Order of the Sacred Sword Ch. 04

"You never listen, do you?" she replied. "Fine, take me back to the tower. I care not. I shall be free in due time. The prince will return to me."

"What are you?" I asked. "What's inside that unnatural shell?"

"Your new goddess," Meredith replied.

"Who is the demon prince?" I asked. "Prince of what?"

"He is your new god," Meredith said. Crouched, she approached the bars, and wrapped her fingers around them, looking up at me. Her eyes flickered in the light, but the lower half of her face remained shrouded; it seemed as if her words were coming from nowhere at all. "He will remake this world, and you along with it."

"Why can he not return to the demon plane?" I asked. "Why is the netherworld closed to him?"

"It is not a matter of open or closed," Meredith said. "I am hungry. I must be fed."

"I will have the guards bring you some food," I replied. I turned to leave, but an arm shot out from between the bars and took a handful of the material in my pants.

"That is not what I hunger for," Meredith whisper-shouted. "Your cock is but a shadow of the prince's, but it will do. Open the door to this cell, and I will give you a taste of his most wonderful creation."

Both her hands passed through the gaps in the bars now, and she rubbed my crotch, her roving fingers teasing the length of my flaccid member through my trousers. I grabbed her wrists, one then the other, and pushed them away.

"Were you Meredith, I would perhaps hesitate a moment," I said. "But you are not Meredith. That much is certain."

"Finally you are beginning to understand," the creature inside the cell said.

I turned and left, my boots echoing on the floor.

#

With the help of four members of the Rivergate city watch, we brought Meredith and Victoria back to the capital in chains.

"Please understand," Elaina said at the start of most days, when she tied them to their horses. "We would not have to do this if you did not attack us."

The women remained silent, a special form of protest that filled Sir Ballard with his own version of quiet anger. Now and then Meredith would glare at me, but Victoria remained unfocused and distraught, her eyes often cast at the ground.

Sir Ballard rode in the back of a wagon that had been given to us, along with two weeks of supplies, by the lord of Rivergate as thanks for ridding his city of the evil inhabiting the monastery. It seemed a small reward, but when his representative tried to offer more, Sir Ballard refused. Later, as I sat with him in the back of the cart, he explained.

"The Order of the Sacred Sword has a bad enough reputation, and the sisters do not fare much better in the eyes of the average citizen," he said. "Better to let the news spread that we work without expectation of reward. He have other avenues for financing."

We immediately returned to the temple district, to the Orders' headquarters. As they were women, and women were only allowed in the Order of the Sacred Sword under very special circumstances, Elaina brought Victoria and Meredith to the Sacred Sheath for rest and examination.

"We will observe and question them for a few days, at least," Elaina said. "One of her companions from the Starlight Tower will be consulted, no doubt. Please be patient. I will send word when I can."

I thanked Elaina, and gave my farewell to a gloomy Meredith. Knowing there was little, if anything, I could do to reach her, I turned and followed the wagon across the street. A number of squires and stewards emerged from the rear door to help Sir Ballard to his chambers, following closely by a nagging apothecary who doubted the skill of the healers who had originally set the knight's leg. Before he disappeared into the upper floors of the building, he gave me some final instructions.

"Take some rest, and speak to Althenon. He will assign you new duties in short order," Ballard said. "Thank you for everything. You have done a great service for someone so knew to the order."

He was not alone in his praise, once I told my story.

"You overpowered an incubus?" he asked. Two brothers joined us in the dining hall: Sir Gregory, and another I had not met named Sir Hallis. He was a smaller man - he barely came up to my shoulder when we were both wearing simple sandals - but built thicker than Gregory, and younger. He appeared to share some lineage with Sir Ballard; perhaps one of his parents hailed from the far-off land that gave Sir Ballard his darker skin tone.

"He had just finished for the second time," I replied. "He was very much distracted. I only killed the body."

"Tell us about him," Hallis said. "How did he seem?"

"Confident," I replied. "He made me watch from only feet away from him. Though I cannot blame him for underestimating me. I had been severely beaten."

