Waves…wave ebbing…waves—
He saw the entire shield illuminated on the creature, along with the places that held it together. Justin ducked under another reared attack, rolled away, and whipped to stab his sword directly into one of the glowing red runes.
The spell flared and a piece of it died.
“Aha!” he yelled. “What now, you piece of horsey shit?”
“I never imagined this as the backdrop of my greatest magical work,” Kural commented in a long-suffering tone.
“It’s better this way.” Justin was on a roll now. He could see the points of strength across the animal’s body and it couldn’t keep all of them away from him at once. “Alone in a tower would be boring. This way, you have an audience.”
“You aren’t, of course, looking at me,” the wizard pointed out.
“Oh, right. I saw that throne.” He recalled Kural’s hideout. “Look, I promise when this is over, we’ll get you a parade and a ton of beautiful women singing new songs about how awesome you are, but right now—take that, you stupid horse—I need you to focus.”
“Indeed,” Kural said dryly. “I’ll hold you to that, you know.”
“I will sing both of you a song if you please shut up for a while,” Zaara shouted.
“Killjoy.” Justin dodged the horse’s back feet and identified his opening. “Aha. One…two…three.” A long slash of his sword cut along an unarmored part of the creature’s side. Without the shield, the sword bit deep and he followed it with a fireball.
His adversary dropped with a scream.
“Oh, hell yeah. Giant worms? Demonic horses? Justin can do it all.” He danced back and wished he could do jazz hands and hold a sword at the same time.
IMPRESSIVE KILLS, Level 1
“Level one?” he demanded of the AI.
“Do you want me to take it away? Because I can.”
“Fine, fine.” Justin looked around. Lyle was punching the last spider into the dirt, Zaara was surrounded by what looked like giant dead slugs, and the rest of the bandits seemed to be reforming their lines. “Is the first wave over?”
“It seems like it,” Zaara said. “Kural, how are you doing?”
“Good. But I’m not quite where I need to be yet.” He spared them a grin. “So let’s hope there are a few more waves.”
“Uh…” Justin looked over his shoulder. “I have bad news about that.”
There was the sound of a particularly thick vat of liquid bubbling, and the demon strode out of the mist.
Everyone gaped at it and panic was evident on the faces of the bandits.
“Well…” Kural said. “Shit.”
Chapter Sixty-One
The demon strode forward with earthshaking strides. Each step was slow, but Justin assumed that it was merely for dramatic effect. They had a minute or two at the most unless it decided to make an evil speech.
“Kural,” he said conversationally.
The wizard was gesturing to arrange the bandits in a peculiar pattern, although it wasn’t clear why. It appeared to be a kind of a cone with an arc of bandits behind the circle as well. One hand still held the lines of power in the diagram, which now glowed white. He glanced at the young man. “Yes?”
“What kind of demon is this, exactly?” he asked him.
“Theoretically, it’s a water demon.” Kural cleared his throat. “Saltwater, specifically.”
He looked at the green and faintly slimy skin. “So…fire magic?”
“Have you ever tried throwing a lit torch into the ocean?” He was pale now. “It would have about the same effect. The demon is stronger than I thought and my spell won’t be able to kill it unless it’s weakened.”
“Oh. Uh…any ideas, then?”
“A big enough torch would do the trick,” Zaara said decisively. “And you taught me that spells can be amplified, right?”
Kural looked quickly at her. “Yes.”
“I can amplify Justin’s magic and you keep the spell going. Help us when you can. We’ll keep moving.” She looked nervously at their adversary. “Hopefully, we can hold out.”
“We can tell the archers to concentrate on one place,” Justin said quickly. “Kural, where is it weakest?”
“The eyes,” the wizard said at once.
“All archers!” he called. “Aim for the right eye! All melee fighters, concentrate on the left ankle. Focus on slowing it and direct your damage as much as you can to one area.”
A yell of acknowledgment followed.
“The sooner we kill this,” he shouted, “the sooner we can go have some ale!”
For that, he got a much louder cheer.
“You’re learning,” Hildon said from behind him.
“Thanks. Ready, Zaara?”
“Ready.”
Justin tracked the demon’s path. It led directly to Kural, whose face was pale.
“Hold out,” he told the man. “Whatever it costs—this being won’t accept a surrender.”
“And I think I’ve used up my luck on near escapes.” He nodded. “Do some damage. I’ll spring the trap as soon as I can.”
He caught Zaara’s hand, ducked, and began to run behind one of the lines of bandits. She muttered under her breath as she started the spell to amplify his power and after a few moments, he began to feel the same tingly feeling as when Kural had given him the potion.
“Justin,” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Start small,” she told him. “You’re not used to having this much power. Trust me. The first—”
The demon took its first step into the crater and the ground shook enough to throw everyone off their feet. Only Kural stayed standing and a white shield began to rise around him like motes of dust in shining sunlight.
“Archers!” Hildon yelled.
