Sophia really came in clutch with that timing. I needed a distraction. For you see, I had fully expected the various travelers to have carriages pulled by tamed animals, but what I had expected were horses. What I had NOT expected, were fucking giraffes again. Their eyes glistening with the joy of bringing about despair, those damn devil horns atop their head, spotted in tan and brown despite the fact that those colors did not camouflage into the surrounding woodlands at all. How the hell did a 30 foot tall being of pure evil even intend to hide itself anyway?! The answer: It didn’t. Those spots weren’t camouflage, they were a warning. They wanted you to see them coming, to know they were there, just beyond the treetops. They wanted to see your face grow ashen as they relentlessly hunted you down. And now, I was somehow supposed to sleep in a box being pulled by these monstrosities?! I half expected them to mistake the carriage for a coffin and try to bury me alive.

So yeah, for these few days that I wouldn’t be able to head home, I also probably wouldn’t be sleeping. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good multi-day bender where I’m just up and doing stuff for a week straight before just collapsing and going into a coma for 24 hours from sleep deprivation. In a weird way I’ve kinda missed it. Maybe not the auditory hallucinations or the just general lack of motor control or judgment capabilities, but more so just the self imposed isolation of it. The feeling of being the only one awake at three in the morning and just driving around, going nowhere in particular, and ending up at a Waffle House, thinking about life, or random bullshit that came to you throughout the week. God I miss chocolate milk and bacon.

When we’d all been discussing the travel arrangements, we had to choose between stopping at some of the four towns in between here and the Capital, or just going straight there. If we stopped at the other towns, we’d be able to actually sleep in beds and our nights would be safer, but it would also extend our travel time to about two weeks. Meanwhile going straight there will only take us around four days, but it will be much less comfortable and considerably more dangerous. What ended up making the decision for the travelers was the financials of both options. The Capital’s establishments don’t charge townsfolk who come to supply the Bazaar for food, lodging, or taking care of the monstrosities pulling their carts. They need to encourage traders to come for them to survive after all.

After we decided to go straight to the Capital, this obviously meant that we would be camping outside for four or five days, so we needed to set up a watch schedule. Half of us would stay awake during the day and take care of any monsters that showed up, and half of us would sleep in the carriages and wake up at night to guard the camp, and seeing as A) I was always more of a night owl anyway, B) I actually rather enjoy sleeping in the car, and C) spending all of my waking hours stuck in a small box would actually drive me insane, I chose to be part of the night watch, Ash tagging along with me. This was before I learned of exactly what would be pulling us of course.

This all ultimately resulted in me spending several hours asking Sean everything he knew about Hell’s oceans, so that I could compare them to the oceans of Earth. Now, this was a bit tricky, as I’m not exactly a marinologist or big into environmental sciences, so if you took all of the information that humans have gathered about the ocean and combined it, I knew maybe one percent of that. And then if you take into account the fact that something like 90% of Earth’s oceans were unexplored… yeah, my baseline knowledge was severely lacking in that department. However, what I’m fairly certain didn’t exist in my old world were currents that would constantly shift speeds and change directions, random spots that would end up teleporting you somewhere completely different, and cosmic horrors that couldn’t properly be perceived swimming around the depths. Well, maybe the cosmic horrors.

The biggest issue with trying to determine how much was magic law and how much was normal physics was the fact that I didn’t fully understand Hell’s situation in space. I didn’t know how big it was, how fast it was actually turning, not to mention the fact that it had four moons, all of which were affecting tidal patterns. However, the key for me lay in that final word: patterns. Yes there were more moons orbiting Hell than in my old world, but they still followed a predictable cycle. I’d been having Sophia chart the moon’s positions in the night sky for over a year now, and while the number of days for each one to make a full cycle around Hell was different for each one, with the shortest being 15 days and the longest being 32, each one is still one hundred percent predictable. This means that while the oceans of Hell should be more complex, they shouldn’t be downright chaotic, and the moons also didn’t explain the whole opening and closing wormholes and currents constantly shifting second by second things.

