Recherché

by BigMacShrugs

Rating: mature
Tags: Sunset Shimmer, Slice of Life, Dark, Thriller, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sex
Length: 5122

Flourishing magic student Sunset Shimmer has yet to meet a boundary she can’t surpass, but that doesn’t mean that none exist.

Depending upon who’s speaking, undergrad Sunset Shimmer is CSGU’s most promising rising star, its most overrated slacker, or its weirdest lay. Sunset is just old enough to think she has insatiable needs, just young enough to still believe she’s immortal, and just skilled enough to think that nothing is beyond her reach.

Along comes her first real challenge.

More a clop-heavy, Dark-centered fic than a dark clopfic.

Contains (spoilers) tentacles, demon-things, bondage, futa (kinda sorta), and sex that's primarily nonconsensual.

Cover art by Daxhie.

Published 2015-11-13 02:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-11-13 02:10:02 UTC

Obscure, Esoteric, Arcane

The Daydreamer Memorial Overlook glimmered beneath the fading sky. Set between and some distance below two sister towers of the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns’ main building, it still offered a commanding view of the east and west. Of the rest of the school’s complex and of the field and forest at its back.

Arranged in patterns of lines and swirls, suns and clouds, the treated marble that made up the overlook’s platform – empty of ponies – reflected the oranges and purples from above. From railing to railing, the ornate design went interrupted only once: off to one side sat a cheap, black tray.

A full pitcher of water, droplets tracing sunlight down its curves, sat atop the tray. Beside it, an empty highball glass, a pressed and folded towel, and an hourglass.

The hourglass was small, little more than an egg timer. Sand was falling steadily from the upper reservoir, less than a third of it left.

There came a crackling sound.

The air above the platform’s center blurred, and the blurring quickly coalesced. It stretched thin and long, a suspended line of haziness fizzling like steam.

It turned inky dark then, and jagged, like a hairline crack in an invisible wall.

The air shattered, and two unicorns materialized so suddenly that they might as well have been there the whole time – a mare who stood upon the marble as though she’d landed gracefully after a long fall, and a stallion who hit the platform shoulder first and slid noisily until he met the railing’s bars. Both were panting, sweaty.

The mare, all oranges and reds, made her way to the tray. She smirked as she eyed the hourglass – watched the last grains fall. Her horn came to life in pale green, and it poured her a glass of water. She took great, heady gulps.

She wiped her mouth. “All of two and a half minutes,” she said lightly, taking up the towel next and working it along her body.

“What, Sunset?” The stallion, blue and brown, lifted his head unsteadily up off the platform and turned to her. Voice raw, he asked, “Was it that good?”

“You wish.” Snickering, Sunset moved the towel up and down her hind legs. In forceful circles beneath her tail. “That didn’t happen until after at least twenty minutes.”

The stallion frowned. “So…”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “It’s how long we were gone.” She tossed the towel over, and it met the stallion’s chest with a muffled squelch. She continued, “Don’t bother trying to understand how. You’re done, so go.”

“Tch,” the stallion spat. All the same, he stood, tossed the towel, and wobbled his way over to the northside steps and down.

The whole way, Sunset gave a cheery, mocking smile and wave for if he should happen to turn around. He didn’t.

The sun fell completely past the treeline. Sunset set her forehooves on the railing, and she poured herself another glass.

The door creaked open on its old iron hinges.

Pale green flared, and around the room, candles and lanterns came to life. It was a large space, but made much smaller by bursting shelves, piles of books and papers, and a bare mattress.

Sunset shut the door and put the tray down beside it. Carefully, she crossed through the mess, over to an oaken desk.

She levitated a quill and, from the top of a stack, a piece of parchment. ‘Time-dilated dimensional pocket,’ it read towards the bottom, beside an already checked box, and then, ‘Time-dilated dimensional pocket while preoccupied’. She checked that box as well.

The quill tapped idly at the empty space beneath that entry. Sunset sighed.

Sunset walked on the tips of her hooves. Past the sign, past the mare always sleeping at the check-in – at whom she stuck out her tongue.

Past the aisle marked ‘Magics Most Foul’.

Past the aisle of ‘Magics Mostly Foul’.

At ‘Magics Which Are Still Pretty Bad’, Sunset turned. Eyeing the tomes, she sucked in a determined breath – and choked back a cough from all the dust. She peeked around the shelf, at the still-sleeping mare. She nodded firmly to herself.

The saddlebags landed heavily upon the mattress.

