by Paul S. Kemp
Still alive? How can that be? he wondered.
He had expected to awaken in whatever happy afterlife awaited servants of the Trickster. Brandobaris’s teachings were frustratingly, and Jak suspected, deliberately, vague on this point—but he knew from the aches in his body that he was still composed of flesh and bone, not spirit.
Surprising, he thought. He knew the gates in the guildhouse to be voids, empty pits in reality that ate away at his home plane like pools of acid. He had assumed that flesh-and-blood beings could not withstand contact with them, and had figured physical death in the gate a better fate than the death of his soul at the hands of the shadow demon. But he hadn’t died, and here he was.
Wherever here was.
He dared not open his eyes, at least not yet. He knew from the smell in the air and the coarse earth beneath his body that here had to be some demonic wasteland of the sort he had heard of in adventurers’ tales. He was not yet ready to face that.
He took mental stock of his body and realized with alarm that breathing came only with difficulty. His muscles, his body, and his very soul felt dulled, like a once-colorful painting faded by time and sunlight to drabness. His brain felt sluggish, his thoughts thick and muddy. A side effect of passing through the gate, he assumed. Yet he was alive! His hand fumbled ineptly for the luckstone at his waist.
The Lady still favors us, Cale—
His happiness at finding himself alive vanished. Jak had left Cale back in the guildhouse, left him alone with the shadow demon helpless on the wall, left him alone to feed the demon with his soul.
I’m sorry, Erevis, he thought, and tears trickled out from under his closed eyelids. I couldn’t die like the Soargyls. I couldn’t be drained by the demon into dried hunks of soulless flesh. I just couldn’t.
But I left Cale to die that way, he accused. He hadn’t planned it that way, he just hadn’t wanted to die that way himself. He realized now what he had done and the realization pained him beyond measure. Cale could not have survived on that wall.
More tears leaked out, ran along his hairline, and pooled in his ears. They did nothing to quiet the accusatory voice he heard in his head. He didn’t try to fight the grief and the guilt. He couldn’t fight it. He had abandoned his best friend to an ugly death.
I’m sorry, Erevis.
He had known Cale for over ten years, and had never met a man more loyal to his friends, or more fearless in the face of danger. Cale had lived for so long on the fine line that separated life from death that he walked it with the practiced ease of a festival acrobat on a tightrope. Jak had loved him like a brother and abandoned him like a coward.
I’m sorry, my friend.
He lay still and let the tears flow until the pangs of guilt began to dull. He had to get up, to try to find a way back. If their situations had been reversed, Cale would have carried on. Jak would, too. He would take up Cale’s cause as his own. Yrsillar had one more death to account for.
He forced his sluggish lungs to draw in a deep breath. The acrid air left a foul grit on his tongue that tasted sulfurous and smoky. He cleared his throat to fight off a fit of coughing. Ready, he sat up with a slight grunt and snapped his eyes open.
I should’ve kept them closed, he immediately reprimanded himself.
As he had suspected and feared, a wasteland of coarse gray ash surrounded him in all directions. It rolled in dunes in the ceaseless breeze like sand in a great desert. Jagged slabs of basalt as sharp as spear tips occasionally jutted through the ash, tombstones in a graveyard that extended for infinity. No plants and no life. A wasteland of emptiness. There was no sign anywhere of the gate he had traveled through. The trip here was one-way. He was trapped.
I’m in the Abyss, he thought. Yrsillar’s home plane. The realization hit him hard and made him weak.
He looked skyward to see an unbroken blanket of soot-colored clouds as lifeless and gray as the sea of ash under his feet. Occasionally, flashes of sickly blue—the color of ghoul flesh—backlit the sky. Rather than enlivening the sky, the sudden, silent bursts of color served only to accent the drab desolation of the gloom.
