The Past
"Oren. Man. You're doing just fine," Caelum said, helping Oren out of a bulky sort of suit whose enchantments were supposed to make it possible for him to survive outside the safe areas of Freeport, where gravity and breathable air were more suggestions than dependable facts. "Caelum says you're doing just fine."
Caelum had been waiting at one of the docks near the end of Freeport, near where gravity went strange. To reach it, Oren had taken something called an 'elevator,' a little room that moved magically up and down a shaft that ran through this section of the place. From there, somehow 'outside' the place that defined his understanding of the world, he rode a little taxi without a pilot, similar to those he had seen on the streets and in the skies of Silfanore. This one hovered the same distance from the metal exterior all the way. As the shape of it narrowed into a spire, he felt lighter and lighter, and was glad he had lashed himself into his seat lest he go tumbling into the chaos of the Aetherial Sea. Somewhere above him, he had decided, Ava was climbing impossible mountains.
Caelum ferried him from the dock to his ship on what looked like the skeleton of the more trustworthy little taxi, and the fact that he could see into its engine where presumably alchemical agents were reacting to what was probably a dragonshard to power the thing only made him more nervous. The sight of it to his newly enhanced senses nauseated him; or, perhaps, that was just the continued threshold sickness.
"Two hours ago," Caelum said, "I take delivery of demon goods for you. Nice elf boy in a yacht, most pretty yacht." Oren didn't know if the goods were actually demonic or the Utopian was just using the word to mean generally bad; he didn't feel up to asking.
Free of the suit, Oren pulled himself gingerly over to his equipment, the hodgepodge of magical shit he didn't understand that, coupled with his new magic tricks, allowed him to do some of the specific tasks his human automaton of a father required of him. If he did this, though, perhaps his previous sins against the man would be, if not forgotten, then forgiven. Then he could make legitimate deals, wheel himself back to being a prince of Cathena's underworld. Or, fuck, go elsewhere. New city. New scenery. New people.
"Well," he said to Caelum, "let's see it."
Caelum produced a package slightly smaller than Oren's head, fished a pearl-handled switchblade on a braided leather lanyard out of the hip pocket of his short pants, and carefully opened it. He extracted a rectangle made of something strange, not metal, but not stone either. It hummed in his hand when Caelum gave it to him.
"Is that part of some... gun?" he asked. Aurin didn't like those; they weren't reliable as a blade. Still, in some places, they were as mystical as Silfanore's sewer system.
"No," Oren said, turning it over in his hands as they absorbed impressions from it will he or nil he, "but it's a weapon. It'll do some damage."
"Not on this boy's tug, man," he said firmly, reaching for it.
"Won't hurt you. Won't hurt your tug. I've got to connect it to the established magics with my toys," he indicated them, "before it can work on anything. It's going to do some damage to a certain part of Freeport maybe."
"Well, elf boy, he said these toys of yours will tell you every what and wherefore you wanna know."
"All right," Oren said, dubious about that. This was still relatively uncharted territory for him, his skills with new tricks stitched to his soul and strange magic jobs that all interacted to do things he only sort of understood. "Well, you leave it to me, all right?"
Caelum kicked off the wall and swam through the air, picking up a lump of caulk to that he started molding into fronds for application somewhere on his tug. Oren looked away. For some reason, the sight of it invoked his nausea.
"What is this thing?" he asked Decimo's amputated spirit. He took a swig of ghostwine to make the communication easier.
"Huh. Some complicated enchantment work. Hold on. All right, this thing... when you activate it just right, will worm its way through certain kinds of wards to get into mnemosyte libraries, and hm, works on a magical level as well as a spiritual level, so I suppose someone's anticipating hungry ghosts on leashes or something—"
"How about a demon?"
"Probably a demon, but some are more powerful than others."
"Mists. Where is it from?"
"Solunarium."
"It's Solunarian?"
"Yep."
"Sleep." He thought for a moment, then changed his mind. "Wake. Dec. Any idea how we got this magical weapon from Solunarium? It doesn't seem like the sort of thing they would export."
"Huh. Scanning." After a few minutes of this. "All right. Everything's faint and chaotic, what's attached to the thing itself which is solidly what it is and what it is is Solunarian. But there's a hint of death... all right, no. Best guess is one of those Silver Sentinels died on a mission in Auris and the gray elves picked it up."
"Gray elves..."
"Was a gold elf," Caelum called, only able to hear the things Oren said out loud and not what he said while interfacing with what was left of Decimo.
"Came from a gold elf, Dec."
"Hold on."
On a hunch, Oren grabbed the packaging and held it close, scanning it so he could share those impressions with Decimo.
"Oh, fuck. OK. Yeah, the one who delivered that is owned by the Archebolds. They're on a list here somewhere."
