“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
The demon we caught the other day has finally talked—more accurately, it said it would speak to me.
“Hmm...”
Director Locktiss dropped in on another failed synthetic-protein experiment last night to give me the news. Now why would the demon want to speak to me, and no one else?
Come morning, I arrived at the torture chambers on the Royal Isle under Castle Shuzelk. When I showed my pass to a guard at the castle gate, he asked, “You still need these passes?” He sounded incredulous. What was that about?
Anyway, here I am, in the castle dungeon. It’s probably for the best if I rein in any questions I might have about all the torture chambers ahead of time and stay focused. Though as I take a stance in front of the demon in question, I can’t help but freak out a little at the spine-chilling tools scattered about the dimly lit chamber. It’s scary to even ask what they’re used for.
It’s just me and the demon—a bilious ebon mist, bound in something like a birdcage suspended from the ceiling. The knight commander and some of his subordinates look on from outside the chamber.
The lamps hanging on the wall flicker.
“Here, take this.”
“Is this...a whip?”
Gonzales Pinyatz, one of the warden knights, hands me a black lash. I strike it against the floor to test it out, still clueless as to what I’m supposed to use it for. Is he suggesting I use it if the demon refuses to talk? Or if it attacks me? Or maybe if it tries to run? My imagination runs wild for a moment, but then I remember that I’m a mage, and a mage always has her own tools to rely on, whatever happens.
Silence settles over the chamber.
How am I supposed to start talking to the demon? It’s not exactly the mood for a “good morning” or “how are you?”
It said it would talk to me, but I’ve been standing here with my arms folded for about an hour now, wondering when it’ll finally speak, and yet there’s been nothing but silence in the air ever since I entered. It would be one thing if it were too exhausted to even speak, but I heard it hurl abuse at Mr. Pinyatz here just before I came in, so I know it’s just fine.
Oh, what the hell. It’s my day off, and I want my time back. Believe it or not, even I have things to do. I wanted to make more magic circles, and shop for some clothes, and I was also going to pick out flowers for that waitress from the café to congratulate her on her newborn baby. Yet here I am, alone with a demon in a torture chamber, supervised by knights standing outside. At this point I’m not so sure which one of us is being tortured here.
“He has absorbed my powers and temporarily lost his own,” says the demon all of a sudden.
“Huh, I see... What?”
I’m caught off guard; I was thinking about my meat-craft and contemplating things like, “I need to get more beans...”
I ask it to repeat itself in case I heard it wrong, or it never said anything in the first place and it was only my imagination, but it clicks its tongue and clams up. What’s up with this thing? Does it realize I’ve been waiting for it for an hour?
There’s little point in getting worked up over how a demon talks to you, though, so I limit my reaction to a click of my own tongue.
“He did it all of his own accord. The contract and everything.”
“So you didn’t place a curse on him?”
From the demon’s calm and composed voice you’d never think it was the same thing that hurled all sorts of abuse at its torturer just a while ago. It’s not the abrasive manner the demon displayed when we met it in the past either. It feels like I’m speaking with a human being, not the cackling, roaring horror from last time.
“It’s true that I set all this in motion, but the woman was my puppet, and the only one I chose to bear my curse. He absorbed that curse and changed its nature. What kind of human would do such a thing?”
“B-Beats me...”
Going by its tone, Rockmann legitimately creeps it out. They’re both pretty uncanny, if you ask me. Still, now that it mentions Rockmann “absorbing” magic, I recall a story Prince Zenon told me once, from back when Rockmann was living apart from his parents, before he learned to keep his powers in check. Apparently, as an infant he had an instinctual compulsion to absorb his mother’s magic, putting them both in danger. Maybe it’s the root of his genius at spellcraft and his portfolio of novel spells; maybe it isn’t. Regardless, nothing he does or knows should surprise me at this point.
“The woman fulfilled her part of the pact with me. She won’t die. The man, however, will surely die young at this rate. He may have another’s magic flowing through his veins, but he’ll still find himself at death’s door once a month.”
“Once a month? You mean that wasn’t the last time?”
So he’ll get black hair again? I haven’t heard from anyone about that happening to him again, but maybe he’s hiding it—something that important. I bet nobody’s noticing just because it’s not bad enough to affect his work or daily life, but there’s no way I can let it slide. During my interrogations he told me he hadn’t come home to the mansion in a while, so he must be staying at the order’s dorms or something. Ngh... Why do I have to worry about things like this? But then again, isn’t that only natural...? I’m pretty sure Prince Zenon would get angry if he learned of this.
“Can it be cured?”
“You ice-blooded apes can purge the curse from his body the same way you purged me.”
“Really? That’s it?”
How suspiciously simple...
“You have a hard time treating wounds, don’t you? Be it your own or those of others.”
“Y... W... Well, yeah, b... How do you know?!”
“It’s obvious.”