Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (ereader ebook .TXT) 📖

was dull. Without villages to stop by and work at along the way, Theissen was starting to bore of looking at tree after identical tree. He would have thought he was walking in circles if it weren’t for the honest flow that led him east. In these times, he took out the Westhaven book and studied, mostly focusing on the page about Cordirls.

These are not actually demons at all. They are categorized as demons to the known world due to their demon-like abilities of energy sucking through skin contact.

Theissen had reread the first paragraph about them over and over again, trying to conceive of what this Jonis was like if indeed he was a Cordril. Energy sucking though skin contact? It sounded creepy. What was creepier was the description of what they could do with it.

Like Sky Children, Cordrils can absorb energy and thoughts through touch. However, unlike Sky Children, Cordrils have less self-control. For a Cordril, their absorption through touch is automatic, though the initial touch only takes a smidgen of energy from its victim. After the first touch, a Cordril is able to put a stop to the energy drain and it can prevent any more from being taken. That said, a Cordril also is able to absorb more than Sky Children can and more readily do so. And when it does, it does not leave any remains of its victim, absorbing it entirely so that nothing, not even a husk, is left. However, this also means that they are unable to ‘borrow’ a life like Sky Children can. What they take is for keeps.

What they took was for keeps? Meaning they had a killing touch. And leaving not even a husk? Theissen just felt ill reading that. These Sky Children and Cordrils sounded equally bad. However, the rest he read had an interesting sound to it.

Despite this, a Cordril retains its blue eyes entirely, never taking on the eyeshade of its victims. Cordrils can also communicate among one another through touch, and more readily than Sky Children. They also are famous for having long memories of generations passed on to them from their fathers and mothers. Passing memories is a tradition among Cordrils, and the depth of their memories varies from Cordril to Cordril. With these memories come skills and knowledge that most take lifetimes to learn.

Learning by touch. That sounded so convenient.

A Cordril with a very long memory can be extremely dangerous.

They sounded dangerous anyway without all that, he thought to himself with a snicker. 

Despite this memory exchange, the personality of a singular Cordril remains unaffected by the memories, and a Cordril can even become disgusted with its own ancestors if there is a conflict of personality in the memory.

If this man was a Cordril, he sounded like he was disgusted with his ancestors. There was a frank flippancy to how he talked of it.

Cordrils tend to breed among themselves, though they also are known to take human wives when Cordril females are scarce.

Yes, finding a girl was hard, demon or not. Theissen sighed with thought on that one. If one was something frightful like a demon, how in the world could he convince a woman to be his wife? Especially if one touch could drain if not kill her?

Today most Cordrils take on professions among humans as demon hunters, mostly for their own protection. In Westhaven, Cordril populations have reduced dramatically due to failure to find mates, however, it is rumored that in the far northwest in Ki Tai (known also as the Western Wild) that a thriving village of Cordrils still exists.

Theissen closed the book with a sigh. The next section was all about their origins. He decided to save that for another day. The last time he read it, he recalled there being a story about flying and that sort of silliness. He almost made the Cordrils’ ancestor sound like a god from one of those myths that condescended to live on their world. A load of nonsense really.

It was getting late. Theissen could hardly see the pages on the book now anyway, so he stopped and found a comfortable space to sleep. Since he had seen neither feather nor beak of a demon parasitic bird, Theissen wrapped his coat and then his cloak around himself and pulled down the hood. Though he was hungry, he decided to skip dinner. His food stores were getting low anyway, and he had to make them last until he got through the forest to a village.

Closing his eyes, he listened to the smooth melodic sound of the wind and the leaves in the creaking boughs of the trees. That alone rocked him into a calm and dreamless sleep.

*

“Get up.”

Theissen blinked sleepily, not sure he heard something. The air stank like a dank mildewy hole.

Something jabbed him sharp-like.

Jerking up his head and tossing back his hood, Theissen stared up. Around him in a semicircle like towering lumps of rock and tree roots were humanlike figures. Most had spears, though some held pick axes in their hands.

“Get up,” one ordered again.

Theissen obeyed, dusting himself off and grabbing his pack from where he had set it aside. None of them had touched it. He stood taller than them, but from looking at the knots of flow in their hands and all over their bodies, these particular demons could slice him up with their very fingernails without any effort.

“Get on.” One shoved him with the butt end of his spear. Another poked him again.

“Ow! Careful with that thing!” Theissen did walk where they shoved him though. Surrounded like this, it did not seem wise to attempt an escape. Even if he tried to sink into the ground, they looked just as capable of chasing him through the earth and mince him into little bits while they were at it. Stirring up a storm would only make them irritable.

