The first thing Angel saw as she stepped out of the portal onto Kra was… nothing. Nothing at all. This isn’t to say there was nothing around—there certainly may have been so far as Angel could tell—but the problem was it was very, very dark on Kra, or at the very least it was at her location on Kra. This made for a particularly anticlimactic arrival and though this disappointed her, she resolved to keep her spirits up and press on with her adventure to an alien world.
And so, she opened up her Ledger, intent on finding a spell to help with her predicament.
After a solid minute of no page turning whatsoever, Lew sighed not unlike a cat with indigestion. [When are you going to ask?]
“Ask what?” she distractedly replied.
[Really? Do I really have to spell it out for you?]
“Lew, I’m trying to find a spell for a flashlight in here, would you please keep it down in there?”
[So I see. And how’s that going for you, kid?]
“Well if you must know, I’m having some trouble reading the pages.”
[Mhm, yeah, that makes sense. Any plans on how you’re gonna solve that?]
“With a flashlight!”
[A flashlight you intend to make with a spell from a book you want that flashlight to read.]
“That sounds about right.”
Lew waited a few seconds more, and when it became apparent Angel really was going to just sit there and try to will her faulty plan to work through sheer stubbornness, he added, [And have you considered making a portal to go somewhere with light?]
Angel gasped, and for a brief, transient moment, Lew thought he’d gotten through to her. One would think the demon would have learned better after his months possessed by her. “Oh! One sec.”
When she finished drawing the portal, Lew immediately noticed something was very, very wrong. This had everything to do with the abrupt, all-consuming heat, the sudden shift of gravity towards the portal, and the blinding light. The latter had been the entire point, but the first two were very concerning indeed, as much of the lush forest they had been in—which could now be seen on account of the illumination provided by the portal—burst into flames that were promptly sucked through the portal. Having been the closest person or thing to the portal at the time of its opening, Angel had already been sucked through into the vacuum of space on the other side and was moving at a good clip towards the surface of a star.
[Go back! Go back! Go back!!]
“One sec, lemme just look up—”
[NO! Go now! Hurry!!]
Angel drew another portal back to the forest of Kra and fell through due to her momentum, leaving her on the earthy soil between the two portals. Her body was immediately subjected to the tremendous gravitational force of each portal, with each pulling her in a different direction. This left her roughly positioned midway between them, but though it was slow, she was definitely shifting towards the portal she had just made on account of it being slightly closer to the star.
[Now close them both at the same time!]
With a snap of her fingers, Angel allowed the portals to close, and she slumped a bit into the solid ground when the gravity was dispelled. Having narrowly avoided being sucked into the surface of a star, she ought to have been relieved at the close save. Instead, her reaction was predictable for any who knew her.
“Oh shoot, now I can’t see again.”
Though the immediate vicinity had been set ablaze when she opened the first portal, the oxygen needed for the fire to continue burning had been sucked through, leaving the area shrouded in darkness once more with the added perk of an overwhelming smell of ash and sulfur. This was a great outcome insofar as a potential forest fire was concerned, but not as much in regards to the original goal.
[When I said a portal to somewhere with light, I didn’t mean the surface of a goddamn star!!] Lew incredulously proclaimed.
“Star? That was the Sun.”
Though he called Earth ‘Hummieball’ and had thought Earth pronounced Ear-th up until just a few minutes ago, Lew was still somehow familiar with this particular name relevant to the Earth’s solar system. [The Sun is a star!]
“Oh. Well, I thought it would help me read.”
[Look, just make a portal to somewhere where the sun’s out and read there. Like that place we just were.]
“The surface of the Sun?”
[For fuck’s sake, no! I meant the… oh, what was that place called again? Whatever that place was where your last target died.]
“Oh! Okay, sure thing.”
One portal later, Angel sat down on the ledge of the roof she had departed to Kra from earlier. Down below, there was a great deal of hullabaloo as the emergency services vehicles were still addressing the situation resulting from her previous target’s death, but Angel only had eyes for her Ledger as she flipped it open to the index, her finger trailing down the listings as she hunted for what she was looking for. “Flashlight… Where are you, flashlight…”
[Pretty sure there ain’t a specific listing for that. You’d just use the object generation spell with a flashlight in mind. I’ve got something better in mind though: Look up the night vision spell.]
