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You cannot do this! I am Xokomaur of the Black Paladins, Patron of the Crypt, the One Who Corrupts, Truth in Darkness!
“Are you done?”
Xokomaur was quickly running out of titles. Guardian of the Tomb, Keeper of the Five Sorrows, the Cold Sun… She had to wrack her memories for curse words she’d been called that sounded dramatic translated into Planacist. Oathbreaker. The… Force of the Immortal. Unvanquished.
“Yeah, ruminate on all your ‘unvanquished’ deeds while you’re stewing away in there for me,” snorted the human—a pathetic being from this plane, disgracing the true grace of magic by calling themselves a sorcerer. “It took me all of ten minutes to get you in here.”
You cheated! Xokomaur raged. She stamped an immaterial foot, glaring through the mirage of this spell-cast prison at the eyebrow raised back at her.
“It got me what I wanted, didn’t it?”
It is not honorable. I would have smote you in moments without your dirty tricks! Just wait, human, the fury of the Black Paladins will—
“I’m sure. I look forward to it.” The human had the audacity to chuckle at Xokomaur of the Black Paladins, Patron of the Crypt, the One Who Corrupts, and the Truth in Darkness. Then they set the cozy material object she was bound to behind a door of glass and swished away. They didn’t glance back even at Xokomaur’s howling.
She didn’t have a lot to lose, at this point, so she kept howling. The sorcerer had not faced her long enough to know the extent of the Crypt’s blessing upon her heart—this prison would not hold her.
Okay fine. It would hold her a little bit.
Xokomaur howled and raged and it made her feel a bit better. She was embarrassed. Not to mention hungry. It could be worse, honestly; her prison was actually rather comfortable beyond the detritus of the Planacist plane. Physical dimensions were so dirty, with all their drifting auras and escaped magical flares unable to be reabsorbed. Xokomaur felt the rays of foul magic settling like grime in the crevices of her immaterial form. She was too drained to do anything to ward them off.
Utterly disrespectful. She would kill that upstart human before returning on her path of exploration for the Black Paladins—
Though she’d have to go back to Actiniaria to visit Mom after missing soul-sanctioned game night. Oh, cryptlord. This human deserved death for forcing her into that alone.
Xokomaur’s howling and huffing and stamping around continued for the weeks it took to rejuvenate enough of the Crypt’s power to shatter through her chains. It wasn’t a very satisfying explosion. More like a wheeze. She had to leave a large chunk of her power behind to keep from alerting the wards built into the spell about her escape. Rude.
At least she still had enough magic remaining to ensnare and destroy a human soul.
Xokomaur oozed out from around the edges of the glass case and pooled into a puddle of mystical disgruntlement on the floor. She took a moment to brush all the unfashionable physical matter from her form. Making herself as horrifying as possible, she slipped off down the hall.
She had to keep herself from pausing to gaze at the views out the windows and at the not at all gorgeous human symbols carved into walls and into objects. She was here to do murder, not sightsee.
Xokomaur lurked in shadows and in the cover of relic’s auras, slowly making her way through this strange and flickering building. If she was at her full strength, she might’ve been able to sense the locations of its inhabitants. Now, though, she’d have to stalk her prey the old-fashioned-way.
It wasn’t long before she’d come to the summit of a staircase. Xokomaur dripped down it. She carefully avoided the shadow of the Seal of the Vishanti—such magics would give her one hell of a sunburn in this state.
She could hear the aura of the human. Xokomaur’s ethereal fangs parted, and she gathered her power in her core. One order and her curse would devour its target.
Laugh at the Power of the Black Paladins now! Xokomaur crowed, and leapt around the corner.
She stopped in her tracks.
The sorcerer that had so impugned her sat in the large foyer beneath the staircase—a room of bright light and mystic furnishings. They weren’t alone. There was…. A child had its boots up on the armrest where it sat sideways in one of the cushioned chairs.
The child human was laughing at something the sorcerer had said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Have I ever lied to you, Codey?” the sorcerer crowed with a dramatic flare of their wrists. “True to the last word.”
The child laughed even louder. “That’s even better then when the hall monitor at my school caught the English teacher falling off a desk. Just full on splat. No one was in the room but she saw it on the security camera.”
“And she showed it to everyone?”
“And she showed it to everyone!” Codey agreed delightedly. “Mr. Glizin was such a good sport about it too; he kept reenacting the pinwheeling arms during class. He’s a nice teacher. He gave me the teacher WiFi password.”
