Chapter Text
"Mammon, where exactly are we going?" Bunnie tripped over a strangely slimy-looking branch and tried not to look around at the crooked, red-barked trees growing thicker around the path they were walking along. She focussed her gaze on Mammon's leather-clad back quickly, who had set a swift pace, as per usual.
"None'uh your concern, Sniffles, just lemme get there, stick close, n' when we get there, hide somewhere outta sight, but not too far away, got it?" he gave her a side-eye over his shoulder and she frowned.
"This seems a little sus, even for you..." she muttered.
"If Lucifer knew I was takin' ye this close to the outskirts, he'd string me up..." he started.
"He always strings you up for everything, aren't you used to it by now?" she interrupted.
Mammon stopped walking and turned to stare at her. "Have you ever been hung upside-down, Buns? Eh?"
She shook her head.
"Then don't tell me I should be used to it," he snarked, turning back to squeeze through some vines that had almost completely grown over the path they were following. She pushed through and used his back as a stopping post when she tripped again, coming into an open clearing to some sort of forest pavilion. Looking around, it seemed long since abandoned. The stone pavilion itself looked ancient and had sticky-looking black vines wrapped about it, the odd old, red tree root winding its way around the base of the floor.
There was a strange noise in her ear that she had noticed getting louder the closer they got, like a far-away mosquito. Bunnie smacked herself in the ear.
"Ey, what the... what're you doin'?" Mammon grabbed her wrist and stopped her from going in for a second smack.
"Can you hear that?" she grimaced as the pitch fluctuated and buzzed in her periphery, making her feel nauseous.
"Hear what?"
"That... buzzing noise?" she wrenched her wrist free and stuck a finger in her ear to try and see if there was some type of occlusion.
Mammon gave her a funny look and his eyes darted about the area nervously, as though starting to wonder if perhaps he should have thought twice before bringing her here. "Naw... look, don't go far - over there, behind those trees, right? And for hell's sake, don't touch anything, got it?" he gave her a shove and she nodded, still wiggling a finger in her ear, sloping towards the trees. She presumed this was something to do with his current shady side business. He'd gotten a bit of a complex recently about never having any money and she suspected it was to do with his avid hatred for not feeling like he was providing for her. Oh, he had no issues asking, or stealing, from his brothers... but he'd gotten twitchy about going out with her and not being able to pay for things. She'd first noticed it a few weeks ago and she suspected it had something to do with Asmo having needled him about it. Asmo was good at making people self-conscious when he wanted to be.
After a few minutes of her peering through the tightly woven old trunks and trying not to think of what might be behind her in these woods, another demon appeared, dressed in guard uniform, and it looked like he and Mammon were haggling.
Bunnie rolled her eyes.
At least it wasn't illicit substances, she supposed. Only human merchandise. The weirdest exchange she had been dragged on thus far was a giant ogre-like demon who had wanted a soft, fluffy unicorn teddy.
She wasn't quite sure where Mammon was getting these things but suspected he might be using Levi's Akuzon account to purchase things and re-sell them. When she had asked him about it, he'd just said nobody was missing out on anything, if he was borrowing, he always gave back once the final deal was done so nobody would notice anything this time.
Typical Mammon.
Bunnie winced as the buzzing tone in her left ear popped and went higher, and her head turned to the right to see if stretching her neck would help.
It didn't, but she saw something odd. At first, she thought it was a face and almost shit herself... then realised it was indeed a face, but not a living one. A few metres in front of her was a large, stone mausoleum with massive gargoyle heads for door handles on it.
As she observed it, her eyes were drawn to a strange plaque on the floor in front of the double doors.
Peeking back at Mammon and his frustrated-looking customer, she tiptoed away from her hiding place and squatted near the writing to see what it said.
The walkway to Humanity
Is one few survive
Live to spread the word
Or die.
Bunnie blinked.
That was ominous.
She stood slowly and craned her neck up, inspecting the doorway, noticing some more etching across the doors themselves. When she went to brush the dirt and growing matter away from them, she almost shrieked when the writing started to burn gold under her fingertips and quickly looked at her reddening finger before sticking it in her mouth to try to dull the pain.
