I was expecting passing through the interdimensional portal to be instantaneous, like all my other portals. But it was more like a tunnel than a doorway. I spent an undefined amount of time, in a place where time itself was only a suggestion and not an immutable law. It was a place full of titanic entities, many of whom called themselves gods, and they were not pleased with my intrusion. As I hurled at an undefinable speed from one end of the tunnel to the other, I sensed many godlike beings launching attacks at me, magic-based astral attacks that would have shattered my mind, burnt my soul to embers, or even simply erased me from existence altogether.
At that moment, I felt at peace. I’d tried my best, hadn’t I? If this was how I would die, it would be fine. Failure seemed like a preordained endpoint to me, an inevitable outcome of my fate as the destined loser. How does one win against gods who decreed that you must fail? The gods had stacked the decks against me, at least, this death was better than dying at the hands of those hated heroes, I had forced the gods to dirty their own hands rather than kill me by proxy.
At that darkest moment a voice whispered in my mind, Not every god hates you, and you make your own fate; do not give up. It was as if giant demonic wings wrapped me in their gentle embrace. A demonic deity? A goddess of my own people, I realized, for the voice had sounded feminine and very sad, but in some way familiar. I could feel the resonance of her mental voice, and knew that she was like me; an entity that could not lie without harming herself, a distinctly demonic limitation humans and their deities did not share. I was shocked, I had long ago accepted demons were godless people. All the gods favored humans, that had become an accepted fact for me.
My name is Lilith, she told me, and I am losing a multi-dimensional war. You are from a planet I have lost contact with, but are of a people I created. Your people, my creations, are but victims in a larger struggle, I do not blame you for what has happened; you did your best, that is all anyone can ask. If you must blame someone, blame me for failing to protect my children, or better yet, blame our enemies; do not blame yourself. I am proud of you for coming this far, despite the odds. But, the story is not over yet, we must both find the strength to keep fighting despite our setbacks, learn from our mistakes and improve. Hope is fragile, I do not wish to see it extinguished today.
The hostile magics of the other gods smashed into the wings that were shielding me, and I could feel Lilith’s pain as she struggled to protect me. I felt her energy seep into me as she bled in a meta-physical way on a plane of existence far beyond my understanding. Her blood was pure magic of some sort rather than a physical substance, a mystical essence that swirled inwards from her battered wings until it reached me and burned. It felt as if her blood were an ethereal acid, burning the part of me that allowed me to use magic. But even as her magic blood seared my mana channels, I felt grateful. Without her intervention, I would have died, and I struggled to convey that to her through our telepathic link. I felt her amused reply, My blood is divine mana, and can be quite useful, once you’ve mastered how to use it. I will heal, as will you. Both of us will emerge stronger for this suffering, though it will definitely hurt for a bit.
Emerging at my destination I was in agony. The portal slammed shut behind me, slicing off the tip of my tail, but even that was but a sting to the pain I felt at my scorched mana channels and the turbulent energies roiling inside me. Desperately, I created a secondary core, no easy feat, and I pushed all the divine mana into it, sealing it away, for now. This created problems, a traffic jam of sorts in my mana channels, which reduced my ability to properly draw in ambient mana into my primary core, but it was better than the alternatives. I would need to rework my mana channels to properly adjust to having two cores, but that would take a few days of uninterrupted careful meditation. I would also eventually need to experiment with using this divine mana, learn how to master it. I did not doubt what Lilith had said, and was certain I’d find it useful somehow, but for now, I would ignore it. With the divine mana sealed, my agony settled to a dull ache. That problem dealt with temporarily, I focused on more pressing concerns.
The first order of business was to scan my immediate surroundings. I appeared to be in an alleyway. The walls on either side were of brick and mortar, but I was impressed by the workmanship and uniformity. The buildings were both two stories, and I could see metal doors and a metal fence of woven links of metal, like loose chainmail. I was impressed by how freely this place used metal for mundane tasks. The road beneath my feet was of a dark grey substance I did not recognize, possibly magical? The only thing that convinced me this was an alley was the smell and the presence of garbage. It did not look like a frequently used thoroughfare. On the side away from the metal fence, I saw a brightly lit street that was much wider and cleaner, so overall, my first impression of this new world was that it was an affluent place, but possessed some typical human habits of squalor building up in the unused places.
