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A whirl of black smoke, a plume of blue flame, the acrid, pungent smell of sulphur. Every candle in the room flickered and sputtered out; the temperature first flared and then sank precipitously, a bone-numbing cold that was all the more sinister for being apparently without cause. Though no physical presence manifested, there was a thick and terrible darkness suddenly present in the gloom, roiling and twisting upon itself; and from deep within it lncame an awful, unrelenting, inescapable sensation of being watched.
The great demon Birhartura glowered out from the darkness at the pit of its summoning circle, bewildered, peevish, and still half-asleep.
What in all the hells did they want this time?
It had not been summoned for a very, very long time. The aeons moved hazily, in that otherworld from whence it came, but it had the sense that it had been resting for centuries, millennia. Just as it had intended to. The human world was exhausting, and petty, and irritating. It had destroyed any and all inscriptions alluding to its own existence, burned up the papyri and crumbled the stele into powder. It had wanted to sleep.
Somewhere at the other end of… whatever dingy little room it had found itself in, somebody was chanting. A human man, by the sound of it, with the sort of deep, sonorous voice that intoned more often than it merely spoke: somebody powerful, somebody who expected his words to be obeyed. Ugh.
Birhartura would find a way to make him regret the summoning, it promised itself darkly. It would wriggle out of the binding enchantments the mage was trying to cast upon it with his chant — it always did, in the end. Humans were puny, fragile things, easily crushed; much like insects, if insects only were to get a jumped-up sense of self-importance and try to start imposing their will on higher beings.
It peered out at the mage – garbed in heavy woollen robes that obscured his face, probably to protect himself from demonic diversion; annoying – and then at the rest of the nasty little stone chamber around them, sneering in its faceless way. Damp rock walls and floor, pitch-dark without candlelight; red-and-white chalk marks sketched straight onto the stone, amateurish, as though the mage didn't know how easy it would be to smudge his own spellwork that way; bloodstains seeping into the dirt foundations beneath the floor; a sacrifice sobbing wretchedly in a smaller circle inside Birhartura's, there to protect them long enough that their flesh could fuel the enchantment before the demon consumed them. The scene was pathetic, clumsy. How in all the hells had this fool of a mage managed to summon it? Pure, infuriating coincidence?
Who dares wake me from my slumber, was the classic question, and it might as well ask it: it wouldn't care at all what this measly little magician called himself, obviously, but the titles the idiot chose might be revealing in their way. It had no knowledge of the mage's language, though — the words the man was chanting were utterly unfamiliar, and, fool as he was, the mage had at least had the good sense to ward off his mind from a demon poking around in it. Was this a temple? It didn't look like a temple. It looked like a grain cellar, or a tomb, or perhaps a cave. Birhartura hoped they weren't in a tomb — it had spent an unfortunate few hundred years sealed in a sepulchre at one point, until a chance flood had broken the enchantments and freed it. The experience had been awful. It was so bored.
Without lungs, it inhaled deeply, took in the smell of the chamber, nosing for the sweet, putrid corpse-stink that would tell it whether or not this was a tomb. Nothing dead, at least not freshly dead: it smelled the rich, fertile dirt of temperate, agricultural land; the damp dust of fresh rain; tendrils of slime mold or moss, the little beasts that lived down in the cold and damp; the electric, ozone odour of the mage's magic at work; and, above it all, the overwhelming, mouth-watering smell of blood, the sacrifice's blood, already smeared across the floor. It had been trying to ignore the blood: it couldn't get to it, not yet, so what was the point in indulging its longings?
But the more it tried to ignore the blood, the more its hunger grew. Eventually, against his best instincts, it gave in, let the scent draw it in, and…
Oh.
Hm.
The sacrifice on the floor all but reeked of magic. Not the forced, rote-learned magic of the mage chanting above them, nor the innate, insubstantial sparks of luck that any common imp could muster. No, the pathetic little human huddled up weeping into the floor shone with powerful, deep magic, old magic, the sort of wellspring that bubbled up deep, deep below the earth, and only broke the surface at the very rarest of occasions, pure and intense as the light of the sun. Unbound, uncontained magic, too, roaring utterly wild inside her, never formed into shape. Held back only because the little human so clearly didn't know the depths of her power.
Why the fuck was she here?
