The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

It was almost afternoon by the time we left. The burial had taken longer than it should have.

There had been twelve demonblood bodies. The soldiers had already dug graves for their own eight dead by the time I made my demand. The Inker had stared at me as if I had grown a third horn. His soldiers had stared harder. There had been no such thing as ‘graves’ for demons in my time, though I knew the concept well enough. It was an honor and a remembrance, and the demand had come with more fire than I had expected.

I had not explained myself. A Queen did not explain herself. I had simply said that the dead would be buried, all of them, or we would not be moving at all. The man had looked at Ash, perhaps hoping she would overrule me.

The Hero had folded her arms and said nothing, save for stepping closer to me. The Inker's jaw had worked for several seconds before he turned and gave the order. The soldiers had shot me dirty looks, but they obeyed the Inker, whose greed made him obey me.

The soldiers had dug without much enthusiasm. I had watched. Some of them had cursed under their breath, though none loud enough for me to single out. The graves were shallow and uneven. I did not complain, even though the ones for their own men had been deeper and more even.

I had stood over the last one for a moment longer than I should have. The girl had been among them. I could only wonder what kind of life could lead a little girl somewhere like here.

After that, we started moving. The road stretched south beneath a sky that was beginning to cloud. The Inker walked at the front of the column, his stride sharper than yesterday. He had not spoken to me since the burial, save for one remark. “Your sentimentality,” he had said, adjusting his robes, “has cost us half the day. If we do not reach the inn by nightfall, we will be sleeping on the road again. I trust that does not trouble Your Highness.”

The words were supposed to be mocking, yet it was perhaps the first time he had addressed me properly since Hamel.

I adjusted the satchel on my shoulder instead of answering, my hand settling over the egg through the cloth. It was warm. I checked that the strap was secure, shifted the weight to my other hip, and kept walking. Even if we did sleep on the road, Ash and I would have the tent. Perhaps that was the source of most of his ire.

The column stopped at a bend in the road where a stream cut across the path. It seemed most of our pauses had to do with streams of water. In my time, one simply conjured water with magic. I had seen some of these use their marks to conjure water, but they never used it to drink. Humans were odd.

The soldiers filled their waterskins. I watched the Inker refill his own, take a long drink, and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. That was when I approached him with Ash beside me.

“You made a promise,” I said.

The Inker closed his eyes. He took a breath that seemed to carry the weight of several lifetimes, though I knew the man hadn’t even lived one of any real consequence. “The first lesson will be short,” he said, opening his eyes. “As someone wasted half the day burying demonbloods, we must move quickly if we wish to reach the inn by nightfall.”

“Then you had best not waste time complaining about it."

He stared at me. I stared back. The man sighed, looked around, and gestured for the two of us to follow him off the road. We walked a short distance from the column, past a line of low shrubs, until the sound of the soldiers had faded. We sat on a set of large stones. It was not comfortable. There were more clouds now.

“Before we begin,” the Inker said, settling onto a flat stone, “tell me plainly, and do not lie -how much do you actually know? About marks, about cultivation, about any of it.”

Ash answered before I could. “Nothing.”

The Inker studied her face. Then mine. “That,” he said slowly, “is rather difficult to believe.”

“You are welcome to disbelieve it,” I said.

He held my gaze for a moment longer. Whatever he found there was enough. “Very well. I will assume you know nothing at all.” He said the word assume as if it burnt his tongue. “Where would you like me to-”

“Before all of that,” I cut him off. “There is something else I wish to know first.”

The Inker paused. I had not planned to ask these questions here, yet it had been sitting inside me since I’d woken. No, perhaps they had been sitting in me for weeks. “What is a demonblood?” I asked. “And what is a half-demon?”

The Inker stared at me. The silence lasted long enough that I almost asked again. “You cannot be serious.”

I held his gaze and did not answer. I felt Ash shift beside me and lean closer. It seemed she wanted this answer as much as I.

“You expect me to believe,” he said carefully, “that you do not know what you are?”

“I expect you to answer me.”

The man looked at Ash. Ash looked at me. Neither of us spoke. The Inker rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he spoke again, his voice sounded somehow both less annoyed and more at the same time.

“As everybody knows, the demon race died out almost a thousand years ago,” he began. “The Last Great Demon War ravaged the land. Through the power of the Divine, all other races beat back the horde.” He paused and seemed to consider. “But the demons were not wiped out. There were simply too many of them. The demons surrendered, and over time….” He paused. “Almost all of these demons bred with the other races.”

He tried to keep the sneer from his face. He did not entirely succeed. “These unions produced beings known as demonbloods. Members of other races who carry a trace of demonic heritage. Almost always it is subtle. Some feature that might be easy to miss, unless one knows exactly what to look for. Demonic traits are…small.” He glanced at me. “This demonic heritage is most visible in humans, where the distance between human and demon is widest.”

