“Get out.” The small hut should have shuddered under the slightest touch, with its thin walls and poor materials, but it didn’t so much as flinch as the witch smmed her door.

  Akakios clicked their tongue, annoyed. He called into the hut, “She doesn’t know we’re here. I promise.”

  The witch opened the door, squinting at the demon behind her small, copper spectacles. The scrunch of her nose revealed green stains where the gsses usually sat. “Why not?” she asked, scrupulously.

  “Because we aren’t here for her.”

  She pursed her lips. Her face was lead-white, like a British Monarch or a concubine from that light novel with the poison-loving autistic1.

  Despite the white cast, the pink beneath was able to push through, splotching rge swaths of her skin. Her hair, which included her eyeshes and eyebrows, was stark white as well. His first guess was Alexandria’s Genesis, which was a deep pull and completely useless considering it was a Tumblr hoax, not a fantasy element.

  She was albino, obviously. He could see Red 40 irises in the thin slit between her scrunched eyelids. They were too red, but of course, it was a fantasy world. Perhaps the typical presentation of physical traits was different here. Or maybe she just put red dye in her eyes.

  One thing that was consistent to her condition was the movement of those eyes. They must have disrupted her vision with their sporadic dance, not that her sight would be any good in stillness. Albinism was hand-in-hand with blindness. He’d known a girl back at his high school with the condition, and she carried the very cane you’d probably imagine.

  This woman, however, kept a wooden staff clutched to her side, which was decorated with copper ivy already oxidizing with age.

  Akakios ignored her suspicion of him, stating simply, “I’m here to buy herbs.”

  “You have coin?”

  “No.”

  “What do you have, then?”

  The demon just held up a velvet pouch, its contents pungent even sealed within. Mars hated the odor, which reminded him of those hippy crystal shops den with appropriated dreamcatchers and white sage. His sister used to drag him to those pces, loudly and oh-so dramatically exciming how the “amatharist” was going to “bind her chakras” with the “qi” from her “starseed soul,” as she held a chunk of machite.

  They would get terrible stares from the clients, and Mars would want to shrink into a hole and die. “I’m leaving,” he would tell her, but she’d cling to his arm, forcing him to stay.

  “But you need to replenish your divine feminine energy. Here,” she would counter, with the shit-eatingest grin, grabbing a tuft of something dubious and swirling it around her brother’s head in a mocking imitation of “magic.”

  “Last thing I need,” he’d grumble, finally escaping from her hold and bolting out of the store. She’d chase after him, that questionable herb or something or other still in her grasp, giggling.

  “Come back here!” she’d squeal, not even bothering to pay for the thing. She wouldn’t go that far. A few steps from the front of the store she’d ugh loudly once more, call him a boring loser, and march back inside to deposit the bullshit she’d taken wherever she saw fit.

  Somehow, the worst part was still how bad those stores smelled.

  Whatever was wafting that disgusting fragrance must have been valuable, as the woman finally acquiesced, widening the door enough to walk through and ushering them inside. “Come in, come in.”

  “What was that about?” Mars asked.

  “Just retionship drama.” That meant Akakios wasn’t going to tell him. His most annoying trait, besides the murder and torture, had to be his insistence on respecting his underlings’ privacy. Mars had so little entertainment in the headspace. He just wanted a little tea to pass the time.

  “Shoes at the door, if you don’t mind,” the witch called, already stooping before a hoard of potion ingredients, snagging one or two as she found them. A few mice rushed out of the pile, carrying their own spoils from that treasure trove of herbs and powders. One was covered in what Mars hoped was only turmeric or something equally benign, for the mouse’s sake. It was akin to a Cheeto Puff as it scurried across the rotten wood floors.

  Akakios complied with the shoe order, his naked dogs slipping from the comfort of those expertly embroidered silk slippers. Why he wore those to trudge through a mortal forest, Mars did not know. He did know that they didn’t have a spec of dirt on them despite the trek. Likely, they were charmed. It still seemed quite the hassle.

  Large, calloused feet hit the reedy mat atop her floor. His big toes curled awkwardly to the smaller ones, and a thick jut of bone at the base of the digit carried that dispcement. They were almost talon-like in their weird, sinewy make up, even as they remained entirely human. There were copious drawings of the vilin’s feet on different fan sights. Even with Mars’ disgust for the appendage, most fetishes were hard to escape the deeper you tread into the fandom. He couldn’t say how accurate the art was, as he desperately tried to expel kinks he didn’t have from his very precious memory. All he knew is that those funky little dogs would drive some fans crazy.

  Akakios’ hands matched that uncanny fvor. They were long, boney, and veiny, with strange curves like they’d been broken and healed wrong. It was like his hands and feet were fighting their human mold, marring his otherwise ethereally perfect features. As Mars thought way too much about dogs and digits, the demon approached the witch.

  “I’m assuming wolfsbane?” she said, not even turning around.

  “Fair assumption. I’ll also need dried hawkeye powder, moon-doused rosemary, ruby dust..” The demon gave a hefty order, but it seemed the pouch would more than cover it. When he was done with the list, she raised a brow as if to ask for more, but he just shook his head. “That’s all I need.”

  “You came in person for this?”

