Amadea and the Divinity Blade - Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“If you really believe what you say, then why don’t you come out from that barrier?” A deep and terrifying voice challenged them from a place they couldn’t locate.

“Show yourself, demon!” Amadea commanded from just inside their protective barrier.

“Why should I? You’ll just use the opportunity to attack me from the dubious safety of your little circle.” The voice sneered.

“See!” Zira screamed in frustration. “This is exactly what I was talking about!”

Zephyr quietly muttered a spell, and then paused to look at his brothers. “Everyone, stay inside the barrier!” He leapt through a hastily cut doorway, trusting that Amadea would seal it up after her own exit.

Amadea followed him through the doorway, sealed it, and loudly began to chant her own spell. Zephyr finished his first. He released it in the direction he was fairly sure the demon lurked.

“Astral explosion!” The spell was useful for penetrating a demon’s protective barrier, and shattering it.

“What?!” The demon demanded in surprise, visible now. “How did you know where I am?”

Amadea finished her spell, and smirked as she released it. “Fists of justice!” Immediately, her hands glowed with a golden-red light, and she punched the demon in the stomach.

Zephyr shook his head. “Now that I know you were raised an Imperial Princess, I seriously wonder where you learned that spell.”

“My father may have tried to protect me from the world, but he allowed me unlimited access to the Imperial library, and there are several books of spells written by my grandfather featuring these wonderful spells.” Amadea explained happily as she punched the demon again. One would almost think that the two of them were having a pleasant discussion over tea rather than fighting a terrifying opponent.

“Foolish human!” The demon roared in pain, and flung Amadea as far away as he could.

She had expected this, and calmly waited until she landed to stand up and start chanting a new spell. Meanwhile, Zephyr shouted “Astral explosion!” again, and then aimed his spirit arrow. The astral spell was to ensure that the demon had not put up a new shield, and would inflict some powerful damage if there wasn’t a shield.

The demon dodged the spell, and made a few unintelligible sounds. He wisely kept moving, knowing that it would be difficult for Zephyr to hit a moving target. Suddenly, he flung a searing blaze at Zephyr.

Amadea didn’t show the slightest concern for her husband, and used the opportunity to release her own spell. “Astral interference!” This spell was designed to make it difficult for an opponent to think or concentrate, which would make it hard for them to cast any spells.

“Ha!” Zephyr taunted. “My skin is made out of rock, you’ll have to better than that!”

“Is that so?” The demon stated with a hint of mystery. He pointed to Zephyr, and released another attack. “Rock borer!”

A spiral of black energy appeared out of thin air, and chased Zephyr around the area. It was determined to drill into him no matter how much he evaded it. Zephyr wracked his brains to come up with a defense, but nothing came to mind.

Amadea forced herself to pay attention to the demon, since he was obviously targeting her now. She held out her hands as if aiming a bow, and the next moment she was holding one. “Spirit arrow!”

The first shot missed, as did all of the others, since the demon was not taking any chances. As he dodged and weaved, Zira did what she did best. She was a ghost, so it didn’t matter if she was outside the protective circle.

“Why are you after us?! All of you demons hunted me seeking my death, but I’m dead now! Why attack my friends?” Zira demanded to know.

The demon laughed as if he found this the funniest joke in the world. “What? Like you wouldn’t kill me if you happened to come across me. I’m a demon, and you humans don’t like to let us live!”

“That’s it? You’re trying to kill them because they were there?” Zira stated incredulously.

“Yes,” the demon confirmed.

Zephyr had used the time that no one was paying much attention to him to enchant his sword with a spell similar to the one he used to sever the troll head once upon a time ago. The spell was designed to cut through anything, and he hoped that it would get rid of the black drill following him. He stood with his weapon at the ready, and sliced the spiral as it came at him.

The two halves nearly vanished for a moment, and then reformed into two smaller spirals. Zephyr repeated his strategy, figuring that eventually, they would be too small to remain in existence. Fairly soon, he had a little more than a dozen tiny drills chasing him, and he could no longer deflect them all.

“So much for that theory,” he muttered as the black energy drilled into his skin. He screamed from the pain, and continued to defend himself as best he could. The really annoying part was that since he was occupied with these distractions, he couldn’t focus on the demon at all.

Amadea was growing weak from the repeated use of her spirit arrows, and paused to pant while the enemy was dodging the one she had just fired. The demon changed tactics by allowing the arrow to hit him as he quickly chanted a spell. He cast it at Amadea just as her arrow hit him.

