The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War)

by Brian J Moses

  Trebor didn’t bother with a reply. Garnet saw all the denarae scattered about the rooftops abruptly turn as though one mind guided their actions, and they raced across the rooftops to converge into two separate waves bounding across the ceiling of the city. Garnet wished them a silent good luck, then focused his attention back on the battle.

  For a wonder, it seemed as though they were not only holding back the monstrous press of damned souls, but they were grinding them up like so much slaughtered meat. To be sure, there were numerous casualties on the side of Garnet’s forces, numbers too high for him to calculate without shuddering, but the toll on the forces of the damned were infinitely higher, and they gave Garnet hope.

  Then a large cluster of demons broke through to the fore against Michael’s company, and the denarae were overwhelmed by the press of foes they could barely damage, much less kill. Michael’s blade was an invisible blur from where Garnet hovered, and he killed dozens of the demons, but their numbers were too great and his platoon was overwhelmed before Garnet could do more than begin his orders to send Flasch as a reinforcement. The army of monstrous creatures swept past, and it wasn’t until most of them had passed that Garnet saw they had largely ignored Michael’s unit in their rush to reach the Barrier. All but a handful of the denarae were still standing, though nearly all were injured, and they looked about them with bewilderment as they realized they had not been slain.

  Between Michael’s platoon and the Barrier, however, there was little to impede the unexpected rush of demons and damned souls, and dozens of men were torn to shreds before they even knew their attackers were there. They overwhelmed the human and demi-human soldiers and rushed through the open gates into the courtyard of the blue Ash’Ailant. Garnet had little hope they would be held back, and while he cursed at the necessity, he ordered Michael’s platoon to fall back and reinforce one of the other streets nearer the center of the battle.

  The defenders in the courtyard would just have to fend for themselves to protect the Stone.

  - 2 -

  The cloaks they wore carried them swiftly from rooftop to rooftop, and they chose their routes carefully to minimize the time they would have to spend climbing. The two platoons of Shadow Company raced through the city like shadowy gusts of wind, allowing nothing to stand in their way.

  When the city landscape changed and they were no longer able to cross the rooftops with such ease, Danner ordered them to the streets, where they continued running. Caret’s squad was guiding them forward toward the ongoing atrocities, all of them watching with fists clenched around weapons awaiting the order to leap down and lay waste to the horrible scenes. Had they done nothing, each of the denarae knew the terrible sights would haunt their memories for the rest of their lives. This way, at least they could slay those nightmares and perhaps prevent them from further reality.

  Trusting Caret’s judgment, Danner deployed his platoon according to his second’s suggestions, and Trebor did likewise. They climbed to the roofs of buildings surrounding the scene of horror in the streets, where a hundred or so damned souls and twenty demons of various breeds were feasting in a bloodbath too horrible for words. The demons were either acting on orders or merely taking advantage of the chaos to slake their own desires. Either way, the result was carnage for the victims and terror for every mortal soul who beheld the grisly sight. Desperate with fright, some people cowered in their homes and prayed they weren’t noticed, while others lost their wits and tried to flee their homes. These were inevitably caught and added to a growing pool of people whimpering in a cluster and surrounded by the damned souls, who guarded the mortals like cattle for their immortal masters’ feasting and delight.

  All this Danner took in with a glance, and in that single glance he was overwhelmed with fury that seared his thoughts. His immortal power yearned for release, and he quivered with scarcely suppressed rage. Without thinking of the consequences, he asolved his wings and leapt from the roof where he’d just joined Caret, a wordless scream tearing from his throat as he plummeted to the ground.

  ”Bloody Hell,” Trebor cursed, not bothering to hide his thoughts. “Attack!”

  Oblivious to his own forces leaping down to reinforce him, Danner set his feet and immediately waded into the nightmare with his sword singing. The demons were shocked to the core at the sight of this avenging angel suddenly come into their midst, and it took them precious seconds to recover. In that bare amount of time, Danner had already slain ten damned souls and was hunting down several others, who fled before him in terror as a hare flees the hawk.

