The Demon City

by Evan Currie

  “You’ll be called demon yourself, soon enough,” the rune specialist sneered at him, turning away to limp toward the stones again.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  That caused the demon to pause, looking back with a dark grin on its face. “That is something you’ll learn shortly, once the elder arrive. In the meantime, why don’t you just . . . hang in there?”

  The demon turned away again, but this time he didn’t respond when Caleb shouted.

  Caleb gritted his teeth. “Merlin, we need something here, and I am out of ideas.”

  “I wasn’t aware you ever had any in the first place,” Merlin responded with an amused tone.

  “I hope that bad sense of humor showing up means you have a plan!”

  Merlin gave the comment all the attention it deserved, completely ignoring it as he shifted his remaining probes into the location.

  “I will make an attempt to penetrate the shield with a probe now. Hold on,” he told Caleb seriously as he brought the probe in.

  “Exactly what else am I supposed to be doing?”

  With no reply forthcoming, all Caleb could do was wait to see if anything happened. At first he saw nothing, then there was a brief flash of light and a shower of sparks exploded over the stones.

  “I’m going to go ahead and assume that didn’t work as you hoped,” he said dryly as he considered his position.

  “Not . . . precisely, no,” Merlin answered.

  “Right. Okay, fine,” Caleb growled. “I am not giving up here.”

  “No one is giving up,” Merlin assured him. “Just give me a moment to evaluate alternate—what are you doing?”

  Caleb ignored him, digging his feet into a crevice in the stone as he let go with one hand and lunged upward, catching another grip. “I’m climbing.”

  Slowly, painfully slowly, he secured his position and then focused on another grip and wrenched himself “up” to where he could dig his fingers into the curve of the stone and pull his body along with it. A foot, an inch, or even less at a time, Caleb slowly pulled himself along the ground to get closer to the standing stones.

  “Caleb, the outer pressure on the armor is reaching critical levels,” Merlin told him.

  “I’m not stopping until this is done,” the boy gritted out.

  “Boy, if this field . . . whatever it is, if it cracks your suit now, you will die,” Merlin informed him tensely. “The human body cannot survive the level of pressure you’re currently experiencing.”

  Caleb reached out a shaking arm, slowly getting into position and grabbing another grip so he could pull himself up that few more inches.

  “Doesn’t. Matter,” Caleb gritted out through clenched teeth. “I won’t stop. Never gonna stop.”

  His arms were shaking violently, even in the armor, as he reached out again to curl his fingers into a ridge in the stone. He tried to steady an arm, bracing it against the ground as best he could, but even then he couldn’t stop the shake. He knew it would break his grip loose if he didn’t, so he paused and just tried to stop shaking.

  *****

  Merlin spotted the boy’s actions and realized what the problem was and what Caleb was trying to do, and it left him with a dilemma.

  If the boy failed to control the shaking of his muscles, he’d be broken loose from his position. The forces Merlin was monitoring would, without question, throw him back like a missile, but with the armor intact, he would likely survive the results.

  However, that would leave the stones intact and the battle lost.

  Alternatively, he could help the boy. Maybe the boy made it, maybe he destroyed the stones. At the current rate, his armor was going to crack. When that happened, it would be like transporting the boy twenty thousand feet underwater in an instant. He’d crack like an egg.

  The mission would be accomplished, however.

  Hesitation was uncharacteristic of Merlin, but normally he was dealing with triple-volunteer specialists who lived to do the job. Children were not his normal forces of choice, and the elemental intelligence despised the situation, but even so . . . he made his decision.

  “Caleb, I can steady your arm,” Merlin said. “It will lower the dexterity of your movement, however.”

  “Do it,” Caleb answered, not hesitating at all. “I’m going to shake myself right off my grip here.”

  “Done. Do you have the weapons material I provided before the mission?” Merlin asked.

  “Some of it, just my portion.”

  Merlin sighed. “It will have to do. It should do. Alright, I’ll highlight the weakest points of the stones. Get there, attach the material, and then get clear.”

  *****

  “Got it, thanks,” Caleb said as the shaking of his arm stopped.

  Rather, the shaking of his armor stopped. His arm was still vibrating inside the suit like crazy, but the armor itself was rock steady. He took a breath and continued crawling forward against the force trying to stop him.

  The sickly-looking demon cocked its head, turning back in his direction.

  “Fascinating,” the demon said. “You should be dead by now.”

  The demon sounded honestly curious as it stepped casually over toward him and crouched down, looking closer.

  “Is it your clothing?” the demon asked. “I see no runic etching, but some armor has it on the interior. Strength enhancement? No, it would require more than that. Your eyes should have popped in your skull by this point. Curious. I’ll be sure to recover your armor when this ends. It will make interesting study.”

  Caleb ignored the smug prick.

  Gripping tightly to the stone ground, Caleb crawled his legs up until he was crouched in place. It felt bizarre—everything in his brain was telling him that the ground was down—but this armor and the strain was pushing him horizontally away from the stones with an incredible force. He felt a sweeping dizziness attack his senses and immediately tried to push it down, steadying himself before he looked over to the side at the closest stone.

