Slayers Vol 9 Chapter 4

The Slumbering Sword Awakens

A bird cried out, somewhere in the forest around us. If not for the arcane light at the tip of my sword, the mountain path in front of us would have been invisible. Now, walking in the dead of night towards a place probably infested by demons wasn't exactly my idea of a night out on the town. But with Sherra kidnapped by the men in black and probably being carried to some place in these very mountains, we didn't really have the option to spend a night at the inn before sallying forth.

We'd heard that the sword was somewhere in the abandoned mines to the north of Bezeld, and that's exactly where we were headed.

It might have been his cantankerous nature or just his own way of letting off stress, but Luke opened his mouth before long, unable to bear the silence. "Hey, d'you really think the men in black're here in the mountains?

"If it turns out that they had some other hideout somewhere in the town, or they're in some other mountain, I'm just gonna close my eyes and pretend none of this ever happened. That's how it's gonna be."

"You mean, that's not how it's been up till now?" Milina quipped. "From what I know of you, that's how you've always been."

"Wha, what?! That ain't true, Milina!" Somehow, Luke's protest didn't sound quite as convincing as he'd probably intended. "I've been an honest man all my life and I'm not gonna change that anytime soon. I've got to be if I wanna live happily ever after with you, y'know?"

"No, I don't."

Apparently at a loss for words, Luke shut up and began dragging his feet, sniffling quietly.

"You guys can have your lover's spat later," I said, pointing ahead. "We're almost at the mines."

"It's not a lover's spat," Milina said sharply, showing more emotion than I'd expected. Ouch. Poor Luke. The schmuck really didn't have a chance.

Silence fell as we walked briskly along the path for a while. Before long the trees began showing more sporadically, and suddenly we found ourselves standing in a wide clearing, a tall sheer wall of stone stretching upwards in front of us.

Like Sherra had said, there were abandoned mine shafts in the mountains. But not just one or two - they dotted the entire rock face, over a dozen at least in the small field of view awarded to us by the magical light. If the rest of the mountain face was like this, and a.s.suming that at least some of these shafts had forks and splits... I couldn't even begin to guess how many places we had to search.

"Well..." Luke said faintly, sounding more than a little overwhelmed. "Looks like there was an abandoned mine."

Beside him, Milina could only nod, looking stunned herself.

Ever the brilliant one, Gourry chose exactly the wrong thing to say in our situation.

"So... which one?"

A very awkward silence fell over our party. Come to think of it, Sherra had never said that there was only one abandoned mine, and in fact it was logical to a.s.sume that, given the orihalcon boom, there would be a large amount of shafts... Bah.

"Mmm..."

"Well, this is a dilemma."

Luke, Milina and I crossed our arms, our brows furrowing with concentration.

Gourry, on the other hand, simply glanced about for a moment before pointing, seemingly at random, at one of the mine entrances. "Hey, Lina. Doesn't that place look a little suspicious?"

I squinted, but I really couldn't tell anything that distinguished it from the numerous other openings around it. The distance and poor lighting made it hard to tell.

"Suspicious? What do you mean?"

"Well, it looks to me like there's a piece of cloth in front of the cave."

"What?"

I stared at it closely, but I really couldn't tell if there was anything there. "Where?"

"Right there. Can't you see it?"

Luke and Milina followed Gourry's gaze as well, but from the looks of it, they weren't seeing anything either.

"Hmph!" I snapped. "Let's go and see for ourselves up close. It's not like we'll do any better just standing here."

The mine shaft Gourry had pointed out was a little ways up the cliff face, and we really didn't have the time to waste finding a way up.

I placed a hand on Gourry's shoulder and started chanting a spell. "Levitation!"

Luke and Milina cast their own spells and came floating up after us.

"Umm... a little to the right. Okay. Straight ahead."

With Gourry guiding us, we made our way to the "suspicious" mine shaft. And hanging at the entrance was...

"Well, what do you know," I muttered, grabbing hold of the handkerchief that'd been hanging from the wooden pillars.

"You saw a handkerchief, in the dark, at that distance?" Luke said, disbelievingly.

Gourry laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head. "It's nothing, really."

The kerchief was a new one, dry to the touch, the colors bright and vibrant. The problem was...

"Did Sherra leave this as a clue to us, or was it left by the men in black as a decoy to confuse us?" I mused aloud.

Beside me, Milina cast a small Lighting spell, the arcane light coalescing at the tip of her finger. She knelt and studied the floor for a moment before getting back to her feet.

