The Angel of Frost

XIV.

Levi thrashed, outraged at the fact that he could not escape Lissandra's bonds. He was in a library, probably one in Namanta, since the shelves showed signs of recent violence. Hasuma was nowhere to be seen.

He heard the nymph queen chuckle behind him. "My, my, aren't you feisty? You struggle, but you can't even move the golden ropes an inch!"

He felt the movement of water disturbed by the queen's tail as she swam to his front. The river's water pulsed like Lissandra was making tiny explosions as she moved. For a moment, he felt the water take on a life of its own, wrapping him in a cocoon of slight pressure. As soon as the queen went still, the cocoon dissolved back into equilibrium with the rest of the river.

He shivered. The water was disturbed, but it was more from the demonic aura of the queen than the strokes she made.

Facing him, she leaned forward, sneering. Levi wanted to spit at her face, but that wouldn't work underwater. Instead, he glared with all the fury that he could muster.

An amused smile curled up Lissandra's scaly lips. "All of this struggling is terribly hopeless, Levi. Given that you're a demon, I expected that you'd agree to my plans, despite how delusional they may sound. In fact, if you hadn't been so opposed to all of this, I wouldn't even have considered tying you up."

Levi desperately wanted to lash out, to make this haughty queen feel the pain of her mortality. Anger burned under his skin, fueled by the outrage of this assuming nymph who had destroyed the city she ruled without batting an eye.

But why should I care? he wondered. I'm a demon; they're nymphs. I'm not supposed to care. In fact, I should have felt joy at the notion that every nymph who died here would become one of my playthings back in Hell.

Seeing his hesitation, the nymph queen plucked a shining book from her tattered clothes. The very light it shone gave away its holiness.

The light should have seared his skin, - and Lissandra's, given her demonized state - but it felt like a soothing ointment upon his body.

His puzzled expression made the queen laugh. "Surprised? This is the Sanctus Domini, or Sanctus for short. Domini isn't really that hard to say, but the two of them together are quite a mouthful, don't you think?"

Levi was too occupied with staring at the book to reply. Lissandra sighed in exasperation. "Oh, well, I suppose the pronunciation of the name is a moot point, however..."

She ran a palm across the golden cover, caressing it like a newborn child. The light faded where her hand touched, revealing patches of purple corruption underneath. Levi swallowed. Ever since his brother Glaucus had been forced to become Siberius, he'd felt a severe aversion to everything that could corrupt in some way, like poisons. Being so helpless near this corrupted book gave him the chills, despite his nature as a corrupt being.

"...the pronunciation of the words written in it is at the forefront of my goals."

She made a snort of annoyance, as if remembering a frustrating memory. "Without knowing the proper way of saying the syllables, all I have managed is to shroud the land near this river in a black winter, and corrupt its nature spirits into mindless things that would freeze anything in sight into dead husks of snow. The land's called Asraca, which is a beautiful name, though to be fair..."

Levi's ears tuned out Lissandra's rants as he stared at the book in her hands. The glow had disappeared now, replaced by a dark aura. The cover looked like the outer part of a decomposing organ, except that it was purple and pulsing with anomalous energy.

There was an eye in the middle of the cover that glowed green with a reptilian iris. It darted around, maybe surveying its surroundings, then came to rest upon his face.

Then the thing stared directly at his eye, then the other, as if forcefully drawing them together to feel the weight of its singular gaze. A voice spoke in his head.

You were never Leviathan, demon. The Father knew you by only one true name: Arcturus.

He felt the eye tug, then pull at his consciousness. He realized what it was trying to do; it had revealed to him his true name, after all.

He screamed as he tried to hold on to his will, but now the eye was like a vortex, sucking in every bit of his personality. Lissandra didn't seem to notice, and if she did, she wouldn't have cared.

*

Hello!

Sorry for taking sooooo long; like, weeks long or more, to update this book. And I apologize for the short length of this update. ;-; And the really long intro about the Sanctus Domini. I wanted to make it clear how Lissandra was able to become demonized.

I'm not that great of a writer. I sometimes cringe when reading my work, but I'm not exactly a driven person. It takes me a while to finish something. Sometimes I never get to really finish what I started.

But anyhow, if you've reached this point, thank you for your support. I hope to update more frequently when summer comes.

Even though I'm not confident in my writing, I've determined that this book is not one I'm going to give up on.

With chubby cheeks,
Jerson