Ringwall`s Doom

by Awert, Wolf

  The demon’s aura was like the Thorwag’s that had once sat upon his shoulder. Wild, black, flickering and fleetingly dark red.

  What’s stopping me from fleeing? By the time the Demon has freed itself from the webs, I can be long gone.

  But Nill knew what truly held him back. It was a strange, bizarre mixture of guilt towards this living nightmare. He knew a blind, overwhelming fear for this creature of the Other World, but no hatred. The idea of leaving someone, something, wrapped up, unable to move for perhaps all time, was equally abhorrent to Nill.

  And it would not solve his problems. This demon would only return to the Other World if it died here or if the enchantment binding it to its master was broken. The demon’s death would send the clear message to his enemy that no creature of the Other World was able to harm the Archmage of Nothing. Nill raised his knife and straightened his back. The knot in the pit of his stomach seemed to loosen.

  “And now you earn your name, blade,” Nill muttered as he approached the stuck demon on shaky legs. He felt nauseous and his magic collapsed, together with his blood, into his legs. Every single step was an uphill battle against the fear that had held him in its grasp for so many winters. Nill’s clothing was drenched with sweat and stuck coldly to his goose-fleshed skin. There was a ringing in his ears and his eyes had lost focus. He was barely able to make out the shape of his foe; it flickered and wavered as though the entire world was dissolving around him.

  It was only his will that kept him upright. Every time the world threatened to cave in around him, he stopped and rebuilt it with calm, deep breaths. When his body refused to move, caught in the spell of the untamed aura, Nill sent his breath from his lungs to every point of his skin. And when his heart stopped, skipped a beat, then hesitated on the next, questioning whether it could dare beat again, he countered it with the pulse of nature. The rhythm that filled life itself and spoke to all those who were prepared to listen. Nill thanked Tiriwi silently for the gift of the omnipresent drumbeat.

  The demon was slightly smaller than Nill. Its head was bald, like the Thorwag’s, its skin gray. The huge eyes were closed; the demons saw best that way. The pointed ears twitched. They could not follow the sounds of nature due to the spider’s silk. The nose, no more than four horizontal slits in the grimace of terror, sniffed, taking every passing breath inside the bulky body.

  Nill had expected to see the huge muscles fighting against their bonds, the mouth spitting slime and the eyes rolling madly. None of that happened. The demon stood still and calm, the only motion that of its flickering aura.

  Nill took a hasty step backwards as he saw the strength of that aura, cutting through the webs. An aura could be a mighty weapon, and with a connection to the Other World it could sap his life force. But it could also be a gateway to the creature’s true being.

  Nill decided that his fear of the demons and the Other World had lived for too long. He contracted his own aura until it assumed a dense, milky white, and entered the Other World through the enemy’s aura.

  The familiar darkness enclosed him and slowly made way for a dull shade. Wherever he was, it appeared empty. There was none of the monotonous brown of the Plains of the Dead. There were no plains at all, no mountains to define them; not even space, as such. Neither was it the painful entombment of the mid-realm, the seam that separated and connected the Here from Beyond. Nothing here hinted where he was, what he was, how he was. The only thing he felt was magic. The magic of the Other World, and three of the five elements. The air was heavy with Metal, Fire and Earth, though he could not make an exact distinction between the three. Before him Nill saw the darkness of the ancient magic, without the germ of cold white light inside it. He felt wetness in the black that had nothing to do with the magic of Water; and over everything lay like a whisper the magic of Nothing. Released from everything that had shape and form.

  He had arrived at the font of the Other World’s magic. It felt purer here than anywhere else he had ever been, as pure as the elements in Ringwall’s Sanctuary. And in that purity Nill recognized it with wonder.

  The primal magic of the Other World was nothing other than the magic of darkness. It was the first power on earth, it was the darkness that enabled the light to shine. In that moment Nill learned to understand the magic of the Other World and that of the cosmos equally. All that due to a demon’s aura. Alone, he knew, he never would have found this place.

