Into the Abyss

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.

“This will be the final death for all of them.” Tom heard one of the priests say. Final death. He’d heard something about this. Boggy had said demons could be permanently slain, given enough time and effort. Was that their plan?

He was so tired. Slash went one of his wings, he fell to the ground. As he rolled on the ground he saw one of those giant umbilical cords to the sky. All that mana, he needed it. It suddenly felt like he was dying of thirst. If he could link on to one of those umbilical cords, he could get mana and recharge. Tom reached out with everything he had and tried to grab it. It was too slippery, it evaded him. He could barely sort of hold onto it with his mental hands but he couldn’t poke a whole into it and insert a mana string from himself. He needed a fucking needle.

He was desperate, this was entirely his fault, he should have just let the knight send Rupert back to the Abyss and left well enough alone, now it was the final death for them all. Vaguely he noticed struggling over where the other demons were. This was distracting lots of the priests. Oddly, Talarius hadn’t been doing much. He glanced at the knight who was being healed by the priests. Those fuckers had really cheated.

His eyes fell on one of the hollow arrows beside him. He stared at it for a second, a fucking needle. A needle blessed by the fucking god whose mana he wanted.

∼

“Did he say final death?” Bess asked.

“That’s what it sounded like.” Ramses stated.

“These folks are definitely feeling rather pissed.” Exador stated.

“Do you suppose we should intervene?” Bess asked.

“Why?” Ramses asked.

“Just sort of seems like the right thing to do; after all this is Good vs. Evil, all us demons are Evil, and the Rod is Good; shouldn’t we help out our fellow Evil? If only to defeat Good?”

“Hmm, you make a compelling point.” Ramses pondered.

“Yeah but that would mean blowing what little remains of our cover, exposing ourselves and jeopardizing our plan to get our hands on the book.” Exador responded.

“Better point.” Ramses noted.

Bess was nodding her head. “You, of course, are correct.”