FORTY TWO

Could Luz's brother's friend be the fish she is looking for?

The friend's bulky belly gradually begins to look no longer made of flesh and blood; rather it seems to turn into gas and blue smoke... Is it like the genie at the beginning?

Now the genie is her brother's friend?

Hunting the genie?

Go for the dream... And what is the dream of a stinky vampire?

Luz concludes that the message of this part of the game, "Hey, if you let your soul rot your dreams will eventually turn you into the undead."

She wants to believe that she's not at all a vampire or anything like that; she doesn't consider the kiss with the mole boy to really be her first kiss. Before time rots her, literally, she must squeeze him out first.

However, if she has the appetite of a vampire she assumes she'll have his skills as well. She tries to find her mental power to slip as fast as light into the octopus' transparent tentacles. She closes her eyes so nothing distracts her but screams as she sees almost all of my face upside down.

She is an exaggerated little girl because; while it is true that working with the king of demons can leave you more crushed than the soda can that once contained this sugary liquid, the same one that makes up most of the opaque yellow liquid; it is not for her to freak out at my renewed face either.

She had not seen my face until now that her gaze and mine have just merged. My skin is somewhat corroded, as if someone had been biting me with some desperation; I have grown crow's feet that look rather like the scales of a fish's tail.

You can tell that my nose marks the midpoint of her rectangular forehead and my whiskers are parallel to that forehead. I could compare my whiskers to the possible wrinkles that will come to her as marks of the war she still refuses to face... I want action.

Anyway, neither me nor my best-selling formula is ever heeded.

Anyway, so "the little princess of the rotten lands" in a few seconds the war will start.

"Why instead of criticizing me do you explain to me what I have to do to move from this tentacle?"

I don't answer her because she knows the answer, if I tell her I will be furthering her wayward ego. Besides she's had plenty of clues before she got this far.

And since this girl only understands the hard way, thanks to my chatty eloquence, she closes her eyes again; but this time she does it slowly so that the changes in my face don't upset her. She also tries to be aware of what her other senses perceive now that she is a vampire.

Her gaze and mine are settling like one melody on top of another to form a song that awakens the body or the mind. Luz has always preferred the mind because she finds it mysterious and the only one she can count on even in the most embarrassing moments.

In her own words the mind is as she would like to be in its entirety: "invisible to people more astute than she is and flexible as far as not judging others is concerned.

It is her judgments that make her isolate herself, make her a hermit, and she fears even those who are bullied just like her... Esteban's friend is one of them.... has this young lady given you an idea?"

Suddenly a mysterious force takes hold of her and destroys the transparent tentacle with a single fang against the wall... at last the action:

Luz falls on water (is it sea water?) but when she tries to acquire the speed she should have for being a vampire, it doesn't turn out exactly as she expected: the speed was not in her legs but in her heartbeat.

Her heart begins to beat a thousand per hour when the bowl attracts within itself the transparent pieces of the tentacle that Luz broke a few moments ago.

She manages to touch one with the tip of her thumb and feels as if her heartbeat is prolonged (she touches her chest with her other hand) to try to create a song of fear.

The curious thing is that this piece is liquid and yet it does not disperse into the sea but keeps its shape of a couple of petals stuck together that soon begin to emit black light.

For her it is light because it allows her to see in each tentacle are students turned into different supernatural beings but nothing to envy: I have seen that those who have approached the werewolf rather than die from its large and sharp claws, have perished by the blood-sucking lice that have for nest the golden curls of several athletes of the school.

What's more, thanks to the black light Luz can see that the big muscles of many a bully boy have disappeared. Something tells me that the lice know where to acquire brutal strength from, maybe it tastes better than blood.

Suddenly, Luz feels his fangs move from side to side trembling, shivering as if trying to move to the rhythm of fear.

Fear is impossible to avoid, so finding beauty within it results in tooth sensitivity.

Why do you think the teeth are dancing from side to side?

Because Luz needs to feel brave and fear leaves her no other option for survival.

There is no doubt that moving from fear to courage, even if it is forced, produces a change in temperature. The same that Luz's dental sensitivity to music generates.

The black light that makes her see the various supernatural beings trapped inside the tentacles; with the exception of the geniuses like Esteban's friend who can be transported with great ease because they possess a body made of "a blue gas", swirls around all the tentacles and the beings that have already come out of them like her.

One of the beings free from the tentacles is perhaps new because she does not remember having read about it in a book. It has just emerged from the right arm and transparent (like the tentacles) of a naked boy floating in the water as if dead.

The monster's body is covered with green scales and, as soon as he looks Luz straight in the eyes, our protagonist's heartbeat, instead of accelerating from fear, slows down and, it could be said, decelerates and, apparently, this causes an invisible force coming from her heart to inevitably take her straight towards the monster.

As she gets closer the monster opens its jaws wider and wider until it is the only thing Luz can see of it... it has just swallowed her.

No, not only has it swallowed her but her entire bundle of madness, poor green monster. As you can see, I'm not Lucifer's only victim.

What certainly worries me more than the monster or Luz is my own safety; the fact that I don't remember meeting our protagonist at some point in my precious life tells me that a lot could have happened and I haven't heard about it.

It is precisely for this reason that I have asked the demon to place the word FORTY TWO in capital letters. It is an old trick that does not affect Lucifer in any way and benefits both the demon and me.

Let me explain:

You know that words are the only invention of man that can reach out to touch the human soul; but the effects they cause by being capital or lower case (with emphasis or without emphasis in speaking, respectively) differ from each other.

While lower case letters reach the interior of the soul, upper case letters only reach the skin of the soul. Don't ask me how it is because I'm not supposed to give filler. The point at issue is that precisely both the demon and I want to touch the skin of Luz's soul. In this way the demon can offer his beloved, by means of his fire, protection to her mind so that she can find beauty in the darkness.

What about me?

By touching the skin of the soul of a mortal human I can keep him from sweating too much so that I don't get too wet. You know that water reminds me of everything my species lost to the unicorns.

Out of all this, I wanted to apologize because there was more there was more description than action in this chapter...yeah, I know, not just this chapter.

Do you think it's because I'm an amateur narrator?

You think Lucifer would take a chance on a makeshift, old-fashioned guy like me just because I'm the voice of a traitor's well-beloved?

Because a traitor would risk losing his entire new entourage of teenage reader souls?

Back to the present, Luz just fell into one of this scaly, green monster's taste buds.

To be specific, she has entered the papilla that detects sweetness and; truth be told, the time has come for her first adventure in this game.

You'll tell me I've heard those promises before but I told you so for certain reasons that you'll begin to discover from here on.

Lucifer feels that he has already generated enough questions in your head; so he is ready to unveil the answers to those questions in the reader's mind.

This first adventure is based on a tale that has to do with action, apologies, descriptions, a very nice cat, a castle as strange as scary, necromancy, a world where cold is forbidden and a vampire princess who will fight to survive.

Can you guess who the vampire princess is?

No, better guess why this tale is titled:

"The Fiery Description of Necromancy".