Sell you a Bridge chapter 96

The Clock Tower September 29th 2010 4:00 PM EDT

I  was exhausted. A month. A month of nearly non stop grinding trying  unsuccessfully to use as few of my points as possible. I'd officially  hit level thirty yesterday, with a daily income of a hundred and fifty  points, and I'd dumped the extra fifteen in dexterity, bringing it up to  thirty. We were on level thirteen now, having just entered, and we'd  hit a wall. Hell was, as one might imagine, hellish. The monsters down  there were the strongest they could get from the concentration  considering how far ahead we were, and even going all out I could barely  take one or two of them at a time.

Which brought me to  where I was now. I had thirty one hundred points banked. I'd planned to  wait and use them for my lair, but I was genuinely worried we might die  if I didn't take the devil transformation. We'd been ambushed by a Storm  Lord when we first got down there and only Artemis and Zee's dominance  over lightning had save me. Even my king's sword couldn't do much real  damage to it. I sighed and looked across the table, glancing up from my  phone at my best friend and girlfriend. "Are you two sure about this?"

Zee  nodded, and I found my train of thought derailed by her insanely high  charisma. Madame Xanadu had been working overtime on teaching her finer  glamour control, and she was doing a damn good job, but when it was the  three of us she didn't bother. She and Artemis were at thirty like I  was, putting my girlfriend at a whopping three hundred thirty charisma,  and despite being mostly used to it it could be a bit distracting. Still  she didn't hesitate. "You being ok is the most important thing, hell is  too much for us as we are, you need to be stronger. We all do."

I  sighed. She was right. I was only at thirty one hundred points because  I'd been dumping literally dozens of them into the dungeon. Which was  what they were for sure, but it also meant I didn't have them to spend  of getting new powers and abilities. Hell was a watershed, and this  close to making it through the dungeon and getting to Annabel we  couldn't afford to slack. I had the weirdest feeling that things were  only just starting to take off and even pulling in hundreds of points  and being fast enough to cut bullets out of the air with my King's Sword  of Haste wouldn't be enough.

Not to mention the income  from my points would probably spike at least a hundred with the race  evolution, plus all the new powers and abilities I would have. The  description of the heart of the ultimate devil made it clear it would  synergize incredibly well with my powers, apparently devils used magic  based on imagination, I wasn't sure why but I felt like that would work  well with my powers. I would even get a unique ability with the  transformation. A bloodline of my own to pass down to my kids.

I  wasn't clear what that bloodline might be but I was excited to find  out, there was no options listed but apparently I would be able to feel  it. Honestly though, I was scared. My last physical upgrade had been  agonizing, and this was any actual race change. I couldn't imagine the  pain. Zee seemed to notice the hesitation because she walked over to  take my hand. "I'm worried too baby. But you have to trust your power,  it's never given you anything you can't handle before and it won't start  now. I'll be right here with you whole time anyway."

I  took a deep breath, closing my eyes to try to center myself before I  hit the button.I felt the energy in my body drain away, but with a  hundred points still left I wasn't exactly drained. Of course, a second  later there was a knock on the door to my room, and I walked over and  opened the door. Sitting in the hallway was a huge black wicker casket.  The thing was sealed with what looked like melted gold, and there were  images engraved on the top in gold tracery. I picked it up and carried  it inside to set it on the table in my room as Zee closed the door.

The  thing was heavier than I expected. At twenty five strength I was two  and a half times stronger than peak human and I still had trouble  lifting that damn casket up and thumping it down on the table, which  creaked ominously under the weight of a box that was only supposed to  have a literal heart in it. I wondered if my heart would get heavy like  that, or if this was some kind of magic fuckery. The melted gold looked  pretty thick, but luckily I still had my trusty tanto, even if it didn't  see as much use these days.

I  had my demon slaying dagger too, but putting it near a devil heart just  seemed like asking for trouble so I slipped the tanto from it's sheath  and pressed it against the gold, slicing right through the stuff with  the insanely sharp and durable material. In this instance not being  magical actually helped I think, because the wards keeping the heart  fresh might have reacted badly with a magic item. Once the gold parted a  hiss of darkness wooshed out of the case, like pressurized air, but  more goth.

Lifting  the lid after that was shockingly easy given how heavy the box was, and  when I saw what was inside I was...a bit torn. It WAS a heart. A  literal body part, but it was also weird. It looked like it was made of  some kind of shiny black material so dark that it ate the light around  it, and I could feel a sense of weight and power rolling off it as we  all stared at the organ. When I reached down to pick it up I confirmed  that the box had been most of the weight, the warm, oddly sticky piece  of flesh being even lighter than I would have expected from a heart,  nearly weightless in fact. I grimaced at the thing then raised it to the  girls in a toast, and before I could reconsider said "Bottoms up" and  bit into the item.

