Into The Abyss (Demons of Astlan) (81 page)

Traeflon nodded, “Since the beginning, I’ve been monitoring their camp as a precaution.”  Heron nodded in approval.

“We are going to want to capture all of this.  This is something you don’t see very often.  We may have our differences with the Rod; but they really know how to handle Evil with a capital “E.”

~

The knight got back into fighting position as did Tom.  This was going to be a long fight, Tom feared.  The knight thrust forward suddenly, Tom
, having sensed a slight motion in that direction, was prepared and side stepped, grabbing the knight’s sword arm with both hands and lifting.  The knight was over six feet tall, but Tom was nearly twelve, so it was like fighting a child in some ways.  He lifted with all the strength in his arms and legs, bringing the knight up and over his own shoulder, spinning and then slamming the knight as hard as he could into the ground.

The kn
ight had managed to slash up Tom’s side pretty good with his sword during this, and his shield had banged painfully against his head, but he was willing to bet that the knight was hurt more than he was.

The knight was on the ground, and Tom really felt like stomping on him with a hoof, but that didn’t seem sporting
, so he stood back and let the knight recover.  The knight slowly climbed to his feet chanting something Tom couldn’t quite make out.   Golden light washed over the knight and his armor seemed to glow more brightly and the knight stood straighter.

The knight tilted his head forward, glaring at Tom in anger.  He shouted something in some strange language and
charged point first.  The guy was losing it.  Tom stepped aside to repeat his last maneuver, when suddenly the knight stopped, spun and seemed to shimmer as his blade whisked around seeming to turn to pure light and extending beyond it’s normal reach to slice through Tom’s thighs!  Both of them!  Fuck that hurt!

Tom screamed as he crashed to the ground, taken so by surprise that his wings weren’t able to catch him
before he fell.  That had hurt--unimaginably so.  Tom was pissed, no more mister nice guy.  He assumed the form of flame.

He swatted hard with his flaming hand at the knight who ducked, but was still grazed by the fire.  He didn’t seem to mind as much as Tom had hoped.  Tom assumed his fist punching form and began fist punching the air, pointing at Talarius.  Kiyaing each time and releasing blasts of fire at the Knight.

The knight deflected the blasts with his shield.  Tom rose in the air and fired straight down; the knight kept deflecting them.  Tom wasn’t sure where’d the deflected bolts were going, it appeared into the crowd.  He hoped they could protect themselves.

This wasn’t working.  Tom came down to hover near the knight.  The knight slashed at Tom.  Tom didn’t move expecting the sword to just pass right through him.  It did, but holy shit did it hurt!  Tom roared in surprised pain.

Tom settled back to the ground and decided to go full bore.  He launched a solid flame attack at the knight, just like against the ship.  To his immense surprise, instead of raising his shield to defend the knight brought his sword forward; the shield hanging unused on his left forearm, and clasped it with both hands.

Tom’s flames were being parted by the sword
; parted and swept aside like the water before the bow of a ship.  Again, Tom hoped the crowd was protected.  The knight simply stood there, taking it.  Tom shook his head and concentrated on trying to recall the blue white cold fire he’d used to finish off the Oorstemothian ship.  He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d done that; but he focused on trying to re-achieve that.

There it went; it was actually a cold and electrical fire.  Now that he was more in control he could tell what it was.
  The knight shuddered under the new assault and began mouthing something Tom couldn’t hear.  The cold fire began to close in on the knight.  Which was good because Tom was getting exhausted.

He glanced down at his body to see if his flame body was blue-cold-electrical fire, or regular fire.  It was turning blue-cold-electrical, but he noticed something far more concerning.  That ring that the priests had put up, the glowing thing, it was seeping mana from him!

He could see a slow, small but steady stream of his mana flowing off him and across the ground to the ring!  The bastards were trying to drain him!  The knight was cheating!  This really pissed Tom off, and he began shooting traditional lightning bolts from his tail at the knight.  He had to end this.

