Page 2

Two

T he whistling of air and magic being squeezed through too little space increased as he entered the portal, and wind rushed in his ears. Somehow, even as he climbed inside, the mortals on the other side didn’t get any closer. As he passed through the entrance, the portal expanded, turning into a long corridor in front of him. The walls were both featureless white and filled with flashes of color, a contradiction he couldn’t explain, and he could not be sure whether they were collapsing in on him or unfolding to become larger.He sensed infinity expanding on every side of him, as if he were standing at the edge of a thousand cliffs, falling past a million skies. He pushed onward, even though the ground had disappeared beneath him and he couldn’t feel his legs.

Abruptly, the infinite space shrank again, and he burst through the window, face down onto a cold, stone floor. The portal snapped shut behind him.

After the howling of the tunnel between planes, the quiet of this place was deafening. Soft footsteps rushed around. Someone was chanting.

“Hurry up,” hissed a familiar voice. The arrogant mortal.

As Azreth looked up to take in his new surroundings, magic came to life around him. The chanting of the shorter mortal had activated a spell. Walls of magic rose up around him, enclosing him in a small cell: the cage he’d been expecting.

He was inside a dark, cavernous room made of stone. Perhaps it was underground, for there were no windows. It was empty except for the two mortals and himself, as if it existed only to hold him.He wrinkled his nose. Inhaling the air here was like eating meat that had gone cold—slimy and stale and unpleasant. He wondered if all of the mortal plane had this scent, or if it was just this room.

His magical cage was a transparent barrier of solid magic, not unlike the spell he used for his false arm—which was gone. He glanced down at his shoulder. He’d lost concentration on the spell when he’d traveled through the portal, and he didn’t have the magic to expend on it now, anyway.

It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need to fight any of his own kind here. He could face humans just as easily with one arm as he could with two. With mortals, it was their minds that were dangerous, not their bodies.

The taller mortal stepped closer to the barrier. “I am Lord Nirlan Han-gal. I am your master.”

Azreth drove his fist into the barrier. The mortals flinched.

It felt like punching air, but there was a sharp bang as the magic stopped him from passing through. He tried several more times for good measure, but it had no effect on the barrier. He hadn’t thought it would work, but it would have been foolish not to try, wouldn’t it?

Lord Nirlan chuckled, watching with awe. “What a brute. Look at him go.” He leaned closer. “Can you understand me, or not?”

Azreth bent low to examine the seam where the barrier connected to the floor. He could sense the magic continuing through the ground beneath him. He would not be able to dig under it.

“I think he can,” Lord Nirlan said, either to himself or to the other man. Then, after a pause, “It’s missing an arm. Of all the demons in every hell, this is the one you brought me?”

The robed mortal finally spoke. His voice was low and serious. “The spell is not like an arrow I can easily shoot where I wish. It is not so simple to dictate what comes through it.”

“Of course. Wonderful.”

Azreth raised his hand, connecting to the web of magic that, to his relief, coated this world just like his own. He plucked at the strings of the spell holding together the barrier. It was strong—more complex than any magic he understood. He had no hope of unraveling it.

Instead, he curled his fingers into a fist, summoning a blade of magic. The mortals’ eyes widened, and the lord took half a step back.

Azreth jammed the blade into the barrier. Or, he tried to. The blade dissolved into nothing when it touched the barrier.

The mortal lord relaxed. “You’re quite violent, aren’t you?”

Azreth exhaled heavily, finally looking down at the man.

He would wait. His keepers would slip up eventually. And then he would destroy them.

* * *

Azreth had seen mortals before, but only a handful of times. They were kept as feeding slaves whenever they were captured in the hells. On a few occasions, he had crossed paths with one of them trailing another demon. It had made him burn with envy. He was fairly confident he could milk a single human for decades without killing them, if he was careful—and if he could tolerate the ugliness of the slaves. All of them had a wide-eyed, hollow look to them, like their minds were already dead and their bodies had gone on without them. He was disgusted by how sad and small and helpless they were.

He’d never fed from a mortal, but he knew they were easily frightened and easily controlled. He also knew that feeding from them was nothing like feeding from another demon. Nariel had fed from mortals before. When he’d asked her about it, she’d looked wistful and said it was like comparing freshly killed meat to dry, moldering bones.

That was what he’d heard, at least. That was what he imagined as he watched the human lord and his mage coming in and out of his chamber over the next few days. He envisioned killing them in various ways, and he thought about how lovely their agony would taste.

