CH21: Demon Outbreak

Bubbling up from the pit, the blackened bones of demons heard the call of a warlock. A voice cut through the darkness, a lighthouse in the infinite void between the dimensions for the spirits to gather like moths to a flame. Devoid of touch, taste, sound, scent, and sight, the weakest of demons arrived in a black cloud of roiling spirits, their forms invisible to civilian eyes but all too clear to mages.

The warlock who made the call had long since vacated the city after setting up his ritual in the basement of a skyscraping escort service. Once the demons crossed over, the promise of sensation was a sweet siren's call unstoppable. Like rising heat, they crossed physical boundaries, moving seamlessly through stone to invade flesh and feast on the souls within.

They had been alone and lost in the dark for so long that they no longer had an identity, only desires. When the first demon found its way inside the body of a spent escort, it became addicted to the sensations of life. While they had been alone and devoid of sensation in the dimension, these lesser demons had soaked up the energy of hell. They had been incapable of using the power they had absorbed as mere spirits within new bodies; that power quickly ran rampant, causing mutations.

An elf girl's eyes filled with inky darkness as her bones cracked and shifted. Her heart failed, and new ones took their place to pump demonic blood through her veins. A fleshy bump grew on the end of her rear before a meaty explosion and a long purple tail ending in a one-eyed mouth. The culture of demons quickly took possession of the newly possessed, and she turned her attention to the mercenary who discarded her.

"Master, don't you want seconds." The newly mutated succubus leaped upon her sleeping partner and wielded her first power. Her sweat turned into a powerful aphrodisiac, chemically devastating the body of her john. In minutes while he slept, biological switches were flipped in his mind as reproduction became more important than survival. Organs shut down as the body decided they were unnecessary. "Give it to me. I want it all."

The demon-possessed girl came to her senses atop the mummified remains of her john. She pulled herself off of him as others changed around her. The woman wasn't herself upon possession; the demon had merged fully with her psyche. She ran out of the building on instinct, searching for more prey.

Alarms that should have flared from the emergence of a true succubus never activated. Zerg had worked out her plan quickly, disabling the runic arrays that would signal a demon outbreak. Before anyone who could have stopped the outbreak early was aware, hundreds had already been possessed. Like any warlock, she knew what was needed to safely wield the demon's power. She could leave well before the summoning activated by removing all safety measures and placing the summons on a timer using a recorder.

Civilians all over Tishomingo city were possessed. Gamblers became demons of greed obsessed with money far more than before, powerful men became beautiful demons of pride, and the wrathful raged. No one had thought a demon summoning viable in a place like Tishomingo in the heart of VHA territory. The cathedral should have been a fortress against demons and repulsed them if only the world didn't continue spinning. Powers that once defended mankind from the ravenous souls of the departed desperate for the warmth of a body were long destroyed. The last of those powers had faded with the emergence of cultures. Perhaps if great men of faith lived within the halls of the cathedral or if it housed a powerful relic. Instead, a demonic spirit invaded the body of Father Gustov; it felt his rage and desire turning his flesh red, his arms firm, and his face into something fearsome.

Within Atom's room, the spirits fled, burned by the Relic Ember wielded when they approached. The relic was not concentrated, nor was it something truly powerful. With a word, a martyr drove away demons from his flesh, blood, and bones; the relics were crafted by the designs of the victor of the astral war centuries past. Remnants of a god's power burned the spirits.

…

My head was filled with smoke down below, up above, and spreading across the city. Stretching my energy sense gave me errors. It was three in the morning, and I had no idea what was happening. Ember was on the bed under a mountain of blankets while a collection of girls slept around her on the bed. I scratched my head at the weirdness and put it off.

I found a pack of bacon in the mini-fridge and cooked it with my aura, dripping grease down one of the floor drains. Once the bacon was crackling, crispy, and good, I shoved the entire pack in my mouth and quickly swallowed it down. Then, I drank the remainder of the training protein shake.

Somehow, I found my pants after stepping over elves, Blasians, and a surprise Arabian. I tightened my belt a few notches tighter than the day before. My body was eating itself to recover from my earlier workouts.

It was August 19th, by my count, so I checked my PL.

Atom PL 3068

That wasn't surprising; I hadn't trained the day before and hadn't put enough energy into my body to recover. On the bright side, I felt stable.

With another day of rest, I would be ready to tackle training again. The big jumps were unhealthy as hell. I didn't know how Jason handled them. He had mostly covered his aura in Norse runes for stability, but I didn't think they should help that much. Emily came up with the idea and design. She didn't know energy physics.

When I pulled on my boots, our door burst off the henges, and Ember snapped awake. The same smokey feeling I felt before covered a group of escorts with curved horns, long tails, and glowing tattoos over their wombs.

