Into the Abyss

One problem temporarily on hold, Tom turned to face the next three. This wasn’t going to be fun, Tom thought. He had absolutely no idea how to deal with these three. As he stood, staring at the demons descending on him, he felt a pinprick between his shoulder blades. Arching his wings slightly, he turned to see what had caused the small pain. He couldn’t see anything that could have pricked him. Quickly scanning the crowd of soldiers who had been behind him, he detected some slight movement, as if someone moving away. He really didn’t have time to deal with whatever was going on there. He began to turn back, when he spotted a dagger lying on the ground. Apparently, someone had tried to throw a dagger in his back. Tom stood still, staring at the dagger for a few seconds. He didn’t know why it surprised him that daggers were bouncing off his skin, given everything else he had discovered about his demonic form.

Suddenly, as he stood there, someone slammed into him from behind. Sinewy arms closed about his neck, trying to strangle him. He had temporarily forgotten about the demons charging from behind. Startled violently, reflexively, without conscious thought on Tom’s part, his long prehensile tail came stabbing straight up. Tom felt it shoot up, and before he could stop himself, it rammed hard into the demon behind him.

Once or twice, when he’d been in elementary school, Joe Montague, who had always been the class trouble maker, had snuck up behind Tom and quickly placed one of his hands flat on the top of Tom’s head, and pounded on it with his other hand. This was what Joe liked to call “Ten Thousand Volts,” which was because it felt like a bolt of electricity was traveling down one’s spine. That was the feeling he now encountered. It felt as if an electric shock were traveling down his spine, from his neck, down the small of his back, down his tail and up to the sharp pointed part, which was stuck in the attacking demon.

The offending fiend screeched piteously. The sinewy arms fell slack, and then slid off Tom’s shoulders. Tom turned around to see a badly charred demon, which looked as if it had been split in two from the crotch up to the sternum. Even as his eyes widened upon the grisly scene, the demon’s body began to fade. This Tom realized was what it must look like to others as he disappeared back to the Abyss. At least that was where Tom figured the demon was going. He really couldn’t think completely straight at the moment, but everything Boggy and Tizzy had said, as well as his own experiences with the dragon, indicated that the demon should be returning to the Abyss to regenerate. At least he hoped so. He would hate to think that he’d killed the smaller demon, just because it was following its orders.

Tom looked up from the offending corpse. The other two smaller demons were simply standing a little ways off, looking at the spot where their compatriot had vanished from. Slowly they glanced up with sickly smiles. There was, Tom thought, definitely a hint of wariness, and perhaps even fear, in their eyes.

“Hi?” one said hesitantly. It made a feeble gesture with one hand, as if waving hello.

Trying to think quickly, but without knowing what to say, Tom just stood there. He realized later that the look of concentration on his face could probably only be construed as a fierce scowl to outsiders. Whatever the case, the two demons looked at each other, and then suddenly without warning, charged Tom.

Tom scrambled back a little, trying to take a defensive stance. However, just before the demons reached him, they let out high pitched howling noises, clouds of smoke sprang from nowhere, and the demons disappeared. “What the hell?” Tom said in surprise.

What were these two up to? Tom quickly looked around, suspecting a trick. The two demons however, were gone. He couldn’t see them anywhere, as far as he could tell, they’d gone back to the Abyss. The question was, why? It really didn’t make any sense.

“Cute,” said a voice from the crowd of soldiers to Tom’s left. Tom glanced over and saw the first demon slowly emerging from the crowd. “Perhaps you can scare pip squeaks into pretending that you destroyed them, so that they don’t have to fight; but it won’t work with me.”

“No, you’re going to have to get rid of me the hard way, asshole. That lightning trick ain’t gonna work on me either. So you’d just better be prepared for a long fight.” As he spoke the demon marched closer. As he finished speaking, Tom judged that he was just at the right distance.