Today's Earth date: October 28, 1991

Horcus and Rathain have taken it upon themselves to begin the planning for our raid on the Water Temple. Wilmond is quietly indifferent and seems willing to do what they want for the sake of party peace.

The Water Temple is massive, it turns out. Most Hero parties needed almost two weeks to clear it out. That's days and days of nothing but demons. Hundreds and hundreds of demons.

I'm not afraid. I'm fucking tired.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

No one knew what to make of Margo's report, Margo included. She admitted that had she not seen it herself, she would have been dubious about her observations as well.

The red dot was still where she left it on the HUD. Fearing it would move again soon, Wayne split the party. He and Fergus followed Margo while Armond and Hector trailed at a distance to reduce the likelihood of a stray noise spooking their quarry.

As they neared, silence turned to the faint sound of distant music, and the volume progressively grew with each step. Wayne believed he recognized the song but didn't mention it to Fergus or Margo. If he did, they would have too many questions that he couldn't answer right now.

At the last corner, Wayne slowly poked his head out to look.

Like Margo had said, the demon was in water up to its waist. Its skin was the color and texture of a cobra. Though its body was muscular, the creature seemed stretched, like its proportions were unnaturally long. He caught glimpses of the claws Margo described, but he wasn't so sure that was accurate. To Wayne, they seemed like very long fingers. At this distance, however, he could understand why Margo interpreted the stringy digits as claws. The fingers had too many knuckles, and when the demon lifted them from the water, the liquid flowing off of them looked like long talons.

The demon had scars criss-crossing its back, like those left by repeated lashings, and a horn grew from the back of its head, as if it had been placed there by mistake during assembly. The size and angle reminded Wayne of a unicorn, but it pointed backward instead of growing from its forehead.

A boombox from Earth, the blocky style popular in the late 80s that people carried on their shoulders, sat at the edge of the water, blaring music, loud enough that Wayne would have had to yell to speak to the people right next to him.

Wayne looked back over his shoulder and caught Armond's eyes. He motioned for Armond and Hector to catch up.

They slowly approached the demon from behind, weapons drawn.

When the song reached the chorus, Wayne was within arm's reach of the boombox. The demon appeared oblivious to their approach, committing completely to singing along like he was alone in the shower.

"Straight up now tell me, do you really want to love me forever?"

Wayne hit the stop button on the tape deck.

The demon sang, "Oh, oh, oh!" at the top of its lungs but froze when it heard its own voice echoing back to it in the sudden silence.

The monster turned slowly, revealing its face to the party. Its teeth were as long as Margo described, and it had small beady black eyes set so close together that they nearly touched.

"Shit," the demon said, dropping its head.

***

Wayne kept the point of his sword trained on the demon, looking down on it from the edge of the pool.

"You guys are early," the demon said, not afraid or angry, just disappointed and defeated.

"I thought only demon lords spoke the common tongue," Fergus said to the party.

"Baseless propaganda," the demon said.

This conversation wasn't going in any of the directions Wayne had anticipated and they were only three sentences in. The demon wasn't fighting, wasn't running, and wasn't spewing curses about being taken prisoner. It stood there, water dripping down its body, looking like it opened an oven to find burnt cookies and was mildly disappointed in itself for misreading the time on the box.

"You're not the Chosen Heroes, are you?"

Wayne shook his head.

"But you got in? Well, obviously you did. You're not supposed to, though."

"Thoughts on what we should do?" Wayne asked Fergus.

The demon answered first. "You should let me live, and we all act like this never happened."

"It could be a trick," Fergus responded.

"What kind of trick starts with letting you sneak up on me in the bath?"

Wayne and Fergus looked at one another, silently agreeing with the demon that the trick didn't seem like a good one.

"We could do a trade," the demon offered. "Everyone leaves happy."

"How do we know you won't kill us in our sleep later?" Wayne asked.

The demon dropped its head. "I've never hurt anyone and don't intend to start. You're the ones pointing swords."

Killing the demon seemed like the simplest solution, but Wayne felt his morals staying his blade. His enemy was unarmed, made no attempts to harm the party, and seemed interested in negotiating peace.

Seemed.

"Why are you here?" Wayne asked.

"Why? I got lumped into a purge and sent here. I hid when I saw what the Chosen Heroes would do to me. None of this was my choice. I'm surviving is all."

"With Paula Abdul?"

"Isn't she lovely?" the demon asked, perking up at the singer's mention.

"How did you get an item from Earth?"

"Listen, this water is cold, and I'm starting to shrivel. Let me get out, bind my hands or whatever you need to do to feel safe, and I'll answer all of your questions." The demon extended its arms, palms up, its wrists pressed together for easy tying.

