“Hey, are you cheating?”
“No…”
Jay glared at Alex, her violet eyes narrowed in suspicion. The Demon stared back at her, utterly calm and unflinching. She affected the air of perfect innocence, showing that she had nothing to hide.
Jadis didn’t believe her.
“There’s no way you’re getting that lucky every time,” Jay groused as she tossed her cards down onto the table. “That’s five times in a row you’ve gone out before me. You’re hiding cards in your tentacles, aren’t you?”
Alex raised her tentacles, showing that she had nothing hidden. Her smile was bratty, almost taunting, and was clearly something she had picked up from watching Kerr.
“I… Am… Luckier than… You…”
“Bullshit,” Jay cursed after making a rude noise with her lips. “You’re doing something funky, I can tell. You’re just good at playing all sweet and innocent when really you gained some kind of master ‘card shark’ skill while I wasn’t looking.”
Alex tilted her head to the side, showing her confusion.
“Card… Shark…?”
Jay chuckled before explaining what the term meant. There were always new phrases for Alex to learn, though the number was decreasing every day. She’d really gotten good at understanding imperial, to the point that she could extrapolate the meaning of a lot of words from context. Card Shark was a bit too strange for Alex to understand without a more in-depth explanation, but still. Jadis was basically able to have whole conversations with Alex without having to worry about anything important being lost in translation, for the most part. More importantly, when there was something that either she or Alex didn’t understand about what the other was saying, they were aware enough to stop the other and ask for clarification.
“Let’s play a different game,” Dys suggested, getting up from where she’d been lounging by the fire. “They have chess here, or at least a version that’s pretty much the same. I’ll teach it to you. I think you’ll like it.”
“Yes…” Alex agreed without argument.
Jay and Syd stood as well, helping Alex to stand out of courtesy. Not that there was any real need to. With how Alex’s tentacles were, she could easily rise from any position in the blink of an eye. But it felt right to offer her hand to Alex and pull her up. She’d do the same for any of her lovers, even though few of them would need that kind of help either.
“I think I saw a chessboard in the library,” Dys commented as she led the way out the door. “Let’s head there and see if it’s free.”
While Jadis was genuinely interested in playing chess, she had suggested the idea more to give her and Alex a change of scenery than anything else. She and Alex had been sequestered in their room all morning, playing various card games and reading books. After breakfast, Jadis had gone about her early morning training with the intention to take Alex out to explore wherever interested her after. However, snow had begun to fall well before the morning exercises were done. By the time she and the others had called it quits, the skies had really opened up and the city had been caught in a whiteout. Looking out the windows, Jadis could barely make out the temple courtyard with how heavy the snow was falling.
Alex didn’t seem to mind the cold and Jadis had a pretty strong tolerance to low temperatures thanks to her high Fortitude, but a blizzard made going outside unpalatable. Instead, they had decided to stay indoors and play games.
The point, of course, wasn’t to just play around. The whole reason for the playful activities was so that Jadis could get some true alone time with Alex, and vice versa. So far, Jadis felt like she hadn’t learned enough about her Demon companion. At least, not as much as she knew about her other companions. Over the months that she’d known her girls, Jadis had learned many things about them, mostly just from idle talk while travelling or sitting around a campfire. That hadn’t happened with Alex, and not just because the Demon was only recently capable of meaningful communication. Alex didn’t have a life before Jadis to reveal in tragic tales or humorous anecdotes. Alex had literally been with Jadis since before she’d hatched, and a lot of that time had just been her sitting inside of a glass jar.
It was a weird thought, when Jadis analyzed the timeline that way. She knew pretty much everything about Alex’s story, starting from her birth, since she’d hatched in a jar Jadis had kept in a box. Alex had no “childhood” to speak of, either. She was born an adult, a physically mature Demon at any rate, as grown as she was going to get since she’d gained a class as soon as she’d hatched. From everything Jadis had learned from talking with Alex, Demons just didn’t have adolescent or immature forms. They were eggs first, semi-conscious and at least capable of being influenced by their surroundings to a minor degree, and then upon hatching they were adults, their minds already fully formed. Since Jadis had taken Alex’s egg from the dead body of her Matriarch, she’d known Alex her whole life.
