The Dark World part.13

    Pan, Lucy, Big-Bad; theirs’ has been a struggle. Despite their superhuman physical abilities they have struggled against the beasts, the elements, the demons of Dark World. They have had to work as one to clear roads, traverse deadly caverns, move over and around very oddly located lava flows, and fight against the largest most territorial beasts who seemed to block them periodically along the way. However what stands before them now, is something more terrifying than any of the three of them had ever seen, and they have seen a zombie apocalypse reduce the population to Earth to small scattered groups.

 

    The three wanderers, despite two looking like red demons, and one like a werewolf would at this moment share an expression of utter terror and disbelief. They duck behind a large boulder on the side of a mountain as a massive army walks across the desert floor. The army is comprised of unholy things, from their high vantage point they can’t tell the difference between the armored walking corpses and the living demons, but the giant black furred bat-faced abominations pulling siege towers covered in bat-winged nightmares and grey skinned knuckle dragging sixty foot tall giants made up for that. In the air a thousand weasel headed dragons with the wings of vultures covered in thorns with their devil riders blocked out the blue sun. This army of thousands crushed the land flat with their pacing, as though they were a swarm, a black sand storm of vile evil pouring, nay, blowing from the gates of Hell. As they marched the horrors sang an un-earthly song, or what might be interpreted as a song, of growls, hisses, and roars with high pitched shrieks that raked Big-Bad’s canine ears with so much that they bled.

 

    For a moment their hearts skipped a beat as the massive army, stopped in the valley below, and turned in their direction. The army followed what looked to be an old dirt road and rain run-offs. Traveling over the direction they had come from, but showed no signs of halting or being swayed by the hazards that had slowed them, instead crushing everything in their path.

 

   Big Bad looked through the binoculars, “They’re coming our way. But…”

 

   He is cut short by the ground shaking beneath them and trails lump through the dirt around them as though either giant moles or some subterranean tentacles were traveling beneath them. This oddity doesn’t have time to sink in as the all too familiar sound of military gunfire draws Big Bad’s attention to the valley. He has to start laughing in sheer disbelief as now an army of robotic monstrosities have popped up amongst the demons and are fighting them in a massive battle.

 

   Amongst his insane laughter, which is ignored by Lucy and Pan as they just stare at the impossible scene in the valley, Big Bad manages to cough out, “What the Holy Fuck?”

 

   Pan and Lucy start laughing too. They have seen some weird things in their lives, horrors, monstrous animals, and so forth, but nothing compares to an army of thousands of monsters and demons engaging in chaotic war fare against equally freakish robots, mechanical monstrosities looking like spiders with stingers, flying orbs with solar panel wings shooting laser, mechanical bats and birds spitting lighting, amongst the more recognizable and describable devices, not to mention numerous tentacle waving and strangling objects.

 

   Their laughter is cut short as the entire mountain side is bathed in a crimson light, they look up wide eyed to see in the air above the mountain top the edges of what looks to be a giant floating archaic symbol of some kind, looking to them like something out of a story about witchcraft.

 

     A few minutes earlier Rhoan, Rhulan, and Hollia, flying through the air had found the marching army of Black Kain marching apparently aimlessly along the border.

 

   “Pathetic” observed Rhoan as they found a mountain top relatively close to the marching army, but far enough way for their uses.

 

    The army instantly stopped and changed directions.

 

   Rhulan put her hand to her chin, “hmmm, don’t tell me. Black Kain intended to use a life energy tracking spell. Perhaps he had scanned us while we were in his home.” She looked over to Hollia and back out again, “makes sense. Would have helped if he had said something to us about that.” She smiles a broad smile, “then again, perhaps I knew about that.”

 

   She grabs her cape pulling the end of it up and waves her hand over its tip revealing a glowing blue glyph. With a second wave the strange blue swirl floats into the air, letting go of her cape she grabs it, crushing it in her fist is a spray of sparks.

 

   “What was that about?” asks Rhoan.

 

   “Oh, yeah, I’ve been flying us around in circles just to mess with his army. Didn’t want to say anything just in case that damned thing had an audio function cast into it. Also I was looking for something.” She kicks some pebbles over the side, “Or should I say some…people. Well let’s get this show on the road.”

 

    She takes from her cape the palm sized metal egg and drops it on the ground. With a gentle stepping of her foot it sinks into the ground sending reality bending ripples as it goes. Only a few seconds later a massive rumble shook the ground as the nanite weapon’s probes flew through the ground branching out their trails of spores fusing with the sediment. Amidst the demon horde her mechanized army rose and assaulted the demons scattering their ranks and taking them out one by one.

 

    However as the battle ensued it was clear that the material they were made of wasn’t enough to outlast the knuckle dragging gargantuans and noctabears with their riders. Not to mention the flying Fur-dragons and the foreign devils the Black Kain somehow obtained into his service to control these unruly beasts. Of course this too was part of the plan.

