The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (97 page)

The arrows had stopped after the demon had moved to the other side of the knight and materialized; at this point the Rod starts firing again. Several other priests had begun chanting loudly. As the demon begins picking the knight up for another smashing, a dark mist grows around the two of them, the knight’s armor suddenly turns white hot in appearance, and the demon begins sweating blood. The arrows continue to rain through the mist, and scorch marks are appearing on the demon’s hide wherever they strike.

The demon’s bloody palms have made the knight slippery and the demon loses his hold as Talarius scrambles free. As the knight regains his footing, he brings his sword around and slices through the demon’s left ankle, chopping his hoof off.

The demon teeters, trying to right himself with his wings, but is obviously getting tired. A priest hurries to Talarius’s side and begins casting healing spells. The demon launches itself into the air to fly over to the knight and priest, but a yellow glowing mist, different from before, envelops him, slowing his progress and dragging him back down towards the ground.

The knight climbs to his feet and slashes at the demon’s other leg, slicing through it at knee level. The demon is extremely wobbly and blinking furiously.

“Prepare for the final rites,” Talarius orders. “Have you got the others secured?” he asks his people even as he moves in for the kill, swinging his blade and lopping off the demon’s left arm. The demon wobbles in the air, looking as if it might crash at any moment. In the background, a glowing yellow magical net has engulfed the other demons with the greater demon.

“This will be the final death for all of them,” a priest shouts towards those casting the net.

Talarius moves in and slashes off one of the demon’s wings, bringing the demon to the ground. The demon’s one remaining arm waves uselessly in front of him, one moment clawing at the ground and the next waving feebly back and forth in the air. A sight that would have brought the bravest warrior to pity if this had been a fellow mortal.

Talarius ignores the demon writhing on the ground as one group of priests surrounds him to apply healing rituals and another group begins assembling the necessary implements for killing all the demons permanently.

The priests aiding Talarius are finished, and the knight stands and strides over to the pathetic, flailing demon on the ground. “So, demon. You are defeated, and now you and your immediate compatriots will face true death.”

“You cheated,” the demon croaks.

“There is no such thing as cheating when fighting Evil.” The knight takes his helmet off. He almost looks sad as he stares down at the demon.

“So you say. I disagree,” the greater demon says quite clearly. The demon is smoldering a bit now. He lets out a loud sigh and suddenly there is nothing but glowing ashes on the ground.

“Curses!” the knight yells. “He fled back to the Abyss!” He turns back to the group of priests who had been preparing the ritual. “How are the preparations going?”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” a man who appeared to be a general asked. “This is the sort of thing that can have unintended repercussions.”

The knight sighs. “I understand, Barabus, but these demons are clearly the root of the problem we and the Sky Fleet have been pursuing, and we need to deal with them once and for all.”

“Do you not want to question them?” Barabus asked.

“What good is questioning demons?” Talarius asked. “We’ll get better results from their human henchmen.” Barabus was nodding as a senior priest nearby suddenly threw up.

“Are you okay?” Barabus asks. The man is quite pale and shaking his head no, gasping and too weak to speak. Another high priest suddenly turns pale and falls on the ground, vomiting. Then another, and then a fourth high priest.

“What the hell is going on?” Talarius demands, looking around. “Verigas? What’s wrong?”

The high priest named Verigas, the whiny one from the beginning of the scene, is very rigid and silent, seemingly locked in some sort of internal struggle. After what seemed like an interminable time with everyone staring at the high priest, he seems to wake from his trance and turns to face Talarius.

“Well, knight, you said that in the battle with Evil, there is no such thing as cheating.”

Talarius looks at the priest strangely, clearing sensing something is not right.

“So I’ve decided to pull out all the stops,” the priest says.

“Verigas, what the hell are you talking about?” Barabus asks the high priest.

Verigas smiles a rather wicked-looking smile. “What makes you think I’m Verigas? Where are your paranoid conspiracy theories now, when you need them? You’ve really pissed me off, Talarius. You cheated. You have no honor, no integrity.”

“Oh, shit,” Talarius says, the blood draining from his face.

Suddenly the embers where the greater demon had fallen burst into flame. A whirlwind of embers and smoke rise into the air over the site of the fallen demon. Suddenly the smoke and embers join into flame, growing and growing. The knight and priests stare as the flames grow and meld themselves into a humanoid form—a large humanoid form.

The high priest Verigas lets out a shriek and falls to the ground, collapsing in a heap like a discarded marionette. No one moves to attend him.

The flames grow to twelve feet tall and then solidify in the form of the demon who had just been defeated.

“I’m afraid you won’t get rid of me that easy, Talarius.” The demon grins.

“So you’re back?” Talarius asks, putting his helmet back on.

“Yes, I am, and you cheated.” The demon shakes his head. “Seems to me that violates the Knight’s Code of Ethics?”

The knight winces slightly this time and sighs. “As I’ve said, there can be no mercy in fighting Evil.”

“I suppose, then, that it’s a matter of how, or who, you define as Evil,” the demon states. “Personally, I’m getting tired of being called Evil when there are plenty of other people around behaving far more dishonorably and despicably than me.”

The knight gets a steely look in his eyes. “Enough of your prevarication, demon. I’ve slain you once; I’ll do it again.”

“Not if I cheat first,” the demon said in a tired and resigned voice. “Fire!” He yells, and  suddenly large numbers of archers among the Rod raise their bows and begin raining arrows upon Talarius.

Talarius falls to his knees, crouching and covering himself with his shield as best he can, trying to minimize the exposed parts of his body. Taking advantage of the knight’s embattled state, the demon rises into the air and flies over to the net where the other demons are contained. He quickly rips it to shreds, yelling something that is hard to hear over the shrieks of the terrified priests.

