“We are seriously on the wrong side!” Lesteroth whined.
“Why are you standing there?” a large D’Orc yelled, strolling over to them. He had Talgorf under one arm and was twisting the smaller demon’s head around in circles, turning the poor fellow’s neck into a corkscrew. Talgorf gave Lesteroth and Bellyachus a very pained stare.
The second D’Orc answered, “We’re watching that battle while letting our burns regenerate. This little fellow says that Phaestus’s wife, Sekhmekt, is a goddess!”
“A goddess?” The newest D’Orc said. “Hmm. I had heard rumors that Phaestus was some sort of dwarven deity, so I suppose that makes sense. Still doesn’t explain how he got such a hot wife.”
“You aren’t kidding on the hot; did you get burnt by that giant blast of wind?” the first D’Orc asked the D’Orc twisting Talgorf’s head around and around.
“Yeah, was that from her?” the D’Orc asked. “Pretty nasty; I haven’t had blisters in at least five thousand years!” He shook his head in admiration.
The first D’Orc nodded and looked back at Lesteroth. “So are you ready for me to resume slaughtering you?”
“Yeah, feeling a bit better now. But I am going to put up a fight!” Lesteroth replied, once more belligerent.
“Yeah, you can try!” the D’Orc grinned, chuckling.
Talarius swung Ruiden in an upward sweeping motion to slice at the Knight of Chaos’s shoulder joint. This thing’s armor was seriously impenetrable, even by his own standards. The joints in the armor were extremely tight, making finding an opening very difficult. Add to that the knight’s shield work, which was quite impressive, and Talarius was beginning to get a bit concerned. He wished he had his shield to parry the other creature’s shield and keep it out of the way; unfortunately, that was still in Astlan.
Interestingly, the Knight’s larger size was playing to Talarius’s advantage; his smaller size combined with the enhancements provided by his Girdle of Grace was allowing him to dodge in and out. To be fair, it was being unencumbered with a shield that allowed him to do this.
Talarius dodged under the Knight’s shield, parrying its blade with Ruiden as his left hand shot outward, grasping his Rod of Holy Lightning. He jammed it directly into the Knight’s crotch and fired point-blank. Krssshhhhhh!!!! ZZZZszzssstttt!!! The holy lightning coruscated over the Knight’s purplish-black armor. Talarius jumped back slightly while the Knight of Chaos was momentarily paralyzed by the electricity zapping through its armor.
Talarius brought Ruiden down, the sword assisting with an otherwise impossible move that rotated the blade into position so that he could now sweep upward into the joint between the metal codpiece and the knight’s right leg. This scored a solid hit, wedging Ruiden temporarily in place. Talarius used the wedged sword to pull himself down and through the larger knight’s legs, twisting Ruiden in the joint.
He switched out his Rod of Holy Lightning for one of his daggers in his left hand, and coming between the creature’s legs, he jammed the dagger into the back of its right knee joint, wedging the dagger deeply into place. Talarius’s left hand came up so he could hold Ruiden with both hands and pull the sword free of the Knight’s thigh joint. Using the sword to leverage his forward momentum up and into a spin, he pulled Ruiden free.
Spinning in midair and using his Sash of Heavenly Flight to increase his altitude, he brought Ruiden around in a two-handed slash at the back of the Knight’s neck. He felt Ruiden shift in his hand as the sword more tightly aimed its blow to one of the small cracks in the Knight’s neck armor.
He managed a solid hit on the neck before the Knight’s head and neck twisted enough that Ruiden was forced out of the crack. Still in the air, Talarius tossed Ruiden upward and pulled his Rod of Smiting from its secure hidden location, activating it to expand the head and increase the length and weight, Talarius grasped it in both hands and brought it crashing down upon the Knight’s head with a loud CRUNCH!
Talarius swapped the Rod of Smiting to his right hand, allowing it to shrink to a single-handed mace as Ruiden came back down, twisting in midair to land hilt-first in his left hand. He would parry the Knight of Chaos with his left hand and smite it with his right, at least for a bit. It was important to shake things up and keep one’s opponent off guard. This was most likely going to be a very long fight!
CRUNCH! came the sound of one of the now even more gigantic and suddenly stone sphinxes as it stomped a Knight of Chaos under its forepaw. Tom shook his head as he swung the Rod of Tommus at the head of his Knight. Those sphinxes were something else!
As the sphinxes had charged into battle, they had begun to expand in size. At the start, their human heads on top of their lion’s bodies had been eye level with himself and Sekhmekt; by the time they reached the Knights of Chaos they had almost tripled in size, and they kept on growing.
As if that hadn’t been interesting enough, when they struck against a Knight of Chaos, they could either rake it with their huge claws — talons, really — or they could turn themselves or various body parts to stone. When they turned themselves to stone, their huge paws and legs would act like giant columns of marble coming down to crush whatever was underneath them; specifically, in this case, a Knight of Chaos.
Amazingly enough, the Knights being squashed by the now fifty-foot-tall sphinxes were managing to get back up, albeit in a very dazed and wobbly manner. Tom shook his head. If he had thought Talarius was tough to battle, he had been mistaken. The armor on the Knights of Chaos was nearly impenetrable; his claws raked uselessly along it and the joints were much more tightly sealed than Talarius’s had been. He was not actually sure how the Knights were moving with such tight joints, yet they were. To be fair to Talarius, however, the Knights were neither as dexterous nor as agile as Talarius. Not by a long shot. They were, of course, far faster and more fluid than any human in such armor could be, but not as fluid as Talarius.
“Shit!” Tom yelled as the knight’s blade sliced completely through his left arm. He flashed it back together again. The knight had stepped back a bit after slicing his arm, presumably to avoid being smashed by the Rod of Tommus. Tom used this to his advantage, leaping forward and planting the sharp spike of the Rod into the ground and using it as a pivot point for a flying dropkick with both hooves into the Knight of Chaos’s chest. He winced as the sharp edge of the knight’s shield sliced into his shins. That hurt!
Tom exhaled; these things were tough! By his count, there were twenty-three of them. He had one of them, Talarius had another; Sekhmekt was fighting two at once somehow and seemed to be winning. That woman was truly impressive; he was damn glad she was on his side.
Morok had been a bit of surprise; the D’Orc commander had waded in with only a short rod in one hand. Tom had been worried until he’d heard a somehow-familiar sshhZZZZDDDTT sound and a reddish black beam of light about five feet long had appeared from the end of the D’Orc’s short rod. The D’Orc commander was using a light saber!
Tom had shaken his head. That thing was seriously impressive. It was the one sword they had that was capable of damaging the armor worn by the Knights of Chaos. It could not slice through it in one blow, at least not so far, but it was melting tracks in the armor. Tom had to chuckle. Morok Deathstealer was one of the odd-looking bald, pale D’Orcs from Visteroth; if the D’Orc had worn robes and not had wings, he would have looked very much like a Sith Lord. He certainly fought like one.
Each of the six sphinxes was tackling two knights apiece. The knights did not seem to be having any more luck damaging the sphinxes than he and Talarius were having damaging the Knights of Chaos. The remaining six Knights were being kept busy by the D’Orcs.