Demon Lord VI - Son of Chaos Read online

  “He is the only one who can save a light god from what you call a dra’voren, a dark god. The only one in all of creation! The chances of another tar’merin existing at this time are miniscule! The chances of his being born as he is, and becoming what he is, are so minute as to be inconceivable.”

  Nikira stared up at him, her sight blurred by tears of shame. “Then everything he said was true?”

  The creator’s eyes narrowed. “No. He is still a dark god, and therefore he is quite liable to lie.”

  She sagged with relief. “Then the story about a Grey God who helped him might be a lie?”

  “That, I doubt. What did he tell you?”

  “That he has a Grey God as a friend, and he’s in trouble.”

  “Did he give this Grey God a name?”

  Nikira nodded. “Kayos.”

  He stepped forward and gripped her arm, pulling her to her feet. “He spoke that name?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  “Then you and your fellow idiots have blundered even more monumentally than I would have thought possible. By imprisoning him, you have endangered the eldest of the Seven Originators, one of the Founders of the God Realm, creator of the very fabric from which our universe is made.” He thrust her back into the chair.

  “We didn’t know.”

  “That is not an acceptable excuse! Your people have fallen into ignorance, become drunk on your power, and forgotten the teachings that should have guided you.”

  “How can we make amends?”

  “You cannot! I will have to undo the damage you have done to him, and hope I can do it in time.” He paused. “But there is something deeper, something profoundly wrong at his very core, which I could only sense. Did he tell you anything that happened to him before you captured him? Anything that harmed him?”

  Nikira searched her reeling mind. “He said that shackles were put on him.”

  “They trapped his power within his flesh?”

  “Yes.”

  He swung to stare at the man on the table for a moment, then faced her again. “Who did that to him?”

  “The people who were with him. They thought he was evil too.”

  “Get out.” She started to rise, then he raised his hand, and she froze. “No. Stay. You have much to learn.” His eyes flitted over the gawping contechs. “You do not even know how to behave in the presence of a god. You have no respect.”

  Nikira hesitated, uncertain, then sank down on one knee, and the rest of the containment room crew followed her example. Drevarin’s gaze swept over them again, but he seemed unimpressed. “Too little, and far too late. But you should practice, for when he awakens.”

  “Will he kill us?”

  “That depends on what you did to him, and how angry he is.”

  “We didn’t know!”

  Drevarin turned away. “Your only hope is that he finds that to be an acceptable excuse, else you are doomed.”

  Nikira watched him re-enter the shredder room, torn between awe at the presence of this legendary being and cold dread at the prospect of the dra’voren’s punishment. Drevarin stopped beside the table and gazed down at the man upon it, then gestured. A glowing cloud couch appeared, and he scooped up the unconscious tar’merin and placed him upon its pale, cottony softness.

  With a negligent wave, he caused the table to vanish, and then moved the floating couch into the centre of the room. Leaning over the tar’merin, he once more laid his hands upon his chest and closed his eyes. Golden light flared under his palms and sank into the tar’merin’s flesh, illuminating it. The containment crew stared, spellbound, at the amazing scene, their expressions rapt.

  After several minutes, Nikira dragged her eyes from the observation window and turned to Enyo, who had come to stand beside her. “I wish we had scanners in there now.”

  Enyo seemed not to hear her at first, and then he spoke without glancing at her. “He only knocked out the consoles.”

  “Can we fix them?”

  “Given time, but I doubt he’ll let us. There is, however, another set of consoles in the medlab. All we need to do is reroute the scanners to them.”

  She nodded. “Do it.”

  Enyo shot her an incredulous look. “Commander, you’re playing with fire. He’s a creator!”

  “This opportunity is too good to miss. He said he can’t punish us.”

  Enyo leant closer. “He also said that the dra’voren can.”

  “It’s a risk worth taking. Why did you suggest it then?”

  “It’s my duty to inform you of what can be done, and yours to decide what to do.”

