I’d like to thank:
Nick Towne for doing my cover art. Visit him at
artnapanick.com
Dominique Minter for being my editor and lovely wife.
Noah Gomez, my best friend and proofreader.
Teayna Riley, also my friend and proofreader.
And all the readers who have made this possible.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
With a peculiar, almost metallic scraping sound, the magical black dome surrounding us lifted; disappearing into nothingness. Izzy, the only companion who had managed to follow me on my initial magical abduction by the dragon princess, Andrit, continued to lean against me. Her long white hair tickled my nose, and when I glanced down at her, her pale white brow hid her frost blue eyes.The spell did not return us to the mountain we had been taken from. In fact, I wasn’t sure where we were. Wherever she was Amy was still carrying Larry, and our surroundings were nothing but a dry wasteland. I leaned into Izzy as we glanced at each other. I was so frustrated by what Andrit had done. Everything started with a misunderstanding; I had only killed the emperor in self-defense, not knowing who he was in his dragon form. Now, I was a fugitive, banished entirely from my homeworld.
“It’s not fair!” I yelled into the open air, shifting my body to collapse into the ground with a thunk.
Izzy leaned over to look into my eyes, and I realized this was the first time I had ever been truly alone with her. My stomach fluttered slightly at the thought. I remembered an earlier discussion I had held with myself questioning whether any of my item spirits might be interested in me.
“I agree. I think we shouldn’t have repaired the Emperor's soul the way we did. Andrit wasn’t a real threat, and it cost us too much.”
I groaned in response. “I couldn’t just leave him like that though. I mean what would have happened to the empire without him? Besides, I hardly wanted to spend the rest of my life as an outlaw.”
Izzy shrugged, “power is taken, not given.”
Having nothing to refute her statement with, I sighed. Sitting up, I pointed to what I thought was East.
“We should go that way.”
Izzy raised one eyebrow. “Why that way?”
“Apocola was on the north-eastern tip of the continent. If we go east all the way first, then all we have to do is go North from there.”
Izzy nodded her assent, and we stood to begin our journey. What followed was an unending slog. Weeks passed as we walked, and nothing changed. Occasionally we would find empty ant mountains, and we discovered that they were all built atop reservoirs of water. Armed with that knowledge, and the massive surplus of fish from the demons, I was able to maintain myself on our journey. Toward the end I was sure that I was developing scurvy, but all I could do was press on. Worryingly, Amy’s avatar never returned to her amulet. I had torn a strip of cloth from my shirt to hang it around my neck, and it only bobbed lifelessly to my strides. My item powers stemmed from the amulet, who’s soul had been stranded on this world when we were taken. With the connection between item and soul severed, the item powers granted by the amulet seemed to be gone as well, which worried me.
Eventually, we reached the coastline. The ocean sparkled a dull red color in the light, and I was hopeful that we could follow the coast to eventually reach the demon’s territory. Another week passed, as we followed the coastline due North. Izzy remained visible the entire journey. Though we eventually ran out of things to talk about, she was more talkative than usual, and even chose to stoically hold my hand a few times. I was feeling more and more comfortable with the idea that Izzy really was interested in me.
After the first week of following the coastline, we found an ancient ruin. Strangely, there was a perfect circle around the space, which held life; a strange contrast to the empty wasteland that permeated the rest of the world. In the center of a small meadow, there was a crumbling stone structure. It stood ten feet high, and twelve feet wide, with one end caved in. It seemed eons old, any decoration having long-since peeled away to leave only the bare stone. We tried to enter, but were stopped by an invisible barrier of some kind.
Izzy stared at the space for a moment, then popped out of existence, popping back in on the other side. She stopped to scan the area, then teleported back, and extended her hand. Taking it, she teleported us to where she had been standing inside the bubble. The air in the bubble smelled sweet. I breathed in the scent of grass, and nature; reveling in it after so long in the empty nothingness of hell. Though we had seen in from the outside with no problem, the same couldn’t be said of seeing out from the inside. The view was hazy, and distorted, the sun overhead seeming to beam downward at odd angles. It was actually slightly dizzying, and eventually I had to keep my eyes focused on the internal space of the bubble.
Curious, we moved to investigate the structure. The door had long since fallen from its hinges, leaving only the frame, a head taller than I was. The inside of the structure was made of stone, and covered in dust. Clouds of it billowed with every footstep, choking me, and bringing on coughing fits. I looked at Izzy for help, but all she could do was pat my back. Luckily for her, item avatars didn’t need to breathe. There was nothing for it, but to press on.
We stepped through the entry room into a corridor, which branched into another corridor, and another, until I was hopelessly lost. I trusted that Izzy was better equipped to find the way back than I was. The place was a maze, and centuries of decay had rendered most of the rooms largely empty. The walls were dusty bare stone, and the rooms we found were the same, bare stone. Some of them held ancient, crumbling skeletons, and I could only guess at what their deaths might have been like. What worried me was that some of the skeletons showed signs of having been chewed upon. That couldn’t be a good sign.
