A Demon Archmage in New York

[CCClover]

CHAPTER ONE: THE FALL OF THE BLACK PALACE
​

It was the end of the world.

A lone figure in stark black robes hurried through a vast, empty hall. The walls soared up on either side of him, rising to a vaulted ceiling so high it was nearly hidden from view. They were carved from soulstone, carrying hues of mottled reds and dark grays that flowed into each other unceasingly, every now and then coalescing into faces twisted in agony. If you listened closely, you could almost hear them scream.

The figure stumbled as another explosion rocked through the hall, then picked himself up and cursed. It wasn't any ordinary curse. It was a curse so vile and terrible that for a moment the light in the hall dimmed and the faces in the walls fell silent. Malakar was inordinately proud of that curse. It could only be spoken once every hundred years, and he had just spent it. Of course, if there was any time to be doing that, it was now.

Might as well.

Malakar had never thought this day would come. The day when the forces of Heaven and the Heroes of Light breached the walls of the Black Palace. Well, alright, maybe that belief was always unfounded; he'd never really paid close attention to the whole 'World-Conquering' situation. That was the purview of the Most Great and Unholy Dread Lord of Darkness and King of Creation. All he'd known was that the meetings about how the war was going had begun to get a lot louder lately, and tended to end with one or more commanders being executed. Politics was for suckers, in Malakar's opinion.

"Not that the Great Dread Lord was a sucker," he quickly muttered under his breath.

As if in response, the soulstone walls shuddered under a massive blow, groaned, and then cracked apart. Malakar leapt back as a great hunk of the architecture slammed into the floor mere feet ahead of him, the liberated souls weeping and giving thanks as they dissipated into the air. A brilliant, burning light lanced down from the ceiling, quickly followed by an actual brilliant, burning lance that sank into the stone and hung there, quivering.

Angels.

Malakar flung himself prostrate onto the floor as three of them descended through the breach in the ceiling, beings of ethereal light so terrible that they could barely be looked at. "Spare me!" he cried, his face on the ground. "I am but a lowly servant!"

The angels hovered in the patch of light for a moment, their very movements sounding notes of sweet music. "Leave the poor wretch be," one said finally, with a voice like the clarion call of a trumpet. "Our mission is—"

"Wait," said another. The objecting angel was larger than the other two, from a higher choir; if Malakar squinted, he could just make out a somewhat human shape in gleaming golden armor beneath all that light. "Something is wrong here. This is no mere servant."

Malakar sighed. Well, he had tried. Disguises had never been his strong suit.

"You should have just moved on," he said, slowly rising to his feet. "You might have lived."

He raised his hands to the air and let the illusion drop. His true form surged forth like a tidal wave of darkness. For he was Malakar the Irredeemable, Malakar Blackheart, Malakar of the Void, the demonic archmage of the Great Dread Lord.

His face, which he had disguised as one of the lowly mortal slaves, cracked and shattered. A long mane of bright red hair burst out from his cowl like an eruption of chemical fire. Two large, golden horns curved upward above eyes that were like twin portals to some mad hell. Rending claws and talons carved furrows into the soulstone. A snout full of cruel needle-teeth grinned at the three angels, whose light guttered and failed in the face of the horror.

"Flames of Nihiloth devour you!" howled Malakar.

Red-black flames erupted from the angels' cores. They died with the screech of snapping lyre strings, with the notes of their music cut short. The angel that had spotted him managed to feebly swing its burning sword before it was burned away into drifting ash.

Malakar stared for a moment at the smears on the floor where the three angels had once stood.

"Idiots," he growled. He really hadn't wanted to do that. These three angels were no match for him, sure, but that burst of magic had certainly alerted others. All the Legions of Heaven were storming the Black Palace, along with all those mortal races which had rebelled against the Great Dread Lord, and all their heroes. But that wasn't all. The Seraphim were here today, and while Malakar probably could have handled most one-on-one, there was no way he was going to risk fighting so many at once.

Another explosion echoed from behind him, followed by what sounded like a chorus of voices shouting out in righteous anger. Down the far distance of the hallway, a light like that of the sun began to glow.

Time to go, Malakar thought.

His hooves clopped a steady beat on the soulstone as he fled. The captured souls within the walls groaned mournful accusations at him as he passed.

After all, he had put many of them there.

* * *
​

The sounds of holy battle faded as Malakar descended downward, ever downward, into the labyrinthine guts of the Black Palace. Soulstone gave way to obsidian bedrock, formed by the lava flows of the volcano that the palace had been built upon. It had taken a whole lot of magic to build a palace on top of an active volcano, but the Dread Lord had insisted, and Malakar had taken on the project as a sort of challenge. He'd done the best he could, but they still required thousands of souls yearly for soulstone repairs; there was only so much his wards could do against the constant eruptions. Probably had something to do with why the mortal races were so eager to join up with the forces of Heaven.

Malakar hoped there would not be an eruption right now. Down here was where he kept his laboratories, the most thoroughly warded wing of the palace. The lava flows were a great source of energy, when they weren't flooding the hallways.

He was going to miss this place. He'd really had a good thing going with the Great Dread Lord. He'd made so many breakthroughs into the arcane, but more than that, this place had felt like home. Inasmuch as a Demon Lord could have a sense of fondness for anything, Malakar held affection for his laboratories and the many experiments there. The pens full of burrowing hellworms, being specially bred for pestilence and viciousness; the whistling brass engine that was the Soul Compressor, the wall covered with Blood-Runes of the Making Language…he wished he could take them all with him, but there was no time.

He sighed as he passed by the monstrous visages of mutated humans floating in his ether-tanks, lit by a comforting greenish glow. Not so long ago they had been tended by scores of promising young demonic students, each so full of innocent enthusiasm for twisting the mortal form. All dead now, or, if not, they'd be dead soon enough, all of them cut down by heavenly blades. So pointless! So much knowledge lost! Didn't the angels care about their fine, hard-won techniques for turning humans into monsters? Of course not. Heaven reveled in their ignorance. Philistines.

Malakar came to the most important part of the laboratory, where the walls glowed with dark enchantments and red-hot piping. Where despite the lava and the overheated machinery, the air grew deathly cold, and carried the faint whiff of something metallic yet sweet, something halfway between a field of flowers and a murder scene. The void research wing.

It was here that Malakar had embarked on his most ambitious project. For the Great Dread Lord had not been content with conquering merely one world. No, the Heart of Darkness had wanted to spread his rule to worlds beyond his own, and had turned to Malakar to provide them.

It had taken years, decades, and a whole lot of dead students, but Malakar had finally managed to discover the secrets to interdimensional travel, tearing through the void to other worlds. Now it would never be used for a conquering army. Instead, that research would save his life. Though it might not be much of a life once he stepped through the portal. All the worlds he had found so far were lifeless, nothing but barren fields of rock, not even with any air to breathe. Of course, Malakar could live in such an environment for quite some time with magic, and it would probably be a lot better than whatever Heaven was planning to do with him. But maybe, just maybe, he could take some time to calibrate the portal coordinates, find some place with life…

He rounded the corner and stopped. Before him lay the Portal-Caster, a raised dais of solid gold forged into the shape of countless grinning skulls, above which lay a wobbling, unsteady tear in the fabric of reality, a portal, its ragged edges glowing crimson, opening up into starry darkness.

The dais was mostly for show. It wasn't required for interdimensional travel; once you knew how to make a portal, it wasn't so expensive. Malakar was just fond of gold skulls. But it wasn't the thought of how he'd have to leave the dais behind or the sight of the portal that made him stop short.

Someone else was here before him.

"Carassiso!" he barked, loud enough for it to echo off the walls.

Carassiso leapt on her many long, spiked legs, high enough to nearly hit the ceiling, before landing and turning around with a clattering scuttle. "Malakar," she chittered, her mandibles dripping steaming venom. "I, uh…"

"What are you doing here?" Malakar snarled, stepping forward, his hooves tapping ominously.

"What are you doing here?" Carassiso hissed back.

"Oh, as if you don't know."

Carassiso the Damned, Witch of Blades, had been a talented…well, Malakar didn't want to call them a partner, but they had worked in the research wing as well. Mostly in the fields of shaping inanimate matter, but she had worked on interdimensional travel too.

She was also completely insufferable. Malakar had always done his best to avoid her. For some reason, she fancied herself a second-in-command in arcane research; sometimes she even behaved as though she outranked him. So often Malakar's joy in his research was spoiled by Carassiso, watching from the shadows with her many-lobed eyes, always ready with a snide comment. That much mana capacity risks blowing up the entire Palace, Malakar. You're going to get yourself and everyone in the research wing killed, Malakar.

A silver lining to the end of the world would be never having to see her again.

Carassiso circled around cautiously, her twin blade-claw arms raised in Malakar's direction. "Don't you have a battle to be at? Or did you run away?"

Malakar actually stopped and gawked at her. "Battle? You weren't at the battle at all! I actually fought, while you—you just came straight here, didn't you?"

"I was at the battle," Carassiso said quickly. "I'm just much more subtle than you are. I kill with silence and grace, while you just go stomping around blowing everything up! All your fancy fire magic barely killed anyone at all, while angels bled beneath me!"

"Oh, sure. With you on our side, it's a wonder we lost at all."

"But we did lose," Carassiso said. "There's no recourse. Only retreat."

"Out of my way." Malakar ducked around Carassiso's trembling arm-blades and pushed her aside. He stared, puzzled, at the portal's calibration system. It consisted of a sheet of ruby inscribed with fiery glowing runes beneath a crystal ball, through which one could view the world on the other side of the portal. Right now it displayed nothing but a blank field of blue. "What have you been doing with the portal-caster?" he demanded.

"Looking for…likely worlds."

"Well, congratulations. I see you've found a lively one."

Carassiso peered over his shoulder. "It's pointed at the sky, you idiot." She reached over and caressed the crystal with one of her thin, spindly limbs. The view of the crystal rotated, rotated, until finally a silver gleaming tower came into view.

Malakar gasped and leaned in until his snout was pressed up against the glass. "You found a world with life," he breathed. More silver towers, dizzyingly tall, came into view. There seemed to be no end to them. There were people there too, humans, dressed very strangely, and much else he did not understand. So many obnoxiously colorful lights, and pictures of some vile brownish liquid hung everywhere. Were they worshiping sewage water? Whatever it was, it was life.

"How?" he asked.

"I just must have a touch for it. It didn't take me very long."

Malakar straightened and stared at the spider-demon. "You've known about this for a while, haven't you," he said. "You've just been hiding it."

"Maybe," Carassiso said coyly.

"Well, alright." Malakar waved a claw, and the image on the crystal disappeared. "I'll take this world. You find someplace else."

"What! Why should you get this world to yourself?!"

"Because I don't want to share it with you. Go to a different one."

"No! That's the only one with life I found!" Carassiso drew herself up, the sharp points of her many-jointed legs striking sparks against the soulstone. "How dare you! If anything, I should get this world to myself, and you can go live on some barren rock! That would be fair!"

"Life's not fair," said Malakar. "I'm taking this portal and sealing it behind me. Goodbye, Carassiso. You should try finding a different world quickly. Don't let Heaven carve your guts out, that would be a real shame."

"Don't you do it!" Carassiso hissed as Malakar stepped towards the portal. "Don't! Don't you dare! Ahhhhh!"

Malakar was standing at the top of the dais when Carassiso leapt at him, her arm-blades snapping, mandibles straining for his flesh. They grappled at the edge of the portal, the death-numb cold of the void pulling at them both.

A jagged blade-claw freed itself from Malakar's grip and plunged into his back; black blood pattered on the ground. He howled and snapped it in half, pulling it out, and plunged it into Carassiso's chest. She screeched as foaming yellowish ichor arced through the air.

Malakar snapped at her remaining limbs, blood dripping from his teeth. "Let me go!" he roared.

"You'll have to kill me to keep me from that portal!"

"I don't have time to kill you!"

"No," said a very calm voice, "You don't."

That voice stopped them in their tracks. It was simple, uncomplicated, but it carried such strength and command that all movement, all sound ceased. It was a terribly unnatural silence, like watching a tossing sea suddenly turn to placid glass.

A glow filled the room. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, as though the walls and stone itself had begun emitting a gentle white light.

There, in the doorway, stood one of the Seraphim.

Six ethereal, translucent wings of rainbow hue flapped gently on an unseen breeze, brushing against the walls; two more wrapped around their body like a cloak. Pure white hair drifted as though on water around a perfect, smiling face. To say that its skin was unblemished would be entirely inadequate. The Seraphim's face radiated such beatific purity that Malakar and Carassiso both nearly threw up right there. Its eyes were closed, long golden lashes resting on its cheeks.

In the center of its forehead was a third eye that seethed with raging light.

This was not just any Seraphim. This was Uriel, one of the most powerful warriors in Heaven.

"Oh shit," Malakar and Carassiso said together.

A hum, a thunderclap, and a spear of light manifested in one of Uriel's six graceful hands.

"The time for all demons is at an end," he intoned, and it seemed as though the very air sang in agreement.

Malakar and Carassiso tried desperately to extricate themselves from each other, but being demons with lots of hooked and barbed bits they were stuck. Malakar shouted the words of spells that summoned soul-annihilating waves of energy from the hearts of dead stars. Carassiso screamed and blades of stone tore themselves from the floor and hurtled towards the angel. Uriel smiled and waved a hand and they were gone.

"Any last words?" the Seraphim asked, hefting his spear.

"Wait, wait—yes—shit—Carassiso stop stepping on my hoof—" Malakar desperately backed up closer to the portal.

"I don't want to die!" Carassiso wailed.

"So said many of your victims," said Uriel, and hurled his spear.

Malakar, at the last moment, leapt for the portal, dragging Carassiso along. He no longer cared to try to shake her off. He simply wanted to live.

The spear took Carassiso through the abdomen first, then pierced his side and came out through his back, right beneath his armpit. It felt like white-hot fire was running through his veins, like solid light was eating him from the inside, burning out all the dark and secret places within that a Demon Lord tends to accrue over the centuries, all the little knots of hatred and cruelty and disease.

Malakar howled, only barely aware that he was now falling through the void beyond the portal. He looked up. Somewhere above him Uriel stood in that tear in space, still on the other side, in his old world.

Close it. Close it. You're probably dead anyway, but don't let him come after you and finish the job.

Malakar reached for his magic, but it was like trying to lift a mountain. Something was clamping down on him, cutting off his connection to all his unholy powers. Carassiso was silent, her legs dangling behind her as they plummeted. Probably dead.

With the last of his strength, Malakar sent a screaming orb of flame flying back towards the portal. Uriel easily sidestepped it, but then, he hadn't been aiming at the Seraphim. The orb expanded quickly into an enormous explosion, sending a wall of flame gouting into the void before the portal twisted, fluttered like a curtain in the wind, and finally winked out of existence.

Malakar had no hope that it had killed Uriel. But now, at least, the angel would not be able to follow him. Not that it mattered.

The pain finally overtook him, and Malakar slouched down into unconsciousness, tumbling, tumbling through the inky black of the void.

* * *
​

For what seemed like an eternity, Malakar felt that he was suspended in blackness, broken only by the distant light of an unforgiving sun, searing him, cooking him to the bone…

And then, abruptly, it was over.

Malakar awoke to a gentle misting of what he hoped was rain across his face. He groaned and sat up. Far too many colors at once stabbed into his eyes. He shook his head and slowly they came into focus, until at last he could see that he had awoken beneath some sort of strange sign, one lined with glowing arcane spheres.

It read:

HAL'S GOLD AND PAWN

WE BUY GOLD • PHONES • WATCHES

CASH PAID TODAY, NO QUESTIONS ASKED

"THE MOST HONEST MAN IN NEW YORK CITY"

NO REFUNDS
​

 

[CCClover]

2. King of Burgers
​

Malakar stared up at that sign for a long time.

He took a look around. He was sitting in the midst of a great stone-paved lane, lined with buildings of red brick built right on top of each other, with not even a gap between them. Each of them had glowing signs advertising goods. Obviously, he had landed in some sort of merchant's quarter, in a human city. Humans did so love cluttering their streets with opportunities to be looted. At least, he thought the people walking by him were human. Carassiso was nowhere to be seen. Briefly, he wondered what had happened to her, but really, he did not care in the slightest.

All in all, Malakar considered this to have been a stroke of great luck. That annoyance Carassiso was gone (hopefully dead), he could sense no angels, and now all he needed to do was blow up some mortals, take their gold, and start establishing who was boss around here.

He struggled to his feet and, in doing so, immediately realized something was horribly wrong. Instead of clawed talons pushing against the ground, he stared curiously at the nubby pink fingers splayed against the sidewalk instead. He clenched his fist, and the pink fingers curled in on themselves.

That was odd.

And he could not help but notice that he didn't seem to be standing nearly as tall as he should. He was significantly shorter than the humans passing by, when really he ought to have been towering over them. Come to think of it, these humans were reacting pretty calmly to a demon lord manifesting in their midst.

"Oh no," Malakar whispered to himself.

The sign he had awoken beneath hung over a storefront behind a pane of smooth glass. Malakar staggered over and looked at his image, reflected back at him over a display of strange black boxes labeled 'SPEAKERS UNDER $100'. He gaped in disbelief at what he saw, but there was no denying it.

A human stared back at him. A human child. He had been transformed into a human child!

Malakar prodded at his chubby cheeks and poked at his button nose. Too hard. "Ow," he muttered, rubbing it. Yes, it was very real.

The only hints of his demonic true form were that he still had a long mane of bright red hair and a pair of curling gold horns. And he still wore his long, dark robes, too. Much smaller than they ought to be. Well, this was strange, but not a problem. He'd just use magic to change back, and…

…and…

…and nothing. Malakar realized with horror that he couldn't touch his magic. He tried again, and still nothing. With a growl, he closed his eyes and focused. Deep within him, that black part of his soul from which he drew his infernal powers should have yawned like a comforting abyss. But now there was a terrible disc of light stretched over it, burning brightly, flickering with runes in the angelic language.

A seal! His demonic powers had been sealed away! It must have been put in place when Uriel stabbed him. Tentatively, he probed at it. It was not merely a wall; it was a great, terrible mechanism. He could sense rings within rings, locks folded into other locks, some clamped down on his power, others reaching into the very core of his being. What had Uriel done to him?!

Frantically, Malakar tried to break past it, only for a bright lance of very real, physical pain to stab through his chest, exactly where Uriel's spear had pierced him. Gritting his teeth, he tried again. With all the lights around, there must be ambient magic in the air for him to drain mana from and fuel his own magic. If he gathered enough, he might be able to break through the shield. But, shockingly, he found he could barely detect any magic at all around him. None, in fact. Still he tried until the pain burned him so badly that he couldn't stand it anymore.

"Ow!" he cried, sitting down. "Ow, ow, ow, owowow!"

Humiliatingly, tears began to roll down his cheeks. He was stuck in this form, and Malakar, being an experienced demon who had taken on many different guises in his time, knew what that meant. No matter how strong-willed you were, mind and body could not be totally separated. When you took on a new form, you began to think like it, too. Transform into a bird, and you'd find that you couldn't live without flying and you gained a sudden appreciation for the artistic merits of pooping on statues. And human children, Malakar discovered, had a predilection for crying and being cranky.

"Little girl! Are you lost?"

Malakar sniffled and glared up at the couple who had stopped in front of him: a middle-aged man wearing severe dark attire and what appeared to be a silk rope around his neck, and what Malakar assumed was his concubine, or perhaps a priestess of some sort. He had really never paid all that much attention to human hierarchies back on his world. They had kings and queens, horribly vulnerable soft skin, and frequently leaked salt water from their eyes to no apparent purpose. That was the extent of his knowledge.

The woman was smiling down at him, and suddenly Malakar was full of rage. These mortals dared approach him, dared to speak to him?

"I am not a girl," he declared. "And I am not lost. I am Malakar the Irredeemable, scourge of your world! Kneel and beg for mercy, slaves!"

The man squinted down at him. "Come away, Nance," he said to the woman. "I think this child's on drugs."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Robert. He's just playing. Look at his costume." The woman reached out and tapped on Malakar's horns. "Where's your mother, sweetie? Did you lose sight of her?"

Malakar, who had been stunned into silence by the sheer gall of the woman touching his horns, went into an apoplectic fit. "I sprang not from mortal loins!" he screeched. "I was called into existence at the very birth of the world! Formless, I dwelt in the void, until the wickedness of man drew me forth! I am your curse and damnation! I am sin! I am death!"

The woman waved away all this and reached into the little bag she was carrying, and retrieved some shiny, rectangular object. "You just wait right there, honey," she said. "I'm going to call the police, and they'll help you, okay?"

"Oh, Nance, don't call 911," said the man as she began to prod at the device. "That's for emergencies only."

"A lost child is an emergency!"

"For all we know his mom is right around the corner. Look, put the phone away. Let's see if we can't find a security guard or something—"

Malakar stopped listening to this conversation. He didn't understand all the words they were using, but he got the gist of things. They were going to summon the town guard. And, in a place like this, with so much obvious magic around (even if he couldn't feel any of it), the town guard would likely have a wizard, one who could figure out who and what he was. Then he'd be in real trouble. The thought of being held captive by mere mortals made his skin crawl.

The woman shouted as he ran, but Malakar darted between the legs of an approaching crowd of humans and disappeared from sight. Her cries quickly faded into the distance.

Malakar found he had to lift the hem of his robes as he ran to stop from tripping over it, and his top speed really was not very impressive at all. It was much easier to sprint on hooves.

All was not lost, he reasoned. All he had to do was get some mana and he could start testing the strength of the block on his magic. Mana could be found anywhere; most of the time, he simply drained it from the environment, but perhaps Uriel's seal was interfering with that. But there were other sources.

His stomach growled. Malakar realized he was famished. That was one source, of course. Food could replenish mana as well.

His human nose was pathetic, but eventually it caught wind of the scent of cooking meat. Malakar followed it until he was standing before another store, one with a large, glowing sign.

BURGER KING, it read.

Malakar burst through the doors. "Bring me your pathetic burger king!" he shouted. "He will grovel at my feet, or I will have his head!"

He paused. The interior of the shop didn't look like much of a kingdom. In fact, it didn't look like much of anything at all. There were about a dozen tables, each of which stood empty. From behind a counter a human adolescent stared dully at him.

Malakar approached. "You there, boy," he snapped. "Bring me your finest mana-restoring foodstuffs. Quickly, if you wish to keep your hide!"

The pale boy just continued to stare at him. By the abyss, humans were ugly. "What," it said.

Oh, if only he had his magic. Malakar breathed in deeply, closing his eyes, and for a moment indulged in a fantasy of dismembering this peasant limb from limb. "I am hungry," he said slowly. "I can smell that you have food. Bring it to me, or—"

"Oh, look at you!"

Another young human bounced over to the counter. She had long dark hair with a bright blue streak in it, and wore the same strange uniform her fellow burger-slave did, though hers was a good deal cleaner and less wrinkled. She looked down on Malakar with a sort of wide-eyed innocence that very nearly made him sick.

"What a cute little outfit!" she cooed. "I hadn't heard there was a convention! Now what are you supposed to be? Are you a witch? Or maybe a dark princess?" She spoke with a twangy sort of accent, pronouncing you as ya. It reminded Malakar of the humans from his world, or at least the ones he had spent most of his time torturing. She squinted at him. "Let me guess. I don't know if I recognize…are you from a game, or a manga, or…"

"I…am not a witch, or a princess…," Malakar said, gritting his teeth, "and…I am…not from any of those things…" twitching, he reached up towards the counter, and began trying to climb over it. "I am…Malakar…the author of your torment, and I…I…"

He slipped off the counter and fell.

"Oh dear, are you alright?" the young woman asked.

Malakar lay on the floor for a moment, looking up at the flickering lights in the ceiling. As enraging as it was to have mere humans talking to him, threats were clearly getting him nowhere. Not so long as he didn't have magic to back them up.

He stood and dusted himself off. Swallowing his disgust, he tried his best to speak calmly. "I…I am very hungry," he said. "Give me food."

