“Typical,” she grunted. “Now, there are two distinct types of demon. The first are spectral demons, which have no physical form in this dimension. They are beings of consciousness and energy, excellent for possession of matter, humans, and other sentient creatures. The other type are physical demons, which have a body. There are a near-infinite variety of both, if the myths are to be believed. You will call forth one of each – one spectral, one physical. You shall confine yourself to demons of the first order, which are the least powerful. They are the easiest to summon and the easiest to bind.”
“Okay… how?”
She stood behind him, stretched out her arm next to his, and put her fingers on his hand, almost caressing him. He winced as the knotted scar tissue touched his skin.
“Feel the mana in your body, like energy… heat… life force… however you wish to visualize it. In the beginning you will have to imagine it rather than feel it. Only after you experience it the first time will you realize that your imagination was the real thing all along.”
Though he felt a little silly, he imagined some sort of invisible energy coursing through his body.
“Feel it flow within you… using your will, concentrate it in your hands… feel it grow stronger… warmer… more alive…”
He followed the sound of her voice, imagining the energy focusing in his fingertips.
“Good… good,” she whispered. “You know the incantation and the name of the first demon, because the book has given it to you…”
It did? he wondered, and began to worry if she was right or not.
“Focus the energy… focus…”
He felt even more foolish, and began to wonder if she was mocking him.
“Now – spew the energy out of your body like water from a geyser – ”
Wait, what?
How do I do THAT?
“ – and at the same time speak the spell and the name – NOW!”
Flustered, he flung his hands out and yelled –
“Expecto patronum!”
Nothing happened.
Cythera paused… then turned to him slowly.
“What was that?” she asked, her voice dripping with disdain.
Eric could feel his face blushing bright red with embarrassment.
“It was… a spell…” he said, stumbling over the words.
“I’ve never heard that spell before,” she sneered. “And it was definitely not Qalarian.”
Yeah, it was J.K. Rowlingian. Or Harry Potterian.
“Perhaps I was wrong about you,” she continued. Her eyes narrowed to slits in both the normal and burned sides of her face. “Perhaps you really are weak.”
Now his embarrassment was turning to anger.
“I’m not weak,” he said, irritated.
“You’re right. You’re not weak – you’re completely ineffectual. Useless.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed.
“Actually, it would seem you don’t know what you’re talking about, since you’re spouting nonsense instead of spells. Like a little child babbling to himself.”
Angrier now – “Cut me some friggin’ slack, it was my first time.”
“Speaking of ‘time,’ don’t waste mine, you little… impotent… weakling.”
And then she laughed, oh so cruelly.
You BITCH – I’LL show YOU.
His anger became rage – and the rage became words.
“Ixotinak Asotidal!” he screamed, jabbing his hands violently into the air.
Power really did flow out of him like water – except it was a blast from a fire hose.
He could see it ripping through the air, black energy that distorted everything around it like heat waves on a scorching day.
There was a sizzling, crackling, popping sound –
The ground flared with black flame, which boiled into smoke –
And then, when the dark mist cleared, there sat a creature on the forest floor.
Small, squat, the size of a bulldog, with beady red eyes and dozens of fangs jutting out of its lips.
Stats appeared above it:
Asotidal
Class 1 Physical Demon
Hit Points: 50
Attacks: Leaping, biting, slashing
Damage dealt: 50 – 500 hit points
Strength: 3
Intelligence: 1
Dexterity: 25
Endurance: 3
Willpower: 1
Cost to summon: 100 Mana
Another message appeared as well:
Success! You have summoned your first Level 1 physical demon.
New Skill: Summoning (Level 1)
You can now summon demons equivalent to or less than your Summoning Level.
+2 to Mana.
Eric stood there, staring at it in disbelief. He also noticed that he felt slightly drained… tired, almost.
“YES!” Cythera cried out.
He was even more shocked at her reaction than at the monstrous thing he had summoned.
“What?” he asked, dumbfounded.
She clutched his arm in glee as she stared at the demon, her eyes shining. “Your anger is your power! That is how you must channel your mana – through your rage!”
“You… you meant to do that? To make me angry?”
She looked at him with a cross between lust and affection. “No one gets it right their first time. In fact, rarely do they get it right the first twenty times. But that…” She sighed contentedly. “That was magnificent.”
Eric looked at her sideways, then stared down at the demon.
It was still sitting there impassively, its ribs expanding and contracting under its mottled skin as it wheezed with every breath.
“What’s it doing?” Eric whispered.
“Awaiting your command.”
He frowned. “It’s so… small…”
“Size is no indication of power.” She paused, then added, “Among demons.”
“What can it do?”
“Just wait…”
She gestured in the air, and the wind picked up the tiniest bit.
“What are you – ”
“Shh,” she said.
Then he saw it.
Seventy feet away, a deer walked into a forest clearing. It was a full-grown buck with massive antlers, and it stood there watching them with its dark eyes.
