***The Mortal Plane***

***Amon***

“One final time!” I encouraged Jebril and Kitia. That fae fortress was a hard nut to crack, but I could feel it in my bones that the wards were failing. They could have withstood more abuse if the craftsmanship had been better, but the bronze runes that projected the wards were already glowing brightly from all the energy they had to channel. The wood which they were carved into was smouldering and unable to absorb any more heat.

I admired the fae’s apparent ability to grow anything they needed, but there were some inherent downsides to purely organic materials.

“I think the mandala can activate a few more times before we have to craft a new one,” Kitia commented while repairing some of the damage which was caused by the activation of our siege spell. She had used her ice magic to craft the physical manifestation of a huge spell mandala which I then reinforced with my mana manipulation technique. It was Jebril's job to aim and operate the insane circular concoction of demonic magecraft that we had put together. The whole thing would have never worked in an environment that was low on magic, but this pocket dimension was perfect for the techniques which Ex had shown us.

The mandala floated in mid-air and had a diameter of ten metres. It was huge and unwieldy, but as long as the fae didn't dare to leave their stronghold we could snipe at their gates with leisure.

“Discharging!” Jebril announced, and I could feel the mandala strain as it fired the magical energies that it had gathered previously from the environment.

A ray of brilliant energies shot towards the fortress and hammered against its defences. The greenish barrier flared and the runes behind it grew even brighter, apparently withstanding yet another attack.

But then it happened.

I smiled when I saw one of the runes that upheld the large barrier fall out of its socket in the fortress’ gate, leaving behind a smouldering indentation. One moment later, the barrier failed and our magical siege engine blasted the main gate apart.

We howled with glee and dropped our mandala before we charged our new training ground. I finally decided that now was the time to summon my armour and slapped the amulet on my chest, hoping that I wouldn’t have to respawn too often.

“Wârﬡaêrjﬡfae!”

We screamed in anticipation, even though the fae reacted quickly and formed a defensive line in the breach we had made. Spells flew at us, but Jebril summoned a shield that deflected them right back at the fae.

I angled my wings and propelled myself right into the enemy line before I unsummoned them. My mana shield allowed me to crash right into the fae alongside Shax who sent our opponents flying with brute strength alone.

The strategy was simple: Go in and kill as many enemies as possible until you die, then return to the battle as quickly as you can through one of several summoning circles that Jebril had hidden throughout the city.

We were abusing our nature, but that was the reason why the mortals feared us. And as long as we managed to take at least a few lives with each charge, there was no reason not to do so.

I drew my dagger and extended the energy blade to its full length before I slashed through a fae’s wooden shield and armour in one go. As far as magical defences went, the fae’s enchanted armour wasn’t bad, but it couldn't stand up to my predecessor’s weapon.

Their armour relied on grown wood that was reinforced with runes that projected their own little barriers. Highly effective as long as the wearer had enough power to supply the energy. In this magically charged environment, only brute force was strong enough to break through the barrier, or a potent magical weapon could also break through. The nature of this setup gave me an idea.

Laughing, I switched tactics and concentrated on my mana manipulation to draw energy away from the environment around opponents. It wasn’t possible to cut off the supply completely, but the runes on the armours of any fae around me dimmed visibly.

That was enough for Kitia’s ice sword to punch through, or for one of Uphir’s throwing daggers to find a weak spot.

Philomena and Shax had no problem with crushing the fae from the beginning. If anything, it was their enemy’s high agility that gave them headaches. More often than not the nimble mortals managed to dodge Philomena’s axe or Shax’s hands, who relied mostly on his body to crush his opponents with strength and claws alone.

Even if there were only six of us and dozens of fae, we fought like demons and without care for our own lives.

Shax fell first since he had no other choice but to tank each blow and spell which the fae inflicted on him. It was a slow death through a thousand cuts, but when the stoic demon finally died, he did so by throwing himself into one of the few groups of fae that had managed to stay cohesive, scattering them like a herd of prey animals.

My own attention must have been split between too many things. Between fighting and inhibiting the fae’s armour, I noticed the fae that had managed to sneak up on me too late.

