Chapter 2: Ch. 2

In the catacombs beneath Apollyon was a room only the Demon King could access: a shrine. In the history of the intelligent races, the story of the shrines had long since fallen out of common knowledge, but they were once found everywhere across the world. They were said to be anchor points that would bind the world to other realms, and in each epoch they would be used to open a door and call forth a hero from beyond the veil.

There had been no recorded history of anyone travelling from the shrine to another world, but once a door was opened, there was no reason it could only be one way.

Vassago laid hands adorned with long black clawed fingernails on the massive doors of basalt stone that blocked the shrine. They weren’t, in fact, locked. Weight and time were the only things that bound them shut. Centuries old crusts of filth and moss growth were dislodged as he pushed, forcing the doors open through sheer brute force. They creaked, protesting fruitlessly at his inevitable invasion.

“So, this is the door to another world.”

The room was circular and devoid of light, but within Vassago’s eyes were a silvery gleam, like two full moons hovering in the void of space. His gaze flicked around the room, studying the formation carved into the ground.

“A magic circle? How démodé.” He rubbed the ball of his foot across the lines of white quartz that had been baked into the hard stone floor. It had been, what, two? Three? hundred years since magic circles had been rendered obsolete by advances in aetherology? And even back then, circles had already been streamlined to a point one could be drawn in the palm of your hand. A construct like this, ten metres in diameter, was to magical sciences what cave paintings were to the written alphabet.

Antiquated, yet a thing of unique awe.

He travelled to the centre of the circle, brushing up a cloud of dust in his wake. Power crackled out from his fingertips, his hair charging with it as it fanned out behind him. Spiralling black horns grew from his temples, becoming a crown of midnight on his head. Tarry black tears shed from his eyes, floating weightlessly around his face and gradually opening into a dozen levitating eyes around him.

He chanted softly, each syllable reaching into the void between worlds where mortal tongues had never spoken, dragging back words constructed by beings that spoke in light and thought rather than sound. With each utterance, a rune inscribed in the magic circle lit up in response, crackling with energy as it was roused from countless millennia of slumber.

Scales formed along his arms as he twisted his fingers into broken shapes, inscribing magic into the air, Talon-like nails became real talons as his fingers stretched, becoming monstrous. Beneath his skin, veins pumped glowing energy at an expedited rate, turning any exposed skin into a pulsing highway of shimmering blue-purple shadow.

He could feel his power leaking out of him, burying itself in the circle around him. He had underestimated the sheer magnitude of what this magic was attempting to accomplish, and now it was taking too much from him. His skin was becoming unravelled, torn off layer by layer like the bandages of his general. Beneath was a pulsing, writhing mass of pure chaos, bubbling away with enough destructive force to wipe out cities.

It was slipping out of him, bleeding away as surely as his life force. The circle was only half activated, but it was already overwhelming him.

Vassago gritted his teeth. This would not be his end. He had retirement to enjoy. No legions to command, no dignity to maintain; just lazily going at his own pace through life once again.

Not like this!

He chanted louder, screaming the old magic until he had no tongue left to scream with, as it dissipated into pure magical energy and flowed out along quartz channels to the outer edges of the circle. Then he used his hands, carving the words into the air in streaks of light. One finger snapped, bent backwards under the resistant force of casting something beyond even his capability. Another broke off completely, black blood gently rising like smoke from the stump.

Magical overdraw. Without enough magic at his disposal, his own life was being drawn from instead. But who was Vassago? What was he? He was the Demon of Dusk. He was power; pure magic embodied in flesh. His blood, flesh, and bone itself was being drawn from and burned into spellcraft.

And it still wouldn’t be enough to finish the spell.

“Your empirical darkness.”

A voice, as soft as snowfall in quiet midnight but as heavy as an avalanche, called out. Vassago’s face was gone, sacrificed to the spell and leaving only a nebulae of light behind, but the floating eyes remained: they whirled around, all dozen of them focused on inspecting the intruder.

