The familiar taste of her own mouth signaled Vera’s return. The clicking of a collar around her neck signaled the rapid degradation of her fate. She’d known what to expect based on the rambling insights of the two gods, the collar only occupying a small fragment of her attention as she set to understanding her supposed newfound powers.
“Thank you, Clenum.” Vladik moved around from behind his desk, dragging the letter opener he’d grabbed across his thumb. Vera, focused nearly entirely on figuring out what had changed, had closed her eyes. “That was a rather quick turn-around. Usually they fight through the entire ritual.” The dull letter opener failed to draw any blood from the demon’s thumb and he let out a disgruntled breath. Tossing it behind himself to land clattering on his desk, Vladik held out an open hand. “Clenum.”
“Yes, sir.” A slight gust was the only indication that the shadowed figure had moved, but a red bead appeared on the loan shark’s outstretched thumb. A matching shade dotted the corner of Clenum’s lips until his tongue removed the trace.
“Now,” said Vladik as he stepped up to Vera, pressing his bloodied thumb to a flat medallion affixed to the collar. “The fresh blood is on the collar, the collar is on the future mindless drone, and the future mindless drone is on the ritual circle.” He pressed his offhand around his bleeding thumb. “Anything I’m missing?”
“No, sir, I don’t believe so.”
“Excellent.”
“Will you be performing the ritual yourself, sir?”
“No, you can manage it,” the violet-haired demon said as he turned back to his desk. “The more streamlined and uninvolved this business becomes for me, the better.” He moved back around to his chair, sitting down to continue reviewing the papers he’d been reviewing when Vera had walked in. “Leaves more time for more industrious endeavors.”
“Very well,” Clenum responded as he moved to position himself a meter away from the silent Vera. He began walking around the still demoness, intoning a chant ill-suited to his mouth from memory. The room was not large despite Vladik’s desire for ostentation, but he maintained the meter radius as he circled her. A dim ring of violet light appeared just within the circuit he walked. Combined with the similarly lit symbols that followed, the lighting matched the engravings on the bottom of the marble flooring. A matching violet light briefly shone from beneath Vera’s tunic, but the purple glow was snuffed out, flickering instead to a cool azure light. Finally opening her eyes, Vera’s irises gleamed a matching blue.
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Since she’d returned and closed her eyelids, Vera had been doing her best to shut out the conversation and events around her. Nothing about her body was odd or different. If it hadn’t been so lucid, she likely would’ve written off her soul being projected as a product of desperate delusions. She’d never read any of the more technical tombs from the archive, mostly due to lacking prerequisite knowledge for all but the most basic topics. She had, however, read some of the tombs less dedicated to learning and more interested in telling fantastical stories of old.
All of them had to have some kernel of truth to them as the archive would not typically house books that were entirely fictitious. What she could actually remember of the tombs only gave her isolated scraps of magical knowledge, and many of those scraps conflicted with one another. Some had mentioned mana channels as if the magics had to flow through the body similarly to her blood. Others had made it seem as if the magics would be captured in the air of her lungs. Still another had told tales of living magic that never would enter a casters body at all. Instead, the caster would have to bargain with the primitive will of the magic, enticing it to perform what feat the caster required. That last version reminded Vera of fae, arguably the most well-renowned race for magical abilities, and so she decided to give that a try.
Hello? she questioned mentally. Magical creatures of Sloth? There was no response, neither mentally nor materially. A part of her hoped her supposed ancestor would pop in, hammock and all, to talk Vladik to death. If you’re listening, stopping time like that Belphegor guy did would be very cool of you. She didn’t really expect anything to come of such a request, so she moved to trying to feel out the other possibilities she’d read about.
Most of the distractions around her were successfully filtered out as Vera dove into one possible way of using her powers after another. She was not testing any method to the extent that would be required to truly dismiss them, but she was becoming more and more distraught as they each failed. Vladik pressing his thumb against the medallion between her clavicles finally broke through the ignorance of the outside world enough that she was dimly aware when Clenum began his chanting.
