Chapter 34

I ghosted along the outside of the building, walking on the ground so as to be at the right height for chomping. I peeked around the corner to find a group of balor six feet away, pushing and shoving to be the one pounding on the boarded-up window behind which my friends were bunkered up.

Melos, god of sun and fire and other stuff, turned out to be 'a needy little bitch' as per Private Garcia. The team had been leaning on him to empower the guardsmen's weapons such that they could harm demons. This worked great up until Melos started feeling unappreciated because Annette was calling on him a lot but not making an equivalent number of offerings. Granted, that was because she was busy killing things in his name, but apparently that wasn't enough.

At first Melos had been okay with the fact that Annette was directing Master Hethok to burn things, but after a while he spoke to her (in her head so the rest of us couldn't hear, which I thought was rude), saying that he wanted her to do it properly instead of cheating by using magic, especially a non-believer's magic. Furthermore, he was tired of being taken advantage of and until she made a proper offering he wasn't going to continue performing miracles for her. Which specifically included empowering her teammates' weapons.

Things were bad enough before that; the hazdahem was chasing after us and we were running away, trying to stay ahead of him and throw him off the track. His minions were swarming everywhere, trying to trap us and kill us in order to impress their leader. Now, with the guardsmen suddenly unable to harm the enemy, there was no choice but to hide.

We found a heavily-built abandoned house in one of the wealthy neighborhoods adjacent to Scarf Knob and the rest of the team forted up while I snuck around outside killing demons and leading the hazdahem a merry chase. Turns out that he was pretty angry about me pooping on him and was more than happy to chase after me, especially because I periodically took the opportunity to run up a wall so that I was at his eye level and then turn around and shake my bumhole at him.

Annette explained that a full ritual offering to Melos took about an hour, or longer if he was in a snit and feeling unappreciated. A handful of demons had seen us scurry into the building and fort up, so now there were dozens of the things gathered around, pounding on the doors and window of the kitchen where the humans sheltered. Annette had said that she would need to reverently construct an appropriately large fire in the kitchen's hearth, make appropriate obeisance while singing appropriate hymns, and then appropriately set the entire building on fire. Or preferably the neighborhood, because apparently the god of fire was a bit of a pyro. Fortunately, this area was evacuated so we had no problem with torching it if it meant that Melos would be handing out the godly power again.

In the meantime it was my job to keep the hazdahem from coming over and kicking the building down, and also to occasionally swing back around and break up the largest knots of balor in order to keep things manageable for the team.

I bit one of the balor and dragged it away, shrieking and thrashing, down the alley. Its friends ran after, shouting and waving their claws. I hopped onto the wall, changing the angle of gravity so that from my perspective I was running horizontally and some unseen force (that being normal gravity) was dragging my prisoner backwards. I got to the top of the building and dropped it to land with a splat on one of its friends. Two hundred Attunement floated onto my character sheet as I did but I wasn't paying much attention to that. I stood at the very top of the wall and howled, loud and long so that everyone within four blocks knew where I was. I ended with two mocking barks.

{You alllll suuuuck and I ruuuule! Nyah nyah!}

Gobbles of demonic rage boiled up from the alley behind me and from all around. The hazdahem was standing on a roof two blocks away. I leaped to the next roof and the next, racing towards him. He howled and came to meet me, his hooves smashing roofs as he ran. He jumped from one to the next and his left foot broke through up to the knee.

I leaped to his roof, howling in delight at his vulnerability. His arms windmilled as he struggled for balance. I bared my fangs in delight—

—and then veered away because I wasn't stupid and I could tell perfectly well that he was a big faking faker. I did manage to make a small poot as I went by, just to leave him something to remember me by.

o-o-o-o

Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 1249 HP! Your Essence is currently at 110/113. Max HP 1100, current HP 723.

377 HP recovered. HP at max. No status effects active. 3 Essence recovered. HP max has increased to 1130. 30 HP recovered. HP at max. No status effects active. Essence at max. 542 MP recovered.

