I tried to enter the Archives stealthily, cursing under my breath as one of my boots squeaked against the spit-shined black floor. I hoped it was late enough that Asmodeus would be asleep. He was the oldest demon in the tower, after all. If he were an insomniac, I would have to think fast.

Thankfully, I didn’t see anyone inside as I carefully closed the door behind me. The desk at the base of the central pillar, which Asmodeus had been floating at this morning, was empty. The room’s lights were dimmer than I remembered, a faint blue emanating from flickering wall sconces along the outer wall. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Seeing Lucifron and the Winged Legionnaires earlier had inspired me. I had resigned myself to the fact that escaping this cursed place would be almost impossible. Even if I could somehow get out of the tower and through the winding, maze-like streets of the city, it would be easy for the Winged Legion to track me down if I fled on foot.

But if I could learn to fly, I would have a chance of getting out of here. From the top of the tower, it was a straight line to the mountains. I didn’t know if it was actually feasible, and I couldn’t ask Mona about it. Not any more. But if they could teach a bunch of legionnaires to do it, how hard could it be?

I passed the aisles of towering bookshelves and reached the central pillar, expecting to find the most interesting volumes there, the ones that Asmodeus kept closest at hand. Sadly, I did not expect there to be a section of the Archives labeled “Flight.” If I wanted to find anything useful, I would have to do some digging.

I called out into the darkened chamber, “Archivist? I wish to speak with you.”

There was no answer. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

My eyes scanned the titles on the shelves, trying to move as quickly as I could. There were no category labels or Dewey Decimal System, which made it difficult to know if I was on the right track. But as my eyes scanned the stacks of tomes and scrolls, I began to see that there was some kind of organization, even if it wasn’t marked. For example, I passed by seven books cataloging all the known animals of this world, all on the same shelf, next to two different biographies of Generals from hundreds of years ago.

I nervously glanced around, keeping an eye out for Asmodeus, but I didn’t see him anywhere. As I paced around the central pillar, my eyes scanned past each set of shelves as I turned.

I must have been getting warmer, for the books became magic-focused, with titles like Fundamentals of Pyromancy, Rudimentary Cryomancy, and Magic Of Light and Shadow. But nowhere did I see a tome on flying, or gravity magic, or how to grow wings in the first place.

My eyes passed over books on geomancy and lightning magic. The latter was what Darkstar had used to subdue the paladin who had attacked us. Interesting, but I was trying to focus.

On second thought, I returned to Fundamentals of Pyromancy and grabbed it off the shelf. It couldn’t hurt. I flipped open the book, and was greeted by an epigraph that read, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.” That sounded familiar, though I had no idea where I’d heard it in my past life.

I continued my search, my eyes scanning more furiously now, but the titles were getting less relevant, changing topics from magic to history. I started to become frustrated, wondering if I had missed something.

“I keep it locked up,” a voice behind me said. My heart stopped. A scream died half-formed in my throat. I gasped as quietly as I could.

“Archivist Kuthoryx,” I said, turning towards him. He was not wearing the kilt he’d been in earlier. Now I realized that he had a drooping mouth at the bottom of his body, filled with dozens of razor sharp teeth, and two tiny, malformed arms which hung limply below him. Each one ended in a single claw.

“That’s the funny thing,” he said. “I don’t make footsteps.”

“I looked for you earlier.” I straightened my back, glaring at him, thinking about what he’d said. “Wait, what’s locked up?”

“Gravity magic. That’s what you want, right? It’s the only school not on the shelf,” he said. His eye watched me with a strange expression as if he was amused and concerned at the same time.

“I was only browsing out of boredom.”

Asmodeus nodded. “I understand, Dark Lord. But you needn’t worry. I won’t tell anyone a thing.”

I stared at him, unsure of what to say. “There’s nothing to tell, Asmodeus,” I said, but my voice hitched while I was saying it, and I don’t think I sold the lie.

“Of course,” he said, blinking slowly, the wrinkled blue skin of his eyelid spreading across his massive pupil for a long moment before it retracted. “Yes, it’s better I don’t know what’s going on, anyway.”

“What is it that you think you do not know?”

“Are you surprised by my candor?” He turned away from me, floating back towards his desk. “It’s always the ones who are the least invested who see it first. We’re the only ones not hopelessly intoxicated by the salvation you promise.”

“I expected Shatterbone to challenge me like this,” I said, following him to his desk. “But not you.”

“No, Dark Lord, the General is a true believer, and true believers are the last to waver. But I should warn you—when they discover the truth, they take it much harder.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

He shook his head. “It is not recorded in the Book of Grievances, but there are records of previous incarnations who lost the faith of Dreadthorn. So I’ve read of it, yes. I possess many books which are… Not usually permitted.”

That was new information, but if I were Greg-Theryx, I would have remembered the times I’d been deposed. Though my deception barely seemed worth it now, part of me didn’t want to give up entirely. It would set a bad precedent.

“I recall,” I said.

“Do you?” Asmodeus asked as a desk drawer opened, and a thick, leather-bound tome flew towards me, landing gently in my free hand. Fundamentals of Pyromancy was still tucked under my arm, but it seemed we’d both agreed not to mention it. “Take good care of that,” Asmodeus said, turning back towards me. “It’s my only copy.”

As I turned the heavy tome over, I saw the title Gravity and Time stitched on the brown leather cover in golden thread. A pretty significant topic for one book, I thought. No wonder this thing was so huge. “I will.”

