A/N: I've finally returned to this story, and have spent a few days working on some plotting for future chapters. This definitely has a direction now, which definitely helps as far as trying to get the story moving. I worked in quite a few things that will be important in later chapters, so it made this one much longer than I'd anticipated! (Honestly, I'm okay with that!)

Jackal laid in his bed, staring at the pale blue ceiling that he'd painted without his father's permission. With how little he was summoned successfully, he'd started missing the sight of the sky on Earth. As a rule, he wasn't very fond of humans. Or Earth overall. But the sky? He loved the sky when it was clear and bright. After only a few minutes, he heard the human woman lying next to him start to stir. He needed to get her out of the Underworld, first and foremost. Which meant that he needed to convince her that reading his book and figuring out what the hell she wanted him to do in exchange for her soul one year from then would be in her best interest. In her own apartment. Away from him. As her eyes opened, he kept his gaze on the ceiling. He waited for her to sort through her thoughts that mostly revolved around no longer being able to deny that this was really happening to her. Because she was still wearing his sheet as a dress, and she was still lying in his bed and when she turned her head to see if she was alone, she found him still lying beside her.

Thankfully, she didn't scream. And she didn't kick him in the balls.

"Yeah, wild, right?" he muttered. Her staring at the side of his face was getting on his nerves. He picked his book up from the bed and handed it to her while they both sat up. "Read it."

She stared at the cover in silence and her fingers traversed the embossed cover.

"I'll get you back home so you can think it over," he said, glancing at her. She still didn't say anything, but he could hear her mulling over everything she'd learned already. "You can call me when you decide what you want." He smirked then. "You'll have me for a year, at least, so you should think of something good."

"Good?" she asked. Her voice was a bare wisp of sound. Almost like she was in shock. Oddly enough, this was a little more normal in Jackal's opinion. Suddenly learning that the world a human had known to be true was much larger than they'd known was, understandably, cause for some silent contemplation. "You're a demon. From my understanding, nothing good comes from demons."

He shrugged then. "That's all about perspective," he said. He needed to get her to commit a sin with his book, under the contract that he'd changed. Even if it was something minor, some selfish act, it would be enough to start snowballing her into more bad decisions. Things that he could use to sweeten the depravity in her soul. Jackal had to remind himself that he couldn't eat her soul anymore, not now that he'd changed the contract, but it would make her inevitable shift to being a full servant of the Underworld much easier if the innocent bright white soul inside her wasn't so bright. Or white. Or innocent. "Regardless, you've accepted the contract, which means that I'm at your service."

She scoffed and rolled her eyes at him. Jackal wasn't offended, but he could tell that she was reverting back to her it's all a bad dream theory.

"I get your soul either way, so you might as well enjoy the time you have left."

Her lips pursed in thought at that. "So I have to think of something for you to do for me, but you make things explode…" She winced then, and he completely understood what she was thinking before she even voiced it. "I don't really want to do that."

He'd already thought of that. It was something that Jackal had needed to consider when he'd been given his book to memorize before it was sent to Earth for mortals to start throwing away their souls for a small taste of power. He put a clawed finger on the book. "Read it," he said. "Explosions are just my specialty. You give me a task, and I make it happen. Either give me specifics if you want me to do it a certain way, or the end goal that I make happen however I see fit."

He sincerely hoped that she came up with an end goal for him to accomplish. Those were always more fun, from what he'd heard from his brothers. It meant that he would get to do things however he wanted to, without having to check in with her over every single decision that he made.

When he met her gaze, she was staring at him, wide-eyed and confused once again. "Read the book, and summon me again afterward."

"How will I summon you?"

"You'll know when you read the fucking book."

"I won't have to do that gunpowder thing again, will I?"

"No," he sighed. "That's only to make the contract." He opened the book and flipped to the right page, then pointed to the text without looking too closely at it. He glanced down to make sure he was showing her the right part, then discretely slid his finger over to the other page. "Here. You say that, and I'll appear."

"O, Jackal of Tartaros, hear my plea…" she read from the book, then stopped and stared at him. Yeah, even Jackal wasn't a fan of how this was written. "Seriously?"

He rolled his eyes then. "I didn't write this shit. It's just how it works."

She accepted it. Fucking finally. She let out a heavy sigh that dropped her shoulders in defeat, and stood from the bed, clutching his book to her chest. "Well, I guess I should be going?"

Jackal watched with no small amount of amusement while she closed her eyes tightly and scrunched her nose. He slowly stood and listened to her thinking something along the lines of 'There's no place like home.' Before she could click her heels together, he asked, "What the fuck are you doing?"

