Sons of Ironstorm - Book 4: Griffon's Stand

Dark Thoughts

Now alone the grisling returned his attention to the crystal. 'What secrets do you hold, little one?' he silently wondered, eyes narrowed as they measured the crystal's diminutive dimensions. 'What plots do you embroil me in?' Knowing the Illishandei, it could be almost anything, as long as they achieved their overall purpose. Including putting himself between an Illishandei overlord and the enslaved descendants of his ancestors in what would quickly surge into a civil war that could theoretically tear this plane apart.

A quirky smile touched the golden creature's lips at that thought. The irony! By engaging in such a war, the illishandei may thwart his kin's ultimate purpose of destruction, only to participate in a different kind of destruction that would achieve the same final end. All things considered, it was oddly appropriate. As was using the former masters and mistresses of defeated demonic rivals to help perpetuate that Kaal Eran failure.

But that revenge wasn't going to be achieved by standing in this sodden glade, pondering the future instead of making it happen. The crystal was slipped into an inner pocket and the grisling extended his Second Senses into the fabric of Reality. Developed in the outer darkness of the Abyss, the extra senses the demons of that place had could sense the very stuff of the universe and how it was woven together by the Maker to form Reality. They could also look beyond the physical limitations of that Reality and cross vast distances with a single thought, seeing through solid rock as easily as through air.

Thus the grisling examined the world on which he now stood, one of a pair locked in a strange graviometric union that kept both not only orbiting their star, but each other as well in a seamless dance of eternal splendour and motion. It was a strange place, filled with substances he had never before seen in his travels through the vast splendour of the Abyss, with its energy fountains, light storms and cascading particle waves.

No, in this plane he found himself facing such things as liquid water, air, plants and animals and sentient creatures that bore no resemblance to the demonic races he was familiar with. Energy was a relatively scarce commodity here, something hoarded and channelled so that none was wasted. It was gathered by plants and stored in their tissues, from which animals then consumed, releasing the energy for use in their bodies via metabolic processes. Yet other animals devoured them, harvesting the energy yet again. And when they died, they returned the energy to the environment to be reused, over and over again. It was a puzzling sort of system, but it seemed to work here. He could only hope the mortal body he now found himself in would prove capable of gathering that energy in sufficient quantities and speed to prove useful in his part against the Kaal Eran.

Taking another long breath in through his nostrils, savouring the cool, moist air as it travelled down into his chest and back out again, the grisling selected his destination and drew his senses back into his body. Though less conspicuous than some of his demonic colleagues, the laekisha and the narithin included, he knew he also bore little resemblance to the races native to this world. If he needed to be among them, it was better to look like one of them. And who better than the humans, who seemed to be on both sides of the strange conflict that was threatening to engulf this world?

Thankfully his body, while mortal, also seemed quite plastic and malleable to the type of energies he could summon and utilize. It took little effort to hide his mane and golden skin, bending light and altering flesh until a muscular man stood in his place, a human with a head shaved in the manner of those he had seen in the pit where he awoke. His clothing was next, the cloak growing heavier and more disguising, his boots sturdier and his undergarments more in line with those on this world.

A quick look from outside his body left the grisling satisfied. 'I should be able to pass as a human, if one doesn't look too closely,'  he mused, examining his appearance in his mind's eye. Wrapping his cloak more closely about his body, the demon then channeled his energy to bridge two points in space and a portal snarled into being a pace distant, opening to a distant place where sea pounded against rocky shore.