Sunset walked to the center of the room’s mess, and with a flick of her horn, papers shuffled, books stacked, and a patch of bare wood quickly took shape within the chaos.

The quill and checklist floated over, and at the bottom, Sunset drew a checkbox and scratched in beside it, ‘Fun stuff’. Setting that aside, another parchment flew to her, and she continued, ‘Dark magic: magic forbidden by nature, via no natural safeguards for caster, incl. no auto-cancellation on unconsciousness. Risks: Damage to mind/body/soul/mana pool/natural lifespan/etc. esp. if mana pool exceeded.’

With a smirk and a flourish, she added, ‘Precautions: Not a normal pony – mana pool not puny. Couple wards for good measure, too.’

From the saddlebags, Sunset levitated the topmost book. Collaborations: The Dark Mage Guide to the Other Side. Shutting her eyes, she used her horn to open it up and start flipping pages. Old paper shuffled noisily until she brought up a hoof and held the next page down. She opened her eyes.

She smiled.

A little metal box in the corner of the room clanged open, and a piece of chalk floated out and over. The chalk met the wood floor at the outside of circle of cleared space. The glow around it brightened, and it started tracing out a line…

It stopped. Sunset was staring off, past the walls of the room. But then her eyes refocused, and her smile shifted into a smirk.

She turned to the tray still sitting by the door. The little egg timer hourglass glowed for a moment, but Sunset sniggered, and the glow dissipated. She turned instead towards her desk, and an hourglass seated atop it – a much larger one, marked for the full hour – glowed and floated over.

Sunset flipped the hourglass over and set it aside along with her quill and parchments. The book and the chalk, she held close.

Her horn flared bright, and the surrounding air began to hiss.

The scraping came to a stop, and Sunset set about scrutinizing her wards.

They stood out sharply against the solid, dark red material of the dimensional pocket’s floor. Pure, white chalk lines, in spite of the soft orange light filtering down from the blank ‘sky’ above. Precise pictographs and inequine languages all circumscribed by a thin, perfect circle.

Sunset nodded, and she moved to the direct center. One more glance at the open book floating at her side.

With steely eyes, the mage took aim with her horn. The green already surrounding it burned white hot.

The air darkened at a point above the floor several meters out from the circle. With a sound not unlike a water balloon being filled from a faucet, a shadowy mass grew outwards from that point. When it had become not much larger than Sunset herself, the mass fell with a loud plop to the floor.

The featureless black thing stretched and rose up to twice Sunset’s height, and from nowhere in particular, a cheery, androgynous voice said, “Hey there!”

Sunset raised an eyebrow.

The mass waddled forward. “I said, ‘Hey there, cuteness!’”

“Um,” Sunset said, eyes flicking down to her book, “hi.”

“Swanky little pocket you got, here. Must be costing loads to keep up, huh?” The highest part of the being, a wide nodule reaching up from the main body, had nothing to it apart from the same murky darkness as the rest. Still, Sunset felt that the thing was smiling warmly at her. “So,” it said, “they call me ‘chattel’. How ’bout you?”

“Nice try,” Sunset said, mouth a smirk. It faded, though, and Sunset’s eyes moved down fully to the page. They roved over the illustration of a four-horned, drake-like, bipedal monster. She looked back up. “You aren’t what I was expecting.”

“Oh?” the mass said. Its body rolled side to side – pensively, Sunset felt. “How’m I different from what you expected?”

Sunset frowned. “You seem much less… demonic, I guess?”

“Eh.” The mass squashed inward, reforming. Its color began to shift, and seconds later there stood a draconic pegasus in its place. Gray scales, leathery wings, lizard eyes. From a mouth filled with pointed teeth and a snake tongue, it rasped in a male voice, “Effort.”

Sunset did not visibly react. She continued, “And you’re remarkably casual about all this. Modern, I could call it.”

The being brought up a bifurcated hoof and brushed the scales of its chest. “Been summoned as recent as a couple years ago. Got a sense of what folks are like nowadays.”

Sunset shook her head. “Why aren’t you acting all suave – domineering, even? What does being casual get you?” She brought a hoof to her chin, and added, “Apart from poor tries at getting my guard down, I mean.”

It chuckled, the sound like rocks colliding. “Few centuries back, sure, I’d’ve been like that.” Its form shifted again, this time slimming. The scales and wings folded back into a simple red coat, and an orange mane sprouted from its head. A pretty earth pony mare now, it said with delicate voice, “Might’ve rolled out a nice face, tried to lure the one who summoned me into making a bad deal.

