The Infernal Aether Box Set: All Four Books In The Series

by Peter Oxley

  Given these limitations, I have had only one opportunity to date to view the other realms: when we were trapped in the Aether at Andras’ behest. Given that our focus at the time was on escaping back to our own realm rather than exploring others, the data I obtained was minimal, but it is still possible to extrapolate from this…

  [There follows another detailed explanation of the calculations involved, which Augustus has, true to form, struck out, writing: “Can we have a SHORT summary?”. In response, Maxwell has handwritten the following:]

  By way of a brief summary:

  Whilst the data is limited…[there follows three pages of exposition which Augustus has again struck through, with the words: “I said SHORT???” scrawled in the margins]…I observed first-hand five different realms, which were sufficiently diverse in appearance to allow the conclusion that they were in fact completely different worlds and ecosystems. It is therefore possible to extrapolate, as set out above, that there are a minimum of three hundred and fifty two other distinct realms which are accessible from the Aether. It should be noted, however, that there are a number of assumptions to my calculations and I have been deliberately conservative in a number of the inputs. Taken to the extremes, it is possible that the number of other realms could be infinite.

  Given that demon physiology is significantly different to ours, it follows (based on the work of Charles Darwin) that the realms from which they emanate should also be significantly different, and I briefly witnessed a number of worlds which would appear to be inhospitable to human life.

  [There follows a number of other bullet points, where Maxwell effectively complains that N’yotsu is not willing to share his thoughts, memories or experiences “as the best first-hand witness available to humanity” in relation to at least the realm that Andras came from. These are free from comment from any other hand: whether N’yotsu saw them and declined to comment, or did not bother to read them, is unclear.]

  5) On the Potential Options: Can There Be a Final Solution to the Demon Threat?

  It is an incontrovertible fact that, as a result of Andras’ portal, the boundary between our realm and the Aether is now weaker than ever. It is also possible (nay, probable) that this boundary is also weaker than that bordering onto any other realm adjoining the Aether. The reason for this is simple: consider this boundary as akin to human skin. Should one’s skin be punctured or cut, then it can heal itself. However, if the skin is punctured and then forced apart artificially for an extended period of time, then its chances of healing are greatly reduced: witness the elongated piercings worn by tribespeople in the Subcontinent. Thus, whilst the original portal now appears closed, the barrier to the Aether remains fragile, at best.

  This means that there is a very real and present risk of further incursions by demons and other creatures into our realm. In addition, the weakness of our barrier means that our world is significantly more attractive as a target: not only for the mindless beasts which subsist in the Aether, but also any warlike beings from other realms. Those who may doubt the risks here need only consider the havoc which Andras alone was able to inflict: this is more concerning given the fact that Andras does not appear to be one of the more powerful beings.

  It is notable that the reaction of the government to this threat remains one of containment and denial, so as to avoid mass panic. However, they cannot deny the evidence of peoples’ eyes, and indeed the authority of the government has been much destroyed by this approach. Action is required, and quickly, before the country descends back into the Dark Ages.

  The options available are, to my mind, as follows:

  Continue to hunt down and destroy the demons and other non-native creatures which have come over to our world from the Aether. This has rightly been given a priority by the Government and armed forces, although to date has been limited to picking off individual creatures, which is time consuming and ineffective.

  Invest time and resources in seeking a permanent method of eradicating creatures from the Aether, potentially by somehow making our world toxic to all non-native creatures. The solution here may lie in the Aether itself, for I believe aspects of the Aether attach themselves to those travelling through that limbo. If that is the case, then a weapon could be devised which purely targets these creatures.

  Repair the boundary to the Aether. I list this as the final option, as my investigations to date have been unable to identify, measure or quantify the nature (or even the existence) of such a boundary, even though it has to exist. Whilst my efforts will continue in this regard, it may need to be left to future generations with more advanced scientific (or magical) knowledge and techniques than is currently available to me.

  [N’yotsu appears to have written some form of response to this final section but it is unclear what exactly he wrote, as his words have been scribbled out roughly and completely by Maxwell.]

  Epilogue: Maxwell

  He sat in his chair with a book propped on the table in front of him, the light from the solitary candle barely sufficient to pick out the words on the page. A rhythmic breathing was all that broke the dark, dreary silence. The door opened, heralding unwelcome light into the room.

  “Evening Max,” said Augustus as he stepped through the door, pausing only to gather a lamp to light his way. “I come bearing entertainments.”

  Maxwell glanced up, and for a brief moment there was a small flicker of a welcoming expression, before his customary moroseness reasserted itself. “You are wasting your time,” he sighed. “I have all I need here.”

  “What, a pile of dusty old books?” Augustus peered at them with a frown, holding the lamp high. “Yes, I dare say you do. But the fact remains that you cannot mope around here forever. Look,” he waved a pamphlet in front of his brother’s face. “There is a new psychic performing down on Drury Lane. Let us go and debunk the fellow; you know how much you enjoy a good debunking.”

