There's rock bottom, and then there's whatever level I'm at.
I spend the next few hours slumped on my mat, every muscle in my body twitching, every bone reminding me that yes, I did in fact get used as a sex toy by a very large, very egotistical woman. The room still smells faintly of her, which would be a turn-on for some, I'm sure, but for me is just a reminder of how low I've sunk.
Sleep doesn't come easy. At some point, I just give up and start talking out loud. To myself, to the universe, to whatever cosmic force is supposed to be running quality control on this hellhole of a world.
"If there's any God up there," I whisper, "anyone at all, could you maybe throw me a bone? My life kind of stinks if you haven't noticed."
What started off as a joke soon became a real, desperate prayer.
"Please, I know I've never been particularly devout, but I don't think anybody deserves to die inside a Demon's snatch, so if you could just…I dunno…swap my life with someone in a slightly less horrifying predicament, I'd be grateful."
I close my eyes and, with a final act of desperation, shout into the void: "Someone! Anyone! It doesn't even have to be a God. Any angel, ghost, spirit, or even devil listening: I'll take literally anyone at this point!"
I keep cursing the hideous fate I've been dealt, cursing the unfairness of this cruel world, until my throat is raw and my shouts become more like strained croaks.
Eventually, amidst all my crazed ramblings, darkness finally blots me out and I enter into dreamland.
I find myself in an empty field, with nothing but wheat for as far as the eye can see. Nothing, except for a small figure a few steps north of me.
She's not a Demon, thankfully. She's…well, she's a girl. A human girl by the looks of it, a rather petite one at roughly 1.55m tall. Maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen, though it's impossible to say in dream logic. She's got a head of silky yellow hair, and she's bouncing on her toes as if the floor is a trampoline.
Her eyes are what you notice first: huge, bright, electric blue, so radiant they make your heart skip a beat. She's got a nose barely big enough to hold a sneeze, and a grin that threatens to swallow her whole face.
"You made it!" she cheers, hands thrown wide.
I blink. "What?"
"Hello? Earth to Michael, are you awake?" she chuckles, which is a strange thing to say in a dream if you think about it. "You were the one that called for me, remember?" She does a little twirl and almost trips on her own feet, then laughs and claps her hands together.
"I did?" I scratch my head in confusion.
"Of course you did!" She sticks out her tongue. "I'm Poly! You requested for a God, didn't you?"
"You…are a God?" I ask, tilting my head.
"Yup! I came here just for you! Isn't that great?" Poly grins even wider. "And boy do I have a great offer for you: make a Pact with me, I give you awesome powers, you do fun stuff and help me take over the world. Any questions?"
All of them. I raise a hand.
She giggles. "Yes?"
"What do you mean by awesome powers?" I decide to start with that.
"Good question!" she chirps. "It means that I'll give you really wonderful, fantastic, absolutely incredible powers. Like super duper amazing powers."
Great, all she did was recite synonyms.
"What do I have to do?" I ask next.
She puts a finger to her chin and tilts her head. "Nothing hard! Just say yes and we will be officially pacted." She leans forward, eyes twinkling. "So? Do you want to make a Pact, Michael?"
I shrug. It's just a dream anyway, so let's see where this goes. "Sure. Why not."
The second I say it, Poly pumps her fist up into the air. "YAY! Pact acquired!" She squeals in excitement.
"Congratulations Michael Roland," Poly says, and every word floats in the air as a soap bubble before dissolving into confetti. "You are now the one…the only…wielder of the great holy sword…"
She claps, and the field around us ripples like a pond. Suddenly, the sky shreds open and a sword comes screaming down from the heavens, trailing a tail of golden fire. It buries itself halfway in the earth at my feet, humming with raw, potent energy.
"…Soul-Sucking Excalibur!" she finishes with an animated flourish of her arms.
I stare. The blade is…incredible. It's longer than my arm, forged from a metal that isn't quite silver, isn't quite anything I've ever seen, and lined with runes that glow like a nightclub sign. The hilt is wrapped in deep blue leather, studded with little opal stars.
