Because he had no idea what was happening or where things were taking place, Tarrin Teleported them back outside the towers, in the sand-filled area where the Knights trained their cadets. It was the one place that he knew would be empty at that moment; if there truly were Demons on the grounds, then every body that could swing a sword would be fighting against them.
He felt it the instant he arrived. The Weave was literally thrashing around the Tower as he felt several powerful Circles scattered through the grounds, all of them wielding High Sorcery. Even from that distance, he could feel what they were doing, and he was a bit startled at their ingenuity. Sorcery could not harm a Demon, since it was a part of the world. Only things not of the world could harm one. Since they couldn't use Sorcery, what they were doing was sucking all the Wizard and Priest magic they could get their hands on out of the Weave. Because both forms of magic were other-worldly in origin, and therefore could do injury to a Demon. At that moment, Tarrin seriously doubted that any Wizard or Priest anywhere on the entire planet could cast any spells. If he tried, the power of the Sha'Kar and the katzh-dashi were intercepting the power before it could reach them, pulling it back to the Tower grounds, and then unleashing it as raw, magical force. They couldn't shape the Wizard magic because they weren't Wizards, and the same applied to the Priests. They had to use both types of intercepted magic in their primal states, but that primal state was more than enough to do significant damage to anything it struck. Raw magic was a destructive force, not a benign force. The power they could unleash in the real world wasn't even a fraction of what was in the Weave; Tarrin realized that doing what they were doing was horribly inefficient, and only a small portion of the magical energy they drew actually managed to manifest in the real world. They had to draw vast amounts of energy to form an attack with enough power to kill. That was why they hadn't already wiped out all the Demons.
Tarrin had never thought to try that before, but it was more than possible. The power of both forms of magic travelled through the Weave, and while it was in the Weave, it was subject to the power of a Sorcerer. Since it was not a spell, it was more of a trick, it was not one of the things he'd picked up when he was turned.
Tarrin swept a weave of Mind through the entire grounds, searching. They were everywhere. Demons literally surrounded his position, nearly two hundred of them. He couldn't tell what type they were, only that they were Demons.
He moved swiftly, drawing his huge black-bladed sword out of the elsewhere. "Allia, show me your swords," he told her quickly. Without a word, she drew them from under her loose shirt and presented them to him. He worked with what he was feeling from the Weave, reaching into it and suddenly pulling, pulling at any Wizard or Priest magic he could find. There was always that kind of magic in the Weave, either active or faint traces left behind when the spells finished their journey. Like a vast broom, Tarrin raked his power through the Weave, collecting up every tiny bit of that dormant energy he could find within his reach. And he had a much greater reach than the Circles formed around the grounds. A vast resevoir of Wizard and Priest magic was drawn in by his power, and he summoned the power of High Sorcery. His paws exploded into Magelight, and he touched each sword with a glowing finger, building an intricate semi-weave that mimicked a strand into both of her swords, then poured that energy into them. It acted like a temporary vessel for the magical power, lasting as long as the matrix of the tightly as he'd woven the seven strands around the metal of the blades kept its integrity. But the weaves, anchored to the metal, extended just out of it, making the swords glow with a brilliant light. The edges of that nimbus of trapped energy was razor-thin, giving the swords a lethal cutting bite.
"They can hurt Demons now," he said, releasing his grip on the resevoir of energy, and immediately sensing every Circle on the grounds tap into it. The Weave shuddered as the Circles fed off his accumulated power, and the sounds of sudden explosions and sharp detonations echoed and re-echoed across the grounds. "Come on, let's go deal with this," he said grimly.
Not like that! the Goddess commanded. They need your power right now, kitten, not your sword!
Before he could reply, a Whisper reached him. Tarrin, you've got to give us more! Ianelle demanded in a hurried, desperate manner. We can't draw out much more on our own!
Where is Jenna? he demanded quickly.
Fighting her own battle in the city! she replied urgently. Quickly! We've nearly depleted what you gave us!
He knew immediately and instinctively what he had to do. "Sarraya, stay with Allia," he ordered. "Keep an eye on each other, and remember that only Allia can do any real damage."
"I can be of use, even if I can't fight directly," Sarraya said quickly.
"Then do it," he said, putting a weave of Air underneath him. "Be careful," he told them as he quickly lifted off the ground, standing on a platform of his own power, rising up with shocking speed, rising up over the battlefield. He could see it now. Pockets of fighting surrounded the seven towers, heavy, intense fighting as groups of Knights, Wikuni Marines, and Arakite Legions surrounded lone or small groups of many kinds of horrid Demons. From human-like armored half-breed Cambisi to those huge vulture-like ones, even two of the four-armed, pincer-handed dogheaded Demons like the one he'd fought in Dala Yar Arak. Big ones, little ones, all of them ugly, and all of them killing humans with almost wild abandon, swinging black-bladed weapons or rending with teeth and claws or killing with crushing blows of raw power. Circles of Sorcerers, each led by a Sha'Kar, struck at the Demons almost recklessly, driving blasting, incandescent bolts of pure, unrefined magical power into them. The bolts exploded when they hit Demons, annihilating the creature, and occasionally accidentally catching up the warriors trying to pin them down in the magical firestorms, killing and injuring their own. The Sha'Kar were trying to minimize the friendly casualties, but what they were working with was raw and volatile, and they didn't have an exacting control over the power they trying to wield.
