I woke early, before the first dream of sunlight fell upon the mountains. Desdemona still lay passed out on the other side of the bed, the book waiting between us like a reminder. The room was dark other than the soft glow of some magical blue orbs in wall sconces by the door. Once my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I flipped back to the beginning of the Book of Grievances and began to read, in order this time. If I didn’t complete my homework I’d probably be murdered, so I was highly motivated.
It didn’t take long for me to start learning new things. The first summoning had been over thirteen hundred years ago, followed by the first Dark Crusade. There had been no Pact yet, only the demons by themselves against the world. The other monsters hadn’t… I flipped through the pages quickly, trying to read between the lines. They hadn’t evolved yet? Because they were farther from the Void, and the various Void-touched races developed over time in approximate order of their distance from the source. The Void had mutated them?
We’ll get back to that later, I thought, flipping ahead. How did I know all that, anyway? It hadn’t said it all in the text, at least not explicitly. I’d read between the lines a bit, but I felt pretty sure I was right. I wondered if it was possible that even my intuition, my innate sense of understanding, was improved by my new form. Or perhaps I was Greg-Theryx after all, and I was merely recalling what I already knew.
Pushing the idea from my mind, I flipped to the next page and was greeted by a crude illustration of a walled city ablaze. An army of demons surrounded it. My eyes raced through the text.
On several occasions, the demons laid waste to the realms of the so-called divine beings—celestials, elves, and humans. There are humans here? I wasn’t sure if I would consider humans to be divine, though. That seemed to be giving us, or them, far too much credit. If I ever saw a human in this world, I wonder how I’d feel about it. I could have been reborn as one of them, but instead I found myself among monsters.
The Book described how millions died, and civilizations crumbled. During the Fourth Crusade the demons made it to Syraelan, the largest of the elven kingdoms, before Sun-Domia could be summoned. As always, she fought her brother, and banished him back to the Void. Then she set to the task of rebuilding the destroyed nations, work she undertook without rest before her avatar died at the age of a hundred and seventy, and her essence returned to the Aether.
Wait, Sun-Domia is his sister? The other gods are his family?
That kind of thing was fairly on brand, as far as pantheons went, the more I thought about it. I wondered how the other gods would feel about me, though. Would they be able to tell? Did the gods have a secret codeword they used in case any of them ever got replaced? All important questions, but I admit that at this point I was starting to find it difficult to stay focused.
I wanted to learn magic. I’d been thinking about it since Desdemona had first mentioned the word. Even though I wanted to be a diligent student and read what I suppose was essentially The Demon Bible, I was already growing tired of it. If I could sum up the gist of the Book, its central argument was that Greg-Theryx was justified because if the monsters had not killed the humans, the humans would surely have killed them, and in fact had already been doing so before Greg-Theryx had even showed up. I was curious what Sun-Domia’s own holy book had to say about that.
But as far as the Book of Grievances went, I got the point after a couple of Void Crusades and began to skim a little. The Book was constantly being added to, and served as both scripture and historical record, biased though it certainly seemed to be towards “our” side. In fact, the one in charge of adding each new section to the Book was the High Priestess.
During some of the later crusades, Old Greg-Theryx hadn’t even made it to the divine kingdoms. Sometimes he “decided to leave” in short order while still on demonic soil, usually for another two to three hundred years. There was always some excuse made for this in the text, some reason why the Void Crusade was averted or rather, as the Book claimed, “postponed.”
Little was said in the Book of the centuries that passed while the gods were absent, when the “stars were not right” for Greg-Theryx’s appearance. But sooner or later, he was summoned again, and another showdown ensued.
After a thousand years or so, the celestials had deduced the astronomical requirements for summoning the Dark One. It could only happen during the “peak of the season of frost,” as it was described in the Book, while certain constellations were visible in precise locations in the sky. I wondered if one of those constellations was the Void itself, if it was the place they had snatched me from? Had Earth somehow gotten in the way?
Before the last crusade, the elves had pre-emptively summoned Sun-Domia before Greg-Theryx’s awakening, giving her ample time to prepare for her brother’s incursion. The end result was one of the shortest, most disastrous Crusades of all.
After so many failed attempts, the end of the world felt almost quaint. They had been fighting apocalyptic wars every couple hundred years for over a millennium, so they must have been used to it by now. I flipped the Book closed and leaned back in bed, my mind still digesting everything I’d learned. If anything, my new understanding made me feel even more hopeless.
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Greg-Theryx’s end goal, the point of each Crusade, seemed to be to cut off this world from “the Aether”, so if he ever succeeded, that would be the end of it. Sun-Domia, and the rest of the other gods, would be barred from this world forever.
But so far, he had only ever failed. Greg-Theryx had a bad habit of getting banished by his sister, or “withdrawing to the Void,” as the Book dubiously claimed.