Poly nearly tackles me as she sprints over. "Go on, pick it up! It's yours!"
I reach for the sword, bracing for the inevitable "unworthy" zap. Instead, my fingers close around the grip like it's always been waiting for me. The moment I touch it, the sword hums louder—almost singing—and the runes flicker through every color of the rainbow.
The second I lift it free, a pulse of light floods the field. The wheat bends away in concentric circles, the horizon flexes, and the very clouds part.
"Well?" Poly looks up at me expectantly. "Do you like it?"
I give the sword an experimental swing. It weighs almost nothing, but the air around it distorts, like the world is bending to avoid being sliced in half by accident.
"This is…actually pretty cool," I admit, and I actually feel like some sort of hero for once in my life. Too bad it's just a dream.
"Pretty cool?!" Poly gasps like I just offended her entire bloodline. "This is THE holy sword of all holy swords, capable of bringing Gods to their knees! I think it deserves a little more than just 'pretty cool', don't you think?"
"Bring Gods to their knees?" I almost scoff at her absurd claims, but I compose myself just in the nick of time. "If it's really that amazing, how does it work?"
"Oh um…you can just worry about that next time!" Poly assures me, dodging the question. "A-Anyway, we're almost out of time! It's gonna be a big day tomorrow and you need your rest!"
A big day? What the hell does she mean by that? But just as I was about to send another barrage of questions her way, the dream begins to fade.
"Just remember: We're a team now! Partners forever! No givebacks, no refunds! The Pact is eternal!" Poly's voice reverberates around me as my vision blurs.
And then, the field blinks out like a broken lamp.
***
It's always a cruel joke when you wake up from a dream and realize the real world is worse. I come to on my scratchy straw mat, mouth glued shut by a mix of drool and post-traumatic stress. My eyes crust open, and there it is: the same needlessly high ceiling, the same sour stink of Demon sweat, and the sound of Lady Vespera somewhere in the manor howling at someone for existing too loudly.
"Great," I grumble. "Another day in this hellhole."
I try to do a systems check. Head: pounding. Shoulders: bruised. Everything below the waist: aching in ways that defy medical science. I try to sit up, and something pulls me back down.
Wait. What the hell is that?
There's a…weight on my chest. A soft, warm, oddly comforting pressure. My first stupid assumption is that I've finally had a heart attack and it's all downhill from here, but then the weight shifts, and I hear it breathing.
I look down. It's a girl.
A very small, very naked girl, snuggled up against my side, her arms wrapped lazily around my ribcage as if it's her favorite pillow. Her skin is the color of sunlight filtered through honey, and her hair fans out across my chest like a spill of gold leaf. The sight alone is enough to make my blood pressure spike to "Immediate Medical Attention Required".
That's when I realize this isn't just any girl. No, this is the girl from last night's dream, the one who claimed to be a God and then coerced me into a suspicious magical pact. Her face is peaceful, almost angelic, and her lips are parted in the tiniest of smiles. One of her legs is draped over mine, and her knee is parked directly against my crotch, which is now doing it's own waking up in the most inconvenient way.
She smells like electricity and citrus. Not a dream. Not a ghost. This is a living, breathing, real person.
I try to squirm free, but her grip tightens—she's surprisingly strong for someone barely five feet tall. I slap at her arm, and she just buries her face deeper into my side with a happy little "mmmph".
There's only one explanation for this. I've finally cracked. I've hit the end of the rope and my brain is throwing hallucinations at me as a last-ditch coping mechanism before total failure.
I try to count backwards from ten, hoping she'll disappear or at least turn into a comforting pile of laundry.
Instead, she stirs. Her eyes flutter open. For a split second, the room is silent as a grave. Then she lifts her head and blinks up at me, her huge blue eyes shining like sapphires backlit by sunrise.
"Morning!" she greets me in a peppy tone, as if this is the most natural thing in the world. "Ready to start conquering the world?"