Chapter 2
Arthur opened the door to his motorhome, catching the crisp and fresh breeze of a mid-spring morning… an observation that he couldn't help compare against the fact it had been hotter than the devil's asshole after spicy wing-night. Amidst a heatwave during summer, no less. Or. at least, it had been when he’d gone down for the nap. The ozone had taken a rather brutal pummeling over the years and each season that passed seemed to get hotter and hotter. And while the reprieve from the shirt-drenching humidity and muggy misery that it had been outside was—appreciable… His thoughts of course, were, sadly, railroaded as a truly god-awful stench filled his nose, nearly making him gag with the terrible offensiveness of it!
He’d naturally smelt the scent before… and, with no more proper manner to name it, it was shit. He nearly spoke the word aloud as he peered out the entrance to his RV, lips biting off the curse while staring down at a sight that he’d been dreading to find… Right beneath his tri-axel trailer's middle-most wheels and beneath his popout kitchen area was the lower half of an all too real corpse. One that was wearing what looked like dark and tattered robes of a decidedly dark and worshipy variety… A corpse that had relieved its bowels in its—passing… or rather, had—had the… contents of its insides popped out of it like an overripe pumpkin after an utterly devastating amount of weight had squashed it with brutal finality…
The stranger's boots were muddy and worn, the hem of their garment shredded and fouled with stains of dubious degree cleanliness… And, of course, who could possibly ignore the—fresher substances of a brownish-red nature that made him gag… Arthur heaving to the side for several moments as the wind shifted and the smell got worse…
In one of their pale, leathery hands, and just ever so slightly visible from where it lay, was what looked to be a blackish blade made of some polished glass-like and gray material… the tires of his camper cutting off the sight of the supposed cultist’s upper half.
This wasn't good… not good at all… Did this make him a murderer? Would anyone care to help him figure out the truth with how insane his story would sound?
“Oh, hello Mr. and or Mrs. Officer, I was just minding my own business, taking a nap within a stolen RV whilst living in your state illegally and bam! All of a sudden, I appeared on top of a cosplaying hippie! Ah, haha, I realize this sounds odd, but I assure you it-is-the-truth! Oh! And also he dropped magic cards when he died, nooo, no ma’am, not the silly childhood game cards, reeeeeal cards, ones that glow and shine like bricks of gold! Ah, they might also be souls, so, best we stop at a church on the way in and—pray to the big man upstairs, just in case, right-o? Hip-hop into the cruiser now!”
Yes… that was as good as a quick trip to an insanity plea whilst being charged with manslaughter that he’d probably ever manage to cook up again… And in the comparative silence that was his strangely zen-like and—floaty existence as he stood there, Arthurs's mind wandered back to thoughts of the nearby village… Face frowning as he considered the problems from a new angle.
Was this individual a member of the community that might have people who would come and search for him? Well… that was utterly without question! He could… flee… maybe t-try to escape and thus avoid any form of responsibility for what had happened… but, then again, he was amidst a sea of tall grass… Probable cause be damned, if there was a literal trail of tire tracks that led back to wherever it was, he next chose to stop, then even a simpleton would be able to connect those dots.
Yet, perhaps the most pressing concern that filled Arthur’s mind was what the man had once been rather than his… ahem, current state of being… His cards implied he was a sort of religious fanatic… cultists coming in all shapes and forms of worship as to what it was they pledged their allegiances to. Arthur had, in his web-browsing adventures, happened across quite a handful of different but largely harmless devoted types that, as he’d admitted, hadn't really turned him away from a constructive conversation, so long as they seemed to be—decent enough folk.
However, somewhat unsurprisingly, he didn't feel the same degree of—nonchalance when considering the dead man beneath his tires. Abyssal sort of had something of a disreputable air to it all, and, the fact he was wielding a particularly suspicious item in his hand, looking the way he did, Arthur surmised that he'd rather not be discovered by any of the man's—associates.
