Lingua Daemoniaca

by HelloAnonMyOldFriend; Nov 9th, 2017


   “Khhh… Kchhh… Crap, I can’t even pronounce that!”
   The quietness of the living room was being interrupted only by two voices, one trying to explain something and the other struggling to even repeat it. Saul glanced at Lerix sitting next to him, looking at him with both an encouraging and entertained smile on his face. While the human tried to untie his tongue and to discern whatever muscle movements were required to pronounce that weird sound he’s been shown, the Summoner effortlessly contracted his larynx before saying a short word with a distinct, harsh and somewhat clicky sound.
   “K-x-arsched. It’s ‘kxarsched’. First, you need to trill your tongue on the top of your mouth and kind of roll it in, so start with this…”
   He let out a prolonged ‘rrr’ sound, even stronger with his quite literally otherworldly accent. This was still manageable, as Saul definitely heard it in some human languages before; hell, even a few English variants had this kind of sound. But then Lerix rolled his tongue inward, not stopping with the vibrations. The result was a heavier, sharper but also almost lisp-like sound. Saul tried to imitate it but gave up after several tries, his tongue always stopping with the trills when he mashed it against the top of his mouth too much.
   
   “Alright, but what were you doing with your neck back there? You didn’t do it now.” Saul asked.
   “That’s for the clicking sound. Since the tongue’s already busy, the noise must come from somewhere else. Let’s not worry about that now.”
   The tall demon grabbed his cup of tea and took a sip before continuing with the lecture. Saul thought he must have had the patience of a saint. Especially considering that all of these attempts at teaching the poor human the convoluted and unpronounceable demonic language stemmed from a joke he made.
   But, to be honest, it was quite fun and the pair had something interesting to do, even though Saul felt dumber after every new grammar rule or tongue twister word tried to enter his stubborn head.
   
   “Right, let’s move on. You remember the object gender, right?”
   The ‘class’ has moved on from pronunciation to grammar. This time it was Saul’s brain that was being assaulted instead of his tongue and vocal cords.
   “Yeah… mostly inanimate objects belong to it and it has two flexing categories and three cases.”
   “What about the example words by which they’re declensed? There’s two, one for each category.”
   Saul searched in his memory while Lerix kept his gaze on him, his almond-shaped amber eyes sparkling with interest.
   “Uh… ‘klechnot’, I think that’s altar… and ‘grunk’, fire.”
   “Good, what about the cases? Try klechnot first.”
   “Well, we know the first one already, right? The second case changes the first vowel, so… klichnot?”
   “Yes.”
   “And the other removes the first consonant, so… lechnot?”
   “Exactly. And what do these cases do?”
   “Uh… The first one is the basic one, when it’s used as a subject… the second one is used when it’s an object of a subject, right? And the third one is locative, used with a preposition of place.”
    “Perfect. So if you want to say ‘That pillar is nice.’…”
   “Guh –karanot– lih viscau.”
   Still mildly smiling, Lerix shook his strange head slightly.
   “You’ve got the pillar part right, but watch out with the ‘to be’ part. You’ve used the transient variant of the verb, not the permanent one. You’re saying that the pillar has some kind of a property, so that usually stays the same.”
   “Oh, alright, so… Guh karanot –veh– viscau?”
   “Yes. And when you want to say, let’s see… ‘They destroyed the pillar.’?”
   “Uh… Lenich krant wi –kerenot–?”
   “Great. And finally, ‘The statue is on the pillar.’?”
   “We polin lihe k’wi –aranot–.” Saul tried to look down at his tongue, wondering how he managed to say that sentence without a hiccup. Lerix’s smile widened.
   “Awesome. See, slowly, you’re getting there.”
   “Yeah, it’s not like I have any idea how I did that.”
   “That’s even better, you’re not even thinking about what to say, you just do it,” he cleared his throat, “But I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.”
   “Oh.” Saul sighed with a blank stare of a high schooler being told that the midterm exam is tomorrow.
   “A lot worse. We’re getting to the high kin and low kin genders, used for actual living beings.”
   
   “Eight cases!?”
   “Yes. I know.”
   “And… five flexing categories? Who came up with this?”
   “Yes, two for males, two for females and one neuter. This time we’re talking about actual biological genders, not grammatical ones.”
   With an exaggerated grunt of desperation, Saul wrapped his head in his hands and rested it on the table.
   
   Ten minutes of explaining the complicated basics and twenty more of slow exercising (and another cup of tea) later, the human and the Summoner decided to call it a day. For the final part of learning the infernal language, the pair took out a bunch of papers and pens, getting ready to carefully draw various intricate glyphs. As difficult and precise this was, it was Saul’s favourite time out of the three. He could relax and calmly paint the complex pictures that were able to convey anything from a sound to an equivalent of half a sentence in English while having more things to talk about with Lerix, not having to be worried about side-tracking the demon’s careful lecture.
   
