We Are the Sages Reincarnated Up to Your Old Tricks Again

The Demon Sage's Daughter, ©2021 Emma Weakley

Content warning:

This page contains:

• Disregard for personal autonomy
• Blood
• Body transformation
• Decease/dying
• Drug use
• Murder
• Needles
• Scars/scarification
• Sex activity
• Violence/combat

In one version of the story, nobody dies, and yous become to keep the princess as your maid.

She chafes against this, longing for her silks and jewels. You scoff, tugging her after you lot, a tangle of jasmine wound around her artillery. She'due south tried to break free many times, plaintively singing to the deer and the birds and the sky for help, but everything in your ashram bows to your father, fifty-fifty the quilt of sky in a higher place, and he is the one who jump her. And so, your princess just weeps.

But for all her faults, in that version of the story, the princess at least is a pious girl love of the gods. And so much so that all her tears turn into sapphires and rubies, collecting in little piles by her feet. And although she protests when you sweep them into the folds of your sari, she knows that y'all are her mistress and she cannot terminate you lot from doing what you want.

What you want, in that version of the story, is to take the riches from your princess's tears, purchase all the weapons of Patala, and then march into Amaravati, the slap-up celestial city, where yous volition kill all the gods.

Every single 1 of the 3 hundred and 30 one thousand thousand.

And when their slithering godblood runs downwards the diamond facade of Mountain Meru, yous will bathe your hair in it, soaking until your scalp is drenched and your sari drips cherry, and then—only and so—will your revenge exist complete.

In that version of the story.

In another version of the story, which is all the same non the real story, yous are on your knees in your ashram, trying to put your male parent back together. Y'all have already tried this with frantic easily and magic, with careful easily and needles, with sticky paste from deodar copse and the decanted salts of your own tears and the drip drip of your claret churned black with incantation. Now, hours later, you are appealing to his logic: telling him how stupid you are, what an idiot-child, can't even put your father back together.

Your father is saying nothing dorsum at all, having outburst open some time ago like ripe fruit.

In the version of the story you choose to be true, you are kneeling in your begetter'south blood, silent. His godly killer has just fled the scene, hoisted onto a heavenly chariot, fading into a distant astral blip in seconds. In his wake, at this scene of crime, there is no revenge, no confrontation, no loud lamentation. Only silence.

Lotuses bloom vividly everywhere a slice of your father has landed. They're below your anxiety, climbing the walls. Great lotus leaves castor your face when y'all move, enfolding you lot in shadow over and over. Your princess sits slumped on the floor, blowing her olfactory organ into one.

"Did you hear it?" you lot inquire, hushed. "The spell. Practice you know it?"

Below the mountain of lotus blooms, your princess is naked as the day she was born. At that place is no blood on her skin, clean and new, but gore drips from her hair and coats her shoulders like a grim greatcoat.

"Answer me."

Your princess's nod is miniscule, just a quick jerk of her head earlier she resumes staring pallidly at the violence.

"I'll free you."

Your princess'due south optics snap wide open up.

"I'll free you from your curse, and in return, you lot'll tell me what you heard. Do nosotros have a deal?"

You lot wonder what you will do if she says no. If she leaves you alone to deal with the shattered bone and adipose florets and stringy grey affair that is all that is left of your begetter. Merely the princess is too crafty to pass up this opportunity.

"Y'all'll free me," she echoes. "No tricks."

"None."

"And after I'yard freed?" she asks. "What will you do?"

That is none of her business. Yous wring your father'south blood from your hands. Y'all crush a bloom under your pes. You wait until your princess stops waiting for an reply, blood-stained face up shuttering over.

When y'all put your arm out, in partnership, your princess takes it.

---

There are two threads of stories here woven together into a loose braid, one bloodier than the other. Your princess is the strongest strand in the first thread. Your father is the bloodiest i in the other. Between the ii, linking force, are yous and Kacha.

Maybe y'all should take started the story with Kacha.

In a more traditional story, he is the hero after all. Kacha, in his bluish silks and gold earrings. Kacha, with his silvertongue. Kacha, who even the goats liked, the traitorous bastards.

Some months ago, when his large celestial retinue arrived, all flappy-winged vimanas and heralds blowing conch-shells, some of your handmaidens crowded the dance hall. They jostled each other, ankle-bells tinkling, a murmuration of gentle creatures hiding fell teeth. Each one called out a new, juicy bit of information: he wears a diamond on his chest, the size of a mango! His torso is strong and robust like a peach! Oh, my lady, my lady, his servants carry bowls of fruit, gold-stringed veenas, and such heavenly flowers!

You tossed your braid over your shoulder. "If he adorns his chest with such sizeable jewels, girls, should we worry if he lacks elsewhere?"

"He's come to report with your father, my lady," Maniprabha said. "What he lacks in concrete prowess, he must possess in spirit."

"Spirit," Samyukta laughed. "Are the gods' spirits not destroyed after centuries of losing wars against united states? Are they non tired of their little sons dying like pitiful worms on the battlefields? Exercise they not seek peace past sending their own to study hither at the ashram of the demon sage?"

