Devil Ash Days (Devil Ash Saga) (21 page)

“How did it go?” Ash asked, sensing something was off with his teammate.

“Did you get the information we need?” Shiva asked.

“Sorry,” Aura told them, “they didn’t know anything.”

“Idiots!” Shiva said. “I’ll go in there and beat some sense into them! Then maybe they’ll know something!”

“You can’t!” Aura
said. “I promised we’d leave them alone from now on.”

“I made no such promise!”

“Shiva, please…” For the first time, Shiva could tell Aura was actually being sincere. Seeing him with such a pathetic look on his face, begging for his friend’s safety, she suddenly lost interest.

“Fine,” Shiva said. “We’d only be wasting our time. Let’s fan out and interrogate as many people as we can. Someone should know something about a man with a crippled wing.”

The team spent the next several hours w
andering the streets of South Hell, asking the various citizens about anyone they knew with a crippled wing. Not surprisingly, not a single person knew a thing. After nearly a hundred people interviewed, they were not even a single step closer to finding their thief. With their morale sinking, Shiva insisted they press on.

Something about the way Aura was acting didn’t sit right with Ash. Shiva was far too into her interrogations to notice, but Ash caught on right away. Aura was different somehow. Not as lively as he usually was. Maybe even depressed. Ash suspected something went wrong during Aura’s talk with his friends, but couldn’t exactly question him about it. He didn’t know how to bring it up. Even when they were asking a particularly beautiful lady their usual questions, Aura didn’t even
try to hit on her. It was a strange sight, like the boy was broken.

T
heir search continued to yield no results after multiple hours and the artificial sun was nearly gone, and Shiva decided to call it quits for the night. She dismissed the team and said they’d continue their search first thing in the morning, and to meet up in the empty meeting room they’d found. With a nod of approval from her subordinates, she took off towards the castle, leaving the two boys behind. Ash wanted to ask Aura if anything was troubling him, but Aura muttered a quick goodbye and walked away. Ash conceded that any questioning would have to wait for another time.

* * *

Aura took off so fast and so unexpectedly that Ash didn’t have time to question him. He was thankful for that. He wasn’t in the mood to be walking around town aimlessly asking people questions, and certainly not in the mood to answer anyone’s questions about himself. Whenever he felt thoughtful or moody, he liked to be on his own. Usually, he’d walk around town for a while and then return to his gang’s usual squatting spot. This time, that would not be the case.

Just like last night, he had no home to return to. He spent most of last night walking the streets of Hell, pondering to himself his abandonment of his gang and worrying about how they’d react. As he expected, they didn’t take it well. After some time, he finally realized that with his new status as a recruit of the Royal Family, he’d be admitted into the castle and could probably go there for the night. Tonight however, he didn’t feel like returning.

Tonight he’d have to go someplace else. A place he very rarely went, and only in times of absolute desperation. It was a special location to him, known only by himself and his gang. For most of his life, it served as his artificial home, even if he rarely went there. It was the old weapons manufacturing plant in the Southern section of the kingdom, and it held significance from his past that he’d never told anyone about.

He waited until any Royal Guards patrolling the area were out of his sight and crept in through the side door of the building that only he knew about. Inside, he was greeted by the usual dusty, idle machinery that in the past was used for making most of the weapons Hell was supplied with. In days of moderate peace like the age they’d recently settled into, such a large-scale operation was no longer necessary, and private merchants made most of the profit off of weapons manufacturing.

Aura glided like a ghost through the empty building, memories of his past fully occupying his mind. It took him a while to notice that the place was less dusty than he remembered it being. A cursory glance at the floor revealed that someone had been walking around in here, leaving footprints in the dust. Since it had been a long time since he’d last returned here, he knew it could not have been from him.

