Demon Lord VI - Son of Chaos (5 page)

“
Evacuate the ship?”

She nodded.
“Go to the bridge and give the order. It looks like they want to
talk to our captive before they start slaughtering us.”

Enyo crawled
towards the door while Nikira watched the blond dra’voren,
frowning. He gestured, and the clamps on Bane’s limbs oozed away
like quicksilver, then he spread his hands and placed them upon
Bane’s chest, his expression rapt. Her mouth fell open as golden
light flared under his palms and sank into the flesh of the man on
the table, making his skin glow. It brightened, filling the
shredder chamber with a pure, celestial incandescence. Nikira
gasped, raising a hand to her mouth. The light flooded through the
observation window and filled the containment room with a warm,
benign radiance. Enyo stopped and turned to gape at the light,
which lasted only a few moments. As it faded, Nikira’s eyes filled
with tears, and she sobbed, her gut quivering.

“
No, it can’t be...”

Enyo crawled
back to her. “Commander...”

“
He’s a creator.”

The blond man
lifted his hands and stepped back, and Nikira stared at the
dra’voren, whose injuries had vanished.

“
He’s healed him,” she whispered. “But why?”

The creator
exited the shredder room and stopped beside the door, gazing
around. “Come forth!”

Nikira rose to
her feet, and the rest of the contechs followed suit, their eyes
wide. The creator surveyed them with a flinty gaze, his expression
grim.

“
I am Lord Drevarin. Do you know what I am now, or are the
depths of your ignorance too profound?”

“
We know,” Nikira said in a shaking voice.

His gaze
impaled her. “Good. You are fools! All of you! It is not within my
power to punish you, since you are not my people, but it is within
his!” He stabbed a finger at the prisoner.

“
But why did you heal him? He’s a dra’voren.”

“
No, he is not!” Drevarin thundered, making everyone shrink
back. “He is tar’merin!” He stepped closer to Nikira, who cringed.
“His soul is pure! I am sure he told you this, many times, but you
would not listen, would you?”

“
How could we know he wasn’t lying?”

Some of the rage seemed to drain out of him, and he eyed her.
“Indeed, hard to know. But when he summoned an angel to tell you,
that should have been
a very big
clue
!” His voice rose to a roar on the last
words.

Nikira
tottered to the nearest chair and sat down on it, shaking. “An
angel?”

Drevarin
stabbed a finger at the winged being, who waved. “Yes, foolish
woman, an angel!”

Nikira wanted
to sink into the floor as a wave of shame and anguish washed over
her. “We didn’t know.”

“
So it would seem. You almost killed him! You injured an angel.
You tried to injure me! You deserve to be punished. If you had a
god, I would demand that he did so.” He paused, breathing hard, his
eyes filled with fury. “I was summoned from my domain to save him.
His kind is so rare that only four exist in legend, and they are
long since gone. Do you know how much one such as he is
valued?

“
He is the only one who can save a light god from what you call
a dra’voren, a dark god. The only one in all of creation! The
chances of another tar’merin existing at this time are miniscule!
The chances of his being born as he is, and becoming what he is,
are so minute as to be inconceivable.”

Nikira stared
up at him, her sight blurred by tears of shame. “Then everything he
said was true?”

The creator’s
eyes narrowed. “No. He is still a dark god, and therefore he is
quite liable to lie.”

She sagged
with relief. “Then the story about a Grey God who helped him might
be a lie?”

“
That, I doubt. What did he tell you?”

“
That he has a Grey God as a friend, and he’s in
trouble.”

“
Did he give this Grey God a name?”

Nikira nodded.
“Kayos.”

He stepped
forward and gripped her arm, pulling her to her feet. “He spoke
that name?”

“
Y-Yes.”

“
Then you and your fellow idiots have blundered even more
monumentally than I would have thought possible. By imprisoning
him, you have endangered the eldest of the Seven Originators, one
of the Founders of the God Realm, creator of the very fabric from
which our universe is made.” He thrust her back into the
chair.