"It's non peace they want," you lot said. "It'due south something else."

The girls all exchanged glances at that, swooning with marvel, but you were the mistress. Yous decided if you lot wanted to include them in your secret. You decided if you wanted to leave them hanging, spinning their theories as intricately as they worked the ashram'southward looms.

"The gods have sent him to sniff out a hole-and-corner," you said. "He'due south a spy."

"A spy? A undercover? What secret?"

But a queen without secrets is no queen at all, and you simply smiled. "Father will need me. I must go now to welcome our new guest."

Exterior, in the seething emerald fields of your father's ashram, Kacha stood bent in one-half, hands clasped, all his attendants singing harmonious praises of your father'due south might. Your new guest's confront was neither stunning nor memorable. His vox, however, boomed in messianic thunder when he spoke: "Oh, Saint of Saints! Near Knowledgeable One in Patala! I cheers for accepting me equally your virtually humble student."

He kneeled, bejeweled brow pressed to your father's feet. Flowers tumbled from the center of his palms: jasmine and marigold, rose mallow and calotrope, oleander and parijat.

Your begetter cast a bemused smile. Lightning flickered in his coiled beard. Raw cosmic power thrummed from him in tympanic waves, flattening the grass, buffeting the crown off Kacha's head. "Ascension, educatee," he boomed, motioning you frontward. You performed the welcoming rituals: washing Kacha's feet with rose h2o, smearing sandalwood and turmeric paste on his forehead, garlanding him with marigolds so brilliant the bees swarmed in droves.

"This is my girl Devayani," your father said. "It's her task to brand sure that your stay with the states is virtually pleasurable."

Near pleasurable! Ha! Y'all knew your father. You knew he expected yous to sidle up to Kacha and seduce him, lure his secrets from his mouth, feed him lies and flirtations just like you fed milk and ghee to the snakes in the ashram's groves every morning.

Kacha was already assessing the curve of your rima oris, your hip where yous had shifted your sari to offer a glimpse of your peel. "Lady Devayani," he murmured. "They whisper rumors in Amaravati that the demon sage's daughter is more beautiful than all of heaven's apsaras. I encounter now that there was no hyperbole."

"You flatter me, my lord."

"I expect forward to studying nether your father," Kacha said. "Just I fright now, later meeting yous, that I will have to work very hard indeed to stay focused."

His shoulders blocked out the sun. The diamond on his chest, fix amongst repeating lotus-patterns of embroidery, made you suddenly dizzy. Yous stumbled, momentarily blinded, dropping your tray of rose and turmeric. He caught you neatly, long fingers folding effectually your wrist.

"Lady Devayani," he said. "I'm sure you will have much to teach me, as well."

Your fingers rubbed unconsciously where his affect left welts on your wrists, an effect of his godblood. Each one was reddened, raised; alphabets in a harsh language carved into your skin. Your begetter'southward future murderer saw them and only smiled: a whetted thing, sharp and profane.

That was the beginning.

---

This is the complex route y'all take to an catastrophe.

You and your princess leave your dead begetter in the ashram and descend into the realms of Patala.

This is where the demons live, in their secret cities of gilt and gemstone copse. At the gates, your princess pulls weakly against her flower-chains, unwilling to go whatever further.

"They won't consume you," y'all say. "At that place are better things to swallow in Patala. The exquisite glair of Naga eggs. Blackness-skinned fish from the river Hataki. Sweets from the tables of the demon-king Bali, wrapped in carbohydrate-soaked argent. They have no need for bland princess-mankind."

She stares at you lot, aghast. You wonder how she will tell this story to the time to come princes lining up for her attention. You: demoness, girl of the Dark Sage, leading her into the realms of ghosts and goblins. She: victim, hostage, held captive past a beautiful monster.

What a repugnant fable.

Your oral fissure turns in a curdled grimace. "Stay with me and maybe they won't rip the meat off your bones."

The vimana y'all summon to travel into the underworld is elegant, with swan wings that ruffle at every breeze and seats of bluish and gilt. A glittering green snake adorns its side, fat diamonds for eyes.

O Pious Girl! Information technology hisses when yous board. How is your male parent?

Your princess opens her mouth, surely to blab nearly how your father is currently a formless flesh-splatter, but you lot hum the opening words of an incantation, the syllables glace equally eels. Your princess clicks her mouth close, pop, hands jumping in surprise to her pharynx. It is not until y'all're descending into the first level of Patala that you permit her speak again.

"You're not my mistress anymore," she spits. "Don't do that again."

"If the demons know their sage is dead, they will march against the gods. The gods volition call the sunday and moon to arms, and the globe will be plunged into eons of icy nights and monstrous tides. Practice y'all want that?"

"Don't you? Information technology'due south your father who's expressionless—"

"Another word and I'll stitch your mouth shut. With iron."

Your princess believes you. She looks out instead, optics wide, at the winding streets and drinking parlors.