His four generals (self-titled): Rogemel the Brutal, the hungry murderer who bowed only to strength. Soriel the Liar, the manipulator that would use her betters as a shield. Mhazael the Whisperer, the decrepit echo of a long-dead creature that leeched off power to live.

And the only one he could never figure out: Otho Greenfinger. He’d never seen the fourth general fight, and didn’t know exactly to what end he was being used by him. He also didn’t look demonic, besides the very cloven hooves and horns. Tanned skin, freckles, dirt beneath his trimmed nails. A wide grin and gently sparkling hazel eyes.

“Oh dear, you’ve gone and gotten yourself into a mighty pickle, your majesty.”

Vassago didn’t understand Otho, but he always got the feeling that he spoke in distinctly lowercase letters when it came to the honorifics.

He would have replied, “Yes, I’m dying,” but most of his throat was missing now.

“Well, now there’s your problem: not enough power.” Otho nodded as he inspected the circle. “I can probably do something about that, your magicalness.”

Now he just wasn’t taking the honorifics seriously at all, was he.

Vassago wanted to point out he was abandoning Otho and the rest of the demons, and to help him was a foolish endeavour of self-sabotage, but besides not having much of anything above the neck left of him, he was also concentrating on standing on one foot as the other had dissipated.

“Don’t worry, I understand the gist of it.” Otho bleated, then clapped his grubby hands together. The ground trembled, the roof rained down dirt and dust, and slowly yet surely tree roots pushed through. Roots transformed into branches, branches sprouted leaves and flowers, both of which immediately wilted and died as their life force was pulled into the magic circle.

The growth didn’t stop there. More greenery spread; grass sprung from cracks, weeds and bushes pushed through stonework, moss spread, wilted, and peeled away at lightning speeds. Life barged into the room, exploding into forms of plantlife that died upon arrival. 

“We want the same thing, your majesticalness!” His eyes shone gold with emergent power, blood dripping down his lips as it leaked from his nose. “To see a different kingdom to these barren wastes.”

Otho’s cheeks were becoming hollow as he fed himself into his creations, creating a blossoming wonderland around them. The disintegration of the Demon King slowed as the circle was fed with a new power, but not stopped.

“No matter what I grow, it dies. No matter how I tend it, it wilts. These lands are poisoned, y’see. Cursed by an incurable rot. I had a thought once, one that occurred to no one else around me: until I saw you. I saw that defeated, angry look in your eyes. I knew you asked it too.

“Are these lands like this because we’re demons?”

Or are we demons because our lands are like this? Vassago finished in his mind.

What is it that their predecessors did that was so unforgivable to the gods that it was decided that their fate should be to live starving, fighting, barely scraping by? Too busy biting each other, snapping like feral animals, to band together.

So he’d gone, as a young and naive man, to see the king. His king; the Demon King of his era. He’d gone to ask why. You’re the king, why do you allow your people to live like this. The man on the throne had looked as tired as Vassago now felt, looking down at him with a humourless smile, and said the words that would bind him forever to the burden of rule:

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If you want to know, kill me.

He didn’t. Not then at least. Years later—had it been ten? Twenty? Fifty? He couldn’t remember anymore, that period blurred together—he had, however. Tired and angry, he’d thrust his talons into the heart of his king and torn his heart from his chest before devouring it. He’d sat on the throne and worn the crown, literal rather than proverbial in that time. And as king he inherited all the knowledge of kings before him, and all the burdens that they bore on their shoulders.

And he’d found out. Just as his predecessor had promised him, he now knew.

If Vassago was capable of laughter anymore, he’d laugh at the memory.

He’d learned that the city of Apollyon and the king were one and the same. To be the king, the lord of the city, was to be the city.

He’d learned that Apollyon had been named by the one who built it: the first Demon King.

He’d learned what the name meant. And from that, he’d learned what role the Demon King held in the destiny of the world and the purpose of the barren wastes his people were exiled to.

When he found out the truth, what could he do but laugh?

