Chapter 464: Stepping on shadows

“I’m a nasty piece of work,” said Blake’s comic book, ‘demon slayer’ construct. “Just ask anybody.”

It took a long, fake drag on its fake cigarette, and tried to toss it away a few times before realizing it was built into its finger. Blake shook his head and mentally gestured at the portals.

“Just go help kill demons, please.”

The thing looked ready for another one liner but Blake mentally slapped it forward. He hoped it had some use other than that sword-arm, but he honestly had no idea.

As he looked out at various demonic creatures forming in the circles, he was getting a touch worried. If the orcs and goblins didn’t come out to help, it looked like things were going to get out of control pretty quickly. He was going to need to think outside the box.

“Can you mimic my Making power?” He glanced at Seul-ki. “Make your own constructs?”

Seul-ki shook her head.

“No prestige powers.”

It was a rare bit of actual information from his secretive ally, and Blake locked it away. He also sighed and started another construct.

This time he tried another moderately successful Making tactic—keeping one half of his Partitioned Mind focused on detail, the other just trying to hold on to the high level, more abstract ‘function’.

He didn’t just need demon hunters, he needed demon murderers. Constructs that ripped these things apart as fast as they spawned. Otherwise he was going to fall behind, and get overwhelmed.

This time he imagined something like his floating ball, but more like a scythed chariot. Something that just rolled around slaughtering anything it touched. His ‘detailed’ brain tried to picture the blades able to move in and out as it rolled, but it was hard to imagine how the damn thing worked. He started to regret the idea but it was too late to stop it now.

Multi-colored energy swirled and grew, then again collapsed like potter’s clay on a spinner. It wasn’t working, and Blake didn’t have time for another failure. In something like panic he reached out for a video game, something to crystallize his imagination, to copy at least in part.

He ended up picturing the ‘Skaven’—rat-men inventors from a particular favorite—the fantasy version of Warhammer. They had a thing called a Doomwheel—a kind of metallic, layered tiretube that rolled around covered in weapons, crackling with magical energy with some insane driver inside.

The Primordial Making finally hardened and gained real shape, and Blake’s eyes went dry as he stared with wonder. With the hollowed center and thinner frame, his tire ‘donut of doom’ grew larger, and larger, the silhouette of weapons or limbs growing out of the sides.

Finally it flashed with energy and formed into existence, and a wide smile formed on Blake’s face. The thing was a rolling nightmare—tank-like treading over a roughly circular wheel, an inner layer that could spin the other way. On the outside was half a dozen spindly ‘limbs’ with swords and saw-like blades, maces and picks. In the center, instead of some lunatic rat man, was a spherical eye, connected like a spider in a web. It stared straight at Blake.

“Kill demons. Don’t stop moving.”

The donut spun and sprayed dirt as it picked up speed. Seul-ki was staring with her mouth slightly open, the occasional side-eye glance at Blake.

“Your new power is…very unusual,” she said. “But I’m certain it will be effective.”

Blake held back the laugh. The truth was, Primordial Making was like leaping into a pool of madness. Every time he created he felt unsure if it would work, but also lost in the process, as if he hardly cared.

It was like being a child again, except with no bullies or parents or anyone watching. The solitude to just think and do whatever he wanted, no one to tell him about rules or constraints. It was like being totally, completely free.

“Let’s get closer to those portals,” he said, taking Seul-ki’s hand and walking towards the nearest.

There had to be a way to close these things without killing every demon that spawned. Blake had learned several ‘runes’, including a specific planar portal rune from a demon dungeon. Did that mean demons used ‘maker’ magic like Blake? ‘Blocks’ of power that were already made with arcane magic?

Blake’s old way of thinking about magic would lead him to consider moving those symbols, re-arranging them or breaking them so that the demon’s portal magic wouldn’t work properly. But was there another way? He suspected if he got close enough he’d be able to read the symbols, at least.

“Annie seems to be doing well,” Seul-ki said. “Should I save my mana for you, or continue boosting her?”

“Save it.” Blake walked on with one mental eye on his constructs. His ‘Constantine’ construct was actually doing pretty well, leaping around and stabbing creatures as they formed, pretty much handling a portal on his own.

The ‘Spinning Flail Sphere’ was struggling to aim. It clearly scared the demons, but they mostly just shrieked and ran away fast enough to avoid getting splattered as the thing swung by.

He stopped to watch his Doom Donut as it rolled into a pack of creatures escaping their portal. It was slower than he’d hoped, but seemed to twist and turn a bit better than he’d feared.

For a moment his heart skipped a beat as one multi-limbed, insectoid creature inspected it with obvious intelligence, than circled and leapt at the Donut’s side, probably trying to get at the eye.

