Riloth 19th the 1523rd

The morning of the next reset after a failure torture session, we met for breakfast before heading back to the Dahn. I offered to pick up Levar for these get-togethers, but between you, me, and your pages I think Levar developed a bit of agoraphobia before we figured out the Bond, and he hasn't gotten over it.

By now, Crossroads was in chaos, as the pack rats had truly gone mad. It was as if each one tried to hold onto each reset as long as possible, traveling back to the beginning of each one at the end of the day. Aside from where they rampaged through markets and homes, they lay sleeping all over. The soldiers of Landing and the town guards were out in bands to kill as many as they could. They must have run into Tilavo in enough resets to fear him, for they never seemed to enter into the Parlor.

After our meal, when I went to teleport back home, I couldn't find it.

"What's wrong?" Trish asked, noticing my confusion.

"I can't find it," I said as I pulled you out of my bag.

I opened you up, Willing Levar's twinned page for the day to appear.

Something banging on the door. Is that you?

If this is you, it is not funny.

Thedoorisbreaking!

I pulled the handle off the door so it would disappear before it broke. Are you guys okay?

I read the entries out to everyone.

"Something attacked the Dahn? How? Who?" I began before Dagmar cut me off.

"No time for your questions. Fly there and check it out."

She was right, and I handed her a twinned sheet and took off into the air toward the Dahn.

As I gained altitude, I noticed the pillar of smoke coming from the direction of the Dahn's clearing.

I stuck my hand into my pocket, grabbed my twined page, and Willed a message to appear

Fires coming. Get to town.

I continued on, flying lower to the ground to not reveal myself to whatever was doing this, though I had a strong suspicion. Suspicions proved true as I grew closer to the flames.

I'd seen birds flying from the smoke, but as I grew closer, the scale became wrong. The flying creatures were huge, with wicked talons on each of their four spindly legs.

Dozens of them flew in a circle, with smaller more humanoid flying creatures interspersed in the flock. In the center hovered a familiar horned monster who had been conspicuously absent the last few years.

A familiar discordant voice echoed through my mind, "Long time no see, little dragonling. Did you miss me?"

I grabbed the paper again and willed a message to appear as I went to the Arcane Realm to teleport back.

The demon is back and he brought friends!

Before I could complete the spell a figure appeared in the air before me and grabbed me by the throat. It was a humanoid figure with skin of obsidian glass. It stood taller than even Bearskin and had the proportions and features of a lean, muscled human, but with cloven hooves that began at a second leg joint just below each knee. Atop its head sat two horns, one small like a goat’s barely sticking from its thick black hair, and the other a long almost helical spike. The demon looked at me quizzically, cocking its mismatched horned head to the side, its flame green eyes boring into my soul, making me hide in my vault.

“This little thing bested you brother?” the demon asked.

Its voice sounded smooth, and matched its refined look—aside from the goat stuff—but despite the apparent normality of the voice, it instilled the same terror in me as the Balor. The fear lessened inside my vault, and I got to work forcing out his influence.

“Bring him here before he blows himself up again,” the Balor yelled.

At the words, my senses returned to me and I sent a fragment of my mind to the Arcane Realm to do just that.

“STOP!” the smooth voice commanded, accompanied by a strong mental compulsion.

An obsidian purple spike broke through my vault, and I halted it inches from my chest, abandoning my attempt to kill myself and throwing the full force of my Will at it. Before he could command me again, or stop me through some other means, I went to the Font and Wind and overdrew on its power.

Riloth 19th the 1524th

“Get up!” Dagmar screamed, shaking me awake. “The demons are breaking through the wards!”

Somehow, I felt worse than I ever had before waking up in this bed.

I looked out the window to see a night sky obscured by the smoke of a burning forest.

I jumped out of bed and grabbed the proffered potions Dagmar presented as we ran into the hall.

Roland stood in the hallway with Daulf and Trish and without a word we all grabbed hands as I attempted once more to teleport us to the Dahn.

