Undermind Book 5, Chapter 2: Imposing (Rough)

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Author's note: Another Undermind chapter! It's been a while.

I've actually begun to sour a bit on the other novel, Dupes. I still like the overall concept, and I have interesting plans for where I want to take it, but I feel like I've taken a wrong turn along the way. The whole fugitive aspect of it now feels like a bad idea, and it wasn't even part of my original concept.

So I've decided to take a break from Dupes for a while and focus exclusively on Undermind (both edits and new Book 5 chapters). Until I feel like returning to (and revamping) Dupes, or finish the Undermind edits, I'll aim for a new Undermind chapter about once every two weeks (no guarantees, because I have no backlog chapters for it). Undermind chapters are, on average, more than double the size of Dupes chapters, so this will mean less frequent updates, but at least as many total words for you to read.

Thanks as always for the continual support! If you have any comments or critiques, please share them. This is your best chance to influence the direction of the story.

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The furthest depths of the Earth’s oceans are home to many a bizarre creature, but there are few more strange and terrifying than the order of Lophiiformes, more commonly known as the anglerfish. The most distinctive feature of the anglerfish is a fleshy growth protruding from the forehead whose tip glows faintly in the deep dark. In such places beyond the reach of the sun and moon and stars, this tiny light must be a curious thing indeed. Other denizens of the oceans are drawn to the shining lure like moths to a flame. They do not see the creature behind it—until they get too close, and the toothy maw of the anglerfish is revealed in all of its horrifying glory.

On days like today, Saskia Wendle wondered if her kind and the anglerfish might be related. Except she—the part of her that called itself Saskia—wasn’t the anglerfish.

She was the lure.

The part of her akin to the anglerfish itself, she called her undermind. Her undermind lay beyond this world—beyond all worlds—in a non-place she called the between. There was higher-dimensional physics involved that she couldn’t even begin to get her head around, and nor did she care to. Down that path lay only madness. But for all of its unknowable strangeness, her undermind had simple goals. It wanted to feed on the magic of this world. And on this world, magic came from souls. As she’d just learned from her encounter with the Serpent King, she could devour those too.

This was the reason why her thoughts had turned to the anglerfish. Her impish little body was the lure. The Serpent King had been her prey. And the undermind…it was the gaping, sharp-toothed maw that had devoured his soul.

Saskia didn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, if she hadn’t eaten him, he’d have eaten her. On the other hand…ew. She didn’t exactly have a list of things she wanted to do on this world, but if she did, chowing down on demon souls would not be on it.

Regardless, the anglerfish analogy only went so far. Anglerfish had but one lure, whereas her undermind’s tendrils reached into multiple worlds, with several different Saskias dancing on the ends of invisible chords. These incarnations, she called her mouthlets.

Her first mouthlet was back on Earth—a young woman who had grown up with no inkling of her eldritch nature. Saskia the human was still alive and kicking, as far as she knew.

The second Saskia had emerged fully-formed on the world tree known as Arbor Mundi. That mouthlet had been a monstrous troll—a fact that had not, at first, ingratiated her with most of Arbor Mundi’s native denizens. Nevertheless, a troll’s immense strength and endurance had also saved her life on many an occasion. But even trolls could be killed, and Saskia was no exception. She’d eventually succumbed to a magical affliction, and now she was banished from Arbor Mundi. For there could be only one mouthlet per world, and once that mouthlet died, there was no going back.

Upon Troll-Saskia’s death, her undermind had extruded a third mouthlet into this new world, the one the Serpent King had named Gothgoria. This mouthlet was an imp, though she had inherited the memories and some of the abilities of her human and troll incarnations as well.

And that wasn’t all she’d brought with her. The soul of Ruhildi, her undead friend from Arbor Mundi, was now inextricably tied to her own. It was good to have Ruhildi along for the ride, even if her friend presently lacked a body to call her own.

“Just so we’re clear,” said Ruhildi, “you’re saying you…ate a god.”

