Demon Quest

by Craig Askham

  Craig Askham

  Demon Quest

  Portal Hunter Chronicles: Book 2

  First published by White Lite Publishing 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Craig Askham

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Craig Askham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Craig Askham has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  Contents

  Dedication

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  A Message From The Author

  Dragon Quest: The Blurb

  Dragon Quest: An Excerpt

  Dragon Quest: Pre-Order

  Dedication

  This one’s for my early newsletter subscribers. If you’re reading this, you shouldn’t be. I already gave you a free copy. Quick, get a refund while you still can…

  …unless you’ve bought it to support me. In which case, this book is doubly dedicated to you.

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  Well. We meet again. Welcome to Demon Quest, my friend. Just to make it clear, this is Book 2 of the Portal Hunter Chronicles series. Have you read Book 1, Watchman’s Quest? If not, you can buy it from Amazon US or from Amazon UK. It’s okay, I’ll wait while you check…

  Now, I think I remember you. Give me a moment…yes, you sat by the fire and drank copious amounts of feijen last time you were here. I’m right, aren’t I? I knew it.

  Well, your spot by the fire is still free. If your visits are becoming regular, I’m more than happy to reserve it for you for next time. Just say the word. In the meantime, head on over and unbuckle that sword. Keep it close by, though; remember what this place is like once things get going.

  Did you join my newsletter in the end? I hope you did; I certainly put enough effort into persuading you with all those free drinks, if I recall? Thilak’s Tits, that’s right! You snored! By the gods, snoring’s actually an understatement. I’ve heard quieter noises coming from a Haghiri hunting horn! Try to stay awake this time, will you? Feijen’s not for everyone, after all.

  If you didn’t sign up, then please click here and I’ll add you straight away.

  The free book I’ll send you is called Demon Hunter: Fall of the Asger Juhl. It’s loosely related to the story you’re about to read, but without any references to portals. It’s basically a straight-up fantasy about the real Varun Behl (the demon hunter from this book’s blurb).

  Oh, you thought he was a random character made up by Stillwater’s creative department especially for the gamers? Oh, hells no! He’s real enough, and he’d be pretty annoyed if he found out his reputation was being made a mockery of like this…

  Also, I’ll send you other free stuff. Books, short stories, a few promos from others like myself, and anything else I think you might like. There’ll definitely be early access to new releases, and opportunities to become beta readers and/or join my ARC team. Most importantly, there’ll be bonus content that only you, as a subscriber, will be able to access.

  But hey, I still might be getting ahead of myself here. You might not be ready to commit yet, and that’s fine. I mean, we’re only up to Book 2 of the series, after all. There will be five altogether in the Portal Hunter Chronicles, so there’s plenty of time for you to change your mind, I guess. The free drinks will eventually dry up, though, and I might not be able to hold that spot by the fire for you indefinitely…

  In the meantime, please enjoy the story. I’ll bring your feijen over once you’ve made yourself comfortable. Drink responsibly, and all that. Some of the words in the book are quite long, so I don’t want your vision going blurry…

  One

  The wind was trying its hardest to pluck cars out of the sky and scatter them across London as if they were toys. For the life of him, Rafferty Barnes couldn’t remember what the wind speed had to reach in order to warrant a flying ban, but this morning couldn’t have been far off. He rolled up his newspaper screen and slipped it back into the pocket of his woollen sports jacket, and looked nervously out at London in case a suitable spot for a crash landing had magically sprung up overnight. It hadn’t. Snow blanketed the brand new metal and glass skyscrapers, as well as the old concrete and brick buildings, and the cars that slid along the roads underneath their airborne brethren. There were too many people on this godforsaken planet, despite the doom and gloom warnings that had been drummed into everyone since childhood. The predictions of overcrowding had come to pass, as had the reality of dwindling resources, but nothing could stop humans from breeding like rabbits. There were always exceptions to the rules, of course; Rafferty was one of them. Unlike the rabbits in the cars below him, Rafferty had heeded all the warnings. He hadn’t procreated. Hadn’t even had a girlfriend for longer than a month, in fact. Ever. He’d saved up his money and bought himself a Porsche instead, and a flying one at that. Every glance at the rabbits down below served as further confirmation that he’d made the right decision. For God’s sake, people; look up! How has it not occurred to you that there’s an army of metal cans above your heads, potentially only minutes away from falling on you like…well, an army of metal cans? No. Rafferty had made the right decision. People were stupid, the world was going to end, and it was too late to do anything about it now. He was going to enjoy his life; drink, cigarettes, soft drugs, whatever. And when death came, he was going to look it in the eye and embrace it with a smile.

  Unless death came for him today, obviously. Please God, don’t let me die like this. Don’t let me fall from the sky and die in the burning wreckage of my life savings. Anything but that.

