Sky Pirates
“We need to do that. We must warn Typhon of Molok’s coming attack.”
“I’m surprised that he let you live,” Ulrik said. “He did not seem to like you much. Which is understandable I suppose.”
“That it should come to this— to have my character disparaged by a sky pirate.”
In spite of himself Ulrik laughed. Valerius did the same. The sound of his mirth was horrible coming, as it did, through mashed lips. “I fear Molok did not spare my life because he intends to show me mercy. I suspect that rather the opposite is the case if anything. This was just a little appetiser before he gets down to the main course in the future. It’s almost enough to drive one to prayer.”
“You’ll be invoking the Elder Gods in a minute.”
“I have always seen the wisdom in that ancient proverb about the Gods helping those who help themselves. It fits the empirical evidence. What happened when you broke into the citadel?”
Ulrik told him. The end of his tale was interrupted. The walls shook. The air vibrated. The sense of magical pressure in the air increased.
“What’s going on?” Ulrik asked. "It’s like an earthquake.”
“It’s a by-product of the ritual Molok is working.”
“It sounds like our captor is planning something big,” Ulrik said. “What is he doing?”
“He binding a Demon Prince. He intends to force it to manifest within this very structure.”
“So what I saw in the dream was accurate then?”
“Yes.”
“What will that achieve?”
“It will give him access to immense power.”
“So what is his master plan?”
“He is going to attack Typhon.”
“The Hydran fleet is large but I doubt that it is any match for the Typhonian Navy.”
“Under normal circumstances I would agree with you, but these are not going to be normal circumstances. The Korverian fleet was demonstrating along the border when we left Typhon. The bulk of the home fleet has moved to shadow it.”
“So they won’t be at home when the Hydran fleet attacks.”
“Just so.”
“Why would the Korverians help pirates?”
“I suspect they think that Molok will not succeed and plan to attack once he has weakened Typhon.”
“That would make sense.”
“Surely Molok must know this as well.”
“I am sure he does. He is not planning on losing.”
“How does he plan to succeed?”
“I wish I knew. All I know is that great sorcery has been worked in this place for many days. I can feel the tides of power flowing all around me. They have saturated the very walls of this palace.”
“Well, I don’t think there is anything we can do about it.”
“We must escape and warn Typhon. If the city falls it will only be the first of many. Molok will not be satisfied until he rules the world.”
“He will just be one more wicked ruler. I seem to recall you working plenty of demonic sorcery myself. I am one recipient of it, in fact.”
“You have no idea about which you speak if you compare me to the likes of Molok.”
“From the point of view of a worm, all descending boots look the same.”
“It’s nice you have espoused philosophy so late in life, Ulrik. Every man should have an interest. However, such talk is not going to get us out of here.”
“I am not sure what will since our expert on breaking out of places is still unconscious.”
“I fear she may remain so for some time. She took quite a nasty knock on the head. Apparently she went berserk after the guards knocked you down.”
Ulrik felt a little guilty about that, but he pushed the feeling to one side. “She came under your compulsion. It was the geas that made her do it.”
“I am aware of that. I am nonetheless grateful that you came.”
The wizard sounded sincere. He looked it too. There was something woebegone in his manner that had not been there before. He was like a cocky youth who had the confidence beaten out of him. He had met someone stronger and he was not used to that feeling.
“I wish I had not come. I am not fond of chains.”
“Who is? Anyway, we must free ourselves and be gone. I do not want to be here when Molok finishes his ritual. My last encounter with his magic was not pleasant. My sanity would not survive another.”
“How is this miracle is to be achieved? Do you have a plan?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then please share it.”
“I will once I have gathered my thoughts and what remains of my power. I fear you are not going to like it.”
“I have not enjoyed much since entering your service.”
“You are going to like this even less. I am sincerely sorry that things have come to this pass, Ulrik. There have been fleeting instants when you have been less than repulsive company. However, the situation has become so dire that I am going to have to dismiss your services and requisition those of a being more potent. In short, I regret that I am going to have to release the demon inside you.”
“No,” Ulrik shouted but it was too late.
Needles of brilliant agony lanced through Ulrik’s skull. The hand of a dark god took hold of his heart and squeezed. Rivers of poison fire raced through his blood. His muscles spasmed. His fists clenched. Ulrik would have cursed but his tongue seemed to have become thick as his fist and he needed all the air in his lungs for screaming.
His skin felt as if it had been dipped in acid, his eyes as if they were exploding from their sockets. His skin changed colour. Veins writhed like worms eating a corpse and then burst through the surface of the flesh. They began to leak blood and something else. It shimmered with many different colours, like oil on the surface of water refracting light.
It spread across his flesh, becoming a second skin, and then thickened and hardened, acquiring a gleaming, chitinous look. His muscles swelled like cables. His mouth felt awful, the pain far more intense than the worst toothache he had ever endured. He tasted blood and something else. His teeth were lengthening and becoming sharper.
