I lost track of time somewhere during those long, intervening hours of brief sleep interrupted by nightmares. I yearned to see Mona more than ever, for us to be free of this place and to hold her hands in mine.

Now it was the following day, and my only way of measuring time was by the arrival of the servants who brought the glass vials or collected them, either from the tray on my bed or the device which drew my blood.

The visits had been happening regularly, even throughout the night. I wasn’t sure how hard Phaedra would try to push me if she grew dissatisfied with our progress. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to torture me or maximize my output.

In practice, they amounted to the same thing.

I felt exhausted even after eating the meal they brought me—still fancy like always, almost as if I could convince myself nothing had changed.

Phaedra had chosen to leave me to my devices for the most part, checking in personally only twice since she had collected my first sample, so I had been free to experiment. Each time I filled another vial for her, I felt myself gain a little more control over my seed. With some practice, I could direct it where I wished it to go. Even one-handed, I no longer had difficulty aiming into the glass vials.

Was this a valuable skill?  Probably not.

I wondered if my initial excitement over my “discovery” had been misplaced. I had been sure I’d found a path to freedom or at least the promise of one. A single avenue of magic that I still, in a small way, had access to. But perhaps that avenue was a dead end. Target-seeking ejaculate was hardly a game-changing ability.

To do anything useful, I needed to tap into its power. I could see the mana within the vials when I closed my eyes, but I needed to find some way to harness it as fuel for a spell or effect. To make it burn, or explode, or something. Sadly, this was the part that still eluded me.

And now I would probably keep having nightmares because I’d pissed off the dark god I shared a soul with by ignoring him. Just lovely. But I would have to bear those terrors if I could.  Theryx was only angry with me because he’d planned on eating me, and instead, I’d hopped out of his mouth and taken over his entire shitshow.  I still didn’t understand that part.  I remembered being devoured in the Void, and I remembered waking up.  What had happened in between was still a mystery.

The servants who’d been performing the collections in Phaedra’s stead hadn’t said a word or even made eye contact with me since my captivity. Not once. There was a different demon each time, and their overall mood was one of silent fear. My newest visitor, a blue cambion who reminded me of a younger, leaner Ilmatar, was no different.

As I watched him enter, he pointedly stared at the floor, and I wondered again where Ilmatar was and how the Majordomo had managed to evade the new masters of the tower. I hoped he was all right, but I felt he was much safer than I was, so I should worry for Mona and myself instead.

It was strange, now, to think that Ilmatar had ever annoyed me. How I longed for someone to acknowledge my presence. To look me in the eye, even.

I blinked, and the servant no longer looked like Ilmatar or anyone else I knew. By now, whether through sleep deprivation or my tenuous sanity, I’d begun to see only what I wished to. The man laid a silver tray containing the vials on the bed, then turned and hurried from the room.

“Three vials, this time?” I said with a sigh, but of course, he did not answer.

As my eyes followed him on his way out, I caught sight of a demon I had never expected to see again.

Asmodeus floated to one side to let the servant pass, then entered the room. He looked for a moment as if he was floating in my direction before veering past the bed and around to where my borrowed copy of Gravity and Time still lay on the floor where Phaedra had dropped it.

In shock, I stared at Asmodeus briefly before my eyes wandered back to the door. The eyes of a guard stared back at us impassively. Asmodeus and I did not receive the same level of privacy as Phaedra.

A thought occurred to me, a chance I had never expected to receive. I was even less inclined to learn how to fly from Theryx now. Any help he provided me felt like a way to reel me back in, to return me to my proper place as his food.

I still didn’t know precisely what he’d done when he’d smashed those exhibits and ejected me from the museum, or what the results would be in the long run. I worried the nightmares were the least of it.

“Asmo,” I whispered as quietly as I could from the corner of my mouth. I spoke only with the part of my face that was out of the guard’s view.

For the first time, Asmodeus took notice of me, his eyeball swiveling in my direction. He blinked slowly, then his pupil shifted back behind him, looking through his body toward the guard.

Be quiet, you idiot. The powers that be were clear. Anyone who speaks to you will be punished.

Though it sounded like Asmodeus’s voice, I realized the sound had come from within my head. I stared at him in shock for a moment, my jaw agape, and I wondered if Asmodeus had possessed telepathy this whole time. Had he always been able to read my thoughts?

Asmodeus levitated the book in the air, and it floated into position next to him. As I watched Gravity and Time fly away, my stomach clenched. My foolish dream of flight was being taken.

Asmodeus, I thought, can you hear me? Please show me the rest of that book.

When I had seen Phaedra drop Gravity and Time on the floor, I thought I was done with it. The tome’s final chapters, where Asmodeus had promised me everything came together, had been taunting me from the floor, out of my sight and reach, forever unread.

The floating demon, however, seemed to be ignoring me.

“Asmodeus,” I tried whispering again.

What do you want? Wait, don’t tell me! Leave me alone.

