A Prison of Worlds (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 1) (43 page)

“What
are you doing?  Desecrating my dead apprentices won’t help you,” the demon
stated uneasily.  In the background the magic in the air thrummed, gradually
gaining intensity as it inched towards critical mass.

I
wetted my hand with the blood and dabbed my forehead and chest with it and
quickly went over to my companions to do the same.  They flinched and the looks
they gave me showed disgust.  I think Faramond almost decked me.  They didn’t
refuse though.  Turning to the demon lord, I said, “I guess we’ll see whose
plans come into fruition.”

“What
do you mean,” was as far as he got before I leaped through the barrier.  I felt
a minute bit of resistance as if the air was thicker before I passed.  I was
growing to my maximum size, which turned out to be about twenty feet tall and
grew my talons and teeth as much as I could.  I landed on top of him, managing
to knock him down among the circles.  I was slightly smaller, but our strength
wasn’t so very different. 

I
tore at him with my claws over his face and neck.  Sadly it only caused lines
of thin scratches and welts.  He wasn’t ignoring my efforts, but it was going
to take a week to kill him at this rate.  I fed psionic energy into my blows
and was rewarded with tiny rivulets of blood.  Now it would merely take a day
to whittle him down.  It was doubtful he was going to stay still and take it
either. 

My
thoughts were prophetic since a moment later a blast of hellfire engulfed me
and ejected me back through the barrier past where I was.  Hellfire is demonic
energy and borrowed nothing from the elements, I had little resistance to it.  No
one had any resistance to it.  I became cognizant of where I was several
seconds later as my eyelids reformed and I found myself staring sightlessly at
the sky. Slowly rolling to my feet I looked around.

Back
in the pit Faramond had taken my place in grappling with the demon.  He had one
arm of the demon in a firm grip and was twisting it around.  Of course, the
limb was the same size as the álfar protector himself, so although I expect it
was agonizing I had doubts how effective it was.  Stella was up, out of sight
of the lip of the crater doing a spell.  I recognized it as the summoning spell
she had done earlier.  Mei was pulling her sword out of nowhere and heading
into the pit.

“Do
you know how I realized you weren’t Jin?” Mei began as she approached Vatapi.  “Jin
didn’t avoid me because he was shy.  He avoided me because I had a sword that
was made to kill gods and demons.  Meet Final Death demon!”

Upon
saying this, she sprinted to where the creature was bathing Faramond in
hellfire while he in turn had his arm grappled. She leapt upward and the sword
came down on the wrist of the hand spewing the demonic energy.  And the wrist
flew off in a small spout of volatile black blood.  I gaped.  My heart lifted a
little.  That was one badass sword. 

I
ran towards the pit again intent on grabbing the arm with the missing hand.  If
we immobilized both arms Mei could carve him up at our leisure.  Vatapi must
have realized this too, because he opened his mouth to an unnatural extent and
more hellfire poured out from it, engulfing Mei.  A blazing Mei flew back over
the crater lip, dropping the sword in the process.  I didn’t expect to see her
back anytime soon.  Faramond was obviously an endurance freak, but shifters,
even bear or tiger shifters, weren’t tough enough to get up after that.

I
reached the demon lord just in time to get his full attention as he finally
managed to throw the fairy guardian off.  He, at least, seemed mostly unhurt,
though his skin had sunburned patina to it.  Unlike Sabastian and Mei, I am no
martial artist, however I do know a few basic tricks.  I rushed in and grabbed
the taller creature.  It seemed to know less martial arts than I did because he
barely resisted my levering him over my shoulder and he flew up out of the
barrier and out over the crater’s rim.

