Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ayda Aguefort only believed in luck to the extent that luck was, in fact, a real phenomenon that existed in the planar system in which she resided. Over the course of her studies, he had read of several individuals who had access to inexplicable "luck" with a tendency to kick in at just the right moments. The reasoning for this phenomenon had, of course, been widely theorized on, and the current leading opinion was that it likely had something to do with those individuals being favored by some sort of deity or other reality-warping being. However, it may have also been a psychological trait that activated alongside a fight-or-flight response that produced extraordinary performance under extraordinary circumstances.

Up to this point, Ayda had made a concerted effort to abstain from being favored by, or in fact observed in any way by, deities or other reality-warping beings. And according to her research, no such “lucky” trait had ever activated in her own psyche under states of psychological duress. As such, it was statistically likely that her luck, in the capacity that such a factor existed at all, was unremarkable and generally average in every way.

However, if she were of the type to speculate about having a certain streak of rotten luck, which of course she was not, there was some evidence present in her life to suggest that she had, as many-a self-pitying protagonist had put it, “been dealt a bad hand.”

All this to say, when her attempts to summon a devil from the Nine Hells failed to bring forth the experienced and much-speculated-on pit fiend Gorthalax the Insatiable, ruler of the Bottomless Pit, Ayda was not particularly surprised. Honestly, if she had somehow managed to summon a major devil likely using an unvetted arcane ritual from an obscure ancient tome on her first try, that would have been more of a surprise.

What Ayda found significantly more surprising was that she had managed to summon anything at all.

“‘Sup?” said the being currently standing on the pentacle in Ayda's bedroom.

Immediately, Ayda began to take note of the entity’s appearance and general mannerisms. She was feminine-presenting and humanoid, with light-red skin, elven ears, and horns, which implied that she was a tiefling. However, tieflings were not equivalent to devils, and it seemed incredibly strange that Ayda could have summoned one on accident. Furthering the confusion, the tiefling was wearing a leather jacket, fishnet-style tights, a choker necklace, a t-shirt, and the skirt from what looked like it may have, in another life, been a part of a school uniform. Additionally, there was a musical instrument slung across her back. Ayda also noticed that the arrangement of features on the tiefling’s face were rather aesthetically pleasing, though she opted not to jot that down.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” The tiefling waved a hand in front of Ayda’s face. While Ayda was taking notes, the tiefling had stepped out of the summoning circle, which was deeply alarming. Also, she was looking at Ayda with a thoroughly indecipherable expression. It occurred to Ayda that she may have been acting impolite.

“Ah. I believe I may have committed a faux pas. Sincerest apologies,” (were you allowed to apologize to devils? Was that an issue? Ayda was pretty sure it was the fey where you had to be careful with that sort of thing, but she wasn’t positive) “... Are you Gorthalax the Insatiable?”

Some devils could take different forms. It was, Ayda realized, entirely possible that this was Gorthalax himself, but that the demon was currently in disguise. Or perhaps this was always his form and some unknown factor had caused him to be misdocumented throughout the ages.

But the tiefling (Gorthalax?) shook her head. She also averted her eyes, and a dark tint came into her cheeks. “Uh, no.” The tiefling (not Gorthalax) tugged at the hem of her skirt and adjusted the collar of the jacket, then straightened up a bit. It was, for once, an expression Ayda recognized, though only because it was one she often practiced herself. The tiefling, if Ayda’s hypothesis was correct, was attempting to put on a mask of composure.

This was further supported when a bit of flame appeared at the tip of her finger. She made a finger-gun and pointed it at Ayda, who stepped back slightly in alarm despite the knowledge that she was immune to fire damage. “No, I’m the new prince of the bottomless pit.” Her voice cracked slightly on the word “new”, and she cleared her throat before saying, “I’m Fig the Infaethable.”

“Ah. Could you spell ‘Infaethable’ for me, please?” Ayda asked, her pen at the ready.

“Yeah, sure. I-N-F-A-E-T-H-A-B-L-E. D’ya want my autograph, too?”

“Are you offering to sign my notes as a gift?”

“... I mean, yes, if you want to put it like that?”

“Then no, absolutely not. I am in no position to be in debt to a devil of the nine hells.”

The tiefling— Fig the Infaethable— shrugged, blew out the flame on her fingertip, and stuck her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. “So, why’d ya summon me?”

“Well, I was rather hoping to summon Gorthalax the Insatiable, but I take it from the fact that you now hold the title ascribed to him that you have in some way disposed of him and taken his position as an archdevil. I am currently conducting a course of study regarding the historical roles of archdevils and their interactions with the material plane, and intended on utilizing Gorthalax as a primary source,” Ayda said. It had been an incredibly difficult thing to track down a book with a proper devil summoning spell in it. As a graduate student and as an employee of the library, Ayda Aguefort had access to many books. But the books that taught one how to summon devils were not to be found on shelves; they were the sort of thing that generally required theft or persuasion to attain, and Ayda was not particularly proficient with stealth or charisma.

“I mean, like, I’m an archdevil,” Fig the Infaethable said, “and I know some pretty fuckin’ sick stories about Gorthalax. Oh, and I have the whole devil-library-thing. So like, I could help you. Maybe. If you’re looking for someone who’s an archdevil. Actually, nevermind, it’s stupid—”

Ayda held up her hand and Fig the Infaethable fell silent. “A fascinating proposition.” The metaphorical wheels in her mind began to turn. Fig the Infaethable was obviously a newer archdevil, so she would have the advantage of an outsider’s perspective and the ability to tell what was and was not worth discussing. Also, the idea of a tiefling girl that did not look to be much older than Ayda herself serving in the role of an archdevil of the nine hells was a novelty all on its own. With proper investigation into Fig the Infaethable’s past, Ayda could very well catalogue the existence of an entirely new demon, and provide a heretofore unprecedented insight into the process of becoming an archdevil, something that wizardly scholars on the material plane had precious little information on. It was a fascinating proposition indeed. And Ayda already had the offering for Gorthalax prepared. Perhaps with slight modification, it could serve as a satisfactory offering for Fig the Infaethable instead.

“I am interested in your offer,” Ayda said. “However, as I mentioned before, I am in no position to be indebted to an archdevil, or, in fact, to anyone, ever. I had an item prepared for Gorthalax the Insatiable that I was planning to offer in exchange for his cooperation in this research. If you would be willing to accept this offering and, in return, provide your insight and experiences towards the development of the field of devilish studies and, in fact, to advance the material plane’s knowledge of the nine hells as a whole, I would find that exchange favorable. Does this sound acceptable to you?”

“What kind of offering are we talking here?” Somewhere over the course of Ayda’s internal thought process, Fig the Infaethable had procured some sort of hand-rolled cigarette and was now smoking it. The smoke smelled more like a campfire than like a cigarette.

“This,” Ayda said, and she procured the ruby from the small box in which it had resided for the three weeks since she’d obtained it. “It is a whole ruby imbued with magical energy. I have been informed by an appraiser that it could serve as a fine conduit—” Ayda paused. Fig the Infaethable, her eyes wide, was stumbling back from the ruby, her hands up in a defensive stance. “Have I done something to frighten or displease you?”

Fig shook herself once more, then said, her voice shaky, “I— what? No. I’m fine! I love rubies. Super great rocks. Not freaky at all. Uh, hey, you’re not planning on sucking me into that, yeah?”

“... No, I have no intentions to bind you to this ruby. Or, in fact, to any other precious mineral. I am merely suggesting a simple trade of this magically valuable item in return for relevant information. Do you find these terms acceptable? I’ve drafted a contract, ahead of time, though I suppose I will need to change the name to reflect the currently involved parties.” A quick Prestidigitation cleaned the paper of mentions of “Gorthalax the Insatiable,” and Ayda penned in “Fig the Infaethable” in its place. “If you accept the terms of this contract, we can both sign and, if you would like, shake hands to seal our agreement.”

“Um…” Fig took the contract from Ayda’s outstretched hand, scanned it with her (deep-red, obviously clever) eyes, and then nodded once. “Yeah, this sounds good. And I think I have to ask this: you’re sure you don’t want to, uh, become a warlock? I think I would be a pretty rad patron.”

Ayda made note of the implication that Fig was not currently a warlock patron, but refrained from commenting on this fact. “I already have access to sufficient magical ability through my studies.”

“Yeah, cool. That’s cool. Good stuff. Can I use your pen?”

Ayda nodded curtly and handed over the pen. With a flourish, Fig signed the document. Her signature was spiky and quick; the penmanship of someone who had signed things before. Ayda looped her own signature next to it and held out her hand.

Fig took it. Her hand was warm, but Ayda’s was warmer.

“Then we have a deal,” Ayda nodded. She handed Fig the ruby, which Fig held delicately between two fingers and dropped into her skirt pocket. 

“Cool.”

“Indeed.” 

The rest of the night, Fig gave long, detailed responses to Ayda’s questions. She had a tendency to go on tangents, but her answers provided a wealth of information that Ayda, a mortal who would ideally never end up in the nine hells, could otherwise never have been privy to. It did seem that she was perhaps avoiding discussing the circumstances under which she’d become archdevil, but when Ayda attempted to push the subject, Fig’s answers became curt. As Fig seemed thoroughly willing to answer nearly every other question Ayda asked, she decided to cut her losses and focus on the structural questions. It was fine. That was, after all, what her thesis was about.

Still, though. Ayda couldn’t help but wonder.

Chapter Text

Adaine Abernant was truly the ideal roommate. If Ayda had more time on her hands, she would perhaps develop a roommate-ranking matrix of some sort, in order to obtain quantitative proof that Adaine was the greatest roommate. As was, she did not have that sort of time, but she could still isolate several of Adaine’s traits that contributed to her… good-roommate-ness. She always had her rent payments prepared on time, even though Ayda was unsure of where precisely she obtained such money. She was a prodigy of a wizard and willing to discuss all matters of magical inquiry with Ayda. She did not have any loud guests over, for sexual fulfillment or otherwise. And, of course, she was also not around very often, leaving Ayda with plenty of time and space to, say, summon a devil without concerns of causing a disturbance.

As such, it came as a great surprise the following morning when Ayda emerged from her room to see Adaine at the kitchenette, holding a steaming mug, with both eyebrows raised.

“You had a guest over last night,” Adaine said, an unidentifiable lilt in her voice, “Did you have fun?”

“Ah, my apologies. I was not aware that you were also in the apartment last night, and did not hear your arrival when you presumably returned from yet another of your days-long outings. How were your travels?” Ayda asked. She was not deflecting , per say. She knew that it was good etiquette, when one’s best (and only) friend came home after a mysterious, possibly oracle-related outing, to discuss said outing with said best (and only) friend.

“It was fine,” replied Adaine, vague as ever about her travels. “Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary. So, your guest from last night. Are they still here, or did they slip away sometime after I fell asleep?”

“... We are currently the only two individuals in this apartment.”

“Understood.” Adaine sipped her tea and continued to attempt to make eye contact with Ayda, who averted her gaze.

“I am going to retrieve breakfast and then return to my room to consume said breakfast and continue work on my thesis. I am glad to hear that your travels went well.”

With that, Ayda retrieved two of the nutritional (if bland) cereal bars that comprised the first meal of each of her days. As she retreated into her room once more, Adaine’s voice chimed in again from behind her.

“I’m glad you’re putting yourself out there!”

Ayda was not putting herself out there. She was summoning a devil of the Nine Hells in here, which was effectively the opposite of putting oneself out anywhere, since it by nature of being in here was in no way out there. Or, she had summoned a devil of the Nine Hells in here. She did not have any plans to do so once more. The ruby had taken a truly inordinate amount of Ayda’s time and funding to locate and obtain, and she did not have another sufficient bartering chip with which to persuade the archdevil Fig the Infaethable to enter a contract. Even if she had been a good conversational partner, and a vibrant storyteller. Even if she had been “cool” in a way Ayda couldn’t quite put a finger on but wanted (desperately, hungrily, with the same gnawing curiosity that led her into higher and higher education in the first place) to see more of.

Even if Ayda maybe had some follow-up questions regarding the court system of the Nine Hells, subpoenas, and the role of devils as instruments of order in contrast to demons as instruments of chaos. Which could enhance her thesis and push it even further into the sphere of academic influence.

