Devil Ash Deceit (Devil Ash Saga) (18 page)

“There was a spider!” Ash said. “I hate spiders!”

“Was it black and purple?” Smitty asked. He bent down to examine the charred, stepped-on remains of the spider.

“Yeah! And it was in my bunk!”

“You’re very lucky you didn’t get bit. These things are poisonous, and common out in the forest.”

“
What kind of ‘safe’ house is this
?!” the boys cried out in fear at learning the ‘safe house’ wasn’t as safe as its name implied. Smitty left them to get their rest, but Ash could no longer bear to be in that bed. Instead, he sat with his back against Aura’s bed, his face buried in his knees. Sleep never came for the boy. Not with the lingering fear of demon spiders creeping up on him.

The stirring of the logging team signaled that it was time to get up. Ash could wait no longer. He stood and silently stalked his way out of the room, leaving his friends behind to absorb every moment of sleep they could. In the hall, he found many members of the logging team up and moving towards the exit.

He followed them outside to find the group of more than twenty men with fireballs in hand. They aimed their hands to the sky and released their flames. The result was an artificial sun formed high above the treetops, shedding light over a huge chunk of the forest. The sun was a lot smaller than the artificial sun created over the Kingdom, but Ash saw that it brought enough light to the forest to see any immediate dangers that might be lurking nearby.

He watched as Smitty gave out instructions on the team’s course of action for the day. The men pulled a giant trailer loaded with saws behind them as they departed down the path that led further into the forest. As he watched them disappear into the tree line, Phoenix appeared at his side followed by Shiva and Aura.

“Time to go,” Phoenix told them. “We’ll want to avoid running into any loggers, so you’ll all be heading in different directions.”

“You mean we don’t even get to stick together for this?” Aura asked.

“That would be too easy,” Phoenix told him. “Ash will go straight into the forest, Shiva will walk to the right and Aura can go to the left. All you have to do is walk in a straight path away from the Safe House. Your goal is to kill one demon each and return to the Safe House before the sun expires. The bigger the demon, the better.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, actually,” Ash said with a new sense of optimism. He had spent the last several hours imagining every possible scary and deadly situation he could find himself in out in the forest. The trip sounded more like a pleasant nature walk than survival training.

“There is one last rule,” Phoenix said, digging into his pockets. “You will each wear these.” One by one he handed the students blindfolds.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ash said. “Blindfolds? Out here?!”

“I believe you are ready for this,” Phoenix told him. “Just remember everything we discussed during our training sessions. You’ve already come a long way in lessening your dependence on vision. This is simply another means to test that progress.”

“A test where we could
die
!”

“Is your self confidence that low?” Phoenix asked, to which Ash had no reply. Shiva was already obediently wearing her blindfold, and Aura reluctantly put his on as well.

I did want to learn how to fight blind, I suppose…
Aura thought.

“
Fine
,” Ash said and gave in. He took one last look at his surroundings, trying desperately to commit it all to memory before sliding his blindfold on over his eyes. Everything went black. He’d have to make do with relying on his ears and nose. Then a thought struck Ash. “If we’re blindfolded, how are we supposed to even know when the sun goes out?”

“The logger’s sun will last only ten hours. I would suggest walking for five hours, and then using the next five hours to return to the Safe House.”

“
Great
,” Aura chimed in with his trademark sarcasm. “So now we have to keep track of the time as well.”

“And that timer has already begun,” Phoenix said. “Now get going! And best of luck to you all!” The three youths set out in their assigned directions, blindfolds securely in place. Phoenix watched patiently as they stumbled their way through the forest, pausing to feel a tree in their path or tripping over some knotty brush. Only after all three students disappeared into the darkness did three more guests appear at Phoenix’s side.

The three strangers dressed in cloaks meant to conceal their identities. To further their mysteriousness, the strangers also wore various demon-like masks to hide their faces. They all stood patiently behind Phoenix, waiting for his command.

“You know your orders,” Phoenix said. “Our mission rides on this. Now
Go
!”

Without a spoken word, the three masked strangers released their wings and leapt high into the air. They landed on tree branches above and leaped forward, going from branch to branch using their wings to help keep them aloft.

“Now the
real
hunting trip begins,” Phoenix said. He reached into his bag and pulled out his own cloak and mask.

Shiva blindly charged forward, determined to be the first person to return with a demon. She started out by walking slowly, but as soon as she got the feel of the forest floor terrain she sped up to a quick jog. Every now and then a loose vine or low hanging branch would enter her awareness and she’d use the twin daggers given to her by Amos Draxler to cut them away.

