Kayla breathed in deeply, the cold air stinging her throat and filling her lungs, a satisfying feeling she had almost forgotten. Beneath her, the red fumes from the demon blood refineries clogged the streets like blood trudging slowly through sick arteries, the yellow lights from the lamps giving it an eerie glow. Up where she was, however, perched on the tower of a long-abandoned cathedral, the air was clear and crisp and she felt almost free.

Almost because still, as far as the eye could see, there was only the walled off cityscape.

The House’s main castle and the buildings surrounding it eventually gave way to more run down edifices, some so strange and seemingly out of place that she wasn’t quite sure why they had been built there. Then, there was nothing but seemingly bare high granite walls on all sides. She couldn’t see the wards that granted them their protective powers, the tangle of shapes and words spelled in God’s alphabet that served to guard them against the demons and even worse things that came in droves from the west. Or the even worse things that came in flocks from the east. The angels.

Kayla looked up instinctively, trying to discern any distant shapes against the flat black canvas of the sky, but there were none. She thought she could hear them, sometimes, even when it wasn’t time for the angel song to play, and it disturbed her to her core but, today, everything was quiet. She could focus on her task.

Finding the demon wouldn’t be hard. She just had to let him find her, instead. They were all much more attracted to her than they were to other humans. Finding a good place to fight it when she didn’t know what it was capable of, what kind of fighting quarters would hinder it, however, was a different matter. The only thing she knew for sure was that it would be big, several times more so than herself, but that didn’t mean that forcing it to fight in a closed-off space would be a good idea. It could all too easily drop an entire building on her, be a magic wielder capable of casting from afar or simply use its long limbs to corner her and attack. Her fighting style didn’t favor close quarters, either. She needed space to vault and jump, attack and retreat, slash and dodge.

Looking back down, she spotted a plaza a few buildings away from where she was, in front of what seemed to be an old gathering house. It was mostly empty, except for a still functioning fountain in the center. It would do.

Kayla leaped down onto the closest rooftop, softening her landing and hitting the roof tiles silently. She couldn’t ambush the demon, it would sense her from miles away. It would be better to back up against the communal house and face the largest road where the demon would most likely be coming from.

Even that plan was laid to rest when she saw it appear out of thin air in the plaza, as if it had been there all along, waiting for her to make up her mind and come meet it.

The familiar flood of fear, despair, anguish, anger and a myriad of other emotions she couldn’t even begin to name hit her immediately. No matter how many times she dealt with demons, it seemed like the demon panic effect never went away. All that changed was her ability to deal with it. She pushed the feelings down, to her gut, where they churned and seemed to burn like acid. At least they were no longer making her heart hammer in her ribcage and her breath to inflate her lungs to the point where it seemed they might rip open.

Then, she finally took a good look at the demon. It was shaped like a tree if trees had obsidian black trunks and spindly branches that bent and were articulated like arms. Midway across the trunk was a beautiful gold belt, inlaid with a red gem and, further up, a face. There was no color to it, only depth to form the crude features. The eyes were lidless and, despite being made of only one solid orb, able to move. The lips, however, were sealed firmly shut, with no openings on them or on the nose to allow for any breathing.

An image flashed in Kayla’s mind, something she had read about a choir of angels that resembled trees and a shiver ran through her whole body. She forced her thoughts away from it. There were a thousand more associations she could be making to trees and none of them made sense. Her brain was just feverish, racing from the demon panic and all the knowledge coursing through it now that she was connected to the Archon’s mind, as well as her own. It was hard to make the distinction between the two while in this state and, if she let herself follow these trails, she would most certainly become unable to.

Rather than do that or risk her powers running out before the demon was defeated, she threw herself from the rooftop and into the fight.

Her sword was a blur as it struck at the spindly limbs first, trying to cut one off. It failed and she missed the softer articulation by a fraction, taking a scratch to her armor in retaliation. Not a great start.

Kayla decided to switch tactics, attacked instead at the bigger target of the trunk. Agility was on her side, while the tree demon certainly couldn’t say the same. It’s heavy roots weighed it down, keeping it from dodging her attacks. But its bark was hard and gnarly and, while Kayla’s sword was sharper than any regular blade and made to deal with supernatural threats, it took a few cuts to finally strike deep.

