A musty, dirt smell assaulted my senses when consciousness first began to return to me. It was the first thing I noticed at least, and maybe the unpleasant smell is what awoke me. The second sensation was pain. Not horrible pain but a dull ache all over my body. Like maybe I fell down the stairs. That's when I remember that I had fallen, but not down a flight of stairs. It had been off a spider. A big, hairy green one with about a hundred eyes.

  I groaned and attempted to pull my arm out from under my body but everything was sore. I thought I was too sore to get up until even more memories flashed behind my eyelids: Roran, his crazy ramblings, and the odd hole in the side of the boulder he had shoved me through. Panicking, I forced my hands under me and lifted, opening my dry, caked eyes.

  "Oh, shit..." I croaked to the empty air. I was not in Kansas anymore. Well, not in a dungeon in the kingdom of Larasta at least. Where I was now, I had no clue, but it was bad. Very, very bad. "No..." I instinctively made to jump up but winced and fell back to the ground.

  And what a ground it was. Dry and cracked, purplish grey packed earth as far as my eyes could see. An oddly colored barren waste land with no end it seemed. What the actual, hell? And why was I naked? Again!

  I wrapped my arms around my exposed breasts and shivered. The air was dry as a bone and I could tell my lips were already dry and chapped from my dirt nap. A cool breeze blew almost constantly, like a chilly sigh, causing small purple-ish dust clouds to shift across the land. I glanced around myself, some how expecting to see a bag with cloths in it like the first time I awoke in a strange new place.

  I saw no convenient bag, but about four feet away there was a small, dark leather, book. My grimoire! Wincing, I crawled forward and snatched it up to my chest. It was the only familiar thing I had right now.

  "Alright Sin, get up." I told myself in a quiet whisper. It felt better to speak out loud.

  I was halfway to my feet when another bout of panic hit, making me jump up painfully. I ran my hands over my shoulders while checking the ground around me again. I groaned. It was a heart-breaking noise. Drogin was no where to be seen! I was so used to him being on my shoulder that I suddenly felt devastated to find that he wasn't there.

  Then I remember that he had been sleeping on Vendaval's back before I went to go find Roran. That sneaky, backstabbing, nut case! I was going to beat him within an inch of his life the next time I saw the bastard. If I saw him again. I remembered then, that as I was being thrown into what must have been some sort of portal that he had conjured, I had torn off his arm with my tail.

  I lifted the appendage in question and ran my hands over its long, thin, whip like length, careful of my sharp scales. No blood. Surly, if I had just sawn a man's arm off with it there should be blood. Even if it had dried out in the time I had been passed out here in these dead lands, there should still be blood.

  I shook my head and put that issue off for another time. I had to see if my tames were alright. I closed my eyes and tried to feal for them. Normally I could sense them in some form or another. We shared a blood bonded contract after all. Nothing. Terrified I tore open the grimoire and flipped through the pages. I sighed in relief when I saw the two spell circles written in blood and both labelled with a name. Had they of died, the contracts would have disappeared from the book.

  Still shaking, I placed a hand on Vendaval's seal and said, "Come, Vendaval." Nothing. Not a damn thing. I shivered, slammed the book shut and screamed, fighting back tears. Why could I not summon them? It should have been costly, mana wise, but easily doable! But I didn't even feel a single drop in my mana levels. A horrific thought, that I couldn't use magic anymore, crossed my mind and I felt dizzy.

  I flipped my left hand over and using the right one, still clutching the small grimoire, I waved it over the left hand. I breathed a sigh of relief when my status chart appeared in a pale, blue-white light. Okay, so magic still worked. At least some of it. I glared at my numbers. I was way over due for another assessment at the guild to get them updated but that would have to wait even longer now. I was sure my power rating and such should be at least a little higher than my last assessment.

  I was about to put my hand down when a number caught my eye. I glared at it for a solid minute, confused. Mana Pool: 100,000.

  No, that couldn't be right. I had a debuff that made my number more like 20,000. It was an insanely high number of course but it was not 100,000. Irritated I scanned down lower on the list to where my abilities and status effects were listed. My eyes passed over the twenty five percent increase in fire and poison resistance and several others till I reached the end where it usually said: Mana Pool -80%, magical attack -80%. There was nothing.

  My eyes darted back to my numbers, and I sought out my magical attack stat which, normally, said 30. Now it said: Magical Attack 150.

