A young demon sees his homeland from the first time, though the travel there cost him something precious. He will soon learn how these two things are related. This story is a prequel to “Dream Of This Battle” located here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28117981/

… and takes place in Chronicles Of Amber ‘verse, with lore included by a gaming group I am in. In case it's not clear in the story, the featured species of Demon is born covered in fur which falls away as the individual matures. The PDF version of the story features an image of a Never-Wake child, made with the assist of a template by shadowinkwarrior (https://www.deviantart.com/shadowinkwarrior). It can be seen on its own here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28340377/

This is also a submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. This week's prompt was the word ‘claim’.’’ Check out the group's user page here: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/thursdayprompt/
And the other stories generated from this prompt here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/28276061/

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The Lessons Of Etu Eqlum
By: DankeDonuts
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/

Etu Eqlum existed, as all Demonic realms do, in a quaint little pocket of corporeality. For in the Abyss even Entropy can break down, and -- having lost all Platonic sense of its own function -- form little pockets of sustainability. The nearby foothills were jagged and split asunder. As was the ground before them, crisscrossed with precarious trenched and eruptions of gaunt stone. Here, even the sky was broken. The dismal stars above cracked open, their splinters scattered as far down as ground level. Brilliant and still as frozen rain that glowed with its own purple-white light. Weekly illuminating the crude terrain and scattered remnants of petrified vegetation. These pale-colored imitations of life long past stood away from the foothills, forming a pockmarked border with the Abyss itself.

The Demonic scout, L’Doth, was the first to cross the boundary. Swimming through the Abyss as much as she walked through it. Following her, two of her kind, whose round black eyes swept the area about them for threats. Finding none. Adults like L’Doth, these Demons were bare of any hair, save for pale plumes sweeping back behind their white faces. Featureless save for thick brows and busy black eyes. While their faces were nearly identical, their horns were distinct unto themselves.

The children who followed them -- fifty or so in number, all roughly nine years of age by human reckoning --  bore no horns but far more hair. It cascaded in large white manes that extended well down their backs. It obscured their loins, as well, and the back third of their lengthy twin-tipped tails. The furry covering also carpeted the space from elbow to wrist, and from knee to the balls of their digitigrade feet.

All members of this party were nude. The Never-Wake lived the vast majority of their life in Shadow -- the between the True Realms -- and the things of Shadow cannot long last in the Abyss. For to traverse the Abyss is to be subsumed by True Entropy.

Each of the younglings had been tasked to bring with them a token of their waning youth. A toy, a favored practice weapon, a trivial souvenir picked up during the endless caravan through Shadow. This was specifically so that each would become lost to them. One by one on the sea-black path to Etu Eqlum, these had flaked away to nothing, or cracked to dust, or coagulated into seeping liquids which became indistinguishable from the waves of Abyss.

That was but one lesson the children needed to learn on this rite. Its import would best be exemplified at this place. The site of another lesson.

“You know the songs,” Dreamspeaker Ab’Dros intoned the moment he crossed onto solid black stone. “Here is where the oldest of them were woven. Look you now upon the homeland we lost. The world our honored ancestors had to flee.” More escorts filed in as the shaman spoke. “One moment, one turning of an unfathomably powerful hand, made this place forever unlivable. And unmoored it from what had been a steady cross-tide in Abyss.”

“Did the bad-guy drop something on this place?” asked one of the younglings. St’Rahn, whose eyes were locked on the half-sunken foothills. “To smash the place up and suck up the power he wanted?”

“No, my son,” L’Doth answered, moving over to pat his furry back. “Nothing fell here. Something rose up.”

“A Sleeper Under The Black,” whispered another of the children. Renike looked very much like she could use the comforting touch then. Her mother had joined the victorious dead not long ago, however. Now she was being raised by the whole tribe, and she found the calm she needed from the agemates around her. St’Rahn was glad of that.

“Yes, young one,” Ab’Dros nodded, “Roused to near-waking by one who sought to join Their number. When the honored ancients soothed the Sleeper back to Their rest, the ground and sky that They had drawn up came crashing back down.”

N’Doth pointed a long, thin claw to the shattered foothills. “That used to be the flatlands, where our people made their homes and gathered their harvests. In its last breath, it served as the place where a fool died. Killed by what few warriors we had.”

The Dreamspeaker took lead of the lesson again. “This is why your mothers and father and brothers and sisters go to war, and ever shall. Why you, too, in time shall be called to entertain the Sleepers. For should they ever wake from their slumber, all worlds -- in Shadow and the True Realms -- shall become as this. And, very soon after, become nothing at all.” Though  he must have spoken them hundreds of times in delivering as many packs of youngling to the dead realm, his words contained a sense of purpose strong enough to set the ends of St’Rahn’s tail twisting.

