Into the Abyss

Once inside he’d managed to send his mana, guided by some animus, he guessed, downward into the priests below; he’d had no desire to go the other direction. He had forced himself to spread quickly through the links to the people below the priest; and was still doing that, letting himself flow among them.

He’d then proceeded on to other high priests and their umbilical cords to heaven. He’d gotten five of them, including Verigas. He worked to secure his connections to the high priests and their lower priest as fast as he could. Once he felt tethered, that’s when he felt confident enough to start diverting the mana for himself. The process seemed to take forever, but in reality must have only been a few minutes.

It was when he turned on the mana flow, started sucking it in for himself that the high priests had started dropping. It probably didn’t feel too good, Tom had laughed to himself. Verigas was the last high priest he’d tapped and he’d suddenly remembered his discussion with Rupert about possession. He had been, and still was, pouring parts of himself into everyone in the chain; creating personal links to them; he decided to put a lot more into Verigas.

It had been a struggle, but he’d managed to somehow seize control of Verigas by pouring his essence into the priest and suppressing the priest’s consciousness. It was very weird, and very taxing, but he now had a huge mana stream to draw on, which helped considerably.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t really enough of him to go around to both possess Verigas and inhabit his own body; so he’d had to release Verigas from his control to inhabit his own form; he kept the mana tap of course.

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

“Yes, I am, and you cheated.” Tom shook his head. “Seems to me that violates the Knight’s Code of Ethics?” The knight winced slightly this time.

The knight sighed, “As I’ve said, there can be no mercy in fighting Evil.”

“I suppose then, it’s a matter of how, or who, you define as Evil.” Tom stated. “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 got 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.” Tom said softly, but still loud enough for the knight to hear. “Fire!” Tom commanded. In his mind, he projected an image of Talarius as a god forsaken evil that had to be destroyed. They had to destroy him.

Suddenly large numbers of archers among the Rod raised their bows and began raining arrows upon Talarius. Some were the same hollow arrows from before, and others were more traditional.

Tom had hoped mostly for shock and distraction, what he hadn’t counted on was that the Blessed Arrows of the Rod couldn’t be stopped by the Blessed Armor of Talarius; to all intents and purposes, the two sets of blessings canceled each other out.

Talarius fell to his knees, crouching and covering himself with his shield as best he could, trying to minimize the exposed parts of his body. While he did this, Tom flew over to the net and quickly ripped it to shreds. “Get ready to move on my mark; there will be a few more surprises I have planned.” Tom was going to try to give the knight one more chance; if the knight didn’t take it, it would be time for plan B.

Tom returned to his position by the knight; by this point, the Rod members not under his command were subduing those he was commanding. Tom didn’t care, as long as they kept each other busy, he sent feelings of fear, anger and rage through his links encouraging his people to defend themselves and fight back. He came up behind the knight as he started coming out of his crouch, grabbed him by the legs and began thrashing him over again; this time watching out for any priests that tried to help the knight.

He smashed the knight into the ground about a dozen times, kicking him as hard as he could between slammings. Periodically he would stop and do a jab with his claws between the joints to try and do damage, and then he’d smash the knight a few more times. The armor held up amazingly well, but Tom was betting the knight inside was taking a serious beating.

Finally, after Tom had lost track of smashings, the knight cried out, “Enough! Stop, please.” Tom stopped.

The knight crawled to his knees then tossed his sword and shield away. He took his helmet off and put it under his arm. “I surrender, you have defeated me, demon!” Talarius shouted. It certainly looked like he had, the knight was black and blue all over his head; he had blood running out his nose, several cracked teeth and various head injuries.

“Kill me now, and be done with, oh vile demon! Know that you have beaten Talarius.” The knight sobbed, tears running down his cheeks. Tom was moved, somewhat.