Into The Abyss (Demons of Astlan) (31 page)

The demon fixed its gaze on
Gastropé then looked at Jenn in annoyance as she came up next to him.  "Well, he was a prisoner also.  I can't let him die.  We humans just aren't quite as ruthless as you demons!"  With that she gave a last heave and shoved Gastropé through the hole.  Even as she did it, cold irony flooded her as she wondered what right she had to take the choice of damnation from Gastropé.  She didn't care though; she might need the wizard to help get Rupert out.

Rather than get angry, the demon actually seemed to smile, horrific as that was.   "No, but you'll gladly toss him into
the Abyss!"  It actually laughed as it ushered her through the hole.  Jenn's spine went cold as she stepped through.   

Jenn's spine didn't stay cold for long.  Out of the fire and into the lava may not have been a sufficiently strong of a metaphor for this situation.  As she stepped through the hole she was hit by an unbelievable wave of heat.  It was literally like walking into the hottest dry sauna she could possibly imagine.  Her breath was nearly sucked from her lungs by the heat. 

To make matters worse, as the demon came through the hole behind her, it closed it.  With the closing of the hole, the last breath of relatively cool air from the inferno that was the tent vanished, along with the light.  With that, the cave, or so it appeared to be from what she had seen as she stepped through, descended into complete darkness. 
Gastropé was lying at her feet gasping for breath in the heat.  The demon was doing something to the hole, she had no idea where Rupert was. "Rupert!" she managed to croak.  Summoning up her will in the face of the heat, Jenn quickly brought forth a Were Light.  It was a simple spell that all students learned early on, but a useful one.  A small globe of green light appeared above and in front of her face. 

The light from the globe revealed that, indeed, they were in a cave.  Actually a rather large cave.  There was a single long passageway sloping upwards to her left and to her right was a crudely chiseled stone table, behind which was what could only be called a stone throne, with a large hole in the rear, near the bottom, and a groove in the seat, going out the back.  Further, there were small rectangular holes, or niches in the walls. These could roughly be described as shelves, except that there was nothing on them.  Other than this, there appeared to be nothing else in the cave, except for the people and the demon.

It felt like the sweat was literally being sucked from her body.  She felt like she was sweating profusely, but the water seemed to evaporate as fast as she sweated it out.  Her lungs began to ache from the heat of the air.  What was she going to do?  There was no sign of Rupert.  Was she too late already?  The heat was keeping her from thinking clearly.  She doubted she could take much more.

"Cool spell..." croaked
Gastropé.

"What?"  Jenn asked as she looked down at him.

"Untie me, please, and then we can cast Cool spells on ourselves against the heat."

"What are you talking about?  That little cantrip is used to cool liquids for drinking and such."

"Yes..." Gastrope' seemed out of breath.  Jenn was sure the fiery air made it hard for him to speak, it certainly did for her.  "But it can be adapted to cool a thin layer of air around your body.  If you do it right and continue to maintain it, it will cool all the air coming through the layer and into your lungs also.  If you untie me, so I can do it for myself; I'll show you how to do it."

What a weird idea
, thought Jenn in a strangely surrealistic manner,
it might actually work
. She found it hard to concentrate on anything.   She bent down and began untying his hands, behind his back.  When she finished, he said "Legs also please, things will be much easier if I can stand."  Jenn supposed he was right, and in the current situation he couldn't do much harm.  She untied his legs. 

Gastropé
got to his feet, slowly.  Every breath was painful.  Despite this, as soon as he got to his feet, he cast the strange variant of the Cool spell, in a clear straight forward manner that Jenn was able to follow.  As he completed the spell, he seemed to relax and breathe easier.  Jenn quickly followed suit. Almost at once, she felt like collapsing.  Her body was surrounded by cool air.  Actually the air wasn't that incredibly cool, about like a hot summer day, but it was the best she could manage, given the outside heat.  As it was, it felt incredible!  She could breathe properly again.  "Rupert!" she cried again.  How would he survive this heat.  She had to get the spell on him.

