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Three days had passed since that sparring session with Daria, and Srida had finally been given another day off. The hellhound believed in downtime, and that it was essential for the guard to function properly. If people were overworked, she said, they would become inattentive and perhaps lose their will to do the job properly, and that it was simply more beneficial in the long run to give people their personal time. Technically it was supposed to be another five days before she had a day off, but after thirty minutes of sparring at the start of the day and everyone had gotten to their tasks, Daria had simply told Srida to take the day as break.

Obviously, the gorgon had jumped at the opportunity. She needed the time to try and piece together a spell that would let her piggyback on an upper hellion back to the overworld when a summoning occurred, and she needed to have it memorized cold. Srida had taken an hour walk or so and found another cave quite some ways from Stillrock, and was back to drawing runes in the dirt.

Srida found herself staring at the ground where several strings of runes were haphazardly scratched. They dictated what the spell would do, effectively instructions for the magic in some sense. To cast the spell, she'd need to provide it with power, and either look at those runes or recreate a perfect mental image of them in her mind--the effect was the same.

That was going to be a problem as well and would be akin to trying to memorize a page from a book, except the words weren't enough, she would also need to know what it looked like photographically. Most casters would simply read the runes as they cast the spell--nothing gave a clearer mental image of something than looking at it--but she didn't have that option, not down in the umbral plain. Carrying a stone tablet with runes scrawled on it would be a dead giveaway and surely bring the wrong kind of attention down on her instantly. She had heard passing references to warlocks--and they seemed to be mentioned in the contexts similar to murderers. It was enough to chill her bones and ensure the secret was very closely guarded.

But she needed the right runes to begin with, and that was the problem she currently faced. Her expression was taut and her hairsnakes writhed aggressively, but that didn't change the fact that Srida was at an impasse. The link she'd used to try and funnel the power off from the gorgon in the overworld all those days ago had been rigid in a sense. That rigidity had been what allowed it to pull her into an alternate dimension, but is also had the side effect of breaking if her physical distance from the linked creature grew too great, even though it maintained a strong spiritual connection.

Yet if she made the link more malleable in the physical sense, it wouldn't be strong enough to pull her along for the ride back to the overworld and the spiritual aspect of it would snap. As far as Srida could tell, the traits were mutually exclusive, and that was a very bad thing. She would need to cast the spell on an upper hellion and maintain the same physical distance from them until a summoning happened to grab them! That was virtually impossible, unless she knew when a summoning was going to happen, which also wasn't in the realm of possibility.

Her current attempt was a bit of a workaround. She was trying to see if she could have the link automatically recast itself every half a second or so, refreshing itself to the new length, making the strong variant of the link able to pull her through, but still behave like it could stretch. Unfortunately, such an attempt wasn't going well with her. It worked in theory, but the power demand of the spell was simply too high. The continuous and automatic recasting had a slight amount of overhead which didn't let it simply use the power from the previous spell, eventually making it grow weaker and weaker until it just failed.

Srida was watching it fail again. A temporary tweak made the normally invisible link visible as a beam of blue light, with its power represented by the intensity of the beam. It was diminishing by the second. No matter how many variations of this approach she tried, Srida couldn't eliminate the overhead. It just wouldn't work. When it finally flickered out, she stopped counting.

Quickly scratching the numbers in the dirt, Srida ran the calculations of how long such a link would last if she actually used it and assumed no other complications that she hadn't considered. Instead of swearing under her breath again when she came to the result, she just hissed. She realized what she'd done the moment it came out and it made her frown deepen. It was too animalistic--something monsters did, not people. That didn't change the fact that it felt better than any curse she knew.

If she used the amount of power the imp had given her, the link would last no more than a day before completely consuming it, and that was assuming optimal circumstances. Currently, that simply wasn't sustainable. Perhaps she could...

_No. _Srida nipped that thought in the bud. There wasn't a way she could go hunting imps on a daily basis to fuel such a spell.

Could she?

The gorgon sat back against her own body, letting all the magic fade and closing her eyes for a moment. The whole idea of venturing out into upper hellion territory quite frankly terrified her. Objectively, she knew she was probably the most well-armed and dangerous creature in the area because of her astral magic--but she was also incredibly easy to kill. It would just take one imp to find her while she was sleeping to sink its teeth into her throat, and it would be over. She'd be trapped down here for good.