That was another weird thought. She’d killed Alex’s mother. Not without good cause, of course, since Alex’s mother had been trying to kill her, but still. The idea kind of put a damper on any discussions on parents and family. Not that Alex seemed to care about her dead mother. So far as Jadis could gather from their conversations, Alex’s only real opinion on the matter was that her mother had been “stupid” for trying to kill Jadis.
In any case, even though Alex had been with Jadis for virtually her entire existence, Jadis still felt like she didn’t know the Demon, not the way she knew her lovers. Alex’s thoughts were still sometimes an enigma to her. She wanted to understand Alex better, on her terms. It was hard to think of topics to discuss sometimes, though.
Thinking about Alex’s matriarch and the way Alex so easily dismissed her death did bring one question to Jadis’ mind.
“Alex,” Jay asked as she strode with her through the halls of the temple, “do you hate other Demons?”
“Yes…” Alex replied without any hesitation.
“All other Demons?” Jay pressed, her brow creased with concern. “As a species? Every last one?”
“All… I have met…” Alex clarified after a moment. “All are… Stupid… Cruel… Blind…”
“You don’t think any of them can be reasoned with? They’re all just, I don’t know, doomed to kill or be killed? I mean, you’re a Demon, but you aren’t like they are. You don’t think there are other Demons like you?”
God, it felt weird to phrase the question like that. It almost felt like she was asking Alex if there were any “good ones” among her race, a topic she did not want to engage with. Still, Demons were a whole different species and all of them were hostile, at least so far as Jadis had experienced. She didn’t know with certainty why that was, though she had some suspicions. She hoped Alex could help illuminate the reasons behind the demonic aggression.
Alex took her time answering Jay’s question. It was a difficult one, so Jadis couldn’t blame her for thinking her answer over a few times. Honestly, that was better than just a flippant response in Jadis’ opinion. It meant Alex wasn’t being dismissive of the concern but was truly thinking it through.
It wasn’t until after they had made it to the temple’s small library and claimed a table for themselves that Alex finally answered. Jadis had just finished setting up all the pieces when Alex made a few movements with her tentacles that Jadis was able to interpret as meaning Alex was saying something serious.
“There could… Be others…” she started. “But… Most listen… to… The Urge…”
“The Urge?” Jay repeated quietly, all her attention on Alex’s halting words.
‘The Urge… Is wrong…” Alex tried her best to explain a concept that she was obviously struggling to convey. “It wants me to… Do bad things… To hurt you… To hurt others… Kill…”
“The Urge isn’t coming from you, is it?” Jay asked, her voice calm even though her heart was beating fast. “Do you feel that way, wanting to hurt others?”
Alex shook her head while flexing her tentacles in a way that indicated emphatic denial. Jadis could even smell a faintly acrid scent waft from Alex that reinforced the signs her body was displaying.
“No…” She intoned with finality. “The Urge is… Other… The Urge wants… Death… I do not… Want death… It is not… Me…”
“I know,” Jay smiled as she reached out and put her hand over Alex’s to give it a comforting squeeze. “You would never hurt anyone, not unless they were trying to hurt someone else.”
“This Urge,” Dys mused after a short pause. “It comes from outside of you, right?”
When Alex nodded, she continued with her theory.
“It sounds a lot like what I’ve experienced with Lyssandria. Just a sort of… nudge of emotion or flash of a feeling. Like someone else is sharing my mind for a moment and I’m feeling their emotions. Is that what it’s like?”
Alex nodded again, her expression difficult to read but her tentacles showing a tentative confirmation.
“I think that Urge you are feeling has to be from Samleos. He’s trying to direct you to do things that he wants, that will further his goals. You’re a god’s avatar, after all, just like me.”
“Yes…” Alex agreed, her body drooping slightly. “Samleos… The Father… He is… The Urge…”
“Father?” Syd raised an eyebrow at the unexpected familial title. “You think of Samleos as your father?”
Alex shook her head, then made a few motions that indicated uncertainty.
