“This is the letter ‘D’, it makes a ‘Duh’ sound. D like Dog or Door.”
“Uh, Jadis? That’s a ‘T’ that’s upside down.”
Reaching over from her right, Aila brushed Jay’s hand away and flipped the little wooden square over so that it was facing the correct way compared to the other letters she had arranged in front of the demonling.
“D like ‘Dumb’ or ‘Dim’ or ‘Dense’ or ‘Dull.” Kerr listed off on her fingers as she laid back on a pile of blankets she’d somehow amassed in one spot. “Or maybe ‘Deranged’ or ‘Deviant’ or—"
“Dick,” Syd said as she smooshed Kerr’s face with a pillow, muffling her unhelpful words.
“Thank you,” Jay told Aila as she shook her head. “I just don’t get why so many of these letters are basically just other letters flipped around or facing another direction. It’s very confusing.”
Aila shrugged helplessly.
“Who knows? Could be worse, though. I’ve seen old elvish script before and it’s almost impossible to read. There are so many squiggles and curves and little dots that have to be in precisely the correct location or you change the meaning of the word completely.”
“I could teach you how to read old elvish if you like, Jadis,” Eir piped up from where she sat on the far, far side of the wagon. “It’s really quite simple once you memorize the twenty-eight different phoneme modifiers.”
“No thanks,” Jay shook her head. “I’m still working on Imperial letters. I’ll save elvish for later.”
Despite being able to understand the common tongue, something that Jadis wasn’t sure wasn’t in some way a trick on D’s part, the Imperial written language was foreign to her. While the locals sounded like they were speaking English or other Earth languages, the letters they used weren’t even close to anything Jadis was used to. Some of the imperial alphabet looked vaguely similar, but only enough to confuse Jadis since the letters that resembled what she was familiar with didn’t make the sounds she expected. She’d grown better at reading with time and could now sound out most words without issue, though sometimes she still had mix-ups.
The letter blocks, embarrassingly enough, were helping her. Small flat squares of wood, each one of the thirty blocks had the upper and lower case letters printed on opposite sides. Ostensibly, Jadis had asked Sabina to make them for her so she could use them to teach the little demon hatchling letters. In the process of explaining the alphabet to the demon, she was learning a fair bit herself. Though not without the occasional flub.
The question was, though, were the letter blocks helping the demonling?
The little demon sat in the middle of the blanketed ground between Jay and Dys’ legs. Practically speaking, there was nothing the hatchling could do to escape Jadis, it simply wasn’t capable of moving that fast. A determined turtle could outrun it. Still, for the sake of her companions who were uncomfortable with the idea of the demon being loose, she made sure that the hatchling was clearly cordoned off. Not that the demonling was trying to escape. Like an obedient pet, it stayed put in the one spot, dutifully keeping its one large eye focused on the letter blocks. Occasionally, when someone else would speak or move, the demon’s big blue eye would flick to follow them for a moment, but otherwise the blocks held its attention.
Jadis had been teaching the little demon for a few weeks now, showing it the blocks when she had free time. So far, there hadn’t been much in the way of results. Occasionally, the demon would pick one of the blocks up with a tentacle, but otherwise it just silently stared. But what could Jadis really expect? It wasn’t as though the demon could speak; it didn’t have a mouth. Still, this seemed like the best way for any potential communication.
It took a few minutes to get through the full alphabet, but once Jadis had reviewed all the letters and laid out the full set before the demon, she started the real test. One she hadn’t had much success in as of yet, despite repeated attempts.
“Okay little guy,” Jay held up a finger. “Which one is the letter T?”
The demonling sat in a ball, unmoving except for the occasional wavy motion in its undulating tentacles.
“Find me T. Teeee. Which one is T?”
“This is never going to work,” Aila shook her head. “I’ll admit that it being able to understand commands like ‘sit’ and ‘fetch’ is impressive, but there’s no chance it’s going to have the mental capacity to remember letters.”
“Shush,” Dys frowned at the redhead. “It’ll get it eventually, it’s just taking some time.”
