Devil's Debtor, Chapter 1 (Patreon)

The wooden door rattled as it jammed, but with the second push it swung open. Cold sea winds disturbed the scantly decorated room as a monk in black robes walked in. Tall, tan, and built, his scalp had been shaved of all but a ring of hair on his head—a tonsure. He looked outside for unwanted followers, then put the door back in its place.

The monk’s brown eyes darted from place to place before settling their gaze upon a stubby dying candle. Its flame partially illuminated the face of a man sitting there, but not enough to properly distinguish his features. Beads in his black hair and beard glinted like gemstones.

“Urban,” the figure sitting in darkness greeted—a deep voice, with a cynical caution.

“You have it?” The man of the cloth, Urban, held his calloused hands out.

“No, I called you here because I love nighttime chats with heretical monks in dank hovels.” The man reached into a pocket on the front of his shirt, then pulled out a necklace and set it on the table. It shone beneath candlelight like a wreath of pearls, but the necklace was made of small teeth. “A prince’s baby teeth. It’ll suffice to lure the creature. My price is fair; not asking why I have fucking princely teeth.”

Urban walked up and took the necklace, manipulating it with his fingers. “I wear this while I sleep?”

“Or clutch them like pearls. Either way, your dreams will welcome a visitor most would consider unwelcome.” He stroked his dark beard, and the rings on his finger clinked against the beads braided into it. “Indulge me for a moment, monk. Let’s talk about this devil.”

Urban pulled a bag out of his pocket, then put the necklace inside and tied it shut. “You said you wouldn’t meddle.”

“When you steal a prince’s teeth, you’ve the right to stick your nose in your investments. I’ve given you something.” The man leaned in. “I seldom give without expectations, so you could infer I have some of you. But you’re dealing with a devil of avarice. Their price, consistently, is blood potency.”

“I know.” Urban stowed the bag away. His eyes were grim and imposing, but that he hadn’t left said he intended to listen.

“Blood potency you lack,” the man said gently, so as not to provoke. “Without it, a single flintlock could kill you.”

Urban shook his head. “I have some. I was given enough to unlock the system, in hopes it might cure my affliction.” To demonstrate his point, he summoned the system. It overlaid atop his vision.

• Blood Potency : 1

• Icon: None

• Stats

•        Locked until Icon is acquired

• Skills: None

Urban’s eyes took on a red hue, projecting light outward. The man scrutinized his face. “I was mistaken, then. But if I know your father, he didn’t give you enough to rub together. He probably considered slaying you to steal it back.” He pointed. “I could give you an opportunity to have a foundation before you walk into a devil’s embrace.”

Urban closed his eyes and inhaled. “Work twice as hard to live half as long. That’s the fate the world bestowed upon me.”

“I know, but—"

Urban interrupted. “The speed I think, the speed I react—I’m wading upstream while others follow the river down. I’d call myself half a man, but you’d get more value from a dwarf than myself. Until I’m cured, I’m no help to no one, least of all myself.”

The bearded man clasped his hands together after the firm rebuttal, thinking. “It seems you’ve thought a lot about it. I imagine you rehearse those witticisms, too, or you’ve four times the acuity of the halfwits I work with. Still, ask yourself… a debt to me, or a debt to a devil? A lot of sharp men have been undone overestimating their edge.”

Urban stared, considering his options. “At least with the devil, I know where it’s putting my puppet strings. You… I don’t know your aim. And all the while you’re ‘helping’ me, time continues to run away from me.”

“I’m flattered. You’d liken me to a devil?”

Urban shook his head. “Worse. I’d liken you to a man.”

The bearded man crossed his arms and laughed with a shake of his head. “Even cured, you’re a monk in a monastic order, stripped of your inheritance, barred from secular possessions, and without allies. Where I’m from, we have a term for that. Fucked.”

“I have a long history of being fucked. Thirty years, and still I walk.”

“You walk, yes, but perhaps a bit bowlegged,” the man jested.

Urban didn’t rise to the provocation. “With the devil, I’m a debtor. With you, I’m a cudgel. I prefer neither, but there’s a dignity in the first.”

“A dog has no dignity, but it lives well,” he argued back.

