After his encounter with the fae, Mikhail had spent the next day confined to his bed.
The demon had never once taken over so completely. The amount of control it wielded over his body frightened him. He'd been powerless to surface, shushed by the heavy caresses of the lower entity. It was soothing, lulling him calm like the heady wave of heavy drugs. Even so, beneath the calm was the heart palpitating anxiety that the demon would not relinquish control. To great relief it did, once they were safely back down the mountain, near his temporary residence. As it left him the demon retreated with a cakey shuck that stripped all the energy from him. In the void of its immense power his bones creaked and his muscles screamed and cramped.
Mikhail collapsed only to be found in the early hours of the morning by Elly. According to his aunt, the waterwolf had dragged him by his clothes into the yard where she spotted him while having her morning smoke. He awoke a few hours later, tucked into bed and feeling peculiar, which quickly turned sour.
He had not anticipated the unadulterated power of the demon. It was truly otherworldly. The being immediately identified the fae, not only as a powerful entity, but personally. It'd remembered the energy from countless lifetimes ago, when they had both been different people.
In the ties of their bond, through pathways of energy, combusting synapses, tubular black masses shedding scales and flakes, traveled memories from the past. Memories of the demon and the man named Solstice mixed with those of Mikhails, and for brief flashes he lived as a warrior. Died as a warrior.
With the occupation of the demon, he already felt full, perhaps even stuffed after it had taken full possession. The addition of Solstice was quite miserable. At the remembrance of the past, Mikhail immediately felt as if he were spilling out. Leaking all over. Emotions and their bodily feelings sloshing onto the bed around him. His equilibrium rippled as his heart soared into his head. His throat burned, ticked like a bomb threatening to detonate. His stomach sank so heavy Mikhail had found himself sinking too, pressing down into the bed. His hands and feet went numb with static and fuzz while his joints seized.
He'd heaved, bile rushing up his throat, instinctually reaching inward, searching for the demon. He found the areas it usually hid within him empty. He could not find it in the uncomfortable and shameful memories of adolescence, in alleys of his own gluttony and lust, or even the guilt and shame of his failures. He could feel the demon there, still filling all the little cracks, but he could not distinguish its edges.
Mikhail hated looking into these hiding spots-like most people forced to look at their shadow selves-and a spark of annoyance rose up in him. How dare you hide from me! He internally spat at the demon, physically swallowed back bile. I deserve some answers, you little coward. He gagged on its acidity, refusing to throw up.
I'm not hiding, snapped the edgy and hollow whisper of the entity. Its voice blew from inside the center of his mind, atypically well versed and clear, not in the darkness, where it always hid, but from an untouchable vertex of his psyche.
"What's happening?" Mikhail hissed, gut wrenching again, his body searching for any way to expel all of the extra.
'Breath.' The demon commanded, voice a little softer as the blanket of calm came forth. This time, instead of weighing down on him, it settled beneath his being, pillowy and inviting. He found himself sinking into it on instinct, breaths leveling, and body relaxing. 'Mortal bodies often struggle to process past lives. They become too caught up in entanglement.'
What does that mean? Mikhail continued with his breaths. Three seconds in and four seconds out was what he could manage.
'Incarnations and Reincarnations are only really remembered through channels of the higher spirit. Under normal circumstances material beings are physically incapable of processing these advanced memories. In rare circumstances where one does access this information, without the proper preparation or knowledge, the body can begin to attack itself.'
"Attack itself?!"
The demon's mattress of comfort deepened, Mikhail sinking further into the down and fuzz. Breath, the demon reminded.
"My body is home to a demon, why is it so damaged by some measly memories?" Mikhail grunted, tried to fight the lull of the demon, feared to fall under its control.
'Do not fight me Mikhail.' It slapped at him, and for a moment the sting of the blow blocked the sensations that accompanied the memories, playing like a reel that overlapped his thoughts.
'I am filtering through most of the information, the more you fight me the harder it is to protect your body. Now just shut up and focus on breathing and nothing else.'