  Danner’s eyes blazed with a furious blue fire, an inferno that consumed his thoughts in a murderous rage. He imagined he was spreading it as a cleansing flame, wiping away the blight of horror contained in the twisted bodies of the damned souls. Two drolkuls leapt before him, but Danner cut them to shreds without pause or remorse. A balrog attacked him from behind, and Danner spun and bisected the demon at the waist without breaking his stride. Another drolkul, another monstrosity destroyed.

  Azure sparks flared and dripped from his eyes, then faded to nothingness before they reached the ground.

  He impaled another of the damned on his blade, lifted the madly twisting creature into the air, then flung him to the side, cutting a gaping hole in its chest in the same motion. The cursed soul twitched once, then collapsed into dust and faded away into nothingness. Lost in the fires of his fury, Danner turned in search of new prey and came face-to-face with an even worse nightmare.

  Fifty feet away, too far for Danner to cross in time, a drolkul held a struggling denarae form in its grasp. The denarae’s face was turned away from Danner, but a vibrant green cloak was clenched and twisted to the side in one of the demon’s four claws.

  Trebor struggled in the demon’s grip to bring his sword to bear, but that arm was also pinned. His left hand was free, and he flailed at the demon, which only laughed at his struggles and caught his wrist in one massive claw. Around them, denarae from Shadow Company struck at the drolkul with their blades, careful to avoid Trebor, but their weapons were having no effect. Suffused with power from the grisly feast, the demon was even more impervious to mundane attacks than usual. Even weapons marked with the Tricrus were having no effect – only a blade in the hands of a true paladin could damage the blood-charged demon. Damned souls pounced on the denarae, preventing them from taking further efforts to free the Green paladin.

  Danner started forward at a sprint, fanning his wings to give him extra momentum, but even so he saw he would be too late. In desperation, he threw his sword overhand and watched the weapon spin end-over-end toward the demon.

  With the sword halfway to its target, the drolkul used one powerful hand and tore Trebor’s head from his body in a spray of blood that drenched the green cloak and turned its once lush color to a sodden black.

  Rational thought fled Danner as madness consumed his mind, and he screamed in wordless fury. His clenched fists burst into azure flame, which then coursed up his forearms in a heatless blaze. Danner’s sword struck the demon in the side and it dropped Trebor to the ground. The four-armed monster looked up in surprise, and in that instant Danner struck.

  He tore savagely at the demon, his flaming fists ripping deep gouges in the creature’s cursed flesh. The blue flame scorched the demon, and it howled in pain as the very essence of its being was assaulted by the holy fire. Whether by his nature alone or through the strength of his fury, Danner’s āyus was so overwhelming to the drolkul that its attempts to strike back were useless – just touching Danner was damaging to the demon, even supercharged as it was. Its cries of pain only made Danner attack all the more furiously.

  Faster than the eye could follow, Danner punched, gouged, and ripped the demon to shreds, all the while screaming incoherently in rage. One arm fell to the ground, Danner’s hand-print still burning in the flesh from where he’d torn through unholy flesh and sinew. Before the demon could even react to the pain, Danner dug one fist into the creature’
s neck and ripped its head in half from the inside-out.

  Then he turned his attention to the remaining demons. The same horror and terrible acts he’d witnessed the demons inflicting on their human victims, Danner now visited on them twofold. He did not take an eye for an eye, he took both eyes. He did not tear loose a limb, he ripped all four arms free and then opened the demon up from the inside with his bare hands. There was no justice to be had, nor mercy as he tore revenge from their very flesh. Demonic blood sprayed from their mangled bodies and splashed over him, where it hissed and steamed away without his ever feeling it.

  When the last of the score of demons lay sprawled on the ground, three of its four arms missing, it stared up in horror as Danner stepped forward to finish it off.

  “Mercy!” it cried in its horrible voice, raising itself on bloody stumps to hold its one good arm protectively above its face.

