Into The Abyss (Demons of Astlan) (15 page)

~

The soldier spun, but not in time.  Zargoffelstan was a minor demon, nothing like the powerful lord that had just left.  But he had been Hortwell's slave for sixty years, and from his experience, there wasn't a better master in the world. 

He saw Hortwell go down, even as the order came.  He moved on the soldier with the speed only a demon could muster.  True he was weak by the standards of the great demons, but he was still stronger than any man, and he had razor sharp claws.  If Tom had been watching, it would have appeared that the man had just been inserted into a food processor. Blood flew everywhere.  Arms, legs, entrails, all were spread evenly about the clearing.  The man didn't even have a chance to scream before his guts lined the trees like shiny red ornaments.  It took only moments before the little demon was done.

As soon as he finished, Zargoffelstan rushed to his master's side.  As he kneeled down, Hortwell opened his eyes on him.  "Zargoffelstan, aid, protect now," was all he could manage before darkness began to drag him down.  He felt so weak, tired, he didn't even really care how the little demon had managed to get out of the warding it had been trapped in.

~

As he neared the edge of the dome, Tom scanned the dome's attackers with his acute vision, looking for the biggest demon.  He figured he’d better take out the biggest one while he was at his strongest.  He soon spotted the biggest demon.  As he settled in behind it, it didn't even turn or seem to notice his existence.  The nearby soldiers did; they were clearing a large area.  They hadn't seen Exador conjure this one, and it was definitely a big nasty looking demon.

Tom walked up quietly to within two arms lengths of the demon who was madly pounding on the force wall.  It was shorter than him, only about man height, maybe slightly taller.  It
s entire body was red, like most demons, it had shaggy goat legs with thick purplish red fur.  Small bat-like wings, a thatch of dark hair on its head, and of course, pointy ears and horns.

"Excuse me," Tom said.

The demon ignored him. 
Perhaps it didn't hear me,
Tom thought,
maybe I'd better speak up.
  "Excuse me," Tom said, about as loudly as a man could yell.  Still the demon continued.  This is annoying, he was trying to be polite...  "STOP THAT, DAMN IT!"  Tom yelled at the top of his voice.

"What the ferg do you want?" the demon snarled nastily as it spun around, obviously bent on trying to intimidate what it thought was an annoying lesser demon.  When it
turned to face Tom however, its attitude lost a little of its nastiness.  This was partly because its eyes were directed at its own height, and all it saw was solid stomach muscle.  Slowly it raised its head to look Tom in his face.  As his head came up, his eyes narrowed in calculation.  "Uhm, what did you want?"

"I said," Tom replied dryly, "please stop pounding on that dome."

"Oh, and why should I?" asked the smaller demon, snidely, but not too snidely.

"Because
...I have been instructed to stop you.  The easiest way for me to do that is for you to just quit and leave."

"And if I don't?"

"I hope, it won't come to that."

The demon stared up into Tom's staring eyes. "You do realize of course," the demon said, as if sizing Tom up, "that I am under orders, and can't just stop."

"I was afraid of that." Even as he said this, Tom came up with what sounded like a logical ploy. "However, think of this.  If you disobey your master's order, he may punish you with a few hours of torment, but if you force me to stop you, I'll ensure that you have a few months of agony.  You see, I'll have to forcibly disassemble you to make you go home, and that won't be fun."

The demon seemed slightly taken aback by this.  "Is that a threat?" he said angrily, his pride asserting itself.

"No," Tom said, realizing he may have said the wrong thing, "simply a fact."  He decided that for better or worse, if any of this was going to work, he'd better stick to his guns.

"I
...don't think so," and with that he slugged Tom in the stomach with all his strength.

Tom's breath, which he'd been talking with, left his body in a rush, as he doubled over in pain and fell backwards.  His falling was more in reaction to the surprise than the strength of the blow.  Still, it was as painful as any blow he'd received from the bullies at home.  Annoyed, but
still wary, Tom leapt to his feet.  He would have assumed a defensive position from his katas, but his legs just weren't built for it.  So he stood there, hands raised into blocking position. "That wasn't a good idea."

