Prologue

From the Desk of Soren Marlowe

Tuesday, February 9th, 2124

Here continue the Confessions of Soren Marlowe, the Magpie Wizard, formerly known as Captain Malthus of the Grim Horde.

This section of my life has proven to be the most difficult to relate of any thus far. The first few volumes were the work of weeks. I don’t have much to do these days besides tend my garden and collect my checks from the Anti-Demonic League. There are advantages to getting a military and an educational pension at the same time.

However, the Tower Attack of 2050 was pivotal not just in my life, but in the history of the League. It’s the first event that put me on the world stage. Everything I have described up to now would have been, at best, a minor story buried in a social media news feed. I doubt many would have read past the headline English Survivor Found Off the Cliffs of Dover as they scrolled by. My victory in the War Games against Yukiko wouldn’t even rise to that level, as much as my lover, Kiyo, would argue it was my greatest accomplishment. I forgive her that bias, since I’d saved her from a likely fateful plunge.

A few more might have read Assassination Attempt on War Hero Asahi Maki Foiled by Nagoya Academy Students, given the fame of the so-called Divine Blade. “How nice,” they would have said after reading, and then gone back to being enraged by celebrity gossip or politics.

That was to my benefit, given the layers of schemes I had to navigate. What spy wants to be famous? I’d been tasked by my betters back home with striking a great blow against the Anti-Demonic League and their Wizard Corps. Once I’d done that, I’d make my way back to the shores of demon-occupied Europe, and freedom. Well, not freedom, precisely. There was one free being in all the lands of the Grim Horde, and that was the Dark Lord. However, for a young nobledevil who’d braved going behind enemy lines and made a name for himself? I’d be almost untouchable among the political classes.

I could have done with better allies to accomplish my mission; striking a major blow against the League would have been hard enough with competent allies. Maggie Edwards and her Holy Brotherhood were, in my estimation (and the estimation of everyone with sense) a bunch of cranks. They spoke a good game about defeating the demonic threat, but they couldn’t even spot a half-devil like me among them. If she hadn’t possessed damning evidence that I wasn’t truly Soren Marlowe, I wouldn’t have bothered with them. However, Maggie and I were stuck together, each knowing enough to destroy the other with a word, and each needing the other to achieve our goals.

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Not that I could blame them for missing me; I hadn’t done the best job being an example of proper demonhood. This chapter of the confessions begins almost right after the last, and that Friday night in August had been a debacle all around. All I had to do was kill Haru Obe, a Holy Brother I’d put in the hospital who knew about my demonic proclivities, though he thought I was a human sympathizer, or a demonkin. It should have been easy for me; Obe was a disagreeable cuss who had been a constant thorn in my side, and it was him or me. Yet, human weakness had infected me. I’d balked at a perfectly reasonable assassination mission, attempted to rescue the target despite my best efforts, and then had to slay him to save myself anyway.

Then, on the way home, I’d come across a friend, Paul Wilson, about to make the beast with two backs with my friend Mariko Yamada, and felt the need to intervene. Sure, she had agreed under false pretenses; she thought he was the one, while he thought she was the one who was available. Every devil I’d ever met used false war stories to impress debutants and ladies of the evening back home, and promises to stick with them for more than a night. It was simply how the game was played, and I shouldn’t have had an issue with it. Yet that weakness had reared its head again, and I’d put a stop to things for her sake.

Truly, a wretched evening that forced me to search my blackened soul. I knew in my heart of hearts that if I stayed with these humans for much longer, I’d be sucked into their foolish ways for good. There were even times when I wondered if simply vanishing into my cover as Soren Marlowe would be such a bad thing.

Perhaps not, but I also knew I was too deep in bed with the Holy Brotherhood to ever be forgiven when I was found out. I had killed Haru in a military hospital after a clever break-in, and my tender feelings wouldn’t save me from a firing squad, or torture when they realized I was a devil. Going home was my only hope. By all rights, I should be writing these memoirs in a villa in occupied Europe in a cursive High Demonic script using a pen and paper. And yet, here I sit, typing my memoirs in a human home on a personal computer.

How did it all go wrong? Not by my choice. As always, it was those damn girls to blame. The ones who had wormed their way into my heart, making me behave irrationally.

I couldn’t be rid of them just yet, though. I knew I had to show up at class, and act as though nothing was wrong, feigning surprise when they announced Haru’s death, as much as I prayed we could talk about anything else. I didn’t need to be reminded of my failures.

Please, I thought to myself as I rolled out of bed that Monday morning, please, let the news be anything but that!

For once, Our Father Below answered my prayers, though as always, the granted wish was like a monkey’s paw.