John Ringo: Queen of wands

“Ready,” Barb said, raising her hands into a panther position. She wasn’t particularly worried about the demon attacking her. Gluttony had never been one of her weaknesses. But if it got out, she wasn’t planning on it just going back in the box, tough to collect or not.

What was in the box…wasn’t really a snake. She hadn’t spent much time staring at the demons before, she simply tried to avoid looking at them. But this time she could examine the thing.

It was about four feet in length including the coiled tail. Scaly like a snake but with a humanoid body, stubby arms and long fingers. The abdomen was vastly swollen, taking up most of the interior of the box, but the head was the strangest. There were no horns, but it had enormous, whorling red-and-black eyes with pupils nearly the size of her fist. The mouth that the thing opened to hiss at her was lined with back-curved teeth like an anaconda’s and had four long fangs.

“Once that thing bites down…” Barb said.

“It’s very hard to remove, yes,” Sharice replied. “I’m seeing something like a small dog with very nasty teeth. You?”

“More snaky,” Barb said. That was about as simple as you could put it. “Or an Indian naga.”

“One of the traditions of the myth, I’m sure,” Sharice said as the thing hissed and tried to rear up out of the box. “Back, you,” the witch added, flicking her finger at it. Barb saw a very brief flash through the air, like a flicker of static electricity, and the thing sank back down. Lazarus had flared up into full Halloween cat mode and hissed back, but as the thing settled down, so did the familiar.

“Now, here’s the trick,” Sharice said, setting the box on a table. “Make it disappear.”

“You mean dispel it?” Barb asked, raising her hands. “Didn’t you say they were hard to catch?”

“Just complicated,” Sharice corrected. “But, no, I mean turn off your Sight. You’ve Seen it. Now don’t See it. Suppress, as you did with your aura reading.”

Try as Barbara might, she could not get the drakni to disappear. She tried concentrating on it going away, which worked with auras. Nothing. Then she tried the Zen state which was required to read auras. Still the thing obstinately remained. And it appeared to find the whole thing very amusing, making occasional whistles of derision. It was getting annoying.

“Okay,” Sharice said, patiently. “Try this. This guy really is a total nothing. If he got loose there’d be one more seriously obese person in the US, which is already awash. He’s a total loser. Demons are like very stupid artificial intelligences. They have a simple program they follow. Dispel one of these guys and it’s like stamping on an ant. He’s nothing. Not worth your notice…”

“That worked,” Barb said as the demon slowly faded from view. She could feel the change in her brain. Concentrating on the demon again, he faded into view. Ignoring him caused him to disappear. “That works. But what if I’m in ignore mode and there’s something really deadly around?”

“Ever get one of those feelings where you just don’t like being somewhere?” Sharice asked. “The vibe is wrong?”

“Yes.”

“If you’d had Sight and opened it up, you’d have probably seen demons,” Sharice explained. “Probably a lot and probably more powerful than this fellow. But you could still sense them vaguely. If you get that feeling again, open up and check out your surroundings. I’ll give you a hint and we’ll practice it later. If you open up your Sight but keep suppressing your aura, which we worked on the last time, you can stay under their radar. Don’t look directly at them, don’t open up your power or use anything but Sight, and you can pick them out without them realizing it. If you want to challenge, just look straight at one and open up your power. But be warned, if there is more than one, they’re all going to get onto you. They can’t hurt you, but they’re annoying as hell.”

“Yeah, dealt with that already,” Barb admitted. “And if I attack one?”

“You?” Sharice said with a chuckle. “You’ll blow it apart. But once they’re attached, they sink a mystical barb into their target. If you blow one off of the person, they’ll just grow back. The only way to get rid of them is to have the person be willing to be exorcised. They’ve got to believe they’re there and they have to want to get rid of them. Note, really want and really believe. Otherwise it’s pointless.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Barb said, frowning. “That’s not the world of my God. You don’t mind if I experiment a bit, do you?”

“Feel free,” Sharice said. “Who knows. You might be able to blast one out of a person’s soul, with all the power you draw. Not sure what it would do to the person, mind you. And unless they had a change of heart, they’d be a ripe target for the next drakni of the same type they run across.”

“Where do they come from?” Barb asked. “I mean, from hell, obviously…”

“Hell might not be a there, but we’ll go with it,” Sharice said, smiling. “Besides, your own Holy Book clearly states that the earth was given over to Satan. But here on this plane, they get generated by lesser Mothers, minor versions of Tiamat, in other words. There aren’t a lot of those, comparatively, but getting rid of them is even harder than getting rid of drakni. They generally attach to a family, being handed down generation by generation. Each produces specific drakni.

“There is actually something of a sovereign remedy for drakni Mothers, drakia, in certain Christian beliefs,” Sharice said, frowning. “Let me see…Saints, saints.”

In the antechamber to the prison was a small bookcase. Sharice pulled a book down and flipped through the pages, looking for something.

“Alas, I don’t think it would help you, though,” she said, flipping back and forth. “Most of the saints whose patronage is possession aren’t recognized by the Episcopalian church.”

“We don’t do saints quite the same way Catholicism does it,” Barbara said. “But any port in a storm. Well, any reasonably Christian port in a storm.”

“Your best bet, if it works for your theology, is Saint Dymphna. She’s a Catholic saint for the possessed and anyone suffering from mental illness. Strange story. Her mother died, and her dad looked high and low for a woman who was as beautiful as his wife. Finding none, he noticed that his daughter was as beautiful.”

“Ick,” Barb said.

“Ick indeed. Story goes on, including fleeing to a far land and being tracked down by the father. Martyred herself to escape his attentions. The interesting aspect to it is that it was believed her father was possessed by a demon of lust.”

“And with what you’ve just told me, that’s distinctly possible,” Barbara said. “But he’d have had to be a pretty sick puppy to begin with.”

“So Dymphna, despite being an otherwise quite inoffensive creature, is reputed to have a real case of the butt with demons, especially drakni and drakni Mothers. I’d suspect the deep story is that it was a drakia who possessed him, and it may have been generational.”

“So I’m supposed to pray to St. Dymphna if I’m dealing with drakni?” Barbara asked. “That’s not really how Episcopalians handle things. More of a Catholic approach.”

“Not…exactly,” Sharice said, biting her lip. “I’m afraid to tread on your theology if I go further. My simple answer that should be inintrusive. Christian theology is a bit opaque to me sometimes.”

“Try me understanding Wicca,” Barb said.

“Point. Here’s the thing. And it’s simply the real and skinny. Your White God allegedly gave over the world to Satan, which means Satan’s troops, within limits, have free reign.”