Chapter 15 – The drawbacks of teleportation I

Areti's POV

I quickly ran into a house and hid myself in there, so as to avoid the oncoming fight. A servant with a knife in his hand saw me, first wondering which side I might belong to but ultimately deciding that it was better to act and ask questions later. Though still young, I already underwent training from the age of 7, befitting someone of higher birth, such as me.

As I killed him, I remembered my family's secret credo. 'First the Sa 'Wa, then the empire, and then everybody else.' Though of course these words were to never be uttered outside of our house, otherwise we would get serious trouble.

[Well, I am in trouble.]

Killing other demons wasn't that much of a problem. Engaging in personal feuds or even as much as going into open battle against other houses wasn't that uncommon in the empire. Such a behaviour was encouraged to a certain degree, enabling new houses to rise to power and ensuring the influx of new noble blood that way. My father once told me that we can only bow down to the emperor and accept his absolute existence as the reason to the prosperity of the empire, because in the end we all knew that in times of danger we would have to stand up again and fend for ourselves without his help. He would only move for the benefit of the empire, while we had to take care of ourselves.

Only the strong are allowed to bow before him. Everybody else was to simply perish. That is why we Sa 'Wa bowed down to him in acknowledgement of his strength, not out of loyalty. A rather treacherous doctrine that my father taught me there, but he said to move inside the limits of this philosophy in order to boost the prestige of our name.

However, what happened now was something completely different. Certainly, he said to act ruthlessly when the need arose, but he also said to never defy the emperor, his strength was too absolute.

[That was a serious mistake.]

The mistake was not my obedience towards this cursed man until he set me free again, I couldn't help but to follow his orders. No, this time I just took something insignificant as a wrong turn and ended up right inside the battle zone again.

After the lava began to materialize everywhere and after the first surprise attack on the guards, they decided to act defensively. Instead of rushing in, they used the other trainees to block the streets and houses along the main roads and now one fourth of the settlement was cordoned off.

From time to time Lucius sent out a couple of attack spells from inside the houses, which was immediately answered by enemy fire in return, so his group had to move on in a zigzag course.

How did I know this? The house I had chosen to hide in was currently occupied by his group. They hadn't found me yet, but if his presence attracted another barrage of spells, I'd have to leave the crack I was in and he would not let me go again. I was certain of that.

They were discussing their next course of action right now.

“Lucius, the first surprise attack was successful and killed three guards...however they adapted quite fast and our last two attempts cost us a demon and two 'Children'. It might be time to send everybody into hiding at different locations and just wait for them to come. I don't think that they will act so reserved any longer.” (Bransek)

“I also thought about this. However, if I gave the order for us to disperse now, we would lose any ability to act, no matter how small it might be... though you are right to a degree. From now on we will leave a 'Child' in every house we rest in behind. The demons are already quite exhausted and can't carry all of us any longer.”

Just then a lookout announced himself.

“Now I've lost it.”

Everybody stopped in his tracks and Lucius answered him.

“I know I can kill it.”

After this countersign was given, the human came into the room and gave his report. It was Fillion.

“They have dispatched at least 100 trainees in the various houses around the main roads. I saw no chance for us to cross them or break through with our current strength. We are trapped in this district.”

“We knew that already. Anything new?”

“Another group of 30 trainees is headed this way. They will soon reach their HQ at the obelisk.”

“Was a guard with them?”

“I saw none.”

“Hmm...”

“Although I have known you only for a short time, I already learned that your 'Hmm' always carries a meaning. What do you have in mind?” (Bransek)

“It depends.” Lucius then turned towards the assembled demons and asked them.

“Can anyone of you make my voice louder? It would be also preferable if you could change the direction of where it's coming from.”

One of them raised his hand. He was fairly exhausted and had a head injury, yet he still answered him.

“I can make your voice louder, sire. Changing it's direction is impossible, though.”

“Understood. Everyone, leave now. They will most likely bombard this place as soon as they hear my voice. We will meet up three houses down the road from here. Bransek, you are in command.”

[Bombardment? If that really happened I would have to leave my hiding place and he would see me again. I can't let him do this.]

There was a way. I had three particular spells at my disposal. The fireball from the 'School of Sun' and two spells from the 'School of Wind'. Waiting for everybody except him and the demon to leave, I silently came out of my hiding place by using 'Steps of the Spider', a magic used for a concealed approach. Looking out of a window his back was turned towards me.

If I wanted to kill him I had to do it in one strike. Otherwise he would use his aura and that would be the end for me. Not to mention that he was now in possession of a cursed weapon. That is why I had to get close to him, since he could deflect a simple fireball with it. What was most important though, was to end his life without being seen. His threat to tell the guards about me was still his strongest weapon.

[Only five steps left...] But suddenly he said without turning around.

“Areti, you should know it yourself. Killing me here won't save you. When the fighting broke out most residents fled this part of the settlement so they will assume that anybody left is an enemy and mercilessly finish them off.”

A chill ran down my spine. I just remained there, caught between two steps, without saying anything. The other demon turned around and looked at me in surprise. Then he looked with fear at Lucius who was able to notice my approach. Everything was over.

“Do as I say and I will forget this.”

A tone that would not allow any dissent. He held me in his clutches again.

-------

Lucius's POV

That was an otherworldly scene. Without making any noise, she came out of behind a cabinet and calmly walked towards me with ghostlike steps ready to strike me, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. She must have been there the whole time. If I hadn't seen her reflection in the glass of the window, I would have been dead by now. [If she just silently would have walked away...i wouldn't have stopped her.]

Areti and the other demon were visibly shaken by my noticing her approach. [I'll let her think that I have eyes behind my back.] It would be better this way.

“Are you ready to perform the spell I asked you for?”

“Y-yes, sire.”

