“You raped a human?” Arridon blurted.
“Whoa, human. There was consent on her part. She summoned me to her world using great magics so she could bind me and bear the child you see before you. I was happy to oblige. She was incredibly attractive, for a human, and she fed me well during our copulation period.”
“Copulation period?” Arridon muttered.
“Dad, enough. Your penchant for literalness makes my soul shrivel.”
“I like being submissive on occasion; there is a freedom in letting go of power,” Kalandar said.
“Dad,” Timtar threatened. “Enough. We’re gonna die here, and wherever Arridon and Derrick’s sisters are, they’re gonna die there.”
“Has anyone seen a human named Maddie? I left her here, on this very world, right near this very spot. It seems as if she’s run off.” He sniffed the air with his large nostrils. “Her scent is gone; perhaps she was retrieved.”
“No humans here when we got here,” Timtar said.
“A shame. She is resilient, though. A true survivor. Never once doubted she’d make it. One more puzzle for us to solve. Thistle and Sam are on an Earth’s moon, sealed inside a defensive barrier built after the fall of the planet itself. They’ve been under siege from a rather large nest of bogalites and are running out of options, power, and time.”
“You know where Thistle is?” Arridon’s fear abandoned, he strode towards the armored demon. “Is she okay? Has she been hurt?”
“I did just explain her situation, did I not? I also added information regarding her short term prospects; yes, I feel I was adequate in my information. Is your friend slow, Timtar?”
Arridon’s eyes went wacky with panic, anger, and frustration. He wanted to climb up the side of Kalandar and punch him to get more information, but instead he hyperventilated and balled his hands into fists.
“He loves his sister and wants to help her immediately. We need to get off this dead rock, get to a Hell to have their auras scrubbed so Oldros can’t track them, and get Derrick’s severed leg seen to. Then we need to rescue Thistle and Sam. The faster we do all that, the better.”
“Oldros?” Kalandar said, not even trying to hide his excitement. “A worthy foe. Has he gotten himself involved? If so, this truly has become a day of days for me personally.”
“Fuck you, asshole. This has been the worst day of my life. And yeah,” Arridon said. “He’s the one who hurt Derrick, too.”
“I cannot bring Arridon or Derrick to the Hells,” the demon explained. “And if you’ve summoned me here, then your wings have been clipped.”
“Oldros,” Timtar explained, “trying to keep us from escaping Eo.”
“The city in the stars. A ripe fruit I wish to pluck one day. Perhaps. Very well then, our only viable course of action is to ascend to the highest elevation we can and hope for a clockwork room to use. Can Derrick travel? Is his frail human body strong enough?”
“I’ll carry him,” Arridon said. “He’s not that heavy.”
“Excellent. That will free me to protect us, if we are attacked. Have you prayed to cause the storms to avert their course? Prayer seems to be effective.”
“I don’t pray. I know what prayer gets me, when and if it ever works,” Kalandar’s son said. “And from the sounds of it, Arridon hails from a world without divine influence.”
“My mother was a god.”
“Regardless, we must move. Let me fish this horse corpse out of the hole in the ground, and we’ll start the search for a clockwork room.”
“Why do you have a horse corpse?” Timtar asked his father.
“I didn’t bring food the last time I was here; I refused to make that mistake again.”
“I’ve never seen a horse before,” Arridon said.
“Exciting. They’re delicious. Let me show you,” Kalandar said, and jumped back into the hole in the ground to get his snack.
In the distance, the storms pushed on, blasting the ground outside the city with zombie-like persistence.
34
EO
Sebastian’s monstrous body grew into its new reality with the same slow build of pus erupting from a seeping wound. Only a few corners of that reality were still aflame with the fires of the Bleed’s purge. This was not one of those corners. This was a storm-wracked, empty-throned world of ash and ruin. The Bleed had already been here; it was a place where even the ephemera of memories had died.
Sebastian pressed through the miasma of birth-caul that encased him, tearing away at the fluid and rubbery, translucent flesh that wrapped him. Fresh blood, chunks of flesh and milky fluids rained down into the silt of the conquered world, piling up and running away from his numerous arachnoid legs. He rose up, stretching his two most-human arms at his shoulders in unison with the sprouted crab limbs growing out of his back. He’d grown; back at the Citadel he’d been a huge man, now, he was a monster of terrific proportion. Twelve feet tall, ten feet long, as wide as two ox carts—and covered in leathery skin and plates of chitin. His fang-filled maw was now surrounded by equally spaced tendrils of muscle and sinew, and those tentacles writhed in the pain of birth and the anticipation that soon they’d be dragging Thistle’s body into his mouth.
Sebastian looked around and sniffed the air, seeking out where his quarry might’ve gone to ground. Keen senses scanned left and right, always returning to the distant cluster of drafted spires that threatened to drown out the even more distant mountain ranges.
Lightning struck near to him, and he lashed out with a scream at the sky for daring to startle him.
“My dearest Thistle…I am on my way,” he whispered to the dead world.
Sebastian launched forward in the direction of the city, his army of angry legs stamping into the dead, dry soil over and over. With each of his many stampeding steps, he moved faster, and with more confidence.
“He’s going to eat me,” Derrick whispered into Arridon’s ear. The man