The kickoff city of Patala is resplendently beautiful. The demon-builder Maya's miraculous palaces glisten like beetle carapaces, all stained glass and coruscating light-beams. Canopies of ivory filigree and statues of statuary beautify the wide avenues. A vista of gemstones spills slanted lite across an bogus sky, illuminating the city in strange, twinkling calorie-free.

Your father e'er chosen it excess. When the demons came to him for advice, he told them not to test the gods. Build just enough marvels. Continue your palaces merely a chip smaller than theirs. Practise not tempt celestial wrath, and mayhap the demons could keep their cities, their sorcery, their foreign and darkling citizenry.

"It's beautiful," your princess says. "I didn't call back it would be beautiful."

"Did you think it would all be vermin and filth?"

"No. I've heard the stories …"

"Women that prevarication with any man for a drink. Nagas that live in holes like animals. Are those the stories you've heard?"

In the gem-light, your princess looks like she wants to put her fist through your face. "They won't come back, you know," she says. "Kacha's gone. Your male parent never loved you. So, you lot tin snap at me all you wish, merely they won't come back for yous. Nobody wants you."

But this is where she misunderstands y'all. This is non a story about your father, or Kacha. This is a story well-nigh you.

You are Devayani, daughter of the demon sage, mistress of his ashram now that he is gone. Your male parent taught you how to meditate for as long as it took to bottle thunderstorms and weaponize blood. In your grottos of horns and teeth, he instructed you lot on trip the light fantastic toe-mantras that brought nigh droughts or floods. Your anxiety became a palimpsest of scars, layered and sliced by hours of dancing. Your very bones are carved with treatises on the importance of illusions and hypnosis, the mysteries of augury, the secretive, coded stratagems of celestial warfare.

Kacha and your father are in your past.

Your nowadays is about you.

"Where are we going?" your princess asks.

"To the night markets. To detect a locksmith who knows sorcery. Your shackles are demon-made and answer merely to the one who put them on you."

"But your male parent is dead."

"Someone there will know how to complimentary y'all."

"And later that?"

You plough your head away, pressing your lips together, pretending to feast your eyes on the sights. Information technology doesn't take your princess also long to stop asking.

---

In whatever version of your universe, this is heaven'southward most coveted clandestine, your male parent's greatest legacy: he can raise the dead.

Subsequently the twenty-four hour period's battle climaxed, when the battlefields smoked and dozed uneasy at night, your begetter would walk through mounds of corpses and broken chariots, chanting the incantations. As he walked, demonic corpse-soldiers rose in his wake, shambling subsequently him into the ashram.

Y'all and your handmaidens would sit at the looms, weaving the soldiers' new skins. The expressionless could non live in the skin they'd died in; their souls hung out of information technology, untucked, and they flopped most like fish. When the new skins were finished, you and your father stitched them onto the demons, dusted off their thick clubs, and sent them dorsum to war.

The gods and demons take been at state of war for centuries. The gods were forever dying, beingness sucked into the karmic pipeline, cycling through reincarnation like leaves buffeting helplessly in a gale. The demons died and just came back, equally if dying was cipher but a mild inconvenience.

Information technology ruffled some big heavenly feathers. Hobbling some tall celestial egos.

You and your father were prepared for spies. Many from heaven'southward ranks had come up here before, pretending to seek tutelage, burrowing instead for information on the resurrection spell. But none were equally subtle and determined as Kacha.

He was a expert student. He studied deep into the night, poring over palm-leaf texts while your begetter meditated. He took diligent notes and debated for hours with your father on circuitous cosmic paradoxes. When he was not taking lessons, Kacha whittled wood into fantastic creatures that followed you around. There was a parrot with a green glass eye, and a rabbit and then minor it would fit in the cup of your palm. A monkey swung from the folds of your sari, bringing you flowers and oddly patterned stones, writing you messages such as:

Today I watched yous dance. I accept seen angelic apsaras dance in Indra's palace above Mount Meru. They are not as skilled equally y'all are, Devayani, or: I wish these treatises on conjuring spirits and calculating cumulative karmic scores was as arresting every bit your singing, Devayani.

You pretended to exist charmed, blushing whenever he sent you a new bulletin. His overtures of dearest cloyed in your mouth like oversweet rose-jam.

At Kacha's request, you took him on tours of the ashram. Y'all showed him the looms and the dance hall. You let him row the two of you out to the center of the lotus pond, far enough in dawn's fog that there was nothing in either direction simply mist-shrouded blooms.

"This is where apsaras are built-in," he told you, plucking a plush pink blossom. "In the hearts of flowers, soft as forenoon dew. Accept you seen an apsara?"

You shook your head.

"I'll show yous 1 day," he said. "Oh, Devayani, don't you chafe at being locked up here in your ashram? Such a clever girl should meet the globe. I could take you."

Kacha came to come across y'all after his lessons, coaxing you lot to feed the deer with him or augur the shapes of clouds in the sky. He tucked flowers behind your ear and told you stories of Amaravati, his home in the skies. He fabricated you lot a model of it with dirt and silk and precious things, laying out wide boulevards and golden gates, sparkling indoor waterways, food-halls where celestial cooks prepared the loveliest of dishes for the gods' banquets.

