Chapter 132: Personal Demon(s)

Past the threshold and into the weeping dark stone of the old fort, I crept along. Doubtless, I should have had no fear, but childhood memories hold strong sway—even ones made into young adulthood. This time, there was no Abigail to crack jokes and break the tension by jumping me around corners. Seyari was waiting somewhere outside, just beyond the gatehouse.

And so, the tension mounted, boiling and sizzling away in the corners of my mind and vision. Outside carried the bright, glinting light of late afternoon, angled just up and over the mountains, but once inside the old stones, darkness reigned. Shadows seemed to move and twist, and I had to take deep breaths to remain calm.

Get ahold of yourself, Zarenna! You’re the Sovereign of Wrath. You’re probably the scariest thing in the whole of Linthel.

That thought mollified the worst of my fear, but I crept along slowly in the dark, just in case. The shadows seemed less deep when I was in the thick of them. And even in my human form, I had no trouble seeing in complete darkness, although the faint blue glow of my eyes was something I noticed, reflected faintly by the tip of my nose and off damp stones I passed close to.

Why meet me here? I suppose it’s away from prying eyes.

I took another step and the sound echoed down the empty hall. Tania would hear if I brought more than one person. Plus, there are probably secret tunnels out of here—if she knew them.

Or perhaps this old fort was just a symbolic place for both of us, though Abby and I never took Kartania down into the dungeon the few times we were able to sneak in further than the courtyard.

I pinched my cheek to try to knock my mind out of its downward spiral. The slight pain I felt was over in a heartbeat. Right. I’d need a lot more than a pinch to truly feel physical pain.

I didn’t fancy bleeding everywhere, so I tried to cope as best I could and kept walking, listening to the echo of my footsteps and watching the white puffs of my breath. Should I show up in human or demon form?

It’s not like I’d run into anyone else here, but wow would that be a terrible fright to give some unfortunate kid traipsing around out here. The place didn’t even have the occasional guard posted that it used to.

Who am I kidding? Kartania already knows I’m a demon, and I’d probably feel less scared if I showed it. I stopped and readied my uniform, then let my human transformation end. Immediately, I felt some of my confidence return.

Whatever goes bump in the night has nothing on me.

I even lit two small crimson fires at the tips of my horns. I liked the look, to be honest, and the light would let Kartania know where I was coming from if my footsteps somehow failed to. My claws did feel tight in my boots, though.

It wasn’t long before I reached the door to the dungeon. It was open more than last time—pulled all the way to the wall, with a rock serving as a doorstop.

A decade ago, I’d been so incredibly afraid of what might lurk down there. In a way, I still was, though in a more metaphysical sense. Like last time as well, anticipation thrummed through my core. Tania.

As I took the first step on the stairs, a thought flashed across my mind: what if this is a trap?

Well, if it is, whoever perpetrated it is going to find out precisely what a furious wrath demon can do. I hissed a little flame and kept walking, the sound of my boots heavy on each icy stone step. Cold as it was, no water dripped and the air was deathly still.

However, when I reached the bottom, I saw the flickering yellow-orange light of a lantern around the corner. I stopped on the last step.

“Tania?” I called out into the darkness. My demonic hearing caught a single sharp intake of breath.

“You came,” my sister replied tersely.

“Of course I did,” I walked around the corner in a semi-slouched nonthreatening pose, two hands in my pockets.

Standing up from behind a crumbling stone counter topped with a single, small lantern was my sister. Ice blue eyes and sharp-cut, straight black hair married with severe features into a familiar look. In the past, a smile and childhood roundness had softened her.

Now, Kartania Miller was all hard edges.

And she had another edge too. In shining armor, tabard emblazoned with the symbol of the Church of Dhias, she held a sword in a firm grip, pointed squarely at me. Ice crystals were growing on the tip and I smelled frost in the air. I felt no anger from her, however.

“Explain yourself, demon,” she said coldly. “Now.”

For a moment, I stood there frozen, watching the light from competing flames cast shadows upon a face that was both achingly familiar and heartbreakingly strange. No eloquent answer was going to happen, and as my sister tensed, I knew I had to say something quickly.

“Uh, hi Tania,” I answered Tania lamely.

She continued to point her sword at me. “You have her memories, Sister. Enough to know something no one living knew. How?”

I could feel her anger now. The emotion was distant, almost… caged.

I kept all four hands raised placatingly. “I’ll assume you’re familiar with how demons form?”

Kartania nodded without taking her eyes off me.

