### Sex God Saga 18
### Cult Of The Dragon
MONDAY:
Theo wasn't getting surveilled every second of the day anymore, since the whole demon plague seemed to have calmed down and the Redeemer weirdos had been subtly pointed at the last few stragglers.
But Paris checked by Ground Up anyway, working on his laptop with the occasional sip from a 'peppermint special' until Jim, the manager, vanished into the back office.
Theo stopped by Paris' table.
"Everything in order, sir?"
The prince smiled and leaned back as if to admire Theo's body in that yellow uniform. "I heard you had a *lot* of fun last night."
"Yeah, it's a miracle I can stand with my legs closed. Are you in contact with Ray or..."
"Sure am. I guess I should be jealous that I wasn't the one reaching that far into you."
Theo couldn't stop smiling in embarrassment. "If you were the jealous type, things would get a lot more complicated. Fulin and I said the big L word to each other."
Paris nodded with an impressed expression. "Moving fast, but I guess he's the type to commit to things."
"Not jealous about that?"
"I'm..." The prince fell silent. He glanced around, a slight gesture throwing a Veil between him and the other patrons. It brushed past Theo like tissue paper on a breeze.
"I'm so into you it's scary. But... I've outlived a few people who are- who were more important to me than I can convey. And I have vague memories, or maybe I should call them impressions, going back to pre-colonial Africa. The bits and pieces I've taken from the Stygians in my lineage are mostly good and I'm emotionally detached from them but there's... a lot of loss."
"I wasn't going to make you..." Theo trailed off. "I didn't think about things from your perspective. I'm not sure I know enough to. Sorry."
Paris smiled softly. "It means a lot that you try, Theo Travis. Ah, your boss is back. Get me another one of those specials, young man. Maybe the... strawberry one."
"Right away, sir."
### ### ###
The backroom still held the memory of that one time he'd been demon fucked and had to escape out the back until he had gotten rescued.
He wasn't super thrilled having to grab new paper cup sleeves but Jim, his boss, was also in the room, fiddling with the shelves.
Theo scooted past the manager with a grunted apology, reached for the sleeves and-
A Veil went down hard.
What?
Theo sensed the invisible blanket 'flutter' out to cover the walls. Jim was *inside* the Veneer of Normalcy. But Jim was a Baseliner. Why-
A stack of cups on the shelf unwound, its glamour snapping away. It revealed itself as a slug, no, snake creature. As thick as Theo's biceps and twice as long as his arm, with the face of a slug, dripping with iridescent slime.
An Outsider of this size was likely a sprite -- not powerful enough to assume a stable roaming form by itself unless it had been fed by a shaman -- or sucked the V out of someone for a long time.
The presumably demonic slugsnake spewed ridiculous amounts of slime. Theo dodged the spray while reaching for his phone and summoning. He saw more Outsiders as wobbles along the shelves. If he ran for the door and pulled Jim along-
Jim was possessed. The streak in the air around him was so dense it looked greasy. It darkened the light around the man in the same yellow and gray uniform as Theo wore.
Jim's face contorted into a grin and the world spun.
Shelves moved as if on conveyors along the walls. The doors, both front and back, vanished from sight as the walls squeezed their existence away.
Theo ripped his spider web ring off and sent a pulse of V into the wisp. "Find Paris!"
Squinty took the shape of a fly and zoomed around Theo's head.
The Jim demon -- Jimmon? -- stepped closer, bringing him into grasping distance. The rotating shelves calmed down, leaving a uniformly covered backroom with no exits, everything shifted and rearranged.
Theo stepped back and slipped. Slugsnake had continued to spew and the slime was more slippery than any lube Theo had ever known. He scrambled like a newborn deer on ice, gripping at the shelves without which he'd have fallen.
But the blond had gotten his phone free by now. He poured V into the fancy sigils he had drawn on the back, complex designs doodled over the course of over an hour, ready with a 'fuck off' Atlas glyph.
He put it on the shelf with Slugsnake and the sprite was catapulted back, recoiling so hard from the seal it made an audible 'splat' on the wall. But the floor was already covered in the slipperiest stuff ever.
Theo looked up at the blinding neon tube. The light, too, had rearranged, giving no clue about which direction the doors were.
The Jimmon was transforming. With a dampened but animal roar, Jim's hair turned pure white and grew into a mane, his facial hair extending. A full ring of white fluff encircled his head and fangs poked from his lips. Whiskers broke through his cheeks. His skin darkened to an unnatural ash as his ears sharpened to a point.
Squinty was still there. The wisp couldn't leave the illusory trap either. Paris had probably no idea anything was wrong yet.
The white furred lion-man tore a flickering bag off the shelf and threw it at Theo.
The bag transformed into a hand-shape in mid-air, premium coffee beans raining into the slime. Some kind of cloth spook, or a grasping kobold in a fabric vessel.
Theo pulled out a stack of cards full of prepared Atlas glyphs.
Baghand, the floating cloth spook, ripped the cards from Theo's slippery grip and tore them up between its rough linen fingers.
A can on the floor popped open and its content bloomed. A plant, a beautiful red lily with more closed buds growing beside it.
The Whitelion Jimmon ripped its own uniform off, the manager's frame now more muscular, ashy with veins running white.
Baghand gripped Theo by the neck and pulled him up, choking lightly with its rough material.