The demon returns to his position near the knight. The rain of arrows is receding as other members of the Rod managed to subdue their possessed compatriots. The possessed Rod members fight viciously, almost desperately.

The demon comes up behind the knight as he starts coming out of his crouch. The demon grabs him by the legs and begins thrashing him all over again, this time watching out for any priests that might try to help the knight.

He smashes the knight into the ground about a dozen times, kicking him as hard as he can in between turns of slamming him into the ground. Periodically he stops and jabs with his claws between the joints to try and do damage; then he smashes the knight a few more times. This goes on for several minutes as the disorganized Rod and priests fight amongst each other, and the other demons, holding a defensive ring, slash any priest or Rod member who comes near.

Eventually, after what must seem a merciless eternity to him, the knight calls out, “Enough! Stop, please.” The demon stops.

The knight crawls to his knees, then tosses his sword and shield away. He takes his helmet off and puts it under his arm. “I surrender; you have defeated me, demon!” he shouts. It certainly looks that way; the knight is black and blue all over his head, he has blood running out of his nose, several cracked teeth and various head injuries.

“Kill me now and be done with it, oh vile demon! Know that you have beaten Talarius,” the knight sobs, tears running down his cheeks. The demon shakes his head at the knight and then suddenly seems to shrink in on himself, even as his skin color fades from red to pink. An average-looking young man not much younger than Talarius suddenly stands where the demon had been.

The naked man walks toward the kneeling knight. “I don’t want to kill you, Talarius.” The young man looks almost sorrowful, as if he pities the knight. “I do not hate you, nor do I wish to destroy you. I only want to protect my friends and my people.” The man-demon stares down at the knight. “I am not different, nor are they”—he waves towards the other demons—“from any other man. All we want is to live our lives, the same as you.”

The knight looks at him suspiciously and skeptically.

“Killing you would only perpetuate this stupidity. It needs to end. This whole Astlan-demon thing needs to end. We have to start somewhere; why not here?”

The knight shakes his head. “I don’t know. You make no sense, demon.”

“Talarius, you don’t have to change your opinion now. I don’t expect that. I am going to simply spare your life today so that you might, possibly, start to think that not everything you’ve grown up believing is true.” The demon makes a questioning gesture with his hands. “Okay?”

The knight hangs his head. “Okay,” he whispers.

The naked man-demon smiles and puts his hand down on the knight’s shoulder. The knight lunges upward. A large, shiny, black metal blade suddenly appears in his hand, and he stabs into the side of the demon. The demon lets loose a scream of pain and then bends over.

“The Holy Dagger of Tiernon!” Talarius raises his arm, showing off a black metallic dagger on a switchblade mechanism on his forearm. “It is instant, permanent death for Evil!”

The demon bends over in agony, twitching. For some reason he is unable or unwilling to flash to fire to heal itself. In the man-demon’s abdomen, a large, almost glowing black wound can be seen with tendrils of inky blackness radiating from the wound.

The demon groans again; however, this time it is a very different groan than the moans of agony he’d been uttering. Suddenly a crystal-white sparkle of light appears in the middle of the wound and begins digging away and dissolving the inky black tendrils. The man-demon grabs the wound, tilting his head upward as if relishing the healing power of the light. The man-demon stands up straight, his clasped fingers no longer able to conceal the glowing golden whiteness within them.

“Talarius?” the man-demon says, smiling. The knight turns from receiving his cheers. His face goes cold when he sees the glowing white light at the man-demon’s midsection. The demon pulls his hands back to reveal the wound, glowing with brilliant white light and healing quickly. “Do you recognize the aura of that light? What magic it is that heals me?”

The knight is staring at the demon’s midsection in shock. The man-demon turns to face Barabus and the fancy priest beside him. They turn pale. He rotates back to face the still-shocked knight.

Trivially, the man-demon reaches out and snaps the dagger from the knight’s wrist. The knight just jerks in response, too shocked to react. The demon seems to stare at the dagger, and the inky-black color of the metal begins to fade to a solid grey and then to a silverfish color, and finally the blade is glowing with a pale white light.

The demon tosses it over towards the feet of Barabus and the other priest. Talarius stares at it dumbly.

The demon returns his gaze to the knight. “One question, Talarius. When I was blasting you with fire, you deflected it with your sword, but wasn’t the air super-hot? How did you stand that?”

The knight is still in shock. Seemingly without thinking, he mumbles, “The armor keeps me safe in any environment.”

“Good, that’s what I had hoped.” The demon looks over to his friends. “<
garbled
> get ready to play catch.” He gestures to the ground at Talarius’s feet, and the other demons nod.

A spark of fire suddenly appears between Talarius’s feet, and then it is a flame. Before the knight has time to realize what is happening, the fire has turned into a ring that is expanding between his feet. A hole opens in the center of the ring, growing wider. There appears to be empty space below; well, empty except for a few balls of fire.

“Talarius?” The knight looks at the man-demon. “Time for a vacation! Off you go—into the Abyss!” With that, the hole widens and Talarius falls through it, screaming. The demon gestures to his friends. “Make sure he doesn’t hit the ground!” The miniature version of the greater demon laughs and dives head first through the hole; the others, grinning widely, follow. The demon begins rotating and waving his hands over the priests and Rod members, particularly in those regions where he had possessed the most.

He then turns to Barabus and the other high priest and says, “Don’t worry; I’ll try to keep him safe.”

The two priests seem to have no idea what he means; they simply stare at him in even greater shock. Getting no response from the two, the naked, human-looking demon grins and steps over the gaping hole to hell and lets himself fall through into the Abyss.

The hole shrinks and closes behind the demon, leaving the Rod members gaping. After a few moments of silence, the sound of battle can be heard as soldiers who had stopped to watch resume clearing the area of demons. The balling goes dark.