#labs chapter

One of the first things I did when I was thrown back in time was knock a rampaging Satan unconscious. It’s been a while since then, and I’m still not entirely sure whether or not I feel guilty about it.

It stopped him from hurting anybody, and I don’t regret that, but… I guess it gnaws at my sense of fair play a bit. He had no idea what was coming. Besides, you don’t get a second chance at first impressions, and I had made a stinker of a first impression on Satan.

Regardless, what’s done is done, so during my first walk through the Devildom with the brothers in this new era, Beelzebub marched with an unconscious Satan slung unceremoniously over his shoulder.

I remember getting a decent look at him as he dangled there, bouncing gently off Beel’s back. It’s always night in the Devildom, so the artificial street lights there are second to none, but they still cast an eerie pall over his face, and the contours of his face formed shadows that were unusually sharp and unhealthy-looking. He was grinding his teeth just about the whole time too, and even unconscious, his hands were balled into fists. I tried to remember if the Satan back when I'm from did either of those things. I didn’t think so.

Of course, I wasn’t thinking too hard about any of that as I walked to the House of Lamentation with Diavolo and the boys. I was mostly preoccupied with my sudden and unexpected displacement in time. I was relieved when I met up with Solomon at the gates to the manor. We discussed my situation, and I spent the next few days trying to come to terms with what had happened to me, all while Diavolo impulsively and zealously recruited me to help found his shiny new academy.

So when I entered the House of Lamentation a few days later and felt a pair of eyes boring into me, and when I looked and saw Satan for the first time since the incident, the fact that I'd recently delivered him a psychic slam so hard that he lost consciousness didn't even register. He stood on the stairs above me in the entryway wearing a grim, tight-lipped expression, his tail curled around his right leg, and his eyes had never looked more cat-like.

“Good morning,” I called out to him after an awkward silence.

“Don’t you have something you want to say to me?” Satan folded his arms, tapping his finger on his bicep impatiently.

I stared stupidly at him for a few seconds, completely mystified.

“Do I?”

That seemed to annoy him. I could feel chilly energy begin to swirl around him as he leaned over the bannister, gripping it with white knuckles.

“How stupid are you?” he growled. “After what you did, that’s all you can think to say? ‘Do I?’ Is this how most demons operate?”

I wasn’t making much headway, still blinking at him like a dying fish, when Lucifer emerged from the dining room, tailed by Asmodeus. He glanced at me, looked up at Satan, seemed to read the situation instantly, and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Satan has, rather immaturely in my opinion, been waiting for an apology for the incident the other day at the new academy,” he explained, crossing his arms and casting an annoyed look at his brother. “Apparently he hasn’t yet realized how ineffective passive aggression is when the other party isn’t there to witness it.”

“Isn’t it so much better than aggressive aggression, though?” Asmo put in. He beamed warmly at Satan, who balked irritably under such an adoring (or maybe condescending) gaze. “Satan’s getting better at managing his temper, I can tell!” He turned to me, wearing a heart-stoppingly earnest smile. “We’re so proud of him!”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” barked Satan. That chilly energy around him was growing stronger, and I could tell from the sudden discomfort on Asmo’s face and the exhaustion on Lucifer’s that his darkening mood wasn’t lost on them.

I took a step toward the stairs.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get hit so hard.”

“But I was.”

“...But you were,” I conceded a little sheepishly. “...Are you feeling alright now?”

What followed was an uncomfortably long silence. Lucifer rubbed his temples, Asmo rocked forward and back, hands clasped behind him, and Satan stared at me with an inscrutable expression and narrowed eyes.

“...Somewhat,” he finally admitted, looking down peevishly. “So I’ll accept your apology conditionally.”

Conditionally? I hadn’t been counting on that. I could feel sweat beading on my forehead. “What’s the condition…?” 

“Never play around with my body again.”

Predictably, Asmodeus gasped. “Are you sure you won’t end up regretting that, Satan? I mean, if we’re really going to have such a cutie around all the time, you never know–”

“I think I do know,” snapped Satan. “Not all of us think like you do, you pervert.”

Asmo gasped again, and Lucifer sighed, wisely turning on his heel and heading further into the house before he could get drawn into things.

“I accept your condition,” I said, hoping to interrupt the rising conflict.

“I can’t believe you’d call your adorable little brother a pervert!” Asmodeus whined, crushing those hopes.

“You’re not my brother, but you are a pervert.” Brushing Asmo aside with that remark, Satan stared moodily down at me and nodded, acknowledging my reply. “Good. Then we shouldn’t have any more problems.”

“I have a problem!” insisted Asmo, who would not be silenced.

“I’m well aware,” Satan said dryly.

Ever persistent, Asmodeus crossed his arms and jutted his chin out defiantly in Satan’s direction. “I have a problem with all the awful things you say about me! And not just me, though it’s certainly most unacceptable when I’m the target. But you’re too hard on the others too!”

Satan didn’t say anything, but his expression darkened. Asmo continued.

“I know you get angry easily, but that’s no excuse–!”

“You think I need an excuse to put you in your place?” The crackling of dark energy around Satan was becoming more and more physical. “You think I give a single damn if I hurt your feelings? I’m not your brother, and I’m not going to treat you like you’re my brother, and if you’re a pathetic loser or a pervert, I’ll tell you so!” He pointed directly at Asmodeus. “You are a pathetic loser and a pervert!”

Announcing his arrival with a dramatic sigh and all the bravado he could muster, Mammon strode into the front hall, his hands on his hips. “Alright, alright, quiet down! Big Bro is here. What’s the problem?”

“Oh, you want in on this?” Satan shouted down at Mammon. He was back to gripping the bannister like a vice and leaning over the edge. “You’re shallow, self-centered, and so stupid and pathetic that I’m ashamed to be associated with you!”

“Whoa whoa whoa!” Mammon lifted his hands, clearly thrown off-guard by the sudden barrage of insults. “Take it easy! What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you dare condescend to me!” He scowled darkly at Mammon. “Don’t treat me like I’m your little brother!”

Mammon sighed, shook his head, and turned to me to offer up an explanation. “He’s goin’ through a phase lately. He’s always goin’, ‘You’re not my brothers!’ and ‘Say that again, I dare ya!’”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not around!” Satan bellowed for the second time. Granted, Mammon hadn’t been there to hear his first warning, but that didn’t do anything to ease Satan’s growing rage. 