"There are signs that people have been here recently. Lots of people."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," she replied, giving me a curt nod.

"All right, then! Let's go!" I said. With Luke lighting the way at the head and Milina following him, and Gourry bringing up the rear, we ran into the seemingly abandoned shaft. Before long, we came to a fork in the path.

"Which way?" Luke asked.

Milina wordlessly crouched again, staring down at the ground before pointing to the right. Once again we headed deeper into the haphazardly dug mine. The miners, their heads filled with visions of orihalcon, had excavated w.i.l.l.y-nilly, the paths twisting and turning like a maze. If Milina was telling the truth, there were signs that some people had advanced deeper and deeper into the mine. Just how many of the men in black were ahead of us?

If Sherra didn't resist, it was possible that the sword was already in the hands of the men in black. In that case, we'd just have to beat them all and take the sword by force.

Without warning, a dull roar sounded in the distance, the mine floor trembling under our feet. From the sound of it, it had come from... directly ahead?

The four of us exchanged quick glances, nodded, and dashed headlong down the path.

"We found them!" I cried triumphantly. The fruit of our efforts shone in front of us - we could see a faint magic light s.h.i.+ning around the corner just a few paces ahead.

Needless to say, they probably knew we were coming, too. I prepared a spell under my breath as I ran forward, turning the corner.

Ahead of us stood three men in black! But Sherra was nowhere to be seen. The end of the dim hall was caved in, and in front of the pile of rubble stood the men in black. It was possible that the cave-in had separated them from Sherra.

Luke and Milina stopped, probably wary of incoming spells, but I took no heed and dashed forward.

"Flare Arrow!"

Like I'd expected, they'd had attacks ready and waiting for us. Once they confirmed that I hadn't stopped, the men in black let loose their attacks!

But of course, I was expecting that, in turn. Thrusting my hands forward, I let loose the spell I'd been preparing!

With a tortured shriek of air, an incredibly strong wind kicked up in front of me, swirling wildly. It was a Windy s.h.i.+eld, boosted by my talismans. Normally, it might not be much, but with the power of my talismans behind it, my s.h.i.+eld became a force to be reckoned with. The incoming Flare Arrows were deflected with ridiculous ease.

I lowered my barrier and-

Luke's voice rang out behind me. "Fireball!"

A coruscating ball of light whipped past me, towards the men in black!

Huh?!

A Fireball would be more than enough to take care of the men in black in this situation, but the explosion would reach us as well! And there was nowhere to hide in the narrow mine shaft.

I was still frantically thinking of what to do when the ball of flames exploded with a huge roar, engulfing the three men in front of us and hungrily advancing toward us as well!

"Flare s.h.i.+eld!"

The fire stopped right in front of me, held at bay by Milina's words of power. The roaring inferno was close enough to reach out and touch, but the air in front of me was cool.

The spell Milina had cast, Flare s.h.i.+eld, was a fairly high level fire resistance incantation, and very effective. The only problem was that it took quite a while to cast, so it almost never saw use in real battle. It was obvious that Luke and Milina had worked this out in advance.

Once the magical flames guttered out, we beheld...

I gasped in surprise.

The sight we'd been expecting was three men in black lying defeated, but one of them was still standing.

It was clear what had happened. Two of the men had let loose with Flare Arrows, but one had readied a defense spell just in case. Apparently he'd only been able to cover himself. The other two were nowhere to be seen - probably blown away by the force of the explosion. Not only the men, but the pile of rubble blocking the shaft had also been cleared, revealing a path deeper into the mine.

"Not bad," the last man snarled, clearly angry. "I wasn't expecting you to be this fast."

That voice sounded familiar... Zain!

"Maybe I should have taken care of you earlier... However! Your meddling ends here! This time-"

Zain's generic villainous ranting was cut off by a bloodcurdling shriek from deeper inside the mine.

Zain whipped around, not even giving us a second glance as he darted away. "Sir Galva?"

Galva? Must have been the Gal-something Zain had been working with before. We looked uneasily at each other, but it was clear there was nothing to be gained from sitting here twiddling our thumbs.

"Come on! Let's follow him!" I shouted, das.h.i.+ng after Zain.

"Aaaaaargh!!!"

Galva's tortured cries echoed inside the mine, seemingly without end.

We entered a wide room and stopped short, taking in the strange sight before us. The room was incredibly large, enough to comfortably fit one or two houses and still have room left over. In the center of the room was...

Galva falls victim to the cursed sword!