“Oh, thanks!” she cheerfully replied as she flipped further back to the N’s. “You’re being awfully helpful. May I ask why? This isn’t for a job.”
[Yeah, well, I’m quasi-interested in this. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Krae, and it’s kinda fun watching them cough up literal shit, so it might be a fun trip.]
“That’s the spirit! Thank you!” She located the relevant listing, flipped forwards, and read it. “Hm… Okay, looks simple enough.”
That didn’t precisely reassure Lew. Likely because ‘simple enough’ often wasn’t simple enough where Angel was concerned. However, there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he simply watched with bated breath—not that he had actual breathing he could do, so the point was rendered moot—as she formed a new portal back to Kra and stepped through. The portal winked closed, throwing her once more into pitch black, and when she cast the night vision spell, the forest did in fact become visible. Now that she could see again, she found herself at what amounted to ground zero of a bomb. The trees, which she had only just noticed were massive and likely would have stretched high up above her, had become so warped at their bases that the trunks had collapsed inward. The only reason there was even a clear patch of ground to return to was the trunks had apparently fallen simultaneously and caught against one another on the way down to the ground, effectively creating a precarious roof.
“Well ain’t this a stroke of luck!”
[Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly look like the kind of thing that’s gonna last long. Get the fuck out while you can, yeah?]
Angel didn’t disagree, so she hustled to depart, weaving her way between row after row of the many scorched black trunks. Eventually she reached a tree line that hadn’t been brutalized, and it was even more apparent how amazingly large the trees on Kra were. She had heard of Redwood trees in California that were so large a car could drive through a tunnel in one, but these were so thick the bases met or perhaps even surpassed the area of an average house. They also stretched so absurdly high that she found herself comparing them to skyscrapers. The leaves growing at the tops of the trees overlapped each other, all but ensuring that even if it had been daytime on Kra, she wouldn’t have seen much of it down at the root level.
Now that she was out of the area impacted by the accident with the portal, Angel asked, “So where do the Krae live?”
[They make these large structures on the trees that go the whole way around and usually stretch from near the bottom all the way up to the top. Can’t miss ‘em. As for where one of those is though… Beats me. It’s been a few centuries since I’ve been here, and the Krae don’t live that long, so I wouldn’t know anyone for the Ledger to latch onto for a portal. I have fuck all clue where we are, so a city or village could be in any direction.]
She considered that for a moment before shrugging. “Well, we can just keep walking in this direction. If we find some Krae, great. If not, then I’ll still be happy. This is an alien world, so there’s probably loads of super snazzy stuff all over!”
[Nature,] Lew deadpanned. [Woo.]
Angel didn’t let that response get her down and started hiking. It took several minutes to get away from the sight of the portal fiasco, but eventually they began to see more flora than just the gigantic trees, which had been sturdy enough to weather the initial blast of heat and pull of gravity. The trees had patches of moss and other vegetation like vines covering their trunks, and the forest floor was covered in all sorts of strange plants. One type of flower was brightly, erratically colored, almost never located around other flowers like it, and swayed its stem and petals as if the wind were blowing past despite there being none that Angel could feel. There were patches of a purple grass that retreated into the ground with surprising alacrity when she strode past, leaving only the barest tips of itself poking out from the soil. Here and there she also spotted groupings of a red tubular plant that stretched up perhaps four feet off the ground and had a ridge of sickly looking purple pustules lining the top of it. Angel felt the itch to stop and sketch some of these species, but she wanted to actually encounter some Krae even more and reasoned she could always come back to draw them later. She had no idea how she would explain the strange picture that would result to Mr. Godfrey, but she would play that by ear.
It took nearly an hour of hiking before Angel came across any fauna. She had begun to doubt there were any on the forest floor, but it seemed they had just fled in the wake of the portal. Small creatures that looked exactly like rats scurried about, and without catching one to examine it up close, she couldn’t determine what differences—if any—it had. There were packs of a four legged creature the size of a large dog that had shaggy fur, a long tail that trailed along the ground, perky ears, and eyes that reminded Angel of a cat’s, though the slit was horizontal instead of vertical. The creatures frightened easily if she got too close but didn’t seem to be bothered by any of the rat-a-likes on the ground, nor did there seem to be any issue the other way around. She paused for a bit to try and work on coaxing over one of the shaggy creatures, and it had warily considered her for a minute only for its head to abruptly snap to the side. It tried to flee, but a new creature was upon it an instant later. The newcomer looked like a male deer with thicker, more muscled limbs, and its horns curved forward rather than up and to the side with each ending in very sharp points, which it used to impale its shaggy prey upon. It shook its head a few times, deepening the wounds it had inflicted, then bucked it off before setting upon it with sharp teeth that didn’t belong on any deer Angel had ever seen.