 

   Hollia observed, “Mr. Rhoan, better get in close its time.” Hollia smiled as Rhulan rose into the air in a trance, her body glowing cherry red.

 

   Rhoan simply looked up, taking a few steps to make sure he was under the massive red complex sigil. With in the great sigil Rhulan uttered an unheard spell, her words embedded into her mind, her hands gesturing, weaving the crimson energy in her hands her lips moving to the song she sung inside her soul. After a few brief moments she threw her arms to the sky, a great flame fanning out above her taking the shape of a massive fiery bird. Its wings were as wide as the mountain, it shrieked into the air grabbing the attention of the six-hundred or so surviving demons, its fire even crossing its glow across the eyes of Black Kain, hidden in the rear of the army watching from an open top flying carriage. Rhulan yelled out as the phantasmal-phoenix flapped its five hundred foot wing span, “Omega-Fire-Ra!”. This utterance, this call to arms, sent the great inferno flying into the air and down to the valley below, its fiery underbelly causing the three on the mountain side to huddle as close to the ground out of their, unknowingly unnecessary fear.

 

    Its flames enveloped the demon hordes, even those not directly in its path were consumed by the waves of air busting flames that issued forth from beneath the flapping of its great wings. The eyes of the summoned inferno, the Omega-Fire-Ra, were fixed directly on the Black Kain. As the flames bore down on him a faint blue glow, contrasted against the red glow all around him drew his attention to his arm, a hex mark. From the very beginning Rhulan had planned just this. This revelation meant nothing in the next moment as the spell exploded upon him. In his intense throws of pain his body contorted into its true monstrous shape. When the flames cleared none save Black Kain remained.

 

    His giant black armored shape, not unlike that of Red Kain, as terrifying as it would be was diminished as it moved slowly, crying in growls of pain as smoke rose from its carapace. Its dark color makes it difficult to discern charred from its healthy state, if any healthy spots were left. Of course all this and the raving craving for destruction in Black Kain’s mind were short lived as a blue and white sparkling ball of energy shot right into, and through his face, cleanly removing his head. His lifeless body lumped onto the ground amongst the burning remains of his army.

 

    On top of the mountain the source of the attack, Rhoan, stood hand out with white and blue arcs dancing between his fingers.

 

   “What was that?” asked Hollia.

 

   With a smile Rhoan said, “Oblivion Bolt. An attack that uses a spot of Oblivion energy, the very same power that teleports people between dimensions focused into a bolt that teleports everything in its path.”

 

   Hollia looks at him with a concerned look.

 

   “Yes,” says Rhoan looking at the massive destruction Rhulan caused, “It’s a weaponized version of a normal means of travel. Not like I invented it…I think. Besides didn’t your girl friend just launch a mini-nuke?”

 

   Hollia blushes, “uhm, actually, I meant to ask why you didn’t just do that from the start? I mean you clearly could hit him from up here, and we had this whole plan.”

 

   “Well,” he says with an upbeat tone, “Rhulan didn’t mention she knew about that hex mark tracking us, or about what ever reason she wanted to land right here. So might as well let her continue her plan to kill a thousand soldiers just doing what they were told  and laying waste to the entire country side.”

 

    Rhulan levitated back down, “what ever,” she said, “Not like that spent any relevant amount of my energy.” she smiled at her brother, “Oh, testing my strength were you? Guess what, THAT, was no where near my best spell. In fact that’s merely the highest class of the fire spells taught on Aesperia. Yeah from me it’s about a hundred times bigger than the standard, but still not my best.”

 

    Before Rhoan can ask anything further Rhulan outstretches her hand twisting her finger in the air with a blue after glow while uttering some whisper of a spell.

 

    On the side of the mountain below the dumbfounded trio still in utter shock over what they have just seen, ground shaking, robots fighting demons, a giant phoenix, and then a blue electric comet apparently sniping some giant roach thing almost a mile away, get another surprise as they start to glow blue and float into the air.

 

     Pan, Lucy, and Big-Bad are yanked into the air up the side of the mountain and dumped at the feet of three people they have never seen before. Pan can’t help but eyeball the scantly clad one in the middle until Lucy jabs him in his ribs.

 

    “I am the sorceress Rhulan.” says the woman, and gesturing to the black clothed man, “This is my brother, the demon general Rhoan,” and gesturing to the shorter white robed girl, “and this cutey would be the white sorceress Hollia”.

 

   Gesturing with a flip of her index finger for them to stand, “and you three must be who that lunatic Fira was bitching about and you can thank some really complex back tracking magic for my finding you. Now get up and brush your selves off we have a psychotic demon to track down.”