“
We didn’t know.”

“
That is not an acceptable excuse! Your people have fallen into
ignorance, become drunk on your power, and forgotten the teachings
that should have guided you.”

“
How can we make amends?”

“
You cannot! I will have to undo the damage you have done to
him, and hope I can do it in time.” He paused. “But there is
something deeper, something profoundly wrong at his very core,
which I could only sense. Did he tell you anything that happened to
him before you captured him? Anything that harmed him?”

Nikira
searched her reeling mind. “He said that shackles were put on
him.”

“
They trapped his power within his flesh?”

“
Yes.”

He swung to
stare at the man on the table for a moment, then faced her again.
“Who did that to him?”

“
The people who were with him. They thought he was evil
too.”

“
Get out.” She started to rise, then he raised his hand, and
she froze. “No. Stay. You have much to learn.” His eyes flitted
over the gawping contechs. “You do not even know how to behave in
the presence of a god. You have no respect.”

Nikira
hesitated, uncertain, then sank down on one knee, and the rest of
the containment room crew followed her example. Drevarin’s gaze
swept over them again, but he seemed unimpressed. “Too little, and
far too late. But you should practice, for when he awakens.”

“
Will he kill us?”

“
That depends on what you did to him, and how angry he
is.”

“
We didn’t know!”

Drevarin
turned away. “Your only hope is that he finds that to be an
acceptable excuse, else you are doomed.”

Nikira watched
him re-enter the shredder room, torn between awe at the presence of
this legendary being and cold dread at the prospect of the
dra’voren’s punishment. Drevarin stopped beside the table and gazed
down at the man upon it, then gestured. A glowing cloud couch
appeared, and he scooped up the unconscious tar’merin and placed
him upon its pale, cottony softness.

With a
negligent wave, he caused the table to vanish, and then moved the
floating couch into the centre of the room. Leaning over the
tar’merin, he once more laid his hands upon his chest and closed
his eyes. Golden light flared under his palms and sank into the
tar’merin’s flesh, illuminating it. The containment crew stared,
spellbound, at the amazing scene, their expressions rapt.

After several
minutes, Nikira dragged her eyes from the observation window and
turned to Enyo, who had come to stand beside her. “I wish we had
scanners in there now.”

Enyo seemed
not to hear her at first, and then he spoke without glancing at
her. “He only knocked out the consoles.”

“
Can we fix them?”

“
Given time, but I doubt he’ll let us. There is, however,
another set of consoles in the medlab. All we need to do is reroute
the scanners to them.”

She nodded.
“Do it.”

Enyo shot her
an incredulous look. “Commander, you’re playing with fire. He’s a
creator!”

“
This opportunity is too good to miss. He said he can’t punish
us.”

Enyo leant
closer. “He also said that the dra’voren can.”

“
It’s a risk worth taking. Why did you suggest it
then?”

“
It’s my duty to inform you of what can be done, and yours to
decide what to do.”

“
I’ve decided.”

Enyo shook his
head, looking bemused. “We’re in the presence of a legendary,
all-powerful being who creates worlds, and all you can think of is
how to analyse him?”

Nikira
hesitated, then nodded. “It’s our duty, no matter how extraordinary
the situation.”

“
Extraordinary?” He snorted. “Try unbelievable, or incredible.
I’m still not sure I’m not dreaming.”

The senior
contech ran a hand over his face in a gesture of confusion and
bewilderment before he headed for the door, glancing back often.
Nikira gazed at the creator, the enormity of the situation serving
to numb her to its long-term ramifications. There was simply too
much to take in all at once, and resorting to the clinical
detachment her training offered was her only defence for the
moment. Drevarin stood immobile, his brow furrowed in
concentration. The angel had entered the shredder room and stood
close by, watching him.

Drevarin sent
his power deep into the tar’merin, seeking the damage he had sensed
earlier. It eluded him, and he cursed his inexperience. Usually it
was sufficient to send the light in with a wish to heal, but now he
had to find something so subtle that the light could not heal it
alone. The ravages of exhaustion and malnutrition weakened the
Demon Lord’s flesh, and he set about correcting that, a
time-consuming and complex task in itself.