Demons' cities tended to be cleaner mostly because enforcement was simpler. “Did you litter, you scumbag?” “Ah shit you caught me, I can’t lie.” “Clean it up or I will beat you to a pulp!” That was a common interaction. Every demon was forced to be honest, but we did tend to be a more violent species, with disputes handled by violence rather than words. Strength, physical or magical, was considered paramount, and leaders without the strength to defeat subordinates who challenged their authority were rare. I frowned, trying to shake off my distraction; but I missed my people already. What were the humans of this world like? How to judge a human society based on one alleyway? I needed more information, so I focused on my other senses.
I could smell something burning, the night sky was lit red with the tell-tale glow of fire in addition to the more neutral white light that lined the nearby streets. There was the sound of explosions and the clang of metal in the distance. Had I landed in the middle of a warzone? The nearby street lights flickered and nearly went out, before coming back on. I could also hear an insistent noise, an alarm from a nearby building? Humans favored certain types of noises to warn each other; high pitched rapidly ringing bells, that was not a celebratory sound. It wasn’t the only alarm I could hear, but this one was much closer. I decided I wanted to risk trying to survey my surroundings from a higher vantage point.
I spread my wings and was about to attempt to lift myself into the air, but nearly screamed. It seemed that I was feeling psychic pain of some sort, the pain Lilith had felt when her wings were battered had been imprinted on my own. It likely had been a side effect of absorbing her mystic blood. Sighing, I folded my wings again. Psychic pain was usually short-lived. There was nothing physically wrong with my wings, by tomorrow I’d likely be able to fly, but for now, I was grounded.
Worse still, her blood had seriously damaged my mana channels. I could feel that I was going to be unable to use anything but the simplest magic for at least a week. It would take perhaps a month to fully recover my magical abilities assuming I did nothing to try to speed the healing process. With regards to my void magic, that meant I’d be unable to make portals, as those required a great deal of magic to create, so I couldn’t simply portal my way to a nearby roof. It also meant I couldn’t access my inventory, as that was an extra-dimensional space linked to my core which required a small but delicate mana manipulation to access. I was limited in both the magnitude and the complexity of spells I could cast.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Void magic had many aspects, each pertaining to a certain difficulty level. The spatial manipulation use, the so-called “shape” of the void, was the hardest and most mana intensive to use. For now, I decided to only rely on the most basic aspect of the void, the so-called “substance” of the void; the hungering void, the aspect that devoured. I desperately needed to find a safe place to recover and avoid conflicts as much as possible until I was healed.
I also needed to heal the stump of my tail, I was still dripping a steady flow of blue blood. All my healing potions were in my dimensional storage, that was a foolish mistake on my part, I should have carried a few on my person. There was a ritual healing spell I could have used, had my mana channels not been damaged, but it was too complex for me at the moment. Instead, I used an easier ritual spell that created a small flame in one hand. Ritual spells were any spell that required incantation or runic writing and were adapted from the language of the gods. The biggest drawback to ritual spells was the time it took to use them, which made them ineffective for use in combat. Thankfully the fire spell was a short one, only half a minute.
I felt a strange stirring in my new secondary core as I spoke the words and briefly wondered what connection there was between divine magic and ritual spells. I knew priests used divine language in the form of prayers addressed to their gods, borrowing power from them in order to cast their magic. A mage, by contrast, had spells that used wording that did not invoke higher powers but spoke the same language. Would I be able to use the divine mana if I said a prayer to Lilith in the divine tongue?
A question for another time. I grit my teeth against the pain as I pushed the severed end of my tail into that fire. It seared the wound, stopping the flow of blood. Regenerating a severed body part wasn’t something I could do, so this solution was the best for now.
As I was doing that, I noticed a human reach the entrance of the alleyway and come to a stop and stare at me, illuminated by the light of my fire spell, burning the stump of my tail. He was dressed in dark clothing, including a facial covering, giving me the impression that he was a thief or a bandit. Adding to that impression, was the fact that he was carrying a sack full of something heavy in one hand, and a strange L-shaped metal object in his other hand. Judging from his body language, aiming the L-shaped object at me at first, then away when he started to talk, I judged it a weapon.
I did not understand the words he said, but from his tone, the frantic look in his eyes and the hurried gestures, I believed that he was fleeing from something, he frequently shot glances over his shoulder. He then hurried into the alley, trying to get past me to the fence behind me. He was wary of me, but there wasn’t much room to avoid me, he jogged past me nervously, his weapon not pointed at me, but held ready.