“Not a god, exactly. Just a really powerful demon.” As she spoke, Saskia fluttered between the dead trees of a dried-up desert oasis sixty kilometres north of the temple ruins where her mouthlet had spawned on this world—and where she’d encountered the subject of their discussion.

“A being who were around afore the first beasts of this world crawled out of the sea,” said Ruhildi. “Who forged new races as I might forge a hammer. Who shaped the course of history for generations uncounted. That, Sashki, is a god, not a demon. In this world, we are the demons.”

Saskia blinked. Her friend kinda had a point there. But she wasn’t going to concede the argument so easily. “I know, strictly speaking, demons are creatures from another world. In this place, humans are demons, we’re demons—everyone’s a demon except…well, the demons. But on Earth the name is usually associated with certain physical characteristics, not just the creature’s origin. Leathery wings, tail, horns, hooves, scales, snakes, an affinity for fire—those are the kinds of things Earth’s fiction and mythology portrays as demonic, so that’s how the Serpent King’s name for his people translated in my head. The actual word he used sounded more like a cat coughing up a hairball, but—”

“Alright, don’t get grit up your butt, Sashki. I were just yanking your tail. It matters not what we call him.” If Ruhildi had eyes of her own, they’d probably be rolling right now. “God or demon, he were fair ancient and fair powerful, and he’s in your belly now.”

Saskia’s tummy gave a little gurgle. “More like in my…soul-tree. I hope that’s enough to sustain me, because it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any real food around here.”

Indeed, this parched husk of an oasis was one of the few enduring signs that anything had ever lived in this desert. The land, though never verdant, had dried out considerably since the Serpent King’s time. Battle-scarred scrublands had given way to a wide expanse of bare rocks and blood-red sand where not even the hardiest of cacti could survive. The desert stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction—which was pretty far from this aerial vantage—and continued yet further, if her minimap was anything to go by.

Oh yeah, the minimap. That little circle in the corner of her vision was another thing she’d acquired in Arbor Mundi, along with various other game-like user interface elements. No, she wasn’t starring in her own personal LitRPG. They were just representations of the extra-sensory information her oracle magic was feeding her. Had she not been raised on Earth and later taken up a career as a game developer, they might instead have manifested as voices or visions or dreams. Not that she hadn’t had her share of weird dreams as well.

Her minimap centred on her current location and extended for tens of kilometres in every direction. And all it showed was sand, rocks, sand, and more sand.

“This place is dead as the Deadlands,” said Ruhildi. “Not half as cold, though.”

“Thank Ixathi for that.” As she spoke the name, Saskia involuntarily cast her eyes up at the cosmic entity prowling the sky, visible even in broad daylight, dwarfing even this world’s moon. Ixathi the Old God, devourer of worlds. If there really was a god here, Ixathi was it. “Hell doesn’t have cold days. Cold nights, on the other hand… Wait, can you feel what I feel?”

“Och aye. Mayhap you only wanted to share your eyes and ears with me, Sashki, but I share all your senses. I can feel the beat of your heart, the hollow in your belly, the wind whistling ’twixt your thighs—”

“Okay okay, I get the idea.” Saskia felt her face flush. Dogramit, imps could blush too.

Another fun fact: imps didn’t wear clothes. Even if they did, she wasn’t going to find any clothes around here. Here, there was nothing to wear but sky and sand.

“Sashki, your face is burning,” said Ruhildi. “Have you fallen ill with the fever?”

Saskia groaned as Ruhildi’s soft chuckle reverberated inside her head. It was an unfamiliar sound, but not unwelcome. Her friend had laughed so rarely back on Arbor Mundi. Maybe here she could find the happiness she’d been denied on her own world.

Leaving behind the dubious shelter of the dead oasis, Saskia continued on her journey northwards into the deep desert. She didn’t have any particular destination in mind, other than outta here, so she’d picked this direction largely at random, but now she’d best stick to it until she reached the desert’s edge—assuming it had an edge.

