Into The Abyss (Demons of Astlan) (78 page)

Edwyrd would have loved to have discussed some of what he’d read the night before with Maelen, but he didn’t know how to do that without exposing his charade as an Animage.  The stuff he read had been fairly basic; he’d had to skip over some of the more technical things, but it was pretty weird.

But it had informed him of some really weird stuff; apparently there was a second moon that went north to south; hence the whole thing about second tide.  He just hadn’t seen it because of the time of the month, or months or whatever.  Their calendar was insanely complex; and they tied it out to astrology.  Astrology?  Everyone knew that was
nonsense; but on the other hand; demons, wizards, elves and dwarves were also nonsense; so maybe there was something to astrology here.

The weirdest thing
, though, was that the wizards thought of what they did as ‘science.’  Except that it was ‘magic’; they even called it magic; science and magic were two separate things.  Everyone knew that.  OK, sure, there was that saying that said ‘any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic to people of lower technology’ that got used a lot in movies.  Now that might be well and good, but everything else he read was all mumbo jumbo about magic.  Honest to god, magic.

He wasn’t sure why he was shocked though, he’d seen the magic work
; he’d used the magic himself.  Edwyrd supposed it was probably just the referring to wizardry as being a science that bothered him.  He’d always been taught differently.  Or had he?  His biology teacher said that science wasn’t a thing, it was a process a methodology.  That was why many science teachers talked about ‘the scientific method’ rather than ‘science’ as a thing.  Could the scientific method be applied to Animus and Mana?  Was that what the wizards were doing?

A lot of the intro material almost read like background info for some sort of roleplaying game, or video game.  Of course, to be fair, he was a giant demon running around shooting blasts of fire and lightning bolts, so he supposed this was something like and overly immersive first person shooter.

He needed to stop that line of thought.  However wacky, this was real life and real death for a lot of people.  He really had killed people, viciously.  He couldn’t let himself lose sight of that.  He thought back to the soldier he’d popped.  Edwyrd shuddered.

There was
, however, some interesting stuff.  Lots of stuff on links and bindings that helped him sort of get a hold of the astral cord and that link from him to Lenamare.  He’d looked at it again.  He didn’t want to follow it too far for fear of alerting Lenamare, but it seemed that it led into the abyss and presumably back out again to Lenamare.  All very interesting; apparently, one could use these links for all sorts of things, including tracking people.  It might be handy to put a link on Rupert so he could find him when he got whacked or disappeared. 

~

Jenn sat and took a breather at a table in the cafeteria before she’d have to get up to get her dinner.  It had been a long day.  She’d pestered both Jehenna and Zilquar about the horses and they’d finally told her to deal with them.  They were apparently both absorbed in some new project of Lenamare’s.  Zilquar had informed his general that Jehenna would help him deal with the Council and Magistrates to do something about the horses.

Not knowing where else to go, she’d gone to Damien.  He’d been a bit surprised, annoyed really, about discovering an army with a cavalry camped in his basement.  They’d spent a good part of the day working with
Damien, Guard Commander Bergon, along with both Zilquar’s Arms Master, and Captain Markoff from Lenamare’s school trying to integrate the basement army with the city’s own guard.  They had to move and stable the horses, arrange for provisions and above-ground boarding for the army.  In all, a lot more than she ever imagined doing.  Seriously?  She thought she’d signed up to be a thaumaturge, not a Combat Mage.

Alvea and Bromagni came in looking almost as worn as she was.  The two plopped down at her table, Bromagni plopping his head on the table.  “Long day?”  Jenn asked.

“The longest.”  Bromagni said without moving his head from the table.”

“Jehenna has us running all over the city gathering components.  Some really expensive components.”  Alvea told her.

“Extremely expensive components?”  Jenn asked.

