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Demon Queened - Chapter 86 - Unguided Tour
🕑 Added 2025-08-05 18:22:11 +0000 UTCDevilla
“Uh… that isn’t good…” Liz muttered. “This… might be a little… or maybe a lot harder than I thought...”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, instantly on guard. I couldn’t see more than a couple feet in any direction - everything beyond was pitch black, an unending darkness deeper than anything I’d ever known. It was almost like I was back in the void… A thought capable of putting me on edge even without Liz making ominous comments.
“It’s fine!” Liz quickly stated in a vain attempt to reassure me. “It’s just that I’ve sorta been watching your progress on the TV Luci gave me. Which is great, and all, except for the fact that it’s made of holy energy and relies on a holy scrying spell, so… Um. Well… I uh… I can’t actually see you anymore!”
“Don’t you need to see us to give directions?” Lucy asked.
“I mean, if you keep me updated on where you’re going, I could always make the camera shift around manually?” Liz suggested, grasping at straws. “And I can still sorta scout the area ahead of you! It’s just that I won’t have any way of knowing if you go off course…”
“Yeah, no, I don’t know what the hell a camera is, but we’re going to need a guide who can actually see us,” Abigail declared. “Preferably one who can walk around without issues.”
“You can’t be seriously suggesting we ask an angel for help, can you?” I asked.
“Why not?” she countered. “They can’t all be Luci’s lapdogs, right? At least one of them has to have at least a little spark of rebellion in them.”
“And, if not, you can always just bully them into helping!” Liz pointed out. “I mean, it’s three against one and most of my angels aren’t really trained for combat…”
“Neither is Abigail,” I protested. “Nor me, for that matter.”
“Plus, I can’t actually hurt them,” Abigail reminded us. “But I don’t think that’s going to be necessary… I’ve already got a target in mind.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised. “How?”
“Well, for one thing, she’s got a weird cut-out picture of our Lucy standing in her living room… I can see it through her window. And… I’m pretty sure that’s some sort of painting of Dimona tower on her door?”
“...What?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“I’ll get closer so you can see,” Abigail replied, moving forward. Lucy and I of course walked with her, trying not to let the disconcerting lack of vision stop us. I walked where Abigail did, putting my faith in her to lead me until eventually she came to a sudden stop.
“Shit, the bubble won’t move any further…”
“Well, the house is made of holy magic,” Liz pointed out. “Everything in this realm is, actually.”
“Doesn’t that mean we’re going to be sorta limited?” Abigail complained.
“Don’t worry! The bubble is really malleable - you can totally squeeze it through doorways and stuff!”
“But what I can’t do is show anyone the weird picture on this door… Are you sure we need to keep this thing on? It seems like it’s causing more problems than it’s solving.”
“Absolutely! Luci would find you in an instant! It’s not like she doesn’t know you’re here, you know? In fact, I’m sort of surprised there aren’t sirens playing or something…”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You don’t mean to say that she knows we’re here here, do you? As in, this precise location?”
“Nope!” Liz assured me. “At least… probably not? I don’t remember the sensors being that sensitive, anyways. Usually the only people who’d break in with divine magic would be other gods, or their servants, which would be kinda easy to tell apart from mine, so…. Yeah. She definitely knows someone just made their way into heaven somewhere though!”
“Are you saying she has some way to see us here?” Abigail asked.
“If you drop the bubble… probably? I’m not really sure what sorta camera setup she’s using. Or if she’s using cameras. It could be a spell! Or a network of nosy neighbors!
“Whatever the case may be, it sounds like a bad idea to lower our guard,” I remarked. “Assuming the spell itself isn’t causing you any distress, Abigail?”
“Neah. I feel like I could keep it going forever, almost,” Abigail replied. “Maybe literally? I think it’s taking less power than I’m recharging…”
“Then you should keep it on,” I replied. “We can’t afford to allow Luci to know our exact location. I don’t believe we can take her in a fight.”
“Definitely not!” Liz confirmed. “Your job is just to find me. If you can get my door open I can take care of the rest.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” Abigail asked. “Aren’t you locked in with literal divine magic?”
“Well, yes, but there’s still a physical door! If you can find the keys, or even pick the lock, I can just… walk out. Easy peasy!”
“Except for the fact that I doubt any of us can pick a lock,” I remarked.
“Actually, I sorta can,” Abigail volunteered, drawing a raised eyebrow from me and wide eyes from Lucy. “Handcuffs specifically, I mean. It’s hard to keep track of keys once the clothes start flying off and sometimes it’s faster to just pick the damn thing than wait for the customer to search through every corner of the room.”
“I’m legitimately unsure how well that’ll translate,” I confessed, “but I suppose we can consider it a plan B, of sorts. Finding the keys would still be preferable.”
“Or just breaking the lock!” Lucy suggested. “I’ve had to free prisoners from bandit camps occasionally, and it really is easier to just smash the lock than find the key most of the time.”
“Am I the only one here who’s actually bothered to use keys all her life?!” I demanded, eyeing my two girlfriends.
“Pretty sure us maids are the ones who actually handle keys,” Abigail remarked. “And while it didn’t involve a doorway, I’m pretty sure smashing through a ceiling is a lot worse than just breaking a lock.”
“Those were special circumstances!” I protested.
I’m sure Abigail would have made a witty reply in kind if not for the fact that we then heard a sound.
“Hello?” a new voice asked, from out of the darkness. “Is anyone there? I swear I heard voices…”
‘Liz?’ I asked mentally. ‘Please tell me you used sound dampening in your invisibility spell?”
The lack of an immediate response was… concerning.
“...Alright, screw it,” Abigail declared. “Everyone move forward, we’re pushing through the door and then dropping this bubble!”
