Chapter 10 – Fast Time at Trenton

I dropped back into Trenton the moment I was able.  The demon attendant glanced over at me as I started to awaken.  They were a totally genderless octopus-like ball of tentacles surrounded by eyes.

“Did you find your visit enjoyable,” they asked in a high pitched whine, which was odd because I couldn’t see a nose.

“It was great,” I said walking toward the door. “Tell Doug I’ll find my own way there.”

I stepped out onto the street and noticed that it was totally deserted now.  The amount of traffic had been low for what amounted to the main demon settlement in Jersey, but there had at least been some.  Now the streets were entirely empty, and that wasn’t good.

“What’s up with Bruce and Badgelor?” I asked as I casually sprinted down the road.

“Badgelor is way too old for a war badger, Bruce is in charge of death,” said Shart consideringly. “He has a dashboard in his UI and I think Badgelor has been on it for centuries. Frankly, I thought it was a glitch as it kept popping off here and there.”

“Bruce wants to end Badgelor?” I asked.

“Well, he’s not going to be upset when the badger kicks it, if that’s what you mean,” said Shart. “He is death, that is his role. He’s very diligent about it which is why he currently has the job. Plus, Badgelor did eat his predecessor.”

“How did that happen anyway?” I asked.

“No idea, we aren’t really supposed to be able to actually die,” said Shart. “His soul should have returned to Limbo, but it never arrived.”

“That’s disturbing, but at least we are safe,” I said as I decided to check out what the alley situation looked like by running into one.

Yup, that’s an alley.

“I don’t know about that. There are a half dozen demons getting ready for something,” said Shart.  “And they are all pulling out higher level forms.”

“Great,” I said, searching the area.  “Gee, I wonder what is wrong?”

Shart considered that, despite my long connection to him the demon wasn’t the best at reading the subtleties of my voice.  He said, “I don’t know, but they are getting ready to murder the heck out of someone. Do you think maybe Charles came down? I wouldn’t want to be whomever they are looking for.”

“Well, I’m sure we are not involved, out of curiosity what is the fastest way towards Newark,” I said, spotting a road and quickly heading down it.

“Why are we running,” asked Shart after a moment.  “Where is Badgelor?”

“Who knows, probably sleeping somewhere, you know that old badger, so tired,” I continued as I hopped onto the roof of a two story building, then hopped back down.  The crappy roofs were not designed to support any weight.

“Why are there packs of demons roaming the streets,” asked Shart causing a minimap to appear in the corner of my vision where many clusters of demons were wandering. “Those are all kill teams! It looks like a full alert situation.”

“I assume they are having a drill to test readiness,” I offered, diving between two buildings as one of the aforementioned packs of very angry demons walked past.

“Those are their high end war bodies,” said Shart.  “Where is Badgelor?”

“Around,” I offered spotting a path past the next door workshop.

I activated the sprint skill and actually started moving just as the first workshop exploded open and five demons each the size of General Ben stepped out.  They were still getting ready, thankfully, and only the first one had a weapon.  It was a massive demonic sythe that glowed with purple energy.

The succubus wielding it slashed at me, and my Blink skill failed as the anti-magical properties kicked on.  Thankfully, I had Dodge so I still managed to avoid the strike but the near miss managed to peel off a chunk of my armor.

I rolled between her legs and swept them as I passed.  I had to activate Powerful Blow just to get enough force behind the kick to even move her an inch but that wasn’t enough to knock her over, just annoy her.

She also wasn’t my only threat.  A second demon, this one looking like some sort of coked out grasshopper with cheeta legs dashed at me almost faster than I could track.  Almost.  As speedy closed, it darted to the right exposing an armored ball of a shell.  Then it propelled itself right at me.

I materialized behind it, grabbing the creature by it's head and then getting jerked after it.  Whatever magic it was using gave it incredible mass and I didn’t recognize the spell.  An instant later spikes exploded out of all sides of it's body, spearing my hand in several places causing poisonous, infected wounds.

