A Demon's Contract

by Delmire Hart

  “It’s not common knowledge, but much of the ways of magic have been lost through the years,” Maxwell continued, keeping watch on Barkley from the corner of his eye. “You’ll be disappointed to learn that grand magics and powerful demons are the stuff of legends; reality is far duller.”

  “You said that much has been lost,” he pointed out. “So how did we get it in the first place? If we found something the first time, then we can find it again.”

  Maxwell laughed, then shook his head in disbelief. “You sure are optimistic. No, that isn’t right. Stubborn. You are very stubborn.”

  “I just have something to fight for,” Barkley replied quietly, the mood between them sobering.

  They drew up in front of some wide marble steps and Maxwell stopped, turning to face the young man. The mage stared at him for a long moment, the demon already having disappeared inside the imposing double doorway at the top.

  “How badly do you want it?”

  “I already told you, I would give everything for my family.”

  Barkley stood firm under the mage's perusal. He had lost his father, uncle, and older brother to the war, but he would not let anything happen to the rest of his loved ones. His grandparents, mother, sister, aunt, and small cousins were all back at the village trying to eke out a meagre existence amongst the ruins. The only reason Barkley hadn’t been conscripted to fight was because he had been bedridden by illness when the soldiers came recruiting, and they didn’t want to risk it spreading amongst the troops. The months had passed them by untouched with no word from their families, until one day the war came to their doorstep. Violence arrived on horseback and demon, tearing their fragile lives to shreds in an instant.

  “Keep that determination, you’ll need it,” was all Maxwell said as he turned to walk up the steps.

  Whatever the mage had seen in Barkley’s expression must have been enough, and he wasn’t about to turn away now. Not after he had travelled so far, and not when he was so desperate. Barkley trotted at Maxwell’s heels, barely taking in the grand entrance and the winding corridors they moved through. They went up more staircases than Barkley had ever seen in his life, how tall was this building?

  They finally stopped outside a dark wooden door, and it was only then that he realised Maxwell’s demon had never come back. The mage didn’t seem bothered, so he could only assume that was to be expected, but it made him even more curious about the magical creatures. Where did the demon go when he popped out of existence? How did he know to come back? How far from the mage that held his contract could he travel? The questions burned at him but he held his tongue when Maxwell gave him a stern look.

  “Don’t speak unless directly spoken to or you’ll throw away what small chance I have given you already.”

  All Barkley had time to do was nod in reply before Maxwell was knocking loudly on the door. He was surprised the mage hadn’t used magic to announce their presence, especially after his words earlier. Well, perhaps there were rules to magic use. It’s not like he knew anything about magic, after all.

  “Come in.”

  The deep voice knocked Barkley from his thoughts and he jumped at the sound. He barely had the chance to gather himself before he was being pushed through a door that opened on its own. So magic was mainly used for opening doors, it seemed. What a waste.

  “Headmaster,” Maxwell began with a bow. He seemed hurried as though he wanted to get out of the room as soon as possible. “This is the young man I mentioned that comes to the gate each day to petition to be allowed to contract a demon.”

  The imposing figure sitting behind a massive wooden desk leaned forward to observe Barkley. Unlike Maxwell, whose hair was only winged with grey, this mage’s hair was fully silvered, and odd round pieces of glass sat perched on his nose, held there by a thin silver wire. Creases lined his face and his eyebrows were drawn down into a frown. Only the shoulders and chest of his robes could be seen behind the desk, but the richly coloured fabric was lined with intricate scrollwork.

  “You are aware, boy,” the headmaster spat the word out as though it was a derogatory slur, “that you have no magical talent to speak of? That the stories of humans without magic contracting demons are just that, stories?”

  “I only ask of the chance to try,” Barkley replied steadily, trying to keep his tone as even as possible. It was hard with how the headmaster set him on edge. It was obvious the man thought Barkley was worth less than the dirt on his shoes.

  “Well, you are causing me hassle by petitioning Hamilton every day. Fine. You can go through the portal, but don’t come out until you have forged a contract with a demon. That’s your choice, succeed or die there in the demon realm. If, by some miracle, you do succeed, then you will join the academy for mage training.”

  Barkley was about to protest, but a warning look from Maxwell silenced him. He didn’t want to do the mage training; he only cared about the demon contract.

  “Do you agree to my generous terms?” The headmaster smiled as he spread his arms wide in emphasis. His expression morphed to a sneer as Barkley nodded his agreement. “Take him down to the portal, then return to your duties.”

  With that they were dismissed. Anger warred with hope as Barkley took a moment to breathe in deeply once they had stepped outside. The man was cruel and obnoxious, but he had given him the chance he asked for. It’s just, now the price of failure was even higher than it was before. Maxwell waited with an empathetic look for him to regain himself.

  “For what it’s worth,” the mage ventured as he led him back down the staircases, “if you forge a contract with a demon and complete your academy training, you can join the army as a trained mage. It would give you a higher rank than just a foot soldier and might be the best way to set about what you want to do. But… are you sure? If you can’t contract a demon, you can’t return.”

