Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:33:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Richard Garcia <invertedbeast@yahoo.com>
Subject: Darkness Evolves chapter ten

DARKNESS EVOLVES
Chapter Ten


"Hey, Kiddo - you awake?"

I opened my eyes.  Chris was sitting next to me on the edge of his bed.
His hair was combed but still wet from the shower.  He was pulling on a
clean pair of jeans.

"You do sleep a lot," he said with a grin.  He stood up and zipped up the
jeans, then pulled a faded green t-shirt over his head.  Now his combed
hair was all messy again.

Yawning and giving a big stretch, I smiled and nodded sheepishly.  "Hey,
Chris," I sat up, "would you do me a favor?"

"Sure.  What is it?"

"Do you have anything made out of silver?"

"What do you mean?"

"I need something small, like a piece of jewelry or a silver dollar."

"Silver?"  The muscles around his puppy-dog eyes scrunched up as he peered
at me.  "I'm not sure.  Do you know where my – "

I picked his glasses up off nightstand and handed them to him.

"Oh, thanks."  He slipped them on and turned to his dresser to rummage
around in the top drawer.

"How `bout this?"  He held up a ring.  It was a silver band with a simple
geometric pattern marching around the outside.

"What is it?"

"Navaho Indian jewelry.  My mom bought it for me on a vacation one summer
when I was eight.  It's supposed to be pure silver."  He grimaced.  "I bet
it's made in China."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure."  He handed it to me.  "You can have it, if you want.  I wore it a
few times when I was a kid, but it doesn't fit any more."

The ring had a nice weight to it.  It fit snuggly on my middle finger.  I
brought it to my lips and listened to its story.  The pattern was Navaho,
although traditionally this one was for rugs, not jewelry.  The silver was
from a mine in western New Mexico.  The casting was done in a goldsmith
shop in Albuquerque.  All in all, about as authentic as you get these days.

"This is good.  Thanks."

Chris glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed.  "Holy shit!  I gotta get
back to the game.  I'm gonna be late!"  He dashed out of the room.

I went into the bathroom and wetted down a washcloth.  After I wiped down
my cock and the rest of my crotch I took a long piss.  Then I went back
into the bedroom, dressed and followed Chris into his computer room.

He was seated in front of his screen typing away on some chat program in
World of Warcraft.  Sinslayer was standing in a group with a bunch other
characters who looked all armored up for some heavy action.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Getting ready for a raid," Chris answered absently.  "We're gonna take
down Atramedes.  He's a boss-level dragon.  This'll be cool, `cause the
dragon's blind.  He uses sound to fight."

"Are those other guys real players?"

"Yeah.  They're my guildmates."

"Can I watch?"  Stepping forward I casually placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Sure.  Just don't distract me, okay?"

"Okay."

I closed my eyes and moved my awareness through my hand and down into the
seed I'd planted in Chris' gut.  From its moist furrow the seed sprouted
and grew, filling his torso and branching out into his limbs until he
surrounded me like a suit of armor.  This was why I hadn't put on a condom;
Chris was my Trojan horse.

Through the game console in his hands, I sent my armored self into the
World of Warcraft and issued my challenge.  From somewhere in the vast
lightless jungle of the Internet the fiend heard me.  It approached.  Our
awarenesses touched lightly and I kenned its delight.  Yes, it would fight
me.

I withdrew from contact, then settled back to watch and wait.  This first
stage belonged to Chris and his guildmates.

The raiders moved through an underground complex, slaughtering wandering
monsters and guards as they made their way to the lair of the boss,
Atramedes.  They took out a flying drake and some things Chris called
slayers, then a couple groups of belligerent dwarves.  Sinslayer plowed
through it all, dealing out destruction with his glowing two-handed sword.

The group stepped into a large cavernous hall, gathered for a quick huddle,
and took positions in a rough circle.  One of the members hit a gong. The
dragon boss descended and the first phase of the real battle began.

The fiend was in Atramedes.  It knew I was a member of the raid, but it
didn't know which character I was controlling.  Because the dragon was
blind, it couldn't identify any of us by sight.  Instead it would attempt
to locate us through the sound-related abilities it possessed.

The raiders attacked the dragon with the various weapons and spells they'd
prepared.  Sinslayer stepped in and began hacking away.  The dragon struck
back with the strength of its powerful body and its searing sonic breath.
Modulations of sound waves swept out from its body.  From its feet smaller
circles of sonar pulses moved around the hall like little spinning
tornados.

Atramedes zeroed in on one of the raiders and tracked it with its flaming
breath.

