Reborn From the Cosmos

Miniarc-Meet the Parents-21 (Remmings)

Remming half expected to be led to a small, dark room not unlike the one in the king's dungeon, and interrogated for his secrets.

The other half expected to be escorted to an execution chamber. Or perhaps dragged around to the back of the house and be disposed of like a dog. It wouldn't be the first time someone was taken care of quietly for knowing too much. Remmings had given such an order plenty of times. It would be the height of irony if the crown's head interrogator had his life sacrificed on the great altar of dangerous secrets.

But his expectations were subverted. The whole spiel over the dinner table wasn't just a performance. The horrible creature led him to what he suspected was Lord Teppin's, or Lourianne Tome's for as long as she chose to occupy it, study and sat him behind the desk. The smile of the guise it chose to wear was almost charming as it faced him and delivered its warning.

"I can crack open your mind like an egg with about the same amount of difficulty. I promise you won't enjoy the experience, so I suggest you make this easy on us both and don't fight. You can't keep me out and though I can't hurt you, there are a multitude of unpleasant sensations you can experience that will not harm you."

"Are you really a don?" he asked, doubts creeping in as he watched it obey orders like a simple servant. As the head interrogator, the chief threat he was meant to guard against were those of the mental affinity. He knew little of summoning, and cared for it even less, but he'd studied the succubi of the Grimoire family. They'd been a thorn in the side of the royal family for generations, each succeeding patriarch growing bolder as generations of secrets and deceptions bound the nobles of the capital in inescapable chains.

There were many reasons why the crown never acted against the family. No matter how terrible they were, the crown could not simply order the royal knights to storm their estate and kill them to the last son. It would set a bad precedent. The king was the ultimate authority in the kingdom, but he couldn't fight all the nobles if they banded together. Usually, their petty pursuits prevented that from happening but if there was one thing that would encourage them to cooperate, it was the crown abusing its authority.

Power was a game. What kept it civilized were the rules. Disregard them and people quickly became animals and there was nothing as barbaric as war.

If the crown wanted to bring down troublemakers, it had to be done properly, through the law. But no law could account for succubi. In their hands, laws became weapons. They were master manipulators, every last one of them.

Summoners weren't considered a threat because most elementals refused to submit to their summoners fully, their contracts only allowing for specific services. Those that did suborn their will to their contractors were usually unimpressive. Their ability would wholly depend on their summoners and those that dabbled in the art were rarely impressive, magically or mentally. Otherwise, they could obtain power on their own.

Succubi were wholly different. They were intelligent creatures with no apparent ego, willing to bind themselves to even the most revolting soul. They happily donned the masks of servants, as they had no problem commanding from the place of a lesser. Truly, from what Remmings observed in his investigations, the succubi were always the ones in control, guiding their contractors with backhanded compliments, outright mockery, or honeyed words.

Thralls didn't have impressive coefficients, but they were highly skilled. The only thing that kept them manageable was their lack of numbers, the Grimoire patriarch limiting which family members could contract them to better maintain control over the branch members and unfavored children.

Gordon Grimoire, the previous patriarch, contracted a virtue but from Remmings' investigations, it wasn't that great an achievement. He didn't know for sure, but he thought their contract came with many stipulations. Gordon was an ambitious and arrogant man. If he could freely order about a creature with a master's mana core and several lifetimes of experience, the capital would have felt the consequences keenly. A virtue was a horrible threat but somewhat in the sense of dragons, in that while there was nothing Remmings could do about one, he didn't expect to face one directly. It was a being above humanity, which meant it wouldn’t meddle in their affairs frequently, if at all.

A don was altogether different. They did not make contracts. If humanity was beneath a virtue, they were nothing but insects to the that being. They were like the tournaments hosted by nobles daring the bravest among their subjects to challenge their champions. If they won, they would receive prestige and enough crowns to live like kings, at least among their peers. Those tournaments always drew hundreds of participants and thousands of eager eyes. Trade flowed and the festivities boosted a nobles' reputation. Everyone won...but it was all a sham.

The challengers were never supposed to win the tournaments. How could someone self-trained or trained by a mercenary or ex-soldier that settled in their village compete with someone who had been trained by the best in the kingdom while provided with countless resources from birth? They couldn’t, but the dream kept them coming back.

That was what the don was, vile temptation. They flattered, they demeaned, they bargained. They showed glimpses of their power, enticing the summoners to contract their lesser kin in hopes of them or their family one day contracting the true powerhouse. However, all recorded history, both those records kept by the Grimoire family and those kept by the Summoning Hall, said that they never accepted a contract. Though the cost in mana, 100 units, wasn't a great hurdle, it was commonly accepted no human had anything to offer such a creature.

Perhaps a member of the royal family or a high noble might be able to tempt it with the resources of their territory, but it would be a sucker's bargain. From the behavior of all summoned dons, it was clear that a summoner would have to enslave themselves to the creature to even think of receiving its help.

