1Chapter Twelve: Einderan VS Malchior (I got ten on the half demon...)
"Esenatar Okera Miater,
Seiar gial Itar tra,
Loeia fomar fraitea so!"
Einderan slowly levitated into the air, the wind whipping around him at such speeds that Malchior found it difficult to remain standing. And he was feeling something that he hadn't felt in so very long.
Fear.
He had never even heard of a spell like this. He hadn't even heard the language.
When the half demon sorcerer was clear of the buildings around him, bright light of every color erupted from his body. And from this light came figures, dozens of them, in cloaks varying in color as much as the light was.
And then the wind stopped, leaving Einderan surrounded by dozens of...
Einderans?
Each wore a different color cloak, and each had a counterpart hovering across from them in the circle.
For every human emotion, a demonic one.
For every demonic emotion, a human one.
Happiness, laughing and smiling. Demon happiness, with a grin of insanity and evil.
Rage, face full of fury and anger. Demon rage, full of bloodlust and the need to kill.
Timid, rubbing his hands together uncertainly, face full of sad expectation. Demon timid, eyes closed and entire body shaking in sheer terror.
Love, looking at everything around him with a warm smile. Hate, looking at everything with a cold frown of such loathing that one wondered if anything could satisfy him.
More emotions, each with a counterpart, all of them in a circle around their master.
Einderan opened his eyes and looked around, "Ealeminus Uminos!"
The wind that had died suddenly returned, sucking everything in towards the half-demon sorcerer. And slowly in pairs, the emotions were sucked back in, trying to escape as if their life depended on it. As that's what emotions did.
They escaped.
First it was the Timids, as they didn't want to fight back anyway. Then the Happys. So on and so forth, until there were only four left.
The Rages were putting up a considerable effort to resist Einderan's will, but were slowly pulled back into his mind, back under his control.
And then there they were, the two hardest to control and most unavoidable emotions of them all.
Love and Hate.
The two untamable emotions.
You can't control what you love.
And you can't control what you hate.
Yet slowly, they to were drawn back in. Einderan gritted his teeth, and said, "If you don't help me, we won't be able to protect the ones we love..."
One of the emotion's heads shot up, and considered.
"And if you don't help me... We won't ever get revenge on the one we hate most..."
The other emotion's head looked up, and glanced at Einderan.
"You know, he does have a point."
"As much as I hate to admit it, he does. I thought he wasn't supposed to be able to control us."
"Technically he isn't really, merely influencing us."
"I hate technicalities..."
"You hate everything."
"Not everything."
"Name something."
"..."
"My point exactly.
"I didn't hate Arella..."
There was silence as Love looked at Hate, who had turned away, his fists tightening.
"Sorry to interrupt but we are about to be ashes in about ten seconds so if you two could make up your mind..." Einderan insisted, panic clear in his voice as Malchior approached.
"Oh right. I would hate to be beaten by this overgrown numbskull."
"You know what, so would I."
"But you're Love."
"Hey, doesn't mean I have to love everything."
"NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME!" Einderan screamed as Malchior drew in a breath for the flames.
The final two emotions flew back into Einderan's body. At that moment, a blast of fire ripped through the air, incinerating everything in it's path, consuming the half-demon's body. The heat from it melted the buildings below, the road turned back into a liquidish goo.
And Einderan was no where to be seen.
"Hahahahaha, that was an interesting fight while it lasted."
Needless to say, he wasn't expecting it when a cloaked figure drifted down right in front of him, arms crossed. Covered in armor, but this wasn't black. It was a shimmering, almost transparent blue. The black cloak swirled around his body, giving contrast to the armor.
"How?" Malchior stammered, taking step back from the newly reappeared Einderan.
"So far, you've seen me fighting at partial strength. After all, it's not possible to control all of your emotions, not completely anyway. And while I can keep from blowing anything up by accident, not even I can harness all of my emotion's power in a battle. Until now."
The dragon took another step back, and tightened his jaw. He didn't like the sound of this at all.
