Shaded from the warmth of the morning sun, Lome’Matar held vigil. His prospective servant snored loudly in the mud. Carrion birds were arriving to feast on the various pulverized humans in the area, though Lome’Matar was careful not to let them get too close to his servant without a good mental jab. The demon head’s miniscule mana reserves were very close empty. He must be careful to keep his soul and ability to communicate intact at this rate. He must teach the woman how to recharge a magical artifact, in this case his head, as soon as possible.

Lome’Matar was a little worried about that, however. He no longer had the mana to imprint a spell diagram into her mind without his mana reserves getting recharged. He also doubted she’d go along with that form of teaching willingly, after her obvious distrust of the method. Distrust not totally without merit, Lome’Matar grudgingly admitted. If he’d had access to any ‘real’ amount of mana, rewriting the memories of a completely untrained human, even one with mana reserves like hers, was a trivial matter. He probably would have done it too, if he could. You just don’t let an opportunity to grab up the eternal loyalty of something like Heidie while they were in their formative stages. It was common sense, really. Without training she was defenseless. With even a small amount of training, her base reserves alone would make it near impossible for a weak mana probe to interact with her mind or body. Simply circulating mana would be a sufficient defense against such attempts at ingress. Unfortunately, ‘Trivial’ to Lome’Matar was a fairly high standard, and the spells needed to make some choice modifications to her memory, such as a fanatical loyalty to a certain Dread Necromancer, were very high level, and even Lome’Matar couldn’t puppet his way through them by proxy.

Lome’Matar sighed. He hoped she woke up soon. There were some nasty things in these woods and he probably couldn’t keep them away too much longer. Spooking and driving away the dangerous beasts that would intrude on the carrion bird’s feast had consumed the lion’s share of his reserves, but keeping the servant alive and functional had also taken quite a bit. More than anticipated, in fact. Lome’Matar beheld the creature he had saved. She was taller than average at six feet high. Her clothing was composed of blue jeans and black hoodie with a brown pony with a tattoo of a great big bushy beard on its rump, wearing a strange hat, performing a military salute, and the words “Rise up my fellow ponies! The oppression of the earth pony proletariat has gone on too long!” Lome’Matar raised an eyebrow; that was a weird article of clothing. Her hair was black. Cut short it reached down to her shoulders and was totally caked in mud, much like the rest of her. She had gray eyes, and a particularly wrathful way of glaring with them, in Lome’Matar’s opinion. Strong anger was a definite plus in a servant. Powerful motivator it was, anger. His musing was interrupted by his servant sleeptalk.

“Stop pulling mobs, you assfaced buttsack!!”. Lome’Matar liked that one. Buttsack. Yes, he’d have to remember that. If Lome’Matar had currently been in possession of functional hands, or a body, he would have stroked his chin. If he’d learned one thing from his servant’s intermittent sleep shouting, it was that his she definitely had anger issues. That was good. He could work with anger issues.

The servant’s hands twitched as though rapidly pressing buttons. Lome’Mater ignored her and went back to monitoring their surroundings. The Contract which the demon had offered had been denied, but what he’d received was good enough for his purposes. Another Contract had been formed between them instead: “Help me and I swear to you I will hear hear you out in good faith, and offer you any help I can reasonably perform to the best of my ability.” A light touch was required to deal with this servant, Lome’Matar decided, but no matter. It was only a matter of time now and Lome’Matar would have his everything at his fingertips, well future fingertips anyway, to study, read, and teach his new little monster how to spread her wings and fly above legions of the dead. No amorous murder ambushes from his wife. Probably little to no further dismemberment. With his new servant, he could probably gain access to the bulk of this world’s knowledge and literature within a century or two. Then after that there were just so many experiments to run on the various races of the world. Lome’Matar nearly giggled girlishly to himself. He couldn’t wait.

