@DragonSong A Serenian in Connlaoth.
It had been some time since Lola had ventured into land that was not Serendipity, but it was not without reason. He had heard rumors that Lord Arvin of a Serenian noble house had taken up residence in Uthlyn, and those rumors led him to further investigation, and that investigation led him to confirm it as truth. That coward, that
bastard Arvin. He was one of the vile men that took turns on his mother, that tortured his mother, that gave her endless torment until there was nothing left.
Well, it was his turn to die - and Lola had full intentions to make sure there was nothing left of him.
Traveling to another land was all too easy. With "Theodore," he disguise of nobility he so carefuly accumulated over the years, he had all the means. Means of travel, guards, escorts - getting to this place was not difficult. The most difficult part up to this point was sneaking away from his company at the inn they were staying at for the night.
But he did, and now he was walking, in and out of the shadows, of Uthlyn, searching for the man who had to pay.
He needed to be quick, as the clouds were only making the night skies even darker as a storm approached. The stars were disappearing, and the wind picked up with each passing second.
Before he knew it, the rain came, and it came with heavy downpour.
"Shit," he grumbled to himself as the falling storm soaked him and all of his clothes. He was still looking for Arvin's supposed residence, but now he couldn't see a thing. Nothing but the closest estate to him.
He had no choice. He couldn't track someone down if he couldn't even see the area around him. He would need to go to the nearby home and seek shelter there until the storm slacked.
He hurried over to the nearby house, reaching the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Curled up with a good book on the window seat in the parlor, watching the rain hammer against the pane of glass-- there really wasn't much better. Ilia smiled as she glanced toward the hearth and saw Twyla stretch out and give a sleepy kitten murmur, then almost roll into the flames. The closer she got to the heat, the louder she purred.
The young lady chuckled and returned her attention to her book, smile still in place. A suddenly movement outside drew her eye though, and she raised her head, squinting to try to see through the silvery sheets.
...Someone at the door?
"Papa?" she called, still frowning quizzically. In less than a moment, Varyyn Amaranth was at her side, drawing the curtain just slightly to the side so he could look out as well.
He snorted. "Not a demon."
Ilia rolled her eyes. "Well I figured that, how could he have gotten passed the seal on the gate if he was?" She tilted her head, eyeing the stranger consideringly. "You should let him in, he'll catch his death out there."
Varyyn gave her a long-suffering look, which she returned with wide, pleading eyes. With a sigh, he shook his head and moved into the foyer, then opened the door to reveal the rather bedraggled stranger on their doorstep.
He blinked, as though surprised, and stepped to the side. "Good gracious, you poor lad, wherever did you come from? Come in, come in, out of this wretched storm."
As soon as the door swung open, Lola shot the man standing opposite of him an embarrassed smile. They answered the door, but he still needed to convince them to let him stick around for a while - without raising any suspicion. He was still wearing his noble clothes, thank gods, so he could still portray "Theodore" to an extent, even in another country.
"Much obliged, m'lord," he said rather quickly as he shuffled into their home.
Holding up his arms, he glanced over his dripping clothes and feigned a delicate moan. "Oh dear," he said quietly. "My robes are soaking wet now!"
Lola's eyes quickly scanned the room as he turned back to face the man who let him in, briefly catching a glimpse of the young woman by the window. He let out a defeated sigh before giving the minor lord a weary smile.
"Thank you for the kindness, sir," he said politely. "I was just out for a nightly stroll when I got a little lost, and then the storm came. I do not know what I would have done if you hadn't answered the door."
He extended his hand, hoping he would accept it. "My name is Theodore. Theodore Alcott."
"Varyyn Amaranth." The lord inclined his head politely, russet eyes roaming up and down the stranger's form with a distinctly calculating air.
He took Theodore's hand easily enough though, and gave it a brisk shake. Spotting Ilia's warily approach from the parlor, book tucked under one arm and the ever-present Twyla at her heels, he indicated her with a wave of his hand and added, "This is my daughter, Ilia."
The lady dipped into a brief curtsy, green eyes sparkling. "A pleasure, ser," she demurred, then added with a wry smile, "Though I'm sure you'd have rather not been caught out in the rain."
"Theodore" flashed the young woman his best attempt at a charming smile. "The pleasure is all mine, m'lady," he replied with a bow of his head. "But yes, the rain. What's a man to do? I'm only grateful that you two were kind enough to let me in your home. You see-"
He paused for a brief moment, contemplating his next response.
"The company I am with are a little strict on me leaving the premises, to keep me safe from harm's way, but where is the fun in that? I do not see why anyone would want to harm me! I am not even from here! But when I heard Lord Arvin or Serendipity might have taken up residence here, I just could not help myself. I've always wanted to meet the man!"
Lola was never the one to waste any time.
"Lord Arvin?" Varyyn and Ilia exchanged a glance. "The name is familiar, but I'm afraid I don't know precisely who that is," the lord of the house said slowly, looking back to their unexpected guest.
"Oh, well shoot!" he said with a cheery tone and a snap of his fingers.
'Fuck,' he cursed inside his head. 'But.. they could be lying. I should do some exploring while I am here.'
He looked back down on his wet clothes, as the water was dripping off of him and onto their flood. He didn't think to bring a change of his clothes before sneaking away from the ones he traveled with, but he couldn't just sit here like this.
"I hate to ask," he began, a look of shame in his eyes. "But it appears as if I've brought a bit of the storm inside with me. Is there somewhere in your home where I can get out of these wet clothes? Also, I'm afraid I didn't bring anything to change into."
He scratched the back of his head and let out an embarrassed chuckle.
Varyyn nodded easily, after a quick, sharp look from his daughter. "Of course. Let me take you to one of the guest rooms," he offered, gesturing toward the stairs.
"I'll fetch a change of clothes," Ilia piped up. "He should fit your things, don't you think, Papa?" She was gliding up the stairs without waiting for an answer, Twyla scampering along behind her.
"Thank you sir."
He followed Varyyn up the stairs, watching the girl carry off in front of them. His eyes scanned the house more as he made it to the top of the staircase. Nothing out of the usual so far.
Outside, the sound of thunder could be heard rolling across the sky. It almost sounded like the storm was getting... worse. He may be here for a while.
He peered at the man over his shoulder. "I promise I will not be a burden. I am very grateful. If you would like, after I change, we can all talk more."
After he looked around, of course.
"Mm." Varyyn cast him a single glance, then looked away again, evidently disinterested. As Ilia tripped lightly into what appeared to be the master bedroom, he led Theodore down the hall to one of the spare guestrooms, gesturing for him to enter.
"Ilia should be by with a change of clothes in a moment. Please, make yourself comfortable-- there's a fire going in the parlor, you're welcome to meet us there once you've dried off a bit."
"That would be lovely," Lola said, giving him another nod of thanks.
His eyes followed the man as he went back down the stairs before half-way closing the door. He peaked around the guest room momentarily, but not enough to really get his eyes on anything in particular. The girl would be there with clothes any minute, so he would have to wait a bit longer.
"These people do not strike me as your typical noble family," he said, mostly to himself, and with his normal 'Lola' accent in place.
Ilia, quiet as the cat by her side, smirked slightly as she knocked on the door frame. "We aren't," she noted casually, striding into the room without waiting for an invitation, folded clothes in her arms. "Though I suppose that might depend on what you mean by typical."
Lola's eyes widened at the sound of her voice.
'Dammit. Why did you say that out load?!'
Lola put "Theodore's" face back on, spun around and flashed the girl a wry smile. "Oh, you heard me," he said in playful defeat. "Forgive me. I did not mean anything by it Miss.. Ilia, was it?"
"Yes, that's right," she replied with a small smile as she laid the clothes on the bed. Twyla mewed and trotted over to sniff at Theodore's wet boots curiously.
Ilia turned to eye him up and down, eyes somehow both playful and calculating. "And don't worry, no offense taken." She smirked again. "Papa and I aren't exactly typical."
His eyes briefly followed the clothes as she laid them on the bed, but then shot back up to her. "I believe you could say the same thing about me," he said wearily.
Kneeling down, he rubbed the little kitten behind the ears. Lola has always loved cats, and most animals, for that matter.
"So, Ilia. What's your story then?"
She shrugged, perching on the edge of the bed lightly. Twyla took the opportunity to jump up into her lap, purring, and she stroked her absently, digging her fingers into bronzed tabby fur.
"It's...well, rather a long story," she chuckled. "But the short version... My mother passed away in childbirth. But she wasn't nobility, you see. Papa's family disowned him when he married her. But then when she died..." She shrugged, the lie she'd told so often falling easily from her lips. "Well. When she died, Papa was allowed his inheritance again. To help raise me."
"Ah, I see," he said quietly. "No matter, you are here now, and it appears as if you and your father have are quite fond of each other. I, myself, was born to Nobility in Serendipity," he lied. "Born and raised that way, so nothing interesting there. But..."
He trailed off, pondering for a moment. "Being of Noble stature isn't all it is cracked up to be, as I am sure you know. It's not very exciting, is it? Besides," he stopped again, a rather 'Lola' smile spreading across his face. "Being Noble doesn't necessarily mean you are a good person. There are many that share our title that are quite the opposite. We all have our secrets."
His stopped again, shaking his head slightly. What was he saying? Now was not the time to go on a self-righteous rant about the people he disguised himself as.
"Not saying that you are not good people, of course," he said, trying to ease out of the subject. He picked up the clothes that she had placed on the bed for him, and gave her a shy look. "Oh. Do you mind?"
Ilia giggled, cheeks going a little red, and ducked her eyes as she hurried from the room with a half-laughed, "Oh of course, my apologies!" As she slipped through the door, she said over her shoulder, "If you're hungry, I'm sure Papa and I can have something prepared in the parlor, once you've dressed."
Lola smiled at her as she exited the room. She was sweet, but he did not believe her story for one second. Still, they had showed no signs of having knowledge of Lord Arvin and his whereabouts, or who he even was. If they did, that would be another story. He really doubted Ilia had anything to do with what happened to his mother, considering her age. But the father he was not so sure about.
He could think about that later. There was really nothing in the guest room that looked like it would be of any help, and he was still in his wet clothes. Closing the door the rest of the way, he removed his wet robes and changed into the dry pair of clothes the girl had provided him.
He really wasn't hungry, but he did not want to come off as rude or ungrateful. That, and he had no idea how long he would be there. Better eat now, while he had the chance.
With that thought, he slipped out of the room and headed for the parlor.
Varyyn was settled in a rather plush armchair by the fire, flipping through what looked like it might have been a book of accounts. Ilia was back in her place at the window seat, Twyla curled into her lap.
It was the kitten who noticed their guest's arrival first, mewing and jumping down from her mistress's lap to trot over to him curiously. She sniffed at him, then rubbed against his legs with a rumbling purr, demanding attention.
Lola knelt down to rub his fingers through the little kitten's fur again. "Curious, loving little thing aren't ya?" he asked with a smile.
The man peered up at his two hosts while remaining on a knee to give Myla continued attention. "Thank you again for the fresh pair of clothes. I feel much better now."
Ilia glanced up with a smile. "Good, I'm glad." She gestured toward the small table beside the couch, which bore a plate of fruits and cheeses. "Not much, but the best we could do on short notice. The...staff is off, for a few days."
The "staff" was nonexistent, in truth, but she didn't really feel the need to put that out in the open.
He returned a smile to the young woman. "Oh. Well, that's nice of you," he said softly. "It is always good to give those under you time to rest, and visit with their loved ones."
The man got back to his feet and walked over to the plate of food. "Really, you have done more than enough," he reassured. "I owe you a great debt already. It is not just anybody who would willingly open the door and let a stranger into their homes. Speaking of which, how long have you two lived here?"
"Since Ilia was a baby," Varyyn replied without looking up from his papers. "Maybe a year old?"
His daughter nodded, getting to her feet and scooping Twyla up before the kitten could start begging for scraps. "You've already had dinner," she scolded fondly, ruffling her ears. Looking back to Theodore, she added, "I suppose we could return the question to you: you're Serenian, right? What brings you so far north, other than visiting?"
He nodded at his response, picking up a slice of cheese and slipping it into his mouth.
"I see. Well, you have a beautiful home," he said after swallowing the remaining remnants of the food. "Very quaint, very quiet, especially for those of Nobility. Tucked back in a sense. If I didn't know better, I would venture to guess that the two of you were hiding here."
He grinned playfully, and took a fruit from the plate. "I don't blame you. I like my privacy too."
Varyyn tensed fractionally, almost imperceptibly, but Ilia just chuckled. "I know, I say the same thing to him," she laughed, waving toward her father. She screwed her face up in a dramatic pout. "I never get to do anything."
"Ilia," Varyyn warned quickly, glancing at her over his work.
Lola slipped a sneaky grin.
"Oh, forgive me," he said, passing on another bite. "I do not mean to pry, m'lord and lady, it's just in my nature. Curiosity, that is. I meant nothing by it."
Walking over to the window where Ilia sat, he stopped just short of her to watch the rain splash against the windows. There were no signs of it dying down.
"Quite the storm we are having tonight."
'Lord Arvin. Where are you?'
Ilia nodded, crinkling her nose slightly. "I'm not sure you'll be able to leave before morning," she murmured softly. She glanced toward her father. "He can stay in a guest room, can't he?"
'I will leave anytime I damn well please.'
"You may be right," he said with a sigh. "But I really do not want to impose any longer."
Surely, the storm would slack up eventually. If not, then he just may have to take his chances. As soon as everyone turned in for the night, he would sneak out. He would have to rejoin his group in the morning, and if this isn't done tonight, it's all been a waste.
His brain went in circles as he planned out his next move.
Learn as much as he can while here, and about this strange little family that was clearly hiding something; change back into his wet clothes once everyone had gone to bed and sneak out; find that bastard Arvin and give him what he deserves.
It had to be done.
"No, that's quite alright," Varyyn said easily, returning to his papers. "The room where you changed should suffice, if it's to your liking."
Ilia snatched a segment of orange off the try of food, slipping Twyla a piece of cheese out of her father's eye, with a wink for their guest.
"Oh, it is a great room! Marvelous, in fact!" he said excitedly, returning a wink to the girl and her cat. "Until then, would you like to tell me more about Connloath? What is it that people do around these parts? I've heard stories, but this is my first time visiting the region."
Ilia chuckled. "Well, that seems a slightly loaded question," she murmured with a wry smile. "What sorts of stories have you heard?"
He grinned wearily.
"Well, not much," he replied honestly. He hadn't really heard many stories, other than the ones most would know. But he was attempting to get the conversation going somewhere, so at least that was a start.
He could always fake it. Faking it is what the man did best, after all. That's how he got to where he was today. Or, he could bring up the Connlaothian's views of magic. He did, in fact, need to know how much he could get away with in regards to magic - especially if he wanted to utilize his glamour.
"I have heard that Connlaoth is trying to rid the world of all magic. Could that possibly be true?" he asked curiously. "Why on all earths would someone want to do that?"
Both Varyyn and his daughter stiffened slightly. While both were magic users in their own right, there were certain appearances that had to be kept for them to continue living the life they led.
"I think perhaps it is time for my daughter to retire," Varyyn said abruptly. Not exactly a subtle change in topic, but a resolute one.
Ilia huffed and scowled at him, but at his stern look she rolled her eyes and moved toward the door. "Alright, alright," she sighed. With a click of her fingers, Twyla hurried after her mistress. Sorry, Ilia mouthed to their guest.
Lola's mouth sat agape, only if just for a moment, at the man's abrupt change in behavior. He gave Ilia a somewhat nervous smile as she left the room before turning his gaze to Varyyn.
"Pardon me, sir," he said cautiously. "Did I say something wrong?"
Perhaps him bringing up magic to Connloathians in person was a bit much, but the thought that every last one of them were sticklers for the art seemed a bit far-fetched.
Varyyn just stared in down in silence for several long moments. "Not precisely," he said eventually. "Though I would avoid discussing that particular subject during your stay in Connlaoth. Most people are more than a little touchy, with the war on and all."
Ah, the war. Yes, he ought to be careful.
One's conquest often blinded him from the world around him.
"You are right," he said with a heavy breath. "I do apologize."
"No need, young man," Varyyn said with a wave of his hand. "It'd just advise you to be more mindful in the future. Now."
He finally put his papers to the side, leaning back in his chair slightly. "I'm sure you tired. You should be getting to bed."
"Right," he nodded.
Right. No more wasting time.
Lola gave his host a slight bow and his best attempts at a proper smile. "Thank you for your kindness, sir," he said once again. "Come morning I will be out of your hair. Until then, may you sleep well. Goodnight."
Without another word, he slipped up the stairs and walked into the guest bedroom.
"Of course." Varyyn watched him go, a calculating gleam to his eye. He waited a few minutes before heading to his own room.
As he passed the guest room door, he sketched a symbol in the air and muttered an incantation under his breath. A crimson seal flickered into being on the door, pulsed brighter, then faded. He nodded, satisfied, and slipped away to his much needed bed.
Alone at last.
It probably wouldn't be wise to try to sneak out of the room from inside the house, so he needed another option. Luckily, there was a window in the room, albeit a rather small window. That would do, despite being on the second story of the house. He would worry about how he would return later, if he returned at all.
The storm was not stopping, but that was not something he could help any longer. He would need to press on.
Quickly, he removed the clothes his hosts provided for him, and slipped back into the now mildly wet clothes from before.
As he began to open the window, he thought of Iliah. She was kind, and genuine. It was a nice change of pace when in the guise of Theodore. If he wasn't to return, he would certainly miss her in a way.
But it couldn't be helped.
"Psst."
From the doorway, Ilia hissed to their fleeing guest. "I wouldn't. You'll make Papa angry." She seemed to be holding the door open without quite touching it, a soft blue light pulsing from her fingertips. How exactly she'd gotten there without being noticed was difficult to fathom.
She glanced over her shoulder down the hall. "Look, if you go out the window the seal will break anyway, and he'll wake up. And I don't know how long I can keep this up." She nodded toward her handing, it ndicating that "this" must be whatever she was doing with the door.
His eyes shot open wide at the sound of her voice. He was caught. Peering over his shoulder at the girl, he noticed the woman holding the door open using some sort of magic or another.
He stood there silent as the woman spoke, still a bit stunned. Seal? Oh, the man must have sealed the door earlier. Why didn't he consider that? Being in Connlaoth, that wasn't something that anyone would really need to consider, he thought.
"Ilia..." he said quietly, but stopped from saying anything else.
Without another moment of hesitation, he tip-toed over and slipped through the open doorway.
"Smart move," Ilia murmured. There were tight lines of concentration around her mouth and eyes. Slowly, carefully, she let the door slide closed.
The moment the latch clicked, the seal flared back to life for a moment, then faded again.
"Now then." The lady turned to eye her guest, arms folded. "It seems neither of us has been exactly honest with the other," she noted with an arched brow.
For the first time that night, Lola grew a little tense, feeling he was at a disadvantage. He thought about denying the woman's claims, but what was the point? She said it herself, she wasn't been honest either.
A noble girl lying to a man who lied his way to nobility. For something so ironic, it only made him feel like he could trust her more.. if only just a little.
"Clever girl," he said with in a whisper. "But should we really be talking about this here?"
Her lips curved up. "Clever man," she retorted quietly. "No, we probably shouldn't. Come on."
She slipped passed him down the hall, Twyla suddenly appearing at her heels, and beckoned for him to follow. "We can take the back stairs down into the kitchen."
Lola followed the woman eagerly to the stairs in the back, and then down into the kitchen.
"I suspected you had your secrets too," he said with a muffled tone and curious eyes. "Will this be a good place to talk?"
"It'll do, for now." Ilia boosted herself up onto the table in the center of the modest, though immaculately clean, kitchen. She tilted her head at "Theodore", quirking an eyebrow. "Let's start with names, shall we? I assume you didn't give your real one."
At the time, Lola didn't really know what to think. This girl clearly had him figured out, at least to the extent that he was no who he said he was. On his better judgement, he would typically label someone like her a threat, but something about the whole affair was just... fascinating.
"Clever girl," he said one more time, this time his rich, color, guise of an accent dropping completely. "You're right, that's not my name. How did you figure me out?"
Ilia smirked and reached into the front of her dressing gown, pulling a small amulet from under her collar. It was simple enough, a pendant with a red gem in the middle, engravings around the edge, on a silver chain.
"Detects deceit," she told him, holding it out for him to get a better look if he wanted. "Nothing too drastic, mind. It warms up if someone's being less than truthful. The bigger the lie, the hotter it gets."
Lola's eyes twinkled at the little pendant with genuine fascination. "I see," he said slowly, eyeing it up and down. "I'm shocked you didn't get overheated then, me being in the room and all."
His eyes lingered on the pendant for a few more moments before they shot back up to the woman. "I'm Lola, by the way. Damien Lola," he finally introduced. "So, if you knew I was lying, why did you not out me to your father? I assume he doesn't know."
“He suspects something,” she replied with a shrug as she let the pendant slip back beneath her dressing gown. "But no, he’s not certain.” Another shrug. “And I didn’t tell him because he’d likely have ripped your throat out first and asked questions later. And I knew you didn’t really pose much threat, so that seemed a waste.”
The man almost choked, but pulled himself together quickly enough.
"Well.. he certainly could have tried", he said cautiously. "But thanks. And you're right. I have nothing against the two of you, nor do I mean you any harm."
He stopped for a moment and his eyes slowly traveled down her neck until they reached the top of her gown. "Hey..." he said in a whisper. "Mind if I take another look at your pendant?"
Ilia raised one eyebrow delicately and smirked. "Is it the pendant you want to see?" she jabbed softly, nodding toward where his eyes rested pointedly.
She made it clear she was joking, though, pulling the pendant up above the collar of her night dress again, letting her dressing down slip down off her shoulders. She held it in her palm, offering it up for a closer look.
Despite the obvious joke, Lola's cheeks grew a slight shade of red. Quickly, to deter the attention off of that, he placed his hand on top of hers to conceal the gem between both of their palms. "My name is Theodore Alcott, and I am of Noble birth," he lied.
His eyes widened, mostly out of fascination, as the pendant grew warmer in temperature. She definitely wasn't lying.
"Neat little toy," he said softly, looking back to her. "So what is it that you haven't been telling me?"
Ilai stared at him in silence for a few moments, debating. Slowly, she laid her hand on top of his, keeping his palm pressed to the amulet.
"Varyyn Amaranth isn't my biological father," she said quietly. "He's my guardian. My protector."
The pendant remained cool. It couldn't detect lies by omission, and every word she'd spoken was true.
The man's brow furrowed at her response. Not her biological father? Well, she certainly wasn't lying - unless the pendant itself was some sort of cheap parlor trick in itself; but that was something he highly doubted.
"Protector?" he asked quizzically. "What is protecting you from, Ilia?"
She considered out to answer that for a few moments. "Pretty much anything that wants to harm me," she settled for after a moment, shrugging. "He...found me as a baby. And he just-- I don't know. Took a liking to me, I guess."
The man's hand remained on the pendant through her answer. There was no change in temperature, though her reply struck him as a bit odd. Took a liking to her? Perhaps, but there was more to it than that.
Deciding to press on, he kept his palm firmly on the gem and said, "But that's not the whole truth. Right?"
Ilia chuckled quietly. "No, it's not."
She didn't say anything more, a playful half smile tugging at her lips.
Lola smiled back, deciding to drop it. Not the whole truth, but enough. She didn't seem too keen to elaborate, nor did he see any for her too.
"One more thing," he said through a heavy breath. "Do you know anything about Lord Arvin of Serendipity?"
Her expression turned a little regretful. "No, I don't," she murmured.
The truth. The amulet wouldn't change.
Her eyes suddenly lit with and idea and she mused allowed. "But...I might know a way to find out."
Lola had been on the edge of his seat for that answer, but his eyes softened at her response. Damn. Well, there was no need in blaming the girl, but it didn't hurt to try.
Wait. A way to find out? His eyes perked up once more.
"Really? Well I am all ears," he said softly, looking at their hands. The woman still had her hand over his, and his still on the pendant. He shot her a quick smile and said, "Oh, you can let go now, unless you just wanted to hold hands all night."
Ilia actually blushed, just a bit, and she pulled her hand back perhaps just slightly more quickly than was entirely necessary.
"Right. Well." She cleared her throat as she tucked the pendant back under her nightdress and gathered her dressing gown around her shoulders again. Twyla twined around her ankles, purring.
She glanced toward the door. "We'll need to head back up to my room. Watch your step; Papa is a very light sleeper."
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that," he said in an almost bragging tone.
And he was right. The man was quite accustomed to sneaking around, given the line of work he had self-righteously assigned to himself. And with the current onset of the storm, sneaking past her adopted father should be no trouble at all.
"Lead the way."
She nodded and quickly bent to scoop Twyla up into her arms. "Follow me then," she murmured as she slipped back to the stairs and up, heading for the hall where her room and the guest room were located.
His curiosity only growing, he eagerly followed the woman back up the stairs and into the hall. He couldn't help but smile to himself as he did, because there was just something about this girl. She was the first person in a long time he had taken in an interest in that he wasn't planning to kill in a long, long while.
Clever girl, he thought again as he tiptoed through the house.
Perhaps sensing his eyes on her, Ilia found herself walking a little more carefully, very aware of the way her nightdress cling and the slight hunch to her shoulders.
She tried to put it from her mind as she ushered Lola to her door, shooing him inside. "Give me a few moments, I should probably get dressed," she murmured as she followed him in, snatching a walking gown from her wardrobe and disappearing behind a privacy curtain. "Twyla, watch the door, will you?"
The kitten mewed assent and padded over to sit on the bed, eyes on the door as she purred quietly.
Lola remained momentarily silent while the woman went to change, adverting his attention to Twyla as she hummed a comforting purr. He stepped over, quietly, to the bed and took a seat next to the little kitten, rubbing his fingers behind her ears.
"How long have you had this little beauty?" he asked in a whisper.
"Oh, since I was very young." Ilia poked her head out from behind the curtain to smile at the two of them. "She's such a darling, isn't she?"
"She really is," he replied, almost too happily as he continued to pet Twyla. "I've always loved animals. They are so much better than people."
"I often feel the same," Ilia chuckled, emerging fully from behind the curtain. She eyed the two of them, Twyla rolled onto her back and purring up a storm.
"You are supposed to be our guard, little miss," she said mock sternly. The cat just blinked at her, still purring.
As the kitten rolled to her back, Lola's fingers adjusted and scratched her belly. With a wry smile, he tilted his head at the woman. "This little cutie a guard?" he asked gently, completely unaware of Myla's full being.
After another moment, he rose to his feet. "So, what are we doing in here? You said you might know a way for me to find Arvin?"
"Mhm." Ilia rolled her eyes at the cat, but gave her a quick scritch under the chin before straightening up and crossing to the hearth set into the far wall. "Mind you, it's a bit of a long shot, but it's really the only thing I can think of."
She stepped up onto the marble facade of the hearth and held her hand out to him, beckoning. "Come on, stand as close to me as you can manage."
"O-Okay," he muttered, suddenly becoming a bit nervous. Not nervous about what was to happen next, but by standing as close to her as he could without coming off as inappropriate. Given him and his mother's history, he never wanted to show any type of disrespect to a woman. Ever.
"Sure," he said, slowly walking up to her. As she requested, he stood as close as he could, looking in the other direction so he didn't breathe directly on her. "How's this?"
She gave a little noise that in a less delicate person would have been called a snort. "I'm not glass, Damien, you aren't going to break me," she chuckled, rolling her eyes.
Nevertheless, he was close enough. Eyes glinting, Ilia reached up and traced a finger along the marble molding, following a pattern of ivy carved into the hearth.
