I see Sai’s eyes flash through a multitude of colors after I spray her face with the cold sting of my frost breath. It doesn’t do a thing to hurt her, my breath apparently not as potent as I’d hoped for as a weapon, she just looks annoyed. She keeps me at eye level with her as she tries to figure out how to respond to my insolence. Blue eyes, then green, then orange again, glaring judgementally at me before I feel another crushing blow when she slams me blindingly fast into the pavement face-first, sending shards of asphalt flying in multiple directions.

Ow.

She speaks calmly at first as she wipes the ice off her cheeks. “I guess I should have expected that. The point I was trying to get across is that you can’t help these instincts. Fulfill them. They’re satisfying. Rewarding. Fun. They’re who you are now. Succumb to them.” I feel the wind forced out of me once again as she stomps on my back, hard enough to create new cracks around me in the pavement as she raises her voice, intolerant annoyance clear in her tone. “What that doesn’t mean is acting like a moron punching way above your weight class, you fucking idiot!”

It hurts. It really hurts being shoved into the ground over and over again at what must be a cataclysmic level of force compared to anything a human could put out or take with their body alone, but it’s not even disabling to me. I still can’t help but feel like mouthing off. I grit my teeth and growl up at her with what little breath I can manage to suck in. “Well, maybe I should’ve held out for a better teacher!”

She lifts her foot off me and I prepare to be hit again, but it doesn’t come. Opening my eyes, I look up to see her glaring at me again. Blue eyes. Does that… mean something? They shift to orange again in a moment as she lets out a sigh “No more frost breath. Get up.”

If I had still been human, there’s no doubt that every bone in my body would be broken all over again, but I feel little more than mildly bruised after Sai’s display of violence. She hurt my ego more than anything else. No more spreading my element, though? Watch me!

I stand back up with surprising ease, take in a deep breath and… And I… I exhale, a stunned expression on my face as nothing but air escapes. I… can’t use my elemental breath? What? But it felt so natural a moment ago. Like using a muscle I’d always had. And now I just can’t?

She lets out a little snort, a wicked grin growing quickly across her features as I try and fail again to make that glorious, comforting magical ice rise up my throat. “I’m your master. You’re compelled to follow my orders. You belong to me, you little rat. Chase your tail.”

What? I spin around and see the end of my tail, and I can’t help myself. I scamper around in a circle, terror finally gripping me. Why did I just do all those things?! I know Sai has power over me! I didn’t think she had this kind of control, though! The humiliation of her exercising that control sobers me quickly. “Sai! Please! I’m sorry!” I shout as I feel my legs begin to tire from repetitive motion. I quickly becoming dizzy as my body continues helplessly obeying the order given to it. Sai watches silently with a smug smile on her face, reveling in her easy-won victory over me. Eyes green. It definitely means something.

My dizziness overtakes me. I tumble sideways back onto the ground, but I still have my orders. I drag myself across the pavement, trying to reach my tail with my front claws now “Sai! Come on! PLEASE!” I plead, trying and failing to fight the magical compulsion.

“Alright, you can stop.” She replies smugly, and I collapse into a panting mess on the ground, my body going limp as it finally gets the chance to relax. “In this world, there are two ways to deal with those who have power and authority. Be stronger, or be clever. You just demonstrated neither.”

She picks me up again, but this time under my torso. It’s much more comfortable than being lifted by a single limb, especially the still somewhat unfamiliar wings. I whimper as she carries me back inside the building to our campsite, feeling exposed. Humbled. “I’m sorry.” I mutter quietly again, hoping to avoid her further wrath. I’m ready to be obedient now.

“I know.” She speaks gently. I crane my neck up to look at her expression and see she’s looking forward stoically and her eyes are gold again. I like the gold eyes. She’s nice when she has gold eyes. She sets me down in my circle of frost again, and while I’m still ashamed of how I behaved toward her, I can’t help myself. I curl up and lay in the comforting embrace of the bitter cold, burying my face in my element and reveling at its chilly touch. Sai returns to her place by the fire.

