I Was Called A Demon

It had been a very long time since she had seen anything from Orbis, to the extent that the majority of her memories were more akin to blurs than anything… and yet, upon seeing this place, it was like she had been here a thousand times before. The car, the electrical sockets, and even the router in a corner… it was like home, far away from home.

More importantly, it made her recognise that she couldn’t possibly be seeing the Planar Continents – at least not directly. At some step of her trip here, she must’ve entered an illusion or another dream, which was concerning due to the presence of pursuers not far from them.

At the same time… whatever this place was, it was a lot closer to home than anything she’d seen in a very long time, so she couldn’t help but relax for the first time in… a while.

Even the Demon Queen aspect of herself – now so tightly interwoven with her other parts that it was practically indistinguishable – relaxed and softened as she went towards the building, hearing the familiar hum of a built-in AC, bringing the inside to a temperature just one degree below her preference… as was common.

Her outfit suddenly felt out of place, but with nothing better to wear, she still strode in, her bare feet enjoying the benefits of in-floor heating… a waste, given the AC was running at the same time, but she wasn’t about to complain.

She almost didn’t want to seek out the owner of this place, as it would mean that her time in this comfortable illusion would draw to a close – at least by one step further – but at the same time, she couldn’t forget the fact that she might just be standing in an open spot somewhere, a moment away from being struck by lightning from above.

And so, she advanced, looking around and spotting yet more familiar things. To the side, a kitchen, complete with a fridge and freezer in the classic Antanian arrangement – fridge on top, a smaller freezer at the bottom – as well as an oven, stove, kettle and more. It was all rather fancy and high-end, but being from a decent family, it wasn’t her first time seeing things like it. The more important element was that it was empty, devoid of life, not even any cups or dishes out to indicate that someone had or was planning to use the place.

So, she checked the living room, the bathroom, even a rather large walk-in closet, all on the first floor, finding nobody.

That left only the second floor, up some glass stairs that looked like they’d be an awful slipping hazard… but the fall was too insignificant to even hurt her in her current realm, especially with her exceptional durability, so she didn’t concern herself with it too much.

‘But… worrying about that sort of thing feels very normal… heh. I kinda missed this… though not everything that comes with it,’ Bianca thought as she ascended the steps, finding a number of closed doors in the corridor above, with a large window at the end letting in all the natural light.

Out of all the rooms, though, one had some artificial light pouring in through the gap beneath the door. Considering that the rest of the building was lit only by the sun, this was bound to be the most likely destination for her.

And so, she approached that one door, and knocked on the cream-coloured wooden surface.

Compared to the calm of the building, her knocking was almost deafening – yes, even with the AC in the background, air conditioners in Antania were famously limited to 40dbA by law – but for a little while, she heard nothing from within, nor without.

It was as though the light was simply left on by the occupant, but she wasn’t about to simply leave. There were plenty of other doors to check up here, sure, but she had the feeling that none of them would be any more responsive than this one had been. So, if knocking alone wasn’t going to give her any answers… she had to look into the room herself.

She opened it up, finding it to be a bedroom – a man’s, most likely. If the décor – or the lack of it – wasn’t a giveaway, then the man lying on the bed certainly was. Luckily, he was completely dressed, but strangely, he was wearing a formal suit and tie, with dress pants to match, and perfectly cut short hair that made him look like a model for an ad about some overpriced cologne, or maybe the latest razor.

That gave her the urge to punch him as punishment for all those ads, treating her as if she had even the slightest bit of interest in the subject matter, but she held back and approached. The man seemed alive, his chest rising and falling ever so slightly as she watched, but he looked like he’d never wake.

‘Strange… but at the same time, if this is what we came here to find, and it was his dreams that I had seen… but the face doesn’t look alike. I think. Maybe I just tuned that out so that I didn’t have to see a man’s face,’ Bianca thought, looking around the room.

She’d already determined that it was mostly empty, lacking even a desk with a PC on or by it, but opposite the bed there was a strange… thing hanging from the ceiling, on a thin length of string. It was made of wooden sticks tied together into a peculiar pattern, one she couldn’t name no matter how long she stared at it.