She peeked one eye open to look at him. "I'm going home?"

"Fucking humans," he muttered with a shake of his head. He turned and stalked to his bedroom door, threw it open and walked out without once looking back to see if she was following him. He needed to get her out of here before he did something stupid.

Then again, he couldn't get much more stupid than putting that damned seal on her chest.

Lucy watched, stunned into silence, as Jackal's tail disappeared through the open doorway. That was all the time it took for her to realize that, even though his room did smell like a relaxing apple cinnamon Glade plugin, she didn't want to stand there all by herself. In Hell. Wearing only a sheet and no bra or panties. With that thought in mind, she rushed out after him and then paused in the unfamiliar hallway with it's dreary stonework walls, brass braziers burning what had to be magical crimson flames, and the sudden realization that she wasn't wearing shoes when she caught sight of him off to her left and felt stone beneath her feet while jogging to close the distance between them.

"Jackal, wait up!"

"Walk faster," he called behind him.

She huffed and ran faster, only slowing down when she was next to him. And then speeding up again when she realized just how long his strides were. Even though he was stomping his furry pawed-feet down the hall, and she struggled to keep up with him, Lucy still found just a little of her focus drifting toward the open archways along the hall. That caused her feet to slow considerably. She stopped walking beside Jackal and instead made her way closer to the nearest archway, placing her hands on the stone banister while she looked out across the foreign terrain. Her breath caught on a gasp at the sheer size of the sprawling land before her. There was no natural light that she could see, and there was no night sky above them, and still she could tell that something high above where her vision could make out any detail was some sort of yellowish-orange light that shined down on spindling spires of buildings in the distance, and the strange walkways that crossed over one another leading from high doorways seemingly built into stalactites that didn't seem to be connected to anything, down into underground passages whose entries she couldn't seem to pinpoint.

"What the fuck are you doing, just standing here?" Jackal growled.

"This place," she breathed. "Is it really Hell?"

She didn't look away from the different buildings that she could pick out the longer she focused on them. They all seemed to be designed differently. No two buildings were quite the same, architecturally speaking. Not that Lucy knew much about that. She didn't really recognize any of the stylistic choices either. There were no quaint cottages draped in creeping vines with rose gardens - not that she'd expected any - and no concrete buildings or skyscrapers. But one building looked a little like a hospital, if she squinted and tilted her head at an odd angle. And another was possibly even bordering on a castle parapet.

"We generally call it the Underworld," Jackal said, leaning his hip against the stone banister and crossing his arms over his chest. "Hell is a human term that doesn't translate well."

"How come?" she asked.

He chuckled, finally drawing her attention to his pointed teeth bared in his smirk down at her. "Hell is a human notion, based on one of your human religions," he said. "The entities that live in the Underworld are more than just demons and devils." A screeching roar had Lucy's attention shifting back to the landscape. There, far in the distance, she could swear she saw something akin to a dragon flying through the air and behind a plume of black smoke billowing up from something she couldn't make out. And moments later, three large tentacles reached up for what she was sure were hundreds of miles, swatting viciously at the flying beast. "That's Rogue's den."

Lucy frowned. "What's a Rogue's den?"

"Rogue. Mard Geer's fifth spawn," he said. "He tames monsters." She didn't see him nod toward the area with the tentacled monster and the dragon. She was positive that it was a dragon when she saw it breathe out something black and smoky. "That's where he keeps all the monsters that Echidna pumps out, and he tames and trains them to fight for the King's army."

She looked up when a sudden chill swept over her, watching as an icy bridge formed from the building they were standing in - several stories higher than the floor they were on - and led toward one of the many other walkways she'd noticed earlier. Walkways, she finally realized, that were also made of ice.

"That's Gray," Jackal said. She tried following one pathway, and her jaw dropped open in amazement when she realized that it travelled right through lava spouting up from a large chasm, but the bridge stayed intact. "Sixth spawn of Mard Geer. He takes judged souls from limbo to their final destination."

"Not their resting place?"

He snorted. "Not all souls rest," he said. His hand extended and she followed his pointing black claw to a dark stone building with a twenty-foot tall iron fence surrounding it. She and Jackal were high enough that she couldn't see the sharp tips of the iron fencing, but she could see the twenty writhing human bodies skewered on random posts - some from between their legs, others through the abdomen, and one through the roof of his mouth, with each of his hands skewered on the spikes next to his head. "Zancrow," Jackal said. "Second spawn of Mard Geer and torturer of human souls. Not all souls go there, but..."

