Devils and the First Dark. Two things any sane mortal sought to avoid at all costs. Even if you didn’t have superstitious motivations for shunning them, simple old horse sense advised against meddling with blatantly dangerous powers you had no way of understanding. Then again, as of tonight Purna was officially a dead woman, so what did she have to fear from anything?
“Before we begin I need to make sure we all understand exactly what is going to happen,” said Hoartrap as he stepped up onto the creaky pulpit of the ruined church and overlooked his meager congregation. “Once I begin the invocation the walls between worlds will grow thinner and thinner until there is nothing at all separating ours from theirs, and that is not the time for you to interrupt my focus with inanities.”
“All we have to do is lay hands on the sacrifices and repeat your words, but not disturb the circle,” said Keun-ju, looking down at the hypnotized rat at his feet. The animal stood just within the band of red sand that composed the outer ring of the pentagram, staring at the candle mounted on a giant bird skull in the center of the symbol. The red wax taper had turned black as it burned halfway down. Across the pentagram from Keun-ju’s rat was Best’s badger, the woman herself outside on a natural errand, and at the front of the star was the three-legged hound Purna had carried in here.
“Where’s your cat?” Purna asked Hoartrap, nodding at the three remaining animals. “With Sullen dipping out I get why you let his go, but don’t you still need a sacrifice for yourself?”
“Four is a very inauspicious number,” said Hoartrap, as if everybody ought to have known that already. “And devils are bad enough luck without trying to get cute with how many you draw in at one time. No, circumstances dictate a slight change of plans but to the same end result—we call forth the devils, you bind them to mortal flesh, and then as soon as the ritual is complete you transfer their ownership to me. I use them to clear our path to Jex Toth, and that’s a good night’s bad magic.”
“Transfer ownership?” asked Purna, the one cool part about this plot being the part where she got to loose a devil in exchange for a magical voyage to Jex Toth. “You can do that, like they were what, a thoroughbred yak you were selling with proof of pedigree?”
“Less paperwork but about the same, yes,” said Hoartrap, juggling a round clay jar from hand to hand. “It’s how Ji-hyeon came by her father’s owlbat—Kang-ho granted the devil its freedom from his will, so long as it faithfully served his daughter instead. Strange though they seem to us, most devils are no different from any simple creature, beholden to their own laws of nature, and once you learn how to exploit their innate behavior you’ve come a long way toward domestication.”
“Uh-huh,” said Purna, looking down at the old hound that stood transfixed in the pentagram. She and her mentor had argued at length about the nature of devils, and while Hoartrap’s explanation jibed more with her preconceptions of such entities than Maroto’s reverential view, the Touch’s casual talk of exploitation made her feel icky. She felt bad about offering up a dying dog to lure in a spirit of the First Dark, obviously, but what about whatever poor devil took the bait, only to be turned over to a warlock that would eat it alive, or worse, employing it to further ambitions it could never understand? It must just be her Ugrakari roots wiggling to the surface, but sometimes it seemed like this misery was all it meant to be mortal, a never-ending cycle of abuse against every other living thing …
“And you’re sure we can’t use the devils to go to Othean first?” asked Keun-ju. “Just to quickly report in with the general before going on to the Sunken Kingdom?”
“If we had an actual Gate at our disposal it would certainly be feasible.” Hoartrap rolled up the sleeves of his robe and started slathering on black grease from the pot he had tucked under one armpit. “We do not, however, and simple as I may make it appear, neither the conjuring of devils nor the employment of them to facilitate passage through the First Dark is an easy business. It’s hard work, it’s dangerous work, and it’s not the sort of thing I do just so lovesick boys can rendezvous with lovesick girls.”
The old Keun-ju would have jumped at the bait, but his time with Purna and Digs had apparently inured him against the warlock’s insinuations. “You had anticipated making this journey to Jex Toth some time ago, before our need for recuperation delayed us. I simply think it prudent to ensure that the situation has not changed at Othean.”