“These are the stakes we Never-Wake fight ever on for,” N’Doth stated, her voice full of conviction. “Now go and see them for yourselves.” She waved a large, dangerously clawed, hand across the vista. Inviting her charges to explore, to learn, to get into some mischief. First one, then two, then a small crowd took the older female up on her offer. Soon it was a flood of young bodies running off in every direction. Even Renike was drawn up in its wake. The last to depart, and much to his own surprise, was St’Rahn. Who lingered on, even as the adults began splitting up to watch over their spreading charges.

“What’s the matter, my little warrior?” asked his mother.

St’Rahn faced his mother, while also moving to avoid the inscrutable gaze of the Dreamspeaker, who had likewise chosen to remain rooted to the site of the party’s entry. “What if…” The fears Ab’Dros had stirred in the boy suddenly did not want to be spoken. Yet they refused to leave. They were pressing at the insides of his chest, threatening to hammer his lungs to mush.

What if a Sleeper could feel him tapping about on these rocks? What if the evil fool wasn’t really dead? What if they became trapped forever in this wandering piece-of-world, cut off from the tribe? What if they stayed to long down here and started to crumble away, like his toy car? What if, what if, what if?

“Go on and look around,” L’Doth’s encouraging smile came in the form of a grand flourish of her twin-tips. “You’ll feel better. Promise.” She gave her child a moment to reply. When he didn’t, she pulled the dirty trick a parent could. Appealing to his desires. “You keep telling me you want to be a scout. Go show ‘em how it’s done.”

Returning the flourish, the boy ran forward. Racing to catch up to the others.

“Stay inside the circle of pretrogrowths!” ordered one of the guards a short way away, speaking to youngling wandering about a little further off.

“And don’t wander too far!” laughed another. “Or a Ty’iga may get you, and make you dance a jig!”

. . .


The younglings that were more curious of the Abyss had joined some adults in searching it for prey. Their bountiful return to the grounds of Etu Eqlum was heralded not by horns, but by Words Of Power which of their own force projected the words “Our Hunters Return!” to every corner and a crack of the pocket-world. The inescapable strength of the call sent the little star-slivers shimmering, ever so slightly.

The campfires were made of magic, and there was no expend metaphysical resources maintaining them once the food had been cooked. If this realm had ever had cold nights, or hot days, or wind or rain or smog, it had long forgotten them. The air was exactly as it had been when they set foot here. Strange enough, that. The other thing that struck St’Rahn as strange was the way everything had been split up. Fifty-some agemates and ten elders had been arraigned on small circles of five or six children to an adult.

The reason for this became evident when Ab’Dros, the adult stationed at St’Rahn’s corner, licked the last juices of his meal from his fingers and pointed a long, dark claw his way. “Scout’s son. Tell us of the treasure you lost on your way here.”

“What?” Tail-tips split sideways in surprise.

Tail-tips coiled in certainty. “How old were you when you got it? What did it mean to you?”

St’Rahn’s whole tale writhed up on itself. He had not spoken one word of his vanished toy for days. (Had it been days?) He didn’t want to appear childish by whining about it. But neither could he disobey. Not with his mother close by in another circle, anyway. His tail twisted abit while he tried to gather his thoughts. It was far from his first time telling tales by a dying fire, but this one hit so close to his heart. “I was six... ish… years old. The caravan has set down for a time so the expectant mothers could have their furlings from the last War Dance. The Shadow we’d set down in was hot and sandy and broken down. There wasn’t a single building standing up in one piece. Some had been burned out, others were held up with scrap. There pictures of Humans around, on signs and stuff, but none there.”

The wisp-furs were tossing the words ‘post-apocalypse’ around and betting on what kind of apocalypse it would prove to be.

“I got put on a scrounging team, with a bunch of other most-furs.” The boy looked around his small circle, but didn’t see any of the faces he remembered from that team. “I was rooting around under a dead ‘trailer’ and found a little box full of someone’s keepsakes. Baseball cards, a compass, the tag for a pet, a tin of bb gun pellets. I needed a grown-ups help reading the Human words. She told me it was mostly kid’s stuff, but she took the pellets anyway. And said I could share the rest with my friends.”

“We didn't take long to split it up. I got first claim because I found the stash. What I took was a little toy racing car.” The lad took a deep breath and proudly recited the model name in full. “A Talbot Lago T26 Cabriolet Saoutchik. Produced from 1946 to 1955, according to the little card that came with it.” He sighed, “It looked like a blue torpedo with big, treadless tires. With a tiny windshield and a plain black number 5 painted on a white circle. It was in real good shape, for where I found it.” Whatever had happened to the Shadow’s native residents had passed the little box by.

His love of the car was plain in his voice, and the excited twitches of his twin-tips. “It was so fastI raced it about everywhere I could. I kept it clean and rolling smooth. I made sure it never got left behind when the caravan packed up and moved on...”

