#ft. ninurta

[kristie-rp]

An Introduction to Demonology

triggers: implied abuse (physical, verbal, psychological), implied kidnapping (of a sort), violent witchcraft, protest, discriminatory/predatory behaviour, demons being weird

The marketplace of the first tier is crowded more often than not. The visitors who are natives to Hell knew how to navigate the winding passages between the stalls and storefronts, allowing the place to flow smoothly. Fights break out like twists in the rapids of a river, but the people continue to move, flowing on without interruption.

A group has built up around the base of the petrified tree standing in the middle of the market, not unlike algae pooling in a river. Demons are just as prone to uncertainty as any mortals, and it is for that reason that the Hegemony has become so popular.

“And worse, Satan himself has become weak – allowing one of the Kings to leave to be with a filthy human?”

A malformed demon with sigils etched over its’ skin laughs aloud, calling the attention of the speechgiver. “You can hardly pass judgement with your pet, Asmodeus.”

A woman in a ragged gown steps forward, pushing her husband aside. She crackles with visible black power, previously white skin shifting towards ash gray and charcoal. Her hair is poorly cared for, hacked into short clumps in a frustrated pique. “Have you something to say to me, Ninurta?”

The demon falters but grits its teeth. “Why should I be afraid of a good-for-nothing human?”

“Ha,” the woman breaths. She steps forward, reaching for Ninurta. Despite its’ efforts to resist, it is compelled to approach, one step, two step, dragging and halting – but still it ends with Priscilla resting a hand in the centre of its flattened head. “You shouldn’t, of course. It’s beneath you.” She murmurs something, a low chant that ends on a crescendo and a scream. Ninurta howls in pain and collapses to the ground in a helpless heap as Priscilla sneers above him. “But I am far from human now, and what I am is above the likes of you.”

She expects silent respect in the face of her show, but what happens instead involves a horrified gasp tearing through the crowd. It morphs into outrage quicker than she can react, and she looks around to find the origin of the disturbance. She finds it in the petrified wood, a small flower blossoming on the branch above her head.

Priscilla grits her teeth and curls her hands into fists, nails biting into her palms. She can feel magic pulse as she meets her husbands eye, and nods sharply to him. Asmodeus gestures behind the tree and reaches up to tear the bud from where it has grown, crushing it in his hand. Priscilla casts the spell she needs to to lock the problem away.

Everyone has a secret, if not more. Asmodeus and Priscilla are no different. They protect their secret as well-practiced experts, hiding it away from the world they prefer. The two are demonic in nature if not in species, a monster and the bride who exchanged her soul and freedom for power and an end to her humanity – and yet the two of them have managed to create a pure soul.

Any mixed breed child is a disaster in the making – a look at Paimon’s legacy can reveal that. Asmodeus is of the opinion that he has managed to create something worse. No self-respecting demon wants to lay claim to a pure soul, not as their own, not unless they can corrupt it. And despite their best efforts, they cannot corrupt Sarina. Her hair and skin remain a pristine, gleaming white, and her eyes continue to glow gold. Their daughter might have inherited her mothers’ jawline, but the picture she paints is of an angel at creation.

It’s almost more disgusting than a human.

Her saving grace thus far has been her power, and Priscilla’s insistence that if they teach her she has no choice, she will lean towards the darkness they revere. She’s a mixed brat, not quite half demon, a little over a tenth human, and the rest of her a witch, all contained within a twelve year old girl in a heavy black cloak.

“There must be a way to fix her,” Priscilla says, wringing her hands. Her brow is furrowed in concern, because in spite of everything, some maternal instinct remains in her. “Torture? Pain? What can we do?”

Asmodeus kicks the trunk she conjured sharply, and finds himself unsatisfied by the protesting squeak the load gives. He growls sharply, turns away.

“Perhaps it’s best to kill her,” his wife goes on. It’s a mistake; her comment captures his attention, and he grips her by the throat and lift her aloft. She claws ineffectively at his hand on her, and drops as he growls his fury and annoyance.