On one occasion, she sensed a vine hanging in front of her. She readied her daggers to cut it down, but before she could strike the vine, the vine struck
her
. She was only able to dodge, falling backward just in time. She heard the hiss of a certain type of demon she was familiar with.

Without wasting any time, Shiva slashed at the ‘vine’ until she felt her blades connect with the demon’s flesh. Blood spattered on her face and the ‘vine’ thrashed as its life slipped away. When the sound of blood dripping on the forest floor could be heard, Shiva knew she was safe. She passed on the snake demon, thinking she could do better to bring something fiercer back as her trophy.

As she jogged on, she took notice of the forest floor’s shifting conditions. The terrain became covered in thicker brush. Shiva ended up getting slapped in the face by a few branches before realizing that she needed to slow down. She put her daggers away, as they were of little help now. Instead she began to feel out for the tree branches and simply avoid them.

After almost an hour of this, she feared her teammates were progressing faster than her. To help speed up the process of clearing out the brush, Shiva decided it’d be a good idea to emit flame from her fists to chop her way through any brush. This definitely made the process go faster, but there was a problem that Shiva could not have planned for.

As the brush burned away with every swing, her flame spread as far as it could before finally dying out. In one unfortunate twist of fate, a single flame managed to make its way to an insect hive. The tiny dying flame found new life in the very flammable hive. As it combusted, hundreds of demon hornets the size of washing machines burst out of their burning home enraged.

As Shiva charged blindly forward, she became aware of a faint buzzing sound behind her. It was getting closer.

* * * *

Aura’s path led him into an open meadow. The grass was cushy and the artificial sun shined openly through the treetops. It could have been a pleasant stroll through the kingdom for all he cared. He was tempted to remove his blindfold several times to look at the sights of the Hellwood, but thoughts of his sister kept it secured to his face.

Nora lives like this every single day because of me,
he thought.
If she can do it, so can I. Besides, I need to be able to protect myself if I go blind again in the future. Wandering around this peaceful meadow is only going to get me so far… I need to find myself a demon!

Aura quickened his pace. He left the meadow and entered a more dense area of the forest. He could hear what sounded like large birds squawking from far off, and wondered if any of them would try to attack him. The boy lit a flame in his hand just in case, deciding that if he was going to be unable to see any danger coming, he’d at least be prepared to defend himself.

His path eventually took him down a steep slope in the forest. He was beginning to wonder if he’d ever run into a demon when he noticed the sound of running water. Aura paused to listen more closely. He could hear what must be a nearby stream flowing. The boy adjusted his course so that he headed toward it. As he got closer to the water, another sound became more prominent. There was a sweet melody being hummed from somewhere deeper in the forest.

What the stuff is that sound? Is that a person humming? It sounds like it’s coming from downstream…

Aura continued to follow the hum, extinguishing his fireball so as not to give himself away. He even pulled the blindfold partially off, reasoning that he needed to
see
if the person needed help.

Wait a minute… such a sweet melodic voice could only come from a woman! But I don’t remember seeing any female loggers at the Safe House, and I definitely looked… Oh well, I should probably just go check and see if she’s alright! It’s the polite thing to do! Heck, maybe she’s bathing in the river…

That was all Aura needed to turn off his assigned path and remove his blindfold. He ran towards the hum, slowing to a more stealthy speed as it got louder. Finally, the figure of a person could be seen bathing in the river far off. Aura dropped to his hands and knees and crawled forward to peep through the bushes.

That definitely looked like a naked babe!
he thought. As he reached the edge of the riverbank, the youth peeked out from the tall reeds to gaze upon what he had hoped would be a woman’s naked body bathing. Instead, he got an entirely different scenario.

* * * *

Ash had intended on using the sun as his method of keeping track of the time. When Phoenix announced the addition of the blindfolds, the boy knew he’d have to find some other way to keep track of the time. Luckily, he brought along his mp3 player. He’d avoided listening to it in order to save the battery charge, and now he could use it to keep track of the time.

He put the ear buds in and hit the play button. Some Japanese pop song started playing. Despite a lifelong hatred of math, the boy tried running a few numbers in his mind. He concluded that by guessing the average length of a song was three minutes, he could listen to one hundred songs before he’d have to turn around. Unfortunately for him, the one thing he could not take into account was that he had played a very specific album on the mp3 player. It just so happened to be the soundtrack for an epic musical production series, which happened to span over twenty hours of music.