That of course, left him in a rather delicate situation as his options, at least as he saw them, were rather limited. His first thought, beyond simply running away, was to quickly and quietly dig a hole. But, that idea quickly fell by the wayside as he realized that nearly all of his tools were actually outside when the—event that transported him, be it wilderness farmers or magic, had taken place. He could always go the shallow grave route and try his best to make do with his hands alone, but… Arthur sighed, leaning against the doorframe as a weary expression took his face. There was, of course, one perfect way to solve his problem…
Arthur was immediately disgusted with himself for even considering it, but the more he thought about his other options, the worse they all seemed to pale by comparison. Digging a hole, lighting the cultist on fire, fleeing the scene… no matter which he might choose, all left evidence remaining to be found. Given that he didn't want that, he silently resigned himself to the reality of what he might have to do.
Though never one to truly balk when it came to the more unsavoury tasks life so often demanded as of late, the looming concerns that he could end up hog-tied and roasting over a bonfire like a witch was—enough to clear whatever lingering concerns he held. If it came down to it, the corpse's dignity or his survival, the choice was rather clear, wasn't it? That being said, on the other hand, the young man couldn't be sure that this individual actually belonged to a much larger nearby group… in fact, to assume anything about them was tantamount to foolishness. For all he knew, the stranger was just some—evil travelling priest, so far from home that nobody would have even known where he was… Yet, on the other side of the supposed token, the entire village might be filled with his peers… no, in such cases, despite how terrible the thought alone was, pragmatism and caution were, sadly, his greatest allies…
He moved back inside his home, taking a deep and meditative breath as he began packing away all the various compartments and objects he had strewn about, cleaning with a sort of grim resolve before retracting the pop-outs of his RV. Silently, he moved to the lone driver's seat, unfolding it from its nook and starting the engine, which activated with a creepy stillness that he’d never really gotten used to.
A grimace was all he could manage as he felt the rear wheels bump over something which he could only hope had been a pothole… even if his mind quickly disillusioned himself from the fantasy. He very nearly kept driving, came within a hands-breadth of simply keeping his foot on the accelerator, ignoring every rational thought in his brain whilst rejecting what he was about to do. Nevertheless, he exited the vehicle a few moments later after turning the engine back off, eyes glazed and heart frosty with resolve, a gleaming cleaver in hand.
“It's just another animal…” he silently told himself, trying his best to convince his conscience that he was still a decent person… He couldn't have imagined things in his life having gotten much worse than they were now, magic land not withstanding. Naturally, there was the briefest of thoughts he held in his mind wherein it offered up an alternative to his dilemma… one in which he might somehow harness his supposed newfound power in an attempt to solve the issue in a—less grisly fashion. Certainly, the personal storage card was one such option; if one were to follow in the steps of more—free-spirited game-like logic, then it might even offer an effective time extension to his issue…
However, as with many things in life, his plan did not survive contact with the universe's own. Thus, stepping outside, meat cleaver in hand, Arthur was confronted with the reality of what such a weighty load actually did to an individual's torso. He almost vomited at the sight of the damage, gore and viscera liberally smeared across the waving grass, the body looking as though a boulder had been dropped on it from the heavens themselves, the remains smitten by some vengeful god of rock and stone.
Pieces of bone were scattered everywhere, red chunks and splattered blood, the remnants of a once more intact body… Arthur earnestly was surprised that a wheel could even cause that much damage, then was quickly reminded that said rubber was rather shapely, solid, and intended to be capable of gripping all manner of terrain—and backed by thousands of pounds which were compounded by velocity, short as the fall had been...
Squashed was an entirely adequate means by which to describe what he saw, which, as it happened, lined up nicely with the feeling of having crash landed that had been his more—initial concern. Now that things had evolved, his plan that had largely consisted of grappling the body to dump into his RV’s black tank reserve had—stuttered to a halt…
The issue wasn't the location itself. Which, foul as it sounded, was where the toilet dumped his raw sewage, the holding tank filled with a sort of super bacteria that happily devoured anything of an organic variety that they were fed with a trade-off that amounted to the occasional expulsion of what would be a rather potent blurb of presumed noxious gasses that were, thankfully, purified before being released into breathable air. No, his issue was something so much worse…
Objectively, the plan as a whole was itself utterly filled with serial killer vibes that Arthur, no matter how hard he tried to justify it all, couldn't shake, largely because he was fairly certain that, as it was now, the body wasn't quite—compact enough to likely fit… hence, the cleaver. Nevertheless, in the end, he wasn't sure which eventuality he would have preferred… the one where he was playing the role of a new American psycho or the reality that he now found himself in… the same which left him staring at a small child, unconscious—or worse, lying atop what looked like a large stone chopping board, two more examples of the same sitting on either side, only, with large piles of windswept ash and burn marks.