I sensed the connection, and a moment later we appeared in the foyer, where Levar stood by the door, preparing to seal it once more.

“Wait!” I shouted, as I moved to summon Bearskin to us.

A hole appeared in the door as the tip of the Balor’s lightning blade poked through. The crack of the Dahn’s defensive lightning could be heard distantly through the door, but the Balor was unaffected.

“Little dragon, little dragon, let me in!” is shouted in an almost childish sing-song tone despite the discordance.

It struck the door again, flames now shining through the crack.

Before it could stroke again, Bearskin appeared beside me, and Daulf waved his hand, causing the door to vanish.

“The Balor brought friends,” I said between pants.

I hadn't been awake more than a minute, and already I was exhausted, as if I’d been in a battle, even though I’d only cast two spells.

What's wrong with me?

I thought, looking at my shaking hands.

Did that new demon do this?

I looked up and saw everyone watching me expectantly, and I related to them what I saw the today before.

Eventually the tremors settled, and we sat around discussing possibilities.

“How did he get more demons out?” I asked the group, but I looked at Levar and Daulf. “Could he summon them himself?”

“No,” Daulf answered firmly, to which Levar nodded in agreement. “Demons cannot summon demons, but they can teach humans to do so. But, the process is not something that can be taught in a day.”

“So why are we only now seeing this horde?” I asked.

“That is a good question,” Daulf said in way of an answer. “I think it’s time we finally visit Knollwood.”

* * *

We worked out a plan that would allow us to get to Knollwood and scope out the situation. Roland has the ability to wake himself up at whichever time he chooses—and claims it to be mundane, though I don’t believe it. It was because of this that we were able to flee the Parlor before the demons arrived. We had a brief window as they pushed through the flaws they’d found in the wards to escape, and with Roland’s aid we could escape.

When it came to “resetting” ourselves, I may have forgotten how knew the process was to the rest of the group.

“Dagmar, can you stab me in the heart?” I asked, handing her a dagger.

“Wait,” Levar interrupted.

“No, it's fine,” I said, waving away his concerns. “She’s done it loads of times.”

“It's not that,” Levar said, unconcerned about the casual murder. “How will you get back in? Shouldn’t we kill Roland? That you can teleport to him as soon as the rest occurs, bringing a handle to the Dahn along for your return.”

“That's a great idea,” I said, turning to Roland and asking. “How do you prefer to die?”

Roland, it seems, had strong preferences about dying. In the end, Levar gave him a potion to put him into a deep sleep that would only grow deeper until he died within a few hours. Trish left the room while he drank it, but after he’d fallen asleep, she held his unconscious hand until his pulse finally stopped.

We spent the rest of the reset watching the clock in a nervous silence. As soon as the time of the reset came, the door reappeared of its own accord and I began to teleport to Roland. In the minute or so it took to the cast the spell, no threat arrived at the door and I appeared next to a Roland who was awake and waiting for me.

I looked around at the random patch of forest I’d appeared in.

“Where have you been sleeping?” I asked, confused.

He pointed up, and I could see his pack tied to a crook in the tree next to a large bird’s nest.

“Keeping the hawk company,” he said,

“I guess I lost that bet. Trish and I had guessed you had shacked up with some spinster, while Dagmar figured it had been something like this, only she thought it would have been a burrowing rodent’s den.”

An awkward silence descended at the mention of Trish and the bet we’d made years ago and forgotten.

“So,” Roland began, breaking the silence, “Did I do something over the last few years to anger Dagmar? She doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

“Oh, no. You didn’t do anything. She never liked you. I’ll let you read through my journal and you’ll find you dislike her just as much.”

“Thanks?” he said, uncertainly.

We set off through the forest, keeping magic use to a minimum. Roland led us to the Kituh entrance, and we took it in the general direction of Knollwood before surfacing and continuing the rest of the journey overland. The Balor had proven himself to have no great skill in the art of magical detection, but with all his new allies, we didn’t risk any overt magic use. With Roland’s help, we reached the town as the sun began to rise. A swarm of winged bird demons flew above the town, occasionally dropping human body parts to the ground. Every now and then another would rise up into the air from the village below.

