Bound by the past and bound in the present, a demon struggles against his archnemesis. A sequel to Mutual Satisfaction.
tags: demon, heroic azuras
artwork by bramble
“AFTER ALL THIS TIME, and this is how we meet again.”
Zalas’thok Tos, the former Master of the Gate, the once Second Knight of the toppled Sixth Hell, knelt in chains of magic and pewter. He did not speak.
“Please, Zalas’thok,” his captor chided. “Glower all you want, but these days it is so rare to meet a friend from home.”
Zalas lifted his eyes. “Undo my chains, Varavos, and we will talk like old times.”
The other demon chuckled. “There’s that fire! Oh how I have missed you, Zalas’thok. How have you been?”
The bound demon lapsed back into silence.
Varavos waved the question away. “Never mind that. I already know. I had to know, to have those binding chains made. Your titles from the infernal realms were discerned easy enough. But the centuries you spent here in Azuras? That was a real struggle to replicate.”
Zalas knew that the chains binding him were no regular chains; had they been, his strength alone could have torn the soft metal apart. But pewter was an excellent conductor of magical energies, used in binding circles and magical instruments. And these chains were both, each link etched with a different title he had earned, here and in the realms abroad. The old standbys were well represented, but Varavos had been creative and he had been careful; Zalas was impressed to see, in carefully etched infernal, titles like Visiting Professor of Celestial Mechanics, Imperial University, Tecera and Apprentice Baker (Second Rank).
Simpler, better times, those had been, and the part of him that they signified ached with a pain dull and deep.
And between each little pain, his most Real name.
Zalas’thok Tos.
Zalas’thok Tos.
Zalas’thok Tos.
He had taken her family name, of course.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” he growled, suddenly and deeply angry. The thousand links glowed as they contained his rage, as they contained the complete sum of his being.
“It is transgressive, isn’t it?” Varavos replied, and despite the deep gulf between them, there was a genuine sympathy there. “But,” he continued, standing beyond Zalas’ reach, a wraith watching prey, “I always knew you would come. I had to take precautions.”
Zalas scoffed. “Our meeting was inevitable, but I never prepared for it, not like this. There are codes, Varavos. Things demons do not do to one another.”
Varavos knelt, eye level with his chained guest. “In the years it took me to forge these chains, I’ve come to understand you very well, Zalas. But not completely. Why, Zalas? What did you hope to gain?”
“We had to do it,” the demon replied, his onyx skin a map of a thousand battles that had to be fought. “She meant to end everything.”
“I don’t mean Phar. I get that. I mean her. She was a mortal, Zalas. She was always meant to die. And yet you swore yourself to her. You took her name. What did you hope to gain, but pain?”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
THERE WERE SEVEN OF THEM, at the end.
There were others, of course, fighting elsewhere, heroes one and all. But at the end of everything, in the ruins at the edge of the world, there were only seven—seven to hold back the armies of the grief-mad goddess, seven to reforge the seals of exile and see Her banished again.
Korva and Zalas held the Orrery. As the enemy tide rose to meet them, they retreated one step at a time, the orbits under their feet shrinking until they stood back to back on the central dais. They burned incandescent, twin stars in a sky of merciless black, the warlock’s purple flame and the demon’s silver lightning lancing through a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand.
They fought to buy time for their compatriots—the minutes, the seconds Kalon and the others needed to invoke the ancient rites and bind a goddess.
And they did it.
They almost did it.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
VARAVOS WATCHED his captive’s face, darkly certain that his questions had cut deep, watched as his foe’s split lip curled up—
—and Zalas threw his head back and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Varavos asked, petulant in his unacknowledged victory.
Zalas answered with a smirk, unbowed. But the smile did not reach his eyes, and what Varavos saw there made him glad for the chains.
They looked at each other for a long moment—Varavos kneeling and Zalas on his knees—their history of hatred and anger and sometimes even friendship playing out between them in a centuries-long moment, in a moment that had taken centuries to make.
And then Varavos stood, wresting back control of the situation by doing what his prisoner could not. Both could laugh and glower all they wanted, but only he was free to turn his back on his enemy, free to walk away.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he admitted, falsely. “I’m asking the wrong question. Of course, you would be attracted to Korva. Beautiful, I’ve heard, if you’re into that whole human thing—but powerful, too! ‘The Warlock of Her Age,’ they called her, yes? The real question, then, is what she saw in you.”