“You let me worry about Othean,” said Hoartrap, bending down and hiking up his hem so he could liberally apply the ebon lard to his elephantine knees. “One of my little friends is keeping an eye on the place for me, and if the armies of Jex Toth drive that far south into the Isles I’ll be the first to know about it. In the meantime I am not in a massive hurry to go there myself, owing to a minor disagreement between myself and the Court of the Dreaming Priests. The empress may have offered amnesty to Ji-hyeon and all who follow the Cobalt flag, but even if I trusted the Immaculate sovereign as much as our general does I’m disinclined to see how strictly her pet magicians obey her orders.”
Seeing Keun-ju’s bug-eyed reaction to the mysterious outfit, Purna asked, “What’s the Court of the Dreaming Priests?”
“It is forbidden to even speak their name,” said Keun-ju.
“Yes, well, that prohibition may have been the start of our quarrel but it’s gone far beyond that now, yes it has,” said Hoartrap, putting his grease pot down and going over to daub some from his fingers onto Keun-ju’s forehead. “Come on over, Best, it’s time to make like your ancestors and reach into the abyss for a prize.”
“The soldiers are coming,” said Maroto’s scary-ass sister as she turned away from the doorway. “Fifty torches, at least, on the road from town.”
“They might not be able to see the church from the road?” said Purna, trying to stay positive in the face of an overwhelmingly depressing night.
“Unless those bounty hunters decided it might be safest if you weren’t around after all,” said Keun-ju. “They have your face already, so perhaps they tipped off the mob from the tavern to hedge their bets that you never return.”
“If you sold your face I hope you got a decent price for it,” said Hoartrap, coming around to loom over Purna with his ooze-wet hands. Smearing a triangle on her forehead and a pair of dots on each cheek, he clucked his tongue. “No no, not a word, I see from your expression you gave away the farm. And to hoodrat bounty hunters at that! Would that you had come to me with your concerns, my runaway rug rustler, we would have taken care of all your problems long ago.”
“Wait, you knew about me, too?” said Purna, her nose wrinkling at the rotten vegetal smell of the ointment.
“There’s not much I don’t know,” said Hoartrap, turning to Best. “Except how a girl as busy as you finds the time to keep her braids so tight. Not a hair out of place.”
“Your teeth shall be out of place if you continue to provoke me,” said the woman, looking him in the eye as he anointed her. With her horned helm she was as tall as the Touch, though if she was a thick oak he was a trim mountain. “I tell you a warband marches upon your blood ritual and you speak of … grooming.”
“I don’t know why you’d think we would have time to call down devils if we don’t even have time to be civil to one another,” sniffed Hoartrap, finishing up Best’s markings and stowing the jar back in his pack. “Fortunately I believe we have time for both, as I’ve gotten my deviltry down to a science, though the sooner we start the better. It will be no good for anyone if some Eyvindian with a bone to pick shoots me through the tongue as I’m trying to reseal the window I’ve opened into the First Dark. Can you imagine?”
“I would rather not,” said Keun-ju, glancing nervously at the open doorway.
“Nor I,” said Best, her hand going to the sun-knife on her low-slung belt as she glared down at the badger at her feet, as though it had done her some deep personal injury. “Shall I sacrifice this beast now or must you first speak your wizard-lies?”
“Yes, first the wizard-lies,” said Hoartrap, returning to the far end of the pentagram on the floor; were it a map of the Star he’d be standing to the south, Best to the east and Keun-ju to the west, and Purna to the north. “No blood need be spilled, however; the act of delivering these scavengers to me was the sacrifice. That’s one of the secrets of the First Dark, so obvious most people overlook it entirely—it’s not death that devils want, it’s life, always life.”
“Maroto wouldn’t tell me what happened when you did this before,” gulped Purna, her face burning where Hoartrap had greased her up. It had been ages since she smoked, but she felt the saam harder than ever. Or perhaps it was just the thickness of the air in the church, the scent of burning sugar rising from the black candle on the great bird skull in the center of the pentagram … “But he said it was the worst thing he ever did.”
