The Door had moved. It had cheekily moved five meters north and ten meters east as if to taunt her. She could only roll her eyes at the antics of the Fae. Katka’s nap time was up, and it was time May and her got to work. The door creaked as she opened it, the other side covered in the warm colors of dusk, bunches of wisteria flowers hanging from up high, shops lining the streets known as Wisteria Way. There were many points you could enter or exit it from, but you always had to pass through if you intended to enter the Fae Realm. May made her way through, her heels clacking on the wooden street with a satisfying sound. Wisteria Way was the inside of the World Tree, that’s why it was the only way through to the Fae Realm. Casually making her way over to the gate she needed to use, May exited the warm, dusk colored street, to find herself in the middle of a field lit by the light of a Full Moon and nothing else, the edge of a forest nearby.
There was a path through the forest, dirt set from people walking through, that May followed to her destination. The full moon behind the house on chicken legs, no matter from which angle you looked at it. She cleared her throat when she got close enough, preparing to speak. “Chaloupko! Otoč se dveřmi ke mě a zády k lesu!” She stomped on the ground, and the house began turning on command. A door now existing on the wall facing her, when there was none on the house before. The windows lit up and the door creaked open.
“Oh heya May, should have texted me you were gonna show up soon, would have made myself actually presentable.” The girl who stood in the doorway yawned and stretched, arms and wings extending, the t-shirt she was wearing pulling up a bit to reveal her somewhat chubby tummy, the only thing covering her lower parts a pair of panties. “Then again, you’ve seen me looking worse. Kyblíku, sedni na bobek, ať může jít dál.” The angelic disaster of a 20-something year old knocked on the door frame, making the house crouch down to allow May entrance. She quickly stepped inside and closed the door.
“You said you had a pretty clear idea of who it could be. So tell me.” May sat down on the armchair in the corner. Surprisingly enough, the interior contrasted greatly with the exterior, looking like a modern apartment a young adult would have, compared to how the inside of Katka’s Grandmother’s home looked.
“You know how I’m watching over trans folk as a guardian angel, because their actual guardian angels aren’t doing their jobs?” Katka was looking through a file cabinet in that moment, surprisingly using these analogue means compared to digital files. Then again, she was stealing those files from Heaven, so no wonder about that.
“Yes, very well aware of your little basement cave of protective charms.”
“Well, one of the folks I’m watching over was recently involved in a young wizard’s fucked up attempts at awakening his demonic heritage.” Katka threw a file on the table, turned around and closed the cabinet with her wing. “He wrote a forum post asking for help dealing with side effects of a botched ritual, so I’ve been keeping an eye on that wizard.” She dropped on her bed, sitting cross legged. May reached out to grab the file, looking through it. “What’s fascinating is the mother’s side of the family. Or, well, the whole thing in general.”
“It’s always daughters, even if they start off as sons and fathers, they end up as daughters and mothers, one way or another.”
“And if they have husbands, they’re usually gone after the child is born. Accidents or other stuff, and the widows end up living with women.” May took the picture from the file, looking it over closely. “She has her eyes... She has Amber’s eyes.” May closed the file, a hand over her mouth as she teared up. “I really thought I lost them all. I really thought he got all of them.” Katka got off her bed and quickly walked over to May, pulling her into a tight hug, both with her arms and her wings.
“Now you know where she is. You can go talk to her and bond with her. And be a mom again.”
“Yeah... Yeah!” May wiped away her tears, taking a deep breath, as a sudden realisation hit her. “FUCK! Khazmiel can trace me!” She swiftly pulled out of the hug and began pacing around the room in concern.“ He thankfully can’t trace her because of the fuck up masking her scent, but I somehow need to be concealed from him immediately! I got fucked the moment I left the campus of my company...”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Well, I do have a way to make you untraceable by heavenly hosts, but I do need to ask you something in regards to it.”
“Ask me what?”
“How are you with needles?”
