Theodore, true to his word as a merchant – and perhaps to maintain some semblance of customer service – did provide lodging. Calling it lodging felt generous, though. It was less a room, more a ship-adjacent box. Plank walls, plank floor, plank ceiling, all smelling faintly of pine and seawater, which the incense was valiantly, if futilely, trying to overcome. The ‘bed’ was a thin straw mattress that looked as if it had lost a fight with a particularly aggressive seabird. Minimalist chic, if your chic was shipwrecked and desperate.

  Stepping into this fragrant void, Faelyn did catch a whiff of something… not entirely unpleasant. “That’s… nice incense,” he commented to Theodore, managing to sound both polite and faintly surprised. “Trying to class up the… plank?”

  Theodore offered a strained smile, the kind that suggested incense was less about ambiance and more about desperate damage control. “Ah, yes, the incense! A necessary measure, you see. To… mitigate the robust maritime aroma. Many delicate sensibilities find the pure, unadulterated scent of the sea… challenging.” Delicate sensibilities on a merchant ship? Right. It was ship stink, pure and simple, and Theodore knew it.

  With a perfunctory, “Good night then, Faelyn,” Theodore beat a hasty retreat, leaving Faelyn to contemplate the aromatic and plank-filled reality of his situation. He did as expected and laid down on the questionable mattress. Laid being the operative word. Sleep was an aspiration, not a current plan. Eyes wide open, he stared at the low plank ceiling, pondering the life choices that had led him to this aromatic and undoubtedly haunted maritime cupboard.

  Time oozed by, thick and viscous as seawater. The ship groaned around him, a wooden symphony of creaks and sighs, punctuated by the rhythmic lullaby of waves and the wind’s whisper against the hull. An hour, maybe more, drifted past. The ship’s noises subtly shifted, a nocturnal rhythm settling in. Just as the thought, ‘Well, maybe this won’t be so bad after all,’ dared to flicker in his mind, the quiet was broken. A soft click, then a protesting groan of hinges. The plank door to his plank paradise was opening.

  Adrenaline, ever the eager participant in unexpected events, jolted Faelyn upright. He sprang from the questionable mattress, facing the open doorway. Framed against the dim light of the corridor stood… something. A demon. Standard issue, basic model, from the looks of it. Think stretched limbs ending in claws like badly whittled twigs. Skin like parchment stretched over too many angles. Its face was vaguely humanoid, if you squinted and tilted your head, but mostly it was just wrong. Eyes too large and black, mouth unhinged in a way that suggested it had taken anatomical advice from a snake. A basic demon, yes, but basic in the way a rusty cleaver is a basic weapon – still perfectly capable of ruining your day.

  And it was drooling. Profusely. Thick ropes of saliva swung from its jaw, each drop landing with a wet plop that echoed in the suddenly still cabin. Faelyn stared, a jolt of genuine, if fleeting, shock rippling through him. A grotesque monster, right here, right now, salivating like a dog at a butcher shop. He blinked once, then twice. Yup, still there.

  “I knew my luck was too good to be true,” Faelyn muttered, mostly to the pine planks around him. He sighed, a dry, weary sound. Of course. Why wouldn’t there be a demon? Why would anything be straightforward and pleasant? He took a slow breath, willing his heart to stop trying to escape his ribcage. Calm. Right. Calm was the plan.

  The demon, apparently mistaking his mutterings for dinner invitations, grinned. It was a truly unsettling sight, stretching its lips back to reveal rows of teeth that looked less like teeth and more like bone shards jammed into gums. “Hmm, food has woken up,” it rasped, voice like sandpaper gargling gravel. “No problem. I like eating the terrified ones the most. It tastes the most tender.” It sounded oddly like a food critic, albeit one with truly appalling taste.

  “You look familiar,” Faelyn said, his voice remarkably even, considering the situation. “Do you by any chance fear the sun?” He couldn’t help himself. It was either crack a joke or scream, and screaming felt less productive.

