The tunnel led to a mechanical door, wired to a single button that Cobalt opened with a slam of his fist. It hissed open, allowing cold wind to wash over him, ruffling his makeshift cloak and causing his skin to prickle into gooseflesh. His inner heat warded off the chill, and as he marched out into a small cave, he saw that the entrance was concealed by crashing water.

Wherever he had woken up, someone had gone through great lengths to ensure it remained hidden.

Taking care not to get soaked through, the Incubus carefully sidled his way out of the cave-

-and right into a torrential rainstorm. Stunned for a moment by the sensation of hundreds of frigid droplets pelting him from on high, Cobalt looked up to find that the sky was pitch black and thick with roiling cloud. The wind howled all around him, whipping up the surface of the lake he found himself standing beside and causing the trees surrounding it to rustle and shake violently. Drawing the tarp tight around himself, the Incubus stalked around the edge of the lake, his brow furrowing as he struggled to put his thoughts in order.

Arnn. Faithful. Teacher. The words just rattled around his empty skull, as though they were taunting him. The mud cloyed at his bare feet, the rain pelted his face, the wind struggled to tear his tarp away, but the Incubus just bowed his head and charged on through the storm. Mud gave way to gravel, and before long he found himself on a path illuminated by orange streetlights. The stones scraped the soles of his feet, but on he walked, his gaze squarely fixed on the path ahead.

Before long, he found himself at the entrance to a park. Blinking the rain from his eyes, he glanced at the sign over his head.

BRIMSTONE NATURE PARK

Brimstone. That Arnn guy mentioned something about a school. That had to be where it was. Brimstone.

“… Brimstone…” he murmured, trying the word on for size as he turned to take in his surroundings.

He was in the middle of a town, surrounded on all sides by lights and sounds. Cars tore by on rain-slicked tarmac, people passed by in front of blinding shop signs, music blared from the open doorways of bars. The sky rumbled overhead, drawing his gaze upwards.

“What…?”

A fortress. Built from black stone and stark metal, illuminated by construction lights affixed to scaffolding. There were construction workers crawling all over it, working late into night on… something.

Demons of all kinds passed him by on the street, staring at their phones as they hustled to get home out of the rain. He tried to raise his voice to catch someone’s attention, but no-one was willing to pay him a single glance.

No matter. He’d find his own way to the school, one way or another.

He passed through streets and crossed roads, stumbling this way and that as the wind picked up and the rain drove against his face. Even despite the rain, he felt determined to get where he was going, and as he barged through the crowds of demons around him, the Incubus’ attention was drawn to the window of an electronics store. Half a dozen TVs had been set up, each playing the same news broadcast.

“… and in other news, though the worst of it has passed, tensions are still high as the EHI struggles to contend with the influx of Hellish refugees in the Boston, Massachusetts area after a major earthquake hit the western coast of Redmont. Authorities state that fleeing to Earth was the ‘safest option available’, while many human detractors believe that Hell is once again offloading its problems to its sister plane. Here with more on the story…”

As he stared at the flashing screens, listening to the news, a bearded man stopped beside him to do the same. He grunted and adjusted his hood.

“Humans… Always fucking complaining… Who fucking needs them, eh? Should’ve let Big S wipe out the lot of them,” he grunted, his single red horn glistening in the rain.

“… Big S…?” Cobalt breathed, completely bewildered.

“You been living under a rock, lad? I’m talking about-”

He completely froze up upon realising who he was talking to. The bearded demon staggered back, almost barging into a trio of rain-soaked women as he pointed a shaking finger at Cobalt.

“W- Wait, you… you can’t be…”

The Incubus swallowed hard.

“The school. Do you know where it is?” he asked, wincing as his throat twinged.

“... You’re supposed to be-”

“Is there a school here?!” Cobalt yelled, surging forward to grab the man’s coat.

His veins alighted, granting him the strength to effortlessly buckle him to his knees. Panic flashed in the demon’s eyes.

“Y- Yes, yes, there is, okay?! B- B.I.D., due north! Wh- Why are you asking me this?!”

North. Where the Hell was that, exactly? Dropping the man’s coat, his gaze flitted around for any clues to his orientation. Spying a set of street signs detailing a “North Avenue” and a “Western Boulevard”, the Incubus darted forward with newfound vigour, his goal becoming clearer in his mind as each second ticked on. His erstwhile captive cried out and pointed at him as he barged through the crowd, but before long Cobalt was lost to the wind and driving rain.

B.I.D. It sounded promising. What it stood for, he couldn’t tell; the first word was likely Brimstone, at a guess, but as for the rest of it his head was annoyingly empty.