"What about his appearance?" Gregory asked. "Was he enhanced, as the witch was?"

"I can only imagine," I said. "He was unlike any man I have ever seen."

"No cambion, then," Hallis resolved. "Only in rare cases do they appear entirely human."

It was true, I thought, recalling the horns that sprung from Talaxel's forehead.

"Full demons always appear human?" I asked.

"Only full demons have the power to make manifest a body of their own design," Gregory explained. "Their offspring with humans are perverted by their darkness, and often bear signs of their heritage."

"I fucked a girl with a tail, once," Hallis shrugged. "Another had stunted wings."

"Did he give you a name?" Althenon asked. "Any clues to his identity?"

"None," I replied. "He merely called himself the prince. The women and brothers called him that as well."

"Fascinating," Althenon said. "I know of no hierarchy amongst them. It is a distressing thought. If there is a prince, there may be a king."

"It may be a recent development," I said, having come across no mention of such royalty in my studies. "The prince spoke of a book."

"Yes, yes, this book," Althenon mused. "Sir Ballard spoke of it. Quentin, will you accompany me in the library this evening? I must record everything you know about this book."

"I do not care for this," Hallis said. "We must speak to the High Paladin. An effort to recover this book must begin immediately."

"Who can we ask?" Sir Gregory said. "We have the collected knowledge of the demon in this very building, and none amongst us have come across any mention of this book."

"Meredith may know more than she is revealing at present," I offered. "Though I do not know how to get the information out of her if she had it."

"A chosen one, you said?" Althenon asked. I nodded. "I must hear about that as well."

"Perhaps we should consult Talaxel," I suggested. "You rescued her from a demon coven, did you not?"

"In a sense," Gregory said. "None who were there still live, but I have heard that her mother was a substandard specimen. A succubus who had been herself cast out from a larger cult. It is likely that she knows nothing."

"I do not mean to be presumptuous," I began, "but has anyone thought to ask?"

"She has been questioned," Althenon replied. "But as Sir Gregory explained, it was not as if she grew up during the war among demon society. Though she has never faced the specific questions you mean to raise."

"Perhaps she may be of some help," Sir Hallis said. "I will fetch her and bring her to the library after sundown. She is much more amenable at night."

"I could not have put it better myself," Gregory said, elbowing Hallis in the ribs. The brothers spoke the truth; I found her desires much more insatiable in the dark, and it was when the world slept that she spoke to me in much more affectionate tones before and after our sessions together. I imagined the brothers would recount similar experiences.

"Well, gentlemen, it appears we have a plan of action," Althenon said. "The High Paladin is currently on assignment, though I understand he will return within the fortnight. We should endeavor to have some information to present to him by that time."

#

Althenon's strategy for research proceeded without any semblance of reason or order. The library was not massive, and in fact it was not much larger than the one at the Dalgot monastery, but as the head steward roamed the shelves, drawing books from them seemingly at random, I realized just how much information the archives at the Order of the Sacred Sword held. All the books I had read from the library so far, on the topic of demons and their motives and the history of the war that had brought them to our plane, had been brought to me by Althenon or another steward, and I had been to the library only to return them, or when a brother brought me there as I assisted him with his errands. But venturing further into the depths of the chamber, I found surprising nuances. Tightly packed between the books were scrolls, and some rows of tomes stood double-stacked in front of other full rows. I wondered how far back the layers went, whether or not there was an end to the number of books held in the two story library. Having never spent much time researching, I could not tell if there was some system of organization Althenon was following as he darted from one section to the next, sometimes pulling a book immediately, sometimes appraising the spine for several seconds before shaking his head and moving on.

After nearly a half an hour of roving the shelves we settled on a table with a stack of roughly fifteen books of various heft. Some he opened, picking specific pages and laying them out before us.

"This is a list of books the Orders have seized from demon lairs," he said, pointing at one of the open books. As he said, the page contained the titles of some books I had heard of and many I had not, with a description of the contents of each. I lifted the page to see the next, and the next; the list went on for several pages.

