2/18/25

I can hardly believe the ‘tactics’ of these demons. Yes, it worked, but surely, surely somebody should have seen the possibility for error.

And that simple error was what ended up dooming them. The massive sleep spell would inevitably catch too many people, free some, and continue to creep outwards for a time. Then it would collapse and start over again.

Fortunately for us, the pilots, we weren’t caught while in the knight armors, and the collapses of the spell greatly distracted the demon.

It took all of one shot from Nyx to discorporate and banish the thing and rob all the planning our superiors did to try and get around this ‘unpredictable soporific attack’ of gravitas.

In the final plan, that shot was just to get the attention of the demon. Ha. Ha. ha.

I should have fought for the the person that wanted to just press the attack, but I do not argue well for a few hours after waking.

It feels strange to be writing at 3 PM. But between the mess of waking and sleeping late yesterday and being unable to be in a position to sleep for most of the rest of today has also been strange.

Beh. I still feel fatigued from the awkward patterns of sleeping and waking yesterday. And I ended up breaking my phone and bruising my face. These are quite related.

Well, these have not been good days for memory.

2/19/25

Was trapped by a demon today. Not sure how I feel about this. On the upside, I got to record the fight. I could manage a really great description of it, if all the shaking and rotating didn’t make me want to vomit.

It’s impressive how this demon’s power didn’t do anything for machines and non-living lenses. I couldn’t quite tell how badly I was being moved around and rolled and such. At no time during my stay in the box did I feel any discomfort other than being unable to move and the direct result of that.

The pins and needles feeling has a name here. Paresthesia. And while Hector and Jeri don’t take my belief that they’re demons, they’ve both felt the sensation enough (and this particular demon was sufficiently demon-like) that my paresthesia from hell joke got a little laugh out of them.

Still need to try and bond with the group more. I think we’re getting another person soon, so it’s definitely going to help if I can manage this group mood bouying before then.

I think that word’s not spelled correctly, but I’m not going to check.

Still feeling ill from the last attempt at seeing the fight recording.

I think I’ll just quit while I’m ahead.

2/20/25

I have managed to actually plan in advance. I’m waiting for the appearance of a demon sometime in the middle of our little outing. Or something to happen and keep it from happening.

Otherwise, this was a nice day. Somehow we have finally managed to start getting some attention as pilots, so whatever magic is in place is certainly fraying badly.

Incidentally, I’m going to find that ritual ground, get the details, and ride that into so many more lessons from my master that. I’m not sure what to compare it to, because it’s just that big. There is nothing to buy that’s really worth making the comparison for.

I also managed to make and pull off a spell that let me notice cameras.

I had to shut it down pretty quickly. So many cameras. So much observation. Again, the scale of the spell staggers my mind. I think I know where all the actually knowledgeable spell singers were. They all died to power this massive work for months on end.

Should have left better notes for their understudies and co-conspirators.

Classes are interesting just because of seeing how much more has been learned in a few hundred years. I can, to a degree, manage to imagine what advances could be done in spell and ritual crafting now that I have an idea of how transformative advances can be.

I should also work on making spells to better defeat heat cameras, microphones that can hear better than any animal, and so on.

Now I wish I had mastered shadow-work enough to actually manage to make wholly new spells. I’m not, but I can do a little modification. So faux-acids, bullets of night, and the sounds of nothingness.

Well, that’s the plan. It’s going to be weeks at best, and likely a few months for the shadow spells. Definitely months for each of those illusions.

2/21/25

Demon attack today, and I’m relieved. This should probably worry me, but the benefits of better chemistry on the knight armors will be enough to salve my worries. I had managed to set up my phone just to get the new knight armor recorded, but while moving about Adrumbation (who comes up with these names, also, male) the demon was nice enough manifest and attack pretty much from moment one.

Now, Adrumbation is the lankiest and most human of all the knight armors so far. I mean, it almost has a person’s face on its ... face. Of course, the proportions are all too thin for an actual person, being like Harold’s Hofud (finally found out that’s the knight armor’s name and I’d just been mishearing it all this time) but ten times thinner and twice as long in the limbs. Almost three in the core, but the extreme curves to its everything means that Adrumbation is not anywhere near three times as tall.

Didn’t do actual measurement, but I think it’s only about nine feet taller. Hard to tell, because this was the first demon fight that I’d actually say is worth calling a direct fight.

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It was tough, strong, and managed to make the best of the sudden appearance by running and flinging bits of construction and handfuls of earth.

Adrumbation had some tricks. Those super thin limbs? They stretch. But more importantly, they channel shadow bolts really well. Possibly other shadow magic as well, but it’s not mine and the shadow bolts didn’t end up mattering as much as I’d have liked.

In my favorite bit of direct offense’s defense, this demon threw a lot of things. Most of the bolts ended up breaking thrown weapons and saving Adru- my current knight armor’s hide a lot of a pounding.

I’m going to hope neither of the two I’m going to get assigned will have a name that long. I’d just have to abbreviate it. Them. Reminder. Need to get more liquid paper, because I’ve managed to loan away all the ones I had.

Still, looking back, the fight was more of a slog then I remembered. It’s probably because having buildings and clods of eath flung at you have a way of being real exciting while watching it is much less so when it’s just one on one like that.

If the demon had a partner, it’d definitely look better as a fight, but I’d probably be dead. If I had a partner already on the field, drawing a few things away would have definitely managed to shorten the fight.

Both Jeri and Harold did manage to get in the fight, but by then I’d gotten a lucky hit to the leg. The demon had to throw smaller things, couldn’t move as well, basically the fight was decided by the time they’d joined.

