DiaG 169 - One Man's Trash is Another Demon's Treasure

Hellina led the way, not even turning around once to make sure the other reapers were following. Morrigan got kind of bad vibes from her, but she supposed that it was at least better than her first meeting with Alice. Actually, to be fair, every meeting with Alice hasn’t been exactly positive so far. The only time Morrgan felt like the girl wasn’t contemplating her murder was when they were shadow stepping, and she was being pulled across the forest and city so fast that…

Okay, well, yeah, maybe she partly felt that Alice was trying to kill her then as well.

“Something’s over here,” Hellina finally called back, and Fenris sprinted ahead.

Morrigan saw that the bridge was leading up to something, a more greyish area that lacked the usual rainbowy quality of every other solid thing they could walk on here in negative space. As she reached the end of the bridge, it was hovering well above whatever was below, and Morrigan’s eyes widened at what she saw down there.

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of very large insect-looking things. Chitinous bodies packed together like a living carpet, their shells a dull ash-gray that swallowed light instead of reflecting it. They shifted constantly with a dry whispering scrape echoing up from the pit.

Fenris skidded to a stop at the edge, where he crouched down to get a better look. “That’s… uh…” He suddenly folded his arms and turned away. “Tell you what, lady’s first.”

“Huh?” Morrigan asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Hellina turned her gaze towards the other reaper as well.

“I was thinking…” He put up a single skeletal finger. “I’ve really been hogging all the fun lately, and I figure the rookie could use some hands-on training with one of the best!”

“You’re saying you will stay up here?” Hellina asked softly.

“I mean, I’ll be watching, and, uh… if things get bad I can always…” He rubbed the back of his skull through his hood. “...You know.”

“Why are you trying to get out of fighting all of a sudden?” Morrigan asked.

“Who said anything about that! I’m just trying to be polite and—”

A cackling from his shoulder cut him off, and Guile’s whiskers flicked. “Master doesn’t like bugs. So foolish.”

“Shut up, Guile! That’s not true!” Fenris yelled at him directly on his shoulder. “You’ve seen what I just did to that dog demon. Why the hell would I be afraid of a few bugs?”

“Wait… that’s really what it is, isn’t it?” Morrigan asked, unable to contain a smirk twitching her lip.

“I said Guile is lying! Look at him, he’s a ferret. They are known for being pranksters, don’t you know that?”

“I haven’t seen him do anything like that yet,” Morrigan said.

Guile tittered again. “Last week, old body, terrible stench, many bugs. Master wouldn’t go in. Tried calling to the spirit to come out so he could reap him.”

“Guile! Come on, man! You’re making me look terrible here.”

“I mean, I don’t really blame you,” Morrigan offered with a smile. “I guess I’ve been lucky so far, I haven’t really had to walk in on a reaping like that yet. Pretty sure that would make me sick too.”

“Are you three quite finished?” Hellina asked.

The whispering below surged a little louder, as if the mass of insects had decided to weigh in on the conversation.

Fenris straightened immediately. “Yes. Absolutely. Completely finished,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Right, Morrigan. You’re up.”

“No, I’ll go first. But make sure you are behind me,” Hellina said, looking over her shoulder at Morrigan one last time. “I want to see what Death’s apprentice can do.”

Morrigan gulped at her intense gaze, but then as if to not leave any room for argument, Hellina suddenly leapt down.

There were a few more, much smaller grey platforms hovering immediately downward from the end of the rainbow bridge, and she hopped from one to the next like stepping stones before finally landing in the center of the larger area.

It looked like a garbage dump down there now that Morrigan was looking closer. 

Not the kind with neat piles or recognizable trash, but a warped, half-remembered imitation of one, as if negative space had tried to recreate the concept from fragments of dying thoughts. Twisted slabs of metal jutted out at odd angles, warped and half-melted together. A phone booth—something Morrigan was pretty sure she had only seen in movies. Shattered furniture, rusted machinery, and things that might once have been vehicles were fused into the ground, their shapes softened and eroded as though time itself had chewed on them and gotten bored halfway through.

Actually, as she looked closer, she realized all the cars looked quite old, not just in their condition but also in their design. Boxy frames, rounded hoods, and chrome bumpers that were mostly rusted through. She wasn’t much of a car person, but these were definitely the kinds from fifty or more years ago. Then, one caught her eye that she recognized almost immediately.

A Rolls-Royce Phantom.

She could only imagine what Death would say if he saw all of this. His love for classic cars probably meant he would consider this a travesty. Either that, or he might try to see if he could snag some working parts from the less damaged ones. She wasn’t sure which.

