Nor Shall My Sword Sleep In My Hand 6.3

We were back on the fourth floor: plunging ravines, bio-luminescent mushrooms of doom, eerie stalagmites and stalactites that glinted in the spore-heavy air, and the faint, omnipresent rumble of waterfalls that cascaded down from somewhere above and vanished into the ravines below. The atmosphere was heavy, oppressive, the shadows seemed somehow deep and malevolent. What colours there were were sharper—although that could just have been a side effect of whatever our enchanted masks couldn't filter out.

We were taking it slow, keeping our distance as much as possible from the massive mushrooms that triggered the floor-wide flood of fungal monsters if you got too close to them. It was easier said than done, and we’d had to do a lot of scrambling up and over rocky slopes, wading through fast-flowing rivers connected to one another by secure rope, and, once, had to descend and then climb up one of the ravines—during the descent of which we’d been attacked by monstrous fanged bats.

“This fucking sucks,” I said as we flopped down for a rest in a relatively calm seeming, flattish area of rock around a hundred meters off from one of the giant mushrooms, and a small rocky hollow where we had found a chest with a few enchanted trinkets in it. “What are we even supposed to be looking for?”

“Dunno, ruins or something, maybe?” said Nathan, tearing a fruit pastry in half and offering it to me as he sat down. “Or maybe there’s something about the mushrooms we need to figure out?”

"Yeah, maybe," I said, accepting the sweet, flaky, goodness and tearing off a strip with my teeth. "'Fanks."

"Sometimes it takes a while to figure out a level's 'thing,'" said Velevir. "We're at the forefront, so it's always going to be tough."

"And we couldn't possibly let the three other teams, the Silver teams, deal with figuring this stuff out, could we?" I muttered darkly. “Follow in a path already blazed?”

"Teams that don't progress—“

“—stagnate," I said, finishing Velevir's sentence. "Yes, I know, I know." I sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this; I’m a doctor—”

“—a doctor whose capacity to heal expands and grows rapidly only because they continue to delve,” said Velevir, a little smugly.

I stuck my tongue out at her, winning the argument.

Not really; she was right, dungeoneering was what pushed me forward as a healer, most of the stuff at my clinic was simple and routine in comparison. And, if I were honest, I’d miss the thrill of it all. Sure, I wasn’t that enamoured with the whole ‘charting new depths’ thing, but nothing quite gave me a high like defeating monsters did.

We finished out snacks and then pressed on, working our way along the edge of a ravine and then, in a place where a rocky outcropping had collapsed and formed a makeshift bridge, traversing the chasm. Mousington rammed metal spikes home, making the crossing somewhat less treacherous, but even with our superdhampir, supercaith, supergrimalkin, and superbeastkin strength and reflexes the damp, slippery rock was dangerous.

We had breakable crystals in our pouches we could shattered in the event of a fall to slow our descent, but just one slip and the run would be over, and we’d be out a pretty penny to replace our safety nets.

I took a few moments to document the crossing and update my map, and then we pressed on, shimmying up through a narrow gully and avoiding a nearby mushroom around which mycellian horrors were shambling. We reached the base of a truly gargantuan stallagmite which had broken off and left a wide, flat, mostly circular dais that we decided to climb to get a better view of the surrounding area. It was steep and rough going, but as we got higher we could see much more of the rolling, seemingly infinite gloom of the fourth floor.

“Stop!” hissed Mousington as I took a step forward onto the flat.

I froze, one foot down. Mousington was usually the least keyed in of any of us, and probably only still had all his paws because he had incredible reactions. For him to give us a warning like that was extremely out of character, and extremely worrying.

“Mouzza? What is it?” said Nathan.

“Demon,” he hissed, sniffing at the air as his long, bushed up ginger tail swished furiously. “Demon!”

I saw, sensed, and smelt nothing, but nonetheless stepped gingerly back and drew an arrow from my thigh-quiver, resting it gently against the string of my bow.

