Shut The Hell Up

Fisher of Victims went fishing for a demon.

She sat serenely on the white-sand shore of a clear blue lake, her fishing rod by her side. There weren’t any demons in the lake, but that wouldn’t stop her. She just needed the right bait.

She wanted something sentient, so she started with a book. She’d stolen a copy of Divinity and Heresy when she’d passed through Bluestone the other day; normally, she had moral compunctions about stealing, but for that garbage masquerading as literature, she’d made an exception.

She wanted something demonic, so she lightly sprinkled the book with sulfur. She was running out of the stuff, and it was a little hard to purchase more when she couldn’t even stay in one place for more than a day without being tracked down. She supposed she could always ask the demons she summoned if they had any on them. They usually had bits of sulfur clinging to them, but she’d have to scrub it off their body to get any appreciable amount of it, and she wanted to spare them that indignity.

Finally, she wanted the bait to be attractive. On the basis that cake was objectively delicious, she took out a slice of cloth-wrapped cake from her pack and gently laid it on top of the sulfur-dusted book. She’d been given the cake as a surprise reward when she’d helped out some innkeeper back in Starhelm; she was down to her last slice, but if she fished out another demon, it would be worth spending it.

Her bait done, she touched her fishing hook to the cake-on-a-book. Her instincts as a Fisher lit up, and she sent a gentle pulse of magic through the fishing rod. When she let go, the cake, the book, and the hook were all attached to each other as if glued, and light as a feather.

She dipped the tip of the baited fishing rod into the lake. The bait popped out of existence. She knew that, by her powers as a Fisher of Victims, her package of bait would be questing out into the world, searching for a being whom it would entice—

—and with a sudden splash, it found one.

Fisher of Victims reeled in the rod, pulling out a sopping wet demon. A very humanoid one, too—she could have been a girl in her teens, if not for the coat of red scales where her skin should have been, or the two stubby little horns on her head. Though the demon had the mass of a human, while attached to Fisher of Victims’ rod, she would weigh less than a mackerel. The demoness blinked in the sunlight and looked around, tense.

“Hi,” Fisher of Victims said, gently. “Welcome to the Terrestrial Plane. I’m Fisher of Victims. But you can call me Fisher for short.”

The demoness swallowed nervously. “I—my name is Kanarta. Please, mistress, I’m just a kid. Whatever job you’ve summoned me to do, I can’t—”

“Hey, hey, easy there. I didn’t summon you to enslave you, okay? You’re a person. You have rights. I get that.” Fisher smiled reassuringly.

Kanarta hunched over, still half in the water. “If that’s what you want me to believe, mistress.”

“Please, don’t call me mistress. I’m not your master. And you can come out of the water if you want; I needed a body of water to summon you from, but you won’t get sent back to Hell if you leave.”

Kanarta remained where she was. “As you wish.”

Fisher sighed. She considered putting a reassuring hand on Kanarta’s shoulder, but she suspected the touch of a human would only scare her more. “Look, Kanarta. Trust me, I have your best interests in mind. I understand that you’ve had a hard life, but I want this to be a conversation between equals, okay?”

Something furious flashed in Kanarta’s eyes, and she met Fisher’s gaze for the first time since she’d arrived, her face set in a grimace. “You want to be treated as my equal?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” Kanarta’s eyes bored into Fisher’s. “You wake up in Hell. You don’t know how you got here. You don’t know how long you’ve been here. You think that maybe you’ve always been here—except, you remember things from the terrestrial world. Air that doesn’t hurt to breathe. Food that doesn’t mutate your body, bit by bit. People who won’t follow you, day after day, waiting for you to drop dead so they can eat what little meat you have left on your bones. Those memories keep you going, scavenging skeletons of stranded souls, cracking them open to suck out their marrow, and wondering if you’re eating something human. Or something that used to be human. Something like you. And throughout it all, you know that, now that your body’s been twisted, your skin hardened, your hands and toes tipped with talons, humanity at large will never look at you the same way. At best, you will be exterminated like vermin. At worst, you will be summoned, and controlled, and… used, as others see fit.” Kanarta took in a deep, shuddering breath. “That is what it means to be my equal.”

