Well guess what! This girl right here has completed four out of five finals, so that means I've time to write again! Semester break will be soon, which means you'll be getting a lot more chapters of this fic. Rejoice!
This chapter contains a meddling demon of the female variety. A lot of my serious writing is about demons, so why not slip one in here? Ama, by the way, is pronounced exactly like "Emma". Then why didn't I just call her Emma? You'll see...
It was dark.
"Um, hellooooo?" Philippa shouted into the darkness. "Uncle Nimrod? Zadie? Anyone?"
"Philippa? Was that you? Are you alright?" she heard her uncle answer. Soon enough, she also heard Rudyard, Groanin and Zadie.
"What is this place?"
"Why is it so dark?"
"And how did we get here?"
Those were some good questions. A mere minute ago they had been sitting in a diner having breakfast. Then suddenly everything had gone dark. Philippa was sitting on cold, damp stones, there was a cellar-like smell and their voices resounded as if they were in a cave. This looked like a different place altogether. But suddenly there was a light. And it came steadily closer, bobbing up and down as if someone was carrying it. Soon the light – an old-fashioned gas lamp – and the carrier, who seemed to be very tall and female, came into view.
"Hi everyone" the lantern-bearing woman said. "I'm sorry. There's electric lighting around here, but, you know, decrepit old place…sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Let me just…find the light switch…" They heard her scuffle to one of the walls to look for a light switch. Apparently she found one, as the naked light bulb on the ceiling suddenly lit up, making everyone shield their eyes against the unexpected bright light. It illuminated the dungeon-like cellar they were in, all thick stone walls, looking ancient. Water dribbled from the ceiling now and then, filling the resonating silence with little plinking sounds.
Next to the heavy iron door stood a woman wearing an odd assortment of clothes: a heavily embroidered Regency-style morning cloak in a faded blue over a crop top and cargo pants. Her long black hair was caught in a bandana. She was very tall, taller even than Nimrod, with toned abs and impressive biceps. Philippa could see a tattoo on the woman's bare hip, a single word in ancient-looking script, practically unreadable as it was disrupted by an old scar that started at the waist and went all the way down, disappearing under the waistband of her pants. It seemed to start with an A…
Philippa could hear Rudyard sucking in a sharp breath as he saw her.
Uncle Nimrod stood up. "I'm assuming that you somehow had us transported to this dreary place, ma'am" he said. "Would you mind telling us why?"
"You know her?" Philippa whispered to her uncle, surprised.
"In a way I do" Nimrod whispered back. "And you must be very careful with what you say to her. You see, she's a demon."
Philippa had read about demons in the Shorter Baghdad Rules. They were the angels' counterparts, much like the Ifrit were counterparts of the Marid, only in a much more powerful dimension. Demons weren't quite as powerful as angels, mind you, still more powerful than any djinn. She remembered how the angel Sam had created an entirely different reality once, just so he could wrestle with Groanin. In the light of that, it wasn't too surprising that this demon woman could have teleported four djinn plus butler from Russia to god-knows-where.
"I have many names" the woman said by way of introduction. "You may call me…Ama. And yes, I brought you here. I'm bound to this place, so I can't go away. That makes it a bit difficult to get to talk to people. So I have to get my conversation partners here."
Nimrod straightened his back. "Is this about revenge?"
"Revenge for what?" Philippa whispered to Zadie. Zadie shrugged. "No idea."
Nimrod who had overheard, explained: "You know, some fifteen years ago, Madame…Ama here was still at large and quite a danger to the homeostasis. So one day the most powerful djinn of all three good tribes united to banish her. We even asked the evil tribes for help, but Iblis declined for some strange reason. And the Shaitan and Ghul were either scared of him or wanted to mind their own business, so they didn't help either. At last we were successful in binding her to a castle hidden deep within the countryside of Romania…which is where we are now, correct?"
"Yes." Ama nodded. "And this is not about revenge. We simply don't have time for that. I brought you here to warn you."
"To warn us? Of what?" Nimrod asked.
"You know about the cult, right? Sons of Taranushi, or whatever they call themselves."
"Yes. We're dealing with them right now."
"Do you know about the artifact yet?"
"We know that they are searching for the artifact."
