5.18
CONTENT WARNING: This update contains vivid descriptions of internal injuries.
It’s dark. Austin blinks, not even sure his eyes are still working. Nothing changes. Same darkness, whether they’re open or shut. He feels around himself with a hand, trying to visualize what the tunnel looks like post-collapse. Definitely much smaller. There’s not much wiggle room on either side of him, just about an arm’s width of space.
The mine car tracks are digging into his back. Austin tries to wiggle into a more comfortable position, but lets out a low moan instead, as a stabbing pain shoots through his chest. Something heavy is holding him down - he remembers, briefly, the sight of the rock dropping onto him. Austin tries to take a deep breath, and is rewarded with another jolt of pain.
“Austin?” Richard asks, from somewhere in the darkness. “Austin, thank God -”
“Don’t thank God yet,” Austin says, his voice barely rising above a whisper. Every word is an effort, another shock shooting through his chest. “I think I punctured a lung.”
“It’s okay,” Richard says. There’s a forced optimism in his voice, but underneath of it, he sounds frantic, closer to panic than Austin has ever heard him before. The tone a parent has when they don’t want to reveal to their child how bad a situation is really turning out to be.
Austin coughs, and moans again, squeezing his eyes shut as if it will block out the pain. “It’s not. I’m stuck.”
“I’ll go and get Otter,” Richard says. “He’s back at the apartment. He can call an ambulance - you’ll be out of here in no time.”
Austin shakes his head, though he’s not sure if Richard can see it. “I’ll be dead before they get here. Y-” He wheezes a little. “You know it. I know it. Don’t sugarcoat.”
Richard doesn’t say anything to that, though Austin can still hear him breathing unevenly nearby. Austin opens his eyes to try and see exactly where, and his vision suddenly floods with fluorescent white, artificial light filling up the half-collapsed cavern. The flashlight beam.
“Well,” Naberius says from above. It’s almost hard to tell it’s him - his voice is much more cheerful than before, almost pleased. “This certainly is a situation you’ve gotten yourself in, isn’t it?”
Austin blinks, seeing spots on the insides of his eyelids. His eyes water as he opens them, trying to adjust to the newly well-lit environment. Out of habit, Austin tries to prop himself up on his elbows, but catches himself just in time to avoid any more pain from whatever’s gone wrong in his chest. He’s having a bit more trouble breathing than he was before - it’s easier to take shallow gasps, now, and he can’t tell if it’s because of his injury or because the air in the tunnel is already running out.
“You could’ve helped,” he says to Naberius.
Naberius crouches down for a better look at him, grinning. A chill runs down Austin’s spine. The grin is unmistakably the expression of a predator - lips pulled back to expose teeth that look far sharper than any human’s should rightfully be, eyes narrowed in a mixture of contempt and mirth.
“I’m helping now,” Naberius says.
“Are you?”
“You’re dying,” Naberius says, still crouching, still grinning. Very gently, he reaches down and brushes a piece of sweat-soaked hair out of Austin’s face. “I can set you right again, if you agree to enter into a pact with me.”
“Go to Hell,” Austin snaps, forgetting momentarily that a stronger insult might be called for.
Naberius cocks his head to one side. “Oh?”
“I’ve seen how you - you demons deal with humans.” Austin coughs again, his throat dry, and pounds a fist against the ground to distract himself from the pain in his lungs. “I don’t - I’m not doing blood sacrifices.”
“Blood sacrifices?” Naberius laughs as though this is the funniest joke he’s heard in a long, long time. “You’re mistaken. Don’t conflate Crocell’s behavior with the way other high-class demons conduct themselves. Blood sacrifices are for summoning a demon, not maintaining your pact with them.” He pauses, pursing his lips. “Well, in most cases.”
Austin scowls. “Explain maintaining.”
“A pact is a mutual agreement between human and demon,” Naberius says. “Give-and-take. I give you a favor, like returning you to health, and you do a favor for me in return.”
“What if I don’t like the favor?”
Another grin splits Naberius’s face. “Then that’s just too bad, isn’t it?”
