Demon Seer 2

by Kurtis Eckstein

  Jericho took a deep breath and looked away, knowing what Miriam was getting at. Most Ryujin wouldn’t risk their wellbeing to help a possible Chrysalis who had been created illegally – not unless they were desperate for companionship.

  “Wait,” I said, an idea hitting me. “What if that’s the difference? Amnesia?”

  Miriam cocked her head as she tried to see where my thoughts were headed.

  I focused on Jericho. “What if that fight with Ragnarok never happened in the other time loops? I would have still met you, but when I sensed Miriam again, you wouldn’t have been in danger of being harmed. None of that extra stuff would have happened, and I wouldn’t have needed to bring you back to Earth. Honestly, you probably wouldn’t have gone with me, even if I asked.”

  “No, probably not,” she agreed. “For one, it’s not my turn, and even if you are the newest Ruler, I wouldn’t have risked potentially going against the wishes of the other five, not counting Miriam. In general, I’m not one to flaunt with the rules…” She hesitated, lowering her voice. “Even if I almost did with you, when I thought you might be Chrysalis…” She then laughed humorlessly, almost speaking to herself. “I suppose I really was the best choice. Objectively.”

  “So,” Miriam said to me, moving the conversation back to amnesia. “What do you think is the difference? Did you remember later than usual?”

  “I hope not. If there’s any hope of making progress, then that’d seem like the opposite of it. Maybe I remembered earlier than usual. Possibly Jericho would have…umm, for lack of a better term, taken care of me for a while. Kept me safe until I remembered. Honestly, if I hadn’t started to remember, then we might not have even stayed in the city for very long.”

  Jericho remained silent, not denying my assumptions, since it was fairly obvious at this point that they were probably correct. She would have absolutely taken care of me, indefinitely.

  “But the problem is,” Miriam countered. “Would remembering sooner make any difference, ultimately? I mean, even if you remembered me right away, would it change anything about the final outcome, in terms of the world ending?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied quietly, even though I knew it was more of a rhetorical question.

  Miriam took a deep breath and let it out slowly, all of us falling silent for a long few minutes. Finally, she spoke up again.

  “Maybe we should explain the situation to my father. He knows things – information that he doesn’t share with most. It’s doubtful he would be able to help with this type of situation, but it’s the last option I can think of.”

  I scoffed, though not at her idea. “And now I’m starting to wonder if we’ve done that before. Would you have recommended that as an option if things had been different?”

  “Probably, yeah,” Miriam replied with a grimace. “Assuming we were trying to stop this in other time loops – which likely happened since you had a vision about it – then it would be the last option I’d resort to. It would definitely come up, no matter what. I’d always circle back around to that idea.”

  “Then should we do it?” I asked seriously. “Because it seems like following the overall path of the other time loops would just result in the same outcome.”

  Miriam reached up and began massaging her temples in frustration, closing her eyes. “Yes, you’re probably right, but I don’t know what else we could do as an alternative. I mean, our options right now are either talk to my father, or else just sit around and wait for it to happen.” She focused back on me. “Whatever it is.”

  I had to admit I didn’t like that idea either. With death looming around the corner, someone choosing to just sit around and hope for the best seemed like a fool’s error.

  Miriam continued, her tone abruptly quiet. “We could also try speaking to your sister again…” She hesitated, examining my reserved expression and thoughts. “Though, thus far she’s not been very helpful. Certainly, she’s given us insight into what’s going on, but it doesn’t seem like she’s willing to share information on how we might be able to fix this.”

  Jericho finally chimed in again. “Seems to me that she’s convinced there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Which might be true,” I admitted. “Unfortunately,” I added.

  We were all quiet again as we considered that.

  Jericho was the one to break the silence, meeting my gaze hesitantly. “I…I don’t want to go back. I know you said you’d protect me, but…”

  Miriam interjected. “But you’re afraid Ragnarok is going to get ahold of you again.”

  Jericho’s icy eyes tightened, her gaze dropping to the ground.

  “That might be best anyway,” I realized, mentally doing the equivalent of placing my hand on her shoulder, only to speak to her separately in my head. ‘Go wherever you want. I can find you again.’ I then continued speaking out loud, not having physically moved in any way. “If you were never here with us in the other time loops, then it might be best for you not to return to Sekajin right now. Miriam and I should do this part by ourselves, to see how it plays out.”

  Miriam continued. “And if anyone asks about you hiding out here, we’ll say we ordered you to do it. No one will question you following my orders.” She hesitated. “Although, we might have trouble finding you again, so maybe you could return here in a few days?”

  Jericho nodded, seeming both shocked and unsurprised, simultaneously, that my love wasn’t aware I could sense the angelic demon’s presence despite distances, as would normally only be the case for any family member sharing the same lineage.

  Even now, when I reached my mind out, I could faintly sense the hundreds of demons who originated from Gilgamesh and his partner Ishtar, back home on Venus.

  But it was odd for members of different origins to be synced, even superficially – partners would basically always end up as being from the same bloodline, their physical characteristics associated with the one who bit them.