Zalas still glowered from his chains, but Varavos saw the briefest of reactions, the fire which burned inside the bound demon flaring for a moment.
He paused, contemplating how to continue his torture. “I’ve held the hands of dying friends before, you know,” he finally said over his shoulder, standing before one of his towering bookshelves. There was a touch of melancholy in Varavos’ voice, enough that Zalas bit back the smart retort on his tongue. “You can feel them leaving, can’t you? The soul, beginning to disintegrate, like sand pouring through a sieve. And there you are, unable to do anything, trying to hold back the inevitable with just your hands.”
There was a great silence behind him, and Varavos knew his honesty was hurting Zalas more than any barb could have, sweet sadness masking the poison.
He dipped his voice lower, letting it drip with sincerity. “And you think you can do it, for a time. Hold their soul back, keep them from leaving. A minute, an hour, a day. But it’s irrevocable, that disintegration, that loss. That death.” He turned back toward his prisoner. “Even for us, now that our home is gone.”
Zalas lifted his eyes and nodded, once. Varavos kept the smirk off his face; always such a sap, this Second Knight, always getting suckered into empathy.
He played with his prey. “I could have saved her, you know.”
“I highly doubt that,” Zalas finally replied, thickly.
Varavos ran his hands long the spines of his books until, finally, he stopped at a large red tome, its faded leather like dried blood. “Before they hid themselves away from the world, the Fleshshapers of the Fifth Hell told me of how they had succeeded in reembodying lost spirits. They told me how to mold an empty shell, inert and soulless, that one could… well, it doesn’t matter, does it?”
The demon turned on his prey, closing the trap. “If only you could have held her soul in your hand a little longer. If only you had been a little stronger. But she was always the strong one, and now? Now you’re alone.”
Varavos watched Zalas’ face re-hardened, finally needled into a fury.
“You’re afraid,” the stygian demon rasped, his rage ill-contained, the chains that bound him beginning to glow again.
Varavos smiled back serenely.
“You’re afraid,” Zalas repeated, his anger loosening his tongue, “because, after all this time, you still don’t understand. I told her once, the infernal realms are only about power. That a demon orientates its life around a toxic web of obligations and prestige. I figured a way out. We figured a way out, she and I. But you—you can see the results but lack understanding, like… like watching the stars move and not seeing why. And you can feel that ignorance eating at you, worrying away at your understanding of the world. You’re torturing me in a fucking library, hoping to understand what you gods-forsaken books won’t tell you. Because whatever force motivated me to love her, and her to love me, to follow each other, to yoke ourselves to one another… you can’t fathom it. And you worry it’s stronger than you.”
Zalas’ lips pulled back into a wolfish grin full of teeth and hate. “And you’re right.”
The tall demon stared down at his prisoner for a long moment. Then he walked back to the bound demon and again knelt, his fingers curling through Zalas’ hair, clenching a handful to lock the two of them into eye contact.
“Here is what is going to happen,” Varavos replied, his voice level, all pretense and affectation gone.
Without looking, his free hand pulled a ritual knife from his sash and, still locking eyes with his nemesis, effortlessly slipped the blade into Zalas’ chest, right under his ribcage.
Zalas jerked and coughed. Varavos wrapped his fingers tighter, keeping Zalas’ head immobilized, watching.
“You are going to die. Your love isn’t going to stop that, just like it didn’t stop Korva from dying.” He twisted the knife, black ichor flowing freely from the wound. “And when you die, it’ll either be a true death, your soul disintegrating into nothing, or… well, Phar took the the Sixth Hell with Her when She fell. Maybe your soul will return there, to be tortured for all eternity by the only thing that hates you more than me.”
He dropped Zalas’ head and stood, looking in disgust at his blood-coated hand.
“It didn’t have to go this way,” Zalas croaked, his shoulders going slack, his voice wet. “We could have… we could…” His head lolled against his chest as he gasped for a breath he couldn’t take.
“We could have what?” Varavos spat. “Been allies? Been friends? We are what we were always meant to be: me, alive, and you… not.”