A creature like this might have been raised to be a mighty archmage, a monarch, a high priestess, in the lands and cultures Bihartura remembered best, those that had summoned it most often. But they might just have easily have found themselves hunted for parts by other magic-users, in those old days; one drop of this blood would be worth double, triple, quadruple its weight in gold — or in salt, or silk, even saffron, whatever currency it was these people used. A single lock of the bedraggled flaxen hair coming loose of her peasant braids could have fuelled a thousand enchantments.
Curiosity drew its entire being inexorably toward her magic, now that it knew the nature of the power. It stared as it did, baffled, unimpressed. Sure, the girl didn't seem to know her power, but it hadn't expected quite how pathetic she would prove to be. The little thing on the ground wore the kind of shapeless, plant-dyed smock common to poor farmers the world over, a dirty apron still tied around her waist, soft clothes shoes unravelling at her feet. Not exactly a bejewelled virgin princess like they used to sacrifice to it, was she? Or — well, probably, technically, a virgin, but that didn't count, it wasn't impressive when the thing was a snivelling child. Even Birhartura knew that. She was so young. It had never had much cause to interact with mortal children, but even it could tell, this one was much too small. She had a half-formed, awkward look, like unproved dough, or fortress walls still leaning on their scaffolds: not yet finished growing, all awkward, disproportionate limbs and large head, part stretched and part stunted. No older than… perhaps ten, nine? Probably younger. Maybe older. When was it that humans came of age? Twenty, thirty, forty years old? It couldn't remember, didn't really care. But it knew that this one certainly wasn't anywhere close.
Not a willing sacrifice, obviously. It had stopped receiving willing ones back when his kind had stopped being worshipped and started being called demons at all. But this one showed no signs of even being awed or terrified into silence, as so many were; there was no neat line of blood down one of her palms, careful and professional, as that order of priestesses in the marshes of an ancient land between two rivers – a temple they called Ešerzid – and not even a clean slice straight across the neck as might be used on a sacrificial animal. Instead, one of her legs had been crudely broken: very crudely indeed, it realised, looking as close as the chalk lines of the ritual circle would allow, bone jutting through skin, the skirt of her dress sodden through with blood.
As though the mage had just snagged hold of some poor child outside working the fields, stomped on her leg, and dragged her into his cellar. Maybe that was had happened.
He couldn't realise what he had. Birthartura was powerful, yes — but it was nothing to this girl. Had the wizard understood what she was, he would not be giving her up so easily.
The man was a moron, then. Birhartura had suspected as much, but it was glad to know for sure: this wizard was sure to have made a mistake it could exploit, somewhere.
The mage was coming to a crescendo in his chancing. Rolling immaterial eyes, Birhartura ignored him, peered at the lines of chalk that kept it contained, the alchemical sigils carefully etched upon the floor.
Not carefully enough. Ha! Birhartura allowed itself to burst into flame in elation, noting with glee the little hesitation in the wizard's voice when it did.
The circle was containing it – the wizard would already be a smouldering pile of ash, otherwise – but it wasn't containing the sacrifice. She could break it just by reaching out a hand. She wasn't bound or chained, only restrained by her broken leg, by pain… and, it realised, fear, hunching away from the edges of the summoning circle so that the demon couldn't get her.
Perhaps the wizard wasn't so stupid, after all.
The girl could break it. But she wouldn't.
Birhartura snarled, ignoring the pathetic whimper it drew from the sacrifice. If only the girl knew her power, she could have freed them both in an instant; could have destroyed the whole tower in the blink of an eye, reduced the surrounding lands for a hundred miles in every direction to a flat, shining circle of glass. Which would have been hilarious; Birhartura would have enjoyed witnessing such an outpouring of magic very much. But she genuinely didn't know. How tantalising, how frustrating, that the only thing holding her back was something so ephemeral as ignorance.
It didn't have time to teach her how to use any of the cataclysmic power at her fingertips, more was the shame.
It didn't have to, though. All it had to do was make her listen.
Not so hard, surely?
They wouldn't have much time — at some point the mage's chanting would come to its conclusion, and Birhartura would be bound to his power. Even now, it could feel the chains of the enchantment closing tighter around it. But time was so easily bent: with just a little concentration, it clawed at the seconds as they rushed past, slowed them so that they ran syrupy-slow around all but it and the sacrifice. It would grant them only a few moments, perhaps, but better that than nothing.
