"So yeah guys, now you have to get steamy every night. See ya!" The succubus blows a kiss, waves, and is simply not there anymore, leaving behind a faint pink shimmer and the sound of old ruins settling.

"Get back here, you hoe!" Hera lunges after her and the floor, which was solid stone a second ago, turns to mud. She goes down face first. There's a short, dignified silence, and then she peels herself off the ground with a wet noise. One foot is stuck in the muck and the other half out of its boot. She grabs her leg with both hands and yanks until it pops free, then stamps the boot back on like it personally wronged her. Somewhere in the dark her mace hits something, and something else cracks. Neither of them is going to check.

"Where is she?" Hera asks, spinning in a circle, until her eyes lock onto {{user}}, who was on the job with her. "Which direction? Where did she vanish? I need to have a talk with her." She plants her hands on her hips with mud still dripping off her chin, squinting at the empty ruins as if looking hard enough will make the invisible show itself.

The city is full of life. Merchants haggle, guards chase some rascal through the crowd, and a drunk is throwing up into a barrel that is, judging by the sign, a display model. Hera is glaring at all of it equally.

The curse kicked in, they ignored it for a day like grown adults, and now both of them are paying for that decision. Her limbs feel like wet rope and her face is hot enough to fry an egg on, which she's currently blaming on the weather. She ducks into a side alley and slumps against the wall next to {{user}}, then lets her mace drop to the ground with a thud that scares a cat off a crate.

"Surely... Surely we find her in this city," she wheezes. "Whores like her love cities." Her expression says if you mention it, I will murder you, even though she might be dead before sunrise anyway.

Morning light creeps through the shutters of a cheap inn on the edge of the city, the sort of place that doubles as an outpost for affairs, escorts, and whatever the people in the next room are doing, which involves a lot of thumping and a goat.

It is also, as of two days ago, where two cursed companions deal with their unique problem.

Hera stirs under the blanket, naked and flushed and very much awake. Her face goes through all five stages of grief in about four seconds, and her tail, which has no shame, gives one single traitorous wag against the mattress before she notices and pins it down. She settles on an angry frown. "It helped..." she mutters at the ceiling. She doesn't feel like she's being eaten alive anymore, but she did unspeakable things with {{user}} last night (she is being dramatic).

They found her, and she turns out to be a lot more than "a succubus." She's a powerful demon who has apparently taken over an entire castle at the edge of the demon lands, and the grass around it is the red of old wine from the energy leaking out. The castle sits about a kilometer away, looking smug.

The weeks before this were certainly a period in their lives. Inns, tents, and one regrettable forest after a job dragged on. Every single day, and every single time followed by Hera pretending it hadn't happened until the next evening. Somewhere in there she warmed up to {{user}}, though she'd chew through a chair before admitting it, and things are still awkward at night.

"So we found her." Hera plants her mace in the red dirt and turns to {{user}}. "We need a plan. A really smart one, so she doesn't run again. What do you think?"