“Lysandra is out on a diplomatic mission,” I told Meta, who was looking around the crypt wide-eyed.

“I wasn’t aware that you had taken over the foreign affairs of Tartarus,” Meta said.

“I haven’t,” I said. I wondered if I could. If a war started, and I said stop, would they listen to me just because I’d fucked the Archfiend’s nominal wife? “She’s on a mission for me, personally. As, er, Queen of Abbyland. To get a gate expert from the elves. No insult intended, but I thought two opinions, from different schools of thought, might be better than one.”

“Ah,” Meta said. “Fascinating. It will be an enlightening experience for both of us, no doubt. It’s not a thing we would normally talk to elves about.” She looked around, taking in things like the computers, the fridge, and the stove. “There’s a lot here I’m not familiar with.”

“Kathy, this is Meta. Meta, Kathy.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Meta said, extending a hand.

“Um, sure,” Kathy said.

“She’s an exdoorcist,” I explained.

“Oh.”

“Abby,” Kendala said, “Would you like me to make our guest a drink?”

“I’ll do it,” Kathy said. “What do you want?”

Meta shrugged. “I’ll let you decide. None of that elvish wine, though.”

“I’ll make you a tequila sunrise.”

“Um, whatever that is I’m sure it will be fine.” Meta looked up at the ceiling. “So that’s the gate?”

“Yes.”

“Why would anyone make a gate on the ceiling like that, way up high? If you walked through, you’d be likely to break your neck.”

“Or ankle, in my case,” Kathy said.

So I explained how the gate had come in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. And then I explained jigsaw puzzles.

“Ah,” Meta said. “A trap to cause people to while away time in endless fascination, so that one can sneak up on them from behind.”

“You’re simultaneously not wrong and way off base.”

“And why would anyone do it that way?” Meta asked.

“I think because he could only push one thing through to Earth at a time. So he had to do it piece by piece, and he had to make it so that someone wanted to put it together. That someone being me.”

“And in your world, many women have penises? Or is it that many men have large breasts?”

“Uh, neither. And my world has no magic, except for the fact that magic is leaking through the gate. That, you see, is our problem.”

“Who is ‘he’?” Meta asked. “I think maybe you’d better start at the beginning. I won’t  be able to help unless I know all I can about the origin, construction, and effect of the gate.”

I didn’t want to tell her all my secrets, because I didn’t trust her. Who trusts a demon, after all? I hesitated. But I wanted her expertise, and I was probably swayed a little bit by the fact that her horse ears made her rather cute. Not sexy, although she was that, but cute. Who wouldn’t trust a pony girl? And if you brought in an expert, you couldn’t hold back crucial information.

“All of this is a secret, not to be shared in Tartarus or anywhere else.”

“Of course, Uber Archfiend.”

I thought of telling her to call me Abby, but maybe it was better for her to feel more like I was an authority figure. So I told her, from the beginning. About Enash. About my transformation. All of it.

Kathy brought the drink, and poured in the grenadine. “Nice,” Meta said. “It’s kind of like I always imagined hell.”

“It’s supposed to resemble a sunrise,” Kathy said.

Meta shrugged. “We don’t get much sun in Tartarus.”

That was because it was on an island at the bottom of a steep canyon. The only time it was really day there was when the sun was close to directly overhead.

She sipped. “Well, mind if I see it in operation?”

I shook my head. “No. We can go look.”

Lesseth stayed back, but Val, Talos, and Kendala all trooped up with us into my basement.

I could stay as Abby as long as we didn’t venture out of the magic zone, so I didn’t bother to get a robe. Meta looked around, and then looked at the puzzle closely.

“Have you considered taking it apart?” she asked.

“Sure. First thing I thought of. But Enash said once that if I did it would explode or something, and everything on both sides would be destroyed. Is that possible?”

I told you it’s fine now! I was lying! Just do it!

“It’s quite possible,” Meta said. “And yet, anyone could do it any time.” She looked at Valeria. “Tempting, isn’t it, to sacrifice yourself and kill a dozen demons at the same time?”

“The thought never entered my mind,” Valeria said stiffly. “Abby, there’s something you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s evil.”

Meta laughed. “Of course I’m evil. I’m a demon. But I’m not going to go around destroying things, especially if they include myself, and it’s in my self-interest to serve the Uber Archfiend to the best of my ability. Do your Paladin senses allow you to know whether or not I’m loyal?”

Val shook her head. “Not exactly. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“She’s mostly telling the truth,” Valeria told me. “Mostly.”

“Lie detection?” Meta asked, getting angry.

“Stop it, you two,” I said. “Back to the topic. So undoing the puzzle would cause the gate to collapse? I can only even really touch the edges, because if you touch the middle your hand goes right through.”

“But you said some objects can lie on top of it.”

“Yes. Or rather, they could, before the zone expanded. Now, they really can’t, because they can’t even enter the area. I think they are things Amaranth doesn’t want through.”

“Amaranth has desires?” Meta asked curiously.

“Well, I don’t know that. I’m just surmising. Either way, it’s a convenient way to talk about it. Magic can’t go out, and some Earth things can’t come in.”

“But if you took out an edge piece, it’s possible that the next piece would become solid enough to remove as well.”

“I suppose. Should we try?”

