Thea

The scroll erupted into flames and I could feel the pact settle near my spirit. The flames were pretty neat, but what surprised me was how the contract felt. Demons and devils use magical contracts all the time, but the ones we use always felt uncomfortable.

Kind of sharp and suffocating, like a cold, wet blanket wrapped in razor wire. They’re meant to intimidate and be always present. They acted as a constant reminder that you have a deal to uphold and that it should be dealt with as soon as possible, or there will be consequences.

The contract with Bryce was nothing like that. It felt warm and friendly and kind of tasted like a cinnamon apple cider. The constant reminder was there, but it was there in the sort of way that you could always feel a warm blanket on a snowy night.

Damn, this girl was good. Like scary good. I had never witnessed this kind of manipulation before and, honestly, it scared me a little.

“I love a bit of showmanship but, all things considered, that felt like a waste.” I got up from where I was sitting in order to help Bryce stand. There was a sudden massive rush of power and time slowed as my perception increased.

“It’s the same spell I use for corporate contracts… intimidates suppliers… shows… I mean…”

Bryce’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she tilted forward. I rushed to catch her, but moved faster than I expected and wasn’t able to stop myself before slamming into her.

I heard her head smack hard into the wall. I cursed an apology and lowered her limp form to the ground.

This wasn’t good. Bryce really needed medical attention and slamming her into a metal wall probably didn’t help the situation all that much.

I could feel her mana flowing into me, and the power was intoxicating.

Like literally. It felt like I was drunk. It wasn’t the good kind of drunk either. I was nauseous and trying to keep the room from spinning. It was clearly mana poisoning, which sucked because that meant Bryce was right and my body was struggling to contain the magic that was continuing to pour into me.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for the flow of mana to slow. The pain was bearable, but gods below, the nausea was terrible. To make matters worse, I felt crazy bloated.

Bryce was still out, but she seemed stable. Well, more stable. She still had a fever that would probably fry the brain of most mortals and she was sweating like crazy, but at least her breathing was more regular, which was an improvement.

Maybe being unconscious was good for the elf? Well, it was a problem for me. Bryce was the only one who knew where the med-lab was, and there wasn’t any sign that she was going to wake up soon.

I tried moving again, but the room was spinning. I closed my eyes, which helped, until it started to feel like I was the one spinning.

How in the hells did Bryce have this much mana? It was completely ridiculous! She gave me a measly five percent, and she still had… basically no mana at all.

Bryce had said she was at around seven percent, so giving me five should leave her at two. Two percent wasn’t a lot for most people, but two percent of Bryce’s apparent maximum was far more than what most mortals had. It should've been more than enough for her body to function.

Bryce must have been off about how much she had left, because now she was running on fumes. Usually, that wouldn’t be a major issue for mortals. They’d just take a nap and wake up when their mana had naturally regenerated.

But, Bryce had said that her body wasn’t able to produce mana because of the poison, which means she wouldn’t wake until we could get it out of her. That wouldn’t happen until I could get her to the med-lab. Which I still didn’t know how to find.

Okay, so Bryce wouldn’t wake up. That’s fine, but I wasn’t about to drag her ass while I wandered aimlessly around…. wherever the fuck I was. She was going to have to wait here while I searched and I had no intention of doing that unarmed, so I turned quickly towards the corpses still in the room.

It was maybe a little too quickly because I missed a step and the ground rose to meet me. The feeling of falling didn’t disappear for a full minute after I hit the floor.

Gods damned heels. I turned my head towards Bryce’s unconscious form with, what I had to imagine, was an extremely pitiful look.

The world came back into focus and with it, so did Bryce. She looked sort of… regal. In a fucked up post-torture, and nearly dying kind of way.

I sighed before getting up and moving carefully towards the nearest doll.

“This better be worth it, princess.”

I grabbed their sword and secured it to my waist. The doll’s boots wouldn’t have even come close to fitting me, but Ava was closer to my size. She was wearing comfortable looking tennis shoes, which were still too big, but closer than the doll.

I placed my heels next to Bryce in a place where I wouldn’t forget about them. Another wave of dizziness hit me, but I caught myself on the wall before stumbling too far.

I followed the wall to the door and sighed heavily before triggering it to open using the nearby console. Even trying to leave the room had been hard, and I wasn't looking forward to trying to walk around like this.

