AUTHOR'S NOTE

Music is "Ethan's Theme" by Mikołaj Stroiński, from the sountrack for "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter". Play it for maximum effect!

This is a prequel of sorts, to introduce Pepper's first experience in the human world, long before Noi acquired him. Isla does not know his True Name, as she was not the one to summon him.  

This short story is also featured in FANTASCI's Allures of Autumn anthology, under the alternate title, Corruption.  Head on over to their profile for more short stories!

★ IN WHICH A DAEMON IS SUMMONED ★

He came into the world, sucked into form like air ripped through a minute tear in the void. Thrust into new limbs; small and constricting. Words that used to mean nothing to him. Finite.

He hobbled on four legs, fell and rolled ungainly. Tangled in his own tail. Unaccustomed to the concept of standing, or crawling, or simply being.

A voice spoke in the language of this strange, new world; but he understood it instinctively. "Fetch me the red chalk."

A girl rushed from a corner of the damp chamber and offered her master his requested piece. The daemon watched from the glimmering circle in which he was kept imprisoned. He had not seen many humans before. Not many mortals dared roam the depths of the epperstrom from which he had been rudely awakened.

This man looked as though he had walked the epps himself, and on one too many occasion. He was a gaunt human, dressed in black and blue and all the other hues of Home. His skin was pale, dimmed by the glow of the daemon-world.

He approached the circle cautiously. He knelt and started to scratch at the cement, etching more symbols and inscriptions around the circle. The daemonist spoke a few words native to the epperstrom—a string of ancient commands that set the inscriptions ablaze—and that was when Corsyfr knew he would never return Home.
                        

★ ★ ★
             

When Agrimar had no use for him, he would keep Corsyfr in his water-sphere; a cage of pure liquid dipped in runic inscriptions the daemon came to know as the Blue Thing. There was a time when Corsyfr's heat used to roam free and unhindered; every much a part of him as the skies above and the deep seas below. But the water-sphere kept his fire suppressed. He could feel it still, just out of reach, somewhere deep inside his now restricted consciousness. Teasing him with the promise of warmth and comfort.

But every time Agrimar left on one of his errands, his slave-girl would come and lift Corsyfr from the cage. "My lizard," she would call him, and put him on her shoulder. He was not bothered she called him a lizard, even though in this human world, he was more amphibious than anything else.

Lizard, rodent, feline. What matter did it make? His true form surpassed any physical restraints the mortal world was subject to, and he had lost it.

If he was good, the girl would let him roam. He spent those times following her, watching her cook and clean, listening to her songs and stories. She taught him how to use his limbs; how to wiggle on all fours and scamper down the table leg like sand storming down the dunes back Home. He learnt how to scale walls, how to curl and grab with his tail, how to summon his flames and unleash them through his snout.

He left a sear once, on Agrimar's oldest armoire. That was how the daemonist discovered their disobedience. He had dragged his slave out of bed that night and whipped her until she bled. Corsyfr could hear her screams, even under the muffled thickness of his water-sphere.

"... untrained still and dangerous ... virtually uncontrollable ..." Agrimar had shouted, his anger somewhat undermined by the hacking cough he had developed over the past weeks. "... and this ... you repay me?"

Agrimar did not leave the pair alone together for many weeks following their transgression. He took Corsyfr out during one of those days, keeping the daemon leashed by a long, silver chain that chafed against his neck. It was the first time Corsyfr saw the outside world, and he was in absolute awe.

Corsyfr had passed by many ifrits back Home. The stronger they were, the brighter their flame. Time and time again, his consciousness had brushed against theirs. He had felt their heat; tasted its rawness, heard its colours. But no ifrit flame came anywhere close to the brightness that was the human world.

The sun was perhaps the best thing to come out of the mortal world. He could feel it brimming with the heat of a thousand ifrits, even though he sensed it was burning far from its full potential. Its light glimmered off the highest peak of Agrimar's home—a construction of stone and hardwood that towered over a field of grass tall enough to drown Corsyfr as he scuttled through.

The field was still in bloom that day, untouched by the early season. The only sign summer had ended was the dry coolness in the air. Yellow and white cottonweeds lifted with every stroke of the wind; a snowstorm in autumn. Its downy seeds tickled at Corsyfr's nose, and when he sneezed, he set a nearby patch of clovers aflame.

