Renamir chuckled. “Hah, I just realized you had to make it the whole way on the air trapped in the pocket.”
Esselles glared at him.
“I know. Not funny for you. But no, the suffocation isn’t why. It’s because the air is much denser here and harder for you to breathe. Also, gravity is much stronger here, and so everything weighs more.”
“Gravity?” Esselles asked.
“Yes, gravity. The earth radiates it and it draws everything towards it. Some planes exert more gravity than others, just as some rivers run faster than others. Here, the gravity is almost twice as strong as on our plane, so everything, including yourself, weighs twice as much.”
“So when demons come to our plane, they weigh half as much as they normally do?”
“Exactly,” Renamir said in surprise. “That’s a concept many students in the mystic arts have a great deal of trouble grasping, and you figured it out yourself. Have you ever considered studying the mystic arts?”
“No. They aren’t practiced much in Arator,” Esselles said.
“I suspect you could be a powerful mage. That is, if we can make it out of here.”
Esselles did not reply, but imagined what it would be like to be a powerful mage, keeping it tight in his mind so Renamir would not pick it up.
They climbed out of the depression and onto the harsh landscape beyond. Esselles could not see very far due to the lack of light, but no matter where he looked, the land was devoid of vegetation and animal life. All around was the hard, glass-like stone, in ripples and waves, not unlike sand dunes, except that it was hard as glass.
A glint caught his eye and he bent down to look at it. It was a narrow fissure in the glass and extended away from the depression, fanning out as it did so. The edges were fairly sharp, especially the lower edge. The raised edge was a little more worn. Walking along the perimeter he noted there were many of these narrow fissures radiating from the depression. “The ground is cracked,” he stated.
“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Renamir agreed. “I’m not sure what sort of attention casting spells is going to bring, but I think I am going to risk it in this instance. We need to see better. I am going to enhance my sight and will do so for you too, if you’ll let me.”
“I’m fine in the dark light. You lead and I’ll follow. I don’t trust you to cast a spell on me.”
“Suit yourself,” Renamir said. He covered his eyes with his hands and uttered a strange phrase. A brief flash of light leaked from beneath his hands and when he lowered his hands, his eyes were glowing slightly. “Much better,” he said. He looked around and set off in a new direction. “There’s something unusual over there.”
When they neared their destination, Renamir put a hand out to stop Esselles. Get your sword ready, he said through the mental link.
There was what appeared to be a small pool of water, although neither of them were willing to test whether it was indeed water.
This looks awfully round, Esselles said.
I agree, Renamir answered. And there’s what looks like a trap door in the bottom of it. I’m thinking this is some sort of lair.
I don’t see an entrance.
You won’t. Think back to the last lair, Renamir reminded him.
Renamir kneeled down and put his hands on the ground. He uttered a strange phrase and began to lightly slap the ground with one hand while he slid the other around, twisting it slightly in different directions.
Ha! I found you, he said through the link. Grab my shoulder. This time I’m going to bring you through with me rather than relying on your annoying ability to follow me.
Esselles put his left hand on Renamir’s shoulder, keeping the sword in his right hand.
Get ready. We’re going to step forward through a slit. I did not detect anyone in the lair, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hiding. As I step through the folded space, you need to stay right behind me. If something is in here, turn around and press your back up against mine. Under no circumstance should we separate. If we do, the demon will eat us alive. And that is not just a figure of speech.
I know, Esselles said. I saw what it did in Ostar, remember?
Renamir let the comment slide and opened a black slit in front of them and led Esselles through it. They were inside a pitch black cavern. Renamir uttered a single syllable and a mage light appeared above their heads, illuminating the cave.
We walked forward but ended up down below us? Shouldn’t you have had to open the slit beneath us?
If you are folding space, there’s no requirement to do so in a straight line, Renamir answered.
So you formed a sort of ‘S’? Esselles asked.
Very good. Now let’s look around and see what’s here.
The cave floor sloped down and eventually opened up into a large room whose walls were decorated with numerous objects, some identifiable and others not. Renamir and Esselles entered the room, muscles tensed, waiting for something to come at them. They stepped into the middle of the room and each scanned the walls, marveling at the strange implements and objects hanging there.
Something hissed at Esselles and he jumped so much from being startled, he nearly lost his grip on the sword. He used the sword to point out the source of the hiss and he and Renamir moved cautiously toward it from opposite sides.
On a shelf was a cage fashioned from what looked like wrought iron. Inside was a strange, scaly, horned, six legged creature whose forked tongue lashed out, reminiscent of a lizard. The creature had multiple rows of small, narrow teeth that tapered to a needle-like point, glistening with spittle. It backed up a little and hissed at them again.
“A pet?” Esselles asked.
“It would seem that way,” Renamir answered.
“Funny, I never pictured demons as having pets,” Esselles mused. He looked into the cage. The creature backed up into the far corner and hissed at him. It appeared to be protecting something. Something wriggled in the black sand and Esselles wondered whether it had young. He leaned forward to try to make out what was wriggling when the creature leapt to the edge of the cage with amazing speed and lashed out with its jaws. Though its head could fit through the bars of the cage, its shoulders could not. Esselles jumped back a few feet and stared wide-eyed at the creature that was now clinging to the bars with its six legs and snapping at Esselles with its tooth-filled jaw.
