Origin - Seven - Rending Nightmare

Alice backed up, then took a moment to just breathe. “What’s a succubus, and what’s the Second Circle?” she asked.

Alice wasn’t sure if ‘asked’ was the right term, really. She didn’t have her sword pointing at Marcia’s throat any longer, but the threat was still there.

“The Second Circle is the second layer of hell,” Marcia answered simply. “And a succubus is what I am. A demon of temptation and lust. Oh, don’t look at me like that, of all the sins I’d like to think that lust is the most genuine and good, no? True love wouldn’t be so true without desire behind it, and pleasing yourself and others isn’t so wrong, is it?”

Alice pushed any thoughts about lust and such aside, and she pointedly ignored the way Marcia’s hands pressed down across her stomach and along her hips in a way that was... no, it wasn’t time for such distractions.

“Hell is real?” Alice asked.

Marcia shrugged. “Real enough.”

“Does that mean that the church was right?” Alice asked.

The girl, the demoness, laughed at that. “Of course not. Who do you think runs the place?”

“So, when people die...”

“Oh, it’s not a true afterlife. Most of what you know is probably wrong, only slightly right, or made up and twisted into actual truth but only through sheer coincidence.” Marcia shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

Alice licked her lips. She had a lot of questions to ask. More than she had time to ask them in. “Why are you here? You, specifically.”

Marcia tilted her head. “It’s an opportunity. Hell is Hell. Power counts for everything, and opportunities to gain more power are scarce unless you already have power. I don’t have much of that. Better off than some, worse than others.” She shrugged languidly. “So here I am. Tempting you instead of killing you.”

“Are those your two only options?” Alice asked.

“Did you expect me to come here to become your true friend?” Marcia asked with a bitter note of sarcasm in her tone.

Alice glared at the girl who was still on her back. “I suppose not. Fine then, why is Hell attacking this city? Do... do you do this all over, all the time? Some great big coverup?”

“Oh, no no, the only covering up going on is entirely humanity’s doing. At least, I think. Hell has rarely interfered with Earth. Why would we? What does this place have that we might want?” She gestured around herself, then paused. “Ah, that’s rhetorical. There are some things. Human chattel has its place. And some succubi have come to test themselves here, but most demons cannot pass themselves as human and what we prize most won’t be found on Earth. Besides, there are... other circumstances that make it unfavourable to come here.”

“Then why now?” Alice asked. She had a sinking feeling she knew why, and Marcia’s grin only made it worse.

“Because of you.”

Alice clenched her fist. “Am I so special?”

The girl rocked her head back and laughed. “Oh! Priceless. If you weren’t so terrifying that insecurity would be so delicious to poke and prod. But no, I want to live.” She wiped at tears that never were. “Alice dear, Rending Nightmare. The shadow queen. The Nightmare walker. Hell wants you dead more than anyone or anything else.”

“Because I’m a magical girl?”

Marcia scoffed. “They wouldn’t care if you were the magical pope.” Her face contorted and she coughed. “Okay, they would care about that. A lot.”

“There’s a magical pope?” Alice asked.

“No? But if you became one anyway they’d care,” Marcia said. She sighed. “That was a terrible deal. I can’t even lie socially.”

“And apparently I can’t kill you unless you lie,” Alice said.

She noticed that Marcia was about to say something, then the succubus stopped herself.

“That’s how it works, right?”

“That’s how deals work between demons, yes.”

Alice glared. “You dodged the question.”

“I chose to interpret it in a more interesting way,” Marcia corrected.

Alice brought Dream Charter around to point towards Marcia who raised her hands. “Please, don’t mess with me.”

“Alright, fine, fine. Demons make deals. And we keep to them. Breaking them a little hurts a little, breaking them in a big way, on purpose, kills us. A human making a deal’s even worse off. There’s no little bit of pain for a slight transgression. It’s straight to the morgue for them. But, ah, you’re not exactly human, are you?”

Alice blinked. “What? Of course I am. I’m my parent’s spitting image. I remember being little, and I haven’t done anything... not-human.” She glanced at the magic sword in her hand. “Until recently.”

“Oh, sure, you’re human, but you’re also a magical girl, which takes all sorts of precedent. If you were just some human girl with a bit of magic, you wouldn’t have a bunch of nobodies from hell invading to take you out so soon.”

“So, what does that mean for the deal?” Alice asked. “We agreed that as long as you don’t lie I won’t kill you.”

“I don’t know what it means,” Marcia said.

Alice glowered.

“Hey! It’s the truth! See, no pain! I have a few suspicions, everything from it being worse for you to you just shrugging it off, but nothing concrete. Do you know how many magical girls there are?”

“I don’t.”

“None. There are none. The only reason we know about them is because of seers and some really powerful demons who could scry into the future warned us about you a long, long time ago.”

“Fine,” Alice said. “You mentioned that the demons attacking were nobodies?”