“Maroto said that?” Hoartrap made a skeptical duckface, then shrugged. “Well, it was prettttty bad—I was a much younger Touch back then, and not knowing just how little it takes to attract a hungry devil, erred on the side of the grandiose, offering-wise. It was a different age, I tell you, we were all just making it up as we went along. Don’t tell them I told you this, but in retrospect it’s a wonder any of us made it out of Emeritus alive! In this world, anyway, I might have brought us all … well, it doesn’t bear lingering on, especially not now. This little séance of ours will be a promenade in the park by comparison, or a stroll in the snow, if you prefer, Best. Why, you can even keep your clothes on!”
“My brother, willingly summoning devils with a witch,” said Best scornfully.
“Hey, happens to the best of us,” said Purna.
“I do not know if I can do this,” said Keun-ju.
“Too late now!” crowed Hoartrap, and emitting an ear-piercing shriek, he tossed a small hunk of metal he’d cupped in his hand out over the pentagram. It was a bronze pyramid, and instead of flying through the pungent air it floated slow and clumsily as a coin sinking in a wishing well. Then it just stopped, hanging in place directly above the black candle, whose green flame jetted higher and higher, turning paler with each pulse … and it wasn’t just the flame that lost its color with each guttering blast toward the hovering pyramid, but the candle itself, the black wax turning grey. “To your knees, to your knees! Hold on to your sacrifices, but don’t disturb the border!”
“Huh?” Purna shook her head. Even more disturbing than realizing she’d slipped into a trance as she stared at the floating pyramid was coming out of the reverie now, and finding herself in the midst of a profane ritual with no fucking idea of what to do next. She’d just assumed it would all make sense once they got started, that she’d go through the motions without overthinking them … but while it had started to go that way for a hot minute now she was right back in the moment, high and anxious and also really really high?
“Kneel, Purna! Kneel!” Hoartrap’s voice wobbled as it slowly crawled through the air … or voices, really, because the words seemed to split to go around the edge of the pentagram and hit her separately, one in each ear. “Hold on to your dog!”
Blinking down, Purna reeled in place at the sudden gulf that loomed beneath her. The skull and the candle were still there, as were the sandy ridges that made up the outlines of the symbol on the floor. That just made the sight even more disorienting, because everything else was gone. What should have been the dirt floor of the church was darkest nothing, a bottomless pit … Except no, it wasn’t. It was a pool of black oil, the head of the dog she had brought to this unholy place breaking the still surface at her feet and issuing a scream unlike any she had ever heard in all her battles with mortals and monsters.
“Grab it, Purna!” Hoartrap sounded ecstatic, and she didn’t dare look away from where her sacrifice had appeared, for as soon as it had risen it sank again. Purna dropped to her knees on the edge of the pentagram. Something churned in the First Dark, and without a thought for her own safety she thrust her hands into the cold, lightless reaches, desperate to save the poor animal from the fate she had condemned it to. She was a thoroughly modern woman and didn’t believe in good and evil or any of that fairy-tale shorthand, a moral relativist through and true … but this was wrong. This was wrong wrong wrong, this was evil, and evil of her own making, and she was sobbing out words she didn’t understand as her hands passed through nothing, and everything, and nothing … And then she felt fur. “Pull them out, pull them out!”
Purna dug in her fingers, felt wet flank and the hot skin beneath it, the dog still alive, and pulled as hard as she could. The First Dark held on, trying to wrest the hound from her grasp, but Purna would not be denied. She had made a mistake, but she was fixing it, she was fixing it, she would carry the dog out under the stars and let it die a clean death breathing the air of the world that had cradled it, she would—
She tumbled backward onto her ass as the dog came free, an oily blur of the same stinking grease Hoartrap had daubed her with. She held its heat to her chest, jubilant even as the mass of fur and bone shifted in her arms, cracking and snapping and snarling, and she ceased her frantic chanting to press her lips to its small slimy skull. Hoartrap’s screams were growing louder and louder, distracting her from the prize that lapped its warm tongue against her warm cheeks, and then there was a great whomp like a snowbank dropping off the roof of the barn back home on a sunny winter afternoon. The light went out of the world, and with it went all the warmth, the thing squirming in Purna’s arms as cold as the First Dark had been, its tongue wet dead leather, and she thrust it away from her, because whatever the fuck it was it wasn’t the three-legged dog she had found in the alley.
