by Langland, J.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Introduction to the Astral Plane
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
The Five Elements
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Wizardry
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Classification of Demons
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
A Treatise on The Hierarchy of The Abyss.
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Higher Realms
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Astlanian Calendar
Chapter 50
A Treatise on the Nature of the Multiverse
Chapter 51
Astrology and the Elements
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Animages
Anilords
Chapter 54
Animus and Mana
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
The Council States
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Animages and Animagic
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Demons of Astlan Vol. 1:
Into the Abyss
By
J. L. Langland
Copyright 2014 J. L. Langland
Special Thanks and Dedication to:
Michael Begal, Jay Haesly, Sean Jones
For Maps, Details, History and more visit: www.Astlan.Net
Chapter 1
He wasn't really positive, but Tom was pretty sure that this wasn't what pot was supposed to feel like. He'd never smoked any before, but people had told him what it felt like and this wasn't it. The room was swaying around him and funny colored lights were dancing about the room. Which he thought, rather muddily, is what acid was supposed to do, not grass. His stomach was beginning to dance in his middle. He sat down on the couch behind him, rapidly. The room seeming to telescope around him, sounds and faces appeared as if through a very long tunnel.
"Whoa," was all he said as he sat down. This might not have been a good idea, thought Tom. He really shouldn't have let Paul talk him into it. In fact, as the colored lights began to obscure the entire room at the other end of the tunnel, he began to wish he'd never let Jack and Paul talk him into coming to this party. At the time though, it had seemed the best way to meet people. He'd only moved to Harding two weeks ago and he had been awful lonely until he'd met Jack and Paul at school last week. They'd convinced him to come to the party, and then convinced him to try one of the new joints Reggie had just bought in New York yesterday.
"Hey Tom, what's the matter? Can't handle a little good feeling?" asked one of the guys on Tom's left.
"I'm fine, just...thought I'd sit down and enjoy the...rush," lied Tom, trying to save face. The world began to spin. Voices filled the air around him. The partiers laughing and joking, the music rushing in waves upon his head. His whole body seemed to be undulating in time to the rather retro—almost trance or psychedelic like—rhythm that was gushing out the fourteen inch speakers in the corners. As he turned his head towards the speakers it was like the tunnel was a reverse megaphone or something channeling the sound; it made him even dizzier.
As the rush grew, the room and its occupants seemed to sort of fade from view, the tunnel dimming, turning gray. Within a few minutes he was unable to see anyone in the room, or the room itself, for that matter. He could feel it and the music, but colored lights swirled and danced around him as his soul seemed to expand and shrink around his body with the music. Voices seemed to come to him from far away, his `friends' making jokes because he'd apparently passed out. As the music and voices began to fade from his ears he slowly realized he could see again. It was weird though; through his eyes, or what he thought of as his eyes, colored lights still danced around him, but with what was almost like a second set of eyes he could see the party going on around him. The scary part, however, was that he wasn't looking at the party from the couch. He was watching from the ceiling above, and he could see his own passed out body on the couch below him. His face pale, the joint slipping from his fingers, his chest rising and falling with the beat of the music.
Paul bent over him, laughing, and shook him, trying to wake him up. Tom didn't feel a thing though. He could no longer hear any of the people at the party, but he could still feel the music, even though he couldn't hear it. The room began slowly receding, as if he were backing away from it like one of those expanding long shots in a movie where they zoom from street level to outer space.
Is this one of those near death experiences? Thought Tom. No, he could still see his body breathing, and he certainly didn't feel at peace. He felt sick and disoriented. This stuff was bad.
As he gazed at the ever more distant room, he realized that he could hear voices again. These, however, didn't sound like the voices at the party. They were chanting something in time to the music in what sounded like a strange foreign language, something similar to, but definitely not, Latin. One voice older than the rest seemed to be leading the chanting, drawing him on. In his mind he tried rotating his point of reference in the direction of the chanting. It seemed almost as if they were saying come to us, come to us. Hey, he thought confusedly, maybe these are the voices of the doctors trying to bring me back, I better go to them, I really don't want to die quite yet. He tried, sluggishly, at first, to move forward, towards them, through the soup of colored lights. The chanting grew louder and louder. Suddenly a face appeared right in front of him. It seemed twisted in a grim smile of triumph and determination.
It shouted in his mind, "NAME."
Tom was so startled by its appearance and by being able to understand the voice, he answered, almost unwilling, "Thomas Edward Perkinje."
The face twisted in, if possible, a more hideous grin of triumph. Tom suddenly decided, if that's what I'm going back for, I think I'll stay here. Tom recognized somewhere at the core of his being that the voice and face wanted nothing good for him. He rotated what he thought of as his body and began to flee from the face with all his strength. He ran on mental legs as fast as he could. Farther and farther away, he fled. As he fled, the voices became more and more insistent, demanding that
he return to them.