    “If it makes you feel any better, at least the language got, well… more or less standardised here. An Imp is probably going to use the same tongue as a Knight.” Lerix said with a small brush in his thin fingers. There was a thicker one lying next to the sheet of paper on the table that he was using for bigger strokes, but currently, he was making finishing touches on a circular rune with lines coming out of it. Each line could represent something else, ranging from meaning to grammar.
   “You mean each species had their own language?” Saul asked, raising his eyes from his own paper with (comparatively) simpler runes (and not nearly as smoothly drawn, either).
   “Yes. Imps’ grammar and vocabulary was much richer when it came to survival.”
   The demon put his tool aside to grab the near empty cup of tea while reaching out to his memory, “There were multiple object genders based on whether or not a thing was edible, usable as a weapon or dangerous. However, the kin genders were simpler, instead of the various caste systems adopted from ours or Barons’ tongue; it was pretty much just ‘us’ versus ‘them’.”
   He grabbed the brush again and, while returning to his work and not looking up, continued, “Speaking of the language of Barons, that’s one I was never allowed to learn. Anyone socially below them was deemed unworthy to know their ‘terrifying’ dialect.”
   Saul got more interested in what Lerix had to say than in whatever he was doing at the time (a quite common thing to happen to him) and his eyes didn’t leave the blue Summoner’s face.
   “Isn’t that weird? I mean, you were getting orders from them, right? Did they learn the language of Summoners for that?”
   Lerix let out a dry chuckle, “That’s the point. They’d scream in some barely recognisable ‘high class’ argot from which I’d know only a few words and they expected us to perfectly understand it.”
   “Reminds me of some people back on Earth.”
   
   “Lerix?”
   “Yes?”
   “I just realised, does your name have any meaning?”
   Being already done with his piece of calligraphic art, the floating demon was now leaned against the kitchen unit with his usual gentle smirk. It seemed to widen a bit when hearing Saul’s question.
   “I suppose it does – the old one, at least. Do you know why our names are so long?”
   “No, why?”
   “Well, even though we don’t really have any parental figures – the concept of a relationship with your biological family is new to us – we do partially get names from our ancestors. There are words that describe our more important predecessors embedded in our names, and they change and convolute with each new generation until they’re completely replaced by a new dogma of our lineage. We are supposed to be guided by those words and they work as predictions of our fates.”
   The demon raised his hands and joined his fingertips in a meditative-looking gesture.
   “So, yes, my name does have a meaning; multiple ones, to be precise. And here’s what’s ironic about it: A part of my name basically calls me a betrayer.”
   
   “What?” Saul’s eyes widened.
   “I admit, it’s hidden a little in there. My former moniker was Tek’hi kah-de Lehrixin – I think you understand why I shortened it. The middle part is just a connector that states I belong to clan Tek’hi; in practice, it just says what horrible temple you live in. The last name is more interesting,” he grinned, “I used to disassemble my name to word roots and comparing it with the names of my clan’s predecessors. Lehgornann was one of the most important ones and his name signified eagerness and loyalty,” his smile lowered a bit, “Can’t say they've missed the point with me there.”
   “Then, there was Xineras, a very hated name in the cathedral. Long story short, he wished for more power, so he collaborated with another clan, resulting in a bloody war. That was a long time ago, but my kind hasn’t changed much. I don’t like to say it, but we can be a sneaky, treacherous sort if we see any gain from it.”
   
   He was silent for a few seconds, his sarcastic sneer returning.
   “Wait, so you were literally named ‘eager to betray’?” Saul asked.
   “Hey, don’t skip ahead.” Lerix responded with a giggle.
   “But you’re basically right. That’s exactly what it meant. I like to say I didn’t betray anyone – I didn't kill or hurt anybody –, but me being a high priest and all and then suddenly escaping Hell probably didn’t help them any. Anyway, the worst part for them was that most other members had no idea about the negative meaning of my name. Most thought it was ‘Leh’ and ‘Rixin’, the latter being derived from Rixanius, a war lord who died not long before I was spawned.”
   Saul didn’t try to hide his darkly amused surprise, “They didn’t think of anything?”
   “No, mostly. And again, with me being so eager to lead the Blood Temple and to suffer for it, the first part of my name was quite true. However, I’ve never had anything to do with Rixanius. My name is actually divided into three parts; ‘Leh’, ‘Ri’ and ‘Xin’. I’ve just told you about Lehgornann and Xineras, but that ‘ri’ part is much simpler. It’s just a shortened variant of ‘anriki’ – ‘before’.”
   Silence spread between the two and Saul asked after moving his lips silently a few times, “So, your name actually means ‘eager before betrayal’?”
   “Yes. That’s the irony of it. The entirety of the titular prophecy was correct.”
   “Did no one figure the name out?”
   “Oh, a few other high priests did and they wanted me eliminated. But seeing that they were the aggressors, I was in the right to defend myself and kill them.”
   For a moment, Lerix’s eyes darkened and his cheeks twitched from the unpleasant memory.
   “Not to mention, assassination was a pretty common way for Summoners to move higher in ranks. And don’t forget, while fighting your master was a very serious thing to do, the result was more spilled blood in a dark temple of Hell.” He let out a long, quiet sigh, “I was praised for my courage. That’s how… wrong that whole place was.”
   
   A second later, the warm, golden glow returned to the demon’s eyes.
   “Well, that was something I haven’t thought about in a long time.” He finally said, partially positive, partially lost in thought.
   “I’m… sorry if I triggered some bad memories.”
   “It’s fine, really. It makes me appreciate more what I have here.”
   He looked at Saul with a smile. The human returned it before standing up from the table and walking over to the tall former outsider. With a simple “Thanks” he wrapped his arm around the tall hellion’s waist and rested his head against his shoulder.
   “I’m glad to have you too, Lerix, here.”
   They completely forgot about the rune drawing.

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Pub: 31 Mar 2021 17:46 UTC
Views: 147