Swell Foop (6 page)

Breanna and Xeth exited by the study door, and found themselves back in the classroom. The class had evidently dissolved into mischief the moment the terrifying gaze of the Professor was absent. The male demons were trying to shape themselves into baskets that formed into a huge ball. The female demons were forming puffs of smoke that were drifting toward the basket cases, trying to get their attention. Breanna and Xeth walked cautiously around the edge, so as not to get caught by either a basket or a smoke ball.

Grossclout reappeared at his classroom desk. "Are your heads filled completely with mush?" he demanded horrendously. "You ignorant louts cease playing basketball immediately; this is not a sports arena. You scheming gamines stop sending smoke signals; this is not a boudoir."

The students quickly reverted to what appeared to be their normal state of muted terror, and the Professor resumed his lecture. "Now we come to the simplest and most basic technique of magic, that even a cranium three-quarters filled with mush should be able to grasp. Unfortunately that means a minority of you will grasp it. This is the magic of illusion, which requires the least effort for the greatest apparent result. It can actually be quite deadly when properly wielded, as when a deep pit in the ground is covered over by the illusion of a path. Mortal folk can find that quite uncomfortable. Even unwary demons can suffer if deceived. Can you provide an example, D. Ceive?" He focused his glare on a demoness who was burnishing her fingernails.

She glanced up, crossing her legs so that her well-fleshed thighs showed almost—but not quite—to her panty line. "Sure," Ceive said. "If a girl thinks there's something useful to be learned in this class, and wastes time attending it."

There was a murmur of admiration at this audacity. No one else dared respond to the Professor like that. Breanna, having made her way to the door, paused to see what would happen.

"That answer is incorrect," Grossclout said.

"You have a better one?" Ceive asked, adjusting her décolletage so that her very full breasts showed almost—but not quite—half their heaving globes.

"Indeed. When a demoness who has been banned from classes because of failing the course fourteen times in succession attempts to masquerade as a student, and discovers that the class she has crashed is an illusion."

"Really!" Ceive laughed, her flesh jiggling juicily.

Then the rest of the class dissolved into a single mass of warty flesh. Ceive was left sitting on the tip of the tongue of a horrendous monster. Huge teeth appeared as it slammed its jaws together. The demoness barely had time to puff into smoke before getting chomped.

The monster formed into a suction pump, and sucked the smoke into itself. "Eeeek!" the smoke screamed as it disappeared into the tank. Then the tank popped into the path of a giant steamroller and was instantly flattened.

The Professor extended a hand on an endlessly lengthening arm and picked up the paper-thin form. "Why, I do believe it is Metria," he said. "She seems to have lost weight."

"Metria!" Breanna exclaimed. "That's where she went!"

The Professor glanced her way. "This miscreant is with you?"

"I guess she is," Breanna said. "We needed her help to find you."

"Then perhaps you had better take charge of her." The Professor rolled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it across the re-forming classroom.

"Uh, thank you," Breanna said, catching the ball. "We'll try to keep her out of further mischief." Then she stepped out of the classroom.

"I had wondered where she went," Xeth said.

"For sure." She looked at the ball. "Do you think she'll recover? I was sorry to see her squished like that, after she helped us."

The ball dissolved into smoke. "Oh, I've been squished before," the voice of the demoness said. "That's when my personality got fractured into three identities."

"I didn't know that," Breanna said. "What happened?"

The smoke shaped into human female form, fully clothed. "In my youth I got stepped on by a Sphinx. It squished me into three aspects: Metria, with the problem of lexicon—"

"Of what?" Xeth asked.

"Vocabulary," Breanna said quickly.

"Whatever," the demoness agreed crossly. "And Mentia, who's a little crazy." She changed form, becoming cross-eyed with her pupils spinning around inside. "And cute little Woe Betide." She became a sweet, nice, adorable, innocent child. "Professional Grossmouth always puts me through the wringer when he catches me in class."

"I heard that!" the Professor's voice bellowed from the room beyond.