  My debuffs were gone. The debuffs that demons received by being in the realm of Hearth, were now missing. I was at full strength. I didn't know much about my race, the demons. There wasn't much known about them as the only contact the other races had with the demons was that of summoned demons and the were just puppets with no ability to speak. The few demons that were on Hearth freely, didn't really speak about the demon world. That or no one bothered to ask. Either way, it made it very hard for me to know anything about the race I had reincarnated into.

  I did know that demons who came to Hearth received an 80% debuff to their mana pool and magical attack stats. I also knew that demons came to Hearth, but nothing went to the demon realm. Nothing. I had read that you could make portals there, but nothing could make it through. If it didn't belong to the demon realm, then it couldn't go to the demon realm. I looked again at my naked body and noted that there were no cloths on the ground, even the human blood that had been on my tail was gone as if it had never been there. Ad that to the fact that I could not summon my monsters...

  "Roran you little shit!" I screamed out into the universe.

  Hell! I was literally in hell. Well, the demon realm, and- for all intents and purposes- was Hell. I had no cloths because they were not from the realm. My monsters could not be summoned here because they were not Demon Realm monsters. That rat bastard Priest had shoved me through a portal to the demon realm.

  I could remember Vale, red faced and furious, pounding on an invisible barrier as I was sucked back into the portal. He wasn't part of this world so he couldn't get through either. Damn it, how did I get back? There must be a way. There were at least some uncontracted demons on Hearth. I had heard about one acting as one of the queens' guards on several occasions. So there had to be a way to get back.

  I needed to find a town. Surly demons had those right? I needed to find people and ask them how to get back. How to get back as soon as possible! Poor Drogin and Vendaval! They must be going nuts with me being gone like that. Would they be alright? I hoped someone looked after them.

  I hugged my grimoire close again, shivered, and steeled my resolve. I needed to get home and standing here was not going to get it done. I took another look around. Everything was pretty much the same shade of purple grey: the dirt and the thick cloud cover up above. I couldn't even tell what time it was as I couldn't see the sun and the color was sort of like the snow in winter. It made it so that, even if it was dark outside, you could see well so long as there was some light.

  I cursed and instead scanned the horizon. Maybe I could find a landmark? I thought it was just clouds for a full three-sixty degrees till I noticed a smudge. Had not clue the direction but it was the only thing I had to go with, so I began to walk. I locked my eyes on the smudge and willed it closer, faster.

  I must have been walking for about an hour or two when I realized that I was starving. I could have sworn I had had at least a little to eat before I got thrust here. After all, Vale had been harping on my lack of eating hard and made sure I ate at least something. But, of course, that was Hearth food, wasn't it? Apparently even the food in my belly wasn't exempt from the rules.

  As I walked, head bent and stumbling with thirst and hunger, I saw that there were a few things in the parched earth. Normal stuff like stones and twigs from time to time, yes. But I once stopped and picked up an odd shaped rock, and found that it was an arrow head. I saw a scrap of cloth blow by once too.

  For hours I trudged on till time stopped registering. Fatigue, starvation, and dehydration weighed me down, made it hard to think anything other than 'one more step'. So, when pain laced up my leg I was caught completely by surprise.

  I screamed- or at least tried to but all that came out was a dry croak- and my eyes came into focus. My foot was bleeding. The crimson blood looked so odd on the purple earth. I shook my head. I needed to focus. That's when it occurred to me that it wasn't just red blood, a dirty foot, and purple packed earth that I was looking at. There were things on the ground. Startled, I looked up and nearly froze in shock.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The ground was littered with bones. Bones, chunks of metal and chain armor, I saw battered helmets and broken spears scattered around. My breath caught and I spun in a circle. Stretching out in front of me as well as to the left and right were the ancient corpses of thousands of people. Behind me the purple wastes stretched mostly empty. I had passed a good twenty feet of death before what ever I had stepped on had broken through my daze.

  At my feet was a helmet of dull and tarnished metal, and thrust through it and the horned skull within, was a spear. The wood of the shaft looked nearly rotted away, but it still stood. A short distance away something flapped in the wind. I took a few careful steps that way, not wanting to step on anything else sharp. It was a flag of some sort. A battle standard perhaps. And it was held to the ground by the broken hilt of a sword. Feeling a little like a desecrator, I lifted the thread bare fabric. It wasn't much but I tied it around myself like a towel, the dusty purple cloth barely covering my breasts and I was sure my ass was still mostly hanging out. But it was something.

