Demon Days

by Jan Stryvant

  His body was whole, he was healed, and everything was there, though dirty from all the dust, grit, and dirt he'd had to walk and climb through.

  The world itself was…different. Again, there only seemed to be two colors: black and gray. He suspected that white probably existed, but he hadn't seen it yet, so he wasn't sure. All of the trees, the brush, the plants, they all fit this color scheme—even the sky was black, and a large black object dominated the heavens, giving off some sort of light, but not much heat. Sean guessed it all made sense somehow, even if he couldn't understand it.

  The only thing he found weird was that he could see. While it was all in a perpetual state of twilight with a scattering of unfamiliar stars in the heavens above, light was coming from somewhere, which made vision possible, even though there was no 'sun' or 'moon' in the sky.

  Taking another look around, Sean could see several roads paved with a dark gray stone that led into this area. Considering how many people had been here, and the size of the explosion, someone was bound to come looking eventually. If not for survivors, then probably for loot.

  So his first priority should be to get out of sight and into the forest. After that, he'd need to find another gateway so he could go home. The demons here had all been set up to take advantage of this one, which made Sean wonder if they always appeared in the same place here? Or had it simply been a matter of luck, which the demons had decided to take advantage of?

  In either case, he needed to get going, and he needed to find a safe place to sit down and think about his next move.

  Then there was that strange dream—or perhaps it was a vision?—that he'd had while he'd been sleeping or passed out. Turning around, he could almost feel, faintly, that there was something off in one direction that was different than all the rest.

  The keep with the brown stranger?

  "Well, anybody got a better idea?" Sean said aloud while looking around.

  The muted sound of the wind through the trees was the only response he got.

  Sean shrugged and, with no better idea of what to do with himself, he shifted back into his full lion form and quietly padded off into the forest in the direction of the faint feeling.

  #

  "What do we do now?" Claudia asked. "Sean was our leader, the one that drove everything! He wasn't just a figurehead, he was the one who laid down the law to all of us, and yes, even me! And now he's gone?"

  "He's not gone," Roxy growled as she looked around at everyone in this small and very private meeting. "He's just stuck in the onderwereld."

  "I didn't say he was dead," Claudia sighed, "but he's not here, and we need him. We need a lion to keep everyone inspired, and yes, to keep us all in line."

  "Claudia's right," Chad agreed. "And not just for those reasons. We need the lions to know what we're doing, and we need their guidance on what's going on with these gateways. They've dealt with them before, we haven't."

  "What I want to know," Daelyn said in a loud voice, "is what are we doing to get him back!"

  "I second that emotion," Peg sighed.

  "I'm open to suggestions," Roxy said, looking around the table.

  "I say we get a bunch of people together, go through one of those gateways, and go get him!" Daelyn said.

  "I've already had this discussion with Chad," Roxy grumbled and gave Chad one of 'those' looks.

  "Oh?" Daelyn said and looked at Chad suspiciously.

  "None of you are stepping through one of those gateways, and trust me when I say, I've taken precautions."

  "You wouldn't," Daelyn growled.

  Chad stood up and slammed both of his fists down on the table. "Oh, hell yes I will. Sean ordered me, he ordered me, not to ever go through one of those damn gateways because I was too damn important to the war. Well, just what do you think he's gonna do to me when he gets back here if I let one of you go through?"

  Chad growled loudly, "So don't even think of it, or I swear by all that's holy, I will clap you in chains and get your uncle to throw your ass in prison until we get him back! Besides, we can't mount any kind of rescue mission until we know exactly what we're dealing with! Will our weapons work there? Can we supply our people after the gate closes? We know the gates bounce all over the place here; well, is that true over there?

  "I'm putting together a quick reaction force. Their sole purpose is to jump through the next gate within minutes of it opening, and then jump back out. Just to see if we can do it, and to tell me what kind of force is already assembled on the other side. We are not going to go running off willy-nilly with no regard. Because you know for damn sure what Sean will do to us when he gets back if we do!"

  Chad pegged Daelyn with a glare and then turned to look at Peg.

  "Me? What are you looking at me for?" Peg said, looking surprised.

  "Don't play 'Miss Innocent' over there. I know you've been asking around and talking to Deidre and Cali." Chad turned to look at Cali, who was blushing almost as much as Peg was, under that dark skin of hers.

  "Look, I get it," Chad said, "you all want to run in there and save him, guns blazing; hell, I want to do it, and the only thing stopping me is that I can't disobey a direct order when he does that 'mystical lion shit', as he calls it. Besides, let's be honest here, if anyone can get through this, it's Sean."

  "So what are we going to do to replace him?" Claudia asked, immediately garnering several angry looks. "I mean until he gets back!" she added quickly.

  "I'll deal with it," Roxy said. "I think you and Chad are both right. We don't just need the authority of a lion for leading the other lycans; we need the intelligence and coordination as well."

  "But what do we do about Sean?" Jolene asked softly.

  "We'll figure something out," Roxy said with a heavy sigh. "Now, all of you put on a happy face, get out there, and get leading. We know Sean's not dead, which means he will be coming back to us. So let's make sure we keep all this going for when he does."

