Estelle Ana Baca

Category: Magics

The manipulation of the metaphysical with the aim of altering the physical world in one respect or another.

  • Orders, Part III

    Back to Orders, Part II.

    As you’d expect, Jiang Xuande’s skill at magics improved significantly after he joined forces with Ninalla. In fact, his skill as an alchemist and an astronomer spread throughout the land, and so it was no surprise that Duke Xiao invited him to join his royal court in 361 BC.

    If there is one force that is paramount within the Universe, it’s love. It’s the connecting thread within all our Graces. When it comes to love, there’s nothing else in the Universe that is more diverse in form and expression. There’s also nothing stronger. Love makes all the difference.

    When Jiang Xuande summoned the demon Ninalla to his side and offered his wife Zhou’s body for her to possess, neither of them had any idea of what was to come. Over the years, a curious thing happened: Jiang Xuande and Ninalla fell in love. It might seem hard to believe, but even demons can feel love. The catch with demons is that most of the time, they don’t know how to express it in a constructive way, and when love is misdirected, it has the ugliest consequences.

    I mentioned last week that Jiang Xuande had theorized that a demon’s possession of his wife’s body might alter her ability to bear children, and he was correct. A Nekudaimon possessing a human (or animal) body has a few effects. Its metaphysical energy is able to simultaneously boost and drain the physical lifeforce of its host. A Neku must have a living host in order for it to wield any power, because the bond it makes with the soul of its host is, in part, a source of power. A Neku also halts the aging process of its host and lends its adopted physical form additional brawn and hardiness. However, if a Neku remains within the same mortal body for a while—more than a few days, for example—the host dies almost immediately when the Neku departs, for the Neku will have consumed most, if not all, of the physical energy of the host. Additionally, if the host dies while the Neku is still in it on account of some horrible damage to the body, the Neku has to find a new host in order to manifest. (These rules don’t apply to Apokomistai.)

    When Zhou was Zhou and Zhou alone, she could not bear children, but Ninalla possessing Zhou was a different story. (Do note that only an Apokomistis is capable of creating an Anathema. I’d explain, but Estelle has called dibs on this one.) The offspring of a Neku and a mortal creature is called an Epiklasmon, and it’s usually a creature that is weaker than its genetic kin. Their tragedy is that they don’t usually survive very long, which is typically a good thing, for they would live a cursed existence as the children of demons if they could live more than a few days. Still, the creative will that seizes those under love’s spell isn’t enough to deter them from trying to defy the odds.

    And so it was that in 355 BC, after thirteen years together, Ninalla was with child. Everyone at the court of Duke Xiao was astonished by the news, for Jiang Xuande and his seemingly-barren wife had been a quiet (but nonetheless feared) couple who appeared resigned to being childless. It was considered a miracle, and Duke Xiao extended the boundaries of the lands of his favorite alchemist and astronomer as a gift for his seeming good fortune.

    La mort du fossoyeur by Carlos Schwabe
    “The Angel of Death” as depicted in Carlos Schwabe’s The Death of the Grave-Digger. Azrael operates more quickly than humans can fathom. He doesn’t look like this model at all, but he does really like black and green.

    But fortune is fickle.

    Among the most feared and most misunderstood of angels is the Angel of Death. His name is Azrael, and he was tasked by God to maintain the balance of life and death within the Universe. One of his specific duties was to help the souls of the dead—especially those of children who weren’t strong enough to survive infancy—return to the Earth. He was also tasked with being close at hand to make sure that the soul of a creature that was cursed wouldn’t contaminate the pure waters of Earth’s well of souls.

    Jiang Xuande’s misfortune was that Azrael was close at hand when Ninalla gave birth to their Epiklasmon on that bright spring morning. Not long after the poor creature had taken its first and only breath, its heart stopped. Azrael then escorted the dormant soul of Zhou from the plane of the physical into the cavern of the metaphysical, and then he went to an isolated corner of the Universe to contend with the curse that was present in the soul of the dead Epiklasmon.

    Azrael is typically too quick for mortal eyes and most Neku senses to catch, but, of course, the exception to the rule came to pass on this occasion. The Angel of Death’s scent had lingered just long enough for the room for Ninalla to gauge what had happened when she realized that the body of her host was no longer ensouled and, consequently, dead.

    Until next Tuesday. Dominus tecum.

    On to Orders, Part IV.

