“So, is anyone else hungry?” Asked Rayden. “Because I’m starving. Being menaced at makes me ravenous. Besides, you don’t want to team up, but maybe we can share info. I’m the best at sharing info. I share everyone’s info. Desria collects stuffed turtles, and Cavallo is obsessed with baking.”

“Ray!” Snapped Desria in an annoyed voice. “That’s a secret, it also does NOT make you seem more trustworthy. Literally the exact opposite of that.” She sigh and gave me a small smile. “Sorry about him. He means well, but sometimes his brain and his mouth aren’t speaking, even when his mouth definitely is.”

I shrugged, not wanting to break character but unbothered. “His blathering has no effect on me.” I intoned.

“Speaking of you.” Ray brightened. “What’s up with your ability? That was a Domain right? But it felt unfinished. Also kind of creepy. Like…a bit demonic, but something else? What the hell is your power?”

Shrugging, I brushed it aside with a half truth. “I’m from the Black Sorrow Cult, but I never wanted to touch Black Sorrow’s disgusting darkness, so I followed in my father’s footsteps. He was a devil.” This wasn’t much of a concession to admit, the Cult interacted with the devils a lot, and there were plenty of hybrids in their territory.

His eyes widened in delight. “Oh my gods.” He whispered reverently. “You have devil powers even though you’re not a devil? You’re just like Devilghost!”

Vesper’s head shot up and she squealed in excitement. “You’re right! He’s totally like Devilghost! I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. I mean he doesn’t have a horse, but still, they’re so similar!”

“What is a…Devilghost?” I asked warily.

They stared at me in horror. “Devilghost?” Asked Vesper in disbelief. “The Specter of Salvation?” She took a deep breath and belted out. “He rides upon a fiery steed, his powers helping those in need, his claws will make his enemies bleed, DEVILGHOST!” Rayden stood up as she did, throwing their hands into the air as they howled the last word of what had to be some kind of theme song in unison.

Desria sighed. “He’s a cartoon character native to this cluster. A lot of the systems nearby have a shared broadcast network, this planet doesn’t because it’s more Imperial than Conglomerate.”

“Ah.” I said slowly. “I’m from Cult territory, as I said. And I do not know anything about…Devilghost. In fact, I’m ignorant of a great many things, including the identities of all the dark gods. I know of a few, but perhaps we might exchange information and you could share your own knowledge of our potential benefactors.”

Rayden slumped, pouting petulantly. “You’re boring. Devilghost is way more fun than you. Devilghost would totally team up with us. And he would use his flames of spectral revealing to burn away the obstruction in our path so we could all find our targets like…today.”

“Nuh uh!” Snapped Vesper. “Devilghost would tell us it was too dangerous, he never puts the innocent at risk.”

“I will literally pay you money if you stop talking about this.” I groaned, belatedly realizing that had been WAY out of character, even if it had still been in my demonic voice. Everyone turned to stare at me in shock. I flinched. I’d just gotten so comfortable with their bullshitting, it was almost like being back with my friends. “I mean…your prattling becomes tiresome.”

Desria snorted. “Oh no.” She laughed. “Cats out of the bag big man. You don’t get to go back to being the brooding mystery behemoth now. The whole tall dark and gloomy thing was getting old anyway.”

“Fine.” I snapped, throwing up my hands. “But don’t tell anyone else. Not that the fact that I’m being pretentious on purpose would mean anything to anybody, but I want to keep up the role in public. Now can you PLEASE tell me more about the dark gods. I’ve got four of them down, how about you.”

Rayden looked devastated. “Man, you’re even less like Devilgho-” I cut him off, pointing at him angrily. “Whatever. Fine. We know about two of them.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“And so do we.” Vesper said. “So assuming we don’t have more than one overlap, maybe we can learn about them all. Which ones do you know about…what did Ray call you again? Fist?” I realized I hadn’t been introduced with the others.

“Mephistopheles.” I said flatly. “But Fist is fine, as long as you don’t make any weird nicknames out of it. As for the gods I know of, as I said, there are four. One of them you know about already, Delthrys, God of Secrets. He’s running this trial.”

She nodded. “We hadn’t heard of him before now. We came to try to work under Verdyn, the god of the Blood Forest. He’s the patron deity of anything that dies in the forest. It’s a whole big ‘man’s darkest nature makes them no better than beasts’ thing.”

I filed that one away, since I hadn’t heard of him. “I’m here to serve Felicity, the Lady of Lamentations. She’s a deity of torment.” I didn’t elaborate, because I didn’t KNOW much more. At their skeptical glances, I shrugged. “What? You guys didn’t come here to pledge your service to the god of fluffy puppies either. They’re dark deities, some edge is to be expected.”

She shrugged. “Fine. Our other one is obvious. Hatescream is kind of a gimme, since he’s the big boss around here.”

I nodded solemnly. “Good to hear. Stralthrem is the Dread God of Fabrication. Some kind of mad scientist monster maker I think? I don’t know the details.”

