Dechaerrim stared at the delicate-seeming sphere of silver strands in their incomprehensible shapes, and realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do with it. Should he touch it? Was it touch-activated -- or possibly trapped? He didn't want to lose an arm in the case of the latter, but he didn't have time to sit around thinking about how to integrate with the thing, either.

He raised a hand, paused, and then finally set it on the orb, pulling his head away in case something violent happened.

Nothing happened at all.

He cursed and grumbled to himself, but was also fascinated by the feel of it -- it was uniquely smooth, it didn't seem like it could have been wrought or forged, it was too perfect...so many threads, some as fine as hairs but stronger than steel, some as flat as ribbons but unyielding. Glassy and cool, but tingly, as of an effervescent fluid. When touching it, he felt a bit of it touch him back, in his mind instead of his hand.

The sudden presence of a mind and the scent of living meat caused him to move quickly around to the other side of the pedestal, with his hindquarters facing the inert portalway. Before him was a figure clad in armor, wielding a sword that seemed too large for a human to be able to lift in one hand, and bearing a shield Argent, a sun Or.

"Greetings," said a calm voice from behind the helm. Sharp, dark eyes glared out through a slot in the metal, the only glimpse at the man's face. Something about them reminded Dech disturbingly of his mother.

"Hello," Dech said, his tail lashing impatiently. He could feel that the venom had been replenished, but if only there were some gap or place of weakness in the man's armor...

"I have longed to destroy you." The man's voice was firm, but soft, and rather melancholic.

"Many beings do," Dech snorted. "I will kill you, if I must kill you. But I want escape."

"Escape? To where, demon? Back out there, to your world?"

Dech pondered a moment, and conceded. "No. I hate my world."

"Good, then you and I agree on that. Never have I seen such a pointless place of filth and violence. Does none of your kin long for blood? Or do you all hunger to thieve innocence?"

"Do all your kind long to take beings as kidnaps, and torture?"

"Oh. I am not...a part of this...scientific process. I detest what they do as well. But when I heard of this new planet they found...yet another Abyssal planet, and the least civilized one so far...I knew I needed to come. Hmm...so I have heard you are half human. Is this correct?"

"It is not...important. You delay me! They will come in this place soon and kill me." Dech wanted to focus on the control core, but he couldn't let his external senses lapse with an armed knight in the room.

"A pity. If you had been raised on... your mother's world, then your death might matter." The knight didn't pause to give Dech a chance to question that odd statement. "As it stands, you serve no purpose. I have seen that you exist like the rest of your fami-...the rest of your kind here...only to destroy. And I cannot let you leave your planet. You will not spread your disaster to any more innocent places!"

"Who the hell are you?" Dechaerrim growled.

"The one who is going to erase you. You may know me as Sunshield, for the last moment of your life."

It happened very quickly. Dech did not expect a human laden with steel to move so swiftly, but it was so. And the man did not expect a demon to rely on more than fire and teeth -- Dech was subtly bending the floor and walls, changing the air, softening the sword. It was all he could do in the very brief battle that happened there.

The sword was fast and enchanted and bit harshly like a striking snake, raking out sizeable scores of flesh that rapidly irrigated themselves with blood that slicked the floor; sometimes it scored deeply piercing, pushing through ribs and arms and twisting before withdrawing. The man's armor resisted fire and he had a spell on him that deflected electricity as well. Dech tried to kill the man with a solid stab in the face with his stinger, but the sword flashed once and the stinger was slung across the room, sans tail. The bleeding stump whipped angrily with a red spray.

Dech however had the advantage of sight, for the room was not lit -- he had no idea how the knight could fight at all in the blackness, but he probably had trained for blind fighting in preparation for battle against foes with magical eyes. He seemed extremely capable of fighting against four arms. Dech had a very unsettling thought that the man was trained specifically to slay Theksarsi, more than any other demon.

But the man was no match for Dechaerrim. The man's movements slowed soon, and his breath rasped heavily. Well-trained, but old and dusty, it seemed. How long had he waited for this fight?

Dech managed to lock his teeth around the sword arm and shook his own head from side to side as fiercely as he possibly could. At an instant the arm was no longer in the shoulder joint; in the next, it was broken everywhere. At the final instant, the metal of the armor plating had been dented, crushed, and pierced, causing more harm than good. The sword fell to the floor and Dechaerrim swatted it aside. The knight raised his shield and bashed it repeatedly against the side of Dech's face, then raised it and sank the bottom point of it into Dech's right eye.

Dech whipped his head up and down, tossing the knight against the ceiling and floor with echoing clangs. At last he tossed the man across the room; he sailed clear over the pedestal and landed near his sword, which he had no ability left to wield.

"Pointless beast," the man uttered. He didn't try to sit up; he knew was done. "Why were you ever born? Who...is glad...that you exist? You have...no point..."

"Stop talking," Dech growled.

"You cannot escape...as far as you go...the cage...will always...be there..." The man's voice, though still as firm as ever, was pained and gasping. They were his last words. Dech needn't deliver a final blow; the man shut his eyes and seemed to sleep, and Dech felt the mind slide away and go silent, the restless, vengeful thoughts quieting at last.