"Well, I know what it is. And that they've probably already found it."
"Impossible" Nimrod whispered.
"No bloody way" Rudyard muttered in the background.
"Yes bloody way" Ama said. "Nimrod, have you heard of the staff of Taranushi?"
"The staff of Taranushi? What is that?"
"It's what the cult is looking for. A weapon powerful enough to enslave even demons. Which, by the way, is one of the cult's next aims, enslaving a demon. And not just any demon."
"You" Nimrod guessed.
"Yes."
"How do you know all that?" Philippa asked.
Ama the demoness sighed. "Well, some weeks ago I had a visit from a certain young djinn. He tried binding me to his will and taking me as a demonic servant, but he was too weak. He told me that he would return with his new friends from the cult, and that they were looking for a thing called staff of Taranushi. And with that it would be possible to relieve the binding that keeps me from leaving this place. Technically I am honor-bound to serve the one who frees me, so they don't leave me much of a choice."
"I always thought demons didn't have rules like that" Nimrod said.
"We have; it's just that no one really plays by them. Anyway, I'm afraid with the staff they could enslave me no matter what. A djinn wielding the staff is more powerful than a demon. Or even an angel. Or anything. They'd be pretty close to a new god."
"And that concerns you…why?" Nimrod asked.
"I don't want to be their slave, Marid. Sure, I get to leave this place, but…" Her cold, superior attitude finally cracked and revealed the desperate woman underneath. "Please, stop them. The fate of the whole world is at stake…and they'll make me fight against the only family I have left…"
"What does that mean?"
"Listen, we don't have much time" Ama said abruptly, trying to regain her composure. "I'm sending you back. Just…look out for the cult."
"We will."
The woman looked at all of them in turn, pausing at Nimrod. "You" she said. "You are the one who must have this." She took the golden locket from her neck and gave it to him.
"What is this?" Nimrod asked.
"It's a locket. It's important."
"Why?"
The demon rolled her eyes. "It's magical."
"Magic is just a fancy word for 'I don't understand it yet'."
"Good. May it remain so! Give it to Iblis, he'll know what to do with it."
At last she stopped at Rudyard. She crouched down a bit so that they were level, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Rudyard. You're fine" she said.
"Yes. I am."
"Look out for your father, will you."
"…uh huh."
"Promise it to me" Ama said sternly.
"Yes, yes, alright" Rudyard grumbled.
"Well then. Back you go." With a flourishing movement, the demoness brushed her cloak aside. Philippa could see the tattoo and the scar again, but was immediately distracted by the large sword that hung from Ama's belt and had been covered by the cloak before. She laid a hand on the hilt and within its scabbard the sword began to glow with an unholy dark light. There was a strange, metallic, resonating sound in the air, as if someone held a knife up against a vibrating guitar string. Then suddenly Philippa had a weird feeling of the ground being swept away under her feet, and she fell backwards and blacked out for a second, and she presumed everyone else was feeling the same, because suddenly they were all standing before their hotel in St. Petersburg.
"Well" Nimrod said brightly. "Not quite where we started out, but close. You've got to admire the powers of these angelic beings."
"Did you just say angelic, sir?" Groanin asked. "I thought she was a demon, not an angel. I say, a demon."
"Demons, angels, not that much of a difference. They come from the same place. Unfortunately, very little is known about…"
"I know stuff about demons" Rudyard interrupted.
"You?" Philippa asked, a little dubiously. "What could you know?"
"There are many kinds of demons" Rudyard lectured. "And their powers are stronger than anything a djinn can ever think of having. They can get thousands of years old, and some of them have been around since the beginning of time. Others are younger. The lowest-ranking demons are the Incubi and Succubi, the ones to descend, it is said, from Lucifer himself. The demon we met just now used to be a lowly Succubus until very shortly, but birth does not determine a demon's whole career. Through a very complicated system of promotion, a demon can rise in rank. Demons possess the ability to shapeshift, and a variety of individual powers. They can obtain powers in pretty much every field of their interest, but they have to specialize. That's why we have the archdemon of sloth, or of lust, or whatever. Almost all of them do this 'I-have-many-names'-spiel. They are often given names and titles by humans or djinn throughout history. Their true names are often either unpronounceable by mortals, or mustn't be spoken for some reason or other." He rattled all of this down as if he was at school giving a talk on some completely mundane boring topic the teacher had made him pick.