Mikahil let out an angry puff and settled down, continuing his breathing. "You are suddenly offly chatty." He dead panned into his pillow, voice heavy and fatigued but still sharp with accusation.
Demons weren't chatty. Not historically amongst the Maaroi and their demonborn. For all of his life, the demon's communications had been somewhat primal and animalistic. Enhanced feelings, internal brushes, snaps, and growls mixed with faint and broken words, chattered from the beak of a mimicking parrot. On rare occasions it would verbalize a whole sentence or two, a clunky patchwork of internal vocalization. It had always been that way with the demonborn. The demon sat chained within the divine soul, caged like a beast by those of the Maaroi lineage compatible and capable of containing the dark entities.
Or that's what was written in the history books, stored in family libraries. It was what his demonborn relatives had taught him. Despite his teachings, the demon had a voice now, deep and hollow, with a melodic and consistent tone. It spoke with refined articulation and charismatic authority.
'You were never taught such things because advanced communications have not been permitted.'
"What has changed?"
'Are you so used to my power that you can no longer think of the answer for yourself?' Mikhail could feel the demons smirk prick at his eyes. 'Ts, ts, ts. You're an ambassador, Mikhail. You'll just have to use that cunning little brain of yours.'
Mikhail sneered, curling his lip and shooting daggers of annoyance at the demon. His own attack hit his center, where the demon resided, and a stinging zap of pain shot through his skull.
'Breath,' the demon chided, armored in audacity, and it only annoyed him further.
"Of course this has something to do with Korin," He spat from between clenched teeth.
Korin. That much was obvious. The demon's peaked interests had him chasing visions–served up by oracles and cards–across kingdoms. They'de started on the great continents. In the Tellan kingdom and the Evelien Empire he traveled in a carriage with a family crest and an ambassador's title. He visited balls and banquets, drank at pubs and saloons, wandered gallas and galleries, all to no avail. After a year of that the demon, with his mothers nagging in the mix, urged him onward.
He searched the disputed territories incognito with a single guard. Later he took to the shadows and trails as he entered the Eastern provinces, careful to keep out of the light of the temples and the eyes of the followers of Eeno.
It was in the provinces, hiding in shadows, he had gotten this nagging feeling that what he was searching for would not be near the Eenoans. He was searching for a kind of magic, and surely the people of the provinces would have hunted it out by now. The cities were energetical deserts, spirits, mythos, and practitioners nearly extinct. So his focus shifted overseas and he set sail for Seval, birthplace of the Aysai and home to the Enrobi desert.
Seval, most commonly referred to as the Southern Continent, was not controlled by any one group but shared amongst various nomadic and solitary tribes. It had only recently begun to establish trading routes with other continents thanks to the Aysai. Three generations back a renowned Aysai shaman gathered his students and left Seval on slim long boats, following a divine command to use their abilities to help the world. Many Aysai followed suit, taking their array of cultural magic into the world and helping the communities they traveled through. Those who remained in the Enrobi desert formed trade guilds and helped connect the peoples of Seval with the rest of the planet.
Another year of moving from place to place had given no results, though Mikhail had enjoyed much of his time and had made many great connections. It wasn't an entirely unfruitful time in Seval, but there was still no sign of the wheel of fate.
Three ignored letters from his mother and his Aunt Amelia was standing at the doorway of his villa one morning, hand on hip.
"Your mother has me out in this desert heat looking for you!" Amelia snapped, brushing past him, entering his abode as if it were her own.
"Aunt Amelia!" Exclaimed Mikhail. "What a pleasant surprise."
"Can it ya little shit." She descended upon his bar like a woman illusioned and stranded in a heatwave. Her hands shuffled through bottles and vases, sniffing this and that, making a face at a grain liquor then thoroughly considering a wine, before settling on a smooth rum mixed with a bright red flash of a local fruit juice.
"What brings you here?" Mikhail entered after her, watching his aunt in fascination.
She raised an eyebrow between deep gulps of liquor, before slamming the vessel on the counter and taking a deep breath. "Are you fucking dense, I just said your mother has me out in this gods forsaken place looking for you!"
