Chương 261: Book Six, Chapter 23: Equivocation Part I

Hiding while the action was happening elsewhere was starting to get old. Isaac had taken charge upstairs and was ushering people into this other version of Hot Head. I stared from a distance, trying to understand what I was looking at. It looked like they would step up on the platform of his lower mouth and climb into some invisible space above, which must have been the oven up on the surface. They were climbing one at a time, and in a hurry. All I could do was listen through my headphones.

"Something's wrong," Avery said. I could hear a hissing sound and a voom, like the internal mechanism was trying to fire on.

"It's going to blow up," Ramona said.

"It's our only way out," Isaac said.

"Faster! Climb faster!" he screamed. I could hear shaking, and I could see above as the giant version of Hot Head started to rock back and forth, shooting up flames. He wasn't the only thing doing that. Looking around me in the pit, a mockery of the dining room above, I saw all the props start to melt away, and as they melted, pools of lava began to form on the ground. Fire plumes shot into the sky. It wasn't just Hot Head that was starting to ignite. This place was starting to look like hell. Properly.

I preferred it aesthetically to the nightmare pizza parlor. I just wished I wasn't standing in it. Upstairs, I could hear them rushing to get into Hot Head and to climb up to the world above before Hot Head himself was consumed and became nothing but fire. One rescued NPC after another would go, until all that was left were the named characters. Ruck pushed Avery to go next and then grabbed Ramona by the arm and forced her up as she tried to stay back.

"You next," he said to Isaac, who obliged him, climbing into the mouth of Hot Head and then ascending to the kitchen above. Finally, Ruck made it up the stairs and barely made his way out of the oven before something started to burst. I could hear them up above. They were in the kitchen, I had to assume, because of all the clanging pans that I would probably have to clean up. I could hear the back door slamming after they ran through it. Then the explosion. First, I saw the giant Hot Head start to ignite.

Then I heard the sizzle in my ears. I reached up to bring my headphones down because I knew a loud noise was about to happen. And it was, because at the same time that the Hot Head down here was exploding, all those pots and pans up in the kitchen seemed to explode too. All around me was fire and lava. A feeling of doom took over me. Was I trapped in hell? The heat, which had not really been a problem before, suddenly became one. I was so hot I wanted to rip off my clothes. I wanted to rip off my skin.

I could feel it coming from all directions. Sweat drenched me as the fires around me grew. There was no escape. Well, there was the one. I woke up drenched in sweat, just as I had for every other nightmare. I was back in my character's bed. It was dark outside. There was a difference this time, though. I remembered everything. I rinsed the sweat off my body, then got dressed and ran to Pecatto's Pizza. I didn't know how this weird dream thing worked.

It was mostly Off-Screen, and likely the effect of the demon messing with me, or maybe it was Carousel. How could I know? I saw the restaurant long before I got to it. The firefighters had just finished putting out the flames, but there was still smoke rising, or maybe it was steam. The fire engines were still blaring their lights and horns. I ran to the parking lot and passed a very confused NPC trying to convince a firefighter that she had just escaped hell, which was inside the oven man's mouth.

That conversation was On-Screen, and I myself went On-Screen too as I surveyed the damage, but just for a bit. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Avery, Isaac, and Ramona were standing on the far side of the parking lot next to Ruck's car, which had not been moved since he was kidnapped. He was changing his clothes from a spare set he had in the trunk. He wasn't exactly shy, but they were Off-Screen, so what did anyone care?

Gus Junior was there. In fact, the entire Bonaventura family seemed to have shown up to watch as their livelihood went up in flames. Standing next to Gus, smiling as she looked at me, was Verity Pryce, the head demoness herself. Gus looked afraid. He looked ashamed. And I knew that as his restaurant was burning, he had made a deal. Of course he had. He was always going to make that deal. For as good a deed as it was to rescue all those poor souls in hell, this storyline was really only about rescuing one person.

And if he didn't make that deal, how could we save him? Hell was a subplot, after all—a very distracting one at that. Carousel gathered footage of the aftermath of the fire. As soon as the fire department left, the smoldering stopped. Then, Carousel got more footage as Gus and the family stepped through the ruins of their restaurant. It was time for the real final battle, which would not be fought with fists or swords, but with words.

And who was better armed for this fight than Camden and Anna, who had arrived to see the destruction? The family and many employees were gathered there. All of the rescued NPCs seemed to have thanked their lucky stars and skedaddled. That was for the best. It would have been complicated to expand on that subplot with so little time left in the story.

"Today we've had quite the setback," Gus said to everyone who was listening. He was holding back tears, but not well. He went on to talk about how his family had founded the restaurant and how his father and older brother Dante had made it everything it was. We had heard this all before in piecemeal, and even Carousel didn't see fit to record the whole thing. Then he got to the good part.

