Unexpected Ally
"What did you say happened?" Freyya asks in alarm.
"I said," Haalfrin explains to the short goddess, "that my Wills were discovered. They fought the best they could and killed as much as possible."
In the middle of Haalfrin explaining to Freyya what just happened, one of the other prisoners sees the crow goddess and calls out, "Mind bringing rum next time?"
"…If you behave…," Freyya begrudgingly replies.
At first, all the prisoners were terribly afraid whenever Freyya would show up with their supplies. Her ambient Death Aura was more than enough to send them packing, never mind her stellar reputation as a soul-devouring demon among the populace.
However, after many years spent around Haalfrin's Aura, and many years seeing her behaving like a normal person, their fear gradually waned. There even eventually came a point where they were able to talk to the goddess casually.
Before the Crow goddess leaves, she drops off a few spatial bags full of food… then she looks up anxiously.
"What's wrong, Freyya?" Haalfrin asks. 'There's not a lot of things that can unnerve her, so seeing that look on her face made me curious.'
"…Nothing." She tears her eyes away from the ceiling and disappears without another word.
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Oddly enough, when the little slave girl falls unconscious, she doesn't just unlock 1 Gate, but 2 at the same time!
…The only downside to this is that her physical age regresses all the way down to a 1 or 2-year-old child. After she wakes back up, she finds that she can barely even crawl on the ground now!
Grr. How annoying.
Still, the little "infant" doesn't know much about magic; she only knows that it's really powerful and that it can do lots of things.
'With my awesome magic powers now, I can probably just leave right now, right?' the girl thinks smugly. 'Ha! Those mean mages can't look down on me now.'
…Her good mood is crushed once she realizes that she doesn't know any spells… Rather, she doesn't know the slightest thing about how to use magic.
The only thing she discovers about magic is that her 2 Names let her use that black Aura to a small extent; she can't control its movement, but she senses where it is at all times. Her other Name lets her communicate with Spirits.
'Hmm…' the child wonders as she looks down. 'There's a lot of that evil black energy below me… I can't tell that whatever creature is down there is very, very angry.'
She then looks up at the ceiling, and her mouth feels parched with thirst. 'Water… Where can I get water… It's so hot…'
Alas, with the warden's ban on entering the lower floors, nobody is coming to rescue the true hero who sealed the demon away.
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Time passes as the little slave girl waits patiently by the teleport circle. 'Is any help going to arrive?' the girl starts to wonder anxiously, 'At this rate, I'm going to die?'
She looks down and thinks, 'No… Why would anyone come down just for me? I'm just a slave. They don't care if I die.'
Rather than feeling self-pity, the child growls up at the ceiling like an animal, 'You know what? I don't care! I'll find my OWN way to survive down here! It's not gonna be too hard, right?'
In reality, the child is in far more danger than she realizes. With her body acclimating to the changing temperature, she doesn't notice the heat rising higher and higher. She also doesn't understand the concept of air growing stale.
The only thing she's thinking about is starving to death, when she SHOULD be worrying about dehydrating and dying of heatstroke.
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Maybe it's because her body is smaller and frailer, but the little slave girl's health is wilting a lot faster now. …After less than an hour, the girl finally feels herself beginning to weaken and die.
Perhaps it's because of her resentment towards the world, or perhaps it's because she's desperate to survive. Either way, with no help coming to her from up above, she only has one place left to search.
Looking down, the girl mutters in her pipsqueak voice, "Hmph! I don't like you either, demon, but I have no choice."
She crawls on the floor over to the installation equipment the spirit mages left behind after they died. "Pardon me," she says as she crawls over one of the corpses and rests her hand on the short-range teleportation circle they used. "Just one brick should be good enough."
Remembering the feeling of the enchantment activating, she pushes some of her mana into the portable enchantment circle. Surprisingly, she doesn't have to spend any time testing the thing out to see how it works; Immediately, a spirit stone brick appears on the ground in front of her.
(In reality, the way the installation enchantment works is it's set to teleport a brick-sized chunk of earth from a set distance underground. Then, the next time it's used, it'll teleport the brick back down in its place.)
(The enchantment is set to automatically alternate between teleporting something OUT of the ground, then teleporting something BACK IN. Since the slave girl put the Spirit Stone brick in it's place before, it stands to reason that the next time she used it, she'd take the brick back out.)
