Only Villains Do That

“So, the Void can refer to two things: shapeless magic, and the realm it comes from.”

“Shapeless magic?”

Sakin nodded, and I couldn’t help noticing how unusually focused he looked. Maybe because we were deliberately going behind Biribo’s back; he only ever seemed to get serious when there was scheming or violence afoot.

“Like how all the magic human beings can use is in the form of Blessings, and the various paraphernalia that stems from them. Spell scrolls, artifacts…whatever Wisdom bullshit the lizard was talking about. That’s shaped magic—or just magic, as most people think of it. The power of the Void is shapeless, not tied to any specific forms or objects or rituals. Whatever you can imagine, the Void can do, assuming you gather up enough energy.”

I straightened up in the bath, setting the water sloshing. “Now that sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. I’m assuming there’s a big, incredibly awful caveat that prevents people from using it? A stupid one, probably.”

“Okay, to explain properly I’ll have to give you a quick history lesson,” he said, his customary grin returning as he lounged against the side of the tub, obviously relishing the opportunity to lecture the Dark Lord. “A long time ago there was a particularly successful Dark Lord who was never beaten. At this point, nobody knows how long ago that was, or what his name was; every Sanorite and Viryan religion has worked hard to erase him, but he’s…kind of impossible to ignore, if you deal in world affairs above a certain level. Guy beat a whole succession of Heroes, figured out how to make himself immortal, and—this is the really important part—while every other Dark Lord eventually fell, this one managed to escape the game.”

I found myself practically vibrating with eagerness. Sakin’s expression told me he could tell, and was enjoying it. As much as I usually tried not to reveal any vulnerability in front of him, this was just too crucial to worry about stuff like that. Another Dark Lord had done exactly what I aspired to?

“He worked out how to corrupt a Spirit into a Void Altar, as we call them now,” Sakin continued. “That enabled him to open a portal into the Void, another reality connected to Ephemera where the goddesses have no power. I don’t know if they can’t go in there, or just refuse to, or there’s something in the Void they’re afraid of, but the fact remains they stay out of his realm and don’t even try to muster forces to march in. This Dark Lord took his entire organization into the Void. The whole empire-sized army, complete with a full chain of command and countless specialists, of what was probably the most powerful Dark Lord who ever lived. Using the energy of the Void, he turned them into immortal devils who are still around today. That’s why we call him the Devil King now.”

“Wait, but I’m the—” I shut my mouth belatedly, realizing I was having another magic translation issue. In Fflyr, Dark Lord and Devil King were two different titles; my inner monologue wanted to translate them both as Maou. “Never mind. Go on.”

“Well, that’s it for history,” Sakin said, sprawling lazily into one corner of the trough. “These days, the Void and the Devil King are just facts of life. The goddesses and all their followers hate him; Sanorites and Viryans will drop what they’re doing and cooperate any time they have a chance to destroy Void witches or devils. Meanwhile, the Devil King has been slowly expanding his reach. Nowadays, there’s at least one Void Altar on most major islands. His devils sneak into Ephemera to cut deals with people, trading the powers of the Void for the chance to corrupt more Spirits into Void Altars, and collect souls.”

“Wait, souls? As in, people’s souls?”

“So they say!”

“What do the devils want with souls?”

“No idea,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe some of the higher-up priests know how Void shit works, but I suspect only the goddesses and the Devil King have all the facts. The point is, the Void’s power is versatile, and available to anyone able to summon a devil and willing to cut a deal.”

“Is this the part where you explain the downside?”

“Well, the most obvious one is that these deals are really tricky. Most of them have, as a standard stipulation, that when you die, they get your soul. Even if you manage to negotiate out of that, they still get your soul if you break the contract, or just fail to fulfill your end well enough. Plus, what with the devils and their King being basically a third faction in the Sanorites versus Viryans conflict, every established power on Ephemera will come down hard on Void magic and those who practice it. Make no mistake: the real reason for this is that the Devil King is proof that the goddesses can be beaten at their game. He’s a threat to their power—and therefore the power of all the cults and nations that follow them. But, the goddesses’ propaganda has the advantage of being objectively correct. Fucking around with the Void always ends badly. Those devils have their own agenda, and they tend to get what they want.”

His expression sobered again and he straightened his posture subtly.

“I wasn’t just spreading manure for the lizard’s benefit, Lord Seiji. I really don’t recommend trying to access the Void. Virya’s likely to go completely feral on your ass if she finds another of her Dark Lords attempting to follow in the Devil King’s footsteps. And as for the King himself… I bet he’d love to tie strings to a new Dark Lord, but he’s not interested in sharing power. That would be a very one-sided relationship. This is not a resource you can use. Still… It’s something you should definitely know about, and not a lot of people are willing to even talk about it. Virya and the lizard would actively try to keep you from learning. It’s very likely you’re going to have to deal with devils eventually, though, if just because they tend to meddle whenever anything important’s going on. When that happens, personally I’d recommend using Immolate until they learn to stay out of your business. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a bandit.”

