Mamnen's Visitor

Mamnen's heart was in his throat thumping away for the second time that day, except this time he wasn’t staring into the face of an angel that could end him without heed. No, this time he stared into the face of a tall, lanky red-skinned devil with thick horns protruding out the sides of his head, the left one appearing to be filed down to a hollow valley three-fourths the height of the other. Ire Mennith stood before him now, a small portal fading behind him.
 
His eyebrow arched, his hands on his shirtless waist above his pant-line, Ire stared at his long lost quarter-nephew. “Your mother was not wrong, it would seem,” he said.
 
“How’s that?” Mamnen choked out in an attempt to sound brave. He, using every ounce of bravery he could, stood up to meet Ire’s height. He had never met another person he wasn’t taller than, but Ire was close.
 
“She said that all of her children are exceptional. I’ve been watching you, Mamnen,” he grinned and began to circle him in a proximity much too close for Mamnen’s comfort. “Like a good uncle, I have watched you grow in your own right.” Stopping suddenly, he brushed and held back Mamnen’s bangs to expose his ear.
 
Mamnen did not react or lift his face from that stoic reflection he’d perfected in times of stress and helplessness. His tail jostled, showing the true nature of his anxiety, but his form was otherwise perfect.
 
“You. Are. Exceptional.” whispered the devil through his signature grin, bare chest pressing against Mamnen’s arm.
 
“M-Mammy?” Vereella’s small voice came from around the corner. Mamnen reacted instinctively, and lifted his hand in a balled fist. Vereella, suddenly unable to move and suspended up in the air, could not respond or react.
 
“Extraordinary,” Ire intuited, eyeing the handiwork. “Can you disarm her as well?” Ire reached out to grab one of her frozen arms, but before he could touch her, Mamnen waved his hand and she flew down the hallway. There was a crash into the backroom, a slamming of a door, and the movement of heavy furniture to prop against it. “That won’t stop me from going in there, quarter-nephew,” the devil smirked, turning back to face the tiefling youth.
 
“I’m keeping her in, not you out,” Mamnen said, arching an eyebrow of his own, “Uncle.” He paused and swallowed once, almost having to do it manually because of how fearful he was in the moment. “Why watch us?”
 
“You. I watched you.” Ire pointed a long, almost accusing finger at him. Mamnen’s heart raced in anticipation of the reason. “And you have not disappointed at all, but you are so modest and meek yet. I did not suppose that you would be ready to see me for at least quarter a century more, but you truly are exceptional.” Ire began to laugh that raucous laugh that Mamnen heard that night he last saw his father’s body, his mother alive... “You have yet to be charged for your murders eight years ago, is that right?”
 
The color drained from Mamnen’s stoic face, but he held it strong regardless. “No, and I won’t be charged. It was deemed an accident.”
 
Ire began circling him again, dragging that accusing finger across Mamnen’s midsection. “You freely admit to me that you’re guilty of this. That’s so dangerous of you. Do you realize how many people in this town I could have come after you for that very thing?”
 
“You want me for something, so you won’t do a thing to me,” Mamnen hoped and determined. Ire laughed loudly again, gripping Mamnen’s shoulder and squeezing. Mamnen flinched at the sheer magnitude of his strength and began to shift a bit at how strong the smell of sulfur was. “Well, how about it? Why watch me?”
 
“Because you needed me.”
 
“I didn’t–don’t need you. Or any devil.”
 
Ire lowered his chin, furrowed his brow and smiled crookedly at him, knowingly. “Now that’s just not true. But if not me, then who? Which devil does Mammy truly need?” Pacing around him again. “Who is it that he longs for? Searches for? Whose devilish influence calls to him like a flame if not me?”
 
“You know where Atka is.”
 
