Wali called out to the herald, and the creature surfaced a hundred meters offshore. The ring of eyes and tentacle-filled maw floated above the waves.
They could all see the black streaks in the demon’s tentacles that had not been there before. No one could tell if they were the result of Gale or the contaminated water. The creature waited there in the waters.
Wali called to it, “I offer you a choice. Live forever in this lifeless cesspool or be killed quickly.”
The tentacles waved around in the air then a voice hit all of their minds—a fog horn from the depths. “I CANNOT DIE. YOU WILL NOT KILL ME.”
“You will rot here then,” Wali said as he turned around on the rock. He waved to Sas’cha to start climbing.
Wali sensed the monster turn and speed toward him. He shouted to Sas’cha, “Go fast!”
She began climbing up the knotted rope quickly. Wali turned back, readying the spear for a fight he could not win.
“YOU WILL DIE WITH ME THEN, MORTAL!” The mental voice was overpowering. Sas’cha slipped and dropped from the rope as it hit her. One of the four massive squid tentacles lashed out at Wali.
He dodged to the side and slashed with Gale. Lightning lanced out of the spear, and Wali dodged. The tentacle recoiled, but another followed it. The tentacle smashed into the rock shelf they stood on, cracking it. Sas’cha leaped to the side and caught herself on another rocky outcropping. She jumped away from the wall and shifted into a big cat.
Spells, arrows, and stones started to fall from above onto the huge shell of Jemna. Sas’cha caught a tentacle as it whipped toward her. Her claws dug massive grooves into the flesh of the demon. Blue-green ichor splattered, and the psychic scream of pain stunned everyone for a moment.
Wali hardened his mind with magic and dodged another slamming tentacle. Sas’cha continued to savage the one she had caught while another wrapped around her in a crushing grip. Wali took a chance and flickered out over the maw of the beast. When he fell, he looked down into a twisting circular mouth. Rows and rows of shark teeth gnashed below him. Wallace thought of the Sarlac Pit for a moment. He spun the spearhead down, and a twisted bolt of lightning lanced downward into the maw. He flickered away as Gale the Storm Elemental penetrated the open maw.
The howling shriek of pain brought the men on the cliff to their knees. Blood poured from their noses and ears. Wali felt his mental fortress crack under the assault. He flicked backward, and a huge crocodilian beast splashed into the water. Neferu went to work instantly. Swimming around and clamping onto the tentacle crushing Sas’cha and crushing it in turn.
Smoke began to rise from inside the herald. An arrow flashed down from Vinny as he staggered to his feet, bursting one of the many eyes. Yacob lay unconscious, the psychic blast too powerful for him. Reiki knelt among the team above, healing them and trying to bolster their mental defenses.
Sas’cha continued to shred the one tentacle, coming close to severing it. Jemna began to retreat then. Trying to sink and pull away. Neferu fought it with all her might. The massive croc firmly attached to one of the main four tentacles. Wali threw out his hands again, Tag screeched up into the sky, and Noodle splashed into the foul water.
He felt the totems sicken as they fought in the sludge of decay. Tag began to dive-bomb the eyes and avoid the anemone tentacles thrashing around them. Noodle swam out to the monster and bit the colossal beast in an eye, filling it with destructive poison.
Jemna slammed a tentacle down on Noodle, and the other tried to ward off Tag. Noodle was hurt but smashing a bendy thing in the water was not the most effective attack.
Wali flickered out over the maw once again. This time he dumped a payload of mixed poisons and potions down the mouth. Vinny had told him that he wasn’t sure what would happen when they mixed, but it would be interesting. The body of Jemna was shuddering, an empowered Gale running free inside the monster. Wali flickered and was back on his original rock ledge.
The ledge crumbed, and he was forced to flicker away again.
Inside the demon, an alchemical nightmare was forming. Acid, poison, empowerment potions, magical solvents and glues, and some potent alcohols mixed inside the gullet. Heated by electricity and soaked in demon-fueled mana, the mixture began to bubble and heat up. In a moment, a deep red foam began to push its way out of the monster’s maw. The foam hardened as it hit open air, becoming a solid magical resin glass.
The tentacles tried to pull away from Sas’cha and Neferu. Sas’ha had two claws attached to the clifface and the others gripping a tentacle she had bitten into. Neferu clung to an ichor-spewing tentacle and pulled against the monster. The other two long tentacles tried desperately to remove the resin stuff. It was glued tight to shark teeth and as smooth and hard as glass. Jemna’s anemone tentacles waved wildly as Gale pulsed through the demon’s body.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Wali took a calming breath and affixed the water walking spell to be sure.
He flickered over to the demon, and as he drew the dagger of binding, he was unceremoniously swatted away. He felt ribs break as the wind was driven from him, and he skidded across the surface of the waves like a skipping stone.
