They’d march as soon as day broke.
The demon hadn’t attacked all night. That didn’t mean that it had left them in peace. At random times, all through the night, the flayed carcasses of animals came flying into the camp; most of them were small, but in one case a boar of at least three hundred pounds crashed into the central fire, scattering burning logs and embers everywhere and forcing a quick response from Fire-, Water-, and Life-mages alike. And then there was the cackling and the taunts. Sometimes along with the carcasses, more often not, the demon would call out. Sometimes to friends of Rill’s or to the captains and other officers. More often to Touanne, whose presence was so important to the outpost in general. Most often—every few minutes—to Ana. The rasping calls of “Marshal!” came so often that after the first hour Ana tuned them out.
Others were not so lucky, or didn’t have quite the Willpower that she did. When they began breaking camp in the early twilight, most of them were badly on edge. Bodies were tense; eyes were tired. Hands fumbled and slipped on knots that they could tie and undo in their sleep.
Today they’d be marching back to the outpost, hoping to provoke the demon to attack so they could tie it down and kill it. No one doubted that it would; it may be cunning, but it was still a demon. No one could truly say that it would go after the bait that they’d be dangling in front of it.
No one could say how many of them would make it back alive.
Of the dozen or so who’d been injured during the previous day’s fighting, six were on stretchers. Most of the rest shouldn’t be walking, and absolutely no fighting, but they needed every capable pair of hands available—or one capable hand, in the case of Captain Pirta and some of the other wounded. At the captain’s own insistence the Life-mages hadn’t given her any of the special treatment they gave to Ana’s Party, and her broken arm would need a little longer to get back to full strength. Still, Ana knew Pirta wouldn’t spare that arm when it came to it. The long-term consequences of aggravating a healing injury only mattered if there was a long term.
Ana herself was far from her best. Her whole body felt twisted, wrung out, with everything being an order of magnitude worse from the hips down. She felt weak, almost a little floaty; despite having eaten several days worth of food since waking up in Touanne’s care, she felt starved. She didn’t feel up to fighting a high-Level Revenant, much less the demon that haunted them. But she had to, because despite having been surrounded by most of the most effective combatants in the Splinter, that demon had nearly killed Touanne yesterday. Yes, it was missing an arm. Yes, Talleh had managed to clip it with a stone projectile as it fled after attacking the officers’ meeting. She still gave herself a fifty-fifty chance at best of not getting knocked on her ass in the first five seconds of any engagement.
That wouldn’t stop her from giving her all. She’d fight like hell. She always would, until she physically couldn’t anymore, and even then she’d try to spit in the face of whoever finally killed her. But today she was—and she’d never admit this out loud—glad to have Aaspiyah in her Party. Not only for her Party Ability, which would make them all that much more resistant to both harm and exhaustion, but for the woman herself. Ana loathed her for what she’d done, but no one else had stood against Ana for as long as the Iron Warrior. With the bonuses Ana provided, Aaspiyah had the potential to be truly terrifying.
Today, terrifying was what they needed.
When they set out, Touanne and the wounded were at the center along with a few people to help carry the stretchers. They were surrounded by combat-ready Parties, with Ana’s Party at the rear; a position that made perfect sense, yet which almost invited the demon to attack them rather than anyone else. This formation would hopefully accomplish three things: not arouse any suspicion, let them react quickly to support each other, and not give too much fuel for the demon’s stolen Horde Breaker Abilities.
Those Abilities were a real headache. Drisa had gone through them with Ana the previous evening; she’d done the same for everyone else before they even set out from the outpost. Most didn’t stick out too much; normal Fighter-adjacent fare like improved Dexterity and Endurance, along with Agility for this Class specifically, scaling per Level. The Ability that massively increased the durability of any weapon the Horde Breaker held was interesting; its purpose was probably to prevent them from being disarmed due to a broken weapon, but in the demon’s case it just let it put all its strength behind Rill’s blade without so much as chipping the edge. But it was the Class’ titular Ability that was the real problem. Horde Breaker scaled all the Classer’s Base Attributes with the number of enemies in range of the Ability. It wasn’t as powerful as Ana’s own Class bonus, or her Class’ own titular Ability, but in the hands of a possessed demon it had the potential to be truly terrifying.