If I had been the enemy commander, I would have immediately ordered every trainee to put on some kind of markings like a red cloth around the arm after they had realized that their own people were attacking them. Now, I would capitalize on them not doing it until now. The 30 or so new trainees were just arriving at the main plaza.

Filling my lungs with air, I let out a shout that was magically enhanced.

“You reinforcements that are approaching the obelisk right now! Quickly hide inside the buildings! The guards know that you belong to us and will attack you!”

Areti and the demon let out a small yell in realization of my little ruse and I motioned them to move on. I could already see attack spells approaching our house. They turned it into dust and the debris of the explosion hit my left shoulder hard. My scapula was broken by it. After years of torture I had a pretty good grasp on the various injuries a body could receive so it was easy to tell. Nevertheless, I didn't mind it and just went to the next rendezvous point with my two demons, while other magic was still hitting our old location.

Bransek greeted me with a smirk.

“Nasty.”

“I would call it necessary. Did it work? I couldn't confirm it because we had to make a run for it.”

“The guards didn't fall for it but a nervous trainee still shot at them and that led to a chain reaction.” He held a hand to his ear. “Can you hear it? Not every spell is landing in this district. They are still fighting. What's with your arm? And where did you pick that blue girl up?”

He was right. It has only been a day since I saw my first magical attack but I was already able to discern some of their proprieties by the sound alone. [Fire, Water, Some kind of magical beam...]

“Nothing serious, I can still somehow move my arm.” With pain in my left arm I put a hand on Areti's shoulder and felt her shivering. “My blue little mount volunteered to help. It seems she grew fond of me and couldn't part just like this. Notwithstanding, we need to think about our next step.”

“The lava created a lot of havoc and the enemy commander must have thought that such a destruction could only be the source of quite the large force. Good that they don't know how little our strength really amounts to. Under the cover of magical spells the 30 demons would have moved into this district and tried to engage us. He most likely wanted to probe our strength with this, though you foiled that plan.”

That was a reasonable assessment of the situation. After losing so many guards, they would rather use trainees and approach with more care.

A young demon suddenly jumped up and came to Bransek.

“S-sire, one of my wards has picked something up.”

“Is it an enemy tunnel?”

“Yes, they are already past the main road and are making their way towards the centre of this district.”

“What is he talking about, Bransek?”

I was genuinely curious. The term ward was pretty much self-explanatory but I would have never guessed that you could use it in a way to create a sensory net on demand as their exchange just now had indicated.

“While you were out there, I asked the demons if they could create a tunnel for us, so we could get behind the enemy lines. They had not enough Mana left and told me that the guards had already erected magical wards to tell them of any such attempts. I don't know much about urban fighting but I thought it would be a wise idea to do the same.”

[A tunnel...I should have thought about this, too.] Now it was too late for such things. Their plan was most likely to attack us from below while we were occupied with the 30 trainees above. Bransek turned towards me.

“What should we do, Lucius?”

Only the trainees could help us here.

“You said you are low on Mana...but can you somehow collapse their tunnel with earth magic?”

The demons in question looked already pale. One of them, the one who carried me together with Areti on our initial assault at the teleport-hall, thought for a moment and said.

“I might be able to do it, though they will notice and prevent me from doing so. I would just waste my last bit of Mana.”

His answer meant that we needed to distract them first. [Hmm...the only good bug is a dead bug.] After I saw the devastating effect of those archaic grenades earlier, I took the last one in the possession of the demons for myself.

“Will you be able to create a hole, maybe 10cm in diameter, towards their tunnel? I'll drop a grenade on them. This should put them in enough of a panic for the other trainees to collapse it.”

Even if they would seal off the hole instantly, the explosion should still be strong enough to weaken their tunnel considerably and shake them through. Judging from the reaction of the guards earlier, they were fairly frightened of such non-magical devices to a degree that they gave up on the wall in order to protect themselves from the blast of the grenade.

The trainee gave me a positive reply and we made our way into the basement of a house that lied right above their estimated course. If you were absolutely quiet and listened closely you could hear their approach. It couldn't be more than three or four metres below us. I signalised everybody to keep their mouths shut and held a hand up high for a slow countdown. Right after I closed my last finger, the trainee created a small hole and I threw the grenade inside it.

A surprised shout was transported towards us along it and the hole quickly closed itself again. Two seconds later the awaited eruption came, was even strong enough to knock a demon off his feet.

“Do it now!”

Three trainees followed my command and poured their Mana into the ground. An immersion of one metre appeared on the surface and the hollow screams of the demons, which we heard after the explosion, disappeared. Waiting anxiously in silence for some other sounds, we only allowed our tension to leave us after five minutes.

That last attempt had been thwarted but now all of my demons had depleted their Mana. Only Areti, who hadn't participated in the most recent fighting had some of it left.

Everybody was fatigued but I still ordered to move into a new building, since I feared that they would bombard the house above the tunnel soon enough. When we got there everybody just sat down and tried to catch their breath. The end of our strength had been reached.

It had been two hours since we stormed the teleport-hall. At this point it was probably the best idea to order one last salvo of magical attacks towards the enemy's positions and then hide in the ruins until they decide to march in.

The only thing that filled me with concern, though, was the fate of our trainees. [What could I do to keep my word and give them a chance at survival?] From the beginning we 'Children' had no escape for ourselves planned, so letting them stay with us would only lead to their demise. It wasn't as if I had much sympathy for them, rather I wanted to fulfil what I promised them.

“It might be time...”

“Excuse me?” (Bransek)

“Do you have any suggestions? If not, I'll soon call it a day.”

“The demons are exhausted and the enemy's next move will be a massive one. The commander of the guards should be fed up by now and probably wants to take control of the situation as soon as possible.”

