“Let’s go.”
He stood and headed for the door-sized portal with his people and minions in tow.
What awaited them on the other side was a sea of gore. Stagfiend bodies littered the basin around the spire in pieces, in piles, in chunks scattered across the stone. Black blood and viscera covered the ground, the glowing fissures barely visible beneath the meat. Severed limbs and split torsos and heads with their mouths still open were everywhere. The stench was something else.
In the center of it all stood the level fifty-seven demon knight, greatly weakened, injured, cursed, diminished. Smoke trailed from countless wounds, from cracks in its armor, from gashes in its flesh. Its armor was a fractured memory of what it had been—plates hung loose, some missing entirely, revealing weeping black ichor beneath. One pauldron was gone, the shoulder underneath torn and bleeding, meat exposed. Its helmet was cracked down the middle, one horn sheared off, the other chipped and splintered. It was breathing hard, uneven, struggling to stay upright. The fear aura that had pressed against David's mind was barely a whisper now, a flicker, almost gone.
The stagfiend—or what remained of it—was still there, still fighting, still latched on. The heretic buck was barely recognizable, a ruin of torn flesh and exposed bone, its hide hanging in strips, ribs visible through gashes in its side, one arm missing entirely at the shoulder, the stump trailing dark smoke. Smoke still trailed from its eyes, faint but present, a last ember of whatever kept it going. Both of the demon's swords were buried in its body, one through its chest, one through its flank, but it hadn't stopped. It hadn't fallen. It was still upright, still pressing, still feeding.
The rider fused to its back had unfurled like a Venus flytrap, splitting open to reveal a mouth of pure darkness that poured out like smoke. The mouth was latched onto the demon knight's shoulder, its neck, its cracked helm—drinking, feeding, pulling something out of the demon that wasn't blood. The darkness spread across the knight's armor, eating into the cracks, and David saw the demon knight visibly shudder and weaken further. Its sword arm trembled. Its legs buckled slightly. The thing was being drained, consumed from the inside out by whatever that mouth was doing.
The knight, half engulfed and weak, pulled one sword out of the stagfiend's main body—a wet, grinding sound—and aimed it at the center of the thing's chest. Where from experience, David knew its true brain was.
David, his thralls, and Rhea—with a constellation of bones taken from the bone place to use as weapons, femurs and ribs and jagged spines clutched in their hands—stood in front of the spire, slowly drawing closer.
None of their physical attacks could harm either creature, not without sawing away at their bodies with time they didn't have. In David's experience, high level beings were only vulnerable to soul attacks or restraints.
David reached through the tether to the warlock.
The warlock's head tilted, understanding, and began weaving sigils in the air, one after another, each one aimed at the two creatures locked together.
He touched Fenrir's mind.
Fenrir's chest surged with pride, the creature huffed as if the command was nothing to it, but David felt through the thrall link that it was pleased to given such an important task, a way to repay the knight for seeing through its invisibility, and a chance to reallyshow what it could do.
David turned to Rhea. She was already looking at him, waiting, a bone orbiting her form, her last javelin in her free hands grip.
"I want you to hold both of them with everything you have," he said. "If you can't hold them, hold the air around them, the stone, the earth, anything. Just keep them in place."
Rhea's jaw tightened. She nodded once and focused, her telekinetic tug reaching out, grabbing at the demon knight and the stagfiend locked together, the mouth still latched on, the sword still buried.
With trembling arms, the demon knight stabbed the heretic stagfiend in its brain. The stagfiend shuddered as if in the throes of a seizure.
David and his group raced forward.
The warlock hung back and unleashed wave after wave of dark spirits that moved like fired bolts slamming into both creatures. It looked like a stream of skeletal wraiths unleashing from him, in a way that could only be described as pure, malevolent curses. Each curse slammed into the high level creatures, compounding, layering, sinking into wounds and cracks in armor and hide.
Fenrir's illusions covered both creatures' senses in a pure void. No touch, no taste, no smell, no sight, no sound came through. In that moment, both creatures paused for a second, as if confused. David thought: maybe they thought they were already dead, in that moment—deprived of all senses. He hoped so. That would make this next part easier.
"Rhea, now!" he yelled.
Rhea dropped all of the bones orbiting her. They clattered to the stone as she outstretched both hands. Her Telekinetic Tug reached out and grabbed at everything around the two creatures—the air, every molecule, the space itself. She strained, gasping, her brow furrowing deep as sweat trailed down her face. The ground beneath the creatures cracked and rose up, stone folding inward like liquid, trapping their lower bodies. She screamed with the effort, holding them in place as reality itself attempted to shift into a prison.
