The Nameless Assassins

Arcane Conversations and the Avoidance Thereof

Naturally, not even assassinating the head of one of the most powerful Imperial organizations could sate Ash's hunger for power. The very next morning, with Edwina still passed out in one of our spare compartments, he turned to our personal Ascendent and asked, "Faith?"

She flicked a glance at him over the rim of her pink, rose-patterned teacup. "Mmm, yeeees, Ash dear?"

"Is there a safe way to do this crazy thing the Church is doing?"

She cocked her head, blinking as hard as if she'd gotten a speck of dust in her eye.

I groaned to myself. It was much too early for this. But I stepped in anyway to clarify, "Which crazy thing the Church is doing?"

Ash waved vaguely. "You know, the fusion. Of demons and humans. Or however you want to phrase it."

"Oh!" cried Faith, pretending that she'd only just figured out what he meant. "Yes! There's a very safe way to do it, which has been developed over millennia of practice. I hear it's very reliable. All you have to do – " (from the way she was observing me out of the corner of her eye, I was not going to like the rest of her sentence) – "is go to Iruvia and go to one of the spires of the Demon Princes, and I'm sure Isha can tell you the rest!"

Whatever she saw on my face made her preen.

Ash, on the other hand, scoffed at the simplicity. "Sell your soul to a Demon Prince for extraordinary power?"

"That's not how it works!" I burst out before he could rush to Gaddoc Rail to catch the next train to U'Duasha. "That's not what they do!"

Oddly enough, he nodded in agreement. "Yes, I thought they only did that to family."

Images of Sigmund, Mother, Father – even the Patriarch – flashed before my eyes. Demonic fusion was not what any of them done. None of them would dream of doing anything so morally and arcanely repulsive.

"The two processes are entirely different! Ours is more like a binding – a connection," I sputtered. "It's not – it's not tearing out your soul and merging it with demonic essence!"

Ash swiftly reprimanded me, "I've never been sure why you're so opposed to that." His voice turned into a sneer, not directed at me. "I mean, the rest of the Imperium is fine selling their souls to the Immortal Emperor and getting shackles placed on them by everything in this city. How is selling your soul to a demon any different?"

At the same time, Faith raised a hand to her throat, clutched the strands of a pearl necklace that I'd bet she'd gotten for this exact purpose, and gasped, "Isha! I was talking about the Gualim! However, I note that it's very interesting how sensitive you are on the subject of demonic possession."

As Ash burst out laughing, I exploded, "Haven't I been like this all along? How is this news to you?"

Reining himself in somewhat, Ash shrugged, "I don't know. It's just that you seem to have derived a lot of benefits from your demonic connection."

Donning her inquisitive-scholar act, Faith followed up with, "So how close are you to having your soul taken over?"

Grandfather's smoky presence at the back of my mind had never felt more invasive.

"Uhhhhh, not very?" I spoke slowly, widening my eyes and staring at her as if she were deranged.

"Being permanently bound?" she asked even more hopefully.