Oh, my first thoughts were how my second was who fucked up, and last we had a terrorist. Warlocks and cultivators had all sorts of tricks to tame demons. Growing up, I might have had a little wanderlust to own a demon army. Mages were terrified of them, and it would honor my Mother to practice some demonic cultivation.

Ember drew her rapier relic and decapitated the three demons before I could make seals for them.

I sighed, formed a ball out of aura, and dipped my finger in blood to write.

"What are you doing?" Ember asked.

"Those weren't the only demons not by a long shot. We have wellspring down below." I said.

Her eyes widened as I worked, hopefully distracted. She gave my seals a look and narrowed her eyes.

"Those aren't for sealing away portals to hell."

Within a sphere, I worked quickly, creating a mostly empty subspace. Seals, especially at the high levels, could do some amazing things like stretching space and manipulating time. Jason and I were taught those higher applications when we were preteens. Creating a subspace that could contain demons wasn't hard; my aura would be perfect when concentrated and bound with seals.

"I saw this in a documentary. The scientist went on this journey to capture all 150 mutant variants in an area. He used a special orb to capture them and then trained them."

"Stop. I know what pokémon is; there are 350 million and more to see." Ember said.

"You were a fan."

"What do you mean were?" Ember smiled and then returned to business mode. "You hate mages; you wouldn't become a warlock," Ember said.

I liked how she said it like it was fact.

"My Mother is a cultivator of the Xia clan. They are well known for their ability to bind demons. Since Mom left, I've been off and on working on a seal to cultivate demons in a way helpful to my culture. While my method isn't perfect yet, this is an opportunity to see where it fails. I should be able to make adjustments as we go." I said.

"What if a demon possessed you? You would become an archdemon instantly." Ember said.

I snorted at that. Archdemons of every sin were needed for a warlock to ascend to archmage status. To think my measly PL plus a demon would make an archdemon was hard to believe. At most, I might become a greater demon. I wasn't sure demon rankings weren't my forte.

"By your blank expression, you haven't studied demonology," Ember said.

"I started reading English when I was 5; mom's demonology tomes were written in Chinese. She took them with her when she left. Father always said concealment and control were the best counters for possession. Only children can be possessed by demons." I said.

"From what I'm hearing, you are mostly ignorant," Ember growled.

It wasn't that. Father always said the best block was to not be there. I liked to think I inherited my love of references from him.

"This will work, trust me," I said.

I put the finishing touches on the seal and fed it energy, altering the frequency until I felt a tug at the smoke around us. When I circled back to the frequency, I didn't feel it and immediately went into contingency plans. I shrank down the aura orb since the seals kept it stable, and size was relative, especially to empty metaphysical constructs. I made a small ring and wrote the necessary seals for a quantum processor. Then, I copied over an AI and helped the new intelligence living in the quantum computer along. It cycled through frequencies for me at an insane rate. It touched the frequency that drew in the smoke, recorded the change, and cycled again. Minutes later, the AI broke the encryption, and my little halo dragged in the smoke around us.

With a twitch of my finger, my halo passed over the bodies and sucked the blood from the corpses, which quickly crumbled into dust.

The halo returned and spun over my head. Within the orb cycled through the demon blood, and I felt a tiny boost to my aura. It was small, almost undetectable, but I could feel the difference. Consuming the power of another culture to bolster my own strength was what Mother taught me to do. Letting this opportunity pass me by would be a sin against my parents.

I felt a part of my seal fail and quickly adjusted parts to work better and propped up another failing part. My AI studied my approach and assisted where it could. Seals flashed and vanished at superhuman speeds while I worked out the growing pains.

"We need to close the wellspring," Ember said.

"Do we have enough time? This is the kind of situation World Gov would drop a tactical nuke. Someone caught them with their pants down, or this place would already be irradiated." I said.

"Dropping a nuke won't stop the portal; if they already launched it, we won't escape the blast in time, and if we stop the wellspring, World Gov will risk retaking the city for the tribute alone," Ember said.

I didn't know a lot about demons, but cultures naturally gravitated to their source of power. The underground should be full of bursting with the strongest demons. I knew the possessed grew stronger the longer the demon was inside them, and the wellspring was ground zero. On the bright side, the wellspring couldn't have been open more than a few hours. Time was against us.

"How much do you know about demons?" I asked.

"I'm no expert, but I know enough; the more souls they take, the stronger they become. The sin of lust is the most corrupting, and we are in a massive skyscraper filled with depravity. Part succubi might have fully become demons and transformed completely. Mutants who become possessed are often more powerful than human mortals. We should expect to encounter a greater demon or stronger." Ember said.

While I knew enough about Miasma, books on demonology were contraband. Only places like the Mage College had the information.

I set up some seals to keep demons and the smoke out of our room, and we took off into the demon-filled hotel.