The bald mage, whom the lord called Eunaios, spent many hours painting enchanting runes all over the stones of the walls and floor. Now that he’d summoned and trapped Azreth, he was beginning work on a new spell.

Eunaios would work alone, in silence, for hours at a time without glancing up at him, but whenever he did, he looked nervous. Azreth stared straight back at him, hoping his fear—which was difficult to feel through the barrier—would intensify. It did, but only enough to whet his appetite.

After a long session of painting on the floor, Eunaios stood up, wincing as his joints cracked. Rubbing his lower back, the man looked over at him. Azreth was surprised when the mage actually came closer.

He stopped right beside the cage, squinting at him with a challenge in his eyes. “You always watch me. Why? Do you think you can intimidate me?” Eunaios said, his voice muffled by the barrier.

Azreth didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

Eunaios backed away, and Azreth thought that was the end of the interaction, but he was only fetching something that hung from a hook on the wall. A metal baton.

“Do you know what this is?” the mage asked, brandishing it.

Azreth just looked at him.

Eunaios pointed the baton toward the cage. Azreth had time to register the runes carved into it and the gathering of light at its tip just before lightning shot from it. It passed straight through the barrier and struck him like an iron sword. His vision went white as pain jolted through him. The next thing he knew, he was crumpled on the floor. Azreth panted, trembling.

“Do you even know what power I have?” Eunaios said, sounding far away. “I alone brought you here. Not Nirlan. It was I who summoned you here, and I who will bind you. Look at me again, demon.”

Slowly, he looked up at Eunaios. The baton exploded into crackling lightning again. Azreth tried to summon a shield to block the attack, but magic only sparked uselessly at his fingertips. He’d not fed, so he still had no power.

The lightning cut through him, burning him from the inside out. He tried to crawl backwards, but he hit the back of his cage.

Finally, the attack stopped.

“And now?” the mage said, his voice shaking ever so slightly. “Look at me again. Do you dare?”

Azreth began to look up, then stopped himself. He kept his eyes on the ground, bracing himself for another attack.

Eunaios huffed, straightening. When he turned away, Azreth watched him return the baton to its hook on the wall before he left.

The days seemed to get longer. There was no sun nor moons visible from his cell to track the time, so he could only judge its passing based on the comings and goings of his captors.They did not seem to plan on letting him out of the cage any time soon.

Several times a day at least, he tested the barrier again. It always held, and he became more tired each time he tried it. He could feel himself growing more feeble by the hour.

Was this really better than the hells?

Yes, of course it was. Or it would be, if he was patient.

He’d assumed that the humans had brought him here to use him—not just to let him die here.Was it possible that they didn’t understand how the kin lived? Perhaps they didn’t know that he’d die if he was left down here without feeding for long enough.

The next time Eunaios came to paint his runes, Azreth reluctantly spoke to him.

“I require sustenance,” he said, disliking that he had to beg. But if they truly meant to bind him, this was only the beginning of many indignities he would suffer at their hands before he found a way to escape them.

Eunaios looked up sharply, then narrowed his eyes. “So you do speak, after all.”

“Yes.”

Eunaios studied him. “You’ll have your sustenance soon enough.”

“How soon?”

“Why? Are you desperate?”

Azreth said nothing. He wished the man would come closer. Perhaps he’d be careless and let one of his billowy sleeves graze through the barrier wall. Azreth would pull him through, and he’d be dead before he could even scream.

“Our lord ,” Eunaios began, putting sarcastic emphasis on the title, “is the one you must ask.” He waited, as if expecting Azreth to react. When he didn’t, he added, “I’ll inform him.”

Azreth was left alone for several days more.

The silence, the emptiness of the place, the hunger and helplessness, wore him down. Somewhere in the distance, he could sometimes hear small scurrying animals running through the cracks in the walls. He found himself hanging on every sound, desperate for any stimulus that would break up the time.He began to hear phantom footsteps in the hallway every now and then. He would sit up, staring at the dark doorway for long minutes, only to eventually realize there was no one coming. He grew strangely nervous, jumping at the creaking of stone or drips of moisture through wet rock.

He’d been beaten and tortured and nearly killed many times before. But he’d never been trapped like this, alone with no magic, no way to fight, no control, no paths forward. It was a kind of slow torture. It made his limbs itch, like there were insects crawling under his skin. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Until finally, the woman came.