Something was different. Saskia knew it on an instinctual level the instant she awoke. The pain was gone, but it was more than that. There was something…lighter about her. And it wasn’t just that she’d regained her strength. As a troll, and even as a human, her body carried a certain inertia that she could sense no matter how strong or fast she became. That inertia was…not gone, exactly, but greatly reduced. She felt as if she could dash up walls or leap over mountains.
But first things first. Where was she? What was she?
Some kind of leathery material enfolded her body. She could feel it stirring against her skin. When she sat up, it became abundantly clear that the material was actually part of her body. It shivered and flexed and unfurled around her, and she found herself looking down at scaly butterscotch-coloured flesh. Body proportions not too far from human, although her legs and feet looked closer to those of a reptile or bird.
A long, snake-like tail flicked out over her legs. Startled, Saskia grabbed hold of it, and let out a little “Meep!” when it twitched in her hand. Yup, that was hers alright. And dogram that felt weird.
Craning her head around, she confirmed that yes, the leathery things in her face had been wings. She flexed her shoulders, and they spread absurdly wide. Oh wow, those things were huge! Did that mean she could fly?
Saskia flapped her wings experimentally. Her left wing whacked against something, which crashed to the floor, spilling grey dust all over her.
Wait, not dust. Ash. And the thing she’d just knocked over was a clay urn, like the kind people used to store cremated remains.
Coughing, she hastily backed out of the ash cloud and dusted herself off. As she did so, she looked about the underground chamber in which she’d found herself. High stone walls. Dusty shelves, stacked with urns—some shattered, others intact. An enormous stone table dominated a far corner of the room. She could stand at her full height beneath it without banging her head. The place was ancient. And yeah, there was a definite dungeony vibe to it. If this was a dungeon, did that make her a dragon?
No, she decided. Dragons didn’t have boobs. Some kind of demon, then? An actual fire and brimstone demon, rather than simply a person from another world? Touching her forehead, her hands encountered a pair of short, but very pointy horns. Another two points in favour of the demon theory. As for what kind of demon, she had no idea. She just hoped she wasn’t a succubus, because of the sex thing. And the soul devouring. But mostly the sex.
This room had the look of a crypt, but there were no coffins or sarcophagi. The people who built it must have been big on cremation.
Speaking of dead people…
“Are you there, Ruhildi?” whispered Saskia. Her voice sounded oddly high in her ears. She was hesitant to speak at full volume, lest some unfriendly crypt dweller zero in on her location. But when no answer came, she raised her voice and repeated the question.
Nothing.
Maybe there were no intact corpses nearby for her friend to claim as her body on this world. Time to go look for one.
The room’s single door proved to be a bigger obstacle than she anticipated. Like everything else in here, it was huge, and she couldn’t reach the lever that presumably opened it. What the hell was this place? A tomb for giants?
As she leapt for the lever, her wings flapped of their own accord, propelling her far higher than she expected. She overshot the handle by a considerable margin, before she forced her wings to slow their wild beating, and found herself perched on the lever. It tilted beneath her, and the door swung open with a groan.
Leaping off her precarious perch, she settled lightly on the floor, heart hammering in nervous excitement. Not only could she fly, but this body was going to fly with or without her permission. While this would take some getting used to, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Her troll body had come preloaded with its own fighting instincts. She never would have survived those early days on Arbor Mundi without them. Her new body may or may not be built for fighting, but it was certainly built for flying, so she needed to let it do what it did best.
Stepping through the doorway, she found herself in a spacious hallway. Unfamiliar symbols had been etched into the wall beside the door. Her oracle translator hadn’t kicked in yet, so she couldn’t tell what they said. Probably something along the lines of: “Do not enter. Dead people inside.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she leapt into the air. As predicted, her wings immediately took over, and she found herself hovering in place. This was almost too easy. As long as she didn’t think too hard about…oh whoa. She dipped in the air, her wingbeats losing their rhythm. Her conscious thoughts had interfered with her flying instincts.
Relax, she told herself. Now move forward.
Trying not to think too hard, she did just that. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed. The wop wop wop sound her wings made as they lashed the air was hardly stealthy, but what the hell. If anything tried to eat her, she’d just fly out of reach.
A short distance down the hallway, she came to a halt in the air, staring at a faded scene painted on the wall. It depicted armoured human—or humanoid—warriors fighting an array of demonic creatures. Some of the demons looked rather like her: winged creatures with fiery-coloured scales ranging from golden to scarlet. Others were much bigger and meaner, their forms as varied as they were ghastly.
If they were demons, and if those winged creatures depicted on the mural were indeed her kind, then she had a pretty good idea what kind of demon she was. And she now understood why the doors and everything else in this place seemed so huge.
They weren’t huge. Saskia was tiny.
