Liam looked the intruder up and down. She was wearing dark garments in a tight-fitting fabric somewhere between black leather and spandex. Her ears were pointed, first leading him to believe she was an elf. The horns on her head quickly dispelled that notion. They weren’t particularly pronounced; she could easily cover them up with a loose-fitting hat if she wanted. Where elves were fair, this woman had dark hair, although the purple highlights had the slightest glow to them. She also seemed curvy compared to the slender elves he recently met.

“Yes… I understand you fine. Do you understand my words?” he asked nervously.

“I do. How strange. Why do you speak my language?”

“How should I know? Should I introduce myself, or are you going to kill me? If you’re going to kill me, I’m not going to bother introducing myself.”

“Hm…” She thought for a moment then holstered her blade, which gave off a similar purple glow to the highlights of her hair. “I won’t kill you for now, but don’t try anything.”

“There’s nothing to try!” Liam complained. “I’ve never hurt anyone before, except for one time when I was little and I accidentally hit a girl in the head with a toy airplane…”

She raised her eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“A–Anyway, I don’t even have any weapons here, and it’s obvious I can’t defeat you somehow in hand-to-hand combat. In fact, I’m declaring my house a no-violence zone. Okay?”

“You didn’t introduce yourself yet.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m Liam. A human, obviously. Are you a… demoness?”

“You can’t tell?”

“No… You do realize you’re in my world, right? There are no demons or elves or anything like that here. Just humans.”

“Ah.” She seemed to understand.

“You did come through the, uh, invisible door, right? How did you even get here?”

“I’m very good at sneaking,” she explained. “I was just going to gather information on the hero summoning, but an opportunity presented itself. Are you really the hero?”

“I guess? The people from the summoning chamber or whatever seem to think so. As you can tell, I’m not very heroic.”

“No, but you’re able to speak with me… Could it have something to do with the invisible door?”

“Probably,” said Liam. “I was able to communicate with a few humans, elves, and a dwarf too, so maybe anyone who comes through the invisible door gains the ability to speak with me?”

“That could be it… I didn’t notice any, but do you have guests from my side of the invisible door here right now?”

“No, they should all be on the other side. I told them to keep away for another day because I was busy.”

“With what?”

Liam was surprised that she was interested. Probably, her interest was professional rather than personal. She wanted to extract as much information as possible, but little did she know that Liam had very little useful information about her enemies to share. “Some studying. It has nothing to do with your war or whatever conflict you all are in the middle of.”

“Ahahahaha!” She finally dropped her serious demeanor. “I think I actually believe you. I don’t get why you’re being so forthcoming with the enemy, but I just can’t imagine you’re pulling the wool over my eyes.”

Liam had a problem with what she just said, no, two problems. “First of all, you’re not necessarily my enemy. I haven’t exactly chosen a side in your conflict.”

Her eyes went wide as Liam continued his complaint.

“Second, you clearly can overpower and kill me whenever you want. You’re also obviously well trained at this type of stuff. If I try to outwit you you’ll just kill me, right?”

“True. But won’t you side with the humans?”

“Why should I?” Liam thought back to all the various stories he’d consumed over the years. Often, the faction introduced as the enemy was in fact innocent if you traced everything back far enough. “The two humans I met were nice, and I don’t want to see them harmed, but that’s an entirely different matter than choosing a side in a major war I know almost nothing about. Maybe if you don’t try to kill me I’ll like you too?”

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“That would be a first!” She seemed to be enjoying how ludicrous the whole situation was. “I’m Lilith.”

“As crazy as everything is, it’s nice to meet you, Lilith.”

A chime from behind Liam startled him, causing him to turn around.

At the same time, Lilith drew her weapon with a practiced motion. “What is that?”

“Oh, I need to close the fridge.” The refrigerator was complaining that the door was open, so Liam shut it.

“That icebox?”

“Technically, it’s not an icebox,” Liam explained. “It does keep the air cool so that food won’t spoil, and the bottom section goes below the freezing point of water, but you don’t actually need to add ice to keep it cool.”

She holstered her weapon again. “I don’t know how that works, but okay. Speaking of, do you have anything good to eat?”

Liam’s head recoiled back a bit at the frankness of her request. “Uh, I was thinking of just ordering in. Are you able to eat the same food as humans?”

“Hm? I guess so?”

“How does pizza sound? I was just going to tide myself over with a yogurt for now, but I can order earlier…”

“Pizza? What’s that?”

Liam found the whole situation just so surreal. “Pizza is a tasty food by human standards, although it’s not the most nutritious choice so you shouldn’t have it every day, I guess.”

