“The flames that consumed the building were green.” Was all that Cass had to say to dispel Romana’s hopes of an easy foe. “Could this be the reason they brought Silver back?”
“I hope not.” Romana muttered, “Because that means that it will continue to happen to healing centres everywhere.” She created a flat disk of fire and moved it till it was vertical, then commanded it to display what was left of the healing centre.
There wasn’t much, just a large crater in the ground.
“I will go and investigate it for myself.” Romana decided.
“But what if it’s a trap to bring you out into the open?” Cass asked. “We have all been over it with a fine toothpick; there is nothing there, sister. And if it is a trap, we would never forgive ourselves for letting someone harm you again.”
Romana sighed. “It’s been nearly two decades since then, Cass. I’m stronger, more powerful and far wiser than I was then.”
“Still, give the rest of us some peace of mind, stay away from the place while we rebuild. It would do us no good to lose you at the start of whatever this is.”
Romana threaded her fingers together and sighed. “If you wish.” She muttered. “But if this happens again, I will not stand idly by. Tell the queens in charge of each centre to be vigilant for this build-up that Leanne spoke of.”
“Already done.” Cass replied.
“Please keep me updated.” Romana said. “Thank-you for bringing the news Cass.”
“It’s sort of become my job.” The vampire smiled.
“I know, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Neither do I.” Cass said as she teleported away with a smile.
Romana couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. She was certain that the healing centre had had something to do with Silver, and yet she knew her half-sister was on a completely separate realm.
All of this was making her head hurt.
Chapter Nine
THE DARKNESS
The first world was a shock; the air was heavy with brimstone, lakes of oil were alight with black flames and the ground was covered with a deep layer of ash that in places rose up as fiery volcanoes.
But the biggest shock was that there were people here.
They lived in communes; huge walls surrounded them and every moment of the day guards patrolled while servants or ordinary people hurried to put out fires wherever they sprung up. The reason for this Silver discovered on her second day when one of the pyro-demons, as she’d decided to call demons from this particular world, rose from an unnoticed fire. It killed three people, two of them children, before the villagers managed to kill it, but they never discovered the tendril of black flame from which the creature had come. So when three more of the pyro-demons came through afterwards, the entire village was annihilated.
Silver did nothing. She simply remained hovering in the air above, not daring to intervene. Instead she sketched and annotated page after page on each of the demons in the leather-bound journal that Gaillean had teleported with her. She recorded their powers, their weaknesses, drew images of them at the different phases of their lives. But she doubted it was necessary, she could never forget any of the beings in this deadly kill-or-be-killed world.
Even though there were fiery demons which could fly, not a single one had moved to harm her. When she slept, the pyro-demons formed a perfect ring around her, their backs to her as they protected her from some unknown threat. Somehow, they had detected her power, and they worshiped her for it.
On the fifth day, when she knew she had documented each and every one, she tried something new.
Silver picked one of the demons that surrounded her and waked up to it. Instantly it dropped downwards, yet since it had no knees, it wasn’t really bowing. Either way, it was a gesture of fear and more than a little respect. So far she’d not really paid attention to how they felt. With her powers – which now she was actually on a demon world she could easily use – she reached out in her mind and took over the mind of the demon.
All that greeted her was absolute chaos.
Silver pulled back and the demon actually whimpered, its blazing apelike form quivering.
This one had no more intelligence than an animal, Silver thought with disgust. But then she thought that maybe there were levels of intelligence for each being, much like there were levels between animals and mortals and elves. She approached another being, who shuffled slightly at her presence. When she delved into its mind, being in no way gentle, she found it more organised than the first, with chronological memories and even emotions.
This creature cared for its biological family, feared her presence and hated the creatures that would harm it. It could even communicate with others of its species.
It had an intelligence level close to that of a human being.
She eased her exit from its mind, but took with her the knowledge that not all demons were equal. She carefully jotted down her findings next to the species; luckily there weren’t all that many species of demons on this world, so she took less time than she’d expected to go through the mind of each one and categorise the level of intelligence. It was also faster because now that she knew what she was looking for she could summon each one to her. From them she discovered only a handful of demons on that world were truly evolved mentally, and even fewer had developed a method of communication between the species.
In short, two main species, aside from the humans, lived on this planet. They lived in packs with well-guarded territories and an explicitly clear hierarchy. If she needed the entire pack, all she would have to do would be to control the leader to control all of them.
The seven days passed quickly, but Silver was convinced she managed to get everything major about the species on this planet down. Going into their minds had been very useful, and after that first try at mind reading that demon species the pages of her journal had filled quickly. She had even taken down details of some of the plants, which at times could be deadlier than the demons.
So on the eighth day, when she opened her eyes after the sensation of being teleported, she saw absolutely nothing. The darkness was so absolute that even her advanced eyes couldn’t penetrate it. Maybe Gaillean had gotten it wrong; there was no way anything could live wherever she was now.
