New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Standing next to the table, Alex summoned Bael, the demon he assumed would be the most convincing in support of his claim. His appearance, lean and rippling with muscles under his vivid red skin and the two curved horns pushing out of his forehead, was as close as humans depicted demons.

So, it was a safe bet.

"Bael, meet Richard Bellemare. Richard, meet Bael, King of the Second hell, Dis. Well, ex-king, by modern times," Alex corrected himself.

Bael scoffed at him, a gout of smoke pushing out his nostrils.

"What? It's true," Alex replied, looking at Bael and shrugging.

Richard was in shock.

"Are… are you consorting with demons, Alexander?" Richard asked, mustering his courage in front of this manifestation of evil.

Alex looked at Richard, and could see the slight shivering on his shoulders.

He snapped his fingers again, sending Bael back into his soul space, and sighed.

"Technically, no. I don't consort with them. But I do have a few working for me, in a technical sense. I used to have a lot more than I do now. But… Circumstances changed…" Alex said, thinking back on Solomon.

"Doesn't that make you evil by definition?" Richard asked, still guarded.

"You aren't listening, Richard. These demons are part of my power. They aren't part of the problem. They will help when the time comes to defend humanity. The same can't be said about the ones we'll see barging into our world in a year or two, if we believe David's calculations and memories."

Richard heard the timeframe, and his mind narrowed back into serious mode.

"Wait. A year or two? We don't have longer than that?" he asked, the shivering of his shoulders stopping.

"And that is only if the numbers are still the same," Alex added.

With all their actions since they knew about what was coming, he somehow doubted the timeframe was still the same, mainly since Gaius had acted radically differently from the last time, killing Psyche and forcing the worlds to separate.

If he were to take a gander at how long they had, he wouldn't bet anything past a year.

But that was irrelevant to the current conversation. He didn't want to make Richard panic, either, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

But he could see the wheels turning in the man's head.

"You were saying they are the real threat? If nothing changes from now on, how much of a threat are we talking about?"

Alex smiled at him.

"Now you are asking the right questions."

"Just answer the question, and stop smiling. You are making this creepy," Richard replied in an annoyed tone.

"Alright, calm down. The threat they pose is unlike anything we've ever faced before. I'm talking about extinction level. If we don't get strong enough to drive them back, the demons will consume our world, with all its inhabitants, and leave Earth a barren wasteland."

Richard gasped at the gravity of the situation.

"Why is no one talking about this on the news, Alexander? If you know this, and I assume you aren't alone, why is no one else aware? Aren't you making the situation impossible to change?"

Alex looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

"Let me ask you this, Richard. If I had told you this, without our prior relationship, as a complete stranger, and without the proof I showed. Would you have believed me? Or would you have marked me as crazy and tried to lock me away?"

Richard realized the reality of his words.

Hell, even though he knew him and saw proof, he still had trouble believing they were having this conversation.

"And to think I only came to ask you if you were trying to scam my wife into getting you a plane to fly to vacations for free…" Richard joked, rubbing his eyes.

Alex almost choked on his coffee sip as he heard the words.

*cough cough*

"Seriously?!" he asked, looking at Richard with wide eyes.

"Well, that was my original intent. I've seen a lot of people try to screw their way into free shit before. And we don't exactly have the best relationship. I thought you were trying to spite me by wasting away my resources," Richard admitted.

Alex looked at him incredulously.

"Do you not trust your wife to make prudent choices? How would I even begin to scam her like that? Your wife terrifies me," Alex said, looking at him with confusion.

"Ha, me too, kid. Me too. But that was my thought, anyway. Now… I don't even know if I'm going to wake up, this conversation just a nightmare, or if I'm going to head home and try to drink myself out of this memory…"

Alex's wide eyes turned to a disappointed frown.

"Please think of your daughter, and don't do something so stupid…" he asked Richard.

Richard looked at him with a smirk.

"It was just conjecture. I've gone sober ever since our last… altercation. I may not like you very much, but I do love my family. And getting punched in the face by a stranger, because I was hurting them? Well, let's just say it is quite the wake-up call…"

Alex smugly smiled at him.

"You're welcome."

"Ahh, fuck off," Richard replied, glaring at him.

They both chuckled a bit before they turned to look at the city.

"It really is a pleasant view, isn't it?" Alex said, thinking of what was to come.

Richard simply nodded.

He'd seen this city from a high viewpoint many times before, which was no novelty to him. But the thought of looking at this same landscape, destroyed and burning, sent shivers down his spine.

It put some appreciation of what they were seeing into the both of them.

"How certain are you that you can stop this from blowing out of proportion?" Richard asked, keeping his gaze on the city.

Alex took a moment to reply, thinking of his odds as things stood.

Even on this side of the veil, he was almost sure he was stronger than when they had travelled through time with that dungeon run, so he estimated his chances were a lot higher.

But even with that, he hadn't fought any of the demon army's high commanding officers, and that was for something that had happened thousands of years prior.

How much stronger had they gotten since? There was just no way to tell.

And that was doubly true now, knowing who the demon lord was. There was no way a reborn Solomon or Zagan hadn't used all their knowledge to raise the demon army's strength to the next level.

Even now, the only demons that the players had seen were from the lowest rungs of their army: frontline fighters and scouts, at best.

Alex was the only one who'd seen a higher-tiered demon in the Ash Elf kingdom, and that one was on a different level.

If he were to guess, his power level was as high as that of the Captain he had fought in the dungeon and almost lost to—and he wasn't even an officer.

Just an infiltrator…

"As things stand now, I'd say with everyone's help, maybe a fifty percent chance of victory. I can't promise anything higher…" Alex admitted.

Richard sucked in a breath of cold September air.

"That is lower than I expected a cocky person like you to respond, but higher than I was expecting, based on the things I've heard today," Richard admitted.

"I know it's not much, and I say this with all honesty. This is a positive estimate. So many things can go awry until then, and screw our chances over. Fifty percent is the best-case scenario, as things currently stand."

Richard nodded, expecting as much.

"It's wise that you know that things can still fuck up. I thought you were dumber than this. But you can still see the truth from your confidence," Richard praised him.

"I'm not sure if I should feel honoured or insulted by your words. But, in any case, it would be stupid of me to think everything will go as planned. Plans seldom go as planned. That's why we make contingencies, right?" Alex said, quoting something Kary had once told him during the siege of Bastion City.

Richard looked at him, an eyebrow cocked, almost certain these words weren't his own.

"That is right. In this case, what is your contingency? Do you have a Plan B or a Plan C if anything goes wrong with your plan?"

Alex huffed.

"Do I look like the planning sort, Richard? I thought you knew me better. Kary and David are the planers. I'm just the muscle. I will lift mountains and split oceans if they say that's what we need. But I sure as hell ain't gonna be thinking, he he," Alex laughed.

Richard shook his head, a smile on his lips.

"I figured as much. If you don't mind, I would like to hear those plans."

"Then I guess there would be no better way to hear them than directly from the horse's mouth, right?" Kary's voice echoed from the open patio door.

"Good morning, Ms. Deveille," Richard said, smiling at her.

"Yeah, not a good morning to you. I'm tired. But let's get this done so I can go back to sleep," Kary tiredly said.