The Demon's Call

by Philip C Anderson

  “Karli’i narthe!” Trent yelled, and several members of the Order turned at his call. He strained his body, pulled a muster of Light, and raised his hammer. The demon, too, had turned its attention toward him, and in the next instant, Trent stood behind it, his hammer arcing toward its head. But the monstrosity turned its grinning face, its eyes frenzied. Trent’s weapon ignited and blew its mass toward the demon’s skull, but the beast trilled a sharp pitch and phased away, and Uniquity hit nothing but air.

  A terrified scream stabbed the courtyard, and Trent gave chase. They danced a frantic waltz: the demon killed indiscriminately, the members of the Order who tried to stop it proved unable, and Trent’s smites missed the abomination, too slow to even graze it. He stopped next to Grenn, and the demon sped away.

  “Ruin… the fun,” the demon said. “Too… easy!” It chased a young woman across the ground, bashing her head against the granite as she scrambled away. “Nlah?” it sounded after the third blow, nonplussed when she raised herself again onto her hands and knees. But her body failed her when she next tried to crawl, and she fell sidelong onto the ground. Rivulets of blood rained down her terror-stricken face.

  “Grah!” the monster yelled and swooped upon her to deliver dozens of quick punches that boomed for each hit. The girl’s body stopped flailing only when the demon ceased its assault on her corpse.

  “Just listen,” said Grenn. He held out his arm, trying to keep a woman behind him.

  “You’re not taking me away,” she said, her voice distorted and slow. She stepped past him, faster than Grenn could track. Cat-like ears laid flat against her head, and her dark-purple hair fluttered in a stray breeze. A furry tail swept from her lower back. She wore Priestly armor, crafted into a chest piece that bared her shoulders and a skirt that hung to mid-thigh. Light answered her call and hung over her left hand, then her right ignited in electricity and flame. “I’ll use this on you first if I have to.”

  Grenn shook his head, his words paced by heavy breathing. “There’s no saving anyone from that thing. What are you gonna do?” Trent watched, wondering the same thing, glad he couldn’t see Grenn’s face for the desperation in the young man’s voice.

  The demon phased around the courtyard, finishing up the last few stragglers who couldn’t get away in time. It blasted one with dark magic and crushed two others’ heads together, hard enough for their skulls to crack open and fill the yard with an unsatisfying thwack. Their eyes rolled into their heads, and they fell to the ground and convulsed, their faces half-covered in Taint from the demon’s touch.

  The cat-eared girl chanted an invocation, and Trent stepped away, taken aback by the power signature of the spell she cast. Two seconds later, the girl let loose a combination of ancient magic and Light and beamed the force across the courtyard toward the insane malefactor in a single power. Her cloak billowed behind her as she channeled.

  The demon turned and phased, but its blackness caught in the aura that spread from the Priest’s magic. Like an animal, it tried madly to escape the impediment, pulling one way, then another, but it couldn’t find purchase for flight. It screamed against the bond, then settled its gaze on its trapper and howled in slathering grunts, pushing toward her. The Priest skidded backwards, bracing herself against the demon’s strength, but it moved quicker as her power faded.

  Instinct made Trent call upon the Light and channel it to her. Grenn followed his lead, and in their combined effort, the demon slowed as though it moved through quick-setting resin. Its undulations became more erratic, and its voice escaped it in crazed bursts. For an instant, it stopped altogether, its outstretched hand less than a foot from the girl’s face, and Trent thought they’d beaten it, that it might cease to move forever by this new magic.

  But in the next, its screech returned to the world, and it pulsed dark energy toward the Priest, who flew backwards, hit the low wall behind her at a senseless speed, and toppled over herself into the garden beyond. The dark magic burned through Trent’s Light and singed his hand.

  Shadow clouded and coalesced at the center of the courtyard as the demon shook itself free of the Light’s entanglement. Its arms swung through the air in arcing cuts, stirring the Fel around it, and its voice escaped its throat in la-la-las, like a child playing a game. It screamed at Trent before it scanned past him and settled its gaze on Grenn. A manic grin spread across its face, then it looked between them and laughed. “Friend… of master. From the fields!”