"My greatest achievement, the spell of bonding. Every side of me, giving all of their energy... It's really quite amazing just to feel this power... I never even knew I had it. My human power," Einderan said, holding his left hand and summoning a white orb, "And my demon power."
He held up his other hand, and created a black orb.
The dragon-sorcerer had seen enough. He took to the air, going high above Einderan, and gathered all of the strength he could into one final attack. One deadly jet of flame.
Einderan merely merged the two orbs of power together, and thought about what to do with it. A smile crept to his lips behind the armor.
"I will not be beaten by some half-spawn!"
"I'm not going to beat you, I'm going to kill you!"
Malchior glared at Einderan from high above the earth, and chanted, "Stersecra Talimat Azterwrath, Pioraln Wisantra!
The dragon fired his flame. It was black, with tendrils of energy arcing from it because the sheer power was almost too much to exist in one place. The ground shook, wind whipped through the air in a maelstrom, and anything remotely able to burn burst into flame.
And it was still hundreds of feet from hitting anything.
However, Einderan simply raised one hand, palm towards Malchior. He used his left arm to brace it. The air around him began to glow with energy...
"Nuncen Longet fu Cblek Gocme!"
A gray portal opened up, hovering inches above Einderan's right hand. The face of it was pointing right at Malchior, presenting the dragon with what looked like a flat, circular shield.
However, then six small portals open up on the inner rim of the gray one. These portals were black.
"Rofi!" Einderan yelled.
Orbs of black poured from the smaller portals, discharging at a randomly rapid rate, flying upwards at great speed. Slowly, the rate of fire increased, until it was almost as if it was a great wall of energy hurling towards the descending column of fire.
Einderan started praying right about then.
Black dragonfire met black half-demon magic.
The shockwave the two meeting created shook the entire city down to the foundations. A few of the weaker buildings fell over. Those who weren't expecting it where knocked off their feet.
For a span of ten seconds, Einderan's magic was forced back. Malchior was laughing inside his head, knowing victory was at hand.
Einderan gathered every solitary scrap of energy he had, and poured them into his spell. It switched colors, from black to the same transparent blue as his armor, which was dissipated for more energy.
This new stream of blue met the dragonfire, and neither moved for a moment. Then the blue energy plowed upwards, as if the magical flames were nothing more than paper.
Malchior watched in horror, closing his eyes just before the impact.
It hit the dragon's head full force, and was kept trained on the falling body until it was blocked from Einderan's view by the buildings. The half demon could vaguely here a crash in the distance, and cheering, but his body was far to weak to maintain such high levels of awareness. Power completely spent, along with some of his life force, his eyes drooped down lazily. A grin found it's way to his face.
Then he fell straight back onto the street, into a deep sleep of exhaustion. His last thought...
"That's, the meaning of pain..."
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Raven felt her heart leap when she saw the massive form of the dragon Malchior fall from the sky, throwing up a large cloud of dust when it slammed into the ground. And the best part?
He didn't get back up.
Mael watched in wide eyed horror as his secret weapon, his master plan literally fell out of the sky. The boy had enough power to defeat a one thousand year old dragon. A one thousand year old black dragon at that.
In fact, Malchior was over a thousand years old. And Einderan had just beat him!
But then, where was Einderan? Dead? No... It was faint but he could still sense the sorcerer's life force.
"No... I've waited for too long... I WON'T LET YOU WIN THIS TIME!" Mael screamed, running off and preparing to teleport and attack his long time rival.
A burst of energy knocked his concentration off, and he sailed through the air into a wall. He stood up, and glared at Rocker, who was smirking at him. And even though the demon wasn't much of an empath, the taunting tone of the notes were clear enough.
"Ah, the demon's big bad lizard got taken down. That's just too bad. I might start to cry... Or not."
Mael continued to glare, saying, "You... I gave you power, I gave you strength. I opened your eyes to the world and it's evils. And this is how you repay me?"
Rocker shook his head, his face hardening, "Thank you? For INVADING MY SOUL WITH A DEMONIC GUITAR!"
The demon was knocked back up against the wall, which promptly collapsed on him. After a few seconds though, the rubble shifted and Mael stood back up, "You fool. I know your limits, you can't beat me."
