fire burn and cauldron bubble

by sometimesiship

Summary:

Yor Briar is a modest garden witch who happens to kill everything she touches. On an afternoon like any other, she tests her skills in the hopes of encouraging one of her withering tomato plants to grow. Her spell goes awry and she summons something much more dangerous.

Who knew the Edenish word for “Nightshade” was so similar to the one for “Hell’s Second Highest Ranked Demon?”

Chapter 1

Notes:

if you've read my other stuff, you might have seen me mention having some funnier, more lighthearted sxf fics in the works. this is one of them. unfortunately, having them "in the works" just meant having an idea. so i'll be writing chapters whenever i feel like it KSJDHF(**#(@ iM' SORRY HHAHAHAH

There’s a cottage in the middle of the woods, parents tell their children, and living in that cottage is a wicked, wicked witch who eats any children who wander too far. Stay close to home and listen to your mother and father, lest you become dinner for a monster, they say.

But the witch in the middle of the woods had never heard this story, and were she to be told it, she would never recognize that she was the wicked witch in the woods. She only knew her garden and the occasional visitor—namely the forest animals and her brother. If asked, she would have said her hobbies included gardening (despite her constantly dismal results), cooking (also not her forté), and making friends (which, unfortunately, she did not get to practice much, given that she lived smack in the middle of a forest with no other human life for seemingly acres). 

She would not have been able to tell you what a child tasted like. She had never cooked a child before, and even if she had, she likely would have burnt them to a char, rendering them inedible. And anyway, she wasn’t interested in eating children. The thought had never occurred to her.

She was, however, interested in growing something she could eat. One day. Eventually. Hopefully soon. As soon as she figured out how not to kill everything she touched. It would be a mark of progress, she told herself. To finally grow something!

“Would you like to pick 30 noon-petals off the tallest sunflowers for me today?” Yor asked the little girl beside her. Anya, on her tiptoes and craning over the lip of the cauldron to peer inside, dropped promptly to her heels and nodded eagerly. “Thank you,” Yor answered warmly.

“Are we gonna put them in here?”

“Yes, but we’ll have to do it one petal at a time, with one minute in between. At noon tomorrow.” Yor paused. “Or maybe it was 11:30? So that we finish at noon? Or… was it 11? And one petal every two minutes?”

She didn’t notice Anya’s perturbed gaze as she continued to correct herself incorrectly. It was a good thing Yor wasn’t a seer or a diviner instead. The pitying thoughts in Anya’s head when it came to her guardian best remained private. “I’ll get your book.”

“Oh, thank you!”

The unfortunate fact of the matter was that despite Yor’s greatest efforts, she was nothing more than a two-bit garden witch with a lack of a knack for any and all horticulture: floriculture, olericulture, arboriculture, and landscaping. She struggled daily to come to terms with that. She struggled like a dead fish trying to fly. Which is to say she did not struggle at all, because in Yor’s mind’s eye, she would certainly achieve results one day if she only kept trying. Admirable.

And also torturous, if you were Anya. Because when Anya had stumbled upon the clearing and its petite cottage with its thatched roof, she had trembled and shook at the thought of what dish she might be made into—only to find out anticlimactically that the Wicked Witch in the Woods could hardly tell her left from her right. And that it would then become Anya’s responsibility to help her determine her left from her right. This often meant enduring many failed spells, often to Anya’s physical detriment. Try as Yor might to prevent Anya from involvement altogether, the little girl was too curious for her own good. Yor, though, fortunately and to everybody’s surprise, was unexpectedly competent when it came to healing spells. You would never know Anya had once fallen into a vat of paprika, ash, and newt for a potion meant to control pests through invisibly violent means (internal combustion).

“That should be enough,” Yor said over her swirling cauldron. Its contents gave off a purple glow. Bubbles burst thickly, like toothpaste trying to boil. Clapping her book shut and smiling at Anya, she said, “Let’s have dinner now!”

Several woods away, there was another witch—a comestibles and libations witch (more colloquially known as a “kitchen witch”)—who had a deal with Yor. For free healing should she ever need it, she dropped meals off in the morning (she, unlike Yor, was capable of distance magic). She was rather severe, erring on inflexible, and so despite Yor’s fondness for her, she kept out of the garden witch’s way. Once, after Anya had arrived, the little girl had mistakenly opened the door upon hearing the rustling. Their eyes had met, and the look of stupefaction, which rapidly turned to appall, on Camilla’s face had frightened Anya. This honey-haired, amber-eyed lady was, perhaps, the true wicked witch, in Anya’s eyes.

But then the next day, all their meals were delivered with extra portions. So perhaps Camilla’s face only looked so disagreeable. Still, Anya made sure to be in the middle of something whenever Camilla was in need of assistance stemming a wound. She did not know how Camilla felt about little children, and she sure wasn’t keen on being the one to find out.

The next day came, bright and sunny as was typical for this spot in the woods. After breakfast, Yor went about setting up their afternoon casting. She dragged her cast iron pot out into the sunshine, making sure to find the spot where her pot would cast no stretched shadow, as the light had to shine perfectly round upon the contents of the pot. The simmering liquid was now a fine shade of red (like a tomato) and smoother than silk. It looked edible, which seemed a good sign.

Anya brought the petals she’d plucked yesterday to the cauldron. The metal radiated cozy warmth, and the velvet yellow contained inside her basket seemed to curl away, opposed to their fate.

“It’s one petal every minute starting at 11:30. We’ll finish just in time for lunch!”

And we might have a tomato salad! was the unspoken understanding. The garden witch had been consumed by her mission to grow at least one tomato. It was understandable, given that the whole row sitting afore her front door was blackened and destitute (and that wasn’t even considering the pumpkins. They’d never stood a chance). 

The concoction in the pot was, after all, meant to act as a magicked fertilizer. A simple potion that, once mixed with water and poured over the field, would detect the nutrients needed to promote growth and become so. The potion-making took a few months. The casting took 30 minutes. The application and growth took a matter of seconds. There was a balsamic vinaigrette in the cottage refrigerator that Camilla had included for today, upon hearing Yor’s excitement earlier in the week. Her expression had remained doubtful, but she’d nodded along.

“My mother used to grow tomatoes!” Yor said, looking at Anya like they were sharing a particularly titillating secret. “They were the best.”

A lot of Yor’s actions were motivated by some sort of nostalgia for the past. Yor’s brother, who often stopped by, was similarly inclined. He, like Camilla, had run into Anya without any warning whatsoever, and had blurted just as unpromptedly, upon seeing her, that “[she] looks like the irritating dog that our neighbors growing up owned, the one that would chase me in my youth!” (For much the same reason as she avoided Camilla, Anya avoided Yuri when he visited.) 

But even apart from instances like those, Yuri was a weird warlock (Yor was not aware that her brother was Magic). He had a secretive way about him. But Yor was a weird witch, so perhaps it ran in the family. 

One by one, minute by minute, they tossed the petals in. Slowly, the color went from deep red to tangerine to, finally, gold like they’d melted down a dragon’s heap of precious coins. At 11:59, Yor let the last petal drift into the pot, fingers shaking with excitement as Anya watched, enraptured. Everything was going according to plan. Everything was happening just as Yor’s book had described.

“Do you hafta say something witchy-watchy?” Anya asked, cocking her head up at the witch. Yor gasped, flinching away from the potion. A sudden wind picked up, so quickly that her hat nearly toppled of her head. She gestured with one hand while she kept her hat steady with the other. Anya fought not to be buffeted by the stormless storm.

“Nox-umbra-espera-offerto!”

For a minute, there was nothing, but then the concoction began to spit and hiss. Yor gasped again, grabbing Anya’s hand and stepping back. The liquid turned quickly from its vibrant, metallic hue to an ominous purple.

“That’s not right,” Yor murmured, urging Anya behind her, then opening her book to flip to the right page. The cauldron began to emit concerning cracking noises. “Oh no—”

There was a loud explosion, the kind that leaves ears ringing. Birds expelled from the canopies around them, squawking with displeasure. Hunks and chunks of fortified iron rained from the sky, blessedly missing both Yor and Anya. Dark, thick smoke billowed from the now empty space where the cauldron had once been and curled over the clearing, crawling with the speed of a frenzied monster over Yor’s garden before stopping just at the edge before the trees began. The plants in its warpath shriveled immediately. More shriveled than they were initially, at least.

“Miss Anya!” Yor exclaimed, panicked. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Anya wheezed, more out of disbelief than harm. The smoke, despite its near-solid appearance, had the texture more of vapor, and smelled pleasantly like cedar.

“Come here, quick!”

Anya felt her way through the fog. Yor did the same a few steps away. They met in the middle, and Yor pulled the little girl into her lap, checking her over gently. 

“I’m so sorry,” she moaned, teary-eyed, as she waved her hands a bit. Immediately, Anya felt the sting in her eyes dissipate. “I did something wrong again.”

“That’s okay,” Anya said, then patted the witch’s head. The gesture induced Yor’s tears.

“I’ll never get this right, will I?”

“That’s okay,” Anya said again. “You’re good at other things, Mama.”

“Oh,” Yor sniffed, freeing Anya from her hold, but not before giving her a little squeeze. “You’re so strange.” 

The smoke began to fade. Slowly, her ravaged yard revealed itself. Even her lawn was a sad shade of brown. Yor sighed, already picking herself up off the floor to grab a broom from inside to clean up the remains of her failed spell. She’d really thought she’d had it this time. Everything had been going well. She’d have to buy a new cauldron, and cauldrons weren’t cheap. She sighed again.

“What’s that?” Anya asked from behind Yor, her little hand slipping out of Yor’s.

Yor turned to look at whatever it might be that Anya had seen, only to double-take. Through the last remaining bit of the viscous haze, there stood a silhouette. It had wings, the kind that were sinister in shape. But then, in a single, incomprehensible motion, the wings disappeared, as if they’d never existed to begin with. The silhouette seemed to be that of a man’s.

An eternity passed before the smoke cleared. Once it was thin enough to see through, Yor’s jaw dropped. There was a man. He was wearing a suit.

Sunflower petals scattered around him as he took his time dusting himself, disapproving frown on his face. When he glanced up, his features opened in shock, too, but only for a second before narrowing. “A witch?” he murmured to himself. “It’s been a long time since I was last summoned by a witch.”

He stepped out of the summoning circle, towards the woman he could only assume had summoned him, as there was no magic radiating from the little girl. Yor grabbed Anya and folded her into her body protectively. When the man neared, she took a step back, gaze cautious.

“Well?” he said.

“What?” Yor asked, stupefied.

“You’re the one who summoned me. Tell me what it is you want, and we can discuss when I’ll come to collect.”

“Come… to collect?”

Loid’s mouth thinned with impatience, but he smoothed his expression before it could be interpreted. “Your soul. Tell me what it is you want and how much time you’ll need, then we’ll bind the contract with your soul.”

Notes:

hehe haha huhu 🤭🤭🤭

Chapter 2

Notes:

haha have chapter 2 🥴

i know the rating of this fic says "mature." i do want to add spice, but idk when or how it'll happen, and idk how spicy it will really be. so it's more a safety measure than anything!! we'll just have to wait and see, you and me both 😂

An hour earlier, Sylvia had appointed Loid to take care of a particularly nasty court of faeries. They’d made a game out of harassing humans, a sport that often ended in murder. He’d been just at the end of cleaning up the gory mess when he’d felt the familiar tug of a summoning. It came as a shock, but he’d straightened up, dispelled the splattering on his clothing, and succumbed to the spell.

It’d been a long time since he’d been summoned so specifically by his Demon name. Summons were usually nameless, the summoner happy to get any demon at all to make a deal, and making deals was usually grunt work. Humans were always very simple. Loid had long surpassed that level of monotony. So, upon seeing a witch once the smoke had cleared, his interest had piqued.

Magic folk tended not to make deals, given that they were aware of the consequences. When witches, wizards, or warlocks did endeavor to team up with a demon, it was often to sequester the latter into a familiar-like role. Demons were just more powerful than toads or black cats or owls, making them more useful. Magic folk loved useful things.

After a bit of confusion and a lot of polite “I didn’t summon you” and “you must have, given that I’ve been summoned” and “I was trying to grow my tomatoes” and “why would your tomatoes need a demon” and “no, that’s not what I mean,” Yor ushered Loid into her cottage. Anya followed behind, eyes wide with wonder.

“I was making fertilizer.” Yor placed a teacup of coffee in front of Loid. 

Behind Yor, the window over the sink revealed the collapsed landscaping of her backyard. The smoke had enveloped her entire yard, not just the front where they'd been casting the spell. 

Loid squinted at the singed, brown shrubbery. “You summoned me to make fertilizer?”

“No, I didn’t summon you at all.”

Loid sighed. “Can you take me to the circle?”

They had just come in, so Yor was reluctant to abide. “There is no circle.”

“There’s got to be a circle. You can’t summon a demon without a summoning circle.”

“I didn’t summon you. There is no circle.”

This conversation is a circle, is what it is, thought Loid. He stood from his seat. The coffee Yor had placed down rippled, the cream swimming through the dark roast. He made his way to the door. Yor followed swiftly, thumbs twiddling. Maybe he doesn’t like cream? she wondered to herself.

They traipsed across the barren wasteland to the spot Loid had appeared at. The explosion had left a shallow crater. If there had been a summoning circle, there was no way to tell. Anya, from beside them, piped up. “Mama didn’t draw a circle. She was making a potion. I watched. I got the petals!”

Loid stared at the little girl. She was barely half the height of a sunflower herself. Then he looked at Yor. “Your familiar?” He doubted it. There was no magic, not even a whispering, coming from the little thing. There was no use in a human familiar.

“Oh!” Yor exclaimed, taken aback. “No! My… adopted daughter, I guess.”

Loid frowned. “Are you planning to eat her?”

“What?! Of course not!” Yor glanced at Anya, worried the suggestion would put ideas in the little girl’s head—but she was entirely unaffected. In fact, she was captivated by this turn of events. Hesitating, as if afraid to hear the answer, Yor asked, “Why?”

Loid shrugged. “Just one of those popular myths the humans have made up in the last century. It’s been a while since I last met a witch. I wasn’t sure if they’d… adapted.”

“Oh. W-well, no, I don’t eat children. A-and I don’t know anybody who does!” she added hastily. Camilla didn't cook children, as far as Yor knew. She wouldn't. Would she? Anya shared her train of thought, though much less forgiving and doubtful.

Loid made a noise that sounded like a laugh. There were plenty of creatures in these very woods that would gladly eat a child (they were very tender, according to fae). Yor blinked at him in bemusement, but he didn’t bother to explain. Instead, he said, “Can you tell me what you were doing when you summoned me?”

“It’s as Anya said. I was brewing a potion. A fertilizer. Let me show you!”

She rushed into the house to grab her book. She rarely came upon other magic folk; Camilla preferred not to stop by for too long, and Yuri was always busy. Perhaps now was an opportunity to get somebody else’s help, and this demon seemed a powerful one.

As she wound down the dirt path, she flipped through the pages, perusing the ingredients list of the spell she’d just wrecked. Loid and Anya exchanged a glance as they waited, the former rather uncomfortable under the little girl’s prying gaze. 

“Mama’s strong,” Anya said without prompting. “She’s nice, too.”

“Err…” said Loid. 

Yor appeared at Loid’s side then, relieving him of the awkwardness by passing the book to him. “This one.”

It was a simple enough recipe, the only complicated thing about it being the amount of time it took. Loid read through it, pausing towards the end. It was shortly after noon, the sun having just passed directly overhead. “What time did you start the petal dropping?”

“11:30.”

“AM or PM?”

“AM.”

“The book says PM.”

Yor stared. “Pardon?”

“‘Beginning at 11:30PM, drop the petals one at a time, every full-turn of the seconds hand, so that all petals have been dispensed by the mid-hour,’” Loid read aloud. Once finished, he looked at Yor through his lashes, as though he were wearing a pair of glasses. 

She paled. “Oh.”

“Though I’m still not sure how you summoned me.”

That was rather dishonest of him, as Loid had something of an idea. Anya’s little tidbit had confirmed as much. There was a lot of magic in this clearing, and it felt like the magic emanating from Yor, which was potent enough that even a magickless child could detect it. So it was certainly strong magic, the kind of magic that could perhaps summon a demon without a circle. Though being summoned through a potion was something else altogether. Very weird, he thought.

“I’m so sorry,” groaned Yor. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, just let me know. But I won’t keep you any longer, I’m sure you’re very busy. Please stop by any time, though!”

“I’m afraid I can’t just leave. Demons can’t be released from summonings until the terms are all laid out.”

“Pardon?”

There was an awkward pause. “What do you know about demon summoning?”

“Nothing at all.”

Loid stared at her blankly. She was becoming more of an anomaly to him by the minute. “Demons aren’t summoned by accident. It doesn’t happen. It requires a lot of forethought and planning. Because of that, once we’re summoned, the moment we’re summoned, the process begins. Somewhere in the depths of Hell, some lesser demon has already started writing a contract between you and me. Recording every word we exchange. Once we determine our terms and conditions, I cast a spell, the contract appears in my hand, and you sign it. Your soul becomes mine.”

“I can’t give you my soul!” Yor squeaked, panic starting to steep through her. “You really can’t go?”

