"I'm a demon slayer. Hunting is what I know."

"In this world," the woman agreed. "But not in the one where you must go. The demon king has stolen one of the keys. But there are others."

She swayed, and Kadra leaped forward, cursing, to catch her. Frail bones, she thought. Such delicate bones would shatter easily.

"Why did they let you live?" Kadra demanded as she helped the woman inside.

"It is not in their power to destroy me. To harm, but not to vanquish. I did not know they were coming." She shook her head as she lowered herself into a chair by a hearth left cold in the heat of day. "My own complacency blinded me to them. But not to you." She smiled then, and those eyes were brilliant. "Not to you, Kadra, Slayer of Demons. I've waited for you."

"Why?"

"You call me lady, and once I was. Once I was a young girl of rank who took a brave warrior into her heart, and gave him her body in love. He was killed in the Battle of the Singing River.

"It was a great battle against the Bok and the demon tribes who joined them." Impressed, Kadra tilted her head. She had been weaned on battle stories, and this was the greatest of all. "Many were destroyed on all sides. Many brave warriors perished, as did three slayers. The numbers of Bok were halved, but still Clud escaped and since increased those numbers again to plague our world.

"I watched the battle in my fire, and in the moment my love was struck down, in that moment of grief, I bore a girl child. She who was born to take up a sword as her father had done. She who would be more than those who made her. You are she. You are my blood and flesh and bone. I am she who bore you. I am your mother."

Kadra retreated one step. Where there had been pity was now anger. "I have no mother."

"You know I speak true. You have vision enough to see."

She felt the truth like a burn in the heart, but wanted only to deny it. "Humans who are not slayers keep their young. They tend and guard and protect them even at the risk of death."

"So it should be." The woman's voice thickened with regret. "I could not keep you with me. My duty was here, holding the keys, and yours was your training. I could not give you a mother's comfort, a mother's care, or a father's pride. Parting with you was another death for me."

"I need no mother," Kadra said flatly. "Nor father. I am a slayer."

"Yes. This is your fate, and even I could not turn your life's wheel away from it. As I cannot turn it now from where you must go, from what you must do."

"I must hunt."

"And you will. Our world and another are at stake. I could not keep you then," she stated. "I cannot keep you now. Though I have never let you go."