“Worthless whore – you gave me that abomination. I should burn the both of you and be done with it.”

He doesn’t, though. He never does. Priscilla is too powerful, and too much of a sign of prestige for him to give her up now. Few other demons have corrupted a human so thoroughly it no longer registers as human on any kind of scale, enough that they truly feel welcome in Hell. He casts her aside and she drifts harmlessly to the ground, magic powerful enough to react on instinct. Her throat is raw and she rubs it with black fingers, glaring at him as he approaches the trunk and tears it open. He drags Sarina out by the back of her neck, snarls in her battered face.

“What have we told you about using your disgusting powers?”

Sarina flinches back from the spittle that springs from his lips, and says nothing, as she has learned to do. It’s better not to complain aloud – better not to defend herself. That way, the demon that makes up her father is slightly less likely to beat her to the edge of death again.

She only wanted to float, the way her mother had. She hadn’t meant to make anything grow, to alert the entire marketplace that there was someone light-magic capable in their midst – hadn’t meant to ruin the rally her parents had been planning for ages.

But she had, and they weren’t going to listen to her complaints.

Better to grit her teeth and take it.

The plains are a frankly disturbingly barren realm. Nothing has ever grown in this place, and it’s ravaged by winds more at home on the windiest places of Earth than here, in the typically sheltered dimension that makes up Hell. The ground is cracked and dry, and pillars carved from stacked stones continue in seemingly random sequence into the distance. There is no doubt that the place is dead.

Ninurta has never felt welcome in this place, but it is where the only demon it trusts to fix the damage done to it presides.

“You reek of death,” is what the wind whispers to it as it pauses to catch its’ breath against one of the pillars.

“You say the nicest things,” it snaps back through a clenched jaw. It would try to sound more respectful to the King of this realm, only it remains in pain, and cannot open its’ maw.

The being it is here to see manifests on the other side of the pillar. He trails his fingers over the pillar as he leans around it, and the wind beating at the surrounding area fades away.

Samael is the King of this sector. He calls himself male and shifts skin on a whim. Today, he has a more demonic, monstrous form, something Ninurta is able to appreciate. Bone is held together with sinew, grey half-dead muscles in place impossibly, except down here, where every appearance is more than likely half an illusion. His head is a humanoid skull with no jaw, teeth hanging in jagged structures. It’s off putting – and it puts Ninurta at ease for the first time since that damned rally in the marketplace.

He says nothing as he grips Ninurta’s jaw, tilting it one way and the other as he considers the damage done. This is more standard than the greeting it received; for reasons that Ninurta has not been permitted to know, Samael is selectively mute, and, when he chooses to speak, it is on a breeze. A theory did the rounds half a millennia ago that the King cannot speak normally, as the rest of them generally do, but it has lost traction without Samael acknowledging it. It is difficult to pull emotion from a skull devoid of flesh, but Ninurta imagines this is an expression of concern. The theory is confirmed when Samael rests a skeletal hand on each of Ninurta’s shoulders, and vanishes them both in a twist of wind.

Samael, it seems, is calling a cavern home today. The pillars are visible from the entrance, arching into the distance. “What are they even for?” Ninurta asks. It doesn’t expect an answer, and doesn’t get one, not in a way that helps. The only response is a freshly conjured gust of wind buffeting the demon until it turns to settle on the floor of the cave. Samael smears a foul-smelling poultice over the parts of Ninurta that show damage; it seeps into its flesh and sooth the pain. As the process continues, Ninurta talks, explaining the scene at the marketplace. It isn’t until Samael stops moving, notably before the pain ends, that he glances at the King’s face. “What?”

Samael tilts his head, lifts a bony finger to tap at the space where his lips would be, if he’d elected to put on skin this morning. He gestures, twining his fingers in a particular way that Ninurta takes to mean he wants to touch on one of the things that have been described by him. “Rally,” it says, only to see the King shake his head. “Asmodeus. Priscilla. Attack. Life magic.”

Samael nods sharply, and resumes applying the poultice.

