Tom returned to his position by the knight; by this point, the Rod members not under his command were subduing those he was commanding. Tom didn’t care, as long as they kept each other busy, he sent feelings of fear, anger and rage through his links encouraging his people to defend themselves and fight back. He came up behind the knight as he started coming out of his crouch, grabbed him by the legs and began thrashing him over again; this time watching out for any priests that tried to help the knight.
He smashed the knight into the ground about a dozen times, kicking him as hard as he could between slammings. Periodically he would stop and do a jab with his claws between the joints to try and do damage, and then he’d smash the knight a few more times. The armor held up amazingly well, but Tom was betting the knight inside was taking a serious beating.
Finally, after Tom had lost track of smashings, the knight cried out, “Enough! Stop, please.” Tom stopped.
The knight crawled to his knees then tossed his sword and shield away. He took his helmet off and put it under his arm. “I surrender, you have defeated me, demon!” Talarius shouted. It certainly looked like he had, the knight was black and blue all over his head; he had blood running out his nose, several cracked teeth and various head injuries.
“Kill me now, and be done with, oh vile demon! Know that you have beaten Talarius.” The knight sobbed, tears running down his cheeks. Tom was moved, somewhat.
Tom relaxed and allowed himself to shift to human form. He didn’t shift to Edwyrd; he wasn’t that stupid; but rather he shifted to a young man a few years older than himself; someone who looked vaguely like his friend Paul, but a bit more fit, and a bit older. With all the mana he had to draw on, it was surprisingly easy.
Naturally, he was naked. “I don’t want to kill you, Talarius.” He walked over to the knight who was on his knees.
“I do not hate you, nor do I wish to destroy you. I only want to protect my friends and my people.” Tom said staring down, slightly at the knight. His current form was about the same height as Talarius standing, so the knight’s head was at his chest. “I’m not different, nor are they,” he waved to Rupert, Tizzy and Antefalken, “than any other man. All we want is to live our lives, the same as you.”
The knight looked at him suspiciously, and skeptically.
“Killing you would only perpetuate this stupidity. It needs to end. This whole Astlan Demon thing needs to end; we have to start somewhere. Why not here?”
The knight shook his head. “I don’t know. You make no sense demon.”
“Talarius, you don’t have to change your opinion now. I don’t expect that. I am going to simply spare your life today so that you might, possibly, start to think that not everything you’ve grown up believing is true.”
“OK?” Tom asked.
The knight hung his head, “OK,” he whispered.
Tom smiled and put his hand down on the knight’s shoulder.
A searing pain lanced through his stomach, far worse than anything other than his first formation had. Talarius shouted in triumph as Tom bent over in agony.
“The Holy Dagger of Tiernon!” Talarius raised his arm showing off a dagger on a switchblade mechanism on his forearm. “It is instant, permanent death for Evil!”
Tom was in pain; he had been expecting this; OK, maybe nothing quite this nasty. The blade was gone, but the wound was there. He tried to flash to fire but something was preventing him, some poison or magic from the blade.
Tom tried hard to flash to flame, he poured in mana from his linked priests and Rod members; but it wasn’t enough. He was seriously bleeding. Blood and animus were flowing out. He had to staunch this. He needed more power.
No choice; he’d been careful to only pull mana from downstream the umbilical cord. He’d have to go upstream. He groaned as he felt the upstream mana start to flow his way. Holy shit! Literally, this was different; this was like highly processed, refined mana or something. He had five streams of it and he poured it into his wound.
The heavenly mana suddenly interacted with the wound... holy crap! He was healing! The divine mana was from Tiernon, exactly like the magic on the blade and was curing it. He stood up smiling. Staring at the bright white glow between his fingers.
“Talarius?” Tom said smiling. The knight turned from receiving his cheers. The knight’s face went cold as he saw the golden light at Tom’s midsection. Tom pulled his hands back to reveal the wound glowing with brilliant white light and closing.
“Do you recognize the aura of that light? What magic it is that heals me?” The knight was staring at Tom’s midsection in shock. Tom turned to face Barabus and the fancy priest beside him. They turned completely pale with shock. Tom rotated to face the still shocked Knight.
He reached out and snapped the dagger from the knight’s wrist. The knight just jerked in response, too shocked to react. Tom stared at the dagger, it was engorged, and literally swelling with whatever it was that had been his wound. He directed the same healing mana at dagger, concentrating on shoving it in and through as hard as he could. Cleansing, wiping, eradicating and healing the evil, the disease that was in that dagger. He willed healing and health and purity into the knife, channeling the god mana as fast and as furiously as he could until he could sense no more darkness.
The blade was glowing with a pale white light, previously black, it was now a bright silver. He tossed it over towards the feet of the general. Talarius was now staring at his knife in just as much shock. Tom looked at the knight again.
“One question, Talarius, when I was blasting you with fire, you deflected that with your sword; but wasn’t the air super-hot? How did you stand that?”
The knight was still in shock, not even thinking he just mumbled, “The armor, keeps me safe in any environment.”
“Good, that’s what I had hoped.” He looked over to his demon friends. “Tizzy, Rupert, Antefalken get ready to play catch.” He gestured to the ground at Talarius’ feet. The other demons nodded; Tom couldn’t read their expressions welclass="underline" Antefalken and Rupert seemed somewhat in shock and Tizzy seemed bored and, well, sort of like nothing unusual was going on.
A spark started between Talarius’ feet, and then it was a flame. By the point that the knight realized there was a fire at his feet, the fire had turned into a ring that began expanding between he feet. It looked like empty space below, well empty except for a few balls of fire.
“Talarius?” The knight looked to Tom. “Time for a vacation! Off you go... into the Abyss!”
With that, the hole widened and Talarius fell through it screaming. It was going to be a long way down. Tom gestured to his friends. “Make sure he doesn’t hit ground, OK?” Rupert laughed and dove in followed by Antefalken and Tizzy. Tom began quickly pulling his mana net out of the priests and Rod members he had infiltrated.
Tom turned to Barabus and Iskerus and said. “Don’t worry; I’ll try to keep him safe.” They simply stared at Tom in even more shock. Tom reeled in the last of himself, took a last gulp of super mana and then severed the links, all of them, yanking his links back, pulling the holy arrows along with them into his two hands. He didn’t want anyone following them back into the Abyss. With that, the naked human looking demon stepped over the gaping hole to hell and let himself fall through into the Abyss.
The hole shrunk and closed behind him.