I knew that demons were a thing on this world. Laera had one for a parent, after all; I’d heard it mentioned that she was a lot older than she looked, and no one really argued that she was the most powerful and dangerous adventurer in Guildport—I’d seen how fast she could move when she’d saved me from Jalver. But beyond that, details were rather sparse. Certainly, they didn’t interact with people as readily as fey like grimalkin and snarks did, although it seemed like they were also from some alternate realm the exact specifics of which eluded me.

“Are you sure?” said Velevir after a moment of silence, her gauntlets creaking as she gripped her hammer particularly hard.

“Yes,” hissed Mousington.

“So, like, I’m guessing demons are bad?” said Nathan.

“Dangerous, definitely,” said Velevir, peering around. “They don’t think like you and I; even Lord Mousington is positively normal compared to them. They’re always after something; whatever it is, no matter how innocuous, do not enter into an agreement with them. They will bind you to it, in ways you can’t always predict.”

“Should we just withdraw?” I said. “If they’re that bad.”

“We need to know what it’s doing here,” said Velevir. “Demons don’t typically crop up in dungeons.”

“Alright, but where is it?” said Nathan, gesturing around the still empty plateau at the top of the stallagmite.

Mousington hissed and rummaged in one of his pockets, turning out some yarn, what looked like a raw fish, and several marbles, before finally finding a bag that revealed itself to be salt. He put a ginger paw in and then cast it forward beginning to sing some kind of rhyme in what was actually a quite melodic voice:

Ash and blood and bone,

Flames and wrath and stone,

Bring all to a halt,

With this pinch of salt.

I had never heard any kind of spell like that before. Mnemonics were personal, and were designed to help someone associate a word with a particular feeling or necessary forms of a spell, or perhaps an emotion that might be necessary for it. I was still more or less a noviciate with magic outside my innate ‘knack,’ although Velevir said my shields were pretty damn good for a beginner. Mousington’s little rhyme, however, didn’t seem even remotely like the magic I had studied.

Still, it sure had an effect, because as soon as the salt scattered across the dais blazing pink runes swirled into existence, revealing a complex looking ritual circle, and at the centre of it was a tall, painfully thin looking man.

He had pale skin, a few shades lighter than Laera, burning pink eyes with black sclera, and curled ram’s horns. He was dressed it a loose-fitting blouse and tight trousers, and had bare feet with sharp black toenails and a wickedly deadly-looking tail that flicked behind him. He grinned at us, revealing obsidian-black teeth as sharp as razors. His long, lank, pink hair danced with flames around his head.

As soon as he shimmered into view, so too did his aura. Like Laera and Mousington, his emotions were shrouded in iridescence, and I couldn’t so much as glimpse the outline of his feelings. That put me on edge: I could feel a bit from Mousington and Laera, and as I’d grown in strength what I had been able to sense had grown with it. But if I could feel absolutely nothing from this demon, then that implied it was far more powerful than either of them.

“Clever little kitty,” purred the demon man, sitting forward on the chair and resting his sharp chin on a fist. “Why don’t you step forward?”

“Do not,” hissed Mousington, his ears flat back against his skull. “Do not! It seeks to trick us!”

“What are you doing here?” said Velevir, her eyes flicking between the yowling Mousington and the demonic man.

“That’s a rather broad question, isn’t it?” mused the demon with a dark chuckle. “Motes of stardust, spinning in the void—”

“No, I mean here, in this dungeon,” snapped Velevir, gripping her hammer but keeping back from the edge of the platform. “Why are you here in this dungeon, as opposed to somewhere else?”

“I think the more interesting question is: ‘why are you here?’” he said, his eyes flicking towards Nathan and then me. “Two lost souls, so far from home. Don’t you want to know why?”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end; Nathan stiffened.

“You know why we’re here on Alaria?” I asked. “Do you know how we could return?”

“I know all about you and the others; I have the answers you seek,” said the demon, smiling. “Would you like to bargain for them, little lion?”

“Do not!” hissed Mousington.