But she wasn’t going to just summon an archdevil twice. The first time around, it seemed, she had managed to successfully exit the interaction with her soul intact and all of her blood still inside her body. And she had obtained a frankly priceless knowledge of what went on in the Nine Hells that would allow her to write a paper of unprecedented depth on the subject. To summon Fig again would be foolish; hubristic, even.

And yet, Ayda’s eyes couldn’t help but drift towards the center of the room. To the circular rug under which lay a complicated series of chalk runes surrounding a pentacle. It wasn’t like Ayda had any use for it, now. Hypothetically her devil-summoning days-- well, day-- had come and gone. But last night, when she finally ran out of questions and Fig started yawning and Ayda asked her to leave and then Ayda was in her room alone again and it felt more empty than ever… well, she couldn't bring herself to clean up the pentacle just yet. After all, she’d been tired. So she’d pulled the rug atop it and left it alone.

Fig had insisted that she wasn’t tired.

Ayda had discussed yawning as a contagious behavior, but also pointed out that Fig had definitely yawned first.

Fig had told her that archdevils didn’t get tired.

Ayda asked her if that was true; the idea was disputed by scholars.

Fig had refused to commit one way or the other. But she’d also yawned some more. And when Ayda had pushed her on the subject, she’d admitted that she was maybe a little bit tired. If only from doing so much nerd stuff. And then, finally, she’d left.

Now, Ayda wondered if she’d made it home safe. Which was silly. It was an incredibly silly thing to worry about. Well, no, Ayda wasn’t worried about an archdevil of the Nine Hells. Because that would be thoroughly illogical. Even if Fig died, she would presumably just reform in the Nine Hells. Unless she died in the Nine Hells. But maybe if Ayda had messed up the runes, Fig could have ended up in the wrong layer. Maybe she was sent somewhere dangerous. It would be… of poor academic integrity, to cause the death of a primary source. Certainly not unheard of. Okay, with wizards, it wasn't even uncommon. But it went against Ayda’s moral values.

So it was absolutely a matter of academic integrity when Ayda rolled up the rug once more to inspect the runes. She was a scholar of values and morals and the like. Obviously.

But then, there, poking out between two of the poorly-spaced floorboards that were trademarks of Ayda and Adaine’s cheap apartment, Ayda noticed a glint of red. There was something stuck there. Upon closer inspection, Ayda managed to extract the item from the floor: a guitar pick, ruby-red, inscribed in Common with the words “Gorthalax’s Girl”.

There was only one being that Ayda could think of who that pick could belong to. So maybe it was good that she hadn’t erased the runes, after all. She certainly didn’t want to accidentally steal something from an archdevil.

Later, once Ayda heard the telltale sounds of Adaine departing on whatever nightly oracle business she was getting up to this evening, she set up the candles, touched up the runes, and read aloud the incantations. This time, though, the ritual went a little differently. Rather than a puff of smoke preceding the appearance of Fig the Infaethable, she appeared instead in a column of flame. She also looked different: she looked significantly older, closer to her late 30s than the 20something that Ayda had previously placed her as. Her horns were longer, her skin was redder, and her eyes were a pure, inky black.

"What puny mortal dares summon Fig the Infaethable?! ” Fig’s voice boomed. Her mouth did not actually appear to be moving, which implied the usage of a Minor Illusion spell, which implied either that Fig was a warlock of some sort or that her powers as an archdevil allowed her access to such magic. Either way, it was intriguing. Also, she’d lit the corner of one of Ayda’s papers on fire. A quick Prestidigitation extinguished the flame before it did any real damage. 

“You’ve altered your appearance,” Ayda noted.

“Oh!” This time, Fig’s mouth moved, and her voice was its usual volume. “It’s you.”

With a shifting like melting ice, Fig’s new face and body melted back into the one that Ayda was familiar with.

“A masterful usage of the Disguise Self spell,” Ayda said.

“Gee, thanks,” Fig said, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket and lighting it with a fingertip. “So, why’d you summon me again?”

“You left your guitar pick behind.” Ayda held it out in front of her.

“Oh, sick, thank you!”

Her hand brushed Ayda’s when she plucked the pick from her outstretched fingertips. Ayda attempted to catalogue every aspect of the brief sensation of touch. It felt rather similar to casting magic, or perhaps engulfing her hand in flame, or perhaps crying.

“Uh, you don’t have to answer if you don’t wanna. That’s totally cool. But why do a whole summoning just to give me my pick back? Most people maybe woulda kept it.”

“Are you asking me to partake in an equivalent exchange of information?”

“... Okay, sure. Is that like twenty questions? Because I had a guy try that with me once--”

“Twenty questions certainly seems excessive, though you may prove otherwise over the course of the evening. We don’t need to predetermine the number of questions ahead of time. As long as we keep the quantity equivalent, there should be no issues of anyone owing any additional information to anyone else. I do not have a proper offering for you this time, and as such information about myself and my thought processes and whatnot is all I can offer in exchange for similar information about yourself. Given that I am a fairly prodigious and learned wizard, I believe that knowledge about me holds a sufficient amount of value. Do you agree?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, I agree.”

Once more, they shook hands. For aesthetic effect, Ayda engulfed their handshake in flame. To prove that her wizardly knowledge was great and valuable, of course. Not to show off or anything.

“Okay. First question.” Ayda retrieved a notebook and quickly sketched two columns, one labelled FIG and one labelled AYDA. She put a single tally mark under the FIG column. “You asked why I summoned you here to return your pick to you. My answer has several components. First and foremost, I returned the pick because if I am in possession of something that belongs to you that you have not offered freely and I have not given something equivalent in return, I have committed theft and am therefore in your debt. Secondly, I summoned you here because I have no other means of contacting you, and additionally because it costs me effectively nothing to complete this ritual, given that I already have all of the components and given that rituals drain little to no magical energy from me. Third of all, to be fully truthful, the text on the pick implies a connection between you and the former archdevil Gorthalax the Insatiable that I was deeply curious about.”

Fig nodded.

“Now I will ask my question. Given that you have up to this point been highly evasive about the relationship between you and Gorthalax the Insatiable, and given that your question did not cost all that much for me to answer, I will attempt to ask a question of similar value. Are you a fallen angel, or were you born of one or more mortal parents?”

Fig took a long drag on her campfire-cigarette and eyes the doors and the window. After a moment she said, “One mortal parent.”

“So you’re a tiefling?”

“I think, by your rules, it’s my turn to ask a question now.”

Ayda shook herself a bit. Typical, for her to draft a contract and then allow her own curiosity to bring her to nearly violate its terms immediately. “You are absolutely correct. Ask away.”

“Are you gonna put my name in your thesis?”

“I was intending on doing so, yes. It would throw my credibility into question if I did not. This is much of why I asked you for the spelling of ‘Infaethable” beforehand.”

At the mention of her title, something in Fig shifted slightly, and she nodded once.

“Are you a tiefling?” Ayda repeated.

“Yeah. Are you a harpy?”

“No. I have human arms. Additionally, I cannot sing particularly well.”

“I’ve never met a harpy,” Fig admitted. 

“I have done extensive research on them. I share a great many traits with harpies, but we have a few key biological differences.” Since Fig had not expended a question to ask about this, Ayda did not offer up any more of the biological differences.

And so the night went. Ayda learned that Fig was primarily a bard, that she wrote songs on bass guitar, that she had a last name, that she’d gone to high school. In response, Ayda offered up her natural knack for divination, the meaning of several of her runic tattoos, her job at the library, her favorite spell. They went on like this, in this odd dance, until the tally marks surpassed twenty and kept on going.

Eventually, once more, Fig yawned.

“Do you sleep?” Ayda asked.

“Yeah,” Fig said, looking away as she did. There was a mortality implied, here, that they’d been toeing around all night. Once more, Ayda couldn’t tell what the expression on Fig’s face meant, not really. “Do you think I’m weird?” she asked, after some heavy silence.

Ayda paused for a second. “I think you’re fascinating.”

They held eye contact for a moment, and then another, and then another. And then Fig stood, hopped into the summoning circle, and disappeared.

Well, shit. She still owed Ayda a question.

Chapter Text

There was still, of course, a major gap in Ayda Aguefort’s knowledge of the archdevil Fig the Infaethable: the nature of her relationship to Gorthalax the Insatiable. This was information that Fig was obviously not going to offer freely. If it held significant value to her, which it seemed as though it did, it would be only fair for Ayda to offer something of significant value in return. The obvious impulse was to go with a traditional fiendish offering: a soul, blood, or some sort of precious gem. However, Fig was not a traditional fiend. It seemed only right that she should receive a similarly nontraditional offering.

Ayda knew the following things about Fig’s personal interests: 

1. She played the bass guitar.

End of list.

Fig already had a bass guitar. Thankfully, though, the university had a whole post-graduate program of people who knew more about Things and the creation of them than Ayda did. And one of them owed Ayda a favor. 

This was how she found herself in the artificing building, on the third floor, in the fifth room on the left, standing behind Gorgug Thistlespring. He had large headphones on, entirely covering his ears, and even from a distance she could hear loud music emitting from them. The one and only time she’d asked Gorgug about the music he listened to while working, he listed a number of historical torture techniques, all with the word “metal” afterwards. Ayda preferred to work in absolute silence, but this was just one of many ways in which the two of them were dissimilar. 

His large frame was hunched over an almost comically short workshop table, where he appeared to be working on a wheel-cover, as in a cover for a steering wheel for a car. Given that these were typically, in Ayda’s experience, made from cloth, she was not sure precisely why a soldering tool was required, but this was why they each kept to their own disciplines. She did not have the physical awareness for artificing. If Gorgug studied wizardry, his immense power would surely end the world. 

They kept in their own lanes.

After what may have been several minutes of head-banging and soldering, Gorgug finally noticed Ayda’s presence. He tapped at his crystal and pulled his headphones down, so they rested on his neck. 

“Ayda, hey!”

“Hello, Gorgug. How is the ‘Hang-Van’ progressing?”

“It’s going pretty well… I think. Zaphriel always says ‘it’s cool’ when I ask him for a diagnostic, so…” he shrugged.

“Ah, yes, that does seem potentially prohibitive.”

“Yeah, but he’s a pretty chill dude.”

“Understood.” Ayda had conversed with Zaphriel, the Spirit of Endless Sky Towards Late Afternoon on a Day at the Beach with Your Feet in the Warm Sand, Just Being Chill as Hell trapped in a sapphire, two times. The first time, Gorgug had been looking for Adaine to cast an “Identify” spell on the sapphire when he’d first found it, nearly a year ago at this point. Since Adaine was, as was common for her, “out”, Ayda cast the spell in her stead. The second time was a few months later, back when Ayda had just begun gathering sources for her thesis. Zaphriel provided some useful corroboration to her reading on the ways in which angels became devils, but he’d also talked about the beach a lot. So the interaction had been sort of a net zero. Ayda wasn’t particularly fond of the beach.

“So…” Gorgug trailed off, glancing back down at his wheel cover. Ayda snapped her fingers, and he looked back up at her.

“I would like to redeem the favor you owe me.”

“Oh, yeah, sure! What are you thinking?”

“I need a… gift… for someone who is incredibly cool. They are a musician, but it appears that they already have all of the supplies that they need to continue this craft. I require some sort of sufficiently valuable offering as to appropriately warrant something valuable in return. For someone cool. And also maybe like, a nice gift. Hypothetically.”

“So a gift for a cool person?”

Was Fig a person? How was Ayda defining personhood? Did it relate to mortality, or primarily residing on the material plane? It was an interesting question, and she’d surely read an academic article on it once, though she couldn’t quite remember what the verdict had been. She’d have to find it again and see how much she agreed. She was pretty sure the article had been in reference to the personhood of ghosts and beings in the afterlife, not to archdevils, but it could be a decent foundation for further defining of terms.

“Uh, Ayda?”

“Oh, apologies. Yes. A gift for a cool person.”

“Okay… like, some jumping shoes? I made some of those once, and they turned out pretty good.”

“Hmm… no, I don’t think that is of sufficient value.”

“They were pretty cool, but okay. What about a big sword?”

“I do not think this person has a need for weaponry.”

“Is it for,” he leaned forward and lowered his voice slightly, although it was still fairly loud and they were in an empty room, “an anniversary gift? Because I can make metal flowers.”

Ayda could feel herself growing even warmer than usual, and she was pretty sure her flaming hair had just flared up a bit. “No. I am not in a romantic relationship with this person. But they are incredibly cool. What are things that cool people like, Gorgug?”

“How ‘bout a skateboard?”

