“How close are we, kid?”
Oatmeal held up the pouch of tracer elements, regarding it closely. “Well, she’s not moving, so we’re definitely catching up. It won’t be much further now.”
Mongrel nodded. “Good. Let’s pick up the pace.”
“You don’t think she’s dead, do you?”
“Nah. It takes a lot to kill a demon. She’s good, don’t worry.”
They continued through the interior. The terrain was boggy and foul, with clouds of biting insects. Oatmeal was able to navigate them across tracts of reasonably passable ground. The lad was proving useful enough. Then again, Mongrel’s expectations had been at zero, so it wasn’t exactly a hard bar to clear.
Near mid-morning, the sound of great footfalls had them scampering for cover. The footsteps quickly receded, but they remained pressed against their trees for a solid fifteen minutes before they dared move on.
Other than that, their fortune held. No monster sightings.
It was around noon that Oatmeal said they were getting close. The terrain shifted, becoming steeper and drier. They had climbed halfway up some foothills when Oatmeal stopped and pointed to a rift in the earth before them. It made up the mouth of a dark, narrow cave.
“I can’t be sure,” the Explorer said, “but I think she’s in there.”
“Good lad,” Mongrel replied, clapping the young man on the shoulder as he stepped forward. “You stay out here.” He motioned to the chimps. “You too.”
The chimps weren’t happy about that. They’d been ill-tempered about the idea of bringing back Nix in the first place. They weren’t exactly her biggest fan after her tussle with Mongrel.
But he was in no mood to entertain them. He silenced their screams and insistent signing by yelling: “Enough! Stay here. I’m telling, not asking.”
He preferred not to command the boys directly via their familiar bond, and leave them as much autonomy as possible. But if they decided to keep being difficult, he would park them on their butts with force.
Luckily it didn’t come to that. Number Four reluctantly signed <
“Good. Keep an eye on the kid. Don’t goof off, or I’ll be angry with you when I get back. Understood?”
They nodded.
“Shouldn’t I be the one keeping track of them?” Oatmeal asked.
Mongrel frowned at him, unable to tell if he was being serious or not. Then he wandered off, shaking his head.
Mongrel made himself a torch out of a thick branch and some rags torn off his blanket. The wood was a little too damp to burn well, but it was the best he could do at the moment.
He entered the cave and was immediately swallowed up by darkness, his sputtering torch a poor shield against it. After only a few steps in, the entrance was only a thin crack of light. He struggled to find his footing on the sloping, uneven ground, his light barely able to cast weak reflections across the wet stones.
It grew narrower as he went, and he soon found himself sidling to get through, sharp rock pressing against his front and his back. He felt like he couldn’t even take a proper breath without snagging on something. By the time he stumbled into a larger chamber, his coat had several lovely new rips in it.
Mongrel held his torch up high to inspect the chamber. He didn’t see anyone, nor did he hear anything apart from a slow drip of water on rock.
“Nix?” he called out, and shrank back as he was bombarded by his own echo. Somewhat sheepishly, he cleared his throat. “Uh, you there? I want to, y’know, talk.”
There was no response.
Mongrel kept looking around, but there was no one. He was alone in there. He called out a few more times, but when only echoes answered him, he eventually turned to leave.
The kid must have led us to the wrong place.
Then a thin, whispery sound made him look up. A pair of yellow eyes stared at him from the cave ceiling, where no light reached.
“If you think you can kill me, you’re profoundly mistaken,” Nix said. “Out of kindness, I’ll give you one chance to leave this place with all your pieces still attached.”
Mongrel made a show of removing his sword belt and tossed it aside, letting it clatter across the stones. “I never had any illusions that I could kill you. Did you really think that’s why I’m here?”
A tangle of wriggling worms extended down from the ceiling, pooling on the cave floor and rising back up. They twined into the rough form of a person whose finer features slowly settled into place.
“Then why are you here, Matthew?” the demon asked, the torchlight tracing her naked form.
