How I Helped My Demon Princess Conquer Hell

Liam looked over the mana diagram that floated in front of him. It was just him in the darkness. Him and the two points pulsing in time with his thoughts. They pulsed in time with his heart.

He pulled at a small strand of mana from his arcane core and tried to focus on it. He formed it into the mana brush. At least, that's what he thought it was. That's what he used to draw the diagram. Almost like he was tracing it. Maybe it was a mana pencil? Mana charcoal?

Mana brush seemed right, though.

He moved the brush along the diagram, tried to figure out the places to make his mark up and down and around.

He tried to move intuitively. He'd seen some of the women around the manor house who had time to work on paintings. Lady Riven, in particular, had enjoyed doing that sort of thing. Sitting in the sunroom that faced away from the forest. She always shuddered and said the last thing she wanted was to look towards demon lands when she was trying to concentrate and enjoy herself. At least that's what she'd said when Liam was younger and she'd still deigned to speak with him.

He'd never been able to paint. The supplies were too expensive. No, he'd always used pencils and charcoals to draw on the paper Baron Riven always kept him supplied with. It had never struck him as odd, though now he thought about it, it was just a touch odd that the baron seemed so keen on him being able to indulge in that sort of thing.

He put those skills to use now with the mana brush in his mind, trying to figure out the most intuitive way to place a line down just so. At the right moment and in the right way.

It wasn't always about drawing the line exactly where you thought it was supposed to go. A good drawing was as much about breaking your perception of how something appeared and placing the line as it actually appeared as anything.

That was something he'd learned from reading books from some of the great masters of civilization from before the demon times.

There was a slight buzzing along the back of his head, but he pushed down on it. He concentrated on the diagram in front of him. It stayed in place now. Faint, but there. Not flickering.

Something smacked his face. The diagram faltered for a moment, but it stayed in place.

The something smacked his face again. It was a hard smack. The kind of smack that would’ve been painful back before he had multiple Ascensions. The kind of smack that was enough to get his attention even now, and he figured that meant whatever it was had hit him pretty hard.

He opened his eyes, and the mana diagram in front of him disappeared along with the darkness that was deeper than any darkness he’d ever seen behind his eyelids in the light of day before. His first thought was that the Inquisitors had gotten tired of waiting on him and had come in to bother him, but no. The coach was still rocking back and forth all around him, unconcerned with where it was going in the world. Happy to stay on the path the horses were pulling it on.

Liam almost envied that. Always just going where you were told. At the same time, that wasn't the life he wanted to lead. Never had been. That was why he'd always enjoyed roaming in the Felwood despite the dangers.

Perhaps there was a metaphor for a life well lived in there somewhere, but he pushed those thoughts away as he looked at Albert. The cat was standing on his hind legs with one paw against Liam’s chest, and the other one poised for another smack.

"Can I help you?" Liam asked, not bothering to keep the irritation from his voice.

He tried to be kind to everyone around him, but he had to admit that the cat was making that difficult.

"I've been trying to get your attention for maybe the last ten minutes or so," Albert said.

"What are you talking about?" Liam asked with a sigh.

"What are you talking about?" Albert repeated in a slightly mocking and more than annoyed tone. "I'm talking about exactly what I'm talking about. I've been trying to get your attention, and you've been conveniently ignoring me all this time."

"I was floating in the darkness with my cores trying to study the diagram you told me to study," Liam said.

"Oh," Albert said. "Well, could you share that with me?"

"Share it with you?" Liam asked.

“I believe we’ve already covered that this is going to be a very exhausting tutelage if you keep asking me questions every time I tell you something," Albert said.

"I thought a good student was supposed to ask questions."

"A good student is supposed to ask good questions," Albert said. “You're not supposed to parrot back everything that I say to you with a slight rise at the end that turns it into a question."

"Okay. Let me rephrase that," Liam said. "How am I supposed to share the diagram that I'm working on with you?"

"Well, actually, I'm not quite sure," Albert said. "I'm your familiar, though, so it should be possible. It was always possible with people working with their familiars at the Academy, and... well… I just know it should be possible.”

“Okay, then make it happen,” Liam said.

He grinned at the cat. Mostly that grin was because of the consternation he felt rolling from the cat. He sat there for a moment staring up at Liam, and then he closed his eyes.

“There should be a way for our minds to be as one,” he said.

“And you don't know how to do this?” Liam said.

“No?”

“You’re telling me the greatest sorcerer the world has ever known, and you don't know something simple like how to work with a familiar?”

“How do you know that’s simple?” Albert asked.

“Isn’t it something that even students starting out at the Academy do? I know they keep mum about a lot that goes on there, but that one’s slipped out into common knowledge,” Liam said.

“I never took a familiar,” Albert said with a snap.

“Why not?”

“You're asking questions I'm going to refuse to answer because I don't want to get into it,” Albert said. “So save us both the trouble and don’t.”

Liam sighed, and then he closed his eyes and concentrated the same as he'd been concentrating for the past few hours trying to nurse the spell buried in his head out of whatever block was keeping the arcane mana from doing anything.