“Luckily its range shouldn’t be more than nine feet,” Drisa had told her. “But it’s well established that a demon’s incredible power comes mostly from Multipliers, not high Base values. Anything that increases their Base, well… we’ve been doing our best not to bunch up. At least it doesn’t have a sword anymore.”
The fact that the demon would likely want to attack the densest group of people in the formation meant, of course, that Ana and her Party would not only be walking a little behind everyone else, but a little closer together, as well. Even if the demon wasn’t fixated on Ana, they should look extra tasty.
And that was if the state of them didn’t draw the demon on its own. Ana was, she’d been told, pale. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes ringed with purple, and there was a stiffness to her gait that was hard to mask entirely. And she wasn’t the only wounded prey. Aaspiyah walked with a limp that she hid well but not completely; her hip had been badly injured, and there was only so much that magic could do in less than twenty-four hours. And then there was the fact that the Party’s average Level was so low; other than Ana and Aaspiyah, no one was above Level 14. They would barely even slow the demon down if it came to it, and with everything stacked the way it was, it almost certainly would.
Ana didn’t like the plan. She really didn’t. But she didn’t have a better one, and she’d accepted it, and now they were doing it.
Man plans, and God laughs. When the damn demon attacked, it didn’t go anywhere near her.
Darr, one of Kosh the Pathfinder’s people, was the first to hear the demon coming. Kosh’s Party had been spread out around the formation, and Darr was a second quicker than Marra Falk when he suddenly hollered, “Front left! Incoming front left!”’
He’d barely finished shouting his warning when the demon descended from one of the uncountable ancient trees that surrounded the path. Wielding a heavy broken branch in its one hand, it threw itself at Marra who, appropriate to her Class, was in the vanguard.
Marra, with a Perception to rival most Scouts, had been quick to react; the long quillioned spear she carried was already pointed the demon’s way when it came at her. For all the good that did her.
The demon moved like quicksilver. In the blink of an eye it slipped past the point of Marra’s spear and slammed the branch it carried into her midriff so hard that it splintered. By the time Ana was halfway up the line Marra was on the ground, and the demon was disappearing into the trees.
Marra lived, but now they had another stretcher to carry.
That was only the first hit-and-run attack that morning. On the second attack it laid Halmer out with a blow to the head so severe that Touanne couldn’t promise that he’d wake; on the third, it snapped Tellak’s femur. It moved so quickly that it could circle the group at a distance and attack from any direction, and when it came they had only a second’s warning; two, if they were lucky. It would appear from the trees, hit someone, and be gone before anyone could react effectively; arrows and magical attacks flew after it and some few struck, but as far as anyone could tell, nobody scored a significant hit.
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It was all rather infuriating. Without her combat bonuses Ana was no better at detecting the thing than anyone. Warrior’s Intuition didn’t tell her when the thing would attack them; it just screamed that an attack was imminent, all the time. Not even the Wayfarer could help; Ana asked, but the goddess couldn’t see even a trace of the demon until they could. Rill may have been one of her faithful, but the demon was just another creature.
As they got moving again after Tellak got hit, with the Bulwark loaded onto a hastily made stretcher and Touanne having done what she could, Aaspiyah slunk up to Ana. “It’s hit your Halmer and Tellak,” she observed in a low murmur. “Both of whom were hurt when it attacked the meeting yesterday.”
“Yeah,” Ana agreed.
“You see where I’m going with this, I’m sure.”
“It’ll go for Touanne next, if it can. This fucking bait idea isn’t working.”