She could hear the screams from down below the longer she looked at the building. That was definitely a place that she never wanted to find herself. Not that she planned on spending much time in Hell, but still. Avoiding it at all costs whenever she did happen to find herself walking arm in arm with her golden-eyed demon through the den of evil incarnate would probably be a wise choice.

"Come with me," he said, his voice a soft growl. She blinked in surprise and looked up at his still-smirking lips, watching as Jackal tipped his head in the direction he'd been taking her. "There's a better angle down this way."

Her adventurous side decided to pop out and take him up on the offer of getting a better look at this place she planned on never visiting again. Finally, Lucy stepped away from the banister and - still clutching Jackal's leather-bound book to her chest and inadvertently covering the crossed hammers now branded on her chest - followed him down the hall, around a curve to the right and up a flight of smooth stone steps. They slowed in front of an archway that opened out onto a ten-foot square balcony, and Jackal led her out to view the Underworld in its entirety. Even though they'd only gone up one flight of stairs, and it hadn't seemed like that much of a climb, she was noticeably higher above the ground than before. High enough that Lucy refused to step too close to the edge for fear that one unruly sneeze would send her toppling over the edge and plummeting to her death. That would be her luck, wouldn't it? Survive being sliced to near-ribbons by some monster, taken to Hell by a demon, and then eventually dying because she fell off a balcony that she really had no reason to be standing on in the first place, aside from her own inane curiosity.

"You might not be able to see it," Jackal said, pointing down to the fog-covered ground far below them. "Orcs walking out of the mines."

Lucy peered down at the ground and just barely saw a large group of nearly a thousand marching out from a cave, a hundred of which wore armor and stood three-humans wide around the edges of the group. In the midst were humans, she assumed, that looked as though they were covered in injuries and black soot.

"One branch of Mard Geer's military," he said. "Led by Gajeel, the eighth spawn. There was some sort of rebellion, so he went down and… dealt with it."

Lucy grimaced and looked away when she saw an orc in armor bash a weapon over one of the humans. Her gaze landed on something she never would have imagined possible. A green and black river with longboats gliding along its surface off to her right wove through the air, down to the ground and around the front of Zancrow's torture chamber, then along a far wall off to the left. The river flowed upward into a large, domineering doorway and melded with the closed door. Screaming faces swirled across its surface, overlapping one another. "What's that?"

"Some humans call it the River Styx, from what I've learned," Jackal said. "We all call it Bickslow's river. All souls are taken down it. Lost souls are stuck in the river and the more determined or righteous ones ride on a boat. But the destination's the same. Limbo."

Lucy frowned in thought. "So, someone dies and goes along the river up to limbo, then they get judged, and take one of those icy bridges to where they're supposed to spend the rest of eternity?"

"That's the basic gist."

She glanced up at him then. "Who's Bickslow?"

Jackal rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Third spawn of Mard Geer."

"Goodness," she teased. "How much of a slut is the King of the Underworld?"

A wicked grin curled his lips then. "Well, he has nine sons, all with different mothers," he said. "And hundreds or even thousands of other demonesses he's never impregnated. He really enjoys succubi."

"Jesus," she breathed.

"Cursing in Hell," he chuckled. "What a naughty human, you are."

It took her a moment to realize that saying the name of a holy figure probably would be considered uncouth language where she was. And another few moments after that to figure out that Jackal was teasing her. Again. He distracted her after that, though, by pointing to a towering spire that corkscrewed high into the sky. High enough that the top disappeared into a dark, rumbling thunder cloud. It seemed no matter how much she thought she'd seen, there was always something new and unexpected just in her periphery.

"That's the Libriat," he said. "The only library in the whole Underworld."

Just a single spire? That was… a little underwhelming, to be honest.

"It's about 500 times larger on the inside," he said. "Freed, he runs the Libriat, set runes up so that you never climb a set of stairs, and you always end up at the exact shelf you need as long as you have a list of books from him."

"And if you don't?"

He grinned with a dark, malicious twist to his lips. "Good luck getting out," he said. "He's not one of Mard Geer's spawn, so he had to make a name for himself in a serious way to get a job like that. And considering how much the King values books, Freed does his job well." Lucy shuddered at the thought of trying to sneak into that library and being stuck in the stacks for all eternity. While the nerdy book-lover inside her thought that sounded lovely, the pragmatic side of her knew that never being able to leave the library would inevitably drive her insane. "And just next to it is the Health department."

Lucy didn't even spare a single glance to the mundane, pitch black, single story building. Instead, she stared at Jackal. "Did you just say health department?" she asked. "Like, the Center for Demonic Disease Control?"

