Bryce

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he’s in a meeting with Prince Orrid right now,” the devil receptionist apologized, and I carefully reached forward to press the ‘close doors’ button as she continued. “But rest assured, your asset is secure and will be retrieved the moment Prince Al’Kais returns from Hades.”

I could see the inky black portal on the far side of the room, but standing between us and escaping was the one person I knew we couldn’t beat. Our only option was to regroup and try again later.

“This meeting is taking place at Orrid’s palace?” Mother asked as I continued to press at the screen, willing the doors to close faster.

“I believe so, yes.”

“Fine. You’re lucky I still have matters to discuss with Orrid.” She turned to leave, and just before the doors finished closing, made eye contact with me. I cursed as I tried to come up with a new plan, but there was nothing I could think to do. We were trapped in an elevator with nowhere to go.

“Maybe she didn’t notice?” Marcel asked, but any hope she had was immediately dashed when I wasn’t the one to respond.

“She definitely noticed.” I spun around to see Mother standing there, glaring at me. “Marcel, would you please press the button for the lobby? We’re leaving.”

“Y-yes, ma’am.”

“Marcel, no, we need—” Mother slammed into me, pushing me against the elevator doors and knocking the air out of my lungs.

“No. You be silent. She’s in enough trouble without you making things worse for her.” I wasn’t able to breathe with Mother’s forearm pinning my chest to the door, so I couldn’t actually respond. She must have taken silence to mean I agreed with her, because she let me fall to the ground a few moments later. “And now you’ve gone and damaged the elevator doors.”

“Sorry,” I coughed out the apology once I was finally able to catch my breath. “I guess you’re just going to have to leave us here.”

“Nice try, but I’m not letting you off that easily.” Mother glared at the elf-sized indent in the metal. The impact definitely would have killed me if I hadn’t been a mantle candidate. “Besides, we should still be on the first floor.” She kicked me out of the way before stepping forward to push the sliding doors outward, tearing them off their rails. She then reached down and dragged me to my feet by my hair. “Now, come along, and shift out of that awful form while you’re at it.”

“Y-yes, ma’am.” Marcel shrank down to look like a dark-haired human woman in a white dress while Mother ignored my protests and pulled me into the lobby.

“What’s going on?” The receptionist looked like she was going to try to stop us, but Mother just reached out her empty palm and fired a black beam of light at her. The devil stumbled backwards a moment later with a melon-sized hole burned through her chest.

I almost felt bad for her, but then remembered that she had helped imprison me, and besides, I had other things to focus on. Namely, the inky black portal that Mother was still marching us towards. It shimmered as we approached, the image of a lavish library coming into focus.

I mentally reached out to the magic controlling the portal while still struggling in vain against Mother’s grip. As best I could tell, it was being generated by some sort of artifact hidden in the ceiling, and the destination seemed to be linked to whoever approached. That meant in order to use it, you would need to be attuned, and that was probably a lengthy process. Which usually wasn't something that could be done while being dragged to your doom.

“Wait, please, just listen to me,” I pleaded, but Mother continued to ignore me and I was quickly running out of time. So, I made one last, desperate attempt. “I know where you can find Sora.”

She immediately threw me to the ground near the portal and stood over me with a scowl. “Explain. Now.”

“I will. But you have to promise to let me go first.” I only meant it as a bluff to buy time, but that turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to say.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Mother stepped forward and knelt down beside me to look me in the eye. “I don’t negotiate.”

I was about to counter, or more likely quip, when I felt her smash through my magical defenses like they weren’t even there. “You can’t do this. Your contract.”

“That ‘contract’ was voided the moment you escaped. One of only a few positives to come from you wasting my time today,” she replied as she dug deeper into my soul.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I threw up as many barriers as I could, but quickly realized that it was futile. All I was doing was leading Mother directly to the memories I wanted to protect the most. So, I switched tactics and focused all of my mental energy into protecting a single moment. She noticed the change immediately, causing a smile to spread across her face. “Ah, there it is. Thank you for making this so easy.”

I held my ground, and actually managed to stave off her first assault, but it didn’t last. She pulled back momentarily, only to refine her mental attack into an icy spear and drive it into my defenses. The pain was unbearable, like a frozen dagger being driven into the back of my eye, and my mind threatened to shut down just to make it stop.

I managed to push through, if only to see the look on Mother’s face, and was immediately rewarded. “What’s wrong? Don’t like what you’ve found?”

“What did you do?” She sounded appalled, which only served to spur me forward.

