Ch 46 – Everyone needs time to get their thoughts in order, even cute demons. No no, I mean other demons, not me!

The demon and I had a long discussion together, one that went back and forth for hours before I was finally willing to let her say her piece. She seemed different from the last time she tried to peddle me her nonsense, despite the anger that had been present in her voice at the beginning. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, though it came as a surprise that she actually gave me much to ponder.

It wasn’t that I was truly considering her offer. The idea of willingly stepping through a portal into the Under was absurd. But I couldn’t help but find it strange that she seemed to be giving me a choice in the matter at all.

Opening a portal between realms was no simple matter, and I doubted that was any different for her than it was for those of our realm. If she wanted me to step into the Under, why not try to force me through? I suspected that it had to be a limitation of the ritual, or at least their knowledge of it. So far as I knew, humans had little idea of how the summoning ritual truly functioned. The information on where it originated from was minimal at best, and experimenting with it tended to be quite literally the last mistake a person made. Chances were, it was made by some mad genius mostly forgotten to history, and we were using the small portion that was still remembered.

The question then became: was it possible that no being could be forcibly pulled through a portal between the realms? Or at the very least, was it possible that neither human or demon knew how to do so?

The more I considered it, the more it made sense. The demon had suggested that she and her demonic comrades had decided to give me a choice in the matter. But I didn’t buy that. Either she was lying and this was some attempt to ease my mind when the portal brought me through “accidentally,” or this was simply a poorly done attempt at subterfuge. I could very well imagine a demon trying to get me to go through on my own due to a restriction from the ritual.

The first possibility made little sense in my mind. I could think of little benefit with her trying to convince me that my being pulled through the portal was some fluke or accident. In no reality was I that naive. Which left the second as the only real option.

But then, why go through the effort of trying to summon me to their realm at all? Breaking through the veil between realms was a costly, mana-intensive endeavor, and the demon had to know there was little chance of me going through it. It was a lot of effort to get a human-turned-succubus of little to no importance to maybe step into the Under.

I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something that I was missing—some bit of information that she knew which I didn’t.

The alternative seemed unthinkable: that the demon, beyond all fathomable expectations, was for some reason being honest. That she was actually giving me a choice. That when she claimed her and her kind were doing this in some effort to help me, she truly meant it.

The demon, Flauri’el, as she called herself, was insistent that I wasn’t safe here in this realm. It was something I actually agreed with her on, though which I felt was rather obvious. Being a demon, either at the academy or at my father’s estate, was a recipe for misery and disaster. If I didn’t get this fixed, I’d be well and truly fucked—and not in a way I’d like. My father wouldn’t allow such a heavy stain on our family name to exist for long.

But I found the idea that I would be safer in the Under to be dubious at best. Sure, there were other succubi there, ones who presumably survived well enough. That didn’t mean their realm was by any means safer for me than this one. Humans as a whole knew little about it, but we knew plenty enough about demons.

I hated that her seemingly honest words had somehow gotten me second guessing myself. Though eventually, I had to conclude that perhaps that was the point.

It was tempting to find a way to block the ritual entirely, but that would take some amount of research. Given that I was now following Lilis everywhere she went, that would prove difficult without informing her of the tagalong in my head.

It was unfortunate that I didn’t have long to ponder what to do about Flauri’el’s offer before a much more immediate problem arrived two days after my and Lilis’s trip beneath the school. After having given Healer Aevn the final ingredient she needed for the potion, the two of us had taken to keeping our heads down as we patiently waited for it to be finished. Annoyingly, the healer refused to give a solid answer on how long it would take. Then we went to Lilis’s first class of the day.

“Melkar has summoned a new demon?” my roommate asked, leaning across the table.

Galia gave her a small nod, her expression never shifting from her normal calm, stoic demeanor. “Indeed. A rather powerful looking one, I might add. I’d be careful. It’s quite obvious what he’s after, after all.” Her flat gaze looked pointedly over toward me.

Class was close to beginning, and the three of us were chatting quietly as we waited for the teacher to finish organizing his notes. It was looking to be another boring one, which hopefully meant I would have plenty of time to consider this new development.

“We should have expected this, I suppose,” Lilis lamented.

Really, I should have somehow dealt with Melkar back when we had him at our mercy. Though I questioned how far I could have gone with Lilis there. Not to mention my own internal misgivings. Still, putting him out of commission for at least a few days would have been ideal. It was too late to do anything about it now, though.

