The Effaced: Chapter Eleven

I could feel it the moment the Undercity and the Fallen Void began to intersect. It was… strange. A faint tingling along my spine, and something in the primal part of my brain that shouted that I was prey, not predator. 

The ley lines, intersections between the human world and other planes, are all over the place, but that’s not to say they’re all the same strength. 

A weak ley line might suck up weak creatures or plants and spit them out on the other side, serve as an excellent point for more complex summoning magic, and increase ambient aura some. 

A strong ley line, on the other hand, makes reality itself start to overlap. Not a ton, but enough that a demon’s vessel might not require aura to maintain, naturally forming rifts between the two worlds can appear, and the ambient aura level skyrockets. 

It doesn’t have to be demonic, of course – it was just that this one was. 

More than a hundred ley lines passed through the megacity of Elderglass in various spots, and they all had entirely different levels of strength, planar alignments, and degrees of usefulness. 

This one, located far below the earth, was strong, strong enough that in this part of the undercity, demons could walk around alongside humans without fear of being drained of power by being away from their home plane. 

That was convenient for me, because I was paying a surprise visit to the Contractor, the biggest, baddest, most deal-making demon in the entire undercity. Even when I’d worked for the Arenamaster, I’d been warned to treat the Contractor with respect and difference. The pair had been allies, and each one was a little scared of the other. Mutually assured destruction was the best way to maintain an alliance in the undercity, after all. 

As I rounded the corner, the Contractor’s square came into view. It was the size of a small town square, with buildings that had been shaped from earth mages, and a ceiling that extended far above. It was also one of the few parts of the not-so-normal undercity that was well lit, due in part to it being a branch office of the Contractor’s actual, legitimate demonic bond businesses. 

A massive naturally forming rift between the Fallen Void and our world sat in the middle of the square, and both demons and humans wandered around the square. Some were eating, others were chatting, and it was all in all markedly more peaceful than the part of the undercity I’d just left. There was even a touch of natural light and fresh air, coming from the massive, earth-shaped pipes that stretched into somewhere in the street-level city, into the cavern, and then down further. 

I passed by the spots that people had set up businesses in, headed for the palatial building on the far end of the square, where the Contractor actually lived and worked. A pair of gates made of wrought iron, carved with wards, stopped me from getting too close, and a pair of guards – one a towering demon that looked like a praying mantis, the other a normal looking human – held up their hand. 

“Do you have an appointment, sir?” the human asked, and I shook my head. 

“I don’t, but I think the Contractor will want to see me, even if it’s just for a little bit. Tell him that it’s a pointless Zherenian red wooden little sparrow.” 

That was a code, an old one, from when I’d been Mist. People had a certain order they liked to use descriptors in, and just throwing off that order by a bit made codes strangely hard for people to remember or process, since they’d usually default to correcting it in their own mind. 

The guards exchanged a look, and the mantis dipped its head and started crawling up the wall, and vanished away into the manor house that was in the distance. I stood there, waiting in silence, and after a few minutes of standing around, the human guard spoke. 

“So… I’ve never seen you before. Or heard that code.” 

“We can just wait in silence,” I said, not wanting to talk about it, in part because while I was sure the Contractor’s personal guards were trustworthy, it was entirely too easy to get people to talk about details they thought were innocuous. 

The guard frowned, but nodded, and then glanced around for a second. 

It took nearly twenty minutes, and I had to shift around a couple of times to stop my legs from cramping. My stomach and chest had also started to get a touch sore from where I’d yanked myself around with my undershirt. When I’d been younger, that had never happened, but I wasn’t a teenage killer, or even a young soldier anymore. 

The mantis did eventually return, and pressed a key, covered in runic script in a spell language I didn’t recognize, into the gate. A moment later, it unlocked and swung open, and the mantis let out a guttural hiss, before speaking in a voice that was almost perfectly normal. 

“Please come this way, sir,” the mantis said, and that, more than the hissing noise, disoriented me. When a humanoid demon spoke like a human, that was just business as normal, but this was a giant bug-demon-thing. 

I was led to the front doors of the manor, which were made of a dark, heavy hardwood, and covered in more wards. The mantis pushed the door open to reveal wooden flooring, with a strip of lush, shaggy carpet, splitting off several ways. Spells were wrought into the ceiling, providing light without flame, and shedding a soft glow on the paintings and artwork that had been arranged throughout the hall.

I was led up the curling stairway, and glanced into some of the open rooms. There were a handful of servants, both human and inhuman, though all of them, dusting, running vacuums, and preparing food, while several other rooms were clearly various ritual sites, used for establishing contracts. 

The mantis stopped outside of an office, laden with elaborately carved wooden bookshelves stuffed with a mixture of books, memory crystals, and assorted enchanted knick-knacks. There was a pair of hefty leather chairs sitting across from a fire, which I was willing to bet was actually an enchanted illusion. 

It was a convincing one, though, as it molded the light perfectly, had the sounds of a crackling fire, and even the faint scent of woodsmoke. 