“Purna …” A voice growled in the dizzying darkness, her own name ringing in her ears. “Purna, you fucking imbecile, what was the one thing I told you not to do?”
There was a bolt of lightning in the distance, and then another. The third time Hoartrap flicked the coalstick in his shaking, smoking hand it caught the pitch and a torch lit up the church. She didn’t even realize he carried one, the Touch always making such a big deal out of how he wasn’t even making a big deal of being able to light his pipe or the campfire with an easy snap of his fingers.
In the glare of the torch and the Touch she saw Hoartrap standing over the wreckage in the pentagram, the skull in the center splintered into a thousand shards. What she initially thought was the end of the candle turned out to be a melted blob of bronze that he prodded with his toe. Squinting in the gloom, she saw Keun-ju still on his knees to her left, cuddling something in his hands, and Best backed up all the way to the far wall, staring down with what might have otherwise been comic alarm at the small black badger sitting at her feet, looking up at her. Steeling herself for a peek at her own devil, telling herself it couldn’t be as bad as she’d thought, Purna sat up … but instead of an animal at her feet she saw something far stranger. When she’d toppled backward with the devil in her arms her right boot had flopped out just to the edge of the pentagram, but her left had plowed through the line of sand altogether, and she belatedly dragged it back over the broken barrier.
“What … oh.” Purna was about to ask what trouble this minor bit of clumsiness might have caused, but then she followed Hoartrap’s gaze, looking behind her to see his torchlight shining on a heaving flank of smoldering meat that covered the doorway to the church … no, that was the doorway to the church. As she stared the fuming mass fizzed with bubbles of fat, and as each one burst a long-petaled white blossom spilled out, until the whole lintel of the church door was a steaming, dripping flower bed. “Um … did I …”
“Yes, you did, and no, I don’t know what the fuck it is,” said Hoartrap, and gave a small, joyless chuckle. “But I caught it before it escaped, so that’s another favor you owe me, Purna. You and the rest of the fucking world. As if I’ll ever collect from you bums.”
“Make it go away,” said Best, her voice low and calm but strained in a way Purna had never heard. “How do I make it go away?”
“Aren’t you even going to give it a name first?” asked Hoartrap, wiping the sheen of grey sweat from his greased-up face with his still faintly smoking hand. “Not necessary, but tradition is—”
“No,” breathed Best, the badger at her feet giving an unhappy huff as it looked up at its reluctant mistress. “Tell me the wizard-lies to release it, to make our debts paid.”
“Poor little fellow probably knows you’d feed him better than I will,” said Hoartrap, finding his good humor now that the intense conclusion of the ritual was past and he could go back to focusing on being dreadful to everyone and everything. “All you have to do is tell it you release it from its bond, on the condition it serves me as it would have served you. Using our full names, if you please.”
“I release you from your bond, on the condition you serve Hoartrap the Touch as you would have served Best of the Horned Wolf Clan,” said the huntress. Uptight as she already looked about the situation, Best nearly leaped out of her skin altogether when the badger responded by hissing and snapping its teeth at her … but then it turned and waddled over to Hoartrap. It looked about as displeased at being turned over to the sorcerer as Purna would have.
“Yes, you’ll do nicely,” said Hoartrap as he jammed the torch in the broken floorboards of the raised pulpit and scooped up the badger. It looked no bigger than a marten in his arm, and carrying the docile devil over to his pack, he removed a plain-looking burlap sack and nudged the creature inside. It gave a final ugly snarl at Best, then disappeared inside. “Come on then, Keun-ju, you next.”
“I’m sorry,” Keun-ju whispered to the rodent in his hands, and then, offering the same terms Best had, he placed the devil in the open sack Hoartrap jutted in his face.
“Yes, yes, we’re all so very sorry,” said Hoartrap, turning to Purna. “And you, gheefingers, and you—if those Eyvindians didn’t know where we were before they certainly do now, and as much fun as it would be to remind them of what happens when they get on the Cobalt Company’s bad side, time’s a-wasting.”
