Mortals are terrifyingly fragile things. They needed to breathe, sleep and consume liquids and solids on a regular basis or they expire. They have strict temperature requirements to remain functional. Apply too much kinetic force and they simply come apart and cease to be. And even if they manage to successfully navigate this complex web of requirements, they die anyway after a mere handful of decades.

Is it then any wonder that they do not look at debts the same way we do?

For us, it is essential that stability is maintained and all dealings between individuals are kept balanced so that order can be maintained and we do not spiral into chaos. We know this. We are immortal. Unless we take steps to calm tensions and settle grudges, they will eventually boil over and erupt into war, as has happened twice in the last million years.

To that end, we understand how important it is that all debts are tracked and paid. That balance is kept between all individuals. That we treat each other fairly. It just makes sense.

Mortals do not share this view. They consider debt to be binding only insofar it can be enforced by the other party.

And why wouldn’t they? Any debt not collected when they die is simply lost. Gone. Of course they would attempt to accrue as much unpaid debt as they could while they live, they live in a world without personal long-term consequences!

In the end, they all die anyway!

It is this very nature of their world that fascinates us so. A playground where actions have little consequence and you are free to act as you wish. But it comes with a warning: mortals do not honour debt unless you force them, and so, neither should you honour debt with them unless forced.

In this, they are clearly lesser creatures, and you must treat them as such. Perform only those functions that are stipulated in contract. Give them nothing for free.

If they offer you generosity, take it. Feel no remorse or sense of obligation to return the favour, for they feel no such obligation towards you. Honour only that which your contract requires. No more and no less.

Do not treat them as people like us, for they will not treat you as such.

- From an internal Infertec orientation pamphlet titled ‘Mortals and Debt’

“Next!”

Ixxy had a wide grin on her face as she stepped to the front of the queue at the bank.

“Can I help… Ixxy!” Leez exclaimed, a smile forming on her face when she saw who had stepped to the front of her queue. Ixxy had specifically picked the queue in front of Leez’s window.

“Hey, Leez. How’s work?” Ixxy smirked.

Leez shrugged, still smiling. “Eh, it pays the bills, you know? Now what brings you to my little corner? Not that I don’t appreciate the visit…” She leaned over and peeked around Ixxy at the queue behind her. “… but I do have work to do.”

“I’m here on business actually,” Ixxy smugly grinned and held out the letter of credit that Marget had given her.

The woman had been understandably hesitant to hand it over, but, much to Vrazhka’s apparent enjoyment, she’d had no choice. She’d signed the contract. And if she’d backed out, Ixxy could have forcibly extracted it from her. Contracts needed to be kept, after all.

“Oh, wow!” Leez said as she read the total off. “A full soul? Who did you bang?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ixxy smirked and winked. “Now hand it over. I have rent to pay.”

After checking through a few records, Leez deposited a squirming bundle of invisible white stuff in her outstretched hand. “There you go, one full soul, courtesy of a certain…” She glanced down at the credit letter. “‘Mrs. Marget Mulder.’ Oh my, the mystery deepens. She sounds like a bookkeeper of some rich guy. Oooh, I bet it was an orgy! Was it an orgy?”

There were a few murmurs of annoyance from the few people in the queue behind Ixxy. It didn’t sound like they appreciated hearing about banging and orgies while trying to do their banking. Well, sucked to be them. Prudes.

“Thank you very much,” Ixxy replied non-committally, absorbing the bit of soul safely inside of her. Now she just had to figure out how to get it to InferTec.

“Anything else I can do for you?” Leez asked, pretending to be professional again. She had a certain twinkle in her eye that betrayed her burning curiousity, though.

Well… why not?

“Actually, there is something,” Ixxy said, leaning forward and whispering. “How do I, uh, pay? You know… rent?”

Leez just blinked up at her silently for a few moments.

“Wow, I forgot just how new you are,” she said, then turned. “Anza! I’m calling in my favour! Cover my shift for a bit, will you?”

“What, now?” a voice echoed from somewhere in the back.

“Wait, what? No! That’s not necessary! Don’t call in a marker on my behalf…” Ixxy tried to protest, but Leez just waved her away.

“Yes, now! Thirty minutes!” She turned back to Ixxy and pointed to the left. “See that door? I’ll open it for you from the inside.”

The door she was pointing towards was set into the same wall as the bank’s booths, just a little to the side. It was probably how the tellers got to the back.

