I stumbled through the Infernal Quarter bleeding more than just blood.

  The structed illusion I’d woven around myself was fading fast, getting pumped out at about the same rate as I actually bled.

  I’d stopped to ge the illusion to an Infernal man of above-average height and a green shade of skin, and to bandage my wounds as best I could in a few brief moments. Blood still dripped with each passing moment as I walked. The cloth I’d ripped off to bind them already soaked.

  Just one foot in front of the other. It wouldn’t be far now. I stumbled, put my hand against the wall, and winced as bloodied and torn fingers brushed against the wood.

  I’d gotten lucky with how the backsh had taken pce, as ridiculous as that sounded. My tongue melting had seared the stump shut, so no bleeding there. The bag of skin one of my arms had been turned into hadn’t burst open, so instead it simply sent spikes of pain through me as disected pieces scraped against each other. Whatever had dissolved in my arm, it left my nerves alone.

  Now the bullet in my leg and my missing fingers as the only bleeding wounds.

  The st of the rat’s life force was going into blunting that pain otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to walk. Even so, each step sent stabs of agony all ay body and dripped blood on the ground. The pain did help in drawing my mind away from something else.

  Tssk, they’ve ed this district up far too much, the Imp said in my head. I remember when you needed boots to wade through these streets unless you wanted mu your skin, when you couldn’t step te without treading over a bum. What has happeo the Quarter? What foul entity has ed it up?

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t sihe seared-off stump of my tongue was not ducive to talking. Instead, I limped on, thinking of what had emptied the alleys. Wars. Fuel for the empire’s expansion, which hadn’t ceased signifitly since Her Majesty had asded her throne. And aid for it all.

  I shook my head, trying to clear those thoughts out. Not everything Versalicci had taught me was worthless or manipution, but the truth made for the best manipution of all.

  I took a step and paihrough my legs as it gave out, sendio the cobbles. The bullet in my thigh. I tried to move the leg, get the hoof ba the ground only for the pain to make my vision swim and my stomach twist. My went to the ground as I clutched at my thigh.

  A small, round little hole leaked blood. Again, luck had been with me. The ball hadn’t hit an artery or bone, and somehow hadn’t bsted through my flesh either. My mind searched for an expnation and failed, although that might be because of the grey creeping in along the edges of my vision.

  I put my good hand on the ground, pushing, and the pain helped a little to drive that grey away. Getting to my hooves ainful process, but I eventually made it and tinued my limping trek.

  I stuck to alleys, and to my grudging gratefulhe efforts of the marchers meant the streets were still less poputed than they should be, but it wouldn’t st.

  Eventually, someone would notice me. I made an easy target, wounded and bleeding like I was.

  The question was if I could make it to my st refuge.

  I limped through an alley, a wary eye on another person. They were taking a dose of something probably halluatory in nature, so not a threat. I could only hope no one had moved into the abandoned building where I’d buried a st emergency stash five years ago. I’d never visited since burying everything.

  I covered a hundred feet in five minutes, falling twice to the cobbles and taking an agonizing half mi myself back up. Luckily for me, the alley’s other inhabitant was busy losing herself in another world.

  I staggered to the building, a low building that could have once been a warehouse, or maybe a shop with the small front area with dispys. I tried to the back door, and it swung open, no lock or bar to hold it still. Just as it had been five years ago.

  I limped inside, closing the door behind me and heading further inside. If anyone followed me, they’d find it easy to get inside. Although if anyone was following me, I was dead already.

  My hidden store wasn’t anywhere near as sophisticated as the one in the Garretsville warehouse, just hidden under ay open-topped crate that had been here when I’d made it.

  I pushed it, flesh protesting with every inch as blood dripped onto the stone floor beh me. Eventually, I moved it off, revealing the stone underh.

  The carved lines ionework were wide enough to get fingers into, but even still lifting the sb of rock took over ten minutes. But I tur over, the quarter inch of stone nding with a ctter.

  When I left five years ago, I’d e here on my own and hiddehing I couldn’t carry. An emergency stockpile, but also things too specialized fur use but illegal to have without a lise, the items I couldn’t trust myself with and couldn’t justify as something for emergencies.

  No one else khese were here, and since I’d visited not a siime since leaving these here to begin with, no one besides me should know they were here.

  The stash wasn’t rge, two feet dug down, one foot across, two feet forward to back. I didn’t try to lift the chest led within, instead f the lid open. I grabbed a few items, a vial, a potion, and some sheets of paper.