“The answer is the necklace Abby gave to me the night of the fire—the one we’d found in this dungeon.”

My sister narrowed her eyes. “Describe it.”

“A six-pointed starburst of woven metal with a vortex in the center.” I smiled sadly at the memory. “You said your birthday present was nicer, but that I’d have to wait to find out what it was.”

For a moment, Kartania’s expression faltered. I caught a glimpse at a roiling maelstrom of fury so deep and raw that I stumbled.

Immediately, I had a blade at my neck. Well, immediately in human terms. Still, I let the cold tip poke into my neck.

“Don’t. Move,” my sister hissed.

“I won’t,” I replied seriously.

“What was that just then?”

“I felt your anger.”

Kartania hissed.

“I’m… I’m so, so sorry sister. I wasn’t there. I left you all alone…” I blinked and my vision blurred as tears rolled down my cheeks.

For a while Kartania was silent. Her emotions betrayed nothing. Eventually she spoke, but her voice was raw. “What did the amulet do?”

“Instead of some of my soul, it took the whole thing to make a demon. That’s why there were two demons created that night: one from whatever ritual the corrupt Inquisition was doing, and… me.”

She withdrew the blade from poking into my neck, but held it ready. “That doesn’t explain why you might still be the same person.”

“Abigail Hunter did that.”

“What?”

“She gave her soul for me, to me.” Under my collar my symbol started to heat up.

Kartania’s eyes flicked downward to my symbol that glowed faintly even through my company uniform. When she looked back up, she flinched and took single, rapid breath.

“Are you okay?” I asked, reflexively.

For a long moment, she stared into my eyes, shoulders tense and blade at the ready. “I… You have her memories. But, are you actually my sister? Could you really be?”

I tried to keep my voice steady and explain clearly. “The one person I talked to about that—an expert on demons—said that my soul was ‘essentially whole.’ But I often wonder myself: what did I lose? How much of me is human me?”

Kartania’s sword-arm faltered briefly. “That…”

“Even so…” I took a deep breath. “I like who I am now—what I am now. There was a long road to acceptance, and I’m still walking it when it comes to the world around me. Not that I think demons are inherently good, but there’s a lot more to us than humans often realize.

“I probably shouldn’t wax philosophical—I didn’t come here to lecture you. I came here to see you, to meet my sister really, truly, for the first time in nine years.

“And I came here to apologize: For dying, for leaving you to grow up alone these past years, and for being stuck on a damn island so I couldn’t find you sooner. And yeah, I know that’s not my fault, but I’m still sorry it happened.

“The power I have now scares me sometimes—often even—but it rarely takes the form of what I want or need. Destruction isn’t me, I just… Sorry, I’m rambling.” My grand speech ended in a mumble. Unable to bear my sister’s cold gaze, I turned my eyes downward to the floor.

Above my gaze, Kartania’s anger came undone. It spooled out and lashed forward. Instinctively, I took it, gathered it, embraced it.

For a fleeting moment, I felt flashes of my sister’s wrath’s source: all the pain Kartania had gone through, her deep resentment, and a metaphysical wound that had never healed.

And then it was gone. Passed through me in a surge of power and mana that bled away into the cold darkness of the cellar.

I heard a clatter and saw a brilliant, shining sword rimed in frost fall to the ground. Above me, my sister wavered, and I knew I’d forever regret it if I didn’t look up to meet her eyes.

Blue stared into blue. Full of pain and anger and hurt and a single, twisted spark of hope that had never quite gone out.

“Tania…” I whispered.

“Zach… Zarenna…” Tania blinked and her eyes filled with tears.

She leaned forward toward me, like a frozen sapling wilting under a spring thaw. I caught her, embraced her, and Kartania Miller began to sob.

Through hiccups and half words, she poured her story out to me: the story of a life without a sister, a family, or anyone she could call a friend.

***

Kartania had lost control of her emotions. The box she’d built, maintained over years, broke apart.

I can fix this. Just… Just…

Her anger melted away, but its absence did nothing to stop the tide of her other emotions. No! Be strong! Don’t grieve!

Kartania’s breath hitched, and her hand slackened, sword falling to the floor. The clang jolted her and she looked at the demon standing before her, not yet ready to accept death.

Instead of claws or fire, Kartania met blue eyes floating in a sea of void-like blackness. Thin vertical pupils were wide with surprise. Something, however, something small, seemed so very familiar.

“Tania…” the demon whispered.