Great
, he thought
. Someone else has been squatting here since I’ve been gone!
He contemplated sticking around to confront whoever it was, but ultimately decided that he’d rather avoid any more devil interaction tonight. He was not in the mood to argue with anyone, let alone try to present himself as threatening or dominant. He peered outside once more. After waiting for the Royal Guards to move on with their area patrol, the boy quickly left the building. As he trotted away, a Royal Guard member turned a corner and spotted him.

“Aura Draxler!” The Royal Guard called to him. “Wait right there!”

Thinking he was in trouble, Aura did what anyone else would have done and bolted. The lone Royal Guard pursued, and soon the area was once again empty. Or so it seemed.

Hiding nearby was the familiar form of a man on the run. He’d see
n Aura enter his temporary home and waited to see if the boy would exit. For once, luck was on the man’s side. With no one around, the man had the perfect opportunity to sneak back inside. Too bad for Aura; he was only ten minutes off from walking in on Apsat with the stolen God’s Blessing.

Chapter Seventeen: You’ve Got A Friend

As Ash entered his tiny flat, his hand instinctively reached to the wall where any normal house would have a light switch. He chuckled to himself, remembering that was something Hell did not have yet. He spat a few sparks at the candle on the wall instead. He couldn’t manage to sustain a flame, but eventually the few sparks that trickled out were able to catch the candlewick. With the candle lit, he carried it around the room lighting the various other candles hanging on each wall. While crossing the dark room, the boy tripped and fell over what felt like his bed. The strange thing was, he didn’t remember his bed being on that particular side of the room. He picked himself off the bed and stared down at it. Then he looked across the room at
his
bed.

There was definitely one extra bed in the room that wasn’t there when he left in the morning. He decided he would leave it alone until tomorrow, and if no one came by to take it back, he would push it together with his bed to form a double. That sounded reasonable.

Tired now, Ash dug through his chest of clothing looking for pajamas. He didn’t actually wear pajamas to sleep, but he liked lounging in comfier clothing before going to sleep in his boxers. Maybe he’d page through ‘Hell In My Pocket’ before sleeping. After finding a suitable outfit, he lay on his bed and kicked his shoes to the floor. His mind was fixed on thoughts of his long workday. They were still a long way off from finding the thief and completing their mission.

Provided he could accomplish this mission and keep his job
,
he wondered what his life would be like. Would he live out the rest of his days here in Hell, working for the Royal Family? Would he meet his death at the hands of a fearsome demon? Would he one day have a group of friends here? Would he meet a nice devil woman, fall in love, and have a couple devil babies? He certainly hoped not. While significantly nicer than he had expected, Hell was still a scary, dangerous, demon-infested place that he had no desire to continue living in.

His mind wandered to the topic of friends.
How does one even make friends in Hell?
he thought. He supposed a good start would be by accompanying Aura to the bars. The time he spent with Aura the other day was the most fun he’d had since coming to Hell, and Ash knew that Aura would be his best bet for a friend so far. He began to wonder if Shiva would ever warm up to them. She didn’t seem to be that interested in making friends.

His thoughts were
interrupted by a loud and sudden knocking on his door.
Maybe that’s the owner of the bed,
Ash thought. He hopped up and went to the door, opening it to a huge surprise. There stood Aura with a large sack of his belongings, escorted by two enormous Royal Guards carrying a trunk.

“Hello,
roomie
,” Aura said.

Aura explained how the Royal Guards came to him with the instructions to ‘relocate’ him to Ash’s flat. Apparently, Goddard had decided that it would be convenient if the two of them cohabitated. Although, as Aura theorized, the move was likely to keep the two of them together to make it easier to keep watch over them. After the two guards left them, Aura paced about sizing up the room.

“Not a very large living space,” he
said, tossing his bag on the floor. The guards had set his trunk down immediately, not wanting to carry it another inch. It was quite larger than Ash’s trunk, and much heavier.

“Ah yeah, I haven’t done much with the place,” Ash
said, although not much could be done with a room so small and he had almost no possessions save for the clothing given to him by Gio.

