Shaking his head, he looked away.
Ouhim smiled.
With a sound like a mountain splitting in half, a black crack spread across its face, as if the mask had splintered.
The crack swiftly spread beyond its face, onto the walls, across bookshelves, a foot above old woman Thorburn’s head, where she sat in the armchair opposite Alister. Destroyed novels and pieces of wood fell to the floor.
There wasn’t a muscle in Alister’s body that wasn’t seized tight.
“It’s not…” Alister couldn’t form words. “Bound properly.”
“It’s sufficiently bound for our needs,” the old woman said. “I have an established relationship with it. It won’t do permanent damage, provided we don’t let it.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but the words weren’t there. He looked back at Laird.
Laird’s expression was grim.
“Go, Ouhim,” the old woman said.
The smile faded, the crack closing, until there wasn’t the slightest seam or scar.
Ouhim disappeared the way it had come, faster, dropping into the circle as though it were dropping into a hole.
In the aftermath of Ouhim’s visit, the bit of fallen wood from the bookshelf and two books that had been split in half remained ruined.
“I thought you said it wouldn’t do permanent damage,” Alister said, pointing.
“That’s not the kind of permanent damage she’s talking about,” Laird spoke.
That Laird knew… it sent a fresh lance of fear into Alister’s heart.
“The second choir,” the old woman said.
“Wait, stop, please. Why are you showing me?”
“It’s a mnemonic tool,” she said. “You’ll see one member of each choir. You’ll remember until the day you die. It’s a good foundation to build from. After this, after I’ve instructed you in what they’re capable of, you’ll want to learn the necessary protections.”
“I want to learn already, I don’t need demonstrations. I don’t want this foundation. Tell me why you’re doing this. Why am I getting these lessons?”
Laird sighed, just behind him.
The old woman was looking at Laird, too, as if they were sharing some unspoken communication.
“You, Laird, or the both of you are likely to find yourself opposite my descendants. We face a unique situation.”
Unique how? he wondered, but he didn’t voice the thoughts aloud. As Laird had said, questions had to be reserved.
She walked around the circle. “Morax.”
It felt like being plunged into ice water. The air was thick. The light, too, seemed as if it was weighed down, pressed down into just blacks and reds, without shade or hue.
But when he looked, the circle was empty.
“Second choir, madness. Don’t panic.”
Alister felt a hand settle on his shoulder.
In this sharply contrasted world of black and red, the old woman’s wrinkles were like scars on her face, jagged lines of black, too sharp. “The situation is that we’re looking to enact revolution. Aimon was on the same page as me. Laird is… less so.”
“Yet I remain open minded,” Laird said. “Provided my family benefits.”
Laird’s voice and the existence of the hand on Alister’s shoulder didn’t jibe.
Alister glanced a little to the left, and saw just how large the hand was.
Deep red.
“The problem with revolution is that it involves conflict, and the various sides in this conflict wield too much firepower. My side most of all.”
Alister could barely hear her. The hand… it was attached to a muscular arm.
The arm was attached to a hairy man’s body.
The man, in turn, had a high forehead, and at the corners of the forehead, the skin twisted into a gnarled sort of halo, like a crown of thorns that was embedded in the demon’s head.
But the demon’s expression was placid, a light smile on his face. It might have been the forehead, but something about his appearance, somehow, evoked the idea of a scholar. A scholar, perhaps, that existed in an era long past, when scholars could have long hair, beards, bare genitals hanging free, and coarse hair on their chests.
His eyes, in this world of black and red, were a pale sky blue.
“My heir, whichever I select, may call things like this to use against you and your family, Alister. Wheels have been turning for a long, long time, and try as I might, I’m not in a position to stop them. They have too much momentum. Go, Morax.”
“Momentum,” Alister said, as the surroundings returned to normal colors, each color arriving in its own time.
The sensation of the hand’s weight on his shoulder didn’t leave.
“I shoulder a heavy weight of karma. I’ve managed it by being careful. Every action I take is deliberate. Whatever you might see, here, I’m being exceptionally careful, calling names I know I can trust. But careful doesn’t encourage change. Not when the entire universe is struggling to heal from grave wounds.”
“Wounds?” He asked, before realizing what he’d just left himself open to.
“Avert your eyes. Third choir, ruin. Zapan.“
Alister looked away just in time.
The demon manifested within the circle like a rolling thunderclap, a storm of images, each one demanding his attention, like a charging bull, a thrown object, all outlined and augmented by fire and lightning and other light shows. The assaults weren’t reserved for him, but at everything. Every mote of dust and book and person in the room.
“My understanding of things is simple, Alister. Every Other is, if you trace things back far enough, the fault of demons. Every practitioner is the fault of Others, or, for a rare few, the fault of demons. All of these things, in their way, guide all of existence slowly toward its end. The unlucky few who get in too deep fall into their clutches.”
Zapan screeched, an eerie, broken sound just at the bounds of his ability to hear, making Alister feel like things inside him were breaking and would never feel okay again.
“Even chronomancy-“
“Virtually all practices, Alister. Call it a diabolist’s bias, but I would posit that the only difference between Laird and I is the level of self-delusion.”