"Where are they now?" I asked.

"Some are here," Althenon said, waving a finger in a circle to signal the shelves that surrounded us. "Some are in the vault. Others were destroyed, either by choice or by accident."

"The vault?"

"Beneath the cells of this building there is a vault of demon relics that the brothers or the Starlight Tower could not figure out how to destroy," Althenon explained. "Among the amulets and weapons there are a few books with sensitive content not fit for the library."

"Sensitive content," I said, wondering what that might be.

"A few spellbooks," Althenon said, indicating a few entries in the log. "I believe one or two are bound with human flesh."

"We should check there," I said, trying to push from my mind the thought of a book made of skin.

"In due time," he said. "We usually need the High Paladin's permission to open the vault. We have plenty to work with here."

We settled at the table and began to pour over the texts. Many of them were barely comprehensible to me; I had never been the strongest reader, having taught myself the skill in my youth, but the subject matter was much more complicated than those books I had been given by the Order to study during my training. Those dealt with demon lore and the history of the Order of the Sacred Sword. These books, with their obscure titles in foreign languages, spoke of unnumbered planes of existence, only one of which was home to the demons who invaded our world generations ago.

"If we want to find out the truth of the demon power, we may have to make a larger cosmological study," Althenon explained, showing me a map of the material planes and their relation to each other. Our plane, the prime plane, was only one of many. Some were home to the gods, others were home to creature, it was told, not unlike ourselves. One, a very large one, close to our plane, was home to the demons.

"It is not quite a matter of distance," he said, attempting to explain to me how the portal opened long ago, and how the invading army poured out of it. "Not a literal one, anyway. Some planes are relatively easy to travel to from ours, but others are impossible. Either way, it takes a great amount of magical power that usually kills the person who attempts it. The book the demon prince spoke of could contain instructions for closing the gap between our reality and theirs."

"How did they do it last time?" I asked.

"We do not know," Althenon said, shaking his head. "We only closed the portal once the demons fled. Any who remained in our plane would be trapped here permanently."

"Unless we banished them?"

"Exactly right," he said. "They told me you were sharp."

"It makes a great deal of sense," I said. "If the prince is trying to create a perfect mate, he may be trying to create a more powerful demon. One who could open the portal, perhaps?"

"A distinct possibility," Althenon said. He put aside the before us and found another. It was a history of the demon war, but one I was not familiar with. "Within this book is an account of the portal closing, written by the sorceress who closed it. Please find it while I look for the catalogue of demon species with a known ability to travel between planes."

"If there were any still alive, would they not just open another portal and invade again?"

"Unlikely," Althenon replied. "We defeated them by sheer strength last time. I imagine it would take them quite some time to marshal an army large enough to attempt another invasion. And to what end?"

What end indeed. The facts we knew of the demon pointed to no motive in the invasion other than our utter destruction. They moved from city to city, besieging it with armies and magic until the walls fell. They took few prisoners, though those who were taken alive were often given to the succubi and incubi. When reinforcements arrived during their siege of the capital and the vast majority of their army was destroyed, the survivors retreated with unfailing speed to the portal. The Starlight Tower met them there, and there was one final battle, and the portal was shut.

"It appears to be a very complicated process," I said, indicating the section in which the ritual was described. "I know nothing of spellcraft."

"Likely it was improvised on the spot," Althenon said after spending a moment reading the passage. "Or it is simpler than this writing is making it out to be. I would imagine closing the portal is significantly easier than opening it."

I asked if we could consult the Tower, but he shook his head.

"It is not necessary," he said. He showed me what he had been reading. "It is ancillary to our concern. There are very few types of demons with the ability to travel between the planes. It is possible that the opening of the portal was as much an accident as anything else."

"So they came here for no reason?" I asked.

"Not necessarily. They might have opened the portal by chance, but they still had to choose to cross through it," Althenon said. "We simply do not have enough information."

"Would Talaxel know?" I asked. "She lived amongst a full-blood for many years."

