Chapter 20: Eyes Turned Skyward

We’d stopped a ways away from Silverwall in the predawn hours, so I could set one last plan into motion. Fortunately, my skill to summon demons was multitudinous in its application. While I could always pull out a hammer in the form of a horde of lesser demons, I’d found the best uses tended to be in the form of a scalpel.

The cart sat by the side of the road, while Electra and I were a dozen or so paces deeper into the jungle. The cloyingly thick foliage broke for a second at a ridgelin before plunging downwards towards the distant ocean.

“So, another day, another demon, Em?”

I glanced over to Electra with a fond smile. “Can you imagine ever saying something like that to me, back on Earth?”

“Oh for sure.” She giggled. “It’s just, you’d be the demon.”

“And you the hero sent to banish me back to hell.”

A wind blew out off the sea, lifting my hair behind me. I leaned into it, feeling the cool air caress my face.

“Last chance to back out,” I said. “Everything up until this point can be argued away. Saving people from gang violence, creating an asylum for refugees, growing a technology base so that you could get back home. All of that is well within the purview of a hero” I spread my arms. “But now, we’re about to attack the head of a foreign polity on its own soil. No amount of fast talking will make that mark disappear from your record.”

Electra gave an easy shrug. “In for a penny, in for a pound, right?” She folded her hands behind her head. “Besides, I’m starting to get it now.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Get what?”

“Why you tear it all down,” she said.

I chuckled. “Careful.” I knelt, pressing my hand against the soil. “Don’t let your boss hear you talking like that.”

“You know, I’d be more worried, but it feels like we’re not gonna be going home for a very long time.”

“In for a penny,” I repeated, “in for a pound.”

I took a deep breath, activating my summoning skill.

Like I’d realized before, my magic was built around preparation and support. In the heat of the moment, I would be stuck with whatever demon I could convince to come out and lend a tentacle in return for what I was offering. Really, it wasn’t any surprise that most young demonologists ended up bargaining away their soul.

When it came to direct combat power, I hadn’t found anything better than my hobblefiends and blight bats. They were good for fodder and scouting, and anything more intelligent tended to want blood sacrifices or X number of virgins or some nonsense. Blood demons, not the nicest people in the world.

Not the worst though!

“God, why does it feel like you’re thinking something really evil, right now, Em?”

I smirked at Electra’s question. “Because I am.” Slowly, the ground beneath my hand began to glow red, expanding outwards like ripples in a still pond. The circle grew and grew until it encompassed the entire clearing, waves of flickering light growing higher and higher until they looked like waves of blood in truth.

“You’re… not actually summoning some evil city killing demons, right?” Electra asked.

“Of course not.” I shook my head. “Assholes like that expect payment upfront, and then they’ll go and eat the entire city anyway.” My smile grew wider. “Now, demons that don’t like fighting? That just want a few days out in the real world in exchange for some easy work where nothing is trying to kill them?” My cute little lumpy baby coal imps came to mind, or my Gryphon, or my jellyfish harvesters. “Well, you’d be surprised what you can do with a little ingenuity and a lot of preparation.”

The glow turned a deep red, and for a second it felt like we were sinking beneath the waves.

“Starting to feel like a blood sacrifice here, Empress…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. The circle flashed once, as something other tore its way into this reality. “I would have tied you down first.”

Electra looked up and up at my newest friend. She tilted her head. “It kinda looks like a space whale.”

I stood up, dusting off my palms. “Essentially that’s what it is.”

“Groouoo…” my new space whale crooned softly.

It was large, big enough to take up most of the ten-meter clearing. It had a curved underside, like a blue whale, and two large, almost wing-like flippers. Its skin though, was pale and clear, like a vase filled with murky liquid. In its depths I saw flickers of constellations, patterns that pulsed in some facsimile of a heartbeat, hidden by the light of day. Really, more than anything else, the beasty looked green, since its skin took on the hue of the jungle canopy behind it.

It craned its elongated neck down towards us, as if it was looking at us with its eyeless face. A wide mouth gaped open. “Gruuuoooo….”

I giggled. “Oh Llen would just have a field day with you.”

“He looks… happy to see us?” Electra said. She tilted her head. “We’re a bit far from the ocean though.”

“Gruooouuu…”

I patted the side of his neck. “Don’t worry big guy, we’ll get you moving soon enough, first, just hold out one of those fins for me will you?”

