“I, Erebus, fifteenth of that name, do swear to be studious, to obey the instructions of my teacher while within her home and only when they are part of my teaching. To strive to become my perfect self and to become a weapon to be wielded against those who would harm the innocent.”
“I,” And this part took most of an hour, the imperator’s name was terribly long, bestowed upon her by Oblivion himself so that none but he could ever command her. Somehow she’d slipped the leash but the name remained, “do swear to teach you as I see best. To craft you into the perfect weapon to defend Reath. Shorn of doubt, of weakness, and of sentiment. Your resolve shall be unshakable, your skills myriad and your enemies shall shudder at your name.”
As demonic contracts went it was certainly a unique one. A small demonic pact typically ran to hundreds of pages, it’s clauses manifest, its loopholes hammered into non-existence. This one was little more than stated intent and trust. Ironically it was more ironclad than even the most extensive pacts, one party had nothing to gain and the other had nothing to lose.
“So what happens now?” Erebus asked nervously, staring around the lifeless world around him, a perfectly smooth plane of stone that stretched as far his eyes could see. The insanity of his decision was just starting to sink in.
“Now we fulfil our bargain.” His new master said simply, buildings beginning to condense out of the aether in front of them. It was easily the most casual display of power Erebus had ever seen. “You will find your room on the third floor, fourth door on the left. Do not use the other rooms. I have not decided what they will be yet and they will be in a state of flux.”
“What will you be doing?” The necromancer asked, not shy about asking questions, it was in many ways why he was here afterall.
“Properly furnishing my home it seems. Furniture and rooms I can create with a thought, but a library will require me to source the books from elsewhere. I will need to pact with those demons and devils who maintain such things, and I will also require a staff. I cannot be teaching you at all times, others will need to step in when I cannot.”
*
It had been a week in the Hells, or at least this specific hell. Though Erebus was increasingly unsure it was a hell. He knew that the realities outside of Reath were more malleable but that didn’t quite explain just how easily it had responded to the imperator’s will. Even Fae Royalty, at the heart of their own demesne, would have struggled to create things so effortlessly and on such a scale.
He’d been astonished with the sheer speed his new master had worked. It had taken her less than a day to bargain, buy and threaten enough books out of her fellow demons to fully stock a library that not even the Seruatis library, the Fortress of Truth in New Pax or the Necropolis’ Whispering Archive could compete with.
So far formal lessons had been rather lacking, leaving Erebus little to do other than to (very tentatively) explore. It was proving difficult given he had no idea if he was even allowed in a given room. His mana senses were for all intents and purposes worthless, always a problem in the Hells where the mana roiled and writhed and fought with no apparent regard for the laws of magic as Erebus understand them.
A brief conversation with Tsa’rahlitzek had finally revealed why.
“It’s not mana. Not as you understand it anyway.” She explained, sat staring at the empty sky with such great and mournful longing that it had been all Erebus could do to interrupt her to ask.
“Then why can I sense it?” The necromancer asked, moving to sit beside her, legs crossed as he tried to get comfortable on the flat stone.
“Have you ever wondered what mana is?” She replied, eyes never leaving the sky.
“Well yes, everyone has.”
“And what, apprentice, was your conclusion?” She was looking at him now, gaze expectant, possibly even hungry.
“Energy.” The answer came readily enough, he’d been thinking about it for a long, long time, and honestly didn’t know a mage that hadn’t. “It’s a source of energy.”
“Close but not quite right. It is the potential for change. That’s why only living things produce it.” She explained, shattering the orthodoxy of mages in a handful of simple sentences. “It is easily the simplest of the magical energies.”
“Hang on. We don’t produce mana though.” Erebus had protested, more out of confusion than any defiance.
“Oh you do, not much but you do. In your entire life you’ll likely produce just enough mana to boil a kettle, and you’re an exceptional case.” She answered, “All living things produce a little, most of it comes from grass, trees and algae.”
“Okay, say I can accept that, what are the other magical energies then?”
“You don’t want to guess?” The demoness asked coyly, apparently intent on returning every question with a question of her own. If Erebus hadn’t known better he’d have suspected she was sidhe rather than a demon.
“I want to know.”
Tsa’rahlitzek frowned for just a moment, “Very well. I presume you’re familiar with vitae?”
“I’m a qualified healer.” Erebus said in answer, only to continue at the obvious irritation on his master’s face, “Yes I’m familiar.”