Worries of his family was pushed aside as he rose to the very top of the Tower, over it, looking down on the combatants like they were tiny figurines. He backed up until he was nearly in the center of the Tower, and he distinctively felt it when he made contact with the major Conduit that rose up from the crystal dome at the very center of the Tower's top. The endless power of the Weave reached out and grabbed him with that contact, literally dragging him into the Conduit, and he felt its power race over him, around him, through him, making every bit of his body tingle and buzz like pins and needles as the power reached through him. As the Goddess reached through him, directly through him, using him as an instrument to do her bidding, just as she had done during the battle against the ki'zadun. He felt himself being shunted to the side as the power of the Goddess joined with his, and he felt her unfathomable energy touch him. Shrinking back from the immensity of her, seeking shelter from her might in the feeble shell of his mortal form, he tried to look away from her terrible beauty, tried not to experience the thrilling, terrifying, awe-inspiring sensation of being directly linked to the power of a god.
An amount of power so vast it would have destroyed him had he tried to wield it himself rose up out of the Conduit, causing the huge pillar of magical power to suddenly blaze with light brighter than the sun. As it had done when he was being turned, the entire Weave around the whole city of Suld suddenly became visible, glittering, glowing strings and strands of energy that crisscrossed the streets, the buildings, the ground, the sky, covering the cityscape with a multitude of glittering lines of magical power. Tarrin could only snap his head back and gasp as that power touched him, infused him, then flowed through him, reaching out into the entire Weave as the Goddess' invisible hand cupped the totality of her precious creation and twisted it, wringing all the otherworldly magical energy within it like a maid wringing a washcloth and funnelling it to the Tower of Six Spires.
She wasn't done. He could sense it, though he tried not to look into and through the connection that now existed between his mind and her godly intelligence. With a speed that made him look like an untrained Novice, flows of power, hundreds of individual spells, lanced out him like arrows shot from a bow, visible lances of magical power that erupted from the blazing pillar of light that was the Conduit and rained down all over the Tower grounds. Their targets were not the Demons, they were the grim, courageous humans fighting against invincible foes to give the Sorcerers a chance to destroy them. In that blink of an eye, in that one instant, several hundred spells were woven through him, snapped down with blazing speed, and then released. Every spell activated unerringly, performing a trick similar to what Tarrin had done for Allia, as every human defender's weapon suddenly began to glow with a bright white light, a light that would allow the weapon to deal true harm to the Demons they were fighting.
In that touch passed information, and he understood the reason for her actions. The strictures in place would not allow her to interfere directly. She could not destroy the Demons unless they directly threatened her icon. But she could act indirectly, and that was exactly what she did, by giving those defending the Tower grounds a fighting chance against their invulnerable opponents. The only way in which she could directly interfere was when it concerned the Weave, her domain, and she had done that as well by gathering up all the alien magic that her children would possibly need in order to repel the Demonic invasion.
Her touch retreated from him, the door between his mind and her power closed, and he understood why they had needed him. Only a sui'kun could do what she just did. He and Jenna were the only ones she could have used to take direct action the way she had.
The draining effect it had on him was stunning. Swimming in a haze of bone-numbing weariness, Tarrin felt his own power slip, until the only thing holding him up was the power of the Conduit itself. She had used him as her vessel, her hand in the real world, but much of the power that had been unleashed in the material world had come from him . It would have killed anyone not a sui'kun instantly. His heart racing, his breathing shallow and as rapid as the drumming of a running rabbit's feet, Tarrin somehow managed to get himself out of the Conduit, where he crashed limply to the roof of the Tower. He had no idea how long he lay there, concentrating only on sucking in as much air as he possibly could, wondering if he was going to die laying there on that rooftop of utter exhaustion. He felt like the Goddess had ripped out a piece of his soul, and he could barely find the energy to breathe, let alone move. His heart began to falter slightly in its rapid beating, and the power of his regeneration began to falter as well as it too was drained, trying to draw up power from the All to enact recovery, but lacking the strength to do even that.
Then tiny hands were on him, and from their touch came an angry, invigorating strength. Tarrin gasped as a blast of warmth flowed through him, delivered by the tiny hands of Sarraya, flinched, then scrambled up to his paws and knees, fumbling with the sword that was still in his paw, miraculously retained through it all. Though it was a welcome sensation, it came in a vast wave, as if Sarraya were trying to make him explode with the excess energy she was sending into him.
"Enough!" he gasped, feeling his heartbeat start to slow, felt heat and vigor spread out into his arms and legs, felt strength return to muscles that had been completely depleted of energy. "I'm alright!"
"That was quite a show," Sarraya said without humor. "Can you move?"
"I can move, but I'm tapped," he grunted. "I couldn't weave a candle lit right now."
"Come on, let's get down there and do what we can," she said. "Whatever you did turned the tide, but they still need help."