  “The mages were wrong,” he whispered in amazement. The magic of the Other World was not an artful combination of Fire, Earth and Metal. Those three elements merely caused a call that the creatures of the Other World were ready to follow. The legendary power of the Other World lay in the magic of darkness, the same magic these creatures bore within themselves and carried, unbeknownst to the mages, with them. The mages were blind to their own doings. Nill had to laugh in spite of the situation.

  If the demon’s strength lay in the darkness, he would be able to break it with the power of light. Nill returned to the world of spiders, the sun and the cold fresh air. Without hesitation, he reached into the web and pulled it apart, clawing at the demon’s skin. Tougher than a leather harness, he thought. To kill this demon he would have to ram his dagger into every spot that seemed soft enough to allow the blade to pass through. He would tear apart the body, slice through the sinews and crush the bones with magical hammer-blows. And the entire time, the demon would stand still and behold its own destruction with closed eyes.

  Nill had few concerns about killing. But to destroy a creature that was bound and helpless, to crush a foe who did not offer even a token resistance – that required the unquenchable hatred Nill could not find in himself. He had no choice but to release the spell that bound the demon to its master.

  He sat down before the demon and reached into the strange aura, which immediately began to sap his strength. He reinforced his own aura and dissolved the aura of the Other World from the inside out. He thrust his dagger into the reddish-black flickering. Had it not already been black, it would have turned blacker still. Until now, the folded metal in the blade had only reflected the old magic. Now Nill attempted to influence the Metal itself. He made it glow in the white light of the stars, but the blade remained black. Nill did not understand what was happening. He had felt the cold white light within the iron. It was there. But why had it not lightened?

  Again Nill made the blade shine, and this time he followed the path of the light into the weapon. As a child, he had picked the plank for its special pattern; in the dusky light of the workshop it had made the surface look alive. The blank had not been a chunk of pure iron. It was made up of sheets, rings or strips, joined together under countless heavy blows from the hammer. Nill had seen that this piece was special immediately, even though he had not known what made it look the way it did, nor who had made it. A special metal for a special purpose, he had thought and dreamed of becoming a hero. Now the white light shone again in one of those thin layers. It was the innermost piece, a slice in the core of the blade with no connection to the surface. That was why the blade remained black. Nill chose a different layer, and suddenly the blade began to glow where it met the air. A thin, quivering strip in the black darkness of the metal.

  The demon squirmed in its bonds. Nill did not know why, but the knife’s presence seemed to torture the demon. If the black light held the demon, then the White magic would release it, even if it meant the aura would die. “Demons don’t die so easily in this world. You will have to bear it,” Nill said loudly.

  He pulled the dagger out of the aura and plunged again. Layer by layer was filled with white light. When the last layer gleamed, the demon crumpled.

  Nill opened the web entirely, grabbed the demon – he noticed that it had become a lot lighter – and leapt with it into the Other World.

  “I come to return your servant!” Nill shouted into the half-darkness. He was again somewhere on the Plains of the Dead. The shadows took no notice of him and floated onward.

 
“I’m right here!” he yelled and shot an arrow of water into the endless distance.

  Anger and rage roared back at him.

  “Have you finally noticed that I’m here?” Nill was almost insulted. He could not make out what was coming from what direction. He stepped aside, slowly and deliberately, pointed toward the figure on the ground and was about to return when he felt a cold chill that stopped him in his tracks.

  “You brought him back,” a whisper said in his ear. “Now wake him. Apart from you, only one of our lords can do that, and they are far too preoccupied to take care of lesser demons.”

  “You mean, if I don’t do something he’ll lie here for all eternity?” Nill asked incredulously.

  “Yes, two or three eternities even; it might take some time before someone bothers to check on him.”

  “And how do I wake him?” Nill asked cautiously.

  “How should I know? You’re the one who separated him from his aura.”

