“Sheldon? Sheldon! Thank fuck, you’re awake.”

I sat up slowly. For a few moments, the sleep clung to me like I’d pulled a Rip van Winkle, but then it sloughed off and slid to the floor, and I was wide awake.

I felt stupendous, actually.

Speaking of sloughing off... I thrust my hand before my face with a surge of recollection. My skin, it looked gorgeous. In fact... maybe I was glowing just a tad too brightly in the mid-morning sun?

Nevermind that. Josefina leaned in, and I sat upright in bed to hug and kiss her properly.

“I’m so sorry to worry you like that. Showing up unconscious and everything, I must’ve looked a mess.”

“Nah, you were having a peaceful little snooze cruise, it was cute! What worried me was you being gone for two fucking days! I got farmhands ringing the bell, asking me questions, saying they ‘can’t find Count Basie’—”

“Not the Count!”

Josie wrinkled her grin at me and waved me off in that disarming way she does when I’m worrying about the wrong thing.

“Relaksss, they found her hiding under the floor of the coop. I’m just saying, neither you nor Ana said I’d be watching the house that long!”

“I thought I was gone for a few hours. Wait. If they knew there’d be time dilation... I’m pissed right along with you. Just wait until Ana gets back, I’ve got half a mind to—”

But she waved me off again. “About that. Madame Squid, would you please come in?”

The door opened, and in floated the hierarch Olkayabnothep, second of the demon triumvirate, the woman who’d personally granted me a tiny piece of her heart. For whom I had briefly held a billion-degrees-kelvin sexual attraction that threatened to vaporize my mind, and honestly, she still rated a solid 10,000K. The things that vampyroteuthis could do to a man... breathtaking.

I frowned. “Where’s Ana? I figured they would be back any time.”

In a very casual sort of way, the hierarch turned herself upside down and inside out, exposing the armored inner layer of her skirt, but also, her mouth. She took a big breath, and spoke in a fluent, husky voice I thought suited her well:

“We don’t know where Ana is. Only that they’re doing important Intelligence work. I brought you here to finish your molt in safety. I gather Asthenar has regained control of our home, with minimal casualties. But we know now that our enemy is on the move.”

I swung my feet out of bed. Rested or not, stressful and confusing situations like this called for coffee. “What fucking enemy.”

“Then it’s true. They never told you about the war between us and the Ji.”

...

Downstairs, I set about filling the electric kettle. “Go back to the beginning,” I said, “and tell me everything. Who’s us, who’s Ji?”

A faint groan escaped her beak. “That irresponsible Zdrak… tch. Okay. First I must stress that you are safe here. You are a civilian, not a soldier, and the Ithaca window is very well concealed.

“There are many of us demons, yes? Every one you’ve had the pleasure of meeting, belongs to Morai-sa, the society of Planters. We tread softly in mortal worlds, aiming to leave them better than we found them. Gradually, over many lifetimes, we prepare them to know us. But, there are other demons out there. Some neutral, some evil. There is a society very explicitly devoted not to benevolent stewardship, but to the conquest, torture and genocide of mortals. They are Morai-ji, the society of Thieves.

“Eons ago, the way of the Planters was... what are you doing, Sheldon?”

“Just waiting for the water to boil. An unavoidable part of my morning coffee ritual.”

She seemed to smirk. “Now that you carry a piece of us, we must teach you energy conversion. Among other things.” A mere wave of her tendrils in front of the kettle, and suddenly the water roiled and boiled. The kettle clicked off.

“Daaaaamn.” I set up the pourover while they continued.

“The way of the Planters was simply the only way we knew. But then the dark, brutish dreams of mortals influenced some of us. They were the first Thieves. They ruined several of the worlds in our care, then roved the galaxy, looking for more races to corrupt and plunder. Somewhere along the way, they took up the habit of posing as gods, to convince mortals to help them enter your dimension. They polluted the myths of those worlds they did not annihilate, fracturing their cultures with perverse notions of absolute good and evil, and setting the stage for their return.”

