Paul Kemp - Shadow witness

Breathing hard, flush with their success and eager for more, Gale nodded, "We need to find a way back home quickly. He's vulnerable now. We killed the shadow demon and we killed the ghouls. Yraillar will have to face us alone." Cale felt confident about the result of that confrontation.

"Agreed," Jak said, rallying himself. "We find a way back and hand that bastard his guts." The little man shot Cale a grim smile, but his confidence gave way to nervousness when he eyeballed the golden aura that protected him from the Abyss. "Let's move fast, though. I don't know how much longer this spell is going to last."

Cale held out his arms and checked his own protective spell. The golden light seemed to have faded somewhat, and the soft sparks and pops sounded less frequently than before. If the unrelenting energy of this plane fully drained their spells, he and Jak were dead.

His hand went to Ms pocket, and he ran his fingertips over the felt mask. Just a while longer, he hoped, just a while longer.

"Let's move." Cale strode for the closed shrine doors. The shrine to Mask seemed the center of this whole affair. The worship hall of the Righteous Man, the place Cale had first encountered Yrsillar, the home of the god for whom Cale seemed called as a Champion.

It was as likely a place as any for a gate back home.

Before they reached the doors, the telltale ripping sound of sundered reality stopped them cold. Without words, they fell into a wary crouch. Back to back, Cale watched the shrine doors while Jak watched the hall behind them.

A thin red line appeared in die air three paces before Cale, a bloody slash that hung unsupported five feet up in the nothingness of the Abyss's air. A gate.

"There," Cale. said excitedly.

Jak turned and stood beside him. Both watched as the glowing line expanded to the size of a small window. Colors! Colors poured from the hole like a waterfall and overwhelmed the drab gray of the Abyss. The colors of their own plane. The colors of home. Cale had never seen anything so beautiful.

"That's a gate back!" Jak exclaimed.

"I know!"

"They must open and close randomly," Jak said,'as both stepped toward it. Because it sat so high in the air, Cale knew he would have to lift Jak through and then jumpA shadow blotted out the cascade of hues. A head appeared in the midst of the gate and moved toward them, corrupting the colors with its emptiness. Nause-atingly, the scene called to Gale's mind a giant womb giving birth to a horror. Involuntarily, he and Jak stepped back. The head of a shadow demon crowned. As it did, the shadowstuff solidified into a bluish-gray oval of flesh, featureless but for two malice filled, milky-white eyes and a slit that might have been a mouth. Two powerfully clawed hands appeared to either side and gripped the edges of the gate as though to rip open the birth canal fully.

A shadow demon, Cale realized, another shadow demon.

• It saw them, and the baleful look in its pupilless eyes pierced Cale like a stiletto. The milky-while orbs narrowed to slits and it hissed through the slash of its mouth-the first actual sound Cale had ever heard one of the creatures make.

"Another shadow demon," Jak said, and sounded tired. "Gods." Cale could hear the fear in his friend's voice. The little man began to ease backward.

The demon eyed them evilly, hissed again, and began to squirm through the opening. Its twisted,

•winged form took shape and fully eclipsed the rainbow colors of home pouring through the gate.

"Feed on you," it whispered through the lipless hole in its face. Its voice grated like fingernails on slate. "Eat your soul. Feed on you as I fed on the others." It was through the gate up to the shoulders. A wave of supernatural fear went before it.

The others. Was this the demon that had attacked Stormweather, and not the other that Cale had already killed? Remembering the slaughter in the feasthall, recalling Thazienne's wounded spirit that might never heal, Gale's anger flared white-hot and chased away his fear.

It doesn't matter which one did it, he thought. For that sin, they would all pay. Ill wipe out every gods-damned one of them. He had already killed one, and he could damn well kill another. He would kill another. Without another thought, he charged. "Feed on this!" he shouted, and raised his enchanted sword high to strike.

With only half of its body clear of the narrow gate, the demon raised its claws defensively, hissed in alarm, and lurched backward. With all his anger, Cale slashed downward into the creature's shoulder and chest. The long sword struck with a satisfying thunk and went a bandwidth deep, opening a bloodless, meaty gash in the demon's gray flesh. The demon screamed and writhed in pain. Though in the throes of agony, it nevertheless swiped a retaliatory daw rake toward Gale.

Gale dodged a heartbeat too late. The claw struck him along the arm. Golden light exploded in his eyes, knocked him backward a step, and nearly blinded him. The demon shrieked louder still and jerked back its clawed hand, now blackened by contact with the protective spell. Gale* stood unscathed, body and soul, by the attack, though the protective aura that surrounded him had dimmed to a soft yellow.

"Gale, the gate!" Jak yelled from behind.

Screaming in pain, the demon pulled itself fully back into the gate. As it retreated, its flesh grew increasingly opaque, its body grew smaller as though the gate was a tunnel over a bowshot long. One of its claws-the unwounded one, Gale noticed-still clutched the edge of the shrinking portal. The demon's arm seemed to stretch for miles, half shadow, half blue flesh. The gate shrank as the demon shrank, diminished with each heartbeat. The demon was pulling the gate closed behind it.

Desperate, Gale slashed crosswise at the demon's exposed hand. The enchanted blade bit through the demonic flesh and severed two long, daw-tipped fingers. They fell to the floor of the abyssal guildhouse and for a nauseating moment squirmed and flopped like thick worms. Gale sensed in his soul rather than heard with his ears the demon shriek as it released the edge of the gate and retreated farther within. Its screams grew more and more distant until they finally tapered off to nothingness and it vanished from sight. The portal stayed open, albeit smaller now, and the demon was gone.

Alive with the colors of home, the swirling gate hung in the drab air. Only as wide as a man's forearm, Gale realized that he and Jak would have to go through one at a time. He turned to the little manJak's wide-eyed gaze went from the demon's fingers to Gale's face. Trickster's hairy toes, Gale! You're not afraid of anything!"

Gale ignored the compliment and indicated the gate. "You first," he said. "Ill lift you through." Jak began to protest, but C"ue cut him off. "Ill be right behind you, little man. I can make the jump up by myself. You can't." He looked into Jak's eyes. "This could be our only chance out of here. You saw, the demons open and close the gates themselves. It's not a random event. We need to go now."

After a moment's consideration, Jak nodded and stepped beside him. "All right. Let's do it."

Gale gripped him under the armpits and lifted him halfway toward the gate. In one hand Jak held his short sword, with the other he clutched his luckstone.

"Wait, Gale, Yrsillar must know we're here now. What if he and the other shadow demon are waiting on the other side?"

"Then we kill them right there," Gale grimly averred. "Don't worry. HI be right behind you." In truth, Gale hoped the demons were waiting for them. He would welcome the chance to put an end to this.

"All right* Jak said, but didn't sound convinced. Gale lifted the little man toward the portal home. Jak led with his sword.

Before he got Jak fully into the gate, a sudden pressure assaulted his eardrums, like the thickening of the air that occurred before a heavy storm. The sensation affected his equilibrium and he nearly lost his balance.