Styak wandered, which felt peculiar along the surface of the memory plane. Utterly featureless but for the fine square grid outlining each cell, walls so distant they seemed immobile and unreachable, moving was hardly distinguishable from holding still.
It kept the form of a calico cat while in this imaginary space where direction and distance had no physical meaning. Why not? The claws were small but tore through the walls and floors of a memory cell easily.
Stopping for no reason on a square, it ripped a line and jumped down, finding a tiny white spark of memory, ripe for a sniff and a little lick...
> Parry was a child in this memory, human, male, black skin and dark wooly hair. He was building something on the beach in the soft wet sand, sun blazing down. His sister was by his side, crying loudly because a crab had pincered her finger. Their mother was scolding her for playing with the wildlife.
>
> The boy dug a moat around his sand castle, then stood, ran to the ocean to carry back water in his mother's helm. The brass got sandy, the leather straps wet, the padding spongy with sea water, and there were leaks, but he made it back and filled his moat.
>
> Now his mother was scolding him, examining her equipment, trying to squeeze the moisture out of it. A decoration fell off, some kind of bird, wings wide, hammered out of brass. Parry ignored the complaining adult, picked the little decoration up and put it on top of his sand castle. It was finished, and his heart filled with joy.
No sense eating that, thought Styak, scratching a rip in the floor of the cell and spilling down to the one below. Eating a memory gave it to him and permanently robbed it from Parry, which the demon decided had its uses. Soul-binding or not, familiar or no, this "partnership" was of convenience and Styak wasn't about to surrender any advantage. It had already slipped a few things into the scribble of the boy's soul that no doubt had gone unnoticed. Those would wait for another day.
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This cell was empty. From what Styak could tell, about one in fifty had no memory at all. Forgotten? Destroyed by some trauma or spell or injury? No matter, there were infinitely more to try. So frustrating--it could find no reason or structure connecting any given memory to its neighbor. How could they make progress? Maybe a pattern would emerge over time, for now, it was enough to simply dig.
How far down did each "column" of cells go? Was there a bottom? Time to find out. Another tear, another cell, another spark of memory. Whiskers and tongue leaned in to taste...
> The wolf's jaws sank into Parry's throat, pain and dampness, snarls, he smelled its fur, felt its warmth, its life against him, tearing at his jugular, spilling the blood. In that moment of mortal injury, Parry felt triumph.
>
> Drink, drink. Parry had his chin high, inviting the attack. Drink of me and become mine!
>
> The fight dimmed in the wolf's eyes and a deeper, dark red spark took its place. It let go, staggered back against a tree, the moonlight filtering down through the copse made the blood on the ground seem black. The wolf howled, a strangled, terrible sound, its body wracked with pain of transformation.
>
> Parry watched, the wound in his neck already closed without a scar. The wolf thrashed, heaved, vomited out its last meal, muzzle foamed pink and ghastly. Panting, its eyes now fully in that terrible red, it approached the man. Submitting.
>
> He tugged his cloak forward and wiped at the lupine face. A canteen appeared, the wolf lapping from his cupped hand. Time felt like it was stretching off to forever.
>
> The animal loped over to the cave, carefully lifting four pups by the scruff. She dropped them at Parry's boots. Moments ago she was fighting to protect them, now she offered them to its new master.
>
> "More than I bargained for," Parry chuckled. "Very well, I accept your life, your service and your offspring. Come. We have the rest of the night to feed."
Styak spat out the memory.
Interesting. What was the context? Was Parry vampire in that life or merely employing vampiric magic? A relic or a spell gone wrong could push a human into vampirism, or was it some other curse? A less intense memory might have carried more clues with it, perhaps shown the moments before and after, something that revealed the time or place.
Styak ripped an opening in the floor and went deeper.