As she rapidly sucked in now cool air, she had time to notice that
Gastropé was once again extremely pale and was staring fixedly behind her.  She turned around.  Obviously by this point her senses were completely out of whack.  The sight of the towering fourth order demon behind her hardly phased her.  She'd gotten used to it, almost.  It however, was searching all over the room with its eyes, as if trying to locate something.

"Where the hell are we demon?  What have you done with Rupert!"  Jenn demanded.

The demon stopped looking around, and turned its baleful gaze upon her.  Her insides withered at her gall.  However, it simply smiled its evil, vicious grin at her, and seemed to leer right into her eyes, if that were possible.  "Close,  my dear, damn close.  But actually you see, we...are in the Abyss."

"The Abyss." Jenn stated, "you've stolen my soul to the Abyss."  There,
she'd said it.  Intellectually,  she knew it when she stepped through.  Thus her determination to save Rupert.  The demon's saying it however, brought a new level of terror to her very being.  Made it more terrifying real than she could have even imagined on the other side of the hole.

"Not just your soul, but as far as I can determine, your entire body.  Because as I understand things, if I had just taken your soul, you'd be naked at the moment."  The demon answered almost mockingly it seemed.

Thoughts overwhelmed her being.  All her childhood memories and training told her that good girls, like her, never got sent to the Abyss.  Here she'd gone and willingly thrown herself in. How would they ever get out, even if she could find poor Rupert before he suffocated.  There were rumors and legends among the students of spells capable of transporting people to the Abyss bodily.   Old wives’ tales  of maidens being abducted by demons to the Abyss, ran suddenly through her mind; no one took those seriously.   It seemed like she should have.  She'd find a way though, she'd brought Gastropé along for help.  Even if they had to bargain with their souls to free the boy, she would. 

Suddenly a thought struck her
, demonstrating once again the incoherent nature of her thinking here.  
How did Gastropé so conveniently know about this application of the cool spell?  Stop it!
  Jenn told herself suddenly, 
First things first
.  She looked around the cave, but Rupert was definitely gone.  He was nowhere to be seen.  "What did you do with Rupert?" she once again demanded of the demon.

"Nothing!"  the demon answered her in a bass that nearly shook her to the bone.  "That's what I was looking around trying to determine a second ago. 

"He definitely came through the hole and I saw him in the cave, through the hole.  He isn't here now though."  The demon almost, almost, sounded sincere.  If, that were, such a thing was possible for a demon. She rigidly tried to hold herself calm.  She glanced at Gastropé.  He still seemed to be fixated on the demon, and didn't take his eyes off it, even though it paid him no attention. 

Jenn heard voices from the tunnel.  They were indistinct at first.  One of them seemed to belong, almost, to an old man, rather high pitched and
crotchety.  The other sounded like Rupert's.  There was also some sort of droning noise, kind of like a giant humming bird.  "So how many masters have you had?"  Rupert's voice seemed to ask.  Was Jenn delirious?

"Oh let's see, 47, I think. It gets hard to tell after a while, they all start running together.  The only one that really matters is the now one of course.  The others are just worm food and memories.  Well, except for Maurice.  Maurice never got to be worm food.  Was food though.  Yep.  Mighty tasty food at that." 

The voices got louder, and suddenly from the long tunnel appeared Rupert, walking slightly ahead of...of well, a demon.  A very weird looking demon with four arms and four legs and insectoidal humming bird wings.  Rupert was looking backwards, over his shoulder at the demon as he walked.  Every bit as if he were having a stroll in the park with a friend. 

"Rupert!"  Jenn shouted.  "What are you doing?  Have you gone completely
berserk!"  She couldn't believe this.  This had to be some kind of nightmare.  Nothing like this could ever happen, it was just too unreal.  The absolute absurdity of the casual nature of their conversation caused her mind to reel.