Both creatures were locked together, but not by anything Rhea or David had done. The fight had done that. The knight's swords were still buried in the stagfiend's body, driven deep through hide and muscle, the blades probably scraping bone on the other side. The stagfiend's rider—that unfurled maw of pure darkness—had engulfed the injured knight's upper body, wrapped around his cracked helm and shoulders like a snake swallowing something too big. It was trying to consume him even with both swords still stuck in its host. The creatures toppled over, still alive, still locked in it, a tangled mass of torn flesh and dark plate and writhing smoke that didn't know how to stop.
Rhea screamed. Her arms were still outstretched, still holding the air around both creatures with everything she had, and they dragged her forward a dozen paces across the stone. Her feet scraped, leaving marks. She couldn't stop their momentum, couldn't let go, couldn't do anything but hold on and get pulled.
David ran. He closed the distance, battle sense screaming at him the whole way, and when the maw twitched—a reflexive spasm, a blind strike at something it sensed getting close—he moved ahead of it. The darkness snapped through the space where his head would have been. Half his head, really. It would have taken everything from the nose up.
"Everyone stay back," he yelled. "Warlock, keep blasting weakness into both. Rhea, hold everything but me still."
Stolen novel; please report.
The warlock's stream of skeletal wraiths kept slamming into the tangled creatures, each one a curse that sank into wounds and cracks. Rhea, trembling so hard he could see it from here, nodded once. Her face was white, drenched in sweat, but she held.
David took the heretic shackle fragment from his belt and wrapped it around the maw on the knight. The chain bit into the darkness, not cutting flesh but binding something deeper, something that made the thing shudder without releasing its grip on the knight.
He had soul attacks. Led by a delirium he hadn't had time to unpack, he'd figured out how to make them. Every soul he'd ever consumed had built his body, layer on layer, excess packed into his cells like bricks in a wall. His real soul sat in his navel, anchored there, but the rest of him was a walking pile of everyone he'd drained. That meant his blood could touch souls. His bones could pierce them. His cells could interact with something that wasn't physical at all.
So when he filled a bone spear with death energy and fired it, it hit something deeper than flesh. He'd checked his status after the first time. Twenty constitution. Gone. Just gone.
Almost not worth it.
"No pain, no gain," he thought, looking at the knight's cracked armor, the maw still latched on, both of them still alive and still dangerous.
He lined himself up with both creatures. Pressed his palm flat against the knight's back. Felt the heat, the damage, the faint vibration of something still alive in there. He reached inside and pulled at his death energy, forced it into his bones. The pain hit immediate, white-hot, a tearing sensation that started in his arm and spread through his whole body. His bones extended, grew, reshaped themselves from the inside, pushing through his flesh, through his palm, coated in black flame. He threaded demonic energy through it as it formed, boosting its power, making it volatile, deadly.
The spear emerged from his hand. Solid. Burning. A piece of him made weapon.
He fired his Soul-Piercing Bone Spear at both of them.
The spear shot into the knight. It passed through the cracked plates of its armor and disappeared from sight, leaving no visible wound on the surface. A heartbeat later it shot into the stagfiend, emerging from somewhere inside the knight and driving deep into the buck’s ruined torso. Then it reappeared in a crater some distance away, the impact kicking up dust and fragments of stone before the spear clattered to a stop, spent and smoking.
Both creatures looked unharmed on the surface. Their hides were too tough, their armor too thick to show any evidence of what had just passed through them. But David could see the truth in his vision. Their souls were devastated. Chained. Fractured.
The creatures toppled over, their souls trapped in their corpses. Rhea kept her arms outstretched, her telekinesis straining to hold every molecule around the still forms. Blood streamed from her nose in two thin lines that ran down over her lips and dripped from her chin. More blood trickled from her ears, winding down her neck and soaking into the collar of her shirt. Her face was white, drenched in sweat, every muscle in her body trembling with the effort of maintaining the hold. She held on until her eyes rolled back and she crumpled to the stone. Unconscious but alive.
[You have defeated a Demon — Sentinel Variant, Alastiel The Eternal Harvest Lvl 57]
[You have defeated a Stagfiend — Heretic Variant, Lvl 47]
[Lvl 21 → Lvl 22]
The Soul-Piercing Bone Spear was slower than he remembered. The first time he'd used it, the targets had been chasing him. They ran toward the spear instead of away from it. That made it look insanely fast. This time he watched it arc through the air and counted the cost. Twenty stats. For one shot. Even if he practiced, even if he got the speed up, the cost was still twenty stats. There were other, better paths to power that didn't involve shooting himself in the foot. And he was staring at quite a few of them right now.
David knelt and pulled a shoulder plate off the demon knight's remains. The thing had shed enough pieces during the fight that picking through the wreckage was like rummaging through a garage sale from hell. The plate came free with a grind, still warm from whatever internal fires kept demon knights running. He turned it over in his hands and read.
