Clancy was in the living room lazing around because today was one of his rare days off when he wasn’t on the job either heading into or out of the monochrome or prepping for another task for the foundation.

Naturally Anne was there too, of course she was, with her hikikomori tendencies, where else would she be.

She was working, clacking at the keys of the laptop that sat in front of her. As often happened when both of them were in the house, they’d somehow ended up in the same room.

So she was in the living room too.

The day had been one of those days where it felt like it was going to rain. An unnatural humid day, hot and sticky. Where the air was filled with this sort of pressure that built and built, but never made good on the threat.

It was the kind of day that the two of them hated the most, the kind of day that was quite common, in a certain hellish monochrome world that they’d once been cast into as part of Clancy’s father’s endeavor to make something that was more than human.

On days like these their tendency to gravitate towards one another would grow even more severe. Severe enough, that at the moment, the two of them were not only sitting in the same room, but were in fact sitting atop one another.

Not so much sharing the couch that they were sitting on, as they were quietly fighting over it. Slowly invading each other’s space till finally Anne sat sideways with her laptop balanced over her knees and her legs slung over Clancy’s lap and Clancy was just sort leaning into her shoulder. Using her slightly bony frame to keep himself upright.

It was uncomfortable, but the kind of okay uncomfortable that holds it own unique sort of acceptability. Like when one is tired and is sitting on something with sharp angles but still can’t be bothered to get up. Laziness and an understanding that in time whatever might be lying beneath one’s posterior will soon be pushed within the cushions, leading to one’s just putting up with the situation.

Till eventually you’re just sort of used to it.

Despite being quite literally on top of one another the two barely seemed to acknowledge each other’s presence.

Anne continued with her work, snacking on candy sticks because she was one of those who adhered to the idea of sugar as a brain food.

Clancy just dozed not really paying any mind to the stoner comedy on the screen. Trying not to think about all the pre-mission prep-work he could be doing if he could be arsed to get up from where he was doing.

Trying not to worry about whether or not he and Anne would be able to squeak by one this month’s expenses with what they already had in their account, or they’d end up having to play catch up during the following week.

Trying not to think about a lot of things because sometimes it was just nice not to have to think about things.

At some point he fell asleep. His eyelids growing heavier and heavier. The nonsensical plot of the movie becoming increasingly unimportant.

For a brief moment he slipped into unconsciousness, then…. something... tugged on his mind and he slipped past that into a realm of nightmares and noise and fire.

Sleep, became something else entirely as reality was skewed into the very worst version of itself.

For roughly five minutes it felt like was falling through a dark space. The kind of dark where your eyes started making up colors and things to see because human brains just weren’t programmed to have such an utter lack of stimulation.

The kind of dark where he could feel things moving just out of sight. The oppressive black nothingness, washing over him, like it was water in a pool and something big had just dived in.

People might say that they’ve been through hell, and thanks to the Monochrome, there was a one in one thousand chance that this was meant literally.

There were roughly 36,203 known “hell dimensions”, dreadful, inhospitable worlds, that as far as their few surviving explorers could report, seemed to have been born from the very worst possibilities for existence and being in the universe.

As a counterpart there were only 12 known “heaven dimensions”, or paradisios, worlds that there seemed to be perfect, made from the very best possibilities for existence and being in the universe.

Naturally all but one of the heaven dimension were all but impossible to get into, while all the hells were almost went out of their way to trap new denizens. Some of the hells could be entered by just knowing too much about them.

Since both the heavens and the hells were both bizarre, mystery places with grand and old magics, and since it was easier to enter hell then heaven, it was just a matter of course for Clancy’s old man to make sure his kids visit at least a few of them, for the sake seeing if they could help them on their path to godhood, even if it happened to be a “dark” godhood.

The same nonsensical reasoning that was likely involved in the man’s earlier attempts to toughen his young son by habitually abandoning him in some of the worst environs and wretched hives.

Such endeavours usually resulting in his having to rescue and then fix and then partially mind wipe, the broken remains of his son.

A practice started from the time he was five and lasted till the time he was nine. Ending shortly before Anne came into the picture because perverse as it was the man got what he wanted, a boy that was all sharp corners, and “tough” enough not to die or fall prey, if you left him in some of the worst places one could abandon a child.

The point being that Clancy Ambrose was a man who knew what hell looked like, in both its literal and figurative forms.

He knew the exact moment that his dreams stopped being dreams, and became something else entirely.

And he knew when that something else transitioned, to a less fantastical sort of terribleness.

Riding it all out like someone who’d ended up sitting in the one strapless seat on a rollercoaster, hanging on for dear life.

Clancy awoke, feeling a panic on the outer edge of his mind. He could sense his sudden exit from the monochrome just as he’d sensed his sudden entrance into the monochrome.

