Is there a plan B?

Stones skittered away from my feet as I rushed headlong down the path. The rocks tumbled over the edge, falling into the abyss. A fate that would probably be mine if I didn't slow down. My vision was tinged with the red that came when I was enraged. It added to the already carmine hue of Carceri, making everything seem doused in blood.Oh, I was in a foul mood. That deva had really pissed me off. I could hear Bishop silently fuming behind me as well, although whether he was mad at me or mad at the celestial I didn't know. I didn't particularly care, either. Magrith was running back and forth between us, trying to figure out what had changed. It was obvious to us both that only the dog had enjoyed any of the time we'd spent with Narcath.

Emotion boiled out of me as I raged at the situation I found myself in. I breathed, subsuming the rage until all that was left was a simmering anger. I began to take heed of where I placed my feet: I slowed down. It wouldn't do to go tumbling over the cliff and end up dead on the rocks below. My mind cleared a little, and I had a chance to think over what that damn angel had said.

"Why am I here?" I had asked, bewildered. "I wanted to see if there's any way to get you to change the conditions so we can use the damn portal!"

"Why would I do that?" said the deva, her wings flexing behind her.

"Why? Because you and I both know there is no way those conditions can be met. And if you don't change them, I'll kill you," I said, narrowing my eyes for effect.

She laughed. "You could try, but I doubt you'd succeed. Besides, if you kill me, then the portal will be closed to you forever. You don't possess the key."

"I bet those giants back at the temple could be persuaded to give us the key," said Bishop in a low voice only I was meant to hear. But damn that celestial hearing!

"Oh," the angel chuckled, "the Tormunath may think he knows the key, but he doesn't. Besides, his price would be just as great as mine."

"We've already paid his price, it didn't seem so bad," I said. Her amber eyes focused on me then, and I felt my skin crawl.

"It is greater than you know," she replied. "If you truly want to leave Carceri, you must change what brought you here in the first place. I believe my sister told you what you needed to do. You have gone a ways down the path, but you haven't traveled far enough."

"That's just it!" I yelled. My emotions have always been close to the surface, especially the darker ones, and right now the rage that simmered in the background was bubbling up, ready to take over at a moment's notice. "We don't know! Exactly what are we supposed to do? Your 'sister' was pretty vague in what she demanded of us."

Narcath looked at me, a feral smile spreading across her beatific face. "You, Kelina, have begun to realize that your own quest for power has crippled you. In your search for personal power, you have lost some freedom and you have lost yourself. Every now and then I see a spark of goodness in you – a lightening of the dark. But it isn't enough.

And the ranger… he has begun to admit to himself the depth of his feelings. But he still tries to deny them in a paltry effort to maintain his supposed freedom. By insisting that he shall be tied to no one, he ties himself up in knots not even he can unravel. It is not freedom, but a cage from which there will soon be no escape.

No, neither of you has come far enough to prove to me that you will continue on this path once I let you through the portal. There must be more, from both of you. You came to Carceri because of what you were in the Prime. To leave you must become something else."

She paused, deep in thought. Bishop and I were fuming with anger. A glint of metal in the ruby light told me he had unsheathed a sword. I found my hand at the hilt of my rapier, caressing the handle like a lover. I so dearly wanted to run the celestial through, even while part of me whispered it was a bad idea. However, if she wasn't planning to let us through the portal, killing her wouldn't matter. Losing the key would leave exactly where we were now. Nowhere. But killing her would feel good – it would feel like I was at least doing something to change the situation.

I pulled out my sword and ran at her, a guttural cry sounding from my throat. She flicked a wrist and I went thudding to the side, skidding close to the pool of water. Bishop exchanged his sword for his bow and fired an arrow at her. The arrow bounced right before it hit and went harmlessly high above her.

The deva's eyes glowed with rage. "You will not harm me. You cannot harm me. You will leave, now. You will not return until you have changed." Then somehow both of us were several meters down the path from the glade.

OOO

We continued down the trail, both lost in thought or rage. Bishop was uncharacteristically noisy and I am sure I wasn't silent either. We arrived at the wide spot where we'd camped the night before. I stopped and threw my pack down. I paced the edge of the camp we'd set the night before, hands on my hips. The demon within me clawed at me, urging me to run back up the trail and teach that angel a thing or two about infernal blood. I had thought the rage was gone, but I found it seeping upward into my conscious again.

Bishop stopped as well. He sat on a boulder and watched me. On one of my circuits around the clearing, he grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at him. "Let it go," he said. "She's right – we can't harm her. So let it go. We'll go down the other path and cross the jungle. We'll head towards that city and see what's there." He dropped my arm, still looking at me.

I sighed. He was right. But my demonic side wanted desperately to run back to that glade and rip a hole in the celestial's throat. I imagined her blood running down my face as I tore into her with my fangs, savoring the taste of it on my tongue. I could feel her skin tearing underneath my hands, her cries adding to the pleasure of the kill…

"Kelina!" Bishop shouted, jarring me from my imagined kill. "Get a hold of yourself. You look like you're about to become completely demonic. While I normally don't mind your demonic side – now is not the time. We need to decide on a plan of action, now, before we go careening down the mountains into that jungle down there."