An onyx sword was embedded deep in the dirt. The blade was gently curved while the hilt was simple and straight, without any fancy decorations. The thing seemed to radiate palpable malice, almost suffocating in its intensity.

Galva gripped the sword with both hands, his entire body bent backwards, the screams still being ripped from his throat. Black lightning and obsidian sparks danced across his entire body, radiating outwards from where his hands touched the hilt.

And standing beside him...

Sherra stood watching silently, a faint smirk gracing her features.

Beside us, Zain trembled with shock, too stunned to even notice us.

"What... in the world...?" Gourry managed to say, his words cutting through Galva's screams.

At the sound of Gourry's voice, Sherra let out a startled yelp and quickly turned to look at us. She'd been too wrapped up watching Galva writhing in agony to notice our entrance. Her eyes widened briefly as she took in all five of us, an expression of blatant surprise on her face.

"Oh dear. You're already here... and all together, at that," she mused aloud, scratching her cheek. She didn't really sound all that surprised. Maybe a little disappointed.

"Who... no, what are you?" I managed to ask.

Sherra just gave a bitter smile in reply. "Hmm... to tell the truth, I'd been hoping you'd come one by one... Oh well. I guess I'll just have to improvise."

"Hey... hey!" Luke shouted. "Sherra, what're you talking about? What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

For once, Luke and I were of a like mind. I hadn't the slightest idea of what was going on, but I instinctively realized one thing: our real enemy here was none other than Sherra herself.

Sherra glanced wistfully at Galva - no, at the black sword. "I wanted to try out a few more things, but that will have to wait," she commented, lifting her hand. "Dulgofa. Transform."

A violent crack rent the air as the black lightning began to intensify! And...

"Sir Galva!" Zain cried pitifully.

Completely encased in onyx energy, Galva's body began to change!

His skin swelled, cracked, then split wide open. Through the gaping wound in his body emerged a leg, where no leg should ever have been. Galva wasn't screaming anymore - instead, a strange sound, like the panting of some huge beast, began rising to join the crackle of lightning and Sherra's gleeful laughter.

As we watched, Galva's bowed form suddenly doubled in size.

"Everyone, get out! Run!" I shouted, instinctively realizing the danger.

As though my desperate words had broken a spell holding them in thrall, everyone turned and followed my lead, das.h.i.+ng out of the mine as though our lives depended on it. The rough panting and Sherra's laughter quickly faded to nothing, but instead the rock under our feet began to tremble ominously. Even as we ran, the vibrations became stronger, as though whatever was causing the tremors was getting closer and closer. It was almost as if the mountain itself was shaking. Would we make it?

We struggled to keep our footing as we ran. Gourry, Luke, Milina, myself... and Zain, the man in black. Just moments ago he'd been our enemy, but squabbling amongst ourselves at a time like this would be nothing short of suicide.

Just when it seemed the quaking couldn't get any more violent and the entire mountain would come down around us, we reached the exit, leaping down to the ground below.

"Get out of the way!"

We had barely made it to the relative safety of the forest when the entrance to the mine exploded in a cloud of stone and wood. Something emerged, a huge, black, menacing shadow silhouetted against the moon. It turned its gargantuan head towards the moon and let out a bloodcurdling cry.

It was the thing that had once been the man named Galva.

"What... is that?" Milina stammered, her normally calm and composed face pale with fear.

As I stared at the monster howling at the moon, I realized what had happened. Not completely, but I understood enough.

Low level mazoku like lesser and bra.s.s demons were created when minor mazoku latched onto the minds of weak-willed lifeforms like animals, transforming and warping their bodies and abilities.

These lesser mazoku were incapable of taking control of fully sentient beings, like humans.

However...

What if, instead of a low-ranking mazoku, a stronger, more mature one made the attempt to control another being?

The answer to that question was right in front of us. It was the size of a large dragon, pitch black even in the moonlight, with ten twisted obsidian legs that would have looked more at home on a spider.

The thing - the hyper demon - let loose with one last tortured shriek and began to move.

It was headed straight for Bezeld.

"Oh, no! It's gonna go for the village!"

"Tell me something I don't know! Come on, let's stop it!" I shouted in response to Luke's startled cry.

We had no way of knowing just how powerful the thing was, but it was a safe bet to say it'd be much stronger than a lesser or bra.s.s demon. If something like that began running amok in a crowded village...

At the size of a dragon, it was already clear that the weapons of the soldiers stationed in Bezeld would be next to useless.

That left us with only one option: take it down before it got there!

Darkness beyond twilight,

Crimson beyond blood that flows.

