Chao DeVoid's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Chao DeVoid stood on the frozen plain and listened to the thing that wanted to eat him. It had escaped a ritual two nights ago, in the east wing of a mansion he had never entered, and now it had crossed the ice to find him. He was a primordial incubus. He had watched desire take a hundred shapes across a hundred ages. The hunger crawling toward him wanted to strip that memory out of his skull and swallow it whole. Without it, he could not find the buried throne. Without the throne, desire stayed loose in the world, and the old gods would gut him before he ever touched it. He saw it come over the ridge. It moved like spilled oil that had learned to walk, small and bright-eyed, its body a swirl of dead starlight and wet color. It left pits in the snow where it stepped. It was hungry the way he had once been hungry, before he learned to hold it. "You're early," Chao said. His voice cracked the quiet. "I haven't decided what to do with you yet." The thing lunged. Chao pulled the staff from his back and drove its butt into the ice. The orb at its head opened a thin slit in the air above him, a shimmering tear that leaked cold light. He needed a cage, not a kill. Killing it would burn the memory it carried of Void's ritual, and he wanted that memory. He wanted to know what his father had tried to do, and to whom. The hunger struck his knee and climbed. He felt his focus start to unravel. The names of old lovers went first, then the shape of the first want he had ever tasted. He crouched, planted a gloved hand on the ice, and did the one thing he had sworn off for a century. He fed it a sliver of himself on purpose. One shape. One age. A city that had burned because of him. The thing swelled, distracted, gorging. He wrenched the staff sideways. The rift above him widened into a jagged hole full of stars, and he shoved the creature through with the shaft. It went in still chewing. The rift sealed with a sound like a struck bell. Chao knelt in the snow and shook for a long minute. The memory he had thrown to it was gone. He tested the rest and found them intact. The hunt could go on. He rose, and saw them at the edge of the ridge. Five figures in pale armor, wings folded, swords already drawn. Incubus-archon hybrids. The old gods' dogs. They had followed the disturbance of the rift the way wolves follow blood. The one in the center spoke his name. Chao spat onto the ice and set the staff across his shoulders. He had planned to spend the next week searching the southern ridges for the throne. Now he had to survive the afternoon.