by Jamie Davis
Kurt laughed. “Marci is stubborn if she’s anything. She won’t just give in and she won’t give them the crystal.”
“Will this crystal affect the ability of the demons to win this war?” Sarge asked. “You all came to deliver that holy weapon to us so that we could win the war. Does that mean this crystal could counteract the effects of the holy weapon on our ability to win?”
Kurt looked at Jonesey and the elf shrugged. “It’s a distinct possibility,” Jonesey said. “The crystal is called a Chaos Crystal. The name is not accidental. It has various effects and can magnify magic and power, but it doesn’t always work the way it was intended. I know only a little about these things, but that much is common in all the lore.”
“We need to hurry and pick up our pace,” the sergeant said. “If we don’t get to her first, they could take that crystal from her and then all hope in this world would be lost.”
Kurt couldn’t agree more. They’d stopped long enough talking about the crystal. It didn’t matter unless Marci was recovered.
He set out at a trot, following along behind Smalls and Sarge as they tracked the trail left by the demons carrying Marci along.
A few hours later, Smalls stopped and pointed at the ground. “There’s boots again here. It looks like they set Marci down. Look, you can now see where she is walking amidst the other tracks.”
Kurt crouched down and extended a hand over the boot prints in the dirt. His spell immediately highlighted the print. It was Marci’s.
“Why put her down now?” Kurt asked. “They were happy enough to carry her this far.”
Smalls shrugged and shook her head. “Maybe they got tired of carrying her? Or maybe, they carried her because she was unconscious or disabled in someway. Perhaps now she is awake and able to walk on her own.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sarge said. “We still need to catch up with them. Let’s keep moving.”
The rest of the team fell in line again. Smalls continued to follow the trail. Anxiety and fear rose up inside Kurt. Marci was in more danger now than perhaps ever before.
He didn’t like the way it made him feel to know she was in danger this way. Usually, she was the least helpless person in a crisis he knew. She could take care of herself in most situations.
Marci had saved him so many times when he got in trouble, he felt like he had to do the same for her and not just because he owed her one. Jonesey’s words earlier had impacted him and he finally admitted to himself what his true feelings for her were.
Kurt vowed to himself to tell Marci how he felt when all this was said and done. He owed her that much. Hopefully, she felt the same way, but it didn’t matter. Kurt would not let her slip away without telling her how he felt. He continued thinking about this as they raced down the trail heading west.
Chapter 16
Marci stumbled through the outskirts of the demon camp. Creatures of every type and variety snarled and swiped at her with claws and talons as her captors led her past the clusters of hide tents.
She dodged and ducked under most of the attacks. The demons escorting her tried to keep the others at bay and out of reach. A few, however, were able to get through to her. Because of that, Marci had cuts and slashes all down her arms, legs, and back.
She’d been walking all night and well into the day. By her reckoning, it was almost nightfall again. Unable to do more than stumble along, Marci focused on each step as even putting one foot in front of the other became more and more difficult.
The leader of the demons in her party took them to the center of the camp. An enormous bonfire blazed at the center of a ring of tents. The horned demon holding the rope bound to her tugged her forward until she walked next to the party’s leader.
The lead demon took her leash and jerked it, yanking her forward. Marci stumbled and nearly fell once again. Somehow, she kept her feet and shuffled forward, head down, as she followed the lead demon around the bonfire to the far side.
When they stopped, she looked up. Marci could not contain her surprise. Standing before her stood the fallen angel turned demon known to her only as the Cardinal. This creature had held the population of an entire world under his will using the Chaos Crystal to magnify his ability to cloud their minds and judgment.
Marci and Kurt had managed to cut off the power feeding his spell and steal the crystal from him. They exposed him for the evil creature he was, but he escaped.
Now, he stood directly in front of her.
“Zerg, I see you brought her safely to me, mostly. How was she injured?”
“That was due to the exuberance of the others in the camp as we walked her through it. We kept them from rending her limb from limb, my lord. A few reached her with their claws.”
“I suppose some collateral damage is to be expected. Does she still possess the crystal?” The demon prince asked.
“Yes, my lord Harshad. We left it in her pack as you ordered.”
This was the first time Marci heard the Cardinal’s name spoken. The leader of the demon band that had captured her bowed as he spoke Harshad’s name.
Marci struggled to find a way to use that against him. If it was his true name, it might give her an opportunity for some protection from him. Bound as she was right now, there was little she could to. She tried to cast a simple protection spell.
Most of her magic eluded her exhausted mind and body as she reached out for it. There seemed to be no way to escape whatever fate the fallen angel had in mind for her.
For a second she almost drew in some magical energy. If she could enact even the simplest of spells, it might make things turn in her favor.
The effort was too much for her, however. She let out a gasp as she tried pulling in more than a trickle. No matter how hard she tried, though, her magic wouldn’t come.