Sarraya picked him up with a Druidic spell and carried him over the ledge. Tiny points of bright light littered the grounds below, glowing weapons that had suddenly turned the Demons from wild attackers to desperate defenders. Knights, Legionaires, and Marines pressed them from every side with those killing weapons, striking back blows that had been rained upon them, and any Demon that tried to disengage from the press was vaporized by an incandescent, ragged bolt of raw energy unleashed from a nearby Circle, Circles that were tapping into the vast energy that the Goddess had gathered for their use. Sarraya literally let him free-fall for several seconds, as the ground raced towards him, the fighting figures grew bigger and bigger, but he had no fear. He trusted his tiny companion utterly, and he knew she would slow him down before he hit the ground. A black-skinned cambisi, a male with blackened, bloody armor, was backing up from a Knight and two big cat Wikuni Marines, his armor actually affording him a protection that many Demons did not enjoy against the newly dangerous weapons wielded by their enemies. The half-breed Demon was backing up directly under where Tarrin was falling, putting his back to the white stone wall of the Tower for protection, completely oblivious to the doom that was descending on him from above. Tarrin gripped his sword in both paws and coiled it back over his head, arching his back and tucking in his feet in a position that Sarraya would instantly recognize and understand. He wanted her to slow him down, but not too much.
Luck probably was with the three pressing the Demon, for a black-furred panther Wikuni looked up and saw Tarrin dropping like a missle of death, sword readied to strike, and he jumped back quickly. The other two saw his act and did the same, not wanting to give the Demon a hole to exploit, and that got them out of the way. He felt Sarraya's power pull on him mere longspans above the ground, and the sudden deceleration worked with him as his entire body uncoiled like a released spring, whipping the sword over his head with such force that it literally cut the air, making a ripping sound as it went. The sudden deceleration gave the sword even more power as momentum pulled it down as the rest of him suddenly went slower than the sword, and only his inhuman strength kept the sword from ripping out of his paws.
The sword's edge hit the Demon right in the center of its burgonet helmet, and the alien metal split like paper. The power of the blow sent the black-bladed weapon right down the centerline of the Demon's body, and the sword, with the awesome power of the falling strike behind it, literally cleaved the Demon into two perfect halves. The sword, with so much force that the metal armor offered no resistance, went on to bury itself to the hilt into the ground under the Demon, as tendons and bones in Tarrin's paws snapped from the strain of trying to stop the weapon after it had done its job. Black blood exploded from that perfect line sliced right down its middle, between its eyes, right down the middle of its nose, and then two halves slid against one another with the slick blood helping them along, and then crumpled to the ground limply.
Pausing a second to let his regeneration repair the damage to his paws, he pulled his sword out of the ground, cleaned of the acidic Demon blood by the earth it had cleaved along with the Demon, and stood up with glowing green eyes and a flat, implacable expression. The only recognition he gave the Demon he had just bisected was to wipe some of the burning, smoking black blood off of his face. He felt it burning at him like acid, but then Sarraya was there, using a Druidic spell to strip the black blood off of him and the three defenders before it could eat into their flesh.
Raising the undamaged sword blade- nothing seemed capable of harming his prized black-bladed sword!-he gave the two Wikuni and the Knight a calm look, a look of utter, complete, and icy resolve. This was not a time to rage. This was a time to let his cold human fury do its work, focusing him on what had to be done and not worrying about things that would distract him. They gaped at him for a moment, then the Knight laughed ruefully. "That's one way to do it," he remarked.
"We're not done yet," he said. "Come with me."
"As you command," the panther Wikuni said instantly.
Ianelle, report, he Whispered. That didn't require any real energy to use.
Whatever you did, it's working, she answered as Tarrin and the three behind him ran towards the North Tower, where a pocket of Knights and Legionaires were surrounding a trio of strange stocky Demons with slimy, shiny skin, webbed feet, and frog-like heads filled with huge teeth. We're starting to kill them off as fast as they're appearing.
Are they Teleporting in?
They can't do that. Their powers don't work on the grounds. They're appearing around the fence and running in.
Take the power the Goddess gave us and build a Circle big enough to surround the grounds with a barrier, he ordered. If we can stop them from pouring in, we can kill the ones already here. The humans and Wikuni are getting the upper hand now, they won't need your help except with the cambisi.
And they were. As they ran towards them, the Knights and Legionaires managed to spear one of the trio of Demons, which staggered and fell out of sight, as the remaining two turned their backs to one another and flailed wildly with their webbed, clawed hands. Without their invulnerability, the Demons were suddenly unarmed and soft targets, with only teeth, claws, and occasionally strength or size to use to fight back. Only the armed, armored cambisi would present a real threat, for they were all expert swordsmen and enjoyed the benefits of their armor.
As you command, honored one, she replied immediately.
Get Darvon to form up at the entrances to the towers, he added. We can't let them get into the towers.
He's already done that, she replied, and then she retreated from him.
The quartet stopped advancing on the group when a Knight ran his sword through one of the Demons, and the exposed back of the other suddenly bloomed a spear shaft between its shoulder blades as a Legionaire skewered it from behind. They weren't alone long as one of the big ones, a glabrezu, howled in fury and advanced on them, its bloodstained pincers on its outer arms clacking in horrid anticipation. Behind it advanced a pair of cambisi, the night-skinned, scaly looking humanoid half-breed Demons brandishing bloody swords, using the much larger fullblood Demon as a shield.