(Besides, activating magic circles is as intuitive and easy as flipping a switch. Everybody has latent mana in their bodies, and you don't have to be a mage to know how to use simple enchantments.)
After the little girl activates the magic circle, she rests her scrawny little hand on the Spirit Stone brick that was just removed from the seal down below. She looks down warily, waiting for another attack to surge up from the deep place.
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It doesn't take long for Haalfrin to feel a hole open up on the seal keeping them in. "What happened to the barrier?" he wonders. "Whatever. Even if it's a trap, I still have to use that opening. I can't afford to ignore it."
He glances over at some of the other prisoners of Floor B33. 'If we ran out of supplies,' he thinks, 'we'd have to end up sacrificing some of our members, just so that a Death Reaper could visit us and resupply us... That's only a temporary solution though, so I'll need to think up something quickly.'
So, the Demon of the Pit (as he's come to be called by his enemies upstairs) reaches out with his Aura cautiously towards the breech…
'Tch,' Haalfrin clicks his tongue, 'I can't see anything up there with the barrier in the way. I hate going into this stuff blind.'
Just when he's about to release some of his Wills to explore for him, he feels his outstretched arm of Aura touch another spirit up top… and this spirit touches him back.
"Can you hear me, demon?" the voice of a little child enters Haalfrin's mind.
Haalfrin coughs out in surprise. He didn't know it's possible to send words directly through spirits touching; can't they only convey feelings and vague images? Is this "child" some impossibly powerful spirit mage or something?
The prisoner calms down and replies, "My name isn't 'demon'."
"…Anyway, demon," the little child goes on to say, "I have a deal for you. You can't refuse this deal, too."
"Oh?" Haalfrin chuckles, "You can't make a deal without something to bargain with. Tell me, what can you give me?"
"Heh, heh," the little infant chuckles, "I'm standing over the enchantment circle, and I have the last Spirit stone brick with me. I can trap you again whenever I want. If you don't do what I say…"
Haalfrin adjusts his seat, and he tries to shake the uncomfortable feeling from his heart. He doesn't like knowing that there's a knife to his throat. Those are the worst kinds of "negotiations".
"…Fine," he gives in, "What do you want?"
"…Do everything you can to keep me alive," the little girl responds. "I'm trapped here on Floor B32. It's really hot. I'm also really hungry and thirsty. I want something tasty. Do you have cake? Chocolate cake is the best."
"… How old are you?" Haalfrin asks. He knows that mages are always a lot older than they sound or look… but this strange spirit mage doesn't FEEL old to him at all.
"12!" the little child shouts back with confidence.
Haalfrin slumps down and puts his head in his hands. Feeling suddenly defeated, the man replies softly, "…I'm a big nasty demon trapped underground. What makes you think I have cake?"
"…Do you have cold milk to go with it?" the little voice asks after a short pause.
Gah! Children are impossible to deal with! "Listen, little girl," Haalfrin says while trying to sound as scary as possible, "There's a spatial sealing just under the Spirit Stone sealing. I do have food down here, but I have no way of bringing it up to you. I can only reach up with my spiritual energy through the hole in the barrier you made for me…"
"…How about this?" Haalfrin offers – this time with a softer voice, "I know some really cool aunties and uncles who drop food off down here whenever I'm hungry. I could ask them to stop by you and keep you fed. Do you know how to open up spatial bags?"
"…No. The guards never let me touch them."
"…Fine," Haalfrin says, "I can have those aunties and uncles teach you how to do it. Since you're talking to me with magic, I assume you're a new mage now. You should be able to open the bags if you have magic now."
"Thank you, mister demon!"
"…Another thing," Haalfrin says, "I'll be sending some of my Aura up there. A few Wills are going to poke around your place and make sure it's habitable for you."
Before goes to make these arrangements, he asks, "What's your name, little girl?"
"Freyya!"
"Oh?" Haalfrin asks with interest. "Where did you get a name like that?"
"My parents named me after the goddess we worship…"
"Heh," the 'demon' chuckles, "This'll be interesting. I'll just call you junior."
"That's stupid," the child objects. "I happen to like my name very much!"
Haalfrin sighs at this child's stubborn tone. "Listen, kid. I happen to be acquainted with that goddess pretty well. It'll be confusing if I know two people named Freyya. How about this? I'll just call you Frey?"
"…That's acceptable." Frey is what her dad used to call her before he died. This makes the child very happy to hear that name again.