The Heavenly Host

Talarius did a double take and looked back at the youth. “Not at all. I compliment your strength and courage. At that age, I doubt I could have done the same. I was twenty when I encountered my first wyvern and it took two others to help me slay it. We were newly knighted and had had the best training available to warriors of the Rod.” Talarius shook his head. “No, most human youth of that age would have frozen in place, given up and allowed themselves to be cooked in the beast’s breath and then eaten. None could have done better; I doubt any would have lived.”

Tal Gor nodded, seeming appeased. He looked back out over the balcony.

“So you are a shaman to the demon Tom?” Talarius asked, probing a bit further.

“Yes,” Tal Gor replied tersely. “You are his hostage?”

“So it seems. I have no way of returning to Astlan, and am to all intents and purposes unarmed,” Talarius said. Tal Gor looked him over, his eyes briefly touching on Talarius’s hidden Rod of Smiting, his Rod of Lightning, and then scanning over the locations of his smaller blades.

“Clearly,” Tal Gor said drily.

Talarius chuckled. “You are the first person I have met here that I understand.”

“So how did you become hostage?”

Talarius shrugged. He did not want to go into it, yet this orc lad was the only one here who did not know of his shame. “Your demon lord challenged me to a duel for the freedom of his son, there.” He pointed to Rupert. “As well as his other friends. I accepted. We fought the fight of my life.” Tal Gor was looking at him incredulously. “I thought I had defeated him, and my hubris got the better of me. I let my guard down. He came back from what appeared to be death and possessed the priests surrounding me and quite a few archers. He used them against me. Admittedly, much the same way I had used them against him.” That was hard to admit, but what did it matter at this point?

“In any event, I could fight no more, even with healing, and I surrendered.” Talarius sighed. “He granted me mercy, and being rather upset, I tried one last time to skewer him with Excrathadorus Mortis.”

Tal Gor’s eyes widened and his breath was sucked into his lungs. “The blade that Sentir Fallon used to kill Orcus?”

Talarius blinked in surprise, he was shocked that the lad would know such ancient history. “The same. As the foremost Knight Rampant of Tiernon, it was my honor to wield it.”

Tal Gor shook his head. “So you missed?”

Now it was time for Talarius to sigh aloud. “No, I did not. I thought I had finished him off.”

“Did not seem to work then,” Tal Gor said, gesturing to the ceremony.

Talarius shook his head and gave a small, sad laugh. “Indeed, it did not. When he possessed the Church and Rod members, he broke into Tiernon’s holy illumination stream. He used the purified mana of Tiernon to heal himself and reverse Excrathadorus Mortis permanently.”

Tal Gor shook his head in amazement. “I take it Lord Tommus was not very happy with you?”

Talarius chuckled. “He opened up a hole to the Abyss under my feet and dropped me through it. He and his friends followed. And here we are!” Talarius shook his head. Talking about it, telling the story aloud to someone who did not know it, he came off badly. The demon had accused him of cheating. He had, and he had been dishonorable at multiple points. He shook his head. Why had he behaved that way? Was it hubris, as he had thought? Ignoring the great evil that Tommus obviously was, he, Talarius, had done things that he had always sworn not to do.

Several minutes passed in silence as Talarius was lost in his thoughts and Tal Gor digested the story.

Eventually Tal Gor broke the silence. “So this blade, Excrathadorus Mortis, it killed the demon prince Orcus permanently?”

“Yes, that is what the church teaches, and that’s what the demon bard says. If both agree, it must be true,” Talarius replied.

“Yet when you used it on Lord Tommus, he easily defeated its power and reversed it completely?” Tal Gor asked.

Talarius chuckled grimly. “Yes. It shocks the mind.”

“Yet was not Orcus one of the most powerful demon princes to walk the Abyss?” Tal Gor asked.

Talarius nodded. “That is what legends say. Behind only Sammael and Lilith.”

“So if Lord Tommus can easily overcome that which Orcus could not, does that not make him more powerful than the demon prince Orcus?” the young shaman asked.

Talarius closed his eyes. That was a thought he had been studiously avoiding. However, as much as he had wrestled with it, there was really only one answer. “It would seem that way,” he admitted.

Chapter 110

^{DOF +9}

^{Evening (Oorstemoth) 16-06-440}