Demonic Magician

The demon standing before us stretched out, readying his blade to attack. Seemed a bit short-sighted to me, when we hadn’t even become well acquainted. My hounds and Imps tensed in anticipation, as Ren and I exchanged a glance.

Would be the first ‘higher’ demon we had encountered, if you could call it that. An assumption on my part due to the fact that he had a little silver crown upon his head. Clashed with the dark coloration of his horns - and drove my desire to know more.

“Are you a demonic prince?” I asked, the taste of regicide on my lips.

“I am Gil-p’tak, eleventh in the line for the throne. Worms like you should be kneeling before me.”

“Pass.” I ran a hand through my messy hair. Still hadn’t had that cut. “I’m getting to that age where I have to be careful how rough on my joints I am.”

“Bullshit.” Ren rolled her eyes. “Would be the first time you ever cared about your own safety.”

“I’m getting better.” I crossed my arms and hoped that she would believe the lie. Her scowl determined that she did not.

The demon with the name I wasn’t going to try to remember wasn’t a fan of our playful bickering and held out his sword toward us. “Silence, worms. Mortals thinking they could just brainwash these demons into following your control, you should be flayed alive for your insolence.”

“Don’t threaten him with a good time,” Ren sighed. “He might take you up on that just to earn some suffering points for his character progression.”

“I don’t know.” My head tilted slightly. “I think I’m all progressed out. What I could use, however, is a fancy silver crown.”

She nodded. “It would suit you.”

I held my hand out to the ever-angering demon. “What say you… uh, Gilpak? Care to join the side of the future demon king willingly?”

“Bastards! I’ll kill you where you stand!”

“Thought as much. Shame.” I clicked my fingers. “Moonflower, erase this stain from my future kingdom.”

Her rifle went up, a swirl of radiant energy circling down the body of the weapon as she aimed it at the demon. In response, he raised a hand, some form of magical shield blooming into life in front of him.

Ren vanished, replaced by a bird, and the prince couldn’t turn quick enough. Radiant blast blew his shield-creating arm off at the shoulder joint, and she returned to beside me. The white dove puffed into feathers as the fiery sword of the demon struck it.

“Apologies, my king,” the elf said, rolling her eyes. “I seem to have just made a bigger stain on your kingdom instead.”

“It’ll wash out,” I murmured. “I’ll be sure to discipline you later.”

Wolf sighed and turned his gaze toward us. “Have I not suffered enough?”

“This is hell, bud. Alright, gang - let’s wrap this up before things get too heated.” I narrowed my gaze and gave the Imps the signal.

Ren fired another shot - the demon managing to deflect it with his blade, but he still succumbed to the entangling vines. As one, my group of Imps charged up their magical strikes - a volley that few things had been able to weather in our time down here.

“Nice try,” the prince growled. “But you are out of your depths.”

Energy washed over us all as he activated his Domain.

Ren, Wolf, and I now stood alone in a… wooden cabin? Although it was large - more like a warehouse in size. Attached to the walls, stacked three high, were hooks where bodies were hanging.

Mutilated and damaged in a variety of ways, and… oh, they were all Ren.

The elf snorted and pointed a finger at one. “That one looks just like that time the horse kicked your head in.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not entirely a shared delusion, then. All of these look like you, for me.”

She wrinkled up her face and stepped up to the closest one for inspection. “Ah, look. I can see your actual heart here - that’s kind of cute.”

For me, her corpse was missing her jaw and lower legs, maybe eaten by something. “Despite your eyes being rolled back, they are still vibrant and beautiful, even in death.”

“Aww.” She turned and wrapped herself around me, and we shared a soft kiss.

Wolf exhaled through his nose and sat down on his backside.

After prying the elf away from me - a difficult task - I stepped over and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Who is it you see, brother? One of us two? Quinn?”

“No.” His amber eyes glanced at me. “They are all bears.”

“Oh.” My mood cooled off. While Ren and I had become unhinged enough that blood and death didn’t shift the needle, Wolf had retained his dour and grounded view on things. “Is it like… your old world siblings?”

He shifted, but shook his head from side to side. “Perhaps that is the intention, but I no longer recognize or relate to them as such. Although I am glad this does not traumatize me, it is humbling to consider how far I’ve come from being an animal to being a family with the both of you.”

“Sometimes blood we share on the outside is a stronger bond that the blood that is on the inside.”

The bear pulled a face. “No need for such concerning platitudes, my only desire is to get out of this place to have some time away from your incessant rutting.”

“It is getting a bit much, huh?” I looked over at the elf, who was inspecting more of the Max-corpses.

She had asked me a day or two ago if I thought the hells had been changing our personalities. Whether we were becoming corrupted or influenced by sin. Certainly, we had been mercilessly wrathful, even more than before. Lustful? Shamelessly so. Greed or Gluttony? Not exactly. We coveted more experience and ate well enough from the rations looted, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Other than being envious of the rest of our Party being in the real world, there was no additional jealousy, either.