“Some seers from the Seventh Circle said that you would be appearing about now. I moved fast to get here first, and those idiots mucking around and making a mess of things? They did the same. There’s a lot of glory to be won by taking your head. That just means that the people trying to kill you are all hotheaded idiots though.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“And what does that make you?” Alice wondered aloud.

“A succubus who doesn’t mind taking chances. Seducing you would be a big win for me, you know.”

“I’m not gay,” Alice said.

Marcia laughed in her face.

“What?”

“Oh, you’re as precious as you are terrifying. I’ll let you figure that out on your own.”

The bell rang, cutting Alice off just as she was about to start asking a lot more questions. She glared at Marcia, then flicked her hand to the side, dismissing Dream Charter into a smokey shadow. “Count yourself lucky,” Alice said. She reached a hand down for Marcia to take and helped the girl up to her feet. “If I catch you messing with the students, or harming anyone, no amount of saying the truth will save you.”

Marcia grinned. “You’re going to make some submissive little thing fall head over heels for you, you know?”

Alice felt her cheeks warming for a moment before she quashed the emotion and glared. “And stop talking about my romantic life.”

“Oh, that I can’t do,” Marcia said. “See! It was even the truth! I have a racial affinity for romantic meddling.”

“You’re messed up,” Alice said.

“In all sorts of fantastic ways, yes,” Marcia agreed. She wrapped her arms behind her back, then stretched. Her vest had come open at some point, and her shirt was no longer tucking into the band of her skirt, exposing her lower stomach as she twisted her upper body left and right.

Alice caught herself staring and looked away. “Get back to class or whatever.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I need to think.”

Marcia nodded, not pushing the issue. She turned and walked off with a final wave over her shoulder. “Have a nice think, magical girl.” Marcia turned and walked off, shaking her hips with every step like a Carnival dancer.

Alice resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

She couldn’t help but ruminate on what Marcia had said... mostly about her own sexuality, but she dismissed that out of hand. The woman was a demoness. A sex demon in the guise of a teenaged girl. Of course she’d try to mess with Alice.

“What do you think?” she asked her sword. It wasn’t around her, but it could still hear her, she knew.

THE DEMON HORDES ARE RIGHT TO FEAR YOU. THEY ARE WRONG TO DO ANYTHING BUT GROVEL IN TERROR.

“Right,” Alice said. That was less helpful than she would have hoped. At least Dream Charter was always confident in her. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose, then sighed and let her arm drop. She had classes to attend to. This next period was math, and the teacher was some young sporty kind of guy. If he asked her why she was late she could always beg off and claim she had feminine issues.

The feminine urge to invade hell.

Chuckling to herself, Alice got going. She wasn’t closer to a solution, but at least she had a few more pieces of the puzzle at hand.

If the denizens of Hell continued to invade, then she would just need to continue to punish them for it.

Then again, if Marcia was right and those attacking her so far were just the fools and chattel, then it was quite possible that future threats would be a lot harder to deal with.

She needed to get stronger, and as she arrived in her class, pretended to have some issues she didn’t want to talk about, then sat down to study, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was wasting her time here.

But no, an education was important, and she wasn’t about to let Hell ruin her life. So she paid attention until class let up, picked up her things, and moved on to the next.

She was kind of regretting skipping lunch at that point, but that was easy enough to ignore.

When school ended, Alice lingered around for a moment or two, then when she didn’t see Marcia heading her way, she left for home since she didn’t want to miss the bus back.

On arriving home, she crammed through her homework while eating a sandwich, then escaped to her room.

There was a lot to think on, but she still found herself laying on her bed, staring at the ceiling while her mind buzzed. “I need to get stronger,” she said. It was the root of her problems. She had lots of power. That very day she’d defeated a demon and sent him running, and the fight against the imps had been pretty one-sided. She was quite certain she could take on a number of human adults too.

But she didn’t envision herself taking on all of Hell.

Not that Hell seemed to know that, the way they were gearing up to fight.

Alice sat up on her bed. “Dream Charter,” she said.

YES?

“I control dreams,” she said.

YOU DO.

“Can I.... I can send a message to someone through a dream?” she asked.

YOU ARE THE QUEEN OF NIGHTMARES. ALL NIGHTMARES ARE YOURS TO TWIST. IT IS THE ESSENCE AND BASIS OF YOUR POWER.

She nodded, her fledgling idea growing. “Can I send a nightmare to a specific person? To a specific set of people all at once? Could I... if I wanted to, send a nightmare to all of Hell?”

DO THE DENIZENS OF HELL DESERVE THE WARNING?

She took a deep breath, then let it all out. “Maybe. It might stall them, at least a little. We... I have to try it. Otherwise more people will die and I don’t want that.”

THEN LET US PARLEY WITH THE DEMON’S OWN GREATEST FEARS. MAY THEY FOREVER FACE THEIR OWN SLUMBER WITH TREPIDATION AND DISMAY.

***