The Demon City

by Evan Currie

  Elan was stunned by the speed, but she’d been training most of her life to fight dirty. Her father hadn’t been a big believer in propriety, something that both Kaern and Simone had enforced. So she reacted on instinct and delivered a knee to the man’s crotch, though it wound up being more of her shin that connected actually, as he was so much shorter than she was used to.

  A keening sound tore itself from the little man’s throat as his cheeks puffed out and eyes bulged in response to the blow. Elan didn’t take time to find any satisfaction in it, instead following up the success with a low underhand blow that hammered his sternum and then an overhand cross that rang every bell between the man’s ears as it sent him to the ground in a slump.

  She felt more than saw the motion of the other rushing in on her and reacted, again on instinct, as she looked around to find the sidearm that was still in flight. She leapt from her position, planting a foot on the closest building and using that to redirect herself into a dive aimed right at the sidearm spinning through the air.

  It was there, right in front of her, the world slowing to a crawl as she reached out to grasp at it, to pluck it from space and put it back in her hand where it belonged.

  A spinning axe from below collided with the sidearm, sending both spinning away from her grasp, and then the world sped right back up again.

  She twisted in midair, hitting another building with her back and slapping her arms out to absorb the impact before sliding down to the ground, where she landed in a crouch with eyes fixed on the remaining little man, who was laughing uproariously as he stood over his comrade.

  “What the circles are you laughing at, brother?” the one on the ground groaned as he rolled over and tried to get back to his feet.

  “What do you think? She nailed you right good in the jollies,” the laughing one answered.

  “She?” the first groaned, looking around with water-filled eyes.

  “Aye. ’Less that’s a twelve-year-old boy with some development issues, I’d say you got caught good and solid by a teenage girl.”

  “Mother forner,” the first spat, both word and spit seeming to splatter on the filth-encrusted ground.

  Elan tensed as she heard motion from the side and saw the big redhead picking her sidearm up from the ground. The slight glow of the weapon went dead instantly as he did, causing him to look at it in confusion as she lunged.

  “Jol! No! Toss it away!” one of the men yelled.

  The redhead looked confused but made to throw the weapon over to the pair.

  “Not at us!” The other frantically waved his hands. “Away! Away! Anywhere but—”

  The two grimaced in unison as Elan plowed into the redhead, shoulder first, and folded him damn near in half as the air rushed from the big man’s lungs.

  “Ouch. That had ta hurt.”

  “Worry about the boy later,” the second snapped as he broke into a flat-out sprint just as her hand plucked the sidearm from the limp hand of the redhead, causing it to hum and faintly glow again as it activated. “Move!”

  Both were charging as Elan wrapped an arm around the throat of the redheaded man and pulled him upright to use as additional shelter. The two retrieved their axes, barely even affecting their charge, and part of her was impressed by the smooth economy of motion. It was the sort of motion she aspired to, what she saw hints of in Simone and that Kaern had wielded with casual ease.

  She leveled her weapon on the closest but was a heartbeat late as a crossing blow deflected her hand up and away just as the weapon discharged.

  The antihydrogen pellet cracked through the air and slammed into a building across the way from them, breaking the magnetic seal as it did. The instant conversion of antihydrogen and a commensurate section of the building directly to energy unleashed a thunderclap that reverberated across all of them and out through the city. Elan, having been prepared this time, managed to avoid losing her weapon but found herself on the defense as she tried to keep them from hitting her with their axes by alternately blocking with her sidearm or simply interposing the redhead between her and her attackers.

  I need to get out of here!

  Desperate to break free of the situation, she flicked her wrist, mentally nudging her sidearm, and felt it reassemble itself in an instant until she held a dull gray sword in its place.

  Now with more reach, she held them off a little bit farther from her and her . . . hostage? Captive? Elan really had no idea what to consider the groggy, barely conscious redhead in her grasp.

  She pushed that thought aside, focusing on fighting her way around to a position she could use to break free and escape from . . . though she was rather angry about the whole situation. First, getting caught flat-footed like she had was just stupid, pure and simple . . . but now just three of them had managed to hold her off while she was in armor and carrying a sidearm?

  Disgraceful.

  She was simply disgusted with her showing.

  Elan blocked another axe blow with the edge of her blade, surprised that the axe had survived it as well as it had. She’d seen the blade of the sidearm cut through steel with ease in the past, but there was no time to really think about it as the two little men pushed the attack suddenly hard and fast.

  They came in together, a whirling pattern of steel and flashes of light that pushed her to her limit . . . her limit and the limit of her armor and sidearm, as she desperately threw everything she had left into her defense. Elan wasn’t even thinking by that point as a crackling energy began to build between them, her actions purely driven by instinct and desperation.

  Even so, she didn’t even see it coming when one of the little men hooked his axe in around her blade and twisted with enough force to yank it from her hand and send it clattering to the wall and ground.

  Elan was snapped out of the battle fugue in that moment, staring at the crackling blue lightning that was dancing along the blade of the axes the two men carried.

