Into The Abyss (Demons of Astlan)

by Langland, J.

  Talarius’ eyes narrowed in calculation for a moment and then he finally nodded and said “Agreed.”

  Tom nodded and gestured for everyone to step back. The priests surrounding them did, as did the three demons behind him, Rupert, Tizzy and Antefalken. Tom looked around the circle using his demon sight. He wasn’t sure if he trusted these guys, but they were supposed to be goody-two-shoes, so they should keep their word.

  Hmm, Tom had to blink; there were tons of links here. Links of a style he hadn’t seen before. It seemed like every person here, all the Rod members had one or more links to people dressed like priests and these priests had links to fancier dressed priests. The fanciest dressed priests seemed to collect all the links from the lower priests and then had massive cords sort of going up to the sky and fading out as they left the plane. How very weird. He could see that the giant cords to the sky seemed to be carrying mana; actually, there seemed to be two lanes, one going up one going down.

  Was this like a wizard link that Rupert had described where wizards could share mana? But if so, who were they sharing mana with? Someone off plane apparently? Gods? Angels? Holy shit! That put a completely new spin on reality! Oh fuck! Were these gods real? Priests did cast spells; everyone said they did; were they really miracles?

  Slam! Slice! “Agghhh” Tom roared as Talarius’ sword ripped in to his side. He’d gotten lost in thought staring at the priests and the knight had attacked. That wasn’t very sporting! Tom looked down at his side where there was a huge gash and blood oozing out. He shook his head and flashed to flame and then reformed without the wound. He heard a few gasps from the crowd.

  He turned his attention back to the knight just as his sword came cleaving towards him. Tom blocked it with his hand. Shit! He should have used his nails, that magic sword could cut him almost as well as a normal sword could cut human flesh. He flashed his hand and reformed it.

  The knight was winding up for another huge slash so Tom quickly spun and gave the knight a standing back kick in the gut as hard as he could. Crap! That hurt! It hurt worse than kicking the dragon or any other demon.

  However, no matter how much it had hurt him, it had also knocked Talarius back and on his ass. He should have gone back a lot further than that, but Tom would take what he could get. The knight jumped back up like a gymnast; almost as if he wasn’t covered head to toe in heavy metal.

  The knight advanced, this time with shield ready to deflect a kick. Tom took a different fighting stance from his Tae-Kwon-Doe. The knight’s left side was protected by the shield while the right hand had the sword. As the knight moved in raising his arm as he charged to slash, Tom moved to the knight’s right side quickly and did a whirling back kick to the knights’ right flank, kiya-ing loudly and with all the force he could muster.

  Talarius went flying forward and to the left, off balance, taken by surprise. His sword coincidentally slashed Tom’s forearm, which hurt, but Tom flashed it back whole quickly. The knight regained his balance quickly; Tom could detect that he was breathing harder.

  The knight moved in again, Tom whirled again, only to have the knight slide down low under his legs, twisting somehow and bring his very pointy spiked boot right up into Tom’s balls. What the fuck! Tom howled in agony! His tail, of its own accord slashed down like a razor raking with a nasty shriek across the knight’s armor.

  As the razor sharp spade squealed across the armor, lightning coruscated over the surface of the armor, released from Tom’s tail spade. Tom completed his action pulling away from the knight and crouching, protecting his balls. In doing so, his tail had to leave the knight; and the electricity stopped.

  “That was rather a low blow, knight!” Tom growled at Talarius.

  “It pays to protect the family jewels, fiend!” Talarius glared back at him. Tom noticed that despite the loud noise, there wasn’t much of a mark on Talarius’ armor where his tail had tried to slice.

  The knight moved in for another slice; Tom blocked with his arm and tried a forward kick. The blade slammed tight into his forearm lodging in the bone. Fuck! Did that ever hurt! His kick just bounced off the shield. This was going to be tricky; he didn’t want to roast the knight with fire, but he wasn’t sure he could beat him physically without a lot of pain.

