Death sentence in my book

With the end of the prelude, the control over my body was returned to me.

The state of my mind was much better compared to the previous visit.

“Of course it’s better, it’s like the difference between randomly falling into a freezing river and willingly swimming in one in summer. Both make you wet and yet the latter’s better, right.”

I had already prepared myself for most of the things that Votr could use against me, though that didn’t mean listening to him was easy or pleasant, but it was still possible to endure.

“It’s like fighting with an addiction, realizing that you’ve got a problem is the first step of doing something with it, and it’s also the hardest one. That parasite girl is still trying to deny everything in the prelude stage. You won’t meet her till she decides to acknowledge it. Back then, do you know how long I had to wait before you could make coherent sentences again?”

She won’t be coming out any time soon heh.

However, there was this one thing that nearly made me crumble.

“Yup, enduring went quite good except for that one thing, it hit you pretty hard, huh?”

Realizing that I didn’t even notice the changes that were occurring in my thought process was incredibly terrifying.

“Don’t worry about it too much, she only messed a lot with your perception at the very beginning. I may be a bit responsible for that, after all, it was a rather hard day for you. The rest is still barely in the first stage of slowly making you accept her dominance. She shouldn't be able to do anything else before completing it. Well, she actually tried to, but you’ve realized it after the first time and that made her more cautious.”

Votr said to me exactly the words I wanted to hear the most, the confirmation of my assumptions as to what exactly Rora was doing inside.

Her tuning means stealthy working in a passive way, unnoticed.

“In that state, she has no access to your memories or thoughts, but influences your subconscious.”

And when I use my power it gives her a signal to pause and check what is going on outside?

“Still no access to memories, can read and replace your thoughts, but it’s obvious to you that something strange is going on.”

What about now, am I s-

“Nope, in here, the both of you are perfectly separated. By the way, how do you feel about the bonus I’ve carefully selected for you to listen?”

This is really annoying. Why do you even ask if you can just read my mind.

“Because you’re an idiot, idiot. If I don’t ask, you won’t think about it. I know you’re confused, but come on work with me here.”

“Selected? That means it wasn’t everything?”

There was a lot of important and interesting information in it, I will have to analyze it later.

“Who knows. Well, I do.”

“Just tell me this, did you make her listen to my side as well?”

“As if she had a spare room in her head for that.”

“Alright, there’s a lot of it so, for now, what about showing yourself? Being surrounded by darkness, blackness, void and a pinch of a shadow is not my favorite environment.”

Everything started to change or maybe it was simply revealed.

A dusty floor together with smooth stone walls created a rectangular room. Lit torches were set at equal intervals. In each corner stood a mighty three-meter statue of a muscular man upholding the ceiling. Rows of stone benches filled most of the space, except for the middle of the frontal area where Votr was sitting on an obsidian sarcophagus, behind him the entire wall was covered with a huge canvas painted with a motif from the danse macabre genre.

“You look quite good George! Did you bully someone or is it connected with the crying teenage girl I’ve got locked in the basement?”

“She deserves at least that much.”

“Be careful with your words George, who knows what you deserve in the eyes of others.”

Votr was almost the same as the last time. He had a worn denim jacket and spiky, bleached hair. His mirror eyes were still making me shiver upon contact. However, two things had changed, the red light in his veins was now pulsating slightly slower and there was no sign left of the scarlet mark he had carved upon his hand.

“Votr, what happened with the twenty-eight mark?”

“Try to guess genius.”

I wanted to ask more about this topic, after all, he himself had said that I shouldn’t back off so easily under pressure, but -

“Yes, don’t ask. Move those grey cells of yours in a more productive way. Think, why the parasite girl wanted to come here with you in the first place?”

Why? It was because… because… of a whim?

“Wrong.”

Why, why, why… is it beneficial to her in any way? By winning the challenge I obtain the mana in the form of a reward and since she thinks of me as hers is this what she wants?

“Before she had learned of your ability I would give you zero points for this answer, as pets don’t need to get stronger. Now it’s worth about forty on the scale of a hundred. Still wrong.”

In that case why? There’s nothing else I can think of that-

“Yup, that’s it, you can’t answer this question, I'm just having fun.”

Exasperated, I sat down on one of the stone benches and covered the face with both hands.

Asshole.

“Votr’s the name. I may tell you the right answer, but first, you will have to answer my questions. Don’t worry it’s nothing big like the last time, but similar.”

He stood up from the sarcophagus and began walking around it slowly, with hands held behind. Each step he made was connected with the peak of his red pulsation.

“Do you want to maintain this relation with her?”

Of course not. True, at that time a part of me was even interested in it and wanted to leave 
all the thinking to someone else, but not anymore. Not to mention that it’s an entirely different matter if I agree to something like that on my own compared to when I’m being remade into someone who agrees unconditionally. After a lot of thinking I’ve discovered that being on the side that controls is more my style.

At this point, I decided that talking to him inside my thoughts was simply faster and more direct.

“Ehh… it was such a good answer, but you had to go one step too far.”

I would never go as far as Rora of course.

“That contract - would you prefer to break it by force? Or make a deal with her to cancel it? Or deprive her of all the power she has?”

Votr stopped circling around the sarcophagus and started moving towards me as if he was giving me a time limit to produce a proper answer.

I can’t imagine doing any of those three, how am I supposed to choose anything?