  Certainly, there were some Ryujin who participated in nontraditional relationships involving everything imaginable, but telepathic cross-syncing itself wasn’t really common – the only exception being very rare cases of those who abandoned their original partners in search of another, and decided on someone of a different lineage, rather than participating in alternative relationships while still being synced with their first partner.

  And even then, those cross-synced individuals could only detect their separate lineages, apart from each other, never truly leaving their origins behind.

  Not to mention, this fact was even more true for speaking from such a distance with someone of a different lineage, with that last part being the strangest aspect of my connection with Jericho.

  Or, at least, that was my understanding based on Jericho’s thoughts as she considered the subject more deeply, using what she knew of her original partner, Darius, as a comparison. One of the reasons why she was ultimately glad to be rid of him was because, after syncing with a woman from Gilgamesh’s lineage, the two of them began recreationally exchanging partners with other willing parties, something that Jericho wouldn’t have wanted to be subjected to.

  However, at present, her primary thought was wondering why I wasn’t telling Miriam about it.

  I didn’t answer the question, because it wasn’t actually directed at me, but it still prompted me to think about it too.

  The reason was simple.

  I was going to tell Miriam, but I didn’t want her to stress about the issue right now – not when we had such bigger problems to worry about. Plus, any other situation, and it would have been completely normal for me to speak to someone else over the phone, such as a classmate about a project, without having my love listening in on the conversation. So, in my perception, speaking to Jericho without anyone else hearing wasn’t that odd, except for the fact that all this was happening telepathically.

  But I would definitely tell her, just not at this time.

  Now that we had decided on our course of action, Mi
riam and I wished our friend goodbye and flew away, waiting until we got to the upper atmosphere to warp back to Venus.

  As I wrapped my arms around Miriam to begin our second-long trip across space, I could see in my love’s thoughts that she was worried about her father’s reaction, considering the situation with Ragnarok.

  I would have thought she’d know him well enough after so long, but her father was…a complicated man.

  He often treated both her and Gabriel impartiality, as if they were acquaintances or coworkers instead of family, which was the reason why Miriam’s adoptive mother Ishtar, as well as the demon queen Lilith, were her closest and only friends.

  But her father wasn’t truly impartial.

  When Miriam originally returned to Sekajin, almost a week ago now, to beg him to make a way for her to transform me, he showed a rare moment of affection for his supposedly favorite daughter.

  Supposedly, because he had told her that before, but more as a statement of fact, rather than out of love. Miriam always assumed it was because she was so powerful – that he saw value in that power, rather than her as a person.

  But his concern for his daughter, and desire to grant her wish, had been evident then – a rare moment of fatherly love peeking out of his exterior of indifference. Which meant, the few encounters I’d experienced with him were not the norm, him having expressed more emotion than usual due to the surprise I’d caused. I also had to remember that one of my ‘memories’ of Gilgamesh had been an illusion created by Ragnarok, with the father-figure speaking and acting like how I thought he might – to make it more believable for me.

  Still, even despite Miriam’s father granting her request, she didn’t know how he would react to hearing us out, even if Ragnarok had no one else but himself to blame for this situation, being the instigator.

  When we reappeared just above the swirling white clouds of Venus, I followed Miriam as she headed towards their capital, Uruk-Verum, both of us being cautious as we sank into the clouds. When we reappeared below the turbulent crimson canopy, the massive midnight city came into sight, cast in red as usual.

  Unlike Ragnarok, who had built his massive fortress quite some distance from the capital, both Gilgamesh and Enkidu had similar castles at either edge. However, we were so high, and there were so many buildings, that I wasn’t able to pick them out by size alone until Miriam mentally pointed them out.

  I also wasn’t even able to locate the crater I had made, or the damage I caused, from my fight with Ragnarok – which was just an indication of the overall size of the place. It would be like attempting to locate a single destroyed building from an aerial view of a major city – there was a lot to scan over.

  Interestingly, the celebration that was supposed to last for another week had completely vanished. The closer we dropped towards the city, the more it became apparent that no one was even in the streets, prompting Miriam to wonder if it was because we had arrived, or if it had just been like this ever since Ragnarok’s outburst.

  Because all of the Ryujin could sense we were near at this point, being within a fifty-mile range. Not to mention all of our bloodline who would have sensed us reappearing above the atmosphere, with many having friends of other origins. So, it wouldn’t have taken long for the entire city to be aware of our presence, even before we got this close, despite the fact that barely a quarter could sense us further away.

  Reaching Gilgamesh’s castle, I saw that he had a large balcony for people to land on, that led indirectly to his throne room, which wasn’t exposed to the open air like Ragnarok’s was. The overall structure was very similar to…what?

  Similar to what?

  My brow furrowed as I felt a sense of nostalgia, recalling another black balcony attached to a structure larger than this entire city, built from twisted midnight vines, though that couldn’t be right. Could it?

  Was it from a dream?

