The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 56

Part 11

The model became slightly transparent, allowing them to see their emplacements and shelters beneath the stone, and the locations of all their citizens and all the demons were marked with tiny glowing lights; blue for citizens, red for demons. All the citizens were within the shelters and emplacements, and the demons were seemingly everywhere else. Tiny white streaks of light showed where attacks were being launched from the emplacements surrounding the village toward the demons within it, and the demons’ returning fire. Another cluster of white streaks appeared at the north end of the islands.

“They’re attacking the Sylvan. They’ve never done that before.” Yazadril stated, and turned unerringly toward the children.

“Helemia, can you show me where the Sylvan are?” he asked.

Helemia nodded, she and Reggie concentrated, and tiny yellow lights began to appear on the table marking the Sylvan’s locations. “Povon, could you help us with this?” she asked.

Povon joined their Link and their efforts. The yellow lights appeared more rapidly for a moment, then they stopped appearing, and more white streaks began to be seen as the Sylvan’s counter-attacks against the demons were shown.

“Sweet Mother, there must be thirty thousand demons out there!” Mark cursed as the situation became apparent. “They’re all over Hiliani!”

Ten seconds had passed since the beginning of the attack.

Alilia cast a Revealing high above the table, showing what was happening in the village. Most of the demons there were systematically destroying the village, starting with the gardens and the water delivery system. Those demons were protected by greater demons, who were also counter-attacking the surrounding emplacements. The place was a maelstrom of spells, fire, and missiles, and the greater demons seemed to be holding out against the surrounding cross-fire coming from the top of the ridge around the village. She moved the Revealing’s focus to the unicorns’ valley, where the grass was burning, then further out where the demons were setting the forest alight, then to the nearest channel, where the demons were dumping huge stone containers full of a green liquid into the water.

“They’re scorching the land and poisoning the water.” Alilia declared bitterly, even as Yazadril psionicly commanded all his fighters to move to the emplacements surrounding the village, and to concentrate their fire on the demons there. “They mean to starve us out, if they can’t kill us directly.”

“If this is a drill, Quewanak’s going through a lot of trouble to convince us that it’s not.” Equemev declared as she pointed with her horn to four lights high above the village, one blue and three red. “That’s him there, fighting three enemies.”

Alilia moved her Revealing up to show that battle.

“Great source! What are those things?!!” Talia exclaimed as they saw what Quewanak was fighting.

“From the descriptions the Triax gave us, those are DemonLords.” Mark grimly opined.

Like all demons, they were reddish-brown in color, and of no uniform shape. Some vaguely resembled humanoids, some were quadrupeds, others seemed to be distorted versions of insects, or dragons, or sea creatures like crabs or squid. Many didn’t even bother with being symmetrical, and had extra limbs seemingly stuck on in strange places. A few of them even seemed to have placed their heads in random positions on their bodies. Their eyes were fire and numbered from two to eight, and they all had an abundance of teeth, claws, horns, spikes, and spines.

A typical fighting demon was anywhere from one-third to three meters in length or height, while the Greater Demons were three to six meters. In this attack, over half the demons were Greater Demons, some of which were a match for Mark in single combat, and Mark was the most powerful individual in the community, with the exception of Quewanak.

It was obvious to everyone around the table that the enemy force they faced was far more than they could hope to defeat without Quewanak’s assistance, and he seemed to be fully occupied with the three DemonLords he was fighting. Each of those were larger than he was, and he was over ten meters long. They seemed to change shape constantly, and like Quewanak, they were using a lot of short-range Translocations. The four combatants were often hidden by the holocaust of power they were casting at each other.

“This is an exercise. It’s not real.” Reggie stated with assurance.

“How do you know?” Yazadril demanded with some impatience, even as he directed re-deployments all over the islands.