Once the others were healed properly they left one by one, probably to get some well-deserved rest. Aurora and Adrien ended up being the last two people other than me in the room, which felt odd for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. I thought I remembered watching Anna leave the room with Alys, but for some reason that scene already felt fuzzy, like a distant memory. 

I watched the two of them chat in the corner, and smiled a little to myself as I watched their fingers intertwine. They were so adorable together, I could already tell how Adrien’s cute nervousness worked with Aurora’s tough confidence. 

I turned away as soon as it looked like they were going to start kissing. Watching them from afar had already been creepy enough, those two didn’t need me peeping on anything further.

I didn’t want to stay alone with my thoughts, but Aria was the only person I knew enough to actively seek out, and she didn’t need to be bothered by me. I wasn’t exhausted like I thought I would be after using my powers, surprisingly, but the thought of going back to my room and resting was sounding increasingly attractive in light of my lack of anything to do. My phone and an incredibly comfy bed could be more than enough of a distraction for me, after all.

Plus I always had someone around who could help keep me company, if she could stop being such a narcoleptic. Speaking of…

“Hey, Nat, you there?” I asked, smiling at the sound of my internal voice. I didn’t get why, but it just felt right. Like my current external voice, but without a constant fear that any and every wrong word might get me hurt or worse. I could be as honest as possible with the demoness in my head, and that idea was slowly starting to grow on me. She didn’t seem like such a terrible person; if she was a demon, she must have been one of the rare good ones. 

The church always made sure everyone knew how evil demons were. They used to make sure we knew that the Magical Warriors, those Blessed by the touch of an angel, were fighting day and night to keep us safe from demons who constantly threatened us. That had changed recently, though. The old pastor, a man whose sister had apparently died decades ago in the service of the Warriors, had retired and moved to northern Cascadia to live out the rest of his life. His replacement, picked in large part by my father’s faction of the church, quickly went to work comparing Warriors to demons. In just two years, he managed to convince a solid majority of our town that the people protecting us were just as bad as the monsters they were protecting us from.

I never bought that nonsense, but all the stuff about demons had always made sense. After all, demons were attacking humanity constantly. My interactions with Nat were leading me to some confusing conclusions, and I had no idea how to make those conclusions match up with the worldview I had been raised with since I was ten years old. Was she a conniving liar who only wanted me as a lifeless husk to ferry her around, or was she a caring adult figure who wanted what was best for us both? 

And if she leaned towards the latter, did that mean that most demons were like her? Or were they as varied as humans were? If they weren’t the evil, chaotic spawns of darkness we were told they were, then did that mean angels weren’t epitomes of goodness and purity, either? It didn’t make sense; the universe worked with balance. That was why the angels never wiped the demons out, their evil was necessary to keep the universe stable in the face of the angels’ pure goodness. 

But was that true? Was anything I was taught accurate? Nat sure seemed to disagree, but she was a bit biased. My mom had always been quietly skeptical of the innate evil of demons, but when she left and we moved to Compound I never got more of any perspective other than Dad’s.

I stopped myself as I arrived just outside of my room. My hand hovered over the door knob, but I couldn’t move it any further. Did this place have a library? If it did, could I find the truth out there? What would it mean if I did learn what was true or not? What if I learned that Nat was a horrible monster or something? Was that worth the risk?

My hand slowly moved away from the door, and my feet quickly followed suit. Yes, this was the right decision. If Nat was actually evil, then I needed to know. 

***** 

There was a place where books were stored, though calling it a library would have been incredibly generous. It was just a half dozen bookshelves in a small room, with a small couch placed on a wall next to the entryway. The books were organized incredibly sloppily, with no apparent logic to dictate their positioning. 

Without any sort of guidance, I wandered across the shelves, looking them up and down for what I needed. Thankfully every book seemed to be nonfiction, though some of the titles alone were outlandish enough that they had to be fake. Feral Angels and How to Hunt Them especially stuck out to me as suspicious. Why would the Magical Warriors want to hunt angels? And what did the book mean by ‘feral’? 

I grabbed the book, but continued my search for what I was really looking for. Some of the titles involved demons in some way, but I had too many choices at my disposal. Eventually I chose to take a book titled Two Millennia of Peace: The Reign of Asmodeus. It looked fake, especially in light of everything I’d been told about demons, but if any inkling of it was true then there was a chance it was worth reading. 

I took a seat on the couch and immediately began absorbing the contents of the first book I’d grabbed. It was incredibly short at fewer than seventy pages, in contrast to the massive size of the other book. I was confident it would give me plenty of time and all the information I needed.

I didn’t realize just how exhaustively boring the book was until I was twelve pages in. The author felt it necessary to describe, in the most dull, scientific way possible, how the average angel’s biology worked. For twelve pages. Everything about it was incredibly useful (apparently their wings were incredibly sensitive to touch, and as a result were considered a valuable weak point), but it was so boring. 

I was almost relieved when the author broke into incoherent mumbo jumbo describing how angels ‘went feral’. It was still incredibly boring, but at least the information was what I was looking for. After fourteen pages I had at least some inkling of what I needed to know: Weaker angels, like weaker demons, slowly lost their ability to think clearly the longer they were away from their home. Eventually they would lose their ability to focus on reality at all, and over a longer period of time would morph into a mindless monster, focused only on finding and absorbing any heavenly energy they could.

It sounded horrifying, like a fate worse than death. Being trapped in a form that was slowly but surely becoming so unbelievably foreign to your very sense of self sounded nightmarish. It was so easy to imagine myself standing in front of a mirror and turning into—

I immediately shut down that thought. I was just glad I had the power to change myself at will. That way I could never be stuck in a body I didn’t want.