  Humor, as it turned out, was not in the basic demon’s programming. Its already unpleasant features contorted further, its black eyes narrowing to malevolent slits. Fury radiated off it in greasy waves. “Let’s hear you talking when I am chewing on your bones,” it snarled, the gravelly voice now laced with genuine malice. Bone chewing. Apparently, that was its comedic act.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Without further pleasantries, the demon attacked. A thick, pink tongue, impossibly long and bulbous at the end, shot out with alarming speed. It was blink-and-you-miss-it fast, like watching a fleshy blur aimed directly at his face. Except Faelyn didn’t miss it. He moved. Not through any heroic feat of agility, but through something more mundane, something he’d prepared. Before accepting Theodore’s generous… plank, Faelyn had spent a few minutes tinkering with his internal ‘skill creation system’ - a frankly ridiculous but occasionally useful perk of his strange existence. He’d whipped up a rudimentary ‘dodge’ skill, mostly on a whim. Turns out, whims could be lifesavers. Fueled by a sudden surge of adrenaline, the skill kicked in, amplifying his perception. Everything slowed. He sidestepped, almost languidly, and the tongue slammed into the wooden wall with a wet thwack, embedding itself deep in the pine. This wasn't blind luck, not chance. This was pre-emptive paranoia paying off. It was like that time running from those dogs – a primal zone, where everything slowed to a crawl and sudden superhuman reflexes became the norm. He still harbored a suspicion he’d briefly achieved Olympic sprinter speeds that day.

  The demon, however, was persistent. With a wet, sucking sound, it retracted its tongue and immediately launched it again, a fleshy pink projectile aimed at Faelyn’s chest. Again, Faelyn simply stepped sideways, the tongue whistling past his ribs to bury itself in the opposite wall with another meaty thud.

  “You are surprisingly slow,” Faelyn mocked, his voice laced with a dry amusement that surprised even him. He stepped sideways again as another tongue lash came his way. Wall, tongue, wall, tongue. He was starting to see a pattern here.

  His momentary amusement was cut short as the bulbous tip of the tongue, re-aimed, now threatened to re-sculpt his nose. He ducked, instinctively crouching low, then rolled to his right as the fleshy missile whipped through the space his face had occupied milliseconds before. The attacks were relentless. The demon was a fleshy, tongue-flinging siege engine. The walls behind Faelyn, once pristine pine, now resembled a butcher's block after a particularly enthusiastic carving session, a horizontal line of jagged holes marking the path of the demon’s relentless assault.

  Frustration, raw and bestial, finally contorted the demon’s features. With a guttural roar that rattled the plank walls, it lunged. It launched itself across the small cabin, claws outstretched, gnarly teeth bared, a pale whirlwind of demonic fury. Faelyn found himself backed against the room’s lone window, thin glass separating him from the dark, churning ocean. Trapped? Perhaps. Panicked? Decidedly not.

  A spark ignited in Faelyn’s eyes. Not fear, but something sharper, colder. Opportunity. He lowered his body further, dropping almost into a crouch, the instant the demon’s snapping teeth were upon him, intending to tear him into bite-sized pieces. He met the demon’s charge head-on, not resisting, but redirecting. He used the demon’s own momentum against it, its weight and speed suddenly working in his favor. With a grunt of effort, timed perfectly, he heaved, using the demon’s forward lunge to propel it bodily through the window. Glass shattered outwards with a sharp crackle, shards raining down into the black depths of the sea with a faint, watery plink.

  The cabin fell silent save for the creaking of the ship and the distant wash of waves. It was only then, amidst the lingering scent of demon musk and shattered glass, that Faelyn registered another presence. Standing silhouetted in the wrecked doorway, framed by the dim light of the ship’s corridor, was a figure. Tall, lean, clad in dark fabric accented by a starkly patterned haori, half crimson, half a geometric puzzle of green and orange. Watery blue eyes, impossively calm, fixed on him, face an unreadable mask of impassivity.

  Faelyn’s mind, already racing, clicked everything into place. The demon, the distinct aesthetic… it coalesced with a surreal, almost ludicrous certainty. But the figure in the doorway, utterly composed in his demon-slaying uniform, was the definitive confirmation.

  This wasn’t just a weird ship, or a bad merchant, or even a particularly persistent tongue-wielding monster. This was… Demon Slayer. The anime. The one with the frankly over-the-top but undeniably cool animation. Seeing it in live, slightly smelly, 3D plank-room reality, though… that was something else entirely. The anime was slick, sure. But this. This was real. And real, he was rapidly realizing, was significantly more… complicated. And likely to involve significantly more demons. Terrific.