Chapter 16: There Are Cow Demons, Octopus Demons, Demon Stalkers...Now What?

As the days passed, my boat wended its way down the edge of Sereia, passing the various tribes that lived within the jagged lines of geography maps, fighting the submerged reefs that were dark spots of radar sensors. Even as I neared Cape Daikorn, the seas were still. I knew what was going to happen next. Something bad.

Something I didn't want to wait for.

Instead, I forced myself into the pages of an ancient book of myths that I'd found on the boat. It was heavy, some pages crumpled and stuck together. There were a few drops of a dark red substance on the pages of a chapter on protection potions. I doubted the past reader had been drinking cherry juice. I wondered if he or she were still alive, and if they weren't, was it because of a backfiring potion or natural causes?

The potions were definitely suspicious, mainly because some of them contained handwritten scribbles in the margins, saying everything to 'ok, that works, yeah' to 'should try next' to 'DOES NOT WORK! MY FRIEND DIED!'

I ran my eyes over the ingredients for that last one. The ink blots on the parchment caught my eye; the page was more weathered than the others—no small feat. I thought that could've been because the person who lost his friend forgot to add the eyeball of a drowned duck (how did ducks drown?). The recipe did promise disembowelment and internal bleeding if you didn't.

The myths, though, I had no idea about. How could I decide which monsters existed, which descriptions were accurate, when up until days ago, demons didn't exist in my childhood life?

My stomach complained; I'd completely forgotten about breakfast. I got myself a large strip of jerky and the only banana in my pack, my first meagre meal of the day, and planted myself on the wooden floor again. When the sun went down again and the day's reserve of solar-powered light ran out, I read by torchlight until my eyes hurt.

I read about sea snake demons who used to live on land, but when some god cursed them and threw them into the sea, they drowned and became demonic ghosts, with opaque scales, see-through bodies and glassy eyes. With nearly fifty metres of ghost snake, the danger it bestowed upon sailors was very much real. A living wraith it was, which could wrap around ships and crush them into tiny splinters, sending any of a ship's crew who hadn't already died of shock to their watery graves.

I should probably look out for monsters like those patrolling the waters.

I learnt that demons came into our world through a portal, that few humans had access to save for those who had been turned into demons themselves. Demons could pass through freely, but normally didn't threaten those who weren't Gifted. And of course, they could summon others from their world, those who were old and ancient, whose evil essences didn't fit through the tiny crack cleaved into our lands by Varyx's scythe long, long ago. Like the black shape that'd floated from Grandma's fingers and poisoned Mama's heart. It was no wonder I did not come across or notice the Branokann, with all the entries of demons floating around the pages.

And I read—I read about demons who stole magic. Magic, which had been implanted so deep into the Gifted's soul that the demon's essence flaked in the burning spirit of a Gifted. So when it retracted its deathly claws, a part of the demon was left in the human. And within minutes, unless the magic-wielder detected the demon and fought it, fought it with every shred of their being, the dark seed took root…

When morning rolled around, my face was planted in the open pages of the book, my hand still reaching lazily for the torch that had rolled around a corner somewhere. My butt ached from sitting on the rigid floor all night long. So did my back, from being in a hunched position while I slept. Ouch.

I went straight to the control room, checking if the autopilot was still on course. It was—we were around the coast of the Unaery tribe, a bloodthirsty tribe who trained their children in battle as soon as they could hold a sword, heading straight for the Iliesao Channel. I could sense, though that something was wrong. Nothing to do with where I was going. I felt a presence, tracking me, stalking…

I whirled around. There was no knife-armed monster lurking in the doorway, ready to sink its deadly fangs into my neck. Instead, taped roughly to the vinyl door I'd closed behind me, was a note. Not crumpled, not ripped, a plain piece of paper. It didn't say anything except for a jumble of letters, perhaps an ancient code or just gibberish. I checked the radar. I was maybe a few kilometres out to sea, far away from the reaches of the Unaery, ruthless and terrifying. No ship or boat within miles of my exact location. Were the Unaery so protective of their territory, even the sea far out from their main village?