I didn’t want to think about that topic further. I set the book aside and turned my attention to the massive tome. It was incredibly heavy on my lap as I opened the book to the first page, and I was immediately relieved to find that this book wasn’t some dreadfully science-heavy book with no personality. 

It only took a few paragraphs before I was completely enthralled. Asmodeus’s life was like something out of a fictional epic. He was apparently one of the only demons in history to be born to a low rank and eventually become an archdemon. He went from a lowly front line soldier in the war against the Heavens to the ruler of all of demonkind, and seemed to be a mostly moral person throughout his life. 

He was also responsible for the deaths of both of the rulers who served prior to him. Arcanel, the ruler of the Hells before Asmodeus’s predecessor, had apparently been a ruthless tyrant who wanted nothing more than the eradication of angels everywhere. Asmodeus’s predecessor, whose name looked to be scratched out of every single page in the book, had led a revolt that ended with Asmodeus cutting off Arcanel’s head. 

I was about to start the new chapter, about the reign of the nameless demon, when Nat finally answered me. I was surprised, I had given up on expecting her to speak up more than two hours ago. 

I’m here, apologies. What did you need? She sounded like she was just waking up, though I didn’t get why. It seemed like she was constantly passed out, or the brain demon equivalent. What made her so tired all the time? 

I debated whether to ask her about that, but in the end decided against it. I didn’t have the slightest clue how she worked, the constant sleep could’ve been a normal thing. Instead, I focused on something about the book that was bothering me.. “Do you have any idea why there’s this constantly scratched out name in this book? It’s a bit odd that someone would go through so much effort just to hide a name.”

Nat went silent for a time, presumably to examine what exactly I was talking about. It took her a minute, but she finally provided me with something of an answer, however disappointing. No idea. Probably just a mundane reason, like a human particularly disliking that demon. There’s no magic that can erase someone’s deadname, so it’s almost certainly mundane. 

I nodded, though the use of the word ‘deadname’ confused me. It was probably some angelic or demonic term, so I wrote it off until I could learn more. Gotcha. And, speaking of names, you kind of fell asleep before you could tell me yours. It wasn’t the most natural of ways to move the conversation along, but it did serve the purpose of getting me an answer I wanted. Not knowing her name didn’t bother me too much, but I was tired of referring to her with a nickname I kind of wanted for myself.

I waited in silence for an answer for a minute. Then two. After five minutes I sighed and gave up on getting an answer. It almost felt like she was intentionally choosing not to answer me. Was her name that big a deal? If so, why did she almost tell me in the first place?

Whatever. I turned my attention back to my book, though with considerably less enthusiasm. It didn’t take long for me to get engrossed again, but there was still a constant underlying layer of disappointment inhibiting my enjoyment. 

The reign of the nameless demon made his lack of a name come off as so much more tragic. He seemed like nothing short of a hero. Apparently he had to reform the entire structure of his civilization just to ensure that ending the war didn’t immediately cause the collapse of society. It was a long process, and the entire time he was pretending to still be entirely in favor of the war just to ensure the allegiance of the demons’ war faction. 

Asmodeus’s role in all of this was to serve as his second in command, and he acted as the loudest advocate for an end to the war. Their efforts worked like a charm, and after just two centuries of rule the nameless demon was able to successfully negotiate a ceasefire with the Heavens and Fae realms. 

These talks were almost ruined when the nameless demon’s apparent affair with an archangel was revealed, and said archangel was executed for her part in their relationship. The nameless demon had responded to her death by advocating for a reignition of the war, which led to Asmodeus killing him in single combat in order to preserve the strained peace. 

It sounded like such a tragic story; apparently Asmodeus had considered both of them dear friends of his. To lose both of them in the span of a few days sounded terrible. How lonely did he feel in the immediate aftermath, and was the peace that followed even worth it to him?

I didn’t know if something like that could ever feel worthwhile to me. Killing one friend and having to pretend to be content in the presence of the killers of the other sounded unbearable. Even if peace was healthier for all parties involved, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to keep my emotions in check long enough to want anything but revenge. The idea of ignoring their deaths just sounded wrong. 

Az was a good man. Still is, I hope, Nat piped in as I closed the book. I wasn’t near finished; everything I’d read was a summation of his life before his rulership, but a glance at the darkness outside told me that I’d been reading for way too long. Were people not looking for me?

“You knew him?” I wasn’t surprised, but the idea that she was close to the current ruler of the Hells sounded incredible. How old were they, exactly? More questions for later.

Nat was silent for a moment, but I eventually heard her make a sound in the affirmative. We fought together in the war for many, many years. He was always a proponent for peace; that didn’t change no matter how many friends he watched die to the armies of the Heavens. I’m not surprised that he’s known for keeping that peace over all of these years.

I nodded along to her explanation, and couldn’t help but smile. She sounded so pleased to be able to talk about him; it seemed he was something of a hero to her. I swore I could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. They must’ve been incredibly close. Had they been together? 

She seemed to sigh before she spoke again, out of what felt more like resignation than anything else. Name’s Belial, kid. Bel for short. Sorry I didn’t say it before. 

My face formed a huge smile in response to her words. That was such a good name, it fit her so much better than Nat ever could have. I couldn’t help but sound overjoyed as I offered my response. “Well, Bel, I’m happy to finally hear that name. It’s beautiful.”

She didn’t say anything back to me, but I was content to sit with her in silence for as long as she felt comfortable. If anybody needed me they could find me.