“What are you still doing here?” I asked, anger seeping into my words.
The kid dropped his arms and looked back and forth between the two of us. He had impossibly curly hair that defied gravity and sprung out around his head. “I... I was just going,” he stuttered, then bolted the way we’d just come.
“Okay then,” Emma said under her breath as we walked on.
“Do you smell that?” I asked.
Emma already had her knuckles up to shield her nose. “Damn, that’s a lot of sulfur.”
My heart pounded. She needed to go, but I knew Emma wouldn’t leave until the job was over.
“Even Othanos isn’t that pungent,” she said, catching my eye, reading my mind of my worries.
“We can’t assume anything,” I cautioned her as we moved forward through the halls. The stench thickened until it was like wading through a palpable haze of rotting eggs and meat.
Turning a corner, a hallway three times as long as the one we’d come from stretched out before us. There were no skylights and fewer windows, casting most of the expanse into relative darkness. Something moved thirty feet away. I strained to see into the shadows.
Emma’s breath caught audibly at the same time I saw what it was. Black mist swirled around the creature’s body, shielding any hint of a torso from sight. With a human-esque chalk-white head, its baldpate was marred with black spots resembling scorch marks. A cluster of tentacles made up for where the mouth should have been. Instead of legs, I counted twelve spindly arms that connected with the ground from the mist, the skin stretched taut over ropey muscle and tendons. Eyes, too human, with blue irises locked with mine. Looking at it made my stomach turn. The way it approached the look of a human but then contorting into something so monstrous went against the law of nature itself.
Something hit the locker with a tin reverberation. An adult slid to the ground, released by the multi-armed menace. Likely a teacher, the man was now missing his face.
Emma went completely still next to me. “Have you ever gone against one of these before?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“No,” I said quietly.
“Goodie.”
The demon looked half-in, half-out of this world with the mist twirling around his body. Physical weapons might not hurt it. Sending energy to my hand, warmth spread along my palm as it lit up in the darkened hallway.
The many-armed demon hissed at us through his tentacled mouth then ran right up the wall.
“Jesus, it’s fast,” Emma said, backing up quickly as the creature skittered across the ceiling and sidewalls in erratic zig zag patterns.
She was right. It was coming too fast with a steady clap of hands slapping along the walls. I tried to follow its movements, aiming with my hand, but it dashed about so quickly I could barely keep up. Zooming straight overhead it then hit the ground, landing between Emma and me, focused on her. Emma slashed out at the demon, but it fluidly moved out of the way. I couldn’t shoot a blast of power or swing my sword without potentially hitting Emma. The thing circled around her as she slashed at it, backing up.
I ran toward it. Maybe we could corner the infernal thing. The demon side-stepped the both of us, now galloping on all twelve arms back down the hallway where it’d come from.
“What the…” Emma said through labored breaths.
A bit of frizzy hair caught my eye further down, turning the corner. “The kid,” I said, running after the demon.
Emma started to follow behind me, but a thud had me turning back around. Another demon, like the first, dropped in front of Emma. She viciously fought off the arms that reached for her as it darted about.
“Go, save the kid!” she yelled.
I paused. The demon was too fast. She couldn’t hold it off for long. I started toward Emma, intending to save her, but she shook her head, never taking her eyes off the monster. “The kid.”
Trapped between saving Emma who was losing the fight and the kid who was utterly helpless against the demon, I couldn’t move, couldn’t think for a moment.
If I left her alone, would she survive? Could I live with myself if the kid was killed but I saved Emma? The thoughts struck me like so many stinging lightning bolts, and I failed to answer them.
“Calan, do what I say,” she yelled again. Lopping off a few fingers from one of its hands, she earned a short reprieve as the creature skittered back before jettisoning itself back at her again.
Turning to run toward the kid, I hated myself. I hated myself for leaving her. My feet connected hard with the ground as I chased down the first creature. Was I doing this because it was the right thing to do? Or was I doing it because Emma told me too? This wasn’t the first time she’d sent me away, and I always obeyed. Was I being a good little dog like Ylang implied?
Ducking down a hall, I saw the kid had managed to fit inside a locker and close it. The creature was clawing, banging and tearing at the metal while the boy screamed his head off.
My anger swelled until I thought I would burst. I dropped to one knee to send a blast of power to obliterate the demon. Nothing. My hand was no longer lit up. Reaching inward, I didn’t find my usual well of power overflowing with the warm, golden liquid I always envisioned there to be mine for the wielding. Instead, I found the familiar sense of conflict barring my belief. I’d built my belief on the rock that Emma was my guiding star. And my belief was the root of my magic. We’d come along enough for me to recognize; I wasn’t sure she was right. My instincts were still demanding I go back for Emma.