Buried in the flow of time,

In thy great name, I pledge myself to darkness.

Let all the fools who stand in our way be destroyed,

By the power you and I possess...!

Milina whipped around to stare at me, her eyes wide with surprise. "Isn't that...?"

Right. The only spell that drew on the power of this plane's Demon King, Ruby Eye Shabranigdu.

"Dragon Slave!"

A cone of incandescent scarlet light burst forth from my palms, streaking towards the hyper demon and enveloping it in a huge explosion.

The dust settled, and Luke gasped in disbelief. "It's still standing?"

My Dragon Slave hadn't moved the hyper demon an inch - it stood still, exactly where it had been before.

"It's hurt, though," Milina commented, having regained some of her composure.

She was right. Though it hadn't been blown to bits like I'd expected, but the mishapen lump of flesh that formed the hyper demon's body was missing a huge chunk. Its nature as a mazoku must have s.h.i.+elded it slightly from Ruby Eye's power, but it hadn't been enough to protect it completely. Right! So it was just a matter of letting loose with more Dragon Slaves until it died.

I had just started gathering my power again when the hyper demon twitched. Had my spell had more effect than I thought?

Apparently not. The hyper demon wriggled once, and the missing piece of its body suddenly grew back with astonis.h.i.+ng speed.

"Huh?"

I rubbed my eyes despite myself, unable to accept what I'd just seen.

"I don't believe it," Luke muttered faintly. The others just stared dumbly, at a loss for words.

Just a few seconds after my Dragon Slave made a direct hit, I couldn't even tell where the wound had been. Not even trolls, famous for their powers of regeneration, could match that.

Almost casually, the hyper demon began moving toward Bezeld again, as though nothing had happened.

"So..." Gourry scratched his cheek. "What now?"

"What now?" I replied, my mind whirling. "Well, we... err... I don't know. What now?"

I'd met a few beings in my time who hadn't gone down with one Dragon Slave. There had even been some who had blocked the spell. But this was the first time I'd ever met one who could take a blast full on and recover from it so quickly. This just wasn't fair. Just how powerful was this thing?

Even fairly high level mazoku would take some damage from the full force of a Dragon Slave, and none could recover from that sort of damage quickly. It was impossible.

Not quite impossible for the hyper demon, it seemed. For once I was completely stumped. Stunned, even.

Milina was the first one to come to her senses.

"We can worry about how to bring it down later. For now we'll have to settle on slowing it down somehow." Without waiting for a reply, she sprinted off after the hyper demon, followed a moment later by Luke.

"Gourry! Come on!"

"Okay!"

With that, the four of us...

...Four?

Huh?! Zain had disappeared without a word while we were talking amongst ourselves!

Well, his mission was only to secure the sword. He had no reason to fight against the hyper demon alongside us, and to tell the truth, I hadn't really expected him to help us in the first place.

For now, our mission was to slow down or stop the hyper demon before it got to Bezeld, and figure out a way to take it down for good!

Our mission clear, we ran through the forest, following the black shadow in the distance.

"Take this!"

Gourry darted in, his sword a flas.h.i.+ng silver arc in the moonlight. His strike sliced cleanly through one of the hyper demon's humongous legs, almost as thick as tree trunks.

But before we could even begin to hope that his cut had done the trick, writhing tentacles sprouted from both severed ends of the leg, instantly bringing it back together! It was actually an incredibly disturbing sight up close - perhaps it was for the best that we hadn't been able to clearly see the monster recover from my Dragon Slave a few moments ago.

As for the demon itself, it continued lumbering along, seemingly unaware that one of its legs had briefly been cloven in two. The thing was literally unstoppable.

Gourry stepped back a few paces, shaking his head. "I can cut it well enough, but it's no use..."

"Let me give it a try!" Luke's sword glowed with power as it generated a shrieking blade of wind, easily slicing through the hyper demon's legs... to no avail.

"Ehh... Can't say I wasn't expecting that," Luke muttered to himself, sheepishly scratching his head. The blockhead.

Milina let loose with a barrage of Freeze Arrows that impacted solidly on all of the monster's legs, but not even a film of frost formed. She had the right idea, but it looked like that level of shamanistic magic just wouldn't cut it.

My turn! "Zelas Brid!"

The ribbon of light utterly vaporized two of the creature's hairy legs, but almost immediately they grew back, sprouting from the severed ends like grotesque plants. Just what would it take to bring this thing down?

We might be able to buy a little time by blowing all of its legs away with a Dragon Slave, but that's all it would be: buying time. Two or three in quick succession might do the trick, but it was a sure bet that the hyper demon would regenerate faster than I could cast.

