Furious Scribe
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29. Hull - What's Underneath
🕑 Added 2025-08-06 01:19:08 +0000 UTC
Chapter 29
What’s Underneath
I stared at the forever-long staircase and my body rebelled. If I tried to walk down that thing I’d end up rolling most of the way, and that felt like a pretty embarrassing way to empty my Mind Home. Half of me still wanted to walk back into the throne room and continue my… conversation with Xemris, but the way she’d been talking, that might end up emptying my Mind Home even faster, not to mention saddling me with guilt and the possibility of a bastard of my own down the road. I had absolutely no interest in repeating that particular mistake of my father’s.
Can’t go back, can’t go forward. Might as well see what the spot where I stand holds for me. The landing where I stood was massive and opulent, just like everything else around here, though the carpet was getting dirty down the middle. Not many servants willing to stick around when wights and demons roamed the halls. It was a wonder that anyone was still working in the kitchens, but I’d seen a couple of cooks still manning the fires down there for whatever reason. Someone was still refreshing the elemental lights overhead too, though I supposed that could have been one of the enemy just as easily as the Palace staff.
I still held the card Xemris had given me. She’d handed me an Epic like it was half an apple she hadn’t felt like finishing. If her daddy was the Primarch then she probably had no shortage of high-rarity cards, but still…! I was curious to see why exactly she’d given it to me. I slipped a Bog Imp out of my Mind Home and slotted the new card in its place, cycling through my hand until I found it. Summoning was second nature now.
As the squat, thick-bodied demon misted into being, I considered how well he worked with my fighting style. Gaining Flurry when I was using Nether to power up my hits sounded insane, and I itched to try it out.
The demon tucked his thumbs behind the waistband of his loincloth – the only thing he was wearing – and gave me a toothy smile. “I suddenly find myself in a new Mind Home full of powerful demons and Spells, and now I get to meet the face behind them. Did you kill Xemris?”
“No,” I snorted. “I’m not sure that’s a fight I could win at the moment. She did lick my face, though. That was unexpected.”
He rocked back on his heels, a belly laugh echoing through the cavernous space. “That’s just a different kind of fight. No less deadly, mind you; not with her.”
“I got that feeling.” This demon seemed almost friendly. I wasn’t about to trust that, but it was nice not to be hissed and glowered at for a moment. “She said she wants you to show me what being a demon is like.”
He rubbed one of his horns and looked dubious. “What being a…? Am I supposed to teach you how to feed yourself, too?”
“I’ve lived with humans my whole life,” I explained wearily. “Didn’t know my mother was a demon until a little bit ago. Yveda.” He was easy to talk to. That might be dangerous.
“Which one?”
“They call her the Changer.”
His eyes went wide and he combed through his chin beard with yellowed talons. “Eugh.”
The simple sound of horror and disgust set me to laughing helplessly. “That more or less covers it.” I gestured to him. “Help me down the stairs. I’m more than half dead until she gives my card back.” As he offered a shoulder for me to lean on, I realized I’d need to keep this demon for a while, if not forever. I was so tired, so soul-wounded, that all my careful secrets were spilling off me like sweat. Handing him back to Xemris would be a disaster for me.
“Xemris doesn’t like her,” the Mentor said as we started down the stairs.
“No shit,” I grunted. “Nobody does. Are the rest of you really so different, though?”
“You’ve got a Mind full of them; you tell me,” he responded.
I thought about it. The Marauders were murder-happy freaks that barely spoke, and of course my Commons and Uncommons didn’t speak at all. I’d never really chatted with my Spell Drinker much, but both the Night Terror and Yveda the Endless were big talkers. The Night Terror delighted in suffering, and though the Endless was less obvious about it, he cared about winning.
“They all really like killing,” I said.
“And the humans see that as evil,” the Mentor said, nodding. He said it matter-of-factly, unbothered and not offering judgment. He seemed to merely want to help me think through the issue at hand.
“Well, yeah. Isn’t it?”
“Is it?” he countered.
“Well…” I said, floundering. “Yeah. If you kill somebody, they’re gone.”
The demon gave an unimpressed shrug. “Let’s leave aside for the moment that anyone worth the salt in their blood will leave a card behind, as that’s something my kind takes some issue with. But what is lost when a person dies?”
“Everything unique about them,” I said.
“And are people really so unique?” he asked blandly.