Having her soul forcibly projected had given her some sense of its nature. Not enough to really do much with, as shone by her inability to even perceive the newly awakened magic, let alone wield it. It did make her vaguely aware of the slight constriction it was being put under. As the man Vera had decided was a butler, Clenum, continued to chant, a pressure grew to surround that facet of her being. Once again, her mouth tasted wrong.
Of course, none of this helped her. If anything, it only made more clear how screwed she was. Her soul was being bound and all she could do was magically flail about. Well, there wasn’t evidence of even her flailing being magical. This far into the ritual, she was no longer able to speak aloud. Actually voicing her desires to some sort of living magic hardly seemed likely to be the issue, but the restrictive magics of the ritual denying her even a peep quickly sent her back to those first moments in that cerulean landscape.
The magics of the ritual that held tight to her soul felt more rigid than the ether of that realm had, but they also were incomparable less potent. Upon feeling the similarities, Vera initially tried to create another Stone of Speaking. Her effort was rebuffed, and she could tell it was not due to lack of skill. Well, potentially it could be done with enough skill, but the more dominant factor was the rigidity of the magics. The realm in which her soul had been projected into, had been flooded with more malleable magics. Even if she did manage to shatter the form of the rituals magics, crafting it into a Stone of Speaking would only result in an unusable miscreation.
Besides, creating a Stone of Speaking just to communicate with living magics that had yet to confirm they even existed, was a long shot, even at this late stage. The insights she gleaned from the differences in the environments did spark a somewhat less put together idea. Before she’d endeavored to replicate the soundless pop that had spawned Belphegor’s hammock, she’d made to push out. In order to accomplish what, she hadn’t been sure, but as she pushed out with her soul again now, she felt the magics… creak?
Vladik’s head snapped upward from his stack of papers as they were illuminated by the blue light spilling from the latest fool. The ritual was not the most secure. Actually, it was the least secure. But he wasn’t using it to bind mystical forces or extraordinary mages. His agents were careful to only find those with little knowledge and less experience in any of the magical fields of study. There was always a chance of someone slipping through, but this wasn’t that.
His voice joined Clenum’s and the magics that encased Vera’s soul squeezed tighter. They each sped up their chants, though that was entirely missed by the enraptured demoness. She had found something against which she could rail, and rail she would. The bindings frayed even as they grew tighter. But there was only so long that she could push for. Similar to the first serious use of a muscle, the force she could exert with her newly isolated soul gave out too quickly.
“Well, that was certainly exciting.” Vera reopened her eyes letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Vladik was standing, but still behind his desk. The violet torchlight of the room shone on the thin layer of perspiration coating his forehead. Clenum had never stopped chanting and maintained the speed the pair had accelerated to. Vera didn’t have the requisite knowledge of rituals to know how close it was to completion. If the sense she got from her binding was any indication, her remaining freedom was best quantified in moments.
“Maybe you won’t be a mindless drone after all. I don’t have a spawn of Sloth yet.” A gear ticked over in Vera’s head. The redheaded demon Vladik had chained up. Belphegor had called him “her spawn.” With the newfound senses Vera had discovered, she’d found two sources of magics with a feel somewhat similar to her own. They’d been background noise as she’d tried to break free, but now, her nascent ability to manipulate her soul exhausted, she focused on the two sources. One was the grinning Vladik, his magic similar but clearly different.
The other was the slumbering demon by the door. Vera had not possessed magical abilities for long enough to accurately gauge something as enigmatic as metaphysical weight, and yet it was clear the power the red-haired demon could wield far outstripped either of her captors’. Theirs, of course, outstripped her own, but that had already been established. The other element of importance was the veneer over his magic. His own was different from hers, only as similar as Vladik’s. The thin coating encasing that power, however, radiated a kinship towards Vera’s soul.