“And half-demons?” Ash asked quietly.

The Inker's expression shifted. “Very rarely,” he said, “the blood of the demon overpowers the blood of the other race. What is born is something closer to the devils of old. The horns. The eyes. Wings. The…dark presence.” His gaze found my horns and lingered there. “They are called half-demons. There are not too many of them, thankfully. They are rare.” He paused, and something in his tone darkened. “Though there have been more and more lately.”

I had listened to every word, much as I had not wanted to. If the man was to be believed, then my race had been destroyed. Or rather…diluted. Absorbed into the bloodlines of other races. My hands had clenched, and I forced myself to unclench them. Slowly. After all the Gods did to us, it seemed they’d found a way to remove us entirely.

And I -or rather, this body I wore- was one of the rare cases where the old blood had refused to thin then. A devil of old, he had said. There was more irony in that than he could have known. It did not answer why I had been given this body, but at least I now knew what it was. There was a stone lodged somewhere in my throat. I felt warmth on my shoulder. Ash had put her arm there. It was a strange gesture, yet I now found it easier to swallow past the stone. I sat up a little straighter, and met the Inker’s gaze.

The Inker was watching us. His confusion was plain. “You…both really didn’t know? You two grow stranger by the day,” he muttered, shaking his head.

I did not answer. The information turned inside me. Would keep turning for a very long time, I suspect. I wished to believe the man was lying, yet I could not convince myself he was. Sister.

There was another question, one I was now unsure I now wanted answered. "And at this Academy of yours," I said. "How are demonbloods and half-demons treated?"

The Inker glanced at me for a time. He seemed to consider himself. "Demonbloods are students like any other," he said. "They train alongside humans and elves and all others who bear the Ink. They eat the same food, attend the same lectures, sleep in the same quarters. The Academy does not discriminate based on blood." He said the words smoothly, with no change in tone at all.

"What about half-demons?" I pressed.

"There are…few of those at the Academy. Three, perhaps four at any given time." He paused, and his tone faltered, just barely. "They are afforded the same opportunities as anyone else -if anything, their rarity makes them notable. Remarked upon."

"Remarked upon," I repeated.

"Noticed," he amended. "With some interest, mind you. Through some…mechanism we do not understand, most half-demons tend to develop…impressively." He adjusted his robes and did not quite meet my eyes. "There is some…caution, naturally. Many of these students are rather particular, and so they are handled as such."

The man was not telling me the whole truth, that much was rather plain. Still, his version sounded rather different from what Isabelle had said. The truth, I suspected, sat somewhere between the two accounts. It always did, when there were two competing generals with two different stories to tell. We were silent for a time. My gaze was focused only on the ground in front of me. My thoughts ran in directions I did not wish for them to go.

“The instruction,” Ash said after a time. Her voice was gentle. I did not think she was talking to me, yet it seemed aimed thus anyway. I had not asked for gentleness.“You promised us that as well.”

The Inker nodded as he rose, and gestured for us to follow. “We walk and talk,” he said. “I will not lose more daylight.”

We returned to the road and fell in behind the column as it started to move. The Inker walked between us, his hands clasped behind his back. He was quiet for a time. When he spoke, his voice had…shifted. The sneer was still there beneath the surface, but it was a little harder to hear.

He sounded like a priest ready to deliver a sermon. Which was, of course, exactly what he was. “All Cultivation is built on three pillars,” he said. “The body.” He raised one finger. “Essence Accumulation.” He raised a second finger. “And Insight.” He raised a third. “Each of these feeds the other two -none is sufficient on its own.”

He looked at us, and when we said nothing, he continued. “The body must be strengthened and tempered to serve as a vessel for power. That is not a concern at your stage and I will not speak of it today.” He paused only briefly. “Essence is the fuel that drives advancement. Without it, a mark will sit at its current stage forever. Much time and effort is spent gathering Essence. Refining it. Gathering still more,” He stopped, looking at both of us, “And then we have Insight. One can be given all the resources in the world. Can have a body no beast can pierce, yet without Insight…one cannot advance. It is the key to the door.”

“What is this Insight?” Ash asked before I could.

The Inker considered this as he started walking. “At the lower stages, it is a feeling more than a true Insight. Some call it a gut feeling, perhaps a vague realization about oneself or about the nature of one’s mark. These have been studied extensively, and so we know the pattern for most people,” He was quiet for a few steps. “At the higher stages, Insights become questions. Or perhaps conversations. Conversations between every man and woman…and their marks. These are questions that many would rather not answer, for fear that what they find inside is not what they wished to see.”

