Chapter XXIV
Cover! Or first attempt at it?
***
Silas tossed up a shield just in time to catch a punch from the daemon. The shield exploded, and the magical backlash sent him flying back.
Carrot stumbled after him, shoved back by the same sudden burst of energy. “Mister Silas!” she shouted. “Are you okay?”
Silas stood up, idly brushing his coat free of dust. “Get back, Carrot,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’m going to distract the daemon. You... run. You can take out the little ones, right? Hit them hard, break a window or something, and get out of here.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“Tell Summer that I fought well?”
Carrot paused, blinking at him. “You have a wife?!”
“What? No, Summer’s my sister. Wait, why did you sound so surprised?”
“I don’t know. You just don’t seem marriable.”
“What does that mean?”
Carrot waved her hands. “No no, I didn’t mean it in a bad way?”
The fisher daemon cleared his throat. “How touching, but until you’re minced up and added to my Master’s potions, your chatter is doing nothing but waste both of our time.”
Silas swallowed even as he started to slowly channel his magic into the form of a new spell. He didn’t have nearly as much practice with this one, but it was one of his most powerful abilities, and if there was ever a time when he needed something with a bit of kick to it...
“You know, Magical Society won’t let this fly. Your Master will be going down,” he said. It was a vague threat, but it was the best he could come up with while splitting his attention.
“As if my Master doesn’t have ties to your precious society already,” the daemon said. Then it rushed forwards.
“Chains of Darkness!” Carrot snapped.
Three chains flew out from the shadows of crates and machines and flung themselves around the daemon’s arms and middle. It braked suddenly in mid-air, then fell, only it still landed with surprising grace, and within a moment it had grabbed onto the chains at its front and started to pull.
Silas and Carrot both stared as the links of her chain started to stretch, then one of them popped apart with a metallic clink.
Still, the spell had won them a few seconds. “Run, Carrot,” Silas said before he raised an open palm towards the daemon. “By theorem, trial, and necessary amendment, Exterminator Art: Zoufii’s Corrective Bolt!”
His magic flowed out of him, and he felt his reserves drop precipitously as it was funneled into the shape of a new spell. Then, the spell exploded outwards.
The daemon roared and leapt aside, but he was still partially tangled in Carrot’s chains, and didn’t quite get far enough to avoid the blast. The spell rammed into the monster’s flank and tufts of fur went flying even as the entire room was lit up with actinic light and the scent of ozone filled the air.
Zoufii’s Corrective Bolt was a pure anti-daemon spell. It very specifically created a link between the caster and the daemon they hit with the spell. The main function was relatively simple. It took negative energy and turned it into something similar to electrical energy.
It was a newer spell, as such things went, and was well-regarded in the Ordo Venator for its ability to punch above its weight class.
The fisher daemon rolled on the ground, and Silas gathered his energy and pressed it into the spell. A second bolt erupted, half as strong as the first, but at only a tenth of the cost.
That was the other benefit of the spell. As long as he could keep it running, he could continuously use it for relatively little to deliver a decent amount of damage.
“I’ll clear us an exit,” Carrot said.
“Go!” he grunted. Sweat was beading on his brow, especially as the daemon rose onto four legs and growled.
“Cute trick,” it said.
“It gets cuter,” Silas replied.
He shot another jolt, and the daemon flinched as it was wracked over by a surge of crackling energy. Still, the daemon wasn’t going down. Instead, it roared and trampled forwards.
Silas ducked aside, avoiding it. The daemon rammed into some crates, then spun around and rushed him again. This time, he wasn’t so lucky, and one of the daemon’s sweeps caught him in the leg and sent him crashing down onto his back.
He expected the daemon to lay into him, but when he looked up, the daemon was across the room and... opening a box?
He only realized what it was doing when the daemon pulled out a bottle and bit off the cork keeping it closed. “Oh no,” Silas muttered.
The daemon downed the contents of the bottle, then sighed. “That hits the spot,” he said even as his fur regained its luxurious colour. “I’ll have to make up the difference with your remains. Can’t have the Master be disappointed by a loss of stock, can I?”
Silas fired off another Corrective Bolt, but the daemon just grinned and bore it.
“See, boy, the secret to hard work is endurance. Did you really think that I’d let you hit me over and over if I couldn’t learn the lesson? Your petty magic will do nothing to me now, wizard.”
Silas growled, then put considerably more force into his next attack. This time, the daemon flinched and crouched as the magical electricity ran over it. “Liar,” Silas said.
He did suspect that there was some truth to it, though. The daemon had some sort of ability to negate damage, and it was growing stronger. Whether or not it was specifically adapting to spells was another thing.
Climbing to his feet, Silas faced his opponent. He was vaguely aware that Carrot was making a mess of the rest of the factory. He didn’t doubt that she could handle a couple of lesser daemons. What she needed was time, and he could at least give her that.
“Once I’m done with you,” the daemon said as he grinned, displaying sharp canines. “I’m going to take my time eating the smaller wizardling.”
“Hey! Fuzzy-butt! Friends aren’t for eating!”
