As promised by Ethan, a few minutes later a pair of kids who looked around Abigail's age or a little older emerged from around the side of the house. One was a boy and the other a girl. Both were wearing fairly ragged, ill-fitting clothes, and if not for the clothing Jonathan wouldn't have been able to pick them out of a line up of the other kids he'd seen in town. Same medium-light skin, the brown hair that was so prevalent, the works.

The girl held back, but the boy strode right up to Jonathan, grabbed his hand, and pumped it. "Hello! You're the 'demon' Ethan was telling us about?" Jonathan could hear the air quotes. "You don't look anything like a demon, did you know that? Not that I've ever met a demon, but you know those stay-houses the Quints run, well we've been in and out of one too many of those and the Quints always make you sit through those endless lectures before they'll feed you dinner, you know? Or at least they do for us kids, I don't know if they do the same thing for adults. Anyway, sometimes they'd read to us out of these manuscripts with illustrations, I think they called them illuminated? Which is weird, isn't it, I mean it wasn't like they were lit up. Anyway, those demons all looked way scarier than you. Oh, my name is Kylus, by the way, and this is my twin sister Sandra. She's not much of a talker, don't worry about it, I'm sure she'll like you just fine. Ethan, should we go? I'm ready to go. Sandra, are you ready to go? Sandra's ready to go. Let's go!"

Jonathan just stared at the kid. He was having significant misgivings about this whole plan already.

----------------------------------------

Partway back to the orphanage, Jonathan was about ready to call the thing off and banish himself to the Infernal Abyss, if only to get Kylus to shut up. As far as he could tell, his sister Sandra felt the same way, because as soon as they'd left the city she'd fallen back so far behind them that she was definitely out of earshot. Jonathan had tried to ask about it, but Kylus just laughed it off—"That's Sandra for you!"—and Jonathan hadn't pressed. After the first few minutes, he wished that he could drop back with her and enjoy some peace and quiet.

"—and then Yanni just headed straight out into the street and Bethany chased after him. Well, Ethan turns around and notices they're gone, just like that, and loses his mind, I tell you, I've never seen him that upset. So he's just about ready to go tearing off when Chris comes running back with Yanni in tow and Bethany clinging to his back, breathing like he's going to die, and Ethan just grabs them, looks like he wants to scream his fool head off, but then Sandra points behind him and there's this old guy chasing after them, holding up his pants with one hand and screaming bloody murder. We all take off, of course, but it turns out that Yanni saw someone he thought he knew, but when he got there this guy picked him up and he realized he didn't know him after all. So Yanni just cuts his belt, but instead of grabbing the coin purse, he grabs the belt. Well that was about when Bethany caught up to them, and apparently she head-butted the guy right in the jewels while he's scrabbling after his pants, and that was just too much for him so he let go of Yanni. Then Chris, who was the only one who was supposed to be lifting anything in the first place but had seen Yanni go by, caught up to them, and they all booked it out of there. Boy, Ethan was not happy about that, let me tell you, he lectured them for a solid half hour, and he really wanted to leave them behind at the hideout next time we went out, but how could he do that? So long story short, we had to stop working that area, which was a bit rough. There were good pickings on that street. I think that was what, two moves before we found our current place, isn't that right, Sandra?"

The boy finally paused for breath, and Jonathan glanced behind them. Yep, Sandra was still far enough away there was no way she could hear the two of them, but Kylus was nodding to himself, apparently satisfied.

"Sounds like you had it rough," ventured Jonathan.

Kylus shrugged. "Oh, well, a bit, a bit! But I tell you, the sight of that old guy running down the street trying to hold his pants up and yelling his fool head off…ah, that was hilarious. Not worth the danger, I'm sure Ethan would say, but hilarious nonetheless."

Jonathan desperately cast around for a topic, knowing from experience that if he waited more than a few seconds Kylus was going to launch into some other interminable story about his and the other kids' escapades, which given that Jonathan didn't know any of the kids aside from Ethan, Kylus, and sort of Chris made them kind of hard to follow. "You mentioned that the church liked to give you lessons when you were staying with them. Mind telling me what sorts of things they taught you?"

