“No... I think that’s what he’s doing. He’s the one that’s crazy!” Zed said.
Gastropé ignored them and hoped this would work. He did not know Tizzy’s true name, but with the binding, he should not technically need to speak it, or even think it. It should be built into the binding.
As his chant came to an end, three figures began forming in his wand’s fire cone. One was Tizzy; the second was a large, craggy humanoid demon with large wings, and the third a shorter, chubbier demon who even so, was still rather ferocious. If he had to guess, the other two were fiends like Tizzy.
He heard Penelope and Zed gulp behind him.
Peter glanced over and his eyes widened as he saw the three demons. “Unholy shit!” he exclaimed.
“Thanks!” The short, chubby one waved at Peter.
“Where’s dinner?” Tizzy asked.
“There!” The craggy, humanoid demon pointed to the lich and dragon.
“I love ice carving!” the short one yelled as the three demons took off at high speed towards the lich and its dragon.
Somehow, Gastropé could hear the smaller demon ask the others, “Liches are dead, right? So how do we kill them?”
“No idea!” Tizzy said. “I think that will make it fun. We just shred it into lots of pieces and see if it regenerates.”
“Abyss, that geezer looks a might moldy as it is!” The craggy one said. “I bet he’s all squishy and mushy!”
“If not now, he will soon be!” Tizzy yelled.
The three demons descended on the lich and ice dragon. Suddenly ice chips were flying everywhere. Dark clouds of smoke and a horrible stench rose from the battle. How did they smell a stench? Gastropé wondered. Or was it just him with his link to Tizzy? He shook his head; it was not quite clear exactly what was going on.
There was a ton of screeching and lightning bolts started raining down on the demons, but they apparently had little trouble shrugging them off. The entire group was suddenly engulfed in a large cloud of ice crystals as waves of cold began reaching the carpet. Thunder rolled from the cloud as the blackness quickly enshrouded everything.
There was a loud boom and suddenly everything was silent. Gastropé was concerned — scared, really. Had the lich slain the demons? Suddenly the cloud began breaking apart and the three demons came flying raggedly out of the black cloud, laughing and slapping each other.
“Woo hoo! Now that was fun!” Tizzy said. All three were definitely looking a bit worse for the wear, but seemed to be in pretty good shape.
“Got any more?” Tizzy asked.
Gastropé pointed towards another of the lich dragon pairs.
“Ho! You didn’t tell me it was an all-you-can-slaughter smorgasbord!” the craggy demon yelled at Tizzy. “Charge!” The three demons charged off and up in the air towards that next dragon and lich.
Elrose finished his second lichcicle and started running over to where three carpets were attacking the next lich. The remaining two liches each had three carpets on them, thanks to his now tried-and-true combat scheme. The rather long walk, and climb, gave him time to observe the situation.
Two of the carpets were keeping the lich and dragon quite busy with swooping attacks of fire, lightning and what appeared to be very intense beams of light. The light beams seemed the most effective, as they were clearly putting dents in the ice dragon, and several more holes had appeared in the lich’s clothes after a few beam attacks.
The third carpet was sitting a short distance away and remaining stationary. A wizard was standing straight up on it and was casting something. It took a few minutes for Elrose to realize that the wizard was actually casting a Cloud of Disintegration.
“Time to pause and do long-range attacks,” Elrose muttered to himself. He had no desire to get near a COD. Given the results he had witnessed during the siege, the fellow on the carpet could probably go head-to-head with Lenamare for egomania. There was no way that could be a stable conjuring situation!
However, the COD was successfully formed and started moving towards the lich and dragon. The cloud did not get far before the lich noticed it and took direct aim at the wizard controlling the carpet. A giant bolt of lightning raced toward the carpet faster than Elrose could see what was going on.
There was a loud crack as the lightning bolt hit a wall — or rather, a shield of ice that had formed in the bolt’s path. Clearly, the other wizards on the carpet were prepared to deal with such attacks. This also gave the other two carpets a couple of free shots at the lich and dragon. They managed to score several good hits before being forced to pull back due to the approaching COD.
Elrose’s magically enhanced sight could see the concerned expression on the lich’s gruesome face. It shook its head and jerked on its dragon’s reins, kneeing it. The dragon dove down fast and hard, banking away from the carpets and the COD.
Elrose blinked. The lich was fleeing; the dragon had summoned a large burst of speed and was flying away as quickly as it could. They were also diving quickly. Elrose reflected that was probably a good idea. Given how high up they were, the lich had a lot of vertical distance where gravity would seriously assist its speed.
Clouds of Disintegration were notoriously unmoved by gravity, so it was limited to the same speed in all directions. The carpet with the COD caster started to follow, given that there was a range limit on how far the caster could be from the COD. However, they soon stopped, realizing they could not catch the lich.
The lich and dragon suddenly vanished in one of the auras, apparently plane shifting out of the border region and back into Nysegard. The three carpets cheered.
“We are going to keep the COD active and slowly move towards the fourth lich,” said a voice over the circlet. “You guys go ahead and join the other three carpets.”
Elrose looked to where the fourth lich and dragon were. Six carpets should be enough. He glanced towards the rear of the ship to see how the others were doing. He had to up the power on his enhanced sight to find the other battles. He blinked as he saw multiple carpets along with three slightly wobbly flying figures heading towards what appeared to be only two remaining lich-dragon pairs. Where had those wobbly red flying figures come from? He upped his sight again and then groaned. It was Gastropé’s demon and two other fiends.
It was bad enough that a Master Wizard might summon a COD from a flying carpet in the middle of battle, but a young wizard fresh out of school summoning and controlling three fiends from a fast-moving flying carpet? This day just kept getting more insane!
Elrose shook his head. Time for a line of sight teleport!
“Gotta hand it to you, Gastropé; I thought you were insane, but those demons of yours are kicking some lich butt!” Peter said, shaking his head as the three fiends headed towards their fourth lich and dragon.
“Amazing how joyous they seem even though they are taking a severe beating themselves,” Zed noted.
“In my experience, demons don’t look at things the same way we do,” Gastropé said, shaking his head. “They look at this as sort of a vacation. The Abyss is a really miserable place, trust me.”
“Trust you?” Penelope asked, looking at him oddly. “You sound like you have firsthand experience.”
Gastropé chuckled. “More than I want.”
“You’ve been there?” Peter had twisted on his cushion to look at him.
Gastropé nodded. “Multiple times. The first time was when I was working for Exador; he took his entire army through the Abyss as a shortcut to get to Lenamare’s school.”
“He sounds insane!” Zed said.
“Yes, well, it turns out he is most likely an archdemon who has been disguising himself as a human for several millennia,” Gastropé said. “So insane is really not the half of it.”