"Sorta," he laughed. "Cobra, he's the seventh spawn, runs the place. It's part hospital, part research facility."

Her eyes widened after that. "Cobra!" she nearly shouted. She remembered that name. And his tanned face and single indigo eye. And how he'd put gloves on his red-scaled hands before touching her in any way. "He's the one I met!"

"Yeah." His answer was short, to the point, and just a little too blunt. Enough so that Lucy had a feeling Jackal didn't particularly care for that brother of his. Still, Cobra did seem nice enough, all things considered. He'd helped her get dressed so she wouldn't be walking around naked. And then he'd warned her not to wander around in the Health department. She looked down at the building, memorizing its location so she could be sure to avoid going there as well.

During all of the visits that she was never going to make to Hell.

"That's pretty much it," he said with a shrug. She could see that there was a lot more to this place that he hadn't told her about, but maybe he wasn't allowed to talk about it. Some sort of demonic gag order, perhaps, that kept Jackal and his kind from telling humans too many secrets. But Jackal turned away from the balcony and walked back into the main building, leaving Lucy alone and staring up at the - after a quick count - ten stories of towering stone.

This place seemed limitless. Maybe it really was, she thought while walking back in and stepping up to Jackal's side.

"Let's get you out of here."

Lucy nodded and walked alongside him down one corridor and the next without much thought over the layout of the building. She hadn't a clue where Jackal's room even was in relation to where they were, or how many turns they'd made. "Wait, Cobra told me you're the ninth," she said. "You left out two of the devil's hellspawn."

Jackal snorted again. "You have no clue how fucking offensive you are, do you?"

Lucy paused in her step. "Is hellspawn offensive?"

"Immensely," he said, though he was so nonchalant about it that she wasn't sure if he was being honest. "And calling him the devil. He hates that. I'd suggest never letting him hear you say it."

Well, she'd definitely keep that in mind. The last thing she wanted was to piss off the devil… King of the Underworld… Jackal's big, scary demon daddy. That last one had her biting back a laugh.

"There's Tempester, the fourth spawn," he said, slowing his steps so she could catch up with him again. "Those natural disasters on Earth that kill thousands of humans? Usually him."

Lucy blanched then stumbled when Jackal's arm shot out in front of her. "What the-"

She didn't have a chance to finish her irritated question when he slammed her roughly into a wall and pressed his back against her chest. Lucy couldn't find her breath when something dark and oppressive weighed down on her shoulders, sucking the joy out of her very pores with every thundering step that came closer to them.

"Stay quiet," Jackal breathed over his shoulder.

"Jackal," a low, grating voice snarled. "What is that disgusting smell?" She heard heavy metal armor shifting closer, and naturally tried to make herself as small as possible. "You smell like a woman." Her eyes closed tightly when she heard a loud inhale. "A human woman." The amount of hatred in this unfamiliar voice nearly had her knees buckling. "What have you been up to?"

"None of your fucking business, Leo," Jackal snarled, but she noticed that he kept his head bowed low.

Lucy nearly screamed when Jackal was suddenly no longer in front of her, and she looked up to find a man with a long mane of ginger hair glaring down at her as Jackal's body slammed into a wall on the opposite side of the hallway. She clutched Jackal's book more tightly to her chest. Just like Jackal, animalistic ears sat atop of his head, the same color as his hair. The armor she'd heard was heavy - probably much heavier than anything she could lift - with gold plating on his shoulders, waist, and greaves, and black plating wrapping around his chest. His bright orange eyes narrowed and his lip curled up in a snarl. In the span of a breath that she couldn't pull in, his black clawed hand wrapped around her throat and lifted her up so she was eye level with him.

"You," he growled. "You're where that putrid smell is coming from."

She gagged when his grip tightened on her throat. Her feet kicked helplessly beneath her. She didn't even try to get him to let go. Just by meeting his gaze, she knew there was no way she could even make the attempt. He would rip out her entrails well before she could even tighten the muscles in her arm to try and touch him. Tears welled in her eyes as she choked on the minimal air she'd had in her lungs before he showed up.

"L-Leo, let her go!" Jackal bellowed.

"You brought a human to our realm," Leo snapped, never taking his hate-filled gaze from Lucy. "And now this whore is stinking up the halls of the King's castle."

"Leave her alone!" Jackal yelled, slowly standing up and shaking the dizziness from his head. "I-I'm taking her back up to Earth!"

"This thing shouldn't be here in the first place!" Leo roared. His next inhale had him visibly gagging. He pulled her away from the wall only to slam her back into it and knock the last of her air from her lungs. Her grip on Jackal's book loosened slightly, but she caught it before it could fall and dragged it back into her chest. "I should take her to Zancrow and have him give her to the Barbs. They'll have a field day."