“There could be a lot of explanations,” he said as if responding to a question I hadn’t asked. “Perhaps Sun-Domia did something to you last cycle, some magic that scrambled your essence. If so, I imagine she’ll gloat about that, so you’ll learn about it eventually. Maybe something strange happened in the Void. Maybe you’re just a random soul captured by a misaligned summoning ritual. Or maybe High Priestess Fell’s cunt causes amnesia.”

“That’s not—” I began, but Asmodeus fixed his eye on me, and then his head twisted in the air in what I imagined was his version of a shrug.

“Only jesting, my Lord. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The less I know, the better.”

“Yet you feel the need to pontificate about it endlessly. And how about let’s not talk about the High Priestess’s cunt?”

Asmodeus laughed, the many-toothed maw beneath his eye flapping open. No wonder he covered that up when he expected visitors—it was horrifying. “Either I keep your secrets, and I’m an accomplice, or I don’t, and you destroy me. I don’t do well with this kind of thing. Skulduggery, brutality, intrigue—none of it has any place in a library.” He paused for a moment as if considering. “You know what? I’m just going to pretend you weren’t here.”

“That’s helpful for both of us,” I said, looking down at the books in my hands. “And what if I wanted to grow wings? Where is the book for that?”

Asmodeus shook his head. “Usually best to wait. You don’t need wings yet. That’s magic for you—essence precedes form.”

“Wait, what?”

“So you are a hopeless beginner.” He chuckled softly, clicking his tongue against his teeth at my mistake. I cringed, but I suppose I was already past the point of no return with him. “The wings aren’t so you can fly. Telekinesis, flight, at the end of the day, it’s all gravity magic, and therefore chronomancy. Deep workings, far less abstract, far more technical, shall we say, than the other schools. You don’t need wings to fly, and often it’s easier to practice the basics without them. The wings are to help you steer once you learn how. But that’s not a skill for a novice. The flying, my Lord, is entirely a matter of Will.”

“I knew that already, of course,” I said.

“Naturally you did, and required only a refresher. I do have one question, though.”

I sighed. “And what’s that?”

“Is the High Priestess’s cunt magical?”

“You know, Asmodeus, for a second there, I almost forgot you were a fucking perv,” I said with a groan. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

If he hadn’t asked about Mona’s sex, I probably would have thanked him for the books, so Asmo’s rudeness had saved me from expressing the dirtiest of sentiments to a demon—gratitude.

Asmodeus hovered low, close to the height of my knees, as if bowing. “It is a pleasure to serve, Dark Lord.” And then he gave another slow blink, though I had no idea what it signified. “Enjoy the read,” he said, and his tongue made a slurping noise that I hoped was involuntary. “Once you finish reading, I have others. But that one is the easiest.”

“Easiest, huh? I could break my foot if I drop this thing.”

“Not easy,” he said, chuckling. “Just easiest.”

His eye watched me intently until I returned to the door and closed it behind me. The elevator wasn’t there, so I hit the call button and waited in the darkened antechamber for it to descend, the chain rattling for close to a minute.

As always, I found myself dwelling on how unsafe the elevator likely was, how archaic its construction. Probably nothing in this tower had been built to any safety code.

But so far, that rickety cage hadn’t let me down. Perhaps I was being paranoid. The elevator arrived intact, then carried me safely up to the penthouse, my gilded cage.

Mona was lying in bed, the covers pulled only halfway over her body, her top half exposed to moonlight. The wan red light of this place’s fel moon bathed her skin. It gave her a subtle glow as if she were illuminated from within. My eyes passed over the curve of her breasts, the softness of her form. I wondered if she had posed like this to entice me, to convince me I’d made a mistake. If I drew any closer to the bed, I’d catch her scent. Lying there like that, she was a trap laid in my path.

I felt lust wash over me, a pounding in my heart, and heat on my face. As my erection peaked, I remembered that Ilmatar had fed me an aphrodisiac. It had been the worst day to start that regimen.

Though I wanted her—how could I not?—the heavy weight of the books in my arms kept me grounded. I had risked discovery to obtain these, and the only thing that had saved me was Asmodeus’s lack of interest in tower politics. I walked to the side of the bed, and slowly pulled the sheets up and over her. She stirred, murmuring something, but did not wake.

I carried my books to the corner of the room, then collapsed into the armchair. As I cracked open Gravity and Time, the book released a musty smell, and I fanned the air before starting to read, trying not to cough. The book’s text was smaller than anything else I had read here, each page covered in two dense columns of runes. I started to have a foreboding feeling that my newest project would be more difficult than I could have imagined.

But that was no reason not to try.

The beginning of the book was an introduction describing a priestess of the Order of Devoted Succubi who had discovered the field of chronomancy centuries before. As a girl, she had lost her family to plague and had always hoped to change their terrible fate. But in her studies, she had proven that time was immutable. You could slow it down or speed it up, but you could never change the past. Upon this discovery, she threw herself down the chute.

Though it was a devastating revelation to her personally, the book cheerfully informed me this was the fundamental basis of all chronomancy. The very concept of this immutability was integral to all chronomantic incantations.

I flipped forward until I found one of these incantations, but stopped cold when I saw something that resembled a complicated math equation more than a verse of poetry. I had expected something I could recite, not something I needed to solve.

Earlier, I’d complained like an idiot that pyromancy didn’t have enough rules and guidelines. Now I’d gone from free verse to something that looked like the crazed scribblings on a mad scientist’s blackboard. It was almost completely incomprehensible, like the meaningless symbols they’d show you in a movie to convince you a character was a genius.

As it turned out, I had a lot to learn, so I flipped back to the beginning and read, this time slowly and carefully, until the quiet of the night and the stress of the day collided within me, and I felt my eyes grow heavy. The book pinned me down, its weight like a heavy blanket, as I drifted off to sleep.