Night had fallen, which meant the demons and, presumably, the Kachua would be at full power. Waiting for daylight was an option, but it would mean leaving Noivern, a more reliable means of flight than the Elytrons, and letting however many people die that the Kachua needed to eat to keep going.
Given the size of that thing, it would not be a small number.
On the bright side, Torgudai and an army of horsemen were not far off. I’d finally gotten ahold of him as we turned the airship around to follow the titan. The orkhan had been trailing the monsters after a disastrous initial assault on the monument at Gundurgon when the titan first appeared.
A weakened army was better than no army, and now that he knew I was here, he was willing to try again.
The gondola rocked slightly as a harpy alighted along its side. Its thick, curved beak tapped against the glass. It had to duck for me to open the window, and then it stuck its head inside.
“The riders near,” it croaked, not as accustomed to human speech as some of its fellows.
“Thanks,” I said. “How long until they catch up to us?”
“Minutes, moments, miles, that way.” It bobbed its head in a north-easterly direction, then it tilted and opened its beak, so I handed it a clump of old zombie meat as a reward before it flapped off. Some of the younger ones expected treats for a job well done.
The green text box behind it informed me that it was unaligned and had no elemental affinity, like most of its kin. What had been different about the bird that brought me a message in Nargul? Celaeno had an air affinity, which made sense—not an alignment.
“Not terribly exact,” Esmelda commented, looking in the direction the harpy had indicated, back toward the storm over Grimwald.
I went to look with her, seeing nothing but darkness and wasteland.
“There,” she said, “pointing. That’s a sizeable force.”
“Your eyes are still better than mine.” Was that a dust cloud? I squinted, seeing nothing.
“Was there any question that Mizu’s gifts are superior to Calcion’s?”
I stopped myself from arguing the point. Both Systems had their benefits, and I was only getting a touch of what Discord had to offer, but going full Chaos Marine was not something I intended to do.
“How far off, do you think?”
She bit her lower lip, thinking. “It warrants a delay. The demons are moving at a snail’s pace compared to the Atlan cavalry. They will catch us well before the moon has reached its peak.”
The cavalry wouldn’t be much more than a distraction, but their shamans could mean we actually had a chance at this. Hearing from Torgudai had been a considerable relief, and even with my concern for the hostages, it didn’t make sense to attack without them now that we had the opportunity.
Hurin dropped our speed as we paced the titan and its cloud. We were a mile behind them, so either spawns or demons must have spotted us by now. They weren’t attacking us, though. Bune had wanted us to come to them, and it looked like they were willing to wait for us to do just that. From the direction of their march, it appeared they weren’t headed for Mount Doom directly. Instead, their path would take them to Nargul. The city was closer. We still would have made it to Gundurgon and back before they reached it, but the margin for error would have been tight.
If there had been any delays, that titan would have put its foot through the walls of Nargul.
Time passed slowly, and aside from distributing potions and sorting through my inventory, there wasn’t much to do. It was only a few minutes before I could make out the line of the orkhan’s forces, but it was a long wait before their route would intersect ours.
The seconds ticked by, and a plume of fire rose from the walking mountain to color the cloud that followed it. It allowed us a brief moment to take the measure of our enemy, the shambling horde, the loping beasts, and the swarm of dark shapes in the air around the titan.
“The humans are marching ahead of the kachua,” Esmelda said, and I nodded. Not that I could tell if it was five thousand of them or not, but it would have made for a reasonable estimate.
The seconds ticked by, and as Togudai and his people drew closer, it became clear that they wouldn’t ride to meet us; they were aiming for the titan. I tried reaching him on the talking stick several times, but he wasn’t answering. Not surprising, considering that his army was now nearly at a full gallop.
They were a fraction of the size of the force they approached.
“Increase speed,” Esmelda said, and furious button-pushing ensued.
As we closed on the cloud, I signaled the templars to start taking potions, and they threw back vials of shimmering liquid, Potions of Speed, followed by a pale purple elixir. Slow Falling had never been helpful for me. I’d had the enchantment first, and now, the Elytron, but they would be our men’s only hope of survival if the blimp went down.
