There was a rumble, a sound like far-off thunder that sent tremors through the chamber, and then the voice of Zagadoth the Tempestuous, Demonic Lord of the Infernal Plane, tore into the throne room of Bloodthorne Keep. “Huh? Who’s—oh, well, hey there, kiddo! Haven’t seen you in half a moon! Where you been?”
Damien lifted his head, a lock of black hair falling into his view. From afar, the throne appeared empty, but this close, one could see a roughly cut shard of crystal propped up in its center and the eye that blinked back from the smoothest surface of the gem, groggy. Apparently, Zagadoth the Tempestuous had been taking a nap.
“Executing the ritual. It was long and arduous,” said Damien, turning the talisman over in his hand compulsively. His eyes flicked to it then back up to the crystal that housed his father’s existence. “And it is finally done.”
“It?” His father’s baritone mused quietly. “You don’t mean—”
“Bloodthorne’s Talisman of Enthrallment is complete.”
The eye in the crystal widened, its slice of a pupil honing in on the ore held aloft in Damien’s hand. “Kiddo! That’s just swell!” The voice of Zagadoth the Tempestuous was said to have once brought entire cities to its knees, and even now as it roared into the throne room with wholly enthusiastic words, Damien could feel the centuries of awe it had inspired. “I knew you could do it! Oh, champ, you gotta let me see that thing.”
Damien rose and brought the talisman close to the blinking eye. Holding it between two fingers, it seemed unimpressive, the size of a simple, gold coin and colored a red so deep it was nearly black, but the aura it gave off was a powerful, twisting, nauseating thing. His father, a demon with infernal power unimaginable, was one of the few who could truly sense all that it was, even while his body was locked away in an unreachable pocket of existence. His iris flickered with Abyssal fire when the talisman came close. “I never doubted you for a second, but this is really something. You sure outdid yourself.”
Damien lifted the bit of magicked ore to his own face then. Bloodthorne’s Talisman of Enthrallment was a long-pondered dream, or nightmare, dependent upon which end of it one found oneself. Even more potent than he had intended, a simple touch by any other being would cause it to be absorbed immediately. Filled with rare and powerful components, unparalleled enchantments, and his own, infernal blood, Damien could command the creature who would become the talisman’s vessel absolutely with or without their knowledge—they only had to hear the word.
To have complete control over a creature, enthrallment, was almost unheard of in such a way. Short bursts of coercion and suggestions that a target may or may not follow were possible through spells Damien had learned, and slightly longer bouts of enthrallment were only possible by creatures with the ability inborn, though Damien wasn’t interested in dying and being resurrected for that. It was only the holy and unholy orders that had something similar to what he held, but that spell required a broken vessel to continuously ingest a concoction to keep it up, it rendered the target dull and changed, and was easy enough to thwart if its source could be found.
Bloodthorne’s Talisman of Enthrallment was exceptional in its existence in that it allowed the vessel to keep its true mind and was unexpellable save for with that creature’s death. As long as he could keep his vessel alive, he could control it completely, in theory, while allowing it to retain its memories, its personality, everything to make it seem as if nothing were controlling it at all. And a creature that could be controlled wholly should be easy enough to keep alive until Damien’s desires were brought to fruition.
“You’re gonna have your pops outta this crystal in no time!” Zagadoth’s voice broke Damien of his wonder at what he’d done, a reminder of what he still had yet to do: break his father out of his crystalline confinement. Zagadoth the Tempestuous had been imprisoned for twenty-three years, nearly Damien’s entire life, and it had taken Damien just as long to master his inborn abilities, ascend as an adept blood mage, and craft the only tool that could free his father and carry out revenge upon the bastard who had imprisoned him.
“Of course.” He closed his fist around the talisman again, snuffing out its dull glow. “I’ll leave for that wretched city immediately.”
“Whoa, wait, wait, Damien, you gotta slow down. At least take the night to sleep off creating that thing.” The eye blinked and softened, looking him over. “You sure are in a rush, huh? You okay there, bud?”
