Chapter 139: Greater Demon

Chapter 139: Greater Demon

Jadis could smell flesh burning. She wasn’t sure whose it was, hers or Aila’s. Probably both, she realized. The heat of the now flying greater demon was unbearable as it lifted the two of them up into the sky, its burning wings leaving trails of fire as it surged away from the ground. The wind was screaming around her ears as they flew. Or it was Aila screaming. Or it was her. Again, she couldn’t tell, and again it didn’t matter. Jadis needed to act now or they were both dead.

Aila dangled by her left arm from the demon’s hand. It was priority number one to change that. Grabbing hold of the demon’s wrist with her left hand, Dys squeezed into the burning hot flesh and tendons. She dug her thumb in as hard as she could, black blood bubbling up around the digit as she broke the skin and worked her way into the muscle. If the demon’s hand worked anything like a human’s, she knew it wouldn’t be able to function correctly as long as she was tearing into its tendons. Dys couldn’t use her right hand to help since it was occupied with holding off the demon’s left arm, so she struggled to break the blazing demon’s grasp.

On the ground, Jay and Syd were on their feet, already moving. The battle had not ceased around them, but the shield wall still held, fortunately. Above, Jadis could see that her third self and Aila were several hundred feet off the ground as the greater demon spiraled up. At the moment, it had carried them over the army of demons. If it dropped them there, they would be torn to pieces, even if they somehow survived the fall. But it looked like the demon’s flight would keep arcing and, seeing that in moments it would take them over one of the broken hills nearby, Jadis made a snap decision.

Picking Eir up in her arms, Syd ran for the hilltop with all the speed her one hundred and eighteen points in agility afforded her. Before she followed suit, Jay stopped to gather up Syd’s lance she’d spotted on the ground. Snapping it up, she looked to Kerr and Thea who had both rushed over to her.

“Stay safe,” she panted out through gritted teeth. “I’ve got to go save Aila and myself!”

“Fuck, go!” Kerr shouted, head tracking the flight of the greater demon. “We’ll catch up!”

With that, Jay sprinted off, hot on the heels of her alter self.

A gurgling sound coming from the demon caught Dys’ attention as she struggled with its arms. Looking at its hideous face, she saw flames appear around its head as a bright light glowed from within its vertically slit mouth. With both arms occupied, there was nothing she could do but watch in what felt like slow motion as burning bile rose up out of its throat to spray across her.

As the flames burst forth, they were stopped by a nearly invisible force, splashing off of it and pouring down the demon’s chest.

Aila’s force shield deflected the fire, though it couldn’t stop everything. Dys cried out in pain as some of the burning liquid spilled onto her legs where they wrapped around the demon’s arm. Still, better than being fully immolated.

The demon’s flame breath attack ended a scant second before Aila’s shield expired and by then, the demon’s arcing flight path had brought them near to the hill. Kicking out with one leg, Dys slammed her booted foot into the ugly fucker’s face, tearing the leather sole on its teeth but knocking its head back as it jerked and struggled with her. Purposefully giving it an opportunity, Dys let go of the demon’s left arm. Instantly it grabbed at her kicking leg, its long sharp talons biting into her shin-guard and flesh alike, but that was fine. At least it wasn’t grabbing Aila.

With both hands free, Dys grabbed the fingers wrapped around Aila’s arm and yanked hard, breaking and tearing them apart with sickening snaps. In that moment, Dys’ eyes met Aila’s through the holes in her helmet. She saw fear in her lover’s beautiful blue eyes. Fear for her, as her right hand reached out, trying to grasp onto Dys. But she didn’t let her. Dys pulled the demon’s hand away and let Aila fall.

Aila plummeted to the ground, over a hundred feet of gut-wrenching free fall before strong arms wrapped around her.

Syd caught Aila midair, leaping as high as her insane strength and agility would let her as she crested the hilltop. Aila grabbed hold of her, her scream cut off as they both tumbled through the air to land further down the hill with bone-jarring force. Syd grit her teeth as she felt something in her foot snap upon landing, but her ankle didn’t matter to her in that moment. She tried to angle herself to make sure Aila wasn’t crushed by her own considerable weight as they crashed down together, but the fall was rough. The pack that was still strapped to Aila’s back was crushed by the impact, the sound of glass shattering audible as the two rolled across the slope of the hill, slipping from each other’s grasps as they came to a stop several yards separated from one another.

As Aila had fallen, something else had risen, passing by both her and Syd. The giant-sized metal lance sang as it flew through the air, having been launched by Jay’s arm up at the passing greater demon. It struck the demon’s side, catching it somewhere in the mess of tentacle-wings, burying itself deep into its burning flesh. If only Dys could get to it, she’d have a weapon. But getting to the weapon was more of a distant dream than a next step. How could she focus on the lance when her skin was melting?

Dys was burning alive. She could feel her metal armor cooking her flesh as she struggled with the demon. While she’d managed to cripple its right hand, it had her right leg in its claws and it wasn’t letting go. Further, it had changed tactics, sacrificing some of its flight tentacles to use them to wrap around her body and limbs. It could no longer fly as fast, but now Dys was caught up in its burning grasp, hopelessly entangled.