  “I have other business in town.”

  That other business came crashing down outside. Mars was convinced the flimsy hut was magic, as it withstood the explosion that hit the woman’s doorstep. She instantly turned on Akakios.

  “WHAT DID YOU DO!?”

  Akakios just smiled, while she sshed the air with her staff, magically donning her a long, white mask in the process. Her peasants clothes switched to clean, stark white robes. The human could imagine a grotesque magical-girl sequence that was too fast for his body’s eyes, however sharp they may be.

  The mask was a pgue doctor’s mask, but rather than mimicking a bird’s beak, it was distinctly in the shape of a rat’s long snout. It was white as the rest of her clothes, as white as her hair and skin. Two rounded fps stood up on its edge, right atop her head, further alluding to the rodent demon beneath. The only color were copper buttons and fixtures and the red-tinted gss where her eyes would be.

  Mars knew that mask, knew those clothes, knew that woman. He had seen her in so many drawings on so many Tumblr posts and stolen Pinterest pins and Instagram posts and Twitter posts (before the muskrat ruined the ptform and the human deleted his account).

  That was Dr. Myscus, the Pgue Queen, and the most popur female character in the fandom. He should have known before. How many albino witches with a hoard of mice would know Akakios? But the mouse demon wasn’t supposed to be here, on the mortal pne, in a vilge just outside of her lord demon’s domain. This isn’t how the novel went.

  Mars believed M.X. Brady owed him compensation.

  I believe that Mars didn’t understand the whole situation yet and maybe should wait a moment before asking a poor writer for money. I mean, he read the story for free anyway. And it’s not M.X. Brady’s fault the world was different. The author was clearly doing their best to describe the one specific iteration of the world and every butterfly fps its wings things will change. You can’t bme Brady for that! You can keep insulting the book’s fixation on worldbuilding over character depth and writing craft. I will give you that. But have you considered that the writer didn’t have access to the character’s inner thoughts at the time??? Maybe after Brady’s promotion to a different institute they could start focusing on characters and plot, not just world building! Okay!???? OKAY!???

  Anyway, the Mouse Demon was geared up for attack as her lord leisurely strolled to the door. One hand tucked in a fold of his robes, casually. He opened the door to a rge, steaming crater right in front of the witch’s hut.

  “Sir Gavin, you’re early. I thought I’d have to stall for another five minutes.”

  The most handsome man Mars had ever seen, and Mars had seen Akakios, floated out of the crater, about 20 feet in the air if you included the hole. His dark eyes were fixed right on the demon lord, leaking golden light.

  “Where. Is. Lars?”

  “Lars?” Akakios asked in confusion. Gavin’s anger deepened, and the demon’s headmate was terrified they’d both be pulverized. How did he get so powerful at this point in the story? M.X. Brady definitely owed him money. (No, he doesn’t!) When the demon lord was satisfied with the hero’s anger, he dramatically “realized” something… “oh! Lars! I thought you wanted Mars. I didn’t know what you wanted to do with the poor soul, or how you’d met him, but I wasn’t thinking too hard. You wanted Lars? Shame, I only brought the one.”

  Akakios and Mars were going to die, Mars for the second time. The human knew his demon was powerful, but the power that radiated around the hero would outcss anyone in this world, he was sure of it. At least this time, he had a few seconds to prepare. The human could pray to the Catholic god he didn’t believe in, or maybe pray to the System, right before he went.

  The Pgue Queen pushed past her lord and approached the edge of the crater. “Did that piece of scum call you here?” she asked, almost growling.

  “I needed a safe pce to meet for our trade, yes,” Akakios confirmed, shamelessly.

  Maybe Dr. Myscus was going to kill them.

  “Akakios, what is wrong with you!?” Mars asked. He didn’t want enemies. He didn’t want enemies this powerful. He didn’t want to be sharing a body with enemies this powerful.

  “Don’t worry. We’re safe in the hut.”

  The hut so flimsy and old it was rotten, that held up to such a massive explosion. Oh, that made a lot of sense. The human wasn’t stupid, necessarily. He could connect these dots. Akakios had not come here for the herbs. Or, at least, they were a secondary mission. He had lured the hero out with a trade deal–promising to give him his friend in exchange for something–only to come to the meeting spot empty handed. Knowing the hero was so powerful, he had used the mouse demon’s hut as a shield.

  “And if the Pgue Queen decides to attack us instead?”

  “She won’t.”

  “How do you know!?”

  “Trust me, she won’t.”

  Mars didn’t know how much trust he pced in a lying, scheming, murderous, ethically unchecked demon lord/mad scientist with recklessly impulsive tendencies who held the future of Mar’s soul in the palm of his hand… but he held the future of Mar’s soul in the palm of his hand. There wasn’t much the human could do.

  “You’re a terrible headmate,” Mar said, not meaning for it to slip in their shared space.

  The demon ughed out loud, surprising no one on the scene. “Oh, my dear Mars,” he muttered. “I could be so much worse.”

  Then, he threw something at the floating hero, and Gavin’s body went limp, dropping to the ground below.

  ~~ 1. The Apothecary Diaries by Natsu Hyuga

  Author's note: If you enjoyed, please tell me what you think! I continue to live for comments <3