“Main Street?” I ask.
“Main Street.” Aisling repeats loudly, nodding to me as she stands up and begins walking.
“Alright, I'll bite, what's Main Street?” I walk at her side again. We can put aside the existential dread of my apparent deity problem for now, I guess.
“The underworld is massive. Infinite, most reckon. But it doesn't matter how far you travel, Main Street is always nearby if you need it to be. That’s why I said it out loud, so it could hear me. It's the center of this world. Climb to my shoulder and stick close.”
I scramble up Sai's leg, onto her back, and up to a resting spot on her shoulder, as she instructed. Huh. Its funny how easy that was. “Oh. Well, this is cozy.” I smile a little, glad to have Sai do the walking for both of us, and happy to return to at least an almost human height.
I do have to wonder what she meant by ‘so it could hear me’, though. Was it a sentient place? Was it Aegis listening and manipulating the world? A single centralized location that could find you sounds convenient.
“It’s so I don't lose you in the crowd.” She says as she turns down a narrow alleyway, pacing along a route with poor visibility and few options if things go badly. A prime ambush spot. And when she turns the next corner, I'm suddenly staring down a long well-lit avenue, and it's bustling with people. Demons! Hundreds of them!
My eyes dart all over as I watch mythological wonders that continuously jar my memory when I identify them, walking and running through the road, minding their own business in the bustling, crowded avenue. There were no hints that this was here from the next road over, this place seriously just winked into existence right in front of us!
We walk by a stall being run by an imposingly large red-skinned Oni, barking about fabrics he's selling. What must be a grey-skinned gargoyle flies overhead, landing on the roof of a shop called ‘The Changeling’s Closet’ that prominently advertises clothing, and slips in through an upper window. A werewolf sweeps up with a broom outside of an old-school family diner. I'm delighted when I spot an elven person sitting in front of an easel at what looks to be an inn, contemplating pigments of some unknown piece of art I can’t see from this angle. Hundreds and hundreds of demons circle around the street, buzzing with conversation and trade as far as the eye can see.
The buildings don’t feel like the rest of the city, either. They feel real. Built with purpose. Not the bizarre concrete facsimile of a city that I’ve seen until now.
And then the dark reality of the situation dawns on me. I'm surrounded by demons. I'm surprised that nobody seems hostile to each other, given the propensity for violence at the drop of a hat that Sai has shown so far.
“At ease, kid, you're digging your claws in.” Sai says to me over the din of the crowd, reaching up to brush my claws out of her sweater. “Main Street has a few rules. No intentionally harming another demon without their consent, no theft, and no rampant destruction of property. That’s it. Long as you can follow those rules, you’re safe.”
I do my best to lean away from a man that seems to be made entirely of razor-sharp blades thrusting out in every direction as Sai passes them before I return my attention to Sai “And demons will follow those rules? What happens if they don't?”
Sai flashes her eyes toward me. Red pupils and a wicked grin. “Then those rules no longer apply to them.”
Oh. I suppose it doesn't make much sense for demons to have a justice system beyond revenge killing. It's a pretty good incentive to follow the simple rules. I bet there are demons just hanging around, itching for someone to break the rules so they can prey on them. I’m actually briefly kind of glad that Sai set me straight about at least paying lip service to authority before we came here. I don’t want to think about where insolently shirking the laws here might lead me.
Sai keeps walking silently down the street while I carefully move between her shoulders, gawking at the fantastical creatures we pass and occasionally moving as far as I can from what look to be the most angry-looking or dangerous people, despite understanding that they won’t hurt me. And then Sai turns toward a dilapidated building. A run-down dive bar by the looks of it, with a flickering neon sign above the door with the word ‘Jack's’ on it. She walks through the double door, and the cacophony of the street outside immediately dims to a quiet murmur.
Inside is exactly what I'd expect from a place like this. Concrete floors, sparse decorations, a fake potted plant in one corner, a long bar in the corner of the room, a jukebox quietly playing old sad music, a few scattered tables that don't fill the room properly, and dim lighting for the one other customer, a man who almost looks human, though I don't get the impression he is one.