  Maxwell turned hollow eyes up at him. “And how, pray tell, shall we get there? Do you fancy carrying your cripple brother?” He gestured at his useless legs, which had been arranged beneath him in a pose reminiscent of casual relaxation.

  “Max,” said Augustus gently.

  “No,” he replied firmly. “I have no desire to leave the house; I am very busy with my reading. Thank you for your visit, and goodbye.”

  “Max,” Augustus said again. “I cannot bear to see you like this. Surely there must be something which we can do to assist you. If you would just let N’yotsu—”

  “I have had my fill of demonic assistance, thank you all the same,” he snapped. “We both know that such devices are not without their cost, do we not?”

  Augustus blushed and took a step backward, out of the light. “We only wish you well,” he started.

  “Then leave me be!” Maxwell turned back to his book, glaring intently at the barely visible words on the pages.

  After a few moments of exasperated silence, Augustus retreated, leaving a pile of papers on a table. Kate was waiting in the hallway. “Told you so,” she said.

  “It is getting worse,” he said. “Has he ventured outside that room at all?”

  “Aside from letting me bathe and change him: no. And even that’s under sufferance. I swear he’d happily wallow in his own shit if I weren’t quite so charmingly persuasive.”

  Augustus allowed himself a brief grin at the thought of Kate’s persuasive talents, pitying his brother’s chances of resisting that particular force of nature for too long.

  He touched his hand to his sword. “I should be going. There are rumours of a new gang of demons in Spitalfields. They should be active in an hour or so.” He forced a grin. “If I’m not wanted here, I might as well join in the fun. Fancy joining me?”

  Kate puffed out her cheeks and exhaled slowly. “You know I’d love to, but I can’t leave him right now. Kill a few for me, eh?”

  Back inside the darkened room, Maxwell listened to their voices recede and slowly unclenched his fists. At last he was free to de
scend back into his lonely isolation; well, almost.

  “They do care, you know,” said a voice from the shadows. “They just lack the imagination and means to really, truly help you. My employers and I, on the other hand, really do understand. And we can get you back into the fight.”

  Maxwell stared at the page, as though to look at the shadowed interloper would be to finally acknowledge the end of an affair which had been dead for some time. “You could give me back my freedom?”

  “We could not restore your legs, but we could provide you with access to the latest technologies and care which would greatly ameliorate your condition. Totally scientific and created by humans, of course,” the speaker added quickly. “All that my employers ask is that you apply your significant talents to eliminating the scourge which afflicts us all. Which is surely in all our interests—yours and ours.”

  Maxwell grunted. “I have had dealings with ‘your employers’ in the past,” he said. “They turned out to be no less resistant to the call of the demon than the rest.”

  “I grant you that, but you are dealing with an altogether more formidable level now; the supreme level, if you will. And with that comes all of the advantages which you would expect. So, I need an answer now, before your maidservant returns: do we have a deal?”

  Maxwell took a deep breath. “We will kill them all? Every last one? Including...?”

  “Every last one.”

  Maxwell looked up, his red-rimmed eyes glittering brightly in the candle-light. “Then we have a deal.”

  Book Two – The Demon Inside

  THE DEMON INSIDE

  Peter Oxley

  By Peter Oxley

  Edited by: Ben Way

  Cover: Kristina Pavlovic

  Copyright © Peter D. Oxley 2017

  Published by Almadel Publishing

  All rights reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1543109764

  ISBN-10: 1543109764

  For Arnie Peters

  …and his three blind jellyfish…

  Part One – Augustus

  Chapter 1

  Sheffield, 1868

  It was the tallest and most imposing-looking door in the street, but it still collapsed as though it were a paper screen as N’yotsu put his fingers through it. With scarcely a grunt he wrenched it from its hinges, throwing it to the ground behind us.

  Kate shook her head as she drew her LeMat pistol, a weapon that had been specifically modified by Maxwell to target demons. “Mate,” she said, “how many times do we have to tell you? People prefer it when you knock…”

  “No time,” he said, charging inside. “I am picking up some strong resonances from within. I fear he may be conducting a summoning.”

  A shadow fell across us and I spun round with my sword held ready to attack, then relaxed as I realised it was just another gas lamp in the street flickering and dying prematurely: yet another sign of the world falling apart around us. Leaves swirled in the half-light, moulded into a dirty vortex by the wind that seemed to follow us wherever we went.

  I shuddered and turned back to Kate and the house. “Shall we?” I asked, my sword raised as I stepped ahead of her into the hallway.

  She cocked her pistol. “And there was me thinkin’ we were just here to collect a kid.”

  “A young man who could also be a sorcerer,” I said. “You know as well as I do that things are rarely straightforward these days.”

  We dashed down the hallway, senses alert for any threats. By the standards I was used to back in London it was a relatively humble house, its furnishings providing scant clues as to the owner’s status as one of the most prominent foundry owners in Sheffield. I cast a critical eye over the decor, comparing it to how I would bedeck my own mansion if I ever fell into my fortune. The artwork displayed on the walls was perfunctory to say the least, as though the inhabitants knew that they should present something but had no idea exactly what would fit. As a result, grimy industrial vistas clashed with gentle watercolours and serene seascapes, with the odd battle scene thrown in for good measure. I frowned, downgrading my opinion of our unwitting hosts with every step I took.