“You know, I’m used to having to kick new thralls around a little. The instincts hit hardest right after you transform. I get that. I still gotta teach ‘em their place. But you took it a step further than most there.” Sai sounds disappointed again, but this time, I feel bad about it. “You got a high pain tolerance. And guts. Can be a good thing, but not always. Something else to learn to temper.”

“I didn’t think you’d do that to me. You were so nice earlier…” I whimper. Was I tricked after all? Is Sai really just as sadistic and evil as I should expect any demon to be?

“Well, yeah, you were human earlier. Humans are fragile. Weak. You’re strong now, physically and emotionally. Tell me, if I had just asked you nicely earlier, would you have cut it out?”

I open my mouth to speak, but then I snap it shut and actually think about it. Would I have stopped covering everything in ice if she’d just asked me not to? No, why should I?

I blink. That’s not the thought I was expecting. “I-I mean…” I hesitate again, trying to come up with a good excuse why I can’t have just be nice back to her, but I can’t find it. Is this because I had literally watched my humanity burn away and disappear earlier?

“See? It’s not easy to keep your ego in check as a demon, is it?”

“Is it really that big of a deal if I make myself comfy?” I whine. I’m so focused on myself now, but it doesn’t feel wrong to be selfish. That will have to be a whole other problem to explore later. If she won’t let me run rampant with my powers, and I have no choice but to respect her authority, then maybe I can coax some kind of allowance out of her? Beg for that little bit of control, at least.

“No. You’re a drake. I get it. You’re a territorial beast. If you respect my territory, you can have yours.” She puts it into terms she thinks I’ll understand. Weirdly, I do. I pay close attention as she gives me her stipulations. “Stick to corners, don’t spread it further than you have to. You can go a little wild if you can justify it as a defensive perimeter while we're camping. Keep it out of the way, and you can have your winter wonderland.”

I nod slowly. Okay. Ground rules understood. Sai is strong, respect her rules and I can still have my territory. She nods back “Okay. Long as you understand that, you get your frost breath back.”

As soon as she makes the allowance that my body must have interpreted as recanting her previous command, I’m stricken with the excited urge to frost over the floor of the entire room, but I’m just able to temper it with my new understanding of the consequences. I really can’t fully control myself, can I? I swallow “Sai, am I like… some kind of animal now?”

Sai turns to ponder me again for a second, her eyes flashing several colors again. I think it means she’s measuring her responses. “There's no animals in the underworld, Tyler.” She stands up and grabs something from the other side of the fire before she stands back up. “Nothing truly alive is native to this world, except maybe Aegis. Everything that lives here now was once a human on Earth. Demons can’t even procreate.”

I guess she’s saying I’m not an animal. That I’m still wholly responsible for my actions, even if they’re so different from what I expect. I’m not sure why it hadn’t dawned on me before I agreed to become a demon, but it really is fundamentally changing who I am as a person, isn’t it? I’ve been a demon for what can’t be more than an hour, I’ve already done several things that I would never have even considered doing as a human, and I can imagine doing so much more that’s still alien to me. Am I still me? Am I still Tyler?

A quiet clattering sound breaks me from my brooding concentration as Sai drops one of the kebabs onto my ice patch, making me look up to it, then her. Orange eyes. Smirk on her face. This is more than a gesture of bringing me food, she’s up to something.

Wait. Food. I swallow as the realization dawns on me. There are no animals in the underworld. I whisper quietly “Sai… what are we eating?”

She kneels down, her toothy smile only growing as she whispers back “It’s only fair after she bit you first.”

My eyes go wide. Wait. What the hell? No! She’s joking, right? “S-Succubus meat.” I mutter, my voice cracking, not sure what else to say. That’s what this was. Sai had been feeding me a PERSON. And the most alarming thing about it is that I mostly don’t feel upset about that. I whimper quietly, wetness starting to form in the corners of my eyes as the moral gravity of the situation hits me like a truck. “Holy fuck, Sai, I’m a… cannibal?”