Her minimap was also a compass, so she didn’t have to worry about flying in circles. She wasn’t sure if in this world the compass oriented itself according to magnetic north or some other landmark. On Arbor Mundi, north had been in the direction of the world tree’s trunk. Different world, potentially different physical laws, so it was best not to assume anything.

This landscape, though desolate, was by no means boring. The expanse of crinkly sand dunes and oddly-shaped rock formations called to her adventurous spirit. It was unlike any environment she’d explored on Earth or Arbor Mundi. And if she did grow bored with looking at sand, she need only look up at the all-devouring, planet-spanning tentacular leviathan in the sky. She found it hard to believe that would be a boring sight any time soon. Terrifying, yes. Boring, no.

If that weren’t enough, the sheer novelty of flight—or to be more specific, self-propelled flight—was a rush like no other. It was one thing to fly aboard an aircraft or on the back of a dragon (been there, done that), but soaring on her own wings was another thing entirely. Once she got going, she was fast. Faster than any land-bound creature, including her troll mouthlet. Riding the warm updraughts was quite literally a breeze. It was better than climbing; better than chocolate; better than sex. Well okay, maybe not better than troll sex. But it wasn’t like she’d be getting any of that around here, so best forget about it.

As the sun crawled below the horizon, the temperature dropped precipitously. Scorching hot days and frigid nights were the norm here, it seemed. Her imp body hadn’t been overly bothered by the heat, but the cold was seeping into her bones, making her lethargic and slow of thought. She suspected imps might be cold-blooded. Their ancestors were reptilian, after all.

Saskia roosted on the overhanging portion of a small cliff, hooking her claws into a handy split in the rock, and dangling upside down with her wings wrapping snugly about her body.

This isn’t so bad, she thought to herself as she waited to slide into dreamland. Her chest vibrated with a gentle buzzing sound, filling her with thoughts of soft sheets and crackling fireplaces.

“Sashki, you’re purring,” said Ruhildi.

The vibrations stopped. “No I’m not!”

Ruhildi laughed. “You were rattling like a frostling snug in a snow cave. ’Twere a soothing sound—much easier on the ears than your honking trow-snores.”

Saskia was too drowsy to argue. So imps had a bit of feline in them? She’d have to watch out for dogs. Pity. She liked dogs more than cats…

The warm caress of dawn’s light against her wings brought her back to the waking world, feeling refreshed and raring to go. She unfurled her wings and—

“Whoa! Are you seeing this, Ruhildi?” she gasped.

The dunes, the rocks, and even the cliff walls to which she clung—everything was covered in myriad lights, like candle flames reflected on the surface of a lake. They varied in size and shape and brightness and colour, but she could see them clearly even in daylight. Several larger shapes moved ponderously across the desert sand. Other smaller ones flitted through the air like fireflies. The rest wavered in place, phasing in and out of sight, and swaying in the breeze.

“Aye,” said her friend. “Methinks I ken what we’re looking at.”

“Some kind of mostly-invisible, yet phosphorescent lifeform?” guessed Saskia. “None of them show up on my minimap.”

“No, they’re—”

“Oh, don’t tell me! They’re fairies! Lots and lots of fairies. Hmm…this could be bad. Do you think they like the taste of imp?”

Ruhildi made a pained sound. “Did you leave your wits behind in Arbor Mundi? They’re echoes, Sashki—what you might call souls.”

“You mean like ghosts?” asked Saskia. “But there are so many! And they don’t look like humans or demons, or whatever. They’re just…amorphous blobs of light.”

“They were once beasts and birds and trees,” said Ruhildi. “Now untethered from their lives, most have forgotten what they were. Some have merged; others divided. This…soup of echoes is what remains.”

Saskia shook her head. “Seriously? You can’t expect me to believe trees have souls. Animals, maybe, but not—”

“Why not?”

