Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As Kalego opened the door to his home, he sighed heavily. 

He’d tried to make the most of  the break before the new school year but that time was drawing to a close.  Tomorrow, he would be back at Babyls,  to make some last minute prearations.  The most important being to check the grounds and surrounding territories for any changes in the environment that might impact the safety of the school.  Not to mention working on the final preparations in order to make sure that everything was properly set up for the next week’s ceremony for the new batch of first year brats as they walk through the doors of the school for the first time.

Kalego hoped the winged black cat that had crossed the path on his way home had just been a coincidence and not an omen.  Although he wouldn’t be surprised, considering that the Chair Demon could always swoop in and wreck his plans on a whim at any given moment.

Kalego’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted  as  his surroundings, his home, suddenly faded away, leaving him suspended in a vast expanse of glowing red swirls, the only thing lighting up the otherwise pitch darkness.  Glancing down, he saw black plumes rising from below. 

If it weren’t for that magical energy pulsing around him, Kalego would have thought this was a bizarre dream.  But the thrum against his skin left no doubt that this was happening. The air was so charged with it that it almost had a physical pressure the likes of which he’d never felt before; and working under one of the big three, that was saying something.  He felt an involuntary shiver and as he crossed his arms to hide it, he felt goosebumps rising from his skin.  Whether it was from the saturation of power or because he was sca…unsettled, he couldn’t say.

Several minutes passed where seemingly nothing happened in this darkness.  It was just him and the dark shadows from below among his shifting glowing surroundings. There was no gravity.  Nor was there any flow of air over him as he moved, although it must have been there since he could still breathe.

It was amazing how unsettling nothing happening could be.  What if he was stuck here in this strange place?  It was amazing how quickly the treacherous, cowardly thought crept in and settled in the back of Kalego’s mind. 

Almost worse; a part of his mind arguing against it brought up that if worst came to worst, Sullivan would probably rescue him. Luckily the thought was enough to get his mind working properly again…because like he was going to let the old coot hold something like this over him.

He fought the urge to hiss at the darkness in anger, an incredibly childish reaction that he knew would accomplish nothing.  Still, when he tried to put up a magical shielding spell he’d drawn up  to block out any magic-based attacks, he was frustrated to find  it almost instantly diffused and new red swirls rolled off his body to join the others around him.

Well, when he decided he wanted something to happen, it certainly wasn’t something like that.

Kalego then tried summoning his wings and flapping them to move somewhere.  Anywhere. The results were even more pathetic than with magic.

Come on; he was a Chet ranked demon.  Surely, he could do something here!  He wasn’t some rankless welp!

Then a flat, glowing object suddenly appeared in the distance, rushing toward him…or maybe he was rushing toward it.  Either way, as it came close, he saw that it was some sort of summoning circle, although he’d never had one work like this before.  Of course, he’d never been pulled to a summoning circle through a space like…whatever this was. 

Before Kalego knew what was happening, he had passed through the circle, leaving the strange shadow world of pulsing magic behind to be bombarded by one of light, air and sound.

And Gravity, which Kalego instinctively flapped his wings to adjust to in hopes of avoiding a crash.  Instead, this only led to him to bouncing off of some sort of magical barrier and crash gracelessly to the ground anyway, unable to recover fast enough.  And there was no give in the stony surface he slammed into despite his initial efforts, scraping up the arm he’d used to brace himself.

As he sucked in a breath and winced, his nose was filled with a scent of something that would have been mouthwateringly delicious if not mixed with a sickening concoction of filth and noxious fumes that permeated the air in a way that suggested it had been that way for ages.

Kalego growled as he forced himself to rise from his compromising position on the floor as his eyes only just began to his surroundings.  But ever so slowly, for although the space he was in was in the shadows, bright light shown in through pillars. 

Then he heard a pair of voices warbling to each other in a foreign tongue he couldn’t even begin to decipher.

Kalego’s eyes had adjusted enough that he could look in their direction and make out silhouettes.

“What do you want?” he asked, his words echoing and being changed into something unrecognizable.

As the two figures looked at him, Kalego was beginning to make out their features.  There was a man with dark blue mop and woman whose own hair was just a shade lighter talking to each other and pointing at him, seeming to disregard his question or that he had spoken at all.  The man started talking and although his words were in the same language as before, the ‘echoes’ were warped into his own tongue.  “We didn’t really think that would work!”

The man stepped closer but stopped just short of a set of powdery white lines. 

It was the spell circle he’d passed through earlier, except the glowing shape had been replaced by chalk drawn across a black, cracked surface.  An unstable thing that looked like it could be broken simply by a swipe of his foot to smear the medium or a solid flap of his wings to blow it away.  But considering the number of symbols and runes he didn’t recognize and the lack of many others that tended to show up in most summoning circles, tampering with it could be dangerous to him.    

And didn’t that make Kalego’s skin crawl.  The idea of being caught up in a spell too powerful for him to escape the pull of and not even be completely sure what it does was absolutely terrifying.  Among the symbols he did recognize was that of Chet symbol that seemed to indicate that he had been randomly summoned among the members of his rank.  He wouldn’t be surprised if the symbol had been chosen at random, itself.

Kalego looked back at his captors, easily able to make them out now.  They both had obviously rounded ears and lacked any visible horns or wings but he could see blood dripping from the male’s hand, undoubtedly the summoner. Still, he saw no sign of the power source strong enough to summon him across whatever that dark place had been.  Whatever it was had probably burned up in the flame of the candle in the middle of the circle with the bloody paper they undoubtedly used to activate the spell.

Keeping one eye on the beings at all times to make sure that they didn’t try something,  Kalego glanced around. He was in some area that seemed to be shaped of some type of stone conglomerates that had been shaped relatively smooth, all grays and blacks.  It was supported by some pillars between open air spaces instead of walls. 

The  place was old.  There were cracks running through the rough floor and occasionally showing up in the pillars.  Random surfaces were painted with various overlapping, mostly unfamiliar symbols and occasionally interspersed with crude pictures.

 Kalego focused on his disdain.  He decided on displaying his annoyance, not wanting these things to catch on that he was scared in the slightest.

Although Kalego’s observations only took moments, it seemed to be long enough for the pair before him to move beyond their initial amazement.  Emboldened, they stepped forward.

Kalego glared at them again with all his fury and asked, “Why am I here?”

The man stepped forward displaying an old dusty, beat up, pocket sized tome with some sort of leathery hide cover and began to speak.  For half a second, Kalego couldn‘t understand what he was saying,  Then, some of the unknown runes which made him nervous started to glow with a slightest tinge of the red they’d had in the darkness and an ‘echo’ sprung up that he could understand. “We found this book and saw it had a Summoning Spell for striking Deals and we want to make one.”         

“A…deal.”  Spellbound deals of any type were extremely binding.  For people who knew what they were doing, it could prove very beneficial but they were very dangerous for their binding properties.  Even the familiar summoning ritual, broadly considered the safest of such deals, were heavily monitored when performed.  He knew; he was one of if not the best authorities on the process in all of Babyls.

“Yeah,” the woman stated as she approached him and said, “we want to be rich!”

“Give me that,” Kalego commanded, gesturing to the book. “I want to know the rules to this spell and how it works.”

They did as he said and passed it to him.  No questions.  No suspicion.  They might have just handed him the means to turn the scales on them and they didn’t care. They were either extremely powerful or terribly stupid.