The area gave off an imposing feeling, in the same area of my head that detected others reaching out into the Arcane Realm, only this felt more sinister. A quick check confirmed my mental vault was free of any outside influences, and I activated my Willsight. The world turned dim, as even at low sensitivity my vision became obscured by the ambient Will. But, instead of being a pure white of the Primordial or the gray of the world, the world looked to be awash in flame. Red, yellow, and orange flickered in the air all around, as if there was another reality overlaid upon our own, and that one was one of fire. The flames had a current to them, and after walking just a bit I saw them blowing out from the center of the village.

I explained this to Roland, and returned my vision to normal before we snuck closer to town. No guards stood watch on the walls, and with Roland’s aid, the trees swayed to obscure our location from above as we got to the edge of the clearing. Once there, we circled around to the gate and ran in, hoping to avoid detection.

We made it to an abandoned home without hearing any signs of alarm, and from there we advanced through the town, from alley to alley. But, the demons must have been at this for some time throughout the resets and grown complacent, for they didn’t give a thought to watching any sort of perimeter. As we climbed the titular knoll on which the town sat, signs of the demon’s activity grew more apparent, splattered across the ground. Cultists lay strewn about, and a quick Mend and Clean made two sets of robes serviceable for us to attempt to blend in—though our method of acquisition suggested the disguises wouldn’t be exactly helpful.

As we neared the great building at the top of the hill where I’d first met the demon, we finally saw human cultists, running around with stark expressions on their faces, doing various tasks while avoiding eye contact or anything else that might make them stand out. Screams could be heard within, punctuated by the occasional crack of a whip. No one challenged us as we entered the building and made our way up to the second floor. We found a room facing in the inner courtyard with a sheer curtain obscuring the view from outside. In the courtyard, we saw a tear in reality.

The rip started at a point two dozen feet above the ground, and widened as it reached towards the ground, where it sat ten feet wide. Within the opening, a wall of flames swirled, just as I saw with my Willsight. Where the flame met reality, the edges were red and jagged, giving off the impression of a rough cut in flesh that had grown red with infection. My Willsight confirmed this portal to be the source of the Will saturation in the area, and I quickly dismissed it when the waves of pain struck my mind.

Cultists lay prostrate before the portal, as a human sized winged demon with the appearance of a beautiful woman struck them with whips, seemingly at random. She had red hair that looked like fire in the sun, and two small horns on her head, reminiscent of the other demon we’d seen. With each strike, the targeted individual would climb to their feed and walk towards the rift, bodies shuddering in pain, fear or both.

As we watched, more of the winged demons would periodically step out, and with each one, the nearest cultist would collapse, and the newcomer would snatch up the body and take off into the air. I watched one of these with my Willsight, bearing through the pain, and watched as the rift sucked the aura from the sacrifice, leaving behind a corpse completely devoid of any Will.

We watched as four cultists were slain in this way before we left our room and circled around the building. From a different view, we saw another cultist standing behind the portal with raised arms. While the rest of the group looked like they’d had a rough morning, with their robes slightly torn and stained with fresh blood, this cultist looked like he’d had a rough decade. His robe was tattered and covered in blood long since dried. He bore a long, unkempt beard, and had the gaunt face of someone on death’s door from some wasting disease. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stared into the back of the portal lifelessly, as if his mind had been broken by his experiences.

Roland and I watched in silence as the day moved on. When all the prostrate cultists were dead, the ragged man collapsed, and the portal did with him. Only then did some other cultist—this one in a robe that looked much finer than the rest, It's threaded with lines of red and gold—come and bring him some food and drinking. The man ate woodenly before collapsing into sobs, and then into a restless sleep. The succubus that had been overseeing the sacrifices then took the once-important cultist inside the manor. A short while later, his auraless corpse was thrown out a window with the flying demons descended on it.