“No, Leez, really, it’s not…” Ixxy tried but Leez was already gone.

She sighed. Great. Now she was going to owe Leez too, and she really didn’t want to do that. She was just starting to think that maybe she’d made a friend.

The door clicked open just as she reached it and the demoness gestured for her to get inside quickly.

The room she found herself in was a kind of weird antechamber for the internals of the bank. It was small and shady, with only a single tiny window set high up on one wall illuminating its bare, featureless walls. A door off to the side had to lead to the rear of the bank’s booths where Leez worked. For some bizarre reason, the bottom of one of the walls protruded, forming a neat, stone bench.

“Leez, please, you really didn’t need to call in that favour just to explain something to me that I’m supposed to know anyway,” Ixxy complained as she stepped inside. “Now I owe you for it and… you know how that goes.”

Friendship existed, in the Abyss. Obviously. It just wasn’t as ‘permanent’ as mortals believed it to be. Demons fell in and out of friendship as the millenia passed and their situations - and themselves - changed. And one of the best indications of a friendship nearing its end was debt. Nothing poisoned a relationship faster than one party owing the other.

“That’s what’s bothering you?” Leez chuckled, closing the door behind her. “Listen, Cupcake, first thing you gotta learn is that little favours are way less of an issue here in this world. You’ll churn through them faster than a pig through a bucket of slop. You can owe me in Red Pepper Cocktails.”

Red Pepper Cocktails were the fruity, alcoholic drinks she and Leez had been enjoying before she’d met Vrazhk. They were a bit spicy for most mortals, but they were pretty popular amongst demons.

Ixxy squinted doubtfully at her. She wasn’t sure how many Red Pepper Cocktails this favour was going to be worth, but it didn’t matter. By necessity, Ixxy’d lived her entire life avoiding debt like the plague. That wasn’t going to change now.

“And what if I get kicked out of here in two weeks? Then I’m stuck in the Abyss and unable to pay you until you leave here as well.”

“Then we’ll figure out something else,” Leez replied. “But you don’t owe me anything for this anyway. As long as you give me the dirty deets of all of the despicable things you did to earn a full soul on one contract! Was it the mages? I’ve never done a contract for them, but I heard they are into some seriously kinky shit.”

Ixxy sighed and perched herself on the nearby bench.

“You’re going to be disappointed, but okay. Now tell me how to pay.”

Leez clapped her hands in excitement, grinning like a schoolgirl that had found a box full of cookies.

“Yes! But then you’re spilling, okay? I want to know who put what, where and for how long. And whether it was any good! That part is super important, I’m always looking for new ideas.”

Ixxy grimaced. Somehow, she suspected that Leez’s sex-life was perhaps a bit… lacking.

“Sure. Now how do I do this?”

Leez laughed. “Oh, that’s easy. Just eat it.”

Ixxy stared at her blankly. “Eat what?”

“The soul, you moron! Just put it in your mouth and swallow!”

“You cannot be serious,” Ixxy muttered. “Are you lying to me? Is this a prank? Is that soul going to disappear the moment I try that? Because I’m warning you…”

“Ixxy, you know I’d never lie to you when it comes to souls,” Leez replied, her whole expression suddenly turning deadly serious. “Our bodies have a permanent connection to the Abyss. When you eat a soul, it slides through that link and gets deposited in your account at InferTec. How do you not know that this is how it works? It’s one of the first things they taught us in prep.”

Ixxy squirmed a little. While she’d always been fascinated by the bodies Infertec produced and had probably spent literal years just going through the catalogues, she’d never paid much attention to some of the more boring aspects of how they functioned.

Sure, she could recite the exact force that a Blade Devil could exert with its scythes and she knew precisely how much venomous spit a Glibzu Demon could produce per hour, but those were cool statistics.

How the soul sucky thing worked was just engineering. That was boring. So boring that she’d fallen asleep.

“Umm… I slept through that class?” she tried. Demons didn’t really need to sleep, but they could enter a kind of… vacant state. Sleep was the best and simplest translation in this world. Every demon would know what she meant.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Oof. Bad luck. It was the one useful one. Shoulda slept through Mortal Studies, instead, that one was a complete waste of time,” Leez said, waving her hand.

Hey! Mortal Studies had been one of her favourites!

Ixxy carefully took out the mortal soul - actually a stitch-up of about… seven different souls, if she were to judge - and gently placed it on her tongue. It was kind of slimy as it slid slowly down her throat, but at the same time had a rich, very slightly oily taste. It wasn’t bad.

