Piece yourself together, he ordered, but that seemed easier thought than done.
'Hang on, Cale,' said Jak, and let his head fall back to the soft ground. The little man pulled out his holy symbol and moved it over Cale's body while mouthing a series of magical syllables. Abruptly, Jak jumped back in shock.
'How-'
A golden light took shape before Cale's eyes. He came back to himself almost immediately. His mind cleared and his body felt lighter. He had killed the demon and fallen through the gate.
He sat up. Jak rushed forward and embraced him, nearly knocking him back down.
'Cale!' the little man happily exclaimed. 'Dark, but I'm glad to see you.' A sparkling golden glow surrounded the little man and crackled like sizzling meat. Cale, as pleased to see Jak as Jak was to see him,' returned his embrace.
'I'm glad to see you to*, my friend.' He disengaged himself and stood. Only then did he recognize that he too was sheathed in a golden aura.
'What is this?' he asked Jak, and indicated the'si' I11.
aura. While he watched, it sparked and sizzled like a bonfire in the raia.
'Ifa a protective spell,' Jak replied. 'Without it, this place would kill you. The whole plane drains souls, just like the shadow demon.'
Cale nodded. 'That was quick thinking, little man, thanks.' ›
Jak gazed at him solemnly*I didn't cast it, Cale, I started to but didn't finish.' He paused a heartbeat before adding, 'You must've cast it.' His green eyes went to Gate's right hand.
Gate's gaze followed Jak's. There in his hand, he unknowingly held tire felt mask.
His stomach went topsy-turvy. His knees turned so weak he nearly fell down. Cast a spell? He couldn't! He had made no commitment to Mask, had he? He looked to Jak, astonished.~
'I don't know how to cast spells.'
He sounded unconvincing even to himsel amp;flec amp;fctY know how, but he also intuitively knew that Boasehow he had. Or that the Shadowlord had cast it for him. In the end, he wasn't sure if the difference WAS ofanysig^ nificance, and that thought niade him wry uncomfortable. He would not surrender himself to a god. He was his own man. Defeating Yrsillar was his task. His task alone
Jak stepped forward and placed a small, commiserating hand on his shoulder. 'Mask wants you badly, Erevis. You must bevhis Ghampien^It% the calk'
Angry and frightened, Gale stuffed the felt mask back into his pocket. He couldn't quite bring himself to discard it, though the temptation was strong.
'Feels less like a call and more like an order.' He clenched his fists and looked up into the churning maelstrom of nothingness that dominated the sky. 'He's saved me twice, Jak. Once in the shrine and once now. But I won't bow down to him out of some sense of obligation. You understand?'
Jak smiled softly. 'I do understand,' he replied. 'I do. But in the end it's not about obligation. You'll come to realize that. Just… give it some tune.'
Cale lowered his gaze from the soot sky. 1 feel tike I'm changing despite myself; Jak-' He fell silent when his eyes fell on the grotesque body that lay in the ash nearby. He swallowed down his gorge. Twisted and malformed, the flesh of the thin, winged carcass looked the bluish-gray color of something long. dead. Long, wiry arms ended in a set of terrible, steel-gray claws as long as knife blades. A thin slit in the hairless oval of its head marked a mouth, and its round, milky eyes stared vacantly into the gray sky. A deep, bloodless gash-the wound from Gale's enchanted long sword-split the corpse nearly in two, from its oval face to the center of its torso. Bloodless entrails hung from the hole like a ship's rigging.
'The shadow demon,' Cale realized.
Jak gave a start and stared at the corpse in amazement. He poked it with his toe. It didn't move. 'You killed it. Back on our plane?'.
Cafe nodded grimly. 'As I fell through the gate. It didn't look tike this, though. Didn't feel tike flesh, either.' He knelt and retrieved his enchanted long sword, which lay beside the corpse^
Jak studied the macabre corpse and stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. 'This is how its body must appear on this plane. Or at least how it chooses to appear on this plane.' He shook his head in bewilderment. 'Something from nothing. The shadow form must be how its kind manifests on our plane.' He poked it again with his boot 'Dark, but its uglier tike this.'
