It all started with a missing cat.
The man who had summoned Alcor for the second time this week- Derek, he had called himself Derek before- held his hands to his hips, glaring as the demon floated nonchalantly above the summoning circle.
Neither of them bothered with the typical post-summoning pleasantries.
"Where is my cat?"
The demon raised an eyebrow. "What, you lost her again? Some pet owner you are."
"I'm not playing games, Alcor. I know you know. Now tell me. Where. Is. My. Cat?"
Alcor narrowed his eyes, staring unblinkingly at his summoner. "I don't like your tone of voice, mister."
"Well, Idon't like how you took my Lulu after we made a deal, so I guess the feeling's mutual."
It took Alcor a moment to process the meaning of the words, but once he did, he let out a loud sigh. "Look, I didn't take your cat. You just need to keep a better eye on her, okay? But if you want to make another deal to get her back, by all means, g̡o ah̸eąd̕."
"I didn't come running straight to you, you know."
Alcor tilted his head sideways, while Derek's gaze drifted downwards until settling on Alcor's wings.
"I asked around. Went to a few psychics. And you know what they all said?"
"That you're a ditz who needs to watch for his cat running out the door?"
"No." The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing, his hands balled into loose fists. "No, that's not what they said at all."
The demon waited for Derek to continue speaking, but he didn't, just kept staring at Alcor's wings as if they contained the secrets of the universe. (Alcor glanced down briefly to make sure that they weren't, in fact, displaying any images of the kind that mortals were Not Meant To See, but they remained a dull black, twitching ever so slightly.)
Finally, he had to speak up.
"Are you going to tellme what they said, or do you want me to just guess?"
"They said…" Derek hesitated, and his voice wavered as he pressed on. "They said that she was taken by magic. Magic connected to you."
"Well, that's a load of barnacles."
Derek's face twisted into an expression of confusion.
Right. That wasn't a phrase people used nowadays, was it?
"I didn't take your cat, okay?" Although now that the man mentioned it, thinking back on the wording of their agreement, Alcor realized that he definitely couldhave. Derek had only asked for Alcor to find Lulu, not tokeep her. Ah well.
But the cat was lost because of magic related to him, huh? Well, nobody'd used a cat sacrifice for several months now, so…
"Those guys were just messing with you. Tr͜u̶st m͠e."
"I trust half a dozen of the best mediums on Beale Street more than I trust a demon," Derek shot back.
"And yet you came running back to me for help."
"Because I want you to give Lulu back already! What'll it cost me? And I won't fall for this a third time, got that?"
"Let's see…" Alcor contemplated the cat's present location, searching through his immens library of knowledge for the information. If she was nearby, he might want to go lower on the price, for risk of his summoner choosing to search the old-fashioned way… and if she was dead, well, that was that, though maybe he could still extract some payment in exchange for that information.
But little Lulu didn't seem to be nearby, or in the afterlife… or far from home, either.
As far as Alcor could tell, Lulu was nowhere to be found at all.
"How inţerestinǵ… Could she be stuck in a top-secret government facility, perhaps? Or maybe a pocket dimension?" He had meant the words to come out as a mere murmur at most, used to keep his thoughts on track more than anything else, but the dumbfounded look on Derek's face and the way he pressed his palm against his forehead made Alcor realize that his speech had been loud enough for the man to hear.
"Why on earth would my cat be trapped in a pocket dimension?"
Alcor blinked as he focused his vision on the summoner's face. "Well, she wouldn't be on earth, now, would she?" he replied glibly. "That's rather the idea of a pocket dimension."
"What- I-" Derek flailed his hands around wildly above his head, as if trying to grab the words he was looking for out of the thin air. "You know what I mean! I don't suppose you put her in a pocket dimension, huh?"
Alcor gasped and held his hand up to his mouth in an expression of mock offense. "I did no such thing!" Of course not. Why would he go through the trouble of setting up a whole pocket dimension when he could just stick stuff in the mindscape to hide it from mortals like this guy?
…and he hadn't put the cat anywhere, pocket dimension or mindscape or otherwise. That was probably the most relevant point here.
"Well, then getting her back should be no problem for you, right?" Derek gave the demon a tight smile, but there was no humor in his eyes.
"Flattery will get you nowhere." Alcor replied absent-mindedly.
