Novels2Search

62. Tea Time

“Hahahahahahaaah. Ahem, beg your pardon Joat, something rather amusing just happened. As to who I am, I am Angel, Devil lord of all evil and rule of Hell” The large, red-skinned being with two equally crimson horns on his head accompanied with a tail and upside down heart end, gives me a small bow as he introduces himself, wiping a bleeding tear from his golden eyes

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Huh I’m tripping

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*Thwap*

“Snap out of it, for Aiag’s sake, he may be pretty petrifying to look at but...he is hellspawn afterall” A new voice and ‘person’ partially appears in the corner of my eye, shining white feathery wings repeatedly thwapping me on the back of the head, ticklish.

Well I never would’ve though my in-game high would be my inner angel and devil having tea with me…I’m going to enjoy this.

“Devil, please don’t harm the man, he’s come a long way after all

“Mortals, hah! They get hurt by so many little things like sticks and stones and even my feathers can bruise this plush mortal” *Thwap thwap*

Actually it just tickles.

“I mean we don’t see many ‘things’ so all the more to insult and bully their worthless lives”

“My life is worth something, at least a few gold thank you” turning towards the one called Devil, who is for some weird reason an angel (Casper at it again?), he literally shines oh my eyes! Apart from the wings I cannot see a single thing except brightness

“Devil turn your bedazzling light off, Joat can just barely handle it”

I feel like he’s rolling his eyes as he turns off the light, revealing a severely handsome man with curled golden hair and face like a model. A cherub turned topless severely sexy man. Although the constant facial twitching breaks the image quite botheringly.

“And so the thing comes back to consciousness, almost expected you to be unable to speak the common tongue”

“Well it wouldn’t have mattered anyway Joat, we can speak all languages”

“Sweet, but do you know Chinese?”

“Ni hao, wo hen hao?” Angel perfectly speaks a small mandarin phrase, I think it was mandarin anyway.

“So er, what are you taking me through today?” Might as well see if the trip has something planned?

“Sorry but we don’t take you through things, rather we’re here for a chat”

“With you? Oh you must be special!” Devil is a sassy, sarcastic and rather mean person from what I can hear (and I’ll never know what he looks like thanks to his brilliant radiance).

“Devil, you know we don’t get people here often so please don’t rush them away with such rudeness”

“Oh Angel, how I have not missed taking tea with you” some small green liquid spills on the floor next to me. Well that’s just plain rude sir.

Actually haven’t drunk my own tea yet.

Mmm, that is good, good tea.

“Good isn’t it, a family recipe” He gives me a genuine, toothy smile as he sips his own tea.

“Wait wait wait, since when did you count yourself as family?”

“Devil, although you may not cherish our bonds but we’-”

“NOT again pleeease, we’ve been over this two hundred times this past century alone”

“And I shall go over it once more” Immediately Devil furls his wings over him, disappearing in a mass of feathers “We may have been born from different circumstances-”

“You were born from fire and seed, while I was cesarianed from my swan mother, different circumstances is an understatement”

“-but we’re siblings in heart and soul and that’s what truly matters. Plus we do come from the same parent-”

“Who stuck his member into the living fire of Kartush to birth you. Being associated with him is not my idea of family”

“-And I respect his being in all senses as I respect yours. For we are family and family support one another no matter how little we like eachother, Devil”

*Groan*

“Are you done yet?”

“I kept it short, since I did not want to bother Joat, who has come all the way here to see us”

“By all means, continue” I’m enjoying this.

“Wait please! Ok fine, I’ll converse with you, but no more lecturing about love, family and all that Mingur droppings”

“Mingur’s became extinct centuries ago Devil, that term has lost it’s meaning”

“And no history lessons please, gah don’t you have anything better to do with your time than watch people, you know like keeping the furnaces of Hell going and bathing in the screams of your residents?”

“The airconditioning is actually working fine thank you, but I still haven’t figured out how to soundproof the castle”

“You’ve got aircon in Hell?”