I did know of one spell even stronger than Dragon Slave that would surely do the job, but... I really didn't want to use that one...

Wait a minute. Maybe...

"Everyone! Get clear! I'm going to try something big!" I shouted, activating my talismans. With the power of four Demon Kings behind it, who knew just how destructive a Dragon Slave could be? Surely it would be more than enough to reduce the demon to dust and ashes!

Gathering the power lent to me by the arcane artifacts, I finished my incantation.

"DRAGON SLAVE!"

An explosion much bigger than the one before briefly turned the night into day. We s.h.i.+elded our eyes from the sudden light and peered through the cloud of debris...

"It's working!"

The demon's body wasn't quite destroyed, but more than half of it had been utterly blown away, and-

It grew back.

"Oh, come on!" I cried, grabbing my head with both hands in frustration. "You've got to be kidding me!" How could anything regenerate so quickly?

Though... come to think of it, that pattern of regrowth was somewhat familiar...

Utterly ignoring our efforts, the demon crawled onwards, toward Bezeld. Before long it'd be at the town itself!

Suddenly, a burst of light flared in the distance. It was from the town itself.

A quick glance in that direction revealed a barrage of tiny red flashes coming from Bezeld's outskirts, all heading toward the hyper demon!

"Flare Arrows!" I said aloud, my eyes widening. There must have been hundreds - no, thousands of them! With a thundering crash, they all slammed into the demon's body.

"It must be the guards stationed at the town," Gourry said from beside me.

There was no way the garrison there could have failed to notice a monster the size of a small mountain heading their way, especially not with someone chucking Dragon Slaves at it. They must have gathered every sorcerer in the town and bombarded it with Flare Arrows... to no effect. The hyper demon advanced ever closer.

Even more spells flew through the air, but most of them splashed harmlessly off the monster's hide, and even the ones that did get through were healed in an instant. Was there any way to kill this thing?

There had better be, because the hyper demon had already reached the edges of Bezeld!

Bezeld was a bedlam of horrific confusion, chaos reigning as shouts and screams filled the air. Sorcerers desperately cast spell after spell at the colossus looming close, but nothing worked. The normal guards, of course, could do nothing against a creature of this size. As for the townspeople, they were paralyzed with fear, having realized that this was a monster beyond the abilities of their protectors.

The soldiers tried their best to give orders, but their efforts were futile, their words buried beneath the villagers' screams.

This was the scene that greeted us when we arrived, having used a levitation spell to get there before the demon. The problem was that we had nothing that could stop the thing.

Even another Dragon Slave would be next to useless. There had to be some way to kill this monster... but how? A faint memory danced frustratingly at the edges of my mind, but even as I tried to remember, the hyper demon finally reached the group of guards defending the town!

The first line of mages broke pathetically as the black ma.s.s pa.s.sed over them. The hyper demon had yet to attack, but the menacing air radiating from it wasn't rea.s.suring in the slightest.

"Don't give up! Keep casting! The thing's got to be hurting!" a man shouted to the fleeing sorcerers, in a futile attempt to rally their shattered will. From the decorations on his armor, he seemed to be a captain of some sort.

A wicked hiss of displaced air followed by a meaty thunk cut him off as he tried to say more. The captain could only manage a strangled cry in the sudden silence as everyone seemed to freeze, staring up at the hyper demon.

A single long tentacle, tipped with a wicked hooked claw, had extended out from the monster's main body, completely impaling the captain, armor and all. As we watched in fascinated horror, the doomed man twitched once and suddenly shriveled, his flushed skin turning first pale, then sunken and dry. It was as though the tentacle had drained his very life, reducing the young man to an old and wizened mummy in an instant.

"Elmekia-"

One of the sorcerers broke out of his shock and began casting, but before he could even finish, another tentacle - this one without a hook - darted out and wrapped itself around his body. Not just him - dozens of limbs suddenly began to sprout from the hyper demon's body, entangling soldier and mage alike. They were thick as a child's wrist... I could easily imagine the brute strength inside them.

Heedless of the people's startled cries, the tentacles contracted, drawing the hapless men and women close to its body. Even as they struggled to get free, more grotesque segments, these ones fanged like horribly deformed snakes, burst out of the monster's body and bit into its victims!

Tortured shrieks filled the air. The remaining guards, their will to fight completely drained, turned tail and fled. But I took no notice. I'd finally remembered where I'd seen this kind of gross and unnatural regeneration.