Low on the horizon hung a gigantic vortex of swirling nothingness. A maelstrom that was a mirror image of the gates in the guildhouse but magnified in size a thousand-fold. Streaks of ochre and viridian mixed with the gray and churned toward the empty center of oblivion. No sun or moon hung in the slate sky. Jak felt certain that this hellish realm had never seen the light of a sun, that it stood forever illumined in only perpetual twilight. He clambered to his feet and brushed a stray hair out of his eyes. When he did, he saw—“What in the …”
Wisps of white vapor steamed from his exposed skin like smoke from a leaf fire. Dumbfounded for a moment, he merely stared. Contrary to the direction of the wind, the vapor rose from his flesh and floated inexorably toward the vortex in the sky as though drawn by a lodestone. Then the realization dawned on him. My soul is slipping away.
Small wonder he felt so torpid. The negative energy of the maelstrom would eat his life just as surely as the demons that dwelled here. Thankfully, he had prepared for something similar back at Brilla’s place.
Hurriedly, he pulled forth his holy symbol. The green tourmaline in the eagle’s talon looked so dull as to appear nearly black. He began to incant the syllables to a spell that would protect him from negative energy. He had memorized the spell several times to protect himself and Cale when they fought the demon, but he thought it would work equally well against the pull of the maelstrom.
He began to cast, but stumbled over the incantation. His voice sounded strangely muted. The unnatural gloom and ash-laden air strangled his voice the moment he made a sound.
Jak’s life-force leaked through his skin. He felt himself grow weaker with each heartbeat.
He cleared his throat and began again, louder this time. The vigor in his voice warred with the torpidity of the air. With great effort he forced out each magic-pregnant word, moved his holy symbol through the gray air to trace the appropriate sigils. His lungs heaved and sweat beaded his brow but he stubbornly plodded on.
At last he finished, and when he did, a golden glow took shape around him and sheathed his entire body. It crackled and popped energetically as its positive power held the negative energy of the void at bay.
“Interesting,” he observed, and held his arms before him for examination. Now protected by the golden aura of the spell, the white vapor no longer seeped from his pores. His flesh had lost its gray pallor and returned to normal. Equally important, he felt himself again. His mind and body once more moved with their habitual deftness. As long as his protective spell stayed in effect he would be safe from the draining effects of the energy maelstrom.
But how long will it last? he wondered nervously. The spell was supposed to protect him from creatures that used negative energy in a single concentrated attack, not from the persistent, slow-draining negative energy of an entire plane. He couldn’t know for certain, but from the way the golden aura sizzled, he did not think the spell would last long. He could cast it again, of course, but sooner or later, he would run out of protection.
“Unless I can find a way out of here.” Within the protective aura, his voice again sounded normal. He allowed himself a smile and enjoyed his small victory over an impossibly grim situation.
I’ll take them where I can get them, he thought, and ran his thumb over his holy symbol. You got anything to say? he thought to the Trickster.
“I didn’t think so,” he muttered irritably. “Have to rely on Lady Luck then.” He tapped the agate luckstone at his belt and scanned the landscape in all directions. Partially buried in the ash nearby, he spotted the short sword he had dropped through the gate back in the guildhouse. Smiling, he hurried over, picked it up, and sheathed it at his belt. Lady Luck had granted him another boon. It heartened him.
“There has to be another gate,” he softly chanted. “There has to be.”
Other than his blade, all around he saw
nothing but wasteland. Only the jagged black points of basalt that jutted from the ash broke the infinite expanse of gray. Nothing that looked like a gate. Nothing that looked like anything.
His good spirits began to fail him and despair began to threaten. He was alone, had never been more alone, and he could see no way to get out. The maelstrom hung threateningly in the soot sky like the mouth of a beast, twisting, churning, ready to grind his life into oblivion, waiting for his spell to expire so it could feed.
Tears began to well but he blinked them away. He struggled to quiet the hopeless voice in his head that told him to curl up in the dirt and accept death. By all the gods, he would not surrender!
“To the pits of the Nine Hells with giving up,” he said aloud, as much to steel his resolve as anything. He clutched the luckstone in his fist like a talisman of hope. “Anything more from you, Lady?”
Nothing.
He nodded, swallowed his despair, and began to walk. The direction didn’t matter.
One way is as good as another, he thought. He had to find a gate back to his plane soon. Otherwise, his soul would feed the beast.