I said nothing. I thought of a campfire and the first time I had felt the need to tend it. Of the phoenix, and the thoughts it had forced out of me. One hand reached inside the satchel, felt at the egg. It was warm to the touch, pulsing against my skin. This Ink was a strange thing indeed. Why a System that had only ever dealt in objective numbers and simple quests would now resort to something this…poetic was perhaps the greatest mystery of all. Did Zarvok create this new world?

"You have both already advanced past the first stage," the Inker continued. "From Sparks to Lines. So, I assume you understand something about the nature of your powers.” He glanced between the two of us and waited. If he expected us to volunteer something, he was disappointed. He took a breath and continued, “I will explain what comes next, and I will not repeat myself."

I had been waiting for this part. He raised his hand and pulled his sleeve back, exposing the horn-shaped mark on his forearm. "A Line, with a strong enough body, with enough Essence and Insight, begins to curve. To branch outward in patterns that are always unique to the bearer. This is called a Sigil." He traced a finger along the pattern of his own mark. "They form almost shapes. Sometimes one can guess what they're forming, but not always. Most people cultivating diligently reach Sigil. It is the stage at which one becomes properly useful."

He paused. "Beyond Sigil, the patterns close in on themselves and forms a proper shape. The shape could be anything from flames to shields to beasts. Sometimes things nobody has ever seen before. Mine are these horns." He looked between us. "This is called a Crest, and each Crest's shape hints at what it does. Crests are far rarer than Sigils. If a hundred men reach one stage, then only perhaps two of them might reach the next. Hence, Crests are rare."

"And beyond this Crest?" I asked.

The Inker's expression shifted. "The shape gains a…dimension to it. A depth. You have seen it for yourself, so I think you understand my meaning." He seemed to weigh whether to continue. "This is called a Rune. There are perhaps a couple dozen Runes in the whole of this Kingdom. Though…." He looked bitter, “Ours is a small Kingdom.” He let that sit. "There are stages beyond the Rune and their names do not concern you. They will not concern you for a very long time, if ever." He looked at us. "In truth, you need not concern yourselves with Crests, let alone Runes. A Line reaching Sigil would be a worthy ambition for the both of you."

I said nothing to that. I was thinking of a mark I had seen in a dark clearing. A dense red shape that crawled the length of an arm, pacing like a caged beast. It had not merely sat upon the skin and it had not merely moved. It had been alive. Whatever stage Morrigan had reached, the Inker had no name for it. Or if he did, he did not think it worth sharing with the likes of us. A small part of me almost felt pride, though she was my General no longer.

“Now,” the Inker continued, “I will speak only of Essence. It is the most immediate of the three, and part of the first instruction you would have received at the academy.” He glanced at me. “Tell me what you know of it.”

I was not fond of being tested, though I could recognize instruction when I saw it. “It is the denser power that everyone uses,” I said. “I felt it during the battle. It is heavier than mana and…feels strange.”

The Inker nodded slowly. “That is…insufficient, but it is not a terrible start,” He seemed to consider his words. “Mana is the raw power in the air. The raw power all around us, in everything, from birds to stones. It is thin and often impure. One learns to draw it in without effort, like taking a breath. It gives one power and yet that power is…weak. One can feed it to a mark, certainly, and a mark will accept it.” He paused. “But it is like trying to light a great forge with nothing but kindling. It is possible, in principle, but hideously inefficient in practice.”

He looked between us. His brows drew together. “To advance even a Spark to a Line with mana alone would be…” He shook his head. “Like trying to step into a room by destroying all four walls, rather than using the door. It can work but….” He shook his head.

Ash and I shared a look. It wasn’t a matter of impossibility then, but one of improbability. No wonder he had looked at us the way he had when he’d seen our marks.

“Essence,” the Inker continued, “is mana that has been refined through a person’s mark. The process is simple. You draw in mana through your mark, rather than your mana core. In doing this, the mana is coated in the mark’s resonance. Its…flavor. Fire marks produce Essence that feels like flame. Wind marks produce Essence that feels like a breeze. A Cypher mark might produce an Essence that feels…sad. Or happy. Depending on what the mark is.”

He held up a hand. “Essence is at least ten times as dense as raw mana, even at a Spark. We aim to make it more dense and pure as we advance.”

“It seems this Essence is rather fundamental then,” Ash noted. “Quantity wise alone….”

If nothing else, then this Essence would let me use Ruin and Bloom freely, which had been by far my greatest annoyance since reaching Line. The Inker looked at her. “It is not simply a matter of quantity. Essence is better, in every aspect. A technique fueled by Essence is far more powerful. The greatest blacksmith in the world can make little from impure steel.”

"And this Essence is stored in an Essence Core?" Ash asked.