There were three soft, successive clicks, then a soft groaning and sliding as the stone beneath them sunk into the floor-- then spun. The entire hearth turned into the wall slowly, clicking away, until it snapped into place on the other side with a soft rumble.
Ilia winced, stepping off the hearth into the hidden room connected to her bedchamber. "Damn. Hope Papa didn't hear that," she muttered.
The room was much smaller than her bedchamber, but it was covered nearly floor to ceiling on all four walls with books. A small desk-like apparatus that looked suspiciously like an alchemy station was tucked into one corner, with a chair slid into place beside it.
Lola almost lost his balance as the ground below them started sinking into the floor. Almost.
After regaining his wit, he watched the walls around him, admittedly in awe, as they slid into the hidden chamber. When they got there, he circled around, several times, looking at the piles of books until his eyes rested on the corner desk.
His lost were lost of him for a few moments, but when he did speak, it had nothing to do with the room.
"No one has called me Damien in a long, long time."
"Oh." She paused and looked back to him, eyebrows raised slightly. "Oh. Um, sorry. That-- that is your name, isn't it?" It was how he'd introduced himself when they'd been holding the pendant.
"Oh!"
His attention wavered from the room, and went back to Ilia. "Oh, yes. My name is Damien, you are right. I was more just.. thinking out loud," he tried to explain. "It's just that everyone that knows me, the real me, call me Lola. Only my mother called me Damien."
He took a few steps away from her, and glanced about the room once more, trying to steer the subject in another direction. "So what exactly are we looking for?"
"Oh. Sorry. I'll...call you that, then." Ilia cleared her throat and stepped around him toward her work table.
"I'm going to try to cast a tracking spell. You don't happen to have anything of Arvin's, do you?" While it was possible to do the spell without a personal artifact, that would make it exponentially more difficult.
Something that belonged to Arvin? His mind raced for only a moment before he remembered the ring in his pocket. It belonged to his mother, but that coward took it off her and Lola almost didn't get it back after she had died. He wasn't sure if, given the circumstance, it would be of any use, but it was worth a try.
Fishing the ring out of his pocket, he handed it over to the woman. "Try this."
She took the ring and hefted it in her palm for a moment, then turned to her work table and set it to the side.
"Alright. This may take me a while, why don't you pick a book and take a seat?" she offered, gesturing toward the chair vaguely.
"Sure," he replied with a nod.
He couldn't really focus on any of the books around, he was too eager to see what Ilia could find out for him. Shrugging lightly to himself, he picked up the first book in reach and took a seat. Dusting it off, he opened the cover and began loosely skimming the first page.
This was pointless.
He peered up from the book, trying to muster a small smile. "Ilia," he said quietly. "I hope I didn't sound rude earlier. You can call me Damien if you like."
She paused, then looked up at him from where she was trying to collect her ingredients. She smiled softly. "If that's alright," she murmured with a nod.
Lola gave her a quick smile in return. "Of course."
Well, like she said, this could take some time. No sense in distracting her, so he may as well make himself comfortable. The book in his head was failing to catch his attention, so he rose from his seat and decided to look for a replacement.
Ilaia smiled and nodded slightly, then returned to looking through her supplies.
She settled a silver bowl on the work table, then set about measuring and preparing ingredients. She hummed softly as she worked, not entirely aware that she was doing so.
Humming.
That was nice. His mother always use to hum to him as a child when he couldn't sleep.
He shelved the book he was previously skimming through, and picked up another.
"Pretty," he said as he slipped back over to his seat.
She started slightly and glanced up at him. "What--?"
Oh. Damn.
With a slight flush, Ilia turned back to her work. "Ah. Sorry, old habit, I suppose."
"No need to apologize," he said, eyes buried in the book he had opened in his palm. "It was nice."
He continued to skim the pages, but that book was failing to capture his attention as well. Sighing, he replaced it for another. And then another. And then two more, as he continued to get back to his feet, swap out books, and sit back down with growing anticipation.
This is still useless.
Peering up from the current pages he had in his possession, he addressed the girl with somewhat hesitation.
"How's it coming?"
"It's coming," Ilia replied distractedly. "Just relax-- this is going to take at least a half hour longer."
Damn.
Sighing, he closed the book in his possession and rested his face in his hands.
Though the room they were in made the sounds a bit more distant, he could still here the pitter patter of the rain, and the occasional thunder that went along with it. It did not seem like it was going to stop any time soon.
Lola had lost track of time since Ilia called him out on his lies earlier, but he didn't fathom that too much time had passed. Still, he couldn't help wonder if he was missing his chance.
Of course, he may have never found him on this night, and he would just be stuck outside.. in the storm.
Ilia sank into her work, nearly dead to the world around her. She crushed and blended ingredients, mixing them carefully into the bowl at steady intervals. Her humming was occasionally replaced with soft chanting in Old Serenian, with a few words of Sylvan thrown in.
Finally, she looked up. "Alright. I think you need to do this part." She held the ring out to him and nodded to the bowl. "Think about the person you're trying to find and just drop it in."
Lola's eyes perked up when she finally spoke, walking over to her almost too eagerly. Gently, he plucked the ring from her and hovered it over the bowl.
His mind burned with the image of Arvin's face and the thought of vengeance, and he almost dropped it effortless into the girl's concoction, but then hesitated.
This was his mother's ring, after all.
"Will anything happen to it?" he asked cautiously. "The ring."
She shook her head, watching the bowl carefully. "It shouldn't..."
The dry ingredients caught flame, flickering with blue and green heat. She jumped back a bit, startled, then rushed forward again to blow the fire out and scoop the ring up quickly.
"OW!" Hot metal, hot metal! She blew on the ring, tossing it from hand to hand, then tossed it onto the table with one hand as she grabbed the bowl and tossed the ashes of the spell over the table, chanting quietly.
The ash whirled unnaturally, forming a miniature cyclone. Then it settled, collecting in the shape of a pentagram, and...a map. A map of the city as seen from above, with the ring settled over what would be the main park.
Ilia huffed and leaned back on her heels. "That mean anything to you?"
Lola watched amusingly as the woman struggled with the heat of the ring. He felt bad, sure, but he was also relieved that his mother's ring still remained in tact.
And then the smoke cleared and a map lay atop the table.
"Not sure.." he replied absently, studying the formed shape a bit longer. "That looks like a park."
His eyes burned with concentration as they scurried over the map, particularly the image of the park. "Park," he repeated under his breath. "I passed a park on the way here.. But I don't recall seeing any residencies around that area."
Ilia shrugged. "I don't think there are-- the spell tracks where he is the moment I cast it, it's entirely possible he's out for a late night stroll..."
Her voice trailed off as thunder rumbled menacingly outside and she frowned. "Though why he would I've no idea."
A small, plotting smile crept onto the man's lips.
"Yeah, he would be a fool to roam around in weather like this," he said softly. He cast a very determined gaze at the woman, trying to keep his excitement at bay. "I need to go there. Now."
Her eyebrows crept up. "Are you mad? It's raging out there!" She shook her head. "What's so damned important about this man anyway?"
Mad? Pissed. Furious. Hateful and seeking vengeance. Any of those would have been better words, though that was not exactly what the woman meant.
"I never said you could come with me," he said quickly, pocketing his mother's ring and moving over to the stone surface that led them down to the hidden room. He tapped his foot on it lightly before looking back over to her. "Look, you and your father have been wonderful to me. Really. But I'd rather not get you caught up in this, so how do I get out of here?"
Ilia glowered at him. "And what do you expect me to say to Papa when he wakes up? He will hunt you down you know; he'll think you somehow had the ability to circumnavigate that seal."
Lola let out an exasperated breath.
"Arvin's a bad person. He's a bad person that does bad, horrible things to people," he said finally. "But I'm the only one who either knows, or that is willing to do anything about. I can't say any more than that, but please. You have to believe me! Every second we sit here talking I'm missing an opportunity to stop him!"
His heart was beating out of his chest with growing frustration.
She stared at him for a long moment, then sighed and dropped her eyes, shaking her head. "I can't very well stop you," she murmured after a while. "Just...be careful?"
He stopped, his eyes softening. He really didn't expect her to let him go so easily.
"T-Thanks," he said quietly, feeling a tinge of guilt now. "What will you tell our father?"
She sighed and shrugged. "I'll figure something out. But you should go, quickly, before he wakes up."
He nodded.
"Thank you," he said again before looking at the stone surface he stood on. "But uh.. how do I get out of here?"
Ilia smiled slightly and stepped up beside him, tracing the pattern of the marble molding again.
As the hearth turned to deposit them in her room, she glanced up at Lola sidelong. "I hope you know what you're doing," she murmured. "I...wouldn't want to see you hurt."
The hearth ground back into place and she sighed quietly, turning to step off--
And froze. Her eyes went wide.
"P-Papa!"
Varyyn stared blandly at her from where he sat on her bed, Twyla nestled in his lap and purring away. Little traitor.
"And just what exactly," he drawled, "is going on here?"
I...wouldn't want to see you hurt.
Just for a moment, her words pulled at his heart. Just for a moment, and then they were back in her room, and there was her father.
Fuck.
"O-Oh, your lovely daughter was just giving me a further tour of your home, see!" he tried his best attempt to muster the Theodore personality. "She find me wondering around when I couldn't sleep and.. and.. Ah, what's the point?
He brushed off the little bit of Theodore that came out and shifted back to his normal self. "I'm sorry, sir," he said sincerely. "But I need to find somebody, and your daughter only wanted to help me."
Varying bared his teeth and Ilia jumped in quickly, “Really, Papa, that’s all, we were just—“
“How did you get passed the seal?” He didn’t even glance at his daughter, eyes locked on Lola.
Ah, right. The seal.
Lola resisted the urge to look at Ilia, though he found it very difficult as he contemplated his response. The father was angry, and caught him off-guard. Lola almost never gets caught off guard. His mind raced for what felt like forever - but it was only a mere couple of seconds before an idea lit through his head.
"I never went into the room," he said cautiously. "Surely, someone with the power of seal could detect someone else with gifts in their home?"
"Like the art of illusion," Lola said from behind Varryn, the image before the man and next to Ilia slowly dissolving into the air.
The lord rose from the bed, placing Twyla to the side with a soft mew of protest. "A pretty trick," he said dismissively. "But I felt you cross into the seal's area of protection. Now I will ask again, and do not lie to me."
He turned to face Lola, face stone, eyes flashing crimson. "How did you leave the room?"
He didn't want to lie. He really didn't, but he also didn't want to give Ilia away after she had helped him.
But time was running out. Every minute wasted here was a minute that Arvin could get away.
What to do? What to do?
Fuck.
"I think you already know the answer to that," he said in a slight defeated tone. His better judgement told him not to continue with the ruse, as something about Varyyn sent an eerie chill down his spine.
Varyyn bared his teeth and turned to glare at his daughter. "Ilia..."
She held her ground, though her hands shook slightly. "He's not dangerous to us, Papa."
Varyyn hissed and spat something in a sharp, crackling language. Ilia's eyes widened, but she replied in kind, tone pleading.
"Hey, hold on," he interjected. "She's telling you the truth. I am not here to cause you any trouble, and she was just helping me find somebody."
He needed to leave, but now he felt inclined to see this through until the matter was settled.
"You keep out of this!"
Varyyn whirled on the younger man, and suddenly he just...wasn't human. His skin paled to a dull gray, eyes crimson, fangs glinting, and ebony horns curling back from his temple. "What exactly are you, huh? How much do you know about us?"
He started to stalk forward, but Ilia lunged and grabbed for his arm. "Papa!"
Lola's eyes shot open at the man's sudden change, mostly out of surprise but a little out of fear, before he got a hold of himself and his brows narrowed.
Demon. Now Ilia's story made sense.
"I'm just a human, and I don't know shit about you!" he snapped back, his eyes burning with confrontation. He took a step closer as the man moved toward him, never breaking eye contact as he fiercely met his gaze. Almost involuntarily, sparks of flame started at his fingertips, ready to protect himself if need be. "And I'm not afraid of you."
Varyyn laughed cruelly, lips turning up at the corners. "That," he growled, "is a very big mistake."
"Papa, no!" Ilia scrambled around to put herself between the two men, glaring. "Will everyone just calm down and we can talk?"
Lola stared through Ilia, his eyes still mercilessly locked tight on Varryn.
But then the girl's words wavered his concentration, and the light of his fingertips went out. His tense posture eased, and he slowly raised his hands up in surrender.
She was right, there was no need for this.
"You are not my enemy," he said through his pounding heartbeat. "And I would hope that I am not yours. I'm sorry. I'll tell you anything you want to know."
Varyyn and Ilia locked eyes, silent for several long moments. Then they glanced away from one another.
"Parlor," Varyyn snapped, grabbing his daughter's arm and pulling her out of the room with him. "Five minutes. If you try to slip out of here I will hunt you down."
Lola remained silent as his eyes followed them out of the room. When he was sure he was alone again, he let out a heavy, exasperated sigh.
That was close.
He took several minutes to go over his thoughts, plotting out what exactly he would tell them. He felt like he needed to say whatever was necessary to get him out the door, but so much time had passed now. Surely, any change of finding Arvin in that park were long gone.
But perhaps not all was lost. These people had secrets of their own, and he suspected he was in, in a sense, in good company. Maybe telling the truth would be the best possible thing for him now. Besides, a little honesty would be... refreshing.
He thought about returning to the guest room to change back into the dry clothes that they had provided for him, but thought better of it. Better not push it.
With another sigh, he made his way to the parlor.
Ilia was seated on a small couch in the parlor, Twyla curled up on her lap and her father on his feet, watching the door.
"Why did you come to this house?" Varyyn said dryly when Lola entered the room, not bothering to deal with beating around the bush.
"I was caught in the storm and yours was the first house I saw," he said certainly, almost immediately after the question was asked. Well, it was the truth after all.
He shot Ilia a quick look, trying to a smile, before looking back over at the father. Perhaps he shouldn't push his luck too much.
"Ilia." Baryon never looked away from their "guest", though he addressed his daughter. "Is he lying?"
She shook her head. "No, Papa."
"Are you lying?"
She scowled at his back. "No, Papa."
He watched the two exchange words briefly with caution before proceeding.
"But that's not why I am in Connlaoth," he said slowly. "And that's why you found us when you did. Ilia was only trying to help."
Varying snorted and bared his teeth. “I have no doubt about that, but my daughter’s judgement is hardly foolproof. What do you want?” His eyes flashed menacingly. “And do not lie to me, boy.”
"Sure," he said, almost defensively. He took a breath, contemplating, before answering again. "The man Arvin I spoke of earlier.. He's a terrible man, and I am after him. I came to this country to put a stop to his wrongdoings."
That was the truth, though his explanation of who Arvin was and what Lola planned to do to him hardly scratched the surface.
"He's telling the truth," Ilia offered quietly.
Varyyn sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Even if that's so, the fact is he still knows too much about us now for me to just let him go."
"Papa!" Ilia jerked to her feet, sending Twyla sprawling with an indignant meow. "You can't do that!"
Lola's body tensed again.
"And just what exactly do you plan to do with me?" he asked as his heart rate began to pace faster. "I promise you I won't speak a word about you or your daughter! Why would I?!"
"You could," Varyyn said with a careless shrug. "Torture, an inadvertent slip of the tongue, there's any of number of ways you could do us wrong just by knowing about us."
Ilia had sprung forward to grab at his arm and he shook her off impatiently. "Do stop that. I'm not going to hurt him, just take his memories of us."
Lola took a step back in either caution or fear, he couldn't be sure which. Take his memories? Did this man even have the ability to do this? Well, they definitely had their fair share of secrets, not to mention the fact that Varyyn was a demon in disguise the entire time, so it wouldn't surprise him if he did.
But he didn't want to lose his memories! If that were to happen, he would lose the little bit of knowledge he had learned about Arvin while he was there. The entire evening would have been a complete waste of time! Not only that, but there was also Ilia. In the very short time he had known the woman, she was the first person he felt like he made some sort of bond with. Sure, he planned on never seeing her again after this night, but that didn't mean he'd be so willing to forget.
"I won't let that happen," he finally said, eyes burning with determination.
"Papa, don't, please," Ilia begged, reaching for him again.
Varyyn finally glanced at her, a mixture of annoyance and almost fond exasperation on his face, maybe a tinge of concern. "I have to keep you safe," he said bluntly, then turned back to Lola. "And I really don't think there's anything you could do about it, boy."
"We could just help him!" Ilia exclaimed desperately. "A blood oath of silence for our aid-- something!"
Lola was ready to fight back, ready to try anything. Use his glamour, throw fire at him, submerge him in a tank of water, anything! But something told him he was a little outmatched, and struggling could only prove to worsen his situation.
But then his eyes peaked at Ilia's suggestion, casting a quick glance over to her despite his better judgement to keep his eyes directly on Varyyn. "I'll take an oath if I must," he volunteered a bit frantically.
Teeth bared, Varyyn glanced down at his daughter, then back to the younger man. "A blood oath with a demon requires an exchange of services," he said sharply. He obviously didn't like the idea, but he seemed to be at least considering it. "What would you ask of me in return for your silence?"
Lola considered. He needed to choose his next words very carefully, because asking them to help him burn some man they don't know from the inside out until nothing was left may not go over too well.
"I would ask you to help me find Arvin," he started cautiously, "and allow me to do with him what I please."
Varyyn scoffed and glanced to Ilia. "Who?"
"The man he was looking for, Papa," she replied softly. "He's a lord or something."
Lola had to stop himself from throwing a dagger-edged glare at Varyyn. Who? He was sure he had mentioned the name as soon as he got to the house, though he failed to put any emphasis on him. He was just, in the young man's mind, the worst person to walk the streets of Connlaoth. A filthy, rotten man who had everything he deserved coming to him.
"Ilia's right," he finally spoke, trying to remain calm. "He's a Noble Lord from Serendipity, but has since moved to your country. He is one of the several that raped, abused, and tortured my mother when I was young, and I'm sure he has done it to countless other women. I've come here to stop him."
He took a deep breath. Finally speaking the words about why he was truly there was somewhat of a relief, though saying it out loud only made him angrier.
Ilia's eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with a hand.
Varyyn's expression suddenly seemed to soften-- well, not soften exactly, but he was no longer glowering.
"An oath, then." He raised one hand and drew the claw of his index finger across his other palm. He nodded to Lola. "Your blood is required. The hand is easiest, though it does sting."
Lola blinked, and then nodded quickly. He did it.
There was no more caution, only anticipation. He moved forward until he was within arms reach with Varyyn and held out the palm of his right hand. "Do it."
Varyyn reached out to grasp his hand, wincing as the blending of mortal and demonic blood stung his wound. "By this pact of blood, I swear to aide you in your quest to locate this man who has done you and yours wrong," he intoned.
Ilia, who had sort of blended back into the room, suddenly shuffled toward Lola and whispered, "Make your oath. If he doesn't like what you've sworn, he can break the pact before it's completed."
Lola tried to bury the grimace on his face during the cut and connection of hands. He nodded slowly at Ilia's warning and his mind quickly raced the best way to return the oath. He had never sworn an oath before. Well, not a real one such as this. The only oath he lived by was the one of revenge he swore to himself a long time ago.
"By this pact of blood and in return for your aid," he repeated and included, "I will never speak a word of you, Ilia, your whereabouts and who you are to anyone for the remainder of my days, or I offer you my life."
That should do it, he thought.
Ilia winced. Well, at least he understood he had to be specific-- but that was maybe a little too much. He'd essentially bound himself so thoroughly as to being unable to acknowledge her or Varyyn's presence in a crowded room if someone asked for them.
Varyyn smirked, and for a moment she thought he was going to take the deal as offered. Then he met her eyes and she relaxed slightly.
"I accept the spirit of your oath," he intoned, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Red and black magic gathered around the men's joined hands, pulsed, and vanished.
The demon dropped his hand and stepped away rather abruptly.
The spirit.. of my oath?
Lola's eyes lingered on Varryn as he stepped away while cupping his bloodied hand, a little puzzled by his phrasing. But, judging by Ilia's reaction, whatever he meant must have been for the best. It didn't matter anyway - he accepted.
He shot a little look to Ilia with a soft smile and eyes that said "thank you" before returning to her father. "So... what next?"
Varyyn huffed again and drew his hand back, licking the cut to heal it. "Now," he said in a soft rumble, "you tell me where your spell led you to find this lordling."
Where he found the lording...?
Oh! The park! During all the commotion, and then through the ordeal of the oath, Lola had almost forgot!
"He was in a park," Lola informed Varyyn eagerly. "It's not far from here - I passed it on the way in. Though I can't be certain if he is still there, nor do I know why he would be out there in this storm in the first place."
The demon gave a long suffering sigh and closed his eyes, but nodded. "Very well then."
"If we hurry, we may still be able to catch him," Ilia piped up. "I can--"
"No." Varyyn glared at her. "You're staying here. End of discussion."
Lola's eyes danced between the father and daughter, and he let out a sigh of relief when Varyyn shut Ilia down.
"Ilia," Lola started in an apologetic tone. "I agree with your father. I don't want to get you involved any more than I already have. Besides, Arvin's a nasty man. I don't want his disgusting paws any where near you."
That being said, he was a little weary of going out into the night with just Varyyn, despite the oath.
Ilia pouted, seeming as though she might argue for a moment, then deflated with a sigh. "Fine," she muttered. "At least take Twyla with you."
She bent to scoop the kitten up and passed her over to her father, Twyla purring all the while. She didn't exactly seem fierce, but Varyyn seemed thankful for her presence, though he frowned slightly at Ilia.
"You'll be alright by yourself?"
She rolled her eyes. "All the wards are in place, Papa. Only a demon prince could get in here."
Take Twyla..? Why would they take the little kitten with them?
And demon prince? Lola had so many questions.
"Hold on," Lola spoke absolutely. "What do you mean by only a demon prince? Why would one want to come here, anyway? And what's with the cat? No offense to Twyla or anything, but that hardly seems to be the place for her to be."
"So many questions," Varyyn sighed. "Look, let's just get this done, and maybe I'll have some answers for you."
Ilia offered a small smile. "If you're worried about Twyla, don't be. She'll be fine-- trust me."
Lola sighed.
"Fine by me," he said, understanding. "Let's get going then."
He gave Ilia one more quick look and mouthed the words 'thank you' before adverting his gaze over Twyla. This family did have their secrets, so maybe the little kitten was more than she appeared to be. Though it didn't really matter, it would be over soon, and they would never have to worry about him again.
Ilia nodded at him, biting her lip a little nervously as she watched her father exit the parlor, calling back, "We leave in three minutes, be ready and meet me at the door."
Lola did not answer, but it was understood that he would be there. His eyes followed Varyyn until he was out of the door, and then he turned to Ilia.
And for a moment, he didn't know what to say. He wanted to apologize to her and thank her at the same time. Still at a loss for words, he moved quickly over to her and gave her a quick, grateful hug that was over just as quick as it came.
"Thanks," he finally murmured.
"Oh." She blinked, caught off guard, then smiled and hugged him back. "You're welcome, Damien," she murmured as they broke apart. "Be safe, okay?"
"Yeah, we'll be fine," he said assuringly. "I'll have your father with me. That should be more than enough. Will you be okay here by yourself? What was that about a demon prince?"
Ilia smiled and shook her head. "I don't think we have time to explain all that. Go on, Papa's waiting for you."
Varyyn was indeed waiting by the door, arms crossed and brow furrowed.
"Right. We'll talk later then."
He gave her another quick smile before making his way to the front door where Varyyn awaited, the storm still menacing from the outside. "I'm ready."
Varyyn nodded and glanced through the window, frowning slightly at the rain. "We should hurry. If we're there quickly enough, I'll be able to follow his trail," he said shortly as he shouldered the door open and beckoned Lola through.
"Right," he said quickly as he made his way through the door.
His heart began to beat. That heavy, full-body beat that caused his body to shake and flutter with anticipation. This was the feeling he always had before hunting his prey, only growing stronger until he made the kill. That horrible, wonderful feeling - his addiction.
"You know the area better than I do," he said with a heavy breath before motioning in the direction he came from, "but I think it was this way."
Varyyn nodded again as he strode out into the street. The rain didn't seem to bother him— perhaps because the moment the raindrops stuck him they seemed to dry up.
"I don't suppose you have any sort of plan once we find this man?"
'I plan to kill the shit out of him.'
"We just need to make sure there is no one else around, and that I can get him alone," Lola said as they walked in stride through the storm. "I'll take it from there."
"As you like." He shrugged and picked up the pace slightly. "Let's get this over with quickly then."
The men walked through the very same storm that Lola sought to get out of earlier that night, but it could no longer be helped. The way he saw it, it was now or never. His party would be out looking for him come morning if he wasn't back at the inn before sunrise, and that would just open up a new can of worms for him to deal with.
They were at the park soon enough, and through the glimpses of light the lightning provided, the roaring thunder, and the rain that just never seemed to end, Lola searched.
"Are you picking up anything?" he asked quietly. "From what I remember, he smell like absolute shit when I was a child... if that helps."
Varyyn looked at him drolly. "I'm not a bloodhound," he muttered. "I use arcane senses to track, not a sense of smell."
He paced down one of the walking paths, murmuring under his breath and twitching his fingers slightly, as though conducting music only he could hear.
"Right," he said under his breath, somewhat embarrassed as the man paced away from him.
'Way to go, Lola.'
He followed a few steps behind him, struggling to see much than his figure in front him as the rain continued to punish his vision - and his clothes.
"What does this man look like?" the demon asked quietly as they moved through the park. He paused every few steps, tilting his head as though listening for a specific sound.
"From what I remember.."
'Ha, from what I remember. How could I ever forget?'
"He's a tall man. About as tall as you, actually, with tidily kept blonde hair and blue eyes," he explained in low voice. "He has a scar on the right side of his chin."
Varyyn nodded. Every detail helped. "This way," he said abruptly, turning sharply off the path.
Lola's eyes shot open at the sudden change of path, and he followed him willfully and eagerly. He could almost feel the fire at his fingertips that he was going to shoot down Arvin's throat.
Varyyn could feel the aggression rising off the other man and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
"Don't be rash," he advised softly.
((I was gonna leave the how/when/if of them finding Arvin up to you, if you wanna take lead on that ^.^))
[OOC: Oooh, okay. I have a good idea for that, and it staaaaaaaarts...]
Lola came back to his senses rather quickly. "You're right," he said softly as he tried to keep himself at bay. "There will be a time and a place-"
He stopped. There was something just then. Something out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to where his attention was almost naturally drawn, and squinted to make out something through the rain.
Was in some sort of out house? No, it was bigger than that - but smaller than a regular home. Whatever it was, there was a flicker of light that came from behind what Lola made out to be the door, and everything about it told him that that's where Arvin was.
His heart nearly leaped into his throat upon the discovery and he started to move in that direction without another word to Varyyn before a thought crossed his mind.
'Why would he be there? Did he just coincidentally get caught in the storm too, and this is where he sought refuge? No, that coward wouldn't dare be roaming around on his own on a night like this unless he had good reason.'
"He's there," Lola said as he pointed to the distant figure of the structure. "And I don't think he is alone."
Varyyn paused, looking where Lola pointed, and nodded. He reached into his overcoat and drew Twyla from an inner pocket.
"Scout around the perimeter, I'll call if we need backup," he murmured.
The tiny kitten mewed, shivered in the rain, and scampered off.
Varyyn looked to his companion. "Lead the way."
Lola wasn't wrong in his assumption that Arvin was not alone, though who he was with may have been a surprise to anyone but the vengeful young man.
