DARKNESS EVOLVES Chapter Ten
"Hey, Kiddo - you awake?"
I opened my eyes. Chris was sitting next to me on the edge of his bed. His hair was combed but still wet from the shower. He was pulling on a clean pair of jeans.
"You do sleep a lot," he said with a grin. He stood up and zipped up the jeans, then pulled a faded green t-shirt over his head. Now his combed hair was all messy again.
Yawning and giving a big stretch, I smiled and nodded sheepishly. "Hey, Chris," I sat up, "would you do me a favor?"
"Sure. What is it?"
"Do you have anything made out of silver?"
"What do you mean?"
"I need something small, like a piece of jewelry or a silver dollar."
"Silver?" The muscles around his puppy-dog eyes scrunched up as he peered at me. "I'm not sure. Do you know where my – "
I picked his glasses up off nightstand and handed them to him.
"Oh, thanks." He slipped them on and turned to his dresser to rummage around in the top drawer.
"How `bout this?" He held up a ring. It was a silver band with a simple geometric pattern marching around the outside.
"What is it?"
"Navaho Indian jewelry. My mom bought it for me on a vacation one summer when I was eight. It's supposed to be pure silver." He grimaced. "I bet it's made in China."
"Can I see it?"
"Sure." He handed it to me. "You can have it, if you want. I wore it a few times when I was a kid, but it doesn't fit any more."
The ring had a nice weight to it. It fit snuggly on my middle finger. I brought it to my lips and listened to its story. The pattern was Navaho, although traditionally this one was for rugs, not jewelry. The silver was from a mine in western New Mexico. The casting was done in a goldsmith shop in Albuquerque. All in all, about as authentic as you get these days.
"This is good. Thanks."
Chris glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed. "Holy shit! I gotta get back to the game. I'm gonna be late!" He dashed out of the room.
I went into the bathroom and wetted down a washcloth. After I wiped down my cock and the rest of my crotch I took a long piss. Then I went back into the bedroom, dressed and followed Chris into his computer room.
He was seated in front of his screen typing away on some chat program in World of Warcraft. Sinslayer was standing in a group with a bunch other characters who looked all armored up for some heavy action.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Getting ready for a raid," Chris answered absently. "We're gonna take down Atramedes. He's a boss-level dragon. This'll be cool, `cause the dragon's blind. He uses sound to fight."
"Are those other guys real players?"
"Yeah. They're my guildmates."
"Can I watch?" Stepping forward I casually placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Sure. Just don't distract me, okay?"
"Okay."
I closed my eyes and moved my awareness through my hand and down into the seed I'd planted in Chris' gut. From its moist furrow the seed sprouted and grew, filling his torso and branching out into his limbs until he surrounded me like a suit of armor. This was why I hadn't put on a condom; Chris was my Trojan horse.
Through the game console in his hands, I sent my armored self into the World of Warcraft and issued my challenge. From somewhere in the vast lightless jungle of the Internet the fiend heard me. It approached. Our awarenesses touched lightly and I kenned its delight. Yes, it would fight me.
I withdrew from contact, then settled back to watch and wait. This first stage belonged to Chris and his guildmates.
The raiders moved through an underground complex, slaughtering wandering monsters and guards as they made their way to the lair of the boss, Atramedes. They took out a flying drake and some things Chris called slayers, then a couple groups of belligerent dwarves. Sinslayer plowed through it all, dealing out destruction with his glowing two-handed sword.
The group stepped into a large cavernous hall, gathered for a quick huddle, and took positions in a rough circle. One of the members hit a gong. The dragon boss descended and the first phase of the real battle began.
The fiend was in Atramedes. It knew I was a member of the raid, but it didn't know which character I was controlling. Because the dragon was blind, it couldn't identify any of us by sight. Instead it would attempt to locate us through the sound-related abilities it possessed.
The raiders attacked the dragon with the various weapons and spells they'd prepared. Sinslayer stepped in and began hacking away. The dragon struck back with the strength of its powerful body and its searing sonic breath. Modulations of sound waves swept out from its body. From its feet smaller circles of sonar pulses moved around the hall like little spinning tornados.
Atramedes zeroed in on one of the raiders and tracked it with its flaming breath.