“Oh yes, the place is boiling to the point of melting your very flesh and bones. So all the residents who aren’t sinners need the aircon to survive the climate”

“By residents?”

“Demon-kin and lesser devils amongst the other higher evil beings, you’d be surprised how bad some of them are with the heat” Angel shakes his head, probably at some memory.

“Think the most horrifying, evil and disgusting beings, that’s them” Devil not-so-helpfully adds on

“Actually many are very beautiful: ever heard of a Succubus Joat?”

I just slowly nod at the fantastic image that pops into my head. I am definitely going to have to meet a succubus because reasons…and also to see how different they are from the actual femme fatales that eclipse around me.

“Tch…could you bring some of those over for me? All I have in my planes are unicorns and fairies oh are they the most boring, innocent beings I’ve ever met”

“You know the rules, evil beings aren’t allowed in the planes of good and vice versa under any circumstances”

“Sc…aaagh I hate my job!!” Stifling his own words, Devil seethes to the sky

“Well Aiag did give us a choice and you chose Heaven”

“I was young, naïve, I didn’t know about the fact that I cannot touch the elven beauties the play the fu-rping harp all the time at my place”

“80 percent is imagination” the brain is awesome and I am having a good dollop of imagination.

“When you’ve been staring at the same mounds covered just barely by semi-transparent silks for a few hundred years, your imagination would understand just how dry and dull it can be, how frustrating to see something that causes you literal pain just to think abouch!”

“Devil feels pain whenever he thinks of something sinful” That explains the contstant twitching then.

“But don’t you have a rotation, I mean there can’t be a lack of beautiful beings in Heaven right?” I mean yeah there aren’t many good people in the world but I’m sure if he’s lived hundreds of years there’d be an amount.

“I do, I’ve been through them all, all fourty seven”

“Wait, how long have you guys been alive to only have 47 elven women in Heaven?”

“Joat, it’s fourty seven women as a whole”

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“I repeat the same question” With much more curiosity now

“About a thousand years” Devil shrugs his shoulders uncaringly

“One thousand and twelve this year in two hundred and six days” Angel certainly keeps track gee.

“So how have only 47 women come to Heaven?” repeating that oh so please answer it question once again.

“Well twenty three are demi-godesses, another eighteen martyrs, that I saved just before death and the last five were heroes”

“It must be extremely difficult to get into Heaven then?” Either become a demi-god, a martyr or a hero.

“Well Joat, actually it’s not: if a priest absolves you of your sins, you can go to Heaven”

“That sounds simple-”

“-But in the current age there aren’t any priests so nobody goes to heaven…well mostly no-one” Angel calmly explains as Devil is busy recounting the names of the 47 women with sadness and twitching.

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“Ah. How long have priests not existed?” and I swear the hobo guy was a priest…oh what has his name again?

“The crusades were about four hundred years ago, and thanks to that my house got flooded by the blimming spirits because everyone was absolved for murder”

“Spirits are beings who died. And only a select few retain their bodies by either physically travelling there or being chosen by us, we call them residents” Oh so he’s got 47 residents then, ohhh.

“Which we have to ask Aiag about and he usually says no”

“Well your reason to save the voluptuous womenfolk isn’t becoming of The angel”

“Immortality sucks, at least you get to have as much nasty fun with your succubuses as you waowouuuuunt!” Like someone is shocking him his body shivers uncontrollably as he grits his teeth, but that only lasts a second.

Well must suck to be him.

“I refrain, since their habit is cruelly born”

“Yeah yeah, raped women become succubuses to take revenge on all men yada yada they’re literally beauties who I would probably become a fallen angel for. At least send me a picture of them?”

“I’m trying to get them away from that lifestyle, ever since one of my imps made this snappit application, they’ve been rather disgraceful in their behavior over the hellnet”

“2, wait multiple questions” Listening to them is so entertaining and I love my mind and it’s boundless imagination “Are demons and lesser devils created from people? And you have internet? And applications?”

