Bad Habits
Chapter Three: Under Pressure


Chimeara was used to painlessness even after tremendous abuse from the Worm King. It was a lucky unforseen consequence of their contract, and for someone as incompetent as she hated to admit she was, a resistance to injury was imperative. But she desperately wished something would hurt, that some bone would be broken, some organ punctured, some bit of skin torn just enough to sting and let a little blood. It that had happened, it would have been enough for Chimeara to fling herself the rest of the way to death.

She was being prodded.
A finger was roughly jabbing at her rib-area. She hoped when she opened her eyes, the King wouldn’t be there. Her left lid peeled back, and the angular, blonde face of a man fluttered into view.

“David?”

“Hm?” No, the voice was too gruff, and both of the eyes were blue. It was a different kind of human. Chimeara remembered the description in the ‘wanted’ posters. Bitterly recalling her already once-failed mission, Chimeara bared her claws and struck the human as hard as she could in the face, lodging her claws deep into his cheek. He groaned as she slammed his head to the ground, clambered on top of him and rammed her stump of a right leg into his mouth like a gag ball.

The human immediately clamped his hands around her thin wrists and broke her grip on his face, twisting them painfully. Chimeara kicked the human between the legs and he nearly choked on her kneecap trying to scream.

Momentarily freed, Chimeara hectored the human and spat on his forehead before ripping open his shirt. A comically pale, salty smelling pink chest- how uncomfortably familiar a scent, she thought as she clawed through his skin, trying to get at his heart. Had she her peg leg, this would have ended by now.

But Chimeara was too distracted tearing the human’s flesh, and she was too small to hold the human down, and after a swift shove, Chimeara was the one on her stomach with her face in the dirt. The human knelt on her back with one leg, pressed the other on the back of her neck, and pulled her arms straight back behind her.

“Move, Demon, and I’ll break your little neck,” he droned.

“Go ahead, then,” Chimeara replied apathetically. The human eased the pressure and was quiet for a moment, with Chimeara trapped beneath him. The human finally stood, lifting Chimeara by the wrists, twisting her arms back further in their sockets than they were really capable, and holding her at his eye level.

“I’m going to be blunt with you, Demon, so try to keep up. I don’t intend to kill you. I’m lost, I can’t find the River-”

“-I know where that is.”

“Of course you do- you’re a demon. And unfortunately, because of that, you’re of no use to me dead.” A long pause before half-heartedly finishing, “Will you show me the River?”

His face was angry and hard, but the human sounded more sincere than the King ever had, than her father ever had. Leverage.

“If you help me with something, then I’ll see what I can do,” Chimeara responded. The human closed his eyes and harrumphled.

“What do you want?”

“Stab the king in the heart.” and she dropped suddenly to the ground.

“I don’t kill demons anymore.”

“That’s a shame. I guess you’ll be lost forever.” Chimeara struggled to her feet and started to hop away. “You humans taste so much better half-mad, anyway.”

Hop, hop, hop.

“Wait!” Chimeara stopped, and the human trotted up behind her. His eyes darted up and down her figure skeptically, and Chimeara remembered, to her embarrassment, that she was still naked.

“Is it true what they say about your king?” he asked.

“Yes”

“Fine,” the human sighed and took tight hold of her wrist. “What’s one more dead demon after hundreds? And I suppose the world would be better off without him as well?” The human clearly thought she couldn’t understand sarcasm. She wrenched out of his grasp defiantly.

“As a matter of fact, it would. Now, um. Do... do you have any clothes I can put on?” She asked, averting her eyes in shame, and, as she expected, the human responded with a malevolent chuckle.

“There’s no need to worry about me touching anything of yours. I, unlike your king, have standards. Besides, you’ve made me bleed all over the place- I need my clothes more than you do.” But he pulled off his ragged shirt and tossed it at her. The human’s belly was flabbier than anyone Chimeara had seen, except for David, and the funny little bag of skin hanging over his pants was still a bit disarming, and still quite disgusting to see.

Once Chimeara was as well covered as she could muster in the torn garment, the human took firm hold of her arms again and held them behind her back.

“Lead the way, Demon,” he leaned into her ear and murmered with condescending arrogance. But Chimeara would no longer let herself be stripped of her dignity.

“Don’t lump me in with the stupid monsters you call demons,” she seethed. “I am a goat, and my name is Chimeara Tastic, and that’s how you will call me.” the human was surprised by her boldness- his hold on her loosened a little- but he didn’t loosen his control on the situation.

“Well, if we’re using names now, you should call me... ‘Master Taylor’. Yeah, that’s got a nice ring to it- get moving!”

And they were off.