Into the Abyss

“Granted. I admit that if that blow had hit me directly, I might have faltered a little more than you did.”

“Needless to say, that’s when I first realized we had a higher order demon on our hands. However, by that point, as you well know, if we’d stopped, it could have come rampaging back on us and thrashed us severely. Our pentacles could never have stood against it, no stronger than the wards we had set were.” He gestured to the six pentagrams on the workroom floor. As any observer could have noted, the wards were set to guard against bound demons and unbound minor demons, but not a major unbound demon. The room itself contained only the six pentagrams, five braziers within the five pentagrams sympathetic to the primary pentagram, the chair in which Lenamare sat beside a small table with chalk and a few vials of conjuration supplies. The walls were, as a matter of course, curtained solidly, so that the demon could not find a way out, or tell where it was in the world of men. “It was sheer providence that we had some Orl wood in the room and the few other supplies necessary for the fourth order binding.”

“Actually, as to that, I am surprised we got it even then,” commented Jehenna, “Its dodging upward, and then attempting to dematerialize from the astral plane, actually suggests fairly high intelligence. Why it didn’t try a few other fourth order tricks, I’m not sure.”

“That plays to my first question, why was it wandering around unguarded, posing as a small demon anyway?”

“To lure silly wizards into trying to capture it, so it could possess them?” suggested Jehenna.

“Well, if that was its game, it might have succeeded if any of the students had broken. Again, I’m mad at myself for not taking better precautions today.”

“Well, luckily they didn’t break, and there is no way for you to have anticipated finding an unbound greater demon.” By this time, Jehenna had finished putting out the braziers and her internal fire seemed to be subsiding; she walked over and put her hand on Lenamare’s shoulder; staring down at him the cold mage light hovering above their heads.

“The whole thing still bothers me; why did it act so confused about the whole thing?” Lenamare sighed, shaking his head.

“That, I have no answer for, so we won’t worry about it for now. OK?” Jehenna asked, trying to put the matter to rest.

“If you insist.”

“I do,” and with that she kissed him on the forehead and left the room.

Chapter 3

At the party, Paul was freaking out. He had been leaning over Tom, trying to get him to come to. At first, he had thought Tom was joking, but when he noticed how pale his friend was he became worried. He shook and yelled at Tom to wake up.

Finally after several minutes Tom looked like he was about to come to, then the lights had flickered and the iPod spontaneously rebooted and the powered speakers turned off; Tom screamed and stopped breathing. Everyone had all gone wild then, as fast as they could Paul and Jack had tried CPR, but they had only seen it done, never actually been trained in it. Mike called an ambulance, and the entire party had stopped to watch them try to help Tom. It didn’t do any good.

Now the ambulance was here and the police were on the way. The medics worked over Tom for a few moments and then decided there wasn’t much they could do. He was dead. Paul and Jack cornered Reggie in the back room.

“What the fuck was in that joint you gave him, Reggie?” Paul demanded.

“Nothin’, the guy I bought it from said it was just a new special high grade shit grown in Puerto Rico. I swear! I don’t know what happened.” A terrified Reggie pleaded, he was scared to death someone would tell the cops he gave Tom the joint. “He was even smoking it out of this big ass old fashioned tobacco pipe when I met up with him. Or that’s what he said he was smoking.”

“Are you sure, cause if you’re lyin’, I’m gonna bust your balls and turn you into the police for murder. Tom is dead because of your fuckin’ shit,” raged Jack.

“I swear to god, man. I didn’t know. I had part of one this evening, it had an incredible high but otherwise seemed perfectly normal to me, I didn’t pass out or anything. Please, I swear to you, I didn’t put anything in the joint. You’ve gotta believe me.”

“What are we gonna do?” Paul asked Jack.

“Shit, I don’t know. You got any more of those damn joints?”

“Yeah, sure, four. Here.” He handed four joints to Jack.

“Anyone else smoke this shit?” asked Paul.

“No, I swear.”

“What do we do?” asked Paul.

“Let’s just flush ‘em and ride it out, it’s all we can do. Pretend he had a heart attack,” Jack answered.

“I hope it works,” said Paul.

“So do I. So do I.”

Introduction to the Astral Plane By Ase Onan Archimage of Turelane 1334–1362 Ani Chronia