He gave me a cheerful, self-effacing smile which I’d like to think wouldn’t have fooled me even if I didn’t know him better than that. For my part, I was still struggling to contain my eagerness at these revelations.

It could be done.

“You said the goddesses haven’t tried to attack the Devil King directly,” I said, leaning forward.

“Yeah, there’s kind of an enforced stalemate what with the inter-dimensional nature of it,” Sakin replied, nodding casually. “I dunno exactly why they won’t go into the Void, but they definitely won’t, and what’s more interesting is they seem reluctant to even send anybody else in there. As for the reverse, that’s easier to see: magic is shaped by Blessings because the goddesses made it that way. They can still use magic shapelessly, and they’ve probably got a lot more power and control over it than the Devil King. Honestly, Lord Seiji, your revelation from their own lips that Virya and Sanora are just playing a game with this world explains a lot. When it comes to the Devil King, well, something tells me they’d stop being playful if he gave them a target to hurl islequakes and falling stars at.”

“But,” I said slowly, thinking out loud, “devils do come here to make deals. So…they’re avoiding the goddesses’ notice somehow, at least in small numbers.”

“So it would seem.” A faint smile hovered around his lips as he watched me coming to the obvious conclusion. It was possible to hide from the goddesses.

“So, the Devil King and the goddesses each stay in their own realms where they have power. They’d probably get instantly murked if they risked crossing the barrier. That’s a stalemate, like you said. He must have some long-term plan to retake Ephemera. Take it from another Dark Lord, revenge on both goddesses is a powerful motivator.”

“Now, take this with a pinch of spice,” Sakin said lazily, “cos obviously nobody knows, and I’m not the kinda guy who hangs out in mystical or theological circles, but of all the theories I’ve heard as to why devils want souls, there are two really common ones that seem the most logical to me. Either they’re using the souls to fuel their Void magic, or they turn every soul they get into a new devil.”

“Hm… That would make the difference in whether his forces are growing or shrinking, wouldn’t it?”

“Exactly!” he grinned. “If they get a new devil for every soul stolen, the ranks have been swelling for however many centuries it’s been now. On the other hand…everybody knows somebody who knows somebody whose cousin fucked around with the Void and got taken by the devils, but this stuff isn’t happening at a high rate anywhere. Not with every country and religion actively suppressing it. They’re getting a trickle, at best. So if their magic is powered by souls, stands to reason it’s been steadily losing power since that old Dark Lord became the Devil King.”

“That depends,” I mused, frowning at the far wall. “If they’re, um, burning souls like asauthec, then yeah. But if their magic comes from some kind of steady central power source that’s somehow augmented by adding souls to it, they could still be growing more powerful.”

“Hey, good point! I see why Virya decided you should be a sorcerer. Still, this is blind speculation. And again, Lord Seiji, I really don’t wanna tell you how to run your own business but let me reiterate that all this is for purposes of general information. Eventually, devils will undoubtedly seek you out. Best to be ready to deal with them on even footing by then. Please don’t try to get favors or anything useful out of them. I’ve been around and seen a lot of shit in my day, but I have never heard of anybody getting the better of a devil in a deal.”

“No, I see your point, don’t worry.” I wasn’t about to risk tangling with cosmic trickster beings, no matter what they might promise me. “But, you said the Devil King himself started all this by figuring out how to corrupt a Spirit, right?”

“So the story goes.”

“And he wasn’t the Devil King then. There was no Void yet for him to use.” I forced myself to lean back in the tub, adopting a relaxed posture; what I wanted to do was spring out of the bath and begin pacing up and down. That’s a good way to break your neck. “But he found a way. The system can be interfered with. If it could be done once, it can be done again—without putting myself in the last guy’s power.” My fingers began absently tapping guitar chords on the rim of the tub; I noticed this belatedly, but let it continue. “Well, this is an unfortunate evolution of the situation I’ve been in from day one. As usual, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But instead of general Ephemera trivia about which I can ask Biribo or Aster or whoever’s nearby, now I’m dealing with the deep dark mysteries of magic which nobody has easy answers for.”

“Sounds like progress to me,” Sakin said cheerfully. “You’re all settled in and established now! Anyway, I know you’ve been frustrated with your spell combination recently, but look on the bright side: fumbling through that process may be the best possible thing to lead you toward cracks in the system. Like, what sort of barriers are you encountering?”