“WRONG!” Ire interrupted. “I don’t need to know where she is, because she is hardly the twin flame for someone like you. You’ve seen it yourself. She’s passionate, loyal, uncontrolled and between the two of us, she’s kind of a b-i-t-c-h to you.” Mamnen looked at the ground, chin falling right into Ire’s cupped hand. He lifted it so that their eyes met again, and continued, “All your training of her, your love, your advice and it’s disregarded in a second at the first opportunity of rebellion. She never should’ve not heeded your warning about the Ring of Dex! You knew then that I had nothing to do with your mother’s role in Baator.”
 
“You didn’t?” Mamnen verified. Ire cackled and released his nephew’s chin to a joking shrug. “You don’t know?”
 
“I don’t make decisions in Baator; I follow my own path. I was to keep her to her promises, and once I found her again, I did just that. You knew. You told Atka yourself. ‘Have you considered that Mom wasn’t under contract?’”
 
“Holy shit, I was right!” Mamnen said under his breath. He meant to sit back down on the couch, but Ire grabbed his shoulders and steadied him. Mamnen’s jaw dropped a bit and he stared at him. “What?” he asked in disbelief.
 
“Nephew Mamnen, there were many red flags for you in regards to your twin that I want to help you cut. 1) She fought you daily. You trained her not to, and she pushed back daily. She always thirsted for more offensive training, more brawling training, more weapons training–females! They don’t need that.
 
“2) Your word was never enough. She didn’t believe you about the fighting, she didn’t believe you about Jone’s lot, she didn’t believe you about Waterdeep, she didn’t believe you that the consequences of her doing such things would land her in the lot she got–”
 
“Did you…have a hand in that?” Mamnen asked curiously. Ire showed him his palms, grinning, sunken eyes burrowing into Mamnen’s worried gaze.
 
“Look at my hands. No dirt on them there. I may influence this plane, but I don’t play without contracts. 3) She trusted Kira Jerty over you. 4)--”
 
“She did, didn’t she?” Mamnen dropped his shoulders and sank down slowly into the couch. They weren’t even five hours away from the farm, and she fought in public, and then sheathed her sword before knowing if Kira was still a threat, and then went with Kira to the Ring of Dex over his advising her not to.
 
Ire’s voice lowered as he drifted down to his knees, a thin tail flicking softly behind him. “4) She severed your empathetic twin connection about a year after leaving so you couldn’t find her.”
 
Mamnen snapped his eyes up to Ire’s and said, “She didn’t!”
 
“You tell me.”
 
“I can’t feel her anymore. I haven’t been able to ever since my telekinesis started.”
 
“Funny how you have a moment of exceptionality and she cuts you off. Do you suppose she felt it and–”
 
“Reacted in–”
 
“Jealousy.” Ire finished for him. “Yes, I believe that’s exactly what I would say. She’s so reactive, your twin. I bet she felt your powers surge and she grew to feel that anger she felt at you all over again and in a fit of her own, she shut you out.”
 
“But… what can I do about it?”
 
Ire placed both hands on each of Mamnen’s knees, pursing his lips and looking up to the right as he pondered. “Yes, what can you do? What can we do?”
 
Mamnen inhaled sharply at the prospect. Ire was going to help him. But with what? He wasn’t sure he wanted to free Atka now, if those flags he mentioned were true. They were, at the very least, plausible.
 
“What would you suggest I do?” Mamnen inquired hesitantly.
 
Ire grinned broadly, slid his hands up Mamnen’s legs to hug him around the waist and got very close to his face. “Dear quarter-nephew, I am not one for sentiment, nor am I one to play the helping hand, so if I were you, I’d play the selfish card and do whatever in hell I want.”
 
“But what do I want if not to free her?” Mamnen wasn’t sure what to do with his arms so he just kept them raised, careful not to touch the devil holding him. One of his horns was thicker than Mamnen’s visage. It freaked him out a bit.
 
“What could you do to be free of her?”
 
“That’s not what I asked,” Mamnen clarified to which Ire quickly replied,
 
“It’s what I asked. Mamnen, have you ever thought about where you’d be if you truly aligned yourself with yourself?”
 