Amadea screamed for a second as thick black wriggly ropes of energy wound themselves around her. She wasn’t scared so much as surprised, and watched with interest as the ropes tried to penetrate her shield. Unexpectedly, her bow shaped Divinity Blade disappeared, and she could feel her shield strengthen.

The demon did not expect the ropes to work – he had sensed her shield – but he used them to immobilize her as he chanted his next spell, releasing it a moment later. “Astral obliteration!”

Amadea screamed from pain this time. Her shield had absorbed most of the attack, but any spell involving the astral field automatically meant that it was coming from a different “space” all together. It was difficult to shield against such attacks, which is why they were the best choice to use against demons in the first place.

Amadea tried to put her hands together so she could summon her weapon, but her hands couldn’t get any closer than an inch apart. “Div-Div,” she tried anyway.

“Lightning!” Luna screamed, having finally emerged from the protective barrier. There was no way she could just sit there as her friends were killed, and besides, from what the demon had said, they’d likely be next anyway.

The demon hadn’t expected her attack, since it occurred just after he had allowed Amadea’s spirit arrow to hit him – which caused him surprisingly more damage than he had expected. The lightning hurt like a bitch, but wasn’t enough to destroy him. He responded to the attack by flinging a ball of energy at Luna.

Luna dodged, but still got hit by the ball, and she screamed as she landed on the ground. “Apparently I misjudged you…” she groaned. She had seen both Zephyr and Amadea take hits from the demon with little to no damage, so she had assumed that his attacks were weak, but this was agony, and worse, she knew that she was already on the verge of dying again.

Zira could do nothing but rage over the situation, but long habit made her chant the spell she often used to defeat demons. “Oh great Goddess, eternal mother of all life, I call your essence into my body. Grant me your power so that I may destroy this enemy who would kill us all!” She waited to receive the power, and wailed when she once again realized that she was dead, and could no longer use magic.

She looked around. Zephyr was writhing on the ground as countless tiny drills tore up his body, and Amadea was slowly being crushed as her shield was now too weak to defend her from the black worm-like ropes of demonic power. Luna was a blackened mass, and breathed as if each inhalation caused her great pain. Notus and Boreus were holding back Kyle – who wanted nothing more than to rush to Luna’s side and kill the demon.

“What do we do know?!” Zira demanded angrily of the Gods.

Amadea started glowing, and the ropes slowly melted away. We shall come to your aid once more for we know that your work is not yet done. We bestow the power necessary to cast your friend’s spells… Remember to have her teach them to you…

There was one spell in particular that Amadea had heard Zira cast so many times that she didn’t need to be taught it. It was an extremely powerful spell, one that required an ability that Amadea just didn’t have, but if the Gods were telling her the truth, she had it now.

“Oh great Goddess, eternal mother of all life, I call your essence into my body. Grant me your power so that I may destroy this enemy who would kill us all!” Amadea waited until she felt the power stop increasing, and then focused it on the demon.

The demon had been gloating over his impending victory, and froze in shock as he heard the spell. “What?! No! You cannot cast that spell!”

Finally the power was ready, and Amadea released it in the direction of the demon. “ETERNAL DESTRUCTION!”

Zira watched in open mouthed shock as a huge orb of golden red light appeared in front of Amadea, and zoomed out towards the flabbergasted demon. She stuttered and stammered for a moment before blurting, “But that’s my spell!” Very few sorcerers ever attained enough power to cast that spell, and while Zira didn’t doubt Amadea’s magical strength, the girl had never been able to cast the spell before.

The demon roared in anguish, and promised to destroy them next time. He shook his disembodied fist at them, and disappeared. Amadea and Zira knew that he was not vanquished for good, but had merely retreated to recover.

Amadea looked around her. She was hurting pretty bad; blood oozing from several wounds. Both Luna and Zephyr had stopped screaming, but that was not good news in the slightest since neither seemed to be breathing. She had very little strength left, but did not worry since the healing spell required to fix this level of damage was the one spell that required almost no power to cast – so long as one possessed a strong talent for healing, which she always had.

“Oh compassionate Gods of infinite wisdom, restore me and my companions to full health so that we may all live to fight evil another day,” Amadea recited the spell.

For a moment, she feared that the Gods had finally turned their backs on her, but then Luna gasped, and Zephyr sighed in extreme relief. Amadea felt the power flow through her body, and swayed. The sheer amount of power that had flowed through her today took its toll, and she collapsed.

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