Demon Made Flesh Ch. 2

Edited by bluetrain.

The primary focus in 'Demon' is on plot and character development, rather than sex ('Wrath of Khan' is the only sexually focussed story I've written) - so you'll have to put up with lots of boring plot to get to the naughty bits. Also, although this chapter can be read on its own, I recommend reading chapter one first: you'll probably find chapter two more enjoyable if you know what's already taken place.

* * * * *

Being the private whore of the commander of the lower guard turned out to have additional perks beyond avoiding gang rape by his men: Khulan was also given considerably more freedom than the other slaves. Quickly realizing the girl was too clever to risk her privileged position (not to mention her life) in some futile attempt to escape, Torolchi had taken to trusting her with the errands he deemed "too trivial to waste his men's time on." One of these was the weekly delivery of stacks of requisition forms and inventories (for food and other supplies), and reports (all requiring at least ten copies), to the clerk Bujir, yielding what must amount to an agonizingly detailed account of dungeon life.

The clerk's office was situated half way up one of the many turrets piercing skyward above the citadel's high walls, and reaching it required ascending sixteen long flights of stairs. Khulan suspected that her assignment to this chore had rather more to do with the guards' desire to keep the stairs above them, than with the task being beneath them. For her however, the chance to escape from the underground chambers for a while made the arduous climb something she eagerly anticipated.

She accessed the upper reaches through a locked wooden door, which opened to reveal a narrow stone staircase spiralling up in the dim light of a few ensconced torches. At the top of the fifty or so steep, uneven steps was a second locked door, this one a far more imposing affair of hammered steel plates held in place with heavy iron bands. Beyond lay the castle-proper, and as its exterior had suggested, the immense fortress did indeed appear to have been created from the very cliff that buttressed it. The polished marble flowed seamlessly from floor to ceiling, gleaming in the bright sunlight that streamed through vaulted windows looking out upon the lush, dark greens of the coniferous woods below.

Emerging from the caverns was almost painful as her eyes, acclimatized to the perpetual gloom of the dungeon, struggled to cope with the sudden influx of light. Only after several moments would the blinding white brightness start to differentiate into shapes: the broad steps, leading to the tower, slowly taking shape in front of her.

The climb was pleasurable at first: the fresh air was a welcome change from the dankness underground, and cool, smooth marble beneath her bare feet felt wonderful after the dungeon's painfully rough stone floors. However, as Khulan continued to climb the burning pain in her legs gradually obscured these pleasures, and the sheaf of papers in her arms grew steadily heavier. By the time she was mounting the last flight she had slowed down to a crawl, each step a forced agony that wrenched screams of protest from her exhausted muscles. Momentum was all that kept her body moving: when she finally came to a stop on the small landing at the top of the stairs she collapsed against the wall, and it was some time before she was able to coerce her limbs into supporting her weight again.

Bujir was always in the same position when she entered his office: his gaunt frame hunched over a massive desk, peering assiduously at the papers before him, the thin wire-frame of his spectacles balanced precariously on the sharp tip of his nose. In his right hand, his thin fingers imprisoned a quill pen, their vicelike grip belying their apparent fragility. Never taking his eyes from the pages he studied, the clerk scribbled meticulous notes, in a hand so fine as to be nearly invisible, into a massive ledger; pausing his work only to dip the pen's nib into an inkwell. The only things that ever changed locations in this hellish monument to bureaucracy were the great stacks of documents standing guard upon the desk, and rising like Doric columns from the floor; giving the unsettling impression that these shifting paper bulwarks were far more animate than their fastidious keeper.

Only the relentless scratching of Bujir's pen broke the stillness. The air itself seemed afraid to move, the suspended dust hanging immobile in thin shafts of sunlight filtering through the tightly-closed, moth-eaten curtains. Although Khulan trod as softly as possible, the sound of her steps always sounded impossibly loud in her ears as she approached the busy clerk, and the air currents from her passage sent the once still, airborne particles whirling chaotically about the room. Standing in front of his desk, she clutched the papers she carried nervously to her chest.