“Kinda? I mean, where else we gonna get meat?” Sai shrugs. This doesn’t even register as odd to her. I wonder how many thousands of other demons she must have eaten in her lengthy lifespan. She uses her foot to knock the kebab a little closer to me. “Eat up, we need to get a move on.”

I stare at the uneven chunks of meat speared on the metal rod, swallowing my saliva as I consider it. I can’t believe I’m considering it. I’ve already eaten a bunch of it, I try to justify to myself. Is this normal for demons? Do I want it to be normal for me? Oh god, I ate some when I was still human! What would human me say if he knew?! When did I start thinking of ‘human me’ as a different person? Oh fuck, who am I?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I need to shut down. My brain can’t parse all of this right now. This is happening. This world is horrible. A nightmare. And not only am I stuck here, but now I belong here. I glance toward and away from the skewer, morals screaming at me for a satisfying answer. Somewhere deep inside of me, a fleeting remnant of my extinguished humanity screams at me to reject the meal, to purge what I’ve already consumed in disgust.

But in the end, I’m just a beast. That ghost of humanity goes quiet as I put my claws down on the rebar and tear the sustenance away from the metal rod with a satisfying rip of flesh in my powerful jaws, and I have my answer. Demons are delicious.

—

“Drakes are pretty worthless as far as demons go.” Sai explains unprompted as we walk down the middle of the eerily empty city street. After simply making the campfire disappear into nothingness like I’d already seen her do with several weapons and the rebar that had impaled my human body, we left the building side by side and just started walking. I’ve got no idea where I’m going, but I’m already trusting Sai to guide me in so many other ways, navigation seems like an obvious extension to that. “They’re not particularly strong, they can’t fly, their breath doesn’t do much more than saturate a small area with a particular element… they’re basically worthless in a straight up battle.”

“Gee, thanks. I love being worthless.” I mutter, distractedly using my tongue to pick a stray piece of sinew out of the back of my teeth. I guess I just eat people now. I’m sure an emotional response to that will catch up to me when I have the opportunity to let myself really think about it. For now, I’m full and Sai has somewhere to bring me.

“Demons get into fights a lot, but it’s not always about being strong or having devastating magic. You’re going to have to get more clever with this form if you’re going to thrive in it. Most half-demon base forms are like that. It doesn’t mean you’ve got nothing, though. You have a singular advantage over most demons that you can use if you’re smart about it.” Sai explains dramatically, glancing sideways at me with a leading smirk.

I perk up at that. I do? Is there something I’m missing about being a drake?

She picks up on my expression and doesn’t wait for me to ask. “Your senses. Beast type demons have powerful senses already, and drakes are keen even among them. So while we travel together, I’m going to train you to be a living radar. Your job is to pay attention to the world around you. Gather information, assess threats, and detect danger, then use your wits and small size to avoid that danger yourself.” Sai reaches her hand out and a long metal pipe materializes into her grip. I really have to ask her about that mysterious power of manifestation she seems to flaunt. She stops in the middle of an intersection. “What do you sense around us?”

“In general?” I raise an eyebrow. Looking up at Sai, I see her eyes are blue again. That at least usually means she’s not about to do something terrible, so I turn my attention elsewhere, whipping myself around to look down each of the four streets around us in turn, focusing my eyes to various windows and doorways. I see nothing important. “Not much. I’m a little weirded out by the buildings, but that’s just cause they’re not built… right.”

“Any demons?” she asks tersely.

Oh shit, are there other demons? I take another look around, scanning rooftops and detritus piled up on the street for telltale signs of movement, but I don’t see any. Sai clicks her tongue “You’re still thinking like a human. You have more than one sense, kid.”