If he were a betting demon, he’d lean toward the latter.  The thing is, he didn’t survive to his current rank by gambling blindly when he didn’t have to.

Maybe Kalego could use the book to wriggle out of this and be  gone.  These things did essentially admit to being inexperienced.

The moment Kalego had the tome in hand and he began to thumb through it.  For a moment, it was full of unreadable symbols but then a ripple of magic passed through it, translating it to easily understandable demon writing.  He found himself staring at a mix of spells and while many had elements that  he was familiar with, most also had many aspects that he didn’t know, a few being completely unrecognizable.  He turned toward the beginning, where the pages lacked spells altogether.  Instead filled with descriptions of their use for contact between beings of different dimensions…which, if even half of these were real, that was terrifying…not to mention, they would cause Sichiro to lose his mind.

Speaking of which, Kalego paused as it flipped to a particular description and looked back at the people before him.

“What are you?”

“Japanese…” the man said.

He had no idea what that meant, “you’re species is Japanese?”

“Oh…no, that’s our nationality,” The woman said. “We’re humans!”

“There aren’t any of us back in your world?” the man asked.

“No, there aren’t.”  Kalego couldn’t help but think of how Sichiro would react if he had met these creatures… These were the legendary ‘humans?’  He wasn’t impressed.

Narnia would’ve probably found a way to kill them by now for their insolence.

Kalego flipped forward to the spells, thumbing through pages until he found one that displayed the summoning circle he now stood in.  And although he could tell that there was a way to escape right now, this book was a new wrinkle in the problem.

There was no way he could leave something this powerful in the hands of any creature this dense. He got the distinct impression that it was as dangerous as any book in the forbidden section of Babyls’s library.  What he’d do with it, he’d have to figure out later.  For now, he just needed to get it away from these things.

“So, I assume you want to trade this book for riches?” Seemed simple enough.  “Show me the currency and tell me how much of it you want for this.”  He had the perfect duplication spell for whatever form of payment they wished to receive.  If other humans got suspicious because all the currency looked identical, that wasn’t his problem.

“Oh, we can use it, too?” The woman asked.

“That’s awesome!” the man exclaimed.

Kalego fought the urge to vocalize his amazement that something as stupid as them can survive at all and instead asked.  “What, exactly, were you going to offer, then?”

“We were going to offer our son’s soul.” The man said cheerfully.

“Excuse me?” Kalego asked, sure that he must have misheard or this spell mistranslated their words.  He couldn’t have heard that correctly.

But the man continued and Kalego knew that, to his horror, he had. “The stories we have say that demons like trading deals for people’s souls or something.  But you don’t even know what we are, so we could probably make more selling him e,lsewhere.  Do you think we’d have better luck with a Spirit world creatue?”

“Or one of those fae things, maybe?” The woman chimed in.  “The book said that they like getting first born children in particular!”

“Wait a minute, he hasn’t actually refused, yet,” The man replied.  “You don’t want to have to draw a whole new circle if we don’t have to, do you?”

“It did take a really long time to draw,” the woman consented.  “Especially since we had to start all over every time we messed up.”

The man nodded as he pulled out a notepad held together by a coil of metal, tearing a sheet off the top and holding it out to him.  A tiny yellow thing that was now missing a ragged strip that  seemed to have joined a set of similar pieces by holes the metal coil passed through.

As Kalego looked at the paper, he suddenly understood that some of the symbols he hadn’t comprehended were indeed high level binding spells, more powerful than he’d ever seen but not of the usual nature.  A binding of words written and spoken, reminding him of the forbidden texts with words which so much as stuttering while speaking would be certain doom. 

As Kalego touched the scrap, it changed back and forth between his language and the unreadable symbols of the humans until the other released his hold on the paper. 

Kalego could tell that any deal made with it would be unbreakably binding if made within this circle.  And the only way to escape it was if the terms to initiate the deal weren’t met within a certain amount of time, the amount it took for the magic of the spell to reach completion by sending him back to the netherworld, according to the book.

This all smelled of a situation for Yud to deal with, not a Chet ranked individual.  In one last desperate attempt to weasel his way out of doing this, he pulled out his Hellphone, willing to pass the buck to the damn Chairdemon if he could, consequences be damned.

But, at the sight of zero bars, despite having the magical settings to get reception anywhere, Kalego confirmed what deep down, he already knew; He was on his own, in way over his head but knowing he had no choice but to proceed. Otherwise, this book could end up causing terrible damage and a child would be doomed.

Because, yes.  These people really did want to hand off their son. Behind the note was another, more firm scrap, which turned out to be a slightly creased picture of a young boy.

A normal demon would hardly have felt anything for a child they didn’t know, even at the sight of a picture.  They had no connection more than any other stranger and therefore wouldn’t care about this child’s well being.

Kalego had never had that luxury.  The branch of the Naberius Clan that focused on protectors of other demons had long ago found that individuals who could build stronger than average emotional attachments often pushed themselves further to defend others than most other demons. So, they secretly bred for it, even if it left descendants fighting to hide these feelings and cope with them.  His uncle was a prime example, smoking and drinking to deal with the stress of defending Babyls at a time when it was far more chaotic; specifically, to be present for every child that was crippled or died on the school’s grounds.  It was only at his most inebriated that he admitted how much it bothered him and since he never remembered his admission when sober, Kalego didn’t say anything about it.  He just got slightly looser with his cash when the other came begging for more of it to feed his means of escape.

Say what he would about Opera; without his and Ballum’s help, Kalego doubted they could have cleaned up that mess of a school. And Kalego refused to let his school fall to such a state of madness again.  To test if he could hold himself together where his uncle broke if placed in the same position.

Even now, with all the order he helped enforce to protect them, some of the brats still managed to slip through the cracks as was bound to happen.  And though Kalego made jokes about or threw threats at particularly troublesome brats from time to time, if it came down to it, he’d step in to step in…although he might let the more stubborn ones take a few hard knocks first to learn their lesson and he wouldn’t have to worry about a ‘next time.’

Kalego wasn’t going to let a child he could save right now suffer at the hands of morons, demon or no.  He knew that this picture ensured that he would strike this bargain and commit to this awful magic.  These people were already talking about trying to contact another world to sell the boy off to if he turned them down.  They were going to keep summoning until either they were killed or someone took their deal and dragged the child off to whatever fate they intended for him. 

Although Kalego wouldn’t mind the first as it would have brought on by these creatures own stupidity, the idea of leaving a child who had no say in this to get tossed to a monster from some strange otherworld made him physically sick.  Quite a feat in its own right, as he’d witnessed some questionable things in his life.

“The child too, then,”  Kalego  finally said, words like ash on his tongue even while he told himself not to think of it as buying a person but paying a ransom, in hopes that it would make this feel less gross.  It didn’t. “Just let me make some quick adjustment to this…agreement.  What’s his name?” 

“Iruma.”

Kalego wrote it down. “And is he the only child you have?” He asked as continued to make amendments to the ‘document.’

“Yeah.  Why?”

“Just making sure I take everything into account as I make the deal.” Because Kalego wasn’t going to allow any more youngsters to be trapped in their care if he could help it.  “You wouldn’t want a miswording to unravel your deal, would you?  Then all the money you’re getting for your boy would disappear.” He couldn’t hide the disgusted sneer as he stated this.