“And me what?” asked Purna, finally picking herself up off the ground and looking around the dim church. “I thought you said it was dead.”
“What’s dead?”
“My devil,” said Purna, looking back at the fleshy garden sprouting from the temple doorway.
“That’s not your devil,” said Hoartrap, “I told you, I don’t know what the fuck that is. Your devil took off outside as soon as I fried that weirdness. That’s what comes of using dogs, the devils they attract always seem a bit smarter, which is to say, a bit more likely to misbehave. So call it back and hand it over and let’s get out of here.”
“How do I …” But Purna thought she had some idea before she even finished, and feeling a little jolt of some strange emotion in her chest, she whistled. It was damned hard, on account of her big fat monster tongue, but that had been one of the first things she’d relearned on the long march up here to the Haunted Forest.
And sure enough it did the trick, the devil trotting back inside on its little legs, the dead flowers drifting down overhead to land in its fur like confetti. Its four little legs, not its three long ones. Its ivory fur, nothing like the chestnut coat of the hound. It was …
“Well, I’ll be a Maroto’s uncle,” breathed Hoartrap. “I’ve never even heard of one doing something like that before.”
Friendly as the shuffle-stepping pup appeared, Purna couldn’t help but treat it differently than she had before. Back in the Wastes she would have snatched the little bastard up in her arms, growling right back in his face when he acted all tough, but it wasn’t like she could just go back to pretending he was nothing more than what he looked like. Prince was not just some spaniel, and noticing the patch of missing fur on his rear haunch and the too-human tongue lolling from his mouth she supposed he wasn’t just some devil, either.
“It’s not uncommon for them to warp the flesh a little this way or that, to make it more comfortable, but a whole different breed?” Hoartrap shook his head, and the open sack in Purna’s direction. “Well, far be it from me to be dogscriminatory, and lapdogs spend just as well as mutts where we’re going. Pass it over, Purna, and—”
“This is one devil you don’t touch, Hoartrap,” said Purna, seizing Prince up after all and giving him such a hug. Glaring at the warlock over the decidedly unique sensation of the little dog licking her chin with her own tongue, she said, “I don’t care if it means you three go on ahead while I walk all the way to Othean, there is no fucking way he’s going anywhere but into Diggelby’s arms.” Giving the devil who had saved her life another squeeze, she added, “Or mine, in the meantime.”
“Ahhhhhh,” said Hoartrap sagely, as if he knew half as much as he thought he did, but to her relief he didn’t fight her on it. Turning back to the ruined pentagram he said, “Oh well, two are better than none, and I’d never begrudge a pal her sense of sentiment. Help me get this set back up and we can go give Maroto the shock of his life. Well, one of them, anyway, but I pride myself on being present for almost all of them.”
Instead of immediately working with either the rat or the badger, Hoartrap stowed his devil-stuffed bag inside his pack and started futzing with the broken symbol on the floor. As he nudged the disturbed sand back into a solid line, Keun-ju shakily joined Purna and Prince, the Immaculate looking as blanched as Purna must. Best had taken a few steps toward the door but stopped in the middle of the empty floor, perhaps unwilling to pass under the floral horror.
“They’re almost here,” called the Horned Wolf, sounding more herself again now that she could focus on something wholesome, like a furious mob coming to murder them. “Firelight replaces Silvereye, they must be climbing the path.”
“Bring your things, bring your things,” said Hoartrap, hopping back to his feet and brushing bone dust off his hands. Tossing the last few odds and ends into his bulky wicker pack, he hoisted it onto his back and then took up the magic post under one arm. “Swiftly now, to the edge of the circle. This time we’re stepping inside, but not until I say so—the door’s already ajar from our first adventure and I don’t want anyone falling through until I’ve made sure it leads where it needs to.”
“Have you already freed the devils?” asked Best, shouldering her own bag and cautiously approaching the altered symbol on the floor. Or perhaps it was the floor itself that had been changed, and the pentagram remained the same. It was hard to tell since looking at it made Purna’s eyes water. “Is it done?”