“But you guys are all too smart for that now, right?” it continued, before giving an exaggerated sigh. “Got your books on us, worked out rules. No point anymore.” All at once, it ballooned back out to its original shape, black again.

“If only,” Sunset said. She shut the book and rolled her eyes. “The ponies who wrote this thing didn’t even say what it is you’re capable of doing for me.”

“Well,” the mass said, quivering, “lots of choices there. Big or small, we’ve just got to make some kind of deal before you can get rid of me!”

Sunset’s eyebrow rose again. “That wasn’t in the book, either.”

“Really now?” The mass rolled further forward, until it was in spitting distance of Sunset. The nodule atop it stretched out like a peering head – inches from crossing above the mage’s circle. “Pfft,” it continued lightly, “what an old edition you’ve got there! No wonder it doesn’t say what I can do.”

Sunset stared at the suspended nodule of shadow. Then her horn flared brighter.

To the sound of rushing wind, the mass sucked into itself and disappeared even faster than it had arrived.

Smiling with eyes half lidded, Sunset spent a few moments examining the state of her forehooves. She breathed heavily on one before rubbing it against her coat. Her horn flared again.

The mass filled out the air once more, back in the position to which Sunset had first summoned it. Its whole form – Sunset felt when she looked up – was grinning.

“Please,” Sunset said in a patronizing tone. “I’d prefer it if we don’t have any more flimsy deceptions.”

The being’s body was vibrating almost imperceptibly. Evenly, and still with that casual air, it said, “Just testing a boundary or two, sweet thing.”

Sunset chuckled. “Fair enough,” she said. She leaned forward. “So, back to what you can do…?”

The head-nodule twisted around on its stalk – shaking its head. “Not how it works.” The being closed the distance between them again, but remained a meter or so out from the circle this time. “You tell me what you want me to do – your little wards there don’t let me do any suggesting.”

Sunset rubbed her chin. “And if you can’t do what I ask of you?”

“Then I do however much I can.” Another nodule sprouted from the mass, this one a thin length reaching out from its side. “Guess what decides how much I can do?” The arm-thing wiggled in Sunset’s direction.

Sunset blinked. She opened the book back up and looked in. “Ah,” she said, “the bit about my sacrifice. Pretty vague, too.” She looked back up. “Basically, I get out what I put in?”

The main nodule bobbed.

“And…” Sunset gestured her hoof in a circle. “What do I put in?”

The mass made a squishing noise that Sunset understood as a sigh. “You tell me, little miss dark mage. Whatever your kind usually stands to lose with this sort of stuff.”

“Ah,” Sunset said again, her expression blank. “Mind, body, soul and such. So” – she coughed into a hoof – “say I were to put up my body…?”

Slapping sounds now, high in pitch – laughter. “How did I know you’d ask that?” the being said. Straightening up, it continued with mock realization, “Oh! It must have been the male I’ve smelled on you since you summoned me.” It collapsed back into slapping, and nodules sprouted up all over its body, waggling about. “If you’re thinking what we both know you’re thinking, the answer’s ‘yes’.”

Huffing, Sunset stared at the wobbling, wriggling things. She cleared her throat after a moment, and said, “Okay, if I told you that I offer my body in exchange for…” Waving a hoof around, she stared off into the flat orange sky. “Knowledge of dark magic and powerful artifacts, for example.” She looked back down. “What would happen then?”

The mass ceased its wriggling, its slapping. “Easy,” it said.

Slowly, it moved forward, all the protrusions but the head-nodule rolling down and squashing beneath the main body and reforming on the other side. It stopped inches from the wards again.

Tone no different than before, still light, still cheery, the being said, “This.”

It gave a little hop, and it came down halfway past the wards’ edge.

Sunset paled, and her eyes shot wide. “What?” she breathed.

The mass inched further forward, tentacles stretching longer.

“No!” shouted Sunset. She hopped back. Her horn flared…

Nothing.

“C’mon,” the mass said, main nodule jiggling. “Before, sure, but you can’t banish me in the middle of a deal. That’d just be unfair.”

Sunset growled, firing up her horn again. Flames spilled out in an arc.

“Whoa!” The mass moved quickly to the side. The blue-yellow heat cut through some of its tentacles in the process, and they splashed like ink against the floor.

Sunset turned her head to follow.

The being ducked its main nodule, the flames missing by an inch and slicing off more of the longer tentacles.