“He called me a pervert,” Asmo told Mammon, ignoring Satan’s outburst.

“Oi, Satan,” Mammon groaned. “You know he doesn’t like it when people point that out! Just let him be!”

“It isn’t true!” Asmodeus argued, and he turned to me. “It isn’t true.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod. Just agreeing seemed to be the safest way ahead.

“You’re both delusional,” Satan snapped, vaulting over the bannister and landing like a cat on the ground in front of us. “Nothing is more pathetic than someone who won’t even admit what they really are.” He turned his gaze to me, and I was just starting to wonder if he was going to tear me a new one when the clacking of Lucifer’s shoes sounded on the floor behind me.

“I shouldn’t have bothered walking away,” he said with the air of a man who suffers fools for the greater good. “This will stop. Now.”

“You,” snarled Satan. He spat the word out like it was poison on his tongue. “You’re worse than any of them.”

“Satan, I would advise you not to provoke me,” Lucifer said with a chilly calm.

“You try to keep us all under control because you know this is all your fault,” Satan seethed. He almost looked like he might start laughing. 

“Oi, oi, you're at this again?” Mammon groaned. “We’re adults, y'know? We’re responsible for ourselves!”

I looked between the brothers, feeling just a little bit out of the loop. What was Lucifer's fault? The Great Celestial War? Their less-than-ideal social standing in the Devildom? Something else entirely? Whatever it was, it seemed like the brothers didn't need any clarification.

“Let it go, Mammon,” Lucifer murmured. He continued to stare down Satan with all the cold exasperation of a disappointed father. 

“It’s all your fault! Everything!” Satan stalked towards Lucifer, spittle flying from his mouth with the intensity of his words, a corpse-like emptiness in his eyes. “You arrogant, self-righteous, clinging, cowardly failure! You ruined your brothers and got your sister killed! I should do us all a favor! I should kill you!”

“Enough!”

There was a crack throughout the hall as if thunder struck indoors, and my hands flew to my ears, though it was already too late. Asmo shrieked, and Mammon shouted, inadvertently gripping him in a tight embrace. Even Satan looked startled enough to be snapped from his wrathful fugue. Now he was suspended in midair by coils of invisible chains, binding his arms tightly to his body and his legs together.

“Let me go!” he demanded, squirming futilely against his restraints. “Let me go! I’ll kill all of you! I’ll grind this whole world into powder! How dare you!”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Lucifer said calmly, dusting off his collar. “I can’t allow you to simply run roughshod through this house threatening to destroy worlds and kill people.”

Meanwhile, after extracting himself from Mammon’s grip, Asmodeus went right ahead and threw his arms around me, as if Mammon had made him realize that this was the perfect opportunity to get handsy.

“Gyah~! Lucifer and Satan are so scary, aren't they?” he whined, petting my hair. “There, there, little one. Asmo is here.”

“Would you knock that off? You’re gonna make me puke.” Mammon sighed a little too nonchalantly and started walking down the hall, away from the entire situation. “Anyway, come on, Attendant. Let’s get outta here.”

“Have you seen my bathroom yet?” asked Asmo, letting go of me and prancing after Mammon. “I have–”

“Ya got your own jacuzzi, yeah, you’ve gold us,” Mammon snapped.

I hesitated and took one last look at Lucifer and Satan. Lucifer seemed tired and frustrated… Maybe even a bit sad. And Satan still looked like he wanted to kill him.

“Hey, hurry up!” Mammon called from down the hall. “You’re gonna get vaporized if you stick around there!”

I woke up late the next day. After tossing and turning in bed, trying to get the memories of what Satan had told me out of my mind, I’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep about four in the morning. 

I probably would have woken up even later, actually, if it hadn’t been for my D.D.D. ringing on the nightstand by the bed. Half-asleep, I fumbled for the device, and after a few messy attempts, I managed to answer.

“What’s the matter?” I muttered as a greeting, still half-asleep.

“What ain’t the matter!” Mammon’s voice boomed through the speaker. “Listen up, we need ya down here stat! Satan’s throwin’ a fit and Lucifer ain’t here to stop it!”

“What makes you think I can do anything about it?” I groaned as I rolled onto my back. Honestly, the last thing I needed right now was more of Satan’s issues to deal with.

“You ain’t one of us! He doesn’t wanna talk to his broth–” I could hear crashing in the background, and Mammon seemed to pull the speaker away from his mouth and shout, “COOL IT, WOULD YA? I’M TRYIN’ TO GET HELP!”

I rubbed my forehead, already exhausted, but I dutifully climbed out of bed and started getting out of my pajamas.

“Listen, just hurry over, alright?” Mammon had shifted gears and was talking to me again.

“Aye-aye, cap’n,” I sighed, and I hung up.

I stood in my underwear, resting my forearms on the dresser for a few seconds as I breathed. In, and out… In, and out… I could do this. 

Half an hour later, I stood in the front hall of the House of Lamentation. Belphie came running up to me and practically collapsed in my arms. “What took you so long?” he whined into my stomach.

Deeper in the house, I could hear the rumbling and clattering of the house being slowly destroyed, one piece of furniture at a time.

“Where’s Lucifer?” I asked Belphie.

“He’s out sucking up to the future Demon King,” he told me, rolling his eyes. “Mammon’s trying to manage Satan on his own, but he’s doing about as terribly as you’d expect from him.”

“You’re all too hard on Mammon,” I sighed, setting my bag down against the wall and rolling up my sleeves. “It isn’t like any of the rest of you can handle him either.”

“Mammon’s the second-born,” argued Belphie petulantly, his voice tinged with an edge of whininess. “He’s supposed to be stronger than Satan. So is Levi, for that matter…”

I picked my bag up again, and Belphie followed me as I made my way deeper into the house. “What’s happening, exactly?” I asked.

“He’s been on a rampage since early this morning,” sighed the youngest.

“Why?”

“Nobody knows.” He shrugged. “Maybe he stepped on something when he got out of bed. Probably there’s no real reason.” 

I nodded grimly. There was always a reason, though. Maybe not a great reason, maybe not an obvious immediate reason, but there was a reason. Yesterday taught me how little I knew about what’s really going on in his head. 

“So what are you going to do?” Belphie asked. “Are you going to pull something like you did when you first got here? What was it you said… ‘Stay’?”

I grimaced inwardly. “Not if I can avoid it,” I replied. Lucifer would put me through the wringer if I did that again. “I brought something that might help snap him out of it.”

