“As funny as it would be to sell Gramma’s soul, I think not,” Perry said.

“Then there is nothing you could offer me.” Alkush said, waving a hand, causing the magical projection to go blank.

“I could offer you a chance to survive,” Perry said to the empty room, his half-baked plan continuing to firm up.

Perry took out his phone and texted gramma.

Are demons of Norgosh edible in their native habitat?

A moment later, gramma responded with:

A demon is a spiritual entity which would normally be inedible, but if the observer is on the plane of Norgosh, then by virtue of being there, they have also become spiritual entities, and therefore a demon would likely be edible for them.

It is, however, ill-advised, as demons are substantially stronger in their home plane, and no studies have been done on the nutritional content of their meat.

-Marigold Zauberer.

Perry idly reached down and scratched Eugene’s chitinous head. The murder-machine clicked its mandibles together and pushed back on his hand like a cat enjoying a good scritch.

“I noticed some reddish tint in your chitin there, Eugene.” Perry said, glancing down at him. “Did you incorporate some of Tyrannus’s MDNA already? Maybe you’ll live a thousand years, get magical powers, and be smarter than everyone by the end of it.”

Eugene purred and rubbed against his leg.

Perry knelt down and rubbed Eugene’s whole head, doggy-talking to him the whole time.

“You wanna eat some demons? You wanna go to Norgosh and eat some bad guys for daddy? You wanna spread like a plague across the multiverse? Do ya, ya absolute unit of a war crime?”

Eugene pranced in excitement and let out a guttural *HACK* Which was the closest thing the bioweapon had to a happy bark.

“Yeah, it’ll be fun,” Perry said, with a parting pat on Eugene’s head as he stood.

All Perry really needed to know now was how much stronger ‘substantially’ meant.

Perry was startled out of his musing as his phone let out the jarring emergency tone.

High Tide!

Public announcement: For your own safety, a curfew is in effect. Avoid going outside at night, stay inside city limits, and report anything out of the ordinary to the local police.

The text box blinked glaring yellow, searing into his eyes the importance of its message.

“Your timing is awful,” Perry muttered, glaring at the phone.

He was needed back home.

Perry called Tyrannus, when he heard the line connect, he didn’t bother waiting for Billy to speak.

“Hey, Tide’s in, wanna put a pin in the whole ‘Killing each other’ thing?”

‘Not particularly,’ Tyrannus said, the distinctive echo in his voice indicating the dragon was standing in Perry’s secret lair.

I’ve called people from there before. All he would need is a soundbite of my voice.

The dragon had probably used a sound modifier to make Perry think he was inside Perry’s lair, prompting him to rush to his lair and lead the dragon there.

Or he was actually there.

Perry tucked the phone in between his shoulder and ear while tearing off his clothes, looking for a bug the dragon could use to follow him back to his lair.

“What? You don’t trust me?” Perry said, locating the magical tracker and carefully cutting it out of his pants before setting it on fire.

‘It’s not about trust. You grow faster than I do, and a time of chaos like High Tide, will only make you grow faster. Asking me to give you time is tantamount to asking me to throw the game,” Tyrannus said.

“You could be my pet,” Perry said, taking off his shirt and inspecting the seams critically. “I treat Eugene pretty good, and you’re the only other thing that’ll live anywhere near as long as me.” Realizing he was being silly, Perry simply set all his clothes on fire before checking his scalp with a summoned mirror. No sense taking chances for the sake of comfort.

‘I could say the same about you, if you didn’t have those silly notions of being my equal.’

“Bitch we both know I’m your equal, that’s the whole reason you’re trying to kill me,” Perry said, pausing when he spotted a tracking spell on the back of his head. “How the fuck did you get a tracking spell on the back of my head!?”

‘It’s an installation that works on principles similar to your Idyllic Manifestation. It can create something out of nothing, at ranges that rival intercontinental ballistic missiles.’

“OOOH, that’s really fuckin’ cool, but I bet you can’t make much with it,” Perry said, wincing as he scoured the tracker off.