"What does an austere'due south daughter know of sweets?" he lamented. "When I take you to Amaravati, I will bring you lot to the halls and permit you have your pick of the sweets. Sugar-wafers drizzled with love so light it melts on your tongue. Milk and khoya confections with surprise drupe hearts. Frosted sugar-soaked cucumber garnished with candy-coated petals."

You cradled a coy grin at your lips. "You seem to have a sweetness tongue, my lord."

Tangerine flowers rinsed through the copse like flotsam. Butterflies spun in spiraling drifts. Kacha'south grinning sharpened. "Would you like a gustation, my lady?"

His bear upon made y'all burn and chimera, a beautiful firework held too close to peel. Pain bloomed, white and scalding, and you cried out once more and once more. Still he, feigning oblivion, pressed his mouth to yours, seeking the estrus of your tongue.

He did not taste sweet. He tasted like fe, and salt, and the acid tang of godblood. You lot clenched your fists tight enough to cleave encarmine moons into your palms just did not pull away.

This was what your father expected from you, subsequently all.

That y'all would dance close enough to serpents that they showed you their venom. That yous would sit through the rut of a hundred scorpion stings. That you would breast-stroke in godblood, if required, let it slough your skin off, if only information technology meant y'all could catch your father his godly spy.

"Oh, Devayani, my beloved," Kacha cried, when you parted at concluding. "I fearfulness our happiness will be short-lived. The demons doubtable me of beingness a spy. I fear they are plotting to harm me. I am terrified that if I die, our honey volition suspension your middle. How could I bear leaving you? How could my soul rest, knowing you will be pain?"

And here, well-apposite, you bodacious Kacha with syrup-thick words that he need non fearfulness. You would speak to your begetter on his behalf. You were the demon sage'due south daughter after all. You lot promised: your dearest would e'er protect him.

The very next day, you found Kacha dead for the first time.

---

The night markets occupy the riverside of the tertiary level of Patala.

The river here runs aureate, casting a glow over the ghosts and goblins that call the city its home. Boats full of men row across it, blowing long plumes of burn down. When the fire fans the surface of the water, information technology spits and hisses, turning into ropes of gleaming gold which beautify the chests of the vendors at the market place.

The market place is a dizzying tangle of wares, sourced from all seven of Patala's realms. Foggy drinking glass tanks, teeming with bathypelagic creatures from the primordial body of water of the lowest level. Spines of gods, crackling with power, boxing-won and encased in silver by Maya's craftsmen. Fangs of panthers and elephant hair, sold by all manners of strange netherworld folk: mottled-blueish vetalas, living upside-down in trees; gray-skinned pisacha, feeding on corpse-flesh; dark-eyed rakshasa, shifting shape into whoever you lot want about.

Y'all once purchased your dancing bells from here, from a pisacha adult female whose breath was thick with decease and sorcery. It is to her y'all go now, tugging your princess behind you.

She blanches at the sight of the store. "This doesn't expect like the business firm of a locksmith."

Rows of skulls line the shelves, and basic hang from the rafters, tinkling grotesquely. Vertiginous drifts of corpse-ash execute strange calligraphy in the however air. The pisacha adult female shuffles to you, bells decorating the hollows of her desiccated ribcage, jangling with each footstep she takes.

"Pious Daughter," she rasps, her flickering tongue dusty grey. "You scent of death and blood. What can I practice for yous?"

Your princess quivers. "No tricks," she whispers. "You lot promised."

Your promises are non worth much. Nonetheless: "My male parent fabricated these bonds," you tell the pisacha. "Tin you break them?"

"Upala can do all sorcery," the pisacha says, burnished eyes focused intently on your princess. "Snip, snip with magic pocketknife. Cuts through even Indra's armor."

While Upala goes to get her magic knife, your princess gives you a suspicious look. "If it's that easy, why couldn't you just practise information technology yourself?"

"I have other business organisation hither."

When Upala comes back, you enquire the cost of her magic knife. Your princess'south brows furrow. A slice of bone from your father is still stuck in her hastily washed hair. You think of proverb something but then turn away, deciding to let her have the pleasure of discovering this ghoulish accessory all to herself.

---

In some versions of your story, which you do non want to be the story, you are nothing but the querulous daughter of a powerful man, spending your days conversing with twee forest creatures. You learn dance and music, just never the spells and incantations that make them your weapons. Your father never thinks to teach you because what use is teaching a daughter?

In those versions, you are simply a lark in the tales of conflicts between powerful men. A girl living in the margins of her own story.

Those versions of y'all are non ambitious. Those versions of you do not get exploring Patala, or demand things from your father. Things like tell me how to brew elixirs, or teach me how to enter some other'southward consciousness, or give me the secret of resurrection.

In every version of yous that exists, your male parent chastises y'all for demanding the resurrection spell.