“What are you waiting for, apprentice!” Hellina called up to her.

“Oh, right! Sorry!” Morrigan took a deep breath, examining the first jump. Before she leapt, she asked Fenris one more time. “So you’re really staying up here?”

“Just to keep watch. If something even worse comes down that bridge, I figured someone ought to be up here to take care of it.”

Morrigan narrowed her eyes at him. “You should have come up with that excuse sooner.”

“Yeah, it just came to me.”

She couldn’t help chuckling at that. “Well, alright, see you at the bottom, I guess.”

If I’m still alive, that is, she thought.

Finally, she jumped down, not nearly as graceful as Hellina. She landed in a crouch on the first one, then did the same for the second. On the third, her footing misplaced, and she wobbled for a moment before a single thin tendril shot from her back to steady her balance. “Thanks, girl,” Morrigan muttered to the changeling.

It returned under her flesh and let out a brief vibration, almost like a purr.

Up close, the place was worse and smelled horrible.

The insects weren’t just on the dump—they were part of it. Some crawled through hollow engine blocks; others clung to the undersides of car frames like living corrosion. Their legs scraped across rusted metal with a sound that set Morrigan’s teeth on edge. A few paused, heads tilting in her direction, antennae tasting the air.

Morrigan summoned her scythe and held it in a clenched fist. “They’re… not attacking.”

“They might once they are disturbed,” Hellina answered.

“What are they?” Morrigan whispered.

“Some type of demon. Though it seems they have been here for a while. Most likely, a single demon who had found this corner of negative space long ago reproduced, though what it has been feeding on I could only guess. In any case…” Hellina turned her gaze to Morrigan. “Begin, and I will cover you.”

“I… uh… begin?” 

“You are Death’s apprentice, are you not? The Death?”

“Um, well, his voidling is named Noir,” Morrigan said. She would be surprised if Death were the only reaper in the world to use that moniker, and though she had great respect for him, this was the second time another reaper had referred to him as ‘the’ Death, which held more reverence than one would expect for the part-gamer, part-bookworm, part-classic-car-nerd she knew him as.

“Yes, if it’s noir, then your master is one of the greatest reapers to ever exist,” Hellia said. “Therefore, I’d expect an impressive showing from his apprentice.”

“Is he really…” Morrigan trailed off.

“Enough delaying. We do not have all day.” Hellina’s empty eye sockets stared at her with that returning intensity. Morrigan gulped. She almost wondered if this reaper suspected that Morrigan was not actually who, or rather what, she claimed to be.

I’m sure the demon grafted into my back isn’t doing much to help with whatever trust issues this lady seems to have with me.

“Death hasn’t really taught me much about fighting yet,” Morrigan explained, her eyes locking onto one of the bug things that was currently dragging itself across a flatter patch of the garbage dump, then Morrigan gulped when she realized it was dragging a single humanlike leg that was attached to it like a malformed limb.

“Is that so?” Hellina asked. “Then observe.”

Hellina’s first step forward was casual and unhurried, but as it touched down, she suddenly shot forward in a blur of motion right into a pack of insects. Her scythe arced wide across the ground, chopping the head off one, cutting clean through the torso of another, then lobbing off several twitching legs of a third.

She didn’t stop moving—backing up a step, pivoting to the side, and spinning her scythe in an arc that had it sweeping to the left and right by her feet. The insects at first seemed surprised; some scurried away, and others moved towards her to attack. But each lunge of their mandibles or swipe of their claws was matched by a fluid motion that moved Hellina out of the way and had her scythe cutting them down a blink later.

A group on a nearby mound of garbage looked up, spread their wings, and then took flight. She raised a hand, and a dark aura spilled from her palm and danced down her arm like heavy fog. As the insects flew at her, she closed her fist, and the aura suddenly expanded into a spear, with wisps of moving fog circling in on the insects and entering them through their open, hissing mouths, between the ridges of their exoskeletons, and surrounding them. Their wings slowed, they dipped in the air, then fell twitching to the ground. Those that were not consumed were caught by her spinning scythe as they tried to attack.

Morrigan’s hands tensed on her scythe as she watched. She hadn’t seen a reaper fight quite like that before. Then, a stirring from her back drew her focus back to her own immediate surroundings. Some of the insects were now moving towards her.

“Ah!” Morrigan yelped in surprise and awkwardly swung her scythe one-handed at one flying at her face. She managed to cut its side and lop off one of its wings, causing it to spin off course right before her. She ducked, and it barely flew past her head.

