A Demon's Lie

Nicole and Lumière both stared at each other. His gaze was dark, with an air of mystery, but Nicole’s was vacant, a distraught expression on his face.

“Who? Who is a demon?” Lumière said with a smile.

‘Ah, I didn’t mean to say that out loud… is he mad that I almost revealed his identity?’ Nicole’s expression sank, fear grasping his heart like an ice-cold hand. ‘Is there hidden meaning in his words? Is Mr. Demon angry? Is it because I didn’t perform adequately?’

Nicole took a look around the room. Gradually, his gaze passed over each of his teammates- noticing the fingers that Ramses had lost, the wounds that Midas had accrued, and the addled state that Cornifer seemed stuck in. Even more, Meraline was gone completely.

“What happened?” Nicole exclaimed, his voice wavering. “Everyone… everyone is hurt…”

Ramses stood up from the bed beside Nicole’s, a warm smile bathing the boy as he placed a hand on his shoulder. It was the hand that remained unharmed, five fingers present.

“Our injuries aren’t your worry. Out of all of us, you were the one that was harmed most. Don’t you feel in pain, Nicole? We’ll summon the Clergy Doctor for you.” Despite his smile, Ramses’s face held a slightly pained expression. It seemed even standing was enough to send an aching spasm through his body. Yet, he was more worried for his comrade than himself.

Nicole shook his head. “No, it’s not too bad. You should sit, Ramses. Your legs are shaking!”

“Really, it’s fine. It seems you’ve recovered well physically. I wonder if your dreams still plague you, enough to shout strange names when you wake up.” Ramses’s face contorted with suspicion. “Who is ‘Mr. Demon’?”

In the background, Lumière’s face remained calm as it had been. Yet, as Nicole’s eyes shifted towards him, he could see that Lumière’s gaze had grown dark, as if intending to fill the atmosphere with cold malice. Nicole immediately averted his gaze.

“Ah… really, it’s no one. I was just having a bad dream, that’s all.”

‘How did it get like this?’ Nicole’s mind wandered, his heart still beating rapidly. ‘Did I mess something up? Will Mr. Demon be mad with me?’

No matter how hard he tried to recall the events that occurred after Lumière Croft had begun to provoke the Nameless, he couldn’t remember a single thing. All that rang out in his head was a single sentence- “If you want even the slightest chance of saving your comrades, anger the shadows.”

However, everyone else besides Cornifer, who was still incessantly messing with his pocketwatch, seemed occupied by whoever ‘Mr. Demon’ was. So, Lumière began to enact his scheme.

“Is this ‘Mr. Demon’ one of those phantoms that torments your mind?” Lumière spoke in a deep voice in the background. The others turned to him, only seeing that he had a worried expression on his face. This was the beginning of his lie.

‘Sorry, little mage. This much is just unavoidable. I’ll have to use your trauma as a part of this scheme, so play along well.’ Lumière sighed inwardly. ‘It can’t be helped if you had to say it out loud, unaware of your surroundings. It’s just an unfortunate situation. In the end, you’re just a part of my lie. Being a casualty of my goal is a certain fate.’

At the mention of the phantoms, Nicole’s face contorted with a mixture of emotions. After all, as a child, he had been taken away from whatever happy little life he had, and been forced to forget it all. What little he remembered of his parents and his family had been slowly stripped away from his mind by the phantoms, and he had been turned into no more than a weapon. That was their modus of operandi. However, the anxiety that plagued Nicole made him useless to them. Their lack of care for his usefulness left a gap in their cautiousness, and so Constantine Adler had been able to take him away from the Phantom Syndicate with the help of Adonis Trinder. He was then given over to Heaven’s Roses in order to offer him a safe avenue of life. As a black mage, he would have been hunted by the Orthodox Churches otherwise.

