Shut Up and Prompt - 3. 535 - A Champion Failure

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?” I stared at the shield on my arm, the leather straps holding it tight enough I didn’t have to think about anything other than making a fist. The bronze metalwork decorating it showed the image of a burning tree on the background in tooled leather of a fireball. I stared at the space where the man had appeared to me as I’d lounged on the sofa, waiting for my boyfriend, the Indian takeaway, and the first episode of The Apprentice, in that order. No man stood there now, but a shape too bright and indistinct to look at. I could make out horns, claws which gouged the sandy floor I had picked myself up from, and eyes of red fire like the centre of the earth.

He roared, and I quaked in fear.

“Stop scaring your champion Ifrit,” the voice was shockingly normal, especially to have issued from the mouth of a person largely the shape of a horse, but who seemed to have been made out of the sea. With him was the tallest and swarthiest man I’d ever seen. He looked like he belonged at the head of a Persian army, and stood holding his sword and fish patterned shield like it was the most natural thing in the world. “You’ve had a year to work with the boy, if you haven’t trained him well, shouting isn’t much going to help.”

I opened my mouth to speak, and promptly fainted.

I came to with the sound of shouting going on around me. I didn’t understand most of it, because it wasn’t all in English, or any other language I’d ever heard, because roaring, snorting, and growling didn’t seem obviously to translate into real words.

“What do you mean, he’s the wrong one?” A reasonably same voice asked.

Unintelligible roaring.

“Just because you’ve lost faith in his ability to win,” a snarky tone replied, laden with smug self confidence, “You can always forfeit Ifrit. It’ll make a change from beating you. Again.”

This time the roaring and snarling contained recognisable tones of anger. There was a lot of noise, like someone was breaking up a fight.

“You two, go and cool off!” A stern voice commanded. “And don’t exacerbate things!”

“Ohh, big words.”

There followed the unmistakable sound of someone getting slapped.

I dared to open an eye, and stared up at a man who at first glance looked totally normal. And then I noticed the lustrous purple hair, longer than I was tall, and the way it drifted around his body as though buoyed up by it’s own private breeze. He turned to me and I gulped audibly, because his eyes were apparently made of solid gold.

“Can you stand?”

“Umm, I think so.” I pulled myself up to standing, and hit myself in the chin with the shield which was still attached to my arm. “Where am I? Who are you?”

“You really should already know that.” His purple brows drew together in a frown. “Did Ifrit not tell you anything?”

“Who’s Ifrit?” As far as I was concerned, Ifrit was a magical spell in a Japanese computer game I’d not played since I was a teenager.

The very very strange man spent a bit longer considering me, his head on one side, his golden eyes totally unreadable.

“What’s your name?”

“James. James Markus.”

“Not Marcus Janes?”

I gritted my teeth. I was supposed to be lying on my sofa whilst my boyfriend handed me onion bhajis, the both of us waiting to talk crap about the self important jerks on TV before I lifted up his shirt and left oily fingerprints all over his abdomen. Instead I’d been mixed up with the guy from downstairs. Again.

“No. He lives in the apartment below me.” And kept very odd hours in strange company. “You mean he works for this… Ifrit person?”

“He works for the God of Destruction,” my host intoned the capital letters when he spoke. “Your neighbour is not as human as you think he is.”

“HUH?”

“You’re gonna give him an information overload Yosui.” The owner of the smug voice was back. He too was hard to look at, because it was as though someone had cut a ten foot high person shaped hole in the fabric of the universe. I stared at the nothingness which spoke. “Send him home, he’s not the right guy.”

“Do I want to know what you did with the messenger who fetch him?” Yosui sounded doubtful.

“Mind your own business Wind,” came the terse reply, “your champion isn’t even here yet.”

“Oh, she will be,” it was Yosui’s turn to be smug. “Has Ifrit gone to fetch him himself?”

“Don’t you know it. All the servants are scared to do it for him.”

“I’m not surprised. Just don’t let Them find out. They hate having to restaff us, and I am not being saddled with golems instead.”

“Just as long as we don’t have to go back to homunculi. That was the worst.”

I was getting tired of understanding every-other word and having a shield attached to my arm. I began to unpick the leather knots with my free hand and scowled.

“Has any of this got anything to do with me, or can I go home now?” I had no idea how I would explain my absence to Jordan, or my attire.

