Title:  A Tour of University


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"If you find the sword, let me know.  There seems to be an unusual amount of demonic activity in or around the University.  You might try perusing these hunting grounds for a change, elf."

The words had been said in a smug way, but the Hunter did not see any reason why he shouldn't at least check the lead out.  Merin Bithsbane was not one to change his patterns often or haphazardly, but he had reason to believe this particular piece of advice.  So walking down the streets that connected the various buildings of the sleeping University, he took in the scenery.  He had visited this part of the city before, but not often.  Seeing it at night was a new experience for him.  A city in the daylight, with the bustling masses of Mankind, the smell of fresh bread baking in the wind, the sound of horses clopping, and the seas splashing upon ships that blew horns and rang bells, it was a powerful, charged machine.  Its cogs were active, violent, brutal, turning in that uncaring way, a malaise.  It was a device that refused to allow the softness of shadow to move within its light excepting the cracks of alleyways and in the depths of the dankest buildings or the darkest hearts.    In these places, Merin knew that other things--that did not enjoy the taste of bread or the sound of the bells ringing--waited until night.  He was used to the way the moon lit the city in the Red Lantern District and, more recently, the Wharf District, to which he had been reassigned.  Tonight, he was not working in his official capacity as a Royal Guardsman.  Tonight, he walked alone; and he worked on his own.

The dormancy of the city struck him as rather sad.  This was the ultimate shame of what Mankind and its allies did in its cities.  For late at night, later even than when the most rebellious youth could keep his eyes open or his bedpartner awake in sheets of stained silk, the city was still; it was empty.  It was left for dead.  Every night, the city would slow to a point where the only thing moving was the darkness, the wind, and the flickering of the torches that lit the larger streets.  No doubt they were meant to wordlessly instill misplaced confidance or agreeable assurances.  This elf felt Drache was a blemish upon the land of Arangoth, but then he felt that way about most settlements that the humans built; that is, those driven greedily into the soil with not a care towards conservation or upholding what lay beneath and around that settlement.  Sometimes it seemed there was no sight but what was now and here.  He could still hear the trees that had been cut, their leaves rusting at the coming of Falltime winds.  Or the grasses that had been driven over, the tender fibers they bore bending, tearing, shredding.   The sound of stone upon stone still clicked faintly off the buildings as echoes.  Bithsbane felt--though he did not himself uphold to such ideals--that Mankind was too blunt in the things they did, too brutal in the things they took and too abrasive in the things they said or thought.  Many elves felt the way he did, but not to the degree.  A Guardsman who despised humans (while protecting them) did not have to admit to his own feelings on their presence in the world; it scarcely mattered.  His opinion did not lead him to attack them and so his eccentricity was ignored in favor of the fact that he did his job well.  He took the late night shifts that not many would want and he took the areas he was assigned without complaint.  No one wanted to be the eyes that saw the fallen, dead city be starkly naked and paused.  That this was all he ever saw suited Merin fine.

The dormitories were laid out in rows.  They sat fat, squat, as if waiting or preening.  The windows were mostly dark and few were open or exposed in any discernible way.  Inevitably, he came upon the building that housed the School of Arcane Studies.  Bithsbane, at his core, was a mage and a mage of some power in his own right.  He was, though, not as committed to the tomes of magicks as those that made it their lives to be scholars.  Nor did he wish to be.  Magick, in its own eccentricity, had twisted Merin and not the other way around.  He had no choice in the matter, but at the very least he believed he did not have to worship it at every sleeping hour with his time.  No, that pleasure went to the demons that he pursued relentlessly.  Demons were everywhere, so it made moving about fairly painless to him.  One could never kill them all, so he could go virtually anywhere and live and prosper.  Still, Drache had a tendency of drawing a variety of kinds and so Bithsbane took this as a good chance to collect knowledge on the various breeds.  

Turning his black eyes over the stone building dedicated to Arcane studies, he viewed the archway with some curiosity.  He did not move to touch the stone.  The cold did not bother him.  The winds of the Wintry Blight had fallen upon the city hard and frozen many a rain that fell upon the old stones, but he was dressed warmly enough.  He bore the ashen cloak to give the impression he was doing Guardly business and the hood was securely drawn over his head to conceal his race.  The rock of the archway smelled of dead vines and magic.  It was whispered that this building had been moved in its entirety from another city when the University had long ago been moved.  It was not an impressive feat to someone unimpressed with the building of the structure to start with.  Moving a cart full of hay from one street to another?  No more or less impressive.