He fled from them harder than he had ever run from the bullies in his old school, the ones that used to harass him because he wouldn't give them money. Tom was stubborn, his mother always said he was too bull-headed for his own good. Well, Tom was absolutely positive that he wanted nothing to do with that leering face. He ran on and on, refusing to give into the voices that called on him to submit, to return.
He felt what seemed to be cold hands reach from behind to try and grab at the center of his being. The old voice screamed at him, "Thomasedwardperkinje, by thy true name I command thee, submit. Your will is mine. I am thy master. Submit demon, submit!" For reasons beyond his grasp hearing his name and that command he slowed his flight. He didn't want to, but he couldn't help it. He was running as if through molasses, his legs slowing, the cold hands firming their grip upon his being. I can't run, thought Tom, so I fight. Without warning, and with all his will Tom slammed to a halt, spun his `body' around and threw something resembling a reverse spinning side kick, right into that hideous leering face. At the same time, he released a loud mental Kiya! at the face, he had no lungs to verbally yell, as his Tae Kwon Do instructor had taught him to do when kicking. His foot met resistance as it impacted with the face, but not solid contact. It was like kicking pudding.. His foot went into the face as his leg reached full extension, but to Tom's eyes it appeared as if his foot went through a hologram.
The face reared back in apparent surprise and possibly a bit of pain. Clearly, it had not expected the kick. Using the time to his best advantage, Tom did two rapid punches to the face, kiyaing twice. The face again backed off. The face was no longer grinning in triumph, now if anything it almost looked worse. It had grown solemn, serious and downright nasty. Tom decided that it was time to run again since the Tae Kwon Do only seemed to pause the man. He ran again; this time the molasses was not quite so thick.
"Urbido Dominae, triustrum" shouted the voices together behind Tom. "These are the rites of high binding let none hinder our task." Smoke was burning somewhere, noxious and heavy. It stunk of sulfur and rubber. His vision of the lights was becoming clouded. "Et servitus nostrus Dominae. Ekfeltos tral kiev. By the sigils of binding, we conjure thee Thomasedwardperkinje. The sigil and thy name bind thee to us. As Varn in the first millennia, we control thee Demon. Thomasedwardperkinje thou canst not escape." A glowing rune appeared in the smoking lights around Tom. Faces surrounded him.
The old face was behind the rune; to its left was a fat sweaty one. To the right, a middle-aged woman, lines of concentration etched on her brow. Beside Tom and behind him were arrayed the faces of young people. Most only a few years older than himself, some had fear in them, others showed nervous excitement. Tom spun around, seeking an opening in the circle of faces. There was none.
Up, he thought, I'm in a three dimensional space. Tom imagined himself fleeing upwards above the circle. This is, after all, a drug induced psychotic state; I can do what I please, thought Tom. His mental body flew upwards away from the circle. Behind him, he heard a grunt of annoyance.
"Necros filium spiratu. Thomasedwardperkinje thou art ours. Thou art bound!" Suddenly from the glowing sigil webs of yellow light shot out surrounding him, blocking his escape upwards. He was webbed in in all directions.
"Shit," said Tom in his mind. “Well, this is a dream, right? I may be whacked out of my head now, but I must still be at the party, these aren't doctors. They say if you wake up before you hit ground, you won't die from a dream fall, thus if I wake up they can't hurt me. Therefore I'll wake up.”
With all the strength he could muster, Tom tried willing his eyes open. He tried to feel the couch under his body, to hear his friends at the party. To fade from the net and return to his own body. He heard a young voice say, "What's it doing? It's fading!"
The old voice said, "Tricky bastard, it's got a body stashed somewhere on another plane and it's trying to return to it. Quickly Jehenna, put Orl wood on the brazier and do Kristel's Fourth Order Binding. I'll sever its cord."
Tom could almost imagine the feel of the couch below him and Paul's voice begging him to wake up. "Thomasedwardperkinje, altos novos ejnikrepdrawdesamohTsovon sotla Thomasedwardperkinje. By thy true name desist, halt and stop. I Lenamare the Great command thee." The old voice shouted. Green smoke began to twist around him, as it touched him he could hear a woman's voice entwined within it, which kept repeating his name and several unintelligible phrases. The green smoke bound him so that he could not move. His muscles, imaginary though they might be, were frozen.
The old voice rose in power. Words rolled through the multi-colored realm. Words that somehow managed to install loathing and a deeper fear in Tom than he thought possible. He had been convinced that he was already as scared as he could get. There was something in these words that installed a deep abiding dread in the very core of his being. He knew that these words were more terrible than anything yet spoken to him. After a few minutes of sounding more like distant thunder rumblings, distinct, if indecipherable words became clear.