What the examination did reveal was another strand, seemingly flowing into the wooden object, from the man’s direction. It was so faint that it was almost impossible to see in the light, but as she approached, she felt it more than saw it. Reaching out, she tried to grasp it-

Suddenly, the strange void she’d found herself in back in the Ghostwood, and images flashed before her. That figure, muttering vaguely, the Dragon’s Fangs, with the pillars of light, and more, faint and indistinguishable, flashing before her mind…

-and just as suddenly, it vanished as her hand retreated from the faint strand.

“… Okay. This… is indeed the one whose dreams I’d seen…” Bianca muttered to herself, looking between the man and the wooden thing, ‘If they’re coming from him, then I could either do something to him… or that thing. Ideally, I’d handle this without touching him at all, so…’

She stepped around the strand and came close to the wooden thing, thinking about it for a moment before simply grabbing at it.

For an instant, flashes of vision entered her mind once more, but the very next instant, they vanished as the string holding the wooden thing up snapped, leaving the object in her hand… before it began to disintegrate, turning into particles that scattered into nothing.

Behind her, she heard the man rising, and turned to see…

The void.

The same one she had seen within the dream.

‘Did I fuck up, or-’

She spotted the man, now seemingly much further away. His face looked to be the same, but his attire was not, switching from the suit to robes and armour more suited to this world’s sensibilities. He looked like he’d just woken up from a long sleep, rubbing his eyes and looking a little confused.

“Where… am I?”

“Somewhere on the Dragon’s Fangs, I… think. At least, that’s where we found you.”

“… ah. So it wasn’t a dream…”

“That’s… complicated. Uh, could you introduce yourself before we… continue?” Bianca held her hands behind her back, one holding on to the wrist of the other, keeping herself from lashing out at the sight of his annoying face.

“My name… is Jonathan. Jonathan Simmons.”

“… Are you… from Orbis?”

“Yes, are… are you?”

“Bianca Stormsden, from Antania. Did… did you also appear in this world out of nowhere?”

“Yes, yes! I was driving down the Averton Pass, and-”

“What? That road was destroyed during the Greatest War, and never rebuilt. Did you live before then?”

“No, it was 2064, a hundred years since then.”

“That’s… when I came to this world, too. That… doesn’t make sense.”

The good news was that the distraction helped to remove the thoughts of punching him in the face, but it left her confused. How in the world could he have possibly gone on a landmark that was so famously destroyed during the war?

Unless…

“Are… are we from different versions of the same world?”

“That would be possible… ah, if only I had met one like you when… when I had lived my other life. Here in the Planar Continents…”

“Did you also go by Jonathan here?”

“No, I was born to a family, a newborn child named… Su Guo.”

“Su… Su Guo? The one that armed an army with equipment made from dragons? The one that resulted in this mountain range being made in the first place?”

“… Ah, so that is what you meant. The Dragon’s Fangs.”

“What did you think I meant the first time?”

“I merely reacted to the fact that you were speaking the language of this world. Of course, there was no such place when I yet lived…”

“Um, on that note… are you dead?”

“I… recall something. The fight with the dragon, the… the last few years of my memory are hazy. It was as though I was in a frenzy, just seeking to get more and more. Resources, manpower, knowledge… It felt perfectly natural at the time, and I didn’t doubt for a moment that I was doing the right thing, but now… It feels like something overtook me. An endless desire and greed.”

“… Did you also have an otherworldly gift?”

“What?”

“The… power that you got on arriving in this world. It took a while to show up for me, but when it did, it was kinda obvious that it wasn’t a normal thing in this world.”

“Ah, then that would be the Throne of Armaments. It allows me to manifest equipment from the items I collect, specifically planar materials. Or… well, it allowed me. I… don’t think I have it anymore.”

“You don’t think?”

“I… I don’t feel like it. Perhaps, in all the years that I had slept, it had left me… probably for the best. If there is any one thing that led to my madness, it was that thing.”

“Madness? That endless desire you were talking about?”

“Yes. I recall how… intoxicating it had been to make and improve equipment, to arm armies, to gather more and more resources until I had an army at my side, a grand city built around me… It was like playing a game, except far more visceral.”

