Plant glow seemed to be much weaker than animal glow, and normally he wouldn’t have even noticed it if he hadn’t concentrated. Last night he hadn’t noticed it, but he hadn’t noticed animal glow in the light before either. Perhaps the plant glows were so faint they couldn’t be discerned against even the low level of night light without concentration, much as the stronger animal lights couldn’t be seen without mild concentration in the daylight. Of course, the other thing was that he was a couple of hundred feet in the air, and there were probably limits to even his vision.
About noon, or so, as Tom judged by the position of the sun above him, Tom spotted a mountain range on the horizon. After a few more moments of scanning the horizon, he was able to make out a small dot at the base of the mountains. Judging by his eyesight’s range he guessed the dot, which he soon resolved as a tower with walls around it, to be about sixty miles away. At this point he began to think about his upcoming encounter with humans. In all likelihood they would be scared shitless again. He decided he had better just steel himself to that fact.
After a few minutes of pondering however, he realized that scared humans were likely to do something foolish, like attack him. If, as they usually did in the novels, they had bows, crossbows, and ballistae, it could make his approach slightly difficult. After the dragon, he wasn’t too scared of little arrows and bolts, but nonetheless, it would still probably be painful, and annoying. Glancing around, he came up with a solution to the problem; if he engineered his approach so that he came from the direction of the sun, they would be less likely to see him until the last moment, and if he came in fast, he could be there before they could act. Tom climbed higher in the sky, and over, so that he could hide in the sun.
It took him about another hour and a half, he guessed, to get within what he felt was a safe distance from the tower. From there he could see everything quite clearly. The fortress was a large tower, about seven stories, surrounded by large stone walls. Inside the courtyard area were many smaller buildings and people wandering around with errands. For the most part it was similar to Lenamare’s, except smaller, and judging from the people in the courtyard, probably not a school.
Well, here goes nothing, Tom thought. Using the full strength of his wings, Tom dove straight for the castle walls. His wings and gravity boosted his speed to close to sixty miles an hour, Tom guessed. He got closer and closer to the walls, at about twenty feet from the top of one wall someone spotted him. People began screaming, and running frantically. Tom swooped in over the top of the wall. To insure his safety by keeping guards off balance, he let out a huge roar, hoping to unnerve anyone who might be taking aim.
“Aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!” he screamed in his deep, thundering voice. Quickly he began back beating his wings to slow himself down. He beat as heavily and strongly as he could, and righted himself so that he would land on his hooves in the courtyard. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t completely used to his own limitations, and so overestimated his stopping power. He hit ground on his hooves, cracking, and caving in, the paving stone of the courtyard. Apparently, the stones were somehow mortared together, so in addition to sinking a foot into the ground, and smashing the stone in the immediate vicinity, he also sent cracks radiating outward along the mortar lines. Essentially, he managed to damage a twenty foot diameter circle of the stone courtyard around him.
Being used to sinking in the ground by now, Tom quickly flew up out of his small hole, and landed on the courtyard itself. He looked around; as expected, several people, mainly women, although one or two men as well, had fainted to the ground, and the rest were cowering behind whatever cover they could find. As he glanced at the wall, he did see a few men with crossbows vaguely pointing in his direction, but none seemed to have the courage to actually point one at him.
Playing it to the hilt, and thus attempting to ignore the feelings of hurt inside him, Tom thundered, “Humans... I bear a message for the wizard Zilquar. Bring him forth.”
Nobody moved everyone simply stared at him. “Where is the wizard Zilquar?” thundered Tom. This was going to be fun; if they were so scared they couldn’t even move, he wouldn’t accomplish much. “I have a message for him, and I do not wish to spend all day here!” Tom looked around menacingly; he spotted a boy about his age hiding near a wagon. “You,” Tom pointed at him, “bring the wizard to me.” The boy’s eyes got wider, and he clumsily pointed to himself. “Yes, you. Now!” The boy shook his head, affirmatively, and ran off. Peasants, Tom thought sadly, this was definitely not fun. The problem was, he had tried this posture to distance himself and avoid the pain, but in reality, this only confirmed their fears. What could he do though?
It took only a few moments for the boy to return, followed by an old man in robes. By his looks, he had probably been on his way anyway, since he was out of breath, and the boy hadn’t been gone long enough to bring the man from far enough away for the man to have run here and ran out of breath.
“I am Zilquar, Demon,” the old man said, speculatively eyeing Tom, while obviously hiding a bit of fear and a lot of trepidation.
“This is for you.” Tom handed Zilquar the scroll. “It is from Lenamare.”
“You delivered a message from Lenamare?” The wizard asked, doubt and suspicion showing on his face. Obviously, this man knew the logic behind not having demons run messages.
“That is what I said. Now if you are through with foolish questions... I shall leave.”
“Uh, yes, by all means,” Zilquar agreed hastily.
With that, Tom stepped up into the air, and left the tower behind. Well, thought Tom, all and all, that was pretty much a waste. All that flying, and for what? To play mailman?
Since he had three days to do his mission, and the trip was only about twenty-four hours, Tom decided to take a slightly different route back to Lenamare’s. This time he flew further west, since there seemed to be a forest over in that direction, and Tom thought that perhaps a stroll through the woods might be relaxing and calm his nerves. He was feeling pretty wound up. This whole demon business sucked. He didn’t like being a demon, he hated having everyone hate him, and he hated himself for playing to their fears. But what could he do, if he simply tried to be friendly, people like Lenamare would walk all over him, and try to use him for their own purposes. Not that Lenamare wasn’t doing that all ready, it was just that if Lenamare feared Tom, then perhaps he wouldn’t try to use him too much.
Of course, all of that was secondary. What if what Boggy said was true, that they’d killed his real body. Then assuming this was real, he couldn’t go back; he didn’t know the way, and without a body to focus on and a party to concentrate on, he doubted he could find his way back. Also if he were dead back home, then his mom would be in bad shape.
Actually, the more he thought of it, the more he realized that there was no way his death would bring his mom and stepdad together. His stepdad would simply blame his mom for not controlling him better. Tom knew that there was nothing his mom could have done, but his stepfather wouldn’t see that, and his mother would probably believe his stepdad and blame herself too. The more he thought of this the more depressed he got.
Finally, over the forest, Tom landed among the trees. It was quiet here, a few birds, small animals running in bushes. The wind through the trees. Feeling depressed and slightly weary, Tom sat down beneath a tree, just to rest. Perhaps to sleep a little, he was not really tired enough to sleep, but if he could, it would help him forget. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the forest. They were far away at first, having been quieted by his disturbance of the forest, but they slowly returned. Slowly he drifted off.