A breeze picked up farther down the road and he braced his body somewhat, drawing his hands into pockets and moving on his way down the street.  The chilled stone of the archway loomed behind him as he walked the cobblestones of the street, keeping a keen eye out for anything out of the ordinary.  There were no students out tonight.  Had the Winter Celebrations then taken them out of the University or did the cold simply make the notion of coming out of their caverns of mortar and wood a disagreeable one?  It made things easier because it made things stand out that might not if there were more activity.  It was then that fate teased Merin's logic by having a door creak open.  It was a dormitory across the way.  He saw a waifish figure in a heavy cloak and scarf open and close a small door.  The Guardsman scanned the figure closely with dark eyes and found little to stand out.  A few books, a small figure, girlish in its simplicity and the smell of magic drifting from her to him.  The breeze brought it helpfully.  A mage, a sorceress?  A student.

The elf stopped and watched the figure glance up and down the road.  She did not see him because she glanced both ways so quickly he doubted she was really looking.  There was an agitation to her step, a quickness that belied fear or anxiety or impatience.  Following her, the Guardsman shadowed her movements but more slowly, more patiently.  Stalking was not an activity the elf bothered with much, but his hunter's instincts told him he should see what the girl was up to tonight.  Her breath streamed from her like the smoke of the dragons of fairy tales or from a great machine and she wore the faintest twist of spice that drifted carelessly for all to smell.  When her hair flickered around her hood, he saw the streaks of crimson even in the darkness of this late hour.  Her path did not make her walk far and she scarcely left the rows of dormitories before she stopped and passed into an alleyway that led between two larger buildings.  Both condemned.  The breath of the Blight blew a hard gust and it knocked the hood from his head.  His hair swept behind him like those capes of old and billowed, ends swirling outwards behind him.  They clawed as though trying to take him back the way he came or at least stop him from going farther.

Drawing up his hood, his steps quietly took him to the turn where the alleyway began.  There was a torch placed just to the front of each of the buildings, but they were arranged in such a way as to make this gap black to the observer.  Turning his head to either side, the elf was amused.  The city-builders go to the trouble of setting these lights in place throughout the city, but fail to light the darkest parts.  An oversight no doubt and not an uncommon one to the world of Men.  Raising his right hand, he let the heavy sleeve of the ashen winter cloak fall from his arm, just enough to reveal the side of a long, intricate, finely-detailed demon's hide glove.  A soft blue energy, glowing in the runes within its contours, announced its presence from within the glove and lit the alley for him.  He walked carefully, dodging pieces of building that had fallen, like the trashcans and litter of the waking world.  In the distance, he could hear the sound of giggling.  This came followed by several hisses, groans, and perhaps a soft gasp.  Keen elven ears hear much and sympathize little.

Finding his way through the darkness, he discovered the inevitable dead end to the alleyway in just a few moments of walking.  It was meant to stop anyone from going any further, but at the end of this passage there was another way splayed open.  A hole greeted him; it had erupted in the side of one of the buildings.  Made or decayed, the hole was large enough for a man, a woman, a dog or a beast.  The smell of spice trailed into its welcoming maw.  The building was not one he was familiar with.  From outside, he had seen the faint traces of paint.  A sign, graffitti, or words of wisdom, it did not matter to this elf.  To him, it could say nothing of importance or relevance.

Lowering his right arm, he slid his left hand back and with a precise motion drew out a dagger.  It was a weapon of elfish origin.  It was silver with a handle of green and brown.  It cut light and sharp, quick, prone to strikes of speed.  What it lacked in power it made up in grace.  It was ancient and he had recovered it from a stockpile of his people's after finding the Community many years after his Ascension and its destruction.  Creeping, he dipped low to avoid the sharp teeth of the broken stone above him and walked through into it.  There was no sign that he had alerted them to his presence with the light he had used.  Faintly, he saw the glow of orange and red in an upper level of the warehouse.  The giggling was the girl if that was ever in doubt.  He could hear in her voice that she was well-pleased with herself now that she was here.  Moving in slow steps, he kept to the shadows of boxes and boxy pillars as he slipped closer to the group.

"Ooooo, look at it!  Just look at it!" a voice called.  It was a man's.  Or a boy's.  To Merin, all Men were boys or children.  "I told you we could do it.  We just had to have the right ingredients and environment.  That stuffy basement was never open enough!"

