Damien covered his hesitating response with another dagger slash, but it was messy and wild and all too easy to dodge. Xander would certainly consider any sentiment toward Amma a detriment—Damien even recognized that it was—but there might be another appeal for her life that would work. “She’s more important than you think. She comes from a noble house that’s become entangled with a much more powerful magic. Something the elves call The One True Darkness.”
Xander stared at him a moment, the two men breathing heavily, and then he threw the vial to the floor where it shattered, blood pooling as frigid, shadowy blackness rose up around them both. “Tell me about this One True Darkness.”
As if they’d been transported to another plane, the cramped space they were in went hollow, and only the flecks of noxscura floating in Xander’s eyes shined back. Damien swallowed, unsure if the connection he only marginally thought was there mattered. “Have you heard the name E’nloc before?”
“E’nloc?” Xander coughed out a single laugh in the dark. “Actually, yes. Whispers of that name came out of Briymari’s Tunnel in the Kvesari Wood a moon or so ago.”
Damien hadn’t paid much attention to the northeast corner of the realm, but that was what the elves had said too. “And?”
“He’s a demon, sort of. My mother spoke of him once, said never to trifle with him.” Xander blinked, dousing the only light in the darkness for just a moment. “He was wiped out with The Expulsion, and Birzuma would normally hate that sort of thing, lament it, ya know? But she actually seemed more relieved when she told me that particular fairytale about him. He, uh, is meant to consume the world, if I remember correctly. Tried once, in fact, but considering we’re all still here, he apparently failed.”
Damien resheathed his dagger in the darkness. “So, there’s an evil out there then that’s too evil? Even for Birzuma? For you?”
“Oh, those bedtime stories are all half untrue and half lies to keep little blood mages in line.If you don’t finish all your dark rituals, a Holy Knight will banish you too!You know it’s all nonsense.” Xander swiped a hand through the air, and the darkness around them dispersed. “Or maybe you don’t—I wouldn’t know how draekin keep their hatchlings in line.”
Damien took a step back, but in the clarity of the room, it seemed the sparring was over. Birzuma hadn’t been imprisoned until Xander was nearly an adult, so he’d had more time with her in person than Damien did with his own parents, though there was no shard of Birzuma’s occlusion crystal to converse with her now. “So, even if there’s talk and evidence of him in the realm, you’d be fine with him existing andconsumingthe world?”
Xander snapped, and a shadow imp flitted from the edge of the room bringing his coat. “Oh, sure, why not?” He dressed carefully, wincing with pain from the last blow. His cuts, however, were already mending.
Damien took a look at his own arms and the places he’d sliced, mostly closed now, even the arcane burn going silver as it dissipated. With his eyes averted, he tried to sound as casual as possible. “You wouldn’t be worried about the…implicationsof letting something like that wreak havoc on the realm?”
When there was no response, Damien looked up. Xander was simply staring back, utterly bewildered. “I don’t understand the question.”
Damien rolled his eyes with a hefty sigh. “You know what I mean. We’ve all got our self-imposed limits of villainy—it’s part of the Grand Order’s damn charter, and you’re not supposed to criticize the height of someone else’s bar.”
Xander groaned. “Are we really about to have a discussion aboutmorality?”
“Don’t act like you’re below it. You’ve chosen not to make an attempt on my life this last week. Even now, you and I both held back.”
“Right. Because you’re worth something to me alive.”
“That’s it? There isn’t some…fondness?”
“Depends on how you define fondness.” Xander scrunched up his nose with a smarmy grin then blew out a breath and sauntered past him to the door. “But, no, I suppose your romantic interests lie elsewhere, with that little bird, just like that raven you adore so much that’s not actually infernal.” He glanced back at him with an eyebrow cocked. “That’s right, I know about that smidgen of divine magic you picked up. But our kitten’s more like a sparrow, isn’t she? So tiny, so delicate, so like prey. The exact kind of creature a raven would pick apart with its talons and devour.”
A twinge rolled itself in Damien’s guts. “I am talking about us, Xander. We’re the same. Birzuma and Zagadoth hate one another, but we are here, working together, and you can’t lie to me: I know you prefer my company to an empty tower. And you enjoy Amma’s company too.”
“I donot,” he said in a huff, swinging around with Abyssal fire flickering in his eyes.
Damien bit his lip, hating what he was about to say, but if it could help protect Amma, he would admit it. “I have this memory of you, Xander. One from when we were very small.”
“Beating your ass?” The blood mage’s grin went wide.
Damien wanted to roll his eyes, he wanted to say that two years was an awful lot of difference to a five-year-old, but instead he just swallowed. “No, not that. Before all that. You and I were alone, and we were far from home, and we were both…scared.”
Xander’s grin faltered, recognition in his eyes, but his face twitched in a way that seemed to say he was disgusted at the very thought.
“Sometimes it feels like it was just a dream, or a nightmare, but other times it feels like a memory. I don’t know where I was, but it was far from home in Aszath Koth, and you were with me. You told me everything was going to be okay, and I believed you.”
Xander’s throat bobbed. “Does that sound like me?”
“Not really.”
When the blood mage gave him a shrug as if that answered things, Damien groaned. Perhaps that had been a waste.
“Regardless, the two of us, we’ve got a shared existence. You know that we’re human just as much as we are demon, and don’t you ever question that? What it means?” He scoffed. “Don’t you ever wonder who your father is?”
“Do Iwonderwho myfatheris?” Xander’s face changed then, every bit of amusement he’d had at Damien’s questions gone. “The human part of me isn’t something to mull over and romanticize. It’s a necessary good. The demons, ourtruecreators, they’re immensely powerful, more so than you or I will ever be, but because of what they are, they’re flawed. They’re only on this plane because some other being summoned them, but they can be banished against their will or worse, chained and subjugated. I know you’ve gotten a taste of that yourself, fucking with a nox-touched, but imagine it being permanent.” Xander had moved closer, poking him in the chest, lips curled down with vicious disgust. “It might take you moons, years even to break free of the noxscura if your will is too weak, but youcan. Demons, though? The price they pay for their power is being reliant on someone else to break them out. That’s the only reason they deigned to lay with humans to bare us—to free them from the idiotic situations they’ve gotten themselves into.”