All of this lent credence to the theory that these phenomena are the result of magical law, and were somehow connected to the concept of what an ocean not only is, but what it represents on a cosmic scale. Mystery, chaos, terrifying life. Were all of these natural byproducts of the oceanic concept, or were they actually necessary facets of it? For example, if you had a massive body of water, but it was just water, there were no tides, no life, no mystery and intrigue…would that still be an Ocean? Or would it just be a shit ton of water? And if Sean could manipulate the Aspect of Reality that was the ocean, did that mean he had a sort of inherent dominion over this added concept of unknowability? I gave him a special series of tests to conduct that had several similarities to Sophia’s special fire tests. Tests that he was more than happy to undergo, as for once they wouldn’t just be helping provide me with information, but also could potentially assist him down his own path to divinity.

Once I gave him his special tests though, I ended up with no distractions once more, stuck in a box with Ash getting pulled by a true Horror. I spoke with her a bit, as my conversations and tests, combined with the fact that we had both woken up very shortly before we left, had made it so that she couldn’t sleep. She was staring at me rather intently as we spoke, finally choosing to demolish my weak attempt at diverting my attention from the problem, “I don’t get it, I’ve never seen you act this way before. What is it about these ‘giraffes’ that freak you out so much?”

I sighed and responded, telling her the dramatic tale of betrayal that had birthed my aversion to these vile beasts.

“You see Ash, in the world I’m from, there are really no more unexplored lands. Sure there are still wild areas, but for the most part they’re all completely mapped out, and we know everything that’s there. And due to the small size of the world, we’ve had global communication for hundreds of years. Now, 500 years ago, communicating with the other side of the world would still take several years per message, and due to the existence of constant wars for dominance and expansion, it wasn’t particularly reliable, however, it was still possible. This global information network was improved upon for centuries though, with many different people making new inventions, technology to improve it even more.

“We built trains that could move thousands of people or building materials from one side of the continent to the other in under a week, and while the original ships that found the new lands had taken months to cross the ocean, we built ships that could cross it in just a couple of weeks. We built devices called radios that could send out your voice to everyone in the world, all at the same time. And as the ability to communicate on a global scale increased for every person, so did the base level of knowledge that everyone had access to.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Think for a moment of all of the things that I’ve been able to make or enchant, and imagine millions, billions of people with the same or even a little less knowledge than I possess coming up with new things to create, then sharing them with the world, so that someone else could take that original idea, and improve it, expand on it to eventually create something completely new based on the same original concept.

“This caused a technological boom that advanced the entire world’s standard of living by an absurd degree in just a couple hundred years. One of the pinnacles of this technological boom was a concept referred to as ‘The Internet’. All of the information that humanity had to offer, every idea, every new discovery or creation, could be accessed by literally anyone at any time. Think of it like a magical book that contains literally everything that humans have ever figured out, or questions that have been asked. Anything you want to know, you can ask this magical book and instantly gain access to every single piece of information that humans have ever collected about your question.”

Ash interrupted me with, “That sounds absolutely incredible, but what the hell does that have to do with you being scared of giraffes?”

“I’m getting to that, I need to set the stage for you to understand the concept of zoos. You see, Zoos have been a thing for like, four thousand years or something. Ancient Kings and Queens would gather all of the animals of the lands and keep them within their grounds as a show of power. However, as technology progressed and the information network expanded, someone thought, ‘why don’t we do the same thing? But instead of being to display dominance and power, it could be a sort of educational tool, to provide a reference for people to learn about animals from places they’ll never get to see in the wild?’

“And with the new global capacity for communication and travel, people all around the world collected specimens, essentially kidnapping animals from their natural habitats and sending them to foreign countries, so that someone from America could see and learn about kangaroos from the opposite side of the planet.

“Our story takes place at one of these zoos when I was about 10ish years old. This particular zoo happened to have a tall bridge that you could cross, and be eye level with the giraffes in question. You could even purchase some food for them, so the giraffes would come up to you and eat out of your hand. This made the giraffes very comfortable with getting up close and personal to humans.

“Now, I was a very small child. Around 4’ tall, maybe 70 pounds soaking wet. The head of a giraffe, for reference, is about half of my height, and can carry the momentum of their entire 3000 pound body. One of them approached me, and started licking my head. Now, just this wouldn’t really be a big deal, but I happened to get a good look at a giraffe’s tongue, which will become crucial to the story later on. Their tongues are over a foot long, and black as the damn night. Okay, maybe not Sophia levels of dark, but if they happen to be covering your entire face, yes, sufficiently dark enough to completely blind you.

