Urgh, this is the last time I drink anything given to me by a dwarf. A simple glance tells me this is not the room I booked in Fiaro's tavern, since it's way too nice for that nagging curmudgeon of a man. Sheets of such soft silk it feels like I'm floating, a canopy of red gauze so fine it becomes nigh-invisible, and a faint haze to the air that reaches into every inch of my skull, incense that could only belong to a noble residence I probably broke into at some point during the night. I really need to work on my habit of stealing stuff, especially from people who have the gold to track me down.

With a reluctant sigh, I force myself up. Yep, this entire room is full to the brim with treasures, every single one gilded and spattered with precious gemstones. Gods alone know how much its all worth, but it's certainly at least a couple dozen of my lives. Surprised no one's caught me yet, but hey, luck sometimes strikes for the most undeserving of people. I won't even take more than, hm, one or three of these little boxes? They gotta have some jewels and stuff for me to pawn. And hey, looks like I slipped into a fine robe of blue silk, too. My bad, nameless noblewoman.

Soon enough I'm making my way to the room's door, robe securely tied about the stolen goods on my waist. There's no window for me to sneak out, so it's up to me to find one or to brazenly make my out the front door. If it's as silent as I think it is, the latter sounds pretty tempting; I need to show my appreciation to such fine and generous hosts, after all. A quick peek to the left and right reveals no one in sight, and I'm out into this massive hallway, lined with tall and gleaming statues of some fancy white rock. Looks more like gargoyles to me than anything, but some of these fancy pants have weird ideas about art.

If nothing else, these folks are absolutely loaded. The walls are painted in intricate murals depicting monstrous figures laying waste to pristine wonderlands, or breaking mountains, or other such gloomy activities. Or, maybe gloomy's the wrong word? It could be some historian's house, and this section is meant to depict some violent part of the nation's past, back when demons still walked the world. As if such things ever existed in the first place, idiot. Everyone knows that demons are just fables that moms use to shut up annoying kids. If these pictures are anything to judge by, this noble's way out of his mind in terms of depicting a few scary stories.

Of course, it's right when I'm thinking that when I turn the corner and actually see a proper demon. The two of us stare at each other for a few seconds, and in some strange way, I feel like we're thinking the same things at the same time. We size each other up first; the demon is at least 12 feet tall, clad in armour that looks to be made out of some gleaming black stone, and he's carrying an axe whose blade alone is taller than me. Their face is animalistic, looking like a cross between an old man and a snarling wolf, one whose maw is full of fangs so huge they can't properly fit. Beady black eyes with vertical yellow slits narrow, just like my own must be doing. This thing's gotta be looking at me, a thin-blade waif of a woman clad in stolen silks, with as much surprise as I'm expressing. How we never heard each other is a fucking mystery.

Then comes the tensing, the demon's massive claws clutching around the hilt of its axe and my hands darting to the pair of knives I always have strapped to my back. They wouldn't make a scratch on this thing, but maybe I can throw one in its eye? At least I'll die knowing I annoyed the hell out of it.

Of course, this is all based on reason and logic, which we all know if the first thing that flies out of your head when you run face-first into something completely unexpected. I mean, how would you react when your darkest nightmare not only creeps out from under your bed, but now they're a couple times your size and looking hungry? I scream, a primal shriek that I'm surprised I'm even capable of, but what blows my mind is that the demon does the same; its voice isn't human, but cries of terror transcend any language, especially when we both back around and start fleeing the other way, frantically looking back over our shoulder only to see the othr doing the exact same thing. Did I stumble into a nightmare or some staged comedy?

At least I get my answer for how we stumbled into each other. When I book it back a few paces, it's like the distance between me and the demon in somehow much longer than it shoulder be. The beast's screaming should be knocking me deaf and yet I can barely hear the thing just a couple yards away. What the hell is going on here? I want to go home and tell momma she was right, I need to settle down and start a legitimate life.

And the final straw is that, only a few seconds later, when the demon and I pause to consider the whole fiasco playing out, a black flame roars to life behind the monstrosity to reveal a second, slightly larger demon with the head of a feral boar and a giant hammer in its pudgy hands pops into existence. I don't need to turn back around towards the room I woke up to know there's gonna be a third there soon, because everyone knows that real tragedies come in threes.

Oh man, I give up. I let my daggers fall to the ground with a metallic clatter and throw my hands into the air. No way I'm getting out of this one alive, so might as well accept my death with dignity.

***

I really wish I had died with dignity.

"Don't you backtalk me, Halach! Your mother persuaded me to let you pursue your studies on mortalkind for too long, and now you actually have the gall to bring one of them here, to our very palace?"

"I don't need your permission for anything, Dad! I'm a fully grown demon now, and a proper princess! Unless you want to take this to the Court of Battle, huh, old man?"

In front of me, two huge demons are arguing with each other, seeming on the verge of blows. The bigger one, a behemoth with jet-black skin and red tattos across his muscular torso, announced himself as Dari-Tensa, King of Demons. I'm willing to believe the claim as he looks fully capable of wrestling down a dragon before his breakfast. The other, Halach'shi Sao, is the first female demon I've seen, smaller than the others but still a good 10 feet tall and a mean streak that makes old granpda look like a saint in comparison. She's also the one I somehow got into bed with last night, though fuck me if I can understand how. Maybe these demons can change shape or something, cause I can't see anything strong enough to make me stupid enough to risk being crushed by a 10-foot tall monster that could crush stone with her thighs.

Or, well, it might not take that much. Yeah she's an intimidating fragment of some midwife's nightmare, but if she could cool it with the yelling, those thighs certainly could crush sto- Wait, no, she's trying to bite out her dad's throat.

Dari-Tensa's muscles bulge with the effort of holding back his nearly feral daughter, but his eyes are stuck on me. "And what do you have to say for yourself, human? Barging into the realm of demons without a care in your head? And then thinking to steal from us on top of all that!" he exclaims, his words formed less from a voice than an angry bull's roar.

"Hey now, I only stole a little bit, you wouldn't have missed a thing. And whatever game I seem to have won with, uh, Halak?"

"It's Halach'shi!" they both shout simultaneously.

"Yeah, whatever game I won over Halach'shi doesn't count for much since I can't remember a damn thing. This, uh, demon wine stuff you guys have here could topple a giant where I come from, it's a miracle I survived. So I say we call the whole thing here and go our separate ways, yeah?" I ask, giving a little shrug from where I sit, strapped to a chair by thick ropes I swear are made from their hair.

Both demons stop their wrestling, if only so their hands can tense up like they're waiting to throttle me in turns. Dari-Tensa is the one to speak first by saying, "You have already seen enough, too much, in fact! We can't risk you bringing back this information to your kind and dissolving the peace between our peoples!"

Demonstrating a purely negative amount of solidarity, Halach'shi raises her voice to shout, "Who gives a damn about all that? I'm not letting this ${my race} get away until I manage to beat them fair and square!"

This time it's me and Dari-Tensa who speak in unison. "You can't even remember what you lost in, idiot!"

A brief time of silence passes as we all catch our breath, staring daggers at one another until I don't even know if I'm on my own side here anymore. But past all their bluster, it's clear that the demons are just as unnerved by my presence as I am by theirs, which means I'm probably the one who has to speak up first.