There was a storm approaching; Cobalt could practically taste the ozone in the air. Seated on a bench in the Brimstone Nature Park, he looked up from the papers on his lap and frowned at the dark clouds forming overhead. The weather had been so nice up until recently, he thought he would have been able to do some of his test marking outside, but judging by the ominous rumbling overhead, it wouldn't be long until rain began to fall.

But he couldn't head back to the school. For one thing, it was too far, and the downpour would definitely begin before he even made it halfway back, and his students' half-graded exams would be ruined. For another thing, he was still chewing on what Karazelle had said to him just a couple of nights ago, and for the time being, he was having a hard time relaxing around his students. Not to mention that the issue of the Hellhound was still weighing heavily on his mind...

Which left one option available to him. One he wasn't dying about.

With a heavy sigh, Cobalt gathered up his things and hurriedly made his way around the edge of the lake, just as he felt the first few drops of rain against his skin. Sidling past the waterfall, he punched the all-too-familiar code to Alison Titch's front doors and shoved it open. As he made his way down the tunnel to the human's laboratory, the sound of falling water gave way to the electric hum of floodlamps, permeated by exerted grunting from deeper within.

Stepping into the main laboratory, Cobalt found himself staring right at Alison as she knelt in the middle of the floor, aggressively banging her head to the music pumping through her headphones. Several empty bottles of vodka lay scattered about, and as he approached, he saw that the human was frantically scrawling equations on the floor in chalk.

"Nine... eight... thirty-six... carry the two... add to the power of eight... ninety... four... sixty-six... divide by three... multiply by the difference of... add... and... SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY FUCKING SIX, BABY! WOO!" she suddenly howled, triumphantly pumping her fists into the air as she leaped to her feet.

Cobalt recoiled at the human's sudden outburst, already regretting his decision to come here. Before he could silently bow out, however, Alison whipped her head around and gave him a surprised grin.

"Ah, bluebell! Didn't see you there!" laughed the scientist, giving him a friendly wave.

Tossing her headphones onto her desk, she set about gathering up the bottles. Now that Cobalt could see them properly, he grimly realised that some of them were full of urine.

"Just been working on a couple theories... So what's brought you down here today? You usually don't come unannounced."

"I was just taking shelter from the rain, and I realised that I haven't checked in on you since the Sulfur Bloods incident, so..."

Placing the urine-filled bottles into a medical fridge, she planted her hands on her hips and grinned.

"Awesome! I was thinking of calling you in anyway! Need you to run some stuff by me!"

She darted off for a moment, too fast for Cobalt to follow, before she returned with a large whiteboard on wheels. Tossing a marker to the Incubus, Alison grabbed her office chair and sat down, eyes sparkling.

"Magic! How does it work?" she asked simply, clasping her hands.

Cobalt stood there, eyebrows raised as he gingerly gripped the marker.

"... you know I'm not an Applied Demonics teacher, right? I'm not qualified to teach this kind of stuff."

"I don't need you to tell me the deep nitty-gritty; just go over the layman's shit with me! I need a basic understanding before I can begin the serious research!"

"And what exactly are you researching here?"

"Science shit! Now quit complaining and start explaining!"

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Despite being so enthusiastic to learn, he got the feeling that educating Alison was somehow gonna be even more painful than teaching his second-years. Shaking his head, he angled the whiteboard to face his eager student and uncapped the marker.

"Alright, alright... Let's start with the basics. Magic as we know it exists within every demon, and can be called upon through the use of set magical phrases, each spoken in Tongues, our ancestral language. It's currently a widely debated topic as to how and why this is," Cobalt began, drawing a simple diagram of a demon.

He circled the head of the figure.

"Despite our myriad of differences, every race of demon has either one or two horns. Within the bone structure of these horns are thousands upon thousands of tightly-packed nerve clusters, which govern our control of magic. Essentially-"

"Magic is stored in the horns!" Alison piped, raising a hand.

Cobalt gave her a dismissive frown.

"... yes. Now, each demon is capable of casting three classes of magic. The simplest of which is Armament Fabrication. Observe."

Extending his right hand, the Incubus took a deep breath.

"Ocov et. Amra ilobaid," he chanted, splaying his fingers as shadows began to swirl around his hand.

