All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 78: A Messy Situation

Bee gathered the last of her materials and walked to the Lieutenant's room. Void and Tony were already in position. At least, Tony was. Void, well, she wasn't sure what it was doing as it just seemed to be following Tony around recently. So she hoped it would at least be in the room for this. When things went wrong, maybe it would save the day.

She truly believed that her master would be powerful enough to take care of things itself. She just hoped that it would be motivated her to act. Though she didn't really have any evidence of it being callous or anything, it still hadn't given her a definitive answer about whether it would step in against the demon. Though, to be fair, she had only asked it directly once.

That hadn't stopped her from trying to bring it up in conversation. However, the only response that Void gave was ambiguous. Her best interpretation of the sounds it made was, "I will do what I can."

While that was comforting to hear, it was worrying that it didn't outright promise help.

Bee entered the room with the Lieutenant. Inside she found Tony fiddling with the last of the eight ballistae that he had rigged up. Earlier today, she had tipped the points with a potent poison that one book claimed worked against arch demons. No one had really had much higher level test subjects than that, so she could only pray they'd still be effective here.

"Are we ready?" Bee called as she set her burden down. She started pulling out bags of powders and flinging them into the cage. The powders drifted through the air briefly before they were pulled into the living flames of the statue.

"We have one testing shot ready; I can fire it every 30 seconds to see when it's vulnerable. Then the other seven will take a couple of minutes to reload. I don't imagine that it'll be so patient, so we better make those shots count." Tony said, checking over things one more time.

"Get ready to fire a test shot and start reloading on my mark," Bee said, trying to calm her racing heart. "Once we confirm that it can penetrate, fire the array. Then you go out the east door, and I go out the west. We have other ballistae waiting. Fire and retreat. If it goes after the other one of us, circle around and try to help. You have your demon's bane?"

Tony just grunted. They had gone over the plan a dozen times by now. He didn't seem calm exactly, but he did look a lot more put together than Bee felt. His hands were barely even shaking.

Bee took a deep breath and steadied her own nerves. This was it. This was the moment she had been working towards. She had to make this work. For herself. For Tony. For Tony's family and everyone else nearby. Bee flung the last potion towards the demonic figure, not bothering to uncork the flask. It shattered in the face of Nazareth'gak, and she shouted. "Now!"

Tony fired their test ballista as she ran to her station. As soon as the bolt was away, they each downed a set of potions to increase their speed, strength, and durability for a short while. She had tied a rope to the ceiling above the cage and a huge flask on the other end. It should act like a pendulum and break upon the demon's face. The large glass was filled with slowing potions. Not because she thought those would do the most damage but because it was the only useful thing that she could make enough of on such a short timeline.

Name: Nazareth'gak, Type: Lieutenant Demon, Level: 70, Class Type: Torture, Status: Awaking.

Since she reached level 25, her Scan had grown much more powerful. Now it was able to give her the level of the Lieutenant Demon. And it was terrifying. It wasn't quite in the realm of the gods, but it was at least nine levels higher than the king's champion, and he was nearly 220 years old.

Regardless, that was the best humanity could offer, and he had been training his whole life. She didn't imagine that he would have a chance in a fair fight against Nazareth'gak. The differences in levels only increased as the levels did.

As she got into position, she saw that the first bolt had just bounced off. Tony wound the crank furiously, trying to get the next shot loaded as soon as he could. But before he could fire it, she checked with Scan again. The new Status field hadn't changed from Awakening.

"Hold, wait for my signal." She called. Tony thankfully didn't waste another shot. They only had two more bolts that were poisoned other than the ones loaded in the array, and she didn't want to run out.

It was a tense couple of minutes as she checked Scan repeatedly. She kept an eye on the demon's appearance but kept her focus on the Scan results. Eventually, the status field changed from "Awakening" to "Groggy."

"Now!"

This time the arrow sunk into dark flesh.

—

I could feel the energy coming from the big demon statue fluctuate. Right when it reached its peak, I knew it was waking. Somehow Beatrice knew it too. She called out again, and Tony let fly with his second shot. This time the head of the bolt sunk in.

It didn't go far in, just enough for the barbs to catch. It then fell down, pulling the skin with it. The demon was starting to regain color. It started with the flames licking along its arms. They never stopped moving, but they went from the slate gray of the rest of the statue to more vivid reds and blues.

The horns stayed the same gray color, but slowly the skin deepened into a reddish-brown hue. The pose hadn't changed yet. Tony started loading the ballista again. It was a risky move. But he explained himself. "I think it was stone under the skin. I'm going to try again."

