***
Zaudern and Ahnungslos,
Natural tornadoes weren't unknown in the Northern and Central Lands. There were witnesses and records, but due to the rarity, those lay mostly outside of the common wisdom, and more within folk myths. Not unlike ball lightning and rogue waves. The phenomenon was better known in the South Lands and the eastern islands, but that simply made it somewhat known amongst more broadly studied people rather than completely and utterly obscure.
The calamity that bloomed outside Sturmkamm that night was unfathomable not because most of those present had never heard of a tornado before, but due to the sheer scale of what they saw manifest.
The winds picked up in what felt like a single blink, tugging at hair and clothes, whistling past buildings, trees, and mountain trails, roaring as the gusts grew more powerful, but this was merely a backdrop to the whooshing. It sounded like a massive waterfall just out of sight, yet indescribably louder.
Then there was its appearance. Even from a few kilometers away, a distance large enough to make most explosions conjured by magic look insignificant, the tornado appeared like a colossal funnel-shaped column that blocked out the view, jet black and ominous, and it stretched from the ground and into the sky, past where the eye could easily follow.
Were the city not a dead, abandoned husk, the bulk of it alone would have boggled the imaginations of countless city dwellers for decades to come.
But even all that, many of the people fighting for their lives that night might still have missed, despite the nightvision potions augmenting their eyes; after all, it was widely known that the Hermit Headmaster was facing a Great Demon.
But then, the tornado ignited, and that had been simply impossible to ignore in the heat of combat.
Dark crimson flames, reminiscent of glowing arterial blood, bloomed at its base, spreading upwards and growing blue, then orange, then yellow, all of it igniting in a single, shockingly bright flash.
Everyone in the city was bathed in the light as if the sun itself had briefly crested the horizon in a crimson dawn.
Many battles across the city paused; even the demons and the slaves of the demonic host, the living and the dead alike, were directed by sets of orders that demanded they assess what they were seeing before they could fight on. A brief moment of respite, born out of incomprehension at the scale of what they were witnessing.
Near the Rathaus, this was no exception. The demon paused, half-turning in a quick, jerky, lizard-like motion, and Aura's puppets stilled, their heads turning. Even in their deep delirium they souls were bound to make decisions that followed their orders in spirit, and for that, they needed to take in information.
Naturally, some of those present recovered faster than others.
Which was why the Bürgermeister could only blink, dumbly, when the hand of what some part of him had already dismissed as a corpse grabbed onto his ankle, fingers curling around his greaves with inhuman strength.
His gaze dropped, and the realization landed even as he mouthed:
"Fuck…"
The first to react was the demon, who caught movement in his peripheral vision. The enslaved humans, not having drunk the same nightvision potions as the defenders, would've had trouble seeing it as clearly.
A human would have also taken longer to react. But a demon's psyche was wired differently. When he saw a human not only distracted, but momentarily vulnerable, his instincts screamed at him to pounce, and so, without even having to think, he did.
With an easy flick of his hand, Mogel sent another wave of the cursed, condensed crimson light forth.
The demon's attack was fast even by the standards of most combat spells, but normally, one could have at least attempted to move out of the way.
That wasn't of much help to Ahnungslos. The man tried yanking his leg away precisely once before abandoning that idea; as the dead elite soldier turned out no less powerful than he had been alive. Instead, he let go of his shield, leaned down, grabbed the soldier by his cuirass, and hoisted the aimlessly resisting body up in front of himself, upside down due to it still clinging to his ankle, as if it were a pavise or a tower shield.
"Ahnungslos!" Zaudern reacted a breath too slowly; the mental command for his closest golems went out half a second before impact, far too late for that exchange.
The wave of crimson hit… and Ahnungslos was shoved back a step, yet looked more confused than anything. Through that confusion, he heard, rather than saw, liquid spilling down, far too much of it; then he saw how the greaves of the man he still held up were starting to… leak?
Baffled, he let go, and as the corpse fell, the plate armour shattered across the paved ground like a ceramic cup, fragments scattering as the rest of it fell away… revealing a malnourished-looking mummy beneath, which went on shrinking and bleeding out at an incredible pace even as the Bürgermeister watched.
The demon across the grounds merely lowered his hand, floating aside and down, both closing the distance with the man, yet not so close that the warrior-trained human would be provoked into action.
Merely close enough so his voice would be carried clearly without him having to raise it.
"You do think quick on your feet," he commented, sounding rather casual. "It won't save you," he went on in the same breath, "Slaves, you are free to engage," he added, as if an afterthought.
The bewitched moved as one.
Naturally, the enslaved soldiers weren't silent; they were deep in their delirium, trapped in literal nightmares, and all they could do was beg for help and mutter their confusion and distress, without ever waking.
Some were more vocal, some quieter; for all Neugieri's skill, she could not alter the original persona of those men, not was she asked to.
They acted as they would have in a fever, lost in their nightmares, seeing delirious episodes. Begging for help, to be saved, some thinking themselves in their homes, some confused or where they could be at all.
They moved organized in spite of the pleading tones.
Only the man in a more ornate armour, Lord Standhaft himself was silent as the grave.
Zaudern, for his part, spared the now-crumbled corpse by the Bürgermeister's side a single glance before returning his attention to the enslaved elites, who advanced in formation as if baiting the golems into acting first.
The demon and the Bürgermeister stood somewhat aside from the advancing forces and the golems, and for that reason, for now, the old enchanter decided to pay them no mind. He couldn't afford to.
His expression was stony as he desperately sorted through options, the information about the demon's magic set aside for now as he tried to think of a way to turn this situation around and… failed to come up with anything at all.
Zaudern had only a few unique golems and just over a dozen mundane ones, assembled mere days before this battle. The numbers were on his side, but that advantage was a technicality at best.
It wasn't the capabilities of the golems that were lacking; Zaudern reckoned that any one of them, piloted by a decent mage, could at least stall one of Standhaft's enslaved men, who were veterans of the war and Central Lands elite soldiers. At least provided those men didn't just rush past the golem towards the mage to cut him down.
That said, Zaudern alone, no matter his skill, couldn't manually control even a dozen golems simultaneously with any degree of precision; he was only human.
This was what he found so unnerving about the demon they were facing: this spell that made humans into puppets… was ingenious. All the usual limitations of necromancy and golemomancy just ceased to be.
The only cost to it was the soul trapped in those 'meat puppets'. Magic fitting for a demon.
Of course, each golem carried some instructions and emergency command structures for independent actions; the expertise of the best enchanters of the guild had gone into designing those in the days they had preceding this.
However, an artificial mind could never compare to a real one.
Against the elite warriors, Zaudern could leave any individual golem unattended for ten seconds at best, if he was being optimistic, before a human warrior would start noticing patterns in the golem's attacks and exploit those. Even if Zaudern switched his attention constantly and meddled in every fight as much as he was able, the soldiers he was stalling would surely find a way to win eventually if they took it slow… at least if the elf's words were true, and Aura's servants could indeed perform as if alive even when dead, and all the more so when merely delirious.
Some of the unique golems had tricks and engraved spells that weren't as straightforward to deal with.
Yet, how many enemies could he, Zaudern, take down? How long could he even last?
That was where he found his thoughts shifting immediately… stalling for time… was really all he was good for.
Their plan did not account for an elite strikeforce to be this large.
Then, there was Standhaft himself, who, in the previous brief exchange, had managed to bisect a pair of golems Zaudern had thrown at him as a distraction.
That man alone was clearly on another level compared to his men.
And then, there was the demon, but… the old enchanter could only hope the Bürgermeister would keep that one busy.