  Fighting back the thirst I turned once again to my goal. Mountains, I thought they were now that I had gotten a little closer. Had this army died of hunger and thirst on their way there? No. you didn't get a spear through the skull from dehydration. I shook my head again, trying to clear it. I wasn't thinking right. I really needed to find food and water. I didn't know how long a demon could survive with out either, but I knew I wasn't going to be moving for much longer. How long had I been walking already? Days it must have been.

  Surly there would be food or at least water in the mountains right. Didn't mountains usually mean forests? And forests needed water. Also, animals lived in forests, and I could eat animals...

  I grunted and continued toward the shadows on the horizon. It didn't take long for my eyes to no longer see the corpses I walked amongst, nor for my feet to feal all the cuts. Just one foot in front of the other... just one more step.

  Loneliness, I decided. That was what was worst. Not the need for food and water but the sheer silence and sense of being alone. Just me and the corpses. How big had this army been? Didn't matter. I missed them: my new friends. I missed my monsters yes, but also, I missed stupid Vale and his over bearing suborn ass, and I missed Zach. I missed the pestering Captain Rift and his stoic brother Commander Rice... I never missed people before. Never had any to miss in my old life. No friends and no family to mourn me when I died, nearly three months ago now. I heard my somewhat manic giggle as I imagined the horror on some poor guys face at finding my own corpse on the side walk back on Earth. I bet it was a grizzly one. I was pretty sure I had gotten cut in half- lengthwise.

  I wasn't dead now, but would my new friends think I was? Either way there was nothing they could do even if they did want to come help me. Only I could help me now.

  I stumbled and fell again but picked myself up without a thought. I didn't even feel the fresh cut to my knee, nor the one oozing on my palm. I didn't feel much at the moment. Not even the hunger or the thirst. I continued to stumble forward toward the mountains. The sky stayed the same, the ground stayed the same and the mountains slowly got bigger.

  Up, I realized, some unknown amount of time later. I was going up. Stupidly I blinked at the purple earth, but it wasn't purple anymore. Now it was black. Black and glassy. Weird, I blinked again and wobbled from side to side, a hand flashing out to catch myself. When I didn't fall, I looked to the hand to see that I had caught myself on more black rock. It was the first thing I had saw that was above knee level in... I didn't know how long.

  Also, why was everything kind of red? I blinked again but the red tinge didn't clear, like I was wearing red tinted sunglasses. The clouds were still there, still purple, but now they were tinted red too. Annoying.

  Up. Yes, I was going up now. I felt odd, going up. And hard. Was it always this hard to go up?

  My breaths came out in pants and gasps, the sound so very harsh in all the silence around me. But up was good right? That meant I had reached the mountains, didn't it? And mountains meant trees, and trees meant water, and water meant animals! A spark, as feint as it was, of excitement had me lifting my head in hopes of seeing the forest that was absolutely supposed to be here. There was no doubt it was here. It had to be here.

  Rocks. So very many black and glassy rocks all the way up, up, up. I noted dully that there was still purple earth, but now it was looser and gravely with black and purple stones than it was the dry packed earth of before. Maybe, when I got to the top and looked down the other side, I would see the forest. Yes, that had to be right. It had to be right.

  I was using my hands and arms as much to move up the side of the mountain now as I was my battered feet. It wasn't that the slope was particularly steep, I was just that exhausted. Had I still of been human I would have died by now; I had no doubt. I had no clear judge of time but if pressed I would say at least five days since I found myself in the demon realm. Probably more though. I wasn't exactly thinking straight now, the thought of finding food and water only helping very little to clear my thoughts.

  Something on the barely-there wind caught my sense of smell and I growled. Was that my stomach? No, I was pretty sure it was me not my belly. The red in my eyes got deeper and I felt myself speed up ever so slightly. I was sweating. That can't have been good, I didn't really have the water in my body for that after all. But the smell was pushing me forward, reason had left me, and I was running on instinct. Even thought had completely gone. I was nothing more than an animal now. The red in my eyes now so intense that I could tell that they were actually glowing. Their light reflected off the black glass stone.

  Eventually even that bare amount of awareness left me, and I just continued forward. Nothing more than a wild beast on the hunt.

  Rougier lifted his head up from his crossed paws. What was this? Another animal was crossing his path. That was three in less than that many days. He had eaten the mountain elk the moment it had been fool enough to enter his domain, but the boar that came by earlier that day he had just killed and put aside. He would either need to eat it soon or cook it and eat it tomorrow. Raw was best, but it maybe smart to save it for a little later.