He hadn’t taken five steps before an explosive surge of energy from behind blew him face first into the ground and made his ears ring. Clouds of ash whipped around him like a sandstorm.
Spitting the filth of the void from his mouth, Jak shielded his eyes from the onslaught of ash and looked over his shoulder. A sudden sound like tearing cloth broke the stillness. From a point six feet in the air above where Jak had been standing, the empty air split open. A hole the size of a door formed. Colors poured through.
The gate! his mind registered. He scrambled to his feet and ran for it. Before he could reach it, however, two bodies fell through the rift and hit the earth in an explosion of ash. Instantly, the gate collapsed in on itself and vanished with a soft pop.
“No!”
Cale stared up into a sky the color of slate. He lay on his back unmoving. The earth beneath him felt coarse, like the sands of the desert kingdom of Calimshan.
Where am I? he wondered.
He tried to move but his limbs felt like lead, too heavy to lift. His mind seemed muddled. He must have hit his head. A light mist steamed from his face, like that of a lathered steed in winter.
Am I sweating?
His mind was fuzzy. He remembered jumping from a wall and stabbing a shadow—
A distant voice pulled at him. “Cale! Cale!” He tried to lift his head but couldn’t. The voice remained insistent. “Erevis Cale!”
Suddenly, a form bent over him and a red-whiskered face took shape above. Jak! He tried to smile a greeting but his mouth didn’t work.
“Dark,” the little man oathed. He gripped Cale rudely by the face and looked with concern into his eyes.
Cale tried to say, I’m all right, but only managed to say, “Amgahh.” His damned mouth didn’t work right! What was wrong with him?
Piece yourself together, he ordered, but that seemed easier thought than done.
“Hang on, Cale,” said Jak, and let his head fall back to the soft ground. The little man pulled out his holy symbol and moved it over Cale’s body while mouthing a series of magical syllables. Abruptly, Jak jumped back in shock.
“How—”
A golden light took shape before Cale’s eyes. He came back to himself almost immediately. His mind cleared and his body felt lighter. He had killed the demon and fallen through the gate.
He sat up. Jak rushed forward and embraced him, nearly knocking him back down.
“Cale!” the little man happily exclaimed. “Dark, but I’m glad to see you.” A sparkling golden glow surrounded the little man and crackled like sizzling meat. Cale, as pleased to see Jak as Jak was to see him, returned his embrace.
“I’m glad to see you too, my friend.” He disengaged himself and stood. Only then did he recognize that he too was sheathed in a golden aura.
“What is this?” he asked Jak, and indicated the aura. While he watched, it sparked and sizzled like a bonfire in the rain.
“It’s a protective spell,” Jak replied. “Without it, this place would kill you. The whole plane drains souls, just like the shadow demon.”
Cale nodded. “That was quick thinking, little man, thanks.”
Jak gazed at him solemnly. “I didn’t cast it, Cale. I started to but didn’t finish.” He paused a heartbeat before adding, “You must’ve cast it.” His green eyes went to Cale’s right hand.
Cale’s gaze followed Jak’s. There in his hand, he unknowingly held the felt mask.
His stomach went topsy-turvy. His knees turned so weak he nearly fell down. Cast a spell? He couldn’t! He had made no commitment to Mask, had he? He looked to Jak, astonished.
“I don’t know how to cast spells.”
He sounded unconvincing even to himself. He didn’t know how, but he also intuitively knew that somehow he had. Or that the Shadowlord had cast it for him. In the end, he wasn’t sure if the difference was of any significance, and that thought made him very uncomfortable. He would not surrender himself to a god. He was his own man. Defeating Yrsillar was his task. His task alone.
Jak stepped forward and placed a small, commiserating hand on his shoulder. “Mask wants you badly, Erevis. You must be his Champion. It’s the call.”
Angry and frightened, Cale stuffed the felt mask back into his pocket. He couldn’t quite bring himself to discard it, though the temptation was strong.
“Feels less like a call and more like an order.” He clenched his fists and looked up into the churning maelstrom of nothingness that dominated the sky. “He’s saved me twice, Jak. Once in the shrine and once now. But I won’t bow down to him out of some sense of obligation. You understand?”