It took a rather generous minute for his mind, slowly in the process of rebooting as it was, to fully take in the latest pit of humanity he’d discovered. Ritual sacrifice… the phrase was truly the only way he could describe what he saw… a small clearing of grass having been removed in a near-perfect circle with the incapacitated girl and the already sacrificed, waiting at its center. He immediately ran to her side, eyeing the bruising around her arms and legs, the cloth bindings that restrained her, along with the terrible welt upon her temple. There could be no question about it; the girl had been kidnapped to be used within some profane ritual that had, in one manner or another, something to do with how he’d wound up here… there were just too many coincidences… What else did he even have to go on towards explaining how he’d gotten—wherever he was…
There, of course, was only one problem… alright; truth be told, he had to admit that his problems only seemed to multiply by the second; however, the primary and most recent hiccup to his nerves arrived with the realization that the girl wasn't human. Ohhhh, at first glance, and with panic and adrenaline flooding his thoughts, the mixup was an easy one without question. The child had two arms, legs and an all too familiar head, after all, entirely what his people might call humanoid in every sense of the word. Yet, that alone was where the similarities began to deviate, if not entirely transform… Tiny horns poked out from behind, dishevelled and greasy raven hair, their alabaster tips standing out starkly against fair caramel skin that approached the dusky. He couldn't see her eyes, closed as they were, but, from the shape alone, they appeared to be oddly wider, almond-like, and her little button was nose partially slitted at the sides, sort of like a hound’s was… The child's ears were more oblong than round, lightly contouring to a tip at their points and, strangely—thicker, almost as if they might have light musculature.
In truth, she was no larger than a human girl of her presumed age would normally be, hmmm in and around what Arthur mentally worked to be twelve or thirteen? But, the presence of a long and slender tail combined with a pair of leathery wings that he’d at first mistaken for odd blankets all combined to provide a definitive answer to his growing concerns… hells, she didn't even have feet… her ankles more akin to a cats or dogs, digitigrade and with hooves at the termination.
Demon was the first thought that arrived in his mind, but the fear of underworld denizens hunting him for his soul was quickly overshadowed by instincts, which all but screamed at him to get over whatever episode he was falling into. He could see the rise and fall of the girl's chest, thoughts racing as he moved to action. Stooping down, Arthur collected the poor thing in his arms, momentarily looking about himself as though expecting to see a party of locals already spreading into the wilds, searching for their lost child. The idea was utter rubbish, all things considered… as much due to the child's appearance as their location. With the town close enough to see in the admittedly far distance and with the lack of anything in the grassland beyond it and the RV, Arthur hadn't a doubt that he would hear such a party's approach long before needing to look for it. And, so far as the child's more—physically deviant traits were concerned… the truth was that Arthur wasn't sure what to think…
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Either the girl really was a—spawn from the depths, the daughter of fire, brimstone and ash, a summons rather than a sacrifice… or she was a part of some secret race hidden away from human society, a species wherein the normalized idealization of demonkind had been copied from. While the summoning aspect didn't precisely explain why the girl appeared to have been living without a bath for a few days or—given the smell—wow… a potent mix of blood, mud, fire and excrement, it might have explained why she was naked. By contrast, considering what he could with the knowledge on hand, if she was meant to be a sacrifice, it all sort of made more sense. Was one of course, to ignore the infernal-looking nature of her existence… Did hell send its minions to the real world stinking like they’d been living in a dark-age hamlet all their lives? Probably not… but proof of such things would be his burden regardless.
Arthur had the child on the trailer's king-sized bed and unbound within a few moments, struggling against the worn but sturdy cloth to cut her free without causing either of them harm. Next, he quickly inspected her for injuries, not noting anything extraordinary beyond more bruisings… Arthur wasn't a doctor or even a nurse, but he had taken first-aid as a part of an extracurricular class in the uni, so when he came to the conclusion there wasn't anything wrong, medically speaking of course, that he could help with, Arthur simply moved on. He dealt with the poor girl’s—dignity shortly thereafter, wrapping her tiny form in a crisp white blanket and cooling a wet washcloth for her head.
