Bryce

Thea bolted upright and gave me a pleading look. I remembered her mentioning back on the research station that she needed me to get a message to Esme. We just didn’t have time to do it then, and I had completely forgotten about it.

“I can get a message to her, I’ll just need a full name and description. If you have anything that belongs to her, that would probably make it easier.”

Thea watched me for a moment before responding.

“I can give you her public name, but her full name is, well, it’s personal. For non-mortals, a full name can give power over your soul. It’s not something you tell people unless you really trust them, and it’s definitely not something you share after you’ve been told it.”

“I just need something to identify her, so a public name is probably fine.”

Thea got up and started collecting clothes from around the pantry. She tossed me mine, and I put them on.

“Her name is Dae’Esmer’etfia’Kai’etcillia’Lilith. She’s 170 centimeters tall, pink skin, gold eyes, long straight black hair, short horns, and enormous,” Thea held her hands out wide in a cupping motion in front of her chest. “Personality?”

“That’s quite a mouthful,” I said.

Thea shrugged. “Probably, never tried. She’s straight, remember?”

“I meant her name.”

“Oh, right! Yeah, names work differently in the lower planes. Dae means she’s a demon, and Esmer is her given name. The last half is kind of like titles; etfia’Kai means daughter of Kai and etcillia’Lilith means servant of Lilith. It refers to our household.”

“Daughter of Kai? The trickster goddess?” I asked.

“That’s just what Esme claims, and I figure since she’s still alive, it’s probably true. I guess Kai used to get around a lot, but settled down in the last few millennia. Esme said she has a lot of half-siblings, but I haven’t met any of them.”

“Okay, so your name should be Dae’Salinthea’etfia’Inim’etcilia’Lilith, if I understood that correctly.” I asked.

“Close, but it’s Dia instead of Dae, because I’m a devil and not a demon.”

I wasn’t fully following this. I thought demons came from devils reproducing, whereas devils came from celestials, which were made by gods. If Esme was claiming to be the daughter of a god, shouldn’t she have been a celestial, and not a demon? I asked Thea.

“Yeah, it’s a different process. When a god makes a celestial, they kind of just roll up a bunch of extra soul stuff that’s lying around and shove it into an empty body. When a demon is made, it’s because of sex,” Thea explained. “Esme claims her dad is Chorus and that her mom pretended to be an elf to seduce him as a joke. So, you know sex, and not weird soul cramming.”

“Kai, the trickster goddess seduced Chorus, the god of debauchery?” I asked.

“She never said it was hard, just that she thought it was funny,” Thea laughed. “I think Esme turning out to be straight was part of the joke, could you imagine? The daughter of the god of debauchery is the only straight monogamous succubus in existence.”

Okay, that was a little funny, but in a fucked up playing-with-the-lives-of-people kind of way. Which really lent credence to Kai being Esme’s mother, because that was exactly the kind of thing she did in all the stories I’d read.

“So, two gods have a baby and that doesn’t just create another god?” I asked.

“Nope, just a demon. I don’t know how the whole deification process works, but it’s definitely not inherited. Here, take this.” Thea tossed me a fist-sized amethyst. It looked like it contained an ocean of depth, and a bright pink light swam around playfully prodding at little golden flakes.

I couldn’t help but smile as I watched. A feeling radiated through me that was reminiscent of a gourmet hot chocolate that had just enough rum to be dangerous, but not overpowering. It was comforting in a way that promised a pleasant afternoon.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s pretty great, right? It’s Esme’s soul stone.”

“Thea! What the hells? Why do you have this? And why would you give it to me?!” I shouted.

Soul stones were dangerous. Unlike with a navigator’s core, which was just a small fragment of a navigator’s soul that would die with the navigator, a soul stone was a portal directly to the soul.

It contained the essence of what made somebody who they were, and it would grow and change right along with them. If you died for whatever reason, the soul could retreat into the stone. Then somebody could use your soul stone to reincarnate you into an empty body.

It could function as pseudo immortality, as long as you had a person who you really trusted.

The danger came from the fact that any changes made to the soul in the stone would be reflected in the living person. It was far more invasive than any sort of mind control or charm spell, because it fundamentally changed who you were. Worse yet, there was no way to undo the changes.

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They would become a part of that person’s identity. Even if you kept heaping more changes onto it in a vain attempt to undo whatever modifications were made, they would all still be there as real core beliefs and experiences, regardless of how artificially they were made. Which is why every civilized world had long ago outlawed the creation and use of soul stones.

Even teaching people how to make a soul stone was incredibly illegal in the Federation. Entire systems had been expelled from the Federation Council because they overlooked a few wealthy individuals. It was one of the very few zero-tolerance laws that even the corporations heeded.

“It’s just in case anything ever happened to her. She has one of mine, too,” Thea said.

“Somehow, that makes it even worse.” I held my head in exasperation.

“But will it work to send her a message?” Thea asked.

“Yeah, it’ll work to send her a message in the same way that a nuclear explosion might get the attention of the room that it was in,” I sighed. “If we were planning on using this, I didn’t even need her name or description. Hells, her full name would have been less potent.”

“Maybe, but you can’t hand me back her full name when you’re done with it, and it isn’t mine to give out.”

