"Mazel tov! Welcome to Hell! It totally rocks, the streets are paved with gold and everything. I can do the tour guide thing if you like."

"This is Hell? You don't look like a demon."

"I totally don't! It's part of my whole thing, I like confusing the everloving heck out of my summoners. You should see them looking through their tomes and stuff for what fairy wings and horns and a doggy tail means. It's hilarious."

"I mean, the horns and the tail should rule out fairy, even if they don't make it clear between demon and angel... I thought fairy wings didn't work for flying, though."

"They don't. Functioning wings are for losers, I have a jetpack. The wings are for pretty. And yeah, they should, but half the time summoners have no frame of reference on anything but "this is how you summon these things and this is what they do, no more questions now." So, confusion."

"Okay. So why am I here?"

"You're a demon now! You have the magical powers of making shit and not getting shot in the face anymore. Well, I mean, you can get shot in the face, I have been, but it doesn't do much. You can make yourself wings and a tail and whatnot if you like, too, I highly recommend them."

"Yeah, it's... kind of supposed to be obvious. I mean, conceptually I guess it's kind of similar to the mortal magic tricks or something? But it's kind of like asking, like, 'how do I breathe,' it doesn't make a lot of sense."

"That's making, all right. Quick and cheap and easy, as the actress said to the bishop. What is that thing, some kind of bead?"

"Piece of candy. Want it? Apparently there are more where that came from."

"Hell yes. I am amazed by the fact that modern humans have such ready access to chocolate that they can ruin it by putting it into those horrible little chemical shells, it's delightful."

"Don't knock the chemical shell." Cam hands over the M&M.

Ari bites into the horrible little chemical shell. "My god, it's disgusting. I love it. So, anyway, twopenny tour of Hell or what? I can get back to my sculpture any time, but molding the flexible little mind of a new demon doesn't happen every day."

"Please, tour. It's been mentioned to me a few times that demons sometimes only started speaking English after I summoned them, I imagine if I go directly to Hell ones I can talk to are a much smaller subset of the population."

"Oh yes. I mean, English speakers make up a lot of the summoner community, but the summoner community is a pretty tiny subset of the population at large, which in this region mostly speaks Lagalann. Which is a lovely language, I highly recommend learning it, but it'll probably take you a while." Ari leaves his statue and pops a jetpack onto his back. (He spent almost fifteen years working on this design back in 1800; since then he's made upgrades to keep up with fuel technology, and by this point it's very sleek and space-agey.) "Want to go now?"

"I don't know how to operate a jetpack, and I don't think I want to court experiments with daeva durability right now, though I'm assured it's state of the art. Can I get there in a car? I know how to drive a car."

"You can drive there in a car while I soar above your head on my extremely cool jetpack, yes."

Ari takes off, white flame bathing his bare legs in a way that looks remarkably uncomfortable. He soars off in the direction which has, for general demonic convenience, been declared north.

At the speed of vroom, Ari leads Cam to a city that looks a bit like what would happen if you let several million people with inherently contradictory design aesthetics and the ability to conjure arbitrary matter build a city together. It's... unbelievably tacky. Near the center there appears to have been something of a competition to see who could build the tallest unnecessary spire, which concluded when the top floors stopped being affected by gravity. Nearer the outskirts it's humbler, just a mess of elaborate mansions made entirely out of gold or rubies or human bone.

"Wow," mutters Cam. He may live in a city for a while to get used to Hell but then he's fucking off to someplace less tacky to be introverted and have a sense of damn (...heh) proportion.

There are not drivable streets in Hell-cities. This may present a problem. In fact, by the looks of things it seems that there may not be streets at all, so much as occasional spaces between the mansions; there are clouds of demons flapping about, who land on the rooftops and descend when they land anywhere.

Cam parks when he cannot drive further and gets out of the car. He feels kind of out of place without wings; he keeps an eye on demons in flight to get an idea of how various sets handle.