How had this happened? I was by myself in the Greman Sea, and the note had not been here before today. The type of demons who could teleport couldn't write, or could they? Was I really alone? My heart thundered in my chest, a chill that had nothing to do with the cold running down my spine.

I stormed around the deck, flinging open trunks and peering inside barrels, searching anywhere someone might hide. I circled the mainmast three times. Taking the steps to the boat's stomach three at a time, I continued my frenzied searching, heart still racing, close to beating out of my chest. Once I spotted a dark shape in the corner of a cupboard—but it was only the shadow of another spare sail, propped up out of the way. I heard a beep from upstairs, and ran up to see what was happening, but it was only the autopilot telling me we'd crossed out of Unaery territory. We were in the Iliesao Channel now. Even without the menace of whoever was following me now, things were about to get tough.

I turned to resume my hunt, to rush back down belowdecks and keep almost ripping the hinges off every cupboard door—and my heart stopped for a count of five. It quailed, refused to keep going and hid behind the cover of my ribs, the adrenaline fuelling every movement evaporating.

There was another note, again, taped to the closed door.

The first letter had been typed, I could tell, and I'd scrunched it up before throwing it in the sea in exasperation, where it immediately turned to nothing. This one was written in an untidy scrawl, again, gibberish. I'd been belowdecks for a total of ten minutes—heard nothing, felt nothing. I was seriously creeped out now. What sort of satanic creature could type, write, and apparently teleport silently?

I decided not to continue looking. What point was there? Instead, I carefully wrote down the jumbled message on a piece of paper, and chucked the original into the water, where it floated for a bit, a cloud in a dark sky, before wilting into tiny little bits. Then I descended into the lantern-lit gloom of the cabins below, locking the hatch after me. Never mind that whoever, whatever was stalking me could likely teleport or bash the trapdoor to splinters with no problem.

Sitting on a cushion on the floor of my room—after last night, I knew that the hard floors were less than comfortable—and back propped against the bed, I picked up the demon books again, and read. I didn't know how I found it in myself to relax, to let myself be absorbed into the terror that was those volumes.

Normal books had every morsel of information published at the same time, in chapters within the leather-bound cover. But this novel, whatever it was, fictional or unbelievable truth, it was different. With each turn of the page under my shaking fingers, the paper, which gradually darkened to the yellow of parchment, became more brittle, easier to tear, to destroy, to turn to dust. The ink faded with each step into the hideous world of the volume's pages. As if people had learned, added more to the horrific knowledge contained by the ancient tome over time. How had they even done that? The binding was intact.

Something else made to unnerve me, I thought, just one more terrible, eerie mystery bound to the darkest catacombs deep beneath the calm surface of the world. The face beneath a mask, a harrowing identity beneath a shrouded cloak. How had I even slept last night, knowing these creatures really existed?

How easy it was to rile a sea that had never been disturbed. To crack the spine of a book that had never been opened.

I was tired of the questions, the questions without answers, the questions that would likely hound me and haunt my thoughts until my dying day.

I was tired of the questions.

So

so

tired.

But I was also desperate for answers. As I put away the book whose pages aged as they went on, knowing the answer I sought was not hidden amongst its riddling words, I picked up another one. (How my father had stuffed so many in my pack and onboard the boat so quickly, I had no idea. I didn't want to entertain the notion that he might've known this was coming.)

You know when you see something like a cockroach or a slug? You squirm at it and feel instantly repelled, but you just can't look away. These books were like that. I couldn't stomach the horrors they contained, but an insatiable thirst to know more compelled me to keep flipping the pages.

The pile of finished books grew into a mountain over the hours.

My eyes were really ruined, was all I thought as I unlocked the hatch to the deck and climbed out. I wanted to laugh at myself despite the severity of the situation. Young Amita—who didn't exist anymore, who I'd left behind on Kaleveh's golden, sun-kissed shores, who didn't know loss as I did—would never had spent the majority of the day poring over a book. Especially when I was in the middle of the Greman Sea, finally out here, finally free, especially with the grim seriousness of the words I explored so slowly. Not only would Young Chandani cringe at the thought of her precious time spent on books, she—the girl I had been—would've shook her head incredulously at me for exploring not the open land of the Northern Continent or the fictional worlds weaved so artfully with words, but the horrendous information contained in the ancient publications on this skiff.