"Where are your parents?" asked the boy behind the counter.

"I…don't know."

"Oh no! Where did you last see them?"

"I don't know," Malakar sniffled. This child's body was getting to him again. He really was quite hungry, and the smell of food was making it worse. He was becoming very upset. "I don't know, I don't know, I'm just hungry, and…and…and…"

"Oh, don't cry, darlin', it's alright," said the young woman, rushing around the counter. "We'll get you some food, don't worry. Leo, bring him out a whopper and some fries, would you?"

"What? Who's going to pay?" the boy asked, but she ignored him.

The young woman ushered Malakar over to a table and sat down with him. She pulled out a shiny rectangular device, much like the one he had seen the older woman carry before. From here, Malakar could see a number of dancing runes floating over its face. Greedily, he reached out and tried to drain mana from the device, but no. Nothing. It was as if it wasn't magical at all.

"My name's Mary," the young woman said. Her smile was meant to be comforting, but Malakar, unfamiliar with the concept, thought it looked slightly sinister. "What did you say your name was?"

"Malakar."

Mary paused over her device. "Is that your real name, honey…? Or is that the name of the person you're dressed up as?"

"Are you going to summon the guard?" Malakar asked. "The, uh…the police?"

"Well, they can help you find your mommy…"

The next word was a real struggle to get out. He had only rarely said it before, and certainly never to a human. "Please…" Malakar almost choked. "...don't."

Mary's finger was hovering over the device. She gave him a strange look. "Why not?"

"I…I'm scared of them," said Malakar, further injuring his bleeding pride. It's okay. Once you get your magic, you can kill her. Kill the boy, too. No one needs to know you ever said those words.

"Well…alright," Mary said, putting the device down. "I won't, call them right now, sweetie. Let's just get some food in you for now, right? We can figure out where your parents are after."

The boy, Leo—Malakar was annoyed to find that he had remembered the peasant's name, insulted by it taking up space in his memory—brought out his meal. Cooked meat slathered with some mysterious sauce between two buns, thin strips of potato fried in oil, and…

"What's this?" he asked, as a cup was placed before him.

"Your drink," Leo answered. "Coke."

Malakar pried the curious cover off the cup and gasped. That brown liquid that looked like sewer water sloshed within. By the Heart of Darkness, it was even fizzing! He had indulged these humans, but this was too far. "You are trying to poison me," he hissed.

Leo rolled his eyes. "Sheesh, kid, if you wanted something else, you could have told me."

Malakar decided how Leo was going to die.

"Just bring him out some water, then," said Mary. "No, no, leave it, I'll drink it." Malakar watched, horrified, as she drank the horrible concoction.

He grimaced and set into his food before he lost his appetite. He took a single tentative bite of the meat and bread, and then his eyes widened and he practically inhaled the rest. "Delicious!" he cried. "What do you call this?!"

"A whopper…?" Leo wrinkled his nose. "Kid, do you really think this stuff is delicious…?"

"Do you mock me, mortal? Do you dare?" Malakar hammered his fists on the table. "Bring me more!"

"Oh, just bring more, would you?" Mary laughed. "Look at him, poor thing must be starving."

So Leo brought out a second whopper, then a third, then a fourth. The fries, Malakar found, were also delicious, though not nearly so much as the burgers, as they were called. They so lifted his spirits that he was even persuaded to try one of those fizzy drinks they had, the sodas. Not the brown stuff Mary drank, never that sludge, but they brought him an orange one, and Malakar was delighted to find that it was sweet unlike anything he had ever tasted before. Of course, he usually preferred his meat bleeding (or still screaming, if he could get it), but the sheer novelty of the flavors they presented him with had an appeal all its own. Had the humans in his world eaten so well? Somehow he doubted it.

There was only one problem. No matter how much he ate, he gained very little mana. Oh, he could feel a very small trickle of it, but not nearly the amount so much food should have generated. Not even the soda provided very much, and that stuff had to be magical.

Could it be Uriel's seal, blocking him from getting mana from food, much like it was blocking him from absorbing it from the environment? But then why would some still trickle through…?

"Let me see that," Malakar snapped, snatching Mary's peculiar device away from her. It was currently displaying a series of falling blocks. "What is this?"

"You mean my phone?"

"Who is the wizard that enchanted this for you? He must be skilled indeed." Perhaps, Malakar thought, he could seek out one of these mortals for help with undoing the seal. It would be risky, a last resort, but—

"A wizard?" Leo snorted. "There's no magic here, kid, just electronics."

"Do you think I am a fool?!" Malakar shouted. He waved his hand at the 'phone'. "How could this not be magic?!"

"That's right," Mary said soothingly. "It's magic." She glared at her fellow peasant. "He's just a kid, Leo, let him have some fun."

Malakar stared at her for a moment, then returned the phone to her. Somehow, he got the impression that despite his ridiculous claims, Leo was the one telling the truth about this.

Greedy for whatever little mana he was getting from it, he ordered another whopper, and began to ask more questions about this world.

* * *


​

Mary and Leo watched the little boy eat whopper after whopper, until, as Mary thought he might, he began to display the signs of drowsiness. Malakar blinked heavily, his head drooping forward more and more, until finally he fell face-first onto the table and began to snore.

That was when Mary called the police.

"He's right in here," she said when the officers arrived. Then she realized she knew one of them. "Oh, Mr. Denton, how are you?"

Sasha Denton was a friend of Mary's, though her father often wasn't home when Mary was over, working late hours at the station. Mary had seen him only a few times. He always looked exhausted, and Mary had thought he must have had a hard day at work, but he looked just as tired right now, in the middle of his shift. Maybe that was simply the way he was.

"Hello, Mary," said Mr. Denton, having no problem recalling her name. "I understand this little boy has lost his mother? That's what he told you."

"That's right. I was going to call you guys earlier, but he said he was scared of police. Oh, be careful…"

"I think we can handle him, miss," chuckled the officer who was not Mr. Denton as he lifted the small boy up. Malakar didn't even wake; he muttered something under his breath and then began snoring again.

Mr. Denton himself remained behind, asking some questions; when exactly the child had come in, what he had said, if they had seen anyone with him, etc. "You think you'll find his parents?" Mary asked when he was done. "Is anyone looking for him? He's such a little character."

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Mr. Denton said, pocketing his notepad. "You'd be surprised how often this happens. Kids go wandering off from their parents more than you'd think."

"Can you leave us a note telling our boss we were feeding a starving child?" Leo asked nervously. "I don't want the missing inventory to bite us in the ass."

Mr. Denton could. Mary watched as they drove off. "Oh, I really do hope they'll be able to help him," she murmured.

"I'm sure they will," Leo muttered, pinning the note to the register. Their shift replacements had come in, but Leo didn't really trust them to relay the story.

Mary wasn't so sure. She had a sneaking suspicion that more might have been going on with Malakar than just a little boy who had gotten separated from his parents. "C'mon, Leo," she said. "Walk me home."

"You only want me to walk you home when you're worried."

"Well, I am," she replied. "About Malakar."

"That's not his real name," scoffed Leo.

"You don't know that! Maybe he's foreign."

"I don't care if you're foreign, no one names their kid 'Malakar'. Sounds like a video game boss."

"Maybe it is," said Mary. "Maybe that's what he's dressed up as. I tried looking it up and couldn't find anything, though. But that's not what I'm worried about. Why was he starving when he came in?"

"Didn't look starving to me," said Leo. "Looked a bit chubby, in fact. I think we got scammed out of five whoppers." He paused, chewing on his lower lip. "But he was weird, wasn't he? Asked so many strange questions. It was like he didn't know anything. He didn't even know what a car was. He didn't even know he was in the states. Maybe…he's a spy."

Mary snorted. "A spy? Come on. He was just a kid!"

"Maybe he was, sure. And maybe he was just really short. Why was he so afraid of cops? Though, to be fair, cops are scary. I'm afraid of cops."

"Leo! That officer was Mr. Denton. You know, Sasha's dad. And if he was a spy, why would he know so little? Wouldn't other countries teach him about the States if they sent him to spy?"

"Maybe he wasn't sent by other countries," said Leo darkly. "There's other things out there, you know…"

"What are you saying? That he's not human?"

"Did you see how he put away those whoppers? I couldn't eat that many."

"Oh, please! He was just a lost little kid."

Leo shrugged his backpack over his shoulders. "Yeah, you're probably right. Come on, if I'm walking you home then I'm finishing my homework at your place."

"Oh yeah, homework. You want a rematch, don't you." Mary wasn't even sure what rematch she was talking about. It might have been in video games, basketball, checkers. Probably video games.

"We can do that too," Leo said mildly. "Let's go."



Officer Ramirez kept his eyes on the road, but he couldn't help but notice his partner kept stealing glances at the kid in the backseat.

"What's up, Denton?" he asked. "Something wrong?"

Denton sighed and settled back in his seat. "Nothing," he said.

"Just a lost kid, right? Strange costume, though."

"Yeah."

There was a moment of silence between them.

"Sure is weird that we picked up two kids like that in one day, though," said Denton.

Ramirez shuddered as he remembered the creepy little girl that had been brought into the station earlier. "Well, look at the bright side," he said. "Maybe they know each other."

 

[CCClover]

3. Reunited and it's Just Awful
​

Malakar was in the Black Palace, kneeling on the cold soulstone. The floor wept and groaned beneath him. Before him the Heart of Darkness and King of the World, the Great Dread Lord, sat on his cruelly spiked soulstone throne. Well, sitting was a bit much. The Great Dread Lord was a mass of shadow deeper than midnight, in which red flame flickered and boiled like flashes of heat lightning. His true form, it was said, was enough to drive even other demon lords mad.

"Malakar, I'd like to congratulate you on your incredible advances into the study of the arcane," his liege lord said, with a voice like the howl of a thousand tormented souls. "Creation trembles at your intellect, and frankly I have underfunded you."

"Yes, that's very true," said Malakar. "Thank you, my lord."

"As a reward for your service, I am hereby declaring that the entire arcane research wing is now under your total control, and I am doubling your budget. Also, we've thrown Carassiso out a window." A thin wail echoed in the distance.

"Wow, that's great," said Malakar.

"There's really only one problem." The shadows surrounding the Great Dread Lord roiled and bubbled like black smoke. "We're running out of it."

Malakar raised his head. "Running out of what, my lord?"

"Time," said Uriel.

The Seraphim descended from above like a bolt of golden lightning. Malakar screamed as Uriel's spear drove through his chest and pinned him to the floor. Uriel leaned in, the one golden eye in the center of his forehead full of raging light like that of a dying star.

"You're out of time, Malakar," Uriel murmured. "Wake up."



Malakar awoke with a gasp.

He was in a dimly-lit room, lying down on a sofa upholstered in some unidentifiable scratchy material. He looked around in confusion, not recognizing where he was. The furnishings here were sparse, nothing more than a desk, a chair toppled over onto its side, and a bookcase in one corner. He squinted. On the floor were scattered what looked to be miniature versions of the strange horseless carriages the people of this world used for transport. Cars, the slaves of the burger-king had called them. Suddenly he felt a flash of outrage. He must have fallen asleep in front of those two. Had their whoppers been drugged? Had he been betrayed?

Then he noticed a small crouching figure hidden in the shadows, holding something long and sharp.

Malakar shouted and rolled out of the way just as a little girl rushed forward and plunged a sharpened stick into the couch where his chest had been only moments before. She shrieked with frustration and tried to free it, scattering stuffing everywhere.

Malakar rolled across the floor and sprang to his feet. "Carassiso," he snarled.

"Stupid thing!" Carassiso finally yanked her weapon out of the couch—it looked to be one of the legs of the toppled chair, broken off and tapering to a fine splintered point—and turned to face him, breathing heavily.

Malakar took a good look at her. Like him, she had been trapped in the form of a human child. Bronze-skinned, she had long, ghostly white hair, and at her temples there was just the slightest hint of chitinous black horns. Her dress was pitch-black, and she wore a veil that looked as though it were made of spiderweb. The most startling part of her appearance, however, was her eyes. In her true demonic form, Carassiso's eyes had been unreadable, insectile. Now they glared at him, an unsettling yellow, the anger and hatred in them clear as day.

"You couldn't just be dead, could you," she spat, advancing with the point of the chair leg held out in front of her. "Well, Malakar, now that it's just us and the Great Dread Lord is gone, I'm going to do what I've wanted to do from the moment I first saw you. I'm going to kill you and eat your skin."

Malakar groped to his side and, with some struggle, broke off one of the legs of the chair for himself. "You're welcome to try. I'll make your head into my alarm clock. A little necromancy would do the trick! It will be a joy to wake up to your screams!"

With a wordless yell Carassiso charged at him, then yelped as she slipped on one of the toy cars. She went down with a hard thud. Malakar leapt, holding his chair leg high like a club, ready to break in her skull.

"Hey, you two!"

The lights flicked on. Malakar looked to the doorway and froze. Standing there was a very large, dark-skinned man wearing a crisp blue uniform. And it was a uniform; though it looked like none Malakar had ever seen, he could recognize the aesthetics of authority. A badge gleamed on his breast, just below his left shoulder, and beneath that was a nameplate that read Denton.

"No roughhousing!" the man shouted. He crossed the room in two steps and plucked the chair legs out of their hands. He frowned at these, and his frown deepened into a scowl as he took in the torn upholstery of the couch. "You did this," he said flatly. It was not a question.

"Um…yes." If Malakar had his wits about him, he might have tried cracking the man's skull, but his human body was betraying him again. Something about the man's tone, the stern snap of his voice, made Malakar very aware that, if he wanted, this man could easily pick him up and throw him out the window.

It was apparently affecting Carassiso as well, because she added, from the ground, "We're sorry."

"Your parents are going to have to pay for this," the man snapped. "Do you think they're going to be happy about that? Do I have to tie the two of you up? No? Then behave!" He pointed to the cars on the ground. "Play with the toys we gave you, and be quiet!"

With that, he left, slamming the door behind him.

After the man departed, Malakar and Carassiso just stared at each other for a moment. Neither of them wanted to give voice to the fact that a human had just cowed them so badly.

"Um," Malakar said awkwardly, "that…that uniform…"

"That's officer Denton," Carassiso sighed. She got up and straightened out her dress, then folded her arms and looked away from him. "One of the guard. We're in their barracks."

Malakar ground his teeth. He had been betrayed. Oh, once he got his magic back… "I suppose you've got a seal too."

Carassiso shot him a withering glance. "Of course. Do you think I'd still be in this wretched form if I could use my magic?" She stamped her foot. "Oh, I hate it, I hate it. This body is awful. Only two legs?! The hands are articulate enough, I suppose, but they hardly make up for that." She wiggled her fingers. Malakar was pretty sure they were bending ways they weren't meant to go. "Why did we end up in these forms anyway? Why human children?"

Malakar gave her a condescending smile. "It's very obvious, when you think about it. I don't suppose you've noticed, but despite its appearances, this world seems to have very little available mana. I think almost nothing I've seen is magical."

"Of course I've noticed that!" said Carassiso in a manner that made it obvious that she hadn't.

Malakar shrugged. "We demons are inherently magical creatures. Without the mana to sustain our forms, I think this world forced us into…suitable shapes. Perhaps if Uriel hadn't locked away our magic, we'd look like full-grown humans. But since we're so weak, we appear as children."

"That sounds like nonsense to me."

Malakar felt his face heating. "Well then, what's your explanation?"

"I think Uriel did it," said Carassiso. "I think Heaven wanted to…to humiliate us! Humiliate me!"

"You did a fine job of that all on your own," Malakar said acidly. "You went and got captured by the humans."

"You got captured too, you arrogant…" Carassiso stalked towards him with her hands outstretched like claws. Then, to Malakar's shock, she stopped, her shoulders hitching, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. "We're going to die, aren't we? We're stuck here without our magic, and eventually the angels are going to find us…"

Something about her tears was making Malakar's body want to cry as well. He blinked rapidly and looked at a wall. "We're not going to die," he said, doing his best to keep his voice steady. "Well, you might, but it won't be Heaven doing it. When we went through the portal, I blew up the portal-caster before I passed out. They won't be able to follow us."

"But what if Heaven already knew how to make portals?"

Malakar scoffed and scrubbed his face on a sleeve. Leave it to Carassiso to be so paranoid. It was true that if they knew how, making a portal was easy enough. But Heaven didn't value research; they were always labeling all the real interesting stuff 'forbidden' or 'profane'. No, if the angels wanted to follow after them, they would have had to reverse-engineer his research, and he had destroyed it. "I'm sure they don't," he said. "None of them have my brilliant mind. Besides, they wouldn't know where we went, anyway. Look, if they could follow us, they would have already."

Carassiso was upset enough to let that remark about his genius slide. "Well, what now?"

"What now? Well, I'm going to find some way out of here. You can…do whatever you please, I suppose. It would be too much trouble to kill you."

"You haven't noticed, have you?" Carassiso stepped closer, a smug smile growing across her face. "You and that brilliant mind of yours."

"Noticed what?" Malakar stepped back. "Stay away from me."

"The seal, you idiot. Haven't you felt it yet? Look what happens when we get closer."

Carassiso took another step closer. Curious, Malakar reached down through the inner darkness where his magic lay locked away. The seal was still there, and yet there was…something different about it. It seemed to hum, and the complex runes scattered across its surface wobbled slightly. It was weaker, he realized. And it grew weaker still with every step Carassiso took toward him. Not nearly enough to break it, of course, especially in his current state; but enough…just enough…that he might be able to squeak out the barest bit of magic.

"It must be some form of arcane resonance," Carassiso whispered, and Malakar nearly jumped out of his skin. She had gotten frightfully close without him noticing. "Perhaps because the seal was applied to both of us at once? Either way, this is the first time I've been able to even consider using magic."

Malakar pushed her away. Immediately the seal within settled back into place with all the heaviness of a mountain, and he was cut off entirely from his magic again. "Oh, this cannot be real," he groaned. "You're telling me the only way we can use magic is if we stay by each other's side?"

"It would appear so. At least for now."

Malakar fell to his knees and pounded the floor. "Curse the fates!" he cried. "Curse them for this cruel joke! I will have my revenge!"

"Hey! Quiet in there!" Officer Denton shouted outside the door.

"Oh, get up, you ham." Carassiso pulled Malakar to his feet. "I'm not happy about it either. But it's better than not being able to use magic at all, isn't it?"

As much as he didn't want to, Malakar had to admit it was. The hardest part of undoing seals was getting started, and Uriel had hit them with one doozy of a seal. Really, it was a stroke of luck that this resonance would make the job easier. Still… "All right, fine. Fine! We'll have to stick together until we manage to break it completely."

Carassiso gave him a thin smile. "Good to see you put that genius of yours to use, finally. Now, let's get out of here."



Officer Denton shifted behind his desk, the chair beneath him creaking as he put his legs up. "No," he said into the receiver held in the crook of his shoulder. "No, that doesn't sound like them. Hair colors don't match. Yeah, it must be dyed. Still doesn't match, though. Alright, keep me posted."

He sighed and put the receiver back into its cradle. He had been keeping an ear out for reports of missing children, but none of the ones in the system matched the two that he was keeping in the chief's office.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Denton leaned back in his chair. He was running out of options. He had looked into any ongoing conventions in the city, too. He recognized cosplay when he saw it; he had a daughter who was into that stuff. He had even called her to see if she had heard anything about missing children in any of her friend's circles, but nope. Nothing. Now he was going to have to find some place for the kids to stay. They couldn't sleep in the chief's office, that was for sure. At the rate they were going, there'd be nothing left of it by morning.

He glanced up as the door to the chief's office creaked open. He watched it swing open and shut, then put his feet down and peered over the edge of the desk. Standing there, side by side, were the two kids. Lord, but their costumes were fancy. The makeup for their horns looked movie-grade. Must have been damn expensive. Well, that was good; if their parents could afford fancy costumes, they could afford the repairs for the chief's couch.

"Can I help you two?" he asked them. "Why are you out and about? You need something?"

"We're leaving," said the little girl. Cara, she called herself. Cara Sisso.

An involuntary chill ran down Denton's spine. Both the kids were weird, but at least the boy was simple enough. The girl had caused a scene when they first picked her up; they had found her crawling around a bodega with her limbs bent all the wrong way. A couple of customers had fainted. They had nearly called an ambulance for her before she got up and put herself together, pretty as you please. He still remembered the awful cracking sounds. Multi-jointed, he had told people as he ushered her into his car. Some kids were just born like that.

"Leaving?" he said. "No, sweetie, I don't think so. I still don't know where your parents are—"

Cara leaned forward. Denton's heart leapt into his throat. Her eyes were pitch black. Before he could scream, a wave of dead, mute calm washed over him. All fear drained away, along with all emotion and thought. He sat back in his chair, hands hanging by his sides limply.

"We are leaving," said Cara. "Our parents are right outside. They told you they were coming to pick us up. Don't you remember?"

"Yes," Denton said numbly. As a matter of fact, he didn't remember that at all, but that was okay. It had been a command, and all he knew was that Cara was to be obeyed. His mind dutifully began growing the memory.

The little boy stood on his tiptoes and peered over the desk. "Oh, and one more thing," he said. "I want you to jam that into your skull."

The boy was pointing at the chair leg that Denton had taken from him, propped up against the wall. "Yes," Denton said numbly, grabbing it.

"No! Stop that!" Cara hissed. "Malakar, we can't just kill him!"

"Why not?"

"Because we're hiding, you moron! Don't you think if they come in and find a corpse, and us gone, they'll wonder what happened?"

"Carassiso, it's been such a long day. You have no idea the…the indignities these humans have put me through. I need to see one of them die."

"You don't think I would like that? I'm thinking about killing them constantly. But we need to lie low!"

"Fine! Fine! But you know, you'll never live a full life if you're afraid all the time."

"Shut up and stop distracting me! We barely have enough power for this as it is. It probably wouldn't even have worked if he wasn't so tired. You, Denton! Don't kill yourself. Our parents came and picked us up, you understand? Tell that to anyone who asks!"

Denton blinked. He could have sworn he was just talking to someone, but no, he was alone.

He felt something sharp tickling him beneath the chin. To his shock, he found that he held a broken chair leg with a long, sharp splinter right where his throat met his jaw. Lord, what had he been thinking? He could have really hurt himself like that. He tossed it aside, embarrassed. What was he going to tell the chief? Somehow, he had let Cara and Malak's parents come and pick them up and totally forgot to tell them about all the damage to the chief's office. How had he let that slip his mind? Probably just working too late.

Well, he'd be damned if he was going to let the repairs come out of his paycheck. With a grunt, he tapped at his laptop's keyboard, brought up an accidental damage form, and began filling it out.

 

[CCClover]

4. Incomplete Victory
​

The forces of Heaven stood victorious over the ruins of the Black Palace.

Beams of holy light had cast down the soaring towers, searing the soulstone to ash and freeing the spirits trapped within. Howling demons fled down the slopes of the volcano the palace was built upon, an eruption of fur and feather, scale and hide. Snapping jaws and talons tore at each other as angels, swooping down upon their backs with spear and sword, harried them down into all the hidden places of the mountain, into the dark where they belonged.

And in the rubble-strewn courtyard of the Black Palace the armies of the mortal races gathered. Or rather, what was left of them, for it had been a terrible battle, at the end of a terrible war. And in their midst stood the greatest heroes of the age, representing every race; man, elf, dwarf, and goblin (the goblins having chosen the right side this time). A great cry rose as the heroes addressed the crowd. It was done! The end of a thousand years of darkness, and the dawn of a new age of the light. The Great Enemy was no more…

Teralel watched from a distance, perched along the ruins of the palace walls along with the rest of the angels, and listened to the mortals cheering.

"Really makes it all seem worth it, doesn't it?" she said to the angel beside her. "What do you think, Trias?"

Trias, who glowed so brightly that to human eyes he seemed merely like an angry pillar of light, only grunted.

