All at once, everyone leapt up, the vigor of Trenton’s word filling them with the energy to resist the overwhelming force of the demon’s presence, gasping for breaths they’d been, just moment’s prior, denied. The only ones who hadn’t been affected were Karfice and Trenton, meaning they were the only two who had any chance of getting them out of there. Trenton picked up Blithe’s reins, commanding him forward with all the urgency he could summon, which Blithe seemed to understand perfectly well all things considered. Like a wounded animal backed into a corner, Blithe burst forward, bounding across the snow faster than they’d ever moved before, Karfice standing at the tail end to watch the madness unfold behind them.
“They’re getting closer! We need to take refuge in the mountains! There should be a cave we can hide in pretty close to here!” Karfice shouted, turning around to meet eyes with Trenton.
“If we hide too close, we’ll just be caught up in the fight!” Trenton shouted back.
“No, you don’t understand! The demon isn’t after Falfiar! It’s after us!” Karfice swiveled his head back to look behind them. “SHIT! RIGHT!”
Trenton yanked the reins right, barely pulling them out of the way as a line of crimson energy unlike anything Trenton had ever seen exploded from the ground they were just standing on, the energy collecting and growing the further it went. It crashed into the mountain just ahead of them, flashing brilliantly as the mountain face sundered into a spray of boulders, each one as big as Rema’s tower.
“We can’t go that way! Bank right!” Karfice shouted, throwing his arms wide to create vast sheets of ice behind them to slow the encroaching danger.
Trenton veered suddenly right, starting up the slopes of the mountains to their right as the boulders crashed into the ground behind him, the wild spread of cracks breaking the ground into waves of shifting cliffs which crashed into each other, carrying them into oblivion as if they were no more than ants caught in a hurricane. Blithe leapt from one path to the next, expertly dancing across the churning earth below them, the sound of fighting fading slowly behind them the further they went.
“How does it look!” Trenton shouted back.
“It looks like they’re holding it off, but I have no idea what the hell it’s even doing!” Garrote shouted, crouching down next to Karfice.
Trenton glanced behind for just a moment, peering over the mess of stone to see for himself exactly what was happening. They had managed to get pretty far up, their steady trajectory carrying them deep into the mountains, so he had a good overhead view of the battle. The only problem was they were so far from the battle that he couldn’t see Walibeld or Falifar. All he could see was the demon, which had ballooned to multiple times its original size, the tortured souls within its flesh pushing further and further out, its entire body wreathed in red blobs of energy. Was it charging something? Trenton didn’t have time to figure out, a rumbling all around them drawing his attention away from the disaster behind them. Great, another problem.
“Something’s approaching!” Trenton shouted back to Karfice.
From adjacent mountains, cliffs, and crags, hundreds of blue cloaked, yellow eyed, humanoid creatures approached, their exact size and shape varying wildly from one to the next, some easily a hundred feet or taller. The only consistency was that each one was carrying a club of pure ice, a light fog surrounding their body.
“What the hell are those!?” Kiva shouted, her head swiveling wildly from side to side.
“Omel! We must’ve stepped onto their territory! I’ll keep them distracted! Find a cave further in the mountains!” Karfice shouted, leaping off of Blithe without another word.
All around them, presumably Karfice’s magic taking hold, massive walls of ice stretched high into the sky, blocking off and trapping the Omel, buying Trenton a precious moment to catch his breath and steady his mind, before the larger Omel raised their clubs above their heads, smashing through Karfice’s ice with their own. Trenton had been under the impression that monsters didn’t have magic, but it seemed like these one’s did, and they were without the fire to combat them with Leo out of commission. It was an impossible situation all around, things only getting worse by the second. With the wall out of the way, the little omel continued barreling forward, curving around behind Blithe and using their ice to boost themselves forward.
“Watch out, he’s retaliating!” Kiva shouted, pointing and the ground off in the distance.
massive sheets of ice and snow barreled towards them from every direction, bursting from the ground without warning, the culmination of Karfice’s and the omel’s magic clashing. The avalanches swallowed stray omel whole as Blithe leapt into the air, easily clearing a 40 foot jump over the rolling tide of snow, miraculously keeping his footing atop the stray pillars of ice poking out of the ground. Yet, even with the chaos surrounding them, the smaller omel seemed determined to reach them, summoning arching paths of ice underneath themselves to leap onto Blithe’s back.