“Is it some sort of cursed artifact?” Belphie tilted his head. “Satan loves things like that.”

“No,”I said, “but that’s good thinking. I’ll stow that away for next time.”

We had arrived outside the door to the observatory, where the volume of the crashing and clattering inside made talking nearly impossible. I gestured to Belphie that I was going in, and he watched me with some trepidation as I opened the door and stepped into the room.

Inside the observatory, Satan and Mammon stood on opposite ends of the sofa, which looked as if it had been chewed up by a pack of hyenas. Mammon was clearly on the defensive, and he was gripping his left wrist with his right hand.

“You’re here!” Mammon exclaimed with relief as the door closed behind me. Satan’s eyes flashed in my direction, and he snarled in frustration.

“Why are you here?” He hurled a lamp across the room. I was amazed that there were still lamps in the house to be destroyed.

“I’m here because Mammon called me.”

Satan looked around the room with bloodshot eyes and snatched up the remains of a painting he’d already trashed. He looked like he was struggling to decide what to do with it. “I don’t want to see you right now.”

His voice was quiet, and tight, and quivering. It was tinged with rage but subdued as if smothered under a blanket of exhaustion. It was frightening.

“Mammon, is your wrist alright?” I asked him, not taking my eyes off of Satan.

Mammon seemed surprised at the question. Through my peripheral vision, I saw him look down at the wrist he was grasping, then back up at me.

“Uh, yeah. It ain’t nothing.”

“Go ask Beel to wrap it up.”

“Eh?” Mammon started, walking towards me. “No way! I ain’t gonna just leave you in here with–”

“Mammon.”

I turned and hit him full on with an entreating stare directly in his eyes. This might be a different time period, but I knew what I was capable of, with or without magic or pacts. Mammon quickly averted his eyes, but he stubbornly stayed where he was.

“...Please.”

He grumbled audibly, but I knew he’d relented. “...I’m stayin’ right by the door.”

I smiled at him gratefully, and as he headed to the door, I looked back at Satan. He was crushing the outside of the broken picture frame between his fingers.

The door latched shut, and an eerie silence descended on the room.

I set my bag down on the ground and folded my arms. Then I unfolded them again. It was probably best not to take a defensive posture.

“...Well?” Satan growled.

Today didn’t feel like yesterday.

Yesterday, I was powerless. Satan was under control and in control, calling the shots, standing in home territory. Today, he was off-balance. He evidently wasn’t expecting me, and he certainly hadn’t planned out any grim revelations to drop on me. As scary as it was to see him angry, it felt less threatening than whatever had happened the day before. I took comfort in that.

“Why are you angry?” I asked.

He snorted disdainfully as if I had just asked him an idiotic question. “I’m the Avatar of Wrath, or did you forget?”

I wasn’t about to let my question get obfuscated so easily. So I repeated myself.

“Why are you angry, Satan?”

“Don’t play stupid!” He finally threw the damaged painting into the ground, snapping the paneling. “Why did you tell Lucifer?” He stormed in my direction, dark energy circling the air around him like a hurricane. He almost walked through me; he surrounded me without quite touching me, somehow, his feet inches from mine when he stopped short, his face close enough to mine that I felt each heavy exhale on my skin. But he was on all sides; he was everywhere. It was his tail, I finally realized. His tail curled around me; never touching me, but putting me in a snare that might snap shut if I made any wrong moves. 

“I didn’t tell Lucifer anything,” I responded coolly. I could feel hot irritation bubbling up inside me, but I swallowed it. The last thing the situation needed was for both of us to lose our tempers. “What, did he say something?”

“Just that I should watch who I talk to about family matters.” His eyes were blazing, and his quivering tail nicked me in the arm. I flinched. “You said you weren’t just loyal to him! You said you were my attendant too!”

“I didn’t tell Lucifer anything,” I repeated more vehemently. I couldn’t tell if this rage of his was rooted in jealousy or a sense of betrayal. “He probably just heard we had tea together from one of your brothers. Is that really what made you so angry? What else did he say?”

“It isn’t any of your damn business what he said!” His tail flicked, and he paced around me in tight semi-circles. “Why do you think I talked to you yesterday?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out, and I haven’t yet,” I said, lowering my voice. “Satan, you scared me yesterday.”

“So you went to Lucifer.”

“So I went home!” I jabbed a finger in his chest. That stopped his relentless pacing, at least. “I went home, Satan, and I was miserable! I actually worry about you, you know!”

Satan’s tail recoiled before the rest of him could. He didn’t look convinced–in fact, he looked more suspicious than ever. But he was no longer quite so close, or quite so ready to lunge at any opening I might offer. His green eyes searched my face silently for a few seconds, then he spoke again.

“Why?”

Ah. There was the tricky part. Why indeed? I couldn’t exactly say, ‘Because I’m from the future and in that time I’ve developed a very close bond with you and your brothers, and I love and care for you, so seeing you in such obvious pain breaks my heart.’ And I didn’t think ‘because I’m your attendant’ would cut it this time either.

“If you saw a drowning cat,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully, “and you reached out to help it, and it scratched you because it was scared and hurt and flailing around. Would you just let it drown?”

I thought I was going to reach him with that. I thought that analogy would somehow click. What I didn’t expect was that Satan would look me straight in the face and respond by asking: “What’s a cat?”

I blinked at him. He stared back at me without blinking once. I considered rephrasing the scenario with a child as the drowning victim, but I was much less confident that Satan would feel like he would, in fact, want to save a child even if it was screaming and scratching at him. 

I rubbed my face in my hands. “...Never mind, then. I just… I worry about you because you need someone to worry about you.”

“That’s a stupid reason.”

“You really want me to tell you that you’re right, and I don’t actually care, huh?” Satan didn’t say anything in response to that. He just looked at me as if challenging me to confirm that he’d nailed it. I couldn’t really tell if he was desperate for me to validate all the horrible thoughts he had about himself or if he was begging me to insist he had it all wrong.

Instead of following up my rhetorical question, I reached into my bag and pulled out a folded board and a box of black and white game tokens. I sat cross-legged on the floor, in an area with relatively little debris, opened the board, and patted the spot across from me.

Satan stared down at me for a few seconds before slowly walking over and sitting down across from me, hugging one knee.

“Do you know how to play Othello?” I asked.

He shook his head no.

The corner of my mouth quirked into a smile. Satan was the one who taught me the game. Now it was time for me to return the favor. Or was this paying it forward?