The thought sent shivers down her spine, and in turn down into her serpent half.

Resigned, Srida found herself looking down at herself again, playing with the tip of her tail idly through her fingers. At this point she'd certainly gotten used to the body, even if the twist on Andreas' sexuality pained him every time it jumped into his head. If Andreas were in the overworld and oblivious of the consequences of dying with umbral magic in his system, he'd probably love it. The serpent was both fast and strong, yet exotic and interesting in a way Srida actually enjoyed. Simply moving with a deadly grace was fun, and would have been incredibly enjoyable to use in the overworld as an intimidation technique.

Srida was lost in daydreams of what could have been that she nearly missed the scent she picked up on when her tongue flicked out on its own accord.

Leo.

Hastily she used a large chunk of her tail to wipe out all the runes she had scratched into the dirt, not really concerned with the work she lost. The approach was fundamentally flawed, and she probably shouldn't be wasting time on trying to make it work. She had just leaned back when Leo's footsteps sounded by the mouth of the cave--louder than they normally were too. He tended to move with almost utter silence, so the fact that she actually heard his paws touching the ground meant only one thing--he wanted her too.

"Srida, are you in there?"

Srida frowned. Perhaps he didn't want to spook her and get accidently petrified.

"I am," she said lazily, lounging against her own body again. "Come in!"

She pitched her voice up a bit and made herself just generally sound a bit more pleasant. The truth was her heart was racing. She'd could have been discovered if he hadn't announced himself and she hadn't flicked her tongue out like that. How _had _he found her?

When he came in, she asked as much.

"I'm kinda surprised you came across me," she said, arching a scaly eyebrow at him. Srida had begrudgingly acknowledged that he had been looking at her in the way men quite often looked at women and behaving in a similar manner too. "This is pretty far from Stillrock..."

Perhaps that hadn't been the best thing to say. It drew attention to the fact which he might take as suggesting something she wasn't.

Fortunately, his face was very serious when he walked in on all sixes, and remained so even after she spoke.

"I followed your scent," he said flatly. "And your trail I suppose. You do leave quite an imprint in the dirt."

Srida grimaced. Her body was over a thousand pounds and moving over almost anything except stone without leaving a trail was quite difficult.

"Before we even start though," he continued, "I need you to know that if I'd wanted you dead, I would have simply warped into your room while you slept and bit you in the back of the neck."

Srida blinked at him blankly, mouth hanging open slightly, the meaning not even fully registering in her mind at first. Was he threatening her?

"And most people would have if they knew your secret. Instead I'm talking to you because I want to solve this problem, and I hope you don't kill me due to my knowledge of it."

That last sentence rang in her ears and made a cold pit form in her stomach. Leo was still standing a few feet from her on all sixes, watching her carefully, but not looking directly at her. Undoubtably, he was ready to warp out at the first sign of danger from her.

"Well," she finally said after a moment, her tone dry. "That's certainly not what I expected."

Leo grimaced. "No easy way to broach the subject," he said. "But I didn't want you to think I had blindly walked in here and killing me was an easy out."

Srida stilled her hairsnakes which had taken to lashing about, causing them to only writhe idly like they normally did. "Well you could have done that smoother I suppose, but you certainly made your point," she said, her tone crisp. "How do you know?"

She posed the question because it didn't actually give away what her secret was and let him tell her what he thought it to be instead, but it was still a natural question to ask.

The displacer beast hesitated. "The Umbral Scourge...felt...you enter the umbral plain and tasked me to find you."

Srida stared at him incredulously, waiting for him to say he was joking, but the statement never came. "The Umbral Scourge?" she asked weakly.

"There is no short explanation," he said quietly, finally settling down onto the floor in a seated position. He'd finally voiced his life insurance and had visibly relaxed somewhat. Srida, on the other hand, was now tense as a bowstring.

Over the next couple minutes, Leo detailed how both he and the Umbral Scourge--a man named Dobrin--were from the same world, similar to the one she was from, but not the same. They never had access to astral magic however, and had gone down a different societal progression. He talked briefly about how their world was invaded, and the vessel they had gone on to conduct experiments far from anywhere else. Then he talked about how they'd successfully opened a portal, and the carnage that had immediately followed. Srida found it interesting how time passed differently where he came from, and he said there was a reason, but didn't explain it.