“Where's the suggestion?”

“There is none.”

Looking at the fatigued faces of the demons I noticed the distress reflected in their eyes. One of them was even frightened so much that he couldn't stop shaking. [Wasn't that the one who set up the wards?] Considering the situation, it might be that he finally gave up but his behaviour was still far too damaging for our morale. Just when I was about to reproach him I asked instead.

“What is it?”

Completely frightened, the little trainee was not able to speak up first, he only buried his head in his hands.

“I-it's over...”

“Well...for us it is. You can go and search a place to hide in.”

“That's the problem. The tunnel gave me the idea to create a pocket with earth magic somewhere for myself to hide in. That is why I set up a ward to search for a suitable location and noticed two other tunnels, one of which is already far beyond our current position.”

Now I understood his reaction. The first tunnel was just set up by the guards to catch our attention and to conceal the approach of the other ones. It was the same as we did. Giving them something for everybody to see, while working behind the shadows.

Fillion, our lookout, also came in at this time.

“New demons have arrived, 50 heads. They have already reached the plaza. I couldn't spot them earlier because they used the narrow alleys.”

Moving with him to his survey post, I wanted to personally take a look at it. Areti also followed me like a shadow.

The guards had formed a new squadron filled with trainees and organized them into five blocks. A trainee was in front of them, holding a two small pennons into the air and guiding their movement; another one had an 18th century style military drum to give additional acoustic guidance. Marching so openly, they obviously didn't fear to put themselves into the range of our own spells very much.

“How come they all know how to perform drills with such ease? Is this supposed to be normal for demons?”

“We are nobility. It is custom for us to begin training when we turn seven. Of course we would be able to do drills.” (Areti)

That explained a couple of things. Though the daily practice in this training facility lacked any military discipline, they were still able to follow it if there was any need for it. Mostly, the trainees were around the age of twelve so all of them had already five years of combat training. Well, a page or knave to a knight had also to start at such an age in medieval times. Every culture with some militaristic prowess sent their children into battle from an early age. It wasn't too surprising that the countries here would follow the same train of thought.

A trumpet's sound resounded which marked the beginning of a new manoeuvre. Ten demons in one block moving all at once, it reminded me of an exercise performed by Tibetan monks. First, stomping on the ground with their right leg only to be followed by the left leg, bringing them into a straddle-legged stance; it's as if their combined action filled the air with tension. Next, moving their hands from their hips towards shoulder height.

With each step a different kind of shout left their lips in unison with the rhythm of the drum. Finally, a red glowing sphere formed above their heads, an attack spell. However, instead of sending that mass of death on it's way towards us as I initially suspected, they performed one last movement with their right hand and smaller bits lashed out from the sphere in rapid succession towards the direction of our last know location.

[Rocket artillery...] With my mouth agape I followed their path. Around 20 of those fiery bits hit the area around the house and turned everything into dust. The 'Child' I left behind there had no chance to survive this kind of impact, no matter how well she hid herself.

The sound of the trumpet echoed again and a wind blew the dust away. Such a forceful usage of magic raised a lot of dust which we could have used to covertly approach the enemy's position. Though the existence of the tunnels told me that they were thinking we would use it to cover our escape and were thus trying to cut that path off for us.

With the trumpet giving another sign and the drummer beginning the rhythm for another firing sequence anew, the next block of trainees began with the exact same spell.

[Damn!] After losing their officer, the next in line for command of the guards prepared his troops for this kind of development from the beginning. A more experienced man would have noticed this. Slowly cutting us off from the rest of the village and possible escape routes, he first tried it in a conservative manner by sending in 30 trainees. After this had failed he must have had decided that it would be better to simply sacrifice this part of the settlement altogether.

On the one hand side I forced the guards to take my group serious enough for them to not simply try and overpower us and use tactics instead. So far my plan had worked perfectly, but I failed to come up with a proper way of fighting during the combat itself. If I were better prepared I could have bought more time for Aoi to flee...

Soon the bombardment would reach our current location. We couldn't even make our way into the ruins of already destroyed houses, for they sporadically shelled them again to prevent this.

At the end of my wits, I was simply forced to watched this frightening spectacle. [They got me good. Seems like I was not wise enough to see this coming.] This is as far as I could go on my own. The rest was up to Randalph and Crence.

Just as I was finally ready to give the order to disperse, salvation arrived. It was in the form of a fireball that had been cast from the other side of the settlement to land right in the midst of these living artillery batteries.

“That was no accident, Lucius. See that? Another one is already raining down on them.” (Fillion)

[Reinforcements? But who?]

-------

Crence's POV

[Auras be damned!]

“Grrr...”

[I'm sorry Crence. You seem to be a capable man but I will give command to my Sergeant here. I can't give it to someone who has no auras.]

My bad habit of parroting people in the back of my mind resurfaced again as I recalled Randalph's words in a spiteful way.

Though I wasn't given command over this group, I was still tasked with finding an alternative escape route out of the dungeon. So far so good, I was able to do so. The problem lied with the leader of our group. He wasn't willing to attack it, despite our clear orders.

“Why are we still hiding and doing nothing? The warning horn resounded more than an hour ago! We are supposed to produce a commotion here!”

“Crence, take a look at this situation. We were tasked to keep the guards at the exit occupied. For me it seems we pretty much fulfilled this task. They aren't going to go anywhere. It's better to search for another possible exit and see what we could do there.”

Somehow or the other, I could understand the reluctance of the Sergeant to attack. We did find what seemed to be a way out of here. However, what we did not expect was it's impenetrable form. In a lake of lava, one single island with a tower was standing. On each side were drawbridges and they were both pulled up. If that weren't enough, it also had a clear view over the area in as much as 180 metres around it.