“It’s pretty simple. We start with four tokens in the middle like this…” I set up the board. “Then we take turns putting tokens on the board. One of us is white and the other is black. You try to surround your opponent’s tokens on two opposite sides, and you switch them to your color. If you can’t put any tokens in a flanking position, you skip your turn. And when the board is full, whoever has more tokens facing up is the winner.”

“It sounds boring,” mumbled Satan.

“Then it should be easy to beat me.”

“At least give me a few turns to figure out how it works. Then I’ll start beating you.”

For the next ten minutes, we sat more or less silently in the observatory, surrounded by wreckage as if the place had been hit by a bomb, carefully studying the board and placing our tokens.

I won the first game. It was the first time I’d ever beaten Satan at a game of Othello. It was also the last.

“I was still getting used to the game mechanics,” growled Satan as he cleared the board. He was annoyed, but not angry, and when he bested me in the next round, he looked hesitantly pleased.

“…You didn’t lose on purpose, did you?”

“Absolutely not. I play to win. You’re going down in the next round.”

That satisfied him. But he won the next round too. And the one after. I guess it was only to be expected. He was wickedly clever.

“Satan?” I asked as we cleared the board and set up for another game.

“Mm?”

“You never said why you had that talk with me yesterday.”

He fidgeted uncomfortably, turning one of the tokens over in his fingers a few times. Black, white, black white. “...I had to tell somebody .”

“Did you…?”

His tail snapped irritably against the floor beside him, knocking the board askew. I rearranged the tokens as he searched for words.

“Yes, I did.” He looked at the board like he was trying to set it on fire with his mind. “Now I know not to tell anybody else.”

“Why did you tell me? Yesterday, you said you wanted to tell me specifically. To see my reaction.”

“And I saw your reaction,” he snapped. His tail slammed the ground even harder. I paused, then started to rearrange the board again. “Now I know not to tell anybody else! I just said that!”

“Was there some sort of way you wanted me to react?”

“I don’t know. Stop asking me stupid questions. It’s making me angry.”

I obliged. Nothing good would come from pressing the issue when he was adamant he didn’t want to discuss it, and it was probably a useful skill for him to identify when he was starting to feel angry if he ever wanted to learn to control that emotion.

Satan had just wiped the floor with me for the fifth time when I looked up at the devastated room around us, then checked the time on my D.D.D. Lucifer was definitely going to expect me to help clean this up.

“...Hey, Satan. Let’s go to the library.”

“What…?”

“Your room is too empty.” I thought about how barren the space felt yesterday. “You should fill it with things you like.”

Satan stared blankly at me, then squinted slightly. “Are you mad that you keep losing?”

I laughed at that, and Satan blushed, scowling. “No. I was just thinking that I don’t want to be here when Lucifer gets back.” I nodded to our surroundings.

That was enough to convince him.

I put away Othello and led Satan to the observatory door. When I opened it, I felt a thump and heard a pained yelp on the other side. Mammon quickly darted out from behind the door, rubbing his nose.

“You coulda warned me you were gonna swing that thing open!” he whined. His gaze darted from me to Satan, then back to me again. “...What the hell did you do?”

“We played Othello,” I said, and my gaze shifted to his wrist, which appeared to be swelling. “I thought I told you to have Beel wrap that wrist for you.”

“And I thought I told you I was gonna wait right out here,” Mammon retorted. “What the hell is Othello, anyway?”

Satan impatiently sidestepped Mammon and continued down the hall. “Come on,” he called to me. Mammon looked at him over his shoulder, then looked back at me, his expression heartbreakingly puppy-like. “Now you’re goin’ somewhere with him?”

Leave it to Mammon to make me feel guilty. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll check on your wrist then, but it had better be wrapped. Got it?”

Mammon let out an exaggerated sigh, but he nodded.

I patted his shoulder. “Good boy.”

“Don’t call me–”

“Are you coming or not?!” Satan’s voice called from up the hallway.

I gave Mammon an apologetic smile. “Later.”

“You better give me the full 'wounded soldier' treatment when ya get back, understand?” I nodded as I slung my bag over my shoulder and hurried down the hall. Mammon called after me, “I got injured in the line of duty, y’know!”

------

I wasn’t sure how we would be received when we entered the library with a wheelbarrow, but apparently, with Satan’s status as one of the Seven Rulers of the Underworld more or less accepted, he could get away with it. At any rate, the library staff seemed more at ease with the wheelbarrow than they had been last time Satan was here, carrying dozens of books piled one on top of the other in a single precarious stack. 

I stood back and watched while Satan piloted the thing in and out of aisles, tossing books into the bed of the wheelbarrow one, two, five at a time. He was collecting quite eclectic material, too. Novels, spellbooks, medical tomes, astrological works, zoological and botanical indices, and, of course, dozens and dozens of books on curses.

Taking one at random, I perused the cover. “Book of Forbidden Spelles and Hexes,” I read out loud, glancing up at Satan with a raised eyebrow before opening it at random. “A curse to put upon thine enemy which shall in due time render him blinde and tooth-less, a wondrous revenge against sorcerers wielding ye Eville Eye.” Satan smirked to himself as he continued looking through the shelves, and I flipped to another page which was bookmarked. “Septinfermium. A curse of sevenfold agonies to befall thy adversary, amonge these being a scourge of boiles, loss of hair, perturbation of tongue, loss of vigour in the loines, a sickness of sweating, incontinence of bowels, and sanguinity of urine.” I closed the book and looked up at Satan, who appeared to be suppressing laughter. “If I read that right, you’re looking into a curse that’s going to make Lucifer pee blood, crap himself, and turn impotent?”

“That about sums it up, yes. Along with boils, balding, sweating, and stuttering.”

I tried to picture Lucifer under a curse like that, but I found that I simply couldn’t. “You’re actually going to do that?” 

Satan turned to look at me, frowning. “You think I wouldn’t?”

“It’s not that, it’s more…” I hesitated. “...You don’t really think you’d get away with it, do you?”

“I don’t worry about whether or not I’ll get away with something.” He shrugged and looked back to the books on the shelf. “If I did, I’d never do anything. That said, that particular hex is extremely complicated and requires a good deal of preparation, so I don’t plan on attempting it just yet.”

Not just yet, hmm? “Why do you hate him so much? Lucifer, I mean.” I’d heard this question answered a few times, but never from this Satan.