An enchanted blade sank into my side, piercing a weak spot in my armour.

I growled and grabbed the hand that held the dagger, crushing the bone and hurling the wielder around while simultaneously using him as a club and draining his life energy out of him. The power that entered my body thanks to Death Grasp was a rush of ecstasy.

Apparently, fae were bundles of pure life force!

The enemies who had thought me weakened quickly realized that I was far from being defeated as I threw myself into them with even less hesitation than before. There was no point in avoiding damage if all I had to do in order to heal was get hold of just one little morsel of power for the duration.

My rampage intensified until the ranks of fae suddenly parted and I was greeted by a fae taller than all the others and a crown of leaves on his head. In his hand, he held a silver sword that blocked my dagger without so much as a chink on its edge.

“Begone from our home, demon!” he taunted as we exchanged blows. “All you will find here is your demise and my court will bring it to you!”

I smiled and jumped sideways to avoid the root that had erupted from the ground in an attempt to trap me. “Unfortunately, it’s your demise that we celebrate today. The contract was struck and the price already paid. Or does it look to you like we have any intention of leaving?”

My hand pointed to the broken gateway, where Jebril had taken up position. Shax was already back, entering the battleground through the breach behind her.

Jebril was standing in the breach like a rock in the tide. Her new barrier technique created a white shield that was plugging up the hole we had made. Fae warriors who had lost their will to fight were slamming fists and spells against it in an attempt to get out of their deathtrap, but none could pass the demoness.

The fae sneered. “It was Loretta who sent you, wasn’t it? Did she finally open the gates to hell with her meddling?”

“Hell is such a boring place in your religious books!” I commented and rushed forward, so as to not give the fae who was now falling back any more chances to think. Our blades clashed again and sparks flew this time. “The mortals have no clue what the Infernum is really like.”

***The Mortal Plane***

***Betsy***

“Took them long enough!” Loretta fumed while we walked down the path to the glade, followed by her husband, Thomas, together with me and my boyfriend Jeremy. With us were over two hundred of the town’s finest, members of the supernatural community who had sworn to prevent the normal humans from ever finding out about us.

Native skinwalkers, dwarves, lycans, selkies, magically gifted humans and dullahans, all who had made a living in the town of Estvan were represented among these brave men and women who fought for the peace of our shared community.

“Shut it, Loretta!” Dominic Hannson called out from behind his men, silencing her complaints. Dominic was the leading chairman for the town’s board for supernatural affairs, and the main reason for why negotiations with the fae had led nowhere. “If your actions caused problems with the fae, I will see to it that you vanish down some deep, dark hole!”

“We will see how my coven will react to that!” Loretta shot back.

“I wouldn’t wag my tongue, young lady. I warned you about dealing with the fae!” the older man admonished her.

“She only did that because you forced her to!” Thomas replied and glared at the leader of his own circle who was incidentally responsible for Loretta's deal with the fae. “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t allowed things to get out of hand with the fae as they did!”

“We wouldn’t be here at all if there wasn’t a huge fae portal in the forest. It's only lucky that it is warding away anyone who walks near,” Savenne Mere growled, second executive on the board. “I’ve about had it with your little personal war between witches and warlocks. As far as I am concerned all of you magic users are the same. Who cares who fucks who?” The lycan shoved Jeremy forward who was dragging his feet. “Now we handle this situation, and afterwards you can go back to fighting as long as you don’t summon any more demons!”

I quickly linked arms with my boyfriend and forced him to walk faster. Who knew what the agitated board members would do once they confronted the fae or the demons. It could only be hoped that Amon would be in a good mood after fighting fae for the last two days. And hopefully, they had found the baby before the whole supernatural community came knocking on the fae’s door.

We reached the glade without any problems and our people fanned out to secure the perimeter. The glade lay silent and abandoned, with only the large oak and a gleaming portal in its trunk.

Our party approached and some of Savenne’s men entered first. Their superior senses made the shapeshifters into the perfect scouts and hunters.