I started to protest but then thought about it. Sure, Basil was unique, and so was Esmi, and Afi. But when I thought about most of the people I’d ever known in the Lows – and even since I’d moved up in the world – they all seemed like the same ten people with slightly different faces.
“What if uniqueness wasn’t the point?” the Mentor asked. “There is nothing inherently good or right in random variability, when you think about it. What if strength was the thing that was valued instead? Hells beneath, we demons care so little for uniqueness that we only give people new names if they make enough interesting kills – and they’re all the same names! It is the prowess we bear that distinguishes us, and that is all that matters. When that is the base from which you start, then killing others not only stops being evil, it becomes a virtue. Your demons are exemplary members of society.” He smirked. “Even the midgety one.”
I sighed. Mere seconds in my Mind Home and he’d already singled out the Night Terror as the one to pick on. I really needed to elevate him. First, though, I had to get back to the Queen to get my shards. No, first you have to get your card back and not die.
We were passing the Queen’s quarters on the staircase – now my mother’s lair – and I paused. “My mother kills plenty. What’s wrong with her?”
The Mentor gusted a sigh. “She uses subterfuge in ways that the rest of us find alien and distasteful. If you can’t overpower your enemy by main force and yet still you prevail, doubt remains as to who is actually more powerful. Yveda the Changer has developed a reputation for trickery and underhandedness in the centuries she has spent wandering outside the Unyielding Court. Some wish her cast down entirely.”
“And yet here she is,” I wheezed, staring at her doors, “in charge of the demon invasion.”
He made a noncommittal sound. “It is hard to argue with success.”
I nodded and hoisted myself off his shoulder, standing as straight as I could. “That’s what I’m going to do anyway.”
“The secret to any demon is discovering what they really want underneath,” the Mentor said. “Despite her unreliable nature, I have to believe that holds true even for her. She is still one of us, no matter how far she has wandered from good sense.”
I dismissed him and barged into Mother’s room, not bothering to knock. I hadn’t intended to do this, but it wasn’t as if it was safe to fall asleep, or to go find Basil and help him, or to go back to Xemris and… whatever. I was up, and by the Twins, we were going to have a little talk.
Mother was sitting at a writing desk scratching something onto a small parchment with a steel-nibbed pen. She glanced up at me, unsurprised, and deftly slid the papers into one of the drawers.
“Don’t want me seeing your plans?” I growled.
“Never write your plans down,” she said. “If you can’t keep it in your head you won’t be able to pull it off anyway.” She smiled and stood. “To what do I owe the honor of an unasked visit? And during the killing hour, no less?”
“Xemris wants me to spy on you,” I said.
“Oh, good. Do that. Tell her everything. It’ll confuse the hell out of her.”
I blinked. “I thought you’d want me to feed her lies and tell you what she’s doing.”
“She’ll expect lies from me,” she said. “Better to jam the truth down her throat.”
I remembered the Mentor’s words. “What do you actually want here, Mother?”
I expected something flippant, but she put her chin in one hand and looked at me intently. “Freedom, Hull. Finally, truly, a way to cut the strings and be my own mistress.”
I pressed the momentary advantage. “And how do you get that?”
“By using the power of the powerful against them,” she said grimly. “And using my son’s help, of course. Anything you want to tell me about Xemris would be lovely.”
I thought on it. Feeding Mother information would keep her and Xemris at each other’s throats and might just tip the scales in my favor when it came time to get my card – my cards – back. “She’s building a portal into the Nether Realm in the throne antechamber. She plans to bring the Primarch through.”
“I can’t wait,” she purred. “How long, did she say?”
“Another day or two.”
“Perfect. See, already my darling son comes in handy.”
I’d had enough bullshitting. This wasn’t why I had burst in on her. “I want to see my card again,” I said.
“Greedy boy,” she chuckled. “We would have met in the morning.”
“Well, I’m worried that if I lay down my heart’s going to stop,” I said, leaning on a chair. “Doesn’t really feel like I’m getting my money’s worth just yet.”
She crossed to me with no sense of hurry and thumbed my eyelids to peer into the whites of my eyes, listened at my chest for my heartbeat, and then pinched the skin on the back of my hand, observing how it responded. “It’s to be expected. I tore out a central part of your soul; there are bound to be negative effects. I’d hoped you’d be more resistant to them, but apparently not.”