Let’s be honest — When it went down.
If I’d had enough Elytrons for the templars, I would have been happy to equip them properly, but with the damage I’d done to every set I’d worn, there weren’t that many extras to go around. Whenever I figured out a working formula, we could have a fleet of gliding knights, but all my attempts to replicate them had only wasted resources.
Esmelda and I would be the only ones with wings: us, the harpies, and Noivern. We swung to one side of the kachua. There would only be so many chances to hit this thing with everything I had, and I wanted that bomb to get dropped on its head.
As we came within its cloud, a scattering of phantoms tried to harry us. The harpies made quick work of them. A wyvern came with the next batch, and Noivern ripped it apart. He was almost twice the size of a normal spawn, so it was barely a contest.
No demons appeared even as we made the halfway point, close enough now to see the red-rimmed caldera at the peak of the kachua’s back. I could make out its form better this close, though much of it was still shrouded in smoke.
Four elephantine legs and a broad, rectangular body. The mountain fused seamlessly with its body, but it wasn’t made of stone. The legs were gray and scaled as if coated in iron. A steady roar emanated from the caldera, and that sound was nothing compared to the booming of its footfalls. Each step boomed, and a noise like the grinding of stones accompanied its every movement.
Where were the demons? Most couldn’t fly, but Bune couldn’t have been their last airbender. And even if he was, we should have been assailed by fireballs, launched stones, or magic-propelled bullets by now.
The Atlans were closing, the thunder of their hooves lost to the distance and the background noise of the titan. We would reach the head of this thing before they came under the cloud. It was not as coordinated an assault as I would have liked, but I would take it.
As we came around the forward shoulder of the titan, we were greeted by our first glimpse of its head. Smoke billowed from its mouth. Mouth or beak? It was flat but hard, and I didn’t see any teeth, only a burning orange glow emanating from its throat. Its eyes were dull silver orbs the size of wagons, slit with black. We could have landed the airship on the dome of its skull without trouble if it let us.
Esmelda shot down a stray phantom, and then all the harpies shrieked.
Searching the sky for threats, I saw another flock of phantoms descending from the cloud, but they weren’t numerous enough to warrant that response.
“There,” Esmelda said, drawing an atreanum arrow from her quiver. Another shape followed the phantoms, one as large as Noivern—a black bird with eyes of emerald flame. The flock around us moved to intercept and then broke into two streams, curving away from the demon.
“My children,” it screamed, “have you forgotten the face of your father?” Somehow, its voice, high and wild, carried over the din of the moving mountain.
A green box flashed over its broad wings, informing me that it was the same harpy who had set me on this course.
“Fiddlesticks,” I swore, opening the gondola door and whistling for Noivern.
“Be careful,” Esmelda said, leveling another shot. “They're coming back.”
She was right; the harpies weren’t just running away from the demon whose name, apparently, was Harpy. They were circling back in what could easily be interpreted as an attack pattern. If Celaeno had been there, maybe she could have gotten them under control, but she was back at Mount Doom managing the rest of the flock and the scouting network. Even if she had been with us, maybe she would have been just as much in the thrall of this demon as the others.
Its proclamation flew in the face of what I knew of the harpy origin story, but that was something I could ponder later.
Noivern emerged from beneath the gondola, and I hopped on his back. He growled at the sudden addition to his weight and quickly accommodated my arrival with a few powerful beats of his massive wings.
The Elytron could be a backup; Noivern was more reliable. As we rose toward the demon, I saw one of Esmelda’s arrows blocked by a phantom, which promptly fell from the sky as the magic that kept it aloft was cut off by the atreanum tip.
A harpy got in my way, scratching at my helmet, and I batted it off with my gauntlet. I didn’t want to kill any of my homies if it wasn’t necessary. This wasn’t their fault. It was a demon thing. Most of them were flocking around the dirigible balloon, alighting to attack it with beaks and claws. The Unbreaking enchantment would hold for a little while, but its effectiveness was relative to the material it was applied to. That cloth would not last under sustained assault.