The little demon said nothing, but suddenly its eyes narrowed and its hand shot out.  Tom raised his arm to block the fist, but instead was surprised again.  The fist never came close, instead flame engulfed him.  It burned.

Without thinking he dove upwards, much like he'd done when trapped on the color plane.  Up he went, sixty, a hundred and more feet.  He then paused, and stared down at the demon.  It was looking for him, unsure of where he'd gone.  The flames had so covered him and obscured the other's sight that for the moment and he wasn't sure where Tom was.  Before the other demon could get a bearing, Tom came down.  He came down hooves first, just like when he'd fallen in the Abyss.  This time, however, instead of using his wings to slow himself, he used them to speed up and direct his path.  He came down, hooves first, directly onto the smaller demon. 

As Tom came in for his kamikaze collision, the
smaller demon saw him.  His eyes widened in surprise, just as Tom's hooves connected with his face at a forty five degree angle.  The little demon's head went crack, backwards in a severe case of whiplash.  His body was plowed backward by the force of the collision.  Tom stumbled a little as he landed, but regained his balance.  He looked toward the little demon.

He'd expected a knockout, but unfortunately, he didn't get it.  The little demon was about ten feet away.  It was standing up, shaking it head, slightly dazed.  Connecting him and Tom was a foot deep gouge in the ground where the little demon had tilled the ground with its body.  Deciding to take advantage of every possible opening, Tom leap
t over to where the demon was, and delivered a double punch to the stomach, using both hands and all his strength. 

As always, he was suitably impressed by his strength.  His fists didn't go through the demon, but they did send it flying.  It was hurled backwards and upwards twenty feet, bowling into a crowd of
onlooking soldiers.  The soldiers were knocked down forcefully; none would have been hurt more than some bruises and cracked bones, except that the little demon was now annoyed.  Angrily it clawed its way out of the pile of soldiers, shredding uniforms and human flesh in equal proportion.  Tom was rather nauseated by the sight, but he didn't have time to fully realize the situation before the demon was on him.

It flew at him.  Literally.  It came at him with both fists extended before it, in a Superman pose.  As it came at him, Tom who was in the air, flew slightly to the
side, but the demon veered.  Both of its fists connected in Tom's middle.  The momentum of the demon carried them both backwards.  Tom's backside rammed painfully into the force wall.  As they slid down the few feet to the ground, Tom grabbed each of the demon's wrists, which were still pressed against his stomach.  He drew them apart and twisted them with all his strength.  He twisted them inward and downward, so that the backs of the demon's hands would be inside.  He twisted and pulled.  A human's arms would have been broken and his shoulders thrown out of joint; the demon, however, only howled in pain.  Thinking quick, Tom brought up his right hoof and slammed it between the demon's legs.  Because of his leg's structure, the kick wasn't as effective as a human kick, but his excessive strength more than made up for it.  The little demon truly howled in pain now.

Its howls were so loud that Tom almost thought his ears would break.   Having no choice but to carry on, Tom brought his knee up, and pulled the
demon’s two wrists down.  This action promptly connected the demon's head to his knee with a satisfactory clunk.  It didn't knock the demon out, of course, but it did change the pitch of the demon's scream slightly. 

Out of the corner of his eye
, Tom noticed some movement coming towards him.  Looking up, he saw the other three demons converging on the fight rapidly.  Quickly he scanned the sky looking for his support, he didn't see any. 
Fun
, thought Tom.  Stepping over his now kneeling opponent's back, Tom turned, bringing the demon's arms with him.  The demon's arms were now behind its back, and crossed over each other.  Using the oldest restraint trick in the book, Tom shoved the demon's wrist up over the back of his head.  Human arms would have been in bad shape at this point, instead the demon simply uttered a completely new timbre of howling.