This turn of conversation was more what Loid was used to. Ironing out the details was usually what sent humans into a tailspin, the first moment of buyer’s remorse. Not so much with witches and wizards—they typically resorted to finding a means to live eternally as the deadline drew near, falling into manic benders in their efforts. It was especially understandable in Yor's case. No individual with magic so strong would willingly part with it. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“What will we do?” Yor murmured, eyes darting all over the ground.

The longest it had ever taken a demon to make a deal was five months. This was because a human, a clever one, had found a loophole. Every time the deal was nearing its deadline, the human would summon another demon and make another deal. The initial contracts could not be fulfilled because of the new deals, so their soul could not be forfeited. And so long as they had a soul, they could continue to make deals. 

Eventually, a much cleverer demon had been called forth to handle it. After some manipulation and deception, the human had been tricked into giving up their soul. Many policies were rewritten, made more airtight. Another century later, Sylvia went on to win the popular vote and become the head of Hell, ruling with an iron first for centuries longer than Loid had been a demon.

One such rewritten policy was of timeline. There could only be one contract at a time, it could be fulfilled at any agreed time so long as that time was between contract formation and the Fated death of the summoner (a Fated death being the contractee’s natural death had they not made a deal with a demon. The Reaper was responsible for natural deaths), and they were allowed to take as long as they wanted to make it. The caveat was that if they were to die before ever determining what desire they wished to be fulfilled, their soul would belong to the summoned demon regardless. 

Essentially, summoning a demon assured damnation. Signing the dotted line with a soul was only a formality (though few demons communicated this part honestly. It didn't matter, when humans were practically falling over themselves to give up their souls). For that reason, nobody ever waited to form a full contract. If you were already doomed to hell, why not get something out of it while you were still alive?

“You can take your time deciding what you’d want in return,” Loid said. “Just know that you’re damned one way or another.”

“Just because I summoned you?”

“Just because you summoned me.”

“But it was an accident!”

“That’s how most of our residents come about.” Not for summons, but an accident was an accident. Transportation accidents, manslaughter; potato, potato.

Horrified, Yor held her clammy hands to her pounding chest. “What about you? What will you do?”

“I’ll have to stay until you choose. I have a weekly standup with my handler, though, so I’ll be gone for a little Sunday morning.” Most people decided by the next morning, though. Loid expected to be out of here by tomorrow afternoon latest. His addition of information was more to encourage Yor to hasten her decision-making. She seemed the kind of person who would be overly considerate of others. 

“Sunday? The Lord’s Day?”

Loid shot her a perplexed look. “Or Saturday. Or Monday. The Lord's Day is whenever God wants it to be. It could be on a Wednesday, for all He cares.”

“Really? That seems unreasonable.”

“Have you ever known God to be reasonable? At any point throughout history?”

Yor, for a second, looked thoughtful. “I… I guess you’re right.”

“Hmm. Do you need help deciding?”

“I could use it, I suppose.”

“What do you wish for most frequently in your day-to-day?”

Yor gave him a long look. The silence seemed ready to burst by the time she opened her mouth. “Am I allowed to ask for my parents?”

“Where are they?” Loid almost felt bad for her. Was she so bad at magic that she couldn’t even muster a distance spell? Teleporting people was hardly worth selling your soul for.

“Well,” she said, becoming avoidant. “Dead.”

“Oh.”

Anya sidled up to Yor, pressing her face into the witch’s legs and peering up at Loid reproachfully. 

“No, err, we can’t bring back the dead, unfortunately. We can, ah, re-animate them, but… I’m sure that’s not what you want.”

The little hope on Yor’s face dwindled away. “No, it’s not. That’s okay. That makes sense. Thank you.”

“Eternal youth is a popular one,” Loid said abruptly. He felt the beginnings of sweat beneath his collar. It was unseasonably warm, and the clock was making its way past comfortable noon into sweltering after-noon. “We can’t do eternal life, either, for, ah, obvious reasons.”

Yor shook her head. “I don’t want either of those.”

Loid looked at her in surprise. “Not even eternal youth?”

Yor grimaced. “Well, it seems creepy. I don’t want younger men or women to… approach me thinking I’m something I’m not.” “Something” being a young woman. Not that many people approached Yor to begin with. But if they did, it’d be especially embarrassing to confess to such trickery.

Loid stared at her for a little bit, trying to dissect her. She was odd. Magic meant power. There were few magic folk who didn’t eventually succumb to the draw of it. Knowing you could subvert the more painful, terrifying aspects of humanity did that, and as a result, very few witches and wizards didn’t live past 1000. The more wise of them, who did nothing to augment their lifespans or looks or riches, were few and far between. Perhaps, Loid mused, Yor was one of those rare ones.

“Could I ask you to help me grow things?” Yor asked, finally capping the silence. Neither had realized how comfortable it’d gotten. Only Anya stared with wide eyes at the both of them. “I was trying to grow a tomato.”

“I gathered. You want to trade your soul for a tomato?”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“I won’t stop you, but I don’t think even I, in good conscience, can let you do it without a warning.”

Yor gnawed her bottom lip. Was there anything she wanted so badly that she would trade her own soul for it? Besides to see her parents again? Should I ask Yuri? “May I sleep on it?”

“That’s fine.” 

“I have a spare room!”

Loid didn’t really sleep (he could, he just chose not to, since it wasn’t necessary for demons. Laying unconscious was a certified waste of time when there were so many souls to tempt), but he appreciated the effort. “Thank you.”

“We were just about to prepare lunch. Would you like to join?”

“If that’s not too much trouble.”

Yor smiled, pleased to have a guest. Loid, on the other hand, was confounded at the sight, realizing he’d so far only seen her anxious, alarmed, and confused. Most those who summoned demons were always delighted upon first sight, ecstatic to know they’d succeeded. The look seemed to change her entire person.

“Not at all!” she enthused, then gestured at Anya to come quickly inside with her. “Let’s get out the nice china!”

Anya’s expression, previously stuck stubbornly on gaping curiosity, also lit up. She raced after Yor with a shout, leaving Loid behind to question how a witch came upon an “adopted daughter,” and what about a demon adamant on taking her soul warranted “the nice china.” 

Chapter 3

Notes:

i don't know where i got the gall to start a fic considering how busy i am LOL work has been non-stop, so i don't have time to write during my work hours, and then literally right after work i'm in rehearsal until an hour before i go to bed. until i'm done with this play, i'm really just going to be banging out chapters during the weekends. hopefully after september, this fic will pick up. idk!!!! i hope!!!!!

The “nice china,” as it turned out, was nothing more than cartoon-character dishware, no doubt of Anya’s choosing. The little girl magnanimously set Loid’s placemat with her second-most favorite character; the first was, of course, reserved for herself. Yor made a great show of expressing how envious she was of Anya’s Bondman plate. Her eyes oozed genuine affection. 

At dinnertime, after a day of putting around behind Yor as the witch fussed with her dead-as-a-doorknob yard, Anya anointed Yor with the second-most prized character-plate. That was her idea of fair. Then, after Yor tucked Anya in for the night, she assigned herself to the dishes. 

Loid lingered at the dinner table, watching her, curious. “It’s not often Magic folk adopt strays.”

Yor’s brows creased. “She’s not a stray.”

“How’d she come to find you, anyway?”

“She stumbled in one afternoon. She looked very hungry. And scared.”

“She didn’t leave after you fed her?”

After a pause, Yor shook her head. “She didn’t want to.”

Yor had done everything she could, short of selling the little girl off to a traveling merchant, to entice Anya back to the human world. It was too dangerous for her to dwell with a witch, particularly without magic of her own. She had no means to protect herself when things went awry, as Yor had repeatedly proven with her own failures. She often felt guilty for subjecting Anya to such conditions, but whenever Yor inquired whether Anya would like to return, the little girl would burst into tears. Whatever she’d had to endure outside of the wood must have been terrible.

Loid hummed, then stood from the table. “I’m turning in for the night. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Good night!” she said, flashing a smile over her shoulder. It really did change her wholly. 

Loid’s footsteps faded down the hallway. Once the dishes were dried and stacked, Yor prepared for bed. 

Loid’s interest in Anya was purely a curiosity, but Yor, sitting on the edge of her bed as she combed out her hair, couldn’t temper her worry that someone might take the little girl away. It was one thing to raise her brother as a sibling—to pick up where her parents had left off after their passing—but it was another to be a mother (and a single one, at that!). She didn't qualify for the role. At all.

To add to her worries, the question remained of what she’d request from Loid. But that was difficult to answer without knowing the value of her soul. For all she knew, it really could be worth one tomato.

—

An unfamiliar signature outside the cottage prompted Loid to wake. He slipped soundlessly through the hallway to the front door. Through the stained round window, somebody very blonde stooped, obviously busy. Loid opened the door.

Camilla gave a little shriek, recoiling like Loid was a cockroach, not human in appearance. Fruit spilled from the basket in her hands. “A demon!” she hissed. Then her eyes narrowed. “First a child, now a demon! What in the world is Yor up to?! Collecting strays?!”

Loid frowned. “It’s only temporary. I was summoned to make a deal.”

Camilla’s eyes grew impossibly wider. “Yor? Wants to make a deal with the devil?”

“I’m not a devil. I’m a demon.”

“There’s no difference.” Camilla turned her nose up.

“I assure you, there’s a vast difference.”

“Well then, I just don’t care. What would Yor want to make a deal with the devil for?”

“Demon. And it was an accident.”

Camilla sighed grievously. “Figures. That’s just like Yor. Well, here’s breakfast.” She thrust the basket into Loid’s chest, wrenching an “oof” from him. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” She shot him a dark look.

Loid shut the door. “Pleasant,” he mumbled as he picked through the basket, judging its contents.

So Yor had her meals delivered. That made sense. Without vegetables or livestock, she had nothing to cook. Without distance magic, she couldn’t travel to a market. Really, how did she survive at all?

“What’s a devil?”

Anya, who had crept out of bed as soon as she’d heard Loid’s door creak and followed him as far as she could without being detected, watched Loid jump. He glared at her. 

“A devil is a creature born of Hell’s fire and brimstone. A demon is a human who passed into the afterlife—more specifically, a human damned to Hell—and opted to pursue employment post-mortem.”

Anya stared at him.

Loid sighed. “Devils have tails.”

“Tails are cool!” she exclaimed.

“I’m cool,” Loid replied a little defensively. Anya looked at him doubtfully, which he found unnecessarily hurtful. This was a 4-year old, after all (actually, Anya was a very small 6-year old).

“You have cool wings,” Anya offered, perceiving his wounded pride and wanting to be generous. Loid eyed her dubiously. “They’re biiiiig! Where do you put them?”

Before he could answer, Yor stepped out, mid-yawn and rubbing her eyes. She grinned sleepily at the sight of them. “You’re both up early! What’s the occasion?” Loid held up the basket, and she “oh!” ’d. “Thank you! I guess I’ll get ready and start breakfast then.”

There was nothing really to start, as Camilla’s foods were all finished. But Anya laid out her freshly cleaned plates again with gusto. She was staring at Loid again. “Can you fly?” she asked.

“It’d be a waste if I couldn’t.” Anya continued to watch him expectantly. Loid sighed, sensing that this would be a pattern. “Yes, I fly.”

“Mama flies too!”

“I hover,” Yor corrected, cheeks pink. 

“Can’t do aerial magic?” Loid prompted jokingly, sawing neatly into a piece of toast with an egg atop it. The yolk spilled beautifully across the plate, the white completely firm. Unpleasant as she was, Camilla knew what she was doing.

“No,” Yor answered sheepishly.

“What can you do?”

He didn’t mean it meanly, but the ensuing look on Yor’s face—eyes to the table, the way she scratched her neck—made him feel embarrassed for asking. He should have worded it more delicately.

“Mama’s good at healing magic,” Anya piped up. “Reaaaaally good!”

“Oh?” Loid eyed the witch across the table, grateful for Anya’s input.

She flushed greatly. “Well, when you’re blowing things up all the time…”

“Aaah.”

Nobody but Anya said much else for the rest of the meal. Loid was afraid of shoving his foot in his mouth again, and Yor wasn’t sure what to say to a stranger in her house, so they let Anya fill the silence.

And, Yor couldn’t help but think, not just any stranger, but a man! She never had men in her house (except Yuri, but Yuri was her little brother, which eliminated him from the category of “man,” at least in Yor’s mind)! Or, well, a very man-shaped demon. Perhaps that was something she ought to ask about. Did demons have gender? Did they have biological sex? Actually, maybe she wouldn't ask.

“I can take care of those,” Loid said. 

Somewhere between all the musings and ponderings, breakfast had finished and Yor’s feet had carried her to the sink. “That’s really nice of you, I appreciate it!”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“I’ll be out in my garden”—the window behind her a vast canvas of dead brown—“if you need anything!”

“Just let me know when you’re ready to set your terms?” Loid smiled tightly.

Yor startled. “R-right!” She’d completely forgotten. Blushing, she hurried out the door to tend to her lawn.

As she raked through the crisped brush of leftover tomato growth (of which there had been very little to begin with, the equivalent of three hairs on a balding man’s head), she contemplated. He’d been right that trading her soul for a tomato was silly, but she had family, she had friends, and since eight months ago, she had a constant companion. What more could she need?

And really, what exactly was so precious about a soul? Sure, they were a booming business for the underworld, but why? And what purpose did her soul serve her, anyway? What if she didn’t even need her soul? Maybe it could be that easy.

The sun was directly overhead when Anya came out to tell her it was time for lunch. Inside the cottage, Loid had already set the meal up. He sat at the table, practically on the edge of his seat. “Any ideas?” he said.

Yor scooted her seat in. Anya followed suit, eyes already wide with anticipation for what was to come. “I have some questions.”

“That’s fine.” He looked a bit pained as he said it, though.

“Does it have to be my soul?” When Loid nodded, she frowned. “But why?”

He shrugged. “For research.” At Yor’s blank stare, he continued. “The difference between those on earth and those in Hell is a soul. You have one. Demons don’t. It’d be nice to figure out why.”

“But what is it about a soul that you want?”

“Well, the current theory is that a soul contains all of an individual’s power, and perhaps with enough collected power, a demon can gain a soul for themself.”

Yor fought not to express her impatience. “Okay, but why do you want to ‘gain a soul?’” She parroted his words in the hopes of getting the true meaning of her inquiry through to him.

Loid smiled wryly. The cruder, crueler distinction was that anybody damned to Hell (born there or passed into it) had their soul torn from them. Loid didn’t remember what life was like with a soul, but the gaping emptiness inside him—a feeling all inhabitants of the underworld understood, shared—felt distinctly wrong. But she didn’t need to know that. “I’m afraid I can’t dispense that information.”

Yor deflated. Despite not having asked him much in the last 12 hours, she sensed from him a general evasiveness. He wasn’t the kind of person (demon) to willingly give up information. “You’re very mysterious,” she said, smiling tentatively at him.

His returning smile made her blush. “I could say the same of you.”

Yor reared back. “Me?” Nobody had ever called her mysterious before.

“Yes. You’ve got a very powerful soul. The strongest I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve been doing this for a while. And yet, you claim you can’t do much of any magic, and you don’t seem to have any idea of how powerful you are. You don’t seem like a liar, but I find it all very hard to believe.”

His smile, which she’d at first found kind, seemed somewhat calculating now. Yor dropped her gaze, neck hot. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re all entitled to our secrets.”

She nodded in agreement, though she really didn’t have any secrets. “I’m sorry to ask this of you, but could I have more time? I really don’t know what I could trade my soul for.”

Loid didn’t respond for a bit. He was trying to piece out the woman in front of him. Her house was the size of two shoeboxes stacked side by side, she lived in the middle of nowhere with hardly a soul in sight, she couldn’t make use of much magic at all, and she had a child that really wasn’t her responsibility. She had a soul that was basically the equivalent of her weight in gold and diamonds and thus could request anything, yet she couldn’t think of a single thing to ask for. He put on his showman’s smile again and shrugged. “That’s fine. Take all the time you need.”

Yor chanced a peek at him. When she saw him smiling—even if it was a little forced—her tight shoulders sunk with relief. “Thank you, Mister…”

The blood drained from her face. She didn’t know his name! Twelve entire hours had passed, and she’d never asked his name! Never even thought to!

Loid couldn’t help his amusement at her visible agitation. “Just Loid is fine, Miss…?” 

At his slight laughter, Yor managed her own smile. “Just Yor is fine.”

“Alright, Just Yor. I can give you more time.”

Her smile grew a little brighter, and Loid felt almost sorry he’d be taking her soul from her. For now, though, he would notify his supervisor that he’d be canceling their next weekly standup to pursue an intriguing case. Sylvia would understand. She liked interesting cases.

Notes:

okay hopefully i'll update more during this week, but if not, hopefully see you next weekend, and if not next weekend, hopefully eventually!!! LMFAO

Chapter 4

Notes:

ahahyehayhaha here have this!!! now i run away

Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant Loid would have to send his notice to Sylvia sometime today. As soon as he had a moment to himself—preferrably in a spacious, secluded area—he would get to work on that.

As for Yor, more questions had come to mind as she’d weeded (not that there was really anything to weed), so she took it upon herself to inquire during dinner. Anya had grown bored of the questioning at lunch, so once every dish had been settled and all the food had been placed, she promptly began shoveling everything into her mouth. Her eyes did occasionally, between bites, ping-pong between the two adults.

“If I’m so powerful,” Yor asked, “Why can’t I do magic?”

“I’ve no idea,” replied Loid. “It’s peculiar. Sylvia will be very interested to hear about it.”