There was a smell that came to Merin now that reminded him of the burning wood, the collapsing trees, and the shadow of hatred that filled his mind when he thought of his homeland.  It was the smell of the demonic, raw and unfiltered, unhidden by any perfume or cologne.  It was a repugnant smell, like that of a deep-rooted rot.  Bithsbane did nothing as he listened and smelled what children had wrought.

Another voice lit up.  It was feminine, possibly the girl he had trailed.  "I don't know, it seems pretty dangerous... look at its teeth, they're so sharp... and it keeps staring at me between growls.  I don't like the way its looking at me, Sygo!"  Having slunk so low and so carefully, he found a place where he could move up the stairs while they spoke.  He did so swiftly, but silently and they never noticed the odd creak, so fixed upon their newest achievement.  Darting past the open firelight, he found a place behind nearby half-broken wooden crates.  The orange light rippled before him.  It was a portal.  These humans had torn a hole in the world's energy to bring over an entity from another plane.  Merin recognized the demon and its breed.  It was a blood demon.  It was a young blood demon and it was encased in a small cylindrical energy barrier just large enough for it to scamper about and threaten them with sounds.  The barrier was strong, but its builders were not.

"Oh, don't worry, Minia, I'm here, aren't I?  What can go wrong while I'm here?  Together, I think we're safe from one little thing.  Try shooting it a little, I'm sure it won't mind..."  His voice was one glazed in confidance, riddled with subtle doubt.  If the waif knew that her "protector" exaggerated their abilities, she gave no sign of it.  He could see them now together, huddled against a wall, watching and tossing spells at the demon.  Bithsbane did nothing at first, but watched the two children tease and torment the little demon.

"Look at it wince!  That'll teach it for staring at me!  Here, take another," and he heard her shoot off a fireball.  It did not hit the demon in the way she anticipated, but in fact the little blood darling deflected the fire and used it to reflect back at her lover.  It caught him quite by surprise and burned his face quite badly.  The boy squealed and jerked, reaching with his hands suddenly, releasing his consort's hand in the process.  She screamed in unison with him and moved to tend to him.  Their attention falling from the demon, the little creature chortled and began a hiss that soon became a screech.  It was not too loud, but it was direct and directed into the portal.  Another screech followed, but it did not originate from this plane.

"Gods, my eyes, they burn... I think I'm blind, I'm blind, oh gods, I can't see!"  The boy squealed and Merin watched the two humans and their pet demon.  Black elfish eyes watched the barrier holding the demon at bay fail.  Immediately, it descended upon the human girl and mauled her.  Blood demons get their name from their capacity to do things with blood that vampries can only dream of.  Their life, their lifestyle, their magic, their intelligence, even their growth depended upon varied sources of blood.  Merin knew their race well, having collected many tomes written in blood by these creatures.  Older ones, of course, were the ones who would write such tomes, but aging did not happen automatically for them.  Cleverness gave them the blood to make the aging happen, the maturation through thirst was a fascinating one.  Bithsbane had seen entire villages destroyed by these creatures of thirst.

The girl screamed and fought at it, flinging a few stray spells at the demon.  It was knocked back, but she found that as a consequence of her having been attacked, she was bleeding all over the floor.  That little drop of blood the demon had taken onto its talon was now the source of great power.  It turned and raised its claws together, screeching loudly.  The portal, small in its design and its purpose, grew now to encourage greater and greater returns.  More demons trickled through the rift and surrounded the girl.  Still, Merin did nothing.  His ears twitched at the screeches, screeches he could reproduce to speak to these beings, if he wished to.  The smell they emitted was atrocious to he who hunted and destroyed them.  In the firelight, a silver ring glinted on his left hand that held the elven dagger.  It sparkled mischievously.

The clitter-clatter of demonic claws gave way to a shaking, a sudden and violent burst of energy from the portal gave way to a larger demon, then another.  Older demons, warriors, not the children that had come curious through the portal at first.  They were dressed in loin cloths and were more manly than the first that had come.  Where the small had claws, the large had hands that ended in blades for fingers.  Their skins were tough, hard as bone, and their bones were as rigid as steel.  Their voices were harsh and deep as they spoke in their native language.

"What is this?" demanded one.  The other looked more or less like his companion.

There were two groups of little demons now, one surrounding the girl who was defending herself admirably against superior odds and the other group had began picking at the boy.  The sorceress seemed to have natural magicks and a good vocabulary with which to spew her spells at the little creatures.  She was, however, weakening as her blood ran onto the wooden floorboards and then dripped below to the bottom floor.  The boy had fallen into unconsciousness at the pain of the fire in his face.  The spell had been powerful for the two had not been holding back against the litte demon that now seemed quite the ringleader in making sure the two suffered.  It was the one who answered the question of the larger, more mature demon.  "These demons stole me, made me pain, hurt, I fight, they pain, I pain they," it said in its dialect crudely.