Cale gave a hard smile. 'It is,' he softly agreed. 'Looks better dead, though.'
Jak giggled at that, but when his laughter died away he turned serious. His eyes found the ground and he kicked his boot in the ash.
'Cale, back at the guildhouse… I feel bad about…' he trailed off, took a deep breath, and started again. 'I thought we were dead, Cale. I mean, I wasn't trying to abandon you, I just-'
Cale knew what Jak intended to say. He stopped him with an upraised hand and a raised voice. 'Dark, Jak, I know why you did it.' He gave the tittle man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Cale knew full well that Jak, of all people, would never abandon him, at least not out of fear. Cale would not have the little man feeling guilty for doing something that most any man would have done. Cale knew too well the way guilt burdened a man's soul.
'I'd have done the same thing,' he said, and meant it 'I thought we were dead too. I get Jucky*
Jak looked up and gave him a grateful, sheepish nod. 'But we aren't,' he said with a smile, 'Dead, I mean.';|
'No, we aren't' Cate looked^uwoa amp;toeltto^the ‹i first time the desolation that sunwunded them. On all 4fj sides, a wasteland of gray extended for as far as he J could see in the gloom. A whirlpool of emptiness hung I in the gray sky just over the horizon tine. A giant gate,'t he realized.!*
'Where in the Nine Hells are we?'
'Not the Nine Hells,' Jak replied matter-of-factly. 'The Abyss. At least I think.' He nodded at the demon's corpse. 'This is its home plane. Yrsillar's home plane too, I assume.'
Hearing Yrsillar's name sent a wave of anger through Cale. He quelled it and tried to absorb what the little man had said:
He knew of the Abyss only through adventurers' stories. Stories which always portrayed it as a chaotic place teeming with demons and alive with unspeakable horrors. This place, on the other hand, seemed utterly dead.
Jak pulled out his ivory-bowled pipe and chewed its end, though he didn't light it.
'This isn't what I would've expected,' Cale said after a moment. 'Where are all the demons? The tortured souls writhing in agony? Surely Yrsillar and this thing,' he pointed with his blade at the demon's corpse, 'can't be the only creatures that live here?'
Jak shruggeTi thoughtfully. 'Maybe they are. The Abyss is made up of lots of different planes and this is an unusual one. The energy here seems to drain away life the instant it appears. Most everything that travels here would be dead in minutes, even most demons.' He nodded at the shadow demon's corpse. 'Creatures like that can obviously live here, or like Yrsillar. Certain kinds of undead too, I suppose. Those kinds of creatures don't live like you and I live. They unlive. We'd be dead long since if not for the protective spells.'
Cale winced, once more reminded of Mask's seeming beneficence, once more reminded of the call. The felt mask in his pocket weighed like a stone.
Only when and if I'm ready, he thought to the Shadowlord. Stop pushing.
'Can we get out of here?'
Jak took his pipe from his mouth and regarded Cale with raised eyebrows. 1 dont know.'
Cale appreciated the frankness. The gate?'
Jak eyed the empty air above Cale' a head. 'That's where it materialized, but it must be one-way only. It doesn't even appear on this side unless someone is passing through from the other side.' Seeing Cale's frown, he added, 'Maybe there's another one somewhere else.'
Maybe. Frustration and anger rose in Cale like a red tide. That they could have come so far only to die in this damnable extra-planar desert enraged him. He would not let Yrsillar win, he could not. Not after what had been done to Thazienne and Stonnweather. The demon would pay, by Mask.
By Mask? He gave a slight start, surprised at himself.
'You all right?' Jak asked.
Cale took a deep breath, quelled his frustration and his surprise. Anger would not get them out of here. 'I'm