"Kite right, kite right!" Chris screamed at the targeted raider as Sinslayer and the other players moved in the opposite direction.
One of the players — a ranger, I think — fired an arrow at one of eight metal shields hanging on pillars around the hall. The shield let out a loud gong and the dragon froze, temporarily overwhelmed by vertigo induced by the resonating clash.
After a few seconds Atramedes snapped out of it and destroyed the offending shield in a blast of fire. Battle resumed. The dragon went after the raider who had hit the shield. The player moved fast, keeping himself out of direct line of fire.
The dragon worked itself up into a frenzy and began firing flames everywhere. The raiders were all getting pounded. The dodging ranger fired off an arrow at another shield and Atramedes was hit by vertigo again. The searing flames stopped. Atramedes destroyed the second shield. Then it took to the air.
That's right, dragons can fly. From above Atramedes rained down flames and sonic bombs. The flames remained on the ground, forming patches of fire around the hall. The raiders were running everywhere, dodging fires and sonic circles. Those who had anything to shoot — missiles or spells — were hammering away at the airborne boss. One of the party was down, and then another. One of the down ones got back up, resurrected by another player.
During all of this chaos, as the raiders were trying to kill Atramedes and Chris was trying to keep Sinslayer alive, the fiend and I were engaged in another battle. Our fight was more primitive than the strategies wielded around us. For us it was a simple battle of wills: we were each trying to tilt the random variables of the game in our favor.
The dragon landed again for another ground phase of battle. Sinslayer moved in and Chris bellowed out a war cry, his fingers dancing over the controller, as his character attacked. That was a mistake: the demon heard him.
Atramedes unleashed its devastating fire upon Sinslayer. One of the range fighters shot a missile at another shield, inflicting vertigo on the dragon. The fire stopped.
Sinslayer was badly wounded, but a priest threw a healing spell at him and his hitpoints rebounded. Atramedes recovered. The fiend strained to twist the parameters of the game and fire on Sinslayer again, but I held them steady and the dragon went after the ranger who had shot at the shield instead. Atramedes hit the ranger with devastation again, quickly snuffing him out.
Around me the players chattered excitedly. The dragon shouldn't have been able to do that. It wasn't following the rules.
The battle continued. Raiders continued to hammer at the dragon as it spewed out sonic breath and flames and pounded away with its limbs. Chris moved Sinslayer back up close to hack at the monster again. This time he kept silent.
The dragon took back to the air. Range players kept firing at it. One of them hit another shield. After it recovered Atramedes began casting down sonic attacks. Its roaring flame breath tracked the character who'd hit the shield. The character had buffed its speed and the flame couldn't catch it. Patches of fire and sonar bombs made the room an ever-changing obstacle course that players dodged wildly as they ran.
Atramedes landed. More sonic attacks and flames. One of the raiders — the priest — was getting smashed. Another shield was hit. This time vertigo didn't stop after a few seconds. It just kept going on and on. I'd glitched the rules.
Everyone poured everything they had into the vulnerable dragon. Sinslayer leapt forward and began hammering away. Atramedes' hit points fell fast. Suddenly they were dangerously low. It was dying.
The dragon snapped out of vertigo and spun, immediately unleashing its full firepower onto Sinslayer. Another missile flew against a shield, but nothing happened. Now the fiend had glitched the rules.
Sinslayer's hit points withered away to nothing. He was dead.
Chris died with his character. I felt his heart stop. The demon screamed in triumph and its dragon avatar lifted its head to scream with it, just before the other raiders finished killing it.
The demon thought it had won. It didn't know that Chris and I were two different people. It thought that when it killed his character — and his body with it — that it had killed me. But it hadn't. I was one body up on it, and I was ready.
Before the fiend could recover from its avatar's death and jump to another host, I grabbed it. Without an anchor, the demon couldn't resist being pulled into my body. We entered the second phase of our duel.
I had expected this part of the fight to be easier. It was my own body, so I had the home field advantage. Because of my darkfather's previous indwelling, the overwhelming intensity of the demon's immortal essence didn't stun me the way it would someone who hadn't endured possession before. Also, I'd absorbed my darkfather's memories, which made me even more resistant to its demonic toxicity. And my mother's shade was fighting with me. This should be a quick victory.
