Title-- The Demon-God of Jubagh (part twenty-six)
Rating and Warnings-- PG-13; mild language and violence.
Cast-- Rai Gerring, defected black magician (human man); Brandon Styhan, exiled paladin-warrior (human man); Lhafa Softstep, possessed spirit warrior (baghan woman); various Lightworkers (presumably human men); various holy men and spirit warriors (baghan men and women).
Previously-- Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen, Part Sixteen, Part Seventeen, Part Eighteen, Part Nineteen, Part Twenty, Part Twenty-One, Part Twenty-Two, Part Twenty-Three, Part Twenty-Four, Part Twenty-Five.



Rai folded smoldering wings and dove as the terrain changed to a steep downwards slant. At the bottom of the slope, some wood-and-weed huts had been hastily erected, scattered in a clump near an impressive arrangement of huge stones and living trees. Except for the leafless trees that were part of the peculiar pattern, the forest ended at the top of the hillside, leaving the rest to tall grass and patches of rocky dirt.

Behind him, one of the last trees toppled, leaves withering into ash as the wood blackened in a cloud of smoke. Heedless of the charred trail he had left, the black magician swept down the hillside on outstretched pinions. He counted a dozen or so individual huts, one to each hexer, three or four spirit warriors accompanying each of them. Already, hands were raised to point at the tree he had scorched.

Cloaked, they could not see him; cloaked, he could fly. And so, cloaked, Rai soared just above the woven roofs of the huts, catching each ablaze and sending thick smoke spiraling towards the bland sky. He did not veer towards the monoliths and barren trees, surmising that they would be warded; now that he had people to kill, magical barriers didn't interest him. He knew he was losing control, but he couldn't find the energy to care. The fires he caused only deepened the shadows that called to him.

Brandon emerged from the ashen trail, panting, and paused at the top of the slope. Everything below him was burning, and the gathered baghans turned towards the treeline where he stood. They'd blame him - radiating with white fire and golden light, he would seem to be the one to wreak such havoc.

The exiled paladin grinned widely as he lifted both arms high, as though to praise the Light like the old priests did in the cathedrals. Somewhere, unseen, was a black magician that he'd try to kill out of sheer instinct if they crossed paths too many times, but shadow and light had gotten good at dancing so that they never truly clashed. The hexers were already sucking magic out of the very air, smoke and light and all, beginning to chant or cast individually; spirit warriors hefted spears and looked uncertain, unwilling to fight a holy man but having nothing else to do. He laughed like thunder as holy fire gathered in his hands and began to rain down.

Rai's chest constricted painfully and he floundered mid-air, crashing ten feet to the ground before his cloak was ripped apart and the strength of his soulform caged again. One of the hexers must have figured out how to reveal him. It was hailing white fire, he realized as he looked up through the smoky haze.

More importantly, two hexers had switched their focus from the distant paladin to him. Rai pushed himself to his knees, then stood, brushing ash from his dark robes before locking gazes with the hexers. They were too obviously of different tribes, now that he knew how to tell them apart - one had reddish-yellow fur with dark splotches, and the other was white-and-brown in stripes. Their spirit warriors stepped back, out of the line of fire.

Line of fire. The thought made him smile, and he made a tossing gesture with one hand. Flames raced from his thin fingers along smoke and shadows, turning both to ash before striking one of the hexers full in the chest; the spotted baghan grunted and staggered backwards, a few quick gestures of his own keeping the fire from spreading to his clothing and face. "No," Rai said conversationally, pressing the flames deeper into the baghan's flesh with a deft motion. "You are not allowed to live." The hexer struggled, but as his ribcage charred and his blood boiled, his heart failed and he fell.

The ground beneath the magician's feet shivered, roots jerking past the surface to coil around his legs with crushing force. He glanced at the striped baghan with a thin, predatory smile. "I don't understand why it was so hard for Brandon to defeat the Rockhide," he mused in his own tongue, incinerating the roots with a quick spell. "These hexers are not a challenge." He didn't notice his own voice growing raspy and guttural as he chanted to shape a demon from the smoke and fire of a nearby hut. The half-aware construct lumbered towards the second hexer and curled intangible talons around the baghan's head, squeezing.

The hexer crumpled, blood seeping from his ears and nose, and Rai looked for his next target as the demon fully manifested and prowled back to his side, smoke and flames obscuring all-too-real flesh and claws. The magician didn't bat an eye at the change; he merely lifted his arm and pointed at the nearest hexer, and the demon sprang to attack.

Brandon had stopped trying to ward himself or deflect the spells from the small mob of hexers focusing on him; he took the blows, suffered the pain, and occasionally spared a breath to heal himself when his body threatened to give out. Other than that, he simply let holy fire spread, falling in globs like hellish rain and then catching on everything that would burn, including grass. Three of the hexers and half a dozen of the spirit warriors had already been seared into white ash.

He would raze this place to the ground, and gladly. "Be purified, heathens," he muttered under his breath, a smile splitting his face open as Light filled him.

"Holy one!" It was a familiar voice, a woman's voice. He'd heard it before. Now, if he could just think of... it hadn't been the monastery, had it?... maybe the cathedral, one of the singers?... "The other outlanders are not far behind!" Outlanders? These natives? Reinforcements? What... wait, what language was she...

"...Softstep?" He turned his head just enough to catch sight of her, memory resurfacing. His Light-enhanced vision centered in on the build-up of power in her amulet, and he saw the residue of ritual-work smearing magic on her fingers, her eyes, and her solar plexus. He wondered what she'd done. "What?"

"The men who are chasing us," she clarified, pointing a lean arm towards the treeline in the direction she'd came. "They are nearly here. They saw me, but I outran them."

She was blind. He remembered now. She still wore the stained and scorched cloth around her head. "How'd you outrun them if you can't see?" he asked, the rain of holy fire slackening as his mind shifted focus.

"I used a Rockhide ritual to see spirits," she answered, her face turning side to side with no focus as though she sought to see with eyes that no longer existed. "The magic already fades, though. It... seems we are winning?"

Brandon looked over the charred skeletons of huts and corpses with eyes a-gleam. "Yeah, we are." He grinned widely. "Kinda anticlimactic, you know, all this fret over how strong these guys are, and we kill half of 'em without even trying..." He trailed off, smile fading, as a demon furred in living flames leapt upon a cluster of spirit warriors and ripped them apart. "...Rai lost it. Shit. He hasn't let a demon manifest in... ah, hells." He turned to her. "Softstep, get somewhere safe. This is about to get messier than it already is."

Before he'd finished, the blind woman had already moved down the slope, sliding into a fighting stance as two spear-wielding baghans charged her. "...spirit warriors fight spirit warriors," the paladin recalled with a sigh. The demon would need killed quickly, but so would the rest of the hexers. He was already feeling the strain of exhaustion; they'd taken all the magic out of the land for their own use.

There was a flash of light from Lhafa's body, and one of the other spirit warriors collapsed with a howl, and the other one jerked to a stop, shuddered, and fled back to her hexer. Lhafa hit her knees, clutching at a suddenly-dimmed talisman.

Behind him, a voice rang out - a woman's voice, again, but not a baghan. "Brother Styhan! In the name of the Light, cease!"