Bujir's shoulders tensed with indignation as his precious silence was rudely shattered yet again. Not one of these ungrateful idiots seemed to comprehend what an incredibly important and demanding task it was to keep the place running smoothly! The one great mercy, in this otherwise intolerable state of affairs, was that Lord Sechen at least had the good sense to leave the day-to-day running of things entirely in Bujir's capable hands. It was quite bad enough to have to suffer the incompetence of these imbeciles surrounding him, without having to also contend with an employer who wouldn't keep his nose out of matters he couldn't possible hope to understand.

Only after pointedly ignoring her for several long minutes did Bujir finally acknowledge the presence of this latest intruder to come barging in and unrepentantly interrupt his work. Looking up from his desk, his sallow face pinched into a scowl of displeasure, he squinted nearsightedly at Torolchi's little plaything. Intrusting such vitally important documents to a mere slave offended him to the very core, and he resentfully tolerated this arrangement only because she was, he had to admit, decidedly less prone to tromp about banging into things than those boorish oafs under Torolchi's command.

"Well," he snapped, bony fingers gesturing impatiently to the documents she carried, "hand them over then, you stupid girl!" Snatching proffered papers from her hand, he eagerly scrutinized each one for errors, making sure every piece of information had been properly recorded, and the correct number of copies had been completed. Only once he was forced to admit that everything was in order, did he dismiss her with an impatient wave of his hand, not bothering to look up again as he sorted the papers into the appropriate stacks.

Khulan held her breath while waiting for the clerk to finish his examination, praying that he would not find any mistakes: for which he unfailingly held her responsible, and took each error as an egregious personal insult. At his dismissal she retreated gratefully, closing the office door behind her with a sigh of relief and scurrying away, back down the stairs to where the tower met the upper stories.

The floors below the turret were unoccupied in this area. Indeed, from what she had managed to get out of Torolchi before he had gotten irritated with her questions (which did not take long, Torolchi viewing verbal communication as a last resort and best avoided), other than the massive north tower, in which Lord Sechen dwelt, most of the vast fortress lay unused now: its vaulted marble halls unchanged by the passage of time, except for donning a fine shroud of dust in mourning for their long departed masters.

Torolchi always sent her to Bujir in the early afternoon, just before leaving to oversee that days training exercises. Khulan soon learned that, so long as she was in his quarters in the evening when he returned from training, he was entirely uninterested in where she spent the rest of her day. As result, driven both by curiosity and by the desire for the daylight that was so absent from her subterranean abode, she got into the habit of exploring the surrounding rooms until the fading light of evening warned her it was time to return to the dungeon.

Her greatest find, made just last week, was the library. At the end of a dark hall were a set of wooden doors, ornately carved with mythical beasts and scenes of fantasy, through which she had found the main level of a palatial oval room. It was a full four stories high, the three upper floors being ringed by broad balconies connected by several elegant wrought-iron staircases, which spiralled up from the floor. Most of the ceiling was taken up by a beautiful stained-glass dome, its sheer size defying creation by human craftsmen. The brightly coloured pieces of glass were arranged so that numerous smaller patterns came together to depict a great four-armed spiral, each arm arching away from the others as it swept out to the edge, dividing the window into four swirled segments.

Khulan had recognized the design as a 'wheel of power,' depicting the fields of force within which mages wove their spells. However, this one was different from the three-segmented ones her mother had shown her: along with the familiar runes for body, spirit, and growth, was a symbol she only recognized because it was written as the negation of one of the others: decay. Had she been one who possessed the talent to shape the forces, it would have shocked her to see the forbidden power depicted along side the others as though it was just another force. She would have known that only those harboring dark ambitions and greed for power dared to wield this tainted force, and that it corrupted what little humanity they possessed, warping their talent, turning them into that most vile abomination: a dark mage. However, having only a slight acquaintance with the arts, she merely found the inclusion of the unfamiliar power a curious aberration.