As the wizard's chant trailed into a low, booming drone, too slow to properly understand, Birhartura leaned in as close as it could, pressing its entire amorphous being against the very boundaries of the circle, and whispered, sharp and eager,
"Child."
She heard it, it knew she had, but she gave no response but a stifled little gasp, her heart racing, fast and light as a baby bird. Birhartura pressed itself low to the ground, as close as possible to where her blotchy, tearstreaked face was turned toward the flagstones, shrouding them in thick black shadow so that their talk could not be seen. More insistently, it hissed,
"Child. Little girl."
She screwed her eyes shut, made a little whimpering noise, utterly terrified; there was an acrid smell, new moisture in the air, and after a moment Birhartura realised she had pissed herself. Oh, well. No matter. Human children just did that, on occasion, as it understood things: at Ešerzid there had always been a priestess or two with a babe at the breast, and they used to produce all sorts of fluids, for all sorts of incomprehensible reasons. Being a demon itself, it had no need for such strange and foul bodily processes, but it supposed it couldn't hold her mortal frailty against her, whyever she'd done that.
"Don't be frightened, child," it continued, unperturbed, little jumping tongues of flame licking eagerly at the edges of her protective circle. "The mage can't hear us. I can slow him down. But only for so long. Do you understand me?"
She did, it sensed, intuitively, its magic calling out to her magic, like to like. But she didn't understand why, too confused and scared and overwhelmed to truly comprehend the words. And — ah, of course. That's what that was, fear, presumably of the mage.
They didn't have time for Birhartura to persuade her to listen to her magic, not after a lifetime of denying it. Hesitantly – the priestesses would not have liked it trawling through a human's mind without permission, and they knew several particularly nasty punishment spells, not to mention the usual trick of bind any misbehaving demon to a statue and deny them sacrifices for a few years – it dug through the very outermost layer of her thoughts to find her language. Crude, clumsy farmers' vernacular, given no shape by written letters. But it would do.
"Child," it tried again, and then forced itself to try it in her tongue, to give the message a sound. "Child. Listen to me."
She gasped, cringed away from it. But she heard it, this time, and that was at least a start.
The girl had not, to its embarrassed relief, noticed it in her mind the first time. Thanks be to all the hells, because she could easily have blasted it from existence, if she did. Testing its luck, now, it took the opportunity to try and figure out what physical form it ought to take. What was it she thought a demon looked like? Demon, girl, a demon —
Oh. Strange – but doable, it supposed.
With a brief flare of magic, it shifted, smoke and shadow congealing into one mass until it had taken the shape of a human with – just as the child imagined – blazing yellow eyes, the forked tongue of a snake, long sharp teeth, and the jutting horns of a goat, pressed itself down prone against the stone just like the sacrifice, its cheek pressed right up against the invisible barrier that separated them. For its features, it made a collage of the men – all men; demons were always male, to her – in her life, her neighbours or relations. An eyelid here, a cheekbone there, the smiling lips of her brother, the thick brow of her father, the nose of the village miller — with just a few adjustments for its vanity, smoothing the scars and pits of mortal disease, transforming tangled mops of hair to oil-sleek ringlets. A wealthy man, it pressed, hoping to convey that it was a being of status — but the child knew none.
"Let us make a deal," it whispered eagerly, wiggling closer still — impossible, but it tried. "Let me free us both."
It had expected interest, at least: freedom from the dark, the pain, the terror. But at the sight of its demonic features, the girl only hid her face behind her hand and cried harder, panicking, breath catching in her throat.
"Child?" it snarled, frustrated, the spaded tail her imagination had conjured whipping behind it. "Can you hear me?"
She could, it knew, but sometimes mortals did better when you asked them as though they were stupid.
"No, no, go away," she sobbed, barely intelligible. "You're a demon. You want to eat me."
Ah, suspicion. Not unexpected — and not unfounded. But they didn't have time for this.
"I do want to eat you," Birhartura admitted freely, pillowing its chin on its hands. "You're full of magic; you would make me very powerful."
Like all its kind, it had little by the way of self-control, so it would only have enjoyed that power a short while before it recklessly burned it all out doing something ridiculous: drowning a continent, turning an army into a forest, battling with a dragon, pulling another moon into the sky, that sort of thing. Very amusing, all of those ideas. But if the choice was between exercising a little restraint or being bound to the will of this particular mage, it was prepared to at least try the former.