"Yes," said the other larger demon as it looked down at the younger one who had grown with the use of the blood magicks to draw its fellows here.  "But what are we doing here?  This realm stinks of Men and elves.  There is the scent of brick and mud.  This portal will never be large enough to be useful to us.  There are others that are better and we already have enough of a presence in this place.  Best we destroy this Bridge."

The little demon hopped up and down furiously.  Its fellows began to replicate its hopping gesture.  By the wayside, several of the demons were scattered by a blast of kinetic energy from the girl, but they were soon to rise up again and move around her.  They did not attack her again, but hopped up and down like squirrels, toying with her fear.  Enjoying the sensation of it.  "Get back, you," the girl squealed weakly, crying just a little.  She glanced to her friend who lay, unmoving.  Between she and he were another group of these demons that she was struggling to deal with.  This group had already begun to cut the boy in various places, feeding and absorbing his blood's life-energy.

"They pain me!" cried the little demon again in its insistent anger.  "They pain me!  They want blood me!  I want blood them!  I blood them!  Pain them!  Dead them!"

Walking through the little demons that parted to either direction as it approached the girl, the larger of the two mature demons tired of the child's spells and took hold of the girl, raising her up and letting her dangle in mid-air.  Razer-like claws wrapped around her throat, rending the flesh there and causing her to bleed more.  Her spells were barely able to blow a breeze across its chest and the fire that she released made the being laugh, a tickling, a hint of power against a chest of might.  Its flesh rippled at the feeling of her fear and her anger.  She squealed and resorted to hitting it with her fists, but her fists began to bleed from the pain of hitting such hard things.  She broke her hands upon the bone and the steel and bloodied them.  This was as good as fresh meat to the wolves and blood to these sharks.  Little demons rushed up, moving beneath the girl to drink of the blood that dripped from her chest where she had been cut originally and from her hands that were wounded by her own action.  "Release me," she begged in common between tears.

The demon looked at her with black eyes.  There was a void in the depths behind those eyes, like smoke that swirled in the ghastly void.  The black did not last, but became red.  Erupting with fire, the demon laughed with demented, cruel amusement and looked to the side to the boy.  Its eyes had become red and it pointed at the other, the unconscious.  "Take it through the portal then and make yourself the more with its life."  The girl heard only deeper screeching and a growl.  Chittering, happy, barking in unison, several of the smaller ones took up the feet and legs of the boy and dragged him into the portal.  It swallowed him up as easily as it spat out these beings.  Faintly, echoing, distorted, Bithsbane's ears heard the boy awaken to the feeling of pain as he traversed the portal.  He was screaming by the time he reached the other side.  The screams were faint, though.

The girl cried, "Noooo, nooo... this can't be happening...."

Rising cautiously, the elven Guardsman--not on duty and without his Guardsman insignia--walked to the other side of the crates behind which he had been hiding.  He presented himself.  Announcing his presence honestly and open-handed.  Blade in one hand, powerful magicks in the other.  Turning, the lesser of the two mature demons growled low.  The greater turned with the girl still in its grasp and said, "What is this?  An elven snack to--" and it stopped.  It looked at Merin and peered deeper, smelling something that did not smell right.  "Ah, ha, ha, ha," the demon hissed in its tongue, "You are not like your birthing, elf.  You smell almost... divine."

"Many are not like me," the elf corrected him in the same blood demon dialect.  "Many do not see the anger that I see or feel its claws so sharply as me."  It was a common greeting among blood demons.  Breathing evenly, the demon hunter raised his glove before him and drew up the elven blade cautiously behind him.  Readying two weapons in case either was needed.  The larger of the two demons stared at the elf for a long time.  Perhaps it was not sure what to do with him.  The portal did not close and the rest of the little demons hopped about, drinking the droplets of blood of the girl eagerly.  They seemed afraid of the elf.  She could not turn around, but she heard the voice of another that sounded like the two she already knew were terrible.  She sobbed and struggled to breath at the tightness of the demon's hold.

"I cannot allow you to live no matter what you know or think you know," the demon told the Hunter.  "It is good that you revealed yourself to us before we left and sealed this Bridge that was created in ignorance.  We do not want to leave any sign that we were here."