"I think you need to shut up and die!"
"Come on Kirk, I'll end your poor, twisted life."
The guitarist's eyes burned, and the air groaned with the power that was filling the air, "Don't call me that. You don't deserve to be able to call me by my real name!"
The lieutenant of Trigon held his ground, and chuckled, "That's it, let go of your rage, let go of the leash. Attack me, try and rip me apart limb from limb. Come on, I haven't got all day, attack!"
And you know what, he did just that. He began to play a small pattern on his guitar, the noise a little blurry. But it was just the intro, meant to build up for the real thing.
(If possible, start playing the Metallica song Some Kind of Monster)
Raven dashed off to the side, amazed by this display. He was giving off more power than when he was being controlled by Mael! And that was saying something!
"That's right... Brake me with your anger..." Mael encouraged darkly.
At that moment the air around Rocker burst into flames, which began to streak towards the smirking demon. The flames illuminated his face as they neared, and he didn't even try to dodge. The only movement was his face braking into an insane grin.
The demon flew back, gasping. He hadn't expected it to hurt that much, but when the flames died down and he slid across the ground to a stop, the insane grin found itself plastered back on his face.
"You call that an attack?"
Paying no mind, the guitarist merely continued playing. The fire was gone now, seeing as it had no apparent effect.
Speaking of the flames, that was a cool little trick Einderan had informed him of that bards could do. He was his own walking pyrotechnics show. Nice.
Mael's smile dropped a bit when his opponent went into another part of the song. Each note sent out a blast that felt like a two ton weight being slammed into the demon's body. Which granted, that didn't do much actual damage, but a two ton weight still hurts!
His head jerked back and forth. Rocker mused that the demon resembled an exceptionally tough punching bag.
The energy flowed with the sound, this time picking up the slightly injured demon and slamming him into the ground at intervals with the song. The deep sounds roared off the guitar, creating notes, rifts, patterns, and ultimately making what amounted to be a hard rock funeral song for the demon soldier.
Slammed, beaten, tossed, thrown, crushed, he made Raven's pummelings of Slade look like schoolyard scuffles. Yet Mael seemed almost no worse for wear because of it, which disturbed the sorceress. Even Slade had to reform his body, but it was almost as if Mael's just wasn't being hurt.
With a final series of high pitched notes, Rocker raised the demon high in the air, and with a flourish the song ended. Needless to say, Mael hit the ground hard.
The guitarist popped his neck and fingers, then played/said, "There, I feel better. Teach you to go around giving possessed guitars to people."
"You think you've beaten me?"
Mael pushed himself off the ground, back on his feet in a flash. Rocker gawked. How the?
"I don't get it, Slade wouldn't have gotten up from that!" Raven exclaimed.
"Ah yes, that reminds me, where is that one eyed idiot? I haven't seen him since that good-for-nothing dragon started fighting Einderan."
MEANWHILE...
Robin kicked the remains of armor that he had been fighting. Whatever those things were, they seemed to have been killed when Malchior was defeated. It was a relief, considering they were tenacious and refused to stay down for all intents and purposes. Beast Boy staggered over, and emmediately caught Robin's eye.
There was a huge gash going down the chest of his uniform, with blood coming out. Small cuts covered his face, and some medium sized ones were scattered across his arms and legs.
"Beast Boy? What happened to you?"
"Whatever those things were, they had it in to me. Walked right by Cyborg and attacked me. I don't think they liked me."
"Not surprising, they were being controlled by Malchior."
"What does that have to do with anything and how do you know that?"
"I know because they died when Malchior got hit with whatever that was, and it matters because if you remember you and Raven started getting close after that." Robin grinned bitterly, "Maybe he got jealous."
"Nah man, it'd take a heart to be jealous." Beast Boy mumbled wincing as he took another step, "I dunno, maybe they just didn't like the color green..."
"Oh ya, where is Cyborg?"
"He's with Star and some of those magic guys. I guess it's over. I mean, unless Raven's dad pops out of a portal somewhere and literally starts raising Hell I don't know of anything else that could happen."
"I could happen." A cool, smooth voice said from the shadows.