“Who’s Sylvia?” Anya asked through a mouthful of lettuce, spraying bits and pieces everywhere.

“Please don’t speak with your mouth full, Miss Anya.”

“Okay,” Anya answered with her mouth full, spraying bits and pieces everywhere. Again. Yor frowned. Anya was never dismissive like this.

“You should listen to your mother,” Loid said, only slightly chastising. He didn’t want to overstep, the girl not being his responsibility. Anya looked at him askance for just a second before the look turned into something like mischief—but at least she finished chewing and swallowed. “Sylvia is my boss.” 

“Does Sylvia have bigger wings than you?”

Loid’s mouth thinned. “She does.”

“Because she’s your boss?”

“... Yes.”

“Heh.” Then Anya dove into her soup.

Yor watched the interaction and tried not to smile. Loid looked quite put out, so she guided the subject back to his expertise. 

“What makes a soul, a soul?” Maybe that was the puzzle piece she was missing.

Loid gave her a long look, then his mouth quirked. He hadn’t expected to get philosophical. “It hasn’t been defined precisely yet, but the general idea is that whatever an individual most values is what fuels their soul. For powerful witches and wizards, that tends to be power, though even that’s a bit nebulous because seeking power is usually inexorably entwined with—”

“Can I eat that?”

Loid startled out of his rambling. Anya was leaning over the table, knees on her seat, hovering with her fork over the mushrooms he’d separated to one side of his bowl. Yor gave Anya a look. The little girl hastily tacked on a “Sorry for intra-rupting please can I have your mushrooms” in one fell breath.

“You like them?”

“Yeah!”

“Go ahead then.”

Yor gave Anya another encouraging little glance, and the girl uttered a muffled, mushroom-y “Thank you.” 

“You don’t like mushrooms?” Yor asked.

“They taste like cooked dirt.”

Anya got a look on her face. Smug. That was the only way to describe it. “You eated cooked dirt before. Heh heh.” 

“I’ve never eaten—never mind.” Why did he feel so compelled to argue with a four-year-old (knowing she was six wouldn’t have changed the sentiment)? “It’s ‘ate.’”

Anya looked at him with concern. “It’s 7 o’clock.” She pointed at the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. “PM.”

Loid fought desperately not to sigh with exasperation. Yor giggled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “She’s not usually so rambunctious. We don’t get any visitors that she’s comfortable around.” Loid smiled weakly.

“You should be a little more afraid of demons,” he said, again addressing Anya. 

“No,” she said resolutely. “You’re not scary.”

Before Loid could refute that, Yor said, “I’ll let Camilla know not to add mushrooms to her meals.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry yourself with that. I don’t expect I’ll be here much longer than another week or two.”

Yor flushed. Of course she wanted power, ideally with some skill and knowledge attached, if only to grow a silly tomato. But really, if she had to make a list of all the things she valued most, it would be nothing more than a list of her family and friends, which meant… “So when you say you’ll take my soul, what you’re really saying is… you’ll take from me what I care most about?”

Loid let his fork lay against his plate as he pondered for a minute, trying to determine how best to explain. He drummed his fingers, then nodded. “Yes. I’d say that’s exactly what that means.”

Yor’s gaze dropped. She couldn’t. She couldn’t have Anya and Yuri and Camilla taken from her. She couldn’t even bear to have the memory of her parents taken from her. Just the thought made her throat close up, brought her to the cusp of tears. “I can’t give you that.”

Loid smiled wryly. Despite her gentle demeanor, it seemed even she was susceptible to the siren song of power. And who wouldn’t be, if they had power like hers? Wasn’t that why he himself was so keen on convincing Yor to seal this deal? “Then I guess you’ll have to tell Camilla not to include mushrooms, and I’ll have to remind you that you already have.”

“Already have?”

His smile grew tighter. “Given me your soul.”

—

After clean up—awkward, heavy, and quiet—Yor retired to the living room to peruse a catalogue. She needed a new cauldron, a sturdier one, perhaps even a bespoke one. One that wouldn’t combust on her without purposeful effort. One that could distract her from her current predicament. The Mall of Magic, unfortunately, seemed only to carry cauldrons made of material that was cheapest and quickest to produce. Yor frowned, mumbling under her breath.

Loid, meanwhile, slipped out the back door, canvasing the area for a space removed enough not to draw Yor’s attention. He, unfortunately, forgot to consider Anya’s attention, and thus failed to notice her scurrying a safe distance behind him. Once he was far enough away from the house, he extracted a pocketwatch from his trousers, one of the fancy ones only ever seen in movies. Then he clicked the button on the side twice. There was a puff of black smoke—large enough to fit three of Anya stacked on top of each other—from which leapt a large dog, entirely white but for its paws. 

“Puppy!” Anya shouted, clotheslining Loid in her haste to ambush the beast. Loid jerked out of her way, expression incredulous.

“When did you—get back here!” 

Bond, normally obedient to a fault, lapsed immediately into behavior he’d been trained out of early on. His tail pounded the ground as he and Anya pranced about in a circle, and he barked without reservation. He was creating a dust storm in this accidentally-induced desert.

Bond then took a particularly high jump, and Loid lunged forward to grab Anya, yanking her back to safety. She yelped, but it was drowned out by the thunder of Bond’s landing. “You need to be more careful, girl!” scolded Loid, features cross.

“I’m not ‘girl,’” she pouted. “I’m Anya.”

“I know who you are!”

“I’m ‘Anya!’” 

Loid gaped. Anya watched, waiting, expectant. It was a standoff between a grown man and a six year old. Bond sat between them like a referee, even donning the right colors, as his tail thrashed back and forth. His tongue lolled out in joy. 

Finally, Loid acquiesced. “You need to be more careful, Anya.”

She grinned, pleased, then made her way back to Bond, wrapping her arms as far around him as she could. She practically disappeared into him. “What’s your name, puppy?”

“He’s not a puppy, he’s five years old.”

“Puppy.”

“His name is Bond.”

“Did you buy him?”

“He was assigned to me. He’s my familiar.”

“Your familiar is cool.”

Anya knew what she was doing. Loid knew what she was doing, too. He narrowed his eyes at her, but couldn’t deny the minute satisfaction of at least being cool by one degree of separation. 

Suddenly, the door far behind them flew open, bounding violently against the back wall. Yor, panting, stood in the clearing dust with the posture of somebody trying to scare off a bear. When she saw it was only a dog—albeit an enormous one, basically the size of a bear—she relaxed and traced Loid and Anya’s earlier steps to join them.

“What’s this?” she asked, scratching between Bond’s ears. His tail grew even more violent. “Your familiar?”

“Yes, his name is Bond. I was just about to send him off to Sylvia’s to request we cancel this week’s standup.”

Yor hummed, too engrossed in admiring Bond’s coat to respond. Bond lapped up the attention. Perhaps, Loid thought, he’d been a bit neglectful. He didn’t have much use for Bond except as an occasional tool. The beast didn’t seem to mind being put away so often, but seeing him enjoying himself so much welled up a modicum of shame in Loid.

Anya, halfway up Bond’s back, yelled excitedly, “Can we keep him? Please?”

“He’s not ours to keep, Miss Anya.”

When Anya then turned to look at Loid for permission, Yor felt an impetuous kick of hurt. Loid, too, seemed taken aback. “I’m not… you can’t… there’s nowhere to keep him.” He glanced helplessly at Yor and shrugged.

“We can make a magic house!” Anya gasped, eyes bright, from atop Bond’s head. He, too, peered hopefully up at Loid. “Please?” Anya added quickly.

There was a long silence. Loid felt out of his realm—this wasn’t his home, his property, his land. He had no power in that sort of decision, and he wouldn’t be here forever. Hopefully he wouldn’t even be here for two weeks. But Bond stared at him intently while Anya alternated between boring holes first in him, then in Yor, who, bless her, had lost herself staring into the abyss of middle-distance as she chewed her bottom lip to shreds.

“Alright,” she said, and Loid almost jumped at the abrupt break in tension. She looked to Loid, brows drawn together. “I can’t do carpentry magic, though. Would you be able to?”

“Err, ah, yes?”

“It doesn’t have to get done all in one day. And I can help with any of the physical labor!”

“That won’t be necessary.”

There was another drawling silence. Figurative tumbleweeds spun through. “Maybe it will liven up this yard,” Yor said a little desolately, and for a second, Loid felt that perhaps she deserved something to break up the devastation that was her backyard.

“Why don’t we get started once Bond returns from messenger duties?” suggested Loid.

Truthfully, he needed the time to mentally prepare for what would inevitably be a herculean effort, based on the way Anya was rattling off feature after feature of what she believed ought to included in the doghouse. She wanted three floors, which was incomprehensible given that that was two more than her own abode. Yor seemed incapable of saying no to her.

“Yaaaay!” Anya yelled, running victory laps around Bond. “Magic dog house! Magic dog house! Magic dog house!” Bond barked along with her.

Together, Yor and Loid ushered Anya off Bond so that the beast could depart for his assignment. Once he vanished in a swirl of black smoke, Anya tore back through the yard and into the cottage to scribble crayon blueprints in her room. 

After a strained beat, Yor said, “It doesn’t actually need three floors.”

Loid chuckled, and the tension between them drained out with the sound. “No, I wasn’t planning on delivering that. Though I have to say, I quite like the idea of the fountain…” He grinned at her, and she smiled back.

“You must think I spoil her.”

“A little.”

“I didn’t know it’d be so hard. I never had to say ‘no’ to Yuri!”

“Yuri?”

“Ah! My little brother. I raised him alone after my parents passed.” Yor hesitated. “Did you have siblings?”

Loid smiled faintly. “I don’t remember.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Sylvia says that I have the disposition of an only child, though.”

“You are a bit like Anya,” Yor said absentmindedly, then flushed from her neck up. 

Loid raised his eyebrows. “I’ll keep in mind you said that when I come to collect.”

Despite everything, Yor laughed.

Notes:

i think this fic is going to be significantly longer than i meant for it to be. whoops

Chapter 5

Notes:

i barely looked over this chapter bc i was too eager to get it out (had too much fun writing it). so here it is, warts and all 😂

Anya and Bond ran circles around the enormous sigil Loid had traced into Yor’s backyard. A short distance away, Loid, palms caked with whatever loose calcium carbonate Yor had been able to dig up in her storage, examined his work for potential errors. The sky was bright blue, the sun was fully out, and he’d long abandoned his suit jacket to roll up his sleeves. Still, he dripped sweat. If he had to redo three hours of work—30 minutes of that because Anya and Bond had kicked up a particular section—because of one incorrect symbol, he was liable to burn Yor’s yard down a second time. 

Beelzebub’s Backside, did he hate runework. Especially when he had to go the advanced route and figure the formula out himself (instead of grabbing it from existing texts, which was the generally agreed upon method, as formulating runes from scratch was widely regarded as a Major Pain in the Ass), and especially when it couldn’t be done indoors. Thankfully, Yor came out just then to offer iced tea. 

He took a glass, gulping gratefully at the refreshment while Yor balanced the two remaining glasses on the bench Loid had hung his jacket over. “It’s a very nice rune,” she said.

Loid looked at her askance. It was an average rune, as far as penmanship was concerned. “Thank you.”

“Do demons go to school?”

“No, we just know.”

“Oh! That’s nice.” 

The thought of not having to go through what she’d gone through in her formative years filled her with wishful wistfulness. Countless nights of studying that devolved into early, sleepless mornings (or worse, afternoons), for magic exams that she still only passed by the skin of her teeth… It’d been a miserable time. There had been nobody to ask for help; Yuri wasn’t magical, she’d had no friends then, and she’d been too shy to ask her teachers. 

“I’m kidding, Yor,” Loid said, mouth wobbling with repressed mirth. “We have something like a crash course for the basics. Further education is an individual choice.” And oh, had Loid chosen, because if you wanted to start doing interesting work—not summons (AND NOT RUNES)—the knowledge required was extensive. 

And now here he was. Summoned (AND MAKING RUNES (Goddammit)).

Better yet, performing general magic instead of demon magic. Don’t dwell on it, Loid thought darkly as he worked his palms against each other to rid them of dust. When the chalk stuck too faithfully, he gave his pants a swipe, leaving behind white stripes. “Bond, Anya.” He gestured for them to join him and Yor on the side.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Yor asked. 

“Take a step back.”

Yor, Bond, and Anya took a generous step back in tandem. Loid, still determinedly trying to wipe at least one hand clean, waved vaguely with the other. “Domus-exstruere-silva.”

The air grew warmer, yet without being suffocating. Dust spun elegantly within the rune. Yor and Anya watched in wonder as saplings sprouted from the ground, stretching into trees as they grew around an unseeable boundary, curving towards each other, groaning under the weight and pace of shaping so quickly. Foliage budded, then bloomed, until, in a matter of minutes, there stood before them a cozy looking dome, complete even with greenery for a roof. The opening was generously large, Bond could enter and exit without stooping.

Without needing to be told, Bond bounded forward and settled in. Loid, finally giving up on his hands, shoved them into his pockets instead and, turning to face his audience awkwardly, asked, “Will that do?”

“It’s amazing!” Yor exclaimed, clapping her hands giddily. Loid flushed at the enthusiasm of her praise, scratching the back of his head self-consciously. At the same time, Anya yelled her exuberance into the warm air and flung herself towards Bond in rapture. Yor smiled at the sight, and it even provoked a grin out of Loid.

Then, Yor let Loid guide her around the hutch as he pointed out little details he’d added just for that artist’s touch. She found his care highly amusing, given how only this morning he’d reacted to Anya’s excited chatter as though he were working under duress. When they made their way back to the entrance, Anya and Bond were now busy building the largest nest of a bed Yor had ever seen. 

“It’s really beautiful, Loid. Thank you. I mean it.” Her insides warmed at the sight of Anya’s easy joy. She smiled at Loid. “She’s so happy.”

Loid, taken aback, floundered for a response. “It’s nothing, really. Just runework.”

Yor shook her head, grimacing. “I detest runes.” Then she noticed the smudge of dirt painted across his forehead. “Anya can show you how to work the shower, it’s a little fiddly. Lunch should be ready as soon as you’re done.”

His collar stuck stubbornly to his neck no matter how he tugged at it. He could probably wring his clothes out and water her garden with it. “Thank you,” he said, letting Anya snatch his hand and march him inside.

Yor took another minute to pet Bond on the snout, then made one more circle around his new home. It really was so pretty, and absolutely not something she could have made on her own, not even with 1000 years of practice. She would have to take proper care of it—and find some way to repay Loid, even if this project had been more for Anya and Bond’s sake than hers.

Except, Yor realized, the only repayment Loid would want from her was whatever she’d want in return for her soul.

Discouraged, she stepped back into her home. The shower was already running. Anya sat at the dining table, manhandling a crayon against a sheet of paper. When Yor asked what she was up to, she answered, very academically, “Journaling.”

“Could you help set up the table and finish journaling in your room?” Yor asked. Anya nodded without heed, setting aside her things to do as she’d been asked. Once finished, she took her crayons and papers and shut herself in her room. She often did so when she deemed Yor to be making too much noise for her personal concentration (journaling was hard work, and the beeping of the oven along with the food smells would weaken her resolve to finish). 

Yor had just set Camilla’s famous (in Yor’s opinion) beef roast onto the table when Loid stepped out of the bathroom, dressed again in all but his suit jacket, which hung over his arm like a towel. Each article of clothing seemed to be freshly laundered and pressed. The only indication that he’d washed at all was his hair, which hung slightly damp. “I fixed the handle lever of your shower fau—”

The front door flew open so violently, several of the knick knacks perched on Yor’s various shelves jumped from their places and took a dive to the floor. She herself yelped, but it couldn’t be heard over the bang! of the door against the wall. 

Loid, still somewhat drippy, felt an abrupt change in the environment. His hair, even weighted with wetness, stood on end. Yor’s magic, warm and inviting, had gone a little sour. It no longer seemed to be hers—this magic wasn’t as strong—but it was nearly identical, only… 

“Yuri!” Yor gasped, breaking into a smile. “I wasn’t expecting you!”

“Beloved sister!” Yuri waxed. “I rushed over as soon as I was—who is that?”

There was no way to describe the difference in Yor’s magic from Yuri’s except that the look in the latter’s eyes upon spotting Loid very accurately reflected it: something noticeably demented (though not malevolent). If magic were colors, Yor’s would be an autumnal ochre and Yuri’s would be an infected sort of purple. Possibly oozing green pus.

Anya, who had poked her head out of her room to see if what was happening was worth partaking in, immediately mumbled, “Oh brother,” before shutting herself back in. 

Loid was half-tempted to beg asylum in her quarters, because here was another thing about Yuri’s magic: it contained a very opposite aura to Loid’s. And Yuri must have noticed, too, because he narrowed his eyes, he bared his teeth, and he just about growled, “You! You’re a dem—”

But Yuri was present enough to cut himself off, choking on the word he’d half-spat. His sister’s lovely gaze was glued to him, perplexed, and he grappled for recovery. “De-dee-deem-demented man!”

From those few syllables, Loid deduced two things, the first being that Yor must not have known her brother was magical, and second, that Yuri was trying to hide that from her. Which must mean, Loid mused, that Yor has no idea what her brother has gone and done. Because the only way to become an angel—which Yuri so obviously was, just as Loid was so obviously a demon—was to first die in your human body.