“Thea, do you have any idea how dangerous this is? You just told me that Esme is the daughter of two gods. One of those gods, I might remind you, is usually ranked right up there as the only real equal in power to the goddess of magic, and while Esme may not be a god herself, she’s almost certainly extremely powerful.”

“Yeah? Esme is a greater succubus. That’s about as powerful as they come,” Thea laughed at her own dumb joke. She was completely missing the point.

“I’m being serious, Thea, now isn’t the time to be making stupid puns. You’re completely powered down, and I still have that strength spell from earlier. What’s to stop me from just taking this?” I asked. “I could just kill you right now and walk away with full control over Esme.”

“Bryce, we both know you wouldn’t do that, and you being so worried about it just proves that I was fine to trust you with it.”

I hated that she was right. Well, okay, I didn’t hate that she was right, because I would never want to be the type of person who would murder her girlfriend in cold blood so that I could steal her demon sister. What I actually hated was basically everything else about the situation.

“Besides, when I’m powered up with your mana I’m at least as powerful as Esme, and when I sleep with you it’s because I wanted to,” Thea added. “Not because I’m the soul slave of the woman who murdered my sister. Which I would like to think makes me the more appealing of the two of us.”

I still didn’t like the idea of the soul stones, or how easily she seemed to trust me with one of them. But I had to admit that she had a point—it was a very naïve and overly simplified point, but a point nonetheless.

There wasn’t a world in which I would betray her trust by hurting her or somebody she cared about. Keeping that in mind, we did live in a world where Thea had left me alone with Sora and Dezra to hide in the pantry.

“I could always make the same pact with Esme that I made with you,” I said. “If she’s the more powerful one, then she could probably take more of my mana. Just imagine how powerful she’d be with half of my maximum, we’d be unstoppable.”

Thea’s smile froze. “Did I mention that I’m the cuter one? Like it’s not even close, everybody totally agrees. Whenever we enter a room together, people are always like, ‘hey did you see that super cute girl, and also there was a succubus.’”

“No, I don’t think you ever did. Now that you mention it, didn’t you say she had really big, personality, was it?” I tossed the soul stone in the air a few times.

“Oh that? Yeah, all of her boyfriends complained about it. You should have heard them, all like ‘ah dang, I really wish Esme had smaller, uh personal-a-titties’”

I completely lost it. I nearly bent over double, laughing at the stupid voice Thea was using to mimic Esme’s imaginary large-breast-hating boyfriend.

I eventually regained control over myself and pushed past Thea’s shit-eating grin. “Okay, fine, you win. What do you want the message to say?”

“Tell her I’m safe on the mortal plane and that the plan worked, but Malvoch is after me, which means it’s only a matter of time before he’s after her too.”

“Are you going to explain what that means at some point?” I asked, but started casting the messaging spell before she could respond.

Hello Esme, this is Bryce Virra, I’m Salinthea’s girlfriend. She asked me to send you a message to let you know that she’s safe here on the mortal plane. She says that the plan worked, but Malvoch is after her and she’s worried he’ll be after you soon as well.

The spell caused a mental message to appear in the target’s mind and allowed them a single response. It only worked for about seventy-five words at a time and the target could resist it, but it was harder depending on the caster’s skill and familiarity.

I was holding Esme’s soul stone in my hands. Meaning she wouldn’t have any choice but to listen to the message, which she would no doubt recognize. I just hoped Esme would take that as a sign Thea trusted me, not that I was coercing her.

“It’s about as complicated as it sounds. We had a plan to steal something from a demon named Malvoch and it worked, but he caught on and now he’s after me.” Thea said.

Esme replied to my message startlingly fast, and I could feel an overwhelming mixture of fear, anger, and concern in her response.

Hello Bryce Virra, it is truly a pleasure to finally hear from you. First, I would like to say that if you hurt Thea anymore than you already have, then I will bring the wrath of the gods down upon your head in such a way that it will become the new standard for suffering. Secondly, I now have your mana signature and I will be coming for you.

I was left standing there holding Esme’s, now inert, soul stone. She had somehow severed her soul’s connection with it. Something that I didn’t think was actually possible.

“Thea, we have a problem.”

I held out the now inert soul stone and Thea gingerly took it.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know! I think Esme thought I was threatening you, she said that if I hurt you anymore than I already had she was going to kill me and that she’s coming for me, then she somehow cut the connection to the stone. Probably just so that I couldn’t message her again.”

“Can she do that?”

“I don’t know. I mean, apparently. It could just be an illusion, but I can’t feel her anymore.”

“Send her another message, quickly. Tell her I’m safe and she doesn’t need to come.”

“I can try, but I’ll have to force my way past her resistance, and I’ve never tried to do that to a greater demon before.”

“Try it! Please, before she does something stupid,” Thea said. “I mean, stupider than severing the connection to her soul stone.”

I started casting the spell again, this time focusing on what I remembered from her voice and emotions before combining the feeling of alcoholic hot chocolate with her name and description. It should have been more than enough for the spell to form a lock, even across the planes, but it failed.

There was no wall, no resistance, and nothing for me to push through. It was as if Esme had never existed and the spell just fizzled away.

It was at that time that the door to the pantry opened.

“Captain, sorry to interrupt, but I found what we were looking for,” Samira said. “And it’s way worse than we thought.”