Bryce

“We should get going,” Esme interrupted before I could respond to Sora’s boast. “Lilith is going to be upset enough without us showing up in the middle of the night and waking the children.”

“Oh shit, that’s a good point. Do we know what time it is there?” Thea asked.

“It’s a few hours before the little one’s bedtime. Which means if we don’t hurry, then we’ll show up right as they’re getting ready to go to sleep.”

Thea turned to me after hearing Esme’s explanation. “Babe, we gotta go. Like right now.”

“Alright, I guess we’ve waited long enough.” I connected to the ship’s feed and shut off the projectors, returning us to the observation room. “Esme, how do my runes look?”

“I didn't see any problems, but honestly, Thea has always been better with runework than me,” the succubus admitted. “She’s terrible at magic in a general sense, but she can read the original language of the runes. Which makes it easier to catch mistakes.”

“Hey! I’m not that bad,” Thea complained. “And Bryce, your runes are perfect, like always. Although we could swap the destination and teleport directly to the house, which would save us an hour of walking.”

“That seems like a really bad idea,” Esme said. “The house has defenses in place to prevent that sort of thing, and the last thing we want is to have Lilith thinking there’s somebody invading.”

“We could just message her,” Thea pointed out. “Surprising her is fun and all, but I’d rather get there before all the kids are asleep.”

“Thea, we aren’t trying to surprise her,” I explained. “We didn’t message her because doing that would require me to force my way past her magical defenses. The last time I did that to somebody, they tried to kill me, and I’d prefer if Lilith didn’t do the same thing.”

“Uh, yeah, I totally knew that. Because you explained it earlier and I was absolutely paying attention.”

I rolled my eyes at Thea before turning back to Sora. “That premonition has me worried about you two staying here alone. Do you have any idea when Ithnaa will be back?”

“Can we really trust Ithnaa to protect us?” Samira asked. “I mean, we were just talking about finding a way to kill her.”

“That’s just how Bryce treats everybody she meets,” Thea said. “You should’ve seen all the contingency plans she came up with to kill Esme before we resurrected her.”

“Really?” Esme asked. “Were there any good ones?”

“To actually answer your question, Samira,” I interrupted. “No, I don’t trust Ithnaa and I fully expect her to betray us at some point, but she won’t do that until she’s able to act against Mother. In the meantime, she can be a useful deterrent.”

“It feels like we’re playing with fire,” Samira said.

“The alternative is adding another homicidal djinn to our already long list of enemies,” Sora said. “Which isn’t exactly something I’m in a hurry to do. As far as when she’ll be back though, probably by the end of the week, but I have no way of knowing. She doesn’t exactly keep me in the loop, unless she’s complaining about one of her relatives.”

“Alright, well, at least take this.” I handed Sora a small plastic token about the size of a coin. “It’s enchanted similarly to the one Ithnaa left with you. I can use it as a focus to message you across the planes.”

“Can you use it to teleport like she does?” Sora asked, and I shook my head.

“Teleportation magic is complicated at the best of times, and I need a specialized circle in order to attempt it.”

“Then how are you planning on getting back from the lower planes?” Samira asked.

“She spent like an hour and a half putting a circle under the carpet in our bedroom,” Thea said. “She made me move all the furniture out of the way.”

“That’s just a temporary measure,” I explained. “Eventually, I’d like to get a more permanent circle created under the floor of the cargo-bay. But that hasn’t been a priority since it’d take me twenty minutes and a room-sized ritual to teleport to it. So, it’s almost always more practical just to have Sora bring the ship to us.”

“Not to rush goodbyes or anything, but we really need to get going,” Esme said. “Especially if it’s going to take you twenty minutes to cast the spell.”

