Into the Abyss

He swatted hard with his flaming hand at the knight who ducked, but was still grazed by the fire. He didn’t seem to mind as much as Tom had hoped. Tom assumed his fist punching form and began fist punching the air, pointing at Talarius. Kiyaing each time and releasing blasts of fire at the Knight.

The knight deflected the blasts with his shield. Tom rose in the air and fired straight down; the knight kept deflecting them. Tom wasn’t sure where’d the deflected bolts were going, it appeared into the crowd. He hoped they could protect themselves.

This wasn’t working. Tom came down to hover near the knight. The knight slashed at Tom. Tom didn’t move expecting the sword to just pass right through him. It did, but holy shit did it hurt! Tom roared in surprised pain.

Tom settled back to the ground and decided to go full bore. He launched a solid flame attack at the knight, just like against the ship. To his immense surprise, instead of raising his shield to defend the knight brought his sword forward; the shield hanging unused on his left forearm, and clasped it with both hands.

Tom’s flames were being parted by the sword; parted and swept aside like the water before the bow of a ship. Again, Tom hoped the crowd was protected. The knight simply stood there, taking it. Tom shook his head and concentrated on trying to recall the blue white cold fire he’d used to finish off the Oorstemothian ship. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d done that; but he focused on trying to re-achieve that.

There it went; it was actually a cold and electrical fire. Now that he was more in control he could tell what it was. The knight shuddered under the new assault and began mouthing something Tom couldn’t hear. The cold fire began to close in on the knight. Which was good because Tom was getting exhausted.

He glanced down at his body to see if his flame body was blue-cold-electrical fire, or regular fire. It was turning blue-cold-electrical, but he noticed something far more concerning. That ring that the priests had put up, the glowing thing, it was seeping mana from him!

He could see a slow, small but steady stream of his mana flowing off him and across the ground to the ring! The bastards were trying to drain him! The knight was cheating! This really pissed Tom off, and he began shooting traditional lightning bolts from his tail at the knight. He had to end this.

“Aggh!” Tom exclaimed. Something was stinging him, a whole lot of some things. They were arrows being fired by the Rod at him. What the fuck! He was having trouble maintaining his concentration on the fire and what was hitting him. Hitting him in his fire form!

He looked closely at one. It was a small hollow arrow! The arrows were entering his insubstantial body and sort of exploding and then falling to the ground empty. Apparently, there was some sort of magic payload in those arrows. It fucking hurt and there were a lot of them.

∼

“Hmm,” Bess casually observed while watching the fight. “Apparently we aren’t the only ones who cheat.”

“Apparently, things have changed a bit in terms of protocol over the last millennia.” Ramses noted, sucking on a lemon.

“Well, I would have expected the Holy Blessed Wards that they put up. It’s a standard blessing they like to use for combat, and it’s great for sapping the resources of mana rich enemies. Demons, vampires and the typical undead, the fey as well. But those arrows the archers are shooting; in my day, they wouldn’t have done that.” Exador shook his head sadly.

“Yet, he’s put up a great fight; I’ll give him that.” Bess observed. “Really a pretty decent Type IV; I don’t know of too many that could have done a lot better under the circumstances. That armor is insane, the knight’s grace is ridiculous and he’s got a huge portion of the Rod helping him with prayers etc. They’re feeding him mana, draining his enemy and now shooting at the guy.”

Ramses shook his head. “I’d have had to use every Temporamastery trick in the book and I’d be limited to the joints and the opening in the face plate given that armor. It would have been tricky, but I would have got him. Add in the other stuff, I’d have to break out the heavy duty archdemon tricks to do better. Which, I might note, I did not do against Sir Astemon. We don’t all cheat — well, not every time.”

“Yes, the knight has some serious advantages that I can see, but clearly any of us could have overcome those. However, I do think it clear that very few Type IV’s could have done much better.” Exador stated. “At this point it’s just a matter of time.”

Bess chuckled, “So, do you still believe Lenamare’s story about this being a fresh recruit?” The others laughed.

“No, this demon has been around several hundred years at least, possibly a thousand.” Exador shook his head laughing to himself, and the others about Lenamare’s bullshit.

∼