He wasn't supposed to be here, now. This was quite possibly the most absurd use of an Incursion portal he'd ever been involved in; and no less than three of his cohort had used one to hook up with a succubus in the past. And yet....

It was exhilarating. He was standing, his back to a fire, having had to dive into the snow to put himself and the boy out on arrival, as quite possibly the only devil on this entire realm. There would be ice and snow for thousands of miles in every direction... and sometimes, at random, a damned soul would arrive here, and start the long, drawn-out process of torment that resulted in evil souls turning into demons. The ones he'd meet would, at first, be the ones out hunting for those souls.

There would be ice demons in every direction. Not close, probably. But millions. Billions of them. In fact...

He smiled when he heard the first wail. The thunk of his second flail impacting the earth was muffled by the mud; but he didn't care. He could handle a little mud, this day. This wonderful, glorious day when his purpose in existence just happened to align with following his rules and his personal code in this....

When the first ice-demon leapt over the ice, screaming at him, he admired, for a moment, how hideous the thing was. Like someone had taken an ant, made it giant, pale white-blue, and crossbred it with the ugliest cow they could find; horns, fur, chitin, far too many limbs... and blue blood. When his flail crashed into the thing's skull he started laughing; even as strong as he was, it would take more than one blow to kill it, but it was stunned, and stumbled forward... and he swung again... this time both flails slamming into the creature's back, just below the head.

It was crippled. Helpless. Slowly bleeding out into the snow, and its face towards the fire... he grinned down at it, and turned back to face the snow. Let it suffer for a while. He glanced at the boy.

He was already looking better. The odd shriveling that had started, as his body had started to eat itself, had stopped. The ambient magic was exactly what was needed to help him complete the transformation he'd started. He shook his head before turning back out to face the snow; it was coming down hard enough to keep anything from past fifty yards invisible, but that was fine. He generally worked best up close.

He could make out shapes..... there. Another one. Could he get it with one strike, if he swing both flails at once, and hit it from either side of the head?

The creature's scream as it charged was feral, vicious.... and when the two heavy spiked balls slammed into its head from both sides, it flopped to the ground mid-charge; its skull a grisly ruin, oozing various fluids into the snow... and yet, still alive. He admired the durability of the creature as it twitched, unable to control its limbs, laying there in the snow. It let out a much softer, lower-pitched, screech of pain. He wondered if it would be calling out to its brethren.

He knew his objective here. That, ideally, none of them would arrive at all, and he could just go right back through the portal with the boy in a few hours, mission accomplished. But he hoped, sincerely, that they would keep coming. More and more of them...

The screech suddenly became much louder; a beam of orange light had touched the creature's chitinous flesh just below the odd furry torso, and it was suddenly ablaze; helplessly twitching as the fire spread across its flesh. He could hear more, answering shrieks... and see figures approaching through the constant snowfall. He took a deep breath, reveling in the frigid air running through his lungs... glanced back to the boy, making sure he was close enough to the portal for the fire to keep him alive... and met the first of the pack; a swung flail shattering two legs of the beast as it charged, while his other impacted a second on the head, stunning it... and the chain wrapped around the throat, tightening down with a crack as it started crushing the thing's head.

The other demons hesitated out of fear; they could feel how strong this devil was... but their pack-leader didn't seem as afraid. He had a second set of horns, was bigger, stronger... and as he pointed at Praxius, shrieking, his wounded companion was hurled at him like a projectile; killing the injured and sending the leader slamming into the snow, as the devil continued his dance; here, a chain wrapped around a leg, shattering it.

There, a flail slammed into a chitinous torso, crunching through the shell and sending blue blood flying into the air as it ruined organs; and gave a solid grip for the chain to wrap around, flipping the beast and sending it flying into one of its companions.

Soon there were a dozen crippled, maimed ice-demons; chains wrapped around them pressing limbs against torsos, spines cracked, heads crushed, wailing and shrieking in pain; as the leader of the pack recovered, charging back forth... and just as a massive clawed limb swept towards the chain-devil, another ray of orange smacked into it; and it shrieked in pain, facing the portal, shoving its arm into the snow to put out the burning... and leaving itself open as the spiked ball hurled into its open mouth, and several feet down its throat; before being yanked back out, shredding the creature. As Praxius looked around, he realized... that was it for the moment. He could hear more screams out there, more angry demons... but all the ones here at the portal were dead, or crippled, helpless.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Those rays of orange were spearing through now... hitting the cripples, setting them ablaze. It warmed up the surroundings as they wailed and thrashed, trying to put themselves out, but unable to move much.

He should tell Terra to stop. That they were helpless, and the noise of them dying in the fire would only attract more. But... thats what he wanted. He couldn't quite bring himself to give the order.

