That night, Lucas and I were in the henhouse, a small construction of wood with a stone ceiling a little away from the house. We were here, like always, to read and discuss what we’ve found in the viscount’s journals and books I got from his office before we left the castle, so we wouldn’t attract my family’s attention if we accidentally raised our voices while talking. Or, more accurately, Lucas was reading and summarizing things for me because I didn’t know how to read and never actually had the opportunity to learn, what with my parents being illiterate and most of the farming community as well.

I was now, though. Learning, that is. Lucas taught me and Thomas the basics when we had free time, and slowly but surely something was coming out of it. I still had difficulties with my writing, but I could already read simple things. Lucas was astounded at my learning speed but I knew it was simply because, for me, it was just like learning another language. Here in this part of the world they used the Latin script. I was very fluent in both English and Spanish in my past life, so it wasn’t as difficult for me as it was for little Thomas, who had to learn from zero.

Still, most of the reading fell on Lucas anyway. Whenever I couldn’t understand something or found a word I didn’t know, which happened quite often, it pained me to admit, I would ask him and he would help me… sometimes even by taking the book from my hands and just reading it himself. Because of this, I only tended to look through books that he had already read and waited for him to find something interesting or just finish so he could give a summary of what he read.

I didn’t mind, really. Since it was something important I thought it would be better to give the books to someone who understood things from the beginning, instead of wasting time myself trying to decipher what I read.

Unfortunately, the quantity of things of importance we found was very scarce.

The books talked only about the experiences of previous holders with the demon. Those experiences greatly changed depending on how compatible they were with it and if they tried to contact it or not. No one ever did, as it was incredibly difficult, apparently, what with the demon being jailed in a deeper plane of consciousness than all the other predecessors. Not counting it was dangerous, too.

What the viscount told me also held truth. The farther you dived into the dreamscape, the more difficult it was to find previous holders, never mind talk to them. Because of that, the information in the books always felt second-handed. It was the typical ‘I was told from someone who was told from someone who was told from someone else…’ scenario.

The most aggravating thing of all was that even the oldest books held no relevant information. Judging by the fragile pages, I could assume the oldest was quite a few centuries old, maybe six or seven-hundred years, but, of course, that was not enough. Not if what the viscount said was true and the demon had been running down his family even before the demon wars that, by the way, are thought to have taken place at least two-thousand years in the past.

So, in other words, we were screwed.

Ironically though, the books with the most information were the journals written by the viscount, apparently the only one in his family to take an interest in the demon beyond how to live with it and transfer it when the time was due. Plenty of times he talked about how discovering the origins of the demon might aid in how to get rid of it, but up until now, no definite information was given.

Like this, we were in a conundrum. On one hand, there was a demon being passed down in a family for generations that could brew chaos if it ever got loose. On the other hand, no one, not even the same family who had been holding it for possibly thousands of years had any idea where it came from or the reason they even held it in the first place. And thus, no one tried or even knew how to get rid of it.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing, really, I could do. So, while trying to squeeze the most information he could out of the viscount’s journals, Lucas gave me a new exercise so I wouldn’t be so idle. It was something I read in another book and that we both thought it would come in handy when keeping the demon in check, shall it ever cause trouble.

Mana manipulation.

Or, rather, just getting in contact with my inner mana.

Because in the manga everyone already knew how to use magic, I had no idea how it was even learned. It was just ‘let’s learn this new magic!’ and it would be showed in a few panels how they ‘practiced it’ but everyone had the basis. Learning from zero was never shown.

It turns out the first thing one had to do was meditate. Close your eyes and tap into your inner mana. Feel it coursing through your body. Once you caught it, concentrate in it for a while until you can feel it unconsciously. Then, localize your main gate; that in all humans’ case was located in the abdomen, around the navel’s level (it was not a coincidence the demon was sealed in the stomach) and try to get your mana to pass through it.

Now, that was the tricky part. It was amazingly difficult to move the mana, less of all having it pass through a gate that, in my case and because I was just starting to learn magic, was only marginally open.

How did everyone go about this?! I knew it was said that to learn magic you needed great concentration and mental ability, but this was just ludicrous. I bet Noah, the great protagonist with overflowing power, never had to go through this.

“While is true some talented people can get it easier than others, it’s going to be difficult either way” Lucas explained one day I complained to him about mental fatigue. “We all had to go through this phase in order to advance. If you can’t get your mana to pass through your gate, then learning magic it’s impossible.”

“I know” I sighed, before glancing at him, annoyed. “How long did it take you to get past this phase?”