Surging across a zebra crossing and earning a plethora of outraged horns from the cars on the street, the Incubus glanced up at the looming fortress in the distance as lightning crackled overhead, briefly illuminating its imposing silhouette. There was something about it that sent shivers up his spine; like it wasn’t supposed to be there, and yet everyone around him seemed just fine with its presence.

As he rushed northwards, however, something else caught his eye, stopping him dead in his tracks. There, painted onto a gable wall was a mural, large and imposing in design. At its base, a depiction of several dead bodies, all arranged into a pile. Standing atop it, surrounded by imagery of what appeared to be blood and teeth, was…

“… an Incubus…?” Cobalt breathed, staring hard at the picture.

It was intricately designed, almost religious in nature. Above it, words had been inscribed in dark, blood red.

WHEN THE BLIND DAYS END, THE HOUND SHALL RISE AGAIN.

“Blind Days…?” he murmured, his focus taken entirely by the mural.

All at once, his senses were overwhelmed by the bright flash of a vehicle’s headlights and the scream of its horn. A hard steel bonnet smashed into the Incubus’ lower body, wrapping him around the front end of a skidding car as they were both sent careening into a concrete wall. He felt stone and metal crush his bones as his head struck something hard, and in a blinding flash of pain, everything went black.

~~~~~

Cobalt had to hand it to the nurse’s little helper; she was a dab-hand at putting people back together. Sure, his wounds weren’t all too grievous, but it was nice not to have to tend to them himself for a change. The bandages kept his clothes from rubbing the worst of the cuts, at the very least.

As the Incubus made his way up the stairs, he took a second to rub at his tie, trying in vain to work out the worst of the blood splatters stained into the cloth. Most of it was his. But not all.

“Dammit…” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose once his efforts failed.

No sense in trying to put on airs; he was knee-deep in hot shit. The tyrannical headmistress of B.I.D. wasn’t known for getting the facts wrong, so he might as well put it all out into the open. Taking a deep breath, he ran a hand through his hair and ascended to the top of the stairs, where a mighty set of ebony double doors awaited him. Words had been inscribed above it in Tongues.

MEPS MENMO ETIUQNILER IUQ CUH SITARTNI

“Cute,” Cobalt murmured to himself, taking the moment to flex his fluency.

“I assure you there’s nothing cute about it, boy. Enter, and don’t waste anymore of my time,” boomed a voice from beyond the doors, startling him something fierce.

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Cold, cutting, waspish; that was definitely her. A voice he had only experienced first-hand at the very start of the year during the introductory assembly.

Feeling no need to hang around, Cobalt pushed the doors open to reveal a lengthy office, and at once he came to the conclusion that most of the school’s top floor was dedicated to this one single room. Hunting trophies lined the walls, an electric fire burned in a fireplace set before a lounge area, and seated at a desk right before a massive stained-glass window was the headmistress herself.

She was tall for a Succubus, and bore none of the rounded features and soft silhouette her kind was known for. The headmistress was all angles, it seemed, right down to her attire; a sleek suit, complete with a coat hung upon her shoulders. Her hands were steepled before her, and she watched the Incubus with icy blue eyes as he approached.

“I just wanna say-” Cobalt began, pulling out the beaten leather chair before her desk.

“Silence. Take a seat,” she responded.

He did as he was told, tail nervously swishing behind him.

She raised her head, looking down her nose at him with a cold, analytical gaze. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun; this woman was nothing but business. Slowly she slid a file across the desk and opened it up.

“Cobalt Atticus Trayer…” she murmured, running a finger down along the page.

He looked her up and down.

“… Mistress Viola,” he responded, unsure of what else to say.

“Don’t get cute with me, boy.”

“I wasn’t. Nothing cute about it, right?”

Her glare was enough to kill the slight smile on his face. Flicking down, she narrowed her eyes at his chest.

“Your tie. It’s outdated,” she noted aloud.

“Oh, yeah, I know. It’s a gift from my mom. Kind of a good luck thing. She was pretty insistent on it,” he replied, lifting up the article in question.

Her eyes widened in recognition, but the rest of her face remained stony. Flipping a few more pages in – presumably – his file, Mistress Viola made a strange humming noise in the back of her throat.

“Your mother… Jezebel Trayer.”

“That’s the one. I, uh… I don’t know any behind-the-scenes trivia, before you ask. Everyone’s been getting on my ass about that since I got here, and-”

“We already know each other, boy. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Cobalt stared at her.

“You’re not gonna make me change the tie, are you? I don’t have any others.”

