For the next six months, Damon spent his days teaching Fergulino the ways of the black side. The boy had reached the third level and Damon had started to teach him how to make more advanced potions. The duke didn’t really care much for the necromantic aspects of black magic, and Fergulino still had reservations when it came to the dead. As such, Damon decided not to give him another dark spirit, he didn’t feel like he deserved them.

Damon had started to feel sympathy for these spirits, but he had also developed more demonic tastes. When he ate souls, he also felt the hunger of his dark spirits be satiated. Perhaps, with each new dark spirit gained his hunger would also increase. Already, when Damon went out with Fergulino to hunt, he felt obliged to eat a few souls, and his connection with his demonic roots deepen. This further increased his desire for these treats.

Still his dark elf instincts prevented him from wanting to do obscene things such as playing with his new slave, however, his hatred for mind control had started to lessen and his inclination to violence increased. He no longer restrained himself from killing every goblin, every orc, and every troll. Thoughts of striking not at the heart, but the stomach, striking not the head or neck but the arms crept up.

#

Like any other day, Fergulino came to what the others now called the night flowers house for his lessons in black magic. His eyes stayed low, and he tried his best to look at the flowers.

“Here.” Fergulino handed a letter to Damon.

“What is it?”

“My sister’s wedding.”

“Oh, the time has already come. But why am I invited? Is this not occurring in the capital?”

Fergulino nodded, “You are an elvish noble.” His eyes often moved up and down from Damon’s eyes to the flowers.

Damon nodded, “Yes, politics. I forgot about that. Now tell me.” Damon bent down to look into Fergulino’s eyes. “Why are you sad? Do you have a thing for your sister?”

Fergulino shook his head. “My sister…”

Damon frowned. If it had to do with her, it required his attention. “Tell me, after all I’m her friend. Maybe I can help”

 “She can’t stop crying, she doesn’t want to marry the prince; however, she won’t tell us why. The duke says it’s because she’s confused and scared. He says that this happens to a lot of people before their marriage, but her sorrow seems deep and painful, very much so.”

Damon nodded, took a piece of paper, and wrote down a new order. ‘An order from Damon ke Stolas, you must marry the prince and progressively reduce your sadness and grief for the marriage until it no longer occupies your heart, mind, or soul. In three days say that you were confused but are happy that you are marrying him. However, you aren’t allowed to feel happy at the occasion, nor fall in love with the prince. You can only show such emotions. Not feel them.’

Damon sealed his words with a seal which would burn the letter ten seconds after its unsealing. Damon had had been granted this wax by Stolas for this very purpose, seeing that speaking with Andrea directly was a hassle.

“Here.” Damon handed Fergulino the letter. “These are just the words of a friend. Can you give it to Andrea?

Fergulino nodded and they started that day’s lesson. Since he seemed zoned out, Damon ended the lesson early and let the kid scurry off to his sister.

Just the other day his second brother returned from the capital with one hundred men in toe. The whole family had now returned, and things were starting to get lively. With a marriage on the horizon and a civil war brewing nothing stayed still, not even the trees.

“Hey, Stolas, what do I do with this invitation?”

“You go.”

“Didn’t you say there was at least one angel in the capital?”

“No longer can you be noticed by them? Have you forgotten that such a thing only applied to black mages, you are now a cambion, even though you are only half demon, you are much closer to us than elves or humans? Angels cannot identify you as we cannot kill them. It is the law of this world.”

Damon hesitated for a few instants, he had yet to fully understand what he had become; however, time ticked on, and he had to answer. “Sounds good. Then I’ll go.” Attending a royal wedding as a guest was what he imagined his life would be like when he transmigrated. Although he had to go to hell and back, in the end he’d manage to get there.

#

Two weeks later a procession of carriages arrived at the mansion. They were made entirely of wood and were painted black. Flowery golden ornaments were placed on its edges. On each door the silver seal of the Carline family glistened under the sun light.

Damon stood to the left of Fergulino, next to his student, the youngest sister stood next to their two older brothers, Andrea and the duke. Apparently, Fergulino’s mother had passed away when she gave birth to his younger sister. To Damon’s right, a group of eleven maids and five butlers were to come and attend to their needs in the capital, as the personnel in their mansion in the capital were just enough to keep the building presentable, and not enough to attend to them.

The duke’s family entered the first carriage, since Damon was considered a guest of honour at the royal wedding, he was provided a carriage of his own in which a maid accompanied him.

In the carriage Damon looked outside. The leaves had started to fall. Although the winters here did not mean snow nor sub-zero temperatures it still became chilly, and the trees couldn’t support their vast fields of leaves.

