“The dagger won’t bite,” he announced, unnecessarily loud in the otherwise silent hallway. “Only magical weapons will work.” He sheathed the dagger and gripped the short sword with both hands.
Mercilessly, Cale sliced the head from a ghoul, then another, then another.
Confused and falling dead without explanation, the pack milled about in the hall. They jumped at one another, clawed and bit at the empty air. In the chaos, individual creatures became difficult to distinguish. Cale now saw only a swirling fog. He knew the hallway back on their home plane must be awash in purple blood, gray bodies, snarls, and guildhouse debris. Here, there was only silence.
He sliced indiscriminately at the mist and killed every ghoul within reach. Unable to defend themselves, unable even to see their attackers, the ghouls died one after another. Without mercy or remorse, Cale cut them down. He felt no guilt, only grim satisfaction. The ghouls that had attacked Stormweather, had preyed on the defenseless, had cut down men armed with dinner utensils and women armed only with screams. They deserved what they got.
For Stormweather, he thought with each slash, for Thazienne.
The survivors swirled around him, confused, close to panic. He raised his blade high—
A sudden realization hit him like a bolt of lightning. He stopped in mid-stroke and looked beside him to Jak.
“Yrsillar doesn’t know we’re here,” he said, certain. “He thinks we’re still in the real guildhouse.”
“What?” With his short sword, the little man ran through the ghoul Cale had spared. It collapsed, writhed, and dissipated into nothingness. “How do you know that?”
Cale took no time to explain. The panicked ghouls started to mill down the hall toward the shrine.
“Don’t let any get away!”
He ran down the hall and ripped one of them in two with an overhand slash. The misty body split neatly down the middle and dissolved into nothingness. He cut down another, and another. Jak leaped into their midst and did the same. None escaped.
Afterward, he and Jak took in the spotless hallway, their unbloodied clothes. Back on their own plane, the hallway must be littered with carnage. He and Jak had administered a slaughter and yet remained clean. He found that thought unsettling.
“Yrsillar must not know we’re here. He knows his ghouls are vulnerable to attack from this plane. If he had known we were here, he would have been waiting for us himself, not allowed his ghouls to be slaughtered this way.”
Jak winced at his choice of words.
Pretending not to notice, Cale waved his blade around the hall to indicate the implied carnage. “They were waiting to ambush us in the real guildhouse. They didn’t have any idea we were here. Neither does Yrsillar.”
Thoughtful, Jak scratched his head and finally nodded agreement. “Makes sense. We’ve only been here a quarter-hour or so. That’s not very long. He must not yet have learned that we passed through the gate and survived, much less stumbled onto the planar correspondence.”
Breathing hard, flush with their success and eager for more, Cale nodded, “We need to find a way back home quickly. He’s vulnerable now. We killed the shadow demon and we killed the ghouls. Yrsillar will have to face us alone.” Cale felt confident about the result of that confrontation.
“Agreed,” Jak said, rallying himself. “We find a way back and hand that bastard his guts.” The little man shot Cale a grim smile, but his confidence gave way to nervousness when he eyeballed the golden aura that protected him from the Abyss. “Let’s move fast, though. I don’t know how much longer this spell is going to last.”
Cale held out his arms and checked his own protective spell. The golden light seemed to have faded somewhat, and the soft sparks and pops sounded less frequently than before. If the unrelenting energy of this plane fully drained their spells, he and Jak were dead.
His hand went to his pocket, and he ran his fingertips over the felt mask. Just a while longer, he hoped, just a while longer.
“Let’s move.” Cale strode for the closed shrine doors. The shrine to Mask seemed the center of this whole affair. The worship hall of the Righteous Man, the place Cale had first encountered Yrsillar, the home of the god for whom Cale seemed called as a Champion. It was as likely a place as any for a gate back home.
Before they reached the doors, the telltale ripping sound of sundered reality stopped them cold. Without words, they fell into a wary crouch. Back to back, Cale watched the shrine doors while Jak watched the hall behind them.
A thin red line appeared in the air three paces before Cale, a bloody slash that hung unsupported five feet up in the nothingness of the Abyss’s air. A gate.