Amelia gave him a look of incredulity, eyes popping out, skin flushed from the heat and booze. She stood about a head shorter than him, tall amongst the women of Tellan but average amongst the Aysai. She was not demonborn, like his mother, but that did not make the woman any less intimidating. She was fiery in nature and the rebellious youngest of the three matriarchs of the Maaroi family. She had refused to become too invested in the family mercenary business, marry or take land, opting to pursue various business ventures and travel. However as her sisters amassed power (Mikhail's mother becoming margrave of the northern territories and his other aunt marrying a grand duke) Amelia was finding herself being called on for family duties more and more. Something she was obviously not too happy about.
Their divergence from family principles and professions, Amelia with her free spirited entrapanural nature and Mikhail, who desired a path of leisure and went about enjoying himself whilst half-assing politics, had made them close. At eleven years his senior, his aunt had spent a lot of time with him in her teen years as well. Spending days playing with a mischievous and whiny young boy.
Mikhail nervously chuckled. "I'm sorry."
"You should be! I'm sweaty and dehydrated and-
"Well I don't think the rum is going to hydrate you."
A brief silence ensued that could make one's ears ring. Amelia wore the unmistakable face of a woman about to lose her control over long standing irritation. Lips curled just slightly, eyes fat with scorn, eyebrow raised causing wrinkles to wave up her forehead, disrupted by a fat vein pumping with blood.
"So I'll get you some water to go with your rum." Mikhail yammered with a nervous smirk. "Would you like some food too? Actually I don't have much to eat here. Shall we go out? There are plenty of restaurants nearby."
"Yes, let's leave this hovel," She looked around eyes squinted in judgment, "it smells like sex and booze in here. Call for a housekeeper while we're out, this place is a pigsty. And you're buying because this has been a big pain in my ass." She stopped past him and exited the villa, leaving the bar in disarray.
Mikhail rolled his eyes and looked around him. It wasn't that messy.
A few days after her arrival the two set sail for Ipahn.
It was the next closest destination. A small country with a decent portion of land in the westernmost continent. In ancient times the continent itself had been fertile and heavily populated with many countries and sub territories. But a great desertification had taken the mid regions while the north and easter shores had been poisoned and fetid longer than anyone could recall. This wasteland was part of a larger dead zone that touched the northernmost tips of the Great Continent as well as a portion of the northern continent, Namun. Most of the two had survived whatever had happened, but all that remained of the western continent was Ipahn, the coastal country protected by its rocky waters backed by thousands of miles of desert and waste.
In war halls it was known as Ipahn the Impenetrable. Few times throughout history had some tempted to invade the land, but all were met with failure with very little casualty to the Ipahnish at all. Tall rocks and cliffs protruding from the waters for miles off its coast made it difficult for fleets to enter. Skilled sailors sailed at a snail's pace to access its limited ports. The only thing worth invading the land for was Ipahnish plasma conducting crystals. They were not too apt to just give out their crystals (as they could easily be weaponized) but had formed trading agreements with a few different countries for the utilization of their power in humanitarian projects. Of course with the agreement of accompanying Ipahnish overseers.
Ipahn had maintained its humanitarian status throughout the course of its history. It was the envy of many citizens across the globe. Its citizens held virtually all rights to self, land and labor. And though it can be said that some degree of poverty exists in every society, little could be found in Ipahn. Locals enjoyed equity amongst one another and cities and villages alike participated in communal cooperation with little oversight from government agencies.
It lacked the expensive and sprawling estates of the kingdoms of the east, as well as their lavish cities and the wealthy that lived in them. Yet its economy bloomed as one of the richest in the world. A welcoming border policy allowed visitors but not immigration, much to the dismay of many. There were few instances where one could gain birthright citizenship, but that was clearly not an option for his aunt. Amelia had actually thrown a famous fit about this very fact at a party one night, that unfortunately Mikhil had missed.
They were sailing into port now, ship swaying in between giant rocks. "You know if I could move anywhere, it'd be Ipahn."