  He flashed to fire, releasing the sword and started a new spinning back kick between sword and shield while in fire mode and then solidified as his foot slid through the opening. Wham! The knight went flying backwards, shield and sword spreading wide. Tom seized the moment, scrambling as best he could, and using his wings he pounced on the knight with hard open hand punch to the solar plexus, expecting his claws to gouge through the armor.

  Again, that huge screeching noise as his claws slid and scraped along the armor! What the fuck! Tom thought? Those nails could carve solid stone! The knight was struggling to curl together and evict Tom. Tom, who’s left hand was back, brought it forward in an open hand thrust at the shoulder joint of the knight; a region only protected by chain mail.

  This time his struck home, hard. His nails didn’t quite pierce the chainmail, but the blunt force caused a cracking noise and a screech from Talarius. Tom’s joy was short lived as suddenly he felt excruciating pain in his right wing! Tom twisted back; the knight had slashed the end of his wing off! Tom yelled in anger and flashed to flame, not bothering to protect Talarius from the fire.

  However, in the few seconds that it took to do that, Talarius dove through his flame form and regained his feet. Solid again, Tom started to rise only to feel a searing pain in his tail! The son of a bitch had chopped it off! It fell flat on the ground twitching. Tom flashed to flame again and then back.

  He noticed that the priests around them were all chanting and there was a sort of glowing circle around the area of combat. He hoped it was some sort of ward to protect the audience, but he wasn’t going to bet on it.

  As he refocused on the knight, he saw the man remove his right hand from his left shoulder; there was a yellow glow around the shoulder joint as his hand pulled away. The knight flexed his shoulder good as new. Tom laughed to himself, a healing spell. Well since he could heal himself with flame, he supposed it was only fair.

  ~

  Exador, Ramses and Bess sat on their carpet watching the battle below, while eating the remainder of their breakfast, which Exador had been able to summon once they were outside the wards. Apparently, the Council was allowing a few other things out of the city at the moment, aside from demons.

  “Hmm, a very interesting match.” Ramses observed. “The Type IV has a very interesting style of hand to hand combat; not sure how proficient he is in it—it looks rather sloppy, but the novelty of it will put the knight off guard.”

  “Perhaps, but this knight is powerful. That armor of his is very nasty.” Bess said.

  Exador tilted his head back and forth; “Tiernon is definitely with him on this. He has a ‘grace’ I could never quite acquire. He may have more than Sir Astemon.”

  “How did you ever become Vicar General of the Rod Tiernon?” Ramses asked him. “You are and were then a freaking demon. Tiernon does not like demons.”

  Exador smiled. “Subterfuge, undercover work. I’ve worked very hard on the Exador line. Presenting a child that people see grow up, a man that runs the place and eventually an old man who dies. Lots of mana and animus hiding as well. Deep undercover.”

  “Plus some serious mental discipline not to reveal yourself in prayers and rituals. You’d think Tiernon’s higher priests and even Avatars might have noticed.” Bess commented.

  “Lots and lots of practice. Generations of it, so to speak.” Exador smiled. “In some ways, my crowning achievement.”

  “You say Talarius may have more grace than Astemon? He certainly had enough grace to kill me.” Ramses asked. “I’d say that doesn’t give very good odds for the IV down there.”

  Exador laughed. “And eventually, I killed Astemon. There are many factors that go into these things aside from how much Tiernon l
ikes a person. I didn’t have as much grace, but I also had a lot of other tricks up my sleeve that I could substitute for grace to get the job done.” Exador chuckled.

  “You cheated.” Bess stated, amused.

  Exador grinned. “Isn’t that what we do?”

  ~

  “Wing Arms Master?” Heron turned from inspecting the desolation of the oncoming demon horde, to find young Traeflon, his personal sorcerer beside him. “You might want to observe this.” He held up a crystal ball.

  Heron looked down and his eyes widened. Talarius was battling a Greater Demon hand to hand! This was definitely something to watch. “You’re recording this in the ball, yes?”

  Traeflon nodded, “Since the beginning, I’ve been monitoring their camp as a precaution.” Heron nodded in approval.

  “We are going to want to capture all of this. This is something you don’t see very often. We may have our differences with the Rod; but they really know how to handle Evil with a capital “E.”

