After another half-day of travel, Falin was almost upon the demon. With it constantly moving away, it had taken quite some time for him to catch up to it. He was fortunate it was not moving at anywhere near its top speed, otherwise he never would have caught it with the boy in tow. He would have had to choose between abandoning Jonik or giving up on killing the demon.
Not that Jonik was slow. After a rest and some food and water, he was moving at a good pace, especially for a human child his age. A demon this powerful, however, could move far too fast for any human to keep up with, let alone a ten-year-old boy, if it so chose.
Of course, even if the demon had been moving at full speed, it would have been a lengthy chase. Falin was confident he was faster than it, but, in all likelihood, it was fast enough to drag things out if it wanted to. On consideration, it probably wouldn’t have been much different than the current situation. A higher speed chase would have given the demon more of an advantage, though. The fact that demons didn’t need to eat would have been more impactful. They did need to sleep, but not as much as mortals. In other words, it would have been able to keep moving without stopping much longer than Falin. That was the case now, too, but it didn’t mean as much when the demon was moving at a snail’s pace
It was curious that the demon had been moving away the whole time, considering it seemed to have been tormenting Flatfield for a while. He doubted its hideout was this far, especially if this was its usual pace. Which it probably was, seeing as it had been moving at more or less the same speed when Falin had first detected it. Maybe it was because it sensed Falin and was trying to flee? That seemed unlikely, considering its low speed. Unless it was trying to lure him into a trap. There was no way it could have known he would be here, but it could have set something up for Sacred Knights in general. Or maybe it had just gotten bored of Flatfield and was moving on. Whatever the case, it must have been feeling confident. There was no doubt a high-rank could sense Falin from this distance, yet it still seemed in no rush to escape him.
He supposed it didn’t matter much. Regardless of its motives, he just had to kill it. He was a Paladin, and he had higher to climb still. The likes of this demon were nothing to him. Even so, he didn’t relish heading into battle with such a big unknown. It wasn’t looking like he had much of a choice, though.
“We’re almost there,” he announced as he came to a halt. “It will be dangerous for you to be near a fight of this level.”
Jonik scowled and crossed his arms. “I’m not scared.”
“You should be,” Falin said. “You’ll almost definitely die if you get in the middle of this, and there’s a good chance I will too. This demon shouldn’t pose much of a challenge to me alone, but, if I have to protect you while I fight, that will be a different story.”
Jonik sighed and nodded. “Fine, I get it. I won’t hold you back.”
“Good.” Falin gestured to a large rock on the ground nearby. “Hide there and stay out of sight.”
“Right!”
Jonik ran over and crouched behind the rock. It wouldn’t provide much protection if the demon attacked, and the demon could likely sense Jonik, but it was better than nothing, if only just. Hopefully, with a Paladin to contend with, out of sight was out of mind.
With that done, Falin moved on. No longer bound by Jonik’s capabilities, Falin ran toward the demon at full speed. It was still moving away from him, still at that slow pace. It took only seconds for Falin to catch up. It was hard not to wonder what it was up to, but there was only one way to find out.
“Stasio,” he said, summoning his Sacred Blade to his hand. It was a simple sword in shape, but it was a brilliant gold from tip to pommel. He swung it as soon as he got in range, aiming right for the neck.
The demon dove forward, avoiding the strike, and turned to face him as she stood. She only had one detail distinguishing her from a reltus, but it was an obvious one. Her sclera were black instead of white. Her short hair was blood-red, matching her eyes.
She groaned as she laid eyes on him. “I was hoping you’d give up if I just kept moving. I knew I shouldn’t have been too lazy to run.” He didn’t get the sense she was mocking him or lying, just griping. It really had been out of simple laziness that she had moved so slowly. It seemed he had been worried for nothing. She burst into a sudden grin and laughed. “But at least this way, I get to kill you. I can avenge my brother too. I’m sure it was one of you who killed him!”
“Your brother?” Falin asked, incredulous.
It was the impossibility that drove him to ask. Demons materialized from Malice. They didn’t have siblings, parents, or any other kind of family. There were stories of demons reproducing like mortals, even with mortals, but there had been no recorded instances of either in centuries.
“Yeah, I know demons aren’t related to each other and blah blah,” she said flippantly. Then her face was a mask of rage and she was shouting. “But we decided we were, so fuck you!” She giggled. “I’m Vaio, by the way.”
“I don’t care,” he said, before surging forward and attacking again.
Vaio danced back out of range. “Rude. You’ll pay for that, bastard! Kaovi!”
She held out a hand and a green scythe materialized in her hands. The color wasn’t uniform. There were countless shades of green on it in random splotches. They even shifted and moved, growing and shrinking, as she held the weapon.
She swung her Demon Blade. There was a ripple in the air, then something slammed into Falin, knocking him off his feet and driving him back. The same thing hit him from below, launching him into the air.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Vaio was above him, scythe raised to strike at him. He air jumped away from the attack, and his cloak was sent fluttering by the outer parts of the blast that followed. A wind Blade. Always a pain to fight with their almost-invisible attacks, but nothing Falin couldn’t handle.
He air jumped back toward her, raising Stasio overhead. Vaio brought her scythe up to block, but his strength still drove her back down to the ground when he struck. He did a small hop to turn upside down, then pushed off another foothold to launching himself toward he ground. He landed on his feet less than a second after Vaio had done so on her back, but she was already standing again.
Falin rushed forward and slashed from the left. Vaio snarled and raised her scythe to block with the shaft again. Two perfect copies of Stasio appeared to Falin’s right and mirrored his strike. Her eyes widened, and she leaped back. Even so, Stasio’s copies scraped their points along her upper chest and belly, leaving long, shallow cuts in their wake.