She could sense the power all around her. She could even touch it with her mind. But that was all. It was as if someone had wrapped her in a thin layer of rubber that stretched as she reached through it. It did not enable her the ability to grasp anything on the other side of the barrier. She could see and sense the magic but could not get a hold of it.
Harshad laughed and stared at her. “I can feel your feeble attempts to reach out for magic, my dear. I’ll give you this much. You are a woman with strong abilities that is true. Here, however, as long as I possess this, I control the flow of magic around me,” He held up a rod of ivory and gold about a half meter in length.
“And what is that?” Marci asked. All she had was her voice and her wits at this point. She decided she had to use both. “If that some kind of sex toy you use, you really should keep it to yourself.”
Harshad paused for a moment, his eyebrows lowering over darkening eyes. Marci allowed herself a brief smile. She’d pissed him off. For that, she was willing to accept a small victory.
“A woman in your position has no business acting so frivolously, Marci Trenton. You appear to be unaware of how much trouble you’re in right now.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I beat you once after all. I don’t see any reason why I can’t manage to do so again.”
“You caught me unawares on that world, my girl. I will not be taken unawares so easily again. Especially after you took something very precious to me.”
“I suppose you just want me to hand the Chaos Crystal back over to you?” Marci asked.
Harshad grinned at her. The look on his face sent shivers down her spine. It wasn’t a grin of happiness. It was a grin of evil expectation.
“The Chaos Crystal, is not so easily obtained, I’m afraid. You may not merely give it to me. I must retrieve it in some kind of ritual contest. You took it from me when you freed the angel who’d been hunting me. Between that and the removal of my spell of concealment, the crystal switched its allegiance to you. Now, to regain it, I must prove to the crystal I am once again worthy of ownership.”
“You act as if it’s sentient.”
“Perhaps not sentient as you and I believe. It does, how
ever, have an agenda. It is aptly named. The Chaos Crystal and its brothers around the universe, thrive on the unpredictability of nature. It wants to increase the entropy of all matter around it. That counts anything that causes disruption whether it be a disruption of people’s lives, or memories, or of a spell. The Chaos Crystal revels in those moments.
Marci considered what Harshad said. If he could not just take the crystal from her why didn’t he kill her right now and remove it from her once she was dead?
The fallen angel with his alabaster skin gleaming as if coated in a thin layer of oil, took a step forward. His black bat-like wings unfolded from across his back. He stood nearly three meters tall and towered over Marci’s diminutive form.
“I would like very much to just kill you and take it away from you. Do I read what you’re thinking correctly?”
Marci glared at him but said nothing. Great, she thought, so he could read her mind.
“Of course I can read your mind, my dear. It is one of the few abilities left over from my time as an angel.”
“Since you know what I’m thinking, why don’t you answer the question. Why don’t you just kill me?”
“Alas, my research tells me the crystal will not switch its allegiance so easily. Since you bested me once already, simply killing you isn’t good enough. I need to prove my worthiness to it once again. If I don’t, it is just as likely to transfer its allegiance to another random sentient creature nearby as to the one who kills you. Remember, it seeks chaos.”
“Great, so I guess we’re going to arm wrestle for it?” Marci said. She tried to meet the demons black eyes and match his defiant gaze.
“You are closer than you might think to what I have planned for you. I will have to win it from you in a contest of sorts. I can use this rod to cloud your ability to use magic, but that is all I can do right now because the crystal protects you. To remove that protection, I must set up a contest. I have to come up with some way for me to prove to the crystal I am worthy to gain it back again.”
Harshad pointed over Marci shoulder. She turned, looking past the bonfire in the direction he indicated. The sun had set at this point and she could see very little beyond the firelight. Far off in the distance, though, she saw a glowing point of deep red. It looked like a red star suspended low in the night sky.
“What is that?” Marci asked.
“That is what I sought when I first came to this world. It is the birthplace of this particular Chaos Crystal. I lured you here because the proximity to the location of its making would make the crystal more pliable to a change in ownership.”
Harshad lowered his arm as he continued. “It wants to return there. If you could return the crystal to its birth place, it would allow you to seal it back in this world. That would permanently disable its ability to lend power to any who possessed it. That is the contest I offer you, Marci Trenton. If you can reach that mountain, the home of this crystal, before I catch you, I will not only let you go free, I will relinquish all claims of ownership of the crystal and you may do with it what you wish.”
“And if I fail?” Marci asked.
“Your failure is my gain. Should you be caught before you reach the mountain and return the crystal to its birth place, then you will die and I will receive the crystal.”
“So again all you need to do is kill me.”
“No, I must defeat you and then I can kill you. It is a minor distinction, I admit, but an important one nonetheless.”
Marci shook her head. This was getting worse and worse all the time. In her current condition, she had little chance to make any sort of run across this rugged landscape for a mountain far off in the distance. Any demons hunting her would catch up with her in very little time.”
“It seems as if that wouldn’t be much of a contest, Harshad. You see the condition I’m in. The crystal will know if it is not a fair test of your worthiness.”
