Wil Ogden - The Nightstone

Walking around the block, Pantros returned to his sister’s inn from the front. The sign above the door was brightly painted and showed a porcupine standing on its hind legs wearing a fancy doublet and drinking from a mug. It seemed like it had been years since he had seen the front of the Inn in daylight.

§

The taproom of the Haughty Hedgehog was packed with people. Pantros only saw the inn so full when a particular bard passed through town. Sure enough, the crowd hushed and he heard the strum of fingers across a lute. He had to stand on his tip-toes to see over the crowd, but Sheillene was sitting on the Hedgehog’s tiny stage playing a song. Pantros looked for the large guards Darien had with him and spotted them standing around the corner booth. Darien and the black haired man sat at the table. Pantros wiggled through the crowd to get a closer look and barely managed to catch a glimpse of the folded black leather being passed across the table.

The next booth over was occupied by four women who came to the taproom often. They were friends of the cook. Pantros invited himself to sit with them. They were intently focused on the bard and barely glanced at Pantros.

Darien opened the leather briefly and glanced inside. A smile came to the gem merchant’s lips as he folded the leather again and placed it into crude but heavy iron chest on the seat beside him. Pantros sighed when he noticed the lock, or lack thereof. A sigil crossed the lid and the chest. The lock would be magical. That was something Pantros was unprepared to deal with. Who would put expensive magic on such a crudely welded chest? Possibly the magician who’d enchanted it had built it himself. Certainly no craftsman’s hand was involved. Even the hinge pins showed slipped hammer strikes in their dimpled iron heads. Seeing his plan become possibility, Pantros simply waited.

Darien, ecstatic at having the Key in his possession patronizingly thanked Julivel for the service. But he didn’t trust the man not to wait in ambush, so Darien left the table first. The largest of his guards carried the chest. As they pushed their way through the crowd, some idiot dropped a purse of coins. The chaos of people diving to the floor in hopes for a spare silver did not hamper his guards; they simply shoved everyone in their path aside. The doorman threatened them as they stepped into the street, but Darien just laughed at the mortal. He led his guards around the corner into the alley.

He pulled the portal parchment from his shirt and unrolled it, revealing complex sigils around a large black circle. He set the box containing the gem into the circle. Once the box was safely back in Demia, Darien burned the scroll.

He and his guards then ceased their projection into the mortal realms. The clothing the demons been wearing fell to the street as the demons faded out of the world. In the blink of an eye Darien was standing beside the box in his chambers in Demia. He donned his best robes then gestured for one of his guards to pick the box up and headed out into the hallway.

Arriving in his lord’s throne room, Darien and his cohorts shifted back into their natural forms. For his guards, it meant their horns, tails and wings appeared. For Darien his skin color shifted to the color of damp coal. He turned and bowed before the demon on the throne, his master, Lord Murdread.

With a deep resonant growl, Lord Murdread asked, “You brought the Key?”

“I did.” Darien gestured for the guard carrying the chest to step forward. Darien approached and touched the symbols on the lock, releasing the latch. When he lifted the lid, it fell to the floor; the hinge pins had been removed. Panic overcame him as he realized the chest was empty. Darien dared not turn and face his Lord with the bad news.

“I sense failure,” Murdread said, standing from his throne. “Where is the Key?” He took a great flaming sword from behind the throne and strode slowly towards Darien. “Shall I send you back to the spawning pits so you can spend the next dozen centuries regaining your rank?”

Darien fell to the floor and groveled. “I made the mistake of entrusting a lesser demon to bear the stone. I deserve any punishment my lord would inflict upon me.”

Murdread raised his fiery blade and cut, not at Darien, but at the guard holding the box. The guard managed to raise the iron chest to meet Lord Murdread’s assault, but the blade passed through the chest as if it were made of paper and continued straight through the guard, cutting it from shoulder to hip. The guard would respawn as a rankless demon in the pits, but it would no longer be part of Murdread's household.

Darien cowered, “Please, my lord, I had an alternate plan in case this one failed.”

Resting his sword on his shoulder, Murdread simply looked at Darien.

Quickly inventing a plan, Darien sputtered words, hoping to pull a remnant of a plan from them, “The Vulak, we can get to them, use them. We can steer the gem into the hands of one of our powerful mortal followers.”

“You cannot project yourself to that mortal realm again for two of three parts of a millennia.” Murdread stepped back towards his throne and fell into it, shaking the hall. “How will you communicate to the Vulak? I only trusted you to project because you are my most intelligent underling. I know of none else who can deal with mortals effectively.”

“Vulak are a simple race,” Darien said. “I can send an imp and they will be impressed enough to follow a simple order. But I have to get the gem out of the city. I have a plan for that as well. I cannot project myself to the mortal realm, but I cannot refuse a proper summons by a powerful magician. This is only a setback. We know where the gem is. If we can’t get it into a powerful ally’s hands, we can at least get it out of the protections of a city.”

“I am only allowing you to exist after this failure because you are my most powerful underling, but I will not hesitate to demote you all the way back to the pits if you fail me again.” Murdread then laughed. “Demons of your rank do not always survive such loss in rank.”

“My plan is flawless,” Darien said. He crawled to his feet then bowed. He turned to his remaining guards and said, “Clean up this mess. Find Kirvel and send him to my office.” He left the room as quickly as he could without running, afraid to gaze again upon his master’s wrath.

His plan had been flawless. He’d hired the most reputable mortal among those who earned their living in the shadows, and he’d ensorcelled him to make sure the key was not only found and stolen, but delivered. The inn he’d chosen for the exchange was noted as the safest place from thieves and he hadn’t taken his eyes off Julivel. If he ever encountered that mortal again, he swore to make the suffering last weeks. Darien smiled at the thoughts of how he would punish the betraying rogue. If he couldn’t torture the mortal, someday Julivel would die, and his soul would come to Demia and Darien would claim it and torture it forever.

He stepped into the hall towards his quarters and bumped into another demon. “Watch where I’m going you…” Darien recognized whom he’d bumped into before he could add an insult. Lady Glacia, a rival lord to Murdread, blocked the hall. Darien dropped to the floor, and spouted as many apologies as he could. He knew he should be confronting her, asking her what she was doing in Murdread’s fortress, but she was one of the Hundred, the most powerful lords in Demia. He’d seen her freeze a demon solid and chip pieces away and didn’t want to find out what that felt like.

“Get up, Darien,” Glacia said.

Her voice was like a purr to Darien’s ears almost as pleasing to hear as her body was to admire, but Darien didn’t dare look below her neck when she could notice. He stood slowly and stepped away from the demoness. Finding a spot on the wall to study, Darien said, “Milady, what brings you here.”