Saskia wished she could stare at Ruhildi, because her friend deserved a good stare right now. “Why not? Because they’re trees!”

“Garri once told me trees are akin to slow beasts,” said Ruhildi. “We don’t see them move of their own accord, but they do move, turning leaves towards sun; always changing with the seasons. Garri were full of shite about most everything else, but he were right about that.”

Saskia chuckled. “If you say so. He was kind of an expert on the subject. I suppose it takes a tree to know one.”

“Echoes come from anything that lives—and some things that don’t,” continued Ruhildi. “’Twere true on Arbor Mundi, and ’tis true here. Echoes just don’t usually linger overlong in the waking world.”

“Given the fact that this is now a lifeless desert, they must have been here for some time, yet I’m only just seeing them this morning. I wonder why.”

“Mayhap they have nowhere to go.”

“No, I mean I wonder why did I just start seeing them? Probably an oracle thing.”

“Mayhap. As a revenant, I could sometimes sense the passing of echoes. Here, I can see only what you see. Mayhap you’re drawing from my necrourgic power, as you did back in the temple.”

Now there was a thought. Saskia considered the possibility as she launched herself from the cliff face. Several airborne ghosts scattered before her.

Fantasinating. So they could sense her presence, even if they couldn’t ordinarily interact with the living.

She wondered if she could absorb these souls like she’d absorbed the Serpent King. Probably, she decided. They must be far weaker than the ancient demon who had ruled over this world for untold aeons. That didn’t mean she should absorb their souls, of course. The thought of it was just…nope. Only as a last resort if one of them attacked her and there was no other way to deal with it.

It wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at these souls, though. When she approached the stationary tree souls, even they seemed to shy away from her. Hesitantly, she reached out to touch one of them with her tiny clawed hands. Though it looked more like a bonfire than a living tree, she felt no heat coming off it. And when her hand brushed against the flame, it passed straight through with no resistance.

Okay, so as expected, they had no physical presence. They didn’t interact with the molecules of her hand. And she didn’t shloop them up like arlium. If she wanted to absorb another soul, she’d have to draw it into that dreamlike soul-space she’d entered with the Serpent King. But since she didn’t want that, she took to the air again, and continued her northbound flight.

There were souls everywhere in this desert. Sure, they were more densely packed in some places than others, but there had once been an abundance of life here. Now it was all gone, and only the souls remained.

What calamity had befallen this place? Had it simply been a climate shift, like what had occurred in northern Africa thousands of years ago? Or some other apocalypse? Surely not another close encounter with Ixathi, or these souls would be gone—devoured by the Old God.

Later that morning, Saskia saw that they had company of an unusually persistent sort. A bright red soul was flying alongside her, zipping in and out of reach, as if toying with her. It darted close and—

“Aargh!” hissed Saskia, rubbing her backside. “It pinched me!”

“’Tis an echo, Sashki. Echoes can’t bite living flesh.”

“Well this one did! I’ll get you, you little…”

The next time it came close, her hand lashed out, lightning fast. She felt a faint jolt in the tips of her fingers, then the little red flame darted away again,  doing loop-de-loops in the air. She had an uneasy feeling that something was laughing at her.

After she swatted away a few more attempts to nip her, the whirling flame vanished and reappeared in a different form. It was now a little bigger than her—and though still seemingly made of spectral fire, it had taken on a recognisable shape. Those wings, that tail…it was an imp!

The ghostly imp regarded her with…well, an impish grin. He was male—made abundantly clear by his enormous…well, suffice it to say she found it hard to believe he’d been that well endowed in life. Clearly he was overcompensating.

“Oh ha ha, you big creep,” she snapped. “Pinch me again, and I’ll petition the local demon lord to have you punished. Oh wait, I ate him. Guess I’ll have to do it myself, then—if you don’t behave.”