  N’yotsu pulled open a door to reveal a set of stone steps leading down into darkness; he nodded to us and then stepped through. Kate had managed to sneak ahead of me while I had been casting my eye over the decor and I cast aside chivalry to push my way back in front of her. I ignored her bemused glare as I focused my attention on the stone steps and the gloom into which N’yotsu was leading us.

  As we reached the bottom, it took a second or two for my eyes to adjust to the flickering candlelight that barely illuminated the cellar, although when they did so I found myself yearning for the blissful ignorance of the dark. The centre of the room was filled with a pentagram that had been drawn on the stone floor in red, sticky splashes. There was little doubt that the substance in question was blood, for the air had that peculiar metallic tang to it; not to mention the fact that a pair of butchered goat carcasses lay discarded to one side of the room. The pentagram was in turn contained within a circle drawn neatly in chalk. A stocky young man stood a few feet outside this circle, glaring at us in surprise and irritation, his long dark hair buffeted by a brisk wind that was as strong as it was impossible in that confined space. As we approached, the candles around the room were suddenly extinguished by the wind, and the darkness was lit up by a terrible glow that emanated from a vortex growing in the centre of the pentagram.

  It was a whirlwind of colours and shifting shapes, an insane mass of pain and loathing given a semblance of physical form. I was reminded of the portals that Maxwell and N’yotsu had created all those years ago, although this one was different: more primal and raw. Were it not for the pentagram’s controlling influence, I feared that this swirling maelstrom would happily consume the whole world.

  We shielded our eyes as the vortex grew in volume and resolve, watching as N’yotsu fought against the gale, shouting at the young man to terminate the spell. Whatever the answer, it was rendered academic by a sharp explosion from the centre of the room. The vortex blinked out of existence, plunging the room back into darkness.

  My ears rang as I fumbled for a match in my coat pocket, keeping my sword poised for any attack while my eyes and ears strained to pick up signs of anything awry. As my hearing started to return to normal I could make out a low growl, accompanied by the sounds of something large prowling and straining at unseen bonds. It was not the best of signs.

  I closed my fingers around a matchbook at the same time as the young man on the other side of the room lit a gas lamp, revealing a huge, muscular demon standing in the centre of the pentagram. The man stared at the creature he had summoned in awe, as though he had expected a kitten to appear instead of a beast from the pits of Hades.

  “Oh, good,” I muttered, raising my sword.

  Kate put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said. “The demon’s still inside the summoning circle. There’re protective charms around it. The demon can’t get out or hurt us unless the circle’s broken.”

  I blinked at her. “How do you…?”

  “The amount of time I’ve spent around Max and N’yotsu, some of it was bound to rub off at some point.” She scowled at me. “What, you think I just spend my days thinkin’ about cleaning, cooking and what pretty dress I’m going to wear?”

  I muttered an apology and turned my attention back to the scene in the cellar before us. The demon tried to lunge at N’yotsu and the young man, but instead collided with the invisible barrier of the summoning circle, flashes of green energy flying off in all directions as a result of the impact. After a minute or so of frantic but fruitless effort it slumped back into the centre of the chalk circle, a rippling mass of frustration as it glared at us with glowing red eyes. Slick black wings unfurled and flapped behind its back, wafting the smell of sulphur around the room. The creature’s face bore a passing resemblance to a human one but was much more angular, with sharp edges in all the wrong places. Its
body was wreathed in muscle, but again it were as though it had been designed by someone who had had the concept of the human body explained to them, but without having understood the relative proportions, like a picture painted by a blind man. I was painfully aware of where I had seen something like this creature before: Andras.

  N’yotsu had managed to position himself so that he could glare at the young man while also keeping an eye on the demon. “Would you mind telling us exactly what you are doing?” he asked the man.

  The man straightened himself up and smoothed down his hair, attempting to portray the air of outraged homeowner. “I might ask the same of you. Exactly who are you to barge in here unannounced and uninvited?”

  N’yotsu looked as though he were about to tear the young man’s head off, so I took a step forwards and cleared my throat. “Joshua Bradshaw I presume? Allow me to introduce ourselves. This is N’yotsu, over there is Kate Thatcher and my name is Augustus Potts.”

  “Gus!” N’yotsu and Kate shouted at me in unison. I winced and glanced at the demon, who grinned back at me triumphantly.

  “How many times do I have to remind you not to state your name within earshot of a demon?” N’yotsu scolded. I held up my hands apologetically. A person’s real name was a gift to certain demons, who could cause a lot of trouble with the power that it gave them. I spent most of my time battling non-magical demons such as Berserkers and so rarely needed to watch out for such considerations.

  The young man, Joshua, did not seem to have noticed my slip of the tongue. He stared at us, his mouth fixed in a perfect ‘O’. “I cannot believe it: it is really you?”