The sorcerer rested their elbows on their knees. “Want some financial advice?”
“What?”
“Sell the password to the student body at a steep increase.”
Codey burst out laughing again, and the sorcerer sat back, a slight smile playing across their face. Their aura had shifted into something like relief at Codey’s laughter. Like they’d been hoping for it.
Were they… trying to cheer the boy up? In the middle of an occult temple?
The sorcerer was exposed, their protections down, unsuspecting. Xokomaur had a clear shot. She hesitated.
And missed her chance. A ripple passed through the building around them, and the sorcerer straightened. Their eyes snapped toward the staircase, and Xokomaur sent her mystical signature diving away. She skulked back up the staircase and let the pure power of the Seal of the Vishanti cover her tracks.
Later. She’d kill the human later when she’d regenerated enough of her power to do it and leave this dimension in one fell swoop.
Later turned out to be a day and a half, and Xokomaur had gathered nearly enough eldritch menace to physically manifest. She followed the sorcerer’s aura through the building. Her power buzzed within her chest; they didn’t stand a chance against her now.
Xokomaur didn’t move with much hurry. She was rather bored, honestly, and she wanted to get back to her day job. Corrupting minions and sequestering offerings and yelling about the Black Paladins and all that. (She was damn good at it, too.)
Xokomaur seeped through the floor of the upper level to stain the kitchen’s top left corner. Her prey was sitting on a stool, a streak of moonlight illuminating the hand they had pressed exhaustedly over their eyes. Their shoulders were slumped. A yawn raised and lowered their spine.
They looked vulnerable. Xokomaur drew closer into her night-streaked corner and tried to remind herself to gather up her magic. Kill the human and get out of here.
“Strange?”
The sorcerer raised their head. “I’m in here, Wong. Did they give you any trouble?”
“Nah. Everything went well, and I got your favorite.”
The sorcerer perked up. “Really?”
Another human appeared in the doorway, tossing the sorcerer a lump of gross-matter wrapped in paper. He held a second one and was already munching on it ravenously. Strange dug into theirs with equal fervor.
“Thanks, Wong,” said Strange through their chewing.
“Get some sleep.”
“You first.”
Wong disappeared, and Xokomaur heard him retreating up the stairs. Strange was humming lightly as they chewed. The moon had moved outside the window.
Xokomaur glanced down at the roiling curse of destruction she was brewing beneath the surface of her aura, and sighed. She couldn’t very well kill someone while they were hungry. That would be unsportsmanlike.
Er, un-paladinlike.
So again, the Patron of the Crypt slunk away.
She tried one more time, the next morning, her soul sparking with determination and a fair bit of embarrassment. She was really risking her PTO days with all this dallying . She had minions to corrupt! Offerings to sequester! Get to it!
Xokomaur marched down into the foyer, ready to rid herself of a mortal nuisance, just in time to see said mortal nuisance spin a man off his feet with a bark of laughter.
“You’re back!” Strange grinned, setting the other human down. They didn’t pull away.
“Aw, Merlin, almost sounds like you missed me.” The man flicked Strange’s nose. “Everything alright in the house of horror?”
“Oh you know, dimensional collapse, zombie apocalypses, exorcisms, overly petty demons—the usual.”
The newcomer snorted. “Sounds like my week.”
“Uh oh. Difficulties?”
“We live for them,” the man sighed. He let his head drop, laying it against Strange’s chest. He was smiling—with such utter, unrestrained joy that Xokomaur felt like she was intruding. Which was honestly ridiculous. She’d been brought here against her will! Where was her multiversal compensation for that, huh? Where was her sandwich?
Irritated, Xokomaur gathered her magic into her claws. She very pointedly did not look at the contented aura of the newcomer or the way his fingers twined with Strange’s where they rested on his hip. He wasn’t of import. She had no quarrel with this man, after all, and should just kill Strange and get on with her life.
And leave this newcomer, so innocently happy on the ground below her, with the Crypt-corrupted corpse of a sorcerer who made cozy demon prisons and comforted kids and had friends who bought them sandwiches.
Fine. Fine.
Xokomaur threw her hands up in defeat. Every lightbulb in the building burst. Strange and their human broke apart, startled.
But Xokomaur of the Black Paladins, Patron of the Crypt, the One Who Corrupts, and the Truth in Darkness, didn’t stick around to see what they did next.