Egan collapsed onto an elastic cot that made him bounce for several seconds before coming to a halt. When he stopped swaying, the young human clung to the cot with the hand that wasn't holding the stone and felt the rough canvas surface covering it under his palm. There were no blankets, and the dim light surrounding him took him some time to realize he was inside a prison, with blue bars preventing him from moving beyond them. Those blue bars formed a cage; there were no walls. The cells followed one after another in parallel, all identical and with the same uncomfortable and crude cot, as the only piece of furniture. His clothes were dry.
"First he invites you to dinner and then confines you down here, bizarre."
Egan looked up, startled, and focused on the figure in the cell next to his.
"Camelia," said the female voice, introducing herself.
He realized who she was only after glimpsing her blonde hair and that luminous chain at the girl's ankles. "I'm Egan, and the demon has been haunting me for a few days."
"Just a few days? How lucky you are."
Egan smiled sadly at that. "But, why are you imprisoned?"
Camelia sighed, sitting on the cot with her arms wrapped around her legs. "Old story."
"Tell me," he moved closer, but then remembered the stone he held in his fist. He turned and tucked it behind the elastic of his boxers, so the light wouldn't filter out. Then he sat on the ground, just before the side bars dividing their cells.
"You'd get bored."
"Try me... please, tell me," he wanted to know the story of that blonde woman, with such a firm and confident voice as her gaze had been, some time before, during dinner. Her amber eyes had pierced him with a single glance.
"If you have time, fine, Egan. But then, you'll tell me about yourself."
"Deal," he smiled spontaneously. The light from the bars didn't spread but was retained solely on the cells themselves.
Camelia swung one leg over the edge of the cot, and then the other, bound by that chain. She touched her still aching lips and licked them to moisten them. "I was born in a country of merchants. My father sold beautiful fabrics."
"The demon told me you've been here for a long time."
"Yes, about fifty years. He hasn't allowed me to age, and he constantly torments me by reminding me of the passing time and of my family… that I'll never see again."
"I'm sorry," without thinking, he tried to touch one of those bars but held back at the last moment.
"My father was a merchant but also something else, he and my mother knew the ancient secrets of clairvoyance. Many were passed down to me, but not all that I should have learned."
"Are you a witch?"
"No, I'm a seer, that's how we were known. A clairvoyant, to use a term that might be more familiar to you." Camelia lifted her legs again, having tired her back, and lay down on the cot. "One day, during a session with a client who wanted to know a part of his future, my father had the misfortune of connecting with the master of this world. Demons don't like it when someone intrudes into their realm, let alone alters their plans, even if it happened accidentally. By revealing a glimpse of his client's future, my father inadvertently summoned the demon that now haunts you. In doing so, he uncovered something that humans were never meant to know."
She paused right after that sentence, leaving Egan on edge, but he didn't dare to speak, instead remaining in respectful anticipation.
A fluttering caught both their attention. Black and fast wings, and then clawed feet – the crow landed outside the cells. "Go away!" Camelia shouted, the bird ignored her and strutted there, in front of them, its empty eyes staring at Egan as if to warn him of something. "Go away!" repeated the seer, and she sat on the cot with a threatening demeanor, despite the hindrance at her ankles, she approached the small bird. "Disappear, cursed spy!"
The crow didn't wait for the young woman to get any closer, it took flight in the gloomy corridor of the prison and vanished. Egan had remained seated, and sweat was running down his temples. Seeing that wretched bird again had brought back to mind the origin of all his misfortunes.
"Lisl, it's the creature that often accompanies the demon. It's dangerous and has a strength that goes beyond its appearances," Camelia explained, and sat back down on the rickety cot.
"Unfortunately, I've already met it. In my world, that is, in ours, mine and yours."
"The demon plays on our Earth at his pleasure, and we are unaware and subjugated at the same time," resumed saying Camelia.
"What do you mean? Does he do it even without an excuse to use?" Egan stood up and moved as close as he could to the bars.
