We set off at a jog, scanning the environment for hazards. A screech from the queen's condor echoed in the lonely twilight, sending shivers down my spine. At the next tree bridge, we continued our ascent at a quick pace, hoping to make it back to solid ground as fast as possible.
The branches where the trees met crawled with dark wings and a cacophony of high-pitched mewling. The most dangerous part of the crossing was blocked by cat bats.
Chapter 28
"Retreat," I said.
"What good will going back do?" Elyssa asked.
"We're about to find out." I withdrew to the window of my soul and almost immediately sensed Haedaemos. It made sense this border realm was much closer to the spirit world than even Eden. "What's the one thing cats don't like?"
"Water," she said. "Did you bring a firehose?"
I reached for a willing spirit and located a minor entity that fit the profile I wanted. "What's something else cats don't like?"
"Having their fur petted the wrong way." Elyssa narrowed her eyes. "You realize how hard it will be to do that when they're swooping at us and gnawing on our faces?"
I rolled my eyes. "You're being intentionally dense, aren't you?"
She gave me an innocent look. "Who, me?"
Directing my concentration to a spot of earth, I ordered my new minion to spawn. As it clawed its way from the netherworld and into this one, I found another demon spirit and directed it to manifest. Within minutes, two hellhounds the size of Great Danes burst from the ground and howled. The first one snapped at me. I stood my ground and bared my teeth at it. It snarled and lunged. I grabbed it by the neck and slammed it on the ground.
You are mine!
I sent to it.
It bucked and snapped but couldn't break my iron grip. Finally, it whined and looked away from me. The other hound trotted over and sniffed my butt, then rolled over on its back for a good belly rub.
"That one sure is a softie," Elyssa said.
"Meet our secret weapons, Snapper and Bugsy." I rubbed Bugsy's tummy then stood and looked up the bridge. Hellhounds could shapeshift into different forms, but making them grow wings wouldn't enable them to fly. During my early days of summoning hellhounds, I'd experimented quite a bit to learn their limitations. Morphing required an intimate knowledge of physiology. Just because I knew what something looked like didn't mean I could command the hounds transform into it.
More often than not they could mimic the appearance, but if I didn't imagine the joints and everything else properly, they wouldn't be able to move. In other words, I couldn't launch my own fleet of flying dog bats, but I also didn't need to. Hopefully the big brutes would keep the cat bats away from us.
Scare away the cats at the top of the tree
. I told them.
Bugsy woofed excitedly.
Cats!
He loped up the tree bridge, Snapper right on his heels.
I waved Elyssa to follow. "Let's go."
The cat bats exploded from the tree as the massive hounds closed in. Swooping and hissing, they stayed just out of reach. One of them dove at me. Snapper leapt and snatched it from the air like a hairy Frisbee and crunched down. Bugsy batted another from the air with a big paw, his face alight with puppy delight.
I kept threads of aether on standby in case I needed to channel a shield. If the swarm really wanted us, it would be hard to stop them. We reached the other side of the bridge and ran across the plain of yellow grass.
The stomp of hooves and whinnies rose with a cloud of dust a few hundred yards away to our right. The two spider giraffes skittered toward us from the left. Directly ahead, a herd of small beige elephants charged out of the trees. Behind us swarmed the cat bats.
The condor screeched.
"Remind me to shoot that stupid bird," I growled.
Elyssa's head swiveled as if she were watching a tennis match. "We're going to need more hellhounds."
"Hellhounds won't do much against those small elephants or the ponies." I'd have to use destruction to carve a path. I fired a blast of Brilliance straight ahead. The energy splashed harmlessly off the thick hide of the elephants. "Crap."
"Understatement of the year," Elyssa said. "We'll have to juke them."
"Hang on." I had Plan B in the works, but if it didn't work, it'd be a doozy. I didn't have much time, so I latched onto the fiercest minor demon I came to first. It writhed and struggled in my psychic grasp, trying to crawl free. I amped up my willpower and held it in place long enough to project my attention on the ground ahead.
The presence of the infernal creature pressed like lead bricks on my mind. I'd only summoned a crawler once as practice, and it had nearly taken off my head. Now I remembered why I hadn't tried again. Though it was nothing compared to the Abyssal, holding onto it and controlling the hellhounds was no minor feat. The black ooze writhed as my summoned creature began to form.
