I had to trust that Lust knew where to go after he took a good, long look from the crest of a tall hill — what felt like a tall hill anyway, considering how steeply it had risen and how long he had climbed it for. It was frustrating being in the dark and letting him take the reins a hundred percent. Not only because it bruised my pride and I became more and more uneasy about the way he squeezed me against himself, but because this was bound to affect the contract dominance. I had already been battling him tooth and nail before this fiasco, all too aware that he was toying with me half the time and barely even trying to assert control, yet I still struggled — but now? The contract definitely favored him. I was helpless if he refused to take the lead, and we both knew it.
Any sympathy for him I might have accidentally stumbled on vaporized in no time. Lust's personal conflicts with the other Princes weren't my business, and if I softened my attitude toward him because of something so trivial, I might as well kiss my contract mastery goodbye. He would have me drooling over his dick within the hour if I didn't figure out how to reassert my authority.
"What did you see?" I asked, putting all the professionalism I possibly could into my tone to compensate for how he carried me like a pet canary on his arm. "Food can wait, but I need shelter and fresh water first. Did you not see any villages or anything? No people?"
"Unfortunately, none, my love, but this end of the island looks lower in elevation, so I'll have to find a better vantage point once we cross through the valley. A great deal of hilly terrain and vegetation. The greenery is thick here."
"Thick? Jungle thick? Or just woodsy?"
"Closer to a jungle's density, challenging but not entirely impassable, I think. Even though it's quite... tall."
What was that? The smallest hesitation right there, like he didn't know how exactly to describe what he saw. Well, he was a long-lived demon and must have seen plenty of Earth in his wanderings, but I doubted there was anything like the Amazon rainforest in the hellish pits of the Infernal Realm. This might be just as foreign to him as it was to me. In fact, if I could just see, I might know more about where we were than he did. I didn't do too badly in world geography when I was in school. If only...
Ugh. Being bitter solved nothing. If I was so upset about my eyes, then maybe I should be figuring out a way to get my sight back.
"Hey, about my eyes. They were the price of the teleporting spell, right?"
"... Yes, love."
"Then shouldn't that be permanent? But you said it was reversible, or something."
He hitched me a little closer, his arrowed tail coming up to press upon my upper back and make me lean against him. It was annoyingly controlling and definitely not a chaste gesture, since the tip of his tail traced down the back of the robe and swirled a little against the small of my back, right above my ass, but I reached back and swatted it away in lieu of starting another argument. Focus.
"The price paid for my magic is different from the sort you're thinking about, love. The cost of a spell that a witch is most concerned with is ordinarily a bargain, yes? With a demon or other spirit familiar. The contracted servant can set whatever price the witch is willing to pay, and the contract holds that obligation in trust while it is not yet fulfilled. In return, the servant will provide his services, not too different from a shopkeeper selling his wares to a customer. There are no set rules for what that price is, as long as both agree to it."
"Right." Except for the tabula rasa, I thought privately.
"But I'm not accessing a foreign magic, only mine, and there's no negotiation of any price. It's simply that there are conditions that must be met to execute the spell, a pure exchange of energy, converting it from one form to another with the necessary catalyst. To create fire, you need kindling. My transference is the same way, needing a reflection. It doesn't demand the intrinsic value of your sight."
"... So why can't I see?"
"Because the toll, when paid, changes the very thing that casts the reflection. Your eyes aren't taken, but they've been rendered... tainted. Used up."
"Used up? How do you use up sight? Do you mean aging it? Like going blind?"
"Using up the essential function, the energy that makes it possible, which leaves it open to be filled with a different energy — a byproduct. When you burn kindling, it becomes ash."
"Ash!" I exclaimed. The hell — ash couldn't convert back to kindling, so didn't that mean losing my sight couldn't be reversed?
"Just a comparison, my Sable. I only mean your sight itself hasn't been eliminated, only changed to a form you can't use. We only need to reverse it since it's still present, simply altered."
Okay. If he was right, thank God. He wouldn't lie about that, right? "Okay. Then what about mirrors? What happens to them when you use your reflection then? Maybe the answer's there. Or do they just break and that's it?"
"The reflection in a mirror is clearer and stronger, so the toll is much lower. They don't necessarily break unless I'm clumsier than usual that day." He chuckled like the thought tickled him pink. "But they are changed, like your eyes. The mirrors become enchanted for a time with all sorts of different peculiarities resulting. Sometimes, they're strong enough to last quite a while. The glass for a seer's crystal ball is harvested from just such a thing."
"Uh, harvested from what? What did you just say?"