  “I’m sure,” Barkley said with more confidence than he felt.

  He had said he would do anything for his family, and while it was true, he wasn’t prepared to have his mettle tested so soon. He had thought he would have had more time to mentally prepare, but then, he had been in the city eight days already. It's just, he had expected to be turned away yet again today.

  “The rift between the human and demon realms has been stabilised into a portal,” Maxwell explained. “I will activate the protection around it so you can enter, but to come back out you’ll need magic. The portal always remains open, but we have wards set so that no one can just wander through. Although, imps have been known to open the wards just for their own amusement.”

  “Imps?”

  Maxwell waved his hand and the reddish demon from earlier materialised at his shoulder. For the first time, Barkley noticed the strange tattoo etched into the mage’s hand, but his attention was quickly stolen by the demon whizzing over to sit on his shoulder.

  “This is Quizak,” Maxwell introduced, and the demon laughed before taking off to fly circles around Barkley. “He is my contracted demon, otherwise known as an imp. You’ll find all the currently contracted demons here are imps, although legends tell of other demons that have been contracted in the past. No one in living memory has forged a contract with a different type of demon.”

  “That’s because you humans have nothing to offer.”

  Quizak’s voice took Barkley by surprise and he stumbled, earning a loud cackle from the demon. The speech was easy enough to understand, but it was strangely high pitched and grating on the ears. It hadn’t occurred to him that the creature would be able to speak at all, let alone the common tongue that was used broadly across their continent.

  “Oh.” All the hope that had been surging through him before was snuffed out like a flickering candle. The anger at the headmaster had faded as well, leaving him with a building sense of dread as they moved deeper into the bowels of the academy. “All I have to offer is me.”

  The imp spun around to stare at him for a long moment, his beady eyes bright with intelligence before he bl
inked out of existence once more.

  “Don’t mind him,” Maxwell said, trying to reassure him. The effort, while appreciated, fell flat. “Imps are strange at the best of times.”

  “Where does he go when he disappears?”

  He might be walking forward to his impending doom, but at least he could distract himself while he had a companion. Maxwell had seemed standoffish to begin with, but after eight days of Barkley pestering him, it seemed like he had wormed his way past the mage’s hard exterior. It got him the chance he had come here for; if only it couldn’t be for something more.

  “Back to the demon realm. Contracted demons can easily travel between our two worlds. Something about using their contracted human as an anchor on this end and the demon realm being their home plane.” The mage shrugged, looking sheepish. “As much as I love to read and study, I have never been very good at the theoretical side of magic. Most of the current theories make little sense to me.”

  The wide sweeping corridors of the castle above them had given way to rough-hewn stone and narrow passages. They finally stepped through an open archway to emerge into a dimly lit room. A swirling black, green, and purple mass sat directly in front of them, orange runes glowing on the floor around it. It could only be the portal between their worlds.

  Striding forward with both hands raised, Maxwell called out words that sounded nothing short of gibberish to Barkley and the orange runes turned white. He turned to look back at the young man soberly.

  “For what it’s worth, I hope you succeed. We could do with some fresh attitude around here.”

  Barkley gave the mage a trembling smile, his hands forming fists to hide their shaking.

  “Thanks.”

  With one last nod of acknowledgement, Barkley strode forward into the portal with no hesitation or looking back.

  It was time to get to work.

  Chapter Three

  There was no sensation of movement like Barkley expected as he stepped through the portal. He wasn’t certain what he had expected, other than a clear sign he had left the human world, but there was nothing. No sound, no sensation. It didn’t even feel like he was moving. Perhaps that was the sign he was looking for; not a feeling, but rather a lack of feeling showed the change.

  The other side of the portal was dark enough that he walked forward several paces before he realised he was through. It was only the white runes on the ground that alerted him. Turning back, Barkley could see the strange swirling portal, the stabilized rift between their worlds, standing tall behind him. It looked exactly the same on this side as it had in the basement of the academy. Moving his attention back to his surroundings, Barkley peered through the dim light, trying to make out anything other than what appeared to be black rock.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realised he was in something of a cave; jagged black rock surrounded him before soaring up to form a high ceiling. The area the cave encompassed was massive. Light seemed to emanate faintly from the rock itself as an exit wasn’t immediately obvious. Feeling unsettlingly vulnerable, Barkley set off in a random direction. He had no way of knowing if this was the right direction, if there even was a correct way to go, but he knew he couldn’t stay where he was.

  He had promised his family he would bring back help, that he would find a way to end the war that ravaged their home. That promise required him to stop standing around and to move forward.

  After stumbling around in the faint light for some time, Barkley hit a wall. Placing a hand on it to guide him, he followed the outline of the cave. Just as he was wondering if there was an exit at all, he found it. A small opening hidden behind an outcropping of stone lead to a long, thin corridor which opened into a brighter, more colourful vista.