[They must have standing orders for a lock-down if anything happened inside the dungeon.]

Any sort of turmoil we could have produced would be over in mere minutes. Five our ten guards were enough to hold it for hours, if not for days. Taking this tower would have required 200 men and more. Sadly, we were only the smallest out of the three groups with only 26 men, including the demons carrying us.

“Sergeant, we didn't even show ourselves to the enemy. I understand that we will be obliterated, but survival was not an option from the beginning. If we would attack here, the guards are surely to use another signal and inform the rest of the dungeon about it. That would relieve the burden on the other two groups.”

“We went over this already. I see no way to keep them occupied or lure them out in a meaningful way.”

The Sergeant was a blockhead of a solider. Being given command by Randalph, Lucius couldn't argue much against it because of my lack of any auras. [Oh, I see! It isn't 'auras be damned', it's 'Randalph be damned'!]

“He...” I let out a small laughter.

“What is it, Crence?”

“Nothing much. I simply had a revelation.”

“If it isn't about another way out of here, I don't want to hear it.” Falling back in his thoughts he murmured in addition. “Maybe we should try to capture a guard?”

“The next group of guards would be in the tower...”

Disrupted by my words, he looked up and showed for a moment his anger before calming himself again.

“Why are you so eager to attack, if it isn't necessary?”

“These are our orders.”

“Crence, your loyalty towards this Lucius honours you, but we have better things to do with our lives than to throw it away in a senseless suicide attack. We were ordered to perform a meaningful suicide attack.”

Visibly trying to hide the erupting sense of accomplishment on his face over the play of words, the Sergeant still hit the mark with his answer.

[Me and loyal towards Lucius? When did this happen?]

He was right. I didn't even consider a different approach, simply because Lucius said it had to be done this way. Certainly, he and Aoi were amusing fellow captives, but I hadn't noticed the amount of trust I put in their words up until now. [When did I stop thinking for myself?]

Sure, Randalph, the arrogant schmuck, be damned. Lucius on the other hand side, I'll show him what this 'hell' he so dearly likes to talk about is really made of. Aoi, his partner in crime, will get it, too. Otherwise it would be too sad if they couldn't share the same fate.

First I had to regain my sense of self. Talking with the two love-birds for the past months had the surprising effect of calming my anger. Since long ago, I was best able to think when filled with anger. Others would lose themselves in a mindless rage at times. In my opinion such a thing was only reserved for direct combat. There was a different kind of anger, one that would allow you to come up with the most effective way to force your enemy to kneel before you. This was my source of strength.

[Remember the witch. Remember the witch. Remember. The. Witch.] Recalling the memory of the woman who betrayed me had the desired effect.

For a moment, the Sergeant became uneasy looking at me but I began to speak first.

“Sergeant, you asked for a meaningful target at which you could throw your life at, didn't you?”

“Did you come up with a way to find another exit?”

“No, I just thought it was strange that we didn't see any other demons since the alarm. It would be prudent to say that most of them rushed to the settlement.”

“It just shows the success of the other group. What's your point?”

With my hand I pointed towards a tunnel.

“Judging from the interior of this dungeon, this tunnel will most likely lead us to the settlement. We could take another way and see what's to find there...but considering the situation it would just be a waste of time. And please don't make a mistake. Our task was to make our presence known to the enemy here so as to lure them away from the main cavern with Godmother in it.”

Two other 'Children' nodded in affirmation as they listened to our dialogue. I wasn't the only one who was unhappy with the Sergeant's decision. He also noticed this, which only made him more open for my next words.

“We have yet to fulfil this task and our time frame to take action is exceedingly small. I understand that we can't do much here but as I see it there is a much better target for us.”

Taken aback by my suggestion, the Sergeant leaned backwards and his gaze went towards the ceiling. [Just another push and he's ready.]

“We could leave one or two 'Children' as well as three demons here and let them feign a jailbreak. They don't have to come close, just enough for the guards to see them so they would warn the others about it. That's bound to put them into more of a confusion.”

Soldiers are best dealt with by tickling their sense of duty without being too rude about it. I was a freedom loving adventurer for the most part of my life but over the years I came in contact with many of them. They are mostly good guys, though you should never let a bad word about their liege fall in their presence if you wanted to keep your tongue. Not that I didn't like that kind of people.

As he focused his eyes on me again, I knew that he made a decision. After he ordered two people to stay behind we made our way towards the settlement. I was tasked to scout ahead together with another 'Child'. Around five minutes later we heard another one of those deafening signal horns from the direction we came from. Now it was our time to act.

-------

Lucius's POV

“Everybody! We will break through their encirclement! Demons, just bring us across the main road into the buildings and we will do the rest.”

The order I bellowed brought everybody on their toes. The last attack aimed at the enemy trainees at the plaza brought them in disarray and prevented them from dispersing the dust after their own spells. It was the only time for us to make our move.

Bransek and I formed the vanguard. The rest followed behind us in two lines. Those cursed weapons were useful until now, as they allowed for the two of us to freely move by ourselves. Finally though, the time to put them to real use would come.

As silently as possible we approached the main road by following one of the many narrow passageways. Reaching the end of the way, the dust still hadn't completely settled, though the other side was still somewhat visible. The road itself was 20 metres broad, split in the middle by a part for colourful crystals of maybe 30cm height, functioning as adornments.

I could see the heads of demons looking outside the windows from time to time. Luckily, the visibility was so poor that only the nearest buildings were visible. It was obvious that we wouldn't make it over to the other side unnoticed.

“Alright. I want those with some Mana left to shoot at these windows. Then we will run over as fast as possible and force our way in.”

After those words, a mere three magical attacks, two of which came from Areti, flew towards the enemy.  Poorly aimed, they could only inflict some minor damage to the facade but still bought some precious moments of confusion for us to use.

