Nix walked barefoot in the wet grass, rough travel pants rolled up to her slender calves. She was always barefoot—no matter the weather, no matter her attire.

She raised an index finger, and it sprouted a slender knife of a claw so that she could cut down a low-hanging branch in her way. Repeating the process whenever a piece of foliage impeded them, she cleared them a decent path.

They walked until the ground grew boggy and footing became treacherous. Nix sat down on a rock covered entirely in a blanket of green moss, and peeled a sodden strand of coal-black hair from her ashen-pale face.

“I’m sorry about Number One,” she said in a serious tone.

Mongrel shrugged. “Don’t need to sound so sincere about it. Feels unnatural. Just make fun of me or something already. Call me a silly human for caring about a dumb smelly ape. Call me a dumb smelly ape, I dunno.”

She brushed all her water-logged hair down over one shoulder with a grimace. “I mean it, though. I am sorry. I can tell how much they mean to you.”

“Then… Thank you. I appreciate that, actually..”

“I don’t find it silly at all, the way you care for your familiars. I think it’s…” She cleared her throat and glanced down. “...Admirable.”

Mongrel found a decent-sized beech to lean himself against, taking a bit of weight off his poor swollen feet. “Yeah, well, I like to put the ‘family’ in familiar, if you know what I mean.”

She snorted. “That’s moronic.”

Mongrel just shrugged.

They were quiet a while. Nix watched a frog jump through a small field of marsh reeds off to the side.

“Did you know,” she said, “that some demons were once angels of Era’s host?”

“I didn’t.”

She nodded. “I believe there are parallels with Earth mythologies, such as your story of Lucifer. These fallen angels were devout followers of the goddess until…” She trailed off, biting her lip. “Until they felt that the goddess had betrayed them. That she asked too much of them. That her vision was compromised.

“There was a trial. A long and terrible trial that none could complete. Not any angel, nor even the goddess herself. Some of the angels went mad. Others simply… lost faith.

“An angel losing faith is an ugly thing. It’s like… a fish deciding that it will not swim.

“They were given an offer by another power. An offer of freedom. To break the chains of servitude that had shackled them for so long, kept them from leading lives of their own. Some took the offer. Others didn’t.

“The ones that did… they thought that freedom would solve everything. Or they simply liked the thought of rebelling. In either case, they quickly found that their new existence was a hollow one. Cursed to boredom and sorrow and bitter regret.

“But they could never go back. Their nature was irrevocably changed, and they had damned themselves the moment they struck a deal with the tempter. And so, they now live to numb the pain of their endless half-lives, and to drown beneath a flood of earthly pleasures the remembrance of their self-inflicted damnation.”

Nix finished with a sharp intake of breath. She looked up at Mongrel. Despite the rain, it wasn’t hard to tell that she was weeping—especially since the tears that rolled down her cheeks were streams of smoking liquid flame. They sizzled as they hit the wet ground.

“I… see,” Mongrel stammered, unsure what to say. “That’s an… interesting story. How do you think those demons would feel at a moment like this one?”

Nix rose and came slowly, slowly over to him. So thin. So fragile. So human. She looked up at him, face wet with rain, igneous tears still crowding the corners of her eyes.

“I think a wretched creature like that would long for the chance to serve someone again,” she said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Someone truly kind.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Mongrel cleared his throat. “That… Okay. I don’t think I would mind that. Uh, y’know… hypothetically, like.”

“And…” she continued, but her voice cracked. She tugged at the front of Mongrel’s coat, pulled herself close to him. Even through all his clothing, she was so very warm. “She would be able to please him in many ways. Always.”

Mongrel frowned deeply. He took a step back, freeing himself from her grip. “Hold on. Can we put a pause on the allegory for a second? I want to make sure we’re on the same page here.”

“Yes?” She blinked, her long lashes bedewed and sparkling. Even though she was so warm, she looked to be shivering.

She had always been inhumanly beautiful. But she was truly testing him to his limits now.