The humans remained silent as he made his adjustments,  magically scratching old words that wouldn’t erase and inserting his own additions.  Kalego didn’t even bother to correct their spelling errors, one of which, a misspelling of soul, worked in favor of the changes he wanted to make.  He made terms that would impact not only these people but set standards for anyone Iruma would be passed on to, in the future because he certainly couldn’t keep a human. Finally, he gave it one last read over.

To what ever makes this deal  Kalego Naberius,

We wanna Offr our 1^st  and only until the end of time kid’s (Iruma’s) Sole guardianship in trade for…

Naberius purposefully skipped over the number, having no comprehension of it’s value nor wanting to understand the price these people considered worth selling off their only child.  He continued reading over the paragraph, checking the rest of his alterations.

 You can have him and keep him forever and ever  as a ward until he either reaches adulthood or is placed in the care another guardian deemed fit to properly provide for him by the demon listed above. He is a hard worker who will and will do whatever he is told and never lash out in any way, so he will make a good slave if you want that or you can eat him or whatever.  will be provided for, ensuring all his needs as a child of his age are properly met, no matter where he is left.

Satisfied as he could be with such a deal, Kalego then went an added an additional paragraph to get his hand on the book for what he hoped was a paltry amount. He then proceeded to ignore the names at the bottom of the page, as these two were not worthy of such recognition.

Kalego was hoping that they would be too lazy to look over the changes he’d made too closely.  He needn’t have worried.  All they saw was the numbers they wrote on the page and that he was willing to agree. 

It seemed like the humans couldn’t get out a pen fast enough as they jotted their own signatures down beneath his.  As they did so, the world faded back to that red and black darkness.  Then, the paper became two and as they each grabbed up their copies, the human world fazed back in. 

Still, Kalego could feel the weight of the unbelievable, previously unimaginable magic filled darkness that was just beyond this reality.  It was like realizing a floor of a building was ever so slightly slanted.  Before noticing,  it can easily go unnoticed, all signs pointing to it easily dismissible but once noticed, it is unignorable and undeniable, even if the other people in the room can’t feel it.

As they showed him a piece of paper currency, he spent time making several exact copies of it until the two were satisfied with giving him both brat and book. And if he slipped a few curses onto the couples newly made notes that might impact their fortunes in the future, well they should have specified they didn’t want a little extra magic on their end of the deal if they didn’t want it…

Kalego took the book before he finally asked, “alright, where is he?”

Chapter Text

Kalego expected they probably had the poor creature bound up somewhere, probably terrified out of his mind if conscious.

“Oh, Iruma’s out working on a trawler or something.” The man said.

“We thought it would be easier to do this if he wasn’t here.” The boy’s mother added.

Kalego knew what a trawler but only through second hand knowledge.  “He’s working on some sort of fishing vessel?”

The two humans nodded.

Kalego looked down at the photo again,  Even the few pictures of imaginary sea creatures that he’d seen had been pretty disturbing and even without that, the sea was a perilous place by virtue of being a giant body of water with dangerous weather patterns.  Yet these people just…he forced himself to recall the deal he’d just made with them. 

Yes, they had just let him go right out.  If selling the boy’s soul didn’t bother them, why would sending him out to work on the seas. 

“You idiots would have known this if you’d actually read the page with the spell, but it has rules.  If I don’t get the boy before I get pulled back, you lose everything I just gave you.”

For the first time since he met them, the two humans looked worried.  Disgustung.

And Kalego was wasting time… if he failed to reach the brat, he had a feeling that these peoples’ anger would fall not on him but the boy. “Look, I need to fashion a tracking spell.  If I can have one hair from each of you, I’ll be able to find any common relatives you share within three generations.”  Hopefully, there wasn’t an inbreeding issue here to confound the magic but he wouldn’t put it past these idiots.

As soon as they gave him the hair he needed, he turned toward the door.

“Wait, aren’t you going to want some way to contact us so that Iruma will believe you?”

“If we tell him to do what you say, it’ll guarantee his obedience.”

Kalego fought the urge to tear these two apart right now, disgusted at how they used the word ‘obediance.’  Instead, he said, “If it comes down to it, I’m sure he’ll recognize your handwriting on the contract.”  There was no way in either world that he was going to subject that child to his parents influence for even another moment.

Come to think of it, he didn’t want to subject himself to any more of their presence, either.  Not even worth the breath or time it would take to bid them farewell, Naberius spread his wings. 

Just before he took off, he heard one of the fools trip on their own feet…no doubt the first signs of their turn in luck.  As he flew away, he couldn’t stop the slight smirk what was in store for them.  Still, Kalego was happy to put some distance between himself and the humans. 

As he flew away from the circle, he could sense the ‘counter’ of his time; the pull of the space between.  He had to hurry and construct the spell to find Iruma; or this book would serve as a reminder of his failure to save the brat’s life.

Once he was away from the humans, Kalego didn’t go far.  He didn’t want to waste any time.  He didn’t know how much he had.   But he also didn’t know where he was or how safe it was for him to stop anywhere.

Kalego found a place that was well shadowed and avoided looking to the southeast as best as he could, where an incomprehensibly bright light glowed so intensely, he suspected it might be the sun of this world, completely lighting the world, rathe than in Barbarus, where pulses of ambient magic cycling across the sky added a far gentler light throughout the sky for what their own sun didn’t cover.

As Kalego landed, he took a moment to pull out a pair of concealing glasses to camouflage himself.  Not the gaudy things the offered at the School’s store but more stylistically simple ones.  Even if they hadn’t been enchanted to make the wearer unnoticeable, they would have been unassuming.  And just by chance, he had selected ones with shades, feeling that they were more professional for a protector role, seconding as protection if someone were to try to use a blinding flash.

There was no denying the usefulness of their primary in many situations to avoid drawing attention. Babyls staff were forbidden from using them at work, both because it was considered an abuse of power to use it to sneak up on the brats and it reduced their availability if the runts actually needed them.

The area he was in was in a place filled with several old, empty buildings.  He noted how everything was constructed in sharp angles.

Between some of the buildings were evenly spaced streets…actually, the more he looked, the more he realized that sets of buildings were placed between the streets than the other way around, as if everything had been constructed with the roads in mind. humans stuck to the edges of these parts as great, metal boxes zoomed by with a trail of reeking fumes, halting only for the change of strange apparati with multicolored lights suspended from raised bars at each corner. 

Further in the distance, the buildings reached higher than any objects that had been grown or built without magic.  A height that he felt they didn’t even have any right to reach. 

There was something imposing, seeing buildings with so many floors and no spatial magic to shrink them down.  And to see them with walls so straight and shiny, walls threatening to reflect the blinding light from above into any eye that dare look at them wrong. 

A city of crystal and steel.

The sky seemed so empty; No one flying to and fro, no floating islands, nothing but a few tiny birds…wait…in the distance, he could see streaks in the sky, left behind by tiny pinpricks that he could barely make out for strange sky.  Probably areal versions of the metal contraptions ruling the road.

It appeared that in the absence of true wings, humans had made something else.

And if they were as fast as they looked…

Kalego could already easily tell that Sichiro’s assessments of what the home of the ‘imaginary’ creatures would be like were very, very faroff.  And, seeing this, he wouldn’t place his bets in the ‘humans would probably be endangered’ camp either.  Of course, these assumptions were all based off the idea that they would be sharing the same world which was a view that the greedy, child selling bastards he’d just met inhabited.  Which they clearly weren’t.