“Right, anybody not going to the lower planes step outside the room and I’ll get the ritual underway.”

~~~~

The incantation finished with a blinding flash of light and when I opened my eyes again, we were standing in the middle of a large plaza surrounded by towering red sandstone buildings. It was dark, and the stars were visible overhead, but the air was still comfortably warm.

“Keep moving, princess.” Thea prodded me gently towards one of the side streets. “It’s rude to wait around here for longer than we need. Even if there isn’t too much traffic right now.”

I followed her lead while taking in the sights of the bustling city. We had arrived in some sort of receiving terminal that had a massive arcane circle hundreds of meters wide, carved into a metal plate on the ground. It seemed like some sort of anchoring sigil that acted as a teleportation beacon. I had never seen anything like it before, and I really wanted to spend some time studying it, but my attention was quickly ripped away by the dozens of demons going about their daily lives around us.

Well, at least I thought they were all demons. But the more I watched, and the further Thea led us through the city streets, the more I realized how varied the population actually was. There was just about every mortal race imaginable. Humans, elves, orcs, dwarves, even a few halflings, and gnomes were sprinkled into the mix.

And the demons who made up most of the population varied so drastically from one another that lumping them into a single race felt absurd. No two were exactly the same and the sheer variety in height, skin color, or even number of appendages was enough to make my head spin. “This is not what I was expecting.”

“Just wait until you taste the food,” Thea said. “That’s what surprised me the most when I first arrived in Hel. Trust me, you’re going to love it.”

“Or hate it,” Esme added. “There really isn’t much for vegetarian options in Hel. You’ll need to go to one of the higher planes if you want a meal that isn’t just a plate full of undercooked and over-seasoned meat.”

“Bryce eats some meat,” Thea countered. “Besides, most shops have something vegetarian, even if it’s just a side dish or something.”

“I suppose I’ll have to try the food at some point,” I reluctantly agreed. “But I was mostly talking about the diversity of people. You mentioned there were a few mortal races here. But this is a lot more than a few, and the number of different types of demons is difficult to comprehend.”

“There have been an awful lot of gods throughout the years,” Esme explained. “Many of them got ‘creative’ when designing their celestials. When those celestials had children, it spawned entire bloodlines of similarly ‘creative’ looking demons and when those demonic bloodlines mixed, well, you can see the results for yourself.”

She indicated towards a quadrupedal demon that was easily over six meters tall and covered in pink camouflage fur. It was patiently waiting for the light to turn green at a crosswalk a few streets over.

“That's rather impressive,” I said.

“This is nothing.” Thea smiled as she slipped past a group of dwarves loitering on the sidewalk. “Hel isn’t a big party city, so it settles down at night. But during the day, when the market is open, that’s when it gets really busy and you can see all sorts of wild demons.”

“It’s also when all the pickpockets and thieves are about,” Esme warned. “If you ever visit the market during the day, make sure you keep your valuables someplace where they can’t be easily stolen.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I would be interested in seeing it if we have time.”

“Maybe we can make a date of it.” Thea turned back to smile at me, and just as she did, a burly insectoid demon turned the corner, causing her to run right into them. Thankfully, Thea’s small size meant the demon barely seemed to notice the impact. “Oh shit, sorry. I wasn’t really—Wait, Pip, is that you?”

“Thea? I thought you were dead.” The bug demon turned its head and blinked its many compound eyes. Their voice sounded tinny and mechanical, as if it were coming through a poor quality speaker.

“Nope!” Thea answered. “Still alive, despite my best efforts. Who told you I was dead?”

“Nothing,” Pip replied. “I mean nobody. Uh, I have to go. But it was good to see you. Be careful out there.” The bug demon nearly tripped over themselves as they rushed across the street.

“Well, bye, I guess,” Thea mumbled after the fleeing demon.

“That’s probably not a good sign,” I said. “How well do you know that demon?”

“Well enough to know he’s running off to report Thea being back to whoever he’s working for,” Esme answered. “We should probably stop him.”

“It’s not like we’ll be able to hide the fact that I’m back forever,” Thea said. “Besides, I don’t want to kill Pip, and we wouldn’t be able to trust any promises he made to keep quiet if we left him alive.”

“Then we better keep moving if we want to outrun any potential trouble.” Esme started down the street and we followed.

~~~~

Lilith’s manor was on the outskirts of the city, and it took us nearly forty-five minutes of walking to reach. When we eventually did, I realized ‘manor’ wasn’t exactly the right term.

It was really more of a campus with four large buildings placed in a semi-circle around a courtyard. The two buildings on the outside were obviously some sort of student dorm, each large enough to house nearly a hundred individuals. If not more.

The other two buildings looked like a pair of lavish mansions that were connected by a covered walkway. The entirety of the grounds was surrounded by a two meter tall iron fence that had some sort of ivy growing along it. We were standing in front of the still-open gate.

“Well, this is home,” Thea said. “Do you think they were expecting us?”

“I can’t imagine why they would be,” Esme responded. “But I also can’t imagine why else they’d leave the gate open this late.”

“Only one way to find out.” Thea stepped through the gate and led the two of us towards the mansion on the left. We followed a well maintained walking path up to the front door, and for some reason I expected Thea to knock when we reached it. But of course, she didn’t. Instead, she pushed the tall double doors open before casually strolling inside. Which triggered an annoyed sigh from Esme.

The interior was neatly decorated with vases filled with clearly magical flowers and a few portraits placed sparingly along the walls. There were three entryways without doors on either side of the large room, and a wide staircase set into the far wall.

“Oh thank the gods, did you find him?” A melodic feminine voice asked from inside the room directly to our right.

“Find who?” Thea’s question was answered by a startled gasp and the sound of glass shattering as a shocked dryad woman rushed into the receiving area. “Hey Rosie, is somebody missing?”