For now Zaudern had the dragon-head golem stay focused on him, because losing a dragon-head would mean the demon could simply rain spells from above with impunity, which will be another way to instantly lose.
The enchanter's frantic musings were cut short; the warriors were close enough now, and the golems' automatic responses triggered, making them step forth and swing. Zaudern snapped to focus, directing his will towards the fight.
To him, it felt like taking a plunge into a freezing water, his breath left him, as his heart hammered in his chest like it didn't in decades.
The enslaved soldiers advanced, shields raised where the men still carried them, and for the first minute or so, all that reached Zaudern through the visual feedback of the golem control nodes were probing exchanges: a cut against an iron forearm here, a shield shoved into a stone chest there.
Zaudern sank his attention into one of the more basic golems, knowing it was his chance to try and get a feel of the enemy.
The old enchanter didn't feel particularly pressured; the golems were durable enough to withstand probing and glancing blows, and shielding their more essential components wasn't difficult. Attacking properly without breaking formation was another matter.
The short exchange he became a part of as he puppeted the golems went as he expected, the soldiers trully didn't fight mindlessly. And Zaudern, for all his mastery, wasn't a master warrior himself to be able to make use of small mistakes in swordman's form, if they wre even present. Shielding the golem's body with it's hand, and trying to grab the bewitched warrior when it approached closely enough to strike, they struck a balance. Nothing was happening.
Which frustrated and scared the old enchanter in equal measure.
Somewhere on his left, he felt himself losing control of part of a golem.
By the time Zaudern threw his will into the construct, it was already missing a hand; the soldier had stepped inside its guard on a half-beat. The old enchanter wrenched the golem through an improvised shoulder-check that bought a few more moments, but its opponent merely circled back out of reach and waited.
Zaudern recognized he couldn't linger.
The glimpses he caught of other fights told him things were going just as generally poorly elsewhere.
He abandoned the golem to its fate. It held a short while longer on its own, and then its control nodes went silent one by one: arm, leg, core.
Nearby, another golem landed a devastating blow, a full swing with it's heavy arm that caved in a soldier's breastplate along with some of what lay beneath it. The man folded around the impact, straightened, and raised his sword back into a proper guard, not so much as favoring the wound.
Nothing quite prepared Zaudern for watching a man with a crushed chest take a stance again as if he was merely pushed, even if his pleading voice now sounded more garbled.
He had to either target the limbs, or pin those men. Going for killing blows with most golems was useless. When dead, they would just continue to fight.
The only way to truly make them stop was to destroy the body, but most golems didn't have the means to do it quickly.
One of the lighter frames at the edge of the melee began to favor its left leg. Its retreats drifted, half a step at a time, towards the scattered remains of the golem that had been taken apart earlier by Standhaft.
The beetle golem, directed by Zaudern, positioned itself carefully in the dark beyond that wreckage, lowering its frame just out of that man's sight.
The soldier facing the limping frame was probing and pushing it slowly, evidently focused on trying to make an opening in the formation.
Zaudern, who had seen where the exchange was going, was ready.
The beetle came out of the dark in three strides and closed its forelimbs around the man's waist and sword arm when he approached just a bit too close. Those limbs had been designed for gripping and tearing at other golems; they curled the soldier against its underside and locked. The man thrashed with enough strength to rock the whole frame on its six legs. But that didn't matter much.
The limping golem moved back to close the gap, stopping any of the men's comrades from attempting a rescue.
That left eight of the nine humans, at least for as long as the beetle's hold lasted.
It was around then that Zaudern once again reaffirmed his belief that warriors and knights, those truly trained, were freaks.
Lord Standhaft was not commanding from behind his men, and he was not dueling one golem or another. At any given moment, four, five, six golems pressed him at once, as many as could physically reach him, and the lord was taking them apart as they came.
The man didn't seem in a rush, nor was he pushing the formation forth, but he was unmovable. A spearhead of the formation of the bewitched humans, easily taking an entire rows of golems, dancing between their blows and limbs and chipping at them, one at a time, slowly advancising as he did, never taking a step back.
No one truly stood still; the whole battle was a mix of exchanges, advances and brief retreats, localized for the most part near the entrance to the garden before the Rathaus.
The soldiers, meanwhile, made no move to press the rest of the line any harder, and Zaudern doubted it was needless caution. More likely, it was the same thing that kept him restless. Even if it looked like he could hold up, this could not last, the enchanter knew.
Meanwhile, some distance to the side, the Bürgermeister was studying the mummified corpse at his feet with distaste, sparing just a single glance at the remains of the golem that had shielded him from the demon's crimson light, which, too, was oozing blood. He had looked over just in time, earlier, to see that stumbling, cursed thing shattered by one of the enslaved men.
His knowledge of magic was sparse, but he had heard enough stories from adventurers to recognize a 'curse'.
"That's one gross spell…" Ahnungslos muttered, rubbing the red liquid between the fingers of his gauntlet, before leaning down and picking up his shield from a sizable pool of… blood? "Makes even this puppet show smell like a slaughterhouse."
The demon tilted his head, seemingly in no hurry to engage.
"I disagree. But it's only natural that we would find plenty of unpleasant things about one another. That is the reason we are in conflict, is it not?" the demon questioned rhetorically.
The Bürgermeister simply chuckled.
"Ah yes, it's not because your kind is just focused on killing mine for no particular reason or anything."
The demon merely tilted his head.
"I speak of one thing; you speak of another. I fail to see the connection. Demons kill humans. Humans kill humans. Demons kill demons. All of those things do happen. However, it bears no relation to the greater conflict between our peoples," the demon offered. "Fundamentally, just because someone kills your kind does not make that creature your enemy." Mogel spread his hands in a theatrical gesture. "The true cause for the confrontation between our kinds, rather than individuals, is undoubtedly that there are things we fundamentally despise about one another, things that warrant the complete extermination of the other side."
Ahnungslos merely raised an eyebrow.
"Again, I believe you are glossing over the part where your kind unconditionally kills humans. That's something most men have trouble with."
The demon paused, freezing completely, before resuming his movement as if nothing had happened, flicking the human's point away with an absent-minded gesture of his left hand.
"This is precisely what I said, did I not? A thing you despise for causes that are beyond comprehension," he continued, his eyes meeting those of the Bürgermeister.
Ahnungslos couldn't help it; he chuckled once he realized the demon was not going to elaborate.
"Beyond comprehension? Can you not recognize that after one and two comes three? Or, in other words, that if a demon kills your neighbor, it will try to kill you next?" The Bürgermeister sounded casual, his hammer resting at his side, but in truth, he was stalling for time, and carefully trying to keep the discussion going.
He couldn't see a path to winning this, not with just him and the old enchanter; they needed to last until someone else got here. Every second the demon was willing to talk was a victory.
"You speak as if there is some logic to your words, when there is none," the demon said simply. "A demon killed your neighbor because your neighbor was clearly weaker than the demon. It does not mean that the demon is capable of killing you. Nor does it mean that the demon would be willing to seek you out to kill you," Mogel explained, seemingly confused as to why he even had to. "There is no causation here; just because a demon would normally be willing to kill a human does not mean it will necessarily attempt to kill you. Especially if you are stronger than that… fellow man of yours. You may not know this, but the main reason an encounter in the wild between a demon and a party of humans of equal strength almost universally turns into a fight is precisely because the demon knows it can't escape without conflict and will be attacked irationally, and so, some strong humans who would otherwise walk away and live out the rest of their lives perfectly well die in an unnecessary battle. It's absurd, illogical behavior," the talking monster stated, sounding more like a nobleman in the capital politely complaining about the quality of service at some eatery than an abomination that regularly consumed human flesh.
