“Not today,” Christine promised. She leveled her wand and lashed out at Lord Berith as the huge beast swung its maul, trying to flatten Becca.
The smaller witch raised her wand, the tip glowing green as she tried to deflect it. Christine cried out in horror, knowing that a singular witch could not deflect such a mighty strike.
Yet before the terrible weapon could land, wind whipped up around Becca and slid the woman thirty feet out of the way.
The maul hit empty ground, the force of the strike spilling many of the emerging team to the ground as earth leapt up to meet them. Behind the demon, Altair lowered his hands and looked to the sky as lightning flickered and thunder boomed.
Christine managed to steady herself from the blow. She needed to buy herself some time.
Lightning flashed down from the sky faster than she could watch. It connected with the tip of Altair’s hand, and then shot out the palm of his other, taking Berith right in the back.
The mighty demon lord twitched, but that was the only indication it gave that it even felt the strike. Turning faster than she thought possible, it swung the maul sideways through the air at Altair.
Christine gasped, but Altair was the faster. Wind deflected the maul away, just enough to miss the crouching dragon and keep Berith spinning.
More magic struck the demon as the rest of her team started to deploy behind her. They were still scattered and not organized, spread out around the demon. Vulnerable.
But they were here now, and they started to take the pressure off the watch group, giving them a chance to breathe. Christine knew she needed to start having them work together, to use the tactics they’d trained with. If they didn’t, Berith would defeat them piecemeal.
The demon lord didn’t seem impressed by the waves of magic hitting him. In fact, his angry bellow said he was quite the opposite.
He gestured at the space between him and the witches. Air shivered and ripped open in half a dozen places. Each was too small to let him escape, but the rifts weren’t designed to let him out.
They were made to let something else in.
Gray shapes rushed through on six legs, the two heads swaying as they came on, snapping at the nearest witches as the gremlins went on the attack. Triple rows of teeth clamped down on one of her team, casually shearing the leg off a second before a blue beam impaled it through both skulls, toppling it, the leg still stuck in its teeth.
Christine looked around, spying one of the dragons and the witch heading up the Outpost watch, even as she triggered a blast of fire from her staff, driving the gremlins back.
“Those are your responsibility!” she screamed. “Hold them off us while we deal with him!”
The others nodded. The witch in charge barked orders to her team and the other witches, not as strong as Christine’s team but still equally capable, went to work on the demonic hell creatures.
Something warned Christine and she spun back, thrusting her staff into the open mouth of a gremlin that had rushed at her. One of its jaws bit down—and the creature simply exploded as yellow light burst from the tip, the magic incinerating the creature instantly.
“I don’t think so,” she snarled savagely, standing her ground as the tidal wave of grey creatures was slowed. She let loose with everything in her arsenal, trying to kill them quickly. The Outpost team slowly came forward as they worked together, one by one relieving Christine’s team, giving them a chance to get organized.
But it meant the four members of the watch were momentarily without help. Four of them against the demon lord. Christine chafed as she took a step back, her place in the line taken by a frost dragon. The man gestured, yanking a hand upward and closing it into a fist.
A line of ice spikes erupted from the ground, impaling everything for forty feet to the left and right of him. A second later, one of the witches stepped forward and fire blackened the bodies.
“Okay, team, let’s go after the big one,” Christine said. There were only eight of them, the rest still on the line stemming the tide of gremlins, but she could wait no longer.
Berith’s maul lashed out, and Becca went flying off to the side as the deadly weapon slammed into her shield. Nearby, a pair of gremlins broke through the witches’ attack and three of the outpost’s members went down under the razor-sharp jaws, either dead or out of the fight. Christine shut her eyes, pushing them out of her mind. She couldn’t focus on them now; she needed to wage a war against the main enemy. Berith.
Try as she might, she couldn’t shake one thought in particular. They were losing. The surprise was absolute, and though she thought she’d been ready for the waves of fear and the sight of the demon lord in person, Christine wasn’t so sure now that she was about to confront him.
“Okay, team,” she said. “Lance. Let’s go. We need to stop Berith.”
Wands and staffs came up together as the tips began to glow blue. At the front of the formation, two witches cast another spell, facing one another, their staffs and their arms forming a diamond shape.
One of them nodded when they were ready, pointing the opening right at Lord Berith.
“Now!” Christine shrieked. Six beams of blue magic went into the diamond shape, bristling and cackling with power.
One giant beam emerged from the other side. The focusing spell combined the magic into one strike. The three-foot-wide beam of magic sliced into Berith, shearing off some of the armor on its upper left thigh and digging into the skin beneath it, though it didn’t penetrate.
It got the attention of the demon though. The monstrous figure whipped around faster than any of them could have expected. It leapt over the portals from which gremlins still emerged and landed right
