Though the demon struggled mightily, its essence grown strong on the souls of multitudes, its strength became my own as I devoured its lifeblood from the inside and gorged my way to freedom.
Oozing infernal power, unholy lore, and the contents of a mind as alien as the gulf between the stars, I rose liberated by the powers that had once constrained me.
Return
I’ve done some pretty awful things in my day, but eating a demon from the inside out is one of the worst.
It was also one of the best.
I returned to the land of the living with clear eyes, feeling remade, born anew amid the fires of Hell itself.
The world around me was in shambles, xeric plains stretching to the horizon in all directions, desiccated vegetation clustered in forlorn hummocks with large stretches of cracked open ground between.
I did not care.
I laughed in joy and madness, rejoicing in my freedom, celebrating my rebirth into a world gone mad, a diseased planet far better than the one I had just abandoned.
My clothes were in shambles, tattered and dusty.
My boots were gone, cast off or worn out and tossed aside.
Loer’allon was nowhere to be seen.
Lucius and Alric were no longer with me.
But I was whole.
And I was alive.
The time of retribution had come.
I now knew the natural order of things.
If demons’ natural prey was mortal man, then demons were the natural prey of Djen’toth.
Though humans had often inadvertently suffered under this natural order, I was here to put it aright.
I grinned wickedly, with only the slightest touch of madness.
I had not eaten in far too long.
I was famished.
Let the demons come.
I would consume their hunger in my own.
Clarity
In days long past, perhaps before the intervention of the Heavenly Host, Djen’toth must have arisen as humanity’s natural response to demonic incursion and predation, a means to protect the species from rapacious predators intent on drinking every mortal soul on Uërth dry.
The Djen’toth would have provided a powerful counter to demonic destruction, one that prevented mass planetary extinction.
After angels intervened, casting out the demonic interlopers and sealing them behind the Empyrean Gate, the Djen’toth became a solution without a problem, one no longer needed, one that turned against the very people their magical ability had once served to protect.
When the Djen’toth turned on their own, the cullings began.
And then the Djen’toth were no more.
With, perchance, one notable exception.
I liked being the exception.
I also liked being a solution to a problem almost as much as I liked mushrooms…especially magical ones.
Which, given my prior fears and concerns, I found to be something of a surprise.
But being helplessly imprisoned in your own body by a soul-devouring monstrosity and being subjected to its depravities can do wonders to alter one’s perspective.
“Alric?”
Nothing.
“Alric, are you there?”
Only the silence of my inner mind replied.
“Alric!”
My desperate screams went unanswered.
No matter how loudly, intently, or frequently I called, emptiness was my only response.
I could look back with supreme clarity on all our discussions as I wandered southward. I could envision everything Alric had imparted to me overnight in dreams while I slept at need, but of my erstwhile master, the teacher I had never accepted having until he was gone, there was nothing.
Only an absence I wished were filled.
Tears stained my dusty cheeks as I trudged southward, my purpose remaining as strong as my heart was weak.
I now journeyed alone.
All those lives that had once shared my own, however briefly, were now but memories, visions to be recalled but no longer lived directly.
I was an empty husk ready to be refilled.
Let the infernals descend upon me.
I was ready.
Whither My Weapon?
Loer’allon and Lucius, that pair of mighty heroes, were as noticeably, heart-rendingly absent as Alric.
Which is to say utterly and completely.
I remembered Alric saying that Loer’allon would come to me at need if summoned.
He had also said that she could exorcise a demon from me if one took possession.
Neither had happened.
What did that mean?
For that matter, what did Lucius’s absence signify?
Had my pet rock refused to tag along with my abominable hunting spree because he was unable to intervene without risking injury or death to my corporeal form?
Had he stayed behind to help Loer’allon wherever the Angel Sword now resided?
Had he met the same fate as Loer’allon?
Had Loer’allon refused my summons because our bond was incomplete or broken?
Had I treated her too lightly, as but a weapon or toy and not a partner in my quest, one that I was to discard in the end?
I had many more questions than answers.
But that was a situation I was comfortable with…one I lived in and made my home—the nimbus of unknowing.
I knew far too many know-it-alls. I knew far fewer who claimed in all sincerity to know nothing…at least of real significance.
I was of the latter category.
My paltry intellect could barely encompass the simplest fungal life cycles of common mushrooms, much less the workings of the heavens, the motivations of angels, the meaning and fate of man, or the totality of existence. Much less if everything truly was better with bacon.
Those were the questions that fried my brain and left puddles of drool dribbling from the corners of my mouth while I stared blankly off into space.
Or the ones that put me to sleep.
Whichever came first.
“Lucius!”