The demon roared in pain, flailing its branches around in a frantic effort to hit her and make her retreat. Kayla jumped back, away from them, landing nimbly into a crouch, left hand on the floor to steady herself. She looked up just in time to see the wound she had inflicted start weeping thick, dark red blood, an expected sight when fighting demons. It was what came after startled her back into action.

From within the wound, a black, heavy chain darted out, fast as a snake, to strike at her.

Kayla jumped out of the way, left hand thrown back to create a glowing red circle she could step on midair, then another and a third as the chain kept chasing her. It strained just out of reach, fully taught, the small mouth full of needle-sharp teeth at the very end snapping at her. With a flick of her wrist, Kayla cut off the round bulb that housed the maw before renewing her charge.

Stepping back down a new staircase of platforms, she summoned nine more swords and threw all ten at the monster’s body. Some were batted away by the arm-like branches and the chain, disappearing as they hit the cobblestones, but four landed true and stuck deep into the wood. Trickles of blood emerged from the wounds as the demon roared once again and Kayla smirked, satisfied.

A loud thud, a blunt pain at the low of her back and she was sent flying towards the nearest building. She barely had time to catch herself, twisting in the air like a cat as her spine pieced itself together from what she was sure would’ve been a fatal injury to anyone else. Her landing was bad, one foot giving out underneath her and making her fall on one knee as the demon brought down one huge root. She rolled away, a fragment of a second too late. A scream of terror and pain tore through her throat as the root, one armored human foot connected through bits of flesh and sinew to its tangles, crushed her right arm and shoulder.

The demon wailed back as her voice echoed through the plaza, pushed down its roots further into the ground. It batted at her body with its branches, claws catching on her clothes and skin, and Kayla had to grit her teeth to keep herself from yelling again. Her voice would just hurt and agitate it more and, considering her current position, that wouldn’t be good. She had to get free, first.

Her left hand flew up to meet the wood pinning her down, finding it strangely warm, with a texture more similar to calloused skin than real wood. Trying not to think of that, Kayla murmured a single word in God’s language.

The root holding her down lit up on fire.

Kayla’s legs were full of rapidly healing bruises and gashes from the earlier beating, but she wasted no time in getting back up and putting as much distance as she could between herself and the demon. She would’ve killed for the ability to create some kind of protective shield just then, but that wasn’t her specialty and she would have to make do with what she had.

The demon was still howling and trying to get away from its burning self, like a dumb beast that was scared of flames but didn’t understand them, when the book fully materialized in Kayla’s left hand. She couldn’t use her sword, anymore, her right arm hanging limp at her side, torn from the socket and broken in several places, the cost of the healing magic too high for it to activate automatically. But there was other magic she could use, magic that came more easily and at a lower cost, magic that would use the blood that was flowing freely from that same arm.

The book opened at just the right page, as it always did, showing her just the spell she needed. Kayla started singing the words aloud, pitch, tone, and pronunciation coming effortlessly now that her powers were activated. She didn’t dare look up to see if the demon was advancing on her, if she was going to die from a branch cleaving her head open while she used what was left of her energy in one last spell.

The blood running from her right arm started gathering in front of her in a neat circle as she sang the words, it’s surface vibrating as if it was excited for her to finish and release it.

And she did.

The blood shot forwards, breaking into dozens of smaller streams that surrounded the demon, making up a circle, drawing shapes and letters that would envelop, imprison and destroy it. It was only then that Kayla realized what it was trying to do.

The demon had not come for her, had not tried to kill her while she was defenseless and that was, most likely, the only reason why she was still alive. Instead, it had turned around and was trying desperately to put its burning root into the fountain, its wails sounding more and more like panicked cries.

Kayla saw this for only a moment and then the demon was no more, a pile of black ash in the place where it had stood, trying to save itself with an intelligence it shouldn’t have possessed.

Her heart was beating madly in her chest, her breathing rapid and raspy through her parted lips, but only part of it was adrenaline and pain. She felt like she had just witnessed something unholy, some horrific, world-breaking secret she was not supposed to know. And worst of all, she knew she couldn’t talk to anyone about it.

Kayla got slowly back up, wincing against the pains that bloomed all over her body. The fire coursing through her body, the pleasant tingles of magic faded along with her armor, exhausted now that the Archon had used up all the blood she had fed it. She would heal, slower now that she wasn’t directly connected to it but, until then, she felt every cut, bruise, and injury as any other person would, without the ability to shut them out. She wasn’t sure whether she was grateful for it or not.

Holding her tattered arm close to her body, she started the long walk back home.

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