It bobbed its head, holding out a long fin at its side. It had to keep it folded, or else it would have knocked over a stand of dense green palms that ringed the clearing. With a hum, I wandered over, pulling a harness out of my bag. Well, I said harness, but really it was just a few lengths of leather with a complicated mount on the bottom. I threw it over his big old fin where it met his translucent torso.

“Empress, are we really gonna cart this big boy down to the ocean?” Electra asked.

“Look, can you just stop asking questions and help me get this part set up?” I replied. “We don’t have all day.”

“Ugh, whatever.” She hopped over to the other side of the fin, and we quickly got the harness strapped into place. The rest of the leather assembly hung down from beneath his fin in a mess of straps and buckles, but we weren’t quite there yet.

Finally, I took out a compact cylinder from my bag, about as thick and long as my own head, and slotted a backup communication mirror into the top of that. It snapped securely into place. I’d designed it with this special mirror in mind. It was one of Marrin’s extra strength ones, but built to my exacting specifications.

It had to match the final lens perfectly, after all.

With that, I slotted it gently into the harness dangling from the demon’s wing. As long as he kept his wing out straight, the harness would keep it snug and steady.

“Alright.” I patted him one last time. “Off you go.”

“Grooooooo!”

“It’s just gonna walk all the way out to the sea by itself?” Electra asked for the third time.

In front of us, the demon shifted, planting two more muscular limbs beneath itself and folding its fins—gently—against its torso.

“Why Eleanor.” I took a step backwards. “Whoever said anything about the sea?”

“GroooOOOOUU!”

It jumped, casting itself into the air with a rush of wind that sent us both staggering backwards. The moment the beasty cleared the canopy, it spread its ‘fins’ wide, catching the currents and slowly but surely winging its way higher. In under a minute, it vanished into the sky above, its translucent skin blending perfectly with the unbroken blue.

“Now, for the moment of truth,” I said. I pulled the matching communication mirror out of the bag. I flipped it open, activating the enchantment.

The ‘screen’ lit up with the image of two women standing in the middle of a forest clearing, one black-haired and one blonde. The black-haired one was holding something in her hand.

“Fuck yes!” I pumped a fist in the air. “I knew I got the magnification right!”

Electra craned her head over the mirror, and the Electra in the mirror did the same. “Um, Em, what the heck is that?”

I grinned. “During the Renaissance, Sir Isaac Newton invented a telescope that was able to magnify up to forty times, while staying small enough to sit comfortably on his desk,” I said. “While everyone else was obsessed with making longer and longer tubes with more glass lenses, Newton made one that used burnished copper mirrors.”

Electra’s eyes widened. “Copper like we’ve been buying by the shipload.”

“Useful for more than just wire.” I laughed, punching the air again. “How’s that for standing on the shoulders of giants!”

“But how does it work with the mirror?”

“Well, obviously I didn’t make my little telescope x40 or anything. I just want a clear picture of the ground, not this solar system.” I waved a hand. “So I added an actual glass lens that flips the light, then projects it onto the concave mirror I stuck in the top of the telescope. Add in a bit of enchantment to make sure it all stays perfectly aligned—because believe me, figuring out that part was a bitch—and voila.” I held out my brand new spy mirror. “I Macgyvered us up a drone.”

“Oh.”

Electra looked like she was still catching up, so I decided to spell it out for her.

“My new friend here is some kind of filter feeder. It flies through the air all day and subsists off of mana microorganisms in the sky or something. It’ll follow us to Silverwall, then stay floating above the city, giving us our very own eye in the sky.”

Her eyes widened. “We’ll be able to see the inner city before trying to break in!”

“More than that,” I said. “With this we can plot out guard patrols, find areas that are less frequented to hide in, and if we’re lucky, we’ll even be able to find Seneschal Hawkwright if he sets foot outside.”

“Oh,” she said again. She turned back towards the mirror, which was still showing a somewhat smaller but still recognizable image of the two of us standing in the jungle clearing. At the edge of the mirror, I could even make out part of our wagon on the road. “I’m beginning to understand why people didn’t like picking fights with the US, you know, before supers started popping up.”

“Well, I mean, mine doesn’t shoot missiles.” I waved a hand. “Maybe next generation. Then I can sell it to overseas investors in return for preferential oil rights.”

Electra rolled her eyes at me. “Hey now, you’re the one who’s trying to depose the head of a country to get a new figurehead installed in his place.”

“He’s just the Seneschal of a city,” I said. “Hardly even a head of state.”

“Feels like you’re kinda missing the point here, Em.”

I sniffed. “Well, he bombed me first.”