After reaching the crystals, some windows were frantically opened and arms were outstretched to indicate their will to fire magic at us. Others were simply violently blown apart by spells from demons who did not bother with opening them.

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Areti tried to give us as much cover as possible, but she couldn't possibly intercept all of the enemy magic. Thankfully, the level of the trainee's attacks was nowhere near the guard's ones and their fiery spells lost a lot of their their power inside my 'Sanctuary-Aura'.  Nevertheless, one of them still made it's way over my head and hit someone behind. The screaming of a trainee could be heard but I had no time to look behind me. I had no doubts that if a 'Child' would be hit, I would never hear something like a shout uttered in agony. Their tolerance towards pain was just as high as mine.

With only a couple of steps away from the enemy position, the nearly from point-black range fired spells became increasingly powerful. Bransek however, showed me an incredible feat. Jumping forward with a vertical swing downwards of his halberd, he split a fireball in half and dispersed it into a small lump of heat. [You could do this with a weapon?]

As I saw this, I straightened my back to boldly walk into the path of one of those slow moving beams that would have hit Bransek. I took a swing at it and redirected the beams trajectory to force it into a building behind us with all the strength that was available to me. While I averted his death, the beam's heat still hurt my arm and left a mark on it, though it wasn't as serious as the one on my head. Not counting the smaller bruises and scratches, it was already the third major injury today. Such a refreshing change of pace, compared to the days of constant hacking and slashing during my captivity.

Five metres before we reached a two-story building, I saw that the front door and windows at the ground floor were barricaded so I shouted backwards.

“Areti, blow the door open!”

As contradictory to her character as it seemed, she was right behind me. Behind Bransek and me was the safest spot, after all. Her fireball came flying two seconds after my words reached her ears. Though I understood that their damage-output was on the lower end of the scale, nothing could beat their practicality, as the required time for casting them was as long as it took someone to perform a throwing motion.

The moment her magic passed my head I brought my left arm before my eyes to cover them from the explosion and simply ran with the little strength that was available to me into the newly created entrance.

My ears rang, the lungs were filled with dust, and I felt multiple new bruises from the debris on my front side but I still jumped without a moment's hesitation through it, as I didn't want to give them any time to recover.

Releasing my 'Aura of the blazing Sun' and opening my eyes in time to witness a small magical projectile missing my head just by an inch, I saw five trainees hiding behind another makeshift barricade of tables, couches, and cupboards. One was already lying on the ground in pain, as the wood from the door found it's way right into his face.

Trails of smoke were already emerging from their bodies as my aura reached their skin. Auras would always search their way around natural objects and never went through them. Given the rooms dimensions, it seemed as if each wall, the ceiling, furnishing, and decoration had caught fire all at once. Obviously not prepared to counter such an unusual type of magic they sought shelter by ducking down behind their barricade. A female trainee tried to blindly shoot over it to only hit the ceiling in her panic.

She was my first target. Bending her arm backwards again to cast another spell, I could see that she would hit me directly with the next one if I didn't stop her. With a sideways swing, my mace and her wrist met mid-ways.

Recalling the touch of the black demon's axe, I imagined her to fall unconscious immediately. Instead of losing her consciousness, however, the mace had a completely different effect on her. On impact I could literally hear the bones in her arm breaking and forcing it into an unnatural position. My strength alone wasn't enough of a reason to explain that amount of damage. It must have come from the mace itself.

Bransek who came in right behind me, had barely enough room for his two metre long weapon. He couldn't see over the barricade and just took a blind, vertical swing over it, scratching another trainee over his back.

The other two found their demise through the effect of my aura. This was the perfect distance for it's usage and produced quick results. Looking at their bodies, I noticed that they finally put some kind of markings on them to distinguish friend from foe. As I thought, they wore simple blue ribbons around both of their arms.

The whole attack, from crossing over the road and eliminating the demons downstairs, took only a little bit longer than half a minute. But for all that, it was still exhausting enough for me to long for immediate rest, if you took the prior fighting into account. Fearing that I would topple over if I took another step, I stood still and caught my breath after shouting a: “Clear!”, and signalizing everybody to come in.

Our rest was only short lived, though, as we heard noise from a hallway and upstairs. There wasn't even enough time to take count of the survivors. Bransek and I forced ourselves over the barricade. Communicating with each other through hand signs because we were still trying to catch our breath, we agreed that he would take the hallway. As he was making his way I gasped more than I said with heavy breaths towards his back.

“Prisoners...to blast...through walls...”

His affirmation came through a simple nod. With any other man it would have bordered on the delusional to even think about obtaining prisoners. Completely exhausted, with no protective gear, and alone, our dominance through the auras was still absolute as long as we faced young trainees.

The stairs towards the second story were contorted. With little strength and heavy steps I went up.

-------

Random trainee's POV

Suddenly, I found myself in the middle of a war zone. Some time after numerous warning horns resounded, we ran to the settlement only to be told by a guard to prepare for battle. Who the enemy was or what kind of strength they had, such things we weren't informed of. Judging from the destruction of the settlement, it must have been a massive force, though. [Who in their right mind would dare to do such a thing?]

Our makeshift squad was ordered to hold a position at one of the main roads inside a building and either capture or kill anybody who tried to cross it. As I understood it, we were part of a blockade to prevent hostile forces from entering the rest of village.

Marching towards our destination, we saw from far away that the district occupied by the enemy had already received heavy damage and that their return fire only amounted to maybe a sixth of the scope of spells our side cast towards them, so we went on with high morale that was enough to surpass the confusion of suddenly being thrown into such a battle. Someone even stroke up a marching song in which the others gladly tuned in to keep our minds occupied from thinking too much.

