nine months ago....

Iktchi-Chi came to herself slowly. She was tumbling through a space neither light nor dark. Featureless to the naked eye. Dotted around in all directions, however, clearly perceived with her faerie sight, star-like bodies of rippling color swirled in a grand cavalcade, each at their own pace, each along their own path, yet all combining in the same grand dance.

Her heart fluttered with dread. She’d been caught up in the spell! The cursed human had dragged her along, intentionally or not, into the void between worlds. The flickering lights weren’t stars, they were portals. Portals, each of them, through which travelers between realities entered or left the worlds beyond.

Except you were supposed to be guided, she knew. Aimed at the very least. The void wasn’t meant to be occupied. It was meant to be traversed, and that as quickly as possible. It would not long sustain life. Even the life of a lost devil girl. Harsh, the demon realm was, but it was nothing to the void, which was, itself, nothing, and she didn’t belong here.

She caught intermittent glances of the human as her tumble brought him into her line of sight. He was tumbling as well, but in more of a ragdoll fashion, trailing a spiral cloud of blood. She couldn’t tell if he was dead yet, but he was certainly dying.

She cursed him without feeling. To have been freed after so many long centuries, only to end up here.... She withdrew the curse, then. Doomed she might be, she thought. But she was free. At last, she was free.

The void wasn’t completely empty. Nothing really is. There wasn’t much, true, but perhaps, if she stretched her wings and snapped them hard enough...

Suiting action to words, she straightened her body and unfurled one batlike wing. The left for no particular reason. At the moment, she was tumbling backwards, and she didn’t much care for that. Stretching the wing as far as she could, straining hard, she beat down with enough force to make her wince. Well.... Now she was tumbling side over. Another, then.

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Gradually, after several iterations, she managed to both correct her direction and stop her tumble. She was facing forward, at least. She knew this because the human was some short distance ahead and to one side, and the blood cloud was trailing past her.

It was a shame he was dead, the thought passed through her mind. He was kind of cute. In a pale, mortal sort of way. Yes, she thought as his face came periodically into view, he was... had been now, she supposed, definitely a cute one. And he’d been nice, she remembered. More than nice. He’d been... special.

As she was contemplating the waste of having had to kill such a yummy human, a great hand shot forth from one of the flickering lights. She had barely enough time to allow her eyes to go wide before the immense hand snatched up the tumbling human and withdrew, unaccountably drawing Iktchi-Chi along with him. The spell! They were still connected by the spell!

Iktchi-Chi opened her eyes slowly, groaning softly in the back of her throat. She hurt all over, and her right wing felt broken. Everything was green. No, not everything. Just most everything. She’d somehow landed in a tree of some sort, it seemed. Looking down over her shoulder, she frowned. Very high in a tree. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem. Not with both wings working. Just now, on the other hand....

She floundered along to the farthest reach of the canopy that would hold her weight, looking down. She frowned. There was a great whopping dire wolf with golden eyes down there, staring back up at her, and it didn't look happy to see her.

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to allow me free passage out of here?” she called down in high lupine.

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To be continued

in Book Two:

What Do You Mean the Demon's Not the Antagonist?

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