“Vitae is also a form of potential, the potential for continued life. Which is why the elderly mortals have so little of it to take.” So spoke the voice of experience, or perhaps not. Erebus was stone cold certain he was the first ever to summon an imperator to Reath, but perhaps an overconfident warlock had braved the hells, or a dying one cashed out his remaining magical chips in exchange for a decent afterlife without risking the Veil.
“That doesn’t make sense though. Children have almost no vitae, surely they’ve got the most potential for continued life?”
“Of course they do, foolish mortal. They have more than you could possibly imagine, and they’re far too busy using it.” Tsa’rahlitzek almost shaking with laughter, and the world shook with her, a considerable earthquake shaking Erebus’ body for the few seconds the demon lost control.
“What is magicka then?” Erebus asked once his master had properly composed herself.
She smiled at the question, “That one we’ve never been entirely sure of. Jr’agenthek thinks it’s some kind of commingled state between vitae and mana. I think it’s a form of mana that’s been refined by proximity to a mortal soul.”
“Jr’agenthek?”
“Imperator of Order and Light. We argue. A lot.” She gave a small ‘what-can-you-do’ half-shrug, “Now the soul itself is particularly interesting. I believe it to be a lesser form of divine spark.”
“Believe? Not know?” Erebus interjected, a touch incredulous given he was talking to someone almost as old as Reath itself, if not older given temporal shenanigans.
“I’m not omniscient. I’m not sure anyone is.” Tsa’rahlitzek admitted. “I’ve no use for souls and no means of acquiring them thus never have put the time in to find out.”
“You mentioned a divine spark? Is that what I think it is?”
“If you think it’s what gives gods their power, then yes.”
“And we have those?” Even for a veteran mage gods were something of a taboo subject. The official line in First Response was that they were a myth made up by mortals about early mages. The official line in Second Response was they were all dead. The unofficial line was to call it in then run like hell.
“A lesser version, all of the flavour, so to speak, none of the potency.” With that she stuck her hand in his chest, not on his chest but in it, the flesh of the demoness simply melting into him as he felt icy fingers close around his heart and then his soul.
Erebus went completely still, he’d have tried to hide his fear but it was hard to hide an increased heartbeat when someone was actually holding said heart.
“Hmm… flavours of undeath, fire, healing and shadows with just a hint of… mirror magic. You’ve led a varied life I see.” She noted as she withdrew her hand, nonchalantly licking her fingers clean.
The sight sent a shudder down Erebus’ spine, it was important not to forget that in more normal circumstances she’d have simply torn his soul from his chest and eaten it in front of his cooling corpse.
“I believe we were talking about how the mana in the air isn’t really mana?” The mage inquired, desperate to change the subject, anything to avoid considering how unpleasant having everything that made up himself quite literally caressed felt.
“Indeed we were. You’ll certainly find it more potent than mana though a lot harder to use. Which you’d know if you’d cast any magic since arriving here.”
Erebus declined to answer the implicit question there. “So what is it?”
“Chaos. Raw, undiluted chaos. Be careful when casting with it, because it will fight every attempt you make to enforce order on it.”
“You say that like it’s alive.” Erebus observed. Normally he’d have been dismissive of the idea, but when the next best thing to a god said it it tended to carry more weight.
“Not alive. Life is too orderly. But it’s chaos. It doesn’t want to be chaos. It doesn’t need to be chaos. It is chaos. When we say that demons are born of chaos we mean it literally, a pattern forms for a brief moment and then there’s a demon. Admittedly that’s almost always because someone puts it in that pattern, but there have been exceptions.”
“Are you an exception?” Erebus asked in what he hoped was an incisive question. Going by his master’s laugh he’d failed.
“No. I was create purposefully. The odds of a demon of my strength occurring by chance are low. So low that through all of time it has never happened. Unless you count the gods of course.”
“The gods are demons?!” Erebus spluttered, eyes wide as saucers.
“That’s a matter of much debate amongst imperators. The theory is that the first gods were also born of chaos, huge patterns in the chaos, so large they disrupted the entire flow, then the first gods made the second and so on. I’ve no idea if it’s true but it’s as good an explanation as any.”
“So what is chaos then?”
“The potential for creation.”
*
“This is Lana, she’s one of the demons I’ve pacted with to help tutor you.” Tsa’rahlitzek stated, pushing forwards a frankly terrified looking succubus.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Lana was a classical demoness, crimson skin, wings, tail, horns, the works. She also wasn’t paying any attention to him at all really, far too busy trying to look behind her at the demon queen without moving her head to do so with rather limited success.