Asmodeus glared at me for a moment. Gravity and Time rotated back and forth in the air as if he was examining it. The tome had collected a thin layer of dust, which began to scatter as if Asmodeus was buffeting the tome’s leather binding with a telekinetic wind.  Fundamentals of Pyromancy soon floated up and joined the other book, though he seemed less concerned by its condition.

I realized he couldn’t read minds, only project his thoughts into mine. I felt like a fool for a moment, but also grateful that he wasn’t aware of every dumb idea I’d had in his presence.

“Please show me the book,” I whispered again. “I never got to read the last three chapters.” As I thought of the book in my mind, I saw each page as clearly as if I were flipping through the pages myself. I hadn’t truly appreciated my new photographic memory until now. If Asmodeus showed me the book, even for a moment, I would try to remember as much of it as possible and figure out what it all meant later.

But Asmodeus continued to ignore me, and once the book jacket was thoroughly dusted off, he and the book turned around and floated towards the exit. I could hardly complain. After all, he didn’t owe me anything. I sighed and let myself fall back until my head hit the pillow.

So that was that, then.

But then I heard Asmodeus’s voice, and my heart skipped a beat. It was directed not at me but at the guard. “Ah, how forgetful of me. There is one more tome to collect… A History of the Knightly Orders of Lycanta.”

I’d forgotten I’d even borrowed it. I supposed I should have been thankful that Asmodeus remembered.

“Be quick about it, Archivist Kuthoryx,” the guard said. “The High Priestess did you a favor even by letting you come here. You couldn’t wait to get these back?”

“Wait? To recover a priceless tome older than you and I combined and worth far more than our lives?” Asmodeus said, an edge to his voice. “A favor, you say, allowing me to do my duty to protect and preserve our temple’s vast array of knowledge and history?” I could feel Asmodeus’s glare from across the room, his voice dripping with acid, even though I was trying to pretend to be uninterested in this conversation.

I rolled to my side and looked towards the bookshelf. The book on the Orders of Lycanta still lay there. I had found it to be of little use. I still had yet to learn what Order the Paladin Rhea belonged to, if any of them, and now it hardly mattered.

Asmodeus floated towards the shelves, and the third book floated towards him. It was a thinner book than either of the others and looked newer.

Look down, you ingrate. Asmodeus’s words, crystal clear, flashed through my mind again.

During the commotion, Asmodeus had managed to float Gravity and Time out of the guard’s sight, and the book was now quietly sliding across the floor toward me. As it approached the side of the bed farthest from the door, the book opened, and the pages began to flip at great speed.

I held my gaze, forcing myself not to blink, knowing I would never be able to process everything I saw but hoping that my brain would store it somehow, each page a record I could go back to and revisit when I had time.

The runes flew past far quicker than I had ever tried to read anything before. It was almost a joke to think that I would be able to learn much this way. But I focused every bit of my mind’s attention on the jagged symbols as they flipped past, each page briefly there, then gone, replaced by more. Endless tables and charts, schematic diagrams describing where to place runes in one’s field of vision, how to Will them into existence with one’s eyes rather than words—a visual incantation.

It felt like an hour but must have been no more than a few long moments. For all the guard could tell, I was still lying on my side, facing away from the door—a perfectly natural position for a prisoner.

The last page flipped over, and the tome closed itself quietly. I closed my eyes briefly, my mind swimming as I tried to burn as much as possible into my memory. And for a moment, I saw what I needed, a two-page spread in the second-to-last chapter which contained one such visual incantation, or perhaps more accurately, a guide to building one.

It would give me a spell to manipulate gravity, arranged from all the pieces I had read earlier. I focused on it, trying to hold it in my mind as clearly as I could, and then I opened my eyes again.

The road to flight would be a long one. The book contained only a schematic for a spell, rather than the spell itself, due to a rather unfortunate fact I’d learned in the third-to-last chapter. The incantation changed based on the mass and body shape of the caster, and I would need to calibrate the spell for my use.

Asmodeus was already floating back towards the door, all three tomes stacked and levitating after him. That’s all I can do for you, Asmodeus thought to me. Shatterbone and Phaedra can go fuck themselves, but I won’t help you again. If you figure it out, you should fly your ass out of here.

I held my tongue, though it was hard not to feel blessed that Asmodeus, too, seemed to dislike the tower’s current rulers. I watched him as he left, not daring to whisper anything back to him now, not while the guard observed us both.

I wasn’t sure how Asmodeus had prevented the guard from noticing that Gravity and Time had briefly departed his custody. Still, I felt impossibly grateful to the floating eye monster for whatever sleight of mind he had performed. Asmodeus left without sparing me a glance, and the guard slammed the door shut behind him.

Alone again, I sank back into bed and breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized it, but my heart had been racing. “Thank you,” I whispered, knowing he would not be able to hear me but wanting to say it all the same.

Now I just needed to do something with the knowledge he had given me.

And I didn’t have ten years to perfect it.