by Evan Currie
Elan shuddered, looking away before she lifted her arms and slid back into the second form.
*****
Krovak stalked along behind the two trackers who were making their way through the streets of the demon city. They weren’t having the easiest time of things, that much was clear. The traffic ruined the tracks more often than not, leading them to be lost and have to circle looking for somewhere to pick them up again, and the press of demons and filth in the streets did much the same for the scent trail.
Between the pair, however, he was confident that they were making real progress.
The trail had led away from the center of the city, out to the old docks that were open to the ocean air and weather. It wasn’t a comfortable place for many demons and was more in keeping with the slave residences, though not all in the circles had issues with either salt or moving water. He and the trackers were among those who could operate well enough in the uncomfortable environment, but most simply preferred to stay within the sheltered walls of the former metropolis.
It made sense, really. If there were a place where a real human resistance was forming up within the demon city, it would be out on the docking spires that stretched out into the waves. On the plus side, for him and the trackers at least, that salt air cleaned away many of the residual scents that were fouling the trail and made the losses less frequent as they moved farther out to the edges of the city.
Unfortunately, being open to the elements wiped away much of the crud and filth that they had been using to track, which had been more reliable up until that point. In many places now, the ground was down to bare metal and stone, leaving no trace of passage, whether one was human or demon. Gose was more often lost now than otherwise, following Wolf’s nose right alongside Krovak.
“This is slave territory,” Gose said. “Lower demons are known to . . . vanish here if they come without sufficient numbers.”
“I’m no Ninth Circle husk, rotting his flesh off and begging for death,” Krovak rumbled in response. “Nor are you.”
“I know that,” Gose said, then flicked his eyes over to the shadows, where forms could be seen looking on from hiding. “But do they?”
“They’ll learn if they don’t.”
Gose gave him an uncertain look but apparently decided that was enough and shut up about it. Krovak merely let his gaze sweep the shadows, and the forms vanished, scuttling off like the worthless vermin they were.
*****
Elan was working on the fourth form when a sound caused her to stop, and she looked over to see someone run in and whisper something to Brokkr and Jol, who were working on the other side of the room. The two immediately stopped what they were doing and started over.
“What is it?” Sindri asked, twisting in their direction, which surprised Elan, as she hadn’t thought he could see them in his previous position.
“Demons coming into this sector,” Jol said. “Three of them, moving a lot farther in than most are comfortable with.”
“Really? I suppose we should have a look then,” Sindri said.
Elan cocked her head to one side, calling up the city security feeds. It was simplicity itself to locate the feeds off her current position, and in short order she found the demons moving through the street.
“They’re coming this way,” she said, eyes unfocused. “Three of them, like you said. Two look . . . weak. The other does not.”
Sindri and Brokkr exchanged glances, but it was Sindri who spoke.
“The strong one, what does he look like?”
“Rough skin, like hide that’s been in the sun too long,” Elan answered. “Tall, strong. Broad across the shoulders, with spiked bones sticking from his shoulders, elbows, and other places.”
Brokkr frowned. “Seven feet tall, you think? Built like a beast, with a torn-up face to match?”
Elan looked at him oddly. “You just described most demons I’ve encountered, but yes to all three.”
“Probably Krovak,” Brokkr said, ignoring the rest of her statement. “He’s the sort that would get a dirty job for her.”
“Well, if it’s him, we have trouble,” Sindri said. “Only one reason he’d be out this far in the docks.”
The two looked over at Elan briefly.
“Me?”
“You blew a hole in a building, girl.” Sindri chuckled dryly. “That attracts attention.”
“Bad attention, if it’s Krovak,” Brokkr grumbled. “That old forner would recognize the signature of her weapon if anyone in this forsaken city would. He fought in the tail end of the war, when things got ugly. That’s one who enjoys killing humans in a way even most demons don’t. Not that he ever was a beauty, but that face of his is courtesy of a human with an iron knife. He made a mistake, underestimating that one. Far as I know, he never did again.”
“We’ll have to move her out of here,” Sindri said. “They’ll have to have called in trackers if they followed us back this far. Good ones too.”
“I’ll take care of them,” Jol said quietly from where he was standing.
“Don’t be foolish, boy,” Brokkr snapped. “Krovak would take you apart.”
Jol shot him an irritated look but kept his peace.
“I can get past them on my own,” Elan said, closing her armor entirely and picking up the tattered old cloak. “There are only three of them, and I can see everything they do. It will not be hard.”
Brokkr looked at her sourly, as though he wanted to object, but Sindri just sighed.
“She’s probably right. The girl is clearly plugged into the old security network,” he offered up.
“Sure, but how much of it is still intact?” Brokkr challenged. “There have to be dead zones.”
“There are,” Elan said. “Many of them. I will try to stay clear of them.”
“Still a problem,” Jol said, drawing their attention.
The three looked at him, confused.
“Well, boy?” Brokkr asked. “Other than the obvious ones, what do you see?”
