And the authorities wanted to keep the roads clear for the forces from Mishawaka and Elkhart who would also be marching home.
There remained the final matters of liberating the enemy slave camps.
The South Bend militia promised to assist.
And Mason needed no other reason to return to Elkhart, now that there was going to be peace for a time.
He could finally try to locate any sign of Tori, and either find her or discover what had happened to her, once and for all. He needed to know.
Now that the main fighting was finally over, at least for the near future, Mason took an entire day and slept. For another day after that, as they traveled, he kept to himself, and bathed, and ate, and slept as much as he wanted.
He located Donna and had sponge baths each and every day. What a blessing that was.
He took off all of his guns and armor and didn’t go near any of them the entire time, feeling a tremendous weight and responsibility lifted from him.
Blondie and a very hot girl named Jennifer spent two days destroying a hotel room together and had to be chased out when the owners returned by surprise to evict them and other squatters.
After making good their escape through a sudden cloud of sorcerous smoke–and without their booze stash or much of their clothing, for that matter, both of them promptly threw up.
Then they took a naked, dancing shower in a pouring rain together. After that, they proceeded to sleep most of the next thirty hours in Blondie’s old tent. Their militia guards assigned to them continued to keep watch over the couple from a safe distance.
Thulkara seemed to have her own personal eating contest and feast at all of the nearby militia mess tents, until no scrap of chow remained at many. Then she also proceeded to sleep for nearly two straight days, and then took up her training duties and painting lessons once more.
Mason sat up with Blondie one night, looking at the stars in the warm night air. It was still hard to get used to not having a moon up in the sky.
“Blondie,” Mason said, “answer me this. Why do the Dark Mages of Vaejan and Sylurria want this part of Michiana so badly? What could it possibly mean to them, that they would go to all of this trouble?”
His friend shrugged. “That, my friend, is an excellent question. But none of the captive mages will talk to us now. Not even to me.”
“It must be something important.”
“It must surely be, Mace.”
“I mean, it’s got to be something really big, right? They went to all of this hassle to control those monsters, hire those mercenaries, and attack us full on like they did and try to wipe us all out. They wanted to make the rest of us their slaves. But that can’t just be it. They fought an entire war against the Urth people in this area, and for what?”
“Mace, I’m agreeing with you. They must be after something. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
Mason hissed. “Well, whatever the hell it is, it must be something awfully important. And we need to figure that out.”
“Yep,” Blondie said.
61
The destruction threatened to topple the house down around David and his friends.
But the demon held its ground, clinging to the fixed circle of mirrors.
Pastor Doran rose up mechanically, and lurched forward, swinging his big sword wildly. Black tentacles enveloped his entire head and face, joining him to the demon.
Jason Inada barely blocked one blow from Bryan with his katana, he ducked another, and pulled Father Michael back.
“Look out!” Jerriel said. “The demon controls him now. Sever the connections between them to set him free!”
David engaged the possessed man, deflecting his sword strokes. He charged forward and knocked the pastor off his feet.
They crashed into the mirrors, destroying two of them.
The demon wailed and shuddered in a convulsion of agony. It flew into a furious rage. “No, no. I’ll rip you apart for that!”
Father Michael sprang forward and dumped a large-mouthed container of holy water all over Pastor Doran’s head and shoulders. The demon’s connection boiled and bubbled away. Doran spluttered and cried out for help.
David and Jason hacked at the remaining tentacles.
“CURSE YOU MEAT SACKS! PERISH IN HELLFIRE, MORTAL WORMS!”
The entire room burst into flame, roaring up all the walls.
“We have to get out of here!” David yelled. He grabbed Jerriel’s arm.
“No, wait,” she said. “No smooke, no fumes? It’s an illusion of fear to make us flee, just as we’re winning. Keep attacking!”
Jerriel blasted the demon with magic ice shards.
Pastor Doran came back to himself. “Thank you!” he shouted. “Come, brothers. By heaven. Let’s finish this accursed thing!”
Together the three of them charged into battle, Jerriel right behind them.
The illusion of flames vanished, but the demon went mad.
One by one, it clobbered them, taking damage, but flinging them away until all four of them lay stunned and in agony.
“FOOLS! NOW I WILL CRUSH YOU ALL. I WIELD THE MIGHT OF FALLEN STARS! YOUR POWER IS AS NOTHING TO MINE! YOU CANNOT STAND BEFORE ME AND LIVE!”
Father Michael stepped in front of them, just as the monster fell upon them. The priest stood fast, Pastor Doran’s flaming crucifix in his hand as he advanced.
“Yield, demon. Not to my own person, but to the ministry of Christ! For it is the power of Christ that compels you, who brought you low by His cross. Tremble before that mighty arm that broke asunder the dark prison walls and led souls forth to the light!”
The demon drew back, trapped and uncertain before the blinding light the priest wielded.
“You are not the one you invoke!” the demon argued. “You are not He! You are a weak, mortal insect of mere flesh. You are nothing!”
