AEGIS Tales 2, page 17
part #8 of Airship Daedalus Series
The Husband’s eyes fixed on his wife’s body. “Ada?”
“So…I feel like I should explain some things to you,” Sid began in the calmest voice he could possibly muster as he pulled out his badge and showed it to him.
“What’s wrong with her?” the Husband asked, “Is she alright?”
“Well, here’s the thing. She’s kind of…dead.”
“What?!” the Husband dropped his briefcase and began to rush toward the body before Sid stood and stopped him. “When—who—how—” The Husband stuttered several beginnings-of-sentences before Sid interrupted him.
“Hey. Listen. This is all going to sound really weird, but I’m going to tell you exactly what happened, and what’s going to happen, if you just…sit down over there, okay?”
There was a silence as the Husband glanced at Sid, complete and utter horror in his eyes, and then back at the body, before he nodded and sat down on the other end of the couch from where Sid had stood, and to where he was now returning.
“Okay. So. I’ve had a really weird day—” Sid said.
“You’ve had a really weird day?!” the Husband couldn’t stop himself from shouting.
“Okay, okay. Yes, I know. This is hard for you. But let me explain.”
The Husband exhaled the breath he was holding in disdain, nodded, and gestured for Sid to continue.
“So, I guess, long story short, I sort of accidentally summoned a demon that killed your wife.”
The Husband’s face was blank for a moment before he stood once again. “Okay. That’s it. I’m going to get in contact with the Chief of Police and have you fired. If that badge even is real—” he had gotten to the door and his hand was on the doorknob when a familiar crack was heard. The Husband froze in place, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell to the floor.
“Disconnected the—?”
“Brain stem from the spinal cord,” Killgrath confirmed.
“Great. Well, that went about as smoothly as it could. Now. This part is going to be tricky. We have to stage the scene.”
“Meaning?”
“We have to make it look like a murder-suicide. We can’t just leave them here. Help me bring them to the bedroom.”
Killgrath did as was asked, although moving Ada was a difficult task due to her fully stiffened tissues. Ada’s body was laid on the mattress, while Killgrath stood the body of the Husband up by the foot of the bed.
“Alright. Now is the time, I guess,” Sid said, taking his gun out of his holster, standing next to the Husband’s body, and aiming at Ada’s.
He shot, and the amount of blood that still came out of the body was nauseating. And he would have to do that again.
He took the Husband’s hand and positioned it to fire the gun, the barrel directly touching the underside of the husband’s chin. Again, the gun fired, blood and brain matter splattering against the chest of drawers and wall behind him.
Sid dropped the gun, and Killgrath exited the body. “That hurt,” he remarked.
“Too bad,” Sid said with a curt glare. “Time to get out of here.”
Sid put on his best terrified face as he ran out the front door and got into his car, quickly getting on his radio and making an emergency call to the station. It was only after he had done that when he realized how much blood had gotten on him. His first instinct was to go home and shower and change, but he figured it would be better for the narrative that he was trying to set if he had been there.
He also realized after that that, despite the fact that all this was mostly a façade, his hands were shaking violently. He had never shot anyone before. He had to remind himself that the Husband was already dead, and he still had never technically killed anyone, but with Killgrath possessing the body, it all felt so real. Like he was the perpetrator of this crime. Then again, he was probably liable for both of their deaths anyway, seeing as there was no precedent for prosecuting a literal demon.
Sid heard the sirens before he saw the flashing lights of the patrol cars that zoomed into the scene. As they stopped in front of the house, he got out of his car with his hands up and his badge showing.
Everything was a blur after that. Sid was taken in for questioning, Killgrath hovering around him the entire time, sometimes with an evil smile full of schadenfreude that was incredibly distracting.
At one point, as he was sitting alone in the interrogation room, Sid realized something. “Why are you still here?” he asked, making a point not to look anywhere in particular or to speak very loudly, knowing that he was still being monitored. “Don’t you have anywhere you need to be?”
“You summoned me,” Killgrath reminded him, “I am bound to you until you cast the spell to send me back to the underworld…which will also kill you.”
Sid blinked. “Excuse me?”
Killgrath sighed. “Another thing you didn’t know before carelessly summoning a demon. Yes, the freeing spell requires the sacrifice of the original summoner.”
“That…would have been useful information,” Sid mumbled.
“It was in the book.”
Sid cast a cursory glare at Killgrath.
“Which you didn’t read,” Killgrath finished for him. “Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
Sid kept his story the same for hours and hours of questioning: he and Ada were having an affair and were caught one night when time had slipped away from them, and Ada’s husband came home from work. He caught them in the act, which is when Sid tried to deescalate the situation, but the husband wasn’t having it, stole Sid’s gun, and shot Ada before turning the gun on himself out of guilt.
“Why didn’t he shoot you too?” Sid was asked several times. He didn’t have an answer; it was a question he hadn’t thought of being asked before orchestrating this whole thing.
More hours later, Sid was let go due to a lack of evidence proving he had anything to do with the case other than being an unfortunate witness. The only real witness, aside from the nosy neighbors who heard two gunshots, one right after the other, and then saw Sid running out of the house into his car.