"Come then," the elf said.  "Come and meet the Abyss through me!"  The demon seemed amused by this and tossed the girl from its hold into the hold of the other demon, who growled and clicked teeth at the girl and then the elf.  The largest, the most mature demon stepped forward towards Merin and the smaller, more agile elf backed quickly and dodged behind one of the half-broken crates.  Tearing it in half, the demon roared through the remnants of it and tried to ram into Bithsbane.  Rolling, the hunter stabbed with the elfish blade and sent it hard and fast into the spine of the creature.  The blade broke off on one of its spinal spikes.  Metal rang out and fell upon wood.

The demon turned quickly and backhanded the hunter as he was given pause by the blade's shattering.  Merin flew through the air and fell down a story into a stack of wooden crates.  Dust came up from the tops of the crates as his body crumpled against it.  Bending in ways that no body should bend, in ways that would kill Men, the agile, limber elf groaned and twisted, dropping off the stack of crates and to his feet.  Ignoring the pain, he looked up just in time to feel a tremor in the floor of the warehouse as the larger demon descended the distance, crashing through the floorboards into the foundation.  Stepping out of this crater, it chuckled openly, "What is wrong, elf?  Have no blade stronger than elfish splinters to strike me down with?  Finding your people too weak in edge to kill me?  What can you expect from a race of hollow-bones and songs...?"

Reaching down into a deep pocket along his leg, a hidden sheath, Bithsbane drew forth another weapon: a black blade quite larger than the silver and quite a sight more deadly.  It was bloody--it smelled of demonic blood--and was tainted with demon's magicks.  It was incredibly sharp, large, but light and precise.  Well-balanced.  The blade's handle was shaped to contour into his hand and the surface of the blade seemed to smoothly come from the handle.  As though they were of the same making, no division between one and the other.  Nothing of the crude plastering together of a Man's blade, nothing of the natural grace of an elfish molding of steal.  This device bore the mark of unnatural life in its contours and its savage shape.  The handle seemed to resize itself to fit his hand and Merin, in the dust and the crashing wood, felt the warehouse shuddering at the great weight of their efforts and the strain the portal was making upon the immediate vicinity.  The beast roared and rushed at him again and he spun, spinning with the agility of an elf to drive his blade home into the beast.  But this blade, this demon's blade taken from ventures less than desireable, landed deep into the muscle and back of the elf's opponent.  

A roar erupted, but not one of mirth or amusement.  Now it was agony and the blood demon shook his entire body at the realization of it.  But Merin did not let it have the blade, but tore it out in the next movement.  The curves and jaggedness of the weapon, a design born in one of the Hells forges, took with it a great chunk of meat and blood and splattered it across the flooring.  Bits mixed with the girl's rapidly depleting blood that already gave the room a certain decayed stench.  The girl could not see what was going on, but the little demons seemed agitated and excited.  In unison, they still chittered as they laughed and suckled the offering given to them freely of her vessel.  The ringleader crawled up onto the girl and detached her shoes, lace by lace, and her socks.  Giggling, they began to bite at her toes, hoping to bite the ends off.  She kicked with her feet in vain, but found her best efforts did little to dissuade them from their snicks.  She could barely breathe.  The hold on her neck by the lesser of the two larger demons was so tight she became light-headed.  It, on the other hand, seemed to watch the battle with interest, but found the elf's newest weapon to be an unexpected and unwelcome surprise.

Staggering back, the now wounded and suffering demon did not linger in its surprise or pain but rushed forward again and rammed its tough skin through another series of crates and barrels, flinging them to either side of it with flailing arms as it searched for the elf.  It found no elf waiting on the other side.  So it turned, chittering quietly in its tongue to its fellow.  The fellow chittered back and it was in this moment that Merin Bithsbane descended again from the staircase and landed on the back of the larger demon.  The force of the fall and an adept use of his booted feet sent the beast falling to the ground, crashing through the decayed wood that floored the warehouse.  Splinters scratched--but did not make bleed--the surface of the demon's flesh and Merin took this chance to drive deep the dark, stained blade into its back, through bone and its heart.  The bone broke, made way for the cursed blade, and the heart welcomed the metal with the etiquette of enemies.  This wound was not fatal to this creature as it might have been to a Man.  It weakened it, but it did not kill it.  Pulling the blade free, he brought his gloved hand down through the beast's mane and to its forehead.  Yanking the head back hard, bending the creature upwards, its head back, he let it feel the power of the demon's hide glove.  It glowed bright and blue and true with runes that any demon knew.   This was his warning of how utterly the elf could destroy this beast.  At the same time, Merin took no chances and put his black blade to the creature's neck and looked upwards to the other demon.  "Do not think to aid your commander.  His head would be free of his neck before you got off that floor," the hunter growled in the gutteral tongue of these demons.