He banishes you from his hut when you persist, corralling you to your trip the light fantastic hall for weeks. In your rage, yous break every pane of drinking glass adorning the latticed walls. You kick at pots of saffron and turmeric and indigo. You dance in the mess, painting the hall brilliant in your anger, casting spells to turn all your handmaidens into brightly dyed rabbits.

Your father lets you.

"The merely obstruction to the victory of the gods is the resurrection spell," he tells yous while you sulk on the floor, boneless. "It's a cloak-and-dagger I must guard closely."

"I'thou your girl," you spit. "Why can't you teach me everything?"

Your father's eyes flash, miniature suns. "Yous act like a spoiled child, Devayani," he says, dispassionate. "What if I teach y'all the resurrection spell today and you, fickle as you are, teach information technology to whatsoever elementary paramour the gods might ship to pull a fast one on you lot? What if I teach you lot my greatest cloak-and-dagger and you use it on birds to wait mighty in front of your handmaidens?"

In every version of your story, you try to evidence him that you are more than that. That you accept bled and scarred yourself to be worthy of him. You siphon secrets. You feed men sweet toxicant. Y'all press shlokas into silk and bone and metal, turning them into potent weapons. Yous are a bract: a bedazzled ane, but a blade, nevertheless. You tin can be equals.

Your father just laughs. Your role is set, he says. You are the demon sage'south daughter, using your dazzler and middling magic to set snares for his enemies.

Just you want to be more that.

You desire to be his heir.

When he hears this, your father laughs for so long so loud that all of hell and sky reverberates with the audio. So long and loud that the blades of grass seem to milkshake with it, trees all joining in, your handmaidens hiding their faces with rabbit-paws while they try not to celebrate at your shame.

(Nobody's laughing in the end, when Kacha rips your father autonomously. But that part comes later.)

This is the story of how yous find your princess: after your father laughs at you, you get out the dance hall a mess of pigments and tears. Your sari is muddied from days of tantrums. Your handmaidens are still rabbits, and so you become lone to the river, where you stare loathingly at your reflection for what feels like eons.

When y'all enter the water, the river swirls about y'all in icy, varicolored eddies. Red for appetite. Blue for humiliation.

You lot stay for hours, sobbing, breathing a fortitude prayer.

At dusk, you are disturbed by a fit of laughter.

"Do you think she thinks she tin wash abroad the embarrassment?" a voice whispers. Your spiritual cognition identifies the speakers: the male monarch's girl, and her favored handmaiden. "Look," the princess continues, and you know she's pressing her feet against your discarded sari. "She'southward the daughter of the demon sage, yet all she wears are rags."

"She's a demoness," her handmaiden says. "This is what they know, princess. Corpse-ash and charnel-house raiment. Filthy things that smell like expiry."

"Neither a dutiful daughter nor a talented sage. No wonder her father has been so displeased."

It is frivolously cruel. Y'all remember of cursing the princess, something inventive and alienating: all her lovers will plow into frogs, or everything she touches will turn to slimy snails.

The princess is cute, after all. Frail face up and night gaze rimmed with rings of kohl. Her fingers are ruby from the dye of the henna plant, elegant when she reaches down to pick up your sari.

"Come and get it, hut-dweller," she laughs. "Come out of the h2o."

It is light-headed, childish cruelty. Just you are a child yourself, hurting considering of a father you can never please. And so information technology is that you clothe yourself in the foam of the river, skimming the crests of small-scale waves to weave yourself a sari. So it is that you rush out of the water, sputtering in your anger. And so it is that you fall right into their trap: a dingy hole in the basis.

They must have dug information technology hours ago.

Y'all twist your ankles, scrape your elbows, lose your illusory river-garb. Naked, wet mud slicks and slithers over you, weighing yous down with its stickiness. Something else is in in that location, foul-smelling, squishing underfoot as yous try to stand. You cry out when y'all come across information technology: fish guts, at to the lowest degree a solar day old, likely gathered from the palace kitchens. The smell sears your nostrils. You retch, and your tormentors' faces glisten with mirth far to a higher place you, vivid from the sun.

"There, in that location," your princess says, satisfied. "Isn't that pigsty much more than befitting for a demoness?"

You set yourself to curse her, merely she surprises you one time over again. Something small falls onto your lap from the surface. You scramble for information technology, panic squeezing your throat, and elevator upwardly a rabbit.

Its hue is unnaturally pinkish. Its neck is broken.

The next i is grey, still warm and twitching. As yous hold information technology—her, her, 1 of your girls, which one?—your spine turns to ice. Your tongue goes slack in your mouth. The horror of information technology mutes yous, blinds yous, stoppers your blood in your veins.

"Can't bring them back to life?" the princess asks. "Maybe your male parent volition show them mercy?"

After, burying the small bodies of your handmaidens, you will wonder if the princess had known. If she had understood the weight of her cruelty. If she had even had reason, relieve that she was a princess of something, and you were the disagreeable girl of the demon sage.

You will never inquire her this. Not when you are finally rescued, and your begetter—apoplectic at the loss of perfectly good servants—curses your princess to be your handmaiden. Not when you gear up her to incommunicable tasks, picking up devious leaves in the garden with her teeth, or polishing the dance hall floor with arms bound behind her back. Not even after your father is dead, and his blood is all over her, and you castling with her for her freedom.

