By this point, Antefalken had reached the main area of the cave. The furnishings weren’t much, mostly hand carved, literally. Stylistically he’d seen better, but O.K. for a first try. The chair and table were functional, the bookshelves too, although empty. No real sign of any Astlanian materials; either this Tom wasn’t able to do physical transport or hadn’t figured out how yet. Not surprising, not many demons could. The majority of fours could manage something though, maybe not much, but at least small things.
Antefalken drew in a breath through his nose, preparing for a sigh. Hmm, Antefalken thought. He’d almost missed something. That was the annoying part about not breathing. If you didn’t breath regularly you didn’t smell things. From his just completed whiff, he detected a rather unusual scent. Something a little out of the ordinary from the run of the mill sulfur, brimstone and smoky smell of the Abyss. It was a slightly sweet, slightly sour odor.
Perspiration, he decided. This was most intriguing. Demons, naturally, did not sweat, unless they worked rather hard at it. More effort than it was worth by all accounts. Except during sex, he reminded himself. Then it was completely appropriate and in fact considered rude in some parts if you didn’t. However, all of this was beside the point, he definitely smelled perspiration, and unless he missed his guess, rather recent and rather human.
Human perspiration in the Abyss, remarkable really. Not remarkable that a human would sweat of course, it was a bit on the warm side even in this cool cave, no, it was remarkable that a human had been in the cave recently at all. In fact, unless he missed his guess, as he repeatedly sniffed around the room, there seemed to be two distinctly different patterns. Male and female it seemed. While he didn’t use his sense of smell often, Antefalken had to admit that it was at least as good as his other demonic senses.
Now, how would this demon have gotten two humans into this cave? Unless the humans came by themselves, of their own free will, which was most unlikely, the demon must have brought them. That seemed to squash his theory that this Tom didn’t know material transport. Given that the humans were sweating, they must have come bodily to the Abyss. Bodily meant that he’d used an Abyssal Gate of some form or the other, and one large enough to drag anything through.
The question was, if the demon could do that, why not bring some decent furniture? Antefalken peered around again at the rather shoddy cave. Unless, of course, all this was a front. Perhaps some higher up demon slumming it for some scheme? Pretending to be a novitiate demon? Very possible, Antefalken thought to himself, stroking his chin as he paced around the room. While admittedly, it had only been a moment ago he’d been chiding the demon on not knowing any matter transport, safely transporting multiple humans implied a bit too good of control for a novice.
It was a lovely puzzle, certainly. Antefalken would love to talk to this Tom fellow. Find out for sure what the guy did and did not know. Unless the man were exceedingly clever, Antefalken felt certain he’d be able to place this Tom in the overall scheme of things. This story of Boggy’s, insisting that Tom was only 16 or so, didn’t seem to hold water. While the cave would support this hypothesis; a teenager undergoing a shock bigger than puberty, suddenly turning around and transporting humans back and forth to the Abyss and messing around in big league politics in less than a month’s time of being a demon just didn’t ring true.
Damien would certainly love this. Antefalken wished he had some form of prescience so he could scan the cave to get more information, but no such luck. He carefully inspected the rest of the cave with all his normal senses, looking for any other clues. He found no others unfortunately. He decided he’d just have to be happy with what he had. He’d also have to come back later in the hope of catching Tom at home.
Edwyrd stood by the same rail on the forecastle at which he’d met Maelen. He was gazing up at the stars in the night sky. He breathed the salt air in through his nose and mouth in large, deep breaths. It had only been an hour ago that he’d realized that he hadn’t been breathing. He’d have to be more careful about that. As in his true form, no, he corrected himself, as in his demon form, the Edwyrd form didn’t need to breathe and so out of recent habit, didn’t, except to talk. He’d realized that that could be dangerous if anybody happened to notice.
That Maelen fellow would probably be the one to notice also. The man seemed just a little bit too observant. The way he looked at Edwyrd made him nervous, as if the man were trying to see right through him. Edwyrd hoped the man couldn’t read minds. Rupert had hinted that some animages could. He was a goner if the man could.
Actually, between trying to avoid Maelen and trying to avoid expanding back into demon form and ripping his clothes to shreds, Edwyrd didn’t know how he’d made it through the afternoon. It was for that reason he stood up on the deck, trying to relax. Relax as much as possible and not shift back, that was. He’d had to plead seasickness to avoid having to eat about an hour ago, and told people he needed fresh air.
Actually, he should have thought about the food thing earlier. He hadn’t had to eat when he was Tom, and Edwyrd’s body didn’t seem to get hungry either. Having never eaten in Astlan at all, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he did. He hoped he had some sort of normal internal organs, but he wasn’t sure. Boggy had indicated that demons could eat, drink or breath, but Tom had never tried. Breathing seemed to work. As far as he could tell he had lungs, his chest expanded when he inhaled What bothered him was that when he’d fought the dragon, he’d gotten ripped apart pretty good, but he didn’t recall seeing any real internal structure or organs in his demon body.
He assumed he had normal plumbing internally and that everything worked, but he hadn’t seen any evidence so far. He cursed himself for not taking a moment of privacy to explore this before. Presumably, if he ate stuff, it would be processed in the normal manner. Again it came down to the close quarters of the ship, he had to live under real close scrutiny. Eventually he’d have to eat, and excrete, just like he had to keep remembering to breath. If he didn’t, people would surely catch on. All these annoying little details humans had to put up with. Demonic life certainly was simpler.
Edwyrd nearly jumped out of his skin, literally, when a hand rested on his shoulder. He turned his head to find Maelen having come up behind him. Cornered! He hadn’t even heard or sensed the man, he couldn’t believe his worthless human senses were that bad, but apparently they were. He’d really have to work on that somehow. The man had come all the way across the deck and up the ladder beside him and taken him completely unaware!
“Good evening, Tom.” Maelen said quietly with a smile. It took Edwyrd a second to realize what bothered him about Maelen’s greeting, and then he did a double take. “Uhm, I’m sorry, but my name is Edwyrd.” Edwyrd protested, looking the kindly smiling man in the eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry, my mistake. Somehow I just thought the name Tom sounded better on you. Actually Tom is a rather unusual name, I’m not sure where I came up with it.” Edwyrd wasn’t sure he believed the man. In fact he was pretty sure he didn’t.
“Uh, that’s... O.K. It happens some time.” Edwyrd didn’t really know how to recover.
“You know, I suppose,” Maelen said almost conversationally as he looked out over the dark expanse of the ocean, “that you are something of a puzzle to me.”