Aaliyah Folious was in the back seat of a black armored van surrounded by knights. Their built-in cryogenics were powered down, yet they were as cold to her now as they were back when she was a child in this very neighborhood.
Lerna. From the blight of Colchis to its jewel, now accursed again, for it now will always be more famed for its devils than its saints. That was why she was brought back here. She did not have the will to cleanse it, a lesson she learned recently, but her hallow presence could still bring ease that would be necessary for the delicate matter she had been ordained.
They rounded onto the street of their destination and saw a man throw a bottle at the steel grilles bolted over a window. He ran away before they parked on the curb to exit the van. A woman— with a rusty machete held over the shoulder strap of her wifebeater—barged out the front door to examine the shattered bottle.
“Mrs. Deimos?” asked Aaliyah.
“Yeah, waddya want?!” snapped Mrs. Deimos without looking.
“We are here to ask you about your son—”
“Fine, just take off your shoes when you come inside.” Her machete arm fell to her side as she went back into the house.
As Aaliyah arrived at the front door, she took off her flats while the knights took off their sollerets to set them on the rack next to the machete. Pitter-patter made the knights aim their rifles but all that crossed their sights was a chicken that took offense at the incredulous display of the guests.
The chicken led them to the living room where it came to the couch to hop on Mrs. Deimos’ lap. She pet the chicken with one hand and her other hung over the armrest with a beer can held by her fingertips.
The hippo skull that was mounted above the tv and overlaid on a cross of two ebony medieval weapons was still there, being as creepy as Aaliyah remembered it. Those weapons were sometimes replaced with versions as chipped and dirty as the machete, but the ones here now were undeniably the originals. The luster of their sleek ebony was nonpareil much the same as their shape: one was an axe whose head was the image of a crescent moon, the other a sword of three sickles stacked atop each other.
“You like ‘em?” asked Mrs. Deimos. She put down the chicken and her beer can to walk across the carpet and heft down the weapons one at a time, now one in each hand. She beckoned for the guests to wield them, even as their barrels pointed at her. One of the knights lowered his gun and stepped up. He held out one gauntleted arm to the axe and his wrist cracked when he caught it. He let go of his rifle to use both hands but was dragged down by the weight of the axe nonetheless. “Careful, they're heavy,” she slurred as she picked up the axe that had anchored the writhing man to the floor.
“What material are those things made of?” inquired Aaliyah as the weapons were put up and the knights helped their compatriot to his feet.
“I don’t know, aliens gave ‘em to us a long time ago,” Mrs. Deimos slumped down on the couch with her beer and her chicken.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. C’mon honey, sit, we were going to be family at one point, no need to be shy, I’m gonna give ya what ya came here for,” she said while she pat the cushion next to her. Aaliyah came to the seat with the knights standing around the couch. Mrs. Deimos had a vacant gaze as she drank sips from her beer can.
“Mrs.—”
“Zhou,” said Mrs. Deimos, who tossed the empty can into a bin, “About thirty years ago, a miracle was born: my son. You knew him as Tyler Deimos, but his real name is Tejieue. That is who you know now.”
“Tejieue? Mrs—Uh, Zhou, he has a false name?”
“It is his clan name. He told you a bit about it: that a handful of families suppressed magic until recent times. That wasn’t even half the truth. The truth is that hell is real and God hates us,” Zhou got up to get a six-pack of beer cans from the fridge. She offered to the guests and one pulled a can from the yoke but it was snatched away from him by a fellow knight who set it on a napkin on the counter. Zhou pulled out a beer can for herself that she promptly downed.
“I’m going to need you to expand upon that,” requested Aaliyah as Zhou drank then punctuated with a belch. She chucked the can into the trash bin which knocked it over and she wiped her lips with her forearm.
“The father of all creation, had a wife, our mother. While our father shaped creation to his will, our mother wanted more for us. She betrayed our Father and used his blood to give life to creation. As for the mother, her corpse made the planet we have today.”
“I… see,” Aaliyah accepted the information presented to her as best she could, “If that is the case, why did these families try to suppress magic?”
“That stuff’s dangerous y’know. The Pantheon wanted to contain it because of all the havoc it would wreak on society. That’s why even you had to be cooped up and micromanaged,” Zhou threw her head against the backrest to stare at the ceiling, “Our father laid a curse in the very blood that gave life. He wanted to prove the futility of free will, and so that curse would feed on our fear and our sins to turn them against us. As life grew, so would the daemons, until they had the strength to overcome life and resurrect the father.
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The clans existed to prevent this, both by slaying the daemon and by policing humanity, the children closest to God. Every clan gathered knowledge and power to enforce their edict but in trying to manage two worlds, they became trapped in their own. Each story was the same: the clan conflicted with the kings of their land, the kings sought the power of the daemons, and all their strength was for naught when life and death turned against them. Without the resources to keep the hell’s influence at bay, what remained of the clans resigned to holding back all magic from the world. Without magic, and the realm beyond sealed away, history fell to myth and reality was regarded as fantasy. But what remained of the clans whittled away further as life grew and continued to feed the curse until it could no longer be contained and fantasy returned to reality.”