“Wh-what?” called the voice, but Abigail made no response. She simply moved forwards, clearly expecting me and Lucy to follow along.
Needless to say, we complied. A few seconds later I heard a door slam shut and then suddenly the veil of darkness over my world disappeared and I was inside what looked to be a modern era living room. Complete with a couch, a TV, a lamp, and of course the owner of this place - a tall woman, or perhaps a slightly shorter angel if my mother and grandmother’s dimensions were the norm. She stood around 5’9”, with tawny brown hair that she was nervously clutching at, running her hands through it and muttering to herself.
“L-Lucy?! A-and Devilla, a-and… A maid? N-no this has to be some sort of illusion…”
“How do you know who I am?” Lucy asked. Her eyes were not upon the woman, however, but of a cardboard cutout of her, in an art style I very much recognized. It was Lucy, in her armor, as she’d appeared in Tower Conquest, but with a bright smile on her lips. “What is that?!”
“I-it’s just some promotional material I made, f-for the game… N-not that we ever used it. L-Luci - I mean, the head angel, she said it was better to focus on the b-bratty Q… I-I mean…”
“You’re involved with the game?” I inquired, breaking into the conversation. “In Tower Conquest?”
“I’m t-the head developer… and the main…well only programmer… and in charge of promotions… I… Um… Luci said that since I’m always playing video games, I should be good at making them… I think she maybe realized I slipped some video game design elements into the actual tower, too…”
“Into the tower?” Abigail asked. “What are you talking about?”
“The battle way?” I asked, remembering the similarity between it and the video game’s map. A narrow hall that spiraled around the tower, occasionally opening up into larger rooms for “boss fights.” It ran from the entrance at ground level to the throne room, with thick walls separating it from the civilian areas. As it was the only entrance available to humans, in theory it meant that even if they breached the tower itself they’d be limited in the number of forces they could send, and the places they could reach.
…At least in theory. I wasn’t sure how functional it actually was. I had never even questioned it even if it had backfired spectacularly in the game, limiting the forces my digital copy could send against Lucy as she grew in strength…
Perhaps it made sense that the person who’d built it into the tower, and the person who’d written the video game, were one and the same? A single overworked and video-game obsessed angel?
“Wh-why are you giving me that pitying look?!” she demanded. “A-aren’t y-you s-supposed to be more… bratty?”
“Yes, well, I was, but…” I paused. “How do you know that? I mean, obviously it was in the game, but… if you truly made the game, then how did you get so many details right? The game predates my conception, does it not?”
“No, it was actually made after your conception,” the brunette informed me, now speaking confidently and without a stutter. “Just… before your birth I think? Luci… I mean, the head angel, she uh… she looked at a bunch of potential futures and then wrote up a script based on her favorite one… It was revenge for something your mother did, I guess? And, I mean, she’d already told me to get on with the process of making a video game for the soul stealing plan, but then she went and told me to scrap it and start over on what would become Tower Conquest… It was really upsetting, too! I almost considered saying no! But, um. Well. Nobody says no to the head angel… not even her second best friend…”
“Her second best friend?” Lucy asked before I could say anything. I was personally morbidly intrigued by the fact that Luci had apparently made revenge porn of her own unborn descendent, but… I suppose it wasn’t precisely relevant at the moment.
“Officially!” the angel declared. “It’s a very contested position! At least according to her. She says that I can keep it as long as I keep proving useful, though! And don’t screw up too much. She apparently has, like, a set allowance for how many screw ups I’m allowed? Not that she’ll tell me what it is, or how close I am to reaching it, or if it resets… ahaha…”
“Have you ever considered maybe not being friends with her?” Abigail suggested. “I mean, no offense, but everything I know about that bitch Luci with an ‘I’ is pretty terrible.”
“Luci with an eye?” the angel asked, tilting her head in confusion. “Oh! Because this Lucy’s name is spelled with a ‘Y?’ Right… Um… I… Who are you again? And… why are you here?”
“Her name is Abigail,” I interjected. “And she’s my girlfriend. Are you telling me she didn’t show up in Luci’s future readings?”
“I don’t know!” the angel replied, back to being a stuttering mess. “I-it’s not like she tells me everything. Or even most things… Just some things… Mostly when she wants to brag. Like how she didn’t even need to do anything to ruin your life… it just sorta went according to the prophecy. Until recently, I guess? N-not that she’s actually said anything about it, but she has been acting pretty antsy and angrily ranting a lot more than usual, and… Well, now you’re here, so… Um… Why are you here, again?”
“They’re here to free me,” Liz said, almost making me jump. Not just me, either - the angel actually did leap into the air, almost hitting the ceiling.
“Eep! G-Goddess!?”
“I go by Liz now, actually,” she replied, “but yes. They’re here on my behalf. To free me from my prison. And you are going to help them.”
“A-and why would I do that?” the angel asked, seeming more confused than truly against the idea.
“Because I spent the last few minutes scanning for and reading your diary, and if you don’t do exactly what I tell you I’ll teleport the thing directly to Luci, open to page fifty-six.”
“Y-you wouldn’t…!”
“Try me.”
~~~
Author's Notes:
This is another chapter I wasn't sure about, at the time of writing... but now I'm pretty sure it was just the depression undermining any confidence I had in myself. It's getting a little better now? Hoping it's light enough for me to work on chapter 90 in the near future.
Many thanks to FallingLeaf for the editing, as always!
Comments
Striving Spark
It would take more energy than she'd like, but with Devilla acting as a relay point for her to reach through.... She's pretty sure she can. Of course doing so would basically reveal whose house they're in, and is probably a terrible idea all around, but it's a compelling threat (so far as this angel is concerned)
V01D
would Liz actually be ABLE to teleport the diary? (Whether she can or not, doesn’t *really* matter…)