“Oh, I’m willing to try it. I can’t carry much food with me when I’m on a mission.”

With their minds made up, Liam walked over to the computer and sat down. “Let me place an order.”

Lilith walked up behind Liam. “What is that?”

Liam sighed. “This is going to get really annoying, isn’t it… This is a computer. It’s a device I can use to, uh, learn what types of pizza are available to acquire and then submit my specific request to the people who make the pizza.”

“It’s not magical?”

“No. No magic in this world. But good pizza. Do you prefer meat or vegetables?”

“No magic…” She was lost in thought for a moment. “Huh? Oh, meat!”

“I can get meat AND vegetables if you want.”

“Nah.”

Liam decided not to lecture the demoness assassin that she needs to eat her vegetables. He started entering the order into the website. “This is the only place that delivers to my address. It’s not the best, but it’s good enough for a first time trying pizza I think.”

“I’ll, uh, just trust you,” she said.

Liam looked over his shoulder at her. “You went from trying to kill me to trusting me quite fast…”

“Yeah… There’s something about you.”

“There is?” Liam hadn’t the foggiest idea what she meant.

“I guess it’s because you’re not from our world, but you’re easy to get along with.”

“Because I’m not prejudiced against demons and the other, uh, dark forces?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, that too,” she agreed. “But honestly, you’re more fun than the other demons, too.”

“I… I guess it’s because I grew up in a peaceful place without so much threat of war and conflict?” he proposed. “And I have lots of cool toys here in my house, at least from your perspective.”

“That’s true… oh, is that what the pizza looks like?” Lilith pointed at the screen.

“Yeah, although it never looks quite as good in real life. I just need to put in my payment information.” Liam pulled his wallet out of his pocket and extracted a credit card. “I think I have the card number memorized… but just be sure.”

“Wait, what is that?” She pointed at the credit card.

“Uh… I’ll explain when we eat, okay?”

“Sure.”

Liam finished submitting the order. “There, they will deliver it in like half an hour or maybe an hour.”

“So fast? How… no, I won’t ask you more questions right now. Even I can see how annoying that gets…”

“Lilith, make sure nobody sees you when I open the door to accept the pizza.”

“Of course! Just who do you think I am?” She puffed up her chest proudly.

Liam answered honestly. “Someone in a strange world with no idea how things work here?”

She smacked his shoulder. “Not that. I’m one of the top demon assassins! Of course I won’t let myself be seen.”

“That’s… reassuring.” He decided not to belabor the issue. “I don’t mind sharing some pizza with you, but what are you going to do after that?”

“Why don’t you give me a tour of your home first?”

“A tour? Uh, okay.” Liam stood and began a walking tour of his home.

Lilith was fascinated by every little thing, asking a bunch of questions of course. Her behavior when she sat on the bed was so similar to Sylara’s that Liam couldn’t help but smirk.

“What is it?” asked Lilith, picking up on Liam’s expression.

“You just reminded me of someone the way you were bouncing on the bed.”

“Oh? Who?”

Danger bells were alarming in Liam’s head. “I… I think if I tell you you will kill me.”

“What? Oh come on! Now I’m curious!”

Liam wasn’t ready to give in. “I really think it’s a bad idea. I shouldn’t have made a goofy face.”

Lilith stood up. “Liam, I’ll make it easy for you. If you don’t tell me, I will kill you. If you tell me, I promise not to kill you. How about that?”

“Uh, I have one condition.”

“He has a condition!” Lilith shouted, exasperated.

“No maiming or other serious injury either… if I tell you.”

Lilith burst out laughing. “Okay! You win! Who is it?”

“An elf rogue who visited the other day.”

“An elf!?” Lilith’s fury was evident on her face. Her hand started creeping towards her favored blade.

“You promised not to kill or seriously injure me!”

Her hand stopped and twitched a bit. “Fine.”

Liam started breathing again. “I was scared there for a sec—“

Lilith grabbed Liam and flipped him through the air, slamming him down onto the bed. Somehow, she ended up on top of him as part of the maneuver. “Are you sure I reminded you of an elf?”

Liam couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. “The… The way you just flipped me was just like her, too.”

“Wha!?” Lilith froze up, unsure how to react to the unexpected follow-up attack.

This wasn’t Liam’s first time in this situation, so he recovered a bit quicker than when Sylara flipped him. He took advantage of Lilith’s hesitation and pushed her off of him, although just onto the other side of the bed.

“You… you think you’ll get the best of me!?” she shouted, half-joking. Before she could pounce, they both heard a pounding from the house’s front door.