Tarrin had them spread out with sharp movements of his paws, then raised his sword in both hands and squared off, challenging the glabrezu. He'd fought such a beast before, and he was aware that they were very fast, very strong, and were very dangerous. But then again, so was he. It bellowed when it reached them, and Tarrin barely registered the sound of steel on steel as the Marines and the Knight engaged the two cambisi as he slid aside of a plunging thrust with the sharp ends of its pincers on one huge arm, like a spear aimed at his chest, then ducked under the wide, sweeping blow of the other. The Demon recovered from its lunge fast enough to knock wide Tarrin's attempt to stab it in the lower belly; it was odd to fight an oppenent taller than him. He only came up to the Demon's chest. Unfazed by its defense, Tarrin reared back and swung his sword in a massive sidewards blow, turning it back in the same direction from which it had been deflected. The Demon tried to block it with the bony pincer, which usually would be an effective shield, but it had never faced a weapon like Tarrin's. The weapon didn't seem to be magical, but its edge was incredibly keen, and the inhuman power he could put behind it gave it awesome cutting ability. The majority of both bony pincers spun away from the arm in a wide arc as the Were-cat's sword neatly severed them, then Tarrin lunged in with the sword low to get inside the inevitable retaliatory strike from the other outside arm. He ducked under the two smaller taloned hands that ended the arms that stuck out of the front of its chest as they reached out for him, seeking his eyes, spinning slightly as he reversed his grip on his sword with one paw and let go with the other, so the blade extended from the outside of his gripping fist rather than the inside, which was the standard holding grip. Ducking down as much as he could, one paw on the ground to give him stability and lower his profile even more, Tarrin continued to move forward, slithering between the giant Demon's spread legs. It hunched over, its good pincer-arm aiming down to stab him with the sharp ends, but then it howled in a high-pitched, agonized keening as Tarrin's shifted sword sliced across the side of its leg, severing the tendons and muscles in the knee. Tarrin cleared out from under it as its lamed leg crumpled under its weight, and then, with a savage snarl, he flipped the sword back around into a proper grip and lashed out with it at the Demon's unprotected lower back, shearing through its spine and sending a good longspan of blade through its body. The Demon collapsed to the ground, its upper body swaying grotesquely without any bone to hold it to the lower part of the body, but Tarrin was on it before it could even roll over. With a vast overhanded chop, he separated its doglike head from its body with one precise, well-aimed blow.
He recovered just in time to parry a strong slash from one of the cambisi, backing up a step to give his larger weapon enough room to bring it to bear. One Wikuni was down and still, the other was kneeling on the ground with a hand to his chest, bleeding from a wide gash in his chest, and the Knight was defending his fallen companions from the other cambisi as it pressed him with light, precise thrusts and flicks of his serrated-edged longsword. The cambisi before him wielded his weapon lightly and surely, like a fencer, so Tarrin decided on using raw, elemental brutality. Quickly and without much finesse, he brought his sword down on the cambisi with vast power, staggering it back as it blocked a blow that would have split its head in half had it connected. The red-glowing eyes of the halfbreed flickered with shock and surprise as Tarrin swung again, then again, hitting it with such power that it could not recover in time to strike back before Tarrin was screaming that black blade right back at the Demon's face. With great, sweeping blows, Tarrin backed the Demon back almost into its companion, then quickly and deftly pinioned his weapon and slapped wide a desperate attempt to stab the length of its sword into his belly before he could rain down another punishing blow. Caught off guard by a quick and convincing display of finesse and fencing ability, the Demon did not recover in time to avoid Tarrin's club-like fist when it smashed into the Demon's helmet. He had learned long ago that he may not be able to do Demons any harm with such attacks, but the raw power behind the blow was something not even against which a Demon's invulnerability could protect. Tarrin had learned, the hard way, the magic went only so far when it defended one against the immense power of physics.
Stunned by the devastating blow, the side of its helmet caving in and skewing aside so it covered the Demon's eyes, and spinning in a full circle, the cambisi staggered back from the massive power behind that attack, staggering right into its companion, knocking its sword inward at a critically bad moment. The Knight pounced on his foe's momentary incapacity, crunching his glowing broadsword into the Demon's breastplate with a powerful thrust. Tarrin raised his weapon and drove it into the Demon's head, before it could right its helmet, and both foes dropped nervelessly to the ground.
"Sarraya, see to the wounded," he ordered of the invisible, lingering Faerie as the Knight gave him a wolfish grin. He raised his visor, and Tarrin realized that it was Ulger.
"You're as good as they say you are," he complemented. "Come on, boy, let's go get some more of them!"
"I'll do what I can for these two," Sarraya called from somewhere beside him. "I'll catch up in a bit."
"Be careful," he ordered.
"Always," she replied before he heard her wings buzzing, lowering her to the Wikuni laying on the ground.
