Summoned

Look at them sleep. So peaceful, so innocent Victor thought to himself as he closed the door to his two children’s bedroom. Like he did every night, Victor was preparing for bed by checking if his children were sleeping. It is a bit silly, he tucked them in an hour ago. But he could not help it, not since he was alone with them, he had been for 2 years now. Oh my dear, how they have grown. They are so beautiful: Clair looks just like you and Aldric has your eyes. But of course you knew that. Victor was reminiscing, when a loud crack came from outside like a lighting strike.

Victor jumped from the shock. What was that? Ha ha, it must have been nothing. Probably just the wind or some rat or something. Ha ha. He nervously mused to himself, cold sweat running down his back.

After a while without any other sounds and ensuring that everything was locked and secured, yes, see it was nothing. Victor decided and continued with his nightly ritual. Laying down in his, he once again heard something from outside, it sounded like a small group of people discussing something in low whispers. No, that can not be true, I have not heard any footsteps or seen any light.

The voices disappeared as quickly and sudden as they appeared, and an eerie unnatural silence crept in together with the heavy darkness, weighting Victor down. So quiet the only things Victor could hear, was his heartbeat racing and his breath raising. So fast, it reminded him of his last nights on the battlefield when the nights became eerie silence and the darkness lied heavy before the demons showed themselves. “Victor! Can’t you hear me?! We have to run!.... Victor relived the nightmare he had had ever since those terrible nights on the frontline. Oh gods, those yellow glowing eyes!

Victor felt the same panic rising in him again. Not again! No no no! Not now! Victor hurried out of his bed, went directly for the cabinet in the kitchen, thirsting for the bottle he had hidden in the corner. He opened the panels and right back at him starred a young blond wave haired woman, with deep blue almost purple eyes, with a peaceful smile. A portrait of his wife and him sitting on a bench holding baby Aldric, it had cost him a small fortune to have commissioned. But looking at it now it was with every silver. The thirst, the lust for the bitter alcohol slowly drained out of him as he took in the portrait. She was my rock, my home, my reason to keep going. She was… but now they are. Living memories of my love, my Caroline.

After some time, Victor had calmed down enough to go back to his bed. The past 2 years had been difficult for him, she had always been the bravest of the two. Brave, kind and oh so beautiful. Victor thought while putting the portrait back in the cabinet. She had been his entire world, the 12 years he had known her. After the conquest of the twin isles, half a decade of fighting, and killing the tribes and nature. Demon cults and worship, the tribes were as inhuman as the things they worshiped and summoned. No, I will not be going down those thoughts again. It was bad enough to live through it once. Victor tried to convince himself unsuccessfully.

All of sudden a green-ish yellow pulsing light shined through the window. Victor paled, as his silhouette was drawn out in the dark against the far wall in the small living room by the unnerving light from outside. No no, not again? Not here! Oh god! No no no… Victor felt the choking feeling of panic running up his throat as he started to gasp for air, while his heart began to stomp away as if it was trying to kick out its way out his chest. Oh god oh god oh god… no no no… Victor’s ears were thumping along with his racing heartbeat. He stood in the pulsing light for a short while, not knowing how to react.

Slowly, he crept to the window to see what was going on, his ears still pounding. As he feared a group of 13 hooded people had formed a circle at the edge of his wheat field, and from the center the unsettling vomit colored pulsing light shone. Oh god, they are summoning something. Nothing good can come from this. Victor starred horrified, caught in a terrifying memory of the last days of the war. His comrades and him running from the inhuman monsters, undead comrades and worst of all, demons. Victor had never dared to seek out more information on these creatures, just the thought of them sent him into a cold panic.

The people outside were still chanting something in a terrible sounding language. Victor forced himself to look away when he remembered the children were still in bed. He quickly walked on shaking legs towards their bedroom, fearing the worst. Please let them be alone! But they were sleeping. Thank the gods they are still here. Victor signed inwardly with relief. As he watched young Aldric and his baby sister Clair, Victor steely himself with a bravery he had not felt since he enlisted almost two decades ago. War has a way of removing that from people.

After closing the door to the childrens’ bedroom again, Victor found himself looking through his old military chest, pulling out his worn leather armor and his old short sword. His armor was dry and cracked in the sides from not being worn or cared for. His short sword was dull and rusted on one side due to similar reasons. Victor had never thought he might have to use either of these items ever again. Maybe, I could teach Aldric some day. 