Essence: 113

HP: 1130/1130

MP: 971/1130

1249 Attunement gained.

There went my last usage of Enhanced Rapid Recovery for the day. The first time I'd used it after running from the hazdahem had been simply to wash away the accumulated damage and refresh my mana pool. This time was because I'd made the mistake of getting caught by a band of snake demons; one of them had successfully grappled me and the only way I could escape before the others killed me was to transfer three Spirit into it, thereby burning it alive. Bet your floofy tail that the first thing I did after getting away from them was to fix myself up.

I checked my character sheet. I was back up to 17,820 Attunement. I briefly entertained the idea of snipping around the edges, knocking off more and more small demons, until I could buy that Rare Skill, which would then turn out to be the 'blow up bad guys with your brain' Skill that I'd been hoping for all this time.

I sighed and shook my head, pushing the lovely fantasy away. Since I had already unlocked one thing today, Mr. FloatyBox was going to charge me 69,984 Attunement to unlock that Rare node and the same again to buy it. I wasn't sure exactly how much that worked out to, but it was a lot more than I was going to make anytime soon. Of that I was certain.

Fortunately, it wasn't critical. I'd been seeing fighting off in the distance—fast-moving flying creatures engaging with demons and usually mopping them up. I couldn't help but recall the Citizen's Council representatives that I had seen earlier this morning. They had taken on lots of demons plus several mages plus some elementals and were doing very well when I left. If they were as powerful as I thought they were then they should be able to deal with this invasion given enough time. If I could keep the demons occupied long enough, this whole problem might be taken out of my bowl.

While having these thoughts I was ghosting across a rooftop several blocks from where my friends were bunkered. I had lost track of where the hazdahem was, so my goal was to find him and then draw him away before he got any funny ideas about going after my friends.

Then a massive gout of fire shot up into the sky from about where I had left Master Hethok and the others, so I figured maybe I didn't need to worry about my actions being what gave away their location. (Assuming the demons hadn't already known it, which at least some of them had and I really shouldn't let myself get distracted with thoughts like these because there were Peoples to reunite with!)

I galloped towards the source of the fire, leaping from roof to roof in long, clean bounds and not worrying about being stealthy anymore. I wasn't sure where the hazdahem was, but—

Eep!!!

He reared up right in front of me, lunging up from where he'd been hiding in the alley between this building and the next. He either had very good ears to track me with or someone had been spying for him because I was six storeys up, so he must have been clinging to the side of the building as he waited for me.

Those thoughts flashed through my mind as his insufferably grinning face popped up and one long-clawed hand lashed out for me.

At the last moment I leaped, tucking my legs up under me. I didn't quite clear his hand; I slammed against the top of his fingers and tumbled clumsily over it, barely not getting grabbed and painfully murderized.

He growled in fury and tried to backhand me with the hand I had barely dodged, but I was to the edge of the roof and over, gravity twisting so that I was still on level ground but he was lying down. I galloped along his right side, since that was the hand he had tried to grab me with and the left hand was occupied by holding himself onto the building.

Partway down I twisted and bit into the bottom of his armpit, then let gravity go back to normal so that I was suddenly plummeting with my teeth firmly anchored in him.

A thousand pounds of mighty wardog going at least twenty miles an hour was a lot of force, and it all slammed straight into my tightly-gripped jaw. Fortunately, Mom and Dad had been very assiduous about my dental hygiene so I had good strong gums and I did not in fact pull all the teeth out of my head.

The demon shrieked in pain as his flesh tore under my weight. He smashed me with his elbow but I hunched over and took it on my shoulder instead of my head. I turned gravity so that I was once more standing on the wall and I was able to back up three steps and bite the back of his leg right below the backward-facing knee. I yanked with my whole body, ripping a chunk loose and then moving quickly away.

The hazdahem let go of the roof and dropped to the ground below, swiping for me on the way past. I pivoted gravity so that it yanked me backwards along the surface of the wall, not changing my distance from the ground but rapidly moving me away from his attack. I wasn't smooth with this trick yet and I ended up sprawling paws over bum on the wall and unable to take advantage of his momentary vulnerability when he hit the ground and his leg buckled.

By the time I got myself sorted out and back on my feet, he was standing up, one hand on the opposite building to stabilize himself while the wound in his leg finished healing, which it was doing all too quickly. In the meantime, he had drawn the sword off his back and held it between us, the point leveled at my eyes.

"You are an annoyance, pissbag," the hazdahem growled.