Knowing that he had to get rid of this guy for the moment, he bent his knees and lifted.  Ungracefully, yet with the rudimentary form he'd learned
in class, he flipped the little demon over his back with all his muscle power.  As it was, even if he'd been the greatest black belt of all time, instead of not quite a brown belt, he probably couldn't have pulled it off if it hadn't been for the shear strength in his new body.  The demon went sailing over Tom's head, forty feet, into the middle of the on looking soldiers.  These soldiers, Tom decided, must be really stupid, despite the fact that they kept getting a demon thrown into their midst, they still held their ground and watched the fight.

One problem
temporarily on hold, Tom turned to face the next three. 
This wasn't going to be fun
, Tom thought.  He had absolutely no idea how to deal with these three.  As he stood, staring at the demons descending on him, he felt a pinprick between his shoulder blades.  Arching his wings slightly, he turned to see what had caused the small pain.  He couldn't see anything that could have pricked him.  Quickly scanning the crowd of soldiers who had been behind him, he detected some slight movement, as if someone moving away.  He really didn't have time to deal with whatever was going on there.  He began to turn back, when he spotted a dagger lying on the ground.  Apparently, someone had tried to throw a dagger in his back.  Tom stood still, staring at the dagger for a few seconds.  He didn't know why it surprised him that daggers were bouncing off his skin, given everything else he had discovered about his demonic form.

Suddenly, as he stood there, someone slammed into him from behind.  Sinewy arms closed about his neck, trying to strangle him.  He had temporarily forgotten about the demons charging from behind.  Startled violently, reflexively, without conscious thought on Tom's part, his long prehensile tail came stabbing straight up.  Tom felt it shoot up, and before he could stop himself, it rammed hard into the demon behind him. 

Once or twice, when he'd been in elementary school, Joe Montague, who had always been the class trouble maker, had snuck up behind Tom and quickly placed one of his hands flat on the top of Tom's head, and pounded on it with his other hand.  This was what Joe liked to call "Ten Thousand Volts," which was because it felt like a bolt of electricity was traveling down one's spine.  That was the feeling he now encountered. It felt as if an electric shock were traveling down his spine, from his neck, down the small of his back, down his tail and up to the sharp pointed part, which was stuck in the attacking demon.

The offending fiend screeched piteously.  The sinewy arms fell slack, and then slid off Tom's shoulders.  Tom turned around to see a badly charred demon, which looked as if it had been split in two from the crotch up to the sternum.  Even as his eyes widened upon the grisly scene, the demon's body began to fade.  This Tom realized was what it must look like to others as he disappeared back to the Abyss.  At least that was where Tom figured the demon was going.  He really couldn't think completely straight at the moment, but everything Boggy and Tizzy had said, as well as his own experiences with the dragon, indicated that the demon should be returning to the Abyss to regenerate.  At least he hoped so.  He would hate to think that he'd killed the smaller demon, just because it was following its orders.

Tom looked up from the offending corpse.  The other two smaller demons were simply standing a little ways off, looking at the spot where their compatriot had vanished from.  Slowly they glanced up with sickly smiles.  There was, Tom thought, definitely a hint of wariness, and perhaps even fear, in their eyes.

"Hi?" one said hesitantly.  It made a feeble gesture with one hand, as if waving hello.

Trying to think quickly, but without knowing what to say, Tom just stood there.  He realized later that the look of concentration on his face could probably only be construed as a fierce scowl to outsiders.  Whatever the case, the two demons looked at each other, and then suddenly without warning, charged Tom.

Tom scrambled back a little, trying to take a defensive stance.  However, just before the demons reached him, they let out high pitched howling noises, clouds of smoke sprang from nowhere, and the demons disappeared.  "What the hell?"  Tom said in surprise.

What were these two up to?  Tom quickly looked around, suspecting a trick.  The two demons however, were gone.  He couldn't see them anywhere, as far as he could tell, they'd gone back to the Abyss.  The question was, why?  It really didn't make any sense.

"Cute," said a voice from the crowd of soldiers to Tom's left.  Tom glanced over and saw the first demon slowly emerging from the crowd.  "Perhaps you can scare pip squeaks into pretending that you destroyed them, so that they don't have to fight; but it won't work with me.
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