Demonthorn 14

“This is kind of exciting.” Lora mumbled from inside her wicker basket.

“Yeah, not really.” Muttered Kelli in the basket next to her.

The two women were being lowered in baskets to the ground outside of the Citadel. The ropes creaked at the slightest provocation and Kelli jumped any time the baskets swayed too much in the wind.

“The only way down was to sneak inside the supply baskets. They just don’t have the same safety precautions as the travel baskets and to be honest I am a bit nervous.” Kelli said.

“At least Samantha will meet us at Northorton. She is probably already there.” Lora said, her eyes lighting up with excitement. “I can’t wait until we can get on with our adventure.”

“Yeah, well the start of the adventure isn’t the most important part.” Kelli said with a laugh.

“Well you don’t have a lance poking you in the side there old maid.” Lora complained.

“Maybe you should have gotten into the basket with the undergarments. Oh wait, I got there first miss young and slow.” Retorted Kelli.

Both women laughed quietly.

“We should be nearing the bottom in the next few minutes. Once we hear the sound of the forges and we have stopped moving, I will peek out and see if we are clear. Then we make a break for the exit and we are home free.” Kelli said.

“It seems like you have done this before.” Lora said.

“Never successfully.” Kelli admitted.

“What?” exclaimed Lora.

“Well they were looking for me the last three times, so I figure we have a good shot because we have the element of they are not looking for us on our side.” Kelli said cheerily.

Lora groaned. This was not the start to the grand demon-slaying adventure she had thought it would be.

The baskets slid to a halt as the lift they were on came slowly to the ground. It was merely more time waiting as the burly women of the Builders moved the baskets to their appropriate places. Lora’s basket shifted finally and she was unceremoniously dumped in a pile of baskets that contained weapons to be sharpened.

Lora waited patiently for Kelli’s signal, even though the lance that was digging into her side was really starting to be painful. At last she heard the gentle cooing of a dove and Lora popped the top off of her basket.

Kelli stood there, grinning with her pack over her shoulder.

“Let’s go slow poke, daylight is wasting!” Kelli said in a teasing voice.

Lora shot her mentor a glare and dug herself an her pack out of her basket. She straightened her armor and gave Kelli a big smile.

“Finally some action!” Lora said with satisfaction.

The two women made it to Northorton just three days later. There seemed to be no limits to Lora’s endurance and Kelli managed to keep up if Lora didn’t try and push the older woman too hard. They saw Samantha lounging at the city gate, sitting upon a ruined armchair she must have dragged from inside the ruined city.

Lora made a face as they approached. The city seemed bad. It smelled of charcoal, mildew, excrement and a slightly sweet smell Lora couldn’t place. It also just felt bad in her core, as if there was a smaller person inside of her desperate for her to be away from that place.

“You actually made it in good time.” Samantha said, looking up from a ruined book she had been reading as they approached.

“Yeah, I had to catch up to Kelli at some points!” Lora laughed.

“And I sometimes had to fight her off with a stick when we stopped for the night.” Kelli said.

Lora blushed. She had been waiting so long to get Kelli alone. When she realized the two of them were alone on the road, she just had to try. She didn’t think she would get another chance.

“Just so you know, I lost every time.” Kelli said to Samantha.

“What you two do is none of my business unless it affects the mission or the safety of the world.” Said Samantha curtly.

Lora thought she could detect a hint of hurt from the icy woman, but she couldn’t be sure.

What she could be sure of was that being with Kelli was everything that she had ever wanted. It was pleasurable and intimate in a way that warmed her to the very core of her being. She felt loved, wanted and sexy all at the same time. When they were together it seemed as if the time flew by and Lora never wanted it to end.

“So where is it we are going?” Lora asked.

“There is a system of caverns about 4 miles away that the demons dug up to and breached when they took the city.” Samantha answered, gathering her things. “The paladins were supposed to plug it with heavy stones, but we can blast our way in.”

“Wouldn’t that attract a lot of attention?” Kelli asked, frowning.

“It would if they guarded it. Northorton is remote from most other major cities and there hasn’t been an attempt to breach Below in close to three hundred years. If I were The Master, I wouldn’t bother wasting guards on an entrance like that.” Samantha said.

“You have thought of everything!” Lora said with a laugh and wrapped Samantha in a girlish hug.

Kelli frowned again and Samantha seemed startled until she pushed the younger woman away.

“We still have some ground to cover and we really want to strike during the day. If they chase us up the entrance, they will be seriously blinded by the light, which could really give us an advantage.” Samantha said.

“Then lead on!” Kelli said, excited.

The three women joked and jabbed at each other the whole way. Their spirits were at their highest, especially since they had put the ruined city behind them. Lora even managed to tease a smile out of Samantha just before the road opened up into the area around the caverns.