There was a brief flash of sound, and then pain erupted in her side.
Silver drew her swords instantly, but the problem was that she had no idea what she was facing, let alone how many of the buggers there were. No matter the answers to those questions, there was one thing she was sure of; this was a test. The beings of this world were testing her ability to fight back. If she lost and somehow survived, she’d be fending off attacks for the rest of the week. But if she won, she’d be left alone for the most part.
Her lack of sight didn’t matter; she’d fought blind on more than one occasion and this would be no different. Although it would most certainly be more painful if she lost. Who knew what these beasts did to the beings they killed.
Another brief flash of sound and Silver tensed, her blades flashed out just after she was cut in the direction the attack came from. There was an echoing hiss, followed by high pitched growling all around. The demons weren’t happy she’d figured out their game so quickly and from the sound of it, there were a lot of them. Since she wasn’t being ambushed by them all at the same time, she could assume that they were also playing with her.
“Let’s dance then.” She taunted, though she was betting they couldn’t understand her. They certainly got the gist because more growling sounded but hidden amongst their protest was that tiny flicker of sound, almost like a quiet short burst of thunder.
It attacked three times in rapid succession, only the slightest pause in between. But for every cut she received Silver dealt quite a bit of damage of her own. However she had no idea if she was winning; for all she knew the creature could be constantly healing itself. Her blows had to be making some impact as the creature hissed after each
one. Maybe the swords were inflicting some sort of magical damage, but Silver’s attacker did appear to be slowing, albeit only slightly. Yet the same thing could be said about her. Cuts adorned her arms and legs and her breath was coming in harsh short pants.
Damn it! If this was a test, she needed to pass and make it look easy. But at this rate she was going to be cut to pieces sooner rather than later.
Her magic, she would have to use her magic.
Almost as if it had been waiting for her to think of it, power surged behind her eyes, and she could see. It threw her off balance and the creatures, which were far more humanlike than any of the demons from the first world, got in a few lucky strikes.
With her sight restored, Silver quickly disabled the creature, and the one after that, and then the one after that. At the end, the few who remained eyed her wearily. Silver had been very careful not to kill any of the demons, only to wound them enough to take them out of action. With her sight it had been easy, despite their speed, to slice a few major tendons.
Now, as she surveyed the ones on the ground, she realised just how close they were to humans. Their bodies were emaciated yet proportioned in the same way; they even had their own version of elvenspeed. But their eyes were hideous; at first, she thought they had no eyes, merely empty shrivelled sockets. Now that she looked she saw that their eyes were tiny, no larger than peas and hidden inside the folds of skin within those sockets. Their ears, on the other hand, had to be at least three times the size of any mortals. They were a crude imitation of the pointed ears of the elves, yet the helix appeared fused to their skull and drawn backwards so that the points were only a few inches from touching at the back of their heads. She’d bet that hearing was the sense that they used most out of all of them.
Although she had assumed they carried weapons of some sort, it turned out they had no need. Along the sides of their arms and legs, sharp scales stuck out from the folding skin like knives, and it was these that they had tried to cut her with. The slight thunder sound had been from the way those scales rubbed against each other as the demons curled up into a ball ready to hurl themselves at her in their own method of fighting.
Silver, impatient from the game of assessing looks they were all giving each other, took a step towards one of the unfallen demons.
There was some hesitation, but one by one the demons began to bend at their waists in a small bow. She had passed their test.
Stupid test passed, she strode past them, opening her wings once she got to the outside of the ring they had created. She took to the skies, attempting to get used to the strange world she found herself in. Unlike the volcanic, fiery nature of the first world, this world was one of ice and darkness. Alien formations of rock cut upwards from the ground in jagged spikes which webbed together forming tunnels and caves. Sometimes the rocks were so thin that the pattern was almost ornate, like a massive spider’s web.
The demons – she supposed she should probably keep with her naming system and call the denizens of this world Nycto-demons – used these tunnels, and ran through them underneath her, for some reason attempting to keep up with her.
She saw no plants, no animals and no sign of any other life there. What did these demons eat? Where were the other species?
She canvased hundreds of miles before on the second day she finally figured it out.
Groups of the nycto-demons sometimes huddled in specific places, looking at the earth expectantly. On the third day, Silver gave up searching the surface and began to study the demons’ behaviour in more detail. These ones were less territorial than the pyro-demon breeds, yet they remained in groups. They were also relatively uniform, there had been totally different types of pyro-demon, yet there only seemed to be one type of nycto-demon. They walked on all fours with their backs bent alarmingly, with those horrible scales sticking up as jaggedly as the rocks and their eyes roaming the ground.
Something must live down there, Silver decided. Maybe humans had taken to cave dwelling, or heck, maybe they ate other demons. But whatever the creatures did eat must live underground, and she was betting it wasn’t earthworms.