He nodded and began a brisk walk over to the little shelter house.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He heart was pounding uncontrollably again. He knew it had to be him.
When they reached the shelter, Lola placed his ear on the door to try to listen in. He could hear something, but it was too muffled to make out clearly just then. There was a light-pitched voice at first, and it almost sounded like laughter.
No. Not laughter. Crying. It was a woman, and she was crying, begging.
Lola's face burned as he started putting the pieces together, and his heart raced further when he heard him - the unmistakable voice of Arvin Hagen. He finally found him, and it sounded like he was up to his old ways.
"He's doing it again," Lola said through gritted teeth. He shot a pleading look to Varyyn before mouthing, 'Get the girl out of there. Leave him to me.'
The demon's hands clenched, his glamour slipping slightly to reveal hints of his true form. He glanced down at Lola, hesitated, then nodded.
"Will he hurt her if I burst in?" he asked softly. He wanted to save the woman-- spirits help him, raising Ilia had rubbed off on him-- but he knew if he charged in with no plan he might only make things worse.
Lola thought on it for a moment.
"I don't know," he replied honestly. "He's too much of a coward to be out here without some kind of weapon, so there's a chance.. maybe.."
He thought it over some more before an idea came into his mind. "What if you.. 'sought shelter?' You know.. like I did?"
Varyyn blinked, then nodded slowly. "Is that the entirety of your plan?"
It wasn't entirely clear from his tone if he was being serious or mocking.
Lola's reaction kind of met in the middle between a shrug, a nod, an eyes that said "What else should we do?
"It's like you said," he tried to explain further. "If we just barge in, he might hurt the girl. But if you, a Nobelman in these parts, knock on the door in attempts to get shelter from this storm.. we may catch him off guard. Actually-"
He stopped, his mind racing. "We can both go. I am "Theodore" after all. We were on our way back to your home when the storm worsened, and we sought shelter at the first place we could find."
"Alright." Varyyn shrugged. He was following the human's lead on this one. "At your command then, Theodore."
Lola closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Time to turn "Theodore" back on for a little while, and he was happy to do it. Something about tricking his prey into thinking he was someone who he was not, and then the reveal before the kill was so... sweet.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The man pounded his fist on the door before melting his accent to the chipper, lighter tone of Theodore. "Hello!" he called out in his best attempt to sound frantic. "Is anybody in there?! My friend and I got caught in this horrible storm! Won't you please let us in?"
From the inside, it sounded like a squeal - or maybe an attempted scream - but it was muffled and otherwise silenced.
"Sssh! Don't you say a fucking word!"
The response was meant to be unheard, but Lola could barely make it out. He waited for a few moments and then knocked again, a little longer and more forceful this time. "Please! It's terrible out! We won't cause you any trouble."
Still nothing. Perhaps he was going to need to barge in after all-
Just as soon as Lola started thinking the alternative, the door creaked open and Arvin peaked his head through the crack. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked as he eyed the two men cautiously. "Have you any idea what it's like to answer the door to some strange men, in the middle of a rainy night like this? I'll ask you to kindly leave."
He went to slam the door shut, but Lola's arm shot out and blocked it from closing them out. "Please sir," he started again with pleading eyes. "I promise we mean you no harm. My name is Theodore Alcott - I'm a Noble from Serendipity. I came here to visit my friend here, and while on a stroll got caught in this storm."
Arvin looked closer, curiously, at Lola. "Theodore Alcott?" he repeated under his breath. "I've heard that name before. And he?"
Lola glanced over at Varyyn. Not knowing if the man wanted to introduce himself by his real name or something else, he opted to remain silent.
"Varyyn Amaranth," the demon replied, dipping his head. They weren't major nobility, but the name was known through the city, and carried a certain amount of weight.
His eyes were flat, a sleeping predator, as he tried for a polite smile. "We really don't mean to intrude, it's just that the storm took us by surprise."
Arvin's eyes widened just a bit, a much more noticeable register of the name Amaranth. Still, he remained cautious, eyeing them both wearily before letting out a heavy sigh and a subtle nod of his head. "Very well," he finally said. "You can come in, but only until the storm has passed. My wife and I are in the same position - we were on a stroll when the storm came, and we found this place."
He swung the door open to reveal a woman sitting on the ground, her knees to her chest, and biting back the urge to cry and plead. She was young, about as the same age as Ilia, if not younger. It was barely noticeable, but she was trembling.
It was a good thing one of Lola's hands was buried in his pocket, or else Arvin may have seen him clench his nails into his skin. "Ma'am," Lola said quietly, giving her a polite nod before making his way into the little shelter house.
Varyyn stiffened when he saw the girl. "Your wife?" he repeated blandly, looking to Arvin. "Isn't she a little...young?"
Arvin's already nervous face grew solemn, and a bit red. "You can't put an age on love," he spat while clearing his throat.
"I agree," Theodore said cheerfully as he made his way over to her. He knelt down in front of the young woman and extended his hand in a formal introduction. "My name is Theodore, ma'am," he said kindly as he took her hand and gave it a soft shake. "What is your name?"
The Nobleman stiffened, unsure whether he should be looking at Varyyn or the young man playing nice with his "wife," before ultimately moving just behind Lola, looming over him to shoot the woman a stern glare.
"M-Mary," she said weakly, eyes on the ground.
"Right, Mary. Lovely name," Lola said as he watched her carefully. "Are you okay, my dear?"
"She's not feeling well," Arvin cut in all-too-quickly. "Must be the weather."
Lola peered over his shoulder at the man and threw him a baffled little grin. "Well, I've never heard of the weather making someone ill. I know a few healing spells, why don't I-"
"She's fine," the man barked with finality.
Alright, enough of this. The “lord” was far enough away from the girl that he didn’t fear him hurting her.
WIth a low growl, Varyyn strode forward and grabbed Arvin by the throat, throwing him backward. “Theodore. Deal with him.”
He turned and knelt beside the girl. Mary. “You’re alright now,” he assured her quietly. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Lola couldn't help but smile wildly at Varyyn's outburst and display of raw power. "W-What is the meaning of this?!" Arvin cried as he attempted regain his composure. "I will have both of-"
He couldn't finish his sentence before Lola was on the man, throwing a fist that made direct impact with the Noble's nose.
Thud!
His head slammed against the wall, causing him to slide to the ground with a whimper. Cracking his knuckles with his other hand, Lola knelt before the cowering sack of shit, his eyes cold like ice as he demanded Arvin's attention.
"Get the girl out of here and lock the door behind you," Lola said, his "accent" washed away.
Varyyn nodded and gently scooped the girl up into his arms, murmuring, "I'm sorry for touching you without your permission, but we've gotta get out of here."
He darted back out into the rain, and as he threw the door closed behind him with a quick burst of magic a small, tabby streak slipped inside. The lock clicked.
Eyes both fire and ice, Lola's lips curled at the sound of the click and he tilted his head, analyzing the trembling embarrassment of a man. Arvin shot his arms up, trying to push Lola away, but the young mage swiftly swatted the arms away and grabbed him by his collar, fist clenched tight as he pulled him close.
"So," Lola graveled slowly. "She's pretty. Where did you find her?"
"W-What do you want from me?!" the man's question more of a beg.
"Shut up," Lola snapped, using his fist to push him against the wall again. "Shut the fuck up, and answer my gods damn question."
"I-I'm.. I"m telling you the truth," Arvin breathed, panic in his voice as his heart could be heart beating through his chest. "I made her my wife.. I found her in the slums.. I just.."
"You just wanted to take advantage of a poor girl who didn't know any better," Lola interrupted, eyes never leaving his captive. "Well, how very fucking nice for you. She sure is a pretty one, isn't she? Pretty as a violet. How could someone so young and so beautiful ever love a disgusting waste of air like you?"
The man didn't answer, his body shaking and his eyes trailing back to the ground. He may have been working through the fear to answer, but Lola didn't have the patience for that, and pulled him up and pushed him back into the wall once more, this time a little more forcefully.
Arvin yelped, and tried for another escape, but to no avail. "I don't know!" he finally cried. "Get off of me! Why are you doing this?!"
The man's lips curled to an almost devious grin, and he nodded. "For Violet," he said softly, leaving at that.
There was that name again. Violet. Why did the boy keep bringing it up?
Arvin's eyes widened in fear, as the horrible realization sunk in that his past was coming back to haunt him.
Returning the girl to her home was a simple enough matter, once she revealed that she didn't have one. Varyyn simply put her to sleep and teleported to one of the women's shelters towards the center of the city-- a newer institution, it hopefully but would be enough for her.
Twyla slunk around Damien's feet, growling low in her throat. She hissed at the strange man who stank of fear and hate, ears pinned back against her skull.
[OOC: I love Twyla]
Lola couldn't help but smile at Twyla's growl, looking down to her for a moment in approval before returning to Arvin with utter triumph in his eyes. "It appears my new friend doesn't care much for you either," he hissed, looking for a reaction. But Arvin was too panicked, too scared, too in utter shock to respond, but that absence was quickly snapped out of him when Lola shoved him to the wall again.
"Cat got your tongue?" the man asked. "Say something now, or I'll cut it off myself."
"Fuck you," Arvin muttered under his breath, any form of hope quickly dissolving away with the rain outside. "You're the boy."
How could this have happened? Viktor told them that the boy was dead along with his cunt mother. He told them! Had Viktor been lying, or does he himself not know? And now he was this bastard's prisoner - what could he possibly do?! There was no hope.
Realizing that, Arvin ducked his head low and started to cry. He was actually crying, sobbing uncontrollable tears. "If you're going to do it then fucking do it," he spat through a shaken breath. "Just get it over with."
"Very well!" Lola obliged, his voice picking up. "Open your mouth."
"What?!"
"Open your fucking mouth," Lola repeated slowly. "Isn't that what you always use to say to her?"
By instinct, the man started to clamp his mouth shut. What in all hells was this boy planning to do? He sighed. Fuck it. "You know, your mother was-"
Lola grabbed his face with an open palm, gripping his fingers tight to keep his mouth open and shut him up at the same time. "Don't you dare speak a word about her," he seethed. Arvin's eyes were wide again, and the panic was back - a last attempt at fight or flight overtook him, and he tried with all the muster he could.
But it was useless. Lola held him down with one arm, and the other hand over his mouth started to burn with fire, as he summoned the magic out of his palm and shot it down the man's throat. Arvin's body started twisting and jerking as flames traveled through his lungs and into the rest of his body, burning him from the inside out as his skin started to steam and his eyes grew black as coal.
Lola watched Arvin to the very last second until the light was finally washed from his eyes, and then he fell back to his rear, breathing heavy, with a satisfied, and almost maniacal, smile on his face.
It was done.
[Lol, me too]
Twyla watched Arvin die with the satisfaction only felines seemed to possess, tail wrapped around her paws and purring loudly.
In the doorway, Varyyn whistled softly. "Lot of anger there, lad," he noted softly.
The sound of Varyyn's whistle quickly snapped Lola back into reality, and he jolted his head over in his direction. "Gods, you saw that?" he asked almost frantically. "I have no doubt you could stomach it, but I didn't want to subject you to this any more than I already have."
He got to his feet, looking over Arvin's dead corpse, contemplating if he should get rid of what little body he had left.
Varyyn just watched him a moment, eyes inscrutable. "You would make a good demon," he said eventually. It wasn't entirely clear whether he meant it as compliment, insult, or neither.
He turned and beckoned. "Come on. Stay the rest of the night at our house. If they find the body and someone comes questioning, you'll have an alibi."
Lola blinked. He wasn't quite sure how to interpret just exactly what Varyyn meant by that, but the invitation back to their home told him it was nothing of concern. He still hadn't completely processed what he had just done, or relished in the moment, but now was not the time. There's a sense of twisted satisfaction, hunting down someone and killing them in cold blood. It's an almost intoxicating feeling that can make a man go insane - but he remained grounded. After all, this was not Lola's first kill on his growing list to avenge his mother.
"Thanks," he replied in an unusually calm tone. He was coming back down to earth, having Arvin out of the way, and he no longer felt the frantic urge to get something done in what felt like an impossible time frame.
He moved to the door to follow Varyyn back to his home.
Varyyn scooped Twyla up as they headed back out into the rain. "Your mother," he said at length, droplets of water skating off his shoulders. "Is she...gone, now?"
Lola didn't answer right away. Just the thought of his mother no longer being there made him shake and red with anger, but at least in his mind he was making it right. He sighed softly, deciding that Varyyn had a right to know everything considering what he had just helped him do.
"Yes," he replied in a soft tone. "We never had much. We grew up poor. And then, while I was still just a boy, she met a Nobleman named Viktor Radbyrne, and then she married him. It wasn't long after that when it started happening. The beatings, the torture, vile disgusting acts against her will.. and it wasn't just him. He let his disgusting friends take turns with her, Arvin included."
He stopped for a moment, his fist clenching in his pocket. "They treated her like some sort of dead dog," he seethed. "The day she finally fought back, Viktor killed her. That was almost fifteen years ago now."
Varyyn paused a moment before replying, seeming to weigh his words.
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, then shook his head. "I will never pretend my kind is virtuous in any way, but humans—“ He shook his head again, not completing the sentence.
Lola didn't have to reply to show he knew exactly what Varyyn meant. Humans could be the worst kind of people, the worst kind of species, if they wanted to be, and Viktor and the rest of his little gang of Nobles were prime examples.
"Why are you protecting Ilia?" he asked, trying to steer the subject away as they moved diligently through the storm. "You are not her biological father, so what does she mean to you? What are you protecting her from?"
The demon just looked at him silently through the rain for a long moment. "Why do you want to know?" he asked eventually, gaze searching.
"You said your kind isn't the most virtuous, but when I look at you a see a man far better than the ones I'm after," he said. "And back at your house when you found us, I thought you were going to kill me. You could have, or just taken my memories like you originally intended. You seem hells bent on protecting her."
He bit his lip in further thought. "Call me curious," he finally said. "I've already taken the oath, so you don't have anything to worry about."
Varyyn stared at him for a few moments longer. He seemed distracted, hardly noticing that the raindrops were no longer rolling harmlessly off him, instead evaporating almost instantly into steam.
"There are plenty of my kind who would do far worse to Ilia than those men did to your mother," he replied bluntly. "Though not for the same reason. Demons consider themselves above that." He snorted. "It would be pragmatism, not some perversion of lust."
"Okay, then who?"
Lola couldn't help but feel he was pushing just a little too hard, but he couldn't help his curiosity. These people have seen the darkest part of him, at least Varyyn had, and now he was left with unanswered questions. "Sorry. What I mean is.. You love your daughter, but how did she become your daughter? And who exactly are you protecting her from? If there is anything I could do to help..."
"Enough." Varyyn's voice was sharp. "Do not overstep, human. Ilia's and my business is our own. I've upheld my end of our bargain-- I made no promises to share information with you."
Lola bit his lip until it stung. He could have very well rolled his eyes too, but decided against it. If Varyyn didn't want to talk, there no use trying to push it. "We're almost there," Lola noted, averting the subject. "It'll be nice to get out of this rain."
Varyyn sighed and nodded. "Yes, it will-- what in hell?!"
Twyla was suddenly yowling, scratching, tearing at him as she tried to struggle out of his grip. He nearly threw the kitten to the ground in his attempt to get her out of his hands, exclaiming something in demonkyn that didn't sound entirely polite.
The tabby kitten didn't so much as pause, racing down the street toward the door to Varyyn and Ilia's home. The demon's eyes followed her as he walked, a confused frown furrowing his brow. "What in hells got into her?" he muttered.
Then he saw, and felt, the broken seals. His eyes widened, steps faltered. "No..."
He took off after Twyla, racing through the storm to the door and throwing it open. "Ilia? Ilia!"
The parlor was a wreck, furniture and bookshelves strewn in pieces around the room. Twyla, now in her full hellcat form, paced agitatedly around the space, growling and sniffing for her mistress. Varyyn froze in the doorway, chest heaving as he felt something he hadn't felt in centuries: panic.
"Ilia!"
Lola could feel Varyyn's panic and it only served to do the same for him, adrenaline rushing as he hurried over to the front door. He stopped just short of the demon man in his company, peering over his back to see the parlor in more than just disarray.
He looked on Twyla almost in fear, but it was brief as he put the pieces together; every comment they made about the kitten made sense now, and being the unusual family that they already were, this wasn't a far stretch.
And then, Varyyn shouted for Ilia.
Fuck.
"What the hells happened here?!"
Varyyn didn't seem to hear him, tearing through the house and chanting spells under his breath.
Every seal broken. Ilia nowhere to be found.
Twyla growled, pacing the room one last time, then suddenly lunged toward Lola, knocking him to the side as she charged through the foyer and down a back hallway toward the kitchen.
Lola let out a surprised yelp as he was tossed aside by Twyla's force. "S-Shit," he breathed, trying to regain his composure. "Twyla! Wait!"
He was back on his feet and rushing down the hallway after the hellcat.
The hellcat paid him no mind, skidding to an awkward halt as she tore into the kitchen. She growled low in her throat, stalking around the edges of the room-- then suddenly came to a halt and yowled thunderously.
Varyyn was in the kitchen doorway in an instant. "What?" he demanded, and Twyla yowled again, softer this time. The demon strode forward to see what she was circling, and he paled considerably, his naturally gray skin tone fading to a sickly white.
Blood dotted the floor, leading in a trail to the back door out of the kitchen. A scrap of Ilia's dress was caught on the edge of the door.
is this my fault?
Lola caught up to them only to gasp and for his stomach to turn at the sight of the blood trail leading out of the back door. He couldn't speak, he didn't know what to say. Is this my fault? he kept asking himself as he waited for Varyyn to say something, anything.
The demon lord suddenly snapped from his paralysis and whirled on Lola.
"You," he growled, and snapped his fingers. His glamour reasserted itself, and he seemed to be trying to calm down, though his breathing was rather ragged. "With me, we're going after them."
Lola blinked. He really thought the man was about to snap his neck in half.
He nodded quickly. "Right," he said with a heavy breath. "Let's go. I'll do whatever I can."
Varyyn just grunted and nodded. "Twyla, come here," he ordered, and the hellcat shrank back into her tabby kitten self, jumping up to snuggle into an interior pocket of his jacket.
The demon could track Ilia's signature, but the hellcat's nose would come in handy. Especially since their quarry was likely using magical means to obscure their trail.
Lola's face was pale. If something had happened to Ilia, he didn't know if he could ever forgive himself. Sure, he barely knew these people, but they helped him, and that was enough. And now, because his own self-righteous mission that took Varyyn away from the house, she was gone.
"Do you know who might have her?" he asked after some time.
"Only a demon of immense power could have broken those seals," Varyyn replied quickly as he stepped out into the rain. He barely took a moment to lock onto the magical trail Ilia's abductor had left, cross referencing with Twyla's nose before starting off.
"There are currently only twelve demon princes in existence. Of those, only nine are likely to have risked attacking her outright like this."
Only nine? Gods help them.
"Why would someone want to attack Ilia?" he asked as he stayed on Varyyn's path. "What are they planning to do with her?"
"Rape her until she produces a child," Varyyn replied bluntly. "Possibly several. And then either dispose of her, or test the limits of her latent powers."
Lola didn't understand, nor care what Varyyn meant. The only thing he heard is that they were going to rape her. They were going to hurt her. He tried to control his breathing, but failed. His eyes burned red like the fire that was fuming out of his fingertips.
He nodded sternly at Varyyn. "Lead the way."
“What exactly do you think I’m doing?” the demon snarled, a fraction of his control slipping and the fear for his daughter shining through in his voice. Blood kin or not, he had raised the girl, and almost despite his better judgement he loved her dearly.
And she had just been ripped away from him. His very worst fear come to pass in what must have been less than an hour. To help a human she had taken a shine to.
He would've been caught off guard, but he knew that anger. He opted to remain silent, and instead followed the man on the hunt for his daughter.
He could only hope that they would get there in time.
Varyyn ran in silence for several minutes longer, then suddenly drew up short.
"Damnit," he hissed, turning in a slow circle. He'd lost the trail.
Well, not lost it. Rather, the trail suddenly led in all directions, and he had no way of knowing which one was real.
Lola had to stop himself from stumbling over his feet when the Demon Lord came to an abrupt stop. He mirrored Varyyn, circling around and glancing every which way for some kind of clue as to where they had taken her.
He felt useless.
Varyyn suddenly whirled on Lola, eyes a little wild. “Were you with her?” he demanded. “Even a kiss or two— anything that might leave traces of her aura on yours?”
"W-What?! No, of course not!"
Lola was not prepared for that question, and quite frankly, it scared the shit out of him. Facing old cowardly nobles from his past was one thing, but a demon lord out for blood?
He wasn't quite sure what else to say, and even if he would even believe him in his current state, so Lola's mind raced for anything that could be of use.
"Wait," he spoke again, something shooting into his mind. "We hugged. Before we hunted down Arvin."
"How intimate?" Varyyn barked— either he didn't understand the awkwardness of the question in a more usual context, or he just didn't care. "Did she share anything with you, or you with her? Something that might offer your aura a hold on hers or vice verse?"
Hells' bells, the one time he'd rather Ilia's teasing, flirtatious nature might have gotten her anywhere.
"I.. I don't remember," he admitted hesitantly. "I gave her a hug because she helped me, and because I felt a sort of kinship with her.. but that's it and-"
He bit his lip. He felt like there was something else. "Wait, there was her pendant," he began, remembering the little gem that informed her when Lola had been lying. "We held it together and.. and this," he said as another thought came into his head. He fished his pockets and retrieved his mother's ring they used to originally pinpoint Arvin's location. "She held onto this for a bit too."
Varyyn grunted and wrapped a stone gray hand around Lola’s, holding the ring. “It’ll have to be enough,” he muttered, closing his eyes. “Twyla, try to find her scent.”
The kitten-hellcat meowed an affirmative and jumped to the damp ground, nose twitching and mouth open as she scented the air.
Lola also closed his eyes, as if it were to help. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, her aura would be even more distinguishable for the hellcat to sniff out.
Or maybe that wasn't how it worked at all.
His eyelids slid open, controlled breaths, as he waited for the man to hopefully find something.
It wasn't perfect, but it narrowed things down. Varyyn snapped his head around, looking down an alley. "That way. Run!"
Thank Gods.
Lola's legs fired through the streets as he made his way down the alley.
Twyla ran ahead of the two men, seeming to almost glow in the dim, drizzly alley. The storm had not entirely passed, but at least it seemed to be weakening.
Lola could only hope Twyla would find the demon responsible for this and ripped his head off without a second thought. He desperately wanted to see that. He couldn't focus on anything more than that and keeping up with the hellcat, rushing against time to save Ilia, as the rain lightened on his skin.
Varyyn and Twyla followed the trail to a less populated neighborhood of the city, near the western outskirts.
An old house, abandoned for at least a decade, seemed to glow in the demidemon's vision. His eyes tinted red. "In there," he said sharply under his breath, pointing.
"What are you planning on doing?" Lola asked quickly. "It's just like before. If we rush in there, he may kill her or worse. We need some sort of plan."
He bit his lip, considering their options, and coming up with a quick idea despite his better judgement. "I may not be some demon lord or demon prince, but I'm more capable than I look. Use me as a distraction. I'll keep him at bay until you can get her somewhere safe."
The demidemon's form flickered between human and demonic as his whirling emotions made themselves known. He clenched his teeth and nodded sharply. The human had a point.
"What's your plan to keep them distracted?"
"Glamour," he said absolutely. "Hear me out. I may not be a demon, a lord, or a prince, but I'm pretty damn good at what I can do. I just need to get inside and I can start duplicating myself, even give my duplicates physical form. I suspect someone like him won't back down from something like that, but it would buy us enough time for you to get her out of there while he tracked me down."
Varyyn listened carefully, then nodded. "Alright. If you can keep him distracted, Twyla and I should be able to free Ilia in a minute or so. Can you last that long?"
It was mostly a rhetorical question. No mortal could truly fight a demon prince, not on his own. But Varyyn didn't need Lola to win, he just needed to buy time.
"I can," Lola said in full confidence. "Can you get me in?"
He already felt his body grow light as he focused on the duplication.
The demidemon nodded. "I can. I'll cloak myself in shadow and break the seals, then you follow behind, they'll think you're the one who broke in, with any luck."
"Okay, just one thing."
Lola closed his eyes, concentrating on what he would do next. He started reciting a sequence of sentences to himself, mostly inaudibly, but bits and pieces rolled out into the air.
'You've been a bad boy.
You did it.
Or have I come too early?'
Those were the words that could mostly e made out, but the rest were slurred under his breath. Once he was satisfied, he opened his eyes and gave Varyyn nod.
"I'm ready."
Varyyn nodded back, either not paying attention to or feeling no need to comment on the little ritual.
With an understated wave of his hand, the demidemon's entie body was cloaked in shadow. He moved cautiously toward the entrance of the building, feeling a myriad of seals flare and break under his touch.
A whisper was enough to redirect the wind of the storm, blowing the door wide open and allowing him to slip inside. He hoped Lola was up to the task of providing distraction.
Game time.
Lola waltzed into the house with all the confidence in the world, and all the foolishness in the world. "Finn," he called out a name he made up on the spot. "Finn, my boy! Are you in here?!"
He walked slowly, cautiously, through the opening room as his eyes scanned in every which direction. "Come out, come out, wherever you are.." he teased in a low growl. "I have a surprise for you! Come on, don't be that way! I know you're in here!"
As Lola traipsed into the house, Varyyn shifted around the edges of the room, trying to follow whatever thin tendrils of Ilia's aura remained. Twyla moved ahead of him, easily hiding her tiny form beneath dilapidated furniture.
"Well, well, well."
The voice was a whisper, but somehow it boomed through the old building, shaking the walls and ceiling. It was everywhere, but nowhere at the same time, impossible to pinpoint a location.
"Is this the rescue party?" A sigh shuddered the the windows. "I confess I was expecting...more. Imps, deal with him. Make sure he's really alone."
And from out of the woodwork poured several dozen creatures, scaly and angular, with vestigial wings and joints that bent the wrong direction. Varyyn cursed silently; on their own or in smaller packs imps were typically nothing more than pests. But in these numbers?
He hoped Lola knew what he was doing.
Fuck.
Why did he expect the demon prince to actually be alone? He wasn't prepared for something like this. He had no choice but to duplicate himself to handle the onslaught of imps heading his way, but he didn't want to do that until he was face to face with the man who stole Ilia away.
It couldn't be helped. He would have to do something a little different for the demon bastard, when that time came.
Fuck it.
His body was tingling. It had been a slow surge building up since they were outside of the house, but it had steadily grown stronger to the point to where it felt like massive waves crashing inside of him, or a ball of pure energy ready to explode. This wasn't something he did often, nor had it quite perfected, so he hoped to gods it worked.
He grinned. "That's no way to treat a guest," he snickered.
"That's no way to treat a guest," another Lola said as appeared seemingly from thin air, snatching an imp from the air and quickly driving a blade into its neck.
"That's no way to treat a guest," another came, and another imp butchered in quick, ruthless fashion.
The pattern continued for what felt like a lifetime, but in reality it was over in a matter of seconds. The imps he sent, all dead, and the duplicates of Damien Lola disappeared back into the shadows, leaving the original standing there with a cocky grin plastered on his lips.
He didn't have to lift a finger, but he would be laying if that little stunt didn't drain him more than he wanted to admit.
Hm. Not bad.
Varyyn didn't have to pay the imps much mind with the Lola duplicates running about. He could focus on tracking Ilia's aura.
