I was pretty sure the more I said that, the weirder she’d think it was. She shook her head, backing away again.
“Seriously, Greid, you don’t have to explain anything. It’s your house. As long as you’re okay, I’ll just go, uh, watch TV.” She paused, freckled cheeks growing pink. “Your, uh, your sweater’s on inside out, by the way. And back to front.”
I glanced down. Fuck. Now it looked really weird.
“It’s not a sex thing,” I burst out hurriedly. “It’s just a… It’s a, um, demiurgus thing. It’s just…” I fiddled with the cuff of my sweater, before blurting out, “I’m not all that used to spending this much time in my humanoid form, and I was feeling a little anxious, so I just—I decided to go to my deeproom.”
“Your… what?” Beryl cocked her head.
I gestured at the door behind me. “All demiurgus-built houses have a deeproom. It’s like a… cave, I guess? Just a space, um, deep in the earth, where we can go to relax and stuff.”
And race around like an idiot when I had too much energy that I needed to expend in my true form.
“Oh.” Intrigue sparked in Beryl’s green eyes. “That’s cool. So you feel more relaxed deep underground?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged. “I was born on the surface, obviously, but all demiurgus like being close to the ground, or below it. Just an instinct, I guess. So, yeah. Demiurgus houses tend to have deeprooms.”
Some rich folk even had entire deeproom networks that tunnelled super far down. And I’d heard rumours that the one percent had their own private entrances to Deep Earth underneath their mega-mansions.
“Wow. That’s awesome.” Beryl smiled at me, but then her mouth twisted with worry. “Were you feeling anxious because of what we talked about?”
“No, no,” I rushed to reassure her. “Just work. This headpiece thing is really complicated, and my eyes started to hurt when I was working on it earlier, so I decided to take a break and come down here.”
And because restless frustration made me get what my mom had always affectionately called ‘the zoomies’. I could not let Beryl know that.
“Okay.” She relaxed, eyes darting to the door behind me. “Well, I’ll leave you to it—”
“Do you”—I shifted from foot to foot, my ears fluttering—“do you want to see it?”
She perked up. “Your other form? Your true form?”
“Oh.” I fidgeted again. “Um, well, I actually meant the deeproom, but… I could show you that too. If you want.”
“You don’t have to,” she said immediately. “Sorry, I just thought that was what you meant.”
“No, it’s okay.” Despite the nerves churning in my belly, I managed a shrug. “It’s not like a demiurgus’s true form is a secret. I’ve just, um, never shown a human before.”
She gave me a gentle smile. “You don’t have to show me, Greid.”
“No, I-I want to.” I actually did. I wanted Beryl to see all parts of me. Turning for the door, I said, “I’ll go first because it’s pretty dark, but there’s enough light in the deeproom for you to see.”
“Okay.”
As she followed me, I felt her small fingers twine through mine. Clutching them tight, I led her down the spiral staircase, our footsteps clanging against the metal.
“Gosh, it’s far down, huh?” she said with a slightly nervous chuckle.
I glanced back at her quickly, almost tripping on the stairs. “Do you not like it?”
“No, it’s fine, I just… I guess I’m used to living up high. On that stupid hill.”
I snorted, facing forward again. “Yeah. If the cult really wanted demiurgus visitors, they should’ve built their compound underground.”
“Trust me, Greid, they do really want demiurgus visitors,” she said dryly. “They just don’t know anywhere near as much about demiurgus as they think they do.”
That was… very true, judging by the incorrect demiurgus cocks plastered all over their walls.
“Haven’t any of them ever watched demiurgus porn?” I realised how abrupt the question was the moment it left my mouth, and my ears fluttered. “Sorry. I was just, um, thinking about stuff. That they have wrong.”
Beryl chuckled, giving my hand a squeeze. “I guess they haven’t. I think the main reason they cut us off so much from the outside world was so that we couldn’t start to view the demiurgus as regular folk. Folk who, you know, just go shopping and out to dinner and make porn and TV shows and films… They want us to think of you all as gods. Above everyone else.”
“But do you think the old man knows? Or any of the higher ups, I guess.”
“No, I don’t think so. From what Violet told me, the high priest was just another follower who eventually rose through the ranks to take over when the last one died. He’s just as fervent as the rest of them. Probably more so.”
I grunted, drawing her to a gentle stop when we reached the closed door at the bottom of the stairs. “But you said people can only join when they turn twenty-one. So they spent the first two decades of their lives living among demiurgus, seeing how normal we all are.”
“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully, “but I guess people see what they want to see. And people can forget easily. Plus, it’s only a matter of time before you start to believe what everyone around you believes. When you’re being told every day that the demiurgus are ethereal sex gods who’ve blessed humanity by living among us, it doesn’t take long for that to become the truth. Especially when you’ve willingly gone into that situation with some sort of belief around that anyway.”
I squeezed her hand, giving her a tiny smile. “Except for you.”
“Yeah. I was lucky Violet never got sucked in. She made sure I didn’t either.” She snorted. “Can you imagine if you’d turned up that day and I’d been waiting in that line, drooling at the thought of becoming your mate?”
I shuddered, turning for the door. “Don’t even joke about that. Okay, you ready to see it? The room, I mean.”
She perked up. “Yeah.”
“It’s not, um, anything special.” I reached for the handle. “It’s literally a dirt room.”
“I’m sure it’s—” She gasped when I let the door swing inward. “Oh my god, Greid.”
I followed her in, trying to take in the room through new eyes. It was about twenty feet across and forty feet high, with rock and packed earth walls that curved organically. Embedded in the walls and rounded ceiling were countless imitation gemstones that were wired up to give off a jewel-toned glow. These ones were small enough that they didn’t give off the hum of current that bothered me. I knew some fancy fucks actually had thousands of real gems in their deeprooms.
Artificially formed stalactites jutted down from the ceiling, affixed to support beams hidden by the dirt, and in a circular cluster of big rocks at the side was my deeproom nest—just a mound of blankets on top of several giant floor cushions. Gotta have a nest.
“I can’t believe this is just… under your house.” Beryl stared up at the ceiling, turning in a slow circle. “Is it safe? Like, how does the rest of the house not just cave in?”
I shrugged, tucking my hands into my sweater sleeves. “I dunno. Support beams and stuff. I could ask my brother Nuni. He’s an architect.”
She laughed. “No, it’s okay. I trust that the house isn’t going to collapse. This is amazing, Greid.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, I guess.” Now that I was back in here, I was itching to shift into my true form again. To breathe in the scent of dirt and stretch my legs and spine.
I’d been running around like a feral idiot when I’d heard Beryl’s faint call from the top of the stairs, so I’d quickly shifted back and scrambled into my clothes in case she came down. I was still restless and antsy. I’d told Beryl that it was only work that’d made me feel this way, but honestly, it was a little bit to do with the conversation I knew we were going to have.