“Nobody’s freeing anyone,” said Hoartrap. “I have the means to take us all through with little more than a wave of the hand and a slip of the tongue.”
“But you said we needed to free our devils to take us wherever we wanted to go,” said Keun-ju. “That was the whole point of … of what you made us do.”
“I didn’t make you do anything,” said Hoartrap, resuming his position at the edge of the symbol, the torch behind him throwing his grotesque shadow over everyone else. “And what I said was if you bound a devil you could then release it in exchange for safe passage through the First Dark, no Gate required. Which you could. I, however, do not need to waste good devils on such a simple trick, not with the ground so thin in front of us. So step right up, hold hands and—”
“Then why summon them at all?” demanded Best.
“To weaken the membrane between our world and theirs, thus facilitating our passage through this very spot,” said Hoartrap with growing annoyance. “When they pull themselves free there is … a residual malleability in reality, to put it in layperson’s terms, which we will exploit to our advantage.”
“Exploit to your advantage, you mean,” said Purna, holding Prince even tighter as the pieces of Hoartrap’s plot slipped into joint like the proper mix of components coming together to release a devil from the First Dark. “They didn’t have to give you their devils at all, did they? Even if they’d kept them you could still take us through this weak spot or whatever, isn’t that what you’re saying?”
“Ah, you Ugrakari and your eerie intuition,” said Hoartrap. “You would make a finer apprentice than your girlfriend ever did … not that that is an invitation, mind you, I’ve come to the conclusion that taking on pupils is more trouble than it’s worth. You give and you give and—”
“You tricked us,” said Best, “to make us complicit in your crimes.”
“I did not volunteer every little detail that would have flown in one ear and out the other,” said Hoartrap. “I told you for a price I would take you where you need to go. I named my price. You have paid it. No tricks. No crimes.”
“You are an ogre and a mage, and yet as Best points out you hide behind your wizard-lies instead of speaking boldly and nobly,” said Keun-ju, getting fired up, too. “Why have us summon devils only to pass them over to you, if it was not required?”
“Because the little shits are getting wise to me,” said Hoartrap, and now his bluster was replaced with something gloomier as he scowled down at the broken bits of skull, spatters of grey wax, and melted metal in the center of the pentagram. “Eat enough devils and word gets out, I suppose, and it’s getting harder and harder to draw them in … if they know it’s me. It’s a difficult business, practicing diabolical witchcraft without the assistance of the diabolic, but this workaround seemed to do the trick, so who knows, there’s hope yet. After we find Maroto we ought to go another round, I’ll certainly make it worth your while to help me refill my larder if—”
Prince barked, crossbows twanged, and half a dozen bolts banked around Purna … and then resumed course. They should have struck Hoartrap, but passing over the pentagram they became caught in the same syrupy slowness that had caused the bronze pyramid to hover during the first ritual. As the shafts swayed slowly through the air Hoartrap waved his free hand in front of his face, covering his mouth as he whispered something that made Purna’s ears ache and hair stand on end. The bolts stopped moving altogether, then plummeted to the floor … and kept falling, when there was no floor to catch them.
“Our cue!” said Hoartrap, grabbing Best’s elbow and hopping over the border of the pentagram, the magic post still tucked under his other arm. As Best fell into the pit Purna grabbed the horn of the woman’s helm with her free hand, Prince yapping his head off now that the Eyvindians were charging into the church behind them. And as Purna was yanked down into the First Dark after them, she felt Keun-ju grab her with his free arm … which was to say his only one, though maybe if Hoartrap hadn’t fleeced him of his devil he might have wished his way into having two again. This was the last thought she had before crashing into the slippery warm scratching heaving river—
Cliff. The top of a cliff, the wind buffeting her, and she would have fallen if Best hadn’t continued to lurch forward, Purna dangling from her helm. Then Keun-ju was there, and his added weight pulled all three of them to the ground. But not off it, thankfully, the sheer drop Purna had glimpsed now a few yards away thanks to Best’s powerful stride. Nobody tried to stand right away, the rocky earth swimming in front of Purna, but then Hoartrap’s oily toes appeared in front of her, catching in the gleam of the setting sun.