The shackles constricted terribly as they fought against the mass growing within them. His fingers blackened and his nails hardened and extended. Looking down he could see that his legs were stretching, his toes splaying and acquiring long hooked talons like those of a hunting hawk. His vision rippled as the jelly of his eyeballs was altered and distorted. The quality of the light changed and he seemed to be able to perceive patterns of heat as well as light.
The agony of his body during the change was as nothing to the agony that began to boil through his brain as the demon awakened. His skull felt as if it was going to split. Darkness roiled across his vision. Tendrils of alien knowledge infiltrated his mind and he became aware of the presence of something alien locked within his own skull, a vortex of evil sucking him down, feasting on his memories, making them part of itself, hungrily absorbing his knowledge. It delighted in smothering his hopes. It fed on the despair that wracked him. A tidal wave of darkness erupted from the deepest well of his soul and threatened to drown out his consciousness forever.
Strange emotions and thoughts bubbled up from the depths. Don’t fight. Don’t prolong the agony. Don’t make it worse for yourself.
For a moment, he almost relaxed, almost gave way, but then as his despair was darkest, it came to him that really he had nothing left to lose, not his body, not his mind, not even his soul. Somewhere deep within him, a spark of fury kindled. The same fighting spirit that had kept him alive in the Pit blazed up within him now.
His fangs ground together, as the alien thing within sought to crush down this new spirit of resistance. He fought back, felt his muscles spasm, and an awful tension release. He opened his altered eyes, and glared around. He saw that he was free. He had pulled the massive chains from the pins holding them to the walls. They still dragged from his wrists.
Valerius looked at him, his face transformed wi
th horror. He chanted the words of a spell. For a moment, Ulrik felt compulsion close around him, but it was fragile as ancient cobwebs compared to the power of the demon. Either the wizard was too weakened to control it, or being caught in the magical vortex of Molok’s ritual strengthened the demon, or perhaps both. Or perhaps Valerius had never really been in control and this opportunity to enter the world was what the demon had wanted all along.
There was something odd, skewed about Ulrik’s vision, something wrong with the angle. Valerius seemed smaller. So did the room, and it came to the small part of Ulrik still capable of rational thought, that it was not his surroundings that had changed but himself.
He had grown, become larger and stronger, altered as the spirit of the demon had wrought its magic on his body. Valerius looked terrified. As well he might. The wizard was responsible for this and at the very least, Ulrik would have his revenge for that. He sprang forward, claws outstretched, desperate to rend and slay the wizard.
He did not quite make it. Something pulled him up short and he realised that his legs were still held in place by their shackles.
That could easily enough be altered. Wicked rage and wicked mirth bubbled through him, a wild, joyous anger. He had power now, enough to maim and harm and wreak havoc on all surrounding him. The anger threatened to drown out what was left of Ulrik’s sense of self, more potent even than the black despair that had preceded it. He knew the anger was just another weapon the demon within was using to destroy him.
His sanity was fragmenting under the unequal struggle. What did it matter, whether he held on? Ultimately he was doomed and it would be pleasant to drown in this maelstrom of rage. The demon would work his revenge for him. That must be worth something to him.
He heard a voice, pitifully small, vastly far off, shouting something. Words began to percolate through his berserk anger and his maddeningly altered perceptions. His talons scrabbled against the hard metal and began to cut through it. Too slow. He braced his enormous muscles and began to exert titanic leverage on the chain and the links holding it to the wall. It began to work its way out of the stone.
Soon he would be free. Soon he would rend the flesh of the wizard that had dared to do this to him. Soon he would feast on warm flesh and blood.
“Fight it, Ulrik. You can control it! You can control the demon just like you controlled the elemental blade in the arena. That’s why I chose you. You have the willpower to master the thing within you.”
Lies, bellowed the voice in his head. Nothing can control me.
Did he sense doubt in that mighty voice? Was there deceit in its words? He could not tell, but somewhere in the depths of his mind a faint hope began to glimmer. Was that really the reason the wizard had chosen him? Could he master the demonic creature within himself, yoke its power to his ambitions?
No! Roared the alien voice.
Yes, responded Ulrik, throwing himself into the conflict once more, struggling to bind the alien presence with the coils of his will. He tried to make his fingers open to let go the chain. They refused. He made them do it anyway, slowly, an inch at a time. This body was his. It would do what he told it. He would have his way.
The demon attacked on another level. What about his life? What would happen when people saw him like this? They would want him dead. Almost that thought was his undoing. The black despair returned, redoubled. His will began to crumble. His fingers began to close on the chain once more. The demon would be free.
“You are a man, Ulrik,” shouted Valerius, his words barely audible through the roaring in Ulrik’s head.
Images of Anna and the boys flooded into his mind, like a touchstone of his humanity, the last barrier that separated him from becoming a demon. He would not have wanted them to see him like this. He felt suddenly anchored as if he had got his feet on firmer ground, as if he had it in him to resist the demon. Its fury peaked, and then the eye of the storm had passed over him, and the demonic thing retreated back into the depths of his mind. He was himself again, although hideously transformed, and aware that somewhere within him lurked a being so awful that it must never be unleashed.