"Certainly. He contravenes the hierarchical laws of creation and does what he wants because he is tolerated by those who should supervise. As long as he doesn't create a critical damage, so severe that it can't be ignored, they leave him free rein. Because he serves them as a guardian – he is the keeper of the penitents and the condemned of many worlds. Without him, without the Underground territory... If the lord of this place wished to transgress his duties and evade the consequences, he could release all the detainees guarded here and unleash evil everywhere—all in a single, devastating act."
At that point, Egan got lost, he couldn't follow her anymore.
Camelia smiled, noticing his puzzled face. "A lot of information to digest, I understand. We'll continue another time."
"No, wait a minute. You can't leave me with this bomb in my hands. Please, tell me what he does and why he does it. How do you know all these things about him?"
"On a couple of occasions, he seized me by the arm or shoulders in an attempt to intimidate me. During those moments of contact, I was able to catch hints, fragments of the truth about him—pieces that veiled a deeper, more complex reality beneath his intimidating exterior… He does it for fun, I don't know how much you know about that monster, but he's a mischievous and touchy demon to almost childish levels."
Egan curved one corner of his mouth. "I figured that out on my own."
Camelia slowly approached him, walking with small steps due to the chains. "My father's client, an elementary school teacher, went to him to find out why all his savings had disappeared from the safe. He was a man who lived alone, and the fact had happened from one day to the next, without anyone else entering his house or him leaving it."
"Wow!"
"My father discovered that the demon had targeted the teacher, and was playing with that man without showing himself to him. My father managed to connect with the demon's mind," Camelia gritted her teeth. "Not knowing at all who was on the other side. At the time, he cast a curse from an old grimoire that belonged to my grandmother. He did it solely to free the teacher from the demon's malevolent influence."
"How did he manage it? Can it be replicated?" Egan faced her directly; they were face to face. If only he could give Noxfor a fright with magic, it would be an invaluable satisfaction.
"The book was destroyed by the demon's magic," her amber eyes turned sad. "The spell attracted and hit the demon but was repelled. My father risked being trapped by the demon for eternity. My mother and I found ourselves abandoned to despair," with one hand she stroked her blonde hair and closed her eyes. "The load of fabrics disappeared, the trade interrupted… the demon had ruined us. So, I invoked him and made him an offer, unbeknownst to my family. He accepted, believing he could use me."
"Wait a minute, Noxfor told me you're here because you didn't want to repay the debt."
"It's a lie. I have no debts with that monster. He wanted me to sell him my parents' secrets, which are... were, much more powerful than me, my father in particular. The demon feared he might act against him once again. My proposal was to offer myself in his place, as a prisoner forever, in exchange he would have to erase all his misdeeds against my family and forget about them. But of course, it wasn't so. He didn't return what he had taken from them and left them in pain, making my farewell note disappear as well. Something the demon made sure to let me know in detail."
Lost in thought, Egan again tried to touch the luminous bars, but, once more, stopped a second before touching them. "After all this time you've been here..."
Camelia nodded. "My parents are dead. When that happened, Noxfor delighted in letting me know immediately. He told me it was from natural causes."
"You don't believe him?"
"I don't believe a single word that comes out of the mouth of a vile and lying demon like him, who has no loyalty or honor. However, he can't kill deliberately on Earth and get away with it. It would be one of those critical damage I told you about before. So, I guess it ultimately went just as he said."
Egan shook his head. "Yet I've come very close to death, more than once, at his hand."
"But it hasn't happened."
"Until now. Who knows, maybe I've just been lucky," he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "But why does he still keep you imprisoned?"
"He wants me to reveal something to him. It's about the source of my family's clairvoyance power. But I don't know it, I didn't have time to learn it. However, even if I knew it, I would never reveal it to him. At the cost of rotting forever in this dark world!"
"And since then, he forces you to remain confined here? For over half a century?"
She confirmed and then lay back down on the cot. "The only ones who could reveal to him the secrets he longs to know were my father and my mother. By preventing him from having them, in some way I achieved a small victory," she smiled weakly. "But now, tell me about yourself."