Urban stared, thinking, then managed, “If you live like a dog… you often die like one, too.”

The man snorted. “Fair enough. But when a devil holds your soul in their hands, dignity is the first thing you discard.” The man reached in his pocket once again, this time retrieving a small medal. “If you make it to Riverre, look for me. Camarai, servant of the royal chamber.”

Urban took the medal, then asked pointedly, “The royal chamber?”

“Did you think me a bottom-feeding criminal? You’d be right in assuming so, but wrong about your assumption of my haunt. The imperial capital’s palace is where the big fish swim. Even the scraps off the table could purchase acres uncountable.” Camarai rose to his feet. “Good luck, monk. Hopefully I won’t be able to call you that for long.”

Urban watched him leave with mixed feelings. Camarai had a vested interest in what he intended to do, so his motive wasn’t brought to question. He’d thought him a pirate—their kind were common in the Delta, the frontline of the war. But no mere pirate would be able to dip their toes into the imperial palace deep enough to procure an item as he’d given him.

With his goal so close at hand, Urban put all of those questions aside. He walked out the door, where a graveyard of a town awaited him. The roads were partially flooded, and few houses still had inhabitants. He saw some scared few squatter families in half-destroyed houses. He didn’t think they’d last long. It was monsoon season. Another storm was coming, and another flood would be soon to follow.  

But for now, his concern was in the dreamworld. He sought higher ground, feeling the dim glow of hope he’d thought had long been snuffed out.

***

Urban felt a weight on his chest, and blinked open his eyes to lash out quickly against anyone who’d come. He was always on edge in the Delta, even in sleep. Instead of an enemy, his gaze fell upon a pink tongue, bobbing rhythmically. White fluffy fur, happy brown eyes, a wagging tail… it was a dog, panting as it laid atop him.

“Jakanne,” he said in quiet recognition.

The dog licked his face, and he flinched away. Then, it bolted off his chest. Urban sat up eagerly to follow it with his eyes. Jakanne ran away, prancing into an endless grassland and joining several other large white dogs. They played joyfully, fussing over a stick, barking, rolling through the grass, and mischievously bumping into one another.  It had been ten years since he last saw these dogs. He had raised all of them alone, from pups to adults.

As he observed longer, he noticed someone lounging on a rock in the center of their pack. The man held his arms behind his head as a pillow as he laid down, balancing his right foot on his bent left knee. It was difficult to tell what he looked like this far away, but Urban knew in his heart it was the devil he’d invited into his head.

Urban took steady steps forward through the grass. He could feel the winds blow across the plains, and felt a serenity that ill suited the barter he was about to make. His dogs continued to play as he pressed forward, until he finally stopped a foot away from the rock where the devil lounged.

Tall and skinny, the white-haired devil dressed in fine silvers that made him seem like the moon underneath all of this sunlight. His appearance was just as Urban had seen in countless books. And when the devil opened his eyes, Urban saw the last of what he needed for confirmation; rippling red eyes, like wells full of blood.

“Well-reared hounds are a precious prize,” the devil spoke deliberately and slowly, as if to ensure Urban had all the time in the world to process his words. “But those that make the prize are seldom the ones to enjoy it. I wonder if you’ll be different.”

Urban said only, “Can you give me what I want?”

“I can, but you don’t know what you want. Your ignorance is only one barrier; the other is my desire. But you ask a greedy question, and that pleases me. I shall be generous and answer your intent.” The devil sat up slowly, grabbing a pebble off the top of the rock he sunbathed atop. “I can give you what the world denied you.”

The devil tossed the pebble up into the air, and it rose quickly. At the peak of its height, Urban felt a tremendous change. The rock, which had ascended so quickly, fell down as though it were a feather carried by an updraft The wind stirring the grass felt gentler against his skin, and even his breath was not so hurried to leave his lungs. Looking around, even the dogs had slowed, jumping about as if trapped in water.

Time had slowed. Though, perhaps it was best to say it had become normal for the first time in Urban’s life.

The devil caught the rock, then tossed it again. It rose so leisurely Urban’s heart quickened with desire. Even so excited, he’d never felt his heart beat this slowly.  

