The bottom-feeders hung in the air, their claws inches from my face, their vacant smiles frozen. The hellish illusion they'd painted over my apartment was suspended, a grotesque painting etched onto reality. Dao's golden light was a static burst. Niran's pulled energy was a visible, crackling tether leading nowhere. Julia was a crumpled statue against the wall.
The only thing moving was the intricate web of blue chains Kephriel had woven through the room. They pulsed with a slow, rhythmic light, like a heartbeat.
And he suddenly reappeared in the center of it all.
"The bureaucracy of the damned is insufferable,"
he muttered, his voice the only sound in the absolute silence. His fingers moved as if scrolling through an invisible ledger only he could see.
"Soul ledgers, damnation quotas, celestial exemptions… ah. Here we are."
His eyes snapped open, glowing with triumph. "Rafael Ismael Sakda. File located."
He reached into the air, and his hand closed around something that wasn't there. With a flick of his wrist, he made a tearing motion. A sound like a universe sighing filled the frozen room.
"A minor edit," he said, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "A footnote. A temporary reassignment of existential data.
Let's change the age,
hm...
how about 7?"
He looked straight at the frozen bottom-feeders, his voice dropping to a taunting whisper.
"You see? You cannot harvest what is under divine protection. Your programming is useless."
He snapped his fingers.
The chains vanished. Time crashed back into motion.
The bottom-feeders lunged.
And my window exploded.
It wasn't a violent shatter. It was a gentle, almost musical pop as the glass dissolved into a shower of harmless glitter. Framed in the opening, blotting out the city night, was the Dekbi.
It was even more immense up close. Its plush, colorful form radiated a warmth that instantly fought back the residual chill of despair. Its large, kind eyes scanned the room, instantly locking onto me. It completely ignored the devileaters, my friends, everything.
Its programming had one directive.
A bottom-feeder, driven by its own mindless hunger, forgot the new variable and leapt at me.
The Dekbi moved faster than anything that size should. It didn't attack. It simply interposed. It placed its massive, soft body between me and the creature.
The bottom-feeder's claws scraped harmlessly against the Dekbi's colorful hide. The creature recoiled, not in pain, but in confusion. Its smile vanished. Its big eyes blinked. It tried to project its hellish illusion, to find my despair.
It found nothing. The Dekbi's aura of pure, innocent safety created a perfect, impenetrable bubble around me. The bottom-feeder's power was nullified. It was a virus trying to infect a ray of sunlight.
The other bottom-feeders hesitated, their simple minds unable to compute this failure.
The Dekbi looked down at the confused creature that had tried to harm its charge. It didn't raise a hand in anger. It simply pointed a large, soft finger at it.
The bottom-feeder didn't dissolve. It… deflated. Like a balloon with a slow leak, it shriveled up into a small, grey, wrinkled husk that fell to the floor with a pathetic plop. The other two followed suit, deflating into nothingness without a sound.
The threat was over. Not by destruction, but by utter, absolute irrelevance.
The Dekbi then turned its full attention to me. It leaned down, its big face filling my vision. It smelled like warm laundry and sugar cookies. It studied me for a long moment, its head tilted. It saw an overly grown-up seven year old boy, trembling on the floor of a wrecked apartment.
It reached out one enormous, gentle hand and… patted my head. A feeling washed over me, not words, but a pure emotion.
Then, its duty fulfilled, it straightened up, gave a satisfied nod to the empty room, and stepped back through the window. The glass reformed behind it without a scratch, leaving us in silence once more.
The apartment was a wreck. Monster husks littered the floor. Thomas was still hiding behind the couch. Julia was unconscious. We were all breathing like we'd just run a marathon.
Kephriel let out a long, dramatic sigh.
"Finally. The help these days is so… inefficient." He looked at the grey husk on the floor with disdain. "Pathetic."
He vanished.
The four of us who were still conscious just stared at each other. No one spoke. What was there to say?
We'd just been saved from soul-eating nightmares by a giant, plush, children's guardian because our personal death god had illegally changed my age to seven in the cosmic database.
The utter absurdity of it all was too much.
Niran was the first to break. A snort escaped him. Then a choked giggle. Dao clapped a hand over her mouth, but her shoulders were shaking. Preecha's silent laugh was a series of sharp, quiet exhales.
And then I started laughing. It was a raw, slightly unhinged sound that bubbled up from the hollow space in my chest. It wasn't a happy laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had finally, completely, lost his grip on what was real.
We laughed until our sides hurt and tears streamed down our faces, sitting in the wreckage of my apartment, surrounded by the proof that our lives would never, ever be normal again.
The laughter died down, leaving a heavier silence in its wake.
Keph sighed, an ironic expression on his face.
"Be happy, Raf,
You're seven year old again for 24 hours.
...
Maybe this childhood will be better than the last."
The room fell quiet.
Dao finally said what we were all thinking, her voice barely a whisper.
"What... what do we do now?"
The question hung in the air, bigger and more terrifying than any bottom-feeder.