You’re lucky the contract prevents me from being more indiscriminate. A few micrograms of ingested radioactive material would be all I needed.

“I eat plutonium for breakfast.” Perry said, doing a quick check of the rest of his body before heading for his decoy lair.

Portal.exe

Perry’s decoy lair was set up exactly the same as his real one, allowing the sound to bounce around identically if listening real close was the game they were playing today, the chances were good this would fake out the dragon.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“I kind of need to be around Chicago for a while,” Perry said as he tiptoed through the place, acting like he was looking for Tyrannus. “Any way we could avoid the city being collateral damage while we do this?”

‘You could sign defense of the city over to me for the duration of High Tide,’ Tyrannus said. ‘I promise to give it back when I’m done.’

Perry could hear the smile on the dragon’s lips.

“Honestly, I might take you up on that,” Perry said, peeking around a corner. A moment later, his skin detected the faintest shift in pressure behind him as an assassin silently slipped into the fake lair, bypassing his security measures.

Maybe he’d successfully tricked Tyrannus, maybe this was just another mislead. Didn’t really matter either way.

Perry was pretty sure Tyrannus would protect Chicago if he was paid to do so. Maybe even if he didn’t pay him.

Chicago was an industrial behemoth shaking off the fog of a long sleep, and it was the only connection to an entire other planet, which would soon make it the richest city on Earth.

The dragon wouldn’t blow it up unless it was the only way he could kill Perry. So all Perry had to do to keep it safe was…not be there.

That’s frustrating.

“Hold on, I’m getting another call,” Perry said, tracking the assassin creeping up behind him as he switched conversations.

“Hey Nat, what’s up?”

‘We were hoping to get everyone together for the meeting for the first day of High Tide. That includes you, Perry.’

“Look, I want to participate, but I have this huge target on my back, and - hold on –“ Perry whipped out a Pernicious Prison and stapled the assassin to the wall before the invisible figure could stab him.

“Let me make it a group call.” Perry combined the two calls and switched to speakerphone as the rest of the assassination squad rushed forward.

There was a fraction of a second where Perry thought he might lose control of the situation when the speedster/Deathray combo showed up, but he was able to leverage his knowledge of the environment to disable the punk before he could shoot Perry in the back of the head.

It was close though.

“So, I asked Big T here if he’d be willing to stop the assassination attempts until High Tide, is over, and he refused. Anything you’d like to add, Big T?” Perry said, leaning against the cocooned forms of the assassination squad.

‘Natalie, I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but your husband-“

“Actually, we’re not-“

‘Shut up.’ Natalie’s voice cut both of them off. ‘I swear to God if you two don’t set aside this stupid little game of tag you’re both playing for ONE DAY, I’ll shove my boot so far up your ass you’ll be tasting the polish.”

‘…yes ma’am,’

“Yes ma’am,” Perry and Tyrannus echoed each other.

Heather’s voice came over the line: “She’s under a lot of pressure.”

“I need you here to give the final check of the defenses and, more importantly, flip the switch on the armor vats so our soldiers can keep the walls clear. Then you can get back to your little game of cat and mouse with Tyrannus.” Nat continued.

“Roger,” Perry said, saluting no one in particular.

A moment later Natalie hung up, leaving him and the dragon alone in the call.

‘You think maybe she’s upset about you not proposing?’ Tyrannus asked.

“Not you too,” Perry sighed, picking up the phone. “You want your assassins back or what?”

‘Of course I want them back. Do you have any idea how long it takes to train assassins? Also, you should consider getting that woman a ring, or I may not be the one that kills you.’

“I already told you, that’s not why she’s mad. I have literally asked her point blank, and she’s not the kind of girl who’ll say no when she means yes, alright? Why am I even talking about this with you!? We’re mortal enemies!” Perry shouted as he opened up portal and kicked the cocooned bodies through.

“I’ll give you twelve hours,” Tyrannus said as soon as the assassins hit the ground on his side.