He was still about ten steps away from me. Somehow my mind had trouble with upkeeping his human image.

Votr? Give me more details.

He seemed to become more and more dangerous with each step as if getting ready to tear me apart. The denim jacket was barely holding together under the pressure of his growing muscles.

If I deprive her of power what will happen to Aura and the others?

Six steps away. The nails of his hands were growing longer and sharper. I felt really uneasy about his actions but decided to think of them as a joke.

Do I even have a chance of winning a fight with her? Can I fight here or do I have to do it outside? Votr? Come on stop fooling around.

Five steps. I started sweating profusely and felt my heart beating like crazy. For the first time, I realized that a really dangerous inhuman beast was slowly making its way to me.

Votr?! You want me to talk with her or fight?! I will fight if I can win!

Fours steps. I could see the terrified face clearly reflected in his eyes. His red aura was suffocating, there was no escape as the entire place was his domain.

“Votr! I should talk with her first, that’s the right answer, right?! I will talk and make a deal!”

He stopped and shook his head. My shirt was soaked with cold sweat, hands were clenched into unreliable, shaking fists.

“Why? Weren’t you going to stop talking and communicate only with thoughts? I was even willing to let it go if you lasted until the last step, but you gave up and changed your mind when I was still three steps away. This is fucking pointless!”

V-votr?

“That’s your problem! You change your mind every five minutes, never sticking to any of your previous decisions, even if it's something so trivial like the one about the way you talk with me."

He leaped towards me and grabbed by the neck. Without any problems, he lifted me up with one hand. I tried to loosen his grip with both of mine, but he wouldn’t even budge. I felt like a small animal about to be eaten and resisted with all my meager might.

“CALM DOWN!”

One his roar stopped that futile resistance. A primal fear was piercing my every muscle, preventing them from moving. Short, wheezing sounds coming from my throat were the only source of noise produced in the room till Votr spoke:

“You need a goal, something absolute that you will never ever be able to break. And you will pick one, here and now, under my geas. I’m letting you choose, but if you will try to pick something stupid like ‘my heart will keep beating till I die’, I promise to make this the shortest geas in history.”

G-geas?

“A sort of power exclusive to us demons, I will use a huge part of my mana to place it upon you and the moment you break it… you remember the state you were at the beginning of our last meeting? That won’t be even close to the suffering you will go through and it won’t end till you die. Quite an effective method of prevention I must say.”

He said it in an irritated tone as if explaining something obvious to an idiot and let me go. I sat down on the bench or more like fell on it without strength.

You’re not-

“No, I’m not. My rank is already bad and it will get even shittier thanks to that, so try asking me one more time if I’m joking or not, I dare you.”

Votr went back to his seat on the sarcophagus and stared at me like a hungry beast that had to give up the meal at the last moment.

“It also can’t be a one time action like ‘I will help Violet.’, but if you make it ‘I will keep helping Violet for the rest of my life’, that’s ok. Though I would avoid an ambiguous geas like this one if I were you. One day you may refuse to take out the trash and activate it.”

My entire body was still shaking, the way I saw him might have been forever warped.

Think, think, think! Something easy that fulfills those criteria…

“It will activate with your next spoken sentence.”

Said Votr and licked one of his nails, there was blood on it. Reflexively I checked my neck and found a shallow cut on it, due to the entire situation I didn't even realize that he had injured me.

We were sitting in silence, while I was turning my brain inside out searching for a good option.

It can’t be a one time action.

I looked around the room for some inspiration, anything that would quickly allow me to provide him with a good answer, unwilling to test his patience.

It can’t be something stupid or trivial!

My heart nearly stopped when Votr suddenly yawned aloud.

It can’t be ambiguous and I must be able to keep it till I die.

“Want me to pick something for you?”

“!”

I nearly yelled ‘no!’, but controlled myself in the last moment.

“Oh~ The ones you were thinking about are all no good, pick something else.”

No good?! Shit those were all the easy ones… In that case, what about this? Votr, I beg you, let me choose this one.

“Hmm… all green. Go on.”

“F-from this point onwards I w-will keep every single p-promise I make, and by the word ‘promise’ I mean a spoken v-verbal agreement when I s-s-specify to do something with this one exact phrase ‘I promise!’”

The moment I finished saying it felt as if something was tightly wrapping an iron chain around my chest. Panicked I tried to grab it and noticed that this barely visible phantom chain was connected to Votr, absorbing all the red light from his veins.

A grimace of pain appeared alike on this face and on his, but overall it seemed to hit him harder. The entire sensation lasted for about five seconds and disappeared together with the chain.

“George, you do realize that even if you think that you won’t promise anything till you die… it’s also a kind of an absolute, right? Anyway, this is enough for now.”

“FOR NOW?!”

“Don’t scream, my head hurts. We will see how it goes, but don’t disappoint me. I’ve fallen to the 39th place and if you make me go even lower I will devour your very soul to regain at least some of it.”

There was no more red light in his veins and if not for the mirror eyes he would look like a normal teenager. As for me, I was still collecting myself on the bench, repeating in my mind three words ‘no promises ever, no promises ever, no promises ever’.

“Let’s go back to my previous question George. I may be wrong but didn’t you promise me to make a deal with that parasite girl? Could you promise it to me again?”

I stayed silent, desperately trying not to insult him even in my mind.