Chapter 60: 59. The Demon

The demon was long and serpentine. Its tail dragged far behind its head as it slithered through the sky. Its head was flat and broad but not like any snake Corvo had ever seen; it might have been the point of an arrow, or the tip of a sword, except for the array of golden eyes scattered up and down its face—two dozen or more, arranged without any sense or symmetry. Behind them pumped veins of translucent mana that glistened red within the blue body, like Corvo’s blood beneath his skin, but he saw clearly through every inch of the creature. Its whole form seemed almost like mirage.

It was a being of pure mana. Immaterial magic given shape and sentience. A hand would go through it, yet it was anything but harmless.

The party stared at it.

At first it stopped, hovering in the air. Its head tilted downward, and it stared at the place down the hill where the goblin village smoked. But its nose led its head, and the head led its eyes toward the party.

“To the gate,” Trito said. “Go to the gate now. Now!”

Aletheia hesitated. Dorian muttered under his breath. But Mother grabbed hold of Corvo and yanked him forward, up the hill backward as he gawked, until he had no choice but to run after her.

She tripped over a root on the path. The trees grew thicker to their sides as they approached the walls of the compound.

“Mama!” Corvo cried. He ran to her side to help her up, but she pushed him away.

“This is useless—you are useless!” she shrieked—not to Corvo, but to Trito behind her. She jumped back upright. Then she grabbed Corvo, leaned down to him, and shouted, “Blink!”

Corvo blinked. Once. Then again. Then he opened his eyes for a third time, and he saw a garden beneath him.

He was dizzy. He nearly fell forward, but Mother grabbed him, steadying him, and he saw.

He and Mother stood atop the walls of the compound. They had teleported the rest of the way up the hill, away from the demon, and now he looked down on the bailey beyond the wall. He saw the tower up-close, now so tall that he could barely make out its top. The bailey behind the wall and before the tower was well-kept and full of fruits and flowers that radiated every color in a rainbow. A cared-for path led up to the tower’s doors—a huge archway, with banded oak, and all along its sides were scrawled ancient runes.

They were not Regal, nor any Elvish dialect Corvo recognized. They did not glow with magic as those in the vault at Waterrest did. They were simple mundane characters up and down the walls. More were scrawled at the foot of the gate, and over it, and along the tower, too.

Mother gasped in exertion. Then she turned to watch the others.

They were tiny in the distance. Even the demon in the sky was hard to see. But they grew larger quickly. Aletheia grabbed Dorian and helped him limp up the path; she looked back and forth, as though she wondered where Corvo had gone, but when she spotted their heads over the parapet, she stopped in her tracks.

She closed her eyes. She held the goblin sorcerer’s staff in her right hand, and Corvo saw its gem glint red.

He blinked.

They disappeared. But they did not reappear at Corvo’s side, like he thought they would.

He spun around again.

Dorian and Aletheia were in the air overhead, above the compound’s walls.

They seemed to hover for a moment. Then, they plummeted. The staff slipped from Aletheia’s fingers, and she was too disorientated to do anything but scream as she fell.

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Mother stretched out her staff and caught them both. They were a foot off the ground by the time they came to a sudden stop, like they had landed in a net; again they hovered, but only until their momentum was gone. Then they fell harmlessly the remaining foot.

Corvo looked back to the demon.

Trito faced it. It had slithered to his level, and now it floated above him, looking him over with every eye.

It roared. It opened a mouth that it hadn’t had until that moment, and from where a forked tongue should have been instead came a torrent of blue projectiles.

Trito evaded them. The bolts hit the ground at his sides and a tree and each was blown apart in an explosion, but he dodged and jumped and dived to stay out of their path.

When the demon came close, he leaped upward and cut at it with his spear.

The Elven blade cut it like it was flesh, just as Mother’s blade had cut the Shadow Man at their last long rest. Blue and red dribbled from the wound, and the demon recoiled.

It lifted back into the air, until it was far out of reach.