"Kite right, kite right!" Chris screamed at the targeted raider as
Sinslayer and the other players moved in the opposite direction.

One of the players — a ranger, I think — fired an arrow at one of
eight metal shields hanging on pillars around the hall.  The shield let out
a loud gong and the dragon froze, temporarily overwhelmed by vertigo
induced by the resonating clash.

After a few seconds Atramedes snapped out of it and destroyed the offending
shield in a blast of fire.  Battle resumed.  The dragon went after the
raider who had hit the shield.  The player moved fast, keeping himself out
of direct line of fire.

The dragon worked itself up into a frenzy and began firing flames
everywhere.  The raiders were all getting pounded.  The dodging ranger
fired off an arrow at another shield and Atramedes was hit by vertigo
again.  The searing flames stopped.  Atramedes destroyed the second shield.
Then it took to the air.

That's right, dragons can fly.  From above Atramedes rained down flames and
sonic bombs.  The flames remained on the ground, forming patches of fire
around the hall.  The raiders were running everywhere, dodging fires and
sonic circles.  Those who had anything to shoot — missiles or spells —
were hammering away at the airborne boss.  One of the party was down, and
then another.  One of the down ones got back up, resurrected by another
player.

During all of this chaos, as the raiders were trying to kill Atramedes and
Chris was trying to keep Sinslayer alive, the fiend and I were engaged in
another battle.  Our fight was more primitive than the strategies wielded
around us.  For us it was a simple battle of wills: we were each trying to
tilt the random variables of the game in our favor.

The dragon landed again for another ground phase of battle.  Sinslayer
moved in and Chris bellowed out a war cry, his fingers dancing over the
controller, as his character attacked.  That was a mistake: the demon heard
him.

Atramedes unleashed its devastating fire upon Sinslayer.  One of the range
fighters shot a missile at another shield, inflicting vertigo on the
dragon.  The fire stopped.

Sinslayer was badly wounded, but a priest threw a healing spell at him and
his hitpoints rebounded.  Atramedes recovered.  The fiend strained to twist
the parameters of the game and fire on Sinslayer again, but I held them
steady and the dragon went after the ranger who had shot at the shield
instead.  Atramedes hit the ranger with devastation again, quickly snuffing
him out.

Around me the players chattered excitedly.  The dragon shouldn't have been
able to do that.  It wasn't following the rules.

The battle continued.  Raiders continued to hammer at the dragon as it
spewed out sonic breath and flames and pounded away with its limbs.  Chris
moved Sinslayer back up close to hack at the monster again.  This time he
kept silent.

The dragon took back to the air.  Range players kept firing at it.  One of
them hit another shield.  After it recovered Atramedes began casting down
sonic attacks.  Its roaring flame breath tracked the character who'd hit
the shield.  The character had buffed its speed and the flame couldn't
catch it.  Patches of fire and sonar bombs made the room an ever-changing
obstacle course that players dodged wildly as they ran.

Atramedes landed.  More sonic attacks and flames.  One of the raiders —
the priest — was getting smashed.  Another shield was hit.  This time
vertigo didn't stop after a few seconds.  It just kept going on and on.
I'd glitched the rules.

Everyone poured everything they had into the vulnerable dragon.  Sinslayer
leapt forward and began hammering away.  Atramedes' hit points fell fast.
Suddenly they were dangerously low.  It was dying.

The dragon snapped out of vertigo and spun, immediately unleashing its full
firepower onto Sinslayer.  Another missile flew against a shield, but
nothing happened.  Now the fiend had glitched the rules.

Sinslayer's hit points withered away to nothing.  He was dead.

Chris died with his character.  I felt his heart stop.  The demon screamed
in triumph and its dragon avatar lifted its head to scream with it, just
before the other raiders finished killing it.

The demon thought it had won.  It didn't know that Chris and I were two
different people.  It thought that when it killed his character — and
his body with it — that it had killed me.  But it hadn't.  I was one
body up on it, and I was ready.

Before the fiend could recover from its avatar's death and jump to another
host, I grabbed it.  Without an anchor, the demon couldn't resist being
pulled into my body.  We entered the second phase of our duel.

I had expected this part of the fight to be easier.  It was my own body, so
I had the home field advantage.  Because of my darkfather's previous
indwelling, the overwhelming intensity of the demon's immortal essence
didn't stun me the way it would someone who hadn't endured possession
before.  Also, I'd absorbed my darkfather's memories, which made me even
more resistant to its demonic toxicity.  And my mother's shade was fighting
with me.  This should be a quick victory.

