“So this is the place?” Rita asked, looking up at a three-story magestone building built right up against the smooth stone road. The rhythmic clanging of a blacksmith working steel echoed between the buildings from somewhere not too far away.

Most roads in Grailmane varied between narrow and claustrophobic, with plenty of back streets and alleys criss-crossing between them, some of which were dead ends. This particular street was more narrow than claustrophobic, but there were no sidewalks. The buildings pressed right to the edge of the roads, which meant pedestrians were forced to weave between the regular carts passing through.

The apartments and houses she could see seemed small from her vantage point, but the area lacked the general air of despondency that Rita associated with truly crummy neighbourhoods. It wasn’t an affluent area by any means, but hardly a slum. Likely an area populated by various craftsmen and others plying one of the innumerable trades that kept a city the size of Grailmane functioning.

“According to Gora’s note, yes. This should be it,” Samual replied, scowling down at the scrap of paper in his hand. He’d dug up a sword and a full suit of chainmail from somewhere among the mess that were the various storage rooms of his home, as well as a number of knives now adorning his belt. Krutus’s temple appeared to possess no shortage of weapons.

“You sure it’s not that one?” Rita asked again, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the nearly identical looking magestone apartment block across the road, behind her. There were, in fact, several such apartment blocks scattered along the road, interspersed with individual houses and businesses.

Samual grimaced. “No. Not completely.”

“Well, what does the note say?”

Samual wordlessly held out the paper for Rita to take.

Their trip through the city had been relatively uneventful. Samual’s copious number of weapons and clear familiarity with them had been enough to scare away most of the casual criminals looking for easy targets and a pointed stare had been enough to make the rest hurriedly get out of their way.

Sadly, children appeared to be immune to his implied threats of imminent violence. A couple of them had become fascinated by Rita after they’d crossed into the outskirts of the district and started following them.

At first, they kept their distance, but as time wore on, they got ever braver and came ever closer. Rita’d clutched her backpack with her money close, but the worst the little brats did was sneak up and poke her in the back of the abdomen when she wasn’t looking, before running away, giggling. Eventually, even Samual had gotten so fed-up with them that he’d drawn his sword on them and threatened to skin them if they came close again. From then on, they’d kept their distance, doing little more than point, laugh and whisper amongst themselves.

It was a good reminder to Rita why she never wanted kids.

“This is Market-Abutt Road?” Rita asked, carefully studying the note that Samual had passed her. Then she did a double-take. “Wait, seriously? ‘Market-a-butt?’ Is this some kind of joke?”

“It means ‘next to Market Road’,” Samual explained curtly. “And yes. Market Road is the next one over.”

“Still a damn silly name,” Rita muttered. trying to count the number of stone apartment buildings from the end of the road. “’Third stone apartment block down’,” she read, “that means either this one or this one, depending on which side of the road she meant.”

It seemed that the concept of each house having their own number had never occurred to anyone involved in city planning, if Grailmane indeed even had had such a thing. Rita suspected not.

Instead, people gave directions by counting houses, or apartments, or porches or whatever else they felt like from the beginning of the street or some other landmark. It was a horrible, chaotic, hodge-podge system that just made Rita realize how amazing and convenient Google Maps had been back home.

“But I think it’s this one,” she went on. “Look, it sticks out a little bit past the other, so it’s technically first.”

“Gora’s on the ground floor. We can check through the window to confirm,” Samual stated, setting off across the road and around a cart steadily trundling up the street.

“You can’t just look through people’s windows!” Rita protested, scrambling to go around the cart with her much larger footprint.

“Of course I can. They’re right there,” Samual replied simply.

“What about their privacy?”

“What about it?”

Rita sighed. Either Aer had different ideas about social conventions or Samual was just an ass.

No, scratch that, Samual was definitely an ass. Aer might just also have some different ideas about things like privacy. He was right, though. The note did say her apartment was on the ground floor.

The rooms of the building were not arranged like conventional apartment blocks Rita knew from Earth, which had a single entrance leading inside to all of the rooms, usually with some sort of corridor system connecting them. Instead, there were eight or so apartments along the bottom floor of the building, each with their own front door facing the street, and eight more doors squeezed in-between behind which was a stairway up to the apartments on the upper floors.

It all seemed horribly inefficient to Rita, but what did she know?

The first ground floor apartment’s windows were covered in the heavy drapes that seemed to indicate its occupants were asleep, and the second appeared to be empty, but at the third they struck it lucky.

The apartment was long, but comparatively narrow and not very big. It was completely open plan, revealing what appeared to be a stairway to an upper floor against the one side and a small kitchen area at the back. In front of it, the familiar, hulking, horned figure of Gora sat at a small wooden dining room table. Across from her, sipping at a cup of something, was a pasty-faced young man in a voluminous grey and blue robe.