“… Hm. It’s still technically within regulations. Just don’t let me catch you disregarding any other aspects of the uniform policy, understood?”

The Incubus nodded emphatically, deigning not to mention how pretty much everyone in this school seemed to modify their uniform in one way or another. Some of the girls in his class wore their skirts at lengths that were definitely not up to code, and some guys didn’t even wear shirts beneath their open blazers.

There was a lot of very attractive people in the city-state capital. It was making concentrating on schoolwork a nightmare.

“You were caught fighting multiple times in the past few weeks. Care to explain?” Viola asked, tapping a pen against the desk.

“Defending myself, actually.”

That icy glare was fixed back upon him, boring right down to his soul.

“Are you correcting me, boy?” the Succubus asked, sitting up straight.

“U- Uh… wouldn’t say correcting. More like… supplementing additional information. Durnall came at me. His asshole friends too. I- I mean, uh… his mean-spirited friends. Pardon me.”

Standing up straight, Viola clasped her hands behind her back and marched around her desk, her boots clacking against the hardwood floor. Approaching a bureau, she produced a bottle of whiskey and began to pour herself a glass, all the while Cobalt swiveled his chair back and forth with his tail.

“I hope you understand the magnitude of your presence here, boy,” she said simply, depositing a single ice cube into her glass.

“Not sure what you mean, miss.”

“What I mean is that with an Incubus in attendance, all eyes are on this school. Eyes I can’t afford to slip up in front of.”

With Viola’s back turned, he took the opportunity to roll his eyes. Sweet hellfire, not this again. He had gone his entire life being told about how “special” and “unique” he was for being an Incubus, for all the good it did him. Between all the pinched cheeks and joking promises of marriage it got him back home and the strange looks and whispers it got him here; Cobalt really didn’t need to be told about how much he stood out.

Yeah, he was blue. Big deal. All that did was make it easy to hide the bruises when Durnall Klarke jumped him outside of the dormitories.

“Miss, I can-”

“It’s scarcely been a month and I see you’re already causing problems,” Mistress Viola interrupted, taking a sip of her drink.

“Hey, I’m not the one causing problems here!” Cobalt snapped.

She flinched. Just a little bit, but it was there. Slowly, the Succubus turned to face him, her eyes colder than the ice cube in her glass.

“… Are you talking back to me, boy?”

“I already told you, Durnall threw the first punch! I just gave as good as I got! Maybe even a little better! If you don’t want trouble, maybe drag him up here instead of me!”

“That’s enough! I deal with enough teenage backchat at home; I don’t need to take it from you too, boy!”

Setting her drink down, she surged back over to her desk and sat down before him.

“I have never before made exceptions like the ones I made for you, Trayer. Sixteen years of age and wholly unqualified to meet this school’s minimum standards; much of the education board was against having you join, and if I’m being honest, I’m starting to see why,” the headmistress hissed in a threatening tone.

But Cobalt wasn’t frightened. He just leaned forward, irritated that she had brought up his age too. As if he wasn’t getting enough flak for that from his much-older classmates.

“Then why did you?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

This time she couldn’t seem to find an answer. The Succubus floundered for a brief moment before sighing and leaning back into her chair.

“… Call it a favour to your mother,” she stated curtly, folding her arms.

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

The two Lust demons stared at each other in silence for a moment.

“Your sisters have already set a high bar for expectations in this school. Best reconsider your behaviour if you don’t want to let your family name down.”

“I’ll take your advice on board, miss,” Cobalt told her, growing irritated.

“That means no more fighting.”

“I won’t start any fights, I can promise you that. Finishing them is a different story.”

“Boy-”

“Mistress Viola, for the last time; I did nothing wrong!”

“Final warning, Trayer!”

“I’m not gonna apologise for-!”

She slammed her fist on the desk.

“Enough already! Sweet hellfire, you sound just like-!”

She cut herself off short. Eyes wide, the Succubus slowly sat back in her chair, her face no longer angry but rather… strangely wistful.

“… Just get out of my office, boy. And watch yourself from here on,” she sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose.

He quirked an eyebrow.

“Are you-?”

“Go. Now.”

Cobalt slowly raised his hands. He was confused as all Hell, but if the headmistress was offering him a get-out-of-jail-free card, then he sure as shit was going to take it. The Incubus quickly rose from his chair and scuttled out of the office, wings flapping nervously behind him. As soon as the doors shut and Mistress Viola was out of sight, he gasped for breath and leaned against the wall, heart pounding rapidly.

“You gotta pick your friends better, Mom…” he murmured to himself, lightly touching his tie.

It offered him no response in return.