Stupid me. The fiend was stronger than my darkfather had been. I'd been expecting that. But not this much stronger. The memories of the eons of its immortal existence — and of the countless human possessions it had perpetrated — were far clearer. They gave it strength and focus. And its emotions were stronger. My darkfather had been a malicious child, tormenting neighborhood strays. The fiend was a bottomless pit of rage against its millennia-long dying.
Against all of that I was an 18-year-old boy and a collection of peculiar memories. The fiend fell upon me like a giant serpent, smothering me in its coils. I fought back, struggling to pin it with my own bodily weight. My mother's shade batted at its head. SSSSsss — fangs flashed and struck. Mom screamed and fell away, dissolving into forgetfulness. The demon slithered out of my grasp and coiled around me. My body was immobilized.
I'd been so foolishly overconfident. Just because I was the big man on campus didn't mean I was ready for the professional leagues. The fiend had lured me into the challenge and ambushed my ambush. It had been so naive to think that this demon would be as easy to entrap as my darkfather. It knew all about Son Tzu, too. Maybe it had even been Son Tzu.
The coils tightened. Mom was gone forever. Her shade would never come back. Now, much too late, I began to feel afraid.
The demon squeezed tighter. The fear grew. I could feel its coils gaining weight and hardness as they sank into my flesh, becoming chains of iron. It was taking my body, stripping it away from me just as I'd stripped away my darkfather's memories. It hurt. Bad.
The chains rattled across my mind. My awareness was constricting. I could hear the demon's laugher now. Laughing at my fear, my pain, my loss. Drinking them in. Consuming my Darkness. It had me now.
Images began to flash through my diminishing awareness. They were gruesome, blood-filled images of the things it would use my body — and my Darkness — to do. A person possessed by a fiend usually becomes a serial killer. A possessed sorcerer could become the charismatic master of a cult of killers. The first victim would be Daniel. He would either bow to my indweller's will and become a tool of destruction, or he would die a filthy, degrading death. Either way he would be damned.
I couldn't let that happen. Daniel had suffered too much already. He would not become a demon's plaything. I would rather die than let that happen. The demon could destroy me, but it would never use me against the only person in the world who mattered.
With what coherent will I had left, I focused my attention on my heart. I would stop it. Chris and I would both die.
Intertwined as we were, the demon glimpsed my intention. Its mood shifted abruptly. The gloating flipped to a surge of fear. Suddenly we were grappling for a different reason. It was struggling to restrain my will to die.
Why was it afraid? It wasn't like my death could harm it ... could it? Had we become too intertwined? Could I drag it with me into oblivion?
The fiend's fear blossomed to full terror. It had overcommitted itself and was now vulnerable. I could destroy it, if I were determined to kill myself.
I'm not a hero and I didn't want to die. I'd rather live as a demon's host than end my own existence. I've endured possession before and I could again. But I couldn't let Daniel suffer. I just couldn't. I bore down. Somewhere back in my body a pain was building in the center of my chest.
The demon went berserk. As frightened of death as I was, it was infinitely more. It had existed for more millennia than I had lived years. As Darkness dwindled it had suffered diminishments and indignities beyond any mortal comprehension. In its frenzied efforts to survive, it had made monstrous sacrifices — and would do them all again for as little as one more heartbeat of existence. There was nothing in the universe more important than its own life.
Poor unloving, unloved fiend. Its hold didn't loosen, but it wasn't squeezing me any more; it was clinging on for dear life. For all its power, it was just a big baby. A giant, rageful baby. As it clutched at me, shrieking, my thoughts cleared. I showed it what it had to do to survive.
It did. Then I gathered it up, stuffed it into my spirit-trap and sealed it tight. Just like a genie in a bottle.
The pain in my distant body receded. Around me everything faded to blackness. I was back in the jungle. Except for the relentless insect buzz of the information flow, it was quiet. But encircling me in the darkness were hundreds of pairs of gleaming eyes. Demons. I was surrounded by demons.
Stupid me again. It had been stupid not to think that maybe the Internet could have more than one demonic inhabitant. The Internet's huge; it's the biggest thing humans have ever built and it's growing ferociously. There's plenty of room for all of them.
In fact, it made sense that demons would flock to the Internet. Darkness keeps dwindling, and any day now they might loose the ability to jump from one host to another. It's an ideal place to sit out the final years before Darkness is reborn and a new cycle begins. The Internet had become a nursing home for supernatural intelligences.
