~~David~~
Being a prisoner on the move, especially when he could do something about it but didn't, was infuriating. It was like sitting in a chair while someone yelled at you, and you could punch them and shut them up, but you didn't, because you knew it'd cause more problems than it solved. If Silvain and Laoko could help them cross the Scar, or at least reach its ruler without any incidents, that was a good thing.
Problem. A hundred demons surrounded David and the girls. If David had a good position and good awareness of the area, he might be able to play a song that'd take the demons out. He could do surgical attacks. He could do large-scale attacks. But both at the same time? Not so much. The better he got at playing the music, the more it felt like he was playing, and conducting. Playing songs that affected large areas was like playing in and conducting an entire symphony at once. Playing songs that affected smaller things directly, specifically, felt far more nuanced, full of depth.
Multitasking. He sucked at it compared to most people. He'd have to be a virtuoso prog metal drummer to handle the multi tasking to play a song that'd attack all demons around him on all sides, taking into account each specific demon, and the area as a whole.
If he got all the demons in front of him in a big group, it'd be so much better. Cast fireball. Boom, done.
They walked along in the fog, Caera, Jes, and Dao in front of him, the Las and Laoko -- fifth honorary La -- behind him. He glanced back, looked for giant cape-like wings, and found none. No Acelina. Those hoof clops were Laoko's.
He looked at the ground in front of him, curled his fingers, played an unheard note, and pulled up a small spike of blackstone from the ground. He gestured with his left hand, gently backhanding the air, and the spike collapsed, crumbling. Every minute, he summoned another spike, tried a unique shape, and knocked it aside. He summoned some small tombstones, grew them from a foot under the ground where the white stone coalesced. Not as durable as blackstone. More like marble. It crumbled more easily.
"I thought," Laoko said, coming up and standing beside him, "that manipulating Hell like this drained you?"
"It does." He summoned a thin spike of blackstone, grabbed it, and played a note to crack it off at the base. Little notes, tiny things, gentle taps of a xylophone. "This is exhausting."
"Then why are you doing it?"
"Because it's important." He tossed the spike aside. "And because I can tell I'm getting better at it. The more I do, the less energy it takes, and the more specific I can make things." With a curl of his fingers, he summoned another spike, and curled it so it spiraled horizontally on the way up. A meter long, nothing special, but the spring shape was difficult to make. The point was the difficulty. "Next time I have to do something crazy, I don't want to be overwhelmed. Only way to do that is practice."
"Practice..."
"You never practiced something?"
She shook her head, and her absurdly long tendril hair bounced against her back and hips.
"Demons do not practice. We simply are. Skills we learn are honed by hunting and fighting."
"You never think to practice something before you need it?"
"Hatchlings play fight, if they trust each other. But that is mostly it." She nodded to the fog above. "Angels are the same. They have their skills, innate to them that they build through experience. But to practice to learn? That is a human trait. I doubt a demon could learn something beyond their innate skills."
Daoka looked back, clicked twice, and kept walking.
Laoko raised a brow and glanced down at David. "She disagrees."
David looked at Dao's back and watched her walk. Clop clop, hooves much quieter than Laoko's. What was her secret? Did it have something to do with a skill?
He almost asked, but the fog ahead darkened, and Silvain's wings emerged. His weapon was drawn.
David and the girls came closer, and froze. Every demon Silvain had with him had stopped, weapons drawn, but none said a word, growled, roared, or so much as thudded a breastplate. They all stared ahead into the fog.
Oh no.
David walked forward, past Dao and Jes. Caera joined him, prowled beside him, and they both stopped at Silvain's side.
No need to ask. They all felt it, the unusual aura that ripped through the air, invisible, unheard, felt on the soul and not the skin. It didn't punch or stab like a demon's sin aura. It didn't vibrate through the world like David's aura. No one's aura was on except the rider's, a shadow of red in the distance that gently trotted closer on his goort. And the closer he got, the more his aura enveloped them, a crashing wind of death in its harshest form. Hot or cold failed to describe it. There was hate, and rage, but it transcended them, became something David couldn't put a word on. Rancor, malice, they all failed.
The rider's aura felt like murder incarnate. And the bastard had gotten ahead of them and cut them off.
"So much for him being a mindless dog," Caera said. "The fuck do we do?"
David squinted at the man as he came fully into view. A slightly large man in massive, heavy armor, but still tiny compared to demons. But every demon took a few steps back, Silvain included, as the rider came closer. Thick, full body armor made of red, gold, and bronze. A skull-shaped helmet that hid his face in the shadow of a T-slit opening. Two axes of the same color hung on his back, with blades glowing amber along their edges.
Silvain rumbled in his chest and dug at the ground with his foot claws.
"Stop," he said.
The rider came closer, but came to a stop at the edge of the fog. The demons traded glances. Did the rider just listen to Silvain?
The rider reached behind him and drew both axes.
"Kill the unmarked or die," he said. Every demon except the imps and grems was bigger than him. A goliath of a man was still just a man, compared to the entities of Heaven and Hell. But the man and his dull, boring voice came closer, and towered over everyone anyway.
