Author: Kord, Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 3:33 PM, Post Subject: Forest Encounter (P)

This plane was bizarre, it had to be said; they were open practitioners of magic, and had even founded a school to teach others, and yet they were incredibly foolhardy, or at least, the mage who had summoned him was. She had seemed young, but Ashok supposed that such a factor meant little when dealing with mages, although she had also been incredibly naïve. Perhaps she had been expecting a demon more docile in nature, one who wasn’t going to check the bonds were secure enough, but that wasn’t what she got, and while she was busy berating the demon for not paying attention, he was examining the pentacle that trapped him, before reaching out with a finger and gently smudging the crisp edge. She had fallen into stunned silence, he had stood up. She had taken a step back, he a step forwards, before the shadows streaming from his fingertips suddenly stopped, something which puzzled him immensely. He watched his hand as more shadows failed to materialise, then the witch had thrown something at him, some artifact which had clamped a silver shackle to his wrist, infuriating and paining him in equal measure. He had resorted to finishing her off with his bare hands, something he had done out of rage more than anything else, and immediately regretted his decision, painfully aware that blood on someone’s hands was not a good sign in any dimension.

He had washed the stuff off as best he could, but water was not interacting as it should have with his demon flesh, and the silver shackle was still bound to his wrist – perhaps she would have been able to do something if she were still alive, but now it was just a large bangle which burned him. Getting out the college had been easier, with most of the mages not in the labyrinth of hallways, perhaps teaching, or even summoning their own demons. What he assumed to be guards were prowling around the main gate, so scrambling over wall had been his only option – he didn’t want to be stopped, not with blood on his hands and metal around his wrist.

The woods near the college had been an appealing place to hide, and now Ashok was surrounded by trees, trying to rip the shackle off his wrist, the silver damaging his flesh like a heated brand. The idyllic scenery was occasionally punctuated by sharp utterances in an alien tongue, a harsh sounding language which still managed to convey that the speaker wasn’t happy in the slightest, thrashing around as he was, one hand looking like it was trying to claw at the other. After a while, he gave up; clearly it wasn’t going to come off, and his efforts might be better focused elsewhere.

Ashok looked around with his burning eyes, taking in the scenery of the place for the first time. It was not the first time he had been in a forest, not at all, but it was still an odd experience, the massive amount of greenery a sight far removed from his home world, and none of the forests he had seen previously were quite this big. He glanced in the direction of the college, the tip of a spire visible above the treeline, and stalked away from the building, hoping to find some way to remove the restraint, and then see if his magic would return.