6.15
When the kitchen falls silent again, it feels like half a day has passed, but Landis checks the clock on the oven and realizes that, somehow, it’s only been an hour. Still, a bone-deep exhaustion is seeping through his body, like he’s just run a marathon instead of helping two other people tell bits and pieces of a story. Otter and Walker look just as tired, leaning against the kitchen counters, watching Abyss for any kind of reaction.
Abyss has been perfectly stoic this whole time, occasionally humming or nodding to show that they’re still actively listening. Now that the story’s over, they tap a finger against their lips, looking lost in thought.
“I’ve never heard of a demon dying after being forcibly exorcised,” they say slowly, mostly to themself. “Though perhaps Crocell’s weakened state made them more vulnerable, especially if they weren’t expecting to be pushed out. And their lack of true physical form after being bound to the lake for so long…” they look up at the humans. “Your story sounds implausible.”
“We’re not lying,” Otter says, offended.
“I didn’t say you were,” Abyss corrects him. “I said it’s implausible. I believe what you say you observed but…you should all consider yourselves very lucky to be alive.”
I’ll consider myself lucky once we get Austin back in one piece, Landis thinks dryly. He can read the same thought plainly on Otter’s face. Walker, however, is harder to read, his mouth set in a carefully neutral line as he stares at Abyss.
“Are you going to take us to Hell now?” he asks abruptly.
Abyss’s lips curl into a smile. “Yes, I suppose I’d better.”
The kitchen suddenly erupts with a flash of light that whites out the whole room, searing itself into Landis’s eyelids as he squeezes them shut. He can feel the floor tiles shaking again, clattering underneath his feet, and someone - Otter? - grabs tightly onto his arm, nearly sending them both to the ground. The smell of sulfur fills his lungs, choking him. Landis coughs violently, so hard it hurts his chest, and then, abruptly, it all stops.
Landis opens his eyes, and finds himself in the biggest hallway he’s ever seen. The floor is shiny, polished wooden panels, the ceilings high and arching, the walls lined with paintings and pedestals set up to display pieces of pottery. Otter is next to him, still squeezing his arm, and Walker is sprawled on the ground, swearing under his breath as he gets to his feet. Abyss is standing a few steps away, looking distinctly amused, their arms folded over their chest.
“Welcome to my estate,” they say. They reach inside their jacket once again to check their pocketwatch, frowning a little as they replace it. “It’s not quite tomorrow, unfortunately, so you’ll all have a bit of downtime before Austin’s fight. I’ll see about having some rooms made up for you, in case you want to sleep…and maybe some dinner as well. For now,” they say, their tone shifting rapidly towards serious, “stay here, and do try not to touch anything.”
With that, Abyss vanishes again, in a small puff of smoke, leaving Landis, Otter, and Walker alone in the hallway. Landis detaches himself from Otter and starts to walk, examining the artwork that flanks the hall proper. He doesn’t know much about art, but the gold frames the paintings are in look ancient and expensive. The pottery, too, looks very old. Though maybe it makes sense for an immortal demon to have accumulated such old decorations. Or maybe it doesn’t - Landis isn’t exactly sure of Abyss’s age at all.
“So this is Hell,” Otter says. He sounds a little dazed, either from the rocky trip or because he never thought he would have to confront irrefutable proof of an afterlife. Landis can sympathize on both accounts, really.
“Yeah, I was expecting more fire and brimstone,” Walker says, “not this Victorian Era mansion crap. Hey, you think there’s a bathroom around here somewhere?”
“I think ‘don’t touch anything’ might have extended to ‘don’t wander off’,” Landis remarks dryly. Plus, if we get lost, who knows what we might end up running into. Yeah, it looks like a cozy mansion, but we’re still in Hell.
Walker waves a hand dismissively. “Whatever. If they didn’t want us to snoop, they should have given us a chaperone. Come on.”
He sets off down the hall in quick, long strides, looking for all the world like he knows exactly where he’s going.
“Should we go after him?” Otter asks, sounding like he could really go either way. Landis shrugs.
“Might as well.”
They catch up with Walker in a spacious sitting room with a loose arrangement of couches and chairs that look like they all straddle the thin line between plush and painfully uncomfortable. Walker is examining the empty fireplace and the taxidermied shark mounted on the wall above it, his back to Otter and Landis.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, “about how we’re going to get Austin out of the whole death match thing.”
Landis is tongue-tied. He’d assumed they just wouldn’t have this conversation at all, even now that they’d been graced with the time to do it. Maybe Walker has a better plan than “let Austin fight, and hope for the best”. Or is that too much to ask of him?
“I don’t think anything we do will actually stop the fight from happening,” Walker says, immediately crushing Landis’s hopes, “and we’re not gonna just grab Austin and run, because then we’d have a hundred demons on our tail, and no way of getting back home. Plus, Austin wouldn’t be fulfilling his contractual obligation.”
“And that’s bad?” Otter asks.
Walker nods emphatically. “I don’t remember a lot of what the DPR teaches about it, but I’m pretty sure that if a human tries to duck their part of the contract, or go back on it after they’ve done whatever favor their demon asked for, they get killed somehow.”
So kidnapping Austin would mean a 100% chance of him dying, as opposed to the 50% chance that he dies in the fight. Landis fiddles with the hem of his shirt, feeling even more helpless than before. Probably more than a 50% chance that he dies in the fight, really. He’s never even killed anyone before. Well, anyone who wasn’t a monster. I don’t know that he could kill a human being, even if they were trying to kill him, too.
“What happens when a demon goes back on the contract?” Otter asks. “Or tries to slip out on it, or whatever.”
“Hell if I remember. You’d have to ask Abyss or someone.” Walker shrugs.
“So…there’s nothing we can do, then,” Landis says, his throat tight around the words. “I mean, if Austin dies in the fight…that’s it, right? He’s gone.”
“We’ll think of something,” Walker says.
“We only have tonight to think of something!” Landis raises his voice. He feels his fingers curl up, his hands tensing into fists at his sides. “And we’ve been talking in circles around it, but it seems to me that the only way for one of us to save Austin is to -”
He snaps his teeth shut over the last part of the sentence, already feeling the words buzzing around his skull, echoing, as he preserves them. His breath hitches a little. It’s a stupid idea. You know how stupid it is. And if it doesn’t work, for any of the hundred reasons it wouldn’t work, then you’re back to square one. But if it did work…
“Is to what?” Otter asks, his eyes suddenly bright and attentive, searching Landis’s face for any clue of what he might mean.
Landis opens his mouth to lie, but is mercifully cut off by the sound of someone clearing their throat from the doorway. The three humans all turn to find Abyss, standing just inside the sitting room, their face disappointed but not quite angry.
“Let me show you to your rooms,” Abyss says, effectively ending the conversation, and begins to walk off with the obvious expectation that the humans will follow. Landis does so quickly, hurrying along before either Otter or Walker can question him further, his inkling of an idea settling behind his ribs and hammering at him alongside his pulse.