Both of them looked up as Rita and Samual stuck their heads through the open window.

“Hey, Gora!” Rita shouted, waving with a broad smile on her face. It had been a few days and it was nice to see her friend again. She had precious few friends in this world, making her treasure the ones she did have all the more.

Gora herself also lit up with a smile. “Hey Rita! Glad to see you found the place. How was the trip? Any troubles?”

Rita leaned her elbows on the window frame. “Nah, just a couple of nosy kids.” She tapped her spear and grinned cheekily. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Beside her, Samual snorted.

“Good to see you again too, Samual,” Gora rumbled, extricating herself from her seat with surprising grace for someone so large. “This is my cousin, Timothy,” she said, gesturing at the awkward looking young man in the robe.

“Hey Timothy!” Rita greeted him with a wave, before holding her hand out to shake.

She’d been thankful to discover handshakes were a custom that were the same in Aer as back on Earth, at least among the human and humanoid races. There were a few more oddities when it came to some of the more esoteric ones.

“Hello,” Timothy greeted politely, coming over and shaking Rita’s hand awkwardly where she was still leaning through the window. “It’s nice to meet you, Rita. Gora told me about what happened on the road from Triskellion.”

Gora chuckled, a deep, rolling bass sound. “Yeah, just the cliff-notes version. Tim here’s the contract expert. He’s agreed to look into setting up a contract for a demon to take a look at your soul.”

Timothy scratched the back of his head awkwardly, blushing in embarrassment. “Shucks, not sure I’d call myself an expert, Gora.”

“Compared to me or her? You’re a gods-damn professional,” Gora cut back. “When we got here, this idiot tried to just walk up to a Pleasure Devil on a street corner, if you can imagine that.”

“Seriously?” Timothy laughed, making Rita frown. Why was that such a big deal?

“Yep. Had to drag her away,” Gora grinned, but before she could extrapolate, Samual poked his head through the window.

“Gora, can we come in? We’re rather exposed out here,” he asked curtly.

“Oh! Right! Let me open up for you guys,” Gora replied and headed for the door.

The moment Rita set foot inside Gora’s apartment, however, she realized something was wrong. Not with Gora, she was fine, still chatting animatedly about their arrival at the city, but the new guy. Er… Timothy.

He’d gone stock still, frozen to the spot, his eyes wide as saucers as he stared at Rita. Especially at her legs.

She glanced over to the window. Right. It came to a little above waist height and would have hidden her lower body from his sight, since he hadn’t actually stuck his head through. He wouldn’t have had any idea that her lower half was a little ‘unconventional’.

“Wait, I’m not a monster…” Rita tried to explain, but Timothy didn’t listen.

Instead he started screaming.

“Shit, Cuz, I forgot you had that whole ‘spider’ thing. Guess I should warned you about Rita…” Gora rumbled apologetically.

“Yes. Yes, you should have,” Timothy mumbled, sipping on a cup of hot tea as he did his best to look anywhere other than at Rita.

After Gora had peeled him off the top of the bookcase while Rita tried to make herself as small as possible in the opposite corner of the room, they’d finally brought him back to his senses by having Rita sit at the opposite side of the table from him with a blanket thrown over her thorax and abdomen.

As long as she kept her legs tucked away below the edge of the table and Timothy kept his head above the table, it seemed like he could function. Even if he did look like he’d just seen a ghost.

“But I don’t understand… how…?” he asked in a faint, wavering voice.

Gora gave Rita a look, and it took her a few moments before she realized the demoness was asking for permission to tell him. The gesture was oddly touching.

She nodded. If Gora trusted him, there no reason for her not to. “Yeah, go ahead. No reason to keep secrets from your family.”

“Yeah, but, you wanna tell it?”

Rita shook her head. “You know this stuff better than I do, Gora.”

“Right,” Gora replied. “Timothy, Rita’s a Nightmare Spawn.”

Timothy’s head snapped around to stare at Gora. “You mean those monsters that appear over near the Grailmane Tree?” He turned back to Rita. “I thought they just attacked people on sight.”

“Yes, generally, but just near the Tree,” Gora explained. “And obviously, Rita doesn’t. She’s, umm, house-broken.”

Rita gave her a filthy look. “What Gora means to say, is that unlike the other things in there, I’m not insane. I’m a person, just like you.”

“Does the Delver’s Guild know?” he asked in a low voice.

“Of course,” Gora responded. “They signed off on bringing her to the city.”

“But… why?” Timothy asked again. “No offense, Rita, but wouldn’t you have been happier to be left in your, erm, natural habitat?”

Rita’s goggled at him. “Are you joking? That place was a death trap! No way I ever want to go back there! I begged Gora to take me out with her!” She hadn’t really, but she would have if Gora hadn’t offered. If they hadn’t been planning on dragging her out and selling her to the Academy first!