"Umatrium seperatum crystum, sceptum Dictum Thomasedwardperkinje, Thomasedwardperkinje, Thomasedwardperkinje. Morium seperatum ce ist. Severance eternal, no more together. Depart thy vessel, leave it in peace. Ek filos, nor xastre, exodus corpum Thomasedwardperkinje, se Dictum ek flux. Supremum, deritivum nos treum, kris falthos reyen kryolbus. Se feat lux Thomasedwardperkinje." As his name was pronounced the last time, Tom felt a great ripping within himself. His heart, his brain, his mental/physical self-screamed. He felt raped, shorn, and destroyed.
Although his entire self-screamed in agony, nothing passed between the green ropes binding him. He did not move, he couldn't. He felt himself dissolving in upon himself. He felt weak and worn, he didn't even have the strength to hold himself together, he let himself melt and ooze. Yet he could go nowhere for he was tightly bound within the green smoke.
In unison all the voices began to chant loudly and triumphantly, for they knew they had won. "Thomasedwardperkinje, appear we conjure thee. Take thy true form, demon. In the name of Estrogal and Varn, Tamros and Uneseros, we command. Show us thy hideous true form, creature of evil. We command thee by thy true name; appear in this room, in this tower. Enter now this our domain. Your spirit is ours, come to us."
The old voice then rose above the rest. "Come demon. I Lenamare command thee. Reveal thyself before me, thy master."
In his mind Thomas saw before him an image from his nightmares, something from the fantasy novels he read and from the games he played. Yet the image before him was real, it was no drawing from a book, nor was it a fantasy creature. He saw it and feared it, yet was drawn inexplicably closer to the immense muscular red figure. All of the sudden his mind blanked and there was no longer the demonic image before him. His imaginary form screamed in agony. His soul twisted and contorted in ways not meant for mortal men. He flipped between here and there, now and then. His form stretched and contracted. It was one of the most terrible and painful experiences in his sixteen years.
Suddenly, he could feel stone beneath his hands. His eyes were closed; he was on his hands and knees. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, he could touch and feel the world around him. At last, he was freed from the color world in which he had been. His head ached; his body, his true physical body, ached. It ached as if every muscle in his body had been pulled like taffy. He also felt weird tingling sensations all over; he just didn't feel right. He was also tired, bone weary. Tom sat there on his hands and knees, with his eyes closed, and rested, too tired to do anything, too tired to even think about where he was or what had just happened.
He heard a gasp from behind him, and a small voice from behind say, "We conjured that?" He was too tired to even think at what the voice was saying.
"Silence," Tom heard, physically, not in his mind, the old voice say. "Thomasedwardperkinje. I have summoned you here, and you are mine, you will obey my every command or you will suffer. Now I have no further use for you at the moment
, so be gone until I summon thee."
Thomas opened his eyes to look at the hated voice. Before, however, he could raise his eyes to the person speaking; he noticed a pair of huge red hands with claw like fingernails on the floor before him. They were attached to the biggest forearms he had ever seen. His eyes followed the arms up to biceps, and then at this point he had to move his head down to trace the arms to the appropriately sized red gleaming body to which they were attached. With an incredible exhaustion and annihilating shock he realized that the gleaming red body was his. The horrible demonic image he had seen in his mind was himself.
With that thought registering on his mind, he felt rather than saw Lenamare twist his hands in an arcane gesture, and then the room disappeared.
Chapter 2
The demon disappeared from the center of the pentagram. Lenamare breathed a small sigh. "Well, students. I think that's enough work for one day. You may return to your studies now."
Lenamare stood calm and poised as ever as pudgy Trisfelt ushered his charges from the tower workroom. He avoided the glare coming from Jehenna standing near a brazier. Finally, all ten students had left and Trisfelt shut the door behind him as he left. Lenamare slowly stepped to his left and sat down in the wooden armchair that rested there. Now that the students were gone, he allowed his exhaustion to show.
Jehenna proceeded to douse each of the braziers in the five sympathetic pentagrams. She too was tired, unlike Lenamare who had done most of the work.
"That--was a bit much," said Lenamare.
"We were lucky, no more preparation than we had, and with a room full of students," commented Jehenna. To an outside observer her statement probably sounded like a neutral observation; Lenamare, however, knew her too well and thus felt the full brunt of her censure.
"Yes, well I certainly wasn't expecting to find an unbound demon today, let alone one of that power."
"So much for demonstrating the summoning of bound demons."
"Well, the students shouldn't have anything to complain about today. Quite strange to find an unbound demon so carelessly wandering around." Lenamare defended himself. He noted the twist in her mouth; she knew she had him on the defensive.