Erebus didn’t blame her. Even after a month of staying in the demon’s private world he still had to fight back a shiver every time he saw Tsa’rahlitzek as every sense he had told him in no uncertain terms that the only reason he shouldn’t be running right now is that it was already far, far too late. He had a sneaking suspicion that ‘pacted with’ in this case had involved corporealizing in front of the demon and declaring she worked for her now.
Tsa’rahlitzek, either unaware or simply uncaring of her charge’s thoughts, carried on blithely, “She will be sorting out the library so as to better aid you in your search for knowledge as well as acting as your torturer.”
Two pairs of eyes widened at that proclamation.
“A torturer?!” cried one.
“A librarian?!” cried the other.
The demon queen sighed, “Of course. Did you really think your training would just involve me dumping the knowledge of aeons into your brain and hoping for the best? You must be able to keep your head in the direst of conditions, to cast spells that even a moment’s distraction would cause you to die in an instant even whilst the world devolves to chaos around you, to remain focused on your task no matter the distraction. I will accept nothing less.”
Both demon and mage shivered, a moment of terrible solidarity passing through them. Especially as Tsa’rahlitzek continued talking, “As much as I would normally attend to these parts of your training myself, after our first lesson turned you into a gibbering soup I have concluded a gentler touch is required.”
Erebus did not recall a first lesson, the lack of knowledge wasn’t the comfort he’d have hoped.
“We will start with pain.”
*
He’d lost track of how long he’d been here. Even accounting for the fact he was having his memories removed on a semi-regular basis he’d lost track at around the three year mark.
Today’s lesson was on pain, again. Lana was carefully flensing the flesh off his back as he juggled the spells around him. A sphere of water, a globe of fire, a perfect marble of quartz and, unseen, a bubble of air.
The four spells were not powerful by any measure and were similar enough that any master elementalist could likely have done it, though it had certainly eluded him before he’d come here.
Whether any of those mages could have done it whilst being flayed was another matter but as Lana’s blade removed another square of skin from his back and more blood pooled stickily beneath him, the spheres didn’t even wobble in their orbit around him.
At least until the succubus began to rub salt into his exposed nerves. Without even a hint of resistance the spheres either dissipated or fell to the floor as Erebus screamed his agony to the uncaring sky.
“Disappointing.” Tsa’rahlitzek declared, “It is just pain child, a distraction, nothing more.”
“Exactly! It’s distracting!” Erebus retorted as he took deep breaths to calm himself down. His back was already healed, the skin not even scarred, the blood once more in his veins. There were other things he wanted to yell but he knew they would fall on deaf ears.
“You must learn to ignore it. Pain, pleasure, boredom, desire, love. These are all distractions. With my help you will overcome all of them.” The imperator told him flatly, “Begin again.”
Gently Lana stroked his hair as he resummoned the orbs. “I’m sorry.” She whispered as the knife once more caressed his skin.
*
It had been some time since Erebus had seen his master. Something about a war, though she hadn’t elaborated on the matter beyond that. A search of the library, with Lana’s help, had returned nothing.
It wasn’t surprising, Tsa’rahlitzek had certainly read every single book there, curating them for her apprentice. If the imperator didn’t want him to find out the truth then he wouldn’t, it was as simple as that.
On the bright side the lack of deific supervision had allowed Lana and he to spend more time together.
There had been other demons around the house, A’ronol and Pth’erek, acted as guards, the two rather burly devils of war would have been the kind of threats on Reath that would have mandated immortals to deal with, but here in the hells they were steady middleweights, and frankly superfluous in the face of the hell’s owner.
As Erebus understood it their purpose was less to fight anything that turned up as to keep him alive long enough that he could be shunted through a portal, then follow after him until his master had successfully subdued, interrogated and disposed of the threat. So far it had amounted to little more than a well paid vacation for the pair who, unlike Lana, had at least kept their heads well enough to bargain for their service.
There was also his swordsmanship teacher, Vaul the Demonblooded, a vampire that had fled Reath for the hells after he’d gotten a tad too peckish during a demonic invasion and began manifesting demonic traits. His payment was to take the form of five drops of Tsa’rahlitzek's blood that he planned to spend the next ten millenia absorbing. The smart money was on the overambitious vamp cooking himself in his own skin instead.
Erebus had protested the need for a swordsmanship teacher, he had afterall been a combat mage of some renown.