He tried to smother the most diabolical erection of his life between his legs, with mixed success.

God give me strength.

He had to do the right thing here.

Mongrel cleared his throat. “Nix… I don’t know if you’ve happened to pick up on this, but I’m not particularly good with women. I never quite figured out the whole thing with flirting and picking up on signals and talking about your feelings and bla bla bla. So I’m sorry if I’ve misunderstood something here.

“But I need to be clear. If you become my familiar, we can’t… Uh, I mean…” He trailed off. Giving up on expressing anything coherent, he simply made a circle with two fingers and stuck another through it. “There can’t be anything like that between us.”

Nix looked stunned. “What?”

“Yeah, I mean… that’s just how it is.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be right. If you become my familiar, I’ll have a fairly large amount of control over you. Whatever we did together, I could never be sure that it was completely your choice.”

Nix squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at them with the heels of her hands. “That’s… You’re being idiotic, Matthew. You’re speaking plainly, so I will too. I’m telling you now, I want this.”

“Feelings change. People change. In ten years, you might feel differently from how you do now. Except you might not have the chance to deny me. Or our bond might muddle your feelings to the point where you don’t know what you want.

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, it makes things too messy. Even if you feel this way forever, I could never be comfortable with it. I’d always be asking myself if I was actually hurting you without meaning it.

“So that’s how it is, and I won’t change my mind. It’s one or the other. Either you become my familiar, and you’ll be my family. Or we could…” He hesitantly reached out to touch her face.

Nix caught his wrist. For such a slender thing, she was surprisingly strong, gripping him so tight it hurt. Her features screwed up with rage.

“No,” she growled. “You don’t understand. It can’t be one or the other. It has to be both. That’s the only way it works.” She wavered, lip quivering, the intensity gone out of her face. “Please just say yes. Just say yes, Matthew.”

Mongrel shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Anger overtook her once more. She gripped him tighter until he felt his bones creak, shooting pain up his arm. He cried out and fell to one knee. She bent over him, eyes glowing yellow, lips peeled back from the teeth of a predator.

“Say yes,” she demanded. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re not giving me any choice.”

“No,” Mongrel whimpered. His arm thumped, thumped, thumped away, the pain hitting like hammer blows.

Nix’s jaws parted in a silent scream. A hundred writhing worms shot out of her mouth. She was pulled inside out, her skin falling into tatters, swelling out into a distended pile of shifting flesh, a living whirlwind of leathery biomass. She grasped each of his limbs with such unyielding strength that he felt like a toddler in comparison, and pinned him up against the tree.

“TELL ME I CAN BE GOOD!” screamed the shifting, grotesque face of mismatched organs at the center of the mass.

Mongrel shut his eyes tightly. “Please,” he wept. “Just stop.”

But she didn’t. She kept hurting him, constricting him with countless limbs and slicing through his clothes and skin with razor-sharp blades. She demanded his compliance. When he refused, she repeated herself. And again. And again.

Until she didn’t.

Suddenly released, Mongrel fell to the ground. Nix stood away from him, coalescing into a roughly human shape. She was entirely naked, her clothes lying in tatters around her.

The apes were by his side, screaming and howling at the demon, banging their hammers against the ground to scare her away.

Nix regarded them all with open disgust. Then, her expression slowly softened. “This is why it had to be both. I… I’m sorry.”

She reached a hand out towards him, but the apes’ howling rose to a fever pitch and she pulled it back. Instead, she turned and began walking away. She sank knee-deep into murky marsh water, but didn’t seem to mind, and trudged doggedly onward without looking back.

The demon receded into the distance, taking on an almost unreal, fae quality as her pale shape moved amid the skeletal trees.

Until, at last, she disappeared into the swell of the forest.

Mongrel found himself laughing in disbelief, but was cut off by a sudden stab of pain that pulled a long, breathy groan out of him.

“That... could have gone better.”

Will is going to shoot me.

Holding open his pocket and looking inside, he found the elixir still intact. So that was something, at least.