“... This seems like a possibility. Could you put some sort of enchantment on it?”

Gorgug shrugged. “Yeah, probably.”

“Incredible. Thank you.”

“No problem. I can drop it by your place by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yes, that would be perfect.”

Tomorrow night, then. Ayda could make it to tomorrow night. It was approximately thirty-two hours, many of which she could pass by sleeping. Sleeping and having completely normal dreams, just like she had the past two nights, that didn’t involve hands or horns or anything of the sort.

Definitely.

Gorgug dropped off the skateboard a few hours later than he’d said, but on the correct day, which was fairly good for Gorgug. However, there was a slight complication: Adaine was in the apartment again, and she made it to the door before Ayda could. Which meant that she now knew that Ayda had obtained a magical skateboard.

“Are you attempting to become a skater?” She asked, both eyebrows high. She was attempting to lean against Ayda’s bedroom’s door frame, but there was an obvious tension in her frame that conveyed a general lack of experience in the field of leaning on door frames.

There were several options here. First off, she could come clean and admit that she was offering it to an archdevil in return for information. This would require admitting both that she had summoned an archdevil in their apartment, which did not seem like particularly good roommate etiquette, and that she was planning on summoning an archdevil for the third time, which would require Ayda to admit this fact out loud, which would likely prompt some self-reflection that Ayda had so far been diligently avoiding. Another option was to concoct some sort of clever excuse to throw Adaine off her scent. The third option was to take the ready-made excuse Adaine had just offered.

“Yes. I have commissioned an enchanted skateboard from Gorgug Thistlespring in order to learn how to ride a skateboard.”

“... Huh.” Adaine tilted her head. Ayda tried to school her features into those of someone who was attempting to learn to ride a skateboard. After a moment of staring, Ayda’s deception overcame Adaine’s insight.

“Well… that could be a useful skill. You know, I have a friend who used to skateboard, if you wanted some lessons. She can be a bit hard to pin down, but if you’d like, I could reach out.”

In any other circumstance, this sentiment would be deeply heart-touching for Ayda, and would likely lead to an outburst of fiery tears. But right now, Ayda could feel the consequences of the lie branching out; she could feel how easy it would be for this to get out of control. “While I greatly appreciate the sentiment, I am firmly set on acquiring this skill myself. I am going to leave now, in fact, to… begin my training. Goodbye.”

Ayda turned and plunged the rest of the way into her room and, once Adaine turned to leave, slammed the door. She shoved the summoning book containing the ritual, some chalk, the candles, and the freshly crafted Skateboard of Sickness into a bag, and then she darted out of the apartment.

It was midnight by the time Ayda finally flew over a skatepark that looked abandoned. She was probably going to have to spend a spell slot to make it home, because she’d flown so far that her wings were rather sore. It seemed incredibly strange that there were so many people, mostly teenagers, out skateboarding on a weeknight. But here, a few towns away, she’d managed to find a skatepark that may have been condemned but was, at least, empty. 

She’d only done the ritual twice, now, but she’d been staring at the sigils upon which Fig had appeared so intensely over the past few days that drawing them was significantly easier, this time. Once she’d finished the chalk-drawing, though, she couldn’t quite bring herself to light the candles; couldn’t quite start the chanting.

It was odd, really. An anomaly. She cast a quick Detect Magic spell on herself, because she felt so strange, but it came up clean. Which meant there was really no logical explanation at all as to why her stomach felt so odd. As to why she felt compelled to check her hair in her crystal, or to worry about the appropriate-ness of her outfit. The only reason she could think of for this was that she was casting a ritual outside of the safety of her room, where anyone could interrupt or corrupt it. That must have been it, surely. Which was silly. Because there were very few beings around here more powerful than Ayda Aguefort.

With that knowledge in mind, she began the ritual.

This time, there was a gap of approximately seven seconds between Ayda’s completion of the chant and Fig’s appearance. In those seven seconds, Ayda felt quite possibly the closest she ever had felt to seeing not just this life, but in fact all of her lives before, flash before her eyes. But just as a shutdown began to creep over her, there was a sound: a deep, bone-shaking, absolutely sick musical note. Sparks showered up, in reverse, from the center of the pentacle. And then Fig the Infaethable was there, plucking out a solo on her bass.

Ayda could do nothing but stand, transfixed, and watch Fig shred. She really did know her way around the instrument, that much was obvious. Also, watching the ease with which she plucked out notes and strummed out chords made something inside Ayda thrum right along with the bassline.

When Fig was finished, Ayda couldn’t think to do anything but applaud. It didn’t feel like the precise correct reaction, not really, but it was the best she could come up with.

Fig gave a shallow bow, swung the bass around so it was hanging on her back, and ran a hand through her hair. “Hey,” she said, jerking her head at Ayda.

“Hello.”

“Change of venue, huh?”

“... Yes.”

“This seems like a more appropriate place to summon a devil, honestly.”

“Was my room insufficient or unprofessional?” Ayda asked, immediately. How clean had it been? Had she dusted beforehand? She could immediately visualize at least a half dozen ways in which her room was embarrassing, lame, and weird.

Fig shook her head, though. “No, no! It was cool. I liked it. This place just has that vibe.”

“Okay. So, to clarify, my room was not embarrassing, lame, or weird.”

Letting out a gentle laugh, Fig shook her head again. “Your room wasn’t embarrassing, lame, or weird.”

“Understood.”

“So, uh… do you skate?”

“No, I do not know how to ride a skateboard. I once attempted, many years ago, to ride what I believe is called a penny-board— it was a very small skateboard— but my talons scratched the ground and it proved an inefficient means of travel. Also, I have wings.” Ayda unfurled them for emphasis.

“Yeah, that makes sense. So, like, why are we in a skatepark, then?”

It was right there, on the tip of Ayda’s tongue, the deal. She would provide Fig with the Skateboard of Sickness in exchange for information on her relationship with Gorthalax. It was an equivalent trade. They’d been doing trades so far, and it had gone well. Besides the more surface-level question Fig still owed her, they were even. Neither in debt to the other. With this established rapport, it should have been perfectly fine to ask Fig for this information, which she had heretofore been evasive regarding. Ayda was offering a valuable item that she’d traded in a favor from a skilled artificer for. It was fine, to ask. 

But she couldn’t help but remember Fig’s response, the first time she’d asked. Reading faces was not one of Ayda’s best skills. But Fig had turned away, and her answers had grown curt, and she was showing all of the signs of not wanting to engage with the topic. Which meant it was likely a sore subject.

And here Fig was, having just plucked out a sweet bass solo for Ayda, glancing around the abandoned skatepark with an air of hungry curiosity. By all signs, in a good mood. Her hair was done nicely, in two braids, and she was wearing a studded leather jacket and fishnets, as usual, but she was also wearing a dress, distressed so that Ayda could see glimpses of her pale red skin poking through at her stomach and at her thighs.

Ayda didn’t want to ask about Gorthalax.

Fig had asked a question, though. So Ayda opened her mouth, and what came out was: “I have had a skateboard crafted for you. Do you know how to ride a skateboard?”

And Fig smiled, and replied, “Yeah, I skate. Ayda, is this a gift?” There was something sharp, in that smile, and Ayda could hear the echo of her own words.

“... No, because that would put you in my debt, and besides you are already in my debt for the sum of one question, and it seems thoroughly inappropriate for an archdevil to be in debt to a graduate student. I would not want to put you in that position. In exchange for providing you ownership of the Skateboard of Sickness, you will teach me the basics of riding a skateboard. If you find these terms acceptable, we can shake, or we could enter a verbal contract, if you’d prefer, or I suppose I could draft up something—”

“A handshake works!” Fig said, and she stuck out her palm, and she was still smiling. Ayda grasped it one more, and they shook, and it was as fiery as ever, and Fig lingered, just for a moment or two, after they’d pumped up and down three times, and then Ayda drew away.

“So, can I see this board?”

Ayda did not leave the night with further knowledge of Fig the Infaethable’s relationship with Gorthalax the Insatiable. Instead, she gained two new sorts of knowledge. The first of these was a basic skateboarding ability. Given that, by the end of the night, Ayda did not, in fact, possess a skateboard, this was not necessarily a particularly useful skill. The second sort of knowledge was much more useful. It was the way Fig’s hair looked, fresh out of braids, whipping in the night breeze. It was the sound of Fig’s laugh. It was the way she swore when she fell down. It was the way her hands felt on Ayda’s waist, as she corrected her stance. It was the way she picked an ashen eyelash off of Ayda’s cheek and told her to make a wish on it.

It was preliminary research on the… physical abilities of this new archdevil.

It was purely academic.

She had to remember that.

Chapter Text

In the long and storied history of academic and archdevil relations, there were a handful of questions that Ayda Aguefort had never been able to find a satisfactory answer to. Some of these were complex: the  full path of mortal-devil relations over the course of the history of Spire, the biomagical processes involved in the creation of tieflings, and, of course, the structures of power and bureaucracy across the Nine Hells. Ayda’s thesis sought to chart the latter in unprecedented depth. But there were also the questions of less consequence, often brought forth as a result of urban legend and rumor: did devils need to blink? Was it true that becoming an archdevil made you double-jointed? Did all devils like spicy food? 

It was the last of these questions that Ayda held in her mind as she walked alongside Adaine to the apartment of Tracker O'Shaughnessy and Kristen Applebees.

“And you’re sure you want to learn to cook with Kristen ?” Adaine asked, again, a note of incredulity in her voice.

“I was under the impression that your step-cousin Tracker would be the one cooking this afternoon, and that Kristen is merely providing the vegetables grown in her garden. Was this assumption incorrect?”

Adaine snorted. This was a sight that always brought Ayda a small thrill of joy; there was something inherently transgressive in watching the ever-composed Elven oracle snort under her breath with sarcasm. This, Adaine’s contrary nature, had coaxed Ayda into small transgressions of her own before. Like going to Adaine’s friends’ apartment with only a small housewarming item to exchange for the knowledge on how to make a strong chili.

“You’ve seen the two of them in a room before, Ayda. They don’t like to detach much.”

She had a point. Ayda could not remember seeing Kristen Applebees further than three meters away from her girlfriend Tracker. She’d never quite understood their constant need to be close to each other, but lately… Well, no. None of that. Fig the Infaethable owed her an answer to a question, and Ayda was merely seeking to settle a great scholastic controversy. Nothing more.

Ayda had been to Kristen and Tracker’s previous place of residence once before, at Adaine’s behest, for a lunar eclipse ritual. The ritual– which turned out to be less of a ritual and more of a loud and intense party– was where she had performed a favor for a botany student named Ficus. However, the primary condition of this favor was that she not speak about the contents of the favor; as such, she did her best not to think about the favor either, as she had, as Kristen had said once when her and Tracker had come to Ayda and Adaine’s place for lunch, a tendency to “confuse inside thoughts and outside thoughts.”

That had been seven months ago, and Tracker had scolded Kristen for the statement immediately after. Ayda still thought of it often.

(She had caught Ficus smoking marijuana in the wooded area behind the house. This would not have been an issue, except that it was marijuana being grown for a study of which he was a part, and he was absolutely not supposed to be smoking it. He said it was “chill”, and that he was “testing it out”, but she did not believe him. However, it was not her department, and he’d promised a favor in exchange for her silence on the subject. So she kept silent. And she didn’t think about it. That much.)

Regardless, the last time she had visited Kristen and Tracker’s home, it was a home that they shared with Tracker’s uncle and Adaine’s adopted father, Jawbone O'Shaughnessy, as well as his partner, Sandralynn Faeth. It was halfway across Spire, in the town called Elmville where Kristen and Adaine had grown up. Ayda had assumed that the older adults would not be present at the ritual, but she had assumed wrong. Her former guardian and also former-former adopted child, Garthy O’Brien, had arrived soon after Ayda had performed her favor for Ficus. Upon seeing their closeness with Adaine’s adopted parents, Ayda had absconded immediately. If she recalled correctly, her thought process at the time was something along the lines of “nope, nope, absolutely not.” She also thought of this often, as much as she had tried to scrub the entire evening from her brain.

She had refused to return to that residence since. Luckily, though, Tracker and Kristen had recently relocated to an apartment several blocks away, closer to the university, when Kristen had decided to go “teleportation-free” and instead ride everywhere on a pastel-green bicycle. Given that Kristen was employed at the same university Ayda and Adaine attended, as a spiritual leader in the school’s department of religious life, this had required a relocation. At least, that was what Kristen had told Ayda when they ran into each other at the university’s coffee shop. When Ayda had asked Adaine about it later, Adaine had informed her that the real reason Kristen and Tracker had moved out was an ongoing tension between Kristen and Sandralynn Faeth. 