“I think I’m like everyone else now,” I whispered, sinking into the chair I had held onto. “Thought about it a lot today. Have you ever stolen a card from a little child before? One that was Epic or higher?”
She snorted. “It’s not a large pool of candidates.”
“Kids are tough,” I said. “Flexible. And I think the fact that I had a Mythic and a Legendary for parents might have helped.”
She went back to her desk and pulled her papers back out, scribbling with energy. “I’d had those thoughts, of course, but if we can rule out some native quality of your own, that’d go a long way toward confirming the hypothesis.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I sighed, closing my eyes. It felt good, but I didn’t dare stay that way.
“Anything else?” she prompted.
“Maybe the fact that I’m dual Source,” I said. “Some protective effect from being able to draw from different places? Not that I knew I had Order until recently, but it was still there, sleeping inside me.”
She tapped the pen against her lips. “It may be time for me to have another child.”
I struggled to my feet. “If you do this to another kid, I’ll kill you.”
She waved a dismissive hand at me. “Oh, be calm. How often can a woman expect to trip a Legendary into bed, anyway? It’s an idle thought, no more.”
I stumped over and held out my hand. Sighing, she pulled my Epic self out of her belt pouch and laid it in my hand. “I’m not leaving; it’s the middle of the night. If you want to talk to him, it’ll have to be with me in the room.”
“Fine,” I said. Hesitating, I stroked the face of the card. Younger me was so angry. “Have you thought about whether I might be able to combine them?”
“Of course,” she said absently as she wrote. “The right alchemical formula would help. But unless he wanted to merge, the process would be doomed to fail. You’d end up destroying both cards.”
“It’d have to be before my new card died,” I said.
“It would,” she confirmed. “A few more days until that occurs.”
“Are you going to give it back?” I demanded.
“I said I would, didn’t I?” she said innocently.
That didn’t even deserve a response. I pulled another card, not even looking to see which it was, and slotted my Epic self into my Mind Home. It was the work of moments to summon him.
He rolled his eyes when he saw me. “Again?” He turned to Mother. “Do I have to?”
She nodded without even looking up. The boy sighed and turned back to me. “What now?”
I regarded him silently. I’d tried to talk to him like Bryll last time, and he’d just about taken my nose off. He looked like a little boy, but this was a demon, not a human. I’m a demon, too. In some ways, at least. I thought about what the Mentor had said to me. “What’s your favorite thing?”
“Killing humans,” he said.
I wondered if that was really true or if he was just trying to get under my skin. “Anyone in particular?”
He shrugged and looked away.
“You got to kill your father,” I prompted. “What was that like?”
His eyes went cold. “That wasn’t really me. It was Mother wearing my skin.”
I watched him carefully. He was agitated, clenching his fists and shifting on his feet. “Do you wish it had been you?”
His eyes met mine fully for the first time. A single, decisive nod.
“I wanted to kill him too,” I said. “He left me to rot in a bad spot, and it turned out he knew about it the whole time.”
He shrugged. “You were weak. What else was he supposed to do?”
“Did you know him at all?” I asked. “I can’t remember if we ever saw him when we were your age.”
He hesitated and then shook his head. “He was just a powerful human. Who wouldn’t want to take down a Legendary?”
“That might have taken you to Mythic if you were still alive, huh? Too bad.”
His eyes narrowed to slits and he shot a glance at Mother, who was still scribbling. Yes, there was definitely some resentment there.
“What would you do if you were Mythic?” I asked.
“Whatever I wanted,” he said immediately.
“Be your own man,” I said.
Another sharp nod.
“I run a whole neighborhood here in the city,” I told him. “It feels pretty good to be in charge. I get to make things better.”
He regarded me for a long moment. “I don’t want a neighborhood. I want it all.”
“That might take a while.”
He shrugged again. “I’m a card. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
We sat in silence for a moment. “Seems like a father ought to be more than just a fight to win,” I mused.
He eyed me suspiciously, but after a while he gave me that decisive nod.
It wasn’t much, but it was an opening. I settled into the chair and tried to ignore the torn, gushing ache of emptiness where my card was supposed to be. A literal ghost from my childhood stood in front of me. I had as long as I wanted… and I wanted everything.
Comments
Chirag
"I Wanted Everything" I think Hull is figuring out what kind of demon he is after all.