I stuck my tongue out at him and lunged forward, betting that I understood him well enough to know what he would do.

I did.

Annoying I might be, but he still wasn't looking to kill me. He was too focused on capturing me so that he could take me back to his research lab and figure out to weaponize my ability to burn demons with my Spirit. He had aimed the sword at me to keep me back, not expecting me to run straight at him again. When I did, all he needed to do was twitch the point slightly to align it with my heart and I would have run it straight through myself.

Instead, he pivoted it slightly, angling it so that the point was next to the building and the flat of the blade was towards me, turning the four-foot width of the blade into a shield instead of a weapon.

A shield or, in this case, a ramp.

I hopped onto the blade and ran along it, gravity pulling me tight against it. My gravity had nothing to do with his; he was strong, but not so strong that he didn't notice a thousand pounds suddenly being added to the tip of his twenty-foot weapon. The blade swung down, halfway to the ground before he got past the surprise and firmed his grip. From my perspective the world pivoted strangely while my course remained straight and level.

I got to the crossguard and saw the right hand coming off the opposite building, reaching across to grab me. He was off-balance, his leg not fully healed, and so the grab was slow. Slower, anyway. I leaped, landing on his right bicep and springing out to the opposite wall. Gravity pivoted as I did, holding me firmly in place against the wall for a moment before flickering back and forth between that way and normal so that I dropped to the ground in a controlled fall. Halfway down I pushed off, twisting back over my shoulder so that I could once again get my teeth into his wounded thigh. I swung up and over, yanking my head to pull a chunk of the semi-healed flesh loose even though it left me falling.

I slammed into the ground on my back, the impact costing me enough hit points to kill a human instantly. I spat out the mouthful of disgustingly putrid demon flesh, twisted back to my feet with desperate speed, and lunged.

He had been off-balance before I bit him, and the refreshing of the wound in his right let staggered him so that he crashed into the opposite building. I got in close and bit out the Achilles tendon in his left ankle; the leg went out from under him and I was nearly crushed as he collapsed on top of me. I wiggled aside enough to take only a glancing blow and leaped to the wall, pivoting my gravity so that I was running on flat ground and he was clinging to the wall (or, from his perspective, the ground) on my left. I howled in excitement and raced forward and away.

He had dropped his sword when he went down, slapping the ground with his left arm to take the sting out of the fall, but he immediately grabbed for the blade and swung it back around.

I was already gone from where I had been, leaping to the opposite wall and running along it. I stumbled as I hit, still not entirely smooth at adjusting to new perspectives on the fly like this, but I managed to keep myself moving in the right direction.

He was on his back, head towards me, with the sword slashing at where I had just been, but I was already inside its reach. I jumped to my right, upwards from his perspective, and then down again, allowing normal gravity to reassert itself as I locked my feet together and dropped my entire weight on his boy bits. I had done this to Dad once in an excess of adoration; he hadn't liked it one bit, and I had a feeling that Ugly McUglyface wouldn't either.

Turns out, demons cheat.

The kilt that he wore looked like steel and moved like fabric. When I jumped on him it swirled up and grabbed me, pushing me to the side so that I landed on his thigh. Pleats in the fabric turned into barbed edges that caught at me, sinking into my flesh and pinning me down. His right hand lashed out and caught me clumsily around the shoulders, dagger-like nails drawing blood.

I yelped and thrashed, kicking out with my hind legs and biting at whatever I could reach. The kicks tore the kilt out of my body and smacked into what I'd originally been aiming for; he grunted, his grip going slack for a moment. I pivoted enough that I could get my teeth into the side of his wrist, just at the base of the thumb. Bite, tear; the tendon was severed and the thumb went slack, allowing me to wriggle free. I rolled awkwardly off of him, got my paws on the wall and turned gravity so that it tumbled me towards his hooves and away.

Five feet past his hooves I let gravity go back to normal and scrambled to my feet. I was bleeding freely, the view from my right eye was blurry, and I was having a little trouble tracking but I was pretty sure that biting was the right thing to be doing so I galloped forward.

He was only now starting to uncurl from the instinctive protective hunch that the yellow guy on the noisybox always did when he got a football to the crotch. I got in close and ripped at the back of the right ankle. Symmetry was good, right? I had done the other one already, so it seemed smart to do this one.

