A foolish purchase

Ash produced a single, dark crimson-coloured ring from her pocket and gingerly set it in Pawn's hand.

"This is what you spent the other half of your money on," said the grey-skinned demon with a smirk.

The celestial looked at it, and frowned.

She had possessed a literal fortune in her inventory, gathered over the course of several centuries. All squandered on a mansion and a ring.

She turned it over in her hand. The ring was flat on one side, with the golden emblem of a jester stepping of a cliff while staring into the distance etched into it.

Pawn understood its meaning to be... fool.

Yet, it was the type of ring someone important might use when sending a letter, pressing it into the wax used to seal it in hopes that its contents would remain undisturbed.

"A signet ring," pawn muttered as she examined it.

"Appraisal," she said casually as she channelled a small amount of energy into her eyes. They both glowed with a faint blue light.

Nothing happened.

The celestial furrowed her brows.

"Greater appraisal," she said, increasing her energy output by several fold.

This time her eyes glowed bright blue, and her surroundings seemed to lose a bit of their colour. Both Ash and Snow took an unconscious step back due to their past trauma regarding Celestials.

Again, however, nothing happened regarding the ring.

Pawn looked at it, a small amount of respect showing on her face.

She held out her hand and the ring floated upwards from her palm.

"Eye of judgm-," she began, all but her eyes and the ring losing all colour. Ash however, grabbed the ring before Pawn could finish the chant.

"You trying to let whole world know what you are!?" She scolded, "just put on the damn ring, already, and you'll understand!"

She then shoved the ring back into Pawn's hand.

The celestial was about to protest the lack of confidence in her ability, but soon noticed that Snow was now hiding her self somewhat behind Ash as she held her sisters hand, and understood that to be the real reason she had been stopped.

"...Sorry," she apologized.

"But this is a demonic noble's ring of some sort, isn't it?" She continued.

"There's no way a celestial could-," she began, as she slid the ring on her right index finger. It was a perfect fit.

The golden part of the ring immediately glowed faintly crimson. Pawn felt it resonating strongly with something deep within herself, something unpleasant.

The feeling immediately began growing in response to the ring's presence.

She felt her wings wilting, her teeth sharpening, her ears growing more pointy, horns attempting to form.

Pawn tore the ring from her finger as quickly as she could, slammed it down on the table, and immediately recoiled away from it.

All present were shocked by the development.

"Summon!" Ordered Pawn, causing the spear she had left in her room to suddenly materialize in her grasp. The celestial held it defensively towards Ash.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Eventually, Ash spoke.

"I'm sorry," she said with a lowered head, "that didn't happen when you were wearing it last night. I shouldn't have stopped you from appraising it."

Ash had noticed the subtle change in Pawn's appearance, despite how quickly the ring had been removed, and she understood what it had tried to do to her benefactor.

Pawn lowered her spear slightly, but not all the way.

Her features then gradually reverted back to normal.

She breathed a sigh of relief upon

"What is that thing," she inquired as she glanced at the ring in question.

This time it was Snow who answered.

"The baron you bought this mansion from, one of the five district heads of the city," she said simply, "you, uh... bought his title and position, as well."

Pawn took a second to process those words, and then several dozen more. No matter how long she did so, however, the meaning they carried was simply too foreign.

"Come again?" The celestial inquired politely, assuming she had simply misheard, "you're saying that I, a celestial who is trying to keep a low profile, bought my way into becoming demonic nobility last night?"

Snow gave a reassuring smile.

"Yep!" She confirmed happily, "That's right, Baroness."

Pawn despaired.

Her plan to not stand out had been sabotaged by none other than herself. She swore in her heart to never drink again, and wished to apologize to the green-haired drunk which she had thought of as a lightweight.

Then she realized something. She had seen rings similar to this one before, as war trophies on Lumin's mantle. With different emblems, sure, but all with the same function.

They would enhance the demonic energy in whosoever wore them. Thus, for beings like celestials, that normally possessed no demonic energy at all, the rings shouldn't show any effect at all.

Pawn could only come to one conclusion...

"Oh dear," she muttered, "it seems I'm dangerously close to falling, aren't I?"

'Falling' being the common term for when celestial 'fall' to being anything other than a celestial.

"I suppose that makes sense," she concluded, honestly. Looking at herself objectively, she was certainty better at being a demon than she was at being a celestial.

She was banished from one, and became nobility in the other, after all. So it was rather hard to argue otherwise.

However, capability and preference were two entirely different matters.

She liked her wings, they were soft and reliable, her current abilities were second nature to her, would she even survive the transition? Would her personality? Such were a few of the many thought which passed through her head.

"I need to find a way out of this realm," she decided, "or a way of replenishing my celestial energy, at the very least."

"but getting summoned by someone is a bust 'cause celestial have such a bad reputation for killing their summoners," she muttered, "I doubt anyone even remembers how..."

She trailed off.

Pawn pondered quietly to herself for a moment more, before then turning to face Ash and Snow.

"I don't suppose there are any stable tunnels to Tribute, that you know of?" She inquired, sarcastically.

The reason for Pawn's sarcasm?

If a person wished to visualize the way in which the various realms were positioned, one could do so by imagining the face of a clock. The celestial realm would be positioned at 12, the nether realm at 3, the demon realm at 6, and the fairy realm at 9. At the very centre sat the realm, Tribute, one influenced by all others. It was a world of swords, monsters, and magic.

Tunnels to adjacent realms were almost unheard of. Tunnels to realms sitting opposite to each other, like the one Pawn had arrived through? Several times more so. Tunnels to the mundane realm? Ditto.

It was for this reason that Ash's reply came as a such a surprise to the celestial.

"Yes, actually," she said casually, "though only the city lord knows its exact location."

"However... he may be rather upset at the moment," she added hesitantly, remembering that it hadn't even been a day since she and her sister had tortured the city lord's son to death...

On a side note. There were, in fact, two other realms not mentioned, though, they were basically inaccessible to the other five. One being the Spirit realm, home to spirits. The other being the Mundane realm, a realm with so little magic, that the idea of it is merely thought of as a work of fiction. They sat opposite to each other, perpendicular to the others.

Many scholars debate whether a dice would be a better analogy than a clock for the sake of including those two realms, however, so little is known of the mundane realm that most do not see the point in including it, and a dice with only five sides would ruin the analogy.