It was then that Albert's words about demons came back to Ahnungslos, resonating one more time in his mind. The creature in front of him made no attempt to hide his inner thoughts; as far as the Bürgermeister was concerned, Mogel was truthful with him… because, fundamentally, the demon mirrored the sentiment the elf had explained at length. A demon does not understand compassion for anyone, ever, nor does it understand 'care'. The powerful creature truly could not grasp why a demon killing some other, weaker human would ever be an issue for a stronger one, a human actually capable of killing the demon back. Because the demon could likely never consider a weaker demon being killed by a human to be a thing worthy of his attention or concern.
The demon shook his head.
"But I do understand in my own way. I don't understand why demons killing humans is an issue, when dwarves killing humans isn't, but I do have my own causes for hating your kind that I know you won't understand. For instance, I despise how a creature like you is the leader of this settlement when you have amongst you someone capable of doing this." The demon jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, towards where the tornado of fire had long since wound down and vanished.
"Is it jealousy?" Ahnungslos asked, mildly curious.
The demon tilted his head.
"Perhaps to a point. I certainly would like to command someone such as this. But fundamentally it's the incomprehension. That incomprehension calls for caution, and that caution prompts me to wish you dead." Mogel shook his horned head. "But it's a poor example; I believe both of us are quite willing to kill one another as is." The demon reached for the collar of his doublet, straightening it. "Because of you, I suffered a substantial punishment at Lady Aura's hand; it's fortunate that I now have the opportunity to kill you for it."
Despite his words, the demon didn't sound eager or excited, and even though Ahnungslos wasn't all that sensitive to such things, he could still feel the demon's bloodlust. It hadn't risen at any point, not the way it had when Mogel was briefly insulted in their earlier exchange.
It sounded like the demon simply spoke of the weather, while he just happened to want him dead.
Neither the demon nor the Bürgermeister had moved a step. Whatever bloodlust hung in the air between them, Mogel was clearly in no hurry to act on it. For obvious reasons, neither did Ahnungslos.
"That said, before we get to it, satiate my curiosity if you will," the demon requested, as he seemed to try to pry something from under one of his nails, "What was the point of breaching our agreement? Were you not afraid of retaliation, or did you think that a practice such as vengence is foreign to us?" Mogel sounded genuinely curious.
Ahnungslos considered him. The Bürgermeister had trouble understanding why Mogel was so engaged in that conversation and their prior dealings; was he, perhaps, trying to stall for time too? Or was he, for whatever reason, so curious about his motives it felt important enough for him to forestall a fight he could easily win? Perhaps the humiliation kept him awake at night?
No matter how amusing the thought was, the Bürgermeister felt cautious, knowing something was wrong. Yet, he had no choice but to keep stalling, didn't he? An actual fight would lead to his crushing defeat instantly.
In any case, he figured answering honestly may keep this going longer.
"Naturally, I wasn't afraid of any retaliation. Until just over a week ago, I didn't know what 'Greater Demon' meant, and to sneak you into the city so you could do your part, I had to make arrangements. I naturally assumed you wouldn't be able to infiltrate by yourself, nor did I consider that you could be successful with an invading force of any sort," Ahnungslos replied, his voice dry. "There is no great reason why you have been swindled. It wasn't for personal reasons or because you were a demon; it's much simpler than that. It's just that, as far as I knew, you were in no position to enforce the terms of our agreement, and I saw a way to easily fool you and have you leave without causing a commotion," he explained it as the most natural thing in the world, which, to him, it was.
The demon, unnervingly, didn't seem in any way angered by the Bürgermeister's words. He merely tilted his head, his eyes growing distant as if he were analyzing the information.
"The caravan that you intercepted, the one with Schleim," the Bürgermeister continued, "Did you even wonder why it was transporting alchemical supplies and enchanted equipment in such quantities not by the main trade roads, but going practically through the wilderness and remote villages?" he questioned absent-mindedly, seeing that the demon was interested enough, "It was because those were items sold to people I couldn't openly associate with in any capacity, people who were ready to pay a shiny coin for them. Even a demon should have an idea, no?"
Mogel raised an eyebrow.
"You mean the rebels in the Civil War?" This wasn't what they called themselves, but it's the name they were known by now, after everything was over and most of them were either on the run or rotting in the ground: "While it's no doubt a context, I can't say I particularly care for it."
Ahnungslos nodded to that.
"I expect that you wouldn't. The only reason you even know about the Civil War is probably that it was easier for your mistress to do as she pleased in its shadow, is it not so?" the man asked rhetorically, and continued without waiting for an answer, "But that's the thing, the reason I made a deal with you in the first place when Schleim somehow managed to bring you into the Valley, instead of just letting you have the bastard to do as you please with, was because I already had channels very eager to pay for things they couldn't get themselves. I saw an opportunity in you, a pair of hands capable of causing the exact sort of incidents necessary to get the items I needed to make use of said lucrative opportunity. I told you that much the last time, didn't I?" the man once again asked rhetorically.
The demon merely stared.
It had been his own initiative, listening to the pleading human named Schleim, one of the last survivors of the caravan they slaughtered, who promised that his master could get them more supplies. Mogel detected some genuine belief in his voice, and it made him curious back then.
Aura's living forces were always delicate; they required raw equipment, armour and weapons, preferably enchanted. But more importantly, they required products of alchemy aplenty.
Potions to combat illnesses, service equipment, create warmth and fires, make water safe to drink- all the things demons didn't really need, but humans, even enslaved by magic, did, else they withered away far too quickly.
The demon had gone with him alone to try and arrange for those supplies, just as Ahnungslos said… making use of the opportunity that he saw. Lady Aura gave him a dismissive go-ahead; keeping her enslaved humans fresh enough wasn't exactly a priority, but having items that made them spoil slower was convenient, in her own words.
For Mogel, it was one of the rare opportunities to prove his use to his mistress.
He had arrived in the valley hiding his nature, and, using a few younger demons he had taken with him, arranged a meeting with the 'powerful man' the pathetic, groveling caravan leader insisted could provide.
Mogel remembered that Ahnungslos indeed had said the words, that he too was merely 'making use of the opportunity'. Back then, he openly asked why the human would need to steal from what was essentially himself to sell them the items. Not that Mogel understood in the first place why coins of gold and silver were of any value, but they still had a fair amount accumulated from destroyed settlements and intercepted armies.
The explanation Mogel had received from the Bürgermeister at the time was both understandable and deeply confusing; it was because while the human was willing to sell those things, many of his underlings weren't, and as such the items' disappearance must be arranged as an accident, so as not to rouse suspicion. Back then, the Bürgermeister explained that this was the only way he would be able to leave with an entire cart full of items he needed without having the adventurers and other defenders of the city on high alert, and advised Mogel not to think too much about it.
Following that advice was a mistake he was rectifying now.
"I see. You were truthful that you had plans for the wares in the warehouses you had me torch, but you were going to sell them twice, and the real good didn't go to me. They went to the rebels, then." Mogel nodded in understanding.
Ahnungslos sighed in… disappointment, to the great confusion of the demon.
"And this is why I said your kind are innocent like babes in some respect. Mogel, why do you think I sold the merchandise only twice?" the Bürgermeister asked, looking at him with open pity, "The civil war by that time was nearing its end; those rebels I've been in contact with had about as much means to enforce our old agreements as your group did. But they needed everything I could get to them, were ready to pay any amount of coin to try to turn things around or at least buy themselves more time to escape with their wealth," the man chuckled, humorlessly, "In the first place, the only reason you've been necessary was that I knew I could do a lot with years' worth of the Valley Guard's stocks precisely then and there, especially at such a time, when the war was at its climax. You are asking me where those anti-illness, warmth, and warmeal potions, enchanted trinkets to sharpen swords, and other such crap that armies eat through like no one's business went? I can't tell you, because I used a small part of it everywhere I could reach to show my wares and present an option to buy more from me, took the payment in instalments, and delivered precisely nothing I promised. Probably every second town in the Central Lands this side of the civil war had some of those items delivered to them, though they did expect ten times the amount that never arrived since," he explained, allowing a smile to appear on his face.
