Death After Death-Chapter 234: A Demon in the Dark (2)

With every night that passed, the preparations in the heart of the Murani camp grew. Each night at midnight, there were bonfires and sacrifices that echoed well beyond the edge of their now well-lit camp, and each day, while Simon slept, the bodies of their victims were removed. Though he couldn’t see where they’d been taken in the darkness, he could smell the series of mass graves that had been dug and filled to hide their crimes.

For five nights, nothing came of these efforts. From where he lingered to watch them after he finished each night, he could see a few of the faces change. That wasn’t definitive, but it indicated to him that their spells were not without risks, and some of their mages died or, at the very least, exhausted themselves in their forbidden rites.

Simon would take a break from slaughtering guards and other pockets of isolated defenders around midnight to watch the pyrotechnic-laden climaxes to whatever it was they were doing. He was rewarded on the sixth night when a fiery rift not unlike the one he’d seen so often on the chapel level appeared. From this distance, he couldn’t make out all the details, but his memory filled them in reasonably well.

The runes of the binding ring were painted in blood upon the ground, and it was easy enough to imagine the way that they would stretch and distort as the world beyond tried to violate them and break out of its fragile cage. Then, a man stepped through the flames. From this distance, he was a dark silhouette that looked no different from the demon that had pestered Simon every time he passed through the chapel. That normalcy only lasted for a few minutes, though.

There was some talking between the newcomer and a group of Murani warlocks, and once some kind of bargain was struck, the creature stepped through the circle, making it flare in protest even as it burned away the devil’s human veneer. On the inside, he had the silhouette of a gentleman, but once he stepped out of the flames and the lies fell away, he changed entirely.

Simon was too far away to see all the monstrous details, but some of them, like the horns and the wings, were unmistakable. So was the fact that it had practically doubled in size. What was a nearly six-foot man had become nearly ten feet tall, and he stood there, stretching. The words of power flared around him in flaming neon oranges, reds, and greens in quick succession, making Simon do a double take. He’d never seen magic cast in such a way, and he wondered at how it would theoretically work as a flaming sword manifested in the creature’s large hands.

The demon swept the thing around in a series of swipes that seemed to be nothing more than a warm-up exercise despite the decapitating someone who had been standing too close. The demon laughed at that, in a voice so deep Simon could hear it all the way from his hiding place on a rocky outcropping a quarter mile from the summoning circles at the edge of the nearest mountain.

Despite the casualty, the thing’s sword didn’t stop dancing for a moment, and it occurred to him there was a strange sort of pattern to it. Is this another spell? He wondered. Or is it more like a war dance or something?

Almost as soon as Simon had that thought, the blade stopped, and the demon leaped into the sky with a powerful flap of its bat wings. It seemed smaller in that moment. It was a mere pinprick of fire rather than a blade.

It took Simon several seconds to realize that it was because the thing was pointed directly at him. Pointed anywhere else, he would see the blade. Pointed away, he’d see nothing at all, but at him, it would look like the medieval equivalent of a flashlight. Of course, the fact that the demon was flying toward him like a missile was a pretty big hint, too.

Simon wondered if he should fly away from the thing but decided against it. He was in the mood to kill something that deserved it and roared a challenge to the sky, even as the demon reached the pinnacle of its flight and started down toward Simon like a thunderbolt.

As the demon fell from the sky with the menace of raptor, Simon considered his opponent. Scale was hard to measure against the glare and the darkness, but he decided that what he’d first taken for horns might be a crown in retrospect. Likewise, the thing was wearing at least some armor, and all of it appeared to be made of burnished gold.

“No accounting for taste,” Simon thought as he checked his surroundings.

Even in the dark of night, he could see several places where he’d rigged up several large traps that he could use to easily shift whole mountainsides if the Murani tried to move any large formations of men around. So far they hadn’t yet given him the opportunity to use any of them, which had been unfortunate until now.

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Still, all of that preparation gave him options tonight that he might well need. Simon spent the last several seconds of time he had before his enemy was upon him considering which of those titanic dead falls and other geologic features might be most useful. Then, he was out of time, and the demon struck.