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Kylus gave him a strange look. "I mean, just the normal stuff, really. Wouldn't you know more about them than me?"

"Ah, no, I'm not familiar with the Quints at all."

"Oh, you must not be a very well-known demon then, huh? I mean I'm no priest, ha ha, not that they'd have me, anyway, so I don't really know much beyond the stories everyone knows, but what were you curious about?"

Well, that didn't help narrow it down. He wasn't "everybody" here, so he didn't really know what to ask about. On the other hand, every religion had to have a creation myth, right? "I've always been curious to hear the church's account of how the world was created."

"The 'church's account'? Why? Do you demons have a different story? Tell it, tell it, tell it!"

"No, I didn't mean—"

"Oh man, Sandra—wait, Sandra's way back there?!" He hadn't realized? "Well, never mind, don't tell it yet, I'll bet Sandra would want to hear."

"I'm trying to tell you I don't know—"

"Well, that will have to wait, but sure I can tell you the story the church told me. Our da, though, he always said the Quints were about as trustworthy as a demon, no offense, but then again he was an evil asshole, so I don't know how much stock to put in that. Anyway, I'm just saying, I don't believe this stuff, okay? You don't have to get angry at me about it."

"I promise, I'm not going to get mad at you. At least not about the story." He might get made for other reasons.

"Okay, that's fine, then. So anyway, how did it go?" Kylus looked thoughtful for a few seconds, before puffing out his chest and saying in as sonorous voice as a pre-teen boy could manage, "In the beginning there was naught but the chaos of the outerdark—I'm sorry, ha, I really can't manage that. I think the first time the Quints forced us to sit through the story of how the God fashioned the earth, the priest had this incredibly nasally voice, and he sort of intoned everything he said, anyway, and I just couldn't take him seriously. Alright, let me start over. So everything was just chaos in the outerdark, and the God—I can never remember all the terms they use for it, I swear it's a different one every time, but I'm just going to call it God, okay? Anyway, the God didn't like stumbling around in the dark or something, and separated light from the chaos.

"So that didn't work out too well, because then I guess it could see what a mess everything was—"

Jonathan interrupted briefly. "It? God is an 'it'?"

Kylus looked at him strangely. "Well, yeah. I mean, it's the God, it's not like it has a gender. Or wait, was that one of those what-do-you-call-thems? Maybe it was just the group of Quints that taught me. There's a bunch of different groups, and I think maybe some believe the God has a gender, but that makes absolutely no sense to me. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right! So the God made light and that was the wisps, and then got all upset because the remaining chaos was, well, you know, chaos. So next the God separated out the meliae and they grew unconstrained, forcing back the chaos while the wisps forced back the outerdark with their light. That was good for a while, but then the meliae got out of hand, so the God reached out to the chaos and pulled from it the afrit to constrain the meliae. That didn't quite do the trick, however, because everything was basically back to chaos at that point, so at last the God pulled forth the mimih, which…did something. That part honestly never made any sense to me; whenever Quints start talking about the Fractal Gardens, things get weird. Anyway, at this point, I guess the God was just fed up with everything because it took some of the wisps, meliae, afrit, and mimih, mashed them together, and created the first demons, then told them to clean the place up."

Jonathan had been feeling pretty lost up to this point, but that was certainly right in line with his personal experiences as a "demon".

"The demons tried to do what the God had commanded, but everything was basically still chaos. So to fix that the God separated out the five realms." Kylus held up his hand, palm toward Jonathan and fingers spread.

"…Yes, you have five fingers. I get it."

"No, no, the priests always do this. See it represents the five realms and the palm is the material world, or something like that." Guess high-fives weren't going to be a thing anytime soon. "Anyway, once the realms were sorted out, the demons finally were able to create the earth before being banished back to the Infernal Abyss when they start to misbehave, the God creates humans and grants them magic, and honestly I don't really remember all everything after that because I usually just kind of zoned out. Sandra might remember more."

"You know what? I think I'm good."

Getting this kid to talk wasn't the problem; it was getting him to shut up that was the trick.