“Hah! As if mortals could stand against the might of demons. Your kind was just learning to harvest seeds they themselves had sown.
“It was the elves.”
Shalise frowned, but nodded. There were stories about elves being great warriors. They were supposedly dying out now–the elves hadn’t fought anything in forever according to Professor Twillie–but the stories had to come from somewhere.
“Long story short, we lost. When we clawed ourselves out of the void, Keeper was there to collect us and toss us into these cells.”
“What, it was against the ‘rules’ to attack Earth?”
Prax let out a loud laugh. “Oh no. No one would care about that. The specific rule we broke was against helping one another to the mortal plane. Some of us got it in their heads that using their own beacons to bring more with them was a good idea.”
“It is against the rules to help each other?”
“Have you ever thought about why–no.” He shook his head. “You are no diabolist.”
“That’s just–”
Shalise’s ears popped. A rumbling noise rattled her teeth as it crescendoed into an explosion. She stumbled forward, falling to her hands and knees in front of Prax.
“Another earthquake?” Shalise spoke without thinking and bit part of her tongue for her efforts. She clamped her jaw shut.
Whatever it was, it was much stronger than the earthquake that had broken the door on their cell. It was doing its best to shake her arms out from under her.
The tremor died down. Shalise used the wall to help herself back to her feet.
“Prisoners out of confinement. Keeper notified. Dolls dispatched. Return to your cells at once or prepare for a journey to the abattoir.”
Prax’s restraints still held, Shalise was happy to note. He pulled and thrashed around as much as he was able while shouting what had to be obscenities in that language he had slipped into earlier.
“Juliana?”
Shalise turned back towards the cell’s entrance and froze.
There were demons outside.
Loose demons.
Most were running past the cell without glancing in once.
One did not. Shalise met the eyes of a demon similar in appearance to Prax save for his deep indigo skin color. He stopped in front of the cell and just stared.
“J-Juliana!” Shalise edged towards the still sleeping girl, not taking her eyes off the indigo demon.
Despite the red barrier still separating them, Shalise wasn’t about to look away.
At least not until she put a hand on Juliana.
Shalise wrenched back her hand.
The blond was burning up. A thin film of sweat covered her face. Probably even more beneath her armor.
Shaking her did nothing except elicit a few groans. Shalise couldn’t try poking her in the side thanks to the metal covering her body.
She couldn’t even take off the armor to help cool her down. It was sealed up unless Juliana took it off with ferrokinesis.
“Juliana, you can’t do this to me. Please wake up.”
In a low throaty tone, Prax chuckled.
Shalise put her back to the cell wall where she could keep an eye on both the red demon and the indigo demon. It had started pacing in front of the cell while Shalise was looking over Juliana.
“You did this,” Shalise said while shooting a glare at Prax.
“You are so quick to assume everything is my fault. As I said earlier, I am stuck here.” He made a show of rattling his chains before sighing. “Even after that quake, I am no closer to being free than I was a thousand years ago.”
“Then why is she…” Shalise frowned, looking down at Juliana, “sick?”
“Look down at her leg.”
After a last look at both demons, Shalise knelt down next to her friend.
Six little holes had been torn in her pants.
No, not just her pants. Moving her pant leg up showed dents and punctures in the metal itself. A small amount of blood had dried onto her skin where the metal armor ended.
“Poison? Or an infection?”
Shalise tried lightly slapping Juliana’s cheeks.
“W-what do I do?” Shalise mumbled to herself when Juliana failed to respond.
“We can save your mortal friend. You are going to free me.”
Shalise did not move. She continued to stare down at Juliana. “What’s to stop you from running off or… or worse?”
“Even if you somehow managed to get me out of these chains, I couldn’t cross that barrier. At least, not on my own.” The smile was audible in his voice. “Inside you is an entirely different story.”
“W-what?” Shalise stood up, taking a step away from Prax as she moved.
“Nothing to be surprised about. A bonded familiar. I will be inside you while you walk past the barrier. We can break the bond later.
“Of course,” he said with a sneer, “you are welcome to stay in my humble cell. That incubus will either leave of his own accord or will be taken away whenever the guards get around to it. Then you can run away on your own. Find help or simply flee.
“Who knows how well the other mortal will be by then…”
Shalise bit her lip. The indigo demon leered through the barrier at her. The red demon calmly smiled. And Juliana…
Juliana lay in her own sweat at Shalise’s feet.
“W-what do I have to do?”
Prax’s smile widened. His middle finger pressed into his palm on one hand, digging his sharp nail into the red skin.
“Dip your finger in my blood. Draw three open circles in a triangular formation with a fourth in the center. It does not matter where. The back of your hand will work. Your stomach is larger and flatter, if you are worried about space.”
Shalise took a few slow steps towards Prax. She felt like she was walking to a funeral. Her own funeral. And she was being given the shovel to dig her own grave. By her murderer.
“Isn’t there another way? There were some imps breaking down the wall around one of the cells…”
Prax snorted. “Unless you no longer care about that mortal, we are on a time limit.”
Sighing, Shalise pulled up her shirt and started following his directions.
“Connect all the circles with a line. Then draw an omega symbol, a star, and a symbol for infinity in the three outer circles. Put a crescent with a cross coming off the bottom in the center circle.”
“What is all this for?”
Prax growled. His growl cut off part way through as he tilted his head. “Omega is the end, a star is birth, infinity is… self-explanatory. The crescent and cross is the symbol of a progenitor.”
“And it all lets you live in-inside me?”
“Of sorts. Make yourself useful enough and I may just teach you to be a proper diabolist. Cannot have my servants being ignorant.”
“I don’t want to be a diabolist,” Shalise said. “Or a servant.”
“Are you finished, servant?”
Shalise had half a mind to shout ‘no’ in his face. She glared at his overeager face instead.
“Give me your hand.”
Shalise took a step back. “Give you–”
“Put your hand against my hand,” Prax said. His chains shook as he waved his bloody hand.
Her hand shook as it inched closer.
His hand jumped forward and clasped around hers, pulling the chains as tight as they would go. Sharp fingers dug into the back of her hand.
There was a burning on her stomach.
And everything went dark.
Chapter 005
Irene let out a sigh. Something she had been doing a lot of recently. There wasn’t really any one thing that was making her sigh, just a lot of little things that all added up.
First and foremost would be the knowledge that one of her professors was a demon. A demon that had attacked Juliana and Shalise. Thankfully, he wasn’t around anymore. At least, no one had seen him since the ‘incident’ had happened. His class had been taken over by a substitute with no word on his return or permanent replacement.
She glanced over to her side. Another of the primary sources of her exasperation sat in the seat next to her.