The Ties that Bind

Author: pratz

Disclaimer: RIB's.

Summary: No demon in her right mind likes any binds. No magician in her right mind thinks of binding as anything but a contract. This is a story of how the impossible shifts and the inevitable happens.

AN: With Faithful are the Wounds on hiatus (my bad, my bad), I decided to take a small detour. As you know, I borrow some concept from the amazing Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy. This is also my first foray into defamiliarization.

-.-.-.-

Prologue

Humans would never know how it felt to be in my shoes.

(Wait. I already used a human idiom. Preposhoesterous!)

This accurately aimed self-chastising hit me even further as I took notice of my surrounding. Choking sulfur cloud hung around the spacious room—I would not think for a second that it gave a pleasant smell to non-demon beings. The level of moistness in the room rose. Ice had formed on the curtains and the walls. And I was in this column in the middle of a pentacle. All standard inspection of reality, checked. Good job, me.

This meant I was summoned.

We demons, especially demons of my level, were able to assess the power of magicians who summoned us, making us justified in our judgment of their worthiness. Mind you, not all summoners were worthy to serve. Some were low-level magician apprentices who were just trying their first luck in summoning, and for those puerile attempts, usually we gave them a taste of magic practicing infancy: a black eye, some scratches that would stay for days, or broken bones. And it was not backlash, I told you. It was a lesson of humility.

Some other summoners—well—let's just say that they were more experienced in dealing with demons. Seasoned magicians would know better than to let a minor slip in their spell or an uneven line on their pentacle cost them their wellbeing.

(But, of course, even the mighty could fall.)

Now, to my summoner.

A pair of hazel eyes met mine from another pentacle across the room. Loose blond hair curled over one shoulder, and a dark robe over the other fastened by an eagle clip. Long, lean fingers that glided over the chalk drawing of her pentacle. High-boned cheeks and jaw, tightened as she straightened up. Pale lips and even paler skin. Barely in her twenty, I assumed. Oh, I liked her composure, though. Well, I did not want to sound so conceited, but I knew how to have respect even for humans. Her poise screamed of regal bearing. And I did have some rewarding experiences with aristocrats.

She did not appear to be scared, but who was I to talk? If there were anything I learned lately, it was that some young magicians did have the capability to surprise themselves—and a few demons.

So I floated and waited.

"I demand of you to tell me your name."

Ha! I wanted to roll my eyes and just left in a poof—but you know how it worked with magicians. When you were in a pentacle, you were to abide by the will of your summoner. At any cost. Even if it was just for a request to make a love potion work (which was silly to begin with—because no love potion had ever been successfully created) to one such as to tell your name.

Again, which was silly, because, let's face it, she would not have summoned me had she not known my name.

"Berry."

She swallowed almost perceptibly. Now, now. Did I finally make her nervous?

"I demand of you again to tell me your name."

Seriously? Was she going to be a time-waster? Fine.

"I am Berry, teacher of David, King of Israel, whose singing career shall not be belittled. I helped Hadrian build his wall across England and helped him nurture arts. I constructed New Amsterdam for the Dutch colonialists and remained her guardian until it was traded to the British and renamed New York. I led Puccini to his greatness. So yes, I am Berry, and I recognize no master. Who are you, then, to implore me of my service?"

Then it happened.

The air crackled, and invisible tendrils shot from her pentacle to coil tightly around me. In a snap. I was strangled inside the column. The pentacle swayed in front of my eyes as the temperature rose, and it was no longer cold. I knew what this was. A punishment. Even before my service started. Just great.

My, she sure could throw a temper tantrum, couldn't she?

"By the constraint of the pentacle, demon, I am your mistress." Even her voice was now cold. "You will obey my will."

I hissed as the tendrils bit harder into my skin. Not yet a contract binding. Not yet. But this young soon-to-be mistress of mine surprised me again with her biding. I took my words back about her being a time-waster. I mean, look at her. She did not even wait to window-shop to give her first command.

(And I admitted that I was curious. No magician apprentice summoned a demon of my level only to do petty, trivial tasks. And knowing that she sought me, of all demons. And it was not as if I could say no. With the way things work, I could not. It was either I obeyed her or returned to the Other Place just to get my body ripped into pieces out of noncompliance. Sometimes being a demon had its disadvantages, you see.)

To my bigger surprise, she stepped out of her pentacle and walked towards me. This. Is. An insult. A slap to my face. Literally. Never had I ever heard of something like this. Was I deemed so weak that she believed she did not need protection against me? Was I deemed so weak that she could rein in me even without a contract? Was I—this kid!

I held back the temptation to give her a piece of my extremely annoyed mind as she stopped right in front of me. We were in the pentacle. The same pentacle. From this distance, I could see her more clearly. Hooded hazel eyes looked at me in the eye, and if there was anything that could annoy me more, it was finding that she had so many walls erected in those eyes.

As if she was the one who needed to protect herself.

She reached out to touch one of the tendrils that wound itself around my left arm. Her fingers curled around my wrist, lightly, as if testing. Then she pressed. And pressed. And pressed. The tendrils soon left mark on my skin. They were blazing red on dark, dark demon skin. Within seconds, I knew her mark was going to be permanent.

Her voice evened out again as she spoke, deep and gruff but with a certain lilt in it—she could undergo a vocal training like what I gave to David, really.

"Be my demon."

-.-.-.-

So... what do you think? To continue or not to continue?