Twyla found her first, sprinting across the room to a door that seemed to lead back further into the house, sunk into a half rotten frame. She meowed urgently and scratched at the door. A tendril of shadow from her master slipped beneath the corner of the door, nudging it open.
What he saw made the demidemon freeze for a moment, eyes going wide. The shadows he had gathered to cloak himself fell away in his panic. "Ilia..."
His daughter hung suspended in the air, eyes closed, floating almost peacefully with her arms spread, ragged and bloodied dress hanging from her frame. A sigil pulsed with faint blue-white light on the floor beneath her, shooting sparks of magical power up in lines like bars around the young woman's frame.
The power that spoke in that thunderous whisper pulsed through the building, making the very darkness shiver.
"Varyyn," it hissed. "I should have known."
The demon snarled, throwing his hands up just in time to brace against the impact of the blunt magical force that was thrown at him. "Lola! Save her! I'll hold him off as long as I can, save Ilia!"
Lola rushed through the hall in what felt like a race against time, and a race against the imps. He thought he took care of them, but there were either a few left over or more came much to his demise as he followed the sound of Varryn's voice.
They flung themselves at him while in his sprint, cutting at his arms and legs and drawing blood in the process. He didn't have any more time to deal with them, though, and soon enough he saw Ilia hung in the air.
He didn't have to think about. When he was close enough he launched himself into the air, arms open in attempts to catch the woman on his way back down.
The moment he touched her Ilia's eyes flew open with a gasp. She was immobile, bound by invisible chains, sparks of magic so cold that they burned rolling off her skin.
She cried out, trying to struggle away from her captor, before she realized who was clutching her, trying to pull her from the circle of the sigil. "D-Damien?"
"Lola!"
Varyyn was panicking. No no no no no. He'd fallen right into the trap, led Lola unwittingly to the slaughter. "Get out of there, now!"
"Papa? Papa!" Ilia twisted, still suspended awkwardly in midair. She caught a flash of orange and yellow flame out of the corner of her eye, Twyla springing forward with a snarl on her face. She manged to get one arm around Damien's shoulders, trying to pull herself from the magical chains with a cry of pain.
The voice chuckled, and the house began to shake, the wind of the storm suddenly doubling as it wailed outside. "Too late."
"ILIA!"
Magic pulsed, the shadows writhed, and the sigil beneath Ilia and Damien suddenly burst into bright white light. And the building exploded.
The Rift tore easily through the Veil, drawing in the three souls that had been standing in the center of the summoning sigil. For a moment it was simply a gaping hole of darkness ripped into the fabric of reality.
Then it was gone, leaving a bedraggled Varyyn kneeling in the wreckage of the building, bruised and bleeding.
"Ilia...?"
They were gone.
Lola managed to soften Ilia's fall, much to his own injury as he landed awkwardly, and painfully on his shoulder on the way down. Not only that, but a sudden lightheadedness washed over him, his eyes dazed and foggy as his lids slid open and he tried to focus through the blur that was poluting his vision.
It was suddenly quiet. Had they done it? Was she safe? Did Varyyn kill the demon and he rescued Ilia from his wrath just in the nick of time?
No. They did nothing of the sort.
Eyes finally finding focus, he tossed his sight around in what felt like panic. They were not in Connlaoth anymore.
"W-Where are we?" he grumbled through the pain that jolted through his limbs.
Ilia was sprawled over him, panting, shaking as the aftershocks of the portal spell skittered through her body.
She didn't even need to look around to know where they were.
"Demon...Realm," she whispered, obviously terrified. "He dragged us through the Veil. We're in the Demon Realm."
"..Demon.. ..Realm.. ?"
That was no good. Lola moved his body just from under her, breathing heavily as he stared hazily up for a few moments. "S-Shit," he winced as he moved to sit upright. That was some fall. It probably wasn't broken, but his shoulder was on fire and he definitely injured it more than he needed to, given the situation.
"Hey," the man said softly as he glanced over her, placing his hands on either side of her cheeks. "We'll get out of here. I'm sure your father is working on it as we sit here.. Are you okay?"
She didn't realize she was crying until his hands were on her face. She sniffled and nodded shakily, wrapping her arms tight around herself.
"They d-didn't hurt me," she mumbled in answer to his question. Her eyes were wide, tears making tracks down her cheeks. "They said they were g-going to send me here. To-- to someone." She swallowed thickly and shook her head. "I think you disrupted the spell. I-I was supposed to be sent to his palace, but this..."
She looked around.
A red and gray wasteland spread in all directions, a desert of obsidian and dust. Her shivering intensified. "...I don't know where we are."
Lola picked the wrong house to find shelter at. He couldn't help but blame himself. He could've found Arvin eventually even without their help, and because of him Ilia's life was put in danger, and now here they were, lost in the middle of all hells.
He was scared too. He never knew much fear when committed to his self-righteous mission, and he never had to deal with anything other worldly such as this. Never had to deal with demons, or even warriors, just cowards.
How the fuck were they suppose to get out of this?
He closed his eyes, breathing focused to get himself together. Finally, he rose to his feet and extended his hand to the woman. "C'mon, clever girl," he urged. "Let's find a way home."
Ilia stared up at him in silence for a few moments, still sniffing. Then, cautiously, she reached out and took his hand, letting him help her to her feet.
"Okay." She took a shaky breath and clenched her eyes shut. "Okay."
And then suddenly she had wrapped her arms around him, hiding her face against his shoulder as she swallowed back sobs. She clutched him tightly, needing the connection to something solid and mortal, something that wasn't this place.
Then she stepped back abruptly, wiping at her eyes. "Alright. We're--"
"Mrrow?"
"...Oh my gods!"
She started running, and a tabby streak darted out from under a pile of jagged stone to greet her, purring as she jumped into the girl's arms. "I didn't realize she came through," Ilia half laughed, half cried, cuddling Twyla to her chest.
Lola was a little startled by the woman's sudden embrace, but it made sense given what she had just went through. He went to wrap his own arms around her, trying to comfort her, but was soon interrupted by the sound of..
Twyla?
He watched as the little tabby hopped into Ilia's arms, a relieved smile on his face. "I didn't either," he replied absently as he moved a little closer to almost inspect the the kitten. "You're one tough cat," he said fondly as his fingers found the back of her ears.
He wasn't sure why, but Twyla being there as well felt like a little weight was lifted off of their shoulders.
Twyla's purring doubled and she rubbed her cheek against his hand. Ilia smiled softly, looking up at him.
"She really is," she murmured. A soft sigh and she ran a hand through her rather bedraggled hair, looking around. Taking stock. "Okay... Okay. What happened, exactly? How did you and Papa find me? Where did you find me?"
Portals usually corresponded to specific places on either side of the Veil. Maybe knowing where they'd been on the Mortal Plane might give her some idea of what to do next.
"Not being from Connlaoth, that's going to be a little difficult," he murmured, mostly to himself. "After we dealt with Arvin, we went back to your home and that's when we found it in complete disarray.. We ventured back into the storm to look for you, but your father struggled to pick up any type of scent.. until we used this," he fished the ring out of his pocket and held it in an open palm for her. "He was able to find you with this. That's when we found you in that abandoned house."
He frowned, considering. "I'm sorry. I don't think I can tell you much more than that."
Hm.
Well that was just maddeningly unhelpful.
Not that she'd really expected more, but she couldn't help deflating slightly. She looked around again, squinting as a sudden, sulfurous wind whipped the dust around them up toward her face.
"Alright. First thing we should do is find some shelter," she decided briskly. It at least gave them a goal, a step forward.
"Shelter," he repeated. "Right."
Where in all hells were they suppose to find shelter in a place like this?
He took a few steps away from her, squinting as if that would actually help him locate something a little easier. No use. Lola was completely out of his element.
"Ilia," he said over his shoulder. "How much do you know about this place?"
The young woman bit her lip and shook her head slowly. "A bit. What I could learn from demonology books, and trying to get answers out of Papa."
She coughed as another burst of sulfurous wind whipped her hair and dress around her. "We won't last long in this," she choked out. "Almost everything here is poison to mortals, in some way or another. We need to get out of the wind."
Jaw set with grim determination, she started walking toward one of the jagged gray piles of rocks. At least, she hoped they were rocks.
Lola coughed with her as the wind dusted through, a burning sensation tickling at the back of his throat. "Poison," he choked under his breath. "Of course it is."
Taking her lead, he followed Ilia in hopes that the little knowledge she had of this place would be enough for them to find a substantial shelter. At least, long enough for them to formulate some sort of plan.
Twyla squirmed down from Ilia's arms, taking her true form as she stalked ahead of the two of them, sniffing warily.
Ilia glanced back over her shoulder at her companion, silent for a long moment before she murmured, "Thank you. For coming after me."
Even if they had both wound up in the Demon Realm. She felt distinctly guilty about that. "You-- you wouldn't be in this situation if you'd just left," she said softly. "I'm...sorry."
"Hey, no," he said rather quickly. "I'm sorry. You wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't come to your home and stirred up trouble the way I did. Varryn would have still been there with you if I hadnt-"
He stopped and lightly touched her arm. "I'm the one who should be sorry, Ilia. Not you."
Ilia bit her lip and took a breath to fight back tears. No. No no no, she would not break, not now. Not here.
"It wasn't your fault," she replied briskly, walking a little faster and pulling away from his light touch in the process.
She was almost ashamed of the way her stomach sank at the loss of contact.
Okay.
Lola accepted the woman's retreat with soft eyes. Everything was just a bit heavy at the moment. He waited a couple of silent seconds before walking after her. "Let's say we find shelter," he tried to steer the subject. "How long before they find us? Do they even know we are here?"
She took a shuddering breath, then released it with a helpless shake of her head. "I'm not sure. I think-- I think when you tried to drag me out of the portal, the addition of your soul to the spell might have thrown off our trajectory. We should be at some demon prince's palace, but instead we're..."
She gestured vaguely at the wasteland around them. "Wherever this is. I'm not sure if they'll be able to track us, or how long it'll take them if they can."
Lola didn't know how much longer he could stay calm for Ilia. They were getting absolutely no where and there was no chance in all hells he was going to die in a place like this.
"Maybe we should go to them, then," he said abruptly. "I'll kill the bastard myself. Even his highness's palace is where we were supposed to end up, it's more likely than that's the place that'll get us out of here."
Ilia blanched and her step faltered. "N-n-no!" she stammered in a near shriek. "We can't, you can't. You don't understand, you can't kill him. He'd slaughter you in a heartbeat."
His brow furrowed. "I'm more capable than I look," he said dismissively, though at the back of his mind he knew the girl was right. "Besides, what else can we do?"
Ilia stared at him as though he were mad. "We can run, is what we can do," she replied bluntly. "We can run until we find a new portal, or a place we can make a portal. And we don't stop running."
Lola ducked his eyes in defeat. "You're right," he sighed. "I don't know what I was thinking. I just want to get us out of here."
"I know." Ilia reached over to touch his hand, smiling tightly. Her eyes were wide in a pale, wan face. "And I'm grateful for it, truly. You're very brave, Damien."
She sighed as they made their way toward the cluster of dark gray shale. "But bravery will only get us so far here. We need to be smart about this."
He couldn't help but grin. Very brave, indeed. Very stupid at times too.
"I'll take your lead then," he said after some thought. "I trust you more than I trust myself to get us out of this. Just tell me what I need to do."
He touched his chin as he followed the woman and Twyla, thinking. "Do you think Varyyn will come for you?"
Ilia breathed a small sigh of relief, twisting slightly to glance up at him. She nodded once. "I think so. I mean, I know he'll try, but I don't know if he'll be able to find us on his own," she sighed.
With a brisk shake of her head, she added, "We can't rely on that, though. We'll have to try to find our own way out."
"Sure, I just wish there was some way for us to communicate with him from inside here," he said wearily. "The more we move, the more I realize how bad of idea I just had was.. It feels like my strength is slipping from me.."
He shook his head and sighed. "It's going to take everything I have to pull of any kind of stunt now. At least, like the one I did on our little rescue mission."
They'd reached the shale outcropping by this time, and Ilia ducked to look inside. Finding it empty, she wriggled into the small space, sighing with relief as she was removed from the path of the poisonous winds.
"Get in," she urged Lola, holding out a hand. Her brow furrowed a bit and she added softly, "How exactly did you two get in that house back there? I was sure it was next to impossible."
He took her hand and moved into the outcrop alongside Ilia.
"Your father," he stated flatly. "He broke the seal to get us in. Then I caused a diversion while he looked for you."
He sighed and rested his fingertips atop his forehead. "He was too prepared," he huffed, referring to the demon prince. "I was so sure of myself that everything was going to work. I've never had to deal with something like this before."
Ilia drew her knees up toward her chest, staring out through the small gap in the gray rocks to the red wasteland beyond.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Her eyes itched with unshed tears. "I'm sorry you got involved. I'm sorry you're stuck here. I'm sorry..."
Twyla mewed softly and nuzzled at the girl's legs, purring in an effort to soothe as she dropped her forehead onto her knees and tried to control her breathing.
"Ilia.."
Lola sat next to her, his arm and shoulder adjacent and touching her own. His eyes were soft and on Twyla, taking a moment to just rest and collect his thoughts.
"Ilia," he said again. "Stop apologizing. You did nothing wrong, and we're going to get out of here. We should be safe here for the time being, so let's just take this opportunity to rest up and think of a way to get home."
Ilia sniffled a bit, but she nodded. "Alright," she murmured, drawing her knees a little tighter in against her chest. She also watched TWyla vaguely as the kitten-hellcat paced back and forth in front of the entrance to their little shelter, on guard.
Lola watched Twyla as well and a small moment of peace washed over him. He felt a little better with the hellcat on guard, at least enough to take his attention off of their surroundings and solely focus on the woman in his company.
"Close your eyes for a bit," he suggested softly. "Get some rest. Twyla and I will keep look out for a while. I'll have a plan together when you wake.. what do you say?"
She hesitated, then nodded with a quiet sigh. "Alright. Just...be careful," she murmured as she leaned back against the wall of the cave, letting her eyes flutter closed.
Twyla mewed and paced back into their little shelter, nuzzling her mistress's hand as she fell asleep.
He wasn't exactly sure what he should be keeping a look out for, but his eyes stayed at the shelter's opening to see if he could catch any movement. He would occasionally glance over at Ilia, and continued to do so until he was sure she was asleep.
"Twyla, I'm going to take a quick look outside," he whispered. He didn't wait for the little hellcat to mew any form of response before he left the shelter.
Red, dead wastelands. Oh, and poisonous winds and air. Wonderful. It wasn't the most intelligent idea to wander out on his own, he knew that, but they were getting no where back there. He wouldn't stay out long enough for the air to affect him anyway, he thought.
He took a few steps away from the shelter, peering back over his shoulder as if it were going to grow legs and run away with his companions, before looking forward again and scanning the surroundings.
This is impossible!
There was nothing out there. Nothing. No one. Just wasteland and poison, and he could feel it starting to seep into his lungs. He cursed silently. "Need to head back," he muttered under his breath turning around to see...
Nothing. The shelter was gone. Just.. gone. What the hells? Had he ventured out that far and not realized? No, that couldn't be the same, he just saw it!
"Fuck!" he cursed a little louder, pacing frantically back in the direction of which he game. "Ilia! Twyla!"
He could feel the panic rise through his throat and up to his face. "Fuck!" he shouted again as he failed to locate his companions. "Gods dammit fuck all! Ilia! Ilia! Ili-"
Whoa.
Something just hit him hard.. Poison? His head felt foggy for only a moment before his vision blacked and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Twyla heard him, her head snapping up and a growl rumbling in her chest. The noise woke Ilia almost instantly, and she sat up, looking around. "Damien?"
No response. She looked down at her guardian, who's form was starting to flicker around the edges.
Oh no.
She scrambled to her feet, feeling panic start to settle in her chest. "Damien? Damien!"
Twyla yowled, launching herself out into the red wastes and taking her true form as she did. Ilia followed at a sprint, praying that the hellcat was following their companion's scent. Luckily, it seemed she was, as she suddenly growled in a meaningful way and changed direction, bounding out over the sands.
Ilia coughed, feeling pain begin to tear at her throat. Poisoned air. Fucking demon realms. Squinting against the sulfurous wind, she staggered after Twyla, and almost tripped over the dark figure that the hellcat had begun circling.
Then her mind processed what was happening and she gasped, dropping to her knees. "Oh gods, Damien!"
His eyes were closed. Was he even breathing? Oh gods oh gods oh gods. "Damien, wake up!" She shook his shoulders desperately, though some part of her knew it wasn't going to do anything.
Twyla rumbled, nudging her head against Ilia's arm. The young woman felt the heat of the cat's magic pulling at her own, twisting around it, almost like she was trying to draw it out, to...
Her eyes widened as she looked down at the unconscious Lola. "I-- I don't know how!"
Twyla growled. You'd better figure it out, or he's going to die.
With a helpless little wail, Ilia slammed her eyes shut and drew on her own power, the power years of blood magic had settled just below her breastbone calling it up to settle in her chest, pulsing. Then she reached deeper, further, into that strange dark place inside her very self that Varyyn had always warned her to be wary of. Magic flooded her veins and she gasped, eyes flying open.
She needed to get rid of it, to expel the power, or it would burn away her very soul. She could already feel the intensity of it eating away at her very self. Sobbing under the strain, she leaned down and pressed her lips against Lola's, forcing the magic from her body to his in a surge of heat and a burst of red-gold light.
((I opted out of trying to rewrite my big lengthy vision post and am going to do them in segments per reply XD ))
"Wake up."
....?
"Wake up you useless bastard!"
...W-What?
"You have a job to do and you're off playing house with some silly girl!"
..Ilia?
"You have to get out of this place, the portal is there. Find it and get out."
Ilia! Where are you?
"Don't worry about her, worry about yourself. You still have work to do. She's only going to hold you back."
D-Don't say that. You don't know what-
"I know exactly what's going on. I'm you, remember?"
Lola blinked through the darkness to see him. It was himself, just a younger version of himself. The boy who just witnessed his mother's murder. The day "Damien" became "Lola."
"You have to get out of here. You have a job to do," the young Lola said.
"I know, but-"
"You have to get out of here. The portal is there."
"Portal? The portal back home? Where is-"
"The portal is there."
Lola's eyes shot open with no sight of anything but Ilia's face on top of his with the feelings of lips touching each other. When they parted, he gasped for air with his chest heaving in and out, drenched in sweat.
"We have to go to his palace," Damien said breathlessly. "That's how we get home."
Ilia stared down at the man cradled in her arms, eyes wide and chest heaving with pants. Magic still tingled under her skin, flickering through the air around them-- for the moment, at least, keeping the poison at bay.
"Wh-what?!" Without thinking she shook him slightly. "Are you insane?! You-- we-- what just happened?"
The portal is in the palace. It's the only way out.
"There's no time to explain, Ilia," he said, grunting as he sat upright and began to his feet. "You're just going to have to trust me. The portal to get back home is in his palace."
On his feet again, he recollected the vision - the bits and pieces of information passed along to him in his unconscious state. What was that? It could be nothing at all, but it was all they had to go off of.
"We don't have a choice," he said. "I don't think I'm going to last much longer at this rate."
"Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa." Ilia scrambled to her feet beside him, her hands fluttering anxiously. "You-- you were practically dying a few seconds ago, Damien! I know we're tight on time here, but if you'd just give me a moment to look at you--"
Twyla suddenly growled low in her throat and gripped the hem of Ilia's already tattered dress in her teeth, tugging insistently. "What, what?"
The hellcat met her eyes for a moment, then released her skirt with a huff and turned to pound out over the dunes, swiftly disappearing into the red and gray wasteland.
"Twyla!"
By now thoroughly overwhelmed, the young woman was more than ready to simply lay down in this poisonous desert and let the dust overtake her. Alright, no. That's a bit melodramatic. Just take a breath.
Time.
They needed more time.
"Oh!" Ilia gritted her teeth and shook her head. "I'm an idiot," she hissed under her breath. Without explanation, she grabbed Lola's wrist and started pulling him after her through the desert, following Twyla's already fading tracks.
"Whoa!"
Lola, already weak from the poison, felt like he was practically being dragged by the small, determined woman. "W-Where are we going?" he asked, trying to keep up with the two the best that his strength could provide.
"Hopefully somewhere out of this thrice damned wind," Ilia replied through gritted teeth. Feeling the drag of his weight in her grip, she paused to glance back at him, then suddenly ducked to pull his arm over her shoulders and wrapped her own around his waist.
"C'mon, Twyla knows what she's doing--" I hope--"if we keep following the tracks we should be..."
Another rocky bluff seemed to almost suddenly appear from the storm of dust and sand around them, looming menacingly just a few dunes ahead. Ilia gave a quick, sharp sigh of relief as she pulled Lola toward it, only pausing to set him down once she'd managed to maneuver them into a crevice that blocked most of the wind. Still no Twyla to be seen, but she trusted the hellcat.
"Here." She leaned forward and took Lola's face between her hands, eyes narrowed as she searched his own, looking for signs of illness or fatigue. "Okay, we have a few minutes at least-- what the hells just happened back there?"
Through gritted teeth, Lola grunted as he sat up, taking her hands in his own. The sudden burst of adrenaline began to wear off, and the weakness brought by poison returned to his bones quicker than one would think possible.
"I.. I can't," he began, trying to find his focus. "It's hard to explain what happened. I'm not sure if it was a vision, or a dream, or if this poisonous air is just playing tricks on my mind-"
"I'm not crazy," he interrupted himself. "When you father opened the seal," he stopped again, struggling to catch his breath. "Listen. I know the way out of here is through the palace."
"Okay, okay." Ilia tried to soothe him, letting her hands drop to his shoulders. "Look, I believe you, I do."
To her slight surprise, she realized that she was telling the truth; she did believe him, as improbably as his claim seemed. Though she'd never been to the Demon Realms before, she'd learned enough from books and her foster father to know that the same laws of logic and physics from their world didn't necessarily apply.
It was entirely possible that Lola had suffered some sort of vision that showed him the way home.
...It was also just as possible that some malevolent power was tricking him into thinking that was the case-- she decided not to think too hard about that.
"Lola, I believe you," she repeated, "but we-- we can't get to the palace. We don't even know where it is, and this place..." She trailed off, glancing back over her shoulder at the sprawling wasteland. "You'll never make it all the way there," she whispered, almost more talking to herself than to her companion.
Then she shook her head abruptly and looked back to him, brow furrowed and jaw set. "Without a blood ritual, I'll only survive a few days here...you even less."
Lola hasn't felt defeat in a long time, but today he soaked in it.
She was right, there wasn't much they could do - and he himself was steadily losing his strength. Even if his vision was accurate, which is fiercely believed that it was, they had no way of knowing how to get there.
"Okay," he said quietly, his thoughts forming as slowly as his limbs could move. "What's a blood ritual?"
"A ritual performed using blood either as a binding agent, an amplifier of natural ability, or a cornerstone of the ritual itself," Ilia replied crisply, as though reciting a lesson that she had heard many times.
Of course she was being more than a little catty; she had no doubt that Lola knew very well what a blood ritual was, and had rather been asking what type of ritual it was exactly that she planned to do.
But she didn't want to tell him.
The young lady turned her face out into the wind for a brief moment, squinting against the dust that stung at her eyes. "Damnit," she whispered. One hand moved toward her waist, then the small of her back, feeling the flat of the blade that she wore beneath her clothes. Lucky thing the imps hadn't been intelligent enough to search her properly.
"Alright." She let out a sharp breath and snapped her head back around to look at Lola, brow furrowed. "I am going to be right back. I promise. Just...don't move."
Without waiting for him to answer, she got to her feet and peered out around the rocky bluff they were using to block the wind, then took off into the wasteland, one arm raised to shield her eyes as best she could.
Well that was a very bookish answer.
Just because he was dying in some demonic wasteland didn't mean he lost all count of his wit, or his sense for that matter.
"Wait, where are you-" he started to say, his voice low with zapped energy, before the woman had completely faded from his sights.
Blood ritual, he thought to himself as he let himself rest for that moment.
Anything to get out of here.
Twyla returned before Ilia did, the hellcat pacing toward their little shelter with her body held low to the ground and her eyes pinned close to her skull. As she grew closer to Lola though, her form shimmered and shrunk until she was once more the tabby kitten that had trailed her mistress around the manor.
"Mow?" The tiny cat sat back on her haunches, butting her the top of her head up against Lola's leg before cocking her head to the side and flicking her ears at him.
Ginger fur was stained with streaks of a strange black liquid, the scent of iron hung thick in the air.
Ilia was only a few minutes behind the hellcat. Her already ragged dress seemed a bit worse for ware from being out in the winds, and she managed to accrue a small collection of cuts and bruises over her face and arms.
"Lola? You still with me?" She hurried to kneel beside him, panting lightly. Her hands twisted in the hem of her skirt-- she seemed to be clutching a bit of ripped fabric in one hand, the cloth probably once a part of the dress itself, but now so worn and soaked through with a dark, dripping substance that it was near unrecognizable.
"Yeah," came his simple, tired reply.
"What happened?" he asked, not bothering to move from his position. No point in wasting any more strength at the moment - plus, he had questions.
"What do you have there? Where'd you two go?"
"We didn't go far, and I really don't think you wanna know," Ilia replied quickly. She shifted to wrap her arm around Lola's neck, her hand cradling the back of his head, and tipped him forward slightly while her other hand came up and pressed the blood-soaked cloth to his lips.
"I'm really, really sorry, but I need you to swallow," she whispered. Closing her eyes, she began to murmur under her breath. The hand at the back of his head sketched symbols against the nape of his neck as she chanted softly in a language that was both crackling fire and rumbling stone, the fracture of ice upon slate and howling winds.
Vile.
The thick blood slipped down his throat at an unforgivably slow speed, and the man's distaste for the substance was all too apparent. With a grimace, he finished the offering as Ilia did.. well, whatever she was doing behind his head.
And that wasn't the end of it.
Lola's stomach lurched violently and suddenly and he clapped both hands over her mouth as bile burned his throat.
Then it settled, and he was left looking helplessly at the woman with while quietly gasping for relief.
"Gods," he panted. "What next?"
Ilia let out a sharp breath of relief, carefully releasing her grip on Lola and sitting back. "Well...that's it, actually," she murmured. She was breathing a little harder than usual, the stress of performing magic in such a place wearing on her, just a bit. She pulled the hand that had gripped the bloodied cloth behind her back, hoping he wouldn't notice the few drops of red that spattered onto the sand as she did-- her own blood.
"That should...help. At least for a while." She exhaled quietly again and glanced out over the wastes. "You're not dying anymore, at least."
He managed a grin, and the pain he felt just from showing emotions was already noticeably less. "I was never going to die here," he said triumphantly, or perhaps stubbornly, before sitting upright to face her. "Wow." He looked around, turning his head left to ride and stretching his arms out. "I feel brand new. So, does this mean... ?"
He trailed off, hoping she would answer the question he was to afraid to ask.
"Mean...what?" Ilia looked at him blankly. "You'll survive the week, at least, if that's what you mean. Long enough for us to get to this castle you're so convinced is our way home."
She huffed out a breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. "So then we'll just die there instead of out here in the Wastes. Hooray!"
Drinking demon blood doesn't turn you into a demon, Lola. Get off of it.
The mage got to his feet, but not without feeling the symptoms of what he had recently consumed. He felt just the slightest tingle in his bones. It wasn't much, but it was euphoric in a way. It made him feel... stronger.
It was like a drug. Similar to the drug that fueled his vengeance, quenched his thirst for the blood of his enemies. Similar, but different. It was almost romantic in a sort of way.