Sid went home, Killgrath sitting in the passenger seat. He went straight to bed, Killgrath up and wandering around his apartment while he was sleeping.
Sid hadn’t slept in a good thirty-six hours, but he still had trouble falling asleep. He couldn’t get over the feeling of lukewarm blood splattering over him, how it all just…sprayed everywhere. He had always imagined blood to be thicker than that somehow.
And when he finally was able to close his eyes, every time he was on the verge of actual sleep, he felt the sudden shock of the gun firing in his hand and the incredibly loud sound it made ringing in his ears. Furthermore, it didn’t help that every so often when he would open his eyes, glowing red pupils would stare at him from the darkness of his room. He knew it was Killgrath, he knew he would come to no harm, and yet there was something incredibly unsettling about it. Maybe it set off a metaphor in his mind of the fact that he would eventually be caught. The perps always got caught; that was just the way it was. He might be able to plead insanity due to the fact that a demon was his accomplice, but ultimately, he pulled the trigger both times and he would have to live with that in a mental institution even if he didn’t get the death penalty.
It was then that he realized, perhaps sacrificing himself to send Killgrath back to the underworld wouldn’t be the worst option.
After a night of restless sleep, he got out of bed at 5 a.m., prepared to sneak into his office and take the book home with him. Thankfully, nobody was at the station yet (he and Ada were the only ones likely to stay late anyway) so he was in and out without a problem.
At home, he decided to take the time to actually read the book. A lot of it was nonsense about an eternity in paradise, ruling over the dead, ultimate power, et cetera, et cetera. Although, really, at this point, how could he rule any of it out, knowing that demons were real? At least this one was. Or maybe he had finally snapped and gone insane. Maybe he really had killed Ada and her husband, and Killgrath was an invention of his psychotic mind that protected him from the truth and reality of the situation.
“I am real,” Killgrath’s voice echoed in Sid’s mind. “I can assure you that.” Of course he could read Sid’s mind.
“That’s exactly what a figment of my imagination would say,” Sid retorted.
“That is true, isn’t it?” Killgrath thought out loud, or at least as “out loud” as he could be.
“So, if all I have to do is kill myself, why don’t I just do it? Is it really that easy?”
“The circle.”
“What?”
“You have to draw the circle first.”
Sid flipped to the relevant page in the book, looked at the design of the circle, and groaned. That was the most complicated thing he had ever seen with his own two eyes. At least it would give him time to think back on his life while he was drawing.
He hadn’t had very many accomplishments. Graduating from the police academy was one thing, but he had barely scraped by on all his tests. Just like he had barely scraped by on all his tests, even before the academy. All throughout school, he did the bare minimum. All throughout his life, he did the bare minimum. Just enough to keep his job and his apartment. He never once thought he would end up doing what he was doing now.
He finished the drawing, gave one final look around his apartment, and said a silent goodbye before turning his gun on himself for a final shot.
Or, at least, he thought that’s how it would go.
After a loud bang and a sharp pain shooting through his head, he soon realized that he was still conscious. He opened his eyes and saw that there was no blood anywhere. Not on the walls, on the furniture, or on himself.
He looked around for Killgrath, and saw the demon standing in the corner, looking just as baffled as Sid was.
“What happened? Am I still alive?” Sid asked.
“I…I don’t know,” Killgrath answered, “Maybe… you did the wrong ritual?”
Sid looked down at the circle he drew, looking for any kind of inconsistency in the way he drew it versus the way it looked in the book, and he did finally locate a discrepancy…
He flipped through the pages again, scouring them for any sign of another circle that was similar but different in effect, and found one.
A ritual for immortality.
“No,” Sid muttered, “No, no, no, I can’t live forever, that’s not the way this is supposed to go.” He had to think quickly. He knew his neighbors heard the gunshot and would be on their way to check on him at any second. “We have to get out of town, now.”
Sid didn’t even bother packing a bag; he just left the apartment, ignoring his next-door neighbor who emerged to ask him if he was alright.
He got in his car and drove. He picked a direction—east—and stepped on the gas.
Then he remembered the demon in his passenger seat. “So this really means we’re stuck together forever now, huh?”
Killgrath thought about the amulet, and how Sid had apparently forgotten that he was still wearing it. He thought about the fact that if he could just obtain the amulet, he could go back to the underworld, to the way things used to be.
But the way things used to be were boring.
“I suppose we are,” the demon said.
Timeless
by R.L. Pace
In the gloom of the primordial forest OotMa the Timeless One walked with a steady stride and sure gait stepping over twigs and around stones without hesitation. Her walking stick of healing willow was well worn and her hand held fast to the seal skin leather loop. For millenia and more, beyond memory, she had journeyed with her people across the frozen reaches from one continent to another, seen her tribes grow and prosper even as glaciers melted away in the new lands.