  The plea enraged Danner, and he surged forward with a pump of his wings and tore the demon’s throat out with one swipe of his burning fingers. The unholy flesh crackled and blackened in his grasp, but Danner held onto it until nothing remained but a puff of black dust that fell through the cracks of his fist. By that time, the demon itself was destroyed.

  His hunger for vengeance still unsatisfied, Danner turned to the damned souls, who were too terrified to move. He rushed forward, only to find his way blocked by Caret and Brican. Their faces were scarred with tears, but they stood resolutely before Danner to block his path.

  “Danner, stop!” Caret yelled at him. The words bounced off the flames that consumed Danner’s mind.

  “Danner, this isn’t right! This isn’t justice! This isn’t even human!” Brican shouted. “Stop before you go too far.”

  Danner bellowed in fury, seeing only that his desire for revenge was being denied. He leapt into the air and swooped over the two denarae, charging down on the damned souls with murderous intent.

  Then something red sprang into being in front of him, and Danner saw the outlined form of a demon. He screamed in fury and tore through the vision, which had the effect of diverting his path from the damned souls. Danner looked about and saw the red form again, and once more he sped toward it only to pass right through. His failure to inflict damage only maddened him further, and the flames in his mind burned even more fiercely.

  “DANNER! STOP!”

  The commanding voice broke through the wall of blue flames and registered in Danner’s mind, and he pulled up in shock as he finally recognized the hazy red image before him.

  It was Kaelus, and the voice had been his uncle’s.

  “You are a paladin of the Blue Facet,” Birch’s voice said insistently, and Danner was unable to resist the words. “You stand for justice in the world. You embody a virtue held dear by all who believe in the goodness of the human soul. Justice, not revenge.”

  Danner shook his head and screamed in anguish, some part of him unwilling to just let go of his murderous rage.

  “Listen to me, Danner,” Birch’s voice said. “The commander of Hell’s armies is a Black paladin now, but he was once a member of the Red Facet. He embodied courage, just as your friend Garnet does now, but Malith is now cursed by his own choices, and what was once a virtue has become his greatest vice. His courage has become overconfidence and brazenness, and that is the reason for his transformation. If you continue on this path of senseless mayhem, you walk dangerously close to the same line he crossed. You will cross from a Blue paladin of justice to a Black paladin of terror and revenge, and there may be no turning back.”

  The smoldering blue flames in Danner’s mind were replaced by the cool, blue waters of reason that hit him like a tidal wave and doused his fury in an instant. He realized his eyes were clenched shut, and when he opened them the fiery red image of Kaelus was nowhere to be seen.

  Danner sank to the ground on his knees and buried his face in his hands. His tears coursed down his face in a fiery blue trail, but they were cool against his flesh and helped soothe his torment. He felt the denarae and damned souls around him more as dim outlines on the edge of his awareness.

  When Danner looked up, his eyes were only for the crumpled and bloody form of his best friend. He crawled to Trebor’s body, dimly aware that several shapes - either denarae or damned was beyond his ability to discern - hurriedly got out of his way. Danner reached Trebor and wept for his friend, tormented by his loss and Danner’s own inability to save him.

  His tears rained down in an azure trickle of fire, and they splashed on Trebor’s body and disappeared without a trace. After a timeless moment of weeping, Danner reared back his head and howled forlornly into the sky. Every window in a three-block radius shattered with the force of his cry. The denarae around him instinctively followed suit and roared their own lament. Even the damned souls added their voices, and what might have been a cacophony of agonized yelling instead rang forth as a clarion of love and a knell of mourning.

  As the echoes faded, Danner slumped over Trebor’s still form and was silent.

  Chapter 41

  Death is a private matter. Consider every possible meaning – they are all true.

