His small room was cramped, the slanted ceiling barely high enough for him to stand straight. He sat on his straw mattress, the chicken leg forgotten on a wooden plate beside him.
He opened the dark leather book, the pages thin and dry under his fingers. The ink was a deep, rich black, the script elegant and sharp. He found his place and began to read.
The story was about a queen named Lilith. She was beautiful, with hair like spun gold and eyes the color of winter ice. And she was a monster. For decades, she ruled her kingdom with a fist of iron and whims of blood.
An off-key lute player was fed to his own dogs. A merchant who offered her a price she deemed too high was encased in molten gold.
Her subjects lived in a state of constant, quiet terror.
But the queen grew bored. The screams of men and the weeping of women were no longer music to her ears. The endless cycle of feasts, tortures, and conquests felt dull, like a play she had seen a thousand times.
She craved a new excitement, a thrill that would shake the very foundations of her soul. No amount of sex or bloodletting could satisfy her anymore.
Her search for novelty led her down a dark path. She dismissed her guards, locked herself in her grand bedchamber, and turned to the forbidden arts. She wanted the power to bend reality to her will.
To make and unmake as she pleased.
August read faster, his eyes devouring the words. The book described the ritual in chilling detail. In the center of her silk-draped room, the queen drew a large circle on the floor with the blood of a virgin. Inside it, she inscribed a perfect hexagon.
From each point of the hexagon, she drew lines to form six sharp triangles. In the very center, on the cold marble floor, she placed a still-beating human heart, freshly cut from the chest of her most loyal knight.
She lit a candle and touched the flame to the heart. A strange green fire erupted from the muscle, casting eerie, dancing shadows on the walls. It burned without consuming the flesh. The queen began to chant, her voice a low, hungry whisper that filled the silent room.
"COME FORTH LORD OF–"
A sharp rap on his door made August jump, nearly dropping the book.
"August?" His mother's voice, soft and muffled. "I hope your work is going well. Don't forget to eat your dinner before you sleep."
He scrambled to his feet. "I will, Mom! Thanks!"
"And August?" she added. "Leon is pouting. He was so excited for your story. Please, make it up to him tomorrow."
"I promise, Mom. I'll tell him a great one."
"Good. Good night, my son. I love you."
"Love you too, Mom."
He heard her footsteps fade down the short hall. He let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He sat back down, picked up the book, and found his place again.
The green fire from the heart seemed to burn in his mind's eye. He leaned closer to the page, his lips moving as he read the full chant aloud in a whisper.
"COME FORTH LORD OF FLESH AND DREAMS. COME FORTH TO THY LOWLY WORSHIPER LONGING FOR YOUR LOVE. I BRING AN OFFERING WORTHY OF A GOD. DÆMON!"
The book described how the circle of blood burst into a column of black fire. The air itself tore open, revealing a swirling portal of purple and red. From it stepped a creature of ancient and terrible power.
It was a bipedal humanoid, tall and impossibly regal. Two great horns, like polished obsidian, curled from its brow. A crown of pure, white flame floated just above its head, yet it cast no heat.
The creature's presence was crushing, an aura of absolute authority that was both majestic and horrific.
The queen, far from being afraid, smiled. She bargained with the Demon of Flesh and Dreams. She offered him a tribute he could not refuse: the soul of every man, woman, and child within her kingdom.
Their joys, their sorrows, their very existence, all for him to consume.
The demon accepted. With a wave of its hand, it granted her the power she craved. The power to shape reality itself.
August's heart was hammering. This was real magic. True power. The queen used her new gift for her own amusement.
She turned a stuffy duke into a giggling serving maid. She transformed a general's prized warhorse into a pig. She turned the cobblestones of her courtyard into solid gold, then laughed as her subjects killed each other for it.
She made the dirt in the fields taste like the most addictive drug, and her people abandoned their crops to lie in the filth, lost in blissful stupors. She could do anything and everything.
The world was her playground, and her reign of torment would last for eternity.
Suddenly, a new sound cut through the silence of the house. A rhythmic creak from the room next to his. His parents' room.