“But… how?” he asked again. “How are you… like this?”

“Well,” Rita replied, fidgeting awkwardly, “it turns out I’m kinda… broken. And being broken for a Nightmare Spawn means I’m kinda not broken for here. Or something like that.”

“I meant the… umm…” He gestured vaguely downwards, going slightly pale at the thought.

Rita shrugged. “No idea. I woke up like this. Trust me, it was as much a scare for me as it was for you.”

Off to the side, Samual cleared his throat. “Could we move this along? We are here for a purpose, after all.”

“Sorry, right,” Timothy replied awkwardly and turned to Rita. “So, this contract is for you?”

She nodded. “Yes. As I said, I’m a bit broken. I have a, um, person in my head. It’s why I could resist attacking Gora and the others on sight in the Nightmare. Except she’s been injured and she isn’t waking up and I have no idea what to do.”

Timothy just stared at her blankly.

“What she means,” Gora interjected, “is that as a Nightmare Spawn, the doctor suggested she get her soul looked at by a professional. And as you know, that means a demon.”

“You do realize that having a demon root around in her soul is a very bad idea, right?” Timothy said, turning to Gora.

“But why?” Rita asked. “How dangerous are they, exactly?”

It wasn’t that she was completely oblivious. She knew demons were evil and bad and everything back on Earth, but there they’d been mythological. Here, they were real, and making assumptions based on the folklore of her old world seemed like a recipe for disaster.

“In short? Very,” Timothy said, looking oddly awkward about it. “They’re sadistic. They hurt people for fun. They’ll set fire to the world just to watch it burn. We deal with them, but we do so very carefully.”

Rita swallowed nervously. Okay, so maybe demons in this world weren’t so different from the ones in Earth folklore. Hell, maybe they were even the same demons that visited Earth at some point in the distant past?

“Unless you know anyone else who can fix a person’s soul, I don’t really have another option,” she explained. “Demons can do that, right?”

“Well… yes and no,” Timothy replied, sipping at his tea. “They can do it, technically, but they’re forbidden from doing so.”

“Forbidden?”

“Yes.” Timothy took a long drink from his tea. “Do you know what the ‘Grand Contract’ is?” When Rita shook her head, Timothy explained.

The Grand Contract, as far as she could tell, was a book. And also a constitution, of sorts. A fundamental set of laws that governed demon behavior in Grailmane. It dictated what they could and could not do, but also what could and could not be put into contracts.

“The Grand Contract forbids demons from tampering with souls any more than collecting their strictly controlled pay,” Timothy went on. “On the one hand, this protects people from being tricked out of their souls, but on the other, it prevents them from doing exactly what it is you need.”

“So I’m screwed,” Rita concluded, sighing.

“Not exactly,” Timothy replied. “Not many people know this, but you’re allowed to waive that protection. Only if you have a good reason, though. A reason that is explicitly more than just you wanting to pay more of your soul in fees. You do, so that’s fine. But you need to be aware that you’re still going to be waiving a protection that most contracts take for granted.

“The Grand Contract’s protection — at least as far as your soul is concerned — is binary. You either have it or you don’t. Waiving it means you are taking safeguarding your soul into your own hands through your own contract. Or rather, I am, on your behalf.”

Rita swallowed nervously. “And if you screw it up?”

Timothy shrugged. “Then the demon yanks your entire soul the moment you sign away your protection. And you die, if that wasn’t obvious, thereby rendering the contract null and void.”

Rita blew out a breath. That was a little riskier than she had thought it was going to be. She’d worried she might end up in debt or maybe a small chance of complications in whatever procedure she ended up needing to undergo, but it sounded like her doctor might end up killing her before it even began. Was this really a smart idea?

“But you’d be able to protect her, right?” Samual spoke up from the side. “You can keep Rita safe?”

The way Timothy squirmed under Samual’s icy gaze didn’t exactly fill Rita with confidence.

“Yes,” he replied. “Theoretically.”

“What do you mean ‘theoretically’?” Rita asked, narrowing her eyes.

Timothy licked his lips nervously. “Well, we studied soul protection clauses in my third year and I aced that section of the exam, so I can probably put something together that will keep you alive. But, in all honesty, I’ve only studied this stuff theoretically. This will be the first time I actually do it for real.”

"So you’re… a student?” Rita asked in a nervous voice. “Gora, you said you would find me an expert…”

“I said I’d find someone you can trust,” Gora cut in. “And you can trust my Cuz. He’ll do his best and won’t try to renegotiate the payment halfway through. That’s better than most Contract Mages, the skeevy fuckers. They’re almost worse than the demons.”

