"Huh." Jonathan considered the story Sandra had just finished. To Jonathan's surprise, Sandra had really gotten into the telling, and the story had lasted almost the entire trip; if he didn't miss his guess, they weren't very far from the orphanage. "What's an unbounded demon? Was this Witch Herschel character in a situation like me?"

"I…don't know. I don't think so, though. I don't know any stories about Witch Herschel transforming into a demon or being possessed, at least. And he didn't actually exist, as far as I know."

Jonathan hummed in acknowledgement. "Are there actually other stories about Ashlynn?"

"Oh, yes!" Sandra brightened up. "That's actually why I told that story. Ashlynn is one of my favorite recurring characters in folk stories, and my mom told us a lot of stories about her. I don't know if she made some of them up or not, but the Witch Herschel one always felt like the first." She fell quiet, and Jonathan shot her a quick glance. She looked a little down. He hadn't meant to turn the conversation to her parents.

"So can you actually exchange your appearance with a fruit?"

Sandra looked up, evidently slightly startled at the question. "No. At least, I've never heard of any magic like that outside of folk stories. But the reason I liked Ashlynn growing up was because she always has some sort of illusion to help her out of a tight spot, and she was self-taught. The magic in folk stories never makes much sense, though, especially the really old ones."

"Fair enough. So what is a witch? In my world, witches were almost always described as female, and practiced forbidden magic."

"Really? I've heard stories about both female and male witches, but they only really show up in folk stories so I'm not sure what exactly makes someone a witch. Most of them have something to do with unbound demons, I guess. That kind of counts as forbidden magic."

"An unbound demon?"

Sandra shrugged. "I don't really know what that means. I always assumed it was just a demon that was summoned without a ritual circle or something."

"Is that even possible?"

"You would have to ask Mr. Geiller."

"Nevermind then."

Sandra laughed. He'd see if she was so merry after she had to take a few classes with the irascible old wind-bag.

They reached the orphanage soon after, and Sandra and Jonathan found the other kids still engrossed in playing Uno. There was still a bit of time before he needed to worry about dinner, so Jonathan sat down to join them.

The games weren't as cut-throat as some of the ones he'd remembered playing back home, but it was a close thing.

For such a soft-spoken and polite little boy, Yanni in particular was absolutely ruthless about dropping "Draw 2" and "Draw 4" cards on anyone who he perceived as having wronged him.

----------------------------------------

That evening after the kids had been shunted off toward bed, Jonathan sat down with an electric lamp he'd conjured and Abigail's grimoire. After things had started to get a little heated over Uno, he'd had the kids do another reading class, and figured that it was time to figure out exactly what went into a demon summoning. He didn't think he was going to try summoning a demon himself anytime soon—based on what Mr. Geiller had said and the stories Abigail and the others had told him of his time possessed by Ebola, it seemed a very foolhardy thing to attempt—but he needed more information about the whole process, if only so he could get a better handle on his own inner demon.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The book was slow going. It was evidently hand-written, and interpreting the author's handwriting made it significantly more difficult to read. It took Jonathan a good thirty minutes before he realized that the first third or so of the book was nothing more than a meandering description of the author's childhood that did not, as far as he could tell, have anything to do with summoning demons. He skipped ahead to the pages where summoning circles were diagrammed out, but the descriptions were so terse he could barely make heads or tails of them.

After a frustrating amount of flipping back and forth he finally found a section that appeared to deal with the theory of demon summoning. At that point in the night, though, he'd lost all patience with the task, so he stuck a dry hand towel in to serve as a bookmark and put it aside.

Despite his active day, he still wasn't particularly tired, so Jonathan tried meditating again. As before, it was a bit difficult to find the right balance between maintaining his connection to the Infernal Abyss and allowing his thoughts to pass him by, but soon enough he felt a wave of murderous intent sweep through him and knew he'd succeeded. It sent his heart pounding, but unlike before he didn't stop immediately. As he had been doing with his thoughts, he acknowledged it, and allowed it to pass him by. As he focused on the feelings, he realized that he could clearly tell that they were external in origin. Although they were strong, there was some quality to them that rang false to him and the longer he sat there with them ebbing and flowing the more detached from them he grew.

The whole experience was bizarre, and after a few minutes Jonathan gave it up and ceased enlivening his magic, the murderous emotions disappearing like a splash of water off a hot griddle.

Something about the sense he was getting from Ebola was bugging him, and it took sitting and mulling over his memories of the meditation session for several minutes before he realized what it was.

That visceral need to do violence—specifically, to kill someone—that he'd picked up on that he presumed was coming from Ebola was constant. It had waxed and waned, but unlike anger, hate, and other strong emotions that Jonathan could remember feeling in the past it never really went away. It was more like a baseline murderous impulse that never disappeared, just sometimes got stronger.

Was that part of why demons were so difficult to work with? If Jonathan had murderous urges all the time, no matter the circumstance…well, he would probably behave a lot differently than normal. Were all demons like that? Or was it something specific to Ebola? From what others had said, it sounded like Ebola was under arrest or something in the Infernal Abyss, so it was possible that the demon was an exception to the rule.

But given that Ebola had not acted on his murderous impulses when Abigail and the other children were around…although come to think, Abigail had said the demon had indicated anyone except her would provide some sort of temptation it would be unable to resist. So say, perhaps, the demon was constantly feeling the urge to murder the people around it, and it could act counter to that urge, but only to a certain extent. Considering what it made Abigail promise, perhaps it decided that resisting its urges in the short term would lead to it being able to fulfill them more in the long-term. That argued for something between a human and a rabid dog. Lots of unchecked aggression, yes, but a being that was able to forego it for a future pay-off.

Jonathan needed to figure out if Ebola's murderous leanings were universal among demons or if they varied, because although he was not optimistic about being able to redirect Ebola's flavor of murderous urges, he had a good feeling about his chances if other demons had different impulses driving them.

That, however, would have to be a project for another day. At the moment he was finally getting tired, so he headed off to bed.