"How do you know so much about demonology, Rudyard?" Nimrod asked, clearly surprised.
"Come on, I'm allowed to know something once in a while too, right? My parents had me learn a lot about them, so…"
Philippa noted the phrase my parents. Rudyard had only ever mentioned his father before…
Rudyard sighed. "I might as well spill. The lady we met right now? She's my mom."
"Your…mother? You're half demon?!"
Rudyard shrugged. "Yeah, it's an open secret that dad got really worried when I was born. Normally djinn powers are transmitted over the mother, right? But so far it looks like I inherited nothing of mom's powers. I turned out a normal djinn." He seemed reluctant to give any additional information, but as Nimrod continued to stare at him, he supplied: "My dad met her at an Iron Maiden concert."
"I have so many questions."
"I can't force you to not ask them."
"First off, what was Iblis doing at an Iron Maiden concert?"
Rudyard shrugged once more. "It was the 80s."
"And why did Iblis sleep with a demoness? And especially that demoness? She didn't look at all his type. She could single-handedly break his neck, probably."
"It's dad. He sleeps with everything. No seriously, as I said, she was just a lowly Succubus. I think he thought he could bind her to him or whatever, while she probably wanted to do the same and make him her djinn slave. It seems they both miscalculated."
Nimrod let the golden locket dangle from his hand. "So now we have this amulet. What is this supposed to mean?"
"The amulet…" Rudyard said thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not so sure, but the story goes that when she left him sixteen years ago, mom stole something from dad. And the bearer of that something has complete power to make him do anything they please. She said the cult was pretty much breathing down her neck, right? I guess she didn't want the cult to have it since they'd use it to gain a way into the Ifrit…or maybe out of a last shred of loyalty. So congratulations, Sir Nimrod. You now possess unlimited power over dad."
Nimrod stopped staring at Rudyard and stared at the locket instead. "Unlimited power…" he whispered.
"You seem surprisingly okay with that" Philippa said to Rudyard.
"I guess so" Rudyard said. "I feel like I spent way too much time thinking dad is infallible. He really isn't. I had a lot of time to think in that jade suit." He sighed. "It took me a while. I'm not smart like you."
"I don't think you're not smart."
"Maybe, but you're smarter!" Rudyard laughed. "Remember how you handed my ass to me in that djinnverso tourney?"
"That was just because you insisted on throwing a temper tantrum! It wasn't that you played badly."
Philippa smiled and took out her phone. She had tried to call John last night to tell him what Faustina had said, but he hadn't picked up. She knew her brother sometimes forgot to check his phone when he was busy, but now, as she tried a second time and only the voicemail answered her, she got a bit annoyed. Wow, he and Vi must be having…fun, she thought, only to then quickly try and get rid of the mental image, or at least the parts that involved her brother. She shuddered inwardly.
"Something the matter?" Zadie asked.
"John. He's not answering his phone" Philippa explained.
"Oh. Is that worrying?"
"Nah, it happens. I'm pretty used to it. But our mom will be mad at him if he misses her calls."
Philippa put the phone away. "Now what next? We still need to go visit the Ghul leader."
"Well, yes" Nimrod said. "But something may be even more important. We have a clue now: this so-called staff of Taranushi. I must admit I never heard of such a thing. But I'm inclined to believe the lady Ama. Say about her what you will, demons never lie."
"What? Why not?" Philippa asked.
"They just don't" Rudyard threw in again. "Most lies are social, dad always says. The truly evil have no need of them."
"Oh, right" Nimrod said, as if remembering something. "Apropos your father, Rudyard. Does anyone else notice an Iblis-shaped hole in this scenery?"
"Yeah!" Zadie replied. "Where did he and Perry go?"
"I suppose they got separated from us earlier. I will contact them." Now Nimrod took out his phone. "I must admit it's nice having Iblis's phone number for once and not just the other way around."
Nobody really knew what to make of that statement. Except for Groanin, who hid his face in his palms.
"Those two" he muttered, "are going to be the death of me."