One moment, Victor Show had been dreaming of being a crusader, leading an army against the freaks that populated the world that was rightfully his. Next thing he knew, a flaming stone fired from a trebuchet hit him, flinging him off his horse, as he began falling. He kept falling, the field of battle disappearing, as if he had encountered an out of bounds glitch, going deeper and deeper, as all light around him disappeared. It felt like ages passed, as if he was reliving his 90 long years during the fall. He began wondering if he would ever reach the bottom, if there even was one.
Then it hit him.
He had expected such a sudden stop would knock his breath out, that it would break every bone in his body. He got off the ground, noticing he was no longer in his gleaming suit of armor, but naked and frail, like he had been in the last years of his life. His gaze turned to his surroundings. He stood on a platform of grey stone, polished, as if an entire mountain had been carved to make it into this structure. The field around it was covered in pillars of the same stone, some as black as obsidian, others light grey, a few of them crimson. The pillars went up all the way to what appeared as a ceiling, they were all rectangular, and had oddly regular holes in them. There was a light scent of sulfur in the air.
“Ah. I guess it was about time. Shame I didn’t do my duty in life. I suppose all new arrivals start here.”
There was a sound of wings flapping, which made Victor turn to look at the source. A large raven like creature descended. It had a number of crucial differences besides it’s size. Instead of the two wings of a normal raven, it possessed four of them, the bottom two having hands at the last elbow, as if the final wing bone was extending from the wrist of a human arm. And where one would expect a beak, it instead had a mask, cast out of bronze, with eye holes of many sizes on it. The raven landed and straightened up, it’s top pair of wings folded up making it look like a man wearing a mask and dark robe.
“Victor Arthur Show. We had been patiently awaiting your arrival. I welcome you to Hell.”
“I must be really special if I’m getting the Dante treatment. Are you to be my Virgil, and show me through Hell and Purgatory, before I enter into Heaven to be with my beloved, Lily Hochikawa, as I rightfully deserve?”
“I am here to show you the way, that much is true. But I am here to show you the way to your eternal torment.”
“ETERNAL TORMENT? What have I ever done in my life to deserve eternal torment?!”
The Raven narrowed his many eyes at Victor. “Inciting Violence against the marginalised. Wrath at those different than you. Hatred of innocent people living their lives.” He stretched his top pair of wings out, making it seem that he grew in size, before pointing towards Victor, as a glowing circle grew under the hateful man. “You will fit right in with all the others who held ‘God Hates Fags’ signs. I can assure you, Victor Arthur Show, God Hates You.” From the circle burst a set of jaws covered in teeth that surrounded Victor, as he screamed and tried to get out, before they pulled him into the circle. The next thing Victor experienced was being spit out, flying for a few seconds over a snow-covered, frozen wasteland, before he landed in the snow, leaving a deep imprint.
The Raven flew from the landing platform, circling it down before he reached his floor, flying in through an open window. “And that’s the last of the fucking channers. Fuck me running they’re always the worst to deal with.” His voice had shifted from a regal, intimidating, attention demanding one… to a Brooklyn accent. He grabbed the stamp and put a big red Punished on Victor’s file, as he threw it into the sorted pile. And then there was the clink of another file being delivered. He sighed and grabbed it out of the mailbox, a massive ‘URGENT’ printed on it. He pulled the file out of the envelope “Well would ya look at that. And here I am without any medals.”
The Raven landed on the beach of black sand, carefully walking in-between the buried sinners, avoiding their ravenous bites, reaching his target. He returned to the regal accent. “Saul Raymond Luxton. Your soul is rotten. It had come here with but a hint of rot, but now it is nothing but rot.” He reached out and grabbed Saul by the neck, pulling him out of the sandy prison. “And Rotten Souls must be burned in the Lake of Fire, disappearing from all existence.” As the Raven prepared to throw Saul down into the portal he summoned for the delivery, Saul began to feel lighter in his grip. He turned his gaze to him in surprise, as Saul seemed to fade and turn into a mist that flew upwards, giving the Raven nothing to hold. The shock of it had him revert to his regular accent. “Well that’s fucked.”