It was in the city Gourry and I had visited once, Atlas.

Raugnut Rushavna.

The curse that only mazoku could cast, bestowing dreadful immortality to the human unlucky enough to be its target. The doomed man or woman would become a featureless ma.s.s of pulsing flesh, doomed to a deathless eternity of unspeakable agony. There was no known way to reverse the effects - only killing the mazoku who had cast the curse would allow the victim to die, bringing their tortured existence to an end. A spell that really earned its name as black magic.

If Galva had been consumed by Raugnut Rushvana, then the monster's incredible powers of regeneration were understandable. But that meant the only way to stop this thing would be to destroy the mazoku who had created it...

A loud crash and a new wave of screaming broke into my thoughts.

The hyper demon was loose inside the town proper!

Finally inside Bezeld, the monster ran amok, its countless tentacles indiscriminately grabbing townspeople and pulling them in to be consumed.

It wasn't exactly the most destructive thing I'd ever encountered, but it was a serious contender for most tenacious. I gave it another try...

"Blast As.h.!.+"

A black void formed around one of the hyper demon's tentacles, reducing half of it to ashes. But even as those ashes drifted to the ground, two smaller limbs sprouted from the destroyed end, intertwining and merging seamlessly to reform the part I'd blown away. Even the extremities possessed the same regenerative powers! This thing was looking more and more like the textbook definition of "indestructible" by the minute.

A Dragon Slave was out of the question in this crowded town, and I'd already seen how it would turn out anyway. d.a.m.n!

"Can you think of a way to stop it, Lina?" Gourry asked.

"Can I think of a way to stop it?" I repeated, giving him an incredulous look. What did it look like I'd been doing?

A normal human afflicted by Raugnut Rushavna wouldn't grow to such colossal sizes and rampage like this, and a mazoku wouldn't possess such preposterous regeneration. This thing was a fusion of the two.

...Wait. A fusion...

"Everyone, cover me!"

I began a long incantation and ran straight at the hyper demon!

"Hey! Wait, Lina!"

"Cover you? What're you thinking?"

I was too busy dodging the tentacles suddenly coming my way to reply. I don't know if the demon sensed me, or if it had just chosen me randomly as a target, but if I didn't get some help soon...!

"Rune Flare!"

Just in time! Milina's lance of fire speared through one of the appendages trying to grab me, while Gourry and Luke hacked swiftly at the others. I took the opportunity to advance even closer, my incantation now half finished.

"Lina!" Gourry shouted from behind me. "You've gone too far! Come back!"

I ignored him, each step taking me closer to the heaving black ma.s.s of the monster's body. I just hoped my hunch turned out to be right.

More tentacles drew close, but they wouldn't be enough to catch me. I twisted to the side at the last moment, avoiding them-

Huh?

Something grabbed hold of my ankle, nearly making me fall over. I looked down and saw a fleshy vine wrapped around my foot - one of them had snuck up on me!

I barely managed to keep my footing, but the damage was done. Taking advantage of my momentary imbalance, a tentacle shot out of the darkness and wrapped itself firmly around my left arm.

"Lina!"

Gourry caught up to me, slas.h.i.+ng down and severing the limb holding my arm. Almost immediately, it regenerated, but I was able to use that short window of time to wrestle my arm free.

"Lina, what are you doing?"

I couldn't reply. If I did, my incantation would lose its power. I kept the energies gathered inside of me, biding my time until the opportunity arose.

Slowly, more and more tentacles began to choose us as their target. With Gourry behind me and Milina providing magic support from afar, we were managing to keep them at bay, but unless something happened soon-

There!

Something slithered like greased lightning through the writhing ma.s.s of oncoming tentacles, darting at me! This was just what I'd been counting on. Thrusting my hands out, I finally let loose with the spell I'd been holding back.

"Ragna Blade!"

With a howl that seemed like s.p.a.ce itself shrieking in agony, a dark sword formed of nothingness sprang to life in my hands, blocking the thing approaching my chest. It was the one tentacle tipped with the wickedly curved onyx claw.

But wait... My eyes widened in surprise. This was too much!

The edge of darkness called forth by Ragna Blade was enough to cut easily through mazoku - even those of considerable rank and power. But the hyper demon's black claw was holding it at bay. No... I took a closer look and realized that the Ragna Blade was eating away at the claw, but just as quickly, the thing was growing back.

I started getting nervous. It was impossible to boost the spell's power once I'd already cast it, and Ragna Blade consumed ludicrous amounts of magic to maintain as it was. If something didn't change soon, my blade of darkness would gutter out, and the razor-sharp claw would...

