The Heavenly Host

Elrose blinked. The lich was fleeing; the dragon had summoned a large burst of speed and was flying away as quickly as it could. They were also diving quickly. Elrose reflected that was probably a good idea. Given how high up they were, the lich had a lot of vertical distance where gravity would seriously assist its speed.

Clouds of Disintegration were notoriously unmoved by gravity, so it was limited to the same speed in all directions. The carpet with the COD caster started to follow, given that there was a range limit on how far the caster could be from the COD. However, they soon stopped, realizing they could not catch the lich.

The lich and dragon suddenly vanished in one of the auras, apparently plane shifting out of the border region and back into Nysegard. The three carpets cheered.

“We are going to keep the COD active and slowly move towards the fourth lich,” said a voice over the circlet. “You guys go ahead and join the other three carpets.”

Elrose looked to where the fourth lich and dragon were. Six carpets should be enough. He glanced towards the rear of the ship to see how the others were doing. He had to up the power on his enhanced sight to find the other battles. He blinked as he saw multiple carpets along with three slightly wobbly flying figures heading towards what appeared to be only two remaining lich-dragon pairs. Where had those wobbly red flying figures come from? He upped his sight again and then groaned. It was Gastropé’s demon and two other fiends.

It was bad enough that a Master Wizard might summon a COD from a flying carpet in the middle of battle, but a young wizard fresh out of school summoning and controlling three fiends from a fast-moving flying carpet? This day just kept getting more insane!

Elrose shook his head. Time for a line of sight teleport!

∼

“Gotta hand it to you, Gastropé; I thought you were insane, but those demons of yours are kicking some lich butt!” Peter said, shaking his head as the three fiends headed towards their fourth lich and dragon.

“Amazing how joyous they seem even though they are taking a severe beating themselves,” Zed noted.

“In my experience, demons don’t look at things the same way we do,” Gastropé said, shaking his head. “They look at this as sort of a vacation. The Abyss is a really miserable place, trust me.”

“Trust you?” Penelope asked, looking at him oddly. “You sound like you have firsthand experience.”

Gastropé chuckled. “More than I want.”

“You’ve been there?” Peter had twisted on his cushion to look at him.

Gastropé nodded. “Multiple times. The first time was when I was working for Exador; he took his entire army through the Abyss as a shortcut to get to Lenamare’s school.”

“He sounds insane!” Zed said.

“Yes, well, it turns out he is most likely an archdemon who has been disguising himself as a human for several millennia,” Gastropé said. “So insane is really not the half of it.”

Everyone on the carpet stared openmouthed at Gastropé. “Are you saying you worked for an archdemon?” Penelope asked in shock.

“Well, I didn’t know he was an archdemon at the time; he was pretending to be a wizard. He fooled the entire Council of Wizardry including Trevin, who I am sure has had dinner with him.” Gastropé felt he needed to defend himself a bit. It was rather awkward to have to admit to having worked for the Forces of Evil.

“You are going to have to tell us all about this when we get back to the ship!” Zed exclaimed.

“Wait — you said there were more times?” Penelope asked.

Gastropé sighed; he should have kept his mouth shut. “Yeah, similar idea — Jenn and I, along with a few others, have passed through it a couple times to get to or from various locations in Astlan.”

“How?” Peter asked.

“Talk about a detour!” Zed exclaimed.

“Well, this is a bit awkward, but... you know that demon that kidnapped Talarius and stole mana from Tiernon?” Gastropé asked.

“Yes. We haven’t seen this crystal ball thing, but we’ve heard the stories. Actually, I think you told us some of those stories at the Bacchanalia?” Zed reminded him.

“Oh, yeah.” Gastropé frowned. “Well, we did it with that demon. He took us to a cave of his in the Abyss that was a bit cooler than most of the Abyss, and we used it as sort of a waiting room until he could make contact with someone else to help him open a gateway to Astlan.”

“You are telling us that you were the house guest of the demon that stole mana from a god?” Penelope asked.

“Well, to be fair, he had not yet done so at the time,” Gastropé said.

A cheer broke out as the three demons finished killing their fourth lich-and-dragon pair. A second cheer then broke out over the com circlets as the final pair were vanquished by the other carpets. They all looked over to where the final set of carpets were watching something fall to the ground.

Gastropé blinked; was that Elrose standing in the air between two of the carpets?

“Hey, that flying human stole our next entrée!” Tizzy yelled as the three demons flew up to the carpet.