  Still, a third meal was quite a surprise. When was the last time so many creatures had stumbled his way all at once. He couldn't even remember. So maybe he would eat the boar and then roast what ever was scrabbling his way now. What ever it was it was not very large, judging by the sounds it was making. Maybe a hundred pounds. Hardly a mouthful.

  Rougier kept his immense body as still as possible. His kind were not earth-bound ambush hunters but over the ages he had had to adapt. Silence was his best friend, especially in these ever-quiet mountains that were his prison. As he waited for the creature to come, he contemplated what it could be. The scent of the boar kill was still strong and so he could only assume it was some kind of scavenger. Any herd beast would have bolted at the scent of blood.

  The sliding of rocks alerted him that his prey was nearly upon him. What caused him some confusion was the direction the creature was coming from: the north side of the mountain. Nothing came from that side because there was nothing there. Nothing but bones and poisoned earth that was. Maybe a creature had gotten lost and wound up over there and was coming this way to get back to the south?

  Didn't really matter. It was about to be a snack.

  Rougier was nearly startled into moving when the creature stumbled to the top of his mountain and fairly fell out from behind a rock. A demon? Here? It was painfully thin with only a strip of cloth wrapped around it to keep out the chill. It had a long dark mane of red-black hair and its skin was pale under the purple dirt it was crusted in, a whip like tail dragging in the gravel behind it. Where were its horns? Ah there they were, tiny little things they were too.

  The demon creature growled, a deep and dangerous sound that mad even his blood run cold. He knew that sound after all. He had heard it several times back when he was lashed to this mountain top. The demon, a female he now understood, stumbled forward, its face lifting and he watched as she sniffed the air. He did not know much about the workings of demons, but he did know that a female with a growl like that and eyes that glowed crimson was very bad news.

  Abandoning his attempt at hiding, Rougier shifted and got to his massive full height. His shoulder was easily three times as high as the woman, his neck adding another thirteen feet on top of that, so that his pointed head was a good twenty-two or twenty three feet above her own. The woman did not flinch nor did she back away. She simply glared and salivated, growling all the while.

  No way was this creature alone, was it? But she must be. Rougier knew enough to know that a Queen was never left to get into such a state. Never. He should eat her before she regained any of her wits and killed him. He was weakened as well after all. Long ages have gone by since he last fought five of these creatures, all at full strength. They had bound him to the mountain in the end, unable to end his life, and he had eaten four of them.

  The demon queen growled again. But she wasn't making a move. Why? She was clearly in a state of mindlessness brought on from neglect. She was skin an bones and smelt of fatigue and sick ness. Smelt of a creature near death. But she did not pounce. Did not cast any spells upon him even.

  That when he realized that the female was intentionally holding herself back. One hand held a book, something he hadn't even noticed she held till that point, but the other arm was across her body, gripping her own arm with such force that her black claws were drawing blood. She was half hunched, teeth bared and snarling but her feet were parted and firmly planted. She was ignoring her instinct to attack and preventing herself from moving by sheer force of will. He saw tears make dirty streaks down her cheeks and she whimpered between growls.

  Cautiously, not making any swift movements, Rougier reached behind himself with his neck. It was a risk to take his eyes off the threat, but he did it anyway. He slowly swung his head back around toward the female, this time he had the large boar held in his fanged jaws. Slowly, not taking his eyes off the demon, he set the carcass down at the woman's feet.

  "Eat." He rumbled in the demon language. Not many dragons bothered to learn the tongues of others, but he had. It had amused him to taunt his prey and the effect was much better when the prey knew what you were saying.

  The demon queen wasted to time and launched herself on the meat, tearing into it in a fashion befitting a dragon rather than the two legged she was. He did not begrudge her that, however. Starvation was not a pleasant experience.

  He watched over the next hour as she devoured the meat. Eventually she slowed and then stopped. When she got to her feet her stomach was visibly filled in sharp contrast to the ribs he could see. She wobbled, then he heard a mumbled "Scuro." And tensed when a spell circle appeared beneath the female. But it appeared to be a cleansing spell as the gore on her flesh and improvised cloths fell away. She then stumbled forward. Rougier raised his head, ready to strike if she showed even a hint of aggression. She shuffled forward then collapsed against the hard, deep purple scales of his side, slid to the ground, and curled into a ball, promptly falling asleep.

  He pushed his head forward and scented the woman. She was asleep. Asleep and crying. Rougier sneezed once before lifting his head and draping it across his paws once again.