Into the Abyss

“Sure, demon sight is a lot better than any mere eagle sight. Just concentrate on something at a distance. If they can, your eyes will focus on it. Try it sometime.”

“What other things, besides the eyesight, the regeneration, and the aliens not marking their caves haven’t I been told?” Tom asked suspiciously.

Boggy smiled at him, “Now lad, you can’t expect me to tell you everything, that would take all the fun out of it. Besides itis sometimes best if you find out for yourself what you can and cannot do. That way I don’t limit you by telling you what you should and should not be able to accomplish. Who knows, different demons can do different things, maybe you can do things that I consider impossible.”

“Yes, but...”

“Now, except for the oversight on the markings, we’ve told you everything really necessary for survival, don’t worry. Besides, there isn’t much that can permanently hurt you here.”

“Speaking of permanently hurt,” Tom realized, “why did this dragon decompose and I regenerate. How did I actually manage to kill it.”

“That is a bit complex. But basically speaking it has to do with the basic differences in the energy patterns between us and the dragons. The dragons, regenerate faster, but not if you kill them. You and I regenerate fairly slowly, but still incredibly fast compared to a man. Dragons regenerate about three times faster than we do. The only way to slow them down is to cut off their heads and destroy their hearts. Which, it appears that you inadvertently did. Now, once you do that to a dragon, it can’t regenerate its old body, so it just abandons it. It then has to form a new one from scratch, and that could take a couple hundred years before it gathers enough energy to form one. We, on the other hand, don’t stop regenerating after a certain point. The largest part of our bodies left after a fight, somehow gathers up what’s left of our field and begins rebuilding. So, we generally stay with essentially the same body. Which, I might add, is many times faster than starting from scratch.”

“That’s handy to know. Here, fly with me, while I dump this.” Tom launched in the air and took off to the dump site, Boggy following.

“So,” Boggy asked, “have you seen your accursed master again?”

“Yes,” Tom answered as they flew. “It was kind of strange. This time there were only two people with him, and they had some sort of ring and did some sort of mumbo jumbo about binding me to the ring and some Neverending Loop.”

“Hmm,” Boggy said knowingly.

“What were they doing?”

“Well, it sounds to me as if they are preparing to control several demons at one time. What they did was bind you to a talisman. Which basically means that any wizard who has the ring, can command you without first doing a bunch of rituals to bind you. Essentially, anyone wearing the ring is as protected from you as if you were in a pentagram, and they can command you in the name of the master who did the binding.”

Tom reached the place where he was depositing the dragon bits, and let the leg go. As he turned to head back he asked, “Now just exactly, who can normally command my service.”

“Well, basically any wizard who knows your true name and does the required bindings for a demon of your power, or any wizard with the ring who knows how to use it. Now, the first wizard to bind you has precedence over any later wizards binding you; unless, the later wizard is a lot more powerful than the first. Actually, I really wouldn’t worry too much about it. You’ll know whose orders to follow, by being able to carry out those orders when they conflict. For now, just realize that anyone who’s guts you can rip out, can’t command you.”

“Great.” Tom didn’t relish the idea of going around ripping people’s guts out to determine if he should follow their orders; that really wasn’t the best way to make friends. Tom also couldn’t feel the bloodthirsty attitude towards the Astlanians that Boggy did. He didn’t like them, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kill them. Sure, for a while he’d wanted to strangle Lenamare, but that was only one Astlanian, and that only for a short while after being bullied by him.

Tom and Boggy went back inside the cave to get the tail and the lower torso of the dragon. Boggy dragged the tail out and Tom what was left of the torso. It was a tight fit, but eventually he got it to the cave mouth. Tom leaped into the air and Boggy followed, puffing as he hauled the tail along. Tom’s section was bigger and heavier, but Boggy was the weaker demon. Eventually they both made it to the dumping site and unloaded the last of the dragon.

“I noticed as I was chopping up the dragon, there was very little blood on the ground. Some of the ground had been dissolved, but there really seemed like more blood in the dragon when I fought it,” Tom commented as they returned to Tom’s cave.