"This place stinks. How do you guys live here?"
The baby demon had been true to its word. She and it were standing in some secluded corner of the main hall. It was a plus shaped open air palace of cut stone. It's impossibly high walls were covered with openings, some of which were connected to eachother via ropes and bridges.
"We do. It is home I guess. It's not that bad. It's not all lust and wrath and fear. There are curiosity demons, art demons, beauty demons... Alot of people are kinda chill actualy."
And at the center of this place was a spire made of portals. Each of them went to a different place in the Blackring. Max figured that Magma wanted to get here, but without him, she had no idea which portal they had to enter. She had to wait for him and the others as well before moving, like they planned.
Wait here, with hundreds demons just behind that corner. In the suffocating atmosphere, and cacaphony of all the demonfolk. At least there were some laws here, so she didn't had to bother seeing the demons go at eachother in multiple ways.
Something poked at Max's shoulder, and she turned around to see a tall dark figure staring at her with six giant red eyes. She was unfazed at the attempt of the fear demon before her. What was she? A tiny little girl? What was this even supposed to be?!
"You were really not a furry-"
Her answer to the failed jumpscare was a short glare followed by a fireball square to the demons face. It's eyes burned on impact, and it jumped backwards, screaming in pain while holding its face.
She smirked to herself, half-proud of her assault. This reminded her about the rule on not getting involved in anything violent, and she almost cared about it, but she was also cranky and felt like hell from being in hell. So she didn't.
The Max's demon friend, who was visibly spooked by the seemingly unbothered, impulsive and powerful being, which was definitely not a furry, decided to speak and find an excuse to leave. It was curious about the her, but it wasn't worth getting burnt to a crisp.
"So, you are waiting for someone, or..."
"Yes. I am."
"Alright. I am late for, uhhh... demon school, and I need to study for my... demon... exams. So, farewell! It was nice to meet ya!"
Max didn't mind the demon leaving. It would be a distraction anyways.
Her last discussion with the demon about meeting with someone made her realise that she would have to get closer to the spire and wait there. If she stayed here they couldn't find eachother.
But the spire was full of demons. This was going to be difficult.
"...And that means that capitalistic societies will always resort to housekeepng services in hotels more in Saturdays. Which means..."
Nature was really glad to have Novel with her. The forumite could be utterly undeciperable at times, which made talking with him a but difficult. This combined with the fact that she had the two carnal elementals under her a quasi-trance using her now-limited [HOSPITALITY] area of effect, made them unable to concieve to just leave off, which made them the target of Novel's constant noospheric downstream of thought. He could go on for real.
She did felt bad about the ungoing suffering of the demons. But she couldn't find it in herself to care, as the bay forumite do. Besides, she was busy nursing Will at the moment, trying to conjure up at least some amount of water in a crown of leaves once again for the man to drink. The supplies they brought for Will? They folded into the Web's hammerspace along with her full form. She would have to unfold to get them, which she couldn't do here.
"...And that is how bees are born. Taking this as an analogy, one can safely assume-"
"You can have the human please! Just please make it STOP!" Cried the poor incubi, curled on the ground with his six wings wrapped tightly around him, unable concieve to leave, and having endured the psychologial torture for an hour. The succubi had long passed out from the mindmelt, sprawled on the floor unconscious. Nature looked at both in pity. She was a bay forumite, not cruel. But before she released them... She and her company could use some directions.
She gently put dow Will who had his head on her bush, then took a few steps to the quivering tent made of wings.
"Hey sorry to bother you. We need to know where the main hall is?"
No answer comes.
"If you tell us where it is then you can leave here. If not-"
"Okay okay okay. Uhhh, it's- it's- Just take this!" Demon handed Nature a paper with a circular material conduit drawn on it. It was a compass conduit, used to know the direction to certain places..
"This will take you to the hall. Just let me go!"
She took the paper with her vines, then charged the conduit using some conjured pollen. Oh, they would just have to continue moving forward, according to it.
"Okay you can go. So sorry for the torture. Goodbye!"
Incubi immidiately got up, grabbed onto the other demon and teleported far away with a spell quickly cast with a simple movement of his wings.
"Oh they left. Now I am sad."
"Don't worry you will find someone else to talk."
"You are right."
Nature turned to Will, who was still sickly from his heatstroke, and wondered if he could walk.
"Will, we are going to walk now. If you are too tired, I can carry you."
"Uhhhh I am still tired-"
Nature didn't waited for Will to finish. She wrapped couple of vines around themselves to make a slidebed to pull him at her back. She then gestured the bed to Will.
"Okay I will carry you."
Will realised rhat he wasn't keen on the idea of being carried around like that. So he got up to his feetq by himself, even if he still felt dizzy.
"I changed my mind. I can walk."