“Yuri!” Yor cried out, so disappointed and hurt that anybody watching would have thought Yuri had insulted her, not some stranger in her home. And to Yor, it really was the same.

Yuri, caught between the Major Moral Dilemma of saving his sister from Life’s Greatest Evil in her Living Room or Not Making Her Cry, settled for the second. “No offense meant,” he forced through grit teeth, glaring murder at Loid.

“None taken,” Loid replied. In fact, he was more amused by what seemed to be an impromptu meeting between pot and kettle. His nonchalance, he could tell, was doing damaging numbers to Yuri’s psyche.

Yor was still disappointed, this time by the lackluster delivery of Yuri’s apology, but she couldn’t catch Yuri’s attention to communicate such. “What brings you here?” she asked instead, resuming the task she’d abandoned upon Yuri’s surprise entrance.

Eyes still glued distrustingly on Loid, Yuri answered, “I caught wind that your house had blown up. I came to check.”

Yor flushed. “Are people talking about that? How embarrassing.”

“Fret not. I defended your honor.”

“Oh, I’d really rather you didn’t…” Yor murmured, put-out. Yuri did not seem to hear it. She sighed. “Well, as you can see, everything’s fine.”

“Your yard’s been blown up!” Yuri shouted, thrusting an arm out to the window. Brown as far as the eye could see—except—what was that? Lo! A sliver of Bond’s hut, bedazzled with seasonal flowers. “Everything is not fine! No doubt due to that de-de-de- monster!”  

Yuri’s thrust arm swung to the monster in question. Loid looked over his shoulder, then shrugged. Yuri made a noise like he was being throttled around the throat with chainmail. Yor, who had finished plating the table, laid a hand on Yuri’s shoulder. “The yard is fine. Loid fixed it up, which was really generous of him considering I was the one to mess it up in the first place. Sit and eat, you’re all red.”

“I will not commune with this de—man!”

“Nobody is communing, Yuri, it’s only lunch,” Yor answered, exasperated.

“Oooooh, that’s what you think, that’s what they want you to think, that it starts with lunch, then it’s dinner, and then it’s mid-hour tea, before you know it, they’re feasting on your eyeballs—”

“Can I eat in my room?” Anya asked flatly. She had slipped into company at some point.

“Oh, please eat with us, Anya! Please?”

Anya sighed. As she wedged her way up into her seat, she gave Loid a beleaguered look that told him all he needed to know about what she knew, which was everything. Peculiar, Loid thought to himself. Anya could detect Yuri’s magic.

Lunch was a one-sided affair. Yuri monopolized the conversation, except when Yor was speaking. He did not aggress the other participants into silence so much as deny their very existence. This was all very fine with Loid, who focused instead on naming the components in the salad Camilla had prepared for them today. Anya did much the same. 

Yuri’s voice became white noise, a sort of audial blur providing a soothing backdrop to Loid’s mental list of leafy green vegetables. It wasn’t until Yuri asked, “So, my dearest and most adored sister, why are you stowing a fiend in your sanctuary?” that Loid glanced up from his fork and met Yor’s doe-in-the-headlights gaze.

There were crickets. And then, at the same time, Yor said, “It was an accident,” and Loid said, “She was growing a tomato.” (The distinction of growing a single tomato as opposed to more than that seemed important.)

Yuri looked between them, scowl furrowing even deeper, glare growing more combative. “An accidental tomato? Interesting.”

The only plausible excuse for why Yor might have a demon in her presence, if it weren’t to trade her soul, would be that she had made a familiar out of him. But taming magic was difficult—on a scale of hard to near-impossible, the scale began at “flea” and ended on “god/goddess/God” (because yes, you could tame God, though you’d have to be an idiot to try), where “demon/angel/nymph/siren/etc.” fell in-between, but closer to the “near-impossible” side of the scale—and Loid couldn’t be sure what Yuri knew of Yor’s magic capabilities.

“You should have just come to me, o venerable sister.”

Yor winced. “Yes, well, I know, it’s just… I didn’t want to wait an entire season for a tomato, you know?”

A silence fell over the table. Everybody, save for Yor, simultaneously remembered that Yor did not know Yuri was capable of magic. The sound of scraping filled the home as Loid, Anya, and Yuri all busied themselves with cutting into their roast. 

“Maybe I should stay. Just to monitor how… your tomato grows. To help you.” Yuri sawed frantically at the saucy brown chunk on his plate.

“I’m afraid there’s no room,” Yor sighed. Her poor brother was always so desperate to spend time with her. He must be so lonely, she thought. A large part of her wanted to make space for him, keep him with her. Another large part of her thought it had long been time for Yuri to detach.

“Yes, yes…” Yuri murmured. His eyes darted to Loid, who was watching him carefully, beef poised halfway to his mouth.

They were both aware that the magic required to extend the house by another room (or two, or three, or perhaps add a second floor) was child’s play. But Yuri could not admit to knowing that without outing himself to Yor, and Loid would not admit to knowing that out of caution, lest Yuri detect just how powerful he really was. Thus, a stalemate. Their eyes dropped and they returned to their food. Anya’s interest in the situation had re-ignited several chews ago.

The rest of the meal passed with an astonishing amiability. Yor did not pick up on the undertone of threat between Yuri and Loid. Anya observed as if she had money on the matter. When it was finally time for Yuri to depart, all three of them waved goodbye to him until he disappeared into the wood. 

The abrupt disappearance of Yuri's signature televised to Loid that the younger man had teleported away once out of Yor's sight. Loid turned sharply to the witch. “Your brother is an angel.”

Yor reeled back, shocked at his forthrightness. Then she blushed. “Thank you!”

It took Loid a minute. “No, I mean he’s an Angel, Yor. A real Angel.”

Yor’s flush only deepened. “That’s very kind of you to say. I had so many doubts as I was raising him, I only hoped he would turn out alright.” 

It had been hard. She’d worried often that Yuri was ostracized by both the magic and non-magic communities, the former for his lack of magic despite having a magic sister, and the latter for his intensity. She’d done her best to be a community for him, but often wondered if that had backfired. Loid’s sincerity reassured her.

Loid, for his part, stared at Yor, truly at a loss. There was a tug at his pant leg. When he looked down, Anya shook her head at him, as if to say: it’s a lost cause, buddy.  

Notes:

i have not even started chapter 6 so idk when that will be out. but see you next time!!! now i sleep honkshoomimimi ꒰｡- ᴗ - ｡꒱ ᶻzᶻzᶻz﹒﹒

Chapter 6

Notes:

this chapter is gonna get BLASPHEMOUS and unfortunately i do not care, i'm sorry 😔 but if you do, now would be the time to click off HAHAHA

it also touches on some dark themes, but they're treated almost flippantly/very matter-of-factly, which i understand can be hard to stomach. i don't feel so nonchalant about them IRL, but i think from the perspective of ppl who find non-magical humans to be quite alien, it'd make sense

Over the next few days, Loid found that there was a cozy roteness to life at the cottage. Camilla made her morning visit at 7am, which prompted the waking ups of the other residents. Breakfast was served shortly after, and, once finished, Yor would putter off into her yard and spend the cooler part of the day devoted to coaxing seed to sprout. Whether the tufts of grass showing up were her doing or just the natural cycle of life, nobody could be sure, though Loid and Anya leaned towards the latter.

Then they shared lunch, and after, Yor would vanish into the woods herself with a basket to gather ingredients for potion making. She’d return an hour or three later to sort and organize her collection before retiring to her usual armchair for some reading, typically some sort of fiction adventure. On occasion, she’d brew a potion or two for her medicine cabinet.

Loid had once asked why she didn’t read her academic texts, and she’d replied, “Oh, I have. Several times. They don’t seem to help much,” and he found he couldn’t fault her for that. Her understanding of magical logic, principle, and theory were all sound, but for some reason or other, applied magic evaded her.

Anya, in the meantime, would disappear from one location to the next throughout the day. If she was at home, she could be heard scribbling in her room, entertaining Bond, or making a ruckus as she watched television (somebody, presumably not Yor, had magicked it to record whatever Anya pleased). But sometimes she wasn’t home, and nobody would know until she came traipsing out of the wood. Yor was always struck with anxiety upon seeing the little girl emerge from the trees, all done up with twigs and leaves and scrapes on her knees. 

Loid had come to question silence in the house. He’d at first taken it upon himself to alert Yor whenever things became too tranquil, but after a day or two of seeing the kind of panic this set upon her, he refrained. And anyway, Anya always found her way back in time for dinner. For sure, if she ever didn’t, they now had Bond, who would be able to locate her. 

When asked what she’d been up to, Anya would reply, “Playing,” without any pretense or further explanation. Bond was always rather forlorn in her absence, staring longingly into the thicket. 

“Don’t you think,” Loid said one day, after Yor had tucked Anya into bed, “She should be going to school?”

He had had quite enough of trying to figure out what to do with himself while everybody else was comfortably going about their business. Yor kept her home impeccably clean, so there was no tidying for him to do; Camilla delivered their meals every morning, so there was no cooking for him to do; and helping Yor with her gardening seemed like overstepping when she wanted so badly to produce a tomato by her own efforts. By the fourth day, he’d read through her entire library (and found it still rather miraculous that Yor was unable to produce simple magic, considering some of the rare tomes in her possession). Perhaps, he’d surmised, he could at least wile away an hour or two ferrying Anya to and from school.

“What school?” Yor asked, genuinely curious. 

This stumped Loid. After a minute—Yor watching him attentively for the duration of that minute—he said, “I suppose I could teach her.”

Her face brightened. “Do you know arithmetic?”

Loid gave her a puzzled look. “Of course. Don’t you?”

“I’ve never been good with numbers,” she said, alarmingly at peace with that. 

Certainly, she had mixed up AM and PM, but Loid had attributed that to a reading error. Was it perhaps instead a counting error? Well, whatever it was, his surprise seemed unwarranted with further thought. “Does she read?” he asked.

“I read to her!”

“Can she read on her own?”

“I’m not sure, actually.”

“... Right.”

The next day at breakfast, Loid said to Anya, “I think you should learn to read.”

She looked at him blankly, as if she not only couldn’t read, but that she could no longer comprehend language, either. Then she said, “I can read.”

Loid, skeptical, said, “Well, then I’ll teach you arithmetic.”

And Anya said, “I can do math.”

Bewildered, Loid said, “What about history?”

So Anya said, “I go to school. I go to school a lot.”

Loid’s eyebrows flew up. Yor, too, looked up from the table she’d been clearing to stare at Anya goggle-eyed. “What school?” Yor asked, mystified. There were no schools in the radius, as far as she was aware.

“Is that where you go off to for so long?” Loid asked at the same time.

Anya said, “I don’t know what school. Yes.”

“How are you getting there?” Yor asked, becoming more aghast. Was somebody kidnapping her every time? But then, if she was being kidnapped, she was also being returned every time… did that count as kidnapping? This was very confusing.

Loid, however, was puzzling on a different matter altogether. “You only disappear some days, though.”

“I don’t go every day,” Anya said, offended and also incredulous that anybody would suggest such a ridiculous notion.

“I don’t think that’s how school works,” said Loid, not amused.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Yor said, heartbroken. Had she done something to earn Anya’s distrust?

“‘Cause I don’t wanna go every day,” Anya mumbled while scowling at a spot on the wall. 

Loid’s eyebrows went up again. “And why not?”

There was a long silence. Loid interpreted this silence to mean Anya did not enjoy school, which he’d often heard was the norm amongst human children. Demons (and angels) could not have children, and children could not become demons or angels. But from the devils he knew, their children seemed to like school just fine. Did that mean Anya was going to a human school? 

That's irrelevant. Wherever she’s going to school, she can’t very well attend the way she does if she’s to receive a full education, thought Loid. Yor, meanwhile, was wringing her hands, table-cleaning entirely forgotten.

“‘Cause Becky doesn’t go every day,” Anya grumbled, gaze avoidant.

“Becky?” Yor chirped, voice high and anxious.

“My friend.”

“How did you meet Becky? How old is Becky?”

“Becky took me to you,” Anya said stubbornly. “I was lost so she took me to your house. I couldn’t see her so she put candy on the floor so I could follow it. She gives me candy all the time and she says nice things about me all the time, and she plays with me and she said she likes me so she always tries to make me go to her house, but I don’t wanna, because she’s weird, she always wants me to take off my clothes. 

“She says it’s ‘cause she wants to dress me up because she says she could make me pretty and her house has all her clothes, but I can’t fit in her clothes! So I think she just wants to see what I’m like naked. And she said she’s 54 years old”—Yor looked positively faint, and even Loid’s eyes got big and round—“I call her a old lady, but she said that’s a baby for a wing-fairy.”

The tension in the room immediately crumbled. Yor collapsed into a seat, heaving with breath. “Well!” she gasped. “What a relief.”

“You should’ve said that first,” Loid said, cross. “A winged fairy’s lifespan is upwards of 10,000 years. She’s literally an infant.” Anya gave him that long, empty look he detested. “She is a baby fairy, Anya,” he sighed.

Not only was she practically newborn, but winged fairies, unlike courtly fae, rarely grew bigger than a baseball. Being a young fairy, she probably wasn’t even the size of a thimble, and her magic would be undeveloped. Very easy to capture in a bottle and watch grow (a very common, and distasteful, practice). Even if Becky wanted to harm Anya, there was no way she could.

“She’s a ooooold lady. She’s a gramma.” Anya snickered, thinking of the fits Becky threw whenever Anya said so. Loid sighed again. Anya continued, “Becky is nice, but she’s a weirdo. She sits on me and tells me she wants to kiss human boys one day.” Her nose wrinkled. 

Oh boy, thought Loid. This Becky sounded like every other fairy—far too fascinated by humans, often to their detriment. Wanting to see the naked human body was (far too) normal for a fairy. They had a gross preoccupation with them, as they were so large and malformed, in their opinions, and they had no wings. The more benign of fairies did only hope to observe and record the differences, but the malevolent ones enjoyed making human bodies “right.” Anya’s humanity was probably what had attracted Becky to Anya in the first place, though thankfully for Anya, it hadn’t led to being eaten or mutilated. It was smart of her not to go to Becky’s house though. Who knew what Becky’s parents would do to a human girl.

“Tell her to go to school every day. And if neither of you wants to go to school—which I don’t condone—then at least come here so that I can keep you both on track.”

Anya became dour again. “Fine,” she groused, crossing her arms and pouting at the floor. She would definitely make Becky go to school, because she could tell having Loid teach her would be far more stressful than her classroom setting. They at least got recess at school. She had a feeling Loid would never give her recess.

Yor giggled at the exchange. “Well, I’m glad you’ve made a friend. You should tell Becky to visit! I’m glad she brought you here.” She had no idea that a fairy had been aware of her this entire time!

“Okay!” I can always count on Mama to be sensible! thought Anya.

“I’m glad that’s sorted out,” Yor said, rising from her seat. “Well, since it’s the weekend and you don’t have school anyway, you should go play!”

“Becky told me she was—”

Suddenly, Loid bolted up from his seat. “The weekend?” Already?! He made his way frantically to the calendar that hung above the entry console, tracing the dates. Yes. The weekend. Sunday. Even worse. When he looked at the grandfather clock in the living room, it was ticking at 8:03AM. 57 minutes until his standup with Sylvia. He paled, briefly paralyzed with panic, but then jolted into action, rushing out the back door.

Anya and Yor exchanged a baffled look and followed him out. By the time they caught up, Bond was disappearing into his smokescreen. Loid turned to face them, glistening with sweat (whether from exertion or anxiety, neither Yor nor Anya could tell). “My weekly meeting with Sylvia,” he said weakly. This wasn’t going to look good, missing two stand ups in a row. And especially for this one to be so abruptly cancelled.

“Can’t you teleport?” Yor asked, puzzled.

“No magic after the Tenth Circle.”

“You have to walk?”

“Yes, it’s a day’s journey from the Tenth Circle to the 13th.” Unless you were a magical creature. Without a passenger, Bond would be able to get the message to Sylvia on time. She’d still be furious at being stood up on such short notice, but at least she wouldn’t wait.

“I didn’t know there were more than ten circles.”

“The first 10 are dedicated to humans. Dante wouldn’t have been able to get past the tenth without being magical.” For the obvious reason that people who could magic away their torment required some other form of it.

“Ah. I see. Is it like that everywhere?”

“Most afterlife domains, yes.” 

(Hell had, to most people’s surprise, the loosest restrictions of the afterlife domains, allowing any magic before the 11th circle (although whether this was by design or a mistake that was corrected with an afterthought was widely debated). Heaven didn’t allow magic beyond its gates until you got to the fork in the road that split to Heaven-Proper or Mytikas’ True Peak. Even in Mytikas, though, the gods were very particular about who used magic, and what for. Zeus, for example, was allowed to turn whoever he pleased into a goose, but if Hephaestus so much as tried to magic an iron to do his work, the entire afterlife population would be hearing about the drama of it for days. God forbid a deity use his magic to convenience his work, Loid couldn't even begin to imagine what fresh hell would break loose if a non-deity were to try in the god's domain. In general, Loid avoided that crowd, finding the whole lot of them exhausting and disgustingly incestuous.

Hades, thank Hecate’s hide, was the most easygoing of his brothers. Magic was always allowed in his domain except for certain cordoned off sections (Hades’ domain seemed altogether more organized than Hell, which was exactly why the debate about Hell’s disorganization was so amok with opinions). Not that Loid had much business there, though. It was only a holding place for lives awaiting judgment after the pre-interview in Naraka.)