The
octopodal demon stopped abruptly, staring at Jenn and Gastropé in surprise.  He took them in, and then looked at the big demon.  Rupert just smiled sweetly at Jenn as if nothing were wrong.  "So Tom, what do you got here?" he gestured with a couple hands at Gastrope' and Jenn.  "Wizard take out?   Sound's good to me.  I haven't been to a good flaying in years!  Boggy, that low down buddy of mine didn't even invite me to the mutilation of his accursed master!"

Gastropé's
eyes were finally distracted from Tom, over to the smaller demon.  Fortunately for him, his face couldn't get any whiter; it could, however, turn a sickly yellow color.  "Actually, it'd be a pretty good lesson for the lad here, boy needs to get his technique down young.  You really can't start too young.

"I suppose you're gonna do the honors.  After all, they're your toys.  I'm sure you'll want the lass, but can I maybe have just a small bit of time with the sickly
looking one?"  Gastropé collapsed on the floor in a heap.  Suddenly, Jenn was torn, she didn't know whether to be terrified or pissed.  She supposed terror was the more rational response, but she was really just getting too numb.  Her mind too overloaded.  There was only so much terror and insanity one could deal with at time, before a person just said enough is enough.   Pissed seemed to be more likely at the moment.

"No, Tizzy.  These are my guests.   I've given my word to protect all...three...of them."  Tom looked rather sourly down at
Gastropé, obviously stretching the truth and hating ever moment of it. 

"Oh shucks, Tom.  Why don't I ever get to have any fun?"  The Tizzy demon whined. 
He stuck a long stemmed pipe in his mouth and took a large puff.  Jenn had no idea where the pipe had come from, all four of his hands had been empty when he’d entered the cave.  "Look, these two wizards here, they're gonna expire soon anyway.  They can't keep their magic up too long, and then their gonna bake.  If they're baked, they tend to be rather unlively and are pretty boring to torture!  And what's more, they taste so much better raw!  Like Wizard Sushi!"

"Tizzy!  I said, no."  Tom stated sternly, like a father to a naughty child.

"Spoilsport."  Tizzy said sourly, not meeting Tom's eyes.  Tom just stood there looking at Tizzy, making sure he had the idea.  Tizzy looked away taking several long draws on his pipe.

"Ok then," Tizzy looked over at Rupert.  "Why don't you come with me then
, Rupert.  I'll show you the Courts of Chaos.  You'd find that a fun place I'm sure.  Maybe I can get us an audience with Mephistopheles.  He's starting to warm to me.  Last time he only had his guards whip me for a month non-stop when I stopped into see him unannounced."

Rupert looked excited.  He looked from Tom to Jenn and back and forth.  "Can I
?  It'd be real neat!"

"Rupert!"  Jenn shouted.  That was it!  As soon as she got them out of there, the kid was going to the first doctor
, or priest, she could find!  He was obviously gone for.  The heat had completely melted his brain!  Like a marshmallow in a fire.  He didn't have too stable a grasp on reality in the first place, and now it was completely gone.

"No."  Tom said.  Jenn did a double take.  The demon was agreeing with her.

"Aaahhh Tom.  You promised to show me the Abyss!  And you're obviously busy right now.  Tizzy can show me just fine, while you take these guys back some place."

"You what!"  Jenn shouted, again staring aghast at Tom.  She was starting to get hoarse from all the shouting.

Tom looked at her in annoyance, then back to Rupert.  "You know I promised no such thing.  You are not going with Tizzy.  You're going with the rest of us...wherever that is."

"To.o.ohhhmmm..."

"Don't try that with me Rupert!  It was stupid enough of me to let you go wandering into that army camp alone.  I'm not going to compound it by letting you run all over the Abyss with Tizzy."

~

Rupert got a sour look on his face.  It really disappointed him.  He'd love to go see the Abyss, especially the Courts of Chaos.  Actually, though, he couldn't complain too much.  After all, Tom was behaving just the way Rupert had always wanted him to behave.  The way he'd always dreamed of. 
Be careful about what you wish for
, Rupert thought,
you may get it.

What a day!
Tom thought to himself. 
This has got to take the cake
.  Here he was, the responsible hero who lets a little kid wander into the enemy army camp and purposefully get captured.  True it worked, but that was another issue.  The more he thought about it, the luckier he had been. 