It hadn’t really dawned on me until that moment, but humans are really overly reliant on sight. It was always the first thing I would take in about anything I observed in life. I shift my concentration to something else, closing my eyes and focusing. Beasts rely on scent, right? I carefully sniff the air. There was Sai, but there’s also something unfamiliar somewhere. I blink in surprise, realizing that I had already subconsciously catalogued what Sai smells like at some point. It’s not important. I shake my head and return my concentration to the world around me. There’s definitely another presence in the area. It’s hard to pinpoint it though. Scent isn’t an exact directional sense, as far as I can parse it so far. “I think… something’s following us?” I ask quietly.

“Don’t panic, it’s just an observer.” Sai speaks back in a whisper. “Just try to track it.”

Oh. Sai already knows we have a tail. It’s just such a non-threat to her, she's using this as a teaching moment for me. I guess if she knows she can handle it if things go wrong, then whatever.

Sight, sound, scent, taste, touch. Those were the basic senses, and if my time spent as a completely disembodied soul was anything to go by, there may be more beyond those. Do I have to use all of my senses in concert for this? I’m uncertain if I’m capable of that. Sight has failed me. I can’t see anything wrong in any direction. I close my eyes and concentrate again. I hear my own and Sai’s breathing, but that’s just because we’re close to each other. Everything else around us is silent. And then, suddenly a click. Like a faint pin-dropping in an otherwise silent room. I recognize it as something I only recently heard from myself for the first time. A claw or other hardened appendage tapping against concrete.

I open my eyes and look to the source of the sound, a building with window holes larger than they should have been. “Right there.” I whisper to Sai, confident that I had nailed the position.

“Don't look.” Sai commands in the same neutral whisper, and I turn to face forward again. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s an order or because it seems like a smart thing to do, but I do it. “You'll spook it. Tell me what it's doing.”

“Watching us.” I reply automatically.

“More specific.” She demands, and I close my eyes again. How could I possibly know more than that? I quickly find that by focusing, I'm able to direct my senses and amplify them in a specific direction.

The demon is trying its best to stay perfectly still. I can pick up steady breathing. Wait, I can hear it breathing from here? I must be at least forty meters away! This is so exciting! Sai was right, I have super-senses!

I need to evoke something from it. A reaction to test a change in behavior against my senses. I take a single experimental step in its direction and I feel its breath hitch. It must be as sensitive as I am, or has some other way of observing us. A faint beating speeds up. Its heartbeat, I realize. Just how sensitive am I? “It's scared. Protecting something. Itself? Nothing else living there. Something precious to it?” I hedge guesses, totally unsure what else could be there without seeing it. “It wants us gone.”

Sai nods along at my guesses, then I feel HER relax. “Okay, that'll do.” She speaks at normal volume again. “If they mean us no harm, we won't give them any.”

I continue to listen, and the demon's heartbeat speeds up again. It heard her. I feel muscles tense. It's bracing itself. I open my eyes and look up toward the window, seeing nothing out of place. A part of me identifies it as prey, but I mostly feel pity for whatever it is. It's going through true, primal fear.

“Let's go.” Sai motions for me to follow and we walk down one of the streets, thankfully away from the cowering demon. I sense relief in its breath and musculature until it finally hits the impressive edge of my sensory range and vanishes to me. “That wasn't bad. You'll get faster at honing in on things as you practice, and eventually you'll start picking up on stuff without focusing at all.”

“They were so scared.” I mumble pensively. “They thought they were going to die.”

“Well then, it's a good thing for them, we're well-fed and don't care about this territory.”

“Are you saying that if we didn't just eat a PERSON recently, you'd just go out of your way to eat another PERSON who deserved it way less than the first one?” I ask incredulously. Is it really that horrible a world I've ended up in?

“Man, humans are always so hung up on the people eating thing.” Sai rolls her eyes. “Weak demons are food for strong demons. At least while you're traveling with me, you're on team strong demons. Be happy about it.”