“Send your servant to kill it,” Cythera whispered. “With time, you will be able to control it with just your thoughts… but at the beginning you must speak to it in Qalarian.”
Eric looked at the buck… then at the squat, toad-like creature.
How? he thought.
Then he remembered her words from earlier which had proved so true:
Only after you experience it the first time will you realize that your imagination was the real thing all along.
He opened his mouth, and it was as though the whispers spoke for him:
“Matala lodanix.”
Immediately the creature spun on its clawed feet and raced across the forest floor.
The deer saw it and reacted lightning-fast – but even that was not fast enough.
It bolted for the treeline – but the demon leapt through the air, fangs and claws extended.
RRRRRRIIIIIP –
There was the sound of wet cloth tearing as the demon passed through the deer’s belly mid-stride.
Blood spattered the nearest trees.
The deer stumbled to the ground. It staggered back to its feet, but it was stopped by its entrails, which were held taut by the demon’s mouth like some nightmarish, bloody leash.
Eric recoiled in horror – but he could not look away.
He was fascinated.
“Again!” Cythera crowed.
“Yaktla,” Eric breathed.
No sooner had the word left his mouth than the creature jumped again.
This time it sliced through the buck’s spine – CRACK!
The front and back quarters of th
e deer fell away in two separate halves.
The monster sat impassively on the ground again, covered in blood, licking its skin with its loathsome black tongue.
“My God…” Eric whispered, overcome.
“There is no god who would countenance this abomination,” Cythera said, her voice filled with dark joy. “Now there is only you.”
27
Daniel
Daniel fell to the ground on his back, using his wooden sword to block a vicious strike from his Taurian sparring partner. Then he rolled away just in time to avoid another blow.
“Shouldn’t we start with hitting dummies?” Daniel yelled as he stumbled to his feet.
“Last I checked, dummies don’t hit back,” Simik answered.
“That’s the point! Start off with something easy?!”
“‘Easy’ doesn’t make you better, boy. ‘Easy’ makes you soft. And when you train for battle ‘easy,’ it makes you dead.”
Daniel ducked another swooping slash of the Taurian’s wooden sword. “I think this might make me dead!”
“Not yet it won’t.”
“Time out – time out!” Daniel cried, then turned towards the dwarf –
“Watch out,” the dwarf said, pointing.
Daniel looked back to see the Taurian’s wooden sword swooping towards his neck.
He blocked it in the nick of time.
CLACK!
“TIME OUT! STOP! NO!” Daniel screamed at the bull-man, who looked at the dwarf.
“Tlalo,” the dwarf said, and the Taurian stood still.
“What the hell was that?!” Daniel exclaimed angrily. “Was he trying to kill me?!”
“What the hell is ‘time out’?” the dwarf asked.
Daniel stared. “You don’t know what ‘time out’ means?”
“Of course I know what ‘time out’ means!” the dwarf roared. “But there is no ‘time out’ in battle! There is victory or defeat! Life or death! That’s all – no ‘time out’!”
“Look,” Daniel seethed, “I paid you a lot to teach me how to fight, but so far all you’ve done is sit there and – ”
“I’m standing, not sitting,” the dwarf interrupted.
“Fine – STANDING there, not doing anything but watching me get my ass handed to me! When’s the teaching going to start?”
“I’m getting a sense of the way you move. If you want to learn to fight quickly, we need to work with your natural inclinations, not against them.”
“Oh, really,” Daniel said sarcastically.
“Yes. Really.”
“So what exactly have you come up with?” Daniel snapped.
The dwarf crossed his arms and began to recite in a disgusted voice. “Well, for one, you drop your left arm when you block, which means you don’t have the power to withstand a crushing blow. You angle your sword all wrong, which means your opponent’s blade is going to slide down towards your body. You have no conception of using the blunt side of the sword to block. If you were using a real sword, you would have destroyed the cutting edge by now. You don’t even bother to dodge.
“Your slashing attacks are alright, although you’re slow – we’ll have to work on your speed. I haven’t even seen you try to thrust yet, though you’ve had at least two dozen openings to do so. All in all, I’d say your blade work is shite – ” He pronounced it like the English version of the word, rhyming it with ‘kite.’ “ – but you’re pretty damn good at running away, so that’s something.”
Daniel stood there in shock – then finally asked, “So… where do we start?”
“Maybe you were right,” the dwarf conceded. “The dummy might be a good place.”
Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
“Don’t thank the gods, thank me.”
Simik put two fingers in his mouth and whistled again. FWEEET!
The Taurian looked at him.
The dwarf yelled, “Varook!” and the bull-man came striding back over.
“Wait – what – ?!” Daniel asked in a panic.
“Here comes the dummy,” Simik said. “Better get ready.”
“You asshole,” Daniel seethed.