"Oh, go toast your ancient old eyeballs on this!" Metria said, reforming in a short-to-the-nth-degree skirt. She faced away from the classroom, bent forward, and flipped up the skirt to expose huge polkadot bloomers.

"I saw that!" the voice trumpeted.

Breanna realized that Metria and the Professor had an ongoing relationship that just possibly barely might include half a modicum of mutual respect. She liked to show him her wares and he liked to condemn her. Apparently no harm had been done to either, this time around.

"Let's go find that Ring," Breanna said. She started off down the hall.

"Isn't Xeth coming?" Metric inquired as she floated along beside.

Breanna realized that King Xeth wasn't with them. She turned and looked back. He was standing where he had been.

Then she added it up. "Your bloomers! They freaked him out!"

"Sorry about that," the demoness said, not too contritely.

Breanna went back and waved a hand before Xeth's face. "Xeth! Come out of it."

He blinked and looked at her. "Did something happen?"

"Metric freaked you out with her bloomers."

"Oh? I don't remember."

"If I had realized that zombies can be freaked out that way, I would have had a much easier time escaping you and your minions, way back when."

"Most zombies wouldn't freak. Their eyes are not good enough to see anything clearly."

"And most fully living men lose their freak the moment the sight ends," Breanna said. "So I guess you're in between."

"I suppose," he agreed. "I wonder if that explains those jumps in time when I'm at home with Zyzzyva."

"She's freaking you out when she wants to be left alone!" Breanna exclaimed. "The canny wench!"

"But I would rather not be freaked out. It is confusing."

"Well, you're married. I understand married men don't freak out much, at least not from seeing their wives' panties. They're too familiar."

"That's true," Metria said. "I can't freak out my husband anymore unless I assume the form of an unfamiliar woman. It's frustrating."

"Unfamiliar?" Xeth asked.

"Once I pretended to be a Mundane Chinese princess with the talent of making animals sing. That put him away for hours. Another time I emulated a woman who could form living things into useful shapes, such as making a tree into a chair."

"Ogres do that," Breanna said.

"Without twisting it into a pretzel, I mean. In the guise of doing that, I bent forward a bit too far, and he freaked right out." Metria frowned. "And he has the gall to claim he doesn't peek at other women!"

"Say, maybe if you just remember that, it won't happen," Breanna told Xeth. "Don't let Zyzzyva fool you into seeming unfamiliar."

"I will."

"And if you fake being freaked out, you can fool
her
," Metria said. "Then you'll see whatever she's doing when she thinks you aren't watching."

"I will."

"Aren't we sort of betraying the female conspiracy?" Breanna asked her.

"Yes. Isn't it fun?"

"Yeah!" They giggled together.

Breanna focused on the faint glow in her mind. "This way," she said, opening a door. She peered in.

Then Xeth was waving a hand before her face. "Breanna! Come out of it!"

"Come out of what?" she asked. "I was just going into this room."

"You freaked out."

She laughed. "Silly! Women don't freak!"

"Then what is the demoness doing?"

Now Breanna saw that Metria was hovering quite still, like a weightless statue, staring into the room. She was, indeed, freaked out.

"What's in there?" Breanna asked.

"Male demons in underpants."

"Wow! You mean male pants freak out females?"

"Evidently these ones do."

"Demon pants!" she said, catching on. "They must have special potency. I never heard of a woman being freaked out by a living man's underwear."

Xeth put his hand in front of Metria's face, interrupting the view. She resumed motion. "Well, let's get on with it," she said, peering ahead—and freaked out again.

"We'd better try another route," Breanna decided.

Xeth covered Metria's gaze again, and this time continued to block her view until they got the door closed. "But we have to get moving," she protested.

"Not that way," Breanna said. "You freaked out."

"Oh—you mean they have those male hot pants on display again?"

"For sure."

"They're not supposed to do it
back
."

"Turnabout's not fair play?" Breanna asked.

"Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?"

Breanna decided not to argue the case. "Well, I just want to find the Ring of Fire. I need to find an alternate route." She opened the next door.

There was an immediate chorus of screams, and a tangle of assorted limbs. "That's a demoness dorm," Metria explained.

