A blanket of darkness encased DeSean while he underwent an unfamiliar transformation. He could feel nothing, sense nothing, but he knew he was being changed from inside out. The process was without pain, and DeSean was secretly relieved by that.

The Main Path Selection trial had taken a toll on him even if he was to come out of it physically peachy. It didn’t do his mental health any good since all of the nightmares he’d been forced to fight were ripped from his own psyche.

When a glint of light shot through the darkness, DeSean felt relieved. It was unlike the burning light from the office or the orange light from the tavern. It was an opening. He could hear a breeze passing through on the other side. There were rustling trees there.

DeSean reached out. The distance between him and the opening squished together. His hand latched onto the edge palm-size hole. On the other side, someone’s fingers gripped his own followed by a voice.

“DeSean, is that you?” cried Social Media. “Come out. We’ve been waiting.”

“Casey, get back. Look at his claws. That might not be our Sergeant anymore!” warned Art History.

DeSean tore away, shattering the barrier between him and Social Media. Shards fell into the void that surrounded him. He punched forward, smashing and tearing everything between him and freedom.

Green-gray eyes looked him up and down, Social Media remaining in place against her friend’s warning. Art History was right behind her with Botany, Roberto, and Mariah not too far away. DeSean glanced past them and took in the area as his Hell Marked cocoon fell to pieces behind him. He was in the same opening where he practiced dark elemental magic before gaining a Systemic Skill from the effort… then one thing led to another and here he was now.

“You’re taller,” Social Media said. “And you got little horns now. Can I touch?”

“A man just smashed his way out of a hell egg, looking partially demonic, and your first thought is to touch his horns?” Art History asked, incredulous.

“Sounds like a good time,” Botany croaked.

“You two are unbelievable.”

“Hey!” Mariah shouted. “You’re not super evil, are you?”

Roberto looked scared and uncertain next to his older sister.

DeSean rotated his hand in front of his face, his eyes tracing over the sharp but stubby claws that tipped his fingers. They were as black as midnight, and slightly curved. When he clenched his jaw, he felt something oddly different about his mouth. He used his tongue to dig around, opening his mouth to reveal his incisors were longer than before.

Everyone fell into an uneasy silence while DeSean explored his newfound changes. Social Media was right about him being taller, too. The clothes he wore before the Selection didn’t fight right. His jeans were flooded and his sleeves fell short of the wrists.

“I didn’t need to be taller,” DeSean muttered, rubbing the newly developed horns on the side of his forehead. “If that’s what makes me evil, than you better round up all your short friends to rise against me, Mariah.”

“Sounds like he’s still himself,” Botany croaked.

“Maybe that’s what the impostor what’s you to think,” Art History said. “I find it a little sus. Just saying.”

“Play that game and see how you’ll be the first one to be ejected,” Botany replied.

“I think I’m done playing games,” DeSean sighed. “The Path Selection is a motherfucker. They played with my psyche in their, and made games out of it.”

He expected them to hound him with questions since they were close to getting Main Paths. Instead, Social Media threw herself against him and hugged him. DeSean stiffened, caught by surprised. The affection was… slightly unwarranted, but not entirely unwelcome.

He gingerly peeled the bubbly, high-energy girl’s noodle-like arms from around him. That became an invitation for everyone to charge him, strangely. Botany gave him a side-hug. Art History patted him on the back. Roberto lifted him off the ground, and once he set DeSean down, Mariah caught the edge of his sleeve and pulled him to the side.

“We were about to explode waiting for you,” Mariah muttered, combing through her frazzled dark hair. “We kept practicing in the meanwhile, but it didn’t feel like enough. I wanted to go… hunting.”

Art History jogged in. “I convinced her to stay.”

“I let you convince me,” Mariah snapped.

“It was through my efforts I’ve made it reasonable for you to let me convince you. However you look at it, the results are the same. We got the Sergeant back.”

“Not just a Sergeant,” Botany added.

“He is much more than that now, aren’t you, my dear,” said a dark, deep, and musical voice from the tree branches above. Sitting among the yellowing leaves, the Forty-First Princess of the Seventy-Two Hells stood with an air of affluence and nobility despite being part bat, part doll.

“Hey,” DeSean muttered. “You sent me into a fucked up situation without much of a warning.”

“I couldn’t forewarn you. It is against Systemic Rules.” Lylothia bowed slightly. “Please forgive me, my dear. For I saw your potential and took a gamble.”

“Your gamble nearly didn’t pan out,” DeSean said. “That trial was screwy.”

“Yet, here you are, standing among us once more,” the princess replied. “I am… very pleased by this development. It comes with costs, of course, for I have put you under much duress.”

“Yeah, so how you’re going to pay up?”

