Peter Brett - The Daylight War

As the first talons reached him, Arlen dematerialized, meaning to let them pass, re-form, and set off the thundersticks before it was too late.

But in the instant he entered the between-state, the local mind was on him.

He felt the pressure of the demon’s will, but Arlen had faced this struggle for dominance before. He gathered his will and struck back, only to run into an impenetrable wall.

The greatward.

Too late, Arlen realized his mistake. The ward was more than just a physical defence and a source of power. It also protected the coreling prince’s mind from unwanted intrusion much as Arlen’s own mind wards did for him.

He threw himself at the barrier again and again, suddenly understanding for the first time in his life precisely how One Arm and the other demons that had tried to claw through Arlen’s Messenger circles over the years must have felt. Angry. Frustrated. Desperate.

Vulnerable.

In that moment of first despair, the demon struck back at him, reaching beyond the wards with no real exposure to himself, like Wonda Cutter standing at the edge of the greatward picking off corelings with her bow.

The coreling prince batted his defences aside effortlessly, seizing control of Arlen’s mind and teaching him how arrogant he had been to think himself a fair match for one of these creatures.

Renna was right. He’d been lucky in the last contest, and even so the demon would have defeated him if not for her. For all he’d learned, he was still a novice at a form of combat the mind demons trained to all their lives.

Arlen pulled all his strength and will together, trying desperately to solidify. If he could do that, his mind wards would activate, and he would only have a few hundred corelings between him and the safety of the Hollow’s wardnet.

Only.

But the mind demon kept his atoms dispersed. Arlen found a path to the Core and tried to flee out of range, but that, too, was in vain. The demon held him fast, forcibly draining the excess magic from him. Even as mist, Arlen discovered he could know pain, and if he’d had voice, he would have screamed as the power was sucked out of him.

He thought the demon meant to kill him then and there, but it relented just before the last of his energy was depleted, leaving him weak as if he had lost too much blood, helpless as he heard the demon in his mind.

A fool, to leave his centre of power and confront us , the coreling thought to the others of its kind.

He must have thought his drones would distract us in their futile assault , another replied.

Fool , the third agreed. Arlen could sense their mental presence drawing closer, adding their own power to the already overwhelming press of his original assailant.

Must get free . He struggled again. Others don’t stand a chance without me.

He fears for his drones! The thought brought amusement from the three minds. How did one such as this defeat one of our brethren ?

We shall soon Know. The thought was punctuated by a hunger greater than anything Arlen had ever felt. Knowledge and experience were power to these creatures, and all of them were eager for the feast as they laid open his mind, reading through his thoughts the way Arlen might thumb through a history book.

They walked through his memories, forcing him to relive every powerful experience and sipping his emotions in his moments of deepest pain, weakness and degradation, savouring them like fine Angierian brandy.

Suddenly he was ten years old again, lying on the ground with his arms covering his head as Cobie Fisher literally kicked the piss out of him. Cobie, Gart, and Willum Fisher had taken it in turns kicking him for talking to Willum’s sister Aly, who was twelve. Arlen had secretly shined on her, thinking her kinder than the Fisher boys who regularly tormented him.

But Aly had proven him wrong that day, laughing right along with the others as Arlen gripped his piss-soaked overalls and ran off in tears.

The mind demons held on to that moment, vibrations of pleasure resonating in the air. There is no sweeter taste than humiliation , one thought.

I enjoy rage , another thought, as they watched Arlen take his violent revenge a few weeks later. It is so … primitive.

Arlen felt derision from the demon that held him. Enraging a human is as easy as making a flame drone burn. It is their nature. A more refined taste is anguish.

Suddenly Arlen was eleven, watching again as his father stood frozen behind the porch wards while his mother and Marea were torn to pieces. He tried to scream, but he had neither mouth nor lungs in the between-state.

He felt the demons feeding on his pain, but there was nothing he could do to stop their invasion of his memories. Like children with a bag of honey nuts at the Jongleur’s show, they forced him to relive the night Mery broke with him, riding his shoulders as he wandered the streets of Fort Miln alone at night, raindrops mixing with the tears on his face.

Instead of kicks, the demons tormented him with every secret shame of his life, every failure, every mistake or loss of control. Some were memories that had haunted him all his life, others all but forgotten until the corelings lifted them out of his mind to examine like trinkets in the bazaar.

He was back in Abban’s guest pavilions, trying desperately to pull up his trousers after one of Abban’s unwed daughters ‘accidentally’ walked in on him masturbating. She offered coyly to help, and Arlen did not know what terrified him more, giving his Krasian friend — who had likely orchestrated the event — an excuse to claim offence and force him to take her to wife, or the thought of her laughing at his lack of experience. His erection had vanished in an instant, but in some ways that only made things worse.

He is given a chance to mate and fails , a demon thought, and Arlen’s shame doubled, feeding the demons further.

They continued to dissect his mind, reaching the point when he and Abban stole the map to the lost city of Anoch Sun from Sharik Hora. The mind demons drank deeply of his guilt over the theft, surprising even Arlen with its depth and intensity. He had rationalized the crime at the time, but it never sat well with him, especially because the crime had led to his finding the Spear of Kaji and starting the world down a road it might not be ready for.

Suddenly the coreling princes became deadly serious, delving deeper into his memories, sifting every sight and sound and smell as he examined the map and made his trek through the desert. When he opened the sarcophagus of Kaji, finding the spear, they hissed in his mind.

We must see the place razed , the local mind thought. There may be other secrets locked there.

Agreed , thought the others.

The more they chattered among themselves, seemingly oblivious — or uncaring — of the fact Arlen could hear them, the more the demons became three distinct entities in his mind. The one at the centre of the net who held him prone was older, stronger, having earned his place in the keyward. The others were not subordinates precisely, but they deferred like young men to a greybeard.

Demon manners , Arlen thought, forgetting the pain for an instant.

The local mind demon sensed his amusement and increased the pressure again, jarring Arlen out of lucidity and back to unembraceable agony as they clawed deeper into his mind, consuming Jardir’s betrayal in the Maze.

If this one’s memories are true, the unifier in the south may not yet understand the full power of the artefacts , the local mind thought.

There was assent. With the unifiers dead, the rest of the stock can be contained. We can leave the cursed surface and return to the mind court triumphant.