It chittered, but did not move.  "I have your girl.  I exchange her for it.  Release it and I release her."  It dangled her over the ledge and the little demons had to leap on the girl to continue dabbing at the morsel's lifeblood.  She was weaker now and she barely groaned at the feeling of a series of bodies on her.  Her limbs were growing numb.  She might yet be saved, but not by Bithsbane.

The elf shook his head and drew the demon he had defeated back and began to cut faintly, the blood--it prized--poured from its flesh and dribbled on the floor, steaming into the open winter air.  It began to lose its power, its size, and consequently its status.  Bithsbane ceased the act of cutting after a moment and the demon's flesh sealed quickly.  "I do not want the child.  You can have her.  I want to know where your other 'Bridges' are.  Tell me and I will spare you and let you return to your ... home less than you were, but not destroyed."

The demon shuddered and shook at the loss of the blood.  The pain of it was great to this kind of demon and he quailed, not holding back.  "A farm on the outskirts of this town has the greatest of our portals," it told him.  "It is where a great many of Men and drow gather to call upon us to come and give them power... we give them this, they give us the blood we crave... they are stronger, they are better and more secure these two were...  Please... just let me go...."  It was shaking, but it was smart enough not to struggle and be bled of more of its precious blood.

"I believe you, but you should not trust every elf you meet because I lied.  You will not live long to ponder the folly of attacking me..."  The Guardsman's words ended as he tore the blade through the neck of the beast and dissolved the head of the demon into himself swiftly.  It screamed a high-pitched, shortlived cry as it faded into a power that swirled around the elf, through the glove and into the open-air.  Lighting the two levels of the warehouse in a way the rift could not.  This energy circled around the elf, slipped through and out and around the glove that now bore stark demonic symbols that glowed, flickered, and changed in every moment.  Then it all went deeply into his elfish body.  Quickly, the hunter's hand dissolved and consumed the body, too, of the demon.  Soon, it turned to ash.  His eyes flashed upwards to the upper level where the other demon was horrified to find its commander utterly destroyed in a matter of seconds.  

The remaining mature demon shook and squealed.  "You will die for this!" it cried.

Standing from the ashes, Bithsbane looked up the level and pointed with his gloved hand and hissed, "Take the girl and this message.  Come to this city and I, an elf named Bithsbane, will make you wish you had not bothered to crawl out from the aether!  Your friend is no more!  I have unmade him!  Now go!"  He clapped his hands together and then bowed down to his knees, his gloved hand taking up the dark blade that dripped with the demon's blood.  It was the only thing left of that particular demon.  Drawing back his hood, he let it fall behind him as he walked again up the staircase now loudly towards the demon, the girl, and the chittering younger demons.  Black, straight hair fell out from along the sides and the back of his head.  There was no wind here, so it fell evenly along his head.  Smoothly, shining red with a trace of the portal's demonic light.  He reached the top and he walked towards the larger demon.  It looked down at its companions and then back to the hunter.  The girl, for the first time, looked up weakly and saw the elf, a Guardsman no less, and she reached out weakly, calling to him.

"Please," she begged, "help me..."  But Merin said nothing and let the girl, the summoner no less!, be taken with the demon and its host into the portal.   His only response to her pleas was a dark, unhappy gaze that he gave her.  Humans were children and many children did not deserve to survive their follies.  

The sorceress' weakness did not keep her from screaming at the agony in the portal and beyond it, but the rift soon began to explode as it shut itself.  Just the same, Merin walked over to the portal and held his glove to it as though to touch the fading energies.  He closed his eyes and pulled at its magicks intently--his glove maintaining that glow of runes bright and well defined--letting the opening's energies swirl away from the rim of fire and into him, much as the demon's own magicks had.  Tasting the portal's source, discerning some of its destination and its secret, learning where these things are.  One never knew when such things might be useful.

The portal shut abruptly.  The room darkened.  Light faded, the sounds of the demons went with the rift and the hissing of a torn plane dissapated.  It was time to find that farm where the seeds of demonic evil grew and he had just the person to help him find it.  But what heavy price would he pay to get that level of help?  What would he give up to continue this quest of his?  What price had he already paid?


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