The youngster’s exuberant words fell away into sorrow, and he lowered his gaze towards center of the circle. Lost in memories that were coming too fast to talk out. A little ankle-biter running vrooming that little car over every surface (and compliant shag-beast) he could find. Following the wisp-furs, begging them to let him go joyriding with them when the caravan hit other mid-tech shadows. Confidently informing the Herdmasters that we could be getting around faster on engine power, thank you very much. Never mind that combustion engines and rubber tires steel alloys would fail in many shadows; only vessels of wood and bone and hide, and living muscle to drive them were guaranteed to last the long walks from battle to battle.

“...I kept hold of it everywhere I went. Until now.”

He could firmly remember the day, maybe he as regretting it now, when his mother told him that it was his clutches turn to go down to Et Eqlum. “We’ll take as little as possible, for part of this rite is learning how to survive in the places we will walk. No waterskins, no clothes but belts to hold emergency supplies. We’ll have no need of tents,” she told him. “And our claws would serve as our weapons, the fur of your forearms and lower legs your shields. My toughened hide shall be mine. You shall, however, bring one item of your very own. Something personal that only each individual would ever think to bring.

St’Rahn and his agemates were no fools. They knew that the older clutches of Never-Wake had taken their favored trinkets with them to the Abyss on this rite, and that not a one of them came back with theirs. Even if they never spoke of why. And the clutch before that, and the clutch before that, and so one down the line of every series of nine-year-old in history. We figured the point of bringing them was to leave something of oneself at the old stomping grounds.

How wrong they’d been.

By coincidence of her tribal role, his mother was at the head of the expedition. Guiding children who’d spent their whole lives in Shadow up to that point through the Abyss. Teaching them how to move and navigate and survive down there. And even though he couldn’t tell time in the Entropic syrup (nor could his other agemates), he suspected that his Ummum was taking her time getting there. While their survival belts loosened due to the notches rotting into gulfs. And the things inside them started falling loose or falling apart. All of them. Even his beloved toy car.

It started with spots of rust in a formerly flawless coat of paint. One ‘morning’ thereafter, he awoke to find the front wheels were just gone. The sprockets they’d been pinned through hadn't even snapped off. The next day, there were cracks in the windshield that by final-meal had become a hole. Piece by piece, his little treasure abandoned him. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing any of his friends could do about the little losses they were suffering.

St’Rahn did not believe it a coincidence that they were all left with nothing by the time our feet touched the bare rock of Etu Elqum. Nothing but memory. He looked upward, into the black eyes of one of his agemates, the Herdmaster’s son Tal’Koak. Which were wet with tears of understanding and sorrow. He’d brought a fedora into the Abyss, with a plume of dinosaur feathers tucked into a bullet hole.

“Do you see it, there, St’Rahn?” the Dreamspeaer asked, a hint of triumph in his voice. “You who have not yet lost close kin to the battles we all must wage? And have only danced for the loss of others? See you not the connection you now share with Tal’Koak there? With Skioh and Gh’Tann and everyone else about you?”

Caught between twisting emotions and embarrassment at being put on the spot like this, the boy stammered, “I.. I guess.”

Ab’Dros rose his hands, motioning towards all the children in sweeps of his long arms. “Therein lies the three-fold lesson of this, our lifeless land! First, a lesson for the present; that you are not alone in your sorrow. All fifty-some of agemates have endured the same casualty. As did I, and Scout L’Doth, and all of your other guardians present. So too everyone waiting for us amid the Caravan. We are one in this experience, and more importantly our ability to support one another through it.” A fluttering of his fingers sent lines of magical energy dancing through the air. To graze against everyone present in the circle. The children, long used to magic, restrained any sounds of amazement. But the meaning was clear enough to set some awe down.

“Second, a lesson for the past. For every one of our forebears who’d survived Etu Equm’s fall left something or someone special behind. Now you younglings, living all these ages since, have something more in common with them.” The magical lines gathered, and began travelling towards the crumped foothills. Joined on the way by ethereal lines from the other circles.

“Third, a lesson for the future.” The elder flipped a finger, and his lines fell to dust. “Some things just slip away, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. Friends may fall in battle. Favored Shadows may grow into something you don’t recognize. Loves may fade. All you can do then is but dance for their memory and carry on. Fight all the harder for the one thing you truly can hold on to. Your tribe.” By the time he’d finished, all the circle’s lines had fallen away too. Leaving only the broken starlight, and ten hearty gatherings of Never-Wake.

Unbidden by his elder, Tal’Koak put his hands to the backs of those closest to him, Skioh and Gh’Tann. These two reached out to him, and those nearest by. Gh’Tann’s hand touched St’Rahn, and he touched her, and reached to Eiona. She and Ab’Dross closed the circle. They all started swaying side to side, as the Dreamspeaker tapped out a rhythm with the claws of his feet.

Before long, everyone was dancing.


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