Demoness 2 - Chapter 36 - Civil War (Pt. 1) (Patreon)

Elania winced as she checked her remaining [Power].

[Power: 1899/1559]

The magical bubble had drained off a considerable amount of it to block her own blast.

That Elder Winx was floating there, doing his best to imitate the avatar of an angry god as the air started to clear... was not a good sign.

Glancing behind her, the room was charred. There was a slant to the floor where stone had melted forward from the energy, and Elania wasted no time in picking Yolani and Henri up under her arms and leaping off the small pillar that had been spared from the cataclysmic release.

It crumbled and cracked and fell into a giant slide into the city’s abyss of deep lakes far below.

The explosion might have been a bit overdone.

“Elania!” Yolani shouted, protesting about being handled.

“Sorry! Didn’t want us to fall,” Elania replied.

Gaston and the guide stood looking back at them from the staircase, both had burns on their arms and faces, and the expression Gaston gave her was of shock and horror.

A lance of golden light slammed into the wall near the exit.

“Henri, take Yolani!” Elania shouted. The young man looked at her dumbly, but she shoved them toward the staircase. It was the only real cover in the room, and she wasn’t sure what the Elder was capable of.

“Go!” she shouted again. This time, the order seemed to cut through the shock. Henri grabbed Yolani’s arm and tugged her back to the others with a nod.

Elania whipped around to face Winx just in time to witness another chant finish. A golden lance struck the ground in front of her, casting rock shrapnel into her.

That hurt, but [Regeneration] patched the scrapes and holes in her almost immediately. She didn’t have time to be impressed, though, because the Elder was already chanting again.

He paused during each chant. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad. She wasn’t sure what a melee would do, but at least she had some ranged options.

She dodged back and forth as the golden lances struck the ground, before she finally landed on a small ledge that was still intact and closer to the elder.

Her rifle banged against her side on its strap, and since he was doing the floaty-flying thing, it seemed like a reasonable response.

She raised the weapon and used the iron sight to aim at him, pushing a bead of [Power] into the weapon’s internal crystal. She fed the familiar tug, the steady pulsing drain turning into a hail of projectiles.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected, though, as she reviewed the results.

The bullets shattered in the air, a golden aura surrounding him and turning them into a rain of metallic shavings.

Elania’s eyes narrowed as he began a rapid descent toward her and swapped in her spare magazine and opened fire again. The strain on his face was apparent. Shooting him seemed to be doing something. So she kept up bursts of projectiles.

“Fucking hell,” Elania cursed. Nuclear blast proof, bullet resistant? Suddenly, the existence of the Conclave and the reason for the Magisters to allow them free rein in the city became a little more apparent.

It wasn’t that they allowed the Conclave to exist, they didn’t have a choice because depending on how many ‘elders’ there were...

A thread of light appeared in front of Elania’s nose. Instinctively, she crouched and pushed back, flinging herself away from it before a solid pillar of energy smashed down into the spot like a massive, oversized log.

Stone crunched, and shards and fragments flew in every direction.

Before Elania could take aim and open fire again, he was on top of her after suddenly closing the distance with a rush.

She blocked his punch with the rifle; that was a mistake, as the artificed metal Yolani had painstakingly crafted ruptured and bent turning it into a paperweight.

Winx followed up with a round kick that she blocked with her elbow. The blow was heavy and sent her feet skidding on abused stone, but she struck back just as fast with her newly inert chunk of ruined metal.

He caught it with his hand, then twisted it out of her grip. Before losing it Elania realized what she could do and poured [Power] into the crystal, then jumped back.

The rifle exploded in his face.

This time, whatever magic he’d used to protect against the bullets didn’t work, or wasn’t active.

The shrapnel and explosion tore into his skin and left him looking like someone had taken a cheese grater to him. Several bleeding wounds on his limbs looked deeper, and his robe had several spots that seemed to be soaking up a lot of blood.

Elania opened her mouth to say something snarky, but ended up coughing up a lungful of her own blood.

Turning her rifle into an ad hoc pipe bomb while standing next to it had drawbacks. She choked out the piece of shrapnel and then her wounds began to knit themselves back together.

She’d endured the pain of [Regeneration] so many times that it barely bothered her now. She pushed away the familiar half dozen system messages and inspected her opponent.

The Elder was clearly on his last leg.

It looked like he was using the last of his energy to remain standing.

She skipped the impulse to shout at him as she kicked him in the chest, sending him flying out into the dark.

There were a few seconds where she worried his body would magically reanimate and float back up to shoot more light beams at her, but he disappeared into the dark without further pomp.

Elania took a deep breath and took a second to look out at the city. She hadn’t meant to re-arrange the infrastructure, and the damage looked... bad. The section where the city connected to the fortress had completely fallen into the dark. It had been mostly empty space anyway, but the damage reached all the way to the buildings and houses, and several had been shaved in half where their foundations had slid out, leaving half the building behind.

A numbness filled her, and she realized there had likely been people in the buildings. She’d killed them. She’d killed a lot of people. Even if she discounted the monks and lightbringers...

The dark thought that people were right to hate demons and that she was exactly what they thought she was wormed its way into her head.

Especially since she didn’t feel nearly as bad as she thought she was supposed to for what she’d done during the fighting.

She shook away the thoughts and looked back at the stairwell. The others were gone. That was good. The fight had been destructive. She started to head toward where her friends had disappeared to, when the distant crack of muskets filled the air.

She turned and spotted a line of guards with their weapons in a street, opening fire on the Conclave fortress. Spread out amongst the still standing buildings, others popped up to fire in ones and twos from the roofs as well.

They were shooting at monks that had begun to pour out of the last remaining arch that connected to the city.

Spells and holy magic shot out to meet the musket fire, and she could see men falling on both sides.

The chaos only seemed to grow as a stream of lightbringers poured out of a tavern to join the fight.

Elania turned and hurried after the others, jumping between the few stable flooring sections until she reached the relatively solid ground near the staircase.

Taking stock of her resources left her feeling pinched. All her mana shards were gone. She’d gone into the mission expecting that, so it wasn’t a shock. Mana shards, while not rare and rather expensive, were expendable.

Her rifle being exploded wasn’t great, but Yolani could make new things as long as she was alive and safe.

Her power reserves…

[Power: 1499/1559]

They weren’t terrible, but not being supercharged wasn’t great.

Especially since…

She’d started a war.

***

Hey guys! How are you!

I've got some good news to share! I just spent the last few days finishing up proofreading and editing Book 1 of Demoness! I'll be sending it to the audio production soon. I think we can expect a release date sometime in late May! (Hopefully, lol.)

At 193k words its a chonker! I decided to combine the two short stories into the back of the book as well, so that added some pages. I'm still working on deciding the print format, but hardback is limited to 550 pages on amazon.

I am not really happy with the proof copies I've seen as well, so I am thinking that it might just be a paperback + ebook + KU + audiobook release. Then down the line do a Kickstarter so we can have a run of really nice hardbacks after the series is completed.

Anyway, thank you all for reading!