After Rupert had gone down into the camp, Tom had allowed himself to fade back to his cave.  He'd then sat and tried to 'listen' for Rupert.  He'd also replayed the scene with the demons who'd captured Jenn in his mind.  Somehow, they'd opened some sort of physical gateway to take her physically through.   They didn't just fade out.  That would be a handy trick he decided.  For one thing if he could do it, then he could bring stuff from Astlan to make his cave nicer.  Finally, he heard Rupert calling his name, and it had been very hard to hear, he was glad he'd been listening.  At that point, Tom had decided to try a different approach from his normal one.  Instead of fading, he tried to imagine a doorway or hole that led to Rupert.  He'd concentrated on it, and imagined Rupert calling him from just the other side.  Eventually, he was able to see Rupert, in much the same way he'd seen Jehenna, and this time he just punched a hole through the image and opened a hole.  From there he'd just stepped through.

It had been a completely different sensation, more like a momentary sense of vertigo and then there he was.  No fading, no gentle switching of planes, he just stepped through, as if stepping over a large chasm.  They'd all been damn lucky he had done it this way.  If that hole hadn't still been there, he didn't think he'd have been able to get the others out.  The soldiers had surrounded the tent. 

Naturally, he could have killed them all, fairly easily, but in the time that took, Rupert and Jenn would probably have died in the fire or by the arrows of the guards.  It was also nice not to have to kill anyone for a change.  All he'd had to do was slightly maim a guy.  That seemed like a major improvement.  Nonetheless, it had still been too close for any real comfort on his part.  He'd almost blown it completely.  He really needed to think a little more first.  He wouldn't always be so lucky.

Tom looked over to where Jenn was trying to wake up the passed out Gastropé.  Tom had hoped he'd seen the last of that guy.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, he'd been tied up with Jenn.  He really couldn't blame her for wanting to rescue the guy.  Under more normal circumstances, say as in back in Harding, he would have done the same, probably.  At least he liked to think so.  Now of course, like in so many things, he seemed much more detached, more cavalier about such small things.   Small things?  he was talking about a man's life after all.  Not exactly small, but that was the problem, Tom just kept finding himself thinking and acting ruthlessly.

Not that Tom was the only one with mental problems in this group.  Actually, he thought, all of them
had severe issues.  Gastropé was a coward of the first degree, no confidence what-so-ever.  Jenn had one severe attitude problem, probably came from being a wizard.  Rupert had finally lost the few remaining face cards in his deck, and there was no question that Tizzy was blatantly psychotic, neurotic, and a few other -otics to boot.  The worst part was that Tizzy and Rupert were over there in a corner talking back and forth like old buddies.  The little demon was certainly not helping Rupert's condition.  Whatever that condition was.

Fortunately, Rupert had agreed to listen to reason and not go gallivanting off with Tizzy.  Following that
, however, Jenn had informed him that she and Gastropé couldn't keep their spells up for long and that she expected him to return them all to Astlan very soon.  He didn't know what spells she was talking about, unless it was the light spell, but Tizzy had made the same comment before asking about eating them.  So, he had to get them out of there, he guessed.  The question was, how?

He might be able to open another hole, it had been slightly tiring, but not too bad.  Unfortunately, he didn't know for sure where to open one at.  Boggy had once mentioned something about needing a focal point for demons to find a place in Astlan.  A wizard conjuring them, or something similar.  The last two times he'd gone willingly to Astlan, he'd had someone calling him that he could focus on.  He didn't have that now.  Would simply imagining a place he'd been, be sufficient?  Was fire needed? it had always been there in the past.  He just didn't know.  They really needed something like Demon-Ed.  After all, if you had to take a class to drive a car, shouldn't you also have to take one to be a demon?  Being a demon was a lot more dangerous; to others at least.