She was an imp.
Or at least a creature that filled the same niche as imps did in many stories and games: small, flying servants of greater beings.
Why would her undermind have chosen such a small, weak form for her? There must be more to the imps of this world than she assumed. A pity she didn’t have a stinger on her tail, like Dungeons & Dragons imps. That would have been handy.
At that moment, she thought she could hear a faint whisper on the air. Just her imagination, or something more? It was always something more. She landed gently, and stood perfectly still, tilting her head from side to side.
Nothing. Okay, so maybe it had just been the wind kicked up by her wings. Maybe.
Continuing her flight, she soon came upon some more painted scenes. Scenes of battles and revelry and inscrutable rituals. One showed a circle of humans kneeling beneath a huge winged leviathan, trailing tentacles. The resemblance to a certain eldritch someone was too close to be a coincidence. But that form was something her human mind had invented for her undermind. Other people saw it differently. So why was this thing so close to her own inner representation of it?
The next scene after that was even more interesting. It depicted the same leviathan looming over a walled city. And from that city, scores of demons were rising into the air toward the eldritch monstrosity. The expressions on their faces told her they weren’t too happy about this.
Apparently her oracle translator had been doing its job, because now she could understand the inscription beneath the scene. It read:
Ixathi will gather them all.
So that thing was called Ixathi, and it would gather up all the demons—or had already done so? For what purpose?
The scene and the accompanying inscription seemed somehow familiar. More words rose from some long-dormant place in her mind.
Echoes afear,
Ixathi is here;
Come to gather you all.
No echoes in flight,
Nor binder’s blight,
Shall weather the final call.
The skin prickled on the back of her neck. Where had she heard that before?
Saskia was still trying to remember the source of the poem—or prophecy—when the whispering began anew; louder than before. That definitely wasn’t just air stirred up by her wings. There also wasn’t much she could do about it, because the sound didn’t have an identifiable source.
She had to ascend to the next floor. There was something there she needed to see. It would also lead to the surface, but that seemed less important to her in that moment.
The hallway emerged into a wide open chamber. It was largely empty, save for some oversized stone chairs, and an altar at one end. Light streamed down from a small opening in the ceiling, shining onto the altar like a ray from the heavens. What Saskia felt upon seeing it, however, was not religious awe, but relief. It was her way out.
She flew toward the light, and as she rose higher, the whispering grew louder. The opening was just wide enough for her to squeeze her impy little body through.
Clambering out of the hole, Saskia found herself in a circular room with dark, polished walls and a dome-shaped ceiling. Spanning the circumference of the room was a pattern of overlapping pentagrams. At the centre stood a lifelike statue, carved out of the same glassy black material as the walls. The statue depicted a large, spiky demon kneeling on a raised circular platform, straining against the chains around his neck, wrists and ankles, which were fastened to five hooks evenly spaced around its perimeter. A spear had been thrust downward through his shoulder and into his chest. The demon’s face was contorted in agony and rage.
Sunbeams shone down from a number of tiny holes in the ceiling, creating a pattern of dappled light and shadow across the demon’s body. A set of mirrors focussed much of the light through the opening from which she’d just come.
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Saskia found herself drawn to the statue, despite its rather morbid subject matter, preserving a moment of death for all eternity. Was it glorifying the demon’s demise, or condemning it? And why was it sitting abandoned in some underground crypt?
Landing at the base of the obsidian figure, she stared up at him in fascination. Almost of its own volition, her hand reached toward the gleaming stone. The whispering in her ears intensified.
She drew back her hand.
Maybe it wasn’t a statue at all. She’d played enough fantasy games to think twice whenever she encountered a lifelike sculpture. Sometimes they’d move and attack the player. Other times they were victims of petrification spells or devious traps. Very rarely were they just statues.
And that, asserted her rational side, is a really good reason to leave the thing alone. Rule number one of fantasy dungeons: Don’t. Touch. Anything.
She stared down at her traitorous hand, which was running across the rough surface of the obsidian demon’s leg.
After a moment of panic, she realised nothing had happened. She let out a breath. Maybe it was just a sculpture, after all.
Her hand came to rest on the tip of the spear that had been thrust into his shoulder. The weapon was forged from of a different material than the rest of the statue; a silvery-blue metal that shone in the reflected light. It was too sharp to be a mere decoration.
Deep within, she felt an inexplicable urge to remove the spear.
What, do I look like King Arthur? I can’t pull a spear out of solid stone.
Except she could. Taking to the air, she hovered over the demon for a moment, before landing on his shoulders. She tugged at the shaft. And she didn’t need to put much effort in before it began to shift.
Wait, should she really be doing this? What would happen if—
Before she’d had time to process what was happening, she found herself back in the air, holding the enormous spear, which now dripped with very real demon blood.