Rather than think about the implications of that, Kalego chose to focus on more immediate issues.  He would have loved to read over the book and get a better idea of how this deal worked.  He’d have preferred to take his time in preparing to track down Iruma, setting up proper spells and waiting for the cover of darkness to begin his flight undetected.

Kalego had tried leaving what loopholes he could think of on such short notice, hoping he could pass the brat off to someone for the completion of the deal but short of a teleportation spell or him getting extremely lucky and the brat being close to port, he didn’t see himself carrying the brat all the way back to the main land, let alone track anyone down once he got here, even if he’d had all the time in the world to deal with it. 

Of course, first Kalego would have to figure out a way to communicate with the child.  Maybe he could figure out which runes were involved in the translation magic and isolate them. Of course, he’d have to convince the boy to stay still long enough for him to set it up and would have to be very careful messing with spells he was unfamiliar with.

Kalego sighed.  He would need to take it one step at a time, he guessed.

Still, as frustrating as this was, no matter what the result, it was better than abandoning anyone to be sold off to some random being in some otherworld.  He’d  happily live with whatever the consequences were to refusing to be complicit to that.

With that in mind, Kalego began setting up his spells to prepare for his travels, knowing that the time he lost doing so would quickly be made up for once he got started.

By the time Kalego had finished the magics that would allow him to track Iruma and he any other spells that would help him on the journey set up, the bright globe of blinding light was now risen to the southeast and might just be starting it’s journey into the southwest.

While working, Kalego had noticed a station where humans boarded larger versions of the metal boxes.  He decided that, until dark, he would try to use them.  Careful to keep his wings tucked away and tracking the few humans around here so that he would either wait them out or make eye contact with them so that he could utilize the concealing glasses, he made his way to the stop.

  Kalego looked over map that displayed several routes and, once he figured out the symbols for the various directions and oriented himself to it, saw that there were a few reaching toward the ocean.  He noted by the listed times that suggested a Twenty Four hour system, rather than the Twenty Six at home.  There was a screen above it that showed the times.  Considering how the last one had just taken off, the next one he would want would be here in about twenty five minutes it seemed.

Joy.

Glancing at the sky, careful not to look directly at the bright sphere that still hovered high in it, Kalego fought to avoid growling in frustration.

A combination of the constant noise, shifting movement of humans and vehicles and unnerving chemical scents were enough to put off any appetite the scent from humans themselves  awoke in him as he waited.

Finally, a bus finally pulled up to Kalego’s stop while the clock flashed a time just a few minutes later than what he had been waiting for.

Kalego  move past a set of seats against the windows to the back of the bus, where they were arranged in rows and sat down at the window in an unoccupied set of seats.  He quickly learned that, it weren’t for his glasses, he wouldn’t have been allowed to stay on the bus, as it seemed that either some form of currency or a piece of specialized plastic was required to ride. And the humans were so serious about having it paied that the driver had seemed to be fighting the dismissive effects of the magic protecting him for a moment.

Once he’d settled, Kalego made his way back.

Kalego stared out the window, trying to take in this strange world of steel, glass and stone, built in a great grid.  Soon, they were in a busier part of city. 

It was so weird to watch; creatures of legend just going on about their lives.  Individuals rushing around with bags or cases, Families walking together, teenagers wondering on their own or in small groups.  People of all ages using various modes of transportation from these gigantic ‘busses’ to tiny bikes that they had to pedal with their feet.  Kiosks on the street and stores with wares in the windows.  Cafés and restaurants, offices and other structures.

Not once in all this time since leaving the spell circle that brought him here, had Kalego sensed any magic.  Once again, it was something that he wouldn’t have noticed except that it was now gone from his surroundings, when it never had been before.

Yet, for all they lacked in magic, the humans seemed to have filled the gap with apparati. As crazy as it was, he wondered if the wires overhead were flowing with lightning, like the experiments children might do with certain fruits and vegetables for fun. Was it possible to maintain that type of power on such a scale in a controlled manner, though? 

Surely not without a special ability or a powerful spell.

Yet, they had to do this somehow.

Kalego was broken from such thoughts as he saw a man walking brown dog that stood at about knee height on a leash, simultaneously thrilled to see a creature with similarities to Cereberion and saddened at how docile it seemed.  Although, to be fair, the creature didn’t seem all that bothered by its current position. 

Kalego was interrupted from his thoughts when a family got on at one stop, the parents sat across, paying him no mind  but unknowinly directed their child to sit in the seat next to him.  She was maybe four or five, with some sort of stuffed animal in her hand.

The demon was about to go back to staring out the window when suddenly a tiny voice said, “I’ve never seen that color nail polish before.  It’s pretty.”

Damn!  Everyone else so far had been drawn to look up because of his height compared to him but the child must not have bothered to.  And now, the glasses wouldn’t effect her at all.

Kalego looked back down at the girl, already wondering how he was going to handle this.

The little girl looked up smiled.  “Mommy painted my nails,” she held up pink nails and he noticed slight bubbles and a couple points where the paint just barely brushed up the skin.  This made Kalego realize just how few nails he’d seen with color in them, here.  He now noted all the short, blunt flesh toned nails.  “Are those things sticking out of your head real?”

Naberius looked over at the parents, who seemed to be talking among themselves, clearly still having not noticed him.

“Who are you talking to Emma?” the girl’s mother asked, suddenly.

“The man in the seat next to me.”

The woman turned her gaze to him but her eyes didn’t focus, unable to see him.  She looked back at her daughter and said, “alright, just don’t bother anyone else.”

The girl, Emma, looked back at Naberius and frowned, “why can’t mommy and daddy see you?”

“Magic,” Naberius replied.

“Really, your magic?  Like the tooth fairy?”

He remembered the mention of the book of fae and a synonym next to it, fairies.

“No, like a monster,” hoping the girl would be scared enough to leave him be.

“You don’t act like a monster.”

Kalego sighed, “And how do monsters act?”

“They eat people.”

“Some of us would love to,” Kalego replied.  “I just usually don’t feel like eating something that can talk to me.”

“Does that make you a nice monster?”

Kalego gave her a deadpan look.  “Do I look nice to you?”

“No, you look grumpy.  Did you sleep bad last night.”

Kalego was about to reply but the door open and he lifted his head to make sure he made eye contact with the latest individuals stepping on.  Hopefully they would reach her stop soon.

Alas, that hope was in vain but not because their stop was far away.  No, instead, the bus hit traffic that nearly came to a stop.  Kalego heard people talking about a ‘bad wreck,’ and after several minutes, he saw what they were talking about and learned a limit to a world without magic that made him very uncomfortable with his current choice of locomotion.  These metal boxes; busses, cars, and whatnot, had little protection to keep them from colliding and couldn’t completely prevent deaths or injuries when they did.

They instead had human responders who tried to rescue the victims after the fact.

If he could have, Kalego would have forced the doors opened and left the death box he was in right now but there were too many people to be able to use the glasses on them all fast enough.  And he had a distinct feeling that not all of them would be as accepting as the little girl now introducing him to her doll as if it were instead a familiar.

As they drew closer to the mess on the side of the road, Kalego couldn’t help but stare at the twisted metal things on the side of the road, surrounded by others, humans with clips working at the top as various ones with headache inducing flashing lights on them surrounded the scene.  It was only when the bus was beyond it that he was freed from the sight.

Whether or not the world had originally been dangerous, it seemed that humans had filled it up with hazards of their own as surely as demons had back home, even without the same physical features or magic to aid them.