“There,” Cale said excitedly.
Jak turned and stood beside him. Both watched as the glowing line expanded to the size of a small window. Colors! Colors poured from the hole like a waterfall and overwhelmed the drab gray of the Abyss. The colors of their own plane. The colors of home. Cale had never seen anything so beautiful.
“That’s a gate back!” Jak exclaimed.
“I know!”
“They must open and close randomly,” Jak said, as both stepped toward it. Because it sat so high in the air, Cale knew he would have to lift Jak through and then jump—
A shadow blotted out the cascade of hues. A head appeared in the midst of the gate and moved toward them, corrupting the colors with its emptiness. Nauseatingly, the scene called to Cale’s mind a giant womb giving birth to a horror. Involuntarily, he and Jak stepped back. The head of a shadow demon crowned. As it did, the shadowstuff solidified into a bluish-gray oval of flesh, featureless but for two malice filled, milky-white eyes and a slit that might have been a mouth. Two powerfully clawed hands appeared to either side and gripped the edges of the gate as though to rip open the birth canal fully.
A shadow demon, Cale realized, another shadow demon.
It saw them, and the baleful look in its pupilless eyes pierced Cale like a stiletto. The milky-white orbs narrowed to slits and it hissed through the slash of its mouth—the first actual sound Cale had ever heard one of the creatures make.
“Another shadow demon,” Jak said, and sounded tired. “Gods.” Cale could hear the fear in his friend’s voice. The little man began to ease backward.
The demon eyed them evilly, hissed again, and began to squirm through the opening. Its twisted, winged form took shape and fully eclipsed the rainbow colors of home pouring through the gate.
“Feed on you,” it whispered through the lipless hole in its face. Its voice grated like fingernails on slate. “Eat your soul. Feed on you as I fed on the others.” It was through the gate up to the shoulders. A wave of supernatural fear went before it.
The others. Was this the demon that had attacked Stormweather, and not the other that Cale had already killed? Remembering the slaughter in the feasthall, recalling Thazienne’s wounded spirit that might never heal, Cale’s anger flared white-hot and chased away his fear.
It doesn’t matter which one did it, he thought. For that sin, they would all pay. I’ll wipe out every godsdamned one of them. He had already killed one, and he could damn well kill another. He would kill another.
Without another thought, he charged.
“Feed on this!” he shouted, and raised his enchanted sword high to strike.
With only half of its body clear of the narrow gate, the demon raised its claws defensively, hissed in alarm, and lurched backward. With all his anger, Cale slashed downward into the creature’s shoulder and chest. The long sword struck with a satisfying thunk and went a handwidth deep, opening a bloodless, meaty gash in the demon’s gray flesh. The demon screamed and writhed in pain. Though in the throes of agony, it nevertheless swiped a retaliatory claw rake toward Cale.
Cale dodged a heartbeat too late. The claw struck him along the arm. Golden light exploded in his eyes, knocked him backward a step, and nearly blinded him. The demon shrieked louder still and jerked back its clawed hand, now blackened by contact with the protecti
ve spell. Cale stood unscathed, body and soul, by the attack, though the protective aura that surrounded him had dimmed to a soft yellow.
“Cale, the gate!” Jak yelled from behind.
Screaming in pain, the demon pulled itself fully back into the gate. As it retreated, its flesh grew increasingly opaque, its body grew smaller as though the gate was a tunnel over a bowshot long. One of its claws—the unwounded one, Cale noticed—still clutched the edge of the shrinking portal. The demon’s arm seemed to stretch for miles, half shadow, half blue flesh. The gate shrank as the demon shrank, diminished with each heartbeat. The demon was pulling the gate closed behind it.
Desperate, Cale slashed crosswise at the demon’s exposed hand. The enchanted blade bit through the demonic flesh and severed two long, claw-tipped fingers. They fell to the floor of the abyssal guildhouse and for a nauseating moment squirmed and flopped like thick worms. Cale sensed in his soul rather than heard with his ears the demon shriek as it released the edge of the gate and retreated farther within. Its screams grew more and more distant until they finally tapered off to nothingness and it vanished from sight. The portal stayed open, albeit smaller now, and the demon was gone.
