The Devil's Bargain, Redux

The air hung thick and acrid, a noxious perfume of burning ozone and something vaguely like burnt sugar. Not the comforting scent of a baker’s shop, mind you, but the kind of burnt sugar that hints at immolation and existential dread. I’d landed, quite unceremoniously, in what looked like the main lobby of a particularly gaudy infernal bureaucracy. Think less molten lava, more polished obsidian and uncomfortable velvet. My boots, still caked with the dust of what used to be Paris, crunched on the glassy floor.

“Lovely décor,” I muttered, dusting off my worn tweed jacket. “Really captures the essence of eternal damnation, doesn’t it?” My voice, usually a steady baritone, had a tremor to it that I blamed on the lingering effects of a particularly unpleasant temporal hiccup involving a herd of stampeding mammoths.

A shadow detached itself from a towering pillar of what I presumed was solidified despair. It coalesced, shimmering and shifting like heat haze over asphalt, into a form that was undeniably… demonic. Not the horned, pitchfork-wielding cliché, but something far more unsettling. It was tall, impossibly so, with limbs that seemed to bend at impossible angles, and eyes that burned with an ancient, indifferent malice. It wore a suit, impeccably tailored, of course. Even the denizens of the underworld understood the importance of professional attire.