Alec POV
"After she died, Asmodeus came to the half-built cathedral that had been our home to take me with him. Some of the nuns wouldn't have it. They fought and argued with an upper level demon for me. They were brave far beyond my understanding then. But others were eager to get rid of me- they knew what I was, they knew who had killed Father Sebastian."
"The guy who attacked your mother?", I ask
"Yes, I killed him myself."
"You were a child, Magda. You were helpless. You defended yourself, that's all", I croon to her.
"Yes and no. I was seven, but I sure wasn't helpless. Asmodeus took me with him after she died and we lived in ramshackle buildings and tents for years. I was terrified of him at first, but he taught me everything—from how to read and write and add, to how to preach his message and how to pick pockets. I just listened for a few years, but then he sent me out on my own to preach his gospel. When it comes to public speaking, I have mad skills", she tells me and I smile.
"I could captivate a crowd as well as my father could. I told them of the delights of the Cult of Asmodeus, how they could pray to him for wealth or beauty and he would answer their prayers, unlike that fake god who lived in the Heavens and shot lightning bolts at people having sex outside of marriage..."
"You know that's not what God is really like, right?", I ask, "I mean my god? The one who created the angels and mundanes... and me." She reaches up and strokes my face.
"It didn't matter. I was trying to sell a message, and the better salesperson I was, the more they would donate. Then I picked their pockets anyway. His devotees would do the same, all day long, then we'd return, toss all the money in a big bronze bowl, and he would tell us a tale every night. It always had a moral. We lived on the money we would collect. Now of course I had to wonder why he put himself through that, living like a peasant in medieval Europe when he was a Prince in Edom. But it was for me, it was all for me. He wanted me to be his right hand, and he trained me as such. I had the best tutors available.
Only peasants ate vegetables then because we couldn't afford meat—Asmodeus made sure I got plenty of both and none of the bread made of anything from wheat to straw to cow dung that circulated amongst the poor. I was probably one of the healthiest people alive at that time. By the time he confessed that he was my biological father...it was anticlimactic. He'd been my father for years."
"How long did you stay?", I ask.
"A decade. I could do things, and I noticed it right away, mostly negative things. If people were arguing, I could choke them and make them stop. I saw a snake about to eat a baby bird, and I tortured the snake for hours before killing it. I moved rocks from one place to another, moved barriers out of Asmodeus's way. When I got angry, our belongings would fly around the room. Asmodeus would only smile and tell me how proud of me he was. He eventually told me that I'm a warlock and that I have magic. Then he trained me how to use it.
This went on for months until I ran into a nun from my mother's church. She told me what Asmodeus was, that he'd raped my mother, and that I was on my way to Hell. I argued with her, but she managed to convince me. That combined with a strong desire to meet boys pushed me out the door. In that day and age, I'd have been married by 15, and I didn't understand why everyone else could do what I couldn't. But it was nothing compared to the day I saw priests come into our enclave with an edict to destroy the Cult of Asmodeus. I watched my father tear the skin off them layer by layer while they screamed. It took the entire day. It was a powerful thing to witness.
Finally I sat him down and told him I was leaving, that I needed to try it on my own for a while. He told me if I did leave, he would protect me no longer, and I'd find out what life was really like. He wasn't wrong. Whatever part of a heart he had, I broke it that day. He didn't try to stop me though. As I walked away, I looked back and he was standing there watching me with a tear rolling down his cheek. I presume he went back to Edom after that."
"Wow. Asmodeus, Upper Level Demon, and King of Vermin, was a decent father", I say.
"He was", she agrees, "Then I was an impoverished 15 year old girl on my own. I went back to find Asmodeus several times but his tent and devotees were gone. I cried myself to sleep on the street every night. I starved. I begged. I was attacked, kicked, punched, beaten, stolen from. I was about to raped one night when Petyr saved me..." She pulls something out of her box. It's a strand of little white stones on a thin rope. "He made this for me."
"That's an artifact, Magda, a museum would take it in a second", I say.
"No one is taking my memories. I loved Petyr passionately. I didn't know at the time that I couldn't have children, but of course it turned out to be a blessing that I never got pregnant. It went as all first loves do, it was wild and intense, and burned out fast when he left me for another girl he met on the street. You know how you cry the first time you get your heart broken, like a baby, like the world is ending." Actually I didn't. I knew how it felt when we were apart, and that was just like the world was ending.
"It was horrible. After that, I decided to go back to the only thing I knew how to do—preach Asmodeus's Cult and pick pockets, and I lived on the proceeds. Time went by. People lived and died, but when I reached twenty, I stayed that age while everyone else dropped like flies. When my father first told me I was immortal, it sounded wonderful. But no one really understands it except other immortals. I have to watch those I love live and die. I have to watch what I love crumble to dust, and fit into whatever insane society mundanes come up with next.
The Inquisition sought out people like me. All they ended up doing was murdering a bunch of Christians, mostly women. Torquemada was an insane devil who was the Spanish Queen Isabella's right hand. Magnus has a story about that time in history and saving Catarina while she was literally burning at the stake. She turned her hatred into love, became a healer, and a doctor when it was possible for her to go to medical school. I was never that strong. I wanted to die to get away from the hate, but I didn't know death was already on its way.
I was living near modern day Berlin when the first pandemic of the Black Plague struck in the mid 1300's. Everyone ignored the warnings, but pretty soon everybody knew someone who had died. They died by the thousands, by the millions I'm sure. I volunteered to work with the sick and spent a lot of time with a plague doctor. I wanted to help and knew it couldn't kill me. We'd spend 13 hours on our feet, and he wondered how I never got tired. We were together a few times, but it wasn't true love for either of us. It was a horrible time and we found peace in other's arms for a while. Of course in the end, the plague killed 2/3 of Europe and would come back every few hundred years.
I was with people from time to time, Alexander, to dull the pain of all the loss. To make me forget what I was, but none of them meant anything to me. Meanwhile I'd learned to use magic to accumulate wealth, a fancy way of saying I mostly stole, but was able to fully take care of myself. Time passed. The Renaissance washed away the death and the blood, and ushered in a new era of open-minded thinking and art. But slowly it passed too.
Jumping to the time of Henry VIII, his "Great Problem" was the only thing all of Europe was talking about. He wanted rid of an infertile wife. But the Church wouldn't end his marriage so he ended the Church, and embraced Protestantism. Europe was thrown into chaos and witch burnings started in earnest, in southwestern Germany where I had just moved, and in Scotland, it was worst, both places with big Protestant populations. Midwives were in special danger. If they lost a child during birth, they would almost always be accused of witchcraft. Society had been turned upside down and someone needed to be blamed, and it was women as always."