To compound her agony, Jadis’ heads throbbed with teeth-clenching pain as the demon continued to steadily fly upward. The demon’s movement was dragging her third self too far away from her other selves, stretching their connection the further it went. But their connection was still there, which was the only hope Jadis could see for her to live through the ordeal.

“Heal Aila first!” Syd shouted as a barefoot Eir rushed to her side. “Quickly! Then heal me!”

Syd’s ankle was broken, but that wasn’t the only injury she had anymore. Her flesh bubbled and tore as third-degree burns began appearing across her body. Jadis transferred the damage from Dys to her other self, making sure that the body trapped in the grasp of the demon was unhindered by physical injury.

“Jadis!” Eir cried out, her nimble fingers quick to pull Syd’s helmet off to reveal her white skin turned raw with burns. She placed her hands on her face, already beginning to heal her while ignoring her orders. “You need my healing immediately!”

“No, she’s bleeding,” Syd argued though pain-gritted teeth, shaking hand reaching towards where Aila lay knocked out and sprawled across the ground nearby, her arm so coated in blood Jadis didn’t know how there was any more of the vital fluid left in the woman. “Stabilize her first, damnit!”

Together, the greater demon and the Nephilim, both began tumbling through the air, the demon’s crude wings already damaged from the explosion. As it lost more and more of its control, the abomination’s flight became erratic and unsustainable. Like a deranged spinning top that had been lit on fire, they hurtled through the sky at a downward angle until they encountered the same fate that every flying thing, living or not, always encounters in the end. The ground.

The demon took the brunt of the impact, striking the sharp angled edge of one of the broken hills as Dys’ body was tossed around, rebounding off of the demon as she somehow managed to keep hold of the lance. The metal tore free of the maggot-like torso of the demon and she was thrown along to tumble across the grassy side of the hill, landing a few yards away from her foe.

“I’m out of magic power,” Eir cried out, distracting Jadis for just a moment.

Syd was still lying on the ground, one arm wrapped around the cleric who had continued to restore her health the whole time. But now the priestess was spent, all of her magic gone as she’d used the last of it to keep Jadis from succumbing to the continuous damage she’d received. The elf collapsed then, the complete exhaustion of her magic power sapping her strength as Syd held her close.

Jay, though, was on the move. As was a newly awoken Aila.

Together they ran towards the base of the neighboring hill where Dys and the demon had landed. Jay carried Aila along, no weapon in hand as she no longer had one, but Jadis would make do. She always did.

With all lingering injuries transferred from Dys to Syd, the much-abused Nephilim got to her feet, lance in hand. There was no witty one-liner in her head at that moment. Just an overriding need to kill the fucker that had dared to lay a hand on her Aila. With a primal roar, she charged forward and skewered the greater demon on the lance while it was still righting itself. The abomination screeched terribly as the metal drove into it, but Dys didn’t stop there. She continued her charge, pushing the massive bulk along and then over the edge of the cliffside of the hill. Tentacles tried to wrap around her and carry her along with it, but Dys pulled back, the sharp tips of the whip-like limbs tearing at her but not finding purchase.

The demon fell over the side, plummeting a much shorter distance than they had before, but it had no time to stop its fall with its torn wings. The blazing beast crashed onto the ground, right on top of several snare and spike traps Aila had barely enough time to cast before it landed.

Force spikes pierced into the burning red body of the demon as ethereal chains tangled themselves with its tentacles, grasping hold of the thing as it impacted hard with the rocky terrain. As soon as it landed, the wailing greater demon began spewing more fire, huge gouts of flame spraying outward as it struggled to free itself. Jay turned with Aila in her arms, keeping the flames away from her and blocking them with her own body. But before they could even reach her, Thea was there, standing between them and the demon with her shield raised, blocking the fire as it came.

“Fucking abyss you’re insane,” Kerr shouted as she ran up beside them at the same time as Thea, bow drawn. “How the fuck have you lived this long?”

“Luck, I guess,” Jay panted as she set Aila down and turned to face the writhing mass of tentacles on the ground.

The demon was held in place, for the moment, but it wouldn’t last long. Jadis could see Aila’s force chains snapping as the demon thrashed its tentacles, already starting to break free. She had to strike while the iron was hot and finish it, once and for all.

As Kerr shot arrow after arrow into the demon, aiming for its head to keep it blinded and distracted, Jay stepped forward and called out to Thea.

“Spear!”

Without hesitation the shieldsworn tossed her held spear up into the air for Jay to snatch. Rearing the weapon back, she waited just a moment, then hurled the spear forward. Her timing was just right as the head-sized rock Dys had clawed out of the ground struck the demon, bouncing off of a few tentacles, but still delivering a blow. Less than a second later, the spear pierced into the upper chest of the greater demon, going all the way through and out the other side as the impact was boosted by Mirrored Strikes.

Tentacles went limp as the burning demon’s life bled out of it, something vital inside of it was cut by the spear’s steel tip. It feebly cried out, flames shooting up out of its disgusting mouth as it raised its ruined head towards her, still seeking to burn and destroy in its last moments. Before more devastation could be wrought by the demon, Jadis’ boot slammed into its head once, twice, then three times, pulping it into grisly smear on the rocky ground.

The greater demon slumped into stillness, its flames extinguished.

Congratulations!

Burning Rancor Defeated.

Bonus Experience Points Awarded

for Defeating a Greater Demon Spawn of Samleos.