  He braced himself as the wind buffeted his Porsche from side to side, trying as hard as he could not to panic when the car dropped what seemed like a hundred feet in under a second, and his stomach took up temporary residence inside his mouth. Half a dozen warning lights flashed onto the windscreen, brightening up his otherwise dreary surroundings with a hue that triggered old memories of red light districts and drunken (but safe) fumblings.

  The Porsche dropped again. It was intentional this time, although it took a few moments for that to register. Rafferty watched as the Stillwater building loomed into view, drab and unimpressively squat against the backdrop of Shards,
Gherkins and other, newer efforts. It was more rewarding to look at from the ground than from the sky; from the ground it was all re-pointed red brickwork and prettily iced windows, whereas from the sky it was a flat-roofed box that was dotted with air treatment machines and mounds of hastily shovelled snow. A gust of hurricane strength wind threatened to knock him off course just as he landed on the roof, but thankfully the computers stepped in to counteract the wobble with a careful dab of opposite thrust. The Porsche bounced as its wheels kissed the concrete, and Rafferty instinctively reached for a grab handle to steady himself. He felt immediately stupid for doing so, and scanned the rooftop to make sure nobody had witnessed his moment of weakness. The rooftop was empty, and undoubtedly had been since the caretakers had ventured out earlier that morning to clear the snow, so he allowed a moment of vanity and let go of the grab handle to straighten his grey, product-coated hair. By the time the car had taxied slowly down the ramp and rolled to a neat stop in front of an airtight barrier, he’d teased all three of the hairs that had dared to escape back into place and regained his composure. Anticipating what was to come, he stared at his reflection in the rear view mirror.

  “Please look into the rear view mirror.” The female voice was off-puttingly deep, and emanated from the car’s expensive speakers with way too much bass.

  “I already am,” he muttered, staring balefully at his own blue eyes and the tanned, artificially youthful skin that surrounded them. There was no indication that his retinas were being scanned, until the barrier blocking his entrance to the Stillwater building started to slowly sink into the concrete floor.

  “Welcome, Rafferty Barnes.” The voice was normal this time. Bang and Olufsen had taken it upon themselves to dial down the bass he’d dialled up earlier in the journey, so that he could listen to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor as God intended; at full blast. “You are cleared for entry.”

  As soon as the barrier disappeared, the Porsche silently sprang back to life, rolling forward another few feet until it reached the next, identical barrier. Rafferty waited patiently as the barrier behind him rose again, trapping him and his vehicle in an airlock that slowly exhaled the evil London air back out where it belonged and replaced it with the clean, artificial stuff that, whilst a little uninspiring on the nostrils, at least didn’t try to burn the hairs inside them. Once the process was complete, the Porsche unlocked and Rafferty stepped out. There was a door between the two barriers, which slid open as he approached. He didn’t bother turning to see what became of his vehicle, but trusted that it would go and safely park itself somewhere unknown, ready to respond to his call later that night and reappear in the same spot he’d left it, hopefully facing the opposite way.

  “Afternoon, Barnesy.” He cringed inwardly at the unauthorised use of his old school nickname, but smiled graciously at the man who’d used it. He was stood the other side of the door in black combat gear, burly and dangerous, with an assault rifle slung nonchalantly over his shoulder and a handgun holstered at his hip.

  “Good afternoon, chap.” Rafferty had no idea what the man’s name was, which was a little unfair as, whoever he was, he undoubtedly had access to whatever file Stillwater kept on him. He’d been exchanging the same greeting with the guard every weekday for the last six months, and was surely now at the stage where it would be considered rude to enquire as to what the hell his actual name was. Therefore, he was simply chap.

  “Bit chilly out there, isn’t it?”

  Rafferty smiled. Although the snow and the wind suggested exactly that, the truth was that it had been a long time since he’d ventured outside to test for himself just how frigid the air was. Well, it had been a long time since he’d ventured outside on this planet, anyway. There was no need; his house had an airtight garage that was accessible via an internal door, and the Stillwater building had an integrated car park. No need whatsoever to don a gas mask and actually leave the safety of the inside world. Even the bars and theatres he frequented at the weekend were all upmarket enough to be situated underneath biodomes; he pretty much spent every moment of his Earth existence indoors, and was perfectly comfortable with that. After all, not many people on this awful planet got to do the job that he did, getting paid rather handsomely to inhale and exhale the fresh, clean air of a world that hadn’t yet discovered the technological means with which to destroy itself.

  “It is rather brisk,” he confirmed, playing along with the guard and deliberately underplaying the severity of the weather. “Brass monkeys, and all that.”

  “Bit warmer where you’re headed, I should imagine?”

  “Oh yes. Thoroughly pleasant, I’m afraid.”

  “Lucky sod.”