It alarms part of me that that sounds like an order. But I don't suddenly seem happy about it, so I'm glad to know that my thoughts are at least safe from Sai's commands. “Well, I'm sorry if I grew up on a world where consuming the flesh of thinking things is considered morally reprehensible.”

“Apology accepted.” Sai chirps smugly.

A silence grows between us for a little while. We walk through city streets, occasionally turning to observe something moving in the underbelly of the husk of a city. Nothing actually dares to threaten Sai, though, and we’re left alone. Eventually, I recall something I'd forgotten in the confusion of my transformation and the battle with my instincts: Aegis. “So I guess I was an artist.” I admit to Sai.

“Like painting and drawing and stuff?” She asks casually. “You do seem like the soft-hearted type.”

“Not really sure how to take that, but yeah.” I nod slowly, uncertain if she considers that a weakness or if that was merely a rude observation. “And writing, I think.”

“I'll see if I can't get you a sketchbook or something. A happy deathday present.” I can’t help but give a surprised laugh at that. That can’t seriously be a thing, right? I also didn't think Sai would want to encourage stuff like this. But it does make me happy to think I might rekindle that part of me. “Something you see jar your memory?” She asks.

I shake my head “Nah, it just kinda came up while Aegis was grilling me.”

Suddenly, Sai stops in her tracks. Violet eyes stare right down at me. That’s new. “You… remember your encounter with Aegis?” She demands. This is completely different. I haven’t seen Sai like this before. Is that… fear?

“It's kinda hard to forget.” I mumble. Should I be shutting up? It's already out there, but is this something I should have kept to myself?

“People usually come out of its realm with a vague recollection of it, but it's very rare for it to let you keep your memories.” Sai mumbles, kneeling down to examine me more closely, like my body would have some kind of answer somehow. “How much do you remember?”

I think back and… It's fuzzy. Most of the conversation is a blur. It seems like it didn't leave my memory of the encounter fully intact. However, I distinctly remember that moment of recall, of remembering my art. “I am a creator.” I mumble quietly. And then… a promise. A threat? “I don't remember everything, but I do remember her telling me that we would speak again.”

“‘Her?’” Sai asks, looking me dead in the eyes, a startled seriousness to her tone of voice. Still violet.

“Yeah…?” Sai's starting to creep me out a little, making me take a half-step back. “I never saw her, but she sounded like a woman.”

Sai blinks a few times. “Are you sure this wasn't a dream? Aegis has neither form nor identity. There's a reason I always call it ‘it’.”

“Pretty sure. I was plenty well-rested since you knocked me out earlier.” I give her a deadpan glare. I'm not really super mad about it since she let me sleep through the worst of my falling injuries, but it was still a matter of principle. “I just got distracted afterward by the whole ‘being a drake’ thing. I didn't think there was anything unusual about my encounter, other than… you know, the entire thing being totally unfamiliar to me.”

Sai's eyes stay on me for several more moments before her expression softens. Her pupils turning gold. “Let me know if you experience anything when you transform, okay? That's when Aegis is able to speak with half-demons. I've only ever heard a handful of reports of people who've gotten its attention like that, and it's never happened to me or any of my thralls before. If you have its attention, something is wrong. A god keeping its eye on you is a terrible sign, Tyler.”

I swallow hard. This is serious, isn't it? I didn't have any way to know if divine intervention was the norm or not when it happened. “I… didn't know. I figured she just does that to everyone. Am I in danger?”

“Just promise me you'll let me know anything you remember from transformation right away, alright? And tell no one else about this. You don't want that attention. We'll keep ahead of this.” She reaches a hand toward me. I flinch. She hesitates. And then she pats me on the head. “For now, let's go somewhere safe. You been through enough today, and I think you need to unwind.”

“There's somewhere safe in the underworld?” I ask incredulously.

“We'll head to Main Street.” She nods, declaring our intent out loud.