Angels do not really fight like humans. Each of them is unto themselves like an entire legion of human fighters, and they are not very numerous; they are used to fighting alone. Yet they still had hierarchy, their different choirs. Trias was Luminary to Teralel, which was to say he was her immediate superior, in a way. They had fought together for quite some time. At least by Teralel's reckoning: Trias had trained her and she had fought for centuries, but by an angel's standards she was very young. Still, she knew Trias well, and his answer being nothing but a grunt was something Teralel expected.

Still, she persisted. "It does a soul good, to see the mortals so happy," she sighed. "My heart burns for their freedom. I—"

"They will not have freedom for long," Trias interrupted her. "It is the way of mortals. This moment of clarity will fade, and they will sink once more into the mire of faithlessness and decay. Hush, now. Uriel approaches."

So he did. With a burst of light that would have burned out the eyes of a mortal, Uriel manifested on the walls with them. The Seraphim towered over the other angels, his outstretched wings an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of color. In his hands he held a large red crystal, in whose many facets shadows writhed.

"It is done," he intoned, holding it aloft. "Within this sacred gem lies trapped the Heart of Darkness, the Devourer of Hope, bound forever within the holy prison it contains..."

The collected angels—no more than a few dozen—all bowed their heads. Then they shifted, hefting their weapons, as a terrible voice echoed forth from the crystal:

"You have not defeated me, fools," said the Great Dread Lord. "No chains last forever. Not even those forged by angels. I will be free, sooner or later, and when I am, I will have learned from this mistake. I will—"

"That's enough of that, I think," said Uriel. He tucked the gem away somewhere within his flowing white robes, and the voice of the tyrant soon faded away to angry muffled blather.

Trias stepped forward. "The Heart of Darkness might be contained," he declared, "But what of his servants? Many lie slain, and yet there are some corpses that I had hoped to see which I did not."

"You are not wrong," said Uriel. "Many flee, and even now are hunted. But there are two that I considered perhaps the most important, which I took it upon myself to bring down. Yet I failed. Malakar the Irredeemable and Carassiso the Damned slipped from my grasp."

"Hah! Good old Malak and Cara!" came the faint voice of the Great Dread Lord. "They'll piss on your parade yet!"

Trias slammed the butt of his spear into the ground. "How could you let such filth escape, Uriel?" he cried. "Where are they now? Tell me, that I might have the pleasure of finishing them!"

There was a round of murmurs, which from the gathered angels had the acoustic properties of a distant opera. Uriel vastly outranked Trias, who had no standing to rebuke him; in addition, Malakar and Carassiso were both well-known, powerful demon lords, who, even wounded, would have been more than a match for Trias. Yet the angel did not back down, staring steely-eyed at the Seraphim.

Uriel's beatific smile never left his face. "I have failed, it is true," he said. "Do you truly wish to succeed where I did not?"

Teralel could not remain silent. "Uriel, please!" she cried. "My Luminary is weary with battle, and misspoke! Punish him not with this task. I will go in his stead!"

Trias' light flared with rage. "Teralel!"

"Would you now," Uriel mused.

"Only tell me where they are, and I will go!" Teralel wondered at the bravery she was showing. In any battle with the demon lords, she was certain to die, and die quickly. But she could not bear the thought of Trias perishing so pointlessly. He had fought so well, for so long; he deserved more honor than that.

Uriel was silent for a moment. "I am afraid," he said at last, "that they have fled to another world."

"Another world…?" said Teralel. "You mean, one beyond that which we know…? Do such places really exist?"

"They do," said Uriel. "Through their dark magics, they have bored a hole between our world and another; this, it seems, was what Malakar was up to these past years. Unfortunately, in our battle, his laboratory was destroyed, and the portal they slipped through closed behind them."

Trias gave a hollow laugh. "Then they are truly beyond our reach."

"Now, I didn't say that," said Uriel.

Suddenly, Teralel realized that she and Trias were alone with the Seraphim. The other angels had vanished, and all the world seemed cast in a gray haze. She glanced down at the courtyard and saw that the mortals were frozen in the midst of their cheering. Her wings trembled. She knew the Seraphim were powerful, but this powerful? And she had volunteered to hunt something that was an even match for one.

"This is a secret of the Higher Spheres," said Uriel. "But we Seraphim know the method of traveling to other worlds."

"What the—are you just telling them? Are you kidding me?" came the voice of the Great Dread Lord from within his robes. "Oh, you hypocrites, I can't believe this, I knew that—"

Uriel waved a hand and the voice cut off completely. "I do not tell you this lightly, Trias. Teralel. I bring you into my trust because you stand out amongst your fellows. For your valor," here, he nodded to Trias, who returned it stiffly. "And, for your purity of heart." He bowed to Teralel, who felt the blush in the tips of her wings. "I would not send you to your deaths pointlessly. When I fought Malakar and Carassiso, I managed to seal away their powers. Even you should be more of a match for them as they are, in normal combat. Yet the world they have fled to…changes things. There, they might overpower even me, though their magic remains locked away."

"What sort of world is it?" whispered Teralel. "Is it an…an unholy world? An entire world of demons, where their power is magnified? How might we best them there…?"

"No. It is nothing of the sort. I believe if we went there, you would better understand the circumstances."

"I…" despite herself, Teralel felt terribly excited. She felt that she had been chosen for a special trust, her and Trias together. She turned to her Luminary, but he refused to look at her. She wished he would.

"We will go," said Trias coldly. "Let us see the hunting ground."

Uriel nodded and wrapped his wings around them both, delicate as lace, strong as steel. It was like being wound in stained glass. Light gathered around them, and a distant, mournful hum rang in the ears, growing louder, and louder, and louder, until…

Teralel stumbled and nearly tripped, the explosion still ringing in her ears. She put a hand out to the wall to steady herself, breathing raggedly, her legs weak beneath her. Lifting her head heavily, she saw behind her the portal she had come through, a tear in reality, a circle of light so bright it stung the eyes.

It only took her a few moments to recognize just how wrong all that was. Angels didn't trip, or steady themselves, or catch their breath or have shaky knees. They generally didn't have to worry about things being too bright to look at either, being, as they were, incarnations of living light. Teralel realized that she was something…more than that, now. Or perhaps less? A sort of heaviness weighed down on her, an unpleasant moist solidness, like a wet, stinking blanket. She glanced down at her body.

"Oh great Heavens, is that flesh?" she shouted. "Am I wearing flesh?"

"You are. This world's laws require that you go forth as such. Give it a moment, and the nausea will pass." That was Uriel's voice, but her vision was still too blurry to make him out. She thought she heard Trias retching somewhere.

Soon enough though, she did get used to it. Not completely, of course. Flesh was very strange, and she always had a sense of a lot of things pumping and pulsing and squishing inside of her that was more than a little disconcerting, but Teralel found that, with some discipline, she could ignore it, let it fade into the background.

She examined her body. It appeared to be that of a human woman with very long, blonde hair that came down nearly to her waist. She could not say whether she was particularly tall or short, fat or thin. Teralel, like most angels, did not pay much attention to mortals. If she did, she might have realized that by the standards of her world, what she was wearing was terribly immodest. It was jogging shorts, a tank top, and a pair of ratty sneakers.

"That is part of the strangeness of this world," said Uriel. "And it is to the advantage of your quarry. They will have been forced into different forms when they first came here—though I know not what—but they, at least, are accustomed to going about in the flesh. Physicality can bring with it all sorts of strangeness."

"Boy, I'll say," Teralel breathed. She finally got a look at Uriel and Trias. Both of the angels looked like human men, but they could not have been more different. Uriel was tall, thin and graceful, and wore a suit as pale as he was. Playing through his silver hair were hints of the rainbow colors of his wings. Trias, on the other hand, was bronzed and extremely muscular, and crammed into clothes similar to hers, only much tighter.

How strange it was, to see them so! Teralel clasped her hands to her chest. "My Lord…my Luminary, when I look at you, my heart feels as though it will overflow…! What is this? I would not have thought it, but seeing you clothed in flesh…you are so glorious I cannot think straight! I have never felt anything like this before…"

Uriel peered at her. "Ah, yes," he said. "That's sexual attraction, I believe. Very peculiar sensation, that one."

"And…do you feel the same when you look at me?" Teralel asked hopefully.

Uriel laughed. "Oh my," he said, wiping away a tear. "Oh dear me, no." Trias said nothing.

"Oh," said Teralel, suddenly embarrassed. This only made her heart pound harder. So many emotions seemed to make that thing go! Did anything ever slow it down?

"There is no mana here," said Trias suddenly.

He was right. Now that she was somewhat adjusted to her flesh, and the distracting flesh of her companions, Teralel took a look around. They were in a dim alley formed by the walls of two towering stone buildings butting up against each other. Uriel led them away from the bright portal, which still hung in the air, to the mouth of the alley, stepping over piles of garbage with a dancing gracefulness that made Teralel's mouth go dry, until she was distracted by what lay before her.

Soaring towers rose into the sky before her, as far as the eye could see; some made of stone, and others apparently made of shimmering glass. All the ground seemed to have been paved over with stone, as well, except for a scarce few trees here and there. There was what looked to her eyes an unmoving black river, flowing impossibly straight; only it must have been solid, for strange, brightly-colored horseless carriages sped down it, creating a constant dull roar. And the mortals! Teralel saw no elves, dwarves or goblins, but an endless stream of humans issued forth from the towers, all walking briskly, many barely even looking up from strange glowing devices they held in their hands. More humans than Teralel had ever seen gathered in one place. Perhaps more humans than even existed in the entirety of her world.

She felt her head spin. Trias only looked at all of this grimly. But despite all the wonder laid out before them, it was true. There was no mana, no magic that she could sense at all.

"Do you see now, the dangers of this place?" Uriel intoned. "In this world, you are trapped in frail mortal forms, with little magic to avail you. Mana is not impossible to come by, but whatever powers of Heaven you wield will be greatly dampened. The same will be true for Malakar and Carassiso, especially sealed as they are, yet death and injury can come swiftly to you. You will be in a strange place, and your quarry is wily." The Seraphim paused. Even in the flesh, there was something clearly inhuman about him, much more so than Teralel and Trias. Colored lights danced over his face, from no source at all. "Do you still wish to hunt the enemy?"

"Of course," said Trias, as though he were offended by the very question. "To the ends of time, I will—"

Uriel gently laid a hand on Trias' arm. It looked very delicate there. "I was asking Teralel."

Trias said nothing.

"She spoke true, Trias. I can sense it in your heart. Long battle has worn you down. It will be good for you to rest."

"I—I will hunt them for you, Trias," Teralel spoke into the silence. "I will stay in this strange world and track them down."

Trias remained very, very still for a long moment, his eyes locked onto Uriel's. "Very well," he said finally, his voice hoarse. "Let her take the hunt."

Uriel nodded. "Very good." He glanced back down the alleyway towards the circle of light they had stepped through. "We must return now, for the portal will not remain open forever, and there is not enough mana on this side to open one back home. Where you stand now is my best guess at where, in this world, your prey has hidden. You will not be without guidance, Teralel. We will communicate with you."

"That is good, my lord." Despite Trias' cold silence, Teralel was becoming excited at the prospect of the hunt. What an honor it would be, to take down two demon lords of the caliber of Malakar and Carassiso! She would never be able to otherwise…

Suddenly, Uriel gripped her arm, and his eyes filled her vision. "Take this guidance now, then," he said, his voice ringing with such clear authority that it drove all distracting thoughts from her head. "Though your prey is weakened, this is no small risk. Death comes easily in this world, with no magic to heal mortal injury. I would hunt them myself, but Heaven would not allow a Seraphim to linger where he might be slain so easily. And remember the precepts of Heaven, when it comes to mortal innocents."

"The innocent can be recruited to fight by our side, but to slay them ourselves is to have the gates of Heaven barred to us, no matter the cause…" Teralel frowned. She didn't have a very good idea how durable mortals were, but without magic to heal them, she'd have to make sure to avoid any…accidents. "I will be careful, Uriel."

"Before we go, might I speak with Teralel alone?" Trias asked.

Uriel glanced between the two of them, then nodded. "Be quick," he said. Then he retreated back down the alley toward the portal.

For a long moment, Trias said nothing. The sounds of the passing humans and the rumble of their strange carriages filled the silence between them. Teralel fidgeted. He wouldn't even look at her. She stared at his face, the strange angles of it carved into flesh, so new and yet somehow familiar to her, the face that she had known etched in burning light for so long. A strange urge seized her, to reach out and touch that face—

"You have shamed me," Trias said finally. He still only stared straight ahead.

"I…that was not my intention," said Teralel. "I only worry for you. You deserve rest."

"Do you think I am weak?"

"No! No. Never." She hesitated, then laid her hand on his. "Trias…"

Trias spun to face her. There was nothing but cold anger in his eyes. "You have purchased this chance for yourself with my dishonor," he said, yanking his hand away from hers. "Do not shame me further by failing."

"I will not," Teralel said quietly.

Trias nodded. Wordlessly, he joined Uriel in the alley. Teralel watched as they stepped through the glowing portal. Once they were gone, it wavered, then slowly dimmed, leaving nothing but a glowing afterimage.

"Rest well, my Luminary," Teralel murmured.

 

[CCClover]

5. Petty Robbery and Apartment Shopping
​

"I'm hungry," Carassiso mumbled.

Malakar blinked blearily as they stumbled out of the alleyway in which they had spent the night. Once he got his magic back, he thought, he'd dim the world's sun just a tad. Surely things didn't need to be this bright. "You ate just a little while ago," he grumbled.

"I threw most of it up." Carassiso clutched her stomach. "These bodies aren't meant to eat raw meat, Malakar. We need human food."

"Stop complaining!" Malakar snapped. But he knew it was true. He'd eaten a rat, which in his demonic form had always been a convenient snack in the Black Palace. While it seemed fine at first, all sorts of horrific stuff had come spewing out of this body a few hours ago. He'd only just gotten his appetite back.

Their first night in this "New York City" had been one of profound misery. Malakar and Carassiso were, in the end, palace demons. They were accustomed to a certain amount of luxury, and unused to the sort of rough living that the average demonic soldier on the front lines might have to suffer.

By the time they had escaped the police station, it was already dark, and they had used what little mana they had scraped together between them to mesmerize the guard. They were, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than a couple of abandoned children in the midst of a gigantic city. And children of the age they appeared to be clearly attracted suspicion when they were unaccompanied by adults, especially at night. And the inns in this city were so strange. They kept getting suspicious stares whenever they walked into one, and the slaves behind the desk—if they did not just immediately begin questioning where their parents were—kept asking for something called a 'Credit or Debit Card.' Malakar worried that they'd end up right back in the police station.

Fortunately, this city seemed to have countless places to hide. Carassiso was particularly adept at finding them. The humans here had bored into the earth like termites into wood, creating so many tunnels running beneath their feet that it was a wonder that all those gigantic buildings above didn't simply sink into the ground.

But as they slipped into these dark spaces, Malakar and Carassiso always found them less than welcoming. One hole in the ground they found belched foul-smelling steam into their faces before they could climb into it. Another long tunnel had seemed promising, until they had to throw themselves against the wall in panic as what looked to be a titanic silver snake went screaming past. Even by the standards of demons who had lived in an active volcano, this was simply absurd. They'd ended up spending their night shivering between two old brick buildings with boarded up windows, eating rats to try to gather the mana for a fire.

Malakar plucked bits of bloody fur from his robes. "We can't spend another night like that," he muttered. "How will we ever get anywhere breaking the seal under those circumstances? We need a place to sleep, at the very least."

"Food first."

"Shut up! What—what are you doing? What is this expression you're making at me?"

"I believe it's called a pout." Carassiso jutted her lip out further. "It's supposed to make people nicer to you, I think. It worked on Officer Denton."

She yelped as Malakar spitefully flicked her jutting lip. "Disgusting!" he shouted. Several passers-by glanced curiously in his direction, and he lowered his voice. "Alright. Fine then. Let's find some food."

They followed their noses to a small store at the edge of a park, whose sign bore the inexplicable numbers "7-eleven". Within, a line had formed up behind the counter, where another slave—Malakar wondered if he was a servant of the Burger King, as well—hammered away at some strange beeping box.

They examined the store's shelves. They were full of food, but it was all wrapped in some transparent crinkly material. What had drawn their attention lay behind a dome of glass; dozens of sausages, rotating slowly on some strange grill.

Malakar pressed his face to the glass and breathed in deep. "You know, I do have to give these humans credit, that grill is an ingenious device."

"For humans, perhaps." Carassiso slapped the glass. "Slave! We desire sausages!"

The people in line frowned at them, and behind the counter the slave rolled his eyes disrespectfully. "Get in line."

"We're not waiting with the peasants!" Malakar snapped.

One of the men standing in line frowned at them. "Hey, you kids shouldn't be calling people like that. It's rude."

Carassiso retrieved a black velvet bag from her pocket. She reached into it and pulled out a handful of gold coins. "Two crowns for every sausage in the store, slave. I will allow you to kiss my feet as thanks for my generosity."

"We don't take toy money, kid," said the slave. "Buzz off."

"What! Two crowns is worth ten times as many sausages, surely!"

"Oh, enough of this," said Malakar.

He took a step back, tapping his chin as he considered the store shelves, before he stopped in the middle of an aisle. He paused, took a deep breath, then threw his shoulder into a rack of slim jims and protein bars.

"Hey, kid, what the hell are you doing?" someone shouted, but it was too late. The display toppled over, falling into the next one, which leaned for a precarious moment before it fell as well onto the next. With a series of resounding crashes all of the shelves toppled over, scattering their goods, candy bars and ramen and tuna cans rolling haphazardly away from the carnage.

Carassiso stared at this in shock. "Malakar!"

"Grab the sausages!" he shouted. The slave, furious, came around the counter. Malakar pelted him with a heavy jar of sauce which bounced off his face with a solid toonk and then smashed to pieces on the floor.

The slave decided that was enough for him; as did the customers. They fled out the front door as Malakar and Carassiso looted the store. Moments later, they walked outside, holding bags hastily stuffed full of whatever they had been able to grab.

The slave was waiting there for them, nursing a rapidly swelling black eye. "I'm calling the cops on you little freaks," he snapped, jabbing at his phone.

Malakar snatched the phone from his hands. "Try calling them now, idiot!" he laughed. Then for good measure he kicked the man in his shins before Carassiso dragged him away.



"You know," said Carassiso, once they had stopped running, "we are supposed to be lying low. You do understand what that means, yes? The whole concept of not attracting attention to ourselves?"

"Of course I understand," Malakar said, popping a sausage into his mouth. "But those humans were asking for it. You cannot deny that it was satisfying."

They had found a park, an oasis of green in the city, and were crouched now beneath some bushes with their haul spread out before them. There was an entire bag full of sausages, and Malakar had filled another with an entire trove of strange pastries labeled 'donuts' and other wrapped goods. Carassiso sighed and gave him a withering look.

"Survival would be satisfying." She plucked something from the bag and peeled away the wrapping, revealing a brown bar, and gave this a tentative sniff before taking a bite. Her eyes widened. "Oh! This is very good!" she cried, peering at the wrapping. "What is this…three musketeers? Chocolate?"

"Besides, now we have a phone," Malakar continued, waggling it between his fingers. "I've wanted to get my hands on one of these devices. They must have other uses than simply summoning the guard." He ate another sausage as Carassiso unfolded a sheaf of large paper packed with dense script. "What is that?"

"I don't know. I just grabbed it on the way out. I think the rulers of this place must use it to instruct their followers what to believe." Carassiso spread the paper out in front of her, eyes quickly scanning through the text. "There is much written here about the current affairs of this world. I can't say I understand much."

"Does it say anything in there about how phones work?" Malakar muttered, jabbing at the device. Indecipherable runes popped up, along with what looked like a drawing of excrement.

"No." Carassiso paused. "Isn't it strange?"

"What is?"

She tapped a long nail on the paper. "Why should these humans use the same language we do in our world?"

Malakar gave a start. Somehow, with so much else to worry about, the thought had never occurred to him. "Yes," he said. "It is strange." Why would two completely unconnected worlds have a language in common, right down to the exact same alphabet?

Carassiso turned the page before he could pursue the thought any further. "Oh, now this might be helpful."

Malakar peered over at the paper. At the top of the page were the words, 'FOR RENT.'

***
​

Hal Mortensen grunted as he plodded his way up the creaking stairs to his rental. He'd been in New York City a long, long time. He could remember taking these very same stairs as a young man in twos and threes. He'd never do that again. Well, then, who knew? People on the television were always talking about rejuvenation drugs, these days.

"Time of miracles we live in, uh-huh," he muttered as he pulled himself along the banister. "Maybe I'll be twenty-five again. Uh-huh."

He could also remember, as a young man, not being so fearful of coming out to meet potential renters. Now he carried a gun. He didn't always, but something about the way this prospective customer had talked on the phone had sketched him out a bit. They had asked an awful lot of strange questions. But Hal, well, he was a red-blooded American, and what sort of American isn't willing to take on a little risk for some money? He hadn't built himself up to owning the finest pawn shop in New York City by being cowardly. No, it had taken gumption and hard work. And a series of fortuitous fires that just so happened to strike his biggest competitors.

He reached the top of the stairs and looked around, mopping sweat from his brow. He was expecting his prospective renter to be waiting there for him. Instead he frowned in surprise at the young boy and girl standing there on the landing.

"Hey there, kids," he said, trying to sound friendly. "Was it your parents who called me?"

The boy stepped forward. He was a weird one. It looked like he was wearing some kind of huge red wig. "I called you," he declared pompously.

Hal chuckled. "Well, your mommy and daddy must trust you a lot to let you set this up for them. Where are they?"

"It wasn't—"

The girl reached forward from the shadows and pinched the boy's arm, hard. "They're not here," she explained as the boy glared at her. "We are to conduct business on their behalf."

Hal stared at the both of them.

"Aw, hell," he said. "What kind of grift is this? Naw, I don't think so." He turned to head back down the stairs.

"Stay right there!" Malakar commanded. "Don't move, if you wish to ever draw another breath!"

It had taken him and Carassiso some time to puzzle out what to do with the for-rent advertisements they'd found in the newspaper. The real breakthrough had come when they discovered that the numbers listed in each ad could be punched into the phone, which, after an annoying ringing noise, would put them in contact with the person who had made the advertisement. What a miraculous device! Malakar had a hard time believing it wasn't magic.

Things had, unfortunately, not gone smoothly from there. Half the people they called had only laughed at him over the phone and told him to put his daddy on the line. Those who had heard him out had given addresses to meet at that neither he nor Carassiso had any idea how to get to. After an exhausting day of trial and error, this was their last hope. This man had the only rental advertisement that had listened to him over the phone and who had given an address they had actually figured out how to get to, once they puzzled out what the street signs and numbers on the buildings meant.

Hal turned and gave a small smile, reaching for something in his belt. "Are you threatening me, boy?"

As a matter of fact, Malakar was. It was already dark out, and he had no intention of spending another night on the streets. Besides, the phone had broken at some point, going dark, and he had thrown it away. He had eaten tons of food, and though the seal made spending mana very inefficient, he thought he had just enough to set this man on fire. But before it came to that, Carassiso stepped in once more.

"Do you recognize what this is?" she said, holding out a crown on the palm of her hand.

Hal took it from her, inspected it. As a matter of fact, he did know what this was. He didn't know the fellow with horns stamped into the face of the coin, but he recognized real gold when he saw it. He owned a pawn shop after all.

"Where did you get this, young lady—" he said, but the words died in his mouth as he raised his head and found her holding out two more of the coins to him.

"I will give you three crowns each month for as long as we stay in your abode," she said coolly.

Hal gulped and took the other two coins. He hefted them in his fist, listening to the clank. Three gold coins this heavy would be worth an entire year's rent and then some.

"You know what, why don't I just let you two in, and we can look around while we wait for your parents," he said.