Its victim made a mournful cry and went limp, and the predator regarded her for a moment before seeming to come to the determination she wouldn’t bother it. It knelt down and began to properly eat, and this time Angel couldn’t resist pulling out her sketchbook and pencils.
[This is what finally convinced you to stop and draw, huh? A brutal murder?]
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“Well I can always come back to sketch those other animals and plants when I have time, but this isn’t something I’m necessarily guaranteed to see again!” she replied as she worked on the crude rendition of the scene before her. “It’s like stumbling upon a grizzly bear catching a salmon out of a river, or a cougar pouncing on a deer!”
[Cougars hunting… deer? I thought hunting wildlife was more of a sport for male hummies. Only cougars I’ve ever seen ‘hunting’ were patrolling clubs and bars for young men to impale themselves on.]
“No, no. Cougars are these big cats that live in the wild back home. I think they’re all over the US, actually.”
[Wha— Why would you use the same name for two things that fucking different? That doesn’t make any sense!]
“I dunno what you’re even talking about. Mama always told me to stay away from places like that, and I wasn’t old enough until rec—”
Angel was cut off by an abrupt stabbing sensation in multiple spots up and down her arm and leg, and she dropped her materials as she was heaved up into the air. “Oh look, Lew! It’s hunting me now too!”
[That hardly seems like something to be excited about,] Lew said, clearly exasperated. [Also, this is a different one. The other one is still over there chowing down on that walking mop.]
The new predator, which did appear to be the same species as the first, made a warbling cry and flung her away. She grunted as she landed on the ground with a thud, and she started to pick herself up only to find something was holding her down. Glancing down, she realized she was being held in place by the purple grass from earlier, which had snaked its way out and latched onto her limbs. A quick glance at where the original predator was showed the shaggy creature was also being held down by the purple grass but she hadn’t noticed before.
“Is this a symbiotic relationship? How nifty would that be, Lew?!”
[Only you would get excited about being skewered and tossed about the place. You do realize this thing wants to eat you, right?]
“But it’s cool! It’s like those birds on the crocs in Florida that I saw on the TV!”
The deer predator had made its way over to her and stared at her sealing wounds with its large black eyes for a moment, seemingly trying to puzzle out what had happened. It didn’t get long to consider this wrinkle, however, as a bolt of green light struck its head, exploding it into gory bits that splattered everywhere. The constricting purple grass released her and instead grabbed at the little bits of meat, each tendril grabbing one hunk before retreating fully into the ground with its prize in hand… leaf? Whatever. The other predator had abandoned its kill in its rush to flee, but it too fell to a green light that caught it in the upper rear leg, crippling the creature and leaving it wide open to a third light that struck its head.
The humanoid creature that carefully descended from a tree overhead could clearly only be a Krae. It was covered in feathers from head to toe, had two large eyes set in its face with a prominent beak, and it gripped its long rifle-like weapon with two hands that closely resembled talons. The coloring and placement of the feathers on its face, which made it look almost angry to Angel, belied the soft voice it spoke with. “What are you?”
“Hi! I’m a human!”
The Krae reared back in surprise. “What…? It speaks Krakao?!”
“Speak what now? I don’t— oh right!” she cut herself off with a short laugh as she climbed to her feet. “The universal translator spell must still be on from earlier.”
[Oh my god, you can teach an old dog new tricks!] Lew said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
Angel almost replied that she could absolutely learn new things, but she stopped when the Krae spoke up again. “You are… intelligent life? Then I am very much so glad I did not hit you when I shot the uldan!”
[Intelligent? Woah now, buddy, you’re giving her too much credit!]
“Aw, Lew, there’s no need to be rude,” Angel remarked with a pout.
The Krae’s head turned a full ninety degrees sideways. “Lew? My name is Ukka, and I meant you no offense.”
“Oh no no, you’re fine! I was talking to Lew. He’s in my head.”
“A symbiotic species? Fascinating! Is this relationship how your injuries healed so quickly?”
“See Lew? Told you it was awesome!” Angel commented with a big grin.