He turned around to face me, yet another book in his hands. He stared down at it thoughtfully, opening it and flipping through the pages without really seeing anything.

“He pretends to be so incredibly responsible and put-together… He lords it over the rest of us. But the fact that I exist at all is proof of how flimsy his pretensions really are.” Satan slammed the book shut. “He’s a hypocrite, and he’s irresponsible enough to create an entire sentient being without any thought as to what kind of existence that being is going to have to endure.” His knuckles were turning white as he gripped the book and stared at its cover. “I never consented to my own creation. But he acts as if he’s done me an enormous favor by shoving me out into the world. Never mind it’s a world where we’re all social pariahs and just about the only emotion I can experience is a mind-numbing rage. And on top of all that, I'm made out of him. It's disgusting.”

Again, Satan was talking about his very existence as if it was a burden; something he would never have accepted if given the choice. It was stirring up all the unpleasantness of yesterday.

“You sound like you hate being alive.” I leaned forward a bit, taking a good look at him.

“I can’t say I love it.”

“Doesn’t anything make you happy?”

Satan smacked his palm lightly with the book in his hand, continuing to stare at it without seeing. “...Not really.”

I hadn’t actually anticipated that answer, so it hit me like a gut-punch. He sounded so earnest and resigned–not even sad, just resigned–that I instinctively raised a hand to reach out in his direction. But what was I supposed to do? Take his hand? Ruffle his hair? Gestures that felt like second nature in one sense seemed out of line here and now. My hand returned to my side, but I still couldn’t accept Satan’s response.

“...I’ll help you figure out how to feel happy,” I said after a lengthy silence. I clenched my fists and met his gaze when he glanced over his shoulder at me in surprise. “That’s a promise.”

Satan looked me up and down for a few quiet seconds before he cracked a bemused smile. “...You’re a really strange demon.”

“Mhm, like you’re one to talk.” I smiled impishly at him, trying to hide how dry my mouth felt. It was strange, but somehow, he looked a little bit different from this angle. Not soft, but softer. It made me want to touch his face.

I didn’t, of course.

Over the next half hour, while Satan kept adding more and more books to the wheelbarrow, I considered my self-assigned task: find something to make Satan happy. Of course, there was an obvious course of action that wasn’t lost on me. I had to introduce this man to cats.

“Are we heading home, then?” I asked Satan as I pushed the wheelbarrow out the library doors. As much as I cared for the guy, I could never accuse him of being too conscientious, and he seemed to consider it a given that his attendant would be the one to roll a few hundred pounds of books along for him.

“What, so Lucifer can lecture me on things I already know?”

I set down the handles to the wheelbarrow and looked at him with what I hoped was a withering gaze. “If you think I’m going to push this thing all around the Devildom, I have some news for you.”

“I’ll buy you ice cream.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

Satan looked around as we walked, clicking his tongue as he thought. “I’ll buy you dinner?”

I’ll admit, that idea appealed to me just a little bit more. But now that this had started, I didn’t want to fold without seeing what my options might be. “Dinner from where?” He sighed tiredly, and I slowed down. “It looks like we’re coming to a hill. I’m going to need some real motivation to tackle this.”

“Alright, stop whining,” Satan snapped. He elbowed me aside and took the handles of the wheelbarrow himself before barreling up the incline.

“Oh– hey!” I pursued him, crestfallen. “Wait, does this mean you take it all back?”

“Maybe,” grunted Satan as he pushed the thing forward. “Are you disappointed?”

“A little,” I admitted. I could see him smirk out of the corner of my eye. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Yes,” he replied without any concern. “You shouldn’t test me like that when you have such a sorry poker face.”

I sighed, and he laughed. It was a nice sound. I hadn’t heard it much lately. Not a genuine laugh, at least. So in spite of myself, I smiled.

“Whatever,” he said with a soft sigh as we reached the top of the slope. “I’ll still buy you ice cream, at any rate. Maybe if we can find a table we can play that black-and-white game again.”

“Othello,” I reminded him. “Sure, if you want.”

He seemed to have a place in mind already, so I was content to follow after him until we reached the ice cream vendor.

“I would like to order a double scoop of stewed hell ham with salamander gizzards.” Satan’s voice when ordering was almost painfully formal. He glanced over at me. “What do you want?”

Now, I have to be honest. I’ve never gotten used to Devildom ice cream. I’ve learned to look past the ingredients in most meals, but there’s something so inherently unappealing to a human about “hell newt ice cream” or “demon squid ink sorbet” that I can’t really get past it. Fortunately, most places sell a flavor called blood anise, which is probably the Devildom’s equivalent to human world vanilla, and although it isn’t fantastic, it mostly just tastes like frozen licorice.

“I’ll just have a scoop of blood anise,” I told Satan.

“Any hell beetles to top it off?” cut in the vendor.

“No thanks, just blood anise.”

“No extra charge for stewed toad sauce.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“We’re having a special discount on black and yellow bile chunks—”

“Are you deaf? Just blood anise!” Satan thundered. For a second I thought he was going to grab the vendor by his collar and shake him, but he seemed to regain control of himself before it came to that. The vendor looked like he’d been shaken though, and he ducked into the stall to prepare the order.

Satan stood with his arms crossed, lips tight, scowling down at the wheelbarrow. He almost looked…embarrassed. When the ice cream was ready, he paid without speaking and carried both cups to an outdoor bistro table, leaving me to roll the books along after him.

“…Was I scary?” he asked me as I set up the Othello board.

“Hm?” I looked up at him questioningly.

Satan dragged a hand down his face, exhaled as if this required all his stores of patience, and spoke lowly. “…That demon who sold us the ice cream. He looked terrified.”

“Oh…” I glanced back at the ice cream stand and Satan snapped his fingers in my ear, startling me back into facing him.

“Stop, don’t look at him!” he hissed.

“You want to know if you were too scary?”

Satan hesitated, tapping the table with one of the game tokens. “…Did I embarrass you?”

I hadn’t expected him to approach the issue from that angle. I shook my head and swallowed a smile. “No. You look like you embarrassed yourself, though.”

Satan’s cheeks, already a little pink, darkened in color as he grabbed his spoon and shoveled a mouthful of frozen stewed hell ham with toad spleens or whatever it was into his mouth. Whoever came up with meat-flavored ice cream deserved whatever horrible thing they inevitably had coming, I decided as my stomach churned. 

