“If only we knew how the system operated,” Josef sighed, looking at the various entrances.
“The captain might have figured it out, but he’s not here,” Krisha put in. “He had a gift for it, even if it was all just logical deduction.”
Jimmy thought a moment, feeling that Quintara were breathing down their necks and knowing as well that the enemy could pop out at any moment from any of the crystals. “They look identical to me,” he said at last. “I say we just pick one and go from there.”
“The captain felt that we were steered down, partly because of our clothing and perhaps lack of the Mark,” Krisha reminded them. “I think he suspected that they were all the same. That the crystals were some kind of dimensional switch box. Tesseracts, Manya called them.”
Tobrush risked a broadcast of its thoughts. <If they are true tesseracts, they might well touch on many, perhaps any, points without going through intervening space. In this case, each crystal is simultaneously touching every other crystal in the network. In that arcane branch of mathematics it just could be.>
Jimmy frowned. “I wonder. . . . It’s as good an idea as any. I say we pick one and have a destination, a common destination, in mind.”
“You mean we just wish ourselves home?” Modra asked skeptically.
“Uh-uh. It’ll have to be a station and we only know the whereabouts of a couple of them. The crystal cave, water world, and fire world are out. The plain, flat world is a good one, but they might not have freed those two demons yet. That leaves the station we came in at. At least we can be pretty sure there are no demons there.”
“I wonder if we can be sure there are no demons anywhere we go,” Modra muttered.
Jimmy shrugged. “What the hell? We’ll probably be killed on the other side if we’re wrong anyway. I—”
At that moment, from a crystal gate not five meters away, a demon emerged. They froze, far too exposed to hope they could make a successful run for cover and the demon, too, froze, looking slightly puzzled, then turned and saw them.
A demon grin was a horrible thing to behold, and this one seemed vastly amused.
<You wear the Mark, I see! How fitting that you should mark yourselves the way you mark your cattle!>
There wasn’t any use bluffing it through; this one, like all demons, had the full range of talents in a strength far beyond any known to normal races.
Josef still tried to play a card if he could. <We are under the protection of your princes, > he told the demon.
<In a manner of speaking, I suppose, > the creature granted. <But it is I who am answerable to them, not you, and I am your master now. Give yourselves to me now, freely and of your own will, and I shall use the portal to send you far from here, and you shall live as my slaves in my service forever. >
“Never!” Krisha shouted back at him.
<Otherwise I shall send you elsewhere, where pain such as you have never known is eternal, yet death never comes. > He raised his left hand and slowly brought it down again. As he did, each of the Terrans felt as if some great invisible giant were pressing on them, and they dropped to their knees. The same happened to Tobrush’s head, its long neck being forced to the floor.
Jimmy McCray struggled against it. <By the power of my Lord Jesus Christ I reject thy power! The power of Christ commands thee/ The power of Christ . . . >
Krisha, realizing what McCray was doing, joined in with her own.
<May the power of Lord Jasura whose dominion over evil is greatest of the gods command thy power! Away in the name of Jasura, and of Madigh His Holy Handmaiden, protector of the Holy . . . !>
For a moment, the demon was taken unawares. They felt his grip on them loosen for a moment, and he shook his head, as if trying to clear it. The victory, however, did not last long. Both of the chanters suddenly felt enormous pressure being applied against their own minds. It was almost a physical thing, black, impenetrable, and overwhelming, darkness overcoming the brightness of faith.
<Enough!> cried the demon. <If either of you were less worldly, or at the core had the simplistic total faith in your petty parochial deities, you might have been able to focus enough power to truly discomfort me, but at both your own cores there is doubt, and that doubt is enough. You pray to gods you doubt exist, and, as such, you pray to nothing!>
The blackness entered their minds, at once chilling them with its cold evil and at the same time seeking out, finding, and magnifying that doubt into a spiritual well that seemed empty, empty, empty. . . .
The station, the others, ceased to exist. They each found themselves swirling around in a sea of darkness, evil, corruption, the darkest parts of their own psyches, with flashes, now and again, like lightning against a dark window, of everything and anything that, deep down, terrified them the most.
They were drowning, drowning in a sea of their own terrors, and, like sailors overboard in a storm, each saw a single line, a lifeline, the only way out of sinking further
and further into the horrors their own minds kept hidden from them, kept locked out of sight. . . .
<Grab on to the line,> the demon called to them. <Come to me, become mine; give your bodies, minds, and souls to me and call me Master, and I shall rescue you. Your gods cannot rescue you. Your friends cannot rescue you. Your minds cannot rescue you. Only I can save you now!>
The terrors increased, became more tangible, reached out, engulfed them, leaving only the tiny tendril of a lifeline. It became impossible to think, impossible to react to the terror in any way other than to reach for that blazing lifeline. . . .
Suddenly it stopped, utterly, as if a wall had materialized between the demon’s mind and theirs. Both Jimmy and Krisha were wide-eyed, wild-looking, not quite sane in appearance, but they were back, and not because of that lifeline. …
<What the . . . ?> they heard the demon say to himself in shocked disbelief, but at a power level far below what he’d been capable of only moments before.
<Quickly!> Tobrush called to the others. <I don’t know how long that’ll hold him and it will surely bring others! Josef! Stryke! Bring those two with you until they get their wits about them! Into that entrance, there! It’s as good as any!>
For a moment, the others were as confused as the demon. They’d been cut off, almost ignored, when the demon launched his mental assault on the pair, but the demon had enough spare power to have kept them from running as he’d worked his misery on the chanters. Now, suddenly, both saw that Tobrush, rather than run away from the demon, had crept toward him, until, within range of the Julki tendrils, the demon, intent on the pair under attack, had allowed himself to be encircled by a neatly drawn black pentagram.