The Were-cat and the Knight sallied forth from that battleground and became a mobile terror for the Demons, attacking those already scrambling in frenzied desperation to protect themselves from a pack of incensed Knights, Marines, and Legionaires that had revenge burning in their expressions and fury seething in their eyes. They gathered up more and more stragglers as they finished off Demons already engaged by other defenders, stragglers that were quickly forming up with other Demons to seek safety in numbers. The defenders had trouble attacking these large groups of Demons, so they too began to gather, and the most dangerous of these groups was Tarrin's. The stray Knights, Marines, and Legionaires that he and Ulger had picked up had formed something of a loose mobile wedge formation with Tarrin at its point and the Legionaires and their large shields and spears directly behind him to engage Demons not totally focused on the lethal Were-cat. The heavily armored Knights protected the flanks of the Legionaires, also protecting the Wikuni Marines that prowled the edges of the formation seeking to flank and envelop enemies struck by the wedge by giving them a secure base within the wedge to which they could retreat when necessary. They moved about the battlefield to engage any Demon that had been trapped by pockets of defenders from joining the main host. Tarrin would slam into the Demons with the Legionaires' spears jabbing at them from behind him, their shields interlocked to keep the Demons off the rest of the wedge as the Knights anchored the Legionaires' flanks and the Wikuni Marines flowed out quickly to surround the engaged foe. Though nobody had called out that they use that tactic, it proved to be devastating. All of them were seasoned, veteran fighters, and they had instinctively gathered into the most efficient and effective formation they could have used. The wedge grew wider and wider as more men joined it, each man going immediately to where his comrades were stationed within the formation, and the large moving formation quickly became a rallying point for all the other groups of defenders that had been doing their best to prevent the Demons from regrouping.
Tarrin felt the individual Circles suddenly break up, and then reform into a huge one, one that had to number at least a hundred Sorcerers, a circle of immense power. It touched High Sorcery, and then he felt it get to work. He felt them reach into the power the Goddess had gathered for them, and then the entire Tower grounds seemed to shimmer visibly. Light bloomed at its edges as Tarrin felt them build the barrier of stolen magic, building a sectioned shell of Sorcery some twenty spans high and then filling its hollow center with the alien magic the Goddess had pooled for their use. The result of their work was not a solid barrier, but a highly volatile, explosive field divided into thousands of small cell structures that, the first Demons to touch it learned, quite literally exploded outward in a fiery blast whenever it was disturbed. Whoever had been leading that Circle had been clever in anchoring it into that pool of alien magic, so that every time a section of it was drained off by destroying a Demon, the individual shell weaving that had exploded mended itself using flows from its partner cells, and energy to replace what was expended in the explosion filled the hole. And since only one cell of the aggragate would explode when it was disturbed, not exploding those to either side, it kept the Demons from making the whole barrier detonate and then rush in before the Circle could rebuild it without needing thousands of Demons to all attack the barrier at the same time. And Tarrin rather doubted that they had that many to waste. The barrier was a self-repleneshing defensive ring of highly reactive, unstable energy that destroyed any Demon that touched it, and it stopped the invasion of new Demons onto the grounds instantly.
Sorcery that clever had to be Ianelle's handiwork.
In moments, the steady stream of Demons rushing onto the grounds stopped. Dramatically. Those trapped on the grounds were very quick to gather into one large mass, and then they turned and started moving quickly towards the defenders, seeking to swarm them over in a single hideous charge. The defenders too had quickly regrouped, forming a single body a thousand men strong that stood right in the path of the Demons, and the Lord General of the Knights himself arrived quickly to take command of it. He arrived on a black charger, heavily armored with barding, the warhorse's protective armor showing signs that Demons had tried to claw through it. Darvon's sword was pitted and burned from Demon blood, and he had some blood seeping from the shoulder of his armor, staining his side, but he moved in the saddle with sureness and his booming voice was sharp and decisive. "Alright, men, form up in the wedge our clever Tarrin has been leading around the grounds!" he called in a commanding tone. "Legionaries in the center, Knights on the flanks, and Marines behind and ready to envelop when we hit!" Darvon himself moved quickly to the center of the hastily forming formation, fully intending to serve as its spearpoint alongside Tarrin. The Legionaries gathered behind them into three rows, and two rows of Knights extended out to each side of them as the Marines set themselves in the center of the wedge, ready to sweep out when it broke through.
Tarrin flashed the Lord General a quick smile, one that was returned enthusiastically. Darvon was old, almost elderly, but he was still one of the toughest fighters the Knights had. His aged arm had swung a sword longer than most of the Knights under his command had been alive, and he was regarded with a towering respect by professional soldiers all over the world. That respect gave the men behind him tremendous confidence facing the unworldly enemy, confident in the fact that the legendary Darvon would lead them to victory.
Darvon clapped down his visor and raised his sword. "Stand ready!" he boomed, and the humans and Wikuni behind him suddenly roared in reply, as swords, spears, and shields were raised and readied.
"We won't stand in defense!" he shouted defiantly as his night-coated warhorse pranced a little under him. "We won't huddle here like cowering babes and wait for them to come to us! We'll ram into those stinking Demons while they're still confused and send them back to the Hells they crawled out of!"
The echoing cry of furious assent from the defenders was almost deafening, swords and spears bouncing in the air over their owners' heads as they screamed their enthusiastic acceptance of Darvon's commands. Tarrin could clearly hear the shrieks in reply coming from the Demons; despite being at a disadvantage, they still wanted to fight, still wanted to kill.
"Alright then, men! They're waiting for us! Let's not disappoint them!" He turned his horse and pointed forward with his sword. "At a walk, forward!"
They started out at a slow walk, as the Demons some distance ahead quickly tried to line up even as they moved towards the defenders.
"At a trot, forward!" Darvon boomed, picking up the pace. Tarrin didn't have to run, he simply stretched out his pace to keep up with the Lord General beside him as the armor of the men behind started jangling as it bounced with their trotting steps. The Demons began to scream and brandish their claws or weapons, and they too picked up their pace.