He looked at Ilia, smiling, feeling very much fond of her in that moment. "Right then," he said eagerly, taking her hand in his. "Let's go."
Lola didn't want to waste any more, and soon they were back footing through the wastelands.
"Wait-- Lola!"
Ilia could do little more than stagger after him as he suddenly pulled her into the dusty wastelands. Twyla gave a little yowl as she raced after them, taking a running leap and digging her claws into Ilia's already tattered dress to clamber up onto her mistress's shoulder.
"Lola, we don't even know where this castle is," Ilia tried to reason with him, tugging at his hand in an attempt to slow him down. "We can just go storming off with no direction and no plan, we'll be dead within a day!"
Ilia's hand was so soft.
Strange that that is what he was thinking of as he led the three of them aimlessly through the harsh winds and dust. "We'll be dead if we stay back there," he replied, determined to move forward. "Just a little further and then we can find another place to regroup. We're getting close. I'm sure of it!"
Ilia stumbled after him, unable to do much else.
Damn. She hadn't expected the blood ritual to be this effective.
"Lola...Damien!" She tugged at his hand again and dug her heels in. "Listen to me. We're going to find this place, we are, but we don't even know which direction we should be moving! Just stop and think for a moment, please."
She was right.
He really got ahead of himself, but his adrenaline was just pumping so much.
He came to a stop, letting his hand slip off of hers before whipping around to face her. "You're right, Ilia," he said quickly, placing his hands on her cheeks - cupping her face in his hands. "You're always right!"
Without warning, the man leaned forward and kissed her lips, fiercely, whether she liked it or not, before separating from her. "What do you propose?"
"Mmph!"
Ilia's eyes went wide and she stiffened. The kiss was too fast for her to really react one way or another, though Twyla sensed her mistress's tension and growled low in her throat, a sound far too deep for such a tiny body.
When he broke away she took a quick step back, relieved that her hand was no longer clutched in his grip. "What the hells, Lola?!"
She glared at him, arms wrapped around her torso. Despite the anger she clung to in her voice, there had been the barest flash of what was clearly fear in her eyes. "What-- what's going on with you?"
Maybe an adrenaline rush was to be expected from a blood ritual, but she had no idea what this was... Or at least she told herself very firmly that she didn't.
And alright...so maybe she'd kissed him first, but that had been trying to save his life!
Lola couldn't help but smile at the woman. She was just so cute when she was mad. Like a love-sick puppy, he returned her gaze affectionately. "What do you mean?" he asked honestly, not entirely understanding the question.
He really didn't understand why she was angry with him.
Probably just the poisoned air they were breathing.
Then he noticed Twyla's behavior and his brow furrowed. "What's wrong with Twyla?" he asked innocently. "Is she okay?"
"You— I— what?" Ilia gaped at him. "You just— what is wrong with you?!"
Alright, she may have been overreacting a bit, but something about the way Lola was acting scared her. Could demon blood addle a person's mind? Oh gods, what if she'd accidentally made him a loony?
Brow furrowed and lips pursed, she abruptly reached up to take his face between her hands and stared at him searchingly. His eyes...were his pupils a little too large? Eyes too bright, almost like he had a fever, though he didn't feel unusually warm.
And he certainly seemed healthier, at least when compared to dying of poisoned air.
Oh!
Oh. Oh gods.
He kissed her. That would explain her sudden, odd behavior.
Lola didn't even remember doing it until now.
"I-uhh," he started, sudden nervous and with a sinking feeling of guilt. "I don't know what came over me. Sorry."
Ilia relaxed slightly, relieved to see that at least some sense was returning to him. "It's...fine," she muttered, glancing away awkwardly.
Another long, uncomfortable moment of silence stretched between them. Then she huffed and shook her head. "Alright. So. If you're...alright now, we should plan. Was there anything in your--your vision or whatever that might give a clue as to where this castle actually is?"
Idiot.
He almost forgot. He was soon wrapped up in Ilia, his mind literally bending for her, that he forgot what he was even doing. He almost forgot where they were at. "Right," he said under his breath, reaching into his memories the best he could.
"I remember the taste," he said, oddly enough. "The taste of metallic. And.. And the smell. The smell was different than what we are smelling now. It's almost pleasant, seductive.And.. something else."
He thought for a moment more before cursing under his breath. "There's something else that ties this all together; that would bring us there. I'm sure of it.. but I can't remember."
"Metallic?" She pursed her lips, thinking, and reached up with one hand to stroke Twyla on her shoulder absently.
That might help narrow things down. She knew there were many layers to the Demon Realms, and even within those layers territories could be harshly divided both in ruler and in the land itself. It was likely that the transportation circle had at least landed them in the correct layer, but whether or not they were in the right territory was an uncomfortable variable.
"Do you remember anything specific about the smell?"
"Only that it was a sweet, seductive smell," he said with a disappointed shrug. "Almost like a woman."
He thought for another moment before throwing up his arms in frustration. "We're getting nowhere," he said. "Are there any women in this realm?"
Ilia gave him a long, droll look. "No," she responded dryly. "There are absolutely no women in the Demon Realms. Demons just spring out of holes in the ground and are spontaneously born."
Yes, they were on a bit of a deadline, but there was always time for snark.
Especially when it was all she really had on her.
Lola sighed, burying his face in his hands. Now what the hell were they suppose to do?
"Mommy," a young Lola cried out from his bed. He sneezed and coughed and whined.
"Just a sec, dear," the voice of Violet Lola, Damien's mother, called out to him.
Just then, Violet entered the boy's bedroom with a spoonful of medicine, gently bending down beside him to slip the spoon into his mouth. Lola grimaced as the liquid poured down his throat, the metallic taste of the inside of his mouth too much for the boy to stomach.
"It'll make you feel better," she reassured him with a smile.
"Yuck!" he spatted back. "I'm just ready to feel better! I hate this! I don't want to be here anymore!"
Violet placed the back of her hand on his cheek to check his fever, then ran her hand delicately through the boy's hair. "Well, if you hate it so much, just stop."
Lola looked confused. "W-What? What do you mean, mommy?"
"This poisonous air isn't good for you, you should just go to the palace."
"But where is the palace?!"
"Silly boy," she said happily. "You're in the palace. The palace is there."
Just then, Violet pointed her finger off in the other direction of the room. Peering over his shoulder, Lola could only see darkness, but it was zooming in on an object far away. By the time it reached, he realized it was no object at all. It was Ilia.
Damien snapped out of his sudden trance, gasping for air before grabbing his companion by the shoulders. "You're the one I was smelling," he said quickly, too much adrenaline pumping from that revelation to realize how odd that may have sounded. Sweet. Seductive. "Ilia, I think we're already in the palace."
Okay.
What?
"Damien, you're gonna need to run that by me again," Ilia muttered, eyes wide as she looked up at him. There was...rather a lot to unpack there, but she knew they had to focus on the whole already in the palace part. "What do you mean we're already there? Look around!"
She threw her arms wide to indicate the vast nothingness that spread out around them.
To her slight surprise, Twyla jumped from her shoulder and began pacing circles around the two of them, mouth open and nose twitching as she scented the air. She seemed to be almost...searching.
Lola bit his bottom lip, not quite sure how to explain himself. It did sound crazy, after all. At this rate, she had probably already determined that he was a complete psychopath, lunatic, or both. "I don't know how else to say it," he said, mostly under his breath.
His attention closed in on Twyla. "Have you found something?"
Ilia's brow was furrowed as she tried to puzzle through what he was saying, so intent on the task that she hardly paid Twyla any attention when the kittne mewed and grasped the hem of her skirt between her teeth, tugging insistently.
"Hush," she muttered, waving a hand at the little creature absently.
"Rrrrraugh!"
Ilia jumped and squealed as the hellcat abruptly took her true form and snarled at her to get her attention. "What, what? What are you..."
Following the flicking of Twyla's head toward the sand, her eyes traced around the circle that the hellcat had mapped in footprints around them-- one of several, each larger than the last, concentric, with herself and Lola in the center.
Layers. Circles. Twyla was sniffing the air as though she too could smell whatever it was Lola had been talking about--
"Oh my gods." Ilia's eyes widened and snapped up to Lola's face. "Oh my gods, you're right! We're inside the palace, we're just-- we're too many layers down!"
Twyla huffed and nodded, looking smug.
If Lola hadn't have been so freaked out by their situation, he would look a little smug himself at a time like this. But that wouldn't get them anywhere, and he still wasn't sure what to do. How many layers down? Hell, what were layers in a demon realm? He hoped Twyla had a plan.
"Great," he said absently, taking her hand in his and watching Twyla investigate. "Now let's get to the top."
"Absolutely," Ilia agree fervently. Bracing her hands against his chest, she shoved him back, out of the circle that Twyla had paced around them. "Twy, keep him there."
The hellcat growled an affirmative and promptly sat herself down on Lola's feet, purring all the while.
Now in the center of the circles alone, Ilia began pacing herself. First a pentagram, a five pointed star in the middle of the smallest circle. Then she knelt and began tracing runes through the sand in each ring until she reached the outer most. The top.
"Alright." She straightened up quickly and gave both Twyla and Lola a nod. "Step back into the center, but don't smudge anything."
"Sure," Lola said hesitantly. Taking a deep breath, he slowly stepped back into the circle, careful not to mess anything up as he was instructed to. They may actually get out of here, after all. Now, if that's a good thing or bad thing is still yet to be seen.
"Okay, Ilia," he said, feeling his nerves shoot up into his throat. "Now what?"
"Now hold on." Ilia raised her hands as though cupping something in front of her breast. The long gash on her left palm was easy to reopen with a quick slice of her nail, and she hissed in pain. "And try not to get sick."
She closed her eyes and began to chant in that ancient, crackling language. Twyla took a flying leap, changing into her smaller form in midair so she landed on her mistress's shoulder.
Ilia hardly swayed at the motion. Blood pooled in her cupped hands, more blood than it really seemed like there should have been from such a relatively shallow wound. Her voice rose in pitch and volume, and the poisonous air shrieked angrily as it whipped around them.
She snapped her eyes open, and they were bright, bloody red.
With a shout, Ilia threw her hands apart, spattering blood over the pentagram.
And the world warped around them. It was both an instant and an eternity, the wastes twisting and squirming while the wind continued to scream around them.
Then, quite suddenly, it was over. They stood in what appeared to be a rather small stone room, the last traces of the magic circle beneath their feet fading in a soft, reddish glow.
Ilia gasped and collapsed to her knees, her whole body shaking as the backlash of the magic claimed her.
Gods.
What had just happened?
He couldn't concentrate on that for very long, because before he knew it the wastelands were washed away from around them and there they were in that room. His eyes met Ilia as she collapsed to the ground, and it immediately brought him back into reality.
"Ilia!" he exclaimed, dropping down beside her, doing his best to hold her in a way to where she wouldn't fall in further. "Ilia," he said again in disbelief. "You did it. You really fucking did it."
Panting and shaking, the young blood mage tried to give him a smile. She figured it probably wound up as more of a grimace, but it was the best she could do. Rather gratefully she sank into his hold, letting her head rest on his shoulder as she closed her eyes.
"Yeah," she gasped out. She was shivering violently now, and looked more than a little pale. "Just...just gimme...a minute..."
"Hey," Lola tried to convey a sense of calm. He kept his hand on the back of her shoulder, slightly rubbing her back for reassurance. "Take all of the time you need. You'll need your strength. Why don't you let me take a look around while you and Twyla hang back here?"
She wanted to argue with him, point out that while neither of them really knew where they were at least she had some knowledge of the demon realms. But before she could get further than, "No, I should--" the world tilted sharply sideways and her vision threatened to go black for a moment.
"Whhhhoooookay." She closed her eyes and swallowed, feeling her stomach threatening to rebel. Twyla mewed, concerned, and pressed her fuzzy head against her cheek. "Yeah, um...sure. Just...don't take too long."
Lola studied her momentarily with a concerned look on his face. "Rest," he said definitively. "I won't go far. I promise."
And he was off. Leaving Ilia in the hellcat's care, he approached the door in the small stone room, checking to see if it was locked. As he went to open the door, it vanished.
Well. That's something. An illusion, maybe?
Pacing down the corridor, he circled around the hallway until he was led to another door.
"Let's try this again," he mouthed under his breath, fully expecting the same thing to happen this time.
And it did. The door vanished and he entered the next room, just as familiar in design as the first. Perhaps it was so familiar because as he turned the corner, there they were again. He was back in the first room - the one with Ilia and Twyla.
For fuck's sake.
"Told you I wouldn't go far," he said, his voice weakened with stress.
Ilia was more or less collapsed against Twyla's side, the hellcat licking the side of her face rhythmically. She blinked and stared up at Lola— still a little bleary, though she seemed slightly more functional than she had a few minutes ago.
"You...what?" She frowned, shook her head, tried to focus. "What's— What's going on?"
"Nothing," he said as he joined them back on the ground, sitting close and pulling his knees up to his chest. "Literally. I tried to look around, but I ended up back here. It's like the halls are just a circle that lead back to this room."
He sighed, and let the back of his head rest against the wall. "Maybe I'm going crazy, or maybe I'm just not demon enough to figure this puzzle out."
Ilia stared at him for a long moment, not quite comprehending what he said.
"Wait...what?"
Her eyes widened and she tried to scramble to her feet. "Are you serious? We're stuck?!"
"Hey, easy there," he said, trying to calm Ilia before she overdid it again. He stood up alongside her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Lola was unusually calm given the situation, but he supposed anything was better than being in that desert wasteland of shit that they were previously in.
"I don't think we're stuck stuck," he said, trying to find the positive. "We weren't technically stuck before, I just think it's.. uh.. another puzzle we have to solve? I don't know. Maybe I just took a wrong turn."
There's no way he took a wrong turn. It was the only route they had from that room, as far as his human eyes could see.
Ilia tried to control her breathing, closing her eyes for a moment. Alright. This...this was okay. It would be okay. They just had to figure out another way.
“Twyla.” The hellcat surged to her feet, fiery coat glowing in the dim light of the room. “Think you could tried scouting around for us?” Ilia asked, voice rather small though she tried to hold herself more confidently.
That was probably undercut a bit by the way she swayed and had to clutch at Lola’s arm to keep herself upright.
Twyla growled, worried, but inclined her head in a brief nod to her mistress before bounding off.
"We'll figure this out," Lola said reassuringly, though he was not entirely sure of his own words. "I'm sure Twyla will have better luck than I do."
That part he believed.
"You're still in no shape to press forward," he said, taking her arm in his for her own balance. "Sit back down. There's no point in overdoing it right now in your state."
She wanted to argue with him, she really did, but then the world tipped sideways again and she had to close her eyes against a wave of dizziness. Nodding a little frantically, she allowed him to guide her back to the floor, trying to just focus on breathing to keep the sickness at bay.
"I'm really alright," she managed to grit through her teeth. "We don't have time to sit here babying me, we have to move."
They had made it out of the pocket dimension, a fact she was sure the demon prince was aware of. If they didn't keep moving, it was only a matter of time before he found them himself.
Hells, even if they did keep moving it was probably only a matter of time.
"Yeah, I agree with you," he stated firmly, studied her with concern as he sat beside her. He placed his hands on the woman's cheeks and searched her eyes. "But, if we move now,, we will be in worse shape than we would if we wait for your strength to recover. We can't do this without you."
Ilia frowned at him, opening her mouth to argue.
Before she could say a word, a massive, shuddering sound, like a thousand gongs stuck at once, the shattering of a room of glass, suddenly burst around them.
She cried out as the noise assaulted her ears--gods, she could feel it in her bones!-- and pitched forward, desperately clapping her hands over her ears in an attempt to block the sound.
"AH. HERE YOU ARE."
Ilia screamed as the voice ripped through her like fire in her veins. It seemed to be as much in her head as it was in the air around her; she had no idea if Lola heard it the same way, and she didn't exactly have time to find out.
"I THOUGHT YOU LOST, LITTLE DOVE," the crackling, shattered voice boomed around them, "BUT YOU WERE UNDER MY VERY NOSE ALL THIS TIME. EXCELLENT." There seemed to be almost a heated, suffocating presence, steadily growing stronger in the room with them with each word the voice spoke.
Ilia felt her power pulse beneath her breast, still close to the surface from the ritual she had performed to pull them here. Staggering to her feet, she raised a hand and literally clawed a rune into her other palm, gritting her teeth against an instinctive cry of pain as her nails bit into the flesh. She ran for the door and slammed her palm against it, shouting in Demonkyn, "Sealed and bound, cleaved and broken, forge a cage of words unspoken!"
Blood-red magic flashed in a burst of light that flooded every inch of the room. The voice hissed, that suffocating presence retreating, and the light faded.
Ilia braced her hands against the door, eyes closed as she panted harshly. "And you...stay out..."
Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed, unconscious.
"Ilia!"
Lola didn't have time to think about what exactly just happened, but he had a good idea. He heard his voice, the demon prince, as he taunted the girl with his advantages. It was distant, but judging from her reaction, it must have been booming in her head, and - perhaps from her demon blood now coursing through his veins - he was able to hear it too, if only in the form of a whisper.
He ran to her side as she collapsed, catching her before her head could hit the ground. "Ilia," he begged, lightly shaking her. "Wake up!"
Ilia groaned softly and stirred in his arms, gradually coming around. She blinked, then squinted up at Lola, her head positively pounding from using all that magic.
"Shhh," she begged, pressing a hand to her brow. "My head...is killing me. Please. Shush."
Lola's first reaction was to ask a bunch of questions- what was going on, was she okay, but by instinct he just stayed silent. Whatever just happened, it seemed like the girl had bought them some time.
Slowly, he ran his hand through her hair, massaging his fingers gently into her scalp. He didn't know why, though. Maybe it would help her feel better? Maybe he just wanted to.
Her eyes slid closed and a soft, relieved sigh slipped passed her lips as his fingers moved through her hair. The headache was already fading, albeit gradually, but the pressure of his hand was a welcome relief.
Slowly, cautiously, Ilia reached up to wrap an arm around his shoulders and pulled herself into a sitting position with another soft groan. "Alright." She dragged her hands down her face as she tried to organize her thoughts, to plan. "That should buy us...maybe three hours? Maybe."
Her stomach lurched at the memory of that crashing, growling voice ripping through her mind. Swallowing, she looked up at Lola, eyes tired and face pale. "You-- you heard that, right? You heard him?"
"Yeah," he said quietly, his hand still in her hair while the rest of him supported her from completely toppling over. "Yeah I heard him. Scaaaaary."
He let his hand drop from her head and rest on her back. "Three hours should give us enough time to at least come up with a plan," he said softly, almost as if he were trying to keep the demon prince from eavesdropping on a private conversation.
Ilia shook her head. "There's nothing we can do." Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, eyes shut tight once more. "For now, nothing can get in or out of this room. He can't see or hear us, can't reach us, but we can't leave. And Twyla..."
She swallowed, looking toward the door. "Gods. I've locked her out too."
She knew the hellcat was far from defenseless, but guilt and worry still clutched at her heart. Her arms slid around herself, holding tight, eyes unfocused and eerily blank. "There's no way out," she whispered. She started to shake. "No way out. He know where we are, he'll be waiting at the door, there's no way, we can't get out, he's won, he's--"
She choked off and pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle either a sob or a scream, she wasn't quite sure which.
Fuck.
She was right, Twyla was still out there, and they were locked in. It wasn't looking good, but he'd be damned if he was going to give up now.
He wrapped his arms around the woman, holding her close as she began to break down. It was the only way he knew how to console her.
Ilia instinctively tensed and started to fight his embrace, her eyes wide and lips slightly parted as her breathing tip-toed toward panicked gasps. "No no no no no no no no no no..."
With a quiet wail she dropped her face into her hands, shaking in earnest now.
Then, suddenly, the shaking stopped. Her whole body went still and sharp. Then she lifted her head, expression scarily calm, and looked into Lola's face.
"You have a knife?"
What... just happened?
What was going through her head?
"A knife?" he repeated, skeptical and a little alarmed. He pulled it out and held it in an open palm as if on display. "S-Sure, but what do you need it for?"
[CW: attempted suicide]
Taking the knife in hand, Ilia replied emotionlessly, "I'm going to kill myself."
She stood, disentangling herself from Lola as she did. No point getting blood all over him.
Although she supposed the demons would just kill him anyway, once the ward fell, so maybe that was a silly concern.
She flicked the blade around in her palm and slashed toward her wrist.
Lola's eyes shot open in disbelief, and his in alarm ticked louder than his brain could process.
"Ilia!" he screamed, shoving his hand into hers before she had a chance to do any harm. It wasn't enough to to disarm her, and he didn't wait for any type of struggle before he hoisted himself over her, pinning her to the ground with each hand holding her wrist to the ground. "What in the hells are you doing?!"
"Let me go, let me go!"
All that panic came rushing back and Ilia struggled desperately as he pinned her. The knife clattered to the ground and skidded away. A wordless scream caught in her throat and she thrashed beneath him, trying to get free.
Fear was a hot, sickening pit in her stomach, and while a small, logical part of her mind knew Lola was trying to save her life, a much larger part just registered the way he'd pinned her, denied her only means of escape, and panicked.
"Get off me, get off, I won't let him do it, I won't, I won't, I won't, I'd rather die, LET ME DIE!"
"STOP!"
Lola had screamed louder than he thought possible of himself, but in the moment it was the only thing he knew to do. He kept his grip on her tight as to not let her loose, his eyes pleading with her to just listen.
Glaring at the knife in her hand, he muttered a quick, jibberish-like spell violently under his breath until the blade slung from her hand and slid across to the opposite side of the room.
"He's not going to do anything to you!" he yelled again. "I won't let him!"
Ilia went still, save for the trembling that wracked her frame. Slowly, she shook her head. "You can't stop him," she whispered. Her eyes were vague and unfocused again, her mind slowly shutting down as a bone-deep weariness seemed to set in.
She'd known what she was since she was thirteen years old. She'd known exactly what demons like Varyyn's brother and this High Prince wanted her for. And, deep down, she'd known that she had a bitter, violent destiny that she could not escape; the weight of it now pressed down on her, crushing her breath from her body.
For a long, taught moment she said nothing, her eyes fixed on some unknown point over Lola's shoulder. Then...
"If you will not let me die," she whispered, still not looking at him, "then I would ask something else of you."
As if he was going to let her die. That was never even an option.
"Of course," he said, all-too-eager to get the thought of suicide out of her head. "Name it."
Her eyes suddenly snapped away from the nothing she'd been staring into, any hint of that vague mist gone from her gaze as she locked it on his. Her eyes were burning.
Even an hour ago she would have hesitated, would have blushed and stammered and been unable to look him in the eye. But with what seemed like the certainty of her fate closing in, she realized she had one choice left before her, one decision she still could make. And she clung to it.
Damn them all.
"Lie with me." Her eyes never left his, something fierce and desperate haunting her voice. "Please, Damien. Let me know a gentle touch, a lover's touch, even once, before..." She took a shaking breath and finally broke her gaze just long enough to close her eyes for a moment. "Please."
Lie with me.
Well, Lola certainly wasn't expecting that. He would be lying if he said he hadn't thought about it, or that he didn't want to. Especially considering that her demon's blood was pumping through his veins, he couldn't think of anything else he'd rather do - he had been thinking about it since the moment that happened.
..Or was it a trick? A trick to get the knife back.
No, he really didn't think so.
If they were going to die, at least they could share something together before they did.
Fuck it.
Lola didn't respond verbally, but instead leaned down and put his lips on hers. Somewhere in the fierce, hungry kiss, he moved his hands to where they were no longer pinning her down - one cupping her face and the other behind the arch of her back.
Ilia hadn't actually been expecting him to acquiesce so readily-- or enthusiastically. Her eyes widened slightly and she found herself frozen beneath him for the first moment or two of the kiss.
Then she felt his hands move, holding her against him, and suddenly any inhibitions she may have held fell away. With her wrists freed she reached up to tangle her fingers in his hair and pull him closer. Her other hand moved to his shoulder, down his back, rested on his hip for a moment before tugging at the hem of his shirt, seemingly unable to hold still.
The kisses she traced down his jaw and scattered across his throat were harsh and desperate. With a soft noise caught somewhere between a frustrated groan and a passionate sigh, she arched her body up against him and twisted, knocking him off balance and rolling them onto their sides.
They had just started, but he couldn't get enough of her. He was tired and sore, but he didn't care. He didn't want to sleep, even though he desperately needed it. He wanted the ache, he wanted the feel of her skin on him, he wanted her.
He wanted to be in charge, and to let her take charge.
On their side, he moved his lips to caress her neck, nibbling at her hear from time to time with heavy breaths to send shivers down her spine.
One of his free hands found itself under her garments, his fingers tracing her soft skin until they landed in between her legs.
A jolt went through her body and Ilia paused, breaths ragged and sharp. She was still trembling as she stared at him, but now the shivers seemed to be the effects of passion. Her hands came up to cup his face between her palms and held his gaze with her own.
Slowly, almost warily, she traced one hand down the line of his throat, over his collar, down his chest, hesitated on the planes of his stomach, then with a sudden burst of courage slipped beneath the hem of his trousers.
Her eyes were still locked on his, lips just slightly parted as she tried to force her breathing to even out. Fingers moving lightly, verging on curious, she whispered, "Is...this alright?"
Lola smiled breathlessly. He was throbbing, and hard, and that should've been all the answer she needed but he found her question just so incredibly sweet. "Yeah," he whispered, trying not to let his eyes roll to the back of his skull. "You're making me really want you."
He moved his fingers, caressing in an almost massage-like motion, keeping his eyes locked onto hers all the same.
He could not keep eye contact for long, because her neck was too delicious to pass up. His lips found it again, from from the bottom of her chin to the top of her chest.
"Aahh--" Ilia swallowed back the rest of a gasp and closed her eyes as a wave of sensation rippled through her body. She could feel something in her reaching out to him, pulsing against her breastbone from that same place where she always felt her power when she called to blood.
"Da...Damien." She bit her lip and tilted her head back to bare more of her throat. Her fingers wrapped around him gently and she began to stroke with light, exploring touches.
Quite without her conscious knowledge, her hips gave a small roll against his hand and she gasped again, the arch to her back deepening slightly. "Damien...please."
Her beg was all-the-more enticing, and he lifted his waist just enough to remove his trousers as she stroked him into obedience. Without further hesitation, he lifted the woman's ragged dress to expose the rest of her legs and positioned himself firmly on top of her, his hands planted on each side of her head to keep him steadily afloat just above her.
"Are you.. ready?"
Holding his eyes, Ilia nodded once, firmly. "I want this," she whispered. Her hands came up to frame his face once again. "I want you, Damien."
The desperation that had first spurred her into this had slowly been covered, almost without her realizing it, by clear, aching passion. Some small corner of her mind rejoiced in this last small victory she could have over her captor, but the rest...
The rest just wanted to feel him move against her, wanted his lips on hers and his breath against her skin, wanted the fire that had lit beneath her skin to be answered.
"Please," she repeated in a soft rush of air. "Please, I--I need you."
Her pleads were answered, and he was soon moving inside of her. It felt so good. Still drunk on her blood, now drunk on her, he felt the warmth of her on him, and he passionately rocked back and forth to give her what she wanted.
Both throbbing and aching, he let out a soft moan as he gave all of himself to her. He let a finger trace up from her waist to her breasts, and then to her cheek.
A soft cry slipped passed her lips when they were joined and she just lay still for a moment, breathing raggedly as she tried to adjust to the sudden influx of sensation.
