Four's a Crowd

Looking Glass closed the musty spell book with a dull thud and sprawled out on her bed, sighing comfortably as she stretched her stiff muscles. Sometimes it was easy to forget all of her troubles and worries. Whenever the azure unicorn got lost in magic, be it her own or a spell created by one of her ancestors, it felt like nothing could be wrong in the world. Eventually reality came crashing back, but those moments were nice while they lasted.

"I wonder how grandma dealt with all this crap when she was young," Glass muttered to herself. Crystal Ball, her mother's mother, was the last medium in the family with as much talent as her. Crystal had also gone insane three years back when a spell gone wrong had caused the spirits of five dead ponies to make her brain their new home, so there wasn't much Glass could learn from her anymore outside of the family spell book. The only thing was to not permanently manifest spirits. As Crystal would attest to if she could be in control of her own body for more than ten seconds at a time, it was a terrible idea.

Glass pushed her wavy jade bangs from her emerald eyes and lifted the book above her head. The cover's original color had been lost to time, but she had a feeling it had been white at some point, or at least off-white. Now it was mottled gray and brown, with dirt and grime embedded into it. The one hundred and fifty or so pages were yellowed and a little tattered at the edges, but surprisingly none of them were loose, and most of the ink markings on them were still somewhat sharp. Sometimes when she was bored, she'd daydream about what it must have been like for the first medium in her family when they had discovered their talent and wrote down the very first entries.

It was impossible for Glass to forget the first time she had summoned a spirit. It had actually been quite a terrifying moment for most of the ponies who were present, save for three; Crystal, who was excited despite the situation, and Glass's mother and father, who were happy that she had discovered her talent, but also upset that it had happened with such terrible timing. The town's dead elderly mayor suddenly manifesting at his own funeral next to his lifeless body was almost enough to cause a panic among the assembled ponies. It was also wildly inappropriate, her parents had scolded her.

Glass growled quietly in annoyance. The ponies of Hoofingford were way too superstitious. Ever since that funeral when she was just a filly, ponies had avoided her. Her friends began ignoring her, a few melodramatic ponies screamed when they saw her in public, and now that she was all grown up and over a couple years out of high school, she still couldn't find a job because all of the ponies in town were too terrified to hire her. Self employment as a medium that allowed ponies to talk to their deceased loved ones should have been a good option, but again, the town's superstitious nature prohibited that. Maybe she could do that one day when she worked up the courage to move away to a big city or something, but until then, she was stuck in this stupidly old-fashioned town.

As much as Glass hated the town and the ponies in it and wanted revenge, even just something small that only she would know about, deep down she didn't want to do anything like that. Every time she felt angry at one of the townsfolk, she'd remember something her grandmother had told her a few weeks after the late mayor's funeral, when a shopkeeper had chased her out and she had gone crying to Crystal, asking why everypony hated her suddenly. It was something along the lines of, "When you walk among the lives of the dead, flesh and blood begin to have little consequence."

Glass had thought her grandmother was off her rocker long before she unwillingly gave herself five new personalities, but the more Glass lived her life, the more she understood what Crystal had meant. It didn't matter that everypony around hated her. The dead were so much more open and accepting, so she found herself caring less and less about the townsfolk, though their insults and actions could still hurt.

While at first Glass had resented her talent for turning her into an outcast, she'd eventually grown to like it. One day when she was young the loneliness had become overbearing, and she'd decided to use her magic to summon a spirit to talk to. This became a regular thing, and the more she did it, the less she cared about the ponies around her. She didn't need her foalhood friends. All she needed was a few spirits who understood her. And her parents. She probably would have been on a steady decline to her grandmother's state if it weren't for their help and observation.

Glass scratched her nose and sat up in her bed. She had originally been planning to eat dinner or something, but she didn't actually feel all that hungry. She could mess around with the spell book a little longer. After all, magic was all she really had left at this point.