I had been summoned just in time to lead the seventh Dark Crusade, which I couldn’t help but feel was a bad deal. No wonder the demons were so obviously demoralized even though we’d barely even started. I hoped only part of that could be attributed to me and my uninspiring inaugural speech, and most was due to the fact they’d already lost six times.
I suddenly became aware, once again, of the High Priestess resting peacefully on the other half of what was an obscenely large bed. I began trying very hard not to watch her sleep. With a sigh, I rolled over so my back was to her, and let my thoughts wander.
----------------------------------------
Mona surprised me with a tap on the shoulder just as the first mote of reddish light appeared in the sky. Her timing was impeccable, so I should not have been surprised by her touch, but a shiver passed through me. I wished her hand would linger, but after a beat, she pulled away.
I turned to face her. She was eying the Book suspiciously.
“I already studied,” I said. “Since my life—our lives—depend on it, I suppose I was highly motivated.”
“You read all of it?”
I wanted to just say yes, but I withered a bit under the scrutiny of her glare. “I skimmed a few parts,” I admitted. “It’s a long book.”
Her eyes widened for a moment, as if in shock at my brazenness regarding what was technically my own holy scripture, and then she shook her head. “Go figure. I got stuck with a fool.”
“Quiz me,” I said. “That’s what you said you’d do last night.”
She rolled her eyes. “What would be the point, Greg, if you didn’t read it all?”
“Try me.”
“We have less than an hour before Ilmatar and some of your other attendants will arrive … ‘Master.’ They will bring you breakfast and prepare your wardrobe. Then you will be in a meeting with the military council for hours. You should spend every moment you can reading this. It’s supposed to be your Book!”
I shook my head. “Somehow, I don’t think the military council is going to be quizzing me on scripture, Mona.”
She frowned. “What did you just say?”
For a moment, I didn’t even know what I’d said wrong, until I realized she’d never mentioned a nickname and probably didn’t want one. “Oh,” I said. “My apologies, High Priestess. I suppose I overstepped.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said after a moment. She looked at me curiously, then let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t mind it, but… I hadn’t told you, and no one else calls me that.”
“No one?” I left the else unsaid.
“I’m either ‘High Priestess’ or ‘Lady Desdemona’ around here.”
“Mona it is, then, if it’s fine with you?”
“Whatever.” She looked down and flipped the Book back open, and I thought I saw a dark red flush in her pink cheeks. “You still need to finish your homework.”
“And you still need to quiz me,” I said. “I don’t have time to read the rest.”
“What do you mean you don’t have time?” Her eyes flashed in frustration. “I told you, less than an hour. Every moment counts. Here, I’ll go over it with you.”
I was beginning to realize she didn’t have a lot of patience for my bullshit. She had her ideas of how to make me survive through today. But there were a couple of things I wanted from her. First of all, I wanted her to teach me magic. Second, if our fates were going to be bound, each of our lives relying on the other’s, then I wanted to know more about her.
I wondered if it was too much to ask. She didn’t seem the type to enjoy divulging anything too personal. I held her life in my hands, more or less, as she held mine. Maybe that was already too much, and it would be easier the less we knew about each other, if we focused solely on the matter of our mutual survival. And yet…
“Mona, I don’t have time because I want you to teach me magic. Just a quick lesson? Please?”
“I told you, Greg, we’d just be wasting our time.”
“I don’t expect to master it, I just want a chance to try. I’m not going to get through this on bullshit alone, Mona. I’m going to need to learn the kind of stuff that Greg-Theryx would know, and in a certain Book that I did for the most part read, he burned a lot of stuff. He rained a lot of hellfire in this book, Mona.” To emphasize my point, I opened the Book and flipped to a full-page illustration, on the hundred and seventy-eighth page, of an elven city whose name I could barely pronounce being razed to the ground.
Mona looked at me for a moment in shock. Then her face broke into a smirk. “I suppose you have a point there, Master. Fine, I’ll teach you… Later. Once I am satisfied by your basic knowledge.”
“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t even have to bring up my second reason.”
“You had another reason?”
“If you hadn’t agreed,” I said, “I was going to tell you the truth is that we may not survive, even if I memorize every word of this Book, and I’d like to try my hand at magic before I’m banished to eternal darkness a second time, likely for the rest of eternity.”
“I’m glad you led with the other one. Because this would not have worked on me.”
“You’re not much for sentimentality, are you, Mona?”
Our eyes met and we looked at each other, saying nothing. She looked solemn and thoughtful for a moment. But then her face broke into a smile, and her eyes shone with fire. I realized she thought she had found a way to trap me.
“Well, as you requested, here’s your test.” Was she stalling until she could think of what to ask me? “There is only one question I have for you. Only one question that matters. Having read what you’ve read, what do you think we should do now? How would you deal with Sun-Domia?”
For a moment, my mind went blank. What was maddening was that it was a perfectly reasonable question, but I had never even considered it. I hadn’t believed, even for a moment, I would live that long. I’d assumed the demons would be the ones who killed me.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the goddess and her angels might be even more dangerous.