  Barkley shielded his eyes against the sudden onslaught of light. Cackles of laughter rang out in front of him and he opened one watering eye to glance around. Imps of all colours, shapes, and sizes surrounded him. They seemed to be keeping their distance, beady eyes watching him with unbridled curiosity. As his vision righted itself once again, he looked closer. Red imps, purple, blue, green. Some with bat-like wings, others whose wings looked like they should be upside-down. A blue one had no wings at all yet floated off to his right, giggling as it watched him watch them.

  Beyond the imps, the odd black rock gave way to rolling plains of red and yellow bordering a lake of fiery bubbling red. To the other side, the plains melted into deep green forest while floating islands dotted the sky above them. A thin stream of water ran off one floating island to land on another before creating a waterfall off that one as well. The end of the water seemed to disappear into the depths of the forest, and the stream never stopped or slowed even though Barkley could not see how water was getting to the top island. In the distance, huge black mountains reached for the strange yellow sky, some even dusted with white as though they were covered in snow. No sun or moon could be seen to explain the odd colouring of the sky above.

  The strangeness only highlighted his feeling of discomfort and Barkley quickly strode forward, hoping that doing something would ease his nerves. The imps scattered in a fit of laughter and jeers in a language he could not understand. Their odd behaviour, coupled with Maxwell’s comment about imps activating the wards on the portal for their own amusement, had Barkley mentally labelling them as tricksters and trouble makers. He wasn’t sure if they were the kind of demons he was after, but it didn’t matter as they kept their distance from him.

  It was both reassuring and unsettling.

  Maxwell had said the only demons the academy mages had contracts with were the imps that seemed determined to keep their distance even as they watched him curiously. Perhaps they were attracted to the magic spark inside some humans, and that was why the academy only recruited those people. But then what of the stories of old filled with vivid descriptions of other demons, great and small? His gran had always said legends had a grain of truth in them, and the contracted demon was a center point of many a tale.

  Perhaps it was silly to base his entire plan on what he had heard from the old stories. He was putting his life on the line, he would die here if he couldn’t find a demon to help him. But what else did he have? The lives of his family were at stake as well as the lives of many more people in the grand scheme of the war. What was his one life against all those? Even if he had stayed back at his home village, with no way to defend himself and his family, he would most likely end up dead anyway. Better to risk his life for a chance to make a real difference than to sit waiting for his death to come to him.

  The black rock gave way under his feet to red sandy dirt. The spots of yellow on the red plains proved to be odd stalk-like plants; their long, thin stem topped by a feathery plume of deeper yellow. They looked like strange mockeries of wheat fields back home, their forms not quite matching up to what his memory said wheat looked like. They felt like plants under his fingers though.

  Barkley jumped as an imp tittered loudly behind him and he glanced back to see that his entourage had diminished. No doubt the missing imps had grown bored with his wanderings already and gone off to make mischief elsewhere. Half a dozen still zipped around him as he walked though, laughing amongst themselves as he slogged alone over the red plains of the demon realm.

  Other than the imps travelling with him, his surroundings seemed oddly devoid of life. He didn’t expect the place to be teeming with demons per se, but he had expected something other than a mottled collection of imps. Although, perhaps that was presumptuous after Maxwell’s warning. If they could see other demons, then surely the academy mages would have tried to forge contracts with them.

  Time dragged out as he walked across the seemingly endless plain of dusty red and yellow. All but two of his imp companions had fled, leaving behind an orange-yellow one with curled horns and bat-like wings, and a dark mottled green imp with small, stub-like horns and the odd upside down leathery wings. They were quiet as they flew beside him, their moods seeming steadier and more subdued than t
he mercurial imps from earlier. After what felt like hours, their presence morphed from unwelcome to almost comforting. Barkley had tried to speak with the imps after walking in silence for so long, but neither responded with more than a stare, so he soon gave up. Still, their companionship gave him hope that he could find a demon willing to speak with him to forge a contract.

  Barkley’s thoughts were wandering when he was pulled up short as he crested a small ridge. Walking on the plains below him were a handful of creatures that seemed to be human mixed with beast. They walked upright on two furry legs but their knees bent backwards like a goat’s, and hooves trampled the earth instead of feet. Yet, from mid-thigh up to their neck, including their arms, they appeared entirely human. Scraps of cloth hung about their waists but no coverings adorned their chests, even those who appeared female, judging by the tanned breasts out on display. Their heads were that of cows and bulls, the males sporting huge curved horns. Looking closer, he could even see a tail peeking out from beneath the odd loin cloth.

  None of the herd of beast-man demons paid him the slightest attention, but Barkley was thrilled. He had finally stumbled across demons other than imps. Glancing back the way he came, he tried to judge the distance he had travelled but quickly gave up. He had no way to judge time in this place either. Regardless, it didn’t feel like it had been that much effort to find these demons, how had the mages not seen them? They didn’t look like they would deal with Barkley but their presence meant there had to be more demons scattered about the realm.