The demon himself now realized what had happened, and tried to calm himself. <Do you think this petty little thing will hold me for long? It is a scratch, an irritant! You’ll need more than this to bind the likes of me for long! And you, Julki, will suffer first!>
The demon turned and stared intently at Tobrush, and, even weakened by the pentagram, it was still terribly strong, its power rolling, concentrated, at the creature who had done this.
Tobrush, who not long before had seemed as in thrall to the power as the others, now seemed to hardly notice the mental assault upon its mind.
<I believe you are correct, > the Julki shot back at the demon. <I suppose there isn’t a better time than now to test a theory.>
A group of tendrils shot with lightning speed from the Julki’s back, breaking the pentagram as the demon roared in anger, and went straight into the demon’s mouth.
The demon bit them off, and swallowed. Roaring in terrible satisfaction and then laughing at Tobrush’s lapse, the demon took a step, crossing the pentagram boundary, then another, and another.
<Your torments will be legend for ten thousand years!> he told them, and then, abruptly, he stopped, stiffened, and started jerking about, as if having spasms in every major muscle of his body.
They watched, thunderstruck, as the creature began to tremble horribly, then to actually claw at his own body, creating huge welts wherever those talons touched.
Then his skin, so tough that it absorbed almost anything, began almost to come alive, as if tremendous undulating masses of living tissue beneath fought to break out of it, while the face contorted in sheer agony, all traces of the arrogance and self-control gone.
<Get in there! NOW!> Tobrush ordered them with a strength of command that seemed more the equal of the Quintara than its usual self. </ believe the creature is going to explode and you do not want any of it touching you! MOVE!>
They moved into the nearest crystal opening, and Tobrush followed with all speed.
Jimmy McCray was starting to come around but he wasn’t sure that anything his mind told him had just happened wasn’t still part of the delusions. It was Josef, however, who was most confused, and amazed.
“You just killed a demon!” the big man exclaimed. “You actually killed one of them!”
<Alas, I think not, although I destroyed its material part,> the Julki explained. <Just as I entered, I saw—no, sensed—that there was something more, at its center and core, something not of life as we know or understand it, more kin to those beings of that other plane than of here. Fortunately, without the body they cannot remain here without geometric protections, and our friend back there was sucked back into that filth from which it sprang. >
“All right, all right, be mystical all of a sudden if you want, but you killed it for all intents and purposes,” Josef responded. “What was it? What did you synthesize and inject into his mouth?”
</ synthesized nothing. >
“Then . . . what?”
Jimmy McCray shook off Grysta’s hold and took a few deep breaths, then said, “Don’t you get it, big man? When your friend, there, needed to be as strong as the Quintara, he was. I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about your society, but I have a feeling that you needn’t bother reporting to your Mycohl masters.”
Josef was stunned. He stared at Tobrush and said, finally, “You—you are one of the Hidden Ones?”
<Yes, I am a true Mycohl, > the creature replied. <Don’t look so shocked! I am the same one whom you first met back at the Lord’s great gathering. The same who has been with you all along. We have a special fondness for the Julki form, obviously.>
And they would, too. The secret masters of Mycohl, the Highest Race and one of the three who ruled, was always said to be some sort of massive microbial parasite. To produce more of itself, or ensure its survival, the Julki, with its thousands of needle-like tendrils, would be very handy indeed.
“You—you injected some of yourself into the demon?” Josef said as much as asked.
<Yes. I had a theory that it would work, although I am not now certain that I like the implications of proving it.>
Jimmy nodded, getting to his feet. “A part of you died to kill it. I see.”
<No, you do not see. That is regrettable and painful but it was essential, and what is lost can be replaced. It is the rest of it that is disturbing. You and the Mizlaplanian priestess have had your very faith shaken to its core, and that is devastating to you both, yet it is not as bad as the implications of my success. We Mycohl—one of the three, now four, highestforms of sentient life! Masters of hundreds of worlds, feared by trillions! You cannot believe how sobering it is to discover that what you are is a disease—a way of making demons fatally ill. You cannot appreciate how shattering that knowledge is.>
“What the hell are you talking about?” Josef demanded to know.
Jimmy gestured to the Julki. “It means that the captain was right all along. It means that the Higher Races, all three of them, are put here; put here to stop the Quintara. Each of them—the Mycohl, the Guardians, the Holy Angels—has but one overriding purpose. Each has a different way to attack and destroy, or at least contain, the Quintara.”
“But—who put them here?” Modra asked.
“Unless our friend, there, knows the answer, we don’t have one yet,” McCray responded.
</ confess to little more knowledge of all this than you, I fear, > Tobrush told them. <This journey of discovery has been equally yours and mine. There are many legends, many ancestral memories, but they are too few and too fragmented, at least in my components. >
“But you’re as powerful a multiple talent as they are!” Modra pointed out. “Surely you’ve got some more information, at least now!”
<Until forced to use it, I have refrained from using any powers beyond those one would expect of Tobrush the Julki until this last encounter, except in a few minor instances to protect myself or reinforce the shielding of this group once we combined. Until I learned enough or was forced to act, any betrayal of myself would have exposed me to the greatest danger of all. Do you think for one moment that the Quintara would have allowed me to live one second had
they suspected who or what I was? I can more than hold my own with any one of them, but two or more . . . >
Jimmy nodded and sighed. “Well, at least we actually got one of the bastards! You did it, of course, but, God! It feels good!”