She would have been overwhelmed a second later, but then the changeling sprang into action, tendrils shooting from her back and her arm sling with precise needles that stabbed the carapaces of multiple insects at once. “AH! There are so many!” Morrigan yelled, crouching down into a ball, trying to make herself small. If it were not for the changeling, she would be getting devoured in seconds. But with even more insects in the surrounding area suddenly being stirred into action, she could already see a near future where that’s exactly what would come to pass.

Hellina jumped away from a pile of dead insects, landing near Morrigan, then making those quick, sure movements around her, spinning her blade and culling back the horde.

The flutter of wings became a sudden static noise that consumed the battlefield, barely drowning out the scythe cutting air and Morrigan’s tendrils lashing at its enemies.

“Face away from me and move outward,” Hellina ordered calmly. “Get on your feet, apprentice.”

Morrigan sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to uncurl.

Her knees trembled as she stood, but she did as she was told, turning her back to Hellina and taking an unsteady step forward. The insects immediately reacted, skittering and lifting their heads.

“Good,” Hellina said behind her. “Now stop flailing.”

“I’m not flailing!” Morrigan snapped, immediately followed by a panicked squeak as something scraped against her calf.

She spun the scythe, coming up too high, too fast. It whiffed over the insect’s head, but the changeling compensated instantly. A tendril snapped out, pierced straight through the creature’s skull, and pinned it to the side of a rusted car door before retracting again.

“You have impressive control of that thing,” Hellina said calmly, as if she were making small talk over tea, not cutting through a horde of demon insects.

“I-It’s not me!” Morrigan said, batting her scythe left and right, occasionally hitting her mark, but whenever her aim was off, the changeling was quick to compensate.

Morrigan took a step which landed on a twitching corpse. Her ankle rolled, and she stumbled, a tendril shooting to the ground to steady her and then pushing her straight up again, but right into a hissing set of mandibles flying right at her. She screamed and swung her scythe blindly, plunging the blade right down its throat, but mostly by luck.

More bodies fell from the air and thudded against the ground as the assault continued, the more experienced reaper and the changeling like a barrage of death.

“Th-There’s too many!” They may have been winning in the sense of keeping score, but Morrigan felt it was still like a sandbank against a tidal wave. Eventually, it would spill over.

“We can not die by such creatures,” Hellina stated firmly, opening her hand once again as she summoned the black aura. “It is weak to fear what’s beneath you.”

“Easy for you to say! I happen to like having skin!” Morrigan retorted, but she kept her scythe moving. Even with both arms, she couldn’t have been as fluid as Hellina was with her quick, sure movements, but doing this one-handed made each swing a sloppy, desperate move.

Yet, Morrigan’s impression of a tidal wave was quickly proving to be incorrect. As the fight continued, the barrage actually slowed. Other insects on far mounds of garbage stood high on their legs and spread their wings, but did not join in. Did they seem uncertain? Did such demons even think that way?

Hellina closed her fist again as she suddenly slid to Morrigan’s side and thrust her arm forward. The black fog shot forward in a wave, coalescing strands spinning into the insects and dropping them like sacks of potatoes being lobbed in their direction.

Then, finally, the flow of battle shifted to something calmer. The airborne insects that were on their way slowed their trajectory, then turned and descended, finding mounds and perches to land upon. Then they just stopped and stared.

Hellina straightened her posture, standing shoulder to shoulder with Morrigan, who breathed heavily, gripping her scythe. “W-What’s happening?” Morrigan asked.

Hellina didn’t answer, but the ground did. Morrigan felt a vibration moving through her feet and up her legs. The changeling tendrils snapped to attention, forming points on their ends and hovering around her like waiting serpents.

The rumbling grew louder, and a large mound of trash began to shift, bits of debris falling loose and rolling down. There was the screeching of rusted steel as a car pivoted, turning nose up as its rear sank deeper into the mound.

Then, something else shot out—a giant insect leg. Morrigan gulped, eyes widening as it reached down and found something to grab onto. The unnatural joints tensing and bending as another leg shot out, and then another. “W-What is it!?”

“As I suspected. These are not individual demons but part of a single mind. I’ve seen a type like this long ago in Egypt.”

“Egypt!? How long ago?”

“Stories of ancient plagues were not born from imagination. Simply altered by human interpretation.”

Morrigan stared at her. “Wait, you’re saying… like the plagues?”

“Indeed. This one had many years to consume and grow. Likely, it found a lost corner of negative space where it would be undisturbed and slowly reached outward into the real world to find sustenance as it grew itself. I thought it unusual that such a mass of demons could live as individuals, so it makes sense they were pieces of one greater demon, which likely had a small door into the real world where it could consume life and sustain its manifestations.