Father Michael pressed forward without relent. “Do not think of deflecting my commands with false words, foul spirit, just because you know me to be a great sinner. It is God Himself who commands you; the majestic Christ who commands you. God the Father commands you. God the Son commands you. God the Holy Spirit commands you. The mystery of the cross commands you! Depart, for you are defeated. Your power is no more. Without the Love of the Creator, it is you and your kind who are void and nothing!”
The demon opened its mouth to roar again.
Father Michael plunged the shining cross directly into its dark maw. Both of them cried out in agony.
Another detonation. The demon’s head burst. A pillar of fire shot up through its body, enveloping both it and the priest.
Weird glowing circles of power and lines and symbols of force flickered throughout the room and across all the remaining mirrors. Some of them cracked and splintered.
The remains of the demon shuddered in agony and terror.
Jerriel rose up and pointed. She staggered forward with her staff. “Destroy the mirrors. They are sources of its power–every one of them. Do not let him feed off of them!”
She shattered one with her staff.
Father Michael toppled to one side. Roiling, black ichor rippled off him like gouts of streaming smoke. Rabbi Bergman flashed over to him, caught him, and doused him with holy water.
David broke another mirror with his sword.
The remnants of the demon had great difficulty reforming.
“Jerriel’s right. It feeds off its victims through the mirrors. Break them all!”
Jason and Pastor Doran lurched forward, swinging at the remaining mirrors with their swords.
Glass shattered everywhere. The demon shrank and weakened.
Gibbering mouths appeared on the demon’s convulsing, shrinking form, crying out in fear with many fell voices.
Jerriel gasped and leaned on her staff, exhausted. “We’ve beaten it down. Now...we must...finish destroying its material foorm. That will banish it from this world...sending its foul spirit back through the Void and into the Abyss once moo
re.”
“How? How do we do that?” Jason demanded.
“Holy water.” Jerriel said. “Make a circle, a circle of power around it with holy water soo that it cannot escape.”
“Do it!” Pastor Doran said, dragging back the stunned, scorched form of Father Michael.
Rabbi Bergman and Jason Inada poured a circle of holy water around the demon’s convulsing remains.
Jerriel doused David’s blade with more holy water.
“Pin down the core of the demon! Fix it to one spot while we dissolve it all. You must be strong, Daeved. Stand fast. Do not move, whatever tricks and illusions it tries on you. It will be desperate. If one part of the core man-hages to escape, we will have to track it down and fight it all over again.”
To hell with that. Literally. They weren’t going through all of this crap again.
David did not hesitate. He charged forward and impaled the demon to the spot with his sword. The runes upon his blade glowed white-hot. Foul, dark vapors, smoke, and fumes enveloped him, clouding and confusing his perceptions.
Immediately, his senses went fuzzy once again. He reeled drunkenly and fell to his knees. But he clung to his sword and kept the demon nailed to that one spot so that it could not escape.
His friends shouted to one another. Jerriel told them what they must do.
The demon wailed, and drowned out everything else.
David gasped and struggled to remain conscious. He wanted to sleep so badly, but he couldn’t. If he was weak, they were all lost.
Then he heard the sounds. His friends crying out in terror as the demon stalked and killed them, and mocked him all the while.
Finally Jerriel screamed, shrieking for him to come save her, as the demon tore her apart. He wept, but he clung to his sword.
It couldn’t be real.
“You could have saved her,” the demon mocked. “You let them all die. Now I’m coming for you. Flee before me!”
“I...will...not!” he shouted. “Liar. Deceiver!”
Through a vision, as if through a shining mirror, he saw himself, walking down from his old apartment, going out to his faithful old car, and driving to class. All as if the Merge and everything that followed had never happened.
In a way–that was everything he wanted. To simply go back to the way things had been before the Merge.
Or was it? Did he really want that now?
“There...see...human–that is an alternate dimension, a reality apart from this one. Everything there is back to the way it was, because nothing there has changed. Nothing has gone wrong in that version of your world. There was no Merge. You can have your little life back…go back to being a simple nobody…anonymous…nothing.
“Live your empty little life, human. Live to the end of your days without all of this strife and chaos. But hurry. Just let go of the sword. Rise up and enter that reality while you still may. I offer it to you freely. All of this trouble will be gone. It will vanish like a bad dream. Isn’t that what you most want?”
Jerriel. He thought of Jerriel and all of his friends and his love for them and their world.
Their world. Whatever world that was now, no matter what it had become. It was precious to him now for the simple fact that they were all in it together.
And not only that.
In the past, there would be no Jerriel.
Nothing mattered, in any case. The demon was an abject liar. It offered what it could never give. It would say anything, try any trick or deception in order to escape.
He laughed. David looked up and laughed into the demon’s cowardly face.
“No. Not at all,” he said. “You’re a total moron, you filthy, wretched, gutless thing. I see you for what you truly are now. You’re nothing. How could you possibly know what I desire? What I really want–more than anything else right now–is to destroy you!”
With one weak hand, he reached into a pouch on his belt and sprayed himself in the face, eyes, nose, and ears with holy water.
The dark mists and illusions parted around him.
