The air changed quickly around me. It was hot and acrid, and I gagged as sulfur burned my lungs. My fall came to a sudden halt with a jerk at my waist. I looked up. Holding me up effortlessly by my belt was a heavily muscled, blue-skinned man wearing an ashy gray robe.
His face was very fair looking, like he wouldn't be out of place in a royal court. His wings, however, told a different story. They were torn and scarred, pieces of skin missing, edges ragged.
He didn't say a word, but kept his eyes ahead toward the Hotel wall. I must have fallen for a while for the man bat, or whatever he was, to have needed to have caught me from so far away. Either that, or I launched myself farther than I thought.
The Hotel itself no longer even looked like a building. It rose like a jagged stone spire, its windows looked like punched out wounds in the rock. It wasn't long before we drifted close enough for him to casually toss me into one of them.
I hit the floor hard, landing on my side and knocking the breath out of me. The room was dark and dusty, the light from the window barely cutting into the gloom. I caught a glint in his hands, and noticed my sword was missing. He had taken Gelato.
"There are no warnings here, prisoner."
I lay there for a moment, sucking in air.
"Pardon?" I asked.
"I'm authorized to administer fifty whippings on the spot for attempting to escape." The blue creature smiled an evil grin. It stretched too far, pulling his mouth wide into something inhuman. Rows of brutally sharp teeth gleamed along with Gelato.
"And who's to say," he continued pleasantly, "that I didn't forget I already did it once? Might have to do it again. Just to be sure."
That's when I realized why he looked familiar.
It wasn't just the blue skin—Princess's was noticeably lighter—but the face. There was a resemblance. Maybe a brother, or a cousin. Family, at the very least.
This man was a daemon, and looking around, I was probably in Hell. Why they needed a space at the Kiss Kiss Hotel, I wasn't sure. Maybe they were running out of room?
"Wait," I said quickly. "I didn't mean to stop on this floor. I'm on my way down."
"And what kind of idiot tries to go down the Hotel from the outside?" he asked
"Do you not know what is going on right now?"
"I know exactly what's going on!" He raised a fist, the one without Gelato, and unfurled a leather whip tipped with metal barbs. "You messed around with a little magic, stumbled into Mana, and made a mess of things."
He leaned closer.
"Didn't you?"
He wasn't wrong.
Maybe I did belong there?
"If you whip me, you could be stuck on shift for a lot longer than you realize," I said.
"Is that supposed to be a threat!?"
"No!" I yelled. "A warning, I promise! Only a warning!"
"It is not for prisoners to warn their guards," he said. He threw down his arm and slung the whip at me. The barbs of the whip lodged into my arm before he pulled it free.
I screamed in pain but gritted my teeth in silence much sooner than I expected of myself.
I looked up to see the flying daemon look curiously at his whip. The barbed tips were glowing with electrical charged. As he put one up closer to his face, they exploded.
It was his turn to scream in agony, covering his eyes with his hands as blood ran down his face.
"You bastard!" he screamed.
"I didn't do it on purpose!"
The daemon roared in rage as he flew blindly toward me, hitting the wall first, then out and back against the wall, and repeating this process a few times before he and his robe were completely covered in the dust of the rocky spire.
The sound of a laugh breaking out, a laugh that had been held in for a long time, rang out from outside in the air.
"Who was that!?" the daemon yelled. "Is that you, traitor bitch? Are you laughing at me?"
I swallowed. At first, I thought the possibility of them being related could make this whole process smoother, but now I'm pretty sure he's going to want to kill me even more now.
"You're not making it very difficult."
He roared again. I saw a familiar sight of light coalescing together outside of the room in the middle of the air, and Princess appeared, flying with her own set of wings, still in her breast and midriff exposing Mycenaean-style dress. This time, her nipples were pierced, and a golden chain ran loosely between them.
"Did you come out to play, traitor bitch?" he growled, looking desperately from one side to another. "Oh, what the Queen would do once she got her hands on you!"
I looked at Princess, and she looked uneasy. It was a look that was out of place on her face. Still, she maintained a steady position in the air, hands on her hips.
"She can be angry with me all she wants," Princess said. "Daemons wouldn't have had a seat at the table if it weren't for me. And if I could remind you, it's my physical body that's confined to the Hotel, not yours. You are still free to move around."
"You call this freedom!?" he asked.
She sighed and closed her eyes.
"No," she said. "But listen. This man here, Teddy, might be able to do something about our situation."
"Not if I get to him first!"
"Here."
Princess glided into the room over to where the other daemon lay, face still bleeding from the explosion. The daemon flinched when she caressed the side of his face.
"You would like your sight restored, yes?"
"Yes," he said bitterly.
"Will you let us talk if I help you?"
"Yes," he said with some hope.
"Lay still."
Princess grabbed his head and leaned forward, pressing the daemon's face into her chest. She straddled him, grabbed one of her breasts, and guided it into his mouth.
"Suck."
"Yes, Mistress."
The daemon sucked from Princess's breast freely. Some milk spilled out of his mouth in between large gulps. Princess moaned as he sucked, pinching the other nipple, and sometimes bringing her other hand down to rub her pussy.
This was the first time I noticed they had tails. They intertwined with each other, the tips of each tail like the heads of individual personalities that jabbed at each other in play as they coiled tighter, then looser, then tighter again.
What I could see of her back from the way her dress was cut was smooth and muscled, while the lower half of her dress was lifted up high enough that I could see her ass and its white lingerie begin to gyrate on the other daemon's hips.
"Okay," she said. She gently lifted her breast from the other daemon's chin, and to my surprise, his eyes were fully restored. There was still blood on his face, but no sign of any of the wounds that had caused it.
"So," I said. "Do you two know each other?"
Princess looked back at me.
"We grew up together."
The brought a chuckle from the daemon on the ground. "We grew up together, sure, but were as far apart as night and day."
Princess looked sheepishly at the ground.
"He is a distant cousin, from a different House, but his family were courtiers at my mother's palace."
"And now you work at a prison?" I asked. And then I looked at Princess. "And you... at a Hotel... that leases a floor for a prison?"
"Yes," the daemon said, "and speaking of that, we've already talked for too long. I'm not the only guard on patrol here."
"So, you haven't really noticed?" Princess asked.
"Noticed what?"
"You've been wrapped up in Teddy's Sugar Rush state along with me and a few others. You are currently moving at a speed close to light."
"Hmm," he said. "I guess it's always so boring over here I never did notice anything strange."
"I'm not sure why, though," Princess said. "Unless other members of my family are also out about? But then it would be strange that I haven't sensed anything."
"He was also able to suck your tit," I observed. "Isn't that strange, too?"
She smiled. "I can still interact with other Mana-based beings."
"Why would you think that strange, I wonder?" the daemon asked. "Aren't you a Mana-based being?"
"No," I said. "Why would you think that?"
"Hmm," the daemon said. "My whip exploded, and that usually only happens when it tries to claw too much Mana from the victim, and that usually only happens when it latches on to a being made of Mana."
"His levels," Princess said. "Take a look."
He stared blankly for a while as he checked out my details.
"Impossible," he said.
"Theoretically, he has enough Sugar that I probably could interact with him like a Mana-based being."
"Prove it," he said.
"What?"
"If he can get you to orgasm, I'll fly him to the second floor."