"This. Is. Delicious. Dazel, have you tried some?"

"I'll get to it. I'm enjoying my flab squiggles."

The little mound of pale, translucent flab squiggles in his small bowl jiggled like a pile of rubber curly fries as he sucked another one into his mouth. She couldn't blame him: the flab squiggles tasted a lot like seasoned, enriched belly fat.

Ashtoreth was now eating some thinly sliced flesh that was white on one side, pinkish-red on the other. She suspected that it was mostly subcutaneous skin with a thin shaving of muscle attached, though from what kind of creature, she couldn't say. They were soaked in a bloody marinade, though, and it made them utterly delicious.

They were sitting in a restaurant that hung from the upper levels, eating with a sublime view of the city below them after a fruitful day of trading. Dazel sat in her lap, with a tiny bowl resting next to her own, larger bowl and plate. The others had all given them some distance. Apparently the raw, fatty food in front of Ashtoreth was bad for their appetites.

"Well I'm glad you guys are liking the food." Kylie said, picking through what Sadie had dubbed the randomness salad with her spork. She pushed aside some multi-colored leaves, grabbed a burnt orange berry the size of a walnut, and popped it into her mouth. "I'd pay a lot for a burger and fries right now."

"Hey, you didn't have to get the elf food," Sadie said. "You could've been adventurous." She had an oversized bowl of broth in front of her, one she'd picked because the noodles reminded her of udon. They weren't, but she'd been happy to dig in anyway.

"I didn't have to get any food at all," Kylie said. "I'm dead." She picked up one of the leaves and examined it. "But I don't know, I can still taste things even if I don't have an appetite. It feels strange not to sit down and eat."

Frost let out a wry laugh and pulled away from the straw jutting out of a translucent egg that was the size of a cabbage and filled with blood. "You feel strange, do you? I can't imagine what that's like."

Hunter had ordered something that looked like perogies, but he'd been sharing Sadie's food ever since one of them had scuttled off his plate.

They'd asked, but the vendor didn't have any Scomb. None of them had figured out what it was yet, but they'd made a game of trying to learn without ever directly asking anyone. From the look that the vendors had given Ashtoreth, it wasn't a food.

Ashtoreth was almost certain that of everyone, she and Dazel were most satisfied with their meal. But then, their infernal palettes were well-known and catered to. It actually surprised her.

"It's kind of crazy," she said, pinching one of her skin-flaps and lifting it out of its marinade. "I mean… how is it even possible that they've got stuff here that I never tried in Paradise? You'd expect the food back home to be pretty much the best, right?"

"Maybe not," said Kylie. "On Earth, sometimes rich people eat and drink really stupid stuff just because it costs a lot. Rarity competes with good taste. You guys had servants to get you your food, right?"

"Yeah."

"You can probably pollute that economy pretty easily," she said, still picking at her salad. "If there's a whole lot of people between the farm and your table, so to speak, then any of them could get pulled more toward seeing food as a way of showing wealth than satisfying your taste buds."

"Huh," Ashtoreth said. "That actually makes perfect sense."

"Yeah, I'm really smart," Kylie said disinterestedly. "I still can't get over the fact that the capitol city of Hell is called Paradise. Kind of makes me picture something different from how humans tend to see it."

"Well, I think it's only really Paradise for the one person," said Ashtoreth. "So it might not be all that different from your idea of the place."

"I think in human mythology, the capitol of Hell is called Pandemonium," said Hunter.

Ashtoreth shrugged. "I remember that one of them is really cold. Your King of Hell is just freezing his horns off, somewhere. And your Hell is just absolutely full of Italians, I remember that one."

"Okay, what?" Sadie asked. "Why Italians? What did Italy do?"

"Pasta and Gladiator, right?" Frost asked, an expression of concern coming onto his face. "Those don't get you into Heaven?"

Dazel was laughing. "No, you guys. That's not—look, there was a writer, okay? And—"

"Don't, Dazel," Kylie said, also laughing. "This is way better if you don't explain it. Hell is just… full of Italians, okay? And we're all pretty sure they deserve it."

Ashtoreth smiled as she listened to them talk, occasionally glancing down at the city below them and wishing that she didn't have to leave so soon. She'd been trying to stay in good cheer, and she'd mostly been succeeding. Still, Haddad's appearance had undeniably tainted their whole trip with an undercurrent of paranoia. They'd rejoined into a single group for the rest of the day, reasoning that because the plastic had worked out so well, they could make enough chitt for Dazel's soulmap without splitting up.