  "One last thing," Chad said.

  "Yes?"

  "In four months, the main gate opens. The chance of Sean being able to find one of the random gates before then, and sneak through before it's full of djevels, is a slim one. But that gate will be open for two years, so finding it will be pretty easy after it's been open for a few weeks. I think that's going to be the most likely gate for Sean to come back through."

  "So in other words, get ready to wait," Peg said.

  Chad nodded.

  "It does make much sense," Cali said slowly.

  "What if he can't find it?"

  "Then we go in an get 'im!" Daelyn growled.

  "Agreed," Roxy said and got up. "Now I need to make a phone call."

  Giving each of her other wives a hug, as well as Max, Chad, and Claudia, Roxy went to her office, picked up the phone, and dialed a number.

  "Hello?"

  "Tisha, it's Roxy."

  "Hi, Rox. Still no word from any of the others. Sean isn't in our dreamland, and he hasn't shown up there at all. Even when asleep."

  "Is that typical?"

  "Well, he is young, so he may not yet be strong enough to reach it unaided from the other plane."

  Roxy nodded to herself. "Well, that's not the reason I'm calling."

  "It's not?"

  "We need a lion here to replace Sean until he comes back."

  "I don't know, Rox, everyone is pretty busy."

  "Look, Tisha," Roxy growled. "That wasn't a suggestion, it wasn't even a request. That was an order. You tell the First that we damn well better have somebody here in the next twenty-four hours."

  "That's taking a lot on for yourself there, Roxy." Tisha growled back.

  "What do you think Sean is going to do when he comes back and finds the rest of you didn't send someone to fill in while he was gone? We've got momentum here with the government and the locals. If I can't produce Sean, people will think he's dead."

  "They're going to think he's dead if they see another lion," Tisha countered.

  "Y
eah, but at least they'll be seeing a lion, and they'll listen to him. We know he's not dead, but everyone knows what he did; there were a lot of witnesses. The rumors of his death are already spreading. Until he comes back, we're not going to be able to convince a lot of people otherwise.

  "So you tell the First to get someone over here, or I'll fly out there and kick you in the ass myself!"

  Tisha sighed into the phone.

  "Okay, okay. You don't have to bite my head off. I'll make sure he gets the message, and I'll let him know that you're on the warpath."

  "Thanks, say hi to everyone, I need to go and rally the troops."

  Wherever You Are

  The woods were thick, and progress through them was slow. They were also dark, but not so dark that Sean couldn't see. He didn't know if that was due to his own abilities, or if it was because of that strange twilight that seemed to pervade everything, though there was no source to it, and no shadows. It was also cold here—not unbearably cold, but if he hadn't had a fur coat, it would have been uncomfortable.

  The part that was taking the most adjusting to was that he was alone.

  For the first time in almost a year, it was just him. The First wasn't in his head, and the girls weren't around. He kind of liked not having the First in his head, even if he did miss him. It had always been nice to have that little bit of support, knowing that there was somebody he could always fall back on if things got out of hand. Someone he could talk to. Someone who, he had to admit, had given him sound advice, and taught him a lot about life, women, and fighting.

  But it was his body, his, Sean's. He'd made the best of the situation because he'd had no choice; there hadn't been anything to be gained by complaining, so he hadn't. He liked the First, a lot, and honestly did look up to him now as a father figure. He was wise, and he was powerful, but...

  But it was Sean's head, and it was Sean's body, and he liked being the only one in it and the one in control of it once again. Oh, he still had his beast, but as Roxy had told him a thousand times, his beast was him and he was his beast. Without the First there, Sean was actually enjoying being a lion more now than he had before, because three is definitely a crowd.

  As for the girls, Sean tried not to sigh too loudly. He'd gone from confirmed bachelor, to husband, to father and he missed Roxy, Jolene, Daelyn, Roberta, Peg, and Cali more than he could actually put into words. They might not have been in his head, but they were definitely under his skin. They were a part of him, a part he fully intended to go back home to.

  Just as soon as he figured out how.

  Hell, he was just getting used to the idea of being a father, and he had a slew of children he had every intention of spoiling totally.

  He heard a noise then and froze, all his senses coming to high alert. He waited several minutes until he heard it again. There was something up ahead and on his right. Something, or rather someone. Stepping carefully through the trees and being mindful of where he put his feet, Sean slowly crept forward through the trees.

  He came to a small clearing with a path leading through it. There was a raseri sitting in the clearing on a log, with a small fire before it. If you could call those black flames a fire. Sean found it interesting, as it didn't seem to give off any light that he could see, though it did give off heat.

  Shifting into his hybrid form, Sean put his hand up on the pommel of his sword, drew it, and stepped out into the clearing. The raseri suddenly jumped to its feet, spun around, and drew a sword of its own as it yelled something at him and attacked.

  Sean was reminded of his vision then, only in that one, he'd been the one being ambushed, not the djevel. They fought for a bit, then he used the same trick he'd used in the vision and slew the djevel, who snarled something at him as it died.

  In the vision, the djevel had said something like, 'We will have you, lion, one of us will, I swear it', as it had died. Sean had understood it then, but why hadn't he understood it now?