“Need to work on my landings,” he muttered, “but this is the spot all right. Time to see just how far the Mighty Maroto has roamed—who wants to be a dear and take the other end of this hexed piece of driftwood?”
Perhaps it was Prince licking her face with her old tongue that helped Purna get over her bends from the First Dark sooner than the others, but whatever the cause she had climbed to her feet and dusted herself off before Best and Keun-ju were even able to sit up. It was hardly the most remarkable aspect of the evening but Purna couldn’t get over how dark the night had been back in Black Moth, but here the sun still slouched on the far horizon. It had felt like the magic of a moment, but had a whole day passed while they floated through the First Dark?
Really taking in her surroundings now, she saw a shimmering jungle poised to break over them like a green tidal wave, and on the other side of their narrow shelf of rock the cliffs plummeted to an ocean as vast and open as any sea she had ever glimpsed. It would have taken her breath away even if she hadn’t known that she now stood on Jex Toth, the Sunken bally Kingdom from whence all Ugrakari traced their ancestry, but where none had set foot for five hundred years.
“Sightsee later, Purna, for now take the other end of this so we can determine which direction to go,” said Hoartrap, bumping her hip with the magic post. “From my brief expeditions to this place in pursuit of my fellow Villain I quickly learned to stay under the cover of the canopy, especially after dark, and the sun’s almost sunk. The heavens are not so pleasant as they seem, nor so vacant, for there are … there are …”
“There are what?” asked Keun-ju, but Hoartrap was as incapable of speech as Purna. She had obligingly hooked an arm around the tamarind log while still taking in the majestic vista, but as soon as she took up her end the unmistakable pull of the post captured her attention. Instead of being tugged back from the cliffs and toward the jungle interior, the wooden compass needle tried to wiggle forward in the crook of her elbow, pressing straight out toward the open sea. Oblivious to this ominous portent, Keun-ju woozily got to his feet and asked again, “There are what in the skies, Hoartrap?”
“Demons,” whispered Best, her eyes wide and bright as the setting sun as she stared upward.
“Is it maybe mixed up?” asked Purna, giving the magic post a shake, as if that might sort it out. “From coming through the First Dark? Something?”
“Fuck!” Hoartrap dropped his end of the post as something popped inside his robes, smoke rising from his chest as he rooted around in the fold and then flung away a fat, glowing cockroach. Prince went right after it, but the bug was too quick for him, wiggling into a crevasse. Sucking his fingers, Hoartrap repeated himself a few more times, as if maybe they hadn’t caught it. “Fuck fuck fuck!”
“Fuck!” yelped Purna, dropping her end of the magic post, too, as the shadow that passed overhead caught her notice. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the tamarind log roll away, right off the side of the fucking cliff, but that was hardly her biggest concern at present.
“Fuck is right!” said Hoartrap.
“What … the … fuck …” gasped Keun-ju.
“A long story with a dud ending,” said Hoartrap, scowling out to sea. “Alarmlings only hatch under extremely specific circumstances. In this case, when a sword I warded for a friend comes into close proximity with a higher concentration of deviltry than has existed in this world for centuries. That friend is on Othean, and the only possible trigger would be an invasion from this very shore crashing down on—oh you meant what the fuck is that!”
They did, but not even Best was sticking around for an answer, everyone scattering away into the jungle like rabbits from the shadow of a hawk. Everyone except Hoartrap, anyway, who initially tried to play it cool, but over her shoulder Purna saw him hike the skirt of his robes and dash for the treeline as the colossal white thing dove down out of the blood-colored sky. He almost made it, too, but then ropey tongues exploded out from the swooping monster, enveloping its quarry, and the Touch was carried off so swiftly and silently you would have thought he had never set foot on the Sunken Kingdom at all … if not for the three shivering mortals hiding under the cover of strange, mammoth vegetation, with one small devil among them.
Before long it was fully dark.