“Please, take a seat, and the Contractor will be with you soon,” the mantis said, and I nodded, settling in and prepared to wait for an hour or more. 

To my pleasant surprise, the Contractor didn’t make me wait nearly that long, stepping in after a mere ten minutes, trailed by a servant pushing a small cart. As the Contractor slipped into his seat across from me, the servant took out a pair of cocktail glasses, pouring a mixture of whiskey, sweet red vermouth, and bitters into each, stirring them, and placing a single brandied cherry in each glass, before depositing them on the small table in between the chairs. He left the room a moment later, shutting the door behind him. 

I picked up my glass and studied the Contractor. Despite the fact I was in a crime lord and demonic-bond peddler’s home, I wasn’t worried about the drink being spiked with anything. If the Contractor wanted to kill or incapacitate me, he would have better ways to do it than a drink.

The Contractor was tall, about the same height as me, which was enough to tower over anyone who didn’t have giant blood in them. His skin was dark, but within normal human range, rather than the coal color that some demons had, his eyes were colored like honey, and he kept his goatee and hair trimmed immaculately. He hadn’t visibly aged in the decade or so since we’d met, as he still looked almost exactly like a well-dressed human man in his late forties, with the only sign of his demonic nature being his fingers. Rather than being soft and round with a distinct nail, the Contractor’s fingers faded into sharp, claw-like points. But even those were softened and indistinct, enough that if you weren’t looking for them, it could be easy to think it was just oddly pointed nails. 

Even as I studied him, he studied me back. Having reached whatever conclusions he was looking for, he took a sip of his drink, and I did the same. It was dark and rich, just like everything in his manor, but smooth and clean too. 

“You’ve changed significantly,” he said. 

“I was, what, twenty the last time we spoke?” I said. “It’s only natural that I’ve changed.” 

“Not your body,” the Contractor said. “Your soul. You’ve changed yourself as a person, re-written the old patterns and much of the indoctrination. Loved, and lost it. More things as well.” 

I shivered at his analysis. I didn’t know what Throne the Contractor worked for, or if he’d established his own, smaller Throne, but he was the only person I’d ever met able to make statements like that with such certainty. 

“Before we continue, I should ask, am I speaking to Mist, the Arenamaster’s personal champion and assassin? Or am I speaking to Axel, the effaced engineer?” the Contractor asked. 

“I don’t know, Contractor,” I said honestly. “If we had met in your airship three days ago, I would have been able to tell you that I was Axel. But right now, I seem to be caught somewhere in the middle.” 

“I see,” the Contractor said. “That tells me more than you may have intended.” 

“It wasn’t my intention to hide things from the most powerful demon in the undercity,” I said.

“Of course not,” the Contractor said, a hint of amusement playing across his face. “I assume that you’re calling in the debt that I owe you?” 

“I am,” I agreed, not saying more, curious to see how much I could get him to talk without instruction. 

“You must be lacking in power, compared to where you once were. I know of several powerful demons who would be interested in contracting with you. Sapient ones, of course, a man of your caliber shouldn’t need to deal with the lower class. I cannot guarantee that the power they would bestow would be infusion, like Odril gave you, but I can promise you a high quality power, which should give you some of your old strength back.” 

I gave him a sidelong glance, and arched an eyebrow. He paused and seemed to work through something, then his eyes narrowed. 

“I knew the Mist that’s running around with the Arenamaster now isn’t actually you, just someone who underwent similar modifications, experimental bonding, and indoctrination, but I thought that she was mostly done with you…” 

The Contractor trailed off for a second, then continued. 

“But you’re here, calling in your favor. She must have come for you. Is it protection from her that you want? I suppose that would be able to be arranged.” 

It took every shred of willpower in my body to not react to the fact that the Arenamaster was really back, because this, more than Zone’s rumors, convinced me that this wasn’t an illusion. 

Once I had my composure back, I spoke. 

“You must not have kept up with the news recently,” I said.

“I’ve been in the void for the past several days,” the Contractor said. “I only returned to the mortal world some few hours ago. You were fortunate to arrive when you did.” 

“Senator Ermonte was killed,” I said. “Shot by a bullet that passed through a warded window without setting off any of the defenses.” 

At my words, the Contractor froze. It was unnerving. When a human went perfectly still, there were still things moving. They still breathed, still swayed slightly to maintain balance, still had hair drift in the wind. 

The Contractor… didn’t. He was perfectly still. It was only for a couple of heartbeats, but it unnerved me. 

I took a sip of my drink while he turned to look at me, no condescension or amusement in his voice. 

“Did you kill him?” he asked, voice deadly serious. 

“No,” I responded. 

“Could you have done that, with Odril dead?” 

I hesitated for a moment, unsure how much I should reveal, but decided that it was best to be honest.

“Yes.” 

The Contractor did something then that disturbed me more than his freezing. He picked up his drink and drained it dry in a single, long gulp, seeming to not care about the fact that this type of drink was meant to be sipped, or the burning it must have caused in his throat. When he finished, he put it down on the table and took a deep breath. 

“I think I’ll have a servant prepare us a dinner. We need to talk.”