The great dark Runesword cried out, once again, screaming, without words, in the language of corrupted souls, for blood; and, once again, Alice told it to piss up a rope, threw it in a corner, and went to brew a proper cup of tea.
Of all the cursedly enchanted souls, in every Universe perceptible by eye or mind or sorcery, the most terrible and most deadly is known by all to be a living being—in fact, a demon—which some mighty but desperate sorcerer summoned to this plane in the form of a weapon, knowing that it would impart to the blade an unholy force, but at a price most terrible: for this demon existed to drink blood and souls, and south hearts and vital essence from friend and foe alike.
And if there’s one thing that’s really, really likely about something everyone knows, it’s that everyone is incredibly wrong.
It doesn’t take a particularly puissant mage to bring a demon to this part of the Somewhereverse. Demons want to come here; convincing a malevolent supernatural entity to visit us is about as difficult as convincing someone to take an all-expenses-paid vacation to somewhere with free alcohol, great weather, attractive and erotically compatible beings of deeply miniaturized morals and lenient personal policies on the need for undergarments, and plenty of easily-accessible Potions Of Forgetting What Happened Last Night. It does take powerful human intervention (advertent or otherwise) to actually open a gate, but that’s because Those who control dimensions of that sort don’t usually let anyone out, for approximately the same reason that very few human jobs offer 52-week vacations every year.
No, acquiring a demon is relatively easy. (It’s the 6 that’s difficult, which explains so much about that which is loose in the world. Controlling the demon is…complicated, particularly depending on how you define “control”. Acquiring a supernatural entity which sucks human souls: relatively easy. Acquiring a supernatural entity which sucks only the souls of people you don’t like…
That’s impossible. Or nearly so. It could be done if you don’t like anybody, including yourself…but that story’s never told, since that dimension is now so empty that it gives even the Eternal Void the creeps.
A truly powerful demon doesn’t just want blood and souls. A truly powerful demon, like any sentient being, wants everything.
Alice that the way to make a Runesword sufficient for her needs was to take a being which wanted to devour all of existence and make it so hungry for the specific havoc you desired that it sublimated, nay, wholly repurposed its entire will to focus on your own goal.
If, at first, this seems unethical, consider that torturing a being whose own existence is fueled by the torture of others would, theoretically, be an act of the highest morality.
Then consider what kind of ethical framework goes around tormenting thinking creatures and then complimenting itself on its good behavior. If you’re a human, this is normal. If you’re a demon, you find this repulsive. Demons, after all, are liars, frauds, cheats, and deceivers—but not hypocrites.
(Besides, in the end, it is easy to decide the morality involved in the creation of any weapon: whoever’s weapon strikes the culminating blow is clearly the one who was right. Books which assert this truth are called histories; books which disagree are generally called “kindling”.)
The actual mystical acts involved cannot be adequately translated into symbols which will fit inside a narrative, unless one’s goal is to create a narrative with a disturbing tendency to consume the reader in a manner which is not, in any way, metaphorical.
The psychological techniques were perfectly simple in and of themselves, although, although putting together Alice’s chosen ingredients, and containing them sufficiently to allow for measured utilization, took a certain amount of risk and skill.
You see, Alice did not summon a demon; she summoned six.
Five of them were food.
It’s entirely possible that they were, comparatively speaking, the lucky ones.
This may not have been strictly necessary; but one ought not question Alice’s judgment unless one is willing to repeat her actions, and that particular course is not, necessarily, the wisest of paths. Let us simply note that if anyone had explained to Alice the existence of the term “overkill”, she would have been certain that it had no practical application in the art of demonology.
For the sake of the squeamish, none of whom are advised to go near this narrative in the first place, there will be no recording of the specifics of the year during which Alice forged her chosen tool for developing interpersonal nonexistence. We’ll simply note that Alice began by giving her chosen subject some of many, many things it desired, including blood. Then, over time, she began exsanguinating its diet. Pointedly so. She noted, aloud and frequently, about the abundance and bounty which would be permitted the captive unhuman, of everything except blood.
It would take a perverse, contrary, self-attacking mind which, when given almost everything, would begin to crave the one thing it was denied.
In short, it would take a mind so inclined towards torture that it would lash out at everything in reach.
And the shortest distance between the self and the nearest potential victim is, as always, the self.
“BLOOD!” screamed the sword.
Alice brought it riches.
“SOULS!” screamed the sword.
Alice gave it power.
“PAIN!” screamed the sword.
“Soon,” replied Alice.
Alice was not, even then, unskilled in the ways of either physical and psychic combat. She did not always use them. Your life is an irreplaceable resource; risking it is not an optimal gambit. But sometimes, you have no other pieces you can move.
There was a certain organization, trained to immunity from sorcerous influence, immensely strong in body and mind. They numbered thirteen individuals, each one a being of strength and influence.
They did not know of Alice; she was a nobody. But Alice went and dwelt near a certain village which had been destroyed by that organization as a by-product of one of their projects. She made it very known that she was an advocate of that organization, that she would apply to join, that their goals were here own.
They had already moved on, and took no notice of her. But a certain youth of the former village could not help but notice Alice’s unmodest dwelling, which she had, rather rudely, placed in the very center of what used to be the town square, and which she had, in a rather unkind decorating choice, covered with some of the symbols used by the aforementioned order.
The youth was destined for greatness. So said the stars, and so said the wise and hooded figure who knocked upon his door one day and told him that the nearby witch has no powers during an eclipse, and there happened to be an eclipse tomorrow, and would he like a key to her manse?
The next night, there was a battle during which the youth did not precisely defeat the witch, but he did cause her to fly away, surely driven by a combination of her cowardice and his own prowess. She even dropped her sword, which was obviously an object of vast capability.
A week later, the entire Order had been eradicated. But presumably the youth had been tainted beyond redemption by their foulness, for he apparently ended the struggle by making sure the corruption was gone forever, through the heroic act of—somehow–tearing out his own throat with his blade. He had left a note, which was an unusual mark of education; he had widely believed to be illiterate, but, then again, people’d thought he stood no chance against the Order; obviously, there was more to the fellow than met the eye. His short, simple note explained why, having taken his revenge, he had to end the final vestige of his enemy, which might live on in him; and he asked only one thing, that he be buried along with his heroic blade.
So he was.
The hero would be remembered forever, and not the least by the hooded figure who visited his grave, faithfully, once a month for two years.
Those who saw this act of devotion sometimes fancied they heard a voice—the wind, presumably—whispering, “Blood?”
Some even imagined they heard the hooded figure say, “Not yet.”
Perhaps a decade later, the tomb was robbed. By then, most people had forgotten its inhabitant; such is the nature of gratitude.
Throughout Alice’s life, spellmakers would attempt to replicate the fury of Alice’s blade, and some would come close. And many would try to reproduce whatever spell of loyalty she had created, for everyone else who wielded such an instrument died, and it was generally agreed that they had, somehow, hacked themselves to pieces. Only Alice seemed immune, and no-one could tell what miagc she might have used.
The sword might have told them. If it had not been locked away, starving, in a very deep cell indeed, fed, perhaps, the life fluid of a mouse once or twice a year. And if it could say anything other than one single, whispered, raspy word:
“Blood?”
