RETRIBUTION

This chapter is dedicated to my good friend Alex! Happy Birthday and I appreciate your support now and always!!! </3

—

“I'VE FOUND THEM!”

The voice sounded oddly familiar.
It was Sigusmund, he ran to us three.

He stood at attention.

“My lieges, we have searched for three days and nights for your presence, I am glad to be able to report your safety.” 

“Thank you Sigusmund, and at that please report the death of a greater demon.” Cassandra said.

“A g-greater demon?!”

“You doubt us solider?”

“N-n-no my lord. I apologize for my behaviour, I will report it at once!”

“And at that, I recommend you station some guards along every corner of this crevice. We cannot risk a break-in again.” I said.

“Make that squads of two at every corner. Is that understood solider?”

“Yes my lord.”

Sigusmund hurried off to fulfil his duties, and we prepared to take our leave.

We bolted up.

Cassandra jumped off the walls.

Tulote, quite literally, jumped straight up.

“Guys, you do know that there are stairs, right?”

“And what fun is that?”

We made it up and out of the heart of the world tree.

We all rushed out and beheld the scene before us.

Elevieth was in ruins. There were doctors, and other medical personnel hurrying off with bodies in stretchers.
There were body bags everywhere for the poor souls overwhelmed by the dark energies.

Cassandra pulled aside a doctor and spoke with him.

I and Tulote started helping out where we could.
Tulote directed soldiers to help recover bodies and wounded to speed up the recovery process.

“Mend the energies! Remember I taught you to!” I heard a voice in my head say.

I focused myself on each individual's life energies and mended the broken glyphs. It wasn't perfect, but it improved the recipient's chances of survival significantly.

“You'll get better at it, but this is a start.”

“Cassandra? Is that you?”

“Yes, now that you know how to manipulate Creation Energy, you resonate on the same frequency as me and Silus, seeing as we are creators ourselves. So now we will be able to speak with you without summoning you to our realms.”

“Well, that's a nice change of pace.”

We continued our efforts for a few hours thereafter.

As soon as the situation had become stable enough, Cassandra called us together.

“So I've spoken to my Chief Medical Advisor and this is what he reported.”

There were two hundred and fifty-four deaths, with over one thousand injured, one hundred of them critically.

“The good news, however, is, now that the world tree is back, it is naturally filtering the darkness out of the elves blood flow so they should recover at an accelerated rate.”

“That's good. Now that we have that out of the way, it's time we retaliate.” I said.

“I agree, we should strike as soon as possible, for they are most likely still suffering from the loss of one of their greatest assets; Abaddon.”

“I suggest we do this by ourselves. We should be strong enough to take on that horde now.”

“Oh yeah, I've been wanting to test out my powers against actual demons for a while now.”

“That's good, but as much as I would love to charge in head first, we need to know what we are dealing with.”

“Way ahead of you,” Cassandra said, “My powers are perfectly suited for reconnaissance.”

“Alright. Godspeed Cass.”

She nodded and was off into the night. I couldn't see her, but I could feel her energy getting farther and farther away.
This creation energy thing is really overpowered.

Around fifteen minutes passed when I sensed her energy again.

She reappeared out of the shadows and told us of her findings.

“Alright, you guys, here's the deal. The demon army is massive, I'd estimate around 5000 demons, and in their midst seems to be a greater demon. Here's the silver lining though, Tulote's right. The demons are VERY disoriented from losing Abaddon, so they're trying to regroup and figure things out. Now would be the best time to strike amidst the confusion.”

“Alright, here's the plan. Arda will use his manipulative powers to deal with the mass of the demon army, whatever is left, I will deal with it. Cassandra will engage with the greater demon and keep it occupied until we have eliminated all the lesser demons. Any objections?”

“Nope”

“None”

“Very well. Let's move”.

—

We moved throughout the night, Cassandra moving from tree to tree with such speed, that it would be impossible to detect with the naked eye.

Tulote rode a wave of earth he had conjured with Terra, he manipulated it such that it would be silent as he rode.

I just ran with my sword in hand, no fancy tricks or gimmicks.
Not yet anyway.

We arrived at the demon camp, and the chaos was evident.

