The Heavenly Host

“Aargh!” Exador screamed as a rapid barrage of razor-sharp ice bolts pummeled him. The bolts appeared to come from Gandros’s direction. At least, Randolf assumed they were pummeling him, as no one could actually see Exador inside Crispin’s smoky cloud. Suddenly Exador was coughing loudly. He must have inhaled after his scream; that would have drawn Crispin into his lungs.

Randolf shook his head; that was not going to be pleasant. Suddenly there was a new whistling sound as all of the smoke and soot began streaming into Exador’s nostrils. Once inside the demon’s lungs, after being initially inhaled, Crispin was able to pull the rest of his smoke and ash cloud to himself inside Exador. This was a standard djinn attack; Crispin would not only be attacking with lightning from inside, but also increasing the air pressure inside Exador. Mortal creatures generally exploded; that probably would not happen here. Exador would probably shift to fire or some other insubstantial form.

Yep, there he goes, Randolf noted to himself as a huge blaze started inside the smoke cloud. He shook his head while reciting his spell. The wind, combined with Exador’s giant flames, were reaching out to the whipping tapestries and drapes. In moments, the upper walls of the foyer were a conflagration to match the pillar of flame in the center of the foyer.

“Fiat Completum!” Randolf screamed at the top of his lungs while thrusting his staff towards the flames of Exador, releasing his spell. Greenish-black tendrils each about six inches in diameter extended quickly from his staff and began wrapping around the flames.

Randolf really had to concentrate now, chanting under his breath to direct and manipulate the spell. He had to force the tendrils to wrap around all sides of Exador’s flames, as well as above and below. He was going to need to get this in place quickly. The two insubstantial beings were now at a stalemate.

Tureledor’s force bolts were now useless with nothing to impact upon; however, the stream of ice bolts was likely still hurting Exador, as the flames were sizzling as the bolts struck. While the bolts did melt, they were also poking holes in Exador’s flames. There! Randolf mentally yelled to himself. And now to squeeze. Holding his staff in his right hand, Randolf began making a fist with his left.

There was a horrendous scream from the flames as Exador began to feel the pressure. Randolf waved his staff in a scourging motion as if he were whipping Exador, which in essence, he was. The flames shifted back to the solid, winged Exador, who was red with fury and glaring with a hideous malevolence at Randolf.

“You sycophantic sociopath! How dare you!” Exador raged. The archdemon pointed at Randolf and giant bolts of lightning flew from his large index finger, crashing against the shielding of Randolf’s pentagram, even as Exador’s body was pummeled from behind by more force bolts from Tureledor.

Randolf laughed. “Wizards use pentagrams to protect themselves from demons, in case you were not aware of this.”

“To the Abyss with your pentagram!” Exador screamed at ear-splitting levels before he started choking again as Crispin again tried to fill his lungs when he inhaled. Perhaps at some point Exador would learn better, Randolf thought, grinning. Around a smoke-formed djinn, breathing was a seriously bad habit.

Exador dove to the floor with both fists forward, slamming hard into the floor while screaming a very loud, very deadly curse word. The ground rocked with the impact, far more than Exador’s actual weight would have caused. He had done some sort of geomantic spell; that was obvious now as cracks began radiating out from the impact point of his fists.

The foyer shook with the force of the quake and the smaller tremors that followed. It had to have been some sort of ground-quake spell. Randolf began whipping harder, which naturally caused Exador to scream in pain again.

“He’s got two columns!” one of his fellow councilors shouted over the communications link. Randolf could not tell which one it was, but he turned his attention enough to see that a crevice had reached and opened up the ground under at least one of the nearby columns. Crap! The columns were definitely load bearing, and were starting to collapse.

“I will work to prop the columns up!” Gandros shouted over the link.

“I’d help, but I’m trying to redirect the crevices from Lenamare while he works on the wards!” Jehenna shouted.

Randolf glanced at her; she was gesturing and chanting rapidly to redirect or ameliorate a very large crevice coming at her and Lenamare.