  ~

  The knight got back into fighting position as did Tom. This was going to be a long fight, Tom feared. The knight thrust forward suddenly, Tom, having sensed a slight motion in that direction, was prepared and side stepped, grabbing the knight’s sword arm with both hands and lifting. The knight was over six feet tall, but Tom was nearly twelve, so it was like fighting a child in some ways. He lifted with all the strength in his arms and legs, bringing the knight up and over his own shoulder, spinning and then slamming the knight as hard as he could into the ground.

  The knight had managed to slash up Tom’s side pretty good with his sword during this, and his shield had banged painfully against his head, but he was willing to bet that the knight was hurt more than he was.

  The knight was on the ground, and Tom really felt like stomping on him with a hoof, but that didn’t seem sporting, so he stood back and let the knight recover. The knight slowly climbed to his feet chanting something Tom couldn’t quite make out. Golden light washed over the knight and his armor seemed to glow more brightly and the knight stood straighter.

  The knight tilted his head forward, glaring at Tom in anger. He shouted something in some strange language and charged point first. The guy was losing it. Tom stepped aside to repeat his last maneuver, when suddenly the knight stopped, spun and seemed to shimmer as his blade whisked around seeming to turn to pure light and extending beyond it’s normal reach to slice through Tom’s thighs! Both of them! Fuck that hurt!

  Tom screamed as he crashed to the ground, taken so by surprise that his wings weren’t able to catch him before he fell. That had hurt--unimaginably so. Tom was pissed, no more mister nice guy. He assumed the form of flame.

  He swatted hard with his flaming hand at the knight who ducked, but was still grazed by the fire. He didn’t seem to mind as much as Tom had hoped. Tom assumed his fist punching form and began fist punching the air, pointing at Talarius. Kiyaing each time and releasing blasts of fire at the Knight.

  The knight deflected the blasts with his shield. Tom rose in the air and fired straight down; the knight kept deflecting them. Tom wasn’t sure where’d the deflected bolts were going, it appeared into the crowd. He hoped they could protect themselves.

  This wasn’t working. Tom came down to hover near the knight. The knight slashed at Tom. Tom didn’t move expecting the sword to just pass right through him. It did, but holy shit did it hurt! Tom roared in surprised pain.

  Tom settled back to the ground and decided to go full bore. He launched a solid flame attack at the knight, just like against the ship. To his immense surprise, instead of raising his shield to defend the knight brought his sword forward; the shield hanging unused on his left forearm, and clasped it with both hands.

  Tom’s flames were being parted by the sword; parted and swept aside like the water before the bow of a ship. Again, Tom hoped the crowd was protected. The knight simply stood there, taking it. Tom shook his head and concentrated on trying to recall the blue white cold fire he’d used to finish off the Oorstemothian ship. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d done that; but he focused on trying to re-achieve that.

  There it went; it was actually a cold and electrical fire. Now that he was more in control he could tell what it was. The knight shuddered under the new assault and began mouthing something Tom couldn’t hear. The cold fire began to close in on the knight. Which was good because Tom was getting exhausted.

  He glanced down at his body to see if his flame body was blue-cold-electrical fire, or regular fire. It was turning blue-cold-electrical, but he noticed something far more concerning. That ring that the priests had put up, the glowing thing, it was seeping mana from him!

  He could see a slow, small but steady stream of his mana flowing off him and across the ground to the ring! The bastards were trying to drain him! The knight was cheating! This really pissed Tom off, and he began shooting traditional lightning bolts from his tail at the knight. He had to end this.

  “Aggh!” Tom exclaimed. Something was stinging him, a whole lot of some things. They were arrows being fired by the Rod at him. What the fuck! He was having trouble maintaining his concentration on the fire and what was hitting him. Hitting him in his fire form!

  He looked closely at one. It was a small hollow arrow! The arrows were entering his insubstantial body and sort of exploding and then falling to the ground empty. Apparently, there was some sort of magic payload in those arrows. It fucking hurt and there were a lot of them.

