What was left of his fractured soul floated lazily from his body. The astral projection was drawn to consciousness, and so was pulled through the wall, pulled into the cell next to Soahc's own, into the mind of the one these dungeons had originally been built for.
Soahc found himself in a shop. All around him were novelty items on shelves, in cabinets, on display, behind glass, atop boxes. They were many and myriad, yet when he reached out to touch one they all disappeared. Now the room was empty, save only for a desk and a chair, and on that desk a note. Walking up to it, Soahc squinted at the overly flamboyant writing.
"
Sorry- gone fishing!
"
Scrunching it up, Soahc allowed his presence to expand, to crash against the walls of this vision, but everything bubbled back to its normal state. In an angry huff he vanished****-entered his own body, the living vessel taking a deep breath as it was restored. Either it was another one of the cell's defences or the person adjacent was trying to vex the demigod. Either way, the Dreamscape was not going to give him any answers, and he was too far below to attempt the Astral Plane- not that he would ever be successful even if he dabbled. Being the alleged Forger of Hell had its occasional drawbacks.
Hell... A summoning it would have to be. The conjuration block was annoying, but not insurmountable. Again Soahc looked back to the door, but shook his head, chuckling sheepishly. "You might have stumped a lesser being," he whispered out to it, appreciating the challenge. His hands went beneath his robes, grabbed his torso, then with a hefty tug the demigod tore his skin from its flesh and flung it to the ground.
Dipping a finger in his exposed rib-cage, a minor noise of discomfort accompanying it, Soahc began etching out the arcane symbols needed for the ritual. It was meticulous work, one wrong drawing, a line slightly out of place... So much could go wrong when calling the demon halls.
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No doubt a regular being would have passed out from blood-loss long before they were done, but Soahc was no regular being. Attaching the starter line to the finishing cross, Soahc watched as the ground sunk, confined by the outer circle of the pentagram, into a deep cavern of harshest red. The furnaces of the deep burst out, electrifying the room, as a human figure arose, its head a shaggy beast, with the horns of a bull and the snout of a crocodile, covered in coarse yak hair. The portal closed behind it, leaving the skin behind, its runes now glowing a deep red, the demon floating above it.
"Who dareth summon Th'Ux?"
"Oh pish-posh, don't act like you don't remember me!" Soahc scolded with the wag of a finger. "It's only been what, fifty years?"
"Slayer of Arran," the demon named Soahc, who shrugged at the title.
"Which makes you the loyal servant of the slayer of Arran. Amusing how times change, no?"
The demon was ignoring Soahc now, checking the lines on the floor, the lines that summoned him to this realm, and bound him to the demigod's will. One single etching astray and the demon could step forth from the demon circle, unchained and lusting for blood. But an attempt at escape when such a mistake wasn't present would invoke unspeakable pain on the demon's behalf.
"If everything's in order," Soahc continued, once the demon had finished its vain search for an error. "I need a portal opening."
"I do not hold such power," Th'Ux responded, head swaying from one side of the cell to the other. The demon could clearly sense the spells which trapped the demigod here.
"You can't open a portal in
here
, no. In there though," he gestured into the demon circle.
"You wish to enter the Demon Halls?" The demon sounded thrilled at the prospect- Soahc did not seem to share the enthusiasm.
Most would argue that a demon did not, could not feel fear; but there was fear in the eyes of Th'Ux now.
"That is no home of mine," spat out the demon. "It is the subjugation of the Demonic Halls and the enthralment of the Mortal Realm both thrown into one. I refuse-"
"No you don't." It seemed Soahc had grown tired of the demon's moping. "I command you, open a portal to where I wish to go."
The demon's body was bubbling, contorting. It was inwardly screaming, Soahc knew- it gave the demigod much delight to know this. The demon was trying to refuse the order, trying to fight back, but the constraints of the summoning circle meant that the demon's willpower was met with the ferocity of a thousand suns. Soahc did not have to wait long before Th'Ux consented.