Still grinning, he did a little cartwheel in the air. When he faced her again, his features had changed. Still an imp, but smaller, with a longer face and hair that crackled and sparked like a Tesla coil. A sideways spin, and he was a plump female imp with exaggerated boobage.

“We hear you, hey tasty little fleshy,” spoke a chorus of voices as the ghost spun and morphed before her eyes. “We behave.”

Saskia stared at the strange ghost, caught off guard by both the sudden metamorphosis and the many voices he—or it—spoke with. It had used a dialect of the same Demonic language she’d just spoken, so she had little trouble understanding it.

“Just what are you, exactly?” she asked. “An imp, or something else posing as one?” Like me, she added silently.

“We are four and four and one,” it said. “All imp, all the time.”

“Methinks ’tis a union of imp souls,” said Ruhildi quietly in her mind. “Many souls coalesced into one being. Careful, Sashki. Such a being may be unstable.”

“Four and four and one—you’re an amalgam of nine souls?” guessed Saskia. Imps had four fingers per hand—as did the other species of demon that had hands—so it made sense that they’d think in terms of fours.

The ghost tilted its head quizzically, apparently not recognising the untranslated number.

“Could you show me each of your faces?” she asked. “I’ve only seen three so far.”

“Four and four and one. We take you—make four and four and two?” As the ghost spoke, it rapidly cycled through a succession of spectral forms. She counted nine total—three female and six male—so it seemed she’d guessed right.

“No you can’t take me,” she said. “My soul is staying right where it is inside this body. Besides, I’m not what you think I am.”

“You are fleshy,” it said with a grin. “Fleshy, squishy, deady.”

She narrowed her eyes in what she hoped was a suitably intimidating glare. She’d have to work on that. Unlike other demons, imps weren’t really made to be intimidating. “Is that a threat? You said you’d behave.”

“We behave…badly.”

As if a switch had been flipped, the ghost’s grin changed from mischievous to malevolent. Its form seemed to vibrate in the air. Then she was looking not at one spectral imp, but nine.

Saskia sighed. “Just so you know, the last demon who tried to take me was way bigger than you, and I swallowed him up just like…” She broke off as she realised she’d been staring at the male imp with the implausibly large man parts. “Let me rephrase that. If you think you can just add my soul to your collection, think again. Greater beings than you have tried—and suffered the consequences. Final warning—augh you little…”

She swatted at the tiny flame that had just nipped the back of her neck. No sooner had she fended that one off than she felt another sharp stinging sensation on her butt. It was like fighting off a swarm of bees. Perverted bees that targeted her most sensitive areas.

“This world sucks!” she sighed. “Can we pick another?”

While several of them kept harassing her in the air, the rest shot towards the ground like miniature comets. At the last moment before they struck the dunes below, they reversed course, rising in a corkscrew trajectory, trailed by a swirling vortex of red sand and dust. Growing larger with each passing moment, the sandstorm formed an imp-shaped mouth and twin eddies for eyes. Voices roared on the wind. “Fly, little fleshy! Fly, fly, fly!”

As Saskia turned to flee the oncoming storm, Ruhildi spoke in her ear. “Sashki, ’tis only sand.”

“Only?” muttered Saskia. “Storm like that could strip the flesh from my bones.”

“Think about it,” her friend insisted. “You have magic. Stoneshaper magic.”

“What do you—oh.”

Now she understood. A stoneshaper had mastery over rocks and metals and sediments—sediments such as sand. Since arriving in this world, Ruhildi hadn’t been able to access her own magic, but Saskia had. Her one attempt at stoneshaping had been clumsy, and nearly catastrophic, but she knew she had it in her to wield her friend’s magic. It was time to truly put that magic to the test.

“I’ll help you, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “Just do precisely as I say…”

Perhaps she could get her oracle interface to help with this, but there wasn’t time to figure that out right now. As instructed, she visualised a certain pattern in her mind—while simultaneously trying to put distance between herself and the sandstorm. It wasn’t easy. The edge of the storm lashed at her wings, sending her tumbling in the air.