Demons were stumbling over each other, and hurrying to posts.
There seemed to be no clear chain of command.

“These beasts smell foul.”

“This is for Thial.”

“You guys know the drill, let's move.”

Immediately, I focused on as many energies as I could, which were around 4000 in total, and began deconstructing them. I struck where their energies least protected, and one by one, the demons started dematerializing.

There were screams. Horrid, wretched screams.

The chaos increased ten-fold, and the demons scrambled to find their attackers.

Just then, Tulote jumped down.
He charged with his flaming sword in hand, and a conjured earth shield held together by Terra.

“RAH!”

I watched as he ploughed through demons.

He split some in two, cleanly.

Decapitated others.
One thing was for sure, though, he absolutely BODIED those demons as though they were paper.

Simultaneously, Cassandra had made her way through the demonic horde and was engaging the Greater Demon, all the while she evaded his attacks by altering her energy build-up and reappearing again.
She also formed copies of herself to strike at him multiple times.
This demon seemed WAY less experienced and coordinated than Abaddon
Or it could just be that it was disorientated from losing a comrade.
In any case, we were holding our own.

I made my way over to Cassandra, all the while killing any demons that stood in my path that did not meet Tulote's wrath.

“SO YOU'RE THE ONE THAT SLAYED ABADDON THE BEHOLDER.” The demon screamed.

“What's it to you?” I replied in kind.

“I'm GOING TO TEAR THAT WRY SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE, YOU WRETCHED HERO.”

He lunged at me, and I had dodged instinctively.
I could tell that I had got stronger, because when Abaddon did this, I just barely scrapped through. But this time I just moved as if it were second nature.

We danced around for a bit.

“THE PARTY DIDN'T START WITHOUT ME DID IT?”

“HAHA! IT'S JUST GETTING STARTED.”

Tulote formed a giant fist of earth and hit the demon straight at its core.
It went flying into a myriad of tents and other demonic equipment.

I then lunged at it with the Gladius in hand and slashed off it's left hand and severed his singular horn.

It screamed in rage.

“I FEEL SOMETHING!” Cassandra screamed.

“IT'S DEMONIC ENERGY IS SKYROCKETING!” I said.

“GET BACK!”

We instinctively lunged back, and rightly so.

The demon took on a new form and started to glow red.
It no longer had a solid form, but was in a sort of liquid state.

“BEHOLD THIS, YOU HUMANS. YOU MAY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SLAY ABADDON, BUT I AM HAYDES. THIRD OF THE GREAT FOUR DEMONS.”

“Oh, stop yer yammering.” I said.

“YOUR INSOLENCE! I WILL BE KILLING YOU FIRST.”

Haydes sought to strike me as he lunged.

“ALL YOU DAMN DEMONS DO IS JUMP.”

The gladius glowed bright yellow and struck him in his side.

“HOW?! YOUR ATTACKS SHOULDN'T WORK ON ME!”

“I guess you're not as formidable as you think.”

“YOU-”

“Oh shut up.”

I walked towards him, my eyes glowing white. Gladius in hand.

I struck once.

I struck twice.

I struck thrice.

“ARGH!”

Haydes started to run away.

“RUN! I MUST RUN! I MUST SURVIVE!”

“All you demons do is talk big. You prey on the weak, you take, and you take and you take.”

“IT'S THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS, THE WEAK DOMINATE THE STRONG. WE ARE INEVITABLE AND YOU KNOW IT!”

“No, you demon, there's a difference between you and me. My strength comes from creation, yours from destruction. We are very different.”

I concentrated on his energy and figured out his “blueprint”
I started to deconstruct the very essence of his being.

“WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

“You won't be coming back. Not now, not ever.”

“NO!”

The demon slowly faded away until he was no more.

“It's only natural that light triumphs over darkness, is it?”

I turned away.

“BRAVO!”

“You beat his ass REAL GOOD!” Cassandra said.

“Thanks, you guys, but I wouldn't have been able to do it without you lot.”

“HAHAH! This is a victory for us all.”

“Thank you Arda, for saving my people, us elves are forever indebted to you.”

“It's what I'm here to do, no worries.”

“How humble-”

“Alright, let's save the chit-chat for when we get back. I'm starving.”

“Me too.”