The book was almost entirely full of spells, enchantments, and random notes. It was a comforting relic, but as well as being near the end of its lifespan, it was almost full. Maybe she'd copy everything to a new, larger book if she ever decided to have foals so they could carry on adding to the family legacy, and keep the original for herself. It had a lot of incredible memories, after all. Hers, and those of her ancestors.

Glass flipped open to where she had stopped. She'd read the entire book multiple times, and had remembered a good portion of the spells in it. Most of the simple ones were ingrained in her memory, but she still had a little ways to go with some of the more complicated spells. A few of them seemed like they were too difficult to cast even with the book in front of her, let alone without it. It didn't help that some were written in barely-legible chicken scratch, or that one of her predecessors had annoyingly decided to put everything in impossibly complex code. It seemed pointless, but then again, many of the other mediums in her family hadn't exactly had sound mental states from the stories she'd heard, so paranoia wasn't entirely unexpected.

The spell Glass had been previously working on was one such spell. An incoherent jumble of letters to the common eye, a deviously complicated cipher to puzzle addicts, and an incredible feat of magic to a trained medium. Luckily she was a trained medium, though puzzles had never been her thing. There was nothing to it but to stare at it angrily while her mind worked its way in circles.

After another good half hour of this, a thought suddenly struck Glass. When she had first seen the spell her brain had instinctively told her it was written in another language, but she had told herself that was just because the letters were jumbled. Turned out she was wrong. It was written in one of the two languages her grandmother had begun teaching her years ago, but without the old pony's instruction, her familiarity with it had begun slipping from her mind. She couldn't remember very much of the specifics or what it was called anymore beyond that its name started with a "G," but she could still remember some of the words.

Glass scratched her nose again, eager now that she had finally figured it out. When she swapped every other letter and converted the text to common script she got "daímona;" the word for "demon" in that language. She ran over to her desk excitedly and whipped out a pencil and paper with her magic, writing down what she could translate of the unraveled words. Despite how mildly foreboding it was that the first word she had recognized was "demon," once it was all written out on paper and she had filled in the blanks to make sense of the partial translation, it didn't actually seem as dangerous as she had initially thought.

"'A spell to summon a demon; not the scary kind, but one whose company you wouldn't mind sharing in. But be warned; while the demons this spell can summon won't steal your soul or eat your intestines, this is not a spell for the weary. A single evening spent with one of these creatures could leave a pony unsatisfied with the living forevermore. Just speak the words while imagining the rune circle drawn below.' Huh. Well, I'm already unsatisfied with the living, so I doubt things could get much worse," Glass mused. There was a mutual hatred between her and almost everypony she knew, so whatever 'unsatisfied' was referring to, it's not like she had friends to lose or anything.

It seemed like by changing certain aspects of the rune one could change what demon they summoned, but considering Glass hadn't had much experience with runes yet, it was probably best for her to cast the spell as-is, at least for now. The spell itself was fairly simple, but a lot of the details were contained in the words she didn't know and therefore couldn't translate. She wasn't entirely sure what the spell did outside of summon a demon who wasn't intent on killing her.

"Well, I guess nopony ever got anywhere without a little risk," Glass thought as she stepped out into the middle of her room and floated the paper and the spell book out in front of her. She wanted to know what the spell did, and there didn't seem to be any way to figure it out that didn't involve casting it. It also crossed her mind that this line of thought was probably the exact same thing that had caused Crystal to go insane, but she pushed that from her mind. Dream Chaser, the pony who had created the spell, had gone on to make quite a few others, so she was certain any possible dangers wouldn't negatively affect her. Permanently, at least.

Glass channeled her magic through her horn, picturing the rune in her mind exactly as it was on the page. She then took a deep breath and paused before continuing. During those few seconds she felt a chill go up her spine, and she then blanked out as her eyes began to glow with her magic and she uttered the spell in a voice that was barely her own.

"Koryfés tis kólasis, férte mou ton daímona tou opoíou to ónoma diatázo!"

Glass shuddered as the magic faded from her body and the spell book fell to the ground. Her legs quivered as she stood, breathing heavily. That spell had cost a lot more magic than she had expected. She shook her head and glanced around the room, expecting to find a hulking minotaur or a pony covered in blood or something, but all she could see were five small glowing dots situated in a pentagon on the floor.

