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The gorgon hissed as him again, pounding the force field separating them. Trapped in the summoning circle with her giant serpentine form pressed up against the invisible barrier, she was starting to get an idea what he was planning. Andreas had no empathy for it. This was the very gorgon that had petrified a student in a summoning accident a few years back, not offering her so much as a hint of warning. It was a killer. But fortunately, Andreas was too.

The wand loosely tied to his back had more than enough investment to vaporize the demon, and he was confident his own magical reserves would be enough to resist petrification for just over four seconds--more than enough time to kill the beast. Still, he wasn't going to look at it directly. There was no point in exposing himself to that kind of attack, especially when the magical barrier was going to need to be dropped.

The spell he was about to attempt had two components. The first would establish a very specific type of magical tunnel between the two of them, only allowing magical essence through, and not any spell variants. The second portion of the spell would smite her. If it worked, he'd be able to pull the gorgons essence into himself and add her own power to his strength.

Holding up one hand, Andreas touched the runes floating in the air, and initiated the cast. The moment he did so, it all went horribly wrong. The channel between the two circles was established like it should have been, but the act of casting a spell through it--the spell to smite the gorgon--disrupted its stability. In that instant, the gorgon acted.

Feeling the tunnel break down between them, Andreas immediately threw up a defensive field, abandoning the smite cast altogether. Unfortunately, it didn't matter. He'd been expecting the gorgon to bath him in petrification magic, but she'd taken a different approach. Instead she was trying to leave the overworld. It shouldn't have worked, but perhaps the gorgon was banking on Andreas making the fatal mistake--stepping back. As he put up the barrier between them and reached for his wand, his foot crossed the line of the summoning circle, breaking its power. In that instant, the gorgon was able to slip back to the umbral plain--and take Andreas with her.

The gorgon vanished, and immediately the link between them--the one he was going to use to transfer her essence into his soul--jerked him along for the ride. Because the transport spell was weaker than the sum of the power he intended to transfer to himself, it didn't break like most tethers would. This was also the reason most people used totems as an intermediary to transfer power. What this meant for Andreas however, was that he had a first-class ticket to Hell.

As the tether jerked him, he roared in anger. He realized his mistake immediately and understood the flaws in his plan before the journey was even over. A journey that took all of three seconds--three seconds of flying through a tunnel of red clouds between the plains. He fell out of the fourth dimension and into the umbral plain with a massive discharge of power, the ground underneath his feet cracking like glass, and red lighting exploding all around him. He was not meant for this world, and entering it was a violent process.

The first thing he felt was the heat. The air was acrid with foul smoke, and the ground beneath his feet was blisteringly hot, smoke rising up from his boots where they touched the stone, threatening to catch fire. It felt like he'd stepped into an oven, and he was going to die in under a minute.

Facing these dire circumstances, Andreas knew a couple things:

The gorgon could survive this environment without issue.

If he killed her like originally planned, he could draw her essence into himself.

Any person who had demonic essence inside them could use that power to assume a demonic form indefinitely.

The gorgon was picking herself up off the ground a couple feet away and never stood a chance. The wand in his hand was imbued with hundreds of days of power, enough that the magus court would consider it a weapon of war. There was little anyone could do to resist its power, unless they had an object they'd spent similar time preparing.

The wand exploded in a flash of golden light, burning his hand and firing a single bolt straight at the gorgon, killing it instantly. Upon death, like all other demons, a burst of red smoke was blown from her body, hanging suspended in the air momentarily before beginning to disperse. Andreas leapt, passing his hand through her essence and pulling it into his soul, then finally forcing it into his flesh.

He'd only been in the umbral plain for five seconds and he could already feel his skin starting to burn. The pain from the superheated air was starting to kick in, and with the amount his eyes were watering he was lucky he'd hit the gorgon at all. But with its essence in his flesh, the environmental threats would soon be moot.

The first thing he felt was his shoulder touching the ground as he fell, hitting the hard rock and immediately blistering from the heat. The searing pain was enough to distract him from the actual changes beginning to affect his body--the first and most obvious of which was his legs. He scrambled, trying to touch the ground as little as possible--a futile effort really--by first using his hands to push himself upright, then faceplanting into the hot stone when he burned his palms and pulled his hands back out of reflex.

It really was a disaster.