Only this time he thought about Albert in front of him. He thought about the two cores inside him. Then he moved that search without, rather than within.

And for a surprise, he saw another small point of light pulsing slightly to his front. Right where Albert was sitting. The stories told of mages having familiars, but they never covered anything like this.

Fascinating.

“There you are,” he said.

He reached out and brushed against that point of light, and Albert let out a yelp.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“I’m talking with my familiar,” Liam said, unable to resist giving Albert a small taste of his own medicine. “What does it seem like I'm doing?”

“Yes!” Albert said suddenly, sounding eager. “That's an odd sensation, but I think that's precisely what you need to do.”

“Well, okay then,” Liam said, and he reached out again, feeling at that point of light. And then suddenly he could feel another mind brushing against him, only it was as though there was a gate there that was keeping him from actually reading anything in that mind.

“I think maybe there's something more that needs to be done,” Liam said. “Like maybe you need to surrender your mind to me?”

“I’ll be doing nothing of the sort,” Albert said with a sniff. “Just a moment while I try to figure this out. This is similar to…”

Liam frowned, but then he felt something blooming from the point of light that was Albert. A diagram that looked similar to the one Liam had been working on appeared in his head.

“Tell me what you see now,” Albert said.

“I see the arcane dampening spell,” Liam said. “How did you do that?”

“I’m the greatest sorcerer this world has ever seen trapped in the body of a cat familiar because my turncoat assistant stabbed me in the back,” Albert said. “Now I want you to think about that spell as it appears in your mind, and I want you to think about how you would draw it.”

“Okay,” Liam said. “All I have to do is...

He paused for a moment, and then Albert let out a slight purr as he started going through the same motions he had been with his mana brush.

“Yes, that's it,” he said. “Show me exactly what you've been doing, mind. I need to see precisely how you've been practicing if I’m going to show you how to get better.”

Liam frowned. It seemed the cat could only see the thoughts he wanted him to see, which was a relief.

Unbidden, a thought of Ana pressing against him moved into his mind. One moment it wasn't there, and the next it was. Along with the thought that it would be supremely embarrassing if he shared that sort of thing with the cat.

There was a pause.

“Liam,” Albert said.

“Yes, Albert?” he said.

“I think you need to try and maintain a little more control about exactly what kind of thought you share with me.”

Liam blushed. Okay, maybe even thinking about sharing that kind of thought with the cat while not wanting to share that kind of thought with the cat was enough to share that kind of thought with the damn cat.

“Noted,” Liam said.

He focused on the diagram he'd been working on, and then he focused on how he'd been painting it.

“How are you even doing this?” Albert asked. “Are you using an infernal mana brush or something?”

“I’m not,” Liam said. “That's just my arcane mana brush. Why, is something wrong with that?”

“Best not to get into that right now,” Albert said. “Just show me what you've been doing.”

So Liam set to it. He started moving the mana brush just so inside his head. Drawing the simpler structures first, and then trying to build them into larger and more complicated structures until there was finally something glowing in front of him. When it was done, the thing pulsed for a moment, but he wasn't able to push much mana through it from his dampened arcane core. So it ultimately pulsed a few times and then it was gone.

Albert was silent for a long moment as he regarded what Liam had done. Liam couldn't exactly say how he knew that Albert was regarding what he was doing. Just that the feeling was there, and it was almost oppressive.

He never had the experience that Andrea had of having a tutor or an instructor complaining that he wasn't doing well enough, but he'd heard her complain about that feeling often enough that he understood it now that it was happening to him. For all that he'd always been jealous that Andrea was getting that sort of lesson.

There'd been times when he'd sat in on them and absorbed a little bit while he was waiting for Andrea to finish up so they could go out and play, but all of his learning had come from the library after he'd been taught to read.

"I see," Albert finally said, his tone unreadable.

"Did I do something wrong?" Liam asked, and he was surprised at how worried he suddenly felt that he'd done something wrong.

"You didn't do something wrong, necessarily," Albert said.

“The thing pulses like that and then fizzles away every time I try it," Liam said, trying to explain. "It's just that..."

"No, that's fine," Albert said. "The thing would explode like the Slow Fall spell you messed up if you didn't have the dampening material all around you, but thankfully that's saving you from creating another disaster.”

"Wait, it wouldn't explode?" Liam asked. "I didn't get any of the marks wrong though, did I?"

"You didn't get any of the marks wrong, no," Albert said. “And we need to talk about that, but the pulsing like that is the spell's way of saying that it's going to fail. When a spell fails, it often has disastrous results. That's why you have to be careful."

"I see," Liam said. “But it’s failing because I can’t push enough mana through, right?”

“Well, yes,” Albert said.

“So if I did have mana to push through then it would work?”

“If you had enough, yes,” Albert said. “That still remains to be seen, and it will remain to be seen if we can’t get the infernal mana to work.”

“So should I try the infernal mana?” Liam asked.

“Gods no,” Albert said, perhaps a little too quickly. “First things first. Let's talk about how you already knew how to draw that diagram."

Liam sighed, feeling that he had done something wrong after all. Damnation.