Ari touches down near Cam. "Do you want to make your own wings yet or should I just fly you up? I can totally carry you, the jetpack has pretty high capacity."

"I haven't decided what I want my wings to be like yet. If you carry me am I going to catch fire?"

"Nope! You're as invulnerable as I am, and anyway you'll be pretty much shielded by my body so it won't even be that uncomfortable. It's a short trip to my place, I got into the real estate scene early but at the time I was a bit outside town so it amounts to me only being a little while into the city."

"I understand that demons, of which I am now one, are indestructible, but I still wouldn't enjoy my jeans being on fire, even slightly. But sure, if you're between me and the flames let's do it."

Ari hefts Cam neatly in a bridal carry and lifts off. Being this near to burning jet fuel is certainly not comfortable, but true to Ari's word Cam does not catch fire. From this vantage point it's pretty apparent that there's no insulation around Ari's legs or anything. He doesn't seem to mind, though.

Cam experiments with alleviating the various discomforts of burning jet fuel by making cold exhaust-free air near himself. It works okay.

"Ooh, clever," approves Ari. "You're taking to the whole demon thing quite well."

"I mean, I was a summoner, I've given thought to clever applications of the powers."

"Sensible. I was only briefly a summoner and not in a coma, so I didn't get the opportunity. I adjusted all right, though."

"What happened to you? When was this?"

"Some time around 1426, I was dropped off on the doorstep of Halifax Abbey and raised by the monks. In the store cupboard there were some odd books; I took a look at them and they were about the summoning of demons and angels and fairies, which was all very heretical but also very intriguing. I decided to summon an angel in the attic, and when she appeared she was very sweet and kind. After a few hours of her being sweet and kind she convinced me to unbind her, at which point she vanished several key portions of my brain and cackled wickedly all the way to the bank. I read in a history book somewhere that a woman matching her description married some duke or other who later died under highly mysterious circumstances. I imagine she kept me vegetative in her attic under the care of some competent nurses. And then I died and she fucked off back to Heaven, where I believe she has pulled the same nasty trick a few dozen times."

"Huh. I found books in an abandoned mansion but that didn't happen to me, I just got killed by somebody with economic reasons to object to me."

"Kudos! Getting shot in the head sounds unpleasant, but brain-vanishing is just rotten. What were his economic reasons?"

"He didn't have a long conversation with me about it first, but reconstructing his likely reasoning I get something like: he was using daeva to make money. If more people know about daeva, he has less of an edge in his industry."

"I told," says Cam, "everybody about daeva."

"I'm Ari. Good to meet you. Do please excuse my spartan home; I live an ascetic life. I was raised by monks, you see, vanity is a sin."

"I'm not concerned about your virtue. Your aesthetics, a little, but it's better than the one with all the neon and upside-down trees we passed."

"My aesthetics are fine. Kalgor's are not, but he is color-blind, so I cut him some slack." He begins descending the tacky staircase into his tacky home.

"Kalgor?" Cam follows, hanging on to the banister.

"Gentleman with the neon trees. I'm sure he'd have a thousand and one citations if we had a neighborhood association, but thank God, we don't. But he's quite nice, he's in a couple of local community theater groups. They put on a native demonic adaptation of Faust the other week, it was a good laugh." The stair (the banister of which is as ornate and ridiculous as the rest of it) leads into a parlor filled with so many absurdly gaudy decorations that anyone with the misfortune to be inside it can hardly get their eyes to focus on the walls. "Sorry about the mess. It's been a while since I had a good spring clean in."

"Demon adaptation of Faust! That's adorable."

"It was! Faustus was a hapless idiot who summoned our lovable protagonist Mephistopheles out of the bath and put him in a binding just tight enough to keep him from putting him in a coma, but too loose to keep him out of general roguery. So Mephi does Faust's bidding in the most inconvenient way, along the way seducing the good doctor's bored wife Margaret, while Faust thinks everything's going just as planned. Then at the end, everything comes crashing down, Faust looses Mephistopheles to save him, and instead he puts him to sleep and drops him in a nursing home and runs off to Aruba with Margaret. Utterly hilarious."