There was no fever he could see, no indication of major internal bleeding where the goose egg at her temple swelled, but he admitted to himself that human anatomy might not exactly be so—accurate despite the similarities offered at first glance. A concussion was what looked to be the most obvious reason she was yet unconscious… and, frustratingly, there was truly little he could do about it beyond letting the girl sit and rest. The fear that something far worse had happened to her, that her life was in danger had, in reality, spurned Arthur into action… but, now, standing there whilst aware there was little he could do left him feeling… wasteful…
He poured her a reusable plastic bottle of filtered water and left it nearby. Just in case she woke. Then, leaving his RV, he scraped at his scalp, his nerves standing on end. He paced back and forth a handful of times while brushing at his hair, just trying to rediscover a semblance of calm in his trepidatious inner workings… Sidelong, Arthur eyed the vicious-looking knife in the dead cultist's hands… his resolve firming that the girl wasn't some demonic horror from the sulphur pits that was merely wearing the guise of a child… but a victim… and one that had been intended to be murdered by a fanatic. After all, hadn't he been the one to appear as he had? Summoned… brought forth through the void and twisting nether of chaos and reality itself?
Suddenly, Arthur found his disgust for the dead man no longer focused upon his morbid presence, his gut churning with the notion of what the monster planned to do… had done when he really thought about it, considering the two piles of ash… Thinking on it, he still hadn't gotten a good look at the zealot's face, the man's hood shrouding what was already pressed downwards in death. Yet, Arthur noted that the man indeed had boots—boots that were in no way shaped to fit hooves. There was also no evidence of wings on the man, nor a tail—if a man was what the cultist was…
“So, what are you then?” Arthur murmured to himself, hardening his will to the filth and gore of it all… “Human or something else…” A sneer formed on his lips as he pulled off the figure's hood and tilted its face.
What Arthur was greeted with was not what he’d been expecting… gaze narrowing upon an utterly alien and strange creature. Its features were gaunt and reptilian, white albino skin leathery with a snouted face that looked unhealthily stretched in a righteous of obvious pain and surprise. Massive fang-like teeth filled its maw in a similar manner to a crocodile, and three eyes, yet wide with disbelief, stared blankly in death, each a strange—off-white yellow with reddish-orange slitted irises… though, Arthur noted an absence of any pupils…
The—thing, which was as far from human as he was from an octopus, had no hair, only fleshy tendrils with a sort of spike at the end of each, appearing to flow down its back in line with the creature's spine. Frankly, he wasn't really prepared to perform an autopsy on the thing and, after seeing enough, silently moved away after a handful of minutes squatting in the grass, staring at the hideous monster and its somehow human expression… Surely, if anything was to be said to be sent from the abyss, then it was the—beast that lay before him rather than the child in his trailer…
There were a great many things that the young man could have been said to be certain of in his life. Things that, no matter how hard another pressed, they’d find it impossible to convince him otherwise. The spherical nature of earth was the foremost that came to mind, the fact that birds were, in point of fact, very real and not some made-up government conspiracy, another. In reality, Arthur suspected these opinions and the countless others like them were largely shared with the more intelligent of his species, which left the outliers to be named whatever one might choose to given their personal beliefs… However, after the girl… the change of scenery and, now—whatever this thing was… Arthur, against what he might have once considered rational thought, was beginning to seriously doubt the validity of his assumptions that claimed he was still on earth… This idea of course, only spread within him like a cancerous weed, eroding the foundations of his sanity as, for the first time since he’d woken, he looked to the sky, a small breath leaving his lips.
A blue expanse interspaced with soft pillowy clouds was what immediately greeted his gaze, but it was not these most familiar of aspects in which he found his breath failing him, but, instead, the glaring inconsistencies that held his attention as though gripped in an iron fist. No moon nor sun or stars waited for his observation above… each seemingly and impossibly replaced by an infinite network of twisting branches and roots, winding their way through the cosmos while producing an ethereal golden hue. They spanned a limitless expanse without end nor beginning, spreading out in places as might a tree’s canopy, while, in others, the complex weave joined and converged until there was naught but singular, massive bundles that stretched for infinity… Between the staggering array of shifting radiance were small marbles of blue and green, countless floating orbs of dazzling beauty separated and connected all the same by the vast system of glowing mass that existed wherever one looked. Planets… there were planets off in the distance! Dozens… no hundreds of Earth-like planets!