  Nill groaned. How was he to know how to revive a demon? This time, he left his dagger in its sheath. He gathered the black energy that was copious here on the plains, brought it together and made it flow into the demon’s lifeless body. He concentrated it, forced it through every orifice – the demon had many – and shot a spark of Fire after it.

  “Black and red. That was your aura.”

  Nothing happened. Nill could make out the restored aura, but it was not alive. It had no connection to the demon it surrounded. Nill was at his wit’s end and tried carefully to enter the creature’s body. There was a tiny gap between the aura and the skin. The aura was not truly one; it was merely concentrated energy, a case around a lifeless body. Just as a piece of leather that is wrapped around a ham can never again be skin or fur; just as a piece of meat might someday be a roast dinner, but never again the animal or human it once was.

  How do I connect an aura to a body?

  Nill laid a fingertip on the gap between the magical energy and the stiff skin, took a deep breath and prayed for the support of the Nothing and every magic he had ever heard of. He sent a tiny spark of his own life force into the gap.

  The world around him exploded in bright colors. Nill’s body was shredded into countless fragments, his self burned out in a white cascade of light. The tremors in the Other World were so strong that it woke the shamans. The mages in Ringwall interrupted their studies; the timeriders lost all sense of direction; and the Onyx in the magon’s tower burst into countless shards as a wave of power broke through Ringwall’s walls. Even Gnarlhand, Archmage of Earth, would never be able to put the pieces back together again.

  In the Other World, where time was worth little and space even less, the goat-legged stood beside the mighty Serp. The two demon lords looked upon one of their own, a lower demon who threatened to choke on its own aura. It required no grand words or gestures; a glance and the demon was revived.

  Bucyngaphos approached in his throne, and the three Demon Lords formed a magical triangle that covered half of the Plains of the Dead. Slowly, the three greatest demons moved closer, bringing together what belonged together and removing what did not. A strange song rang out across the plain.

  Nill’s skull was pounding, his body felt as though he had slept in a field of nettles, his arms and legs disobeyed him entirely. But he was alive. Above him he saw the mighty head of the battle-boar, the form Bucyngaphos always chose when face to face with him, and Nill became tiny and trembled. A Demon Lord is not a being most humans would like to meet. Legends are told of the great mages of the first time, when fate had been in the mood to make earthen magic and demon lords meet. Yet these were truths from half-forgotten days. Only Nill, of all the creatures in the world, now met Bucyngaphos for the third time, and he did not consider it preferential treatment.

  “Greetings,” he said weakly, and the force of the answer made him cower.

  “Were you never told that the magic of life can exist in the darkness, but must never be melded with it?” a voice rang out, filling the breadth of the plains, chaining the shadows in place.

  Nill shook his head. He had just successfully moved his arms and legs and now attempted to get to his feet.

  A snakelike hiss shot through the plain. Serp the Mighty seemed troubled this time, too. Nill could not understand this Demon Lord’s words, but he knew that his presence was unwelcome.

  “Did I mess a lot up here? I apologize for my intrusion. But I could not simply leave your servant out there to die!”

  The last words rose to a crescendo of outrage in spite of his calm intention; he did not notice the magic in his voice as it raced over the plain. An icy silence was his answer, and had Nill not felt the presence of the three Demon Lords he could have sworn he was the only being in the Other World.

  Nill turned around and raised his eyes to the heavens. High above, in the distance, he saw two slanted, yellow eyes in the darkness.

  “O Lord, with respect – I do not want to say it, but you have the eyes of Ramsker, my best friend.”

  The eyes vanished, the hissing subsided, and Bucyngaphos’ voice echoed out once more. “I fear our next encounter, small human. Fate appears to have made you to disturb the order not only in your world. But know this: henceforth there is a demon who is connected to you by magic that cannot be broken by anyone, not even us Demon Lords. I know not what this means. Across all eternities there has been no such bond. You will have to learn to handle it, for not only does the master command his servant, but the servant shapes his master. In the end there may even be a demon who lives solely in the world of the living. Or you might become a creature of our world, forever in my service.”

