Hoping very strongly that the fire demon knew what he was doing, Mack looked at the portal, which activated right before his eyes. The space inside the ornate frame rippled and warped, the light bending around the space until the color of the portal was an opaque, pitch black. Mack gave one last look at Taran, and then hesitantly stepped towards it. He realized he had no idea how to use a portal. Did he just, step through it?<br/><br/>He stuck his foot through, but as soon as he made contact, the portal pulled him in, stretching out with black tendrils to swallow him. Everything went black. His stomach dropped. It like he was being squeezed through a tiny tube.<br/><br/>And then he tumbled out the other end, onto a carpeted floor. It was a round room with a high ceiling, a chandelier with unlit candles hanging from the top. The walls were decorated with a peeling mural, parts covered by what Mack initially thought to be black paint, but then realized was mold. A circular pond set in marble was in the center, the water inside covered over completely by algae. The place stank of mildew and piss.<br/><br/>Despite wiping off all his slime before seeing the mage, Mack had already accumulated enough to leave an fresh black streak on the carpet. He winced, and took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself, and looked around to see if someone saw him. It wasn't like the carpet wasn't already dirty. Nope, nobody there. Mack used his hand to wipe off the incriminating lint and food crumbs that had stuck to him from his fall, and kinda shook it off his hand into the filthy pond in the middle.<br/><br/>"HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" A voice shouted from behind him.<br/><br/>Fuck.<br/><br/>Mack turned around, craning his neck to see a giant...cloud? stepping out from behind the pitch black of the portal. He hadn't noticed it. The cloud thinned a little, and a crocodilian face looked disapprovingly down at him. "I thought we ordered the portal mages not to send any visitors until we got rid of those damn Iry- " he muttered, before the demon noticed the black slime stain in front of the portal. The face looked back at him. "Did you do this?"<br/><br/>Mack wondered what was taking Taran so long.<br/><br/>'Uh," Mack said, his tongue freezing up. He was painfully concious of the fact that his skin was probably producing more slime right in front of the demon.<br/><br/>The demon leaned down, but from his sheer size all Mack was eye to eye with the demon's teeth. Golden eyes inspected him carefully. Each tooth was the size of his thumb. "What clan are you?"<br/><br/>Mack started to wonder if Taran had abandoned him. Just toss the human through a portal and leave, haha good riddance. That or the mage killed him.<br/><br/>"I'm a Tubman, uh, sir," he said.<br/><br/>"Never heard of them. What territory do they hail from?" Was this normal? Mack had no idea honestly.<br/><br/>"Cain," he lied, going off of what Taran had told him. Where the fuck was the fire demon?<br/><br/>The golden eyes stared at him uncomfortably long. The eyes flicked to his slime to his horns. It was hard to make out the shape of the demon, as if the entire back of the demon was hidden in a shroud, but through some of the black wisps Mack could make out the shape of a sword.