  The demon used their pause to phase behind the young knight and close its right hand around his neck. Grenn struggled against it, frantic as he pawed at the demon’s arm. His armor cracked against its grip, and Grenn gagged. His helmet sparked and partially retracted, and the demon phased with him to the other side of the yard.

  “Do… you see… me, Russell?” Its eyes changed from pitch to jade-green. “I… found you.” Its mouth and throat struggled to form the words it said. “Kill… the pup”—it traced a claw into Grenn’s right cheek—“and kill me. Don’t… let me… murder more. Hah!”

  Others looked on, cowering behind walls and statues and trees. Yet still, a few edged forward past their fear.

  Grenn looked at Trent from within the demon’s power, and when their gazes met, a flicker of smirk broke across the young man’s face. “You think you scare him, bitch?”

  “Shut up!” the demon yelled, throttling Grenn’s neck. “You’ll be dead… soon enough. Don’t… waste your breath.” It pulled Grenn from side-to-side as it swayed. “Nyah!” it said with each jerk.

  Trent raised his hammer overhead and blasted it downward. When he pierced the granite, he left Uniquity in the stone and quickly followed a line of splintering Light that crackled through the ground. The blow splashed through Grenn and cuffed the demon, which loosened its grip on the young warrior, and in that moment of pause and shriek, Trent slipped between them, grabbed the monster hard by its throat, and pushed it to its knees.

  Their gazes met, and Trent felt the nether’s pull. He resisted, planted his feet into the ground, pushed against the draw. “Understand,” Trent said, staring into the pools of the creature’s soul, “I’m coming for you. If I don’t, the Order will still find and kill you. You’re just a different strain of disease on this planet, and we are Coroth’s cure.”

  “Hah! You… don’t understand… anything. You fool.” The demon laughed and folded backwards toward the ground as it howled and spat, grabbing at Trent’s wrists with huge hands.

  “Quiet!” Trent shouted. “Show me where your master waits.” He grabbed its skull with his free hand and forced the beast’s gaze to meet his.

  “Gone,” it said. Its eyes turned black again. “Gone… from you… forever. You will die… without seeing her… again. Hah!”

  The weight of the demon’s words blew through Trent, and as though it had struck him, his hand flew from the creature’s head. He tightened his grip around its neck while it laughed and cooed and twisted and flailed, and its jovialities turned to gargled attempts of the same.

  A vision came to Trent of a forest, dark and cold. The scent of blood faded for the stench of tar and sulfur, and his vision sped as though on rails toward a clearing. Hundreds of red eyes peered at him from just out of sight, blackened by the forest’s shadows, all of which led him toward a cave. Just before he crossed its threshold, his vision returned to Karhaal. He yelped and caught his unbalance before he fell.

  Trent looked at the demon’s face. “What did you do?” he said, then he yelled, “Tell me what that was!”

  The demon’s body shook under his grasp, and it gagged with glee. “Come for thee!”

  Anger flared within him, and Trent crushed the demon’s neck.

  “Don’t kill it,” the cat-eared Priest said. She spoke quickly, cradling her left arm against her body. “We can study it, learn from it. Don’t let this chance pah—pass. Please.”

  Trent decided before he spoke. “Made a lot of mistakes in my life. Leavin this thing alive isn’t go
nna be one of ‘em.” The Light answered his call, and he pushed his left hand into the demon’s chest.

  “Hah! Tickles… from the”—its voice pitched higher, and it lost its ability for speech. Even when it could no longer make sound, its body heaved in hilarity while it died.

  Trent closed his eyes in focus, his body protesting the effort. His chest tightened, and his muscles spasmed in his left thigh and pinched in his groin. An ache grew steadily in his head as his shoulders shrugged to keep the demon under him.

  After so much power, its Fel conceded all at once and transmogrified the hell-spawn into a veil of shadow. Trent’s right fist closed on nothing, but finding what he sought, his left hand clasped the demon’s soul before its body ashed into the wind and left nothing behind but its fetor and destruction and silence. The rune on Trent’s arm lost its vigor and warmed.

  His left side seized up with a stitch, and his lungs burned as he labored to draw breath. He lowered his helmet to gulp frigid air.