But then he was moving against her, in her, and an instinct she couldn't identify took over. A sound very like a growl rose up in her throat and she arched up against him, arms wrapping tight around his waist and shoulder to press her body against his.
She turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm, eyes burning and hazy with desire as she looked up at him. "Make me forget where we are," she begged quietly. The words came to her lips almost unbidden. "I just want you; make me forget everything else."
How could he deny her wishes?
It started slow, and then not too slow but not too fast, but now they treaded loosely on the line of passionate love to a hard, hungry fuck as he moved in and out of her, the slapping of their skin echoing off the walls as he pounded her into submission. It felt too good to stop, and he found his mouth agape with little moans slipping out of his lips from time to time.
"On top," he almost commanded before twisting them around, his back now on the floor, her on top, as he handed her the reins.
"Wha--ah!"
Ilia found herself gasping desperately as he rolled them over, which did very interesting things to the way they were connected. She whimpered quietly, eyes squeezed shut as she adjusted. When they opened again, a flash of blood-red nearly ate away their color for the briefest moment before she began to move against him.
It was...fierce. Her skirts rucked up around her waist, fingers clawing at his shoulders as she sought for an anchor while her hips pushed and then rocked against him, gaining speed and power with each movement. Pleasure so intense it verged on pain rippled through her body in waves, tightening into a burning coil low in her core.
With a wordless cry she pulled him up and slammed her lips against his in a starving kiss. Her hips continued to roll against his, hands now scrabbling at his back for purchase as she threw herself into him with wild abandon.
He returned the kiss, if you could call it that. He could have practically eaten her face he was so hungry for her. When they broke, he let his forehead rest against hers as she continued to work herself on him. Slapping his hands down to grasp her rear, he growled and almost guided her movements.
"Gods yes," he all but roared through gritted teeth. "Fuck me, Ilia. Fuck me harder."
He wasn't sure where the animal inside him had come from, but he embraced it to it's full extent.
"Oh god, oh gods!" Another shiver ran down her spine at his words, an instinctive part of her awakening to fight-or-flight that she didn't entirely understand.
She pushed it away, one hand moving to the back of his head and twining her fingers through his hair, gripping tightly as a new ferocity entered her movements, near frantic now. "Please, oh gods, please," she whispered, voice low and rough. Her brow pressed to his, lips parted and eyes burning into him. "Please, Damien, I-- I'm--"
The dam within her broke and she all but screamed his name, crashing against him with a few last thrusts of her hips before her head fell to his shoulder and she just gasped and shuddered against him, unable to do anything else.
"Fuck!"
The intensity grew to the point where it was to much for him to bear. Too much for him to hold on any longer. As she thrusted against him, fiercely and rapidly, his body tensed and he could feel the pressure build up inside him. It felt amazing. She felt amazing. He was going to explode into her, give her everything.
And then he did.
Moaning, gasping with her, he lost control just as dangerously as she did, and was left with heavy breathing as he began to shrink back down to reality:
For several long moments, Ilia could do little more than cling to him and shake. She was still burning, her body lit up from the inside, but she knew now that it was simply the release, that frantic passion having cooled somewhat in her chest.
She turned her face into the curve of his neck and wrapped her arms around him, holding as tight as she could. "...Thank you."
It wasn't until she spoke that she realized she was crying. She pressed herself more firmly to him, knowing that he'd be able to feel her tears against his skin and just not caring.
His breathing was slowly becoming more steady, and his bones were no longer tense but more relaxed. Gently, he wrapped his arms around the woman, holding his hands behind her head and just let her cry.
That was something.
He didn't really have time to think about how that was possible, definitely, the best sex of his life. No, when reality hit him, it really hit him. It knocked him in the face. They were still in the demon realm, and they had no idea how they were going to escape.
"We're going get out of here, Ilia," he said quietly, stroking her hair with his fingers. "I'll get you out."
Lola tried, but he didn't believe his own words.
Ilia just cried harder, shaking her head without lifting her face from his shoulder. "You can't," she whispered. "No one can, he's-- he's too powerful. Maybe Papa could have bought us some time, but..."
But Varyyn wasn't there. They didn't even have Twyla. Her hand fell to rest against his chest, fingers curling tightly in the fabric of his shirt, which she sort of vaguely remembered they'd never bothered to get off of him.
Oh gods. If she'd been under any illusions that she'd ever be going home, she was absolutely positive that she would have been mortified by what just happened. Not that she was ashamed to have taken Lola as a partner, he was actually quite a lovely young man, as far as she was concerned; but the raw desperation, the ferocity as they just took one another--
She felt her cheeks flush just a bit, though she knew how silly it was given the circumstances.
Forcing herself to breathe, Ilia pushed away from him slightly, hands resting on his shoulders. "We...probably have another hour or so before the ward fails." She swallowed and closed her eyes. "But just in case, we should, um..." One hand waved vaguely between them, indicating the way they were still connected as she sat in his lap.
His eyes open.
"Oh. Oh gods! S-Sorry."
He didn't know why he was embarrassed, given the circumstances, but he was. His face too flashed a slight shade of crimson, and he quickly helped to lift her up so he could remove himself from that position. "Right, I'd better put my pants back on too."
Her own cheeks heated further in answer to his blush and she quickly shuffled back once they'd disentangled themselves. "It's...it's fine," she murmured, eyes on the floor. "I was the one who..."
She was the one who'd asked. And Lola had responded to her with great enthusiasm, which had honestly been a bit of a surprise, but the responsibility for what had just happened lay with her. She knew that.
Ilia sighed and dropped her head into her hands. "Maybe if I-- if I just go with him, if I don't fight, maybe he'll let you go," she thought aloud despondently.
"Don't be stupid, Ilia," he shot quickly at her statement. After getting his pants back on, he walked over to and took her hands in his. "First off, I very much doubt he would let me go even if you did that. Secondly, I would never let you do that."
Ilia snapped her head up, mouth already open to argue with him.
Before she could get so much as a word out, that same ringing CRASH reverberated through the air. Her eyes widened as she felt the wards shiver and buckle, threatening to break.
"Damien!" She launched herself to her feet and all but threw herself into his arms, shaking as fear gripped at her heart.
"Come through the Veil, Child of Fire, Daughter of Night..."
Ilia gasped. That voice...wasn't the demon. Shaking, she snapped her eyes to Lola's, searching his face. "You-- do you hear that?"
"Come through the Veil..."
Her chest felt tight, and something pulled at her, dragging at the edges of her soul. She cried out, terrified, and clutched tighter to Lola's arms.
"What? Hear what- ahh, hey!"
Damien didn't hear the voice this time. Maybe the demon blood was wearing off, draining from his system, or something else? Maybe Ilia finally and truly snapped and was just hearing voices. All he knew her embrace was tighter than he was prepared for, and he knew something must've been happening.
"The voice, it's different, it's, it's a woman, I-- ahh!"
The tugging grew stronger, more insistent. She clung all the tighter to Lola, staring up into his face with wide, scared eyes. "D-don't let go," she begged.
"Daughter of Shadows...come through the Veil..."
She whimpered, closing her eyes tight.
"Ilia...come home..."
What in all hells was going on now?!
Quickly, he wrapped his arms completely around the woman, holding her as tight as he could. He too felt a tugging sensation now, though he couldn't figure out what from. "I'm not going anywhere," he said, trying to keep his composure as panic rose.
"Damien, I--"
"NO!"
The wards shattered, the Demon Prince screamed, and the world warped around them.
Between one breath and the next, Ilia and Lola were pulled from the trap of the prince's palace and into a familiar sitting room. A summoning circle flared beneath their feet, then the glow began to fade.
Varyyn stood to the side, hands raised with his palms out toward them, matching runes from the circle carved into the skin and still bleeding. A stranger, a woman, stood beside him, tousled red hair falling into her face as she cocked a hip and smirked.
"Damn, I am good." The woman laughed and rocked back on her heels. "I mean, you've all gotta admit, that was impressive!"
What... just happened?
Another trick?
No, it couldn't be. This place felt different. It felt familiar. They were back.
"How did.. what did.." Lola had a difficult time forming words, or thoughts, and his eyes were barely focus as he was still getting use to the transition. He saw the woman, and then Varyyn. Varryn - Lola's father. He was almost a welcome sight, but he immediately thought back to what he did to his daughter not too long ago.
"Take it easy there." The stranger grinned at him as she folded her arms loosely in front of her chest. "Neither of you are actually demons, so going through the Veil like that is gonna take its toll."
Ilia was frozen, still gripping Lola tightly. She sort of swayed in place. "Papa...?"
"Ilia."
With a soft wail, she tore away from Lola and launched herself at the demidemon, who caught her easily and swept her up into an almost painfully tight hug, murmuring something to her in a the same crackling language Ilia herself used to cast her spells. His hand stroked over her hair, then down her back, searching for injury.
The woman, the demonlord, blinked and raised her eyebrows a bit. "Well. Ah. I shouldn't...intrude." She nodded a little awkwardly to Lola. "Nice to meet you?"
"Oh, y-yeah," he said, looking over at the woman. "Damien Lola," he said, trying to get his bearings. "Nice to meet you."
He took one step forward and- oh boy.
The walls came crashing down around him as he was suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue, became lightheaded, and dizzy. The man almost pre-warned his company what was about to happen, but instead he collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.
"Oh shit."
"Damien!"
Ilia had turned to see the woman who'd saved their lives, intending to thank her, but instead saw Lola collapse to the floor. She started toward him automatically, one hand stretched out-- but then the world sort of spiraled around her and she wove in place. "What...is...?"
The demonlord sighed and moved forward to catch the younger woman as she too collapsed. "I tried to warn them," she said with a huff, gently lowering the girl to the ground while her father hurried forward. "Surprised the girl lasted as long as she did, honestly."
Varyyn smiled, though the expression was rather tense. "She's tougher than she looks." He bent to scoop his daughter into his arms, giving a nod to Lola. "I'm sorry to impose on you further, but could you help him upstairs? They both need rest."
Rolling her eyes with a put-upon sigh, the woman relented "Oh, alright. I suppose." She snapped her fingers, suddenly calling forth a familiar feline with flames for eyes. "This one's yours, right?"
Varyyn smiled and scratched Twyla's chin when the hellcat bounded up to him. "Yes. Thank you."
The demonlord nodded to him. "No problem. We can say she's on the house, since she'll help me lug the human upstairs."
Roughly half an hour later, Varyyn and his guest had managed to get both Ilia and Lola into their respective beds. Twyla spent her time pacing the hall between the two rooms, growling worriedly at every little sound as she waited for her mistress and her new master to wake.
Lola woke up to what felt like the worst hangover of his life. Though it had been quite some time since he had a sip of alcohol, his head, his body, his throat, even his face said otherwise. His vision was blurred as he awoke, and the room spun at a rapid pace.
"Gods, thought this was over," he groaned as he tried to sit up.
And then it was.
Unlike an actual hangover, this feeling didn't last. Once he was up, it was like unplugging something full of water, and the water was now draining out. The toxins of the demon realm must have been draining now.
"Okay," he looked around wearily. "Where am I at now? Where's Ilia?"
"Mrrrp?"
At the foot of his bed, a small tabby kitten suddenly started and raised her head, cocking it to the side as she looked at him. With a cheerful mew she bounded over the covers to land firmly in his lap, purring and rubbing her face back and forth over his hand in a demand to be pet.
"Ilia's resting."
That voice came from the doorway, where Varyyn leaned against the frame. He'd just been passing really, but coincidentally heard Lola stir and had decided to check on him. The demidemon, still in his true form, arched an eyebrow at his guest. "How are you feeling, lad?"
"Oh, not too bad, all things considered," he said, though the weakness in his voice said otherwise. He walked over to Varryn slowly and leaned on the opposite side of the frame, looking at the demidemon with tired, but grateful eyes.
"Thank you," he said. "I don't know how much longer we would have pulled through if you and your friend hadn't saved us."
Twyla protested the movement, but clambered up onto Lola's shoulder when he stood, perching there quite happily for the time being.
Varyyn simply nodded to him. "You don't need to thank me. The demonlord, Jynx, she did all the work anyway-- and she's not exactly my friend, more of an...associate. I just offered an anchor with my blood." He fell quiet for a moment, looking Lola up and down, his expression unreadable. His eyes flickered to the kitten on his shoulder and he mused, far too calmly, "She's grown quite attached to you."
"Oh, yeah," Lola grinned, peering at the kitten on his shoulder and moving a hand to rub behind her eyes. "And I her. I think we all did, in that realm."
He hid his embarrassment, and anxiety, well. He had a funny feeling as to why Twyla had become so attached, but he could only hope that Varryn hadn't already figured it out.
Varryn's expression seemed to be set in stone. "I'm sure it was harrowing," he murmured. "And much as I'd rather you hadn't been forced to go through that...I suppose I am thankful Ilia was not alone."
Silence. Then:
"When did you sleep with her?"
Lola coughed, practically giving him away. Thank gods he wasn't in the middle of taking a drink of anything, or it would have been all over Varryn's face. "P-Pardon?" he choked.
Varyyn sighed and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Please don't play dumb," he muttered. "It doesn't suit you, and I'm rather at the end of my patience. Allow me to be more specific." He opened his eyes to meet Lola's, holding his gaze firmly. Perhaps oddly, he didn't seem the least bit awkward or embarrassed by the topic of conversation.
"Did you sleep with her before or after she fed you demon blood?" He had his suspicions, but he needed confirmation. "This is important, Lola. Be honest."
Lola felt the heat in his cheeks as his face grew red. He couldn't remember a time where he felt so awkward, even though it didn't seem to matter much to Varryn. He genuinely seemed concerned about when the two had slept with each other, and not at all concerned with why or the how am I going to kill the man who slept with my daughter.
Demon culture was... odd, to say the least.
He could barely keep eyes on Varryn - almost ashamed of himself. "After."
The demon's jaw set, something very like worry, or maybe even fear, flashing through his eyes. "That's what I thought," he sighed, dropping his head into one hand as he closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Correctly interpreting the younger man's nerves and awkwardness, he added rather briskly, "Look, Ilia is a grown woman. I don't care what she does or who she does it with, as long as she's responsible about it."
Which she very clearly had not been. Although he understood why-- fiends below, he didn't want to think about it, about how terrified she must have been, but he understood it.
"Did she explain to you what it does, exactly? That ritual?" he asked abruptly. He still hadn't raised his head, so his eyes were hidden, but there was a new tension to his shoulders.
Twyla began kneading almost nervously at Lola's shoulder.
"Ritual?"
I mean, you could certainly call it that if you wanted to, he thought. Ilia helped him as close as he would probably ever get to the Gods without actually dying, so that was in someway ritualistic in itself.
"No," he replied, a hint of worry in his voice. Varryn wasn't getting worked up for nothing. "What does it do?"
Of course she hadn't explained. Well, why would she, really? It was just meant to keep him alive for a few days, it shouldn't have mattered.
Not realizing that he should have clarified that he was speaking of the blood ritual, Varyyn sighed again and stepped fully into the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He still wouldn't look at Lola as he moved toward an armchair in the corner of the room and began to speak.
"When she fed you demon blood, she was doing it to save your life," he muttered, for some reason feeling like he had to repeat that, as though Lola didn't already know. "But it...that ritual does more than just-- mask your presence or what-have-you. Sure, it does that too, but that wouldn't have kept you alive in the Demon Realms."
He sank into the chair with a long, quiet sigh and propped his elbows on his knees and allowed his chin to rest in his hands. His eyes were narrowed slightly. "Ilia isn't a demon," he murmured after a few more moments of quiet. "But she...has the potential of demonic power in her blood. By mixing that with true demon blood, and the right application of magic... For all intents and purposes, when she performed that ritual to save your life, she turned you into a demon." He finally raised his eyes to meet Lola's, jaw set and expression grim. "It was temporary, of course. But for the time you were there, your blood, your-- your being was more demonic than it was human."
Leaning back in the chair, he turned his face toward the window and dragged a hand down over his mouth. "You probably felt drawn to her? Like there was something instinctive in you that wanted to be closer to her. Does that sound right?"
Lola felt his heart flutter in his chest. "Yeah," he said cautiously, a little off guard that Varryn knew exactly how he was feeling. "It was almost uncontrollable, that feeling."
He moved away from the now closed door and took a seat on the edge of the bed, curiously facing the demidemon with his chin resting on open hands. "So what does this mean, Varryn?"
Twyla slipped down to curl in Lola's lap when he sat, the tip of her tail flicking as she watched the demidemon intently.
Rather than answer his question directly, Varyyn seemed to change the subject entirely. "Do you remember what I told you, when we went after her? About what the demon wanted her for, why he'd taken her."
He let out a breath and his form seemed to shimmer for a moment, his glamour almost reinstating itself before it settled back again, leaving him still in his true form. "I wouldn't be surprised if it did not cross your mind again, circumstances were...fraught, to say the least. But did you not wonder why he would want a child? Ilia's child." His eyes met and held the younger man's, expression carefully neutral.
Oh Gods.
Lola hadn't even thought about that. At that moment, they were both so very sure that they weren't going to make it out of that realm alive. That's why they gave each other everything they had, and they were not careful in the slightest. A Child. Lola could very well be on his way to being the father of Ilia's child. The thought made his stomach turn. Not that he had any regrets, or any ill-meaning toward Ilia, but he did know if he was capable of being a father.
"Not really," he said breathlessly. "I was too concerned about getting her out."
It was true. He had no idea why they wanted Ilia's child, but he was starting to fear the worst about it.
As if he could sense the burgeoning suspicions in Lola's mind, Varyyn dropped his head forward with a sigh. Slowly, he nodded.
"Yes. Well. That is understandable." He raised his head, lips drawn into a thin line. When he spoke again, every word was careful and measured as he considered each before they left his lips. "Ilia is human," he repeated slowly. "But there are...extenuating circumstances. Circumstances which are perhaps too complicated to get into just now, but which amount to this: a prophecy nearly as old as your world states that a demonic child born from the union of two ancient demonic bloodlines will be the most powerful that my kind has ever known."
His eyes found Lola's again. "Ilia is the union of those bloodlines, but her demonic ancestry has been so diluted as to be next to meaningless. However, if she were to bear the child of a demon..." He trailed off. The rest seemed fairly self-explanatory.
He glanced away, toward the door, and added quietly, "I...apologize for the situation you find yourself in. I believe Ilia was-- that she saw what she believed to be her last chance at choice, and she took it."
Lola's was pale, his eyes not necessarily focused on anything. He did not say a word for a long time, and just let the air settle between the two men.
"I'm going to be a father," he whispered, mostly to himself. He finally got his bearings, and shot Varryn a pleading look. "Is this child going to be dangerous?"
Varyyn held his eyes. "Yes," he replied plainly. "Very." What was the point in hiding it from the boy now?
Gods. The boy. He really was-- sure by human standards he was an adult, but to Varyyn the man was little more than a child himself. And Ilia...
They'd have been celebrating her twenty-first birthday in just over a month.
They're both so young...
With a sigh, Varyyn pushed himself out of the chair. "I'm sure you have questions, many questions, and I promise you I will do what I can to answer them. But for the moment I must check on my daughter." He started toward the door, paused, and then glanced back at Lola over his shoulder.
"...Would you like to see her?"
Does he have to be?
That's what he wanted to ask, but he was way too in over his head to even think about how and if they were going to raise this child. If Varryn would even allow it. There were too many unanswered questions.
The invite to see Ilia was a welcome one. He nodded, gave Twyla a little pet behind her ears, and stood. "Yeah, if you don't mind."
Varyyn didn't answer verbally, just gave a brisk nod as he turned to head back out into the hall. Twyla jumped down to follow him with a quiet mew, trotting at his heels as he walked a few doors down until he'd reached Ilia's room.
He paused for a moment at the door, listening, then pushed it open. "She's still resting," he murmured to Lola. "She woke earlier for a few moments, then fell back asleep. I am not sure how long she will remain so."
Twyla squeezed through the small gap in the door and bounded up onto her mistress's bed, purring like a thunderstorm. She pranced over the covers until she reached Ilia's head, nuzzling her cheek affectionately before curling up against her neck.
Ilia herself seemed surprisingly none the worse for wear after their ordeal, at least physically. She was curled on her side under the blankets, one hand tucked beneath her head and the other curled against her chest-- perhaps a shade too pale, and a line still furrowed between her brows, but any cuts and bruises she had accumulated had been healed.
Lola was envious that Ilia was still asleep. He wish he had still been asleep himself. He certainly didn't want to think about their child right now. It was all... too much.
Still, he felt a certain peace watching her rest. Maybe it was just the relief that they were safe, for now, or maybe what happened back there drew them close enough to when she was okay, he was okay.
"I can come back," he whispered to Varryn. "She needs her rest."
The demidemon shook his head slightly and started in a whisper, "She was only conscious for a few moments before, but she asked for you. It might be best if you--"
Even as he spoke, Ilia stirred. Her frown deepened and she groaned quietly in her sleep, then curled into a tighter ball. Twyla mewed in concern and bumped her head against her mistress's hand as Ilia twitched, then twisted, then her eyes fluttered open.
She was groggy, hardly able to process through the misty haze of such a deep sleep, but she manage to catch sight of Varyyn and murmured, "Father...? What're you--?"
Waking up a little more, she saw Lola. Her mouth snapped shut, eyes blowing just a bit wider as she suddenly found herself very much awake. "Oh. Um. Hello."
Varyyn looked between them, considering. "I will...go make some tea," he decided after a moment. He turned to leave and clapped a hand on Lola's shoulder. "I believe you two should...talk."
Ilia felt her stomach drop as her father left the room. Talk. He-- he'd told Lola then. He must have.
Oh gods.
She couldn't even look at him, her eyes dropping to the covers as she twisted her hands nervously in the fabric. "How, um...h-how do you feel?"
Lola's face was suddenly pale - more so than before. He stood before her, the mother of his soon-to-be child. He didn't know where to begin. "Uh, yeah," he practically mumbled, taking a seat at the edge of the bed with his eyes on the floor. "Not too bad, all things considered."
We're going to have a child. A dangerous, potential evil child. I'm going to be the father of your demon baby. What the hells are we suppose to do?!
Those were all of the things he wanted to say, and then some, but he held his tongue and just focused on his breathing.
This wasn't her fault, and he didn't need to put the pressure on her.
Slowly, he moved to take her hand in his own, giving it a gentle squeeze and letting out a soft exhale. "It's going to be okay."
Ilia jerked violently at the touch and stared up into his face, surprised more than was probably reasonable.
Why do you want anything to do with me? I dragged you into this, I never explained, I almost got you killed and now I've trapped you in a destiny I never wanted. Why would you touch me?
It happened almost comically slowly, her eyes welling up with tears and then spilling over. She gasped out a sob and clutched at his hand, drawing her knees up toward her chest as she began to shake trying to hold the sobs back.
"I-I-I-- I'm s-so sorry--!" She gasped wetly and buried her face in the blankets over her knees. "I'm sorry, I'm so s-s-sorry! I'm sorry, I--"
Her voice failed entirely and she just cried, curled into a tiny ball but with one hand still outstretched, gripping his.
He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to act. But her apologies and sobs had gone on long enough.
He slipped off of the bed, balancing himself on the ground with his knees and spinning to face her. "Hey," he whispered, their hands still connected. "It's okay. Really. You don't have anything to apologize for."
Taking his free hand, he wiped the tears from her cheek with his finger.
Her sobs gradually devolved into pathetic little hiccups and gasps, and she raised her head slightly to look at him.
"How can you say that?" she whispered, voice raw. "You...do you know what I did?"
Maybe she'd misunderstood, maybe Varyyn hadn't told him everything. That was the only explanation that made sense to her, that would justify him not being furious with her.
"Ilia," he started, now cupping her hand with both of his. "I know. But, we thought we were going to die. What choice did you really have? And if we were going to die, none of that would have mattered! You can't blame yourself for that."
He let go of her hands and returned to his seat at the edge of the breath, a stressed sigh slipping from his lips more than once. "Look. There's no point in us arguing over this, or me being mad, or whatever. We just need to figure out how we're going to get through this."
Ilia just stared at him for a long, tense moment of silence. Then:
"I didn't think I was going to die."
Her voice was soft, eyes dropped to the bedding again. "I-- I knew I wasn't going to die," she whispered. "He needed me alive. He needed me for-- for the baby." She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "I just...couldn't let him win. I thought, even though he'd still...he'd still try, even if he kills me later... At least he'd never have that. He'd never father that child."
She still couldn't look at him, though her voice had stopped shaking quite so much. "It was selfish. I'm sorry." Finally she did look at him, eyes huge and round in her rather wan face. "B-but I didn't know the ritual had-- I didn't realize it would affect you the way it did. Please believe me, I didn't plan it, I..."
She cut off with a sigh and dropped her eyes again. What did it matter? Excuses wouldn't change anything.
Lola was left speechless.
He had to think on her words for a long, painfully silent moment.
"I don't know how I'm suppose to be a father," he finally said, looking away from her. "I'm a killer. I kill people. I can't be some vigilante assassin by night and father to a demon by day. What would you have me do?"
He buried his face in his hands. "Do you even want me as a father? I don't think I even deserve to be called the father of your child."
Did she want him for the father?
Better than a demon prince who'd kidnap and rape you.
Well, yes, that was true. But it wasn't exactly a high bar.
Shaking her head helplessly, Ilia dropped her chin onto her knees, legs still drawn up tight to her chest. "Honestly?" She swallowed. "I don't...want the baby. If I had any real choice in this, you wouldn't even have to be worrying about being a father."
She turned her face into her knees, muffling her voice slightly as she admitted, "I know it's probably not saying much... But I'd rather you than that-- that thing in the palace." Because at the time, she'd thought those were her only options.
Silence reigned for several long moments. Then she continued, even softer, "You don't...have to stay, Lola." Her heart twisted even as the words left her lips, though she ignored it. It was a silly reaction anyway, they'd only known each other a few days. "I wouldn't dream of tying you to this...creature anymore than I have. I won't hold it against you if you decide to just...go."
Gods, he was so drained.
He couldn't just leave, even though that's what he wanted so desperately. She didn't want the child.. Well, neither did he! But if she was going to keep it, which he was piecing together that she really had no choice, he couldn't just abandon her.
Fuck.
"Let's get some rest," he said, ignoring her last comments. He crawled into the bed behind her, tossing an arm over her waist to hold her loosely, and closed his eyes. That's all he could think to do.
"But..."
Well. He was crawling into bed with her and she realized that it probably didn't matter what argument she gave him, he was not about to be moved in the near future.
Still utterly exhausted herself, Ilia allowed her body to sag back into the mattress. She hesitated a moment, then reached up to lay her hand over Lola's at her waist.
Twyla purred happily and crawled up in between them, snuggling in to the tiny gap between their bodies near Lola's shoulder.
Ilia couldn't find the strength to even murmur a cursory "sleep well". She was unconscious in moments.
Lola slipped his other arm under the side of her waist that touched the bed, and held her just a little tighter. He was alone with his thoughts for some time after Ilia had fallen back asleep, but soon enough he joined her.
At some point while they slept, Varyyn returned with a tray bearing tea. The demon simply watched them for a moment, debating, but eventually he sighed and left the tray on the bedside table with a murmured spell and a flick of his wrist to keep it warm.
Let them rest while they could— gods knew things were going to be hard.
Ilia felt more than heard Twyla’s purring as the cat had moved at some point to curl up on top of her head. She blinked and huffed, then tried to roll onto her side to dislodge the hellcat. “C’mon, Twy...”
She rolled right into Lola, his arms still around her. Oh. Right. She’d forgotten. How had she managed to do that?
