The forest echoed with the not-sound of a god leaving. After a few moments, night returned, the tentative chirping of insects, the frogs, the owl.

Parry numbly put another branch on the fire. Two. Three. Suddenly he couldn't get enough light and warmth. Summer nights don't require that level of blaze, but the cold he was chasing away had little to do with weather.

Styak emerged and was sitting in the fire itself, its flames not harming it. The impression of a calico kitten lounging in a campfire reinforced Parry's sense of blank surrealness.

"I bet that was a first."

Parry curled up, head on his too-white pack.

"Yeah."

"Talk to a lot of gods in previous lives?"

His voice very neutral, flat. "When a life has gone well and I've amassed strength. When I make a play to reach the Creator, yes. That's when you run into gods and demon archlords and great dragons. Hours and Ruins. The powers."

Parry's felt fragile and faint. His words were a mortal sound in a mortal wood, very different from the divine, even if it was no louder.

"He really tore into you."

A numb nod.

"What's a line in a database?"

Parry stared at the cat-on-fire, the question hanging in the air. He started to laugh.

He laughed and laughed, eyes smarting, stomach cramping, completely overcome. It wasn't even funny, but it was the funniest thing. He laugh-sobbed and pressed his cheek into the fabric of his pack, closing his eyes but facing the fire so the light bled through, filling his sight with red, red.

Stop being hysterical and pull yourself together, it doesn't matter, none of it matters, stick to the plan, get strong, get to the end, destroy the Creator, finish this, go home.

That was even funnier, somehow. His own voice, demanding, commanding--his own thoughts, taken as the supreme authority in all these lives...how strange it sounded now.

Styak cocked its head, though the boy couldn't see it with his eyes closed. "You're laughing like a maniac and crying. Did the god break your mind?"

"Yes! No. I don't know." Parry sat up, clear-sighted, suddenly eager. "Let me tell you something, Styak the Demon, my familiar, my 'masterpiece,' my tool."

The voice from the fire was cautious, gave the impression of stalling. "Alright?"

"My first few lives here were heaven. Adventure! Magic! I was a prince, I could throw fire and lightning. I loved it. I was beautiful, I was in love with a princess, and a maid, and others. I had friends, and a kingdom to run. I loved. I didn't want to die, but I died, everyone dies...only I came back. Not the same life, but a beautiful bird, a roc. Ever seen a roc?"

A nod from the fire.

"We...they have their own society, you know. There's leaders and hunters and thinkers and poets, there's defenders of the crags and readers of wind and weather. I was a poet. I wanted to fly to 'my kingdom,' from the previous life, convince them it was me, but..."

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"I died. Rocs don't live that long. Rocs don't know the human names of places. They see differently, they think differently, I cawed out my poems, I fought raiders, I laid six eggs and had three chicks survive, it was a good life, a heaven. I loved it. But I died."

"Then I was a human again, but not royalty, just a farmer's boy, out in slave country. I loved my friends, the boys and girls my age, and when I learned it was slavery, I fought it. I taught them to read, when that was illegal. I taught them spells where I could, the few I could steal. It was adventure. I had magic. I had a cause and justice was mine and...I died. I don't remember the details perfectly, some kind of raid? I died."

Styak listened as the words poured out, more than he'd ever seen from the boy. Frankly more than he'd had aimed at him all his existence: demons rarely get into deep conversation.

"I wanted to be the liberator of slaves, like Lincoln. The rebel, like Spartacus. The flying hero on his roc, like Perseus. And the fairy tale prince, who knew everyone at court, who could hand-pick and build a government of righteousness, with all the advantages of living it before. It was a goal. It was magic. It was heaven."

"I do not know these names."

"It was a trap," Parry went on, looking more at the flames than the cat. "Caring. Loving a princess. My children, the chicks. My friends in the slave rebellion. My wives and my husbands and my friends and the people who fought with me, against me, bled with me, I know their names, I remember them. Hundreds of them, then thousands, maybe millions, lifetime after lifetime. I see them sometimes, young again when I'm in a new life, they don't know me. Sometimes I find their parents or brothers and learn they simply never were born this time. I still care about them. And that's the trap."

One of the fire logs crackled.

"Every life I lose a lot of memories, the particulars, the details, the important things I need to get ahead. But I remember the emotions and the people I get close to. They tie me here. They make me part of this world. This magical, adventurous, wonderful world. But it's not real!"

Now he looked right at Styak. "You're code. You're generated, my body is, this 'magic,' it's all fake. None of you know it, not even the gods. So why not use you? Why not? Computers are tools, right? The Creator knows. They set it all up, they locked me into this world and every rebirth is another attempt to get me to LIKE it. Memories are how I'll survive and get out of this, but memory pulls on me and forces me care about you all...and that traps me here. Do you get it?"

Styak saw desperation in Parry's eyes. It had to pick its words very carefully.

"You humans, you mortals don't feel real to me. Hell is real. The bastards who exiled me are real. My world of flame and pain is real. You and your animals and elves and monsters and green plants, strange stars and blazing sun probably dreamed up by some godling, you're fake to us. Demons come here to take from you what power we can to bring back and use where it matters."

Parry blinked, caught short at that.

The cat shrugged. "So you're a demon. You're stuck here and seek power to bring back and use where it's real. You bound and used me when I made a play for your soul--I respect that, it's what a demon does. You're acting like a real demon, and for as long as your hold on me is real, and the opportunity you represent for me to get strong is real, I'll treat you as something real. Where's the problem?"

"And if you knew your Hell was just as fake, dreamed up as an unending distraction just for you by some archfiend or fallen god?"

Styak batted at an ember. "So what? I care about Hell. All the Hells. I want to be strong there, take my vengeances, rule with authority, reward the loyal, punish the fools. All that matters to a demon is getting what it wants. If I learned there was some deeper Hell more real than mine? I'll decide then if I want to command it. That's what it means to be a demon. Decide what you want, then take it."

"The Lord of Wings just now called me disgusting and immoral precisely because that's how I treat this world."

"If you're so sure he's 'fake,' what do you care what he thinks? It's madness to worry if a figure in a painting approves of you. Rip it off the wall and burn it, set the gallery ablaze instead. But he's powerful, he could destroy you in an instant. If something 'fake' can hurt you, help you, even kill you, it's real enough to respect. A demon who wants to survive and thrive up here in this mortal world will be wise to remember that."

Parry couldn't push the exhaustion back any further. Head back on his makeshift pillow, he watched the kitten in the fire.

"I don't think that helps. I'm right back where I was."

"Seems to be your pattern, yes."

He closed his eyes. Before he fell asleep, all he could see was the light bleeding through his eyelids, leaving him in a world of red.