  Sean took a moment to see if there was anything worthwhile in the way of loot the dead raseri may have had before it melted away to the tar-like residue they seemed to leave behind when they died. There was a pouch of what Sean assumed was money, so he took that, but he left the rest and moved back into the forest, putting a fair bit of distance between him and the fight, before he sat down on the ground and thought about what had happened.

  In the vision, in all of the visions, he'd understood what was said, so he'd assumed they'd been speaking English. But now he knew that they hadn't been. So what had translated their words for him?

  He puzzled that over for a few minutes. He recalled that the First spoke their language and understood it rather well. But the First wasn't here.

  Sean blinked. The First hadn't been with him in any of the visions, either! That meant either the vision had translated the speech for him, or somewhere in his head he already knew the language.

  But how?

  Calling up his frameworks, Sean set up a defensive shield, as well as an alarm spell, and then called up his stat sheet. Scrolling down to mental abilities, he noticed a very small triangle under the stat, so small as to easily be missed. How he had missed it, he wasn't sure. Or perhaps it hadn't been there until he needed it?

  Selecting it, the sub-category Languages appeared, with a long list of languages beneath it. Every language spoken in the world today, as well as some Sean was pretty sure were no longer spoken at all.

  As they were arranged alphabetically, it didn't take him long to find 'Demon'. He put a point into it, and not only did it light up, but so did Danish and Dark Elf, if not as brightly. On a hunch, he scrolled down to goblin, and saw he had some skill there now as well. Apparently they were all related, which made sense when he thought about it.

  On a whim Sean scrolled all the way down to the end of the language list, where he saw another tab like the languages one. Only this one said 'Mystical Shit'.

  Opening that tab, Sean saw a whole bunch of things he'd had no idea existed, and a lot of them had points in them already! There were 'voice' and 'will' stats, as well as one marked 'home (lion)', which split down to 'visit - incorporeal' and 'visit - corporeal'.

  Sean's head spun for a moment at that. The incorporeal one had points in it, but seemed like it needed more. Sean wondered about that for a moment. If this was what he thought it was, it meant he couldn't go to the dreamland until he leveled the skill back up a fair deal. As he had just traveled to another plane, that made sense.

  But the other one? Examining it showed him that the cost was far beyond his means right now, but it made him wonder what the cost would be back home? And if he could afford it back home, could he use it?

  Sean was fairly certain that the First's presence had either been blocking this list from his view, or when the First had been ejected from his head, he had perhaps left him with the skeleton of all his abilities. That maybe he now had a view into the part of his mind the First had been occupying. The language costs were ridiculously low, at least Sean thought that they were, so he could learn to speak anything fairly quickly.

  But these skill costs, and some of them he really had no idea at all what they meant, were all very expensive. Apparently his magic user's statistics and learning spell had latched onto all these abilities, just as it was connected to his magic using skills and lycan skills. The purpose of the spell was to make it easier for a mage to develop and hone their abilities, so surprisingly—or maybe not so surprisingly—it worked with his leonine abilities as well!

  Scrolling down through the list, Sean saw there were a lot of things he didn't quite understand. Obviously this was something he'd have to examine more closely when he had time. Coming to the end of that list, he found yet another one, which was labeled simply as 'Status'.

  Opening that one up, there were only three lines, and they were all informational displays. The first said 'Available', and was at zero. The next said 'Stored', and was at two hundred and thirty-two. The last one said 'Generating / Using', the number
s were '2 / 2', and there was a second entry on the same line after that that simply said 'ratio at min'.

  That made no sense to Sean at all, so he closed it all up and thought about what he'd just seen. Lions obviously got their power from something, and whatever that something was, it wasn't available in this realm.

  Sean looked at his wrist and remembered that he had left his father's watch sitting on the dresser when he'd gone to bed. Shaking his head, he dropped the alarms and shields he'd put up and started to walk towards that 'feeling' once again that he'd associated with that brown person he'd seen when he'd been unconscious.

  Shifting back to his lion form, he let his beast have control as he looked at his mana levels and pondered what he'd seen. His mana was still recharging, if slowly. A lot more slowly than he was used to. He'd definitely have to be a lot more careful about using magic, as his lycan healing, and even shifting to a small degree, depended on his having a positive balance.

  Then there was the next thing to consider; namely that he wasn't hungry, and he wasn't tired. With his lion out and running things, he could go sort of 'mindless', and that was a kind of sleep, but he didn't feel the need to. For some odd reason, he wasn't tired and didn't want to sleep.

  Then there was food. He was happy about not being hungry, as he hadn't seen anything that even remotely passed as being food. But after all the healing he'd done, and the walking, plus the short fight, he should be hungry. Yet he wasn't. Not even the slightest bit.

  Suddenly his mana levels, which he'd only been paying a little attention to, started to rise much more quickly than they had been, at almost normal levels. Stopping in the forest, he made sure that there was no one around, shifted back into his hybrid form, brought up all of his frameworks, and started to check himself over, making sure he didn't have any injuries he might not have noticed before. Then he checked the spells he constantly had active to make sure that they were still working.