A Piece of History: Infernal Kindness

     He stood very still and simply waited.

     Not that Joshua Ogniali, or Ax as he was known in the house, was good at being patient. He really wasn’t, but for the former death mage’s sake, he was trying. It would have helped if the damnable tray wasn’t to hard to balance. Stone-grey eyes widened in horror as the coffee cup began sliding to one side, and he swiftly jostled it back into place, only to lose the strawberry jam. He held his breath when the closed jar hit the hall rug, and breathed a thankful sigh that the sticky stuff hadn’t spilled. The idea of what Betre might do to him if he ruined something in this very expensive place made his skin crawl. Ax glanced around, then slid the breakfast tray onto a hall table, kneeling to retrieve the jar.

     It was still very confusing, this new world he’d been dragged into. Ax’s mind was often clouded, and he found himself staring at the sky for hours on end with no particular reason. Betre had warned him that taking over a body usually meant dealing with a few leftover bits of the body’s former occupant, but that had been the easy part. Joshua Ogniali had been a failed model with the IQ of a brain-damaged fruit bat. His personality hadn’t been strong enough to leave much of an impression upon the grey matter Ax now used. It had been pleasant, receiving a tabula rasa, as opposed to Betre. The other demon had regaled Ax, listening with horrified fascination, of the battle between him and his host’s soul. Oh yes, Ax certainly had it easy in that respect.

     One of the greatest joys was the technology of this modern age, as Betre liked to phrase it. Ax’s memory was dimmed and fogged by his time in Hell, but he did recall handling the earth’s raw metals, making things, using his large, callused hands to good effect. It was a memory that always gave him pleasure, and when Betre had shown him steel, he had nearly wept. Yes, this was a good age to live in.

     Perhaps the only unpleasant thing was his summoner. Ax replaced the strawberry jam on the tray and resumed his patient stance outside of Jonas Foster’s bedroom door, head tilted to catch the first sounds of wakefulness. It was an old, old pact that went centuries, millenia back: a summoner was responsible for their summoned. Betre always commented, with a smirk, that it usually depended heavily on who was summoning what and for what purpose. That may be true, but it didn’t change anything in Ax’s mind. Jonas Foster had summoned him from Hell, had saved him from eternal torment, and he was grateful.

     The whole of the situation was, perhaps, beyond Ax’s understanding. He knew that Jonas had loved someone very much, and that she had died. Instead of lying down and taking it, Jonas had, to Ax’s mind, quite sensibly decided to change it. He hadn’t wasted time on vengeance, which really only begat bloody hands and wasted time, but had gone to Betre and made a deal. Betre had tried to explain some of what had happened, but it had been one of Ax’s inattentive, vague periods, and now he could only recall bits and pieces. Betre, in his kindness, had decided to get Ax out of the pit, and had given Jonas the chance to change what had happened. Then Jonas had summoned Ax. Quite simple.

     The only problem with that was Jonas hadn’t wanted to keep him. A summoner normally had a task for the summoned creature to complete. After that, it was up to the creature’s cleverness or the summoner’s graciousness what happened once the task was finished. Jonas, unlike most summoners, had no intentions of using Ax for anything. It was freedom, openly given, and that, more than anything, was what made loyalty burn in the demon’s heart.

     Faithfulness was not unnatural to Ax. Despite fables and the common stories, angels were utterly faithful, and a demon was merely a fallen angel. A single trip doesn’t erase all that one is, and to Ax’s mind, Jonas deserved more love than God. He had been created by the Almighty, but he had been set free by Jonas. Something in the demon’s mind cried "Heresy!" and was ignored. Ax was, evenamongst fallen angels, exceptional for his loyalty. When one was befriended by him, it was for eternity. Betre had been a welcome sight, even though Ax had not begrudged his friend’s good luck those centuries before when some foolish society boy had called the cunning demon out of Hell.

      A noise! Ax perked, all of his tangled thoughts falling back into the corners of his mind they regularly occupied, and then nudged the door open. His smile rivaled the bright sunlight streaming in through the window, and he held up the breakfast tray. "Look, breakfast in bed! I brought you coffee!"

     Jonas Foster, former death mage and hit for hire, groaned as he tried to focus his swimming gaze on the demon standing in his room. With a grunt, he sat up and stretched, pawing at his bleary eyes until they could see the clock. He made a faint noise and eyed Ax darkly. "It’s six in the morning."

     "And you’re awake! See, toast?"

     Black, vicious thoughts crowded Jonas’s sleep-befuddled mind for a moment, and then fell away. (This…again. Where did this kindness come from? You’ve changed.) Grumbling, he shoved himself into a more suitable position and motioned to Ax. "Well, come on then. You might as well have the toast. I don’t like it."

     The demon’s face struggled between dejection that his breakfast choices weren’t perfect and elation that he was allowed to stay. He promptly darted to the bedside and gently la

id the tray on Jonas’s lap, then bounded over to sit on the man’s other side. Jonas, busy stirring a bit of cream into his coffee, didn’t notice Ax’s face when the demon looked at the sketch framed at his bedside. He paused in taking a sip and followed Ax’s gaze, and a similar expression of love and hurt appeared on his face.

     "That was Dia," he said softly, putting his cup down and reaching out, picking up the framed sketch. "I’m not much of an artist, but a…friend of mine, Kyle, isn’t bad. He drew her for me."

     The demon craned his neck, trying to examine it, and looked astonished when Jonas put the frame into his hands. Treating it as one might a cracked eggshell, Ax squinted, drawing it closer and gazing deep into the sketch’s eyes. "She was an angel," he whispered, very much in awe.

     Jonas paused, the cup against his lips, and then took a swallow of his coffee. "Maybe, Ax. Maybe."

     The demon looked up at the former mage, a hesitant smile dawning. "Is she who Betre’s trying to find?"

     The man looked over, his eyes resting briefly on the sketch before he met Ax’s eyes. "Yeah," he said gruffly. "That’s her."

     "Betre said he won’t be much longer in finding her," Ax reported, obviously cheered by the thought. He leaned over Jonas and carefully replaced the sketch, angling it so that Dia’s pencil-shaded eyes looked directly at them. Jonas shifted a bit, meeting the picture’s unseeing gaze for a long moment, and then turned the frame just a bit, directing her eyes towards the window.

     "Good," he said, handing Ax the jam and a knife as the demon began crunching through the toast. Jonas Foster looked back at the sketch, then at the demon scattering crumbs in his bed. The former mage and hit-for-hire gazed into his coffee and felt some strange twitch at the corners of his mouth. He looked up, his eyes shifting to the huge French mirror Betre had put on the facing wall. The fomer death mage blinked, his dark eyes widening as he saw his own face.

     He was still lined, yes. More weathering showed there, a storm of nearly a year and a half having taken its’ toll on him. His dark brown eyes were sad, and his eyelids drooped a bit, shading them and enhancing the expression. His hair had lightened considerably, now some odd shade of mahogany brown with a bit of silver showing. None of this astonished the man. He had seen it over and over again. As he sat with cup in hand, a demon stealing his bacon, and looked at the mirror, Jonas saw the change and found himself marveling at it.

     He was smiling.