“Zach…” Kartania said, finally understanding what seemed so familiar in those blue eyes. Vulnerability, but now reinforced with a sense of self-assuredness that had never before existed. “Zarenna…” Kartania corrected herself.

She’s… she’s really my sister.

Like a puppet whose strings were cut, Kartania toppled forward, toward the huge, crimson-skinned woman. The paladin of Dhias fell against soft skin thinly padded over hard muscle, and four warm arms embraced her.

For a heart-stopping instant, Kartania didn’t move: sister or no, the being holding her was something she was all-too used to fighting against. And something whose touch normally meant losing a limb at best.

Here, however, great pains were taken by Zarenna to move slowly, deliberately, and with as little force as possible. Kartania felt fragile. In a way she hated; in a way she couldn’t ever accept because a single sign of vulnerability would be all it took.

All it took to…

Not here; not right now. Zarenna—her sister. She… perhaps it was okay to let go for just a moment.

Just a small moment of respite. A single ear to which she could air her grievances and her sorrows.

“I…” Kartania started, her voice small. She tried to clear her throat, to regain the imperious tone she always used, but all she did was hiccup and cough. Still, she soldiered on. “After you… died. After mom and dad and everyone died, I—I didn’t know where to go. I was so alone… Sister.” The familial word rolled out of her with some hesitation.

Saying “sister” felt… wonderful. I’m not so alone right now.

Zarenna stayed quiet, only moving both of them to lean against a wall. Kartania, legs like pudding, slid down, and her demonic sister followed her, the pair coming to rest against the wall, looking out into the darkness at a short row of centuries-old cells. Crimson light from twin balls of fire at the tips of her sister’s horns flickered up the walls, casting fantastical shadows.

Kartania drew in another breath, and continued, “No one else was left, so I went to Bourick. He… he had a lot of regrets, watching you two run off toward the fire, wishing he’d run after you.”

Zarenna bowed her head and bit her lip. “I regret that he had to live with that…”

“Bourick took me in, for a short time. I… wasn’t as grateful as I should have been. I wanted revenge, and I didn’t believe Finley was the top of everything.”

“What did you do?” Zarenna asked, tilting her head to one side.

Kartania sighed and looked away from her demon sister’s sharp teeth and forked tongue. “I took some money and ran away to Ardath to join the Church of Dhias. I wanted to find out the truth and fix things from the inside. It was stupid—and I don’t even know why I’d do something like that, burn the last bridge I had.” She glanced at Zarenna to gauge her reaction.

The demon took a moment to realize Kartania was waiting on something. When she spoke, her words were slow and deliberate. “I… I think I understand. You were angry and hurt. You wanted revenge more than anything, but you also felt guilt—like you didn’t deserve what Bourick was giving you? Like you survived when you shouldn’t have?”

Kartania swallowed. “Maybe. I… I’m not sure.” She jolted when a thick crimson tail laid itself over her legs.

“You’re shivering,” Zarenna said simply. “And maybe I’m wrong, but that same sort of feeling’s been eating away at me for leaving you behind. A voice that says I don’t deserve this life I have.”

This time, Kartania nodded, forcing that same ever-present inner voice down. “It only stays quiet when I focus on revenge,” she whispered, surprised at her sudden admittance.

Zarenna pulled two right arms around her and pulled Kartania into a hug again. Her face landed on Zarenna’s chest: it was warm and soft, even through the leather of her shirt.

Soon, it was wet, too. Kartania tried to hold back her tears, but failed.

“Sister,” Zarenna said softly. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. That voice is wrong: I’m glad you lived. Bourick is too. Every single person in Linthel is glad you survived that night. You deserved to live. Mom and Dad and everyone else who lost their lives would think so too, I’m sure.”

“But why me?” Kartania’s words came out in stutters so unlike herself.

“Your sister’s help… and luck,” Zarenna replied simply. “No one can fault you for that, Tania. And if they do, then they’re just listening to that same lying voice in the back of their head.”

Kartania hiccupped, and her tears grew stronger. Zarenna held her tighter. Dimly, Kartania realized she felt safe.

She also felt tired. There was so much more she needed to tell her sister: the academy, her training, the war, her first time killing another person, and the demons she’d fought. Most of them were literal. The others, it seemed, she’d been too scared to take on.

Ripping claws and gnashing fangs and corrupting magics were one thing. Her own fears and insecurities were another.

Until tonight.

Kartania lost track of the time she spent crying into her sister’s arms. Eventually, however, she drifted off to sleep. For the first time in a long time, she dared to feel safe.