Taurac and I have been walking for the better part of an hour, and it's beginning to seem as though the landscape is endless. Black canyons and landforms are all I see, not a single tree or castle in sight. With the heat bearing down on us, I don't know how much longer I can last on my dwindling waterskin.

Mira and Belle haven't woken up yet, and I'm hesitant to use a potion to bring them to consciousness. We restocked before coming out, but I there's no telling what we might encounter out here. And with an extra hand in the form of a minotaur, who knows if he will end up needing to pop a potion during a fight.

I should consider us fortunate that we haven't come across a fight yet. Some of the lesser beasts and demons, namely flying imps, have steered clear of us. Likely sensing the magic signature within us being too powerful to handle.

"Hrr… found cave." Taurac alerts me to an indentation along the canyonside. 

It isn't really a cave than it is an alcove, but it can provide us some shelter away from the harsh sun. Taurac lays the sleeping witches on a bedsheet he stole from the mansion. I try to shake them awake, but there's no response.

As soon as I sit down, I feel something between my legs slap against my thigh. When I pull my robes up, the penis that I thought I had lost is back where it is.

I'm not sure if I should feel relieved or disappointed.

"Demos…" I mutter the trickster god under my breath.

He probably put an illusion on me to make it disappear. Why did he do that, though? Just to have get a good laugh at me having sex with Taurac?

Or rather…

Since Vessyra put in me the power to drain magic from another creature through sex, was their intention to make me stronger by draining Taurac? Yet he seems perfectly fine. He isn't showing any symptoms of magic deficiency like exhaustion or delirium.

"Time may be slowed here, but every minute I waste is progress not being made towards defeating Edith. Traversing this wasteland would be so much easier with Rio…" I open my satchel to see my little furball inert as a corpse.

Without magic flowing through familiars, they might as well be dead. I can't imagine it being a pleasant experience.

I have no choice. I need help, and we can't afford to stay here much longer. Six restoration potions are all I have. I'll spend two to awaken Mira and Belle, and hopefully we make headway in finding Zertos's castle.

Beginning with Mira, I raise her head and pour the vial into her mouth. I do the same with Belle and pray that the potion's effects set in quickly. After a minute, when I think they aren't going to awaken, Mira's eyes snap open.

I'm surprised that her first reaction isn't to blast Taurac as soon as she sees him. Instead, she scans the surroundings, takes note of the minotaur and myself sitting leisurely next to them, and pulls out a waterskin to wet her parched throat.

"Y-You're not going to ask about the minotaur?" I ask her, wondering if this is some sort of test she's giving me.

"Last time I awoke, we were freezing and you were fraternizing with a yeti. Leave it to you to find us in a similar situation, except it is sweltering, and with a different creature," Mira snorts.

My heart fills with joy, and I can't help but laugh. I throw my arms over Mira and she responds with a kiss to silence my uncontrollable giggling. We part away as Belle awakens next with a start.

"What the hell— minotaur?!" Belle backs up, hands sweeping the floor presumably for a weapon to defend herself with. Her panic subsides when she sees Mira and I staring back at her, stifling our laughter. "Everytime we go somewhere weird, I'm always waking up in an even weirder place. Someone want to explain why we're baking in a literal hellhole?"

***

Mira and Belle accept everything I tell them leading up to where we are now without a hint of doubt. Maybe because we've been encountering plenty of unbelievable things lately, and this has become yet another unbelievable journal entry in our lives.

Not even mention of the gods faze either of them. Belle, however, shares my doubts about my new benefactors' intentions.

"It would have been fine and all if the gods took a back seat in this, but they appeared right before you. They practically beseeched your help," Belle says, putting emphasis on the desperation they demonstrated to me. Then to Mira she asks, "I want to know what you think. These are the same gods that had given Edith the means which brought about the Crimson Wars. This rewrites history as we know it."

Mira sits with her legs crossed, smoking from a pipe. She stares long and hard into the distance, then to her own satchel where Talos is currently inert.

"Maybe we don't need them. Talmora doesn't need them, but they need Talmora. Chances are they mean to restore the entire pantheon, not just Vessyra and Demos. That would suck dry the entire planet— eventually, witchcraft may disappear entirely." She exhales a puff of smoke and empties the contents of her pipe to the ground. 

Mira is right to an extent. Gods like Vessyra and Demos have already shaped this world into existence, they have no reason to tamper with it anymore. Letting them live means allowing them to run their influence rampant, good or bad, it doesn't matter to them. Yet it feels wrong to just abandon the gods as well.

Or perhaps, that is my selfish naivety at work again.