I do not know what he expected me to do, perhaps nothing. He might have been warning me to stay away from him, if I had to guess. But he certainly wasn’t expecting me to suddenly lunge at him with a burst of speed, grabbing him by the head. He had time to point the weapon at me and do something that made it bark loudly, which caused something to hit my breastplate. I paid it no mind, as it did not penetrate my enchanted armor, though I made a note to be warier next time, as the blow felt strong enough to harm me had he aimed for my unprotected head. I should have put my helmet on before traveling to an entirely new world, but of course, I’d put it in my dimensional storage so I could give my dramatic speech to the heroes.
No matter, now that I’d gripped his head, I unleashed the hungering void on him. The “substance” of the void was potent magic, highly effective at certain things, but limited in that every use was contact-based, and could not be used at range. This time, I used it to consume a piece of the man’s soul.
Soul eating was taboo magic among humans. They pointed at it as one of the many reasons demons were innately evil, as those among us who could use void magic, could use the hungering void to eat souls. It was true that eating entire souls was dangerous, addictive magic that would inevitably lead to madness, but it was more or less safe to eat a small chunk of a soul.
A soul carried information uniformly, eating a piece of soul gave access to all the information that the soul carried, but also did not remove information from the whole. Every part of a person’s soul held a complete copy of everything that defined a person. Souls also regenerated, which meant that it would only take a week for the human to fully recover. In the meantime, he would be comatose, and I would absorb some of the knowledge his soul carried. Particularly, I wanted to quickly learn the human language of this world, so I focused on that.
I could not steal everything a person knows from a single “bite” of a person's soul but instead needed to pick and choose what I wanted to learn. The larger the bite, the more I could learn. In the past, I’d sometimes eat tiny pieces of enemy soldiers' souls, to learn the battle plans of my enemies. But I was wary of overusing this ability as repeated small bites could still be addictive and mentally corrosive. Larger pieces of souls could be ingested to gain abilities and skills, but carried greater risk. I was already pushing the limits of what I was willing to do by eating a chunk large enough to confer an entire language. I decided I would not use this ability again anytime soon, as I could already feel an unnatural hunger for more souls tainting my thoughts. Hopefully, that would pass within a day or two, but I decided waiting a few weeks before eating another soul chunk would be safer. It would be safest never to use this ability, I reflected, but sometimes, one has no choice but to take risks in order to survive.
I carefully laid the comatose human against a wall, pausing to examine the contents of the sack he’d been carrying, and the object I now knew to be a “gun”. The sack was full of jewelry, stolen from that nearby building that was loudly broadcasting its alarm, I learned. In addition to stealing a language, I’d stolen bits and pieces of word associations. The sack was associated with “loot”, so I was given a little information about where it had been looted from by simply thinking about that new word, a brief mental image of what the jewelry store had looked like before the human had broken in. I decided to leave the sack of jewels with the human, as I didn’t think it would be worth the hassle of trying to “fence” them, as I didn’t have the contacts this thief obviously did.
The gun was more interesting to me, so I decided to steal it, wrapping the looter’s belt with a holster around my own waist, and putting the gun in its holster. I wasn’t really impressed with the weapon, but I was interested in learning more about how it worked, later.
As I did this, I heard a strangely metallic and unnatural sounding growl coming from the entrance of the alleyway. It was the thing the looter had been fleeing, I realized. My stolen knowledge provided a name, it was called a “grendel” and it was a horrific abomination.
Eight feet tall, massive as a horse, it was a dire wolf of some sort, but also not. Fully half of it was composed of metal parts, which my new knowledge described as “cybernetic”. The rest was decaying deformed tissue that bubbled and slowly dripped black fluids as the machine parts struggled to maintain the false semblance of life. It appeared that humans of this world were under attack by “aliens” who manufactured half organic, semi-living, autonomous creatures and dropped them down, from “orbit”, on human cities periodically. These grendels were indiscriminate killing machines that targeted humans, an evacuation had already occurred, of course. But the foolish human looter had risked coming here because the jewelry store would be empty, and with luck he might avoid being eaten or worse, captured, by the grendels.
His luck had not been good, and now his bad luck was my bad luck, as this grendel focused its attention on me, whatever strange “programing” that controlled it decided I was human enough for me to be considered a valid target. A shoulder-mounted device the looter would have called a “laser cannon” began to hum ominously as it swiveled to point at me.