"Useless element." Agrimar pulled him aside and stomped on the burning brush. But Corsyfr's fire was strong and still fresh of Home. One burning patch soon became two, and more and more it spread until it seemed even Agrimar was about to burn.

Corsyfr welcomed the heat. To him, it was bliss. He could not understand, when he looked upon his master, why he was so frazzled. One hand was clenching his staff, and with the other, he lifted Corsyfr by the leash and dropped him onto his shoulder. Away from the wonderful flames. From this close, the element could see the careworn lines on the daemonist's face. The bones jutting out of his fine cheeks. The condensation puffing out of his mouth—

Corsyfr chirruped frantically. The temperature had dropped quickly and drastically. When he looked down, a sheet of ice was crawling from Agrimar's feet towards the burning brush, freezing everything it passed. Steam hissed, ice bubbled. Fire fought and flickered and died, leaving the brush coated in blackened glass.

Agrimar let his theurgy drop. He took a moment to collect himself, waiting for the sudden cough that had overtaken him to subside. Ice crunched under his feet as he resumed their trek through the field. "Set such a fire in my home, and I'll set frost to your innards."

Truth be told, Corsyfr never even thought of setting flames to the house. Rin was always about, and like Agrimar, she had no love for the fire. Unlike Agrimar though, she had no theurgy to protect her.

"Almost there." They had descended the sloping terrain, where the tall grass tapered to a soft carpet of moss and mud. Agrimar's boots sunk, schwamp-ing with every laborious step.

The place smelled strange to Corsyfr. Soaked with a scent that sent shivers down his spine. Grass gave way to trees, mud to water; and soon Agrimar was wading knee-deep in murky green waters. The surface teemed with leaflets dense enough to hide the riverbed. Further and further into the marshes they went; Corsyfr watching the still water from the safety of Agrimar's shoulder, his beady eyes darting at every slightest movement.

Finally the daemonist stopped. The trees were parted into a circle around them; boughs silver and thin, bending at awkward angles, looming far into the sky before trapping them under a web of green and white.

"Welcome to The Bones." Agrimar plucked Corsyfr off his shoulder and held him firmly in his palm. "One of the few places on this land where still the winterbirch grows."

There was a stir from deep under the water. Foam gurgled onto the surface, and something hungry blinked out at them.

Corsyfr scuttled back up Agrimar's arm, but the daemonist was unfazed. "Do you know the value of the winterbirch? Its root is the only known treatment for whitefever. They grow deep into the mud, and can only with daemon fire be removed."

But daemons knew nothing of illness and disease; especially not Corsyfr, who was new to the human world. He did not know whitefever's deadly and incurable nature, or its vicious seasonal cycle. All he knew was he did not like what Agrimar was implying at for one bit.

Agrimar took him by the tail and dangled him by the closest winterbirch. "You are to burrow in there and fetch me as many a-root as you can."

Corsyfr swung in the air and leapt free, discarding his tail behind. He landed onto the bough and circled the tree, coiling his chain around its slender trunk as many times as he could, chattering madly all the while. There was no way he would dive into those waters. Especially not with that creature looming about.

Agrimar shook the limp tail in his hand as though it could still harm the daemon. "I am your master and this I command!" He yanked the chain to no avail, for the tree held it firm. "You're a salamander! Salamanders swim!"

He was also a fire-daemon. Fire-daemons drown. He remembered the Blue Thing and thought of its cloying presence around his skin. How it pushes his heat away, trapping it out of reach. Agrimar would never understand. He had never had the air taken out of his lungs, unable to breathe and yet unable to die.

The daemonist lifted his staff and muttered a sequence of commands. Words that belonged to Home. The small, twisted orb at its peak began to glow. Black seeped out; like a thundercloud it rolled around them and engulfed the daemon on his tree.

Home. He could taste it in the thick air leaking out of Agrimar's staff. But it was not the comforting safety of the epperstrom that he felt, but the instinctive fear of it. The crushing rot that lingers in the deeper layers of the daemon-realm, feeding on mortal and immortal essence alike, that could at any time rise and smite a being out of existence.

Corsyfr spat out a torrent of flames, spraying the air around him. But the blackness ate its light. The stifling air drank its warmth. Corsyfr felt his essence stretch; thinner and thinner. The fire within him was slowly dissipating.

"Do as I command!" Agrimar's voice spoke through the darkness, subdued under the pressure of the air, and yet strangely imposing.