Your princess killed six of your handmaidens that day. You do non know how to weigh cruelties on a grand karmic calibration, just you think the balance is nevertheless tipped in your favor.

---

Y'all make one more cease before you lot exit the night markets.

Your princess, newly freed, continues to trail afterward you, terrified of goblins and ghosts. Her fingers are laced tightly in yours, the aroma of her fearfulness abrupt and distinctly peppery.

"What will you exercise?" she keeps asking. Devayani, whose begetter is dead. Devayani, whose Kacha has fled. What will you do now?

"You're costless," yous snap, hiding Upala's knife in the folds of your sari. "What will you do?"

"If I go back to my male parent, he'll just make me marry a prince."

"How terrible for yous."

"I don't want to ally a prince," she sneers. "I desire to learn the things you know. I always accept."

You give her your most contemptuous look. "Is that why you murdered my handmaidens? Because y'all were jealous?"

Your princess's face briefly crumples. "I didn't know," she says. "They were rabbits, how was I supposed to know?"

"Equally character traits go, a rabbit-killer isn't much improve."

"I was aroused. All this knowledge you have, all this potential, and you waste material it all on Kacha—"

"Yous said it yourself. He's not coming back."

"True," your princess says, restlessly. "So, what now?"

You settle your face up into its grimmest expression. "The demon sage is dead," yous drone, bored. "Killed by his own treacherous student. Information technology's fourth dimension for retribution."

Yous swivel correct, dipping into the dim liquor shop of a Naga distiller. Gold-scales dapple his hood, and a ruby glistens atop it. He is surprised to see you lot, inquiring in his sibilant tongue as to your father's whereabouts. You wait until after y'all take made your purchases to tell him: "He's expressionless."

The Naga's hood rises in shock. His lidless eyes travel over you, trying to discern if you are joking. His coils shift closer.

"He'south expressionless," you lot repeat. "Tell everyone in Patala. Their demon sage is dead. Killed by the traitorous gods!"

And and then you leave, turning effectually and racing downwards the market, feet slipping against mottled glass and gleaming stone. Your princess trails backside y'all, hand in yours, gasping.

"This is why y'all came!" she pants. "This is what you wanted. For them to know, to panic. This is what you wanted, isn't it?"

You hide your grin. As your vimana rises, you can hear the whispers brainstorm, ascent to screams by the time you lot are in the sky.

---

In the version of the story you tell the demons later, you will give inventory of all the different ways Kacha died in his pursuit of the spell.

The first time you permit him go cold, godblood congealing against singed grass, while you tried to understand. He was sprawled only outside the dance hall, a great swathe of his mankind ripped, ribs cracked open up, his insides glinting like a red geode. The expression on his face was that of a human being trying clumsily difficult to look dignified while something tore him open similar an orangish pare.

You stood staring, listen racing, silent in the afternoon'south blood-rich breeze. The proximity of his body to your favorite haunt meant that he had expected you to observe him. But why? Only considering he guessed your honey for him would propel y'all to accelerate his resurrection?

You lot paced for a chip, shooing abroad the flies and the birds. It was only after y'all held his heart in your fist that you made your decision.

You tore at your hair and burned your fingers taking his eye to your father: screaming, wailing, begging until your father cried out that you had become exactly what he predicted: a weak-hearted, foolish girl, giving her centre abroad to sugariness-talking paramours.

"I honey Kacha," y'all wept, disconsolate. "He is no spy, father, only my beloved. And now the demons accept killed him for no law-breaking merely his love for me!"

You lot were adept at acting. Your father had demanded you be. At present you were putting on a evidence, playing a part, and he stormed and blustered at yous, betrayed.

"You volition non take me as your heir," you lot spat, your throat raw, eyes stinging. "At to the lowest degree give me my lover."

"Be repose!" roared your father. His lightning whip croaky across your shoulder: searing, splintering your collarbone. "I will raise him from the dead because he is my student. But because of that. End this stupidity, Devayani. He does not honey y'all."

While your father resurrected Kacha, stitching him into a skin yous had woven so lovingly, you lot hid behind a wall, craning to listen. Simply your father did not demand words for the spell anymore, but the power of his mind. And and then thwarted, you ignored Kacha for 2 days, sulking in your hut while your shoulder healed.

A petty before the second time, Kacha lamented repeatedly that he was afraid the demons would impale him once more. You wept into his chest. He sighed: Oh, Devayani, why does fate test our dear and so?

The two of you were lying in a gunkhole, buoyed gently by the waves of the lotus pond. You pretended not to notice a lowly demigod creeping towards you. Sunlight glimmered on the assassin's golden crown, throwing shards of brightness in your eye. Kacha motioned with his fingers, as if telling him to hurry up.