Robin whirled, staff drawn, and Beast Boy went into a fighting stance despite his injuries.
"Slade!"
"You know Robin, whenever we meet, you always either yell my name angrily or say it through gritted teeth. Have you noticed?"
For some reason as the super-villain demon henchman stepped out of the shadows, Robin got the feeling that under the mask he was smirking.
"Where is Mael Kirheinse?" Robin asked.
"Oh Robin, do you tire of my presence that easily? I'm hurt. But if you must know he is with Raven and the guitar player."
"Rocker?" Both of the teen heroes exclaimed at the same time.
"Yes, I believe that was his name. Mael was blabbering on about him being a bard or some sort of dead race of sorcerers... But back to the matter at hand. In about three seconds you are going to yell something, then lunge at me with your staff. I will dodge to the right, grabbed the staff, brake it over my knee, and then you will begin to try and beat me in hand to hand. You will also fail miserably. Your green friend will attempt to help, but he barely ranks as a distraction when at full strength, and with his injuries he might as well not be there at all. Then I predict that Cyborg will probably return in the nick of time to try and ambush me, along with Starfire and perhaps some of the sorcerers that have been helping you lately. By then I will be outnumbered to the point where I will be forced to retreat, and will leave you with some infuriatingly cryptic yet still insulting remark to ponder."
Robin gritted his teeth. No wonder he had never been able to beat Slade, the guy had everything down pretty good, "And what if I do something else?"
"Replace me braking the staff with either dodging to the right, catching whatever you throw at me and throwing it back, then add in the staff afterwards. Let's face it Robin, you are not that complicated an opponent. I was going to change that, but you threw my offer in my face. So, now you are facing an opponent superior in speed, strength, skill, powers, endurance, stamina, agility, and the only reason that you are still alive is that someone else has come to save you. But that's always been the way hasn't it, Richard?"
Robin froze, eyes widening behind the mask. Beast Boy glanced over at Robin, who was still as a statue.
"How do you?"
"Come now Robin, do not take me as a fool. I've known who you are from the start. I thought about blackmailing you with it once, but that seemed pointless and tacky. After all, what would that sound like? Become my apprentice or I'll tell the world who you really are? Of course, in retrospect, it probably would've worked."
Suddenly a green orb of energy hit Slade in the head, knocking him to the ground. Starfire descended, eyes glowing, while Cyborg ran up changing his arm into a cannon. And sure enough, some sorcerers were accompanying them.
"Predictable. So predictable. Well, it seems we were too busy for the fight Robin, but I will leave you with this. The future is just as predictable as you are, this world will end. I will make sure of it."
Then, before any of them could react, he was gone through one of his fiery portals.
Beast Boy looked at where Slade had dissapeared, then looked back to Robin, "Dude, your name is Richard?"
"...Yes. Don't ask me about it. Don't pursue the matter further. Drop it right now."
"Alright, alright, I get it."
Cyborg walked up, "You guys alright?"
Beast Boy suddenly flinched, remembering his pain, "DUDE! Do I look alright to you!"
"Man, they really did a number on you after I left didn't they? Hey, one of you guys help him." Cyborg said, motioning to the spellcasters. One nodded and floated over to heal the changeling.
"So Robin, what now?"
"Please, I suggest we find Friends Raven and Einderan." Starfire said.
Robin nodded, "Star's right. Come on team, we'll regroup then figure out a plan of action from there."
Beast Boy got up, thanking the sorcerer who merely nodded, "Alright, but our communicators aren't working remember? How do you propose we find them?"
Robin smirked. Indeed, the magical energy (Come on, demons, half demons, dragons, sorcerers and who knows what else running around the city? You get power pent up in the air.) Was blocking their transmissions. However, he had another way, "Slade said Rocker was with Raven."
"So..."
Robin listened, then pointed, "We follow the music."
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Alright, it's late. I'm stopping now.
Next time. Showdown.
Raven will sing in the next chapter.
And... other stuff.
Did I mention it's late? Er, early?
Anyway, this story will be wrapping up soon. So...
God bless.
Professor Curly-