We thought we could control them. Chain down their power, and make it our own. We thought them bound, suppressed and restricted by our will. We had an army, massive and fearsome, at our beck and call. Now… Now we have scraps. Dregs of a once glorious dark power. Now we hold our former might at an arms length, fearing to draw its attention. We cower here in our towers, scribbling down our histories. This is the only one that matters in my mind…
Walking with the others to the summoning site was an experience. The tension threaded the air mixing with the screams bleeding through the walls from further below. The dim purple light revealed very little of my companions, and even less of the stone corridors we rustled through. Our dark cloaks shifting softly in our wake, further and further we progressed into the dungeons. They may have been deeply forbidding to some, but I found comfort within. The sturdiness of the walls, the power I could feel pulsing in the walls, the physical power i exerted over the prisoners. All served me, like so much else in this world due to my magical prowess. I could command the elements, pull a soul from the Ether, and hear the whispers of the underworld. Today we were going deeper. Taking hold of a power we had used, albeit limitedly, before. Today… we were summoners.
Finally reaching the lowest dungeon room, the acolytes began the circles’ inscriptions. the circles of runes slowly pulsed with a faint light as they drew the ambient available power into themselves. The thralls were brought forward and their throats cut. The blood pulsed richly from them, and flowed through the channels, steadily filling out the runes. I began the chants. The acolytes took up chants of shielding and left me to my summons. The final words practically ripping themselves from me, we waited in silence. As the silence wore on, the acolytes began to whisper amongst themselves thinking perhaps we had failed. As they were distracted, I noticed the first hand reach from the seemingly unchanged circle. Then followed the shoulders and wings. We had seen illustrations of this beast before, but that did not prepare us for the sheer horror that crowded our minds during the first emergence. the acolytes quickly fell and began gibbering in panic behind their shields.
It spoke. “Where?” In a tone so commanding my mouth started moving before my mind realized what was happening, its voice shook with raw strength, unchecked since the times of old. Holding my tongue, I waited to see what would happen. It roared “WHERE?” reaching out to crush my skull in its immeasurably strong talons. The circle activated and bound the creature, snapping up from the ground in strings of power anchoring themselves in the blood imbued from earlier. Still the creature reached, straining against the bonds, struggling to reach me in its wrath at having been challenged for power. It almost succeeded in reaching me, but the bonds pulsed and drew the creature back, compacting it into a smaller form. At half the demon’s original size it stopped. I spoke. “We have summoned you to do our bidding while on this plane. We command you to heed us.”
“And if I don’t?” it sneered, obviously amused by my efforts to sound steady.
“Then you will be punished.” This was greeted by raucous laughter, sounding far too human to feel comfortable.
“Very well. I will follow your commands puny one.”
From that day forward, we crushed our enemies. Any and all outposts of those putrid descendents we found was wiped off the maps. We held the upper hand in every battle. We stopped rampaging, holding our power back, turning inward. We began experimenting with our new toys. Seeing how much of our human torture they could withstand was very popular for quite some time. Eventually we began exploring their anatomy, and how much power we could gain from their deaths, as opposed to ours. We began using them en masse to power our spells, chaining them to our constructs, abusing this new “free” power source. One day, it happened. A summoner, having grown cocky from so many easy summonings, slipped up. A single demon escaped. This one demon, not so large on its own, immediately freed larger entities from their bindings. This issue snowballed. We couldn’t stop them. They flooded out, killing and destroying as much as they could, creating the darkest day the Cult had faced since its inception. I survived somehow, but many others did not. They tore us apart. Pulled limbs from sockets and flesh, clawed open guts, injected acid into us, ate from our flesh as we ran away. We managed to barricade the keep and held them off until they grew bored and left in search of easier prey.
The day after, we left the keep, and gazed across our domain. Shattered, the land itself showed what we had wreaked upon it with our foolish ambitions. A gaping maw of death leading to a dimension of chaos was now open on our doorstep. From below, it devoured. We managed to seal it, to a degree, but we cannot control it. The few demons we have left are either weak, or too strong to be ruled over without placating sacrifices. We were greatly weakened that day, but like the night after sunset, our darkness shall fall once again.
Author's note: This is the third of a few stories I wrote while I wasn't updating The Terrarians. I wrote these as short story fan-fics for a game called Infinity Wars. It's a digital TCG you can find here: http://infinitywarsgame.com/
If you are intrigued by the site and the game this is the beta access code: 84E82. It may give an error but the error is a glitch the code works fine. I do not claim ownership of the original material, I simply draw inspiration from it. Hope you enjoyed!