Alone
for a moment, I stood under the barrier surrounded by the active circles
getting my bearings.  The magic was reaching its peak and whatever was going to
happen would be soon.  Examining the circles, I saw the barrier and frantically
scanned how the exclusions were defined.  There is saw the spots of blood that
must have been from the apprentices.  Borrowing on the sympathy of the
apprentices blood was how I had bypassed the protection but how had Vatapi
defined himself?  Ah, there.  Of course, he hadn’t inscribed his name.  Names
were dangerous things for demons or any greater entity.  A bit of black blood
showed where the demon lord had excluded himself from the spells effect.  Tearing
off my sleeve I spat on the crusted demon blood and rubbed hard.  My specially
ordered clothing had stretched with me when I grew. It was now skin tight so it
had taken a second to get my finger under it. 

I
heard a thud and a screech of frustrating from the edge of the circle.  Vatapi
had leaped down to the barrier to find that he was now excluded.  He pounded on
the barrier in rage spewing vitriol from his mouth, both hellfire and verbal. 
Faramond was his back, his arms wrapped around the demons throat in a futile
attempt to choke him with one arm and slam his other fist into the demon’s
cheek.  I could actually see swelling bloom under the fur as the blows landed,
but this wasn’t going to have a happy ending unless we significantly changed
things.

“Sorry,
this location is under new occupancy,” I shouted over my shoulder as I
continued to examine the circle.  Okay, those circles linked to the other
portals.  Those other circles looked like barriers.  The circles were almost
active, brimming with power, a minute more and they would activate and likely
became almost indestructible.  The energy was distributed equally across all
the circles.  If I destroyed any of them the excess energy would redistribute
and switch on the entire thing.  That meant I couldn’t simply destroy the
entire thing.

I
felt the ground tremble and looked back to see a huge earth elemental approach
Vatapi from behind and encase the demon lord in a rocky embrace.  It was a bit
careless of its attack and Faramond was crushed in between the demon and the
elemental.  I winced, elementals were infamous for not caring about collateral
damage.  Nevertheless, I was sure he would be fine.

Looking
back to the circle, I made a decision.  I couldn’t destroy it, but I could
modify it. Inside the barrier circle, I inscribed the sigil for demon and evil
under the inclusions and a dabbed a drop of my blood under the exclusions. 
Vatapi’s was likely there, but I didn’t have time to wipe it off.  Then I took
a talon and etched a connecting line to the barrier circles to the portal
circles.  This additional structure distributed the energy a little wider,
slowing the charging a minute amount.  I then raced over to the portal circles
and etched the demon sigil under the exclusion section and my drop of blood on
the inclusion list.

I
had no idea how effective my changes would be.  There was no time for
calculation and although this was the master circle array that supposedly coordinated
all the other circles in the ten dimensions, the others were not written with
these changes.  I had no idea the effect this mismatch would have.  Ideally, as
the master matrix it would overwrite the others.

I
heard a thud behind me and a huge force smashed into me from behind.  I found
myself unwillingly flying through the air, over the circles and out of the
barrier again.  At that moment, the circle array hit critical mass and the
world as it was, ended.  And a new one began.

A
massive tear in the dimensions formed above me, towering a mile above me by. 
Energy surged through the ley lines, now visible and glowing in a cold blue
light to even mortal eyes.  They were monstrous torrents of energy stretching
from the portal.  All five of the lines connecting to the node were visible,
each one a river of energy.  And oh, it felt so good.  Gone was my hunger, my
constant companion since I had been exiled to this world.  I couldn’t help it,
I roared in pleasure and heard and answering roar from the pit. Vatapi was
enjoying the moment too.  Right now, saturated with energy we could both shrug
off megatons of explosives.  The satellite weapon was meaningless now.

In
the distance, I heard alarms go off and I saw the buoys around the park drop,
as smoke billowed out.  I knew that out in the city, probably the world, aircars
were falling out of the sky, power plants were going offline and technology in
general was unwinding as fifty years of advancement was destroyed.  A lot of
people were going to die today.  Hopefully, the hospitals would have enough
power to bring them back to life.

