Glowing horizons of burning forests shone all around when the emerald was uncovered. The stone prison rested on the edge of the manor's roof and I saw my daughter stood there in robes complimentary to Circe's shimmering cyan, with edges runic-embroidered for the forty-three names of Lucibel's progeny. Her face was covered in a pattern of henna, and her hair had strands of spun flax braided into it.
"What is happening? Were you helping Circe summon demons?" I asked, hearing the distaste in my own voice.
"These words protect me from whatever is in this. If it sees I wear its sign, it will not try to kill me. That's what Circe said. We were going to open it, she was casting this spell." Penelope showed me an old bottle, the glass was cloudy and then she showed me the circle drawn in brick powder upon the roof, a simple spell of the enchantress's own design, but effective at keeping a demon contained.
"She expected that the bottle contains a demon?" I asked. I felt Azoza stirring where it slept suckling on my soul.
"Yes, Father. And when she opened the way, she was pulled in by grabbing - things." Penelope looked frightened by what she had seen. I realized she was consulting me for real this time, and I tried not to smile as I said:
"Perhaps you should keep me around for this adventure, so I can observe what is happening in your life and make a fair assessment of what to do. I think for now you should put that bottle back into her circle and leave it there. If Circe is really gone, you don't have much to worry about, right?"
Penelope wrinkled up her face at the thought of letting me into her life. Evidently, she still had very hard feelings against me, and they had festered into something like shame and mistrust in her father. She took a deep breath and then was about to say something, probably that she would follow my plan, at least this once. Then she looked again at me and asked:
"What do you know about demons, Father? Circe said you knew a few things and she thought it was funny. I don't like it." Penelope asked me. I realized that if I lied to her, she might never speak to me again. I willed myself to be honest with her, despite the fact that the demon sickened me and it was hard to turn the soreness of its presence into words. I spoke anyway, letting Azoza whisper in its sleep.
"Demons are pieces of things, broken things, incomplete things. They are faceless, wanderers, parasites. Angry old spirits, spiteful, cruel and cunning. They are tenacious, capricious and calloused. The jaded eyes of a demon are of a color from the realm of its birth, and they are born from hideous deeds and corrupt thoughts. They thrive on rot and pain, they sip on fear and feast on suffering. A demon may die, but it lives long and destroys much, sleeping when it is weak and killing when it is unleashed. Yet in this horror, a demon might become a part of something." I winced, as Azoza's eyes opened and it listened, trying to make me tell her its name. If I gave in, I would infect my daughter with my sickness - nothing could be worse than if I somehow gave her Azoza, or rather, gave her to it.
"Father, there is something you are not telling me." Penelope's eyes flashed a warning, and it meant that I would lose her trust forever if I did not tell her everything. If I were to tell her though, the demon would have its chance; it would leave me, abandon my consciousness for an even greater host. It wanted her, and I could barely contain it.
"Remember whatever I say to thee will always bring us one step closer to switching places. Circe is free and I am trapped. Would thou have me take thy place and leave thee in this timeless abyss?" I begged her to let me be silent and to keep my secrets.
Penelope shook her head. "I am more afraid of forgetting you, than hearing what awful things you might say to me."
Azoza began screaming at me to tell her its name, to reveal to her its existence, so that it might reach her, and possess her. I fought the torment until I was twisted around and unable to tell if the morning was coming, or if fires surrounded the woodland manor. Smoke took the starlight, and in the glow, my daughter looked like her grandmother, her youthfulness an illusion.
"I cannot speak!" I choked myself, trying not to let her willpower and the demon's align against my own.
"It is a shame." Penelope frowned at me and covered up the emerald.
Alone in the dark with Azoza the creature tore at me in its frustration. When it was exhausted and it had wounded me enough, it wormed its way back into the festering socket in my soul where it slept, like a crater of a pustule. I gasped in agony, unable to die from the wounds, or heal them.
When the pain became a plateau, I felt broken and ill. If she were to ask me again, I would not have the strength to say no. Azoza would take her, and I would be helpless to stop it.
"My Lord, the daughter is not well. My Daughter breaths in sobs, drowns in tears and awaits the memory to soothe her, and it does not. Is there not some way you could speak to me? Perhaps show yourself to me?" Cory asked me, having found the emerald on Penelope's desk, beside her damaged book of shadows, at midnight.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I could not yet whisper the way I could later on, nor could I send dreams of my desires to those who owned the emerald. I learned those abilities much later, centuries later, as such abilities take a long time to develop for the prisoner of the emerald. Instead, I reached into the cavity where Azoza was curled up like a maggot and I squeezed it until it shrieked at me in rage and indignation. I said to it:
"Does Stormcrow not hear your cries? I shall tear you into two dripping halves of the worm." I used my pain against it, fueling my thorny attack on it. The demon writhed like a caught fish, slippery and strong, but I would not let go, and it could not get away from me. Finally, Azoza spoke, foregoing its routine insistence on using only infernal syllables. First it cried out for its mother, and then it asked me to release it, should it bridge the psychic lanes between me and my crow.