“I don’t know. Asmodeus and his whore both panicked when the flower bloomed; one of them destroyed it, she cast a spell. The crowd scattered, they hauled their trunk away, I dragged myself here because you’re the only capable healer in this damned place.” Samael frowns, or Ninurta imagines he does. “I don’t know what’s in the trunk. It’s probably a problem they haven’t bothered solving.”

The skull twitches, and Samael crouches to write letters in the dirt. Daughter, it spells out.

“Their daughter? No one’s seen her. In possibly... ever? Of course, no one would tell me if they did. Not today.”

Samael’s jawless skull emanates exasperation and Ninurta has a vague sense of unease. The King withdraws his hands, and the lesser demon realizes the job is done. The pain is gone, but it won’t be healed yet; Ninurta needs to rest until the process is complete. It won’t take long, as it is a pure demon and is hardier than that, even to dark magic.

“Your highness?” Ninurta presses, somewhat sarcastically. Samael does not reply, and indeed disappears once again in a whirl of dirt and air. If there’s ever a sign the conversation is over, this is it.

Ninurta doesn’t require sleep, but when it becomes aware again, it is sprawled on a carpeted floor between a lit fireplace that is constantly flickering, and there’s furniture around it. This would be more startling if it wasn’t entirely aware of Samael’s ability to twist his world on a whim. It suspects all the Kings can do it, in their own dimensions; it does not know if Paimon’s ability has been severed in his abdication or not.

What it does know is that a small, pale face is hanging upside-down over it. Strands of white hair are brushing its’ skin, and golden eyes gleam down. To Ninurta, the lurker looks like a human girl-child, and it finds itself growling instinctively.

The human recoils immediately, darting out of sight. Ninurta would watch her move, but it is abruptly unable to move, unable to feel anything below its’ jaw. It roars, outraged by the attack from – so far as it can tell – the tiny human. It stops when the wind moves around it, but only because it knows this is good news: the King will not allow a human in his home, however it looks.

A being that must be Samael appears in Ninurta’s vision. He has adopted a new appearance for a new day, for reasons unknown. He appears almost human, with alabaster skin and ashen hair, all of it layered with cracks of gold. Something off about his appearance gives away his identity to Ninurta, who knows better, and a kind of simple bone crown has grown from the top of his head. “There’s a human in here,” Ninurta snaps. Samael’s completely white eyes – the sockets seem to be filled with a smooth continuation of the skin he has taken – stare at the lesser demon on the floor, before he vanishes from sight, this time by stepping out of the way.

A series of moments pass, and the lack of sensation fades. Ninurta gets to its feet, relishing in the lack of pain, and is immediately faced with Samael and the human. The King has his hand resting gently on a pale shoulder, and the human is peering up at him as though he offers something she has not seen before.

Samael must whisper something to her, because she swallows and opens her mouth. “I’m called Sarina,” she says. It’s a soft voice, quiet. The accent is familiar – too similar to the witch who dared to curse it before it came to this place.

Ninurta stares at the girl for a long moment, seeing similarities it missed before. The jawline of Priscilla, an eyeshape similar to Asmodeus. “You claimed their halfbreed brat?” it demands of the King, because this explains a fair amount. Samael has always preferred halfbreeds and mixed bastards to purebreds; it is quirk unique to the King of this barren, wind-battered land.

Samael nods, and the girls lips twitch into something like a smile.

The mess of the Ninurta’s recent past hits it all at once. Fried and almost destroyed by a  witch who may actually be worse now she cannot make any claims to humanity, healed by a foul-smelling poultice only the Demon King Samael knows to make, and now this, waking to a half-breed brat as the clear next pet project of the King it respects so much – it has a right to be stressed, it’s sure. Samael squeezes the girls shoulder as Ninurta watches, and the two leave the room. It is only then that it notices that both of them are floating, feet a good few inches from touching the carpet.

It’s not sure why its’ surprised, really. Samael might not be as readily corrupted as Paimon, but he has always been curious.