The most interesting part about it, however, was she could taste it with more than just her meaty body. The flavour penetrated all the way to her real self.

“Oh! Wow!” Ixxy said, just a little bit surprised, as the soul disappeared into her ‘stomach’. “That was an… interesting experience.”

“I know, right? One of the perks of using InferTec. Even paying them is a fun experience! You don’t have to wait for your rent to come up, though, you can eat these at any time. InferTec gives credit for future weeks. Some people turn into total gluttons once they get here.” Leez grinned as she patted her beautifully toned belly. “I’m a little bit ahead as it is.”

Yeah, Ixxy could totally see it. It wasn’t like the taste was that amazing on its own, but back in the Abyss, ‘taste’ was a sensation that was quite difficult to indulge. Having tasted actual, physical food kind of took the edge off, but it wasn’t quite the same. The vast majority of others in the Abyss had never and likely would never enter a physical realm. Just the concept of taste was likely to completely blow their minds.

“Eh, I’m too poor to turn into a glutton,” Ixxy pouted dejectedly.

“Not if you can rack up full soul contracts!” Leez exclaimed. “Now tell me exactly what slutty things you did to earn it! And don’t you dare spare any details, especially the kinky ones!”

Ixxy took a deep breath. “Well, funny story, actually…”

Ixxy explained how Vrazhk had approached her after Leez had left and how she’d followed the demoness to the oddly named Mulder & Heath’s offices. Her tale was awkward at first, but gradually grew more confident as Leez turned from excitement to curiousity.

“So they just find you contracts? That’s it?” Leez asked after Ixxy gave her the brief version of Marget’s pitch.

“Yup! No forced contracts, I still get to pick and choose, and I get to set my own prices,” Ixxy grinned.

“Okay, but where did you get the soul from? Did they have a couple of contracts ready and waiting for you?” Leez asked, confused.

“That’s the best part!” Ixxy gushed. “They have this ‘upkeep’-clause that says that if I’m not going to make rent, they’ll lend me a soul!”

“So this is a loan?” Leez asked, suddenly concerned. “Ixxy, I didn’t realize this was a loan. When do you have to pay it back?”

Ixxy grinned. “That’s the beauty of it. I don’t. I just don’t get paid for the contracts I do for them until I’ve made up the value. Not like I’m in a rush, though. If I don’t have enough souls for the following week’s rent, they have to give me another soul!”

“You’re kidding!” Leez squealed. “And a mortal actually signed this?”

“Yup! Apparently its a new trial program or something. They’ll probably can it before too long when they realize what a screw-up it is.”

Leez was practically bouncing in place from excitement, and Ixxy knew how she felt. There was nothing quite like the feeling of pulling a fast one on a mortal. They really were such idiots.

“I want to see!” she begged. “Can you show it to me?”

Ixxy’s eyes narrowed. “You promise you’re not going to weasel in on my score? It’s already Vruzhka and I, and the more of us there are the faster the old biddy will get wind that something’s off.”

“Oh, pfft, I already have a full-time job that pays my rent,” Leez said dismissively. “It won’t work nearly as well for me, since my rent’s paid up months in advance.”

“Months…?” Ixxy asked, momentarily taken aback.

“Yeah, well, souls are tasty, okay? Now show meeee!” Leez begged, sitting down next to Ixxy and tugging on her arm.

Ixxy flicked her wrist, and, with a puff of brimstone, the thick sheaf of papers that was her contract appeared in her hand. Not her actual contract, of course. The original was still safely with Marget, but as Ixxy had signed it, it had automatically connected to the Great Contract and the ambient contract magic backbone of the city. Tapping into that to produce a copy of the contract was child’s play.

They sat on the bench, pressing close together as Ixxy took Leez through the salient points of the contract.

Normally, Ixxy found contracts the annoying, bookkeeping part of what she did. The vegetables that you ate so you were allowed to have dessert. But somehow, she found sitting with Leez, going through it as she pressed up against her side, to be… fun. They giggled like schoolgirls as they pointed out silly clauses and theorized potential exploits.

“Wait, what’s that one?” Leez asked.

“Hmm? Oh that. That’s just the non-compete clause. Apparently there’s a whole bunch of these companies and they don’t want me signing up with a bunch of others,” Ixxy replied before flipping to the next page.

“No, wait!” Leez said, grabbing the contract.

“What?”

“Look,” she said, flipping the page back. “I don’t think that’s what it means.”