“Loer’allon!”
My voice disappeared into the vast openness of the desolate wasteland that was my new home, finding no purchase in the whipping winds and churning dust.
Memories of my demon-induced killing spree were too scattered for me to easily retrace my steps, to find where I had been and hope to find my friends.
I did, however, have an idea of how to find them.
I would cast a divination spell.
Not being particularly divine at the moment, the vile demonic taint still a noxious stain soiling my essence from the inside out, my hopes were not particularly high about the result.
But when did I let something as minor as reality or the possibility of success get in the way of my goals?
I hunched down on the red dirt, my toes sinking in and finding purchase where once my handsome boots had protected my feet.
I gathered my will, envisioning Lucius and Loer’allon, and literally cast a bit of my essence outward. This small part of me was the fuel that would seek out my friends and power the magic that would tell me where they were.
In theory.
Just like the theory that had led me to complacency, thinking I was invisible to the roving demons before being possessed.
Or like the theory that I could actually survive the journey southward.
A theory I still tried to believe in, no matter how unlikely it seemed.
With the completion of my spell, one I hoped would be more effective than my prior attempts at magic, I watched the energies I had gathered around me concentrate in a luminous, purposeful ball of force.
Which promptly disappeared.
Waiting patiently for some time, I watched carefully as nothing happened.
Even more nothing happened.
For some time.
Well, that was disappointing.
I had expected a bit more.
Maybe something like
an immediate response.
Or a pillar of smoke and a disembodied image of Loer’allon and Lucius.
Or a radiant vision of how to reach my friends.
Or a voice echoing in my mind telling me of the quest I would need to undertake to find my allies.
But nothing?
Not even a fizzle?
Maybe that was not as unexpected as I would like to think.
Sighing, I refreshed my cloaking spell—for what it was worth—then settled onto the earth in a small plume of dust and went to sleep.
There was always tomorrow.
I hoped.
That word again.
I needed something better than hope.
Like certainty.
With something less than certainty and not much hope, I finally managed to sink into the boundless halls of sleep.
My friends were waiting for me there with open, loving arms…or rather heavenly bladed edges and polished elemental stone surfaces.
Sadly, they were joined by hordes of multi-limbed demons wreathed in the fires of Hell.
Those were the friends I would rather not revisit.
Dreams to Come
The nightmarish dreams of early sleep soon disappeared.
Those dreams, though vivid and disturbingly disquieting in their subject matter, were but pale, weightless shadows of the surreal visions that followed.
I trudged across an open, expansive plain.
There was no relief in sight.
No vegetation broke the horizon.
No hills or valleys added relief to the beaten, hammered topography.
No birds circled overhead.
Not even demons bespoiled the skies.
I was starkly, utterly alone.
I had to be thirsty.
And hungry.
But I lumbered on.
How much longer I could go, I could not guess.
A week?
A day?
An hour?
I was exhausted, ready to lie down.
Ready to close my eyes and sleep.
Ready to lay my head on the hard-packed ground and rest.
Ready to give up…if only for a time.
Light shimmered on the horizon.
Blinking, I shielded my eyes from the light of the sun.
The light would not go away.
It began to grow brighter.
As I made my way forward, the light became blinding.
Still I persisted onward, eyes closed, hands blocking my eyes, but the light still found its way in. Its radiance scorched my eyes, scalded my skull, and etched its weight eternally on my memory, its burden evaporating thought and reason alike.
I screamed out beneath the light’s onslaught and tried to run but my feet would not listen.
My legs carried me relentlessly forward as the light continued to burn more and more of my essence away, what I felt to be the true and vital Saedeus, burnishing the surface of my body and mind to an incandescent mirror, one clean and pure but honed to deadly sharpness.
One that could reflect the light back upon itself.
One that could magnify the light to perceive clearly and without distraction.
One that could burn and purify at need.
No longer needing to close my eyes or cover my face, I strode forward dauntlessly.
What I had once taken as a single light of illimitable intensity resolved itself as I approached, finally striding through its unwavering curtain as I reached my destination.
All around me, the lights of Heaven itself shimmered in empyrean perfection, the blades of Angel Swords fallen to the ground in Zion’s fall.
Reality After Dreams
I wiped spittle from my lips, too precious to squander in this barren hinterland.
The dust of a night’s sleep huddled on the dry, open ground clung to my cheeks, arms, and clothes in a ruddy haze.
Brushing myself off, I restored my wandering saliva to its rightful place and sat up with only the slightest groan.
My head felt abnormally light and clear, purposeful but keen and unblemished.
Strange.
Standing fully, I shook myself clean as best I could before pausing in wonder.