I
raced over to the pit and saw Vatapi.  He was inside the barrier, his arms
raised in triumph.  Faramon was still around his neck, pummeling the demon lord
but being temporarily ignored.  Meanwhile, the elemental pounded futilely on
the outside of the magical dome.  Stella was far behind me, well away from the
crater, arms crossed over her chest and eyes closed.  Supposedly she was
directing the elemental.  I looked closer at the demon lord and saw a smear of
blood on his chest and forehead.  Well, rakshasa were known to be smart, it
made sense that he had stolen my idea and used the apprentice’s blood to regain
entrance to the barrier again.  I could tell that Faramon and the elemental
each had benefited from the new energy levels.  We were now all stronger than
we were.  But the demon lord was still the strongest among us.

The
good news was that the circles were fully empowered and the changes I made were
fixed.  No changes could be made with that much energy flowing through them. 
You would have to shut down the portals and stop the energy flow first and if
we could do that we wouldn’t have any of these issues in the first place.

The
bad news was we had an angry demon lord on the rampage and he wasn’t going away
until he had killed us all.  I stared at Vatapi below me, a huge portal stretched
from the surface of the inscribed circles to a mile in the air.  With Mei out
of commission where could I get enough energy to eliminate him?  He was the
closest thing to a god I knew of on this plane.  It would take an artifact,
such as Mei’s sword, or something similarly powered directly from the firmament
to do anything.  Mei’s sword was bonded to only her and until she came back
from wherever she was flung, her sword would remain embedded in the floor next
to the circles where it had landed like King Arthur’s sword in the stone.

Unless
there were mad dwarves passing out rune weapons, the only runes I knew in the
area were the ones on my chest and the ones on the tooth. The tooth was presently
being carried by Stella.  There was also the anchor rune on an indestructible
chunk of permacrete laying in some nameless alley in the city.  It was ironic
that I had myself been hoping to create a portal to another dimension.  The
stress of walking through the portal had a chance to break or weaken the rune. 
Even if it didn’t break it could at least widen the definition of the rune. 
Increase my ability to wander, limited teleportation... something more than
what I had.

I
tapped my chest where my anchor rune lay.  There was a lot of energy in runes. 
The moment when the energies rebalance were instants filled with limitless
potential.  That was an idea.  More a hope, but I would take what I could get.

My
thoughts had wings and almost no time had passed while I had gone over my
limited options.  Having a rough plan, I acted.  I activated my force field,
putting all my remaining energy in it.  I had been saving it, so amplified by
the energy flowing from the portal it was a lot.  Once more I jumped down to
the pit and rushed through the barrier.  I tackled Vatapi who was still posed
in proud victory, encircled his waist with my arms and carried him across the
portal.

He
raged and blew hellfire from his mouth down on my back but to be honest that
was the least of the pain.  As I crossed the threshold the anchor rune tried to
act.  It was like having a heart attack, a huge pressure coupled with sharp
pain right over my heart.  I did my best to ignore the hellfire eating at my
force field and the pain from the anchor and focus on the energies within the
rune.  The portal’s existence and sheer energy fought with the rune and I used
the imbalance to act.  I reversed the energy balance and in that instance I
became the anchor and the indestructible chunk of permacrete was forced to come
to me.

I
flipped Vatapi so his back was to the portal and waited.  Off in the distance I
heard thunder and crashing and I knew a new hell was about to be unleashed.  Of
course, the demon lord wasn’t tamely standing there. He bathed me in hellfire
from his mouth once again and clawed my head and back with his remaining hand. 
My force field went down almost immediately afterward.  Even with the energies
flowing through me, it was gone in seconds.  The only reason I didn’t go flying
off, like I had before, was the death grip I had on the demon’s waist and that
the column of demonic forces was directed downward. 

My
legs collapsed immediately after my force field so I was just hanging from his waist. 
I think the hellfire may have done something to my back because I couldn’t feel
my lower body and my upper body burned, radiating more pain than I thought
possible.  He stopped soaking me in demonic energies and almost gently held my now
limp body up before him.  “It was a good try but as I said, you’re not the
first dragon I have schooled in manners.”