The journey to hell didn't get any less sickening the second time Calyx made it, but this time he at least knew what to expect.
He was excited to finally be putting his training to real use, and against an entire enemy camp no less. The disgusting feeling in the air almost made him feel more excited, like a pit forming in his stomach that he needed to sate with action.
Still, he knew that these wouldn't be freebies. Him and Tharon could barely take on a single one-eye the first trip, but that was before they had real magic to fight with.
"The camp should just be over this incline." Lania said as she looked up at a steep, rocky slant in front of them. They had been walking for longer than Calyx cared to keep track of, but this was the first part of the path that wasn't smooth ground.
"Once we get close, stay quiet if you know what's good for you, and only attack when I give you the signal." Lania glanced at him judgmentally. "You can handle that much, can't you?"
"I dunno." Calyx said. "Knowing what's good for me is what Tharon's for."
"Don't be stupid." Tharon muttered, staring forward and focusing on the mission ahead.
"See? That kind of wisdom is rare these days."
Calyx climbed up the rocks and got a better view of the camp. It was built in a massive cavern that the tunnel they were in cut into. It was also built in a circle around a fire that was about ninety feet in diameter, with around twelve two-eyed demons inhabiting it.
The demons had very little variety in what they looked like, with each of them being lanky and thin compared to the ones they had fought before. Each was about half the size of a person and had two glowing eyes, thin and sideways, making their otherwise human faces appear much more unsettling.
Half the group was working on some manner of construction, making Calyx curious as to what demons actually did with their time in hell.
The rest of the demons were roasting food over the fire, despite whatever they were cooking already having been burned to a crisp.
"How intelligent are demons, anyway?" Calyx asked as he watched them go about their duties. Lania popped up next to him after climbing the slant herself.
"I was told it corresponds with their number of eyes." Lania looked over at the fumbling creatures going about their duties. "So these guys would be only slightly smarter than an animal, not unlike you."
"Don't flatter me too much or I might take it the wrong way."
They had been told before the mission that there would be a three-eyed demon somewhere within the camp, but it was nowhere to be seen. Calyx couldn't decide whether this was a good or bad thing.
"We have the advantage right now." Tharon pointed to the encampment. "Many of them are gathered around the fire, so we can use that for our ambush."
"I can blow the fire up." Lania said as she pulled her 'weapon' from her pocket, focusing on the enemy. "Pyron energy reacts violently with natural fire, since the spirit energy reacts to blend with the more gritty stuff."
"Don't know what that means, but I'm down for explosions." Calyx said. "Me and Tharon should make our way around and flank them while they are panicking and moving in your direction."
Calyx didn't know how effective that plan actually would be, but it felt cool to use words like 'flank' in a real strategy discussion.
"I was going to say that." Lania sighed grumpily as she motioned over to a tunnel entrance on the far side of the cavern. "That should be connected to the tunnels this one forked from. You two go over and find it, and peek just over the corner to let me know you're ready."
"Let's go." Tharon said, pulling Calyx along to get in position for the upcoming attack.
~=~=~=~=~=~
A cone of scorching heat blasted from the side of the cavern into the campfire at the demon's camp, causing an explosion of flames to flare up and engulf the six demons surrounding it. Out of the ones that were hit by the blast, only two of them wobbled out with enough intact flesh to move.
This made every demon at the camp shriek, locating the source at one of the cavern's entrances. Pulling up spears from the gulfs of their stomachs, they began to charge at the danger.
But amidst the smell of charred flesh and rush of adrenaline, the demons didn't notice the two brothers coming in from behind. Calyx charged up Ardai into his cleaver and slashed it against the back of one of the running demons, the bright energy flashing as it burned a gaping wound into the imp.
Tharon wasn't too far behind, slashing one of the other demons to bits with a few clean strikes from his sword. Unlike Calyx, he seemed to be reserving his energies, which may have been smart.
Once the demons caught wind of the two attackers, it wasn't long before they turned around to fight back. Three of them dived at Calyx, but he sidestepped their coordinated charge easily and cut through them as they barely missed him.
Tharon was taking a different approach, using Somae in his sword to block the incoming spears and turn them brittle, snapping them into two useless toothpicks with his next swing.
And speaking of useless toothpicks, Lania used her spirit thorn to focus a beam of Ardai on the attackers, setting one ablaze and maintaining the connection until the demon fell to the ground in flames.
It had been less than half a minute after the attack's initiation before all but two of the enemy troops were taken care of. If it had stopped there, Calyx would have believed these demons to be pushovers.
The two surviving demons began to take a defensive stance, using their superior speed to keep distance from the brothers. Lania couldn't focus her attacks fast enough to keep up with them either as they scurried around.
That's when the shaking began.
