Will saw her clearly as she stared up at the demon looming over her. She looked tired, and for the first time the white shock of hair made her look old rather than exotic. He could tell she had nothing left, but somehow she managed a force-wall anyway.
The demon’s makeshift corpse weapon fell apart when it slammed into the force spell, but that didn’t deter it. Its fists were literal battering rams. Janice bent and picked up a longsword that was obviously too heavy for her and scraped together the turyn to cast a silver-sword spell on it. The force-wall collapsed under the weight of the demon’s blows before she could lift the weapon to defend herself, though.
Will’s light-darts bored holes through the demon’s side, but they weren’t enough to stop it. Clawed fists came down, but before they reached Janice, one of the soldiers leapt to her defense; a massive man in mail and breastplate with a long spear in his hands.
Tiny seemed almost to fly through the air before slamming his spear into the quadrupedal demon’s chest. Big as he was, his mass was enough to drive the weapon entirely through the demon, which finally had the sense to collapse.
The one following after it had a better weapon, a ridiculously large iron sword which it swept horizontally through the air at the man who had just slain its comrade. Tiny had no weapon, his spear being fully embedded in the dead demon on the ground before him, nor did he have a shield. Even if the massive sword struck his breastplate, it would probably kill him just from the shock of the blow.
The blade stopped dead in the air, just inches from his chest, and Will could see the telltale turyn of a point-defense shield vanishing a moment later, though it wasn’t his. Was that Janice? His suspicion was confirmed when she moved forward a moment later and blocked a second attack the same way.
Tiny dropped an empty glass vial to the ground while at the same time Janice fended off two more attacks. She had already dropped the bespelled sword for him, but as Tiny lifted it from the ground, her luck finally ran out. A third demon had come at her from the side and she failed to stop the spear it held in time.
Blood flashed through the air like a grotesque red flower as the spearhead passed through Janice’s belly and emerged from her side. Will felt his heart clench in time with the scream of rage and horror that tore free from Tiny’s throat.
And then a new beast entered the battle as Tiny brought the blazing sword around to cleave the head of the demon who had slain Janice. Nothing had changed about his size or appearance, though Will knew that beneath his armor Tiny’s veins had turned black under the influence of the dragon’s heart potion he had taken.
With the fiery silver sword in hand, John Shaw, the gentle giant known to his friends as Tiny, went berserk and tore into the oncoming demons with no care or concern for his own life. He cut through the first massive demons as though they were children, and somewhere along the way he found a second weapon, a mace with a black iron head, to occupy his left hand—and still, even with two weapons, it wasn’t enough to give vent to all the rage and despair in his heart.
With the potion feeding his fury, Tiny’s strength and reflexes were enough to make even a vampire jealous. He cut and smashed a path through demons several times his size and showed no sign of stopping. Will could almost believe his friend might singlehandedly dismantle the demon advance and continue on to kill them all, but Tiny wasn’t the only soldier who had been tasked with protecting the sorcerers at the center.
They’d been caught on the back foot, but others followed Tiny’s lead, downing the same potion and racing into battle behind him. The exhausted ritualists cast the silver-sword spell on their guardians’ weapons, and the tide quickly began to turn. Over the span of a minute or less, the demons’ advance faltered and then fell apart.
Tiny was beyond logic or reason, and he left his companions behind as he cut and slashed his way to where the shield-wall should be, and there he seemed happy to fight until he died or his potion ran out, which would amount to the same thing.
Will wanted to help more