“Let me go!” Janet screamed as she tried to pry her hand out of Sylthis’ vice grip. “I wanna kill that son of a bitch!”
Her shadow billowed behind her like a cloak on a windy day. Her eyes, two flaming orbs, in both appearance and the rage they projected. Her hair was whipping about like a banshee mid-scream.
“Have you ever fought a demon?” Sylthis asked. She was trying her hardest to hold back laughter, which only made Janet more infuriated. “As a matter of fact, have you ever actually fought a fully sentient being that fought back with spells and Skills?”
“You already know…”
“Marius doesn’t count, and Amurag was not trying to kill you,” Sylthis rebutted before Janet could open her mouth.
“Ow! What the hell, Janet?” the captive had tried to distract Sylthis by pinching a section off of her shadow. She had of course failed, but the Cyclopean still had felt some pain.
“Okay, that’s enough out of you,” Darius sighed as a bunch of runes flew from his palm into and Janet’s torso, before heading straight for her core. Before the girl could react, her entire body grew still. “There. Now calm down and let us draw up a plan of attack. Okay?”
Janet grunted out a noncommittal “fine” as all her previous efforts to escape Sylthis’ grip were directed towards breaking down the binding spell. Was Darius trying to be funny or something, using what essentially was the linchpin of her power to restrain her?
After throwing the man a dirty look that he ignored, Janet activated [Mana Sight] and began scrutinizing the runescheme. The fact that Darius had just turned her frenzy into a training session never occurred to her as she focused all her efforts into constructing runes of her own to counteract the meaning of the spell-borne ward that held her mana hostage.
“Now, as I was saying, we’ll have to observe the demon’s actions for a while and hopefully ascertain their motives and endgame.”
“Why, though? We should just kill the fucker and forget all about it. Have you ever heard of a good-intentioned demon?”
“Well…” Darius began, before Sylthis interrupted by clearing her throat and throwing the man a secretive glance. Janet stopped fiddling with the runes and threw her a hostile glare.
“You told us you had a pet Hellhound, remember?” Janet just scowled, then looked away. “There are as many types and species of demons as there are of people. Perhaps even more, seeing as we use the term ‘Demon’ for any being that hails from the Hellish Spheres.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“In our Spheres, we differentiate between people, beasts, and monsters. But when it comes to residents of other Spheres, we usually refer to them by a general term, be that Demon, Angel, Spirit, Elemental, etc.”
Sylthis then turned towards the direction in which she suspected the soul-stealing bastard to be hiding. It was the same direction as where the Adventurers had made camp, but Darius and Sylthis seemed reticent to assign blame just yet.
“So, what kind of demon do we suspect this one to be?” Janet asked, mostly to distract herself from the ire bubbling like magma inside her chest.
Since that did not work, and every moment Janet spent idle was another chance for her legs to try and go kill the rat bastard, she withdrew one sheet of plain white paper from her storage. It was part of the ream Darius had given her to practice her numbers.
Her purpose today was however not to get herself a headache trying to decipher the infernal characters of mathematics. Rather, Janet got herself a pencil and sketched out the runes of the spell Darius had used to restrain her.
“Oh,” Sylthis continued, fully aware that Janet could easily follow the conversation and doodle on her paper with her improved Stats. “I suppose this one should be a mid-tier demon. From what you reported, it has some capability of affecting the Realm of Souls, and perhaps draw sustenance from it – though we can’t be sure of that just yet. Lesser Demons are not powerful enough to do that, and Major, Greater, and Archdemons cannot survive in an area as starved of mana as the Havenhurst.”
Janet completed sketching the circle of runes. In her less-than-expert opinion, she could tell that it was at best a Second-Tier spell. The runes could be grouped into two distinct groups, each dedicated to a specific function.
She double-checked her work. Everything seemed to be in order.
“I wanted to ask,” she turned towards Darius, “how come Demons can all over a sudden affect the Realm of Souls? When we first met, I remember either you or Pireus stating that Soul magic did not naturally exist.”
“It doesn’t,” the man stated with a cold certainty as he inspected Janet’s sketch. With a pencil of his own, he crossed over two runes and placed them in their own distinct group.
Janet noted that those were the runes responsible for intake and output of energy. Depending on how one looked at a spell, they could either be part of the spell’s main functionality, or were a whole other functionality. Since she had not cast the spell herself, the right thing to do was treat them as a discrete functionality, at least until she deciphered what energies the spell used to sustain itself.
