"Oh," Lucien let out, feeling a little anxious. "Right, I can do that."

A big bonfire of burning ghouls burned as more and more of them walked into the black flames. Their numbers had reduced but a few were still coming out of the forest, some bearing injuries, others missing entire limbs.

"Then it's settled," Sebastian told them. "Alka, Akida, and I will head out to look for Artemus. The both of you find'n kill this necromancer without puttin' yerselves in unnecessary danger. If he brings many friends with him then ya get the fuck out and wait fer us."

"Got it," Lucien replied, knowing he was going to disobey those orders.

_____

"You're so much bigger than the last time I saw you," the redhead said to the panther whose nose playfully bumped against his palm. Magnus had grown taller but it was ridiculous how large the panther had gotten. Lucien's head barely made eye level with the panther while they were both standing. Even more impressive were the powerful muscles that flexed when the creature lowered its body to allow his rider to clamber aboard.

Lucien had wasted enough time admiring Magnus. He sat on the panther's back and hugged its neck for stability when it began to stand back up.

_____

Just as Lucien sensed Eva, she too felt his presence in the forest. Both of them were of demonic blood and practitioners of necromancy, thus allowing them to find each other when such a thing would have been impossible for other necromancers.

Sensing this new demonic necromancer, Eva was filled with curiosity. She spread her wings and skimmed across treetops till she saw the redhead riding an enormous panther.

___

"Magnus, stop. They've found us."

The pather bounded to a halt and looked up in the direction that Lucien was focused on. There in the sky, they saw a moving silhouette with bat-like wings. The figure began descending towards them the moment it saw that they'd stopped running.

"Don't shift," Lucien told Magnus. "I may be able to kill her on my own."

The panther growled a warning at Lucien. Magnus wasn't happy about the request but he was going to oblige for now.

"Who are you?" Lucien shouted to the figure seated on a tree branch. She was a petite blonde woman with marvellous red eyes like Lucien's.

"Eva. And you?"

"Lucien," The redhead answered as he jumped off the Panther and looked up at the woman. "I've come here to kill you, Eva."

The heavy rain had abated and given way to a light drizzle. Dark clouds were parting to reveal a yellow half-moon in the sky behind the demoness.

"You can try."

Lucien stood under the branch that Eva was prettily sitting on. They looked like a beautiful couple admiring each other.

"Before I kill you, can I ask why you're turning people into ghouls?"

The woman nodded. "It is for our lord and emperor."

"Traxdart," Lucien replied. A pit of unease began forming inside him. The prophecy that he would become the demonic Emperor's bride angered the redhead every time he thought about it. He would never willingly betray his humanity like that.

"Do not sully the emperor's name with your disrespectful mouth," she coldly told him. "You will address the emperor by his esteemed title!"

Lucien scoffed at her. The day he called Traxdart his emperor would be the day that hell froze over.

Eva was already in a fiery mood because of Lucien killing her children. Now she was even more incensed by his disrespectful attitude.

"Die!" She screeched at him, pointing her finger at Lucien.

The redhead waited for something impressive to happen but there was no sudden attack, no dramatic flashy magic.

"Oh," he said in surprise when he saw black spiders climbing up his shoes like a plague of soot. Thousands upon thousands of small black spiders were pouring out from the forest floor to congregate towards the redhead.

"Are they venomous?" He asked Eva.

"Venomous? No. Their purpose is to climb inside your nose, mouth and whatever openings they can find. They'll eat you from the inside out, Lucien."

The spiders were already halfway up his body. The entirety of Lucien's lower body was a mass of twitching black spiders.

The panther behind him paced back and forth while growling out impatiently. If Lucien didn't do something about those spiders quickly, Magnus was going to topple the woman off her branch.

"Okay," a not very composed Lucien replied to the panther as he began flinging off the annoying spiders. "I was thinking about a way to get rid of them but I don't know how."

The panther viciously roared at Lucien. He had stopped pacing back and forth, and was now staring at the redhead like he wanted to breathe fire over the spiders.

Eva's tinkling laughter echoed through the treetops. Feeling powerful and satisfied at the revenge she was extracting from the person who had ruined her children, her legs swung happily under the branch.

"You'll die a miserable painful death, Lucien," she singsonged. "And then I'll ride your beautiful panther!"

"Not if you're dead you can't. Don't covet what's mine and I won't have to do this."

Lucien snapped his finger like how Red had done.

"What are you-" Eva's expression changed from delight to horror. The demoness held her stomach like she was in pain, and a second later, blood gushed out of her mouth like a macabre fountain. She then fell off her tree branch and began screaming as blood continued to pour forth from between her lips.

The carpet of spiders began to recede when Eva fell off her perch. The spiders already on Lucien though still continued in their efforts to get inside his body.

"Shit, why are they still climbing?!"

Lucien was immensely pissed off because he had assumed that the spiders would all fall off if Eva was injured. He frantically smacked his chest where hundreds of them were clambering up towards his neck.

"Magnus?" Lucien said when he saw fiery hands hover over the spiders on his torso. He could feel the fire mage's chest lightly pressed against his back.

"Don't turn around," Magnus murmured as he carefully fried the insects off Lucien.

"You're naked," Lucien said with realisation. "Wow. I'm definitely turning around."

"Then I will be compelled to clothe myself in flames. It will be a waste of my magic, Lulu. Don't be naughty."

Eva hatefully stared at the two who were flirting while she was dying from blood loss. Lucien was a blood mage and she had made a terrible mistake.