Garrote pushed what few he could back towards the ground, killing them by way of burial beneath the snow, Kiva piercing several with branches of sharpened bark, the both of them managing to hold off just enough to allow Trenton to continue steering them forward. They just needed to get a little further forward, out of the range of Karfice and the giants. But just when it looked like there was actually hope, it was quickly snuffed, a colossal wall of ice rising in front of them wide enough and sheer enough to be completely impassible. One of the giant omel had broken free of Karfice and now stood before them, ready to kill.
“Can you raise us!?” Trenton shouted back at Garrote.
“Not quickly enough! We’d be swatted out of the sky before we even got close!” Garrote shouted back, pulling a little omel off of the side of his face and crushing it.
Trenton looked to their sides, searching for any possible path they could take to keep them moving. Even if it wasn’t out of danger, they just had to keep moving. The ice below them was holding them well enough, but pillars rose and fell within seconds, the snows churning snapping them into little slivers. If they weren't able to keep moving, the ground would give out below them and they’d be subject to the mass of snow and ice below them, certain death, no question. Yet, those pillars of safety too were disappearing, growing thinner and thinner the further forward they went.
“Just jump! I’ll at least try!” Garrote said, focusing all of his strength and focus beneath them.
He had to have faith in Blithe, Garrote, and himself, to ensure no one dies regardless of how far fetched the idea was. Trenton commanded Blithe to leap forward into the open sea, his willingness to obey surprising Trenton, the great well of snow below them threatening to consume them whole. Then, just as Garrote’s magic took effect, and they started to lift into the sky, a flat pillar of ice dozens of feet wide slammed into them from behind, pushing them up over the head of the omel as it’s club slammed into the ground, their little group just barely scraping by the side of the monumental weapon. They even cleared the still rising wall from the one great burst of speed, sending them tumbling widely through the bitter, stinging air, no obstacles left to stop them. All they had to do now was to not fall to their death, easier said than done. Trenton managed to hold onto Blithe by the reins, clutching Millie’s shivering body close to chest, but Garrote, Kiva, and Leo were sent flying out in every direction, no supports able to hold them in place.
“GARROTE!” Trenton cried out as they began to curve towards the ground some hundred feet below.
“I’M TRYING!” Garrote cried, scraping himself, Leo, and Kiva into one mass, which he slammed down into Blithe’s back, pushing them down so as to keep up with Blithe’s accelerated falling speed. The ground approached ever closer, Garrote still struggling to collect enough magic. Garrote twisted his body towards the sky, throwing his one arm up with everything he had, slowing their descent little by little, but it wasn’t fast enough. They were still going to hit the ground with enough force to turn them into a fine paste.
“IT’S NOT WORKING! YOU NEED MORE LAD!” Raligoth shouted out from Trenton’s waist.
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“I CAN’T! I NEED MORE TIME! MORE SPACE!” Garrote cried back, his magic only barely picking up.
It was madness, he knew it, but Garrote’s words suddenly gave Trenton an idea, a really stupid idea. It had absolutely no right to work, and he would probably kill himself in the process, but it was better than just waiting to die on their own. Using his right arm, Trenton wrapped Millie in the reins, tying her tightly into its weave so as to secure her without his help. When he was confident she was completely secured, Trenton pulled himself underneath Blithe’s rapidly turning form, using Blithe’s belly as a springboard to launch at the ground. It was a combination of the move he used to finish off the blood crazed man and the one he used to get Leo and himself out of the hoard of crawlers, using his body mass combined with gravity to cast magic far beyond his typical means.
Trenton spun wildly through the air, the unsure footing of his launching point spilling over to his tumble, but it would work. He could control it just enough by twisting this way and that to make sure he landed exactly how he needed to, much like what he did to the adiathan back on the Liafer. In many ways, this one move was the culmination of all of Trenton’s experience. Trenton summoned his stone hammer to his hands, turning around in just the right way to slam it into the ground with as much force as he could, commanding the stone underneath Blithe to split open as far down as possible.