The revelation that the Umbral Scourge was just a man really struck Srida however. He had seemed like so much more--or she had envisioned him as such at least. When she voiced that to Leo, he chuckled mirthfully.

"Just because he's only a man, it doesn't mean he hasn't done ever single one of those things you've heard about." Leo's eyes glittered dangerously as he said that. "The upper hellions fear him Srida. Their magic can't penetrate his shield, and the armor itself can be powered by the essence."

_Just like my magic can be powered by umbral essence, _she thought.

"If he is so strong and dangerous, what does he need with me then?" Srida asked weakly. She really didn't want to die, and the Umbral Scourge was the only thing down here other than her who could truly kill someone permanently.

"You warlocks have control over astral magic," Leo said simply, making Srida jump slightly. She'd never used either of those terms with him before. How did he know them?

"Dobrin wants me to get you to get me hypnotic resistance," Leo continued, and after he said that sentence he frowned. "That was poorly phrased. Steal hypnotic resistance from another naga and transplant it to me!" he barked, a little annoyed at his poor choice of words moments before.

His sudden half shout made Srida jump again. "He can't do that himself?" she asked carefully. She'd assumed the Umbral Scourge--no, Dorbin--would have access to astral magic himself. A silly thought in retrospect, Leo had said his world didn't have it. But then how had they opened a portal to the umbral plain...?

Leo shook his head in response to her question. "Maybe if we had the right equipment, but we only have access to the Ironshell suit." His lips drew a little bit tighter. "And Srida, if I'm being entirely honest, I would love it I knew those upper hellions couldn't dominate my mind at will."

His expression had hardened when he said that, but his voice had wavered ever so slightly. For the first time since entering the cave--actually, the first time ever--that she'd heard him sound frightened.

Srida chewed her lip for a moment, thinking about how to do it. She knew how to transplant parts of other souls into her own--she had done it with the succubus--but how could she do it for others?

"I'd have to experiment," she said carefully. "Currently how I take bits and pieces from other demons is done entirely by feel, but I wouldn't be able to do that with you. I'd need to write out a more structured spell I think."

Leo nodded. "It just needs to be done within a couple weeks. There isn't a huge rush." He grimaced again after saying that. "Dobrin has waiting hundreds of years of course, he can wait a little longer."

That made Srida shiver a little bit. The memory of the slaughter that had taken place above her head on her first day in the umbral plain was still clear in her head. She didn't want to make someone capable of that wait for too long.

"I'll need to find a naga demon," she said quietly. "Not incredibly common around here, and, well," her expression grew sour. "You know how little free time I have."

"I could see if I can narrow an area down by scent," he suggested.

Srida gave him a curt nod. "That would help. I just need to kill it...then I can store its essence for later, see if there's a way I can extend the wild magic. I know the shapeshifters in the overworld can...so there must be a way."

She grimaced herself while saying that. It was a bit of a secret amongst the shapeshifters actually. They thought the ability to forcefully transform other people was a dangerous one, and the school guarded the knowledge fiercely. It didn't help it took years of training to learn--another fact that soured her face.

Leo took what she said in stride. "It's fine. Time isn't an issue. I just need to be able to act as a scout when this is done."

Srida found herself eyeing him with a weighing expression on her face. "What does he need you to do anyways? It just seems like he's already unstoppable..."

"He's forced to follow where the portal drifts," Leo said, not sounding too pleased about that fact. "If Dobrin needs to venture from it to say...kill an upper hellion..." he put emphasis on those words, "someone needs to tell him where said tyrant is, and then watch the portal while he deals with them."

Srida found herself licking her lips out of nervousness and suppressing a bubble of excitement in her stomach. "Killing an upper hellion?" she asked carefully. "Why?"

Leo's smile was more malevolent than she was used to. "They're who organize the biggest attacks against him, the hardest waves to keep from the portal. It's best for him if there's no organization down here at all--or a minimal amount at least." He seemed to hesitate like there was something more to say, so Srida kept her mouth shut, looking at him expectantly. Perhaps such a gaze could draw more out of him.

