Necromancer's Fall

The wisp suddenly sensed danger and began to zigzag. Vidius snatched it up, crammed it into his mouth and swallowed. It would hopefully sustain him until he could reach the first barrier. He tried to snag another but it stayed well out of reach. None would come near him now – unless he visibly began to fail, in which case they might swarm to try and overcome him. They would not tolerate a predator amongst them any longer than they had to.

  The first sphere of the demon realm was as insubstantial and ethereal as its inhabitants, so much so that the weight of his mortal body caused him to sink up to his knees in the fogginess of the ground. He moved as if he were wading, which made the going slow and difficult.

  It wasn’t just his weight that this sphere of existence was loath to support. It was his very physicality. His skin was a barrier that separated him from his surroundings. Where the wisps were entirely porous to the thin substance of this sphere, he disrupted its fragile continuum. He caused a hole in the sphere’s essential fabric just as a blade shears silk.

  It tried to pass uninterrupted around him, but there was too much friction and he tore more and more of it with each step he took. His flesh burned as if being eaten away. He began to tear his face from his skull to give himself but a moment’s relief – but then reminded himself he would need this body if he were to see his way past the other spheres. He gritted his teeth, clenched his hands into fists and put each of them under the opposite armpit.

  Trying to ignore his agony, he pushed on, causing more and more damage to the sphere. The wisps occasionally flared with light, trying to tempt him from his path with a show of life force. He drooled at the thought of consuming their power, but knew they sought to lead him into one of the inky pools of nothingness concealed in the mists to either side of him. When wisps had drifted into the mortal realm from this sphere, they’d been known to do much the same with travellers in swamps, deep forests or other remote places. Like any other denizen of the demon realm, they always hoped to find some opportunity to steal the body or life force of a being from a higher plane of existence, and such opportunities more commonly presented themselves at the precise moment of the being’s death.

  It was ironic, but perhaps inevitable, that it was the least powerful of all demonkind – the wisps – who inhabited the sphere closest to the mortal realm. They had easier access than any others to the mortal realm, but the least innate ability with which to manipulate the mortals. They were privileged to see at first hand what life could be, but at the same time were tortured by what they could not have. It was just one of the paradoxes upon which the magic that sustained the demon realm was built.

  When demonkind had been consigned to this realm, they’d been in disarray. The infighting had started immediately, as sustenance had been scarce. Larger demons had devoured smaller ones, the smaller ones hunted those even smaller in turn or occasionally came together in packs to overthrow a larger one. They’d been close to consuming themselves entirely when the six Princes had emerged, one from each of the demon Houses. To save their species, they’d created the seven spheres, one inside the other, each separated from the other by a barrier. The wisps had been assigned to the outer sphere, as they were the only ones who could really exist there, and each subsequent sphere had been assigned to the next most powerful sub-species and so on. The innermost sphere belonged to the Princes, of course, yet they did not possess the absolute centre.

  At the core was the Relic, the artefact of power that sustained the entire demon realm. Before the coming together of the Princes, the Houses had warred back and forth for possession of the Relic, each seeking to have sway over the others in order to ensure its survival. Yet each time one House captured the Relic, the others would unite against it and the struggle would start again. Finally, the Princes had sealed the Relic within an adamantine sphere at the core, so that none had it while the realm stayed intact.