Before Sunset could correct and angle down, one of the mass’s remaining tentacles elongated again and shot forward, right to her forehead. With a warm, firm grasp that gave the lie to its shadowy form, the arm took hold of the base of Sunset’s horn.

“There now,” the being said as it forced Sunset’s head safely off to the side. “Let’s go back to not killing me, hot stuff. I liked that better.”

Sunset frowned, and the flames sputtered out, her horn back to its softer glow. She spat at the ground.

“Great!” The head-nodule leaned in close to Sunset. “Any more unexpected hornwork, we get drastic, hon.” Tone stiff like an instructor’s, it went on, “So, know where you went wrong?”

Gritting her teeth, Sunset said, “Don’t freaking tell me just saying a deal hypothetically is enough to—”

“Looks like I don’t need to tell you.” The mass leaned back. “Your kind has a really dumb idea of what a ritual’s supposed to be.”

The tension in Sunset’s stance bled away some, and she sighed. Looking right to the main nodule, she said, “I’m going to ask again, and please don’t be creepy. What happens now?”

The mass slapped against itself again – from this distance, Sunset could see wads of shadow forming and colliding with each other along the body, the sound loud and wet in her ears. She cringed.

“Sorry,” the being said. It swelled up a little larger, and then contracted. Apart from the tentacle still holding on to Sunset’s horn, its form became that of a tall, handsome blue unicorn, and the slapping shifted to a throaty chuckling. “There’s no escaping ‘creepy’ at this point, but how’s this work for you?”

Sunset chewed her lip. “Well…” She looked the stallion up and down, then right into its surprisingly soulful eyes. “If we’re doing this, I could go for something more like the other, um…”

“Ha,” the being said. “I’m liking you more and more.” It shifted once again, shrinking. The blue coat became red scales, and the horn disappeared in favor of dark dragon wings. Green eyes with black scleras. A red and yellow mane and tail. Female.

A demonic mirror image of Sunset herself, smiling its fangs at her.

Sunset blinked. She averted her eyes, face reddening.

The demon laughed outright. In an echoing mockery of Sunset’s voice, it said, “Now she’s shy. Well…”

The lone tentacle, reaching out from the demon’s shoulder, jerked Sunset’s head forward. Her muzzle stopped an inch from the being’s – a moment passed with her just staring into its cold eyes, just breathing in its hot breath.

The demon pushed its muzzle into hers. Not a second passed before its sharp, forked tongue was prying open her lips. It snaked all along the wall of her teeth, clamped shut as they were.

Sunset squeezed her eyes closed.

The demon’s throat gave a muffled, rumbling chuckle. Its tongue caressed the meat of her cheeks.

Sunset could feel something else sneaking past her lips, and she peeked with one eye. Right as she saw the two new, black little tendrils that were growing out and up from the demon’s neck, she felt as they gripped her teeth.

With a satisfied grunt, the being wedged her jaw open. Its tongue crossed easily through.

Sunset’s own tongue retreated to the back of her mouth. She tried to yank her head away, but all the being’s appendages held firm.

Its tongue reached far enough in to pass Sunset’s completely. Gently, it prodded and stroked the back edges of her throat. Only once she had shut her eyes again and given a near-silent whine did it pull back, tracing down her tongue’s center.

Mellow fruit, she tasted. And ash.

The demon snaked the thin length of its tongue around Sunset’s. Down to the slippery flesh of its underside, up and over to tickle her soft palate. Down and up, down and up, getting rougher each time. As its tip reached the back of her throat again, it constricted.

Sunset took in a sharp breath as the demon’s tongue pulled her own past her teeth, past her lips, and into its maw. At the touch of fangs brushing past, she shivered.

The being began tugging rhythmically on Sunset’s tongue. Stopping short of pain, it pulled just far enough and just hard enough that all she felt was the steady pulse of pressure and tension.

Eyes slowly opening, Sunset stared past half-closed lids, off into nothing.

They went wide an instant later – she felt a wriggling along her hooves and barrel. More tentacles, she saw, reaching out from what little she could make out of the demon’s sides past its face. They crept along her coat, not slick or slimy, but with an otherworldly smoothness. Like the one affixed to her horn, they were warm as any body she’d felt.

No. Now that she was fully conscious of them – their slow trip backwards, hugging up against her flesh – she was sure that they were getting warmer.

The ones touching her hooves now started coiling. In moments, her legs were as much prisoners as her tongue – Sunset tried to lift a forehoof, and it was forced quickly back to the ground. She had little more than the freedom for her knees to quake.