Well, the demon tried to strike him. It arced down with grace and power, using the momentum of its descent in an attempt to cleave Simon’s head off. Evading the blow was impossible at these speeds, but a moment before the demon could impact him, Simon’s body dissolved into mist, making contact impossible. The demon’s eyes widened just enough for Simon to see that he’d noticed the trick. Here, though, its speed worked against him. There was nothing that the demon could do to alter the attack without throwing himself entirely out of balance.

Not that such restraint would save him. Simon reformed almost as soon as the blade was clear, and even as the demon soared past, he grasped its ankle with his monstrous, malformed hand. He felt the scalding heat of demon’s greaves and its terrible momentum, but he ignored the force straining his tendons and the way that the searing metal melted his flesh. Instead, he whirled around like a shotputter, spinning 270 degrees on his heel and redirecting the demon's momentum straight into a cliff a hundred yards away.

The monster flipped and rolled in the air chaotically as it tried unfurl its giant bat wings and right itself, but it was useless. It had only just begun to get control of its twisted flight path in the seconds before it hit the stone with a terrific crack that echoed out throughout the valley. Even before the demon hit the stone, Simon was charging toward it.

If that wouldn’t be enough to finish me off, then it definitely isn’t enough to handle a demon, he told himself. He wasn’t in the habit of underestimating his opponents these days. Still, in terms of people he wasn’t likely to take it easy on, Demons were pretty much at the top of the list.

The demon had only barely gotten to his feet and was still leaning heavily against the wall when Simon approached like a wrecking ball. He expected treachery and wasn’t disappointed when the flaming blade on the thing’s sword suddenly reversed. The hilt stayed right where it was while the shimmering blade burst from the rear.

It was a neat trick, and it scored a shallow but painful blow along Simon’s side before he body-checked the demon hard enough to break his spine. This time, the thing didn’t even try to get up. He just rasped, “Gervuul—” before Simon ripped his head clean off and tossed it far enough that it started to roll wetly down the mountain.

Simon considered ripping off all of its limbs as well, but the headless corpse didn’t put up a fight after he yanked off the first one, so he picked up the blade as the corpse’s open wounds started to smolder and sizzle.

The thing was just a handle now, and he was studying the markings on it when he heard the words behind him. “Gervuul Uuvellum Vrazig!”

He only just had time to whirl around before black lightning rippled out from the unseen caster. It blew holes right through his flesh, and his wounds were slower to regrow than usual, even as the arcing ebon streamers carved into the rock behind him. Simon slumped against the stone and struggled to rise, but the demon hit him for the second time with the same spell, bringing him to one knee as he took stock of the situation.

At least he’d turned all the way around by the second blow, and he could see what he was facing. The demon had started to regrow from his head, and though he looked like a naked dwarf right now, barely four feet tall, he was getting larger even as Simon watched. There was nothing that would stop the thing from blasting him over and over again. This time, though, Simon had his sword.

It’s been a long time since anyone hit me that hard, Simon reflected as he tried to figure out how badly he was hurt.

The sheer fact that he hadn’t already healed told him how bad it was, but Simon refused to accept that. Most of his guts and chest had been blasted away, along with half of his face, but his charred skeleton was still complete, and his limbs were largely complete. The demon had gone for center mass, which was a smart move most of the time but a terrible mistake in this instance.

A moment later, he made a second mistake when he took Simon’s moment of hesitation for defeat when he started to speak. “They told me you would be tough,” the demon said almost boisterously, “and for a second, I almost believed them. Still, for a God, you are not much of a— Oonbetit!”

The demon rightly judged that he didn’t have time for a greater word. Not at this range. A simple word of force wasn’t going to cut it, though. He’d applied it broadly in an attempt to shove Simon back, but after three steps, even in his weakened state, he was strong enough to shatter that invisible wall of force and keep right on going. This time, Simon slammed him into the ground by his throat, pasting him. Whatever words of power he’d been about to speak next were lost in the short, sharp scream that followed.

Simon only had a moment to enjoy that, though, before he whirled around as he realized something. If this asshole can regrow from his head, then he can probably regrow from other parts of his body, too, can’t he?