Chapter 19 Culture Shock #2
The sound was dampened in the narrow space, the light even dimmer.
She reached out with her free hand to feel the cool roughness of the rocky wall and traced a chaotic pattern of cracks and crevices.
Her fingers found something soft and damp that spread away from the fissures.
A closer look told her it was dense moss, black in color, and when she lifted her hand, it came with the most deliciously sweet scent.
They passed a small chamber lit with a curious blue light. There was one demon inside, sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed. Serenity seemed to radiate out of the small space, and Kat’s limbs loosened in response.
I want that, she thought with a fleeting surprise that melted into normalcy. Of course she wanted to be able to sit with her thoughts and be so at peace. But it was impossible, wasn’t it?
Then a gasping moan echoed into the passage, and Kat felt herself flush, but she didn’t hide away.
A hand stuck out from the darkness of a hidden alcove, clawed fingers digging into the rock.
A murmuring voice said something Kat didn’t quite let herself parse, but the tone and panting response was more than clear.
Oh, maybe I want that. This time she was even less surprised, gaze cast once again on Azrion’s muscled frame and his long, slender fingers entwined with her own.
Her demon companion brought her to a different alcove, bigger and brighter.
The walls had been smoothed out, and almost every inch of them was covered in runes.
The carvings were beautiful, and Kat felt compelled to spread her hands over the markings as if she could absorb their meanings and magic by touch alone.
She would have pressed her entire front to them if Azrion’s hand on her shoulder didn’t bring her back to her senses.
“Kat, look at me,” he said gently, and she did, and oh, gods, he was just so pretty.
“You’re so pretty,” she said, and she didn’t care at all. In fact, she was happy the truth had come out—thrilled even—his self-absorption be damned.
Azrion grinned in that pretty way of his with his pretty fangs and his pretty voids for eyes and his pretty everything, and then he groaned and that was pretty too in a more salacious way. “The incaendi moss is affecting you after all, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t,” she said through a smile.
“Do you know what incaendi moss is?”
“No, I don’t.” Her voice sounded dreamy even to her, and she could feel her smile widening.
There was a sympathetic bend to Azrion’s brow then, one that would have made Kat feel abashed and awful any other time, but instead she was simply excited to hear whatever it was he was about to say under that look he was giving her, one that was full of affection for her foolishness.
“Incaendi is different from the indigo species above ground. This moss’s oil is extracted for medical purposes, and at its most concentrated it’s used as a sedative.
But down here it just gives off a sort of general.
..calming essence. I wasn’t sure how or even if it would affect a human, but perhaps I should have guessed it might be a little stronger. ”
“Calming?” Kat rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath, but other than the damp earthiness, there was nothing else new in the air. “I guess I feel…well, I don’t feel worried or scared or even irritated.”
“That sounds like being calm to me.”
She clasped her arms behind her back and swayed her hips, feeling the new sensation and the absence of all the others. It was odd how utterly ordinary it felt, especially when she couldn’t recall ever experiencing it before. “Wait, is this what normal people feel like all the time?”
Azrion shrugged. “Most of the time, probably.”
“Oh my gods,” she whispered, admiring the magical moss sprouting from the cracks in the walls. “Everyone should be getting a lot more done if you feel like this all the time. Nothing’s stopping you!”
Azrion broke out into laughter that echoed into the high-ceilinged chamber.
Kat grinned wide, delighted she could conjure such a joyful sound out of him. Her gaze followed it upward and landed on bright if very small dots of light above. They were clustered against the darkness, and she took a step forward, craning her neck to see better.
“Stars.” Azrion stepped close to her and pointed.
“That bright one is Ockna, and her consorts are the others that appear to orbit around her. Together, the constellation tells the story of an ancient magician who discovered how to break open the hardened hearts of her fellow demons. It’s the one that crested the horizon when you arrived in Heck and consequently one of my favorites. ”
She didn’t need to steal a peek at him to know his face was changing, earnestness heavy in his voice.
“There are lots of small channels like this that climb up through outcroppings around the city so we can see the sky from the safety of the caves. It might be strange to think we go underground to worship the sky, but it’s symbolic of where my kind came from.”
Kat wanted to touch him as he spoke, to feel the rumbling of those words alongside the beat of his heart.
She would admit, if asked, that it was largely because he was shirtless and all that inked lavender skin had been calling to her since she’d first laid eyes on it, but a deeper truth was that he was finally abandoning pretense and charm in favor of sincerity, and it wasn’t a fleeting flicker this time.
This time, he wore his truth like a tattoo, etched permanently into him, always there if sometimes covered by fine fabric and finer jewels.
But she only flexed her fingers at her sides as she listened because she didn’t want to break the spell, and while the incaendi moss was strong, it didn’t actually make one do anything they didn’t want to—an important detail for what would come later.
“Lykalia is about connecting to our roots. That looks a little different for everyone who chooses to take part, but I like to see if the gods will allow the stars to speak to me, show me new runes, help me solve problems.”
“Even after…” She gestured carefully to his chest.
“I also come to make amends for that.” He spread a hand over the markings that protected him from the ones that had nearly driven him mad. “Some come to Lykalia just for the party, but I like to pay my dues, as it were, first. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all,” she said, and it was true, not just the right thing to say. “I can go explore and leave you alone to do…your magic stuff.”
“Please stay.” His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.
The spark ignited between them again, sharp and rousing. She’d gotten so used to it, every touch a little calmer, but this jolted right through to her chest.
Azrion bit his lip, eyes darting away as if the moss had suddenly all died off. “I just think you might like trying to speak to the stars too. Or you’ll be bored out of your mind, but either way I’m dying to experiment.”
“Me?” Kat poked herself in the bare space between her breasts. “Do magic?”
He shrugged again so nonchalantly she thought anything was possible. “Perhaps not do magic, but feel it? Listen to it? Or just sit quietly with me while I work. Ah, that sounds a little selfish…”
Kat chuckled. “Of all the things you’ve said, that might be one of the least selfish things. Come on, show me what we need to do.”
He gave her a great big grin. “It’s simple really.”
And it was simple. And a little boring, like he admitted.
They sat facing one another on the ground in the middle of the small chamber and just…
listened. Azrion closed his eyes, hands folded in his lap.
Kat expected chanting or at least a hum, but there was nothing.
The thrumming of the music echoed far away in the cave, and the blue light all around them let her gaze soften so that she was lulled into comfort.
The gentle rise and fall of Azrion’s chest was a rhythm all its own, and a random flick of his tail’s tip every so often kept her observant.
I bet it’s soft, she thought as the silvery tuft swished again.
Time passed, and it could have been minutes or hours, but eventually Kat felt her lids grow heavy.
The runes on the walls persisted when her eyes were closed, shifting in the darkness to patterns she was more familiar with.
One redrew itself to be made up of back stitches, another stem stitches, and there were knots and chains and ladders too, and as the symbols became embroidery, they gained deeper meaning.
The one that looked like darning, that could heal a wound.
And that slip stitch rune could bind two things together in secret.
A new sound in the alcove, the gentle scratching of quill on parchment, broke her of those thoughts.
Kat peeked one eye open and found Azrion writing furiously.
She said nothing, only observed the fluidity of his hand as symbols and words formed under it.
She looked down at her own lap and was surprised to see her hands poised like she had been embroidering threadlessly.
When she chuckled at herself, Azrion looked up, a triumphant grin on his face. “Ready to go have some fun?”