by Marie Mistry
In fact, most of my time was spent closeted in my room that week. Bane had mysteriously disappeared, so I almost never saw him. Whenever I asked anyone if they’d seen him they just shook their heads and shrugged. All the other students were settled into their friendship groups, and I was starting to feel like an outsider.
Although, having met some of my classmates, I was beginning to think it was a good thing.
Some people were so obviously meant for one caste or another. I don’t think anyone could rightfully be surprised when two girls from Rina’s circle of friends turned out to be Pride and Envy. Other than them, in the past week, there had been ten showings, including Daron. Three for Envy, two for Sloth, two for Wrath, one Pride, one Gluttony and a Greed.
In one memorable case, the girl selected for Wrath had shown in her sleep, crying out in the middle of the night and waking the entire Gatehouse. She had looked pale as she was juggled out of the house by a group of angry looking girls chanting ‘Wrath’.
I couldn’t say that I felt much braver about the whole thing, even having watched a few people go through it. The entire process looked hauntingly painful.
I was still thinking of the scared look on the Wrath girl’s face when I arrived at Professor Maddox’s lesson that morning. I was early, because I had inexplicably awoken before my alarm this morning, and there was no one there when I took my seat.
Professor Maddox arrived shortly after and offered me a smile. He was one of my favourite teachers, and his lessons were rarely boring.
“How are you this morning, Lilith?” he asked me. “Ready for a change of subject matter today?”
I frowned, for the past week we’d been covering castes and sub-castes – a varied topic which touched occasionally on demonic theology. I’d been enjoying our current lessons, especially since it helped to familiarise us with other castes we hadn’t known much about. “What are we doing?” I asked.
“Demonic duels.” Maddox’s face lit up.
I raised an eyebrow questioningly. “I don’t know much about them.”
Maddox beamed, and I noted it. As much as I had tried to resist, I had become slightly obsessed with attempting to figure out his sub-caste; I had several clues, but no concrete suspicions. “Duels are actually fairly common among demons,” he informed me. “They’re the only real method of settling disputes between demons that are respected by all sides.” He gave a small smile. “They’re also highly entertaining, but the rest will have to wait for the others to arrive.” He turned to the door, “Ah, Bane! Come in, come in. Where is the rest of the class?”
“There’s been a showing, right at the entrance to the great hall,” Bane explained, taking his seat at the back. “Everyone’s stuck inside till they can get him to calm down.”
“What do you mean?” Maddox frowned, confused.
“The guy’s a Lust,” Bane said, as if that explained everything. “He’s sitting in the doorway yelling his head off about it.”
Maddox shook his head. “All this prejudice,” he muttered. “It’s no wonder our numbers are on decline.”
I shot a curious glance at Bane, wondering where he’d been all week. He returned my look with an innocent stare which only infuriated me.
When the rest of the class arrived – angry Lust guy in tow – Maddox beamed at them all.
“All here then? Let’s be getting on then… As I’ve just been saying, today we are switching topics to demonic duels!” He waited for the chatter to die down a bit before continuing. “Who can tell me the three original rules to any duel?”
Across the class, people’s hands shot up. Maddox pointed over to the back of the room at one of the louder guys in the class.
“Duels are between two single people, and cannot be forfeited. Duellists can only use demonic power, and the fight is to first blood.”
“Almost!” Maddox looked more excited than I’d ever seen him. “The first two were correct, but originally all duels were till the death. The elders put in the first blood rule two centuries ago, when it became clear that our numbers were declining too rapidly. Otherwise, very good! Who here has ever watched a demonic duel?”
A few hands shot up, and I was surprised to note that both Rina and Bane had, along with maybe eight or nine others.
“Who can tell me of any exceptions to the rules?”
Bane was the only one with his hand still up, and Maddox nodded at him to continue.
“Two people may duel as a pair if they’re mated,” Bane began. “If the person is unable to fight, they are able to nominate someone in their place, usually a family member. Also, if the power difference between the duellists is large, the duel can be called off in favour of the more powerful.”
Maddox was bouncing around the classroom. “Excellently put, Bane!” He looked up as an Envy girl put her hand up.
“Yes?” He acknowledged her.
“What does ‘mated’ mean, Sir?” she asked the question I had been thinking.
Maddox stilled, completely shocked. “Does anyone else not know this?” he asked, turning on his heel towards the blackboard at the front of the class.
I raised my hand, along with half the class.
Professor Maddox began writing on the whiteboard, a list of books that made even me dread whatever homework he was setting.