That protest had died when he’d been skewered three times on the vampire’s rapier, Lifedrinker, in three seconds from three different angles.
The vampire’s role was less to teach him how to be better with a blade and more to teach him how to survive when facing a blitz attack from a much faster foe.
“All that guff you read about spotting patterns and predicting the attack is just manure to appease the gullible.” Vaul had told him, between skewerings, “If someone’s got that big a speed advantage on you they’ll just abort or redirect the attack. Unless they can’t actually perceive what they’re doing properly in which case it’s a miracle they haven’t just splattered themselves against a wall by now.”
“Then how am I supposed to deal with it?” Erebus had asked whilst healing a perforated lung, his trusty travel staff held in front of him, blade out.
“Well I know the Lady intends to teach you chronomancy at some point, and that goes some way towards levelling the playing field, though it’ll be hard as heck to do on Reath. My advice…? Explosions. Lots of explosions. Send out shrapnel. Send out heat. Doesn’t matter how slippery the git is, they can’t dodge if there’s nowhere to dodge to.”
“Let’s assume that’s not an option, say I’m in an enclosed space, what then?”
“Oh that’s easy. You get stabbed. And you make damn sure that once the blade is in they aren’t getting it out again. It’ll hurt like… well being stabbed but given some of your other lessons I think you can handle it.”
That was certainly true. Lana was no longer required for his training sessions since the kind of pain needed to make him drop a spell had escalated to the kind that had to be pumped into his brain directly. He knew it was stressing her out, that she was now superfluous to requirements and he’d made a point to compliment her care of the library to his master whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Tsa’rahlitzek was not exactly renowned for her generosity and she’d never actually promised to let the succubus leave once she’d played her part in this.
*
“I won’t let her hurt you.” They were foolish words and they both knew it, but Erebus meant it all the same.
The two were cuddled up in his bed, sweaty and thoroughly pleased with themselves, and each other.
It was another of Tsa’rahlitzek’s barely explained disappearances and they’d been making the most of it. Things were coming to something of a head, no more pain lessons, not because there was no greater pain that could be inflicted upon him but because the kind of soul mutilation required would have been beyond even the imperator’s ability to heal.
Lana feared the worst. That at any moment the executioner’s axe would descend for her and it had made the supernatural predator skittish and jumpy to the point she’d screamed once when he’d shut a door too fast.
“What can you possibly hope to do against her?” Lana asked, not unfairly or unkindly.
It was a good question and Erebus carefully didn’t answer it as he simply repeated, “I won’t let her hurt you.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer, he did, but if he put voice to his plans he suspected that would rather be the death of them.
After so long in the imperator’s private hell he thought he’d finally figured out what was so strange about the pocket dimension. This place wasn’t Tsa’rahlitzek’s private hell. It was Tsa’rahlitzek. The great imperator had built a world of herself, an impenetrable fortress to defend against some great enemy where the very air would be against it.
If he was right even saying as much as he had was a risk, though he quietly suspected that the imperator got a quiet thrill from what little defiance he showed. She probably wouldn’t kill him if he chose to throw down with her. Probably.
As to Lana’s question, he had ideas. He had no idea how long he’d been away from Reath, though he did know that Tsa’rahlitzek had severely skewed the flow of time in his favour, but regardless of how long it had been he was sure that some of his friends would still be alive. It would be the work of moments to open a portal for Lana and shove her through.
A moment was a terribly long time when fighting a demon queen.
The key, he was sure, was going to be chaos. Rather than attempting to strike her down or hold her off with spellwork, what if he could set up some kind of cascade effect in the chaos in the air? That combined with the new shield spell he’d been quietly working on, which he’d decided to call the absolute aegis, might be just enough to get Lana away.
He didn’t say any of that though, just pressing a kiss to the back of the succubus’ neck and pulling her closer against him, intent on getting some actual sleep.
To his surprise Lana pulled away, rolling over to face him. “When you go home… you’ll remember me right?”
“Of course.” The promise slipped out before he could stop it. Not out of any intent not to keep it but because they both knew what he remembered was not something he had any control over.
“That… that’s good.” She whispered, almost to herself. So taken in was he in that moment of vulnerability that Erebus barely even felt it as she tore his throat out with her claws.
It took a couple of seconds for the pain to sink in, though he barely even noticed it, almost mechanically moving his hands to cover the wound as he tried to heal it. He didn’t manage it. Lana’s tail twined smoothly around both his wrists, pinning them in his lap even as she began to pull the life from him, not much but enough to gutter out the spell before it could take.