What had truly arrested her attention were the books: thousands of them, of every size and description, filling the floor to ceiling shelves that lined the walls. She had spent most of the rest of that afternoon investigating the wealth of knowledge confronting her, and was delighted to discover the books were conveniently ordered according their subject matter, which ranged from astronomy to poetry and everything in between. Although many were books of magic and arcane lore written in the runes of the ancient tongue, and others were in languages she did not even recognize, there were still an overwhelming number to choose from that were written in the common language. She had finally settled on a thick tomb, whose title proclaimed, in bold gold-leaf letters upon the cracked leather cover, World Renowned Scholar Teb Tengri Presents: LEGENDS OF THE MYSTERIOUS WESTERN LANDS.

To the best of Khulan's knowledge, nothing lay to the west other than the desolate wastes of the Black Desert. Intrigued, she settled into a soft leather chair with the book in her lap, and began to read exalted tales of the kings, queens, heros and villains of these unknown places. All too soon, the retreating sun had forced her to reluctantly replace the book on its shelf, and return to the unpleasant reality of her life as a slave. She retreated dejectedly back down to the dungeon, the seven days she would have to wait before returning to the magical room seeming an eternity.

Today, with the despotic clerk and his arsenal of facts and figures only a few steps behind her, Khulan's mind was already in the remote lands and ancient times spoken of in the book she was reading. She hurried down the stairs and through the halls, until reaching the Library's great doors. Pushing through this final obstacle, she took a moment to enjoy the dry, musty smell of old parchment that greeted her, before retrieving her book from the shelves on the far side of the room.

From the shadows of a recessed alcove across from the doors, a dark figure watched Khulan's entrance. Blood-red pupils narrowed to thin slivers of ruby as the human female passed close by. The beast knew what she was and, more importantly, what she was for: the Master had occasionally given it such things to feast upon. A clawed hand flexed at the memories of closing around a warm neck, desperate gurgling breaths slowly choked off by tightening fingers . . . Yet it hesitated before falling upon this tempting delicacy: it knew she was prey, but it also knew that she should be dragged screaming to it by the master's guards, or cowering in a corner and whimpering in terror. She should not come strolling in voluntarily. She should not be seated comfortably in a chair reading a book. Perhaps this was some sort of trick by the Master? Cautiously, it approached the strange human from behind, the slight click of its talons upon the stone floor too faint to register in human ears.

Khulan stopped reading, disturbed by a feeling that there was someone, or something, behind her. Frowning, she tried to concentrate on the story again, determined to ignore the sensation. Between the ominous threat of Lord Sechen's plans for her, and the every day dangers of reprisals from the guards (resentful of being denied her use, but unable take their anger out on their commander), there was more than enough to fear without her now succumbing to a host of imagined perils as well. The anxiety building inside her soon rendered sitting still impossible: she spun around in her chair, even while preparing to harshly chastize herself for allowing phantom imaginings to get the better of her. The planned rebuke died unspoken on her tongue - confronting her, clad in nothing but coarse leather pants, was an exceptionally large, muscular man. Or at least, she would have called it a man, were it not for the dark skin, the wickedly curved talons extending from each finger, the crimson pupils set in pitch-black eyes, and the leathery wings folded against its back.

In shock, Khulan instinctively tried to anchor her thoughts in identifying the creature that stood before her, but its features were utterly incongruous. Only pureblood demons had such eyes: the eyes of bastard spawn, produced by forced matings with humans, were entirely, and without exception, black. Yet only amongst half-breed spawn could creatures even remotely humanoid in form turn up. She stared at this thing, which technically could not exist, in bewilderment, vaguely aware that some detached part of her mind was gibbering incoherently in fear.

For its part, the creature gazed back at Khulan, in much the same predicament. There was still no screaming, no frantic attempts at escape, no hysterical sobbing; the female just sat there. She looked and smelled wholly human, but she continued to behave in an inexplicably bizarre fashion.

"Can you speak?" Khulan asked suddenly. The question just seemed to pop into her mind, and was uttered before she had time to consider just how unsuitable a response it was, to finding oneself within easy reach of a very large, very lethal-looking demonic fiend.