The water was invisible beneath him, but Corsyfr knew it was there. He slowly unwound his chain from around the tree, and with one last hiss towards the blackness, dropped into the cold.

It greeted him like a spurned lover. Brittle and choking, it clawed against his skin. Corsyfr dove further away from the surface and the black smog above. He found the water here was not like that of his spherical cage. This coldness still let his fire breathe. He could feel his pulse thrumming; his heat budding back into life. Corsyfr reached for it and set the darkness to light.

The water fought, but his flames were stronger. It danced forth, red and wild; a gleaming serpent trailing bubbles and froth in its wake. His fire lit the riverbed to life. Waterbugs and rivermites swam out of the mud and away from the heat. The winterbirch was just before him. Corsyfr lunged to its base. The sooner he was done, the sooner he could get out of this mess.

But the current shifted before he reached the trunk. He found himself being pulled away, dragged back by a relentless force. Corsyfr turned on his back. Somewhere above, Agrimar had summoned the blackness away, and pockets of afternoon light was finding its way to the riverbed. Something caught under a strand of light; something with liquid fins but needle-sharp teeth, shooting straight for the daemon.

He gathered his essence and spat at the beast a stream of fire so scorching, the water boiled around them. But the creature opened its giant maw—for giant, it seemed, to Corsyfr in his tiny, mortal form—and quelled the flames with one breath.

Corsyfr felt something was strange about the creature, but he never would have guessed he was facing a nix. He was not familiar with the water-daemons' physical form; but this one was twisted, corrupted. And his flames had angered it.

He spun and fought against the current, trying to reach the winterbirch in vain. Perhaps with his tail, he would have had more luck—but all that remained of it was a stump. It would take time for it to grow back, and for now, the nix was gaining on him, teeth at the ready.

There was a bright flash and a sudden surge that pushed him away. His head met the winterbirch and he scrambled until his four legs took purchase into its bark. When he turned to look back at his pursuer, he found it trapped in a thunderbolt of ice extending from the water's surface and into the muddy terrain below.

"Make haste!" Agrimar's voice boomed like a god from above. "More are soon to come."

Corsyfr needed no further reminder. He darted down along the tree and burrowed into the mud. It was much harder than he thought; the ground offered some resistance, but soon he was tunnelling through like an earthworm.

He returned moments later, a small bundle of roots tangled around his limbs. They were three times longer than his own fragile body, and almost his entire girth. Corsyfr half-clambered, half-swam up the tree, his keen eyes searching for predators. A small shoal of corrupted nix had gathered around Agrimar's feet, snipping at his ankles, hurtling into his calf in an attempt of bringing him into the water.

The daemonist speared them down with rapid bursts of white; one creature at a time, leaving the marshes spiked with icy spires. Headstones to mark the dead. Corsyfr resurfaced and leapt onto Agrimar's shoulder, almost tripping over the roots he carried.

Agrimar untangled them from the salamander's body and stuffed them into his pocket. "What takes you so long? These creatures are yet to become more vicious once the sun sets."

It was still a while before sundown, but Agrimar spared no moment. He backed away as fast and steady as he could, pointing at the creatures circling below them, shooting ice from his finger to help their retreat.

"Blasted beasts!" He kicked a water-daemon that had latched onto his robe. "Mindless creatures. Absolutely mad!"

Another burst of ice.

Corsyfr sprayed a wave of flames into the water. Not that it helped; but it was the statement of the matter. One of the creatures leapt high enough to snap at the salamander's stump, but with another cold burst, Agrimar sent it hurtling back in a block of ice. It flew several feet in the air before plummeting into the water with a satisfying plop.

"Too long ... have they stayed ... in this world," Agrimar said between bouts of coughing that racked his entire body. He stood leaning on his staff for a brief second, and then the fit disappeared as though it never came.

Corsyfr bit the daemonist's collar to keep from flying off as Agrimar gained speed on their retreat.

"The mortal air taints them. I shall soon need to expel them back into the epperstrom." He looked at the sky, and then to Corsyfr. A shadow of doubt on his face. "Ten summers. Or twice that. Thrice ... if we're lucky." He held in another bout, but even the daemon knew the redness on his face was not natural. "Then you, too, shall have to go. We will see. We've time yet."

Corsyfr twitched but made no sound. Perhaps the daemon had another twenty human summers; but he was not so certain about Agrimar.

                                                    
★ END ★