“Thanks,” she thanked her mentor for the correction, all acrimony forgotten now that she was engaged in an activity that she found enjoyable.
“People always say that demons eat souls. Now, this particular one is affecting the Realm itself. How can demons be capable of either if they do not possess the Affinity or [Talents] to do so?”
Darius paused for a moment and gathered his thoughts.
“You’re working under a misunderstanding here. Demons don’t eat souls, like you can. Instead, they siphon from them their stores of Mystery. That can manifest in their victims as a sudden loss of power, or in severe cases dementia and memory loss.”
Janet thought about it as she traced her own circle of runes above each of the rune-groups. The first group’s purpose was to attach the spell to her core, so she created a rune pairing that disintegrated that section of the spell. The second group drained all momentum from flowing energy, and transferred the energy it drained to empower the third portion, the energy input.
Janet was a bit stumped on how to get rid of that second section without causing herself too much damage.
“What Darius is trying to say,” Sylthis added, “is that the common understanding of magic is very biased. If a frog can tunnel through the Earth, it has earth magic, rather than the spatial Mysteries it utilizes. If an owl can blast people apart with bolts out of the blue, then it possesses Lightning Affinity.”
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Janet, upon hearing mention of the owl, turned towards Sylthis like a dog hearing the word ‘treat’. The two adults found it very amusing.
“Demons, essentially, are one and all, wielders of fire magic. They all are born with a propensity for a particular flame called Hellfire, which can burn – or more accurately corrupt – Mysteries, be they within mana or the soul. Whatever is burnt by that infernal flame turns into a substance that the Demons can absorb, which is where the myth of demons eating souls came from.”
Janet gave the explanation some thought. She could actually see the very plausible logic jump from a creature that binds one’s power with flame then absorbs it, to a scary monster of legend that can eat souls.
She chuckled softly, for the first time understanding why the Religions had decided to brand her sire a Demon. The fit was just too uncanny.
It was also understandable that anything that affected souls would have a palpable effect in their Realm, regardless of whether that effect was active or not. But Janet knew people loved their secrets. She refused to ascribe to the assertion that Soul Magic was as rare as it was made out to be.
“Wait a second… Tippy had a greenish flame, if I remember correctly. It also did not produce any heat. Does that mean he could also absorb Mystery?”
“Tippy?” Darius clarified.
“Her pup Hellhound.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but Hellhounds are barely demonic. They do hail from the Hells, but comparing them to true demons would be like mistaking a finger monkey for a human.”
“But… but they can still evolve into more powerful creatures, right?” Janet’s voice had a certain pleading quality to it. She really wanted reassurance that her pup had survived in the wilds.
After a meaningful glare from Sylthis, Darius admitted that indeed, Hellhounds could also grow powerful enough to contend with actual demons. He made sure to preface his statement by stating that it was very rare, downright miraculous in fact, that such a situation unfolded.
Sylthis seemed ready to jump her mentor’s throat for that explanation, but stopped when she saw Janet’s face light up like a wintertime dawn. “I knew it! Tippy is alive!”
The adults shared a brief look, but decided to leave the girl to her delusions.
With renewed gusto, Janet went back to calculating the best way to get out of Darius’ hold. She ran through a dozen different runic configurations, but none could interrupt the recycling of drained kinetic energy to even tighter bonds.
Admitting defeat for the time being, Janet changed her focus back to the first rune grouping. Had she missed something basic and foundational about the spell?
All that her inspection revealed was that if left alone, the cycling power would eventually make all her mana slow down to a standstill. Janet really did not want to know what lay at the end of that outcome.
“What do you think this particular demon is doing here? Was it attracted from its Hell by the mass death of the ants, or has it always been around?”
Sylthis mulled over the question, before she shrugged and decided to reveal that she had noticed a demonic presence in the Havenhurst as far back as before the party met Janet, but she had dismissed it as an error of her perception.
However, they still had no way of knowing whether what she had detected was the very demon that they currently were targeting, or another nefarious entity altogether.
“Then why don’t you scout ahead and confirm?” Janet asked, her attention upon the runescheme doubling as she felt her mana slow down yet again. She could barely feel her core anymore, and her eyesight was beginning to blur.
“I tried,” Sylthis reported. “I focused my [Far Sight] on the direction you pointed out, but for some reason I kept falling asleep.”
The woman sounded embarrassed even to admit it, and Janet sympathized. Her role in the team was the scout. She could deal damage and cast spells, but she was neither the hardest hitter nor the most erudite caster. Her forte was seeing into places and across distances that no other Skill could reach.