“Is that a serious question? I thought you weren’t interested in mystical stuff.”

“It’s a thought exercise! I am definitely interested in rule-breaking. There are rules and then there are rules, you know? Like, a man can’t fly by grabbing his own hair and pulling upward, and no amount of weaseling or brute force will get around that. But also, a person can’t enter the Archlord’s personal fortress uninvited, abscond with a set of his wife’s undergarments, and sell them to the head of a rival Clan. Except, you can absolutely do that, it’s just a matter of knowing how.”

“That is an incredibly specific example, Sakin.”

He grinned broadly, and leaned forward in the water, abandoning his deliberately insouciant posture. “It was purely hypothetical, Lord Seiji. Highlady Nazfryn prefers to feel the breeze. My point is, every ‘rule’ is one of the two: an absolute law that nobody even enforces because it’s just part of reality, or something somebody simply doesn’t want you to do and will try to stop you from doing, which you can definitely do if you work out how to circumvent their countermeasures. Think about that while you figure out how spell combination works. Are the things you’re trying to do just not working because you haven’t hit on the method yet? Or…well, what’s something you’ve discovered is an absolute impossibility? Or are at least starting to suspect is?”

I opened my mouth, starting to answer purely by social reflex, but then closed it, considering his unusually interested posture.

The thing was, I had an answer for that question. He’d put words to a trend I was noticing, that a number of the things I’d tried with spell combination seemed not to have worked simply because I didn’t know how any part of it worked and my efforts were blind and incompetent. But I had just today become convinced that there was a hard rule against using my combined spells in further combinations.

None of my attempts to do so had borne fruit; no spell I created would connect with any other spell. Nothing stopped me from making the attempt, though, so I’d thought initially it might have just been the fact that none of them happened to be suitable. There were already combinations of some of the base spells that didn’t work. Then, when I added Windburst and Orb of Light to my repertoire and none of the new combinations worked as building blocks either, I began to suspect there was some kind of data limit. Maybe combined spells just contained too much code to fit into further combinations? Those were both “soft” barriers I could in theory work around.

But following Aster and Donon’s comments today, I’d started to think of the mechanics of combination not as a rational system running on sensible rules, but as a means for the goddesses to create the kind of drama they wanted to watch. From that perspective, it made a depressing amount of sense that they wouldn’t let me keep re-combining already-combined spells. That would be carte blanche to just keep re-mixing spells until I got whatever I wanted. Monkeys and typewriters; enough time spent at it would eventually yield something valuable. They didn’t want me hunkering down in my fortress refining my magical technique, that would be singularly boring to watch. I was supposed to be out there, trying to gather up new spell scrolls and generally making a fun spectacle.

He was right. There were rules, and then there were rules. Except…in the case of Ephemera, some might be both. The whims of the goddesses were likely to be hard-coded into the system. But the Devil King’s example proved that they made exploitable errors. I just had to find them.

None of which was what made me hesitate. I looked at Sakin’s open, interested expression and considered how deftly he’d guided this conversation to a point at which I’d nearly told him what I suspected was the crucial weakness of my unique magical gift.

Sure, extending a little trust was the best way to earn some back; the rule of reciprocity is universal across cultures, something inherent in the social programming of human beings. Except…that might work with Aster and the other bandits, and I was basing my entire strategy in Cat Alley around it, but…Sakin was different. He struck me as the kind of guy who would know how to make use of the human instinct toward reciprocity without feeling personally bound by it.

My leading theories were that he was either some kind of highly-trained government agent (or as highly-trained as the primitive governments of this world could produce), or a garden variety high-functioning psychopath. I had been about to forget that unlike everybody else out here, whose motivations I more or less understood, the only thing that kept Sakin on my side was that he had no specific motivation to turn on me.

For now. As far as I knew.

“What’s your story, anyway?” I asked, keeping my tone mild and my posture relaxed. I found that my fingers had stopped their drumming during the few seconds I’d been lost in contemplation, and started them up again. “I don’t get why a versatile fellow like you is out here in some dinky-ass bandit gang in the middle of nowhere in the first place, but since you are… Granted, my acquaintance with Rocco was brief, but I got the distinct impression he wasn’t as competent as you at…I’m gonna go ahead and call it ‘anything.’ A person might start to wonder about your circumstantial presence right in the spot where the Dark Lord landed.”