“Trackers,” Jol said simply. “I don’t know why you didn’t ask her about it—maybe it’s too obvious for you—but there aren’t many ways into this city, and you both know it. No ways in or out for a human, in fact, unless you’re escorted by a lower-circle demon. She has a way. They’ll follow her to it and close it.”
The two brothers hissed softly, both looking a little chagrined at having missed that possibility.
“Boy has a point,” Brokkr said. “Could save a lot of lives.”
Sindri looked at Elan. “Maybe. Do we just kill the trackers? Or try to foul the trail?”
“Both,” Elan surprised them by answering. “First we kill them, all three, and then we foul the trail.”
Sindri grinned. “You think big, girl, I’ll give you that.”
She checked her sidearm, getting a cheerful green light that signaled its readiness to act, and slid it back into the holster on her hip before she looked up.
“I’m going to see every demon on this world dead,” Elan said with dull eyes as she looked back at them. “Moving them to the front of the list isn’t thinking big; it’s just shifting priorities.”
*****
The sky was a disgusting shade of blue, and the wind smelled of salt and something he couldn’t place. Whatever it was, Krovak didn’t much like it. Any of it, frankly. The sun burned even his flesh, though less than most demons, and the salt did much the same to his nose, mouth, and lungs.
There was a reason he’d avoided coming this far out of the city proper, a reason why most demons just avoided it entirely. It had become a haven for the human slaves that did most of the work in the demon city. He tolerated them, the way one might tolerate cattle, but being this close to so many left him seething inside.
Still, they weren’t his assignment, and the one thing he took more seriously than his hate was assignments from her. All the more if that assignment was to locate a real human warrior, rather than the pitiful livestock their descendants had
allowed themselves to become.
The slaves had fled before them anyway, leaving the streets open, both clear and clean. It was an odd feeling to be wandering through streets so empty and without any trace of habitation. The wind whistled through the buildings. An occasional bit of clutter would blow along in front of them as they walked.
“Are you sure you still have the scent?” he demanded as Wolf paused to sniff at the air and look around briefly.
“Barely,” Wolf grunted. “The salt is ruining my nose. If we don’t find them soon, I’ll be of no use in this—or anything else—for at least a week.”
“Then find them, fast, and you’ll get your week on my authority,” Krovak snarled. “Lose them, though, and that week will be a horror you’ll not soon forget.”
Wolf hissed at him but twisted and sniffed again before responding, “That way.” The hirsute demon pointed.
Krovak looked and saw that it was a door that led inward.
“Finally,” he growled, “we can get out of this forsaken sun and salt air.”
The trio headed for the door and were almost there when Wolf stopped dead and caused the other two to haul up short as well to keep from running into the back of him.
“What is it?” Krovak snapped, irritated.
“We’re not alone,” the tracker hissed. “The scent just got a lot stronger, and it’s not coming from inside.”
He sniffed again at the air, then twisted around into the wind blowing from the city. Krovak and Gose turned as well, eyes widening as a single figure stood there in the center of the thoroughfare.
It was a human, Krovak recognized instantly, though a smaller one and a female, he thought. He recognized the armor instantly and the weapon on the human’s hip as the damned little beast stood there, clearly challenging them as the wind set her cloak billowing. The human’s hand dropped to the weapon, resting easily on the grip as her hair flowed in the wind.
Krovak spread his hands wide, roaring to the skies as the two trackers split away from him quickly. Gose went for his weapons, while Wolf howled like his namesake and dropped to all fours.
“Come on then,” the human called clearly. “I have something here for each of you.”
Chapter 13
Simone shook her head as she spread on the table the rough sketches of the plans provided for her by Merlin.
“We can’t move enough people,” she said tiredly, having spent hours trying over and over to find a way to make the plans work. “The boats we’ve made can move a few dozen, maximum. It’ll take multiple crossings and several days, even going all day and night, to move even the limited forces we have . . . and even with that, I have to agree with your assessment. It would not be enough.”
“I am aware,” Merlin responded, his own tone even and unchanged from normal despite a deep inner weariness that matched what he was seeing in the woman across from him. “Nothing I have calculated gives us much better than an even chance of disrupting their plans. Surviving afterward is far less than that.”
“Survival would be a nice bonus,” Simone said acerbically before sighing and straightening up from where she had been leaning over the plans. She pushed her hair out of her face. “What about Elan?”
“What about her?” Merlin countered.
“Is she alright?”
His attention flicked for a moment. “She’s fine at this point, though the foolish girl seems intent on challenging an entire city of demons on her own, so I am not certain how long that will last. She’s acquired . . . allies perhaps? Not enemies, at least.”
“She’s good at that.” Simone smiled.
“She’s better at acquiring enemies, it seems,” Merlin said with a hint of a frown. “She’s caused a minor stir among the residents of the city. They’re tracking her, I believe.”
“Can you warn her?”
“If I must,” Merlin answered. “However, I would prefer she learn as much as possible, so I will not intervene unless I consider her at significant risk without my help.”
