The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (94 page)

“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.

Unfortunately, the knights appeared to be too small and fast to be easily targeted by the gravity cannons, at least not without hitting their own people; however, in a few instances, they had been able to zap knights with the BFGs; and the blaster rifles seemed to work quite well. There were two D’Orcs with odder-looking rifles who were having luck vaporizing various knight body parts and limbs with some sort of Star Trek “phaser”-like effect; unfortunately, like demons, the knights were able to regrow those limbs. It would probably require a full body hit to take a knight down with the “phaser” rifles or whatever they were, and the knights were just too nimble for that so far.

~

Talarius was losing track of time. This was a battle of endurance in the truest sense. He spun, parrying the knight’s blade with Ruiden and smashing his Rod of Smiting into the dagger still wedged in the back of the knight’s knee; the knight stumbled. Talarius quickly swapped out the Rod of Smiting for the Rod of Holy Lightning and jabbed the lightning rod into the small crack in the armor plates near kidney level. He released the lightning, causing the knight to go rigid for a few moments.

Talarius was not sure how many charges he had left in the Rod of Holy Lightning. It was effective in stalling the knight long enough for him to fly up and try to wedge the small hole he had managed to open in the crack of the knight’s neck armor a bit wider. He had no idea of the number of rounds he’d taken trying to accomplish this. He’d taken every opportunity, when flipping overhead and to the back of the knight, to try and wedge the tight crack wider. Talarius knew from long experience that either the neck or the underarm was the best place to try to pierce the plate mail for a killing strike. Normally the neck would be the harder spot of the two, but given the size difference and the fact that he could fly, the neck was easier than dealing with the knight’s sword or shield.

He felt bad for flying when the Knight of Chaos was grounded, but he was seriously overmatched and as he had noted to Boggy and Reggie, Knights of Chaos were truly the most evil creatures known to the Rod. Although probably a small distinction when compared, say, to Lilith. Demons at least had some rules and laws. Knights of Chaos were agents of pure anarchy and annihilation. While demons did want to control the multiverse and make everyone in it miserable, Knights of Chaos simply wanted everyone and thing dead and miserable.

There!
His final wedging may have given him a large enough point in which to plunge Ruiden on his next pass. It was going to require a rather tricky setup. He began a series of parries and stabs at the knight to distract the knight from his true intention. He wanted the knight to focus on other areas, as well as luring it into deeper attacks against himself.

In order to lure the Knight of Chaos, Talarius allowed himself to start slowing down, as if winded and worn. Which admittedly, he was, but nowhere near enough to actually show in his fighting. He needed to simulate weariness to trick the Knight of Chaos into being more aggressive, less defensive, to draw the knight out.

It took several more minutes but at last, Talarius saw his opportunity. The Knight of Chaos lunged for him, and Talarius fell back in disarray, as if falling over backwards. Instead, he did a backflip while storing his Rod; on coming up, he launched himself into the air using the sash even as he took Ruiden in both hands and came down feet first onto the knight’s shoulder, Ruiden aimed down between his legs.

The sword twisted in his grip, positioning itself for maximum effect, and then down they came. It really was an awkward angle; if not for his extensive training with the sash and Ruiden’s self-direction, it would have been impossible. He willed the sash to accelerate at maximum downward speed onto the Knight of Chaos.

Down! In!
Ruiden entered the narrow slit, splitting it open wider and wider.
Success!
The sword plunged deeply into the knight’s chest cavity, right where the heart should be.

VOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!
There was a tremendous explosion.

Pain! Screaming pain! Horrendous pain!

Talarius was not sure whether that was him or Ruiden. When the sword had plunged into the knight, something, a vast gusher of raw energy, had come blasting out of it, reaching upward and scorching him and Ruiden. His armor was glowing as bright as Sekhmekt’s shield as its protective rituals kicked into full gear. He could feel the mana pool on the chain around his neck heat up as mana was funneled to his armor.

This really, really hurts!
Ruiden shouted in his head.

I know! But I take the pain as a sign of great gain!
Talarius shouted back to Ruiden. Suddenly the pain stopped as the giant blast of energy that had shot up from the knight ended. Talarius fell to the ground, exhausted, his armor still glowing brightly in the aftermath of the Knight of Chaos exploding.

“Whoo hoo! Great job, Talarius!”

Talarius looked up to see Tom shouting at him and giving him a huge thumbs-up. The Knight of Chaos behind Tom suddenly cleaved the demon in two with his sword. Before the demon’s two halves could fall, the Lord of Mount Doom flashed to flame and turned to continue battling his own Knight of Chaos.

VOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

Talarius looked over to where the creepy-looking D’Orc commander with the sword of blood-red light had just exploded his own Knight of Chaos. This blast was coming from the center of the knight’s chest. The knights all had giant emblems of eight pointed stars on their chests; the D’Orc had somehow pierced the knight’s breastplate right in the center of the symbol. The D’Orc commander was grimacing and holding his sword before him, trying to deflect the insane blast of energy coming from the hole in the Knight of Chaos, even as Talarius often used Ruiden to split fire.

Talarius was impressed. Having felt the blast of a dying Knight of Chaos, he doubted he could have done a split shielding on that energy blast.

CRUNCH! FFFOOOOOMMSSHHHHHH!!!!
came a sound from his right, and then a loud, catlike yowl of pain that actually hurt his eardrums. He looked to see one of the sphinxes lifting its paw off an exploded Knight of Chaos. The sphinx’s paw was completely blackened and looked rather crumbly.

THUD! VOOOoommmmpph!!
Everything went pitch-black for a moment.

As the light came back, Talarius looked over to where that very weird sound had come from. Cheers rose from the D’Orc regiment. There was a crater where one of the knights had been; apparently, the rifle D’Orcs had managed to pin a knight down with crossfire so that the gravity cannon D’Orcs had managed to get a lock. The Knight of Chaos had tried to explode, but the gravity blast had swallowed the blast, or damped it. The air around the crater was glowing in a color similar to the knight explosions, but very subdued.

Talarius climbed back to his feet. He needed to pick a new knight, but hell and damnation, was he worn! He took a moment to drink some cooling water from his flask before trudging off after his next Knight of Chaos.