It was also difficult to know when one song was starting and another was ending. All the music seemed to flow together, never really stopping or starting. After an hour of walking through a grassy plain, Ash realized he had no idea what song he was on or how long he’d been walking for. Frustrated, he decided that he would only remove the blindfold to peek at the sun, specifically for the purpose of telling the time.

The boy eventually walked into some tall grass. It reminded him of a cornfield, except the grass was much thicker and taller. Pushing through it became more and more difficult. The boy became frustrated at the situation and decided to remove his blindfold. The new rule was that he could also remove it when he got stuck. That seemed reasonable.

Removing the blindfold didn’t tell him much. He was in the middle of some real thick tall grass. He spun around and looked all ways, but could see nothing besides grass and giant trees. He reckoned he could use his flame but was reluctant to go starting forest fires, especially when he was in the middle of all the flammable vegetation.

An idea stuck him. He pulled the sword Amos gave him from its sheath and swung it around a few times. The grass before him split and fell to the ground. Ash pressed on, hacking and slashing like an adventuring explorer. Eventually, he became so adept at it, he felt confident enough to put his blindfold back on. It was shortly after this that Ash felt his sword connect with something much thicker than the grass he’d been cutting.

The sword became stuck, and Ash struggled to pull it free. Finally, he let go and lifted his blindfold. Before him was an enormous gray rock. He lit a small fireball and examined the rock more closely. He walked around it and saw that it was long. He kept a hand on the rock as he followed it around to the other side.

The side of the ‘rock’ he found was actually the rear. What Ash was now staring at was the front, and it was no rock. It was a demon. And Ash had just lodged his sword in the monster’s colossal butt. The demon looked like a mythical centaur with the body of a rhinoceros instead of a horse, colossal and gray with a giant horn extending from its long snout.

The beast looked stone-faced, but Ash could hear it choking back the pain. The creature turned and looked Ash right in the eyes.

“
Gyoooo
?” it said.

The music coming from the boy’s mp3 player swelled to a dramatic high, and he realized it was the perfect time to run for his life.

* * * *

Shiva fled from her own demon problems. Fully aware of the massive swarm of deadly demon hornets only seconds behind her, Shiva ran as fast as she could. With all the thick brush around her, that was not very fast. She decided to take a gamble on flying instead. Bringing out her wings she jumped and flapped as hard as she could, barely managing to pull away from the thick overgrowth.

In the air she was much faster. She could detect trees in her path, but only seconds before she would run into one. Her method of avoiding them became spin-dodging. As soon as she felt a tree in her way, she would flap one wing more powerfully, wrapping around the oncoming tree and then kicking off the other side. This also had the benefit of giving her little speed boosts.

But no matter how fast she flew the hornets were right behind her. She insisted she would not remove her blindfold. She would continue to flee from the dangerous demons until she evaded them. She didn’t know how difficult that would be. Something shot at her so fast she was almost impaled. A loud, clear buzzing was audible as it blew by.

As she flew to the next tree, she could hear the sound of a buzzing hornet’s wings fluttering, trying to free itself from whatever it had becoming stuck in. The demon must have rocketed forward aiming its stinger at her, but could not have known the devil would dodge. Now it was stuck in a tree. Shiva launched a fireball towards the noise. The flutter of insect wings stopped.

Even the buzzing of the swarm died out for a moment. Shiva felt proud, thinking she’d finally evaded the swarm.
Surely they would have all been scared off by the flames
, she thought. She soared on peacefully, reveling in her triumph. She was not pleased to discover that like a dark cloud on a sunny day, the buzzing sound was coming back.

This time, it was
much
louder.

* * * *

Aura gazed in terrified awe at the naked person bathing in the river. He knew at once it was no woman. Much to Aura’s dismay, the mysterious bathing person was a man. He stood waist-deep in the river with his back turned to the death toucher, but the body type was all wrong for a woman. It would have to be one
muscular
woman… with short hair.

The sweet melodic tune that Aura had mistaken for a lady’s voice was coming from this man, no doubt about it. The boy was disappointed, but continued spying out of curiosity. What kind of man comes out to the middle of the Hellwood just to bathe, anyway? Could he possibly be a logger taking a break?

The man dipped beneath the water. When the bathing man reemerged, he faced Aura. That’s when Aura went from disappointment to fear. The nudity had thrown him off, but there was no mistaking the man’s face.

Aura was peeking on Darko Satan, the Prince of Hell.