It was an earnest, easy expression.
"Of course, I had an idea of doing something like that before; the way the Guard is organized in terms of bureaucracy is just… well, sufficient to say I had plenty of ways to acquire materials to sell through those brain-dead idiots. Between you and me, bureaucracy in this city in general is laughable; I could keep 'cutting the budget' for the Guard while making the money never add up in ledgers, buy items and potions and enchanted gear through trusted hands through the difference, and resell to rebels for profits that would make any sensible man go mad with greed. But without an asset like you who could fly, follow orders perfectly, and then leave forever and never be trusted at your word even if you did try to reveal anything… well, sufficient to say, I couldn't just have taken the gamble at the end of the war, and would've ended up as just another profiteer who sold to the crown's enemies through shadow merchants…" He chuckled, "But now, thanks to you, I am a hero in a way, a man who robbed those pesky rebels, taking revenge for the crown, and so forth…" Ahnunglos said, as if waving the idea away, while still smiling.
Right now, the bulky man looked more like a simple, somewhat bulky man who was reminiscing about a good day in his past than anything remotely like what he was describing.
Among the wreckage of the earlier exchanges lay a construct most of the city had last seen in the arena: the Kiln, the students' tournament golem, five meters of pale segmented stone on dozens of short legs, built in imitation of a centipede, the same golem that had coiled around the guild's own Hammerfall in the opening bout and cooked the anvil into a lopsided mass of slag.
That match had cost it its front segment and cracked three more, and the repairs that Zaudern, Albert, and the guild's masters had crammed into the few days since were rash work that he would have failed an apprentice for… but the thermal array at its core was intact, the body still moved.
So, it did just that.
The coils took a soldier at the knees, whipped up around his sword arm and chest, and then the construct laid its full weight down on him, pinning the man flat against the frozen ground. Even pinned, the strength in him was appalling; through the golem's acoustic feedback, Zaudern could hear the patched segment joints grinding against the strain.
Then he ordered the thermal array into action.
Not to burn the man. It wasn't that heat killed too slowly; heat killed plenty fast, but a dead man was no easier to handle tonight than a living one, and short of incinerating a body whole, killing accomplished nothing at all. Zaudern doubted the Kiln's array could reduce an armoured soldier, with all the enchantments on that armour, to ash before the man's comrades tore the construct off of him, and he had no wish whatsoever to learn how a man cooked alive would look and sound through the golem's visual and acoustic feedback.
The armour, though, was another matter, as steel answered heat long before flesh gave out, at least steel with this particular defensive enchantment, outdated by three decades or so.
Zaudern recognized it instantly when he saw the soldiers; this one was decent at protecting the body beneath from heat, but the outer layer of metal accepted all the heat in return, which he was going to use to his benefit.
He held the array's output at the threshold he wanted and watched as the soldier's sword glowed angry red, as the armour joints showed a much stronger degradation, elbow and knee glowed, sagged, and fused into shapeless lumps, and then he cut the spell entirely and let the winter air set the slag.
What remained was a man welded into his own harness, alive, whole, and unable to bend a single limb; he would keep until a priest could see to him, provided any priest lived that long. Seven of the nine were still fighting.
It was while backing the Kiln off its prisoner that the weight of the moment caught up with the old man.
He had been twelve when he saw the creature this golem was built to imitate. What he kept of that day, sixty-odd years past, were only fragments: a small frozen lake, the heat reaching his face, a shape of smoke, magma, and liquid fire where the far shore should have been… and a single figure with a staff, standing on the lake between it and three boys.
Sixty-some years later, Zaudern was the one behind the monster's eyes.
The joy that rose in him at that thought was entirely inappropriate for the circumstances, but he was beyond caring; he snapped his attention to a pair of golems that managed to press one of the men particularly well…
Across the square, the fighting had been slowly drifting towards the corner of the gardens.
The gantry that was positioned there was an embarrassment of a product. By Zaudern's standards, that is. The two gravity hammer-arms salvaged from Hammerfall's remains after the tournament, bolted onto a frame of scrap iron and rough stone in a single night. Somehow it looked even worse than the dragon-head golem. He had fielded the thing mostly because leaving a quality enchantment unused tonight would have been foolish.
Two golems body-checked a soldier in sequence, driving him staggering into the construct's reach; the maneuver cost the first golem an arm, severed cleanly even mid-shove, because his swordwork never faltered, not even off balance. It didn't matter. The hammer-head came down on his shoulders and pressed, and the enchantment that had been built to crush tournament golems into rubble began multiplying the weight of everything beneath it.
The soldier went from staggering to kneeling to flat in the space of a few breaths, cobbles cracking in a ring around him, his armour groaning under the load, and there he stayed, straining against several times his own weight.
Then, with an explosion of gore and metal fragments, the man was no more.
That brought the count of soldiers still moving freely down to six.
Somewhere off to the side, the Bürgermeister was still talking, which meant the man was still alive. Zaudern had no attention left over for the words.
And underneath the strain sat a fact he could no longer pretend away: his heart was hammering.
This was fun. He was having fun. Not some sensible and diverting pleasure; this was what he was curious about his whole life, and only ever heard of.
It actually felt like lust, this shaking in his limbs, this absolute intoxicating feeling in his head, intertwining in his total focus.
This is what it felt like to truly fight for one's life. And today, he was fighting the same demon as Albert, didn't he? If not for him, those men might have been fighting the elf by their mistress' side.
The thought filled him with more pride than he could ever admit.
A pair of soldiers went for the dragon-head golem, snapping Zaudern out of his rash.
The dragon-head was his only means of threatening the demon, and a finite one. Every golem fielded tonight had been loaded with a set store of mana, and the dragon-head's store had been budgeted, down to the last shot, for Mogel; the beam was ruinously expensive to fire, and Zaudern fully expected that suppressing a demon of his caliber would take multiple shots.
The fact that for now the golem was idle was a blessing.
Once again, Zaudern couldn't help but be impressed by Ahnungslos's skill in running his mouth to his own benefit.
He could surrender the golem, or he could spend some of the energy he'd been saving for the worst-case scenario. It was no choice at all, in other words.
The dragon's jaw fell open, and crimson light pooled in its throat. Aiming was not the difficulty; the way the golem handled when being aimed was one of the few parts of its design that was beyond reproach. The difficulty was that behind the head, and its targets, lay Zaudern's own melee force, packed with his own golems.
Ordering them to move aside seconds before he fired was trivial; doing it without telegraphing the shot to the two soldiers was not.
A flash, a clap of scorched air, and one of the two soldiers ended at the waist, everything above it gone to ash and glowing char; what remained of him stood upright a moment longer before folding into the melted snow. The second man threw himself aside, and that was enough for two basic golems to catch up to him and tie him up in combat.
That left five soldiers still fighting, and their lord.
Mogel, for his part, seemed to have finished weighing the Bürgermeister's story.
"For your reference, quite a few humans in Lady Aura's forces died in a pretty pathetic manner due to the wares you've sold us," Mogel recalled, studying the man in front of him curiously. His words were the truth; spoiled potions and those that were labeled wrong did produce a lot of rather painful deaths. "I suppose you can assign fault to us for not knowing better what spoiled potions looked like, but ultimately you are responsible for men who did you no wrong dying from diarrhea, rotting wounds, and in other rather unpleasant ways."