  “I’ve decided.”

  Enyo shook his head, looking bemused. “We’re in the presence of a legendary, all-powerful being who creates worlds, and all you can think of is how to analyse him?”

  Nikira hesitated, then nodded. “It’s our duty, no matter how extraordinary the situation.”

  “Extraordinary?” He snorted. “Try unbelievable, or incredible. I’m still not sure I’m not dreaming.”

  The senior contech ran a hand over his face in a gesture of confusion and bewilderment before he headed for the door, glancing back often. Nikira gazed at the creator, the enormity of the situation serving to numb her to its long-term ramifications. There was simply too much to take in all at once, and resorting to the clinical detachment her training offered was her only defence for the moment. Drevarin stood immobile, his brow furrowed in concentration. The angel had entered the shredder room and stood close by, watching him.

  Drevarin sent his power deep into the tar’merin, seeking the damage he had sensed earlier. It eluded him, and he cursed his inexperience. Usually it was sufficient to send the light in with a wish to heal, but now he had to find something so subtle that the light could not heal it alone. The ravages of exhaustion and malnutrition weakened the Demon Lord’s flesh, and he set about correcting that, a time-consuming and complex task in itself.

  While his power poured forth to restore Bane’s strength, he first examined his blood, finding it untouched, then looked deeper. The scars in Bane’s brain puzzled him, but they were old and long healed, not the cause of his weakness. The rune scars had channels that led to his bones, through which the dark power flowed when he Gathered it.

  While he searched, Drevarin pondered the strangeness of the tar’merin’s flesh, so much stronger than a normal man’s, its structure slightly different. Like comparing ebony to balsa, or steel to tin. When the Demon Lord died, his body would take aeons to decompose. Drevarin searched through flesh and bone, finding nothing amiss, yet knowing that something was. Bane’s soul shone with blue-white purity, giving off subtle warmth he had not encountered before, and he deduced that only a tar’merin possessed it. Reaching the end of his search, he paused, pondering his failure, then went back to the beginning and started again.

  Enyo glanced around at Nikira, who studied the medlab’s bioscanner screen over his shoulder. “Well, what that means is beyond me.”

  The screen was filled with coruscating rainbow hues in random, wave-like patterns. Nikira shook her head. “Maybe when he’s not using the white fire, we’ll be able to see more.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that.”

  “This is our chance to study a creator, Enyo. Let’s not blow it.”

  “It feels wrong.”

  “I know.” Nikira straightened and turned away. “Deal with it.”

  Back in the containment room, a crowd of spectators gathered amongst the defunct consoles, watching the creator with bemused expressions. Drevarin still stood beside the tar’merin, pouring golden power into him. The angel sat on the floor, his wings raised, his eyes closed as if asleep. At least an hour had passed, yet the tar’merin remained unconscious. A deep, warm gladness that he would live filled her heart, and she wondered at it. The revelations of his true nature and the creator’s presence had yet to sink in, and it still seemed like a dream. She sat on a chair that a contech vacated for her, staring at the amazing scene in her shredd
er room.

  Hours passed while the creator stood like a statue, and when Nikira’s eyes grew heavy she left to get some sleep.

  ***

  Within his shield sphere, Kayos gazed into the Eye, heartened by the scene within it. He did not know the name of the god who had come to Bane’s rescue, but he was grateful to him. He seemed to know the urgency of restoring Bane to his full potential, and was now busy doing just that. Bane had summoned the angel just before Kayos did it himself, showing a laudable sense of self-preservation and lack of arrogance. That was because he had no power, however.

  Asking for help was not something gods did often. Most tended to think themselves invincible, especially the young ones. In one remarkable instance, an angel had freed a goddess from a flesh beast, but at the cost of his life. The goddess had been recaptured, and she had not summoned another angel. Sadly an angel, even one armed with the Sword of Vengeance, was nothing more than a distraction to a dark god.

