Demons (DNF)

Chapter 65: the underworld

Dream POV.

The crust… that is what we called what we now refer to as the underworld. Seeing the surface of the planet made me confused as to why the crust looked like this, but being a kid I never really cared about it.

The crust was made of 7 layers, and for a while in the past the demons living in the different layers didn’t interact which is what gave them different personalities. At the bottom of the crust there was a giant pit of lava which humans referred to as the Earth’s core.

And yes, demons knew what humans were. We learnt about them in school and they were pretty much just less advanced versions of us. They were smaller, slower, weaker, and they didn’t even have claws or a second form.

Still, humans apparently don’t focus on raw strength as much as demons do, instead their entire culture pretty much revolves around money and beauty. We have seen some pictures of humans and you can see it, richer humans are more attractive to others in a lot of instances. It was weird.

I sighed and slammed the tattered book shut which I was meant to do my homework in. Each layer in the crust was different, but things like dens (which is what we lived in) looked identical to every other one on the layer. My family, despite being pure blooded pride demons, lived on the Wrath layer, closest to the Earth’s core. Only a few demons who weren’t wrath’s lived on this layer and so naturally I befriended the 2 pride demons in the school, a boy called Quackity, and a boy called Skeppy.

There was only ever one wrath demon who I trusted, which was my best friend Sapnap. He was a wrath demon who lived not too far away from me. Demons were often untrusting against a type that wasn’t their own so all the other kids at school tried to avoid me except for Sapnap who preferred my company to the other kids in our class.

After dumping my book on the small bed in the room I shared with my little sister I left the room. My little sister was with our father in a different part of the layer, probably trying to trade something for food since that is what our currency was, trading something for something else. It would be so much more effective if we had something like money, like the humans did.

I walked out of the small cranny, which is what we called bedrooms, and into the main room, where my mother was sitting on a stool reading a scroll, which is like a newspaper. Without a word I sat down beside her and looked over her shoulder, trying to see what my mother was reading.

“What do you want Dream?” my mother asked the moment I sat down. She sent me a sideways glance and my eyes widened.
“I don’t want anything,” I reassured her, “just curious what you’re reading.”
My mother just rolled her eyes and angled the scroll differently so that I could see it.

It was written in demonese, which is the only language we speak, read, and write down here in the crust. A lot of us know other languages though, mainly English. But some types know others, a lot of lusts speak French because it is apparently the most romantic language, and wraths often know German. Quackity knows Spanish too.

“What are you reading?” I asked her, and she pointed to a certain place. I just sent her a glare silently asking her to explain which she did with a sigh.
“A Wrath demon went missing while on the greed ring a cycle ago…”

A cycle… a day in the crust, approximately 3 days for humans, yes our way of calculating days was weird. But a cycle is a full day, or 3 human days. New cycle means a new day, mid-cycle means mid-day, annual cycle is a year, and we have 13 months which follow the cycle of the moon going from crescent to gibius to full moon. A year is 365 days (1,095 human days) and our life span is 79 years (237 human years).

Why did I have to memorise this stuff in school? I mean why would I ever be around humans if I lived here in the crust, and why would I want to be around one anyway?

Skeppy was somehow a natural when it came to learning about humans, and Quackity, Sapnap, and I often joked about him going to marry one. Not that we should, if we didn’t copy off his homework and tests we’d have been kicked out of school for failing. Most demons who get kicked out of school end up going rogue and dying in their layers outskirts.

“What is such a big deal about someone going missing?” I asked with a shrug, shaking the thoughts about my hatred of school from my head, “maybe they got into a fight and ended up dead in a lava pit or something shit.”
“Dream!” my mother growled, her eyes flaring up in anger, “you know very well that I don’t allow swearing.”

Strange that a demon hated swearing but she has killed dozens of people brutally on several occasions. My mother had a strict rule against swearing and apparently she had ever since my father and her met about 14 annual cycles ago, which is what we call a year.

I mumbled an apology for the swear word and asked her the question again, replacing the swear word obviously. My mother sighed, “he suddenly disappeared in the middle of a crowd of people, they think he got dragged to the surface…”
“So he is up with humans?” I raised an eyebrow, utterly underwhelmed, “what’s the big deal about that. They don’t know anything, and probably think he is one of them.”

“The leaders of all the different layers think he is being held and experimented on… they want any families willing to go up to the surface to go and fight because they think.” my mother explained, “at least that is what it says here.”

“Why would they want whole families?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me and my mum took a moment to answer.
“It doesn’t exactly say… but I believe they want demons to start heading into the overworld during new cycle…” she stated.

A lot of people have talked about this, going into the overworld. When out trading I heard some demons whispering about it amongst the crowds. In classes the kids in the back would talk about how there probably wouldn’t be school in the overworld. And once I was in Sapnap’s cranny and heard his parents talking about living up there.

“Are we going to?” I asked, and my mother nodded.
“Most likely… I have to talk it over with your father though…” she stated, and I felt worried. What if I go and Skeppy, Sapnap, and Quackity don’t? Or what if I stay here and they all go? Would we be allowed back?

Why was I even worried about this? I was never going to the overworld, it was pointless. You couldn’t pay me to live among humans, they were weak, and small, and can’t really do anything for themselves. I feel that I could just pick a human up and do whatever the fuck I wanted with it. They were just unevolved, reckless, selfish, and honestly a lot like animals.

Please don’t make me live on the same layer of Earth as one...
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1271 words.