To  understand the experience of eating the heart I would need to explain  it in stages. First stage, the squelch. When I bit into the heart I felt  a massive rush of juice flow into my mouth, so I naturally assumed in  that split second that it was mostly full of liquid. This led to stage  two, the surge, where my momentary relief at not having to chew the  thing turned to confusion as the entire rest of the heart became liquid  in my hand. Which led to stage three, the smothering, when the   acceptance that I'd end drinking the thing turned to horror and the  black sludge it turned into was drowned out (no pun intended) by the  substance shooting down my throat like a living entity and surging  through my whole body.

I'd  been expecting pain, and that was in there, and I'd been expecting the  taste to be awful (which it was), but I had not been expecting the thing  to try to suffocate me from the inside while it was burning its way  through my whole body. My muscles all locked up, but luckily this time  the screaming couldn't happen because of the toxic sludge blocking my  airway, so Zee and Artemis just got to watch worriedly as I flopped down  on the floor like a fish, twitching as my entire body got overwritten.  It was almost a relief when I finally blacked out from the pain.

Or  it would have been, if my slowly clouding vision didn't clear suddenly.  On the upside I now officially no longer hurt, but unfortunately I  couldn't feel my body at all, which made standing up and looking around  disconcerting. I wasn't in my room anymore. I was in A room, but not  mine, and I wasn't alone. This entire thing had been so fucking weird  already I literally just sat frozen for a minute, contemplating what was  going on , before the girl on the couch playing videos said "Can you  talk? I could have sworn you could talk."

I  jumped at the sound of her slightly dreamy voice. She never looked at  me as she spoke, just staring at her game. She looked...weird. She had  shaggily cut blonde short hair, a white tank top, and her arms were  festooned with multicolor glow stick bracelets and leather cuffs and  bands. Her incredibly thin, pale legs were wrapped in a pair of cargo  shorts and she had them against her chest with her feet up on the couch,  her toenails painted rainbow colors. She looked like a very high raver  girl, but I got the impression she absolutely was not to be fucked with.

I  cleared my throat. "Um, hi. Yes. I can talk. I don't think we've been  introduced, though you do seem weirdly familiar." Which was true, she  did seem familiar. But not like I knew her, more like Deja Vu, but  without the impression of something forgotten. It was hard to explain. I  looked around. "If you don't mind me asking, where are we? Is this my  brain? If so how exactly did you get in here?" I didn't really want  things coming into my brain, even mostly harmless looking raver girls I  somehow kind of knew.

She  shook her head quickly, her blonde hair flying around. "I'm Del, and I  didn't get in anywhere. This is my place. You're the one who showed up."  She flicked her eyes to me in a sort of apathetic curiosity. "Which is  strange. You do seem to be between consciousness and unconsciousness, so  you could be considered Delirious, but mostly people need an invitation  to visit. I must have invited you. Or maybe I haven't yet, it can be  hard to tell with me. Would you like to sit down?" She gestured to the  couch next to her with a jerk of her head.

I  shrugged and did that. "So, you said I'm delirious? I take it that  means I'll wake up soon? Not that your place isn't nice, I just kind of  want to get home. I left my girlfriend and my bestie alone with my body,  and once the shock of seeing me pass out in a mouth foaming mess wears  off there's a non zero chance of my best friend drawing something on my  face in permanent marker." I doubted Zee would let her, but if she was  annoyed enough it was possible, and I'd rather not risk it, since I knew  Artemis would take pictures.

She  waved a hand casually. "Nah, you'll wake up in a little under a minute.  Still, nice meeting you. I think I can see why I picked you. You have  an interesting power. Good luck with that." For the first time she  turned and fixed me with her gaze, her heterochromic green and blue eyes  spearing into me, the silver flecks in them shining. "Also, you might  want to slow down. Changing yourself too quickly can mess with your  head." I realized as she said this that her outfit had changed. In fact  it had changed three times while she was talking.

My  eyes were wide as I opened my mouth to ask what she was talking about  and if my powers came from her when she flicked her eyes back to the  screen. "Looks like you're waking up now. Say hi to my brother and  Barnabas for me. It'll be nice to meet you. It was good seeing you again  for the first time. Bye now." The experience of your eyes flying open  while they're already open was enough to shock me back into the  awareness that I was in my room again with Zee and Artemis on either  side. What the fuck had that been about?