Stupid me.  The fiend was stronger than my darkfather had been.  I'd been
expecting that.  But not this much stronger.  The memories of the eons of
its immortal existence — and of the countless human possessions it had
perpetrated — were far clearer.  They gave it strength and focus.  And
its emotions were stronger.  My darkfather had been a malicious child,
tormenting neighborhood strays.  The fiend was a bottomless pit of rage
against its millennia-long dying.

Against all of that I was an 18-year-old boy and a collection of peculiar
memories.  The fiend fell upon me like a giant serpent, smothering me in
its coils.  I fought back, struggling to pin it with my own bodily weight.
My mother's shade batted at its head.  SSSSsss — fangs flashed and
struck.  Mom screamed and fell away, dissolving into forgetfulness.  The
demon slithered out of my grasp and coiled around me.  My body was
immobilized.

I'd been so foolishly overconfident.  Just because I was the big man on
campus didn't mean I was ready for the professional leagues.  The fiend had
lured me into the challenge and ambushed my ambush.  It had been so naive
to think that this demon would be as easy to entrap as my darkfather.  It
knew all about Son Tzu, too.  Maybe it had even been Son Tzu.

The coils tightened.  Mom was gone forever.  Her shade would never come
back.  Now, much too late, I began to feel afraid.

The demon squeezed tighter.  The fear grew.  I could feel its coils gaining
weight and hardness as they sank into my flesh, becoming chains of iron.
It was taking my body, stripping it away from me just as I'd stripped away
my darkfather's memories.  It hurt.  Bad.

The chains rattled across my mind.  My awareness was constricting.  I could
hear the demon's laugher now.  Laughing at my fear, my pain, my loss.
Drinking them in.  Consuming my Darkness.  It had me now.

Images began to flash through my diminishing awareness.  They were
gruesome, blood-filled images of the things it would use my body — and
my Darkness — to do.  A person possessed by a fiend usually becomes a
serial killer.  A possessed sorcerer could become the charismatic master of
a cult of killers.  The first victim would be Daniel.  He would either bow
to my indweller's will and become a tool of destruction, or he would die a
filthy, degrading death.  Either way he would be damned.

I couldn't let that happen.  Daniel had suffered too much already.  He
would not become a demon's plaything.  I would rather die than let that
happen.  The demon could destroy me, but it would never use me against the
only person in the world who mattered.

With what coherent will I had left, I focused my attention on my heart.  I
would stop it.  Chris and I would both die.

Intertwined as we were, the demon glimpsed my intention.  Its mood shifted
abruptly.  The gloating flipped to a surge of fear.  Suddenly we were
grappling for a different reason.  It was struggling to restrain my will to
die.

Why was it afraid?  It wasn't like my death could harm it ... could it?
Had we become too intertwined?  Could I drag it with me into oblivion?

The fiend's fear blossomed to full terror.  It had overcommitted itself and
was now vulnerable.  I could destroy it, if I were determined to kill
myself.

I'm not a hero and I didn't want to die.  I'd rather live as a demon's host
than end my own existence.  I've endured possession before and I could
again.  But I couldn't let Daniel suffer.  I just couldn't.  I bore down.
Somewhere back in my body a pain was building in the center of my chest.

The demon went berserk.  As frightened of death as I was, it was infinitely
more.  It had existed for more millennia than I had lived years.  As
Darkness dwindled it had suffered diminishments and indignities beyond any
mortal comprehension.  In its frenzied efforts to survive, it had made
monstrous sacrifices — and would do them all again for as little as one
more heartbeat of existence.  There was nothing in the universe more
important than its own life.

Poor unloving, unloved fiend.  Its hold didn't loosen, but it wasn't
squeezing me any more; it was clinging on for dear life.  For all its
power, it was just a big baby.  A giant, rageful baby.  As it clutched at
me, shrieking, my thoughts cleared.  I showed it what it had to do to
survive.

It did.  Then I gathered it up, stuffed it into my spirit-trap and sealed
it tight.  Just like a genie in a bottle.

The pain in my distant body receded.  Around me everything faded to
blackness.  I was back in the jungle.  Except for the relentless insect
buzz of the information flow, it was quiet.  But encircling me in the
darkness were hundreds of pairs of gleaming eyes.  Demons.  I was
surrounded by demons.

Stupid me again.  It had been stupid not to think that maybe the Internet
could have more than one demonic inhabitant.  The Internet's huge; it's the
biggest thing humans have ever built and it's growing ferociously.  There's
plenty of room for all of them.

In fact, it made sense that demons would flock to the Internet.  Darkness
keeps dwindling, and any day now they might loose the ability to jump from
one host to another.  It's an ideal place to sit out the final years before
Darkness is reborn and a new cycle begins.  The Internet had become a
nursing home for supernatural intelligences.