“Oh, but I know so much more than that besides,” said the demon, its gaze boring into me. “You’re the one the dungeon touched, aren’t you? The one it’s been trying to speak to?”

“How do you know that?” I said.

“More questions, more questions,” tutted the demon. “I could answer them but answers come with a cost.”

“What kind of cost?” I said warily.

Knowing why we were here, that was something I had worried about for so many, many hours since I’d first arrived. All of us Outlanders had. It was a question asked before and after Union meetings, over pints of beer in the Guildhall, in snatched moments of downtimes in dungeons. Why were we here? What was it all for? Could we return home? I wasn’t the only one who had turned to studying magic to try and see if it might be possible to make it back to Earth.

“Charlie, don’t!” said Velevir.

“No! No!” yowled Mousington, pawing at my arm. “Friend Charlie mustn’t! Mustn’t!”

“Just a moment of your time, nothing more,” said the demon, grinning widely.

I felt a shiver go down my spine. It was phrased innocuously, but I immediately realised what Mousington had been talking about. Demons were dangerous creatures, and although he had phrased it lightly, I could almost feel the weight in its words. My answer would have meaning, permanence, and somehow a ‘moment of my time’ would no longer be mine.

Was that worth it? To know the truth of things?

“How long is a moment?” I asked.

“Chezza, don’t do it,” said Nathan seriously.

“Don’t you want to know though?” I said, turning to him. “Don’t you want to know why we’ve been brought here? What the point of it all is?”

Nathan shifted, looking to Velevir for a moment. “Nah,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand with one of his. “I’m good. If we figure it out, we figure it out; if not, well, I’m happy here. I think you are too.”

I paused, flicking my lion ears as I considered his words. It had been a point of faith for me, a guiding star: I was trying to find a way back home. To my friends, my family—the parts that still talked to me, at least, to my cat Herr Schnurrli, to my job at the hospital. It had been why I’d started to learn magic beyond my already powerful innate abilities.

But was it really what I still wanted? Oh, yes, I still missed those who’d been dear to me greatly, but I had new friends here on Alaria. I had a girlfriend I adored and who adored me; a relationship that had lasted longer than any of my other flash-in-the-pan romances. I had good friends here. I had responsibilities: my clinic, the union, my work against slavery—all of it was important, and if I were honest, they came with a sense of purpose greater than I’d ever had back in Vienna.

And if I did return, how would Guildport fare without me? They’d lose their head doctor, a person they relied on for their health—along, presumably, with Swithin who was more or less the head nurse now. Many of my patients wouldn’t do so well without me, even with the various healing potions that were in some ways rather miraculous.

I’d also be abandoning the Guild I’d placed in a precarious position by freeing slaves—an action I didn’t regret, but an action that had escalated things nonetheless. To leave would feel like tucking my actual tail and running away.

And Meria. She loved me. She’d be utterly heartbroken. She was kind enough that she’d want me to go if that were what would make me happy. But would it? Would returning really make me happy? Or would I always regret having left Alaria behind?

Did I really even want to return after all these months?

Not badly enough to make a deal with a devil, I realised. Definitely not.

“Well?” said the demon, leaning forward on its wooden stool.

“I’m not interested in making any deal,” I said carefully, shaking my head.

The demon hissed, baring its fangs wider in anger. It snarled and stood, revealing its tall, strangely stretched proportions. Its features, which had already been sharp and unnerving, sharpened further—far more than Laera’s did when she got annoyed—and whatever similarity towards a human or dhampir or beastkin that it had had crossed some kind of threshold into monstrosity. Its aura flared, although what with I couldn’t be sure as bat-like wings unfolded from its back and its skin began to glisten and sparkle in the cavernous gloom.

“A mistake,” said the fiend with a growl as all across the plateau the pink glyphs shifted and morphed, changing. Then the outermost part of the circle shattered.

“It is free!” yowled Mousington, lightning crackling around his paws a moment before the demon charged towards us. “It was a trap!”

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