  A soft grating made Kayos look up with a frown. The ominous silence outside had become oppressive, and that was the first sound to break it. Whatever Torvaran was doing, it did not involve hammering on his shield sphere with the dark power. He glanced back at the Eye, and the image changed to show the dull landscape outside, and his sphere. Torvaran stood beside it, a shining key in his hand, which he waved over the sphere. Each time he did, the key sparkled and pulsed. Kayos’ heart sank. Torvaran was trying to re-programme the key by sensitising it to the sphere.

  Keys performed two functions. Firstly they deactivated the wards outside a realm gate, allowing the holder to approach it, and then, if it was tuned to that particular gate, the key would unlock it. Part of the structure of Kayos’ sphere was similar to a realm gate’s wards, which would vanquish any dark god foolish enough to step within their range. The elements of ward power in a sphere’s structure made it impregnable, though benign. If a key was sensitised to a sphere’s ward patterns, however, it might deactivate them.

  The sphere would unravel, and Kayos could not raise his shields until it had completely dispersed, a few seconds when he would be vulnerable. He could not counter the deactivation either, since once it had accepted the key’s command, he would lose control of it. His only other choice was to Move as soon as the sphere began to unravel, but then he had no idea where he would end up, and Bane would never be able to find him. Torvaran would follow, and the battle would be resumed. The spacial distortion caused by a Move lasted for only a few seconds, so Bane would not be able to follow it. If Kayos landed in a dark region, he was doomed.

  Kayos touched the sphere’s wall, sensing its unique pattern, which was tuned to his power. If he could change it, he would delay the sensitising of the key, but he had not tried to do that before, and was not sure that he could. The sphere’s pattern had solidified when it had, and in order to change it he would have to unravel it slightly, weakening it for that brief moment before it solidified again.

  Closing his eyes, he bowed his head and concentrated, taking hold of the ward patterns within the sphere’s structure. When he had them in his mental grasp, he commanded the sphere to unravel. It pulsed, and, in the instant when it became tenuous, he gave the ward patterns a tug. They changed, and he commanded the sphere to solidify. It pulsed again, the ward patterns becoming visible briefly, then it hardened. Kayos slumped against the wall, swamped with relief. A thud on the sphere’s side told him that Torvaran had kicked it in frustration, and he smiled.

  Chapter Three

  Healer

  Nikira stared through the observation window at the strange tableau in the shredder room. Drevarin lay upon a second cloud couch beside the tar’merin’s, and ropes of white power connected them. She had got a few hours’ sleep with the aid of a pill, which she had taken when she had realised that the excitement of recent events would not allow her to sleep, despite her exhaustion.

  Spectators packed the containment room, and a vidfeed was being sent to all the recreation rooms in the ship. Drontar and his cronies stood in a group near the window, muttering and making notes on word recorders. Nikira made her way through the crowd and entered the shredder room, her mind seething with questions. The angel still sat on the floor, apparently asleep, and she wondered if he would answer some of them. She stopped before him and knelt, and his eyes opened, flicking over her.

  “May I ask you some questions?”

  He inclined his head. “You may.”

  “I’m sorry for what we did to you earlier. We didn’t know what you were.”

  “That is not a question.”

  Nikira bit her lip. He was not going to accept her apology. As Drevarin had said, what they had done was unforgiveable. She glanced at the creator. “What’s he doing?”

  “Healing the tar’merin.”

  “But it’s taking so long.”

  The angel’s grey eyes flicked to the creator, then back to her. “Yes. Drevarin is young, and not terribly powerful. He has taken it upon himself to restore the strength of one who, judging by the time it is taking, vastly outranks him. He also seeks the damage done by the shackles that were placed upon the tar’merin, and he lacks the experience to accomplish such a difficult task swiftly.”

  “How can a man be more powerful than a creator?”

  “Flesh is no constraint to power. That depends upon his will, and spirit. Also, the Demon Lord is not merely a man. He is a mortal god.”

