Page 6 of Daemon Master

The staircase gradually opened into a stone chamber far larger than the cabin above. Most of it remained shrouded in darkness, his flickering candle revealing only a few paces around him.

A small knob protruded from the wall at the base of the stairs. Curiosity overruling caution, he twisted it. With a faint hiss of gas, lanterns burst to life across the cavern, illuminating what looked like a laboratory. Overturned tables, broken instruments, and scattered papers littered the ground, either carelessly discarded or intentionally smashed to pieces.

Adrian gaped at the wreckage. Had the Watcher Division done this? They were certainly capable of such wanton destruction if it suited them. Yet, what possible motive could they have? Even Watcher Seymour wouldn’t be so careless during a routine assignment.

More likely, the watchers hadn’t discovered this place at all. But if they weren’t responsible…then who or what was?

He stooped and retrieved a torn scrap of paper. Indecipherable glyphs surrounded a partially sketched daemon. Like the notes and books upstairs, it meant nothing to him. His aether, however, thrummed as if in primal recognition of the symbols.

“What were you up to down here?” he muttered.

Trailseeker suddenly tensed, its snout jerking toward the stone ceiling. Frowning, Adrian dropped the paper and closed his eyes, melding again with his daemon’s mind. It didn’t take him long to comprehend what Trailseeker sensed, fresh fear jolting him.

Shadowlash had returned. Spirits knew why the daemon had spared them only to reappear now. Somehow, however, he doubted it would be so merciful a second time.

Releasing his meld, he glanced at Trailseeker. He could try the same diversionary maneuver as before. If his daemon invested its entire reserve into aBolster Body, perhaps it could hold Shadowlash’s attention long enough for him to slip past. But then what? He’d never be able to outrun it.

He raked his eyes over the laboratory. Plenty of enigmatic devices lay scattered across the floor, but none struck him as a viable weapon. Not that he’d know what to do with one anyway. Few daemon masters outside the Watcher Division bothered with personal combat training when they had bonded daemons to fight in their stead.

The bondstones rattling around in his pack were equally useless. He’d never be able to activate one in a daemon as powerful as Shadowlash without subduing it first…which brought him full circle to the impossibility of winning such a fight.

Wood creaked ominously from the top of the stairs, and the trapdoor rattled. Spirits below, the feral daemon had found them!

His heart pounding a hole in his chest, he scoured the laboratory for another way out. If Crastley had been insane enough to build this underground chamber, perhaps he’d also been paranoid enough to devise an emergency escape route. When Adrian found only blank walls, he switched to his aethersense and commanded Trailseeker to perform its own survey in tandem.

This is hopeless. I’m going to die down here, the failure everyone always expected me to—

His racing mind jerked to a halt as his gaze locked on a nearby section of wall. The stone there stood completely blank. Not just to his regular sight—though itwasunadorned rock—but to his aethersense as well. That…that shouldn’t be possible. Even inanimate objects always contained trace amounts of aether.

The distinction was subtle, easy to miss against the rest of the stone. If he hadn’t spent years honing his aethersense to make up for his other aetheric shortcomings, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Yet, now that he had, he could discern a square area about an arm’s width across devoid of any aether.

A loudbangreverberated from the trapdoor above. Adrian tensed, but when he glanced up, he saw that the wood had merely buckled a bit inward. Thank the spirits Crastley had invested in quality workmanship. Still, considering how thoroughly Shadowlash had pummeled Trailseeker, it wouldn’t take too many more blows to bash through.

Melding again with Trailseeker, he instructed the daemon to sweep the blank section with its keener eyes usingBolster Body. It only took him a few seconds to find what he was looking for: another recessed button hid in the wall, visible by a slight change in coloration. Releasing his meld, he pressed the button. A latch clicked free, revealing a tiny alcove.

Two things instantly caught his attention when he peered inside. The first was a battered journal tossed at the front. Though he spied no markings on its binding, it appeared well-used.

The second was a daemon crouched against the far wall. The creature’s blazing azure eyes met his, and he stumbled a step back, raising his hands to fend off its pounce.

The expected attack never came.

Slowly, he lowered his fingers to study the daemon. It was smaller than Trailseeker—not much larger than a house cat. It resembled a cat as well, though with smooth cerulean skin and an entirely too-long tail with a barbed tip.

As he regarded the daemon, he realizedthreeglowing eyes stared back at him—two in the usual spots and a third set into its forehead. Jutting fangs curved over its lips, and he shuddered at the mental image of them rending into his flesh.

Another crash resounded from the stairs, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused his aethersense on the newly revealed daemon. To his relief, this one felt about the same strength as Trailseeker, so if worst came to worst, his daemon might actually be able to protect him. Its name came to him on the flows of aether:Heartrender.

Heartrender continued to appraise him. His skin prickled under its too-clever gaze. While the creature’s macabre name and tensed posture gave him pause, it didn’t appear aggressive. Its presence down here suggested it had belonged to Crastley…but then, why didn’t it seem bondsick after his death? And why had it been confined within this small compartment?

None of this added up, and his brain was too frazzled to sort through the mystery. As if to punctuate the thought, wood cracked and groaned. He glanced at the stairwell, swallowing when he caught a flash of blue through the shattered planks. One more good hit should do it.

His eyes flicked back to Heartrender. Now that the compartment was open, he had no trouble detecting the daemon with his aethersense. With the door closed, however, it had been as invisible as the rest of that area despite its apparent lack of a shroud. And if the space could hide one daemon, then maybe…

Knowing he had only seconds left, he tucked the journal in his satchel and concentrated on his bond with Trailseeker. This wasn’t a simple linking of their minds like before. Instead, he drew upon his reserve of aether and focused his entire being down into that singular stream connecting them together.

In a flash of blue light, his physical form dissolved. For an instant, his consciousness was simultaneously nowhere and everywhere—part of the Great Aetheric Sea beyond the bounds of creation. Then, he resided within Trailseeker, not just peering through its eyes but fully inhabiting its body. His own body, he knew, had temporarily melted away, subsumed by the aetherhe’d sent flowing into Trailseeker in much the same way Trailseeker melded with him.

Unlike daemons, however, humans couldn’t sustain such an unnatural state for long. His mind was already beginning to buckle beneath the immense strain it required, and the thought of controlling Trailseeker like a lifeless puppet made him squirm with still more discomfort. On the plus side, this kind of total meld quickened his orders and protected his body so long as his daemon didn’t perish. Today, it also had the added perk of reducing the amount of space needed to contain them both.