  “Is that what you fear, high Lord? That I am your servant? That I, as your servant, might shape you? If that is true, so help me please not to fall under your influence. I am a child of the living and would like to stay that way.”

  As boldly as Nill had begun, so quietly and meekly did he end his speech.

  “That is not in my hand, small human. Even we, powerful as we are in what you call the Other World, are merely pieces in fate’s delicate web.”

  The voice was gone; it left behind only a dull reverberation. Nill stood, swaying slightly, his headache no better for the conversation, in front of the demon whose stance was unchanged, as though the spider webs still encased him. He still held that terrible weapon. Slowly, the demon gave a weak bow, his eyes not breaking contact with Nill’s. From the distance came a scream of anger and disappointment, a voice from the world of the living; it spread strangely and powerlessly across the Plains of the Dead and disappeared whence it had come. The demon opened his mouth. A few gargling noises came from it. That was likely his name. Nill did not understand the sound, but the message in his head was clear. It told him who the demon was and how to summon him. Nill nodded and returned to the crag.

  XI

  Waves of rage and wrath raced through Pentamuria and left the arcanists disturbed. Nill’s enemy, so proud of himself at summoning a secret, untraceable magic, felt only his bond with the demon break, and fear overwhelmed him. He had not been able to hold Amargreisfing, but that defeat he took with grace; even a weak sorcerer, he reasoned, could win a fight with a little luck. But this time it was different. The bond between the mage and his servant from the Other World had sundered anew, but the demon he had believed lost had come back with all its strength, unscathed and powerful. The anger at his defeat at first gave way to exultation. Thin lips spoke renewed spells and magical hands crossed through the border to the Other World to reclaim their grasp on the demon, to hold it and chain it to servitude once more. Yet his hopes were dashed, and fear made the mage howl like an injured khanwolf. Time and again, his hands closed on nothing. The demon was outside of his control, and there was no sign of the thing that had broken his spell.

  Fear is a terrifying companion. It weakens you, makes you hesitate, and paralyzes your thoughts. Warriors know this, sorcerers know this; but only mages are capable of turning any emotion into a weapon. A
nd so, hidden in the shadows, fear turned to rage, and rage to hate. As bare as a blade, as hard as the steel that shaped it, as sharp as the magic of Metal.

  I should have listened to what they whisper in Ringwall, the hatred thought. The Archmage of Nothing seems to have powerful friends in the Other World. But magic offers many opportunities to those who have the wit to see them.

  As the Onyx shattered, a quake went through Ringwall that shook the walls and made the mighty Knor-il-Ank tremble. The archmages appeared one by one in the small room in the magon’s tower and stared in horror at the destroyed remnants of the noble stone and the fallen chairs, whose dignity had entirely vanished in the chaos. With an empty expression, the magon yanked his heavy chair back to its feet like a muckling employed to clean up after an excessive party. Ilfhorn made his chair return to its usual position with a single glance; Bar Helis required a three-fingered gesture for the same, and Ambrosimas left his own alone. He held a large piece of the Onyx table in his hand and turned it over thoughtfully before pocketing it.

  “What happened?” Gnarlhand had just arrived. “The Onyx was not just a mirror to our magic – it was a symbol of our unity!”

  “It was more than a symbol, Brother Gnarlhand,” Queschella said morosely. “Have you forgotten that it broke when the spirit of discord and mistrust took an uninvited seat among us? The Onyx was one of us, even if it was never an archmage. It helped us, and it suffered with and for us.”

  “The world is sliding out of control,” the magon muttered. “Our power crumbles. And we do not have the vision to see what is causing it. No one is attacking us. We have not even arrived at the battlefield, and already we are defeated. What did we do wrong?”

  Although he had spoken very quietly, Bar Helis had caught every word.

  “You seem tired, magon. We witnessed a surprise attack. The true battle has only just begun. If you no longer feel capable of dealing with the pressures of your office, tell us. We will decide on a replacement. Then you can use whatever time you have left usefully, and do all the little things left to do at the end of a responsible life.”