Hell's Heroes

UNSTILL WATERS

I’m driven to the ground by gibbering demons, but back on my feet moments later, scattering the beasts with a burst of magic. I look over their heads, searching for Lord Loss. The familiars don’t bother me—I’m far stronger than them—but their master is a different matter. If he crosses, we’re in real trouble.

But there’s no sign of the eight-armed sentinel of sorrow. Demons are spilling through the window, but only underlings. Maybe he’s saving his grand appearance for the end, to make more of an impression. Or maybe he’s wary of Kernel and me, and wants to see how we fare against his familiars first.

Several small, furry demons attack the blind teenager. They have long snouts with suckerlike mouths at the end. I think their orders were to focus on his eyes if he’d reconstructed them.

“Kernel!” I roar.

He bats most of them away and smashes the snouts of another pair with a karate kick that Bruce Lee would have been proud of.

An octopus-like demon launches itself at me and wraps its tentacles around my throat. I bite through a couple—sushi… yum! — then grab one and yank the demon in hard. I head-butt it and send a thousand volts of magical electricity crackling through its brain. The octopus drops, its remaining tentacles withering. Stepping onto its carcass, I bound into the air and rain a sheet of fire down on the demons closest to me. Their screams are music to my ears.

Kirilli is warding off monsters, firing weak bolts of energy at them, yelping and staggering around anxiously. He’d be a good fighter if he could forget about his fear and just focus. Even in this agitated state, he’s powerful enough to drive back the demons who attack him. His biggest worry will be tripping over his own feet and leaving himself open to assault.

Timas and Shark are fighting side by side, with their bare hands and feet. Shark prefers the old-fashioned ways, punching, kicking, throttling. He likes to get his hands—well, thumb! — dirty. Timas isn’t able to do anything magical, but he’s fast and sharp, and although he can’t kill the demons, he repels them artfully and calmly. He wouldn’t last long by himself, but with Shark by his side he holds his own.

Moe is slaughtering the stampeding creatures with delight. It’s Christmas come early as far as he’s concerned. He rips throats open, tears off limbs, disembowels viciously. His only regret is that he can’t stop to feast on the spoils.

Curly staggers to her feet, her face a broken mess. She lasts about three miserable seconds, mewing painfully and trying to push the pieces of her cheeks back into place. Then demons drag her down and finish her off. A sad end for a fine warrior.

Five large, burly beasts slide through the window. They’re giants, twelve feet tall. I get the sense that they’re tough as rocks, but not much on the magical front. If these are the fiercest foes we have to deal with, it will be a breeze. It’ll take a while, but we can wipe out this crowd without having to go into second gear.

I don’t get it. There must be more to come, or maybe there’s a hidden threat among the smaller, yapping demons. Lord Loss wouldn’t waste his familiars on us. He’d happily sacrifice them if he thought they could wear us down and leave us ripe for the picking, but these guys wouldn’t even test a run-of-the-mill mage.

As I’m trying to figure out the method behind his apparent madness, the giants grab the smaller demons and lob them through the air into the pool of living liquid. It bubbles and seethes, swiftly stripping the skin and burning through the bones of the familiars, dissolving the shells of the more heavily protected.

“What’s going on?” Shark yells, throwing a poodlelike demon with four heads at one of the giants, who grabs it like a frisbee and spins it off into the pool, where it only has time to bark twice before its tongue is fricasseed by the foaming liquid. “They’re doing our work for us.”

“Maybe they’re on our side,” Kirilli squeals happily. “They think we’re going to win the war, so they’ve betrayed their master and are trying to prove themselves worthy of our mercy.”

“I doubt it,” I mutter, head-butting another octopus demon, watching warily as more demons are thrown into the pool. The liquid’s glowing with different hues of demon blood. I’ve a bad feeling about this.

As another demon is tossed into the ravenous pool, the liquid throbs. The giants kneel in front of the pool and bow their heads. Some of the demons attack them spitefully, but the giants ignore their blows and wait patiently, like monks praying at an altar.