"Yea I've heard you say that before." Came a sickly reply from Mikhail, strewn upon railing, head hanging down, ocean breeze cooling his face.
His aunt relaxed in a lounge chair that miraculously stayed put despite the swaying of the ship. Unbothered, with a glass of colorful booze in one hand and a fan in the other, she continued on. "And I'll say it again. I'd move there in a heartbeat if they ever begin to allow it. It's a shame that even with proper documentation the most anyone can stay is eight moons. Eight moons? Only two seasons? I still have yet to experience an Ipahnish winter. It's a beautiful country, I imagine the winters are so lovely. And, ugh, the people." She said in dramatic admiration. "Acceptance and understanding are some key principles in Ipahn society. Everyone is so kind, and just willing to share and be present. It's a paradise if one is okay with less."
Mikhail did his best to chuckle at his blabbering aunt, grip firm on the railing. It was well known that one could only possess so much wealth in Ipahn before law required redistribution. "Would you really be okay with less?"
"Yes." Was her immediate answer.
He turned from the waters to find a look of absolution on her face. Eyes glimmering and shoulders drawn tight and proud. He snorted in disbelief and turned back to the waters.
Long ago the Maaroi family had known less, been well acquainted with less, but that was the past. For generations now the lineage had lived on the riches of war and the privileges of aristocracy. Mikhail and Amelia were no exception to this privilege and they had both grown up with quite a bit more than most.
With little shame and admitted laziness, Mikhail spent coin from the family treasury as if it would never run out. And, not only did she also have access to family wealth, but Amelia was independently wealthy. With successful business in food and dining, retail, and wealth management. She owned city estates and country cottages, fine clothes galore, and enough jewels to drive a dragon wild. Yet she seemed so sure that she'd be okay with less.
Amelia took note of Mikhail's raised brow and the knowing look in his eye. "Absolutely I would." She reinforced her answer. "In Tellan, those who have more only have more because there are those who have less. However too many with more take too much and that leaves a lot of people with nothing at all. It is the nature of our economy and embedded into our culture. Here," she gestured to the cliffy shore where Ichar, Ipahns capital city, sat pretty on its edges, "that is not the case."
"The people who are capable of amassing power are held in check by communities and their governing councils. The culture ensures that everyone is taken care of and that there are those who are not left homeless and hungry."
Mikhail still was not buying his aunt reverence. He tried to offer a smile. "We have both traveled far and wide, and I can say with certainty that there are opportunistic and scheming men in all corners, is Ipahn truly so different?"
Amelia nodded. "Don't get me wrong, there are greedy men here too, but the culture itself demands it be kept behind closed doors. The Ipahnish have what they call an 'out of sight, out of mind' policy when it comes to the taboo. And if ones greed leeches from the seals of the door, the community is usually quick to remedy the situation. I imagine we'll be here for a while. You'll see what I mean."
The captain approached then, a portly man who, despite his sea stench and weathered clothes, had a regal air about him.Perhaps it was just his hawkish nose, and Mikhail thought hawks were regal. "We'll be sailing into port in about five minutes, Lady Maaroi."
"Oh thank the gods," groaned Mikhail.
The captain let out a grunt and headed back up to the wheel, giving orders to a mobilizing crew as he went.
"Aren't you demonborn? How is a little trip on a boat making you so sick?" Amelia poked with playful scrutiny.
He rolled his eyes, looking back out to the ocean, stomach still queasy. "Elly!" He managed to call out into the waters, voice bouncing through the field of stone.
A wave barreled along the surface, rushing the ship. A few sailors caught sight and quickly went about business, no longer swayed by the mysterious phenomenon as the large creature shot up from the water. She just barely caught the railing, legs kicking about in dog like fashion as Mikhail proceeded to haul her on deck by her scruff.
"Good girl." He cooed.
The waterwolf pranced about happily before proceeding to shake water from her fur, spraying those around her. The action was accompanied with groans and laughter from nearby crew as well as a shriek from his aunt.