As the sun set, Damon saw a city on the horizon. It wasn’t the capital but their first stop, a city named Carabino, the domain of the Carabin family, a minor viscounty. When their caravan appeared, the guards cleared away all incoming traffic and let them enter without a word. In the city, Damon thought that the fields outside the walls were more impressive than the city. Perhaps due to being on the road from the duchy’s capital to the kingdom’s capital many inns, taverns, and whore houses had been built. However, they were constructed in cheap untreated wood. The caravan group continued straight to the inner district hidden behind a second wall. This is when Damon noticed that there weren’t any castles here, which seemed questionable for a medieval type of world. He would have to withhold judgment for now. Today he would sleep in a noble’s mansion as a guest of honour.

When the carriages stopped a retinue of maids and butlers greeted them. Two of Carabin’s maids came to escort Damon, the rest were reserved for the duke’s family. But he wasn’t a resentful nor jealous man, so he followed them to his room. The room wasn’t large; however, it had a box bed which looked rather cozy. The maid assigned to him by the duke started to unpack his luggage. She took off Damon’s shirt and used a dry cloth to wipe down his sweat. Although Damon felt like he was being treated like a child, he didn’t say anything in fear of being called out for his fake background. If they did any persistent background check and discovered that he impersonated a noble his head would surely hang.

When she had finished Damon followed the Carabin families two maids down to the dining area where a woman, two girls around the age of ten to fourteen and a boy perhaps around eight sat around a table. In the background lutes played slow melodies. Damon greeted what he assumed was the wife of the Viscount and sat down at the chair assigned to him. The children looked at him with curiosity; however, their manners prevented them from asking any questions.

Not too long after the true guests of honour appeared. A middle-aged man Damon had never seen was speaking to the duke about what seemed to be the arts. The man had the look of the stereotypical prideful and arrogant noble with a hefty stomach and a used and damaged face, yet next to a duke he looked obedient and timid. Damon and the others around the table rose to their feet and politely bowed.

When the duke sat down, everyone else did the same. The music seemed to quiet down, for which Damon thanked. He wasn’t a fan of medieval music, perhaps this was due to the lack of exposure. Who knows, he may come around and enjoy it, but for now bedroom pop and lo-fi was still his thing. In all honesty he felt like going back just for the music, but then again living the life of a noble didn’t sound half bad either.

“We are humbled by your presence,” said the viscount of Carabin. The viscountess nodded in affirmation.

“Anything for an ally.”

It seems that the best guarantee of alliance is through social display.

“I am honoured to be seen as such.”

Five maids pushed in wooden trolleys with large metal casseroles. When they were neatly arranged on the table, they removed their covers at the same time in an impressive display of coordination and the vapours twirled about in the room.

In the first plate there was an entire chicken, in the second there was ox soup, the third as introduced by the maid, contained lizard meat, and the others were various small meat dishes. They were all garnished with decorative amounts of vegetables and a good number of cereal products, such as rice or bread. If he had to keep up this diet, he may have to go chew grass to get some greens in his diet. For the rest of the dinner the duke and the viscount spoke in political jargon and innuendos while everyone else silently ate their food, only speaking when asking the maids to fetch them some meat on the other side of the table.

For the next two weeks, the same scene occurred repeatedly with different nobles until Damon’s eyes laid themselves on the tallest walls he had seen so far. And for the first time since coming here, Damon saw a castle. He would need to ask someone about this later. Then he remembered that everyone had their own Gandalf’s, even if his was a talking demonic owl.

“Hey Stolas, why do the cities here not have castles?”

“Oh, that’s mainly a thing in this continent, they just don’t have the funds.”

“So, they can build walls but not castles?”

“I forgot you didn’t have magic in your world. It’s because just a simple rock wall can be destroyed easily enough with some earth magic. To build war worthy walls and castles one needs to use a fortification spell, the larger the area required to fortify the easier it is to make since you don’t need to condense the mana as much. However, with a castle you need technology and techniques not accessible to the people of this continent. As such they need to hire people from the main human continent, which costs an arm and a duchy.”

“Well, I have no clue how that works, but I’ll take your word for it, thanks.”

“No problem.”