Cringing inwardly, she watched as the surface of the statue began to fracture. Cracks spread outward from the gaping hole where the spear had been.
I knew it! Saskia raged at herself. I frocking knew it! What did I say about not touching anything?
The cracks widened to reveal leathery white flesh, with grey spikes jutting from the demon’s shoulders and spine. In moments, it was not a statue that knelt in front of her, but a living demon.
Or rather, a dying demon. Still bound in chains, he slumped down onto the platform, curling onto his side in a spreading pool of black blood.
And that was when she saw his face; pale as bleached bone. He wasn’t breathing. But as the last glimmer of life fled his eyes, his expression transformed to one of…triumph?
A voice reverberated inside her skull, as if from headphones with the volume cranked way too high. “Thank you, little imp, for setting me free!”
The voice wasn’t speaking English, or any other language she recognised. Yet her oracle translator hadn’t had time to learn a new spoken language, had it?
The whispers, she realised. They must have been him, luring me here to…oh crap.
“Uh…you’re welcome…I guess?” Saskia spoke the same unknown tongue without effort.
An eerie white light rose from the corpse, and shot into her.
“I accept your invitation,” said the voice with a sinister chuckle.
Saskia dropped to the floor like a sack of meat, and lay there, writhing and tearing at her flesh with tiny claws. It felt as if all of her nerves were being seared at once. But beyond the physical pain was something far worse. Something ancient and malevolent that tore into an essential part of her.
“Mmm…your soul is exquisite,” said the voice inside her head. “So many layers; each one a unique and delectable flavour.”
“What are you doing?” gasped Saskia.
“Isn’t it obvious? Tasting the sweet nectar of a juicy young soul, offered freely.”
“I didn’t—”
“Offered freely,” insisted the voice. “Such a deliciously generous gift.”
This thing—this demon—wanted to devour her soul.
Unacceptable. Saskia had fought beings far greater than this parasite. She’d fought deepworms and dragons and gods. The Primordial had found out just what happened to those who tried to attack her mind. This wannabe demon had no idea what he was dealing with.
“We’ll see just who devours whom,” she hissed.
Shoving aside the pain, she focussed her thoughts inward. A metaphorical curtain parted inside her mind, revealing a scene both familiar and startling. On a wide grassy plain, basking under the golden glow of the noonday sun stood a slender, leafless tree. A tree she knew all too well. A tree—a world—she’d never thought she’d see again.
Arbor Mundi.
Or perhaps she was getting ahead of herself. It looked very much like a younger, smaller version of Arbor Mundi, but she couldn’t tell if it was the same world tree, or another of the same species, or just one that superficially resembled it. This tree wouldn’t be devouring a planet any time soon. For now, it was just a tree.
No, she realised. Not just a tree. It was, in some sense, her, just as the leviathan of the deep place was also her. Both were aspects of her true self. Her deepest self. Her soul.
Her soul was under attack.
The great serpent coiled about her trunk and upper branches, his fangs gnawing on her bark. He thought he could devour her; subsume her. He was wrong.
By her will, her branches shuddered and flexed and changed, forming jagged spurs that drove into his flesh, and tendrils that encircled him, holding him in place.
“W-what…?” spluttered the demon. “How are you doing that!? You’re just an imp! You can’t restrain me!”
“Oh but that’s where you’re wrong,” said Saskia. “I’m not just an imp. You should have done a little research before you tried to eat this soul.”
Letting herself flow around him, she began to absorb the snake into her trunk. As his flesh flowed into her, she grew. Her branches grew longer; her trunk taller and stouter. Oh wow, this felt good. Although thinking about it like this made it seem like a weird sex thing. Which it wasn’t. Nuh-uh.
Now only his scaled head protruded from her trunk, roaring in rage and panic. The roars morphed into squeals, fading quickly as the last of him sank beneath the surface of her trunk.
Silence settled across the branches of her soul.
“You still…alive in there?” she asked.
There was no reply. A deeper inspection showed that some lingering remnant of the demon was still inside her, like a mosquito caught in amber. But he wouldn’t be doing much of anything, ever again.
Saskia wondered if she should feel bad that she’d just…well, eaten his soul. He’d tried to do the same to her. It was only fair, but…
She couldn’t suppress a little shudder. What was she becoming?
Before she could dwell too deeply on that thought, it was swept aside by the realisation that the serpent wasn’t the only soul clinging to her tree. Other beings hung from her branches: tiny chrysalises, dormant yet glistening with potential.
Except one of these chrysalises was less dormant than the rest. It wriggled and swayed as whatever was inside struggled to emerge. There was something about this soul that felt achingly familiar.