  He took a breath, and then Caleb jumped.

  All the enhanced strength of the armor was pushed to the limits as Caleb jumped just a few scant inches off the ground and flung himself horizontally a dozen feet, slamming into the stone and grabbing at it desperately as he started to slide off.

  “Hey! Get away from there!” the demon snarled, now no longer amused.

  “Screw you,” Caleb muttered, hanging on to the rock desperately as the force tried to flatten him against the massive stone. He started to push himself up, but Merlin immediately cut him off.

  “Do not stand up,” Merlin said urgently. “If you concentrate that force onto your legs, you will compromise the structural integrity of the armor. Lie as flat as possible; spread out the force.”

  “I can’t move if I lie flat!”

  “You can’t move if your knees pop and your armor implodes, either,” Merlin snapped. “Set the charge at the base of the stone. It will have to do.”

  “I can do more,” Caleb ground out.

  “No, you cannot. Set. The. Charge.”

  Caleb growled, the sound turning into a wordless, meaningless yell . . . but finally he gave up and painfully reached back for the charge. He slapped it hard into the base of the stone as the sickly-looking demon ran over, waving its arms and screaming something that Caleb didn’t understand and didn’t care to try.

  “I’ve set the detonation sequence,” Merlin told him. “Get out of there.”

  Caleb flopped over on his back, upside-down, pressed against the stone, and flipped a rude gesture to the approaching demon. He grinned under the helm, though he knew the demon couldn’t see him, and his voice was cheerful when he spoke.

  “Go to hells. Tell ’em the Atlanteans sent you. Don’t worry,” Caleb said clearly. “You won’t be alone.”

  He had a moment to enjoy the enraged look on the demon’s face as it charged toward him, then Caleb rolled off the stone and felt the pressure explode into motion as he was flung out
and away from the circle just as Merlin blew the explosives he’d planted.

  Everything went red for a moment as he spun wildly in the air, then cleared up just in time for Caleb to see the jungle rapidly approaching . . . and then it all went black.

  Chapter 24

  The fighting was brutal on a level Elan had never really experienced, short of her very first fight perhaps, though this time the tables were turned.

  Stepping up and giving orders, getting the rioters back into some form of organization, had quickly made her a primary target of the rest of the demons in the area. The more dangerous ones in particular were intent on continuing this strategy of eliminating the leaders of the riot wherever they were spotted.

  Elan had recognized that early on and decided to take advantage of it.

  With staff in hand, she faced off against the first line of demons as they charged in. The metal of her weapon gleamed in the light of the burning fires as she spun it about and whipped it viciously into the faces of her attackers. Bones cracked, flesh tore, and the screams of the injured managed to drown out the sound of the riot in her vicinity.

  She raged against her enemy, but the part of her that had been growing since the night her parents died reveled in the violence that swirled about her. A small part of her mind knew that when the fighting was over, she would not be nearly so happy with her responses. In the moment, however, Elan could not bring herself to care.

  She swept the staff back and forth, felling demon after demon sent after her, and felt a joyous glee in it.

  These creatures had invaded her world.

  They had destroyed the society she should have been part of by birthright.

  The monsters had terrified the human race into near submission.

  They killed my parents.

  She found no pity and no mercy in her soul for the demons, and she knew that while she might regret her own satisfaction at some point later, she would not regret that. They offered no mercy, and so she would offer none in return.

  The combat was intense all around her, demons literally fighting their way over the bodies of the dead to get to her, but in the process they had lightened the pressure on everyone else. Elan stood in the midst of growing piles of bodies and used them to her advantage with vicious efficiency. In order to get at her, any demon had to sacrifice footing and focus, often looking down to ensure they didn’t trip or stumble, and in the midst of that distraction, more than one died at her end of her staff.

  “Stand and fight!” she heard Brokkr cajoling the others behind her. “Or will you let a child stand for you?”

  Her focus was on the fight as she stood her ground and defended the few square feet of the city she had claimed as her own, but in her periphery vision, Elan could see and hear weapons being picked up from the ground, men and women regrouping, and the fighting being rejoined.

  She had lost count of her kills, but as she dropped another demon—one of the shambling, weak ones almost crippled by the change, despite its rage and hunger for violence and death—Elan felt people push in on either side of her, and then the pressure lessened on her as well. Her arms and legs burned, as did her lungs, but she refused to slow and pushed through it as she looked on to the next target.

  Elan knew that if she stopped now, she would likely not be able to move again.

  “Push them back!” she ordered over the din, surprised when her voice didn’t crack from exhaustion. “Make them run for their miserable lives or make them dead on the ground!”

  *****

  Brokkr watched, amused at the responses the girl had cultivated with that statement.

  There were shocked looks on both sides of the line, faces of humans and demons alike who were startled right out of their complacency by a human willing to utter something so provocative in the face of a fight to the death, both types of which tickled Brokkr to the core such that he had to hold back the maniacal giggles that threatened to break out.