Then a low moan.
His mother's voice, but not in a way he ever wanted to hear.
His face flushed with heat. He clamped his hands over his ears. The walls of their small farmhouse were so thin. He could hear the bedframe knocking against the shared wall, a steady, insistent rhythm.
He squeezed his ears shut, trying to block out the sounds, trying to focus on the story of the queen and the demon:
The Queen twisted a river of water into a river of wine... thump... thump... thump.
He groaned, burying his face in his pillow. He waited, his ears burning, until the sounds finally faded.
The house was quiet again. He sat up, shaking his head to clear it, and forced himself to look back at the book one last time.
He read the last paragraph of the queen's story. But there was no real ending. It just stopped. After the description of her terrible games, the next page was blank. And the one after that, and the one after that.
All the way to the end.
"What? That's it?" he muttered, flipping through the empty pages in frustration.
But as he reached the very last page, his fingers brushed against raised lettering on the inside of the back cover. It was a different handwriting, messy and rushed.
I found her. A shriveled corpse on the bedchamber floor. Old and withered, as if she had lived a thousand years. On the floor, faint burn marks shaped like a circle and strange triangles. Nothing more.
August stared at the words, then slammed the book shut and tossed it onto the mattress. It landed with a soft thud.
"What a load of horse manure," he muttered, pacing the small space of his room.
"This isn't 'basic illusion magical theory'. It's a badly written horror story. Where are the instructions? The spell formulas? The chapter on mana channeling? I paid good silver for a skill book, not a grim fairy tale for naughty children."
He stopped and glared at the book. It was his only lead. Wasting money was a sin in his family, and he refused to let this purchase be a total loss.
He sat back down and picked it up again, his mind working.
"Okay, let's think about this," he said to himself.
"Forget about it being a 'how-to' guide. Let's pretend it's a puzzle. What's the point of the story?"
He leaned back against the wall, chewing on his thumb.
"So, a crazy queen gets power from a demon. She torments everyone. Then, someone finds her dead, all dried up like an old apple. The end. So the lesson is... don't make deals with demons? That's it? I could have figured that out myself."
It was too simple. Too stupid. His mind kept snagging on one detail.
"The book says she could 'shape reality'. But if she could really do anything, why did she die? A person who can turn stone to gold should be able to keep herself from turning into a raisin. That makes no sense."
The two parts of the story fought against each other in his head. On one hand, she had godlike power. On the other, she had a pathetic death.
They couldn't both be true. Not literally.
"So one of them is a lie," he reasoned aloud.
"Did the demon trick her? Did it give her no power at all?" He shook his head. "No, that can't be it. The story says people saw her do things. They saw a pig instead of a horse. They tasted drugs in the dirt. Something happened."
He paused, a new idea beginning to form. "Okay, so the power was real. But what if the description of the power was the lie? What if it couldn't 'shape reality'?"
He tapped his chin.
"What if it couldn't change the horse into a pig... but it could make everyone believe the horse was a pig? The horse is still a horse, but every person who looks at it sees a pig, smells a pig, hears a pig."
The idea clicked into place with the force of a slammed door.
"That's it!" he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright.
"The cobblestones were never gold! Her subjects just perceived them as gold, and their own greed made them kill each other.
The queen didn't die because her magic failed. She died because she was so lost in her own illusion, so convinced she was a god playing with her toys, that she forgot her real body needed food and water. She starved to death while her mind was living in a fantasy."
It all fit perfectly.
The incredible feats, the terrified subjects, the shriveled corpse. The demon hadn't given her the power to change the world. It had given her the power to change perception. A trick.
The ultimate scam.
"It's not about creation," he whispered, the truth of it feeling heavy and profound.
"It's about imitation. You make one thing... mimic another."
The word felt powerful on his tongue.
Mimic
As soon as the thought solidified, a familiar screen flickered to life in his mind's eye.
[Mimic: F]
[A basic illusion spell that alters the perception of an object. You needed to read a book to figure it out? Idiot. Not the brightest candle, are ya?]