Forming a handle, he gripped it tight and gradually pulled the full length of a whip from the umbral nothingness, much to Alison's amazement.

"A whip, huh?" she commented.

"Indeed, the Leather Whip is the armament of-"

"Kinky."

He slumped his shoulders and groaned.

"Alison, if I'm going to do this for you, you could at least take it seriously," reprimanded the Incubus, dispelling the whip as he folded his arms.

She raised her hands apologetically and gestured for him to continue.

"Of course, every race of demon has a different armament. Nymphs have Golden Spears, Imps have Lead Revolvers-"

"Wait, what? Revolvers?" the scientist interrupted again.

"That is what I said, yes."

"But I'm pretty sure humans invented those. Like in the 1800s."

"They did. Supposedly Imps used crossbows up until a certain point when a human left a revolver behind in our world. As for why all Imps can now summon them..."

Cobalt sighed and shrugged. He wasn't cut out for this; there were too many mysteries surrounding demonic magics. Though it felt wrong to do so, he tried to invoke the words Madam Pudon had taught to him, all those years ago. Traumatic as her teaching style was, the woman was an expert in arcane matters.

"The weapons we summon are comprised of condensed magical energy, and the form which the armament takes differs wildly from one demon to the next. One Glutton's Rock Candy Mace could take the form of a handheld maul, whilst another's could appear as a sledgehammer," he explained, drawing a few simple pictures of various weapons.

Alison nodded and pulled out a notebook. Jotting down a few drawings of her own, she quirked and eyebrow and raised a hand.

"Yeah, uh... why the fuck are Gluttons' weapons made from rock candy?" she asked.

"Let's just say it's another mystery."

"Yeah, but-"

"Moving swiftly on...!"

Wiping the board clean with a nearby rag, Cobalt began the second part of his explanation.

"Next up is Elemental Manipulation. This one is fairly simple; most incantations begin with a universal phrase. Menidutitrof ihim ad. Arbmu"

As soon as those words left his mouth, the shadows leaped forth from the corners of the lab and began to coil around his outstretched hand.

"Once the element is invoked, one can speak another word to change its behaviour. Tneratpac," continued the Incubus, splaying out his hand.

At once, a tendril of shadow shot forth from the palm of his hand, whereupon it coiled and tangled itself around the wheels of Alison's chair. Her eyes widened with delight as she frantically noted down what she was seeing.

"Nice~. So every kind of demon has a different element, right? Like fire, earth, water and air?" she asked, readjusting the welding goggles on her forehead.

"In addition to plants, electricity and darkness, as you can see here," confirmed Cobalt, dispelling the shadow.

Wiping the board clean once more, he took a deep breath and prepared himself for the final part of the explanation.

"Finally, Racial Specialisation. As it sounds, this differs from race to race, and I'm afraid I won't be able to explain them all," he sighed, tapping the board.

"Aw... At least tell me what they are! Quit blueballing me, bluebell!"

He rolled his eyes.

"They range from kineticism, magnimorphisis and ambitioditanic modification to bestimorphisis, telekinesis and illusory manipulation."

She cocked her head.

"Yeah, I think I understood less than half of those words," she mused, chewing the end of her pencil.

Ignoring her, Cobalt continued.

"My people are capable of psychomancy, which just as it sounds, allows us to manipulate matters of the mind."

"Really? Can you show me?"

"I..."

Cobalt gazed down at his hands. The same hands that - just a few days ago - cast a thorny collar of shadow around Karazelle's neck. The same hands that grabbed her horns and bent her will to his own. The same hands that held her until she relented, and plunged her into a deep sleep.

"... I'd rather not..." sighed the Incubus, wiping the board clean.

Noticing the change in the Incubus' demeanor, Alison's face softened. She pocketed her notebook and gave him a concerned look.

"You okay, bluebell?"

He sighed and took a deep breath. Was he alright? Advanced ability in the art of psychomancy was the pride and joy of every Fesserite to come out of Phrodival, but Cobalt could never shake how disturbed it made him feel. Interfering with dreams, charming people, making their heads spin... it just seemed wrong to him, and thus he tried to keep his usage of the art to a minimum. But at least he understand that ultimately, such spells tended to be relatively harmless.