“How interesting!”

“You’ve never visited?” Tourism in the afterlife domains was quite popular with magical folk. Purgatory, which had once been as disorganized as Hell, had been modified to act as a ticketing lobby and museum. It was done up quite nicely and worth a visit of its own (if the reviews were to be believed).

“No, I’ve always found it a bit… morbid.”

“Hm.” He did always hear about the long lines for Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Tantalus. “Yes, I can see that. Well, it’s worth visiting just to understand how you might choose to contribute once you pass.”

“That’s true,” Yor murmured, thoughtful. “I’ll have to stop by some day.”

Anya, of course, had wandered off by then, not interested in the slightest and eager to meet Becky. Yor, too, was about to take off to her front yard, but Loid stopped her. 

“Yor,” he began gently. “Is there anything I can do? I’m not trying to be polite. I’m honestly just bored, and until you come up with something you want in return for your soul, I’m stuck here.”

“You can’t do other parts of your job? Do you have errands you want to run?”

God’s beard, she was strange. “Convincing you to complete the drafting of terms for this contract is my job right now. And no, I don’t have errands.”

“But can’t you do other things while you wait for me? Don’t you have to tempt people?”

“I’m trying to tempt you, aren’t I? To finish writing this contract?” Not that he was doing a great job of it. But that was all the more reason to stay and keep an eye on her. She may very well reveal a weakness in due time.

Yor startled at the suggestion. Her shock provoked Loid’s amusement, and at the sight of it, Yor also smiled. “I guess that’s true. Can’t you just take my soul by force?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Well, no. But don’t demons do that?”

“Not for eons now, no. God stomped that out almost immediately as soon as it started happening. It’s been written in the inter-afterlife policy, stamped with the blood of a lamb and everything.”

“Then all Hell’s souls are collected through contract?”

“Oh, no. Some people give them up freely, often without even knowing that that’s what they’re doing. Often it’s people in influential positions, the wealthy, abusers. That sort of thing. And that’s all very easy work, we just come to collect the moment they pass. But if somebody summons us, we respect the sort of desperation that that act requires by offering something in return.”

“Oh… but I can’t cancel my contract even though it was accidentally formed?”

“... Yes.” It was certainly a bureaucratic oversight, but then again, weren’t most corporate matters?

“But those bad people… don’t you tempt people to make poor choices? Don’t you make them bad?”

“I wouldn’t say we make them bad. Nobody is born evil, but certain factors expedite certain personalities.”

To start, there was no use in taking a misbehaving child’s soul. They were undeveloped and particularly useless. Even an adolescent’s soul was often too mired in confusion to be of any service. It was nearly always—save for exceptional circumstances—adults or older. Humans who had had time to become the culmination of their choices and beliefs.

Some of those cases were nasty. Loid tried to avoid them out of convenience, but dirty hands were unavoidable at a certain point—you didn’t work analogous to Hell’s dictator without shedding some blood. Often, you could follow the victims of such events, and for just as many who would never give up their soul after having witnessed somebody do the same, an equal amount would decide that the only way to justify their suffering was to make others suffer the same.

In summary, Humans were an odd bunch.

Yor pondered this information. After considerable thought, she asked, “Do I disappear when you take my soul?”

Or would Anya and Yuri and Camilla disappear? Which, she wondered, would be worse? To not have them, or to not have a self to have them?

“Oh no, no disappearing,” Loid said emphatically. “Death insists He have something to collect, it’s against inter-life policy to remove the physical body. It’d put Him out of a job, for one thing. No, you’ll just become a shell.”

“A shell?”

“You’ll exist until you die, but only in the most literal sense. You’ll no longer care to pursue whatever it was that you were pursuing.”

He’d seen many a powerful wizard ask for greater power in return for their soul, practice with that newly acquired power for years, then, once the agreed upon deadline arrived and their soul was taken, become inert and aimless despite the massive reserve of power at their fingertips. Countless vain magic folk asked to be the most beautiful alive, to stay young forever, only to abandon all pretense of self-care once the date of retrieval came upon them. Rich fools sitting in their piles of money with vacant looks in their eyes.

But it was never a contentedness. It was always an emptiness. In the minutes after collecting a soul, when Loid watched the light leave their eyes, it always felt, for a second, like looking in a mirror and seeing inside himself.

“Oh,” Yor whispered, quieted by the distance in Loid’s expression. He was somewhere else entirely.

At the gentle sound, Loid came back to himself. He smiled. “Any more questions?”

It sounded like Loid couldn’t take Yuri, Anya, or Camilla. And while they were what she most valued, she didn’t know if she was pursuing anything from them. Wouldn’t that mean, then, that they weren’t in danger? Feeling more reassured, Yor shrugged. “I don’t think I pursue anything, I just want to grow a tomato. Do I pursue tomatoes?”

Loid pursed his lips to keep from laughing. “I believe it’s more about why you pursue tomatoes. So,” he leaned in, “why do  you pursue tomatoes, Yor?”

She, like him, had to contain her laughter. They lingered like that as she gathered her thoughts, and the question grew all the more funny in the silence until Loid was grinning and she was giggling. “No reason, really,” she said finally. “It just makes me happy, I think.”

Loid pulled away, blinking with surprise. So then she pursued happiness. That wasn’t unusual; not as common as power or vanity or wealth, but common enough not to be surprised. And yet, he was. She didn’t seem unhappy. She seemed perfectly happy, even. She had the sort of peace he associated with happiness. “Happiness is what you care most for, then.”

But she shook her head. “No. Happiness is fickle. I learned that after my parents died. Sometimes you’re happy, and sometimes you’re not, but whichever you are, you’ll always be the other soon enough.” She huffed a laugh. “Happiness might be a part of it, but it feels bigger. Fuller? It stays, even when you’re unhappy or hurt. I don’t know. But it’s not about getting what you want, because it’s there even if you don’t.” 

Just describing it made her feel it. A tightness in her chest, but with no anxiety. A feeling like being so full with something that could make you cry or laugh or shout, sometimes angrily, sometimes joyfully, sometimes tearfully. She didn’t choose it, it was just there, and when she held the feeling in her hands, she seemed also to hold Anya, Yuri, and Camilla in her hands—as well as the memory of her parents. Folded and fading at the edges, but there, like an ache, one that didn’t hurt. Or maybe it did, but it was a soft hurt. The kind that made you smile even when your throat closed up.

Her eyes had gone soft. Loid stared intently, trying to understand—wanting to understand—what it could be that gave them that glow, if not happiness. “I’ve no idea,” he finally sighed, unable to rationalize an answer.

Yor smiled wryly and shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find out together.”

“Yes. Maybe we will.”

Her smile turned bright at his affability. There was that softness again. “You can start by helping me with this tomato,” Yor cajoled, turning away to begin the trek around her home. 

For a second, Loid thought to stop her, if only to take her face between his hands and solve the mystery that was the warmth in her gaze. Instead, he frowned at the inexplicable urge, shooed it away, and followed Yor to the front to examine what, exactly, could be so volatile about growing this tomato.

Notes:

oh, loid, you silly demon 🤭

Chapter 7

Notes:

also, all the magic language is Latin. but i ignore everything but the literal word. so none of it makes any actual sense 😌 WALA!!!!! (that's voila)

“Don’t you think,” Loid pondered aloud, “It might be better to section off your lawn?”

He asked with the best of intentions—Yor’s “garden” had no real beginning or end. She planted rows and plots wherever she wanted, resulting in an organized chaos. It had been this way from the very beginning, even before Loid had blighted it all to Hell, and while it likely had no effect on the actual ability of the plants to grow, there was a certain lack of finesse that drove the demon more than a little crazy.

“How do you mean?” Yor asked from where she crouched in the dirt. She had gloves on—very dirty—and there was a streak of brown across her forehead. In one hand she held a packet of seed, still unopened. It would be the first seed scattered, and she had come out to the very center of the yard.

“Well, instead of putting things wherever, you might first plan out where you want everything.”

Yor took inventory of her yard, gaze sweeping over the brown. Then she stood, eyes a little wide. She’d never thought of the landscape in such a way, as if it could be a home in and of itself. “Do you mean adding a pathway from the gate to the door?”

“Well, that’s one of many options.”

“It would be nice to have those little beds I see on the covers of all those magazines.” She occasionally subscribed to gardening varieties, though would inevitably cancel once she’d failed again. “Are those difficult?”

It would require a lot of runes. “Not especially so.”

“I do have a lot of wildflower seed.”

A thought struck Loid. “May I see that packet?” Yor handed it to him. He flipped it over in search of a specific line of text. Upon finding it, he said, “Where do you keep the rest of your seeds?”

Yor, puzzled and intrigued, led him back into her home. In the entryway, she pulled a drawer out of the lone console, revealing all the seed she owned, organized neatly and by sowing season. Loid pulled out one packet and flipped it over as he had before. He did this several times throughout the drawer, until he’d gone through at least half. Then he looked up at Yor.

“Your seeds have all expired.”

Yor, stunned, could not find the words. It was several beats before she parroted, “Seeds expire?”

“Yes.”

She blushed. Loid succeeded in not laughing. “That must be why nothing grows,” she groaned.

But if she’d used the right spell for her fertilizer potion, she should still have been able to brew the proper potion without it blowing up. “What spell did you use?” Loid asked. He should have done so when he’d first been summoned, but better late than never. 

“Nox-umbra-espera-offerto,” Yor answered. To her surprise, Loid flushed a deep red. It made her want to laugh, but also made her feel a bit self-conscious, as if she shouldn’t be watching. She turned her face away, feeling it grow hot again.

“Well, there’s the real problem,” he said, very obviously trying not to laugh out of discomfort. “You got a bit too specific with Nox-Umbra. Better to have gone for something more generic, like Frux , or even Planta.” 

“What did I say?”

“Night-shade.” Loid scratched the back of his head. “Which, while I understand what you were aiming for, isn’t the typical formula for that spell. Potion-made fertilizers aren't meant for specific genera or families of fruit. Getting that specific—the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous a tomato would need, for example—would require alchemy. You also, ah, used my demon name.”

(Furthermore, “nightshade” would not be the word for tomato, in this case. It should have been Solanum, or even Lycopersicum. And Nox-Umbra was a bastardization for “nightshade” anyway.)

There was the additional matter of her syntax and choice of wording, which was… well, there was a sort of dreamy romance to it: “I hope to be brought Night-Shade,” as opposed to a more traditional (and standard) “Bring me Night-Shade.” Loid figured, however, that he would spare the both of them from the embarrassment of such knowledge.

“Your demon name is Night-Shade?”

“Well, in actuality, it’s Twilight, but you can see how Night-shade would be interpreted similarly…” Loid trailed off.

Ah. Yor understood. It was mortifying to have made a mistake like that, but at least the summoning made sense now, even if it was still uncomfortable to be trapped in a contract made due to her own failures. 

After a moment of clumsy silence in which they both avoided the other’s eyes, she said, “Why don’t you tell me more about sectioning my lawn?”

That brightened the atmosphere. Loid, Yor noticed, was most comfortable when making and executing plans. After some fumbling about for pen and paper, they settled at the dining table, where Loid immediately began to draw out a grid. His rendition of her house and its surrounding space was startlingly accurate. Had he grown so familiar in such a short time?

She observed carefully as he mapped out where features could be placed. His attention to detail was amusing; he drew out shrubbery and took the time to illustrate the differences between tomato plants, pumpkin plants, and all other varieties she named to him. There was something comforting about watching him work, about his presence in general. He was so absorbed—even as he stopped to describe the components of his plan, he didn’t seem exceptionally concerned with her reception—that it took all attention from her, almost as if she were alone. 

Except she wasn’t. And there was something very nice about that, thought Yor. 

She realized belatedly that he smelled familiar, and that it was the scent that had wafted out of the smoke when he’d first been summoned. “You smell nice,” she said suddenly, jarring Loid from his explanation.

“Oh. Thank you?”

Heat rose to her cheeks. “I just didn’t expect a demon to smell like cedar.”

Loid raised his eyebrows. “What did you expect a demon to smell like?”

She was reaching fevered degrees of internal heat. “Smoke, I guess. From all the fire? And maybe cooked meat… Beef?”

“Beef.” Loid snorted. “The most sacred of animals. I’d have requested decommissioning long ago if we all smelled constantly of barbecue. And it’s only the first several circles that are hot, it gets progressively colder as you go down. Farther from ‘God’s warmth,’ and all that.”

“Decommissioning?”

“Not being a demon anymore.”

Loid recognized the very visible gears ticking in Yor’s head. He was getting quite adept at reading her—not that she was particularly guarded to begin with. She didn’t wear her heart only on her sleeve, that was for sure. 

“You can do that?” she asked, curious wonder in her gaze. When he nodded, she asked more. “How does it work?”

“You go to management and say you’d like to retire. They have you fill out several forms, there’s an exit interview, and a few weeks later, you’re retired.”

“What does one do once they’re retired in the Underworld?”

Loid shook his head. “It’s not like that. You essentially start the dying process all over again. Your soul is taken and judged all over again, afterlife experiences now included. You'll be placed accordingly afterwords.”

“I thought demons didn’t have souls?”

“Your soul is briefly added back to your form for judgment. It’s painful and quite frightening, from what I’ve heard.” Having your soul torn from you was also excruciating, so he could only imagine.

“Oh.”

“Mm.”

Yor twiddled her thumbs. Loid stared contemplatively across the room. He would under no circumstances ever retire, as he found his work quite fulfilling, but even he was prone to wonder what had been taken from him, why his human-self had chosen to become a demon. Was it a result of making a pact for his soul during his lifetime? Or had he died and made the decision once he’d found out he’d be doomed to suffer eternal torment? And if he were to retire, to undergo judgment all over again, to remember his human and afterlife experience wholly—would he make the same choice? Would he choose to be a demon again? The only thing he knew for certain was that his human self had deemed having his soul ripped from him preferable to whatever the other option was. So had he been an incredibly maladjusted, idiot of a human, enough so that even his afterlife couldn't justify what he'd felt before death?

“I’m sorry if I’ve brought back uncomfortable memories,” Yor whispered, reaching out to tentatively rest her fingertips against his arm. His expression had gone distant.

Loid, glad to be rid of the thoughts, smiled and shook his head. “It’s natural to be curious. Any more questions?”

“Do all demons smell like cedar?”

“No. It’s my aftershave.”

Yor, stupefied, could only ask, “Demons shave?”

“If they need to.”

She stared at him for an unnecessarily long time, long enough to make him shift awkwardly in his seat. Then she huffed out a little laugh, breaking her scrutiny to look shyly at the table instead. “I’m just now realizing the depth of how little I know about demons.”

“It seems so,” Loid said, just glad to have her eyes off him. Of course, having had the thought, she promptly returned her gaze to him, smiling faintly.

“I’m glad you're the demon I happened to summon. I’m learning a lot.”

“Well,” he murmured, “don’t forget I’m here for your soul.”

“I’m sure we’ll figure that out,” she said, all too pleasant. “Just like we’ll figure out this landscaping situation.” She tapped his blueprint, then leaned in to peer intently at it once more, ready to hear him explain.

“Right,” Loid replied, feeling odd in his chest, as if his organs had all re-organized themselves slightly to the right. 

Notes:

who is this man trying to fool. really.

Chapter 8

Loid took to his landscaping tasks easily. Yor enjoyed his company under the sun and found his refusal to wear anything but his three-piece suit highly entertaining. Though he argued he was incapable of getting heatstroke (employee of Hell and some such nonsense), she could at least convince him to put his jacket aside. Seeing him sweat was all the rationale she needed.

Time passed more quickly, too, with somebody to converse with. Loid was always happy to expound on anything Yor asked, and by the time the weekend arrived, she’d learned a surplus about not only demons and devils, but geology and botany and all things flora and fauna related. It was peculiar how much Loid knew, though when she asked how, he became avoidant and said he did a lot of reading. Loid, for his part, certainly was not going to tell her that researching souls included temporarily subsuming them, which in turn meant taking on the experiences of the original owner. The process was grotesque to describe, though the actual event was not so. It was quite euphoric, in fact, but disappointingly fleeting—a taste, Loid always thought, of something that could be great. 

What Yor found most heartwarming, though, was watching Loid answer to Anya’s curiosity. He always got carried away, which would cause Anya’s eyes to glaze over, and then Loid, all too aware of how negligible an effect he had on the impressionable little girl, would call her out with vexation. But Anya didn’t care, and Bond was always more than happy to have his play-partner returned to him from the clutches of education, whether it be school or Loid.

“What’s that?” Anya stopped her cartwheeling to crouch at Loid’s side.

“Milkweed.” He pulled it out of the earth, roots and all.

“No,” Anya thrust her finger out to one of the still-grounded milkweeds. “That.”

“Oh,” Loid, startled, began to check the plant he’d just yanked up. “A caterpillar.” The milkweed in his hand was, thankfully, bereft of any forms of life.

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s making a cocoon.”

“Why?”

Loid gave Anya a long, bewildered look. What were they teaching children in school nowadays? “To protect himself while he’s becoming a butterfly.”

Anya’s eyes grew large and round. “That thing turns into a butterfly?”

“Yes. If you come back in another week or two, you might be able to see him emerge.”

“I thought butterflies were girls.”

Loid, perplexed, frowned. “Why do you think that?”

“Because butterflies are pretty like mama.”

