Badlands (© Biswapriya Purkayastha) This contribution is part of a series:- 1. Badlands (5-Jun-2014)
| A knight and a demon, on a mission to save a town from an unknown danger. | 2. Badlands II: God of Wrath (16-Jul-2014)
| Revisiting an old love, the knight finds her missing. Only the demon can help find her - and, if possible, to rescue her from where she is. | 3. Badlands III: Boat on the River (3-Dec-2014)
| Something strange is happening to the world and the knight and the demon must solve the problem if they are to survive. | 4. Badlands IV: The Beginning (3-Jan-2015)
| Where it all began - The demon, the knight and the beast meet each other for the first time. | 5. Badlands V: The Hatching (8-Feb-2015)
| About a mountain slope on a winter night, a lost girl, a meeting with an entity, and how something was created, immortal and dangerous. | 6. Badlands VI, VII & VIII (7-Sep-2015)
| Three new parts to the series. | 7. Badlands IX: The Mountain God (31-Jul-2016)
| An erupting volcano, a cult which lives on its slopes, and the knight, the beast and the demon must attempt a rescue mission. |
Page 1 The night was completely dark when he awoke. His chin had been resting
on his chest, and the muscles of his neck were cramped and aching, He had not
meant to sleep, but it had been far too long since the last time he’d closed
his eyes, longer than he remembered. The exhaustion was creeping up, but he
couldn’t stop now. He shook his head and
squeezed his eyes shut till lights flashed behind his eyelids, and then opened
them again. The darkness was still absolute. There was the faint noise of the
beast’s hooves on the ground, but no other noise either. He wondered how long he’d
slept, and what had been happening while he’d been sleeping. He knew what he had to
do, and he did not want to do it. He resisted as long as he could, till he
could resist no longer. And then he called his
demon, and his demon came to him. "You took long enough to
call me," it said, walking by his side. He looked at the demon
from the corner of his eye without replying. Tonight, it had chosen to look
like a woman of sorts, her naked body bright red and glowing faintly. Huge
horns sprouted above her ears and curled past her jaw, and her eyes were amber
and feral. It wasn’t by any means the first time his demon had decided to
look like a woman. But at least it wasn’t trying to tempt him tonight by
looking like someone he would want to sleep with. "Well?" the demon-woman
demanded. Her tail moved, the barbed tip slapping against the flank of the
beast, but it didn’t notice. "What do you want to ask?" He thought for a moment
before he spoke. "Where are we? Am I lost?" The demon stared at him.
"You shouldn’t have fallen asleep, Man." As she flicked her flaming hair back
over her shoulders, sparks flashed from her hands and spiralled away into the
darkness. "You aren’t lost. Lost doesn’t even begin to
describe where you are." "You brought me here," he
said with complete certainty. "I’m not here just by chance. You brought me
here." The demon didn’t say
anything for a bit. Her feet and the beast’s hooves hushed through the dust. "Have you ever thought of
where you’re going?" she asked at last. He was taken aback at the
question. "Of course. It’s all I ever think about." "It’s been a long
journey, hasn’t it?" She glanced at him under an arched eyebrow. "Do you even
remember how long it’s been?" "Of course I do. It’s..."
he stopped abruptly. He tried to remember, but couldn’t. "It’s just..." The demon was looking at
him with open amusement now. "And do you recall a timebefore the
journey began?" He made no attempt to
answer. "Well, then," she said,
"it doesn’t really matter where you’re going, does it? Nothing matters except
the journey." "And you," he said. "And me," the demon
agreed. "Now, we have another job to do." "Another job?" He looked
at her. "What do you mean, another job?" She rested one taloned
hand on his thigh. The nails were so sharp he felt their touch through his
chain mail. "Just a little thing,"
she said. "A little matter of putting a wrong to right." She laughed, the noise
like crystals splitting. "Or a right to wrong, depending on your point of
view." Something screeched in
the darkness, far away. The noise was like nothing he’d ever heard. "What was that?" he
asked. The noise came again,
from another direction. There was no way of telling just how far away it was.
His hand instinctively went over his shoulder to touch the sword on his back.
But there was nothing to draw the sword against. "Don’t worry about it,"
the demon said, her fingers still digging into the chain mail on his thigh.
"It’s nothing you need to worry about." She smiled, her teeth like daggers.
"What you need to worry about comes later." [ Continue to page 2 ] |