Head to the tavern

You've safely traversed the black lake, but, now that you're here, you feel a moment of hesitancy when confronted with the assembled throng of hell-denizens. You look back to the black barge of Bulgarmet, but the ship has already vanished, almost as if it had never existed. How easily might you cease to exist? The image of your twin's last moments assails your thoughts... her body drawn into the innards of your would-be **** master, her face - your face - contorted with terror, causes you to shudder.

You have been through so much - your memory is patchy so it is hard to say precisely how much - and you can think of no better way to slough your misery than with a warm, bitter pint in a tavern. Not that you have much experience with drinking. Even when you were not trapped in this nightmare realm, surrounded by inhuman fiends, you never sat down for ale or mead at a tavern.

You know of the salutary properties of **** primarily from reading stories. The sort of stories where brave travelers rested in taverns, drank to ease their troubles and loosen their tongues. Perhaps even in this cursed realm, such a place might exist.

There is no easy path to the tavern. The scurrying ratches jostle you as they go about their insane labors. A giant, muscular woman with the head of a fly stares at you as you pass and restrains her brace of eyeless hounds. Chattering daemons no bigger than dolls clamber over and around a smoking cauldron that hangs from a dockyard crane.

A giraffe-necked fiend bends its shovel-shaped head down and sniffs at you with a dozens nostrils. Its snout wrinkles and it sneezes and sprays you with a mist before jerking its head back up. You wipe the foul-smelling slime from your face as you finally push your way past a pair of stocky daemons, like half-formed golems, and into the tavern.

The tavern is packed with an indescribable profusion of daemons. They fill the seats, the bar and crowd the stage where an act is being performed. Dissonant music is being played by a pianist fused to his instrument. His dozen or so tentacles tap away at the yellowing keys all around him as a succubus with a cloak of feathers gyrates gracefully on a stage. She does not seem to have the cock you would expect of one of her blue-skinned kind, but she wears a tight-fitting garment around her waist that might hide her phallus.

A tall, gaunt daemon with black eyes turns to you and looks at you.

"How much?" asks a voice inside your head and the daemon's cold fingers caress your hip as you slide past him.

Somehow, you find a spot at the bar between a tentacle faced daemon with a huge, iron bucket of foul-smelling drink and a fairly human looking daemon with a hundred iron nails driven into his pale bald head and face. He seems to have difficulty getting his cup to his lips with all the nails and the bartender swoops by and drops a hollow reed into the daemon's drink.

"Yes, much better," says the nail-headed daemon and it begins to drink through the reed.

The bartender is a three-armed creature that appears as if two identical men were struck with an ax and somehow recombined into a single sloppy creature. His heads are split open and do not quite join up properly so that when he turns you see his pulsing brain and his divided tongue. A pair of his four eyes look at you harshly.

"The brothel is in the Bazaar," he growls.

"I'm... I'm not a whore," you say.

The bartender looks at you with what seems like surprise. His other head speaks in a softer tone. "Every pure soul will find her way into a brothel if she stays here. Or a **** pit. Best be on your way."

"Can't I just have a drink and enjoy the show?" You glance back at the stage and the succubus seems to be squeezing pigment-filled caterpillars onto her bare breasts. The paint they squirt out glows in the strange light.

"Do you have coin?" snarls what you have already come think of as the bartender's mean head.

"We must take payment of some sort," adds the "nice" head and one of the bartender's flopping arms bends down so it can slide its hand over its bulging trousers.

A daemon like a huge, four-armed mantis with a golden turban on its head and several scimitars on its waist sidles up to the bar. It speaks in a surprisingly clear and mellifluous voice.

"I will buy whatever she would like."

"Suit yourself, duke," says the gruff bartender. He leans under the counter and blows the dust off a bottle of port wine. He pours a tall cup of the dark liquid and slides it to you. "That shouldn't poison you."

You gingerly sip the drink and marvel at the richness and sweetness of its flavor. Who could imagine such a luxury could exist in such a place?

"Th-thank you for the drink, um, duke," you say, toasting to the mantis.

"Of course, you do not remember," says the mantis, doffing its turban. "We have met before, Sabine St. Croix. I must say, I am actually sorry to see you. I had hoped the last time we met would be, well, the last time we met."

"What are you talking about?" you ask, wishing your memory worked.

"We should not speak more here. If you wish to know about our past, meet me behind the tavern when you have finished your drink." The mantis turns to leave and then turns back. "Oh, and beware the Oophid."

"The Oophid?"

The mantis gestures with its mandibles at a strange creature sitting at the bar. It has basically human proportions, perhaps a fourth again as large as a normal man, with green skin and bulging muscles. Its flesh seems to be covered in a thin layer of translucent jelly. But what distinguishes it most of all is that instead of a head, the creature has a long, fat tube, like a grotesque worm, with four tiny black eyes perched atop the upper rim of its lipless, fangless mouth. Your blood goes cold as you realize those eyes are staring right at you.

You turn back to say something to the duke, but he has already disappeared into the crowd of daemons. You see the gaunt, black-eyed daemon that spoke into your mind is still watching you from within the crowd. You are inclined to bolt down your drink and seek out the duke behind the tavern, but then again, if he truly knows you, perhaps this is a trap he has sprung before. You look at the Oophid again. It seems so vile and yet it is not making any moves to attack you. Maybe the duke warned you away from that particular daemon because he knows it can help you.

And then there is that succubus on the stage. So lithe and gloriously feminine. Almost comforting in her beauty compared to all this ugliness. Maybe she would help you.