When he saw her expression, he didn't seem to realize his own face had betrayed him and kept talking, in a tone that almost sounded like a child who had been caught in his own lie. "And, they're the ones who organized the invasion against my home world," he added, somewhat hastily.

Srida found herself chewing her lip again.

"Huh," she finally said, looking at the ground with unfocused eyes, thinking about what he'd just said--and the implication. "They were able to portal out of the umbral plain and into your world."

He had mentioned it earlier when he'd explained where he'd come from, but it hadn't really occurred to her what it meant. It meant there was a way out.

"They could at one point," he said dryly. "But after their little invasion got pushed back, we made sure they couldn't do that again."

Srida glanced back up to him, legitimately surprised. "Wait, really? How?!"

Leo looked at her like it was obvious. "We, uh, put a shield up. We knew where the umbral plain is relative to ours metaphysically, it was just hard getting to it. Just because you know where the center of a mountain is, doesn't mean it's easy to get there. But that also doesn't mean you can't put a fence around the thing with too much difficulty."

Digging through her memory of her history classes, the number did seem to add up. "So the time distortion wasn't bad until the--until Dobrin came down here, right?" She caught herself before calling him the Umbral Scourge.

Leo gave her a nod. "Yeah. The excess energy from the portal was directed to the engine, which made us accelerate, which made the distortion get worse really quickly. If you're wondering when the shield went up relative to planetary time...it would have been about 2500 years ago." He grumbled when he got to the number, "though to me it was only five or so."

"That was when the Dreadlords stopped ruling my world as well," she murmured.

Most of the details had been lost to history, but the consensus was that the Dreadlords had been a powerful collection of warlocks that had ruled for centuries uncontested by any except each other. Then, at some point, it seemed like when one of them was killed by another, they stopped coming back. Whatever mechanism they used to shield themselves from death had stopped working. Nobody had been able to explain it, but after that point in time it had only taken several generations to completely claw the world back from the invasion of the umbral plain.

It was the reason being a warlock was outlawed. Nobody wanted a repeat of the dark ages. But had the Dreadlords actually been the upper hellions?

"Well they bit off far more than they could chew when they poured into my world," Leo grunted. "Even the simple energy barriers rich folk use as fences was enough to stop their magic. Never mind the military grade stuff."

Srida only half heard him. "So is there a vulnerability?" she asked, her voice low in thought. She knew exactly the barrier he was talking about, the shield that kept the hellspawn in, the veil that all assumed was natural. "A way to get through it?"

"Not without the decryption key to nullify a part of it," he said matter-of-factly. "It wouldn't be a good barrier if it was easy to punch a hole in, would it?"

Srida huffed air from her nose in irritation. "So I still need to use a summoning to escape then," she muttered.

Leo eyed her curiously. "Why do you want to escape though?"

That question took Srida by surprise and she gave him a puzzled look. "Leo...this is the _umbral plain. _I want to get out for that reason alone."

His expression was just as confused. "I mean, I had a similar thought at first too, but..." He pursed his lips, an expression that still looked odd on his half cat-like face. "Well, we're pretty much immortal down here," he finally said. "Or at least we've had thousands of years added to our lives."

Srida frowned. He wasn't wrong. "The astral plain has something similar as well," she said, though now she was unsure of herself. "We don't know what exactly, but it is a less..." she looked around at the stone and dirt cave, then at the entrance to the cavern outside. "A less fiery version of this," she said, tilting her head at him slightly.

"You're sure you'd go there after dying?" Leo asked, almost cautioning her. "I don't know what this astral plain is, but I'm going to guess it's one of the many other metaphysical realms we detected, and I don't see any reason why you'd be pulled to it in particular after death."

That gave Srida a start. "One of the many other?" she asked incredulously.

He gave her a nod, frowning. Evidently he'd assumed this was something she'd been aware of. "There are a lot. All obviously artificial. It's just that boring into them is hard."

Srida heaved a giant sigh, sinking further into her own coils. "Okay, clearly I don't know as much as I think about realmatic theory. We knew the archangels were stingy with knowledge but that's...annoying. That's a conversation I need to have with you later." As she said that she knuckled her eyes. "But it doesn't change the fact that I want out of this place."

Leo smirked. "Bit too close to Hell for you eh."

