It had all been a complete and utter blur. Jezebel had taken it all upon herself to organise the journey to Furnace, leaving Cobalt to prepare himself alone. The feeling of nostalgia in his gut didn’t quite sit well with him, but neither could he refute his mother’s wishes. So he just put his faith in her and packed his belongings.
It was funny; they barely even felt like his. And once he had them all laid out on the bed, the Incubus realised just how little he actually had.
Once everything was squared away, his mother hired a private taxi service to escort him and Lydia to the Tempered Bastion, and the brand-new train station within. They drove deep into the depths of the old Devil fortress, whereupon a group of well-dressed staff hustled them out of the car and through a series of service tunnels. Though confused and disoriented, Lydia assured Cobalt that Jezebel had spared no expense in ensuring his privacy. They were to board the train ahead of all other passengers, while it was still undergoing maintenance checks, and once inside, Cobalt was not to leave their cabin until they reached Furnace. It was all very secretive, but considering how the general public tended to reach to him, Cobalt was thankful for it.
The train itself was nothing like the locomotive he expected. It was a huge metal beast, panelled with gleaming silver metal and painted with both the Brimstone and Furnace city-state crests. Even the tracks were much wider than he expected, through he wasn’t given much time to look at them before he was politely-but-firmly pushed through the train’s doors.
Within was a cabin much like a small, luxury hotel room. A double bed, a minibar, even a bathroom… It seemed Quincy Hanlon had spent more on ensuring the Rimebound Express’ clientele’s comfort than ensuring that the ancient ruin in the centre of his town was actually safe to inhabit.
But that wasn’t of any consequence to Cobalt. He sat on the bed until the tannoy announced the train’s departure a few hours later. He could hear other people bustling through the walls of his cabin, completely unaware of who their neighbour was.
He felt nervous, and a little bit sick. Lydia was always on hand to fetch anything he needed from the Express’ diner car, but they both knew there wasn’t much he was capable of eating aside from the dried meat they had packed for the trip.
Once the train started moving, a sense of finality washed over him.
This was it. Having barely just regained a sense of who he was, he was being uprooted and shipped off somewhere completely alien to him.
But he could only sit clutching his cane for so long. Changing into his nightclothes, he crawled into the bed, shifting about uncomfortably as he struggled to find a position that suited him. The mattress was too soft, and the pillows too firm.
“Are you alright, young master?” Lydia asked from her position by the door.
She had been standing there since the train ride began, eyes still shut to give him privacy while he changed. She didn’t even sit in one of the chairs around the cabin.
“… Just nervous,” he replied quietly.
The Oni cracked an eye open and sighed.
“I will be by your side every step of the way.”
“Yeah. Thank you, Lydia. Really.”
“There is no need to thank me.”
“Still. I feel like I owe you something.”
“If you feel the need to repay me, Master Cobalt, you could begin by getting some sleep. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
He gave her a weak smile and buried himself in the duvet, shutting his eyes. Beneath him, the wheels of the train rumbled, and though his bed wasn’t terribly comfortable, the soft rocking of the cabin eventually lulled him in a deep, restless sleep.
~~~~~
The soft, spongey mattress gave way to cold, unyielding stone. His head was bent at an unnatural angle. Even his nightclothes seemed to chafe against his flesh. Cold metal was biting into his wrists and ankles, and when Cobalt stirred uncomfortably, he felt the same coldness around his throat.
Panic welled in his chest. A nightmare, he first thought.
But Lust demons don’t dream like that.
Eyes fluttering open, Cobalt found himself lying a world away from the train cabin he had fallen asleep in. The Incubus was lying on the floor of a cold stone prison cell, surrounded by broken chains and chunks of broken bricks. Light streamed a hole in the ceiling, and as his vision gradually cleared, he found that the walls were covered in tally marks.
Blinking a few times, he looked down to find himself in a dirty white jumpsuit, his ankles and wrists clapped in metal shackles. A quick touch to his neck confirmed the presence of a collar there too.
The panic rose, quickening his heartrate, but before he could begin to despair, a dim flash of realisation sparked in the back of his mind.
He had been here before.
