Page 5 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires

I’d simply wait until he came home to cum again and again, with a second and a third and possibly a fourth round. The idea alone was invigorating, and I intended to indulge to the fullest.

Following the gloomy lighting of the stock room’s hallway, I made my way through the various stacks of knickknack oddities Wally would spend countless hours fawning over.

If he spent half as much time focusing on the devil essence circulating throughout him as he did fixating on these so-called artifacts, then he’d practically be a masterful devil. Well, devil adjacent.

Whatever. I’d already done my job. Deliveries were all dropped off, and my boyfriend was piledrived—and trained in casting—so that meant the rest of the evening was mine.

I lounged in the breakroom, rifling through the fridge to put together a little snack. While I didn’t have everything I wanted, there was enough to make a half-decent sandwich.

Wally’s mysterious little shop generally had a decent amount of foot traffic, which was why I stayed in the back. I didn’t have the patience for customers. I didn’t have the patience for these artifacts and antiquities either. Nope. The only puzzle I enjoyed deciphering was the array of flavors I created in my salted ribeyefried tomato peanut butter sandwich. It had everything. And thanks to the panini press, I could smother all of it together into a warm, crispy bite.

Luminescent green light reflected off Antoninus’ black shell as the tiny scorpion scuttled into the room. He hissed, carrying a dozen different boxes.

“You’re in a mood.” I took a bite of my sandwich.

The boxes shook, potent Diabolic essence gripping their delicate edges and crushing the finely wrapped packages until the creepy crawly bug eased the flow of his telekinesis. Such a bizarre sight. Not the scorpion. He wasn’t bizarre, merely fucking irritating.

No, the strangeness came from their familiar bond. Sure, mage magics allowed them to draw upon the Pentacles of Power and establish links to animals by sharing their mana with the little beasts, but I’d never met a Diabolic who could do such things. The essence demons unleashed often overwhelmed the mortal animals, poisoning them, rotting them from the inside out, yet Wally’s connection remained unfazed. In fact, it seemed stronger. Antoninus didn’t have Diabolic essence coursing through his body, but this somewhat phantom form of Diabolic abilities, like a ghostly connection to Wally.

If I were to be a Walter about the situation, I’d hypothesize that since he’d established the familiar bond before absorbing the devil essence, it allowed him to continue his familiar link. Since I wasn’t Walter, my actual theory was that they were both fucking weird.

“This is why Wally can’t control his essence.” I snatched away the packages Antoninus carried here. “You’re teaching him your sloppy technique, you annoying insect.”

With a click of his claws, he summoned a black gust and knocked my sandwich out of my hand before scurrying out of the room.

“Fucking coward!” I shouted.

I crouched low to retrieve my splattered snack, but that damn bug had ruined it. I sighed with defeat, then looked at the boxes he’d left. I had some deliveries to attend to.

“Which would be easier if some people—bugs—didn’t just scribble the addresses all illegibly!” I gathered the boxes and made my way out of the stockroom. “Guess I’ll just starve now.”

And yes, I didn’t require nutrients, but I wanted them. Needed them to be happy. Antoninus had taken away my happiness.

As I stepped outside, I winced at the harsh burn of the setting sun’s light. Such a shift from fake light indoors to over-emphasized daylight trickling through the dimensional walls of this city. I preferred this pocket realm when Mora first created it with her witchy wife. The blueprints were wonderful, and Wally analyzed the Fae magics, tinkering with the mechanics to streamline things. The realm was truly euphoric. It was eternal nightfall, glimmering rainbow stars and colorful comets and glittery rainfall.

But no, the whiny citizens Mora continued to invite to live here craved sunlight for normalcy or routine or cheer. I hated it, especially this slow-setting sun.

“Just fucking go to bed already, daytime!”

I spread my wings, using the gray feathers to block the fading light until the night finally took hold and the moon’s gentle illumination filled the city below. There was a calm, perfect silence for the flicker of three seconds before the nightlife ignited.

Neon lights to rowdy businesses switched on, cars weaved between each other as their brights flashed, and vast buildings stacked atop each other lit up in the strangest patterns depending on who sat at home.

And just like that, the Diabolic Oasis had come to life, sparkling under the moon’s beautiful light.

Mora’s city didn’t look anything like an oasis. Well, if the snow surrounding the veiled city served as a sandy substitute, I supposed the resemblance wouldn’t be too far off if it weren’t for all the tech and plant life.

I stretched my wings wide, enjoying the cool evening breeze against my dark gray feathers. Even if artificially created. This dimension, while and isolated temporal fold, worked exactly like the mortal realm thanks to the spell craft put in place to make it tick-tock on the same scheduled clock as the mortal world along with the technology meant to keep everything synced with the rest of society.

A society the Diabolic Oasis had intentionally removed itself from. And I certainly didn’t understand Mora’s obsession with time. It was dumb and boring and constraining. Schedules were ugly things that often got in the way of joy. I hated time. The idea of dealing with it forever. I shuddered.

Perhaps I could convince Wally to find a pocket portal dimension where we could simply be, no structure, no linear lines of day through night back to day, no million and one Xs to cross off a calendar of to-dos.

It was something I’d push for in a century or two once Wally had grown bored with his menial tasks as a shopkeeper of exotic antiquities. Speaking of menial tasks, I took a deep breath and unleashed a wave of telekinesis to wrap the packages in my grasp, and then I soared high into the sky and flew through the city.

I weaved between buildings wrapped in giant vines, plants sprouting flowers in every color, and roots that burrowed into concrete to claim a foundation. Despite the stranglehold the wildlife here had, it never slaughtered the city as it should to assert dominance.

Instead, it seemed nature and technology intermingled in this weird form of symbiosis, as Wally called it.

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