When the women reached the caverns, there were bad omens everywhere. Animal and human skeletons were strewn about and the ground was barren of vegetation for about a hundred feet from the entrance.

“The skeletons are old.” Samantha said quietly as she squatted near a deer skeleton. “Not any activity for a while.”

“Why does nothing grow here?” Lora asked.

“They salt the earth.” Kelli said before Samantha could answer. “Helps enforce superstitions among the less educated of our citizens and it’s an affront to the Goddess to keep her gifts from growing. Plus it is intimidating as all hell.”

Samantha nodded in agreement and Lora shivered. Wordlessly the three of them approached the cavern entrance. The floor was not smooth as they had expected, but littered with rock which it looked like had been pulled from the ceiling in large chunks.

Samantha swore.

“I was hoping the lazy bastards would do a terrible job or something.” Samantha said, disappointed. “I don’t know if I can freeze enough rock to get us in.”

“What about over there?” Lora asked.

“What do you see?” Asked Kelli.

“There is a small black space against the wall where it meets the floor there, it might be where some of the rocks have shifted or something.” Lora pointed.

Samantha quickly walked to where the younger woman pointed. She knelt and started examining what indeed had turned out to be a hole.

“Well, the good news is that we can fit.” Samantha said.

“Why do I feel as if there is some bad news coming to?” Asked Kelli.

“This was made fairly recently. It was probably made by imps trying to get to the surface to catch squirrels or stray cats. It is fairly big for an imp hole, but it means we might encounter them if we get unlucky.” Samantha said with a grunt as she shifted a rock to make the hole a little bigger.

“Well isn’t that good? We can just have me poke the little guy with a sword and we can be on our way.” Lora said cheerfully.

“No you have to kill a demon.” Kelli and Samantha said simultaneously.

“Aren’t imps demons?” Lora asked, confused.

“Kind of.” Kelli said.

“To unlock your power you must slay a fully fledged demon, one who has taken the soul of a living person. That is the exchange the God demands for the full power of his gift.” Samantha said. “Vengeance.”

“Oh.” Lora said blushing.

After about twenty minutes of shifting boulders and large rocks, the two furies finally widened the hole to be large enough for them all to fit single file. Lora took the lead. The rubies inset into her armor provided them with enough light to move by, even if it faded a little as she breathed.

Lora was excited and nervous at the same time. She had never killed a thinking creature before. She had slaughtered her share of animals on the farm, but had never gone out with the intention to destroy one before. If the scriptures were right, she would also be condemning what had once been a human soul to eternal torment. It was a moral dilemma she had not considered before and she actually looked forward to speaking to Kelli about it later.

The tunnel was not an extension of the main one, but had been dug separately by the small demons. It was fairly rough and there were plenty of handholds for the women to grip as they worked their way down. Samantha stayed in the back, her wings folded against her back.

“You look nervous Samantha.” Kelli whispered. “Something wrong”

“I do not like being underground without an escape. I am used to being able to use my wings as an advantage. I feel trapped.” Samantha admitted.

“Worst comes to worse, we can always go out a main entrance. We could probably take them by surprise and fight our way out if we need to.” Kelli muttered.

Lora shushed both of them with a finger to her lips. She felt powerful giving an order to the older women and she smiled a little more than she should have when she turned back around.

It seemed hours before the women began to hear anything other than their feet on rock or the dripping of water from some condensation on the tunnel walls. What they heard was chilling. It was almost a feeling of something massive breathing and it was accompanied by screams. The screams of thousands of prisoners being tortured, eaten or worse. Despite herself, Kelli shivered.

Lora began shivering too. Not in fear or because of the cold, but in anger. All of her moral dilemma was swept away in her rage. These creatures were the reason she was here, why her sister had died. Her eyes began to glow and her body began to heat up as her anger filled her.

“Not yet.” Whispered Samantha in her ear. “We need to make sure we can get back out before we strike.”

Lora knew she was right and inhaled a deep breath, bringing the fire of her temper under control.

The tunnel emptied out into an enormous cavern with a big boulder in front that hid it from view. All of the women were speechless at being Below for the first time. They had expected maybe some forges, some basic structures and a lot of miserable demons, but this was not that.

There were massive structures carved out of the stone and there were buildings set up to do everything from treat demon wounds to housing fellwolves. This was not some excrement filled hole where the demons wallowed. This was a sophisticated operation that was readying for war.

Lora could see the forges and the fires that lit them as the demon smiths produced weapons and light armor for the Hordes. Samantha saw the organization of the roads that spoke to months of planning before construction. Kelli noticed that the entire cavern teemed with demons of all types. Some flew, some crawled and some walked, but they filled almost the entire space.