“It isn’t that big of a deal,” I continued after a sullen silence on Satan’s end. “You didn’t actually hurt him.”

“Right?” Satan glared down at his ice cream with the same amount of loathing that I felt for it. “And he shouldn’t have been pushy about toppings in the first place. It’s his fault.”

With that out of the way, he placed his token on the board, and the subject was dropped.

We were around halfway through the game when I noticed Satan looking distracted. He kept glancing at something behind me, and when I turned around to look, I saw a tawny cat peeking out from between two buildings. I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Are you looking at that animal?” I asked, looking back at Satan.

“Yes,” he answered. “It looks comfortable in a very uncomfortable place.”

“That’s a cat,” I told him. There was something deeply sad about the fact that Satan was aware of things like hexes, and bowel incontinence, and impotence, but not cats–though it did make some sense. Satan had a natural curiosity for all things esoteric, and he was the owner of a body with anatomy that, presumably, made bowel incontinence and impotence things he might have had some personal experience with, or at least a conceptual understanding about. I didn’t know. I wasn’t in a position to judge. But since cats weren’t animals used in Devildom cuisine, there wasn’t really any reason for Satan to have heard of them before, especially considering he had never even left the Demon King’s castle until a few weeks earlier.

“A cat… The thing you talked about drowning?”

Of course Satan had remembered that bit of what I’d said back in the observatory.

“No–no, not really, I wasn’t actually talking about any real cats,” I insisted. Satan looked at me with what I could only describe as general disapproval. “...I’ve never hurt any cats!”

“You scared it,” Satan informed me with a frown. I turned around to look, and, indeed, the cat was no longer there. It had probably darted back between the buildings.

“How do you know I scared it? Maybe it just got bored!” I didn't like how this interaction was painting me as some sort of cat abuser.

“You shouldn’t be so loud,” Satan said coldly.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” I huffed.

Satan continued to stare at the spot where the cat had been. “I like how its ears looked. They were very triangular.”

My irritation softened a little bit. “You should keep an eye out,” I told him. “Cats aren’t uncommon in the Devildom, though they can be a little wary of people.”

Satan nodded. His interest in the board game in front of us had clearly petered out. “...Are you going to complain about rolling the books back down the hill as much as you complained about rolling them up?”

“Back down the hill?” I asked warily. That just sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

Satan nodded. “I need to return to the library to find reading material on cats.”

“Can’t we bring these to the House of Lamentation first, then go get cat books?”

“As if Lucifer would let me leave once I show up.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Well, then, why don’t I take these books to the house, and you can go to the library on your own for…cat research materials.”

Satan was still staring at the now vacant spot where the cat had been. He was frowning. “You need to check on Mammon?”

Actually, it wasn’t until he said it that I remembered I’d promised to check back in on the second oldest. A surge of guilt pooled in my belly. “I just don’t think rolling a wheelbarrow full of books down a hill sounds like a scenario with a happy ending,” I said.

Satan sighed. Apparently he saw the justice in my words, because he looked a little less resentful and a little more resigned when he nodded. “Fine. If Lucifer asks where I am, tell him you don’t know, but I said something about visiting an alchemist’s shop.”

“You had that loaded and ready, huh?”

“Of course. Don’t clean that up yet.” Satan stopped me as I stood and reached out to clear the Othello board. “Let’s finish the game.”

I sank back into my seat and cracked my knuckles. “Are you ready to lose?” I asked.

“Would you care to join me for tea later?”

I was sitting at the dining table with Brothers 2 - 5, enjoying a relatively quiet lunch. I’d finally managed to cool down a bitter dispute between Mammon and Levi over the financial benefits of investing in gold versus collectibles, and I’d spent most of the meal nervously watching the pair cast searing glances at each other when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. So when Satan suddenly turned to me and extended the invitation, I had to take a few seconds to process the question.

Asmodeus didn’t need any such buffering period. He leaned in my direction, eyes fixed on Satan. “Ahhhh! I just got goosebumps!” he whimpered, rubbing his arms dramatically. Looking at me, his expression became heartbreakingly sympathetic. “Did you see his smile? So scary!”

“Shut up,” Satan suggested, flashing a dangerous glare in his brother’s direction before directing a more polite expression towards me.

I wouldn’t say it, but my impression wasn’t far removed from Asmo’s. I’d never been fully comfortable in the crosshairs of Satan’s smile even before the time travel incident–especially when it looked like how a cat might smile at a mouse. 

Still, he was one of the brothers, and I felt guilty for ditching him at the library the other day, so I smiled at him and nodded. “Sure thing!”

“Great! You can come to my room in an hour or so.” And as if to say ‘well, that’s that,’ Satan started gathering his dishes to take to the kitchen.

Mammon scowled and pointed a drumstick in Satan’s direction. “Oi, why your room? It ain’t respectable, you know? Have your damn tea in the library or something.”

“As if you’ve never spent time together in your room?” Satan snapped. “Don’t make me laugh. Besides, if we go anywhere else, you’ll all conveniently turn up and interrupt us.”

“Have a point, he does,” said Levi, speaking in a caricatured voice. “Interrupt, we would.”

“Why’re ya talkin’ like that? And whose side are you on, anyway?!”

While Mammon barked complaints, Asmodeus sighed sadly next to me, hugging my arm. “Wouldn’t you be happier with more of us there?”

“No,” said Satan.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Asmo replied curtly before turning glistening eyes to me again. “Wouldn’t you? Maybe not those clowns,” he nodded toward Mammon and Levi, “but I’m worried you’ll spend the whole time missing me. It breaks my heart to even imagine it…”

I grinned awkwardly and shook my head. “I think I’ll be alright. It looks like Satan would rather it just be the two of us, anyway.”

“Thank goodness you at least can pick up on subtext. Then that’s settled.” Satan cast a stern glance around the table as if daring one of his brothers to put up another argument. When no one did, he walked off to the kitchen with his dishes.

“There’s a difference between missing subtext and ignoring it because it pisses you off,” grumbled Mammon, crossing his arms and leaning back in his seat. “I hate that guy sometimes.”

“Let’s set up a group chat!” gasped Asmo, pulling out his D.D.D. “It’ll be us four! That way, you can sound the alarm if anything goes wrong!”

“A separate group chat, we need not.” Levi pointed out. “Redundant, it would be. The House of Lamentation chat, we already possess.”

“Seriously, why are ya talkin’ like that?”