Ixxy’s brow furrowed as she read over the wording again.

“What? I don’t get what you mean,” she said.

“Read it carefully. It says ‘any other contracting or contract management entity’.”

“So?” Ixxy asked, confused.

“Ixxy,” Leez replied, exasperated. “You are a contract management entity. And so am I. And every single mortal we attempt to make a contract with becomes a contracting entity, by definition. This contract bans you from taking any more contracts from anyone who isn’t them.”

Ixxy just stared at Leez in shocked horror. “What?”

“This contract is a scam,” Leez explained gently.

“But… no… that… it doesn’t make sense!” Ixxy exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “They gave me the soul!”

“They loaned you a soul. You still owe it back.”

“Fine, but that just means I have to do contracts for them. Okay, fine, so those are the only contracts I can do, but it’s not a scam, not really!” said Ixxy. “It’s still better than having to find my own contracts, technically!”

Leez gave her a long, silent stare.

“And what if they don’t give you any contracts?” she asked quietly.

“Then this is still a dumb scam because it costs them a soul each week for nothing!” exclaimed Ixxy.

Leez shook her head, slowly, eyes not leaving Ixxy’s face. “No, not nothing, Ixxy. Debt.”

“Yeah, to a mortal,” Ixxy scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Who cares? I don’t owe them anything more than what is in my contract.”

“Until they sell that debt to a demon,” Leez replied through pursed lips.

There was a moment of shocked silence.

Then Ixxy frowned. “They can’t do that. Can they? The only way they can recover it is by giving me contracts.”

Leez flipped through several pages of the contract, until she found what she was looking for.

“Hmm… nope,” she said, shaking her head “It doesn’t specify what they may or may not do with your debt. It specifically mentions that the proceeds of any contracts that you do get assigned goes fully to them until your debt is paid, but nowhere does it say they can’t just sell it instead.”

A feeling of dread settled over Ixxy as she realized the scope of her mistake.

“But… but… they wouldn’t do that, would they?” Ixxy asked, a faint hope in her voice. “I mean, it’s a whole soul a week, surely they’d give me some contracts to make their expenses back…”

Leez shrugged. “That’s what I would do if I was running this scam. Never give the mark a contract, never give them a chance to worm out. Plus, I’d save on all the costs of trying to canvas for contracts in the first place.

“Of course, the obvious counter would be for the mark to flee back to the Abyss, thereby cutting off my income stream, so I’d put in some form of penalty clause… oh. Here it is.” Leez tapped the contract clasped in her hand. “If you leave the plane of Aer with outstanding debts, they accrue interest at a rate of one percent per day. Ouch.”

Ixxy shuddered. She could see herself, thirty years from now, still stuck here, her debt still accumulating as she sat impotently, unable to do anything.

“How did you not see this, Ixxy?” Leez asked. “I get that you’re new, but…”

What was she supposed to say to that? That she hadn’t read the contract properly? Well, she hadn’t! Because of Sazka’s stupid fine and InferTec’s stupid strict time limits squeezing her…

“Vrazhka lied to me. She said it was okay…” Ixxy muttered.

“Vrazhka was probably on contract with them to lure in inexperienced newbie demons,” Leez explained quietly.

Of course. How could she have been so stupid. Vrazhka had been working for them. She’d even told her as much up front. Ixxy’d assumed that she’d meant that she’d signed the same contract, but there was no reason why that would have to be the case, was there?

Fuck, she’d really screwed up badly, this time. Ixxy could feel the tears threatening to start flowing, but she couldn’t afford to cry in front of Leez. How pathetic would that be? A demon, crying like some pathetic, helpless mortal.

Instead she used a little bit of shapeshifting to seal her tear-ducts shut. It meant her eyeballs would dry out in a few minutes, but at least Leez wouldn’y see her bawling like a baby.

When Ixxy didn’t respond, Leez continued: “Ixxy, you need to find some way to cancel this contract.”

“Will you help me figure a way out of the contract?” Ixxy asked softly, feeling a strange resistance as she did. “I’ll…” The words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t say ‘I’ll owe you’. Something was stopping her.

But Leez shook her head. “I’m sorry, Ixxy. I can’t. Your contract prohibits any kinds of deals with contracting entities, and I’m a contracting entity. As are any other demons. I’m afraid you’re going to have to do this on your own.”

Ixxy’s stomach dropped. She was… on her own?

“Then… what should I do?” she whimpered.