“Boys can be pretty, too.”

“So you think mama’s pretty?”

Loid gaped. Anya’s expression curled wickedly, then she hopped back to Bond to play. Yor, who was busy laying flagstone down for the path cutting through her front yard, came over to join the fun. “A caterpillar!” she gasped.

Loid, flustered, could only parrot himself like an idiot. “Yes, it’ll be a butterfly soon.”

“There must be more. Maybe we should plant some butterfly bushes. Is it too late to make changes to the plan?”

“It’s never too late. This is your garden, Yor, we can do whatever you’d like.”

“Oh,” she flushed, pleased, and the look made Loid turn away out of what he could only assume was misplaced mortification. That dratted little girl. “That’s very nice of you.”

“Like I said, it’s your garden—”

There was a loud crack of sudden thunder. Anya yelped, diving behind Yor’s legs to hide. Bond followed suit, cowering with his muzzle beneath his paws. The sky grew dark in a matter of seconds following a second crack, and the wind, too, picked up, sending Yor’s hair whipping around her. She came to a stand to better protect Anya and Bond, but also to inspect what seemed to be an oncoming tornado. It looked as though it might land right in her yard, which was a dreadful thought, as she’d only just finished laying down the stone. It would probably take care of Loid’s weeding, though, which was at least a positive outcome.

Speaking of the devil—er, demon—Loid, at a third clap of thunder (the loudest yet), rose from the ground and grabbed Yor’s shoulder to maneuver her (and the rest of the little posse) behind him. There seemed to be a portal forming overhead, grey and swirling. “You should go inside,” he murmured, brows creasing with concern.

“Shouldn’t you, as well? It looks like a storm.”

“That’s not a storm.” Loid squinted at the sky. Something was coming. Then he flinched back, grabbed his hair in both hands, and began to swear vehemently. Yor covered both Anya’s ears with admirable reflex. “What day is it?!” said Loid.

“Sunday.”

His cursing grew in intensity. “Apollo’s Ass,” he spat, then grabbed Yor’s shoulders and began to push towards the door. “Go inside, go inside!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot about my standup—”

“Twilight!”

Loid paled like death, meeting Yor’s eyes in a desperate plea for salvation, then turned swiftly on his heel to face the tall woman that appeared from nowhere. “Sylvia! I hope you’re well.”

“I’d be much better if you’d remember your poor, decrepit boss once in a while.”

“Decrepit?” Yor chimed. “You look far from decrepit.”

The air grew very still. Oppressive silence filled the space. Sweat trickled down the back of Loid’s neck as Sylvia examined the witch behind him. “I like you very much,” she said suddenly, guffawing, and Loid stopped himself from collapsing with relief. “And who is this?”

“My name is Anya.”

“Your daughter?” Sylvia asked fondly. Loid shuddered at the uncharacteristic display of affection.

“Yes, basically,” Yor answered, eyeing Anya in a fashion matching Sylvia’s expression. “Would you like some tea?”

“That would be lovely.”

They trailed into the house, Loid spluttering behind at the tail. What was happening? Why was Yor inviting her in for tea? And who was this woman who was letting herself be guided in to sit at a rickety wooden dining chair, because it most certainly couldn’t be his domineering, demanding supervisor that never left her throne?

Loid sat stiffly as Sylvia entertained Anya, who happily babbled away at the tall, listening lady. Then, after describing her “drawings,” she leapt up to sprint to her room and gather them. Yor brewed tea in the kitchen. 

Sylvia’s gaze alighted upon Loid, and she drawled, “You’re looking at me like you think I’d eat them. Relax.”

“Don’t tell me to relax!” hissed Loid. “What are you doing here?!”

“Figuring out why you’ve skipped three meetings with me now,” Sylvia sniffed. Yor exited then, placing a floral teacup in front of Sylvia, alongside dishes of cream and sugar cubes. Sylvia, to Loid’s surprise, dropped two cubes in, then swirled a generous river of cream over the dark brew. To Yor, Sylvia said, “Your home is lovely. Very cozy.”

Yor blushed, and Loid wanted to shout don’t fall for it! “Thank you! It can be hard to keep tidy.”

“Well, you’re doing a marvelous job of it. Did you grow up here?”

“Oh, no, I grew up in the city! I only moved here a few years ago, after graduating.”

“That’s quite a distance.”

“Well, I’m very prone to accident,” Yor explained, glancing at Loid in embarrassment. “It felt safer to do that out here than somewhere populous.” 

Loid had never asked how she ended up in the countryside, but the very image of Yor trying to grow a tomato on an apartment balcony and instead summoning him led Loid to agree that taking up residency somewhere with vastly more space to blow things up was the right decision.

“Ah, of course. Twilight mentioned in his note how you two came to meet.”

How you two came to meet, as if it had been a casual get-together and not the inauguration of the debacle it currently was. As if he was a normal man and she was a normal woman and they’d just so happened to bump into each other in a market. Laughable. Sylvia detected Loid’s stewing aura, because she smiled with all her teeth at him. He smiled back tightly and with insurmountable self-control. 

Before Yor could reply, Anya bolted out of her room, mouth already moving and a folder as thick as her neck in her arms. She spewed her epic as she laid out her illustrations, and Sylvia paid rapt attention. Loid could only watch in astonishment at a side he’d never seen in his mentor. His bewilderment only grew as the afternoon dwindled into evening. 

Eventually, Yor, who also watched Anya as if she had never heard such stories before, asked Sylvia, “Will you be staying for dinner?”

Sylvia smiled warmly and rose from her seat. “I fear I’m unable tonight. But perhaps a rain check? I came with the primary objective of delivering a message to Twilight.”

Loid, alarmed, stood quickly from his seat. Sylvia waved her hand at him as if he was an unimportant bug. “It’s only Franky. He says if you take any longer on this contract, he’s going to file a missive to have you replaced.”

“What!” Loid shouted.

Sylvia shrugged. “Yes, inconvenient. Deal with it yourself.”

“How am I supposed to convince him?! He hardly listens to me!”

“Bring Yor”—Sylvia smiled kindly at her again—“You know how Franky likes pretty women.”

Loid made many sounds, not a single one intelligible. Yor glanced from him to Sylvia, confounded by Loid’s change in composure. He was always so poised. Seeing him in such a frenzied state coaxed a laugh from Yor, but she hid the noise behind her hand as if she were instead having a brief coughing fit.

“Have you been to the Underworld, Yor?” Sylvia asked, completely indifferent to Loid’s flapping mouth. When Yor shook her head, Sylvia clapped her hands together. “Well, that settles it. Bring Yor. Franky will surely understand once he sees her. After you’ve cleared the air, you can take Yor sightseeing. I’ll be going now. If you’ll accompany me, Twilight.”

“It was wonderful to meet you,” Yor said, eyes bright.

“Bye bye, miss lady!” Anya cried out. “Come back sooooon!”

Sylvia smiled over her shoulder as she left. Loid, expression dark, followed her out. They traversed Yor’s freshly paved path until they were a safe distance away. In the open air, Loid huffed. “Satisfied?”

“Mostly. You really should have just told me, Twilight.” She chastised him as if he were still a sapling.

“Told you what?”

Sylvia looked at him crossly from over her glasses. When Loid continued to gawk, she shook her head and sighed. “You must feel so free, being so stupid.”

“Pardon?!”

Sylvia did not deign to respond. Instead, she circled her hand in front of her, calling forth a smoky portal. “We’ll postpone our meetings for now. If you want to discuss anything with me, send a request. I’ll have Bond bring you my earliest availability.”

Without waiting for any sort of acknowledgment, she stepped into the portal. It sealed shut behind her, then vanished. Loid stomped around, hands in his hair, as he bemoaned this turn of events. He was going to strangle Franky when they finally met. To go to Sylvia, of all people! He could have gone to anyone else! That god-forsaken devil only liked to cause trouble. With that final, irksome thought, Loid made his way back to the cottage.

Yor set down the final platter when Loid re-entered. He was all scowls, and so evidently, entirely consumed by what had just occurred. When he sat down, he glowered at the salad. Anya withheld her mirth. While it was Yor’s first time ever seeing the demon in such a state, Anya prided herself in the fact that she often incited such fits of passion from Loid.

Yor, meanwhile, battled with her guilt. She ought to be more sympathetic to Loid and his bad mood, but she couldn’t help her surplus of amusement. It’s nice, she thought, to know he, too, can be clumsy in certain ways. It made him… less like a demon after her soul, more like somebody she might one day understand.

And there would be ample opportunity to better understand him, particularly if he were to take her through the Underworld as Sylvia advised. Her comfort, perhaps, shouldn’t be so, and the phenomenon was difficult to describe, but undeniable. She’d come to recognize the feeling in the past week—there was something about Loid that made her feel settled.

Yes. She quite liked his company.

Notes:

so many ppl to meet 😌 and still so many more myehehehe

Chapter 9

Notes:

every chapter i write, i get this feeling like, "crap. i have no idea how long this fic is going to be. i have a feeling it's going to be much freaking longer than i meant for it to be."

anyway. so. welcome to the next chapter of this fic that i think is going to be unexpectedly and extremely long ._.

In the following days, Loid worked hard to convince Yor that her company, when he was to finally set out to meet Franky, was not necessary. Yor’s intrigue, however, proved very stubborn, and several days and nights passed where the conversation, pleasant of a facade as it had, would come to a tense impasse. Yor did not want to push Loid beyond his comfort, but she also felt that the area in which he felt comfortable was tragically small.

For whatever reason Loid could not surmise, he did not feel at ease taking Yor to the Underworld. Certainly, he did not feel comfortable bringing any being who did not originate in the Underworld down there for the Hell of it, but Yor especially made him squirm. 

“Maybe,” Yor said one evening, “maybe it would trigger some ideas in my head.”

Loid looked up from the evening paper. “Ideas?”

“For what I could ask of you in return for my soul.”

Loid sighed. “You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?”

Yor smiled ruefully. “I’d really like to go, but if it truly makes you that uncomfortable, I’ll accept your decision.” Oh, but she hoped he wouldn’t deny her. She really wanted to see where he lived and worked (though the reality was that Loid spent more time above ground than below). 

She was right on all accounts. He didn’t have a genuinely good reason to keep her away, and her point was valid. Anything to fulfill this contract. With another heavy exhale, Loid folded his paper and rose from his seat. “We’ll go together, then. Four days time.”

“Should I bring anything?”

“A few valuables and a handful of gold coins, in case we run into Charon.” Charon was technically supposed to ferry only the passed who had undergone funeral rites, but he was known to make exception given a few extra coin. Running into him, however, was another matter entirely, completely up to chance. He was a busy corpse.

Anya, who had witnessed this back and forth every night, piped up. “I wanna go!”

“No,” Yor and Loid said in unison. 

She pouted. “Why?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” Loid said.

“Danger-ous my middle name.”

There was a baffled pause in which Loid and Yor glanced at each other as if to ask, where does she learn this? Or, at least, that’s what Loid assumed was their shared thought. That flew out the window when Yor looked at Anya and said, “I didn’t know you had a middle name!” She sounded needlessly heartbroken over it.

“I’m joking,” Anya said, mildly perturbed the way she always was when encountering her mother’s bouts of ineptitude. “Can I go? Please?”

“When you’re older,” Yor chided gently. 

Anya’s disappointment was palpable. She pushed away from the dining table to skulk off to her room, but not before a halfhearted “Good night.”

Yor exchanged a look with Loid, hers pitying, his resigned. “Valuables and coins. Anything else?”

“Food. Don’t so much as put a single thing but your own food in your mouth once you’re down there.”

“Oh? Is that real, then?”

“Very real.” Too many had trapped themselves in the Underworld for decades, centuries, eons even, simply for wandering too long trying to find a way out, growing hungry, then, logically, quelling the starvation once faced with sustenance. 

“I’ll let Camilla know.” The kitchen witch would express displeasure while being secretly thrilled. Happy with her victory, Yor made her way to the stairs, only to stop at the foot. “Thank you,” she said to Loid.

He waved her off. “I couldn’t have stopped you if I tried.”

She giggled, and he cracked a smile at his own expense. “No, you couldn’t have.” 

—

Camilla, as Yor expected, grumbled the next morning upon receiving news of Yor’s request, but the morning following that one, she arrived with a satchel full of bottled powders and a generous carafe of liquid that was clear like water, but, without smelling it, unidentifiable in its true nature. Magic stoppered the mouth of the jug to prevent any spillage.

“Sprinkle any of these over the surface you’ll be dining on, pour this over it, and there’s your meal.” So saying, she handed the leather bag to Yor along with their basket of meals for the day, then eyed Loid distrustfully as she left.

Yor and Loid watched Camilla disappear into the brush. Then Loid turned to Yor and said, “She doesn’t seem at all to like me.”

Yor nodded. “Her grandmother was eaten by a werewolf that didn’t belong to these woods. She’s distrusting of anything she knows doesn’t come from here.”

Loid, appalled, repeated, “Eaten?”

“Yes. An axe man came to help, but it was too late.”

“That’s… I’m sorry for her loss.”

“Oh!” Yor exclaimed. “No, her grandmother’s alive, the werewolf swallowed her whole. But she was bitten first, so she’s a werewolf now, too. Every full moon, Camilla has me brew a potion for her grandmother that eases the pain of transformation.” It was another part of their agreement, and how they met in the first place.

“Oh, well, that’s… a relief.” Actually, Loid didn’t know how to feel. It sounded to have been quite the ordeal.  

They entered the cottage again to see Anya stumble out of her room groggy-eyed. Half-awake, she fumbled her way through breakfast, through getting ready, through the door, and thereafter to school. Camilla’s meals marked the end of preparations, so Yor busied herself with her yard while Loid went out back to coach Bond on guarding Anya while they were away.

It was well past noon when Yor and Loid, having migrated indoors, started out of their seats at a frantic knocking. There was a curt pause, as if the assailant was second-guessing themselves, before another flurry hailed upon the door. Bond howled suddenly. The timorous yodel filled the home, rattling the windows. Sharing a cautious look, Loid and Yor convened at the entrance.

Loid opened the door, but there was nobody there. Just as he was about to close it, he detected a spark of a magical signature, and thus threw the door back open. Yet again, he found no one. 

“Hello!” something shouted, tinny, faraway, and squeaky. “It’s me! It’s Becky! I’m here!”

“Oh!” Yor gasped, pointing at a firefly’s glow hovering a forefinger’s distance from Loid’s nose. 

“Well!” Becky tittered, previous urgency having vanished. “Anya never said she had a father!”

“I’m not her father.”

“Then you’re single?”

She was a toddler. A toddler nearly twice his age, but a toddler nonetheless. Loid bit his tongue not to roll his eyes. “I’m not looking.”

“A shame!”

Yor watched this exchange with curiosity. Loid, expression flat, asked, “What are you here for?”

Becky’s desperation returned. “It’s Anya!” Both Loid and Yor stiffened. This did not bode well. “We visited the Underworld and she—”

“You what?!” Loid exclaimed, eyes immediately growing to the size of dinner plates as his face reddened. 

“Well, she was going on and on about how neither of you would let her go, so I said I could take her, and so we went, and we were on our way to the River Styx when she took a tumble, and I couldn’t find her after—”

“You skipped school?! No, nevermind that! How long ago was this?!”

“No, it was at recess! And it was six hours ago—”

Six hours just trying to get to the Styx! Loid flew back into the house, swearing under his breath. Yor made to follow, but hesitated and addressed Becky with her heart pounding in her throat. “Will she be alright, do you think?”

“I tried to look for her, but I couldn’t find her! I don’t know how far she could have fallen, or if she perhaps fell right into the River!”

Panic rose in Yor’s chest, but she kept her calm for Becky’s sake. The little fairy flitted about erratically, clearly distraught. “Thank you for coming to us, Becky. You’re always welcome, but please go home for now, I don’t want your parents to worry if you’re out too late. Loid and I will take care of this. Everything will be alright.”

“Thank you, Miss Anya.”

“Miss Briar is fine, or Yor.”

“Thank you, Miss Yor Briar. May I ask, are you a witch?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you living with a demon?” 

Yor did a double-take. “Oh! Well, I… He owes me a favor.”

Becky cocked her head, expression knowing. “Did you make a contract with him?”

Yor blushed. “By accident. I have to figure out what to ask of him in return for my soul.”

“Hm,” Becky nodded, as if that was normal. “Well, retrieving Anya might be that.”

There was a pregnant pause in which Yor, while Becky stared at her, realized the little fairy was right. More than that, Yor realized she would gladly trade her soul for Anya’s safety. 

“Well, I’ll be off now. Mister demon seems more than capable, and Anya is shockingly resilient. I’m more worried about you, Miss Yor Briar, truth be told, but I’m sure you’ll be fine in Anya’s father’s hands.”

“Oh, he isn’t her father,” Yor repeated.

“Hmm," Becky hummed cryptically as she fluttered back into the forest. She was an odd woman, but she sensed a spirit as stalwart as Anya’s. Perhaps that was where the little human girl got it. Fascinating creatures.

Yor, mystified by Becky’s reaction, dismissed her perplexion and turned to find Loid, only to nearly bowl him over as he rushed out the front door again. “Bond is already aware and tracking her scent,” he said, half out of breath. “I’ve already packed Camilla’s meals into his saddle bags, so we can leave right away.”

