Into the Abyss

Thus it was that Tom heard only a very short yell, as the cloud expanded and completely engulfed the demon and the wizard. C.o.D’s are very efficient, the victims feel only a momentary instant of infinite pain as their cells are ripped into their component molecules, which are in turn disassociated into their constituent atoms. At this point the victims feel absolutely nothing as the atoms are stripped of their electrons, and then the protons and neutrons are ripped apart. Suffice to say, one need not even mention any thought of pain as the nucleons are split into quarks and so on it goes down to the primordial energies and particles which may make up quarks. Naturally, a theoretical magic student may wonder at what happens to the incredible amounts of binding energy that are released in this occurrence. Unfortunately, the best theories simply state that this energy goes into feeding the cloud, allowing it to grow. After all, it takes an awful lot of energy to rip things apart on this scale in the first place.

It is also fairly easy to see that it would be nice to have a wizard controlling said cloud, otherwise it would disintegrate things, grow and eventually eat everything. Unfortunately, in this case, the controlling wizard was eaten by the cloud. Now, actually, Lenamare, who was observing from the castle wall, wasn’t too concerned. He wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure that the cloud couldn’t get through his wards. After all, the wards were pure energy to begin with. Thus at least he and his school would be safe.

Exador, on the other hand, had no such protection. Therefore, he quickly decided that instead of messing with more demons to fight Lenamare’s demon, he would do his best to try to get the cloud under control, before it ate his army. By the time he got close enough to begin work on trying to control it, it had quadrupled its size and had eaten four horses and five soldiers who hadn’t realized the problem in time to get away. Naturally it was also dissolving the earth below it as well.

∼

Tom though, didn’t really care about the cloud. He was simply exhausted and sick. He was just glad that he apparently had no more enemies to fight. Without waiting around for further orders, Tom took to the air to head back toward the clearing with the wizard in it. As he flew off, his last glimpse of the army was of some new big shot wizard waving his hands, and of soldiers finally having the sense to run away from something obviously dangerous.

It took very little time for Tom to return to the clearing. By the time he was coming down for a landing he was already preparing something nasty to say to the wizard about the timely backup he’d received. The words died in his mouth as he quickly noticed the state of the clearing.

The clearing kind of looked like one of those paintings he’d done at a carnival, where he’d squirted paint onto a rotating piece of cardboard. The main difference was that the clearing was painted mainly in red, with a little purple here and there. In the center of the clearing lay the wizard, unconscious, obviously suffering from some relatively minor sword wound. Over the wizard stood the little demon he’d noticed upon arrival. It seemed to be standing guard over the wizard, and glaring defiantly up at Tom.

“Stay back!” shouted the little demon as Tom landed a few feet away.

“Why?” asked Tom.

“’Cause I’m not going to let you hurt him,” said the little demon, with such seriousness and conviction that Tom had to restrain a bit of smile, despite his sour mood. Apparently, the little demon considered Tom a serious threat to his master and was quite intent on defending the man. A rather strange thought, actually, Tom decided, why would a demon want to protect its accursed master?

“Why don’t you want me to hurt him?” Tom asked in curiosity. “If I offed him, you’d be free.” Not that Tom had any desire to kill the wizard, the guy had been a little paranoid and pretentious, but he didn’t deserve death.

“Cause I said so,” retorted the little demon. “Besides, he’s the best master I’ve had in a long, long time, and I don’t want to give him up and get stuck with someone a lot worse. So you just back off, or I’ll make you sorry.” The little demon puffed.

“Oh,” said Tom with what he thought was an amused grin. The little demon blanched, so Tom figured the grin must not have worked like he’d intended. “Very well then, I’ll just go back to my cave.” The little demon said nothing, it just glared.

Without wasting any more time, Tom visualized his cave and began to will himself back to it. As the image of the cave began to superimpose itself upon the clearing, he noticed that the little demon wasn’t glaring so hard, but was still extremely vigilant. As he was almost completely back in his cave, he gave the demon a friendly wave and a nod.

Chapter 24