“If what you say is true, why have the demons never been encountered in public before now?”
“ ‘If’ this little gal says… you probably have seen it before but it was chalked up as either superstition or mutant incident. Besides that, well, there is plenty of destruction and horror in the world happening every moment. Compared to the ‘natural’ world, daemons are a drop in the bucket— ‘if’ only because we were good at our jobs.”
“But why would they not reveal themselves?.”
“In the first attack, there was a blue thing with red wings, right? That wasn’t a daemon, that was a monster. A monster is like an animal and is created by fear. A daemon is a thing created by sins and has a higher purpose in service to its father. They seek to subvert our conscience and draw out our worst impulses. They don’t want to destroy us, they want to refute us, prove to us the futility of free will so that we willingly submit. On top of that, they can’t manifest in this world as easily as monsters. They need either an abundance of magic or a living host. For those reasons, they prefer to work in the shadows. As for us, we kept them a secret to reduce the number of people seeking their help because even the weakest can offer immortality.”
“This is all very… uh, interesting,” said Aaliyah as Zhou picked up, cracked open, and kicked back a cold one, “but I would like to focus on the relevance of your family in all this if you will. We were hoping you would help us bring Ty… Tejieue into custody,” said Aaliyah. Zhou choked on her beer.
“Help you? He killed a dragon. A. Drah. Gun. That could stop time. What do want me to do, ground him? A history lesson is all y’all gettin’.
Now let’s see. The clan was an offshoot of a small tribe called the Tequesta. The clan had no name, as they considered everyone their family, but other tribes gave them the name Halpadalgi for their reverence of the alligator. The clan, and their allies, protected the southeast of America from threats within, without, and beyond. That was until the Europeans arrived and brought their daemons with them. Disease, drugs, destruction, war—the tribe could not fight against two hells,” Zhou stood up and returned to the Hippo skull, ”they welcomed slaves, runaways, and ship-wrecked sailors that they rescued into their family. One batch came from a tribe that worshipped the crocodile and drew the crescent sword that was the same shape as an executioner blade from Africa.
While the rest of the Tequesta were driven south, this clan went north to try to connect with other clans but only found more ruin. Some of the allies of the daemon slayers were maintained for a time but by now in all of America—all of the world—my son is the last. And this,” Zhou picked up the chicken, “is the last direct descendant of the first alligator.”
“Really?” asked Aaliyah.
“Heh, no,” chuckled Zhou as she put the chicken down.
“...I see. What happened to the other clans then?.”
“They were killed in the war with the arch-daemons. Each arch-daemon represented the apex of their realm, in both power and vice. The closest comparison you know of would be Hannah. Although it's not that straightforward, they important thing is that each could threaten the world. One of those arch-daemons desolated Australia before it was stopped, but as I said, there was a convenient mutant there to take the blame for the actions of a daemon.”
“If these arch-demons are such a threat, why is he attacking us?” asked Aaliyah.
“You have it backward. He already killed them, that’s why he is attacking your group” Zhou brought out a bowl of grain and water to feed the chicken. The bowl was name-tagged ‘Emily’.
“Elaborate. Please.”
“The seals could not be maintained. That is why my son wanted to go on the offensive rather than prop up our crumbling defenses here. Every endeavor took catastrophic losses, even as he bolstered the ranks with convicts and other fodder. Eventually, the other clans had been wiped out, and he controlled the secret network of allies that he expanded his way; that is surely how he created the syndicate you face now. Since his focus has turned on you, he must be trying to enforce the second part of the edict: police mankind, starting by controlling those with great affinities for magic. Even with the arch-daemons dead, new ones will rise if humanity continues to feed them. Tejieue is the greatest daemon-slayer but he very well could be the last: if he can not find a way to end the threat forever, there will be no one left who can stop them,” said Zhou. The knights had taken off their helmets to sit by the kitchen counter and drank apple juice as they listened to the story.
“You said that the clans had only gotten weaker over time. Did he find some other way to overcome the daemons?”
“Nothing in particular that I could see,” she tilted her head to think for a moment, “Tejieue was born without any magic at all. My son has always been a little tougher, a little faster, and a little stronger than he should have been from the moment he was born, but he can’t fly or walk on water. Every day, he strained to make a little become a lot more. The training of the clans would make anyone a champion, but what we needed was a miracle and he sought challenges that would chisel him into what he needed to be. Strong, fearless, unrelenting—he is everything a hero should be.
I was worried at first as a mother, but before I knew it my boy was a man. More than that,” she looked Aaliyah in the eyes finally, “I saw how others needed him. Tyler Deimos may have been my son, but Tejieue is the moon that shines in midnight. I don’t have any information to help you stop him… but I do have something to give you regardless.”