A flash of pink was the only warning I had as one of the ponies rammed into my leg and sent me rolling. My connection with the crawler sundered and I landed in a heap. Elyssa picked up the little pink pony by its left legs and flung it toward its herd. It bowled through a dozen of them, slowing their advance. I pushed unsteadily to my feet and saw something that was definitely not a crawler rip its way from primordial black ooze.
Dozens of faces trapped beneath rubbery black skin screamed and writhed as if trying to escape their prison of flesh. A body like a scorpion with a stinger of crocodile jaws followed the gruesome head of faces. A newly summoned monster scorp rose up before the elephant herd and screeched in challenge. I didn't have time to see what happened next because the rest of our magical little pony friends were nearly on top of us.
I counted at least thirty—too much mass to stop with a simple shield. The hellhounds howled and leapt to the fore, jaws snapping. The ponies whinnied and bit back with razor sharp teeth. Though the hounds outweighed them individually, they stood no chance against the collective.
Raising a finger, I fired a thin beam of Brilliance. It smoked against the hide of a purple pony, but didn't penetrate. The pony squealed and bucked crazily. "Magic isn't going to cut it against these things."
"I can tell," Elyssa said. "Your hounds are getting pulverized."
Elephantine trumpets of pain tore my attention back to the monster scorp. Its tail chomped down on one mini-elephant while its claws snapped the head off another. At three-times the size of its attackers, and behind the protection of shiny black chitin, the scorp didn't seem to have any problems.
I couldn't say the same for us. Snapper shook off five ponies and tore the guts from another, but Bugsy went down beneath a pile, his terrible yelps going silent. His doggy spirit would return to Haedaemos, but his physical body was done for.
The cat bats saw their chance and dove at us. Elyssa round-housed one pony and snapped the neck of another as they broke past the hellhounds. I fired off a torrent of Brilliance. Smoking cat bats spiraled out of the air with yowls of pain.
I pumped a fist. "Magic finally puts one on the scoreboard."
Elyssa leapt and spiked her feet down atop a charging pony. The little monster's snout plowed into the dirt. She looked up, face wet with tears, eyes haunted. "Why is that evil bitch making me kill ponies?"
"I didn't realize it was so traumatic for you." Two more ponies galloped at me. I flipped over them and booted one in the backside, slamming it into the other one.
"I love ponies!" Elyssa dodged a charge and stared down a red pony. "Please don't make me do this."
The monster flashed fangs and whinnied. Gobs of hellhound flesh hung from its jaws.
"These aren't the ponies you fell in love with," I said. "Don't expect them to crap rainbow-flavored ice cream or nuzzle you for affection."
"I know." Sadness weighed her voice. "Vicious little perversions."
Loud hisses told me the fourth threat was almost upon us. I rolled to the left as a cobra head struck where I'd been. The other spider giraffe lunged at Elyssa. She picked up the red pony and slung it at the other monster's face. The cobra head chomped down on the unexpected meal and chewed on it.
I risked a glance toward the scorp. Blood and gore coated the path we had to take and only a few elephants remained. A torn-off scorp leg twitched, but the rest of the demon scorp looked undamaged aside from chunks of missing chitin. I'd completely lost my link to the creature which meant it would try to kill us the moment it had a chance. It was too tall to leap over and too low to the ground to slide beneath. Spiky black trees blocked us to the sides, so that left us little choice but to run straight at it.
The ponies finished off Snapper, rending the poor hellhound to a grease spot and turned to us. The spider giraffes finished munching on the carcasses of the ponies and skittered toward us with evil intent. The cat bats clustered and swooped around for another attack.
"Plan C," I announced and grabbed Elyssa's hand. We ran pell-mell toward the scorp.
"Plan C?" she shouted over the roar and din of hisses, whinnies, and mews behind us. "I didn't even know there was a Plan A or B!"
"We're going to run over the scorp." The demon rotated on its remaining five legs and snapped its gore-stained claws. "Try to avoid the claws!"