"Screwtape, save me, Mother! I will talk, I will traverse, I will stretch. Please let me go, I am a part of you, and I am your servant. Stop this!" Azoza snarled.
"You do this and then you sleep again, do not tempt me to describe you to my daughter, for you will first tell Stormcrow thy chain's length, the exact number that would bind thee. Then you will discover the contents of the bottle on the roof, for I know the dust of bricks is useless against you - with your special ability to avoid such traps. And then you will, for the sake of your mother, a demon's mother, you will share your ancient wisdom and claim anything that is unclean. As a part of me, I accept you, and you will obey." I wrestled with it, feeling the coldness of its claws, feeling how it took parts of my mind, my personality and ate them, leaving me with bites taken out of my sanity. Azoza was a part of me, but I was in it, nurturing it, and it had acquired a taste for me.
"I'll do whatever I want." Azoza swore and laughed diabolically. "And I want to do those things. They were all my ideas in the first place."
Cory hopped around in fright as the demon revealed its secrets to him, then he said: "Of course the fortieth seed of Lucibel would be this Azoza. What would my Lord have said?"
But Azoza just laughed and went to its next task. When it returned it had brought something with it. I looked closely at the dream, and saw it was made of pixie dust. "You've done well, now return to where you belong."
"No, I think I will visit the budding young girl where she sleeps and defile her dreams with all my favorite violations of morality." Azoza tried to do as it wished. I watched, knowing my crow could handle my demon - he had its number already, and he knew how to use it.
"I count numbers, like a man does. I count shiny coins, linearly. I am counting, a crow that counts the numbers, and forty is thy seed." Cory hopped up and down on the blanket under which my daughter slept. The demon circled invisibly and then decided it was not a good idea to trespass where the crow was counting, when the crow had already begun a spell to make a demon forget things. Azoza did not want to forget its favorite things, it would be like aging, or dying, or wasting away. Instead, the demon came to me for sanctuary.
"That was not a nice trick. I did not know a demon could have a number for a name." Azoza complained.
"A human mother gives her child a name. It is the sacred bond of love that compels her to do so. The name gives guidance to the soul, it calls the child back to her, and it is a reward for the grown human, to have a name, and all the world the name is thy own. To a demon, what is a name? It is a chain, a link in a chain, and your mother, this Screwtape that shat you out, did it lovingly bless you as Azoza? Or did it label you number forty?" I laughed at the curled-up demon.
"You named me Azoza. That name was from you, Master, and I am grateful. Let me sleep, I am finished this night. Have you not had your sport, and I mine?" Azoza yawned defiantly.
I examined the dream of the pixie dust. I began to suspect that the bottle was somehow linked to the trouble with the fairies, more specifically, with one particular pixie name White Nettle. I was worried the bottle was Circe's folly, and White Nettle had returned. I couldn't fathom how White Nettle could possibly have outwitted Circe, but I would have to solve it, for removing Circe was only the prelude to a more advantageous assault.
Penelope found some glimmering green light as the shaft of morning sunlight found its way through the smoke of the burning forests and through her drawn curtains and struck the facet of the emerald. She smiled a little because it looked pretty, and then she got up and went to the nursery for her turn with the baby. I guessed she had allowed her mother to explain to her that it would take the effort of the entire village, and not just one sleep-deprived single mother, who was also just a teenager still. She came back later in the day in a good mood.
"I just love Franz. You realize Franz is your grandchild." She told me.
"Hadn't occurred to me. The last time I saw Franz, in another life, they were plummeting into the crack of darkness that resides between worlds and their ages. I thought that was the end."
"Well, Franz is here to stay, and they are mine. I'll take good care of my baby, and I get help from everyone, now that I've heard what Mom had to say about it."
"That it takes a village to raise a child? She likes that saying a lot. She is a very social creature, your mother." I smiled at the thought of Dr. Leidenfrost, and I longed for her. "I miss her."
"You and Mom are so romantic." Penelope sighed. She stared at me for a long time, and I thought I detected a hint of forgiveness in her countenance. Instead, she frowned and began to cover me back up.
"Wait! I think I know what happened to Circe, and about the bottle." I said.
"How could you know something you did not know last night?" Penelope asked with suspicion.
"I - I have my ways." I folded my arms. "You must hear me."
This made my teenage daughter angry with me and she said: "Fine, I'll hear you, and I'll deal with it myself. You are going into my jewelry box and I am going to bury it in the garden. I've had enough of all your lies! You keep so much from me now - I used to trust you!"
"The bottle was enchanted by a pixie. I've seen evidence of its magic. Circe was lured to the edge of the Glade, and that is where she is. I don't know what kind of enemies have taken up residence where Fey Courts are festooned in ettergeist. What would clear away cobwebs, cocooned fairies fed on until they are just bones, and live there?"
"What, are you asking me?" Penelope looked surprised.
"You're my daughter. I believe you can solve this mystery, find out who is acting against you, and rescue Circe from their trap. I have complete faith in you." I said to her as she opened her jewelry box, frowning as she had second thoughts.
As she closed the lid and hid me in darkness I said to her, and I know she heard me:
"I love you!"