“Yes, though only spirits which have served their sentence have the choice to become one…although in many cases that is their sentence. As for the thing you called the internet? I believe you mean the hellnet, odd that you know of it but then again you are a demi-god so it’s not t-”

“I’m a demi-god?”

“Oh, you…didn’t know about yourself? That’s peculiar”

“He may be a bit thick, and an airhead”

“I am completely normal, but I’m a demi-god?” I’ve got delusions of grandeur, well I mean of course.

“So demi-gods usually know that they are by the main obvious signs; eternal life, able to see statuses of everything around them, unnatural regeneration. Out of the place things like that”

“So if I’m a demi-god…then you two are gods?”

“To your puny mind we might as well be greater than that-”

“-But we are also just demi-gods Joat…”

“So that’s how you know my name? you looked at my status?”

“Exactly. And for your information there is only one god, Aiag”

“So aren’t there any like rogue gods or demi-gods?”

“There are many demi-gods but if any goes rogue Aiag just obliterates them and then gives a century long lecture while they re-compose” Devil doesn’t look too happy, probably from experience.

“So let me get this right; Aiag is top dog, Angel is the lord of evil and Devil the lord of good. Are there any more demi-gods who are in charge of something?”

“The mortal plane surely is losing much culture by exterminating all religion. Tut tut. So from the beginning. Aiag is the top god, the one and only. I rule over all evil things, especially Hell which is the plane of punishment for the spirits who wander the mortal plane. Devil rules over all good things, Heaven being his plane for souls to rest in eternity. Then we have all the elements, Flora, Fauna demi-god’s and then the ones for all the concepts and in all honesty Aiag has a lot of free time, so anything and everything has a demi-god looking after it”

“So whenever we have our Annual meeting, it’s like being stuck in a giant room with strangers of which there are never an ending too. And when we have to actually talk to them! I couldn’t care less that I’m apparently in charge of naming every fuuuping unicorn child”

“It’s important to give all your residents their appropriate fae name”

“Like you’re one to talk about their names, what did you call that new efreet demi-god?”

“fourtwentyblazeit, why? It was the name he had chosen himself”

“At least I give mine proper names, like littleshirrruh…”

“Uncouth words are a sin, you should have learnt that by now”

“Freedom of expression, why are you allowed it and not I”

“I have some limits, only Death is truly fr-”

“Oh not that guy again, seriously he’s a bag of bones with nothing but funny bones in his body”

“Don’t disrespect your elders, Death’s a laughing being but he’s also dutiful to his work, quite unlike you who skips meeting and greeting your new spirits as well as checking that eternal peace is all that it can be for them”

“Eternal peace is litearlly the worst thing there is, you would not understand. All you have to deal with is a bunch of spirits screaming all the time”

Angel just shakes his head. “So moving onto Death, he, like us is one of the top 3, very important to know about, since he brings the cycle of life into play”

“Sooo if Death took a day off” not sure if demi-god’s, well this kind are allowed days off, but in my inner mind I’m sure these guys are allowed a day off

“He does not” oh what, but everyone needs a day off once in a while.

“Excuse me, but I smell Kalkak’s fart upon your mouth, Death has taken more than a few days off in the past millennium”

“Once again Kalkak are extinct in the mortal plane, not appropriate to this age. And yes Death has had to take some days off, ferrying spirits for eternity takes a toll on the poor being”

“Right, totally. But he could just slow down, not stop completely and have The Great Dive happen”

“The Great Dive?”

“Let me fill that airheaded brain with some fantastic stories, which are true”

“So history”

“Eugh do not use that word, it’s nothing like how you would tell history” He certainly never enjoyed the subject then. “So The Great Dive was when the continent of…Angel where was it again?” “Sjunkade” “that place. It sunk, submerged under the oceans forever, taking all it’s populace with it. But here’s the fun part. Death was having his millennial holiday, which lasted 2 years-”

“Wait there was no Death for 2 years, isn’t that just insane?” Yeah brain what are you thinking? I mean I did say they’d be taking a day off but not two years, although…

“Aiag decided Death needed some time off so he took over” Angel helpfully explains, refilling my cup with delicious tea as well.