A rip formed down the length of the chrysalis. Slimy liquid spilled forth, and from the wriggling sack of flesh crawled…
“Ruhildi!” shouted Saskia. Out in the real world, she pumped an impish fist in the air. “I was beginning to worry you hadn’t made the journey with me.”
It was her friend, alright. But this inner representation of Ruhildi was not the undead creature she’d been on Arbor Mundi. She looked…alive. More than alive. Her skin was smooth; unblemished by the brutal scars her elven torturer had inflicted on her.
“Sashki?” Ruhildi glanced about her, wide-eyed. “Where are you? I can’t see you.”
“I’m all around you,” said Saskia. “This tree you’re perched in…well, it’s me. What you’re seeing isn’t the physical world. It’s some kind of inner soul space.”
“Och, this is fair odd,” said Ruhildi. “It feels real.”
“You can read my thoughts. Can’t you see out of my eyes in the real world?”
“No. Your thoughts are hidden from me, as is your sight.”
Saskia considered the problem. “There mustn’t have been a suitable real-world body for you to inhabit this time. Or maybe this world has different natural laws. Let’s see if we can at least hook you up to my eyes…”
She extruded filaments of…something from the branches above and below her friend. It was instinctual rather than rational, but she somehow knew this was what she had to do. When the tendrils coiled about her, Ruhildi didn’t resist, but leaned into them with a sigh. They gathered into a knot, then plunged into the back of her neck, fusing with her ethereal flesh. In that moment, a jolt of electricity surged through Saskia—through her physical body. She stiffened, shivered, and finally relaxed.
“I can…see you!” said Ruhildi. “Och! You have wings!”
“Yup, and a tail. How fantabulous is that?” In the real world, Saskia twirled around, watching her tail spin in a wide arc behind her. Now she knew how puppies and kittens felt. It was mesmerising. She looked at the demon’s corpse. “Can you do anything with that? Maybe use it as a temporary body?”
Soon, she felt a gentle warmth rising inside her, as if her friend was casting a spell. But the corpse didn’t so much as twitch.
“’Tisn’t working. I can’t even raise this beastie, let alone take his body as my own.”
Saskia frowned. “That’s weird. Guess there’s something more I need to do to give you access to your magic.”
Her oracle interface wasn’t much help in this regard. The vial representing Ruhildi’s essence supply was gone. But Saskia had felt something when her friend tried to raise the demon, which implied that there was some kind of connection already. Looking inward, she didn’t gain any sudden insights on how she might unblock her friend’s magical pathways.
“Let’s get out of here first,” she decided. “Once we’re somewhere safe, we can deal with this at our leisure. Except…” She eyed the holes in the ceiling through which the light came. Those were too small for even an imp to fit through. “It’d be nice if we could tunnel through there. I don’t see another way out on my map.”
Indeed, though this floor extended for several hundred metres beyond this chamber, she couldn’t see any stairs leading up. It seemed much of the tunnel beyond had caved in, and wouldn’t be accessible.
“Let me try again,” said Ruhildi.
Again, Saskia’s body grew warmer. There was no discernable reaction in the physical world, though. She flew to the ceiling, and pressed her hands against it, even as her wings struggled to hold her in place.
The moment her fingers made contact with the ceiling, something shifted in her mind. She could feel the structure of the stone; the bonds that held it together. All it would take was a little flex…
A violent shudder rippled across the ceiling. The huge blocks cracked, and gave way. Amidst a shower of sand, they tumbled down around her. Something slammed into her shoulder. She spun away, teetering in the air. How she managed to stay aloft, she had no idea. She couldn’t see crap, but she could sense the position of every falling block—and avoid it.
Several terrifying seconds later, miraculously unhurt, she was coughing and blinking through the haze at a high shaft, lined with mirrors.
“Did I do that?” asked Saskia.
“Well ’tweren’t me,” said Ruhildi. “I amn’t so loose with my magic as that.”
“Oops,” said Saskia. “I’d prefer you do the casting, but I don’t know how to enable that yet.”
The newly-uncovered shaft led to another set of mirrors that redirected light from several sources at its apex. It was those that led to the surface. Choosing one at random, she wriggled and crawled for some time, until finally she emerged blinking into the light of the surface—and let out a gasp.
She was on the side of a massive, crumbling dome, in the midst of a sea of scorched red sand. Heat rippled in the air. The sun was a blazing inferno, high overhead.
But the sun and the desert and the dome weren’t what grabbed her attention. She stared up at the dark silhouette of an immense winged leviathan. The great beast’s tendrils reached from horizon to horizon as it swam behind a blood-red moon. The scarlet orb was but a tiny marble against the cosmic entity prowling the sky.
“Forefathers preserve us,” whispered Ruhildi in her head.
Saskia swallowed hard. “That…must be Ixathi.”