· You have caught Hyper Herpes/Aids/Cancer.  Symptoms include Total Organ Failure, in 5 seconds.

I activated Treatment, negating the worst of it as I extended stamina to brute force my way past the problem and stay in the fight.

The demons hadn’t been expecting that, or my Second wind ability.  I recovered my Stamina and smiled at the wrecking ball.

· One Punch: You have applied an unstoppable force to an unmoving object. Checking, unstoppable force is more unstoppable than the immovable object is immovable.

• <admin>       Seriously?

The demon was just solid enough to apply the damage multipliers I had on inanimate objects.  With Weapon’s Master I was able to apply the Basstown Headbutt knockback modifier.  In total, I was able to blast that demon for nearly a hundred logs because it had the misfortune of choosing the wrong form for the fight.

I aimed it at the other demons.

The succubus lost an arm and a much larger demon behind her had the wrecking ball implanted deeply enough into it's chest cavity that it probably died on impact.  If not then, the second impact when it smashed into the Limbo café certainly did the job.

Because the café exploded with enough force to level all the nearby buildings.

The three remaining demons stared behind them before rounding back on me.  There were hundreds, if not thousands, of demon bodies in that building and they were not combat forms.  Every single one of them had probably been destroyed in that instant.

“That’s his companion,” said another impossibly formed demon.  She had massive shoulders and tiny, stubby arms with delicate fingers on them, mated to a squat, imposing body with oversized legs.

As her shoulders began to glow, I recognized that she was a caster and dropped into Badger’s Stance and attempted to close before she could get her spells off.  I wasn’t fast enough, but it didn’t matter much.

Magical Darts were a basic expression of magic.  That was one of the first spells I had learned, and it was so low power and low damage that I basically had ignored it.  I was wrong.  When the demon cast Magic Darts she didn’t shoot me with four or even twelve of the things.

· Magical Dart Swarm: You have been targeted by 666 Magical Darts.  Each Dart does Eight Points of Arcane Damage.

They formed over her oversized shoulders and held there for a moment before streaming into my anti-magic shell.  I had initially thought that would prove sufficient, but the darts caused it to destabilize the instant they struck it and then continued to hammer at it until my first line of defense popped after the seventy third dart struck it.

I used my Counterspell skill at the same time, but each date was individually cast. I countered one.

The darts had tracking and there was a stamina penalty for dodging multiple simultaneous attacks, and there were still over five hundred of the things incoming rendering dodge worthless.

Next came my Dragon Scales perk, which let me ignore a certain amount of damage from every strike.  In this case, each strike did 8 points and Dragon Scales ignored 3 points of that.

My Sorcerer Path had upgraded Mitigate to work against magical strikes almost as well as it did against physical damage, but I was still blocking at 590 separate 5 point strikes which would have been enough to outright kill me, except for Badger Stance.

· Badger Stance:  Uses 10 mana per tick to enhance your defensive abilities and render you resistant to most magical attacks.

That reduced the damage further, but I wasn’t done yet.  When I went into my stance, I also activated Herald of Badgelor which allowed me to further buff the stance.  Normally, Badger Stance would have reduced the damage by the dart from 5 down to two, but with my full augments each dart ended up doing less than one.

Five hundred and ninety times, but still less than one each.

· Total damage: 354

Then I was on her.

She was already using her magic to levitate away, so I leapt fifteen feet into the air and attacked her with a Badger’s Fist, which instantly caused her spell to become disrupted.  As she started to fall, the demon wizard attempted to recast the spell so I struck at one of her mana cores, conveniently located in her shoulders, causing her entire mana network to collapse temporarily.

Unable to cast spells, she fell to the ground in a heap where I landed on her sternum with my full weight and twisted.  Demons didn’t have a brain, a heart, or any other really vital organs in their bodies, except one.  Their only vital organ amounted to a receiver so they could run their demonic body from wherever their mind was.

As that was a weak point for their race, it tended to be located deep into the most heavily armored section of their bodies because any serious damage to it would cause the demon to, for lack of a better word, malfunction.