Whichever was true– and Ayda presumed it was some combination of the two– they’d found a new apartment that did not require Ayda to fly, teleport, or, gods forbid, ride in a car to reach. Hence, the housewarming item. They had a new house to warm. It would, Ayda felt, be an appropriate thing to exchange for knowledge. It was a small bush that yielded Goodberries. She had obtained it from a botany student named Ficus. 

“Hey!” said Kristen Applebees, opening the front door to the apartment building.

Ah. Ayda had become lost in thought once more.

“Good evening, Kristen.” Ayda said, nodding at her.

“Oh, sick, is that for us?” asked Kristen. It seemed odd for Kristen to refer to herself as an “us”, until Ayda craned her neck and saw Tracker standing on the staircase behind Kristen, looking at the plant with interest.

“Yes. In return for Tracker’s assistance in instructing me on how to make ‘very good and spicy chili’, as she informed Adaine she was capable of doing in your group chat.”

Tracker grinned. “And I meant it. C’mon, let’s go upstairs.”

–

“I simply do not understand what measurement a ‘pinch’ corresponds to.”

“You just have to feel it.”

“I can observe the texture of the ground cayenne pepper. I do not understand how that allows me to judge what amount is sufficient to put in this chili.”

“Here, just pour some into your hand–”

“Can you pour the exact amount you would put into the chili into this measuring spoon?”

Tracker sighed. “Yeah, okay, Ayda, I can do that.”

She did, and Ayda used her mage hand to write down the measurement in the small notebook she had laid open on the counter. Then Ayda deposited that amount of ground cayenne pepper– a half of a teaspoon– into the chili, and then stirred the chili as Tracker had instructed her to do.

“Good, just keep doing that until it’s all combined.”

From her perch at the kitchen island, Kristen turned her attention from Adaine to Ayda. “So, Ayda, why the sudden interest in cooking? Does this have anything to do with your nighttime visitor?”

Immediately, Ayda’s cheeks grew very, very warm. A peculiar reaction, which must have been from the heat of the stove, since Ayda had nothing to be embarrassed about. She was not doing anything wrong. 

Ayda attempted to glare at Adaine, who had clearly betrayed her. Adaine would not meet her eyes. Next to her, Kristen’s eyes were wide, her eyebrows high. “... Yes.”

Kristen gasped audibly. Closer to Ayda, Tracker also gasped, though more discreetly.

Adaine finally looked up at Ayda. Her eyes were wide. “You said this had to do with your research. Do you have a date ?” 

It was possible that Ayda had not fully considered the ramifications of providing conflicting answers to sources who would be in the room with each other. In her defense, though, Ayda had not lied to either of them. If she lied now, Kristen and Tracker would surely see through it. They were incredibly insightful.

“I am… curious… as to the proclivities of my, as you put it, nighttime visitor.”

Kristen gasped again. Immediately, Ayda realized the connotations of her word choice.

“Not her sexual proclivities. For clarification. I am referring to her likes and dislikes in terms of cuisine. Tracker, I think these ingredients are sufficiently combined.”

“What?” Tracker seemed very focused, which made it strange that she was not cognizant of the current state of the chili. “Oh, yes. We add the broth next. You’ll be glad to know I have the measurement on this one, actually– it’s a cup and a half.”

“Fantastic.” Ayda focused very hard on the chili making, and when it was required only to simmer, she took up post at the stove and stirred it diligently every three minutes. The several times Kristen attempted to ask about her so-called “date”, Ayda skillfully redirected the conversation with questions such as “How is work?” and “How is Jawbone?” and the others were so enraptured by Ayda’s conversational skills that they entirely forgot to try and catch her in the assorted half-truths she had presented them.

Or so she thought. When the chili had been completed and consumed– it was quite good, so much so that Ayda thought she might prepare some for herself perhaps in batches and eat it throughout the week; the simmering process had removed any unwanted textures and it was at the spice level she preferred, which was “very much and a lot”– and Kristen had had several glasses of wine and was talking to Adaine quite loudly about a mutual friend from high school, Tracker stood from the table. 

“I’m going to bring Ayda’s gift outside,” she said, crossing the room to grab the plant, and gesturing for Ayda to follow her.

Silently, the two of them made their way out to the balcony. It was a large balcony, with several vertical gardens on it, and a fiendish-looking potted tomato from which one of the ingredients from the chili had been taken. (Tomatoes.) There was also a table and chairs. Tracker sat, and patted the chair next to her in invitation.

Ayda sat.

“Hey, uh…” Tracker rubbed her hand against the shaved back of her head. “I know we don’t, like, know each other super well. But I know Adaine doesn’t really do relationships, and Kristen can be– well, I love her, but even I know she can be a lot. And I thought maybe you might not have anyone to talk to? And that I could be that person for you, maybe, if you wanted. Like, for tonight, at least. I don’t know your whole situation, but I think I give pretty good advice.”

This briefly shocked Ayda into silence. And then, without her permission, words began to spill out. “I am in a situation in which I am experiencing symptoms that I can objectively recognize may be attraction, which is a rare phenomenon for me but one that I am nevertheless capable of observing within myself, but I am not so easily swept up in emotion as to be unable to realize that acting upon this would be a disastrously bad idea.”

Tracker opened her mouth to object, but before she could say anything, Ayda added, “I would not like to discuss why at this time.”

Tracker closed her mouth again and tilted her head in thought. It was a starkly canine expression, one that sharply reminded Ayda of Tracker’s lycanthropy. Ayda didn’t mind. Perhaps it should have been intimidating, but it was, instead, a humanizing thing.

Finally, she said, “Tell me about her.”

Once more, the words escaped without Ayda’s permission. “She’s absolutely fascinating. She is clearly very skilled at what she does, and yet carries a vulnerability that I am intensely curious to learn more about. She is beautiful, of course. She is very cool. I have never met anyone as cool as her. She seems to view me as an intellectual equal and not a novelty or in some other way weird or unacceptable. She makes me feel a way I have never felt before. It is incredibly inappropriate, and also terrifying, and I do not know what to do with it. I have not stopped thinking about her since we first met. I want to hear what she thinks about everything that I encounter. I recognize that this is illogical. I cannot stop it from happening.”

Tracker nodded slowly, and waited entirely too long before she said, “Make her the chili. Talk to her. It sounds like you like her a lot. If you don’t want to talk about why you can’t have feelings for her, that’s your business, but there’s nothing wrong with liking someone. It doesn’t have a moral value one way or the other. If being around her makes you feel good, then that’s okay, you know?”

Tracker spoke with such authority that Ayda found herself nodding back, even though “good” was an insufficient descriptor. Adjectives currently available to Ayda were all insignificant for the way being around Fig the Infaethable made her feel.

–

She made the chili. When Ayda had asked Adaine if she was going to be home tonight, she informed her that she was not, and then told her to “have fun” and winked tremendously. Ayda took this to mean that she could use the kitchen. So, following the detailed instructions she had made from Tracker’s tutorial, she made the chili. But when she’d been at the grocery store, she had panicked, and had in addition to the chili ingredients purchased three different bottles of wine and the ingredients to make boxed cornbread. So she also made cornbread, and lined up the three bottles of wine on the counter, and put a tablecloth on the table, and laid out silverware, and lit some candles.

The candles, at least, soothed her a bit. When she had first left Leviathan and Compass points behind for a university on solid land, when she’d found a world so much larger than the only one she’d known for all her lifetimes, she’d accidentally set her papers on fire when she got too overwhelmed, and she’d picked up the habit of leaving unlit candles around just to have somewhere to put that frustration. It was nothing to light them, just a bit of Prestidigitation, but it was still soothing. Deliberate, or something.

But soon enough, the candles were lit and the chili and cornbread were cooling and there wasn’t anything left to do but return to the summoning circle still in the center of the floor of her bedroom. Ayda lit the summoning candles, too, and took a deep breath as each little flame flickered to life. The incantation rolled off her tongue too easily. 

Once more, it took several seconds for Fig to appear. When she did, though, it was as extravagant as her past entrances. Her appearance was preceded by a swirl of heatless purple flame, and from it, she emerged, rolling out of the smoke on her skateboard (having clearly gotten a head start) and doing a sick ollie directly into Ayda’s bookshelf.

The front row of books– and, beneath them, Fig, and beneath her, the Skateboard of Sickness– crashed to the floor.

“Aw, shit,” Fig groaned.

For a moment, Ayda stood frozen. This was, admittedly, not how she had anticipated their evening together beginning. However, she was a highly skilled and formidable wizard, and as such she only allowed herself a moment’s shock before summoning an unseen servant to return the books from their position atop Fig to their positions on the bookshelf. It was not doing it fast enough. Ayda crossed the room with haste and began pushing books off of Fig, with no regard for their positions on the shelves according to her system of organization. Book organization was, strangely, the furthest thing from her mind at that moment. This was peculiar, but would have to be shelved (ha) for later analysis.

“Are you severely injured?” asked Ayda, when Fig emerged from the book pile horns-first.

Fig sat up and rubbed her head. “Ouch. No, I’m okay. Just bruised my pride.”

“One moment.” Ayda sped out of her room, through the common area, and into Adaine’s room, retrieving a healing potion from the stash Adaine seemed to think was a secret. (It was not a secret. She often left her door open when she came home injured from oracle business. For someone so intelligent, it was frankly amateurish; one might almost think she wanted Ayda to know where she kept her healing potions.)

She returned to her room with haste and held out the potion to Fig, who was watching bemusedly as the books whisked themselves back onto the shelves. At Ayda’s return, Fig turned her gaze onto her. 

For a long, strange moment, Fig just stared at her, not taking the potion, not moving at all. It stretched on for nearly enough time for Ayda to try and check her for the stunned condition. But the moment ended, and something shifted in her eyes. She shook her head a little, took the potion, and chugged it down.

“Ah,” she said, straightening up as the potion smoothed the bumps and soothed the redness that the books had inflicted, “Never gets old. I think I still prefer it when a cleric does it, though.”

“Interesting,” Ayda replied, holding her hand out to help Fig up, “I’ve never been healed by a cleric before. I will endeavor to try it sometime.”

“Oh, wow, really? I feel like most adventurers have been at some point.” Fig took the proffered hand and pulled herself to her feet.

Ayda cocked her head. “I am not an adventurer. I am an academic.”

“... Wait, what? But you’re so…”

“So what?” Ayda asked, perhaps a bit more eager than she’d intended to sound.

“Good at magic!”

“Wizards improve through years of rigorous study.”

Fig looked thoughtful. “I guess you’re right. The only wizard I know besides you mostly improved through years of beating shit up, with a side of rigorous study.”

“Fascinating.”

The unseen servant finished returning the books to the shelves and Ayda dropped her concentration on maintaining it. “I thought your skateboard trick was impressive. My apologies that my bookshelf was in the way.”

Fig snorted. “Thanks. I know I looked like an idiot, but it’s nice of you to say that.”

“You absolutely did not look like an idiot. You did a sweet trick.”

A hint of red tinged Fig’s cheeks, and she ducked her head. “Pshaw. I guess I got the occasion wrong. Was expecting the skate park again, not– you look really nice.”

For a moment, Ayda furrowed her brow in confusion. Then she remembered that she was wearing a nice outfit: her one tailored white shirt, with the slits in the back for her wings; a tie; the tightest pair of pants that she could comfortably wear, which were admittedly not very tight, because she liked to be able to move around in her clothes. 

“Like, really nice. I feel underdressed.” Fig was wearing a tank top, the straps of which were doing something complicated that resulted in the shape of a pentagram, and artfully torn-up black jeans. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. “Actually, hold on, I’m just going to–” 

She stepped back towards the summoning circle, but Ayda, spurred on by some force she did not fully understand, put her hand on Fig’s arm. 

“No, stay– I mean– You’re dressed entirely appropriately. There is food. I made food. Come eat food with me? Do you eat food? Oh, I didn’t even ask if you ate food. I assumed that, since you required sleep, that you would also eat food, but that may have been presumptuous–”

Fig smiled, the same sharp thing that Ayda hadn’t stopped thinking about since the skate park, a few long days ago. “I would love to eat food with you, Ayda.”

