Back to Valac the Demon, Part I.
Before I return to Valac, it’s important to understand something about how demons work. Present circumstance forbids me from explaining precisely why demons do what they do—Estelle shakes her head and mouths, No! Not now. Not yet.—but for the meantime, suffice it to say that it’s a given that they have it out for humanity.
Demons are indeed powerful. They’re stronger than humans, and there are even some demons who are stronger than some angels. (However, as an Archangel, I’ve yet to meet a demon who would dare cross my path and not expect swift annihilation.) You might ask yourself, “If they have it out for humans, and they’re stronger, why don’t they just take over the world?”
Not that they haven’t tried. But humans are a resilient species. Every attempt to subjugate them has been repelled with defiance. Such as the time—oh, no? OK. Furthermore, humans have a purpose that—not even that? Very well then.—More shaking of the head from Estelle. Apologies.
Back to Valac, then.
Throughout the assault from the boys of Fontainebleau, Valac maintained his shape as the wealthy young boy, feigning the victim with a red face and tears, volleying with childish threats that he knew would cause the boys to chase him as he ran off. Then Valac, as the boy, hid. The boys looked for him, and they voiced aloud their fantasies of how they would punish the little boy when they found him.
Valac watched in amusement, for he had dematerialized, occasionally appearing as a wisp in the corner for the boys to chase. After the better part of an hour, the boys had lost interest and were more interested in harassing a local girl. The demon then took the shape of a young man of about eighteen wearing the uniform of the newly formed French Republican Army. He strutted past the boys, and pretending to show outrage for their idle behavior, he admonished them for their laziness. He appealed to their innate childish recklessness and told them all to enlist in the Army, for France had wars to fight.
By the next day, all six boys had been sent off to assist in the crushing conflict between the Republicans and the Royalists that had arisen near the west coast of France, the War in the Vendée. Valac hung around, assuming the shape of various soldiers, ensuring that each boy met his end in a gruesome fashion. The eldest boy was trampled to death in a surge. The youngest boy, who served faithfully as a little drummer boy, was blown up in a cannon blast. Valac nearly brimmed over joy when the last boy died viciously at the hands of the Royalists.
However, Valac had no idea that that fourteen-year-old boy, the last of the six boys, was destined to become legend. His name was Joseph Bara, and to this day, he is celebrated as a hero of the French Republic. How he met his end is the reason for his fame: he was captured by the Royalists. Valac was well aware of Joseph’s inner terror and unwillingness to die, and the boy already had a plan in mind to beg for his life. Valac couldn’t have Joseph being returned to Fontainebleau in one piece, so he took over his body and began to pronounce a laundry list of rude names all directed at the Royalists captors. The Royalists were already blood thirsty, and they had no patience for a Republican brat spouting curses at them. They gave him one last chance to recant, and they ordered him to declare, “Long live the King!” to save his life.
Internally, Joseph fought the demon’s hold over his body and mind, but he was no match for the Apokomistis. Valac quieted the boy, and said, “Long live the Republic!” instead.
The soldiers were slightly kinder than Valac. At least they made sure that Joseph died quickly.
The Royalist soldiers were captured later that day, and one of them let slip Joseph’s seeming bravery. Word spread throughout the Republic of Joseph’s bravery, and Valac followed the path of the story, amused beyond comprehension that his—and not Joseph’s, the poor boy—defiance of the Royalist soldiers served to foment further hatred between the factions.
Valac remained in Paris for a while, while the story turned to myth turned to the cornerstone of a religious devotion to the lad, and he was immensely intrigued that one of the Republic’s strongest (and rather blood lustful in himself) supporters, a painter named Jacques-Louis David, offered to immortalize the boy in a painting.
David debuted his painting in 1794, the year after Joseph’s death. It wasn’t so much an accurate tribute to how Joseph died—Jean-Joseph Weerts came far closer with his representation almost a century later—as it was an odd combination of praise for the Joseph’s purported demigod-like bravery through its neo-classicist themes and an indication of David’s own, shall we say, varied and unusual tastes.
Given even the slightest hint of corruption of the soul, Valac is ever intrigued. Valac followed David for a few days, and it was there, in David’s studio, that he uncovered an entirely new opportunity among a throng of hungry and ambitious young artists all desperate for immortality in one respect or another.
(Time’s up. More on the next day of Ariel. Dominus tecum.)