  “Dear Goddess,” one man said, his voice carrying in the quiet. “What have we done?” He fell to his knees and wept in front of one of the fallen, whose legs and arms splayed from his body at wrong angles.

  “Revlina!” a woman called. Georina ran into the courtyard, her hair matted to one side of her head. “No.” She knelt next to a corpse, turned it over.

  “Georina,” said the younger woman from Faahraon as she stumbled out of a storefront nearby. Her legs buckled from under her just as Georina caught her in her arms, and they sunk to the ground, where Georina buried her face in the girl’s neck, holding her close.

  The temple doors opened, and the Chamberlain poked his head out from between them. “Is it gone?”

  “Yes,” Grenn said. “No thanks to you.” He held one hand over his face, trying to staunch the corrupted wound under his right eye.

  “Hey. I stayed inside because he”—Manifeld pointed at Trent as he pulled himself between the doors—“told me to.”

  More of the Order joined them near the center of the yard. Trent stood, and his armor actuated when he tipped left, aiding his balance. Most watched him with a mixture of fear or suspicion or anger—curious wonder on a few. They bumped their neighbors and spoke in whispers. Whimpering mourns filled the spaces between quiet speech.

  While Trent recovered his breath, his gaze fell upon the slain, so few in their years. The man on the ground in front of him would have been a child, not much older than Grenn, if at all, when Trent left after the War. He knelt and closed the Karlian’s still-intact right eye and said a short prayer for the man’s soul to rejoin the gods.

  Then he stood. “Look”—his voice caught in his throat, and he forced himself to speak louder. “Look what you’ve all witnessed. A greater demon”—he held up the soul stone—“with power far deadlier than anything we’ve faced before. For a greater demon to journey outside the nether requires strength beyond their own—far be it to walk upon our holy grounds. This is hardly how you should have found out, but it suffices for as good a message as any: the demons’ power has returned, and behind them, a master.”

  No one responded. Their gazes met his with the same emotions they’d shown.

  “How did you want to tell them?” the Chamberlain said. “What did you want to tell them, hmm? Exactly what you told me? Demons have never made it inside our walls before, and now, at this auspicious hour, when we’re all gathering in one place, a greater demon! Who could have orchestrated such a thing?”

  A woman spoke from the edge of the square. “The demon knew him. He spoke to it.”

  “Thank the Goddess he did,” said a man. “Imagine if he hadn’t been here.”

  “Is this true?” the Chamberlain asked. “Then could it be you who called it here? To prove what I wonder. Force our hand at something? What does the scepter want out of this?”

  “It didn’t know me,” Trent told him. “Its master did, and it was her to whom I spoke.”

  “So you admit it!” the Chamberlain said.

  “Speak plainly, Manifeld.” Georina joined Trent and Grenn. “If you mean to accuse, then be out with it. Surely I misunderstand you about his Majesty and the scepter.”

  Manifeld pointed at Trent again. “He is here on behalf of the king, and the demon came to find him. Just now, he admitted to speaking with its master, as he admitted in private not ten minutes ago.”

  “Chamberlain,” said Grenn, “try to understand that speaking to something doesn’t make you party with it.”

  Manifeld raked Grenn with his gaze before he returned his attention to Trent. “You spoke of Hollowman. Are you and he cohorts? Should we assume our Grand Master has turned to the darkness? What about you? Familiar with the darkest of arts?” The Chamberlain waited. “I think it’s time we find out who you are, Mr. Geno”—he hurled Trent’s name like an insult. “You come here in armor that isn’t yours to deliver denunciations you have no business declaring. Perhaps you’re a Warlock and you stole that armor from someone. Tricked them. Maybe your entire act is just that—a trick.”

  “No,” said Trent. “I can assure you it’s not.”

  Grenn stepped beside him. “So can I.”

  “What proof do you have?” asked Manifeld.

  Trent waited a moment. “Russell Hollowman stands before you.”

  The crowd whispered: “Russell Hollowman,” “No, it can’t be. He’s dead,” “That looks nothing like him,” and, “I told you he looked familiar.”

  “And the Grand Master doesn’t need proof,” Grenn said. “His word here is law by anointed right.”

