Into the Abyss

Well, here goes nothing, Tom thought. Using the full strength of his wings, Tom dove straight for the castle walls. His wings and gravity boosted his speed to close to sixty miles an hour, Tom guessed. He got closer and closer to the walls, at about twenty feet from the top of one wall someone spotted him. People began screaming, and running frantically. Tom swooped in over the top of the wall. To insure his safety by keeping guards off balance, he let out a huge roar, hoping to unnerve anyone who might be taking aim.

“Aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!” he screamed in his deep, thundering voice. Quickly he began back beating his wings to slow himself down. He beat as heavily and strongly as he could, and righted himself so that he would land on his hooves in the courtyard. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t completely used to his own limitations, and so overestimated his stopping power. He hit ground on his hooves, cracking, and caving in, the paving stone of the courtyard. Apparently, the stones were somehow mortared together, so in addition to sinking a foot into the ground, and smashing the stone in the immediate vicinity, he also sent cracks radiating outward along the mortar lines. Essentially, he managed to damage a twenty foot diameter circle of the stone courtyard around him.

Being used to sinking in the ground by now, Tom quickly flew up out of his small hole, and landed on the courtyard itself. He looked around; as expected, several people, mainly women, although one or two men as well, had fainted to the ground, and the rest were cowering behind whatever cover they could find. As he glanced at the wall, he did see a few men with crossbows vaguely pointing in his direction, but none seemed to have the courage to actually point one at him.

Playing it to the hilt, and thus attempting to ignore the feelings of hurt inside him, Tom thundered, “Humans... I bear a message for the wizard Zilquar. Bring him forth.”

Nobody moved everyone simply stared at him. “Where is the wizard Zilquar?” thundered Tom. This was going to be fun; if they were so scared they couldn’t even move, he wouldn’t accomplish much. “I have a message for him, and I do not wish to spend all day here!” Tom looked around menacingly; he spotted a boy about his age hiding near a wagon. “You,” Tom pointed at him, “bring the wizard to me.” The boy’s eyes got wider, and he clumsily pointed to himself. “Yes, you. Now!” The boy shook his head, affirmatively, and ran off. Peasants, Tom thought sadly, this was definitely not fun. The problem was, he had tried this posture to distance himself and avoid the pain, but in reality, this only confirmed their fears. What could he do though?

It took only a few moments for the boy to return, followed by an old man in robes. By his looks, he had probably been on his way anyway, since he was out of breath, and the boy hadn’t been gone long enough to bring the man from far enough away for the man to have run here and ran out of breath.

“I am Zilquar, Demon,” the old man said, speculatively eyeing Tom, while obviously hiding a bit of fear and a lot of trepidation.

“This is for you.” Tom handed Zilquar the scroll. “It is from Lenamare.”

“You delivered a message from Lenamare?” The wizard asked, doubt and suspicion showing on his face. Obviously, this man knew the logic behind not having demons run messages.

“That is what I said. Now if you are through with foolish questions... I shall leave.”

“Uh, yes, by all means,” Zilquar agreed hastily.

With that, Tom stepped up into the air, and left the tower behind. Well, thought Tom, all and all, that was pretty much a waste. All that flying, and for what? To play mailman?

Since he had three days to do his mission, and the trip was only about twenty-four hours, Tom decided to take a slightly different route back to Lenamare’s. This time he flew further west, since there seemed to be a forest over in that direction, and Tom thought that perhaps a stroll through the woods might be relaxing and calm his nerves. He was feeling pretty wound up. This whole demon business sucked. He didn’t like being a demon, he hated having everyone hate him, and he hated himself for playing to their fears. But what could he do, if he simply tried to be friendly, people like Lenamare would walk all over him, and try to use him for their own purposes. Not that Lenamare wasn’t doing that all ready, it was just that if Lenamare feared Tom, then perhaps he wouldn’t try to use him too much.

Of course, all of that was secondary. What if what Boggy said was true, that they’d killed his real body. Then assuming this was real, he couldn’t go back; he didn’t know the way, and without a body to focus on and a party to concentrate on, he doubted he could find his way back. Also if he were dead back home, then his mom would be in bad shape.