Nyx, Lord of Nightfall Castle, had just grabbed their holstered dagger and made a very dramatic statement about going out into the world and gettin’ some glories when they heard a knock at the front door.

“Or maybe that’s glory right now,” said Nyx. “Kinda hope so.”

Dodd’s heart wilted. She’d just seen them act more valiantly than ever before—like their old and distant self. Now they’d become a loser again. Hopefully temporarily.

“Shall I get it, my lord?” chirped Felicity.

“Nope! This is the first door-opening of my new life, it’s symbolic. Besides, if you get in the foyer it’ll ruin the illusion.” And with that, Nyx jogged away.

The door of Nightfall Castle opened...and the entire foyer changed. In a flicker, it shifted from a grand ballroom-esque hall to a stumpy little one-room home. The person who opened the door wasn’t the androgynous and lean Master of Light and Darkness, but instead this buff dude in rags who called himself Mr. Chutney.

“Hello,” said Mr. Chutney to the visitor. He couldn’t hide his surprise. In fact, he had a pretty vacant, doofus look. “...Forgive me, are you from around here?”

The strange visitor said, “Are you from around here.”

Mr. Chutney shrugged and grinned, trying to come off friendly. “Indeed, I’m new in the neighborhood. Just a vagabond looking for some honest work, yup. If you saw some dark smog coming out my window last night, that’s just my fireplace, it’s been finicky.”

The visitor was unmoved. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know who you are, smartass.”

Nyx smacked him. “Mr. Chutney’s” hand went flying across his face. The palm burned. So did the visitor’s face. It had literally seared with light magic on contact.

But the wound closed before Nyx’s eyes.

The visitor beamed.

“Luckily, I know you too,” Nyx whispered.

Nyx looked both ways, saw no Red Ochran bystanders. Then they snagged the visitor’s hand. He surrendered it willingly, and it sat like a limp fish in Nyx’s. Pressing their fingers against it, they found nothing but ordinary, human flesh and bone. They pressed harder. They gripped it so hard that their fingernails nicked the skin. Blood came dripping out.

“Better not let that get on the ground,” said the visitor. “Could bring trouble.”

“Not here. Believe me, you haven’t seen sad sacks until you’ve lived in Red Ochre a while. If there was a murder spree, they’d throw up their hands and call it the way of the world.”

Blood plopped to the ground. Nyx covered it with a kick’s worth of dust.

They took the visitor’s hand more gently. Bleeding and all. They said cordially, “Let’s take a walk, shall we, Spencer?”

So they walked together, into the woods that bordered Red Ochre and led to the blood lake.

The visitor was named Spencer Casimir. Nyx knew him from back when he still had his hair-flip and scrupulously maintained five o’clock shadow from Earth. They'd lost him to battle, him and two other friends. Now here he was strutting around in a brownish-green vest and tree-colored cloak fit for a fantasy ranger. Even his hair was elf-long.

Whatever he was doing now couldn’t be far off from what Nyx was up to...right?

“Lazy days, huh?” said Nyx as they took their first steps into the woods.

“’Lazy?’ Hah...yeah, I wish. Fell in with some adventurers that-a-way.” He pointed over his shoulder, which meant north-east, which happened to be exactly the direction he’d intended to point to. “You already knew this, but this place is a shithole.”

Nyx sighed.

“Then you should get transferred, Spence.”

“Doesn’t work that way. Besides, don’t you know how charities and stuff work? You move to the place where you can do the most good. I’m on the shitty planet Gaia, in the shitty continent Darshanna. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

It was a bit of a chore to march over the knotty roots of the trees here. Twisting oaks made up the bulk of the forest here. Blotches of sunlight made it through their thick leaves. They were in the upswing of summer, headed soon for solstice.

Nyx made small talk. That was what people normally did, after all. “Phew! These roots. Getting a workout here.”

“Ha ha! Yeah?” said Spencer. “You think this is hard? What the fuck’ve you been doing out here, Nyx? Do you even...train? At all?”

Now that was a bridge too far. “I train!” barked Nyx.

Spencer stopped marching. He leaned on an oak and gave Nyx a sucked-in smile. “Prove it. Kill the first weak-ass monster comes our way.”

Nyx’s confidence—which was already flagging—plummeted.

“You can’t expect me to perform at my best,” they said, “when I don’t even know for sure who you are. A ghost? You couldn’t still be alive.”

“I can tell I freak you out.”

“Oh, not at all,” breathed Nyx. “I like you a lot. You only freak me out in the good way. Like all special friends do.”

Never before nor after would Nyx put a string of words together so well.

“I hear those leaves rustling,” said Spencer, and he pointed straight upward. Sure enough, leaves were rustling. There was something up there, and it could’ve been anything from a putrid, noxious slime to a raccoon, which was less putrid but could still have rabies.

Nyx grabbed their dagger and took it firmly in hand. Part of them wished that Spencer, or Ghost Spencer, or Whatever-Else Spencer or whoever he was would just turn around and let Nyx kill the creature with some measure of privacy...

But they figured they’d let him have the whole show. Nyx finally released their transformation, and the image of Mr. Chutney morphed like clay into the demon lord’s true self.