“Where shit really went down, is somehow the giraffe that was licking my head conveyed to its buddies that I was delicious or something. Next thing I know, I’m being pushed around by three giraffe heads like massive boulders nudging into me, completely off balance and trapped by their whims. All three of them started licking my head at the same time, completely covering my face, my ears, my nose, my mouth, my eyes. I could see nothing, I heard only in short bursts when a tongue happened to not be covering my ears, I couldn’t breathe, it was hot, suffocating, and disgustingly slimy. I was drowning in giraffe saliva, and being crushed by their heads.

“A certain habit of mine is that when I’m in pain, or really scared, I start laughing. It’s great when you’re in a haunted house and just kinda adding to the overall vibe, but when you’re a small child who’s in the process of dying, and everyone around you just hears coughs and laughter, they assume everything is fine. There was no one to help me, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. I was getting rammed all over by animals the size of trees, it was a miracle that I didn’t break a single bone. Eventually, I managed to push one of them away, breaking the encirclement, and escaping with my life.”

I turned to Ash, stating gravely, “And that is the story of that time I was waterboarded by giraffes. They are evil creatures, who are not to be trusted.” Ash stared at me in silence for a while before eventually bursting into laughter.

“It’s not nice to laugh at someone who opened up their traumas to you Ash, just FYI.” Her laughter only grew more cacophonous as she choked out, “So let me get this straight. You go to a place to see giraffes. You find them, and they give you kisses. Because they’re big and you’re small, you get scared, and laugh. Because you’re laughing, everyone around you thinks you’re having a good time before you finally run away and at that moment vow to never get close to another giraffe again?”

“Yeah, that about sums it up, though I wouldn’t call actual torture and attempted murder ‘giving kisses’.” Her laughter was joined by Sophia’s own suppressed giggles ringing in my mind. “You two suck just so you know. Here I am, opening my heart to you, revealing one of the scariest moments of my young life, and you’re laughing. You suck.”

“Only for you.” Sophia sent flirtatiously through her giggles, accidentally sending it through the general channel and not the soulbond, causing Ash to choke on her own laughter. Serves her right, I thought to myself. I then told Sophia to watch what channel she sent messages through, as there was no need for Ash to know too much about our private life. After a while, the two of them finally stopped laughing at my pain and Ash said,

“Honestly I think that’s kinda stupid and hilarious, but sorry for laughing at you.”

“Somehow I get the feeling that you lack sincerity.”

She shook her head then came over to sit beside me, stroking my hair the same way I often did for her and Sophia. “Nah, that wasn’t cool of us. Don’t worry, I won’t let the big scary monster hurt you, so go ahead and sleep.”

It was times like these that I really wished I still had my eyes so I could scowl at her for the blatant sarcasm in her words. I know I’m not always the best at picking it up, but this one was just obvious. She ignored my failed attempt to express irritation, and continued stroking my head, singing some sort of lullaby I couldn’t understand the words to. It was odd, because I definitely felt some sort of magic in her words, but it clearly wasn’t the kind that translated everything. Instead, I felt my muscles relax, and my mind start to wander, lulling me to sleep despite the terror outside the carriage.

When I awoke, the carriage was still moving, but the light outside had dimmed considerably, making my vision far sharper, as the sunlight in the daytime tended to interfere slightly with the infrared colors that my blindfold picked up. Beside me I saw Ash leaning against me, still sound asleep. I thought of the spell she had used a few hours ago, the one to make me fall unconscious. While perhaps not demonic magic, it was rather similar. A way to inflict a certain state of existence on another person. Ever since I lost my natural vision, I also lost that inherent, faint link to the soul of another person that you get whenever you make eye contact, which meant that the Evil Eye spell that I had practiced so much back in my first few months on this new world was now unusable, halting my progress in demonic magic.

But what if I could connect with the soul another way? The arts are generally referred to as ‘self expression’, and what is ‘self expression’ but a means of imposing the state of your soul upon the world? And if you have an observer, and a little bit of magic, why couldn’t you impose that state of your soul to influence theirs? I had an idea of a way to start using demonic magic again, but first I would need an instrument to use it. While Ash continued lightly snoring beside me, I pulled out my enchanting diary, and started working on designs, and plans for this short journey to the Capital.