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Ashtoreth had even insisted on getting a set of rooms in a reputable inn. They weren't going to use it, but it gave Ashtoreth piece of mind: if they did have any enemies who might want to ambush them, the rooms she'd rented would make a great spot. Hopefully, their hypothetical enemies would hold off on making a move with the expectation that they'd be sleeping there later.

Still, she sighed as she gazed at the city. The more she thought about leaving earlier than they'd planned, the more it bothered her. She had the strangest feeling about wanting to stay for a while… because she wanted more than to just stay for a while.

It the very same feeling that had taken root when they'd watched the bizarre advertisement. She didn't just want to see everything here, she wanted to see everything everywhere. It was a dream that hardly meshed well with her role as the Monarch of an Earth that was at war.

She didn't say anything about her sudden new desire. She could have, but she felt like it would ruin the current conversation. It would be too sad, and she'd monopolize everyone's attention anyway.

But she could tell Frost, later. And maybe everyone else, too.

For now, she'd scheme. She'd noticed that Sadie almost never talked unless there was silence to fill: surely there was some way to drag her into more of the conversations so that she'd better connect with Frost and Kylie.

The trick, she figured, would be to get Hunter in on the conversation. And that she could manage just fine…

* * *

"You sure you want to come?" she said. "I know what to ask, and you guys can probably get started while I'm still in the meeting."

Dinner was over, and Ashtoreth was getting ready to fly to the appointment that Master Guthuk had made for her. The others were headed down below. They'd made an appointment with a soulweaver on the lower levels, and Ashtoreth was going to meet them there once her meeting was done.

"Nope," Dazel said. "I'm coming with you. Let's be real, boss. I know too much compared to you—it'll be useful to have me in the room."

"Sure," she said, shrugging. "I just thought you'd want to get started on the map right away. I'll be able to use telepathy to talk to you if I really have any questions."

"Nah, it's worth waiting a little bit for this," said Dazel. "We've only got one of these meetings, so I'd like to make it count. Plus, I don't really want to be putting myself in the hands of a soulweaver without you around."

"D'aww," she said. "I make you feel safe."

"...Yes?" Dazel said. "Look at the very least, if something does go wrong, I don't trust any of the humans to kill me quick so that you can summon me again later."

Ashtoreth frowned. "Hold on a sec, are we worried something will go wrong with the soulweaver? Because I thought that at this point, that was the one thing we weren't worried about."

"They're not going to betray me," Dazel said. "They've got no reason to, and we'll all use contracts. But you know, if they do, obviously their abilities make them especially dangerous to me—and the proper call will be to spike me with something lethal so that I disperse and you can summon me again later."

"Okay, but to be perfectly clear," Ashtoreth said, "this is just the paranoia talking?"

"They're not going to betray us, boss."

"Okay."

"But if they do," he said emphatically. "Just give me a javelin on your way out the door."

"This place has rules, doesn't it?" she asked. "Won't one of the high-tier overlords absolutely ruin a soulweaver who tries to get around the spirit of a contract?"

"Definitely."

"So we're good."

"Sure, yeah. I don't want you to worry, boss."

"Okay."

"But if something does happen—"

"Now you're just being silly," she accused. "Though I guess I'm glad you're in good spirits. It makes sense."

"Believe me, you have no idea. And you probably don't need to be reminded, but make sure you tag race only. Whoever this is has a good chance of seeing through your disguise."

Though if they do see my real tag, [Vampiric Archfiend of Humanity] is going to narrow things down quite considerably.

They still won't know your name. And the cosmos at large probably has no idea you exist yet.

True, she said. Though now that the Eldunar are in the picture, and humans are able to leave Earth… that won't last long.

Just think. You're going to be famous. You could start your own line of health products.

"If only we could stuff my regeneration in a bottle," she said. "We'd make money hand over fist."

"Wow. Kylie was right."

Ashtoreth frowned. "Right about what?"

"You touched money once, and now you're a capitalist. How much you want for Park Place?"

She shrugged. "You can have it for free as long as I get to be the top hat."

"The capitalist pigdog's closest thing to a crown," Dazel said.

"Exactly. Now come on—this is getting distracting. I need to find where to go before we're late." She picked a lane, then began to fly toward the center of the cavern.

Hopefully soon they'd be learning some ancient human history.

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