Renamir laughed then observed, “Looks like a fitting pet for a demon.” He then pointed towards the furniture around the room. “It looks like there was more than one demon living here, but the place seems to be empty right now. How long it will stay that way, I don’t know, so let’s have a look around and be ready in case the owners of the house return home.”
They moved warily about the room, looking at various items. Some of what Esselles saw had an apparent purpose, although he wondered whether he was just projecting human uses to items. Other items had no obvious purpose whatsoever. A good number of the items around the room were in the possession or draped over the assembled skeleton of some former creature. Esselles could not always tell what type of creature they had been. Many looked demonic. Others did not. He did recognize a human skeleton, one of which had Renamir’s full attention.
“Help me pry this out,” Renamir said upon hearing Esselles walk towards him.
“What is it?”
“It is a mage’s staff. They differ from mage to mage, if they bother to make them at all, but they usually can be used to channel energy. I’m not sure what this one does, but its magical field is still intact, and it seems to be a fairly strong field.” Renamir tugged on the staff, trying to work it out of the stone it had been imbedded in.
“Did you look at the skeletons?” Esselles asked. “At first I thought they were the remains of ancestors, but they were too varied. I think these are trophies, perhaps kills they were proud of for some reason. For instance, that real big one over there, look how its hand is clutching that huge bardiche and the way it is covered in that strange m
ail. It reminds me of some hunters and their trophies.”
“You’re probably right, and that’s all fine and dandy, but I’d like to get this staff out and get the hell out of here,” Renamir said, a little short tempered.
Esselles looked at where the human figure held the staff. The skeletal hand was wrapped about it and where it was, the fingers were reinforced with stone, which also completely encased the staff. The staff was also stuck into the stone on the ground. “It looks like they could shape stone like dwarves. Perhaps if you chiseled at the stone a bit,” Esselles suggested.
“With what?”
“Just a second.” Esselles walked over and came back with an oddly shaped weapon that ended in a five-sided point, almost like a spike. He grabbed it with both hands and drove the spike into the stone.
“Be careful!” Renamir said.
“I will,” Esselles said, and then swung again, chipping some rock away.
“Be forewarned that those staves can often hold energy, and if broken, that energy can dump all at once. You don’t want to be near it if that happens,” Renamir explained.
Esselles checked his stroke in mid-swing. He looked over to Renamir a second then said, “Thanks. Just what I wanted to hear.” He continued chiseling at the staff and worked enough of the stone loose that he was able to pull the staff from the rock. Esselles handed the staff back to Renamir, who almost caressed it as he took it in his hands. Esselles then bent down to examine the hole left behind. He reached a finger in, amazed at its smoothness, having clearly been formed around the staff.
“Let’s go,” Renamir said, calling Esselles’ attention away from the hole. Esselles picked the chisel up and started heading over to return it to where he had taken it.
“What are you doing?” Renamir asked. “Just toss it aside and let’s get out of here.”
Esselles laughed at himself, then tossed the chisel towards the wall. It crashed into the skeleton there. It was a large winged creature with a single prominent horn in the middle of its forehead. The chisel broke a few bones and dislodged a large wooden club it held in its hand. When the club hit the pedestal, a brightly colored disk fell out of the end of the club. Esselles bent down to examine the disk and noticed it had cut a little gash in the floor. He was amazed, since the floor had already proven so hard. He called over to Renamir, “Come take a look at this.”
Renamir let out an exasperated sigh but came over. He bent down to look at the disk, and then raised his eyebrows. “Interesting,” he said, as he used his second sight. “That thing has incredibly dense force lines weaving through it. I’m not familiar with the type of energy it possesses, but I do know that whatever it is, it is made well and is of ample power, for those force lines are bright and drawn tight.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Esselles said.
“Picture something woven together, like a tapestry. Well, this thing is woven with very strong line, like iron cables, but woven very tightly, like work done by a master weaver.”
“It looks like a solid metal disk to me,” Esselles said.
“Yes, it is, but it has the magical cables woven through it, much like your sword. And they are on a similar scale and magnitude as those in your sword,” Renamir explained. “Maybe I was wrong on the suggestion for you studying magic.”
“Very funny,” Esselles said. “So you are saying this item is as powerful as this sword?”
“No, I am saying that it is as well made as the sword. It has the potential to be as powerful,” Renamir corrected.
“Then I will take it as my find,” Esselles said. He grabbed the club and looked at it. It had a slot in one end about the same size as the disk. He slid the slotted club over the disk, but it did not pick up the disk. He tried pushing it with his finger into the slot but was rewarded with a razor thin slice into his finger. He grabbed one of the shards of bone and was successful in getting the disk back into the slot. He lifted the club up and watched the disk roll back into the club.
“Stand back,” he said. Drawing the club back over his head, he whipped it forward. As he had expected, the disk came shooting out of the slot and flew forward, a silver blur marking its passage. What he did not expect was what happened when it reached the far wall. It sliced clean through a metal shelf bracket and imbedded itself into the stone wall.