“Not even a fireplace…
do they want us to freeze to death?” Aura asked. “Oh well,” he said with a sigh. “We can work with this.” The boy disappeared into the bathroom for several minutes, keeping the door slightly cracked. Ash hoped he wasn’t using the toilet.

“That Shiva…” Aura called from inside, attempting to make small talk. “What’s her
problem
?” He messed around with his hair in the mirror, a usual habit of his when he was bored or nervous.

“I don’t know man.”

“I’ll tell you what her problem is: she’s probably not used to working so closely with someone so
good-looking
.”

“Yeah,
that’s
her problem,” Ash replied. The bathroom light extinguished and Aura rejoined Ash in the main room. He took a seat on his bed, opposite of Ash, and continued the conversation. As they spoke, he worked on removing the button from the neck of his coat.

“She sure is a weird one, though,” Aura said. “Not at all lady-like. Such a shame, she has potential to be
cute, too.”

“I can’t blame her though, given that her family is totally crazy,” Ash
said. “I get the impression that King Satan isn’t exactly a great leader, and her brother Darko is a psychopath!”

“Yeah, that Prince sure has got a few screws loose, even more so than Shiva,” Aura said. “I think it has a lot to do with their mother, the former Queen, dying.” There was no longer a playful or joking tone to Aura’s voice at the mention of the death of their mother. Ash wanted to ask more, but Aura changed the subject abruptly. “So, I never got around to asking
, exactly how and why did you come to Hell?”

Ash hesitated, remembering that Aura still had no idea the circumstances under which he had
been brought to Hell. He still wasn’t sure if he felt like talking about it, but decided that he had to get it off his chest at some point, and talking about it with someone might help him to feel better. “I was kidnapped, more or less,” he said.

“
Seriously
?” Aura seemed genuinely concerned.

Ash told Aura his story. Everything from the angels arriving at his house, to the demons invading, followed by his meeting with Goddard, drinking the devil’s blood, and his transformation. The last detail he could remember was passing out after killing the last
shrieker demon. As expected, it felt good to finally talk about it, and he hoped that it would make it a little easier for Aura to tell him what happened between him and his friends at the bar earlier that day.

Once Ash was done with his story, Aura remained pensive. He seemed really touched by one detail in particular, which was a surprise even to Ash.

“But you saved your mother, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ash blinked, finding that a strange detail for Aura to get caught up on.

“That’s all that matters, then,” Aura said with certainty. “There are far worse deals you could have struck than trading your mother’s life for coming here. You should be grateful. There are plenty of people who
wish
they could saved a loved one, but were never given a chance like you were.” Aura almost appeared to be lecturing Ash, but the sullen, far-off look on his face seemed to imply that there was more meaning behind his words. Was he referring to Shiva? Or maybe
he
was one of the people of which he spoke.

“Of course I’m grateful she’s alive. I just wish I could be there with her. But the more I learn about this place, the less likely it seems that I’ll ever make it home.” Now it was Ash’s face that appeared sullen and far-off. It always hurt remembering how unlikely his return home was.

“I may know of a way for you to go back,” Aura said, shocking Ash so much he thought he misheard him at first.

“What? Seriously?” Ash tried to contain his excitement from overflowing, but that was hard to do.

“It’s just a pipe dream, but I suppose you could return the same way you came here. That is, with a gate key.” Ash vaguely remembered, before passing out on Earth, there was a gate-shaped doorway that appeared from the ground. That must have been how Goddard transported him to Hell.

“The only trouble with that is that all the gate keys are kept under constant surveillance inside of the castle. No one is allowed to take any, except Goddard and maybe The Prince. Obtaining one
would be next to impossible.”

“Oh.” Even though he tried to keep his hopes low, Ash still felt crushed.

“That is,” Aura was quick to add, “Unless you’re strong enough. But I’m talking ‘strongest in all of Hell’ strong enough. You’d have to be on The Prince’s level – no, even stronger than him. You’d need to be strong enough to not only kick
his
ass, but
all the assess
of the Royal Guards that would definitely be after you. That’s the only way you’d stand a chance at snatching a gate key and staying alive long enough to use it.”

