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***Chapter Four***
"W... why?" Dion stammered, his throat once again feeling dry for some reason.
"Weren't you listening to me?" Lythia asked with a roll of her eyes, already knowing what was going through the boy's mind. "Right now you are full of a demon lord's soul energy," She informed him. "The only..."
"Wait, you are a demon lord?" Dion cut in with a look of both shock and confusion. Despite her annoyance at his interruption, Lythia couldn't help but smile cockily as she finally got the recognition she believed she deserved. "But I thought that..." Dion spoke and stopped mid-sentence looking around the room till he found the black leather-bound book still lying on the floor where he'd had fallen. From the look in his eyes, Lythia could already tell what was going through his head even without reading his mind.
"The book didn't lie," She erased the doubts that had been cropping up in his mind about the reliability of the book. "A single human summoning a demon lord relying solely on their soul energy is completely unheard of. In fact, in the mind of most occultists and demons alike, it may very well be the definition of impossible," She relayed, neglecting to add that she too was having a hard time believing that he'd been able to pull it off. "Except for a few lines, most of what is written in that book is accurate, " She stated. Lythia hadn't read the book herself. She, however, could pick every word that Dion had read from his memories.
"But back to what I was saying, " Lythia continued with a dismissive wave of her hand almost as if she was dismissing the existence of the book. "The only reason you are still hidden right now is because I've cast concealing arrays on this house," she informed him. "The moment you step out of it, you'll be an easy target to track down for any demon or half-baked occultist living in the city," She explained.
"Wait, demons can be tracked?" Dion asked.
"Anything can be tracked down if you know what to look for," Lythia replied. "But no," She went on to say. "Most demons know how to hide their aura and powers," She informed him. "Only imps would be incapable of such basic concealment. But then imps are like cockroaches, you can barely tell one from the other," Lythia spoke, her contempt for the lesser demons not in any way hidden. "The only good thing about them is that, unlike cockroaches, they are not that hard to kill," She said, a sadistic smile crossing her face. Looking at her, Dion couldn't help but thank his lucky stars that he'd put up his third condition to protect himself from her.
"So how will taking my clothes off help my situation? " Dion asked.
"It won't," Lythia replied with a snort. "The concealing runes I want to carve onto you, however, will keep any demonic aura your soul energy might give off hidden," She informed him.
Dion couldn't help but swallow hard before inquisitively repeating the word. "Carve?".
"Yes, carve," Lythia replied. Despite her indifferent tone, Dion could tell by the smile playing on her lips that she enjoyed his discomfort. "The ideal place would be to etch the runes directly onto your bones," She went on as if she was just commenting on the weather. "That way, it would be permanent and not need constant reinforcement," She said. "But you are still not strong enough to endure it, so we'll have to settle for your flesh instead," She explained.
"Isn't there a less painful way to cast the concealing spell on me?" Dion couldn't help but ask.
"Plenty," Lythia responded making no effort to hide the truth of the matter. "This, however, is the most effective method there is, " she added. "It has the strongest concealing effect and also lasts the longest of all the concealing spells. Instead of a new spell having to be cast every other day or week, this spell will remain active for at the very least, three months before I have to cast it once again," She said.
"Wait," Dion spoke up as something occurred to him. "You said that it should be impossible for a single human to summon a demon lord, right?" He inquired. Lythia nodded, looking annoyed at the fact that he still wasn't complying with her command. "How common is it for a coven to summon a demon lord?" he asked.
"You could probably count on the fingers of your two hands how many covens can achieve that feat," she answered. "Why do you want to know?"
"Because I'm trying to understand who or what you are trying to hide from?" Dion replied causing Lythia's eyes to widen in surprise. A response that Dion didn't miss. "From your tone of contempt when speaking of imps, It's safe to say that you'd sooner die than run from an enemy weaker than you," Dion observed. "So either another demon lord or perhaps a foe stronger than that?" He laid out his line of logic.
The side of Lythia's lips tilted upwards in a half-smile, half-smirk. Despite his annoying unwillingness to bend to her whims, the longer she interacted with the boy, the more pleased she found herself with him. His mind's ability not only to quickly understand both those around him and the situations he found himself in, would prove itself more than useful in the future. In barely half an hour of interacting with her, he was already putting together a picture of the kind of demon she was. From one statement alone, he'd already eliminated a majority of the possible foes she could have been hiding from. Lythia was growing more and more confident that even if by chance, she had gotten the right person to have at the head of her coven.
"As I said before," Lythia spoke up, the smirk still on her lips. "You are incredibly lucky to have managed to summon a demon lord on your own and to have lived to tell the tale," She told him. "You must have used up all of your luck just to survive, however, because you also managed to summon the most-hated demon lord in all of hell," She informed him with an easy smile. Clearly, the status of most hated demon didn't bother Lythia in the least. "Above the rank of demon lord is the rank of prince of hell. Of which, there are seven. Without getting into too many details, let's just say that all seven of them would love nothing more than to have my head on a pike," she said calmly. "Hell is the kind of place where anyone weaker than you is treated with contempt. But those far stronger than you are either to be avoided or to be kissed up to," She explained.
"Having the favor of one of the princes of hell is nothing to be scoffed at. It's a golden ticket that most demons would kill for. Not only does it offer you protection of a kind that only other princes or the king of hell himself can threaten. It also means obtaining the means to ascend to the highest levels of the Demon lord rank," She relayed. "Something that ninety-nine point nine of the demons in hell can only dream of," She stated. "The fact that the seven princes of hell want me dead means that every demon from the demon lord level and below now has a means of gaining the favor of not just one, but all the seven princes of hell," she stated. "They don't even have to fight me, they just have to let them know where I am and they'll be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams," she said. "It's a chance no demon will pass up on," She declared.
"Wait, are you saying that every demon and their coven are currently looking for you and, by extension, me?" Dion asked his eyes wide as the weight of the situation he was in hit him like a ton of rocks.