Bracing his hands against the wall, he got to his feet and took an experimental step forward, and was surprised to find that his leg didn’t hurt. Just ahead of him he could see an old cell door, the light beyond shining too bright to see through. The metal was old and rusted, and as he put his weight against it, he felt it shift ever-so-slightly.
“Come on…” the Incubus murmured, pushing with all his might.
Flakes of rust fell to the floor as it budged a little more.
“Open… damn you…!”
Throwing all of his weight against the bars, the cell door abruptly swung open with a horrific screeching noise, allowing Cobalt to collapsed out of the cell. Blinded by the light, he cried out and covered his eyes as he struck the ground, sending a shock of pain through his entire body.
Blinking his stinging eyes, the Incubus held a hand to his face as his eyes adjusted, gradually revealing his surroundings to him. He was standing in the centre of a vast salt flat, surrounded on all sides by bleak, white nothingness. The sky above him was pitch black and starless, and yet it shone with a luminous light, and as he struggled to get his bearings, he heard a soft giggle from somewhere behind him.
“It’s not really all that much to look at, is it?”
It was a soft, implacable voice. Gentle and feminine. He had never heard it before, and yet something told him that he had. Clambering to his feet, Cobalt turned to face the desolate prison cell that he had just freed himself from.
A woman sat atop the broken roof, her black and gold dress rippling softly in a non-existent wind. She was kicking her legs back and forth as she rhythmically clacked her heels against the stone, and as Cobalt stared, she cocked her head, loosing a mane of pure-white hair from beneath a tilted hat.
But her face… That was what made the connection for him. In place of a typical person’s features, the woman bore a mask set with two emeralds where the eyes ought to be. With every blink, the mask’s expression would shift and change, and Cobalt had a hard time looking directly at it.
“Omnihil…?” he breathed.
“Correct,” she responded, slipping down off the old cell.
She landed with a dainty plié, causing the loose salt on the ground to sweep away from her.
“But...,” Cobalt asked, raising a finger, “… weren’t you a-?”
“A man? Oh dear me, no.”
“Ah. Sorry for my mis-”
“But in the same vein, I am a man. I am also a woman, but I am certainly not a woman. Just as I am both, I am neither, as I am one I am also the other. Everything, nothing, both, twice, thrice; in the grand scheme of things, do the minutiae really matter?” she responded, drawing closer to him.
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Cobalt blinked a few times.
“… How can this be? I- I thought you were just a figment of my imagination,” the Incubus asked as she began to walk in circles around him.
“Let me guess. You considered me a reassuring figure conjured by a dying mind, there to pull you back from the brink?”
“Um… well, when you put it like that…”
Sighing, Omnhihil placed a gloved hand on the Incubus’ shoulder.
“Oh Cobalt. As flattered as I am, do you really think you have the imagination to fabricate something such as myself? Considering this is all you have to work with?”
She opened her arms out wide, gesturing to the flats all around. Cobalt stared into the distance, taking in the vast nothingness as he put two and two together.
“This… is my mind…?” he murmured, glancing back at the strange, masked woman.
“In a way,” Omnihil answered simply.
“In what way?”
“Consider it more of a physical metaphor I conjured for you to be able to effectively understand it. This flat, empty expanse is the very depths of your subconscious, scrubbed clean of the memories that once made you... you. It is here that you and I can talk relatively undisturbed.”
Her explanation only served to confuse him further.
“But… why? Why do we need to talk? Who even are you?” he asked, feeling irritation begin to swell in his chest.
Omnihil took a few steps back, leaving footsteps in the salt.
“How do I put this… I’m something of an outside observer. Most of the time, anyway. I try not to involve myself in conventional affairs, but… well… sometimes there are exceptional individuals that catch my attention, much like yourself. Long story short, I’ve known about you for a long, long time,” she explained.
A shiver ran down his spine.
“You’ve been stalking me?” Cobalt breathed, taking a step back from her.
“Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve known about you since very beginning. And I trust I’ll know you until the very end of all things.”
“… What?!”
“Minutiae! You’re getting so caught up in the details, asking me why I’m here when you haven’t even considered why you’re here!”
“I was going to get to that!”