The party debated for a while, and finally, Armond stepped forward and squatted to tie the demon's hands. The demon didn't move other than to lift or lower its arms to make tying easier for Armond.

"Smells like cleric," the demon observed.

"Is that a threat?" Armond asked.

The demon rolled its eyes and sighed. "Humans are so jumpy."

Wayne instructed the demon to get out of the pool. The demon attempted to comply, but struggled to get the leverage it needed because of its bindings. It slipped and fell back into the water three times before it stopped and asked if someone would pull him out, please.

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Hector deposited the demon on dry land. Hector and Margo stood behind the sitting demon while Wayne and Fergus were in front. Armond was off to the side, ready to aid Wayne and Fergus if need be.

"I hope you're not the type to kill nonviolent prisoners," the demon said, looking around at the people standing over him. "What do you want to know?"

"Start at the beginning, who are you, how did you get here, and how have you managed to stay alive?"

The demon shared its name, but no one in the party could pronounce it, so the demon asked to be called "Vanilli."

"...as in Milli Vanilli?" Wayne asked.

Vanilli nodded.

Wayne's head hurt already, but he let the demon proceed.

What Vanilli called a purge, this world called an invasion. The demon admitted how it looked, but on the other side of the portal, all of the motivations he heard were centered on population control, not military strategy. At various intervals, the hells ejected demons to other planes to avoid overcrowding, but the purge Vanilli got caught in was the largest and most consistent, occurring every 500 years.

Yes, he knew it was 100 years in this world. He didn't know why the times were different, he just knew that they were.

As Vanilli described it, he got caught in the round-up and forced through the portal with a thousand other demons. They ended up in the Water Temple and looked for ways out, leading to a great deal of violent in-fighting. That in-fighting stopped when the Heroes came through the front door and started culling.

"You expect us to believe that the horde of demons invading our world were the real victims?"

Vanilli shook his head. "I'm a victim, yes, but demonkind isn't polite. They were all pissed about being stuck in this place and plenty happy to attack the first humans they saw. That's how it always happens."

"Always?"

"Every cycle since I arrived, yes."

Wayne put a hand on Fergus' shoulder. "How many cycles have you been in here?"

"Nine."

"Impossible," Fergus said.

"Clearly not," the demon retorted.

Returning to his story, Vanilli explained that he built his life around the Hero cycles. When the portals opened–one-way, he tried going back but couldn't–he socialized with the latest round of offerings. They always assumed he was part of the purge, so he didn't correct them. When the Heroes showed up, he hid. When all of the fighting was done, he had the Temple to himself for the next one hundred years.

"You've done that for 900 years?" Wayne asked. "Are there others with you?"

Vanilli shook his head. "I've got a good thing going. Not going to risk that by inviting some first-circle reject to join me."

"And the boombox?"

"Boombox?" Vanilli asked.

Wayne pointed to the stereo.

"Ah, it's called a 'boombox.' Not what I expected but feels appropriate."

"How did you get it?"

According to the demon, the connections between worlds fluctuated unpredictably. That was common knowledge for anything living in the hells, Vanilli insisted. Humans from Earth and objects handled by them seemed to be the most susceptible to falling into cracks between worlds. The more use and attention an object received from humans, the more likely it was to travel. There were other rules and factors, Vanilli explained, but that was the gist.

"This part would be tough for a human to understand, but these events are very rare," the demon said. "One in a billion rare. They've grown slightly more frequent as your kind reproduces, but I've been disconnected from any real knowledge since I got here. Makes it tough to be definitive, you know?"

A handful of Earth items had fallen through the portal during Vanilli's stay, and all of those appearances were off-cycle, so he made it a point to regularly visit the portal. One hundred years could pass between anomalies, but he found so much entertainment in them that the walk was worth it. Just in case.

The boombox took him a while to figure out as he had to replace its power source with mana, but after that, it became his favorite treasure. He only had three cassettes, however. That term was also new to Vanilli. He repeated it softly to himself as if to help him remember.

"That level of engineering skill is beyond demons," Fergus said.

"Beyond you, maybe. I figured out how to live here, and you have no idea how that's possible, remember?"

The demon added that was all of the story. Most of the time, he was completely alone, looking for ways to entertain himself. Nothing meaningful would happen until the next purge, but Vanilli was okay with that. He liked keeping himself company.

"And you learned to fish?" Wayne asked.

"Is that skill complicated for humans?"

"No."

"So not hard to figure out when you've got time like I do. I held up my end. I'd like to go now, please." Vanilli's 'please' was more politely formal than an act of begging.

Wayne pointed out that blood would be on his hands if Vanilli escaped and hurt someone.

"I can't get out, and I spent three centuries trying. Only blood on your hands would be fish. Granted, the smell would make that unpleasant, but metaphors don't have odors."

