by Victor Kloss
The demon went down on its haunches, and began feeding. Thankfully the demon had its back to them, so Ben couldn’t see the gory details. But that didn’t make a difference to Charlie, who made a sudden retching noise. Ben clamped his hand over Charlie’s mouth.
The demon stopped feeding, and raised its head. It stood up slowly, and turned, momentarily forgetting the poor goblin. Its red eyes were curious, and its tongue kept flicking out, as if it were tasting the air. Ben prayed the shadow spell would be strong enough.
It wasn’t.
The demon locked eyes with Ben, who still had his head poking out from the tree.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered, whipping his head back.
Charlie looked as though he had gone into a state of shock. He was standing, back against the tree, muttering incoherently. It was only when Ben listened that he realised Charlie was saying the same thing over and over again.
“Demon Underlord.”
Ben didn’t have time to ask what exactly this Demon Underlord was capable of. He could hear its languid footsteps heading right for them. Run or fight? The goblins tried running, and that clearly didn’t work out very well.
Ben lifted his spellshooter. He took a deep breath and, ignoring Charlie’s frantic shaking of his head, thrust himself away from the tree to face the demon.
— Chapter Twenty-Five —
The Southern Path
The demon stopped and regarded him with a curious stare.
“A human child, and far from home,” the demon said, licking his lips with his long tongue. “A delicacy I have not enjoyed in some time.”
Ben kept his spellshooter trained on the demon, managing to keep the shaking to a minimum. “Stay back or I’ll shoot.”
His voice didn’t sound quite as intimidating as he would have liked, and the demon cocked his head in amusement. “What if I choose not to? You will shoot me with your toy?”
Ben grit his teeth, his finger hovering over the trigger. What was the demon’s weakness? Very little, if its confidence was anything to go by.
“Hit him with a snow storm.”
Charlie materialised next to him. His face was ashen, but there was a fiery glint in his eye.
Ben pulled the trigger, and an explosion of ice and snow shot towards the demon with such force that the kickback almost made Ben lose balance. An icy wind tore into the demon, carrying with it icy snowballs and huge hailstones. The demon reared its head, and cried out, more in anger than pain, trying to waft away the mini storm.
“Hit him again!” Charlie said, watching the demon struggle with something approaching hope.
But the demon attacked before Ben had the chance. It moved with inhuman speed. Ben dived to his left, Charlie his right, and the demon’s fist cannoned into the tree, punching a hole right through it. Ben rolled and fired, hitting the demon right in the chest with a six-foot spear of ice. This one left a mark, albeit a small one. This time the pain was evident on its gruesome face, but it didn’t slow the demon. In one fluid motion, he removed his hand from the tree and leapt high in the air. Ben followed the demon’s flight and fired another spear, but the demon batted it aside, and landed on top of Ben, flooring him. Ben stared up at the seven-foot monstrosity in horror. A red hand reached out and grabbed Ben’s neck, lifting him off his feet.
“Dinner time,” the demon said, his tongue flicking out to lick Ben’s forehead.
Ben kicked and squirmed, but the demon’s grip was like iron. The demon drew Ben close and opened its mouth. Ben screamed with defiance, then panic, and finally horror, as the demon’s teeth closed in on him.
The demon paused just as he was about to take a chunk out of Ben’s face. It frowned, and sniffed with its pig-like nose.
“You are Sparkstorm,” the demon said. There was a sudden look of doubt in its blood red eyes, and for one glorious moment, Ben thought the demon was having second thoughts about eating him. But the lure of human flesh was stronger than whatever doubts crossed its mind. It licked its lips, and re-opened its jaws.
The ice spear hit the demon full in the back, and it lost its grip on Ben. The demon turned, just as another spear hit him in the chest.
Charlie had a spellshooter in his hand, and was firing for all he was worth. The demon approached its new adversary, but Charlie held his ground and continued to fire. The ice spears shrunk in size, as Charlie struggled to hold his nerve. Conversely, without the distraction of the demon, Ben was able to focus and call forth some huge spells. Dozens of arrows cast in ice struck the demon’s back. It arched and tried to swipe them away, but the majority found their mark. Ben’s spells were clearly stronger than Charlie’s, and the demon turned back to face him. The moment it did so, Charlie’s spears grew in strength and size. The demon was being pounded from both sides. But despite the barrage, the demon stood up straight, and looked Ben right in the eye. For a moment, he thought the demon was about to strike, and he panicked – he was giving everything he had, and if that wasn’t enough, then he was in trouble. But the demon didn’t attack. Instead, it looked, gave him a nod, and then disappeared in a blur.
Ben collapsed onto the grass with exhaustion, massaging his neck, which the demon had strangled. Charlie staggered over and joined him. His hair was dishevelled, and there was a wild look in his eyes.
“I can’t believe it,” he said softly. “We took on a Demon Underlord and didn’t get brutally eaten.”
Ben managed a weak smile. “I was about to be, until you hit him with those ice spears. How did you summon the spellshooter?”
“I knew we were going to die unless I could get my hands on a spellshooter. I don’t think I’ve ever exerted that much willpower before. I didn’t know I was capable of it, to be honest.”