“That’s your Blade’s power?” Vaio exclaimed, eyes blazing. She laughed. “Two more of the same sword? That’s so lame. You just caught me by surprise is all.”
Falin ignored her. Stasio was effective. It didn’t need to be as flashy as his colleagues’ abilities. As long as it could kill demons, it was plenty. He charged, thrusting out with his sword. He adjusted the copies’ positions to be slightly below Stasio’s main sword to either side, making it impossible to block all three stabs in one motion with her scythe.
Instead, Vaio dodged to the side and prepared to counterattack. Before she got the chance, however, Falin whirled and swung. He kept one copy where it was, but dismissed the other one and reformed it so that it was coming from the opposite direction. Vaio moved back, choosing to block the two strikes coming from the same way, getting another scratch from the third sword for her troubles.
It would have been nice if he had cleaved her in two there, but any hit on his opponent was a win. A true death of a thousand cuts would have taken much too long, but any wound would still weaken and distract her, no matter how little, taking him closer to that killing blow.
She swung her scythe downward, but Falin saw the ripples in the air signaling her attack. He dashed to the side. The gust of wind that erupted from her weapon carved a trench through the field and sent grass and his cloak waving wildly, but Falin was unharmed. He rushed at her while she was recovering from that big swing and slashed toward her throat. One copy came at her from the opposite direction, while another bore down on her head. She leaned back, allowing the former two swords to graze her cheeks and the last to leave a shallow cut down the center of her face.
One leg lashed out in a powerful kick to Falin’s stomach. The force of it drove him back, but he barely even felt the blow itself. Although she was well above average as far as high-rank demons went, her strength wasn’t sufficient to break through a Paladin’s enhancement. Nevertheless, the attack provided Vaio with an opening. She surged forward and slashed at him. He batted the attack aside with his sword. Then a blast of wind erupted from the tip of the scythe as Vaio whirled. It drove her to turn faster and bring the scythe around in another attack. Fast enough that Falin couldn’t get Stasio in position to block in time. The main sword, at least. All it took was a flick of the wrist to have a copy parry the blow. They all had his full strength behind them, a fact that often took his enemies by surprise.
He recovered and slashed at her again, all three blades closing in from different directions. She kicked one away by the flat of the blade and parried the others with a single swing of her scythe before attacking once more. Now those swords were out of commission for a little while. That was annoying.
Falin jumped into the air to avoid the wave of wind that once again rent the earth where he had stood, leaving the inert copies behind. Vaio leaped up over him and swung, sending out another gust to drive him to the ground. He landed hard on his back and looked up to see Vaio rocketing toward him, firing a gust of wind out behind her to boost her speed.
Falin moved out of the way just as she brought the point of her scythe down into the ground, sending up a spray of dirt and dust. He was well out of range, but he slashed, dismissing the copies, reforming them, and sending them out ahead of him where they could hit. Vaio blocked one on the shaft of her scythe and twisted her body to avoid the other unscathed.
“I told you, two extra swords is lame!” she shouted. “So what if they can reach a couple extra feet in front of you?”
She swung her scythe once more. Falin brought up his sword, held vertical with the flat facing outward. The copies formed in front of him in a narrow wall, but it was enough to divert the brunt of her attack. Debris whipped through the air on either side of him, but he wasn’t affected beyond a light breeze.
Vaio was next to him in an instant, capitalizing on what she thought to be his vulnerability. Her scythe was held high, ready to carve out his skull. He materialized the copies to either side of her, but she jumped, kicked them aside before they could move, and swung. She had learned. Moving the copies independent of his sword swings wasn’t quite instantaneous—even if he did so by dismissing and reforming them—especially after an external force had acted on them. In fact, he couldn’t control them at all for a little while after that. Falin brought his sword down, and two more copies of Stasio sliced through her shoulders. Her scythe careened through the air overhead to land uselessly in the dirt, just as her arms flopped down to do the same. She screamed as blood spewed from her stumps and looked wildly from one blade to the next, until she had seen all four.
“Whoever said there were only two?” he asked with a smirk. “Moving the copies might take some time, but creating new ones is about as close to instant as it gets.”
He raised Stasio and the four copies formed up around her to strike from all sides. Of course, with only four, there was plenty of room to move, so she did. She turned and ran toward a gap. Toward, and not out of, because the cage of swords followed her, maintaining their positions relative to her.
“Nobody ever said they had to stay near me either.”
He swung down, and the copies followed, slicing vertically down through Vaio from four different angles. Her mangled corpse unraveled as it fell into a heap of limps and entrails. Her scythe dissolved into motes of green light and floated away on an unfelt wind. Falin dismissed Stasio. It was over.
“Woah! That was so cool!”
Falin sighed and turned to face Jonik as he ran toward Falin. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
There was no way he had gotten over here so quickly, let alone seen anything to comment on, if he had been behind the rock. For that matter, he wouldn’t have even known the battle was over. Though Falin did have to wonder how much of a fight of that level the boy had even been able to follow.
“Technically, no,” Jonik said with a grin that faded as soon as he saw Falin’s scowl. “Okay, I was, but I heard all the banging and wooshing and I got worried.”
“I’m a Paladin,” Falin said. “I don’t need a child to worry about me.”
Jonik sighed. “I know that. But I couldn’t help it. It just didn’t feel right to cower behind a rock while all that was going on, you know?”
“I do know,” Falin said. “You still should have stayed hidden. Unless you’re a beast, you need to learn to rein in your impulses.”
“I get it already,” Jonik grumbled. “But, hey, neither of you noticed me until just now. So, it worked out, right?”
Falin pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “You’re hopeless. Let’s just get you back home.”