As we strode ever farther into the labyrinth, Izzy suddenly pricked up, pushing me into a side room. A moment later, I heard what she had heard, footsteps ringing down the length of the hallway. As they grew closer, a hoarse, seemingly out of practice voice broke out into song. “Food, food, food, I hear you out there. Food, food, food, just where oh where?”
Despite the fact that he had not seen us, a shriveled-looking demon poked his head into our room. “Hello there food. And lady food! Too long since I’ve had good food. Too much hunger, not enough food.” The demon grinned, predatory teeth on full display, and licking his lips happily.
Properly creeped out, I asked, ”Um hi, before you eat us who are you, and what is this place?”
The demon stopped, confused. “Been a while since food had questions. Usually food just goes ahhhh- crunch.” He seemed to think about it for a moment, then shrugged, eyes slightly more lucid than they had been before. “I am the bandit king Luciverne, and this is the prison of Aristos.” he swept his hand to indicate the facility behind and around us. “This is where they keep those they call criminally insane. They throw us in here, behind that damned shield, and call it mercy that they don’t kill us outright. At least they used to. Lately, there are no new arrivals, no new food, just old bones to keep me company. After all, they were all trapped in here with me.”
I shook my head in amazement. “How are you still alive after all these years?”
He laughed cruelly. “Silly food, I cannot die. I ate a greater being long ago, and e
ven now its power burns within me. I eat the foods, and the souls stoke the fire of it’s core. I have eaten hundreds of souls, and their power burns in me like a star.” I could feel Izzy shivering as she pressed into my side, and I could only agree with her. This man was horror personified.
Before he could continue talking, Izzy launched a flurry of ice shards at the man. Amazingly, they simply bounced off his skin, not even scratching him. He laughed at us as if we had just told the best joke ever.
“I had forgotten how fun it was to watch food squirm.”
With that he leapt toward us, closing most of the distance before I even registered that he had moved. Luckily, Izzy’s reactions were faster, as we suddenly popped into existence in the outside corridor. He crunched sickeningly into the wall directly behind where we had been, unable to stop his momentum. Delighted laughter burst from his mouth, as his neck moved in a sickening way, righting itself on his body. “Run, silly food, it’s so much more fun when you run!”
Izzy began teleporting us as fast as she physically could. I struggled to hold back the vomit as the world flashed past in a dizzying blur of disjointed images. Amazingly, the demon was able to keep pace with us, never quite closing, but not losing ground either. His speed and resiliency were incredible. Finally we made it outside, feet from the edge of the barrier, when Lucivern sped up, and grabbed Izzy, laughing. She thrust her sheathed dagger into my hand. “Go!” she cried, shoving me as the crazed demon began tearing into her projected form. Suddenly grateful for the time I had spent training with her, I poured all my mana into a single teleportation. The moment I reappeared on the other side, she discorporeated, returning to her dagger. Thankfully the damage to her corporeal body was essentially moot. I wasn’t actually sure whether my spirits felt pain; I had never thought to ask, but I could only hope not as I attached the dagger to my belt.
I stared at the demon, shell-shocked, and he stared back at me, irritation written on his face for the first time. He screamed manically. “You won’t get away, food! Nothing escapes Luciverne! You think this shield protects you, but it only buys you time! It was never made to hold me in, it was made to hold the food in with me!”
His fist smashed into the barrier, and the air around it rippled for a moment. He smashed his fist into the barrier again, and again it rippled ominously. I wasn’t sure of the mechanics behind the barrier, but it was centuries old. Something told me it wouldn’t hold against him forever. Izzy reemerged from her dagger. Flinging her arms around me, she hugged me tight, and teleported. Once again she teleported rapidly, as fast as she could bear, trembling, and clinging to me the whole time.
When I lost control of my stomach, vomiting my morning’s fish mid-leap, she finally stopped. Jumping one more time, presumably to leave behind the pool of vomit, we resumed walking. Her shivering form pressed into my side, and I stroked her hair, whispering soothingly to her. I couldn’t really blame her for her fear, I could only hope the barrier held long enough that he gave up.
Izzy was much more subdued as we resumed our trek through the wastes. Sometimes when I looked at her, she would cloak; expression icey, and inscrutable. After several days of this, I stopped her, grabbing her arm so she couldn’t flee. “Look, do you want to talk about it?”
Her placid expression shattered, a nervous tic causing one eyelid to twitch. She cleared her throat, sounding unusually vulnerable. “When you first gave me life, I was afraid. Everything was new, and scary. Everything was a threat. I know logically that I shouldn’t fear anything, given who I am, but that doesn’t change anything. I wanted to fight, to flee, anything to be safe. So I did. I hid, I killed my enemies from the shadows, and I did everything I could to get stronger. Recently I’ve thought I was safe. I thought I was invincible. I thought I really was a god. Then that… thing took all of that away. All my power meant nothing. I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t fight. He stripped me of everything I thought I had gained. He didn’t just take away my power, he made it worthless.”