You ignored them, playing the office of an idiot, sighing, and pressing your lips to Kacha's cervix. When the hitman struck, arterial godblood splashed all over you lot. It slithered down your throat, liquefying your lungs. Yous spat a glob of blood contemplatively, and so collapsed confronting Kacha. When y'all woke next, both you and he had new skins, and neither of yous were any closer to figuring out the spell.

The third and final time, you followed a secretive Kacha into the forest without his knowledge. At that place he met with his co-conspirators, other demigods, all dressed unobtrusively in the fashions of demon-folk. "The gods are growing tired of waiting," they said. "How long until y'all have the spell?"

For all his dying, Kacha had managed to glean just a few words of the incantation. He defenseless them each time his soul was yanked from the astral plane, an repeat of a whisper that was non enough. The gods needed all of it, the whole spell, and they needed it fast.

It was time to practice something drastic.

This time, you watched as the gods cut Kacha'southward throat on his instructions and burned his body. You watched them mix his ashes into a beaker of your father's favorite vino. Information technology flummoxed yous, this new pull a fast one on. How was this different from the other times?

But and so, as you lot paced your dance hall and your princess swept the floor, realization crept upward on you. "Come with me," you said, tugging at her chains. "I need you."

You took her to a glade, far from the ashram. She huffed and spat on the floor, demanding to know what you were going to practice. Throw her in a hole of fish-guts? Ask her to pluck fruits with her teeth?

"You'll see in a moment," you promised. And so you lot flake your lip against the unpleasantness, took out a pocketknife, and got to work.

---

Afterwards, when your father requested his favorite wine, information technology was you who took it to him.

You lot, dutiful daughter of sweet comportment, had poured him just the quantity he liked. He, pleased with you lot for once, downed the start cup in a single consume.

"I am tired of fighting you, Devayani," he said, deep sigh fluttering his beard. "Must we sulk at each other because of an outsider?"

Yous kneeled, folding your easily in your lap. "Forgive me, father, just Kacha is not an outsider to me anymore. He has promised to marry me and take me to Amaravati."

Your father's confront twisted in ugly displeasure, but he hid it under a smiling. Y'all poured him more of the wine. He swilled it and said: "If you desire him so much, perhaps I can consult the celestial astrologers. Just if you intend to marry, Kacha must leave the ashram this instant. It is not appropriate, the two of you living in close quarters."

You nodded, contrite. You lot had seen this coming. "Yous volition not regret this, father," you trilled, hands clasped to your chest. "Kacha is wonderful."

"If you believe in his intentions, I believe you lot," your father said, sly. He tuckered the terminal of the wine. "Where is Kacha? I have not seen him today. Nosotros must find him, instruct him to leave."

"I've seen neither Kacha nor the princess all day," yous lied, wringing the hem of your sari to appear concerned. "Merely there were some strangers in the forest today. And a strange scent of fire in the afternoon."

A flickering in the air, like ghosts convening.

Your male parent'due south expression began to change. A storm descended upon his face, dark and tempestuous, and he snatched the wineglass off the floor. He peered into it, swirling it this style and that, face twisting in a horrific grimace when he spotted the flecks of ash.

"What is information technology?" you asked. "What is it, father?"

"Daughter," he said, optics wide and thunderstruck. "I have been tricked."

Varying expressions of disgust crossed your male parent'south face. Someone, he raged, had tricked him. Mixing Kacha'south ashes into the vino! Knowingly feeding him his ain educatee! What wicked treachery! If the gods came to know, they would destroy the cities of Patala. They would plunge both sides into a catastrophic war. And how was your father to explain, smashing sage that he was, that he had non been cognizant of Kacha swimming around in his wine?

You wailed, crumpled on the floor, "Oh, male parent! Begetter, what volition nosotros do?"

"There is no other way," your father said, through fierce retching. "I must resurrect him."

"But he's within y'all! If you resurrect Kacha now, information technology will kill yous! Won't you exist ripped open? Torn apart?"

A long, querulous moan escaped your male parent. He clutched his tummy. "Go, make united states both new skins," he said. "I have no option. I will need to teach the resurrection spell to the role of Kacha within me. One time I resurrect him, he can tear out of me, you can stitch him upwards, and he will revive me. Kacha knows the situation. He wouldn't want to start another war."

"Or," you ventured, quietly, "you can teach information technology to me. And I can revive you, father, after you resurrect Kacha."

The simpler solution. The safest, virtually obvious one. But even so, your father'southward gaze for you was stinging. "You lot don't have Kacha'southward aptitude for spell and sorcery," he scoffed. "You trifle yourself with middling spells and think as well highly of your own talents. Your identify is at the looms, and after at your husband's side. Understood?"

Yous forced your lips into a rictus grin. "Aye, father."

"Get now. No time to waste."

You worked the warp and the weft at the looms, possessed past a strange at-home. The weave slithered and moved, enlivened by the sorcery of its production, speedily taking shape under your skilled easily. Just equally they were done, two skins perfectly woven, you heard your father scream: a wretched sound. It went on—basic cracking like fireworks, spine splitting with a wet crunch—for a long while. Only when it stopped did you move, skins thrown over your shoulder, bare feet crushing the grass beneath your anxiety as you ran.