Ahnungslos just waved the demon off.
"Are you trying to see if I am capable of guilt?" the man asked directly; the demon, in response, grew silent, not even attempting to deny it. "Heh, you have no idea what makes a human feel guilt, do you? Those men were dead no matter what I did or did not do back then; even if I was the sort to wake up in cold sweat from the results of my dealings, this incident wouldn't have been it," the man explained simply.
"A poor example, perhaps. But don't you feel the guilt for what is currently happening?" the demon asked calmly, "Wouldn't those weapons and potions be useful now, in the defense of the city?"
When the crimson flash washed over the square, Mogel didn't turn. His eyes did leave the Bürgermeister for a long breath, though, tracking something past the man's shoulder with what looked like mild, honest interest, before settling back.
Ahnungslos merely lifted an eyebrow, fighting down the urge to flinch, before slowly answering the question.
"I have arranged for this entire region to be viewed as the one that supported the crown wholeheartedly. We did, in fact, materially support the crown, so the crown would have never attacked us during the Civil War. We showed our loyalty openly, which is already more than some dared to do. Simultaneously, I arranged for a deal with the rebels, who needed highly specialized premium equipment, and I provided it to them," the man explained. "Which also made us safe from invasion on their part, as conquering us with an army would have stalled the production of the items they were getting now, and which they critically needed. In other words, I have secured the region with no need for the Guard for anything but handling monsters, and they were always overequipped for that work. Any proper army could never have been financed and housed in this city alone, no matter how much the Guard tried to pretend otherwise; I ran the numbers, and what the Guard did was embezzlement through hiring way too many people who were useless for the amount of actual work they had on hand. Indeed, I hadn't anticipated your mistress appearing, but…" Ahnungslos chuckled, "Would potions and trinkets make any difference at all in this battle, against a creature that could raze a city singlehandedly? Of course not." The man simply smiled. "I've led Sturmkamm and this entire region through the most turbulent time of the century without most people here even getting to know what a war is. Hunger? Bandits on the road? Raids or attacks by foreign armies? Sieges? No one in my region experienced it. Do you know how many great lords across the entire king's realm can claim this? Tell me, have I done a bad job? Would you have somehow been grateful and not come here if I didn't give you expired crap instead of what you ordered?" the man questioned, eyes narrowing.
The demon considered the Bürgermeister for a few seconds before tilting his head in acknowledgement.
"Were I the leader of the warband, I would have to retaliate against you for threatening my authority like this. But we all serve Lady Aura, so naturally, after suffering my punishment, there was no need for such actions. You are correct; us being here has nothing to do with your prior actions; we would have come anyway," the demon explained, his voice casual.
Mogel tilted his head.
"I was just curious about how you look at this. I've questioned many humans before, though, admittedly, usually at death's door, and a lot of them tended to feel guilty about the most absurd of things. Perhaps it's some sort of lunacy humans only have before death," the demon mused with some idle curiosity. "That said, allow me to ask you one more thing… why did you decide to stay and fight? You are a human closer to demons than most, and you are clearly good at lying. It would have been effortless for you to slip away with your life and even those riches you treasure," Mogel asked, curiosity in his voice.
The smile disappeared from Ahnungslos's lips.
"Me, akin to a demon? Don't make me laugh. Your kind doesn't even care about your own progeny." The man tilted his head. "My firstborn is currently in the capital, studying the trades. My daughter is married to a baron of a neighbouring region. My three youngest and my wife are currently traveling to safety," he listed simply, shifting his stance somewhat, sensing the conversation coming to a close. "There are things that are natural for humans. Stealing and caring for your own, yourself, and your blood is one such thing. I've lied and cheated in circumstances when it's natural, and I regret none of it; it would have been a sin to have the opportunities I had in front of me and make no use of them. It's the same logic that allowed me to strike a deal for safety with both the crown and the rebels, from which this region profited immensely. And now I will fight for this city, because that too is only natural," the man explained, awaiting the demon's verdict.
Lord Standhaft, in the time it took to draw three breaths, undid a fair share of Zaudern's careful attempts at repositioning the remaining forces.
In one brief exchange with the golems pressing down on him, he cut through one, appeared behind the defensive line… and the whole structure crumbled.
The Kiln, its welded prisoner lying beside it, was a good nine meters from the lord's path. Standhaft was by its side in an instant.
The Kiln's midsection burst apart around the impact, patched granite, thermal array and all. The return stroke followed while the fragments were still falling, and it opened the construct from end to end, both halves sagging aside, still glowing faintly in the dark.
A few shorter strokes cracked the slag welds at the prisoner's elbows and knees; it looked easy the way he did it, and the entrapped man became a danger once more.
The puppet fell in at his lord's back as if he had never left it.
And Lord Standhaft's helm turned to the enchanter on the backline.
The soldiers moved as a spear, their lord at its point, and the order to retreat was enforced by Zaudern's subconscious before any conscious part of him had caught up.
The flat, six-legged golem under his feet was already scuttling backwards.
His golems tried to strike at the soldiers moving past and rearrange themselves, but the maneuver was too fast and decisive; now the majority of the army of golems was striking the enslaved soldiers in the back, while Zaudern himself stood to their front.
The mage still had some hope that the scuttling golem under his feet could gain enough distance.
It wasn't fast enough.
Standhaft closed the distance in a handful of strides and one low lunge, and the longsword came for Zaudern's ribs…
…and stopped.
A half-dome of pale green light snapped into being around the old enchanter, its rim seated into the edge of the platform beneath him, and the sword's point ground against it in a spray of white sparks, arrested a forearm's length from his chest.
The first proof of concept alone had taken Zaudern four months, and the workings of that barrier had consumed most of the internal volume of the golem.
That was why the construct carried no weapon and no armour worth mentioning, and looked like nothing but a moving platform on six legs; there had been no room left inside for anything except the defensive spells and a place for its maker to stand. The spell itself was akin to the layered defensive barriers that powerful combat mages raised around themselves, with one crucial difference and one crippling one. The array could push the barrier to a strength no human mage could hope to sustain… for mere moments. It worked on the same principle as the shields he had seen a certain elf use against a calamity of fire and shadows.
The barrier lived in pulses: a breath of near-absolute protection, then darkness while the lattice re-knit itself, then protection again.
This golem was his own, personal prototype that he worked on in his idle hours. Nothing he ever planned to truly use, just… an idle project for a 'what if'. 'What if' he would have to fight one day, after all. What if the ground were to break apart once again, and a monster crawled out? What if he had to face that horror as an adult, with no hero to hide behind?
It was an idle thing he worked on year after year, a week at a time at most, for almost thirty years, until abandoning it for a decade more to collect dust in storage.
Taking it to the field now felt appropriate.
The dome faded as it cycled. Standhaft's sword was already moving through the gap… and another, weaker supporting barrier arose, this one a constant dome, which stopped the far weaker strike, one with no wind-up to speak of.
Yet, the enchanter could see a spiderweb of cracks travel across the crimson surface.
What monstrous strength did it take to damage the defensive spell to this extent with a single swing?!
Zaudern, for the first time that night, withdrew his will from every other golem on the field, ordering them to keep pushing to try and reach him, with their most aggressive algorithm, and focused his full attention on the nearest golems.
The platform's foreleg snapped up and caught the cut edge-on, iron shrieking along steel as it steered the blade wide of his shoulder. A second leg lashed low at the lord's knee and found nothing; the man simply no longer stood where the strike arrived. The primary, green defensive dome pulsed alive in time to swallow the answering thrust, faded, and two limbs struck together in retaliation, one high, one low, and forced Standhaft to give ground… as he did, the red dome came down, repairing, before flaring back to life.