“I also think that it’ll go for the Healer. I suggest we move closer to her. Sure, it might surprise us and bash in your skull instead, but if it does you may as well be close to help.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ana muttered. But they did move the Party up so that they were only fifteen feet behind the rear-most stretcher.
They’d been right in their prediction, in a way. The demon did attack their part of the group next. Again, it came from the trees. Where they’d been wrong was in that instead of leaping at Ana or Touanne, it chose Waller as its victim. It seemed it wanted to finish what it started the previous morning.
The demon fell too fast; unnaturally so. Perhaps it had shoved off downward from a branch, or perhaps it some some physics-defying Enhancement or Ability of Rill’s. However it did it, Ana was too slow to intercept, as was everyone else. Waller got his shield up in time, but was driven hard into the ground, his scream cutting off in a pained gasp. The sound when the demon hit, slamming his shield into his metal breastplate, was like a sledgehammer hitting a steel barrel.
Ana felt her ribs bruise and her arm threaten to break, but her bones held. It was only pain and bruising, and with her bonuses for being in combat, pain was nothing. She drew back her gifted sword, preparing to hack at the demon with the force of an industrial guillotine and hoping that the blade wouldn’t shatter on the first strike.
She’d have to wait to see how well the steel would fare against demonic flesh and bone. Aaspiyah beat her to it.
The Iron Warrior had been marching no more than five feet away from Waller. Not because they liked each other in any way; the two had struck up an instant loathing of each other, and Ana suspected that Waller would cut the woman’s throat in her sleep given the opportunity. After all, it was one of the mercenary mages—most likely Talleh—who’d killed Waller’s last friend in this place, and possibly anywhere. But Aaspiyah was as good as her word. She’d fired a blast of small stones at the demon as it fell, further shredding its armor, and when Waller went down, the melee mage was already moving.
The demon drew back its arm to break Waller’s skull open against the earth; Aaspiyah hit it like a five-hundred pound wrecking ball. She didn’t bother with punches or kicks; she simply tackled it, wrapping her arms around it as she did. That she’d increased her weight using a Shaping became evident when she and the demon hit the ground with a far too heavy Thud! But that extra weight seemed almost irrelevant as the demon broke her grip through sheer brute force and shoved her off, sending her first flying and then rolling among the low shrubs that lined the path.
The blunt trauma Ana suffered from that was minor; barely even noticeable, really. But her shoulder burned, and she felt blood well and soak into her under-shirt, hot and sticky under her armor. The reason became clear as she saw the large patch of torn cloth in the demon’s teeth.
The bastard had bitten Aaspiyah in the shoulder as it shoved her off it. Ana blessed her luck; it could have gone for the throat.
With the Iron Warrior out of the way, Ana took her opportunity to attack. So did Deni. As Ana unleashed a scream and an all-out downward chop, using the sword more like an axe, a marble of plasma streaked out from the young mage’s hand. The demon evaded the first, Ana’s sword cutting deep into the loam as it heaved itself upright off the ground with barely more than a flex of its muscles. The other, though? It didn’t even see Deni’s plasma bolt coming. The tiny star took it low in the abdomen, burning a hole through its now-ragged armor and setting much of the rest ablaze.
The demon didn’t even flinch. With a howl of glee it threw itself at Deni, who scrambled backward screaming in terror as its one arm came down like a claw to rake at her face.
It never connected. The spearpoint of Jisha’s halberd drove into the demon’s chest; it ignored it, but was stopped in its tracks. Then Messy’s blade flashed at its face, making it jerk back. That moment of hesitation cost it, and it was knocked bodily aside. This time it was Lesirell who tackled the thing, and what she lacked in mass compared to the Iron Warrior, she made up for in determination. The demon smashed her aside easily enough, leaving Ana gasping for air after another powerful blow to her chest, but it didn’t matter. Jisha, Messy, and Lessa had barely slowed the demon down, but barely was all Ana needed.