He didn’t say anything as the demoness held him in place, choking on his own blood he couldn’t say anything, and with her sapping away anything he tried to cast with he couldn’t do anything either beyond stare at her in quiet betrayal even as one of her hands pushed into his flesh beneath his ribs.
Symbolically it should have been his heart that she pulled out but as Erebus stared at his own liver he couldn’t see any way he could live without that either.
*
“I told you I would break you of love.” Tsa’rahlitzek told him calmly for the umpteenth time.
“Was any of it real?” Erebus screamed at her, or at least tried to, his voice hoarse from yelling, “Tell me! That’s all I want to know.”
“And I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. It was real for you. That’s all that mattered. And if you were anywhere else in creation you would be dead because of it.”
“It matters to me!” The necromancer yelled, angry enough to actually take a swing at her. Tsa’rahlitzek didn’t even bother to dodge it, simply deciding that there was now several metres of space between her and Erebus that hadn’t existed before and letting the necromancer overbalance as the predicted resistance never appeared.
“I won’t tell you.” She said simply, “Doubt is also a distraction you must overcome.”
“And what? You think one heartbreak is going to somehow numb me to love?” He snarled as he tore stones larger than he was from the ground to bombard his teacher. No longer even trying to show restraint where his rage was concerned. He knew the imperator could take it.
“Hardly. It would take a thousand heartbreaks to numb someone to something as pernicious as love.” She said from behind him, a hand on his shoulder. “And a thousand heartbreaks I have wrought.”
Memories poured into him. Pounding him to the ground in flashes of agony.
Of Lana licking his lifeblood from her claws as he bled out on the floor. Of the succubus choking him to death with her tail. Of an assassin bursting into his room and Lana dying in his arms afterwards. Of him weeping next to the demoness’ body the one time he’d reacted faster. Of the demon draining life and soul from his body. Of them plotting against Tsa’rahlitzek only for Lana’s blade to burst from his chest when the moment came.
Again and again, as many different betrayals as the imperator had been able to concoct, and then when her imagination ran dry the same again for good measure.
His master had been right, he felt numb. Also like he wanted to throw up, but mostly numb.
“You must be ready and able to strike down anyone at a moment’s notice. Now let us speak of boredom.”
*
“You’re ready.” The words took him by surprise. He’d long given up on ever hearing them.
He couldn’t say what had finally changed to let his master reach this decision. Possibly that he’d stopped expecting it.
There wasn’t some grand work of magic or terrible torment being undertaken at the moment, he’d been sat quietly in the library learning one of the runic scripts and for a short time he simply kept reading in the belief that it was some kind of test.
“I said you’re ready.” Tsa’rahlitzek told him, going so far as to incarnate in front of him. The necromancer studiously ignored her until she closed the book on his fingers. Given the size of the tome he’d had to pull them away rather sharply to keep them.
“Ready for what?” He asked, not trusting his ears in the slightest.
“Ready to leave.” She clarified. “Pack what you brought with you. My staff desire to give you gifts.” The imperator shook her head at the absurdity of the idea. Erebus declined to point out that for all her disdain she was allowing it anyway, and the demoness never allowed anything she didn’t approve of.
Vaul’s gift, perhaps predictably, had been a blade, a glittering rapier with a rather large number of rather large mana stones worked into the hilt. The blade bespelled to steal the vitae of its victims. It would have been an invaluable gift if Erebus had ever taken to the blade, as it was he could think of a number of powerful mages who would gladly barter for it.
The two war devils had, somewhat surprisingly, given him a small portrait of himself in heavy meditation, close to a dozen spells swirling around his head, and a book of poems, handwritten.
There had been other gifts, most of them more useful for trade than personal use. Gr’kriss, the leader of a pack of hellhounds that his master had teach him how to track properly, had told him how to summon her and promised not to charge him on the first two summonings.
Last had been Lana, the demoness stepping up to whisper three words in his ear as her gift.
“It was real.” Only for the succubus to step back crestfallen at his impassive expression, simply nodding to her once as he tried not to sneer, love was afterall a distraction and he was finally free of them.
“You will need to establish yourself rapidly on your time. You have been absent six months Reath-time, I advise laying low an established power.” Tsa’rahlitzek informed him as Erebus opened a portal home.
“Of course master.” He said, turning to bow at the waist to her, “My gratitude to you for your training. I intend to do great things.”
With that he stepped through the portal and was gone.