"At a run, forward!" Darvon commanded as he spurred his horse to a canter, and the entire host suddenly broke into a sharp, fast, yet still tightly organized run. They kept their lines, kept from spreading out, keeping a pace that Darvon set that any professional soldier could hold for a short amount of time. It wasn't a dead sprint, which would let the men behind set the wedge, but it was fast enough that them crashing into the Demons was going to split their enemies into two groups. The Demons, not nearly as disciplined as the soldiers they faced, charged at the host, breaking up as the faster ones outpaced the slower ones. Every eye was locked on that unworldly horde of nearly two hundred Demons, big ones, small ones, thin ones and heavy ones, but all universally ugly. But not a single man faltered in his charge, despite charging into battle against the spawn of the Hells themselves. As one, they were confident in Darvon, and they would not break under his command.
"Set-shields!" Darvon barked, raising his own sheild to his side, tucking it in. In a singular rattling sound, the Legionaires all raised their curved, rectangular shields to form the shield wall that would split the Demons' line apart. The Demons only screamed in fury and ran at them even faster, some of them frothing at the mouth with a horrible grayish foam.
"Spears-ready!" the Lord General boomed, and the forest of raised spearpoints suddenly lowered in a single motion, putting glowing steel spearpoints to either side of Darvon's charger and the loping Were-cat. The Demons did not falter in their mad charge, closing the distance in a shocking amount of time. But still the men behind did not waver. Tarrin raised his black-bladed sword grimly, ready to do his job and punch through the lines, break a hole in them the host would use to separate them, surround them, then grind them to dogmeat within a ring of unyielding steel teeth.
"No mercy!" Darvon boomed furiously as he raised his sword to ready to do battle with a vulture Demon not ten spans away. The defenders screamed in an intimidating war cry and followed as Darvon deflected aside the cruel point of the vulture-Demon's wicked hooked polearm with his shield, then sent its head flying with a powerful stroke from the saddle of his warhorse. Tarrin didn't bother with fancy fencing, he simply chopped his sword over his head at a heavily armored cambisi, shearing through the sword raised in defense and cleaving a horrid wound in its face and shoulder. The power of the blow sent it flying to the side, only to be trampled into the ground by the warhorse's grinding steel-shod hooves.
The impact of the defenders and the Demons was loud, ringing across the grounds and well into the city. The larger Demons stopped the forward movement of the wedge, but only momentarily, for their lines were very loose and disorganized. The Demons did not fight as a group, they fought as a collection of individuals, and that prevented them from reacting to the tactics the defenders used against them. Instead of regrouping in the hole that Darvon and Tarrin opened in their middle, they instead each fought its own private battle. But the spears of the Legionaires kept them from closing in and using their size to break up the defenders' lines, and those trying to get at the Knights found that their heavy armor and powerful broadswords made them impossible to split up. The wedge began moving forward as the first Demons to reach them were cut down, and those Demons reaching them after the initial rush came with a wider and wider gap in the center as Tarrin and Darvon, still side by side and moving ahead of the formation, split the charging Demons into two groups, leaving the rapidly dissolving bodies of their victims behind them as they advanced. When they ran out of Demons in front of them, they split up, Tarrin going one way and Darvon the other to engage those on the flanks, and the Legionaires, now with Ulger serving as the head of the wedge, advanced into the hole they created behind them. Amid the din of shouts, ringing steel, and the shouts and cries of the wounded, and the howling and screaming of the Demons, the wedge passed between the lines of the Demons and began to widen as the Marines rushed out from the core to either side and enveloped their foes, surrounding them.
The formation worked perfectly. The two pockets of Demons, realizing to their chagrin how they had been trapped, fought with zealous ferocity, assaulting the Legionaires and Knights that now stood between them, but the spears of the Legionaires on the front rank had been discarded and now they wielded glowing shortswords. They let the Demons crash into their shields, and then expertly shifted the large shields and stabbed out from behind them with their short-bladed weapons. Demons screamed in pain and fury, clawing at the shields, the stronger ones ripping them away, but the Legionaires simply closed ranks around any man who fell, men who lost their shields stepping back into the formation against the shields of the second rank and letting the men on each side in the first rank close the hole with their shields, denying the Demons a chance to get between them. The Legionaires in the second and third ranks still wielded their spears, jabbing and thrusting them at the Demons, pushing them back and preventing them from getting inside the front rank, aiming for the face and chest and shoulders, trying to maim or incapacitate if they couldn't kill. Marines that had swiftly gotten behind them and began assaulting them from behind now proved to be a deadly distraction to those trying to get past the Legionaires and Knights, allowing those in front to get in a killing blow as the Marines behind harried and harassed them.
Without their magic, without their invulnerability, and without any kind of coherent battle strategy, the Demons fell quickly to their highly organized and cooperating adversaries. Darvon and Tarrin continued to cut wide swaths through the Demons, breaking them up into smaller and smaller pockets, and the wedge finally broke up as the Legionaires and Knights helped the Marines surround those dwindling pockets of resistance and chop them down. In mere moments of furious, intense fighting, a force of two hundred Demons had been destroyed by a thousand mere mortals, and there was an eerie silence after the squeals of the last Demon faded away.
Then one man, an Arakite Legionaire with blood flowing from a nasty claw gash over his left eye, raised his spear and shouted in triumph. Another man joined him, then another, and then more, until the survivors cried out, flushed with victory over their unnatural enemies.