“Remember the stuff we used for the wards back at the school, like that
, only much bigger.  Apparently, they are working with the council to do something extremely complicated with the wards.    Lenamare, Zilquar, Hortwell, Elrose, Jehenna, Gandros, half the council of wizards plus their best masters.  Whatever it is, it’s going to be big.”

“We ended up buying over 10,000 crowns worth of materials from various apothecaries, alchemists and metallurgists.  It’s one seriously big spell.”  Bromagni finally looked up shaking his head.  “Gandros, Lenamare, Hortwell, Jehenna,
and Trevin were locked in planning all day, and Alexandros Mien was even coming and going for consultation.  He’s the most experienced wizard on the council, and so old he has to float himself down the corridors.”  Bromagni shook his head in awe of the Elder Archimage.

“I think he’s like 120 or something.”  Alvea said shaking her head in agreement.  Jenn nodded, everyone knew of his record.  One of the brightest mages of the last few generations.  No one had seen him do much, other than float around the palace in the last decade, but when he’d been active, he’d been a major force in the world.

“Where were you today?”  Alvea suddenly asked.  “Normally Jehenna has you stand by to be her whipping girl.”

Jenn grinned, “Someone had to do something about the horses and the army in the basement since we could
n’t get food for them, or remove their manure.  I pestered Jehenna and Zilquar so much they put me in charge of bringing the army and the horses above ground.  So I spent the day with Councilor Damien, Markoff, and Zilquar’s captain, and the city guard captain.  It was an all-day ordeal.”

“So, the rumors are true then,”  Bromagni smiled at her, Jenn tilted her head in puzzlement, “you have switched over to doing combat magic!”  Jenn hit him on the arm.

~

Wing Arms Master Heron sighed and put his head down on his desk upon his hands.  He was getting to
o old for this.  Despite his best intellectual reasoning, and common sense, there were times when he wished diplomacy were illegal.

He’d spent the morning discussing the situation with Arch-Vicar General Barabus and Arch-Diocate Iskerus.  This was truly a tricky situation.  
Apparently, the same malefactors he was charged with dealing with were subject to a prior set of charges from the Church of Tiernon and the Rod.   This prior claim arising from actions inside Church property before the vile Asmeth had ever set sail.  Abduction, imprisonment, illegal interrogation and mental, if not perhaps physical, torture of the Church’s highest representative in Gizzor Del.  Defilement of church property, blasphemy and perversion of religious rites, fleeing Tiernon’s justice among other charges.  Heron was not familiar with the exact laws of the Church, but, clearly, these would be capital crimes in any jurisdiction.

Therefore
, now, they had to mediate their competing claims of justice and arrive at a mutually satisfactory arrangement.  He really did not need this.  However, if that were not enough, they informed him on good authority that the entire city of Freehold had been overrun by demons.  Freehold had apparently had been invaded by half the Abyss!

Clearly, that complicated the issues.  He had sent back to Keeper City a request for the various relevant treatise regarding such invasions.  He had no idea of the appropriate legal response
: did they have mutual aid agreements?  Would the Sky Fleet be required to remove the demonic horde?  How would they determine and restore a legitimate government?

This presented a lack of information and thus a completely unusual uncertainty that he was unaccustomed to; however, he could deal with that.  A few hours after the Rod delegation had left; a delegation from Freehold arrived, led by the esteemed Alexandros Mien himself. 

Alexandros was a man Heron had only met a few times prior, but he was certainly a walking legend even in Oorstemoth.  His keen perceptions, understanding of legal principle and his ruthless negotiating style were much admired, and admittedly, feared, in Keeper’s City.

The Arch
image had informed him that the Council was aware of the incursion, that the incursion had not in any way actually impeached the council (obviously something to be considered suspect) and that the council had determined a mechanism to purge the city of all demonic influence.

Now this all seemed a bit fanciful to Heron, but this was Alexandros Mien after all.  The Archimage had assured him that the only way the Council could properly, honorably, and legally meet the terms of both the Rod and Oorstemoth was to purge the city of all possible malignant influences and judicial pervert
ors and preventers.  This did admittedly make sense to Heron.