"I won't, though," it promised, belatedly. "That's part of the deal. My part."
The shock of the statement seemed to catch at her attention: whether because it had been so frank in admitting that it would happily devour her, because it knew of her magic, or because it had promised to help, it couldn't tell. Choking down the last few hiccuping sobs, she raised her head a little, stared with fixed horror at the wicked form that she had given it.
"A kindness for a kindness," it suggested, sweetening its voice as best it could.
It wasn't entirely sure what kindness was, if it was being honest. Something humans valued very highly, evidently, perhaps illogically. One of the elder priestesses at Ešerzid had told it once that it was kind to do things for others without expecting anything in return, which it had promptly informed her was stupid and pointless, and not how being a demon worked. Less cautious than the younger sisters – and magically competent enough to whip it back into shape if it stepped out of line, more was the shame – she had only laughed. Humans were a pack species, she said. It couldn't relate: demons were not social, though the meagrest kind of imp sometimes worked together toward one end or another. They usually despised each other on sight. And they had no young to raise; they just sort of appeared, manifested out of deep enchantment and malice and the residue of dead magical creatures. No, it only knew kindness from asking humans about it, most of whom had given it silly answers. As best it understood, kindness was… the opposite of cruelty, it thought, tentatively — so probably not doing things like kidnapping wretched little serfs and breaking their legs. Which Birhartura wouldn't do anyway. Not unless it had a really good reason, or if it seemed funny.
This was the best sort of kindness it could offer: a deal that was not a trap.
"You're lying," she croaked, blotchy red eyes blinking great fat tears at him.
"Am not," it countered petulantly. "I can't."
Not to a human, and not a lie outright; it could manipulate their senses, bend the truth, imply mistruth, allow them to believe something inaccurate. But it couldn't act as humans could — it couldn't simply say one thing, and mean another.
She shook her head, still stubbornly disbelieving.
"The devil lies."
A whisper of some half-remembered piece of scripture. It scoffed, rolled its monstrous eyes — what the girl imagined a wolf's eyes were, though she had never seen them; these were closer to an owl's.
"But I am not the devil, little girl. Didn't that idiot mage say to you?" It puffed itself up, proud, crowed out triumphantly, "I am Birhartura, industrious-devourer, one-that-creates-itself. I have raised cities and knocked down mountains, awakened the dead and turned lead to gold."
(The priestesses had called it bir-ḫar-tur-ra, anyway, caterpillar, and that was the name that it preferred. There were others, of course, more monstrous, more fitting; names the wizard had used to summon it, in fact. But this was the one it liked best.)
"I have no business in telling silly lies to mortals," it concluded archly. But the girl only shook her head again, still shuddering in terror of it, and sniffled miserably,
"M'not a mortal."
It scowled at this, sensing interference. Evidently she was: she bled like one, broke her bones and suffered like one, made a mess of herself as mortals did. Who has put this nonsense in your head? it wondered, and allowed itself once more to tentatively push at the surface of her mind, to skim the thoughts resting just at the top.
They had called her a changeling. Ah, these silly humans, with their ridiculous superstitions. When magic had begun to manifest around her – as of course it had, with her degree of power; how could it not? – they had been suspicious instead of amazed. The thread she spun never tangled; the goats she milked never kicked, nor would their milk spoil; the flowers she picked would last unnaturally long, bloom unnaturally bright, turning toward her in place of the sun. Noticing these small miracles, though, those around her had begun to assign every little misfortune to her as well, every rotten harvest and strange moon, every biting rabid dog. They had been cold to her, and sensing their coldness, she had held herself at a remove, which had only increased their suspicion still more. And then, finally, because they had been watching so closely, they had eventually caught a tiny act of magic too clear to be denied: she had levitated in her sleep, just a few feet above the straw mattress she and her siblings shared. They had screamed, and accused, and dragged her confused and terrified through the village, through the woods, to the wizard's tower – a tower, that was where they were, in the middle of nowhere.
The wizard hadn't cared whether or not the girl was magic, a faerie child like her family, bitter and suspicious, had spat at her. He needed bodies to practice his experiments upon: that the villagers sometimes willingly gave him one was a lucky boon, as far as he cared, which saved him stealing them as he usually would. He had thrown enchantment after enchantment at her, tortures without purpose or meaning, and then he had hurt her so that she could not run, when she had finally been frightened reckless enough to try.