Lucy didn't like the sound of that at all. She recognized the name in an instant though; Zancrow would torture her. That was all she needed to know to assume that the Barbs weren't a group of suburban soccer moms who would offer her mimosas, a pink polo shirt, and a pair of khaki capris.

"Her soul's mine!" Jackal yelled. "I m-made a contract with her, so I g-get her soul!"

Leo's grip loosened slightly at hearing that, and Lucy desperately sucked in a ragged breath the reeked of dried blood. "A contract?" he growled. "You don't make contracts."

"I did!" Jackal yelled. He stormed over to them and grabbed Leo's arm with his hand glowing a bright, murderous orange. "She's m-mine! You can't do whatever you want just because you're the oldest!"

Lucy whimpered when Jackal pulled on Leo's arm, and the resulting force felt as though it would snap her neck.

"You untouchable piece of shit, don't put your grubby paws on me!" Leo roared. Lucy screamed when Leo swung a fist centimeters in front of her face and clocked Jackal right in the jaw, sending him tumbling backward once more. Leo's gaze settled on her once again, and the smile he sent her way chilled her to the bone. This demon was nothing like Jackal. He was more vicious, more terrifying. "Now, what should I do with you? Take you to Zancrow? Feed you to Rogue's other siblings?"

She couldn't find her voice to speak for several seconds, but when she did, she said the one thing that came to mind. "Mard Geer," she breathed.

"You dare speak the king's name with your unworthy tongue?!"

"Take me… to the King," she rasped as he choked her again.

Jackal roared from where he'd landed on the floor and rushed forward, trying to tackle Leo to the ground. He froze when he saw Leo lifting his other hand with what Lucy could only call a ball of purple and black fire. Aimed right at her face. "She's m-mine, Leo! I made the contract, and the King knows about it already! If you kill her-"

"Leo."

Lucy's eyes widened at the sound of Mard Geer's voice ricocheting between her ears with so much intensity that she would have collapsed if her feet were even on the ground. Just one word, but the finality of his tone offered no room for argument from the demon before her. Leo didn't speak, but she felt his grip tightening on her throat a fraction of an inch. His other hand's flames intensified, but she couldn't feel it burning her. Instead her chest tightened with despair and tears sprung to her eyes as she stared into its swirling depths.

"The human belongs to Jackal. Do not keep me waiting."

Lucy fell to the floor when he let her go. One hand instantly lifted to her throat as she curled up into a ball. Her teary eyes lifted to find Leo glaring down at her; specifically, the book that was still clutched to her chest. Finally, he looked at Jackal. "Worthless dog," Leo said. Without another word, he turned and walked down the way Jackal and Lucy had come, and disappeared around a corner to the right.

Jackal walked closer and knelt beside her. "Fucking asshole," he muttered. She felt the tip of his claw gently touching her chin, and slowly turned to look into his golden eyes. It wasn't hard to see that he was furious, but his touch was gentle, almost shaky in the single digit that stayed against her quivering jaw. "You okay?"

Lucy nodded quickly. It was a lie. She wasn't okay in the slightest, but what was she supposed to say? That she wasn't scared out of her mind from that demon's mere presence? That she'd been a hundred percent positive he was going to kill her? Then again, if she compared the potential result of her dying at Leo's hands with sitting on the floor and trying not to shit herself, she was definitely doing a lot better. It was all about perspective. "Wh-Who was that?"

"Leo," he snarled, glaring down the hallway for a moment. "First-born spawn of Mard Geer." He looked back into her eyes then. "He's the top general in the King's army. They go to other realms, and deal with whatever the great King of the Underworld tells them to."

She could taste his sarcasm in the air, it was so potent. But Lucy didn't have time to dwell on what she'd heard Leo saying - to either herself or Jackal. She wanted to get the fuck out of there, right away. And, by the look in his eyes, Jackal wanted the same thing. She just wasn't sure if he wanted to get her out to keep her safe, or because he was going to go on a murderous rampage as soon as she was back in her apartment.

She quickly swiped away her tears before they could fall, and pulled herself up to stand on trembling legs. They held her, thankfully. She didn't fall, and she didn't stumble and lose her footing while taking a tentative step forward. Lucy kept her gaze squarely on the ground as Jackal picked up the previous pace they'd had, and then started walking with more purpose than before. After a couple more minutes, and a flight of stairs leading down in a long spiralling tower with no windows, she found her voice.

A distraction from the near-death experience with Leo was what she really needed.