The door opened to a hallway lit by a series of artificial lights recessed in the ceiling. I didn’t want some random guy stumbling onto an unconscious Bryce in a room full of dead people, so I set up a quick illusion to camouflage the door.

The spell took hold, and I felt a brief relief from the nausea. I grabbed two fistfuls of my hair and let out a muffled scream.

I could already hear Esme’s teasing voice in my head.

Salinthea, you dumb bitch, if you have too much mana, all you have to do is use some of it.

I closed my eyes and untangled my right hand from my hair. Calmly, I leveled it with my shoulder and unleashed a massive jet of flames out of my outstretched palm.

I felt the heat wash over me as the nausea and bloating slowly dissipated. It felt like I had just woken from the most restful sleep of my life.

I knew this wouldn’t last forever. My body would still need to get used to Bryce’s mana, but as long as I was using it regularly, then I shouldn’t have to deal with the worst symptoms.

Everything was looking up. I had a sword and a task that didn’t involve a lot of thinking or lying to dangerous, greater demons. I could even ignore the high pitch shrill of the fire alarm and the gross stale water that was raining down on top of me. Nothing was going to ruin my newfound good mood.

That turned out to be painfully accurate, because I found nothing and that ruined my newfound good mood.

The hallway was set up in a square-ish circle with eight long straight sections. Most of the sections were pretty sparse. They had a few doors that led to storage rooms filled with various arcane reagents.

The reagents were useless to me. I had a natural talent with fire and illusion magic, but I didn’t know shit about any other type, and even the stuff I knew was more instinct than a learned thing.

I checked the various storerooms and eventually looped back to the stretch of hallway that I had incinerated. Thankfully, the fire suppression system had worn itself out, but that left the hallway covered in a gross sooty mud.

There were four doors in this final hallway, three of them on the left and one on the right. I knew the furthest one on the left was the one I had stashed Bryce in. The other two were probably just more storage, but the one on the right was different.

It was easily twice as wide and about as tall as the walls would allow. If I were a gambling gal, then that’s where I’d put my money.

Thankfully, I was a gambling gal, so that made my decision easy.

Now I just needed to figure out how to get it open. The first problem was that the console nearest the door had somehow melted. That gave me an idea.

I conjured a large red flame above my right palm and forced the heat into a fine stream. Focusing, I turned up the temperature until it turned a silver-blue.

I kept adding more heat until it began to singe my dress. Taking that as a sign, I placed my open palm against the closed door.

At first, the flames just splashed off the metal, so I added more mana. It was getting close to my previous maximum, but wasn’t straining at all.

It felt like I could easily put two or three times as much mana into the flames before getting tired. I kinda wanted to try it.

I doubled the mana. The power flowing through my arm was pushing against the door hard enough that I had to lean into it just to brace myself. I doubled the mana again.

I was grinning like an idiot. Never had I felt anywhere near this power before, and it was amazing. I heard a shattering sound as the enchantments reinforcing the door failed, causing me to lurch forward as the door stopped resisting the flames. It didn’t take much more effort to create a me-sized hole.

Stepping over the slag, I entered the room. It was a massive metal dome made of lead or some other type of magic blocking metal. I could even sense magic negating formations on the surrounding walls.

My best guess was that they had used this room for testing dangerous spells. I looked around for all of twelve seconds to make sure there wasn’t another entrance or some sort of teleportation circle. There wasn’t, so I shrugged and turned back towards the hall.

That left two other doors, both of which had the consoles melted. I moved towards the left most door and tried something that should never have worked in a million years. I kicked the metal sliding door.

I honestly just wanted to try it. I could tell that my physical strength had increased along with my mana capacity and I wanted to know what I could do.

The door buckled in on itself and flew into the newly revealed storage room. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

I was a low-tier devil. Most demons just called me an imp, which they could get away with because it was pretty accurate.

Now though? I bet I could probably hold my own against greater demons or arch-devils. Hells maybe even a demon prince.

There was only one door left I hadn’t checked and if that wasn’t the med-lab, then somebody was going to die. I just hoped it wasn’t me, or I guess Bryce.

Since I was testing new toys anyway, I wanted to try something different on this one.

I unsheathed the sword at my side and swung down onto the door in a single, fluid motion. There was a massive clanging noise followed by a snap as the blade broke off at the hilt and got stuck. The door was mostly unharmed, and I was holding a useless hilt.

