Just as he was about to charge at the golden throne, Mordred looked up and began to laugh aloud. Ethan stopped short, wondering why the man laughed. Mordred looked right at him and said, “You actually came!”
Ethan looked around, trying to see whom Mordred had spoken to. After all, Ethan was still invisible to human eyes in his spiritual form. Mordred stood up at the throne and gingerly held up his turkey leg. Then the big man tossed it through the air so that it landed precisely at Ethan’s feet. Ethan watched it roll to a stop in front of him. It didn’t make any sense.
“Surprised I can see you, Deliverer of God?” he said. “Mordred said that you would come for him, but I must admit, I wasn’t completely convinced.”
Ethan’s eyes grew wide. His expression must have given away what he was thinking. “Oh, you thought I was Mordred, didn’t you?” the big man said. “I hate to disappoint you, Deliverer, but Mordred felt he should leave this place just in case you managed to come here. I am General Rommil, Lord Mordred’s second in command. We were just celebrating the inevitable defeat of King Stephen’s army.”
Ethan didn’t know what to do next. Mordred had slipped into hiding somewhere and he didn’t even know where to look for his sister in the palace. He took a deeper look into the man boasting before him. A single spirit possessed General Rommil. Overwhelming darkness emanated from the demon.
Ethan raised his sword again. “What is your name, demon?”
Rommil’s laughter faded to a devilish grin. “I am Jericho, son of man. Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to know who you were before I destroy you,” Ethan boasted.
The demon within Rommil laughed through him. “Don’t you realize by now? You can’t destroy me. Even if you managed to defeat the man, I would be back eventually.”
This was the kind of insight Ethan needed. Okay, so I can’t destroy demons, only send them away temporarily.
“Do you really take me for a fool, boy?” Jericho asked.
At that point, Ethan heard swords drawn behind him. The soldiers closed in from both sides of the room. Civilians stood from their places at the table. Ethan saw, now, that demons dwelt with them as well, only on a deeper level like Jericho. It took greater concentration to make them out within the mortals they inhabited. Spiritual swords mingled with the steel in their human hands. When the first possessed man closed on him, Ethan’s heavenly blade locked with the physical steel of the soldier’s sword.
The demons can fight with their weapons through humans! Darkness permeated the entire chamber now-power emanating from the demon, Jericho. Ethan realized he had made a mistake. Gideon’s admonishment to pray resounded in his mind like a trumpet.
Ethan tried to pass through the floor and escape, but the Jericho’s power somehow prevented him.
“There is no escape for you, Deliverer!” Jericho said, as if answering the unspoken question in Ethan’s mind. “You have stumbled into death this day, son of man.”
Swords flashed at him, but Ethan managed to defend himself. People, who had been eating and laughing, moments before, now stalked toward him from every direction. Each of their expressions had changed from jovial to hate-filled.
Ethan leaped over several possessed people, trying to find space to fight as they closed in. More swords swung at him. Men leaped at him like wild animals lunging for their prey. Ethan’s blade cut the air. His weapon met one sword in flight and then another, but they were too many.
The battle in the bottom of the slaver ship’s cargo hold flashed through his mind again. He had walked into a similar predicament now. Then, he had barely escaped, but now he faced a far more powerful foe.
Ethan remembered how his weapon multiplied as needed and found the second blade at his hip again. He freed one of his hands to take it, using it just in time to block another sword coming at him. He blazed a trail through some of the closest dinner guests as he fought wildly with both swords. Each time he hit a person, the blades struck the demon within, sending the creature tumbling out of its host. The humans crumpled to the floor, while the demons dissolved into the ether-returning to their own wicked abode.
But there were more to replace those who fell. Ethan noticed that General Rommil had not entered the battle. A possessed attacker managed to strike Ethan. The pain was excruciating, but his armor protected him from the worst of it. He fought back and dispatched the demon and its host-one to unconsciousness, the other to the netherworld.
Two more strikes got past his defenses. He felt the pain even though he did not see any wounds. Their strikes weakened him-each unseen wound sapping his strength. Ethan leaped straight up out of the swarm of bodies trying to pile on him like ants on a piece of discarded food. He reached the high stone ceiling, clinging to it like a fly. Rommil still stood at the far end of the throne room. Ethan leaped away from the granite ceiling at an angle, bringing him down near the general.
Rommil appeared surprised by Ethan’s aggressive move. He grabbed his broadsword from its leaning position at the arm of the throne, holding it out in front of him. Ethan hit the floor, running toward General Rommil and the demon, Jericho, within.
Ethan used his momentum to his advantage. He struck Rommil’s broadsword with one of his own, deflecting the weapon. He drove the other right into the Wraith General. But in the split second before it hit Rommil, Jericho leaped from the old soldier’s body. Without the presence of the demon, Ethan’s weapon pierced Rommil’s physical body. Jericho shot away to the stone wall, immediately bouncing back with his own spiritual sword in hand. Ethan withdrew his sword from Rommil, letting the old soldier fall back on the throne. He deflected Jericho’s attack, but noticed the possessed soldiers closing in again from the far side of the throne room.
Jericho deflected several shots and struck Ethan’s face with his fist, sending the boy falling backward to the floor. Ethan recovered quickly, then scrambled back to his feet to attack the demon.
The possessed mob had begun to overrun Ethan’s position, when a wild whoop erupted from the middle of their ranks. Howls of pain came from the soldiers between the two gigantic lavers filled with wine. Levi and Gideon had emerged from the floor grate, swinging cutlasses taken with them from the earlier sea battle.
Levi had the same wild-eyed expression as before. Ethan loved seeing it now in his time of trouble. Gideon somersaulted over some of the possessed soldiers, landing among them. His entire body became a whirlwind of destruction. His elusive blade dispatched members of the mob like a scythe laying down wheat, while his fists and feet pounded through their ranks like battering rams.
Jericho grew furious at the sight of them coming to Ethan’s aid. He launched into a furious barrage of jabs and slashes, forcing Ethan back. Jericho continued to advance on Ethan, his every hacking blow threatening to dispatch the Deliverer once and for all.
Gideon and Levi searched for Ethan, but they could not see him or his demon opponent. They only saw Rommil’s dead body draped haphazardly across the throne. Gideon and Bonifast continued to push in that direction, hoping that Ethan was still in the throne room somewhere.
Ethan felt his wounds aching-the same wounds he had just received when the mob of soldiers had swarmed against him. He grew weaker by the second. What had happened to Shaddai? Where was the strength he had known recently? Why had he not prayed before coming into this battle as Gideon had warned?
All of these questions hammered Ethan’s mind as Jericho took advantage of his weakness, driving him back. Jericho knocked one of the spiritual swords from Ethan’s hand. It evaporated in mid-air as it left him. The demon smashed Ethan’s face with his boot, knocking him back further, then Jericho flung his demonic broadsword at Ethan with both hands. Ethan was not fast enough to stop it. The weapon spun at him, struck his blade, deflected off and hit Ethan. The weapon exploded against him, shooting pain through his entire body. Ethan felt darkness take him as he disappeared from the spiritual plane.