“Mm? I don’t really remember. I was around three when Mathias taught me. I think a few months?”

“Months?!” then something he said caught my attention. “Wait, Mathias was the one who taught you magic?”

“Yeah, well…” he shrugged, but the sadness in his eyes was undeniable, “the viscount never thought about teaching it to me. I guess he just didn’t see it as necessary.”

“…” I frowned. The viscount, probably one of the greatest mages in the Runno continent without Magi blood, never saw necessary to teach his youngest son magic? What was the point of even having Lucas live with him if he was going to neglect him so much? “How long did it take Mathias?” I asked after a while, wanting to change the subject.

Lucas thought, tilting his head as his eyes turned to the sky. “I asked him that once. I think he said around one week, give it or take a few days.”

“What’s with this difference in speed?!”

“I told you, it depends a lot on the person’s inner capacity. Hn, maybe that was the reason the viscount preferred to teach Mathias?”

And, like that and with three months of practice, I was finally able to move my mana and get it through the damn gate. I still didn’t know how to perform a specific magic, mostly because mine and Lucas’ affinities did not match so he couldn’t teach me (turns out elemental magic was not my forte at all), but I was getting better at it. Since I kept playing around with my mana, every time it was easier to move it, which Lucas said was a good thing as when I actually learned magic it would come much more naturally.

I did want to learn how to perform magic though, so once or twice or a bunch of times I tried imagining an effect, like moving something with my mind, with the expected results. I also tried healing a scratch I got after a small altercation with the chickens, and I am proud to say it actually worked, though obviously I wasn’t going to hurt myself continuously just to practice.

I knew what my affinity was though, as Domenic said so that time in the castle. The problem was that sensory magic was quite different to any other magic, meaning that in order to use it, something more than passing mana through a gate was necessary, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Too bad I couldn’t learn anything from that guy, since I didn’t join their mercenary band and I literally only caught a glimpse of him as he was leaving the castle that time. Without even saying goodbye, I may add.

It was like this that our nights at the henhouse and every night in my room passed. With Lucas reading and I meditating. I felt happy, though, because it was becoming easier to move my stupid mana. The only thing I needed was a magic to perform and then everything would be good.

From my side, I heard Lucas gasp in surprise, taking me out of my remembrance.

“What is it?” I asked; opening one eye. It used to disturb my mind greatly whenever Lucas interrupted my… ehm, mana moving? But now it wasn’t as hard getting out of that state as it used to be. Helped I wasn’t that much concentrated on it this time.

Lucas snorted, locking eyes with me. “The viscount actually travelled as far as the fairies’ country… and he lived with them for two years!”

“What?!” I asked, unable to keep my voice down. The chickens were ruffled, but I paid no mind. I scooted closer to him on my hands and knees. “That man? Living with the fairies?!”

“I know! I couldn’t believe it when I read it! But here!” he pointed at a passage on one of his father’s journals, where he recounted the time he lived with the fucking fairies and they accepted him as one of their own.

Fuck the fairies. I always knew they were a malicious bunch.

“Those treacherous, egotistic, lazy lot…!”

“Elaine, I understand your indignation, but please keep your voice down. The chickens are starting to glare at us.”

I shut my mouth without preamble.

Hey, don’t look at me like that! You don’t know how evil these chickens look! We’ve been lucky till now, but you never know when they might decide to gouge out our eyes or something equally terrifying…

“So, he lived with the fairies, but did he manage to get information from them?” I asked, lowering my voice.

“Well, I didn’t read it yet. I was more surprised at the fact the fairies accepted him, but…” he cleared his throat, starting to read aloud. “The fae are just like the tales of old proclaim. Small fist-sized humans with transparent wings and dressed in foliage. It took me three months of waiting outside their domain for them to allow me entrance…”

“At least they gave him a hard time” I muttered, crossing my legs and resting my cheek on my hand.

“Their homes are made within the crevices of trees or in the small caves of rolling hills. Their society is matriarchal, which is something foreign to us, humans. They do not have an economy and they do not work, preferring to dance and sleep and laze around. They barter in order to get things in the markets, pretty much the only form of work they have. During my time there, I made my home in the hollow of a tree, and exchanged stories and anecdotes from the human world for food.

My objective by going to them was gathering as much knowledge as they had about the demon wars as well as the demon residing in my body. Fairies have the longest lifespan of any living creature. They can live up to a thousand years. Despite that, or maybe because of it, history is not something they’re terribly interested in.