Dech knocked the helm off out of curiosity and saw only a dead, old, white-haired man. He wondered why this man in particular seemed to be so upset by Dechaerrim's existence; he decided he didn't care to think about it, and shoved the body into the corner.

He turned his thoughts to the control core. It's now or never. If I delay any longer, they'll flood the room soon. I'm going to have to leave my senses behind again.

He set his chin on the blood-slick floor and his mind left his body behind. Once again, he was viewing a higher, outer scape, swimming in the rivers of magic that coursed here. As he suspected, this core was positively bundled with so many intricate spells and functions he dared not try to touch to change them; but, it was sorely thirsting for a mind to direct it. It was fueled by willpower. There were so few minds of significant power here of enough focused cognizance to make a difference, and it was slackly sitting there, doing very little. The only thing it was left doing was maintaining the external barrier, which was probably the most important function of all, considering what was outside.

Dech hesitated, then at last, unhesitatingly, plunged his own willpower into the core. His brain flared with hot-white fire and he felt a mental shock so bad it nearly cut him down to a vegetable. Functions lined up and checked themselves off, drawing off of his numbed, dumbed state and taking his oblivious nonresponse as an Okay to Go; runes and lights, doors and rooms were turning on again now, for he wasn't able to deny them, he barely comprehended what was going on. For a moment he had the horrible realization that the palace itself had a very real, very penetrating intelligence of its own. It thought and felt, and it was temporarily difficult to disentangle his own sensations from those of the building. He was immensely aware of its storeys and occupants. The rooms and hidden places without doors or windows. The temperature, the structure. It flashed briefly in his mind and went back again, for he had no chance to hold onto the images to look them over properly.

When Dech awoke again -- it occurred to him that he had fainted and must have been in a sort of coma while integrating with the palace. He hadn't healed, however; the enchantments on the knight's sword had prevented that, he supposed. The wounds had been bleeding quite a bit, and only a very rapid blood refresh rate had kept him from dying in this basement. How ironic it would have been, to have died in the process of gaining control at last, not from the process of wrestling a magic above his standing, but from injuries received preceding the attempt.

But the man's words shook him. You cannot escape. As far as you go, the cage will always be there.

Nonsense. It wasn't poetry, it was confusion in a death throe, vomiting pretty prophecies that were nothing but misfiring nerves in the brain. Nothing but nonsense, nothing at all.

Pointless beast. You have no point.

Dech snorted in contempt. How often he had heard that said before by his father, being told his reason for birth was a punishment for Ruth, and an additional plaything for the rest of the family. Being told by his father also that he'd never escape, because wherever Dech could go, the old man would find him. Being told...

Nothing worth dwelling on.

And you're dead now. Let's see you find me from wherever you went to, Father.

That's right. His father was long gone. Years ago...he wasn't quite sure anymore. A fast spectacle. Another battle, a fast one. Aren't they always fast? Doesn't everything always happen so fast, too fast that you should be able to remember it, yet they stick out most in the mind, those moments that go too quickly to stop yourself --

Dechaerrim cursed again and angrily bit the arm of the dead knight again, twisting it off this time and tossing it against the wall. He didn't know why his thoughts were straying. He should be happy. He had won! The only wizards left were the weakest ones, the slowest ones who were too late to gain an upper hand in the battle. Students and fools who now wouldn't be able to get into the room, now that its powerful barriers were re-enabled. He was free. He was! He had escaped, he had! Any world was free to leave to -- maybe even he could go back to Ruth and take her back to her home...

...where everyone she had ever known would be long dead and the only memories of her left would be of some extant farm girl who brought a demon on the town. Where she would be a longevitious freak to outlive them to the tenth generation. A demon-tainted, demon-mothering ghost of a bad memory.

Perhaps he could just go get her and bring her here to keep her safe...

A hollow reminder of civilization and people who had no interest in her well-being. A dead, dusty mockery of the life she'd never have back.

Perhaps he could...

No. Nothing. He left her behind. He left her with the last little memory of him being a vaguely good one. If he went to her he'd destroy that. He'd become weak and someday tell her what he did, in one of those moments that go too fast to know what you're even doing but you don't know if you wanted to do it or not and the fact you have to ask is a very evil sign, and if she knew about that moment, and then about the fact that he had just gone on a killing spree for --

no point

-- for...for something...

Where would he go?

They'd always be there, wouldn't they? His father and mother over his shoulder, their words on his mind. He was trapped...by his own actions, by the accident of his existence, by his memories, faults, traumas and crimes...trapped by his freakish nature, neither demonic enough to live among his father's kind nor human enough to leave the planet...trapped in a family that despised him on both sides, trapped by his past and what he had done or failed to do, trapped by the cage that would never go away...

Got to the very top and found it lonely. Reached his goal and found nothing at the finish line. Looked at himself and found himself wanting.

It was just too late.

For the first time in a very long time Dech covered his head and wept.