"It sounds like all of your brothers have a job of some sort," she said.

"Yeah."

"What about you?"

Jackal scowled at her for half a second before setting his attention on the hallway once more. He opened a door and walked through it, pausing for her to follow. "I read," he said. "My only job for now is to read the whole history of the universe, or some stupid shit."

"... What?"

"Every spawn of the King has to know that before they can be given a role," he sighed. "I'm still reading it."

That was definitely not what she'd been expecting. So every child that Mard Geer had, needed to know the whole history of the universe? How long would that even take to learn? "H-How far have you gotten?"

He was silent long enough for her to look up at him and find a pensive expression on his face. "I just finished the beginning of the Persian empire," he said eventually. "So… 500 BC?"

"And where did you… start?"

"Creation," he said. Again, it was nonchalant, as though it was nothing new or intriguing. If anything, he sounded bored by it. And Lucy could understand that, for sure. Having to read the entire history of the universe from its very creation? That must be mind-numbingly tedious. If she'd had more of her wits about her, maybe she would have thought to ask him how the universe really began. Or any number of other questions that humanity was still trying to solve, once and for all. She didn't ask him anything. They turned a corner and he finally stopped at a thin hallway, much thinner than the rest they'd gone through. Jackal took a deep, steadying breath and walked in with her following closely behind him. They exited into a small circular room with a bronze dome ceiling only a few feet above Jackal's head. Jackal's eyes closed as she stood in front of him. Lucy took a moment to look around, to make sure none of his other brothers had followed them into the small room. They were alone.

"Okay, there's no one at your apartment," he said, looking at her again. He put a hand on his book, still in her grasp. "Close your eyes. This might make you sick."

As her eyes closed, Lucy felt movement in the air around them. She couldn't open her eyes though. Too much had already gone wrong in the last 24 hours alone that she didn't want to chance anything else happening. When the world was still again, she kept her eyes closed.

"You're home."

Slowly, she peeked up at him and found his golden eyes had a slight orange glow in the pupils. But then their surroundings filtered in and she was home. Her blue paisley wallpaper was just behind him, and she could still smell the overwhelming scent of garlic and gunpowder in the air. The sun was still out, as though it hadn't been all that long since she'd left. It felt like hours.

"It's been 5 minutes on Earth," he said. "Time moves differently."

Lucy watched in silence as he stepped back from her and looked at the book.

"Read it," he told her again. "Summon me when you're done, and we'll finalize what you want from me in exchange for your soul." Before she could muster even a thought that would turn into words, he disappeared in a puff of smoke with burning embers floating around what had once been his outline. She was left alone in her apartment, hungrier than before, and more than willing to treat herself with a fucking pizza for the shit she'd just gone through.

Freed sat alone in the Libriat at a large quartz table, a heavy tome in front of him and several other books stacked to his left and right. It was the perfect spot to be able to welcome demons to the Libriat, give them the list of books they requested, and ensure everything was run smoothly. This place also had the best lighting, but that was because Freed had requisitioned a chandelier with inverted, waxless candles to hang in the entry chamber. Most demons complained about the extra light, but Freed knew that it was entirely possible for even demonic eyes to deteriorate from reading for too long with only low lighting.

His own mother's sister had needed glasses for nearly 500 years before she eventually plucked the eyes from her head to be done with updating her prescription. Freed was never allowed to bring up how moronic that was when she was within three miles of him. Her hearing was far too good those days.

The door opened as he turned the page in the large tome and started transcribing the scratchy, nearly illegible text slowly. A familiar step drew his attention to his guest just as he pulled up the magnifying glass to try and make out the scribbled note in a margin. Jackal walked closer, his ears perked up at attention, and Freed offered him a thin smile. "Ah, Jackal. Come for more books?"

Jackal nodded and stopped at the line neary a foot from Freed's table, as he knew to do. "I brought the others back yesterday," Jackal said. Of course he did. Not once in the centuries that Jackal had been coming to the Libriat and checking out books had he ever turned one in late. Of course, return dates were really based on Freed's preferences, as the keeper of all the tomes in the Underworld. He just preferred the books being in the Libriat, but he couldn't keep the information all to himself. He especially couldn't keep it from one of the nine spawn of Mard Geer. And even moreso, he could never keep a book from Jackal. "I left off at 515 BC."

Freed's smile widened as he mentally perused Earth's complete timeline. He'd long ago memorized the events on Earth from one corner to the next. "Oh, things on Earth did get more interesting in that era," he said. Freed paused and opened the log book that detailed each text a demon checked out, pausing at Jackal's latest collection of texts. "It looks like you left off with the Persians. How many books are you wanting this time?"