He cried out, partially in agony, partially due to how pathetic he felt over that quick series of events, his harsh yell echoing through the caverns of the underworld. Yet by the time he'd rolled onto his back and tried to sit up, the pain was subsiding. It was startling to watch how fast the transformation took place. Andreas rolled over just in time to see his legs beginning to lengthen, forcing his trousers down and merging together into one giant limb. It was a mildly horrifying sight to see, watching his body deform itself, but at this point he was just glad the air didn't feel like it was baking him alive anymore.

Glancing down at his hands it made sense why the heat was no longer affecting him--they were covered in a pebbly texture that wasn't quite scales, but not entirely skin either. It seemed his whole body had put fire tolerance high on the priority list of changes, but it didn't stop his clothing from catching fire. The whole experience was happening so fast he couldn't really process it properly, but the sensation of being bathed in flame and not feeling it actually burn him was incredibly strange. As his clothing burnt, what used to be his legs continued to take a more serpentine form, stretching out and forming a limb that was first five, then ten--twenty, and finally thirty feet long. The underside of his belly--if that's what he were to call it--was covered in those flat, horizontal scales like any other snake, and the scales on his back were also what one would expect when looking at a giant serpent. Because of the way the scales formed along his underside, Andreas also found himself momentarily sexless--bringing on another realization about changes to come.

As his tail finished itself off, his waist became slimmer, eluding to the forming hourglass figure his body was taking on. Squeezing his eyes shut because he really didn't want to see, Andreas still felt the change quite distinctly--his chest pressing out as pecs became breasts. They're technically growing in over your pecs, a small, pedantic voice inside his head told him, just adding to his frustration. Even as his shoulders cracked and narrowed, and his nose and jaw shifted to become more feminine, Andreas refused to think of himself as a woman. If anything, now he was a monster.

He knew it was coming, the final portion that made the gorgons unique, but that didn't stop the shudders from flowing down his spine as the wiggling ropes of flesh started to press out of his skull. They were tiny serpents, the smallest at the front, forming something that would resemble bangs, and contrasted by the larger and thicker bodies trailing down from the back of his head. By the time they finished growing out, the longest of the snakes was probably two and a half feet long, and doubly thick as his thumb. But the strangest part wasn't the snakes writhing around his shoulders and back--it was the information he gleaned from them.

Each snake was very much its own entity should he leave it be, but it was ultimately slaved to his will. He saw out of every single pair of eyes, smelled from all the nostrils on the serpents and could taste the air when they flicked the tongues out. Yet it didn't overwhelm his senses--the sight from what must have been a hundred different pairs of eyes only expanded his field of view. It were as though he'd covered one eye his whole life, and now he could see through two--except it was much more extreme. The world was still fundamentally the same, but he could see more of it, and much more clearly.

The whole transformation from start to finish had taken about forty-five seconds, and it was only when it finally stopped Andreas really took in his surroundings. The Umbral Plain, Hell, The Underworld--whatever one wanted to call it--definitely had a ceiling. It was a couple hundred feet overhead in this particularly cavern, which was lit by a deathly red glow from fires burning all over.

Andreas was in a sitting position with his arms propping him up from behind, and when he tried to climb to his feet, the whole action just felt weird. There was no need to get his legs underneath him, he just kind of...rose up. The weight of his--he refused to think of himself as a woman despite his body--serpentine form anchored him to the ground so firmly that when he started to sit up, the motion continued until he was in an upright position.

And about ten feet in the air.

Andreas glanced down as it occurred to him he was probably around thirty-five feet long total and would easily raise himself another ten feet in height if he wanted to. Being high up yet still touching the ground was odd and even slightly disorienting.

Movement behind him caught his eye however--or more specifically the eyes of the snakes on his head. Crouched behind a couple of rocks the entire time was an imp--a tiny little creature about four feet tall with skinny limbs and pointy teeth. Not much smarter than a child and so void of magic they were of almost no use at all. This one had probably seen him kill the gorgon though. This one knew he wasn't really a demon.

Unsure if he'd be able to use conventional magic in his current body, Andreas pressed on its natural magic instead, feeling his eyes glow and become alight with deadly power. Then without any warning, he turned on the imp and made a hissing sound. He cut the hiss off as fast as he started it, realizing how silly it was, but kept his magic on the imp for a couple seconds longer. Not that it mattered, the demon turned to stone before the expression of fear could fully register on its face, its dying look that of mild shock.

Andreas let the power fade, realization of what he'd done slowly setting in. He'd seen a creature--a threat he told himself--through eyes literally on the back of his head, and turned it to stone with nothing but a stare.

