Loyd ducked, rolling backward from the savage blow and kicking up toward the Oni’s chin with both feet as his shoulders met the ground. The Oni finished his leap just in time to catch the heels of Loyd’s feet under his chin, sending him crashing away from the lich into the counter he had just hurdled. A grunt was heard from the Oni as he recovered quickly from the blow. However, it didn’t seem to slow the sizeable red beast-man as the Oni laughed harder.

The club swung again in an overhand arc, meeting the collarbone of Loyd as he flipped back to his feet. Loyd’s grunt at the strike connecting preceded his hand cracking into the side of the Oni’s head in an overpowered slap. The force of the blow on the Oni’s face gashed open Loyd’s hand on one of the tusks but knocked the laughing Oni to the side in a spinning heap toward the ground.

Starting to stumble to the ground at the overpowered bitch slap, the Oni used his falling momentum to twist his body in a circle to leg-sweep the lich. As the dead man started to fall through the air, the Oni bellowed and struck out with a fist that could shatter stone. It landed in Loyd’s sternum as he fell, sending his body hurtling back against the wall.

As the red demon advanced, Loyd’s crash was accompanied by now hysterical yips of glee from the Oni. Loyd got back to his feet before the Oni reached him. Unfortunately, he lacked severely needed components for magic, so it would have to be a contest of physical violence. Loyd contemplated his following approach.

‘His club isn’t enchanted. This should be fine.’

Loyd glanced at the gash across his palm that wasn’t closing as it should.

‘Maybe.’

The pair exchanged the oldest form of conversational conflict resolution for several minutes, the Oni laughing the entire time. Finally, after every piece of decor, including the counter, several chairs, and a lovely ming vase, had been smashed into splinters, the combat paused. The Oni stood amidst the debris, heaving great gasps of air and breathless chuckles.

Loyd had managed to avoid the tusks of the demon throughout the rest of the fight, so they stood out of the Oni’s reach. As a result of being dead already, he had no breath to lose. Impervious to non-magical weaponry didn’t mean he enjoyed being tossed around from the attempted lethal beating, though.

The Oni looked around at the devastation, and his chuckles faded to a dissatisfied grunt.

“As fun, as that was, I’m gonna have to charge you extra for the redecoration. My aunt gave me that vase.”

“I said something upsetting, but you started the ruckus.”

“Don’t you understand an insult is the first blow?”

“We can go back to the violence if you like. You doubted my word about the deputy being mine anyway. You started it.”

The Oni looked around again at the debris left in his lobby. The demon looked wistful and had a sad nostalgia in his eyes.

“There’s nothing left to break. Where’s the fun in that?”

Loyd took this in with calm and inexplicably felt sympathy for the Oni’s plight. Not everyone had a burning, all-consuming purpose to fill their days. He might be dead, but the violence had also been a good stress reliever for him. It wasn’t often he found an opponent that could last more than a few seconds.

“We could move to another room? Though preferably not near my things.”

“I’m paid to hold onto people’s things safely and discreetly. That would not be beneficial to either of us. So I’m fine with how our conversation developed, provided you pay for the damages. It was my property that was destroyed.”

Loyd thought of all the noise their discussion had caused. He looked around at the smashed bits and questioned this.

“How was this discreet?”

“I locked us inside so we wouldn’t end up duking it out in the street. Mortals might have questioned how I could beat you with a horse, Marshal…and why you got up afterward. I remember how you used to run things. This was better.”

“You remember me? Why don’t I remember you? If you know how I do things, you should be less free with admitting to paying me the discourtesy of evading my law by voiding introducing yourself.”

“My glory days of conquering were over long ago, Marshal. I didn’t see the point in making myself known to you when I moved into town. Instead, I read your old “laws” you would hand out to others.”

“I don’t shit where I eat. It makes for a terrible seasoning. Any “harvesting,” as you used to call it, I did outside the county. One of your bylaws clearly stated you didn’t care about anything done outside your “jurisdiction” as long as it didn’t come back to Vegas.”

Loyd’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t care for the assumption of the Oni that his town would be capable of being conquered. His last demise being fresh in his mind and the Oni having possession of Loyd’s artifacts and spell components made the point a tough one to argue with. Loyd changed the subject.

“Do we need to continue our discussion, or can I retrieve my possessions without further conversation?”

The Oni chuckled and scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish for an eight-foot-tall red ogre.

“About that, we have a mutual problem there. So it’s better if I show you.”

Loyd debated restarting the conversation with more exuberance. But, deciding it may be faster to humor the demon for now, he observed instead of attacking.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The Oni walked to the sealed door in the back wall and tapped out a rhythm near the handle. Flashing glyphs reappeared under his claws as his fingers unlocked the magical seal holding the door closed.

Loyd followed the Oni into the next room. It turned out not to be a room but the warehouse storage area. The size of the place was enormous. Large stacks of crates with narrow corridors of space between them were scattered around the cavernous space. A diffuse light with no visible source softly illuminated labeled plates at the end of each aisle.

Loyd may have underestimated the magical acuity the demon was capable of. The place was bigger on the inside than the exterior would lead anyone to believe.

Extradimensional space manipulation was complex magic to master and even harder to conceal. If the Oni had hidden all this from Loyd and concealed his presence when he moved into town, even with supplies for his more potent spells, the Oni would be a difficult opponent to overcome easily with this level of mastery.

‘If he is this capable, though, what is the problem he’s talking about.’

