Infernal Investigations

I felt warm.

It was strange. The water was icy cold. I could feel it on my skin as I plunged deeper. Chilly cold that should have made my muscles seize up. Instead, a strange warmth, as the cold met my scales and simply slid off.

My tail moved back and forth, helping propel me down deeper, fins fully extended. I wasn't actively doing any of this, letting instinct take over and drive me further down. Cold water sucked in through my mouth then expelled by the gills of my neck failed to send cold into me.

Further and further down. I could see in this darkness better than the darkness in the sky, and could still see the butterfly diving deeper as well.

Fey. Didn't it know butterflies could not fly underwater?

I continued after it because I'd glimpsed the alternative. Jagged claws formed from ragged scraps of wood, clawing through the water at me. The Imp hadn't taken my rejection well, it seemed. It hadn't caught up yet, but who knew how long that would last.

How long I would last was another question. I shouldn't feel tired, not in an imagining of my own mind, but I certainly felt it. A slow-burning sensation was creeping up my limbs, my tail, settling deep in my muscles all across my body. Pushing further and further down into the depths.

By all rights, pressure should have taken me by now. Or not? Some new quirk of my biology, the fact I wasn't in reality, or just not having swum that far?

It was hard to tell how far I'd swum. The only glimmers of difference in this abyss were the butterfly ahead and the diabolical creature behind. Ten minutes? Thirty? Fifty? Was this just delaying the inevitable, and the real answer was to turn back around and fight?

There was that temptation. To surrender, as my limbs burned and I pushed ever deeper. To just stop, and let it happen.

Not yet. I kept on diving.

I pushed further, and the colors down there changed, something besides the inky depths. Bright lights, in a framed square.

I could feel warmth down there, and pressed towards it, pushing until my hand breached past water to warm air, and I was falling into a busy, familiar floor.

The sound of cheer and music replaced the muted sounds of the underwater for a single second before I fell.

I plummeted between two tables, forming into a roll that sent me sprawling face-first into an empty chair. I grabbed the arms, stopped my head from ramming into it. Letting loose a shuddered, tension-filled breath, I got up.

I was in a tavern, notable in that every surface was stone. Marble everywhere the naked eye could see, granite where you were less likely to see it. Expensive, but the four times this place had nearly burned down had finally convinced the owner to pay the extra price instead of having to rebuild. I'd always wondered why Edwards had never done that from the start, considering what he'd named this place.

I got up into the busy common room of the Hells' Own, eyeing my surroundings uncomfortably. Here? I could think of a half dozen reasons why I could end up here. The butterfly fluttered down, landing on my shoulder.

"I don't suppose you know why I'm here, do you?" I asked it, only to get a fluttering of its wings in response.

I glanced upward. The entire roof was a swirling mass of water, the black depths of the ocean I'd just swum through. Some water had fallen with me down onto the ground, making the marble slick as I got to my hooves. The rest of it stayed above, rising and falling, but none of it came down onto the tavern floor.

I tore my gaze away, instead focusing on my surroundings. Edwards looked older, very close to his current age. The Black Flame occupied their usual spot in the corner. Eight of them, two keeping the rest of the patrons away while the other six enjoyed a drink.

There, nursing a pint at one of the tables was Tolman, post the Biosculpting I'd done for him to get him to his proper body. That and Edwards' older appearance narrowed down when this was. This was-

A red-skinned Infernal stepped out for the section with the private rooms, having just finished saying something to some abominably poorly sculpted bodyguard, and looked my way. Shorter than me, with a face rounder and more Anglean than my own, she gave me a polite nod.

Shite. Of course, another one of them was here. Based on the four I met so far, a coin flip if this one would be helpful or not.

She'd headed to the bar itself, trading some words with Edwards that I caught the tail end of as I walked closer.

"-little stronger will cost you extra."

"I'll pay. Double the usual amount. And one for my friend here."

The fake-Edwards gave me an appraising look, and I replied with as friendly a grin as I could muster. Please let my mind not lean too hard on his actual opinion. I hardly wanted to be lying here, head split up by his shotgun when the Imp came breaking through the ceiling.

"Sure," he said, nodding gruffly. "Triple the pay for this one."

I scowled, but didn't protest. It would be horrible to be kicked out of a bar inside my own head. Also, it wasn't my coin being spent. Also, this wasn't even real, so stop worrying about it!