"I should have expected it would be something like that. Demon fan-theater. Glorious. Speaking of Faust, can demons in fact do the soul thing, I suspect no but I couldn't even tell right away how to make an M&M."

Ari giggles. "Oh, souls. It looks like you've hit on the other mainstay of demon humor. Yeah, soul-barterers just like watching the mortals squirm. There's another comedy about a clever summoner who figures out on his own time that they don't exist and barters his off to five separate demons while acting convincingly dismayed about losing it, but the demons meet in Hell and figure out the plot and when he dies they stick him in a black hole for being a smartass. That one's a musical."

"I'll have to hit the theater scene. How do they allocate seats with no material scarcity to power a currency, is it all first-come first-serve or what?"

"Generally first-come-first-served, yeah. It all gets recorded too nowadays, though, there's no reason not to, and then you can appear a copy of the recording by being specific about the performance and the date. I've got the coordinates of the best versions I saw of those two memorized, if you'd like to see them some time. Or we could go to a performance of something in person. Some time. Together."

"I'm straight. And have not yet formed an opinion on tails. But flattered. I would like to know about those recordings, in fact."

"Never hurts to try. I suppose I'll drown my sorrows in ice cream and one of my other beautiful immortal acquaintances. Tragic indeed. And the coordinates for the recordings are Mephistophilis et Margareth et Error Faustam at the Galakon Arena on November 1 1959 terrestrial time, and Lonoro Galamana Thel'garana at the Ruklanat on October 7 2001 terrestrial. Neither's in English, but most theaters have some people go over the recording and subtitle them to the big languages, and if I recall there are such versions in English for both."

Cam makes a piece of paper. He finds that he can appear words on it without the piece of paper coming into existence with them. He records this information and pockets it. "Thank you."

"No problem! They really are great performances. Lonoro in particular, the lead is played by... somebody, I don't remember, he's very good and he's an ex-mortal and apparently he acted back on Earth too. He's excellent, whoever he is."

"How many demons are ex-mortals? Is it the same with fairies and angels? Is it only summoners, or everybody?"

"Just summoners, and yeah, it's the same arrangement for everybody. There's somewhere called Limbo where the other mortals go, it's not very interesting. The proportion of ex-summoners to natives is very low. I don't know the percentages, but I think there's a few dozen ex-summoners living in this entire ten-million-demon city. There's a group of them meets every couple of months, I don't attend because I just consider myself a demon at this point. You might go for meet-and-greet potential, I can tell them there's a new one in town. They like to know who's who."

"Do they all speak English?"

"Nah, but everybody in the region speaks Lagalann, and I can interpret for you. If you'd rather wait until you actually speak the lingua franca, I can tell them to wait a few years on the big meetup. Some of the English-speakers might stop by, though, and they're mostly nice. Not Cheryl, Cheryl's an asshole, if Cheryl stops by nobody's home."

"I'm sort of curious, but except for wanting to get summoned and try to talk to my parents as soon as - demonically possible - what does summoning feel like? I haven't noticed anything, yet - I feel no overwhelming desire to identify as an ex-mortal or hang out preferentially with ex-mortals. I should learn the language either way, though. Is it hard?"

"Talking is generally not an option, but good luck. Summoning feels sort of like- somebody knocking on your door when you're in bed, and saying that you leave for a trip in five minutes, and trying to pack your suitcase and get dressed and get out the door in time while half asleep. Except in a fraction of a second. And you usually fail. Not always, though, sometimes it goes alright. And a specific summon, one where they're just summoning you, is like having all the time you need for it. I don't know that you'll get a specific summon, though, they only really happen after you've been responding for a few years and you demonstrate a lot of skill in a specific area and somebody writes you up in their personal summoner Yellow Pages. I happen to be in one such book under 'incubi'." He waggles his eyebrows.