Silas groaned as Carrot made her triumphant return onto the scene, hands at her hips and back straight. There was a lot of smoke behind her, and he suspected that a few daemons were regretting their day back there.
“You’re getting in the way of my productivity!” the daemon roared.
Silas dove to the side, but it wasn’t fast enough. He felt something stabbing into his side, then winced as he was thrown across the ground to skid into a pile of detritus. The daemon was practically glowing with magical energy as it scooped up a large box, then flung it across the room towards Carrot.
She eeped and ducked under the crate which exploded against a pillar behind her and rained down bits of wood all over.
“Run, dammit!” Silas shouted.
“Friends don’t let friends be eaten!” Carrot shouted.
Silas grunted, then fired off another Corrective Bolt. His reserves were starting to get dangerously low, but he couldn’t stand the idea of Carrot being chewed up on his account.
The daemon barely seemed to notice his spell. Instead, it stomped across the room, each step making the ground tremble.
Silas started to stand, then gasped and touched his side. He’d definitely pulled something. Before he could get away, a massive paw grabbed the front of his shirt and jacket, then lifted him right off the ground.
He recoiled as the daemon laughed in his face, breath like rotting fish. “What now, wizardling?” the daemon asked.
“Black Petal Thorns!”
The daemon hunched in on itself as three, then three more petals stabbed into its back with a staccato of thumps. He grunted, then spun around and flung Silas across the room.
Carrot jumped up, and instead of ramming into a machine, he thumped into her, throwing them both onto the ground.
“Carrot,” he said. “I told you to run.”
“I didn’t like the idea,” she admitted. “Mister Silas, this guy’s kinda strong.”
“Yeah,” he said.
That was maybe an understatement. But on a similar note, they were also rather lucky. An avowed daemon was one who had made a deal with magic itself, and unlocked a significant amount of power. That could mean new and more powerful abilities.
The one seemed bigger and tougher. It was more of a brute, and he suspected that the daemon’s ability to adapt to magical attacks was part of its avowed abilities.
If this same daemon had gained different, more potent powers, then this might be over already.
Silas coughed and pressed a hand against his side. He suspected that a rib or two was out of place, they pinched his insides when he breathed. Still, he turned and climbed onto his feet. “Run, please,” he said.
“No thanks,” Carrot said. “I... watch out!”
Silas ducked and threw up one of the fastest Shields he had ever managed. It cracked apart as a long piece of something metal bashed against it, but it had saved him and Carrot. Then he threw up another to catch another piece of scrap, then another. Each one was a blow to his reserves, scooping out more and more of his magic.
He heard Carrot mumbling next to him, her head turned down and shadowed by her hat. Then she moved her hands up before her, and he was able to pick out the words of her incantation. “Shadows crowned in thorns, twilight wrapped in fangs, starlight swallowed and sorrow tempered. By fallen light and friendship that will not yield. Dark Magical Girl Art: Umbral Sanctuary!”
A wave of magic washed past him, ruffling clothes and hair, then it snapped into place as a massive dome that immediately turned night to day.
Silas lowered his arms and looked around, only he couldn’t see anything. “Is this your new shield?” he asked. His voice was strange, muffled.
“Yeah,” Carrot said. There was a shuffling behind him, then light. Carrot was holding up a cellphone. “It’s, uh, dark?”
“You know, seeing through your shield is a feature that’s rather important,” he said.
“Well, I haven’t figured out how to do that, yet,” Carrot said. “Also, I think this is, uh, airtight?”
There was a hard thump as something hit the shield, then again a moment later. It held, however.
“So we have... a few seconds?”
“Like, at least a minute? How much air does a person breathe?”
“A lot,” he said.
Carrot shrugged. “If I faint, I think the shield will break, so we can’t suffocate, at least. Well, not for long.”
“Yes, and then we’ll be on the floor for the daemons to eat us,” he said. He took a deep breath, then let it out as a sigh. Touching his side, he felt at his ribs. Definitely something wrong there.
“If they’re patient. Maybe help will come?”
“Before we die?” he asked.
Carrot blinked, then rummaged in her pockets. She came back with a small notepad and clicky pen. “So... we have about two metres in diameter here, minus the floor space, but let’s assume it’s a sphere. That’s... pie, and the radius is one, more or less, and that space is not pure oxygen, and it’s at a pressure equivalent of about sea level... that leaves us with...” She frowned at her paper which was filled with numbers and figures. “How many liters of oxygen would you say you breathe in an hour?”
“What? I have no idea.”
“Well, then how am I supposed to find out how long we have before we die of carbon dioxide poisoning?”
“What even is that?” he asked.
She stared at him. “Don’t you have science classes at your magic school? Chemistry? You do have math, right?”
He sighed. “Look, that was years ago, and I was focused more on learning magic.”
“Hmpf. Well, we have like, give or take three to seven hours.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s more than I thought.”
“Is it long enough to learn anything that would let us kick that daemon’s butt?” she asked.
“No.”
“Not even that cool vow magic you were on about just a few minutes ago which sounds like it makes you super strong and awesome?” she asked.
“The average wizard knight takes two to three years to learn a vow,” he said.
“We have two to three hours, but I’m a fast learner!”
***