Itchy, breathing bush

Bardeelus didn't want to play the role of a hero, because he simply didn't care so much to intervene. Audera wasn't the heroic type either, but instead it felt nice to dismantle such an establishment, who acted godly in a sense. 

"I've set the bugs free… they won't play nice anymore. Those scorpions are gonna get an extra hole in themselves, hehe." She thought.

She loved to break the ego of the recent enemy, even if slightly. It was a bonus that a bunch of random slaves were set free in the process, and in relation to that matter, their job wasn't done just yet. 

They had to make sure that the slaves couldn't be followed. To make that happen, the team had to split up immediately.

It took little thinking to figure out how to split. Bardeelus only needed Erdeta, as they were to fly across the forest, to massacre the scouts who could track the escaped slaves. 

They only had minutes to do this, and this is what he needed Erdeta for. She could help him travel half a kilometer across the air, in mere seconds if necessary!

"I don't need to kill all of the scouts, just half." Bardeelus thought, "They'll get disoriented, and that's enough to break their systematic scouting. Easy greasy."

The idea of a job that could be done quickly, excited him. He could count the scouts by hand even, there were about twenty of them spread across the forest! They were not a challenge whatsoever, especially to a pure necromancer, who had sensed them before time!

Anyway, the rest of the team had no responsibility for this task. They only had to run away and follow the main, dirt road that pierced the forest.

Bardeelus rescued his sister, so necessarily, they got what they came to the mines for. Now he just needed most of the team to stay together, while the later portion of this attack against the scorpions was taken care of.

He still felt side-tracked by this entire task, but at least he was almost done. After this, the idea of getting back home didn't feel as bad anymore. It would be nice to feel comfortable for once.

…

Bardeelus and Erdeta went through the worst part of this hunt, only minutes after they split up with the team. The scouts who had stalked them in the very beginning, had waited for things to go wrong in the mines; They were in the surrounding area, waiting to pounce on anyone odd-looking!

Thankfully though, Bardeelus was already one step ahead. He flew across the forest, and destroyed the hearts of six scouts, without even having to face them. It was easy, and with such confidence won over, he decided to slow down a little bit, just moments later. 

"We were supposed to do this quickly, why are you moping around?" Erdeta asked, she was beyond nervous.

"Give me a minute… I wanna watch." Bardeelus argued, and pushed his friend deeper in the bush. 

They tried to hide, as best as they could, for the sake of observing a single enemy. The way they hugged each other would raise suspicion on some, but he just tried to keep her out of sight, rather than strangle her.

They crammed together in a bush, and Indefinitely felt each other's body heat in the process. At some point they even breathed on each other's faces, but this situation made them feel itchy and sweaty rather than bubbly.

"I have a theory," He whispered, "The scorpions aren't normal, there has to be something weird and evil about their powers."

"Don't you think Driola would've noticed that already?" She argued, and spat on the other's ear.

"That's creeping me out too. Why wouldn't she say something if she noticed it?" He whispered back. 

They couldn't talk much, however. The said enemy was twenty meters away, and could hear them at any given time.

He wasn't scared of this scout as he managed to kill six of them already, however, he was still curious. 

"The way he's flying around… their powers look like a mixture of everything." He thought.

The scouts had this job for specific reasons. The magical power which surrounded these scorpions, wasn't limited to that tail they could summon; There were other things within their arsenal.

"Wings?... Why are they called scorpions then? This makes no sense." Bardeelus spoke out, and right after, he decided to kill this enemy.

As highly as they thought of themselves, these scorpion people weren't immortal. Bardeelus could blow their hearts up easily, and as for these scouts, he didn't bother to resurrect any of them, at least without a reason.

In this particular case, he allowed the enemy to move around freely, in order to test something out. He had bargained that the scorpions could sense heartbeats, but that was not the case ~ They were just really fast instead, and dominated the air above the forest' trees!

"This is how they saw us coming before, hell, they can find the slaves in no time. I hope our interference messed their shit up at least a little bit." He said.

As for his theory, it made more and more sense now. Erdeta was focusing on the theory too, she was especially free to do so after they crawled out of that itchy bush. 

She ignored the wellbeing of all those slaves, and instead said. "I don't know if these scorpions are… demonic, but they're definitely summoners. Their summoned tails should've told us everything we needed to know before, but I thought that was just a random spell."

"They got me fooled too, but hey, looks like they fooled Driola of all people, and that's helping me feel less retarded." He expressed, "These scorpions can hide their spooky shit in plain sight. Guess that's how prestige works, damn."

Their conclusions were not set to stone, however, as they didn't understand everything about these scorpions just yet. But since the scorpions could summon a pair of green, transparent wings at their will, then it was safe to assume that they were summoners.

Summoning was looked down upon generally, since it was related to dark magical arts one way or the other. Since these scorpions weren't fondling with actual, human souls, however, they've managed to perfectly blend into this world without getting hunted down. They even managed to label themselves as superior!

The whole concept was perplexing, but Bardeelus didn't want to poke at it any further. These scorpions already received all the damage he and the team could inflict, so it was best to leave them at peace, that is, after he slaughtered a few more of their scouts. 

As for the concept of summoning and its integration across the scorpion kind, he wanted to hear Driola's opinion about it later on.