It was a single step, the first Zaudern had seen anyone take from this man all night.
Standhaft settled into a low guard, sword angled across his body, and studied the golem through his helm, no doubt aware his men were now being surrounded by the golems.
This might have been the chance… at least if he could last long enough.
Zaudern grinned back at him through the light, feeling thirty years younger.
"Well then," the old enchanter breathed, more to his golem than to anyone alive, "Let's see it."
He gave a command, and the dragon-head started to charge, while at the same time the gravity gantry started to move, with two standardised golems which were close enough to summon forth.
The hero of the Civil War must have heard them approach, as he glanced back, shifting his stance, and then, to Zaudern's confusion, jumped, easily vaulting over Zaudern's mobility golem… and then dashing forth.
"Bastard!" the old man cursed, having his mobility golem attempt to strike the dashing knight in the face, only for said knight to pull a ridiculous stunt and fall on his back, sliding across the stone with enough momentum to produce genuine sparks.
The man's sword flashed, burning blue, in what Zaudern recognized as some warrior's skill, or perhaps even a knight's spell - and the limb that had swatted at him flew off.
The old man still had enough presence of mind to raise the emergency red barrier and… watch it hurl the striking fist back.
His eyes widened, even as the barrier, incapable of holding for long, went down.
The sword flashed next, and only by some miracle did the old man fall back, the red barrier holding the strike just enough for the longsword to bite deep into his shoulder and arm rather than cut him in two.
A second later, the dragon-head's beam washed over the lord; Zaudern, sitting on the golem's back, saw the man still bring up his arms and a sword in a defensive guard an instant before being swallowed by the light.
The demon stepped aside, and a second beam struck past him and into the building behind, setting off an explosion.
Mogel actually turned, staring into the debris. A second later, a man walked out of it, armour red hot, yet his steps measured.
"Astonishing resilience," the demon commented, "Hard to believe Schrägstrich subdued him easily. Then again, he isn't too far from being a Greater Demon himself, and…" The demon glanced at Ahnungslos. "He must have helped Lady Aura finish off your prized elven hero by now." The demon studied the Bürgermeister's reaction with a hawk's intensity. "That is why you are stalling, aren't you? You think that the elf can somehow win?" Mogel simply shook his head. "It is pointless; you should not be relying on him to come here and help you; it's you who should have tried to do your best to defeat me and go assist."
Ahnungslos was slowly inching back, step after step, hammer and shield raised now, as he stared at Standhaft, who was slowly walking towards him - or rather, towards the fight at his back.
"Albert is a peculiar one. See, he is actually the soft-hearted type you probably expected me to be throughout our little talk," the Bürgermeister casually explained. "He knew plenty about your mistress's spell and knew most of us would simply be fatalities in combat, which was why he elected to face her alone."
The demon tilted his head to the side in what looked like agreement.
"He was correct. Nonetheless, it's the only way to defeat the force assembled against him. I struggle to imagine anyone who can beat what Lady Aura prepared by themselves, bar, perhaps, His Majesty, or some of his Sages," Mogel explained, floating up. "In any case, I believe this conversation has served its purpose."
The sound arrived as if summoned by the demon's words: boots on stone in marching step, coming up the main street from the gates, and underneath the rhythm, the begging.
The column entered the square in parade order, twenty-five men or so, keeping step as if on a review ground while two dozen voices wept and muttered and pleaded out of turn. None of the pleading ever broke their stride.
The Bürgermeister recognized the two men in the front rank at a glance. Entladung, the lord's army mage, still carried his staff and was murmuring half-drilled commands to himself, "…men, pre-pare… pre… pare…", in a cracked voice.
His face was the only one not concealed by a helm, and Ahnungslos could see the absolute exhaustion on it, deep dark circles under his eyes, unhealthy paleness, slightly hollow cheeks.
Beside him marched Braveur, a warrior-trained officer, also easily recognized by the Bürgermeister on account of being an annoying soldier-type, incapable of any subtlety, lacking in brains, and given to demanding things on behalf of his equally narrow-minded lord.
At the head of the column walked a demon that looked like a girl of sixteen, perhaps younger, dressed… bizarrely, as if from looted wardrobes. A burgher wife's fur-lined winter coat, a silk scarf of southern make, and ribbons, ribbons everywhere, through her pale hair and tied in little bows around the bases of two thin horns that swept back along her skull. She was beaming, skipping across the stone without glancing down or around and without the smile shifting once.
"Lord Mogel!" she called, waving with her whole arm. "We're here, we're here! Please forgive us; they had golems at the gates, and as you ordered, we prioritized trying to get in quietly! It took simply forever!" She skipped the last few steps, glancing around. "Isn't Lord Versklaver with you? Strange, he's directed me to meet up with you here after taking others with him to fly over directly." She stopped at a respectful distance and bowed, deep and formally perfect, entirely at odds with everything above her shoulders. "You aren't cross with me, are you? Say you aren't!"
"Fröhlich," Mogel greeted, unbothered. "I am not. You are, if anything, timely; the Bürgermeister here was kind enough to keep me entertained while we waited." The demon gestured towards Ahnungslos the way a host presents a dish. "To be entirely blunt, I had already feared that the entirety of your force had been wiped out. It seems Versklaver has been," he added absent-mindedly.
"Oh!" The girl-demon turned, following the gesture, and her face lit up further, which should not have been possible. "Hello!" She waved at the Bürgermeister too, cheerful as to an old friend across a market square.
The demon that had followed her at a slower pace showed no interest in greetings. It was tall and starved-looking, wrapped head to heel in pale ribbons that drifted and swayed around it with no regard for the wind, and only at a second look did it become plain that the ribbons were not cloth; they were skin, peeling off the creature in long, bloodless strips that never quite finished detaching. A single horn bent from its brow like a fishhook.
The last demon was built like a cellar door, barely chest-high to the soldiers around it and wider than any two of them together, its dragging knuckles armoured in growths of horn, its jaw fringed underneath with spikes in the manner of a beard.
Making use of the opportunity, Ahnungslos retreated further, until he stood side by side with Zaudern's riding golem.
"Old man…" the city's Bürgermeister spoke, sparing a glance at the enchanter who'd been pouring a potion on his wound.
"I know," Zaudern replied just as grimly, "Keep to the inner circle and close to me; they will target me, and every second longer I can operate the golems is a second longer both of us will live," the enchanter said, even as his golems were breaking off their encirclement of the remaining six soldiers, converging on the pair instead.
"I…" Ahnungslos paused, "I don't actually have anything to say to you. As a matter of fact, I think I hate how you kept bribing the tax collectors for your guild and dragged my administration through courts, you lingering fucking skeleton."
The old enchanter glanced back at the slightly overweight man, and through his usual frown, a small smile appeared.
"Quite a thing to hear from a talking wild hog. Rest assured, the feeling is very much mutual. I did promise that you would only squeeze more gold out of us through my dead body, did I not? Seems like I've been a man of my word," he said sternly.
Both men could only afford to have their eyes meet for a second, but broke down chuckling in the most honest amusement they'd felt in weeks before snapping back to attention.
Meanwhile, the demons across had a short exchange of their own.
"The three of you would be permitted to entertain yourselves when we circle back to the main gate," Mogel addressed the newly arrived demons, "But for now, stand aside; I will be taking care of these. Soldiers, advance," he commanded the slaves.
Ordered by Aura to obey her subordinates, they did as he wished.
Fröhlich pouted.
What remained of Zaudern's golems drew into a circle around the platform, packed as close as their frames allowed, bar some distance to maneuver, and held there. The soldiers came against the ring from three sides at once, never quite shutting up.