“Aggh!” Tom exclaimed.  Something was stinging him, a whole lot of some things.  They were arrows being fired by the Rod at him.  What the fuck!  He was having trouble maintaining his concentration on the fire and what was hitting him.
  Hitting him in his fire form!

He looked closely at one.  It was a small hollow arrow!  The arrows were entering his insubstantial body and sort of exploding and then falling to the ground empty.  Apparently, there was some sort of magic payload in those arrows.  It fucking hurt and there were a lot of them.

~

“Hmm,” Bess casually observed while watching the fight.  “Apparently we aren’t the only ones who cheat.” 

“Apparently, things have changed a bit in terms of protocol over the last millennia.”  Ramses noted, sucking on a lemon.

“Well, I would have expected the Holy Blessed Wards that they put up.  It’s a standard blessing they like to use for combat, and it’s great for sapping the resources of mana rich enemies.  Demons, vampires and the typical undead, the fey as well.  But those arrows the archers are shooting; in my day
, they wouldn’t have done that.”  Exador shook his head sadly.

“Ye
t, he’s put up a great fight; I’ll give him that.”  Bess observed.  “Really a pretty decent Type IV; I don’t know of too many that could have done a lot better under the circumstances.  That armor is insane, the knight’s grace is ridiculous and he’s got a huge portion of the Rod helping him with prayers etc.  They’re feeding him mana, draining his enemy and now shooting at the guy.”

Ramses shook his head.  “I’d have had to use every
Temporamastery trick in the book and I’d be limited to the joints and the opening in the face plate given that armor.  It would have been tricky, but I would have got him.  Add in the other stuff, I’d have to break out the heavy duty archdemon tricks to do better.   Which, I might note, I did not do against Sir Astemon.  We don’t all cheat—well, not every time.”

“Yes, the knight has some serious advantages that I can see, but clearly any of us could have overcome those.  However, I do think it clear that very few
Type IV’s could have done much better.”  Exador stated.  “At this point it’s just a matter of time.”

Bess chuckled, “So, do you still believe Lenamare’s story about this being a fresh recruit?”  The others laughed.

“No, this demon has been around several hundred years at least, possibly a thousand.”  Exador shook his head laughing to himself, and the others about Lenamare’s bullshit.

~

Tom’s flames were starting to sputter a bit.  It was just getting too distracting, too painful and he couldn’t keep the intensity level up, he was getting worn out.  His mana level was visibly low when he looked at himself.  He couldn’t keep this up.  He made a decision.

He turned the flame blast off, leapt over the knight, spinning
as he descended and materialized, quickly grabbing the knight’s legs and jerking them out from underneath him.   He pulled on the knight’s legs and stood up.  Lifting the knight by his legs, he picked him up like a doll and then smashed him face first into the ground as hard as he could.  While the knight was down, Tom pulled the knight’s legs apart and kicked him as hard as he could in the balls.

He picked the knight up and smashed him again into the ground as hard as he could; the knight twisting feverishly in his grasp.  The squirming made it hard to hold him, but Tom held on; no more mister nice guy.  He smashed the knight into the ground again.

He drove the edge of his hoof has hard as he could in between the man’s thigh plates and calf plates until he heard a crunch of broken knee.   Tom pulled back, twisting, lifting the knight and bringing him up and over his own shoulders and head and then smashing the knight down on his back.

The arrows had stopped after he’d moved to the other side of the knight and materialized, now they resumed and the
y still hurt.  Several other priests had started chanting loudly.  As he was picking the knight up for another smashing, a dark mist grew around the two of them and the knight’s armor glowed white hot and suddenly Tom felt a billion tiny pin pricks digging in to him.  Blood started oozing from his pores, even as the exploding arrows left weird burn marks on his flesh.

He was getting exhausted. 
Shit, his hands were slippery.  He lost hold of the knight who scrambled free and in so doing managed to bring the sword, which he’d never dropped, around and lopped off Tom’s foot at his ankle. 