Its focus did not return to Trito. Instead its gaze went to Mother.

“Get inside the gate!” Trito shouted, voice echoing from a vast distance. “Within the tower! Go!”

The demon headed their way.

“It cannot follow there! Go!”

Corvo grabbed hold of Mother’s arm.

She pushed him away. “Go to Aletheia. Go with her!”

Corvo shook his head and held on more tightly. She looked down to him, and she was furious, angry, and evil in her eyes; she pushed him off harder, and he had no choice but to let her go.

He stumbled to the parapet, tears in his eyes.

“Go to her!” she screamed.

This time he listened. He ran for a nearby staircase, into the garden, and down to Aletheia.

She bled from countless wounds. She rose slowly, and Dorian barely rose at all. Her nose was smeared with gore. But she made it to her feet with Corvo’s help, and the two went to the banded door, the gate into the tower.

She tugged at its handles.

It did not open.

“Let us in!” she shouted. She pounded, and a large echo came from the other side. “Let us in!”

But no response came.

Behind them, the demon appeared over the parapet.

Its mouth opened anew when it saw Mother. It lowered near to her, like a sea snake diving deeper in water, until its head was near hers.

Its eyes came to her level. They were face-to-face. But the demon’s body began to flicker. It sparkled blue, and its mouth widened, and Mother was drawn toward it.

She lifted off the ground. Her back arched, and her staff fell from her fingers. A haze of green left her mouth, and her skin grew pale.

But she reached down to the sword on her belt, and she drew it.

She cut with the draw. The enchanted blade of Korakos sliced through the demon’s neck, and the spell ended. She fell back to the ground, and the green mana extracted from her instead broke from the demon’s throat and splashed on the ground like a punctured container.

The demon screeched and reeled. It pulled away from her; for a moment its head seemed detached from its body, but the wound on the immaterial form closed quickly, and the demon regained its senses.

It came toward her again.

Trito appeared over the parapet’s edge. He nearly flew over the wall, and he thrust his spear into the demon’s side as he landed beside Mother.

The spearpoint pierced its body, and the demon reeled. Green and red mana leaked from the wound, hitting the ground with an inaudible splash—before disappearing, dissolving and fizzling away as though it had never been there at all.

The demon pulled farther away. It raised into the sky again, slithering out of reach.

Trito grabbed Mother. He looked up to the demon and shouted a single word:

“Tkoymaz!”

It was the Old Regal word for home, Corvo recognized it, and with those three syllables, the demon erupted in flame.

Its mana began to sizzle off its sides. It reeled and screamed and thrashed back and forth in the air, until it fled, still burning, out beyond the compound’s walls.

The moment it was over the wall, the fire stopped. But its flight didn’t. It kept onward without delay, until soon it was out of view.

Aletheia collapsed. Mother had been on her feet, but at the uttering of this word she, too, fell, and Trito had to haul her back down the stairs.

He set her down in a garden, by a young apple tree with orange fruit and yellow leaves.

Corvo rushed to her side. She was still at first, but soon she stirred. Her eyes opened.

But her eyes were not her eyes. They were not golden like they always had been.

They were brown.

She shot upright and hugged Corvo. The embrace was so tight that he felt himself choke, but he returned it as best he could.

“You did well, my son,” she whispered.

“What did you do?” Dorian said, coughing. His face was smeared red. “What—what’s happening? Why’d it leave?”

Trito opened his mouth to respond. But before he spoke, a noise stirred behind the banded doors.

A hatch was thrown. A hinge creaked.

The doors were pressed open.

An elf stood on the threshold. Beside him, half his height, was a girl—an elven girl, a child, hardly older than Corvo. The male elf wore a robe, and around his eyes was a white blindfold.

“Trito,” he said. “You’re alive after all.”

“Yes,” Trito said. “And I’ve brought guests.” He nodded to the four humans. “Stand. Come. I promise it will be safer inside.”