  • Orders, Part II

    Back to Orders, Part I.

    It all started when the Watchers Sabrathon and Kochabiel informed Michael that a deranged human—a dark magician by the name of Jiang Xuande—had stolen a powerful grimoire from the Apokomistis Astaroth. Allow me to provide some background (per usual) so that you can understand what this means (before we angels got involved).

    Demons are well-versed in black magics, and they also have a healthy understanding of white magics for, like the best of adversaries, they know the tools of their enemy. A few of the ancient ones consolidated their knowledge of black magics into books containing spells and magical secrets called grimoires. Grimoires are plentiful within the demon world and have varying degrees of potency. Every Apokomistis has at least one that he or she relies upon. Grimoires are most often books or scrolls or tablets, but they have been known to exist in other forms. Regardless of shape, they have often been sought by many human magicians for the vast knowledge and power that they hold, but in most cases, they are completely useless to mortals on account that most spells require demon blood to make them work.

    (Incidentally, there is a white magic counterpart to the grimoire known as an ellamadus. As far as I know, the very few ellamadi in existence were either captured or destroyed by a few Apokomistai during the era that humans refer to as World War II. Remind me to tell you about ellamadi after we’ve wrapped up this tale.)

    However, there are exceptions to most every rule, and if we return to the state of Qin, in ancient China, in the year 354 BC, this particular grimoire and this particular magician Jiang Xuande were a recipe for disaster.

    Temple at Hua Shan
    Hua Shan is one of the sacred mountains in China. This was one of Sabrathon’s favorite vantage points for overseeing matters in the state of Qin, as it gave him a nice view.

    Jiang Xuande was born in 421 BC, and he served as an astronomer and alchemist in Duke Xiao’s royal court from 361–354 BC. The Duke and his advisers all held an understanding that Jiang Xuande’s predictions were beyond reliable, and there were whispers that he had an army of spirits at his disposal to do his bidding.

    This wasn’t entirely far from the truth. Jiang Xuande had nurtured a passionate quest for immortality from the time he was a young boy and had witnessed several members of his family succumb to smallpox. He was subsequently raised by his uncle, a doctor and alchemist himself, and he taught the boy the arts of using the elements and herbs to balance the body. However, Jiang was certain that the science of alchemy could be stretched so as to bestow immortality upon anyone who discovered its secret formula. It led him to dabble in black magics by means of a watered-down grimoire that he acquired through great difficulty during a trip to India.

    Not many of the spells worked in the grimoire, but there was just enough information in it for Jiang Xuande to realize that it was useful. He wanted more, and so he used his little grimoire to summon a Nekudaimon by the name of Ninalla in the autumn of 368 BC.

    Ninalla wasn’t pleased to have been summoned to serve a lower creature, but she sensed that Jiang Xuande’s thirst for immortality had the potential for too much fun for her to pass up. She answered Jiang Xuande’s call, possessing his pet cat, and pledged her services and wisdom to him under the condition that he volunteer his wife’s body for the Neku to use as a human vessel.

    Jiang Xuande didn’t think twice about Ninalla’s proposition. He had long fallen out of love with his outspoken and barren wife Zhou, and he had begun to regard her latest failed pregnancy as a sign of an inferior stuff in her family history. He idly wondered if the metaphysical bond between the spirit of a demon and the body of a human might improve what was wrong within Zhou and endow her with the strength to bear him a healthy child when he was finished playing around with demons.

    Ninalla had an agenda in mind as well. Serving a human gave her an excuse to escape the tyranny of serving Astaroth for a while (I’ll let you imagine how demanding a master an Apokomistis can be over hundreds of years). She knew that eventually Jiang Xuande would die and she’d be able to convert his possessions into capital that she could use herself, or rather, until Astaroth pulled rank as an Apokomistis and took them. Astaroth gave her Neku permission to stay with Jiang Xuande, understanding that his demon-dabbling made his soul all too pluckable when the time was right. Furthermore, she sensed that affairs in the state of Qin were nearing a steady boil.

    Moments after Jiang Xuande gave his assent, Ninalla occupied Zhou’s body. Later that night, she taught Jiang Xuande how to make the some of the other, more grisly and powerful spells in the grimoire work through donating decent quantities of his wife’s demon-infused blood.

    More about Jiang Xuande next week. Dominus tecum.

    On to Orders, Part III.

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