“You all have the potential to be any different caste until your showing,” Maddox muttered. “All of you are subject to prejudice because of your parents. I cannot help this. But study these texts, and perhaps you might understand why it would pay to be a little more open to the views of others. They are all available in the library. It is not homework, but I would suggest you all do this reading. And don’t just read one; you need to fully see the subject from all points of view before you can truly understand.”
He finished writing the list, and I hurried to copy them down. By the time I finished scribbling down titles, Maddox had gotten back to his original jumpy self, and all talk of mating was forgotten.
At the end of the lesson, during which Maddox had read various accounts of historical demonic duels to us, I hurried out of the room, determined to get to the library and find those books.
I didn’t even see Bane until he drew up beside me.
“Hi,” I said, smiling. “Have you finished disappearing on me?”
He didn’t reply, so I decided to try a different line of questioning.
“How did you know all those things about duelling?”
He shrugged.
Obviously, someone wasn’t feeling all that talkative today, I thought bitterly. It was a shame, because I had genuinely thought Bane and I could be good friends. Common sense said, however, that you couldn’t be friends with a guy who would walk you back to your dorm one day and then avoid you for a week.
I resolved to not talk to him until he snapped out of this creepy, quiet phase.
We reached the library, and I handed the list I’d made to Mrs Mogg, the librarian at the desk. We exchanged small smiles in greeting, familiar with one another, since I had taken a serious liking to the library as soon as I managed to find it.
It was one of those old-fashioned libraries, panelled with wood, interspersed with fireplaces and large chairs that swallowed you up. I’d made a habit of coming here with a snack from the vending machines in the dorm room, instead of staying in the grand hall in order to avoid having to sit alone.
When the librarian handed me a stack of books, some of which looked incredibly old and fragile, I took them gratefully and headed for what had quickly become my favourite spot. A large sofa sprawled in front of a fireplace, surrounded by shelves and tucked into a corner it gave the illusion of privacy.
I slid my pile of books onto the table beside me and curled up onto the sofa with my legs tucked under me. I tried to ignore Bane sitting awkwardly on the other end of the couch, but when he craned his neck to read over my shoulder, I snapped the book shut in frustration.
“You want to hang out, you have to talk to
me first and stop acting like a prat.” I looked him in the eye as I spoke, surprised to find that his irises were actually the warmest shade of brown I’d ever encountered on a person.
He returned the stare long enough for me to become mildly uncomfortable, those eyes seeming to see things no ordinary person could, but broke the connection just before I would have.
“I’m sorry I haven’t seen much of you recently,” he hedged.
I gave him a look which told him exactly what I thought of his apology.
“No excuse?” I asked.
He gave me a half smile that didn’t seem to affect the rest of his face. “In my experience, people rarely like excuses.”
Touché, I thought to myself. Against my better judgement, I opened the book once more and shifted it, so he could read more easily. Three paragraphs in, I realised that the book was written in complete gibberish and groaned in frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
“It makes no sense.”
He frowned. “You’re not reading it correctly,” he said. “It’s in Old Demonish.”
I looked at him in confusion. “You don’t happen to know how to read it, do you?”
“It so happens that I do,” he muttered. “Pass it here and I’ll read it out.”
I looked around the library, seeing no one nearby that would be disturbed, and reluctantly passed over the book. And, since I wouldn’t be able to re-read it later, I grabbed my notepad to take notes.
He skimmed it for a second and then muttered to himself before he turned to face me. “It’s very… scholarly. It will probably sound a bit archaic in places.” I nodded to show I understood, and he began to translate. “Herein follows the account of Brandon Antox, of Greed-Philomath caste and my account of the phenomenon of mating.” He paused, frowning at a word for a second. “Mating is a seriously understudied concept in academic circles, mostly due to its commonplace nature. The vast majority of the subject is taken for granted, and most scholars pander to their demonic nature and only mention the subject when it appears relevant to studies on demonic duels. Hence, I shall attempt to invest into these pages an honest study of what I have observed of matings and behaviours between mates.
“‘At the core, a mating is a bond between demons which serves to enhance their individual power and ensure the continuation of the species through the pairing of well-suited, powerful demons...' He goes on a bit about the importance of good breeding…” Bane flicked past a few pages then continued. “‘In some rarer cases, mostly with regards to sub-castes which require multiple sources of power (such as the polyamory sub-caste of Lust), multiple mates have been known to exist, and the structure of such matings is always that one demon forms a nucleus by mating two or more others. Generating power between mates always results in generating more power than would normally be possible; therefore, it is often of particular importance to demons without the ability to self-generate power (for example, the majority of Lust and many Envy caste demons) to discover their mate early.
“Humans possess a similar concept, though the existence of any such bond between lower organisms is debatable. It is worth noting, regarding this, that it is possible for unshown demons to find mates, although this is rare owing to their lack of power. This is also widely regarded as a fluke of nature by most, as unshown have no practical reason for finding a mate.”