When Jackal was silent longer than usual, Freed looked up at him to find him wincing. "Well, I've got a contract, so…"

That was definitely a surprise. Freed couldn't readily recall the last time Jackal had taken a human contract. His brothers had steady contracts at least twice every generation - Bickslow and Zancrow, surprisingly, tended to have four or five contracts in a generation, as their books circulated the most often - with the exception of Leo whose book had been taken out of circulation on Earth after he was summoned by Adolf Hitler and sent the casualties skyrocketing. Mard Geer had been proud of Leo's prowess, but he'd had to admit - after Bickslow and Gray told him they couldn't keep up with the workload - his eldest son had gone too far in his desire to rid with world of humans.

"I see," Freed finally said. "Congratulations on your contract. Perhaps just a couple books this time to fit in with your current schedule?"

He didn't miss the way Jackal's tail swished and his ears lowered just a hair. "It's not a regular one," he said. "The human has no goal for me yet."

"Ah," Freed said, nodding his understanding. Gajeel tended to have those sorts of contracts quite often, so Freed understood both the time Jackal would spend waiting to be summoned for his task, and how it could either take a long time to complete, or no time at all. "Then the usual ten books? And I can extend your due dates, considering the circumstances."

"The Persian stuff was kinda boring," he said. "Is there something else?"

Freed smirked at him then. That he found the rise of the Persian empire boring was interesting, considering his penchant for destruction. Although, it was entirely possible that Jackal destroyed things so often because of his cursed power. Or how his brothers treated him.

"You made it further than most," Freed said. "And you have about 500 years before things start moving in Britain. You'll want to start learning the languages for the coming countries as well, but you'll need to finish the Persian empire to understand its repercussions in the rest of history."

Jackal's heavy sigh was warranted. Freed could admit that. None of the other spawns of the King had needed to read as much. Their mothers had taught them a great majority of the history they needed to know. "Which languages?"

Freed looked at his books again, even though he didn't need to. It was a small concession he made to set other demons at ease. Generally, it freaked them out when he answered their questions too quickly. The telling pale purple flash in his left eye would let anyone who knew that he had perfect recall of everything he'd ever read know that he was using the ability right then. "Old French, Old Norse, Old English, and Latin. At some point, you really should start looking into the Eastern countries as well." Jackal hadn't ventured into any of the Mongolian history, and had yet to learn Chinese, one of the oldest languages on Earth. Freed had made the executive decision to have Jackal focus on specific areas, then return to previous eras to learn what happened in other parts of Earth at the same time as what he'd already learned. "The romance and Germanic languages tend to carry similar roots with Indo-European, so that's where most of your focus has been so far."

"But I already learned Indo-European!" Jackal snarled. "And then you told me that humans barely even know that it exists, let alone how to translate it!"

Freed glanced at Jackal and smirked. "Old Norse is very similar to a current language on Earth, so it's not a complete waste."

"And the others?" Ah, he was getting petulant. This could end poorly, and the last thing Freed wanted was to listen to him trying to explode the books in the stacks. Again.

"Roots for the current languages," he said. "Latin is considered a dead language by humans, but it is used in many languages on Earth. Mostly in the sciences. And in some of their religious texts."

"So… four languages, huh?"

"Yes." Good. Jackal was accepting it. That didn't mean that Freed couldn't tease him just a little, though. "Do you think you can manage?"

"Yes!" Jackal roared.

Freed nearly laughed over it all while he pulled out another piece of parchment and started writing down the titles of the books Jackal needed. His visible eye glowed a pale purple while he ran through his mental catalogue of the titles, their locations, and wrote them in the order that Jackal would need to find them to spend the least amount of time wandering around the Libriat. He finished the list, pulled Jackal's usual enchanted extradimensional satchel from beneath the table so he could collect his books, and offered both to the snarling demon in front of him.

Jackal didn't take anything right away. He looked at the offered list and bellowed, "This is sixteen books! What the fuck, Freed?!"

Once again, Freed smiled - a common occurrence when he got to deal with Jackal. The normally stoic, green-haired demon just couldn't help himself. Jackal was so expressive, so open with his emotions and how things around him affected him. Of course, the way he generally expressed those emotions was through anger, but Freed knew Jackal much better than most. He'd been the one to take the ninth spawn under his tutelage after the first time the young demon had wandered into the Libriat with tears in his eyes and his tail between his legs.

"Nine are history," Freed said, gesturing to the list. "Six are the history on Earth as it is written by humans, and three of the true history as it happened, including the contributions of demons and the interference of the fairies and God."