“The other… Demons… Call Samleos Father… It is… The word… With the closest… Taste…”
Disturbed by what Alex was saying, all three of Jadis leaned in towards her Demon companion. Jay spoke softly, keeping her voice down so that anyone else in the library who might be near wouldn’t overhear.
“You’ve spoken to other Demons?”
Alex’s motions changed, becoming stiff with anxiety as she struggled to answer the question.
“When you… Fight them… I see them… I taste them… I hear them… They speak… I listen… They are terrible… They follow… The Urge… I would destroy them all… To silence what they scream… To stop them… From becoming Death…”
Sliding across the floor, Dys pulled Alex off of the chair she’d been sitting in and set her down into her lap. Wrapping her arms around Alex, she hugged the Demon to her chest, giving her the comfort that she so desperately needed. With every word she’d spoken, Alex had grown more and more distressed, her body language showing an extreme fear that hurt Jadis’ heart to witness.
This was her fault. Before Jadis had known the extent of Alex’s intelligence, she’d thought of her as nothing more than an experiment, or maybe a particularly smart pet. She’d cared enough about Alex to protect her from being summarily destroyed, but she’d also not truly given any consideration to Alex’s mental well-being. For all the time Jadis had travelled the wilds of Weigrun with her companions while searching for the Dryads, Alex had been trapped in a glass cage that hung from the front of the wagon. She’d seen pretty much every one of Jadis’ fights against Demons. She’d seen Jadis and her companions kill hundreds, if not thousands of Demons. Which meant Alex had been able to see, hear, and taste the shouts, cries, and deaths of every single one of them, experiencing a silent slaughter that only she could understand the language of.
What the fuck had Jadis been thinking.
Alex’s tentacles slid around Dys, wrapping her up in a cool embrace. Her touch was tender, an expression of love that Jadis wasn’t sure she deserved. With deliberate intent, Alex raised one of Dys’ hands to her lips. She placed a kiss on one finger, her soft skin brushing against a pale knuckle. Slowly, Alex kissed each of Dys’ fingers, finishing by bringing Dys’ hand to the side of her face so that she could rest her head against the palm.
“They chose… To Follow… The Urge…” Alex spoke, her eyes closed in comfortable bliss. “Their choice… Was wrong… Do not be sad… They would not… Be sad… For you…”
How Alex could still show such selfless concern for Jadis after everything she’d put the Demon through was a mystery. She’d never intentionally done any harm to Alex, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d been a complete idiot. She should be apologizing to Alex, begging for her forgiveness for forcing her to watch her kind be killed in droves. And yet, Alex’s only worry was that Jadis was sad.
“You’re a really good person, Alex,” Dys croaked, her throat feeling unexpectedly tight. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“No…” Alex answered, still happily leaning into Dys’ embrace.
“Well, you are,” Dys repeated. “You’re a very, very good person.”
“I know…” Alex smiled.
“Of course you do, you know it all,” Dys laughed before kissing Alex’s cheek. “Now, how about we stop talking about such serious shit. I was going to show you how to play chess.”
“Alright…”
Jadis kept Alex in Dys’ lap, happy to hug and be hugged by the Demon. She didn’t think she’d lost her appetite for killing Demons, not based off of her past experiences with the terrible monsters, but Alex had definitely introduced her to a new perspective that was going to take a lot more time to process and come to terms with. But Jadis was done with heavy conversation for the time being. There was only so much she could take in one sitting.
There was one more question she had to have an answer to, though.
“Alex,” Jay said as she leaned across the chessboard to look the Demon in the eyes. “What made you decide to not listen to The Urge?”
Alex grinned, showing her bright teeth as one long tentacle wrapped around Dys’ shoulder and stroked the side of her face.
“I hatched and… I saw you… And you… Were beautiful… Perfectly beautiful… And then… The Urge… told me to… Destroy you… And I knew… The Urge was wrong… So I did not… Destroy you… And The Urge became angry… So… I knew… I should never… Ever… Listen to anything… It had to say… Ever again…”
Jadis smiled, a small huff of laughter escaping her lips.
“Thanks for not destroying me.”
“You’re welcome…”
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