76. AN UNCEASING APPETITE FOR PAIN

Janel’s story

Just outside the Korthaen Blight

Immediately following Xaltorath’s reappearance

The moment Kihrin contacted her mind, Janel knew three things: one, that the situation was dire, two, that she was going to kick Kihrin’s ass if and when they got out of all of this, because three, he was backsliding: putting her into a “reserve” category that he clearly hadn’t intended to ever call upon.

The if part of that caveat presented itself in all Xaltorath’s splendor. That would need to be dealt with before Janel could so much as pat Kihrin’s butt gently, much less kick it. And Xaltorath was a problem under the most ideal of circumstances.

This was not the most ideal of circumstances.

**NO GREETINGS TO YOUR OWN CHILD?** Janel “shouted” at Xaltorath. **NOT SO EAGER TO CALL ME YOUR DAUGHTER NOW THAT I KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY ARE, ARE YOU? AND NOW THAT JARITH’S NOT UNDER YOUR CONTROL EITHER? WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW HOW I FREED HIM? TOO BAD! I’LL NEVER TELL YOU!**

Most entities would have pivoted, turned, swiveled, or in some other way rotated to face her at this point. Xaltorath merely made a face appear on her body facing Janel, because why even pretend to obey the laws of biology when you’re a demon prince? ***THIS IS PATHETIC,*** Xaltorath replied. ***YOU’RE A CHILD. A CHILD BEGGING TO BE SPANKED.***

**I AM SIMPLY TREATING YOU WITH THE RESPECT YOU DESERVE, SULESS. WHICH IS NONE,** Janel corrected. **AND YOU HAVEN’T MANAGED TO KILL ME YET.**

***I HAVEN’T TRIED.*** Xaltorath raised her arms, which tripled in length and grew clawed fingers protruding in every direction. ***THANKS FOR REMINDING ME THAT I NEED TO DO THAT BEFORE I LEAVE THIS FAILED TIMELINE. DEPARTING WITHOUT COLLECTING YOUR MEMORIES WOULD BE INEXCUSABLY SLOPPY OF ME.***

Damn. Xaltorath had never eaten her soul—not in any of Janel’s incarnations, not in any of C’indrol’s, not on any previous “loop.” So the demon didn’t know all that Janel knew. Janel contemplated the possibility that this could go very badly.

Now Xaltorath was thinking about it, which meant that if this plan of theirs didn’t work, things would be exponentially harder on them next time around.

Janel slammed her sword against her shield and gave the demon prince a feral grin. **YOU’LL TRY, ANYWAY. SO DO YOU NEED TO PONTIFICATE SOME MORE? I KNOW HOW YOU LOVE TO HEAR YOURSELF TALK … PERHAPS I MIGHT CONJURE MYSELF A CHAIR AND A BEVERAGE IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE AT THIS A WHILE?**

***IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF RILING ME UP? EVEN YOUR INSULTS ARE INSIPID, DIRECTIONLESS, AND WITHOUT STING. ASSUMING I HAVE USE FOR YOU NEXT TIME, I’LL TRY TO TEACH YOU TO AT LEAST MOCK YOUR FOES INTELLIGENTLY.*** The demon queen appeared at Janel’s side instantaneously, raking at her with those many-clawed arms.

Janel was already moving, raising her shield to her left while dodging right. The claws skittered across the shanathá shield, and Janel’s sword flashed down in an arc. Several of those extra fingers fell, vanished into smoke on their way down, and were immediately reabsorbed. Janel stabbed cross-body at Xaltorath’s head, but the head elongated, stretched, and flowed around the blade before re-forming so that Janel’s arm was inside the monster’s mouth.

Xaltorath clenched her jaws, but a burst of rainbow energy shone around Janel’s arm. The demon’s teeth couldn’t penetrate it.

Janel yanked her arm free, losing her sword in the process. She glanced over her shoulder to see her mother, Tya, watching the fight with obvious concern. Sweat dripped from the Goddess of Magic’s brow; containing the devastation had taken a toll on her, but she was still in the fight. Tya gave Xaltorath an ironic bow of her head. “Can you beat us both, Suless?” she asked, locking eyes with the demon.