After surveying his surroundings for another moment, Andreas slowly slithered towards the petrified imp. His body slid over the stone in near silence, a pleasant surprise considering his size. There didn't appear to be anymore bystanders around for his entrance to the underworld, though he still wanted to get rid of the imp's statue. Far off to his left was a cliff, and over it, what looked to be a lake of lava.

"Well that explains th-" his mumbled thoughts about the air temperature were cut short by the odd way the words flowed from his mouth. He knew the problem before he even looked, then stuck his tongue out to reveal it was nearly a foot long and forked.

"I need, to make sure, I can speak, clearly." The words came out of his mouth with a thick accent, and in a voice he wasn't familiar with.

"I am a male," Andreas repeated under his breath, trying to ignore his voice telling him otherwise. "A man. Not a monster."

He continued babbling to himself under his breath while trying to move the imp's statue, mostly speaking to try and get the hang of his new tongue. Both were harder than he thought. His demonic heritage had oddly enough made his upper body slightly stronger than before, but while he could pick up the four-hundred-pound rock for a few moments, his grip kept failing. Eventually he wrapped his enormous tail around it and began using his serpentine bulk to drag it over the stone floor.

With the status in his coils, he really couldn't slither anymore and was forced to kind of worm his way over the rock, hauling it ten feet at a time with each pull. His lower half was incredibly strong and able to move it with little effort, but the motion was tedious, and he really wasn't that agile in the body quite yet. Two thirds of the way to the edge, sounds echoed off from far in the distance--screams, by the sounds of it, though it was admittedly hard to tell. What was more distinct however was the booms, not unlike a cannon being fired.

None of it helped with the anxiety chewing away in his stomach. The underworld was seeming like a very inhospitable place and currently he did not know how he was going to get out. If there were cases of people being pulled down into the Umbral Plains, he hadn't heard of it until now. Another boom echoed and the screaming grew a bit more distinct, making him quicken his pace. It wasn't screams like a woman, but more of a wild animal. The howl of something dying.

Eventually Andreas got the statue over the edge of the cliff and gave it the final shove, watching it fall far to the lava below. It fell for a good five seconds before splashing into the molten rock and sinking out of sight, hopefully to melt. He briefly wondered if the imp--or his own body for that matter--could survive the heat of the magma while still alive, or if those temperatures were fatal to all in the underworld.

Suddenly realizing there was no ground beneath him, Andreas jumped and pulled himself back. It was a silly reaction, but he was still unused to having hundreds of pounds of snake anchoring him to the ground. Without realizing it, he'd looked over the edge of the cliff by simply suspending his humanoid portion about ten feet out into the air, like a ruler a third off the desk. He hadn't been in any danger but looking down and seeing the lava directly below had startled him.

He pursed his lips and sighed, momentarily unsure what to do and then hearing the noises in the distance again. Perhaps the opposite direction would be a good start.

He spent the better part of an hour slowly picking his way through the underworld. While it initially looked uniform and mostly rock, he quickly realized that was only because of the area he was in. Right by the cliffside was uncomfortably warm, but the further he moved away from the magma, the more pleasant the air became, and the more signs of life he saw. The first odd thing he came across was what he would come to know as the underworld equivalent of a plant. Ironically, it had more in common with a person than fauna, as it was made of bone and flesh. Rooted in the stone, a bulbous fleshy limb grew from the ground and ran along it like a vine. The purple-red skin on it looked raw and worn, and was warm to the touch. But it didn't seem to react in any way when he touched it, and tugging on the strange limb revealed it to be far more fragile than expected. The bone was only really as strong as rotten wood, and the fleshy portion was spongy and easily torn.

A little grossed out, he continued on further away from the lava. There were a lot of cliffs with the terrain on a constant upward trend, but it was possible to find paths up them on their more gradual slopes, and it gave Andreas a lot of practice moving around as a snake. The fleshy fauna of the underworld began to become more common too as he moved away from the intense heat of the lava. What used to be the lone plant was now a collection of them--describing it as a bush didn't seem right--but they certainly grouped up like fauna. They all seemed to have traits in common too.

There wasn't an equivalent of grass. While the ground softened, it only turned to dirt or gravel, and the smallest plant seemed to something with bone like roots in the ground, and fleshy tendrils that waved around in the air like they were under water. They tore easily and grew out from a round bonelike bulb, retreating into it when touched too much. Andreas suspected something ate these.

