkins, closely tied to the Gunpowder Pirates. My mother tried to handle it legally through the local authorities, but it was useless. When that failed, the pirates turned around and accused our tribe of stealing their livestock. Shortly after, a patrol unit working directly for the Furry Tailed Pirates arrived at our reef. My mother went up to meet them, thinking they were there to investigate... but they weren't there to make arrests. They were sent to leave a warning."
I grimaced, my grip on her legs tightening slightly.
"They slaughtered her, didn't they?"
"Worse than that, Mother was strong… she could wield a spear better than anyone in the reef. But me? I was just a little girl. The pirates dived deep into the water and used massive weighted nets to capture the children. Including me. The adults fought back with everything they had, but those cat beastkins were relentless. The children were dragged out of the water in droves. My mother had told me before that an adult mermaid can survive out of water for about an hour before suffocating... but for children? Their lungs couldn't handle it. The second those nets hit the surface air, the children began to choke and die."
She took a shaky breath, the memory clearly burning behind her eyes.
"All of them suffocated right in front of me… except me, because of my human lungs. The pirates saw my legs and my gills, realized I was a hybrid, and decided I was too useful to kill. They made me a slave. As for the other mermaid children? Those monsters slaughtered their bodies, roasted them on spears, and made a barbecue right on the deck. It was horrific."
I felt a cold wave of anger ripple down my spine, my crimson blood wings beating heavier against the night sky.
"I was kept in chains below deck, there were only two slaves on that ship: me, and a beautiful young girl with long green hair and striking hazel eyes. One night, while the crew was drunk, that green-haired lady snuck over and lockpicked my chains. She handed me a map to freedom. I never even learned her name. She told me to run, so I slipped over the side of the ship and hit the dark water."
She let out a dry, bitter laugh.
"Because I was a hybrid, I could breathe underwater indefinitely. I couldn't swim as fast as a full mermaid, but I was vastly faster than any human. I survived on raw fish and sheer adrenaline for a solid week of non-stop swimming until I finally crossed the Mirage Sea and washed up right on the docks of Lulu City."
"Lulu City? So you've been to where we're going."
"Yeah, I was just a starving, half-drowned orphan on the docks. Eventually, a local rescue party took me in and transferred me to Caria City for official adoption. To make me a legal citizen, they had to register a proper name. My real name back in the reef was Patricia Tuna… but 'Tuna' was distinctly beastkin, and beastkin names were strictly prohibited on the Andromeda continent. To keep my cover intact and pass as a normal human, I registered under the human name Patricia Barbon."
She paused, taking a deep breath of the high-altitude air as the dark mountains of Lulu City loomed larger in the distance.
"Once I was settled, I enlisted in the Bureau as a paladin trainee, I had already learned basic spear and sword tactics back at my reef home, so I threw myself into training for a whole decade. I took on monster bounties, earned my own gold, and paid my way through the Caria Mastery Academy using my target rewards. And then... right after graduation, I took a high-tier raid contract... and met your big brother, Elias."
I let out a quiet, whistling breath through my teeth as the cold wind whipped around us.
"So... did big brother know about any of this?"
Patricia shook her head against my back, her metal armor clinking softly.
"No. Absolutely not. I would never tell anyone about my secret. In fact, Eirene... you are literally the very first person I've ever told."
I couldn't help but let out a sharp, amused smirk.
"Really? Not even Elias? He's the golden-boy party leader."
"Are you kidding? Your brother had that serious, brood-in-the-corner edgy tone going on twenty-four seven back when we formed the party! There was zero time for deep, emotional campfire stories with him around. He was always so hyper-focused on the mission, tracking demons, and brooding about his missing sister." Patricia laughed, the sound bright and clear against the night sky.
She gave my shoulder a gentle, friendly squeeze.
"And the sheer irony of it all, is that the mysterious, terrifying 'winged demon' who kicked my teeth in, and the missing little sister Elias was always brooding over... turned out to be the exact same person. And now here I am, riding piggyback on your wings."
"Life's funny like that," I chuckled, my single eye gleaming as I tilted my wings, adjusting our flight path into a smooth, silent glide.
Ahead of us, the towering, dark jagged peaks of the Lulu City mountain range cut sharply into the starry sky. The shadows below were deep and treacherous, but the trail was warm.
"Get ready, Barbon, storytime's over. We're entering the mountains."