In the bottom of the chest, next to an empty waterskin, laid a crystallized leaf connected to a golden chain. Victor held it up and looked at it for a long moment, only to put it back in the chest. Why would it work this time? Victor thought while his mind went back to the small fey child he had met at a riverside he did not recognize, after getting lost in the nearby forest as a child. She told him stories of the future, most victor did not remember. Only two, “Your love will show itself in waves of golden” and “the day will come, when your seed will need my help, all that is needed is to crush this leaf.” She had said it with an eerie seriousness that reached beyond her young age. Her eye color shifted between a fresh leaf green, burning sun yellow, falling leaf orange and an icy blue. Victor had not believed her back then like now.

But he had tried to crush the crystallized leaf over and over again when Coraline had gotten sick and before he knew his darling love, on the battlefield when the nightmares were real and terrifying, but nothing could crush that damned leaf. Nothing.

Victor closed the chest with a trembling hand and began to fit the pieces of armor on him. It was stiff and difficult to donne, but after a couple of tries, he managed. He took a long look at his sword, holding it with shaking hands, his heart was racing and all too familiar thumping in his ears started again. This was why he had left it in the chest for so long.

One day Aldric had opened the chest and swung the short sword a couple of times. Victor had a full panic attack, when he grabbed the sword from Aldric’s small hands. Thankfully Coraline had been around that day to help him calm down again. A sharp pain hit Victor in his heart, when he thought of that day. That was 4 years ago. Aldric must have been 5 at the time. 

Outside the eerie green-ish yellow light started to pulse faster. Victor wiped at his face, as he tried and failed to calm himself down again.  Okay, I just need to show that I have the ability to defend myself and they will run. Victor tried to convince himself, while he was exiting his small farmstead.

The light became a bright pillar of green-ish yellow pulsing, together with a low thumping demonic mumbling and abyssal chanting. All of it made Victor stop in his place, as his ears thumped with the demonic mumbling and his heart stomped against his chest so fast , he was increasingly terrified and convinced he would collapse then and there. He finally took another step and one more, painfully slow, but he made his way towards the continuously increasing chanting and the demonic mumbling turned into a high-pitched laughter, so high and loud, that both Victor and the chanting people fell to their knees holding their ears. 

After a short while the chanting stopped as the 13 hooded people all collapsed to the ground. The light was still pulsing and the demonic laughter continued, but at a lower pitch. Victor managed to get off the ground, pick up his sword and move closer to the still pulsing lighted circle. On his slow paced walk towards the circle, he noticed blood dripping from his ears and nose. Oh gods, what’s happening? Victor’s terrified thoughts raced around his head. A bit before Victor reached the circle, something poked its head up, something big.

As the light dyed off in slow pulses, a giant slug? Snake? With a human’s torso? What the hell. A slug snake human crawled out of the ground. Fully out of the ground, the light completely gone, Victor stood face to face with a monster from another plane, twice as high as him and three times as long. With a deep low voice the demon spoke some foul language that made Victor go stiff. The slug snake man slithered toward him and Victor’s panic continued to hold him in place, even though he would love nothing more than to run as far and long as possible. Before the demon reached him, the smell hit him like a hammer to the stomach, forcing Victor to vomit everything he had in him. 

The slug snake demon said something again, but in a different language, still sharp and unpleasant. It signed loudly and spoke this in a low moist voice, “where am I?” almost dripping with condescension. Victor tried to answer, but his stomach forced him once again to vomit, the smell like everything rotten combined with spoiled milk and eggs. The worst thing he had ever smelt in his life, ever more than the battlefield after a week of hard sun and corpses.

Finally, Victor got the words “Palewood” out between gasps for air and vomiting. “Which way is Queensport?” the demon asked, with the same wet voice and condescending tone. This time Victor only managed to point the southeast, just wishing the smell and the nightmare to stop.

The demon nodded its head and started slowly slithering toward the direction Victor had pointed out. Victor was thankful for the demon leaving. After a minute, the smell was gone and Victor felt some wet and hot against his knees. Completely certain he must have pissed himself, he looked down to see his pants burning with a hissing from acid. The entire ground was covered with a thick slime-like liquid spreading from where the demon had slithered past. Victor stood up, but his pants were burning and it ran down his legs, burning through the skin where it touched.

Victor hurriedly took off his pants and threw them to the ground, where the slime had spread and they immediately disappeared with a burning hiss. Victor looked at his fields with fear in his eyes, slowly but steadily the crops were vanishing as the pool of slimy liquid moved across the land.

Victor stood on horror, watching everything he owned and had worked for, burning away in an insufferable hissing sound that turned his stomach. At least it is gone now. But he only felt relief, that the giant demon was gone. “Thank the gods, I survived one more battle.”