Chapter 50

“You’re telling me Dad played dead - actually played dead and the demon believed him?”

Mikel’s eyes narrowed but he couldn’t keep a smile from his face as the thought played through his mind. Much of the story he'd heard before - related to him over dinner, or through rumors from the estate staff - this part though, the actual battle, he'd never heard from anyone. Outside of speculation and gossip, only the four combatants who'd waded into battle The Time Demon truly knew what happened - and now, Helsket had finally imparted that last bit of information to Mikle.

“To be fair, the demon had a lot on its plate. Sylix had magicked up a massive pylon in the middle of the chamber we found ourselves in and of all things, the pylon shot out spurts of water! The demon didn’t know which way was up after a few blasts from that cannon. I’d never seen such a thing.”

“And then Dad… What? Snuck up on the demon and cut its legs out from underneath it after playing dead?”

“More or less. I was a bit… Groggy at the time,” he pointed to the scar on the right side of his face, “Demon-borne wounds don't heal so well. Poison on their weapons and talons from some pit in Hel. At that point, the poison was working through my system and I felt like my body was icing over. I could hardly move, and the only reason I could see the action was because I’d fallen in such a way as to have a front-row seat for the final part of the fight.”

“So… you just lay there? Doing nothing?” Mikel asked, smiling again, the heat, for the moment at least, forgotten.

“I’ll have you know, I did my job in the raid just fine, thank you.” Helsket tipped back the flask he’d retrieved from his belt at some point during the telling. He took a deep drink and offered the hot, silver container to Mikel, but Mikel, for his part, waived it off.

The stuff had been hot before… Now, he swore he could see heat waves rising off of the surface of the flask.

Mikel hadn’t seen Helsket drink any water since early in the morning when they’d left Faraway - only whiskey. By his guess, it was nearing four or five in the evening, and the heat ran on, unabated. If anything, it had gotten worse as the sun sank lower against the horizon and turned the sky a blazing crimson through the smoke.

Helsket took the flask back and after one more drink, tucked it and whatever small amount of liquid remained, back into his belt.

The leather had a well-worn bulge where the flask sat.

“Now, where was I?” Helsket burped and wiped his lips, leaving a dirty imprint from the back of his hand over his face.

Both men were coated in dust and smoke. The hot breeze had picked up, growing from a suggestion air movement to a blast furnace. It came from the East, and carried with it dust so fine you could hardly say it existed at all, except for the pebbly, second skin it caked a body with.

“Dad woke up and,” Mikel mimed a swipe with a sword and Helsket nodded in approval.

“Oh, aye, yes. That’s when your dad sprung up and cut the demon’s hamstrings - or whatever counts for hamstrings on such a beast. It was as tall as a church and twice as profane as any bishop.”

Mikel laughed at the joke… or at least what he thought was a joke. There were many rumors about the church after all - none flattering.

He didn’t have a chance to ask before Helsket launched into the rest of the tale, waving his arms above his head to accentuate the long-ago battle.

“And then, soaked to the bone, confused and in pain, The Demon falls forward onto its face and your ‘pa takes the chance to run up its hairy, spiny, back and ram his sword, Crest of Evening, into the things skull up to the hilt.”

“This is where he lost The Crest, right? I’ve never actually seen the sword and rumor had it he either lost it or traded it away before I was born.”

“Lost? Lost that sword? That sword was like your father’s wife before he found your mum! No, that sword fell to ruin that day. Unbeknownst to us, the damnable Time Demon had more tricks up its sleeve than I gave it credit for. No. We were lucky to get out alive - even without The Crest.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

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“It has everything to do with it! A demon, or any creature of magic is constructed of aether and encased in a shell created to survive the plane it invades or is summoned to.”

“So you’re saying that any magical creature is… what, a construct? and what we see is just a shell for the real important stuff inside? Kind of like a beetle or ant with its exoskeleton.”

Mikel had never heard that about demons or magical creatures - but to be fair, he hadn’t heard a lot of much since his father had locked his travel privileges from the estate. He’d been little better than a prisoner in his own home - Although now, the knowledge conceptual he slew in the library in the market turning into some type of smoke made more sense. He'd wondered why there hadn't been a body.

“Good analogy, 'bout as good as I’ve ever heard. Yes, magical beings summoned or otherwise in our realms are simply constructs with a hardened outer shell to protect the prima materia that make up their internal workings. So what you see as a Demon, or a Ghast, or something of their ilk, is just a shell. The real creature is hidden from view and protected from the alien atmosphere of our planet.”

Mikel breathed, and although the air scorched his nostrils yet again, he didn’t find anything particularly awful about the day aside from the heat, the smoke, and the weight crushing him to the ground. “Why can’t they survive in our air? It’s not that bad.”