When the Doctor had told her she needed to speak to a demon, she’d thought they were just kinda like Gora. Grumpy, grouchy and maybe a tad violent on the outside, but sweet and squishy on the inside once you got past the prickly outer shell.

Turns out, if Timothy was right, they were instead violent and deceitful on the outside, and flat out malicious on the inside. Not the kind of being you want to give unfettered access to yoursoul.

“Timothy, not to doubt your abilities or anything, but I’m not so sure about this,” she said apologetically. “Nothing you’ve told me so far has done anything to put me at ease that this is in any way safe…”

“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Timothy exclaimed. “This is very much not safe! It’s dangerous as hell and my professional advice is to not go through with this.”

Rita sighed and hung her head. “Gora? I’m thinking maybe your cousin has a point. I want to help Alice, I really do, but this honestly sounds like a creative form of suicide. I think I’m going to have to look for another way.”

“At the end of the day, it’s your decision, Rita,” Gora said, shrugging. “I don’t even know what the deal is with this Alice-person you keep going on about. But, honestly, if you need your soul looked at, a demon is your only option. Not even god-botherers like Samual can perceive the Asom… Asomi…”

“Asomatous Essence,” Timothy supplied.

“Right. That stuff,” Gora continued, pointing at Timothy. “The essence your soul is made of. Not even Samual can see it. Only demons. Now, the only reason I’m helping you out here is because this seemed important to you, but if you want to call it quits, that’s fine too. I just want to make sure you’re making an informed decision.”

“Samual?” Rita asked. “Normally you’re dragging me away from anything that’s even remotely dangerous, but you’ve been oddly quiet on this.”

Samual stared silently at her for a few moments from where he was leaning against the wall. Rita couldn’t help but notice he could both watch everyone in the room and keep an eye on the door and stairway to the upper floor from where he was standing.

He shrugged. “This is your decision. Whatever you decide.”

Well, great. He was going to be of no use.

“Umm,” Timothy spoke up, half-raising his hand.

“Yes?” Rita asked.

“Technically, you don’t have to make the decision yet,” he said. “I can set up the contract and you can take a look first. And I can bring the demon here as well, so you can meet her first and see what her price would be. If she doesn’t flat out refuse the contract, though that is unlikely, I think.”

“’Her?’” Gora asked. “You have a specific demon in mind for this, Cuz?”

Timothy wasn’t sure when he’d made up his mind to bring in Ixxy for this, but he was committed now. Maybe it wasn’t smart to bring in a demon who’d possibly got inside his head that much, but he honestly didn’t feel up to wrangling any others right about now.

“Yes, it’s one I’ve contracted with before,” he said vaguely. “I wouldn’t call her ‘trustworthy’ exactly, but I’d feel more comfortable doing this with a demon I’ve worked with in the past, if that’s okay?”

“I guess so,” Rita piped up. “I mean, it doesn’t make much a difference to me. Whatever has the best chance of getting me through this in one piece and breathing, I suppose.”

“You’re the expert, Cuz,” Gora added. “I trust your judgement.”

Timothy took a deep breath. “Well then. Let’s summon us an Ixxy.”

High Inquisitor Patrus was doubtful.

“And you are sure you saw the spider-woman go into that house?” he asked, carefully pointing, wanting to be absolutely sure he was watching the right door.

“I told you, Mister, I saw her!” the boy with the filthy face insisted. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old. “We followed her from the other end of the district! Her bum looked like a spider, just like you said!”

“I ran up and touched it!” his little brother next to him giggled.

Patrus smiled to himself. Children were truly the blessing of Mitla, innocent and pure, but they were prone to exaggeration. When he’d offered them a few coins spending money to keep an eye out for a lady that looked like a spider, he hadn’t really been expecting much in the way of results. Surely a child would not succeed when the various spies, criminals and information brokers he’d slowly accrued in his time here had so far failed?

For a brief moment he considered simply chasing them off without payment. It would not be the first time the children had brought him misleading information. The first time, they had found a woman who owned a cloak made out of spiders, held together by the vile magics practiced in this place. Not the monstrous spider he had been looking for at all.

In the end, he relented. They truly were doing their best, and it would be unfair to deny them their due. Inwardly, he quietly decided not to make use of them again, however, if this lead also turned out to be false. It simply wasted too much time to follow up on every foolish lead they brought him.

The children’s eyes lit up when he took the coins out of the pouch at his waist and he tutted softly. Already this place was corrupting them with greed and avarice. Truly, this was the City of Sin.

“Alright, as promised. Coins if you won the game,” he said solemnly. Small hands greedily scooped up the coins.

“Hey mister, if you’re gonna kill the spider lady, can we watch?” the youngest asked, picking his nose.

Patrus blinked at him. Perhaps he’d overestimated the children’s innocence after all.