They did, in a sharp arc formation, nearly a hundred feet away from where Berith stood among the still-smoking ruins of the Outpost. The buildings had been destroyed down to their foundations, only bits and pieces still standing upright.
The instant they landed, Berith howled with laughter. “Yes! Come, attack me. Send me back to the Abyss. It is time!”
Christine exchanged confused glances with the rest of her team. This was not what she’d expected from the demon lord, and it was confusing her.
“You can go back any time you wish,” she said quietly. “You don’t need us for it.”
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
“Maybe I want you to do it for me!” Berith snarled, his voice booming across the battlefield.
“Something doesn’t make sense here,” Madison said from the left flank.
“Yeah. It majorly stinks. Why would he want us to send him back? That’s just insane on his part,” she agreed.
What could he be planning?
The two sides stood at a face-off, neither attacking the other while the witches tried to puzzle out what he was up. Demons were sneaky, slippery creatures, vastly intelligent, though prone to underestimating the intellect of races they considered ‘lessers’, of which humans, and thus witches, were most definitely one.
“I think we have no choice but to find out what he’s up to,” she said heavily at the end. “He cannot remain here.”
The others muttered their agreement.
“May as well go for the lockdown spell,” she said quietly. “If he’s willing to let us take the offensive, let’s do our worst.”
The others spread out slightly, and yellowish magic began to pulse from wands and staffs as the witches charged the spell, working in common.
Lord Berith rumbled expectantly, positioning himself slightly off to the left. The witches faced him, and as one, they cast the spell.
Brilliant strands of yellow magic shot out and over the demon lord, splitting and intertwining as they went. The giant net spread vast, and then plunged down to the earth, trapping the demon lord beneath its magically infused strands.
Berith howled.
“Uh, guys?”
The demon was breaking free.
Christine cursed. She couldn’t call in Circe and the Coven for help if Berith wasn’t locked down in one spot. If he could get away, then that would leave Winterspell vulnerable.
“We’re going to have to do this ourselves,” she said, making a decision.
The witches lined up and hit Berith with a focusing spell. The blue beam hit him in the chest, this time at full power. The demon roared in pain, thrashing wildly. The spell holding him down broke, and he leapt forward at the team with astounding speed.
Rifts opened to his left and right, and gremlins poured forth anew.
Lightning flashed and new magic seared her eyes. Whether Lord Berith had forgotten about the dragons or not, she didn’t know, but the trio of storm dragons and the two witches riding their back entered the fray now, bringing with them the very wrath of mother nature itself as they kept Christine’s team free to handle the demon.
“Hit him again!” she howled as Berith came at them, wind tearing at her voice. The already dark sky plunged into blackness as the storm dragons waged their own war.
The blue beam focused and shot forward. This time, it hit Berith in his right knee. The demon lord tumbled, crushing dozens of two-headed gremlins as he went, taking an inadvertent blast of lightning straight to the face.
Fire shot into the sky from his horns, and one of the dragons narrowly escaped, banking hard as the flames singed at its scales. Christine hoped it wasn’t Altair.
Lord Berith got to his feet, and Christine saw that he was no longer hurt. His wounds were healing. The demon laughed. “Yes, give it to me!” he howled as they attacked him again.
Something was very, very wrong. Their magic wasn’t hurting the demon lord. He was absorbing it.
“Stop your attacks,” she shouted as Berith backed away, heading toward the ruins of the Outpost. “He’s up to something. He’s got something stashed over there. He must.”
Altair landed nearby, resuming his human form as he jogged over to her. “The others have the gremlins in hand. How can I help?” he asked, walking next to her.
“Pants?” she suggested as they shadowed Berith.
“Not my forte.”
“Right. Well, then tell me how he’s absorbing our magic, and what he intends to do with it. He doesn’t want us to send him back to the Abyss I figure. He just wanted us to attack him.”
Altair nodded, then glanced at the massive, towering figure of the demon. “What if what he’s going for isn’t in the Outpost?” he said, horror spreading across his face. “The new magic!” he hissed. “I can’t believe we missed it!”
Christine shook her head. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“Berith wasn’t talking about us, when he said that. He was talking about the portal.”
Her blood turned to ice. She looked at Berith, saw him bull his way through the ruins and carry on. Directly toward the portal.
“If he dumps all that energy into the portal,” she whispered.
“It would open up again. The Infected would come through.”
Christine didn’t think. She just acted. Her staff came up and across. Reality parted savagely. Through it, she could still see Lord Berith. Only this time, he was approaching instead of retreating. She was about to put herself between him and the portal.
“By the way,” she said. “In case this goes badly, I want you to know, I love you too.” She grabbed him by the neck and kissed him hard, but briefly, and then rushed through the rift, followed by her team.
Even as she oriented herself on the other side, nearly two hundred feet from where she’d been, her body was tingling. Humming,