  Rafferty realised he was still smiling. How fake must I seem? Or even worse, how smug? He managed a nod, then headed across the office to the 3D printer so that he could zap a double espresso to take into the daily briefing with him. He could just about remember that real coffee had existed in his youth, but had long since forgotten what it tasted like. One of the tea drinking snobs from the admin department sidled up to him and complained that the printed version was way off, and her youthful naïveté made him laugh. She’d never had the pleasure of the real thing, so how could she know the fake stuff was inferior? Surely it was better to have 3D coffee rather than no coffee at all? Idiot. This would be the last chance he got for a caffeine hit until he woke up the following afternoon with the obligatory hangover, so he was going to enjoy it whether it was inferior or not. It wasn’t until she’d sloped off back to her tea drinking friends that he realised she’d just been using coffee to start a conversation, and he’d rudely thwarted her misguided attempt at chatting him up. He felt bad about wasting the opportunity, and made a mental note to be sleeping with her by the end of the week.

  As he stood blushing by the printer, Jessica Towsey saved him by bounding out of the briefing room like a kid with her whole life ahead of her. Ninety years old if she was a day, the sheer number of studs, rings and chains that adorned her body made her jingle like a Morris dancer every time she breathed. She clapped her hands together impatiently, and this made her wrinkly, fully tattooed arms wobble like a turkey’s neck. She should have been enjoying her retirement on an indoor beach somewhere, instead of waiting for natural causes to catch up with her whilst she was in the middle of rewriting her latest script for the millionth time. Everyone on the team loved her, but none of them wanted to be the one who discovered her body.

  “Actors and actresses!” she called out, in her best acting voice. “If you could stop whinging about the Oscars you didn’t win for long enough to join me in the briefing room, I’d be eternally grateful! Chop chop, you horrible bloody thespians!”

  Rafferty didn’t need to be told again; he sped across the office with his double espresso sloshing dangerously in front of him, before the angry admin clerks had a chance to root through the bins for soggy teabags to hurl at him.

  Two

  “Right.” Jessica tapped the table that everyone was sat around, then selected an image from the interface and threw it nonchalantly towards the middle of the glass surface. As one, the assembled actors leaned forward to get a better view of the picture that resided underneath the glass. Suddenly the picture expanded upwards, escaping the confines of the glass to become a 3D hologram of a miniature red dragon with furled, membranous wings. Its tail was long, and stretched magnificently along the glass; the tip looked like a spade from a deck of cards, and it flicked silently against the surface of the table as the dragon glared suspiciously at each human face in turn. Stalking its way along the table until it reached the limit of the projector’s scope, it belched fire from its mouth that looked realistic enough to give half the onlookers a mild heart attack. The animation department had outdone themselves with this one, if there even was such a department. Someone had to have created this magnificent work of art, right down to the reflection that reached down into the glass beneath its scaled belly. Amidst the resulting cries of Holy crap
and Sweet Jesus, Jessica cleared her throat impatiently. “Right,” she repeated, and this time her tone cracked like a whip. “We’ve been waiting for this for some time. A dragon sighting, up in the Seghiri mountains. From a reliable source who thinks she’s going to be sticking around for a bit, maybe even making a lair to hatch some eggs. What do we think? Any volunteers?” She looked like she should be wearing little half moon spectacles, just so that she could peer disapprovingly over the lenses.

  “Oh, hell yeah.” It was Lee Casey, unsurprisingly. Short enough to look like an uncomfortable child sat in an adult’s chair, and possibly with his feet swinging under the table because they didn’t reach the ground, his ginger hair looked like it had been set on fire by the tiny dragon and his joyful grin betrayed his unadulterated excitement. He had a moving dragon tattoo on his shoulder that had seen better days, and everyone in the room had, at some point or other, been forced to watch it belch fire onto his pale bicep. It was covered now, but he tapped it to remind everyone that he was Stillwater’s go-to guy for all things dragon-and-adrenaline-related. “Been waiting for this.”

  “Any other volunteers, before Mr. Casey gets the gig?” Jessica peered one by one at everyone over those imaginary glasses, almost as if she was willing one of them to challenge the self-professed Dragon Guy. Lee stared daggers at each person at the same time she looked at them, daring anyone to challenge his dominance. There were nine people in the room apart from Jessica, and none of them allowed their eyes to make contact with anything but the dragon on the table. Rafferty went one step further, and shook his head quite vehemently. Dragons really weren’t his thing. He was a fine actor, probably better than anyone else in the company, but Jessica was talking about a real life dragon. Not a CGI dragon, or a couple of guys in a rubber suit, but an actual dragon. Although he wasn’t afraid of being dead as such, how he achieved said state of death was a potential bone of contention; getting torn limb from limb whilst being simultaneously barbecued wasn’t on his admittedly short list of acceptable methods.