We sat in that room, hiding under a bed for the rest of the day in silence. Roland drilled a hole through the wall, and we kept an eye on the courtyard. Near the end of the reset, the demon birds returned to the village with a captured person in their grasp. I didn't recognize any individuals, but it was clear from their appearances that they were refugees from outside Crossroads. Shortly after their arrival, a different rift opened up in the courtyard, and the elegant obsidian skinned demon stepped out. With a casual flick of his wrist, the new captives fell dead, and a new portal opened up to that realm of fire, this one however was a neat rectangular doorway. The succubus grabbed the still sleeping cultist by his foot, and dragged him through the portal as if he were a child.

The teleporting demon gave a cursory look around the courtyard, eyes passing over us and sending a chill into my soul, before stepping in and closing the portal behind him. We’d planned to sneak away and open a door back to the Dahn, but silently we agreed it best to wait out the reset.

Riloth 19th the 1525th

The next morning Roland woke me up and shoved a clarity potion down my throat. Half asleep, I swallowed it, and jumped to the Arcane Realm to begin casting Greater Teleport. I easily located the Dahn in that strange non-space, and we appeared inside the foyer to the sound of thunderous bangs.

“Finally!” Daulf shouted, as he ripped the handle of the door, causing it to vanish. Before it did, I noticed its condition. It was full of cracks and holes from the demon’s attack, but it had also been reinforced. Heavy metal bands covered the stone door in a latticework.

I looked around the foyer, surprised to see it shrunken back down to its original size.

Daulf caught my look and said, “I found I could reinforce the door if I took power from somewhere else. It takes a constant stream of the Dahn’s energy to maintain spaces. I also found I could make the defensive bolts of lightning stronger, but the demon did not seem to mind.”

* * *

Over coffee and treats, we went over all that we’d seen in the town. Levar, who’d been studying demons in the books I’d permanently borrowed from the Parlor’s library through copying, named each demon that we’d seen. The flying ones were Vrocks, semi intelligent beasts the demons used as expendable soldiers. The succubus was known to us all. The teleporting demon was a demon prince, and the ruler of the Balor these cultists had originally summoned. Somehow—likely through the tortured cultist—the Balor had devised a way to bring allies through.

“There really should be an adage about letting a demon lord run around unsupervised for a few years,” I mused, thinking about my father’s saying.

Everyone ignored me, and we began to discuss our options.

They weren't good, and the time it took for us to get to Knollwood rendered most of our plans moot.

“If only I could teleport there,” I complained after a few hours of talking.

“Could we bring one of the cultists here, Bind them to the Dahn, and then have Tal teleport to them?” Trish suggested.

A sour look covered Daulf’s face, but said nothing.

“No,” Bearskin said simply.

“Why not?” I pressed, more curious for the reason than eager to do it.

“You must share some connection before making a Bond. Common cause, family, friendship. Not evil strangers,” he explained.

“How do teleportation circles in the big cities work?” I asked, knowing that the Tower ran networks that allowed any wizard with the spell the ability to go to any connected city.

Levar answered, “The Tower maintains circles of a magic similar to the stable field effect you use. They create areas of similar properties. The properties of any two locations in space are very different, but not completely different. The properties change on a gradient, so that in all practicality, two points a foot apart are indistinguishable from any magical sense. This is why you can teleport freely in a certain range with Greater Teleport without a connection to the target. The Tower has a spell that overwrites the properties of a space, so that anyone in one such space can teleport to the others. There’s more than just the spell though, they require secret magical items to be present to further flavor the space as a security measure, but those are not strictly necessary for the process to work. Now, I’ve sold many a re—”

“Wait,” I said, interrupting him before he began a new topic. “Can we do that?”

Levar’s eyes lit up, “With spells? No, but... with runes? Maybe.”

We all turned to Dagmar, who shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s give it a try.”

—-

So, that was three days ago. Levar and Dagmar spent the time devising sensing runes and other things I didn’t have the mental capacity to follow, and now Roland and I are going to set out back into the world.

Wish me luck.

I really need to stop writing that. It never ends well.