And the world began to slow down. Not apparently at first, but the Knights and Vendari began to move slower and slower, the sounds of the battle became lower and lower pitched, sluggish, and even the dust in the air began to swirl lazily. It became more and more apparent, until men hung in the air for impossible amounts of time between footsteps, and arms and legs moved like dandelion fluff floating in the still air.
Tarrin had used Druidic magic to accelerate his body, to increase his speed beyond natural limitations. The spell ususally came a a dreadful cost to humans, for it put incredible stresses on the body and caused it to accelerate its aging during the time it was sped up. A man could die of old age within ten minutes if the accelerated state was maintained, so it was something Druids usually used as a last resort. But Tarrin's body was immune to the effects of age, so it would be safe for him to use, at least for a few moments. He hoped that a few moments would be all it took.
Tarrin blazed through the men and came face to face with the Demoness. She moved much faster than the men around her, but she was still very slow to him as he engaged her without any warning or challenges. The surprised look on her face was very apparent to him, but he concentrated on keeping those six swords away from his body. He moved like lightning, but he was using a single weapon against six, and found himself parrying blow after blow, coming from above, below, in front, the sides, and every angle in between. The Demoness used the six swords in complete, total harmony, and Tarrin was hard pressed to do anything but defend against her, despite the fact that he could move more than twice as quickly as she. He barely managed to parry a stunningly complicated and fast series of slashes that came in from every angle at once, and he hissed in pain when one of the edges of those weapons slice across his waist, leaving a bleeding slash wound nearly five fingers long in his side.
Tarrin backed off, realizing that he was using the wrong weapon. He traded his sword into the elsewhere for his staff, a single weapon whose two ends and middle would give him a great deal more versatility and options against this dangerous foe. He came right back at her fearlessly, holding the staff in the center-grip, and she again unleashed a stunning series of interwoven slashes and thrusts that would have killed three men in seconds. But Tarrin used the entire staff to slap those attacks away, spinning it in his paws so quickly it whistled through the air with every movement, and it forced the snake-bodied Demoness to stop advancing forward as he turned and attacked her, knocking wide two weapons on her left side, parrying a third from the right, then turning the staff and driving it point first into her belly, just above where the mottled scales of her snake body began, jamming the staff's butt right into her navel. She actually slithered back a few spans, giving up the ground she had won as she struggled to take a breath, but Tarrin waded right into her, literally right into the wedge formation she headed, keeping the Demoness off balance and not giving her the chance to recover.
Tarrin's stand gave the defenders a chance to regroup themselves, and they fell on their smaller or more lightly armored foes with a renewed fury. They smashed into the wedge formation, crushing its left side and bending back its right as the Vendari and Knights drove the wedge back into itself. The Demoness hissed sibilantly at Tarrin, but then he sensed something on the edge of his awareness, and realized that the Demoness was communicating telepathically with her troops. They began to pull back, retreat as the Knights and Vendari threatened to encircle them and cut them off from the troops still coming over the fence and through the ditch, to reform their lines and attempt another breakout. Tarrin killed a few of the ki'zadun that tried to block him away from the Demoness, and then re-engaged her as the rest of her troops retreated behind her. She fought with a renewed vigor, moving faster than she was before as she took him very seriously, and he could see the look of intense concentration on her face as she sought to cut off his paws with her swords, attacking not his body, but the staff and the paws holding it. Tarrin spun the weapon precisely before him, parrying those attacks on his paws and fingers, but she got closer and closer with every new slice. They traded furious blows as Tarrin tried to disarm her even as she tried to disarm him, a dazzling display of weapon handling as two masters of their respective weapons wove intricate designs before them in a contest not of strength, but one of delicate nuance and skill, a contest where a miscalculation of a mere finger's width could spell the difference between victory and defeat.
They broke in a stalemate, and then Tarrin felt his heart suddenly begin to race wildly. The spell was starting to do damage to his body, and he knew that he'd have to break it any moment. His heart hammered in his chest as he rushed forward, understanding that if he didn't defeat the Demoness right then and there, he was going to have to retreat from her, and she'd be free to head up another wedge to break through their lines. He attacked her like a cyclone, pushing her into a defensive position as his staff blurred before him, seeking to hit her in some vital area, but he saw that she was making no attempt to fight back, only parrying the furious series of blows he levelled against her. She must have realized that he couldn't maintain his speed much longer, and now she was stalling! He redoubled his efforts to penetrate her defenses, but her six swords flowed with utter grace and complete harmony, proving that she could protect herself as effectively as she could attack.
Tarrin felt his blood begin to burn. He had to end the spell, and do it now!
He dropped back a pace as the battle continued to rage around them, and ended the spell. Everything around him sped back up, but his blood continued to burn and he felt very winded and a little dizzy. The Demoness grinned wickedly at him, raising her six swords and preparing to slide forward and battle him while he was trying to recover.
But then Thalia was between them. She rose her sword and gave an undulating cry not unlike the one the Selani used, then attacked the marilith without fear. The marilith seemed much more wary of Thalia than she had been of him, and seemed unsure of what to do as the Alu was turned away, then took one step back and stopped moving. The marilith did the same, and that confused Tarrin. What were they doing? Staring at one another? But then sensed something else going on, another battle taking place on another level, and he realized tht the two telepathic beings were battling with one another with their telepathic powers. Thalia must have feigned a physical attack to either confuse the marilith or make her think that she wasn't capable of such a mental assault.
It only lasted a moment, little more than two heartbeats, but then it was over. Her wings drooping, Thalia simply collapsed to the ground in a boneless heap. It was obvious that the marlith had won that confrontation.
But those two hearbeats were enough. Tarrin had felt the amulet around his neck become suddenly heavy, reminding him of its presence, and he again realized that he never had to fight the Demoness in the first place. It was on the Tower grounds, close to his Goddess! He could banish it the same way he banished the others! He was such a fool!
He took the amulet in his paw and remembered the words he had used before. They were words of power, a spell created with words instead of weaving, and he began to repeat them exactly. His voice rose in power by degrees with each word that escaped his lips, and the Demoness suddenly looked at him in total shock, seemingly taken aback by what she was hearing. She recovered quickly and surged forward with all six swords leading, seeking to kill him before he could complete the chant of the spell, but some unknown Knight suddenly interposed himself between Tarrin and the Demoness, sword and shield at the ready, prepared to stop her at any cost. The Knight had literally come out of nowhere, and the Demoness slashed at him at her full speed to knock the mortal out of the way-