She was sitting on the ground now, knees drawn into her chest. Her face was hidden in her long hair. I knelt beside her, placing my hand on her back. She spoke again. “And with all that going through my head, the thing I worried about most was what would happen to you.” She leaned into me as she said this, and I repositioned to better take her weight. The moment I extended my legs for a full sitting position, she shifted again so her head was laying in my lap. I felt the wetness of her tears soaking into my pants as she inhaled, and exhaled rapidly. For a moment she laughed bitterly as she cried, before going silent again.
I ran my fingers through her hair as she bawled into me, tears soaking into me like little icicles as they proved to be far below normal body temperature. Where her tears hit the ground, buds of new life rose, tiny white flowers the color of snow. I picked one, and threaded it into her hair. Strangely, the flower grew roots, and attached itself to her head, as if finding a home there. I smiled down at her as she stopped to feel the flower with her hand. I cleared my throat. “See? You are a goddess. And I’m your master. I won’t let anything hurt you, especially Luciverne.” I ran my hand through her hair as I said this, staring down at her with fierce determination to mark my words.
She blinked, caressing the flower that now rose from her head as a symbiotic entity. Suddenly, her face launched upward, lips meeting my own hungrily. Pushing me downward, to the ground, she whispered “I believe you” into my ear. She curled up on top of me, occasionally sighing, and we held each other. I could only pull her tighter to me, hoping that my warmth would ward off the darkness. We sat like that for hours until night fell, and I drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 2
In the morning we pressed on, and within a week, we finally reached the settled demon lands. The entire trip, we didn’t encounter a single ant, and despite the monotony, I was extremely grateful. There is nothing more creepy than giant insects; especially when you’ve already been eaten by one. Not to mention that it was a tangible sign of success. Izzy didn’t show any more physical affection the entire trip either, except to occasionally hold my hand. I was a little disappointed to be honest, but I did my best to respect her boundaries. Overall, her demeanor was subdued, but she had stopped turning invisible on me again, and I took that as a positive sign.
We reached the demon lands from a different angle this time, allowing us to see a different portion of the territory than before. Mostly this wasn’t overly meaningful, but a well-placed hill on the border allowed us to see a fair distance into the territory. What we saw were columns of troops, and what looked like caravans of settlers streaming toward the wasteland in an orderly line from the center. I took this as a good sign, a symbol of the confidence the demons had in our success. I wondered where they were headed. Would they slowly extend the border, or would they try to reclaim a chunk of wasteland wholesale? Logistically, the first option made more sense given the demon’s carnivorous diet. Still, anything was possible.
The guards at the first border tower we saw waved us through disinterestedly. It amused me to note the similarity to my own experiences with guards back home. Naturally, this thought led to a pang of homesickness, that I attempted to quash with little success. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, this was my home now.
Our journey through the demon lands lasted another three days, and we periodically encountered further groups of settlers, and soldiers headed for the frontiers. Some of them were amicable, and excited when we stopped to chat with them. Others seemed more downcast. I got the sense that not all of the resettlements were voluntary, a downside to the demon’s planned economy. From a logical standpoint, I could understand it. Some skills were necessary to the survival of a settlement, but only held by a select few people. Usually people with those kinds of skills would be well-regarded, and well-established, making them reticent to leave their homes behind. I could only wish them well as they passed, whatever the nature of their feelings about their new lot.
By the ti
me we made it to the City of Apocola, I was grateful to see it. I had grown up in a mid-sized town, but it had literally been months since I had seen real civilization. Even if that civilization was a demon civilization, it was still a welcome sight for weary eyes. The guards hailed me as I entered, and I recognized Ahren the Guard Captain as he hailed me. “Hello Rowan, do you come bearing good news?” I looked to Izzy, but she had stealthed as we approached.
I shrugged. “I’d like to say yes, but I’m honestly not a hundred percent certain. I got pulled away from the battle with the ants about a week in. I certainly hope that my companions were able to finish the job, and given the way the battle had gone up to that point, I think success is likely.”
He nodded. “I’ll take that as good news then. Incidentally, you, uh, have a visitor. She’s at the royal court. I’ll escort you there.”
I looked at him in confusion. “A visitor? Who is it?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you. I think they’re afraid you won’t come if I do.”
I shook my head. “Fine. Whoever it is, let’s get this over with.”
Once again, Ahren guided me through the ugly, overly practical town to the large manor-style building that served the role of governmental seat here. I say manor-style, but where a regular manor would likely be straightforward to navigate, the interior here was labyrinthine. I wondered idly whether it was some kind of protection for the elites. Revolutionaries can’t kill the leadership if they can’t find them.
“They are ready for you behind this door.” Ahren said, as he guided me to an entrance. I had no idea how he could even differentiate it from a hundred other identical doors, but I chalked it up to experience with the building.
I nodded. “Alright. Anything I should know before I go in?”
“Oh, do just come in already. I have waited on you far longer than a princess should.” A feminine voice called out to me, and I sighed. I knew exactly who that voice belonged to. Ahren just shrugged at me apologetically as I opened the door.
The Itemancer 2 Page 1