The red runes of the pentagram turned an oily grey, as though drained of all hope, and the floor sunk again in patches, until a cavern of utter darkness was left instead, a cold mist creeping out, setting the hairs on the back of Soahc's neck a-standing. The longer he stared, the deeper it seemed to be, and he seemed drawn to it, as though he were falling in, as though he would fall forever-
"Are we done, god?" Th'Ux hissed, snapping Soahc from his delusions.
"Oh yes, but quite frankly you took twenty seconds too long." Soahc's arm stretched the length of the room, seized the handcuffs, and bending backwards against the elbow came to the demon, shackling its human hands behind the back and pushing it out of the circle. It slumped onto the floor with a crash, and seemed quite incapable of getting itself back up- the demon had clearly not walked the mortal way in many centuries.
Leaving it behind as an amusing parting gift, Soahc plunged into the deep. He dismissed the demon from his service, closing the gateway behind him and leaving the now powerless creature to whatever fate its captors might decide for it. He floated down like a feather, floated down for an aeon, and then; he landed.
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"Best not tarry," he said, his breath coming out in icicles. There was darkness and shadow and smoke and twisting fog, and on and on it went into eternity. If he remained, soon his past would catch up to him, and few wished for such a thing to occur. And if the things that lurked this realm were abound...
Soahc concentrated hard, his magic bubbling up within him. Realm-hopping left him vulnerable, but he was just powerless enough to escape the ire of the Judges for now. Should his father come for him, not that he was outside the Girdle of Janus... Well, that would make matters much more complicated indeed, but Soahc had been left with little choice. Wherever the kingdom of Selathon had acquired those magic-restraining cuffs might also be a place that would have a sword worthy of slaying a god.
Most came from the mortal realm to this, next to none went from this realm to the mortal. It needed an item, a tether, something that linked the travelling spirit to the world with which they wished to enter. Tongue lolling out, Soahc dripped out the few hairs of the king he'd snagged in his invasive tonguing. They strung together, bloated, wrung out, growing larger, growing fleshier, and channeling his power into it Soahc tossed the contorted mass forth into the darkness, away from the voices that were calling for him now on the horizon, and in the crack in the world that was made Soahc slipped away, back into the light.
Soahc wasn't sure how his reappearance into the world had looked from an outside perspective, but the king had wet his bed and his wife was in the middle of a panic attack. Looking down, Soahc saw his blood had dried and crusted, his skin had mortified, his ribs were shelves upon which maggots nested. Smiling and shaking his head, Soahc decided not to heal himself for the time being- the aesthetic would work well.
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"Y'know I always hated happy endings," Soahc told the king.
He opened his mouth to shout for help, but Soahc's fingers were already cramming down his throat. Reaching behind the ear of the king's wife, Soahc pulled out a mallet- some amusement before their demise might ease the coming of their deaths. Soahc donked it once on the king's head, knocking him unconscious, and then transmuted the mallet into a dagger, and stabbed the queen through the eye.
The next day, the king of Selathon went forth to his court with a high head. He had sent emissaries from all of the lands he ruled over, Oakfoot and Gladstone and Buroughland and Hamstead, for a royal proclamation. Now they were here, and he let them know the news: Selathon was a nation founded upon magic. Before the coming of the Empire they were sages and shamans and soothsayers, and the Empire tried to take magic away from them, to outlaw it, to make it something evil. Now that they had escaped the grip of tyranny, never again would magic be allowed to be taken away from them.
On that day, despite public opinion much to the contrary, the king of Selathon declared that magic would forevermore be practised in Selathon, without scrutiny and without question.
Later that night, the king was found dead in his room. His throat had been cut, and his wife had been stabbed through the eye. Judging from the bodies, the wife had been killed hours earlier, and when the king returned he saw his dead wife, and that was the last thing he saw before his throat was cut. It was widely believed to have been a political assassination inspired by anti-magic sentiment.
Soon, there were protests throughout the land. Their king had died to protect the people's freedom to use magic. And the people of Selathon would honour that. Anti-magic sentiment boiled away into nothingness, and to this day, the Kingdom of Selathon sits as a bastion of magical enterprise, the greatest in all the lands.
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