“Varavos, you… you really shouldn’t have done this.” Zalas’ voice was distorted by pain and strain, and… something else. A niggle of doubt scratched at Varavos, and he focused, concerned, as the chains continued to heat, brighter and brighter.
Zalas’ head stay dipped, but he wasn’t struggling for breath any longer “You know those chains you forged? The ones that meticulously bind every aspect of Zalas’ being? Well…”
The chains were incandescent for a moment longer. And then they exploded, links of metal become molten destruction. Varavos yelped as he was blown backwards, the force of the magical explosion carrying him back into his books.
The thing that had been Zalas stood, her eyes purple flame. “The chains are just useless pewter when binding anyone who isn’t Zalas… and honey, Zalas isn’t home right now.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
THEY HAD DONE IT.
Somewhere near, the others had finished the evocation; even now, the spell’s power was reaching across Azuras, rebinding Phar, casting Her back out of the mortal realm. Betrayed in Her moment of victory, stopped by the very architects of Her freedom, Her anger keened across the world.
Zalas had no ear for it.
Korva lay where she had fallen, blood pooling under her, spilling across the dais, trickling along the circular orbits inlaid in the Orrery’s floor.
Her husband knelt above her, hands compressed against the chest wound, trying to hold the blood in, pouring every drop of his magic and his will into stopping the cursed necrosis that was eating away at her.
They had done it, and it didn’t matter.
“I think,” the warlock said, her voice clear, “that this is the point where I’m supposed to tell you everything is going to be alright.”
She wrapped a bloody hand around Zalas’ wrist and squeezed. The demon looked her in the eye, trying to will his lips into a joke, a quick word that could make light of the situation. He tried to imagine his eyes were soft, and his touch loving, and that he would pull her to her feet and all would be well.
He looked at her and floundered, lost, dying as surely as she was.
“Well, fuck that,” Korva smirked, but her lips were paler than they were a moment before, and a trickle of blood was coming out of her nose now. “This is complete bullshit, and I’m very cross.”
“I can’t stop it,” Zalas finally admitted. “I can’t—”
“Zalas, please. I don’t have much time, but I do have a plan.” She pulled her husband’s hands into her own, letting the wound reopen, the rest of her blood beginning to spill out.
“I can’t—” the demon repeated.
“Honey,” she said, her lips trembling but her voice full, “we are in a ruin of singular power, awash in the magic of the most powerful spell in an eon. I’m surrounded in concentric circles of my own lifeblood, and I’m with you. At this moment, I can do anything. But I need you to—”
“Yes, I’ll do it. Anything. Don’t tell me, do it!” the demon sobbed.
Korva smiled a wan smile, the last she would smile in a very long time. “Then I need you to hold very, very still.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
THE LIBRARY WAS ON FIRE NOW, specks of superheated pewter transmuting parchment to kindling.
Through the smoke and flame came Varavos’ death.
To his credit, the demon responded to this imminent threat with an exasperated sigh. Zalas might have broken out of his chains—a feat which should have been impossible—but Varavos still knew his foe’s Real name, not to mention the thousand subtle shades of Knowing that came with the titles he had accumulated.
He didn’t even bother to stand. With a flick of his wrist, a dozen spectral chains punched through the smoke, binding Zalas in place. They were nowhere near as permanent or precise as inscribed pewter, but it was always the names, never the metal, that held the power. The spell would tighten around Zalas and give Varavos the time he needed to regain control.
And in one large claw, Zalas scooped the spell up and pulled it aside, as easily as one might brush away a cobweb or break a gossamer thread.
The first inkling of panic took root in Varavos’ heart, and he tried again, holding in his mind the sum of everything he knew about Zalas, lashing the demon in place with thought and will.
This time, Zalas didn’t even pause. He simply stepped through the chains, inexorable, unstoppable. It was as if Varavos was trying to bind someone who wasn’t Zalas, as if—
It wasn’t Zalas, Varavos realized.
It was Korva.
“Oh fuck,” he whispered, pulling himself to his feet, his cool collection dashed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
It was one thing to needle and stab and murder Zalas’thok Tos, visiting professor and apprentice baker, second class.
