The hides worked. Still got no idea what a Meat Slime is, and I don’t want to find out. But their hide wasn’t that far off from a cow’s, just a bit thicker, and it held heat less. It was also a lot lighter once it cured. Curin’ hide ain’t hard, thank the lord. But it’s not fun, and real smelly. At least, the way I did it. I was real lucky that whatever System magic nonsense held the mountains together also stopped the hide from rottin’.

Modern times comes with a heck of a lot of benefits, and I had none of ‘em. That meant I had to get old school to do the tannin’. I won’t go into detail, but it involves…bodily byproducts. Both from myself and other animals. Demons do poop, who would have guessed?

Then again, everybody poops. Wiser words were never spoken.

For the first part at least, all I needed was salt water. Somethin’ that was so common, we’d found two whole mountains of the stuff right near the toilet mountain. The rest just involved diggin’ a hole, modifyin’ a shovel into a halfway decent saw, cuttin’ down some trees, linin’ the pit, and dumpin’ the hide in with the salt water. Stir for about three quarters of a day (not fun) and you’ve cured the hide.

Then the dirty stuff, skippin’ over that.

Scrapin’ followed by more gross stuff and more cleanin’.

Then, I had to get tannin for the actual tannin’. Ha. Luckily, some of the Hell plants had tannic acid in ‘em, so that worked out. Dug a few more pits, lined ‘em with more processed wood, and got to tannin’. Overall three months and change got me somethin’ halfway decent. Another month and the lessons from the first batch made the second one (put in a month after the first, I’m not a wizard tannin’ hide in a single month using ten thousand year old techniques. That’s some magic nonsense), which turned out just about perfect.

In the meantime, I’d gotten together some metal from the pile of shovels, made a kiln, forge, and a smithy to go with it. Also a house and a lumberyard, for doin’ my woodworkin’. Made nails, thread from plant fibers. It wasn’t the best, but it was enough to do some stitchin’. With a quality of leather I was happy with, I got to splittin’ and cuttin’ and sewin’.

I made more than a few mistakes with my measurements, mostly from workin’ with a new kind of leather. Went through a few hides, but I had plenty to spare. Finally, I put it all together into somethin’ I was happy with. The months while the hides tanned gave me enough time to make all the tools I needed out of shovel iron.

It took time, and buildin’ a bunch of my own stuff for once, but I got it done. I even had the spare time to mess around with makin’ that meat we were eatin’ taste better, unsuccessfully, and turn some Hell clay into containers Miss Sasha could swallow for holdin’ water and snacks.

Oh, and I smoked some jerky. Because of course I did. Have you ever had jerky? It’s amazin’.

Anyway, now it was time to go see if all of this had been a big ole’ waste, and if I could pull out any of those spikes from the big fella.

I didn’t wear my PPE up the toilet mountain to our hole-tunnel down to the god cave. What was that sentence? How is this my afterlife? Anyway, I wasn’t wearin’ the stuff. Why? Because it was heavy! And more than a little hot. I designed it for protection from a liquid spill, which meant as little gaps as possible. It got stuffy.

“You could have redesigned it. It’s not like we’re short on time.” Miss Sasha pointed out after my grumblin’ died down.

I shook my head. “Can’t. It’ll work, the tests showed. Delayin’ anymore is just leavin’ that man to suffer for my craftsman's pride.”

“...You’re totally going to spend as long as it takes to perfect it afterwards, though. Aren’t you?”

“You bet the farm on it, Miss. Ain’t nothin’ stoppin’ me. What I got right now ain’t up to my standards and it grinds at me.”

“You’re working with self-made tools and methods you’ve only ever heard of and never implemented yourself. It wasn’t going to be perfect.” Her tail nudged my cheek. I was startin’ to get a real beard goin’. None of the edges I’d honed were fine enough for me to feel comfortable shavin’ with ‘em. Never shave with a dull blade. That there is a recipe for pain.

I snorted, tapping her tail away with the tip of a finger. “Tell that to Ester. Or Unc! He’d take one look at my hammer and anvil and cuff me one. Not even a third as good as he’da done on the first try. And it’s my fourth one!”