“Go through the contract with a fine-toothed comb. Find a way out of it. Anything. And tell Sazka about this. She doesn’t like it when we screw each other over like that. She might be able to help.”

Ixxy sucked in a breath and hummed noncommittally. She really didn’t want to have to tell Sazka about this. She already had two fuckups behind her name, and she had the impression Sazka’s patience was wearing thin. Right now, she really could not afford to get tossed back into the Abyss.

Steeling herself, Ixxy made for the door, unsealing her tear ducts as she did. A deluge of tears forced her to wipe her eyes.

“And Ixxy,” Leez called after her.

Ixxy paused, hand on the door.

“I hope you figure something out.”

Obviously, the first thing Ixxy did as soon as she left the bank was test whether Leez was right. Whether she really couldn’t make contracts anymore.

She’d approached a random guy on the street and tried to create a contract to offer to him. Nothing. Her connection to the contract system simply hadn’t responded.

That confirmed it. She really had gotten scammed.

It wasn’t fair. This whole world sucked. Why did anyone even come here? Why was it so popular among other devils? All it did was dangle hope in front of you before snatching it out of your hand, over and over and over…

The whole place should just burn.

After several hours of fruitless study of the contract on her own, Ixxy was forced to concede that if there was a way to wiggle out of it hidden in the thick legalese, she couldn’t find it.

Not that there weren’t weak points. There were. Minor errors that allowed one to interpret the contract in ways that just slightly tilted the balance in the demon’s favour, if they were wily about it. In demon jargon, it was referred to as the contract’s ‘wiggle’; how flexible the interpretation of it was.

This contract had a surprising amount of wiggle once you started looking carefully, even to Ixxy’s admittedly less than expert eyes. It just lay in the sections that governed the execution and pricing of the sub-contracts passed through by Mulder & Heath themselves, not the parts that locked her in.

For example, the fee was calculated off the ‘quoted price’, not the actual price that the client paid. By simply quoting the customer a far smaller amount (officially, at least), she could effectively make the fee she had to pass on to the company itself any non-zero amount. Or in another section governing the payment times, she was allowed to drop off the company’s fees ‘at the contractee’s discretion’. That discretion could be weeks or even months! And the only thing the company could do was withhold any further contracts!

Of course, none of that mattered if the company never intended to give her any sub-contracts. In fact, the more she read through her contract, the clearer it became that these little wiggles were likely intentional. Something to trick the average devil into jumping on the contract, but not so obvious or so overwhelming that it would arouse suspicion.

Unfortunately, the parts that dealt with the loan agreement and the non-compete clause were airtight in comparison.

It was only after almost a full day of the legal equivalent of bashing her head against a wall that Ixxy finally admitted to herself that she probably needed to talk to Sazka after all. It wasn’t like she was going to be able to hide her fuckup, anyway. All contracts went through Sazka’s office, even dubious ones like her own. Sazka absolutely had a copy of it by now.

Unfotunately, there was no sign of her.

“Sazka? No, sorry. I don’t think she’s around. I heard she headed out somewhere yesterday and hasn’t come back,” a lazy looking pleasure-devil, leaning against one of the walls in Triorbus Square, told her.

“Yeah, she does that sometimes. Heads off without telling anyone where, comes back days later and continues on without a word,” her companion, another pleasure devil with short, curling grey horns, added.

“Ugh, thanks anyway,” Ixxy sighed, and turned away.

“No problem, hope you find her,” the first girl replied, before they both turned back to their conversation about the weird spider-thing they’d seen passing through the city gates recently, leaving Ixxy to stomp away in frustration.

Now what was she going to do? Hoping Sazka could point her in the right direction had been pretty much her last resort. Sure, she had an entire week to come up with a solution, but at the end of that week she was still going to have to pay off her rent. And if she spent all week unable to take contracts, there was no way she was going to be able to to make it.

To make matters worse, she still owed that dweeby, little contract mage a fucking. The knowledge was like an itch she couldn’t scratch.Who knew when he was going to summon her and demand she pay up? She didn’t mind screwing him - heck, she could use the stress relief - but she had a serious problem that needed all of her attention right now.

What she needed was some kind of contract expert who wasn’t a demon. Someone she could get around the whole non-compete clause with. Like…

Like…

Ixxy froze.

…like a certain little contract dweeb she already had a contract with. That could work.

A smile slowly returned to her lips.

She was just going to have to convince him to help her. That could be… fun.