It was another thing to go up against his wife—Korva Tos, the Warlock of Her Age.
As if hearing his thoughts, the warlock laughed, low and throaty. “In the flesh.”
She cracked her neck as she advanced, basking in the feel of heat on her flesh, the smell of smoke in her nostrils. She had worn this body, once. It had not fit then, but at least it was familiar now—an old, disliked jacket that pinched in the shoulders, but which reminds one of home.
But her gait was heavier than Zalas’, and where his eyes were a soft silver-white, hers burned an angry purple.
“How—” Varavos started, the moment before Korva lunged forward and grabbed him by the throat. She effortlessly hurled him to one side, and he slammed hard into a far bookshelf, the force of the impact tipping both over, sprawling the demon amongst smoldering books.
Fear carried him back to his feet, but it also kept him rooted in place, tottering in the poor footing of the splintered bookshelf, priceless manuscripts underfoot. Somewhere in the smoke and ember, he could hear Korva pacing, the manacles that had bound her husband still around the wrists she now possessed, broken chains clinking in the twilight beyond.
“You’re… dead,” the demon wheezed, blinking blood from his eye. “Years ago. Your soul should be gone.”
“You’re right,” she taunted from the smoke. “I should be gone. My body did die. But here I am.”
Varavos shifted, trying to follow the voice in the murk, trying to brace for the coming blow.
“All this time,” she continued, “Zalas has held my soul within his thoughts, like… like guarding a palm of sand in a driving gale. Imagine the dedication of that effort, the constant struggle to defy the universe’s entropy. Imagine the effort involved. Imagine the love.”
The voice was suddenly close, right in Varavos’ ear. “And now imagine… imagine what I am going to do to the demon that hurt him.”
Varavos had no time to react. The chains were already curling around him, choking out his screams as Korva lifted him over her head and tossed him into one of the heavy beams that supported the library’s ceiling. The mighty wood did not even creak as the demon crumpled around the column.
But the chain was still wrapped around him. With a yank, she pulled Varavos back to her, his neck flying into her outstretched palm, her fingers closing in a vice around his throat.
The demon’s eyes went wide with the realization that, for the first time in his existence, death was a very, very real possibility. He met that fate indecorously. “If… if it’s the Fleshshapers’ work you want, it’s yours!” he begged, gasping and crying and shaking all at the same time. “Just let me—”
Korva lifted him with one hand, Varavos’ long legs suspended off the ground, swinging uselessly. “Zalas wanted it. But now it’s all burned up,” she snarled. “No more chances, Varavos. I swear to all the gods, I will kill you.”
The purple flames in her eyes blazed higher, her nails digging deep into the demon’s throat, his pulse coming fast and hard under her fingers. His efforts to dislodge her hand were growing weaker, his kicks more feeble. In a moment, this would finally be over. In a moment—in a—
And then Varavos was free, collapsing in a pile at Zalas’ feet, the death grip released. Zalas, too, slumped to the ground, his eyes returned to their gentle white.
The defeated demon gagged and wept, spit and snot pooling on the charred wood beneath him. He tried to crawl away, then accepted that he only had the strength to prop himself up against the remains of a shelf.
Zalas watched placidly, but he, too, was shaking with exertion and exhaustion. He had collapsed against a support column, and the two demons stared at each other across a gulf of broken books and splintered wood. Around them, embers began to die low as the wrath that had fed them dissipated.
“What,” Varavos finally choked out, “in the fuck. Was. That.”
“You heard her,” Zalas replied, his tone that of someone speaking proudly of a loved one. “In the moment of her death, she anchored her spirit in my mind. She sleeps, waiting for me to restore her body. But when I’m in danger, or when she feels very strongly, she can… take over.”
After a moment: “She really, really hates you, by the way.”
“You can’t do that with spirits. You can’t share a body like that. That’s… impossible.”
Zalas shrugged. “For you.”
They continued to watch each other, their breaths slowing toward deep, regular pants.
“Are… we done?” Varavos ventured.
“I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you mean. And sorry about the neck, by the way.”
“What do you—aahhh, fuck. How bad is it?”