Harshad paused and brought a hand to his chin, considering what she just said. “Perhaps you are right. I cannot risk the crystal rejecting me even after you are dead. Very well, I accept your terms. I will heal you and then set you off so I may hunt you down. You have set the terms of the contest and now you must abide by them.”
Marci ground her teeth. How could she have been so stupid? She could have set the terms to be almost anything and Harshad would’ve had to agree to it in order to make the contest fair between the two of them.
All she’d asked for was to be healed and returned to a condition to lead them on a fair chase. She could have demanded weapons, she could have demanded that her magical abilities be restored. This could be the mistake that ended her life, and she was royally pissed at herself.
“So, Marci Trenton, do you accept the contest as the rules have been laid out before you?”
“I accept,” Marci said. “Heal me and restore my stamina. I’ll give you a chase worthy of the prize. I promise you, though, you won’t find me so easy to capture and kill again.”
“Oh, my dear,” Harshad said, an evil grin spreading across his face, “I so look forward to proving you wrong.”
Chapter 17
Two of the horned demons took Marci from the bonfire and tied her seated to the central post of an empty tent nearby. It surprised her they planned for her to have a full night’s sleep before the hunt’s beginning.
Her mind worked through her options after she tested the ropes that bound her in place. She would not escape from the tight ropes binding her, so she focused on a plan for what she could do once the hunt began the next morning.
Marci’s mind ran through a series of possible plans until she fell into a fitful sleep, slumped against the tent pole.
In the morning, one of the horned demons brought Marci before Harshad. It might have been the same one who’d led her through the camp the previous evening. She couldn’t tell them all apart and she didn’t really care.
Her injuries from the flight towards the army and parade through the camp the night before still pained her. Marci was unsure what Harshad planned to do to heal her. The previous night’s delay made her assume he would wait for her injuries to heal on their own over time.
She was wrong
Two demons held her under her armpits, lifting her up from the ground in front of the fallen angel’s tent until her toes almost lifted from the dirt. Harshad leaned down over her and placed his cold white hands against either side of her head. Tilting her face until her eyes met his, he grinned and muttered a word in a language she didn’t know.
The first thing she felt was a tickling on either side of her head beneath the demon’s hands. As she gazed into his eyes, they glowed with an inner fire. The eyes bored into hers as they burned bright red. The tingling sensation turned into a burning pain in that instant, spreading down her body until it seemed to encompass her entire being.
A guttural howl escaped her lips, turning into an unending scream of anguish. Every molecule in Marci’s body burned as if the fire entered every part of her.
The burning pain seemed to go on forever. She had no idea how long it was before Harshad let go of her head. One second he held her. The next the fallen angel pulled his hands away, as fast as he grabbed her.
At the same instant, the demons on either side of her let go of her arms. Marci collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Her breathing came out in ragged gasps as she lay there facedown staring at the reddish-orange dirt. It took long seconds for the pain to ebb.
And then, the pain dissipated. All the pain left her; not just the pain from whatever Harshad just did to her with his demonic spell, but also the pain of her previous injuries.
Marci looked down at her arms and no longer saw the cuts and scratches from the demons she encountered on the way into the demon camp. A magic with which she was completely unfamiliar healed her. She sat up and stared at Harshad, looming above her.
“How did you do that?” She asked.
“You have a powerful control of the magic you know, Marci Tren
ton. But, you do not know all there is to know about the mystical world. I have powers far beyond any you could hope to control. My power has its origins in the divine. Even though they cast me out with the others after our failed rebellion, I can still command some of my original capabilities.”
“So now what?” Marci asked. Around her, the demons from the camp crowded in, forming a semicircle with Harshad and her in the center.
“Now, my dear , You run.”
The demon standing to her left dropped one of her silver edged tomahawks on the ground beside her along with her backpack, bulging with the crystal inside. She looked down at the weapon and then up at Harshad. He pointed off to the north in the glowing mountain’s direction.
“Run, girl. You are using up what little time for a head start we give you.”
The surrounding demons parted, creating a corridor to safety leading to the north. Marci climbed to her feet, grabbing the tomahawk as she stood and slipping the straps of the pack across her shoulders.
For a bare instant, she considered attempting to bury the tomahawk in Harshad’s chest right then and there. She figured that would be cheating and the crystal would no longer protect her.
Instead, she turned and raced out of the demon camp. The demons forming a corridor to safety hissed, growled, and snarled at her as she passed them but the didn’t harm her.
Running across the rough ground for all she was worth, Marci worked to put as much distance as possible between her and those who would soon try to hunt her down.
Marci was unsure how long she’d been running when a horn sounded behind her and the baying of the sixer hounds announce the hunt had begun.
Her breathing came in searing gasps as she continued to run onward. She knew she’d pushed herself close to the breaking point, but she had already covered a great deal of ground towards the mountain rising before her. Marci hoped it would be enough to maintain her lead now that the demons raced after her.