Dropping the hilt, I wordlessly turned and walked back into the room where I left Bryce. She was still breathing, which I took as a good sign.

I grabbed the other doll’s sword and stored it in my sheathe before returning to the unopened door.

It seemed safe to assume that the sword wouldn’t work. Since I only had the one sword left, I wasn’t about to risk losing it. Besides, I still had another idea.

I placed my hand on the door and began channeling mana. The metal glowed red hot and the tips of my fingers sank into molten metal.

I shut off the flow of mana and let the door cool. Once it cooled, I simply pulled the door open using my newly formed handle.

To my immense joy, the door opened and revealed an elevator instead of another storage room. I stepped inside and inspected the console.

It seemed like I was on the highest floor, which was five, and I figured that the med-lab would either be on the lowest or the center most level. That meant that I should start with… two-and-a-half? But there wasn’t a floor two-and-a-half, because that would have been fucking stupid.

Ever the optimist, I selected the third one. To my surprise, the elevator moved up instead of down. It didn’t take long to stop, and the doors opened to reveal a very surprised looking human man.

I was never great at deciphering mortal ages, but this one seemed pretty old. He had dark skin and just a few wisps of white hair on his balding head. He was also wearing the same uniform that Ava had on under her cheesy cultist robes.

We just kind of stared at each other for a moment until recognition seemed to dawn on him.

“What happened to you? You’re covered in blood, are you alright?”

The human seemed more concerned about me being hurt than that I was an unknown devil with a sword at her waist. This was something that I thought I could work with.

“Oh uh, maybe? Hey, do you know where I could find the med-lab? It’s not for me. There was an accident upstairs and my friend got hurt pretty badly, now she can’t move. Could you maybe help me get her there?”

He seemed to compose himself quickly and nodded an answer before turning down the left hallway and walking with purpose.

“Yes, I can. If she can’t move, we’ll need to get a stretcher and I’ll grab a few nano-boosters just to be safe. Was her neck or spine injured in any way? If so, we’ll need to brace it with something.”

I ran after him. He was nearly half a meter taller than me and it showed in his stride. I had to half-sprint in order to keep up with him.

He led us to a door and typed in a passcode, causing it to open. We stepped into what had to be the med-lab, and he immediately moved to a group of shelves to gather supplies.

It wasn’t a large room. A pair of beds surrounded by counters and shelves mostly took the space up.

“I don’t think she hurt her neck. Probably just a few broken bones, maybe some internal bleeding and something about a poison? I wasn’t there when that bit happened, though.” He seemed satisfied with his collection of devices because the man moved out of the room before turning to look at me quizzically.

“Well? Lead the way, please.”

I nodded and walked back to the elevator door. It had closed while we were gone. I tapped on the console, but nothing happened. I tapped harder and nothing happened harder.

“What’s wrong with this thing?”

I tapped even harder and the glass screen broke. The human sighed, and I let him push me out of the way.

“I should’ve expected this. Before you arrived I had been stuck on this floor. Something triggered the lockdown. We’ll need to get the door opened if we want to get to your friend.”

He set his medical collection down and pulled out a tablet.

“I’m doctor Daelin," He introduced himself. "You must be new since I don’t think I’ve seen you around before and I’m usually the one who gives physicals to the new recruits.”

Daelin was focusing on his tablet and only half paying attention to me. It was a bit rude but I guess I could forgive him, all things considered.

“I’m Salinthea. Most people just call me Thea. Yeah, I guess today is technically my first day here.”

I approached the elevator and repeated the trick I used upstairs. Daelin looked up right as I slammed the door aside. He spent some time just staring at me, mouth agape. I snapped my fingers in front of his face a few times to bring him back to the present.

“Hey buddy, friends dying, remember? We should probably hurry.”

That seemed to be enough to get his attention because he quickly put his tablet away and picked up his menagerie of medical devices before joining me in the elevator. I selected the fifth floor and the elevator quickly descended the few levels.

I stepped over the remains of the door and beckoned over my newest buddy. He carefully followed me, looking around at the minor disaster area.

“What happened here?” He whispered the question.

“I was looking for the med-lab,” I shrugged and opened the door to the room where I had stashed Bryce. “I found it eventually.”

He walked cautiously to the door before looking in.

“Executive Virra!”