Somehow he was moving even faster than his last reload. I simply waited with Beatrice until Tony fired. This time the arrow went several inches deeper. It must have hit something more solid as it stuck out straight rather than sagging like the last one. Beatrice waited a bit more.

My internal clock told me that only 13 more seconds had passed, but it sure felt like a lot more. After those 13 seconds, one of the statue's fingers twitched. As soon as she saw movement, Beatrice released her giant glass ball. It swung towards the cage right for the demon's face.

The swing took it between two bars of the cage, but it slightly clipped the one on the left. The glass shattered, and the liquid sprayed all over the demon with 71.2% efficiency. At the same time, Tony launched the other seven bolts. Each penetrated deep into the side of the demon.

The demon came alive with a deep, bellowing roar. The whole room vibrated with the sheer volume of it, shattering the glass lamps around the room into pieces. The area was plunged into the darkness except for the glowing fires burning on the demon's shoulders and down his arms. The fire reached for the cage, and with slow pressure, it ripped the bars apart.

As soon as the bars left the hands of the demon, they flew off to the side, embedding themselves in the far walls. It was too much for the structure of the cages, and it just fell apart as the demon took a single step out of the cage. Slowly it grabbed one of the arrows sticking into its side and ripped it out. A disturbingly soft chuckle escaped its inhuman lips.

Its arm flashed as it hurled the bolt at Tony. Lucilky Tony was sticking to the plan and was already diving through the east door. The bolt punched through the stone wall like it was drywall. As it shattered rock, a portion of the wall crumpled, and a shower of debris flew out of the other side. Tony was right beneath it but seemed to be okay. I watched with my senses as he scrambled down the hall to his next position.

Then the demon turned to run at Beatrice. It wasn't moving nearly as slowly now, but I still had no trouble tracking it. Beatrice was much faster than Tony but hesitated as the cage shattered. She was moving fast, but not that fast. For the first time, I needed to act.

My front bumper began to glow. A thin line of bluish-purple energy shot out faster than the eye could see, and the sanitation lamp's beam struck the demon right in its eyes. That seemed to get its attention. It growled, apparently annoyed, as it raised its arm to take the hit there instead. It then stopped chasing after Beatrice, having only taken a few steps, and turned to face me.

I started to zip around the edges of the room as it chased me. While I was avoiding getting crushed by the stampeding demons, I was also trying to get as much damage from my lamp as I could. I tried to focus it on the wounds in its body, and when it moved to cover the area, I shined it back up on its face. It really didn't like the light in its eyes. Despite my best efforts, the light didn't really slow it down.

I still had a speed advantage but only barely, and it was shrinking. Each change was getting closer and closer to me. However, as it got faster, it seemingly got worse at its ability to pivot. Using my air manipulation abilities, I fished out the glass bottles that Beatrice had stored in a crate over her position. Flinging them at the pursuing demon, they shattered on contact.

Sometimes it flinched. Sometimes it slowed down for a fraction of a second. It only took a dozen seconds and a single lap before I ran out of ammo. There were a couple of bags of demon's bane in my reach, but I couldn't use them immediately. I couldn't just toss those as they were, and it cost me concentration to untie them with the air. I barely avoided a fist smashing down where I was. To my horror, the perfect floor shattered in a small crater around the fist, and I was sprayed with broken shards of glass. But once I had the pouches open, I controlled the powder with streams of air.

When it first made contact, I heard the sizzling. Instead of this just being a powder in the air the demon could blow away or avoid, I held the burning against the demon's skin until it seemed inert. Then I replaced it with fresh stuff. As it charged it again, it began laughing. Still, I didn't stop.

Soon I would run out of powder, but it seemed to be doing damage. Not a lot, no, but between that and the lamp, I was able to hold its attention. Eventually, it seemed to tire of the game of chase. Even as it continuously sped up, I was still able to avoid it.

Soon, it stopped running after me and simply walked back to the center of the room, where it grabbed a metal bar from the scrap pile that had once been its cage. I took advantage of the reprieve to consider my options. Mop and grabby arm both didn't seem useful here. Maybe I could go get one of them and…

The demon stood and flung one of the metal bars at me faster than I would have thought possible.

—-

Bee cursed at herself for freezing as she ran toward her next position. Her slowing potion hadn't done anything. Well, it had probably saved Tony, but it was so much less than she had hoped. Even supremely slowed and with nine siege weapons sticking out of it, Nazareth'gak was only barely inconvenienced.

She had hoped to do more before it moved. Already she had to leave behind weapons unused. Maybe her master would make use of them. Its beam attack was the only reason that she managed to get away. She sprinted to the end of the hallway toward a mounted ballista with a poisoned tip.

She had little hope for it, but she adjusted its aim up slightly. Maybe a shot to the face would have more of an impact.