  I started writing instrus for the Imp, the written word the only way to unicate with it.

  After all you’ve put me through, I waer, the Imp pihe meal will either be a full animal of tremendous size or the limb of a se while they are alive to feel and witness. I will accept nothing less.

  That sounded less like a request and more like what it would need after exerting its own powers. I did owe it, so….I’d see how much a cow costs. Dead. I grabbed the potio, cheg the seal otle.

  It was simir to the one I’d had Golvar drink, a potion to close up wounds and begin the healing process, except much more powerful. If the seal had held, it might even repair whatever had been ripped out of my arm.

  A minute of examination showed the seal to still be held, so it shouldn’t have lost any potency. Good, because I didn’t know how the hells I’d find any phoenix ashes.

  I took the bandages off, wing as the blood-soaked cloth dropped to the floor. Blood soaked all of them to the point I could wring several cups out of all of them.

  Fresh air on my wounds added to my irritation, but I he cloth off of them before I used the potion or it might close with them ihey wouldn’t survive letting the Biosculpting ge me back, anyway.

  The magic was intuitive but not the best for repg eye or tongue, so I wrote instrus for the Imp to read. It took a quick sed for it to firm it could stop the healing magic at my neck with no cost, I prepared to use the potion.

  The bullet would o stay inside. Not the best solution, but my body would naturally surround it with scar tissue, and it would stay i. Painful, but I could force it out once I had my Biosculpting tools back from Voltar. Right now, it was more important to staunch the bleeding.

  I pulled the clothing back from all the cuts and holes and prepared a gag out of the bahen I drank the potion and put the gag into pce.

  The edges of the exterior wounds itched.

  The inside of my arm burned, and I went to the floor, and only the gag kept my screams fring out across the building.

  Tears clouded my eyes, but I forced myself up as pain traced itself up and down my arm. How repairing the damage hurt more than having the es between flesh and bone ripped away in the first pce I didn’t know.

  I o get to my feet, though. This wouldn’t be the worst of it.

  I grabbed the vial and headed for a closet, oh not a thick door, but it would have to do. The biosculpting would o be undone now, paying the piper for deying it.

  Things could never be easy. I’d used Diabolism to halt the natural progression of things, and even if Diabolism did not inflict its own prices, interfering with a natural process would never end well. Having one’s flesh shift in shape without the proper tools? Already agony.

  I would not experience what it was like with diabolism mixed in. I eyed the vial.

  There were spiders in the great forests across the sea to the east whose venom made the eyes of even the most attentive slump and close. I’d gained five entire vials of the mixture, to use as a sedative, and over the years I’d used four of them, a few drops at a time to dull pain, sometimes more to induce sleep. A deep sleep that was difficult to rouse from, the length increasing more and more for each additional drop.

  I sidered the half-full vial before me.

  A few seds left. Make your choiow.

  Would imbibing too much cause me to never wake? Or to sleep for weeks? But if I used too little, would I awaken in the middle of the ges?

  Enough hesitating then. I pulled the stopper and drank from the vial even as my finger bones pushed past flesh, bursting free as maggots of bck crawled along the exposed bone.

  ***

  I coughed, hag through lungs as something lodged in my windpipe. Something came loose, small ks of darkhat dissipated after hitting the floor.

  I breathed deeply, then looked at my hand. It was colored a pale shade of blue now, not the deep crimson I’d been for several years. I felt my horns, gone from straight to curved. The ges back had taken. For the most part.

  They’d been closed up but the stumps of missing fingers were still there, I did not have a tongue, and my eye was still missing. Problems for when I had biosculpting tools in hand.

  The inside of the closet and my mind were quiet. Had the biosculpting somehow expelled the Imp?

  Damnations, the Imp hissed in my ear. Since I know you’ll never willingly bite a human to eat it, two full cows, or I’ll sider this tra viotion.

  Ah. Of course, I couldn’t be that lucky. Still, pining about the tract would get it nowhere since I didn’t hold that. I willing to help me though, and n to sabotage me.

  My clothes g to me tightly, pulled over a taller frame. I had a spare set iash, so it was time to fish them out and go meet my partners in this little escapade.

  Assuming they weren’t rethinking after seeing a Duke of the Hells peering at them through a hole iy. Their fault for leaving me only a Diabolism focus as my method of escape.

  I didn’t think they’d see it that way.