I hate banishments on a Friday. Fridays are for drinking and meeting up with your mates at a pub. But since I quit drinking and my mates are all dead or worse, well, here we are.
The demon's name is Bar’ak’dol. I hate the ones with multiple apostrophes in their name. Like, we get it; you're a demon, and you have powers. One day I'd like to meet a demon named Cliff or Robertson.
I park my bike at the Everson Hotel, a long-forgotten relic in the armpit of Detroit. The armpit's armpit, I guess. I look around, and it's just me, the moon, mounds of discarded papers, and the detritus of lives long gone and missing.
I walk into the hotel and immediately want to flee into the street, but I manage to hold back the impulse. The hotel has a ward in place, and it's the emotional equivalent of a horde of angry wasps coming at your face. A nice deterrent for lookie-loos and people looking to score. I filter it out with a little bit of magic, and I can feel my heartbeat settle.
With that out of the way, I cast my repertoire of spells to find this little hell-borne monster. I head down into the basement of the place, and it smells like an open furnace—hot and smoky. It's filled with storage rooms, old broken washers and dryers, and pieces of random furniture: a couch here, a chair there, a bed over there.
I stand in front of the door behind which the demon resides and cast your basic shield spell, then check my equipment: candle, flute, and holy water. I take a swig of the holy water, light the candle, and place it under the flute, heating it up. The sigils embedded spring to life, and I can feel their hunger for what I'm about to offer.
I kick the door in and look around for the hideous monstrosity, the seething wretch. Instead, an old man sits on one of those ubiquitous metal chairs. He's breathing heavily. His skin is flaky and red, and I can see the horns beneath his human disguise—little nubs that can't be ignored.
I’m ready to wipe him from this plane, but I see his eyes go from red to blue for just a second. Everything in me wants to just unleash on him, shred him like I’ve done countless demons here. But instead I do something I’ve never done before—I take a breath in front of a demon before I start.
There's a chair across from him, and he motions for me to sit.
I comply, and he sighs, leaning back with exhaustion as if some Herculean feat is finally over. I can hear the sigils humming, and I put my flute to my lips. For the first time, I look into a demon's eyes while I begin to play. I play the notes of an old Scottish dirge I know, and I see the demon mouth the words. He doesn't buckle in pain like the others. I move into my next piece, a lament a druid once taught me about stars and a maiden, and Bar’ak’dol nods. I hear him sing the melody.
He starts to fade soon, like fog under a harsh sun. He smiles at me, not with cruelty or malice, but with something I can only describe as gratitude.
My last piece is something of my own making, a song I've never played for another—one of comfort and passage, an earnest farewell, one I proclaim on rooftops when I remember my friends who have passed on. We look into each other's eyes for a second, sharing a spark of humanity, probably his first and my last. I then watch him drift away to another place that doesn’t want him either.
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