Young Chandani would never have been left out here, to fend for herself. No matter how much she stared towards the distant horizon, she would almost remain within the reach of her home.

Young Chandani would never have left Narreta behind.

Young Chandani, who had given Narreta her nickname, who had held baby Narreta in her arms as a child, who had brushed her hair and walked her to school every day.

And it hurt, it hurt so much to think of what I'd left behind. What I hated my mother for, hated so much. I knew it wasn't her fault. That she had to hide. But in that secret she had withheld all my life, it made me feel as if I hadn't really known my mama at all. Inferior, because she'd kept it a secret while I gave the god who was now a part of me such control over my body. Hid it all her life, while I'd been content to burn, wreathed in fire that did not touch me, while the people around me fled. Fled from their Chieftess. Like I was—like I was a monster.

A monster.

Not one of fur and fangs, but one that could think, that manipulated, that simply didn't care, that destroyed without will or question.

And I hated her so much because she left. It was easier to forgive Grandmother, who had not borne me of her own flesh and blood, who always left time for me but had not the same warmth in her arms. But Mama, who I loved, whom I feared I had never really known, I hated her, loved her at the same time, for leaving me, leaving me with a father who didn't know the burdens of magic, of power beyond the power he was granted as Chief.

Leaving me alone.

Alone to drift in the middle of an empty sea, hounded by invisible demons.

I hated that she left, though I knew it wasn't her choice, knew that she had fought every second against the demon who infested her.

But she still left.

She left me.

For the hope of survival, though, to make it to that fabled keep in the Calbron Mountains, I'd do it. For the hope that Mama could come back, for hope for a better future.

I noticed that I was still half lying across the hatch I'd closed perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes, hours ago. My eyelids drooped and I scrubbed at them to keep them open. It was only early evening, yet I felt like a zombie. I stumbled to my feet, limbs feeling like rocks, and crossed the deck to the battered wooden door at the other end.

Nothing had been moved. But here, I got the sense, stronger than anywhere else, that I was being tracked. That someone other than the gods was watching. I wasn't good at engineering, couldn't figure out if it was the machinery installed in the boat that allowed my stalker to hide, but I stuck masking tape over every camera, just in case. In hindsight that probably wasn't the best idea—I would have no evidence of the notes and no recording of who might've been there, but just in case they were tracking me through the cameras, well, they were off.

I checked the map, showing me a flashing red dot making its way slowly south. According to the navigation, I was a day's sail away from the Iliesao Channel. Another day, if I crossed the Channel safely, and I'd be at Cape Daikorn, ready to slice east for Szcheguay.

Then…through Orinm. Through the labyrinth of cars and concrete that was the great city. Through the people. Through the families. Through the parents treating their children. Through the mothers holding their newborns.

Through the laughter and the unchecked joy.

I longed for human company, but that was what I had to go through. What I was no longer able to have. I turned around, more than ready for the merciful kiss of sleep.

I hadn't realised I was holding my breath. But the sight, it knocked the breath from me. Did not frighten me so much, set my heart racing in my chest. But it was still creepy, to be ghosted when you were miles away from civilisation. Another letter, with no sender or marked recipient. No envelope. Just a crinkled bit of paper. An alphabet soup inked upon it.

Again, I jotted down the letters. Even with the first two messages that I'd thrown hatefully in the sea, there was no visible pattern. I reached for the chipped chrome handle of the door. Go to sleep, I ordered myself.

Well, I tried. But I could not. Fleeting images were snatched up by the greedy claws of my mind. Tortured until every answer I could glean was shaken from it. Every possibility, every doubt, the monster that was my brain devoured. Carved up the memories like fine bones of meat. Made them scream, until I was begging myself to stop, to stop the flood of thoughts.

But I did not stop.

And through the night, it continued.