Lillene

Enjoy!

Legion told Serenity about the trapped package a few hours after it happened.

Russ waited until Serenity was back on Earth to fill in the details. All of the details. “...six trapped packages that day. We’re lucky that only two of them were opened by their apparently intended recipients, so we only had one death. It could have been a lot worse.”

“You’re sure they’re all people who were on Mr. Michaelson’s list?” Serenity couldn’t do anything about the death, but he could try to figure out why it happened. 

“Everyone who hadn’t agreed to sell. Oddly, the people who agreed then backed out after the scam was revealed weren’t targeted. I’m not sure if that means an old list, a shortage of the summoning devices, or if it means whoever’s doing this doesn’t need actual ownership.” Russ rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m leaning towards the last option, but the second is also plausible, with the box of fake Solomon vases we recovered at that enchanter’s place. Red’s looking into-”

“Serenity? You need to see this.” Aki’s voice in the air interrupted Russ. There was a note of urgency in her voice; that, along with the fact that she interrupted them, told Serenity that this definitely wasn’t just a welcome home surprise. “I thought Cliffside was overstating the weirdness but he barely even touched on it.”

Russ’s question “Cliffside?” overlapped with Serenity’s “Where?”

Aki answered Serenity first. “East, towards the old parking lot. I’ll direct you.” She paused, then seemed to realize she should answer Russ as well. “Cliffside is a nearby surface dungeon; he’s a lot younger than I am but just as happy that people like spending time inside his space. We talk about what we see; it’s fun and interesting. He sees a lot of the same things I do, but also a lot that I don’t. Some of his stories are incredible.”

“Nearby? Where is he?” Serenity wasn’t certain what that meant to a dungeon, but he couldn’t think of a dungeon with cliffs inside New York City, which meant it was probably a decent distance away.

“Cliffside’s formal dungeon name is Palisades on the Hudson, if that helps?” Aki sounded uncertain. “I don’t have a good grasp on non-dungeon geography, but he’s loud so he has to be close.”

Serenity had heard of the Palisades; he’d even been there with Rissa. They weren’t exactly what he’d have called close, though they weren’t all that far away when compared to the scale of the planet. With that said, it was far enough that something that was affecting both a dungeon at the Palisades and Aki’s dungeon in New York City seemed likely to be caused by either humans or something on the ley lines. The fact that Aki said he had to see it made Serenity guess it wasn’t just ley line weirdness.

Aki directed them across some of her relatively wild terrain until they were close enough to the edge of her territory that Serenity could see the boundary in the distance. That was relatively new; he’d only started to actually see the dungeon edges when he came back from A’Atla. 

The land in this direction was marshy; while it wasn’t completely inundated, they had to be careful where they stepped or they’d be standing in three or four inches of water. Even the “dry” parts were wet enough to squish and the land smelled of rot and decomposition with a hint of salt that reminded Serenity just how close to the ocean they were. The driest bits were when they approached one of the large trees that rose from the ground, but the very roots that let them stay drier were a significant trip hazard. They could only move slowly through the wet terrain unless they wanted to be spattered up to their knees in mud, assuming they didn’t trip and end up completely covered. Aki didn’t push them to move faster, so Serenity and Russ stayed at a comfortable, safe pace.

“I don’t know how skittish it is,” Aki told the two of them, “But I think it’s more likely to be scared off by Russ than by Serenity; he feels like he belongs here while Russ doesn’t.”

“Do you want it scared away?” Serenity wasn’t certain what Aki’s goal here was. “Is it something you don’t want in your dungeon?”

“Oh, no!” Aki sounded startled. “I want more of them! Once I know what it is, at least. It’s weird but it’s nice, not like someone using skills but … more like you when you’re doing that strange thing you do in the crafting halls. Well, your crafting room.”

Serenity blinked at that. He wasn’t doing anything particularly unusual there; he was using them for anything that might be dangerous, that was all. Any mage needed a good warded space for experimentation and practice; new spellforms and rituals could be dangerous. That couldn’t be new to her; more than that, he was certain he wasn’t the only mage using Aki’s “crafting” rooms as a secure location to practice. That meant she must be talking about what he was practicing rather than the fact that he was practicing. “It uses essence?”

“Probably?” Aki sounded distinctly uncertain. “It’s something I’ve only seen on this planet; no one on Asihanya did that. At least, not in a dungeon.”

Naturally, that was when Serenity heard a sobbing sound from behind a nearby tree. He didn’t quite believe it; first, Aki would know if there were a human nearby and would have warned them. Second, they were out here because of something Aki didn’t recognize. The combination was telling; the sobbing noise likely came from their target.

Serenity would have hurried if he thought the sobbing actually came from a scared child, the way it sounded, but he didn’t believe it. Instead, he took his time to carefully pick his way through the terrain. Russ either had the same idea or he was simply following Serenity’s lead; he moved slower through the marsh than Serenity did.

When Serenity rounded the tree and saw the weeping child with silver skin and golden hair, he knew exactly what he was looking at: a young, probably Lesser, Demon of Sorrow. They could take on a couple of different forms, but a gold-and-silver child was one of the more famous variants. 

