Into the Abyss

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 likes 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.