Chapter 12: The Great Demon Emerges

The doors did indeed open, allowing the pair of unwilling allies to step forward – but not very far. After around five yards, the way ahead was blocked by further paired doors made entirely of glass or some other transparent material.

Miguel pushed at the new obstacle with both hands and scanned around for a catch or a button, but to no avail. They would once again have to wait until the masters of Demon Hunters were ready to let them proceed.

“They want us to freak out, to worry about what’s to come,” said Tarja. “Look.”

Beyond was an arena that they hadn’t seen before, a sandy circle around thirty yards across which sloped gently towards the middle. There were various obstacles or hiding places dotted around the place: a huge oblong boulder, a few thin waist-height barricades shaped like tombstones, a couple of shallow pits. Finally, while the edge of the arena was made up of a solid grey metal wall, there were at least three (as far as Miguel could see) little wooden huts nestled against it, each with glass doors at their front.

“Showdown time,” murmured Miguel.

Equip crossbow

And as he watched on, he realized he could see the other contenders inside the little huts – and that this must be how he and Tarja looked to them, although unlike the appearance of the ‘huts’, the side walls inside where they were standing weren’t wooden. Sid stood behind the opposite doors, together with a dark-skinned woman with braided hair. Further along, Miguel could make out Chloe. Like him, she had been placed together with a former rival. All of them looked alert, ready – their nerves no doubt jangling as much as his were.

“Contenders,” called out the guide, “your audience is assembling for the next event. Eight of you remain. Well done – you made the top ten percent. You will now see the rankings projected onto the doors in front of you.”

Sure enough, Miguel could now clearly make out writing on the transparent doors:

1) Sid Geraghty 2) Tarja Tuomi 3) Gwendolyn Acoba Árbenz 4) Dustin Chu 5) Miguel Rubio 6) Laticia Blake 7) Chloe Králová 8) Brad Green

Tarja looked sideways at him. “Bottom half, Shmoop. Told ya that you should have necked with the brunette.”

He rolled his eyes. “Her name is Chloe.”

Miguel looked again at the rankings, which were just starting to fade. Man, the public could be harsh. It was hard to see what Chloe had done to deserve her fall down the rankings. As for him, fifth out of eight wasn’t much of an improvement on seventeenth out of twenty-six, but it wasn’t much worse, either.

It was clear that there could not be much time left before they were in combat, and Miguel’s mind again turned to the idea of spending his accumulated XP, wondering how this was done. Well... the system is intuitive, right? He concentrated hard, and then thought to himself: spend xp on one hit point.

A notification flashed up immediately:

You have added one hit point at a cost of 150XP; You now have 4 out of 9 hit points remaining; 545XP remaining.

Damn. He had forgotten that he was still wounded, though he felt fine and there had been no visible indication of this.

Then Miguel remembered the little vial in his belt pouch, and rummaged into it. There it was! He pulled out the vial, unstopped it, and poured the liquid into his mouth, as Tarja looked on with one eyebrow arched.

You now have 9 out of 9 hit points remaining.

Better.

Now, time to try a further upgrade. Spend XP on three hit points, he thought to himself, figuring out that this would be the maximum he could afford with the XP that remained.

You have added three hit points at a cost of 450XP; you now have 12 out of 12 hit points remaining; 95XP remaining.

At that moment, the glass doors opposite began to open, and Miguel tensed himself, raising the crossbow. But their own doors didn’t budge. Instead, the doors opposite slid right back, leaving Sid Geraghty and Laticia Blake in the open.

“Ah... It’s not an advantage to go first,” Tarja murmured, pressing her forearms up against the glass as she leaned forward to get a better view. “I bet we go in last. Those guys have to endure for longer. Against whatever it is we’ll be facing.”

“Makes sense. So we just watch?”

She didn’t reply.

The red-haired warrior Sid had now emerged, his long beard flung across his shoulder. His companion, the slim and cloaked Laticia Blake, was holding a two-handed sword. The pair stepped cautiously out from their doorway and the wooden structure that surrounded it, and then looked around, weapons raised as the glass slid shut again behind them.

They split up immediately; although they were clearly talking to each other, pointing and gesturing as they moved around the arena, Miguel was unable to hear a word.

Then his attention was captured by a spherical pod which rose up from the divot in the middle of the arena. The sphere was around two yards wide and made of gleaming gray-colored metal. As they watched on, it began to glow orange in a ring around the center, and then to split apart like an oyster. The top raised up as if on a hinge, and a reddish shape within began to rise.

The shape soon took form – and it was huge. It was humanoid, but definitely not human. Its skin was deep red in color, and it was twice as tall as a person, and very bulky around the shoulders and chest. It was horned, too. At first Miguel struggled to make out its arms, until he realized that he was looking at three rather than two upper limbs, equally spaced around a triangular torso. It had two legs, but each was ridged and enormously wide, shaped more like the trunk of an oak than a leg.

“They are so screwed,” muttered Tarja.

Miguel glanced to the side. Sid and Laticia had disappeared, and he briefly wondered if they had managed to get back through the doors. But no – they were each hiding behind one of the tombstone-like rocks, ducking down out of sight.

Wisely.

The creature took a step forward. Its face was almost featureless, with glowing yellow eyes below the horns, and only a slight indentation where a nose or mouth might be. Even its feet weren’t normal, Miguel realized; they were shaped like the roots of trees, each with tentacle-like appendages which were able to grip the ground firmly as it moved.

The demon wasn’t fast – that was one positive sign. But its arms were hugely long, and each ended in a pincer like a lobster’s claw. It would only need to take one stride and then stretch out in order to attack someone who was at the other side of the arena.