“I’ll just grab the valuables—”

Loid shook his head. “Time is of the essence. I doubt Charon will be at the dock, given the time of day”—evening, when the spirits of the deceased typically arrived at the shore of the Styx from their morning funeral rites after a few hours of processing and climbing down—“so we’ll have to ferry ourselves over.”

“I see. Then let’s go. And there was something else—”

But Loid grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards the back where he’d stationed Bond to prepare for takeoff at a moment’s notice. “Fantastic, let’s not waste any time. She can’t have fallen too far, and I’ll be surprised if she makes it past the River Styx at all.” 

Loid was in too much a state to have the conversation Yor wanted to have. She would have to wait until things settled down more, then she would bring up the topic of trade. For now, she let Loid open a portal. He cast the spell single-handedly, the other never leaving her arm. Bond bounded through, but Loid turned to her.

“It’s going to be hopelessly dark for the first hour and a half, possibly more.” He held up her hand. “Don’t let me let go, and if I do, shout. Bond will find you.”

He looked into her eyes intently. Yor, with a jolt, understood him to be searching her for comprehension. Pulse lightning quick, she nodded. Loid gave a resolute nod in return, then turned his back on her to face the portal. Inky black smoke crept out of the tear, indolent and thick.

He took a step towards it. Yor, swept up abruptly by a bout of intense apprehension, folded her own fingers around his wrist. Loid looked over his shoulder, saw her anxious expression, and smiled comfortingly. “Don’t let go,” he said, giving her a squeeze.

Then he stepped in. Yor followed.

Notes:

'nother chapter incoming bc i got a lot of writing done these past few days!

Chapter 10

Notes:

i am making up lore as i go, which means there might be inconsistencies. i try to catch them before i post, but it's entirely possible i'll reread in 13 months and be like "whoops. lemme change that for consistency." KSKSKSJFKJKSS 😂😂😂

When Loid had said “hopelessly dark,” Yor had interpreted it to mean a room with the lights off and curtains drawn. That was the kind of unnavigable dark she understood, one in which she might stub her toe or feel around in to orient herself. This, however, was not that. 

“It’s so dark,” she breathed, whispering her whisper, for it was that kind of dark. She couldn’t be sure who was listening, if anybody at all, though it felt as though she were being watched, and yet, also as though she were alone and talking to herself. With each step, her feet seemed not to land on any surface, nor to cover any distance at all. She could not, in fact, see her feet; she could not even see past her elbows, which graduated into black nothingness. There was no way to distinguish whether it had been one minute or infinite. She could feel Loid’s hand around her wrist, though, and her hand around his.  

Was Loid able to hear her at all? Did sound travel in this emptiness? But then Loid replied, “It is. We’ll be out before you know it, so long as you don’t lose track of me.”

“How do the deceased find their way?”

“The soul wants to move on, so those who have passed instinctually find their way forward. It’s a bit like having a sixth sense.”

Loid spoke at full volume, having made this journey often enough. Some magic folk had the foresight to ask for guidance on their way to the afterlife (in addition to whatever request made for their soul). That was one of the trade-offs of renouncing your soul early—funeral rites or not, you forfeited a traditional passing. Without a soul, you were completely and utterly on your own.

“Then I’ll be on my own when it’s my time?”

Loid stopped suddenly in his tracks. Yor crashed into him with a soft oof! “Err, sorry—well, I’ll, err, be there to guide you down.”

“Oh! Thank you.” 

Even in the chilling dark, her voice carried its inextinguishable warmth. Loid pressed onward as his insides twisted uncomfortably. What he'd said was not even remotely true.

“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about—”

“We’re here,” Loid interjected, finally catching sight of Bond’s silhouette. In another few steps, his familiar materialized fully. Loid pulled Yor ahead with him. “Bond takes on a different form in the afterlife, don’t be alarm—”

Yor shrieked, flying towards Bond (not away, to Loid’s stupefaction). “Bond! What’s happened to you?” she cried, teary-eyed.

Instead of the snow white she’d come to associate with the beast, he was a bleeding red. Leather wings sprouted from his back, and where he’d once had tender paws and retracted claws, he now had talons the size of elephant tusks. He had already been enormous on earth, but here, he was easily 30 times the size. His fangs matched in proportion, and his tail was a devilish spade. Strangely, he still retained a general roundness to him, and his eyes were no less beady and gentle than they always were.

Bond whined at Yor’s fussing. When she turned to stare at Loid with wide, worried eyes, Loid coughed awkwardly into his fist. “He’s a hell hound. He takes on his natural form in the afterlife.”

Yor gave a cry of relief, patting and petting Bond. “Oh! Well, if that’s the case. You’re quite beautiful like this, too, Bond.”

Truly an oddball. “This way.” Loid quickly began to depart, swimming through a sizable queue of people, and Yor realized she’d torn herself from his hold in her frenzy to ensure Bond’s wellbeing. 

She kept up, occasionally stumbling through crowds apologetically. There were signs placed helpfully throughout the space, and every-so-often, she identified what looked to be an employee guiding lost souls. Velvet rope sectioned off the edges of the room, presumably to keep tourists and guests from touching the paintings hung on the walls. The ceiling was high, arched, and ornate. Sound echoed off it bountifully, lending an air of sanctity. This must be purgatory. 

Loid became increasingly difficult to find. The next moment Yor caught up to him, she grabbed his arm. “Sorry, it’s just, it’s quite a lot of people.”

Loid, taken by surprise, flushed and nodded, taking her wrist again. “My apologies.”

“Why are there so many?”

“Well, most of these are tourists,” Loid gestured at the tour guides with their hats and pennant flags, leading groups of magical beings around the lobby. “The individuals in that middle line are waiting for review in Naraka. It’s a long process, and they’re a bit understaffed.”

“Naraka? To determine if they’re worthy of being reincarnated?” Loid nodded. “What happens if they aren’t?”

“They’re directed to Judgment, which is the next level up. After that, they either go there”—Loid pointed at a shiny, gleaming set of marble, self-moving steps—“or there.” 

Where the escalator seemed to ascend into a hallowed light, the new direction Loid motioned at could only be described as cave-like. To Yor’s greater concern, they were headed in that direction, and the closer they got, the more she confirmed that it was, in fact, a cave. They were looking down the steep slope when Yor finally said, “This must be the entrance to Hell, then?”

“The Underworld,” Loid corrected, though not as if he truly cared. It was a nuance that only mattered to the afterlife’s employed.

“And you think Anya fell down here?”

“Bond seems to think so.” 

The beast, upon hearing his name, leapt into the dank and musty smelling cavity. Loid stepped back to help Yor down. She took her steps carefully, keeping her free hand on the wall until the cavern became too wide to do so. Loid was patient with her as they went, excusing her constant apologizing with nothing more than an unbothered smile. Despite the dreary look of the cave, it became warmer and warmer as they descended, and Yor thought passingly that, as unlucky as it was to have accidentally damned herself to such gloomy conditions for the rest of eternity, she at least would not be cold.

It was barely an hour before they came upon a riverbank. Loid led her along the swampy path—Bond’s paws sank deep into the clay, leaving behind dinosaur prints—until they arrived at a series of boats. As expected, there was no ferryman in sight. Loid sighed and hopped into one of the vessels, momentarily freeing himself from Yor before offering his hand, again, to help her in. Once she was seated, Loid hopped out again, heaved the boat off the bank with a grunt, then quickly hopped back in, all with astonishing grace. His shoes did not so much as skid the surface of the river.

The ends of the boat swept upwards in elegant arches like a gondola, but the sides of the vessel rose unusually high. After Loid looped a length of rope through Bond’s toothy maw, the beast dove into the waters and began to paddle. Yor craned over the edge of the boat to peer into the rippling depths. Her reflection gazed perfectly back at her in the obsidian black; her hair had no beginning or end, as if they were drifting through a sea of her locks. Yor gasped when her reflection smiled at her and stepped back, beckoning for her to follow. Yor reached forward to catch hold of her own hand—

Loid yanked her back, and she fell into him with a yelp. When she gathered her bearings, she was sprawled over his legs. He looked down at her, lips pursed. “Don’t touch the water. You’ll have your soul torn from you straightaway.” 

Yor nodded, sat up, and checked herself for injury. Finding nothing of note, she asked, “What was that?”

“What?”

“I saw myself. I thought she was my reflection, but she moved on her own.”

“Ah. Your mirror.” Intrigued, Loid asked, “What did she look like?”

Yor, not knowing what a “mirror” was but understanding that that was all it could be, answered, “Exactly like me, only very welcoming.” 

That wasn’t the right word for it, not really, but she could find no better way to describe it. When her reflection had smiled at her, she’d felt accepted, safe. Following her had seemed logical. Was a “mirror” meant to be a version of you that you longed for? She glanced at Loid to find him inspecting her with a quizzical expression. “Is that bad?” she asked self-consciously.

“Mirror images reflect an unexplored or unknown part of our identity. People are enticed to chase after it because we long to know ourselves.”

“Really?” Yor fell into short contemplation. “She seemed very nice.”

Her response was fascinating. Did she really not know? “Well, you’re a very kind person, Yor. Not many people would willingly adopt a child right off the streets.” Or right out of the woods, in Anya’s case. “You’re very forgiving of people’s faults, as well.” Yuri and Camilla, to name a few. Very off-putting individuals, in Loid’s opinion. Ah, and Sylvia. He worked hard not to make a face.

“I try to be kind. But she was different. She felt like a home.”

“Ah. Yes, well,” Loid became avoidant, looking from one part of the river to another, then to Bond, then to the distant shore. “As they say, knowing yourself is life’s greatest adventure.”

If that was something people said, Yor was not privy to it. She wanted to pursue further discussion, but Loid was leagues away, aspect vacant as if he’d long lost interest. Dropping the subject, Yor turned also to watch the waters pass. 

Loid, on the opposite side of the boat, composed himself outwardly, but internally, he interrogated his discomfort as if it were a hostage. Why did it throw him so out of sorts to learn she had no idea of her own obvious softness? Moreover, how could she hold that sort of hospitality inside her, then kill every plant within a stone’s throw radius of her? Inconceivable.

“You don’t think Anya fell in, do you?” Yor asked suddenly, gently tapping at the quiet.

“Bond would alert us if that were so.”

Yor’s shoulders dropped from her ears, the lines around her eyes relaxing. Another half hour of silence passed until Bond found land. He pulled the boat out of the water with ease, then dropped his rein and shook off. Loid helped Yor clamber out, then exited with equal as much poise as he’d entered. Yor noticed as he jumped over the water that he had no reflection.

“You don’t have a mirror?”

“It’s only for the living who somehow happen to stumble this way.” The dead had their souls removed upon judgment. “Anything for a soul, as you know.”

His words startled a reminder into Yor’s head, and as they trudged up another hill—or dune, it seemed a bit sandy here—Yor asked, “Could I ask this as my favor?”

Loid barely glanced over his shoulder at her. “Your favor?”

“Anya’s safety for my soul—whoop!” 

She ran right into Loid’s back and, as a result, skidded down the side of the dune. Loid hastily retraced their steps to help her back up. Yor thanked him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. They lapsed into another silence.

“Loid?” Yor prodded, hesitant. This made the second time today he’d stopped so abruptly. 

“It’s too late for that,” Loid sighed, shaking his head. “We’ve already started the expedition.”

“Should I ask before we start, next time?”

“Err. Yes.” Next time? How often did she expect to find herself in such a predicament? And shouldn’t he be celebrating the prospect of increased opportunity? What was this feeling he was experiencing instead?

“Thank you for your help,” Yor said from beside him. “I’d be lost trying to find her on my own.”

Loid frowned. As if they’d be in this predicament if he’d never been summoned to start with. Then, for the third time that day, he nearly stopped in his tracks, the thought having incited an epiphany. Oh. His realizations came haltingly and with dawning comprehension. 

What he felt was guilt. The unfamiliarity of it only added to his dysphoria. 

Chapter 11

Notes:

a shorter chapter!

Hell was not warm all the way down, Yor found, as they wound their way further downwards. Loid had said so, but having never been to Hell, how could she have known just how frozen the landscape would become? Bond was still sniffing out a trail detectable only to him, and she was lagging behind, doing her own sniffing as her nose dripped with the cold. She had cast a warming charm on herself a few circles down, but it had long since dissipated, being that she could only cast a weak one. It was miraculous, she thought, that Anya could have found her way so far down. She hoped the little girl wasn’t hiding in this cold.

Loid had gone quiet after her request for Anya’s safety in the first circle. Now they were hiking their way through the tundra of the tenth. It occurred to Yor that perhaps she had said something wrong, that her request had been odd or unacceptable, but it could also have been a matter of terrain. The geography they traversed was taxing (though Loid seemed entirely unspent as he navigated crags and crevices). Even if Loid were to talk to her, she suspected she wouldn’t have been able to keep up, she was concentrating so hard on not toppling over into unseen pitfalls.

On her 12th sniffle of the half-hour, Loid glanced over his shoulder to check on Yor. She wiped her nose, the tip of it bright, cherry red, on the back of her sleeve. With a sigh, Loid scrubbed his hands over his face, bid the knot in the pit of his stomach to untie itself, and slipped out of his suit jacket. When he fell behind Bond’s steady pace to hand it to Yor, she flushed and ducked her head in thanks, tugging it over herself. It was magicked to stay warm. Life returned gradually to her fingertips.

“We’ll stop to eat when we get to flatter ground. We can set up a fire.” 

“Maybe I should trade my soul for eternal warmth once I’m here for good,” she quipped.

Loid smiled. “I’m starting to think you’re not taking this very seriously.”

“Oh, I’m taking it very, very seriously. Me and all my tomatoes.”

Loid laughed, truly laughed, without reservation or pretense. His unabashed amusement surprised Yor, and she couldn’t help but to watch closely. Loid, however, noticed her intensity and dwindled back into his usual aloofness, self-conscious. That, in turn, prompted Yor’s embarrassment. They both looked away, taking sudden academic interest in their surroundings.

Loid was the first to break the silence. “Would you still like to trade your soul for your loved one’s safety?”

Yor’s thoughts stuttered. Right now, she was only concerned with Anya’s safety, but Loid was right—she valued the safety of every person she loved. And here was an opportunity to ensure that they would always be kept warm and well-fed and away from danger. “Yes!”

“Then we’ll let Franky know the minute we meet.”

“Can’t we finalize the contract now?”

Loid raked his hair back with a hand, avoiding her prying eyes. “Ah, well, yes, but finding Anya is of the utmost importance, so I’d rather not waste any time, negligible as it might be. I’m sure she’s safe, it seems like she’s made her way into the magic realms, where she’ll be largely unaffected by anything, so you don’t need to rush into the contract for her sake.”

She certainly didn’t need to worry about her brother, angel that he was, and Camilla didn’t leave her home much to begin with, from what Loid gathered. Still, his logic was unsound even to himself. It felt as though he were lying to Yor. But lying had never bothered him before, so why should it now? 

“You’re right,” Yor said, interrupting Loid’s thoughts and nearly giving himself whiplash looking at her in shock. Was it really that easy? She nodded resolutely. “Time is of the essence!”

“Yes,” Loid said dumbly. “Time is, err, of the, uh, essence.”

She smiled brightly at their alliance. Loid, filled again with guilt, examined the stalagmites and stalactites instead. He let out a low, inaudible breath and fussed with his hair. This was turning out to be a much bigger headache than he’d accounted for it to be, for reasons he couldn’t even begin to understand.

—

An hour later, Loid called out for Bond to heel. The beast gave a whine, but sat obediently, tail thwacking the ground impatiently.

“That slope begins the descent into the 11th circle. I don’t know if Camilla’s spells will activate there, so better to eat now.”

“Will we have to descend all the way to the 13th floor?”

“I can’t imagine so. Sylvia would know if Anya entered her residence. Bond seems to think we’re especially close, too.”

Relief washed through Yor. Heart much lighter, she was even able to hum as she rifled through the pouches lining Bond’s sides to retrieve Camilla’s provisions. The kitchen witch had generously included a quilt and dishware for their convenience. As Loid scribbled a rune into the dirt with his finger, Yor laid out the cloth, dishes, and two powders. Behind her, Loid snapped, and the kindle he’d summoned burst into flames. She poured the assigned liquid over the powders and watched their meals materialize.

“Does Bond eat?” she asked once Loid had seated himself.

“No.” He hesitated. “To be fair, I don’t need to either. I just enjoy it.”

Yor smiled. “Food is good.”

“It certainly is,” Loid echoed. Camilla’s especially. He cut into a tenderloin with ease, and they both fell into silence filling their stomachs.

Afterwards, they packed up and pressed onwards. The journey down was slow and winding, as if they truly were corkscrewing down a spiral ramp into the next circle. It went on for so long that Yor began to wonder if perhaps they’d already entered the 11th circle, but as soon as she opened her mouth to ask, she felt the hairs on her arms rise. She knew then that they’d entered.

The magiclessness of this circle was immediately apparent, simply for the fact that the air was still and lifeless in a way Yor never experienced on earth. She’d thought she’d experienced magicless locations above ground, but she understood now that there was no such thing as any truly magicless place on earth. The world had an inherent magicness in every part of it, but here—here, there was nothing. The emptiness—even more so than the darkness into the afterlife they’d first wandered in—was so disarming that it drew a sharp breath from her.

Loid glanced over his shoulder at the sound. At the stricken look in her eyes, he fell back. “It takes some getting used to.”