"Thank you, but I don't really drink that much anymore," I told Falara, settling into my chair. That felt good, stretching and letting worn muscles relax. If my mind was going to inflict exhaustion on me to begin with, it could let me rest as well.

"Yeah, you traded one vice for another once you started worrying about getting caught while drunk," Falara noted. "I'd like to note even in the middle of the Black Flame you didn't give up the occasional indulgence of vice."

"I was also an idiot who thought I could trust a whole host of people I couldn't," I replied.

"You traded your trust a bit too freely," Falara agreed. "Then, you decided you never would again."

I raised an eyebrow, inclining my head towards Tolman. I took a tentative sip of the mead, and let myself enjoy the taste. It has been too long since mead and sulfur.

"How has that relationship fared?"

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Anger spiked inside me, my hand almost strangling the tankard's handle. "I had good justification for-"

"You got paranoid," Falara said with a sad smile. "Not without any cause, and if anyone understands that fear of discovery at any second, it's me, but still. Did you make more than a token effort at finding out why before condemnation?"

I stared, anger and shame fighting for equal dominance in my heart before I breathed out.

"No, although determining that would have been….impossible."

"Improbable, not impossible," she replied. "Come on Malvia, we're in the detective business now, aren't we? And the improbable happens all the time."

"I'm hardly a mystery-book character," I muttered, taking another sip of my drink.

She rolled her eyes. "You are currently running around with a pair of people who write mystery stories based on their actual cases Malvia."

"I am a conscripted servant for Imperial Intelligence, who occasionally works with them," I corrected, staring into the tankard. "Muscle, occasional alchemy, and bad decisions are what I'm made out of."

"Stop selling yourself short," Falara said fiercely. "It's not needed, it's not necessary, and somewhere in that head of yours, you know it's not true. Making bad decisions doesn't make you lesser."

"They don't?" I said bitterly. "You've been given free rein inside my head, you know what I've done. Bad decisions, in some people's views. How many have I killed, you think? Just personally, not even just from my involvement."

That actually made the surrounding patrons shift; the business of the tavern hit a lull as eyes glanced my way. Edwards, behind the bar, shifted, his hands drifting beneath the bar's surface, towards the shotgun stored beneath.

Oh joy, was my mind taking hints from what I was saying?

"Not enough to justify sinking into what your brother said about you," Falara said. "And completely ignoring the good you did."

I snorted. "Saving my own skin."

"And saving people from being killed and replaced by shapechangers, on top of whatever else they planned. Given that one of them was aiming to frame the Quarter for their crimes, quite a number of people."

"Not intentionally," I reminded her.

"You're doing it again," she replied.

I paused, uncertain what it was. Holding myself accountable? You'd think that would be something to encourage, not the other way around.

Around us, the patrons had settled back into their drinking and talking, while a band played on the stage. Nostalgia in my memories must be improving on their skill, because I was quite certain the Hells' Own had never had a band capable of playing that well before. Well, not after an hour of the free drinks that was the typical pay for playing.

Familiar faces like Tolman had vanished into a mass of Infernals, impossible to spot among the sea of skin colors, horn patterns, tails, and more esoteric signs of Infernal heritage. I'd once seen someone who had it manifest in a head of living flames, which according to her had been as impossible to live with as it sounded.

"Are you surprised to be here?" Falara asked me. "In many ways, this is our beginning."

I snorted. "My beginnings along this path were far before this. Your beginning was not as far back, but still far predated this."

"Not our very first beginning but it all began here, about oh, thirty minutes ago, when Lord Montague emerged from the underground and decided that a pistol was the best way to negotiate," Katheryn said, the sighed. "Pity that he actually has a brain behind that bluster and arrogance, or he could have been put away."

I bristled. "If you're implying-"

"I don't need to imply anything," Katheryn stated, looking me in the eye. "Are you going to claim you don't blame yourself for how that ended? Not just how he wriggled off the hook, but how other things ended?"

I shuddered. "In hindsight, yes, there are many things I did that I would have done differently, but-"

"Not to interrupt what I'm sure is a healthy dose of self-justification covering an even healthier heaping of shame," Katheryn said. "Have you considered the fact that maybe you aren't the only person to blame who was there?"

"Gregory has been very unforgiving ever since-"

"Enough about Gregory," Katheryn said. "But also keep in mind if someone kidnapped mother, had trusted her to some random drakes, then acted innocent-"

"Enough," I said, sighing. "The point is made."

