Elmar stared at the surrounding swamp. No one else but him dared to go out of the inn. He touched the scar on his neck from where he had plunged a blade inside.

Then he looked at his gray skin. It was weird that his skin had changed color. He had asked Hades about it and had received a cryptic answer about death in general. Hades was never one to give him a straight answer.

Now that he was dead, that annoyed him less, somehow. But it was still annoying. Elmar had stopped three waves of corpses so far, the barrier a trusted anvil to his hammer. But more kept coming, and Elmar had a problem.

He couldn’t see his mana anymore. He was dead, and so he couldn’t produce it anymore, or so Hades had told him. But Elmar had found a way around that issue. A painful, but effective one.

His soul could regenerate now, even though he had no mana. He used it to power his spells. They were stronger than before and demanded he concentrated more, but he was not satisfied.

Elmar looked up at the sky and felt the harmless, for him, rain fall on him. He was drenched. But he had to wait here, outside the barrier. To use himself as bait. The fire demon had to come, so they could battle.

Even as a spirit he could still protect the inn and his friends, Elmar was certain of that, if of nothing else. The fire demon was welcomed to tear him apart, but Elmar was just going to power up the barrier indefinitely.

Then, Hades would have to do his own dirty work. Only the teleportation ring was left. Was Hades even bothered by something like the swelling sickness? Was he even alive?

Elmar heard heavy footsteps and saw smoke in the distance. The heat that the demon was radiating must be quite intense, if even the wet trees were burning. The water around of Elmar began to bubble and steam rose from it. Even the soil he was standing on began to heat up.

Well, that won’t do. If this kept up, even if the demon came close to the inn, everyone was going to boil alive inside. Elmar looked at the window, where Garry was looking at him with worry.

The gnome had admitted to calling the demon because he had been fed up with eating baked apples and ginger bread. It was his fault and he regretted it now. What he thought was the spirit of wishes was a demon in truth.

But it didn’t matter to Elmar. He made a step forward and then broke off in a run towards the smoke. If he could keep the thing away from the inn, then everyone was going to be ok.

He ran and saw dead fish in the swamp, bellies up and skin boiled. The birds had already died off because of the swelling sickness, their corpses rotting in the foliage.

The animals that had been smart enough to go below the earth had survived the swelling sickness, but now they were roasting in their burrows. Elmar’s thoughts went to the two giant frogs that they have met. Were they dead now? Or were they roasting? Or maybe they were too far from the demon and unharmed. Elmar hoped for the latter.

The earth was baked and cracked around Elmar. The rain cracked it further, and the water in the swamp was boiling now. The footsteps were growing ever near.

Then, Elmar saw it. It was a giant thing with a flaming body and smoke rising from it. It wielded a club and a shield and had on black tar that resembled an armor.

The boy stopped before the monster and took a couple of deep breaths, despite not needing to anymore. The giant flame demon turned to him and raised its club high.

“You won’t take their lives!” Screamed Elmar. He could feel his skin heating up from the proximity, but didn’t feel any pain.

“Garry… Aleida…” Said the demon, and Elmar wondered if it could speak more than the names of those it was sent to kill.

Elmar clapped his hands and focused on the boiling water around him.

Raise and rumble.

Roar and grumble.

Be a beast most fearsome.

And tear this demon apart.

A dragon made of water rose from the swamp, using up all the water that hadn’t evaporated yet and making up for the lost water with rain water. It roared and made a lumbering step towards the giant fire demon.

The demon laughed and trusted its hand inside the dragon’s head. Not only didn’t its hand didn’t extinguish itself, the dragon’s head blew up and the water that constituted the body fell harmlessly back on the ground.

“Well, I didn’t expect that.” Said Elmar, worried. He needed to think quick. How does he extinguish the demon if water had no effect on it? He looked around and saw sand near the road.

Back in the grotto, they sometimes went down to the beach. They had extinguished their camp fires by kicking sand on them many times. It was worth a try.

He repeated his spell, this time making the dragon from sand.

“Go and coil around the demon!” Screamed Elmar as he dodged a swing of the fiery club. The dragon did as told and stuck on the tar armor of the demon. The demon growled when his neck began to flicker and smoke more.

Elmar smiled at that and was ready to jump in joy when the dragon began turning to glass from the heat. The demon had a gaping hole spanning half its neck, but it managed to break the now glass dragon in small shards and throw it in the water.

The boy watched the damage the sand had made. The demon’s left hand was gone, and so was his left knee cap. It had fallen on its right knee, and it was now in the water, smoking and beginning to disappear too.

Then, the demon did something that Elmar hadn’t expected it could. It uprooted a tree and ate it. All the damage it had sustained vanished, and it raised to its feet and threw the club at Elmar.