Unfortunately, it meant a delay in meeting the agreed
-upon delivery of the requested miscreants until due process could occur in Freehold.  Delays however, were not completely unexpected, given his meeting with the Rod.  That was a resolution that would take some time as well.

The bigger problem however, as the Archimage informed him
, is that the Council would be evicting all demons from the city, forcibly, tomorrow.  Said forcible eviction from the city, ejecting all the demons onto the proverbial laps of the Rod and the Sky Fleet.  They were about to be set upon by a displaced demonic horde.

Fortunately, most were lower level and relatively easy to dispatch with the Rod’s help.
  The bigger issue was that some of the demonic influences or suspects were likely to be released as well, and would need to be apprehended, interrogated, tried, convicted and eradicated before they could escape.

This, Heron reflected with a misruling grin, might be theoretically possibly to deal with; the problem
, however, only got worse.  Apparently, both the Rod and the Council had determined that there were at least—AT LEAST—three Archaedemons in the city.  He’d been prepared for maybe one; and he’d thought that threat overblown—but three?

It was going to be a very long night.  Heron pulled his head up as a knock came at his cabin door signally that the delegation from the Rod had returned to discuss and coordinate activities based on the new intelligence Alexandros had provided.  A very long night, sighed Heron.

~

Edwyrd had the day mostly to himself.  Rupert and Tizzy had set out to do some more palace exploring.  Obviously, that was perfectly safe, what could wrong with a 10 or 12 your old demon egging on an unhinged multi-centenarian demon around a palace full of wizards
and invisible enemy demons?  Edwyrd didn’t want to think about it, but he didn’t have any better suggestions for them.  He did warn both to not cause any trouble, specifically no murder, torture or evisceration of anyone, and if they ran into anything or one important, they should try and get a hold of Edwyrd before proceeding or revealing any information.  It was about a ten minute list of instructions.  Tizzy obviously tuned out within 30 seconds.

Maelen and Gastrop
é had gone to town to check out some bookstores.  Edwyrd had enough to read from Maelen so sent them on their way.  Jenn was running around with Damien messing with horses and soldiers and who knows what.  So that left him to his own devices.

He spent a good part of the day in the main palace entry hall sitting on a stone bench along the side
wall watching people go in and out.  More precisely, he was examining them with full demon sight.  He was trying to determine various levels of animus and mana in them and determine if they had any of those links attached to them.

Fortunately, most the people going in and out were wizards so they were almost all heavily mana oriented and many had links and tethers.  He had a couple reference books with him to help him figure out what things were.

What was interesting is that there were all sorts of links to all sorts of things.  All the wizards that had demons with them, and to be fair there were not that many, had links to their demons similar to the one he had to Lenamare.  There were also links between individuals; some between men and women were very light and clear.  He wasn’t sure what those were; but the couples that had them were very clearly couples; some of them behaving like stereotypical married couples.

The wizards also had links/tethers to various items they possessed.  Not all items, typically amulets and staffs.  Some amulets then seemed to have more links radiating off of them to ‘somewhere else’ fading into the background unless he tried hard to trace them.
  Which he could do, at least until they went through a wall or out of sight.

He spent quite a bit of time looking at mana and animus distributions.  Whatever this animus was, it wasn’t quite so clear.  He believed it was this golden stuff enmeshed inside the people and their auras.  Most of a person’s aura was mana related in some manner; or so he thought, but it wasn’t really clear.  Maelen could answer that; except he had no idea how to ask because that was stuff any Animage should already know.

One thing that was clear is that some people ‘glowed’ more than others.  These may or may not have been people that were more powerful.  In fact, he was thinking they might not be.  People whom he could tell by their clothing, demeanor and entourage were higher ranking wizards seemed to keep their mana more tightly concentrated inside themselves.