The difference from before showed within the first exchanges. With a numerical advantage, the golems could hold their own somewhat, but the moment they were outnumbered, it was over. The soldiers no longer needed to read a construct's rhythm patiently, nor could they afford to in melee this clustered and chaotic; it was simply a matter of showering the enemy with strikes and shielding one another. One of the golems lost both arms in the same heartbeat, to two different swords, and a third man, who had merely been watching, stepped in and caved in its torso.
Zaudern felt the connections going dark faster than he could follow, two, then four, and then he stopped counting.
The beetle, slowed by its prisoner, had never reached the circle at all. The fresh soldiers found it in the open, and they didn't bother cutting; four men set their swords into the forelimb joints like levers and cracked the limbs from their sockets, one pair at a time, until the golem lay open on its back with its legs torn out. The prisoner stood up out of the wreck, took a sword from a dead man's hand, and walked back into the fight.
Mogel worked from above.
The demon never descended into the melee; he drifted over it, and the crimson light fell from him in waves and beams: narrow crescents that arced down between the soldiers' shoulders without touching a single one of them, thin rains of darts, once a wide, flat sheet that settled over two golems at the rear of the ring like a thrown blanket. Whatever the light touched began to bleed. Zaudern could feel the mana reserves of the struck golems draining out of them along with the blood; iron browned and flaked as if it had stood decades in the rain, stone went porous and grey, and then the soldiers barely had to swing at what was left.
The gantry never got to use its press again. A single crescent folded over the crude frame, and the scrap iron Zaudern had bolted together in one night, with not a single durability enchantment on it, took the curse the way dry ground takes water; the whole structure sagged, bled, and came apart at the connection points in seconds, the two gravity arms landing dead on the cobbles.
The dragon-head was positioned in the inner circle next to Zaudern and had kept shooting at the demon, an annoyance at best.
Yet now the old enchanter could only grit his teeth; he was running out of shots.
Zaudern saw the shape form above him, not a crescent this time, a needle, thin as a spindle, and he watched it wait. It hung there through one pulse of the green dome, through a second, and on the third, as the lattice went dark to mend itself, it dropped through the gap and struck the red dome beneath.
There was next to nothing he could do about it. This was the great downside of this formation; he was boxed in by his own golems, with no room for a true dodge. And being able to rely only on conventional defensive magic against a curse… Zaudern already had his suspicion before the red needle ever struck down.
This was why he still wrenched the golem aside at the last second, guided more by sheer instinct than any actual reaction.
The crimson needle touched the lighter red barrier, and the dome itself began to bleed. To the enchanter's quiet horror and fascination, the spider-web-like cracks in the hard light of the barrier started to fill up with red liquid that seeped down and through; he felt a drop fall on his cheek.
The barrier held for a second, then two, even as Zaudern fell from the sudden movement, trying to steady himself, as he glanced back towards the demon…
…and the barrier just fell apart, dissolving in the air like soap in hot water. The old mage couldn't even react in time to the second attack that followed.
There was no pain to speak of, which was the first wrong thing. The second was the blood: it welled up through his sleeve in a slow, even seep, from no cut he could find, and the potion he splashed over it did precisely nothing.
The ring broke on the western side first, and the Bürgermeister stopped being a spectator.
The first man through took Ahnungslos's hammer under the chin; the enchanted head flared on impact, the crack of it echoed off the Rathaus, and the soldier was thrown back through the breach in the golem formation he had entered by. The second blade he caught on the buckler, and the third, and the fourth, the enchanted rim splintering a little further each time, until a stroke landed on its edge and the shield burst apart across his arm. He threw what was left of it into the next man's face with a foul-mouthed curse, broke that man's knee with the hammer, and paid for the opening with a cut that found the mail at his side and burst a handful of links.
Ahnungslos screamed.
Somewhere beyond the fighting, Fröhlich clapped.
"Ah, Lord Mogel does like to play around a lot, doesn't he?" she commented with a smile that any human watching would've found a bit too wide. It didn't help that the smile revealed a thinner, second row of needle-like teeth somewhere down her throat.
"This man has openly embarrassed him. He has to do at least this much," the stout demon said, its voice sounding like a very loud whisper, "That said, it's not just him playing with those humans. Lord Mogel is conserving mana."
Fröhlich blinked, glancing back at her companion in disbelief.
"What could he possibly be doing it for?" Just for an instant, her bright-orange, sunny eyes glanced back towards the spot outside the city… "Surely, Lady Aura won't need our lowly help, no?"
The pair of demons by her side were in no hurry to respond. This was answer enough.
The cheerful-looking demon glanced back towards the fight, just in time to see it.
The soldiers stepped aside, both at once, without a word, and Lord Standhaft came through the gap they made, approaching Ahnungslos.
"Ah," the man with a hammer said, trying to steady himself, "And this is just Goddess taking the piss…"
It was the only thing he had the time to mutter.
The first stroke took the hammer from him; the blade went through the haft just below the head, and the enchanted weight that had folded metal all night went ringing away across the cobbles.
The second stroke Ahnungslos ate on his vambrace, the last undamaged enchanted thing he carried, and it held, barely, the blow driving him to one knee and leaving the metal creased like tin.
"Leave him," Mogel said, landing very close by. "Handle the mage."
Standhaft's sword stopped mid-lift and swung away, and the lord turned and walked towards the platform, a few remaining golems throwing themselves at him as he did.
The demon stood over the kneeling Bürgermeister with his hands loose at his sides, and one of them was sheathed to the wrist in the condensed crimson light.
Mogel struck him, open-palmed, in the chest.
The blow itself was almost gentle by the night's standards; it rocked the man back. The light was another matter. It soaked through the mail like water through a shirt, and the bleeding began at once, welling up through the links where the palm had rested, running from his nose, seeping from the creases of his knuckles inside the gauntlets, far slower than it had run from the soldier who had crumbled to dust in his hands at the start of the night.
Mogel took a fistful of the mail at his collar and pulled him up off his knee, one-handed, until only the toes of his boots kept to the ground.
"Now then," the demon said, his voice as casual as it had been all night. "Any thoughts you care to share now? I rarely find a human conversation partner so willing, so I am curious if you still feel the urge to talk."
Meanwhile, Zaudern met the lord with everything the platform had left.
His left hand had gone slick inside the sleeve, blood dripping from his fingertips onto the deck in a steady patter. It didn't help that the same shoulder already carried the longsword's bite from earlier. Somewhere in the press, Entladung's lightning had started falling on the red dome in flat, even cracks, one after another.
The lord struck exactly on the green dome's dark interval, and the red barrier, dripping blood each time it was engaged, took his full swing and burst, fragments of light scattering and fading before they reached the ground.
The green pulse caught the thrust behind it, and by then two soldiers had reached the platform's flanks, set their shoulders under its edge and heaved. The golem's legs left the stone, and the dome's rim, seated into the platform's edge, tipped with it.
Zaudern was jerked from the platform, a sharp exhale leaving his chest, before he fell on the cold ground, hearing something crack.
Something slipped out of the old man's inner pocket. Looking up, he saw it; it was a locket.
Barely thinking, he crawled, one push after the other, as he extended his hand…
An armoured boot stepped atop the locket, surprisingly, without much pressure.
Zaudern looked up, eyes cloudy, and all he saw was Lord Standhaft. His once-decorated armour had its decorations melted together; even its eye sockets had bits of metal solidified, likely partially obscuring his vision.
Yet, the old man could swear he saw the dark eyes beneath.