Alive with the colors of home, the swirling gate hung in the drab air. Only as wide as a man’s forearm, Cale realized that he and Jak would have to go through one at a time. He turned to the little man—
Jak’s wide-eyed gaze went from the demon’s fingers to Cale’s face. “Trickster’s hairy toes, Cale! You’re not afraid of anything!”
Cale ignored the compliment and indicated the gate. “You first,” he said. “I’ll lift you through.” Jak began to protest, but Cale cut him off. “I’ll be right behind you, little man. I can make the jump up by myself. You can’t.” He looked into Jak’s eyes. “This could be our only chance out of here. You saw, the demons open and close the gates themselves. It’s not a random event. We need to go now.”
After a moment’s consideration, Jak nodded and stepped beside him. “All right. Let’s do it.”
Cale gripped him under the armpits and lifted him halfway toward the gate. In one hand Jak held his short sword, with the other he clutched his luckstone.
“Wait, Cale, Yrsillar must know we’re here now. What if he and the other shadow demon are waiting on the other side?”
“Then we kill them right there,” Cale grimly averred. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.” In truth, Cale hoped the demons were waiting for them. He would welcome the chance to put an end to this.
“All right,” Jak said, but didn’t sound convinced. Cale lifted the little man toward the portal home. Jak led with his sword.
Before he got Jak fully into the gate, a sudden pressure assaulted his eardrums, like the thickening of the air that occurred before a heavy storm. The sensation affected his equilibrium and he nearly lost his balance.
“Cale?” The tip of Jak’s blade already stuck through the gate.
“I feel it,” Cale acknowledged with a grimace.
“Put me down. Hurry,” Jak ordered.
Nodding, Cale set the little man down and tried to get his bearings.
A charge ran through his body. The hair of his arms rose and stood on end. His breath left him. A wave of nausea washed over him and he retched.
“Cale …”
Abruptly and without warning, the sensation vanished.
Jak bent over and held his stomach. His breath came hard. “What was that?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Cale replied. Intuitively though, he did know. Another gate had been opened, opened by something more powerful than the shadow demon.
He felt a presence manifest. A palpable wave of malice radiated out from behind the closed shrine doors. Hate rained down on him like a sleet storm.
“Cal—” The sheer power of the presence lurking behind the shrine doors choked off Jak’s words. Breathing hard, the little man turned to face the shrine. Cale placed a hand on Jak’s shoulder and did the same. The doors began to pulse like a heart.
“Yrsillar,” Cale hissed through gritted teeth. The demon’s hate seemed so substantial as to be a physical thing, the only physical thing on this plane of emptiness. Cale answered the demon’s hate with a rage equally substantial. Here was the cause. Vengeance was at hand. He took a step toward the doors.
Jak clutched his hand, pulled him to a stop, and fairly jumped into his arms. “Lift me through, Cale,” he said urgently. “Lift me through!”
Eyes on the pulsing doors of the shrine, Cale made no response. Anger consumed him. He felt no fear. Yrsillar was waiting for him.
Jak gripped Cale’s hand in both of his own. “Erevis! Cale! Dammit, you can’t fight him here. He’s strongest here.” Jak shook his arm as though to bring him to his senses. “Let’s go through the gate and fight him on our own plane. Erevis! Don’t.”
“You go, little man,” he said, and lifted Jak toward the gate. Cale wanted to fight Yrsillar here.
“What? Wait, wait.” Jak squirmed in his grip like a fish. Cale turned the little man around so they could look into each other’s eyes. Cale’s resolve must have been evident from his expression, for Jak’s protests fell silent. The little man visibly wilted.
“Why, Cale?” he softly asked.
“Because when I kill him here, he’s dead for good.” Nothing less could satisfy him now.
Jak said nothing for a moment, merely hung in the air between Cale and the gate home.
“Put me down,” he said at last.