Arthur felt a wave of vertigo wash across him, stumbling backwards whilst unable to yet tear his eyes away, all but crashing into the side of his RV like a wandering chicken while it rained. A small groan was enough to aid Arthur in his return to reality, the young man’s head snapping to his doorway, but a moment before, he was rushing up the stairs. He paused at the entrance, watching as the child blearily looked about herself, pupils disturbingly odd, like a softly purple and glowing four-pointed star that sat upon an ires backdrop of pitch darkness, the sclera otherwise normal... The appearance gave Arthur a chill down his spine as the girl’s enchanting gaze locked on him, clear confusion and muddled uncertainty plain to see in her expression. Arthur made to talk, opening his mouth but a moment before he reconsidered, the once irking suspicion that he was no longer upon earth now gaining a significance of traction and swinging at him with a wild haymaker.
The poor girl was confused, injured and doubtless scared enough without him starting to babble at her in, to her, what would be an entirely alien language… but, he did have a solution for that, now didn't he? Arthur hadn't thought he’d be going back for it so soon, especially since there’d been too much on his mind in a back-to-back panic-driven spree of off-the-wall circumstances… Yet, within the creatures deck of cards had been something to deal with such a very scenario, hadn't there? Arthur quickly opened up the cupboards again, finding the tarots and sifting through them until he found the one he wanted. The translator… its name scrawled out in flowing bronze script…
Arthur simply had no context as to what any of that really meant so far as the cards hinting capabilities were concerned, but if ever there was a time he needed to just hope for the best, this would be one of them. He didn't have a manual for any of this, or even so much as a hint… however, what he did possess was a childhood filled to the brim with as countless a number of fantastical works as a magically deprived species imagination could manage which, was enough to take as many educated guesses as he might need.
It was only when, upon his fourth failure to add the tarot to his—deck, each attempt combing quietly muttered words with actions that included pressing the soul card against his chest, then Arthur finally summoned his own and tried to place the translation card beneath his soul-engineer.
There was a—sensation, like a pop but more muddled that brought with it a feeling of brief euphoria in which, without explanation, Arthur felt inexplicably changed. Like a piece of a puzzle he’d never known was missing had suddenly fit neatly into his brain. He looked upwards, eyes meeting with the small child's own who had been busy watching him without so much as moving a single muscle, face frozen in fear as she’d regained her bearing.
“Do you… do you understand me?” He softly asked, licking his lips with concern when the girl didn't so much as shift in reply. “I'm not going to hurt you…” He continued raising his arms and sitting down, making himself look smaller if only to help alleviate the child's earnest concern. “I think I rescued you… There was a cultist, dark robes and white leathery skin… Do you… by chance remember any of that?”
She blinked at him, her figure beneath the blanket seeming to almost deflate as a modicum of tension disappeared, her eyes closing hard, over and over again, as if to shake away her delirium before; with a tiny and fearful voice, she eventually responded.
“I remember being taken at night… I was… I was flying when I felt magic… Why do you look so strange? And sound so strange as well?” Her brow furrowed as if struggling to parse through her own disjointed thoughts, yet seemingly lost in a haze of a battered mind.
Arthur likewise found the girl's speech to be—off… Not unpleasant, but more guttural and throaty than English… yet, he could only surmise that, because of the card, he could still understand what she said, even if the words themselves weren't altered. Still, he had to furrow his brow in thought as he tried to make sense of her words… They all translated of course, but the speed in which they tricked into his mind was like—watching a poorly synced movie with subtitles, one where the words on screen lagged far behind what was being said. Honestly, it was entirely jarring, but he powered through all the same.
“The badman who took you is gone,” Arthur stated, trying to talk simply like he might when conversing with one of his young cousins, lowering his hands a fraction so they rested on his knees. “he hurt you, and I think I hurt him… he’s gone now but… Try not to move or your injury might get worse.”