The demon swooped down, easily avoiding the first swipe of my sword and Noivern’s teeth. Its talons scraped my pauldron, leaving deep lines in the orichalcum. Even the lion with a metal affinity hadn’t been able to do that kind of damage with its sword.
Its raucous laughter seemed to echo as it barrel rolled around us. The green System screen held stable when I focused on it.
Harpy
Entity Rank: D
Alignment: Discord
Affinity: Flesh
Its rank had gone up. It must have been hiding its aura. That made it one of the strongest demons I’d come across. As powerful as Bael. And its affinity was flesh, the same as Stolas, the owl that had killed me.
A good fight, then.
I switched our Smaragdine for Kevin’s buster sword, the extra reach was critical, and readied for its next fly-by. It sent in phantoms first, and Noivern caught one in his mouth, but I had to slice through two of them to keep them away from my face, and the demon took advantage of that moment of distraction to hit us.
It battered me with its wing as it went by, nearly dislodging me, but its real target had been Noivern. A long gash opened in the stretched skin of his right wing, and he screeched in anger as our flight became unsteady.
“Keep fighting, buddy,” I called over the wind. “I’ve got this.” Rolling from Noivern’s back, I drew the buster to my chest and activated the fresh rocket in my Elytron. Flame sparked behind me as I shot up toward the demon, my body becoming the shaft of a comically large spear.
The move caught the demon off-guard. Though it still moved to evade, the buster sliced through its left wing as I went by. Its reflexes were insane. Even as it dodged, it must have cut at my back, because the rocket exploded.
It gave a very human shout of surprise at the detonation that claimed one of its claws. I couldn’t revel in the victory.
My heart bar was flashing from the damage, and my Elytron had shattered, leaving only the straps over my shoulders as I fell.
We were hundreds of feet up, and a small legion of monsters was beneath me. Mostly shamblers, with a few more prominent shapes mixed in as well. No time to waste categorizing what I’d be falling into.
The last time I’d had a fall like this, I’d tried to use leaf blocks to cushion it. It had worked, sort of. The force that kept them suspended wasn’t strong enough to make them a platform.
But what happened when you made leaf blocks with a Fixation rune?
Using the Storage Ring was second nature now, and dismissing the buster sword barely required a thought. Sticking out my hand, I placed a leaf block in the air just below me and dropped onto it like a falling man encased in heavy armor.
The situation was too urgent for proper metaphors.
The leaf block hit me in the breastplate, compressed, but didn’t break apart. A success, except that it was only one cubic foot, so I slammed into it and spun right off.
I was much closer to the ground for my next attempt, but I placed three blocks in a rough triangle before smacking into them, and they held. Didn’t even cost me hearts.
The sounds of the moving mountain, the harpies, monsters, and everything else, were largely replaced by the beating of my heart in my ears. I didn’t have a full stack of leaves in my inventory, making anything with runes was too essence-intensive for that, but I had enough to make myself a floating platform to stand on, and I quickly did so.
Shamblers groaned fifty feet beneath me, raising their arms to catch the prey that would not fall. The Kachua was still moving, but it had slowed, and seemed to be coming to a stop. An unasked question, why the demon hadn’t pursued me, was answered as I looked up.
It had tangled with Noivern, who could still maneuver and keep himself aloft as long as he didn’t have a few hundred extra pounds to carry. But the wyvern alone would have been no match for the demon. Esmelda glided in an arc around the monstrous pair, firing arrow after arrow. Her aim was unerring, and each atreanum-tipped missile weakened the demon, who summoned the harpies with a cry.
The harpies broke away from the now sinking dirigible with angry cries, the entire flock angling for Esmelda. Without an Elytron, I was stuck on my makeshift platform, the leaves shifting and compressing beneath my boots.
“Run!” I shouted, but Esmelda didn’t need the warning. She activated her rocket and shot away.
Calling up a bow, I targeted the demon, who thankfully wasn’t giving chase. He fended off Noivern, giving the wyvern a wide gash along its face in the process, and took my arrow to its back. The black-winged demon’s cry cut through the air as it looped, spotted me, and dove like a missile. I got off one more shot before it hit me, the force of its landing breaking through the already overstrained leaf blocks, and we barreled toward the ground.