“… I see. Not a big gamer myself, but… I think I can understand.”

“If you have a similar power to mine, be careful, Bianca! It can consume you if you’re not careful!”

“I-I will, I…” Bianca averted her eyes, “Um, I had seen your dream far from here, in the Ghostwood. Somehow, I think your dream was being siphoned away by this wooden… thing that had been hanging in front of your bed.”

“Bed?”

“Oh, right, you woke up into the void… uh, I found you in a modern-looking house, two stories, glass and concrete, some overly expensive car parked outside.”

“Ah, that would have been my vacation home, the fourth one. It was built on the Border Mountains, it’s where I had been driving to through the Averton Pass.”

“… Were you rich?”

“Unfortunately not. I was only the twenty-sixth richest man in Antania, despite my best efforts.”

The urge to punch returned with a vengeance, as he seemed completely genuine. His disappointed look, eyes looking down as though he was greatly ashamed of this… while he had been on the same list as some of the wealthiest billionaires back home. Of course, Bianca didn’t know the list off the top of her head, so she couldn’t be sure whether a man named Jonathan Simmons appeared on that list in her own world, but even if he had… chances were that they were effectively completely different people.

“… So, to move to something less infuriating… how do you think this whole thing works? Us being from different versions of Orbis, I mean. Did yours not have the Greatest War?”

“No, it did, that led to the construction of the Lonesome Shard, and that thing can be seen from all over…”

“Same thing here… guess our worlds aren’t too distinct. But still, the destruction of that road… ah, never mind it, I could barely recall the details when I was still at Orbis, and it has been quite some time since I got here…”

“Even longer for me, though… I do not know how long it has been since my demise, but I know for a fact that my age is long since past. I’m not sure how you and I were able to enter this world from the same age, but from such different times, but… I think I know why I have not yet passed on, why I linger, and why… why you’re the first one to find me here.”

“Oh, we getting serious? Alright, fine… what is that reason?”

“I wish to grant you what remains of this life, the things I had accrued. My Throne of Armaments is gone, hopefully for good… but the items it produced yet remain. I can feel them here… right over there, look,” he lifted a hand and pointed to the side.

She wanted to say that there was nothing there, but… as she glanced over, she found a path amidst the darkness, a faint glow leading forth into the darkness. At the end, nearly out of sight, there was a doorway, open seemingly within the darkness itself, leading to somewhere brighter and more vivid.

“Just like that?”

“I have no wish but to pass along my legacy to someone of my world. You may not be from the same Orbis as I, but… it is the closest I can hope for. However, I will warn you.”

“Oh?” Bianca finally felt the urge to hit him disperse again, and so she focused on his words.

“I can feel something else here… I am not the only one that endured. Jun… The Crystal Terror, the Dragon of Song, the one that fought me to death. Same as me, she yet endures, waiting for a successor.”

Her surroundings felt cold, unnaturally cold. Lei Kai Lian had reached the peak of the third realm not long ago, but her control over her energy had long been great enough that she could constantly shroud herself from the effects of the elements. Even when they had been high up on the Dragon’s Fangs, the cold had barely phased her, but here…

She couldn’t even tell what here was. At once, she felt as though she saw everything, and nothing. A world full of detail, as she remembered it, as it should be, and also nothing, a void, a darkness, an eternal abyss, an absence…

But the cold was certain. It was akin to being in the depths of a cave, where no sun reached, where all the water turned to ice and all the ice had hardened further, where her own body heat could not compare to the lack of warmth within the cold expanse.

And yet, though she shivered and tried to warm herself, no way out presented itself. She felt like she was walking on something, but at the same time…

It was the first time she had felt so cold and alone since she had been taken in by Hua Jun, into the Righteous Court, all that time ago. She was starting to get nervous, her confidence fading away, and when something finally emerged… she nearly cried out in shock.

At least, that’s what she’d tell to the others.

Before her, emerging from the darkness, was a vast crystalline expanse. The floor, walls and ceiling were all made of crystal that jutted out from grey stone, many crystalline pillars paving her way in, and leading to a central cavern where…

A vast entity hovered in the air, a maw made of crystal, with eyes of blazing fury.

It was a dragon’s maw.