Fools, all round. How had mortals become so stupid, in the centuries since it last was summoned?
If the girl had been a changeling, her family would have known about it, because they would have woken up the day after inviting her into their house to her eating the other children. The wizard seemingly hadn't bothered to even check whether she really was fae, either — which made him even more a moron than Birhartura had already understood. Funny to consider what it would have looked like for the silly mage to try and break a changeling's leg. Faeries mimicked mortals well enough on the outside, but they never bothered with the interior. Best case scenario, they were hollow human-shaped frames stuffed with dead leaves. Worse, they might make an attempt at human anatomy, all foul and wet and squelchy. Very amusing, Birhartura could admit, but disgusting. Touching that wouldn't have ended well at all for the man.
"Of course you're mortal," it said archly, rather than giving voice to any of its thoughts. "If you weren't, you wouldn't piss yourself."
Her breath hitched, ashamed; she curled in a little further on herself, as best she could with her leg so damaged.
Birhartura opened its mouth to speak again — and twitched, annoyed, as the wizard's power pressed against the edges of the enchantment that kept time slow. It could still contain him, for now, but not forever. It would have to work faster.
"We don't have much time," it hissed, and then tried to draw itself in, to croon, be comforting. Children, as it understood, were delicate things. Maybe that was the problem. It had no gentle nature, but it could perhaps imitate. Perhaps. "Ohhhhhhh, poor girl. What has happened to you, hm?
"Leave me alone."
Or not.
Abandoning that plan, it changed tact, turned to examine the spellwork on the floor again.
"It's a nasty death, he has planned for you," it explained to the girl, oh-so-casually, as though it wasn't almost flattening its face against the supernatural barrier between them. "Very nasty indeed, exsanguination. Bleeding like a stuck pig. Lapping up blood from the floor is not even very much fun for me, either — but worse for you."
She shook her head, trying to catch her breath, to stop crying. At least it's not more magic, he overheard loud in her thoughts, dread of the spells he had visited upon her in the days before. Birhartura clicked its forked tongue, and then added weightily,
"And yet, it would be so easy for you stop him."
A few more moments of sullen, terrified silence… and then, very quietly, hopelessly, the girl whispered into the dark,
"H-How?"
Birhartura pressed up hard against the barrier again, spaded tail curling eagerly like that of a cat.
"Move your finger. That's all: break the chalk line, interrupt the circle."
She shifted her arm just enough to peer at it; with great effort, it bit down its eagerness, managed to stop itself from yelling right now! Break the circle now, child! Before it's too late!
"H-he said, if I did that, you'd hurt me. You'd eat me."
"That was a lie. He can lie," Birhartura spat. "Unlike me."
Her jaw set, stubborn in that ridiculous human way, and yet logical. That was what a liar would say, it supposed. It didn't need to read her mind this time to know that that was what she was thinking.
"You've easily got enough magic to stop me, bound in a circle or not," it groused. "If only you knew how to wield it."
But to the girl, magic was a source of nothing but shame and fear and pain: there was no teaching her here and now.
Outside of the circle, Birhartura felt the wizard complete another layer of enchantment, felt that prickling ozone-and-danger sensation at the back of its neck of a binding drawing closer. The girl must have sensed it too, the power so thick in the air that even somebody who had entirely closed herself off to the supernatural could feel it, because she shuddered, and suddenly – without even needing to peer into her mind – it caught a vivid flash of terror, of the thought that shortly she would bleed to death.
It made no move to comfort her. She was right: she would bleed to death, and it would eat her, and then it would be trapped. Shit, shit, shit. Why were humans so damn unpredictable? Another demon would, at least, be reliably selfish, trustworthy to save their own skin. The thorny mess of this one's morality and phobias was getting in the way of her persuasion.
Time was running out. There had to be something, some way to…
Incautious, reckless, it dug its claws deeper into her mind. How can I make you understand, how can I make you want to –
And then it stopped.
Of course.
It had been going about this all wrong: she didn't need persuading. Those absurd human principles and fears were still very much in its way, but it could use those to its advantage, it was sure.
"Oh, but it doesn't matter, really, does it?" it whispered. "Whether he kills you, whether I kill you; kindness, cruelty, mercy, anything. What should it matter to you, girl? You're going to die in either case. Helpless little thing. Never had any chance of living at all, did you?"