I quickly walked forward and took Loretta’s hand to support my friend as we passed through the portal with the board members and dozens of guards.

What I found on the other side was horrible. Someone had desecrated the corpses of two fae in order to draw a summoning circle on the ground. It was barbaric.

“This is old, a day at least,” one of the shapeshifters said.

Savenne gestured with her hand. “Spread out and scout the surroundings. The fae would never leave an entrance to their realm unprotected like that.”

“Unless they have better things to do…” I mumbled to myself and followed the others down the path into the strange forest which boasted vegetation unlike any I had ever seen. The plants seemed familiar but wrong.

And there was a strange power in the air. I was never a strong witch, but in this place, I could almost feel the magic hum through my veins.

We found and travelled down a forest trail that led deeper into the woods. Several times the scouts returned and whispered things into Savenne’s ears who shared the information with other board members. As the accused, I and the others were left out of the discussion which left us at a loss of what they had found.

The forest opened up into a large field that allowed an unhindered view of a burned village and a few dozen injured fae. I studied them carefully, finding pixies, sprites, and gnomes with a few elves among them, but none of them belonged to the ruling caste. The prince’s court was strangely absent, nor did any of them look like warriors.

These civilians looked nothing like the regal fae which we normally had to deal with.

The ten board members led us past these survivors who tried their best to take care of their injuries with tree sap and other natural medicines. Their haunted expressions told a tale of pain and sorrow. They were so broken that they didn't even dare to challenge us when we walked past them.

I didn’t fail to notice that Duncan, the dullahan leader inconspicuously ordered several of his people to keep an eye on the little camp of survivors.

What we found in the village made my eyes bleed tears. It was worse than the images of war zones from overseas. Fae, no matter their age or size lay in the streets, burned husks for the most part. But there were also signs of a battle.

A squished pixie on the ground. An elf who was nailed to a housewall with a branch through his left eye. There were piles of heads on the streets, and in places, someone had staked body upon body onto poles.

We reached a fortress, where the fae apparently fought their last battle.

The entrance hall was the worst. Bodies lay so tight that there was hardly space to tread on the ground. A brutal battle had been fought here and it was clear who had lost in the end.

It made even Dominic mutter a curse.

Loretta seemed disturbed by now while she was holding onto her husband’s arm. “What do we do? This is beyond what I expected from Amon. What if they hold us responsible for this massacre?”

“You will have to burden some of the blame!” Savenne cut into her words. “But it seems like things are a little more complicated than they seem.”

“What do you mean?” Dominic hissed. “The witch clearly summoned something beyond her ken! She should be locked away for the rest of eternity!”

Thomas glared at the board leader. “Nobody locks away my wife. As I see it, the fae had it coming.”

One of the other board members pointed up the central stairway, trying to steer everyone's attention back to the matter at hand. “These stairs lead directly towards the throne room. We should see if we can find any of the royals there.”

We slowly climbed the stairs that were slippery with blood and guts, and then I heard it...

“♪…gift a soul to your demon, to have him fight a mighty horde, or fulfil a little wish. We wipe out the pests! But beware of what you ask, since our service has a dire price…♫”

Savenne wrinkled her nose. “Are they singing?”

Higher and higher we climbed and the voices became clearer until we entered the throne room, a large wooden hall with a tree at the far end that acted as a living throne.

The demons had cobbled together a generously sized dining table that was clearly not of fae origin and placed it in the middle of the room. On it, filleted like a fish was the corpse of the fae prince, Eluhallen, who was the leader of the local fae community. He was gutted and the demons had shoved some fruit into his mouth.

His family of four had been hanged from their legs on the wall to our left. Wife and children, with their necks cut, they were left to bleed out into large bowls beneath them like animals after the slaughter.

Amon, Kitia, Shax, Philomena, and Uphir were sitting at the table and singing, drinking. The demons' armor was cut and in tatters, more hanging from their bodies than true protection by this point. It was clear that they had fought a hard battle. Yet, their expressions were relaxed as if we had found them in any bar down in the city. The succubus, Isabella, was dancing naked on the table, shaking her figure to the rhythm of the song that was drawing us in.