Vladik cried out when a sapphire glow mirroring Vera’s dimmed radiance emanated from the bound redhead. He didn’t hesitate as he scooped up the letter opener he’d thrown back on the desk. The loan shark threw it with practiced accuracy at Vera, whose dim glow was waxing at the same rate the redhead’s waned. Vera had hoped pulling the magic encapsulating the redhead magic would reinvigorate her tired soul. A resigned sob threatened to emerge when the restrictive magic Clenum had been weaving around her soul did not only keep her soul and magic in, but the familiar magic out. There to complete her tragedy was the dull blade that spun unerringly towards her frozen body.
The magic Vera had pulled away from the chained demon had still not managed to break through the bindings surrounding her when the glow from its source winked out. The flung letter opener was headed toward the exposed part of her throat, and her desperation died. A bitter joke about the afterlife Belphegor had mentioned flashed in her mind, but never truly formed. Her last flicker of hope died just before a ruby glow washed out the violet and blue throughout the room.
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Vera didn’t flinch when a tremor shook the room, the marble beneath her fracturing. She failed to meet Vladik’s eyes as he screamed about calamities, his dull blade still spinning toward her. Her soul only passively accepted the familiar magic after the binding force around her shattered, the residual shards of said force pulled toward the chained demon. She only reacted when a wave of that demon’s magic rushed through the room. And she didn’t move with hope, only an empty fury. Her first expression of freedom was a step towards the demon across from her. This put her only closer to the soaring blade, but that stopped mattering when a grey face framed by scarlet hair appeared before her.
“Temper the fury,” he said, touching a finger to her glabella and releasing a more controlled form of his magic into her mind. “Don’t let it use you.”
The fury noticeably leveled. It wasn’t quite that it lessened it effects, Vera’s chest still thumping with rage. Instead, the pinpoint of ire that had driven her forwards towards Vladik unfocused. The quantity was the same, but her vision no longer tunneled only towards him. Now the rest of the room came into focus. And the rest of the room was in chaos. In only that brief moment between the initial wave of magic and when the red-haired demon directed her anger, the population of the room had tripled. It became evident Vera truly hadn’t had a clue how many of those shadowy figures were among them as figures of indistinct shadow erupted into a frenzy, tearing apart anyone before them.
Vladik and Clenum seemed to have resisted the wave of magic, their own magical natures enough to shield them from the undirected attack. They were still not spared from the frenzy of their hidden allies. The figure that had handed Vera’s contract to the loan shark began clawing at the back of its boss’s neck, and if the figure hadn’t just been blindly slashing, Vladik’s throat likely would’ve been ripped out immediately.
“We must leave before they gather themselves.” The redhead held the chain that had bound him in one hand and jerked it backwards, a chunk of the wall it’d been affixed to flying past his waist and into the figure that had leapt at Vera. As it flew, Clenum, far faster than his boss, had blurred across the room and leapt across the desk. His arms spread so as to catch both the figure already clawing at Vladik, and the one that had more recently emerged from the shadows. His fingers, having been replaced with claws, dug into both figures, neither releasing much blood.
“Can you walk?” asked the demon before her. He was wrapping the chain around his torso while forcibly turning the occasional frenzied figure back toward their brethren. Vera was still fueled by the rage he’d released, but her executive processes were thoroughly stalled by the gruesome sight of one figure biting and tearing at another’s neck. The not so lovely flavor of bile and wine filled her mouth as the carnage around her tempted Vera to divulge the sparse contents of her stomach. She hadn’t given any indication of hearing the spawn of Wrath by the time he’d finished wrapping the chain and thrown the piece of wall over one shoulder.
“I suppose not. Apologies for this.” He bent to a knee in front of the dazed Vera and hugged her a bit below the waste. Vera’s mind caught up to her as she was roughly lifted and she yelped in confusion as she was draped over his other should. She intended to have him drop her, but dismissed the desire when one of the figures raced toward them.