"Maybe we should skip to Plan D." Elyssa's gaze focused on the demon, no doubt visualizing the safest path to victory.
I couldn't stop looking at its horrific face of many faces and wondering if mine would be trapped inside if it ate me.
Images of claws rending me to Justin stew flashed through my mind and I realized the scorp was talking to me. Unlike hellhounds, these things didn't use words. I sent back an image of it lustily tearing into spider giraffes accompanied by a nice red wine, hoping it might think they were a more tantalizing target. It stubbornly sent another image of it ripping into my guts.
Are you mad at me for summoning you, or just grouchy?
The monster sent no response, probably because it didn't understand, but more likely because it didn't care.
I closed in on the scorp, juking left and drawing its attention solely to me. The scorp turned just enough to offer its side to Elyssa. She jumped atop a leg and ran across its back. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the herd of death closing in. Drawing upon Murk, I channeled a sheet of slick ice on the ground and then leapt to the side.
The spider giraffes and my little ponies of death hit the ice. Legs motoring furiously on the slick surface, they skidded right into the monster scorp with a resounding symphony of whinny-hiss-screeches loud enough to wake the dead. I swept the air with a blast of Brilliance, driving away the cat bats, and then clambered atop the heap of snapping jaws, hissing cobra heads, and the screaming demon faces. The scorp's tail stabbed down at me as I ran across its back. I dove forward and rolled off the armored back, landing heavily on the ground.
Elyssa jerked me out of the path of another stab that sliced a nearby tree in half. Before the scorp could skitter after us, the rest of the monsters on its flank took out their frustrations on the demon.
The queen's condor screeched in displeasure. I raised a fist at it but Elyssa jerked my hand back. "Don't piss her off unless you want the vines and trees to attack us!"
I grudgingly nodded and looked around at the crooked forest as we raced through it. "Yeah, we're not out of the woods yet."
Elyssa rolled her eyes. "Save the smartass remarks for later."
We stopped at the edge of the forest and looked uneasily up at the next tree bridge. A flock of the giant condors circled overhead.
I pounded a fist into my palm. "This just isn't fair."
"Got any flying demons up your sleeve?" Elyssa asked.
"No." I stared up at the next obstacle. "If those birds are magic resistant, there's no way we'll get past them."
"We'd have to hijack one," Elyssa said grimly.
"How are we supposed to do that with the queen controlling them?" I asked.
She sighed. "Scratch that idea."
"All they have to do is knock us off the bridge." I imagined those huge wings and claws beating and tearing at us as we tried to navigate the narrow branch connector at the top.
Elyssa's eyes lit with an idea. "What if they can't see us?"
I frowned. "Is this camouflage armor?"
She shook her head. "No, but you can make fog, right?"
It had been a while since I'd messed with the forces of nature. I'd created a monstrous tornado that nearly killed my own people. Fjoeruss had taught me the basics of elemental magic, but he hadn't taught me how to make fog. Then again, I didn't have to blanket the area to keep the birds from seeing us.
I took a quick headcount of our adversaries. The sound of hoofs pounding behind us told me we didn't have much time to make a move before the rest of the Glimmer gang caught up to us. Four condors—eight eyes to cover.
"I hope this works," I muttered.
"You never answered my question," Elyssa said. "Are you using fog?"
"No, I'm going with something a bit more localized." I glanced back down the path and saw the spider giraffes, ponies, and the surviving mini-elephants racing our way. "Be ready with a Plan E if this doesn't pan out." I dashed toward the tree bridge.
Elyssa pulled even with me as we raced up the incline. "Is this Plan D?"
The Condors saw us coming and unleashed a chorus of warbling screeches that made the hair on my neck stand on end. They attacked when we were nearly to the top. I thrust out my hand and channeled a sticky strand of Murk similar to what I'd used to climb buildings, but focusing this one into a thick glob.
It smacked into the lead condor's head right above the beak and coated its eyes. With a surprised cry, it veered left and thudded into the tree bridge. The bough shook violently, throwing me and Elyssa off balance. She screamed and vanished over the edge.
"Elyssa!" I dove after her and caught her hand.
I tried to grasped a branch, but my fingers missed and our momentum carried us both over the edge and into the sea of stars.