I got something more important than a tendon this time. Foul black ichor gushed from the wound and he howled in pain. A manhole-sized hoof connected with my head but the action was broad and clumsy, the whole leg swinging from the hip since there was currently no control over the calf. It still slammed me into the wall but it was a slow impact and I was tough. I got back up, got my teeth into the closest bit of him (his outer thigh), and pivoted gravity so that I fell up the building, tearing a chunk of him out and bringing it along for the ride. I turned gravity back to normal and leaped forward, spitting the chunk of thigh meat at his face to distract him while I landed all four feet on his belly.

He instinctively raised one arm to block the spat-out flesh gobbet and so wasn't able to stop me from landing on him. His breath went out in a woosh and he curled on his side, gasping.

I barely jumped free before his arms came down, but it was an instinctive action, clutching at himself instead of grabbing for me. I ran up the wall and jumped again, landing on the ground just in front of him. I spun around, teeth flashing for the exposed veins of his neck—

He swatted me in the head. It was the hand with the disabled thumb, making the blow awkward and preventing him from grabbing me, but he still stopped my lunge and pancaked me into the ground. He tried to keep me pinned down while he twisted around so he could get to me with the functional hand, but I wiggled out from under and went after his wrist, getting my teeth in deep and thrashing my head back and forth to rip the wound open.

The reason the swat hadn't crushed my skull was because it popped the last of the layered Personal Mana Skins that were the only reason I had been handling his attacks thus far. With my defenses down, the moment I felt ichor fountain into my mouth I backed quickly away. I was out of uses of Personal Mana Skin for the day so I couldn't renew it, meaning that I needed to be more careful now.

Fortunately, he wasn't doing so well either. Ichor was pumping steadily from his right wrist and spurting from his right ankle. He sat up and grabbed the bleeding wrist in his undamaged hand. He muttered a few words and smoky flames erupted from his fingers, searing his flesh and halting the flow of blood. His damaged thumb pulled itself back into position and wiggled, demonic healing kicking in.

I was already in motion as he reached down to fix his spurting ankle. I galloped at him and leaped, gravity pulling me 'down' onto the right-hand wall of the alley, took two steps along it and then 'fell' down towards him.

The rapidly-twisting perspectives threw me off and I hit him lower than anticipated, putting my teeth in his upper left arm instead of his neck. That was fine. I tore a bit out and pushed off, shoving him away so that his right horn slammed into the far wall. The bricks broke.

By the time I touched the wall again, he had finished fixing his ankle. The left shoulder was bleeding but not pulsing. He twisted around to face me but he was seated and didn't have the range of motion to catch me as I dodged behind him. I went up, running along his back and getting a bite out of the top of his shoulder before jumping back, pushing him forward in the process.

He pivoted, coming up to his knees facing me with one hand extended forward ready to fend me off while the other groped behind him for his sword.

I went in again, twisting gravity back and forth so that I was moving in something like that weird malazaheen motion that I found so difficult to track. At the last moment I jumped to the side, planning to bounce off the wall and go for his wrist again.

Apparently, he had some experience fighting malazaheen. He plucked me out of the air effortlessly, squeezing so tight that I felt ribs snap, and smashed me into the wall.

I pivoted gravity so that I was 'falling' up away from him, yanking his arm up and startling him enough that he didn't smash me back to the ground. Simultaneously, I shoved five Spirit into the fingers clenched around me.

His hand exploded, his wrist caught on fire, and my body shrank back to its unbroken state. I pivoted gravity again, returning it to normal and falling down onto him. Resetting myself had restored my ribs but didn't do anything about my hit points; another hit like that one would kill me.

Fortunately, the agonizing destruction of his hand had made him instinctively look away from me and clutch at the damaged appendage. I fell between his horns and landed hard on his head, breaking more ribs in the process but driving his body forward towards his own lap.

At which point I dumped fifteen Spirit into his head.

I landed gracelessly, whacking my head painfully on the paving slates of the alley. My vision blurred and for a few moments I couldn't do anything except lie still, whimpering and panting for breath.

Next to me, the hazdahem's headless corpse began to slowly decompose into a cloud of disgusting black smoke that settled to the ground, coating me and the alley in a layer of filth.