  ~

  “Hmm,” Bess casually observed while watching the fight. “Apparently we aren’t the only ones who cheat.”

  “Apparently, things have changed a bit in terms of protocol over the last millennia.” Ramses noted, sucking on a lemon.

  “Well, I would have expected the Holy Blessed Wards that they put up. It’s a standard blessing they like to use for combat, and it’s great for sapping the resources of mana rich enemies. Demons, vampires and the typical undead, the fey as well. But those arrows the archers are shooting; in my day, they wouldn’t have done that.” Exador shook his head sadly.

  “Yet, he’s put up a great fight; I’ll give him that.” Bess observed. “Really a pretty decent Type IV; I don’t know of too many that could have done a lot better under the circumstances. That armor is insane, the knight’s grace is ridiculous and he’s got a huge portion of the Rod helping him with prayers etc. They’re feeding him mana, draining his enemy and now shooting at the guy.”

  Ramses shook his head. “I’d have had to use every Temporamastery trick in the book and I’d be limited to the joints and the opening in the face plate given that armor. It would have been tricky, but I would have got him. Add in the other stuff, I’d have to break out the heavy duty archdemon tricks to do better. Which, I might note, I did not do against Sir Astemon. We don’t all cheat—well, not every time.”

  “Yes, the knight has some serious advantages that I can see, but clearly any of us could have overcome those. However, I do think it clear that very few Type IV’s could have done much better.” Exador stated. “At this point it’s just a matter of time.”

  Bess chuckled, “So, do you still believe Lenamare’s story about this being a fresh recruit?” The others laughed.

  “No, this demon has been around several hundred years at least, possibly a thousand.” Exador shook his head laughing to himself, and the others about Lenamare’s bullshit.

  ~

  Tom’s flames were starting to sputter a bit. It was just getting too distracting, too painful and he couldn’t keep the intensity level up, he was getting worn out. His mana level was visibly low when he looked at himself. He couldn’t keep this up. He made a decision.

  He turned the flame blast off, leapt over the knight, spinning as he descended and materialized, quickly grabbing the knight’s legs and jerking them out from underneath him. He pulled on the knight’s legs and stood up. Lifting the knight by his legs, he picked him up like a doll and then smashed him face first into the ground as hard as he
could. While the knight was down, Tom pulled the knight’s legs apart and kicked him as hard as he could in the balls.

  He picked the knight up and smashed him again into the ground as hard as he could; the knight twisting feverishly in his grasp. The squirming made it hard to hold him, but Tom held on; no more mister nice guy. He smashed the knight into the ground again.

  He drove the edge of his hoof has hard as he could in between the man’s thigh plates and calf plates until he heard a crunch of broken knee. Tom pulled back, twisting, lifting the knight and bringing him up and over his own shoulders and head and then smashing the knight down on his back.

  The arrows had stopped after he’d moved to the other side of the knight and materialized, now they resumed and they still hurt. Several other priests had started chanting loudly. As he was picking the knight up for another smashing, a dark mist grew around the two of them and the knight’s armor glowed white hot and suddenly Tom felt a billion tiny pin pricks digging in to him. Blood started oozing from his pores, even as the exploding arrows left weird burn marks on his flesh.

  He was getting exhausted. Shit, his hands were slippery. He lost hold of the knight who scrambled free and in so doing managed to bring the sword, which he’d never dropped, around and lopped off Tom’s foot at his ankle.

  Tom teetered trying to right himself with his wings, but he was getting tired. A priest had hurried to Talarius’ side and was doing something. Tom started to fly over there, but a yellow glowing mist, different from before was slowing him down.

  The knight climbed to his feet and slashed at Tom’s other leg, he got it at knee level. It hurt like hell, but by this point Tom was feeling punch drunk. His eyes were getting blurry. He had to switch to full demon vision to see.

  “Prepare for the final rites.” Tom heard the knight say. “Have you got the others secured?” Tom was confused. He felt a searing pain as the knight lopped off his left arm. He was still flying barely. He glanced over at the other demons and saw a glowing net of mana surrounding them. Fuck, they’d trapped them.