"Yes. If you try to store Essence inside of a Mana Core, it will simply leak out. The process of forming an Essence Core is rather painful," He trailed off and looked between us again. “It is the single most important thing any person wishing to cultivate power ever does.”

"How does one form it?" I pressed.

The Inker glanced at the sky. The clouds were thickening. "That," he said, "is a matter best handled under proper supervision, at the Academy.” He smoothed the front of his robes. “Where certain people will be able to see, firsthand, just how thoroughly I have prepared the two of you. You do not have to wait long. We should reach the Academy tomorrow, even given the…diversion.”

His greed was rather apparent then. He was going to frame even this forced instruction into something presentable. He was rather like Seryth. The Inker continued, “Though, I believe a short demonstration would be instructive.” He looked at us. “Would you like one?”

Ash and I exchanged a another glance. In the process, my gaze caught on something I had not intended to notice. The light -what remained of it- had found the edges of Ash’s hair. It turned the blonde to something warmer. Her eyes were catching the same light from below. The blue seemed to shine.

It was not a long lapse. A heartbeat. Perhaps two. I was aware, distantly, that the Inker had said something. I had not heard a word of it. Ash had noticed me looking. I knew this because she had gone very still. A faint color rose in her neck. Despite the cool of the blowing wind, it felt very warm. How strange.

“Are the two of you even listening to me?” The Inker’s voice cut through the strange gap. Both of us turned toward him at the same time.

“I am imparting sacred knowledge,” the Inker said, his voice strained to the point of cracking. “Knowledge I was coerced into sharing against my will and my better judgement. Knowledge that scholars spend decades pursuing. And neither of you is paying the slightest bit of attention.”

“I was paying attention,” I said.

“Then what did I just say?”

I had absolutely no idea what the man had just said.

The Inker pressed both hands against his face and made a sound I had not heard before. It was somewhere between a groan and a prayer. “The demonstration,” he said through his fingers. “I asked if you wanted a demonstration.”

“Yes,” Ash said quickly. “Please.”

The Inker removed his hands from his face and looked at the nearest tree. He took a breath, shook his head, and closed his eyes. I could feel him drawing mana from the air. “Forgive me,” he said, eyes still closed. “It has been a very long time since I have had to use just mana for anything.”

His horn-shaped mark blazed. He opened his eyes, stepped forward, and struck the tree with his fist. The blow landed with a solid crack. Bark split and wood splintered inward, leaving a hole the size of my fist in the trunk. “This,” he said, shaking out his hand, “is my mark with just the power of mana. No physical reinforcement either.”

He stepped back and looked at us. “Now, step back.”

We stepped back. The air around the Inker grew heavier. His mark blazed brighter than I had seen it before, and the light coming from it was denser. The air had that flavor again, of something faintly earthy.

He struck the tree. It left the ground. The trunk snapped at the base and the whole of it went flying, crashing through two more trees behind it before coming to rest in a mess of splintered wood and scattered leaves. The sound of it echoed and then faded. Birds fled from the canopy above.

The Inker straightened. He turned and looked at us, brushing splinters from his knuckles. “”I take it you see the power of Essence now.” He said, very smugly.

Neither of us spoke, and the Inker let the silence hold for a moment, clearly savoring the impression he had made. Then he brushed the last splinters from his sleeve and looked at us.

"Now you understand what Essence is," he said. "You understand its superiority over raw mana. You understand that it is produced by channeling mana through one's mark rather than one's core." He paused. "And that is all you will understand for some time. I will not teach anything further, as there would be no point."

I frowned. "Explain."

"The first step is making Essence, but even that step is not simple. Drawing mana through a mark is not a natural act," the Inker said. "Every instinct you possess will fight you, especially at your ages. It is akin to trying to breathe through your ears." He folded his arms. "At the Academy, students spend their first weeks in resonance chambers and under the guidance of trained instructors." He looked between us. "The average student, even with these advantages, requires two to three weeks before they produce a single drop of Essence."

I held his gaze. His expression was not quite a smirk. "We will reach Koralis very soon" he continued mildly. "Whatever I teach you on this road will not change the fact that the application of this knowledge is weeks away, at best." He smoothed the front of his robes. "You forced me into sharing sacred instruction, and I commend your persistence, but you might have simply waited and received the same lessons in far greater comfort."

The Inker was rather smug about this. Perhaps this was the real reason he had agreed so willingly. He had known this knowledge would do us little good anyway. The man was actually clever, though only in the way that small men were.

"We shall see," I said.

The Inker inclined his head, and if the gesture was mocking, he hid it well enough. "Indeed we shall."

Ash and I looked at each other. In her gaze, I saw the same hunger I doubtless had in my own.