Page 70 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)
CALAMITY
C alamity and her friends were heroes. Just ask anyone in the Capital. Word of their success defeating Nephrine had spread, and they were invited to banquets and ceremonies night after night. Yorick’s ballad about the whole affair was being sung by every bard in every tavern across the realm.
But Calamity didn’t feel like a hero. She felt like a fraud. Because she was lying to her friends.
Well, not lying. Not explicitly. She’d never told them she wasn’t the daughter of a demon lord prophesied to destroy the very kingdom they fought to protect, after all.
After Laszlo had drawn the Dark Lord card for her, she’d thought someone would ask her what it meant.
Luckily, Yorick and Eden and the rest of them had been so wrapped up in their own cards, and then in the whole Lady Nephrine situation, that they hadn’t remembered to ask.
Unluckily, it had been weighing on Calamity ever since.
So despite the fact that she wanted nothing more than to enjoy the adoration and gratitude the city wanted to bestow on her, and despite the fact that The Twelve still had ten chances to take over, she decided to confront her history once and for all before it came back to bite her.
Which was how she found herself in the astral plane, standing in front of the portal to Pandemonium.
The immense vortex of colour and light swirled into the abyss in front of her, casting pink and blue and orange glimmers across her purple skin.
She’d seen visions of the astral plane– Eden had shown her before projecting Calamity here so she would be prepared– but being there, standing in front of a portal to another dimension, was…
well, it was another thing entirely, and not one she thought anyone could ever fully prepare for.
Her body was back on the material plane under Eden’s careful protection.
If anyone else found her in Calamity and Eden’s room, they would think she was sleeping.
Astral projection was cool, Calamity could appreciate that even now, but it was also scary as hell.
Or, she supposed, scary as Pandemonium. Any mistake here could kill her body, too, connected to her projected self by a thin silvery cord that disappeared behind her.
The only material possessions she had in her lighter-than-usual pack were her spell focus– the broken tip of a horn wrapped in thin leather– and the scroll of astral projection she’d need to get back.
Whilst she’d never been to Pandemonium, she knew this could be a one-way trip if she didn’t do things exactly right.
That said, it was now or never, so Calamity grabbed onto the straps of her pack and stepped forward.
She expected to experience the feeling of being sucked into the vortex, and even held her breath in anticipation, but the moment her foot connected with the swirls of colour, she stepped not into the abyss but onto the hard, dusty ground of Pandemonium.
As if he’d been waiting for her– and knowing him, he probably had been– Calamity looked up from her feet to see Trulnuroth, the demon lord in exile, standing before her.
Feather-like obsidian scales covered his body, lying upwards rather than down.
Sharp talons protruded from the tips of his fingers and toes, and his eyes glowed silver as they took in Pandemonium’s latest intruder, who would have wanted to look around at her new surroundings, had Trulnuroth not been taking up her entire field of vision.
He stood more than twice as high as the tallest of her friends, and that was without the long, curled horns atop his head, one of which was broken off at the tip.
Calamity sighed and waved up at the demon, annoyed but not surprised when all she saw in his returned gaze was disdain. She took a deep breath in, preparing to greet him, trying to lace her words with the same sentiment.
“Hey, Dad,” she said. “Long time no see. Sorry to drop in on you, but I need your help.”