They shoved him and prodded him through the forest off the path towards the east, veering north for a while. Their walk was more like a trudge. In the dark he could see that their legs were short, so he knew that at least he could outrun them if he got a head start. So far they were not taking that chance with him. They marched like a moving wall, going steadily on together all the way until they reached the foot of what looked like a rocky cliff. At the base of the cliff was an enormous pair of doors, open without even a shining light inside to make the cave look like a home. The doorway gave him the impression of a plain old mine, like the ones not far from Pepersin Town his father told him about. There were wood beams holding up the top with sturdy, yet old side pillars to support it.

“Go in.”

Theissen stared up at the cliff before they shoved him inside. It was not even a sheer rock face, but fraught with little trees and vines, dangling down in what would have been a picturesque curtain of plants. But that was all he saw before he was forced into all consuming blackness.

He stumbled.

“Watch yer step.”

“Watch my step? I can’t see my feet. How can I watch my step?”

Someone jabbed him.

“Shut up.”

Theissen tripped again, falling against one of those demons. That one shoved him back, cursing words his mother would have shouted at.

“I said watch it!”

“And I told you, I can’t see!”

That one jabbed him again.

“And that hurts!”

“Shut it!”

Theissen stumbled more, feeling about the floor through his shoes with his feet to keep his step. It was not something he had to do before, but he was slowly getting the hang of it by the time they had trudged through one corridor to another. It was a good thing they had such a slow pace.

“Who is this?” he heard a deep voice say to his right.

“An idiot traveler.”

He was starting to really resent that demon.

“Take him to the chief.”

They shoved him forward again. Theissen could feel them leading him down a fork in the caves. The smell of the caves was filled with that same dank moldiness, all moving knots of demonic stink going about as if the tunnels were a town. There were other odors and smells, more natural ones, but the demon stench overpowered it and was starting to make Theissen feel nauseated.

“Are you sure you can’t see?” one demon said before jabbing him again.

Theissen tromped irritably, walking better now that he could feel the walls to his right and left and the ground underneath him. “Not at all.”

A disgruntled noise answered him.

“Did you mean you aren’t sure that you can’t see or you that you just can’t see?”

“I’m as blind as a bat in here,” Theissen complained.

“Ah, but a bat can see in here. So which one is it? You can or can’t see?”

“I can’t see!” Theissen snapped wishing he could so he could give the one speaking what for. So far all he could tell was that the irritating voice was coming from his left.

The demon snorted. “Well, you’re walking like you can. You ain’t bumping into nothing now.”

“I ain’t…I mean I’m not bumping into what?” Theissen staggered to the right, now avoiding a small rough ball that could have tripped him.

“There! You avoided that! What about that? Ha!”

“Well, I didn’t see it, if that’s what you mean,” Theissen said.

“Then how come you didn’t trip?” another voice asked. This one was at his right.

Feeling all the feet striking the ground around him, and therefore bodies on top of them, Theissen could tell he was still well surrounded. Chances for escape had gone from slim to none, and they seemed to really enjoy putting obstacles in his path. That ball was just one of them. One had moved a chair. Another had stuck out his foot. Theissen had managed to step over and around these things because he could still feel the flow around him.

“Luck?” Theissen offered.

“Liar,” a new voice said.

They emerged into a room, this one dimly lit with phosphorescent stones arranged together on shining wrought gold and diamond imbedded stands. In the center of the glow was a throne entirely made of gold and precious stones, almost gaudy in their assembly. And sitting on that throne was the strangest looking person Theissen had ever seen, stranger even than that gole he had met in the woods. The demon’s face looked smooth, yet pinched, its eyes beady black and set deep behind a snout like nose. Smashing down a patch of twiggy looking hair was a fat gold coronet studded with jewels, and around his thick neck were chains upon chains of jewelry made from precious stones and metals. Yet, under all that jewelry it wore what looked like nothing more than matted and dried-out moss, molded together as felt. Its legs were bare, though the shoes on its feet were iron shod with molded tree bark, strung together with twisted root-like cords. The demons around him entered with a sense of reverence, blinking their tiny back eyes and bowing one by one before what had to be their chief.

“Who is this?” the chief asked in a gravelly voice, gesturing with his paddle like hand at Theissen, his long claws buffed and sharp looking.

One of the other demons shoved Theissen forward. “A fool traveler. Gope found him sleeping alone in the forest.”

“Sleeping alone?” The demon chief shifted in his throne, peering down at Theissen with a look Theissen could only interpret as accusatory. It was hard to read such tiny black eyes. “In the forest?”

Theissen felt another jab on his back. One struck him on his shoulder blades to make him bow to the chief, though really he didn’t need to bother. The ceiling was too low for him to stand fully upright anyway.

“What kind of fool idiot travels alone in the forest? It isn’t rainy season yet!”

Someone struck him on the back again. It took a minute before Theissen realized that they wanted him to speak, having only assumed