“Oh, I quickly stopped worrying about that,” he said in a breezy tone, grinning as usual. “At first, sure, the idea that the Nightlady might’ve been pulling my strings to put me here was tense, but I figured, hey, if I’m gonna pal around with the Dark Lord anyway, may as well get used to Virya looking over my shoulder. Figure I’ve got nothing she hasn’t seen, anyway. As for Rocco,” he added, winking at me, “I don’t have to tell you of all people what being in charge is really like, Lord Seiji. I’ve led a few operations in my time, and…never again. It’s all responsibility and very little actual reward. People who want power are always looking to fill some emotional gap that no amount of power ever will. Guys like Rocco, who need to be able to bark orders and kick people around, well, they’re always trying to prove something to themselves, in the end. And that’s not me. One thing I’ve never lacked is satisfaction with who and what I am. I’d just as soon not have to make the decisions and keep shit organized, thanks. You have fun with that headache, m’lord.”

“Thanks,” I said sourly, prompting a laugh from him.

It did not escape me that he had dodged the question. Neatly—even going so far as to offer me backhanded advice and a little glimpse into his mind. But only a little one, which did nothing to explain what he was doing here, much less what he ultimately wanted.

Yeah, I was definitely not going to clue this guy in on what was probably the hard limit of my special gift. I had a sinking suspicion he might be able to work it out anyway.

Right then and there I resolved to do my future spell combination in private, and not reveal my new spells to anybody who didn’t specifically need to know.

Sakin, typically, picked on the subtext as naturally as he breathed. He’d deflected my inquiry, but in silent acknowledgment that I’d also deflected his, did not pick it back up. Instead he just lounged in the bath, leaning his head back against the rim of the tub to gaze up at the ceiling of the stable.

“I think you can consider me a convert, Lord Seiji. They use baths not unlike this in Lancor, but being a Fflyrdylle boy myself I never saw the point. This is weirdly pleasant, though! I wonder how anybody does it without the fire slimes.”

“Yeah, it’s just too bad I’ve gotta conquer the world instead of going into business. I could make a killing.”

“Hah! Well, what other innovations from your home country do you think we should try? After this, color me interested in your little cultural exchange program.”

“Hmm. Considering winter’s coming… I wonder if I could manage to put together a fire slime powered kotatsu? Might be too hot, though…”

I made myself relax in the bath, as baths are meant to be used. Later, I was going to spend some serious time alone considering the enigma of Sakin, the dangerous riddle of the Void, and how by granting me the gift of spell combination, Virya might have accidentally handed me the keys to start tearing apart her whole world.

The thought of what I’d do to her once it was I who had the power warmed me almost as much as the water.

“Huh.”

I stared at the smoking dot on the akorthist wall of my room later. Sitting on the edge of the bed, with Junko’s head resting on my knee, in the relaxed state which follows a meal and a hot bath, I suddenly found that spell combination was easier to do.

I hadn’t even been planning to do more of it tonight, it had just occurred to me in an embarrassing eureka moment after I retired to my room that I hadn’t even thought to try combining my two new spells together yet, I’d been so excited to get new permutations of my older ones. Almost to my surprise, they worked like a charm: the fusion of Windburst and Orb of Light made Light Beam, a directional glow I could emit from my hand. It would continue as long as I held focus on it, and I found that like Breath of Vitality I could vary the dimensions of the beam from a diffuse glow not unlike Orb of Light itself to something with the acuity of a laser pointer.

Even better, I had finally made a new triple combo. Orb of Light, Windburst and Spark made Heat Beam, which had all of the above properties, plus a more orange shade to the glow, and heat. The more focused the beam, the more focused the heat, until at its tightest concentration it would scorch the akorthist brick walls, and presumably ignite anything flammable. Not that I was interested in starting fires in my room.

It was all more of the same, in that the spells themselves were less useful than the lessons I’d gained from the process of making them. The last thing I needed was yet another means of setting stuff on fire. But this had all been much easier than anything else I’d tried to do today. It made sense, really; mood and mental state surely have an effect on any task which requires concentration.

I was definitely too tired tonight, after that, but for future reference… Could I create some of the spell combinations that had been eluding me just by eating well, having a nice bath, and cuddling with my dog?

“If that works,” I said out loud, “imagine what I could accomplish if I manage to get laid.”

My whole body jerked as a flash of memory overtook my consciousness for an instant. The faces of so many sick, injured, miserable prostitutes compressed into a split-second vision of human suffering that blended them all together till I couldn’t have picked out a single individual.

Junko straightened up in alarm, ears perking upright, and whuffed softly at me.

“Sorry, girl,” I muttered, wrapping an arm around the dog. “This place has really fucked me up. And I’ve barely gotten started. Sorry to say it, Junko, but your world sucks.”

She licked my cheek and pressed her body against mine, her tail thumping against the covers.

With a sigh, I threw a blanket over the bottled light slime on my bedside stand, crawled into the bed, and tried to fall asleep.

Like everything else today, it took a lot more time and effort than it should have.