"I have no idea. Once the portal was closed, there was no way to find out why. We stopped asking questions," Althenon shrugged. He called out to the darkness. "Steward, bring Talaxel to us."

"At once, my lord," said a voice, and I heard the opening and closing of the door to the library.

"We should keep looking. If there is mention of the book in the writings about the war, we will find it," Althenon said. "Though you may be correct about going to the Tower. Their library is much more extensive than ours."

Minutes passed while we read in silence, only breaking it to point out an interesting fact to the other. The door opened again, and I heard two pairs of footsteps climb the stairs and approach our table. The steward, a boy no older than sixteen, seemed terrified of Talaxel, who wore a simple robe but slinked within it. It seemed as if it was threatening to fall from her shoulders at any moment.

"What could you possibly want?" Talaxel asked. "The sun set hours ago."

"We have some questions about a very urgent matter," Althenon explained.

"I'll answer none of your questions," she replied.

"Please, Talaxel," I said. "We need your help."

"Darling, I'll answer your questions," she said to me. "Not his."

"I don't understand," I said, looking from Talaxel to Althenon, and back.

"Old grudges die hard, I suppose," Althenon said. "Very well. I grow tired anyway. Quentin, please record any information you find relevant, and we can review it in the morning. Blow out the candles when you are finished."

He took the arm of the steward as he rose from the table and made his way toward the stairs.

"Come, my boy," he said. "It is time for rest."

After a few seconds of waiting the door closed behind them, and there was silence. I remained in my chair, and Talaxel seated herself on the table edge that faced me, her legs dangling to the right of mine.

"I didn't know how late it was," I said, looking up. "I apologize for waking you at this hour."

"I don't sleep," Talaxel replied.

"I didn't know that," I said. "How do you fill your time?"

"Books, mostly," she said, looking around the room. "And there are many who come to me seeking in the night. I am not strictly forbidden from interacting with the stewards, you know."

I had not been aware of that.

"What about Althenon?" I asked.

"He helped devise the spell that keeps me restrained during my encounters with the brothers," she explained. "I knew there would be some chains placed on me when I came here, but you cannot imagine how strange an experience it is."

"I'm sorry," I said. "If it's unpleasant for you, I can stop coming to you for our sessions."

"It is not unpleasant," she said. "Though it seems like a loss, to be incited into a demonic, erotic rage that serves no other purpose than to give the brothers practice against the real thing. When my passions are less restricted, I find them much more pleasurable."

I thought about that for a moment.

"If you could have one thing, what would it be?" I asked.

"Free will," she replied without any hesitation.

"But you have that," I said. "Granted, you are confined to this building, but your time is your own. You are free to pursue your own interests. Am I wrong?"

"That's not exactly it," she sighed. "I wish for freedom from the impulses."

"I don't understand," I said, for the most recent of many times that night. "You said you enjoy experiencing your passions."

"When the spell restrains me and my mate does not finish inside me, I am left unsatisfied," she said. "Why do you think I am always ready for the brothers?"

She took my hand, which was resting on the table, and brought it between her legs, under the fold of her robes. The crease where her legs met was hot, and her slit dripped with wetness.

"My urge is to breed and create more demon spawn," she said, leaning forward, gasping, as she rubbed my fingers up and down the line of her cunt. "It is instinct, but it is not what I would choose."

"What would you choose, Talaxel?" I asked. I found that I was not aroused; being with Talaxel without the presence of a wizard of the Starlight Tower muttering over our bed was a dangerous prospect. I had no idea what might come out of her: tender passion, or unbridled rage.

"I would choose you, my darling," she said, thrusting my fingers into her. There was no resistance. She closed her eyes and threw her head up to the ceiling, opening her legs wider. "I would choose you every time."

She drove my fingers into her for a few moments, grasping my wrist with both hands and her hips thrust against me. Biting her lip and smiling, and looked down and met me with her emerald gaze. Curtains of hair fell over the sides of her face, and she looked at me through a tunnel; it was only us now. It had only been us, always.

"You want me," she said. "I can see it in you."