While the plant life was still sparse, he eventually did come across his first tree. It was growing out the side of the cliff and rooted in it with those same bone-roots that all the other plants seemed to have. The "trunk" looked like a giant's limb, with about ten different joints down the length. Several of the joints acted like splitting points, where one limb became two, and reached out into a different direction. The most peculiar part however, was the upper branches were eventually covered not in smaller branches with leaves, but tentacles.

The entire tree was alive and writhing with them, giving it an extremely malevolent look and making him question if there was a giant maw hidden inside the writhing flesh. A part of him doubted it, logically knowing predatory behavior required a large area to roam in, and a lot of prey to draw from. The tentacles also seemed to be generally waving in the direction of the lava, as though attempting to capture as much heat as possible.

But if the plants like heat, why aren't they closer to the lake then? The question hung in his mind, but the sounds of chaos in the distance pushed him onwards. In fact, despite him moving away from it, it sounded closer than before. The source was moving.

"What are you doing?!" The voice was what Andreas would describe as a shouted whisper. It had all the intensity of someone yelling, but didn't carry very far. And because he didn't immediately realize where it was coming from, it scared him.

As his gazed snapped towards the source of the voice, the snakes atop his head--mostly writhing randomly--all did the same. But even with his attention laser focused on the cliffside where the voice had originated, he couldn't see the speaker. That frightened him, though in all fairness everything did at the moment. Still, someone was right there and he couldn't see them; generally bad for long term survival. Had others been watching when he'd entered the underworld? If anything caught wind he was human, he was as good as dead.

"Hide you maniac! Before he finds you!" The voice came from directly where he was looking again, though this time, he realized why there was nothing there. It was coming from underneath the rocks at the base of the cliff.

Andreas quickly weighed his options. He could continue onwards and completely disregard the warning, but based on the complete lack of people--or demons--something must be wrong. And perhaps the sounds of fighting off in the distance were not actually the norm. However this could also be a trap. What if their intent was to lure him close before he could petrify an attacker in time? Gorgons were a medium ranking demon, about half way up the power scale which meant they were quite rare, as the scale was bottom heavy. But if this individual was willing to be helpful, could he afford to pass it up?

In the five seconds of thought he gave the problem, the conclusion was no. He needed help. He didn't even know what was safe to eat, never mind the workings of the umbral plain.

"Where are you?" he demanded, the sound of his feminine voice once again surprising him. He swore internally. He was going to need to commit to an act.

"In a cavern underneath the rocks! How close is he?!" The voice was also feminine, sounding a mix of earnest and frightened.

"Who?!" Andreas answered without thinking, the immediately cursed internally again. If he didn't know who literally everyone was hiding from, he'd just tipped his hand as a newcomer. "He's... still a ways off," he blustered, trying to play it off and hoping he sounded somewhat convincing.

The voice didn't answer for a moment, though he thought he heard low murmuring.

"You're... a new spawn, aren't you?" The hidden speaker eventually said in a lower tone than before.

Andreas didn't say anything, letting them infer their own conclusions. After a moments silence there was a sigh and she spoke again.

"Get her in here. Hopefully we aren't all rocks in the cave when this is over."

Several other voices suddenly spoke up muffled but were quickly hushed. Moments later one of the larger stones Andreas had assumed to be largely immovable shifted to the side. Underneath was a creature that looked to be a cross between a man and a dragon--a form warlocks actually took quite often. They were known for being incredibly strong, able to lift a thousand pounds overhead as evidenced by this particular dragonborn.

"Get your ass down here, now!" he hissed at her, his voice deep and intimidating.

With little choice, Andreas moved. The exposed entrance to the cave was a hole about three feet in diameter, and while getting in might have been awkward as a human due to the low ceiling, Andreas slithered right in as though it were his natural habitat. While the cave was dark, he still found that he could see without issue, though in the darkness it was...different. The room seemed to have an innate light source that he couldn't pinpoint, and the bodies in it were glowing faintly. It only took a moment to realize he was seeing heat, and that he'd actually been seeing into the infrared spectrum all along. In fact, it was probably why the underworld seemed too bright to begin with, even when he was far from the lava lake, the only true source of light he'd come across. Creatures in the umbral plain saw in both visible light and heat.

Waiting for him where the cave grew high enough to stand upright was the source of the voice, standing next to an eye slit that peered through the rocks and above the ground. It was a succubus, judging by her wide hips, enormous breasts, and long jet-black hair trailing behind her, punctuated by two red horns. She had the trademark spaded tail trailing out from behind her, and seemed to be wearing a leather catsuit, sliced strategically in places to reveal skin.

