Chapter 2: The Sweetness of Effort.

Air, clean and pure, filled my lungs.

The coughing woke me. I stared up as a blue sky stared right back down at me-a blue sky, the first I had ever seen. The place where I lay was soft, so soft. I turned my head and saw the green grass stretching around me, bleeding into a sea of trees. I was in a forest, then. A human forest.

The light that beat down upon me was not scalding, simply soft and warm.

“Finally,” I said as something in my chest loosened. I raised a single hand towards the sky, just to reach for it. Just because I could.

I was in the human realm, and that meant that my mad gambit had worked. I laughed. For the first time since I had taken my Role, I laughed. It started as something small and foreign, and then it wouldn’t stop. I laughed until my stomach hurt, and only then did I lie there, letting a smile creep across my face.

“You stupid Gods and your stupid rules,” I said. “Even us pawns can bite, you bastards.”

A warm breeze slowly filtered over the clearing where I lay. It felt pleasant on my skin. Evidently, I was still wearing my battle armor, [The Darkness Binding]. That was convenient, as it would be hard to find its like again in this world.

I finally rose, getting into a sitting position as I glanced around. There was no way to tell where I was, or which part of Enreth my spell had taken me to.

“[Map]!” I said, my right arm extended outwards. My mana whirled within me. I expected a translucent blue screen to pop open in front of me. Instead, nothing happened. I stared at my hand for a second, perplexed. It was like trying to move a limb and having it refuse to move.

“[Status]!” I said again. Nothing happened this time either. My confusion gave way to annoyance.

“[Inventory!]” Nothing again. The annoyance suffocated under the weight of uncertainty.

I turned my head and stared at the nearest tree. “[Inspect!]”

……….

Something cold settled inside me. I was the Demon Queen. If I demanded something, it happened. This was as true of my subordinates as it was for the World itself.

“Fine then,” I growled. I decided to use my strongest spell -if subtlety would not work, force would.

“[Oblivion’s Decree]!” My mana swirled.

This time, something answered. My mana surged against the world and the world pushed back. A weight settled over me, pressing down on every part of my body at once. My power clawed at the fabric of existence and for the first time, existence refused to tear. My mana settled.

I wiped sweat from my brow, feeling faint tremors in my hands. My heart was beating fast. Was I…out of breath?

“Damn it,” I muttered, finally rising to my feet. Mana still coursed when I called it, and it settled in whatever limb I wished. That, at least, seemed to work just as it had before.

I had the tiniest fraction of my power -that was what I had. I hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. I did not care to name what this feeling was.

“Well, let’s see,” I said thoughtfully. Information had to come first.

I channeled mana into my limbs and ran for the tallest tree in sight. It had been a long time since I hadn’t used [Flight] for something like this.

I made my way up the tree, my head cresting above the canopy of leaves. My breath caught as I stared in every direction at once.

I had thought the sky beautiful from the ground. Now, I could see it in full. It was blue as far as the eye could see, and a setting sun bled orange into halcyon. The trees stretched all the way over to the horizon.

For a few moments, I forgot the entire reason I had climbed this tree at all. For those moments, all I did was take it in.

“Damn it,” I said, reaching to wipe my eyes. It was a sniffle, nothing more.

I saw a reflection of light somewhere to the right -a river that cut through this large forest. That was as good a place to go as any. I made my way down. Mana reinforcement had never been my specialty, since you needed a feel for it I had never possessed.

I landed on cool grass. It was odd that my shoes hadn’t transferred with me, but the ground felt pleasant.

“I don’t feel them,” I finally said, after a few minutes of walking.

The invisible strings that had haunted me for centuries -the burdens of my Role in this world. That was why I did not despair when my mana did not answer my call. That was why the System’s absence mattered even less.

As I walked, I occasionally saw a squirrel scamper up a tree, or a rabbit duck and hide from view. Birds flew overhead, cooing and cawing. In the Demon Realm, there was no such thing as an animal that wasn’t a Beast. It was odd, to see something living and not have to kill or subjugate it.

“So I wasn’t imagining it,” I said.

I had been trying to draw ambient mana into my body. I was succeeding, but one thing was clear: even the mana felt different. It was thinner. It filled my core easily enough, but there was less force behind it, like breathing air at the top of a mountain. It was simply lesser.

A few oddities with me I could accept. The spell had been a mad gambit -a mad gambit by a genius, perhaps, but still a mad gambit. This was something wrong with the world.

“Serene, a curse upon all you stand for!” I waited.

The Goddess of Peace didn’t answer. Or if she did, I did not feel her gaze. The Gods weren’t watching me. No, it seemed they could not watch me. My role was truly at an end.

“It’s not my problem, then,” I said.

I walked for so long I almost wanted to climb another tree and check again, just to make sure I hadn’t wandered off course. That’s when I finally heard it: the sound of running water, somewhere in the distance.

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I ran through the trees and underbrush. Branches broke under my weight and deer startled from my path. A boar bolted when it saw me. The sound grew louder until I finally broke past a line of trees and saw the river before me.

I strode forward and knelt down. The water was pure, and so clean it didn’t look like anything at all. I leaned down and drank greedily. Cool liquid drove back the dryness that had been clawing at my throat.

“I never knew it could taste this sweet,” I said when I’d finally had my fill. There was no need for mana to keep it from burning my throat.

I stared at my reflection and froze.

My features looked similar, and yet not quite the same. My face was a tad darker, a tad younger than I remembered. My eyes were bright crimson now, with hardly any white to them at all. At least my two jutting horns were the same at first glance, though I could not shake the feeling they were thinner.

I was still a Demon. That much was certain, but this face was close enough to mine to unsettle me in a way a stranger’s never could.

“Did I do this?” The spell was meant to reincarnate my body in the future, not change it. Any alteration would and should have destroyed me in the process. Yet here I was, alive and of sound mind.

No answers came, no matter how I turned the problem over. It would have to wait.

My stomach grumbled unhappily, and I winced. Even my near-divine body had still been mortal in the end, and now it was closer still.

Growl.

A sound behind me, one low and guttural, one that vibrated in my chest. I turned.

It stood at the edge of the clearing where the trees thinned. It was a silver wolf, though wolf was too small a word for it. It was as tall as I was and twice as wide, and it had three heads. Each set of jaws was opening and snapping shut, ropes of spittle swinging from teeth as long as my fingers.

It was a cerberus…and yet not. All six eyes were fixed on me, and those eyes were red and angry.