First Infernal Contract: Bugsby, The Dark Apprentice (I)

--- Booker H. Freeman ---

“Wh-who are you?!” The pale boy stuttered out, the knife in his hand shaking almost as much as he was.

Booker considered this for a moment, wondering, (how best to proceed?)

(Greed: Since the boy did the final kill, he’s technically our summoner.)

(Lust: Meaning we should play nice with him!)

(Gluttony: Even after he stole our kill? Our meal?)

(Lust: Yes! Besides, can't you still eat him?)

(Gluttony: It wouldn’t be the same…)

(Wrath: Regardless, he meant us no ill will with this…)

(Greed: And none of this matters, we’re getting paid either way.)

(In that case, there’s no reason to be rude.) He smiled, before taking a half bow with a hand to his chest. “My name is Booker H. Freeman, The Rabid Red-Eyed Rabbit, and you my boy seemed to have done me something of a service.”

“A, a service?” The boy asked, his brown eyes darting towards the nearest coffin with a look of guilt and regret.

(Envy: He knows what was done to make those coffins…)

(Lust: Aw, you should reassure him that that’s not what we mean!)

“No, no, my boy. That’s not what I meant.” He chuckled, before looking down at the corpse before him. “I meant the spineless sorcerer who didn’t understand that making a sacrifice, does not mean what he thinks it does.”

(Envy: To sacrifice you must give up something you value.)

(Wrath: Or do something you do not wish to for another’s sake.)

(Gluttony: This man enjoyed the slaughter as much as we would’ve~)

(Greed: Payout would’ve been bigger for us if he followed the rules. Speaking of rules, they say we’ve still got to fulfill our end of the deal to get paid.)

(And given how killing the boy is a waste, what exactly were the terms of this deal? A vague offer of power I believe?)

(Greed: Wording is vaguely along the lines of ‘Granting power negotiable upon summoning based on the entity in question’. If we leave early, we forfeit our payment back to the summoner. However, there were no real protections on the summoner’s part beyond an inability to kill. In which case payment will be fully forfeited on our part.)

(Pride: Meaning we could’ve fulfilled our end by giving him the power of wisdom.)

(Sloth: More accurately the wisdom not to summon a Demon.)

(Gluttony: A few bites could’ve gotten the point across.)

He let out a dark chuckle at that thought, causing the boy to jump and drawing his attention back to his audience. “But imagine my surprise when I find my work has already been completed more thoroughly than I could’ve managed under my current restrictions!” He tapped his lips before giving the boy a smile full of fangs. “I suppose this means I owe you a favor, my boy.”

The boy flinched, before looking down at the man he’d killed. “Can you… can you save him?”

He couldn’t help but blink in surprise at that. “You want me to help him? Whyever would you want that after going through the trouble of killing him?!”

The boy flinched once more, unable to meet his eyes as he stumbled over his words, holding the girl ever closer. “I… I didn’t mean to… I just… I just didn’t… I didn’t want him to… I-I had to stop him…”

(Wrath: He did it for her… To protect her.)

(Lust: Oh! Is this a love story? A dark apprentice falling in love with his mentor’s next victim, only to save her at the cost of betraying all he’s ever known?!)

(Envy: You’re an idiot… and they’re too young for those kinds of thoughts.)

(Lust: Ho! Their first love perhaps?!)

(Envy: Just ignore him… and tell the kid the truth.)

(Wrath: There’s blood on his hands now. He can’t wash that away.)

“Hmm, well sadly, bringing back the dead is beyond my many abilities.” He sighed with a sad smile as he interrupted the still rambling lad.

“Oh…” The boy whispered, his voice hollow as he stared down at the corpse in front of him, his hold on the girl becoming tighter the longer he did so.

(Envy: There’s a thought.)

He stepped outside of the summoning circle and towards the boy. “While I may not be able to help you with him, perhaps I can help you with your friend there?”

The boy blinked beneath brown hair, his eyes slowly drifting from the dead man on the floor to the living girl in his arms. “R-right, I… I need to… I need to get her back to her family…”

(Greed: You need him to ask for something from you specifically.)

He tilted his head and watched with narrowed eyes as the boy struggled to stand with the girl he could barely lift.