“Ugh, you’re all no fun,” Asmo pouted. Then he looked at me and grabbed my hands with an air of total seriousness. “So when you’re in his room, try and stay close to the door. That way you’ll have a clean escape route.”

“Lol,” Levi giggled. “Asmo as a grand strategist. Hindered by the fog of war since nobody knows what Satan's room looks like. -3 to all mental stats.”

“A’ight, knock it off, you’re gonna freak ’em out,” Mammon groaned. Then he looked at me, lifting one palm into the air. “These guys are overreactin’. Satan likes ya. He ain't gonna do nothin’.”

Asmodeus sighed. “I'm not so sure about that Mammon. When Satan gets mad, I don't think it really matters how much he likes or dislikes someone. All that matters is how close they are.”

Not even Mammon could contradict this point.

------

Eventually, I managed to extricate myself from the dining room. By that point, it was time to head to Satan’s room. I’ll admit that I was a little bit nervous as I approached the door and knocked.

I mean, I’d blown him off so recently. He wasn’t in a rage or anything, sure, but was he feeling bitter? He certainly seemed bitter the other night. I didn’t really want to be alone with him if he was seriously irritated with me.

It was too late to go back, though. The door opened, and Satan stood at the threshold, smiling like a perfect gentleman.

“There you are. Thanks for coming.”

As I looked past Satan into his room, I had to choke back an actual gasp.

Where… were all the books…?

There was a small table with a tea tray set up in the middle of the room and the bed was in its usual place, but otherwise, the room appeared to be mostly barren.

“What’s wrong?” Satan asked, frowning testily. “You look like I left something weird lying out.”

As if confirming that he hadn't actually done that, he stole a quick glance behind him before looking back at me and gesturing more forcefully to the table and chairs, inviting me inside with considerably less decorum than he'd shown earlier.

“Oh. Nothing,” I lied awkwardly, stepping through the door and taking a more thorough look around. Now that I was inside, I saw that there were at least thirty books stored on shelves, most of them from his earlier trip to the library, but compared to the hundreds of precariously stacked volumes I was used to, it felt barren, even a little bit sad.

“Sit down,” he said. It wasn’t exactly spoken as an order, but it wasn’t especially courteous either. My nervousness grew, and I did as I was told.

Satan poured us some tea, and I mutely took the cup and saucer. I took a sip of tea and let my eyes wander around the room. That sense that it wasn’t finished yet kept nagging at me. After all, what was his room without books? Just four walls and a bed, really. And, today, two chairs and a small table. And– Huh. That was weird. Something on one of the shelves was glowing. It was some sort of document… A scroll, maybe? The faint effervescent glow was noticeable, but not distracting.

Satan followed my gaze to the scroll and clicked his tongue irritably. “Oh. Lucifer gave me that. I haven’t looked at it yet.” He closed his eyes and shrugged with almost vehement disinterest. “I’m not sure if I ever will.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Something like a birth certificate, I guess.”

I almost said I was surprised that demons had those, but it would be strange for a demon to either be unaware of that fact, or to be naive enough to mistake an obvious joke for the truth.

“Could I look at it?”

He opened one eye and squinted at me through it. It felt like he was trying to discern my motives. Whatever he thought, he eventually nodded, and his eye closed again.

I put down my saucer and walked over to the shelf, standing on my tiptoes to grasp at the paper curled up in the corner. Snagging it by its edge, I pulled it down and, untied the gold ribbon that held it together, and started to unroll it.

ANNO MMCDXCI REGNI GARDONI MAGNI A SANGUINE LUCIFERI ET CORPORE LILITHAE

I quickly rolled it up again.

“Mm? Is it that terrifying?” Satan was sitting twisted in his chair and looking over his shoulder to see me. He wore a small smirk.

“No,” I said quickly.

“Are you sure?” He looked genuinely amused. “You look a little shaken up.”

“Oh,” I said flatly. My hands were trembling just a little bit. I wasn’t quite sure why. “It’s just… I don’t feel right being the first to look at it.”

“You don't 'feel right'? If you think it’ll hold any sentimental value for me, you’re wrong,” said Satan dryly, turning back around in his seat.

I replaced the scroll on the shelf and made my way back to my seat. Satan stared at me. I knew he wanted to know what I’d seen. I also knew he wasn’t going to ask directly. He wasn’t about to show interest in the document after dismissing it so completely out of hand.

“...I saw Lucifer’s name on it,” I said. “And some year… It- It was in a language I don’t know.”

I could tell it was in Latin, but I wasn’t sure how well your average demon would be acquainted with human languages. It was a little strange that it was written in a human language at all, really.

“Well, obviously Lucifer is on it.” Satan stared into his mostly-empty teacup as he dangled it by its handle from his thumb and forefinger.

“It also mentioned Lilith…”

Satan’s eyes darted up to meet mine. A flicker of emotion; that was it. “Lilith, huh? That’s interesting.” He looked into the teacup again, slouching somewhat in his seat. “What do you know about Lilith?”

“I know she was your sister,” I started, and Satan swiftly shook his head.

“Theirs,” he corrected. “Not mine.”

“I know she was their sister,” I started again. “I know that she fell in love with a human. And I know that’s what led to the Great Celestial War.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” he asked nonchalantly.

I hesitated for just a moment. “...She died.”

Satan nodded. Then he sighed and glanced up at me. “You don’t need to be so careful about how you talk about her around me. I never even knew her.”

“Still, her dying, and the war, and everything that’s happened since then…” I struggled to find the right words. “It seems like it’s been hard on all of you.”

“I have it the easiest,” he said with a condescending shrug.

“How?” That statement baffled me. Sure, his situation was different from his brothers’, but never once had it crossed my mind that he might have it easier. 

“I don’t have any annoying attachment to that other place,” he explained with a broad gesture towards the ceiling.

“The Celestial Realm?”

“What other place is there?” he snapped. I might have mentioned the human world, but there was no sense in nitpicking at the moment.

“You don’t feel any connection to it at all?” I asked, growing a bit curious. I knew the general circumstances of how Satan came to be and the implications of that, but my actual understanding of the whole thing was muddled at best. “Even though you’re…?”

“Even though what?” Satan’s expression was… Well, the most accurate word I can think of is bright, though that doesn’t really give the right impression. He was smiling broadly, and his eyes were glimmering with an unsettling intensity. But he didn’t look happy, and his expression was as pale and cold as ice. He knew what I was thinking.