“Well, I can’t say it’s for any particularly noble reason. We need your help.” He took a step towards her, illuminating her face. It was twisted in an animal snarl, black hair falling over her eyes. “But also… I didn’t like the idea of not seeing you again.”
Nix shrank back into the darkness until only her eyes were visible. She stalked around him in circles, forcing him to keep turning around to hold her in view.
“I don’t want you here,” she said. “Leave now, or I will kill you. You know I’m not bluffing.”
Mongrel rubbed at a few of the cuts on his arm. “Yeah, I reckon you’re not.”
“So start walking.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
The demon stopped moving, became silent. “Aren’t you afraid of me?”
Mongrel let out an echoey chuckle. “Scared shitless.”
“And you’re still arrogant enough to ask favors of me?”
“Yep.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Something wrapped around his ankle, yanked his leg forward. He fell hard, hit his head on a rock, saw stars. The torch went flying away from him and rolled to a stop two meters off, leaving him in darkness.
The demon inched forward on top of him. Only her eyes were visible, but he felt her body press against him. A foot on his stomach, a knee on his chest. A hand clamped down on his jaw.
“You humiliated me,” she hissed.
Mongrel swallowed hard, and said a silent prayer to the dead goddess. “Aw, c’mon. We had a little disagreement, that’s all. And honestly, I think the outcome of that was on you. You didn’t stick around for the making up part. You fight, you compromise, you kiss and make up. That’s how it goes.”
She snorted, clamped down harder on his chin. “I used to think your pigheadedness was charming, Matthew. Now I find it unsightly.”
“Ouch, Hurtful, but all right.” Mongrel forced out a smile. He had the distinct feeling that while he couldn’t see her, she could probably see him well enough. “I’ve got one more reason for coming here, if you’d like to hear it.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: “Speak.”
“All right, it’s uh… something I didn’t say during our little domestic, but I ended up wishing I had. So if you don’t take anything else from this when you’re gargling on my blood or whatever, just hear me out on this one thing.”
Silence.
“You can be good, Nix.”
She took all her weight off him at once, and he heard the faint whisper of her footsteps as she crept away.
Mongrel sat up with a groan, rubbing the back of his head.
Nix moved through the circle of firelight, then melded back into the darkness. “Just tell me what you want, Matthew,” she said in a low voice. He couldn’t tell if she sounded vulnerable or dangerous. For her, the two were evidently linked.
“Before that, can I tell you a story?” Mongrel asked.
“Why?”
He patted the ground next to him. “Come on, sit.”
For a minute, he listened to her footsteps as she moved around the chamber, sizing him up. Then, finally, he heard the shuffle of her plopping down next to him. He caught the narrow slivers of her yellow eyes glancing up at him.
“Thank you,” Mongrel said, nodding. “Now, I haven’t told anyone this, not even Will. So don’t go blabbing about it, yeah?”
He took her silence as a yes.
He cleared his throat sharply, struggling to get the words out. “I… used to have a son, back on Earth. To be honest, I was kind of a shitty dad. I was always working when he was little, so I didn’t see him much, and when he got older we grew apart. I’d talk to him three or four times a year, make sure he was healthy and stuff, but other than that I wasn’t really in his life.
“It took me dying to realize what a piece of shit I’d been. Once it was too late, and my life was forever separated from his.”
“You could have—” Nix began, but Mongrel cut her off.
“I’m not as fucked up as Will. I’d never bring someone I love anywhere near this hellhole So I had to reconcile the fact that I’d never see him again.
“Over time I started to forget about that life; friends, family, work, all of it. But there’s one thing I still remember clear as day. Holding my baby for the first time, and everything in the world suddenly making sense. Like it all meant something.
“That was the point of my life. To be a father. If only I hadn’t let it get lost in the wash of bullshit obligations and pointless distractions. So when I came here, I… started looking for the same thing, I guess. That kid out there, he said something pretty good last night. He’s usually pretty dense, but that one thing was pretty catchy.
“He said that we don’t get to have relations here. We don’t get to have families. So the only thing that matters is the people around you. Friends. Something like that, I dunno—I’m paraphrasing.”