She eyed the door with her finger in her mouth suspiciously, but the writing continued to glow.
Entrance: The Eight Planes of DevilDom it sparkled at her.
Frowning, she briefly recalled Lucifer having spoken about the eight layers of the DevilDom, and them being a pathway back to the human world. He hadn't explicitly warned her about it but had said something about it affecting her psyche if they travelled that way, so they hadn't.
Bunnie pulled her finger from her mouth and looked at the gargoyle handles again, crossing her arms. She would have thought this kind of thing would be guarded, and it seemed old and unused, and very out of the way in this overgrown forest. She knew there were other doors in the centre of town, near Diavolo's castle, and they looked much grander and were guarded. Perhaps this one was defunct or out of commission?
Perking her ears for Mammon's voice, she could still hear him making small talk faintly, nervously. He hadn't made the sale yet.
She placed her hand on one of the gargoyles and, not expecting much to happen, gave it a push. Considering how small the mausoleum was, and how large the gates through the eight planes looked in town, she couldn't imagine this led anywhere unless there were stairs going all the way down...
The door moved much easier than expected, and her senses were shocked into focus when a gap of inky blackness appeared, growing as she tentatively rocked the door back inch by inch.
The buzzing noise in her ear stopped.
The wind and rustling of trees from the woods stopped.
Mammon's voice disappeared.
The sound was sucked away from around her like she'd been thrust into a void, and as she peered into the blackness, her pupils expanded. It was so quiet and so dark, she could feel the warmth from it working up her arm where she was holding the gargoyle handle.
"Hhhhhhhhhhhhh,"
Bunnie's face suddenly felt like she'd been breathed on, and she had the uncanny feeling that she was being watched, but she couldn't close the door.
Something cold ran up the inside of her thumb and started to track its way under her wrist, along towards her elbow, like an icy finger trailing a line of intrigue.
Speak....
Speak...
SPEAK! A set of lilting whispers rumbled in her head prompting her to open her mouth and she swallowed loudly, her foot inched closer to the gap in the door.
"I... I'm Bunnie," she breathed, not knowing why she'd said anything to the blackness, and as her face drew closer into the darkness, her pupils expanded so widely that the colour in her irises disappeared.
"BUNNIE." A voice like deep thunder sounded satisfied, sounded amused, that was good. He was pleased...
"What the fuck are you doin', Buns?!" someone grabbed her hand, someone much warmer than her, and slammed the door closed, shutting out the darkness that had started scowling at the newcomer's presence.
"No!" Bunnie tried to push it open again but Mammon grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back easily, giving her a shake.
"Oi! Stop! What the hell, Buns? What did I say about not touchin' anythin'?" Mammon leant forward to peer into her face and flinched back. She watched his face change from mildly annoyed to slightly panicked. "What did you do?" he muttered, grabbing her chin and turning her face this way and that, his eyes locked on hers. "What did you do, Buns, ya need to tell me right now..." he demanded.
Blinking and trying to start breathing like a normal person again, Bunnie's brain finally kicked back in and she furrowed her eyebrows. "Mammon?"
"What did you do, dumbass?" he snapped at her, worried.
"Uhm... I... I don't know. I just looked in the door?" she admitted.
"Yea, I fuckin' know that. What didya see?" he let go of her chin and his hand migrated to her forehead to check her temperature, then pushed her fringe back to inspect the whole of her face. Bunnie grimaced and pulled away. She hated when he did that.
"I didn't see anything," she murmured, trying to stop him from fussing like a mother hen. "It was totally dark."
It wasn't a complete lie.
Mammon breathed out heavily through his nose and, still looking a bit disconcerted, scanned her face and body again with his eyes. "Your eyes were all fuckin' weird," he told her. "They're fine now..."
She shrugged. "I feel fine," she confirmed.
He nodded once and gestured for her to take the lead, in front of him, back the way they came, which she did reluctantly.
She was tempted to look back, but didn't.