She got lucky on the fourth day, when someone down below made a mistake.
Silver realised when she went into the minds of the demons following her that she had inadvertently become leader of their pack when she wounded all of their best fighters. As leader, they were happy to communicate with her through their language (a series of grunts and groans that she had picked up easily since it was so similar to the goblin language) and so that morning when she woke, one of them scampered up to her.
“Hunt, prey coming near.” Yup, their language was simple alright.
Silver nodded and stood up, grunting in acknowledgement. Finally, after waiting this long she had almost thought she would never find the answers to her questions before Gaillean forced her to move on.
The pack darted around rocks as they fought to be the first to reach whatever their prey was. Silver had automatic rights to the front of their group as their leader, yet she hung back, willing just to observe, as their unnaturally large ears guided them to whatever it was these demons ate.
They ended up in the middle of nowhere, how the nycto-demons had scented prey from where they had been camped she would never know, yet as she watched, the flat patch of rock that they surrounded suddenly bowed and bent upwards, and air hissed outwards, followed by light that made Silver’s eyes blister.
The demons weren’t bothered by it, probably because they had those tiny eyes hidden by their skin, but Silver was forced to dull down her new vision in order to watch what happened next.
The demons quietly climbed onto the rocky webbing above the glowing circle, punching away at the rock directly above it. Silver took to the sky, guessing that they did not want whatever was coming out of that vent to know they were there. Luckily for her, her clothes and wings blended perfectly with the darkness.
The rock slowly seemed to fall down into the pit of light, and suddenly the entire pack jumped down at something.
Screams filled her ears, and Silver watched as one by one, the demons remerged, faces bloody, sometimes carrying body parts.
But what shocked her, was when she realised that what had been down there definitely wasn’t mortal. Picking up a pickaxe from where it had been flung in the chaos she stared. These demons ate dwarves.
This then, must have been some kind of vent, and now the demons were using the ventilation system to quickly snatch dwarves before they were shut out again.
Dwarves, the race with some of the strongest most tireless fighters in history, were the prey of these frail, sickly looking demons? Silver quickly stole into one of the pack’s mind as the demon dived through the vent.
Like insects they swarmed down a thin shaft, their long thin fingers somehow finding purchase on what looked to Silver like smooth rock. They followed the tunnel and then suddenly the demon dived straight out of the tunnel and into a room.
Like all dwarven tunnels it was carved out of rock, with blazing torches lined up against the sides of the walls. The brightness of the fire was difficult for the demon’s eyes to handle, but as more demons filled the area, the light dulled until it was extinguished completely. The demons didn’t seem surprised by this, and it didn’t take Silver long to realise that their presence was the cause of the darkness that permeated the surface. The demons brought darkness with them wherever they went.
That was an ability she would have to test out when she got back to her own world. Perhaps she would have to summon some of the demons for it to work, or maybe she would be able to mimic the effect of their presence herself. She made a mental note to check because either way it would work excellently for getting herself out of a pinch.
The dwarves were blind, and the demons were faster. It was a slaughter, yet the nycto-demons were smart and left at least half of the dwarves alive. In a way, they were farming them, letting them live long enough to repopulate their home before the next culling.
More importantly, the dwarves had to be eating something and getting their food from somewhere, which meant that somewhere on this dark world, sunlight did prevail otherwise how would the dwarves eat? In Silver’s realm most dwarves were woodsmen or farmers, with only four of the twelve different clans actually trained as master miners and blacksmiths. So somewhere around here there must be fields, forests.
She left the mind of the demon and quickly dived into the vent herself, though she could only just find the space to crawl, so her progress was impeded slightly by the lack of space and when she emerged in the tunnel she found most of the other demons had left through other vents. The corridor she had emerged in was short, so she was forced to bend; of course, most dwarves never exceeded the four foot marker.
A slight snick, the sounds of hydraulic machinery working and then she heard the clang as the vents were shut. No going back now.
Chapter Ten
THE LIGHT
“Halt!” A rough voice affected with the rich brogue commanded. Apparently it was a universal trait of the dwarves to speak so commonly. Although at least he had spoken in the mortal language first, her dwarvish was rusty at best.
Silver turned to find a dwarf, clad in armour trimmed in gold, standing with a spear pointed straight at her.
“Be you a demon?” The dwarf asked. “Answer!”
“Jeesh, enough with the orders.” Silver moaned, silently revelling in being able to converse with someone for the first time in what seemed like an age. “And I’m offended if you think that I am some mere demon. Did you really think I was that weak?”
“You’re a woman?” He sounded surprised.
“Oh, who’s the greatest detective ever to roam the demonic realm?” Silver patronised, earning her a scowl.
“Where is your respect when speaking to one of the higher race?” The dwarf seemed outraged. “And what backwards race are you from that they allow a mere woman to carry weapons?”
Silver's Redemption (Soul Merge Saga Book 3) Page 7
