Elva Rackthorn and the Tears of Azrael

In a Bind, Part 1

Elva took a moment to mourn that her bed was occupied by a demon, that she couldn't just sleep and turn everything that had just happened into a bad dream.

She saw the demon take in another breath, the spirals of his heartmarks swelling slightly, so she raised a hand and slowly got to her feet. "It's dark because it's night time. You're here because I bound you as my familiar in order to save our lives from a monster that gutted you and was coming after me, what you see on the floor is the rune work that enabled that, and you don't remember anything because..." Elva curled her hair around her finger. "That's what the monster does. It takes away memories when it attacks."

The boy sat still for a moment, before curling his wings in against his back. "So... I'm your familiar now?"

Elva's hands flailed. "No! I mean, technically yes, but no. That would be illegal and immoral and uhh rather icky, right? It was just the only way to save us both in the garden. Now that we're back here and healthy, more or less, and it's still the half-moon, I can unbind you and send you back."

"To where the monster is?"

Elva frowned. "It should be gone by now. But even if it isn't, the unbinding ceremony won't send you back precisely to the same place. Actually, the translation is a bit unclear— this isn't something that has been paid particular amounts of scholarly attention. It could be you will be sent back to where I first entered the Night World, which was a lovely spot in a southern forest, or it could be you're sent to a place with the same parameters as that spot as I entered into my original equation, but interpreted through your own spiritual compass. Alternatively, one might suspect an average of—"

"—Elva, lovely as that all sounds—"

"How do you know my name?"

The demon looked surprised and even a bit offended. "I mean, it's just there. In my mind. Or, somewhere else. In the space between us."

"Your poetic attempts at subterfuge are unappreciated." Elva rubbed her forefinger against her thumb, readied herself and will, prepared to trace any manner of runes into the air. If he had taken the time to sift through her belongings to find her name while she was unconscious, there was no telling what else he had done.

"I'm not—" The boy stumbled to his feet, and one of his wings swooped forward, cutting the air between them. The rush of air was too much like the garden, and Elva let one leg rotate back and her center of balance settle evenly between her two feet. She raised a hand into an archaic rune dueling posture.

"Well, Nyx, you don't get to just threaten— Oh. Hmm. That is rather odd." His name was just there at the tip of her tongue, at the front of her mind, in that odd space that was now their familiar bond. She couldn't really pull any more information about him, but as sure as she was that she was Elva— and not Elvira, and not Elfie, though she could be called both— he was Nyx.

Nyx's inverted eye's met Elva's, and they took a few moments just to look at each other.

Elva clapped her hands and felt her face rictus in a smile. "Okay, well, let's get to work then. Begone foul demon, back from whence you came, and all that."

Nyx offered her back a weak grin and then a cautious extended hand. Elva gave it one solid shake, marveling at how the ancient sigilmancy managed to make tangible a being that could also hide in her shadow, and then she turned her mind to getting rid of him.