It was all things that Nicole wanted to forget, to tuck away in the deepest part of himself. If he didn’t readily prepare himself to think or speak of the topic of his past, it would shake him. Being struck by a blade without raising your shield brought along wounds.

‘What is Mr. Demon talking about suddenly?’ Nicole’s heart began to beat, unaware of Lumière’s ploy. ‘Is he trying to tell me something? He wouldn’t say something like that so suddenly if it had no meaning.'

“Ah, I see. It was related to your past. That’s why you were having bad dreams…” Midas spoke from behind Ramses. “Well, that explains it well enough. We shouldn’t pry further, Ramses.”

Ramses nodded his head. “My apologies, Nicole. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”Nicole shook his head, a frown still present on his face. “No, it’s okay. It’s just something I have to deal with, right?”

In the background, Lumière let out a quiet sigh, having averted the situation. By making Nicole feel bad, it inadvertently made the others feel bad. By seeing that they had brought up Nicole’s latent trauma, it discouraged them from prying further into the topic. This also planted the seed of an idea that any mentions of ‘Mr. Demon’ in the future were related to Nicole’s past with the Phantom Syndicate, and so it would disallow them from prying further to keep Nicole’s mental state stable.

‘Lies are a necessary tool for me. However, that is only the case for myself. To expect someone else- Nicole to lie on my behalf is a shaky foundation to stand on. I wonder what exactly constitutes a ‘lie’? Is it the lack of the knowledge of the truth that makes a lie into belief? Then, as Nicole does not know I am not really a demon, does that make it the truth- a real belief for him?’ Lumière ruminated. ‘As far as strength goes, belief will always hold steadfast in comparison to a lie. One will die for their beliefs, but one will be killed for their lies. Then, it must be that the purpose of lying is to make people believe. To believe is to make real. In this instance, the Demon of the Garden, Ophelia, has already become real in many minds. However, it’s harder to make some people believe than others.’

‘To this extent, Nicole was like a test. It seems that for now, it’s better off to leave ‘Lumière’ and ‘Demon of the Garden’ as separate identities, at least in my personal life. The deeper my lies are tied to the ‘true’ me, the easier they can be unraveled.’ Lumière lamented inwardly. ‘Still, this conclusive mantra doesn’t solve the current problem. How should I deal with Nicole?’

Lumière drew the curtain that separated him and the others and began to pace back and forth beside his bed. His hand nestled his chin as he began to lose himself in his thoughts.

‘The problem this time was that I was too hasty in establishing my persona in order to avoid Nicole’s conclusion that I’m a servant of an evil god. I wanted to scare him to avoid him messing with me, and revealing my persona as a Demon was just a way to accomplish that. After all, those who use magic against me always seem to discover the strange aspects that surround me- the protection of being a servant of the Sinner. However, I didn’t think it through enough. Mixing my identities in a social circle that was directly connected to my most personal life was a mistake.’ Lumière nodded his head, having come to a conclusion. ‘The difference in acting as Ophelia in front of Cartwell Heffen, Zelia Chatelaine, and Juno from the House of Cards is that despite knowing of ‘Lumière Croft’, they are very far removed from my actual life. There is a lot of time to plan and act around them in order to maintain my identity as the Demon of the Garden, as opposed to acting around Nicole, who can begin to mess things up so suddenly as he just did.’

Suddenly, Lumière came to a realisation, his eyes widening.

‘Shall I bring him to meet Juno, Cartwell, and Zelia? If I can keep the ones who think that Lumière is equivalent to Ophelia close together, then managing and improving this identity will become far easier. The more people of different values and backgrounds I have in proximity to me, the easier it will become for me to act as my persona in different situations. Moreover, it will just be another person I can use to accomplish my goal of taking down the Phantoms- a plot that Nicole might be quite interested in.’ Lumière’s lips curled up into a grin. ‘It’s funny. Lying used to be about performance for the sake of my career. Now, lying as a performance gambles my entire life for the sake of my goal. Isn’t that humorous?’