All I could see was its black feathered body—the golden talons that gripped me as my bow fell away.
The zombies, at least, cushioned my landing. Being pile-driven by a demon into a horde of spawns did surprisingly minor damage, but small injuries added up. It took the wind out of me and jarred me to my bones. Half my health bar remained.
Talons raked my breastplate as the demon loomed over me. Hands and tentacles reached in from all sides, grasping my limbs. In response, I spammed Shadowbane torches, a dozen dropping from my Storage Ring in a few seconds. The zombies pulled back even as the demon knocked my head to one side with a swipe that nearly ripped off my visor. He had multiple atreanum arrows in him and was within the aura of the torches, but he was still strong enough to peel me out of my armor.
He struck me again, disorienting me, and when I summoned Smaragdine, he knocked the viridium blade out of my hand.
A lance of light blinded us both in the next instant, and the demon’s voice broke in a ragged scream. The weight lifted from my chest as he retook flight. The flare had only lasted a moment, but I lost long seconds blinking back my vision. Spawns encircled me along the edge of the light of a pile of glowing torches, though there was a break in their ranks where the beam had disintegrated a line of zombies.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Through the gap, I could see the Atlans, still hundreds of yards away. The shaman at the head of their charge had to be Torgudai, a brilliant gem held aloft as the demon swooped down. There wasn’t enough time for him to cast another spell of that power, but three smaller beams leaped from the galloping ranks. Twisting in the air, the demon avoided one, and the second grazed his wing. The last, coming from a different angle, hit him full in the chest, seemingly with the force of a runaway elephant.
Harpy spun head over talons and dropped to the ground, overtaken by the horsemen a moment later. Hooves pounded, and blades flashed down. The already wounded and weakened demon was quickly lost in the chaos.
In the sky above, the harpies were scattering, released from whatever hold the demon had over them. I saw Esmelda zooming back to the airship, which was sinking fast, losing air from countless punctures in its balloon.
Ranks of spawns moved to meet the Atlan charge, led by hollows riding varghests, and among them, I saw the lanky shapes of voidmen blinking forward. Trolls bellowed battle cries, and a chimera roared. A vorokai, one of the giant spider scorpions, landed atop a horseman, crushing him and his mount alike, its barbed tail lashing out to take another warrior’s life.
For the moment, the torches were still protecting me. So I downed a healing potion, followed by Might and Speed. Grimacing against the too-sweet elixir, my attention was drawn to the shift in the grinding din of the behemoth behind me. It had come to a stop, and now it was turning.
A leg thicker than the monument of Salenus swung out, threatening to crush whatever happened to be underfoot when it came down. I grabbed a torch, then Smaragdine, and ran.
The Kachua seemed to move with aching slowness, but that was a trick of its size. Once it was up and moving, its step covered ground faster than I could. Thankfully, it wasn’t trying to squish me; the titan was merely turning to address the commotion along its side.
I was headed for the cavalry to help them if I could, and as I glanced back, I saw the Kachua’s head turn on a stubby neck, its great eyes settling on the new arrivals. Its Presence was immense. Now that I wasn’t struggling for my life, I could feel the pressure of its spirit against my own. It was not trying to overwhelm me; it was naturally overwhelming.
How could the demons control something like this? Was that why I’d only seen the two so far? The rest were all busy trying to keep a titan in line?
The spawns that got in my way fell swiftly, and the torch kept them from mobbing me. It looked like the templars were trying to steer the airship behind the Atlan forward line, the safest place to land.
Though safety here was relative.
As I reached the Atlans, Torgudai recognized my armor, raising his crystal in a salute. He was using it to generate a protective field, a supercharged version of my torchlight, to help keep his people pressing forward in a wedge.
They couldn’t stop. They needed to charge through and around. They weren’t outnumbered yet, but there were battalions of monsters all around the Kachua, and the other groups were already moving to converge on the riders.