~~~~~

A dull, all-encompassing pain slowly brought Cobalt back to the land of the living. A groan rumbled from his throat as he slipped back into consciousness, his vision bleary and dark, pierced by blue lights flashing into his eyes. He couldn’t feel his legs, and his back was killing him.

“H- Hey, he’s alive!” an echoing voice called as he lifted his head, struggling to piece together what had just happened.

Was that… a dream? A memory? That woman… and that office…

“… B.I.D…” he murmured, the name now sparking a dim memory in the back of his head.

What the Hell happened? A car came out of nowhere, he hit his head and-

“Sir! Can you hear me?!”

Blinking his vision clear, Cobalt took a deep breath, causing the pain to spike in intensity. Taking stock of his situation, he found himself unceremoniously pinned between a crashed car and a cracked wall, his legs trapped by the vehicle’s crumpled bonnet. Traffic had halted as dozens of demons crowded around the scene of the accident as first responders pulled the unconscious driver to safety. An EMT holding a flashlight was waving to Cobalt.

“Sir!” he called, desperate for a response.

Wincing, the Incubus raised his hand to shield his eyes, whereupon the paramedic’s own eyes widened.

“W- Wait a second… You’re…”

Not this again. Cobalt didn’t have time for this.

Gripping the front end of the car, he dug deep into the burning sensation languishing in his veins, causing them to spark and glow as the black flame in his stomach flared. All around him, people pointed and cried out, startled by the light glowing through the tarp.

“Is that…?!”

“It’s him…!”

“I- I don’t believe it…!”

Teeth gritted, the Incubus dug his fingers into the crumpled metal, damaging it further as his veins began to flash and surge. His heartrate quickened, the black fire flared, and to an audience of multiple shocked bystanders, Cobalt Trayer began to push the car back. Its chassis groaned in protest as its tires screeched against the wet tarmac, but even as the emergency workers cried out for him to stop, the Incubus forcefully shunted the vehicle away. With his lower body freed, he crumpled to the ground, the pain intensifying tenfold.

“S- Sir!” the EMT cried, skirting around the car to assist.

He began to fuss all over him, but the Incubus was too busy trying to get his thoughts in order to pay attention. His left leg hurt like Hell, but his right… bones were grinding against one another, and sharp stabbing fragments made every movement agony. His kneecap was completely shattered.

“Sir…? Can you tell me your name?” the EMT asked, his voice quavering almost as though he were afraid to ask.

Glancing up, he gripped the hood of his tarp and pulled it down, revealing his face. People gasped. A few of them screamed. Most pointed and pulled out their phones.

“Cobalt Trayer. I- I need to go,” he rasped, forcing him to get to his feet.

Despite the medic’s protests, Cobalt forced himself to stand, wincing as his broken leg twinged. His blood boiled in response, numbing the pain with ceaseless burning.

“H- He’s returned! The Iron Hound has returned!” a man cried from the crowd, forcing his peers aside.

Soon more began to speak up, inspired by his words as the rain-soaked demon threw himself to his knees in reverence.

“The prophet’s readings…! The Blind Days are done! They’re finally done!”

“Call the Faithful! He’s come back to us!”

“Praise be the Hound! Praise be the Faithful!”

Their voices rang in his head, causing Cobalt’s ears to rings.

“Please, just… I- I have to go. I have to get to the school…” the addled Incubus mumbled, his bad leg buckling as he struggled to turn around.

“S- Sir, Mr. Trayer, you need to-“

“Don’t touch me!”

The Incubus slammed his palm into the EMT’s chest, hurling him back into the car. He smashed into the windscreen, shattering into hundreds of pieces and startling the entire crowd. A few people ran away in fear as the rest of the medics rushed to the ambulance to call for backup, but those on their knees only prostrated further.

“He’s doing it! He’s smiting the faithless!” one woman cried deliriously, slamming her forehead again the road in an effort to bow deeper.

Cobalt stared at the injured medic, eyes wide as he processed what he had just done. The power surging through his veins made throwing a fully-grown man as easy as tossing a ball of paper; something about that didn’t sit well with him.

But before the doubts could creep in, he was reminded of his dream. That office, that woman, those memories…

Shaking his head, Cobalt ducked his head and bolted. He barreled through the crowd, his broken leg screaming in agony with every step he took.

Mistress Viola. Headmistress of B.I.D. The school he used to attend.

He needed to find this woman and pry some answers out of her, one way or another.