As Glass watched, the dots began carving lines into the floor that glowed like lava. While she had recognized the upside down pentagram as the base for the rune circle, exactly what she had just done hadn't hit her until she saw the rune tracing itself into the wooden floorboards, about a meter in diameter. The red light that got brighter the closer the rune circle came to completion didn't help with her confidence.

"I seriously just summoned a demon inside the house. I sure hope this rune circle isn't permanent. Mom won't be happy if a pentagram suddenly appears on my floor. Oh crap, what's she gonna say? I'm supposed to be careful about what magic I use here," Glass muttered worriedly to herself as she glanced back at her door, which was cracked open. She should probably close that at some point.

Glass turned back to the rune circle and almost had a heart attack when she saw the torso of what appeared to be a pony coming out of her floor. Or, that's what it had looked like. The rune circle had finished and a swirling red portal had appeared in the middle of it, through which she could see black stone illuminated by a pulsing orange-red light. She also swore she could faintly hear screaming. Once she took all that information in and looked back at the pony who was still halfway inside the portal, leaning on her floor with his chin resting on his forehooves and his eyes staring up at her, she realized something.

"Holy FUCK, he's cute," Glass thought as she felt a little heat rush to her cheeks. From what she could see that was sticking out of the portal, he just looked like a normal pony with an extremely attractive androgynous face. His coral colored coat along with his medium length cherry mane that flowed to one side and his piercing scarlet eyes left no doubt that he was a demon, but he didn't look hostile. If anything, he almost seemed... bored.

"Hi there," the demon said in a warm voice, flashing Glass a friendly smile.

Glass blinked a couple times, trying to clear her thoughts. Between the pentagram and the screams that were still quietly filtering in through the portal, she had expected something scarier. "Um, hello."

"You look surprised to see me," the demon commented as he cocked his head.

"A little. The spell said it would summon a demon, so I guess I just expected..." Glass trailed off nervously. She didn't want to insult him and risk him suddenly deciding to rip her head off or something. Plus, she strangely found herself wanting him to like her. "Focus! So what if he's cute? He had to have done something really bad to have been put in the underworld. There's something hiding behind that beautiful face," she thought.

The demon laughed. "Somepony with fiery horns and blood dripping from their mouth? No, that spell won't bring you one of those." He raised an eyebrow at Glass. "But why cast a spell if you didn't know exactly what it was going to do?"

Glass shrugged. "Curiosity, I guess. I also have a habit of doing things without thinking them through all the way."

"Huh. I guess chasing knowledge is admirable, but you really should be more careful. Recklessly casting a demon summoning spell could get somepony hurt."

"I know. I really need to think about what I'm doing more often." Glass eased herself up onto her bed and leaned back so she was resting against the wall. "So while you're here, can you tell me the specifics of the spell?"

The demon opened his mouth, but a voice from the hallway interrupted him and made Glass jump. "Glass? Is everything okay in there?"

Glass sidled over on her bed so she could look out through the ajar door. Her mother was standing at the opposite end of the hall, looking at her with a mildly worried expression. Her father was also faintly visible in the living room at the end of the hall, where the lights were turned off. "Yeah, everything's good, mom. Just working on one of Dream Chaser's spells. Don't mind the red light."

"Or the shrieking of what I'd assume are the souls of the damned," Glass thought, hoping that her mother couldn't hear them from where she was.

"Okay, just be careful. No summoning rampaging demons. Mother mentioned a lot of his spells weren't very safe. I think one actually killed him in the end," her mom said with a grimace.

Glass glanced anxiously at the demon out of the corner of her eye and nodded. "I'll be careful to not summon something like that, don't worry."

"Good. Your dad and I are going out to eat before the town meeting, so we'll be gone for a while. You can eat all of last night's leftovers if you want."

"Okay. Thanks, mom," Glass called. She watched her parents walk out of sight and waited for the sound of the front door closing before she shut her own door and turned back to the demon.