A situation where the don was the servant, and such an obedient one, wasn't just unexpected. It should have been impossible.

Remmings fought a flinch as the creature laid a hand on his head, still smiling softly. It was unnerving how expressive it was. It could easily fool anyone who didn't know its nature, but most accounts agreed that succubi were unfeeling, or if they felt, it was in such an alien way that a human mind couldn't possibly understand it. Those few records that disagreed were written by poor fools who thought their thralls loved them truly and deeply, damn the opinions of their peers.

They also usually died young or disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

"I am what you humans have named dons, yes." The feeling of foreign mana entering the body was maddeningly uncomfortable, like worms digging under the skin. Remmings knew it intimately. He made all his interrogators train against mana intrusion, as one of the worst things that could happen was someone breaching the sanctity of one of their minds. He was prepared to suffer, his teeth grit as he reminded himself not to fight. The last thing he needed on top of having his mind ransacked was to force his captor to injure him because he was fighting against impossible circumstances.

Yet, the creature's invasion was gentle. The mana that flowed into him caused a faint tickle where it passed, a feather that floated through him rather than the usual biting, stinging, and burrowing through his flesh. It was humbling, observing such masterful control. The thing didn't just have incredible control over its affinity, but the same control over its mana. A revolutionary experience for someone who only understood mana as fuel and only thought to move it through his body.

That kind of knowledge was far more terrifying than any coefficient. If only he could tell someone. He didn't know what he, or anyone else in Harvest, could do about it, but he foresaw tragedy in the kingdom's future stemming from the crown's ignorance. The king was going to handle the young noblewoman causing a ruckus in one of his most important cities entirely wrong and it wasn't his fault. No one understood. No one was ready.

"What are you doing here?" he asked as the ticklish feeling reached his head and turned into a massage.

"Why bother asking? You won't remember the answer."

"Your orders were to replace my memories of dinner. Nothing else."

"Very good. They also missed the big one about leaving messages for you. How interesting would it be if you woke up tomorrow with a note in your pocket telling you your memories were false?" It chuckled. "When you're proficient with magic, your enemies seem to forget that you also have mundane methods available. Oh yes, there are a few ways I could circumvent my orders...but I don't think I will."

"Why not? I didn't expect a creature like you to serve so sincerely."

"Another mistake you all make. You presume to understand us. Though my decision has nothing to do with my supposed loyalty. It's simply an act of self-preservation. Your daughter is a bit more suspicious of me than my summoner and has none of Lou's oh so useful trepidation when it comes to my kind. I strongly suspect that she will ask for a recounting of what happened in this room, if only to learn from my technique. It would be very uncomfortable if any nascent schemes were revealed, hm?"

Remmings couldn't help a swell of pride hearing that the creature was treading carefully around Talia, but it deflated a moment later. "Learn?"

"Was I not clear? She is my student. Well, not exclusively. She is happy to learn from all of us." Its smile stretched wider. "There are plenty of better options than you, an unimaginative, dying, poor excuse of a master anything. You're worthless in her eyes. Why are you making such an expression? You raised her and should be the last person surprised by her cold heart."

"What we have goes beyond master and student,” he snapped. “We're family. Your words only show how little you know her."

Talia was certainly different but no one who truly knew her would call her cold. Rather, she was incredibly passionate, just for the few things that caught her attention.

"There it is again. That terrible habit of assuming that a being that looks like you, talks like you, and acts like you, feels the same way you do. That woman's heart may as well be made of ice. Any warmth she has is reserved for things that are useful for her own ends or at least worthy of her respect. You are neither."

The creature shook its head. "Unfortunately, she has some ridiculous notions about gratitude and repaying debts."

"There is nothing ridiculous about being honorable."

"Of course there is. Everything aside from power is a weakness to be exploited."

"Power is useless without a strong mind to wield it."

"Knowledge is power. Morality is a restraint. Now, quiet down. You're not my student and this will be easier without you focusing on me."

"What are you doing?"

"Well, I can't do anything to you but there's nothing stopping me from learning a few things. Now, let's see what kind of secrets the head interrogator keeps."

He had been doing his best not to fight the creature but at its words, his discipline failed him. His eyes glowed as he called on his mana, circulating it, his power naturally pushing against the foreign energy inside him. Then they rolled back into his head as he was bombarded with sensation.

His skin was practically burned with an infernal itch, his eyes water, his nose was congested, his stomach tightened with a dread so powerful he thought he might throw up, and the room swam despite him sitting down. More and more sensations piled onto his senses, leaving him thoroughly disorientated. He couldn't cast a spell even if his life depended on it.

He didn't even notice the massage of the creature's magic turning into a vice-like tightness around his skull as it forced its way into his mind.

"Interesting."

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