Shamans targeted the larger spawns, vorokai and trolls, that regular warriors could not hope to kill. Troll hide and spider carapace were both too tough for most unenchanted weapons to pierce. Arrows buzzed through the air; every Atlan rider was a consummate bowman, but they weren’t nearly as effective as they would have been against human opponents. Zombies could suffer horrific wounds before falling, and the hollows had to be dismantled to be stopped. No matter where I looked, the Atlans were at a disadvantage.
Heads dropped as Smaragdine swiped, and an explosive discharge of essence removed a troll's leg at the hip. But I could kill monsters all day, and there would still be more. It was the titan that mattered.
I pushed for a gap, shouting for Noivern, and the wyvern swooped down. Riders parted to make way, and I had to stop a man from shooting. To them, Noivern looked like another big spawn. My familiar gave a sad trill as it hit land, bleeding from multiple wounds, with an arrow sticking out of its tail.
“Open wide,” I said, feeding it a healing potion, and the long gash in its wing knitted together before my eyes. As its wounds closed, I climbed onto Noivern’s back, and it took a few lumbering steps before catching enough lift to get us airborne. People had to scatter to get out of our way, but they would get over it. The Atlans were already mostly past us, continuously in motion, preparing to circle the enemy they had just split in two.
The Kachua opened its mouth, and flame spilled out. A cataract of superheated destruction that swept over hundreds of square yards. It didn’t distinguish friend from foe. Spawns died in droves, but so did the rear line of Atlans. The roar of the flames drowned out all else, and the sudden updraft gave Noivern enough lift to send us spiraling into the sky.
But we didn’t need to go up. The airship was landing in an open stretch of desolate clay well beyond the clashing armies. I urged Noivern down, and we dropped beside the deflating balloon as the templars and Esmelda exited the gondola.
“I need you,” I said, holding out my hand to my wife.
She glanced between me and the templars, then to the wall of flame that was just beginning to die down.
“This isn’t what we brought you for.” She said, “Stay as clear of the battle as possible and keep yourselves alive. If you spot a demon, call us.” Esmelda tossed Hurin a speaking stick, and he saluted. We were in the air a moment later.
For all the death its attack had caused, the Kachua, at least, seemed to take a long time between breaths. Smoke and steam curled around its maw as it surveyed the destruction it had caused and continued to turn its body at the pace of a sliding glacier. The glow from its gullet had dimmed, suggesting a built-in cooldown between uses of its breath weapon.
Esmelda clung to my back as Noivern banked, bringing us up and around the titan’s broad head.
“When I drop it,” I said, “hit it with a flame arrow.”
It took a bit of readjusting for Esmelda to find a position on Noivern’s back where she could comfortably fire her bow, and we passed into the dark cloud just above the Kachua’s head. Its eyes had followed us as we circled it. Not interested, certainly not afraid, simply aware.
TNT blocks, when stacked together, converted into a single medallion. It wouldn’t work with all combinations, but any even cube would do.
A four-by-four cube, sixteen blocks of TNT, popped into existence under my hand and fell toward the flat expanse of the Kachua’s head. Esmelda watched it fall, bowstring taut, and fired a heartbeat before impact.
The explosion was bigger than I’d bargained for. A deafening boom and a shockwave that sent Noivern reeling. It blasted much of the smoke that surrounded us away, only to replace the cloud with more of its own, and the Kachua emitted a long, drawn-out moan like the sound of straining metal.
It wasn’t dead, not by a long shot, but we had hurt it. As Noivern took us in a loop, it was hard to tell how much damage had been done. The Kachua’s head lowered, then raised, as it twisted to get us in sight. I was preparing to drop a second bomb when the titan’s presence hit us.
The force of its will drove us down, Noivern and all, into the rocky outcrop where its neck connected to the mountain on its back. My familiar shrieked, one of its wings snapping as we hit the ground. Esmelda did a diving roll off his back, and I crawled off. The pressure wasn’t holding us down. It had been like a psychic slap.
We’d just been chastised by a god. The last time I’d felt anything close to that was when we fought David at Salenus.
Noivern got to his feet, but he wasn’t in any condition to fly.