"Yes." It replied, its voice low and sibilant. Now she asked questions? There must be something that convinced her she was safe, a something that might prove very detrimental to its health if it followed through on the urge to rend her limb from limb. In a most undemon-like fashion, it decided to follow the dictates of reason, and leave this particular morsel untouched.

As surprised as she was to hear it reply, she was far more so when it turned and started walking away. "Wait," she called after it, "what are you?" Grave doubts about her action surfaced the moment it turned around to face her once more. "A-Are you a demon, or demon spawn?" she added, more to calm herself than to clarify her question.

"I'm a chimaera." Its eyes flickered, as though flames burning behind the bright pupils had been disturbed by a gust of wind.

"A chi-mae-ra?" Khulan repeated the unfamiliar syllables uncertainly.

"Separate creatures, made into one," it hissed, "the Master created me from a demon and a white mage."

Finally this creature began to make sense to her. It was not a demon, nor was it one of the weaker demonic monstrosities that arose from demon seed. Unlike those so-called half-breeds, whose humanity was limited to the dissolute effect of their mother's mortal flesh upon their innate power, he actually was half human.

This explanation seemed to have satisfied the human, but he was not content to leave matters at this: if she could have her answers so could he. "Why are you so different from the others? Are you of some importance to the Master?"

Khulan was not sure what difference he meant, or exactly which others he referred to, but she knew the answer to the second question: "Yes. I don't know what it is, but Lord Sechen does have a special purpose for me." Just thinking those words, let alone speaking them, sent cold chills through her and drew her thoughts down dark corridors of unimagined horrors. "Do you have a name?" she blurted out heedlessly, anything to tear her thoughts away from Lord Sechen's plans for her, "I'm Khulan."

No wonder she was not afraid: the Master would inflict endless torments upon anyone unlucky enough to interfere with his experiments. He was startled out of his thoughts by her question: a name? "No." He growled. Why would she care about names? Why should he? Why was he even bothering with this human's prattle now that he knew she was not prey? The dreary answer came all too easily. A quick extension of his awareness determined that none of the Master's minions had accidentally wandered out of their protected quarters into the deserted sections, so there was nothing better to do. In fact, there was nothing else to do at all. "Sometimes I am called Sacha," he added, somewhat reluctantly.

"Was that your name when you were a mage?"

"I was never a mage. There 'was' a mage, and there 'was' a demon. Now there is me."

"Was that the mage's name then?" she pressed, spurred by the unconscious desire to identify him more strongly with his human side.

"No." What was the mage's name anyway? It had been so long since he'd even acknowledged those memories, let alone examined them, that they were nearly impossible to find. Even when he managed to locate one, it slipped away before he managed to see more than their vague outline, or hear more than a whisper of some long forgotten voice. He growled in annoyance at even bothering to make the effort: it was not as though any of it mattered.

The chimaera's eyes had lost their sharp, predatory focus, as though he was lost in thought. Watching him, Khulan wondered what thoughts such a creature would have: how would the thoughts of a demon mesh with those of human? Do demons even think? What sort of strange knowledge did he possess? With this last question, an interesting possibility occurred to her: "Sacha, do you have knowledge of maps?"

"What do you mean?" There was an edge of hostility to his reply that would have silenced her had she not been so intent on pursuing her idea.

"Could you recognize this land on a map?" she persisted.

"Of course." He looked at her strangely, his irritation fading into curiosity over the reason for these odd questions.

"I have a map here, could you show me where it is?"

"You don't know?" How could she not be able to locate her own land on a map?

Khulan bristled at his incredulous tone. "No one ever taught me," she countered defensively. Her fickle indignation fled as the dark chimaera began stalking toward her, and she suddenly regretted not having had the sense to let the dreadful thing leave: what had she been thinking, trying to engage it in conversation? Swallowing nervously, she fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut so she couldn't see its approach, as though it were some childhood monster that would disappear the moment she stopped looking for it. She tried to hide her fear beneath affected ire: "And it's not as though you were born knowing how to read a map."