"Congratulations. So that's what that feeling was, I thought that was lingering anxiety from being murdered. Well, they should be coming in faster now than they were before, now that I've pulled off my thing."

"I'm pleased with that! I like summons, they let me help people, it's nice."

"For values of 'help' that mean 'incubus for'?"

Ari sniffs with dignity. "It's a form of help. No one's complained, certainly."

"Not being able to talk must make that tricky though."

"I have a certain talent for nonverbal communication."

Cam laughs. "Congratulations. So what happens in Limbo, which I gather is where my parents end up if I don't get ahold of them and they continue not to summon anything?"

"Aw, I'm sorry. Apparently it's not, like, classical hell or anything, but it's not all that fun. You get one object, the thing you valued most in your life, and the rest is just an infinite plane of beigey dust. People who got houses and stuff get all the contents, which is handy, and there's some stuff you can do with, like, mud bricks made from the soil and water from someone's sink, but overall it's kind of bizarre and terrible. I'd have been alright, I'm more about people than things, but I'm definitely glad I got my summon in. Even though it led to, you know, unpleasantness."

"I would like that to not happen to people. I was thinking the humanitarian benefits of publicizing daeva would be enormous, but apparently I will also have improved thing things for a subset of dead people, go me."

"Yeah, improving things for dead people winds up being more important than doing it for living people a lot of the time. We spend more time this way. Hell does its collective best to make Limbo as livable as possible, every time there's a concordance we send through necessary goods. I imagine the klen-takk do the same, to whatever extent they can do that with their fiddly little powers."

"You're going to have to translate me that word. Angels, I assume, but...?"

"Oh. Yeah, it means- eh, it's nuanced. Sort of a fusion of words that implies that half the time they set their halos to shine our of their asses instead. It's a pretty recent construction, the slang gets shifted around periodically as people think of new nasty things to call them."

"I did detect racism when I mentioned demons around angels and vice-versa."

"Yep! Racism is merited, they're prissy little bastards and you have joined the winning team. I mean, I've known decent angels, but for the most part- ech. Plus, when they're nasty, they're nasty. Belinda was not a lone case."

"I see. And why don't they like us?"

"Because we're better than them? And I believe I mentioned that they're prissy little bastards."

"But some summoners turn into angels. Or fairies. How does the sorting work?"

"Yeah, I think prissy bastardry or an unhealthy preoccupation with neatness leads to becoming an angel and coolness and/or rampant egotism gets you demonhood. And people who are generally alright but kind of boring end up as fairies. Fairies are alright."

"How interesting."

"I don't mind if you don't agree with me on the angels thing," Ari reassures him hastily. "You got more summoning in, you're friends with a bunch and all. I just talk about them like that because it's fun. It's like with the French, back on Earth."

"I'm not close friends with any. What's wrong with the French?"

"Filthy treaty-breaking land-stealing snobs is what they are. Or were, back when I was around. Possible they've changed by now, though I'd doubt it."

"I believe these days they are principally famous for food, and there are lingering jokes about their surrender during World War Two."

"Hah. They have changed, then. Their food was vile, but their soldiers would keep coming at you after you'd damn well buried them. Which we did, of course."

"And now they make cheese."

"What? We made the cheese! French cheese was- agh. You people willingly eat M&Ms, I shouldn't even be surprised."

"Do I want to try authentic medieval non-French cheese?"

Cam pops his cracker into his mouth gamely.

"Huh," says Cam, who likes brie and honey but not ale. "It's all right."

"I'll take it. The French made horrible-smelling mold-cheeses which I would not allow in my home, so I'll spare you that."

"It's fairly common these days for cheeses to involve some mold. Different kinds depending on the cheese. I will refrain from demonstrating, what with being a guest in your house and so on."

"Thank you. The incinerator in my basement is very efficient, but the fact that the cheese had been here at all would be heresy of the highest order."

"Anything else you won't have within these walls besides moldy cheese?"

"Not much, really. That was mostly facetious anyway."