I breathed in through my nose and blew out through my mouth for a few minutes in an effort to calm myself down. Bishop was making sense, and that usually meant I'd lost perspective. "Ok," I said. "We go to that city on the other side of the large river and see if it's Severence. We do some scouting around and find that other portal. What do you think? Is it a plan B or not?"

"Yeah. How tough is that city going to be?" he asked.

"Don't know," I replied, sitting beside him. The rocks beneath my bottom were sharp and pricked into my leather, making the seat uncomfortable. I squirmed to find a better position and wound up leaning into Bishop. He looked at me, confused for a minute. Then he put an arm around me and pulled me even closer.

"I have a feeling it's going to be bad," I said. "I don't really know that much about what types of beings live here. So far we've seen humans, giants, gehreleths and my personal favorite: devas. But there are as many types of demons as there are rocks on this path in front of us. They'll congregate in the cities; desiring the crush of the people and the accidental evil that comes with crowds. Demonic senses revel in the close contact of lots of bodies and the sensations they bring."

"Well, if anyone gets in our way, we'll kill them," he said with a sharp intake of breath. "We're good at it. Besides, it's not like we have much of a choice."

I looked into his eyes and found something strange reflected there. The bitterness and anger that was always present was there, but behind it was something not quite so dark. I reached up to touch his face, bringing my own face closer to his. When I was close enough to feel his breath on my cheek, I closed my eyes. I willed my demonic senses up to the front of my mind in an effort to make some sense of him.

When I opened my eyes they had changed from their customary black to deep red. He was still staring at me, that same enigmatic expression on his face. But my enhanced senses could make no more of it that the human ones. Hastily I pushed the demon back down before she took over. "Bishop," I began.

He stroked my face with a forefinger, following the curve of my cheek bone down to my chin. His eyes focused on my lips, desire evident in his gaze and his touch. "When we get out of here," he said, his voice low, guttural and impassioned, "promise me we'll spend a few years in the woods. Just the two of us. No quests, no destiny, no running for our lives. Just you and me and the forest."

"I promise," I whispered.

His lips met mine in a passionate kiss. There was something more in this kiss than in all the others we had shared. I felt the quickening of some emotion I couldn't give a name to deep within my belly. The kiss deepened, igniting a wave of euphoria in its wake. His hand was on the back of my neck, holding my head to his, his other hand at my waist. The kiss went on and on, and I found that I didn't really want it to stop.

Finally we pulled apart, breathing heavily. I was flushed and jittery and my stomach was in knots. What was going on? His kiss had never made me feel that way before. I found that I liked the sensation of his hand on my neck and his breath on my face.

"I…" he said. Just then, Magrith came bounding up the path, growling and snarling, her hackles raised. Bishop immediately stepped away, looking in concern down the trail. His eyes grew wide and then he was walking quickly and quietly back to me.

"Hide. Now. Cast invisibility too, just to make sure. On both of us."

The look on his face was so serious that I did what he asked. There really wasn't anywhere to hide in this little spot, but we crammed ourselves into a crevice that had a rock in front of it. I don't think we could have gotten any closer to each other if we'd tried. Before we'd jammed ourselves into the rock face Bishop had given Magrith a look and waved his hand. She had gone bounding up the trail back towards the portal.

I crouched behind that rock, trying to breathe quietly. Bishop's breath came hot and fast in my ear, and I knew his adrenaline was up. I just didn't know why, yet. Then I heard the sound of something ambling up the path. My eyes were fixed on the trail, waiting for whatever it was to appear. The trail bent around the mountain on the downhill side. I watched the spot where it disappeared behind the rock face.

An incredibly fat creature rounded the trail. It stood about six feet tall and had wings extending from its back. Its head was small for its size, and seemed to be mostly comprised of teeth. It seemed to be draped in skin, as if the skin it was wearing didn't really belong to it, even though I could see that it did. Four arms jutted out of its torso and they ended in wicked looking claws. It looked a little bit like the lone gehreleth we'd encountered on the plains, making me think it was another type of demodand. I felt myself shrinking back into Bishop. We couldn't afford a fight now. Not here, with a 5000 meter drop off and that thing with wings. All it would have to do would be to force us off the edge.

While it ambled past I barely dared to breathe. I could feel Bishop holding his breath, one hand on my shoulder and the other on his knife. The rock we crouched behind seemed to shrink as my fear of the demon grew. Its progress from one side of the clearing to the other seemed to take forever, even though I knew objectively that it couldn't have taken more than a minute. At one point it stopped and looked over where we were. I thought my heart was going to explode, it was pounding so fast. I willed it to slow before the creature could detect us just from the thudding of the blood in my veins.

Finally he was gone. We waited: frozen in our spots and breathing shallowly for a long time after it disappeared from view. We waited until Magrith came bounding back down the trail, her tail between her legs.

"What was that thing?" Bishop hissed.

"I'm not sure. I think it was another of the gehreleths. But let's not stick around for it to find us here on its way back down." He didn't really need any encouragement. We both walked as quickly as we could without endangering ourselves back down the trail, hoping to put a good distance between us and that thing.