At the next stop, he was the one to depart, leaving the girl behind with her family to carry on to their destination.  He had no interest in remaining in this machine for an instant longer.  He’d make his way on foot for now.  He looked at the map to find that he was not too far from the beach and could probably make it in an hour or so without a single wing flap.

Chapter Text

Kalego walked, paying attention to the humans to find their devices for signaling when it was safest to move across the blacktop at every corner. It was inconvenient but he knew he hardly had any better options.  He didn’t want to test human observation abilities nor whatever technologies they have replacing teeth, claws and magic.

Kalego also didn’t want to test how in tune the border patrol was with demon presence in the human world.   He knew that memory wipes were a necessary evil but would prefer not to end up on the receiving end of one.  He was hoping to find a time to hand the summoning book over to Narnia privately after he safely dealt with the human.  Hopefully, with all the loose ends tied up, they could avoid the official protocols altogether and get on with their lives.

Kalego tried to consider how to approach this new problem he’d taken up.  If Iruma took after his parents, he doubted he’d be able to tolerate the boy’s presence for long.  Maybe he’d get lucky and the boy would know someone the demon could consider capable of taking care of him and the man could pass of his guardianship and wash his hands of the whole thing.

As he walked, the bright sun of this world hot against his skin.  As he glanced down, he realized that it was actually turning red.  The sun was so powerful that just a short time in it was causing a burn.  So, he started slipping into the shade whenever he could.

Eventually, he arrived at a beach that was filled with people.  Still, his legs were tired from more walking than he was used to and the sun was getting low, so he sat on a bench beneath a tree and decided to wait for dark, when it would be easier to slip out to sea unnoticed.

As he watched the humans running, swimming, playing with sand or purposefully sunning themselves the minutes ticked by.

As the sun reached the horizon, Kalego was treated to a spectacle of colors, most of which he’d never seen quite this vibrantly in the sky before; probably a side effect of the brighter sun.  As the now reddish ball of light sank, many humans also admired it while others packed up and left.

Finally, it faded to a familiar dark blue and purple comparable to the sky in the early morning and late evening back home.  The types of activities that the humans on the beach took part in had changed, some lighting fires and gathering in large groups and others shifting around alone, in pairs or in small groups in the dark.  The children had all but dissapeared by that time.

But in that darkness, Kalego’s eyes were being drawn back to the city.  The lights were so bright that they drowned out everything around them.

Deciding it was time, Kalego walked to a less populated section of shoreline before spreading his wings and taking to the air.  He followed the tracking spell into the dark.

Then he was over the sea.

As Kalego flew further from the city, the air became cleaner and colder and now smelled of salt water.  And it turned out that this world did, indeed , have stars.

A very different set of stars than back home, but stars, nonetheless.

At some point, Kalego noticed that the breezes had become gusts and in the distance, he could make out a bank of deeper darkness, intermittently lit by flashes of lightning.  And of course, the tracking spell kept directing him into it.

Kalego couldn’t believe his poor luck, having to go through so much for a brat he didn’t even want.  But he’d already taken responsibility for the boy’s wellbeing.  Plus, he hadn’t come this far to turn back now.

All too soon, he reached the storm.

If it had been under different circumstances, this flight might have been the some of most fun  he’d had in ages.  He was navigating a world considered nothing but a legend and braving a storm that would allow him to practice with his stronger spells in order to maintain control in flight. It wasn’t often he got to test the limits of his powers like this.

Still, even with the seriousness of the situation, Kalego enjoyed himself as he spread his wings and weaved a web of verbal and nonverbal spells to ease his flight through the treacherous swirling zone where sea and sky clashed.

For a while, Kalego went with the flow.  He focused on that and forgot what the pull he felt was taking him to and just followed it.  He allowed himself to flow with the fierce forces of the storm and the feel the high of the energy from spells he used to keep himself aloft and dry as he flew through the wind and rain.  The world became black as pitch, punctuated by the blinding day bright lightning of various colors, which often arced close to him, occasionally even deflected by a set of shields he rarely ever got the opportunity to use.

One of the spells also allowed Kalego to read the wind currents and thus he rose, dove or otherwise adjusted his flight in accordance to them.

And in that moment, with no one around, he could admit it was fun. 

But as Kalego felt his excitement take on darker tones, he stopped and expanded the small, thin shell of  magic cloaking him to instead curve the winds closest to him and create a bubble of  relative calm. 

Kalego took a moment to regain his wits and settle down.  Between spinning with the powerful storm and mindlessly following a pull, he’d been simulating the high that might come a dangerous hunt or a fierce battle.  It was a state  that could easily excite anyone into their wicked phase if they weren’t careful.

Kalego probably could have kept his wicked phase from kicking in.  He prided himself on his self-control but out here, alone, with no one to restrain him or call him back from it, he couldn’t take the risk.  He couldn’t afford a wicked phase in a strange place so far from home.

With a sigh, Kalego set up magic so that he could maintain his small place of calm as the storm swirled around him.  Beckoning to him.  Calling for him to play where he could feel the thrill of placing his life and emotions on the knifes edge.  A temptation he refused to give into again, even as he flew into ever wilder weather.  As he followed the pull, he reminded himself exactly what awaited at the other end to further set up another grim bar between him and the primal thrill that had he’d momentarily allowed to creep in.

Then a ship came into view, bucking on the waves and as the pull directed him toward it, he was horrified by the thought that a child was on that ship because his parents couldn’t be bothered to get work, themselves.  Kalego grit his teeth as his mood sank once again into something far more stable.

The only advantage to this for Iruma; a lower-level demon might have been in danger, trying to brave this weather.  If the boy had been claimed by an individual who was interested in harming him, the weather would have probably worked in the child’s favor, possibly killing an overeager idiot who’d surrendered more to instinct and desire than sense.

Kalego also couldn’t help but wonder if humans could be anywhere near as fragile as legends claim if they willingly worked under such conditions. 

As Kalego paused for a moment to plan how to proceed, he could quite literally feel the direction of the pull slowly move as the boy’s position shifted and he was pretty sure he could actually see a tiny figure scrabbling across the deck in the storm, along with the other humans working to secure the ship.

They actually had a child working in these conditions?

Iruma knew he shouldn’t be out here on the deck right now.

Honestly, if he’d had a choice, he would have avoided the fishing boat altogether.  One  of his oldest memories is being used as bait for tuna.  Then, he’d had deep, disturbing revelations about how the world worked and the flexibility of the food chain when he later had to depend on eating the flesh of the monsters from his nightmares out of a can in his desperation to stave off his own starvation. 

That being said, he’d never really wanted to go back to working with fish again.

But, fate had other plans.  After the mess with the Yakuza, Iruma had needed to lose the people tailing him, fast.  He had become a loose end to something, although he never saw enough to understand what it was.  He’d needed a way out of town where they wouldn’t expect him to go.  Someone had even led them to his…well, home was too strong a word.  Den, he supposed.  He’d had to abandon everything he had.  Not that it was the first time but still, starting over was always hard.

But it’s what he needed to do, so he did it. 

The only stop he’d made on the way to port was to warn his parents about the situation, so they’d know that it was time for them to move again and it would be a little while before he would be able to bring in his usual money for them.  He knew the patterns they followed and would track them down when it was safe and he had made some money for them again.

Once at the waterfront, he’d considered it a stroke of luck to find a fishing vessel ready to head out that had just become short a deckhand.  Even if they came back to this port, as long as the Yakuza didn’t know he went out this way, they wouldn’t be looking here when he got back.  He’d have enough money to slip out of town quickly and be somewhere else with a new job.