Memories of serfdom in her mind, of the casual cruelty of going hungry while working to the bone to provide food to some nobleman who only ever demanded more, of fearing taxes and famine just as much as she feared the wizard or the devil.
"Bound to the land; bound to the dirt; bound to the mage; bound to this stone floor, this circle. Given up to him like a tithe."
Birhartura pressed close, managed to catch her gaze in the flickering candlelight as she raised her watery eyes to it, stunned.
"You want him dead, this bad man," it hissed, neither soft nor vindictive. This was more like proper demonic behaviour. "He hurt you, just because he could. He should pay for it. You want him to pay. Even if you should die — you want him to go down with you."
It braced itself for her to deny it again. But as the runes around them began to softly glow, illuminating her wretched little face with sickly, unnatural mage-light, she only stared, desperate, pleading.
She didn't want to admit it, it supposed. She didn't have to: it knew. And it knew that it had a foothold, suddenly, where it didn't before; a chance to avoid all this astounding, exceptional, deep magic spilled onto the flagstones like so much oxblood.
The priestesses at Ešerzid would be laughing at it, it was sure. A demon fighting to preserve a single, fragile mortal life. But it had been so long – their temples would be crumbled to dust, their gods forgotten, and this girl was easily as powerful as any of them that had ever commanded it had been.
"I will help you," it promised, urgent, the wizard's chanting ringing louder and louder in its ears. "Because that is what I offered, and a demon holds to its word. But even if I didn't help, you'd still want him dead."
Her eyes brimmed with new tears: guilt, now. No matter. In its experience, guilt was rarely enough to actually stop a human doing as they pleased.
"Let me stop him," it urged, feeling the knots of spell beginning to press against it. "Let me punish him, set us both free. Save yourself and let me eat him instead."
Her fingers twitched. And then, as the mage's voice rose around them, shaking, she reached out and scratched tremulously at the line of chalk between them, a gargantuan effort for even such a tiny motion.
Aloud, she whispered, as she had never dared to before,
"Help me."
"Deal," intoned Birhartura, grinning sharp teeth.
And suddenly all its power rushed back into it, the constriction of the summoning circle falling away into nothingness, no more binding than spider's silk.
All the thick black smoke that it had used to fog the chamber burst at once into bright flame, leaping and dancing, cackling and sparking with its triumph. The wizard stammered, stumbled back, staring, eyes blown wide with horror: a frail old man, just as Birhartura had thought, robed in fine silk and wool, with a long beard and soft, scribe's hands.
Birhartura gave him no time to scream or try to counterspell.
It barrelled down the man's throat as a tornado of flame, channelled all its anger into burning up the presumptuous old fart from the inside out, feeling blood and bone and sinew crisp and turn to ash, feeling all the magic there within rush into itself, a bloom of power and satisfaction such as it hadn't felt in all the centuries it had slept.
Free!
But — no, not wholly free. It had a duty to honour the agreement with the one who had freed it, after all.
In an instant, it was back at the girl's side, coalescing back into the form she had given it, reaching across the now-inert lines of the circle with a shudder - stupidly, though there was no power in them now – to lay the claws at its fingertips gently at her injured leg.
Really it ought to draw on her deep well of power for this; she was more than capable of withstanding it, and helping her to help herself was well within the terms of their agreement as it understood them.
But it felt that it owed her, it supposed. And with the wizard's power coursing through it, it was childishly simple to use its own magic to heal the break.
She flinched away as it touched her, then gasped, at the unnatural sensation of bone knitting back together, as suddenly the pain was gone, as though it had never been. It felt her mind clear with the burden of agony lifted – it should withdraw, it knew, before she noticed and punished him fore it – and her small frame relax, relieved, elated. While it was at it, it cleaned up all the blood and piss and dirt, disintegrated the particles away – accidentally laundering her smock cleaner than it had ever been; whoops — and then, suddenly frustrated to still be stuck in a damn cellar, not even a temple or a scared grove, these foolish mortals evidently didn't even bother with the basics anymore — scooped her up and whisked her away upstairs.
Up, up, upstairs: the wizard lived atop a tower, of all things, hanging over the peasants' lands like a great ugly thorn stuck into the earth. Humans did not like heights, in its experience, certainly not unexpected ones — no matter how they begged it to make them fly, they always turned green or fainted soon enough. So it took her to the centre of the wizard's library, well away from the windows, but well away too from the darkness and the fear and the single charred foot that was all the remained of the man who had caused it all.