The apartment really wasn't much. Just a studio with a creaky floor, a non-functioning oven, and a window that looked out on a courtyard that was more often than not filled with garbage. Hal was afraid they wouldn't take it. He intended to keep the three coins the young miss had already given him, and make them an offer to help them find something else if they weren't satisfied. For just a little more gold, of course, as a finder's fee. But the pair only quickly glanced around before the boy slumped dramatically to the floor. "Oh, it will have to do."

"Where are the furnishings?" the girl asked.

"Comes as it is," said Hal.

"We'll take it," said the girl. "But tonight is the last night it will be so sparse. You will provide us with whatever else we request, merchant, be it bedding or anything else. Do I make myself clear?"

Hal watched as she pressed two more coins into his hand. "Well, um, uh, of course, miss," he said. "I'm just gonna need, uh, your parents' signatures, and then a background check, and…uhhhh…." Hal stared, agog, as the little girl retrieved an egg-sized ruby from the pouch she held and held it out to him. "You know what, forget all that. You two just tell me whatever you need."

Some time later Hal finally left, with a list of hundreds of items entered into his phone. He also carried more coins, 'to exchange for currencies the other slaves of this city will accept', as the girl had said. Some of what the two kids had requested made sense. Bed, furniture, their own phones…even if he didn't know what "angelskin blankets" were. Other things he had no idea, and he prided himself on being a man who knew his knickknackery. What was a 'divine resonance crystal' or 'arcane attunement rod'?

But regardless of what they had asked for, Hal had promised to find it for them. Hell, that was just the sort of discreet, hardworking man Hal Mortensen took pride in being. For the right price, he'd promise you the moon. No questions asked.

And definitely no refunds.

 

[CCClover]

6. Pursued
​

"Leo! Leo, c'mon now, we're gonna be late for our shift!"


Leo groaned and rolled over in his bed, blinking against the sunlight peeking around the corners of the blinds, drawn as tightly as he could make them. His room was lit by the dim glow of a television screen and his computer monitor. The pause screen for the game he had been playing when he passed out still flickered on the TV. BladeKing: Conquest of the Shattered Realms was trash, but it remained one of his favorites. He glanced at his controller, lying on his covers just out of reach. One push of a button, and he could be back to having grateful villagers shower him with gold for blowing up easily killable dragons. Much more appealing than serving burgers.

"Leo you're gonna make me late you better get out here right now mister—"

No matter how hard he tried to ignore it, the yelling from just outside his window wouldn't relent. Leo sighed, got out of bed, and immediately stepped onto a pile of discarded electronics. Moments later he was hobbling out his front door, still pulling on his Burger King shirt. He found Mary waiting there for him, tugging anxiously at the blue streak in her long dark hair. She frowned as he approached.

"You know, you should really wash your shirt," she said, pointing to a mustard stain.

Leo shrugged. "I had planned on it." He fell beside her as she began walking at a brisk pace. She cared way too much about this job.

"Let me guess, you were playing BladeKing all night again?"

"So what if I was? You can't lecture me. You streamed it for 48 hours straight that one time."

Mary blushed. "Well, maybe," she muttered. "But I still washed my clothes."

"I'm skeptical of that. Besides, why do you care? The boss doesn't."

"I don't! Not really." Mary paused for a moment. "You'd, ah, you'd be handsome if you cleaned up a bit, is all."

"No one's looking handsome in this," Leo replied, pulling at his shirt. "They're not designed to be flattering. The more time the customers spend ogling the clerks, the more money the store loses."

Mary rolled her eyes. "Oh, whatever."

They continued on in silence. The Burger King job had been Mary's idea. She spent most of her money on costumes and conventions. Leo, on the other hand, wasted it all on video games. He really had to admit that most of it was a waste, because he kept buying games that he'd never had a chance to play, and at this rate never would.

He yawned. "Oh look, it's open again," he said, as they walked by the 7-Eleven that they passed by every day on the way to work. "Hold on, let me pop in real quick."

"We're going to be late!"

"I'm tired! I need an energy drink."

Mary grumbled, but trailed after him into the store.

The 7-Eleven had been closed for the past few days. Apparently someone had robbed it, and trashed the place so badly in the process that the clerk on duty had quit. It was a little frightening, really. Their neighborhood wasn't exactly quiet, per se, but this sort of violent robbery in broad daylight was definitely outside the norm.

Maybe that was why there was a cop still lingering around inside now. Mary smiled at Mr. Denton—sorry, Officer Denton—as Leo rummaged around in the freezer. Leo vaguely knew Sasha, Denton's daughter, and he felt sorry for her. It must suck having a cop as a dad.

Mr. Denton only briefly nodded at them, though. He was currently trying to politely extricate himself from a conversation with a very animated customer. Leo could not help overhearing some snatches of conversation as he mulled over which of the three dozen flavors of energy drink he wanted.

"It's a shame what this world is coming to!" The customer was a crooked old lady with a vaguely eastern-European accent. "Such things never used to happen in this city!"

"It is definitely a shame, Missus Kharchenko," Denton agreed.

"I hope you officers will be doing your job. What else are we paying you taxes for? To shine your badges? Huh! When do you think you will catch them? Why aren't you taking notes?"

"We've already got your statement, Missus Kharchenko."

"You don't look like you're taking it seriously! It was so terrifying being in here when it happened. Children, two little children did this! How hard could it be to find them? One of them had long, bright red hair! Like a clown, he was!"

Mary perked up at that and stared at Officer Denton.

"He was most likely wearing a wig," Denton said. He took a step back from Mrs. Kharchenko, whose jabbing finger was coming perilously close to poking a hole in his coffee cup. "If we hear anything, we'll let the community know. Now I've really got to—"

But Mary was not the only one who had been listening in.

"Did you say red hair?" a woman shouted, rushing to Denton's side. She was shockingly pretty, almost unearthly so, with long blonde hair that seemed almost to glow coming down in a golden waterfall to her waist. The effect of her beauty was accentuated by the fact that she was wearing a fairly revealing button-down shirt that was very buttoned-down and a pair of shorts that seemed a size too small, a uniform Leo recognized as belonging to the waitresses of Bald Tony's Pizza, the restaurant that always made Mary get very quiet whenever Leo said they should go there. However good-looking she was, though, the intense look in her eyes would have been enough to make most sensible men steer clear.

The woman grasped Mrs. Kharchenko's hands. "Did he also have eyes of black flame? Did the earth groan beneath the weight of his wickedness? Did his sins scream in your heart?!"

It was Mrs. Kharchenko's turn to be flabbergasted. "Let go of me!" she cried.

The blond woman dropped her hands and turned to Denton. "You, guardsman! It is your duty to investigate this villainy, is it not? You must tell me what happened here, and who you suspect is responsible!"

"Uh, no," Denton replied, shielding his coffee as though he feared this new interlocutor would grab it and throw it in his face. "I must not do anything of the sort. This is police business, ma'am."

The blond woman took a step forward and seemed almost on the verge of shouting, but then she merely nodded. "I understand. The strictures of law are solemn, and duty must not bend! I will respect your oaths, guardsmen. I see the goodness in you. You are beautiful!"

"Uh huh," said Denton. "And could I ask who you are?" But it was too late. The woman strode swiftly out of the store. Denton and Mrs. Kharchenko exchanged worried glances before they too left.

"You heard all that, right?" Mary asked Leo as they stood in line. "A kid knocked over the store. A kid with bright red hair!"

"I did."

"Do you think it was Malakar? Oh, he must still be starving…what do you think that lady wanted him for…?"

Leo kept a grim silence. Mary was too innocent; she'd had that kid on the brain ever since he'd walked into Burger King (if kid indeed he was). She was worried about him; obsessed, almost. That was the kind of girl she was. She'd once spent a whole summer taking care of a half-dead old alley cat she'd found, trying to nurse it back to health; whatever money she'd had, she'd spent on the vet, and she'd even managed to get some money out of Leo as well. He'd tried telling her it was doomed, but he couldn't resist when she looked up at him with those big, dark eyes of hers. Of course it had died in the last weeks of vacation, and Mary had bawled her eyes out, but that was who she was.

Leo, on the other hand, wasn't sure that this kid (or whatever he actually was) needed to be worried over. Perhaps it was themselves they should be worrying about. Was he a spy? Was that lady his handler? Were they…of this earth? All of these thoughts raced through his mind. But there was no point in upsetting Mary over them.

"It could have been any kid, if they were wearing a wig," he said. "But maybe it was Malakar. Just goes to show the little punk probably lied to us if he was the sort to go knock over a store later. Now come on, we're already late."

"What?!" Mary cried, glancing at her phone. "Oh, damn!"

They ran the rest of their way to the Burger King. They passed by the blond woman as they did. Leo glanced behind himself to find her staring at them, long after they had run by.



* * *



"Concentrate, you fool!" Carassiso shouted.

Malakar's hands flexed. Oh, how he longed to have his talons back. The day he could tear out her throat would be an ecstasy of bliss. Instead he screwed his eyes shut and focused on the seal.

He and Carassiso sat on the floor of their apartment, facing each other. There was a gap of a few feet of empty floor between them. The arcane resonance would have been stronger if it were closed, but this was about as close as they could stand to be to each other.

Uriel's seal was a ring of burning brightness in the darkness of Malakar's mind. With what little mana he had, Malakar cast his thoughts out over it, probing it for weaknesses. He could feel Carassiso doing the same, weaving her magic like a web, scuttling through the abyss. Neither of them, unfortunately, were having much luck.

It had been a humbling few days since they had gotten this apartment and really settled down to work on the seal. At first they had assumed that, powerful demon lords that they were, they ought to make good progress. But Uriel must have been stronger than they thought; his seal was assuredly thorough. Malakar realized with unease that if it were not for the arcane resonance, he might have been cut off from magic completely. As it was, they could not say whether they had managed to weaken the seal at all as of yet. Well, actually, yes, they could say so. They knew with certainty that they hadn't managed to weaken it at all.

Malakar shouted with pain as he carelessly slipped a bit too close to the seal and pain ripped through him. "Wait," he gasped, opening his eyes. "Stop for a moment. I need more mana…"

He reached for the enormous stack of chocolate bars that sat between himself and Carassiso. While still very little, they had discovered that chocolate restored the most mana of any food they'd tried in this accursed world. Before he could grab one, though, Carassiso slapped his hand away.

"No," she snapped. "Not yet. We keep trying."

"I cannot," Malakar growled. "I am spent."

"You're fine! And you know the rules." Carassiso gave him an evil smile and nodded to the chocolate. "Those belong to me. You can eat when I say. If you're a good boy."

Malakar gritted his teeth as fantasies of tearing Carassiso limb from limb floated through his skull. He tried to remind himself that he needed her for now. As true as that was, he didn't know how much more of this he could take.

In his original world, wealth had been such an afterthought. He only cared about it insofar as it funded his research. Surely he had never carried it on him; for a demon of his station, it was almost considered gauche to do so. The idea of purchasing things he needed on a day to day basis was foreign. He made demands of the palace slaves, and they fulfilled his wishes. If he ever actually did need to handle gold himself, he summoned it from the vaults as needed. Carassiso was one of the few demon lords who actually carried wealth on her, which was so old-fashioned as to be almost cute.

Except now it had landed Malakar in the abominable situation of being reliant on her for…well, for everything. Money was the only power they held in this world at the moment. And Carassiso had all of it.

"I need to eat," Malakar said, reaching for the candy bars again.

Carassiso slapped his hand away, much harder this time. Then she put her chin in her hands and leaned forward.

"I will let you eat if I hear the truth fall from your lips," she purred. "Tell me what a genius I am."

"Do you so long for my approval?" Malakar sneered, rubbing his hand. "I never knew."

Carassiso's eyes glinted dangerously. "Admit it. Admit that you are jealous of me. Admit that I always deserved to be the Great Dread Lord's right hand. Admit that you are my inferior." She laughed and extended a hand, holding it out towards him. "Kiss my ring, and swear your utter loyalty to me like the dog you are. Then I will allow you to eat."

Malakar stared at her hand. Slowly, he lowered his face towards it. Carassiso's breath grew faster.

"I'm waiting!" she cried.

Then Malakar opened his mouth wide and bit down on her fingers, hard.

"Oh!" Carassiso screamed. "Oh you filthy little worm—"

Malakar spit her hand out and scampered towards the chocolate bars. He quickly began stuffing them into his mouth, wrapper and all. He had only managed to swallow a mouthful before Carassiso tackled him.

She was howling, screaming on top of him, clawing at his eyes. Malakar shielded his face with one arm and wildly flailed at her with the other. If they were in their demon forms, they would have been tearing each other apart. As it was, Malakar sustained some slight scratches on his cheeks, and Carassiso had the wind knocked out of her as his fist connected with her stomach.

She fell over, breathless. Malakar staggered to his feet. For good measure, he kicked Carassiso in the gut again. Her eyes widened and she made a high-pitched noise not unlike a balloon slowly deflating.

"You think I need you, insect?" Malakar hissed as she writhed on the floor. "You think your gold has purchased you power over me? Keep your chocolate. I will take what I want from the mortals. For I am Malakar of the Void, and the Great Dread Lord is the only one worthy of my allegiance! Certainly not you."

Rubbing his face, Malakar stalked his way out of the apartment. Carassiso appeared at the door when he was halfway down the stairs.

"Good!" she screamed. "Leave! I command you to leave! This is my apartment, anyway! It belongs to me, just like everything else! I don't care about the seal, I hope you never come back!"

"I won't!" Malakar screamed back. "You can rot without me!"

"Good! Good! I hope one of those…those cars hits you! I hope you die! Maybe when you lie bleeding on the ground with your guts strewn about your ears you will recognize my kindness, you cur!"

From an apartment somewhere below them a baby started crying. A door opened. "Hey! Be quiet up there!"

"Silence, peasant!" Malakar and Carassiso both shouted. Then Carassiso slammed the door shut.

Malakar stomped the rest of the way down the stairs and out of the apartment. He hated how this stupid body had begun crying. Worthless weaklings that human children were, it seemed their bodies wanted to weep over everything.

What was he to do? There was no chance that he'd ever be able to break through Uriel's seal on his own. But he simply could not remain in that apartment with Carassiso. At least not right now, or he'd actually try to kill her.

At least it wasn't actually all that much trouble to get his own food. The humans of this world were remarkably stupid. Not only did they leave food out everywhere, they didn't even really guard it very closely. More often than not, you could just simply take it.

So it was that after a quick theft Malakar sat on the sidewalk, stuffing his face with candy bars and mulling over his thoughts.

"Hey little dude, where's your mom?" asked a passing human carrying some kind of lute and reeking of strange smoke.

"In the eternal abyss," muttered Malakar.

"Poor little guy," said the human, and tossed him one of the odd paper notes that apparently passed for currency in this world. Malakar picked it up. This world was so odd. Maybe if he just stood around he'd get for free what Carassiso paid gold for.

"Were you with your auntie, then?" asked another human.

"What?" Malakar blinked up at her. A plump middle-aged woman was smiling down at him.

"I think your auntie is asking for you," she said. "Are you Malakar?"

"I am…" Malakar said, slowly getting up. "Who is asking for me…?"

"Look, you can see her now. Is that your auntie?"

Malakar looked where the woman was pointing and his blood froze. Down the sidewalk, a woman with long blond hair was stopping passing humans and interrogating them. Even as he watched, the man she was talking to pointed in his direction.

Immediately Malakar turned and bolted.

It couldn't be, he thought to himself as he dodged into a crowd and ran through a forest of legs. But it was. Maybe it was merely because they were both from the same world, but Malakar hadn't needed to see wings or a halo of holy light to know that woman was an angel. If he could recognize her, did that mean she could see him, too?

He dared to take a look over his shoulder. He could see the woman, but the crowd of humans rippled with shouts of outrage behind him, as though someone were pushing their way through. How could the angels be here? Had his parting shot not destroyed his research, like he thought it had? Had they reverse-engineered already what had taken him years to achieve? Or, even worse, was Carassiso right about them knowing of other worlds?

Suddenly there were strong arms wrapped around him. Malakar immediately began to punch and kick. A hand clamped down over his mouth before he could cry out, and he was dragged into the entrance of a dimly lit building.

By the Heart of Darkness, this was it. He was going to die. He bit down on the hand over his mouth and was rewarded with a loud yelp. "Hey, stop that now!"

Now that was a voice he hadn't expected. He looked up with shock into the faces of his captors.

"Slaves of the Burger King?" he cried.

 

[CCClover]

7. At the Movies
​

"It's Mary and Leo, 'kid'," said Leo, frowning. "You really shouldn't be calling people slaves."

"I will call you whatever I so please, Mary!"

"No, she's Mary, I'm Leo—look, come in here, get away from the door."

Mary and Leo tried to pull Malakar back further into the movie theater they had dragged him into, but Malakar dug his feet. "No! How dare you, betrayers! Unhand me! I'll kill you! I swear I'll make your skulls into my chamberpot—"

"Ahah, don't worry, he's, uh, our little brother," Leo said to the people in line for tickets, who had begun to look over with concern.

Mary knelt down so that she could look Malakar in the eye, face-to-face. "Malakar, we're trying to help," she whispered. "We want to hide you from that woman who's looking for you."

"What? What do you know of her?!"

"Not much. But we know she's after you, and we saw you run from her. Will you let us help you?"

Malakar considered using her position to try goring her through the eye with one of his horns. But then he glanced out the doorway. Outside, on the sidewalk, he could see the crowd still jostling, and caught a glimpse of golden hair. "Very well," he growled. "Hide me. Quickly now! Then you will explain yourselves, and I will decide if you shall live!"

Mary ushered Malakar behind a cardboard prop for the movie 'DEATH SWAMP 3', which appeared to be about an alligator that exclusively devoured women in bikinis. Leo stationed himself by the entrance to the theater, pretending to examine his phone. Malakar peeked out from behind the cutout, watching.

And there she was, in a flash, golden hair streaming behind her. There one moment, and gone the next, pushing her way further into the crowd, leaving the theater behind. There was truly no doubt that she was an angel. Not one that Malakar thought he might recognize, but he was absolutely certain she was one regardless. How had they done it?

They waited for a moment longer, but the woman did not return. Malakar glared over his shoulder at Mary.

"Alright, then," he said. "Explain, while you still have your tongue."



The entrance to the theater, like so many other buildings in this city, was made of transparent glass. They didn't want to linger in front of it, for fear that the woman might return and glance inside, but going deeper into this building required purchasing tickets of some sort. While Leo stood in line for those, Mary remained behind the cutout with Malakar and told her story.

The strange blonde woman had not restrained her activities to the 7-Eleven. She had come into the Burger King while Leo and Mary were working, and demanded to speak with their liege lord, wanting to know if he was aware of 'this wickedness in his realm'.

"We both thought she was looking for you, but we didn't tell her anything." Mary reached out and tousled Malakar's red hair. "She kept asking about red hair…this sure doesn't seem like a wig. And your horns…." Malakar answered by snapping at her fingers.

Once they had gotten off their shift, Leo and Mary had spotted the woman going down the street, accosting and interrogating random strangers. Thoroughly weirded out, they had followed her from a distance. It was sheer luck that they had spotted Malakar before her, and had the quick thinking to pull him aside once he had begun to run.

By the time she had finished explaining all of this, they had gone deeper into the theater, and were now alone in a long, dimly-lit hallway. Leo stood nearby, munching on a bag of popcorn and keeping an eye on the lobby. "Now," he said, "I think it's time you tell us what's going on here. You owe us."

Malakar scoffed. "I owe you nothing!"

"Mary here thinks you're in trouble," said Leo. "But I'm not so sure, 'Malakar'. In fact, I'm not so sure you're a kid."

"What…" Mary glanced back at him. "Oh, Leo, would you knock it off with that?"

"Why would I tell you anything?" Malakar shouted. "You betrayed me. You gave me up to the guard!"

"That's because the guard…the police are supposed to help people," said Mary. "Who did they release you to? Did you really knock over that 7-Eleven? Where are your parents?"

Malakar bit his thumb and considered running again. Mary seemed to sense it, because she put her arm against the wall, boxing him in. It was clear these slaves did not intend to let him leave without words. Certainly they could not be trusted with the truth. And yet, despite their ignorance, it did seem that they intended to help him, or at least, to help the human child that they thought he was. They had hidden him from that angel, after all. What could he say…?

Suddenly, it came to him. The merchant that Carassiso hired had dropped off something called a 'radio' yesterday, and Malakar had spent a long time listening to it last night, learning about the reality of this world. The perfect cover story came to him.

"Oh, woe!" he cried, flinging his arms wide. "Oh, despair! Very well, then. I will tell you the truth! You see…they want my blood!"

Mary, who had been leaning in, clearly excited, gave him a confused look. "Your blood? Who wants that…?"

"Senator Cornwallis, and his elite cabal within the very halls of your congress! Yes, it's true! I am a victim of his blood and organ farm! Using the dark and twisted powers of his alien allies on Neptune, he captured me and planned to harvest my blood and inject it into himself to maintain his eternal youth! For what you have heard is true…Senator Cornwallis is, in truth, centuries old! And secretly the Emperor Napoleon!"

Mary frowned. "What? Oh, come on now, that's rubbish. Tell me the real reason—"

"No, Mary!" said Leo. He was watching wide-eyed, agog. His popcorn lay spilled at his feet. "I've heard about this. My dad talks about it all the time!"

"Oh, for goodness sake!" Mary huffed, but Malakar had already turned to Leo, nodding.

"It's true! It's all true. I had escaped from the South American prison they housed me in, where they forced me to till the soil while feeding me only a teaspoon of beans a day. That woman is doubtlessly one of Senator Cornwallis's android slaves, programmed to capture me and bring me back…and to kill me if she cannot."

"My god, it explains so much," whispered Leo. He looked at Malakar in a new light. "I'm sorry, kid. I shouldn't have suspected you…"

"What? No it doesn't. It doesn't explain anything." Mary shook the sleeve of Malakar's robes. "Why is he dressed like this, then? And what about the hair? And the horns?"

"I'm sure it's all part of their twisted rituals. These people are sick, Mary. We have to help him!"

"Well, if all this is true, then we should take him back to the police—"

"No!" Malakar shouted. "The guard are in on it, don't you see? I only barely managed to escape the last time! You almost handed me right back into the clutches of the cabal!"

"Now that, I don't believe," said Mary firmly. "I don't think Sasha's dad would do anything of the sort."

Leo shook his head. "He doesn't even have to know, Mary. Think about it. He takes in some kid and calls what he thinks is some protection agency. But secretly, they have the alien AIs listening in on the line, and they reroute the call. The person who comes to pick up the kid looks legit, but really they're a Neptunian. They're all in on it, the FBI, the CIA…it's just how the elites work. Or at least, that's what my dad says." He considered for a moment. "Hey, maybe we should take you to my dad!"

"No! No. It is complicated to hide from the cabal. It would only endanger your father if you took me to him. I have my own lair…ah, I mean, hiding place. " Malakar straightened out his robes and glared at the two of them. "I demand you bring me back there." And, he thought grimly, once they were there, he could dispose of them.

Mary wasn't sure what to believe. What Malakar told them sounded like a bunch of hysterical nonsense…and yet, would a child have the wherewithal to lie about that? She glanced at Leo and sighed. He was clearly already fully on board. It didn't matter whether it was the truth, she realized. What was in front of her was a scared child in need. Maybe later, she could convince him to try going to the police again.

"Well, alright then," Mary said, and then to Malakar's disgust she embraced him. "I'm sure you've been through a lot, honey. We'll help you however we can—"

"Let me through! I must find him!"

The strident voice of the blonde woman carried through the hallway. With a yelp, Mary and Leo grabbed Malakar and ducked around a corner.

The blond woman stood down the hallway, in the lobby of the theater, confronting the tiny old woman who served as an usher.

"Ticket, please," the usher said.

"I do not have one. I do not care to watch your…movies. I am looking for a child with bright red hair, I think he might have come in here—"

"Ticket, please," repeated the usher.

"I do not have one! Please. It is a matter of cosmic importance that you—"

"Ticket, please."

"Forgive me!" the blond woman cried. "I must get through!" She moved to step past the usher.