–

“You made all this?” Fig asked, gesturing at the spread on the kitchen counter. 

“Well, the cornbread was from a box.”

Fig filled a bowl with chili, dumped a large quantity of shredded cheese on it, and placed a square of cornbread directly atop it. It was, to Ayda, a bit like watching a dissection had felt in undergrad: horrifying, but she couldn’t look away. Ayda put her chili into one bowl and her cornbread onto a small plate. As it should be.

Just before Fig took her first bite, Ayda held up a hand. “Wait. I cannot in good conscience present this as a gift to you. I do not want you to enter into my debt, Fig the Infaethable. I would like to make clear an equivalent exchange.”

Something in Fig’s face fell, just a bit, but her expression quickly resumed its casual impenetrability. “Yeah, what’s up? What can I do you for?”

“There is… something of an urban legend about the spice tolerance and desires of devils. An academic rumor. I desire your opinion on the subject after consuming the chili.”

“So… you want me to eat this food that you made and tell you what I think about it?”

“Yes.”

With a snort, Fig said, “I can do that. May we also exchange conversation while we eat?”

“I find that permissible, yes.”

“Hell yeah.” Fig raised the spoon to her lips, and this time, Ayda didn’t stop her.

They exchanged conversation and ate. The spiciness of the chili did not seem to phase Fig, but truthfully, Ayda only noticed this in passing. Once more, she was distracted by the way Fig spoke. She told a story of a time she and a friend from her youth had infiltrated a hospital through use of the Disguise Self spell, and she had ended up performing surgery.

“And you were how old, at this time?”

“Oh, man, I must have been fifteen? This was freshman year.”

“And you… successfully performed surgery on this patient?”

“Stabilized, yup. I mean, my friend helped a little.”

“That is genuinely incredible. Do you realize that that is incredible? And additionally terrifying?”

Fig laughed. She had, at some point over their four meetings, become generous with this laugh; Ayda feared that if she heard it too many more times, she’d somehow be in Fig’s debt, because it was so clearly a gift. “Yeah. I was scared shitless. I was scared shitless a lot, in high school. But my friends helped.”

“These friends sound like a great treasure.”

“Yeah, they were.”

Ayda cocked her head. “Did something happen to them?”

Fig stirred her chili with her spoon. “No, I mean, not really. I guess… Well, something happened to me.” She smiled wryly, but it wasn’t the same smile as before. The sharpness in this one seemed like it was cutting into Fig. Ayda found that she didn’t like it.

The thing to do in this situation, Ayda had learned, was to change the subject. But this was the subject she’d been trying to learn more about the whole time, wasn’t it? Fig had held the circumstances of her past so close to her chest. But Ayda wanted to– no, needed to know. For her research, the thing that had been there for her much longer than this archdevil.

“When you overthrew Gorthalax and became an archdevil?”

Something in Fig’s face shifted once more, and Ayda wished, not for the first time, that she understood the many intricate expressions that people could manipulate their muscles into the same way that she understood any spell she’d ever encountered. “No, it was before that. We managed to stick together all the way through high school, all through college. Which was more than most of the adventuring parties thrown together by our high school could say for themselves. You know what they say about high school friendships and all that.”

“I do not know. I did not attend high school. I am also fairly new to friendship.”

Fig’s eyes softened. Her hand resting on the table twitched in the direction of Ayda’s hand, also resting on the table. “They were great. I’m sure they still are. A lot of people who are friends when they all go to school together don’t keep that going afterwards. And, well… I guess we just kept going to school together longer than most people. But when we graduated college, we all went down separate paths. I know some of them still talk to each other, but I– well–” she gestured at herself, “I’m a fucking archdevil now, you know? I don’t exactly have time for brunch.”

When it became apparent Fig was not yet going to offer up any further information, Ayda searched herself for the right interview question to ask, the right thing to say to make Fig feel safe and also want to tell Ayda precisely what had occurred. But she couldn’t find anything better than, “What happened?”

“Gorthalax retired.”

“... What?”

Fig sighed. “Gorthalax retired.”

For a long moment, Ayda’s brain stopped working. Since meeting Fig, though she did not ever draw conclusions without adequate evidence, she had certainly hypothesized that the reason she had taken over for Gorthalax was that she had killed him. With the addition of the “Gorthalax’s Girl” pick into the mix, the caveat arose that perhaps some sort of torrid affair had been involved. But at no point had she expected– wait, unless– “When you say Gorthalax retired, are you using the word ‘retired’ as a euphemism for ‘died’?”

“Nope.” She popped the “p”.

“Explain?”

Fig stared into the middle distance like it had wronged her. “When I was in sophomore year of high school, someone controlled my body against my will and used it to trap Gorthalax. In a ruby, by the way– I guess in that way, it worked out that it was me and not him that turned up that you gave the ruby to, because I don’t think he would have loved that. Anyway, since I’d technically defeated him, that gave me his role as an archdevil. But then me and my friends freed him, and he took his job back, because I was in high school and had no freakin’ clue how to manage the Bottomless Pit. So he did that for a few years, but the whole time he was having a thing with my friend’s mom–” Fig waved away Ayda’s confounded expression, “-- and so he wanted to settle down. And, you know, I think maybe also pass on the family business a little. So when I graduated college, I didn’t know what the fuck else I was doing with my life. He asked me if I wanted to take over as the archdevil of the Bottomless Pit, and I said, sure, why not? When I did it back in high school it didn’t seem too hard.”

Ayda cocked her head. “From my understanding, the responsibilities associated with the position of an archdevil are great.”

With another wry laugh, Fig nodded. “Wish I’d had someone tell me that before I took over.”

“Wait, I’m sorry. Did you refer to the position of archdevil of the Bottomless Pit as, ‘the family business’?” Something clicked. “Oh! Oh. He’s your father!”

“Quick as always,” said Fig. 

“Do you realize that this is an unprecedented situation? There are no documented peaceful transfers of power in the Nine Hells. Ever!” With a quick Mage Hand, Ayda brought over her notebook and immediately began jotting down the details of Fig’s story. “Absolutely fascinating. This entirely revolutionizes our understanding of the structures of power among devils, and the means of transference of the archdevil title and associated responsibilities!”

“Talking about me like I’m not right here,” noted Fig, with a strange little laugh.

“No, quite the contrary. Your experience will be absolutely crucial in this.” Ayda squawked out a laugh of her own, the sort that only ever came with a breakthrough. “This is going to revolutionize the field of devilish studies like nothing before. Oh, how have I never realized this was possible before? There is no strict legal system without its loopholes! There are so many documents that are going to read differently in this light…” The Mage Hand brought over a few of the documents in question. Ayda pushed the mostly-empty bowl of chili and the plate that once contained cornbread aside to make space to spread notes out. 

The possibility became foolishly, magically obvious once she knew what to look for. It was there, in every translated devil court document and eyewitness account she had on hand; the vague verbiage regarding the process of ascending to the title of archdevil, so closely guarded by devils who wanted to maintain power, and yet right here, at Ayda’s fingertips, spread in that way that knowledge always yearned to. Seeping through the cracks in any wall that tried to contain it. Wild, and transcendent. 

There was a sound. 

It was Fig, clearing her throat.

“I’ll just… go, then,” she said, using the hand that had twitched towards Ayda’s earlier to push her chair back from the dining room table.

“What?” said Ayda.

“It seems like you’re busy.”

Ayda cocked her head. “I’m documenting the research that I summoned you with the intent of conducting.”

“Oh, cool, glad to hear you got what you needed from me.”

“What? No,” Something was wrong, Ayda had missed a step again, like she always did, and now Fig was upset. “No, I mean–”

“Hey, no, it’s fine, really. I have stuff to get back to anyways. The Bottomless Pit isn’t going to eat the souls of the damned itself!”

“I was under the impression that it did do that?”

“Well, then– the gates aren’t going to guard themselves, then. I’m going to leave. Bye.” She took off towards the room, but Ayda managed to summon the wherewithal to follow her before she stepped back into the summoning circle. 

“Wait! Fig.”

She turned, and if Ayda hadn’t known better she would have sworn Fig’s eyes were wet around the corners. But she was an archdevil, and archdevils (probably?) didn’t cry. (Maybe? But if Gorthalax could retire, perhaps all knowledge of devils was now suspect.)

If Ayda had been anyone else– Adaine or Tracker or Garthy O’Brien– maybe she would have known what to say, in this moment, to fix whatever she had done to Fig. But she was Ayda Aguefort, and the ideas in her brain were the loudest they had been in a long time, and she was buzzing with it, and she didn’t know what she had done wrong, and she didn’t know how to fix it. And so instead she said, “Don’t forget your skateboard,” and picked it up to Fig and handed it to her and almost let her disappear, and then said, again, “Wait!”

“What?”

Clenching her teeth, Ayda yanked a fiery feather out of her own wing, and held it out to Fig. “I’m going to be occupied for a while with this, maybe. But if you need me, hold this aloft and speak my name, and I shall know.”

Fig looked at the feather and, for a moment, softened. Then, she looked out Ayda’s open door, and saw the Mage Hand still flipping its way through documents, and clenched her own teeth, and reached up to her elven ear, and ripped off an earring cuff from one of her pointed elven ears. It looked incredibly painful, and there was no small amount of blood coming from Fig’s ear where it had once been. 

“Here. So you don’t have to worry about anyone owing anyone anything. You’re free and clear. The dinner was great. Good luck with your thesis.”

She stepped back into the summoning circle. This time, there were no flames, no skateboard tricks or bass licks. She was simply gone.

Chapter Text

There were many parts of the academic process that Ayda Aguefort adored. Academia was, in many ways, her first and truest love; the thing that could not betray her. Institutions could be flawed, sure. But the pursuit of knowledge at their core was infallible. And Ayda loved that pursuit with a fervor she had never believed she could feel for anything or anyone else. So, after the breakthrough that an archdevil could effectively establish a successor, Ayda expected the next several weeks to be bliss. Bliss, in this case, Ayda defined as working towards a clearly defined goal which one knew would revolutionize their field of study forever. 

But she rewrote her outline, and bliss did not come.

She updated the first two-thirds of her thesis paper, the sort of wonderfully tedious process that involved combing through thousands of words of jargon for any information or analysis that had since become obsolete and then updating those words, and bliss did not come.

She committed her new findings– her new, revolutionary findings– to paper, and bliss did not come.

She found sources that read in an entirely new light with the knowledge she now had, and then she incorporated those sources into her argument, and somehow, impossibly, terribly, bliss did not come.

In the moments in between, when she got up to refill her water or eat a granola bar or, even worse, sleep, in the absence of bliss, this is what came instead:

The edges of a sharp smile. Teeth, bared in vulnerability. Teeth, clenched in pain, as blood dripped from an elven ear. Elven ears poking out from black hair.

Black hair, in braids that started up at smooth horns. Black hair, tousled and messy over pale red shoulders. Pale red shoulders, and the collarbones that stretched out towards them. 

The collarbones, under black tank-top straps. The collarbones, poking out from the top of a t-shirt, the top of a dress. The contours of the dress over a body.

The body, the thing she had not allowed herself to look at, but yet could somehow recall the shape of in exacting, excruciating detail. 

The details.

For much of her life, when Ayda dreamt, she dreamt of past lives. Never the grand moments, the great battles that she was sure her past selves must have fought, the incredible discoveries she knew she had made, but the small moments that made up a life: shelving books at the Compass Points Library, or– well, actually, a lot of her dreams were just about shelving books at the Compass Points Library. The majority of her dreams. Once, when she was thirteen, she’d had a dream about chasing down a pirate who had stolen a book, and despite the fact that she had done this many times before already in this life, she still woke up crying, so grateful for this insight into the life of a woman she had once been. Since leaving Leviathan, eight years ago now, the dreams had grown less frequent, but nothing had risen to replace them; she just dreamt less. At first, she mourned the loss. But the years passed, and she learned to live with dreamless nights. 

Since she had met Fig, she hadn’t gone a night without dreaming, but the dreams had changed. Her whole life, she’d only ever dreamt of the past, the real past. Since she had met Fig, she dreamed of Fig. Not just their meetings. Ayda wished it had been their meetings, because she only knew how to dream the truth. But when Fig appeared in Ayda’s dreams, it was in places Ayda knew she’d never been. Fig on her tip-toes at the Compass Points Library, tucking a book under her arm. Fig on the barstool next to her at Garthy’s, nodding empathetically as she lamented the theft of another priceless tome. Fig sitting next to Ayda in an undergraduate lecture class, passing her a note with a rude comment about the professor. Worst of all, Fig atop her, underneath her, holding her hand, laying in her bed.