But the darker, more forceful psychomantic spells... There was no such justification. They were the result of the more sinister side of the art, oftenmost employed by those the Fesserites despise the most; predators. And yet, weren't they once predators themselves? It was said that years back, when Cobalt's hometown was still a burgeoning settlement, that in order to keep the town's population at a healthy level, humans were often abducted from Earth in order to be used as combined breeding stock and entertainment. Supposedly they were kept in underground halls known as the Undercroft, endless chambers of pleasure carved out of the meteoric iron that lay beneath the settlement's very foundations.

Long had his forebears laboured to right those wrongs. The humans were returned to their rightful homes, the Undercroft was converted into a place of sexual healing and enlightenment, and decrees were put into place banning the usage of the dark psychomantic arts. The "Domineering Arts", as they were called.

So why did Cobalt used one as heinous as My Will Be Done?

And why the Hell did he know how to cast it?

"I suppose I'm not, Alison. I think I messed up," stated the Incubus after a long period of silence.

He sat himself down upon one of her worktables, taking care not to disturb the equations on the floor. The scientist paid her work no such curtesy, however, as she rolled her chair across the chalk markings in order to meet his gaze.

"What happened?" she asked in a tone much more genuine than he was expecting.

"There was an... altercation at the school. Things got out of hand, and in order to defend myself, I wound up biting a student," he murmured, remembering how the fight concluded.

"For real? Like full-on teeth-clamping?"

"Yes... Drew blood, too..."

Nodding, Alison rolled her chair back over to her computers and began to frantically click through tabs.

"Huh... Well the properties of your saliva are too weak to actually affect anyone, so..." she mumbled.

Cobalt raised an eyebrow.

"Excuse me?"

"I said the properties of your saliva are too weak to actually do anything. You know, the aphrodisiacal ones? Found trace amounts of kinky chemicals when I was analysing your spit. Too mild to actually effect anyone, though they might grow more potent as you get older"

Well that was something of a surprise, but such information wasn't really lifting his mood much.

"Oh yeah, on the subject of biting..."

Tapping a few keys, she brought something up on one of the screens. Squinting, the Incubus found himself gazing at his own dental records.

"Turns out the sexual dimorphism between Incubi and Succubi have a lot more subtle differences than I realised. See these?" she stated, pointing to several of his canines and premolars.

"Wh- What about them?" responded Cobalt, feeling a little self-conscious about his mouth.

"These here teeth are way sharper than they ought to be. And going by the shape of your molars, you've straight-up got a carnivore's mouth. It's not just your teeth that struck me as odd, either. I analysed some of your fingernail clippings-"

"Where the Hell did you get those?!"

"- and I found that they're pretty damn hard. Most fingernails come in on the Mohs scale at about 2.5. Yours?"

She spun around and held up four fingers, looking visibly impressed.

Cobalt, on the other hand, was feeling a little put-off. Sure enough, now that he thought about it, he had difficultly cutting his nails without sufficiently heavy scissors, but he never really thought much about it at the time.

"But I'm getting off track. This student you bit, where was it? Like on their body?" Alison asked, cocking her head.

"On the neck. Just here," responded the Incubus, tapping the side of his neck.

"Ah, the classic hickey spot. Well, if they manage to keep it covered, then you shouldn't get into too much trouble. Heh, imagine if you'd bitten them on the lip or something!" she laughed, slapping her leg.

Cobalt went red.

"Th- That would not have happened! I- I didn't even-!"

Then it struck Cobalt. In all the confusion, guilt and overthinking that followed his confrontation with Karazelle, his mind had completely skimmed over one single, crucial thing that occurred in that gymnasium.

They had kissed. Cobalt and Karazelle had kissed, right on the lips. With tongue.

Staggering to his feet, Cobalt gathered his things and held his hands to his burning cheeks. Slipping and skidding on the chalk equations underfoot, he staggered over to the exit, completely dazed.

"Bluebell? What's wrong, I thought you were gonna wait out the storm!" called Alison in a confused voice.

"I, um... I- I'll just run home, on second thoughts... I, uh... bye, Alison. Th- Thank you, I suppose..."

With that he held his satchel to his chest and began to run up through the entrance tunnel, face burning hot.

Just when he thought he could start looking Karazelle in the eyes again...