The scene in the hut was a nightmare. On the floor lay Kacha: bloody, stirring, watching you with empty eyes. He strained weakly in your direction. You threw the new skin atop him, careless. He keened, tugging uselessly at it, fingers grazing your thigh. Yous only stepped past him, towards where your father'due south claret splattered the hut flooring, crying out: "Princess!"

A loop of jasmine, pristine, unspooled from the chop-chop blooming lotus-field of your father's ribcage. You took it in your hands and pulled. It took you a few tries before you could see her, head and cervix crowning, blind terror in her face as you yanked her free of your father'south torso.

You had fabricated ii skins, simply like your father instructed.

One for Kacha. One for your princess, who yous had murdered earlier in the glade, mixing her remains with that of Kacha's in the vino.

Every bit you lot slipped the skin over her, stitching her upward tight, you could hear Kacha slithering nearly. He shuffled and croaked, one-half-live, struggling to slip into the pare. His technique was poor, having never practiced it himself. Did he wonder why yous were not weeping at his side? What was he thinking, in his untucked mind, that his eyes were starting to cloud with terror?

Y'all began to scream. Loud, deliberate, renting your throat. The scream ripped itself out of you lot even equally you worked fastidiously at fixing up your princess.

Assistance, he'due south killed my male parent!

Assistance, the gods accept murdered him!

Kacha belly-flopped, new pare fluttering like a half-sloughed snake. Footsteps sounded, running into the hut. You smelled godblood and stayed kneeling, clutching your head in despair, pretending to splutter and choke on your ain grief.

Just a poor, helpless woman, bereft of both begetter and lover.

Behind you, there was gasping and grunting equally Kacha's people carried him away. In forepart of y'all, your princess panted and mewled, stretching out her new peel, gaping at you with the ill terror of something faced with both its destroyer and creator.

Yous could hear the gods' chariot outside, wheels aflame, taking to the sky with Kacha notwithstanding flailing uselessly at the back. When Kacha was nothing but a spark in the sky, you straightened up, taking in the scene.

Your father dead. Kacha indisposed. Your princess the sole, accidental keeper of the resurrection spell's surreptitious.

At that place was silence now, hazy and friable, cleaved just by your princess's fitful crying. Into that stillness you lot spoke, hoarse and hushed, the question that would both begin and cease your story: "Did you hear it? The spell. Do you know it?"

And in your princess's affirmation, her awed terror, her perfect new peel and the bloody crown of her caput, yous glimpsed a strange new future: nighttime, malleable, gratis for you lot to shape.

---

An hr after yous return from Patala, you take at terminal finished collecting your father's skin, piled neatly what is left of his ribs and hips, and placed fragments of his spine in wraps of gold silk.

Your ashram is starting to fill with scores of demons. There are kings and queens, pisacha and vetala, rakshasa and Naga. There are demonic maidens so fragile they waver in the wind. Their loud lamenting rises like song, thrilling your blood, raising the hair on your skin.

You do non know where your princess is. Her absence makes y'all strangely lonely, merely y'all have permit her go. Her arms are free, and she kept her bargain by teaching you the resurrection spell. This is all she owes you, after you cutting her pharynx to outsmart Kacha. At present, the 2 of y'all are fifty-fifty.

Briefly, you wonder what your father will call back. That in the end it was not Kacha who betrayed him, but yous. You wonder if he will be disappointed. But: oh begetter, what did you await? He had never seen you for what you really are: a weapon, gluttonous for power.

You will suck the marrow of information technology, for equally long as you lot delight, and the sweetness of it will linger on your tongue far longer than any memory of love.

Upala's pocketknife cuts hands through bone. Y'all put abroad the final sliver of your father's skull, collecting information technology in a wide-rimmed container. The lotus blooms take all withered away. Exterior, the demons expect: for caption, lamentation, confrontation. Y'all tin can sense of taste their hunger for vengeance and claret in the very air.

You have apposite the version of the story you volition tell them. The ane where you screamed, and wept, and fantasized revenge on Amaravati. The one where you hope you lot will help them annihilate the gods—all three hundred and 30 meg—and bathe in their claret at the height of Mount Meru.

There is no version of the story branching from here where the demons do non follow you to the ends of the universe. You are the holder of the resurrection spell, the avenger of your father, the savior of demon-kind.

Yous are no longer the demon sage's girl. You are the demon sage, herself.

Simply before you speak to them, yous will cascade them all liquor. A sip to remember your father, to accolade and celebrate his great life.

In each drinking glass, you will place a tiny slice of him, obscuring the taste with the forcefulness of freshly purchased Naga wine. No piece of him will go to waste. You will make certain of information technology.

In this way, distributed bit by bit among the demonic regular army, you lot will besprinkle your father'due south remains, that he may never be brought back whole.

Ane last safeguard to make certain that this is the deterministic version of your story: the terminal draft, the inevitable determination.

You beverage your loving cup of wine, forcing it all down in one gulp.

Then you get out to start your war.

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Source: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-demon-sages-daughter/

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