"And the other seven?"

"Languages, of course," Freed chuckled.

He waited for Jackal to read through the list more closely, still not reaching out for the paper or the satchel. "But I'm only learning four new ones," Jackal muttered.

"As Old Norse is closely related to a current language called Icelandic, you should learn the pronunciation as well, with this text," he said, underlining one of the books.

"That's fair, I guess," Jackal said. He hadn't been told to learn how to speak any languages that weren't either currently in use - so far, none of them were - or with phonetic systems similar enough to a current language to make it a necessity. The exception had been English, both Early Modern and the current Late Modern variations, so that he could communicate with the humans who summoned him.

"The last two are requirements from the King," Freed said. "You need to brush up on your demonology, and continue practicing your writing."

"My writing is fine!"

All Freed could do was pull a thin blue notebook from the stack to his left without looking and hold it open in front of Jackal. He watched as Jackal read through his own handwriting. "This is hardly legible," Freed said flatly. "Unless you meant to write…" He paused and turned the book to read it. "Di firsting bod wishted warden."

Jackal scowled at the book when Freed turned it back toward him. "The thirsty dog wanted water," he read aloud. "It's right there!"

He wasn't fast enough to snatch the book list and satchel from Freed's other hand. Once Jackal's clawed fingers touched the paper, Freed dropped the blue notebook and grabbed his wrist in a tight, nearly bruising grip. He met Jackal's burning gaze, his now-turqouise eyes outwardly showing no emotion. "Take your time, Ninth," he said quietly. "When you rush through the exercises, you get sloppy. Take your time, and do it right."

He could nearly feel Jackal's struggle not to back down from the confrontation. Having eight older brothers had always kept him at the bottom of the any interaction, always in a position of the least power. But Freed knew that, as Jackal aged, he'd tried more and more to not show weakness in front of anyone.

Eventually, Jackal lost his own internal fight. His ears lowered mere moments before he averted his eyes to stare at the quartz tabletop. "Writing takes too long," he muttered. "It's stupid. Not like I need to write for anything, anyway."

He was able to pull away when Freed's grip went slack with shock. It wasn't what Jackal had said, but what he'd kept to himself. "You must learn it all the same, on the King's command," he said softly, his voice offering only a small kernel of the sympathy he felt. Jackal didn't notice it at all. "You should take your time to get it right."

As Jackal stormed off with his list and satchel to collect his books, Freed let out a heavy sigh. For centuries, he'd been trying to discreetly undo the traumatic conditioning that his brothers and other demons had put him through. And for centuries, Freed had failed on most accounts.

"You still think you're stupid, don't you, you silly pup?" he whispered under his breath. With a shake of his head, he returned his attention to the tome in front of him, picked up his magnifying glass and tried to continue deciphering the notes in the margins. "Yet here you are, learning on your own because the king slaughtered your mother, and left you to fend for yourself."

For so long, Freed had hoped that his own private lessons teaching Jackal how to read and write and even speak at the age of fifteen would have given him an anchor. He matured physically at a normal rate, but he'd spent his formative years after being weaned off of his nursemaid unable to say more than an apology. When Freed first met him, Jackal hadn't even been able to say his own name. On occasion, he could still hear that small, shaky voice stuttering "I sowwy" while looking at Jackal. From what Gajeel had told him, Jackal did still stutter when he was upset enough. Of course, Jackal didn't mention it to Freed at all. He ignored his shortcomings and pretended he no longer struggled with putting his words together.

An explosion rocked the foundation of the building, and Freed chuckled quietly to himself when he heard Jackal yelling obscenities in the distance. He looked at the blue notebook with Jackal's handwriting, glancing through the exercises that Freed had written up for him to complete over the last month. He would need to give Jackal the next one when he returned with his books. Which reminded him… Freed took a moment to pull the red notebook he'd finished filling out just that morning, with Jackal's new writing exercises, from the bottom of the stacked books to his right.

He turned back to the tome he needed to finish transcribing sometime that century, a book written by the King himself concerning the history of another realm called Asgard. "Maybe I should show Jackal his father's handwriting," Freed muttered to himself. He grimaced while leaning closer to the tome, tilting his head to one side in a vain attempt at deciphering the word in front of him. He couldn't even make out what letters the King had been attempting to write, and he was positive that Mard Geer hadn't decided to put a picture in the middle of the text. He was prone to doodling, after all. "Utterly atrocious, my King."

I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Yes, I normally headcanon that Mard Geer's handwriting would put the best calligraphers to shame, but it was too good a notion to pass up to give him horrible chicken scratch in this story.