“It’s not the air,” Helsket said waiving his hand, as if to dispel the heat, “it’s the Essentia in the air, magic. Our plane is one among thousands, maybe millions. Probably more." He swept his hand across the vast open plain around them where dust blew in the wind and small, hearty desert plants fought for shivering droplets of water which yet clung to the darkest portions of the bodies even in the heat of the day, “Each plane has its own rules and natural laws - and if those rules and natural laws are too foreign compared to the plane you call home, the atmosphere can kill you.”

“I’ve heard of humans traveling to other planes, but not about what they had to do once they got there. Does a person have to wear a special suit to move from plane to plane?”

“Depends on the person and depends on the plane. Take, for example, a world made all of water we’d like to travel to, to get a drink after today. That would be pretty refreshing, right?”

Mikel laughed and imagined a blue-blue planet covered with water and gently wafting clouds, “Alright - so what? We get wet and swim to the surface to breathe and have our drink?”

“What surface?”

The thought boggled Mikel’s mind for several moments until he was able to get his mouth working again.

“You can’t mean that…”

“The plane is entirely water. Entirely. There are few pockets of air there, to be sure, maybe some land, but not as numerous as there are pockets of water here.”

The thought of an entire universe filled with water instead of air, or with nothing, as was mostly the case it seemed to Mikel, filled him with awe… and a dusting of dread.

“You have to want to go there, right? You can’t just end up in the plane of water with nothing more than… bad luck, right?”

Helsket winked sideways at Mikel, not turning his head, “That’s the trick of it. You’ll have to ask one of the more magically oriented members of our potential band. I can give you broad-stroke descriptions but Sylix would be better to ask, or Calcifer - although he’s always been a pyro.”

“So… the demon you and Dad killed was from the plane of time?”

“Don’t know.” Helsket said simply, “What I do know is that as soon as your pa’ pierced that things ruddy hide, all Hel broke loose. And when I mean all Hel, I mean all Hel.” He paused and gathered himself before continuing, a look of consternation settling over his face as memories long buried were dredged up for close examination.

“I saw my life before my eyes and not just my life - but all the lives I could have lived. A prince, a beggar, a bug, and many where I wasn’t even there… It was something to behold, and humbling to know you mean so little to the universe that there could be a thousand of you, and not a one would make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things.”

Mikel was about to interrupt when Helsket raised a hand, his face pale, even the sun-washed, dust-covered color from the long day's hike having fled.

“I saw your pa die, again and again. A man, more like my own brother than blood, killed in a thousand terrible ways. He missed his sword strike on the demon - he never had The Crest in the first place… or worst of all, when we faced the demon… the demon wore your father's face and I stood beside a stranger, together fighting for our lives.”

Mikel remained quiet as Helsket went on.

“We were in luck - whatever horrid, time-rending, reality-bending madness the demon spawned upon its death, fell flat once it fell to the ground. Your father withdrew The Crest - or what was left of her, and the madness ceased.”

“How did you deal with that? It sounds as if a thousand lives were crammed into your brain all at once. That would drive most insane. How do you cope?”

Helsket tapped the flask tucked into the well-worn spot on his belt.

He went on.

“We recovered, slowly, and over the next few hours we looted the hoard the demon had put together and left, collecting our dead and wounded along the way. The story sounds like a grand adventure, but it cost, lives and blood. We paid for every inch of our progress with meat.”

Mikel considered for a long minute before responding, “And that was why you were so worried about going to HelGate. One demon did that to you all… and we have to go into the maw of Hel itself with no telling what we’ll find.”

“Essentially, yeah,” Helsket said with a flippant smile, “But to save your father, I’d try anything.”

“I hope the others share that sentiment. I know he hurt you when he cast you out.”

“Enough talk about that,” Helsket said, “let’s talk about our plan for when we get to Stennin. Calcifer has always been… prickly, and rumors I’ve caught about him indicate he’s gotten worse in his old age.”

“We have to pass through the ruins of Kar’Xet to get there, and if we’re lucky we can get there tonight. If we push. It’s a bit further than twenty miles, but it is a good place to camp. I’d prefer to get into the city before full night. I’m confident we can establish a safe camp if we have daylight left - but in the night we might as well go around the city entirely."

“Do… the beasties that live there come out at night?”

Helsket shrugged and pointed to the road in front of them, to their unseen and shrouded destination. “They tend to. The sunlight, it burns them. Something about the magic of their creation and the Sunken Folk. There’s never been a confirmed sighting in broad daylight - although there's always plenty of monsters just before dawn and before dusk. They know what's coming and going at those points - they only have so long to wreak havoc.”

“Kar’Xet isn’t supposed to be haunted or anything of the sort,” Mikel volunteered, “It’s just a place. A dead place for sure, but at least it’s a quiet death. I haven't heard of any monster sightings there for years. We should be safe... Right?”