Something about her statement did sound familiar, however, so Janet forced herself to look up from her calculations.
“Does the drowsiness hit every time you activate the Skill, or just randomly?”
“For some reason, as long as I don’t try to look, I can stay awake. If however I even try to take a single glimpse, I’m suddenly hit with this overpowering haze that puts me to sleep right away.”
“Status effect?” Darius asked before retrieving his golden glasses from storage.
“I’m not sure, but it must be something to that effect since I’m awake barely two seconds after the Skill deactivates automatically when I fall asleep.”
Janet hated those glasses. They were engraved with runes too dense to read, that were arranged in a scheme too convoluted to decipher. Any time Darius wore them and activated their enchantments, Janet always felt a wave of revulsion sweep through her body.
“I think I know what the problem is,” Janet piped up as Darius unfurled their temples and infused them with mana. “I also felt a sense of dizziness hit me when I was inspecting the Realm of Souls.”
“Just the Realm?” Sylthis asked. “What about regular meditation?”
Janet explained that activating [Meditation] did not appear to rouse the effect. She even demonstrated it by activating the Skill. Nothing occurred that was out of the ordinary.
“The problem comes, I suspect, when any Skill or ability rooted in the soul gets activated. I remember seeing your soul, Sylthis, and its always-active ability seemed deactivated.” She said, remembering the closed eyeball.
“So why are you not affected?” Darius asked.
“My [Talent] is always active, always feeding in one way or another. To put that on hold would be the same as stopping a person from breathing.” She decided to lay into conjecture mode, totally forgetting that her mana was gradually coming to a standstill.
“If I’m right, the demon puts people into a state of senselessness. As their victims rest up unaware of their surroundings, it burns away at their soul and absorbs all the power it desires.”
“I’m awake now, though,” Sylthis pointed out. “How could the demon…”
“You’re awake, yes, but your soul might as well be an inert orb of goo. People have so little awareness of their souls that they never realize I’m attacking them until I take a bite out of them.” It was the same with their shadows, Janet thought with smug satisfaction. “What the demon does is take away even that tiny shred of awareness, basically anesthetizing you as it slowly consumes you.”
It was nice, telling her opinions without judgement or criticism. It forced her to think about and articulate what was basically instinctive knowledge into words, an exercise that seemed to be elevating her comprehension of her own magics.
“So, are we thinking sleep demon, or paralysis demon?” Darius asked after mulling over Janet’s answer for a bit. He put his glasses back into storage, something Janet welcomed with a sigh of relief.
“Can’t it be both?” Sylthis asked, just before she presumably tried to activate her ‘Sight’. Her head suddenly drooped, then jerked back into position seconds later as wakefulness returned.
“So?”
“Definitely something to do with sleep. I was totally out of it. Paralysis should at the very least leave me with some awareness. This effect didn’t.” she tried to shake the unease off her body with a full-body shudder. It did not appear to have worked. “We need to kill this thing.”
“Yay!” Janet pumped her fists into the air. “See? She agrees with me. Mind removing the shackles on my mana now? There’s no way I’ll break this spell before my core grinds to a halt.”
Darius inspected Janet’s work without word, before dashing her hopes of an easy release. “We’ve not discussed a plan of attack yet, have we?”
“I’m sure you’ve hunted the things before, being Slayers and all that. Let’s just go and flatten the thing.” She mused for a moment, then added, “I also call dibs on its soul. Any Mystery that can overpower someone as powerful as Sylthis in an instant is a power worth cultivating.”
Sylthis glared at Janet, then shook her head in dismay and once more activated her ‘Sight’. Her smile widened with each activation, as subsequent attempts took her less and less time to reawaken, until eventually she was just drowsy rather than knocked out to sleep.
“Mental effects always wear down the more times they’re weathered,” she explained with a smug grin. “Now, to find this cheeky bastard…”
Janet returned to designing a counter-spell. It was slow going, but the talk of demon-hunting strategies kept her entertained.
Her favorite option? Sylthis had suggested that Darius go in guns blazing and obliterate the creature in a single move. It would mean she got to keep the soul and finally see their mentor in action for the first time ever.
Unfortunately, the stalwart man wanted her trained up, and saw the coming fight as a prime opportunity to face a humanoid, intelligent combatant in a battle to the death.
Janet hated that she agreed with his logic.
Before that, however, Janet had a pesky spell to dismantle.