"All right. Wouldn't want to get stuck in a black hole for being a smartass, though, so I'll steer clear of moldy cheese till I leave."

"Nah, I don't hole people. It's antisocial and all. There's a very short list of people I'd do that to."

"And you've already got them all?"

"By 'very short list' I mean one, and she's in Heaven. Or fucking people over on Earth again, as is her wont."

"I am pretty concerned about that. I tried to make, you know, general safety information firmly attached to the 'hey look daeva' thing, but yeah."

"She's very, very persuasive. For what it's worth, she's probably already swanning about on some hapless bastard's lifespan, so it'll be a while before she renews her lease. Maybe by then they'll have learned."

"Do you know what she does?"

"Usually once she's loosed on the world, she acquires a great deal of money by various awful means and sets herself up as a socialite. Once she's in society, she mostly just enjoys her life, though I believe she also has a fondness for turning people into horrible living sculptures. Very artistic type, Belinda was."

"Eugh."

"Rather. I've often wished I could've convinced some summoner or another to let me and some fairy wheel her out into interstellar space and strand her in a black hole. Would've been a nice turnabout, to have her trapped for however long instead of roaming free."

"It'd be a long trip," Cam points out. "There aren't any in the immediate neighborhood and I have no information suggesting fairies can break lightspeed. You could have dumped her in the sun, maybe."

"We can make black holes, you know. Probably want to do it outside the immediate neighborhood, but it could be done. And I'd hesitate to drop her in the sun in case she decided to start hacking away at its lifespan by changing it to iron as quickly as she could, which I wouldn't put past her."

"Oh, and here I was assuming you didn't want to risk wrecking the orbit of the Earth by putting massive objects nearby. Point well taken on the sun."

"Ugh. At any rate, it's a philosophical question at best, because the chances of a summoner arranging that kind of circumstance for a demon is about the same as the chance of me putting on a halo and spinning straw into gold."

"I imagine you could pull off the halo if you were willing to undergo some surgery. Straw thing's probably harder."

"The only reason I would ever consider a halo would be for a pantomime show. The Rumpelstilzchen act would actually be quite easy, if you set up a 'spinning wheel' that burnt the straw and then set up the gold to come out the other side. That one, I've done."

"The halo would contribute to your 'confuse the summoners' act. You don't really have anything on you that screams angel, just fairy wings and demon horns and a tail equally uncharacteristic of anyone who could acquire such a thing."

"I'd consider it, were it not for the fact that I'd never consider it."

"One time I got this really over the top practically Biblical angel with a ton of wings and eyes who was slightly on fire all the time, it was amazing."

Ari cackles. "Typical. You want to see Biblical, though, Nalagon in the obsidian house down the way has actually given himself hooves. Utterly mad, I think, but then I'm the one with butterfly wings and a jetpack."

"I don't think I will go for extreme body modification that involves cutting things off," shudders Cam. "Not anytime soon. I can appreciate the fashion statement of hooves, but I can also appreciate, like, sneakers."

"Yeah, it's fetching in its own way but I doubt it's for me. I might try it sometime, though. And I've been thinking of claws and maybe fangs... It's been a while since I switched up my appendages."

"I'd expect those to get annoying in day to day life. The claws more than the fangs, I guess."

"Probably. I think I could get used to them, though. And I definitely know some folks who would appreciate them."

"I see."

"Are there buildings here that aren't individuals' tacky houses?" wonders Cam. "Is there government of any kind? I'm told Hell is anarchy, but that doesn't necessarily apply to individual cities."

"Mmm... There's theaters and arenas and such, and I believe one of the ex-summoners has something approximating a restaurant, at which you can pay by telling him in great detail exactly what you thought of your meal. 'Shops' exist where the very creative conjure things for the less creative, but generally you'll need some piece of media to pay for those. And there's a library with some decent lists of books and music, you can contribute to it if you like but you don't want to publicize too many titles if you're ever going to want to buy something around here. Government-wise... in a word, no. If something comes up, occasionally there'll be some kind of council that meets on it, but there's nobody with real authority."