But of course, Trenton’s body didn’t stop moving when he hit the ground with his hammer. Trenton hit the ground like a rocket, his body flattening like a pancake and his blood spraying out in every direction. His vision faded and blinked, his mind no longer all there as he lay bleeding, the pain washing over him in unbearable waves. He wasn’t dead, but he was bordering it, fading in and out of consciousness, nothing to help ground him in reality save for his own faltering mind.
The ground to Trenton’s side creaked to life, a massive fault line slowly growing, the ground splitting into two massive hunks of stone which pulled apart just as Blithe would’ve hit the ground. It wasn’t much, only another 50 feet or so of free falling, but it gave Garrote just the few extra seconds Garrote needed to make their fall dangerous instead of lethal. They still hit the ground hard, each of them suffering dozens of grievous injuries on contact, internal bleeding, external bleeding, broken bones, ruptured organs, but they were alive, and thankful at that. Slowly, ever so slowly, as Trenton bled on the ground, Garrote pulled everyone out of the pit, using his magic to keep himself moving, even despite the injury.
“You’re insane,” Garrote heaved as he pulled Leo’s body from the hole. Thankfully, Walibeld’s magic seemed to have protected him from the worst of the fall, the charm ensuring his physical state changed in absolutely no facet.
“It…worked…didn’t it?” Trenton managed, coughing up blood as he talked, the pain almost overwhelming.
“Enough…good quick thinking. There’s a cave just up ahead we can rest in. Try not to die along the way,” Garrote said, picking up everyone with his gravity, slowly trudging them forward towards a little opening surprisingly close to a mountain peak. There was no telling how big it would be, how spacious. The mountain curved off only 100 or so feet above the entrance to their hiding hole. They must’ve been pretty far up in the mountains, much further than Trenton had realized, for a peak to be so defined.
One by one, Garrote pushed them through the small opening, leaving Blithe outside since he couldn’t fit. Thankfully, he seemed to have no issue with the cold, so he would be fine out in the open elements, his usual blithesome self completely unbothered by any of the events befalling them.
The cave was surprisingly spacious, a nearly perfect ring of stone surrounding the edge with a nice ceiling overhead. It wasn’t massive by any means, maybe only 50 feet across and 20 feet high, but it was more than enough to protect them, hide them. Trenton laid against the wall next to the door, holding Kiva and Millie close to himself, Garrote looking after Leo.
“It looks artificial, almost manmade,” Garrote said, throwing out a handful of magical lights to decorate the space.
“Does it?” Raligoth called out from Trenton’s belt. It looked like he was still perfectly healthy, Trenton’s fall not affecting him in the slightest, thankfully.
“Yeah, some geomancer probably made it to take shelter when passing through. Geomancy can’t be undone easily, so they typically just leave the effects of their magic behind without bothering to cover it up,” Trenton said.
“Just like you did with that hole you made in the ground,” Garrote said.
“Exactly. It would’ve taken me a ton of energy to seal it back up the way it was. If I needed to cover our tracks I would’ve, but tracking us through the mountains should be practically impossible. Even with Blithe outside, I think we’ll be alright. It’s not like-” Trenton said, stopping his joke about salamanders before he fully got it out. He looked down at Millie’s cowering form against his chest, considering her lingering pain. He really needed to talk to her. Tonight, he’d talk to her that night after everyone else had gone to bed. He owed it to her, if nothing else.
“Well, so long as we keep a little profile for a bit, we should be fine,” Garrote said, sitting down by Trenton. “And now that we’ve got a second, could you explain any of what just happ-”
At the other end of the cave, just like when they were in the valley, the ground split open, stopping Garrote dead in his tracks as the ground collapsed in itself to form a glowing red pit. From it, three demons emerged, each one an ashy skinned humanoid with a twist. The first was a grotesquely fat mound of flesh, its stubby limbs somehow managing to carry its body with incredibly deftness; the second was a harpy looking creature, who flew up into the air, hanging just below the ceiling; and finally, the final demon, a white skinned humanoid with twisted black horns and eyes of the deepest black. Despite having no presence, something Trenton specifically remembered being told, the demons had a strange aura about them, nothing magical, but just as intimidating–terrifying. How? How had they found them again so quickly? And what did the hells want with them anyways? What had they done to anger so many demons at once?