"Get that entrance closed again!" she called in a low voice to the dragonborn, before directing her attention to Andreas. "When did you first become conscious?" she asked, "what have you seen?"

"An hour ago," Andreas answered, "if that. What... is going on?"

The succubus rubbed her eyes. "It's... complicated. You're in the umbral plain, you were probably just born because someone killed a gorgon in the overworld, or the person who held the gorgons power died. The point is, the power returns here and forms a new creature in the image it knows. Usually near the lava where the magic is strongest. But we're kind of in a crisis here. What's your name? You should know it instinctively." She paused for a moment then held out her hand for a formal greeting. "My name's Vyvyla."

This particular moment would stand out to Andreas later--it was the moment he truly committed to a second identity to protect himself. It was when he decided, to preserve his own identity and to be as consistent as possible, he would think of himself as a freshly spawned female gorgon. It was much harder to be caught in the lie if you lived it and believed it to be true.

"Srida..." he--she--said drawing out the S with a slight hiss. "What are you hiding from?"

The succubus sighed and glanced back to the other creatures against the far wall, all of which were watching their interactions closely. "You need context, I'll try and be quick, but when Gowris says so, we all need to be completely quiet." Vyvyla glanced at the dragonborn. "Watch the peephole, would you? I'm going to try and give Srida the rundown. If we survive this, I'd love if she stayed with us." She closed the statement off with a hopeful glance to Srida.

When the dragonborn--Gowris seemed to be his name--nodded, Vyvyla led her to the furthest corner of the cave where she sat down and gestured for Srida to do the same. After a moment of consideration, she coiled herself up into an armchair like shape and rested her arms on her coils, wriggling in and getting comfortable.

Vyvyla pursed her lips. "I'm already jealous," she said dryly. "But--the rundown." She took a moment to consider her thoughts, then started speaking at lightning fast pace.

"This is the umbral plain, you're a gorgon, I'm a succubus, and there are many other creatures with different levels of magic and power. Don't reach for your magic, especially if you can feel it, though it might take a while before you can. If you do, anyone looking into your eyes will turn to stone and die, something I'd rather not happen right now."

When Srida nodded, she continued.

"This is the umbral plain, some call it the underworld. Demons and hellions live here. Since you can think straight and have a conversation with me, you're a hellion, as it everyone else in the cave. Demons are animals, they're violent and subject to their worst impulses, but at first glance, they look like us." Vyvyla paused and put emphasis on those words. "A succubus, a gorgon, a dragonborn...those are all body types and associated powers, the difference between demons and hellions is the demons have no soul attached to their power. They get pulled into the overworld and cause a whole slew of problems for us that just want to live our lives."

"I'm assuming you were a demon last your power was in the underworld. What probably happened is someone summoned your old self--a demon--and destroyed you for your power. They then used that power for the entirety of their lifetime, and when they died, their soul was pulled into the underworld because it was saturated with umbral magic. That soul is why you--" she pointed sharply at Srida's chest, "--are listening to me and can think, speak, and probably have a general knowledge about the world. Because your soul is used to the overworld, you probably think the umbral plain is terrifying and alien, right?"

Srida stared at her dumbly for a moment then nodded. "It's so...strange," she finally said.

Vyvyla nodded. "I know. I remember my first day too. I don't remember the overworld, but I do remember thinking how wrong this place was. Then I got killed. Lesson two:" She paused and grinned for the first time at the look of shock on Srida's face.

"If you die," she grinned, "it will hurt, but providing your soul isn't destroyed--which is possible in certain circumstances--it will eventually spawn again. Somewhere in the underworld. It usually takes a couple weeks, weeks filled with horrible nightmares, but it happens. That's the whole schtick of the underworld, perpetual torment, you know? Except that whole operation collapsed some millennia ago, and now it's just kind of the wild, and us hellions do our best to survive the demons. And..." her face adopted a grimmer look. "...him."

The word hung in the air for a moment, practically begging Srida to ask.

"Him?"

"The stories vary," Vyvyla sighed. "There weren't many souls down here when it occurred, but it was the fighting you heard earlier. It's a human imbued with holy power. He's a kind of super paladin, except he only has one vow." The succubus paused again, probably for dramatic effect more than anything.

"To destroy those who burned his world."