He recovered just in time to parry a strong slash from one of the cambisi, backing up a step to give his larger weapon enough room to bring it to bear. One Wikuni was down and still, the other was kneeling on the ground with a hand to his chest, bleeding from a wide gash in his chest, and the Knight was defending his fallen companions from the other cambisi as it pressed him with light, precise thrusts and flicks of his serrated-edged longsword. The cambisi before him wielded his weapon lightly and surely, like a fencer, so Tarrin decided on using raw, elemental brutality. Quickly and without much finesse, he brought his sword down on the cambisi with vast power, staggering it back as it blocked a blow that would have split its head in half had it connected. The red-glowing eyes of the halfbreed flickered with shock and surprise as Tarrin swung again, then again, hitting it with such power that it could not recover in time to strike back before Tarrin was screaming that black blade right back at the Demon's face. With great, sweeping blows, Tarrin backed the Demon back almost into its companion, then quickly and deftly pinioned his weapon and slapped wide a desperate attempt to stab the length of its sword into his belly before he could rain down another punishing blow. Caught off guard by a quick and convincing display of finesse and fencing ability, the Demon did not recover in time to avoid Tarrin's club-like fist when it smashed into the Demon's helmet. He had learned long ago that he may not be able to do Demons any harm with such attacks, but the raw power behind the blow was something not even against which a Demon's invulnerability could protect. Tarrin had learned, the hard way, the magic went only so far when it defended one against the immense power of physics.
Stunned by the devastating blow, the side of its helmet caving in and skewing aside so it covered the Demon's eyes, and spinning in a full circle, the cambisi staggered back from the massive power behind that attack, staggering right into its companion, knocking its sword inward at a critically bad moment. The Knight pounced on his foe's momentary incapacity, crunching his glowing broadsword into the Demon's breastplate with a powerful thrust. Tarrin raised his weapon and drove it into the Demon's head, before it could right its helmet, and both foes dropped nervelessly to the ground.
"Sarraya, see to the wounded," he ordered of the invisible, lingering Faerie as the Knight gave him a wolfish grin. He raised his visor, and Tarrin realized that it was Ulger.
"You're as good as they say you are," he complemented. "Come on, boy, let's go get some more of them!"
"I'll do what I can for these two," Sarraya called from somewhere beside him. "I'll catch up in a bit."
"Be careful," he ordered.
"Always," she replied before he heard her wings buzzing, lowering her to the Wikuni laying on the ground.
The Were-cat and the Knight sallied forth from that battleground and became a mobile terror for the Demons, attacking those already scrambling in frenzied desperation to protect themselves from a pack of incensed Knights, Marines, and Legionaires that had revenge burning in their expressions and fury seething in their eyes. They gathered up more and more stragglers as they finished off Demons already engaged by other defenders, stragglers that were quickly forming up with other Demons to seek safety in numbers. The defenders had trouble attacking these large groups of Demons, so they too began to gather, and the most dangerous of these groups was Tarrin's. The stray Knights, Marines, and Legionaires that he and Ulger had picked up had formed something of a loose mobile wedge formation with Tarrin at its point and the Legionaires and their large shields and spears directly behind him to engage Demons not totally focused on the lethal Were-cat. The heavily armored Knights protected the flanks of the Legionaires, also protecting the Wikuni Marines that prowled the edges of the formation seeking to flank and envelop enemies struck by the wedge by giving them a secure base within the wedge to which they could retreat when necessary. They moved about the battlefield to engage any Demon that had been trapped by pockets of defenders from joining the main host. Tarrin would slam into the Demons with the Legionaires' spears jabbing at them from behind him, their shields interlocked to keep the Demons off the rest of the wedge as the Knights anchored the Legionaires' flanks and the Wikuni Marines flowed out quickly to surround the engaged foe. Though nobody had called out that they use that tactic, it proved to be devastating. All of them were seasoned, veteran fighters, and they had instinctively gathered into the most efficient and effective formation they could have used. The wedge grew wider and wider as more men joined it, each man going immediately to where his comrades were stationed within the formation, and the large moving formation quickly became a rallying point for all the other groups of defenders that had been doing their best to prevent the Demons from regrouping.
Tarrin felt the individual Circles suddenly break up, and then reform into a huge one, one that had to number at least a hundred Sorcerers, a circle of immense power. It touched High Sorcery, and then he felt it get to work. He felt them reach into the power the Goddess had gathered for them, and then the entire Tower grounds seemed to shimmer visibly. Light bloomed at its edges as Tarrin felt them build the barrier of stolen magic, building a sectioned shell of Sorcery some twenty spans high and then filling its hollow center with the alien magic the Goddess had pooled for their use. The result of their work was not a solid barrier, but a highly volatile, explosive field divided into thousands of small cell structures that, the first Demons to touch it learned, quite literally exploded outward in a fiery blast whenever it was disturbed. Whoever had been leading that Circle had been clever in anchoring it into that pool of alien magic, so that every time a section of it was drained off by destroying a Demon, the individual shell weaving that had exploded mended itself using flows from its partner cells, and energy to replace what was expended in the explosion filled the hole. And since only one cell of the aggragate would explode when it was disturbed, not exploding those to either side, it kept the Demons from making the whole barrier detonate and then rush in before the Circle could rebuild it without needing thousands of Demons to all attack the barrier at the same time. And Tarrin rather doubted that they had that many to waste. The barrier was a self-repleneshing defensive ring of highly reactive, unstable energy that destroyed any Demon that touched it, and it stopped the invasion of new Demons onto the grounds instantly.
Sorcery that clever had to be Ianelle's handiwork.
In moments, the steady stream of Demons rushing onto the grounds stopped. Dramatically. Those trapped on the grounds were very quick to gather into one large mass, and then they turned and started moving quickly towards the defenders, seeking to swarm them over in a single hideous charge. The defenders too had quickly regrouped, forming a single body a thousand men strong that stood right in the path of the Demons, and the Lord General of the Knights himself arrived quickly to take command of it. He arrived on a black charger, heavily armored with barding, the warhorse's protective armor showing signs that Demons had tried to claw through it. Darvon's sword was pitted and burned from Demon blood, and he had some blood seeping from the shoulder of his armor, staining his side, but he moved in the saddle with sureness and his booming voice was sharp and decisive. "Alright, men, form up in the wedge our clever Tarrin has been leading around the grounds!" he called in a commanding tone. "Legionaries in the center, Knights on the flanks, and Marines behind and ready to envelop when we hit!" Darvon himself moved quickly to the center of the hastily forming formation, fully intending to serve as its spearpoint alongside Tarrin. The Legionaries gathered behind them into three rows, and two rows of Knights extended out to each side of them as the Marines set themselves in the center of the wedge, ready to sweep out when it broke through.