On her haunches, other tentacles kept moving – still more stretched their way down, across her stomach. Sunset gasped into the demon’s mouth as a pair in sync began to slide over her teats. Another moved past her dock and came to rest, wedged shallowly between the pillows of her rump. Several others nestled into the pliant flesh bare inches from her lips.

Sunset’s breathing hitched when, as one, each and every tentacle puffed itself up. Her nipples were pressed up into her body, and her rump stretched slowly apart. Pressure built around her lips as the ring of tendrils there expanded inward.

Then, they shrunk again. And again they ballooned. In time with the tugging in her mouth, they puffed and contracted, like a vital organ Sunset hadn’t had before.

The being let go of Sunset’s tongue, and it released the tendrils holding her teeth. Pulling a few inches back, it asked with no malice, “Ready?”

Her brows arched, Sunset looked again into the blank, dark eyes across from her. “Can…” she started. “What if I said—”

“Just being nice,” the demon said, smiling.

Sunset shifted her gaze down. She took a long, deep breath into her body. “Thanks, I guess,” she said as evenly as she could, her eyes on the dull scales of its chest, “but I’ve just” – she gasped again with the tentacles’ next dilation – “learned a valuable lesson about— Ngh! About rules.” She took another heavy breath. “My answer’s ‘no’. I’m not ready.”

The demon’s smile split wider. “A lesson,” it said. “What a smart way of thinking! More experience, and you’re going to go far. For right now, though…” Turning to the side, the demon started walking past Sunset, tentacles shifting all along its body to accommodate the motion.

As it passed, Sunset’s head was forced to turn, and her eyes widened as she saw a new tentacle take shape. Thick and bulbous, it grew beneath the demon’s barrel – and then it rapidly shifted into black skin. It now had a flared tip familiar to the mare, but the rest of it was wrong: bulging flesh ringed its length at intervals, and it was pockmarked with squat, wriggling nodules.

The being moved out of the range of vision Sunset was allowed, but a moment later, she felt its hoof trace a bare patch of her flank. Just as it stopped, another hoof settled in on the other side.

“For right now,” the demon’s voice rung out, “I really was just being nice.”

At once, the tentacles around Sunset’s lips dug deep and pulled outwards, stretching her open. The hooves on her flanks bore weight. The flat, hot press of the demon’s organ came an instant later.

Before Sunset could finish sucking in a breath, it slid inside. Just a couple of inches, and just a normal-feeling part, but it was as thick as any she’d ever had, and she could feel the insistent press of one of the fleshy rings.

She shut her eyes and clenched her jaw tight.

The ring pushed through, and with it more inches. Wrong things. Knobby lumps swelled to greet and probe her walls. Tendrils swept lightly, teasingly along the passage. And the next ring sat waiting at her lips.

The demon grunted, and as Sunset’s body made way for even more of it, her front legs buckled. She fell to her knees, panting hard. The tentacles still wrapped around her body pressed in tight, holding her rump high and the rest of her steady.

One more push, and Sunset felt and heard a warm slap against her mound. She tried to focus on that little weight. Forget the rest. The demon was resting all the way inside, and that’s all there was to it.

But it was impossible. The back end of the demon’s length was more warped even than what came before it: jittering masses all but burrowing into her, patches bumpy like tongues, even little openings that she could feel were slowly pumping out a viscous fluid like the ink staining the floor.

There was too much to make sense of.

Despite the girth, Sunset found herself thankful when the demon began to move again, sliding back out and then steadily in again – it was a feeling her body could understand, riding high over the others. Pressure and friction instead of insanity.

Something moved along her neck, and she almost failed to notice past the slowly building pounding at her back.

Her eyes peeled open, but she knew already what they’d see. Another shadowy tentacle was hovering languidly there. Groaning through her nostrils, and desperate for more simple things to focus on, she opened her mouth.

It dove readily in. Smooth and warm – hot now, or fevered – as all the rest, its rounded tip slid roughshod past her lips. It came to rest at the back of her tongue, its bottom half swathed in a growing pool of saliva.

Sunset shut her mouth and lapped at the tentacle. More sweet ash, but her taste buds were starting to appreciate the flavor.

Behind her, she could feel a syrupy mess pouring out with the demon’s every withdrawal from her lips. Feel a little more give as her body took each thrust.

In tandem with the growing speed – the growing feeling in her gut – she could feel all the tendrils along her body throbbing like they were before. She suckled at the tentacle in her mouth to match the rhythm, keeping time with the ones pressing and squeezing against her crotch.