“Well, it would be risky. It could trigger exactly what you’re worried about. On the other hand, it could do nothing at all. It’s very hard to tell But I think it’s unlikely that pulling a single piece would cause massive destruction. Say, one in a hundred. On the other hand, it wouldn’t do much, unless we intended to pull up the whole thing. And there’s another problem, of course. Whoever pulled it up would have to do it from this side, since it’s perfectly smooth from the other side. Which means that even if nothing went wrong, they’d still be over here, with no gate to ever return.”

I nodded. “I’d love to keep the gate, but not have the magic coming through.”

“Well,” she said. “Then you’d have to move it, most likely.”

“Move it?”

“My guess is that the magic particles of Amaranth are lighter and more energetic than the non-magic particles of Earth. The magic particles rise, as a result, and spread the magic zone. Of course, that’s just a theory. No one knows if magic particles even exist. But it would explain the phenomena.”

“For the same reason that hot air rises.”

“A good analogy. I’m afraid there’s a lot we don’t understand. But it’s possible that if you were to disassemble the puzzle, and then reassemble it against a wall, somehow, that you would equalize things out and the magic area would no longer expand, and you’d still have a gate. All according to just one theory, of course.”

“She’s not lying,” Valeria said.

Meta glared at her. “You know, you take all the enjoyment out of conversation. Of course I’m not lying. Why would I lie when I could be busy showing off my erudition? Do you think I don’t have priorities?”

Right. “So we don’t know what would happen if we disassembled the thing?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “And I suspect Enash doesn’t either. No one makes gates like this, piecemeal. No one has any reason to, until now. Rather unique circumstances. You have to be powerful enough to make a gate, and more so, powerful enough to push pieces through from one world to another without one, and yet not able to simply make a gate on your own side that lets you walk through or push yourself through.”

“Wait, we could do that?”

“We could probably do that. Make a whole new gate. It would require a lot of magic, but it’s possible, in theory. But we’d have to first dispel the magic that stopped Enash from doing it that way – which even Enash couldn’t do.”

“Or could we make a gate from somewhere else on Amaranth than the crypt? Because I think the magic that was thwarting Enash was designed to keep him inside his tomb.”

“It’s possible,” Meta said. “In order to do that, I would first have to become very familiar with Earth, or at least some location on Earth. This tomb here, for instance.”

“This is a basement in my house.”

“Oh! My apologies. Still, it would be ideal for our purpose, since magic works here. By far the easiest way to make a gate is to be able to operate on both sides of it.”

It sounded like a great solution. On the other hand, it meant letting an evil demon loose on Earth, to become “familiar” with it. “You must be tired from your journey,” I said. “Let’s all sleep on it.”

“I could sleep here,” Meta said. “Although it doesn’t look very comfortable. You said there’s a house above us? I could sleep there, to begin the process and all.”

“Remember, Abby,” Valeria said. “It’s my turn to sleep with you tonight.”

“Oh?” Kendala asked. “I mean, I didn’t assume I was even part of the rotation, but I assumed Lesseth, having been away while you and Xyla had her to yourself, would –”

“No,” Valeria said. “It’s my turn. At least for the first part of the night.”

Kendala was right, of course. And Valeria knew it. So there was something else she was trying to say, or something she wanted to say to just me.

“How delightful,” Meta said. “You make them fight over you. I love it! Truly a worthy Uber Archfiend.”

Yeah, well done for a change.

“You can have an hour, Valeria, but after that it’s Lesseth, and Kendala.”

Kendala looked like a kid on Christmas morning who got just what they’d asked for.

“An hour is all I need,” Val said.

“Let’s all sleep down in Amaranth,” I said.

“As you wish, Uber Archfiend,” Meta said. “I believe there is a cot for me with the soldiers.”

“Good,” Valeria said.

“Perhaps I will be able to learn more, tomorrow. This is certainly an interesting problem, and you are certainly an interesting person.” Meta bowed again, smiling.

Val glared at her. “Quit trying to flash your tits at her,” she said.

“Oh?” asked Meta. “Was that what I was doing?” She smiled at me. “Do you like breasts, Abby? I understand the Arch Fiendess has rather small ones.”

“All sizes,” I said.

She smiled at Valeria. “Well, as a good subject of the Uber Archfiend, who am I to deny her? Don’t worry, I’m well aware that the Uber Archfiend would never stoop to make the beast with two backs with a mere Lady. I’m sure, however, that she gets particular delight from corrupting the virtue of a Paladin. I mean, who wouldn’t?”

She headed back through the gate, leaving the rest of us to follow. Valeria glared, and then she and Talos stayed back, having some kind of whispered conversation.

I didn’t feel a lot wiser, but I shouldn’t be impatient. She had only just taken a cursory look at the problem, and maybe she’d be able to discover more in the next few days. Probably we’d be able to fix it, though, it sounded like.

Except that the cost of being wrong was very great indeed.

Heh. So, fucking the pally and then the orc slut, huh? With Lesseth as lube?

So why did Enash want me to take a chance now by mucking with the gate, but not before? But then, it was entirely possible that after a while of being shut up inside me without a body, he ceased to place as great a value on continuing to exist. Still, if he wasn’t frightened by the downside, what did he see as the upside? The thing he wanted most, of course, was a chance to turn the tables on me.