Chapter 4. The Other Camp

“There you are! Where the were you?” barked Chaelin once he returned to the northern woods. She was standing there with her long black hair, cat-like eyes, strong figure and annoying arrogance. Jiyong looked around, the fire was almost extinguishing from the bonfire in the middle of the camp and the rest of the demons were either drunk, sleeping or hunting at the surroundings of the camp, protected by the dark of the night. Jiyong’s wings itched, tired of flying the long distance between the eighth quadrant and the camp at the north, near the quadrant 26.

“Stop talking to me like that, Chaelin,” hissed Jiyong, baring his teeth towards the female demon and dodging her presence, annoyed. “I don’t owe you any explanation,”

Chaelin’s eyes ignited with something close to despising fury, some of the feathers at the edge of her wings puffed and sharpened but she rather drew a contrived smile, fangs showing and turned her back, snorting.

“Esh has been looking for you. And you do owe him explanations,” she hissed while she walked away, swinging her tail behind her like an annoyed female demon would do, between arrogance and courtship.

Jiyong’s jaw clenched at the mention of the leader of the extremist camp. If Esh was looking for him, it meant he was angry and he wanted answers. And Jiyong clearly knew what exactly he was angry about. They had planned that attack for weeks, they sent trackers all along the territory of the eighth quadrant to monitor the Alpha sentinels routes, they had found that blind spot two kilometers from the entrance by luck. They even patrolled at the edges of the city, something they almost never did for the danger it represented to expose the members to the Alphas presence. They had always tried their best to avoid a confrontation with the Alphas. Took all precautions needed. But for some maddening reason, not even two minutes since the attack to the wagon had started, they had had a bunch of angry Alphas flying above them and forcing them to hid among the woods and ran away because none were prepared for the Alphas sudden appearance. To be honest he was frustrated because it was his damn plan the one that had failed and Esh would very eagerly point that out for him.

He ran a hand across his tired face and let out a long-suffering sigh. He looked around at the already extinguished bonfire and at one demon sprawled over the earth playing with some brown feathers with his fingers, eyes watery, clearly wasted of alcohol.

“Preee-tty angel feathers,” the demon stuttered, smiling to himself and tearing one by one the silvery, downy barbs of the feather as if it was some kind of a daisy flower.

“Jezz,” shook Jiyong his head and continued his way through the camp. Some of the demons at the camp were not only extremist haters but cruel and ignorant and even ridiculously vulgar. Jiyong despised some of them, if not almost all of them, but he felt he belonged there. At least there were no creepy angels around, and if there were it would be delightful to see them whining and screaming in pain instead of fluttering around like happy butterflies.

At one of the tents, he saw two angel Krevatis tied up with silver chords, hands already blue and swollen and faces hidden with black robes. One was completely quiet, maybe almost dead, his or her wings already gone. The other one was still crying silently and trying to hide her wings behind her the best as possible. After watching the messy patches along her brown wings, Jiyong knew where his fellow demon had found those feathers he was playing with.

Chaelin was sitting in front of the Krevatis, legs spread open as she used to sit. She was drinking some of the worst beer possible as if it was elixir while she talked with another demon, though her eyes were fixed to the angels in front of her and a subtle smirk make her upper lip twist. That was Chaelin, the only one who had no boundaries when it came to torturing angels. The only one with the stomach to do the things she did, and only Jiyong sometimes could equate with her wickedness, but for some reasons he found himself ignoring the invitation in Chaelin’s eyes and walked to the leader’s tent instead.

Esh saw him slip inside the tent with reddened eyes and tightened lips. He wasn’t alone. Youngbae was at one side of the table and two other commanders were standing one at each side of Youngbae staring at some kind of map. All of them lifted their eyes to the new arrival and then at Esh as if expecting some kind of demon slaughter to happen at any moment.

Jiyong simply bowed his head and stepped inside giving no importance to neither of them and dropped his body over one of the closest chairs, took his vest out and looked at the other demons inside the room nonchalantly.

“How nice for you to pay us a visit, Jiyong,” murmured Esh staring at him frowning and his tail still and upwards in signal of dominance, “You probably have many other important things to do than obeying your leader orders,” he hissed and stood up, all his wingspan showing off with his dark almost purple wings behind him.

Youngbae stepped between them as he always did when Esh and Jiyong had those confrontations. He even tried to divert their leader's attention by pointing out something about the territories around the third quadrant, but Esh simply growled and with a low grunt ordered him to shut up and move aside and Youngbae did, completely frightened.

“One Alpha was following me. I had to make sure I lost him before coming back,” Jiyong simply explained and looked at Esh right in the eyes. Youngbae always nagged him for doing so, for behaving so disrespectfully with their leader, but Jiyong considered Esh no leader but a useless, arrogant demon that believed he owned the whole world but couldn’t even get his own together. “Unless of course, you don’t mind Alphas showing up at the camp. Maybe you wanted to invite them for dinner? My apologies for ruining your plans,” Jiyong said and then turned his back to stare at the maps displayed over the table.

He felt the pain once Esh hit him with the back of his powerful wing at the right side of his body. But Jiyong was strong, even stronger than his leader and Esh knew it. So when Jiyong turned, sharpened his wings and growled, bearing his teeth and standing as tall as possible, Esh backed and murmured something like “Don’t you dare,” but with worry and even fear in his voice.

“Don’t ever hit me again then,” Jiyong barked and gathered his wings again at his back, feathers still sharpened.

Youngbae finally snapped back and pushed Jiyong away, trying to calm his friend while the other two commanders inside the tent stood in front of the leader, clearly in a display of loyalty, although their faces revealed how unexcited they were at having to stand against Jiyong.

“Whatever,” Jiyong snorted and rolled his eyes, “We have worst problems Esh, Alpha problems,” he emphasized and the older demon frowned and nodded accepting the “time out” Jiyong was offering and returned back to his serious, calm state.

Both the commanders and Youngbae sighed relieved and stared at each other already accustomed to those scenes between the demons in front of them and moved closer to where Jiyong was already analyzing the maps.

“You said your trackers found no signals of Alpha sentinels at these three points around the eighth quadrant,” Jiyong addressed one of the commanders who nodded and stood straight.

“I sent Taur and Aigiel. You trained them yourself, Jiyong. They’ve never failed us, not once,” the commander said.

Jiyong agreed on that. Aigiel at least was, probably, their best tracker and he had never made a mistake. If he had said that there weren’t any alpha signals then there were not, not even by chance. So Jiyong turned to face Youngbae expecting some suggestion from his friend who used to be the most