“I killed you.” I inched away, slowly moving back towards the portal. “Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or hells, even this century. But you will die, and when you do, you’ll know that it was me who did it.”

“You’re lying. The spell isn’t there.”

“It’s there. You just can’t see it.” I slowly got to my feet, keeping the portal directly behind me. “If you look, then you’ll see that your core isn’t connected to your soul anymore. Which means you won’t be able to generate any more mana, and once you’ve run out, you’ll die.”

“I’ll make you pay for this!” She charged forward fast enough that I barely had time to dodge out of the way even while expecting it. The moment she entered the portal, I forced way too much mana into the artifact and shattered the connection to force it closed.

“Why did you do that? She knows where we are, and all you’ve done is make her even more angry. It’s going to be so much worse when she gets back.” Marcel was clearly panicking, but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with it. At least, not yet.

“Please be quiet. I need to focus.”

My entire plan—if you could actually call it a plan—revolved around the idea that it wasn’t possible to teleport in or out of the building without using the primary portal. It seemed like a safe bet, but if it wasn’t true, then we only had a matter of seconds before Mother would be back. That meant anything I was going to do needed to be done quickly.

With that in mind, I mentally reached out to the artifact to assess the damage, and was surprised to find that it wasn’t actually that bad. Whatever was providing the mana for the spell had been completely fried, but the artifact itself felt like it was still mostly intact.

Hopefully, that meant I could just provide the mana myself and the portal would come back online. The only problem was that I still wasn’t attuned to the artifact, and the moment the portal opened, Mother would be able to use it to get back to us.

I needed to understand how the attunement process worked, and to do that, I needed to actually be able to see the damn thing. So, I summoned my sword.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Marcel took a step back, and I pointed towards the ceiling two meters above me.

“There’s an artifact up there that I need to get so we can escape. Would you mind giving me a lift?”

“Oh, um, yeah. I can do that.” Her form shifted to be easily a full meter taller as she grew into one of the largest orcs I had ever seen. She then strode forward to lift me onto her shoulder as if I weighed nothing.

“Woah, that’s… impressive.” I wasn’t normally into muscles, but dear gods, I could see the appeal.

“Please hurry. I’m not actually as strong as I look, and you’re heavy for an elf.”

“Excuse me?” I looked down at her, and she glared back up at me. “Right, sorry. A few steps forward please, it’s still just out of reach.”

She followed my instructions, and I stretched myself up to stab the tip of my sword into the ceiling. It still wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, but it was more than enough to cut a hole underneath the artifact. Marcel took a startled step backwards to dodge the circular piece of ceiling that nearly fell on top of us, then I leapt off of her to land delicately on my feet.

“How’s that for elvish grace?”

She morphed back to her dark-haired human form with a disbelieving look. “Is now really the time to be joking? Mother could be back any second, and she’s not going to fall for your portal trick a second time.”

And just like that, I was reminded of exactly how much I really missed Thea, and how incredibly unlike her Marcel was. “Of course. What was I thinking?”

I let out a resigned sigh as I walked over to where the artifact was resting inside of a claw-like apparatus. The small, black, metallic sphere was about the size of an orange, with dozens of runes written in what was likely ruby dust. It gave off an ominous aura, and even without mana to power it, the magic it was radiating was obvious.

I disconnected the artifact from the claw with more effort than I’d like to admit, then pushed a thread of mana to my eyes to inspect the inner workings. It was… complicated. I would need to spend a real amount of time studying it to fully understand how exactly it worked, but what the artifact did was obvious from how Prince Al’kais was using it.

With that context in mind, and my general knowledge of runework, I was able to attune myself to it while also removing all the other attunements. Hopefully, that meant I would be the only person who could use it moving forward, but that was far from a guarantee. I put that issue aside as a problem for future Bryce to solve, while I held out the artifact and channeled mana into it.

The portal appeared half a meter in front of me, and I sent a quick message to Lilith before walking through.

We made it out, and we’re teleporting directly to the circle set up in your estate. It shouldn’t be traceable, but I’m planning on changing the signature once I arrive, just to be safe. And Lilith, thanks for the help. I don’t think any of this would have been possible if you hadn’t kept the prince distracted.

She responded immediately, her relief obvious through the connection. Oh, thank the gods. I can finally end this damn meeting. I’ll be back in Hel soon, but I can ask Rose to open the door for you so you don't have to wait. I’m glad you’re safe, Bryce, but do me a favor and wait to contact Thea until I get back. There’s a lot we need to discuss and some of it is rather grim.