Demon's Throne Read online

  Demon’s Throne

  K.D. Robertson

  Copyright © 2021 by K.D. Robertson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the product of imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  To all of my readers (and imps), past and present, who helped make this series possible

  Maps!

  The following page has a map for the starting island in the story. Check out the link below for a detailed map of the entire archipelago that the series takes place in.

  Click this link to see full size maps on my website.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Thanks for reading!

  Afterword

  Books By K.D. Robertson

  Chapter 1

  Life coursed through a man’s veins for the first time in centuries. The tendons in muscular arms rippled like steel cord as he pushed at the walls of his coffin. Light shined down on him. He winced at it, eyes sensitive.

  Most people thought that being put in stasis left no memories. That somebody went to sleep, then woke up an instant later as if nothing happened in the intervening months or years.

  This man was living proof of the opposite. Pulling himself out of his coffin, he briefly sighed in relief that his muscles hadn’t atrophied from lack of use.

  He couldn’t recall how long he had spent in that interminable void. There had been no sound. No sight. No people. Not even his thoughts to keep him company. He had been aware, but his mind had been incapable of doing anything for a time longer than he was capable of comprehending.

  Finally, he awoke in reality. But he found it hard to remain here.

  He felt that if he closed his eyes, he would drift away again. Back to that void. Likely forever.

  Somebody shouted nearby. The noise drew him away from his thoughts. Blood lingered in the air, or the smell of it at least.

  The words were unintelligible, but something scratched at the man’s mind. As if he should be capable of understanding what was said.

  He looked over at the source of the shout. Three armed men stood over a tied-up woman. They hadn’t noticed the new arrival. The woman appeared unharmed, and her fine clothing stood out against the rags of the men.

  The surroundings were clearly that of a castle. A ruined one. A thick layer of dust coated rubble while moss, lichen, and plants thrived. Shafts of sunlight poked in through holes in the stone roof.

  The awakened man frowned as he looked around. His memories remained jumbled, but he knew this place was unfamiliar. Somehow, it appeared different to any castle he felt he recognized. There were strange sigils etched into the walls, but time had eroded these beyond recognition.

  “Ah, you have awoken,” a voice said. “And it appears that my worries over your health were unnecessary.”

  The man looked around but saw nothing. Instinctively, he reached for a sword at his hip. His hands came up empty. He was dressed in well-tailored black silk clothes. Otherwise, he had nothing else on him.

  More worryingly, the voice appeared to lack a source or body. The men in the distance continued to ignore him, chatting amongst themselves.

  The disembodied voice chuckled. Its tone was low and had an oddly empty timber to it. A memory told the man that meant the speaker was using magic to talk. Magic produced detectable traces when used to reproduce voices, at least in those sensitive to magical energy.

  “Politesse would have us introduce ourselves to one another, given we will be working together for the foreseeable future,” the voice said. “I am Orthrus. Know that we are each the keys to one another’s freedom. I feel it’s important that I know who and what you are.”

  Wonderful. The first thing the man encountered when he woke up was a disembodied voice so formal that it used the word “politesse.”

  His name, though. The awakened man struggled to grasp it. He knew his name was important if he wanted to remember who he was, regardless of what he told the strange voice.

  His name defined him. He knew that he hadn’t forgotten everything while in that void. Instead, his identity had drifted away from him, just like his body. He needed to reconnect to himself.

  So, he focused himself with every ounce of concentration he had. He took back his name, and with it, everything that he was.

  “Talarys,” the man said aloud after several long seconds. “My name is Talarys.”

  He rolled his shoulders as his memories flooded his mind. Centuries of warfare, bloodshed, and the collapse of the world.

  In his memories, Talarys had been a general for one of the greatest of infernals: the archdevil Malusian. He had been born a human and lived in servitude to them for most of his life. Despite that, he had gained immense power and become free when the Infernal Empire collapsed.

  None of that explained how he had ended up here. The castle still looked unfamiliar, but now he understood why it bothered him. The architecture reminded him of one of the ancient divine races that had occupied one of the western continents. Said race no longer existed, but it was a curious connection.

  “Talarys. I see. We have much to discuss,” the voice said. “We should head below and leave these men to their plaything.”

  Talarys ignored the voice. He had spent most of his life in service to demons and devils, which were collectively known as infernals. Whatever this voice was, it didn’t matter. Talarys had no intention of obeying it.

  He was his own master now.