I looked back at all the eyes. The hatred of hundreds of soulless immortal spirits beat down on me. But every time I stared directly at a pair of them, those eyes blinked out. None of them was going to challenge me, not after what I'd just done to one of their top dogs.
Witches can pool their Darkness in a coven circle to get more bang for their buck. Demons can't. A gang of demons is only as powerful as its strongest member, which is why the lineages can usually get the upper hand. I was stronger than any of them, therefore I was stronger than all of them.
I willed, thinking of the S.E.C. and Daniel's emails. No threats were necessary. They all got the picture. Pair by pair the eyes vanished, leaving me alone in the jungle.
I returned to my physical self in front of Chris' computer. His body had slipped out of his chair and lay sprawled on its back at my feet. The eyes were staring at the ceiling and it wasn't breathing. He was definitely dead. I hadn't really expected him to survive the ambush. That's one reason I hadn't wanted Daniel around when we confronted the fiend.
When my big brother got back he'd be pretty upset to find our host dead on the floor. He'd never believe that it wasn't my fault.
I knelt beside Chris' body and put my hand on its forehead. It was still warm. Less than thirty seconds had passed since the demon had stopped his heart. I sighed. Okay, Daniel, I'll do this for you.
I slammed my fist against the dead man's chest, channeling Darkness into the impact. Like a finicky engine, Chris' heart sputtered and started chugging again. He drew in one shuddering breath and then another.
The eyes blinked open. "Wha ... ?"
"Hey, Chris, are you okay?" I helped him sit up.
"Jesus — " he gasped, "what happened?"
"You just fell out of your chair. It looked like you had a seizure or something. Are you okay?"
"I don't know." He pulled his knees up and sat with his head against them.
I placed my hand on the back of his neck. Now that he was alive again his skin felt cold and clammy.
"Jesus, I feel like death warmed over." He coughed and then gagged. "Shit. I gotta go to the bathroom. I'm going to be sick."
I walked him into the bathroom and he threw up in the sink. Then I helped him get to his bed.
"Hey," he croaked, "what happened in the game? Did we win?"
"Yeah, totally. The monster's gone. You did great, Chris, just great." I patted his shoulder. "Now go to sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up tomorrow."
He was out before I'd switched off the bedroom light. Other than a foggy memory, Chris would be fine when he woke up in the morning. By then, of course, Daniel and I would be gone.
I walked into the living room, stretched out on the couch, and closed my eyes. Tarriel reported that Daniel had left the bar and was driving back to the apartment. He was in no danger. Meanwhile, inside my ring, the fiend was swirling around like a Tasmanian devil. Its fury was all bluster; it was trapped.
I thought back over the conversation between Daniel and Amber. A lot of what my cousin had told Daniel was right, but she'd been wrong about one thing. The twenty-two dead pretty much had been my fault. As I lay there on the couch, studying my new captive spirit and considering what Amber had said, I suddenly knew — I kenned — what I am.
He's a very special kind of sorcerer, Amber had told my brother, one who can command demons. A spirit-namer. That's right. But there's another word, an older word, for a sorcerer who can do that: magus.
In the far ancient days, when the spirits were gods, magi were not so uncommon. They were the mediators, the balancing fulcrum, between the gods and their worshipers. A magus was his divine patron's greatest servant, the god's high priest. As Darkness dwindled and the spirits fell from divinity, the high priests became their greatest rivals. Eventually the magi outstriped their fallen gods.
Master of Spirits, that's what a magus is. A few of them have found their way into lightblind history. Moses was a magus, and Siddhartha and Mohammad. Jesus could have been a great one, but chose instead to become something else. The last magus of the western world, the man known to the lightblind as Comte Saint-Germain, had lived in the eighteenth century. Among Crowley and his crowd of 19th century spiritualists, not a single one was a true sorcerer, let alone a magus.
I am. Moreover, I am the last — the last Master of Spirits before the dying Darkness is reborn. In the prophecies of my predecessors, those who foresaw my coming anointed me with various titles: Arkon Omega, Terminus Rector, Shepherd of the End-of-Days.
Christians, I suppose, would call me the Antichrist.
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