That morale easily plummeted as we walked across a place where an enemy attack had it's point of impact and our singing came to an abrupt halt. Dead guards in full armour were lying on the street. Their remains implied the usage of an original spell that seemed to be a mix of techniques from the 'School of Sun' and the 'School of Earth'. I had heard that some of the greatest casters could meld their magic and create devastating spells that would send incendiary shells at you just like a catapult. However, I had never heard of someone summoning lava over such a wide area. The faces of the other trainees turned as pale as mine, as we realized why our presence was needed. The guards were in trouble and our enemies had to be elites.

Taking up position inside a two-story building, we barricaded ourselves in. Information was scarce, so the others and me went upstairs to observe the situation from there. After a while we heard a warning shout from the enemy towards their friendly forces, and somewhere behind our lines the sound of fighting erupted. Soon after, a messenger brought some ribbons and the order to put them around our arms because there were traitors amongst us. He also told us a codeword to identify each other. If someone would shout 'Black' the other party would have to answer with 'Rogue' or otherwise we were ordered to attack without holding back.

The battle went on without us doing much. From time to time we let out a magical spell at the same spot everybody else was firing at until we heard the familiar sound of artillery drills from the direction of the plaza. The grim atmosphere in the air and the anxiety around our hearts was somewhat lifted when we followed the familiar silhouette of the spell 'Siren of Calamity' making it's way to the occupied district. Some of us jubilated, clapped on each other's shoulders with a smile on the face. I found myself amongst those who congratulated the person next to them, as if we were the ones who did all the work.

“That will show them to betray the empire!”

“The emperor's might!”

“We did it!”

Not thinking too much over the stop in artillery fire, we were too relaxed and began to debate over the identity of the enemy. The fact that other trainees were involved raised the question of a power struggle between two black demons or the rise of a rebel faction.

Right in the middle of talking, our position was suddenly hit by magical spells and forced everyone to drop on the floor. A trainee who was close to a window peeked outside and let out a shout.

“E-Enemies! They are coming here!”

I quickly let a blindly aimed fireball out of the window, crawled towards it and tried to take a look at them for better aim after I realized that no other spells were coming. [They must be low on Mana.]

Seeing the approaching group, I could not understand their composition at first. Through the dust I could make out two figures covered by brown cloaks and some trainees carrying other people with the same attire.

“They are carrying their wounded and are easy picks on the street!”

Preparing another fireball, I aimed it at the person  with a mace in the very front. Strangely enough, it lost a considerable amount of power and speed on it's way. The figure had no problems to duck under the weakened magic, which hit the arm of a demon behind him who screamed out in pain but didn't dare to stop or drop the person he was carrying.

From somewhere else another magical attack came flying at them. One of the two figures leapt forward and simply intercepted the spell with his halberd. It was foolish to use a weapon this way as it would quickly wear down. I was amazed that it didn't break apart after this first try. The guards had the ability to disperse low grade magic with their bare hands and feet by hardening those body parts to the extreme with spells from the 'School of War' but they would never commit such a mistake as these people.

This movement created an opening, which I wanted to capitalize on. Taking aim again, I let out my most powerful magic. It was a highly condensed beam of fire that was saturated with enough air so as to turn it blue in appearance. Yes, I was already able to use a melded magic with the proprieties of fire and wind. It would turn him into ashes.

In the following couple of moments, though, my mind went numb. I had the ability and knowledge to clearly tell what was happening before my eyes, but still didn't utter the logical conclusion, simply because I never imagined that I would have to ever do so.

Everybody talked about their future and that they would surely possess such a weapon,

without wasting a single second to the thought of what would happen if they ever had to face an opponent with these things in their hands.

At first I thought the other figure wanted to throw itself in front of it's comrade in an attempt to save his life. Already imagining the scene where both of them would be hit by my beam, I couldn't have wished for more. This short foreboding of euphoria was destroyed the moment it came into existence, as the lack of any desperation in the movements of the mace wielding person gave birth to an incredible fear. All these things went through my head during the four heartbeats it took for my magic to come in contact with the head of his weapon.

This fire that had an incredible heat at it's centre was easily redirected and stopped following the will of it's caster.

[Bearers of cursed weapons...]

Not able to believe my eyes, I poured all of my Mana into sustaining the beam until I ran out and fell backwards in exhaustion. Still during the motion of falling, I remembered a lecture in advanced combat tactics. If you ever come across someone with a cursed weapon, you should only ever engage this person with either large scale magic, or in direct combat if you have the confidence that you are faster, and only after you have discerned the nature of the additional attack type that the weapon grants. Given all this, usually the only ones who were able to fulfil these conditions were bearers of cursed weapons themselves.

That was the true terror of these arms. Their appearance on the battlefield always indicated the existence of someone with enough strength to be a Captain. All the guards here were eligible to wear them, if they ever decided to serve somewhere else than this dungeon.

A person who was able to kill so many of those guards was making it's way towards me right now. Even worse, there were at least two of them.

I cursed myself for exhausting my Mana resources to a point where I would nearly faint as I tried to stand up again. From downstairs the sound of fighting and violent yelling was carried towards our ears. All of which ended abruptly and was exchanged with the nauseating smell of blood and burnt flesh.

The trainees around me went into confusion but still managed to ready themselves somehow. First, they wanted to take up a favourable position near the stairs but were quickly forced to retreat as a sudden fire found it's way upwards.

“They laid fire downstairs. We are going to die up here!”, one of them said but it was drowned by the screams of someone who was set ablaze.

The wall of fire slowly crawled closer. No, it didn't crawl, it approached with intervals of five seconds and more. This wasn't a natural fire. It was clearly the work of a magical caster. With all my might I yelled downstairs.

“B-black!”, and again, “Black! Black! Black!!!” No answer was coming.