When Korva had begun to choke out his life, the only thing that had saved Varavos was the fact that one of the chains had slipped between her palm and his throat, providing just enough space to let him breath for a time. But the chain had branded into Varavos’ neck a half dozen of his archenemy’s names.
“It’s pretty bad—but at least the names are backwards, so it just looks like gibberish.”
They actually shared a chuckle then, Varavos too elated at being alive to be angry yet. But slowly, he focused, and his smile dropped.
“Why?”
“‘Why’ what?”
“Why aren’t you going to kill me. I can’t stop you. My seat of power is in ruins, my body is broken. When you were at my mercy, I tortured you and tried to kill you. So: why?”
Zalas sighed, long and heavy. “My wife, I can hear her. She knows what you are, and she hates you for it. But I know you… no, that isn’t right. I know you for the conniving, murderous asshole you are, too. But I… I wish you were better than that. I choose to believe that.”
He stood slowly, clearly with some effort, and when he looked up his eyes had become hard. “And second—because Korva said she is going to kill you, and I won’t be making a liar out of my wife.”
He turned away, moving around debris toward the exit. “Have a good rest of your life, Varavos.”
“Wait.”
Zalas hesitated at the door, only half turning back.
“Wait. The Fleshshapers… they’ve gone into occultation far to the north, passed where the sea turns to ice, and then again passed where the ice turns to glass. Their tower writhes and moves under its own power; it will be impossible to find. And they are recidivists, still loyal to Phar; even if you do find them, they will kill you where you stand for what you did.”
“Why do you think I sought the book?” Zalas was tired and exasperated, and he had no desire to learn where this conversation was going; he had had too much of Varavos’ poisoned kinship for one day. “Where else was I going to learn how to reembody Korva?”
“Pick any cardinal direction, Zalas!” Varavos could not help but be condescending, even now. “There are any number of ways you could achieve your goal. You’ve been searching for years! Surely you…”
The lanky demon struggled to his feet, clearly worse off than Zalas. But he looked around knowingly; even in ruins, this was his sanctum, and given a moment, he could find what he sought. He stumbled over to a downed bookcase and pulled out a tome. “Here—to the west, past the Aklan Mountains, through the wilds the orcs call home, there are said to be pools of living metal, that can be possessed of an intelligence and take on any form you wish.”
Varavos found a satchel and slipped the volume inside. He held a second book for Zalas to see, and then packed it, too. “To the east—across the sea, on the far edge of Zaphan, 40 days hard ride beyond the ruins at the ‘end’ of the world where you banished Phar… this treatise talks of the tribes that live there, said to predate even our goddesses. They say death has no purchase on them, and that they imbue singing crystal with the souls of those that fall in battle.”
He hobbled toward the other side of the room, handing the bag off to Zalas as he moved passed. He stopped at a desk against the wall and retrieved a thin portfolio, which he also gave to Zalas. “And finally, to the south—a new goddess stirs in the Ashen Mires, a three-armed naga born of blood and suffering. She has not yet come into her power… but she might be able to bestow upon you a boon, if you ask nicely.”
“This… is in your hand. You are still writing this?”
Varavos shrugged. “The past few years have not been kind to the arts. What’s happening in the mires is important, and someone had to write about it.”
Zalas’ eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“‘Why’ what?”
“Why help me?” he echoed.
“Because when she is restored, Korva will kill me. My only hope is to feed you the truth and hope you both die in the effort.”
Zalas looked up at the taller demon, his silver-white eyes unreadable. “Thank you. I—”
“Yes, you couldn’t do it without help, obviously. That’s why you’re here and why you broke in and why you’ve been doing the same dumb shit for a decade. I’d have had Korva back in six months, a year tops.”
Zalas smiled, but it was not a kind smile. He turned and left, only stopping at the door one final time. “You are smarter than me, and more clever, that’s true. But Varavos? You’d never have had a Korva to bring back.”
Author’s Note: I had this idea very soon after finish Mutual Satisfaction, but it took me months to mold the story into something that I was happy with. I wanted a story that would put the amazing Zalas and Korva pair through the wringer (but not leave permanent damage), while simultaneously deepening the lore of Azuras. A special shoutout to my Patreons, who not only got to read this story early, but whose support enabled me to commission Bramble to once again draw Zalas!