The demonic taint was gone!
The vile putridity that I had felt, real or imagined, after my ordeal with the infernal had cleared!
Where had it gone?
How had it vanished?
I squinted my eyes doubtingly, skeptical of the truth I now felt with a surety I could not deny.
I felt cleansed.
I felt remade.
Had the dream been true?
Had I actually had a vision?
Had my spell worked?
Incredulous, I did what any sane man of my vaunted stature would…I leapt up into the air and whooped, the echoing call of my voice only slightly less heroic than I might have hoped.
I then quickly clamped my jaws shut, fearing the reprisal of demons without a weapon in hand.
Thankfully, none were visible plying the skies overhead in search of lost souls to harvest.
That I might be able to travel for some time in peace and security was a blessing warranting true thanks.
Halting my forward momentum before beginning my day’s march, I spun in a circle, stunned.
My heart sank as I realized the true cost of my blessing.
For a blessing it was not.
The cost of my peace was far too high.
I stood within a graveyard of angels.
Angel Swords marked the final resting places of many divine souls.
How I had missed their many lights on my journey the day before, I could not say.
Perhaps something of the residual demonic stigma truly had blinded my inner vision.
Or mayhap the Angel Swords had hidden themselves from one yet sullied by Abyssian befoulment.
But now I could see.
And the radiance nearly blinded me.
The Light of a thousand suns shone from beneath the polished earth just as it had in my dreams.
My divination spell had merely revealed to me what I had perhaps been too blind to see.
My salvation, if they would have me, surrounded me in numbers far greater than I had ever wished to see.
That so many of the Uërthly Host had fallen protecting our world brought tears to my eyes, tears I let fall willingly without thought of loss.
If only those angels yet remained.
If only the Empyrean Gate yet held.
If only the demons were no more.
Sadly, I did not live in a world of ifs.
I lived in a world bereft of what had been.
I lived in a world of dreams dead and dying.
I lived in a world of demons and dread.
I lived in a world where men had to take up the swords that angels could no longer bear for us.
To Call and Hope for an Answer
I sat back down.
Dust scattered around my legs in roiling clouds that were absent in the sky above.
My tears fell freely, a steady rain over a land parched and dried of hope and possibility.
I might not be able to do much, but I could try.
Taking a deep breath, I opened myself, letting the calm I had felt upon wakening deepen and spread outward.
I asked for help.
I expressed my need as fully and completely as I could.
I shared my concern for Loer’allon and Lucius and their safe return.
I called to the Angel Swords.
And they answered.
Lights rose upward from the ground itself to surround me in a halo of luminosity so bright that I could not discern the individual blades themselves, only feel their divine intensity.
Seldom had I wished to be free of my inner vision, but the Swords were too much.
The Light was too intense.
Seraphic wings, auroras of heavenly radiance, and visions beyond my ken shimmered in a phantasmal haze around the blades, opening
onto the infinite.
I tried to look away but there was nowhere else to turn.
Row upon row of Empyrean Knights and angels stood witness above me, each Angel Sword a projection of a multitude of former bearers, their essences its own.
I sat within a circle of the Uërthly Host.
Unable to do anything else, I accepted as much as I could of what I was given and let the rest pass.
The celestial visions began to coalesce into a single frame.
I gazed upon a place of utter Darkness, the absence of identifiable form as much an assault upon my senses as the seething wrongness of the place upon my mind.
If this was not the Abyss itself, this fell dimension was Its close cousin.
If this was what cousins were like, I was glad I did not have any.
At least that I knew.
Within this foul plane, pushed upon from all sides by the very essence of the place, a blazing white sword shone brighter than the sun above.
Orbiting about this star, a small planet whirled frenetically.
Loer’allon and Lucius.
The demon that had possessed me had somehow banished them to this place.
As hard as it was to imagine, without Loer’allon fighting the demon’s attempt to cast them out, I am sure the pair would have ended up some place much worse.
Not that where they were appeared to be anything like a vacation.
After this brief glimpse of my friends’ plight, the vision began to fade.
“No!” I reached out to them beseechingly, drawing in the Light of the Swords themselves in my need, making their energy my own.
With a horrific, bone-jarring, ripping sound, the air within the circle of holy swords tore open in an onyx vortex, the terrible Light of the Swords holding the writhing Darkness in abeyance.
From within this void, a lambent blade and a refulgent stone shot forth.
Reunited
Loer’allon hovered in the air before me, a vision of perfection yet unsullied by the travails of Hell itself.
Lucius plunked down happily in my lap with a faint puff of dust, his return as simple and unremarkable as a trip from the local market.
Soul Stealer: Legacy of the Blade Page 11