Just as I was imagining my unpleasant and grisly end, a crimson light shone from behind me.

"Ruby Eye Blade!" Luke cried, a scarlet aura forming around his sword. Rus.h.i.+ng past me, he lifted it high and brought it down squarely on the black claw, at an angle to my own strike.

In the face of two attacks from different directions, the talon could only stand for the briefest of moments. With an ugly dull sound that hurt my ears, it snapped into two pieces.

The demon let loose with an earsplitting cry that rang in the air like a solid thing.

Luke and Lina strike the final blow

Luke and Gourry gasped. "The demon's dying!"

So it was. The black ma.s.s that had effortlessly grown back from point-blank Dragon Slaves was slowly collapsing in on itself before our eyes. The tentacles extending from its body writhed frantically, then slumped lifelessly to the earth and faded into dry dust. Its many legs buckled under its own weight, and its body exploded in a cloud of dust as it hit the ground, all color bleeding away in an instant.

All that was left in the hyper demon's wake was a small mountain of dirt, and the confused murmurs of the townspeople.

Gourry walked up to stand beside me. "What happened, Lina?"

For once, he wasn't the only one in the dark. Luke and Milina were giving me quizzical stares as well. Hmm. Where to begin?

"Well, for starters, I'll start with the obvious facts. Like you all saw for yourselves, that thing used to be the man in black, Galva," I said after a moment of thought. "Not only was he cursed, he was also possessed by a mazoku. That's why the resulting demon was so resistant to physical attacks and magic. There was only one way to bring it down... by destroying the mazoku that cast the curse. And where would that mazoku be? I thought that maybe the mazoku that had possessed Galva was the same one that had cursed him."

Luke b.u.t.ted in. "But how'd you arrive at that conclusion?"

I shot him a glare and said, "It was pretty obvious that the black sword transformed Galva into the thing we just fought. So I thought that perhaps the sword was both the mazoku that cursed Galva and the one that possessed him."

"The sword was a mazoku?" Luke muttered, frowning. I nodded.

"Pure mazoku are astral beings, anyway, so they can manifest on the physical plane in any form they want. Like for example, one of the mazoku that Gourry and I fought in the past took the form of two separate orbs, one red and one gray. It wouldn't be strange if a mazoku took the form of a sword in order to lure in greedy humans."

I didn't explain to Luke and Milina, but a large part of my hunch had also hinged on my observations of the Sword of Light Gourry had wielded in the past, which I suspected had been a high level mazoku from another plane of existence.

"So with that thought in mind, I took a good look at the monster and realized something: out of all those dozens and dozens of tentacles, only one of them had a claw. I thought, what if that's the mazoku's core?"

"So... Basically, your guess turned out to be right," Luke said slowly.

"Right. I was planning on beating a hasty retreat in case I turned out to be wrong, but thankfully things didn't turn out that way. Do you understand now, Gourry?"

"Nope."

Why, you...

"But it doesn't matter since we won, right?" he continued, oblivious. If he was going to say that, why ask me to explain in the first place? Bah, that moron.

I forced myself to calm down and turned to Luke. "But anyway," I said, "you aren't half bad, Luke. You harnessed Ruby Eye's power and made it into a red blade, didn't you? I've never seen anything like it."

"Neither have I," a calm voice commented from a few paces away.

We turned to see a hand plunge into the mound of dirt that had been the hyper demon's body. It sifted around for a moment and emerged, the hilt of the shattered black sword in its grasp.

"You!" Luke shouted.

"Ah, where are my manners? You've all done very well. I didn't really expect that this would be enough to get rid of you, Lina Inverse, but you proved to be quite the fighter as well, Mister Luke. I was a bit surprised."

Sherra smiled brightly, fiddling with the sword's hilt with one hand. Instead of the commoner's clothes she'd been wearing before, Sherra was clad in what looked to be a set of priest's robes, modified for easy movement. They were colored pitch black, with silver decorations - I couldn't tell whether they were runes I didn't recognize, or simply decorations - sewn into the fabric.

"This is all your doing, isn't it?" I asked. "The sword, the demon attacks, everything."

"Of course," Sherra replied politely. "I spread the rumors about the sword, as well. Glenn truly was a fool, but he had his uses. I used his house as a base of operations after making him think I was his daughter, and made him spread rumors about the sword as well."

"I see... that's why you didn't need any means of support even though you were living by yourself. I guess you got impatient when n.o.body believed in Glenn's story and began creating demon 'invasions' here and there."

