"Are you f**king insane?" the four-legged demon shouted.
"Did I make a mistake?" Praxis yelled back.
"Why would you put so much essence into the shovel? Are you trying to get us killed?" the demon said as he began stomping over to Praxis.
Praxis was already aware that the shovel should not be glowing. None of the other shovels were glowing, nor did he ever see an essence-infused weapon glow.
He had to attend the coliseum matches as a representative of the imperial family. He witnessed the greatest military leader and warrior fight. They were abnormally fast and strong, but even though their sword strikes were strong enough to cut through entire buildings, they never glowed.
Praxis also closely observed the strength of some foreign warriors during military displays, and none of their weapons emitted any glow either. Praxis started doubting the explanation Ralos and Karvin gave him after he passed out when he first released his essence.
Because then, too, he remembered seeing the sword he was channeling glow a bright white color before he lost consciousness. When he woke up, the sword he had been channeling his essence into was nowhere to be found, and the expression on their faces was odd. He believed it because of concern over potentially exposing themselves to risk, but seeing a similar bewildered expression on all these demons made him doubt that.
Praxis wanted some answers. No Praxis needed a lot of answers, and maybe this demon could give him some. Every instance from the moment he was ambushed by the assassins to now, wielding a glowing shovel in his hand, left him with nothing but questions.
"Can you explain to me what I did wrong?"
The four-legged demon approached Praxis rather quickly while yelling random words out into the world. "Stupid! Moronic! Useless, rich, good-for-nothing pricks..."
It stopped a few feet away from Praxis. He began talking, still with an irritated demeanor, "First, carefully place the shovel down on the ground."
Praxis slowly bent down and placed the shovel on the ground between the demon and him. The demon dug out a small pit and began shoveling dirt to cover Praxis' glowing shobel. As he covered the glowing shovel with dirt, the other demons returned to shoveling, acting like nothing happened.
"Tell me now you stupid piece of sh*t, why are you trying to get us all killed."
Praxis did not know what the demon was talking about because he had no idea what it was he did. All he wanted to do was imfuse some essence into the shovel, so he could find the damn soulrocks and not be potentially gutted alive by the head demon.
When responding to the demon, Praxis decided being honest could probably help him in this situation. "I don't know what you mean," Praxis said.
The four-legged demon exhaled, "I see you have a thing with your stupid little jokes, but I am not the foreman. Just be straight with me."
Praxis figured that the foreman was most likely the large demon in charge, but he still had to explain to the demon that he wasn't joking about his ignorance surrounding essence. "No, I am not joking with you, that was my first, no, that was my second time releasing my essence."
"Do you think I will believe that a Transcendent Demonkin never released his essence before?"
The demon believed that Praxis was a demonkin and a Transcendent at that. Praxis had never even met a transcendent being before, let alone be one. Why did the demon think that Praxis was a demonkin? He remembered that the demon foreman also referred to him as a demon. Praxis needed to figure that out first.
"Wait, please believe me when I say I'm not a transcendent. You are mistaken, and neither am I a demon either."
The four-legged demon looked at Praxis and exhaled deeply. "Let's say you aren't a Transcendent, then explain how you managed to release so much essence into the shovel at once. Only Transcendent-level beings can do such a task."
"I honestly don't know. I was attempting to put some essence into the shovel. I felt a flow in my body, thought about it flowing towards my hands, and into the shovel. Then I felt a sudden pulse of essence and quickly stopped channeling."
The demon took another look at Praxis. "Do you mind if I try something?"
"No, I do not mind at all, whatever helps to make light of the situation."
The demon walked towards Praxis and placed his hand on his chest. It closed its eyes for a few seconds and opened them up again. "My apologies, you weren't lying. Most of your essence is still locked up in your body. So this was your first time trying to channel it, which was why you couldn't control the release. But, it's still strange why a demonkin hasn't been trained to harness essence, especially one in their adulthood."
"I'm not a demonkin either," Praxis smiled. "I don't know why you think that."
"Not a demonkin, huh. So, what are you? Definitely not a demon-mite or demon-spawn. An incubus?"
"No, I'm not a demon at all. I am a human from Airth."
The demon began laughing almost uncontrollably. "I understand that you may not be trained to tap into your essence, but now you're a creature from another realm."
"No, I am not joking. Look at me, do I even look like a hellspawn?"
"Look around here no nobody looks like anybody else here."
Praxis looked around again at all the demons that were in the area. Demon was right, none of them looked like each other. The idea of what a demon looked like to him, fangs, claws, and horns. It wasn't true at all, some of these guys didn't have any of them.
Some of them stood on two feet, others had anywhere from four to eight. Some had two arms, others had four. Some had hair, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth like a human, but also a thorax and a pair of insect-like wings. Some were humanoid, others more animalistic, but there didn't appear to be a set shape for them.
Hell, even the foreman wasn't what he thought a typical demon would look like. If it wasn't for enormous size, fangs, claws, and ash grey skin, he almost looked like a 40-year-old fat man with an overbelly.
"You're right, I didn't notice that demons all looked so different. But, I am telling you the truth when I say that I am a human."
"Prince, was it?" the demon, but continued talking before Praxis could open his mouth. "We can all see the essence radiating out of you. And just like everyone else here, it is one of a demon's, specifically, you give off the essence that is typical of a demonkin."
Even if Praxis wanted to dispute what the demon just said, he knew he couldn't. He did not know enough about the essence to have a valid rebuttal. He witnessed Karvin and some other knights sense when there were other people or identify when certain beasts were around, but the specifics of that were still unknown to him.
As the demon told him that he gave off the essence of a demonkin, he just had to accept it. This had to have come out just when Praxis thought he was getting some answers. Now, another question that he needed answers for manifested itself.
As Praxis was about to ask more information regarding his essence, the hulking figure that was the foreman was standing behind him and four-legged demon.
"Why aren't ya two working?" it said.