It was tempting to sit there, in relative safety, but they knew time was short and they needed to get going. Once Ben’s windpipe had recovered and he could breathe easily again, they got to their feet and continued following the thin, red trail.
For the first fifteen minutes, Ben and Charlie spent every second searching for any sign of danger. The demon had proven that creatures could appear from nowhere. But it was difficult to remain alert when the place was deserted; it felt like they were the only two people alive.
“The demon said I was ‘Sparkstorm’. Do you know what that means?” Ben asked, turning to Charlie. He had been so focused on looking out for danger that he had forgotten all about the demon’s words.
“Never heard of it,” Charlie said.
Ben recalled the demon’s expression. “It made the demon think twice about eating me, and I also think it helped persuade the demon to leave.”
Charlie was intrigued. “The word never came up in any of my books. That is interesting.”
Ben wasn’t sure how long they walked for on the southern path, though he guessed at least a couple of hours. His legs started to tire, until he remembered that they weren’t his real legs, just a spiritual representation, and he willed them to be strong. The pain went away immediately. He tried doing the same when he heard his stomach rumble, but it wasn’t quite as effective.
“Eating and drinking are such critical parts of our body, the mind will not easily accept that you can just will yourself to being full. Food is also on the no summon list,” Charlie said.
Ben sighed, and cast thoughts of Big Macs aside.
It was impossible not to think of his parents while they walked, especially as there was very little to occupy his attention. It was difficult to suppress the hope that they might somehow stumble across them. Whenever he found himself dreaming of such a scenario, he thrust it ruthlessly aside. That wasn’t why they were here. But, inevitably, the thought would return.
It was another hour before the dreary, lifeless landscape started to change and, with it, came their first major obstacle.
“We’ve got a problem,” Ben said, pointing ahead.
The land ended suddenly and quite
dramatically. A mighty chasm barred their progress, splitting the land. It must have been at least a hundred feet across. Ben and Charlie walked to the edge, and looked down. It was black, an eternity of nothing. The void in its purest sense.
“This is the end of the southern path,” Charlie said. “Over there is where the action starts.”
— Chapter Twenty-Six —
The Demon’s Prison
“How do we get over there?” Ben asked.
The answer lay in the red trail they were following. It continued on serenely over the chasm, as if the dwarf had used some sort of invisible bridge.
“The dwarf walked,” Charlie said.
“You mean he flew?”
“Basically, yes. Which is what we need to do, if we’re going to follow him.”
Ben stared at the chasm, a small smile playing over his lips. “I’ve always wanted to fly.”
But they soon found that flying made summoning a spellshooter look like child’s play. They managed some mighty leaps, but they simply couldn’t levitate, even for a second.
“I can jump a good forty, maybe even forty-five feet,” Ben said, eyeing up the chasm.
“Great. So you’ll plummet to your death in the exact middle of the chasm.”
“How did the dwarf mage do it?”
Charlie rubbed his cheeks. “Either his willpower is stronger than ours or he knows something we don’t.”
Ben walked up to the chasm’s edge. “So we can’t fly. But what if there was an invisible bridge we could walk across?”
“Yes, that would be handy. But there isn’t.”
Ben smiled, and tapped his nose. “Yes, there is. You just have to believe it.”
“Ah, I see,” Charlie said with an earnest nod. “Yes, there is definitely an invisible bridge there. You go first; I’ll follow.”
Ignoring the sarcasm, Ben concentrated on the first step he would have to take out into the open air. Technically he didn’t have to mock up the entire bridge – a platform or a single stepping stone would do.
Ben pictured the type of stepping stone he wanted, envisioning every detail, down to its colour and shape. After a few minutes, he managed to get a small stone, barely big enough for a single foot, to materialise. It stayed there for less than a second and promptly disappeared again.
“Success!” Ben said, raising both arms in celebration.
Getting the stone the right size wasn’t difficult, but it took a good hour of focusing to get the stepping stone to remain in place, floating in the air.
Ben stepped back to admire his work. “Now we have to test it.”
“It looks rather transparent,” Charlie said.
He was right – you could see right through the stepping stone. Ben spent a few minutes trying to solidify it, without a great deal of success.
“It will have to do,” Ben said.
He approached the edge again, and peered down at the black abyss. It would take only a small step to get onto the stepping stone, but if it wasn’t solid, he wouldn’t have anything to jump back from to get to safety. He took his jumper off, held one sleeve, and gave the other to Charlie.
“Here, hold on to this,” he instructed. “If I fall, you can catch me.”
Charlie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Having a safety net implies you don’t truly believe the stepping stone is there, which means it will never hold your weight.”
Ben put his hands on his hips. “So I have to step on it without any protection whatsoever?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Ben turned back to the stone. It was real; it was solid. He just had to step on it. Of course it would take his weight. So what if it was floating in mid-air, defying the law of gravity? Ben shook that thought out of his head. The void wasn’t a normal world; there were different rules. He took a deep breath, and focused, his heart rate moving up a gear.
“Okay, here goes,” Ben said, rubbing his hands together.