  Even if Talarys couldn’t recall why he was here or where he was, he remembered who he was. He felt his power creeping back into his muscles, heating them up from the inside. His body ran on magic, as it had been so corrupted by infernals that it barely qualified as human anymore.

  Speaking of his body, he quickly checked that he had come out of the coffin in one piece. He patted down his chest, arms, and legs. Nothing seemed out of place. The magical nature of his body prevented him from aging. On the other hand, he’d spent a thousand years in a coffin. That might test his durability a touch.

  He still had his jet-black hair and was clean shaven without a speck of stubble. Even under his clothes, his muscles rippled.

  His body had been crafted by a powerful succubus, and she had a particular taste in m
en. Fortunately, that taste had been rather normal. He knew a few slaves who had been turned into rather horrific beasts by their succubus owners.

  In the distance, the men raised their voices again. This time, Talarys understood them. With the restoration of his memories, he had regained the ability to use his magic, which included translation.

  “We can’t kill her yet,” one of them said. “If we chop her head off, then we can’t get her to sign over everything she owns. How else does she make good on the family debt?”

  “Good point,” another said, rubbing his crotch. “Plus, with tits like those, I can think of a good way to convince her to sign the documents. It’ll be fun for us too.”

  Ah, debt collectors. This trio was a truly wonderful specimen of…

  Not humanity, as it turned out. Horns protruded from each of the men’s heads, no longer than an inch or two in length. Despite the clearly non-human appearance of the men, Talarys failed to sense any magic around or within them. They appeared to be humans with horns.

  Talarys had never seen a race like them, and he’d seen every race that had ever walked the planet in recorded history. Or at least, history recorded while he had been walking the planet. Clearly, he needed to brush up.

  One of the men turned around, a leer on his face. He froze when he saw Talarys.

  “Holy hells, the corpse is alive!” the man shouted, pointing at Talarys.

  The other two men jumped, their hands falling to axes at their hips. Their weapons looked crude, almost as if they had simply grabbed whatever they had lying around. Or perhaps they were using weapons that could pass as work tools.

  “About time you noticed me,” Talarys said, crossing his arms as he sized up the men. “I think it’s best if you leave. Just looking at you makes me want to turn you into ash.”

  Each of the debt collectors hesitated as they raised their weapons. They looked at each other, a hint of fear passing through their eyes. Their clothes were simple brown cloth, and they looked like typical malnourished farmers.

  In other words, they were simple rural folk that shouldn’t pick a fight with a man who could incinerate them all with a wave of his hand. Talarys felt it only fair to offer them the opportunity to walk away.

  “Fucking foreigners,” one of them spat. “Bringing necromancy here. We’ll burn this talking corpse, then chop this fucking merchant’s body up into pieces. To hell with her money and her body. She’s tainted.”

  The others muttered agreement, tightening their jaws as they stared at Talarys.

  “Well, I gave you a chance,” he said, then shrugged.

  Talarys raised a hand. Nothing happened.

  He frowned. Odd.

  Grins spread across the faces of the debt collectors.

  “You’re a fucking corpse. Your magic doesn’t work anymore,” they yelled, taking steps toward him.

  Talarys ignored them and tried something else, twisting his wrist this time.

  The wrist-twist didn’t do anything, but the effect looked nice.

  Shadow erupted from his hand, driving away the sunlight. Lines of red light ran along his arm and chest, like veins of infernal energy protruding from his skin and visible through his clothes.

  The jaws of the debt collectors fell. One of them turned and tried to run, but he only made it a step before Talarys finished casting his spell.

  An explosion of blood red fire consumed all three men. Pitch black shadow rose from the flames instead of smoke, and there wasn’t a hint of white flame within the magical blaze.

  As quick as it came, the fire vanished. It left no remains. Not even ashes.

  “I’m not even sure that counts as a warmup,” Talarys said, frowning. “But at least I learned something important.”

  Said important thing being that he had lost one of his most important powers.

  An Infernal Gift. The primary means by which demons and devils gave other races magical abilities, and the source of much of Talarys’s magical power.

  He flexed his fingers, staring at them in a mixture of confusion and worry. While he had worked out how to use his infernal sorcery, his missing Gifts concerned him.

  “Your powers are sealed, great one,” the voice from earlier said. “You may be awake, but much of what you are capable of is beyond you. Only by working together will we be able to become what we once were.”

  Unlike before, the voice was no longer disembodied. With some focus, Talarys saw a glowing golden wisp hovering near him. There was no face or discernable shape within it.