“Now, Sashki!”

At Ruhildi’s words, Saskia channelled her essence into the pattern she’d visualised, activating the spell. Heat flowed through her body as it became a living conduit for the eldritch energy. There was a pattering sound like rain against roof tiles, and the wind died away into stillness.

A thin, concave shell of rust-coloured crystal had formed in the air behind her—was still forming as it absorbed the sand that pummelled its glossy surface. Not only did it stop the sand from striking her, but it also acted as a wind break, allowing her to glide gently to the ground, where there was plenty more sand with which to strengthen her barrier.

Only when she was safely on the ground, sheltering under a crystal dome, did she return her attention to the imps themselves—or rather the single imp. The ghostly visages had once again fused into a one form: that of a young male with big eyes that shot sparks.

“How you do that?” demanded the ghost as it circled her inside the dome. “Tell us, and we let you go.”

“Okay,” she said. “Come closer and I’ll tell you.”

It kept circling, head cocked to the side, perhaps sensing a trick.

“Closer,” she urged.

After a moment’s hesitation, the ghost landed before her, close enough to touch. Saskia reached out—not with her hands, but with something she couldn’t name. Without knowing quite how she was doing it, she snatched up the ghost, and drew it inside her.

Appeasement be damned. She’d already tried being nice, or at least tolerant, but this soul had proved itself too fickle to be trusted.

They were in her soul-space now: a metaphorical representation of her soul, which for some reason had taken the form of a leafless tree that resembled a miniature Arbor Mundi. Yeah, maybe it had been a bit silly of her to argue that trees couldn’t have souls, because souls could apparently have trees. Ruhildi stood on one of the tree’s branches, looking bemused. It was only here that Saskia could truly see her friend. She should visit more often. Out in the real world, Ruhildi was just a voice in her head—at least until they found her a body of her own.

The imp soul writhed in the grip of a branch-tendril, looking half-mad with terror. Well, technically it had already been utterly mad, so…one-and-a-half-mad with terror?

Saskia gazed down at her prisoner for a long minute, trying to decide what to do with it. She could absorb the imp soul, just as she’d done to the Serpent King—though that time, it had been largely by accident. It was what this creep might have done to her if it had had the chance. Might already have done to others of its own kind. Or maybe not. Maybe all of its constituent souls had chosen to merge together. She could ask, but could she trust anything it said? Perhaps there was another way…

“Please don’t eat us!” wailed the soul. “We serve you, mistress! We do anything for you!”

“I don’t want slaves,” she said. “But what would you say to…a pact?”

“A…pact?” it said.

“You agree to my terms. I agree not to devour your soul.”

“Yes, mistress! Anything! We serve you!”

Saskia sighed inwardly. This creature didn’t seem to understand the concept of a binding agreement that didn’t involve slavery. “Before we go over the pact, tell me your name.”

“Name?” it said. “We have many names.”

“Pick one. Or I’ll pick one for you.”

“You name us, mistress.”

That took her by surprise. “You’d rather I name you? Well okay…let me think for a moment. How about…Impudent? Implies? Impacted? I could go on all day, but…ah, I know! From now on, you will be named…Nine.”

The ghost’s eyes widened, and it shook its head vigorously. “We pick name. We be…Four-and-Four-and-One.”

“Oh no, that’s way too much of a mouthful. Nine it is, then. I’m Saskia. And that over there is Ruhildi.” She twitched a tendril at her friend. “Moving on, here’s what I want you to do…”

She laid out the terms of their pact, which she considered to be quite generous. Nine would agree to act as her guide on this world for a period of one month, Earth time. Then she’d let it go free. If it betrayed her in any significant way, then…bon appétit.

“We agree to serve, mistress!” said Nine without hesitation.

The moment it sealed the pact, her tendril uncoiled from Nine’s arms and legs and thrust into the back of its neck, fusing with it.

“Huh,” said Saskia. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”