Tom teetered trying to right himself with his wings, but he was getting tired.  A priest had hurried to Talarius’ side and was doing something.  Tom started to fly over there, but a yellow glowing mist, different from before was slowing him down.

The knight climbed to his feet and slashed at Tom’s other leg, he got it at knee level.  It hurt like hell, but by this point Tom was feeling punch drunk.  His eyes were getting blurry.  He had to switch to full demon vision to see.

“Prepare for the final rites.”  Tom heard the knight
say.   “Have you got the others secured?”  Tom was confused.  He felt a searing pain as the knight lopped off his left arm.  He was still flying barely.  He glanced over at the other demons and saw a glowing net of mana surrounding them.  Fuck, they’d trapped them.

“This will be the final death for all of them.” 
Tom heard one of the priests say.  Final death.  He’d heard something about this.  Boggy had said demons could be permanently slain, given enough time and effort.  Was that their plan?

He was so tired.  Slash went one of his wings, he fell to the ground.  As he rolled on the ground he saw one of those giant umbilical cords to the sky.  All that mana, he needed it.  It suddenly felt like he was dying of thir
st.  If he could link on to one of those umbilical cords, he could get mana and recharge.  Tom reached out with everything he had and tried to grab it.  It was too slippery, it evaded him.  He could barely sort of hold onto it with his mental hands but he couldn’t poke a whole into it and insert a mana string from himself.    He needed a fucking needle.

He was desperate, this was
entirely his fault, he should have just let the knight send Rupert back to the Abyss and left well enough alone, now it was the final death for them all.  Vaguely he noticed struggling over where the other demons were.  This was distracting lots of the priests.  Oddly, Talarius hadn’t been doing much.  He glanced at the knight who was being healed by the priests.  Those fuckers had really cheated.

His eyes fell on one of the hollow arrows beside him.  He
stared at it for a second, a fucking needle.  A needle blessed by the fucking god whose mana he wanted.

~

“Did he say final death?”  Bess asked.

“That’s what it sounded like.”  Ramses stated.

“These folks are definitely feeling rather pissed.” Exador stated.

“Do you suppose we should intervene?”  Bess asked.

“Why?”  Ramses asked.

“Just sort of seems like the right thing to do; after all this is Good
vs. Evil, all us demons are Evil, and the Rod is Good; shouldn’t we help out our fellow Evil?  If only to defeat Good?”

“Hmm, you make a compelling point.”  Ramses pondered.

“Yeah but that would mean blowing what little remains of our cover, exposing ourselves and jeopardizing our plan to get our hands on the book.”  Exador responded.

“Better point.”  Ramses noted.

Bess was nodding her head.  “You, of course, are correct.”

“So why,” Ramses asked.  “Isn’t the
Type IV leaving? He should have enough mana left to fade to the Abyss.  The little ones over there,” he pointed to the other three demons, “may not be able to do so on their own.”

“Particularly inside that weird net thing.”  Bess observed.

“But the big guy?”  Ramses asked.

“Quiet
, something is happening.”  Exador commanded.

They looked down on the field.

“So demon.”  Talarius was standing over the greater demon who had been flailing around on the ground with no feet, only one wing and one arm.  That arm had been flailing around a bit as if trying to throw something at the priests but not much had happened.  “You are defeated, and now you and your immediate compatriots will face the true death.”

“You cheated.”  The demon croaked.
 

Bess and Ramses chuckled.  Exador shook his head thinking about how times had changed the Rod; then he smiled, obviously, he must have had some influence on the development of the Rod’s ethics.

“There is no such thing as cheating when fighting Evil.”  The knight took his helmet off.  He almost looked sad as he stared down at the demon.

“So you say.  I disagree.”  The greater demon said.  The demon was smoldering a bit
now.  The demon let out a loud sigh and suddenly there was nothing but glowing ashes on the ground.