More arrows flew down from the cliffside apartment—each finding an eye to burst or pin an anemone tentacle back. Yacob groggily staggered to his feet and saw his friend go skipping across the water. He reached into the wall and drew out a massive spike of stone. He shifted into his stony flesh and leaped out. His arc carried him down toward Jemna, who swatted him away like a bug too. He flew back and smashed into the cliff wall. He bounced and fell into neck-deep sludge.
Jemna was growing more desperate and endangered as moments ticked by. The group above was doing little to help in the fight. One raised a platform of ice under Yacob, lifting him from the disgusting soup. Another threw down lances of fire, but they had little effect. Other than Vinny, the archers were largely ineffective. Their arrows struck but were little more than slivers to the great beast.
Reiki could not directly interfere, but her support kept the men fighting. Wali staggered back to the fight, timing his attack with strikes from Tag and Noodle. Luckily, he had kept the binding dagger and Gale’s spear in hand. He slammed the binding dagger into the flesh between two burst eyes and felt the magic take hold.
Instantly Jemna froze in place. “WHAT IS THIS!?” It shrieked.
Wali just pushed the dagger deeper into the body of the monster. He shouted, “Give it everything you have!”
Sas’cha ripped the tentacle free and leaped onto the main body of the demon. Neferu rolled and pulled the main body closer to shore as Jemna ceased fighting to move away. Tag latched onto one of the remaining long tentacles and began to savage it with razor-sharp talons and beak. Noodle bit and held on, emptying his poison sacks. Yacob swiped, and a bridge of stone spread from the wall. He ran forward and sprayed flames across the side of Jemna.
The demon shuddered, and its skin began to crack and peel. Black smoke began to rise, but it swirled and was pulled into the dagger in Wali’s hand.
Wali pushed forward, still holding the blade inside the monster’s body. He buried a scream of pain as he tried to breathe slowly. More than a few broken ribs, his head rang. Concussion, he thought, tasting the blood running from his battered face.
The waters began to boil as smoke rose and was pulled into the dagger. In moments the demonic herald Jemna was sucked away into the blade in Wali’s grip. It pulsed with dark power, throbbing like a beating heart. Wali almost dropped it when he felt the thing move.
A cheer from above, and Wali released all of his totems. His soul ached from the mana expenditures of the past few days. He was a disgusting mess and exhausted. Yacob and Sas’cha both hugged him tightly. He screamed in pain and moaned after the hug was hurriedly released. He felt the world go wobbly, and his consciousness faded away.
The team above extracted the trio down below. They were washed and carried out back to the seawall. Reiki broke the magical link between the boiling and icing stones. The need to keep the dam intact was gone. She collected the pulsating dagger from Wali’s unconscious iron grip and stowed it away.
Vinny healed the direst injuries in Wali first. Broken ribs, fractured pelvis, concussion, and several internal injuries. Wali had been fighting on pure adrenaline after being struck once by the herald. Sas’cha was in almost as bad a shape. She shifted back to catkin form, vomited blood, and passed out on the floor. Vinny stabilized her and fixed up Yacob’s injuries.
Then they waited.
During the downtime, while Wali and Sas’cha rested and healed, Yacob and Reiki broke down the wall of the icy dam. They carved a trench along the top to allow water to flow over the top. As water poured into the half-empty toxic bay, it carved the channel deeper. It also exposed a crushed mess of frozen sea creatures and added to the bay’s mess. One of the mages worked with Yacob and broke off the spikes and blades of stone. Time and the rushing ocean would break down the icy dam swiftly.
Wali spent much of the time in meditation. He pulled mana from the nexus below the old obelisk and slowly refilled his reserves. He dared not rush things. He had ripped mana from his body at the end. He was sore and did not want to damage himself.
He thought about the cost of the victory. The Guilfort team had seen the destruction caused by Jemna and did not blame Wali for losing their city. He felt guilty about it, in any case. They had come to prevent Rags from freeing Jemna. In the end, Wali’s actions released the herald. This cost the city of Guilfort everything. He did not know how many lives had been lost, but countless livelihoods and homes. The town was the floating flotsam swimming in a soup of rotting sea life. The cost was great, but how could they sustain this sort of fight against twenty-some more heralds and nine Demon Lords who were even more powerful?
They had gotten lucky here in some ways. If Jemna had escaped to the ocean, there would have never been an end to the battles with the demon fish. Now Rags was still on the loose somewhere. Rags would be a threat unless they trapped him in one of the binding daggers. That, too, was Wali’s fault. They could have gotten Rags and kept Jemna in the toxic soup for a long time. Time enough to get another dagger or find a way to defeat the monster without using a dagger. All of the heralds could reform if killed; some like Rags, had ways of making that far faster than the others. He could be trapped in other ways, as he had been near the elven city. Trapped underground in a troll breeding pit for eternity. It was all that Rags deserved.
***
A pillar crumbled a little on another continent, shards of stone cracking away. A tiny little naked demon, no larger than a toddler, danced around it. His chicken feet make strange marks in the sand.