***EASILY,*** Xaltorath sneered. More eyes appeared all around her body.

Meanwhile, Khored attempted to sneak around back to flank. Xivan and Senera were focused on Kihrin, who appeared dazed or distracted.

Xaltorath paid attention to the people she perceived as threats: Janel, Tya, and Khored. She lashed out at Khored with hands glowing with tenyé. He rolled under the attack, coming to his feet and slashing with his blade, but the glass sword passed through Xaltorath’s thigh and reappeared on the other side.

At the same time, several black tentacles with scorpion-like stingers on the ends burst forth from Xaltorath’s chest, whipping toward Tya. The Guardian managed to avoid most of them with a sudden conjuration of energy, but one tentacle slipped past and wrapped around Tya’s left arm. The stinger jabbed down, a mouth opening at the tip as it did, and it bit deeply into Tya’s shoulder.

Janel could actually see energy being drained from Tya and flowing into Xaltorath through that connection. ***YES!*** the demon queen exulted. ***GIVE ME YOUR POWER!***

Janel dove forward and slammed the edge of her shield against the tentacle, severing it and breaking the connection. Tya staggered back, while Xaltorath smashed the other tentacles against Janel’s shield, crashing her into the newly-formed rock near Senera and Xivan.

Janel was close enough, in fact, to see Xivan produce a small star-tear diamond from inside her misha and hand it to Senera.

“Never thought I’d be glad to see this,” Senera said, somewhat bemused as she examined the gem.

Janel rose to her feet, picked up a chunk of stone the size of a large man’s rib cage, and began circling to the right.

Janel threw the rock when she was about thirty or so feet from the demon and yelled, **SULESS! TELL ME, WHAT KIND OF FOOL MUST YOU BE, TO PLAY THROUGH THE SAME GAME SO MANY TIMES WITHOUT EVER ONCE WINNING? HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU DONE THIS AND ALWAYS LOST?**

The rock did little except knock askew one of Xaltorath’s arms (of which she had around eight at the moment) and cause her to miss an overhead slam against Khored. It did, however, buy her the demon queen’s attention once more.

Janel needed to distract the demon and play defense for a while.

That star tear that Xivan had given Senera belonged to Suless. The Suless from this timeline. No matter how many times Xaltorath reset the timeline, she could never change her own origin. The core of Xaltorath’s gestalt demonic entity would always be the angry, spiteful soul of Suless, God-Queen of Witches.

Senera was the master of sympathetic magic; changing the whole by affecting a part. She’d used that sort of magic in Jorat, in Yor, probably in many other places. She just needed time.

Time Janel was determined to buy her.

Easier said than done. The childish insults were having some effect: Xaltorath chafed under the accusation of foolishness and incompetence. The demonic face twisted in malicious rage as Xaltorath once more teleported into Janel’s personal space.

The shield held … barely. While that defense saved Janel’s arm and half of her torso, the shield was all but destroyed, forcing Janel to discard it quickly. She suspected her arm was broken.

***DON’T MAKE THIS TOO EASY,*** Xaltorath sneered. ***I’M GOING TO ENJOY TEARING YOUR SOUL INTO TINY PARTS BEFORE I EAT IT.***

**OH, THAT THREAT’S SO ORIGINAL,** Janel replied, sprinting for cover behind a rock. **DO ALL DEMONS STUDY FOR THE STAGE? WAS THERE A BOOK OR SOMETHING THAT I MISSED? SOMETHING TITLED HOW TO TALK LIKE A SELF-IMPORTANT PIECE OF SHIT?**

The boulder Janel wanted to hide behind exploded into shrapnel and dust as four of Xaltorath’s arms crashed into it. Janel flung herself back and rolled, feeling the wind from the other two arms rush by, one of them scoring her from hip to shoulder along her left side. She staggered back with her hands raised.

“Janel!” a voice yelled. That was her mother; her real mother, Tya. Xaltorath extended her arms to grasp and crush Janel, but another rainbow energy field interposed itself.