The void who spoke made a dismissive gesture.

“Oh do find someone to take him away. Unless you can use him, of course? Saryu is always partial to pretty little mortal after all.”

I gulped, knowing all the blood in my body and drained to my feet in a rush to get away.

“Don’t worry,” the man with the purple hair turned to me with a smile which did little to be reassuring, “we’ll get you home. Come with me.”

I followed him, still picking distractedly at the leather holding the shield to my arm, and walked with Yosui down a long marble passageway. We could have been in any number of stately homes, because every open doorway we passed gave way to richly decorated reception rooms, and there were paintings and gilt mirrors everywhere. My companion walked with his hair making strange glyphs and swirls in the air around him, and it wasn’t until he stopped at another doorway, I noticed his bare feet weren’t actually touching the floor.

“Deorion darling?”

In the room was a man painted with smoke and fire. He had been reading a book, and shed small flakes of ash as he looked up.

“Is it over already? Oh… who’s that?”

“He’s… here by mistake. There was a bit of a mix up in requisitions. I was hoping you could take him home before Kage tries to entice someone to eat him.”

“So, I get babysitting duty?” the man made of smoke didn’t seem too annoyed, “and what’s my reward?”

Yosui left my standing in the passage, and crossed the room to his friend who was now standing. They kissed in a manner which made my stare, slack jawed in amazement touched with just a little bit of lustful jealously. The smoky figure chuckled as they stepped apart.

“Down boy. I’ll deal with you later.” He stroked his lover appreciatively. “Have fun at The Games babe.”

As Yosui turned away, I realised he was blushing.

“You didn’t think Gods could be embarrassed, did you boy?” I fell easily into stride with my smoky companion. “It’s surprisingly easy with some of them.” He noticed the shield still attached to my arm. “Oh how ridiculous,” he somehow stripped me from the Greek warrior get up without actually touching me, and I found myself dressed once more in the comfortable practical sweats and hoodie combination I’d been wearing at home. “Even if they do insist on having The Games every year, you’d think they’d want to move with the times. But gunfights aren’t as interesting to Gods apparently.”

“He was a...you kissed a God?”

“I do a lot more than kiss him.” the person called Deorion winked at me, and I gaped. He continued on without me, and I had to run to catch up. “At this stage you’re going to start asking a lot of questions, most of them a bit stupid,” Deorion spoke like he could read the inside of my mind, “so let’s just go with the facts. Yes, there are Gods. No, Gods aren’t a lot like most people imagine them to be. All prayers do indeed go somewhere, but there ain’t any need for churches as far as I can make out. And no, I’m not a God.” There was a pause during which I could feel my brain trying to process such a vast amount of information. “Ahh, here we are.”

Deorion pushed open a nondescript door into a room packed with objects of all kinds. It was like stepping into the world’s biggest and most varied flea market, but there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. Deorion moved around bits of furniture, touching things and leaving ash everywhere, until he settled on a glass sphere about the size of a tennis ball. As soon as he picked it up, it began to glow as though lit by an inner fire.

“This should just about do it. Take it, and just think of where you were before the messenger came to get you. Job done.”

“It’s that easy?” I doubted him suddenly, as if I had any other choice.

“Trust me kid, Yosui don’t just keep me around ‘cause I’m good with my hands.” He grinned suggestively, and his teeth were very white, and pointed.

“Who are you?”

He held out the glowing sphere, which grew brighter with every passing moment.

“The Demon Del Deorion, at your service,” he bowed.

I took the sphere.

“You’re a demon?”

“Not that kind. Bye kid.” Deorion gave me a little wave.

“Huh?” I stared at the sphere, and suddenly the light was too bright to keep my eyes open. I blinked.

My feet collided with the floor hard enough to jolt me off them and onto the couch. I blinked at my apartment as the light faded. The sound of the the key in the lock was obtrusively loud.

“James? Has it started yet? Did I miss anything?”

My boyfriend’s voice cut through my senses. Without stopping to look at the TV, I ran to him, the non-longer fiery sphere falling from my fist and rolling away across the floor into some distant corner. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed tight. A moment later, the takeaway bags thumped onto the ground as he squeezed me back.

“Babe? How was your day?”

“I love you!” I muttered fiercely, then kissed him soundly.

Jordan blinked at me, looking surprised.

“I got extra poppadoms.”