With the liquid grace of a striking snake, the usher dipped into her pocket and pulled out a can of mace and sprayed it directly into the blond woman's eyes.

"What—what was—OH, BY THE HEAVENS! IT BURNS! IT BURNS LIKE THE FLAMES OF THE PIT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"

Malakar laughed as the angel fell to the ground and writhed. Two more burly ushers arrived to drag her out of the theater. Leo went back to the lobby to see what happened with her, and returned shaking his head.

"Well, they're not letting her back in," he said. "But she's just sort of hanging around outside, waiting. If we leave now she's sure to spot us."

Malakar groaned. "That damned ange—I mean, android. We are stuck here! How will I get back?"

"Well, she's got to leave eventually," said Mary. "I mean, she has to eat."

"Androids don't eat," said Leo.

Mary sighed. "She's got to charge, then."

Leo rubbed his chin. "You're probably right. We might be able to wait her out."

"Wait!" Malakar cursed. "What will we do until then? Just sit here?"

"Well," said Leo, "We did buy movie tickets."



So they sat down in the theater and watched a movie.

Malakar had become accustomed to moving images in this world by now; they were ubiquitous, and usually trying to sell you something. This 'movie' was more of a story being told. Pablum and pap, of course, though the slaves seemed to think it was something a child should enjoy. A tale of a young prince befriending a dragon and saving his kingdom from an evil warlock…so these humans did know what magic was, even though their world was so devoid of it. Curious, that. There was something about this movie, Malakar just couldn't put his finger on it…

By the time it had ended, night had fallen. Leo checked outside to make sure the blonde woman wasn't waiting for them. Indeed, she was gone; either she had left out of frustration, or decided that Malakar hadn't come into the theater after all. Mary and Leo walked through the streets, one on either side of him, blocking him from curious eyes. They raised their eyebrows when Malakar told them where he was living, with Leo muttering something about it being a bad neighborhood. But he was just being a coward, as most humans were. They made it back to the apartment without incident.

When Malakar opened the door, he was greeted with the scene of Carassiso sitting in the middle of the floor in the midst of a pile of discarded wrappers, chocolate smeared across her face and tears running down her cheeks. She had clearly been trying to break the seal herself.

"You," she hissed as he walked in. She rose and jabbed one sharp nail at him. "I did not give you permission to return. I do not care if you beg, you are banished from this place. Return your key to me, and…and…" Her eyes widened as Mary and Leo walked in.

"Oh, and who is this?" Mary asked, clapping her hands together.

"Carassiso," Carassiso whispered. An errant wrapper clinging to her dress fell to the floor.

"What a pretty name. Your little dress is so cute!"

"She's a, uh, fellow escapee," said Malakar. "One moment. We must speak in private. Just a moment." Grabbing Carassiso's hand, he dragged her to the bathroom.

She said not a word until the door had closed. Then she whirled upon him. "You…you fool. You were always careless, but this…why would you bring humans to this place? Why—"

"There are angels here," Malakar said.

Carassiso fell blessedly silent and listened as Malakar told his story. When finished, she said nothing for a long moment. Then, to his horror, she grabbed the front of his robes and began weeping into them.

"Oh, we're going to die, I'm going to die!" she sobbed. "Oh, I knew the angels would follow us! I'm going to die in this horrible world and the only person I know here is you!"

Malakar pushed her away. "Get off! Stop sniveling. We're not going to die, not yet. The angel was stuck in a human form, too, and they are just as starved for mana here as we are. Certainly she did not use any magic while chasing me."

"There will be more, and more…oh, if only the Great Dread Lord were here, they would know what to do…"

"There is only one thing to do. We must redouble our efforts to break the seal. The only alternative is surrender. Go out into the streets, if you wish to give up. I am sure Heaven will find you soon enough."

Carassiso was still sniffling, but she dabbed her eyes dry on her hands. "Yes," she said, her voice hoarse. "Yes. I suppose you are right. And I suppose the humans you have recruited might be useful."

"Useful?" Malakar frowned. "I was thinking we'd have to kill them."

Carassiso gave him an exasperated look. "And how do you think we'd hide the corpses, hm? You must adjust to the fact that you do not have your magic, Malakar. You cannot simply blast them to ash."

"Maybe we could eat them."

"Do you have any idea how quickly a corpse begins to reek? People would notice. Their families would notice. And besides, they think they are…saving you. No, it is good to have them as servants."

Malakar threw his hands up. "Do you really think they can be trusted to keep quiet about this place?"

"No," said Carassiso. "But that can be remedied."

Mary and Leo were still standing by the door when they came out of the bathroom. "So, is it just the two of you here?" Leo asked. "How is it that you got this apartment—"

"Silence!" Carassiso snapped at him, then forced her face into a smile. "Silence, uh, is the key to our survival. We have allies who aid us against, the, uh…the Neptunians…?" she glanced to Malakar.

"And the secret cabal of Senator Cornwallis," he confirmed.

Carassiso nodded. "Their identities, of course, must be kept secret. They are part of…the resistance. And you can join their ranks, if you so desire. But you must swear yourselves to secrecy in all matters! You cannot tell anyone of this hideout, or even of our existence. Not a soul! Not even your own families!"

Carassiso stepped forward and clasped her hands together, and Malakar watched, astonished, as she underwent a transformation. Her perpetual sneer melted away, and her eyes grew wide, innocent and shimmering. Her lip jutted out in the 'pout'.

"Pwease," she sniffled, "Pwease, can you do this for us? Can you pwomise? We need all the help we can get! We're so scared and…and you're the only ones that can pwotect us!"

It was a terrible sight. Seeing Carassiso like that left Malakar feeling about as unsettled as the average human would be if a dog got up on two legs and began prophesying the dates and manner of everyone's deaths. Mary and Leo, however, were completely captivated.

"Oh, of course we'll help you," said Mary. "I don't know exactly what's going on here, but we'll try to find some way to make sure you're alright, and…well, alright, I suppose we'll keep quiet…"

"You will?" Carassiso said. "Can you pwease say it? Can you say that you…promise?"

Her eyes went black. Malakar felt her burning through all the mana she had to force her magic past the seal. He lent her what he could, which was very little. He could only hope that this worked.

Mary and Leo's heads snapped back as the spell washed over them. Their eyes took on a glazed, dumb look, which really wasn't all that different from the normal look humans had. "We promise," they mumbled in unison.

Then they were shaking their heads, blinking at each other. It was done. The binding spell was nothing compared to what Carassiso could normally weave, but it was enough to hold a pair of weak-minded humans to their word. Malakar yelped as Carassiso suddenly slumped into him, utterly spent.

"Oh dear, are you alright?" Mary asked, rushing forward.

Carassiso waved a limp hand. "Fine," she whispered. It had taken everything she had to work that tiny bit of magic.

"Go, now," Malakar told the humans. "Leave us. Return tomorrow, and we will…discuss your duties."

"Bring me to my bed," Carassiso wheezed once they were gone.

Malakar gave a grunt of disgust and considered dropping her. But, no. He needed her, and as much as he hated it, he could not afford to provoke her ire.

Their beds were not much, at least not yet. The only things Hal had managed to get for the both of them were a pair of mattresses and a few blankets. Malakar helped Carassiso stumble to her mattress, where she collapsed face down and lay perfectly still. For a moment, Malakar paused, looking down at her. A strange tremor ran through the seal, perhaps a remnant of the arcane resonance. Then he left her there and turned to go to his own bed, on the opposite side of the room.

"Malakar?" Carassiso's voice was muffled, speaking into her blankets.

"Yes?"

"What do you think happened to the Great Dread Lord?"

"I don't know," he said. "Shut up and sleep."

Malakar climbed into his own bed and wrapped himself up in his blankets. He wondered what had happened to the Great Dread Lord, too. But that wasn't what he thought about as he drifted off to sleep. It was the movie he had seen. And the magic in it.

 

[CCClover]

8. Doubt
​

Trias drifted through the hallowed halls of Heaven, feeling lost.

It wasn't hard to feel lost in Heaven. You weren't supposed to, of course. You were supposed to be filled with a glow of utter contentment and peace, knowing that here, at least, all was as it should be. But Trias was having trouble feeling that sort of inner contentment right now. And when that was lacking, he found that the architecture of Heaven—the soaring columns of light, the endless drifting cloudbanks stretching out forever, the glory of the sun like liquid gold washing over everything…well, it all felt a bit isolating. Beautiful, achingly so, but isolating. Heaven was so large, and there just weren't that many angels to fill it.

Not that Trias was so sure he wanted to see another angel just now. He had just come from a meeting with Uriel. One the Seraphim had described as "illuminating", though the only thing that Trias found "illuminated" was how powerless he was.

He was to rest. 'A deserved rest', as Uriel called it. A chance to savor victory. But Trias, having fought for so very, very long, found that he wasn't quite sure what victory was supposed to feel like.

He passed through a hall of singing, glowing spheres, each one glowing with the cold light of a star. With a start, Trias realized that he was once more flying to that part of Heaven.

To the Prison of the Great Enemy.

At the end of the hall was a whirlpool of raging light, like the very antithesis of a black hole. Suspended over this endless font of holy energy, a pinprick of darkness, was the divine stone in which the Great Enemy had been imprisoned.

There were no other angels here, no guard set. There was no need. Here the Dark One was scoured endlessly by divine light, pressed beneath a constant current of holiness. And his powers had been sealed away by not one Seraphim, but all six of them. Here, Trias could at least hear the whisper of what victory was supposed to feel like.

He focused his power, and in his mind the prison that the Seraphim had woven for the enemy took shape. A box made of glowing seals, each face belonging to one of the Seraphim. Inside that box, behind the angelic runes etched in the language of creation and the very forces that had forged the world, lay the root of all evil. It was a great triumph, Trias told himself. The greatest triumph possible. It had to be. So where was his joy…?

So lost was he in his thoughts that when his attention drifted back to the prison, he was shocked to find a dark presence watching him very intently from behind the seals. With a shout of shock, he released his power, and the prison vanished from his mind. But it was too late.

"You come here often," purred the voice of the Great Enemy. Trapped as he was, it was little more than a whisper, a tiny thread of darkness in the back of Trias' thoughts. "To gloat, I suppose. Well, good on you. Even powerless as I am, the other angels are still too afraid to approach."

Trias turned immediately to leave.

"That's probably a good idea. I mean, you're probably thinking that all I'm going to do is bullshit you, and you'd be right. What else do I have to do all day? Wait. I know you. You're that angel that was so gung-ho about hunting down Malak and Cara. Man, what happened? Did you really let your underling just go and take care of it for you?"

Trias wavered, but he did not stop moving. "It is the Great Enemy," he told himself. "His words are dust…"

"Teralel, that was her name, right? I have to say, I'm surprised. Do you really think she can handle those two? Even with Uriel's seal on them? You better hope she can. Did you see the laboratories in the Black Palace before you guys burned them down? That was all Malak and Cara, you know. Hoo boy, real sick shit in there, wasn't it? And that was just what they were doing to humans. Can you imagine what they'd do if they got their claws on an actual angel?"

Trias stopped. "Silence," he whispered.

"Of course, she's trapped in flesh now, in that world. So getting their claws on her would be all that much easier. And worse for her, really. Cara, especially, has experience in pulling apart the human form, piece by piece, while still keeping them alive. You'd be shocked at how little the brain needs to keep functioning, even the only function it has left to it is processing pain. There was one experiment she did where all that was left of the body was a brain and a mouth with which to scream. Cara was very proud of that one. Maybe the next time you see Teralel, that's all she'll be—"

"SILENCE!" Trias screamed.

He whirled and summoned a spear of light to his hand and cast it out towards the Dark One's prison. Before it came anywhere close to that point of darkness, it was dragged into the unceasing swirl of light. Trias hovered on the edge of that furious tide, shivering with rage.

"Whoa whoa whoa," said the Dark One. "I didn't mean to upset you that much. I figured you knew I was fucking with you. I'm sorry."

"Everything you say is a lie."

"No, really, I am. It was uncalled for." Somehow, the Dark One managed to sound honestly contrite. A mockery of true feeling, like everything else he did. "Look, I don't know how things are going to work out with Malak and Cara, alright? Teralel probably has a good chance of taking them down."

"It is not a mere chance," said Trias. "She will destroy them. I have trained her well. Their darkness will be purged, and with it, the last remnants of your wickedness sealed off from reality."

"Sure, sure. But, you know, I wasn't lying when I said I am a bit surprised that you ended up not going with her."

"Uriel's orders," said Trias bitterly, and then cursed himself. He hadn't meant to respond. But the anger in his heart for the Dark One's vile threats had only stoked the embers of his anger and frustration at the Seraphim's authority, and the words had simply slipped out.

"Yeah, I was there for that, but I figured that you'd try talking your way out of it. I mean, you didn't seem shy about speaking your mind to him."

"Words are one thing, but his orders—" Trias shook his head. "You—you only speak to deceive."

"Well sure, of course. Of course I'm going to try to trick you. I'm the Heart of Darkness. But so long as you just keep that in mind and draw a hard line at letting me talk you into anything, it's fine, right? I'm also just really bored and trying to make conversation. I mean, this is my eternity."

Trias said nothing.

The Great Enemy let out a soft chuckle. "In a way, I suppose it makes sense. Uriel, Uriel, Uriel. He was always an odd one."

"You know nothing of Uriel."

"You might be surprised. Me and him go way back. I mean, we never talked much. He seems like a nice enough guy, hell of a fighter, but a little strange in the head. I wouldn't have let Teralel hunt Malak and Cara, is all I'm saying. But then again, all the Seraphim are a little strange, aren't they? They are as apart from angels as you angels are from humans."

"Ignorance," said Trias. "Why do you speak so? Why should you know anything about the ways of the Seraphim?"

"Why, Trias," said the Enemy, "Because I was one, of course."

Trias had enough of this heresy.

Without another word, he gathered his strength and bolted from the Enemy's prison, moving fast enough to leave a thunderclap in his wake. The words of the Dark One meant nothing. He would say whatever he could just to unsettle and sow doubt into the hearts of those who attended. It had been a mistake to listen.

So Trias told himself. But the parting words of the Enemy lingered in his mind long after he had left.

 

[CCClover]

9. Video Games
​

"Human bodies are filthy," Malakar grumbled.

He stepped out of the bathroom, dripping water onto the floor. He had just undergone a human cleansing ritual, a 'shower'. In his demon form, he would have bathed in a luxurious tub of sacrificial blood, and needed to do so only once a year to renew his splendor. Humans, on the other hand, began to reek after a few days without washing, and needed to do it so frequently that they actually had appliances installed in their homes for the purpose. And all they used was soap and water!

Carassiso was sitting on the couch, reading through a newspaper. She glanced up at him and wrinkled her nose. "Clothe yourself."

"What? You've worked with human bodies before, haven't you? Surely you cannot be disturbed by the mere sight of them."

"Those human bodies were not occupied by you! Clothe yourself!"

Muttering, Malakar pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, struggling not to get them tangled in his horns.

Hal, the merchant that Carassiso had hired to procure their goods, had come by with another delivery this morning. A couple of burly hired hands had wrestled a sofa into their apartment and also built bedframes for their mattresses. Really, the room was becoming quite crowded. He had brought them clothes, too, and while Malakar found the fashion sense of this world utterly deplorable, he had to admit his robes were becoming quite rank. He couldn't help but notice, however, that Carassiso had ordered exceedingly simple, plain clothing for him to wear, like that of a commoner or a peasant, while she herself had purchased no fewer than a dozen absurdly elaborate dresses.

But what really caught Malakar's attention was the television.

He plopped down on the couch beside Carassiso, who made a small 'hmmph!' of displeasure, and jabbed at the remote. The television flickered on and a solemn-looking man appeared on the screen.

"Tragedy today, as an airliner at La Guardia exploded on takeoff, killing all passengers aboard. Two hundred forty nine lives lost—"

"Hah! Stupid humans!" Malakar chuckled as fireballs blossomed on the screen. He changed the channel.

"You ought to pay attention to the goings-on of this world," said Carassiso. "We should not want to be swept up in some war we were blind to." She shuffled the paper and frowned at it. "And it worries me how these humans achieve so much without any magic at all. Did you know that they are constructing intelligent golems called robots, which—"

"Who cares?" shouted Malakar. He didn't give the slightest damn about what the humans of this world were doing. They had no magic, which meant that as soon as he did, they were prey.

He stopped on a channel that displayed two sword-wielding humans in the middle of a bloody fight. They danced around each other, looking absolutely ridiculous, until one of them raised his hands to the Heavens. Strange runes glowed at the tips of his outstretched fingers, and a moment later a lightning bolt tore down from the sky and incinerated his opponent. The victor stood over the smoking corpse, smiling grimly.

"I have seen this already," said Carassiso. "They dream of magic, though they have none."

Malakar rolled his eyes. "There is more to it than that," he said. "Don't you see? There is something about this…"

"Well, what is it then?"

"I don't know! But can't you sense it?"

"No." Carassiso sneered. "Is this how you conducted all your research? Blindly stumbling about, searching based on your buffoon's intuition? I can't say I'm surprised."

Malakar's hands twitched. "No, you wouldn't see it, would you? You cannot understand the artistry of magic at all."

Carassiso's eyes flashed and she opened her mouth to retort, but before she could, the doorbell rang.

"Hello there!" Mary's voice rang through the intercom. "Are you two home? We've brought presents!"

Oh yes. Malakar had almost forgotten that those two would be by again today. "I still think it was a mistake not to kill them," he said, as Carassiso pressed the button to let them in. "What are we even supposed to have them do?"

"Use that intuition of yours," Carassiso replied. "At the very least they might be scouts. Besides, they bring tribute!"

Tribute indeed. Mary and Leo bustled through the doorway with their arms weighed down by multiple plastic bags. Most of them were filled with groceries, as it turned out, though those were hardly needed; Hal had filled their refrigerator with food this morning.

"Oh, well," said Mary, as Leo struggled to cram the food they brought alongside the rest. "But hey! I saw how much you two liked chocolate yesterday, and so I thought, well, I can whip you up something better than some crummy gas station candy bars. What do you think?"

She held out a container full of dark squares coated with toxic-looking specks. "Uh, what is it?" Malakar asked.

"Brownies! With sprinkles!"

Malakar took one of the brownies and sniffed it dubiously, before taking a tentative bite. His eyes lit up. "It's chocolate!" he cried. And not just any chocolate, it was chocolate containing more than twice as much mana than any of the candy bars they had eaten so far. He grabbed another, then another.

Carassiso clocked what was going on. "Hey! I want some!" she cried. She began shoveling brownies into her mouth as well. Between the two of them, the container was emptied in seconds.

"Very good," Malakar said, patting his stomach. "I am pleased. I demand more!"

Mary and Leo, who had watched in shock as they had cannibalized the entire batch, glanced at each other. "Er," said Mary, "That's all for now. I can bring you some more tomorrow."

"Yes! You will do this. You will bring twice as many!"

Leo glanced around the apartment and whistled. "You've got a lot more in here than you did yesterday."

Carassiso waved a hand. "Yes, our, uh, allies came by with supplies this morning. The, ah, resistance…it is no small operation."

"I had brought over an old television in the back of the car, but I see you guys already have one." Leo stepped over to the TV, and then his eyes widened. "Whoa! Look at all of this!"

"All of what?"

Leo knelt down. Next to the television was a box filled with a tangled array of electronics. "I can't believe you guys have all this stuff! There must be every console from the past ten years in here…oh man, and you've even got an Omnicaster VR headset. Two of them! I didn't even know you could buy these yet!"

"Uh, yes." Carassiso shrugged. She had asked Hal to find all that nonsense for her because it had sounded vaguely arcane, then had been disappointed to find none of it carried even the trace of magic. "Our sources are very well connected. Do you know how to work any of it?"

"Work it?" Leo lifted a tangle of wires and then dropped it. "I mean, I know how to set it up, but you don't have any games here."

"Games?"

"You know. Video games." Leo glanced from Carassiso to Malakar and received nothing but blank stares. "You mean to tell me you don't know what video games are?"

"Um…no," said Carassiso. "Things were…difficult at the…"

"The blood and organ farm," Malakar finished.

"Oh, you poor things!" Mary cried. Malakar stepped back as she stooped to hug him.

"Well, we can fix that. I brought my copy of BladeKing with me. My Xbox, too, but you've got one already." Leo pulled a slick black console from the box of electronics. "The newest model, too, the ones with all that fancy new tech."

Malakar and Carassiso watched curiously as Leo hooked up various wires to their television. He himself seemed confused by some of them. "I don't even know half the stuff this can do," he professed sheepishly. Finally he ruffled through one of the bags he had carried in and retrieved a curious black stick, which he slid into a slot on the console.

"You still carry those around?" Mary asked teasingly.

"I'll go digital when I die. Alright, here we go."

Leo joined them on the couch, and handed Malakar a strange device with all sorts of strange colored buttons embedded in it. "What do I do with this?" Malakar asked.

"Hold on, and I'll show you. I—"

But then Malakar's attention was torn away by an ear-shattering screech. On the television screen, a humongous dragon reared up above a bloody battlefield, spouting fire across a full moon. A castle burned behind him, and in the sky other dark shapes—other dragons—blotted out the stars.

"IT WAS TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO THAT THE DARK DRAGON XENOFRAX ATTACKED THE LAND OF ARANOR!" the television thundered. The scene cut to two elves running through a forest from a horde of orcs. "SINCE THEN, OUR PEOPLE HAVE—"

Mary clapped her hands over her ears. "Jeez, Leo, it's so loud!"

"I didn't turn it up so high!" Leo grabbed the remote and dialed the volume down. "Look, let's just skip the cutscene."

He pressed a button and the elves disappeared. "Hey!" Malakar cried, outraged. "You—bring them back! I want to see!"

"What? Oh—forget about it, that intro cutscene is so long…"

On the screen now was a heavily armored man carrying a sword that looked as though it weighed more than he did. A fireball exploded behind him. "BLADEKING: CONQUEST OF THE SHATTERED REALMS!" a grizzled voice intoned.

"Here, we'll start a new game," said Leo. He pressed another button and the screen faded to black once more. "I'll just go with the knight character for now, and here we go…"

Malakar leapt to his feet as a knight clad in shining silver armor appeared on the screen, only to be swarmed by a horde of zombies. "This—this is amazing!" he cried.

"Well, this is just the first fight," Leo said, amused. His thumbs hammered at the controller. On the screen the knight decapitated three zombies with one swing of his sword. "You must deliver the Darksun Relic to the King of Aranor!" cried an old woman, before the undead overran her.

Leo was saying something, but Malakar wasn't listening. This was it. This was it! This was what he had sensed in the movie theater, what he felt while watching the television. This would be their salvation!

Malakar leapt to his feet. "I need to use the toilet!" he shouted. "Carassiso, join me!"

"What?" said Mary.

Carassiso made a small 'eep' sound as Malakar grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the bathroom. "What are you doing?" she hissed as he closed the door. "You're making them suspicious. Humans don't use the bathroom together, I don't think."

"You felt it, right?" Malakar whispered furiously.

"Felt what?"

"Oh, by the abyss—the video game! You're telling me you didn't see it?"

"No! What are you talking about? Have you gone mad?" Carassiso took a step back.

Malakar grabbed her by the shoulders. "That video game," he breathed. "It's a link to another world."

"What?"

"It's true! And I think many things here are links to other worlds. I could sense it while watching a movie, I can sense it while watching television…but the video game is much stronger than either of those. I only now realized what it was I was feeling. They are links…windows of sorts…into worlds beyond this one!"

Carassiso stared at him and bit her thumb. "Are you certain…?"

Malakar scoffed at her. "You really can't sense it, can you? Well, I suppose that's why I was the archmage of the Great Dread Lord, and you weren't. Do you see what this means?"

"I think it means that we're surrounded by potential portals through which anything can cross over," Carassiso muttered, glaring at him. "No wonder the angels could find us. This world is full of holes!"

"No, you idiot. Think about it. This world might not have much in the way of mana, but those other worlds clearly do. We can leave this wretched place behind and make much more progress on the seal." Malakar laughed and slapped his stomach. "The links make it easier, and I believe those brownies have given me enough mana to open a portal. I can't wait to leave this world behind. Good riddance!"

"Wait," said Carassiso. "We must be cautious. I don't know that these are other worlds. If they were, doesn't something seem…off about them to you?"

Malakar gave her a condescending smile. "Oh. I see how it is. I have discovered the obvious solution to our plight, whereas you were blind to it. So now you feel the need to pretend it won't work."

Carassiso blushed. "That is not—"

"Don't worry. Perhaps after a few centuries, you will be as adept with magic as I am. I'm opening a portal."

"Don't!" Carassiso shouted as Malakar stepped closer to her, so that the arcane resonance would weaken the seal for his spell. "We should not rush headlong into this! If you open a portal, anything might come through! Stop, fool! Stay away from me!"

"Hold still!"

Malakar leapt at Carassiso, but she squirmed her way past him and threw open the bathroom door. He ran after her and tackled her to the ground in front of the television, much to the astonishment of Leo and Mary. Both the humans rushed forward to pull him off her.

"Hey now, no fighting!" Mary shouted as she grabbed Malakar by the waist.

"Help! He's going to kill us all!" screamed Carassiso.

Malakar ignored the two humans fumbling with his legs. Grimly, he gripped Carassiso by the ankle and focused. The seal on his magic was thrumming with arcane resonance.

"Don't you do it!" Carassiso shrieked, trying to kick his face, to no avail. Malakar called upon the reserves of mana that the brownies had left him with, and directed his spell to the 'video game' even now playing across the screen.

Reality warped and buckled as the portal began to bore a hole between two worlds.

"Uh oh, I think something's wrong with the TV," said Leo.

There was a blinding flash of light.

 

[CCClover]

10. First Invasion
​

Malakar had time to think "Wait, that wasn't right," before he was tumbling down the side of a hill.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant hillside to be tumbling down. There were lots of rocks and thornbushes and, where there weren't, the ground was covered in rotten dead leaves. Malakar spit out a mouthful of these only for another bunch to find their way in. Somewhere beside him, he could hear the indignant curses of Carassiso falling down the hill as well.

Finally they came to the bottom. Malakar lay on his back, dazed. Above him dark branches reached for a cold blue sky. He had just managed to catch his breath when Carassiso's eyes filled his vision.

"Why did you do that?" she screamed, and kicked him in the stomach.

"Wait—" Malakar tried to stand up, but she kicked him again. He doubled over in pain as she continued to scream, punctuating each word with a blow:

"Why…are…you…so…careless? Why…couldn't…you…listen?!" Finally Carassiso kicked too high and fell over backwards. Groaning, Malakar pushed himself away from her and sat up.

They were in the midst of a dark forest, full of green shadow, silent except for the occasional chirping of a far-off bird. Of Mary and Leo there was no sign. He glanced up the hill they had fallen down. No sign, either, of the portal that should link this world with the one they had come from. They were simply…here.

"Where could the portal have gone…?" he muttered, and that set Carassiso off again.

"Where could the portal have gone?" she mocked. "It's not there, is it?"

"It…something misfired. The spell went wrong. Probably because you weren't cooperating!"

"No. It went wrong because you went and used magic we're only barely familiar with, and now we're stuck in this world, and who knows if we'll ever get back…"

Malakar shook the leaves out of his hair and stood, then took a good look at both Carassiso and himself. Both of them were wearing different clothes than they had first come to this place with. Carassiso's dress was longer, darker, not nearly so delicately tied up with bows; more of a rugged traveling dress than the fanciful ones she preferred to wear. On her head rested a floppy pointed hat with a ridiculously wide brim. Malakar himself wore a robe, simpler than the robes he had brought from his original world, and more tattered too; and around his face was a thick red scarf. Other than that, physically, they were unchanged. They remained in their child forms.

He breathed in deep and smiled. "There is ambient mana here!" he crowed, feeling its power fill him. "Haha! Yes! Who cares if the portal is gone. I can make a new one back whenever I want!!"

"Oh, yeah?" said Carassiso. "Do it."

"Fine, I will!" Malakar concentrated. But he quickly realized the problem: there was no link, here. The 'video game' back in their apartment had made traveling to this world much easier, but there was no link back to their former world on this side. Without it, the amount of effort and mana to open a portal was much greater. Too much to force past the seal. Malakar took a step closer to Carassiso, then another, hoping the arcane resonance would allow him to cast his spell, but no. It was simply too much.

"You can't, can you?" Carassiso whispered. "We're stuck here."

"Well—so what if we are? This world has mana. Who cares about that old one?"

"That world was our protection, you idiot! It had little mana, but that meant we did not have to worry about anyone hunting us with magic, either! Now we are in a world with magic, who knows what can be done with it, and our powers are still locked away behind that damned seal!" With a high-pitched growl, Carassiso tore at the leaves around her. "We were making progress in that world…we had servants, we had a lair…Abyss take you, I left all my gold there! Now who knows what we'll have to deal with here! I hate this, I hate this body, I hate you! Ah!"

Carassiso threw her head back and shrieked at the sky, then buried her face in her hands and wept.

Malakar stared. Normally, right now he'd be mocking her, full of contempt for her weakness. Especially after all the kicks she had given him. Instead, he found himself experiencing some strange new emotion, one he wasn't quite sure how to classify. It was a little bit like contempt, he supposed, except now, as he looked down at Carassiso, scratched and bruised from her fall, he found that instead of mockery he wanted to simply stop her tears.

"There is no reason to weep," he said gruffly, unsure what to do. "We are not completely defenseless. With more mana, we should be able to manage more magic, even if the seal makes it terribly inefficient. And we can make quicker progress on the seal itself...look, see for yourself. Even just having more mana, the seal seems weaker, doesn't it?"

"That might still take years," Carassiso sniffled. "How can you be so brilliant, and so stupid all at once?"

"I—wait. You think I'm brilliant?"

"Of course you are, you imbecile!" Carassiso shouted. "You were the Dread Lord's greatest mage! Dare you insult him by implying he would appoint an incompetent to the position?"

Malakar almost brought up that Carassiso had implied just that many times, but he decided to let it slide.

"I just wish you would listen to me, sometimes," Carassiso continued. She dried her tears on one of the baggy sleeves of her dress. "It was like this in the Black Palace, too. So many times I tried to warn you of dangerous experiments, and…" she paused, then, and a look of disgust passed over her face. "Ugh! What horrible emotions is this ridiculous body filling me with? Make it stop!"

"I know, it's revolting," Malakar said as she doubled over and gagged. "Look, come here." He helped her to her feet, then took a deep breath. "Perhaps…just perhaps…things have not worked out as I thought they would," he said, not looking at her. "I was just so hungry for mana."

He braced himself for Carassiso's jeers, but they didn't come. "The mana is nice," she said, sounding very tired. "Well. You've brought us here. What do you plan to do now?"

Malakar pointed at the horizon. There, only just barely visible above the trees, rose thin plumes of smoke, as though from multiple fires. "We should head that way," he said. "We do look like children still, so perhaps whatever civilization we find will feel obliged to take care of us. And if they do not, well…" he grabbed Carassiso's hand, feeling the arcane resonance weaken the seal, and summoned an orb of hellish flame to float in the air between them. "I think we can defend ourselves, at least a little bit."

Carassiso only sighed. "What do you think happened to Mary and Leo?" she asked as they set out, hand-in-hand.

"Who cares?" said Malakar. "They're probably dead."



* * *



"I've never felt more alive!" Leo shouted.

He leapt through the air, light as a feather, and rolled into a crouch upon landing. The sword in his hands hummed through the air, strike and stroke flowing into one another so quickly that it appeared as a flowing sheet of silver. He wore thick plate, but he barely felt it; it was like a second skin to him. He sprang up, blade dancing in his hands, then with an expert snap he slammed it home in its sheath.

He and Mary had experienced a smooth entrance to this place, alighting in a field of beautiful flowers and soft grass. The first thing Leo had noticed was that he was armed and armored, much like the knight character in BladeKing was.

The second thing he had noticed was how vital he felt. In the real world, Leo was hardly an athlete. He was tall and gangly and awkward, and often garnered nicknames like 'beanpole' or 'giraffe' or 'stork'. The most exercise he had gotten in years was walking, and his diet consisted of at least one third energy drinks and one third gas station snack bars.

But here? The moment he had landed here, he had felt his body rippling with muscles he didn't know existed; his shoulders were broader, his chest thicker, his arms more powerful. He knew he could run a mile and barely break a sweat. It was magnificent.

"Leo?" Mary's voice was small, afraid. "Where are we?"

He turned to her, letting out a booming laugh. "Don't you see? We're in Aranor!"

"What…?"

Mary was still sitting amongst the flowers. Physically, she seemed…mostly the same. Perhaps she was slightly curvier. Or perhaps she had always had those curves, and Leo was just now noticing. If he was dressed as the knight class from BladeKing, then Mary was dressed as the water priestess, carrying a gem-topped staff and wearing a sheer blue robe that was best described as 'wispy'. Leo's face burned as he helped her up. He had seen her wearing cosplay before, but never quite like this.

"This is Aranor," he told her. "Don't you recognize this spot? It's right outside the first town." He pointed at a cobblestone road winding off past a few farms. "Right down that way, there's Brightwood."

Mary squinted, leaning on her staff. "I do recognize it," she murmured. "But…how is this possible…?"

"It's the Xbox. This is VR."

"VR! But this seems so real—and we weren't wearing any headsets!"

"I told you, it was a really advanced one. They're doing all sorts of crazy stuff with consoles now. The latest ones have NeuroWave technology—beams the experience right into your brain." Leo tapped the side of his head.

Mary gave him a skeptical look. "Really…? But you…um, you've changed. You're, uh, very muscular." She glanced down at herself, seeming to realize what she was wearing, and blushed. "And I don't remember choosing this class…"

"It's the NeuroWave," Leo said quickly. "It can really enhance the experience."

"Well, I suppose it is my favorite," said Mary. She did like to be a healer. "I don't know that I like how it plucked that choice right out of my head…NeuroWave, you called it?"



"Right. It's hard to get your hands on, though. I didn't even know it was on the market already. How those kids got it, I have no idea…"

"If you say so." Mary said skeptically. "Where are Malakar and Carassiso, anyway?"

They both spent some time calling out, but there was no sign of the two children.

"Leo, I don't like this." Mary had become increasingly worried the longer their cries had gone unanswered. "I'm worried about them."

"There's no reason to be. Look, in the real world, they're still right next to us. We're all just in a deep, sleep-like state, where the NeuroWave technology can mold our dreams—"

"I don't like that either. Can't you turn this off?"

"Um." Leo looked up into the sky. "NeuroWave, deactivate!" he shouted. Then he shrugged bashfully. "I, uh, don't know how. Look, don't fret so much! They've got to be nearby. Why don't you try your magic?"

Mary frowned at him, but she did close her eyes and set her staff before her. A moment later, her hair lifted off her shoulders, floating as though she were swimming, and a large globe of water blinked into existence before her, quickly expanding until it was the size of her head. "Well, this is pretty fun," she laughed. "It's like being a real witch!'

"See? Hey!" Leo jumped aside as Mary sent the water globe hurtling at his head with a flick of her staff.

"I am still worried about Malakar and Carassiso, though. I know you said they're really just sitting right beside us, but I can't help but feel like all of this is real, and they're really lost…"

"There you are, heroes!"

Mary and Leo turned at the sound of the new voice. Floating in the air above them was a tiny fairy. Her dress was woven from leaves and colorful flowers, and her delicate butterfly wings scattered twinkling dust in the air.

Oh great, Leo thought. The tutorial.

"Greetings, O valiant knight and mystical water priestess!" the fairy declared, flitting around their heads. "My name is Nessa! Us fairies are the guardians of Aranor's forests. You might hear that the elves have that job, but don't let them fool you! It's my job to guide you through this world and help you on your quest to defeat the evil Xenofrax. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!"

"Yes, I do, actually," said Mary. "Can you tell us how to turn this NeuroWave thing off?"

Leo was about to tell her not to bother. The NPC was still an NPC; it only had pre-set lines that it could say. But to his surprise, Nessa hovered in the air, a thoughtful finger placed upon her lips. "NeuroWave, you say? Sounds like some sort of fancy magic. I've never heard of it."

Mary sighed. "Well, then, we're looking for two kids. One of them is a boy with bright red hair and the other a girl with white hair. Though, oh, who knows if they still look like that here."

"A boy with red hair and a girl with white? I can't say I have seen them." The fairy brightened and gave them a tiny smile. "Oh, but if you want to find their trail, Brightwood is your best bet! You hear all sorts of rumors in that town. Come on, I'll show you the way!"

"Yeah, thanks," Leo muttered. NeuroWave technology must be more advanced than he thought. Rewriting NPC dialogue on the fly? He guessed they must be doing some fancy work with AI. Now that he thought about it, Nessa shouldn't be here at all. This area was way outside of the tutorial zone.

"Leo! C'mon!" Mary waved to him. She was already down the road, following Nessa. The fairy shimmered in the sunlight.

"Coming." Leo jogged after them. Maybe Malakar and Carassiso were already in Brightwood. Or, if they weren't, there'd be a NPC who could at least tell them how to turn the damn game off.

 

[CCClover]

11. Brightwood

​

Brightwood was…different from how Mary and Leo remembered it.

BladeKing: Conquest of the Shattered Realms was like many video games that described their game worlds as 'expansive' and 'realistic', and made it a big selling point that you could enter every building and talk to every NPC: it was mostly illusion. That is, what existed of it was quite well-crafted, and at times you could even feel like you really were in another world, but it all fell apart when you noticed that there simply wasn't enough of it. 'Towns' were absurdly small, and the number of people that lived in them would have trouble filling up a single classroom; meanwhile, the countryside could be bounded across in minutes, and in fact the entire game world rarely took more than an hour to traverse.

That was how Leo remembered Brightwood: very small, with under a dozen buildings, and NPCs eager to tell you that the lifeblood of the town was its lumber industry while a singular chopped wood delivered by a singular cart. But now…?

They walked down a street that must have, by itself, contained scores of buildings, with hundreds of characters that Leo couldn't name rubbing shoulders, jostling each other as they walked. Dozens of merchants shouted out from behind their stalls, dirty children scampered underfoot, and the crowd parted to make way for a horse-drawn carriage where—could it be—yes, it could. The horse had actually pooped.

"Good Lord, Leo!" Mary cried as they carefully stepped around. "What is all this? It's been a while since I've played BladeKing. Was this in some…update?"

"It must be the NeuroWave," said Leo. He had heard that the technology could make the environment appear much more realistic, drawing upon your own imagination to fill in the blanks. Really, he was in awe. BladeKing was his favorite game, but he had played it until the world had begun to seem small. But now…? He glanced down another street full of homes and shops and bustling crowds. Brightwood alone must be bigger than the entire game world had been before. Which, as delightful as it was, did present them with a problem. There was no way they were going to find Malakar and Carassiso in all this mess.

"Hey, Nessa!" he shouted above the din. "Can you show us the way to the Fowl and Mare?"

The fairy had continued to follow them through Brightwood, hovering cheerfully about their heads, alighting on their shoulders, and occasionally offering inane commentary on parts of the world Leo had never known about before. No, as a matter of fact, he was not aware that Brightwood was experiencing some political tension over the heavy taxes levied to expand its sewer system. He had not even known it had a sewer system. It simply hadn't occurred to him, while playing the game, to wonder about all that.

"Of course!" Nessa burbled happily. "The Fowl and Mare is Brightwood's oldest tavern, and a hotspot of rumor and intrigue. But watch out—there are some less than savory characters that are frequent patrons of—"

"Just take us there, please!"

The Fowl and Mare was, in fact, the only tavern in Brightwood, at least so far as Leo remembered it, but in this new version there were dozens. Still, he felt that it was best to start somewhere at least a little familiar. Of course, the whole idea of looking for the kids was ridiculous to begin with. In the real world, Malakar and Carassiso were right next to them.

Nessa brought them to a seedier part of town. The crowds of people thinned, and the crowds of rats thickened. Mary shrieked and leapt back as one of them ran over her foot. "Oh, I could feel its little paws! Gross! Who would ever want to put that in their video game?"

"Well it's what you call immersive, you know," Leo said defensively.

The Fowl and Mare was a squat stone building, crouched between a cemetery and the town walls like a mangy dog jealously guarding a bit of rat leg it had plundered. Dirty orange candlelight burned in its windows, making the building seem like it was glaring at them. The sounds of shouting and breaking glass could be heard from inside.

"Oh, wow," Mary murmured. "This place seems bad."

"I know, isn't it great?" said Leo. The building had always looked like this, but now you could really feel how seedy it was supposed to be.

"I would take caution, heroes," Nessa intoned as they stepped to the door. "Not every resident of Aranor is necessarily friendly! Sometimes, you'll have to—"

"Yeah, yeah," Leo said, pushing the door open. He knew what to expect from this place.

As soon as he entered the tavern all talk died down. Hazy smoke drifted through the common room. A group of rough men, their red faces only barely illuminated by the candle on their table, looked up from their dirty mugs. With a wet laugh, one staggered to his feet and approached.

"Well, well," he said, with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Lookee what we have here. A knight and his wench."

"Wow! I can really smell the beer on his breath!" Leo whispered to Mary.

The man recoiled as though he had been slapped. "You lissen to me when I'm talkin' to you, chickenshit," he rasped. "You're going to just turn around and walk back on out that door. This place ain't for the likes of you."

This was met with general cries of "Aye, that's right!" and "You tell him, Carl!" from his companions back at the table.

This was lecherous Carl, a rather infamous NPC. He was meant to be your first "optional" fight, in the very first town you went to. He was there to give a brief intro to the non-combat options of the game; you could bribe him to leave you alone, talk him down, or humiliate him in a card game if you were a stealth class and knew a little sleight of hand.

Of course, Leo was a Knight character, and so he had only one option to deal with the man.

"No, Carl," he said, directly into the man's blinking, ugly face, "I don't think we're going anywhere."

Carl's face contorted, but then he grinned. His eyes darted to Mary. "Aye," he said slyly, "maybe you won't have to. You've a fine wench, and very saucy too. I think if mayhap she stays the night with me, then—"

Leo's sword hummed through the air. Carl's head flew from his shoulders. His headless body took a single step, blood gouting from its neck and painting the ceiling, before it toppled.

A woman shrieked. The men at the table went silent with shock for a moment before they leapt to their feet.

"Wow, it's so much more satisfying this way!" Leo laughed.

Normally, after killing Carl, his companions would either surrender and leave the tavern if you had slain him easily, or they would fight you if the fight had been difficult. Clearly, Leo had dispatched Carl far too swiftly, for the largest of the men approached him now, holding his arms out.

"Look, m'Lord, we didn't mean anything by it—arghleblarghlyaargh!"

The man stumbled backwards, clutching at a bleeding throat.

"Leo!" Mary chided. "He was surrendering!"

"Oh, whatever." Leo flicked the blood from his blade. "Come on, help me kill them. The combat in this mode is great!"

"Leo, they're not even attacking you…"

"Yeah, but so what? It's just a video game, Mary. Come on."

Mary opened her mouth to tell him no again, but then one of the remaining men grabbed Leo from behind, pulled his head back, and raised a dagger to slit his throat. "Leo!" she screamed, and raised her staff.

Immediately, a stalagmite of ice thrust up from the ground and impaled the man with the dagger. "No no no—oh gods, no please—" he managed, blood bubbling from his mouth, before he slumped down, dead.

Mary stared at him, but there was little time to contemplate what she had done. There was no stopping it, then. More men rushed forth, grabbing their blades, and Leo waded towards them, laughing and swinging his blade. Mary gripped her staff.

They were just going to have to kill them all.

People in the street stopped and stared as screams echoed through the Fowl and Mare. Then they turned and ran as blood began splashing out the windows and spattering into the streets. They ran faster as the blue glow of ice magic lit the tavern from within and something began making a sound like a giant blender.

When they were done, Leo and Mary stood, panting, in the middle of what looked like a charnel house.

"The gore settings are…really something in this mode," said Leo. He picked up the edge of a tablecloth and tried vainly to mop the blood from his armor, before tossing it aside.

"I'll say," said Mary. She was perfectly clean, having stood safely behind a shield of ice the entire encounter (spellcasters really were very OP in BladeKing, it was one of Leo's gripes with the game). Still, she looked breathless and pale.

"Fun, right?" he asked her.

"Yes," Mary breathed. "I mean…I mean, not fun. I don't know. Leo, this is weird. I know it's a game, but it just don't feel right somehow."

"That's right, heroes!" Nessa burbled from above. She had flown up into the rafters as soon as the violence had started. Now she flew down, sprinkling sparkles and flower petals over the carnage. "Aranor has a fully realized morality system. It's up to you to decide whether you want to save the realm…or destroy it! You can kill everyone in this room if you've got the guts for it!"

"Whoa, whoa. Let's just hang on for a bit." Leo wasn't above doing an evil run—he had done them before, and they were pretty fun—but they came with all sorts of maluses and made most of the towns into no-go zones, at least until you were strong enough to kill the guards. Plus, who knew how all that would work out in this mode. "Barkeep!" he shouted. "Barkeep!"

A fat little man crawled out from beneath one of the tables. "Oh, by the gods. Oh by the gods by the mercy of all that is holy oh by the gods please don't kill me please don't kill me—"

This was Lem, the barkeep. He was the main quest hub in Brightwood, and was the one you could ask for rumors. Leo supposed if these NPCs were this much smarter than they usually were, then if anyone had heard of where Malakar and Carassiso were, it would be Lem. "Hey there, Lem," he said, casually putting a bloody hand on the man's shoulder. "I don't suppose you've seen any children around, have you? We're looking for—"

Leo was interrupted by the man's squalling. "Oh bloody mercy oh by the gods oh blessed mother oh faith shield me king shield me please don't kill me—"

"Lem. LEM!" Leo picked the man up and shook him. "Rumors!" he shouted. "Rumors, Lem! Tell me rumors!"

"Pleasepleasepleasepleasedon'tkillmeoh—" Lem's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he went limp. He had fainted.

Leo dropped him into a bloody puddle. "Must have bugged out."

"Uh, Leo—" said Mary. "Something's, uh…something's off."

Something was. Leo looked about the room. Their slaughter had been well-targeted; they had only killed Carl and his men. Yet most of the remaining patrons of the tavern were staring at them in abject horror. And those who weren't looking at them didn't seem to be doing so hot. A barmaid was on her knees, shaking and weeping uncontrollably, while a serving boy stared, dazed, at a loop of intestine dangling from the rafters. A man who had remained at his table throughout the whole ordeal stood up and promptly vomited.

"I don't get it," said Leo. "Did we trigger the morality system…?"

"No, no, no you didn't!" cried Nessa. The fairy perched on his shoulder and wagged her finger at the shellshocked patrons. "We all saw what happened. Carl and his friends attacked first, didn't they? By the rules, you've done nothing wrong!" The fairy stomped her foot and shouted shrilly, "haven't they?!"

"Nothing wrong," a few of the patrons mumbled in response. Most of them did not get up.

"Oh, I don't like this," said Mary, clutching her staff.

"Maybe NeuroWave gives them…more realistic trauma reactions?" Leo suggested.

"It's creepy."

Leo had to admit it sort of was. Normally, after a battle, the NPCs wouldn't really react much. They might shout at the sight of a dead body, but it wouldn't be long before they were back to what they were doing before. Leo wasn't sure he liked the idea that every fight he engaged in might give the witnesses PTSD. "Well…come on, Lem is bugged anyway," he said. "Let's try to find another tavern."

Finding another tavern wasn't a problem. Finding one that had people who would speak to them was.

Word traveled fast, it seemed. As they went back out into the streets of Brightwood, they found that the crowds were now giving them a wide berth. In fact, entire streets emptied once they set foot onto them, and the shops all slammed closed their shutters and barred them from the other side. Even the guards were looking at them fearfully, but they didn't do anything. Leo supposed he was still coated in blood, but what was he supposed to do, wash it off?

Nessa in particular did not seem very amused by this. She kept huffing and crossing her arms, and occasionally she would flit off to talk to the townspeople. Her targets only shook their heads fearfully and refused to look Mary and Leo's way. It looked as though the fairy were scolding the villagers, but it was hard to tell.

"I'm sorry, heroes!' Nessa shouted when she returned. "Brightwood's not being very cooperative today. I'll have to make sure that gets fixed. In the meantime, why don't you just try the next town over? Greenport's not very far away, and the people there know how to treat a hero right!"

"Well come on now," Mary huffed as the fairy began herding them towards the exit. "All we want to do is find Malakar and Carassiso, or turn this dang thing off. It's been fun, but I'm real worried about…"

The town gates swiftly slammed shut behind them. The game's day/night cycle had kicked in, and the sky was mostly dark. Mostly, that is, except for the dull orange glow clearly visible against the horizon, as though from a great blaze.

Hooves galloped towards them in the gloom. Leo and Mary only just managed to dodge to the side as a horse came barreling down the road. It stopped short, rearing and throwing off its passenger, who landed at their feet: A horrifically burned elf, marred almost beyond recognition. He lifted one blackened hand towards them.

"Please," he gasped. "You have to help us. The two little demons…they're killing us all!"

With that he collapsed, stone dead.

 

[CCClover]

12. Quest Hooks
​

Following the thin streams of smoke in the sky, Malakar and Carassiso did not have to walk long before they were greeted with the sight of a small village nestled in a forest glade. Simple wooden cabins lay along a small stream; young girls carrying washed linens walked down dirt paths lined with flowers, talking and laughing. There was the faint sound of wood being chopped in the distance, and on a flat patch of ground lay what looked to be a half-dozen little huts. Malakar was curious, until he noticed the fat bees wafting lazily through the air above them. Beekeepers.

In a way, the sight of the village was strangely comforting. The last world they had come from was so strange; here, at least, was a scene that would not have been out of place in their own world. Or, at least, it might have been more common, before the Dread Lord had declared his Purging War against the human kingdoms.

"Oh, these people are weak." Malakar laughed. He and Carassiso peered in at the village from the outskirts, hidden from sight beneath the branches of a collapsed tree. "We have nothing to fear from them." He rose.

Carassiso pulled him back down. "No," she urged. "Who knows if some mighty warrior dwells amongst them in secret? Let us scout, first."

Malakar still clasped her hand; while the constant physical contact was obnoxious, it at least kept their arcane resonance at a maximum and constantly weakened the seal. He felt Carassiso burning through mana; darkness trailed from the edges of her fingers as she wove her spell. When she was done, a floating Eye of the Void hovered before her, an eyeball forged from shadow and magic. It hung in the air like a hole in the world.

Carassiso wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her free hand. "Oh, it is good to be able to cast that again. It is like having a little bit of the Dread Lord with us."

"Yeah, yeah." Malakar rolled his eyes. There were some who said that the Great Dread Lord himself had created this spell by sacrificing one of his own eyeballs. "Hurry up! We cannot hide here all day."

"O, great Void-Eye!" Carassiso intoned.

"'Sup," said the Eye of the Void.

"Heed my command! Go forth amongst this village, hiding ever in the shadows, then return and tell us what you have found!"

"Okay," said the Eye of the Void, and then winked out of sight. Malakar and Carassiso could just about spot it reforming in the shadow cast by one of the beehives, before it winked away again.

They waited while the Eye of the Void flitted around the village, always silent, always observing. It wasn't exactly invisible, but mortals had a hard time seeing it. They could sense it, though. Whenever the villagers passed close by to the Eye, they shivered as though touched by the cold; others glanced about warily. But for the most part, they remained blind.

Finally the Eye returned to them, popping back into existence over Carassiso's shoulder.

"Analysis complete," it said. "Population of village: thirty-seven. Thirty-four are villager-class NPCs. Median level 2. Highest level 7. One villager is a level 13 warrior suffering from an advanced age malus (-5 to strength and endurance). One—"

"Wait wait wait," Malakar snapped. "Stop. What is this nonsense? These numbers. What are you talking about?"

The Eye of the Void wobbled in the air for a moment. "You asked for a report—"

"Yes, a report that makes sense! Carassiso, did you cast the spell right?"

"Of course I did!" Carassiso frowned at the Eye. "Look, just…start over. Use normal words this time!"

The Eye of the Void was silent for a moment. "Engaging immersion mode," it said at last. "The village that lies before you is called Greenhollow. Most who live there are simple peasants, mostly human, some elf. But there are three who seem to have some experience with the arts of war. A retired warrior, a priest, and a fledgling mage. In addition, the priest tends over a small shrine beneath which lies a font of holy water, a potential source of mana if properly corrupted."

"Excellent," said Malakar. "Let's go in there and take it!"

"We ought to avoid a fight if we can," said Carassiso.

"Oh, why?" Malakar glared. "I'm beginning to think you don't even want to kill humans!"

Carassiso gasped. "How dare you! Of course I do. But they might have information, don't you see? They might know of other sources of mana. If we win their trust…"

Malakar was about to reply that they could get such information with a little bit of simple torture when a branch snapped behind them. The Eye of the Void blinked into nothing as they whirled and found a long-mustachioed old man behind them, with a sheath buckled at his belt and an elegant but ratty old coat draped over his shoulders. In his hands he held a very sharp-looking sword pointed directly at their heads.

"Well, well, well," said the old man. "What have we here?"

Carassiso did not miss a beat. She did that strange thing where her eyes grew wide and watery. "Just some lost and hungry children, sir," she pleaded. "Please, we were just wondering if your village might have something to spare to eat…or a place to sleep…"

"Uh-huh," said the old man. "And what about the horns?"

His sword moved to tap Carassiso's chitinous black horns and Malakar's long golden ones. Malakar drew in a sharp breath and began channeling hellfire.

"Just a curse!" Carassiso cried, before the flames could manifest themselves. She shot him a sharp glance. "A curse! That's why we're wandering! No one will take us in…oh, sir, will you be just like all the others? We're so hungry and tired…"

There was magic laced beneath her words. The old man's eyes clouded and he sheathed his sword. "Well," he said slowly, "I…suppose you are just young'ns. Mayhap you better come with me. We can get you a meal, at least, and then we can decide what to do with you."

The old man might have had his caution clouded by Carassiso's spell, but he still watched over them carefully as they crawled out of their hiding space, and bid them walk ahead of him as they marched back to the village.

Malakar shot a furtive glance over his shoulder. "We could easily kill him," he whispered.

"Oh, you were always so simple," Carassiso whispered back. "You never understood that the most fun in tormenting humans was to be found in worming your way amongst them. Corrupting them from within…if we are to be stuck in this world, let me at least savor what I can here!"

"What are you kids whispering about?"

"Just how excited we are to eat!" Carassiso flashed the old man a smile with too many teeth.

Malakar could have incinerated him in that moment. He almost did. But, he thought, perhaps it was only fair to let Carassiso have her turn. She was sure to embarrass herself anyway.

* * *
​

The old man's name was Reginald, as it turned out. And he was a former member of the King's Guard or blah blah blah, some such nonsense. Malakar boggled at the man's propensity to just ramble on about his pointless backstory, as if anyone cared. No, it was not interesting that once he had saved the crown prince from assassins. No, it was not relevant in the slightest that he had once carried an enchanted dagger from those days until a group of thieves had stolen it and holed up in a nearby cave. What were thieves doing in a cave anyway?

But he wasn't the only one. As they entered Greenhollow, Reginald stopped to introduce them to everyone they passed. There were some remarks about their horns, but so long as Reginald vouched for them—and Carassiso used a tiny bit of magic—it all went over smoothly enough. They did look like children otherwise, after all, and these folk were afflicted with the strange human habit of fawning over the young.

It seemed everyone had a story to tell, and a terrible lack of self-control about telling it. Glinda the washer's husband was under the weather and needed a potion made from a rare flower to be healed. Robb the Hunter wanted help taking down a particularly vicious bear he had wounded in the forest and for some reason felt that he had to bring this up to children he had just met.

"Look," Carassiso said, as another random villager began to launch into a story about how her son had spotted a troll wandering through the woods nearby. "We really are very hungry. Could you please feed us? And perhaps bring your wizard to us, if you would."

Reginald gave her an odd glance. "Hey there, how'd you know about Harold?"

"It…we…a rumor. Just bring him! Perhaps he can tell us how to heal our curse." Carassiso let out a long sigh as Reginald turned back. "Were humans always this talkative?" she muttered.

"You'd know better than I. You worked with them more in the Black Palace."

"Yes, but usually by then they were just begging for death. These seem strangely forthcoming. The ones in the last world were not nearly so bad."

Reginald brought them to a small, empty cabin, and soon returned with plates of cooked fish. Maids followed soon with a pitcher of milk and talked loudly about how there was a troll nearby as they poured it into clay cups. They cooed over Malakar and Carassiso, despite the horns. Malakar wondered what it was that made humans so fond of children. Such chubby, useless things to spend so much attention and effort on, especially when they weren't even yours!

The food was acceptable. At least it had more mana in it than the last world's meals had. Malakar had begun to build up a real respectable store, now.

Carassiso frowned at him. "Stop fidgeting!"

"I can't help it! I want to use my magic. It's been too long!"

"Just wait, I—"

Reginald chose that moment to re-enter the cabin with an owlish young man wearing long, too-loose robes at his side. "Like I was saying, Harold," he said loudly, "We really ought to do something about that troll nearby—"

"Yes! We've all heard about the troll!" Carassiso shouted. "You! You must be Harold."

"Ahem! Yes. Well." The young man in loose robes nodded, then stepped forward to peer at them both. "That I am, young miss. Oh my. I can see what you mean about the curse, Reginald. Most peculiar. They almost look demonic."

"Yes, it is very bad," Carassiso said hastily. "We were told that in order to cure ourselves, it would take an enormous amount of mana. Being a mage, you must be familiar with places of arcane power…"

"Well, certainly. Largest one is probably at the university in The Silver City, where I studied." Harold carried a thick grimoire; he opened it now and began flipping through the pages. "But I don't see how mana fixes this problem. You know what might fix it, though? If some grand hero were to fetch me a phial of troll's blood, then I could—"

Carassiso's hands hooked into claws and jerked towards the mage. She took a deep breath and smoothed out her robes. "Oh, but I am certain that mana would be what solves our predicament. Perhaps if you could draw out a map of all nearby sources, as well as list out their defenses and any guardians they might have…"

"So it's true!"

An elderly man, barefoot and dressed in simple robes, barged his way into the cabin. He wielded a walking stick like he planned on beating everyone in the room with it. Most of his face was hidden beneath a lengthy white beard; the part of it that wasn't did not seem very happy about what he found.

"Demons!" shouted the old man. "You've brought demons into the village!"

"Now hold on there, Beild," cautioned Reginald. "They're just kids…"

"That's right! Poor, cursed children! Oh woe, oh mercy! Oh, won't anyone take care of us?" Carassiso's eyes were doing that disgusting big-and-wet thing again. Malakar gagged.

Beild was having none of it. "I suppose you agree with them, Harold?"

"Er, well, I think usually demons are a bit bigger, aren't they?" the young mage answered, wringing his hands.

"Idiots!" cried Beild. "All that matters is the size of the evil inside them, and let me tell you, as village priest I can sense it! They're thinking wicked thoughts right now!"

"No I'm not," said Malakar, who had been thinking of whether the priest's skin would make a nice jacket.

"Silence, you," Beild snapped. Then he turned to Reginald and Harold, tugging at his beard. "What are you waiting for? Strike them down now! Before it is too late!"

"You know we can hear you, yes?" said Malakar. "We're children, not stupid."

Reginald and Harold glanced at each other. Harold coughed awkwardly into his sleeve. "It's just that, well, Beild, they do look an awful lot like kids, in any case," the young mage said. "I think you'd want to be really certain before you did any striking…"

"I can see they've already corrupted you," Beild muttered. Carassiso smiled and arched a satisfied eyebrow.

"If I need to, I'll do it myself," the priest continued. He whirled with his walking stick held high over his head.

"Wait!" Carassiso cried, and once more there was an undercurrent of magic in her voice. "Oh, I understand. I understand why you are suspicious. So many have tried to kill us, even though we're just…just children…" She began to weep, and she darted out a furtive hand to pinch Malakar hard enough to send tears down his cheeks as well. "…but please, can't there be a way to know that we're safe…? Perhaps if you kept us within your shrine…if we were demons, wouldn't we be weakened on holy ground?"

Beild froze, his arms trembling, his eyes clouded over with Carassiso's magic. "I…I…oh, alright, I suppose," he said finally, lowering his stick. "Under the watchful eyes of the goddess would be the safest place for you to be. And I suppose it would be best to be certain of what you are…"

"It's settled, then!" Carassiso clapped her hands together. "We'll stay in the shrine. Eh? Eh?" She nudged Malakar and gave him a smug look.

Malakar only snorted.

Outside the cabin, the bells of Greenhollow began to toll for evening prayer. From every little house and workshop, villagers turned toward the shrine, smiling, murmuring blessings, bowing their heads. None of them noticed a tiny void opening in the air in the shadows of the trees.

"Objective updated," whispered the Eye of the Void. "Access to holy font acquired. Next Quest Objective Marked: Profane Corruption."

 

[CCClover]

13. Old-Fashioned Fun
​

"See, now, wasn't that satisfying?" Carassiso whispered.

They lay on straw cots in the room they had been given at the shrine. Really, it could barely be called such; it was little more than a cabin, just a bit cleaner than the others. Nevertheless, when Beild had first brought them here, he had seemed a little disappointed that they had not burst into flame upon entering. Mortals had the habit of overestimating the strength of their holy places; that seemed common across all worlds. Perhaps a lesser demon would have felt a little uncomfortable being here, but Malakar, even in his weakened state, barely felt the divine disapproval of his presence.

It had been a neat trick, sure. With very little mana whatsoever, Carassiso had gotten them exactly where they had wanted to be. "It was efficient, at the very least," said Malakar grudgingly. "I just don't see the point."

"The point is that now we have mana reserves to do what we must, here." Carassiso sat up, her eyes glittering in the darkness. "I can feel the mana here."

Malakar could, too. Quietly, carefully, they rose and crept out of their room.

They could hear Beild snoring in the room across from theirs. After he had brought them to the shrine, and after they had failed to be incinerated by it, Beild had declared that he would stay up all night to watch them. And for a while, he had; whenever they snuck a glance out into the hall, they saw him there, sitting with his legs folded beneath him, staring at them. Really, very creepy, and Malakar might have killed him, except that he actually had been tired and in need of a nap.

They slunk past and the sound of Beild's snores faded behind them. The main room of the shrine was as pathetic and humble as the rest of it; a rug laid over a floor of bare dirt, and a small pedestal on top of which rested a stone statue of some goddess or whatever. Beild had spoken of her when they first arrived, but Malakar hadn't been listening. Whoever she was, she looked like she could stand to lose some weight. That wasn't the interesting part, anyway. Behind the pedestal there lay a dark tunnel into the earth. Malakar and Carassiso descended the simple, stone-carved steps.

Soon enough, the tunnel opened up into a grotto, quiet and still. A shaft of moonlight snuck through a crevice on the surface and illuminated a pool of water so clear and pure it almost seemed to glow with its own inner light.

"Ah, now there we are," said Malakar, drawing close. He looked at his reflection wobbling in the surface of the pool. Mana, and a renewable source of it, fed by mystic currents deep in the dark caverns of this world. Truly a paltry amount, compared to what he had commanded in his days at the Black Palace, but much more than he'd been able to get his hands on before. "Good. Now we—"

With a small pop, the Eye of the Void manifested in the air over the pool.

"To begin the profane manaseed ritual, you must carve six unholy demon runes into the stone around the pool. CURRENT RUNES CARVED: 0/6. Alternatively, you may draw the runes in troll's blood. TROLL'S BLOOD (OPTIONAL): 0/1—"

Malakar flinched back from the hovering black orb. "What the—where did you come from? Carassiso, shut this thing up! Why did you summon it again?"

"I didn't! This must have been the one from earlier. I thought it had been dispelled." Carassiso frowned. "There must be something about the magic of this world…I have never heard the Eye speak in such a manner before."

"To begin the profane manaseed ritual, you must—"

"I know how to do the ritual!" Malakar shouted.

Grumbling, he paced around the pool, using flickers of hellfire from his fingertips to carve complicated demonic runes into the cave floor.

"Yesss," Carassiso purred. "I can feel the holy power in this place beginning to wither!"

Malakar snorted. The profane manaseed ritual was nothing to get excited over. It would corrupt the pool and link it to their souls, providing them with a constant, minor source of mana. Normally it was of limited use—when he had his full powers unsealed, he could drain mana from the living, or from the very earth itself. But, well, it did have a sort of appealing rush to it. Very old-fashioned.

"There," he said when he was done with the final rune. He and Carassiso stood over the pool, where the Eye of the Void still floated in the air, silent, its perfect blackness reflected below.

Both of them raised their hands into the air and began chanting the Seventh Unholy Incomprehension of Nihiloth. The air crackled and burned with the very foulness of the arcane language flowing from their lips. The holy water roiled and churned, the power there wrestling with the corruption they were pouring into it. But there was only one outcome: surrender. The water calmed. And then, from its heart, a thick darkness spread, spreading its tendrils throughout like ink, until finally the entire pool was a perfect black mirror.

"What are you doing….nooooooo!"

They turned to find Beild staring at them from the mouth of the tunnel. The priest rushed forward, and when he saw what had been done to the pool he fell to his knees. "Forgive me, goddess!" he howled. "Forgive your servant! My vigilance has failed! I am unworthy!"

Carassiso leapt back from the edge of the pool and leered over him. "That's right, priest!" she crowed. "Your pool is defiled! Your goddess was powerless to stop us! Suffer, knowing how deep your failure goes, and know—what? Malakar, what?"

"Oh, it's nothing."

"You're laughing at me! I saw that smirk!"

"Am I?" Malakar chuckled. "I just never knew you were so…indulgent in your dealings with the humans." Among demonkind, there were a few schools of thought on how to deal with mortals. Malakar was firmly of the opinion that they were there to serve as slaves or to be destroyed. A little suffering was good, here and there, but to overdo it was a bit gauche. Watching Carassiso revel in the priest's torment was a bit like the demonic equivalent of watching someone eat an entire box of chocolates all by themselves.

Carassiso blushed as the priest continued to wail and gnash his teeth at her feet. "Perhaps I let myself get carried away. But you can't tell me you don't like it!"

"Well, sure…." Malakar drifted off. Something felt crooked. He was certain he should be disgusted with Carassiso right now, but instead he had this strange warm feeling right where his utterly inadequate human gut joined with his chest. What in the world was this awful emotion…?

"BONUS OBJECTIVE," shouted the Eye of the Void. "Further desecrate the pool to trigger a special demonic incursion event."

"That sounds fun!" said Malakar.

"That sounds strange, is what it sounds like," Carassiso retorted. "Something is off, here. I just know it."

"Oh, come on, you've had it your way all day," Malakar grumbled. "I let you do it because I…ugh…felt bad about dragging you here."

"Bad?" Carassiso tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know! It's this stupid body! Whatever, you owe me. Let me have my fun now."

"Oh, alright. We've got about as much as we can from this village anyway."

"To desecrate the pool," said the Eye of the Void, "first gather the priest's head. PRIEST'S HEAD: 0/1."

"Wh…what…?" said Beild. He looked up to find Malakar staring down at him, wearing a grin that contained far too many sharp teeth.

"Hold still," said Malakar, flames running down his arms. "It's always tricky beheading people with hellfire."

* * *
​

The people of Greenhollow woke in the middle of the night to a great echoing bang as their shrine exploded, raining smoking bits of wood and priest down upon their village.

All that remained was the cave over which it had been built, no longer a moonlit grotto, but now rather a bubbling pit of darkness, darkness from which nightmares of shadow and flame and ragged black wings issued forth, rushing into the night with howls like the souls of the damned. Some of the folk who woke to the explosion stood agog in their doorways, staring in shock, only for these horrific visions to seize them with claws that burned even as they tore and ripped and flayed.

Then the screaming started.

Malakar crawled out of the pit even as more and more flaming shadows streamed past him. Once at the top, he put his hands on his hips and surveyed the carnage. "Not bad!" he said. "Not bad at all! Stronger reaction than I was expecting from the priest's head, but really not bad!"

"So noisy," Carassiso huffed, joining him. "I mean, really. You just like pure destruction. You might as well be blowing up rocks."

"Blowing up rocks is good, too." Malakar nodded.

"You don't appreciate the unique qualities of mortals!"

"Sure I do!" said Malakar. "They splatter way more than rocks do. See?" He stepped back as one of the nightmarish shadows dropped a screaming villager from the sky. "I can appreciate that!"

"Well," said Carassiso, wiping splatter from her face, "I suppose I can admit it has its charms, too."

"Come on then," said Malakar. "Let's enjoy ourselves before there's none left."

He held out his hand. Carassiso took it with a sigh, but she was smiling slightly, too. The arcane resonance between them weakened the seal, and the mana they had absorbed fueled magic that had lain dormant since the day they had fled the Black Palace.

Malakar called upon the red-gold flames of hell and incinerated the closest cabin. Carassiso summoned deadly spikes that shimmered in the moonlight before they darted forth and impaled the survivors.

Laughing and skipping, they traipsed through Greenhollow, laying waste to everything they saw. The villagers fled screaming from them into the woods, rushing past a giant, brutish troll who had arrived only moments ago with raiding on his mind. The troll stared agog at the villagers and at the carnage that lay before him, then glanced at the primitive club he held.

"You know what, I'll come back later," he said.

* * *
​

By the time Mary and Leo arrived, it was all over.

Leo had taken the horse of the dead elf and swept Mary up behind him on the saddle. Of course, he knew nothing about riding horses, but it was an innate skill of the Knight class, and so he had been able to spur his steed, frothing at the mouth, back up the road where it had run from, then steer it into the woods, leaping over streams and fallen branches and towards that awful orange glow growing brighter and brighter between the trees. He recognized where they were going; Greenhollow was a small quest hub you were supposed to spend a few hours at outside of the first town, and it was there that you'd meet an old warrior named Reginald, later revealed as Reginald Delacour, who would be your first contact and lead-in to joining the fabled guild of the Dragon Hunters…

Only that's not what it was. Not anymore. Now Greenhollow was a pit of ruin.

"Oh, my god," Mary murmured, as Leo brought his horse to a stop.

Before them lay a black scar on the landscape, a great wide circle where all the vegetation and trees had been burnt away. Of the village there was no longer any sign, other than some tattered corpses lying on the ground. Leo winced as he watched a large, winged shadow-demon grab an unidentifiable torso and begin to noisily gnaw on it.

"What are those things doing here?" he asked. "Those are an endgame enemy…"

Nessa, who had spent the ride on his shoulder, gasped. "Oh my goodness! Heroes, this must be a demonic incursion event! We should be very careful…"

"Ain't that an endgame thing too?" Mary asked. "It only happens after you, uh…give that staff, to that guy…darn, what was it called…"

"The staff of Yibalba," Leo said absent-mindedly.

"Yeah, whatever. I thought you started a new game?"

"I did. It must be bugged." Leo dismounted, then helped Mary climb down as well.

"I hope Malakar and Carassiso weren't here," said Mary. "Kids would probably be scared of this part—"

"Malakar! We have visitors!"

From the shadows Malakar and Carassiso emerged, each of them riding one of the gigantic shadow-demons. Behind Malakar Reginald rode, bound with glowing, magical chains, his eyes lost and wandering, nothing but madness in them now.

"Good!" Malakar cried. "More fools for the slaughter—oh, it's you two."