They have no writing but an oral tradition. One of the fairies I befriended told me about the stories her grandmother would tell her as a child. Fairies did not always live apart from the rest of the world. They used to mingle with all the species, sharing their territories and sometimes their homes. However, after the demon conquest became more and more greedy, the fairies ran away to the western continent, erecting a barrier that prevented the demons from entering, and like this, were the only race that did not suffer conquest under them. This is the story the grandmother of my grandmother’s friend told her.”

“The grandmother of the grand… wait, how many years is that supposed to be?” I asked, dumbfounded. Lucas shrugged.

“It would depend on how many years a generation has for the fairies. If it’s around four hundred or five hundred years, then… around three-thousand years ago?”

So even longer than it is thought? That means this demon is even older than that?! I tried to make calculations in my mind. In Earth, what was humanity doing three-thousand years ago? I think Egypt was still at its peak, and the greatest civilizations could be found around Mesopotamia… Was Ancient China already a thing?

“Keep reading” I asked Lucas.

“Among the tales they talked to me about, I could not find a single mention of the demon that belongs to my family. Their knowledge of the outside world also ceases as soon as the barrier was created, so I couldn’t find many more clues.

However, I remained in the fairies’ domain for almost two years with the hope that the queen of the fairies, Titania, would grant me an audience. It is said that even among fairies, the queen herself has the longest lifespan, and some others told me she was as old as ten-thousand years. Only two months before my departure from the fairy domain, the queen finally accepted to see me.

Unlike her people, Titania is more serious and strict. She has to be, in order to properly take care of the fairy race that only thinks of playing around and sleeping. She told me what she knew; including history so ancient I could barely believe it, until, finally, the name of the Tau Patriarch came up in conversation.

The Tau Patriarch or the Patriarch of evil, as his own people called him. He was the creator of all demonic arts his race utilized later on to conquer the world, but, ironically, he was considered a dangerous being that should not be allowed to live.

The queen could not recount the details, but she told me it was said he perished during the massacre at Quiindy. This information was all second-handed, of course, and thus, the veracity of it is low.

There are not many recounts I have access to, and those pertaining to the history of the demon race before the Great War are scarce, but the Tau Patriarch is mentioned more than once in the journals left by Tume, eighth ruler of Jaharu, as well as the scrolls and tactics of the Nine Demon Generals, where they reminisce of the time they learned about the demonic arts of the Evil Tau Patriarch.

In all accounts he’s always portrayed as an entity so perverse even mentioning his real name in paper is forbidden, lest he come back to life, but, it’s also always said that he perished, or on the Quiindy Massacre, or on the Second Siege of the Cursed Mountains, and, sometimes, even proclaiming he took his own life.

What interested me of this Patriarch was the time he was said to be last active. Three-thousand years ago, the same time my family first came into possession of the demon. Titania was very kind so as to tell me that the Tau Patriarch also had a good relationship with humans, leading me to believe this demon is the one inhabiting my body.

The reasons for my family to take him are unknown, as well as if it really is him or not, but, I am hopeful, that with further investigation I will be able to find out more about this mysterious character. In the meantime, I will continue my journey, searching for the truth and a way to rid this thing from my family forever…”

Lucas finished reading and the two of us were left in silence. After a while, he looked up to me.

“How do you think he found out how long the demon has been running down my family?”

I shook my head. “No idea. Maybe one of the books says an estimate? Come to think of it, he did mention the demon was sealed in his family even before the demon wars, that time…”

“We must keep searching, then. Although it’s really interesting getting to know who the demon might be, it still doesn’t help us understand more about it. The viscount understood that, that’s why he kept searching” he turned another page of the journal, while I went back to my previous position. This time, though, I truly could not concentrate in my meditation.

“This Tau Patriarch… just how scary was he that even his own people feared and despised him?” I asked to myself, but loud enough for Lucas to hear.

He sighed. “There’s so little we know about the demons in general. Their culture, their powers… they’re a mystery. Getting to know more about that… maybe that’s the only way we have to understand how to get rid of it.”

“Yes, that’s true” I acquiesced. However, I was still worried. “If it really is this Tau Patriarch… and he was as scary as his people said… do you think we could even destroy him?” I asked. Lucas stopped reading, lifting his face while looking at me. He seemed pensive for a while, before returning his eyes to the book.

“Maybe? I mean, we’ll never know unless we try? And if we don’t try, what else can we do? Wait and do nothing?”

“Yes… you’re right” I sighed as well, closing my eyes and trying to go back to meditating. I knew getting worried would not help matters, but I couldn’t help it.

If it really was the Tau Patriarch… then what should I do?