"You didn't know? My, my. That's only one of the many secrets your head witches keep from their covens. But soon, you'll know them all, as you deserve... Yes, love. True crystal is harvested from my kind, incubi only. Or rather, harvested from the traces we leave in our wake, though it takes one of a certain caliber to travel through reflections at all, much less gracefully. If the tainted glass left behind is intact, it's taken to be melted and reshaped. The witches have been doing it for centuries."
I didn't know what to say. There was no way that was right. Genuine crystal balls and wells were created solely by the Coven and the best of the best Artificiers after ages of cultivation and secret rituals. They were one of the rarest and most exclusive kinds of magical artifacts, and there wasn't a witch soul that didn't long to have one of their own even if they tried to hide it. Even Grandma had possessed a crystal, though I was never allowed to see it since it would have bored out my eyes, with me lacking passive protective magic. Besides the fact that everyone in the witch community would have lost their minds if what Lust said were true, Grandma would never have let a true demonic artifact stay in the house with Mom and me.
No way. Period. The Coven would never knowingly harvest demonic energy like that, especially from incubi. I'd never gone to a witch academy myself, but I knew they had a mandatory sex education course specifically to drill into every student the dangers of messing around with an incubus. It wasn't that they were the most powerful. It was because they were by far the best at corrupting souls, bar none. The very traces of their aura even after they were long gone could turn an unwitting witch dark through her dreams, night by night. No escape. Worse, incubus magic made you not even want to escape. If that happened, game over. If anyone were ever to make an illegal contract with a demon, at the very least they should never, ever stoop to employing incubus magic.
And now Lust was telling me the Coven deliberately harvested it? No way in hell. He was just trying to make me lose trust in them, that was all. I knew better than to take everything a demon said as gospel, especially one contracted to me and with something to gain by isolating me from the rest of the world.
No. No more talking about it. It was irrelevant to me regaining my sight and I was better served steering us back on track.
"So, my eyes," I said firmly, changing the subject with all the grace of a mule kick. "You said the enchantment doesn't last forever, right? Don't I just need to wait it out, then? Until it fades and returns to normal? When crystals expire, they just become regular glass or mineral, whatever they were before."
"Ah... it's likely not that simple with your eyes, I imagine—"
"Asmodeus knows nothing that isn't fucking or fighting. You won't get your answers until we find a way off this island, so don't waste your time."
Ugh. Mammon. Had he been eavesdropping the whole time? But I was the stupid one for thinking he would trail at a distance just because I'd snapped at him once. If anything, he should be looking for an opportunity to tear me to shreds for daring to talk to him like that. As it was, from the nearness of his voice it sounded like he wasn't but a few paces back, and he must have heard every word.
I scowled. When did you get here, I wanted to say, but I was already pushing my luck. I wasn't stupid enough to completely trust the supposed 'connection' that forced the truce between the demons. I was still perfectly clawable and biteable regardless. For now, I had to be... polite.
"Fine. If neither of you know anything about it, then nothing I can do for now. Like I said, clean water and shelter first, and tell me everything you see on the way —"
"I see you're injured, yet Asmodeus is powerless to help."
"I'll figure it out, thanks. Not being able to see isn't the end of the world."
"I don't mean your sight. I mean your body. His vitality saved you in the mountains from freezing, but your body is breaking down. Even if you had the power to summon it through your bond, the vessel was what has to contain him, and it failed. You're in pain, aren't you? You're just hiding it, and very well."
Lust's walking had been getting stiffer and stiffer as Mammon spoke. Now he halted completely. But Mammon went on, still talking, still taunting. Not me, but Lust. He acted like he was speaking to me, but there was no mistaking to whom he really directed every word.
"You're gifted, but your ability outstrips your physical limits. Another one of those, and you'll die. You feel it, don't you?" He paused, but not long enough for me to scrounge up a retort. "Asmodeus doesn't. How can he keep you alive when he doesn't even know what can kill you? A little longer in the mountains, and it wouldn't have mattered whether the witches imprisoned us in their trap seal. You would have died long before they reached you."
Lust held me tighter, turning slightly so his head blocked Mammon's view of me. "You underestimate Sable. Don't you know who she is? She's no ordinary witch. The cold wouldn't kill her so quickly."
"You must think I'm stupid, or you really believe what you say and you're the stupid one. I know what she is, but the magic in her veins is completely sealed up. I can smell it."
"She has magic."
"Inside, only. There's witchseed in her, but that won't be enough to keep her alive if you fuck up again. And you won't be enough to keep her alive, either." The sound Mammon made might have been a scoff or a laugh, I couldn't tell. "Work hard, Asmodeus. Or you'll prove me right too soon."