Malakar brought his fell-beast rearing up, its claws tearing through the ground mere feet from where Mary and Leo stood. Clumsily he attempted to clamber down, making it about halfway before falling. He stood up and dusted himself off as Carassiso, who had managed a much more graceful descent, joined him at his side.

"Did…did you two do all this…?" Mary asked, gesturing at the festering darkness and pits of bubbling fire.

Malakar crossed his arms and threw back his head in laughter. "Oh yes! I am most pleased. Gaze upon my works and know despair!"

The shadow demon carrying Reginald apparently took Malakar's laughter as an order to attack, though in fairness it interpreted mostly everything as an excuse for violence. It snorted and charged forward like a bull. Leo darted forward with his sword at the ready, but it was Mary who stopped it. With a frightened yelp she raised her staff, and from the end of it shot a stream of icicles. Not the romantic, holiday sort of icicles, either, no; the gnarly yellowish ones that grow real thick and tear off gutters. The shadow demon took a particularly nasty one right through the forehead and collapsed to the ground, where it began to flake away on the wind like embers peeling from a burning log.

Malakar stared at this, then at Mary. "You didn't tell me you knew magic!"

Mary smiled at him. "Oh, sweetie, I know this might be confusing, but it's just a game. It's the NeuroWave stuff that makes it seem so real. I don't know any actual magic, you know. Just like your magic! It's not actually real."

"A game," Malakar muttered, sharing a look with Carassiso. These humans still thought they were in a game. But of course they did; there was no way for them to recognize the nature of the link these games made with other worlds. Someone must know what they truly were, though…

"And…I suppose you did that to him," said Leo. He pointed to Reginald, who had fallen from the fell-beast's back. The old man lay on the ground, gazing at nothing.

"They made me watch," Reginald whispered. "Oh, gods, they made me watch…"

"Yes." Malakar frowned. "This one just wasn't dying, for some reason."

"Well, yeah. He's an essential NPC." Leo scratched the back of his head. It looked as though Malakar had been assigned the Occultist class, and Carassiso the Shadow Witch. He wasn't too familiar with those, but they must have been using some pretty high-level skills here. "Maybe this whole save is borked."

Nessa had been staring agog at Malakar and Carassiso, but finally she shook her head and recovered. "Heroes!" the fairy shouted. "Be on your guard! These two are the monsters responsible for all this madness! I'm updating your quest log! REPEL THE DEMONIC INVASION. RED-HAIRED WHELP SLAIN: 0/1. WITCH-CHILD SLAIN: 0/1."

"What did you call me?!" shouted Malakar.

Suddenly, the Eye of the Void winked into existence above Carassiso's head.

"Masters!" it shouted. "Be on your guard! These two are the do-gooders who are trying to repel your demonic incursion! I'm updating your quest log! PROTECT THE DEMONIC INVASION. KNIGHT SLAIN: 0/1. WATER PRIESTESS SLAIN: 0/1. OBNOXIOUS FAIRY SLAIN: 0/1."

"Wh—you can't do that!" Nessa sputtered. "You can't change the quest log!"

"Looks like I just did," said the Void-Eye.

"Hold on a moment!" Carassiso cried as the two tiny beings began to bicker with each other. "Malakar! Um, will you come talk to me alone?"

"That's cute," Leo said, watching Carassiso drag Malakar away. "They seem really close, you know? Probably formed a real bond while escaping from Senator Cornwallis."

"M-maybe." Mary clutched her staff and shivered. "Leo, doesn't it seem just a little weird to you that those two…did all this? Sure, everything here's…not real, but…don't you think this is a little violent?"

Leo shrugged. Kids being bloodthirsty in a video game? No, it didn't seem weird at all.



"Ow! Carassiso, damn you, what is it?!" Malakar growled as she pulled him off into the shadows. "Why did you—"

"You were about to kill them," Carassiso said dryly.

"Kill who?"

"Is that what you think an innocent expression looks like? Hah!" Carassiso gave a mirthless laugh. "Who do you think? Mary and Leo."

"Well, why not," Malakar grumbled, rubbing his arm where Carassiso had grabbed him. "We don't need them anymore."

"I think we do," Carassiso said. "I think they might know something of the magic of this world."

"What! More than we do? Have you lost your mind? Besides, they know nothing! They still think they're in a video game, or whatever they call it."

"Haven't you noticed? The Eye of the Void keeps speaking…strangely. And as…entertaining as the demonic incursion was…I do not understand how it happened. That is not how such things were done in our world."

"So? That just makes it more exciting!" shouted Malakar. "More magic to pull apart and understand. It's better that we don't know how it works. We can discover it ourselves!"

"You don't understand as much as you think, fool! Remember how we came here in the first place! I do not understand what Leo is saying, but I believe he knows something about this place….even if they way he normally sees it is through the 'TV'. Some sort of scrying spell, perhaps…? We should at least keep them alive until we know more!" Carassiso took a deep breath. "Oh, if only there was a way to go back to their world."

"Why?" asked Malakar. "This one has mana. It's much more useful. Weren't you complaining that their world was full of holes, too?"

"Because other creatures using magic are dangerous for us so long as our powers remain sealed. Besides, while their world might have been…permeable…it still held so much opportunity. Think about it! We might have found other worlds, with yet more mana…other strange powers…if only someone hadn't consigned us to this place."

Malakar was quiet for a moment. "Oh," he said. "I think I see your point."

"Yes." Carassiso sighed. "But I suppose it's too late now."

"Well, perhaps not…"

"Really…? Do you know of a way back to their world? For all the mana we have robbed, I do not think it is enough for us to create a portal out of nothing."

"Hmm," said Malakar. "Yes, I, uh, think that I might have found a link back to their world."

"You have? What is it?"

"The humans themselves," said Malakar. "Marty and Liam or whatever their names are. They are attuned with their own realm, I suppose."

Carassiso stared at him.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" Malakar offered.

"And you were just going to kill them," Carassiso snarled, reaching for his neck.

"Wait!" Malakar danced away from her. "I admit it! I admit that I was not thinking. It is true, their world holds much potential. I just…ah, I just enjoyed myself so much in this place." He sighed, and looked out over all the destruction; the broken corpses, the slavering shadow-demons. He looked back to Carassiso, hidden in shadow, her eyes glinting like daggers. "Didn't you?"

Carassiso seemed on the verge of pouncing on him, but then she softened. "Yes. It was fun. You have a fine hand with hellfire, though I suppose you know that."

"Of course I do!" Malakar grinned. "You, though—your domination spells are very subtle. Almost undetectable."

Carassiso gave a small laugh and twisted her foot in the dirt. "Oh, do you really think so?" Then she jolted, her eyes widening, and she grabbed Malakar by the hand. "Enough, then! Return us to their world, before something happens to them here!"

They found Mary and Leo still standing by their horse, watching the fairy and the Void-Eye tangle with each other. "Oh!" Leo laughed when Malakar told them it was time to go home. "Little man, did you know how to turn off the NeuroWave this whole time?"

"Don't you ever call me that, Larry," said Malakar.

He raised his hands and focused. He had spent much of his mana on the villagers, but he still had enough to just barely enough left. A hole in reality tore itself open, ragged edges glowing white-hot.

"Let's go! Through, go through! Hurry up!" he shouted. He didn't have the strength to keep this open for very long. He watched Mary, Leo, and Carassiso hop into the darkness. Then, just as he was about to go through himself, he felt a small tap on his cheek. He turned to find the wrathful face of the fairy filling his vision.

"I don't know who you are, or what you are," the fairy hissed, "but I know you don't belong here. I'm going to find out how you did what you did, and when I do, you can be sure you'll suffer the consequences!"

Malakar blinked. Then he spit in her face.

"Oh my—you wretched little—" the fairy reeled. "I'm going to kill you!"

Malakar stepped through the portal, the fairy's shrill shrieks still ringing in his ears, and his vision filled with blinding light.

* * *
​

When the light cleared, Malakar found himself once again standing in the living room of his apartment. Ahead of him, Mary and Leo were still rubbing their eyes. He glanced down at himself. He was once more wearing the 'jeans' and the 't-shirt' that Carassiso had her merchant bring to him. And Carassiso was in the elaborate dress she had been when last she had stood in this world, too. She gave him a strange look, then crossed her arms and turned her back to him. Behind him the portal wobbled and closed with a small zoop.

"Whoa there!" Leo said, holding Mary steady as she threatened to topple. "You alright? Man, that tech really is something, isn't it? Seamless. Really felt like we were just stepping through a portal."

"I feel like I'm gonna hurl," Mary said. She clutched her hands to her mouth and ran out the door.

Leo took a step after her. "Is she…is she going to be okay?"

"Sure," said Malakar dismissively. He didn't know if she was, actually. He had no idea the effects that portals had on humans. But he didn't care about that at all.

He could feel the effects of the profane manaseed ritual, feeding him a steady trickle of mana. Carassiso must be feeling it as well. Even in this world, it still came through. Though it was little, compared to what he was used to, it was better than relying on food alone.

"I am most pleased, Leo!" he said. "You have done well. You will leave this video game with us!"

"Oh…no can do, little guy," Leo said, glancing out the window, where the sound of Mary vomiting into the bushes came floating up to them. He bent to the Xbox and retrieved the game stick he had inserted into it. "Sorry," he apologized. "But this is my favorite game. I can come back with it next time I visit, though."

"You will do this, then! With all haste!"

"I must ask," Carassiso said suddenly, "How many of these…video games…are there? For this cannot be the only one, can it? I have read of others."

"Oh, there's thousands," said Leo absent-mindedly. He looked at his phone and grimaced. "Look, I'm gonna go help Mary, and then I've got to go. But we'll be back, alright? You guys…lock your doors, and stay safe. Don't go outside! Who knows who is looking for you?"

He ran out the door, leaving Malakar and Carassiso staring at each other.

Thousands. Thousands of video games.

Thousands of worlds to feed on.

 

[CCClover]

14. It's Probably Fine
​

Officer Denton sat with his laptop open before him, his eyes pinned to the screen.

He had been sitting like this for the past thirty minutes. He was in his home, at the kitchen table, with piles of thick manilla folders stacked up on either side of him. A lone ant crawled across a half-forgotten ham sandwich lying on a plate next to his left hand. It got stuck in a smear of mustard, frantically escaped, wriggled around furiously in that way ants have when they are doing the ant equivalent of coughing and gagging, then finally seized a crumb three times its size and hauled ass out of there. During this entire drama, Denton barely moved.

He only tapped his finger to restart the video he was watching.

This was supposed to be one of his days off. Denton hadn't necessarily wanted a day off, but the chief had started going on about vacation days and "use them or lose them" and something about the union getting on his back, and so Denton had been encouraged to stay at home today. That was fine. There was always paperwork to do.

Denton was a stickler for paperwork. That's why something had been bothering him ever since that 7-Eleven had been knocked over. He'd heard the descriptions of the suspects, of course; he'd conducted some of the interviews himself. He knew they matched those of the kids who they'd found wandering about; the little boy and girl dressed up like video game characters. That's why one of the first things Denton had done was go and look for the relinquishment forms that must have been filed when they were released to their guardians. Maybe he could find some sort of contact number, an address, anything.

Only the paperwork wasn't there.

Except that was impossible. Because Denton was a stickler for paperwork, and he had been the one there that night when the kids were released. Or, at least he thought he had been. But the more he tried to recall what had happened, who the kids had been released to, the more that memory seemed to fly away. It was like trying to catch smoke with his hands.

Of course, he had a lot of other things on his plate. This was New York, after all. Even in a relatively quiet neighborhood, some rambunctious kids pushing over the shelves in a convenience store—with no major theft—didn't warrant a whole lot of attention. Still, it had bugged him, so Denton had pulled the records of the security camera from that night. Maybe seeing the kids' parents walk in would jog his memory.

So now Denton sat in front of his laptop, watching the grainy footage over, and over, and over again.

He watched the kids walk out of the chief's office, alone. He watched them approach his desk. Alone. He watched himself lean over to talk to them…

And then he watched himself go slack. The kids lingered by his desk for a few moments. It was hard to tell from the footage what was happening. Maybe they were talking to him, or to each other. Then the little boy pointed, and in the footage Denton watched himself pick up some long, dark object and hold it under his chin. The kids argued with each other, then turned around and left. Alone. And after a little while, saw himself relax at his desk, toss the dark object aside, and turn back to his work.

Like nothing had even happened.

It made no sense. No damn sense at all. What had he been thinking, letting those two kids wander out by themselves? For a moment, he wondered if it was really him in that chair, but no; the video wasn't that low-quality, he could easily recognize himself. Except that he would have never done what the camera had so clearly captured. Not in a million years.

His mind raced. How could it be explained? This was something that could really get him in trouble, if it ever got out…was that it? Did he have an enemy at the department? Had they tampered with the security footage, maybe edited out the parents, all in an attempt to nail him for neglect or misconduct? But Denton could not think of anyone who might possibly want to do that to him. And he could see no signs of editing in the video, either, though he supposed that AI was good enough now that it was getting very difficult to tell real video from fake. For a moment he entertained the idea of a rogue malicious AI infecting the department's computers before dismissing it.

Instead, Denton rewound and paused at the part of the video where he had held something up beneath his chin. Right after that little boy had pointed at it. Almost like he had been obeying the kid's command. As strange as the rest of the video was, it was that which chilled Denton to the bone. He still couldn't see what the object was, but the way he had jammed it beneath his chin…what had he been meaning to do…?

From somewhere in the house came the sound of a slamming door.

"I'm ho-ome!" he heard the voice of his daughter, Sasha, call out.

"Hi home, I'm dad," he replied, closing his laptop.

"Oh god, dad, Mary's here," Sasha groaned. "Don't embarrass me."

"Hello, Mr. Denton!" Mary called. One of his daughter's friends. Sasha had many, and in the normal course of things Denton might not have remembered Mary very well. But the first thing that sprang to his mind now was how it had been Mary who had called the police, called him and his partner into the Burger King, where he had met the mysterious little boy…

Denton went to greet them. Both Mary and his daughter were struggling with bags overflowing with fabric, foam, coils of clear tubing and what looked to be silver spraypaint. "Looks like you're making a new costume," Denton said, recognizing the supplies as he helped them bring them in.

"I am," said Sasha. "There's a con coming up, dad, I told you that. DreamCon. And I'm going as the Omnitrix!"

"It's a, uh, big robot," Mary clarified, seeing his confusion. "Oh, I wish I could go, but the tickets are so expensive…"

Denton nodded. He knew that both girls were into cosplay. There was a time when he had worried that his daughter was too old for dressing up as cartoon characters; she was in her final year of high school, after all. But then he had done some research, and realized people did this well into their thirties. And, she had explained to him, she wanted to get into costume design for movies, and this was good practice. He had still been skeptical, until he thought back to what he had been doing when he was her age. Drinking, mostly, and a few other things he was lucky had never gone on his record or else he'd never have been able to become a cop. Dressing up as cartoon characters was just fine, he decided.

"Are you going to hang around, Mary?" he asked as he set their bags on the kitchen table. "Do you guys need some tarp or something for your, uh, project?"

"No, Mr. Denton," Mary answered. "Sorry, I've got a shift at the Burger King I need to get to." She shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Plus, knowing Leo, I need to go wake him up first."

"Well, alright," Denton said as Mary hugged his daughter goodbye. "Speaking of which…I'm just curious, have you seen that little boy again?"

Mary froze. "What little boy…?"

"You know. The lost kid. The one I came to pick up after you called the police."

"Oh," said Mary quietly. "Malakar."

"Was that his name?" Denton shrugged.

"Why are you looking for him…?" Mary asked. She would not let her eyes meet his. "I thought you took care of him."

"He was released, I assume to his parents," Denton lied.

Mary looked up at him now. And was that hurt in her eyes? "Well, then everything is all right, isn't it?"

"Should be. I just heard he might have been causing some more trouble since then. He must live somewhere around here, I just never see him…"

"Maybe," Mary murmured. Then she shook her head. "N-no. I haven't seen him since. At all." She backed away. There was a tension in her movements that Denton immediately recognized as fear. "Anyway, I really got to rush. I'll see you later, Sasha. Mr. Denton."

"Have a good one," Denton called blandly as she sped out the door. Now, that was odd. If he had to put money down, he'd swear Mary was lying. But she seemed like a sensible girl; she had been Sasha's friend for years. Why would she lie about something like that?

He thought back to the video, and wondered.

"What was up with her?" his daughter asked. Even she noticed.

"Just late for her shift, probably," Denton replied. He watched his daughter rifling through her shopping bags, smiling at her haul. "Hey, Sasha, do you mind taking a look at something for me?" He opened up his laptop. "Mary might not have seen him, but maybe you have. He is pretty distinctive-looking, after all. Here we are. Have you seen this boy?"

Denton paused on a good frame in the video and zoomed in, then stepped aside for Sasha to take a look. She frowned at it for a moment. "No," she answered. "No, I can't say that I have. But…"

"But what?"

"That costume he's wearing," said Sasha. "That red hair. Those horns. I don't really remember, but I feel like I've seen them before. Maybe in some kind of video game."

* * *
​

Leo sighed, shrugging his backpack from his shoulder as he slowly trudged up the stairs to his room.

"Leo!" shouted his father from his customary spot, downstairs in front of the television. "Stop stomping! You'll break the stairs!"

Leo doubted that. The stairs had brick beneath them, after all. But if he brought it up he knew his father would just answer that the brick was hollow, with the empty space crammed full of the monitoring equipment that the rental company had placed there, for the purposes of spying on its tenants. Or maybe it was the insurance companies. Or the electric company. Leo's father changed his story as to why exactly they were spying on a weekly basis, but he was sure that he was specifically targeted. Leo regarded his father the way an experimental scientist might regard a theorist; he was good at thinking, a brilliant man, but often times his thoughts needed refinement with actual evidence.

As he neared the top of the steps, he saw that there was a dim glow coming from his room. "Hey!" he shouted. "Zoe! Get off my computer!"

"No! Dad said I could use it!"

He sighed and pushed open his door. There she was, his little sister, sitting in his computer chair, peering over the edge of the desk. A large number of tanks and warplanes were exploding on the screen.

"Come on, out," he said, slinging his backpack onto his bed, where it settled next to some empty cans of energy drink. Unfortunately, it settled next to some half-full ones, too. Leo stared at the spreading, fizzing puzzle as it soaked into his mattress.

"Why? You're just going to play your Xbox." Zoe nodded towards his TV.

"No I'm not," he lied. "I'm very tired and want to go to sleep." He and Mary had just gone through a terrible shift at Burger King, where it seemed every other customer somehow got the wrong order, and, as was customary for fast food service, decided that the best and most adult response to this was to lose their goddamned minds. Afterwards he had walked Mary home, which was something she usually appreciated after she got more than three death threats in a day.

"Come onnnn," Zoe whined, kicking her feet. "I'm besieging Rome! The Pope will be my hostage! Europe is almost mine! I'm so close!"

Leo shook his head. Most little kids her age would be playing…well, he wasn't sure what kids her age would be playing these days, but he was pretty sure most of them weren't playing grand strategy games where the goal was world domination. And they definitely wouldn't be drooling at the prospect of burning the Holy See to the ground. "Out!" he demanded.

"Fine!" Zoe hopped down from the chair. "I know what you're going to do," she grumbled on her way out the door. "You're gonna have another late night phone call with Mary, huh? You're gonna talk about dirty stuff, aren't you?"

Leo felt his face burn. "You little—she's my friend, not—"

"Oh, please. I'm eight, and I know you're lying to yourself." Zoe stuck her tongue out at him and scampered out of his room.

Leo closed the door behind her. He had been planning to call Mary, but he decided to just text her. Then, after setting his phone aside, he glanced at the door and then turned his Xbox on.

There was something very wrong with his copy of BladeKing. The night that he had first taken it home after experimenting with the NeuroWave with Malakar and Carassiso, he had been eager to get home and play it on his own. After all, he had apparently missed some huge content update. But it just hadn't worked; after some brief flickers, the Xbox had rebooted to the starting screen. When Leo took the cartridge out, he'd nearly burnt his fingers, it was so hot. He worried that the NeuroWave had fried it somehow.

But this time, the start screen booted up with no problem. Though whatever update had been pushed out, it must have come with a lot of bugs. That was apparent as soon as Leo landed on the start screen. Nessa was there. The tiny tutorial fairy was flitting back and forth frantically over the title like some sort of angry, sparkling wasp.

"What in the world," Leo muttered to himself. How badly must things have been messed up for her to be on the title screen?

As though she had heard him, Nessa zoomed closer. She did not look very happy. Suddenly a scroll unfurled across the screen, of the sort that were used to mark quests in-game.

"REPEL THE DEMONIC INVASION: FAILED," it read. "RED-HAIRED WHELP ESCAPED! WITCH-CHILD ESCAPED!"

"Oh, come on!" Leo jabbed uselessly at the control sticks, then sighed. He navigated to the options menu and selected the option to turn the tutorial off. Nessa vanished, but not before she gave a muffled, outraged cry.

Leo sat, puzzled by this for a few moments, before he booted up one of his own saves. But, much to his disappointment, he found that when he fast-traveled to Brightwood that nothing had changed. It was the same as it had always been, with none of the expansions he had seen while experiencing it with NeuroWave.

That got him wondering. What would happen if he opened up the save he had started with Malakar and Carassiso? Would it be a NeuroWave-only save now? How would they handle it? Curious, he loaded it up and spawned right outside Greenhollow. Then he simply sat and stared.

Usually, when you loaded and reloaded a save, the destructible environments in BladeKing would respawn. Even if all the NPC occupying the village were dead, Greenhollow should have reappeared more or less as it was. Instead, Leo found himself staring at the broken remains of the village, just as ruined as he'd last seen it. There was no music here, no NPCs, no sound of anything except the whisper of the stream that still ran through the glade, blackened by ash.

Only…no, it was somehow worse than when he'd last seen it. Between the burnt cabins and fallen trees snaked some sort of horrible red vine. Leo steered his character closer and saw that it was pulsating, as though it were flesh rather than a plant. Experimentally, he tried harvesting some of it. He wasn't able to. When he tried, a text box popped up:

Who will forgive our sins?

Slowly, Leo traced the tangled vines back to their source: they rose up from an enormous pit, where they came together so tightly, in vines so huge, that Leo could go no further. Not that he was sure he wanted to try. In the hole's dark depths throbbed a sickly red light, like a beating heart. Leo couldn't tell for certain, but he thought this was where the shrine had once stood.

He backed his character away from the pit, then shouted and nearly dropped his controller in shock. There, at the edge of the screen, a skeletal gray figure stood, watching him. Only watching. It clutched a threadbare cloak around its shoulders, and its face was gaunt and covered in harsh red sores, as though it had been burned from within by some terrible fever. With a start, Leo realized that this was Reginald.

He was whispering something. Leo piloted his character closer.

"They are still here," Reginald was whispering to the empty air. "I can still hear their screams…" He pointed. And, just for a moment, there was a ghostly flicker on the screen in the vague shape of a human.

"Still here," said Reginald, lowering his hand. "Still here…always here…"

Leo put his controller down and was silent for a moment.

"Man, what kind of creepypasta bullshit is that?"

Leo whipped around. Zoe stood in the doorway to his bedroom, watching. "Hey!" he snapped. "Zoe, go to bed! And don't swear!"

"Is it a mod? I thought you couldn't get mods on consoles…"

"Go to bed!"

His sister crossed her arms and glared at him, then stomped off. "Dad!" she called. "Leo's swearing in front of me!"

"No I'm not! She's the one—"

"Neither of you swear! If the insurance companies hear it they'll tell the cops I'm a negligent father and then you'll be taken away! Go to bed!"

Leo sighed and took one last look at the television screen. Reginald still stood there, looking like a corpse. Leo watched him swaying for a moment, then turned off his Xbox.

This update sucked. What was with all the horror content? Halloween was months away. It wasn't even any good, either, and clearly bugged to all hell. Leo sighed and climbed into bed. He'd have to bring Malakar and Carassiso some other games to play.

No use trying this one when it was so messed up.