“It’s more than we know.” Said Cavallo, who had been mostly silent this whole time. “Our last one is Raxus, god of deceit. We don’t know much about him for obvious reasons. I’m not sure how deceit varies from secrets, however, they seem similar.”

“They should.” Said Ray. “They’re twins. At least I think so. He’s the one we’re here for.” He paused. “Also, sorry for the look earlier I guess, I don’t think ours is any nicer than yours. But yeah, I heard Raxus had a twin, I just didn’t know who it was. That makes the most sense.”

I sighed. “It does. If I had to guess while this trial is about digging up secrets, Raxus’s will probably be some kind of infiltration thing. Who knows. I’m just worried about what Felicity’s trial might be. It’s either going to be monstrous or VERY painful. I suspect the latter. It’s easy to find murderous bastards, but people who can survive torture are harder to source. Seems like a more interesting quality for a goddess to search for.”

My instincts were pushing me in that direction, and while that wasn’t anywhere near proof, it at least helped me calm down a bit. Sure, undergoing horrible torment to pass sucked, but I had ways to mitigate that. I’d been through some awful shit, and my pain tolerance was solid. At least I wouldn’t have to do anything really monstrous to another person. Hopefully.

With the details out of the way we finally had a chance to get some food. No one seemed to be in the inn except for us, or if they were we didn’t detect them. So we raided the kitchen and Ray left some chits behind while I made steaks.

It soothed me to do some cooking, and carefully pan searing the steaks in butter made me feel like I was home with Callie. I reached through the bond and felt her answer me, glad to sense me and missing me as I missed her. With a wry grin, I opened the bond in a way I hadn’t tried before, inhaling the scent of cooking meat, and I felt a slash of scolding faux outrage and sullen poutiness.

Not laughing at her reaction was a bit of a struggle, but I made sure to send some affection, and got grudging forgiveness along with a warning feeling that I was pretty sure was a promise of vengeance.

Her presence retreated back into the bond, always with me, but it was less…well, present. I finished the steaks and brought them to the dining room, dropping the plate piled high with meat onto the table. “I did what I could.” I shrugged. “The meat here isn’t amazing quality. It’s a little lean for my taste and it’s only F-rank.”

Not that I was surprised. This was a small place, E and D-ranked meat was far too upscale for them to keep on hand in their stores. I took a bite and grimaced somewhat. It wasn’t BAD, but it wasn’t great.

To my surprise, everyone else froze when they bit into their food. “Holy shit, this is amazing!” Shouted Ray. “Fist you’re a culinary genius!”

I shrugged. “It’s just pan seared in butter. If I’d had time I could have done a marinade. I was able to use a very light touch of corrosion to tenderize the meat. Don’t worry though, the skill fades when I dismiss it.” It was one of the possible uses for my Skills I’d picked up on the Acheron. I was surprised they liked it so much though.

Although…I’d been eating food from a master chef recently. For the last month I’d only been ingesting professional quality meals, so my own read on what was good might be off.

Vesper shook her head. “He’s right. This is fantastic. I’ve never had food this good.”

“I have.” Said Cavallo. “But not often. This is an exceptionally well prepared meal.” I nodded to him, and he returned to eating with a slow, methodical intensity that I was pretty sure meant he was trying to reverse engineer my exact steps when cooking the steak.

“Well, if we’re already sharing a meal, why not share a bit about ourselves.” Said Vesper cheerfully. “We know each other’s names, but not much else. If we might work together in the future, even if it’s once we all pass the selection, it might be a good idea to make some new friends.”

Ray nodded slowly. “That’s a good idea. Well, I’m local, as you might have guessed. Not to this planet, but to the cluster. Me and the twins are from Crayton Seven. And no, I don’t know why they decided to name all eight of the planets in our system the same thing. It’s super rare because of how confusing it gets, but hey, I didn’t name them.”

“You named one of them.” Said Desria with a grin. “Or renamed it anyway. Your family had to have smuggled off world when the governor found out it was you who started it.”

He shrugged. “In my defense, I had no idea Shitworld was going to catch on. Sure, it was accurate, but come on people, have some decorum. Anyway, I wasn’t really the kind of person who would fit in with the Empire, and I find the Unity kind of pointless and childish. When I got wind of the selection I decided to give it a shot.”

Desria chuckled. “We don’t let him go anywhere alone, since he has zero filter and tends to get into trouble.” I remembered Jerry the guard mentioning someone with eyes like Ray and knew what she meant.

“We’re local too. We’re from this system actually.” Said Vesper. “We’re looking for a chance to change our fortunes a bit. No powerful factions nearby, so we can’t join anyone. When we heard about the selection we knew it was our big chance. But…well, with the whole dark gods thing we’re still deciding if we’ll actually take part or not.” She bit her lip, looking a little worried.

I fed them some story about wanting to get away from the Cult which was technically true based on my wording, and then steered the conversation away from the subject and back to general getting to know you stuff.

By the end of the night, I was in a surprisingly good mood, and ready to take on tomorrow. My hunt for my target would begin, and it would be time to head off on my own. I couldn’t wait to see what I was really capable of.