My eyes went wide. “Angels and Devils. They’ve been on this planet.”

“Indeed they have. So the rest of us organized to counter them, with Asthenar as our leader. We are Morai-sa. Peacebringers and shepherds to all sentient life. As for the Ji, they are vicious fiends who deal in death. And they shall receive the same.”

I shook my head as the last few ounces emptied from the pyrex gooseneck and into the funnel. “Leave it to Ana to embroil me in an existential galactic conflict.”

“This is the first time we’ve had contact with the Ji in centuries, and it was but a small skirmish. I admit, it is strange your mentor told you nothing—oh, erm, thank you.” She took the 6-ounce short mug and raised it to her beak with an audible slurp. For a good 15 seconds she said nothing; just sat there, seeming to consider the taste. Then she set down the mug. Her eyes were the picture of distaste.

“Hm, no, we do not have the facilities to appreciate this.” Her beak was wagging side-to-side to accentuate the “no.” I heard Josefina chuckling from the stairs.

I shrugged. “It seemed only polite.”

“As I said,” Olkaya continued, “it’s not your fight. You are safe. But the triumvirate does have a request for you. While we wage war, someone must continue to wage peace. The demonheart will enable you to travel as our emissary. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? See new worlds, come in peace, meet new life forms—”

“—and make those life forms come? Yes. That excites human Sheldon and demon Sheldon.”

...

The hierarch took her leave of us that afternoon, after teaching me some important demon skills. Most notably, she taught me that mindfully clasping hands, appendages etc was the most basic and universal form of empathic connection. It could replenish the demonheart (albeit slowly), and could make it impossible to lie (in thoughtspeech, at least).

<Practice these skills,> she sent. <Even if all goes perfectly, you will have need of them someday. And things haven’t gone quite perfectly thus far.>

The three of us then walked the grounds, and she took her leave. She had distant cousins in the Mediterranean she hadn’t visited in centuries, and now seemed as good a time as any.

“We’ll have a few things to attend to,” she said, “before one of us can return to speak of traveling. Asthenar has traced this particular group of Ji, and is leading a hunt as we speak. We must search the remaining ergospheres for would-be intruders. And of course, Zdrakloyananuiseth is out there, searching for resources to aid in the fight. This could take weeks from our perspective, and months or years from yours.”

I scratched my head. “What am I to do til then?”

“Practice your transformations. Try new things, build your proprioception. We respect that being a male with a large penis is gratifying for you, but it’s no longer enough. You can be every creature and every sex, and you have barely scratched the surface. A diplomat of the Realm must go deeper, You’re lucky to have a partner who understands this.”

She clasped and shook arms with the both of us, smiled, let go, and then she was gone—a blazing red meteor that whizzed off into the forest and out of sight.

<May peace be yours, earthlings,> came her voice in my head.

“She’s right, you know,” said Josefina. “I mean sure, space dick is daddy as fuck, but you’ve got a million forms. You could be a hyperfemme venus fly trap with vagina hands, and still be daddy.”

I nodded, and tried to physically shrug off my stupor.

“I know you’re right. Jo, I’m sorry if I seem cold today. Aside from having all this weighing on my mind, I think—I think that initiation left me with a bit of unresolved sub-drop.”

“Aw, honey-sweetie-baby”—and she wrapped me up tight in a bear hug at this—“why didn’t you say so?”

“It took til now to put words to the feeling. All of this feels new, even when it’s not. Anyway. Thank you. Your bear hugs are a godsend, I’m feeling better already.”

“Don’t mention it. We all need our soul crushed back into our physical form sometimes.”

I smirked. “Hey, speaking of bears, I didn’t tell you about all the different weird looking demon parts that were inside me, did I!”

She put on her trademark insulted face. “Bitch, you got dicked down by a bear?”