“Is this it, Ragel?” The harpy called out, her voice like a handful of nails being shaken around a bucket. “These are the targets?”
“Yes, and you won’t complain. The reality shaper and the wanderer are already dealt with, even the ice boy is already gone. We’re just cleanup, quick, clean, efficient,” the horned demon said, crouching down and tapping the ground with his index finger, the ground behind them reassembling.
“But I kinda want to toy with them, savor the moment,” the harpy said, flying over to hover just in front of Trenton’s face. “There’s just something so palpable about-”
Trenton slammed his broken arm into her form like a whip with no warning, splattering her body against the far wall, her crumpled corpse sliding down limply. Even injured, Trenton was a threat. Taunting him was foolish. But just as he was considering his next action, the harpy’s corpse rose again, stiffening to an upright position. New, fresh skin layered over her wounded form, her limbs snapping back into place, her eyes full of fury. Trenton’s attack hadn’t even harmed her in the slightest.
“See, now I really want to take my time with it, make them bleed a little!” The harpy cried, taking to the air once more.
“We don’t have time for this. You deserved that, anyways. You shouldn’t have been so cocky,” the horned demon said, shaking his head and starting towards them.
“You need to run, all of you,” Raligoth whispered to Trenton, his voice urgent. “The only way to kill a demon is by destroying their core, but these 3 are easily upper class, demons most any warrior in their right mind would fear. You wouldn't stand a chance in a confrontation, even if you were in top form.”
Trenton looked over at Garrote as they both stumbled to their feet, imposing themselves between the demons and their wounded friends. They had no chance of fighting, but neither did they have a chance of running. Even if they got out of the cave, none of them were fit enough to move with any urgency, especially not when pursued by demons incapable of sustaining physical harm. Yet, if they sat there and did nothing, they would die just as surely. It wasn’t much but it was their best bet. At the slightest nod of his head, Trenton and Garrote grabbed Kiva, Millie, and Leo, diving for the entrance like their life depended on it. But just as they moved, the fat demon slammed its foot into the ground, a thick wall of bone spikes shooting up from the floor to block the door. It looked like running wasn’t an option either.
“Can you break through the wall?” Garrote muttered, looking over at Trenton.
“No, I haven't the strength,” Trenton said, shaking his head.
With an understanding look shared between them, and a moment of silence, they turned around to face the demon. If they couldn’t run, then they’d fight, no matter how poor the odds. That was their duty, both to themselves and to their companions. But just as they started forward to meet the demon, risking life and limb when all else failed, the ground slightly shook, a small tremor that everyone could feel. Then, after a slight pause, it shook again, more violent this time. Again and again the ground shook, the tremors getting worse and worse with every succession, until they could no longer stay on their feet, the wild shaking throwing even the demons to the ground. Something heavy was approaching unbelievably fast.
“What the hell is that!? You said there weren't any others! Don’t tell me they got past Visiel!” The horned demon yelled, struggling to rise to his feet.
“No! They’re still fighting! This is something else!” The harpy cried, her flailing wings just barely keeping her in the sky.
With a resounding boom, one final quake shook the mountains, Trenton’s teeth involuntarily clattering violently enough to crack from the incessant shaking. Slowly, the shaking calmed to nothing, each of them staggering to their feet, the silence practically deafening. Even with no more quakes, it was difficult to stand, the whole world still tilting and listing wildly.
“Is it-” the harpy started to say.
A loud crack, the breaking of stone, rang out, its source unidentifiable to everyone but Trenton, who could physically feel the stone breaking as if it were his own body being torn apart. Around the top of the cave, a single crack slowly spread out, cleaving the top from the base, effectively pulling the roof of the cave from the rest of itself, with just a thin line of daylight shining through. Then, when sunlight shone all around them, when the roof was no longer attached to the cave, it rose, the mountaintop suddenly pried up by some ungodly force. And there, helmet peering into their little cave through his handmade opening, a giant looking into a dollhouse, was a very familiar man in full bull regalia, one Trenton had seen dozens, if not hundreds of times throughout his life in painted form; king of Verulik; champion of the modern age; the strongest man in existence–the Conqueror.