Danny locked eyes with Smith.

Smith matched his gaze with cold eyes.

The scarred man offered the hulking youth his sidearm. Danny shook his head. He had no idea how to use a gun. Smith snorted and readied his rifle. “I’ll aim for anyone at range, guns or magic. Handle anyone who gets close. Ready?”

Smith didn’t wait for Danny to respond. He barked out a short chant and the flame walls suddenly burst with motion, flying away from them. There were screams as the fire came into contact with bodies. Smith responded quickly, taking shots at anyone he identified as carrying a firearm. A horde of people were charging toward the duo. The street being packed with cars, and Smith’s car blocking the middle of the road worked in their favour here. The horde couldn’t surround them, a small mercy.

The horde all had the same fanatical look that the last group of demonic worshipping youths had when they were commanded by the sultry voice back at the abandoned winery. Danny didn’t have time to contemplate what it meant. The first of the many zealots was in front of him. Danny kicked the man hard, hearing bone break as he was spent flying into the charging group.

Ideally, Danny would have charged as well, but he had a role to fulfil. He was defending Smith. Charging into the group as they were distracted by their peer would have been smart, but it also would have meant leaving Smith open to the group coming from the other direction. So, Danny pulled back and got ready for the next zealot to get too close.

A middle-aged woman shrieked as she charged at him, brandishing a kitchen knife. Danny stepped forward and kicked her chest before she had any open of getting close enough to stab him. The woman flew back, hitting the other zealots coming from that side.

The two groups didn’t care for their fallen peers, once they recovered from the impact they continued their frenzied movement toward him. Danny’s body felt off, but still far stronger than any human had a right to be. As he threw the next punch he was made distinctly aware of how linked his body and mana pool were. The curse was attacking his mana, but his entire body felt it. It was like having a fever that weakened his body.

Unfortunately for the cultists, a weaker Danny was still stronger than a normal human. Not that a normal human had the decade of fighting experience that Danny did. He cleaved through each zealot that got too close. A single kick or punch was more than enough to make a cultist stop moving. Danny had to mute his senses as much as he could to keep going. The sounds of bones breaking under his strikes, the feeling of flesh and bone giving way were disgusting, it made him feel sick. He couldn’t stop though, so he tried his best to ignore the sounds and sensations.

Men and women, old and young, they charged toward him, eventually running out of makeshift weapons and just coming at him barehanded. Danny was covered in cuts and scrapes, but nothing significant, the cultists weren’t aiming for his vitals.

“-SKALA!”

“Huh?” Danny snapped out of the trance he had fallen into.

“Fucking wake up! Go stop that fucker!” Smith screamed.

Danny saw where the Smith’s rifle was pointed. There was a chanting figure surrounded by a hazy red curtain. Smith was shooting at it, but the bullets had no effect. Smith chanted and a fireball crashed into the curtain, but it only made it shake.

“He’s summoning something! Stop him!” Smith sounded desperate.

There were still zealots mobbing toward the duo, but Danny now charged toward them. They met him with an inhuman fervor but before they could collide Danny jumped, climbing over one of the cars that had formed the makeshift blockade.

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Danny wasn’t entirely sure what was happening but he knew he needed to stop the man chanting. Smith stopped shooting the curtain, now having to focus on the cultists close to him. Danny couldn’t turn back to help, Smith’s desperation made it clear that the chanting had to be stopped. Danny was quickly closing in on the figure until he heard chanting from a different direction. On instinct, he turned to look at the source.

An old man was glaring at him, malice in his eyes. “May the fires of hell smite this heathen!”

A fireball materialised in front of the man, heading straight for Danny. Danny tried to summon a mana shield, but instead only made himself feel nauseous as his man writhed. His wasted efforted removed any time he had to try and dodge, and he could only watch in dismay as the burning ball thundered threw the air and straight into him.

Danny was knocked clean off his feet. His head bounced off the lawn he had been charging across, making everything go black for a split second. He felt bodies and limbs crash down upon him. He felt his skin burning, he could smell cooked meat. He could feel bile rising in his throat. Most of all, one sense rose above the others. His hearing.

Danny heard the figure he was now close to finishing their chant.

“Accept our humble sacrifice and pave the way for a vassal of our Highness, the Old Hag, to enter our lacking realm!”

The world seemed to stop for a moment. From the floor, between the limbs of the cultists who had piled onto him, Danny could see the results of the chant. A disgusting crack formed in the air. The mere sight of the crack made Danny’s skin crawl like he was witnessing something so unnatural that his body had no choice but to feel revolted.

A dark claw emerged from the crack, grabbing the edge of it and pulling the rest of the creature through. A humanoid abomination stepped a clawed foot onto the law, the grass singing beneath it. The creature, no, demon, was a fleshy red colour, with odd growths and exposed muscles making up its body. It almost resembled a human, with two arms and legs, a torso and a head, but that's where the similarities ended.

The demon’s limbs ended in horrific claws, built expressly for slaughter. Its head had two eyes, but they were entirely black. Its mouth was a twisted collage of sharp teeth that surely were only useful for hurting, not eating. The demon stood hunched, taking in the world around it. Its foul head turned and its black eyes landed on Danny, trapped beneath a growing pile of writhing human bodies.

The demon snarled, or grinned, perhaps an unholy combination of the two, and began to prowl toward him. A spear of fire hurtled through the air and smashed into the demon, sending it stumbling. Smith chanted again, another spear flying toward the creature.

Danny focused on his own situation. His mana had mostly won out over the curse, sending it packing. He was worried that if he tried to use his mana again he’d give the curse room to spread its demonic tendrils again, so spell casting was off the table for a while longer. His body felt less weakened than before and he put it to use.

With a mighty roar Danny pushed himself off the ground, carrying the weight of the numerous cultists on top of him. Like a desperate rugby player attempting to charge through the defensive line, Danny got himself up and began moving. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but everything in his body screamed that he had to kill the demon. It was an existential pressure, like the very world itself was compelling him to slay the foul abomination.

Danny managed to cast aside the cultists weighing him down and began a full-fledged charge toward the demon. It was distracted by continuous flaming spears cast by Smith and noticed too late as Danny charged in and tackled it. Danny was relying on hopes and dreams in his takedown attempt. It looked like the demon had a similar pelvic structure as a human, so Danny went for a classic double-leg takedown, scooping its fleshy legs up and using his head to push its torso in the opposite direction.

Thankfully, it worked. In response to his efforts, the demon swiped a claw at him, dragging its bladed digits across his chest as it fell. Danny screamed in pain, his already exposed and burned flesh being torn apart. Instead of pulling away like his chimp-brained instincts were begging him to, Danny got closer. His years of experience grappling telling him that he needed to remove as much space between himself and the disgusting creature as possible, lest its claws could slash him again.

So, Danny got closer, trying to isolate the demon's arms so they couldn’t slash him. Unfortunately for Danny, the demon wasn’t a human, and it certainly wasn’t going to play by MMA rules. Its maw of sharp teeth tore into his back and he was wrestling with it. The pain of the numerous teeth ripping into him almost made him black out.

Danny very suddenly realised that he had put himself in a close-quarters situation with a creature made with claws and sharp teeth. A creature that was more than willing to use them.