“Consume? Do you mean it's been killing people this whole time?”

“Not necessarily people,” Hellina replied. “Its window would not need to open onto a city or a home.”

She gestured faintly toward the trash-laden landscape around them. “Consider where waste gathers in the real world. Landfills. Dump sites. Places where things are discarded and forgotten. Humans see them as rot and filth, but they are not empty.”

Morrigan swallowed, eyes flicking to the crawling masses around the wreckage.

“In such places, life thrives. Rodents. Insects. Bacteria. Mold. Entire ecosystems built on decay. Where something dies, something else feeds. This creature found value in what most would consider used and forgotten.”

“One man's trash is another demon’s dinner, I guess…” Morrigan muttered. Despite the quip her eyes remained locked on the shifting mound as the demon finally began to emerge.

“With the rise of the human population,” Hellina continued calmly, “those places multiplied. Each generation leaves behind more refuse than the last. More nourishment for a creature such as this. This situation allowed it to grow exponentially. Slowly at first, then faster, as human excess accelerated its development.”

The mound split apart as if unzipping, refuse sloughing away in sheets. Rusted appliances slid free and collapsed inward, swallowed as the thing beneath rose.

Its body was a segmented mass of chitin, the color of old ash, each plate overlapping the next like armor. The surface was pitted and scarred, textured with the dull sheen of something that had never known light. Embedded throughout its body were fragments of the dump itself. Twisted rebar jutted from between plates like spines. Half-melted tires were fused into its sides. A refrigerator door hung open from one flank, its enamel cracked and yellowed, insects crawling in and out of it as if it were an open wound that was left to fester.

Then she saw the faces.

They were not arranged with any symmetry, trapped in the mass like impressions left in drying cement. A cheek here. A slack mouth there. An eye socket stretched wide and empty, its gaze locked in permanent horror. 

Then she noticed a skeletal arm jutting out, but the sleeve was what caught her attention. It was faded dark green and a thick material with a button near the cuff. It looked like an old army uniform.

A soldier?

Upon noticing that detail, her eyes searched, noticing more random limbs, and her mouth fell open in horror. Some had loose rags hanging from them; another was a chest with a torn drawstring shirt. Another had brown cloth that looked fashioned from an animal hide. The one thing they all had in common was that none of it was modern.

“Garbage dumps… and what about mass graves?” Morrigan asked, her voice distant as the realization took hold.

“That would certainly be a useful source of sustenance to such a creature.”

Morrigan felt a chill crawl up her spine.

“Though I suspect it had few living victims and had not consumed many souls. If it had, the Fates would have been alerted long ago, and reapers would have been sent after it. However, if it had continued to remain undisturbed, it would eventually have grown strong enough to force a permanent breach and enter our world. Not a tear like this, but a stable opening. A foothold.”

Morrigan’s grip tightened on her scythe. “And then what?”

“Then it would be humanity’s problem and a great tragedy. Many years from now, it might only be remembered as a plague or some ancient myth. But before that, there would be much death if reapers or perhaps mages could not put a stop to it.”

The demon finally finished detaching itself from the garbage, legs pulling it free. Its massive mandibles separated with a hiss that consumed the air, the sound reverberating right down to Morrigan’s bones.

“Don’t worry,” Hellina said in a reassuring tone that Morrigan didn’t think was possible for her. “I may not have lived to fight the great demon wars as your master had, but I’ve still faced plenty in my time. The difficulty will be finding its core…”

Morrigan’s eyes frantically scanned the massive demon once again. Stabbing the core of a demon with a scythe was an instant kill, but that seemed like it would be impossible.

“If that demon on your back can be of use, we may have a good chance,” Hellina explained. “But you can’t stand back quivering. Take reassurance that I can guarantee that you will not die today.”

“I’m more worried about getting eaten alive.”

“It is not as though you would keep your flesh forever.”

“That’s not exactly comforting!”

“It’s a matter of perspective.”

“Well, my perspective is I don’t want to be mutilated!”

Hellina glanced her way, her hollow eye sockets seeming to examine the changeling tendrils. “You’ve done a poor job at it so far.”

“Thanks. I know.” Morrigan grimaced. “Shouldn’t Fenris be helping us!?”

“I don’t expect any aid from that fool. I have higher hopes for Death’s apprentice. Now, let’s begin. Our prey will not sit idly by while we deliberate.” With that, Hellina rushed forward, extending one hand to her side as the black aura formed between her skeletal fingers, her scythe in her other hand, her steps gliding her right into the fray.