The wheel twisted with the barest flick, and a limb slashed off the demon’s head with a sword.

“Ha!” Blake punched the air. He knew it would be wise to follow the thing and help it—use Telekinesis to pull off anything that tried to flank it. But he needed to focus on closing portals. He forced himself to turn away, eyes turned to the symbols as he got close.

Navi flashed across the rocky ground and floated over Blake’s shoulder.

“The portals are forming around a central point, master. The demons are abyssal, their base nature indicating a higher order of the abyss.”

“Thank you, Navi, but please explain. What do you mean by ‘higher order’ and ‘base nature’? And what should I expect at this central point?”

“Apologies, master. By higher order I mean they are from near the top of the abyss. This makes them less powerful physically, but more intelligent and often with more powerful magic. All demons are…‘themed’, created much like your constructs around some identifiable creator. In this case, I predict a greater demon that looks insectoid. It will form eventually in the central point. Expect multiple kinds of magic, multiple limbs, and considerable speed. But it will be vulnerable to physical damage.”

Blake was legitimately impressed. Navi had always been extremely helpful, but since the ‘upgrade’ from Psion, it seemed to be even more knowledgeable and articulate.

“I’m going to try and close these portals,” he said. “Any advice?”

Navi’s colors flashed like it was processing or thinking.

“There are many portals, master, and only one of you. You must accept some risk for haste. Close them fast enough, and the central demon will be unable to spawn properly.”

Blake grinned, and sent his familiar a mental hug. It was pretty much what he’d been thinking anyway, but it was definitely nice to get some confirmation. He reached the first demon portal and took in the door-way like pattern of symbols.

At first the runes seemed to have no meaning—they were like a foreign alphabet or a series of unique pictures all drawn with no order. But as Blake stared and unfocused his eyes, he started to see letters. Words. Sentences. They were jumbled and flipped with the occasional letter out of place, but they were there.

“It’s a word puzzle,” he said, mostly to himself, and laughed in delight. Blake had always loved word puzzles.

He flinched as a demon roared and jumped at his back, held by Telekinesis. Blake flicked a spear from his floating pile and impaled it, wincing as black ichor sprayed at his feet.

“Perhaps…another construct first,” he mumbled, activating Primordial Making as he took Seul-ki’s hand.

This time he went with simple—a big, blocky humanoid to shuffle around and defend him. He let one half of his mind keep channeling, the other eagerly spinning symbols and putting them in their proper order.

Unraveling the first portal took him less than thirty seconds. As the channel finished, the demonic gateway sizzled and popped, and a cluster of mostly half formed creatures shrieked and screamed as the whole thing sucked them into the air and collapsed upon itself.

Seul-ki blinked in confusion.

“What just happened? I saw the magic weakening, but not what did it. How could it close that fast?”

Blake squeezed her hand with a smile.

“Come along, my dear, we have a lot of work to do.”

She stared at him, and he looked at his big, now formed but useless defender that could barely walk, and sighed. He had a lot of practicing to do with Primordial Making. Did he unmake it to free up the mana? Send it waddling to some other portal?

“Oh just go do something useful,” he muttered, then lifted himself and Seul-ki with Telekinesis. It would cost mana, but he decided Navi was right—haste was the name of the day, and if all the portals were as simple as that one, he suspected he could close them all very quickly.

Blake flew through the air with Seul-ki, taking a moment to check on Annie. The little warrior was hacking her enemies apart, ignoring their mind-magic with her ‘Void’, her frightening axe looking even blacker than usual, and maybe emitting some kind of shadowy aura.

He decided she was just fine. He watched his Doom Donut spin through a row of demons, spraying bug bits and ichor in every direction, and laughed as it slaughtered. The damn thing was a demon-mincing prodigy, and Blake just wished he could reliably repeat what he’d done. Either way, he was excited to try.

“I am the one who steps on shadows, all trenchcoat and arrogance!”

Blake’s ridiculous ‘Constantine’ construct jumped and skewered a single creature like it had accomplished some amazing feat. Blake supposed not every piece of art could be a masterpiece.

He floated above another portal, not even dropping down to let the demons get a chance at him. He held out a hand and relaxed his eyes, letting the symbols leap to life and form their puzzle. This time he turned both halves of his mind to the task, reading from both ends as the symbols twisted and formed.

He counted as he worked. The rings around the demonic ‘doorway’ spun like a safe lock, words unlocking the thing instead of numbers. The last symbol clicked into place with another satisfying pop, the whole thing pulling itself back into the sky.

Blake didn’t wait around to watch.

“Twenty seconds,” he mumbled to himself, shrugging as he floated towards the next. “Let’s see if we can do fifteen.”