It would have no need for weapons.

And soon, Miguel realized, he himself would be facing it, with almost no effective shelter to be found in the circular arena.

As Miguel watched on, Sid rolled out from behind the upright rock. He had equipped a javelin in one hand, and he hurled it from a crouching position, and then dashed backwards to avoid retaliation. It was a hit – the javelin embedded into the jellylike outer flesh of the demon. Then, from his position closer to the outer edge, Sid threw a second, and ducked down behind another of the tombstone-rocks.

It appeared as if the monstrous red demon was not going to react. But then the creature rapidly pulled the two spears out simultaneously with the claws of two of its three arms, and flung them aside dismissively. It then strode forward, reaching over the tombstone with one arm.

But Sid had already moved, scurrying back and flattening himself against the far wall. Laticia now leaped forward, hacking at the monster’s arm with her two-handed broadsword. Her strike was accurate, catching its limb where it rested on the top of the rock, like a length of meat on a chopping block.

Surely it will be too tough for that, thought Miguel, craning to see the action clearly and pressing himself up against the glass door, Tarja at his side.

But with a second slash, Laticia succeeded in hacking off the end of the creature’s limb; the squirming lobster claw fell down onto the sand beyond. The monster screeched and waggled the stump in the air as Laticia moved away and circled around to one side, trying to duck behind the beast and out of its field of vision.

But the demon was not so easily distracted. As Laticia ran, she found her legs blocked by another of the demon’s limbs, while the third swept in and thumped her across the back of the neck and head, tripping her and sending her sprawling across the arena.

She rolled, and the demon then planted one of its huge trunk-like legs directly onto her upper body, wrapping the tentacles around it and leaning down on her. She yelped once and then squirmed as she began to be crushed.

“Shit. She’s going to take a ton of damage now,” muttered Tarja.

At that point, two things happened. One of the other double doors opened, potentially letting another pair of contestants join the fray – though the pair did not initially enter. Simultaneously, Sid rushed back towards the center of the arena, now whirling his enormous battle axe through the air and thumping it hard into the creature’s body. It made a roaring noise, and twisted to begin pounding at the man’s face with its two intact limbs, punching at the red-bearded man with the chitin edge of the claws. The warrior tried to block the blows with his axe, but it was clear to the observers that most were hitting home – and despite the retaliatory attack, the demon hadn’t stepped away to release Laticia, either.

Her body had now gone limp.

The assembled then heard the name of the two latest arrivals announced by the guide: Brad Green and Gwendolyn Acoba Árbenz, and they had now emerged. Obviously staying inside the wooden area was not an option, Miguel realized, though he couldn’t see how they had been ejected.

Miguel recognized Brad; he was the bald-headed man with the goatee who had slain a woman in front of him at the beginning of the first task. Brad immediately pulled out a longbow and began to fire arrow after arrow into the demon from as far away as he could get, close to the outer wall. Gwendolyn pulled out two short-swords, one in each hand, and stalked towards the monster, keeping low and circling around behind it as Laticia had tried to do.

Sid had now dropped to the ground under the barrage of blows from the demon, and had curled up almost into a ball, clearly stunned and possibly close to death. And at last the demon let up on its barrage of hits, noticing the bow-fire and instead turning to take one step towards the archer, Brad. As it did so, it at last stepped off the mangled and lifeless Laticia.

Sid was now prostrate and bleeding profusely. He looked like he should be finished too, but instead the big warrior stood up unsteadily and picked up his axe once more. Miguel could now see very clearly what Tarja had meant, when she had said that he could soak up a lot of damage. How many hit points did the man have?

“We’ll be in soon,” muttered Tarja.

The demon now thumped a raking blow of one claw towards Brad, but narrowly missed; the man had dropped his longbow and lunged to one side. He now rolled and then sprinted away. At the same moment, the third door opened. Chloe now emerged, spear in hand. There was a man just behind her – the eighth contestant, and another of Sid’s crew. That must be Dustin, thought Miguel. At the same moment, Tarja hissed, “There go Dustin and your girl, Chloe...”

Dustin was staying as closely as he could behind Chloe, acting like her shadow. As the huge demon now looked around and took a step towards the new arrivals, Chloe raised her spear in anticipation of an attack, and sure enough, the demon swept one of its huge limbs towards her. She set the spear against her boot and crouched, getting her full weight behind it. Aiming to use its strength against itself, thought Miguel approvingly. But while the beast did indeed impale its limb on the tip of Chloe’s spear as it swung one of the huge claws towards her, this didn’t stop the follow-through of the mighty blow thumping hard into Chloe’s chest and sending the woman tumbling towards the far wall where she lay, momentarily stunned.

Sid Geraghty was now approaching once again, undaunted. Yeah, I can see why he’s top, Miguel now thought to himself. He has guts. Audiences like that sort of grit.

The red-haired warrior used the demon’s momentary inattention to lunge forward and hack his axe into the back of its mighty legs in a move that would have hamstrung and disabled any human.

But the creature wasn’t human, or anything even close.

Rather than being slashed, the sinew of its legs appeared to wrap around the axe head, and Sid found himself struggling to pull his weapon free. As the creature twisted around to face him, he was left with no choice but to abandon his favored axe and sprint away to one side, reaching one of the shallow pits in the ground and sliding into it, hunkering down.

The latest axe attack didn’t seem to have slowed the beast at all. But at least it had been distracted from Chloe, who was slowly picking herself up from the far wall. Gwendolyn Árbenz had come alongside her – safety in numbers, perhaps.

“Tarja Tuomi and Miguel Rubio,” shouted the guide at that moment.

And as the glass doors slid open, Miguel felt the wall behind him move closer.