"She seems nice. You've got a good mother," the demon said. Glass swore she heard a hint of wistfulness and pain in his voice, but his expression gave nothing away.

Glass nodded. "Yeah. She's not a medium herself, so she worries about me a little more than she needs to. To be fair, her mother did lose her mind from one of her spells." She scowled slightly. "Speaking of what my mother said, you're not a rampaging demon, are you?"

The demon laughed warmly, which definitely made him seem less threatening. Not that he had looked very scary in the first place. "No, violence has never been my thing. There will be no rampaging. I know I'm a demon, but that wasn't a lie."

"I believe you, but I'm curious about something. You don't seem all that bad. How'd you end up as a demon?" Glass asked, creasing her brow slightly.

"Ah, my backstory." The demon tapped his nose thoughtfully for a moment. "I don't have all night before the summoning spell ends so I'll keep it short. Put simply, I couldn't stop fucking."

Glass frowned. "Fucking what?"

"Anything with a hole," the demon said with a wry smile.

Glass felt her face go beet red as she realized what the demon meant. "Oh. By fucking, you meant that fucking."

"Yep," the demon said as he laughed again. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna rape you or anything. Most of the holes here in the underworld are scorchingly hot, full of spikes, attached to something very scary, or a combination of the three, so I've learned a good deal of self restraint over the past few thousand years."

"Okay," Glass said quietly. She wasn't quite sure what to make of the situation.

"Of course, that doesn't mean I don't fuck anymore. If you want me, I can guarantee that I'll meet your every need," the demon said seductively.

"I'll think about it. So while you're here, can you tell me the specifics of the spell?" Glass asked as she floated the pencil, paper, and spell book back over to her, wanting to change the subject. She'd never talked about smutty stuff with somepony else before, and it was making her a little uncomfortable.

The demon smiled, though he didn't call her out on changing the subject so suddenly. "Sure. What do you want to know?"

"Well, I can assume it's a spell to summon an incubus or something. Are you an incubus?"

"Not exactly, but if it helps you to think about it that way, then sure. I guess you could say I'm somewhat of a reformed incubus, though I don't think I'm quite ready to go all the way to the greener side of the fence, so to speak. I want a little more fun with this body before I give it up," the demon replied.

"Reformed? Demons can leave the underworld if they do that well enough?" Glass asked. She'd never heard of that happening before, and she was curious.

The demon nodded. "Yeah, it happens pretty often. I'd imagine most demons who have paid for their sins and who choose to drop their dirty acts don't want to be reminded of their past, so they don't exactly go around saying they're an ex-demon. If that's the case, I'm not surprised you've never met a spirit who was willing to talk about their history in the underworld."

"Yeah, I guess so," Glass said as she jotted down a few notes. "So, the purpose of the spell to summon a sex partner." The word 'sex' felt strange on her tongue. Being an outcast nopony had ever been willing to be her friend, let alone sleep with her. While most ponies in the town her age were married and already had a young foal or two, she was still a virgin. Thinking about which, something in the back part of her head said this wasn't such a bad opportunity. Still, she pushed the thought from her mind. Magic first. That was all she had left, other than her parents.

"Basically. Dream Chaser knew exactly what he was summoning when he made the spell and put together that rune circle. He was a kinky son of a bitch," the demon said with a wink. "I haven't been summoned in a while, and I know he was long dead the last time I was in the living world. He was fun. Maybe I'll see him again if I ever decide to fully reform."

Glass blinked and glanced back at her paper, feeling her cheeks get slightly warmer again. "So some of my ancestors translated the spell, but none of them bothered to write it down afterward?"

The demon shrugged. "I guess not. Speaking of your ancestors, I think your grandmother was the last one to summon me. She said something about her daughter not inheriting her magic, and the time matches up."