Lola awoke shortly after, violently and out of breath. He barely had time to acknowledge Ilia in his arms before he jerked his head around frantically, panic in his eyes and breath heavy and short. It took a few moments for this sudden behavior to pass, but when it did, he let his head drop back down to the bed beneath him, letting out a heavy sigh of relief.
Just a dream. Or a nightmare.
"Gods," he groaned, letting his eyes closed as he melted into the warmth of Ilia. "Thought we were back in the realm for a second there."
Startled when Lola awoke so suddenly, Ilia found herself moving on instinct. One arm slipped down around his waist and she lifted the other hand to stroke her finger through his hair a few times, murmuring, "It's okay, it's okay. We're safe now, we're home..."
Home. Well, that was true, but honestly...she had no idea if they were really safe.
With a quiet groan of her own she rolled back onto her side. "Oh." She sat up, the faintest echo of a smile playing at the edges of her lips. Another glance back over her shoulder at Lola, then she reached out and plucked one of the cups Varyyn had left beside the bed off the tray and twisted again to hold it out to him.
"Here." She pressed the cup into his hands. "Still warm. Just...drink it. It might help."
Holding the hot cup of tea, he slowly allowed himself to take in its contents. Lola hated tea growing up, but acquired a taste for it as he got older, primarily from "tea gatherings" he would have as "Theodore Alcott," the young lord of Serendipity.
It tasted good. It was warm in his chest, and eased the aching in his bones. "Thanks," he said quietly after taking another sip. "..How are you feeling, Ilia?"
She laughed mirthlessly and gave him a rather bitter smile. "How do you think?"
With a small sigh she allowed her head to hang forward. Twyla wriggled her way around into her mistress's lap and she began petting her absently. "I was just thinking, in most cases I might be thinking that there's no way of even knowing if I'm actually..." She waved a hand vaguely toward her stomach. "Y'know. At least not so early on."
Another bitter laugh and she leaned back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. "I don't even get that luxury. Another few weeks or a month of maybe I'm not."
She fell quiet for several moments, then sighed and turned her head to look at Lola. "...Sorry. I'm just..." She huffed and shook her head. "How-- how are you? I mean, I assume Father told you the basics, but, um..." She bit her lip and tilted her head at him slightly. "Is there anything...you want to ask me?"
He took one more sip of the tea before placing it on the side table.
"Um.. " he started a little uneasily. "Not sure. When we met.. When I knocked on your door.. I certainly didn't plan on becoming a father. Especially not to one that.."
He trailed off, rubbing his hands over his face.
"Varryn.. Your father.. He said it would be dangerous," Lola spoke again. "What will it do, exactly?"
Ah, yes. An obvious question, though still and important one.
Ilia let out a long, heavy breath and shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't really know," she whispered. "I...never actually heard or read the prophecy myself. All I know is that it will be powerful-- more powerful than any demon born in the last ten generations of their kind."
She looked away, her lips a tight line. "Some want it for a general, some as a figurehead, some...I'm not sure I even want to think about it. I just know they're willing to do just about anything to get their hands on it."
"Okay, and what will it do to you?"
Sure, he wanted to know what this all-powerful baby demon would do, but in that moment he was more concerned as to what it would do to Ilia.
Baby steps, he thought.
"To me?"
She twisted her head to blink at him, rather stunned. "I-- it will do what any baby does, I suppose. At least at first."
She thought. Oh gods, she hoped. It wasn't like she'd never thought about it before, the possibility that this--this whatever it was would be unlike a human child, may be too much for her body to bear.
She didn't like to think about it, but the possibility had certainly crossed her mind.
She'd gone rather pale. "I don't know," she replied, shaking her head slowly. "I really don't know what it will do..."
A soft knock suddenly snapped her head up, drawing her attention sharply to the door. Varyyn had pushed the door open a bit, poking his head just barely into the room. "You are both awake, I see," he murmured. His eyes flicked over them, but lingered on Ilia. "Do you think you are strong enough to come downstairs. You both should eat something."
Ilia took a breath, then nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine, I can..." She looked back to Lola, concerned. "Are you...?"
Watching her reaction, he couldn't help but think he somehow made things worse.
Wonderful.
"Yeah. I'm okay," he assured her. "Eating something sounds like a good idea, anyway. Thanks Varryn."
He shuffled his way out of bed, and then offered his hand to Ilia to help her do the same.
The young woman simply stared at his hand for a moment, as though she didn't entirely understand the gesture. Then, rather hesitantly, she took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. "Right. Food is...a good idea."
In the doorway Varyyn nodded, then stepped back. "Come join me in the kitchen when you're ready. Twyla." He clicked his fingers and the hellcat perked up, jumping off the bed and bounding over to his side with a happy chirp. The demidemon turned to head back down the hall to the stairs, closing the door again behind him.
Ilia sighed quietly and moved toward her privacy curtain, ducking behind it to pull a dressing gown on over her nightdress. "I have to admit, I'm just a little surprised he's being so calm about this whole thing," she muttered as she reemerged, one hand absently carding back through her hair as she tried to convince it to fall away from her face.
Yeah. He was surprised too. Hells, he was was surprised he was so calm about this.
Well, calm on the outside, internally screaming. Not sure if he should run or stay.
His head sound run, and what little of a heart Lola had left over the years of his vengeance said stay. Stay with Ilia.
"Yeah?" he replied, his hand resting on the doorknob. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, I mean..." She bit her lip. "He's always been protective of me. Because of exactly this. Now that it's actually happened...I don't know."
She sighed and moved toward him where he seemed to hover by the door. "Everything's different now," she murmured; she wasn't looking at him, and it wasn't entirely clear if she was even talking to him, or if the words had been meant more for herself.
Then she gave herself a brisk shape and stepped around Lola to the door. She barely hesitated a moment before laying her hand over his and turning the knob, then stepping out into the hall.
"Come on. I don't know about you, but I'm starving." That, at least, she could deal with.
"I don't think I've been this hungry since I was a child," he said, and the growling of his stomach agreed. "I conned my way into nobility, and ate like nobility since... Think I've become a little spoiled."
His stomach growled again. "Okay!" he attempted to quiet it down, joining Ilia in the hall before letting the girl lead them downstairs.
Ilia almost smiled at that.
By the time they made it downstairs, Varyyn had spread a small array of dishes out on the kitchen table; since it was just the three of them he evidently didn't feel the need to stand on ceremony and serve the meal in the dining room.
The food mostly consisted of fresh breads, smoked meat and fish, and a collection of fruits. Ilia had absolutely no idea where he father had managed to get the produce, but the second she caught sight of the bowl of strawberries she found that she didn't give a damn, she was just grateful.
The demidemon smiled slightly as his daughter half ran to the table and plucked a bright red berry between two fingers, swiftly popping it into her mouth. He looked between the two young humans, hands braced on the table.
"So." His eyes fell and lingered on Lola. "I believe we are left with an important question: what next?"
Lola was grateful for the food. Really, he was. And he hoped he was showing his gratitude, but his mouth was full in an instant as he ate like a wild boar. He managed to showcase some level of manners, though the hunger in his gut prevented him from doing much more than that.
"Good question," he finally said after swallowing the food he was chewing in his mouth. "What is next?"
Varyyn was quiet a few moments, his eyes moving slowly from his daughter to Lola and back. "First point of order," he sighed after a moment, "we cannot stay here."
Ilia dropped her eyes to her plate. She suddenly wasn't very hungry. She supposed she'd been expecting that, but to hear it said out loud was still a shock of cold water down her spine. "Where can we go?" she whispered.
The demidemon propped an elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. "Connlaoth was a good bet when you were a child. It was easy to hide among such fear of magic. But now..." He shook his head slowly. "Now I fear magic may be our best chance. There are...orders. Ancient orders, some secret; they've fought creatures like me for generations. Most exist in Serendipity."
Serendipity.
Lola's thoughts were written all over his face as he chewed through more of his plate. "I live in Serendipity," he said after mulling it over for the briefest moment. "You can stay with me. Of course, I'm Theodore there, so we would need to have a reason for you all to be living with Theodore."
Varyyn and Ilia exchanged a look. "Visiting nobility?" she offered.
Her father shook his head. "No. If this is going to work, our lives here need to end. Varyyn and Ilia Amaranth need to die. We cannot bring those identities with us to Serendipity."
Ilia sighed again and nodded. That made sense, but gods she just couldn't process all of this right now. "So what?" she murmured. A dry, unamused smile curved her lips and she muttered, "I highly doubt it would do Theodore's reputation any favors to be hosting an unwed, pregnant young woman and her suspiciously enigmatic father?"
Varyyn just stared at them, gears turning behind his eyes. "No," he said slowly after several long moments. "However...it could hardly be suspicious for him to host his young bride and father-in-law."
Ilia felt her jaw actually drop. "...What?!"
Lola was in the middle of drinking his tea when Varryn made the suggestion.
He spit it out.
"E-Excuse me?" he asked, his face hot with sudden embarrassment. "Bride?!"
Varyyn blinked laconically and dabbed a bit of tea off his sleeve. "Yes," he replied evenly, "bride." He quirked an eyebrow and added, even as Ilia opened her mouth to protest, "Extenuating circumstance there may be, but she is carrying your child. It is the easiest ruse to explain away the...particulars of the situation."
Ilia snapped her mouth shut. Her eyes flicked down to the table again and she set her jaw, frowning.
"You don't have to do this," she murmured to Lola without raising her head. A little louder, more for Varryn's sake than Lola's, she added, "I meant what I said: I won't tie you to this thing."
Well. There was that.
Lola let that sit. He let it sit longer than anyone would have been comfortable with. He mulled the thought of it over in his head with a blank expression on his face. If they were to marry, would it be an actual marriage, or just something they told people? Would Theodore taking a bride be the right move for his... moonlighting endeavors? Was it the right thing to do, given the circumstances?
He put his tea down, clearing his throat.
"Let's do it."
Varyyn quirked one eyebrow. “I’ll admit I did not expect you to take to the idea so easily.”
Ilia seemed similarly bewildered, but was not nearly so restrained. “Are you serious?” She looked from her father to Lola. “I mean— th-thank you, I suppose, but...Damien, are you sure?”
She reached over to lay her hand in his arm cautiously, bright green eyes searching his face.
Lola shrugged and began eating again - this time less violently. "I don't see why not," he said almost casually. "The way I see it, this marriage will be more so for appearances than anything. It really doesn't mean anything. You don't have to love me, and I don't have to love you, but we're having a child together, and - like Varryn said - your life here is over. I don't think we have any other choice."
"I do care about you, Ilia," he continued, "but you don't have to feel the same for this to work. Theodore having a bride would only strengthen my cover, and it will give you two the new identities you need to start a new, hidden life in another country."
He realized how cold that may have sounded, but he said it anyway, and he did not regret it.
Ilia drew her hand back sharply and looked away. She glanced down at her plate, then pushed away from the table and stood.
She really wasn't hungry anymore.
"I suppose I'll pack," she said tightly, and turned on her heel. Twyla meowed almost urgently and jumped up from her place by the kitchen fire to patter after her as she left the room.
Varyyn sighed and dropped his head into his hand, rubbing at his temples. "She knows this is the best option we have," he muttered; it wasn't entirely clear if he was actually talking to Lola, but it was loud enough that it couldn't have just been for himself. "And we'll need to leave soon. Jynx helped me reinstate the wards and add some deflection, but that will only buy us another two days of protection. Three at the outside, but I want to be long gone by then."
Lola stared at his plate. He wasn't focused on his food any longer, he just didn't want to focus on anything else. That could have gone a lot better.
Actually, no. Not it couldn't have. This entire situation is fucked. Varryn is right: this is their best option. Doesn't mean any of them had to like it.
"I don't have anything to pack," he finally spoke. "But I should start thinking about a story to tell the others. Theodore has been missing for quite some time now."
Varyyn raised one eyebrow. "A whirlwind romance and returning with a new bride in tow should cover nicely, don't you think? Scandalous, of course, but the kind of scandal that gives Theodore the weight of reality rather than drawing undue suspicion."
The demidemon furrowed his brow slightly in thought, and his form gradually began to melt back into his human glamour. "I'll have to craft new identities for us. Perhaps you should help with that, if you're amiable to the idea. It should be fairly easy to kill Ilia and Varyyn Amaranth, but creating two strangers in their place...that may prove more challenging."
Lola mulled on that. Sure, that's practically what he was thinking, but he felt it would be a little too suspicious for something like that to happen so quickly. He almost forgot how he rose to the ranks of a noble, though, and soon remembered he could force them to believe it.
"Creating new identities happens to be my specialty," he replied with a soft grin. "Never had to create one for someone other than me, but it should be no problem. Got names in mind?"
Another shrug and he twirled his finger absently around the rim of his glass of water. "Perhaps. Names are less important, I find, save for training oneself to respond to them." Her pursed his lips slightly and tapped one nail against the glass. "Coming up with a believable courtship and reason for such a rushed marriage seems as though it may be the most difficult part."
Varyyn glanced at him and tilted his head slightly to the side, musing, "We could always use a bit of the truth: perhaps after a bit too much to drink you shared a night of spontaneous passion, wherein the young woman in question got with child and her father forced you to take responsibility."
His tone was dry, and it was not at all clear if he was joking.
He glanced down to his glass again and abruptly murmured, "Her mother's name was Charlotte. She may like to take it."
He nodded in agreement on just about everything Varryn had said. The name, the reason, what not. He took a sip of the tea and mulled it over for a little longer. "Those who know me.. Not me, but Theodore, know that I'm a man of my word. They also know that I am a little careless. So if Theodore were to fall in love and do something careless, like impregnate a woman, it would be expected for him to marry her. That, and her father forcing his hand, makes sense."
He let that sit for a moment longer. "I don't see any reason why they wouldn't accept that. If they don't, I will make them accept it, like I made them accept me."
"Very well then." Varyyn nodded in turn, as though that settled things. He drummed his fingers against the table, eyes once more unfocused as he seemed to be thinking.
Rather sharply, he shook himself out of it and looked back to Lola. "Right. I suppose I will have to place full confidence in your abilities then." He pushed himself away from the table and dipped his head in something close to a polite half bow. "If you'll excuse me, I should begin preparations. If Theodore brought anything with him--a coach, perhaps--I would recommend you collect it."
Lola nodded in agreement and rose from the table. He was finished with his meal anyway. He didn't need to collect anything but his thoughts as he left their home, and was soon greeted with another storm. Figures.
"Oh Daniel, you're going to just love her!" Theodore assured the host of his Connlaoth trip. He had returned to the inn where they were staying in the middle of the night, the middle of the rain, to much relief of his host and the guards assigned to protect him. He was scolded as much as one of his nobility would be for slipping off, but mostly they were all just worried that something terrible had happened to him. Little did they know.
It didn't take much convincing on his part. The story itself was perfectly believable, and he only had to use a little of his persuasion to accept that this was going to happen, and they needed to be on their way back to Serendipity no shorter than immediately.
The driver, the host, two armed guards, and Theodore arrived just outside Varryn and Ilia's home several hours later.
Ilia--now Charlotte, for the foreseeable future--waited just down the drive of the manor, two smallish bags packed at her feet and a dozing, purring Twyla snuggled in her arms. Her eyes were downcast, but when the coach arrived she manged to lift her gaze and deliver a relatively convincing smile.
Her father had told her the cover; she and Theodore needed to be hopelessly in love for this to work.
As though just thinking of her father had summoned him, the demidemon appeared at her elbow. He smiled and nodded to their arriving "guests", and leaned in to murmur in her ear, "I will take our carriage with the few things we cannot risk leaving behind. You should ride with Theodore."
She nodded and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "The house?"
He paused. Then: "It will be ash come morning."
Lola was as ready for this as he was going to be. As the stage coach pulled close enough to the manor he could see Ilia and Varryn standing there. Amazing thing, he thought, how he came into this family's lives and completely changed it in a few short days. No magic. No persuasion. He just messed up.
Ilia is what made him feel the most guilty. Seeing her, abandoning the life she knew to start a new, made-up one with him, soon to be the mother of this so-called child.. well, he did not feel good about it. He was more than guilty. He was ashamed.
But no time to fret on that right now. He had a show to put on, for everyone's safety.
"Charlotte! Charlotte, my dear!" he called out enthusiastically as he exited the coach. He did not waste any time. He went to Ilia, placed his hands on her cheeks, and kissed her. He then broke from her lips, and whipped around like a giddy schoolboy. "This is Charlotte!" he said to Daniel, Guard number one, and guard number two. "Isn't she the most beautiful woman you've ever seen?"
She probably should have expected the kiss, but somehow it still caught her off guard. She managed to turn her shocked expression into bashfulness before anyone noticed though, ducking her eyes and giggling quietly when Theodore introduced her to the rest of the party.
"Oh, hush now," she protested, tugging lightly on his arm. "You are far too biased I believe, my dear."
The lies came easily, the slightly different mannerisms and lilt to her voice that Charlotte had as opposed to Ilia. But beneath it all she could feel her stomach turning, a sick, swooping sensation in her gut.
Varyyn stepped forward and nodded to Theodore's friends. "It is a pleasure, I'm sure," he demurred with the ease of long practice. "But allow me to make proper introductions. I am Fredrick Tilton, and this is my daughter, Charlotte."
"And you are too modest, dearly beloved."
Theodore smiled, laughed, placed a loving hand on her back, kissed her on the cheek. He couldn't help himself. He was really quite infatuated with Charlotte, and no one would ever suggest otherwise.
"Ah! Where are my manners?" he then asked, looking over to Fredrick. "As he said, he's the father of my beautiful bride-to-be."
His voice was both excited and a little timid now. It would have to, considering the story they were going with was 'the father forcing his hand,' so naturally he would be a little uncomfortable around his soon-to-be father-in-law.
The three in Lola's company introduced themselves, or rather, their host, Daniel, introduced himself and then the guards for them. Guard number one and Guard number two, as Lola so lovingly referred them as, had real names: Owen and Hansard.
"Well, then," Lola practically interrupted. "Now that the introductions are over.. shall we? I don't want to wait another second to start my new life with Charlotte!"
He wrapped his arm into hers, turning to lead her into the coach, before shooting Varryn a glance over his shoulder that all but said 'are you sure about this?'
Varyyn didn't have to adjust much to play his role: austere and intimidating, but with real love for his daughter, protectiveness in his stance even as he stepped away from her.
His eyes met Lola's and he nodded once, subtle but firm.
They really didn't have another choice.
Taking Ilia's hand in his, he leaned in to kiss her cheek and encouraged her to ride in Theodore's coach with her betrothed. "I'm sure you don't want me hovering over you," he chuckled quietly.
He played Fredrick almost too well. Ilia smiled and squeezed his hand. "Thank you, Papa. I'm sure we'll break to eat and rest together."
He nodded again and stroked one hand through her hair before stepping back. "Be safe, Lottie."
She forced another smile and nod. Lottie. "Of course." Turning her attention back to her soon-to-be husband, she managed a blushing sort of smile as she hung onto his arm. "Of we go, then!"
Theodore smiled into her eyes as warm as the sun, and nodded in agreement. "Right then. Off we go," he repeated.
He helped Charlotte into the coach and then followed. Daniel, Owen, and Hansard joined them right after. The driver waited until Frederick was ready in the second coach before leaving the manor.
Inside Lola's coach, conversation ensued for what felt like hours, though it really only proved to be about thirty minutes, give or take. Daniel, having some level of magic himself, was the only one who seemed even remotely suspicious.
"How fortunate Lord Alcott found you," he began, raising his voice just slightly so he could be heard of the rain that had started back up outside. "And how even more fortunate that you two would fall so madly in love and expecting a child so quickly. Tell me, what drew you to him in such a way?"
Lola tensed but did not show it. "Now, Daniel," he started. "Please don't embarrass me. It's going to be a long night and we should all probably get some rest. We'll have time for questions later."
"I have many questions," Daniel said, polite yet forward. "How long have you and your father lived here? It seems awfully well-established to up and abandon it just like that."
"No more questions."
Lola's voice was a commanding, mono-tone whisper, and his eyes flashed just for the smallest second as he glared at Daniel. He shot the same look to the two guards currently in their company. "Go to sleep."
As if on cue, the three of them yawned simultaneously. "Forgive me, Lord Theodore," Daniel said, covering his mouth to hide yet another yawn. "Seems we're all a little tired. Perhaps we should get some rest while we can."
"Yes," Theodore responded. "That sounds like a good idea."
It was rather crowded in the coach with five people, and Ilia quickly felt herself growing claustrophobic. She began to wonder if she shouldn't have simply ridden with her father after all.
A feeling that was only compounded when Daniel started in on the questions. She flickered her eyes to her feet and held Twyla a little closer to her chest, silently willing a blush to her cheeks and hoping that her silence would be taken as that of a young woman "in trouble" and consequently ushered into a rushed wedding.
She felt the magic as Theodore ordered the other three men to sleep and glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye. "Perhaps you shouldn't have told them," she whispered as softly as she could once they'd started to doze. "It is...rather early for us to be certain, under more ordinary circumstances. At least without use of magic."
Lola shrugged slightly, eyes lingering on the three for a moment longer. "You can speak normally," he said, not bothering to low his voice to a whisper. "They'll be out for a while."
He sighed and twisted slightly to face her. "And.. maybe I shouldn't have," he said. "I'm still trying to.. figure all of this out, I guess. But they would've found out sooner or later."
She sighed and nodded, letting her head rest against the wall of the coach as she looked out the window. "I know. I just..."
Another sigh. She allowed her grip on Twyla to loosen so the tiny hellcat could climb down from her lap and explore the inside of the carriage. "Your man is very forward," she muttered eventually. "The nobility in Connlaoth would never ask about a child from wedlock straight out like that." She almost sounded offended--and she supposed she was, a little.
Even if their relationship had been what they claimed it was, her pregnancy still would have been something shameful, at least in the society she was used to. She had no idea how things worked in Serendipity, but she didn't imagine it could be too different.
"People will talk," she noted quietly. "Papa said it's actually a good thing. They'll be so focused on the scandal of the quick wedding they won't bother to really question us...but still. They'll talk."
Lola grinned, and even muffled a small laugh. "Your father is right," he said. "It is a good thing. "I'd rather them talking than them thinking."
He sighed. He knew that wasn't the answer she really wanted.
"Sorry," he continued. "Sorry about Daniel. Most folk are not like that at all. You see, Daniel is... how do I say it? He's jealous. He's letting emotion take over proper noble etiquette, but he's doing it with a polite smile and a calm voice."
He was sure that was still not enough.
"Daniel is in love with me. Well, in love with Theodore. He would never say it, that sort of thing, two men that is, is looked down upon in his family. But it's there, and it has been for quite a while."
He placed his hand on hers. "Try not to worry, Ilia," he whispered. "I'll protect you."
Her eyebrows crept up slightly. "Oh."
That was...surprising. She'd thought Serendipity was more opened minded about that sort of thing--although she supposed older family, nobility and quasi-noble, tended to hold on to old prejudices and beliefs.
Lola's words did spark a few rather uncomfortable questions, however. "How many of you are there?" she asked after a moment, seeming to ignore his promise of protection, though she did not withdraw her hand. "Theodore, Lola, Damien...they're all different people, whether you want to admit it or not. Just how many are there? How many with some poor Daniel caught in their coattails?"
Perhaps she was being a little harsh. She honestly couldn't tell anymore, her own emotions clouded over and muffling her sense of tact and propriety.
Her question certainly caught him off guard.
"Okay," he sighed, removing his hand from hers. "Fair question. Let's see."
He had to think it over, which he was sure didn't look great on his part, but he wanted to answer carefully, for his sake just as much as hers. "I've been hundreds of people," he admitted. "But only once. Now, there's just Lola and Theodore. Damien died a long time ago."
"It's not always easy," he continued. "Manipulating people. Well, it is easy, in technical terms, but good people... they..."
He sighed and looked away from her. "It's necessary."
Ilia finally turned her head to look at him, though she kept quiet as he spoke. And for several long moments after, her eyes flickering over his face in silence.
Was it? Necessary? She supposed it must be, or he wouldn't have survived the way he had. And while she still didn't really know all that much about him, she knew what her father had told her, why he'd been so intent on killing that nobleman the night they'd met.
But she didn't say any of that. When she did speak, it was to murmur a softly hesitant, "He's not dead."
Surprised herself a bit at her own words, she turned her head to look out the window again. "Damien isn't dead," she continued quietly. "Maybe...maybe to you. But I have to believe he's in there, somewhere. When we--" She paused, swallowed. "When we were together...there is still something of Damien in you."
Maybe she was right. Maybe Damien was really alive. He showed Ilia a part of him no one had seen since his mother back in those realms, so maybe, just maybe, he was still alive. Maybe Lola was just holding him hostage until he got the vengeance he yearned for.
He tried to put it from his mind, but her words brought a small smile to his face.
"We should get some sleep too," he whispered after a few moments passed. "Maybe I can convince them to let us ride in the other coach when we're at our halfway point, too."
He leaned over and let his shoulder rests against hers, patted his lap for Twyla to join, and closed his eyes.
She started slightly, a little surprised by the touch, but didn't try to push him away. She turned her head to just stare at him for a moment, then let out a soft breath and nodded.
Her eyes fluttered closed and she let her head rest against his shoulder. As she began to drift off, she felt Twyla jump up onto his lap and butt her head against Ilia's hand affectionately before curling up to nap herself.
Whoopsies.
Lola felt her head on his shoulder and let his own rest atop of hers. He ran his fingers through Twyla's fur until he too drifted into sleep.
The morning came quicker than he wanted, and soon the sunshine was blaring through the window.
Ilia groaned quietly and shifted in her sleep, trying to turn her head away from the offending light. She wound up with her face pressed against Lola's shoulder, still mostly unconscious as she pressed into his side.
On his lap, Twyla mewed quietly and lifted her head, blinking and yawning as she looked around the coach.
Lola didn't wake any easier than Ilia and Twyla. He cursed softly under his breath, debating if he should just fight it or not, but ultimately stirred himself up. He let his fingertips find the top of Twyla's head, petting her gently as he looked at Ilia and then his party of three that they were crammed in there with.
They were still asleep.
Gods. It should have worn off by now. Maybe the demon realms made him... stronger? Maybe.
"Wake up," he said flatly, and the three simultaneously yawned into consciousness.
Ilia jolted fully awake.
That...was more than a little terrifying. Ilia had used blood magic practically all her life, an art most people considered taboo, and even she was unnerved by the ease with which Lola could command people through his magic.
She didn't say anything, just sat upright in an attempt to remove herself slightly from her fiance's personal space. "We drove through the night," she noted, glancing out the window.
"Driver!" Lola called out from inside the carriage. "Driver, can you stop for the moment? My beloved would like to check on her father!"
The driver obliged as it was his job too, and "Theodore" climbed out of the coach, beckoning his fiance to follow.
Ilia blinked, a little startled, but when the coach rattled to a stop and Lola held out his hand to help her down she took it with a murmured, "Thank you."
The carriage behind them had also stopped, not really having much other choice, and Varyyn leaned his head out of the window. "Everything alright, Lottie?"
Charlotte. Right, I'm Charlotte. She smiled and nodded as he opened the door and climbed out, striding down the road to meet them. "Fine, Papa, fine. We've just been on the road so long, I needed to stretch my legs, and I wanted to ask after you."
Varyyn smiled gently and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head as she moved to meet him, though his eyes flickered about warily.
Theodore smiled blissfully after his bride-to-be, watching her with the love and the care that a good future husband should. Then, he turned around, and went back into the coach. After several moments had passed, he emerged from the door, and walked around front to speak with the driver.