And of course, the storm had hit while he was working in the hold with the tuna and they’d come down on his head while he was alone with them.  He rubbed his shoulder self consciously, a bruise forming from his first failure to dodge in ages, the storm throwing off his balance just enough to take a blow from one of the falling fish.

Now Iruma scuttled across the slippery deck, trying to keep low for balance while moving quickly to help secure the equipment, ignoring a fresh ache in his shoulder as he went. 

When he had been called up, he could tell from the look on the crew member’s face at the sight of the scattered fish that docked pay was now hardly his biggest problem. 

As an underaged worker, Iruma was well aware that many of the people who he worked with were…shady, to say the least.   Good people rarely hired kids to do the kind of work that made real money.  He was well aware that if a kid like him wasn’t careful…well, they disappeared and someone might pocket a little extra cash in the process.

Honestly, he’d have preferred to stay away from the docks, altogether, let alone graduate to the open sea but his pursuit had left him desperate.  He hadn’t even been able to take time to listen to the rumors about the various boats and deckhands like he usually would and a couple of the guys here gave him bad vibes.  But, up until this point, he’d been able to play ‘the stupid kid on board here and been left to work.’

But witgwhat had happened down below deck, any goodwill would be gone.  These people would need someone to blame and being both the outsider and the one who was left in the room when everything went wrong…

Iruma’s instincts were telling him that he was probably best off swimming the last leg of his journey once land came back into sight.  As much as he hated it, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to leave early without anything to show for it but his life.  Although, his act of ‘jumping ship’ had never been quite so literal, before. 

Iruma knew he wouldn’t be in great shape, having to find his way without a cent to his name but he’d find a way to make it work.  He always had.

Maybe it was time to start anew anyway, a small part of him thought.  Slip the nooses of this life.  His parents were starting to get cagy; he was worried they might have figured out that he’d lied about how much he was getting paid and kept money to take care of himself, even if they did still get the larger cut.

Of course, he was sure they wouldn’t really do anything.  Just be annoyed with him.  Surely.

Still, maybe it was time.

The thing was, none of that mattered if the ship didn’t make it through this storm.

He was checking the storage units, both the ones inset into the floor of the ship and the crates and bins on deck.

A particularly large wave hit the far side of the ship, tipping it at a sharp tilt and Iruma slipped a short ways along the deck before getting up, grabbing onto anything he could with his numb hands. 

He growled as some of strands of hair fell in his face, having escaped his pony tail.  He couldn’t afford to release his handholds or waste the time and motions required to put it back up, so he pressed on, coming to the end of a section that left him close to the edge of the deck.

And then, in a flash of lightning, a silhouette appeared out of the dark, great wings spread wide several meters overhead.

Iruma fell backward, startled, just at the wrong moment for the ship to tip too far on its axis again, smacking his bad shoulder and his head on the railing as he went over, to add insult to injury.

The world tumbled, and for a moment, he was in free fall.

Then he hit the waves and was trapped beneath, instantly tangled in netting that was being tossed about in the water, knowing that despite the fact that the crew was currently trying to pull it in, it would probably be too long for him before they reached whatever section he’d landed in.

Iruma was only able to tell what direction was up by the warped, shifting flashes created by lightning.  He struggled, trying to reach it but couldn’t get free of the sinking net.  He turned back to focus on it, trying to get free.

He had to get out.  He needed air.  He didn’t want to die.

Iruma’s lungs were burning as the currents yanked and pulled him every which way, getting him further tangled.  He knew he’d have to take a breath and then…     

Then something else was there. For an instant, time seemed to slow down.  Iruma saw the webbed structures momentarily spread forward to either side of him.  A pair of arms wrapped around him and pulled him against something he couldn’t see behind him. It held  him tightly, arms wrapping around him in a secure grip.

Startled, he took a breath, instantly letting water in his lungs before his throat seized up painfully to stop more from getting in.

For a moment, he could see membranous structures moving against the water as whatever was holding him was pulled down with him.  Then they flapped again and he was being pulled back, not through water but into a strange abyss of swirling red light, the weight of the water gone…   

For a moment, there was a silenced puncture only by…wing beats, his world shifting in time with them.  He recalled what he had seen as he was being grabbed. And what had startled him.

He went to draw a breath and everything felt tight and heavy.  He started gagging.

A moment later, they were in a dark room, his rescuer holding him up with one arm on his back as he felt a hand on his chest.  Iruma heard a harsh voice, felt a tingle in his chest and then found could breath again.

Chapter Text

Iruma took deep, trembling breaths even as his lungs still burned. 

He wasn’t sure when he leaned into his rescuer, clinging to wet clothes with a tight grip as he continued gasp, watering eyes clenched against the sting of the sea water.  Still, he hadn’t been pushed away, so that was something. The other hadn’t even stood up or removed the supporting hand on Iruma’s back.

And now that logic was just starting to rear it’s head, it was telling him not to look up now or he’d lose his mind.  He remembered webbed, membranous structures in the dark sea.  His sea legs were making it clear that he sure as hell wasn’t on the ship, the stillness actually throwing off his balance since he had gotten used to the rocking of the ship.  He also recalled that there was the strange dark place between the sea and here, whatever ‘here’ was.  

Iruma hadn’t had a very easy life.  His experiences hadn’t been what he would call pleasant but it was moments like this where they served him well.  His world had been turned upside down in the blink of an eye many times before.

He was well trained by it in how to behave when he was in a situation where he didn’t know what was going on.

Usually, his first step was, ‘dodge,’ but that didn’t exactly apply here.  Hadn’t been since he went overboard.

So, the next step, now that he’d caught his breath and was somewhere that was hopefully safe, was to think.  To freak out was the most dangerous.

Sometimes, that involved not  considering the deeper implications of things.  Like what would happen if he got caught by a hungry animal or men with guns or what the way his parents treated him like meant about the amount they cared about him. Rather, just considering how to avoid that happening at all.

He took a moment to collect himself, reminding himself that, whatever  his situation, being here meant he wasn’t drowned in the ocean.  Whatever he saw, the being holding him had saved him from becoming fish food.  A fate that haunted his nightmares for as long as he could remember.

Finally, feeling calm enough to face reality, Iruma lifted his head from where it was pressed against his rescuers shoulder.

When he let go, the other stood, so tall it forced Iruma to release his grip balled up in in the fabric of  their clothes.  Iruma felt the hand on his back shift up to grip his shoulder gently but firmly, the tips of sharp claws barely making their presence known as it did so.

Although the other’s wings were somehow gone, even in the dark the presence of horns sweeping back and pointy ears were features further separating it from humanity.

For a moment, Iruma just stared back, trembling, wondering what he should do and struggling not to fixate on how terrifying the figure he stared up at was.  Instead trying to remind himself on what he had done…the trouble he must have gone through to save him…

Anything willing to go through the effort of diving into the ocean, in a thunderstorm to pull him from a fishing net couldn’t have gone through all that trouble just to hurt him. 

Which meant that, relatively speaking, whatever his rescuer’s intentions, Iruma was probably currently as safe as he could be.  The problem was, that by the same token, this…Monster?  No. It didn’t seem a fair title… couldn’t have just happened to find his fishing boat in the middle of a storm like that.  It had come out there for a reason.  One it either gave it up to rescue him or could still reach by taking him.