She woke from these dreams out of breath. She rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face which evaporated with a hiss . She avoided Adaine’s gaze as she ducked into the kitchen and grabbed a granola bar. 

She returned to her room, and lingered in the doorway, eyes on the rug that still concealed a chalk summoning circle. She thought about lifting it up, about lighting the candles and chanting the words. But each time, without fail, the same memory struck her: Fig dropping a bloodied earring into her hand, telling her she was “free and clear”. Ayda was not an expert on the intricacies in social interaction. She knew enough to recognize a “leave me alone” when she heard one. She glanced at the small, ornate box on her nightstand, where she had tucked the earring.

And then she sat down at her desk and worked on her thesis.

It was unbearable. Ayda had been alone for nearly her whole life, for many lives before hers. It had never hurt like this. It was like she’d learned to see a new color that only dragons could see (she’d once read a really interesting paper on the fact that dragons could see more colors than any humanoid, and the dilution of that trait across generations of Dragonborns), and then that color had vanished. Her mind never rested, never stayed where she put it. 

Her draft of the final chapter was done in two weeks.

She brought it in to her thesis advisor, a miserable little man who picked holes in everything she’d ever written, who had slowed her down at every single step of this process, and he declared it revolutionary. He scolded her for conducting additional research so late in the process, but then he’d said, “Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet,” and when Ayda got home that evening and checked her encyclopedia of idioms she was fairly certain that that meant that he actually approved of what she’d done. Another week of edits, and he approved her to send her final thesis draft to the committee.

They scheduled her defense.

When she got home that evening, she sat down at the kitchen table across from Adaine, who looked up at her with visible surprise.

“Are you alright?” Adaine asked.

“I scheduled it.” Ayda lowered her head slowly onto the kitchen table and rested it there.

“Ayda, I’m not certain what you’re talking about, and your hair is catching the table on fire.”

Just as slowly, Ayda lifted her head back from the table and cast a quick Mending on the lightly charred surface. “My thesis defense. It is scheduled. It is happening.”

Adaine’s eyes widened. “Ayda! Congratulations!”

“Thank you.”

“This is certainly cause for celebration! You’ve been working on this for months, particularly these past few weeks. I would love to attend your defense, if you’ll have me.”

“Of course.”

Ayda glanced up from the spot she’d been staring at on the table, the spot she had just Mended, to see Adaine looking at her with furrowed brows. “What’s wrong? Are you nervous about the defense?”

“I believe it should feel… good. I think that is the way I am supposed to be feeling at this moment. I have been working towards this point for years. I am confident in my research, confident that I can defend it. I think this is my greatest accomplishment in this life. And yet, I feel– I don’t know how I feel.”

Adaine tilted her head in thought for a moment, then nodded resolutely. “I’m going to make tea.”

She made tea, the way she had the first night they’d moved in together, all the way at the beginning of Adaine’s first year of grad school and Ayda’s third, three years ago now, when they’d barely known each other; the way she had a year ago, when she’d graduated with her master’s and left Ayda alone in the world of academia to serve full-time as the Elven oracle; the way she often did, on nights when she came home with freshly-healed wounds from fights she couldn’t talk about. It was the same herbal blend she’d made on that very first night and every night since, a brand sold only by a small stand at the Elm Valley Mall in Adaine’s hometown. Ayda drank it near-boiling. Adaine cooled hers slightly with a Prestidigitation.

“Are you able to tell me about whatever has been making you so unhappy lately?” Adaine finally asked, when they’d both half-emptied their cups in silence.

Ayda shook her head.

Adaine nodded. “Well, it would be hypocritical of me to fault you for that. Just– please know that I’m here for you, in whatever way you need me to be. You’re my best friend.”

A hot tear ran down Ayda’s cheek, and she found it hard to get the words out, but she managed to say, “You’re my best friend too, Adaine.” She took a moment to compose herself before continuing, “Your affection means the entire world to me. I mean that in the most literal sense. I know you choose to bear the burden of your oracular visions alone, but if you needed me to, I would blaze this world barren in your name.” This was what Ayda Aguefort had learned friendship to be, in the past four years. It was, she thought, almost certainly the best thing that had ever happened to her. 

When she had made her first friend, Ayda was under the impression that she’d discovered the last of the emotions that there was. That she had felt them all. But now, the gaping chasm in her chest begged to differ.

“And you could do it. But I do wish you’d do something so extraordinary for yourself, someday,” said Adaine, with a sad little smile. 

Ayda finished her tea. Then, in silence, she stood, washed the cup, returned to her room, and got back to work on her final presentation. 

–

Ayda had rehearsed this presentation so many times now that she was fairly certain she could recite it under the effects of the Sleep spell. The third bullet point on the fourth slide read, “Firsthand account of archdevil replacement without bloodshed from Fig the Infaethable.” It was an opening for Ayda to deliver the most compelling evidence of her thesis, her first-hand research, which led directly into the primary analysis portion that made up the next five slides (about ten minutes of talking time). Perhaps, in her wildest daydreams, she had imagined impressed murmurs from the dozen or so PhD students in her year that hung around to watch the public thesis defense presentations. In her more reasonable but still optimistic daydreams, the committee nodded approvingly.

What she had not anticipated was one very loud, very familiar voice to say, “What the fuck?”

Ayda’s head snapped up from the committee, into the audience, to see Adaine Abernant with her hands clapped over her mouth, her eyes the widest behind her glasses that Ayda had ever seen them. 

For a long moment, the room sat in stunned silence. Then, the head of the committee cleared his throat and said, “Please hold any questions until the audience question portion of the presentation, please,” and Ayda, shaken, forced her gaze back to making respectful (excruciating) eye contact with various committee members, and began to recite her evidence, suddenly very glad for every time she’d rehearsed this past the point of simple memorization. It was easy to talk about Fig. When she told the story of Fig’s rise to power, she could almost hear Fig’s voice, telling it to her over chili.

During each slide transition, though, she glanced back up into the audience. She only caught the rest of Adaine’s reaction in snippets, the transition from that initial shock to a strange, shaken, pale expression Ayda had never seen her wear before.

She finished the presentation without further incident. Two audience members asked surface-level questions that Ayda gave very in-depth answers to. Then, the audience was shooed out, and the committee asked their questions. 

They didn’t ask anything she hadn’t prepared for. She answered to the best of her ability. She was fairly certain her ability was great. 

And then it was over. She packed up her stuff, quickly, quietly, thanked the committee once more, and calmly walked out of the room. Adaine was not outside. Ayda had asked her to head straight home afterwards; she knew that the waiting for deliberation would feel longer with an audience.

Ten minutes later, her advisor opened the door and said, “Congratulations, Doctor Aguefort.”

Bliss did not come.

She thanked him, thanked the committee. Walked out of the building. Once the door closed behind her, she broke into a run. Adaine would be home. She knew something, had seen something in Ayda’s presentation that had shocked her in a way Ayda had never seen her be shocked. So, running, and then flying, as fast as she could, Ayda went home.

Adaine was on the couch. She was sitting very still.

“Adaine?” asked Ayda, tentative.

Slowly, Adaine began to laugh. It started off quiet, but it didn’t stay that way, and soon she had to put her hands on her knees to brace herself. She laughed the hardest Ayda had ever seen her laugh, and Ayda stood there, by the door to the apartment, still in her presentation clothes, with absolutely no idea what was so funny.

“What is funny?”

Finally, Adaine managed to choke out, “I just can’t believe–” and then briefly, abruptly, went silent, glassy-eyed. She froze, and Ayda realized she was on the receiving end of a Sending spell. 

After several strange, liminal seconds, Adaine stood. “I am so sorry, Ayda– we will talk about this, I promise– but I have to go, right now. Things have gone terribly wrong sooner than expected.” 

And she was gone. Teleported away.

Ayda stood there, alone, for a long time. She looked at the place Adaine had disappeared from. She looked at the table where she and Fig had eaten chili. Slowly, the tension dripped from her body. It simply could not hold it anymore. She sighed, walked over to her room, and rolled up the circular rug.

The runes of the summoning circle had smudged a bit, in the weeks (seven weeks and three days, to be precise) that had passed since Ayda had last used it. But she knew this summoning circle intricately, intimately, and drawing them back properly was as easy as breathing. As easy as summoning the flames for the candles. As easy as reciting the words that had been playing in her head, on an unspoken loop, since the last time she’d dared say them out loud. (Seven weeks and three days ago.)

When she finished reciting the ritual, she couldn’t help but count the seconds. The past four summonings, it had not taken Fig more than ten to appear. At ten, she was anxious; at twenty, halfway to hyperventilation.

At thirty, the universe spat out an absolutely fucked-up little imp. (It was not Fig the Infaethable.) He had the general shape of a humanoid baby, but he looked to be made of a red fluid (almost certainly blood) and he had pointed ears, horns, wings, and a little tail with a spade at the end. This was all fairly normal for imps. What struck Ayda as particularly strange about him was that he had a belly button.

“My mistress is unavailable right now,” he said, in a strange, singsonging, squealing voice, “Can I take a message?”

Ayda could only say, “What?”

He repeated himself. 

“Who are you? Where is Fig?”

“My mistress is unavailable right now,” he repeated for a third time, “But I’m Baby!” He did what Ayda could only describe as an absolutely fucked-up little dance. 

“And, just to be entirely clear, Fig sent you to take a message for her?”

“That’s right!”

“Have you harmed her in any way? Are you lying to me about her whereabouts?”

He looked offended. “I would never harm my mistress.” He broke out into a horrible little grin. “Unless she asked me to!” Back to serious. “But she didn’t. I didn’t lay a finger on her!” He wriggled his strange, fluid fingers.

She cast a quick spell to probe his mind. On the surface, he was thinking, My mistress is unavailable right now, can I take a message? She probed deeper; beneath that, he was thinking, Hey, that tickles! which she took to mean that he had somehow succeeded in cloaking himself in his wisdom. 

“I am not convinced you have not harmed Fig. I do not trust you to deliver a message to her.”

“Well, I’m the best you’ve got, lady! Let me spell it out for you: She. Doesn’t. Want. To talk to you!” He made jazz hands. “So if you want to say something to her, you best try and deliver it through me, because that’s the only way you’re going to get it there!”

Oh. Oh, no.

Ayda had three realizations at the same time.

The first was this: that she had been working on her thesis for seven weeks, and in all of that time, doing the thing she had always thought she loved most in the world, she had not felt even a fraction of the anticipation and excitement and anxiety and investment she had felt in the thirty seconds in which she had waited for Fig to appear in the summoning circle.

Which made the second realization, in hindsight, painfully obvious: she was falling in love with Fig the Infaethable. Was falling, and had been for some time now, maybe since the first day she’d seen her.

The third realization was the worst of them all: she had deeply, entirely, and possibly irrevocably fucked this whole thing right up.

She looked at Baby. “Can you hold for a moment?”

He shrugged.

She retrieved a pen and paper from her desk and, crouched on the floor with a blood imp blatantly peeking over her shoulder, wrote a note. She did not allow herself to script it out beforehand, or even, despite every academic bone in her body screaming at her, to review it for errors afterwards. She simply wrote it, folded it up, and dripped some of the wax from one of the summoning candles onto it as a makeshift seal. She also drafted another short contract, which she set aside. Then, from her bag, she grabbed the extra bound copy of her thesis she had printed for the committee and, cutting off a length from the ten-foot piece of rope all wizards carried on their person at all times, tied the note and the thesis together. She handed this package to Baby.

“Please see that this makes it to your mistress safely. In exchange for guaranteeing its safe passage, I can present you with a quantity of blood not exceeding one-half teaspoon.”

His eyes widened. “Whose blood?”

“Well, if you sign this contract, you can receive it and find out.” She offered him the contract she had set aside and a pen.

He shrugged. “Sure, why not!” He signed “BABY” in big, blocky letters. 

She fished out a very small vial of blood from her component pouch and handed it to him. Immediately, he uncorked it, stuck a long, forked tongue inside, and slurped out all of the blood. It was unpleasant to watch, and when he was done, he let out an uncomfortably satisfied sigh.