Sorrow Demons were attracted to locations of sadness and would express their sorrow there; famously, this tended to cause more accidents and sorrow as people tried to help or were simply distracted at the wrong time. Serenity wasn’t certain if this was accidental or malicious; with demons, either was entirely possible and both was probably the correct answer. It depended on the particular demon.

Some Sorrow Demons became attached to particular locations or at least lasted long enough at them to become identified with particular places. Serenity could think of several things in Earth’s myths that could be Sorrow Demons; the myths he could think of immediately all cast the demon as as much a tempter as anything else. It was hard to say how much of that was simply because humans wrote the myths.

“Lorelai,” Russ muttered from behind Serenity. “How did one of those get here? I haven’t heard of one actually being found in the past fifty years.”

“It’s definitely a demon,” Serenity whispered back. He could feel it, which told him that even if his new shape no longer called itself a demon, there was still some influence. “A Lesser Demon of Sorrow, I think. They’re usually harmless as long as you don’t decide to rescue them.”

Russ snorted. “Which makes it more dangerous than almost anything in Aki’s dungeon, even the lower floors. Never underestimate the power of stupidity.”

Serenity couldn’t really argue that. Mistakes probably killed more delvers than bad luck, after all; something as simple as pushing too hard or taking on something too strong for you wasn’t really bad luck unless you were delving into an unexplored dungeon or one that had recently changed. In both cases, there were usually signs and it was recommended to add one to two Tiers to how powerful the encounters could be until they were adequately explored, but people often didn’t follow the guidelines.

Serenity knew he often didn’t; he’d gotten unlucky a few times, too. Of course, Vengeance hadn’t really cared about whether he lived or died, so perhaps he shouldn’t call it bad luck. He’d courted death. The fact that it turned out that he didn’t stay dead was an accident that changed everything and nothing.

“Get out of your head,” Russ muttered from behind Serenity. “Do you know of anything better to do with a Demon of Sorrow than kill it? That’s all I know to do and I don’t want to leave it out here where anyone could run across it, even if Aki wants to keep it.”

Serenity started to shake his head, then realized that he might actually have another option. Sure, the form didn’t say it was a demon lord, since he’d specifically avoided those options, but it had developed from a demon and was apparently one of the sources demons were created from. It wasn’t the Demonic Dungeon Lord the monsters’ Voice had predicted, but maybe it was closer than it seemed. 

He’d have tested it earlier if he could have. Unfortunately, the demons in the dungeon on A’Atla reacted to his human shape as if he were their lord; changing to his Asura shape hadn’t changed anything, but they were dungeon monsters. He needed a demon that didn’t already “belong” to him if he wanted to see how they reacted to his Arcane Asura shape.

“I’m going to see if I can tell it to follow me. Which means I need to use another shape,” he warned Russ. He didn’t think he’d surprise his future father-in-law, but it was still better to give a warning.

Russ waved at Serenity, clearly telling him to go ahead.

Arcane Asura didn’t feel different from his human shape, or at least not very different. Yes, there was the weight of wings on his back, but he was used to that from his chimera shape. Instead, the first thing he noticed was how very short Russ seemed, half Serenity’s new height. It seemed natural and intensely weird at the same time; he knew he was bigger but it seemed more like everything around him had gotten smaller.

The second thing he noticed was that his vision had changed as if he had his magesight active, even though he didn’t. Something similar happened with mana in his “Tom Cooper” form, so Serenity knew what was happening: apparently his Arcane Asura shape could natively see both mana and essence. He’d probably be able to see more if he did use Magesight, but that wasn’t the point of this test.

Serenity walked up to the weeping metallic demon-child. He wasn’t certain how to begin, but maybe that was the answer. “Child, why do you cry?”

It was a dumb question; the demon cried because it was a demon of sorrow. Knowing it was a dumb question didn’t help Serenity come up with a different one.

The Lesser Demon of Wrath didn’t answer in words. Instead, it turned and grabbed his leg in a tight hug. A very tight hug. Serenity wouldn’t have wanted to be hugged that hard around the chest at low Tiers if he still had to breathe; it might have prevented it. At his Tier with the hug around his leg, the hug was only mildly uncomfortable.

“I think I’ll take that as a yes,” Serenity muttered. The demon wasn’t attacking him; if anything, it was turning to him for comfort. It was impossible to remove a demon of sorrow’s sadness, since it was literally part of them, but it probably was possible for them to feel other emotions as well.

Serenity looked up and turned towards where he knew Aki’s core was. It didn’t matter for her ability to hear him, but he still liked to face her when he talked to her. “Where would you like me to take it? Somewhere it can safely cry.”

There was a long moment before Aki answered. “The dungeon, third floor. There’s an area I hadn’t decided what to do with; I can make it fit the demon. I can keep delvers away from it for now. What do I need to know to care for a demon? I don’t think they eat plants like my moose.”

Lillene

For those who are wondering: Russ is (slightly) mangling a Heinlein quote, not a George Carlin quote. They’re … basically the same idea.