"Correct. I also spread rumors in the surrounding towns, though to be completely honest I never thought that Lina Inverse herself would get involved."

"Hey! D'you know who Sherra is?" Luke asked.

"Mmm... I can take an educated guess," I replied, but Sherra cut me off with a wave of her hand.

"That will be enough, Miss Lina," she said, giving me an annoying smirk. "I'm quite capable of introducing myself, thank you."

Sketching a mocking bow, she said, "As you might have already surmised, my name is Sherra. I come from the Kataart Mountains." Her smirk deepened. "And though I don't look like it, I am a genuine mazoku."

"What?!" Luke and Milina shouted together, evidently more than a little surprised.

"So? What were you after? From what you've explained so far, it seems that you were trying to separate us and lure us to where the sword was, one by one. Everything you did, from leaving alone at night, to deliberately getting yourself captured by the men in black, was designed to split us up, right? Though you failed handily in that respect."

"Shu, shut up!" Sherra growled, losing her calm. "I didn't expect you to reach the mountain so quickly!"

"And it doesn't seem like you were planning on making that demon," I pressed. "In fact, I think you transformed Galva into that demon and set him loose because you were miffed that your little trap didn't go according to plan."

"I said, shut up!"

Well, looked like I struck a nerve. Seemed she was either a bad planner, or easily fl.u.s.tered.

"Anyway, I don't know what you were trying to do, but now that your sword's been broken, I'd say your plans have been undone."

Contrary to my expectations, Sherra's smile suddenly returned.

"Oh, really? This sword is a mazoku I created, and it also serves as my weapon. So..."

She gave it a light shake, and suddenly the snapped blade grew back to its original length!

"What?"

"...I can easily do things like this," Sherra finished, holding the sword in a light ready stance. Her defense looked to be utterly impregnable.

But... if she could create a mazoku that, even considering the regenerative powers of Raugnut Rushavna, could withstand my Ragna Blade, and repair the shattered blade in an instant...

"Sherra, it seems you're not just a mazoku."

Lina vs Sherra

Sherra giggled. "You're right. I suppose my full t.i.tle would make it easier for you to understand. I am Sherra, General of Dynast."

I found myself at a loss for words. She was Dynast Grausherra's general?

"What's that?" Luke asked, confused.

"The direct subordinate of Dynast Grausherra, one of Ruby Eye Shabranigdu's five retainers," I managed to say. In the past, I'd met the Greater Beast's priest, and personally fought with the Chaos Dragon's priest and general. Long story short, each and every one of them had been incredibly strong.

If Sherra was truly Dynast's general, that meant she was on par with those beings, and even outnumbered four to one, it was safe to say she could easily mop the floor with all of us.

Our only chance was to make her retreat!

"The nerve of you!" I shouted, injecting righteous indignation into my voice as I pointed at Sherra.

"Hmm? What is it? Are you angry that I deceived you? That I destroyed this small village? Surely it isn't because I turned that man into a demon." Sherra spoke with the smooth confidence of a person sure of her superiority, but I ignored her sureness and plowed onward.

"No, what irritates me is that your name is Sherra, servant of Dynast Grausherra! What kind of a name is that?"

Sherra's calm façade cracked a little around the edges. "What?! What are you talking about? My name was given to me by Lord Dynast himself! I'm sure there's a deep and meaningful reason as to why he chose it!"

Ha ha! Pay dirt! All right, now to move in for the kill.

"Sherra, surely your counterpart priest isn't named something tacky like Grau or Grou, right?"

Sherra froze completely, her eyes widening with shock. There was someone with that name? What was with Dynast?

"A, a human like you couldn't hope to understand the workings of Lord Dynast's mind!" Sherra stammered, losing her composure completely. "There has to be-"

"Has to be what? How about you ask him yourself? Who knows, it might turn out that he didn't really have anything in mind at all when he thought up your name, eh?"

"Of course not! My name is sure to have a complex meaning!"

"Prove it!"

Sherra opened her mouth to reply, stood gaping for a moment, closed it again. Grinding her teeth, she lifted her sword to point at me.

"Fine! Just you wait! I'll retreat for now, but next time we meet I'll be sure to have asked about the meaning of my name!"

With that completely unimpressive parting shot, Sherra turned and faded abruptly into the shadows. Phew.

"Heheh... I guess mazoku are weak to mental insecurity, being purely astral beings and all," I muttered.

Luke peered at me doubtfully. "Are... all mazoku like that?"