Manifesting her wings, for all that she loved them, still didn’t come reflexively to Ana. Deni’s terrified scream had reminded her, and as her wings came out, the fear on everyone’s faces vanished in favor of rational caution and murderous fury. They’d do what needed to be done; they only needed a chance to hit the thing, and it was Ana and Aaspiyah’s job to give them that chance.
Ana abandoned the sword. Rill’s blade dropped to the ground as Ana threw herself at the monster puppeting his body around and did what she did best—what her System features seemed to want her to do. Leaping on the demon from behind, she locked her legs around its waist, wrapped one arm around its throat, and pulled its whole arm behind its back with her free hand. Then she held on for dear life and screamed, “Kill it! Do whatever the fuck you have to, just kill it!”
“But you— we’ll—” Messy sputtered, hesitating to cut, much less thrust with her blade.
From the side came a roar of “We’ll heal!” and Aaspiyah threw herself at the snarling demon so hard that it knocked the wind from Ana, just from the transferred force. All three, angel, demon, and mage, went down in a writhing heap. Ana strained, the demon bucked, and Aaspiyah rained down blow after punishing blow, targeting joints, trying to disable the monster as everyone piled in, the formation abandoned in favor of trying to get a clear shot at the monster that had killed ten—that they knew of—and wounded more than a dozen.
This was what they’d wanted. Everyone in the group surged in, trying to find an opening. And yet it wasn’t enough.
The thing that had been Rill the themion heaved forward, sinking its teeth into Aaspiyah despite Ana’s arm around its throat. This time it went for the side of her neck. Ana suffered for her failure to control the thing, screaming as she again felt dozens upon dozens of small, sharp teeth sink into her flesh, drawing blood and ready to tear. Ready to devour.
Her scream was one of outrage; she was beyond pain or fear, but the thought of teeth in her flesh still triggered something primal in her. Abandoning her grip on the demon’s arm, she launched blow after short, sharp blow at the thing’s jaw, feeling the teeth slice across Aaspiyah’s skin with every impact. The Iron Warrior, meanwhile, was trying to pry its jaws open with her hands, but couldn’t get a good enough grip; she only succeeded in tearing its lips, leaving them flapping and spilling blood all over her neck.
They were not bound like that for long. With its arm free the demon shoved Aaspiyah back enough to let it raise its legs, and its teeth finally came loose as it planted its feet in the Iron Warrior’s stomach and pushed. Experienced Delvers fell like bowling pins as the deceptively massive woman crashed into them. Blood poured down Ana’s neck as she again absorbed the injury, but it only poured; it didn’t gush or pump. At worst she’d lost some skin. Her veins and arteries were untouched. Even if they hadn’t been, the massive blood loss wouldn’t have been Ana’s most immediate concern. The demon hadn’t been idle in the second after it launched Aaspiyah into the crowd of would-be demon slayers. While Ana had been digging a short furrow through the dirt with her back, feeling the space between her skin and tunic fill with blood and dirt, the demon had been escaping.
Ana couldn’t say when, but at some point during that second the demon had wrenched her arm loose from around its neck. It then proceeded to twist around within the prison of her legs so that it was facing her, and shove her back as it pushed itself to its feet. Before Ana knew it she was being carried away from the others, pushed down by an infernally strong hand on her stomach and fighting to keep her head from plowing into the ground.
She thought the demon intended to carry her off into the forest and finish her off there, away from the others. Not so. The moment they reached a tree, the demon twisted with such speed that Ana’s vision blurred, the blood rushing to her head, and then the world went white as she smashed into that tree with a sound of shattered bark and cracking wood.
Ana was on the ground. She couldn’t say how many times she’d had the wind knocked out of her lately, but this was a bad one. But she was only down, not out. She was too damn hard for something measly like being smashed into a tree to break her. Then a barrage of projectiles and flashes of light alerted her to something absolutely infuriating: the demon was fleeing. And at the speed it could move, it would get away.
Like hell it would!
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