“One package, headed straight to my mistress on the Baby Express! Pleasure doin’ business with ya.” He grabbed the package with both of his small hands, staggered back into the summoning circle, and was gone.

Alone, Dr. Ayda Aguefort went to bed.

Chapter Text

But that night, Dr. Ayda Aguefort did not rest for long. In the twenty-five years of this life, she had been awoken in many strange and abrupt ways, many of which were a natural side effect of her childhood on a pirate island. Her least favorite were the nights where her magickal booby traps she set around the library while she slept went off; it meant she had to get up and do something, chase off some pirate with a well-placed magic missile or put out some fire that had started nearby and was threatening to reach Compass Points. 

Her favorite had come at age sixteen, when a different alert had gone off, the one she had set to notify when her response letter from the undergraduate program she’d applied to had arrived. (This “alert” came in the form of Rawlins, her library assistant.) He came in yelling, faster than she’d ever seen him move, and told her that she’d gotten in. After getting over her initial displeasure at him reading her letter before she could, Ayda had experienced the highest peak of happiness that had yet reached her in this life. She’d gotten into the program on an education provided only by her past and present selves, and the thousands of books squirreled away in Compass Points, two years younger than their typical admission.

It had been a good night.

All this to say, she had never been awoken by a Sending spell before.

Adaine here. Portable teleportation circle in top nightstand drawer. Prepare Reverse Gravity. Come immediately. Urgent.

Ayda sat straight up. It was an unpleasant experience, much like the jolt of “falling” in that liminal space between wakefulness and sleep, but she was up. Before she could think too much about it, though, her body was already moving. Adaine’s voice, whispering, in her ear. Adaine needed help. 

Shoes on. Down the hall, into Adaine’s room. Nightstand was easy enough to find, next to the bed; she opened the top drawer and saw what looked to be a rolled-up poster. Out of the drawer, onto the floor. Deep breath. Stepping in.

Sloppily-made teleportation circles left their travelers nauseous, disoriented, or suddenly exhausted. Adaine was one of the best wizards of her age. Ayda landed on the other side more awake than before, sharper and clearer. Even with the clarity that came on the receiving end of Adaine’s magic, though, it took Ayda’s half-asleep brain a long moment to take in the scene in front of her. 

The air felt upset . It was reddish in hue and humid, like if a mist were hot and made of blood. It immediately enveloped her, and though the temperature didn’t bother her, the dampness made her clothes and wings feel heavy. Her feet were on solid but uneven rocky ground. These were the atmospheric qualities. Then there was the strange part: Adaine Abernant, standing on the edge of a cliff, legs stanced wide, both her hands out in front of her. Kristen Applebees (of all people) crouching down over– was that Gorgug?-- her palms against his chest. A white-haired half-elven man she didn’t recognize, sitting roughly on a large reddish stone, bleeding from several places. There was an intricate metal door behind him, but it was closed. At her arrival, he turned to look at her. The others did not. 

“Adaine!” she called out.

Adaine didn’t turn her head. “Come here, please!”

Without hesitation, Ayda ran to Adaine’s side. Peering over the ledge, she could immediately see the issue. There was a goblin, holding… a gun, slowly falling through the air, about forty feet down. Glancing at Adaine, she could see that she was straining with effort.

“Feather Fall isn’t working properly– I’m upcasting it quite a bit, and still, I can’t lose concentration or it’s going to drop– Flying spells won’t work– Reverse Gravity!” she said, through gritted teeth.

Ayda got the memo, and wincing with the effort of such an intensive spell on a level of exhaustion, cast Reverse Gravity. It was a spell she’d cast several times before, primarily in her undergraduate upper-level wizarding classes, but never in a situation like this. Still, though, she was fairly certain that it was supposed to send anything in its range shooting up towards the sky or ceiling. 

That didn’t happen. Instead, the goblin simply hung in midair. He turned up towards Adaine and made a generally disgruntled impression. 

“I think the pit is hungry!” shouted Adaine down.

“That’s not reassuring!” the goblin called back up. 

“Fly spells don’t work– rope?” Ayda asked, turning towards Adaine.

Adaine looked back over at her and brought her hand up to smack her own forehead. “Oh, I’m an idiot. Fabian! Rope!”

The half-elf, who must have been Fabian, rifled around in his pack before tossing a bundle of rope over to Adaine. She handed one end to Ayda, then tossed the other down towards the goblin. It swung perilously while he grasped at it. Another idea occurred to Ayda, and this time she didn’t ask permission before sending a mage hand to hold the rope steady, ten feet above the goblin. He grabbed on with both hands, and Ayda began to haul him up. Though Ayda considered herself to be fairly strong, she didn’t need to be; it seemed the Reverse Gravity had made the goblin weightless.

He grasped onto the edge of the pit and hoisted himself up and over, then immediately scrambled away from the ledge and onto solid ground.

With a loud exhale, he slumped down onto the rocks. Adaine stepped away from the ledge as well. Her first step was firm, her second shaky, and her third not a step so much as a slide onto the ground next to the goblin.

The goblin looked up at her. “Riz Gukgak. Nice to meet you. Adaine’s told me about you. Thanks for saving me from the bottomless pit.”

After shaking off the glow of apparently having good references, Ayda looked at Riz, then at the pit, then at Adaine, then back at Riz again. “I’m sorry. When you say the bottomless pit, are you referring to the Bottomless Pit?”

“The one in Hell, yeah.” Riz nodded.

“As in, the former domain of the archdevil Gorthalax the Insatiable, current domain of the archdevil Fig the Infaethable?”

Riz cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “... Yeah. Adaine, did you tell her about this?”

With a weak laugh, Adaine said, “No, I did not. She figured it out all on her own. I didn’t even piece it together until after she had.”

“Why would Adaine have knowledge of this? Also, I have to leave now.” If this was the Bottomless Pit, she was in Fig’s domain, and she didn’t want to show up on Fig’s doorstep unannounced.

Adaine sighed and held up her hand. “Stay. I’ll have to explain eventually. We went to high school together.”

“You and Riz? Yes, I surmised as such, given the presence of Kristen and Gorgug and my knowledge of your relationship with the two of them.”

“No– well, yes, but–” Adaine looked her dead in the eyes. “Me and Fig.”

“And also the rest of us!” chimed in Kristen.

“What?” Ayda froze. “No.”

“Yes,” said Adaine, and slowly, painfully, the pieces snapped into place: Fig’s mention of an adventuring party in her past. Adaine’s party from high school. The old friend that she and Kristen had talked about in hushed tones, the one that didn’t come around anymore; Fig, who didn’t have time for brunch. The cleric healing Fig had once received. The ages, which lined up. Even Gorgug’s friend, who was cool, and who he thought would like a skateboard. She was a fool. 

“I’m a fool,” she said.

“What?” Adaine looked confused. “No, you’re not. How were you to know that I went to high school with a demon that you studied for your thesis?”

“I summoned her,” muttered Ayda, under her breath.

“What?”

“I summoned her,” Ayda repeated, enunciating this time. “Into our home.”

“I’m sorry. You summoned an archdevil… into our home?”

Ayda winced. “Yes.”

Closing her eyes and leaning her head back against Riz’s shoulder, Adaine let out a long, slow sigh. “Sure.”

For a moment, she just stayed like that. Off to the side, Gorgug gasped and sat back up. Kristen gently nudged him back down, switching from reviving to healing. 

Then, Adaine gasped. “Your midnight visitor!”

“What?” asked Riz.

“About two months ago, Ayda went on a series of dates with a mysterious person she wouldn’t tell me about. Those weren’t dates at all, were they! You were summoning Fig!”

That was the truth. That was the real, actual truth. And yet, Ayda felt her cheeks grow warm when she said, “Correct.”

“... Wait, were they dates?”

“Nope.”

“Because from the expression on your face, you’re starting to make me think they might have been dates.”

Gorgug chimed in, “Is Fig the cool person you had me make that present for?”

Ayda was fairly certain the fiery hair on top of her head had grown several inches in height, based on the heat her body was producing. “It wasn’t a present , it was for use in a trade in which I exchanged it for information!”

“What kind of information?” Adaine asked, a strange twinkle in her eye.

“... Erm. How to ride a skateboard.”

“Wait, so when you went out with that skateboard– I knew something was odd with that!” Adaine let out a sharp laugh, “I offered to ask Fig to teach you!”

“Well, she did. Kind of. The talons make it fairly difficult.”

Adaine slumped back against the rocks with a smile that was altogether too self-satisfied for Ayda’s liking. “Elven oracle, baby.”

“I’m fairly certain that’s not how your gift of prophecy works.”

“I don’t think anyone knows how my gift of prophecy works. If I did, we’d certainly find ourselves in less situations like this,” Adaine said, gesturing at her various wounded party members.

“Yes. What occurred here?”

Adaine gestured at Riz, who reluctantly explained, “I was the only one that knew Fig was here, because her dad kind of has a thing with my mom–”

“You’re the friend!” Ayda realized.

Riz nodded. “Nice that she told you about me. So I’ve been coming by to check up on her, but she always tells me to go away. And she swore me to secrecy, because she didn’t want anyone else to worry.”

A quick glance around the group revealed a group of rather worried-looking people.

“I knew,” said Fabian. Adaine whipped her head around to glare at him. “What? The Ball and I are roommates. Hell has a very particular scent.”

“Okay, fine, only Fabian and I knew. Well, when Adaine figured it out– which apparently was because of you?-- she Sent me a message that we all should go down and stage a little intervention. I figured I’d go down and warn Fig ahead of time, but when I got here, it turned out that something was… wrong.”

“Wrong in what way?” asked Ayda.

“Well, originally, the gate that usually led to the Pit led to a labyrinth with the Pit at the center. But once I got through that– it didn’t take that long, it was really more like one of those mazes they give to kids at restaurants– there was a minotaur fiend at the center. That’s when I Sent Adaine a message, and everyone else showed up. We killed it, blah blah, the labyrinth dissolved, and some monsters popped up. But the thing is, they just haven’t stopped coming. Whenever we finish them off, more crawl out of the Pit. We’ve been at it for hours. The doors that are supposed to go into Gorthalax’s– well, Fig’s now, I guess– mansion just lead to other parts of the pit.”

A terrible, squirming feeling began in the pit of Ayda’s stomach. “When was the last time you spoke to Fig?”

Riz thought for a moment, then said, “Little less than two months ago? Came by to check in. She was in a hurry to do some devil stuff.” He muttered a curse under his breath. “Oh, no, she was– shit. I’m an idiot. They should take my certification away.”

“The Ball, no!” said Fabian.

Ayda had no idea who the Ball was, and at this point, she was too afraid to ask. But if there was one thing she knew plenty about, it was the Nine Hells. 

“This is Fig’s domain,” she realized, “It’s responding to her emotions. But Hell is a blunt instrument, and it corrupts– if she doesn’t want to see you, it will just keep throwing obstacles at you, until you go away. If that means death, it means death.”

“Hold on. Are you saying Fig wants to kill us?” asked Kristen, who had moved on to healing Fabian. 

“No– well, not necessarily. These are defenses that it is putting up, in a perversion of her demand to be left alone. To get through it… well, I’m not sure, actually.” The words felt bad leaving Ayda’s mouth. There was little she hated more than uncertainty. “If she’s expecting you all, I’m sure the Bottomless Pit is plenty prepared to keep you out.”

They all sat with that unpleasant realization for a few beats. 

Then, Adaine spoke. “Would she be expecting you?”

“What?”

“You said the Pit was prepared to keep us out, because she is expecting us. Would she be expecting you?”

Unbidden, the image rose to mind of Fig, holding out a bloody earring to Ayda. Saying that their debts were resolved, as if that was the only reason that Ayda had continued summoning her. Sending a fiend in her stead. But then, hadn’t Ayda been so careful to tally who owed what? Hadn’t she been the one keeping score?

“No,” she realized, “No, I don’t think Fig would be expecting me.”

Adaine gestured at the metal door behind Fabian, still closed. “Then it might be worth a try, no?”

Slowly, Ayda rose back to her feet. She glanced around at the gathered party, at her best friend and her best friend’s best friends. Riz gave her a sharp nod. Adaine smiled warmly at her. Gorgug gave a small wave.

Kristen said, “I’d normally give a speech right about now, but I think you know what to do,” and then she winked.

Ayda walked over and opened the door. 

–

Ayda Aguefort was thirteen years old, and she was growing horns. 

