Chapter 2: A New Me

HERE I WAS, a brand new demon, cast adrift in the cold cruel world, alone, with no guiding hand to show me the way, no mother’s breast to nurse me. Sob.

Um ... That last was definitely implanted from Pinaruti’s memories. I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise. You see, in spite of the way I was endowed, I was not born a sex-craving monster. I had to work hard for that. Nor are demons inherently evil. We are brought into this world by magi who give us our instructions and implant the character we have. Pinaruti’s intent to use me to air condition the king’s house was pretty benign as far as good and evil are concerned. I have met plenty of hmans far more evil than any demon.

And I have met some—dare I say?—holy demons.

I suppose I should explain a bit about demons, or you will never understand the depth of my bewilderment when faced with the human world. Before Pinaruti summoned me, I did not exist. That is one of the things Pinaruti (and most magi of any sort) misunderstand. They spend their lives trying to discover the names of demons they might summon and control. Eventually, they come across a name in an ancient scroll or a name comes to them in a dream, and they set up an elaborate summoning spell.

In some cases, they stumble upon a demon who has been summoned before and therefore has a personal identity. As long as that demon’s name is known and he is not in use by someone else, he can be summoned. Inevitably, the frightened mage dismisses the demon to hell, and that is where the demon waits until the next time he is summoned.

I remember Jana, a perfectly delightful young beauty I spent several years with. We were close in more ways than the joining of our genitals. However, the sex act with Jana was unbelievable. She happened to meet me during a time when I was in my natural form, complete with horns, hooves, and huge phallus. I transformed into something less intimidating, but she begged me to keep a cock big enough to satisfy her. That took a lot.

Oh, was she a screamer! She sacrificed herself on my sword daily for many years, having created a fantasy tale in her mind that she was saving all the virgins in her village, then in the area, then in the country, by throwing herself onto my dick and riding hard until one or both of us passed out. She might have been the most enthusiastic lover I ever had, so committed was she to the salvation of her peers—or perhaps to keeping them away from me.

After one particularly loud and satisfying bout of sex, she lay in my arms and said, “Oh, Bob. I’m sure I’m going to hell for this. Tell me. Is sex like this in hell?”

“I don’t know, Jana. I’ve never been there!”

“But ... but you’re a demon! Everybody knows they come from hell.”

“Everybody is wrong. Many demons are sent to hell by their masters. The fellow summons a demon, uses him or her, and then needs to dispose of him. Hell is the common destination. But the first time we are summoned, we don’t come from hell. We come out of the primordial mass. We don’t exist before we are summoned.”

“I love it when you talk dirty. Fuck me again, Bob!”

Well, she wasn’t a great conversationalist, but it got the point across. Before Pinaruti summoned me, I was just part of the primordial mass of pre-creation. Once a magus learns to summon, he or she could summon anything into existence. I think, frankly, that is how hell came to be. I can think of no god who would have created it. We should all simply be thankful magi have such limited imaginations.

So, when Pinaruti summoned me, I was a brand new demon. I had no experience of the world. I took the shape that Pinaruti envisioned. But he never gave me a command—never sent me away before he died—and never infected my mind with evil. Yes, I captured as much of his memories as his fading body would yield, but I could easily identify them as his memories and not my own experiences. And Pinaruti wasn’t particularly evil as magi go. He was just inept.

I was left on my own to discover the world and I set about doing so at once. The magic room into which I had been summoned contained Pinaruti’s library of scrolls—six of them. Writing wasn’t that common at the time, and so there weren’t that many books. If people had known what he had in that room, he would have been considered a very wealthy man rather than a poor hedge witch. People came to him for cures to various ailments, love potions, charmed artifacts, and travel talismans. King Drakomaxos was the first to actually challenge him to a task that was of a true mage level.

In addition to the scrolls, there were shelves of potions, herbs, sacrificial animal body parts, mortar and pestles, and oddities of every sort. And wine. There were also scraps of food on the shelves that I took to be edibles and not magic substances. I quickly acquired a taste for wine and cheese and dried sausages. It took me nearly a week just to explore that room. Then I realized the room was not the entire world. It had a door!

The next room was a kitchen and the selection of food was somewhat better than in the magic room. I simply had no idea how to cook anything and discovered that even Pinaruti’s memories had very little about the subject. The next room was a bed. Not a bedroom, but an entire room-sized bed. When Pinaruti had come to Knossos, he fancied that he would become a popular mage and would have women falling all over him. One woman actually did trip and fall over him, but she was quite unfriendly about it. Pinaruti’s huge bed had no sign of conjugal relations having ever occurred there.

In the modest courtyard, the bread oven was tucked under the stairs to the roof. I kept exploring and found my first view of ‘the world!’ It was amazing. And a little frightening. Up until that very moment, my world had all been contained in Pinaruti’s house and courtyard. Imagine seeing houses in one direction as far as the eye could see. And in the other direction, mountains like a wall around the world. In another direction, the sea, sparkling in the afternoon sunlight. And opposite the sea, fields of olives, grain, grapes, and sheep. The world was huge! I couldn’t comprehend it all and stood on the roof watching my surroundings until it grew dark and I saw stars in the sky.

I have to tell you: I get a little choked up about this even today. I’m just a sentimental little demon. I swore I would see every inch of this remarkable world. I would discover all its wonders. I didn’t bother with Pinaruti’s huge bed. I spent the night on the roof, gazing at the stars. What a remarkable world!

I SPENT a few more days mapping my surroundings in my mind. This also began my fascination with mapping the stars and learning to know where I was located by their position in the sky. That became a bit of an obsession that I have had ever since. Which is why the stars in the infinity room ... Well, let me get to that in a minute.

I learned every detail of Pinaruti’s house and had even explored his plan for cooling the king’s chambers. As brilliant as it was in some ways, it was also disgusting. To me. His original plan was to enchant a bottle in such a way that he could command me into it and I would have to stay there until summoned again. From that point, I would be called upon to cool the king’s house. He had no idea how I would go about accomplishing that feat. It was supposed to be my problem.

What really put my nose out of joint was that he’d just grabbed a bottle, drank the last of the wine, and cast the enchantment so that I’d fit in it. Barely. With the dregs of the wine. But the process of creating that bottle room led him to another thought. Why not simply imprison his pet demon in the walls of the king’s house. Then he could simply command me to keep it cool and walk away. I was insulted by his lack of care and loyalty to the being he had created. He actually used the word ‘imprisoned’ when describing how he would use me. I admit to a moment of being glad he was dead. Rest his soul.