Loyd heard giggles coming from around him. They echoed throughout the warehouse in a suitably ominous way, the source hidden from view. Beyond a source being able to be seen, the sound was obscured by the aisles of crates stacked throughout the warehouse.

Loyd had a bad feeling about what he was about to witness. Shoten waved for him to follow as he walked down one of the aisles. After a few minutes of the now annoying giggling following them through the stacks, Loyd emerged into an open space with the Oni leading.

Several shelves of crates had been torn apart and then rearranged into what Loyd could only describe as a child’s clubhouse retreat. Canvas and ropes were sprinkled throughout the various piles of crates used to construct the fort.

A group of children, Loyd counted almost a dozen, stood staring at a doll in a predictable black miniature Victorian-style dress sitting atop the fort. None of the children looked up at the approach of Loyd or his Oni guide. Some of them looked malnourished.

The giggling came again from the doll.

“Hello. My name is Francesca. Wanna play a game with us?”

Loyd sighed. His disregard for needing to breathe didn’t preclude him from doing so when he was feeling exasperated. He looked at Shoten with distaste.

“You can handle the extradimensional enchantment of space while concealing its active construction from me, but you can’t deal with a simple possessed doll? Ghost possession shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

Shoten looked perturbed at his skills being questioned. He gestured to Loyd with his middle finger and addressed the doll, who now had locked its gaze onto the lich with glowing white eyes.

“Hello, Francesca. This is Loyd.”

The doll’s painted mouth opened into a round void of darkness that sucked in air, briefly creating a wind with the force of its intake of breath before a shriek of rage issued at Loyd in a cone of focused sonic fury. The blast of sound picked Loyd up and flung him through the aisle of crates behind him, then the next three.

Loyd lay in a pile of shattered wood and various items inside them. He sat up, checking himself. His clothes had been shredded from being flung through the crates at high speed. His leather duster hung in tatters along with his shirt. Various gashes were laced all over his now partially exposed chest. His arms and legs were unbroken but also lashed with cuts, and none of the gashes were closing as they should.

Loyd sat there staring at the path of destruction his undead corpse had left as it was blasted through the aisles. He was not upset at being taken unaware. Not at all. The shaking was an after-effect of the attack, that was all. His mortal form being the only thing affected. It would pass.

More giggling sent Loyd thrashing to his feet with a thunderhead on his face. He kicked debris away from him in his fury, sending it clattering against other debris from the aisle in front of him. Shoten stepped through the hole left by his passage.

“I should explain the problem now, I think.”

Loyd ripped the remnants of his jacket and shirt from his upper torso, flinging them to the side. His bare-chested desiccated form advanced toward the demon in front of him.

“I do not appreciate trickery. That was more than “a problem.” That was not a simple ghost possession. What the fuck is it? A minor demon lord? How? Why would you invite that kind of headache into a place of business?”

Shoten sighed and pulled one of the less damaged crates over to sit. He waved for Loyd to do the same. Loyd debated starting up their earlier conversation, then imitated the Oni.

“That… is Francesca. I did not invite her. She showed up and hijacked my entire warehouse. I don’t know what she is, but she is very…playful. If I keep her occupied with playmates, she doesn’t act out or destroy anything.”

Loyd restrained himself from attacking the demon yet again,

“I meant to talk to you about the missing children. Using them as bait or a stopgap to prevent your place of business from being destroyed is a deplorable use of resources. Do you know how long it takes humans to grow enough to be useful?”

Shoten ignored the question, continuing the tale.

“She showed up a few months ago demanding I play with her. So I tried getting rid of her as I would any commonly possessed simulacrum, and she kicked the shit out of me. Not in the fun, “I’m just trying to kill you” way we enjoyed earlier.”

The Oni raised his pantlegs to show long gangrenous, looking gashes along both legs. Then, letting them fall back into place, he winced as the cloth settled.

“She doesn’t like being called a ghost or questioned about what she is. Says that’s council business, then gets violent.”

The Oni rubbed his forehead with one clawed hand in a defeated manner before continuing.

“I started bringing her playmates, the kids, about a month back to trade for some of the things I have stored here for other clients. She is territorial about this warehouse and doesn’t let anything go without a trade of what she considers equal value. What…she..considers…equal…value. That means the kids. One item. One playmate.”

Loyd thought on this for a while in silence. The Oni seemed fine with the silence, waiting for his response to this information. The dead man was not feeling as chatty as usual. They stared at each other until the Oni started shifting uncomfortably.

“Well?”

Loyd continued staring a moment longer, then replied.

“She said, what she is, was “council business”? Those exact words?”

“Yes, why? Do you know what council she’s talking about?”

Loyd grasped the sides of his head, took a deep breath, then started rubbing his temples. Dead men didn’t get headaches, but old habits came back this close to reconstituting into a new body.

“She is my problem. This has just complicated all of my plans. Let’s go talk to her.”

The Oni frowned,

“Why do dead men insist on such ambiguity?”

Loyd dismissively waved at the Oni as he passed back through the shattered aisles towards this miniaturized headache standing in the way of him getting anything done with haste. With the resources he badly needed to consolidate his position in Las Vegas once more lost within this warehouse, he would need to get the thing controlling it out of the way or at least negotiate the release of his personal effects.

“The living are unsure of most things no matter what they pretend, that doesn’t change after you die. It just gets more esoteric. Also, I like the stupid look on people’s faces when I do it.”

Loyd and the Oni Shoten went to confront whatever this doll was.