"Why should they care?"

"They scream every time the door opens, just in case it's necessary."

"But demons can assume any form they want to, can't they?"

"Of course. They're just having fun, same as the boys. Soon one dorm or the other will stage a freakout raid."

"Well, I'm getting tired of demon fun. I just want to find that Ring."

"Then maybe you need an M-path."

"A what?"

"It's a path that feels what you need, and takes you there."

"But I already know where I'm going."

"But you don't know how to get there without getting into trouble."

Breanna nodded. "Right. So how do I get an M-path?"

"I just happen to have one here." The demoness reached into her own bosom, rummaged around elbow deep, and came up with a small length of tape. She presented this to Breanna.

"This is it? I can't walk on this."

"Just hold it in front of you and follow the glowing M."

"Oh." Breanna tried it, turning around while holding the tape. Sure enough, the M brightened in one direction. She went that way. Soon they came to a hall intersection, and the M brightened to the right. She followed it, and soon it brightened to the right again. When the path intersected a hall they had already been through, Breanna halted. "This thing's going in circles!"

"No it isn't," Metria said. "It's always right."

"But what if I need to go left?"

"It makes three right turns."

"Oh," Breanna said again. It did turn out that the M-path led across the hall and through a new one. It had made a looping left turn.

They continued until they came to a washroom. There the path ended.

Breanna looked around it. "I can't find any continuation from here," she said, frustrated.

"It must be here, then," Metria said. "Hidden."

They looked all around the small chamber, but found no ring. There was a pitcher of water, and a basin, a washcloth, and a towel, and that was all.

"It must have been here, and then been lost," Xeth suggested.

"But my sense of it indicated it was here!"

"It could have been here for centuries, leaving its trace, and been taken yesterday," Metria said. "We don't know how current your perception is."

Breanna wasn't sure she understood that, but certainly the Ring was not to be found. "So what do we do now?"

"We can ask Professor Grossclout," Xeth said.

"No!" Breanna and Metria said together.

"But who else might know?"

"Well, there's Ersup," Metria said. "She looks in her purse to find something personal about whoever she concentrates on."

"Would that help me find the Ring of Fire?"

"It should, if it's personal."

Breanna was dubious, but game. "Okay. Where's Ersup?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her in months."

Breanna did her best not to explode. "You're a big help!"

"Thank you."

Breanna pondered. "Xeth, you say this Ring controls Com Pewter too?"

"Yes, he is demonic."

"He knows a lot, and I get along with him okay. I'll ask him."

"Those infernal machines are not to be trusted," Metria said.

"Neither are demons," Breanna retorted.

"How can you say that? I am a ghost."

"You're a what?"

"Apparition, specter, spook, phantasm, ghastly—"

"Aghast!" Breanna exclaimed, making the devious connection.

"Whatever," the demoness agreed crossly. "We demons can be trusted to be perfectly demonly."

"Which is to say, devious."

"True. So why trust a demon machine?"

"Because I set him up with his girlfriend, Com Passion. She'd be annoyed if he played me false."

Metria nodded. "Helm has no fury like that of a female annoyed."

That seemed close enough, considering. "So can you take us to Pewter—and if so, will you?"

"Of course I can, and will." She fuzzed into smoke. The smoke enclosed them, then dissipated.

There was Com Pewter's screen before them.
TO WHAT DO I OWE THE DUBIOUS PLEASURE OF THIS VISIT BY GIRL, ZOMBIE, AND DEMONESS?
the screen printed.

"We have a problem," Breanna said. "I need to find the Ring of Fire to save Xanth from a loss of gravity."

BUT XANTH HAS NO GRAVITY, ONLY HUMOR.

"Gravity as in staying on the ground. The Demon Earth's lost, and his gravity is fading. The Ring of Fire is supposed to be in a demon washroom, but I can't find it. Can you help me?"

NO

Breanna was used to this. "Can you direct me to any person, creature, thing, or idea that can, and if so—?"

Another machine appeared beside Pewter.
©©
Why, hello, dear mortal girl
©©
the new screen scripted.