Impotent. The Demon King was the one who stood atop all others, the one that wore the mantle of “the strongest demon”, but in truth they were the most impotent, the most powerless. There was nowhere in this world he could run to escape the fate he’d naively and stupidly volunteered himself for when he killed his predecessor.

So he’d run to another.

He shifted his power, decimated a couple kidneys and collapsed a lung in order to reform his vocal cords and tongue long enough to speak.

“This will kill you.”

Otho was always smiling, wide and guileless. But now it thinned, yet somehow become all the more sincere. “I hear humans leave flowers on the graves of their loved ones.”

Vassago stared at him only for a moment before finally his orbital eyes were obliterated, eaten by the magic circle. He saw, heard, and felt only darkness, all up until the moment a jolt of power ran through him and he felt the last of his physical form melt.

Not eaten this time, but changed, momentarily dismantled. He felt the rushing of space around him, the pulse of power—something older and more powerful than “magic”, something that terrified him. He was hurtling, hurtling, hurtling through a place that existed outside of “places”, a nowhere that was nothing more than a thread that bound worlds together.

He understood now that doors did not always open two ways. Only his nature as the Demon of Dusk would allow him to survive this violent escape, but even then he’d come out the other side different. Changed.

Then there was stillness.

Take a step back. 

The time was the dead of night.

The location was a corner alley: a place no one could see, a nook in society away from streets and footsteps and prying eyes. Where there had been nothing, initially, suddenly there was something. It was gelatinous, but also not. More like a piece of the void that had become so condensed it had partially solidified—yet only partially, still shifting and iridescent with far off stars. It gooped and bubbled, gradually becoming still. Beneath the surface of a gelatinous cocoon, things continued to move.

After about an hour, a shape had formed. The mirror form of curved and arching silver bones, forming a cage.

A half hour after that, the cocoon trembled with the faintest of vibrations as a twisted black knot formed within the cage, giving off delicately quivering beats.

Another hour later, a silver gleaming femur stretched out, followed by another.

The world spun. The moon drifted. Dew condensed.

Finger bones clattered into place. A gleaming skull formed layer by layer, like a pearl growing around an irritating piece of crud.

By the time the sky turned grey, there was a skeleton. Silvery, almost pearlescent, roughly 120cm tall.

As with anything in this world, once the foundations were laid, everything else followed quickly. Muscles knitted across bone; fingers began to flex and curl now that fibres were there to pull them. The jawbone chattered. Two balls of jelly squeezed into empty sockets, gradually becoming covered in a layer of membrane before becoming twisting black eyes with shards of amethyst stars within. Black ooze wound as snakes through the body, solidifying into squishy intestines. Porous tissue deflated and filled with nurturing primordial fluid for lack of oxygen. Delicate veinwork buried themselves across the structure, zipping dark fluid to every corner. Skin stretched over it all, white and lifeless as paper, gift wrapping the reformed body to present to the new world.

A hand pushed against the membrane of the cocoon, piercing it and meeting cold air. A head pushed out next, spilling vestigial fluid as a mouth gasped for air. Feathery black hair grew rapidly from the momentarily bald crown, tumbling like silken fabric over bare shoulders. A small chest heaved with the weight of new life, struggling to adapt to alien air.

Tender legs shakily held the weight of the body as they stood, for the first time. Hair fell, kept falling, well past the length of the body that bore it, until eventually slowing and stopping its frenzied growth.

“Ha. It worked. Hahaha.”

Vassago leant against the wall, gasping in shock. He was in another world. Against all reason and odds, he’d really done it.

Step back. Around the corner. Exit the alley. Roads not of dirt and cobblestone but of blackened asphalt. Walkways of concrete. Buildings of steel and glass, towering like pillars crafted by gods to hold up the heavens. Carriages of metal and foul emissions. Screaming trains hurtling at breakneck speeds in underground tunnels, like ravenous worms.

Endless people, all different yet all the same: all human. Speaking to each other, all the time, from palm-sized tools.

A “different” world.

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