Fisher fell silent, pondering Kanarta’s words. Slowly, whatever fire had propelled Kanarta’s speech petered out, replaced by stomach-dropping, spine-chilling horror. Kanarta took an unconscious step back as she realized what she’d said and stammered out, “I—I’m sorry, mistress. I spoke out of turn. Please don’t—”

“No.” Fisher held up a hand. “You did nothing wrong. I was just thinking. I’d read and heard descriptions of Hell before, but… none as vivid as that.” Fisher chuckled. “Well! I suppose that only vindicates me. Kanarta, I have summoned you to the terrestrial plane to free you from Hell. You are free to do whatever you want—although, if I may suggest something, I’ve established a nice little Hellish community which I’m sure would love to receive you.”

Kanarta blinked, flabbergasted. “You… what?”

“You’re free, Kanarta.” Fisher sobered up. “Now, you’d best get moving. You don’t have to come with me, but I’m leaving before the guy who’s been chasing me catches up.”

Kanarta’s eyes widened. “Um.”

“Don’t worry.” Fisher grinned. “He won’t find us for a long—oof!”

Kanarta stumbled backwards as a gale-force breeze screamed by, slamming into Fisher and hurling her into a distant dune. Kanarta went flying with her; a tugging at her sternum reminded her that she was still attached to Fisher’s supernatural fishing rod.

Fisher scowled and stood, dusting herself off, glaring at something in the distance. Kanarta followed her gaze. The clouds of dust and sand kicked up by the wind rendered the newcomer’s form a hazy silhouette to Fisher and Kanarta—and, ostensibly, would do the same in reverse. Fisher hissed to Kanarta, “Hide. Striker of Winds will kill a demon on sight.”

Kanarta scuttled behind a sand dune, mindful of the fishing line still connecting her to Fisher’s rod, leaving Fisher to face the newcomer alone.

Striker of Winds was a tall, thin man, muscular despite his leanness. He carried no weapon and wore no armor, but power and danger radiated off him like heat from the sun. Strikingly, his hair was mostly transparent, only visible in the way the sun glinted off what would otherwise be empty air.

“Striker,” Fisher said calmly, “we should talk this out like rational adul—”

“Demon-summoner!” Striker slashed at the air with an open palm, and Fisher was sent hurtling back once more. She released her grip on her fishing rod—to keep Kanarta from being jerked into the open, she realized. “Your unholy art ends now, servant of Hell!”

Fisher struggled to her feet, wheezing. “‘Servant of Hell?’ Striker, we’re the ones who enslaved demonkind, not the other way around. I’m saving people, Striker. Traumatized, scared people, who—argh!” Midway through her speech, Striker leapt over Kanarta’s sand dune in a single jump, landing amidst a swirl of wind and sending Fisher flying. Kanarta shivered in sympathy. She knew what it was like to face down someone unfathomably more powerful than her; she’d done it herself, mere minutes ago.

“I’m not listening to your lies, Fisher.” Striker held both hands in front of him and clenched his fists, then yanked both hands towards him, as if tugging on an imaginary rope. A sledgehammer of wind materialized behind Fisher, slamming her towards Striker. He calmly strode towards her.

“Fine,” Fisher grunted, “you think I’m a servant of Hell? I can work with that. Ahem.” She snatched her fishing pole from where it lay, then shouted, “Striker of Winds, you holy bastion of light and order! You have bested me! Quickly, I must kill the perfectly innocent human girl who only looks like a demon because I have used my unspeakably evil magics to torture her!” She flicked the fishing rod above her head and swung it like a lasso; as if being flung by a giant’s hand, the fishing rod flung Kanarta into the middle of the lake. She fell, screaming wildly. Fisher winked at her as she flew.

“You monster!” Striker of Winds clenched his jaw as Fisher started sprinting away, looking between her and the swiftly-falling form. He squinted at it—were those horns on her head? Were those fingers a little clawlike? After an instant of hesitation, he shook off the momentary confusion. The distance was blurring her form too much for him to make anything out—and he wasn’t going to let an innocent little girl plummet to her death if he could stop it. He spun around and dashed after Kanarta, wind whipping around him, lifting him into the air. “Don’t worry! I’ll save you!” Striker of Winds shouted. 

Fisher made it to the treeline, huffing and puffing, then looked back at Kanarta and Striker’s distant forms. She sighed, hoping her little deception would be enough to keep the girl safe—at least, until she could return for her.

“Sorry, kid.” Fisher stood up and walked away. “Best I could do for you.”

A.N.

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