Vol II, Ch 56 – Yep, and there’s the headache.

I did not approach the market area from the same place I left it. Instead, the street I was on came to a sudden end, dropping off a several-meter cliff to where the wide market street sat below, lightly shrouded in the fog that seemed to cling to the city. Ahead of me the sun rose, streaks of red and orange spreading across the purple-blue sky. It only made the strange color stand out that much more.

The street end was lined with boards of an old, pale wood and stretched out both directions along the edge of the much smaller cliff down toward the market, rather like a long dock or balcony that sat on the ground. Clumps of moss and small ferns grew on and between the wood, as though threatening to overtake it. The strange “balcony” had no railing, unless one counted the long pipe of metal sticking up just off the ground along the edge.

From the opposite side, which was a mirror to this one, a winged demon took to the air, gliding across the wide gap of the market street below. They landed just a couple of meters away from me, taloned feet gripping the “pipe” that I was realizing wasn’t a pipe at all. It was more like a curved bar of metal for landing. The demon passed me by with barely a glance, to my relief.

Looking across from where they’d flown, I realized that the street did continue, if you were able to fly or hop across the distance. It seemed they couldn’t be bothered to build a bridge when those who lived here could either fly or just take another route.

Stepping up onto the landing platform to my left, I spotted a massive plateau with a lone waterfall. Towering trees came right up to the edge of what looked like a mesa, and from what little I could see, I suspected the city hugged around the bottom. Despite its sheer cliff edge, a beautiful carpet of green hugged much of the pale white rock. I stared for a long moment, as the foreignness of everything around me finally hit in full. The mesa, the strangely stacked buildings within an eerie city, the demons of so many shapes and sizes, and even the otherworldly colored sky.

For the first time in a long time, I felt truly lost. Out of my depth.

Alone.

How was I supposed to survive in a place like this, a place I knew nothing about?

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Just one step at a time, Ruby. Then I made my way to the massive tree standing to my right, its width wider than my arms span. Around it was a series of wooden steps leading down to the area below, steps that had somehow been there so long that the tree had partially swallowed them.

I made my way down them carefully, one hand pressing against the tree as my other gripped tightly around the cloak. It reminded me too much of the time I’d needed to use Professor Kheln’s cape to cover my modesty, back when I’d just transformed and had nothing to wear. My tail kept rubbing against the rough, abrasive fabric, only increasing my agitation.

For so early in the morning, the market was surprisingly lively. Though perhaps that was normal for humans and demons alike. The sounds that filled the air were strange and foreign to my ears, both the language and the various noises of the city. Street vendors yelled to those passing by, and demons of numerous shapes and sizes jogged, scurried, and glided about. I was hesitant to get too close to any of them, but that was much easier said than done. The fog only made things worse. It seemed to collect down in the lower street, clinging around the towering buildings, and the many red lanterns cast most things in a sinister crimson light. It brought to mind the question of how a city of demons like this could possibly function. How were they not constantly clawing at each other throats? Perhaps something or someone was keeping them in line. A demon strong enough to control the rest. Just the thought made me want to shudder.

Most demons within the market street seemed by themselves, or perhaps with one other. Though the ones who were more martially equipped tended to move in groups of four or five. At first, I assumed them to be guards of some kind, but the diversity of outfits and uniforms made me uncertain. Either way, I avoided them especially as I slowly moved down the street, eyeing the shops and vendors that I passed.

The trouble with blood was that it would, by necessity, be in a container of some kind, and there was no guarantee that container would be some variety of transparent glass. I also couldn’t understand a word of the language they used, and judging by my encounters thus far, they couldn’t understand me either. The demons summoned to our realm did know Thelsian, however, which meant that at least some of their kind could speak it. Did that extend only to demons who practiced summoning, whatever that involved? If I couldn’t find an obvious container of blood, then perhaps I could ask around, and if I was really lucky, I might find someone familiar with the Thelsian language.

Because I sure as Under and Above couldn’t understand the shop signs or banners one bit.

The street curved along with the short canyon it sat within, many of the shops being part of the light, chalk-colored stone. A few looked as though they struggled with an ever-expanding green—a carpet of moss, ferns and other plants threatening to engulf the massive wood and stone buildings. Much like elsewhere, other buildings stood on top of each other, with bridges and crossings forming what was almost its own street above. All of it stained by the scarlet glow of lanterns.

The doors and passages were all much larger than I was used to, made for figures a fair bit taller and wider than the typical human. And the buildings themselves were sized much the same. It was an oddity that I’d noticed briefly when traveling through the alleys prior, but here it was that much more pronounced.

It made quite a lot more sense now that I could compare it to the demons themselves, some of them being twice my height, with others being at heights I was a bit more used to. It felt like I’d shrunk. I’d forgotten what it had felt like to be so small in a world of towering giants, as I’d been when I was younger. It was a strange and rather tainted nostalgia. A time when you would literally and metaphorically look up to the adults around you, as though they were beings who knew everything and could do anything.

Walking down the street, feeling lost, alone, out of place, as I was, left me with a strange sense of vulnerability that I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before. Like a missing child, unable and incapable of finding my way home in a world that was much too vast and incomprehensible.

I immediately rejected the comparison. I would survive and do so as I always did—with my head held high.

A large, muscular ogre was tossed through the doorway of a building just ahead of me, and my breath caught in my chest. His face was bloodied, and he struggled to pick himself up off the cobbled street, spitting blood from his mouth. A group of armored demons laughed and spoke what I assumed were several taunts. I fought against the urge to panic—to run the other way. They weren’t after me. They weren’t even paying attention to me.

As I stared down at him, I could feel the heavy anger rolling off the ogre, filling the air around me like a dark, sticky oil. Not in the sense that I could tell he looked angry, but in a much more literal way—like a sixth sense I’d never felt before.