Unc was my third cousin once removed, around the age of my folks. Like an uncle, but more distantly related. He was a blacksmith by trade, makin’ beautiful pieces of form and function from raw metal. He’d taught me for a bit, but I didn’t have the real skills for it. Still, what I’d learned helped me out more times than I could count, and it was helpin’ me again.

“That says more about Unc than it does about you. Actually, it says a lot about both of you. But that’s not the point.” She wound up until part of her coils were restin’ on my stetson. Swivelin’ around, she kept an eye out behind. And then she snorted. “You’re not going to believe it.”

“He’s still kickin’.” I smirked. What can I say, I was feelin’ a little smug.

“That’s insane. Most Imps don’t survive for more than a month, especially not a Runt. They get harassed into starvation!” She whipped down to give me the stink eye. “Have you been feeding him?”

“...”

The glare didn’t stop, but I would not fall to tyranny.

“Riiiick.”

I’m ashamed to say that I broke.

“I’m the one that cooks anyway! What’s it hurt if I leave a little out for the stinker?” I defended myself against unjust persecution.

“You cook all the food because I don’t have hands! It’s not like I’m willfully unhelpful! And keeping an Imp around is likely to bring more Natives into our backyard.” She huffed, flicking her tongue out.

I wasn’t appreciatin’ all the very reasonable arguments comin’ my way. “That is both fair and right.”

“Buuut.”

“But I’m gonna keep feedin’ him anyway.”

“Why, why must you make this all harder than it needs to be?” Sighin’, Miss Sasha moved from in front of my face to wind herself up tight around my neck. She squeezed, lookin’ like she might be thinkin’ about squeezin’ even harder. “It’s exhausting, trying to plan around all the possible consequences.”

“You’ve done a bang-up job so far.” I tried to offer up a compliment.

“Thank you for the moral support, eternal font of all my problems.” She sassed.

We kept movin’ on toward the tunnel in a comfortable silence. We didn’t always talk. Heck, some days passed in complete silence. I’d be workin’ on this or that, and Sasha would take inventory, sort whatever mess I’d made the last day, or keep track of the things I tended to forget about. Like sitrrin’ and movin’ the tannin’ hides or goin’ foragin’ for the few edible berries we’d found that she recognized.

I’d traveled a lot, back on Earth. Worked with a bunch of people from all over, a lot of which were related to me. I’d never really felt lonely. But I’d also never had a travelin’ companion, someone who came with me when I went. It was…nice. More than I thought it’d be. Though I might chalk that up to Miss Sasha havin’ seemingly endless patience for my shenanigans, despite what she might say.

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This wasn’t the first time we’d come back down the tunnel. Since the first go-round, I’d added some things to make the trip a mite bit easier. Stairs at both drops, and a guide line that acted like a handlebar through the dark bit of the tunnel. Tried to light it, didn’t work. Magical darkness and all that.

Instead of takin’ over an hour, the trip was done in minutes. And now it was time to get my PPE on.

Miss Sasha laid it out on the floor for me. I can’t tell you how glad I am that the things she stores don’t come out covered in snake spit. It was all magical nonsense, so while they did come out of her mouth, they just kinda *poof* appeared at her snout, right between her fangs.

It was….fine. The gear, I mean. It was alright. There were six different pieces. There was the bodysuit, which covered my chest, arms, and legs, but not my hands or feet. Then the headpiece, pants, and the two arm covers. Finally, the chest piece. Puttin’ it on was a process. The whole point of the thing was to make it liquid tight, so everythin’ ended up double-layered. Some areas were triple-layered.

I had to slip out of my shirt, jeans, and boots to get the bodysuit on, but it went over my undies. It was open in the back, and I had no go way of closin’ it. Zippers are real hard to make, and I’d need some better equipment than an anvil and a few crappy hammers to pull it off. But that was why I made the other pieces.