"We are very fortunate that my father's business partners have agreed to put forward enough money for us to rebuild," he said.

"We won't just build back, we're going to build a better restaurant. And I think we're going to move forward with our franchising dreams." His emotions were so strange; he was saying happy things and trying to be hopeful. But as a man who had just sold his soul to the devil, he was clearly devastated.

"I just want my family to know that I would do anything for them. And no matter what, I will make sure that we are taken care of," he said. Because that was what it was all about, right? Like father, like son.

"No!" Anna screamed.

"You can't accept her deal! Don't you know what she is?" Some of the family members gasped at the interruption following Gus's emotional speech. Gus might have been the only Bonaventura who wasn't upset because he knew exactly what Anna was talking about. If anything, he was only confused that Anna knew.

"We already made the deal," he said.

"We're moving forward. We have no choice. I have no choice." I liked Gus as a person and as a boss, but I had to say, Pryce chose her victim well.

"She's a literal demon," Anna said. She didn't exactly get positive reactions to that statement. And I didn't know what she was expecting. Gus stared at Anna, hollow and broken, as if having someone know what he had done was worse than having done it. Surrendering one's soul to a demon in a deal was a private affair.

"What is she talking about, Gus?" Anita, his sister, asked, both confused and a hundred percent on board with the accusation, because that was just her personality. Gus froze. The family might not have believed the silly accusation from some girl who worked at the restaurant, not just from hearing it. But they did believe the look on Gus's face. The shame. The guilt. As for the accusations of demonhood, Miss Pryce didn't deny it. She laughed. She looked at Gus and said, "Don't you worry.

They won't remember this tomorrow. Our secret will be ours." Her eyes glowed red, and her smile grew unnaturally wide. It was daylight already, but it was overcast. There was a darkness over the scene.

"What's done is done," Gus said.

"You promise they won't remember?"

"Gustavo, what have you done?" his mother asked, as the demon revealed herself. The family joined in a chorus.

"I did what I had to do," he said.

"You don't know the pressure. The bills. The loan payments. Full salaries for the entire family. Customers who are always chasing the newest restaurant in town." Even as he spoke, he wept. The pressure had gotten to him, and it had been building for months since his father had died. All the weight and stress of that restaurant had been on him, and only him.

"I'm sorry," he said. And I could tell he meant it. But that didn't matter. The poor fool. His mother approached him and pleaded with him to take back the deal, speaking partially in Italian as far as I could tell. He only wept in response. He responded in English, "It's too late. It's too late." Then he turned to Miss Pryce.

"You promise they won't remember? You promise?"

"I do," she said. And she was probably telling the truth. Why lie when you think you've won?

"It's not too late," Camden said.

"Demon deals always have flaws. There's always a way for the human to get out before they're cast to hell. You just have to know the words of the deal and figure out where the trick is. It's called equivocation." These demons didn't trick you by giving you something other than what you asked for. The whole 'be careful what you wish for' thing? That wasn't a part of it. They give you exactly what you asked for, and you give them exactly what they asked for. That was never the way they tricked you.

The way they tricked you was by making you think you were bound in the first place. There was always some flaw in the deal, in the contract, and if you could find it, you could be freed. Like Isaac being too young to agree to a contract. We had figured that this moment would come. It was practically written on the face of this storyline, from the tropes of the demons, to the lore, to the overstressed owner at the edge of his rope. The question was: how could we get Gus out of his deal?

I stood at the back of the crowd and watched.

"What was the exact wording of your deal?" Camden asked. Miss Pryce stood and did nothing, because in the old stories, that's always what the demon did. Trickery was their game. Forcing people to hell for some sort of sin-eating scheme was just a side gig. She could argue if she wanted, but she never did end up doing that.

"She said that for my soul, and for letting her do her business on the premises, she would make Pecatto's successful and thriving," Gus said.

"Is that the way she worded it?" Camden asked.

"Did she say Pecatto's, or did she say your restaurant?" Gus thought for a moment. Miss Pryce had a scowl. She knew her ferret was cooked.

"She said my restaurant. She said, 'I'll make your restaurant a thriving and successful establishment, greater than your father's restaurant ever was.'""That's it," Camden said.

"What are you talking about?" Gus asked.

"How is that it?"

"When your grandfather passed, the restaurant was left to Dante, your uncle, because he was the older brother," Camden said. It was just then that I noticed he was holding a stack of paper, various documents of different sizes and shades of yellow and white.

"Then when Dante passed, the restaurant was supposed to go to his heir, right?" Camden asked.

"Yes," Anita said.

"But Uncle Dante didn't have any children, so it passed to Dad."

"Oh yes, he did," Camden said.

"And I can prove it."