"Yes, but is it taken?" she asked, then held her hands up as I glared at her. "Don't get offended, unless you want to deny a habit of saying you understand why something is bad, then doing it anyway."

I felt a growl building in my throat, and forced it back down.

"I'll admit going back to Diabolism wasn't the smartest move," I said. "This entire mess is because of that."

Falara nodded, took another swig of her tankard. "A bit late, but I'm glad you're realizing it. You have other tools you can use besides it, you know."

"Very expensive tools," I said, looking at my own tankard. The sulfur-flavored mead glinted back at me, trying to tempt me. "I can't just throw around Alchemy like I have no limit to my funds. Same goes for my Biosculpting. I'm barely afloat, and-"

"Imperial Intelligence is supporting you," Falara said. "Your worries about what they might do if you're too much of a bother are a bit of the same paranoia that led to the issue with Tolman. But not entirely unfounded, since you've been stuck under someone just as much to blame as how things turned out as you."

I frowned. Who was she talking about-no.

"Voltar?" I said. "You're blaming Voltar for how that turned out? He was hardly involved!"

She snorted. "Yes, he hardly was involved, and doesn't everything show for it. His contributions after were minimal, his plan so passive you had to arrange everything yourself and drag him into it."

I stared at her, mildly aghast. Yes, I had my doubts in Voltar's plans, but I'd also seen him disarm some of the most intricate schemes my half-brother had sent after him. Was this Tagashin making her opinions known through a proxy?

"If I had followed his plan, maybe things would have turned out differently-"

"Yes, they could have been worse," Falara said drily. "But let's not overfocus on it. He's just an example of this. You've already talked with some of the others, about how much you've come to not trust others. Do you trust yourself to handle this, Malvia?"

I chuckled. "That is a joke right?"

As the only answer was silence, I frowned as her expression remained serious. "You must be joking."

"It's not that you don't have the capability to act, or that you don't," she said. "But your opinion of yourself is-"

The ground jolted, shaking our table. I barely grabbed my tankard in time, looking around as patrons were sent stumbling to the floor. Up above the ocean-ceiling roiled, waves spreading and breaking free of whatever force kept them up there. Water fell from the sky, brief streamers that splattered all over the Hells' Own marble floor, spreading around before the ceiling stabilized itself.

I cautiously put my tankard down on a wet table, staring up at the ceiling still.

"Refill," Edwards muttered, seemingly not caring about what just happened as he dropped a fresh pair of tankards off.

"We're running out of time, aren't we?" I asked Falara.

"Something is coming," she admitted, her eyes moving between the door and the watery ceiling up above us. "Multiple things."

"I know," I said, retrieving the full tankard. Would my mind make me drunk in here? I certainly hoped not. "I'm guessing you'll be as much help as the others were earlier? In regards to the Imp, I mean?"

"Diabolism could tear through us easily," Falara admitted. "We aren't native to inside your mind and soul. It is. The Imp held back because it didn't want Tagashin to be angry at it. Kitsune have long memories, and killing fey she entreated…destroying it would become her life until it was gone."

"Seems you have nothing to fear then," I replied, idly playing with a knife on the table. "If it doesn't want to risk destroying you."

"Everything has its limits," Falara said uncomfortably. "For now, its happy to put us to sleep, which it can do easily. I imagine if any of us actually offered it resistance it couldn't handle non-lethally, it would reach for the lethal options. Luckily, it and the diabolism is the only thing in here that can hurt us."

One of the figures at a table behind Falara flickered, changing, and immediately ran across the tavern floor towards where we sat.

I stilled, my hands moving for knives that weren't there as I moved out of my chair. Falara saw my expression and was moving herself, far, far too slow as a dagger plunged into her heart. A half-second later before I could get to either of them, jaws latched around her throat, tearing half of it away. She fell back, throat a ruin of exposed spine and strips of flesh as she hit the ground.

Nothing I could do but grab a knife for defense as her assailant spat a mixture of blood and flesh across the table with clear disgust.

"What was that about only hells' magic being a danger in here?" She said icily before turning her attention towards me, staring contemptuously as I readied the knife.

"Well now," Malvia Harrow said, blood dripping down her chin as she stared at me. "Where the hells have your decisions landed us this time?"