The liquid throbs again, then rises up in a circular sheet of dripping darkness. It looms over the kneeling giants and lesser demons. For a mad moment I think it’s going to form legs and stride towards us. But instead it crashes down over the giants and those around them, breaks like a wave, then re-forms and rises again, even larger than before.

The sheet of lethal liquid sloshes forward several yards, by means I can’t work out, then collapses over another pack of demons, smothering and dissolving them, expanding again as it pulls itself up to its full, majestic height.

The pool is getting closer to us. Most of the demons have realized they’re in trouble. Some try to attack the moving pool, only to be scorched and torn apart. The smarter beasts flee for their lives.

Shark, Timas, Kirilli, and Moe have clustered around me. They’re all staring with disbelief at the aqueous, mobile tower. I call Kernel to our ranks, then prepare a ball of energy, taking power from Kernel and the others. I unleash it at the sheet of liquid. The ball punches a hole through the sheet and sizzles angrily as it shoots out the other side. But then the liquid oozes shut over the rip, and the pool sways on, undaunted.

“Bloody Beranabus!” I howl. “He told us the master of this realm had left or been killed. He was wrong. The pool is the master. It’s been dormant, lacking the power to move, but now that it’s been fed enough demons…”

I try a freezing spell, but although part of the pool half-frosts over for a couple of seconds, it doesn’t take hold and the killer sheet presses on, destroying more of the demons, which I now realize were sent here for the sole purpose of empowering the slumbering behemoth.

“We can’t defeat it,” I huff, backpedaling.

“Perhaps an evaporation spell?” Kernel suggests.

“Nothing will work. It’s a demon master and this is its realm.”

“Surely we can outrun it,” Kirilli says.

I laugh. “You can always rely on Kovacs to opt for a hasty retreat. But this time he’s right. Let’s make like sprinters and…”

I draw to a halt. The trees around the perimeter of the oasis are snapping together, bones and flesh linking, forming an unbroken ring. Demons screech and hurl themselves at the bony, fleshy fence, or try to scale it, but are swiftly speared by some of the longer, sharper bones.

“So much for running away,” Shark sniffs. “What now, oh wise and noble leader?”

“We could offer Kirilli as a sacrifice and hope it leaves the rest of us alone,” I murmur, drawing a satisfactory yelp from the terrified stage magician. “Kernel—any luck with those eyes?”

“It’ll be a while,” he says.

“What’s taking you so long?” I growl.

“Bite me,” he retorts.

The pool breaks over another group of demons. This time when it rises, it splits into two sheets, which glide apart—double trouble.

“A multiplying demon,” Timas says. “Fascinating. Based on those it had to devour in order to divide once, and on those who remain… assuming it can split again…” He does a quick head count of the remaining demons. “We might have to face as many as eight clones within the next six minutes.”

“We could do with a plan,” Shark barks.

“I’m working on it.” I look around, weighing up my options. Trying to punch a hole through the wall of bones and flesh is probably our best option. Maybe we could explode a demon against it. But I’m not convinced that will work. Demon masters make many of the rules in their own realms.

If we link, Kernel and I might get the better of it in a fight to the death, but again I’m dubious. Even Beranabus avoided direct confrontation with the stronger Demonata on their home turf. We’ll be taking an awful risk if we pit ourselves against it.

There’s one other option. The words “frying pan” and “fire” leap to mind as soon as I consider it. But if it’s a choice between facing a firing squad and jumping off a cliff, I’ll always opt for the jump because you might get lucky on the way down.

“Follow me!” I shout, grabbing Kernel’s hand and darting forward. I narrowly dodge the pillars of liquid, racing past them as they crash to the ground less than a yard to my left. I head for the spot where the pool used to rest, and where the window that the demons crossed through is still hanging in the air.

“You’ve got to be joking!” Shark roars. “That leads to Lord Loss’s realm!”

“That’s where we were heading anyway, wasn’t it?” I yell back.

“But the plan was to take him by surprise. If we jump through a window that he made…”

“Hell,” I chuckle, “if I was in his shoes, and some nutcase jumped through my window and straight into my arms, it’d sure take me by surprise!”

Before Shark can argue, I hit the window of light and throw myself at it, bursting through, bellowing wildly, relishing the insane buzz of my suicidal lunge.