He looked upward as he greedily drank in the dragon’s yolk. His bloodless body was craving the nutrients, and he didn’t deny it.
Above him, the world was a black smear, backlit by bright, wavering green light. It was as if he was seeing the world from underneath a frozen lake. He could make out the shape of someone as they stalked around, throwing out erratic gestures, but everything else was a blur. Somehow, he knew that it would be a very long time before he could get himself back into the world above him. As the screams of the icy dark thing in his head clashed with the fiery heat of the dragon’s yoke settling in his guts like lava, he began to wonder if he might be better off dead.
Shokin felt the revival of the sacrifice and began to panic. Pael’s binding held the demon to both the wizard and the dying boy, and now it was being pulled apart. Pael felt it too, but the persistent wizard wouldn’t let the spell break. Shokin screamed out in horror. He was bound to each of these men. He reached into the boy’s mind, found the place that controls human thought, and told him to stop; ordered him to stop, but it was no use. Pael wouldn’t let the spell break. Then, the boy tumbled through the Seal and down the stairs, and Shokin, the mighty spectral demon, was torn in two.
The demon’s horrified yell, blasted through Pael’s concentration, thus breaking the wizard’s spell, but it was too late. The demon’s essence was contained in two separate pieces of dark shadow, each with no form of its own. The part of Shokin that was free of the Seal, was bound to Pael, and the quick-witted wizard was gathering it all in.
Shokin wasn’t just a place in Pael’s mind now, nor was he another spirit in the wizard’s body. He was Pael now, and Pael was him. The demon’s power was Pael’s power, and the binding was holding true.
Shokin was a prisoner in two separate places, bound to Gerard in the world of darkness, and to Pael, in the world of men. The demon raged and screamed, his anguish slowly turning to a desperate kind of madness. How had the sacrifice regained its life? Why hadn’t it gone into the Nethers? The answer was irrelevant, for all that really mattered, was the fact that he was Shokin no more.
Pael had felt the spectral demon being torn apart and had concentrated all his will and power into his binding. He didn’t let himself panic; he had worked far too hard to make this moment possible. He would do his best to salvage as much control over the demon as possible.
When the spell was finally broken, he was rewarded for his diligence. As the emerald fire faded away around him, the surge of spectral power filled him like a lightning bolt. It was awesome and breathtakingly electric, glorious and enlightening. It was like a whole new world – no – a whole new universe of possibilities had suddenly come into being. It couldn’t have happened more perfectly. Now, instead of having a demon to do his bidding for him, he had the demon’s power for himself. He wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened, how the boy had kept himself from dying, but his blood tingled with vast demonic power and he found he didn’t really care.
So long and so badly had Shokin longed for revenge, that Pael felt the demon’s desires coursing through him now. All of that rage and determination would serve Pael’s purpose well. He found he was laughing maniacally, and it fell so good that he didn’t try to stop when he saw his daughter, Shaella crying hopelessly on the floor. He didn’t even stop laughing when the huge red dragon behind her reared back its head and sucked in a great breath of air.
Claret wasn’t really the dragon’s name, but it was the name she had given Shaella to command her by. Her true name was unspeakable in any of the languages of men, elves, or dwarves. It pained her deeply to be collared as she was, but she had to protect her eggs. Nature dictated it. It was instinctual. Now, she found she was glad to be where she was. As the green demon flames around Pael died away, Claret saw the egg the wizard’s tornado blast had left broken on the floor. In her growing rage, the dragon sent out magical feelers for her other eggs.
Shaella had tricked her, she learned, but in doing so, had saved one of her eggs from being destroyed. Through the magical link of the collars she and Shaella wore, the dragon could read the girl’s heart plainly. Shaella had not wanted to hurt the eggs, nor did she have any personal reason for trapping and collaring the dragon. All that Shaella had done, had been done to please her father, or to protect her lover.