The girl nodded, wincing as she did so, appearing to at least believe his story for what it was. Sadly, Arthur didn't exactly have a playbook when it came to stumbling across random and potentially non-human children who were on the cusp of being slaughtered like swine for a feast… Frankly, it was all rather awkward to an extreme… Yet, they were making progress, as evidenced by the child's willingness to converse. Unfortunately, the next words that arrived from her lips felt like a gut punch from an over-simple farmboy with fists heavier than brick. “Where am I? Where’s my mom?”
“You're safe! You’re safe!” Arthur tried, more anxiety rising as an entirely new problem rose to the equation. Gods, he hadn't even considered the girl's mother—worse, her possible—current state of being given the piles of ash… Still, he trundled through, determined to, at least, be a pillar of reliability if for no other reason than his own moral compass and sense of communal duty. “A-and, I—I don't know about your mom,” He continued, voice as confidant as he could make it. “but we can certainly go find her! I’ll… We can go together! Do you know where you live? Is it in the town that's nearby?”
To his utter lack of surprise, the girl frowned as he spoke, appearing to—struggle with some of the translation on her end as well, but, nevertheless, she seemed to get the gist of it. But, when she tried to get up, letting out a pitiable mew as she did so, Arthur shot to his feet, moving close to press her back down, the child's gaze going wide with his close proximity, which was to her clear distress.
“You’re hurt…” He tried to explain, giving her space, but, not willing to allow her to try again. “Need to lie down, rest.”
She still looked infinitely displeased with his presence but appeared to do as he bade, remaining still, even if her distrust was clearly evident. Arthur considered what he should do, eyeing the barely contained despair the child held in her expression for a short few moments before arriving at an idea. He moved back to his kitchen, opening the special cupboard and reaching inside a partially torn cardboard box. He retrieved two small packages, both of the same design, after digging around to find a matching pair, returning to the girl with a small smile on his lips. Carefully, he undid the first wrapper, making sure she was watching, using his teeth to break off a bite of the brown chocolate bar he’d brought with him.
He made sure she noted how he slowly chewed it, swallowed, and then took a second bite, savouring the flavour of what might very well be one of the last chocolate bars in existence; comparatively speaking, of course, he did still have half a box… The girl was hesitant when he offered it to her, and, in truth, he wasn't terribly sure if it was even safe for her to eat… but, given how—genuinely similar the world looked, he was banking on the fact that he wouldn't be starving out here due to some protein issue that poisoned him whenever he made to consume anything. It wasn't like the air was harmful or anything, so chances were good food wouldn't be an issue… he hoped… Given everything else, praying for the fact that Magic-land rules would smooth everything out was as much as he could reasonably hope for…
The girl eyed the candy bar he unwrapped for her with blatant distrust, her entire frame shying away and not seeming to want anything to do with it right up until the moment her nose seemed to catch its scent. Subtle as it was, at least to Arthur, and he’d been the one to open them. It nevertheless captured her interest as two little nostrils flared in a careful twitch. It was almost cute how the girl hesitantly tested the bar with a small lick after cautiously accepting it, eyes shooting wide with surprise, but a heartbeat before whatever reservation she might have held disappeared in the emergence of a desperate and potentially dormant sweet tooth. Arthur watched her all but devour the small Halloween-sized bar, teeth very sharp and very pointed, making laughably short work of the proffered candy before the girl licked her fingers with a brightening demeanour.
“Did it—taste good?” He asked, smiling warmly while keeping his distance.
Again, he found the girl’s guard rise, her attention refocusing on him, crossed pupils narrowing, though, to his pleasure, and the slight smile on his face, he noted there to be a good deal less concern, as though she wanted to distrust him still, but, was finding difficulty in pressing her own case. He waved the largely intact remains of the second bar before her, the demon girl's gaze following the thing like an enchanted puppy who was being teased by a juicy sausage.
He grinned, offering it to her before leaning back. This time, she chewed slower, treasuring the treat as she ate, and also considered him through a crumbling caution. He decided to take a sip of water from the nearby bottle as well, waterfalling it at first to display its contents, then letting her watch as he drank it with a touch more normalcy before handing it too towards her. She took the bottle carefully, mimicking exactly as he’d done to open it after a mere few seconds, then drank deeply of its reserves, pulling upon the bottle with a needy desperation, her body finally relaxing as her shoulders collapsed, water forming in her eyes.