“Alright, seeya later,” Perry said, hanging up.

After a quick decontamination procedure to rid himself of whatever tracking had managed to stick, Perry left his phone behind and went straight to his real Lair.

One major difference were the three bands sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the room under heavy shielding. Each of them was made out of the liquid light that Perry had inadvertently made by shooting Gorm with a laser.

Try as he might, recreating liquid light had been impossible, but he had figured out a way to slow it down even further, making it effectively a solid. He didn’t have enough of it to make anything big, nor did he think half a dozen expendable bullets would swing a major battle.

He had just enough to make three indestructible, weightless rings that faintly glowed.

Hey Nat, I made you three super fancy rings to enchant – no particular reason there’s three – This isn’t me proposing, this is just me thinking you’d like some new materials to work with. Totally. I just…wanted to make rings out of it, is all.

Perry groaned and ran his hand down his face before grabbing the three rings. They radiated a faint warmth, like the sun on a spring day.

They weren’t radioactive, Perry had already checked that.

He got dressed and pocketed the rings before heading over to Chicago.

On a whim, Perry teleported into the skies above Chicago, looking down on the city far below.

Three years could make a hell of a difference.

The walls rivaled Franklin city, wide enough for a marching band to parade down it with room to spare, and over seven stories tall.

There are diminishing returns on wall height versus effectiveness.

The city proper was dominated by massive buildings Perry had created with Idyllic Manifestation to increase the production of the city itself. Every bolt, seam and hinge in those factories would outlive the people working there, working each day to expand the borders of the city and support expansion both into Manita and into the plains surrounding them.

There were massive gun emplacements that shot heavy slugs the size of a man’s forearm, manned by androids constantly scanning the horizon for megafauna.

The light-armored units patrolled the streets, patrolling in groups of three for anything out of the ordinary, like giant wasps, or rodents of unusal intelligence.

There was literally no telling what could happen during High tide, when every living creature on the planet stood a good chance of becoming a world-ending threat.

The streets were shiny new asphalt, and the cars seamlessly slipped past each other at high speeds, thanks to the god of transport accepting bribes from basically everyone who lived there.

Here and there, Perry could make out a glimmer of the former city, whether that be the shape of the streets, the occasional stub of an overpass, or a rusting building yet to be replaced.

The meat packing plants were going at full steam, with skyscraper-sized pike being hauled out of the lake, filleted and put on freezer-trains to ship across the city itself and the inter-city train.

The troll side of the city was on the north side, with their own fishing plants supporting their ongoing population boom.

They still worshipped Gna’kis, carving the symbol of the fledgling demon lord on their foreheads to grant themselves intelligence and power over technology. Their god, however, understood the need for coexistence with humans, and had added that to their doctrine…Because Perry told her to.

Their warriors patrolled the wall by themselves. The sixteen-foot tall troll soldiers wore high-tech nanotube computing armor with inbuilt offensive options, covering only their vitals, fused to their very skin. They each bore a huge satchel of dried meat attached to their hip, roughly the size of two grown men.

When the satchel was empty, the Troll soldier would be relieved. It worked well enough. Perry had also invented some technology that would mess with a troll’s inner ear, making them feel like they were being held upside down. it helped calm down some incidents before they got out of hand.

Perry’s eyes narrowed in thought at the sight of the troll warriors. Each one of them was roughly equivalent to a human Bruiser watching the walls, and there were no less than a thousand of them, backed up by gun emplacements and androids in flying suits of armor of Perry’s design.

Chicago might actually be okay without me.

Perry flew down to the central tower, where Natalie and Heather were waiting along with the rest of the Planning committee.

“Sorry about yelling,” Nat said, blushing hard and staring at the ground as Perry arrived.

“I figure you’d only yell if it was important,” Perry said, tousling her hair. “So what’s the situation?”

“We’ve got ants.” Nat said, motioning to the holographic map display in the center of the room, displaying the city, with an ominous red blotch dominating the northwest exterior.

“…Shit.”