Nature's respond was to simply to turn around and look at Will right in the eyes. Will got the memo from the looks given to him, even if Nature had the empty, black and emotionless eyes of spider. She wouldn't take no for an answer, especially now that the bed was already made for him. So he simply laid down.
"Alright but just because it is comfortable."
Okay, Magma knew that he was the one who was all high and mighty about the rules at the entrance. But he had changed his mind about that. He realised that he didn't give shit about it, especially about the lives of demons. Forget Will and the pattern screamers for now, he was having fun, riding the blood high.
This was the twentyninth demon he toyed with and devoured so far, crushed and still chewed in his mouth, with more sure to come upon his path by the trail of emotional imprints he was leaving behind. He was going to be at the center soon anyways.
Finding someone who had a compass conduit with them was easy, and taking it by force also was. He ate the poor sin demon he took the compass from after he promised it its life in exchange for the compass too.
Magma was sure there was some very important moral extravazanga that he needed to internally contemplate about how he is the real hellspawn here, but he didn't really care about it. He was a both a bay forumite and a predatory cetacean at heart, an orca to be exact, and orcas were pure carnivores who killed and ate meat and had no qualms about it.
He melted right through another wall which was in his way. Oh, you thought he was following the halls and paths? No, he was melting and burning his own passageway with his body heat all along. He was pretty sure that he had started several large scale fires.
Magma touches and turns a door into ash and is greeted by the sight of a demon who was backing off from under a table, having left an obvious pouncing position in dumbfounded shock at the sight before him. Magma doesn't bothers to speak. He instead clicks loudly in a mix of a taunt, a dare and a celebration, and burns away the wooden table the demon was hiding under almost instantenously.
"You are not a demon, are you?" Demons expression turns into one of fear after he takes a few moments to process the situation.
Ooooh noooo! There was another poor ambushing demon in his path, who had just become a young adult, so it seemed. A lust one or a beauty one? Well, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that this young demon was very, very hot. Maybe one-tenth or so as hot as Magma himself, which was still infinity.
He was probably a lust demon, an incubi, who was attracted here by the extra heat, foolishly mistaking it for sexual heat and planning to ambush the source. Now he was slowly backing away to a wall after making his last mistake and seeing the approaching monstrosity with wicked teeth, burnt blood covered mouth and giant eyes that dug into his soul.
He couldn't teleport to save his life? Haha. Others put up more of a struggle than this guy. They all tried to teleport far away at the sight of him slowly approaching, only to get to the next room because he had severed their entanglement prematurely.
Then they would attack him. Fireballs, energy clumps, magic lasers, you name it. He would eat them after they had exhausted themselves.
He didn't even had to go through that with this one. This guy couldn't even defend himself. He was stuck to a corner now finally connecting the dots, Magma just a meter away. The demon wasn't looking at Magma, but instead somewhere else. It didn't matter. He won by default.
Which meant one thing...
That he lost the game!
He was food.
"Oh hey hello Magma who is your new friend?"
Will couldn't sleep while being dragged around. Which was the reason why he was bored. Well, that was until Nature stopped walking.
"Guys I know where Magma is."
"Will, wake up, we found where Magma went. This path leads to him It is kinda obvious, anyways."
Will gets up from his bed and looks at his back, towards Nature's view. The concrete wall infront of them was melted off and the wall after it too, and the wall after that one too. The other side offers the same view. Magma had carved himself a new corridor here.
"I wasn't sleeping. Do we just follow the path or..."
"We can do that I guess. This is Magma's doing. I know him well enough to guess."
Will looks forward again to see Novel had already moved in, looking around, if it can be called that. It was more like extending around the room.
"Guys, there is blood here. Like alot. And there are tiny blades of obsidian stuck everywhere. Magma fought something here."
"Let's just move Novel the compass points to the other side and to my back now that it sensed the new roadway."
And they move. Not five minutes later, they saw Magma and a demon who was obviously cornered by him. He didn't noticed them as he was looking at the demon. But the demon noticed them, looking at them with fear and expectation in his eyes.
"Oh hey hello Magma who is your new friend?"
Nature said, seemingly unaware of the fact that the demon seemed very threatened.
Magma turned slowly around to see Nature. He quickly wiped the burnt blood off his mouth, the flakes falling to the floor.
"I am great, Nature, thanks for asking. I was just playing a game with my friend here!"
"And what was the game?" Nature asked joyfully.
"Uhhh... A... A staring contest. Right my dearest friend?"
"Yes!"
"We need to go now, though. So quit your murdering and join us." Novel says.
"What? Murdering? But-"
"Alright alright. You get to leave, You win the contest, dear 'friend'. Live your life fully and savor every second I guess. Maybe we will 'play' again. Who knows?"
The team leaves off to the main hall after that, not saying a word to the shellshocked person who was still clinging to the wall. Leaving the almost dead demon on his own.
Who throws up from his near death experience and then.immidiatey alerts the authorities of a outer class foreign threat.
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Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 295173 times)