"Show us where you hide to avoid the Heroes."

"No."

"That's not very cooperative," Fergus observed.

"My goal here is to live. That's it. If I show you how I do that, then you'll tell the next batch of meatheads about it and that's curtains for me."

"We won't, I promise," Wayne said. "So take a chance on my honesty or die here."

"Fine. Someone needs to carry the boombox, though. And gently."

***

Vanilli led the party to the outermost hallway of the fifth floor. With his hands still tied, he touched a sequence of bricks. His movements were so fast and chaotic that Wayne couldn't remember the sequence, like he looked over someone's shoulder as they typed a password but their words-per-minute was too high for the human eye.

Red runes lit up and formed the border of a doorway. The wall inside that outline lowered into the floor without a sound, leading to a stairwell. A dwarvish character on the wall marked their current level, and they could go up or down. The Temples were supposedly built by humans, but script from the first dwarves would seem to contradict that, Wayne thought.

Vanilli led them down.

Wayne saw none of the elaborate architecture and decoration in this part of the Temple. No fountains. No sculptures. No art on the walls. The stairs were plain stone, not even sanded smooth, and the walls were just as plain. He had to activate Light to see them.

Even more curious: His HUD showed the dots of his party and Vanilli, but it didn't map the place itself. The dots were "outside" of the map, wiggling back and forth across the void as they descended the stairs.

They passed the sixth floor and then descended to a seventh where the stairs ended. A unique dwarvish character marked each of these levels as well. When Wayne pointed out that the Temple was only supposed to have six floors, Vanilli held up his tied hands and gave Wayne creepy spirit fingers. The demon continued on.

The hallways here were long, straight, and as plain as the stairwell. The dimensions reminded Wayne of the tight tunnels in dwarven ruins. Side passages split off at various intervals. Nothing was labeled. No corridor was any different from the rest. And Wayne's HUD displayed no map at all. On a lark, he tried to use Navigation, but he felt the curt sensation of a failure notification when he did.

Vanilli never looked back at the party. He held a casual walking pace and continued ahead without pause or hesitation. When they finally reached a T junction, he went left, eventually stopping in a corner. Wayne supposed that meant they were on the outermost edge of the floor, but without his HUD, he couldn't be certain. Losing access to that information showed Wayne just how much he had come to rely on the system. Not having his HUD map felt like going outside with his pants off.

The demon quickly tapped a series of bricks again. Instead of a door rising or falling, the two walls forming the corner of the corridor opened outward like double doors.

The room beyond was made of the same bland stone as the rest of this floor, but this room appeared to be where Vanilli lived, looking like the horde of a dragon who loved antiques instead of gold. The walls were etched with drawings, the cover of Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" album standing out the most. Wayne didn't recognize the image by sight. He saw the cassette case sitting on a stone table, which was also where Vanilli asked Hector to "carefully deposit" the stereo.

Wayne's eyes darted from Earth relic to Earth relic. The first item he noticed was the cover of The Space Gamer, an old gaming magazine. The cover featured a shirtless bearded barbarian holding a gun, looking down at the head of a dead dragon. According to the cover, this issue was released September 1980. The edge of the cover was torn, and there was only the cover. Vanilli didn't have the full magazine to enjoy. He did get a cool poster out of it though.

Scanning the rest of the room, he spotted a Raggedy Ann doll and Lincoln Logs next to one another. Vanilli had built a cozy little cabin. Older building blocks were piled on the floor next to a doll house with a whirligig bird inside.

A rusted musket leaned in the corner alongside a long staff. It had painted etchings that seemed African to Wayne, but he didn't know enough about art to be certain. Mostly obscured by the staff, Wayne almost missed a sheathed katana in the same corner.

An old, yellowed map of Earth hung on the wall, a half-broken captain's wheel on the floor beneath it. In a chipped teacup, Wayne found an old coin with the year "1640" stamped into its border with a lion in the middle. And he found a powdered wig with an old horseshoe set on top of it for some reason.

Lastly, Vanilli had a collection of books. Wayne skimmed them, seeing the Great Gatsby, Songs of Innocence, an old Bible, a book in French as well as multiple books in traditional Chinese. A fiddle with broken strings rested on top of the books.

The room was more full than Wayne would have guessed from Vanilli's explanation of dimension-traveling objects, but it didn't seem like anywhere near enough to stay busy for 900 years.

Vanilli pointed to a ceiling corner. "There's a hatch there that leads to something like a closet. I planned to hide there to ride out the first cycle, but I found the hatch instead. If I'm down here, the Heroes can do all the killing they want and never suspect they missed one."

He added, "I'd like that streak to continue if it's all the same to you."

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