  She looked down at her hands, finding his direct gaze unnerving. “How did you know he was a tar’merin?”

  “No servant of the dark power can summon an angel. The Demon Lord’s soul is pure, yet he bears the rune scars used to command the dark power and its unmistakeable imprint upon his flesh. When I touched him, I learnt much about him, including the fact that he is tar’merin.”

  “You can see souls?”

  He shook his head. “I can see auras, which are the emanation of souls, and from that I know whether or not a soul is pure. It is a gift that was given to us when we were created, one of several.”

  “Like the ability to become invisible.”

  “Precisely.”

  Nikira hesitated, raising her gaze to study his finely moulded countenance. “How can we... make restitution for what we did to him out of ignorance?”

  His eyes drifted to the tar’merin. “Beg his forgiveness, offer him your aid and loyalty, swear to obey his every command and throw yourself upon his mercy.”

  “Will that work?”

  “It is impossible to predict a dark god, but I would recommend that you do it before he regains his power. Since you are the leader of these people, you could also offer your life to spare the rest.”

  Nikira’s heart sank. “Do angels help people, or only gods?”

  “Mostly we help people. Gods rarely require our aid.”

  “Could you... help us?”

  His brows rose. “If he chooses to punish you? Perhaps.”

  “Thank you.” She hesitated. “I also beg your forgiveness, for what we did to you out of ignorance and fear. It was... shameful.”

  “You will have to be far more eloquent than that when you beg for the Demon Lord’s forgiveness. I hope that is not the best you can do. I know your people are godless, and I pity you. I will accept your plea.” He paused, considering. “I would also recommend that you return the Demon Lord’s clothes before he awakens. You have affronted his dignity enough.”

  “Yes, of course.” Nikira stood up, hesitated, then made a stiff, awkward bow to him and left the shredder room on shaking legs. When she glanced back, the angel had closed his eyes and resumed his placid pose. Grabbing the nearest contech, she dragged him to the door and sent him to find the tar’merin’s clothes, with instructions to clean and repair them as well.

  Drevarin searched Bane’s flesh again, fatigue hindering him. Although he drew in light power to replace what he expended, the process was exhausting due to its complex nature. Revitalising a normal man would have been a lengthy, though not arduous process
, but Bane consumed power at an unprecedented rate, and as yet there was little improvement. He wondered if he had taken on a greater task than he could accomplish, but even if he could not restore Bane completely, what he had done would help.

  Once more he sent the light into the Demon Lord, searching for that elusive something that weakened him. His tiredness made him blunder, and the questing light brushed against Bane’s soul, causing it to flare in defence. Drevarin snatched the finger of light away, but not before he sensed something that made him tense with horror. Flinching, he sent the light back, brushing against the same spot as before, and again Bane’s soul flared. Drevarin had his answer, however, and it frightened him.

  When the dark power had been trapped within Bane’s flesh, it had sought many ways to release itself. It had wrought havoc upon his body and mind, but it had also attacked the bonds between his flesh and spirit. Ultimately, that would have killed him, and now the bond was gravely weakened. Drevarin writhed, uncertain of what to do next, for healing the damage around Bane’s soul would endanger both of them.

  One wrong move would release the Demon Lord’s spirit, and the backlash of its unleashing would have grave repercussions for Drevarin while they were linked. He relaxed, pondering the problem. His link to a soul so much more powerful than his own was daunting enough; to try to heal it was terrifying. This was something that only a Grey God should attempt.

  Opening his eyes, he sat up, allowing the conduits of power between them to fade. Swinging his legs off the couch, he stared at the wall, his mind seething. He summoned a cup of ambrosia and drank from it, his exhaustion abating somewhat. The woman, Nikira, appeared in the doorway and performed a stiff bow that only irked him.

  As she opened her mouth to speak, he said, “Get out.”

  She retreated, her eyes wide, and he slammed the door in her face, then turned to Tryne. “I require your aid, Tryne.”