Iruma realized quite suddenly that he was so shaky on his feet that he was only really standing because he was leaning against said intimidating figure that was holding him.  He felt warm…but that was probably because Iruma was really cold.  He was also as wet as Iruma was.

They were just staring at each other quietly, the only sound being that of the water dripping onto the floor.  Iruma wasn’t sure for how long but it was enough time that his eyes adjusted to the faint light coming in through a few windows which looked out on a starry night. Iruma shifted his feet uncomfortably and was rewarded with the wet squishing sensation of shoes filled with water, leaving him feeling even more awkward.

And Iruma fixated on a single question.  What should he do now?

That was, until he had an epiphany of why the being towering over him was staring, too.   He didn’t know what to do from here, either.  The idea was enough to push Iruma to make the first move.  “Th-thank you for saving me,” he croaked.

The creature cocked it’s head before it gave a short reply that Iruma couldn’t understand.   

“You don’t know Japanese do you?”  Iruma asked before repeating his original thanks in English.  He had long ago figured out that knowing some of the language, hard as it was to learn for being so different, was useful for many jobs.  After investing in books and gaining enough confidence, he took time to present himself as a cheap unofficial tour guide for visitors, talking with them to better grasp the language as he showed them around. After gaining functional English, he was able to get much better jobs than before.  It was in part because of this skill he had been snatched up to do work in Manga.

Unfortunately, it failed him here.

Iruma knew how to say ‘thank you’ in a few other languages, among a few other simple phrases.  He gave each a try, despite his doubts and the pain talking brought for his throat.

The other just shook his head on Iruma’s fourth such attempt and the boy decided to let it be.  Still, it had broken their paralysis.

The entity, for his part, sighed and moved to reach toward the wall for…a switch. 

In the light the creature’s appearance screamed ‘uncanny valley,’ humanoid features all ever so slightly too sharp.  Facial features severe to the point of looking almost too thin.  Pointy ears, large sharp fangs, and horns and hair so similar in color that they blended together.  His fingers were tipped thick purple nails that tapered to the sharp points Iruma had felt earlier.  They looked like they could easily slice through his skin if he wanted to do harm.  And although Iruma still couldn’t see any wings or fins right now, he knew the other had something like that concealed from view.

Iruma fought his instinct to flee as he continued to tremble, staring up at the imposing figure.  He pointed at Iruma and said something.  Both of their bodies glowed and then…Iruma realized he was dry.  Although, he could still feel the stickiness of dried salt water.  “How did you do that?”

Rather than answer him, the other gestured to himself, making a statement that ended with ,“Kalego Naberius.”

An introduction, Iruma realized.

“Iruma Suzuki.  Nice to meet you, Naberius, sir.”

“Kalego,” the other corrected sternly.  So, a culture that put more stress on the first name than the last, then?

“Kalego,” Iruma quickly repeated in his gravelly tone, correcting himself.

The horned man, Kalego, gave a nod.

“I’m Iruma.” Gesturing to himself as he said his name.

“Iruma.”  Kalego repeated.

Iruma nodded with a small smile, tension just barely starting to leave him.

After a moment, Kalego gave a command and gesturing for Iruma to follow him, leading him to a doorway that must have been the entrance to the building they were in.  Therewas a mat and a coat rack.  To either side were windows, which had thorny plants taking up the sills…maybe a succulents or even cacti.

As Iruma followed Kalego, he looked around the room. It was filled with an admittedly dim light.  It looked like a living room filled with relatively expensive looking furniture.

His host took his robes and placed them on the rack and Iruma was about to follow suit when the boy caught sight of  a tail.

Iruma had been on the run for weeks because he’d crossed the Yakuza, survived falling off a ship to be pulled into the depths of the sea, rescued by what may be a literal devil and pulled through to who knew where.  All the while, he held himself together.

But for some reason, seeing that long, thin, barbed tail was the breaking point.  He started laughing hysterically.  He couldn’t help it as his vision blurred.  Nor how as he doubled over and collapsed to his knees,  it somehow changed from laughter to turned to sobs.

It was too much.  It made no sense that this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back but here he was.

Iruma was startled when he felt a hand rest on his shoulder again.  As he looked up and took a quick, if still too shallow breath, he looked up, surprised by the comforting gesture. 

Not really thinking about it, he leaned forward and for the second time in the few minutes he’d been here, found himself leaning into Kalego for support.  And after he’d gone through the trouble of drying both of them off, too.

Iruma felt the other pushing him away gently and felt embarrassed.  He backed up and nearly tripped over something that wasn’t there before.  A something that turned out to be a seat. shaped like a leaf.  He realized Kalego hadn’t been trying to shove him away so much as get him to sit down, probably using magic the same way he’d dried off their clothing.

“Sorry,” Iruma said before remembering that Kalego couldn’t actually understand him.  He sniffled as he relaxed into the surprisingly comfortable seat he’d been provided. 

Iruma made to wipe his face on his sleeve but was stopped, one arm in Kalego’s firm grip as he snapped his fingers and a handkerchief appeared in midair and dropping into the boy’s lap.  The boy picked it up and proceeded to use it, instead.

Iruma took a moment to study Kalego.  He was beginning to suspect that, despite how they met, his rescuer was the type of person who usually held himself and those around him to a certain standard.  One that Iruma had a feeling he was going to have to learn fast.

Iruma knew he was lacking in certain manners, mainly those more related to polite society rather than the ones related to respecting others in general.  He also knew that he’d learned much harder lessons up to now and adjusting his behavior would probably be a relatively simple thing compared to things he had to figure out on his own throughout his life.

Iruma looked around for somewhere to place the fabric when Kalego snapped his fingers again and it vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Kalego snapped his fingers another time and another, similar, if larger leaf themed chair appeared, allowing him to sit across from Iruma. He looked worried but awkward, like he wanted to help but wasn’t sure about what he was doing.

He must have felt too tired to even make the short distance to his own couch.

Iruma tried to force a smile  “thanks…” He took a moment to breath while he recovered himself as Kalego sat across from him, seeming to have settled on just waiting for him.

Finally, Iruma rubbed his eyes as best he could and stood up.  He glanced over at Kalego, who watched him quietly as the boy went to hang up his own filthy jacket that he had been given on the ship, although the shirt beneath wasn’t much better.  He also took off his shoes and his socks for good measure.  At this point, his bare feet were probably cleaner than the dirty things.  “Sorry,” Iruma said, feeling further embarrassed by his obvious filthy state, probably even improved by his dunk in the sea.

Kalego calmly stood, snapping his fingers so that the chairs disappeared. Iruma wondered what the point of having furniture around was if you could just make it like that, anyway.  Kalego could just summon it like that whenever he needed it.  Of course, Iruma supposed it was like asking why cellphones needed internet when you could have a computer do it.  Anyone would easily be able to give an answer to that.

Iruma was snapped from his thoughts as Kalego cleared his throat, seeming to pause at his glance before repeating his order and gesture from earlier, with a wave of the hand to follow again.

As Iruma trailed the other, he finally realized how tired he was, himself.  He thought about how even before the thunderstorm, he’d been running nonstop for weeks.  Even before he got on the ship.  The meltdown he’d had just pushed him further.

And now that he was sure he was safe, his body was letting it’s complaints be known.  Sure, he had no idea what was going on but that was the story of his life, this was just taking it a step further than usual.  It took all his energy just to keep one foot in front of another.