“It’s to be expected,” I muttered with a nonchalant shrug.

“Can we expect to have your assistance going forward?” my roommate pointedly asked Galia.

“Of course. What are friends for?” The blonde gave her a small smile.

As class started, I began plotting just what to do about this new development.

The next day came, and Healer Aevn was still refusing to give a direct answer on when my potion would be ready. It was frustrating beyond belief, and I suspected she was deliberately putting it off in order to get more experimentation out of my blood. As I couldn’t rely on Lilis to provide enough of her own, going to the healer had become an unfortunate daily routine. One which I hated. When I tried to pin the annoying healer down into giving me something more definitive, all she would tell me was “in a week or so,” while waving her hand. I was tempted to throw my hands up and be done with her on the matter. Part of me expected she’d already completed it, but there was little I could do about it except glare at the rancid woman. Whatever the case, I hoped she would hand it over before my father arrived.

In the meantime, I needed to focus on the Melkar dilemma. I was sticking close to Lilis and her friends, not going anywhere except back and forth with them to class. It provided little opportunity for him to try something. But that wouldn’t deter him for long. With this new, presumably stronger demon at his side, he was bound to become bolder. The first step was getting Lilis on my side.

“No,” Lilis said, shooting me a glare.

I was just changing into something more comfortable for bed when I’d posed my vague plan for dealing with him to her.

I blinked, pulling the loose shirt over my head. “No? What do you mean no?”

“I mean exactly what I said. We need to be laying low, Ruby, not getting into more trouble. So long as Melkar has no easy way to get to you, he and his demon can’t act. At least not within the more common areas of the school.”

How absurd.

My arms crossed beneath my chest. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s naive and you should know that. Melkar will act. With each passing day, it only becomes more and more of a certainty. The obvious play is to do a preemptive attack of our own before they’re able to put their own scheme into action.”

“Do you really think that running toward danger is the right call here? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t prepare for another incident, but that is quite a bit far and removed from instigating one.”

“If our encounter below the school is anything to go by, Melkar will find the right opportunity to attack us. Allowing it to happen on his terms is a mistake, Lilis.”

Why did she always have to argue with me on these things? I’d have thought we had an accord with each other. Couldn’t she see that waiting around doing nothing was the same as allowing him to determine the playing field, and ultimately, the outcome?

“Yes, and your previous scheme, whatever it was, worked so well didn’t it? When you ran off to cause mischief all on your lonesome. Wasn’t that what started this whole problem in the first place?”

“No,” I hissed. “It wasn’t. I was merely trying to gather information, and ideally get what I needed without any sort of altercation with him. Melkar’s actions afterward had nothing to do with that.”

I declared it with confidence, but in truth, I didn’t know for sure how it might have impacted what came after. What I was sure of, however, was that Melkar wanted me regardless. Presumably both to rub it in my own face as well as my family’s.

Lilis gave me glare. “My answer is still no. I’ll work on getting some more protective enchantments from my family for us and tell the provost about Melkar’s actions. But I won’t be gallivanting throughout the school looking for trouble, and neither will you.”

By the end of it, I was fuming, but it was clear Lilis had no plan to help. Stomping away toward the bathroom and slamming the door shut, I did my best to cool my head as I considered what to do next. It was tempting to do as she suggested and try to wait things out. Particularly since going and doing anything without her would be tricky to say the least. I knew that would be foolish, however. If I wanted any peace, I needed to show Melkar that he couldn’t touch me once and for all. That meant getting rid of his demon and putting him in his place before he put his own scheme into work.

It always came down to this, didn’t it? I had to handle this myself or it wouldn’t get handled. I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it. For some reason the thought left a throbbing pain in my chest. Though at least I wasn’t just doing this for myself. This time it was for both our sakes.

I stared at the bathroom door, wondering how I could achieve this under Lilis’s nose. It would be especially hard now that we knew the looming danger had increased; Lilis would insist on keeping me at her side at all times.

I stepped out of the bathroom, back into the small indoor garden that counted as her room, and took a heavy breath.

“Alright, we’ll do this your way,” I said. “But when things go wrong, I hope you’ll have some kind of backup planned.”

The lie left a vile taste in my mouth.