"Ah, Goddess," he muttered weakly, feeling light in the head, "Not like this…" Those were simple, quiet words spoken to no one in particular. A prayer of sorts, in its purest form.
The old man had long been disappointed in gods and most men; he expected no one to hear it.
But divinities aside, one mortal did.
It was with a strike of fire and thundering force that Standhaft awoke from the insidious spider-web of the mental magic woven atop him. His will wasn't very susceptible to the particular magic Neugieri wove in the first place: he had forgotten what it was like to see dreams back when he was young, first joining, at his father's side, the war he supposedly became a hero of. For that reason, a blow hard enough to rattle his skull was all it took to wake him.
Countless battles, countless decisions, countless hardships forged a will harder than any iron and more fierce than deep underground fires.
Yet, even awoken, he found himself feeling weak, his body puppeted, his mind cloudy. He could center himself; it felt like he was in a nightmare, but a familiar one.
That was until now, with an old man at his feet, looking up at him, praying.
He moved his foot, forgetting that he wasn't supposed to be able to, seeing a cracked portrait of a young woman in the locket, and an old, callus-covered hand grasping it.
He glanced back at the old man at his feet.
His shoulder shook.
A longsword came down…
Zaudern saw it approach, but he didn't see the sword; instead, he was hearing waves against a distant shore, ever quieting, as warmth kept covering his chest, and the light spots in his vision showed him familiar faces…
…and struck the stone by the old man's side.
"ME-E-E-E-EN!" The shout that the Lord let out was filled with mana, but it was no spell.
Warriors tended to use mana instinctively, mana moving along with their bodies, yet rarely had they gone past that. Forming a spell with intent alone was usually impossible.
Making the sound travel with greater force, though, hardly counted as a spell at all.
Mogel's eyes snapped to the side, distracted from the barely moving lips of his toy, his shoulders tensing.
"Another one?" he muttered, sparing just one glance at Standhaft's collar, which stayed dead, "Then Versklaver…"
Meanwhile, the Lord glanced around.
"HOW LONG… HOW LONG WILL YOU KEEP YOUR EYES CLOSED?" he asked, soldiers turning towards him, swords at the ready; Aura's set of commands had them move in on one of their own who had broken free, to put him down the way they would an enemy, "HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN? UNDER ME, I SWORE THAT YOU WILL NOT SLAUGHTER THE INNOCENT, YOU WILL NOT BURN AND DESTROY THE LIVELIHOODS, YOU WILL NOT BE DEMONS WEARING HUMAN SKINS! AND LOOK AT YOU!" he questioned, striking the pommel of his sword with his fist, the power behind it strong enough to make everyone in the street feel the ground tremble. "LOOK UPON WHAT YOUR HANDS HAVE WROUGHT!" Braveur stepped forth, winding up a strike…
Mogel exhaled, moving his attention back to the fat human in his hands. Luckily, this time the anomaly wasted its breath screaming instead of making use of the opportunity; truly, humans' ability to talk was their biggest weakness…
"WILL YOU MAKE ME ANOTHER LIAR AT COURT, MY FRIENDS, MY BROTHERS AT ARMS, AND YOU, BRAVEUR?!" The sword froze at the upper point of the swing.
The puppet's shoulder shook.
"Arrrrrrrrrgh!" With a scream of rage, the man turned around, bisecting the walking corpse closest to him, a soldier with his chest caved in, "FOR STANDHAFT AND THE CROWN!" he let out a shout.
At the same time, beneath his helm, Standhaft smiled weakly.
He felt the weakness of the wounds he had taken back at the riverside, never properly seen to… and yet, for this, there was strength aplenty.
In one motion, he took the sword, turned around, and threw it.
The longsword sailed through the air towards Ahnungslos and the demon… who had turned towards the shout just in time to see the blade coming, and began turning to meet it.
Mogel's eyes widened as the sword, meeting his turn, struck him full in the chest instead of his side with such strength that the air crackled behind the throw, and he was carried out of the circle of soldiers and out of sight.
Fröhlich frowned. The young demon was unable to quite make out what was going on beyond the circle, so she turned towards the other demons.
"What is…" She could only blink, seeing the human mage level a staff at them, golden lightning already dancing at the tip.
With no hesitation, she kicked the demon closest to her in front of the spell. That didn't help, as it chained across the three of them instead.
Her mouth could only open in a wordless scream.
"FOR STANDHAFT AND THE CROWN!" Entladung echoed; the old battle cry that they'd been forbidden from using, for the fear of the court that Standhaft may be aiming for a crown for himself… came out as natural as breathing, reaching where nothing else could.
"FOR STANDHAFT…!"
"…AND THE CROWN!"
The shouts kept echoing as the men who had woken tore at the puppets by their side, the dead and those who could not wake, their bodies visibly straining with effort, yet all of them moved as one…
"Impossible… Lady Aura's spell is still active… it couldn't have failed on so many… how could it malfunction so many times…" Fröhlich muttered, her body smoking and refusing to respond to her command, as she saw the mage slowly walking towards her, using his staff as a walking stick… "P-please… I didn't mean to do anything bad! I am under the spell like you!" she begged, tears falling from her eyes, "I don't want to die!"
Entladung lowered his staff, a point of light igniting at its tip.
"I saw you eat the face off of Gewalttätig at the river… he was still alive…" he said quietly.
The demon opened her mouth again, and after a moment, her head disappeared as a spear of light splattered it across the paved street.
The mage swayed in place.
Standhaft, meanwhile, leaned over the old man, reaching into the old man's waist bag, his hands not showing any strain in their movements. He pulled the cork of a potion he recognized and poured it onto the old man, as he crouched next to him. With two fingers clad in the gauntlet, he lifted the wet, blood-soaked sleeve… the potion didn't seem to do anything; the bleeding continued.
His eyes trailed across the area and towards where Mogel had disappeared.
With a single leap, he was outside the ring; with two, at the side of the demon, who was pinned to the wall of a house by the longsword and seemed to be fruitlessly attempting to tear it out.
"Still in control of yourself, I see," the demon noted, and the human took a dagger from his belt, at which the demon merely raised a hand. "No need, see?" he said, and Standhaft could see. The demon's hand was shedding flakes. Looking closely, he could see his entire body ooze flakes that looked like black dust, trailing upwards, much like a monster struck at the…
"Your core is destroyed."
The demon lifted an eyebrow.
"You mean my heart? Not destroyed, but yes. I can't even muster any strength in my limbs nor cast my magic." He pointed at Standhaft… no, beyond him, "This battle is a draw. My curse will not lift with my death, and you will return to Aura's service shortly."
At those words, Standhaft felt his hand twitch against his will, as he lifted it in front of him. His brows furrowed.
"See?" the demon said calmly, "A draw."
The Lord spared a second to glance at his shaking fist. His lips tightened.
Then, with a single motion, he struck the demon's head. The demon tried to say something. He struck again. Then again. Blood sprayed, yet he struck again. He kept hitting until the skull gave, and instead of a head, there was only dissolving gore and bone.
"Men," Standhaft spoke, turning around, unsurprised to find his remaining soldiers gathered there, "I am sorry." He had a lot more to say, but he could tell whatever miracle had woken his men was losing its potency.
He also could not think of anything he could do. Death would not relieve them of this slavery. Destroying the bodies outright would, but there was no time, nor did he have the heart to dismember those who fought by his side for years, and nothing else was coming to his clouded mind.
It seemed the demon was right.
He threw one last look towards the old man and a slime of a man who had at least chosen a man's death.
In his mind, he uttered a short prayer, even as he felt his body slipping from his control and the shackles tightening once more
SECOND PART OF THE CHAPTER, AGAIN, DUE TO THE SIZE POSTED SEPARATELY.