The bandits were well trained. The demon’s giant head swung to find the source of the shout and the archers scrambled to their feet, aimed, and waited for it to stop. It had barely stilled when all of them let loose. The arrows found their targets, and although they extinguished quickly, it was enough to make the being rear back. One giant hand moved to its eye and it uttered a scream that Justin didn’t hear in his ears so much as his mind. A series of red numbers floated up and away
“Melee!” It was Mira’s voice this time. She raced forward with the melee fighters. Their group was ragtag but with their swords alight, they looked more formidable than they might usually. The demon looked down when their group reached its foot. Swords and spears swung in a flurry of blows before the fighters scrambled when the creature stooped to sweep one giant arm. A single bandit, the younger man who had challenged Justin, catapulted away with a yell and lay still.
Justin gathered his power and waited as the demon’s head swung around. It looked at Mira, at Hildon, and finally, at Kural. When it stepped forward, the young man was ready. He gathered a small fireball in his hands—only enough to divert its attention—and lobbed it gently toward the right eye that was still steaming.
His plan, unfortunately, went awry. Instead of his intended restrained assault, a fireball the size of a small sheep singed his hair as it rocketed away. He stumbled, barely held his aim, and managed to hit the demon in the neck.
“And now you see why I said to start small,” Zaara said.
“Oh, mama.” He grinned. “Oh, I like this. Let’s do that again.”
“Let’s run first!” She grasped his hand and yanked.
Mira’s group attacked next to switch the order and keep the demon off-balance. They didn’t shout war cries as they charged and simply ran. When the being swung to face them, they were already gone, having scattered behind it to circle. They had learned from the last time, Justin thought.
He loosed his next fireball at the same time that the archers shot and this time, they did enough damage that the creature’s health bar took a noticeable hit. In a somewhat amusing twist, the health bar had been made a part of it, which meant that it was also obscured by the sw
irling mist and the demon’s sheer height.
The next few assaults followed quickly. Emboldened, the archers began to fire without pause, and the demon could not find its footing to retaliate. Several of Mira’s team collaborated to target the back of its heels, and although Justin suspected it didn’t have an Achilles tendon, it bellowed in pain just the same.
“You’re doing well,” Kural called. “Keep at it.”
That was all the demon needed to remember why it was there. Its mouth opened in a silent snarl as it looked at the wizard.
“Oh, shit,” Justin and Zaara said at the same time.
The creature dropped its hand from its eye and stared at Kural. It took one step, then another. As if the fighters around it had only succeeded in annoying it, it turned and swept its arms forward and back. Tentacles that hadn’t been there before lashed out and bandits careened away with a chorus of screams.
“Kural!” Zaara tried to run to him, only for Justin to yank her back. “Let me go.”
“Don’t get in its way,” he snapped in response. Years of sword-fighting and months on the road had made her strong, and she was sneaky along with it. He had trouble holding on. “Listen to me. If Kural can’t hold it off, what chance do you think you have?”
That made her hesitate—and the hesitation was enough. The demon surged toward the wizard at full speed. Justin, seeing Kural as small as a mouse beside the demon, had one moment of deep regret before white magic exploded outward like a bursting bubble.
The demon skidded across the ground and lay still with its skin smoking. It was still moving, however.
He didn’t want to warn it what was coming and merely raced forward and hoped the other fighters would see him and take note. Zaara caught up with him with enough time to pull his head down. His heart gave a sideway leap, but her words weren’t quite what he had hoped for.
“I’ll help Kural. Stay safe.” She ducked away and left without giving him time to respond.
THIRD WHEEL, Level 1
“Now you’re trolling me,” he protested.
“Do you think that just started? Really?”
The demon pushed up and swatted at Justin, who skidded to a stop. It took another step toward Kural, who—he had to admit—did not look well. He was on his knees as he poured every ounce of energy into his summoning spell and his whole body shook. Around him, bandits lay prone and wounded.
And Zaara wasn’t there to amplify fireballs anymore, which meant he had to get creative.
“Hey!” he called. “Hey, you. Yeah, I’m talking to you, fish-face.”
The demon didn’t spare him a glance.
“If I could give you negative levels for trash-talk, I would.”
“Some demon you are,” Justin called and ignored the AI. “You were summoned as a fucking contingency plan, you useless fucker. I bet your mom was a salmon and your father was a horny fisherman.”
The demon swung to look at him. He couldn’t tell if it was angry or merely bemused, but at least he had its attention now.
“You know what? You aren’t even listed in the book of demons. When humans think of your kind, they think of bright red, flaming stone creatures, and now I know why. It’s because you fucking suck. Where’s your ingenuity? A proper demon doesn’t do its own dirty work. It talks humans into doing it—but noooooo, you wanted to make an army of werewolves. How did that turn out?”
The demon began to flicker madly. One moment, it was gigantic and green, and in the next, it was the witch he and his team had encountered.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you. Miss ‘I need you to go fix the problem I made.’ Great pitch. I guess I know why you didn’t go into sales. Let me guess, Sephith found you in the discount demon bin, didn’t he?”
“Discount demon bin,” Nick muttered. His lips twitched crazily.
Amber, who had snorted root beer up her nose, tried to recover without coughing soda all over the monitors.
“What’s a discount demon bin?” DuBois asked.
“Never mind.” Jacob patted his arm. “Have some popcorn.”
