17. Bone Growth, Literally

Isaac inhaled deeply before stepping off the train after it screeched to a halt at the Inferno platform, savoring his last not-burning breath of air for the next foreseeable hour, though even that was warm at this point. Mortimer looked at him oddly.

“What? The heat’s fucking awful.”

“Oh, I understand.” Despite his words, Mortimer didn’t look remotely bothered by the rise in temperature, his demeanor entirely unchanged. Isaac frowned.

“Is that part of being undead? Not feeling temperature?”

The man hummed in response, which Isaac took as affirmation.

The two rose from the plastic train seats and stepped out. Isaac found his eyes drifting towards the demon who was still staring out the window. He frowned, vaguely wondering if he should say something. Mortimer seemed to sense his thoughts.

“Maybe he’s riding the train for fun,” he suggested.

Isaac stared at the demon, who had a sort of faraway gaze in his eyes that made him look not quite there. “I don’t think he even knows he’s on a train, to be honest.”

“Hm.”

There was a telltale rumble as the doors began to slide closed. Isaac quickly stuck his arm out to keep them open. Well, too late now. At the very least the demon certainly didn’t look unhappy, so he at least didn’t have to have that on his conscience as he and Mortimer stepped off the train and made the trek up the stairs and broken escalator to the Inferno.

The Inferno looked like it always did, and the ever present heat was just as overwhelming as usual. Notably the bridges weren’t moving around as much that day, only swaying lightly (but definitely still swaying) rather than violently oscillating like they’d been doing when he’d come for Olzu’s stat update.

The flip side was that the cavern walls were pulsing a little more than usual, rippling about as much as the ceiling usually was. They almost looked soft when they waved like that with their glowing interiors, but Isaac knew from experience that they were somehow still hard as rock when touched.

“You been here before?” Isaac asked. Mortimer nodded.

“A few times, to deliver things.” He was staring intently at the walls. “I don’t recall the cavern walls moving this much.”

“Yeah, they’re kind of inconsistent.”

Isaac pulled out the tablet, turning it on and pulling up the live map. It was much more troublesome to find names when they weren’t highlighted thanks to update requests, and as he scanned through the map of the Inferno, starting at the top layer where Lucius usually was, he couldn’t find him. He frowned, slowly moving lower and lower, but still he saw no sign of the demon. Odd. Had he gone to another realm? Unlikely. Isaac had never seen Lucius outside the Inferno before.

“What’s wrong?”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Can’t find him,” Isaac muttered as he began scanning the map again, just in case he’d missed the demon’s name the first time around.

“Oh, well that’s unfortunate.” Mortimer didn’t sound all that bothered by it.

“Hang on.” While he didn’t find Lucius’s name, he did spot another familiar one not too far from the bottom of the cavern. Olzu’s name was located on the center of one of the arcing bridges. He pointed the location out to Mortimer. “This guy might know where Lucius is.”

“You’re being much more proactive about this than I expected,” Mortimer observed.

Isaac rolled his eyes as he tucked his tablet under his arm and turned towards the stairs. “Might as well get this shit over with all at once, right?” His eyes drifted over to the long, narrow bridges crossing the space overhead and silently prayed whichever bridge Olzu was on was one of the more stable ones.

Mortimer seemed to accept that answer, silently following as Isaac began climbing up the cavern’s spiraling stairs.

—

The positives were that Olzu was on one of the lower bridges, which meant minimal stair climbing, and it also didn’t sway too much when compared to its neighbors. The negative was that the specific bridge was extremely narrow and had no railings. And even if this bridge was closer to the ground, it was still very much “high enough to kill an ordinary human if you fall trying to get to the tiny demon standing in the middle yelling about who knows what, and wouldn’t that be a very stupid way to die” height.

Olzu, for his part, was yelling at (what Isaac assumed to be) the top of his lungs to some demon far above them, way beyond what his mortal eyes could make out. Olzu’s small stature was reflective of his voice, it seemed, and Isaac could only catch the occasional swear word here and there. Which was all well and good; he didn’t really feel like dealing with whatever that was in the first place.

Isaac squinted at the gently swaying bridge, silently measuring if it was wide enough to stand on top of with two feet side to side. Based on his estimates, someone human sized would have to shuffle over sideways or walk in a straight line like a supermodel. Neither option seemed particularly safe or stable.

“Hey, Olzu!” He raised his voice loud enough to make himself cringe, but it either wasn’t enough to cross the wide expanse of the cavern or Olzu was too preoccupied with whatever he was doing to listen. Isaac cursed under his breath and attempted to shout again, which worked about as well as the first time had.

Mortimer took a step closer, slowly looking between Izaac and the small demon standing on the center of the bridge. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think? I’m not risking my life on that goddamn bridge.”

Mortimer glanced down, humming thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose the fall would probably kill you.” He slowly raised his hand. Isaac was about to ask what he was doing, but before the words could leave his mouth, something long, matte, and white extended from the center of his palm and grew longer and longer, slowly crossing the expanse of the cavern.

Isaac stared at it, distantly processing that it was bone. He could vaguely recall hitting [EXPAND DETAILS] on Mortimer’s sheet once and one of the skills being [SKILL BONE GROWTH LVL 26]. At the time he’d looked at it oddly and decided against asking about it. Well, it looks like he’d gotten his answer either way.

At this point the bone had extended all the way to where Olzu was, somehow managing to hold itself together without snapping in two under its own weight. It was hard to see from where he was standing, but Isaac could catch faint glimpses of the bone looping around a still preoccupied Olzu’s black cord necklace. The moment it was securely through, the bone shot backwards, retreating back into Mortimer’s palm while a screeching Olzu was dragged back with it.

Isaac barely had the time to contemplate where the fuck all that extra bone went when a small demon landed on the ground right in front of them, tumbling around and spitting demonic curses. Mortimer’s expression didn’t move an inch as the bone finished retracting, leaving behind a smooth palm in its wake with no indication that anything unusual had happened at all. Isaac raised an eyebrow.

“Well. I guess that’s one way to do it.”