March from Darkness | ✓ (to be edited)

THREE

     I don't remember when the last time I ate like this was. Maybe three years ago during an assignment that required me to appear wealthy and I had been forced to use a good portion of the money I'd saved from other jobs to attend a fancy dinner so I could poison my target's food. But even then, the food hadn't been this good.

     But this... this food was amazing. Everything tasted so rich, everything so warm and fresh. There were various selections of meats, potatoes cut into thin coins and drenched in a sweet cheese sauce, vegetables, a small selection of shellfish, and a few pomegranates that were cut into chunks with heavy, blood red seeds. And what's more, Soria, Sri, Talia, Docri, and Marshall sat with us. I found it odd at first, no one I had ever met with power or money let their servants dine with them, but as I observed the ways that these... creatures?

     I still didn't know what to call them; I was hesitant about calling them people because they technically weren't. They were mythical creatures that all happened to be in the same universe and were talking with me, as crazy as it sounded. Granted, it was because of my unwillingness to really call them people that made me wonder if this was just a fever dream I was experiencing in a coma. Maybe I hadn't truly died, maybe those assholes were keeping me alive so they could torture me whenever I came out of it.

     Anyways, as I observed these creatures interact with each other, I realized that they interacted more like close friends than servant and master, maybe with an even deeper connection. Granted, Phrer still kept his stoic expression, but there were times when I caught his lip twitching slightly, and the light in his eyes when he spoke with them was much brighter, more life-like than the strange, forced light he had when he spoke with me or Forseti. 

     I did manage to discover that Soria and Talia were, indeed, half-sisters, sharing the same mother but a different father. Soria never told me what her other creature traits were, but I found out, through Sri, that Talia was half-Siren and half-lindworm, which was apparently a bipedal dragon with no wings that had a venomous bite. So, technically, in my book, at least, she was half-snake. I shuddered at the thought and made sure to store that in my memory as a warning to never piss either of them off.

     Sri was a fire daemon from the land of Styx, a place in the land of the Greek underworld, which apparently existed, as well. "In fact, young one," Sri told me before stuffing a piece of pork into his mouth, "every single pantheon that you could ever imagine and was ever worshipped exists. The Greeks, the Romans, the Aztecs and Mayans, the Egyptians, all of them. They all exist, with varying distances from here. Our closest are the Japanese, the Sumerians, and the Aborigines of New Zealand and Australia."

     Okay, now I really had to be in a fever dream or something.

     "You're not," Phrer told me, answering my unasked question for the third time today, causing me to clench my teeth to refrain from yelling at him to stay out of my head. "You really are dead, but because you didn't believe in anything and the Sumerians refused to take the Wanderers after they were almost wiped out a few hundred years ago, your soul ended up here."

     Soria and Sri looked at me, but before they could say anything to me, Docri spoke up. "Well, we're lucky to have you here. More eye-candy for me!" I grimaced at that. He was overtly sexual, and it kind of freaked me out. I wasn't used to getting this kind of attention and it bothered me that it happened to be from someone who was most likely just looking for a good fuck before I left.

     "Ugh!" Marshall groaned, his black eyes staring at Docri, unimpressed. "Do you have to try and seduce everyone you see within ten meters of you?"

     Docri flipped his white hair, his bangs almost hitting Marshall in the face. "Aww, you're just upset that you won't ever get any of this because I don't like you." Marshall appeared to gag at that, his expression filled with disgust.