A wave of dizziness flooded my head, and the ground below began to tilt. I stumbled, barely catching my footing just as the world came Alive.

Anger. Annoyance. Boredom. Despair. Elation.

What seemed like hundreds of different emotions flooded my mind, smacking into me like a brick to the skull, before filling my head with an overwhelming and all-consuming storm. They fought for dominance, fought to devour me.

I wasn’t feeling them in the normal sense. They weren’t my own. It was more like I could taste them in the air, if taste was a foreign sense that I’d never felt before. My butt thumped against the ground as the world came up to greet me, still spinning. Pain pierced through my skull, as though it were splitting open with an axe buried within. I gripped the sides of my head, and my eyes squeezed shut.

What was this? Some kind of mental attack?

I wanted to get up. To escape. To run away. Instead, my body began to shake. The foreign emotions battered my mind, threatening to pulverize it into the mud. No, no, I don’t want to die, I can’t die, not like this! The sound of a desperate whimper met my ears, one from my own lips.

Then a single emotion within the crowd grew stronger, pushing back the others as it expanded. I didn’t recognize it at first, unused to sensing them all in such a strange way.

Concern.

I sucked in a shuddering breath. The singular emotion was still powerful, but nowhere near as volatile or overwhelming as the horde of others had been. I dared to open my eyes.

Approaching me was a humanoid demon with large, rounded eyes and two antennae sticking up from a wild mane of autumn-orange hair. Wrapped around them was what looked like a strangely patterned coat, with brown and gray coloring. The pattern curved and swirled like the knots of a split log, surrounding an ominous eye. Her coat shifted as she reached me, opening up to reveal four arms, and a black dress. Then I realized it wasn’t a coat at all. They were wings, four of them from what I could tell that poked out from her back. Shaped like those of a butterfly or… a moth. It explained the strange mane of hair that covered her head and around her neck like a furred scarf. As well as the antennae and extra arms.

Yet another demon that I’d never heard of before. And she was nearing me.

She wasn’t the tallest of demons, but she was still quite a bit taller than me. By several feet, were I to guess. Then she spoke in that strange demonic language, her voice airy in a way no human’s could be. Her head tilted as she finished.

While I’d stared, my headache had stopped, and the emotion-sense had waned. Even her concern, once strong and near overpowering, was now nothing more than a fading whisper. In its place was a hunger strong enough to make my gut cramp. I sucked in a breath and my claws dug into the ratty cloak wrapped around me. The fangs in my mouth began to ache worse than they’d ever done before. I wasn’t as dizzy as I’d been moments earlier, but my head still felt light, disoriented.

The demon spoke again, re-grabbing my attention. I mumbled something about not being able to understand her. Then she bent forward over me, reaching out a hand. I stared at the long, slender arm of the bug-like demon, noting its odd shape.

Her light-gray skin felt cool to the touch, soft but with a hard layer just underneath. More like a shell than bone. I’d reached out and met her grasp without even realizing. With a firm grip around my arm, she pulled me up to my feet, two of her other arms wrapping around my back to keep me from stumbling.

Then, before I could even put together what I was doing, I leaned forward and my teeth sunk into her forearm. The outer shell held much more resistance than human skin and muscle, but did not ultimately stop my fangs from piercing through it. Blood poured into my mouth. It tasted like the heavens. A divine wine made from the blood of the gods themselves.

I drank and drank until my stomach filled to bursting, the fullest I’d ever felt since my transformation. Pure euphoria flooded my head.

As my lips finally left her arm, I fell forward, her arms catching me as my face crashed against her. My eyes blinked open to see her staring down at me. She looked shocked, but with how wide her eyes were naturally, I couldn’t guess whether she really was or not. One of her hands patted my back, and she said something again, not that I could understand her.

I rubbed my face against her dress, into what I assumed was her belly area. I dreamed of staying like this, feeling this unfamiliar euphoria forever. But it eventually began to fade, clarity once again returning to my mind.

It took me several seconds before I stumbled back, my eyes blinking as I took back my balance. I looked up at the demon in horror, realizing what I’d just done. My feet stepped back, and I prepared to run. Then a hand gripped tightly around my arm.

Those wide eyes narrowed slightly, as she spoke again, this time with a clear tone of agitation.

“Let me go!” I yelled, failing to yank my arm from her grasp.

The demon grumbled something and began pulling me in the opposite direction, intent on taking me somewhere, I assumed. I didn’t want to find out where.

As hard as I could, I stomped on her foot, causing her to release me. I barely caught the look of surprise in her eyes as I turned and ran.

Was I insane?! Why did I do that?

I couldn’t believe that I’d drunk the blood of some random demon, no matter how thirsty I’d been. Not only had I left myself completely vulnerable within her grasp, there was no telling what level of crime something like that might be. I was probably in a lot of trouble.

Though much to my luck, the demon didn’t follow me, and there were no shouts or sounds of a chase to my back. I could only hope I’d somehow gotten away with it. The one upside was that I was at least well beyond sated now. Hopefully it meant I’d have the time to gain my bearings in the new world. Assuming that there wasn’t already a search for me forming.

I slowed to a walk at the sound of combat up ahead. In front of me, the market widened, the road curving around both sides of some large circular area. My curiosity got the better of me and I approached. The crowd thickened, and I could hear shouts and a chorus of cheers. Finding an opening between a few less-intimidating demons, I squeezed around them and met a large circle of railing.

Before me was a large open arena set into the ground, with tiered seating curving around it. Two large demons fought in the center, heavy blades colliding in fierce competition. I chewed on my lip in thought.

Hopefully this would serve as a good spot to hide for a few minutes.