“Really more of an ursine-reptilian chimera—”

“DAMMIT, I knew I should’ve forced Ana to take me with you! Spill everything. No, take me upstairs and show me. When you’re up for it, obviously. But you heard the squid lady. This is vital exercise, and I don’t care if it takes all weekend. We’re gonna get you back in the mood. And then, I want you to do me exactly like they did you.”

“Not exactly, Jo.” I was blushing just at the thought of it. “Some of those dicks are physically impossible for a human—”

“Did you just challenge me?!”

“Gah! It’s not a challenge if it’s for your safety!”

“Fine, whatever. Scale it down if you must, but you better give me some bear realness.”

Josefina reheated me some congee, and draped herself over me while I ate in bed. It wasn’t long before she had me feeling right as rain. Becoming the bear, though, that took a few tries. I sat at the edge of the bed and formed the image of the bear tongue, carefully sized mitts with rounded claws, and the glorious fur-sheathed bear cock. And shut my eyes.

“This is still tricky for me, so I’m gonna have to show you one side of Kae’s anatomy at a time. Okay. Here goeth... oh.” My mouth felt very full and very foreign. When I opened it, the tongue unrolled itself like a welcome mat.

“Jeethith, I thaw I mayth it thmaller!” I tried to form the image one more time, blinked, and... “Okay. That’th better.” There was a strange rumbling in my chest like that of an empty human stomach. Ah, shit. The Hunger.

“I’ve been with some bears in my time, but this is way hotter,” said Jo. “You better fuck me right now.”

My whole face was going red with fuckhunger. My palm pads sweated, and the bear penis twitched with readiness. I shook my head. “Almotht. You, pants off, bend over. Daddy’th hungry for ass.”

If I weren’t so damn preoccupied with the aching need to eat and pound my delectable sweetheart, I’d have been very pleased with myself for forming that “S.”

For the next two days, we did basically nothing but fuck, nap, drink and snack. I called in sick to the foreman. Even then, our plan turned out to be rather too ambitious. Fuck her literally fifteen different ways in a weekend? We ran out of steam around 6. And already it felt like we weren’t leaving enough time to explore the workings and possibilities of each one.

So we agreed we’d spread the fun over our next few visits. Every few months we’d pool our money and she would fly to Ithaca, where we’d cook together, catch up on her work and my research, visit the farm animals, and do unspeakable monstrous things in bed while Stilgar cowered downstairs.

Finally, just shy of a year later, we’d worked through the list. I’d reproduced every bit of demon anatomy I could clearly picture, and she had dutifully managed to make them all fit somewhere. Be it hand, mouth, ass, or between her tits—now size C thanks to a year of crowdfunding.

Some of those demon bits worked better than others, of course. I couldn’t get king crabstick to stand upright, even scaled down. A vampyroteuthis sperm receptacle felt amazing on Jo’s girldick, but adding the hardware to my forehead caused intense vertigo, and it took continuous mental effort to hold the transformation; I gave up in less than a minute. Putting it on my belly fared much better.

Most delightful were the possibilities I’d opened up by wearing Kae’s reptilian cloaca. On that first weekend, I’d figured out how to scale it down and re-skin it to match my body. Josefina had got her fist, and most of her forearm, inside me. On her next visit she’d slipped a few fingers into the vaginal “offramp,” which was both gender euphoric and brain-meltingly good.

By her third visit, we were setting aside time to play with my intersex parts, specifically the bonus hole. Josefina was shoving fingers in there while she sucked me off, when for the first time in years, I let slip the words, “fuck my cunt,” and this time, they felt right. The time after that, she strapped on a dildo and fucked me in both holes. I squirted all over her while screaming to wake the gods.

But it wasn’t only the gods that heard us that night. A silent spy crouched outside the window, hidden by the bountiful glare of the overhead lighting.

They were human, and something else as well. Segmented arms with little grippy paws clung to the farmhouse’s siding with total confidence. Huge compound eyes took in the scene, while from their human mouth and lungs they breathed gently and steadily. A loose black cloak hung around them, more to conceal their monstrous form than to keep out the night’s chill.

Demi-demons barely feel the cold.