“She’s in the middle of a demonic city. How significant do you need it to be?” Simone challenged him dryly.
“By her choice and against my advice,” he replied firmly. “So much of the risk is beyond my ability to mitigate. I will only intervene if I judge there to be something I can do that she needs doing, as opposed to merely making it easier on her. Hard lessons teach best.”
Simone grimaced, wanting to challenge him, but she knew it was true. She wasn’t certain that his definition of risk lined up at all with her own . . . but there was little she could do to really change the entity’s mind.
For the moment, that meant she was best served focusing on the task at hand.
“What are the demons doing now?” she asked. “Locally, I mean.”
Merlin shifted focus, glancing to one side as imagery appeared in midair for them to examine.
Simone stepped around the table to look closer, pointing to the small demon at the center of most of the images. “I’ve never seen a demon like that.”
“Count yourself lucky then,” Merlin responded. “Our best information places them as what we would call high-ranked specialists . . . by the standards of my time. ‘Rune practitioners’ is the best translation we ever got for their speciality and title. No human force that went after one of them without the advantage of surprise ever survived to return. They are known for being able to prepare a battlefield to their advantage given even the slightest of lead times.”
“They’re that powerful?” Simone was shocked. She’d seen what Elan could do with the weapons of Merlin’s time. The very idea that there were demons that dangerous to what she assumed had to be more effective warriors with the same weapons was . . . frightening.
“Not in the way you likely imagine,” Merlin said. “Physically, they’re frail. I suspect you could easily kill one if you got close enough. They have very little direct power. It is their mastery of the quantum language they call runes that makes them deadly.”
“A language?”
“Of the universe, one might say,” Merlin said. “Humans once believed that the language of the universe was mathematics . . . that everything could be quantified, analyzed, and explained with numbers alone. They were . . . almost right.”
He brought one of the screens in closer, showing the fine detail of the engraving the scrawny demon was painstakingly setting into the stone with tools and its bare hands. She watched, disturbed by the smoke rising from its fingers as it traced the lines it had just carved.
“Numbers may be used to explain the universe,” Merlin said. “However, the true language of the universe is below the quantum level. It exists on sizes and scales so tiny and large that you quite literally cannot possibly have any conception of them. It would take me at least a decade, more likely two, just to instruct you in enough knowledge for you to begin understanding the scales involved. For now, I will simply say that this particular language exists on a scale so small that the width of a single human is gargantuan by comparison.”
“If it’s so small, how is he writing it?” she asked, pointing to the engravings on the stone before them.
“He isn’t, not really,” Merlin hedged. “He is engraving a symbol that creates a sympathetic harmony with the concept he wishes to reference. It is a principle of what demons call magic and was defined by humans as the similarity principle. By linking two similar things, they can affect one another. Demons use this as a tool, a weapon, many things. Humans once referred to it as entwining, which is a better description, but never truly developed it as a practical tool.”
“What can it do?”
“The unimaginable,” Merlin answered grimly. “It can cause rock to decide that floating in midair would be a fine idea . . . blood to choose to boil, air to turn to liquid . . . or any number of other things. Give one of those time to prepare, and only those who wish to die should consider venturing an attack against them.”
“Can you tell what it will do here?” she
asked then.
“Only in part,” Merlin said. “Certainly it will open a portal . . . a doorway to another dimension, where presumably it will summon these . . . elder. Beyond that, I am uncertain. Based on everything I have been able to gather, both from my own archives and from what Elan has been discovering, this would be a very bad thing indeed.”
“Then we must stop it.”
“Indeed. However, I do not see how we might.”
*****
Overseeing assignments from the circles was never what one might call a warm affair. Dealing with rune-masters, however, was a completely different level of the sort of unnatural twisting of the universe that had become largely accepted as normal by those such as Tel.
As the master worked, Tel could feel the nature of the area around them churning in protest.
A screaming from behind him caused Tel to spin, his four eyes wide as he saw a massive shark had burst from the surf and grabbed a demon foolish enough to be standing that close. The beast chomped twice, then regurgitated the demon back to the sand before flopping back into the water and vanishing into the surf from whence it came.
“Everyone be on guard!” he snarled. “No more foolish losses, damn it!”
That was an unlikely hope, but he had to issue the order anyway.
“Let the beasts eat their fill,” the rune-master rasped from where the small demon was curled up and working on the stone. “Shortly they will fall to the yoke as everything else will. Just keep them away from the standing stones while I work.”
Tel hesitated, but there was really nothing else he could do.
He nodded firmly. “Very well.” He stepped away, waving in his forces. “Guard the stones. Nothing passes.”
They moved quickly to follow orders; most of them had no choice. Ninth Circle demons had nothing that even resembled free will, as the change had totally broken their minds and nothing had yet managed to rebuild itself from that inevitable mess. Even many circles lower than the Ninth had little enough will of their own, except in extreme situations.