"Yeah..." Srida said through her teeth, mind back on the problem of escape. Another thought had occurred to her.

"If I do get you the hypnotic resistance," she said slowly, "I want to see the portal the--the portal Dobrin is guarding." She caught herself and forced herself to use his name again. "I might be able to study it, replicate it back to my world, perhaps even close it."

Leo's gaze snapped to her suddenly and harshly. "That's possible?" His voice was a cross between shocked and hard.

She nodded quickly, suddenly wanting to shrink back from that predatory stare. She might be a gorgon, but her human mind still flinched when a giant cat looked at her like that. Steeling herself, she squelched the instinctive fear and spoke.

"It might be. I know it's possible to break portals that are being powered from the other side, though you are creating them differently than I'm used to," she added hesitantly.

"How long would you need to examine it?" Excitement was leaking into his voice, although he was obviously trying to keep his tone neutral.

Srida just gave him a slow shrug and an expression to match. "I know a lot of techniques for deconstructing a cast spell, but again, I don't know if any of them will work. And even if they do, there are ways to tunnel into another plain that only take a page of runes, and other ways that take an entire book. It all depends on the complexity."

He nodded slowly. "I suppose that makes sense," Leo finally said, looking at the ground again but with eyes unfocused.

A long silence sat between them to the point where Srida was beginning to find it uncomfortable, but Leo didn't seem to notice. He was still deep in thought. Licking her lips nervously, Srida asked another question. Perhaps she could get some more information out of him while his guard was down.

"I know Dobrin is trying to kill an upper hellion," she said slowly, certain of that fact and hoping to dig out deeper motives, "and the why is pretty apparent, but what about afterwards?"

He looked up at her and his yellow eyes found hers.

"Where does it end for him?" she continued. "When the portal is closed? When all the upper hellions are dead?"

Leo sat there in silence for a bit longer before answering. He didn't seem to be unsure if he should tell her or not, just unsure about if what he was saying was even true.

"Fundamentally to him--and me I suppose--it's about preventing another invasion against us. Nobody wants a repeat of what happened when that first portal opened. The upper hellions used some kind of corrupting influence to turn a lot of our civilians into devils of some sort-"

"Improper fusing," Srida muttered, aware of the phenomenon.

He waved what she said away with one of his four hands. "Whatever, you know what I'm talking about. Imagine what the result would be if that happened in the middle of a city with millions of people, and no way to find the source. It was a massacre. But," he said strongly, emphasizing the word and pausing for a moment.

"The military caught a demon in a shield and did a bit of torture. A couple demons actually. All had roughly the same story. It took a lot of coordination and effort. Upper hellions working together."

When he said that his smile was grim. "And you know what upper hellions don't like doing?"

A mirth laced smile crept onto Srida's own lips. "If it is indeed the same creatures as the Dreadlords, they're treacherous bastards."

Leo gave her an exaggerated nod that was almost a bow of his head. "They're basically petulant children. How well do you think they're handling an agent of chaos? Someone like Dobrin?"

"Other than being scared shitless?"

Leo smirked. "They keep trying to feed each other to him to save their own skins. And as long as they're fighting down here..."

"They aren't trying to find a way out," Srida finished.

"Because they probably could with enough time," Leo said grimly. "They certainly know the rules better than we do. Dobrin has basically accepted that his role in life until the day he dies is to keep the upper hellions fearing for their lives, but not to the point that they band together. Just enough stress on their little empires that they're focused on him and each other. Not on getting out."

Srida found herself smiling. "He could kill them," she said wryly. "He really could just kill them."

"At the expense of leaving the portal unguarded," Leo said, nodding. "And letting the people on the ship die. And even then, other hellions would just take their place. Those below them wouldn't get culled and others would become new upper hellions. Something will always fill the power vacuum."

Srida found herself agreeing with him. It all made sense, at least at face value.

Realizing how much he said, Leo had adopted a sour expression. Perhaps he hadn't been in the wrong telling Srida so much, but there certainly wasn't harm in secrecy either.

"Well that was a bit of a tangent," he said dryly. "But, if Dobrin wants me to help him keep this place balanced at the brink of chaos, I need that hypnotic resistance. And there's still a couple hours in the day. Shall we hunt a wild naga?"