[Oh emperor, please no...]

In my fear, I grabbed the talisman I got as a present from my mother that hung around my neck. It was a small metallic cylinder with inscriptions telling about the strength of the emperor. In their ignorance, many demons of my age laughed at me for my blind faith in someone who never appeared in public. For me, it was only natural that the emperor - his rule may be eternal - would not allow the unworthy to lay their eyes upon him.

The older ones, especially my grandfather, knew it better and commented me on my maturity in this regard. I decided I would meet my last moments by reciting the Mantra on it. If I had enough strength left I would have tried to flee through the window like the guy next to me, but as it stood now I was about to meet my end.

All demons here tried to put as much of a distance between them and the approaching fire as possible, pressing their bodies against the walls to gain even an inch more of space. It still drew nearer.

The first thing that could be seen was a thin, wrinkled hand grabbing around the corner. Usually, we would have had all fired spells at this without any hesitation but my comrades were either backing further away or had already been caught in the enemy's spell.

Such a conduct was completely unbefitting for warriors of the empire. If I hadn't known any better, I would have believed that we were all under the influence of hostile mind magic. Because my eyes were glued at the hand the whole time, I didn't notice something very important at first.

The fire was not effective against me. Though it looked as if a hundred fiery tongues were licking all over my body, there was no damage.

[The talisman...]

The inscriptions on it were glowing, the emperor - his rule may be eternal - was protecting me. Not wanting to shame him any further, I mustered all of the strength left in me and forced myself to meet my enemy, while standing on my own two feet. I wouldn't be running like the others.

The rest of the person's body came into view from behind the corner. He had less of a bulky build as I initially assumed, wasn't even as big as I thought. I couldn't look him in the eyes since his head was turned in the other direction, most of which was still covered by the hood of his cloak. Then, he slowly turned after he had made sure that the trainees were either running, or lying on the ground while futilely trying to beat out the fire around their bodies. Finally, his face turned towards mine and I finally understood the situation.

[I-It was a fairy?]

I still had a chance...

-------

Lucius's POV

Going upstairs, I fully intended to wreak havoc amongst the trainees that fired upon us just now, despite the order I had given to Bransek.

From the noise upstairs, it was obvious that there was quite a number of them there, so I let the 'Aura of the blazing Sun' ooze out as much as I could. That brought them into a state of panic.

One of them even jumped outside through the window. He would rather risk a broken neck than certain death here.

However, there was one very disturbing sight. A single trainee was standing in the middle of a room, visibly not bothered by my aura as his whole body was covered by flames. If he hadn't had a humanoid appearance, I would have assumed that he was a piece of furniture, seeing that the aura's fire moved just the same way around him as it did with all inanimate things.

He was rather shaky on his feet but there was a will to fight in his eyes.

[Then I will respond in kind...]

We both approached each other calmly and readying our weapons; his was a shortsword. That would be a hard fight.

From my perspective the increase in power coming from the mace was phenomenal. Still, if the stats of the little demon Vo 'Rin were any indication as to the trainee's level of strength, they were all at least three times as powerful as me. Besting them in melee combat wouldn't be easy. Especially in my state.

A mace wasn't exactly made for parrying, so I picked up the leg of a broken stool with my other hand. I planned to use it as some sort of shield and held it in front of me.

Drawing closer, the little demon switched into an over-head stance with his sword, while putting one arm in front of him. As I had already seen hundreds of thousands of stances, I figured he wanted to end everything with one swing and was ready to sacrifice an arm for it. My own stance was a similar to his, with the exception that I had a chair leg and a slight bent in the arm holding the mace.

[You ran out of Mana and are just as exhausted as I am, aren't you?] That was the only logical explanation for his choice. His athletic abilities were far beyond my own and he should have also known it.

Only three metres away from him, I threw the leg into his face and rushed two insecure steps forward. With the kind of weapon I held in my arms, one strike was more than enough.

His reaction was commendable. Instead of evading the piece of wood as I had calculated, he let it hit his face straight on without losing his balance. There was not enough strength behind the toss.

Entering the demon's range, he swung his sword downwards with a battlecry. From my experience I could tell that he would hit me first. It was really a mistake on my part, to have thrown the piece of wood away and not used it to parry him.

Having gained some momentum through my advance, I let myself fall sideways to the ground in evasion and hit his knee to let my mace do it's destructive work. If he had anything else than a shortsword and me anything other than a cursed weapon, he would have cut me down.

This way, he let go of his blade and we both fell down with him on top of me. His face in my ear, he  screamed his pain into it. From this unwieldy position I just clobbered at him aimlessly until he finally stopped to move. The force of the cursed mace was strong enough that I could feel it even through the body of the demon.

Hurting all over, it took me some time to catch my breath and free myself from him to get up again. During the whole fight, I hadn't eased up on my aura. The strain on the mind was great, but my time in chains was enough of a preparation to not lose myself in such a crucial moment.

Looking down on his deformed remains, I asked myself why it didn't came to me to simply wait it out. Those protective barriers used up Mana-stones and the smartest way to fight this trainee would have been to let his item run out of it's source of power, so as to let the aura do the rest. The answer to this was overt. He stood before me and I chose the most direct way of combating him.

I realized that this was my very first duel to the death. It ended anticlimactic and as those last seconds flashed before my inner eyes again, I saw that it was decided after the first two steps. Furthermore, the only kind of understanding we had, was the respective will to end each other's lives.

[A merciless way we chose to meet one another.]

Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on the greater picture again. The upper floor didn't had any trainees left that were in the position to stand up to me; most of them were either dead or right on it's doorstep. It seemed that this was the only one with a protective item so I let go of my aura and made my way downstairs again to see how Bransek was doing.

Before this, though, I did two things. First, I took the protective item from my defeated opponent. It had been glowing around his neck.