"Does anyone else feel that?" Calyx said as he kept an eye on the two fleeing demons, and Tharon nodded. The ground began to shake slightly as if there was a small earthquake.
Suddenly, three arms burst through the hard rock over at the burning campsite, and a demon with a wide mouth and three eyes burst from the ground. It looked like the cross between a caterpillar and a toad, and had its brownish-red scales slightly darker than the other demons.
Finally, a real opponent.
The two-eyed demons ran up behind it, almost like chicks huddling under a mother hen.
Attempting to get the jump on it, Lania threw out an orb of Ardai and blasted the creature in its gaping jaw, but unlike her previous uses of Ardai the creature's hot scales didn't seem even slightly harmed by the attack.
"Crap." Tharon said as the monster made a gurgling sound, lunging towards the brothers at the speed of a race dog.
One thing Calyx learned about fast moving enemies from his training is that the speed they accumulated could easily be used for his own benefit. He stepped closer as it moved, waving his arm around to try to make it focus on him. Like he expected, that taunting was enough for it to aim for him, and he was ready to jump over it while using the speed to drive it into his knife where it would hurt most.
Unfortunately, he underestimated the pace the creature was moving at. Before he could attempt to use his strategy, the beast bashed into him and bit his stomach, then moved down, using its huge, toothy mouth to chew into his leg.
While his armor protected his torso well enough to keep it unscathed, his pants couldn't say the same. Once it got there, it chewed through the meager protection and tore up the skin on his left leg, causing him to grunt in pain.
A second blast of Ardai hit the creature at the same time as Tharon's sword did, causing the creature to stumble back in pain. The scales on the demon were durable, but Tharon's attack managed to cut through the outer layer and spread decay from the point of impact, seemingly from using Somae.
Calyx's leg was bleeding, and he was in more pain than he had ever felt before. He had never gotten into any major accidents as a kid, so having his leg chewed up was a new level of injury for him.
Despite the feeling of cold, burning pain going up his body, Calyx didn't have time to feel sorry for himself before the demon lunged again. His adrenaline managed to ground him enough to dodge to the side when it came close, but it simply went straight for him again after missing.
"Hold on!" Tharon shouted as he tried striking the demon from behind again. Unlike last time, the demon was a moment faster than him and tried the same stunt on Tharon that it did with Calyx.
Fortunately, Tharon managed to stab its head as it tried to attack him, spraying black blood across Tharon's face. It moved back again, and retreated toward the other two remaining demons.
Lania shot out an odd tentacle of light that tried to burn its way into the fleeing beast, but had very little effect on it.
Lania shouted out a string of curses Calyx wasn't familiar with, and shot Somae at the beast this time. It proved to be more effective than the Ardai, but it began to dodge the blasts after a few hits.
Calyx tried to run forward to pursue it, but his leg wasn't working too well.
"Are you okay?" Tharon got down on the ground and kept switching between inspecting Calyx's leg and watching the remaining demons.
"Been better." Calyx admitted.
Tharon began to clean the wound with the first aid they brought, hastily bandaging it up while the demons regrouped.
"Look out!" Lania yelled as Calyx turned to see the demons all charging the moment he let his guard down. He began to charge an attack, but it wasn't necessary.
By the time the three eyed demon nearly reached their location, it succumbed to its wounds. The two surviving two-eyed demons both began to flee, before being promptly taken out by Lania.
"Is that it?" She said as she came out from her post and towards the brothers, looking around cautiously. When she seemed convinced of the safety of the situation, she picked up the pace.
"It seems like it." Tharon bent over to get another look at Calyx's leg.
Lania pressed her spirit thorn against the bloodied bandage, and began to send some form of cold energy into it that made it numb. Calyx didn't know what she was doing, but he wasn't complaining.
"I'm just reducing the speed of time in the wound." She intensified the magic. "It should slow your system in your leg, and any bleeding or infection along with it."
Calyx noticed that in combat and while healing, Lania had an unusually serious demeanor, compared to her submissive doormat personality when up against authority or her snarky sadism in training.
It was amazing to him that one woman could have so many faulty personalities at her disposal.
"Once we get back, our job is done." She said as she finished whatever she was doing to his leg.
"Not so fast." Calyx said, looking around. "We should check the camp before we leave. There might be something useful."
Truthfully, Calyx was interested in what the round burned blobs were that the demons were eating. While it was an excuse, he wasn't wrong about the other stuff potentially being useful too.
"Alright. But if you bleed out, that's on you."
Calyx limped over toward the camp and saw that the fire had consumed most of the flammable objects while they were fighting. Luckily, he managed to find a few barrels that were safe from the blaze.
"No… Way…"
Calyx was hoping for something interesting, but he wasn't expecting such an amazing surprise to be found in a barrel at a demon camp.
"THARON!" He shouted, motioning for his brother. "HELL HAS POTATOES!"