(Greed: And there’s your in.)

With a smile he bowed down and offered his arms to the wary child. “You look like you’re having trouble lifting her, would you like me to lend you my strength until your task is complete?”

The boy stopped, before glancing up at him with wide eyes. “You, you’re a demon…”

“True, but irrelevant.” He nodded. “What is relevant however, is that I must assist whomever summoned me. Which currently is you, my boy.”

“You… you can’t trust Demons.” The boy told Booker, while doing what he could to drag the still unconscious girl away.

“Except, when they’re bound by a deal.” He pointed out. “And our deal clearly states that I cannot kill you.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed as he pulled the girl close with a (grotesque) frown. “You can’t kill me?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

(Sharp.) He grinned, because there really wasn’t anything keeping him from killing-

(Greed: Actually, remember when I said an inability to kill? That wasn’t limited to just the summoner.)

(Wrath: He was protecting the boy.)

(Envy: Or just putting down a basic protection.)

(Sloth: Either way, kid should know…)

“I can’t kill anyone while I’m here.” He confessed, doing his best to contain what irritation he could.

(Gluttony: Killing a man has been a human right since Cain and Abel!)

(Envy: We aren’t exactly human though.)

(Gluttony: Carnivores have had the right even longer!)

In contrast to his feelings on the matter, the boy looked somewhat relieved as he gave the corpse another guilty look. “Of course he wouldn’t be that stupid…”

Seeming to trust his dead mentor more than he did Booker, the boy finally relented and told him, “You can carry her but I want you to stay nearby.”

“Of course.” He smiled as he picked the girl up with far less trouble than the boy had had. “Now then, why don’t you lead the way?”

The boy gave him another glance before nodding and making his way up a set of nearby stairs.

Following after, he soon found himself in a workshop of some sort filled with a number of what appeared to be metal skeletons lining the walls in various states of dress, and more of those screens like the kind he’d seen while in the basement of the Smiling Man’s home in Ira Invidia.

(Pride: So much interesting technology… Do you think we can sneak any of this back home with us?)

(We’ll see…) He thought, drawing his eyes away from the numerous tools that he could not name lining a table and back to the boy in front of him.

(Lust: Aren’t you getting tired of calling him ‘the boy’?)

(A little.) He admitted. “Tell me boy, what is your name?”

The boy paused at a door. “My name… why do you need my name?”

“For civil conversation?” He offered as way of a confused answer. “Unless you wish for me to simply refer to you as ‘boy’?”

The boy’s eyes drifted around the room, before settling on one of the skeletons wrapped in brown fur of some kind. “Bugsby… you can call me Bugsby.”

(Greed: He’s lying.)

(Envy: Names have power.)

(Sloth: At least if they’re the right names to the right people.)

Deciding it wasn’t going to hinder him in any way since the boy’s name meant nothing in his hands, he allowed this alias with no protest. “Well then Bugsby. If you don’t mind me asking, where exactly are we taking this girl?”

Bugsby was quiet for a moment, his hand on the door. “Back to her family and… away from all of this.”

With that said the boy pushed the door open and held it open as Booker stepped out into a parking lot behind a building and caged in by a chain link fence. The night sky above, while filled with a number of dark clouds, also possessed a clear view of a nearly full moon looking down on them.

A chill swept through the air and Bugsy pulled his coat closer.

“Come on… It’s just a few blocks away, try not to draw attention…” The boy looked at him before looking away. “We’re so lucky it’s Halloween.”

“Is it?” He smiled as he followed after. “I wonder if there’s a mass in the cimetière? Or a party in the speakeasies.”

While he couldn’t remember the holiday proper, he knew it was a day-

(Envy: -to respect the dead.)

(Lust: And party like you’re dying!)

“Probably?” Bugsby (hideously) frowned in confusion. “It doesn’t matter though.”

“It matters if you intend to live and laugh, my boy!” He chuckled, a faint sway to his hips as he remembered a tune that would make any Baron dance.

“Yeah, those aren’t big things in my family.” Bugsby scoffed, as they started walking through streets filled with decorations.

(Envy: Ominous…)

“Oh, and what does that mean?” He wondered, sure that the events that led to the interesting scene in that basement were just as if not more interesting.