Glass jolted back, startled. "Grandma?! I mean, I know grandpa died soon after mom was born, but I-I didn't think-"

The demon suddenly broke down into laughter and shook his head. "Hang on, I just realized something!" he said in between breaths after he had mostly recovered from his bout. "Your grandmother didn't fully know what the spell did either when she first summoned me! Granted, she at least knew it summoned a sex partner, but still! Now that I think about it, you both have very similar personalities, and you look just like she did when she was young. Well, mane style and a few color shade differences aside, anyway."

"Really?" Glass asked. She'd always felt close to her grandma before the incident, but she never realized that was because they were so alike.

The demon nodded. "Yep. It's kind of strange because-"

A loud roar from inside the portal startled both of them, and Glass stared through the glowing hole. She could feel terror rapidly setting in as she imagined a horrible monster of some kind coming through and tearing her in half, but the demon waved his hooves to get her attention.

"No no, don't worry! He's not here to wreak havoc on the living world or anything. He's just my landlord. I'm late on my rent again. Besides, I'm the only demon that can go through this portal since I was the one who was summoned. I'll be right back," he said quickly before disappearing underneath the floor.

Glass blinked at the space where the demon had been. "Demons have to pay rent?" she mumbled curiously to herself. She would have never thought that the underworld shared similarities like that with the living world.

"Hmm... The more I think about it, the less threatened I feel by him. Plus, I didn't want to admit it at first, but he's about my perfect type. Not to mention how cute he is..." Glass thought. She frowned and shook her head vigorously. "What am I thinking? He's dead. We can't be together. I'm getting way ahead of myself again."

Glass squirmed slightly, feeling the slight moisture that had formed between her hind legs as they shifted. A serious relationship was obviously out of the question, but realistically, what other opportunity would she have for something like this? Her parents would be gone for at least two hours, and the spell was only supposed to last for a little over half an hour. She didn't want to remain a virgin until she worked up the courage to move away, something that could take years. Plus, she knew it had only been a few minutes, but she found herself really liking the demon. If the purpose of the spell was to summon a sex partner, she didn't have a single complaint about the personality of who she had encountered.

The demon reappeared suddenly with a smile on his face, as if he hadn't even been gone. "Sorry about that, but I'm back now. What was I saying?"

"I don't actually remember," Glass said. She had been too preoccupied thinking about other stuff and had completely forgotten where he had gotten cut off. "Hey, what should I call you? You haven't told me your name yet."

"Oh, my apologies. I completely forgot to introduce myself to a lady. How rude of me," the demon said elegantly as he bowed jokingly at her. "The other demons call me Akkorokamui, but you may call me Koro. Should I ever leave the ranks of the underworld for a holier home, please allow me to grace you with my real name."

Glass put a hoof over her mouth and giggled at his performance. "Koro. That's a nice name. I'm Looking Glass, but you can just call me Glass if you want."

"Looking Glass. A beautiful name for a beautiful pony," Koro said with a wholehearted smile.

Glass smiled back, feeling her face flush again. Koro really wasn't making it easy to accept that they couldn't be together. She got the impression she wasn't the only one getting a sort of star-crossed lovers feel from their encounter. "I think I've heard of Akkorokamui. Isn't that an octopus deity of some sort from the east?"

Koro nodded. "Something like that. That's also why I got the name."

"It is? But why?" Glass asked as she tilted her head at Koro. From what she could see he was just a normal pony, so why name him something like that?

"Ah, you've only seen my torso up until now. Don't have a heart attack. Yours is too lovely to stop beating so soon," Koro said as he planted his forehooves on the edge of the portal and pulled himself into Glass's room. As his lower half emerged, Glass couldn't keep her eyes from going wide or her jaw from dropping.

At Koro's hips his body suddenly flared out, making it look somewhat like he had a very large waist. Instead of two pony legs, however, his body split into eight octopus tentacles, each about as thick as his foreleg at their base and complete with suckers and everything. His coral color transitioned into crimson from the back end of each tentacle around to the front, making even the coloration appear octopus-like. The insides of each sucker was the same color as his eyes; a crimson so striking Glass didn't think she'd ever seen a color so full.