  “You’re like Kaern!” she blurted out, stunned.

  The two exchanged a long glance and shifted marginally apart, making her twist to try to keep both in view and to keep her only remaining defense, aside from her armor, interposed between them as best as possible.

  “And what would ye know of the wanderer, girl?” the one she’d nailed between the legs demanded, still walking with just a hint of a limp.

  Elan, rather angry with herself for her shock and loss of control, angrily shut her mouth with a click of her teeth. She kept moving, keeping the redhead between her and the other two, her eyes dancing back and forth between them.

  “Well now,” the other man said as he stepped over and knelt down by her fallen sidearm. He picked it up, and again the dim glow that signified the weapon being active died down. The edge of her blade was now less than iron. It was too light even to make a decent club. “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time.”

  “Standard issue, brother?”

  “Not a peck,” the man with the blade in hand said firmly. “This is special service issue.”

  He looked over his shoulder to the smoking hole in the building Elan had accidentally shot.

  “One of the late-war models, no less,” he said with a laughing shake of his head. “After they stopped giving a damn about collateral damage.”

  The other looked over at her severely. “Now where did a slip of a girl pick up something like this?”

  “I’m more interested in how she knows that old bastard Kaern,” the other said, still laughing.

  Elan looked between them, trying to determine if she had any chance of getting her weapon back. She did not want to go back to Merlin and admit that she’d lost another sword.

  “Put him down, lass,” the laughing one said, a little more seriously. “The boy’s a bit dense, but we rather like him. Don’t make us angry.”

  “Angrier,” the one with a limp growled.

  That set the other off laughing again, gales of it just exploding from his mouth as he held his stomach against the
cramping pain.

  “Oh shut up, brother.”

  The redhead in her arms groaned, trying to shift away, but Elan tightened up her grip, and he moaned in pain as the armor-enhanced arm wrapped around his neck cut off his air.

  The limping man sighed, waddling slightly as he went over to his brother and grabbed the sidearm out of the laughing fool’s hand. With a casual flick, he set it flipping in Elan’s direction. She reacted on instinct, grabbing it out of the air. The glow returned to the edge of the blade almost instantly, and she looked between it and the two for a long moment before she relaxed her grip and pushed the redhead away.

  The big, muscled man slipped from her grasp and sprawled to the ground and filth that covered it with a splatting sound that made her wince slightly under her armor.

  “If you can work one of those, I expect you’re here about the elder,” the limping man said, scowling. “We’re not enemies, lass . . . doubt we’re allies, before you go thinking that, but my brother and I have no reason to be fighting you.”

  Elan cocked her head, looking at him from under her armor.

  “Elder?” she asked, confused.

  *****

  Simone stood in front of the people of Atlantis, in the center of the small town’s square, and looked over the faces of those who were at least fit enough to consider fighting.

  The world was a cruel place, she reflected as she considered what she was about to say . . . about to ask. A kind world would let people rest after losing all they had. A kind world would not have let them lose so much in the first place.

  That wasn’t the world they were living in.

  “Merlin,” she said, making her voice carry with a practiced effort, “has informed me of a demon incursion in this very island chain.”

  A low murmur of fear instantly went up, and she had little choice but to let it go for a moment. Any attempt to silence them would fail if she didn’t give them some chance to express their fears. She was well aware of how people thought. After a moment, she raised her arms for silence and received it.

  “There is little concern for the moment that they will find their way to Atlantis,” she reassured them. “They appear intent on another island some distance farther down the chain from here. However, what they’re doing may be of concern. We have to make a decision, one that may have no good options, I am very much afraid.”

  “Just tell us, Simone.” Caleb spoke up with a bit of a grin. “No sense playing games.”

  “Shut it, boy.” Another man, considerably older, laughed at him. “Some of us would rather play games a while.”

  Simone rolled her eyes but again waved down the rising wave of nervous laughter and chatter.

  “We could ignore them. Odds are they’ll not come here,” she said. “There’s no sign that they will for the moment. However, what they’re working on has us concerned.”

  She looked over the sea of faces, satisfied that she had their attention.

  “Merlin,” she said, invoking a near-magical name. He was the one who had sent the wave, who controlled the magical transports and other things that had saved them in the past. Besides Elan, who had more of a familiar and visual presence, Merlin was an oft-whispered savior for the people of Atlantis. “Merlin believes that they are constructing a portal to bring through something worse than demons. If that happens, especially this close to us, I don’t believe it takes much imagination to predict the outcome.”

  The sickly look among those watching and listening was enough to tell her that she had gotten the message through.

  “So we have a choice,” she said. “We can hide here . . . we could try to run. Merlin is willing to transport us elsewhere.”

  “Demons are everywhere, Simone,” Caleb said loudly, clearly. “If they’re going to bring more of their kind, or worse, then running would be a short escape, and you know it.”

  She nodded somberly. “I know . . . but we’ve lost so much already.”

