Page 58 of Bound and Tide

The silvery liquid ebbed gently within a basin raised out of the earth, as wide across as Xander’s arm span. Torchlight flickered from its holder over rocky walls carved out by chaotic arcana and then smoothed by more practiced magic. The chamber was cramped, and his innards roiled over themselves as he stared down into certain doom.

Sever the tie, Father Theodore had advised, though he’d not said how.

“Of course not, why be of any real assistance?” Xander groused to himself, and that brief moment of irritation cleared enough terror from his mind to allow the summoning spell to creep in and take the fear’s place.

The symbol to call up a demon from the infernal plane was one of the few he knew by heart. It had been ingrained in him early, the first he’d ever carved into his skin, hand guided or rather forced by his mother. All on its own, tracing out the arcane symbol and spilling a little blood wouldn’t do much. The ingredients and timing and intent made a demonic invitation work, but maybe a superficial spell was exactly what he needed.

He removed his coat, noting the bloody gash across the back. Rolling his shoulders and feeling the ache of a too-slowly healing wound, he dropped it to the earthen floor, then thought better of leaving a mess and folded the coat to tuck away neatly against the wall. With the sleeves of his tunic pushed up, he pulled out his dagger, but when the obsidian blade sprang out, it was stained. After a brief panic, he buffed the smudges out on the hem of his pants—those were in such bad shape there would be no fixing them no matter how he wished he could.

Prepared and yet not, the knife hovered over his flesh. It was so infrequent that he spilled his blood like this. Birzuma had taught him early how to dig in the blade, how to push past the pain, how to angle his slices for the highest yield and the quickest healing, but he had never really taken to any of it with ease. Eventually, she gave him the vial, and though he still bled to fill it, the process was tempered and clean.

Xander grunted in frustration and resheathed the blade, uncorking the vial instead. There was very little blood left, arcanely preserved before all of this mess and so still powerful, but it was enough to pour a thin sliver over his forearm like he had indeed cut in.

He drew the summoning circle over his skin with his finger, the feeling so much softer than using a knife and much more like when Red gently dragged her nails over his back or her lips over his cheek. There was no cutting, no pain, but there was magic all the same. Holding his forearm steady over the basin, he watched the liquid silver rock harder as noxscura cloyed up the air. A single drop of his blood slipped into the pool, the first outside arcana it had tasted in so long, and it latched on. The queasiness in Xander’s belly grew, but then it turned with the outpouring of magic into a kind of chaotic strength, like being just drunk enough to do something mad.

His reflection stared back at him from the mirrored surface, and he looked so awful he was relieved when things began to shift. Demonic features filled in around his own as if his humanity were being leached away, his warm brown skin turning blue, his sharp features hardening, horns sprouting from his head. And then there she was: Birzuma the Blasphemed, Ninth Lord of the Accursed Wastes and Nefarious Harbinger of the Chthonic Tower.

“Hello, Mother.” He heard his words more than uttered them, a strangled greeting through a toothy, painful smile.

“Xander.” The flatness with which she said the name she’d given him dashed the last wisps of hope that maybe this time she would be pleased to see him.

He bit down on his lip, shoulders drooping.

“Stand up straight.”

Every one of his muscles responded, though he had to keep his head bent to face her reflection in the pool. It wasn’t a choice, but then it wasn’t magic either, it was just what his body did.

She was scowling back, and though it hadn’t been even three moons since he’d seen her last, it shocked him all the same. She never aged, identical to the demon who had raised him, the one he had gone to with each of his troubles, the one who had taught him, berated him, turned him away.

“By the Abyss, you look awful.”

I knew I should have found a way to wash my bloody face first. Xander ran a hand through the hair that had fallen loose from his top knot. “Bit challenging…things…almost died.”

She sighed, quickly bored by the idea. “Serves you right, facing a little peril after all the frivolity you’ve been indulging in.”

Xander pressed his lips together to keep from frowning, knowing she hated when he appeared upset. “It’s just been especially difficult because, well, you know.” He gestured to the pool and her within it. It struck him then, the distance and the time. Save for the brief moments in Eirengaard, they’d been separated for over a decade. The length of time wasn’t as pressing for a demon, perhaps, but didn’t she at least feel some of that expanse?

“Oh, has it been difficult for you? Have you been suffering on that side of the realm, prancing through the forest picking flowers, lounging along the river, fucking a damned elf?”

“That’s not all I—” Xander’s throat tightened. “Wait, you…you’ve really been with me this whole time?”

“Been with you? You make it sound pleasant—I’ve been battling for your attention, more like! And for what—to be talked back to and forced to watch you laze about!”

Maybe that accounted for her lack of joy at seeing him, but nausea rolled through his guts all the same. It had truly been her voice speaking to him and not just his self-loathing playing an elaborate game, which meant… “You saw all of it?”

“Not all of it, thank darkness. The connection I’m capable of here is as unreliable as my spawn, but I’ve seen enough to know you’ve been shirking your responsibilities.” She leaned closer to her side of the noxscura rift. “You haven’t collected a single ingredient or bothered to draw up any star charts, have you?”

Xander opened his mouth to explain, but she cut him off.

“No, of course you haven’t—too busy languishing in that shithole of a village, hiding your lineage like some sniveling human. What do you even expect to gain by turning away from your purpose and playing pretend?”

Was it true? Had he been languishing? His powers had certainly dwindled, but that wasn’t his fault. And he had been trying, but…but he hadn’t even scoured Red’s inventory for a single herb that might have been of use, had he? And he barely looked at the sky but to complain over its greyness. Perfectly aligned constellations and the blood of dragons aside, the noxscura was the real problem. “I’m having more trouble this time than when you were just locked in the occlusion crystal.”

“Archibald’s prison blocked all of my abilities,” she hissed and then grumbled of the dead king, “Dark gods rend his soul in the endless Abyss.”

“Er—yes, endless Abyss, soul rent, all that,” Xander muddled through the echo quickly and cleared his throat. “But I’m speaking of my abilities. They’ve gone a little…funny.”

“This is no different than the last time. Your laziness has forced me to—oh.” The demon’s dark brows rose, and she clicked her tongue. “I’ve not been banished during your lifetime before, have I?”

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