[Uh huh, sure, the Krae said it is, so it must be true. Definitely listen to the shit spewers.]
She poked at the holes in her clothes lining her side and added, “Until I got Lew in my head, it would have taken me… I don’t even know how long to heal from something like this. A real long time, I bet.”
[Assuming you even lived. You hummies can’t heal for shit, you can’t regulate your body temperature, you don’t have tails…]
She ignored Lew’s continued ramblings about the—entirely true—failings of the human species and asked, “So hey, Ukka, was it? You are a Krae, yeah?”
“Why yes! And you are… you said, ‘human,’ yes?”
“Mhm! I’m from a different planet!”
“Well yes, I had presumed as such. We don’t get a lot of visitors here on Kra, nor do we leave very often ourselves, but we are not ignorant of other life amongst the stars.”
[Unlike some pitiful hummies I could name…]
“Where is your ship?” Ukka continued, unaware of Lew’s interjection.
“Oh, I didn’t come here on a ship. I came by a portal!”
“I do not understand.”
“It’s a magic circle I use to travel from one place to another. Here, check it out!”
She started drawing the circle, and Ukka took a half step back in alarm at the fire trailing from her finger, which became several more steps when the portal fully formed, revealing the mountain where Angel and Lew had first met.
“Oh my! How incredibly extraordinary!” It carefully inched forward, its head twisting this way and that as it examined the portal. “And how is it you do this, precisely?”
“It’s magic—I said that, didn’t I?”
“You did, you did. So sorry, I am just astounded! I’ve never quite seen— Oh pardon me, one moment.”
The Krae turned away and a wing extended from its back, obscuring its face from Angel as it hunched over slightly.
[Oh look! It’s doing the thing! Shit incoming in three…! Two…! One…!]
Ukka’s wing, though quite large, didn’t extend all the way to the ground, so Angel saw the wad of black mass hit the ground despite the Krae’s discretion. The portal snapped shut and her eyes went as wide as saucers as she stared gobsmacked at it, and she was still fixated when Ukka began speaking once again.
“So sorry, I was trying to hold it in, but… Angel? What are—?”
Angel leaned in closer and jabbed a finger into the gooey substance with a look of unholy glee on her face. “Leeeeew! You were right!”
[Of course I was!] the demon remarked haughtily. [And now that we’ve reminded ourselves of how awesome I am, would you please stop fingering this thing’s shit? It’s fucking gross.]
“Why are you touching my pellet?!” Ukka cried in dismay, dropping its rifle to clutch at its head with its talons as its wings extended fully and began waving about.
“Well it’s the whole—ooo, there are some bones in here—reason I came to Kra! See, Lew and I had this conversation a bit ago about whether—”
“Oh no, this is so mortifying! Please stop touching it! This is just dreadful!”
“Oh sorry! I hadn’t thought I’d be embarrassin’ you or nothin’! I just thought… Well, I’ll just leave it alone…”
Angel pulled her finger out and wiped it off on the ground, which didn’t really do much good in getting it cleaner, what with how she had literally rubbed her finger with dirt. She frowned, unslung her backpack, and used her clean hand to fish out the bag of soiled clothes from earlier. She then used the lingering clean portions of said clothes to properly remove the shit from her finger, and the desecrated clothes having been further defiled, she resealed the bag and tucked it back into her backpack.
“There, see? All better!”
[Until you use some goddamn hand sanitizer at minimum that finger is far from clean.]
Ukka’s wings had returned to their rest against its back, but it was still clutching at its face. “Why would you think that was okay?! What if I had done the same to your pellets! Surely you would not have thought that acceptable behavior?”
“Well, humans don’t really make pellets.”
“But that’s… Does your species digest everything it eats?”
“No, but if it’s small enough, then you just shit it out. This one time when I was a kid, I ate a penny ‘cause a penny saved is a penny earned, and I didn’t understand how bank accounts worked yet. It came out a day later!”
[That sounds like something your dumb ass would do right now.]
“Am I understanding you correctly? Your species passes everything it eats? Even indigestibles?”
“Mama told me doctors can do doctor things to get something out if it’s too big, but pretty much, yeah!”
Ukka considered this for a minute, and eventually its talon-like hands lowered to its sides. “I must confess, now that I have learned this about your species, I too am fascinated by the thought of examining your ‘shits.’ I have misjudged you, Angel. I am sorry.”