“You think another bomb will do it?” I asked Esmelda, staring down the titan’s neck to see the section of its head where its steely flesh had burned blasted away to reveal white bone. Not much of a crater, but proof that we could hurt the thing.
She pointed up the hillside, which, now that we were on it, seemed more like a gnobbled shell than an actual mountain. Near the caldera, half hidden by smoke, was a stone temple. A high arched entrance, with columns running on either side. It could have been something out of a Roman city, except it was on the back of a giant monster.
Beneath the arch was a demon, a hybrid of wolf and man. Valefor. He saw us, turned his back, and disappeared into the temple.
“I guess we found the demons,” I said.
“They don’t seem concerned about the Kachua,” Esmelda said, glancing back at its head. The titan was once again surveying the battlefield, perhaps deciding where to send its next cataclysmic breath. “How many more bundles do you have?”
“One,” I sighed. It would have been more than enough for the monument, and I had some single blocks to work with, but they wouldn’t do anything for us here.
“The demons, we can kill,” she said. “This thing,” she looked down at the rocky shell. “I do not know.”
“Is an out-of-control titan any better than one they’re directing?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t worse.”
I gave Noivern another one of my healing potions, then told him to follow us as we made our way up on foot. Flying would have been faster, but it left us more exposed. It was hard to believe the demons weren’t watching us, and we had no idea how many there were in there, or the nature of their affinities.
Esmelda and I set off at a jog. Uphill. In armor. Fortunately, my potions were still in effect, and she was light enough on her feet that it looked like she could have kept this pace all day. She kept her bow in her hands, but the twin swords I had made for her were bouncing on her hips, and I was sure she would soon have a chance to test them.
The sounds of the battle were distant now, replaced by the rumbling of the caldera and the sound of our footfalls. A quick mental inventory didn’t leave me feeling confident—plenty of daggers, and one stick of dynamite filled with atreanum shards. The encounter with Harpy had shaken me. Valefor had to be at least as strong as that, and there could be ten more demons with him in that temple, or even more.
Still, this is what we were here for. We would do as much damage as we could, and, if it came to that, be ready to fight again when we respawned.
What do you think, Calcion? Can we win?
There was no answer to my thoughts, of course. The eye didn’t work like that. It also refused to give me a reading on the Kachua. It was that far out of my league.
“Esmelda,” I said between hurried breaths. “If it goes…bad…I want you to run. Take…Noivern.”
She shot me a look that told me all I needed to know about what she thought of that plan.
They weren’t guarding the door, and there were no windows on the front facade. We stopped at one of the columns at the corner of the building. It was perfectly smooth granite, as was the rest of the structure. It had been made, not built. There was someone with an earth affinity here.
We crept to the entrance, and rather than rush inside, I lit my dynamite stick and tossed it inside. I didn’t sense the demons, but that just meant they were veiling themselves. If they were waiting for us, we could start this off right. Otherwise, I’d wasted a single-use weapon.
Considering all the explosions that had preceded it, the resulting boom was anticlimactic, but that was our cue.
I rushed in first, Smaragdine in one hand, the Durak shield in the other, and a Shadowbane torch clipped to my waist. All that greeted us was a wall.
It was ten feet inside the entrance and only five feet wide, a bulwark erected in the middle of an otherwise open chamber. Partially blackened from the explosion, the texture of the stone looked like what would form in a cavern from the slow drip of water, raised by a spell.
I didn’t stop moving. My heel scraped the smooth floor as I made the corner of the barrier, turning to face whatever was hiding behind it.
Marchocias
Entity Rank: E
Alignment: Discord
Affinity: Earth
A hound instead of a wolf. He looked like a Doberman on two legs, covered in interlocking rock plates. Not as big as Agares had been, but the same kind of armor. At least he didn’t have a hammer.
Before I could charge him, I was forced to dodge as a shape dropped from a ledge over the door. Valefore didn’t wear armor. He dressed like a noble. His bestial appearance made a silk vest, a ruffled shirt, and embroidered trousers all the more incongruous. His claws sparked off my shield as I hopped back, and he easily avoided my counterswing.