The boots went back on my feet, and then the pants, the head cover, and finally the arm guards. All of ‘em were pretty loose and shapeless, since I was still workin’ on shapin’ the leather properly. But they covered me good. The pants came halfway up my chest, and the arm guards went to my shoulders.

There were drawstrings at the hems of the arms guards, the waist of the pants, and around each ankle where the pants came down over my boots. Between my boots, the bodysuit, and the pants, my ankles had three layers coverin’ the gap. I had to pull it all tight, I did the ones at the ankles and the waste, but I had to make little loops for the arm ones so that Miss Sasha could pull ‘em tight with her teeth.

Finally, the chest piece. It had short sleeves and a long waist, as well as a collar. Each had a drawstring, also made for snake teeth. All told, it was about as water-tight as I could possibly make it. And most of that was thanks to Miss Sasha. My first design wasn’t nearly as well-planned, and she pointed out as much. Then she had me start puttin’ pieces through testin’.

Dunkin’ the pieces in a barrel of water, we found out that my saddle stitchin’ wasn’t water-tight. I had to render some fat from the meat we were eatin’ into wax to cover the stitchin’. Then we made a testing dummy out of branches wrapped in dried out grasses and dunked the whole assembly into a pit of water, up to the neck. That put us through three versions before I’d made one that didn’t take on water in only a few minutes.

The dummy’s design was Miss Sasha’s idea. It was stiff enough to hold shape, and the dried grass made it real easy to spot where water had leaked. What we ended up with could sit in water for almost ten minutes without any leakin’.

But neither of us could fix the head piece. I still needed to see and breathe with the suit on, and that meant holes. I managed to cobble together a mesh of plant fiber covered in wax that I could still see and breath through, but also stopped random splashes. But it failed against any water of actual depth. It was the main failure in the whole thing, but we didn’t have a better solution.

It’s not like I was about to make an oxygen tank and plastic goggles. So we just had to go with what we’d got. So long as I didn’t faceplant into the ichor, it wouldn’t be a problem. Miss Sasha tightened all the drawstrings, and we were ready to go.

The cave hadn't changed in four months. That alone showed how long this god had been here. Four months, and the ichor hadn’t risen even an inch. He’d been here long enough for the ichor to form a pool around him. He was lyin’ on a little bulge of toilets that held him above the white, shiny liquid. A tiny island in the pond.

Miss Sasha already had me test my boots in the ichor, dippin’ ‘em in to make sure they wouldn’t soak through. Of course, it didn’t. No self-respectin’ workin’ man buys unwaterproofed boots. It’d be like buyin’ boots without steel toes. That’s for fancy folk, I work for a livin’. At least, I used to. They weren’t waders or anythin’, but they got the job done.

That bein’ said, I was more than a little nervous dippin’ my foot in that pond. Didn’t let it stop me none, but there was a bit of worry in the back of my head. A few more steps had the stuff over my ankles, and I was real glad I’d listened when Miss Sasha had me check the depth of the pond with a few sticks. If she hadn’t, I mighta stepped into a ten-foot-deep pool without knowin’.

It capped out at around two thirds up my calf. I took my steps slow and careful, since I couldn’t see where I was steppin’. Wet porcelain wasn't exactly the world’s best foothold. The pond wasn’t all that far across, so a dozen small and careful steps had me right next to the staked giant. At the end there, I had to duck around a few of the magic chains comin’ off all the spikes jabbed into him. I could dang near hear ‘em hummin’ with all the magic in ‘em, and I wasn’t keen on touchin’ ‘em.

I was here. Now, the real question. What the heck was I doin’? All them stakes were just singin’ with magic, so how was I supposed to pull ‘em out? A fair question, and one raised by my Sin Totem an hour after we’d left the first time around.

That there had us turnin’ around and takin’ another peek. All the spikes were magic, that was true. But Miss Sasha was certain all that magic nonsense was focused down into the god they were pinnin’. She said it was kinda like an induction stove. The magic in the stakes latched onto the magic in the god just like an induction top latches onto a metal pan. The reaction between the two was what was doin’ harm to the god, keepin’ him knocked out and bleedin’.