“Even though you’re… I mean, even though you came from…” The smile didn’t falter, but he raised his eyebrows, prompting me to continue. “…from…Lucifer.”

I assumed it wouldn’t send him into a rage, since he had clearly anticipated what I said, and I was right. But I still didn’t expect the gentle laugh that followed. It was perfectly polite, like the kind of obligatory laugh you’d expect at a fancy party. I could hear Asmo whispering in my mind. I just got goosebumps!

“Even though I came from Lucifer. Haha. What a weird way to put it.” His expression finally softened a little, and I released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I’ve actually wondered about this before, and I’ve come up with a theory.” He straightened up and took the last sip of tea in his cup just then. Probably trying to up the drama of the moment.

He set the teacup down in its saucer and fixed his gaze on me again. I wished he’d stop doing that.

“I think I’m the part of Lucifer the light from the Celestial Realm never touched. Something ugly deep inside him that he kept hidden until he couldn’t contain it anymore.”

I looked at him, and he looked at me. I didn’t believe him. Not really. I knew that some of Lucifer’s old feelings and memories lingered in Satan. But I couldn’t imagine he felt good about that. And there wasn’t any reason that I should know that in this place.

“I don’t understand,” I finally said.

He smiled and nodded kindly. “Of course you don’t. No one does. Not even I understand it.” He leaned back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling. His mind wasn’t there, though. It was up, up, up, way up in that place he’d never been, but which was so inextricably linked to who he was and why he existed.

“The rest of them… The ones who call themselves my brothers. They all wish they were back there. Even Lucifer. They all regret it.”

He looked at me sharply for a few seconds as if challenging me to argue.

I took a more conservative approach. “…Why do you think that?”

“Because they failed.” He shrugged. “They lost everything. They didn’t even save their sister. It would have been better for everyone if they’d done nothing at all.”

I couldn’t agree with that for a whole host of reasons. But topmost on my mind…

“But if they did nothing, you wouldn’t exist.”

Satan grinned, and I got the distinct impression that he’d been hoping I’d notice that issue. Like I had made his point perfectly and saved him a lot of tedious explaining. But that grin of his… It was an awful thing to look at. It didn’t look like it so much as it felt like looking at the grin of a corpse. So I stared down at my hands. I had no interest in picking up the teacup again. I felt sick.

“Think about it from my perspective,” Satan said, sidestepping my comment. “The only reason I’m here is as a legacy of failure. I pick fights with them a lot. But isn’t that just natural? It’s why I exist. I exist to remind them that they failed.” I heard him shift slightly in his seat. “...I exist to remind him that he failed.”

Things were quiet for a few merciful seconds.

“You look so sad.”

I braced myself, then hesitantly met Satan’s gaze. He wasn’t grinning anymore, thank goodness. But that eerie brightness hadn’t left his face. He seemed to be enjoying this entire conversation far too much.

I tried to answer him. I tried to tell him that I was sad. I didn’t want to think he hated himself that much. Hated existing that much. Or was all that just a cruel joke of his? He didn’t seem to be taking it seriously. But he wasn’t really treating it as an actual joke either. More like… gallows humor? Like he had to find it funny, or else it would smother him. And it was painful to watch it. In another world, I really loved the guy. But here…

I didn’t know this person.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said you looked sad.”

Satan leaned forward in his seat, examining my expression. The brightness was dimmer, and I got the feeling that I wasn’t reacting the way he’d hoped anymore. I was probably being too quiet.

“...Why did you want me to have tea with you?” I asked him. My voice felt dry and separate from me. I didn’t recognize it. “Are you punishing me for leaving you at the library?”

Satan looked taken aback.

“Punishing you?” His surprised expression suddenly turned angry, and he scowled. “Why the hell would I waste my time punishing you? Is having tea with me really so awful that it feels like a punishment?”

“No,” I said, my voice a little firmer. “But this conversation is.”

Satan stared at me, then looked at the table with the teapot and other accoutrement set atop it. 

“I was just curious how you would react, that’s all.”

Curious how I would react? Curious how I would react to what, exactly?

“I wanted to tell you, specifically. I thought your reaction might be interesting to watch. I didn’t expect you to look so heartbroken over it, though.”

“Over what?”

“Over the fact that I’m not a real person and I shouldn’t exist. That I’m punishment for my brothers. Did you know that my name means ‘the adversary’ in a human language?” He tilted his head a bit. “Or maybe I misinterpreted your expression. That’s just what it looked like to me.”

I stared blankly at him. “...I’m sorry, what?”

Satan seemed to appreciate that reply. His lips quirked into a hint of a smile again. “That’s what I was telling you. Lucifer shouldn’t have started any idiotic rebellion. None of them should have become demons. I shouldn’t exist. And the evidence–”

“Satan–”

“The evidence,” he continued, drowning out my interruption, “is my incompleteness.”

All I could do was stare at him. I didn’t know what to think anymore. I was tired of trying to understand what he meant. Still, the obvious question spilled out, as if I was reading a script he’d handed me before I walked into the room.

“What do you mean, your ‘incompleteness’?”

Satan leaned back in his seat as if to say ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ “All I am,” he explained slowly, “is the wrath that leaked out when Lucifer tore off his angel wings.” The ghost of a smile stayed on his face, but unlike before, he looked and sounded deathly serious. “Lucifer rebelled, and he failed. Lucifer hates to lose. He hates to lose so much that all the ugly energy that poured out of him turned into something like a person. But you can’t make a real person out of ingredients like that.” The ghost of a smile grew slightly, but it was bitter and resentful. “You can only make a shadow.”

------

I walked out of the House of Lamentation without saying a word to anyone. I could hear my D.D.D. pinging me, probably Asmo and the others asking how things went. I ignored it all the way to Cocytus Hall.

“I’m home,” I said tiredly as I stepped into the unit I shared with Solomon. 

The sorcerer peeked out of his room with a cheerful smile. “Hello! Did you have a good…” His smile vanished, and he stepped out of his room. “What happened…?”

I knew I looked awful. I didn’t have to see a mirror to understand that. I felt awful. So when Solomon approached me and put a hand on my shoulder, looking carefully at my face, I didn’t protest. I didn’t have the energy.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.

Solomon continued to stare keenly at me, his expression almost stern. Then his face loosened up and his usual smile returned.

“That's okay. You can cry if it helps,” he said gently, clasping my hands. I pulled one of them free and touched my cheek.