Aila shook her head but didn’t interrupt further. With a sigh, she sat down next to Kerr and leaned into the pile of blankets. Dismissing Jadis’ attempts, she opened up one of her books and began to read.
“Okay, this one is the T,” Jay said after a few more fruitless tries. She picked up the block with an imperial ‘T’ on it and showed it to the demonling before putting it back down. “Alright, let’s try a different one. How about, A. Can you point to the letter A?”
“This is so weird,” Jadis heard Bridget whisper from where she sat on the edge of the wagon with Sabina and Thea. “I mean, there’s a lot of weirdness with you all that I’ve seen. No offense! Just, you know, there’s just, uh, a whole lot of weirdness going on with this group. But yeah, this thing with the demon? This is top level weirdness.”
“Is it really weirder than Jadis being one person with three bodies?” Sabina asked from where she sat next to the orc. “Because that’s the strangest skill I’ve ever heard of and I once saw a smith that could eat pieces of ore and spit out pure metal ingots and that was absolutely the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. But Jadis being three people? That breaks the wall for me, I can’t think of anything stranger than that, including the whole sex for stats thing which is also really strange though I guess not as strange as the demon things since I know there are prostitutes and, um, other types of people with classes and skills that revolve around sex so I guess that means it isn’t completely out there? I’ve never seen anyone play with a demon hatchling though and—”
“Oh!” Thea suddenly exclaimed from her spot on Sabina’s left. She grabbed hold of the smith’s hand, silencing her ramble. “L—look!”
While Sabina and Bridget might have needed the prompting to look, Jadis certainly didn’t. Her focus was very much on the one tiny tentacle that the demonling had extended out and had hovering over the A block. With an almost tentative motion, the demonling picked up the block and brought it close to itself before holding it back out and wiggling it in Jay’s direction.
“What the ever-loving fuck…?” Jadis heard Kerr quietly curse but she was too excited to care.
“Yes! Good job! That’s the A!” Jay and Dys both clapped. “Well done!”
Since the demon’s eye took up the majority of its body, Jadis didn’t have an easy way of petting the squiggly little thing. So, she settled for wiggling her fingers into its mass of tentacles, giving it a kind of tickling pet that way.
“Do it again,” Aila said, all of her attention now on the demonling. “It could have been a fluke. Make sure.”
“It wasn’t a fluke,” Jay said, more to the little demon than to Aila. “You’re a smart little demon spawn, aren’t you? Okay, let me have that.”
Jay took the A block away and sat it back down with the rest of the alphabet.
“Alright, now find me the letter ‘L’. Can you do that? Ehhllll.”
Moving a little faster this time, the hatchling picked up the L block and held it up for Jadis to see.
“Yes!” Jay clapped happily again. “You did it!”
As Aila and the others watched in various states of confusion and shock, the little demonling proceeded to get the next five letters correct.
“Aw, who’s a good little demonic tentacle monster!” Jay cooed as she scooped the hatchling up in her hands. “You are! Yes, you are!”
“Okay, you were right,” Sabina told Bridget quietly as they all watched Jay rub her nose against the demon’s undulating tentacles. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
As Jay continued to give exaggerated praise to her demonling pet, Aila moved to stand back by Syd. Worry creased her face and furrowed her brows as she watched the interaction.
“You okay?” Syd asked quietly.
“I’m concerned,” Aila said after a second of silent thought. After another moment, she elaborated. “I have no idea what this means. Or what could happen if this continues.”
“Well, I’d say it means that demons have more intelligence than most people think,” Syd replied with a shrug. “Though clearly whatever is going through the minds of most demons isn’t conducive to reasonable communication.”
“But why this one?” Aila said with a frustrated wave of her hand. “Why is this one demon not behaving the same way every other demon in existence behaves? What’s the difference? What’s the end game? Because regardless of how this demon has come to be more patient and observant than other demons, that doesn't mean it’s less dangerous.”
“I gotta agree with freckles on this one,” Kerr said with her own concerned look. “Demons are a pain to fight because they’re strong and show no fear, but we can generally handle them since they’re dumb. Can you imagine having to fight a Burning Rancor that was intelligent?”