Not knowing what to do, but sensing that following his first instinct might well lead to tragedy, especially in the case, that he was really still back in his home, next to Anne, he did nothing.

Literally freezing in place. Not even daring to breathe.

He counted to ten and only when he was sure that he was still under his own control, did he open his eyes to try and properly assess his situation.

*****

Clancy found himself in a 10 by 10 space. he figured it was some kind attic or garage, based on the mustiness of the surroundings and the general freshness of the air flowing through it.

The only light came from some half-melted candles that were arranged around him in a circle on the floor.

Each candle sat on a point of a star that was drawn in a circle the ground, a circle that Clancy was standing. A pentagram and ward of containment.

There was girl standing in the corner of the room, holding a book and candle, gazing at Clancy with guilty, frightened eyes.

She was chanting, never stopping, her words crisp sounding like clashing knives.

It took him a second but Clancy eventually recognized what it was she was chanting, even if he hadn’t heard his father chant similar words countless times, even if he hadn’t heard others use similar incantation...he still had a certain “friend’s” store of knowledge to draw upon.

A lavish gift given to him and Anne by an auspicious friend that he’d met on very inauspicious day. The one other person beside Anne and himself, responsible for the Clancy's current mostly healthy mental state.

The girl was speaking in a doggerel mixture basic Infernal and classical Akkadian. A tongue that was called by most, as Heretic’s Cant. The language for Demon Summoners and diabolist rituals.

At first Clancy had a hard time putting together what was happened and what had happened, then as her chanting continued, he felt something, a faint something. Like nails tapping against reinforced glass.

In Clancy’s case it was meter-thick reinforced glass, covered by miles of plate and concrete, a fortress of a mind.

One created by his father’s clumsy experimentation and the assistance of Clancy’s aforementioned friend.

Clancy was slowly realizing that the tapping that he was hearing was actually the sound of a magical compliance command trying and failing to encapsulate his mind.

Someone was trying to take control of him. Trying to put chains around his mind so they could make him do their bidding.

Outraged, Clancy surged forwards, walking through a wall of dark mojo, ozone and incense. He grunted, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out. His eyes watering from the pain that came almost instantly. Which led to a numb sense of almost instantaneous regret.

Looking down at himself, and the amount blood that he was losing and looking up to see that he’d somehow managed to instantly cross the room, and get his hands around the girl’s neck, he realized that he was probably not as calm right now, as he’d wanted to be.

If he had been calmer, he would have cast a counterspell to break the containment ward he’d been standing in, instead of just walking through it and letting the backlash peel half the flesh of his torso away. Removing most of the skin of his upper body and arms, leaving a good portion of his ribcage and the connective that held his insides “inside”, exposed to the open air.

As for grabbing the girl by the neck, that might have gone either way. This wasn’t the first time, Clancy had found himself being randomly summoned.

He was an existence that was more than a little “demonic” in nature. A demon that was technically free from its “master”. Thus his name or some otherworldly variation of it, would occasionally pop up in books of eldritch creatures and diabolic rituals.

The same went for Anne, but their linked nature, and Clancy’s tendency to take on the more troublesome parts of their state whenever possible, meant that it was a Mister and Missus thing.

Summoning her, meant he’d show up instead.

In any case, it was always a right inconvenience when such things happened especially when it was to other worlds, or alternate realities within the monochrome.

And like most actually demons or anyone else who suddenly found themselves, uprooted from their homes and daily routines and brought down into someone’s creepy basement for errands, Clancy tended to get ornery once summoned.

As always the first instincts were homicidal ones but Clancy knew not to listen to those. It was actually quite easy since they seemed to come with the same force and insistence as Clancy’s endless desire for sex.

The same self-discipline that let him go through life without trying to hump everything that moved, also keeping him killing everything that looked at him funny.

Not minding that his summoner seemed to be turning blue, her feet flailing, kicking out ineffectually, as he kept her pinned to the wall, Clancy calmed himself a second time. Making sure to do a proper job of it this time.

A breath went in, a breath went out, and in the meantime Clancy’s flesh began to crawl, blood and tissue oozing back up over his torso. Covering the parts where his bones were exposed and sewing him back together.

“.....”

Clancy dropped the girl letting her stand on her own feet again, before she dropped to all fours, unable to stay upright.

“*Gasp*!”

She gasped and coughed. Choking as she tried to draw as much air into her oxygen starved lungs as was humanly possible. Clancy watched her, glaring. While he quietly cast several spells to break up the remainder of her ritual, and wipe away the otherworldly air within the small room lest some other entity pop up and crawl through the hole the girl’s spell had made in the fabric of reality.

“Okay….First off….Who are you?”