He stretched and noticed that he had altered. He had gained mass, not just from the chitinous armour but in the flesh it had enclosed as well. The play of his muscles felt odd, different, when he tried to pull himself to his full height, he stumbled, like a child learning to stand.
He pulled the leg chains from the wall, and then pried open the links that connected them to his ankles. He left the arm chains in place. They could be used as weapons at need. He began to crawl towards Valerius, moving on all fours like an animal. With his elongated limbs and hunched misshapen body that somehow seemed more natural and easier.
He loomed over the wizard now and realised that he must be at least half again as tall as he had once been, and was much broader. He felt strong. Power pulsed within him.
“I knew you could do it,” Valerius said, and only then did it occur to Ulrik to wonder at what the wizard had done. He had helped Ulrik retain his humanity, even though he had been instrumental in his losing it. It seemed it was all part of some subtle plan, and Ulrik did not doubt that somehow it would be one that worked to Valerius’s advantage.
Once again, rage burned within him, and he let out an inhuman bellow so loud it made the wizard flinch. Ulrik was sick of being a tool for others. He reached out and grabbed the wizard’s head with his right hand. The span of his grip was so large now that his talons pierced flesh on either side of Valerius’s head.
“Enough, Ulrik, I know you are in there,” said Valerius. The way he swallowed when he spoke the words showed that he was not as certain as he was trying to sound. The urge to close his fingers and drive his talons deep into the wizard’s brain blazed through Ulrik; only the fact that he was not entirely sure whether the idea was his or the demon’s kept him from doing it.
“Give me one good reason not to kill you,” Ulrik said. It was an effort to force the words out and they resonated strangely through the air, sounding completely unlike the product of a human tongue. He knew even as he spoke that his mouth was changing and that soon he would not even be able to speak.
“I helped you to stay in control. I helped you remain human.”
“You call this human?” Ulrik was certain that he bore not the slightest resemblance to anything mortal. It was getting harder by the heartbeat to form words.
“Inside you are a man. I know how to get you out.” Blind rage urged Ulrik to kill. Once more the wizard was trying to bind him, to chain him to service. Once more he would be nothing but a lackey, a slave. Again, only the fact that he did not know whether these thoughts came from the demon or himself stopped Ulrik acting on the impulse. “I can reverse this process.”
“How?” It was almost all he could do to force that one word out. His tongue felt as if it was made out of metal. His lips were non-existent.
“There is a spell, it takes time and I must be free but I swear to you that if we get out of here I can reverse the change. I give you my word.”
“No more slavery.” Ulrik wondered if the wizard understood him. His words were so slurred as to be almost unrecognisable to his own hearing. Valerius nodded his agreement.
“But first we must get out of here, and that’s not going to be easy.”
Ulrik ripped the wizard’s chains from the wall and then prised open the links. At first Valerius seemed to have trouble standing but after the third attempt he managed to stay on his feet.
“What now?” Ulrik asked.
“Rhea,” he said. “She comes with us.”
The cat-girl would only slow them down, but Ulrik agreed. He was not going to leave her here. He pried her from her chains and lifted her gently. Valerius indicated that he should set her down in front of him. After a few moments, the wizard passed his hands over her and uttered a spell. Her eyes fluttered open.
“We found you,” she said softly.
“It was clever plan, letting yourself get capture
d like that,” said Valerius.
She looked up at Ulrik and her eyes widened.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Ulrik,” Valerius said. “I had to unleash the demon in him. I will bring him back once we are free.”
“You are an evil man, master,” said Rhea.
“I don’t think now is a very good time to be passing judgement on my morals. You can save that until after we are free. Can you walk?”
Rhea pulled herself to her feet, swaying unsteadily. She lacked her usual grace but at least she could walk.
“Good,” said Valerius. “Help support me. I find I am somewhat weakened.”
“Now what?” Ulrik asked in his grating, inhuman voice, his words mangled by the misshapen nature of his new mouth. The effort to talk was painful now.
“Now you open the door and we find a way out of here. We need to contact Typhon.”
“How are we going to do that? Magic?” Rhea asked.
“No. Molok stripped me of adjuncts and the torture has sapped most of my strength. My powers are limited. Unleashing the demon was about all I could manage and that was almost fatal. We will need to steal a ship and get away.”
“How will we find the way out?”
Valerius smiled wickedly. “It should be simple enough. We find one of Molok’s servants and ask them. I am sure we can persuade them to give us all the aid we require.”
“Ulrik and I tried that on the way in,” said Rhea. “It did not exactly work for us.”
Ulrik loped over to the door, moving much faster than he could have moving upright, and tried the handle. The door was locked with something at once mechanical and magical. He heard something and caught a new scent. He raised one clawed hand to indicate to the others that they should be silent and strained his every sense, listening.
Marching feet came ever closer and he suddenly grasped what was happening.
“Get the prisoners out of the cell,” said a commanding voice just outside the door. “It’s time for them to be sacrificed.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ulrik motioned to Rhea and Valerius to stand on either side of the door and then, using his claws, he climbed above the lintel. There was a rattle of a key in the lock and the door swung open. He heard someone curse, as they looked at the manacles on the walls and saw nothing.