This all falls to the wayside when I look at the barman, though. A hulking figure stands at the register cleaning a glass with a rag, but its presence is more like an absence. There is an empty person-shaped hole in reality that seems to suck in all the light around it, nothingness swirling about like it's a black hole in the shape of a very large man.
Sai approaches the man with a smile and a comfortable familiarity “Sup, Jack?” She calls, hopping up onto a barstool as the figure walks (I think?) up to address her.
“Sai'Andra.” It's voice rumbles in a neutral, acknowledging tone. Its voice, too, feels like it's somehow sound being ripped away from my ears rather than being sent into them. An absence of sound that manipulates its surroundings to create a voice.
Sai leans over the counter. “Got a newbie here. They've had a long day, I'm here to get the kid wasted.”
“Ah, I'm only nineteen.” I mumble automatically.
There’s a short pause, Sai staring at me incredulously before saying “So?”
And that’s a pretty good point. So what? Why am I still trying to adhere to the arbitrary idea of the American drinking age when I’m stone cold dead?
Holy FUCK, I am DEAD!
“Okay, yeah, why not?” My voice quivers. I’m suddenly shivering as the shock of everything I've been through today suddenly bursts through, and the sheer existential terror of becoming an actual demon in my actual (nearly) eternal afterlife hits me like a truck.
I'm frozen in place as Sai carefully picks me up from her shoulder and places me down onto the countertop. I’m desperately trying to parse everything that happened today all at once, and it’s too much.
I died. I'm dead. And I'm dead forever; I'm never returning to Earth. I'm not even human anymore. All my hopes and dreams and buried memories on Earth are dead along with me.
My poor family. Oh. Wait. That's not a pleasant thought, actually. Okay, screw my family then. But I still have loved ones that will miss me. I wonder if I had a girlfriend. Nope, no memory there. I hesitate for a moment. Boyfriend? Nope, not that either. Several friends come to mind, mostly online. Oh, the internet. That'll be something I miss.
“Does the underworld have internet?” I ask idly, trying to give myself a momentary distraction from the dread I feel building in the pit of my stomach.
“People always ask about that. No. The underworld is a supposedly infinite plane. The infrastructure for a connected electronic network would be impossible. Just come to Main Street if you wanna meet far away people.” Sai grabs hold of a bottle from Jack's ‘hand’ and takes a deep swig from it herself. I couldn’t help but stare as she drained the bottle in a hurry. I guess she had her own internal demons to fight along with the external ones.
Okay, guess no internet makes sense. With the destructive nature of demons, all the cables would probably be impossible to maintain. Besides, we have a magic teleporting city street I guess.
Still, there’s so much I had left to do on Earth. Even if nothing specific comes to mind yet. It just feels like so much wasted potential. I could have done so much more there. I wasn't even a quarter of the way through my lifespan after all. I wonder how I died. Hmm, nope, nothing comes to mind. Maybe it’s something unusual that I'll have to figure out.
Jack places a glass bowl in front of me, filled with a dark fluid. It's enough to break me from my dissociative state and glance up at Jack with a deadpan glare. Really? A bowl? I'm about to complain when I think about the logistics of it. I am a quadrupedal lizard with no thumbs. I can’t pick up a glass, and the structure of my mouth isn't suited for sipping anymore. Ah. Okay, the bowl tracks then.
I lean over the bowl and sniff at its contents. That's definitely alcohol, but it's also got something sweet and acidic in it. This is a mixed drink. Which I'm thankful for because I never drank booze a day in my life, so I don't think I have the tolerance for either the flavor or the effect of drinking it straight.
I lean over and habitually try to sip at the edge before I grumble in frustration. I guess I drink like a dog now then. I stick my face into the bowl and lap at the fluid, recoiling at the flavor immediately. It burns way more than soda. I don't like it. But at the same time, the thought of obliterating my thoughts right now is too tempting, so I close my eyes and drink another bit of the mixture. Still unpleasant, but bearable, I guess. I wrinkle my nose at the bowl for a moment before looking over to Sai and Jack talking about something I don't care to pay attention to. They're not looking. So I surreptitiously blow a puff of frigid air into the bowl and watch it chill over before drinking again. Much better!
I keep drinking as I tune back into whatever they were going on about. “And then I spot the skyfall, so I just fucking impale him so I can take off. Wonder if he's alive. Yeah, probably alive, he certainly had enough of his thralls around to patch him up. Or finish the job. Eh, I did my part. Anyway, I got there in time to catch Tyler here.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Would've appreciated if you showed up a couple minutes earlier. Then there might not be a hole in my soul.” I smirk to try to show her I don’t actually blame her. I’m not angry about it, of course, she saved me from losing my entire soul. But I feel like bitching.
Jack nods along, distracted with his own cleaning. It isn’t a very expressive demon, but I suppose it is a good listener. Supposedly that’s a fantastic trait for a bartender.
“Yeah, but if I did that, then we wouldn't have had such a nice meal afterward.” Her voice drips with malice as she reminds me once more that I ate a person today. I shiver and push my head back into the bowl. Sai returns her attention to Jack. “Kid's a mouthy bastard. I like them.”
“You would.” Jack grunts. This just makes Sai laugh again.
“You two sure are familiar,” I comment. I wonder if Sai is a problem drinker. “This your favorite place to hang out?”
“It's like a second home.” Sai smirks, taking another swig of her drink. I can't help but notice that she got a beer. A weaker drink than me. Huh. “Don't get all judgy on me, kid. You get the idea what kinda world we're in by now. Everyone's got a vice to help cope with this hell, I'm just trying to help you find yours. I figure the best place to start is always sex or drugs, and I know you don't want the former, so let's get sloshed.”
Huh. How'd she guess that? I mean, I suppose it's culturally somewhat more acceptable to get drunk than to go looking for a one-night stand on Earth. Maybe she’s appealing to my dwindling humanity? Except even if I look past my deeply instilled morals, I don't really want to have sex. Maybe being my master just gives her some kind of insight into me? Am I a virgin? My memories point to yes, but it doesn’t really bother me that much.
Whatever the implication, she’s right. I'd rather destroy my brain and not have to dwell on the absolute horror that my life has suddenly become. Or rather my afterlife. Ugh. I push my snout down into the bottom of the bowl and take a deep drink of the foul, but at least comfortably chilly drink.
—
I draw in a sharp breath. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. My everything hurts. Holy shit, what an awful dream too. God, what happened last night? I blink the sleep out of my eyes and shake my head to reorient myself back to reality. Only what I see doesn't feel like reality.
I'm laying in the corner of a nice-looking home, and the room I'm in looks like it could be a spacious living room if not for the enormous pile of medieval weaponry thrown haphazardly into a pile in the middle of the room.
Where am I? I stand up slowly and look down. Claws. Oh shit, I have claws! I blink myself back to reality, the events of the previous day playing back quickly in my head. “Fuck. Oh holy fuck, that's my voice. Okay, yeah hung over drake. Shit. Fuck. Holy shit, I'm still dead.” I whimper, bitching softly as I take in more of my surroundings.
I was sleeping on top of what looks to be some kind of plush pet bed made for a cat or something. I let the indignity of that slide off quickly; I have more important things to focus on.
Now I'm just in a house somewhere? I want to hold my aching head, but unfortunately I need all of my major limbs to walk, so it's a luxury I don't get I suppose. I need to find out where the hell I am and I need water.
The house feels modern, with flat-colored beige wallpaper and decorative wooden struts lining the walls. There are a few spots where things have obviously been patched over at some point, from holes struck through the structure of the building, no doubt. Signs of violence plastered over, but not forgotten. It makes it feel more real. This place feels lived in by demon standards.
I step aimlessly out into the hall of the strange house and see what look to be display cases of various themes lining the halls. There's one with bottles full of glowing fluids, there's one loaded with bound scrolls, one with what look to be paper talismans not unlike the one Sai used on me yesterday, and the collections of odd objects just keep going. I pass by numerous more shelves. Cooking utensils. Climbing gear. Travel supplies.
Then I hear something. I’m not sure if I should attribute it to my enhanced senses, or that I’m so sensitive after my drunken binge with Sai last night, but it feels closer than it should. Sweeping? I step through the halls and eventually go toward the source of the sound, cautiously peek into a room to see the first person since I woke up in this place. She's wearing a modest, royal blue dress with a white apron on over it. Her tanned face is framed with long hair that's just as vibrantly blue as her outfit, tamed by a plain brown rag over top of her head mostly holding it back from her face, aside from her neatly trimmed bangs. She almost looks human, but just as I had seen with a few scattered human-like people on Main Street, I could instinctively tell that I was looking at another demon. Or rather a half-demon. I’m not quite sure why, but after a moment examining her, I’m sure she’s like me. A thrall.
And she's just standing there, idly sweeping the floor with a blank expression on her face. She is somewhere else entirely. Is she upset and thinking about something? I take note that her eyes are blue. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to test if my eye theory was just Sai or if it was all demons. I hadn’t been able to tell with Jack last night, since he had no eyes, and I haven’t spent enough time around any other demon yet to observe their behavior.
I glance about and see another pile of disparate weaponry on the floor in the room she's cleaning. Am I trespassing? If I approach this woman, is she going to scream out in surprise and drop that arsenal of melee weapons on me? After what I’ve seen the past day, that actually seems like a realistic possibility.
“You are not as stealthy as you believe you are.” The woman suddenly speaks in a steady monotone, her distant eyes glancing directly at me. Still blue though, which I hope means what it means with Sai. That she’s not going to do anything too dangerous. “Good morning, Taylor.”
I mean, it was close to my name. It barely even feels like the wrong name. “Uhh… It's Tyler.” I correct quietly, stepping out to show myself “Sorry.”
“Ah. Apologies.” She gives a barely perceptible bow. “Mistress Sai'Andra is difficult to understand when she is so heavily inebriated.”
‘Mistress Sai'Andra’? Oh, I see. She must be another of Sai's thralls. So that meant I’m in…
“Is this… Sai's house?” I glance around at the various collections surrounding me again and I’m starting to get a picture of Sai's ability. Her powers don't create and destroy those objects she touches, she merely teleports them in and out of this place. Her demonic power is being materially prepared for anything by stockpiling anything and everything that she could possibly need in any situation in her house, and retrieving it out of thin air when the need arises. So where is this place, then? Somewhere on Main Street?
“Correct.” She stops sweeping, and with robotic movement that makes me wonder if she’s actually alive, sets the broom against the wall. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lucretia Leuvier, magi and caretaker of Mistress Sai'Andra's estate. And you are Mistress's newest thrall, yes?”
Wow. She is… very prim and proper for a demon. And she cleans up after Sai? I don't envy her. Part of me wonders if Sai has her brainwashed or mind controlled or something. It certainly doesn’t seem like something that’s in the purview of Sai’s powers, but who knows what kind of otherworldly demonic objects she might have access to in this place?
“Yeah, Tyler Snow, not Taylor.” I give a nervous smile. It’s a bit of a funny mistake, so I guess I’m not offended. I shake it off. Why am I dwelling on this? She already corrected herself. “I could really use some water, could you point me toward the kitchen?”
She steps toward and past me, continuing down the hall. I take a moment to realize that I’m supposed to be following her, at which point I scrabbled forward across the floor to catch up. “S-So. You're the first other thrall of Sai's I met. What's it like working for her?”
“Mine is a fulfilling life of cooking, cleaning, tending to the garden, and preparing equipment. Safe. Quiet-” As if to contradict her words immediately, a crash of metal sounds from down the stairs next to us. If Lucretia has any emotional reaction at all, she doesn't show it. “-when Mistress is not home.” She finishes, moving down the stairs slightly faster than before.
As we round the stairway into the kitchen, we see Sai in a small pile of scattered pans on the floor, an irritated expression on her face as she looks our way. “Nngh… shut up.” She mutters preemptively. I’m glad that my body doesn’t seem to interpret that as an order.
“Mistress, if you wish for something off of a high shelf, you need only ask.” Lucretia speaks in a stern monotone. Then she makes a simple wave of her hand and the scattered pans levitate up and collect themselves on top of each other before depositing themselves into her waiting hands in a neat pile from largest to smallest. “Which one did you want?” She asks patiently.
Sai has a blush on her face already “Gah… the one that's flat all across the bottom.” She mutters sheepishly. Blue eyes.
Lucretia picks up the one she must be asking for, and the rest simply float back up into a cupboard, which closes itself “Would you like me to cook for you, Mistress?”
I stare, dumbfounded, at my master on the floor, absolutely flummoxed by the blue magical girl coddling the experienced maniac in front of me. I want to laugh so badly, but I do my best not to. I’m not sure if my expression contains my humor or not.
“Lucy, do you gotta do this in front of the kid?” Sai whines at Lucretia, who walks past her to an electric stove top that clicks on from Lucretia’s mere presence. She clearly has some kind of telekinetic powers that she has masterful control over. She had introduced herself as a ‘magi’. So this is magic, presumably?
“Of course, Mistress. All of your thralls should understand that you are absolutely helpless without me.” She states this as a totally neutral matter of fact rather than a boast.
I'm frozen to the ground, not sure if I want to see Sai putting her in her place.
Sai looks like she's about to object. I see her eyes go to green, then quickly back to blue before she lets out a defeated sigh. “Yeah.” She whines.
Wait, what just happened? If I said something like that, Sai would kick my ass. Is it a seniority thing? Will I be allowed to mouth off to her if I’m around long enough? Perhaps they’re just that familiar with each other, and I’m missing some kind of inside joke?
Sai picks herself up off the ground “I see you two already met.” She clears her throat, trying to change the subject. “Really didn't want to bring you here for the first time under these circumstances, but we both got a little carried away last night. Needed a safe place to stay.”
“Sai, I don't even remember what happened last night.” I mutter, sitting down and trying to nurse my headache with my front leg. “Can I get some water?”
Her eyes flashed between colors again. Indecision on her face before settling back to blue. “Wow, like nothing? Alright, damn. Maybe that's a good thing.” she mutters to herself as she stands up and grabs a bowl off the counter, walking to a basin and tapping a rock of some sort tied in place above it, which spills water summoned from nothingness into the bowl until it’s full and she taps it back off again. “Uhh, anyway, welcome to my house. Don't do anything I wouldn't?” She’s trying to deflect from me not remembering anything. Just what did we do?
“There is not much that she would not do here.” Lucretia says with just a note of bitterness permeating her unflappable demeanor.
“Shush.” Sai mutters as she puts the bowl down on the floor next to me, which I ravenously slurp up.
After a moment of silence in which I parch an unholy hangover thirst, Lucretia fries something that smells delicious, and Sai sulks, I finally look up and let out a satisfied sigh “Holy shit I needed that. Thanks.”
Sai holds a thumbs up at me and then turns to stare out a window above the kitchen table.
“So why didn't you just summon that pan into your hand?” I ask, smiling smugly up at her “I figured out that's what you're doing. Teleporting matter.”
Sai nods, too distracted by her own thoughts to look my way. “Yeah, you nailed it. Except I can only teleport objects from my pocket dimension to the underworld and back. I can't teleport it within a realm.”
“Pocket dimension?” I sit back down and raise an eyebrow at her.
Sai says nothing for a moment before she turns back to me and I flinch. Orange eyes. She never does something I like when she has orange eyes. When they show up, she’s always about to either commit violent atrocities or some mischievous act at my expense. She walks toward me and picks me up gently from under my legs, continuing down the hall with me under her arm. I just go limp so as not to annoy her. I think I’m getting used to being carried around.
She opens a door that leads outside, and walks out into a lovely garden atop a cliff. I start to panic a little when she approaches the cliff edge and holds me aloft to show me… Nothing. There's nothing beyond the cliff. Complete emptiness. And it suddenly dawns on me that Sai's house is not in the underworld.
“Pocket dimension.” She declares triumphantly.