Demon of the Black Gate

The small dish rang like a Standish carillon. The water Rovinkar had set into the eddy had come from this platen. The spell experienced the demon’s capture like vibrations shot through a spider’s web. He smiled to himself. There was no conceivable way the demon would be able to escape this calling. The bones had been clear on the strong nature of water. Nonetheless, he deemed some caution necessary. He had not anticipated everything the last two times he had attempted the retrieval and he had no more options.

He packed the inert obsidian, the ancient tome of majics containing the pages of bone, and headed south to the Bridge of the Moon. He retraced the route to the promontory that had been the site of the other disastrous encounters with the demon. That didn’t bode well in his mind, but Rovinkar wanted to see the demon captured from a safe vantage and there was none other. He didn’t trust the demon. He didn’t trust the power of water. He didn’t even like water spilled on the floor of his own apartments.

He traced the articles of protection upon the surfaces of the abutment. The mote of obsidian in the small eddy at the mouth of the Black Gate was all that was necessary to entrap the demon. The cage knew neither dimension or time. It just was. ‘Or wasn’t’ Rovinkar thought grimly.

He did not know how long it would take, now that the demon was in the water. He felt fortunate that he had arrive at his vantage before his majics signaled the capture.

“I am life” echoed in the demon’s thoughts. The water had invaded his very essence.

“I am of the earth”. The murkier depths were awash in silts and sediments. The water itself gorged with minerals and salts.

“I am of the air”. The water captured the particles of air that it fed to the denizens that lived in its bosom.

The demon absorbed the knowledge of the dilution like the sponges that collected in the shallows near the Emerald River’s great delta. He looked on the life of the great expanse, a mirror pond of his existence. The demon had experienced the devastating numbness of the void. He drifted in suspension, with the realization that this was the opposite. Water was all. Gold and minerals drifted in its flowing parts. There was a drop in the ocean, and the ocean was in a drop. The animus of the demon returned with every intuition that penetrated his consciousness.

“I am life.” The sea essense of female washed over him like a bliss and a reflection of red and gold burnished into his thoughts, offering sounds as it swirled past.

“What is fire like?”.

The luminous deep brown eyes that were lost to sight floated like reflective pools.

“To fly must be grand.”

The joy of her being filtered through him like the smallest germs that inhabited the sea. The image of the woman solidified in his mind.

“Come back.”

The cry rounded in his mind like a fish circling its prey in the deep, a small beacon of light daggling as a lure.

The pull towards the mote was uncompromising. The demon felt for the edges of the sea. The rush was toward a river, an unnatural tide that slithered against the currents. He knew the void. It lay as a black star, drawing in the essence of all around it. The demon leapt forward. If he was going to be pulled, he would assist. He led his awareness ahead, gathering himself and the waters.

The tales that would be told to the next generations would be mixed and varied, depending on the witness. Most did not survive. A massive swell rolled over the low slung delta of the Emerald River, and channeled itself up the river. Only the high arches of the Moon Bridge protected it from destruction as the surge crashed against and through it, for the swell had yet to crest.

The demon felt the turning water that held the mote and let the mass he had gathered rush towards it. The passing of the great wave roiled the loose silts of the riverbed and boiled the water with great gulps of air shoved into the depths. As he approached the eddy, he let himself crest, gathering the silts and air around him like a blanket. The waters began backing with the headlong charge, a stampede of waves riding the sandy banks and washing in a great flood across the plains that lay at the face of the Black Gate.

Rovinkar heard the roar of the approaching water. His vantage was poor for viewing the inside of the Black Gate, and he watched the opening expectantly.

It was only moments later that he realized the sounds of flood were coming from beyond him and he snapped his attentions to the plains below in time to watch in horror as a great wave surged over the sandy banks of the river. The raging foams rushed across the encampment of the imperial army, sweeping it like rubble against the northern cliffs of the Black Gate. Instead of drawing the demon in eddy was choked by the massive breaking wave, the demon used the collapsing vortex to churn from the flowing waters of the river, rising in a spout and drawing in silts while the waters shed.

Rovinkar fell from the recoil as the attraction to the void was broken, his magics laid to waste. The winds rose and tore at his robes as the spout pulled ether and earth into the vortex. The demon’s face was a hellish apparition in the spout. The swirling visage turned its attention to Rovinkar as it pushed skyward. He muttered a spell hastily, fear frozen in his vitals. His protections had been forgotten, he was so sure of his success.

The demon knew as he gathered the other elements into his embrace that the wizard, his jailer, was the architect of this event. The cast of the wizards energies brought the demon’s awareness around to face it. The demon spun and stormed, a monstrous waterspout that separated from the river, bearing down on the craggy parapet where the wizard. He could see, he could feel, the fear emanating from the wizard. But he had attacked before, and to his own injury. The demon let himself waver in front of the rock.

Rovinkar quailed behind the shields of his protection as the demon drew near, his presence a magnificent toroid of energy. The face of the demon glowered at the fringes of the swirling mass, fire looping in the space of its eyes.

“You are right to fear me! And I can feel your ... direction.”

Rovinkar didn’t know if he heard the threat with his ears or mind. The rumble and din from the storm howled about him. He held his shield ready for the demon’s strike, praying he was strong enough to withstand a concentrated assault.

Instead the demon leered and gave out what sounded like a derisive snort. The storm leapt and increased in intensity. Lightnings fell from its core, shattering the earth again and again. Rovinkar fell to his knees, unable to stand in the tempest. The world around him was spinning with him at the core. Sight was blurred by the swirling winds, and he squinted against the din.

The screeching of the banshee winds lifted away. Rovinkar watched as the funneling storm gathered into a violent thundercell. He gained his feet slowly, like an aged man. The raving winds and cracking lightnings retreated across the Emerald River and began ravaging the Granite Mountains at it headed north. The trailing spout lifted as the mountains were gained and soon the demon was lost in the tors, with only the reflections of the storm blooming off the faces of the high peaks to mark its passage.

Rovinkar stood in silence for a long time. The battalions that had taken to sieging the shattered Black Gate were devastated. Some of the war machines were still in evidence, toppled to their sides or cast against the cliffs in snarled wreckage. The rest of the force had been swept away. Some of the detritus of tent and arms lay among the pools of water that remained, but most was lost to the receding flood. The was no soul to move.

“That didn’t go well.” Rovinkar groaned. “That didn’t go well at all.”