The well-honed edge split open rotting flesh and sent black ichor spattering across the ground as the thick almost-blood sprayed from a severed artery. Caleb sidestepped the spray as best he could and pivoted to sweep his sword around in a vicious arc that caught another down low and sent it toppling to the ground with a ruined leg.
Elan, shocked by her own attack, had paused to stare at the weapon in her hand and would have been swarmed had Caleb not stepped in to distract the demons from her. Even with his distraction, however, she was still struck before she recovered from the surprise and sent back into the stone wall of a nearby building.
The stone cracked audibly and dust drifted down around her, shaken from the impact, but Elan found herself barely shaken by the strike, but rather took it as an eye-opening moment that brought her out of her shock.
Right, deal with the surprise later, she thought as she lunged off the wall and swept her blade across the neck of a demon that had thought her open to a follow-up blow. The demon’s head rested in place for a moment as its misshapen face looked surprised just before it fell forward and toppled off the body and fell to the ground at its own feet.
She shouldered another away, sending it flying twenty feet back and sprawling to the ground, and found herself beginning to get a feel for what had happened.
I’m stronger, faster too, Elan thought as she fought, starting to grin under the armor. “I think the armor is magical, Caleb!”
“I noticed!” he growled as he ran through another demon with his blade. “Don’t swing that sword in my direction either, please.”
Elan sent a nervous and slightly guilty look as she shot a glance back at the damage she’d done to the building. “Ah, yeah. Good idea.”
Caleb muttered something about liking his head where it was, then something else about both of them that she didn’t understand at all.
Elan ignored him and surveyed the ground around them. In seconds they’d eliminated the entire group of demons between them, and it had been easy. She rather thought that she and Caleb could have managed to do as much without the assistance of the armor and sword…sidearm…she carried, but with it, the fight had been so easy.
“If you’re quite finished playing around,” Merlin’s voice sounded clearly in her ear, making Elan jump, “the area you’re in is infested with demons, and very few humans. I don’t believe you’ll be saving many by staying still. Oh, and just to make the point, the armor is not, in any way, magical.”
“What? Where? How?” Elan spun, looking in all directions.
“What’s wrong, Elan?” Caleb asked, hesitantly staying just out of the sweep of her blade.
“Didn’t you hear that?” she demanded.
“Hear what?”
“Merlin!” she hissed. “He’s here somewhere.”
Caleb twisted around, eyes wide. “Where? How?”
“I don’t know!”
“Oh for…” the voice of the specter groaned. “I am not there. I am speaking to you through your armor. If you survive this, child, you will be spending a rather inordinate amount of time in your studies. Ignorance is forgivable, but only when you seek to correct it as possible.”
Elan scowled. “He says he’s speaking to me through the armor. He’s also a jerk.”
Caleb stared at her for a moment, but really what could he possible say to respond to that? Instead he just shook his head and surveyed the area around them.
“Okay, magic armor and voices no one else can hear aside,” he said dryly, “what next?”
Elan was about to respond, but Merlin’s voice again distracted her.
“I am activating some of your display systems. Try not to panic, please.”
“Shut up, jerk!”
“I just asked what’s next?” Caleb protested.
“Not you!” Elan grumbled. “This stupid ghost or whatever he…oh…wow.”
“What?”
Elan didn’t answer as she looked around, realizing that she was seeing through the walls of the stone buildings around her. Demons were moving above, below, and around them and showed up a glowing red to her vision. There were humans, many of them huddled in the buildings, and they were lit up in blue. She glanced over at Caleb and was surprised to find that he was glowing green.
“You’re green,” she said, surprised.
“I’m what?” he asked, half confused and…no, pretty much all confused.
“Green. You look green. Why do you look green? The other humans are blue,” she said, confused.
Again, Merlin spoke through her armor. “Green is the code for an ally. Blue is a civilian. Red is the enemy.”
“That’s amazing… What does civilian mean?” Elan asked.
There was an odd noise that almost sounded like sobbing, but when Merlin spoke again, Elan was sure she’d misheard, as his voice was steady as always.
“Civilians are people who are not fighters,” he said in a very slow voice that sounded like he was speaking to a very young child.
Elan growled and made a gesture her father had once made when he was very angry, one that got him scolded by her mother for doing it where she could see. She didn’t know what it meant, but it felt right in the moment.
That done, she turned to Caleb. “The jerk has shown me where everyone is in the city. People are mostly hiding, and the demons seem to be searching for them. There’s something wrong, though.”
“What?” Caleb asked, electing to skip over the question of how she could know any of that for the moment.
“There don’t seem to be enough people,” she admitted. “Just a few, here and there. I don’t know where the rest are.”
“What about the demons?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“Well, how many of them are there?”
Elan paused, turning slowly to look around. Finally, she made a confused noise. “A lot, but…”
“But?” Caleb prompted her.
“All the ones I can see are the weaker ones that the light burned,” she said. “They’re moving around the city as far as I can see, like they’re searching it.”
“There should be a group of them, the leaders.” Caleb frowned. “Maybe with prisoners?”
Elan shook her head. “I don’t see anything like that.”
“Can you see the whole city?”
“No,” Elan said firmly. “No, I can’t.”
“Then we need to look around the city, find the places you can’t see,” Caleb decided. “Maybe we can find if there are any prisoners?”
Elan nodded slowly. “That sounds right. Okay, should we go up on the walls then?”
Caleb shifted his gaze to the walls, considering. “Do you see any up there?”
“Not a lot. Everyone seems to be focused in the city,” she admitted.
“Then let’s go up,” he suggested. “You’ll be able to see farther from up there, right?”
She looked at him. “You’re asking me? I don’t know how this thing works…”
“Yes, you’ll be able to see farther,” Merlin grumbled in her ear.
Elan jerked her thumb toward her right ear. “The jerk says yes, so let’s go.”
The pair turned toward the wall and broke into a jog toward the closest stairwell leading up to the guard walk.
*****
Kaern let the demon’s body drop to the ground at his feet as he looked up and down the street he was standing in, something bothering him beyond the obvious. There were not enough demons around for what he had been expecting, and all of them were Ninth Circle trash. Not even a challenge, spread out as they were.