“Austin,” Richard says, his tone lifted out of panic into dead seriousness. “Don’t do it. Demons aren’t - they don’t tell the truth, about hardly anything. And they don’t make deals to benefit humans. You know this.”
Well, what choice do I have? Austin thinks, but doesn’t say. He closes his eyes again - there’s a throbbing in his head from when the revenant pushed him back into the mine car tracks, and it’s getting too annoying to ignore. His injured shoulder, too, is a consistent knot of pain. If I stay here and wait for help to come, I’ll die. Plain and simple. We were too lucky the first time, when Richard managed to get Landis and Monty and everyone here just in the nick. And, yeah, I did manage to kill the revenant, but…
Otter’s face comes, unbidden, to his mind’s eye, and a pit opens in Austin’s stomach. Crap. He was so worried I was going to die here, and I was an ass about it. He was upset, and I didn’t listen to him, even when I kept getting the feeling like something horrible was going to happen here. Like the same feeling I had the night Mac died. And Landis has already lost so many friends, I don’t know if -
Austin opens his eyes. “How big a favor are we talking?”
“Austin,” Richard says warningly.
“Well,” Naberius says, his grin stretching even wider, “something comparatively small, to bringing you back from the brink of death.”
“How big.”
Naberius shrugs. “Not big. We consider pacts with humans a status symbol, you know, and it would be…ah, advantageous to my specific social situation, to be able to show one off.”
“This,” Richard says, “is a bad idea.”
“I don’t get it,” Austin says, through gritted teeth. He coughs again, and something warm and wet comes up out of his throat, drooling out from between his lips. He touches his fingers to his chin, and doesn’t have to look at them to know they’re coated in blood.
“He’s saying he wants to take you to Hell with him,” Richard explains flatly. Naberius says nothing, which Austin takes as confirmation.
Well…how bad can hell be? he asks himself, seriously. Probably not any worse than dying slowly underneath of a rock. Maybe even better.
“Not…forever, though,” he says, watching Naberius’s face carefully, for signs of a lie. “Right?”
“Of course not,” Naberius says. He looks offended that Austin would even suggest it. “Only a few days, then we’ll be out of one another’s hair forever, unless you choose to summon me for another favor.”
“And I stay alive, as long as the -”
Austin finds himself nearly choking on his words, desperate for air, and has to gesture instead, hoping Naberius gets the gist of it. The demon watches him closely.
“As long as the contract is still intact?”
Austin nods. The inside of his mouth tastes overwhelmingly of pennies.
“That is how it works, yes.” Naberius cocks his head to the other side. His eyes are dark and unreadable, scrutinizing Austin, boring through him. “You’d better decide soon.”
“I’ll do it.” Austin pushes the words out through a throat thick with blood. There’s a blackness lingering around the edges of his vision that he can’t blink away.
“This is a mistake,” Richard says.
“It’s my only option,” Austin snaps, bubbles of blood and spit popping at the corners of his mouth.
“There are other options,” Richard says, his voice just as irate, the panic coming back full force now. “There have to be.”
“Do you even want me to live?” Austin asks, raising his voice as much as he can, and regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth.
Richard says nothing.
“Excellent,” Naberius says, sounding more pleased than ever.
Setting the flashlight on the ground, Naberius flicks his wrist, and a scroll unfolds from his free hand in an instant. Austin’s mind crazily conjures up the image of a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve, and he laughs apropos of nothing. Naberius doesn’t seem to notice. He reaches down and dips his pinky finger into the blood pooled around Austin’s mouth, using it to draw something - a sigil, Austin supposes - on the bottom of the scroll. It takes longer than Austin was expecting. Naberius is precise and exact, running his fingers over Austin’s chin twice more before finishing his signature.
“There,” he says, licking the excess blood off his finger. He shifts, and dangles the scroll over Austin, letting the bottom edge come to rest against Austin’s collarbone. “Your turn.”
“Sorry, Dad,” Austin mutters. He sticks his fingers in his mouth, coating them in his own, sticky blood, and starts to laboriously scrawl his name next to Naberius’s.