A horned, red cockroach scurried across the floor into one of the numerous piles of rubbish decorating Grizz’s apartment floor. Lin had the unsettling realization that she was in a strange devil’s home, alone, and as he slid the lock down, without a way to escape.

Flashes of memory assaulted her. A dark hilltop. Dancing under a red moon. Wrinkled, shadowy hand grasping her throat... A now nameless yet dear friend reaching out, only for her life to be wrenched away by-

Forget.

Lin shook her head. Her hand was in her purse, clutching a clear blue bottle of cold fire. When had that happened?

“So, are we ready to get this show on the road?” Grizz interjected, sauntering through Lin’s dark thoughts, and illuminating them in the orange hellfire sizzling at the tips of his horns. She couldn’t be sure if the flames light pushed the shadows away or drew them in further.

“Are you sure this is where we should do it? I don’t know much about tattoos, but this doesn’t strike me as particularly… Sanitary.” Lin said, pursing her lips at a pile of half-eaten raw chicken that sat in a pool of black fluid.

Waving his hand nonchalantly, Grizz riffled through a pile of rags, eventually coming up for air with a small black box. “I know you humans worry about hygiene and all that, but it ain’t a concern for me. Bacteria are just small devils that escaped from hell. They wouldn’t dare mess with me.”

The biggest problem with the convergence and subsequent arrival of millions of magical beings was that it made telling mystical powers apart from sheer bravado almost impossible. But as Grizz fished a gleaming, barely used piece of black metal from the box and began plugging it into various instruments, all arguments wiped themselves from Lin’s mind.

There was something about the simple tattoo gun that called to her, demanding that she use it.

Know your power.

Before she knew what was happening, Lin found herself seated, with the gun in her grasp and a hand on Grizz’s forearm.

“Woah, slow down there, slick.” He said with a chuckle. “Don’t you wanna stencil the image in first?”

Dumbly, Lin nodded, her mind blank. Stencil? What did that even mean? She took the marker and napkin she had drawn on from Grizz’s proffered hand. Immediately, Lin knew something was wrong. Because, on the napkin where she had idly sketched the fire spirit, was a living flame. It moved and writhed rhythmically and aggressively, but only in two dimensions. It did not seem capable of leaving the surface of the napkin, but Lin had the sense that it desperately wished to do so. Wished? What kind of drawing had wishes?

Thinking back on everything she had eaten and drunken in the past day, Lin couldn’t think of anything that could have caused such a reaction.

“Hey, Grizz. Did you slip me something earlier?” She asked, not thinking she would get an actual answer, but unaware of any other options.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“What. No, why…” Grizz looked at her quizzically for a moment before understanding dawned on his face. “You never noticed it before, did you?”

“Noticed what?”

“Your drawings. They have a… life to them. A couple minutes after you finish, they start moving, almost like they’re trying to get out of the paper. Are you telling me you never looked at your old drawings?”

Lin looked down and bit her lip. “No. Not since… It doesn’t matter. I don’t think this is a good idea.” She said, pushing herself up to leave. A part of her screamed in protest, but she shut it down. This was not something that she could allow herself to entertain.

“Kid, why do you think I wanted you to tattoo me? Dancing ink would be sick!” Grizz said, leaping to his feet and moving to block Lin’s exit.

Hand returning to the vial in her purse, Lin fixed an iron gaze upon Grizz. “Are you not letting me leave?”

The devil at least had the awareness to look ashamed by this. “Wha- No. Of course not. If you want to leave, you are free to do so. I just… I think you have something special, and I would like you to have a chance to see that for yourself.”

A war began within Lin. On one side was an unrelenting yearning to discover what talents lay hidden within her and just how high she might soar. On the other was a deafening dread, inescapably and irresistibly decrying the risks of learning such secrets. That which is buried should remain so, it was laid in the dirt for a reason. A reason whose uncovering threatened to shatter Lin’s entire mind. This was an incontrovertible fact that she intrinsically knew.

Closing her eyes, Lin breathed deeply, mentally preparing herself so she might endure this trial. “Okay. I will give it a try… But I won’t draw the fire spirit. It needs to be made by someone else.” The compromise was weak, but it was enough to suppress the obstinate side of her resistance.

Grizz snorted a puff of white steam, his consternation filling the room. “But I really liked the flame spirit!” While impossible for a devil to ever whine, there is no word more accurate for what Grizz’Bluk the Skin-Scraper did in this instance. He complained like a child.

Crossing her arms and turning away to hide the figment of a smile, Lin affected as steely a tone as she could manage. “Well tough titties. It’s my way, or the no tattoos… way.” Wincing at her weak ending, Lin turned to inspect the tattoo gun, unable to look Grizz in the eye. This was insane. She was literally playing hard ball with a devil. A servant of Lucifer and torturer of the cruel and devout alike (a “tragic” revelation of the convergence was the not so shockingly few practitioners of most world religions that found their way into the higher planes. Grizz had tortured as many popes and priests as warlords. (not that there’s much of a difference.))

“You got me over the ropes kid. Reminds me of Cortez.” He said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Seeing Lin’s blank stare, the devil continued. “Oh, see Hernan Cortez was a-”

“Spanish Conquistador. He turned the native people of Mexico against each other and was generally a cruel and self-serving man.” Lin interrupted. She cocked her head, shocked at her own knowledge.

“Right.” Grizz said slowly, equally surprised. “That’s some good history knowledge. Most people don’t know any preconvergence history. That’s already hundreds of years of knowledge… Anyways, Cortez’s primary torture was that he was strung up by a series of ropes tied to each of his appendages. Those ropes were then weighed with a corpse for each person he murdered. It wasn’t much at first, but eventually the weight was so great that his arms were ripp-”

“I get the picture, thank you.” Lin said, raising a hand.

Deflated, Grizz nodded. “I didn’t even get to what happened with the neck, but fine… Oh! How about you give me that as a tattoo?!” He said excitedly.

Lin pulled out her shard phone. “Of Cortez being quartered by the corpses of his victims? I don’t think that’s something I can just find on the web…” Her face twisted up in both shock and disgust. “Never mind… That’s a shockingly popular subject of art.”

“It really was my best work.” Grizz said sagely.

Biting her lip in consternation for a second more, Lin grabbed a permanent marker and began stenciling onto the devil’s enormous bicep. For better or for worse, she was committed.