[Item: Demon Knight Trainee Armor
Tier: First Tier Equipment
Full black plate armor issued to trainees serving the court of the Iron Throne, forged from layered hell-metal and null-mineral steel composite, resistant to standard weapons and penetrable only by magically empowered strikes or sustained heavy force; bonded to the wearer’s form, the armor adapts to body shape and regenerates with every kill, repairing itself and providing minor healing effects the wearer simultaneously. Wielder healing diminishes with excessive repair in short periods. Provides passive demonic energy circulation if worn by demon species.]
He read it again. Trainee. First tier equipment. That badass knight, the one that had waded through a hundred stagfiends, that had transformed into something dragon-like, that had kept fighting while being eaten alive by a maw of pure darkness—that was a trainee. David wasn't even surprised anymore. At this point he could find out the dirt was ground-up gods and he'd just check if it made decent cover.
He thought about what a knight meant. Kingdoms. Kings. Princes. Crowns. The Iron Court. Theo had said there were things much worse out there. Theo was right. The Iron Court was something to be avoided entirely, or burned down in the middle of the night while he watched from a very, very safe distance. Preferably miles away through the eyes of a more disposable thrall.
Then he studied its gauntlets. It took some work prying one off the dead arm—the thing was shaped to the wearer's form, which apparently meant it didn't come off easy. He had to selectively reinforce himself just to get enough leverage. When it finally came free with a wet grinding sound, he held it up. He could fit his whole arm inside just the gauntlet. The thing was massive.
[Item: Demon Knight Trainee Gauntlets
Tier: First Tier Equipment
Gauntlets issued to trainees serving the court of the Iron Throne, forged from layered hell-metal and null-mineral steel composite, the gauntlets forgo defence for offence. Converts the wearer’s demonic energy into metal talons that tear through armor and flesh with enhanced cutting force, should the trainee find themselves without a weapon. Bonded to the wearer’s form, the gauntlets adapts to body shape and regenerates with every kill, repairing itself.]
Useful. It was a weapon in its own right. David turned it over, feeling the weight, imagining what those talons would do to something soft, armoured, and alive. Although, considering where they’d just been to reach this point, the ‘alive’ part was optional.
He set gauntlets aside with the other treasures he'd collected. The day was young and the dead knight had a lot of parts.
Then he studied the sword. The thing was a beauty of energy and engineering, complex and powerful in a way that made level one skills look like finger paintings. In the giant knight's hands it had looked like a long sword, something you could swing one-handed. When David held it, it looked like a greatsword. Almost as long as his spear.
[Item: Nightcleaver
Tier: Third Tier Equipment
A longsword awarded to the most outstanding trainee of the Iron Court, sheathed in a permanently enhanced layer of cutting force and capable of projecting blades of the wielder’s energy; its forging marks the bearer as the Court’s rising most prominent star, a symbol of elite skill and favor within the demon knight hierarchy.]
Damn. So the guy was a big deal. Too bad he's dead. That made David feel a little better, though. The eternal harvest guy had been special. Important. He wasn't the standard. He almost breathed a sigh of relief. If every trainee could take out a hundred enemies half their level led by an elite practically the same level as them, that would be a catastrophic problem.
He pieced it together. The tiers lined up. All the standard knight gear was first tier—the armor, the gauntlets, the basic kit. But the special sword was third tier. That meant higher tiers meant better gear. The Nightcleaver had no listed drawbacks or limits, and he'd watched it project those green energy blades through a hundred stagfiends. It did what it said.
His cursed spear was first tier. It carried effects he needed, the smoky edge, the drain, but it was baseline. The heretic shackle fragment was sixth tier. Sixth. No wonder a piece of it could keep two high-level souls pinned in their corpses.
That meant David had gotten his hands on two pieces of good equipment. The shackle and now a dead knight's worth of loot. Not a bad day’s work, all things considered.
He turned to where Rhea lay on the stone, still unconscious, blood crusted around her nose and ears. He looked at the warlock and Cinder. "Would you put Rhea on Fenrir?"
The warlock drifted over, robes trailing. Cinder followed, bent down, and lifted the woman carefully. Together they moved to the wolf and positioned her across Fenrir's broad back. The warlock adjusted her arms so she wouldn't slide. Cinder stepped back. Fenrir stood still, waiting.
David looked at the two corpses tangled together on the stone. The knight in its cracked armor lay half on top of the stagfiend, both swords still buried in the thing's body. The stagfiend's maw hung open, frozen mid-strike. Their souls were still in there. He could see them pinned by the shackle, aware of nothing. Then he looked at the field around them. Stagfiend bodies stretched in every direction, pieces and parts and pools of black blood under the spire's dim light.
"Watch our backs," he said. "This won't take long."
With his palm still on the knight's back, he entered its soul.