The stench of the gas filling the cave was nearly overwhelming, but it had the desired effect. The demon approached them cautiously, halted and then stood motionless for a moment, regarding the two humans.
Then it opened its mouth and issued sounds; not the inarticulate sounds of rage and anger, for they seemed meaningful, with rhythm and distinct pronunciation.
Brandos said, ‘Is it casting a spell?’
Amirantha hesitated, his curiosity overwhelming his need to rid this realm of the demonic visitor. He listened for only an instant before he realized that Brandos was correct: the demon was a spell caster!
‘We should interrupt that, I think,’ said Amirantha. He uttered a single word, another cantrip release he had prepared for such dangerous encounters. The word acted as a mystic placeholder for a long, complicated spell, and its utterance instantly released the full force of the enchantment. As a result, the raging demon was suddenly unable to speak. The efficacy of the spell was dependent on several factors, but most importantly upon how powerful the targeted magic user was compared to Amirantha. The average village enchanter could be rendered silent until Amirantha chose to lift the spell. A powerful magician would be silenced only for a minute or two. A more powerful magician could shrug off the spell with little effort. This demon was an unknown quantity.
Amirantha began the spell of banishment and was only halfway through the incantation when the demon again found its voice, and resumed its own incantation.
‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Brandos as he darted forward, starting a slow, looping overhand strike at the demon’s head; at the last moment, he moved his blade, dropped to one knee and unleashed the blow upon the demon’s left leg. Shock ran up his arm as if he had struck the trunk of a massive tree, but even so, the demon howled in pain and retreated back up the tunnel, its spell casting interrupted. The creature was injured and it knelt for a moment, nursing its leg. Years before, Amirantha had paid a magician in Maharta to enchant the sword, to inflict additional pain on demons. Now he wished that he had paid for the spell to cause real injury, instead of a mere distraction.
As Amirantha finished his spell, the air seemed to come alive with hissing energy. The demon screamed defiantly, and the stone beneath their feet vibrated for a moment.
‘It’s still here,’ observed Brandos.
‘I can see that,’ countered the Warlock. ‘It’s using its own magic to remain here.’
‘What next?’ asked Brandos.
‘A more powerful spell of banishment, obviously. But we’re going to have to wear it out.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Brandos shaking his head. ‘So I bleed and you chatter.’
‘Try not to bleed too much.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Brandos as Amirantha drew a large gem-like object from his pouch and smashed it on the floor.
A hazy curtain of ruby-coloured energy sprang up, bisecting the tunnel. ‘Back through the wards!’ commanded Amirantha, and Brandos did not hesitate. He had been through too many of these confrontations to ignore the Warlock’s instructions.
The magic user’s deep voice resonated in the narrow confines of the tunnel as he quickly strengthened the new wards with a cantrip and reached into his pouch once more. A tiny light pulsed on his palm as he held out his hand. He cradled the light as it quickly grew into a throbbing crimson orb, and threw it at the demon just as the creature moved purposefully towards the two men.
The demon was instantly engulfed in a scintillating web of crimson threads, which caused tiny explosions of white heat as they touched its skin. It howled and the stone tunnel shook from the sound, dislodging fine soil and small rocks that fell on Amirantha and Brandos.
Brandos took a quick look around, to see if the entire hillside was about to come down on them, but satisfied that things were relatively stable, returned his attention to the enraged demon. ‘I think it’s annoyed,’ he said dryly.
‘What made you notice that?’ asked the Warlock.
Brandos swung again as the creature advanced, giving Amirantha a moment longer to prepare the complex spell of banishment. As a safeguard, the Warlock quickly placed another set of wards behind the first, as an emergency measure. The demon recoiled from the blow, but Brandos wasn’t trying to attack it, only slow it down. ‘Back!’ commanded Amirantha, and the old fighter retreated behind the next invisible threshold.
The Warlock uttered an invoking word and a wall of pulsing violet-coloured energy sprang up to encircle the demon in the tunnel. The sizzling cylinder of light was shot through with rose and golden colours, and when the demon struck its surface, it recoiled as if it had hit a stone wall. Smoke coiled from its flesh and its wounds were charred.
Brandos knew that demons expended energy to heal themselves, so each time they were injured they were weakened. But demons also had an exasperating ability to feed off other sources of energy given the chance, so it was wiser to weaken them as fast as possible so that the summoner could quickly banish them back to the demonic realm. ‘Do I need to hit it a few more times?’
‘Wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ said the Warlock as he readied another set of wards.
Brandos feinted high and wide, causing the demon to raise his hands above his head; then the fighter crouched and thrust, taking the creature’s left leg out from under it again. With another stone-rattling bellow the huge monster fell back, crashing onto the floor as its dark blood spurted into the air. It smoked and emitted a foul sulphur stench as it splashed onto the stones. Brandos pulled back.
‘That was a good strike,’ observed the Warlock.
‘I strive for the greatest result obtained from the least effort; I’m getting old, you know,’ said the fighter as he retreated back to where Amirantha had erected the next set of confounding wards. Taking a deep breath, as perspiration flowed down his face, he added, ‘One day you’re going to get one of us killed.’
‘More than likely,’ agreed the Warlock.
‘Or both of us,’ added Brandos, raising his buckler and holding his sword ready against any new, unexpected problem.
The demon healed its latest wound slowly, and both men took that as a good sign. It required time without distractions to repair itself, and the more damaged it was, the more time it required. Lacking that space, it consumed its own magic essence to heal faster, leaving it less magic to use against Amirantha and Brandos.
‘We’re wearing it down,’ observed Brandos.
‘Good,’ said Amirantha, ‘because it’s wearing us down, too.’
‘Can you banish him?’
‘Just a minute more, perhaps two.’
‘Very well,’ said Brandos, and he stepped forward again, reading the boundary of the wards and striking hard at the demon. It was an easily anticipated blow, and the creature raised its hand to sweep Brandos’s blade aside. But the old fighter had expected such a move, demons were predictable when it came to non-magical combat. In their realm, the bigger, stronger demon almost always triumphed simply by physically overpowering their smaller, weaker opponent. Rarely did demons of similar stature confront one another. In the mortal realm their size and savage nature gave them a decided advantage against any but the most powerful creatures. A greater dragon would make short work of such a foe, but a simple swordsman would have to overcome brute strength with intelligence. Brandos turned his wrist as the demon tried to brush aside his blow, and let his blade slide along the creature’s raised left arm, inflicting a series of cuts and causing the demon to retreat half a step. Then the demon lashed out with its uninjured right arm, almost dislocating Brandos’s shoulder from the blow taken on his buckler.
Brandos retreated across the ward threshold again and braced himself for another onslaught. The demon hesitated for only a moment, then charged. As it crossed the ward barrier, it shrieked in agony, but continued towards Brandos and Amirantha. Three strides from where the old fighter