*****
Kaern sat idly on the parapet of one of the guard towers as the explosion tore through the section of the city the demons had been moving through. Rigging an appropriate level of destruction with what little the people here had available had required a little creative thought. He had fought through enough wars in his very long life, however, that improvising things that went boom really was almost a hobby by this point.
The fires were flickering and casting their light around, such that he could tell that they were burning merrily away even though he could not see them. Kaern was unsurprised. While the locals hadn’t bothered to mix real explosives in a long time, they still knew the value of oils, sulfur, and other various chemicals.
In general, they weren’t effective as weapons, if only because they were very nearly as dangerous to the people using them as the demons, but since Kaern had a mostly deserted city to play in, he felt like indulging himself.
Once the secondary explosions had died out, he jumped up to his feet and then dropped off the tower to the wall below, landing in a casual roll that brought him back to his feet. He set out in a brusque yet intentionally casual walk toward another part of time, not hiding his presence in the slightest.
What use was a distraction if it wasn’t…distracting?
*****
“Whoa!” Caleb put a hand up as a wave of heat washed over him, surprised that Elan wasn’t even flinching. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, but it looks like it wasn’t nice for the demons,” Elan said, her tone sounding satisfied as she stood in the door and watched the enemy burn.
Caleb hid behind her to avoid the heat, but tapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t you feel the heat? Oh, and could you not sound like that? It’s creepy.”
“Heat?” she asked, confused, turning to glance at him. “And what do you mean, I’m creepy?”
“Not you, your voice. I know they’re demons, but you sounded like you were smiling and really, really happy,” he told her. “And that’s a little creepy. And yeah, heat. How can you not notice that?”
Elan shrugged, turning back. “Don’t know. I guess the armor works.”
“Well, that’s great for you, I guess,” Caleb said, “but I’m not going out this way. There’s a back way out of the tavern, though.”
She nodded absently, eyes still on the burning demons as she backed into the tavern building and swung the door shut to block off the heat. It would probably burn shortly, but by then they’d be gone anyway.
The whole place, and every demon with it, could burn once they were gone, as far as she was concerned. Elan would happily light a few fires herself.
Caleb led her around the bar to the back rooms, through the barrels and bottles, to a door that led out to a quiet back alley. She slipped out first and then waved him along. It was clear as they moved through the shadows cast by the buildings against the fires that the city was, if not deserted, certainly not populated by people any longer.
“Do you think they all got out?” Caleb asked as they paused near one of the guard towers and looked on as the fires continued to rage while inhuman shapes and shadows ran through the streets.
Elan shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She didn’t really care a lot either, she realized. She hoped that people had gotten out and would do what she could to help those she could, but the city itself meant little to her. She’d grown up with her whole world being one small cottage and a chunk of land in the middle of a desert. Humans mattered to her, but it was all rather unreal somehow.
The demons, though, they were real. They had to die.
Her grip tightened on the sword—sidearm—in her hand, and only the armor she wore hid the whitening of her knuckles.
“There’s a squad moving around the fire,” she said. “Come on, we’ll flank them.”
“Where?” Caleb asked.
She pointed. “There.”
He looked in that direction, squinting against the shadows. “Are you sure? I don’t see anything.”
“It’s plain as day….” Elan trailed off. “It is plain as day. Isn’t it still night out?”
She looked up and around, confused.
“Of course it’s still night. Oh, I see them now. Wow, how did you spot that?”
Elan hesitated. “I…don’t know.” She shook herself. “Worry about it later. Come on.”
*****
Kaern whistled as he walked, casual as he remembered walking the paths of the old communities and the paradise from even earlier. He was not walking a path in Eden now, but if he tried hard enough, he could always go back there for fleeting moments in time. He rarely did—it was too painful to remember—but right now he needed the pain. It fueled his actions.
He stepped off the edge of the wall, dropping forty feet to the ground, and landed in the middle of a group of demons that had been sent out to scour the city for any stragglers who might still be hiding out. Not everyone had evacuated. Some people always stayed, in his experience. Too old to run, too sick to walk, too stupid and stubborn to think they needed to.
The demons were pulling an old man out of a house and laughing as they did. It was a singularly disturbing sound. These were Ninth Circle demons just in the Change. They’d probably been human, once.
Now, they were just meat.
When he hit the ground, all eyes turned to him. Most of them were more curious than wary, giving Kaern more than enough time to straighten from where he’d landed in a crouch. The dirt under his feet kicked up as he moved, snapping out his blade to bisect the closest demon with an almost casual flare.
He slammed his shoulder into the one holding the old man, then stomped its skull while it was on the ground and used that motion to kick off in the other direction. With two of their fellows down, the rest started to heft their crude weapons finally, but it was too late for them. Kaern slipped under the guard of his next target and brought his blade up in a sweep from left to right that sent the demons wheeling away from him as he simply spun on to the next target.
In seconds they were all on the ground, dead or dying, and Kaern was standing over the stricken old man.
“T…thank you, I…how…?” the man stammered out.
“Ninth Circle demons are filth,” Kaern said coldly, not looking at the man. “Wheat for the thresher. Their only power is numbers, and here they didn’t have them. Can you walk?”
“Not well,” the old man admitted. “I didn’t want to slow the others down.”
Kaern nodded. “Go back inside, find cover, and wait for the sun. I can’t promise you good odds even then, but they’ll be better than what you have now.”
“Thank you,” he said, getting back to his feet and hobbling inside.
Kaern didn’t respond to the old man. He had other things on his mind as he set out again to harass and generally make as much a nuisance of himself as he could. Many people had told him over his life that he was very good at making a nuisance of himself, and Kaern had always believed one should go with what they’re good at.
****
Elan hit the demons like a runaway boulder, shocking Caleb as he struggled to catch up.
Her first blow entirely bisected the demons that caught it, but what was more shocking to him, who followed her into the fight, was that he didn’t think she was aware of it or actually intended it. The blade cut through like there was nothing stopping it and then continued to sweep up to kill another demon before taking a slice out of the building behind them.
Best stay behind her, Caleb decided as a hint of cold sweat chilled him. At least until she’s mastered that thing.
With that thought clearly in mind, Caleb shifted to catch one of the demons trying to attack Elan from behind. His sword was one he had worked with so long he was intimately familiar with its weight and draw, so he gauged the swing as he stepped into the demon that was fixated on Elan and brought his blade down from right to left.