“I don’t understand,” he was ashamed to admit because he was smart, but he was also intrigued enough to risk being chastised by his uncle. None such beratement came.
 
“What could you do if you were able to do whatever inspired you in that moment, without thought of consequences or influences? Mamnen alone. I have a feeling if you disavowed yourself from this twin flame of yours, and nurtured your own abilities–”
 
“Be my own flame?”
 
Ire leaned back, fingers floating from Mamnen’s lower back to rest on his waist as Ire debated his response. “Not exactly.”
 
“Then…?”
 
Ire studied him, face cocked to the side so that he looked at him out of the narrows of his eyes. He waited for Mamnen to figure something out. He waited and waited until Mamnen covered his own mouth with both hands.
 
“You?”
 
Ire’s chagrin was palpable.
 
“You want to help me detangle from the attachment of my sister and nurture my twin ability by harnessing part of your ‘flame’ to me?”
 
“You are the exceptional one here.”
 
Mamnen was silently staring at him. But Ire didn’t move. The young tiefling leaned back, dropping his arms onto his own lap between Ire’s protective arms at his sides, and he exhaled deeply. He was tempted by this, he admitted, but he remembered still he was dealing with a powerful devil…
 
“You’re doubting my motives.”
 
“You said you don’t influence this plane without contracts. You and I don’t have one–”
 
“Oh, we don’t?” Ire stood up and pulled from the pocket of his pants a small scroll case with a rolled up piece of parchment. He began to read, most likely from the bottom, “And if I should bear children and any of them show promise for the work, I leave them to your care and direction should anything happen to me.”
 
“My mother contracted future children? Us?”
 
“You.”
 
“Me.” Mamnen was enraged suddenly but was immediately disarmed when Ire’s large hand engulfed his head, horns and all.
 
“Not the time, place, or company for that aura shift, quarter-nephew.” He removed his hand after stroking Mamnen’s hair twice. “I am an accomplished care and direction leader. I fulfill my duty with pride, even love.”
 
“Can devils love?”
 
“Can you love?”
 
“Well, yes–”
 
“Then yes, devils can love.” Ire clicked his tongue as if it was obvious. Mamnen wasn’t even angry that this time he was linked to a devil. He had accepted that he was in part. He was accepting that Atka was too, despite her not fitting the “showing promise” role that bound Ire to assisting her. As he pondered that, he could not help but grin. He showed promise according to his mother, according to Ire, where Atka and Vereella seemed not to.
 
“So, do you want my assistance or not? I’m like a vampire; you have to invite me in.”
 
“Um, alright? That’s awkward,” Mamnen stammered, “Yes, uncle, I would like to see my potential through to its maximum by linking your flame to my own.” Ire’s chagrin returned in its palpable state. “What do I have to do to start?”
 
“Let’s say… we shake on it and my flame will seep into you at a rate you can tolerate.”
 
“At a rate I can tolerate?”
 
“Think of it like kindling growing into a blaze. It starts with a flicker and as you feed it, it grows,” Ire explained and then slowly extended his hand. “Have we got a deal, Mamnen?”
 
Mamnen felt like he knew the terms and there wasn’t a downside. His soul was intact… Ire was contracted to help him. All he was doing was putting some of his connection with him. What harm could that do? Mamnen stood up, inhaled deeply as he stared at the extended, large hand, and reached out to grab it.
 
Their palms touched, fingers curled around the other’s hand, and it felt warm momentarily so Mamnen closed his eyes to see when he felt different. When he opened them in a second, he stood alone, arm outstretched in the room. “Uncle?” he asked and looked around, finding no sign of a portal or an open window or door. “Hm.” He looked at his hand and gasped, finding a red, inscripted rune on his palm. Having no idea what that was, if it did something, or would be recognized, he sought out gloves.
 
What was done, was done.