“Behind,” she shouted. Watching someone kick backwards while slung over their shoulder was certainly disorienting, even disregarding everything else going on. Yet Vera was sure the thump from that kick should’ve crumpled the figure’s chest. When the figure hit the wall though, instead of lying dead or dying, it sprang to its feet and turned to attack the first figure it met.
The demon who held her used the force of the kick to propel them forward and was moving toward the door of the office nearly as fast as Clenum had been moving. As they passed through the door, the ruins of the alcove in which the redhead had been kept became visible. Vera’s mind formed a feeble connection between the spiderwebbing cracks at the center of the alcove and the tremor that had passed through the room.
The two of them flew down each flight of stairs, not pausing at the landings as the spawn of Wrath kicked off of walls to preserve their momentum. Vera’s mind recovered quickly from the disturbing imagery of before. Her mind could only process so much bizarreness and the stairs soaring beneath her combined with the hairpin turns at each flight left no room for the abrupt massacre. Still, the jarring escape had her stomach in turmoil.
She managed to keep it under control as the pair reached a torn-apart lobby at the bottom of the stairs. The culprit of the destruction made himself known when the receptionist ran screaming at them from where he’d been bashing one of the ornate pillars with a surprisingly durable inkwell. Vera started to inform her rescuee-turned-rescuer, but the receptionist’s screaming had sufficiently warned the demon. Restricting himself to a simple backhand, the spawn of Wrath sent the man sliding, his eyes dulling before he hit the ground. It wasn’t easy for Vera to fix the demon with a stare in her current position, but by propping herself up with an elbow, she did her best.
“Precision has never been my strength,” he said in answer.
“You can set me down now. It doesn’t sound like they’re following.” The demon glanced at the stairs for a moment before complying. Her feet beneath her once more, Vera was left directionless. “What do we do now?”
“What you do from here is not of my concern.” He lifted his hand, the letter opener jutting from both sides of a messy hole. With a swift jerk of his other hand, he removed the dull instrument.
“That looked like it hurt.”
“It will be fine,” he said with a grimace. “I intended to catch it but—”
“Precision isn’t really your thing, yeah, that’s been communicated,” cut in Vera, her thoughts going back to the tremor that had freed her from the ritual. The demon’s brow scrunched in mild confusion at her words, but he didn’t voice it. He moved for the door she’d entered the lobby through with Vera trailing behind. Exiting the building she hoped to see the large Titon, if for no other reason than to warn him about his imminent dismissal. When there was no sign of the lumbering man, Vera’s mind conjured the justifiably terrifying image of a Titon blinded by rage and tearing through a bodega.
“We part ways here. I must see to the affairs of my god.” He scanned the city for a moment. “Much has changed.”
“I understand you just woke up, but you can be dramatic after you teach me how you did all that magic.” She didn’t know what to do from here, but Vera knew learning how to do whatever he’d just done had to be helpful in some way.
“You are a spawn of Sloth, not of Wrath. You should be content with your own abilities. After all, you are not of Greed.”
“Right, but see, I don’t have any abilities. That used to not be an issue, but now I’ve got shady contracts for my soul and all this spawn business to deal with. Plus,” Vera said, pausing to jab a finger into the demons chest, “Your god owes me a favor.” The redhead raised an eyebrow as he lifted his uninjured hand to grab her finger and move it away from his chest.
“Your heritage only just awakened,” he said, his tone hovering between questioning and realization. “That explains your hair.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” Vera reached up fearing whatever Belphegor had done had fried her hair. Her hands met smooth undamaged hair and relief spread through her. It was replaced just a quickly with confusion when her hands met her horns. Rather than the familiar size she’d grown used to and which had become a comfort whenever her thumbs had hooked on them, the base of her horns had grown much thicker.
“My horns grew,” she said simply, confusion preventing a larger reaction.