He eyed up the stepping stone, willing it further into existence. It was definitely becoming more solid; Ben could barely see through it now.
He lifted a leg, and jumped onto the stepping stone. It held fast, as if it were lying on solid ground, not floating in mid-air. Ben let out a wild shout of joy.
“Success!”
He was still celebrating when he made the mistake of looking down, into the black chasm. His left foot sunk into the stone, and it was only with a lightning quick thought that he was able to lift his foot, and reassert the presence of the stone.
“Well done,” Charlie said. “Now you just have to repeat the feat about fifty times, so that we have a bridge to the other side.”
Now that he had done one, the rest came relatively easily, and he started hopping across. He turned back to Charlie, and found that he hadn’t moved.
“What are you waiting for?” Ben asked. “I’m doing all the hard work, you just have to walk across.”
“I still need the stones to take my weight,” Charlie said, looking anxiously at them. “If I don’t believe they can, they will disappear.”
“You’ll be fine,” Ben said. “They’re real. Come on, I want to get going.”
Charlie inched forwards, until he reached the chasm’s edge. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and stepped onto the first stone. A mixture of relief and delight crossed his face when he realised the stone held strong.
Once Ben and Charlie were safely across, Ben allowed the stones to disappear, and turned to face the new landscape awaiting them. It was very different from the southern path. The land was rocky and constantly undulating, with patches of grass and shrubbery covering the ground. There were plants as well, some of them taller than Ben, coming out from the rocky undergrowth.
“We need to watch our step,” Charlie said, eyeing the scenery warily. “Those tall plants are dangerous, but they’re not as bad as the smaller ones hiding in the grass, which are extremely poisonous.”
The red trail was still present, but it zigzagged constantly; the dwarf mage clearly underwent the same task of picking a safe route.
Ben picked his path carefully, often jumping from rock to rock, to avoid the dangerous plantations on the ground. It was slow going and hard work. Danger lurked with every step, and not just from the plants. They spotted several animals watching them, some as small as rabbits, others as big as bears, and all interested in sizing them up for lunch. Ben concentrated on finding the path, while Charlie was responsible for scaring the animals off. Then there were the black streaks in the sky. They would slowly grow, and then, like a bursting cloud, unleash a bolt of electricity that would scar the ground. They almost got hit on more than one occasion.
An hour passed, then two. Ben began to tire. His eyes searched each rock mechanically now – he hadn’t the energy to do anything else. He thought briefly of his parents, wondering if they were anywhere near them. Gradually the rocky terrain gave way to a more manageable landscape – the rocks became less frequent, and they found a rough path, which the plants and shrubs didn’t encroach upon.
The brooch was now a third filled with red, meaning they had already been in the void for a full eight hours. The good news was that they were relatively intact, barring a few scrapes and bruises, but the red trail seemed to go on forever, and Ben started to get concerned that they wouldn’t reach its end before the time was up.
“Look at that,” Charlie said.
Ben, who had taken to staring at the ground as he walked, looked up. Charlie was pointing at a cluster of makeshift houses, surrounded by a wooden fence in the distance. The path split – left went to the settlement; right continued onwards.
“Goblins,” Charlie said with distaste. “We need to watch out from now on. There will be other creatures, not just goblins, here.”
Thankfully the red trail did not turn left, towards the village, but kept on goi
ng. The path was well worn here, and Ben knew it would be only a matter of time before they ran into someone or something. Sure enough, he soon spotted three goblins heading their way.
“Stay calm,” Ben said, seeing Charlie shuffling uncomfortably.
“I’m really starting to dislike goblins,” Charlie said with a sigh.
“At least they’re not demons.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. The goblins that approached seemed to be a demon hybrid with red skin and small horns protruding from their foreheads.
The goblins had been talking amongst themselves, but they noticed the two boys and were now looking at them with interest. Ben thought he saw one of them lick his lips. The path was sufficiently wide that Ben had hoped they might just be able to pass by without incident, but when he subtly shifted his position to the side of the path, the goblins matched his movement. Ben was half-tempted to use his spellshooter and try to take them down from a distance, knowing goblins were better at close-quarter combat. But he couldn’t bring himself to shoot without provocation.
Both groups stopped, facing each other, each sizing the other up. Ben was pleased to see the goblins eyeing up their spellshooters warily.
“Which clan are you?” the taller goblin in the middle asked in an accusing voice. “Only the Lartes are allowed here, and you’re no Larte. They don’t have no humans.”
Ben exchanged confused looks with Charlie, who gave a helpless shrug. There wasn’t much he could say; he didn’t know the name of any clans, or else he would have used one of them.
“We don’t belong to a clan,” Ben said.
The goblin gave a snarl of surprise. “You are loners?”
“Well, there are two of us, so that’s not technically true,” Ben said. “But we don’t belong to a clan, yet.”
The goblins immediately started talking to each other in a harsh language that Ben recognised but didn’t understand, despite his basic goblin lessons. Eventually, the taller one turned back to them.
“My brothers want to take you in, but our clan has a temporary truce with loners, as long as you leave our land within the hour.”