“You don’t need to—”
“Put me down, godsdammit,” Jak ordered. “This is our fight, Cale, not just yours. Those bastards hurt me too.” Jak looked at him meaningfully. Fear had given way to resolve, or resignation. “I said I’m with you and I am. Put me down.”
Cale did. Both drew blades and turned to the pulsing doors of the shrine.
“He’s waiting for us,” Jak observed. “He thinks it’ll make us more afraid.”
Cale started for the doors.
CHAPTER 11
CONFRONTATION
Cale strode boldly for the pulsing double doors. The wooden slabs beat faster as he neared, as though in anticipation of his touch. From behind the doors he heard only silence, but he could feel Yrsillar’s brooding presence. The demon was waiting.
Beside him, Jak’s breathing came in fearful gasps.
“Easy,” he said, and reached down to pat Jak on the shoulder.
The halfling nodded, struggled to get himself under control. “I’m all right,” he said, though his breathing still came hard.
Cale saw that Jak had sheathed his dagger. He now held his magical short sword in one hand and his holy symbol in the other. Frightened, the little man had fallen back on his god for strength. Jak had sheathed a weapon of steel to draw a weapon of faith. Cale envied him.
The felt mask in his pocket brought him small comfort. Perhaps someday faith could be a weapon for him, but for today he would rely only on his steel.
Standing before the doors, he took a breath and kicked them in.
The moment the doors flew open, a wave of terror blew from the shrine like a black wind. Cale’s throat constricted and fear threatened to overwhelm him. With great effort of will, he fought down the supernatural terror and stood his ground. It’s not real, he told himself, it’s only magic.
Beside him, Jak let out a soft moan.
“It’s magical, Jak,” Cale said, and shook him by the shoulder. “Resist it.”
“I know,” Jak replied through bared teeth. He clutched his holy symbol in his fist so tightly that it must have cut into his palm. Cale saw blood squeezing from between Jak’s white knuckles, but the little man held his ground.
“We’ll provide you no amusement, Yrsillar!” Cale shouted into the gloomy shrine.
“Damn right,” Jak echoed with as much bravado as he could muster.
No response came from within.
They shared a solemn glance and walked through the open doors.
The shrine here looked much the same as the actual shrine back on their home plane. They saw rows of pews that led up to a raised dais and an altar.
From the opposite side of the room, Yrsillar’s voice boomed, the deep bass of distant thunder. “You’ve grown some since last we met, Champion.” His voice dropped so that each syllable dripped with enough malice to make Cale wince. “Some, but not enough.”
Cale scanned the room toward the altar. He saw nothing but shadows and darkness.
“There,” Jak softly said, and pointed to the left of the altar.
The shadows and gloom suddenly unfolded, vomited forth the titanic form of Yrsillar. Cale’s breath caught in his throat.
The demon lord looked majestic. Where the lesser shadow demons had been lean and wiry, Yrsillar was a mountain of bluish-gray flesh. Powerfully muscled, the demon lord’s mammoth chest and rippling torso sat squarely atop a pair of tree-trunk-sized legs. He towered over Cale. Naked, but seemingly sexless, a nauseating spiderweb of purple veins pulsed visibly beneath the hairless, leathery skin of his body, each beat keeping time with the pulsing of the shrine doors, each beat no doubt keeping time with the pulsing of the gates back in the real guildhouse.
Overlong, powerful arms ended in bony, three-fingered hands, each digit capped with a black claw as long as Cale’s hand. Membranous wings sprouted from his back and spanned the room. He stood still as a statue, a nightmare carved of stone. The voids of his eye sockets, each as large as a Sembian fivestar, stared holes into Cale’s soul.
From the darkness around him emerged the shadow demon that Cale had wounded earlier, a miniature version of its master flitting about Yrsillar like a moth flitting about a flame.
Silently, majestically, Yrsillar stepped to the altar and regarded them coldly.
“Not enough,” he said again. From behind the demon lord’s shoulder, the shadow demon hissed.
“This is just how Yrsillar chooses to appear to us,” Jak whispered through the side of his mouth. “To heighten our fear, but he’s made of nothingness, Cale, nothingness. Remember that.”