  “Oh-ho, sir knight,” said the Chamberlain. “I’ve no intention of trying to reason with you. How have things been in Keep, by the way? This one slipped you while you busied yourself cavorting from one bedroom to the next.”

  “Of course I slipped him,” Trent said. He reached for the monocle in his pocket and traded the soul stone for the glass. “I don’t look as I should. Been able to fool the queen herself.” Trent chucked his monocle at the Chamberlain, who tried to catch it, but in his haphazard haste, he missed it, and it fell to the ground. “See for yourself.”

  The Undertaker picked up the wire-rimmed curio and examined it, her face alight with interest.

  Manifeld held out his hand. “If you would Madam Undertaker.”

  She instead rolled the glass across the back of her palm and tossed it from one hand to the other until it balanced in the air between them. “Excellent quality,” she said and peered through the crystal. No emotion betrayed her face as she lowered and raised the piece several times. Apparently satisfied, she whispered to the Chamberlain and handed the monocle to him.

  Manifeld held the piece to his right eye, and he too didn’t react when he gazed through it. “It’s a ruse.” He lowered his hand. “Who else has seen you through this?”

  “I have,” said Grenn.

  Trent gestured toward Grenn. “Him. And the king.”

  “The king,” Manifeld said, his voice a circus. “Anyone else?”

  “I’ll look through it,” said a man who approached the stairs. “I want to.”

  Manifeld ignored him. “Madam Undertaker, what do you make of this?”

  “There’s no magic in the glass, Chamberlain. Anyone who looks through it simply sees past its paired enchantment. In this case”—she appraised Trent with her scowl—“Russell Hollowman’s disguise.”

  Displeasure contorted Manifeld’s face. His grip loosened and tightened on the monocle while he thought, then he addressed the crowd. “Has anyone ever heard of Trent Geno before? Anyone from the old guard here to vouch for him?”

  “There won’t be,” Trent said. “Can’t be. Before I left twenty years ago, Trent Geno didn’t exist except in my mind. As I wanted to show you before”—he un-sleeved his left arm—“I can prove beyond a shadow of doubt who I am. Not only with that monocle, but”—he touched the rune and traced along its pattern, and the symbol glowed anew.

  The Chamberlain shook his head,
unimpressed. Though most had retracted their left arm’s armor, Manifeld ignored his. “It’s some form of magical hijacking. I’ve already given the Undertaker my opinion on this. Tell me, how are you in our databases if you technically don’t exist?”

  “Excellent engineering.”

  “For the gods’ sakes, Chamberlain,” the Undertaker said. “If the king himself trusted him, you should”—

  “Thank you, Madam Undertaker, I’ll take that under advisement,” Manifeld said, his voice a clipped patronage. “However, as I’ve told you, I suspect the scepter is under mal-control, and today’s events do nothing to calm my fears.” The Chamberlain raised his voice. “Until such a time when this man”—he pointed at Trent—“or any other can prove he is who he says he is, there’s nothing we can do.”

  The gathered all spoke at once.

  Manifeld spoke over the collected voices. “That—that is my appointed decision.” He waited until the crowd quieted, ignoring their collective questions and outrage. “Taking on a disguise is illegal, Mr. Geno. If you pretend to have done so, then you have violated the law.”

  “Someone can tender a disguise if they have approval from the Order or High Tower or the scepter. I gave myself the authority and allowed a Leynar to put one on me.”

  The Chamberlain giggled. “Preposterous. And convenient. You’ve thought of every angle on this, haven’t you? But you’ve forgotten one important detail: it all relies on the supposition and our required belief that you’re who you say you are.”

  “You’re daft, Karles,” Georina said. “You would hang your own brother if it meant you didn’t lose your seat.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have one.” Manifeld’s gaze lingered on her. “Georina, good to see you again. Sorry, we’re fresh out of girls for you to groom. I hope you’re here for more than that this time.”

  The blonde scowled at him.

  “How do we know you’re who you say you are?” the man at the foot of the temple’s stairs asked. “You expect us to just believe you’re the Chamberlain. How do we know you aren’t a malevolence in disguise engineering all this from the shadows? What if I am?”