  - Dwarven Proverb

  - 1 -

  Garnet pulled Siran’s elves back, feigning a retreat. Had there been one central commander of this small force of demons, and had he known anything at all about strategy, the ploy would have had as much chance of succeeding as a marriage between an elf and a dwarf. But Garnet had no counterpart, no demon commander observing the battle to know his forces were already being decimated. To the demons on the field, it seemed as though Garnet’s forces had finally been pushed back, so they ran howling after them, heedless of the danger.

  The elves turned their backs to the damned souls and ran with a speed only the fleet-footed demi-humans could achieve, and they quickly put distance between themselves and their pursuers. Seeing their adversaries getting away so easily, the creatures charged mindlessly after. Then, at a mental command from Garnet relayed to a denarae he’d left with Siran, the elves turned and met the first ranks of the damned with bared steel and ground them to black dust.

  The damned souls and their demon overseers were strung out in a long force to charge after the elves, and the sudden reverse of tactics sent them into disarray, tripping and clawing each other in their confusion. Into this chaos, Shadow Company suddenly materialized on each flank and struck with stunning force. Marc and Guilian attacked from the north, and Michael from the south, and they sandwiched the demonic forces and squeezed them together in a lethal press. Then Flasch appeared behind the demons, and even Garnet wasn’t sure how the most nimble of his platoons had managed to slip its entire force behind the demons undetected. The Violet paladin struck ruthlessly, and that was the final nail in the coffin. The demons were destroyed utterly, and the mortals were left to celebrate their survival and evaluate their damages.

  Garnet was still aloft with his father on the yellow dakkan. At Garnet’s behest, they flew the length of the Barrier to allow him to take stock of the battle and see where his company would next be needed. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat and dragged his spirits – his high sense of triumph and hope – through the mud of despair.

  The soldiers around the blue Ash’Ailant had not been able to hold back the sudden attack of damned souls that had slipped past Michael’s platoon, and the angelstone megalith lay shattered and strewn about the courtyard in a dozen pieces. The remnants of that demonic attack had already been dealt with, but with the destruction of the Stone, the assault against that courtyard had already slackened off.

  Farther north, the courtyard of the yellow Ash’Ailant was already filled with damned souls and the familiar drolkuls, but Garnet saw a new breed of demons in the courtyard. They resembled giant praying mantises, were only slightly shorter than a man, and sat on four hind legs while attacking with two forelimbs. And they moved so fast! Their movements were a blur as they attacked with short spears or their bare hands - instead of proper hands, h
owever, the demons had one-piece, flattened forearms that were sharpened on two edges to create living sword blades. Garnet couldn’t understand how they wielded their spears without hands, but then he saw one of the demons throw a spear from a clawed grip, and a moment later its forearms changed into the bladed style, and Garnet was reminded of a demon’s amazing ability to change its own shape.

  “Those are the childris,” Garet shouted to his son. “Birch told me about them. I think they’re the one force of demon he actually fears, and I can’t say as I blame him. The bastards are faster than a sneeze and damn near impossible to bring down.”

  Indeed, the childris were the deciding factor in the courtyard, and nothing could stand before their onslaught. Two dozen childris managed to empty the courtyard of living bodies in a matter of minutes, and Garnet watched their lethal ferocity with stunned amazement and the beginnings of fear in his mind. If his denarae, formidable as they were, went up against such a force, they would be carved to pieces in seconds.

  Too quickly, the yellow Ash’Ailant was destroyed, and the childris turned their attention to the stairs leading to the walls atop the Barrier. They divided into two forces and climbed opposite walls, and where the childris passed, they brought death.

  The only thing saving the other courtyards from being similarly overrun was the childris’s apparent inability to scale the walls in the way the other demons and damned souls could. They had to wait until the gates were forced open, and in all places the human and demi-human defenders were putting up the fight of their lives to prevent that from happening. Small groups of childris were formed up outside each gate waiting for their chance to spread the slaughter.

  All this Garnet saw in the single pass of Garet’s dakkan over the Barrier. Garnet thanked his father and then leapt free of the dakkan to glide back down to his troops below. Garet was free to join the battle again, which he did after only one backward glance at his son.