He was nine feet tall, his rippling muscles evident beneath the fur on his arms. The text box informed me that he had the same rank and affinity as Harpy.
I didn’t have time to take in the scene, but it struck me how empty the temple was. A church with no pews, only an altar and some kind of ritual circle lined with glowing gems at the far end of the hall. No more demons, at least none in the open.
Valefor and I exchanged a few blows, and I felt the stone beneath my feet soften in time to avoid being caught. Fighting Orobas had given me the experience to deal with earth magic, but one mistake would put me at their mercy.
“This is the end of your adventure,” Valefor said, his voice like velvet, as calm as if we were having tea.
My blade nearly took off his fingers, and I felt like he was grinning, but it was hard to tell with a full-on therian. “Where are the rest of you?” I asked. If we were talking, I might as well get some information.
His amber eyes flared. “The Kachua came at a price.”
Had they sacrificed themselves? That didn’t seem very demonlike. More likely, the strong had volunteered the weak. Fending off a flurry of strikes from Valefor prevented me from thinking about it too deeply
I spotted Esmelda creeping around the other side of the temple, and she launched an arrow at the hound. Even with her aim, there wasn’t a single chink in his armor sufficient to let the atreanum head through. It shattered against stone, and the demon turned.
He charged with a howl.
Valefor’s body blocked the scene as he continued to push me back. I managed to cut his upper arm, but the wound sealed almost as soon as it was made. I wanted to help Esmelda, she’d never faced a demon alone, but I couldn’t get past Valefor.
She dropped her bow, drawing her swords almost in the same instant and slipping around the reckless charge of the stone-covered demon.
Valefor wasn’t stronger than me; he wasn’t faster. The potions more than made up for whatever difference there would have been between us. He was, however, more experienced. And my potions were running down. About two minutes left on each.
It was unlikely that he would agree to a time-out.
His claws couldn’t scratch the Durak shield; I could rely on its defense for as long as I needed to. The groove he’d dug out of my bracer with a bare miss suggested that was the only thing I could rely on. As I tried to get around him, we shifted left and right, his blows coming fast and wild. He seemed to know every move I would make before I did, reading my stance, my tells. Gastard would have been able to trick him with a clever feint, but as swordsmanship went, I was still pretty basic.
He avoided my swings rather than blocking them, only occasionally turning my blade with his claws. The makeshift wall was to my right, and I started overcommitting my swings so that I tapped it, or the floor, with almost every stroke.
“Getting tired, human?” He sounded smug. The extra motion wasn’t doing me any favors in fending him off, and I had the impression that he was toying with me. If he’d really wanted to get around my shield, he could have. But he liked seeing me flag.
The timers ticked down. One minute. Thirty seconds.
Gacha games are the worst.
He stepped back to avoid a downstroke, and Smaragdine rang against the floor between us. The essence it had stored from the spawns we’d fought on the ground discharged in a violent cone of green-black energy that rolled over Valefor’s lower body. His legs vanished.
The wolf howled, his upper body falling to the floor, his hips charred stumps. I was so surprised by the power of the wave that I lost a beat, and he pushed off the ground hard enough to throw himself out of the way of my follow-up stab.
I spun, sprinting to where Esmelda danced around the other demon. Stone spikes had risen from the floor to impede her, but the hound was limping. Even as covered as he was, she had managed to slip her cerulium blade into a crack under his knee.
Smaragdine vanished into my Storage Ring, replaced a moment later by the buster, and I brought the flat of the enormous blade around into the back of the demon’s stone-encrusted head.
It wasn’t as good as a hammer, but it made him stumble. Esmelda slipped between the spikes and thrust her blue-edged blade at the eye hole in the demon’s mask. The gap wasn’t large enough for her to drive in fully, but the tip entered, and he jerked his head back with a bark.
The buster dipped as the effects of my potions wore off, suddenly too heavy to be used one-handed. We needed to finish this. As the demon swiped to keep Esmelda back, I switched out the buster for a pick. His next punch was for me, and I took it on my shield. The strength of the blow drove me back, my boots scraping on the floor.