"The fuck. Listen, Dec, and gimme the benefit of your background, all right? Galeas seems to be setting up a run on a demon that serves the Archebolds. They own a couple of those mnemosyte libraries you were talking about."
"Yeah, one killed me. The first time."
"...yeah. So perhaps they do or perhaps they don't have some sort of... magical link... that reaches out here in the Aetherial Sea? But it looks like they have one at Luminaria, the Archebold base, at the tip of the spire, and we're supposed to use this to cut into it. So if Douma is backing the whole show, it's paying us to burn... it? It's burning itself. And something calling itself Douma is trying to get on my good side, get me to maybe shaft good old dad. What gives?"
"Motive," came the voice from the soul gem into his mind, or his spirit or whatever. "Real motive problem with a demon. Not human, you see?"
"Well, yeah, obviously."
"No. I mean, it's not human. And you can't get a handle on it. Me, I'm not human either, but I respond like one, you see?"
"Wait a second," Oren said. "Are you human or not?"
"Well, it sort of feels like I am, kid, but I'm really just whatever bits of soul they scraped up and scooped into this magic rock. It's one of those, ah, philosophical questions, I suppose..." The ugly sensation of laughter rattled down Oren's spine. "But I ain't likely to write you a poem, if you follow me. Your demon, it just might. But it ain't no human. Or elf or any of the naturally occurring assholes in Ransera."
"So you figure we can't get onto its motive?"
"It own itself?"
"I mean, I don't know? An Archebold or someone they own summoned it, huh? Or acquired whatever they're using to leash it. But I've heard tell there are princes in hell, so either Douma is one, in which case we're probably all fucked, or it owes allegiance to one."
"That's a good one," Decimus said. "Like, someone owns its ass in the infernal hells, but it lives in our world where it could wreak real havoc, but an old lineage of magi own its ass here. Sure. Lots of luck, demon."
"So, like, it wants to die rather than be a slave in the hells or here?" Oren began to prod with his mind at some of his magical tools like tonguing a loose tooth.
"Autonomy, that's the prize, where your demon's concerned. My guess, Oren, is you're going in there to cut the magical shackles that keep this bastard from flexing its real muscles. And I can't see how you'd distinguish, say, between some of the moves the demon makes and the moves the tribe that owns it makes, so that brings some confusion in." Again the laughter that wasn't laughter. "See, those things, a shit-ass summoner can let one into our world. But from what I understand, there's a sliding scale of how powerful the summoner and how powerful the summoned. And with a demon, how fucking manipulative and strategic. So. Oh, shit. Well, all right. It could have just been summoned from the hells. Or it could have made a pact with some idiot summoner, but took over the summoner's body, right? In which case... What if they have its body back in Ransera somewhere, but extracted the demon? So, they have the leash of the body that allows it to even be here, and then a leash to keep it docile and obedient. I mean, if it was me, I would have a redundant amount of leashes on something like that, and I'm still stupid enough to die trying to bore into one of those silos of magic and knowledge and other exotic goods. But, I mean, there are demon hunters and those guys are fucking terrifying. They will hunt down the ones that get loose. Some of them take it a step farther and hunt down summoners known to fuck with demons just for good measure, you see? But any summoner worth their salt is going to have safeguards in their compact so every demon allowed to be in our world has a cocked crossbow lashed to its forehead."
Oren glared at his equipment, half imagining Decimus was really there.
"All right," he said finally, and slid the rectangle into a slot in one of his devices. "I want you to scan it. Galeas said they would have instructions magically encoded into the thing, but I need your help to read them. And, err, tell me what you think."
He got the sense of someone reading over his shoulder, which was creepy. Then it stopped. Then it continued.
"Unholy fuck, Oren. It's a slow weapon. Or tool. I'd say it would take about six hours to crack the wards that killed me, and the other myriad defenses."
"Or a demon?" Oren posited. He sighed. "Can we make it work?"
"Sure," said the voice that had carved its way through the uncanny valley and into his mind, "unless you got a morbid fear of dying."
"Sometimes you repeat yourself, man."
"It's my nature."
The Past
Aurin woke up in a cold sweat. The sheets were sodden, twisted, and curled around him like vines or restraining ropes.
"Fuck," he whimpered. Instead of extricating himself, he just curled in on himself as best he was able hugging his knees to his chest. A part of him knew he could sit up, work his way out of the bedding, perhaps have a warm bath and a hot mug of herbal tisane, and go back to sleep.
Another part of him knew that the nightmares would only return. Perhaps not that night, but he never knew. Right now, he could feel them, feel their dark fingers grasping at him, weighing down his eyelids. Sometimes the only way out was through. Grin and bear it, like one rival of his father's who had fucked him brutally as if it would affect Galeas Cavafy at all.
Aurin tensed, but fell back into his subconscious all the same. The dreams would end when they were good and ready, and not a moment before.
