Origin - Ten - Rending Nightmare

Alice had two weeks to prepare before going to Hell, which wasn’t something most people, she assumed, were afforded.

Two weeks, with school on top of it, wasn’t a very long time to get ready for anything, but she still made the best of it. Every lunch hour was spent on the school’s roof, casting spell after spell and learning new ways of twisting her magic.

After school, she’d go to a local park, past a stand of trees where it would be hard for people to spot her, and there she fought with Marcia with Dream Charter. The succubus had claimed to be ‘proficient with handling swords.’ She’d delivered that statement with a wiggle of her eyebrows and a suggestive wink, but Alice took her up on the offer and soon they were spending every afternoon with Alice becoming more proficient at sending Marcia crashing to the ground.

On the one weekend she had, Alice planned to take a bus out to the countryside to really let loose with her magic, to see how hard she could push things far from any civilization, but she had to cancel that trip early.

She was on the bus heading out when a report came over the radio of an attack at a nearby college campus.

She’d gotten out at the next stop, changed into her costume in an alleyway, then darted across the city to the college where she found several demons fighting the police. Fireballs were being flung towards already-burning cop cars and imps were being gunned down with extreme prejudice from men with assault rifles who were still pouring out of black BOPE vans.

Alice watched it all from a roof across the street, just one more person staring at the mounting carnage of the assault from the sidelines.

The attack was clearly being led by a trio of demons similar to the one she’d fought before. Big men with reddish skin and large horns who thought that chains and tanned leather counted as clothes.

Their skin seemed impervious to the smaller pistols the police were using, but they shied away from the bigger guns the special operatives had.

As Alice watched, she winced at how ineffective the police were at taking them out. They were prioritising getting civilians out of the crossfire though, and she saw more than one officer go down while trying to save people.

She decided that she was going to test her larger spells right then and there.

With Dream Charter by her side, Alice gestured ahead of her and willed darkness to swallow the light.

Instantly, it became overcast, shadows lengthened, and the air chilled.

She reached out, then closed her free hand in a fist, and with that gesture the dark fought the light cast by magical fires until the flames cast by the demons below were smothered and extinguished.

The demons noticed her.

It didn’t matter. Her next move was to turn their shadows into nightmares. The darkness beneath their feet surged upwards with claws and teeth and soon the demons and their imps were screaming in pain and horror as they were eaten from below.

One of the demons opened a portal in the air, a rent into Hell.

Alice concentrated, formed a large spear of writhing darkness behind her, then flicked her sword forwards like a conductor calling for a sharp change in tempo.

The spear rammed into the opening portal and both exploded, hellish fire and burning darkness warring for a moment before both burned each other out.

Alice watched, searching for more threats for nearly a minute before she decided that things were clear and she stepped away from the lip of the roof. She went around, intending to jump onto the roof of the college, but then she noticed a police officer setting up on a rooftop across the street, so she ran around and landed on the roof a dozen metres away.

The officer jumped and turned to stare at her.

She must have spooked him a little, she realised. A young woman with a mask on and a strange dress carrying a sword wasn’t normal, especially after she landed onto the rooftop from what was clearly a long jump.

“Hey,” she said while raising a hand in greeting. “Do you know if there are any more demons left in the campus?”

The officer rolled backward and brought his rifle up, pointing it at the ground before Alice. “Stand down!” he shouted as he reached for a radio hooked to the front of his vest. “This is Andrew, I have a suspect on the roof with me.”

“I’m not a suspect,” Alice said. “I’m the one who helped you guys.” She gestured and a small ball of darkness appeared over her hand.

Then the police officer shot her, and Alice stumbled back.

She gasped, then, on reflex, jumped back and away.

Her landing was less than graceful, and she found herself cupping her chest as she spun around and leapt from roof to roof until she dropped down to a fire escape a level down.

When she looked, there was a neat dent in her dress that dug deep into her side. There was blood leaking out from beneath her shirt.

Alice gasped in a breath, then tugged at her shirt.

The bullet popped out of her with a squelch, and she felt her gorge rise and was worried she might lose her lunch for a moment.

Then she opened her shirt at the front and looked at the wound proper. It was a thumb-sized hole right between her ribs, just a bit to the left her her sternum, and it was bleeding slowly but surely with big spurts of near-black blood.

“Oh, I’m going to die,” Alice gasped.

ONLY IF YOU WILL IT.

She blinked, then shook her head and refocused. Her magic pooled in her hand, then she pressed it to the wound and willed it away.

Her skin burned and her blood sizzled, but the wound knit itself closed and she found herself leaning against the brick wall of an apartment building, laughing at the pain ebbed and flowed away.