Well, what did he have to lose?  All he could do was try.  Everyone else was busy, so he might as well try.  What first though?  His Tae-Kwon-Do instructor always said that a clear head was the first step in any process, so Tom guessed some form of meditative trance might help.  Tom went over and sat down in his chair.  He closed his eyes and began to relax his body.

Actually, despite all the craziness going on around him, Tizzy and Rupert babbling on, and Jenn comforting
Gastropé, trying to convince him he wouldn't be eaten, it wasn't as difficult to achieve a trance like state as Tom had feared.  He simply concentrated on blankness, on whiteness.  He let the sounds of the others wash over him.  Pass him by, and go on, like water rolling over a stone in a brook.  He remained calm, serene,  unchanged by it.  He cleared his mind and slowed his, hmm, he didn't seem to have a heart rate.   After a moment's pause to consider his lack of heartbeat, he resumed his blank state.  He wiped all the confusion, all the warring thoughts and clamoring memories from his mind. 

Tom concentrated on images of Astlan, as he remembered them.  He concentrated on fire.  Consuming fire.  Fire which ate all, which gave all.  Fire, the
birthplace of the Phoenix.  Fire, the warm bath which could only caress him, fill him with gentle warmth.  He imagined himself encased in fire, he was the living flame itself.  He remembered when he was first conjured.  The chanting, the braziers, he brought them back into focus, as if they were there.

Suddenly they were there.  The braziers, the flame, the chanting, all were there.  A voice was chanting a summons.  Tom felt no compulsion however, the summons wasn't for him, but for some other.  It was also a weak summons.  Tom felt that even if it had been for him, he could easily have resisted it.  Nonetheless, Tom concentrated on the summons, focused his will upon it, his very being.

Tom saw a room, different then Lenamare's.  True, there was a lot of paraphernalia lying about, but very different sorts.  Not so much bat-wing and blood magical, but more incense and reverence magical.  A bald headed little man was chanting over a small flame adjacent to the one which was Tom.  He was waving a small medallion on some sort on a chain.

"By the Holy Azrael and Azaphael, I summon thee.  Come thee oh demon Krysfalkenon.  Thy Holy Master Verigas calls thee to do his bidding.  Answer demon!  The Lord Tiernon will not tolerate insubordination to his Blessed Priests.  Come demon! I conjure thee by thy true name.  Come demon, come now."  The little man suddenly stared into the flame that was Tom.  "I sense thee demon, get thee into this chamber.  Come, come into this most
Holy Place of Power!"

Ok, Tom thought, I don't really need a second invitation.  Tom began to imagine his body as the flame, began to allow himself to fade.  Then he remembered why he was doing this, and pulled back slightly.  He couldn't fade through, he needed a gateway.  Crap.

"Arrest ye demon.  Thou canst not depart!  I have summoned thee, thou must come!"

Annoyed, Tom said, "Don't worry, I am coming."  The little
self-styled priest jerked suddenly, aware that something was dreadfully wrong.  He'd heard Tom, and he knew it wasn't any little Krysfalkenon demon coming through the flame.  Suddenly the priest's chanting changed.  It seemed to Tom that he felt the ties to the room weakening.

We can't have that, Tom thought.  Tom concentrated on the room, imagining a small tear in the space between him and the room.  With a mental hand he stuck a finger in the hole and began widening it.  Wider and wider so that soon he could get a mental hand in.  The priest was now shouting commands at the top of his lungs.  Apparently growing slightly desperate.  Tom opened his eyes.  There before him, between the chair and the table was a small hole in space, surrounded by a ring of fire.

Apparently the others in the room had heard him call out to the wizard, because they were all staring at him and the hole.  He spared a moment of his attention for Jenn and said, "Well, you said you needed to go back?  Are you ready?"  He then turned back to the hole and stuck both hands into the hole, tearing it wider.  On the other side of the hole was the room with the priest. 

The priest was jumping up and down.  As the hole got wide enough for the priest to see Tom, the priest stopped chanting and screamed a scream of bloody murder.  For some odd reason that Tom couldn't understand, and in fact, disturbed
him greatly, the man's scream caused him to smile.  He opened the hole wider and stepped through.