That also meant that the magic wasn’t about to affect anyone that wasn’t like the staked guy. As in, another god. It wouldn’t do anythin’ to little old me. I wondered why whoever had staked him set it up like that, and Miss Sasha went back to the induction stove. It was more efficient. Pinnin’ a god at all wasn’t easy, so who’d done it picked the least costly option. And that meant narrowin’ the scope of the magic they used as much as possible.

I was a little leery, but Miss Sasha hadn’t steered me wrong, and she didn’t ever bluff or blow smoke. If she was sure that was how the stakes worked, I was willin’ to go out on a limb.

The parts of the suit coverin’ my hands weren’t gloves so much as mittens. I was still workin’ on makin’ good fingers. But it was a lot of extra stitches, and that meant more weak points. And that’d be on a part of suit comin’ it direct contact with the magic spikes, all of which were soaked in ichor. They were stabbed right into the poor guy after all.

There were roughened portions of leather on the palms of the mittens so I could really get a good grip. Now, were do I start pullin’? I could just grab the nearest one and go from there, but that was apparently a magically unsound idea, so Miss Sasha threw it right out.

She’d said that somethin’ like these spikes, it was all connected. Magically, of course. The spikes worked together, relied on each other to do what they were doin’. Pullin’ ‘em out willy-nilly was a good way to make the whole thing blow up. So what do we do? You pick at the outliers. And there was a great big obvious example.

One of the stakes was different. It was three times the size of the others, had a black chain instead of gold, and was stabbed into the giant right over his heart. I didn’t need Miss Sasha tellin’ me to start there, even though she had. I was a go big or go home sort, and that stake screamed ‘I’m important, pull me’.

I stepped up onto the god’s arm, mentally apologizin’ for the rude behavior. He was such a big guy that there wasn't a better way to go about it. Once I was standin’ one foot on his arm and the other on his leg, I carefully put a leather covered hand on the big stake, avoidin’ the chain. Nothin’ happened.

Lettin’ out a sigh of relief, I grabbed the thing in both mitts, braced my feet, and yanked.

It slid out like it was greased and under pressure. Which turned out to be more than a little true. A big surge of ichor came out of the wound, slammin’ into my chest. The only reason I didn’t catch it in my much more exposed face was because I’d pulled so hard, expectin’ more resistance. My big pull had me standin’ instead of crouchin’.

The geiser of ichor picked me up and tossed me. I felt my ribs creak and my breath whoosh out my lungs. It was like a sack of concrete mix hit me in the chest goin’ ten miles an hour. But instead of one hit, it just kept comin’. I slapped down on my rear at the edge of the ichor bond, thankfully.

My tailbone ached somethin’ fierce, and I knew I had one heck of a bruise formin’ across my whole chest, not to mention bein’ covered in ichor, but I was fine. My head piece held up. The stream had been surprisingly dense, not spreadin’ out much. Flecks of ichor definitely landed on my wax and fiber mesh, but nothin’ slipped through.

It took me a moment to catch my breath. Gettin’ socked right in the chest’ll do that to you. Once I did, I breathed deep before lettin’ out a groan. “Well…That…wasn’t any…fun.”

Miss Sasha slithered over, hoppin’ the streams of ichor to get to me from where I’d left her. “Are you ok? You didn’t get any ichor on you, did you?”

“Nope, right as rain. Just a little bruisin’ luckily enough. Suit worked perfect.” I waved her off.

“Well ,you’re going to have to wait a while for all the ichor on you to run off before we can get you out of that suit.” She sighed, seeming to accept my answer. Though she still slithered around me, lookin’ at me from all angles.

“I got to get the other stakes out yet.”

“I don’t think that’s happening.” She flicked her tail toward the god. “I underestimated the array those stakes made. The linchpin being removed seems to have triggered some…safeguards.”

Lookin’ over, I saw a dome of golden light with cracks of white, black, red, and blue runnin’ through it surroundin’ the god. His chest wound was already closed up, scaly skin takin’ the place where the stake still in my hand once stuck out.

“Well, ain’t that a shame.”