“I feel so sad,” she whispered, clutching her chest as if she were in physical pain. “It’s as if something’s gone missing in me.” A deep, deep longing for something she didn’t know.

Loid smiled ruefully. “Yes.”

“Is this what it feels like?”

“Hm?”

“To not have a soul?”

Loid paused, trying to remember how he’d felt the first time he’d stepped into the 11th circle. “Yes,” he eventually replied. He offered no further explanation.

This, then, was what he was eternally searching to fill? This bottomless well? She could have cried. It was no wonder. He’d said it took some getting used to, but to grow used to such hopelessness was nightmarish in its own right. She watched Loid turn around, and the sight of his back to her seemed suddenly so vulnerable that tears sprung to her eyes.

No sooner had Loid returned his gaze to Bond than he felt a tug at his waist coat. Twisting around once more to check on Yor, he saw instead that she was clutching the hem of his vest, doubled over, and—shaking? Alarmed, he pulled her up to ask what was the matter, only to find her crying, breathless and heaving with tears. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, willing as much calm into his voice as he could, despite how opposite he felt. To his dismay, his question seemed only to further agitate her. Whatever had happened seemed to be ripping her apart at the seams. What was he supposed to do in this situation? When was the last time he’d encountered a sobbing woman? Panic began to rise in his throat. In all his centuries of demon training, he’d never once been prepared for anything even remotely like this.

Yor shook her head furiously, as if she could rattle an explanation out of her brain. She tried to get the words out, but could only blubber in a garbled and unintelligible language. She saw the growing concern in his gaze, and shame flooded her for making his pain about her. Dropping her head against his shoulder, she cleared her mind and worked determinedly to draw in deep breaths. 

Loid, still frantic, felt the increasing weight of her form against him. Slowly, guiding her gently by her arms, he brought her to the ground, where she continued to shudder as he crouched with her. “What’s wrong?” he asked, tones falling helplessly into whisper.

Yor peered up at him, eyes glassy, swollen, and rimmed pink. “You can have my soul,” she croaked back, voice wet. 

Loid puzzled at the non sequitur. “What are you talking about?”

Fresh tears slipped down her face. She hid her face against him again. “This feeling. It’s so”—her muffled voice wobbled—“It’s so lonely.”

Oh. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure he could even make a sound, the way the back of his throat tightened.

“I want you to have it,” she said into his shoulder. “My soul. I don’t mind.”

Loid cleared his throat and managed a chuckle. “Well, let’s not be too hasty. I’ve been handling that feeling much longer than you have. I’ll be fine without a soul for a few days longer.”

But Yor only shook her head again, crying softly into him. He patted her awkwardly, feeling confused, uncertain, and… touched. That someone would cry for him.

Notes:

💖💖💖

Chapter 12

Notes:

can't wait for you all to read this chapter 😏

They spent another handful of minutes on the ground like that, until Yor, mortification beginning to settle in, pried herself from Loid, hiccuping and rubbing her eyes. When she caught his expression, her mood lifted somewhat at his comically distraught appearance. It was clear he’d never had to soothe a weeping woman (not as a demon, at least). 

“I’m sorry,” she said, pursing her lips to withhold her mirth, which felt inappropriate after falling apart only moments earlier.

“No, it’s quite alright. I’m just glad you still know how to laugh.”

She did just that as she rose to her knees. Loid scrambled up, offering her a hand to stand. Bond, having watched the entire ordeal with sad eyes and drooping ears, perked up. 

“That’s enough time wasted.” She steeled herself for a few more hours of hollowness. She would find Anya, and there would be no more of this. She would go home and see Camilla in the morning and Yuri in another few days. And ultimately, here was Loid, accompanying her step for step. She was not alone. “Let’s hurry. I don’t want Anya to feel like this any longer.”

She’s so strange, Loid thought as Yor strode ahead with purpose. After relinquishing her from the responsibility she felt over his soul, she only redirected her energy to somebody else. She couldn’t grow vegetation to save her life, nor could she perform any meaningful magic (he’d yet to see her perform healing magic, so her skill-level there was still up for debate), but she was resilient in her own way.

As luck would have it, Bond jerked to a stop an hour later, ears and tails shooting straight up into the air. He sniffed obsessively for a second or two, then bounded, barking, towards a canyon wall. Realizing where they were being led to, Loid groaned. Please, no. It had never occurred to him that Anya would somehow end up here, that she might have already been rescued—by somebody he absolutely did not want to deal with. Somebody he never wanted to deal with. Sylvia sent him here on his own because nobody enjoyed dealing with Death, and being Sylvia’s right-hand man meant having the work she didn’t want to do pawned off on him. 

“What is it?” asked Yor, brushing a hand over the face of the cliff. It seemed a harmless enough wall.

“Anya,” Loid answered dryly, lips thin, “is safe and sound.” Had probably been safe and sound for several hours now. “Stand back.”

Yor scurried away, giving Loid a wide berth. He picked a sharp rock off the ground and got to work carving a sigil into the stone (God Almighty, he was drawing so many runes these days. It went against every fiber of his being). Yor, enthralled, observed closely, trying to predict what he was doing. She identified a few unlocking charms in the pictograms. Once Loid finished, he dropped the rock and strode to Yor’s side, dusting his hands off. 

“Aperta-sesamum,” said Loid with an uncaring flick of his wrist, none too impressed. Nothing happened. 

Yor glanced at Loid. He appeared bored. “Is something supposed to—” 

She screeched, starting into the sky as the entire cavern, without warning, rumbled and shook. The wall before them began to crumble. Before long, the cave wall disappeared, revealing a gaping trench of a corridor. The ceiling was so high and the stone so dark that whether there was a roof at all was indiscernible. But torches lined the hallway, illuminating a path so smooth and black, it looked wet. 

“Stay,” Loid instructed Bond. The hound whined, but sat obediently.

Suddenly, somebody screamed—high and violent—from down the hall. Both Loid and Yor startled. The shriek bounced over the glossy surfaces, amplified and echoing, and they both recognized the small power in the sound. Bond leapt to all fours, barking ferociously while Yor broke into a sprint, blood surging in her veins. Loid shouted a command for Bond to stay behind and keep watch before chasing after Yor.

“Anya!” Yor bellowed, too fraught to admire the grandness of the foyer she stumbled into. 

“Mama!” Anya gasped, looking up. She smiled sunnily at Yor and Loid from between the fist she had pulled back and the hand she pinned her victim down with. Between her knees lay a boy, flat against the floor and very obviously furious.

Loid, understanding everything he was seeing yet still baffled, asked, “What in Hell's Maw is going on here?”

The boy took advantage of Anya’s distraction to throw her off and come to his elbows. He was bleeding out of one nostril, and his hair went in every direction. “You neanderthal!” 

Anya’s bright expression snapped into dark fury. “Am not!” She leapt at him again.

Loid lunged forward to pull her away. Anya continued to kick and growl and spit as he dragged her to the opposite side of the room. The sphinxes he encountered in the underworld were more docile than the little girl currently raging in his arms. 

Yor, concern forgotten in place of her bewilderment, rushed over to the boy. He flinched away from her hands until he recognized the magic radiating off her. “A witch!” he spat, making a face. 

“Is that okay?” Yor inquired, stopping midway to his nose. Her gentle tone surprised the boy so much so that his disgust dropped away. After a beat, he nodded, flushed and pouting. He let Yor heal him, though he didn’t once meet her eyes.

“Stupid!” Anya yelled. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“Am not!” The boy shouted back, swatting Yor away so that he could stare Anya down. He was very red in the face, Loid noted, though whether it was from exertion or something else entirely, he wasn’t sure. After all, he’d been lying on the ground taking Anya’s beating, so he couldn’t have exerted himself much.

“Are you okay?” Yor asked. “What are you doing here? Where are your parents?”

The boy sniffed and dusted himself off, as if cleansing himself of Yor’s touch. “I live here. This is my father’s domain.”

Loid choked. “Death has a son?!”

Death’s son scoffed. “He has two sons,” he said haughtily. “My brother, and me”—he jutted his chin into the air, puffed his chest, and grinned smugly as he looked down his nose—“Damian Desmond. Son of The Reaper.” Superiority gleamed in the gold of his eyes

Loid reeled at the onslaught of information. Sylvia had never, never mentioned that Death had sons, and if Death had sons, that meant Death had a wife (or perhaps many)—and this son certainly looked like him, which meant he had likely sired both his sons himself, meaning they weren’t adopted from the underworld or picked up from any of his expeditions above ground or summoned familiars—which meant he had a family, which meant he could have a family. Moreover, Death had a name?!

“Where is the Reap—your… father?” To call Death by any other name felt ludicrous. Loid fought every instinct in his gut when doing so.

“He’s out.”

“Then how is Anya here?”

“I found her.”

“How?”

Damian snorted. “I smelled her! Anybody with a nose could have smelled her from leagues away!”

So Damian had inherited his father’s abilities. Was his other son similarly gifted? If so, did that mean they were to be raised as his successors? Both, or only one? Was this something Loid needed to be wary of? He would absolutely be informing Sylvia, though he suspected she knew and had kept it from him to see him squirm once confronted with it.

“Creep,” Anya grumbled.

“Am not! You just reek!”

“Do not!”

“Yes you do! You smell like life! Human life and fear and regret! You’d have thought you were on the cusp of death! It’s abhorrent!”

Life had a distinct scent that varied between species, as did death. Often, when the latter neared, fear and regret and a multitude of other emotions accompanied it, perfuming the pleasant scent of life with sour, acerbic notes. These scents could not be detected by any other beings, only The Reaper had that power (and his descendants, as Loid had just learned. Which meant The Reaper had a father himself. The concept of death not being a singular entity for all of time was too overwhelming for Loid to appreciate at the moment). Thus, Death made it his business to follow those trails and pick up any souls that had passed. In the instance somebody passed peacefully, the grief surrounding them was also an indicative scent. Souls that passed neither peacefully nor horribly and had none to mourn them would occasionally go unretrieved by Death for a substantial amount of time. Such was their lot.

(Furthermore, these wandering entities were not to be confused with ghosts. While falling under a similar category, they were not the same, and to confuse any for the other would offend both.)

“Shut up!” growled Anya. “I’m not ab-warrant!”

Loid was too preoccupied with the fortunate news that Death was not at his domain’s door to care about their spat. With any luck, they’d be able to flee before Death returned and intimidated them—or worse, bored them to death. He was a man who could soliloquize and monologue until the end of time.

Quickly, and with urgency, Loid ushered Anya and Yor towards the exit. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” he called out to Damian. He did not elaborate with any further niceties, as he sure did not hope to see The Reaper or any of his family again. 

“Wait!” Damian yelped, running halfway to them before remembering that Royalty Did Not Run. He regained his composure and stuck his nose back in the air. “You can’t leave.” He addressed Anya directly. 

“Pardon?” said Loid.

“She ate.”

There was a long silence before Loid made a sound so incredulous and pained, you’d have thought he’d been immortally wounded. “You ate?!” He did not consider himself to be someone who wailed, but he came quite close this singular moment in his demonic life. “How much?!”

“Fistfuls of pomegranate seeds,” Damian answered for Anya. She scowled at him.

Loid, who was now pacing, unleashed another indignant noise. Yor, however, noticed how sly Damian’s announcement was. As if proud of it. Curious.

“I’m willing to broker a bargain,” Damian said, again altogether too pleased with himself. 

“A bargain?” Loid parroted, confounded by the confidence this boy, who barely breached knee-height, carried.

“If you allow me to monitor you for one day every week, I will allow you to leave.” 

Yor hid her amusement behind her palm. Despite his protests, Damian did not seem to genuinely believe Anya was repulsive. For one thing, he stared a little too hopefully at her as he awaited her reply. Anya, meanwhile, glared at his neck, as if she wanted to snap it. Or slash it. The murderous intent clear in her eyes was a little concerning.

“Don’t you dislike her?” Yor asked. “Wouldn’t you rather be free of her?”

Damian flushed purple. “I don’t want to see her! By eating the food I offered her, she’s now my captive! I need to know what my minions are up to!”

Anya, too speechless with rampant anger, foamed at the mouth. Loid, too, stared, jaw hanging. 

“Where do you go to school?” Damian asked Anya.

“None of your beeswax! Where do you go to school?”

“Mongrel! I’m homeschooled! Which is a privilege, considering I don’t have to walk amongst your ilk!”

Anya shrieked again, flailing in Loid’s arms. He clutched tighter to her and gathered the last of his remaining wit. “We’ll take your deal. And we’d really best be going,” he grunted against Anya’s heaving body. “Tell your father”—it really was not natural rolling off his tongue—“I send my regards.”

Loid lugged Anya down the hallway, Yor following and waving amicably towards the ever-shrinking Son of Death. Once Damian was well behind them, Anya stopped jerking around to glower over her shoulder. Loid released her, though he kept a cautious eye on her should she bolt back in to land one last punch. He wouldn’t put it past her (and he wouldn’t blame her).

“He seemed nice, Miss Anya,” Yor chirped. Both Loid and Anya looked at her with horror, though for different reasons: Loid at how incredibly incorrectly Yor interpreted everything they’d just seen, and Anya because Damian was the furthest thing from “nice” she knew. Well, except for the foster home she’d escaped from. “If he’s homeschooled, you may be the first person his age he’s ever met.”

For all the boy’s immaturity and bombast, Yor didn’t believe he would truly harm Anya or enslave her. He seemed only to want a friend, though had too much pride to say so. There didn’t seem to be many beings in the area; in fact, Yor had yet to come across a single tortured individual in all their trek through Hell. Perhaps they were hidden away in each level? She would have to ask Loid later. Her point, though, was that Damian masked his loneliness with an arrogant front.

Anya mumbled inaudibly and ferociously for the rest of the journey until she laid eyes upon Bond. Her distaste evaporated; she lit up and raced towards him with her arms wide open despite his strange and unfamiliar appearance. Bond yipped, as if once again a puppy, and abandoned his post to lick her. His affection doused her bodily in saliva.

After the celebratory squealing and running around in happy circles, Loid hoisted Anya up by her armpits, seated her upon Bond’s saddled back, and said, “Take her home.”

Anya’s face dropped instantly. “Noooo,” she wailed. “I wanna stay! I wanna come too!”

“You’ll not be coming or going anywhere but school for a long, long time,” Loid scolded. “You ought to be grounded!”

“I don’t know what that means!” Anya huffed.

Yor crouched at Anya’s side, placing a gentle hand to her arm. “You shouldn’t have run off like that, Miss Anya. You scared Miss Becky half to death, and us as well. What if Damian hadn’t found you? What if Mister Loid wasn’t here to lead the way with Bond? What would I have done?”

At her mother’s chastisement, Anya grew somber. When Damian had first found her in the dark, upon which he'd tricked her into his home on this floor, she’d immediately detected the vacuum of magic. (Damian had seen the tears welling up in her eyes and thrust a pomegranate in her face to distract her, cracking it open to show her the gemmed interior. It had done little to soothe her (especially after she’d eaten the entire fruit and he’d cackled the truth to her)). Knowing that she could have been trapped down here forever had struck her with a fear unlike any other (Damian had panicked when she’d once again burst into strident tears). 

Anya dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

Yor hugged her. “Silly girl. It’s okay. Go home and let Bond keep you safe. Let Becky know you’ve returned. We’ll all discuss a fair punishment once Loid and I have returned.”

Loid, upon hearing Yor’s inclusion of him, did a double take. Was he to be a part of that? A family discussion? That seemed far too intimate a thing for him to partake in. He dwelled on his misgivings as they escorted Anya and Bond to the beginning of the ascending ramp. Yor and Anya embraced once more, then Loid gave Bond a hefty pat on his hind leg. The beast sprang forward with his rider, becoming a pinpoint in a matter of seconds. 

Loid turned to Yor to express his uncertainty over being included in Anya’s disciplining. He’d commented earlier that she ought to be grounded, but he hadn’t meant it as a prescription or invitation, and if Yor thought that, he needed to clear the air promptly. “I’m not qualified to dispense justice on a child.”

Yor stared unreadably at him for a bit, then pursed her lips to prevent laughter. “‘Dispense justice?’”

“Deciding how to punish her.”

“I know what you mean. But it’s not a court proceeding, Loid. It’s just making sure she understands there are consequences to her actions.”

“Well, I’m still not qualified.”

“I don’t know that I am, either. But it has to be done.”

His brow creased. “What do you have in mind?”

“Oh, nothing too serious. I think she understands well enough the danger of what she did. I might have her do the dishes for a few nights. We can brainstorm together on our way to—Franky, was it?”

There was that closeness again, that suggestion of some sort of companionship, of equalness. Not a demon on the outside looking in, but a member—of what, he wasn’t sure. But it was uncomfortable, as if he no longer knew who he was or where he stood. He wondered, for the first time in a long time, what somebody living outside his skin thought of him. 

Yor waited as Loid disappeared deep into his thoughts. Sometimes the solution was to call him out of it; other times, it was a matter of patience. Eventually, when he returned to the present and his eyes found hers, she smiled. Loid smiled back tentatively. What a funny demon, thought Yor.

“House chores are a good idea. I have a few education-oriented possibilities. We’ll have another few hours to discuss, as Franky is only one more level down.”

In spite of his avoidant gaze and cagey posture, Loid did not take the lead. Yor fell into step beside him, and they began the last of their descent alongside each other.

Notes:

LMFAO DIDN'T SEE DAMIAN COMING, DID YOU!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA