“Okay! Okay, I get it! We’re in a pocket dimension! Put me down!” I scream, flailing wildly as I glance into the abyss below. I don’t want to find out what happens if I fall into the empty void of a pseudo-dimension. Just yesterday, saying that would have been absolutely mad, but today, it already feels reasonable.

Sai finally turns around and drops me unceremoniously into the dirt. “Calm down, kid. I wasn’t gonna drop you. Just showing you that you’re in my domain now, that’s all.” She lets out a mocking giggle as she steps back around me. “Come on, Lucy’s gonna make us a nice breakfast, and we can talk about your future.”

I grumble as I pick myself up again and bound after her, scrambling up her leg and onto her shoulder just like I had on Main Street. “Uhh… this okay?”

“You’re not hurting me, I’m okay with it.” She shrugs, walking slowly through what I’m now noticing is an excellently maintained flower and vegetable garden. “Just don’t get used to it. You’ll have to get used to taking care of yourself, eventually.”

“Huh?” I tilt my head. I’m her thrall, aren’t I? Does she not want me around? I mean, that would be nice, if I could have the benefits of being a half-demon without the drawback of having someone with absolute control of my body hovering over me, but being away from Sai feels… scary. She’s strong. Really strong. So I’m safe around her. I grimace a bit at that thought. She beat the crap out of me yesterday, but she makes me feel safe? That HAD to be our supernatural contract meddling with my thoughts. Then again, she didn’t really HURT me yesterday. It had been moderately painful, but when I thought about it, it hadn’t cause any lasting damage. It was like a dog play-fighting, just scaled up to a demon’s strength. I bet if she’d done the same thing while I was human, I would have bled out a few times. “Do you not want me around?”

“I don’t mind my thralls sticking around to help sometimes, or even genuinely dedicate themselves to me like Lucy, but I don’t need a legion like so many other reapers insist on doing, and you’ll get tired of having me around eventually once you can hold your own. So I won’t hold you back when you get there.” She shrugs.

That sounds… great, actually. If I can stick around until I’m strong enough not to need her, that’ll be perfect. Then I can make my own way out in the underworld. Make my own friends. Maybe become an artist again? Huh… I guess I hadn’t thought much about a future beyond Sai yet. And she would just let me have it, even though she definitely had the power to keep that from me. “My future, huh?” I mutter, settling in on her shoulder as she walks inside “So… when do I get locked into being a full demon? It won’t be that quick, right? I don’t think I wanna be a drake forever. I don’t really know what else I can be yet, though.”

Sai chuckles. “Like I said, it won’t be for a long time. I intend to live for quite awhile longer.”

Huh? Wait, hold on… is she saying what I think she’s saying? “Sai… do half-demons only become demons when their reaper dies?”

“Yeah.” She says soberly. “You’re a half-demon til I kick it. That’s how it works. So you better get used to being immortal, cause I don’t intend on getting killed,” she says confidently.

I suddenly understand that instinct I had yesterday. The one that told me to endure my own pain or even my own regressive transformation at ‘death’ to save Sai. If Sai ever dies, I become vulnerable, and suffering is worth being able to keep myself far from another dive into what could be an even worse hell in the next life, or maybe even just oblivion. So that’s the lopsided symbiotic relationship between reapers and thralls. They command us and we protect them so that we can protect ourselves from mortality. Not that someone like Sai needs someone like me to protect her. But maybe someday I’ll be strong enough to keep her alive where she can’t.

“Hey Sai?” I ask quietly as she approaches the door and walks inside again. “Why did you become a reaper?”

She glances at me with gold eyes. She almost looks like she wants to smile. But then they shift to orange and she scoffs “Why else would you become a reaper? It’s the only real way to earn power in this world. I have god-granted super powers. Who wouldn’t want that if they had the drive to put in the work for it.” she proclaims smugly, hands on her hips as she holds her head high, radiating self-importance. “Sure, I could just do something safe for a living. Stay on Main Street. A lot of demons do. But I wanted real power, not just to hide.”

She’s lying. Her eyes betray her. I kind of want to ask her about the eye thing, but I’m not actually sure if it’s normal. Surely, if she knew how easy it made her to read, she would try to hide her eyes when she lied, right? So what is it? Do I have something special?

Whatever. If she wants to keep her secrets, then so will I.

She walks back into the kitchen, and I can’t help but sniff at the delightful aroma coming from Lucretia’s skillet. It smells of meat and eggs and herbs, properly seasoned to draw out the flavor of the ingredients.

Except I give pause to that. Not just because meat meant eating more demons. But eggs. There are no animals in the underworld. That has some weird implications. Whatever, I’ve eaten a person. I rationalize eating people eggs is probably not any more morally strange than that. Besides, it smells too good!

“Looking good, Lucy. You wanna eat with us?”

Lucretia turns to look at us and I see her eyes are still blue. Sai’s eye color shifts constantly, but hers have been stagnant so far. Am I overthinking it?

“If you would like. Do you wish to discuss something, Mistress?” She asks politely.

“I just think the kid might benefit from your expertise is all.” Sai turns back around and sits at the kitchen table. “Lucy’s a magi. She’s… almost human, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I still wish you would not call me that, Mistress Sai’Andra.” Lucretia spoke in passing. Seems she didn’t appreciate Sai’s nickname.

“I took note of it.” I admit to Sai. “I saw there were a few ‘almost-humans’ while we were on Main Street. They still felt like demons, though. I could just tell.”

“Yep. Anyway, she’s already been through the wringer. One of my oldest companions, though pseudo-retired now. She can give you a good idea of what it’ll be like.” Sai watches as Lucretia walks up to the table carrying two plates of expertly crafted omelets, a third simply floating in the air next to her. She places them around the table for each of us, and then sits down.

She clears her throat. “Mistress Sai’Andra has many responsibilities throughout the underworld, often involving managing the ventures of her thralls. Some matters are mundane, but often, they require expertise beyond their ability, access to Mistress’s extensive library of contacts… or rescuing.”

Rescuing? What would a demon need to be rescued from? Then I recall that I very nearly faced an eon of existence as a constantly digested disembodied soul before I even became a half-demon “Oh.” I mutter “There are a lot of fates worse than death for an immortal.” I ponder out loud.

Lucretia nods solemnly. “Correct, and Mistress Sai’Andra is a hopeless bleeding heart for her thralls when they are in danger.”

“Hey!” Sai gives a muffled whine, mouth already full of delicious egg filling. Man, Lucretia seems like she can get away with anything. It’s good to know that Sai would even have my back after I was able to live on my own if I got in over my head, though.

Lucretia continues speaking unbidden. “Mistress, since you attended this skyfall, does that mean you were not able to meet with Prince Altriss?”

“Nah, I met him, just figured I had better things to do when I saw the humans start to drop.” Sai shrugs and shovels another mouthful of the food into her mouth.

“Thanks for that.” I’m really glad she kept me from being food. Who knows how long that succubus would have lived before I had a chance to be free again if Sai hadn't shown up. I guess I should get used to thinking of things in a geologic timescale, though, if I'm going to be around at LEAST as long as Sai will be.

Lucretia, however, stares at our master with contempt “Mistress, how exactly did that meeting end?”

Sai's eyes briefly flash red. So far, I’ve only seen that in moments of genuine violence. “With a halberd through his sternum.” She gives a creepy laugh that I can’t help but flinch at.

For the first time, I see Lucretia's eyes change color. Orange. Violet. Back to blue. So it definitely isn’t just Sai then. “So you've created a power vacuum?”

“I didn't kill him!” Sai protests, eyes orange, then starts to idly draw shapes in the air with her fork, like she’s trying to distract from her murderous faux pas. “He's just such a pretentious asshole, I had to shut him up somehow before I left.”

“And the fallout that's sure to come?” Lucretia crosses her arms. “How do you suggest you mend this new rift?”

Sai rolls her eyes. “I dunno, send him a polearm-themed fruit basket?”

I can't help myself, I choke on the bite of omelet I had in my mouth and just barely manage to choke it down before I cackle at the thought. I have no idea what the gravity of this situation is, but it’s still funny.

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

Lucretia smolders quietly for a moment before she addresses me. “As you can see, politics are not Mistress's strong suit. She tends to have an easier time controlling herself when she has someone who was only recently human around.”

I manage to recover from my laughing fit in time to answer. “Because I'm still a little bit human inside and can act as her moral compass?”

“Because she has someone else to take it out on, yes.” Lucretia nods. That wasn't what I said!

“I think you get the gist of it, kid.” Sai said as she speared the last of her meal on her fork. “I have a lot of business to deal with all over the underworld, and you’re going to be my assistant while I train you. So let's stop beating around the bush. What's on the docket, Lucy?”

“Ripslayer wants a word with you, Mistress. Says he wants an eternity mark.” I cringe a little bit at the name. ‘Ripslayer’? That sounds like the kind of thing an edgy kid names themselves in an online video game.

“The arena dork?” Sai deadpans, taking her last bite. An arena, huh? I recall that Sai said that the rules of Main Street were specifically to not commit violence that hadn’t been consented to. I suppose there must be some avenue for consensual combat in the underworld. Blood sport, but without the death, if it involved half-demons. “Does he know how expensive the ink alone is for that? He's literally got a career where he's expected to die frequently. If he's shelling out for it, sure, I don't give a shit, he can waste his own money on it, but I'm not paying that.”

“Eternity mark?” I ask curiously.

“Think of marks like a magic soul tattoo. Affects how half-demons transform. Only some really specific breeds of demon can make them, especially that one.” Sai mumbles, contempt for the thrall’s request obvious in her voice. “Tell him he has permission, but no support. What else?”

I have a lot of questions about marks now, but I guess it'll have to go on the pile since Sai is already moving the conversation along.

“Joshua's crew has disappeared, no contact for a month. Approximately three days travel from our current position, toward the Felwi mountain range.”

“Huh, someone took Josh out?” Sai looks serious for once, then glances at me to explain. “He leads a good crew, even if he is an idealogue. Put a crew of other halves together. They claimed a small region for themselves, and I don't have a good reason why they shouldn't. He protects runaways from oppressive reapers. They're usually good at defending the place. Guess I'll head out that way next. Gets me out of the loser prince's territory too.”

Runaways? I guess it makes sense that even if a reaper has absolute control over their thrall’s body, it does seem to require verbal commands, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to engineer a situation where a thrall could get far away quickly enough to escape their master.

“Sounds like you really don't like this Altriss guy.” I comment on the ‘loser prince’ line before I take the last bite of my own dish.

“Demons can't have children, and he's running around with a frigging royal title like he's got a bloodline to foster!” She crosses her arms, annoyance plain on her face. “I hate the self-important delusional assholes who think they deserve to rule the whole underworld.” Sai seems really passionate about this. I wonder if there’s history there.

Lucretia clears her throat. “One more thing, Mistress. You received a bill.” She produces a white sheet of paper and slides it discretely toward Sai. “Margaret's.”

Sai's eyes go wide. Blue pupils. She silently lifts the page to look and bites her lip. That has her a little spooked.

“Who's Margaret?” I ask.

“A whore.” Sai claims flatly, putting the page back down. Wait, what? Does she mean that in the ‘I don't like her’ way or in the prostitute way? She doesn't look like she's ashamed when she says it, but I'm not sure if that means the former or if demons just don't have a taboo about paying for sex. “I'll have to see if she'll take something in trade next time I'm on Main Street.”

Lucretia nods and hides the bill away again. “And, of course, since skyfall just happened, it may be wise to continue searching for humans who may not have been claimed yet, Mistress.”

“As always.” Sai nods, standing up again and moving toward the door. “Thanks for breakfast, Lucy. And good job with the nightmare lance. The new starter works perfect.”

“Of course, Mistress.” Lucretia gives the slightest smile, her eyes briefly flashing green.

The nightmare lance? The only lance-like thing I’ve seen Sai use so far is her chainsaw spear, and it makes sense that it would have a mechanical starter. I guess it has a name. I suppose it makes sense that something like that would need to be maintained by someone on this side of Sai’s teleportation ability.

I jump down off the table and briefly consider that such a height might have made me hesitate as a human, then scamper after Sai. “Thanks Lucy.” I repeat in a chipper tone, refreshed by breakfast. Then I feel my feet slip out from under me. I'm suddenly floating upside-down in the air. I let out a surprised yelp before I'm rapidly carried by invisible forces through the air, face to face with Lucretia quickly enough to make me dizzy.

Red eyes. Holy shit, what did I do?! This girl was so calm before and that expression was pure smoldering rage while she held me prisoner with her magic.

“You are new, so I will allow it just this once.” Lucretia explains in that same calm monotone, but her eyes betray her intent. She wants to kill me. “My name is Lucretia. Do you understand?”

I nod quickly. “Yeah! Thanks Lucretia! Sorry!” I correct myself rapidly. Her eyes return to blue just as quick as they changed before and I drop out of the air. I Instinctively twist my body as I fall to land on my feet, and then run after Sai again, fear carrying me out the doorway in front of her before I look back at the house and pant a few times, the rush of adrenaline entirely unexpected in a place that should have been safe.

“She’s a little touchy on that subject.” Sai says discretely as she walks down the path away from the house.

“That’s what you called her!” I whine, trying to stay ahead of Sai so that I have her between me and Lucretia, who has walked out onto the porch to watch us leave now.

“Yeah, well you’re not me.” Sai shrugs, making an upward motion toward her shoulder. I gladly scrabble up her leg and into my position next to her, still glancing back at the blank-faced magi.

“I don’t know why I feel safer with you. You’ve kicked my ass more than she has.” I mutter.

Sai responds by holding a hand out, a piece of paper held in it with what looks to be a series of intricately carved runes. She tosses it out in front of her and reality tears open. A sickly green twisting portal worms its way into existence in mid-air where the page was thrown, writhing and turning in directions I can’t follow with my eyes. The exit to Sai’s world, I have to assume. I close my eyes to brace myself when Sai steps toward it, and a second later, I open them to once more see the desolate city-scape stretching out in every direction around us. I make a mental note not to be such a coward and actually watch what happens the next time we do that.

“Just us again.” I mumble.

“For a ways, yeah.” Sai nods. “Which is good cause you have a lot of questions.”

“You’re not wrong. What’s with Lucretia? She acts like a robot. Most of the time. Are magi just like that?” I have to ask first. It’s hard to get how she’d just suddenly turned murderous at something like a nickname out of my head after all.

“Nah, that’s just Lucy. She’s always been this terse but witty girl.” Sai sounds like she has nothing but fond memories of the woman, which is punctuated by how much they allowed each other to get away with. “At some point she became infatuated with me while we were journeying together. She’s surprisingly fun in bed too.”

“Definitely needed to know that.” I roll my eyes.

“Lucy didn’t want to leave on her own. She started finding more and more excuses to help out around the house and stay there even when I wasn’t around. When she became a magi, she even started making enchantments for me to augment my arsenal, and that kind of clinched it. She just kind of became the caretaker of the house after that so she could be around me regularly. I never asked her to be, she just enjoys it so much that I see no reason to tell her no. Even eternity marked her so she didn’t have to deal with transformations anymore.”

“Well, that sounds like a healthy relationship.” I scoff, trying my best to drip sarcasm. I wonder if Lucretia’s infatuation with Sai is entirely unrequited or not, considering how casual they are with one another. But I’ve already been led into my next question “So an eternity mark stops you from transforming then?”

“Sometimes a half-demon finds a form that connects with them so wholly and completely that they decide that it’s what they want to be when they become a demon.” Sai smiles wistfully, then a slight look of annoyance crosses her face. “That or a reaper wants to keep their thrall in a certain state indefinitely and don’t mind the prohibitive cost of the mark. Either way, yes, an eternity mark will stop someone from transforming entirely, barring death. I’m not going to force that onto any of my thralls, but they’re free to bring it to my attention if they feel like they’ve found their true form. I handle it on a case-by-case basis, though, and if they’re just going to throw it away anyway, say by being an arena fighter, I’m not going to keep them from doing it, but it’s not coming out of my pocket.”

I ponder that for a moment. If I find my true form, Sai could let me keep it. It would have to be something that I would feel comfortable being forever. Well, I’m certainly not going to want to be a drake forever, but I haven’t been anything else yet, so I guess it’s somethin to consider much later.

“How long does it take before someone transforms for the first time?” I ask hopefully. I kind of want to try being a different kind of demon now. “What do you think I’ll be?”

“Won’t be long now. Doesn’t take long to get out of your base form. About a day, maybe a little longer. You might go off any moment now if something stressful sets it off. Halves tend to transform in a crisis. Hard to say what you’ll be, though. Your actions dictate it somewhat, but it has a lot to do with what’s going on in your head.” And she couldn’t read my mind. Got it. “There’s a few common forms that newbies tend to run into because they’re still hung up on their old lives, but you don’t seem like your memories are much of an obstacle.”

“Well yeah, I only seem to remember stuff when it’s relevant. I still don’t know how I died.” I close my eyes to think on it again, but something catches my nose. An unfamiliar scent. I try to hone my senses onto it, but it still doesn’t come very naturally to me.

“That’s normal. Death is one of the hardest things to remember.” Sai reassures me. “It wouldn’t change much to know anyway, so don’t get hung up over it.”

I sniff the air, trying to piece the direction of the scent as we move. There’s apparently no wind in the underworld, so the way that scent lingers in this world is still a bit of a logical mystery to me. “I’m just curious, that’s all, but how’d you die?”

“Dunno.” Sai shrugs, and I open my eyes to give a her a sympathetic glance. Four thousand years and she still hasn’t unearthed the memory of her own death? That feels… concerning. “Don’t give me that look. Most people remember within a few years. It’s a long story for me, I’ll tell you some other time.” She looks away from me, but not before I catch a glint of violet in her pupils. I still don’t know what that one means, only having seen it a couple times, but she’s being evasive.

I sniff the air one more time and determine that we already have a tail. Someone who must have been around when we phased back into this dimension. Perhaps they’re just curious, because they’re keeping a wide berth. I wonder if Sai is aware of it, but it doesn’t seem like a cause for alarm just yet.

Maybe I should just ask her about the eye thing. It’s not like I can keep it a secret from her forever. And why would I? So I can use it against her? That’s a pretty good reason, actually. Being able to tell what Sai’s thinking might save me some trouble in the future. Not that it’s mind reading exactly. It’s more like… emotional responses? No, there were a range of different emotions that just read blue. It only changes when they’re either taking action or considering taking action.

Intent. It shows their actionable intent. Red means an intention for true violence. Orange means ‘play’ violence, banter, or mischief; malice without murder. Gold is genuine benevolence. And blue is passivity, with no intent to take action at all. I’m still not completely clear what green and violet mean, and maybe that’s not every color, but it’s a lot to work with already. Maybe I have an edge in this world after all.