Jak smiled softly. “I do understand,” he replied. “I do. But in the end it’s not about obligation. You’ll come to realize that. Just … give it some time.”
Cale lowered his gaze from the soot sky. “I feel like I’m changing despite myself, Jak—” He fell silent when his eyes fell on the grotesque body that lay in the ash nearby. He swallowed down his gorge. Twisted and malformed, the flesh of the thin, winged carcass looked the bluish-gray color of something long dead. Long, wiry arms ended in a set of terrible, steel-gray claws as long as knife blades. A thin slit in the hairless oval of its head marked a mouth, and its round, milky eyes stared vacantly into the gray sky. A deep, bloodless gash—the wound from Cale’s enchanted long sword—split the corpse nearly in two, from its oval face to the center of its torso. Bloodless entrails hung from the hole like a ship’s rigging.
“The shadow demon,” Cale realized.
Jak gave a start and stared at the corpse in amazement. He poked it with his toe. It didn’t move. “You killed it. Back on our plane?”
Cale nodded grimly. “As I fell through the gate. It didn’t look like this, though. Didn’t feel like flesh, either.” He knelt and retrieved his enchanted long sword, which lay beside the corpse.
Jak studied the macabre corpse and stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “This is how its body must appear on this plane. Or at least how it chooses to appear on this plane.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Something from nothing. The shadow form must be how its kind manifests on our plane.” He poked it again with his boot. “Dark, but its uglier like this.”
Cale gave a hard smile. “It is,” he softly agreed. “Looks better dead, though.”
Jak giggled at that, but when his laughter died away he turned serious. His eyes found the ground and he kicked his boot in the ash.
“Cale, back at the guildhouse … I feel bad about …” he trailed off, took a deep breath, and started again. “I thought we were dead, Cale. I mean, I wasn’t trying to abandon you, I just—”
Cale knew what Jak intended to say. He stopped him with an upraised hand and a raised voice. “Dark, Jak, I know why you did it.” He gave the little man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Cale knew full well that Jak, of all people, would never abandon him
, at least not out of fear. Cale would not have the little man feeling guilty for doing something that most any man would have done. Cale knew too well the way guilt burdened a man’s soul.
“I’d have done the same thing,” he said, and meant it. “I thought we were dead too. I got lucky.”
Jak looked up and gave him a grateful, sheepish nod. “But we aren’t,” he said with a smile. “Dead, I mean.”
“No, we aren’t.” Cale looked around, took in for the first time the desolation that surrounded them. On all sides, a wasteland of gray extended for as far as he could see in the gloom. A whirlpool of emptiness hung in the gray sky just over the horizon line. A giant gate, he realized.
“Where in the Nine Hells are we?”
“Not the Nine Hells,” Jak replied matter-of-factly. “The Abyss. At least I think.” He nodded at the demon’s corpse. “This is its home plane. Yrsillar’s home plane too, I assume.”
Hearing Yrsillar’s name sent a wave of anger through Cale. He quelled it and tried to absorb what the little man had said.
He knew of the Abyss only through adventurers’ stories. Stories which always portrayed it as a chaotic place teeming with demons and alive with unspeakable horrors. This place, on the other hand, seemed utterly dead.
Jak pulled out his ivory-bowled pipe and chewed its end, though he didn’t light it.
“This isn’t what I would’ve expected,” Cale said after a moment. “Where are all the demons? The tortured souls writhing in agony? Surely Yrsillar and this thing,” he pointed with his blade at the demon’s corpse, “can’t be the only creatures that live here?”
Jak shrugged thoughtfully. “Maybe they are. The Abyss is made up of lots of different planes and this is an unusual one. The energy here seems to drain away life the instant it appears. Most everything that travels here would be dead in minutes, even most demons.” He nodded at the shadow demon’s corpse. “Creatures like that can obviously live here, or like Yrsillar. Certain kinds of undead too, I suppose. Those kinds of creatures don’t live like you and I live. They unlive. We’d be dead long since if not for the protective spells.”