“Yes, that has a tendency to happen. Your eyes have most likely changed as well.”
“Then why did you mention my hair? It didn’t change.” Vera could see the few strands that framed her face, so she knew that in addition to not being fried from her head, her hair hadn’t changed color to match the vibrancy of either this demon or Vladik.
“It has,” responded the demon, content to leave it at that until Vera motioned for him to elaborate. “It will take time for the new color to grow out.”
Vera groaned. She was suddenly not looking forward to the next time she’d see her mother. Being peppered with questions about dying her hair was not the reunion she was looking for right now.
“You will need rest.”
“Yeah, yeah. The gods mentioned that.”
“Gods?”
“Yeah, Belphegor and Astaroth,” she said, motioning between herself and the demon as she named their respective ancestors.
“I would not have thought they would be on speaking terms again so soon.” He turned and began walking away from Vladik’s office building motioning that Vera should follow. “Although, I am not entirely sure how long it has actually been.”
“Right, so then do you even know where you’re going?”
“Away from there. We already had been standing there for too long.” He looked at Vera as they merged with the crowd on the damp street. Vera was still quite sodden from her march with Titon and she envied the dry demon taking aggressively long strides beside her. “Is there anywhere you can stay of which our pursuers are not aware?”
“I don’t think Gren would mind if I stayed at the archive.” She wasn’t sure Gren would even notice her sleeping there.
“Is this Gren capable and willing to defend you while you recover from your awakening?” He asked it so earnestly that Vera’s outburst of laughter was accompanied by a softening of her eyes in apology.
“No, Gren would be more likely to join Vladik, for no more reason than it might lessen the damages to his books.” She didn’t actually think the elderly graezen would betray her, but his frail body would do little to stop the terrifying figures she’d just run from.
“Then I will stay with you until you have recovered from the stress of awakening.”
“And then you’ll just leave? I still have no idea how to do anything with my ‘heritage.’”
“We will see. Before I decide anything, I will need to determine the state of my church.” The demon had a determined glint in his eye.
“So if I’m going to rest at the archive, should we start heading that direction?” The demon stopped suddenly, frustrating a party of people walking behind them. An embarrassed frown was on his face, but he quickly reigned it into a more neutral expression.
“Right, yes, I just wanted to take a wide berth in case this Vladik had already sent out scouts after us.” He extended a hand in the direction Vera had motioned. “Please, lead the way.”
Vera set off in the general direction of the archive, the demon following at her side. She was not walking slow, but she could tell her companion was getting frustrated as he constantly had to pause as his absurd strides had taken him past her.
“I’m Vera, by the way.” She had to turn her head a bit back as he had taken to following a half step behind in order to have a buffer. “I figure you should know if you’re apparently going to be protecting me.”
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” The two walked for almost half a block.
“And you are?”
“Oh, right, I am Braulen.” He looked at her questioningly, but Vera just nodded. Braulen was a fairly common name.
The rest of the trek to the archive passed in silence. At one point Vera worried that Braulen would get impatient enough with her pace that he’d throw her over his shoulder again. Of course, she just slowed down further. The demon wielded impressive magics and had just fought them free of a room filled with frenzied killers. But he flustered so easily.
Gren was mostly unbothered by her request to sleep at the archive. He even set up a small sleeping area for her. The graezen was more interested in her new companion with the brilliant hair. However, Braulen was more focused on getting information from Vera before the exhaustion hit in full force. As soon as Gren had finished the sleeping area for her, it had begun creeping up on her. Now she was struggling to keep her eyes open as Braulen questioned if there was anything else she needed from her apartment if Vladik hadn’t already gotten to it.
“No, I’m pretty sure—” Vera started to say but cut herself off with a yawn. “—that was it,” she finished.
“Understood. I will hurry so as to not be gone too long.”
“That’s good, have fun,” she said sleepily as she dozed off.