“He was bored. So he took over, missed the fact that an entire continent was sinking and since nobody of that continent was able to die they naturally and magically adapted on the seabed”

So atlantis then but a whole continent, sweet!

“But he’s a god isn’t he? How did he miss that?”

“We’re not as omniscipent as you believe, even I can only focus on about a few hundred things at a time” Devil looks very full of himself.

“And when you have to search for deaths, pinpoint them for your reapers and also help ferry the spirits, I am to this day still impressed he watched the final ever Giggleball match, since the Gigglers became extinct at the end, while doing Death’s duties on top” failing to as it sounds like…an imperfect god, well yes god should never be perfect.

“How much time do you spend with that guy? It’s like you know how his job works and actually enjoy his company”

“Well I do take over on his days off now since I can be trusted to not keep people alive when they should not” He shakes his head slowly at Devil who’s twitch intensifies to a mild standing spasm

I feel like Devil fools around a lot for someone who’s supposed to be responsible for all good things…

“It. Was. That. One. Time” through gritted teeth he speaks through. Wow he must’ve thought of some terrible sins

“Milena still has fourty one years on her succubus sentence Devil”

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“At least she gets fourty one years of fun, while I get squit diddle do”

Angel shakes his head silently once again.

My brain, really why is this on the forefront? Am I going to have to go see a psychologist to see why I’m thinking so much about rape? This is worrying, please stop brain!

“But back to the religion lesson. There are a few out there that believe in gods, but those are actually just demi-gods so don’t be fooled”

“Well that was enlightening I guess, so teach me more” I am interested to see what my brain comes up with next, hopefully away from rape and horrible things. I feel like I definitely could do without Devil and what he brings to the trip.

“Oh you want to learn? Well-”

“Oh cmon you can’t be serious, look at it, it’s just a hobgoblin, who happens to be a demi-god”

“He’s an evil being, with a lot of goodness in him, you should know that at least” “But it’s still just a hobgoblin”

“I’m a human actually” well I am

“A hobgoblin who believes it’s a human”

“No I’m actually a human and this is just a game, crazy right”

“Wow, Angel, have you really been trying to converse with this, it’s ma-” Angel hold his palm towards Devil.

“A game you said”

“You have them down in Hell too?”

“Only a few, and although they are entertaining, nobody has much time to delve into them”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you set up the inter, sorry hellnet?”

“He’s Aiag’s favourite that’s why”

“Aiag gifts me and my residents technology to better our lives, as a reward for good service in maintaining the world”

“And because you’re his favourite”

“I won’t deny that” He smirks just a little, breaking his otherwise solemn composure just for a second. “But you’re telling me this is a game? You must be quite affected by a substance of some kind”

“That I am sir, that I am” the strange red and white joints oh my what a fourth wall trip break, haven’t had this before “And yes this is a game, where my consciousness is here but my body is not. None of this is real, it’s all created by code and science”

“You still want to teach it?” Please stop calling me it and thing, I am human afterall so it hurts just a little when you say it, even if you are a figment of my tripping imagination.

“I see…well back onto the topic at hand, thank you Devil. Joat, do you want to make a pact with me?”

“I will immediately say yes, but also ask why?”

“Well you express a desire to learn and since I rarely get visitors such as yourself-”

“-Exactly five hundred conversations since our beginning”

“I’m open to teaching you, if only to hopefully one day once again meet you in person”

“That’s a pretty weak reason to make a pact with me” Brain you’re flagging on the interesting ideas.

“He’s just a massive softie, and nothing makes him happier than sending his children into the ‘wide world’”

“They need to experience the mortal plane, not be stuck playing games and snapping eachother all day”

“So if I make a pact with you, I can summon your residents?”

“Yes, though many get mistreated so please be kind to them, they’re all suffering anyways”

“Mahoosive softie”

“Well alright, pact with me. It is a blood contract?”