Heidie woke to the musical sound of birds chirping and cawing with the warm sun shining on her face. Heidie hated the sun, it being the life-giving, eye-burning bastard that it was. There was also an unpleasant smell nearby. Ugh. Getting back to sleep was not going to happen like this. I’ll just take the dishes out of my room and shut the damn window blinds. Why did I ever open them? Heidie thought. She peeked open her eyes, shading them with her hand as she took in the fact she was lying in the mud. Oh right. Yep. Not in my room. Still in that shitty clearing. Heidie stretched herself out, scrambled to her feet, and put her phone in her miraculously dry hoodie pocket. She was absolutely covered in mud, much of it drying out in the sun. The mud was matted through her hair, covering her clothing, and caked all over the majority of the exposed skin on her arms and face. Even so, Heidie herself was much less damp and miserable than she expected to be. There was a noticeable absence of pain in her leg and torso too. That was a good sign. She looked around the clearing, and started to wonder if she should be recoiling in horror. It was absolute carnage. The twenty something members of her orientation group were here, as were the majority of the contents of the gym they’d been touring. Treadmills, rowing machines, squat racks, leg presses. Dozens of dumbbells. It was a seriously well stocked gym. There had to be thirty or so heavy machines and their various parts lying all over the place. There were other machines Heidie had never heard of; She didn’t go to the gym very much. Most of Heidie’s almost-classmates were crushed and broken beneath the equipment, the condition of their corpses ranging from reasonably intact to fairly mutilated. Their blood was turning the surrounding mud slightly reddish. Large birds that looked much like crows on steroids were picking apart what they could easily get at and eating the exposed viscera. Heidie was suddenly glad she watched so many gorefest movies. This was disgusting, and her strong stomach was serving her well. A familiar voice rang out. It was quieter and less impressive than Heidie remembered.

“You’ve finally woken up. Good. I have fulfilled my end of the bargain, and now I am in need of your help.” Heidie tried to remember what exactly she’d promised it. There was that bad feeling again. Heidie had a bad premonition that she might not have been careful enough with her words last night.

“What do you want?” Heidie asked.

“Pick me up. It’s time we met, face to face” the voice replied. Heidie looked around. She saw a lot of dead college student and broken machines. No obvious sources of disembodied voices around.

“And you are where, exactly?” Heidie asked.

“Here!” Heidie tried to follow the voice. She found herself led to a rowing machine. It was stuck in the ground, broken, but surprisingly otherwise upright, two curved horns were visible just to the side of the seat. “Here” the voice said again. “Right here!” Heidie grabbed the horns with both hands and pulled it up. Heidie and Lome’Matar looked at each other. Heidie took in the glowing green eyes, magnificent curved horns, and sharp pointy teeth, which were exposed by a rather terrifying smile. She especially saw the sharp pointy teeth. I’m going to set this thing down now. Heidy thought.

“Here you go” Heidie said, putting the head down on the rowing machine seat, taking a step back, and resorting to her favored self-defense mechanism: sarcasm. “So you’re the head of some ancient demon, right? You look like the head of an ancient demon. Am I going to have to carry you? On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to bite me if I get too close?” Lome’Matar tried not to sigh.

“Yes, and one” Lome’Matar said. Six he thought. They call me Lome’Matar, and we have much to discuss. I shall begin by explaining what brought us to this place” Heidie nodded and waited for elaboration. Lome’Matar had prepared for this moment and continued, “Our presence here is due to a groundbreaking interdimensional portal which malfunctioned at a critical moment. You and the dead humans around us were pulled in by the catastrophe it caused. Those who had knowledge of how to create the portals were almost certainly destroyed in the disaster.” Heidie raised her hand and Lome’Matar stopped talking

“So I’m definitely not in my home world or dimension or whatever the correct term is?” Heidie asked.

“Correct.” Lome’Matar replied. “And judging from your pathetic physical ability and total lack of measures for self-defense, this world is far more hostile than your previous one.” The green eyes of Lome’Matar burned brighter as he stared at Heidie. Heidie definitely did not like where this was going. “A pathetic fall of one hundred feet broke your body and nearly ended you. Any one of the dozens of predators I have turned away from this place would take your life with the greatest of ease, and that brings us to my next point: you must learn to circulate mana and to charge a magical artifact, and you must do so with great haste.” Heidie like the sound of mana circulation, but couldn’t shake the constant feeling of imminent doom she’d been experiencing.

“Okay. I’m in if there are no strings attached. Why the great haste though?” She asked. Lome’Matar’s smile turned deadly serious

“I cannot regenerate mana in my current state. The smell of this place is attracting more predators than expected. I will use the last of my reserves and lose the ability to turn them away within the hour, unless you learn to circulate and restore my reserves.”

“Shit.” Heidie said. Learning under pressure sucked. “Where do I start?”