"Huh. And this all rubs along in a reasonably friendly manner, I take it."

"Yep! There's less friendly types, but generally they don't go for us too much. Too busy warring endlessly with each other in the void. Every so often some jackass tosses an unrestrained black hole into the middle of the city or something, but that's only a temporary problem. Most of the jackasses don't have much persistence."

"Good. I wouldn't have liked to land in a war zone."

"Recommend you stay out of Amngaroth then. That place is more holes than void by now. Very unpleasant."

"Noted. Where is Amngaroth? Can I get a map?"

Ari causes such a map to exist! It's on a state-of-the-art (given the state of the art) holographic projector. The center is a wobbly thing that appears to be the plane of gold. "There," says Ari, pointing to a cluster of somethingorother in space opposite their side of the plane, "is Amngaroth. I don't recall what supposedly started the feud, but there's a few thousand demons over there who've been warring with each other for much longer than I've been around. By this point they hate each other more than the angels."

"Huh. And where are we?"

Ari points at a red dot on the plane. It's about as far from Amngaroth as it's possible to be. "Scenic Nagala. I think the story is that a bunch of the Galegans and Kelkaron who hadn't been around for the start of the war got sick of the whole thing and decided to go to the opposite side of the plane. The Kelkaron mostly live in Talrakk, a few hundred miles east, they're nice enough."

"And these are - subcultures or communities of some kind, as opposed to the Earth gold standard of ethnic groups."

"Yep! Far as I can tell it's just who popped in nearest who, but that doesn't stop them from hating each other. I do my best not to get involved."

"Have I acquired some sort of affiliation via talking to you?"

"Ex-humans are a special class. We can take sides, but nobody expects you to. If you'd popped near a particularly orthodox Amnagarothe they might have tried to indoctrinate you, but even so you'd have been safe to get out of there. And as I said, I don't get involved."

"What a thrilling cultural education I am about to acquire."

"Don't worry too much about it, it took me almost twenty years to get all the cultures straight. Those are the two main groups in the region, anyway."

"About what fraction of demons live on the giant tacky plane anyway?"

"Around three-quarters are on or around it. There's some other landmasses, but this one's been around forever and it's pretty much the best game going."

"I wonder who decided Hell needed a gigantic plane of gold. It's not really a good substrate for a civilization. I guess you can put whatever on top of it."

"We have absolutely no idea, but feel free to curse their name for their role in the spread of demonic tackiness. I would've made the world out of a great sphere of multicolored corundum, myself. Much more tasteful."

"Well, that would... look like a level in a children's videogame... throw in a racetrack or something..."

"Racetracks, yes. Possibly a great big series of hoops for jetpack races as well. We're demons, my friend, the sky is the limit."

"Having realized that I could instantiate Mario Kart in real life doesn't make me want to actually do it."

"The video game character Mario is ostensibly a plumber but never seen plumbing. He and the other characters of his franchise spend most of their time doing other things, including racing go-carts through assorted colorful scenery. Do you want to play Mario Kart?"

"...Yes. Yes, I want to pretend to be a plumber racing around colorful scenery, that sounds like the invention of the damn century."

Cam laughs. "All right, how much do you already have in the way of video game hardware, let's not be redundant unnecessarily."

"I'm only barely aware of them as a medium. I have a television, though?"

"Let's see your TV and see if you need an upgrade."

"This TV will do nicely." Cam conjures up a Wii and its various hookups already in place, and controllers (the wheel kind, because why not), and a copy of Mario Kart. He goes briskly through various setup procedures while explaining the general phenomenon of Mario Kart to Ari, and then hands him one of the wheels.

Cam doesn't play very fiercely, but he doesn't let Ari win anyway; the computer players won't.

After some rounds, Ari actually wins a round! He performs a victory dance, detonating several tiny smokeless fireworks around himself.

Cam laughs.