“I will rescind one of the favors owed to me by you,” she said. “It is reasonable to ask for more than that, but I would prefer to keep one favor as a strong beacon of our relationship. If you push me to rescind all favors, it would be harder to keep in contact like we are now.”

“I’m game to have you rescind a favor, but I’m going to ask that I can be owed a favor from you,” DeSean said.

Lylothia hissed, her voice like a thousand serpents. The power of her his blew away all the leaves from around her.

“To ask of such a boon from me is the height of foolishness! You may be Hell Marked, but you are still in the infancy of your power.”

Backing off would be the smart thing to do. But DeSean felt disrespected in a sense. Lylothia was grander than him, true, but that didn’t mean he should let her do as she pleased without consequences.

“You took a gamble with me,” DeSean said. “And I’ve made a major return that’ll grow your earnings big. But that trial took a lot out of me. And you weren’t there to help me through it.”

“It is not my fault,” she grumbled.

“Owe me a favor, Lylothia. It won’t be anything huge or hard for you, I’m sure,” he said with the utmost belief.

The fiendish ruler of the Forty-First Hell studied him. A sigh escaped her. “Let these mortals serve as witness that I, a princess of the Seventy-Two Hells, grant this Hell Marked, who bear the weight of my kiss, one favor that is of little to no inconvenience.”

There was a ripple that passed through the area. Nobody noticed it except for DeSean… and Social Media. The girl looked spooked from the showing of power inherent in favors exchanged with a demonic princess.

DeSean felt comforted in a sense. There was no equal playing field with an entity like Lylothia, but he felt a little closer to having some control in this relationship.

“So….” Social Media drawled, sliding up against DeSean’s side with a gleaming look in her eyes.

“So?” DeSean asked.

“What is it?” Roberto blurted.

DeSean cocked an eyebrow.

Mariah groaned. “He’s playing dumb. He’s totally playing dumb!”

“Is it something you can’t say? Like a secret that’ll make you weaker if it’s known?” Art History asked.

“Sounds like an old school anime,” Botany croaked. “If you don’t want to say, you don’t have to.”

“They can’t see it?” DeSean asked Lylothia.

“They are Pathless. They are without the vision to see their own paths and the paths of other Pathtakers.”

Huh, he had a lot of things to relearn and go over. There were System Notifications happening in the background, too, but DeSean favored paying the group his attention now. Besides, who knew how long they’d been…

“When’s the next wave?” DeSean asked.

“Oh, yeah, that!” Social Media exclaimed. “Well, we’ve got 13 hours before another 15% of Enlightened Chosen are released. Heh, yeah, you’d been gone for the past two nights.”

DeSean found a log and sat down.

“Fuck!” he yelled.

“Casey’s been telling us all about the local news stuff,” Roberto said. “Lake Ozark and Camdenton is, uh…”

“Surrounded by thousands of Enlightened Chosen,” Mariah finished for him. “There’s Pathtakers in that number, too.”

“They’re barricading Marked from reaching the Chaos Zone,” Botany added.

“And it sounds like they’re coordinating their efforts effectively, too,” Art History informed. “Right, Casey?”

Social Media… no… Casey gave DeSean a worried look. “They’re all following the orders of a man called the Holy Sheriff. He’s supposedly a level ten or more now. He’s got some powerful people at his side, like the Bold Soldier, the Sparkling Maiden, the Angelic Saint, and others.”

DeSean felt power ringing with each name Casey mentioned. These were Pathtakers no doubt. He was one of them, but for the other side of the coin.

Casey came forward, gripping her hands in front of her nervously. “Sergeant DeSean, I’m a little, or more like really, really worried that we don’t have enough to reach the Chaos Zone now.”

“You guys waited here for me,” DeSean said, lowering his head. “I held you back.”

“Let them know, my dear, that it was not for naught,” Lylothia said. “Let them know what you are, and what you will do to return the favor.”

DeSean nodded. Lylothia was right. He could see it in everyone’s eyes that they needed certainty that their time wasn’t wasted.

“I don’t know if the Chaos Marked Path Selection will be anything like the Hell Marked version, but I went through a lot of shit to get this,” DeSean said, standing up to his new height, feeling strong and mighty. “I got some System Notifications to reexamine, but it looks like I won’t be an easy pushover any longer. I’m the Warlock Lord, and I’m at your service.”

When the name left his lips, he felt the space between reality and the eldritch rub strangely against each other. Dark tidings whispered from one side to the other. Wretched magic oozed around his body as the shape of his path became something uncanny.

When he looked into Casey’s eyes, he knew she could feel the strangeness of him. The monstrous nature of his transformation.

Perhaps there was a reason for them to worry. If he wasn’t evil, the Warlock Lord was certainly something… other.