  It felt distant like a dream, as if it were something I had woken up from days ago, though I couldn’t pinpoint having any such dreams recently. And, I mean, I didn’t even need to sleep as a demon, so it would have been a human dream, of course. Yet the sense of familiarity continued to persist, even as we landed.

  Miriam wasn’t too concerned about it herself, instead caught up in her own apprehension.

  She was already reaching out with her mind, finding her father and mother alone in what would have been equivalent to a bedroom, prompting her to be hesitant as she called out to him.

  ‘Father, if permitted, we seek an audience with you.’

  His mental tone was reserved when he responded a few seconds later. ‘Very well. Wait in the throne hall.’

  Miriam expected a similar answer, so we were already heading there, walking down a wide hallway, before taking a turn and continuing on. When we got to the throne hall, I stopped in my tracks, a wave of nostalgia hitting me as I examined the cathedral-like room.

  The front of the extremely tall space had a large black throne on a lava-stone podium, coupled with a massive midnight cross that went from floor to ceiling, appearing to almost serve the purpose of being a support beam, as well as decoration.

  However, that wasn’t the most shocking aspect of the room.

  It had three massive stain-glass windows – one behind the cross, and two on each side, all three of them seeming to be arranged in random orders, rather than creating images. I was shocked that glass would exist in this environment at all – that it could look normal despite the heat. But then again, I knew nothing about the melting temperature of glass, realizing it must not be hot enough to even change the color.

  The glass itself didn’t have a lot of pigment in it, instead appearing to take advantage of the continuous crimson glow outside to determine what the colors were, bathing the room in shades of orange, purple, and of course red, though the actual shades of those three primary colors were extensive, depending on the amount of yellow and blue pigment in each shard of glass.

  For example, I could distinguish at least six or seven different shades of orange alone.

  But the beauty of the light wasn’t why I stopped. Nor was it because I felt nostalgic.

  For some reason, I felt like I’d seen a similar cathedral room before, minus the windows. A larger one. A darker one.

  A similar room that had a massive midnight cross.

  The sensation – the hazy memory – made me feel empty inside, like all was lost. Like there was no hope in the world.

  Miriam abruptly stopped when I did, looking back at me with concern.

  “What’s wrong, love?” she asked gently, worry tainting her tone.

  Of course, she could vaguely sense how I was feeling, and my confusion over a dream-like nostalgia, but she couldn’t pinpoint the problem, just like I couldn’t.

  I cleared my throat, it suddenly feeling tight, like how I might feel if I were overly emotional and about to cry. “Is your father religious?” I wondered hesitantly.

  Her brow furrowed, as she turned to look at the cross. “Not that I’m aware.”

  “Then why the cross?” I asked seriously, suddenly realizing how out of place it was – and not because the Ryujin race looked like demons. “It doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, isn’t he like, really old? Churches with crosses have only been a thing for a couple of millennia – I mean, you’re almost as old as this tradition is, never mind your father, who you said was much older.”

  She shrugged, returning her crimson gaze to me. “Maybe you can ask him sometime, but right now we need to focus. There are much more pressing issues than whether or not my father is religious.”

  She paused, when she saw where my thoughts had just gone.

  “I’m not sure if I believe in anything,” she admitted with a bitter grimace, knowing I was thinking about her words earlier, sounding like she was literally praying to God to bring me back. “There’s obviously a being that created my father, so maybe there are gods out there. Maybe there’s one above the rest. Or maybe there are none, and
it’s all wishful thinking. I don’t know.”

  I could tell she wanted to drop the subject, feeling weak to be so helpless that she resorted to praying as her only option, but there was something else there too.

  A resentment.

  It was easier to believe there wasn’t such a being, rather than realize that God had abandoned her – allowed her to become a monster who required human sacrifices to continue living. But then again, the God I knew from my human upbringing didn’t cause evil, and even promised to punish it eventually, with evil instead originating from the freewill actions of people. But then, that raised another, possibly pointless, question – who would be punished? The creature who made the Ryujin, or the people who were forced to become monsters? Or both?

  Probably a pointless thought though, since there very well may not even be any gods. And even if there were, we did have more important issues to worry about at the moment.

  I reached out and gently rested my hand on the back of my love’s slim neck, prompting her to draw closer and wrap her arms around my exposed torso, resting her head on my shoulder. Neither of us said anything though, instead just holding on to each other while we could, being reminded of the uncertain impending doom that loomed over us.

  Her father obviously wasn’t in any rush to meet with us, so I just enjoyed the warmth of my love’s body against mine while we waited.

  I wasn’t sure how long we remained like that – maybe half an hour – but finally Gilgamesh made an appearance from a stairwell to the right of the podium.

  Considering he was one of the three Originals, I almost expected him to sit on his throne, like how I had found Ragnarok, but he instead walked to the middle of the room, and stopped, clasping his hands behind his back – his shoulders square, his posture tall, his overall presence regal.

  It was still so strange to see someone with such a young appearance, appearing no more than twenty-five, and yet know he was something like five-thousand years old.