When I landed on her, I didn’t damage it.  I damaged the armor plating and as the demon stared at me, I drove my fist through the weakened portion of her chest and tore the heart like organ out entirely.

Then for some reason I took a huge bite out of it.

· You have been poisoned with demonic blood.  All stats affected.  Your mana network is particularly impacted, 50% chance of mana failure.

“I thought I was immune to demon’s blood,” I grunted, puking the bite out as the other demons got back to their feet.

“Just mine,” said Shart.  “You aren’t bonded to them.”

I wobbled.  I didn’t have the stamina pool to cleanse myself of the demonic poison at the moment, which left me in a precarious position.  Without my mana, using a portal to escape was out of the picture and I needed to buy Badgelor a bit more time before we departed.

The remaining two demons realized my predicament and stepped forward.  The first demon I’d fought only had one arm, and a two handed weapon, so I was pretty sure I could still manage her.  The other demon had five arms and looked like someone had taken a paper doll and folded it over several times before scribbling on it with a crayon.

He tore off one of his arms and handed it to the other demon.  She attached it with a snapping sound that had no place in an organic body.

“I call hax,” I grumbled, getting back on my feet.  They quickly moved to surround me and I realized that holding out for Badgelor was a bad idea. I was too wobbly and spent to fight both of these demons. If I tried, I was likely going to get killed.

“Fine,” hissed Shart, who finally made his presence known by materializing on my shoulder in his lithe familiar form.  When I’d first encountered Shart he looked just about like Phil from the old Disney Hercules movie.  Now he looked like a tiny satan, a lithe imp from someone’s nightmares.  It took a bit to process.

Both remaining demons stared at shart, a complicated tapestry of emotions playing out on their faces before one pointed and screamed out Shart’s name among his people

“THE ASSHOLE!”

“They don’t call you <Kevin>,” I thought.

“Nope, I am not popular at all down here,” said Shart as he pointed at the first demon and fired a purple ray at her.  She cleaved it in twain with her scythe and followed up with an instant strike that slashed through a barrier Shart created.

The Elder Demon was non-pulsed, grabbing the shaft of the weapon and loosing Radiant energy down it causing the demon’s hands to burn as she released the weapon.  Before Shart had any time to capitalize on the attack, the four armed demon was on him swinging a variety of daggers.

Shart’s barrier had a large crack in it and the other demon crammed two daggers into it, prying the magical shell apart while it desperately tried to fling another dagger inside the barrier.

The other demon had forgotten about me, which was a mistake because while I wasn’t operating at 100%, I was still potent.  I came in low, striking at her knee with as much force as I could muster.  I struck the joint with a powerful blow on the reverse articulated knee and the leg snapped forward at an impossible angle.  The joint shattered in a spray of viscera.

Then the other Limbo location’s front door opened up.  A half dozen demons ran out shrieking, searching around until they found Shart.  None of them were combat frames, but dozens more followed the first.

“We need to get out of here,” I muttered, grabbing the Sythe and trying to wield it.  The weapon was made for a 12 foot tall demoness with inhuman proportions.  I used it to carve the now three armed demon in half from the back before turning to face the oncoming horde.

If it had just been the now hundreds of weaker demons I might have chanced it.  Unfortunately, another four kill teams were also coming this way.

“They really don’t like you,” I hissed.

“Gee, you think.  Where is that idiot?” growled Shart.

Suddenly a flash of purple energy struck the first member of the demonic horde, blasting through him before splintering into pencil thin streams of energy that carved through most of the demons chasing me.

“I’m here,” growled Badgelor, “Are we ready to go?”

I focused on the ground, feeling out my mana network as I attempted to use Treatment to clear out the demonic poison but it had gotten in too deep.  With Badgelor nearby I could share his stamina pool so with a bit of time I could manage it… then I paused.

“Oh, damn it.”  I focused on Shart using our familiar bond and generated a portal as far away as I could see towards Newark. Then I dropped another portal right below my feet.

The city full of demons last sight of me was the three of us dropping into the portal. Of course, all three of us were guns blazing, because feck ‘em.