Glancing briefly to the towering form that was Valsevrus, the minotaur who attended the throne room and the crystalline shard his father was trapped within, and then down to the draekin Gril behind him, Damien cleared his throat. “Yes. Definitely. I’m fine.”
“Son, let’s go for a walk.” Zagadoth had always been perceptive. Irritatingly so.
Valsevrus hustled up the stairs with a snort, grabbing the shard of occlusion crystal and carrying it so it was level with Damien’s head. They crossed the throne room, boots and hooves scuffing into the long room’s silence, Gril waddling behind studiously. Through an archway, they stepped out onto the uncovered, elevated walk that circled Bloodthorne Keep, a low parapet at their side. Below, the city of Aszath Koth was laid out, encircled by the Infernal Mountains casting their dark miasma over all.
“Damien,” Zagadoth began, “I know what I’m asking of you is…a lot.”
“This is what I was born to do, who I was meant to be, and I’ve made a vow—”
“Let me finish, kiddo.” His father’s voice dropped to a quiet but firm tone, one he used infrequently. “Youarethe only one who can free me from this crystal, Damien, but getting trapped in this thing was my doing, and heaping my break from it onto your shoulders was no small request, especially as early as I did. The vow of a child, it doesn’t meannothing, but children shouldn’t be held to the promises they made. I know you’re grown now, by human standards,”—at this he cleared his throat—“you can make your own decisions, and you’ve never wavered in your dedication to freeing me, but I want you to know I’m not blind to the work you’ve already put into this or the risk you’ll be taking to break the occlusion crystal that bastard Archibald trapped my body within.”
Valsevrus and Gril both hacked phlegm in the back of their throats. Damien eyed them, and they halted their instinct to spit at the name of Archibald Lumier, the so-called king of the realm of Eiren and a mage by heritage in his own right, if a disgraceful one. Years ago, Zagadoth had asked those in the keep to stop spitting when the hateful man’s name was used, and the floors were better for it—draekin saliva was especially acidic.
When it was clear both had swallowed, Damien cast his gaze over the tilted, dark peaks and shadowed streets of Aszath Koth, just outside of the reach of Eiren and its insufferably beloved ruler. As the son of a demon, it was the only place that had ever been his home and could ever be.
“The talisman will turn that pompous monarch into my puppet.” Damien grinned, imagining it, not even all that disappointed he wouldn’t have to torture him. “Archibald Lumier will be all too eager to reverse his own divine binds and set you free.”
Zagadoth mused a quiet sound, something between hesitancy and approval. “I am also not blind to the power you’ve acquired, son. The progeny of demons and humans have always been spoken of as formidable, and you’ve proven that, but there is a cost to infernal arcana.”
A sigh wanted to rake through Damien and grumble out, overburdened and childish, but he held it back.
“You are exploitable, Damien,” Zagadoth said with a harshness that suggested he knew exactly the reaction Damien wanted to have. “The darkness that runs in your veins, the noxscura, is meant to be carried and wielded by a demon—”
“And my humanity makes me weak,” Damien concluded for him, jaw clenching on the last word.
“Your humanity makes you unique,” the demon lord’s voice corrected. “Insusceptible to binds, unlike your foolish father, and capable of withstanding the divine, but you are not infallible, not incapable of becoming lost to it.”
Damien stepped away from Valsevrus holding the shard and to the edge of the parapet. Below, the long, stone side of Bloodthorne Keep plummeted into darkness, the pull of it tugging at that odd, hesitant feeling still prickling at his skin from the inside. “I appreciate your faith in me,” he grumbled.
“You know I have never doubted you for a moment.” Valsevrus stepped up just behind Damien to hold the crystal near his ear. “It isyourfaith that mustn’t waver. You must have something to hold onto, a way to remain grounded in yourself and know who you are.”
Damien’s mouth opened, but no words came out, and he snapped it back shut. Irritating, as always, but his father was right. Noxscura was sometimes aproblem. Dark and all-encompassing, it left him vulnerable to a select few, holy people with too much power, the nox-touched, and his own temperament, the thought of which made him want to choke the life out of something.