When he was done, he began walking toward Ilia and Varryn, much less Theodore and much more Lola. "We're riding with you," he announced.
"Oh?" The demidemon raised one eyebrow. "Your party will not object to such an arrangement?"
Rather than question him, Ilia just nodded and murmured, "I'll go fetch Twyla," before turning to make her way back to the coach and collect the little hellcat.
Lola buried a face in one hand. He forgot to bring Twyla with him. He felt like a real ass for that.
Then he sighed, and he looked at Varryn with a slight 'oh well' glint in his eyes. "It's too cramped in there," he said. "They'll be fine."
Varyyn shrugged and turned to the side with a gesture for Lola to climb into the coach. "As you like then," he murmured.
He waited until Ilia had returned with the kitten, then helped her up into the coach before climbing back in himself.
Settling on one of the long seats, he cocked his head slightly at Lola and noted, "I highly doubt you simply wanted some extra room. Was there something you wished to discuss?"
Lola was looking out of the window as the coaches continued their trip, acknowleding Varryn's question but letting it sit for a few moments. The truth was that what Ilia had same to him, about Damien still being alive, stirred something up inside him. Not that he was going to go on some wild goosehunt to find the boy he once was, or anything like that, but he was just so damn tired of pretending all of the time. At least with Varryn, Ilia, and Twyla, he didn't have to put on any type of act.
They knew he was a monster.
"No," he said flatly, but then shook his head. "I mean yes. I should probably fill you in a little more about my life in Serendipity. I want to try to avoid as many surprises as we can."
He gave Ilia a quick glance, thinking back to Daniel's abrupt questioning.
Varyyn shifted slightly, his eyes flickering between his daughter and the young man. Something had...shifted between them. Subtle, but it was there.
"Yes, I suppose that makes sense," he mused calmly. "We should at least know whatever Theodore would have told his fiance and impending father-in-law."
Curled up on the seat next to Lola--as the seat her father claimed was piled with a variety of boxes and bags beside him--Ilia glanced away from the window to look at the two of them. She supposed she should be paying attention for this.
"Right."
He rubbed his hands over his face and let out an exasperated breath.
"Theodore has a house staff that will wait on him, and you, for any and all of your needs. They basically won't leave you alone unless you ask them to. There are several cooks, several maids, a groomer, and my butler Tommy. I very much like Tommy." He paused for just a moment to give a slight wave in the other coach's direction. "You already met guard number one and guard number two."
"..What else?" he said, as if it were a pain to remember the schedule of his day-to-day "life." "Theodore is typically the life of the party at gatherings," he continued. "Not sure why. My jokes are bad."
He knew why.
"And there have been a fair amount of suitors in my time of nobility. Many people will be jealous of Ilia, Charlotte, for being his fiance."
He may have sounded just a bit full of himself, but he was only speaking the truth. It was all due to years of formulating his identity.
"Theodore Alcott," he said. "The young lord is what they call me. Born into Nobility and inherited his family's wealth and fortune when they died in a horrible accident when he was young."
"Mm. How did you...acquire all these people? I would assume none of your staff know that Theodore is anything but what he says he is; that's quite a feat, I'll admit," Varyyn murmured thoughtfully.
Ilia just nodded from where she sat. She'd already gotten a taste of the jealousy that might be directed at Charlotte; perhaps she should care a bit more, but she really couldn't find the energy to do so."
Lola shrugged lazily. "I borrowed them from other Lords and Ladies," he replied. "One by one. And those lords and ladies forgot about their particular staff member one by one. Except Tommy. Tommy came to me looking for a job, and I found something very genuine about him, so I hired him."
He almost felt like he was bragging about the life he created for himself, though it should have been clear to the both of them how he hated it so. It only served to give him allabies and covers for his moonlighting activities.
He sighed and almost laughed. "It's sad... Tommy may have been my only real friend before you three came around."
Sad, but true. It was a lonely life pretending to be somebody you're not.
"Does he know?"
Ilia's voice was soft, her eyes once more directed to the passing vista through the window. "Rather, how much does Tommy know about you? I assume very little, or he'd be in constant danger."
Lola shook his head. "No," he confirmed. "No, he doesn't know anything about the real me. He just knows that I'm not as sunshine and rainbows as everyone else knows me as, but that is the extent of it."
"So then you have friends the way I did." Ilia turned her head to look at him, expression rather blank. "Shallowly, or not at all."
Varyyn sighed quietly, but didn't try to cut in. He had no idea how his daughter might be processing everything that was happening--far be it from him to attempt to tell her how to handle it.
Lola cocked a brow and mulled that over as he considered his response. Then he sighed, faced away from her, and looked to the window.
"Yes."
Ilia just nodded, as though that had been about what she'd expected. "Does it ever bother you?"
Varryn was starting to feel more and more like this was a conversation he shouldn't really be privy to. The demidemon exchanged a quick look with the hellcat on Ilia's lap, arching his eyebrows rather helplessly.
He didn't reply right away, and instead continued to stare absently out of the little coach's window. Ilia didn't understood the level of hatred that burned in his chest, the commitment, the motivation, and the determination that pushed him through the hard days and the harder days. He would never be the person he was suppose to be, and he had come to terms with that.
He had really devoted his entire life to his cause, so there was never much room for friendship or anything like that.
"I.. don't know," he replied honestly. "Should it?"
She shrugged, still not looking at him. "I should think it would bother most people," she replied quietly.
It bothered her. She'd had a few friends in Connlaoth, but none that were more than really surface acquaintances: say hello at the right events, occasionally call for tea or a walk through one of the city parks, but that was it. She knew why it had to be that way, but it had always bothered her.
When no more words were forthcoming, Varyyn murmured into the increasingly awkward silence, "Perhaps the two of you would prefer if I rode with the driver?"
Ilia started slightly, as though she'd forgotten he was there, and finally turned her gaze from the window to look at her father. She blinked, still feeling rather...vague. "Oh. What? Why?"
Varryn's sneaking into their conversation brought him back to the coach. At least, more mentally than he felt he was before. "No," he added quickly on top of Ilia's response. "That won't be necessary."
The demidemon glanced between the two of them, looking rather unconvinced, but he just shrugged and murmured, "Suit yourselves then," and settled back in his seat.
Ilia watched him for a moment, then let her head rest against the side of the coach again with a quiet sigh. "I'm tired," she murmured. She had no reason to be, she'd done almost nothing but ride in silence for the better part of a day and half, but she was.
His eyes fell on Ilia for a moment and decided to let her be.
He then looked back to Varryn. "Is it going to be a problem if I continue my work?" he asked. He really didn't want to bring it up, but it felt it necessary.
Relieved despite himself for the change in topic, Varyyn replied, "As long as Ilia is kept hidden from demons and their servants, I believe you should be allowed to continue your life as you see fit, Lola."
Ilia shifted slightly in her seat and Twyla grumbled in complaint, jumping down from her lap to begin exploring the floor of the coach.
He shook his head quickly. "I wouldn't dream of putting any of you in any more danger," he said sincerely. "I can't help but think if it weren't for me.. You would have never had come with me if I had never come here, and.."
He couldn't finish what he was trying to say. He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed guilt.
"The men I am after are not demons," he said suddenly. "They're just cowards."
Ilia still didn't look at him, her eyes focused loosely on the slowly changing scenery outside the window.
But she reached over and took his hand silently, twining their fingers together and giving a quick, soft squeeze.
Varyyn arched an eyebrow but decided not to comment, patting his lap gently for Twyla to jump up into, which she did with a loud purr. "As I said; you should live your life as you always have. We will endeavor to be as little a distraction as possible."
Good. Great. It was settled then. Lola would continue his moonlighting affairs and would at all costs keep any and all attention off of his soon-to-be wife and father-in-law.
He nodded, let out a sigh, and leaned back in the coach. He wasn't tired, but he wasn't up to continue the conversation. He gave Ilia and Varryn the pieces they needed to know before arriving at his manor, and anything else that may arise he could fill them in along the way. They had a long trip ahead.
Varyyn leaned back in his own seat with a quiet sigh, allowing his eyes to close for a few moments. "You should both rest," he murmured, seemingly speaking to the roof of the coach. In his lap, Twyla paced a few small circles until she'd gotten comfortable and lay down again.
Ilia made a small, noncommittal noise of vague agreement. She still felt listless, adrift. She wasn't sure she'd actually be able to sleep, much as she wanted to.
Lola nodded in agreement. "I'll just need to see to the others," he said under his breath. "Make sure they don't miss me too much."
His eyes flashed for the briefest moment, and then rolled to the back of his head, a pure display of white as he concentrated on extending the glamour on the coach ahead of them.
Eyes still closed, Varyyn twitched slightly as he felt the shift of magic in the air.
Ilia's reaction was decidedly more pronounced, a ripple running through her whole body. She stiffened, straightening up and looking around instinctively, as though she didn't know where the feeling was coming from.
That was...not right. Was it? Her own magical gift stemmed pretty much entirely from blood rites and rituals, she shouldn't be that sensitive to shifts in magical energy.
The rest of that day's journey went more or less the same. Little conversation, weariness, and Lola's eyes at the back of his skull. He didn't want to ride with the others, but he had to keep them under his control. He should probably rest soon from what he was doing, but the exhaustion didn't come. Normally pulling something like that, to that many, at that distance, would utterly render him useless by nightfall.
Not now. He was... stronger. He couldn't explain it, but he didn't mind it.
He finally broke his concentration as he was confident he bought them the rest of the night without them worrying about Theodore. "I miss anything?" he asked, casually looking over to his company.
Varyyn opened one eye to look at him in silence for a long moment. Eventually, he answered, "No. You've expended quite a bit of magical energy though. Perhaps you should rest?"
Ilia shifted a little in the seat beside Lola, feeling as though she wasn't quite....quite settled in her body. And was...tired. More tired than she had any reason to be, but the weariness felt distant...
Strange.
Lola really wasn't tired at all. It was unusual for him to be able to extend that much energy and not be the slightest bit faint.
He didn't think about it more than that, though. He would be tired soon enough, he thought. "Yeah, I should at least try before I wear myself out beyond repair," he said almost sheepishly.
He let his head lean back against his seat and closed his eyes. Wide awake.
Varyyn frowned. There was a flow of energy, almost a circuit, in the coach. Perhaps it had been there for a while, but it hadn't really been clear before.
Ilia was almost instantly asleep while Lola was bright eyed. He could feel her inherent power flagging while his hardly seemed to need recovery from that massive spell.
Well. That...should probably be addressed soon.
Perhaps when they reached their destination. It would make sense to sit down and talk to them about it once they had some time.
The trip took a near month before they reached their destination. All things considered, Lola's legs should have been stiff and his back sore from all of the sitting they had to do to make the best time possible, yet somehow he felt better than he had his entire life.
He felt stronger, more alert, more capable - complete control over his abilities. Ilia, on the other hand, seemed tired practically all of the time. A sneaky suspicion told him it was his own doing, that somehow they became connected in more ways than one back in the demon realm, and it wasn't long before he opted to rejoin his group in the first coach so there would be less of a strain on his magic.
He couldn't be sure if that was it, but he didn't want to risk it any further.
They arrived at his two-story manor in the middle just as night fell, and Theodore stepped out into the crisp cool air with excitement and purpose.
"Finally!"
Finally.
"I believe we have arrived."
Ilia was brought to consciousness by her father's soft voice and his hand on her shoulder. She yawned, blinking blearily. Gods, she'd just been so tired, even though all they'd done the last few weeks was sit in a carriage..
"...Is it going to kill me?" she asked softly, staring up at Varyyn while Lola's voice rang out clear outside the coach.
Varyyn stilled. Then, quietly: "Not if I have anything to say about it."
She nodded once, not quite believing him, and allowed him to slip an arm around her waist to help her out of the coach and onto the ground. Twyla came bounding after, twining around her legs.
"So." Ilia looked up at the manor, face pale and drawn. She tried for something like a smile, but thought she only managed a twitch of her lips. "Home then, I suppose."
"That's right, my dear," Theodore said proudly as he strode over to her. "Home."
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, but then pulled back and concern filled his eyes. "Oh, but Charlotte, you look so pale!" He let the back of his hand touch her forehead as if checking her for illness, and then frowned. "Come inside, please. Both of you. That long journey could wear anyone out. Get some rest and I'll have them prepare some food for you."
He took Charlotte's arm and slowly led her to the entrance where Tommy awaited.
"Master Alcott," he greeted them with a warm, professional smile. "Welcome back, m'lord."
Theodore removed his arm from Charlotte's long enough to throw the butler a quick hug and a pat on the back before returning to her. "Tommy, just Theodore is fine," he said. "You know that."
Tommy nodded, but he would never oblige. He looked at the two guests, but Theodore spoke again before he could get another word out.
"This is my beautiful bride-to-be and her loving father, Tommy. But do you mind if we do the proper introductions later? They're both very tired."
"Of course, m'lord."
Tommy led them into the living quarters.
"Charlotte" did her best to smile and nod as she was led into the manor, and tried not to show exactly how weak on her feet she really was.
Varyyn watched her every movement like a hawk, even as he turned back to the coach to begin unloading the few boxes and bags that they had brought with them.
Then they were introduced to Tommy, led into the living quarters, and Fredrick suddenly made his appearance, smiling at Theodore and saying jovially, "I should think a nice cup of tea may be in order, don't you? Just the three of us, have a chat before we settle in."
His eyes flashed once, meaningfully, and he shot a brief glance to where Ilia still clung to Lola's arm, essentially using him as a crutch to keep herself upright at this point.
Theodore nodded. "Of course," he agreed. "Tommy, would I-"
"It would be my pleasure, sir," the butler said before hastily making his way into the kitchen.
It only took a few minutes for Tommy to fetch the three of them a nice warm cup of tea, but during that time Theodore was able to give his thanks to his escorts, have the guards settle back into their normal routine, and see Daniel off with another guard - sending him back to his parent's estate.
He led the father and daughter into the parlor. There was a seat for all three of them, and even an empty one for Twyla if she wished, but something told him the little hellcat would rather be in the warmth of someone's lap.
"Here you are."
Tommy handed them a mug individually, and then poured them full with the steamy beverage one at a time, before bidding a quick good night and leaving them alone.
Twyla immediately leaped up onto the chair that had been left free, kneading the cushion for a few moments before pacing three circles and then curling up in the center, purring happily.
Ilia managed to muster up a weak smile from her own seat, and chuckled quietly to herself. "Little princess," she teased the hellcat quietly.
"Mrrow! Mow-wow-wow."
Varyyn smiled slightly and lifted his cups to his lips, breathing in the steam of the drink before he took a sip. "Well now. Are you sure we are alone here, Theodore?" he asked after a moment, eyes flicking from Lola to the door pointedly.
Ilia leaned back in her chair, letting her eyes close. God, she was just so tired...
"Lottie, darling, you must stay awake."
She flinched as her father's voice all but snapped out at her, jerking her from the edge of sleep. "Papa," she complained, rubbing at her eyes. When she met his gaze however, she felt a tiny shiver of fear run down her spine at the intense concern on his face.
"Please," he muttered. "Just stay awake. Just a little longer."
Lola gave Varryn a slight smile before snapping his thumb and middle finger together. A seal surrounded the room in a quick flash - naked to the human eye but he assumed Varryn would at least be able to notice the subtle change in energy.
"We're alone," he said, dropping the accent and the act. "Ilia," he looked to her. "Are you okay?"
"'M fine," she tried to mutter, waving him off, but it was just so hard to shape the words properly in her mouth, to keep her eyes open...
"She's still bound to you," Varyyn said quickly, rising from his chair and crossing to kneel in front of Ilia's. "The ritual she performed in the Demon Realms is taking longer to fade than I'd anticipated--and it seems she bound herself to you too powerfully to begin with."
He'd been worrying about this for weeks, but it was only now that he could see them both together defenses both magical and mundane lowered, that he could read the change in their auras properly. Glancing to Lola, he explained shortly, "With half her soul tied to you and the--the baby starting to grow, it's eating her life away."
Lola bent over in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands now covering his mouth. "I thought so," he said quietly. "I didn't know how to explain it, but I knew it had to have been something like that."
Another sting of guilt touched at his chest.
"So what do we do?" he looked to Varryn for guidance.
"I have to perform a ritual to completely sever the first."
Varyyn spoke quickly and sharply. He was angry with himself. He'd suspected this, he should have just made them stop on their journey and sorted things out the moment he thought Ilia was in danger. But that would have required time and supplied they didn't have, and may have raised suspicion.
Didn't exactly make him feel any better about the situation.
Straightening up, the demidemon said briskly, "We'll need vervain, salt, hot water, and a copper bowl. And somewhere to perform the ritual where we won't be disturbed."
"What do you mean?" Ilia's voice was weak and hazy, but she still managed to catch her father's attention, at least, as she tried to sit up straighter in the chair. She was looking at Lola. "What did you mean, you...you knew?"
Lola's face was absent while he was taking in everything Varryn was saying. All of the ingredients he had requested should be easily enough obtained - more than likely all was readily available in the manor, and he had the perfect place for them to do it at.
He looked to Ilia, blinking slightly at her question. "Oh," he started, a little caught off guard. "Every time I used my abilities you became noticeably weaker. That's why I stopped doing anything, and rode the rest of the way in the other coach."
"Oh." Had she noticed that? Should she have noticed that? If she was being honest with herself, Ilia knew she hadn't really been paying much attention to anything going on around her since she'd left Connlaoth--not even what was going on with her own power, apparently.
Turning his attention fully to Lola, Varyyn cut in smoothly, "If you would tell me where I may acquire the ingredients, perhaps you could escort Ilia to the ritual site." The suggestion was voice softly; despite the wards Lola had erected, he was cautious.
"All of that should be readily available for you in the kitchen area," he said, gesturing his hand toward a hall that would lead him there. "If you see Tommy, you can ask him for his help. He won't ask questions."
Lola rose from his seat and stepped over to Ilia. "Ready?"
Varyyn nodded and slipped out the door quickly.
"I'm fine," Ilia tried to protest again, waving a hand at him. "Really. I'll just be happy to have this link severed."
She moved to stand, but her knees buckled the moment they took her weight and she collapsed back toward the chair, clutching at the arms. "Shit." She clenched her eyes shut, trying to suppress a wave of anger and fear that threatened to swamp her.
If she was actually just tired and not in any danger, he probably would have laughed at that. Instead, he just frowned slightly out of concern. "You're not fine," he argued. "Come on. I'll help you. Take my arm."
She glared at him, hating the fact that she needed help--but she did need it. With a small sigh, she reached up to take his arm, leaning on him heavily.
"...Thank you."
Lola was careful with his bride-to-be, taking each step with caution and he supported her down the hall and then down the stairs into the cellar.
The cellar itself was much larger than one would typically expect in a home. Where most people would ride out a bad storm, he often used it to torture his victims that he would lure here with his glamour. He released the seal that remained in hold on the underground room before they entered, and then resealed it once they were settled in.
Solid stone, sealed with magic, sound-proof. There would be no better place for Varryn's ritual.
He brought her to a chair that he kept stashed in the corner, pulling it out more into the open and helping her to sit in it. "Think you'll be okay here by yourself for a while?" he asked. "I'll need to go get your father once he's collected everything he needs."
Ilia had enough energy to quip a weak, "Charming locale," as Lola led her down into the cellar of the manor. Twyla followed at their heels, sometimes winding in and around their legs, but mostly just padding along behind.
When he sat her in the chair, she nodded tiredly and tried to wave him off. "Fine, I'm fine. I've got Twyla with me, see?"
The hellcat mewed and jumped up into her mistress's lap, kneading the fabric of her skirts. She blinked slowly up at Lola as if to see, I've got her, go on.
Though she'd told him to leave, before he could actually go Ilia suddenly reached out and grasped Lola's wrist weakly. "Damien..."
She took a breath, swallowed, then murmured, "About... The journey here, I wasn't--I think I was...unkind to you. I'm sorry. You didn't deserve it."
He was about to leave when she grabbed his wrist, and he let his eyes linger on her for a moment while she apologized. He was unreadable until a small but warm smiled curled into lips. "Life is unkind, Ilia," he said. "Many have been unkind to me, and you are not one of them. You're actually quite charming."
He winked at her, gave Twyla a quick scratch behind the ears, and began climbing the stairs to find Varryn.
She managed at least the ghost of a smile in return. As he pulled away to leave she found herself reaching out for him again, words forming on her lips. But she pulled her hand back before he noticed and simply slumped into the chair, head bowed and shoulders heavy.
Varyyn had found the kitchen easily enough, although he seemed to have disturbed some of the staff by coming in and rooting around for the ingredients he needed without allowing them to help him.
Lola was back in character as he made his stride through the manor. He heard the click clacking, ping panging of dishes, pans, and the sort being shuffled around from the kitchen area. Guess he didn't ask Tommy for help, was his first thought with a soft, amused smile as he appeared.
"How we doing?" he leaned into the door frame and asked.
"They are common enough ingredients, and easy to find," Varryn replied as he turned to face him, holding the copper bowl with the main spell components in one hand and a water flask in the other. He jerked his head toward the door, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "You left her alone?"
There was just the barest hint of a growl in his voice.
Lola looked at Varryn wearily. He knew that was less of a question and more of a disapproving statement. He nodded and said, "Yes. I made sure she was fine, and Twyla is with her. If anything were to happen, we would know about it."
He moved out of the frame and into the room. "If you're ready, follow me."
Varyyn grumbled quietly, but didn't press the issue. He just nodded and moved to follow Lola to wherever it was that he'd decided was an appropriate place to perform the ritual.
He led Varryn out of the question, down several halls, and down the stairs and into the corridor where Ilia and Twyla await. Once inside, he locked the door behind him and freshened the seal that was already in place to keep any and all sounds out.
"How are you feeling?" he asked they made it down the steps.
Ilia raised her head, blinking quickly in an effort to hide just how heavy her eyes were, how close she'd felt to drifting off.
Surely just a little sleep wouldn't do me any harm...
"I'm...fine."
"You are typically quite an excellent liar, Ilia. I'm disappointed," her father replied brusquely to that. Crouching on the ground before her chair, he muttered something under his breath and summoned a bright, white-hot flame to his fingertip before he began tracing designs on the stone floor around her feet.
Over his shoulder, he said to Lola, "Combine the vervain and salt in the bowl, burn them, and powder the remains."
"You got it," Lola replied almost absently. He had no idea what Varryn was about to do or how he was going to do it, but the instructions he had been given were simple enough. He trusted Ilia's father to take care of the rest.
After mixing the ingredients in the bowl, his fingertips sparked in flame with a quick flash of his eyes, and he burned and powdered appropriately.
He looked to Varryn when he was finished. "What next?" he asked.
"Take her hands," Varyyn replied quickly, grabbing the bowl so Lola was free to do so.
Ilia gave her head another little shake, clearing exerting no small amount of effort to keep herself awake. She wrinkled her nose up at her father as he paced around them, sprinkling the powdered mixture into a pentagram on the ground so that she and Lola were in the center.
"This is going to hurt, isn't it?" she grumbled, almost petulant.
Varyyn shot her a droll look. "Perhaps. Hold still."
Lola did as he was told and took Ilia's hands in his own. Hurt? He felt invincible as of late. Was this ritual going to take that feeling away?
...No. He couldn't think like that. This was for Ilia's safety and well-being.
With her hands in his, he looked to Varryn as to ask what they should do next.
"Just....close your eyes. Breathe." Varryn began pacing the circle and pentagram on the floor again, sprinkling the ashed ingredients as he did. "This will likely be uncomfortable, but do not break contact until I give the word. If you do, it may disrupt the unbinding."
Ilia screwed her face up, but she kept her eyes closed, her hands in Lola's. Heat started to gather gradually between their palms, growing slowly from a simple warmth to something dangerously approaching burning.
Lola felt the sting of heat in his palms as he held Ilia's hands in his. It was much like the sensation he felt when he conjured his own elemental fire but with no control over it. Before he knew it, there was a slight wince on his face from the burn, but it was nothing he couldn't handle yet.
He kept her hands firmly in his as he glanced between Ilia and her father as the ritual progressed.
Ilia's brow furrowed deeper as the heat grew, her lips parting slightly. "Papa...?"
"Shhh," Varyyn urged. He moved to stand just outside the pentagram and began murmuring under his breath in a language Ilia didn't recognize, perhaps some dialect of the demonic tongue that she didn't know.
The burning grew to near scalding and Ilia flinched, instinctively trying to pull her hands back as pain sparked over her palms. "Ahh--!"
Varyyn paused his chant only long enough to shout a clipped, "Don't break contact!"
Through gritted teeth, Lola tightened his fingers into hers to prevent her from breaking away. It wasn't easy. This sensation was hot. Almost as hot as the magic he often produced, and what he produced he often used to kill.
Almost involuntarily, he leaned forward and rested his head on top of hers, and his eyes closed as he fought through the flame.
Ilia was shaking, but she tightened her grip on Lola's hands, jaw set determinedly. When his head came to rest against hers she found herself pushing back against him, trying to focus on keeping her breath even as the burning spread up from her palms to race through her arms and down into her core.
A soft cry struggled passed her lips. "I--I can't! It hurts!"
Varryn winced, his jaw clenching, but he continued the chant. The spell was almost completed, just a few more seconds...
The fire suddenly raced through every inch of Ilia's skin, lighting her up from the inside, and she screamed.
Then it was gone, as suddenly as it came, and she collapsed forward into Lola, gasping and trembling.
Varryn dropped the smoking bowl, his own hands shaking slightly as he moved forward to place a hand against his daughter's back. "Shh, shh." He stroked her hair and looked up at Lola, searching the younger man's face with concern. "It's alright, it's over..."
Damien's own scream of pain was internal, but was communicated with the look on his face. When it was over, Ilia collapsed into him, and he barely had the strength to keep them both from toppling over onto the solid ground.
It was a weird sensation. Now that the scorching pain had left their bodies, it was almost as if a part of himself went with it. Hands and feet tingly, head slightly dizzy, and bones chilly as if he were out in the snow without a coat on.
"That's it?" he asked, more of a plead for confirmation than an answer. "So.. what next? Just.. nothing?"
Varyyn shrugged, head tilted slightly to the side. "That is the end of the binding, at least. Neither of you should feel any more ill effects--though it may take a day or two for you to adjust to no longer being connected."
Ilia was curled into Damien's chest, still shivering. In the absence of the heat from the ritual, she felt far, far too cold. While she was relieved that the connection would no longer be sapping her strength, in a strange way she suddenly realized that she almost...missed it.
"I'm so tired," she whispered, closing her eyes with a sharp exhale. "Please, can we just...can't we deal with the rest of this in the morning?"
"Y-Yeah," he whispered. "Morning."
That was all he managed to muster, though it was an agreement nonetheless. His legs felt weak and his knees nearly buckled as he started to stand, and the aid he offered to Ilia was just as uncertain. Again, it was a weird sensation. It was just then he realized how much stronger he and his abilities had become when he was connected with Ilia, and how it quickly zapped from him.
It was for her own safety, so he was happy for that, but there was a sudden feeling that he lost apart of himself in the ritual. Now the empty hole inside him that begged to be filled was ever present from within him again.
He needed to kill someone.
Varryn stepped forward quickly, catching Lola's shoulder to help brace the younger man as he in turn tried to steady Ilia.
For her part, the young noble's new fiancee just sort of clung to him, still not back to her full strength. "Where, um..." She licked her lips and glanced from Lola to her father. "Where are we staying, exactly?"
Varryn shrugged, looking down at their host. "I'm not sure, actually. Think you're up to showing us to our rooms?"