The noise was the worst for the women. The pounding of the forges mixed with the screams of the captives and the snarls and yips of the creatures that lived Below. It was as if their worst nightmare had been given a sound as they squatted behind the boulder that guarded their way in and out.

“Now what?” Asked Lora.

“Well, we have got to find you a demon. Probably a lower ranking one they wouldn’t miss.” Kelli said. “Their blood glows green, which will stand out like a man at the Goddess orgy down here.”

Samantha stiffened and the air grew cold. The other two women looked at her as their breath steamed.

“What is it?” Asked Lora.

“Garesha.” Growled Samantha.

“Oh you have got to be-” Kelli groaned.

If she was going to say anything else it was lost in the rush of air as Samantha spread her wings and sprinted into the sky, glowing blue and freezing the air itself into snowflakes that fell on the now terrified demons below.

“Garesha!” Roared Samantha as she rose to a gaggle of harpies flying nearby.

“Samantha?” Came the startled reply.

Samantha grimly drew her sword in a flurry of blue light and struck at Garesha. The harpie shoved one of the other harpies in the way and Samantha’s blade sliced through her, glowing green demon blood spurted as the flying demon woman was cleaved in two.

The other harpies screamed and were on Samantha a heartbeat later, tearing at her with their claws and ripping away clumps of hair and screeching their claws along her armor. Samantha roared, trying to reach Garesha, but her sister laughed and danced away as her harpie brethren tore at the Fury.

“So much for being subtle. We need you to fly up there as soon as possible to bring that fool down, otherwise she is going to get herself killed.” Snarled Kelli.

Lora nodded grimly, drawing upon the rage that she had felt earlier. She remembered her sister. She remembered Samantha’s story. She remembered her former helplessness and fear. The rage built and she felt her fists burst into flame. She drew her sword and then that caught fire as well.

The demons nearby turned to the boulder in confusion as it seemed some idiot had lit a fire behind it. Lora vaulted the rock with a war cry, her eyes blazing and her sword flaming. She landed in the middle of a gaggle of imps and slit them in two with a sweep of her sword. The smell of their burning blood was noxious, but Lora didn’t care. She was too deep in her rage to care.

Kelli also vaulted the boulder and slashed at anything nearby that was moving and wasn’t Lora. All she could think about was how she couldn’t let Lora down. She couldn’t let her end here Below, not when they had just finally made a connection. Not like she had let down her daughter.

As this was happening, Samantha was being dropped lower and lower by the harpies she was fighting. She had managed to decapitate another flying demon, but she was outnumbered. Even in her rage she was not able to fight them all off.

“Now or never!” Yelled Kelli.

Lora looked around and saw a hulk of a demon coming into the fray. The small imps and lesser demons scattered in his wake. He was supremely muscled and featured a black mane around his neck that stood in stark contrast to his red skin. He was about twice as tall as Lora and he moved like a veteran of many raids. This was a full-blooded demon if Lora had ever thought she would see one

Lora pointed her flaming sword at him, issuing a challenge.

The demon nodded to her and drew a massive war hammer from a scabbard slung across his back. He grinned at Lora and charged. The ground seemed to quake under his feet as he ran, but Lora felt only calm. She was still angry, but she set it aside for a second. Her mind coldly analyzed the way her opponent moved. She saw where he had been injured in the past and where he was likely to be hurt again.

The demon roared and swung his hammer at Lora with all of his might, where her midsection would have been. That was, if she hadn’t leaned back to duck. She came up within his guard and plunged her sword into the demon’s chest. She channeled all of her rage into that blow. She screamed and her sword burned the demon’s skin as he howled in pain and his body lit with an internal fire.

He grunted in surprise as the bright green demon blood sizzled against Lora’s blade. It splattered all over her, coating her in it’s luminescent and putrid goo. Finally, the demon’s eyes glowed and popped, spewing more goo around. The demon fell to his left side and Lora slid her sword free from his chest. It was still burning.

It was just then that she felt something stir within her. It was as if a phoenix had been living inside of her all her life and it was just now spreading its wings. She was invincible. Lora screamed in exultation as brilliant and fiery red wings burst from her armor as if it were made of parchment. The brilliant feathers ignited once they emerged, cloaking the area nearby in a fiery red glow. She was cloaked in fire and the green demon blood burned away, cleansing her of it’s filth.

Lora saw her friend in trouble above her. She saw that Kelli had wisely retreated once all eyes were on the Furies. She was out of danger for that moment. With a shout she launched herself into the air. Her wings spread wide and flapped her closer to Samantha, the embers from her flight igniting demons below her.

“Bring it on!” She screamed and charged with her eyes aflame.

THE END OF CHAPTER FOURTEEN