"Either way, we need to find Zertos before anything else," I say, picking myself up and brushing the dirt from my robes.

Mira nods in agreement. "A demon should make for fine alchemical reagents. I'm salivating just thinking about dissecting it."

"Gods help us…" Belle gags.

As we exit the alcove, a caravan of demons marches along a beaten road along the valley. Flying imps survey the lands from above, and hulking beasts with bones protruding from their spines pull cage wagons made of bones and black metal. They're occupied with naked humans, presumably knights from the Order of Piety.

A female demon soars into view upon black, feathery wings. She has the appearance of a human, but skin as red as blood and horns jutting from her forehead. A mane of black hair cascades down her back and chest, like a male lion's crown of fur. She wears a dark grey chestplate with chainmail underneath, and a shredded skirt at her waist. 

The demon cracks her whip in the air and shouts, "Zertos wants these bags of meat delivered to his castle soon. If we're late, it won't be my head he's taking!"

"You won't see me shedding a tear," Mira chuckles, watching the ensemble parade northwards.

None of us have ever met with a demon before, and only knew them as scheming creatures of a plane separated from us by a thick veil of magic. Our books would have us believe they are akin to greedy merchants and opportunistic aristocrats.

"I doubt they will be keen on letting us hitch a ride." Just as I say that, an imp spots us and shouts to his cohorts below.

Belle brandishes her staff. "What do we do? Fight? I'm not looking to be a demon's next meal!"

A gang of imps makes a nose dive towards us with spears and tridents. Mira stomps the ground, pauses for a moment and realizes that there are no plants in this world. She nudges Belle on the back instead.

"It's your stage, darling."

"Hah! Depend on me, will you? Finally admitting that I'm your better?" Belle gloats, and then summons a gust to knock the imps from the sky. She puts her hands on her hips, raising her nose into the air. A proud smile adorns her face.

I put a hand to my face and sigh. "Why are you two like this?"

The female demon descends to meet us, but remains in the air to keep her elevated advantage. She grips her long whip with two spiked gloves, eager to lash out at us. Being this close, I recognize her features as an erinyes. A demon that gets off to doling out punishments.

Fitting, seeing as she's transporting human prisoners in cages.

"Three witches accompanied by a minotaur. Did that pesky jester of a god send you?" she asks.

"Actually, we're looking for—"

I open my mouth to answer her, but she speaks over me instead. "Doesn't matter. You will make fitting gifts for Zertos—"

The erinyes is blown out of the sky by a massive fireball. Belle and I gape at Mira whose staff is smoking at the crystal.

"It irked me when she interrupted you," Mira replies, shrugging.

Four ropes shoot out from the smoke and bind our arms to our body. Belle tries to cast a spell, but nothing comes out of her staff. The magic within me is sealed away, I can't tap into it.

"Anti-magic?" I mutter.

When the smoke clears, I see the erinyes' whip has split into four separate ropes that entangle us. She cackles victoriously until suddenly the bindings slacken and fall away.

Mira has her dagger out. She's cut my bindings, and is moving onto free Belle and Taurac from theirs. My magic returns to me

"I… I could have thought of that, too…" Belle grumbles, rubbing her wrists.

The erinyes' eyes twitch with rage. She pulls out a black stone the size of a marble, reminiscent of the black sun above us.

"This was supposed to be a last resort…" she mutters, and then tosses the orb toward us. I'm about to dive out of the way when Mira instead punts the marble back to the erinyes. Her eyes go wide with fear, before she is swallowed by the black portal that opens up from it.

Even from down here, we can feel the suction as it begins to draw us in. I catch a glimpse of what is beyond the portal— a dark and dank room that appears to be a dungeon.

"Shall we go in after her?" Mira asks.

"That erinyes is the only intelligent demon we've come across so far. We'll have her tell us everything we need to know about Zertos," I reply.

Belle nods and lifts all four of us into the portal with her moving storms.

We come through on the other side, landing on chiseled stone floors, and cooler temperatures. The dungeon is dark, tinted with a red hue and lit up by few torches that barely illuminate the room.

Chains and shackles are bolted to the walls. A table full of different sized mouth gags and whips of varying length are on display. There are chairs with something shaped like a penis at the center of the seat. The luxurious bed is the most out of place in this dungeon, like it was plucked right from a royal bedchamber and dumped in here.

Mira points to the corner of the room. Trapped in an iron cage, hands clutching the metal bars, is the erinyes.

"Oh, how the tables have turned," I say to her, crossing my arms and taking in view of all the s&m toys we can use to torture her with. "Whatever shall we do with you now?"