She had rowed with warriors in cedar canoes across the straits between islands and mainland and watched a ship commanded by George Vancouver as it sailed near her family village of Bahaada. In the ancientness of her life the Timeless One had fished for salmon and halibut, harpooned whales and fashioned clothing from cedar bark and sea otter skins. She had been present, but untouched, as disease ravaged her people and been an honored elder when her tribes finally bowed to the treaty seventy five years ago. She had lived the length of a thousand lives and more, yet she had seen nothing with her own eyes. OotMa was born blind and the world was invisible to her without a keeper of the vision quest. Death touched everyone in its time—her time—including countless vision keepers, but it had not yet beckoned for the Timeless One.
✽✽✽
October 1927
Makah Indian Village
Neah Bay, Wash.
“Watch where we are going, child! Pay attention to the path ahead, you are looking for both of us.” OotMa said.
“I am trying, OotMa. It’s hard! I like to see through the birds.” Bird Far Seeing was barely fourteen and like all young boys dreaming of becoming great hunters he chafed at being stuck with looking out for the village’s oldest citizen. Literally looking, in his case. He had only begun his studies as a Keeper and the only vision quest on his mind at the moment was being with his friends preparing to become a warrior.
“Stop then. Come here, boy. Let me see what you see. First, close your eyes.” OotMa opened her mind and gently laid her consciousness upon her young acolyte like a cloud enveloping a high mountain peak. After generations of training new vision quest students she knew this could be an unsettling experience for them, suddenly having another voice not your own in your head. “Open your eyes and let me see.”
Bird Far Seeing opened his eyes and looked at OotMa.
That’s right. Now I see myself as you see me.
Suddenly there was a jarring, almost kaleidoscopic image of her left ear in a hundred tiny identical pictures, then just as suddenly it was replaced with another view of the two of them from somewhere higher, a tree branch perhaps. What are you doing? What vision is this? OotMa had never in her centuries beheld such a sight.
“I saw a fly on your shoulder, and then a jay in the tree.” He said aloud.
Speak to me with your mind. You saw me through their eyes?
Yes, OotMa, he thought. I have always seen through other eyes. It’s how I got my name. If I can see any creature, I can look through their eyes.
Show me the eyes of the eagle up there in the sky, she commanded.
He turned and focused his attention on the bird soaring high above wondering how she knew there was one up there.
There is always an eagle in the sky on a clear day, she explained.
Now their shared field of vision became an aerial view of the lush temperate rain forests on the earth below and the unseasonably clear sky above them. At first it was dizzying and exhilarating to OotMa as she fought to make sense of what her young student was showing her. Then it was instantly terrifying. Through the eyes of the eagle they could see a column of thick black smoke rising from the direction of their village. Poised overhead hovering just above the tops of the cedars and Sitka spruce was a massive black dirigible airship.
The Timeless One extended her thoughts to the predatory brain of the eagle and though she couldn’t be certain, his telescopic vision seemed to reveal a rain of death issuing from underneath the dark leviathan.
Run, little bird. We must run to the village as fast as we can. Look only through your eyes at the path ahead and run! Together they ran through the forest amid the towering giants, nearly silent on the evergreen straw beneath their feet, across the creeks for their home at the edge of the world.
From a hidden position behind a fallen log at the edge of the village OotMa spoke to Bird Far Seeing in his mind. We must see the great canoe of the sky. Keep hidden, but find a way. Bird squinted through the branches, then spotted a raven perched on a limb near the Elders Lodge. The Timeless One extended her mind and through the eyes of the raven searched each direction until the massive airship came into view. It was enormous, all black save some elements of the gondola. Upon its aft vertical stabilizer a large four point silver star was visible and near the forward nose was printed Nephthys.
Nephthys slowly settled close to the clearing where fishing nets were mended and four people wearing black uniforms slid down ropes dangling from the basket. Once on the ground they tied the airship off to nearby trees and the sound of grinding winches could be heard as the ship pulled itself to the earth.
Responding to the nudges of OotMa, the raven took flight, circling near, as a short gangplank was lowered and heavily armed troops rolled out. Through raven the hidden pair could see a woman with glistening golden hair and very fair skin speaking and pointing toward areas not already afire. The troops dispersed to the spots indicated and moments later the blasts of gunfire and terrified wailing was heard, only to fall silent at the report of another gunshot.
The raven perched on the outstretched wings of the great lodge totem eagle and viewed the scene curiously. Presently two of the troopers dragged a man to the ship and dropped him at the feet of the blond woman. She lifted his chin with the toe of her boot and spoke. His response drew a savage kick to his face and the two troopers lifted him and tied him to the opposite totem. Again the woman spoke, again the response drew a rain of blows. This was repeated until the man could no longer respond, hanging limply from his bindings.
More commands were issued and back-packed equipment was brought from the belly of the ship. Teams dispersed throughout the village. Fire belched in molten incendiary orange streams until everything was ablaze right to the edge of the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean. When OotMa released raven, Bird Far Seeing peeked over the windfall where they were shielded from view. The last of the troops re-boarded the Nephthys, cast off the lines, and the ship drifted skyward as the thrum of her thruster engines filled the air.