As the communication ended, Damon entered the capital of Milone for the first time. He closed his eyes as he crossed the city gates, but when he opened it his dreams of a flowery and clean city were crushed. The commoners kept on with their jobs going from shop to shop, feces, and manure littered the streets, and the slabs of stone which made the road were unequally placed and were just slightly more pleasant than the beaten earth roads outside. They kept on moving through the outer city, however, once they reached the inner city, the entire scenery made a one eighty-degree turn. The roads were flat and seemed to be cleaned. On the side of the streets, beautiful gardens showed the way to the castle as nobles waved their hands to the groom and sung praises to the soon-to-be couple. The houses, well, the mansions were made from an amalgamation of different bricks. This gave the inner city a fantasy vibe, which he hadn’t felt since arriving in this bleak world. This time the carriages didn’t stop at the local lord’s mansion since you don’t sleep and eat with the king. They stopped in a mansion two hundred metres from the castle. When he came out of the carriage, he saw a small path flanked on both sides by a beast in the flesh of humans. They murmured to each other and bowed to the duke’s family. Perhaps he should invest some time in lip-reading. But, for now this whole ordeal didn’t matter to him. He just needed to stay with the duke as political eye candy and to reinforce the notion that his duchy was supported by the tree sect to those in the know.

Damon gave small nods to the nobles, as he followed behind the duke’s family. Somehow, after the few weeks of travels and meeting various nobles, he felt like he was the least approachable everywhere he went. This only made him more curious about the strength of the elvish continent. But then, if the Carline family were the weakest, what reason did they give to explain the presence of an elvish noble amidst their guests? Who knows, that isn’t problem. He still didn’t know enough about the history of this world to make an educated guess.

After the duke entered the mansion Damon followed, the other nobles came in after him and were greeted by what could only be called a feast. Tables lined with casseroles filled with meat lined the grand hall. In the rooms centre a stuffed voracino, whose top carapace had been charred to a crisp acted as the main attraction, and paintings of different legendary beasts in a Byzantine style lined the walls.

Seeing that art nearly never made an appearance in these types of worlds he was immediately drawn to them. The painting which drew him in first was one of a dragon. He had never seen one nor did he know what they resembled, well until today. Of course, this could be an awfully inaccurate representation of a dragon, regardless, what he saw disturbed him, to say the least. The beast had the traditional shape of a dragon; however, its proportions were skewed. Its neck looked to be twice the size of its body from which bones pierced through its scales and greeted the morning wind. Its wings were too small to permit it to fly, and its tail was fatter than its already thick legs. The dragon’s scales were a brownish green, and its fangs seemed to be rotten and loose.

Damon backed away slightly at this sight and went to another painting. This one reassured him since it depicted a traditional black dragon. He wanted nothing a do with that last monster. Damon continued to observe the paintings; however, he was suddenly interrupted.

“I see that the rumours that the elves are a cultured and educated people are true.”

Damon turned his head and saw a man, perhaps in his mid twenties with a wooden cup filled to the brim with wine. His shaved head did stand out in this crowd of people with black hair. It seemed that baldness wasn’t very prevalent with the people of this region.

Damon decided to go along with the man’s racist words. “Yes, I’m just admiring this country’s art.”

The man nodded, “I’m Richantelo Bivedillo, the son of the duke of Bilvedillo.”

“My apologies,” Damon gave a slight bow, “I’m not fully aware of this country’s’ affairs.”

Richantelo shook his head, “It’s of no worries, they will change soon enough.”

Damon hesitated and his head started to churn, he quickly asked Stolas, “Who the fuck is this Richantelo fucker, he’s talking about politics and change, have we been found out?”

“Oh, don’t worry, he’s the heir we’re supporting in one of the three dukedoms in our care. He was the second son, so we helped him deal with his older sibling. Think of him as an ally.”

“He seems to know that something’s up with me. Did you tell him anything?”

“No, I haven’t said a word; however, he’s not a stupid man. A dark elf is a rare sight in these parts. It’s probably not hard to put two and two together when he’s been told that the Carline family would be his ally in the coming conflict.”

 Damon cut the communication, “Yes; indeed, that’s the case. Marriages do change a lot.”

The man nodded enthusiastically. “When this is over let me entertain you at my residence. I have quite the art collection and I’m rather curious about elvish art and culture myself.”

Damon cursed his luck to meet an educated person. If anyone could find him out, it would be him.

“It would be my pleasure. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time when the affair is resolved.”

Richantelo nodded, “Then I’ll send you an invitation when the time comes. For now, I must go I’m rather busy, however, know that it was a pleasure meeting you, noble elf Stolas.”

“Of course.”

Damon followed him and saw him join a group of nobles gathered around a dish of ox meat. For the rest of the day, Damon felt obligated to study the paintings in detail before his exam in a year or so. At least the meat wasn’t bad. The duke had access to more spices than the common nobles visited on the way to the capital after all.