Page 53 of The Misfit Mage and His Darling Demon

“You’ve seen a suit of armor,” I corrected him. “We’ve seen a few dozen while investigating.”

Novus had a vast collection of mortal armor and artillery spanning centuries back from across the globe.

“No. That exact suit.” Wally returned to the control panel, zooming in on a camera positioned in a foyer.

He rolled the footage back.

“You think you saw it,” I said. “Knight armor can be easy to confuse.”

“No,” he snapped. “This was the exact same suit this Eligos demon wore. I know how to distinguish minute details. That suit of armor came from tenth-century England.”

Wally was right about the century. I recalled Eligos’ particular fondness for that suit, having earned it on a pilgrimage in the mortal plane. He regaled many about his journeys as a knight errant.

“See.” Wally paused the footage.

I found myself more fixated on the framed image of his frantic expression on camera—the same expression he had now—from the night of the Fae Divinity, backstepping from a looming shadow that must’ve been Novus.

“Look.” He pointed to the suit of armor positioned behind him. “It’s exactly the same.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “They are similar.”

“They’re identical.” Wally pointed. “Everything down to the dent, which should’ve struck me as odd considering the pristine condition Baron Novus kept everything else in his collection. Fixing damage like that would be easy, even without magic, so long as you know what you’re doing.”

I thought back to the many memories of Hell I kept buried, to Eligos, his nobility, his honor, his tales which offered a small reprieve from the constant torment of my existence. He’d earned it by slaying some Mythic beast—a dragon, I think, which is as cliché as it can get—and saving a village of mortals. That dent. The singular scuff he’d received from the slow-moving beast because he’d deflected a blow meant to kill a child.

He had been particularly proud of the suit’s durability and the war wound it obtained, even as others mocked his sluggishness and need to prioritize a finite, worthless mortal life. It hadn’t bothered him at all, though, and I loved how no one’s opinions ever deterred his desires, his tales during meetings among the hierarchy of demon lords.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, the memories best left buried. None of them mattered. “Eligos is dead. Saw it myself.”

The former reigning devil smashed Eligos and so many demons to pieces, shattering their forms and scattering their broken essence among the thousands of other defeated demons. A rebellion for the ages, one that Eligos would’ve told a thousand times over, except he had died.

“Diabolics don’t die, not like others. You said that.” Wally tugged at his hair, yanking away the confusion festering in his overworked brain, so he could come to a sound conclusion. “He could’ve been brought back or survived the attack or…”

I’d seen Wally get this way when unraveling a secret layered in lies and mysteries. Usually, he had great insight, fantastic instincts, and a knack for the puzzles people created. Hell, locked in a room with Mora, he’d likely learn all her secrets over a single cocktail.

But he was wrong about Eligos. I couldn’t explain the similarities. Perhaps, I’d seen it around the villa, substituted it for my repressed memories of a fallen friend, a demon I regretted the death of.

“Even if Eligos had survived, which, to be clear, he didn’t,” I said. “He couldn’t get through a closed doorway.”

“Precisely.” Mora smacked Kell’s ass to draw our attention.

“Babe, he seems serious,” Kell said, slipping off Mora’s lap and straightening her skirt.

“More like overthinking it. Beelzebub’s Hell is completely sealed off,” Mora said, indicating she too kept a watchful eye on the world I’d abandoned, ensuring that particular Hell never opened again. “No way in or out.”

“Unless,” Wally interjected, continuing his wild theories, “Novus had been left to his own devices, which—oh yeah, he was—potentially figuring out a way through this locked realm in some nefarious plot. For all we know, Eligos is—”

“I never considered the former baron nefarious so much as narcissistic,” a hauntingly chivalrous and familiar voice said. “Vapid, callow, arrogant by any man’s measure. Certainly. Nefarious. Not even sure the Fae truly know the meaning, despite millennia of observation.”

I quaked at the sight of his full suit on display, moving gracefully with his aligned essence and demon form navigatingfrom within. Eligos didn’t possess hosts, favoring the armor for the limited mortal shape. Well, the Eligos I knew. This couldn’t be him. Still, those golden eyes peering through the slit of the helmet were uncanny.

“As for Beelzebub’s sealed Hell,” Eligos said, nodding his helmet at me. “Getting him here was the first step in undoing that travesty.”

Fucking Eligos. How was he here? How had he survived? What did he want with me? Why was he trying to free Beelzebub?

“How did you escape?” The words left my lips like I’d become the frightened, whimpering demon all over again.

“You weren’t the only one to cross through the portal before it sealed away,” he said, which meant he’d been in the mortal realm for centuries. “Though, the state of near-death you left my essence in, it took a while to regain my bearings.”

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