To the right, the demoness named Jebril was busy with several baskets. In her hand was a baby bottle with a suspiciously red liquid inside.

And all the while they were singing their happy drinking song that didn't at all fit the scene around them. They were content with their achievements and proclaiming their way of life proudly to the rest of the world.

“♪And as the Infernum casts its everlasting shadow, the blood of our enemies flows, giving us their souls so that we may rise aneeew!

And at the dawn of each new day, we walk the line and throw ourselves into the infernal fray!

We bleed, we scream, we die, but the Infernum is a burning thing. Round, round it goes as our conflict stirs. And if we have the souls, we rise again from the burned ash, just to dance anew. And it burns, burns, burns, a burning infernal fire!

But once the contract is fulfilled, and we claimed our due, we get to dance and fuck and sing, because the Infernum is a rocking thing!♫”

We stood there at least for a minute, trying to process the scene until the demons finally noticed our presence.

With that, their exuberance came to a sudden halt. They turned silent and Isabella stopped her dance that was drawing the eyes of every man in the room. I couldn't help it when my boyfriend kept staring, so I pinched Jeremy just for checking her out.

Amon looked at us, then at the rest of the room, and then back at us. One could see that the little cogs in his head were turning. But not only him. All seven demons looked like they had been caught doing something they didn’t want us mortals to bear witness to.

I myself couldn't combine how these creatures could bring down hell and slaughter on a place and then sit down and party as if they had done no wrong. They were clearly capable of feelings. They comprehended what taking someone’s life meant. It was like they understood, but didn’t care.

The demon gestured at us with a shooing motion. “Could you go back out, give us five minutes, and come back and pretend that you didn’t see anything? Then it will look properly demonic in here…”

He sighed when none of us moved. “Guess not…”

Jebril clapped her hands somewhat cheerfully. “You guys know what we need now to diffuse the tense situation?” She spread her hands wide, spraying blood all over the wall with her baby bottle. “A happy reunion!”

The demoness bent down and picked up one of the baskets. Then she danced on tiptoes over to Loretta and allowed us to look into the basket, where I saw her baby boy sleeping with a smile – and blood splatters all over his face.

“Yees, we made a bit of a mess out there in the village, but Isabella rescued fourteen of the little ones from being turned into living trees to serve as mana engines for the fae. I had to rip out some roots and heal them. Cut out some things in other places… do you know how inconvenient it is that you mortals don’t have natural regeneration? But it turned out that fae blood is blasted full of life energy. Just what a mortal needs after cutting off a piece…” Then she realized that she wasn’t exactly making it any better with detailed explanations, so she handed the basket with the baby to his mother’s trembling hands. “We just sang the screaming fleshbags to sleep when you came. If it helps, we fed them enough blood to give them at least ten more years of life!”

I swallowed, my throat feeling somewhat dry. Did that mean that Loretta's baby boy would stay a baby for ten years?

“Okay… c- c- can you go back now?” Loretta asked the seven demons who were smiling at us.

“Nope!” Amon shook his head and pulled a contract out of his pouch. “This contract says that we can stay in this dimension until your baby is safe.”

“But he is safe now, is he not?” Thomas asked.

Amon shook his head with a sad expression. “Mortals, they never read the contract. There are still more fae out there at the edge of the village, aren’t there?”

“Yes…” one of the board members replied dubiously. “They don’t seem to be a threat.”

“Ah, but for how long?” The demon replied, looking smug. “How long until they decide that they want to create another pocket dimension like this one? Years? Decades? Centuries?”

We looked at him until his succubus nudged him from behind. “They are mortals… they don’t think like that.”

“Well… let’s just say that we'll be staying here for a while. At least until we get bored.” Amon packed away the contract. “We like this place. It's good for training and almost feels like home after redecorations…” He looked to the left, where they had hanged the royal fae family.

It only occurred then to me that the setup was arranged like a display of trophies. “Jeremy?” I asked my boyfriend, wondering whether he was still with me.

“Yes, dear?”

“I am going to pass out now.”

“Okay, dear.”