moonshadows | TBTT 02. Joshua waits and remembers

Outside the ornate double doors, Joshua paces. The guards, said to be loyal until death, ignore him. Inside, the half-demon girl he has taken into his home is taking her life into her hands. The new lord of this world - or at least, this part of this world, although Joshua has no doubts the other regions will fall in line eventually - has a reputation for casual cruelty that deters the masses from asking too many questions, but Joshua could not afford ignorance. Not when Tessa's nature has never been secret.

He remembers the night he was awakened by a palpable sense of waiting. Until that moment, he had just taken it on faith when his "pet demon" blithely informed him that she'd warded the house...the section...the region...the world. She was just a teenager, how could she have that kind of power, half-demon or no? But that night, as he left his bedroom to find her standing in the middle of their chambers, he remembered the aura of predatory control that had surrounded her when she first arrived. She'd terrified him at the time, casually plucking the antique demon-control amulet from his unresisting fingers and tossing it over her shoulder. Since then, her bubbly nature had buried the memory of that first meeting...but that night he’d shivered seeing her listening so intently to something he couldn't hear.

Joshua's fingers close around the amulet now. Although he knows it has no power over Tessa, it is the only link he has to her now and he prays to nameless gods that when the doors open, it will not herald his death following hers. That first night, she'd had an aura of power about her and he could believe that she had, indeed, placed magical wards around the entire world. He'd stood in silence, watching her listen, until dawn came and his parents began to stir. The only words she spoke in those hours were chilling: 'Something's coming'.

Three days later, an unremarkable story from across the world reported unusual activity in the stronghold of some petty tyrant; no one was sure what happened, but shots were fired and there were bodies. The next report came after a month: the petty tyrant was on the move, absorbing the villages nearby and moving on to attack his neighbors. No one expected any more than that; that region was wracked with squabbles for territory and the borders rarely changed. This time was different. The tyrant, now a warlord, took out each of his rivals in turn while the world scratched its collective head - and Tessa glared holes into the news screen. When the warlord had secured the region, the most chilling story yet reached them: he had slaughtered his advisers and generals, and appointed new ones from the conquered territories. After that, Joshua found his ward not-sleeping more often than not, doing things he couldn't understand when she tried to explain and couldn't see when she tried to show him. When morning came, she laid aside her cold, controlled fury and was the cheerful girl he and his parents were used to, but at night...

He'd started quietly researching the warlord, combing questionable sources for any information. When he uncovered the hushed rumor about the warlord summoning a demon, the things Tessa had told him made more sense. During the day, it hardly seemed likely that she could be waging a cutthroat magical war at night. She still smiled, still laughed, still read the silly teen romance novels his mother bought her and sang the bouncy pop songs she preferred. As weeks became months, he took to sitting with her at least a portion of the night, watching her work with the tip of her nozzled power cable clenched between her teeth like a cigar, listening to the occasional muttered comment. The news stories continued to roll in as the warlord conquered a second region, then a third - and set his sights on the one Joshua lived in.

The neighbors started talking, then, as did his co-workers. Didn't Josh have a tame demon? Couldn't she be commanded to do anything? No, he told them. He was no warlord, he wouldn't know what to tell her to do. Did they want to bring the warlord's wrath on themselves quicker? By that time, the other stories were filtering in. The warlord punished those who displeased him, usually with death. Their replacements served with terrified fervor. Those who muttered loudest about a revolt often were found dead in the morning. When the warlord finally made his way to the region capital, the government surrendered and swore loyalty almost before the demand came. It cut down the casualties significantly. The Warlord casually executed the former Prime Minister and took his quarters, clearly intending to stay a while to secure his newest acquisition.

That's when Tessa went completely insane. Joshua had been expecting her to be frothing with rage, but that night as her mind ranged out and followed trails he couldn't sense, her demeanor changed. She went utterly still, eyes wide, and stopped breathing for so long that he dared to call her name. She shook her head, blinked, and fixed him with an intent stare that was a little wild around the eyes. "I have to see him," was all she said. He begged and pleased, reasoned and argued. Was she mad? Did she know what she was doing? He'd kill her, it was suicide. Each attempt was met with that same unsettling gaze and the words 'I have to see him'. Not even the arrival of day, and the tears of her adoptive grandmother, would sway her. When she threatened to walk into the section reserved for the highest members of government and find him herself, Joshua sighed and agreed to do what he could to set up a meeting.

In truth, he didn't expect the response he got. Tessa tagged along as he went to his boss, then his boss's boss, and was passed up the rungs of governmental ladder like a hot potato or a cursed penny. Each time, he repeated his request: a message sent to their new lord, that he and his tame demon wished a private audience. Each time, the government official started to scoff, then caught the look on Tessa's face, paled, and passed them on to his superior. It wasn't that threatening a look, Joshua thought as they waited for yet another official to get out of his meeting. She actually looked rather serene, like one of the ancient images of saints receiving divine messages. But when this latest official - Minister of Finance or somesuch - saw her, he actually shook and sweated. The runner left minutes later and returned just as fast. The Warlord would see them.

As it turned out, the Warlord would see her. Joshua was left standing outside the doors to the vaulted audience chamber (had it been a throne room in years past?) with the guards who had also been ordered out, leaving their Lord and the half-demon alone inside.

Joshua pauses in his pacing and listened, but there are no screams. The echoes of his footsteps die, and there is silence for half a minute before an order cracks through the air and Joshua finds himself being roughly escorted inside. He's afraid of what he'll see, but no - Tessa is alive. Their Lord has her on her knees, one hand pulling her head back by her hair while he snaps the fingers of the other and imperiously demands her control amulet. Joshua looks his Lord over as he hands over the pendant; it is the first time he has seen the man in person, and something seems off. The Lord is tall and imposing, powerfully built but impeccably groomed and clothed. His dark hair is cut short, as his neatly-trimmed beard, and his eyes are an incongruously warm brown as they rake Joshua with disdain and impatience. He drops the amulet into the Lord's manicured hand and searches Tessa's face briefly, but her attention is on the man whose feet she kneels at and her face shines with joy. Joshua is dismissed with curt thanks, empty words praising his loyalty and promising nebulous reward for delivering a teenage girl to an uncertain fate. Tessa's eyes flick to him briefly, and she gives him as encouraging a smile as she can with her head bent back like that.

As he returns home, he ponders his Lord and finally realizes what it was that seemed wrong. He's seen Tessa's true form: the horns, the wings, the hooves and talons and fangs. The veils and illusions she uses to maintain the mostly-human shape are perfect enough that her bare feet make no sound on stone floors, even though he knows her hooves are clicking against the hard surface. That knowledge is a kind of subliminal itch that he's gotten so used to that he doesn't notice it anymore - but his Lord causes the same kind of itch.

When night comes, Joshua sits alone in the center of his family's chambers, wondering what his pseudo-niece has gotten herself into.