Also, need to experiment with later armors, do they have a limitless supply of one aspect of mana, can the massive magic hearts just twist their deep wells of power into any aspect, or is there some other explanation for the sheer number of bolts I managed to project through it?

2/22/25

Ah, the sweet smell of success. And drinks, and other things. Yes, I’m a bit late on this, but I don’t care. I had success today. No, wait, officially yesterday now. So later than I thought. Also, I’m going to have to teach both of my teammates a little bit of that thing called moderation.

If these were the alcoholic versions of the drinks and not just punched up some with magic, I fear most of the pilots would be very dead now.

Yes, not just dead, very dead.

But once I can get my hands on some, I’m going to see if this ginger beer is supposed to be that rough or if the non-alcoholic version is making up for the lack of alcohol by being about as smooth as sandpaper.

In either case, it’d be a good gift for a few people I can think of, master included. It’d just be better with alcohol in it.

I think I’ll write more tomorrow. Despite the bout of wakefulness I still feel like I could get to sleep. So I will.

2/23/25

Well, had to explain a few things. My explanation of magic almost got over with the other three pilots. If it had just been Jeri and Harold, I think they’d have gone for it. Miss Smisse or however her last name is spelled. And of course, she’s the kind of person that insists on having her last name used. Just once, I’d like to meet somebody that’s very insistent on having their last name used and that has a last name I can actually spell.

That was more of a complaining rant than I’d like to have done in here. I’ll blame it on the last bit of demon activity, which was at once underwhelming as hell and dangerous. The large, monstrous demon was large enough that it couldn’t avoid Nyx’s shots, slow enough that it couldn’t get anything between it and my shadow bolts, and (eventually) defenseless enough that Hofud only needed us to minimize the amount of damage it could do to the surroundings, not to win.

Of course, the high powered sensors that the HQ uses detected a much smaller entrant into the world.

Human sized, to be precise. Unfortunately, it left no trail of demonic power and was at least knowledgeable enough to have covered its face. Well, all I can hope for is that it will react like most demons upon being threatened by anything and become larger and monstrous.

And that it will get threatened soon.

Oh, to have focused on demon warding.

Well, nothing to be done but to try and do a little bit of ritual and work on getting Miss Schmeisse to loosen up some. At least enough that I can start calling her by first name and don’t have to keep on trying to properly spell Shmisse. Perhaps I can look up the name tomorrow when I have to test the newest armor.

2/24/25

As much as I didn’t like the length of Adrumbation’s name or the difficulty I had to go to just to find out the spelling of Smisse, I would have liked to see them stay here. But, no, it is to the EU they go. I’m still not sure where in that place, but I could find out.

Some part of me doesn’t want to, but I probably should. It’s still a secret, but officially signed policy is that once any other nation in this agreement opens up a factory capable of making more of the knight armors, the city the factory is in will get three armors stationed in it in addition to others the state already has.

Once again, the official but somewhat secret line is that the demons are alien invaders targeting high energy sources. Which, officially, is why the first attacks happened in places with the new fission power plants. It’s more likely that there’s some magical fore-knowledge of where the first ones would appear, the plants were placed there, and then something magical is put in the factories to divert demonic transit from wherever it was supposed to go to near the factory… at least in a relative sense.

In an era of horses being the kings of speedy travel, none of the appearances have been close. But in an era of cars, trains, and planes all laughing at the idea of merely surpassing the horse, the appearances were all exceedingly close.

Of course, military minds have said that the second greatest advantage of demons and gods is that they have mastery of movement, and occasionally lend that to their subordinates. I think they’re just not yet used to not having that advantage, and that’s what most worries me about the loose demon.

The obvious concern is that it could learn how much the gap has closed and then they’re going to make use of the advantages they do still have. I think whatever demon is in command just doesn’t get (yet) that any single demon of the strength they can easily send over can be relatively quickly outnumbered and defeated despite what strange gifts it may have. Knowing that a battle will quickly become three on one (or one knight armor and Many Soldiers on one demon) will definitely lead to some kind of change. I’m just not sure what kind.

The other obvious concern is that the loose demon might be getting supplies. Demons love tools almost as much as the more successful kind of mortal societies do, even if they have a far broader idea of what is a tool and really don’t have as much of an idea of ‘this is a tool to keep in good condition’ as the better craftsman I’ve seen at work do.

Just given the great variety of tools available and the magic of demons, that’s a possible problem I literally couldn't even begin to make a worst ten list of things it could lead to.

At least the demons seem to be going for something other than just death given that it was a sleeping spell and not a slaying one.

I’d call this worrying I’m doing fear of the unknown, but it’s only half that. In the few cases I’ve ever had to deal with demons, I had no clue why they were there. I at best knew that their reasons were in service of the most radical outsiders and their means involved violence to me or those near to me.

Here, it is demons coming for the reasons of demons, and while slaughter was out, well. There is a great deal of unpleasantness that can be done to people without reaching the level of slaughter.

I should probably practice this secretive bit of prodding elsewhere, but I am still unsure as to which of the seeming secretive masters of this job is the one, true secret master. Or if any of them actually are; in that case it’s a great bit of hilarity that what should be this conspiracy isn’t and is instead some kind of legitimate governmental work gone

I’ve spent an hour trying to encapsulate my feelings into words. And yet all I can do is laugh at how I can’t properly end “Have I wandered into some great work of government gone ____” with a single word or even a concise phrase.

At best I’ve come up with comparisons to a few shows or the worse kind of morality play to fill in the blank. And then I’d have to explain those comparisons, and that would defeat the point. Ah, well. I leave this contemplation for tomorrow.

2/25/25

Emergency! Disaster! I hope to be able to see tomorrow. Now, off into the breach!