  “If we run now, we lose the last things we have,” Caleb told her. “We lose what little respect we have and our right to call ourselves freemen . . . and when it’s all said and done, they’ll still catch us and kill us.”

  Simone could almost have hugged the boy. Though he was arguing with her in some ways, he was also playing directly into her intent. The crowd was following him, and Simone could feel that the young man had them on his side of the argument. It wasn’t how she planned it, but she’d take advantage of it.

  “Then we have our third option,” she said. “Merlin cannot provide us much, but he has said he will give us what he can if we want to make a stand. This isn’t a decision for me to make . . .”

  “I’ll make the decision,” Caleb interrupted her, “for myself and no one else. If I have to go alone, I will. This is my home now. I’m not running again.”

  Several others called out their agreement, such that Simone could see the shift from fear in the crowd. She immediately moved to capitalize on it with her own statement, taking advantage of the opportunity Caleb had just presented her.

  “You’ll not stand alone, Caleb,” she said with as serious and confident a tone as she could, masking both fear for, and pride of, the young man she had raised when her two best friends left him behind, one more orphan to demonic evils. “Atlantis is my home now as well.”

  That was enough to turn the tide.

  The fear remained, but it was drowned by the surge of anger and enthusiasm that followed.

  Simone looked over the assembly with satisfaction and trepidation.

  The fledgling city of Atlantis was about to go to war.

  Chapter 10

  Jol looked between the brothers and the girl who’d bounced him around the alley like he was some Ninth Circle filth choking on his own rotting flesh, uncertain quite what he should be thinking. The fact that she was human both assuaged and stoked his injured pride in confusing ways.

  Once they’d stopped fighting, the brothers had decided it would be wiser to get the hells out of the open in order to talk. He understood once he saw the damage the fight had caused to the nearby building. It would be a miracle if the structure wasn’t eventually brought down by that smoking hole, though it might be years before that happened. There was unlikely to be anyone who would be able to fix it correctly. Similar things had happened before, so he was well aware of that little truth of living in the demon city.

  She will probably order the building destroyed to keep it from coming down in some unexpected way, he assumed.

  In any case, that entire area would soon be swarming with midlevel demons from the Fourth and Fifth Circles, perhaps even a low-ranking Third or so, all looking for the cause of that damage. Ser’Goth was the hells, no pun intended, on those who used excessive powers within the city . . . and blowing a massive gaping maw in the side of a building in the most packed sector of the city certainly would count as excessive. The only reason it wasn’t already filled with demons was due to the sheer incompetence and disorganized nature of the Circles.

  They were hell on armies and the very devils in a fight, but neither of the brothers had ever met a demon less than fifth circle that showed more than a modicum of discipline, and for that that did… well, corralling cats would be child’s play compared to doing more than merely pointing demons in a general direction and hoping they didn’t get too lost.

  “We’re safe for now,” Brokkr said, shifting painfully as he sat down in the apartment the brothers had chosen to use for the time being. “Why don’t you tell us how you know Kaern? Last I heard, the Wanderer had bowed out of human affairs a long time past.”

  The girl—Elan she had called herself—looked away before she answered, eyes growing unfocused as she remembered something that mattered to her.

  “He saved my life,” she said finally. “I called for help in the dreaming, and he came.”

  Sindri, still altogether too amused by the whole situation, made an impressed sound.

  “You’re a dreamer? Not too many of yo
u humans ever bothered to learn that,” he said. “Too impressed with your own technical wizardry to master the arcane. One of the things that lost you the war, albeit one of the smaller factors. So how is Kaern, then?”

  “Dead.”

  The answer was delivered in a monotone, with only undercurrents to hint that the question meant more than expected from the girl. Jol looked at her more intently and saw the flash of pain in eyes that tried to mount a stony appearance.

  “That old bastard? Doesn’t seem likely,” Sindri said with a skeptical chuckle. “How’d he go out?”

  “The wave got him when he held off the demons chasing us,” she said quietly, catching Jol’s attention.

  “The wave?” he asked sharply. “The one that wiped out the lord’s forces?”

  “I suppose.” She shrugged. “There were a lot of demons chasing us, but I never stopped to ask their names.”

  That once again cracked Sindri up, leaving him roaring while Brokkr and Jol glared at him.

  “The report said that wave was a monster, hundreds of feet high,” Brokkr said, shrugging. “If anything could take out the Wanderer, I suppose that might do it. Still . . . that bastard has been kicking around longer than you could imagine, girl. He’s had more names than I can remember and escaped certain doom enough times that when death finally does come for him, you can bet the dark specter will be bringing reinforcements.”

  “There’s truth in that,” Sindri agreed, “but I’m more interested in how you escaped something that could take out that old forner. I thought the report said there were no survivors for hundreds of miles. If you were close enough to see Kaern die, no way a human could have outrun something like that. I know; I’ve seen them try.”

  Elan hesitated, eyes darting between them as she wondered how to answer that.