Bane continued reading, but I found myself zoning out despite my interest in the subject. That was until he shut the book with a snap.
“So why had so few of us heard of mating if it is so common?” I wondered.
Bane frowned, leaned across me and picked up the next book on the pile. “Perhaps it has something to do with this?” he guessed, turning the book so I could read it.
“Modern demonic society issues: Population decline and the disappearance of mating,” I read slowly. “Disappearance?”
I took the book from him and skimmed it. “Matings inexplicably stopped happening over the last few centuries. No demon has claimed to have found a mate in over two hundred years.” I checked the front page. “This book was published over five decades ago,” I added. “So, now it will have been a quarter of a millennium.”
“That’s around when the elders added the first blood rule to duels,” Bane noted.
We read through the pile of books in record time, mostly because they were all so short. I began to suspect that the scholar, Brandon Antox, had been right when he had said that very few people had written much about the subject at all. In fact, the majority of the writings were about how mating had disappeared, and the increase in duels that had occurred to try and find mates, which had resulted in an unprecedented rise in demonic deaths.
The only things I had really learned were: mates were usually discovered during duels, because demons in general loved duelling and a demon’s power would never attack their mate. A mate bond was solidified when the two actively collaborated and used their powers together; once the bond was cemented the two were inseparable and considerably more powerful.
Oh, and the fact that had made me blush scarlet? Apparently mating came with an insatiable appetite for intimacy between the two demons, to the point that most mated pairs lacked the ability to feel desire for anyone other than their mate and remained monogamous for life. When Bane had coughed those facts out during his translation of another of the Old Demonish books, I had choked on the chocolate bar I’d been snacking on. That of course, had only made me more embarrassed, and I flushed as I remembered it on the way to Pruitt’s lesson.
Of course, I knew people had sex, I just didn’t really hear it described by ancient scholars that often. It wasn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation among young demons either, what with us basically being unable to feel desire until we stopped ageing. My human friends had gone on and on about it for hours, obsessed with who liked who. It had only driven me further apart from them. In that regard, Vice suited me perfectly. No young demons were bothered about endlessly discussing relationships. That Rina had brought it up to me at all was a surprise to me.
“I wonder why mating disappeared,” I mused, as we walked. “It caused so much chaos... Perhaps it was some kind of mutation.”
“Or divine punishment,” Bane muttered, as we reached the doorway. “I don’t want to go in there,” he confessed as we neared.
I shook my head. “If I think about it, I will bolt. Did you know my mother got banned from Pruitt’s classes?”
Bane looked at me like I’d turned into a ray of hope. “How? Maybe we can copy her.”
I began to open my mouth to reply, when Pruitt’s voice echoed down the hallway from behind us.
“Yes, it is an interesting tale.” She’d clearly overheard us. “Even before she went through her showing, Braxion was a self-obsessed piece of rubbish.” She was speaking loudly enough to carry to everyone lined up outside the room ahead of us, and I realised she was intentionally going to try to make an example of me. “In the middle of her third lesson, she underwent her showing in front of the whole class, and then within five seconds she’d summoned her power and sent all of the desks in the classroom flying at me. After assaulting me, she outrageously decided to claim that she had won her first duel.” I gulped at the hatred burning in Pruitt’s eyes.
No one laughed.
“What do you think of that, Carazor?” the old lady demanded.
My respect for my mother had actually risen, but I couldn’t very well say that. “I believe it to be highly disrespectful, ma’am,” I replied carefully. “But I am grateful for your willingness to teach me, regardless of her actions.” Careful flattery appeared to work best on the old woman, and I watched her smarmy smile appear as she swept past me and into her classroom without speaking to me again.
As soon as she’d gone in I mimed relief to Bane, who sniggered near-silently in response.
Any relief I might have felt fled as soon as we entered the classroom to find it strangely empty of chairs and desks. My feeling of dread only g
rew when she announced that the lesson was going to be devoted to learning the traditional demonic formal dances.
Chapter 5
I fell into bed knowing I couldn’t stay there but wishing I could all the same. I reeked of sweat, and my arms and legs felt like dead-weights pulling me down.
Despite having been a dance student before I came to Vice, formal demonic dances were my new hell. They were slow, stiff and horrid beyond belief. Pruitt had kept us practicing till we missed dinner, claiming we were so bad at it that we needed the extra practice. Then when she’d finally allowed us to leave, with just ten minutes till the curfew, she’d dropped a second bombshell.
There was a ball on the summer solstice, and to this end, we were to practice those hellish dances one lesson every month for the rest of the year.