“It means they’re all dead, because I… because I didn’t stop him in time!” Bugsby spat, more at himself than Booker. “I knew something weird was going on and I-I did nothing until… until everyone else was… I did nothing…”

(Pride: So he wasn’t the ritualist’s apprentice, but rather one of his victims.)

(Gluttony: The boy is a survivor. The last man standing.)

(Lust: He’s also all alone…)

(Sloth: There are different kinds of ‘alone’. Which is he?)

“You truly have no one?” He asked, not quite empathizing with the boy given how in all his memories he’d never been alone, and not quite sympathizing given his lack of pity for a stranger but still feeling something.

Bugsby was quiet for a moment, his unspoken answer clearly eating at the lad. “Maybe, maybe a friend of… a friend of my father’s but… I don’t know…”

The boy looked back at him, or rather at the girl in his arms before sighing. “All I know is that she’s got a family still and I need to get her back to it.”

“I see…” He nodded in understanding, his eyes drifting to a number of children wearing costumes of all sorts, their parents trailing a short distance behind. Something that the boy in front of him would never experience again.

His eyes stayed on the parents for a moment longer as he wondered, (have I ever experienced that?)

What few memories he’d managed to regain had focused either on his childhood in the country or his time as the leader of the Rabid Red-Eyed Rabbits gang. The fact that he had a descendant told him he must’ve had children or at least a child at some point, but… (I can’t remember…)

(Envy: A family…)

(Pride: Their names…)

(Lust: Their love…)

(Gluttony: Their life…)

(Wrath: Their warmth…)

(Sloth: Their laughter…)

(Greed: We have nothing…)

Maybe he did know something about loneliness after all.

Feeling his smile begin to droop he forced his smile back to peak cheeks and turned his attention back to the nearest distraction at hand. “Given the situation at hand, I can’t help but wonder how you got into that basement?”

Bugsby was quiet for a moment, a long one in which Booker thought he wouldn’t answer, before finally saying, “He let me in… Taught me things I didn’t understand… He thought I was like him… Heh, and I guess he was right since I… since I killed him, heh…” The boy’s laugh was hollow in a way no laugh should be.

(Pride: So he is the summoner’s apprentice then?)

(Wrath: Difficult to say.)

(Lust: The feelings are fresh. This kind of stuff takes time to heal.)

(Sloth: If it ever does.)

(Envy: And if he ever forgives himself.)

“This is the place.” Bugsby told him after a moment, the pair of them standing in front of a house covered in decorations of all sorts in spite of all the lights being off. “Leave her on the porch, in front of the door.”

“Very well.” He nodded, before making his way up the cement path as Bugsby stayed by his side.

Once he set the girl on the ground, Bugsby stared at the door for a moment before raising a hand and banging his fist on the door with enough force to wake the neighborhood. An act he repeated until some of the lights inside began to turn on.

“Alright, we need to go before anyone sees us here.” The boy told him, taking off in a sprint.

“Oh, you don’t intend to take credit for your good deeds?” He wondered, as he easily followed after with his long legged gait. “I mean why run when you saved the girl’s life?”

“Because I’m the reason he even managed to catch her.” Bugsby answered as he slid into a hiding spot and turned to watch the house behind them.

Following suit, they both watched as a dark haired man and a blonde woman step out of the house, the pair breaking down into tears upon finding the girl -their daughter- unconscious on the ground, before slowly panicking as she didn’t wake.

“Alright, from here her parents will take her to the hospital and they’ll take care of the drug… he used on her.” Bugsby assured him, only stepping into the open once the couple had run back inside. “All that’s left is to… clean things up in the basement…” The boy looked his way with eyes so very tired for one his age. “Can you… can you help with that?”

(Pride: We could melt the body with some household chemicals.)

(Greed: Or sell it on the black market.)

(Lust: Ooh, we could frame it as an accident!)

(Envy: Magic can do a lot with a bit of time.)

(Gluttony: I’m still hungry. Let’s just eat the thing.)

(Wrath: Fire tends to work when there’s a lot of evidence.)

(Sloth: Easiest way is to just take it and dump it somewhere.)

“I do believe that’s within my skill set.” He grinned.