Tarrin didn't feel like joining them, and neither did Darvon, it seemed. He raised his sword quickly and got their attention. "It's not over yet, men!" he shouted. "Fan out in groups of fifteen and make sure there aren't any loners out there! Five of each, and watch each other's backs!"
Tarrin paused while the men quickly scrambled to obey the Lord General. The attack had no real sense to it. Did the Demons come here just to make him return, just to cause trouble? Where was Jenna? Was she alright? He cast out his senses into the Weave, and even that seemed to tire him. But he could feel her somewhere in the city, relatively stationary. The Weave around her showed no signs that she was doing anything, but it was shifting a little with her emotions. He could feel it clearly; Jenna was very angry. Something had happened out there, something to draw her out of the Tower, and then the Demons swarmed in while she was gone.
Wait. That was not right. The Demons showed no sign of using any kind of coherent battle strategy, but luring Jenna out of the Tower meant that there was a design behind things. What could be gained by getting Jenna out of the Tower? Tarrin mulled that over quickly, lowering his sword as he thought. Getting her power out was the first thing he saw. If Jenna had been here, the Demons would have been stopped almost before they could have gotten started. The Goddess would have used Jenna instead of him, and what was more, Jenna could have Circled with virtually everyone in the entire Tower, creating an awesome magical force that even a Demon would fear, a force that would have stopped the attack in its tracks.
Something a Demon would fear.
Jenna had been lured out of the Tower to prevent her from stopping the invasion. That much was plain. But why? The Demons out here didn't do anything but run around and try to kill people on the grounds. None of them he'd seen had tried to force their way into any of the buildings, and they'd had the chance to do it several times. Why come out here and attack men on the grounds when they went to all the trouble to pull Jenna off the grounds? They didn't do any lasting damage. The only thing they'd managed to do was bring him back to the Tower.
They were a diversion!
With an awful cold feeling in his stomach, Tarrin turned and bolted for the main Tower, but before he took more than a dozen steps, the Weave suddenly wrenched, wrenched with such a power that Tarrin felt it like a knife twisting inside him. There was a drastic, dreadful surge in its power, as if the entire Weave was trying to flow into one place.
And that place was in the Tower.
Jasana! Jasana was crossing over!
Only one thing could make her cross that line, to make her desperate enough to have to resort to Sorcery. She was in danger!
The Demons on the grounds had been a diversion! Their real target was Jasana!
Unable to Teleport or project, almost too tired to run, Tarrin still managed to dig as deep inside him as he could and summon up reserves from some unknown source, reserves tapped out of abject fear and concern for his daughter. It propelled him faster than any horse had ever run, and his mind raced even as a cold hand gripped his heart and squeezed it mercilessly. They'd distracted him and everyone else while someone or something else had snuck into the Tower and attacked his daughter! That was why none of the Demons tried to force their way into the Towers… they didn't want to interfere with what was happening inside! Tarrin endured the pain as he felt the Weave writhe and contract under his daughter's personal struggle, felt it rush into her like an avalanche unbidden, felt it seek to infuse her until her body literally exploded from the energy contained within. If she lost control and was Consumed, the explosion would kill everyone on the Grounds and bring the Towers down!
He didn't even bother with the door. He ran right through it, sending shards of wood flying in every direction as he plowed through the obstacle. He trampled some faceless person without even realizing, running the robed figure down without losing a single step. He felt the Weave reaching its crescendo as he reached the stairs, flying up them six and seven at a time, frantic to reach his daughter before she reached the moment of truth, to tell her what to do, to keep her from destroying herself. He abandoned running in circles and bounded up them in huge leaps, using the walls as springboards, taking entire floors in two vaults off the circular walls.
He reached their floor! He barrelled down the hallway madly, seeing the dead bodies of human servants lining the sides of the passage, trails of blood. Someone had attacked his family! He turned a corner and saw, to his horror, the door of Jesmind's apartment smashed in, with debris laying on the floor beyond the open doorway from what he could see. Where were Jesmind and Mist?
Jasana was infused as far as she could possibly be infused with the power of the Weave, far beyond the power he himself could hold. Even in his frenzy, in his terror at what was happening, he was awed by the absolute power contained within his daughter's tiny body. Such and incredible power! Almost there, almost there! If he thought it would do any good, he would have shouted, but he knew she wouldn't hear him. He was too late! Just a second too late! Jasana was already at the climax. If she didn't Transmute herself and do it now, she wasn't going to make it!
Think! he cast his thought frantically towards her. You've touched me, cub! Make yourself like what you've felt in me!
And she did. The power raging into her simply stopped, and then the power she contained turned inwards on her, sweeping through her as she Transmuted herself, altered her body so that it could withstand the destructive forces the magic brought to bear against her tiny body. Just like that, in the span of a second, it was over. She had used up all the power within her, and now she was isolated from the Weave until she learned once more how to come into touch with her powers.
For her, it was over. The Weave shuddered at Jasana's Transmutation, and then the entire thing seemed to thicken. It was the only explanation he could rationalize. The strands around them became thicker, stronger, if only by a negligible amount, every strand becoming a tiny bit more conducive to holding and transmitting magical power. The Goddess said that the Weave benefitted every time a Sorcerer crossed over; that had to be the effect.
But there was no relief in his daughter's survival. He reached the doorway and slid to a stop inside, certian that something dreadful had happened.
