In the first hours after jumping through Sahjahn's tear in reality there was no time to regret his decision. There was only the disorientation of falling from one world to another, then the hurried attempt to gain his bearings. In those first hours he allowed instinct to dominate him.
Clutching the fragile blanketed bundle to his chest he?d surrendered to his instincts: find shelter. He'd "touched down" at the foot of a bleak cragged mountain, and headed up. Seize the high ground. The alternative had been the twisted trees growing amongst thick brambles that formed a solid wall of darkness behind him. Even the constant flashes of lightening in the dark, violet sky couldn?t penetrate that gloom.
I shall find something more suitable in a few hours, when it's light, he'd thought as he huddled in a small cave, barely more than a crevice and stared out at the desolate landscape of his new home. Only then did it strike him, the enormity of what he?d done, and it chilled him to the bone as no icy wind ever had. Or perhaps it is never light here in Quor'toth. It is after all the Darkest of the Dark Worlds.
007. Days
In fact it did grow light in Quor'toth, though Holtz couldn't bring himself to call it day. In his mind there could be no day without a sun, and so far as he could determine this world had none. But it would grow lighter, the sky becoming tinged pink behind the black clouds. At this time the strikes of lightening also increased in frequency, providing enough illumination to distinguish this time as day.
That first period of light Holtz remained in the cave with the baby observing the gradual brightening, looking into the remaining gloom. He observed the movements of the various unholy creatures, small ones scampering amidst the rocks, ones that scuttled like shellfish or slithered. He saw glimpses of larger creatures in the thick forest and suspected he would be encountering some of them sooner than he'd like. Shadows passed overhead, winged predators wheeling and occasionally swooping to capture the shelled rock creatures.
And he counted the seconds, looking into the sky for evidence of time passing. The sky dimmed to violet, then to deep blue, the lightening diminished, the clouds rolled over the sky. 21,300. A mere six hours of light. Holtz reached out for a rock and scrawled the count on the dripping wall of the crevice. Then he began the count again.
A much longer count, in which the baby began to squirm with more violence and even at one point to attempt to cry, which Holtz brutally shushed, having run out of liquid in the bottle that had been tucked into the blanket. A much longer count, and far more creatures to observe, hordes of them moving through the rocks and treest in the dim forest. Hunting each other, killing each other, even the plants grabbing and ripping thrashing victims to shreds and devouring.
Eventually the sky began to lighten once again. 86,400. A full home day's worth of darkness. He leaned over and scrawled this figure down as well. Then he picked up his knife, tucked the baby away in the cave, as hidden as Holtz could make him and prepared to meet the day.
009. Months
Quor'toth was a hard enough world to survive in without having to care for a baby.
Holtz had to catch more food, and had to chew the baby's portion down to mush before it could be fed to him, a task that could sometimes take hours with the thick chewy roots or tough meats of the demons he killed. It had to be rocked or fed constantly to prevent it from squalling and alerting demons to their position.
They had to change camp every several days because the smell of the baby's excrement would soon build up and despite his attempts to dispose of it as far from them as possible, the smell of it would cling to the spaces they dwelled in and draw the beasts to them.
Holtz eagerly counted the months as the baby grew, remembering his long lost children all the more because of it. He drew on these experiences to know what to expect what to do. He spoke calmly and sang, during the long night hours when it was too dangerous to hunt and likewise to let his guard down long enough to sleep. These moments had fed Holtz's fleeting fears that he would forget his mission. That he would get lost in raising the baby; that little Steven would truly become like his own child and not the weapon he needed him to be.
But it soon became apparent that this baby was not like his own children had been. He remembered the tight grasp of his dear baby's fist, pulling on fingers or locks of hair, but this baby's grip is perilously strong, nearly breaking his fingers at one point. Holtz was too afraid of what it would do should he ever allow the baby to draw his finger into its mouth.
Soon after fleeing to Quor'toth the baby could already bear weight on its legs, and raise its chest up off the floor to a point that made Holtz afraid he was about to crawl away. At an age Holtz estimated to be three months. It was the kind of abnormality that would have had his wife fearing a changeling.
Steven killed his first demon at the age of seven months, reaching out with more speed than Holtz himself was capable of and grasping hold of a Scuttle demon that had been investigating the mouth of their current cave. The demon struggled, presumably attempting to bite but it never got the chance, crushed in the little baby's careless grip. When it ceased moving the baby burbled, confused, shaking the thing's lolling corpse with an angry pout.
The baby had looked up at Holtz then, and he had put down the knife he'd been sharpening and gently removed the demon from the baby's grip. "You killed the demon." Then he'd smiled. "Good job, Steven."
010. Years
When Steven was two, Holtz left him alone for the first time. It was out of necessity. They hadn't eaten in two days and he couldn't risk the boy putting something poisonous in his mouth, or scampering around scaring the more vulnerable prey.
He'd returned to the hollow tree inside which they were making camp to find the small toddler eagerly biting into a large snake demon at least ten feet long and as fat in the middle as the boy's head. It was still struggling feebly even as Steven ate it.
Steven remembered the story as his first hunting trip.
When Steven was four, Holtz taught him how to make his first knife. It was fashioned from the claw of a Rauksor, the hardest material they had yet encountered in Quor'toth.
Steven treasured it, sleeping with it under his pillow or running his finger over it while he kept watch until he was seven and it snapped in half inside an enemy. Steven barely remembered his hard earned lesson never to cry.
When Steven was five, Holtz left him at camp for a three day hunting trip. Steven knew he wasn't to leave camp for anything short of imminent death, but he listened for his father, and breathed in his scent for as long as he could. When he heard the scream and smelled the blood on the wind he grabbed his knife and ran, body tensed anticipating the fight and the reprimand that would surely follow.
He slew the demon, and when his father demanded he explain voice low and eyes intent Steven stammered out that he had heard the scream and followed the scent of his father's blood. Steven remembered that as his first tracking lesson.
When Steven was five Holtz tied him to a tree and left him there, in the dark wrathful forest alone. It took him two weeks to find him again, that first time.
"Connor, that's terrible," Angel had said. Steven hadn't thought so. When he finally found him again, sometimes his father would let him have a hug.
008. Weeks
The newspaper crinkled in his scarred weathered hands as he looked at the date. A mere two weeks had passed in this world, while he had suffered years in that hell. Their prison, not their home, as Steven had never quite been able to understand.
But Steven had learned most of his lessons by wrote, told and told again through the years they had spent in Quor'toth, reinforced during every spare moment. And now that his son had found the way back into this world, it was time to put all his lessons to the test.
As Justine plunged the ice pick into his neck for the second time, he had just enough time to reflect that as with all the parts of his grand vengeance that had gone awry, two weeks was actually perfect.
Because Steven had all the rage of a young man, fashioned expertly into cold hatred over years, but Angelus still remembered him as a fragile, precious baby. He would see that baby every time he looked at Steven, never understanding what the boy truly was.
Steven was his son, through and through, and Angelus wouldn't understand that until it was too late.
The World for Weapons
Holtz had intended to raise Stephen in Utah on a modestly priced but expansive and self-sufficient ranch. This had been less a matter of preference than necessity: he had needed a place where Angelus would not find them, a place where the three of them could be free to carry out his mission as planned.
Quor'toth had not been his intent, but in retrospect it was perfect. A horrific place, full of traps, of enemies, of demons. A place full of violence that was so perfectly black and white. All demons were evil, and Holtz was the only human. The only one Stephen could trust.
A perfect place to hone his weapon to perfection. Angelus would never stand a chance against his son.