“Well then cast your gaze over yonder!”
Grabbing his arm, Omnihil suddenly twisted Cobalt’s body around, pointing him away from the prison cell. Despite his best efforts to resist, she had an unearthly strength to her, allowing her to easily pivot him around on his heels. With one hand planted on the back of his head, she pointed far into the distance with the other.
Sure enough, there was something there. Far, far away, Cobalt could just about make out-
“… a mountain…?” he breathed, squinting at the far-off peak.
He could barely see it – a dark shadow against a darker sky – but surely enough it was there.
“Not a mountain. The mountain. Consider that your goal,” she said unhelpfully, patting his head.
“My goal-?! What do you mean?! Explain yourself already!” the Incubus suddenly cried, whipping around to face her.
The emeralds on the mask glinted as she stared back at him.
“Your memories. They’re held by seven others, each bound by the emotions they feel towards you. Hate, despair, longing, confliction… Each and every one of them lies on the path to the mountain. The key to your realisation lies with them, and the memories they keep from you.”
Cobalt’s head was spinning. Everything she was saying… it didn’t make any sense! Seven others? He didn’t even know seven other people!
“I- I don’t understand,” he said, feeling more than a little overwhelmed.
“I wouldn’t expect you to, in all honesty. But you know what they say; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
He looked her up and down, his gaze lingering on her mask for a moment before he finally took a deep breath and nodded. As confused as he was, something deep down was telling him to put his trust in this strange individual. After all, they were always by his side during those long, unending years, trapped in a coma. Though deep down, Cobalt honestly preferred their feline form. It was less unsettling.
“… Okay. I’ll, uh… I’ll do my best to reach the mountain,” he told her, glancing back at the peak in question.
“And…?” Omnihil asked, gesturing for him to continue.
“And… I’ll… free my memories from seven others…? I guess…?”
“There, you’re on your way already. Now, be a good boy and wake up; you’ve got a long day ahead of you. Oh, and before I forget-”
The emeralds flashed as the salt flats began to fade away.
“The Angel still flies.”
~~~~~
Cobalt’s eyes flickered open. He was back on the Rimebound Express, wrapped up in a duvet and lying a mere couple of feet above the roaring wheels of the train. Blinking a few times, he glanced over at the clock on the wall to find that he had been out for a couple of hours, and a second look at the window confirmed that it was the middle of the night.
Since he woke up in that cave, he had written this “Omnihil” thing off as being some bizarre coma dream, but now he wasn’t so sure. They spoke like something completely separate from him, and more importantly, they seemed to know more than they let on. True enough, his mind was far too empty to come up with something like that even consciously, to say nothing of the things they said…
“The Angel still flies…?” he breathed, sitting up in the bed.
What the Hell did that mean? Angels? Weren’t they just a myth?
Rubbing his eyes, Cobalt looked over to find that Lydia had moved from her post by the door and was sitting in one of the cabin’s chairs, her eyes shut and her chest heaving. She was sleeping bolt upright.
Feeling a little guilty for taking the only bed in the room, the Incubus groped around for his cane and stumbled to his feet, wincing as he ambled over to the window to peek outside. The train was tearing through the countryside, though his surroundings had gotten a lot rockier and more mountainous than the relatively flat lowlands around Brimstone. They were approaching the Silatned border, and with it, the great city-state of Furnace.
Apprehension and excitement clawed for dominance in his heart, and yet even then, Cobalt found his mind wandering back to that strange dream. Was it even a dream? Or was it some kind of vision, or nocturnal hallucination?
Regardless, Omnihil told him about “seven others.” He could only assume they meant seven other demons. But that only served to confuse him further. What was the goal here? What did he have to do to reach this so-called mountain in his mind? Would any assortment of seven demons do? Or were there seven specific individuals that his coma-fractured psyche had in mind?
None of this made sense, spurring the Incubus to sigh and lean his forehead against the cool glass. At least in his dream, his body didn’t ache quite so much. That was nice.
He stared outside at the lights illuminating the train tracks as they cast shadows against the cabin walls.
“The Angel still flies…” he repeated to himself.