Okay. This was ridiculous. The cat had to be somewhere. So if she had somehow gotten herself trapped somewhere with wards strong enough that even a demon of his stature couldn't sense her… he'd just have to see where she'd been before that. Alcor thought of her face, her name, of the moment in the past summoning when he'd dropped chubby little Lulu unceremoniously into her owner's outstretched arms… and saw nothing from after he had blipped away from the scene days before.
Just after the reunion, it seemed, Lulu had entirely ceased to exist.
He kept looking, desperate to find some meager tidbit about the cat's location- not even for his summoner's sake anymore, but because this was knowledge escaping his grasp, a deal undone and not by his own hands, an affront to his power, a challenge- but the search led to nothing but fatigue, energy used up on a task that was increasingly proving futile, exhaustion seeping into his very being.
Alcor finally deigned to return his attention to the scene in front of him and was greeted with trembling limbs and a face gone pale.
"I don't think you're willing to give what I'd ńe͝e̶d."
"…more than last time?"
Alcor just laughed, his cackle echoing in the musty room.
"Just tell me, unless it's like my soul or something I'll at least think about-"
The demon held up his hand, cutting off Derek's rambling speech. "So that's a no to the soul trade?"
"What? Are- you're not seriously saying I'd need to give you my soul to get back Lulu?"
"That's the idea, but given that you're clearly not willing to fol͜low ̧thrǫuģh͟, I think I'll be off."
"A soul for a lost cat is not a fair trade, and you know it!"
"Who said anything about f҉air̸?"
And with that, Alcor transported himself into the mindscape, trying not to look too closely at his summoner's distraught face in the process.
Lulu's mysterious disappearance was a small problem, all things considered. He could almost convince himself that it wasn't worth investigating, given how minor of an issue it would be in the grand scheme of things. But soon enough, Alcor was confronted with evidence that showed that one missing cat was just the tip of the iceberg.
There was the lawyer who pointed out that their airtight deal to extend their mother's life hadn't prevented her untimely death after all. The woman still plagued by nightmares, her Alcor-granted good-luck charm vanished into ether. The boy who disappeared from his newfound loving home and returned to the parents who had thought it a good idea to offer him up to a demon.
One by one, his deals were being undone.
And as he scrambled to make more, to make up for all that had been lost, Alcor noticed that his power was waning. Binding circles that hadn't worked on him for centuries were once again able to restrain him. His visions of the future were growing so fuzzy as to be utterly indistinct.
Even when he retreated into his corner of the mindscape- his one safe spot, his territory, where none were allowed to intrude- signs of his growing weakness still followed him. The Flock was growing smaller by the day. His meticulously-organized library had empty spaces where books had once been, and half the time Alcor couldn't even recall what was meant to go there, the gaps in his collection mirrored by gaps in his memory.
Something was deeply wrong, and he had no idea what.
The first potential cause that his mind leaped to was that some immensely powerful being was trying to destroy him, to tear apart his very existence from the inside out. But he hadn't made any new enemies recently, and even if some old foe was back to haunt him, who was powerful enough to eat away at his power without leaving a single clue about their presence?
And it was happening retroactively, too, deals that the demon knew he'd made being erased as if they had never been, which would require something more than mere force, it'd require some kind of…
Some kind of time travel.
He was reminded of an old movie that he'd watched several times over long ago- Return to the Future, it had been titled. Grossly inaccurate about most of the details surrounding time travel, of course, but that was to be expected of a pre-Transcendence flick. But in between nonsense about lightning strikes and shiny cars, the film had outlined the workings of a time paradox in a way that was surprisingly close to their reality.
But what paradox could he have caused? What had he done, or not done, that would break the timestream so drastically?
As if to answer this unspoken question, a portal opened up a few feet away from Alcor, its shape a circle just large enough to contain his form, its surface shimmering blue-black against the grayscale surroundings of the mindscape. A hole in the fabric of reality exposed itself right before his eyes, practically begging to be investigated. And if something wasn't done… well, this might not be the last of the damage.
What lay on the other side was an utter mystery, but if this was a time paradox of some sort- and as he ruminated on the thought, Alcor grew more and more convinced that that was the only logical explanation for the chaos that now surrounded him- then it had to lead somewhere, somewhen, that would fix things.
The fate of the world may well be contained within that circle's depths.
Alcor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and entered the portal.