While his
power poured forth to restore Bane’s strength, he first examined
his blood, finding it untouched, then looked deeper. The scars in
Bane’s brain puzzled him, but they were old and long healed, not
the cause of his weakness. The rune scars had channels that led to
his bones, through which the dark power flowed when he Gathered
it.

While he
searched, Drevarin pondered the strangeness of the tar’merin’s
flesh, so much stronger than a normal man’s, its structure slightly
different. Like comparing ebony to balsa, or steel to tin. When the
Demon Lord died, his body would take aeons to decompose. Drevarin
searched through flesh and bone, finding nothing amiss, yet knowing
that something was. Bane’s soul shone with blue-white purity,
giving off subtle warmth he had not encountered before, and he
deduced that only a tar’merin possessed it. Reaching the end of his
search, he paused, pondering his failure, then went back to the
beginning and started again.

Enyo glanced
around at Nikira, who studied the medlab’s bioscanner screen over
his shoulder. “Well, what that means is beyond me.”

The screen was
filled with coruscating rainbow hues in random, wave-like patterns.
Nikira shook her head. “Maybe when he’s not using the white fire,
we’ll be able to see more.”

“
I wouldn’t bet on that.”

“
This is our chance to study a creator, Enyo. Let’s not blow
it.”

“
It feels wrong.”

“
I know.” Nikira straightened and turned away. “Deal with
it.”

Back in the
containment room, a crowd of spectators gathered amongst the
defunct consoles, watching the creator with bemused expressions.
Drevarin still stood beside the tar’merin, pouring golden power
into him. The angel sat on the floor, his wings raised, his eyes
closed as if asleep. At least an hour had passed, yet the tar’merin
remained unconscious. A deep, warm gladness that he would live
filled her heart, and she wondered at it. The revelations of his
true nature and the creator’s presence had yet to sink in, and it
still seemed like a dream. She sat on a chair that a contech
vacated for her, staring at the amazing scene in her shredder
room.

Hours passed
while the creator stood like a statue, and when Nikira’s eyes grew
heavy she left to get some sleep.

***

Within his
shield sphere, Kayos gazed into the Eye, heartened by the scene
within it. He did not know the name of the god who had come to
Bane’s rescue, but he was grateful to him. He seemed to know the
urgency of restoring Bane to his full potential, and was now busy
doing just that. Bane had summoned the angel just before Kayos did
it himself, showing a laudable sense of self-preservation and lack
of arrogance. That was because he had no power, however.

Asking for
help was not something gods did often. Most tended to think
themselves invincible, especially the young ones. In one remarkable
instance, an angel had freed a goddess from a flesh beast, but at
the cost of his life. The goddess had been recaptured, and she had
not summoned another angel. Sadly an angel, even one armed with the
Sword of Vengeance, was nothing more than a distraction to a dark
god.

A soft grating
made Kayos look up with a frown. The ominous silence outside had
become oppressive, and that was the first sound to break it.
Whatever Torvaran was doing, it did not involve hammering on his
shield sphere with the dark power. He glanced back at the Eye, and
the image changed to show the dull landscape outside, and his
sphere. Torvaran stood beside it, a shining key in his hand, which
he waved over the sphere. Each time he did, the key sparkled and
pulsed. Kayos’ heart sank. Torvaran was trying to re-programme the
key by sensitising it to the sphere.

Keys performed
two functions. Firstly they deactivated the wards outside a realm
gate, allowing the holder to approach it, and then, if it was tuned
to that particular gate, the key would unlock it. Part of the
structure of Kayos’ sphere was similar to a realm gate’s wards,
which would vanquish any dark god foolish enough to step within
their range. The elements of ward power in a sphere’s structure
made it impregnable, though benign. If a key was sensitised to a
sphere’s ward patterns, however, it might deactivate them.