If an angel somehow managed to find their way to Hell, that certainly would be a surprise. Perhaps scholars would finally be able to put the Rapture debate to rest and conclude that the whole thing had actually happened.
His musings were met with silence. Strange, why was he expecting a response?
Cobalt sighed, leaving a patch of fog on the glass.
A new city. A new job. A head full of fog and esoteric instructions. And a lifetime of forgotten memories to recover. He had a lot to catch up on.
“Young master?”
Flinching, Cobalt whipped around to find Lydia’s eyes piercing through him, gleaming despite the gloom.
“Y- Yeah?” he replied, a little startled.
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I, uh…”
Lydia was always there to listen to his problems. But something told Cobalt that his dream went a little beyond the pale in terms of strangeness. Telling the Oni would only open him up to questions he didn’t feel fit to handle right now.
“… I got cold. Chill woke me,” he lied, gritting his teeth.
Nodding softly, Lydia rose to her feet and flattened her skirts down.
“That stands to reason; we’ve been travelling north for quite some time now.”
In truth, the cold didn’t seem to affect the Incubus much, but he didn’t let her catch onto that.
“Furnace supposedly has all kinds of systems in place to keep the city from freezing over. But even still, we should see about buying you some warmer clothes when we arrive,” she continued, removing and neatly folding her apron.
“Do you know much about the city?” Cobalt asked, sitting back down on the bed.
“Only what Miss Viridi and Miss Violet have told me. I’ll be sure to study up on the subject, however.”
Climbing back under the covers, the Incubus frowned as curiosity overtook him.
“Is it cold where you’re from?” he asked.
“Phrodival is quite temperate,” the maid answered, neatly placing her shoes by the cabin door.
“I mean where you first came from.”
She didn’t answer that.
“… Lydia?”
“Yes, Master Cobalt?”
“Your hometown… is it cold there?”
“I had no issues with the temperature in Phrodival.”
“That’s not-”
“Are you still cold, young master?”
He swallowed hard, deigning to continue his little lie rather than push this topic any further.
“Yeah, a little. But I’ll be alright. Wait, what are you-?”
Rounding the bed, Lydia lifted the duvet and climbed in alongside Cobalt.
“There. Come closer; I’ll keep you warm,” she instructed.
He half-expected her to play this off as a joke, but the Oni’s tone was deathly serious. He laughed nervously as Lydia’s natural body heat washed over him, his heartrate only growing quicker as his nose twitched at her scent.
“L- Lydia, what are you doing…?” Cobalt breathed, trying to focus on anything else.
“Mistress Jezebel instructed me to attend to your every need,” she responded curtly.
“Yeah, but… This is a little…”
“We used to share a bed all the time, young master.”
Yeah, when he was seven years old and still frightened of the dark, maybe. Lydia spent more nights lulling the young Incubus to sleep than she did in her own room.
“I- I’m not a kid anymore, Lydia,” he blurted indignantly.
The duvet shifted about as the Oni placed a hand on his shoulder. She was warm.
“I know. But that does not mean I won’t be here to help you whenever you need me.”
Her words seemed to work the tension right out of him. Lying back into the pillow, Cobalt took a deep breath and really processed what she had just said.
Lydia was right. No matter what, she was going to be there for him. Sure, his head was barely screwed on straight, and he was diving feetfirst into the unknown, but he wasn’t doing it alone. She would be there for him, as she always had been for nearly all his life.
“Yeah… I know I keep saying it, but… Thanks, Lydia.”
“I’m only doing what is expected of me, young master.”
“I guess. We, uh… We won’t be sharing a bed when we’re there, though, right?”
“Unless you’re still suffering from the cold. Keeping you warm is the least I can do.”
“Y- Yeah, but people will start to talk, you know?”
“Will they now?”
“I- I mean… Lydia, like I said, I’m not a… you know…”
“Do I?”
“Wha-?!”
He heard a short, sharp exhalation from the Oni’s nose; the closest thing to a laugh she was capable of.
“Despite everything, you really have grown up, Master Cobalt,” she said, shutting her eyes.
Swallowing hard, Cobalt stared at the ceiling and watched the lights rhythmically flash across it.
“I… guess I have…”