The demon’s hand twisted, and one of the spikes ripped out of the floor, spinning through the air and slamming into Esmelda’s side as she lunged again. It didn’t pierce her, but it knocked her to one side, and I heard her gasp in pain.
My jaw clenched, and I swung Durin’s Digger at the demon’s chest. A square section of his armor disappeared, harvested, and he batted my shield away, stepping into my guard. He jabbed, his fist knocking my head back, and my vision swam. I tried to mine more of his armor, but he pressed his advantage, hitting me again, and I hid behind my shield.
Esmelda reappeared, and he turned to meet her just as she drove her atreanum sword into the bare space on his chest. His armor had already begun to close, but her blade slipped in and through, clinking against the stone of his backplate.
He dropped silently.
A howl filled the hall.
Valefor had regenerated. Becoming immense, and all human resemblance was gone. He crouched on all fours, though his limbs were longer than any wolf’s and oddly jointed. His eyes blazed with amber light, and his mouth hung open, revealing a long tongue that ended on a barb like a phantom’s tail.
No more talking, then.
Switching back to Smaragdine, I took a single step forward and was abruptly thrown back ten feet into the wall. He’d moved too fast for me to see, blinking forward like a voidman and hitting me with the force of a raging troll.
Esmelda moved around to flank him, and he watched her with one eye.
I charged ahead, struggling to catch my breath but unwilling to give him a chance to go after Esmelda. She couldn’t tank a hit like that.
Valefor grabbed me by the shield and tossed me like a doll. My shoulder popped, and pain flared as I rolled across the floor. Esmelda made to lunge, then jumped back to avoid claws that had grown to the length of sabers.
My mind raced. A bomb wouldn’t stop him. Even if he stayed still long enough for me to use one, he’d already survived getting half his body blown off. It had to be atreanum. Esmelda narrowly avoided being sliced in half as I levered myself up. She had to stay back.
“Shoot him,” I said, “I’ll hold him off.”
The wolf laughed, a rough sound that set my teeth on edge. He took a step toward Esmelda, forcing her to retreat. Still playing with us.
“Face me.” The words were harsh, but they didn’t come from the demon. A man in diamond armor had stepped around the bulwark. He held no shield, and pure white light wreathed his sword.
“Gastard?” My mouth dropped open. The green notification behind him confirmed his identity, not that it could have been anyone else. He saluted me with a fist to his chest, then stepped toward the demon.
Valefor had spun at the new voice. He launched himself at the Guardian of the Realm in a blur of dark fur. Gastard moved so quickly that it took me a moment to understand what I’d seen. As the wolf lunged, he’d slipped under the extended arm, slicing along his flank as he went by.
The light of his blade remained burning where it had cut. Valefor dug his claws into the stone, using it to flip himself around and face Gastard again. His next attack was more measured, testing his opponent, and the pair traded blows. There was no more laughter.
Gastard was…ridiculous. He was outmatched in reach, strength, and raw speed, and though his blade could cut the demon’s hide, Valefor was still regenerating. Still, he held his own, refusing to give ground and even driving the monster back.
Valefor grunted as an atreanum-tipped arrow appeared on his shoulder. Esmelda had taken my advice, and I decided to follow her example. Unable to break Gastard’s guard and suffering the sting of our arrows, Valefor leaped to the wall, latched on, then launched himself at Esmelda.
He was too fast, crossing the room in a flash. There was nothing I could do to save her.
A fireball exploded against Valefor’s head, knocking him off course just enough for Esmelda to dive out of the way of his claws.
Valefor raged wordlessly as a green and blue feathered phoenix rose to the vaulted ceiling of the temple.
Astaroth sang, raining fire. Valefor crouched, preparing to leap again and pluck the other demon from the air. He lowered his head enough for it to be within reach of Gastard. The sword wreathed in light swung up, severing the wolf’s head at the neck.
Valefor gnashed his teeth like a snake refusing to acknowledge its own death.
Esmelda dropped her bow, redrawing her atreanum sword as she rushed in. She stabbed Valefor through one huge, amber eye, and he stilled. The wolf’s body wavered before its legs gave out. Its neck spurted dark blood, and did not heal.