Kalego led him out of the room and into a hallway, finally opening a door to reveal a bathroom. It was complete with a tub  that had a shower; even if both were a bit larger than regular ones in the human world.

The sight was enough to give Iruma another burst of energy as he stepped into the room, excited at the prospect of bathing properly for the first time in ages. 

Kalego entered and pulled out a towel from the closet beside the doorway.

Iruma was suddenly caught off guard when Kalego pulled out a trashcan and placed it next to him.  Before he could look up, the other tapped his shirt and said something, causing layers of grime from weeks at sea to rise off of it and leave a fine dust in the air.  The demon then pointed to the trashcan and it all went to it.  He repeated the process with the pants.  Iruma could still feel the more ingrained stuff was on the clothes but he was guessing all the ‘loose’ grime just came off. 

Kalego placed a basket in the doorway before closing the door so that it was the only thing that held it open.  Iruma knew that he was expected to place his clothes there so the other could give the rest of it the same treatment while he showered.  And, grateful as he was, it was still awkward to think about.  So, he didn’t. 

He dropped the clothes in, pushed the container out, closed the door and turned his attention toward the shower.  The tub was huge, making him feel like he was ten rather than fourteen.  And the shower knob was ever so slightly too high compared to where they usually were, only further adding to the illusion.

Still, Iruma didn’t hesitate to get in, excited as much by the sensation of warm water pelting against his skin as that of being clean afterwards.  He started with a shower.  For a while, he just enjoyed it.  It wasn’t often that he got to just have a good one.

It didn’t take much to figure out which containers had body wash, shampoo and conditioner as he finally began to wash up properly. He took note of the symbols on the labels, hoping he could learn to recognize them in the future.

Despite wanting to take a little time to enjoy it, Iruma knew he wouldn’t be very long.  He wasn’t used to taking his time for anything just to relax.  It felt wrong when there was work to do.  His parents were always counting on him.

Right, his parents.  How was he going to get back to them.

He slowly sank into a sitting position, arms wrapping around his knees as he felt the water run down his back, tears mixing in with the water running down his face as reality started sinking in. 

He was in another place.  Maybe a whole different world.  Because a strange creature that wasn’t supposed to exist had pulled him here using magic that was supposed to be equally not real. 

All in order to save him.

And anyone going out of their way to help him  seemed just as plausible as other worlds and monsters and magic being real.  Unless, he reminded himself, they wanted something from him.

What was he suppose to do from here?

The person in the next room had already shown more care for him than anyone else in his life and Iruma was willing to bet he’d have dove in for anyone who needed help.

Was Iruma destined to become nothing more than a burden for Kalego? such a reward for extending a helping hand, to be forced to take care of Iruma. He’d try to make it up as best he could.  He had skills in housekeeping and repair as well as fixing appliances.  He’d have to learn the language quickly, too.

Thinking about things he could do always helped Iruma to calm down.  It had kept him from losing control in the worst of situations.  Don’t focus on how bad it could be; instead, look at what he can do to make it better.  And so that’s what he did.

When Iruma finally turned off the shower, he wrapped his towel firmly around him and opened the door enough to pull in his clothes, which were all now clean.  The uniform he’d gotten for the ship wasn’t the most comfortable clothing but he’d spent weeks in it and it was far better clean than dirty.

Iruma followed his ears, finding his way back to the living room.  Standing there, he noticed something. Although the room was lit up, there was no visible light source.  He looked around, trying to find it.

Then he saw another doorway he hadn’t noticed earlier, where the sounds were coming from and all thoughts of the strange sight were cast aside.  For it opened into a hall that had a kitchen to the left and, although he couldn’t see it, probably a dining room ahead.  In said kitchen, Kalego was rummaging around for something.  He must have come here right after leaving Iruma to shower.

Kalego was currently slicing off a couple pieces of some sort of  dark colored bread with various seeds baked into it, placed them on a plate and pushed it toward Iruma. He then gestured to another section of counter where other items had been placed out for him.

Not having to be told twice, Iruma rushed over and grabbed up the plate, his stomach already making it’s own noises as he thanked Kalego enthusiastically.

As Iruma investigated the various jars of spreads, he saw that there was a small spoon and a knife next to each, so that he could sample them.  After tasting everything, he settled on some sort of nut butter and a fuchsia colored jam for his sandwich.  Among the other sides Kalego had pulled out, he was surprised to find salt and vinegar chips.  Despite usually not caring for them too much, selected them for simple familiarity.  Then he took half the fruits…was that a bunch of bananas? He was definitely taking  a couple of those, as they were the most familiar foods here. And there were some vegetables. 

Iruma picked various items, most of which were unfamiliar.  Honestly, Iruma was fighting his instincts to grab up everything in sight to either gobble up or stash in his pockets for later.

Still, Kalego didn’t try to stop him as he took what was undoubtedly more than his fair share, just led him off into the connected dining room, which had windows opening up to a view of a distant fortress that overlooked a cliff into a gorge with outcrops of rock pointing out like spikes, the space was wreathed with spiky plants like something out of an ominous fantasy.  The sky was just really starting to lighten.

Iruma sat down at the table with his food.

Kalego didn’t join Iruma to eat but was instead doing something in another part of the house.  The food was amazing and after finishing his first round, he went back and made a different type of sandwich for his seconds.  Honestly, he could have eaten more but it felt rude.

As he finished, Iruma washed out his plate in the sink and placed it in the dish rack next to it.  He was going to try to put everything away but noted the second plate waiting and realized that Kalego did plan to eat, eventually. 

So, once he’d wiped down his spot at the table, he proceeded to find Kalego, who was studying a room that seemed to just be storage space.

Noticing Iruma, Kalego closed the door to it and gestured for him to follow, using the same word as before.  Iruma silently repeated it, trying to commit it to memory.

Kalego took him back to the bathroom, pulling out a spare toothbrush still in it’s packaging and handed it off to Iruma.

For a moment, Iruma struggled with the plastic it was encased in before Kalego took it back and sliced it open with his nails in an easy motion that would make many humans who’d wasted ridiculous time opening similar packaging jealous.

Iruma took the tooth brush as the man pulled out dental floss and toothpaste from the mirrored cupboard.  It was bizarre.  Seeing so many items that were so normal and mundane amidst all the fantastic elements throughout the house.

Kalego once again left him to his own devices, going further down the hall.

When Iruma finally stepped out, expecting to have to make himself comfortable on the couch, Kalego instead led him to a bedroom, which had a few more personal items than the living room.  In one corner, there were a couple more plants on a windowsill next to an oval shaped, full body mirror.

The bed was like leaf shaped like the chairs but where they were curled down slightly, this one was concave, the bottom not quite touching the ground.  It had  a slightly rounded  mattress, in set in a shining ring that made it reminiscent of water pooling in the center of a leaf.

Iruma looked up Kalego to find he was already leaving, closing the door behind him.

Iruma turned his gaze back to the bed to stare at it awkwardly, wondering if he should argue with Kalego on this.  How would he even start, with the language barrier?

The bed did look nice…

How long had it been since he’d slept in anything better than a cheap cot in a communal space.  And even that didn’t happen all the time.

Sighing, he walked over and pulled back the covers, no doubt as freshly cleaned as his clothes.  The moment he got under them, he felt the temperature change slightly and the bed become softer, magically reaching the perfect level of comfort for him.

He momentarily wondered if Kalego had set that for him or if that was just how he set up the bed in general.  Then his thoughts fell away altogether as he surrendered to his exhaustion.