What graced his eyes was something that he would never, ever forget, ranking as the most horrid memory he would ever confront. The room had been destroyed in a savage fight, debris and pieces of furniture laying everywhere, and sprawled on the floor with the debris, laying in pools of their own blood, were Jesmind and Mist. Both had been slashed by some kind of edged weapon, and both were unnaturally pale, their breathing shallow and faltering. Across the room, holding both of his children in its arms, was a creature he had seen before. It was a Demon, a Demon with the upper body of a woman, the lower body of a snake, and six arms. He recognized this one; he knew her personally. This was the same Demon he had banished during the Battle of Suld. In her left arms, she held a limp, pallid Jasana, knocked out by her ordeal. In her right arms she held Eron, who was thrashing, hissing, spitting, gouging in vain at her ensnaring arms with his tiny claws, even biting at her. And in the left hand not holding Jasana, she held Jegojah's magical wounding sword.
In horror, he realized that she had broken in and used it on Jesmind and Mist. They would have ignored a weapon, and she used that against them to deal them incapacitating blows immediately. Tarrin had felt the pain-amplifying bite of that deadly weapon. And even now, the magic of the sword was keeping his mate and friend from regenerating, spilling their lifeblood out onto the floor.
I told you I'd repay you, her thought reached him. It was ecstatic, triumphant. She held up his two children and raised the sword when he took a step towards her, his ears laying back and his eyes igniting from within with the uholy greenish radiance that marked his anger. Internally, he had to crush the Cat in a vice-like grip to keep his powerful protective instincts from making him fling himself at the Demon. As long as she held that deadly blade to his children, he could not attack her. And she knew it, smiling viciously at him as her dead eyes burned with evil delight.
My Master wants the Firestaff, and you will deliver it to him, her thought touched him. You will do it to recover one of your children. This one, I think, she said, hefting Jasana. The other you can have now, as insurance you don't try to follow me.
Then, with deliberate slowness, her eyes boring into him with evil pleasure, she deliberately raised the sword and drew it across Eron's exposed neck, cutting his throat. The blood boiled from the ghastly wound, and Eron gurgled feebly as the Demon brutally tossed his body aside, where it crumpled to the floor with a quickly and horrifically expanding pool of blood forming around his head.
The enraged bellow that tore from him could not define the fury, the rage, the incredible pain and injury she had dealt to him with that one act. His claws came out and he coiled up to fall on her and tear her to tiny pieces, but the sword raised again and touched Jasana's neck. That made him freeze instantly, fear for his daughter preventing his rage from taking control of him.
You can chase me or try to save them, her thought echoed in his mind trimphantly. If you're fast enough, you may even save the boy-child's life, but I rather doubt it. Choose, Were-cat. Save one life or three. I leave it to you.
Then, her coils doubling over on themselves, she slithered backwards towards the balcony door. For an awful moment, Tarrin's rage nearly made him launch himself at her unprotected back as she turned around, but an image of Faalken's tomb stayed him instantly. He would not let his mate and son and Mist die over his need to kill that Demonic bitch for what she'd done! They had to keep Jasana alive, or they couldn't get the Firestaff from him! Save what he could, and leave recovering Jasana for after the others were saved!
Though it killed him, he made no move towards the marilith as she slithered out onto the balcony and then somehow went over the side. His lunge was instead to Eron, rolling him over and putting desperate hands on his neck, trying to stem the horrific flow of blood pouring out of the grisly wound. He was spent, utterly spent, and even as he desperately reached out to try to command his power of Sorcery, he knew that it was going to fail. Even as his son's skin turned chalky and the flow of blood pouring from the dreadful wound began to wane. Never before had he felt so powerless, not known what to do, not had someone to help him. He gave a strangling cry as he redoubled his efforts, terror and panic starting to overwhelm his rational attempts to exert his spent will against the Weave.
Calm down! the voice of the Goddess touched him, though her own voice was frantic. I can't do anything unless you calm down, kitten! Open yourself to me, quickly! There's no time!
Trying to calm down, trying to reign in the firestorm of emotion roaring through his mind, he put his paws on Eron's shoulders and tried to center himself. He knew he had to reach out to the Goddess as she reached out to him, and in their meeting he would become her instrument, but his eyes could only look at the deadly wound in his son's neck and the blood that was saturating the knees of his trousers.
It seemed an eternity, but then he finally felt her searching for him, reaching out for him. He rushed out to meet her, and in their touch he was again shunted off the the side as the awesome power of the Goddess reached directly into him, through him sweeping him up with it and joining his mind to hers. He could feel her near-panic, her fear and fury at what had happened, but she did not let it her affect her judgement. With her swift and sure manner, she wove the spell that Tarrin had improvised to defeat the killing magic of Jegojah's sword, wove it through him and into Eron, Mist, and Jesmind simultaneously, something he would not have been able to do. That was all she needed to do, all that needed to be done, and all that Tarrin's weary body could withstand as the regenerative powers of the Were-cats would kick in now that the magic defeating them had been neutralized.
As his eyesight failed and the Goddess quickly separated herself from him, he saw the terrible gash in his son's neck begin to close, and pink flush his chalky skin as his body's regeneration restored the blood spilled by Jegojah's sword. All he could feel was relief as he spiralled down into unthinking blackness, knowing that his son and the mothers of his children were going to live.
To: Title EoF