“Matthew, while I appreciate this epic tale, I’m not sure where it’s going or what it has to do with this,” Nix said.
“The point is,” Mongrel replied, “that the boys are like my blood. It’s not the same as with my son back on Earth, but I don’t love them any less either, the little idiots.” He smiled as he sensed them squabbling over a tasty-looking beetle outside the cave entrance. “It’s a good thing. I give them something, and they give me something.
“But now that I’ve thought about it, I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want you as my familiar, Nix. I might be a little slow on the uptake, but I’m not stupid. I know you’re using me to try and run away.”
“Run away?” Nix murmured.
“Yeah, run away. You’re sick of being the thing that goes bump in the night. So if you give yourself over to me, I can keep you in line. Or you can at least shift responsibility for your actions onto somebody else. Maybe you could go from being a demon to something a little brighter.
“But I won’t do it. Whatever you used to be—an angel or some such—you’re not anymore. And that’s fine by me. I like you the way you are now. I don’t need you to run away from it.”
He heard Nix stand up and move away. She went over to the torch, picked it up, and threw it into a puddle of water, where it went out with a wet sizzle. The cavern was left in perfect darkness. Not even her eyes were visible anymore.
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. But it’s not the only reason. I have another one.”
“All right, what’s that?”
“I haven’t made a beneficial contract in a long time now. I’m getting weaker every day. I’ll survive another few weeks at least, but beyond that I don’t know.
“The elixir would help a little. But more importantly, I think becoming a familiar, my life essence being tied with yours, will bypass some of my need to feed off humans. Even if I get weaker, I won’t die outright since I'll have a sort of life line. That’s my theory, anyway.”
Mongrel took a few moments to absorb that information. “You’re dying?”
“Yes.”
“Bitch, why didn’t you lead with that?”
“I thought it went without saying. Also, I… thought appealing to your libido would have a higher chance of success.”
“Do you see me as a big penis with legs or something?”
“Sort of.”
“Rude.” He scratched his beard in thought. “But I mean, I guess that changes things. Do you really think it would help?”
“I do.”
“And it’s what you want?”
“It is.”
“Fuck. Then… Fuck, all right. I’ll make a compromise with you. That’s what responsible adults do, after all.”
There was a drawn-out silence from Nix that betrayed her suspicion. “What kind of compromise?”
“I’ll make you my familiar if we can draw up a contract that leaves you less vulnerable to manipulation.”
“...I suppose that should be possible.”
“And in return, I need you to promise me one thing.”
“Yes?”
“That you'll try to find a decent life in what you have now. I get that there are parts of being a demon that aren’t so sweet, and I’ll work on making that better for you. But I like you as a person. I see good in you—more than half the bastards on this planet. You don’t need to try and water yourself down. That’s not how people work, anyway. It would only make you unhappy.”
“Then… I guess…”
He cut her off. “Besides, I realized I was being selfish before. If a woman wants my cock and balls so bad, I figure it’s my moral obligation to give it to her.”
Her scoff echoed through the cave. “Very romantic, Matthew.”
“Thank you, but I’m not done. You’ve got a responsibility to me, too, the way you’ve been blue-balling me. Looking all sexy and teasing me and stuff. It’s not fair at all. I think it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Be quiet, you horrible little man.” He thought he could hear a smile through her words. At least, he liked to imagine that she was smiling.
Nix went quiet. Contemplating. Then she said: “I appreciate what you said. I do. But I need as many constraints on me as we can contrive. Otherwise, I would only hurt you again. No matter how much I try to be good, the bad comes out anyway. I can’t help it.”
“That’s all right,” Mongrel said softly. “I trust you. Besides, I like my women a little on the abusive side. Kinda chubs me up.”
She laughed. Her laugh made him smile. It was simple and innocent and human.
Mongrel stood up and clapped his hands together. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“I never actually said yes.”
“Yeah, yeah. Quit fucking around and hurry up. But, uh…” He fumbled around in the dark and found nothing to orient himself. “You might have to lead the way. Can’t see shit in here.”
There was a brief pause.
Then Nix took his hand.
It was warm.