Secondly, I bent down towards one of the half-dead demons and whispered in his ear.

“Black”

With severe burns all over his body that were already leaking liquids, heavy breathing, and the eyes closed, the demon opened his mouth to sigh in delusion.

“Rogue...”

[It's as if they thought that nobody would catch onto these things...]

-------

Coming down, I met Bransek midway, who was about to check up on me. He also gained a couple of new cuts and bruises.

“Any trouble downstairs?”

“Nothing I couldn't handle. I was able to capture one of them alive. He tried to hide in a cupboard. How did it go on your side?”

“No prisoners but I can return the favour with the mace.”

He raised a brow in curiosity and I put the talisman into his hand.

“It can erect a protective barrier around your body. It's a pity that the previous owner didn't explain to me how it can be activated. Ask a trainee about it.”

Jokingly, he answered me.

“How did you know that I like such trinkets?”

Both of us made our way down and I allowed a few minutes of rest, during which I tried to find a shield in the remains of our enemies. For all the weapons they had, there was very little protective gear to be found. They never assumed to have a use for it here, after all. In the end I had to settle for a cooking top.

The houses in the vicinity, particularly those next to the road, were occupied by other demons and our fight had most likely attracted their attention. I let our trainees put on some of those blue ribbons and informed them of their codewords. Being right in the middle of fighting, their chances of survival had still just risen by a lot. Especially, if we could breach deeper behind the enemy lines were they could abscond more easily in all the confusion.

Our new captive was asked to create a hallway through the buildings for us. My aim was to get as close to the point of origin of those allied attack spells, as possible. On the way there we had to clear out another group of five trainees, which was considerably easy since we tricked them into deadly carelessness with the right codeword. Otherwise, we tried to move covertly without searching for a fight.

It was the fifth house after the main road. There was movement in the next building. I ordered a demon to yell the codeword.

“Black!”

Hearing the noise of a surprised group of people that suddenly went silent, some time later the correct answer came.

“Rogue!”

Bransek, who was next to me strengthened the grip around his halberd in anticipation of the next fight. Tension could be felt once again from the rest of my group.

I, on the other hand side, wasn't agitated in the least as I recognized the voice. The blockhead didn't even use a demon with their younger voices to give a reply. Still, it was an indescribable feeling, thinking that you were on your own, only to suddenly hear a friendly voice. In an amused tone I yelled back.

“That was the correct countersign for the empire, which means you are our enemies. We will now calmly go into your building and blast you into obliteration! Goodbye, Crence!”

This time there was no delay in their answer and a shout filled with rage came from a window of the building.

“Lucius you damn bastard. Just you wait, I'm coming for you!”

A sigh of relief left the mouths of the young demons. The 'Children' simply let their expressions ease up a bit after having realized the presence of comrades in the vicinity.

“Don't bother. I know you are old and bedridden and that you can't move without the help of others anymore. We will come to you. Just order some of your mounts to provide cover for us in the eventuality that there are real enemies here.”

“I am a real enemy!”

“You are your own worst enemy!”

We quickly made our way into their building with Bransek and me staying at the ready to deflect any possible magical attacks that may come from someone hiding close by.

“Lucius, you look like crap. And what's with this lousy shield?”

His glance only stopped for a heartbeat on the cursed weapon, but he deemed it not necessary to comment on it in any other way than letting a short expression of admiration appear on his face.

Letting go of the lid, I grabbed his shoulder with a hand and could not hide my smile after seeing him. He didn't look very differently. A large cut was on his chest that only had been tended to in the most rudimentary way and multiple smaller wounds covered arms and legs.

“I will always look better than you.”

We both had to laugh at that.  This heartfelt reunion, though, was interrupted by a lookout from Crence's group that came downstairs.

“We are in trouble! A black demon has appeared.”

End of Chapter 15

Afterwords:

I just realized that the makers of Starship Troopers probably came up with that line because they threw fireworks into anthills as children.

I'd like some input from you. The most important part I wanted to know about, is regarding the length of the chapters. The last couple of chapters have become increasingly longer with this one being the longest as of today. I try to follow the rule of thumb that would make people forget the beginning of a chapter by it's end. A long chapter gives me enough room to further the plot a great deal, though I wasn't able to wrap up things nicely this time. If the chapter had been as long as intended it would have amounted to 30 pages. This one was 19 pages long. I would have liked to finally implement the encounter with the black demon but decided to do it in the next one. I've already written their meeting one month ago and have been sitting on it ever since.

The drawbacks of those long chapters are longer release dates. I thought that I couldn't let you allow to wait longer for some paladin action this time so I decided against an ultra-long 30 pages chapter.

As strange as it sounds, though, I believe that the dialogues have suffered because of these long chapters. Comparing them to the first ones (with maybe five or six pages) I feel like I couldn't put as much care into the thoughts of the people as I would have possibly done with shorter chapters. Like letting them talk with each other but each one of them still having a different understanding of what had been said. Those aren't exactly misunderstanding, just simply how inter-human relationships truly are in my opinion. If the rankings on the site are any indication as to the quality of the ff, it might be true because I dropped like 15 places in the last month. Though I absolutely understand that it's not about the rankings, but rather to provide those that follow the story with an enjoyable read.

Also, I've loathed the lack of possibilities to implement my philosophical brainfarts lately. Granted, I think I came up with something good that will cement the true nature of paladins, after providing them with the necessary foundations. But that is something that will come after this fight.

So basically the question is as follows: Longer chapters with longer release dates in between them or shorter ones? If you'd like to get a better understanding of what I regard as a shorter chapter...with this one I would've put it online after Crence's POV...

If opinions on this are too differing I'll simply go with what I see fit, though I would greatly appreciate some input on this.