“Holy shit,” Esselles exclaimed, looking down at the end of the club. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” Renamir answered, “in more ways than one. The thing was putting out some powerful magical fields as well, especially when it made contact with the metal.”
Esselles walked over to the wall where the disk had imbedded itself. It was one-third of the way into the wall. Surprisingly, there were very few fractures radiating from where the disk had stuck in. Instead, it had split the stone, pushing it aside and wedging itself in. He tried to grab the disk in the middle and pull back, but it did not budge. He picked up a fallen piece of the metal shelf bracket and tried to pry the disk out, but succeeded only in gouging the shelf bracket. Finally, he grabbed another strange tool, this one looking something like smithy’s tongs, and was able to pry the disk out. He jumped back as the disk fell dangerously close to his feet, chipping a small piece out of the floor before falling on its side.
Having learned his lesson earlier, Esselles pushed down on the middle of the disk with one finger and used the metal shelf bracket to catch the edge in order to stand it on end. He then picked it up from the middle and dropped it into the slot.
He turned back to Renamir and said, “Okay, now I’m ready.” He hooked the tongs over his sword belt.
He and Renamir walked back to where they had come in and then Renamir reached back to grab Esselles by the arm and led him through the slit that appeared in front of him. They were standing back in the dull red light of the demon home world.
“It doesn’t look all that different to me whichever way we go,” Esselles said, scanning the horizon, or what he could see of it.
“As I said before, one way is as good as the next,” Renamir agreed. He pointed toward some broken hills in the distance and said, “Let’s go towards those hills.”
*
When the third order alert was lowered back down to a first order, people were ushered into the Great Hall. The assembly bells were rung, reverberating throughout the castle, and even more people filed into the hall. When the majority of the guests had taken their places, Bracconius’ page bellowed out.
“His majesty, Lord Bracconius Dhunami, Emperor of Ostar and Urigrave to the Uranthian people, will now address the assembled audience,” he said in a clear, stentorian voice that easily carried to the back of the room. Murmurs ran through the hall as people tried to guess what the unscheduled address would be about, most assuming it had to do with the recent alert status.
“My fine Lords and Ladies,” Bracconius began, “I have some distressing news.” More rumblings ran through the crowd. “An enemy of the empire has just taken a heavy toll.” Bracconius had to wait until the gasps and murmurs died down before beginning. “Fourteen individuals have been slain.” His grim tale had to wait once more. “Included in the fourteen dead are four barons, those being Toliver, Rodite, Tellite, and Zabel.”
This time, it took a number of minutes for the crowd to quiet down enough to continue. There was anguish and despair, as well as shouts of anger and revenge. People were yelling out questions, wanting to know more. “I can’t tell you more until you quiet down,” Bracconius said. He waited until they finally complied.
“The attack appears to be the work of an enemy of the empire,” he continued. “There is conjecture that it might be an old disciple of Malustreure, bent on revenge. Of this, we are not certain, nor do we have much information to guide us. What we do know is that a powerful demon breached the castle’s defenses and attempted to slay myself, and all those in the room with me. Fortunately, through the dedicated work of Lord Mage Balderon and the protective items he created, I was able to surviv
e the attack. Unfortunately, Barons Toliver, Rodite, Tellite, and Zabel were not.
“In addition to the four barons, their personal retainers and guards were also slain, as were a number of castle guardsmen and a watch officer, Sergeant Batine. Services honoring the deceased will be held tomorrow, at the noon hour, in the Hall of the All-Fatherer. All are welcome to pay their respects.
“Due to this unfortunate tragedy, all further festivities for the evening have been canceled. The feast will, however, continue, and we will begin serving shortly. The demon responsible for the carnage has been slain and there is no further threat in the castle.
“We dedicate this feast to our fallen comrades. May their lands be plentiful and their heirs know peace.” Bracconius bowed his head momentarily, most of the crowd following suit, and then returned to his throne and sat down.
Almost at once, the assembly erupted into a cacophony of sound. Bracconius ignored it and turned his attention to his chief of security. “What have you found out, Vanier?”
“Not much new. It seems the demon charged the guards at the ecclesiastical gate and hit them with bolts of energy. A few survived. He then won his way through the gate and headed out into the courtyard. He was pursued by a guardsman in a standard uniform wielding a large, well-crafted longsword. The demon opened up a magical portal in front of him, but before it could get through it, the guardsman ran the demon through with the longsword. The guardsman then turned toward portal, swung at it, then dove through. Both he and the portal disappeared. The description of the guardsman is consistent with that of Hawkblood.”
“Has anyone been able to locate him?” Bracconius asked.
“No,” Vanier answered. “Balderon, Clyne, and Falconer followed the portal and found a cave up north with no entrance or exits except by gating in. There they found a magical device that could open up a gate to the demon home world. He said that two ethereal pockets had recently been created by the device with someone in them. His conjecture was that the first was the remaining assailant and the second was Hawkblood. However, we are still searching locally and have alerted the city guard. We’re also spreading the word to neighboring towns and villages to be on the lookout for Hawkblood.”
Demonified (Hawkblood Chronicles Book 1) Page 23