I looked back at all the eyes.  The hatred of hundreds of soulless immortal
spirits beat down on me.  But every time I stared directly at a pair of
them, those eyes blinked out.  None of them was going to challenge me, not
after what I'd just done to one of their top dogs.

Witches can pool their Darkness in a coven circle to get more bang for
their buck.  Demons can't.  A gang of demons is only as powerful as its
strongest member, which is why the lineages can usually get the upper hand.
I was stronger than any of them, therefore I was stronger than all of them.

<Fix it> I willed, thinking of the S.E.C. and Daniel's emails.  No threats
were necessary.  They all got the picture.  Pair by pair the eyes vanished,
leaving me alone in the jungle.

I returned to my physical self in front of Chris' computer.  His body had
slipped out of his chair and lay sprawled on its back at my feet.  The eyes
were staring at the ceiling and it wasn't breathing.  He was definitely
dead.  I hadn't really expected him to survive the ambush.  That's one
reason I hadn't wanted Daniel around when we confronted the fiend.

When my big brother got back he'd be pretty upset to find our host dead on
the floor.  He'd never believe that it wasn't my fault.

I knelt beside Chris' body and put my hand on its forehead.  It was still
warm.  Less than thirty seconds had passed since the demon had stopped his
heart.  I sighed.  Okay, Daniel, I'll do this for you.

I slammed my fist against the dead man's chest, channeling Darkness into
the impact.  Like a finicky engine, Chris' heart sputtered and started
chugging again.  He drew in one shuddering breath and then another.

The eyes blinked open.  "Wha ... ?"

"Hey, Chris, are you okay?"  I helped him sit up.

"Jesus — " he gasped, "what happened?"

"You just fell out of your chair.  It looked like you had a seizure or
something.  Are you okay?"

"I don't know."  He pulled his knees up and sat with his head against them.

I placed my hand on the back of his neck.  Now that he was alive again his
skin felt cold and clammy.

"Jesus, I feel like death warmed over."  He coughed and then gagged.
"Shit.  I gotta go to the bathroom.  I'm going to be sick."

I walked him into the bathroom and he threw up in the sink.  Then I helped
him get to his bed.

"Hey," he croaked, "what happened in the game?  Did we win?"

"Yeah, totally.  The monster's gone.  You did great, Chris, just great."  I
patted his shoulder.  "Now go to sleep.  You'll feel better when you wake
up tomorrow."

He was out before I'd switched off the bedroom light.  Other than a foggy
memory, Chris would be fine when he woke up in the morning.  By then, of
course, Daniel and I would be gone.

I walked into the living room, stretched out on the couch, and closed my
eyes.  Tarriel reported that Daniel had left the bar and was driving back
to the apartment.  He was in no danger.  Meanwhile, inside my ring, the
fiend was swirling around like a Tasmanian devil.  Its fury was all
bluster; it was trapped.

I thought back over the conversation between Daniel and Amber.  A lot of
what my cousin had told Daniel was right, but she'd been wrong about one
thing.  The twenty-two dead pretty much had been my fault.  As I lay there
on the couch, studying my new captive spirit and considering what Amber had
said, I suddenly knew — I kenned — what I am.

He's a very special kind of sorcerer, Amber had told my brother, one who
can command demons.  A spirit-namer.  That's right.  But there's another
word, an older word, for a sorcerer who can do that: magus.

In the far ancient days, when the spirits were gods, magi were not so
uncommon.  They were the mediators, the balancing fulcrum, between the gods
and their worshipers.  A magus was his divine patron's greatest servant,
the god's high priest.  As Darkness dwindled and the spirits fell from
divinity, the high priests became their greatest rivals.  Eventually the
magi outstriped their fallen gods.

Master of Spirits, that's what a magus is.  A few of them have found their
way into lightblind history.  Moses was a magus, and Siddhartha and
Mohammad.  Jesus could have been a great one, but chose instead to become
something else.  The last magus of the western world, the man known to the
lightblind as Comte Saint-Germain, had lived in the eighteenth century.
Among Crowley and his crowd of 19th century spiritualists, not a single one
was a true sorcerer, let alone a magus.

I am.  Moreover, I am the last — the last Master of Spirits before the
dying Darkness is reborn.  In the prophecies of my predecessors, those who
foresaw my coming anointed me with various titles: Arkon Omega, Terminus
Rector, Shepherd of the End-of-Days.

Christians, I suppose, would call me the Antichrist.


InvertedBeast@yahoo.com