When Koro was fully inside of Glass's bedroom, it became apparent just how big he was. Each tentacle was probably a little over three meters long if she had to guess, tapering to a thin but rounded tip. As the last of Koro's tentacles passed through the portal it swirled shut, closing him out of the underworld until the summoning spell ended. The red glow from the rune circle faded, leaving a dark impression on the wooden floor.

"Isn't this body amazing? I'd probably have reformed long ago if I had become just about anything else when I got to the underworld," Koro said as he moved each of the tentacles independently, showing off their dexterity.

Glass nodded, too stunned to speak. Koro's body certainly was impressive, and the more she stared, the more she liked it. It definitely looked like there was power behind his tentacles, but at the same time, they seemed gentle enough to cradle a robin egg without breaking it. She could imagine them pulling her close, holding her tight, caressing her body...

Koro chuckled. "Everypony who casts that spell is speechless when they see my whole body for the first time. Well, all but one. There was a stallion who took one horrified look at me and immediately told me to go back to the underworld."

"His loss, I guess," Glass said. "And you did what he said?"

Koro nodded. "I guess that's one of the parts of the spell you couldn't translate. If you tell me to do something, I have to do it. You don't even have to say it out loud. If you just think of something you want me to do, I'll get an incredibly strong urge to follow any orders you have. I don't think I can resist, but to be fair, I haven't really wanted to before."

"I didn't know that. Still, I should have guessed there were safety measures put into the spell." Glass tapped her nose. It wouldn't hurt to have him do something simple, just to test it out. "Straighten out the chair that's at my desk," she thought.

Immediately after Glass finished that thought, Koro grabbed her chair with one tentacle and moved it so that it was square against the desk before giving her a smile. "See? Kind of cool, isn't it? It's almost like telepathy."

Glass nodded. "Yeah, but it's a little weird, too. It's almost like mind control."

"Don't think of it like you're ordering me around. Pretend you're just asking me a favor, if that makes it any easier. I'd probably accept without the spell making me, anyway," Koro said.

"Okay. I guess that does help a bit." Glass pushed her back up against the wall and placed the spell book on top of her pillow before resting her forelegs on her lap. "So what now?"

Koro shrugged and leaned back on his tentacles, using two of them like a backrest. "Anything. We could translate more of Dream's spells, rampage through the town, eat those leftovers your mother mentioned, whatever you want. That second one was a joke, by the way," he said with a wink. "I've got more or less twenty minutes left here, so keep that in mind when you decide."

Glass shifted her legs and glanced away, her cheeks turning red again. "Well, uh, I was kind hoping we could, um..."

Koro raised his eyebrows. "Really? What made you change your mind?"

"I don't know. I guess I just..." Glass scratched the back of her neck and sighed. "Look, I've never said anything like this to a pony before, so it feels really awkward. I don't exactly know what I'm doing, either. I..." She swallowed and bit her lip, wishing she'd had a normal foalhood so a situation like this wouldn't be so difficult. "I think I love you."

Koro was silent for a few moments. It stretched on into seconds, and Glass had begun to think he was going to turn her down when the end of a tentacle suddenly appeared in front of her face and booped her nose.

"Even though it's only been about ten minutes and you feel awkward, I don't think I've ever heard a pony say anything so heartfelt to me before," Koro said warmly. He ruffled the rear part of his mane with one hoof and sighed. "Argh, you make me really wish I wasn't dead, you know that? Oh, and the feeling is mutual, in case that wasn't already obvious."

Glass giggled. "I wish that, too." She glanced at Koro worryingly. "It wasn't the spell making you say that, was it?"

Koro shook his head. "No. I can tell the difference between my own desires and the pull of the spell, and that was entirely from my own feelings."

"Good," Glass said. She couldn't help smiling happily at Koro, and she felt incredibly lucky that things had turned out the way they did, otherwise she would never have met him. It didn't matter that they couldn't be together in a serious relationship, or that this was starting to feel like some sort of fairy tale love story where the protagonists fell for each other at first sight. All she cared about was that he was here, right now, and that despite being a demon from the underworld, he was the first pony who saw her for who she was, and not for her unusual magic.