“That comes later, right now I’ll teach you how to visualize the symbol and speak the words”

He produces a small block of chalk and begins drawing a simple pentagram with small strange symbols drawn at each point and a small number of them in the centre.

“Yay drawing lessons, seriously it’d be more fun to watch It struggle to learn it by itself”

“Now the outer symbols are the incantation and the inner is the name of the demon you’re summoning. Repeat after me: Angel, Lord of all evil, I beg your permission to summon from the depths of Hell, the plane of punishment, a child of yours, to aid me in my purpose, so grant me the imp JerryTheMouse”

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“…Angel, Lord of all evil, I beg your permission to summon from the depths of Hell, the plane of punishment, a child of yours, to aid me in my purpose, so grant me the imp JerryTheMouse?” I mean…ok? Bit of a strange name???

“Simple enough, and the final words are Advocabit impdicitur”

“The last is all one word?”

“Yes”

“Advocabit impdicitur”

“That will summon JerryTheMouse, or for short Jerry who you will then make a blood contract with”

“Why is the imp called JerryTheMouse?” I swear he mentioned something about this earlier.

“His naming right was his own, but I suspect it’s from a certain mouse that many of the young imps watch before torture time”

Huh…Hell seems superbly modern in my mind…well I am going there so might as well believe it’ll be comfy when I get there.

“If you want to summon more sociable demons, the incantation just gets longer and more complicated but Jerry will tell you once you’re demonic summoning skill has reached the right point”

Love it how my devil and angel personas can see my character sheet!

“Alright alright, you’ve done your annoying summoning skill things. I however have a better thing to teach you!”

“Wait why are you teaching me too? Don’t you like hate me?”

“Ah you see, if I teach you, you can absolve people and make all the beautiful women join me in Heaven, at least give me some of the fellow demi-goddesses you know!”

“They’re not property, but nonetheless they’re still mine. But a skill is a skill and I’m guessing no matter if I try or not, it’ll help the others become good”

“Yes, so take the book” He chucks a tiny almost notepad thickness white tome.

“Devil why do you try to seem better?” Angel takes out his own tiny red tome and hands it to me “These tomes are the physical embodiment of your good and evil magical abilities and spells. The more you know, the bigger your tome gets”

I’m sure my brains making some forlorn innuendo but gosh I’m too tired to think about it.

*yawn*

“Ah the tea is finally affecting you it seems”

“Sleeping leaves?”

“Spirit restoration spices but you needn’t worry about that, have some more” I mean I’m not going to say no even with the strangely positive name, since that tea is deeeelicious.

“By the way guys, has anyone ever told you, your names fit perfectly”

“only seventy two times, no seventy five now” Right whatever brain, I’m going to enjoy this made up tea now.

Mmmmmmmm

“Hey are you awake?” Snapping my eyes open, I get a face full of someone I do not recognize, human though.

Ah that was a quick comedown…or maybe I lost consciousness after it, can that happen in game?

Well I did get absolutely trollied and have a super weird high-dream about meeting my inner angel and devil all the while related to the game so it’s not that far fetched to believe I can lose consciousness…

“Hey, respond” the unrecognizable human with bright blue eyes shakes me again

“I’m here I’m here, why are you shaking me, and who are you?”

“Nightbird”

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“Aha!” Whoops wasn’t meant to be out loud, well whatever “I do remember you. Why are you shaking me so much, what happened?”

“Ah…nothing…it’s just that…I’ve been pretty lonely for the past three days”

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OH MY GOD MY LECTURES!

“Sorry, but I’ve got to go to sleep like now, um are you ok with that?” Also why am I topless?

“…no, it’s lonely without Filly ….” He looks away rather awkwardly

Who’s Filly? Also let’s check the time…well I’ve missed the lecture nothing I can do so I GUESS I can stay with him.

“Actually I can stay awake” somehow my tiredness just vanished.

“You’re not tired after spending three days with the devil and angel?”

“Yeah surprisingly I’-…how do you know about them?”