“Which is why I question the wisdom of teaching this one how to read and write and the gods know what else,” Aila finished with her arms folded. “It’s hard to imagine this not ending in disaster.”
Jadis sighed through all of her selves. She had to admit, Aila had a point. Yes, the demonling hadn’t shown any sign of hostility so far. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t in the future. Thinking about their experience back in the caves, Jana the crossbow-wielding mercenary had acted without any hostility right up until the point where the demon possessing her thought it had an opportunity to get a kill. Clearly some demons had the ability to understand that patience could net them better results than just rushing in blindly.
Based on everything Jadis had experienced so far, she was convinced that demons were intelligent. An alien, animalistic intelligence, maybe, but they weren’t just stupid animals. The real question now for her was, did they have the capacity for self-determination? Weren’t demons an avatar race, just like her? That meant they were on Oros to act as the hands of their parental deity, but despite Jadis being a Nephilim, Lyssandria had never influenced her in the slightest. D had, in the roundabout way of the class options he helped her gain and the occasional direct communication they had, but she always had a choice. She could choose to do whatever she wanted. She could get up, leave everyone, and become a cultist helping the demons destroy the world. She could even stop fighting all together and renege on her deal with her patron, just settle down and do nothing to change anything in the world. That was a viable option. There was nothing compelling her, telling her she couldn’t do that. Was it the same for demons?
“I don’t know if this will end badly,” Jay finally said as she gently put the demonling back on the ground. “But until I’m given a concrete reason not to, I’m going to keep trying to communicate with this little guy. It hasn’t ever done any harm to me or any of you, so as long as that continues, I’m going to give it a chance. Besides, how can we know where this will take us if we don’t explore it? Even if it turns out demons can’t be reasoned with or changed or anything, as nice a dream as that would be, we might learn something else that’ll help us in our fight against them. In my opinion, it’s worth the risk.”
Jadis’ speech was met with silence, most of the others not quite meeting her eyes. All except for Aila, who gave her a stern, searching gaze.
“Fine then,” Aila nodded once. “Whatever happens, it’s on your head then. However, if I ever see it make any kind of hostile move, I want you to know I will not hesitate to kill it. I won’t let it possess you or anyone else.”
“Thank you,” Syd said, leaning over to give Aila a kiss on the cheek. “I wouldn’t expect any less from you. And if it comes to that, I’ll kill it myself.”
After that, the mood in the tent was somewhat grim. Deciding that the lessons had gone on long enough and it was time to turn in for the night, Dys took the glass cage and put the demonling back in. As she carried the little demon over to the wagon and moved to put it inside, Bridget leaned over and gave the glass a tap with her finger, causing the demonling’s tentacles to squirm tightly.
“You going to give it a name?”
“Huh?” Dys said, pausing mid motion.
“A name,” Bridget repeated with an uncomfortable shrug. “I mean, it’s a demon and all that, but it’s also kind of awkward just calling it demon or ‘it’ or whatever. I mean, you don’t have to or anything, just feels kind of like it’d be easier that way…”
“You’re right,” Dys said as she looked at the demonling in her hand. “I never did give it a name. I guess I wasn’t ever sure how long it’d be around, so didn’t see a point in naming it.”
“Naming a demon,” Eir said as she approached, looking at the caged creature with apprehension. “That seems almost as though it should be sacrilege. Though to the best of my knowledge it isn’t.”
“You aren’t going to make a stupid pun, are you?” Kerr whined. “I swear, if you name it Igor or something like that—”
“Alex,” Dys said abruptly. “Its name is Alex.”
“Alex?” Sabina said with a tilt of her head. “That’s a Voltonian name, like mine. Why Alex?”
“It feels right,” Dys said with a shrug, not willing to broach the subject of famous African Grey parrots. “So, it’s called Alex. Hello Alex,” Dys said as she raised the cage up to her face and gave the demonling a wave with her fingers.
Whether it understood the reason why or not, Alex waved a few of its tentacles back.
369