He licked his shoulder, tasting some of the bluish blood. It must have come from the leader; it tasted of dominance, of fury. Felt like something that was used to being obeyed.

***

Marie hadn't been completely certain about this assignment, at first; but she'd grown to like it more and more over the course of the first day, as she met her liege, her companions, the fairly boring butler, and... her grandfather. The devil had been, rather than some sort of old red-horned monster, a startlingly handsome sort of brute that didn't seem old at all; almost human if one ignored the skin tone; and she'd been considering just how propositioning her new liege's grandfather would impact her job prospects when the chaos had started that night.

Now... she wasn't sure it mattered. On the other side of that portal, a monster in humanoid form was tearing through much larger, hideous-looking monsters with reckless abandon, and enjoying every moment of it. She was supposed to be watching for opportunities to put an arrow in something, but kept catching herself watching him at work instead. By the end of the first hour, as dead ice-demons had piled up around the portal, she'd only had a few chances to spear an ice-demon with an arrow... but had already very firmly decided that, if her sister didn't get to him first, she was going to make a play for the devil. When a lucky claw strike buried itself in his torso, and he'd simply broken the offending limb off and dropped his flail long enough to shove the offending digits down their owner's throat....

She wasn't the greatest of spellcasters, but she knew magic when she saw it. That was... amazing.

Then... things started to get worse. She had to focus. There was a much larger ice-demon; towering over the devil as he wrapped it in chains, dodging its blows and beating on it... and she had to watch out for the smaller ones. She kept the left side, letting Serra take the right; smaller ones, trying to help their master, or reach the portal, would receive bolts of fire. Marie was proud of that one shot she made that took one in its bulbous eye, though more often she ended up merely burying it in the creature's hide... and soon enough, she was out of arrows.

She glanced at her sister's quiver for a moment. Serra only had a few left herself. In very short order, they were going to be just about useless in this fight; Marie herself would be able to at least use some lesser magic; she had a sort of natural whip spell, she could use local natural elements, usually vines and branches, to strike down enemies. But it was much more of a close-range thing. But... she also knew a second-circle spell that would let her reshape a giant mass of wood. Normally useful for building carefully hidden hideouts for rangers by taking advantage of dead trees in existing forests. But. If you had a giant pile of burning wood, and needed to protect a gateway for a while...

"Serra! I'm going to get a spell started up, I need you to take out that pine right there!"

Her sister glanced at her, then at the tree; already partially cut, with a chain set in place by the devil earlier to make moving it easier. "...You sure? It might hit the kid?"

"I'll handle that! I can't move it around too much; the new shape I make needs to at least partially be where the existing one is... so we need it to fall through the portal on its own."

Serra looked at the tree, and the portal... and put her bow away, as their lady looked at them oddly before going back to tossing rays of burning magic through the portal. The setup was clear, easy; and as Marie conjured up a magical whip of vines, a few solid blows from the hatched sent the mighty tree tumbling... and with a deft shift, it was guided... slamming into the fire, through the portal... and almost missing the boy as it slammed on top of a pile of demon corpses on the other side. Unfortunately, an errant branch caught him.

The devil looked back at them in confusion at the sudden appearance of a pine tree on his side of the portal... before going back to finishing off the giant ice-demon, which by now was laying limp on the snow. When, a few seconds later, the tree started to visibly warp.... he gave a low chuckle.

One moment, it was a tree. The next... it began to twist into a wooden barricade, spikes projecting out of it, forming a half-circle around and reaching the portal. Marie could see the devil look at the barricade, the boy, and then at Marie; giving a quick nod, before going back to work on his end. Serra glanced at her, then back at the portal. "....Well. That's useful. Hopefully..." She stopped. Out there, in the woods... she could hear something.

Suddenly, there was a loud, wet sound, the familiar sort of crack of a bolt piercing flesh she normally only heard on the hunt... and Marie glanced at the source... there was... a spider? Some sort of horrible giant spider with a crossbow bolt through its body, still moving towards them. Hell. Were there more? Were they going to have to defend both sides of the portal?

As Serra put one of her own arrows into the thing, Marie heard more of that noise; the butler, Parkins, was firing the crossbow bolts from that clockwork bow into something else she had yet to spot. Shit. This... was bad. Were those demon-spiders? Did they sense the portal and come investigate?

Either way.... Marie stretched for a moment, and just dropped her bow to the dirt, sliding free her blades. Time to get to work. If her lady was going to be helping fight whatever else was on the other side of the portal, she and Serra could handle whatever attacked this side.

With a nod at her sister, who dropped the hatchet to draw her own blades, the two started charging forward; heading towards the single dead spider; and however many others the butler had spotted while they were distracted.

Hopefully, there weren't too many; but still. They'd wanted a challenge, a chance to make a name for themselves and, well. Meet new people. Sometimes that involved a little stabbing.