Pride? I’d always been prideful of our capabilities - it was part of putting on a show, of course. Then again, we had been doing a lot less of that, as our time was almost wholly devoted to the first two aforementioned sins. And sloth? Not at all. We’d been almost constantly on the move and killing, only stopping for sleep and acts of passion.

So, my diagnosis? Things were just pretty fucked. Constant oppression from the atmosphere in hell and the need to keep killing day in and out had worn us down. Sure, we were a little less sane - but our physical closeness was more due to our love and doomed situation rather than our actual morals slipping away.

At least, this was what I believed.

“Oh, I wish I could show you this, trickster!” She waved her hand at a body. “Remember that dream I had the other night?”

“The one where a demon crawled out of my body like it was a skin suit?”

“Yeah! For this dead version of you, someone has stuck the wrists of your severed hands into your eye-sockets, so it’s like you’re trying to escape your own head.” She turned back to me and beamed.

Okay, so things weren’t entirely as normal as before. A Max from just a week or two ago would have been panicked and disgusted—heartbroken, even—at seeing so many mangled corpses of the one I loved. Did it no longer bother me because I knew it wasn’t real? Just a figment of demonic power within this Domain? Had I just become so numb to death?

“You’re very sweet, Ren, and I do love to see you energized… but let’s deal with this macabre illusion and get back on track.”

Her wide grin softened to a calm smile, and she nodded. “You’re right. It’s just not every day some limp dick demon thinks showing you a warehouse full of your dead soulmate is an effective fighting strategy.”

“Right? Our first Domain here in hell and it’s this? How are we even supposed to die from this?”

Wolf righted himself onto his paws. “Can you break this one, Max?”

I puckered my lips and looked around. From where we stood, it seemed to be arranged like a supermarket or library, perhaps. We were close to one wall, and there were aisles between more stacks of dead-us-on-hooks. Beyond the distance we could see was a thick, fogged darkness. It was unlikely the Domain was infinite, even for a prince, but gave that appearance.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t really moving my Power bar, for some reason.” I gave him a shrug. “So I don’t think I could override it.”

“Maybe these bodies will come alive and attack us?” Ren offered, considering prodding one with her rifle muzzle to check.

My demons and Roger hadn’t been drawn into the Domain, so that was something to keep in mind. Whether they were now gone, or just standing outside this pocket bubble waiting for us, remained to be seen. Their summoning cards were still inert and gray in my deck, so I couldn’t invite them - or inadvertently escape.

“Let’s walk and see what comes out to bite us?”

They agreed, and we did just that, heading… southward, perhaps. Towards the looming darkness in the distance to see if anything turned up. Occasionally I’d check behind us to see if anything stalked us or changed at all… but no, it remained mundane.

Even the different corpses didn’t really register after a while. Missing limbs, shredded flesh, and pale skin. All blurring into something boring. One caught my eye, however. “This one has half your shirt ripped off, showing your stomach. It’s quite the fashion statement.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ren raised her eyebrows and put her rifle away. She grabbed the bottom of her frayed shirt and rolled it up to mimic the body I had seen. “What do you think?” She gave a brief twirl.

“Fetching, although I may be biased.”

She wrinkled up her nose and let the fabric fall back down, and withdrew her weapon again. “Don’t think I’d ever leave the house like that. Not my style.”

“I’ll put in a complaint with the dead body fashion department. Oh, maybe these are all split versions of ourselves that died along the road we’ve taken?”

Wolf grunted. “I doubt you would have died thousands of times, even if you ran head-first into everything. Which you almost always do.”

A true enough point. I was actually trying to get a feel for the Domain and ascertain what it actually did. Often they were just battlegrounds that gave the demon a better advantage or different abilities. We hadn’t seen the prince so far, and it didn’t make sense for there to be no threat against us - we couldn’t be contained indefinitely.

“My assumption is this is like a… venus fly trap, if you’re familiar?”

They both gave me a nod, the System at least translating that into something they did understand, even if they were used to it by a different name.

“The idea is that we arrive, get spooked and panic. Lose all hope and become disgusted by the corpses and then wham. Something comes and gobbles us up.”

Ren nodded slowly. “So, because we don’t really give a shit, the demon is hiding away?”

“Essentially.”

“Can I just start shooting stuff and see what happens?”

I took another look around as we paused. Didn’t seem like we had moved at all, really.

“That seems to be your thing now, so go ahead.”

She spun her sniper rifle around in her hand, a blazing trail of radiance energy following it, before she snapped it into place and aimed off into the darkness ahead of us.

As her finger pressed against the trigger, something large shifted behind us, displacing the air.