He spoke the words of command Jerriel taught him, and the runes on his longsword flashed rapid-fire in bursts of magical force.
“Kal!” Fire engulfed the demon.
“Zae!” Holy water blasted it.
“Doru!” Earth and rock smashed it down.
“Vae!” A fierce vortex of wind wore it away.
“Shi!” Blasts of spirit energy annihilated the fragments.
With a fading cry, the demon shriveled up beneath his sword.
All illusion vanished.
His friends stood beside him, battered but hale and triumphant. They doused the fragments of the fiend with more holy water. Chanting and praying, even Father Michael stood on his feet once again, lending his aid.
He placed the shining crucifix on the dark, squirming remnant of the demon squirming beneath David’s sword–still pinned to the ground.
White flame spurted, incinerating the last pieces of the demon’s core to ash.
The ash scattered, dissolving into nothing on a spurt of putrid air.
Jerriel put her arms around him. “You can let go,” she told him. “It’s all right, Daeved. We’ve beaten and destrooyed it. We’ve won.”
David fell back into her arms, exhausted. “Thank goodness,” was all he could mutter.
Pastor Doran thumbed his sword and nodded around them. “There are still a few mirrors left intact,” he said. “Should we break them, too?”
Jerriel shook her head. “No, not now. The demon’s powers are broken forever. But have the troops bring the mirrors with us. We might be able to use them to see what the demon saw through them and who he was feeding off of and working with.”
After he regained his strength, David would tell her about all that he had seen.
They gathered the few remaining mirrors, just as the ruined house started to collapse in on them.
“Gather around Rabbi Bergman,” Jerriel commanded. “Embrace him. Yosef–get us out of here.”
“I-I...I don’t know if I can!”
“You can and you will. Focus on taking us somewhere else. Make it close by. Do it! Anywhere but here.”
“I’ll try–”
They encircled him with their arms. The house collapsed inwards upon itself, and on them.
“Do it now, Rabbi. Or we all die!”
A flash of light. A wave of cold energy swept through them all.
They fell out of the air outside the crumbling wreck.
They appeared several feet above the ground.
All of them crashed on top of each other–painfully.
Rabbi Bergman lay stunned when they all rolled free.
“He saved us,” David said. “Is he going to be all right?”
Jerriel felt his forehead. “He’s just exhausted. He’s gooing to be fine.”
“He’s...old.”
Jerriel smiled. “He has the heart of a lion. He’s a traveler, Daeved. A natural adept at it. Once he trains himself, he will knoow few limits.”
David looked around as the troops rushed in to help them. The ruined block looked less bleak now. The sky cleared. Stars winked overhead, and the moon rose.
The demon’s power was finally broken–another grim threat to Michiana had been vanquished.
So weary, David sighed to himself. Everyone was, after all of that.
All he wanted to do was get home, drive the darkness from his mind, and sleep peacefully.
62
With the help of forces from Elkhart and Mishawaka, Mason and his comrades, and the Shooting Stars, undertook one final task.
Together with the forces of Michiana, they hit and raided all eight of the mercenary slave camps all at once, on the same night.
They very nearly struck at all of the camps at the same exact time.
They attacked and defeated the mercenary guards, or accepted their ready surrender. They captured hoarded supplies and contraband, and, most importantly, freed tens of thousands of
people at each location.
The Pistolero helped the militias surround Slave Camp Number 4 and led the charge against its gates, cutting down the guard towers on either side of the main gate.
Blondie the sorcerer blasted those gates right off their supports and blew it to shattered bits with exploding force from his bright, glowing hands.
Some pockets of mercs formed up and tried to break out in an attempt to get away.
Thulkara leaped forward, bellowing her war cries, and swinging her deadly weapons. She led the charge that drove the mercs back, and cut many of them down. In open battle, she remained a premier force to be reckoned with–nearly unstoppable.
In less than and hour all resistance had been beaten down, and the camp and its former slaves were finally liberated and safely in defender hands.
For a few brief minutes, everyone celebrated the victory, and the return of liberty to so many. They would learn later that all eight of the slave camps were liberated in that same hour, and the siege and containment of the City of Elkhart was also brought to an end.
But confusion and chaos instantly ensued thereafter, as it often did with fallible humanity. Problems quickly mounted.
First, the comfort women had to be freed, separated, and protected under heavy guard. Despite all that they had endured at the hands of the enemy, there were many angry slaves who insisted vehemently that those poor women and girls should be beaten, stoned to death, or hanged as traitors.
The militia declared that they and all of the slaves had already suffered more than enough during their captivity.
After that debacle, many captives insisted on leaving the camps in droves on their own, regardless of their condition. They clogged the roads with new waves of sick, weakened refugees.
Some people who might have survived went forward heedless, and later collapsed and even died at countless places along the roads where no help could reach them.
This scattering madness hampered travel on the roads in the region, even for the military, who were still trying to pursue and stamp out any lingering pockets of the enemy. Small bands of bandits and monsters remained stubborn raiders, always hunting for anyone weaker than themselves to attack. The isolated roads at night remained unsafe for small groups or individuals.
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