Bending down, Alice picked up the bullet. It was both at once massive, and somehow tiny. She wondered what calibre a sniper’s rifle used, then dismissed it. It hadn’t gone through her costume, but the punch had still hurt her.

She wasn’t bullet proof, then. Not yet, in any case. Something told her that if she’d been shot that way just a couple of weeks ago, soon after gaining her power, she wouldn’t have been able to skip away from the incident so easily.

And maybe in a week or two she’d be just a little stronger too, more resistant. Less.... human, maybe.

“Am I becoming non-human?” she asked.

YOU ARE BECOMING YOURSELF.

That was somehow reassuring, in a strange and twisted way.

She used her own shadow to scrub away at any blood left on the scene, then she fell down to the ground level and dismissed her costume to become just another girl out in the city on a normal weekend. She never did make it to the countryside that weekend.

The rest of that week followed more or less normally for her. More practice whenever she could get away with it. She started using her magic to sense the feelings and thoughts of sleepy students, and she walked the corridors with her eyes closed, relying on her sense of where shadows were around her to see.

Marcia was a constant, and strangely helpful in her own perverse way.

She had some fantastic ideas for exercises Alice could practice to hone her skills, some derived from how demons practised their own magics, others...

“Come on, different colours reflect light differently, right?”

“Yes,” Alice admitted. “Different materials too.”

“So the quality of a shadow can change based on the thing the shadow’s resting on?” Marcia asked to clarify as they walked through the halls.

Alice sighed. “Yes.”

“So you can guess at a person’s underwear colour with your powers,” Marcia said.

Some of Marcia’s practice ideas were, unfortunately, less than useful as well.

The week wore on, and soon enough, it was the last Friday before a three-day weekend. Alice had brought Marcia home enough that her parents had met her, and other than Alice having to kick Marcia to stop the succubus from making passes at her father, those visits had gone well enough.

As far as her family was concerned, Alice was spending Sunday and the next Monday at Marcia’s place.

It was even true, in a way. If they considered Marcia’s place as ‘Hell itself’ then Alice wasn’t even lying, just bending the truth creatively. Marcia really was a poor influence.

Alice discovered that Marcia lived in a rundown motel on the edge of one of the big transport roads leading into the city. “I got the room with few questions asked,” Marcia explained with a shrug as Alice followed her into her room and tried hard not to touch anything. There was a smell, mould and sweat and something else that Alice didn’t want to think about.

“I can’t imagine how you managed that,” Alice said.

“Oh, I gave the owner a blow job that almost literally blew his mind. He ended up in the hospital,” Marcia said.

Alice just stared at her... friend. “Okay,” she said. She made a mental note to judge the owner harshly if she ever saw him. “Just... how do we get to Hell?”

“Some people say that Hell is other people,” Marcia said as she shoved the room’s bed to the side. “But I always found that saying stupid. The fastest way down is the straight path. Grab both ends and fold them in on each other, you know.”

Alice nodded along, even if she didn’t quite understand.

Then Marcia cut her arm across the air vertically, and a slice of reddish darkness remained where her hand had crossed. It widened, and the motel room’s interesting scents were replaced by the stink of sulphur and brimstone and an uncomfortably warm wind. “Ah, home,” Marcia said before stepping into the rent in reality.

Alice closed her eyes and allowed the darkness to swallow her and spit her out in her magical girl costume. She flicked her hand to the side, summoning Dream Charter, then she held the sword and her will close as she stepped into the rift.

There was a deeply uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the warmth grew more and more until it was nearly unbearable. Then Alice stumbled for a step onto an uneven stone floor. She was in a large chamber lit by... normal light bulbs in sconces that had once been used for candles hanging off of stone walls.

The chamber was quite large, with three raised platforms, one of which held the portal she’d stepped out of.

“Hey, you made it out alive,” Marcia said. She was standing nearby, a hand picking at some light singing on her school uniform. “I didn’t know if that would work.”

“You thought I might die?” Alice asked.

“It’s not exactly human-comfortable down here,” Marcia said. “And transportation magic sucks in a big way.”

“And what would you have done if I died?” Alice asked.

Marcia shrugged. “Taken credit, obviously. It would make me quite famous, you know. But... yeah, I think I’d be sad too. You’re fun to tease.” Alice glared at her, and she relented. “Very sad. Super sad. Might even cry a little... into my pile of gold.”

“You can be utterly insufferable sometimes.”

“High praise down here,” Marcia said. “In any case. Welcome to the Second Circle! Lusts and pleasures most carnal abound for any and all. No matter who you are and what bits you have, you’ll never feel as sinfully good as you will here!”

***