  Perhaps ignoring the wisp was unwise, but there was another reason not to respond.

  Said reason lay on the ground nearby, gagged and tied up with rope. The explosion of fire left her unharmed, but she looked worried. She wore finer clothing than the debt collectors, namely a combination of leather and silk, and a black weatherproof cape. Her pants and tight-fitting top emphasized her bountiful curves and suggested she had been travelling. Her silky long black hair was messy and full of sticks and leaves.

  The woman looked young, at least by Talarys’s standards. Mid-twenties at the oldest. More than beautiful enough to earn unwanted attention, even without the debt collectors.

  With a snap of his fingers, Talarys destroyed her restraints. She jumped as they disintegrated into light. The hellfire that he cast didn’t leave ashes behind.

  Talarys held out a hand after crossing the hall. Taking it, she let herself be pulled up. She then brushed herself off and gave him an uncertain grin. Her face bled from a few scratches, and the gloves on her hands were torn, but she looked fine otherwise.

  “Well, it seems I’m secretly a master necromancer. I can raise a powerful sorcerer from the dead without even casting a spell,” the woman said, still grinning at him.

  But her eyes wavered and her hands shook despite her light words. The brush with death had rattled her, but she put on a brave face for him despite that.

  “I’m Vallis Tornnes,” she continued. “I’m assuming you’re not going to turn me into… whatever the debt collectors became. What’s somebody of your talent doing here? Assuming you, uh, didn’t rise from the dead.”

  To tell her the truth or not, Talarys wondered. What was there to lose by being honest, given how vast the gap in power was and how much he needed to learn?

  “Are you asking what I’m doing in this castle, or in this area in general?” Talarys asked.

  Vallis laughed. “Both. No mage with your ability would live here. We only get the hacks and petty mages who think being able to blow up a house means you should be able to rule a village.”

  An archipelago? Talarys blinked, then frowned. The last he remembered, he had been on the continent of Gauron and there were precious few archipelagos of interest there.

  “I’ll level with you,” Talarys said. “I did climb out of that coffin, but I’m not undead. The last thing I remember was being in Basette to deal with some personal business. I thought I got used to things being strange after the Cataclysm.”

  Frustratingly, he couldn’t remember what that personal business involved. He simply knew he wanted to visit somebody there, but couldn’t remember who or what.

  Now it was Vallis’s turn to blink in confusion. “Basette? That place is a legend. It was a ruin even when my grandfather came here. The history books talk about it a lot, though. And the Cataclysm is literal myth, isn’t it? People talking about how the world nearly ended two thousand years ago and such.”

  Two thousand years ago? A pit formed in Talarys’s stomach. How long had he been in that coffin for?

  The voice, Orthrus, spoke again, “You are far from your time, infernal one. We have that in common, at least. The Infernal Empire fell 1600 years ago. The Cataclysm was over 1900 years ago. I can’t help but wonder how old you are, if you talk about such an event as if it were recent history?”

  As old as a fossil, as it turned out. He had been asleep for over 1500 years.

  And while he was now awake, everything felt different. He
had already seen an unfamiliar race. Vallis spoke about an archipelago that he didn’t know about. His power was sealed and other things felt very off about his infernal magic.

  This wasn’t the greatest morning that Talarys had ever had, to put it bluntly. He held a hand against his temple and resisted the urge to groan.

  Life contained challenges. This was a new one. An exciting one. And Talarys had never shied away from whatever punches life threw at him.

  This punch felt particularly vicious, however. If only there was someone he could complain to about how unfair life was, but he’d met a lot of the most powerful beings in the world. Slept with a few, even. None of them felt particularly godlike, and some of them might even be responsible for his current predicament.

  With a sigh, Talarys abandoned his thoughts and returned to reality. Vallis continued to give him an odd look. Orthrus’s voice appeared to be inaudible to the merchant, which raised questions that Talarys chose to ignore.

  “Well, this is awkward,” Talarys said. “See, I brought those up because I thought they might help you give me some sort of indication of where I am or something I could use as guidance. Instead, it’s only made it clear that I’m very lost.”

  “How lost?” Vallis asked.

  “About 1500 years lost. Give or take a century,” Talarys said, waving a flat palm in the air. “I lived through the Cataclysm, you see. Felt two of the world’s continents be destroyed. Understood how small we are compared to the obscene power of demigod-like beings.”