  More interesting was the honest and naked fear he saw on a very few of the demons’ faces . . . and the similarly naked bloodlust on a very few of the humans’ visages.

  Seems that Sindri was right. There’s a real undercurrent of rebellion here. I did not think the humans had it in them anymore. It is good to see.

  After so long of watching them grovel, there was something satisfying about watching the humans stand up for once.

  *****

  Finding any sort of leadership for the revolt was nigh onto impossible. For the most part, the fighting had sprung up organically and spread like a viral infestation across the populace of the city. So Sindri didn’t bother looking for leaders. Instead, he set out to both make leaders and have Jol take leadership.

  It was easy, as such things went. Jol was a known face in the city, one that had often been derided publicly in the past specifically due to his refusal to bow to the demons’ oppression. That had been a liability for the young man in the past, crippling his social acumen, as so few people wanted to have anything to do with him. But now? That reputation elevated him to whole new levels.

  Of course, while Jol would be able to lead them in the moment, the second the fighting was over, he would not only have no political capital to speak of with the various groups, but he’d have no idea how to leverage his newfound reputation into capital. He’d spent too many years publicly looking down on his fellows for them to feel anything more than a distant gratitude to him now.

  That, however, was a problem for the future.

  While there was fighting afoot, Jol had no problem drawing in people to follow him, and Sindri played shamelessly on that with every group they met. Less than an hour after splitting from Elan and Brokkr, the pair had gathered a mob—Sindri refused to call them anything else, especially an army—of several hundred at least, flooding the streets in places as they swarmed over the uncoordinated demons that were still expecting things to be business as usual.

  He could see that was changing.

  *****

  Jolinr held up a fist, bringing the group behind him to a stop as he looked at the group of demons that had just stepped into their path from side streets up ahead.

  “Why are we stopping?” one of the angrier men behind him snarled. “Kill them all!”

  Jol said nothing. He just hefted his hammer as he eyed the group.

  “What are you stopping for?”

  “Group leader is a Fifth Circle,” Jol said finally. “He’s a commander, the lady’s own.”

  “So what?” the man demanded.

  “So that’s only a quarter of his command,” Jol said before glancing around. “Watch for ambush.”

  Murmurs filtered back through the crowd, and Jol emphasized his words by gesturing in both directions and directing the attentions of the group to the side as the lead demon laughed and stepped forward.

  “I should be less surprised to see you, Jol,” the demon rumbled, clearly amused. “I expected that you’d be on your knees before Her Lady.”

  “That bitch is no lady,” Jol returned, “and while I may have been her toy in my time, that’s only because she had standards. The rest of you fell well below them.”

  The commander growled. “You’d do well to learn respect, human.”

  “Respect a demon?” Jol laughed. “You’re all filth that can’t even maintain the city you captured. Look around. The only reason the towers are standing is because of human slaves. You rot and you corrupt, and you bring nothing into the world other than death.”

  “Your death and the death of your entire world,” the demon commander sneered, “which makes us greater than you by far.”

  Jol laughed, the sound booming off the buildings around them.

  “Greatness? Greatness built this city,” he said. “Your kind has no greatness in you. Only depths to which you can sink. Every living thing kills to live, death is easy. Where’s the power in that? Being the best killer just means that you die a little later than everyone else. Greatness is measured in time. This city h
as endured centuries of your rule, and it still stands. That is greatness.”

  “It’s our city now.”

  “No.” Jolinr shook his head. “The city is gone. It belongs to time. Nothing lasts forever, demon. Not even greatness. Your kind didn’t destroy greatness; you only sent it away a little sooner than it would have gone on its own.”

  “Enough words!” the demon commander snarled. “Take them!”

  “Watch the flanks!” Sindri yelled, his axe flashing in the air as he directed focus away from the frontal attack.

  Demons poured out of the buildings on either side, but they weren’t quite in the optimum position to properly flank the humans, as Jol had called a halt just a little too early to be entrapped and then refused to be goaded into exposing the group. Thanks to that, the demons were mostly a little ahead of the group, focusing their strength into the front of the human formation rather than coming in at the unprotected sides.

  Jolinr held himself back with some difficulty, wanting nothing more than to face off with the demon commander himself, but the brothers had trained him well enough not to rush forward and get himself cut off from the group and surrounded. That itch to act made him antsy as he watched the distance close until, finally, the range was closed such that he decided enough was enough.

  Jol surged forward, hammer cocked back in a powerful, though telegraphed, swing that culminated when it met the demon commander with the force to pulverize human bones to shards. Against a demon, however, the strength of that blow was reduced significantly. Even so, the demon rocked back, stunned as the force of it was transmitted through his body, spinning him around and opening his flank to Jolinr’s follow-up.

  Jol choked up his grip right under the body of the hammer as he drew back, then drove it up vertically into the commander’s jaw, and this time he heard bone crack. He ducked a wild swing down and slammed the hammer into the demon’s knee, putting him off balance. Another crack could be heard, and the demon commander collapsed as his leg gave out.

  Jol grinned at the arrogant bastard as the demon came down to face him where he was now waiting on one knee. “See? I told you death was easy.”