“I’m the asshole who’s going to make you into a warrior, boy, and don’t you forget it. Now, keep your left elbow up, because he’s going to be hitting you – a lot.”
It turned out that was the truest thing Daniel had ever heard in his life.
28
Eric
Just as there was an incantation to summon the demon, there was one to send it back. Once it was gone, Eric turned to Cythera and asked, “What next?”
“A spectral demon.”
“To possess someone?”
“That’s a possibility, yes.”
“Can I take someone over completely?”
“The demons you can summon at this point are too weak to do more than merely influence and persuade. A normal human – someone sane, rested, not drugged or inebriated – would be able to fight off its influence fairly easily. Someone evil would be more easily swayed.
“But for right now, we merely need to bring it here. And to do that, we need a vessel for it.” She looked around. “Normally you could send it into any substance – earth, a tree, an animal – but then it would be difficult to interact with it, and I want you to see it with your own eyes.”
“Can I send demons into corpses?” he asked, eyeing the deer.
He tried to imagine what a spirit might do if it entered the buck’s severed remains. Though it would probably be horrific, he was undeniably curious.
Cythera’s expression showed she was impressed. “Yes, I suppose so. I never considered that, since corpse reanimation normally falls within the realm of necromancy… but if a demon can inhabit a poppet or a doll, it most certainly can animate a corpse.”
A doll…
That sounded interesting. He wanted to see if he could make the thing walk.
He looked back towards the hut. “Do you have a…”
And then he saw something that made the question fade from his lips.
“What about that?” he asked, pointing at the ground in front of the earthen house.
The liquefied remains of the thief still lay there, the bones jutting up out of the flesh like a dead animal left to rot in the wild. Flies had begun to buzz around the puddled mess, but other than that there was no smell or sign of decay.
Cythera smiled evilly. “Yes… that will be perfect.”
This time Eric didn’t hesitate. He worked himself into a fit of anger, then yelled, “Xatho Mylopik!”
Dark energy again burst out of his fingertips – but this time it was a black mist that zigged and zagged as though it had an intelligence of its own, until it plunged into the slack skin and bone lying on the forest floor.
He felt the same curious draining sensation as before. He quickly raised his stats and looked –
Yes, his mana had dropped to 2 points. Down from 102! he thought in consternation, though it began to creep up bit by bit.
I’ll never be able to summon anything GOOD if a Class One wipes me out like this.
How do I get more mana?
And how do I get it to regenerate faster?
He was about to ask Cythera when the flesh began to move.
It looked like something inside it was bubbling – like someone had poured a dessert pudding into a pot and brought it to a boil, so that giant pockets of air were pushing up against the firm skin.
Not only that, the bones began to move independently of the flesh, like they were animals trapped under a blanket.
Suddenly the thing lurched – but Eric’s eyes were drawn to the messages that hovered in the air:
Mylopik
Class 1 Spectral Demon
Attacks: Possession
Hit points: Depends on entity possessed.
Damage dealt: Depends on entity possessed
Strength: 0
Intelligence: 3
Dexterity: 0
Endurance: 3
Willpower: 20, plus extra 20 if possessed character is predisposed to evil
Cost to summon: 100 Mana
Success! You have summoned your first Level 1 spectral demon.
New Skill: Possession (Level 1)
You can now summon spectral demons equivalent to or less than your Possession Level.
With this skill you can possess living things, depending on
A) the power of the spectral demon summoned, and
B) the species, Willpower, race, and other determining factors of the target.
You can also possess non-living things.
+3 to Mana
You have leveled up!
Level 2 Dark Mage
Eric swiped away the messages and watched with horrified fascination as the rest of the scene played out.
The figure struggled to get up on all fours. First it slammed one wrist into the ground, its hand bent backwards like a rubber glove. Then it pushed up with the other until it could stagger drunkenly to its feet.
The skin hung off the skeleton like chicken fat off chopsticks.
The head lolled sideways grotesquely on its shoulder.
The jaw dripped down on its chest again, the tongue squirming.
Everything about it was obscene and monstrous and disturbing –
…but it was alive.
Or at least possessed.
One eye rolled in the socket until it found Eric’s face – and then he heard the rush of air in its throat.
It had no lips or tongue to separate out words, but in the hissing sound he swore he recognized one of the voices that whispered when he touched the book:
“Masssssterrrrrr… what is thy bidding?”
29
Daniel
After an hour of instruction on blocking – with Daniel fending off punishing attacks from the bull-creature – they moved onto dodging.
Simik gave Daniel a helmet and some leather armor he rented from another mercenary. He made Gorth wrap his wooden sword in a cotton blanket, and then Daniel spent the next hour stepping out of the way of the sword at the last second.
It didn’t always work, especially in the beginning, and he got whacked plenty of times. With the helmet, the armor, and the cotton padding on the sword, it didn’t hurt too much.
Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series Page 14