Janel looked past the demon to see Tya, on one knee and holding one hand pressed hard against a bleeding wound on her neck, the other hand raised. Khored sprinted past her, his sword aimed at Xaltorath.

***HONESTLY, YOU PEOPLE NEED TO LEARN WHEN YOU’VE BEEN DEFEATED!*** Xaltorath bellowed.

“Funny,” Senera said, “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

Xaltorath manifested another head to look at her, Xivan, and Talea. On the ground in front of them, a series of rune-infused circles glowed with faint light as tenyé lit up the dust drifting in the air. In the center of the circle, a small, perfect star-tear diamond glittered.

Janel was impressed the demon even saw the thing, but Xaltorath must have felt some instinctive connection, some link to a soul that might have once been hers. The demon queen tried to teleport to the center, to pick it up, but nothing happened.

Khored’s red blade glowed as it descended, severing one of the demon’s arms. He created another sword out of nothing and tossed it to Janel, who caught it in her off hand and raised it in an awkward defense.

Xaltorath batted Khored aside almost casually and frowned.

“Can’t teleport, can you?” Senera said. “You’re pinned.”

***IT IS NO CONSEQUENCE,*** Xaltorath snarled. ***I DON’T NEED TO TELEPORT TO KILL ALL OF YOU, AND YOU CAN’T DEFEAT ME IN THE TIME YOU HAVE LEFT ALIVE … ***

That’s when Kihrin appeared.

Or rather, in this case, Vol Karoth. His hands, silhouettes of deepest black, grasped either side of the demon queen’s head. “They cannot.” His voice sounded hollow and distant but at the same time resonant and commanding. “But now I’m ready for the feast of suffering.”1

Xaltorath screamed on both the psychic and physical planes. The scream was one of absolute agony, of feeling her soul being torn to shreds and consumed in exactly the way she’d done to so many others before.

Tya forced herself to her feet, one hand raised to intervene. While Xaltorath was bad, Vol Karoth must have seemed much worse, and the Guardian’s loyalties were conflicted. Janel stepped forward to block her mother’s path. “Mother, wait. It’s okay,” she said. “Trust me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Teraeth was having a similar conversation with Khored.

Tya’s hand dropped. “But,” she said. “Kihrin. How?”

“I promise all will be explained,” Janel said. “Just help us.”

Behind her, Xaltorath continued to scream.

There was nothing about what was happening that was fair or noble, nothing that adhered to any Joratese sense of honor or chivalry. This was an ambush, pure and simple. It was also, unfortunately, the only way they could defeat Xaltorath. They all knew it.

Tya’s magic soothed the pain in Janel’s body. She glanced down to see her arm healing and setting back into place.

Xaltorath continued screaming, the sound having moved now from agony to terror.

Janel turned to see what was happening.

“Oh no,” Senera said.

“What?” Janel and Xivan both asked the question at the same time.

“We didn’t expect Xaltorath to be so powerful when this happened. So literally power-full. We’ve never established what Vol Karoth’s limits are.”

“Limits?” Janel said. “He’s the Endless Hunger, the Prince of Annihilation. He doesn’t have limits.”

Senera stared at her. “Are we sure about that?”

Kihrin continued to feed, consuming Xaltorath’s souls and energy. The empty silhouette that was his body began to vibrate. Another scream joined Xaltorath’s: Kihrin’s.

“No,” Janel said, the dread growing inside her. “We’re not.”

Kihrin didn’t stop. But he was in obvious, agonizing pain. Absorbing all of Xaltorath’s energy was pushing him to his limits. Past them.

Janel felt a dull ringing sound, a vibration that carried through the rock beneath her feet. Suddenly, all the extraneous sounds ended, leaving only a faint susurrus of wind. What was left of Xaltorath flaked to ash and drifted away.

Kihrin staggered. Janel moved toward him, reaching out for him before she remembered that touching him was one of the more effective ways to commit suicide. She yanked her hand back, then raised it again to block Teraeth from making the same mistake.

Kihrin swayed, screamed again. The ground around him trembled and cracked. A pressure began to build in the air. Teraeth pushed Janel’s hand aside, and he ran forward.

Fortunately, Kihrin had already vanished.