Angel gave the Krae a big smile. “Ain’t no thing! We’re both so different, we can’t help but be interesting to the other, huh?”
[Oh my fucking god, it’s like an after school special… Someone save me from this madness! Quick, go back to Hummieball, buy some vodka, and drink the whole bottle!]
“Be quiet in there, Lew,” she told him, knocking sharply on her head with her knuckles. Her smile turned apologetic. “Sorry, Lew’s acting up. I’d offer to show you one of my shits to look at, but ever since I got Lew in my head, I don’t pee, shit, or anything like that anymore.”
“I fear I would have declined—still terribly embarrassing, after all—but I thank you for the thought. I am intrigued by the logistics of how your body disposes of waste. Is this another instance of this magic, of which you speak?”
She pondered that for a moment then answered, “I think so? Never really bothered to figure it out. I suppose it’s ‘cause I’ve got a demon body now.”
[Blindly accepting things as a given without questioning them. Are you sure you weren’t raised in the church? I mean, you won’t touch vodka…]
It may have been Angel’s imagination, but she swore she saw Ukka’s feathers bristle for a moment before settling back down. “I fear I may have misheard. I thought you said you were a human?”
“Oh! Well see, I was but when I died I got put in Lew’s body, which is why he’s stuck in my head. Or I guess it’s his head, I suppose. He can get awful noisy sometimes.”
“I see… Well this has been a truly fascinating discussion with you, Angel! I must get these uldan back to my village soon, lest the meat spoil before it can be prepared for consumption, but I do not wish to cut off our time together. I would offer you our hospitality, that you may tell us more about magic and being a human turned… demon. Does this offer appease you?”
“Does it ever!” she agreed without hesitation. “I totally want to meet more Krae!”
“Very well! Allow me to bind my catch, then I shall guide the way.”
As Ukka set about preparing the slain uldan for transport, Lew sudden blurted, [Oh! Oh! Hey kid, I just remembered the Krae make this fantastic liq— uh, really good drink called Tré that you should totally try some of!]
“Okay! I’ll ask Ukka about it in a sec, Lew,” Angel distractedly said as she gathered up her fallen sketchbook and pencils. A burst of inspiration had hit her as she watched the Krae working with the uldan, and she hurried to sketch it out on a fresh page.
[Ugh, whatever. Just be sure to ask, got it? Don’t fucking forget!]
Her tongue stuck out as her hand and pencils worked away. The two of them continued with their respective tasks for some time, and it was ultimately Ukka who spoke up first. “I am ready to depart. Are you ready to go as well, Angel?”
“Uh, well, I didn’t quite finish, but I think I’ve got enough down to pause.” She held out the drawing with a wide smile and happily inquired, “What do you think?”
The Krae accepted the sketchbook, taking care to not damage the pages with its talons. It stared down at the picture for a long time without saying anything.
Lew eventually chuckled then said in a mocking, sing-song voice, [Looks like somebody’s about to get a rude awakening about how bad her drawing skills are.]
Angel began to fidget as the silence stretched on, worrying that Lew might be correct—that Ukka might not like it after all. Her smile wavering, she asked, “What, uh, do you think?”
“This is… me?” Ukka finally spoke up, its tone the softest she had heard it speak with yet.
“Yeah, I, uh… Well, you were awful kind about saving me from the deer-thingie and about how I embarrassed you when I poked your pellet, and now you’re offering to give me a place to stay for a bit, and well, uh…” In a moment of insightfulness—a rarity for our protagonist, the narrator is aware, especially so soon after she used the word ‘deer-thingie’ to refer to the alien species she had been mauled by not so long ago—she realized she was rambling and forced herself to stop and take a deep breath before continuing. “Well, it ain’t much, but I wanted to do something for my new friend.”
Ukka’s feathers shifted in a way she couldn’t quite describe, but at least this time she was confident her eyes weren’t deceiving her. “It is… lovely, Angel. I will wait for you to finish it.”
[Goddammit,] Lew complained as Angel’s expression immediately lit back up, [that’s just what you needed, another person lying to you about how shit you are.]
Angel ignored him with practiced ease as accepted the sketchbook from Ukka’s outstretched talons. She then flipped it closed, tucked her pencils back into their box, and placed both in her backpack. “I’m ready when you are, Ukka!”
And so the two of them turned to leave, with Angel’s new friend, Ukka, leading the way.