It was the year of closed doors and whisper-fights. It was the year her body became a foreign object, a changing landscape. It was the year her past became a lie. She wished she could be someone, anyone else.

What?

That wasn’t right.

Ayda Aguefort was thirteen years old, and Garthy sat her down and told her that they had seen her as a mother to them, in a past life, and fiery tears had streamed down her cheeks. They said they would always look out for her.

In their own way, she supposed, they had; she was sure they’d stopped plenty of harm from coming to her. They were paying the debt they owed to her past self. But they hadn’t raised her. She had raised herself.

She didn’t want to think about that .

Ayda Aguefort was sixteen years old, and she was in the Forest of the Nightmare King, and a rockstar teenage Fig the Infaethable told her that she was so, so selfish, for thinking of her own self-image when her friends were in danger. She was tied to a tree by that Fig, and she tried to think of anyone who would love her for who she is. The best she could come up with is her step-dad– 

What?

– and he thought of her, the kindness she had shown him, and the love, and it gave her enough confidence to power through. Fear swallowed her, and she relaxed, and she woke up bound to a tree.

That never happened.

Ayda Aguefort was sixteen years old, and she left her home behind. She thought of a thousand more lifetimes in the same library, collecting and studying knowledge but never adding to it, and she found that future wanting, and she applied to university, and she left her home behind.

She never dreamed the same way again. She’d abandoned herself, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she failed all of those past versions of herself?

No–

She’d been trying to be better than them, or to make them proud, or–

Ayda Aguefort was eighteen years old, and she’d gotten into the same university as all of her friends, and she had absolutely no fucking idea what she wanted to do with her life, except to hang out with these same five people forever. She picked classes at random, whatever her friends were taking, and she showed up when she felt like it, and mostly scraped by with passing grades.

Well, she’d certainly never done that .

Ayda Aguefort was eighteen years old, and she did not have a single friend. She had never had a friend in her whole life. What she did have was a perfect grade-point average, an undergraduate research position, and a number of prestigious scholarships. She had absolutely no one to share them with. She’d left behind the closest thing to family she’d ever known, and even if she tried to tell Garthy, they’d do no better than a nod and a that’s great, love , and then they’d have to leave, and she couldn’t blame them, because she’d left them first.

They were even, though, they’d paid her back for what she’d done to them–

Ayda Aguefort was twenty-two, and graduating with a degree in bardic studies that she’d only gotten because Riz and Adaine had built her schedule for her, those last two years, when the advisor had told her to get her shit together. And now, the worst had happened, and her friends were going all over, Riz and Fabian to the city and Adaine and Gorgug to grad school and Kristen for a post-university gap year and Ayda Aguefort to nowhere at all, nothing at all.

A door had opened in front of her, and her father had stepped out, and he’d given her a future , and it was the only offer she’d gotten.

But she didn’t know her father, he’d abandoned her lifetimes ago, she wasn’t–

Ayda Aguefort was twenty-two, and she had a new roommate, someone who had shown up before she’d even put up signs, who told her that she’d just had “a feeling”, and Ayda recognized a divination wizard when she saw one, and the wizard, Adaine, made her tea, and Ayda learned what friendship was, but she held herself back, held herself tight and close, 

because she didn’t know anything else, had never known anything but deals and contracts, because she’d been a kid on a goddamn pirate island all by herself, and she’d learned from her own past lives how hard it was for someone like her in a place like that, a place that she’d left, but there was no promise that the world wouldn’t be just as hard, there was no reason that the other shoe wouldn’t drop any day now, there was no–

“Ayda Aguefort!”

– What?

There was a rippling in the fabric of memory.

“Ayda Aguefort!”

She felt a tug on her wings. No, a tug on her finger, a string tied around it. No, a tug on her heart, and it was pulling her.

She took a step forward, then another. Then another, and then, somehow, through an in-between space, she broke into a run, and whatever had wrapped itself around her heart pulled in the slack and stayed taut, kept tugging her forward, and she had no choice but to follow it, because around her was the past, all in its fragments–

– a voice on a speaking stone, her voice, teaching herself to read, earlier than she was perhaps quite wired to do–

– a professor telling her that though her work was perhaps revolutionary, no one would listen to her if she couldn’t look them in the eyes when she spoke–

– nights alone, dozing off in the stacks of Compass Points, waking up unsure which of her lives she was living–

– nights in the mirror, practicing presentations and facial expressions–

But in front of her, there was something, surely, someone pulling her not just away from the past but towards the future. She could feel it, could almost hear it, saying,

“Ayda Aguefort!”

like a prayer, like it meant something. And she ran, and ran, for what felt like a dozen lifetimes.

And then she saw a door, with light spilling out of the sides and the bottom, and she wrapped her clawed hand around it, and she wrenched it open, and she threw herself into the unknown.

–

There was a soft hand on her face. To anyone else, it would have been just a touch too warm, but to Ayda, it was cool, comforting. It cupped her cheek and, unthinking, unused to touch, she leaned into it. A thumb rubbed gently down her jaw.

Awareness returned in pieces. She could feel warm, smooth ground beneath her legs, beneath her hands. She must have been on her knees, but she couldn’t move just yet. She couldn’t hear anything, really. Wait, no– she could hear breathing, steady. Her eyes were gummed shut, with what she knew to be ash. Unthinking, she brought a hand up and tried to rub it away.

“Hey, shh, it’s okay,” said a familiar voice, softer than she’d ever heard it. “No rush.”

She managed to scrub her eyes clean, though it took a moment for them to adjust to the light when she opened them. They must have been closed for a while.

In front of her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, her hand on Ayda’s cheek, was Fig the Infaethable. 

She looked exhausted, dark circles beneath her reddish eyes. She wore a large, faded t-shirt that said FIG AND THE CIG FIGS, with red-black plaid boxer shorts peeking out from underneath. She had Ayda’s feather clenched in one hand. Her hair hung loose around her face in loose waves, frizzy where her horns poked out at the top. 

She was as beautiful as Ayda had ever seen her.

“I read your thesis,” she said, her face unreadable, “It was really good. But your note, that you couldn’t have done it without me– I think that’s too much credit.”

“I’m sorry.” Ayda said it, and the words felt right, so she said it again: “I’m so sorry, Fig.”

Fig shrugged. “It happens.”

“No. I didn’t– I did it wrong.”

“What are you talking about? Your thesis? I thought it was really strong, seriously,” said Fig, a strange, self-deprecating grin tugging at her lips.

“No. I should have– I wanted to give you gifts, Fig.”

“What?” Fig looked genuinely taken aback.

“I wanted to give you gifts, and not take anything in return.”

“But, you–”

“I wanted to know what you thought about everything, not just spicy food or devil politics. Everything.”

Fig looked at her as if she had perhaps sustained a traumatic head injury.

She didn’t understand, clearly, and Ayda needed her to understand. “Every time I came up with a new point for my thesis, I wanted to know what you thought of it. Academia was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I know,” said Fig, looking away.

“ Was . It was. And then I learned about friendship, and still, I clung to academia, to logic and reason and everything in this world that I knew to be safe. And I was a fool. And then I met you, Fig the Infaethable–”

“It’s Faeth, actually. My last name.”

Ayda took it in stride. “And then I met you, Fig Faeth, and I wanted to know things that weren’t relevant to my research, that weren’t relevant to you being an archdevil or a tiefling. I wanted to know what your favorite color was, and what you’d think of my roommate, and if you’d like the food I cooked for you, and–”

“I–”

“No, don’t say anything yet. I wanted more than an academic relationship with you, Fig, and even worse, worse than all of it, I wanted you to know about me . I wanted you to know about the place I grew up, and all of the things that are weird and wrong about me, and if you thought they were weird or wrong too. And above it all, the thing I wanted to know most, was if you liked me, Fig, because I liked you. I like you. A lot, certainly more than I’ve ever documented liking anyone, and then I didn’t summon you for two months because I needed to finish my thesis and the whole time I was doing it, this thing that was supposed to be the most important thing I’d ever done, it didn’t even matter, all I could think about was you–”

And then Ayda couldn’t talk anymore, because there was a mouth on her mouth. For one long moment, she froze, uncomprehending. And then something deep inside her melted against Fig’s lips, and she kissed Fig Faeth back with everything she had.

It was perfect. It was, undoubtedly, the best thing that had ever happened to her. It had happened in her dreams more times than she’d ever be willing to admit, and she had never once guessed that it could feel like this.

Fig pulled back. “Wait, hold on, I just need to double-check a few things.”

“Okay.” Ayda’s tongue darted out. Her lips now tasted like cinnamon, which meant that Fig’s lips tasted like cinnamon. Her brain imploded a little bit.

“You like me. As in, like-like me. Wait, no, that sounds stupid, forget I said that–”

With a surge of bravery, Ayda reached out and tilted Fig’s face towards her, so she could see no deception on Ayda’s features. “Fig Faeth, yes. In your terms, I like-like you.”

“And, just to be super clear, you’re not saying that because you definitely just lived through some of my memories, and you feel bad for me because they were super sad?”

“I– ah, that clarifies things, it was a combination of both of our memories. No, I would not do such a thing. Did you also experience that?”

“Yes, kind of, but I snapped out of it sooner. I think it was the whole Nine Hells archdevil security system thing. That’s how I got you out, with the feather.”

Ayda nodded. “I understand.”

For a long moment, they just looked at each other, Ayda’s hand still on Fig’s chin. 

“And, if you are clarifying things, you… also have feelings for me? Despite apparently also experiencing some of my memories which could certainly be categorized as ‘super sad’?”

“What? No, Ayda, I– I get it. I mean–” she turned a darker shade of red and turned her head away. Ayda released her chin at the first sign of resistance. Without making eye contact, Fig continued, “I like you a lot, okay? Like, since I met you. You’re really cool and smart and interesting and easy to talk to. That’s why I– kissed you, just then.”

“Ah, yes. About that.”

Fig snapped back to looking at Ayda, alarm clear in her eyes. “Was it– did you not want it? Was it bad?”

“The opposite. It was perfect. However, I think I can do better.”

She leaned back in. 

As it turned out, practice really did make perfect.

–

“Oh, dear,” Ayda paled, “I believe we have left your adventuring party on the edge of the bottomless pit.”

“Shit!” Fig stood, and held out a hand to help Ayda up. Even when standing, Ayda did not let go.

When they opened the door, it was Riz that noticed them first, and without warning, he ran and tackled Fig. 

“Don’t ever do that to us again,” he said, wrapping his arms around her hips.

“Seriously, don’t even think about it,” said Kristen, and then the others rushed Fig, and the six adventurers formed a strange pile of limbs and verbal threats.

Ayda lingered awkwardly at the edge, still holding Fig’s hand, until Gorgug (of all people) wrapped a massive arm around her and pulled her into the hug, too. 

It was probably the most people Ayda had ever been touching at once. It was certainly the longest for which she’d ever been hugged.

She found that she rather liked it.

The group held each other for an indeterminate amount of time before simultaneously pulling away. Ayda was unsure of how they knew when to let go, but they did all do it at once, which she found rather remarkable. A phenomenon for future study.

Adaine glanced down at Fig and Ayda’s still-clasped hands, and her eyes went wide. “I knew it!”

Fig smiled, a genuine, warm smile that Ayda would do terrible things to see again and again. “I think we all have a lot to catch up on. Is anyone hungry for brunch?”

“Yes, definitely, but first you have to promise not to do anything like this to us ever again,” said Fabian, falling a bit short of stern.

Fig winced. “Yeah, the whole ‘endless swarms of fiends’ thing was definitely my bad.”

“No, not that. We destroyed them!” He briefly basked in his victories.

Softly, Adaine added, “We missed you, Fig. We’ve been missing you for a long time.”

“Seriously, man, we’re not just some regular high-school friend group. We’re the Bad Kids! I’m sorry your job sucks, but that doesn’t mean you get to hide from us. We’ve made it through way worse than that,” Kristen said, fierce.

Fig opened her mouth, as if to object. Then, she looked around at her assembled friends, tired and battered but without a hint of regret in their eyes. She nodded.

“Fantastic. Now, onward to brunch!” declared Fabian. 

As the assembled adventurers agreed that most everyone needed brunch right then, immediately, Fig squeezed Ayda’s hand, caught her eye, and winked.

Ayda still maintained her feelings on deities and other reality-warping beings– predominantly the desire for them to leave her alone– but perhaps she needed to revisit her conclusions on luck. It seemed that she might have had a little extra, after all.