The demon stalked closer and its features shifted and writhed. “You are nothing, a useless human.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, that’s why you lost an eye and you’re getting fucking owned by a horde of bandits and a level-three group of adventurers, huh? How’s your eye, Cthulhu?”
Justin. It wasn’t the AI, he realized, but Kural. Lure it closer.
“You wanna go?” He walked toward the being and spread his arms as he began to circle and drive it toward the summoning diagram. “Let’s go. I’ll even let you choose the weapons. You wanna—”
Someone pounded into him from the side. Justin went over with a grunt of pain and hit his head so hard the whole world turned white.
Or…wait, the whole world had turned white. It wasn’t the sickly gray of the demon’s fog, either. It was a pure, blinding, light-filled white that illuminated the ground in lines that sizzled and burned and finally slammed closed around the demon.
It probably would have screamed if it had time, but it didn’t. Where the lines fell across its skin, they seared through like a hot knife through butter. The creature didn’t even go up in flames as there wasn’t time for that.
Within seconds, it was ash.
Justin looked at Zaara, who had tackled him to the ground.
“Sorry,” she said. “Kural said not to shout the plan where the demon could hear.”
“A broken rib is…” He winced. “Probably better than death by demon. The jury is out, though.”
“Let me help you up.”
“I’d rather not move, thanks.” He laughed, then regretted it. “Lyle?”
The dwarf appeared overhead. His knuckle weapons dripped with black blood and he had a psychotic kind of grin. “Let’s find more demons.”
“Oh, God.” Justin closed his eyes. “Lyle Stout, demon hunter. It has a ring to it, I guess.”
Around the crater, bandits struggled to their feet. Kural limped to those who were not moving. Hildon and Mira both tried to hold each other up and consequently didn’t do a spectacular job.
Everything ceased when a loud, commanding voice asked, “What in the seven hells is going on here?”
He looked up to see the blacksmith. He was still pale but stood with his hands on his hips at the edge of the crater.
“Oh, hi,” he blustered. “I’m glad to see you up and about.”
“I woke up in a strange cottage in the middle of the mist and with what sounded like a full war going on,” the man said. “And I think I remember a giant worm. And what’s that?” He pointed at the diagram. “Did someone summon a demon?”
“Sephith.” Justin took Zaara’s hand and stood with a wince. “Don’t worry, the demon’s gone. Do you want to go back to East Newbrook?”
“Only if you promise there will be no demons,” the blacksmith said. “I mean it. None.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Kural sent several of the uninjured bandits to retrieve supplies from his house and had others turn the battlefield into a makeshift hospital. Those who could still walk were tended to by Zaara and Justin once Hildon had taught them a basic spell to clean wounds.
The young man had never experienced the aftermath of a battle this way. Before this, he had simply stumbled to the nearest tavern and taken advantage of game mechanics to heal his tired muscles. Now, he had an up-close and personal look at the damage done by a battle.
Every so often, his gaze drifted to the edge of the battlefield where two bodies lay still. The young man who had challenged him—and been swayed, in the end, by his speech—had died in the demon’s first attack. An older man lay beside him.
“It isn’t your fault,” Hildon said when he caught him looking.
He was making a splint for the bandit leader’s twisted knee and wrapped the bandage as neatly as he could around the hardened leather of the man’s scabbard. A short silence followed as he did not reply at first.
Afte
r all, he knew it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the demon and he wasn’t the bandit. But still, he’d been part of how it had all played out.
“Every choice has downsides,” he said finally. “I made my choice to try to persuade all of you and two of yours died for it. I know it would be worse if we had all cut and run. There would be hundreds of dead villagers and an army of monsters. That doesn’t mean those two aren’t still dead.”
Hildon looked curiously at him. “Everyone dies. People die young, especially bandits and warriors. If you know such things are inevitable, why let them sadden you at all?”
“He’s from a very different place than this land,” Zaara said. She looked up from where she was binding a long cut on a bandit’s side. “You should have seen him agonizing over what to do when the witch wanted us to kill you and you wanted us to kill the witch.”
“Hey,” he said, a little sensitive.
She bit her lip on any further words and moved to the next bandit.
“She doesn’t think less of you, lad,” Hildon said in a low voice. He smiled.
Justin’s cheeks were hot. He finished the splint and looked around. There weren’t many left to heal, and all of those were within Kural’s purview, not his. He sat on the ground and rubbed his face as he realized he was exhausted.
“It can’t happen,” he said finally. Zaara wasn’t real, and somewhere in a lab, a doctor watched all of this. He wanted to curl into a ball and die at the thought of people watching a romance between him and a fake character.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to explain this to his companion. “A mayor’s daughter and an adventurer?” the bandit asked thoughtfully. “I can see why you’d have your doubts.”
He responded with a tight smile.
“Still,” Hildon continued. “She wouldn’t be the first well-born scion to run off and be an adventurer instead of marrying up. Mayors and merchants and the like always have plans for their children. And the children don’t always like to go along with those plans, do they? It’s somethin’ to consider.” He clapped him on the shoulder and allowed Mira to help him up. “Think about it.”
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