Suddenly, her horn was pulled again, forcing her head to turn back as far as it would go.

Past frazzled hair, one eye could see the demon as it picked up its pace again. A red and monstrous vision of herself, its gaze locked to hers as it drove itself in as deeply as it could. Her hips bucking forward with each thrust, against this mass of writhing shadow that was her restraints. The tentacle in her mouth, hot and swelling, slick with spittle.

Sunset’s throat gave up a high-pitched noise, and she felt herself clamp down hard on the demon’s nonsensical organ. With her pressing in on it, the malformed thing went into overdrive – the lumps and nodules all filled out and pushed back, the rings seemed to go rigid rather than giving up any space inside her, and the thick liquid spilled out in waves.

As much as the tentacle fattening up in her mouth would let her, Sunset cried out.

Her body kept on contracting, each wink of her lips sending out a spray of liquid that met the base of the organ. It dripped down her legs, down her crotch – down tentacles that were reaching out for it as though driven to wick it away.

Sunset fell limp in her fleshy prison. The tentacle in her mouth ejected itself with a pop, replaced by ragged breathing from a raw throat.

As the lightness in her head and in her gut began to fade, she managed, “Finally.”

The demon chuckled. “Sorry to break it to you, hon,” it said, rubbing its hooves tenderly against Sunset’s flanks, “but this isn’t about when you finish.”

Sunset’s eyelids shot up. “You mean…? How—” She looked back, pupils narrow. “How close are y—”

The demon tsked and shook its head. “Not about when I finish, either – I never do, anyway.”

Sunset spent a moment staring, mouth agape, before asking, “T-then what the hay’s it about?”

“Again, real sorry.” The demon sucked a breath in through its fangs – like it thought that would make Sunset really believe it was sorry, her brain told her. “Your deal? Super vague. You offered me your body, period.”

Sunset felt some rage boiling back up in her core. “What does that even mean?”

“It means,” the being drawled, rolling its eyes, “that if I choose to – which I do – we keep going until…” The tentacle from Sunset’s mouth reached up and tapped her still-glowing horn.

Blankly, Sunset said, “Until I run out of magic.”

“Or till you pass out and then go dry, yeah.” It chuckled again. “Know what happens then?”

Face pale, Sunset tensed, and with all she could muster, she tried to swing herself out of the tentacles’ hold – a little looser now than it was before. She didn’t make it five inches before they tightened back up and pushed her to the floor again.

“Hey, hey! There’s good news here, sweetness. Those wards?” The being swept a forehoof around, at chalk lines now smeared with sweat, viscous ink, and more. “Pretty much worthless after the deal happened. This is a fluid deal now – never mind the pun – and that means we can change it if we both want. Plus I can make suggestions.”

“Like?” asked Sunset, spine going rigid.

“Relax, newbie. I’ll go easy on you.” The tentacles surrounding Sunset’s form began quivering. “How about you give me a little bit of your soul and a corner of your mind. Permanently, I mean.”

Suddenly, the demon shoved its hips forward, and Sunset squealed, eyes pinched closed.

It laughed a biting laugh, and went on, “Also, I get to keep going with the body till just before it gets too worn out.” The mouth-tentacle tickled Sunset beneath the chin. “You’re just so precious.”

Sunset hissed out a breath, and she turned a glare back on the being.

“Hey, doesn’t matter to me.” The demon licked its lips. “You say no, and I might be keeping my end of the bargain by giving all that sweet, sweet knowledge to your sexy little ghost.” It took its hooves from Sunset’s flanks and leaned over her instead. The weight of its body pressing down through the tentacles, it whispered into her ear, “All I lose is time, hon, waiting for the next summoner.”

Mouth a line, Sunset stayed silent.

The demon leaned back again, saying brightly, “Just think. Permanent piece of your mind and soul – even just a twentieth of each, we’ll say. That’s important stuff, never mind the body sacrifice on top of it. That’ll get you a lot of knowledge.”

The mage’s eyes flickered.

After a long few seconds, silent but for Sunset’s breathing and the squelching of the tentacles, she opened her mouth.

The air above the floor shimmered, darkened, and cracked.

Sunset – streaked and speckled black – fell roughly to the wood below, her landing half thud and half splat.

Ink dribbling down her face in rivulets, she groaned softly and turned her neck.

The upper reservoir of the hourglass at her back was barren. A raw chuckle passed Sunset’s lips, and her head fell back down.

Breathing going light, she drifted off with a grin on her face.