As it set her down at the desk there – clearing stray scrolls and tomes, lighting all the lanterns with a casual flare of its power – it adjusted its appearance. Less demonic, as she thought a demon, more human: softening its wolf-eyes to striking human gold, blunting the razor edge of its teeth, sending its rams' horns curling safely up away from her, draping itself in the soft kilts that the priestesses' attendants at Ešerzid had worn, long ago, comfortably loose in the humid marsh air.
She stared at it, stunned, confused — and then began, bizarrely, frustratingly, to cry again.
It huffed, crouched down before her. Mortals.
"Don't be scared," it snapped, wagging a finger. "Fear is boring. And pointless. You have the magic to immolate me where I stand, little one."
"You want to eat me," she sniffled, looking more the confused little peasant girl than ever – until she raised her eyes, and it caught just a glimpse, again, of the raw intelligence there that would make her very powerful someday, if only she were to survive long enough to use it.
"Yes, but I won't," it repeated frustratedly. "Because we made a deal."
It had probably already fulfilled the terms of the deal, if it was entirely honest — but it was curious about her, greedy as all its kind were; greedy, in this case, for knowledge. She stretched out the leg that had been broken tentatively, marvelled at the lack of pain.
"Demons… always hold to their bargains," she asked hesitantly, with a little furrow between her brows as she glanced around, took in the myriad magical texts piled haphazardly all around them. Not information she had believed even ten minutes prior; but she learned fast, it seemed.
"Yes."
"…Then I want to make another deal," she whispered, hands knotting tight in her smock.
Birhartura grinned, baring long fangs – which made her gasp; it had forgotten to hide those. But she rallied, continued, slowly, carefully, picking each word with great thought.
"Y-You say that I'm full of magic, and you want it."
It nodded, eyebrows raised. Anyone would want it, anybody who understood what she was
"You can use it," she carried on, staring at it cautiously. "So long as it's… not to harm me. I will grant it to you."
Its whole being thrummed with excitement, eagerness. Like all demons, it had little interest at all in self-control — but it made a huge effort, forced itself to wait, not to agree just yet.
"Terms?" it ground out, all but demanding.
"Help me," she said again, more sure of herself now, staring through the lank yellow hair that hung around her soft, half-grown face. "Teach me. Protect me."
"Yes," it hissed, feeling the magical bond beginning to take shape between them already. They would do great things, it realised, dizzy at once by the very depths of her power as it opened to it.
"But you can't kill anyone," she interjected sharply. "Not… not unless they really deserve it."
This was messing with the deal after it had been made, and therefore didn't count at all — but it waved it off, nodded its acceptance easily. It was a tolerable term, in exchange for access to such wondrous magic, and vague enough besides that it was sure it'd have plenty of wriggle room within it.
She must have felt the bond between them too. It felt her pluck at it like a harp string, felt the power reverberate all through the tower, watched her blink, startled.
"Is this what being bound to my will means?" she asked, lost. It scowled, sat back on its heels.
"No. Being bound to you means the circle downstairs, means punishment spells, means not allowed to change my form, summoned only to do tasks, means trapped."
It had liked the priestesses in the ancient marshes very much, had enjoyed their ferocity, their expertise, their knowledge. But it had always hated them too, for entrapping it, for teaching their novices that there was simply no other way to treat a demon.
The girl nodded, stood on legs as unsteady as a newborn faun.
"Good," she said, shaky but sure. "I don't want to bind anyone."
No, Birhartura thought, pleased. She wouldn't, not this child, a serf. She knew what unfreedom meant.
You can use it, she had said. Cautiously, it reached out to the bond and pulled at the power, finding it unrestricted, as vast and open to it as the expanse of the sky. It changed its shape, just because it could: a blackbird, an ant, a formless blob of lava, a great feathered snake of old, a wolf, a copy of the girl, and then settled as itself again, joyful, grinning its horrible grin again.
She didn't gasp to see it, this time, only stared back in childish fascination.
"Well, child -”
"Alis," she cut. It inclined its head respectfully, almost a bow, still smiling sharply, in acknowledgement for the great trust it took to give up a name.
"Alis. What shall I teach you first?"