The Heavenly Host

I know! But I take the pain as a sign of great gain! Talarius shouted back to Ruiden. Suddenly the pain stopped as the giant blast of energy that had shot up from the knight ended. Talarius fell to the ground, exhausted, his armor still glowing brightly in the aftermath of the Knight of Chaos exploding.

“Whoo hoo! Great job, Talarius!”

Talarius looked up to see Tom shouting at him and giving him a huge thumbs-up. The Knight of Chaos behind Tom suddenly cleaved the demon in two with his sword. Before the demon’s two halves could fall, the Lord of Mount Doom flashed to flame and turned to continue battling his own Knight of Chaos.

VOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Talarius looked over to where the creepy-looking D’Orc commander with the sword of blood-red light had just exploded his own Knight of Chaos. This blast was coming from the center of the knight’s chest. The knights all had giant emblems of eight pointed stars on their chests; the D’Orc had somehow pierced the knight’s breastplate right in the center of the symbol. The D’Orc commander was grimacing and holding his sword before him, trying to deflect the insane blast of energy coming from the hole in the Knight of Chaos, even as Talarius often used Ruiden to split fire.

Talarius was impressed. Having felt the blast of a dying Knight of Chaos, he doubted he could have done a split shielding on that energy blast.

CRUNCH! FFFOOOOOMMSSHHHHHH!!!! came a sound from his right, and then a loud, catlike yowl of pain that actually hurt his eardrums. He looked to see one of the sphinxes lifting its paw off an exploded Knight of Chaos. The sphinx’s paw was completely blackened and looked rather crumbly.

THUD! VOOOoommmmpph!! Everything went pitch-black for a moment.

As the light came back, Talarius looked over to where that very weird sound had come from. Cheers rose from the D’Orc regiment. There was a crater where one of the knights had been; apparently, the rifle D’Orcs had managed to pin a knight down with crossfire so that the gravity cannon D’Orcs had managed to get a lock. The Knight of Chaos had tried to explode, but the gravity blast had swallowed the blast, or damped it. The air around the crater was glowing in a color similar to the knight explosions, but very subdued.

Talarius climbed back to his feet. He needed to pick a new knight, but hell and damnation, was he worn! He took a moment to drink some cooling water from his flask before trudging off after his next Knight of Chaos.

∼

Tom shook his head. This was going to take forever. Fortunately, his allies were having some success. Talarius had gotten the first kill, and then Morok, then one of the sphinxes, and surprisingly, the D’Orcs had gotten one. That kill was a true testament to teamwork and coordination; he was so proud of his D’Orcs.

VOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Tom glanced over to see a now headless Knight of Chaos with a giant jet of black energy shooting up into the sky where its head had been. Sekhmekt had killed one of her two knights. Tom grimaced; they were all here defending his new house, and everyone else was finishing off their knights faster than he was. He was just not having any luck. He had tried pretty much every trick he had used against Talarius, but the Knight of Chaos was much larger, almost his own size, and even more invulnerable. Bashing it with the Rod of Tommus seemed to work the best, but he was not making any dents in the armor.

He needed to fight smarter, not harder. The only problem was, he had no idea what “smarter” might be. He stared at the knight in front of him as they exchanged blows. Its armor had a glowing, reddish-black set of eight arrows radiating from a central point towards each of the eight cardinal directions. The symbol of Chaos in the world of the Eternal Champion.

For the knight’s sake, he hoped Michael Moorcock or his publisher had not trademarked that symbol, or the knights would have Big Publishing coming after them. Of course, while that would be bad, it would not be as bad as putting a giant, stylized “S” inside a diamond on one’s chest. That would have set Warner Bros. on a warpath, and Tom was pretty sure their lawyers were meaner than a Knight of Chaos.

Given all the crazy stuff that he had seen the last few months, there probably was a universe in which people flew through the air in blue and red tights. In which case, maybe the Multiversal Trademark MTM would reside with the real Man of Steel, if there was one.

Of course, even the term multiverse might be copyrighted by Michael Moorcock, who had invented it. Hmm, if he was going to set himself up as a “dark lord,” he had probably better make sure he was not going to violate any copyright or trademark laws. Of course, the coop had already been flown on his new house. It was probably only a matter of days before he was swarmed by hobbits (©JRR Tolkien) with lawsuits.