“So you’re saying I’d have to get impossibly strong?”

Ash didn’t see the likelihood in that happening. He’d definitely made advances in strength since becoming a devil, but he didn’t think it possible to ever be on The Prince’s level. He don’t know whether to feel happy that his ticket home could be sitting in the castle waiting for him, or crushed because even though it was so close it was still impossible to attain. Dejected, his mind turned to fantasy.

“It’s too bad that God’s Blessing thing doesn’t actually work, or I might stand a chance.”

In that moment, Aura was reminded of Goddard’s warning to him and Shiva from earlier that day. “Wait a second!” he said. “After you left this afternoon, Goddard gave Shiva and me a secret mission!”

“What do you mean? I thought you were going over castle etiquette?”

“That was a lie. What he really told us was to not let
you
touch God’s Blessing!”

Ash was dumbfounded. “Not let
me
touch it? Why?”

“I don’t know, but if Goddard has a reason, it must be serious. That guy’s way smarter than dudes like us. He must have figured something out about God’s Blessing that he doesn’t want us to know about. Something involving you.”

The two boys remained quiet for a while, deep in thought about it. He remembered the passage from the book that Goddard showed them. Try as he might, he couldn’t make sense of why Goddard wouldn’t want him to touch the item. It’s not like it even worked for any of the devils that tried it anyway.

Devils
…

“Wait a minu
te!” Ash sat upright in his bed with an idea. “God’s Blessing supposedly never worked for any devil, right? Well the first Satan – Lucifer – he would have been an
angel
back when he used it. What if God’s Blessing was never meant to work for
devils
? What if it only works for angels, or…”

“Or God’s other creations, humans!” Aura caught on to his point, sitting up as well. “And because you’re half-human, it may actually work on you!”

“As impossible as it seems, I think we may be on to something here!” Ash’s hopes were skyrocketing once more. Could he have really found his way home already?

“I have an idea,” Aura started looking happier than ever. “We carry on with the mission as we normally would. For our sake, let’s leave Shiva out of this little plan. I don’t think she’d be so keen on all of this.” Ash nodded in agreement. “But once we find the thief, we need to somehow make sure
you
end up with God’s Blessing. If it works, you’ll be powerful enough to steal a gate key to Earth!”

Ash gulped nervously. The thought of becoming a super-powerful being sounded cool, but actually using that power to force his way through the hundreds of Royal Guards, not to mention The Prince, seemed impossible no matter his strength. “I don’t know,” Ash started to back down. “I doubt I’d be good enough at fighting everyone off, even with
any extra power.”

“Are you kidding? You’re a natural! The way you thrashed my gang, our sparring match with Stryd; you were incredible! I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d never fought before!” His praise actually did make Ash feel more confident. Maybe he did have a hidden knack for fighting after all. “And besides,” Aura continued, “if God’s Blessing doesn’t work for you, no big deal, we’ll just complete the mission and find another way back to Earth.”

Ash was so overwhelmed with these sudden developments he overlooked one key question that finally came to him. “Why do you care whether or not I get back to Earth?”

Aura was caught off guard, but didn’t falter in explaining. “I was thinking I’d
go with you,” he said.

“You want to go to Earth?”

“Heck yeah! What else am I going to do? Stick around here and serve the Royal Family for the rest of my life? No way! I want to hit up Earth, get me some of those human babes!”

“But aren’t there more t
han enough ‘babes’ down here for you?”

“Yeah, but they’re
devil
babes.”

“So what?” Ash didn’t understand. After all, as far as he knew, there were no differences betw
een Earth girls and Hell girls.

“You might not know this,”
said Aura, “but it’s pretty common procedure here for devils to mate
for life
. I’m in the minority of devils that is
strongly
against this practice. I’ve heard you humans go through multiple mates though…”