“Time.” The devil’s voice, which had seemed quick enough, now sounded dreadfully sedated, almost drunk. “This is what it is to swim with its flow instead of against it. I can tell how you feel. To carry twice the burden your entire life, and then to so suddenly be deprived of it?”

The devil caught the pebble, and the entire grasslands shifted into myriad colors. Urban was suddenly twenty again, holding a wooden sword in a mock duel. His younger brother rushed at him, his sword lashing out like a viper. It struck his arms, his legs, his hands, his body. Urban’s counterattacks never managed to keep it from hitting him.

“To see those you know are your lesser act your better…” the devil’s voice whispered. “You need not restrain that righteous fury.”

Time again loosed its hold on Urban. His brother’s attacks, which had seemed so impenetrable, became a joke. As he hadn’t ten years ago, he swatted aside the next attack and stabbed his training sword right into his younger brother’s gut. He burst into smoke, and Urban senses vanished.

When next his sensation returned, Urban laid strapped to a table, twelve years old. His father stood with the surgeon.

“There could be permanent brain damage, permanent scarring,” the surgeon cautioned.

His father looked over, with those cold blue eyes. They looked like they rejected warmth entirely. “He’s already broken as is.” He looked back. “Fix him, or I’ll find another who will.”

With his directive clear, the surgeon approached with scalpel in hand. He tightened the restraints around Urban, then hunched over him. The twelve-year-old child thrashed against his bindings and screamed into the gag fruitlessly as the knife came ever closer. Then, the devil’s pale white finger tapped the tip of the knife, and time froze.

“You couldn’t retaliate, back then…” The devil pried the knife from the surgeon’s fingers, then cut the straps tying Urban to the table. “…but with my aid, no bindings could hold you.”

Urban broke free of the severed restraints, took the scalpel from the devil’s hand, and plunged it into the surgeon’s temple. Before the man died he jumped off, rushing toward his father with spite in his gut. The man merely turned, then, as if swatting a fly, backhanded Urban. The world scattered into a thousand pieces.

When next he blinked, the devil stared down at him.

“But even free, you are weak,” he said, staring down with evaluating red eyes. “The world cannot give you time—it will not give you a second chance, either.” He kneeled, until his eyes were half a foot from Urban’s own. “But I am not the world. I’m one of its devils. I can give you freedom from your curse, monk. But much more than freedom… I could give you mastery. I could give you the strength to seize the parasite worming through your body, and return to you that which it steals.” The devil raised his hand, then snapped. “Time.”

Urban once again stood in front of the devil as he lounged atop that rock. His red eyes stared up, hungrily. “What shall it be, monk?” The devil smiled. “To fight against the world, merely free? Or to fight against the world, your curse now mastered?”

“Mastered?” Urban repeated.

“It’s very simple,” the devil said in his velvet tones. “Should you spend ten seconds allowing the curse to feast on your time, you can steal back five. If you should invoke its ability, you would appear back where you were five seconds ago in the river of time.”

Urban wavered with indecision. He had prepared himself for an immensely difficult task. To fight back against his fate would be to fight against his father, the empire, the church, and perhaps the world. After all, the world had given him this life. Was freedom alone enough? Even with his time flowing as it was meant to, did he have a chance?

Even with freedom… one mistake. Be a little slow, be a little late. That was all it took.

“Which shall it be, monk?” the devil pressed. “Freedom, or mastery?”

All of the dogs playing stopped, sitting on the grass and watching him expectantly. He closed his eyes to avoid their judgment, but even in the darkness of his mind their gazes persisted. Knowing what had been done to him… knowing what had been done to them… and knowing his powerlessness in this cruel world…

“Mastery.” Urban opened his eyes. “I want mastery.”

The devil sat up. “Well-chosen, monk. There is much more freedom in mastery. Being freed of burden makes one liable to float away into the night sky, until, at best, you become one of many stars. But for all services, there is a price.” He held out his hand. “Let us discuss mine.”

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All criticism welcome. Things will be subject to change if you mention something and I agree with you, so speak now or forever hold your peace.

I already intend to work out some way to post the stat sheet on Patreon in a way that's more pleasing on the eye.