Despair washed over her. How can you fight such terrible creatures?
But she had no time to dwell on it. A demon was racing toward her. Knowing what to expect, she twisted to one side to avoid the brain-thrust. The stinger drove into the front of her mantle. The wound was harmless; hardly even painful. Nowhere on the mantle of a gukuy was the tissue tougher and thicker than on the edge of the cowl.
She lashed upward with her fork, striking the demon’s tentacle. Again, that strange cracking sound. The demon ululated.
Full of fury and triumph, Nukurren whipped her flail around at the monster’s upper torso. The blow was fast and powerful, but the demon’s uncanny speed enabled it to interpose its other tentacle, which bore some kind of armor. The armor splintered. She heard another crack; the demon was hurled to the ground.
They can be broken! came the thought.
Another demon. Another. And another. Twisting like a slug, faster than she’d ever moved, Nukurren managed to avoid the death-blows. But this time the stingers penetrated through her mantle, into the flesh of her body cavity. The pain was intense. Even more intense was the knowledge of her certain doom. Such wounds invariably caused lingering death, by horrible diseases.
With no thought now but to wreak havoc, Nukurren hurled herself at her tormentors. Her fork and flail struck hard. One of the demons fell to the ground, clasping its side. Nukurren’s flail had torn out a great swath of—flesh? A second demon, a huge one, was stripped of its weapon by a smashing blow of the flail on its tentacle. The third demon withdrew, moving with an odd gait, hopping on one of its bizarre peds.
A pause. She spun around, feeling agony as the stingers sticking out of her mantle flapped with her motion.
She was surrounded by demons. They were standing back, however, beyond reach of her weapons. Peculiar sounds were coming from them. Horrible sounds, full of spitting and gasping. A language, she realized, but like no language she’d ever heard. Through the haze of pain, she was finally able to discern some details of their shape, now that the demons weren’t moving in a constant flicker.
Those are heads, she realized. Those strange growths on the very top of their bodies. And the sounds are coming from those moving parts in front. Are they lips? Is that tiny thing a beak? It can’t be—it only has one jaw.
Then she saw the eyes. Those, at least, she had no difficulty in recognizing. They were almost like her own, except that they were so small.
Why aren’t they attacking?
She moved toward one side. The demons there flickered back.
They’re afraid of me, she realized. The slavers were butchered like uju. But I injured several. Some may even die.
But the tiny hope faded. She heard a demon’s voice, lower-pitched than the others. Turning to face the voice, she saw two demons in the circle surrounding her flicker aside. A new demon appeared, stalking slowly through the ring.
The new demon was much bigger than the others. Taller, and wider in its upper torso. It moved slowly, for a demon, but she instantly recognized the total poise of its stance. As bizarre as the demons were in their shape and their movement, she had no doubt of what she was seeing.
A great warrior. Demonlord.
The thing began circling her. Faster and faster. She spun around. It reversed its circle. She spun again. She could feel the stingers in her body tearing at the flesh. She realized the thing was deliberately forcing her to wound herself further.
She had no chance in a prolonged battle. Suddenly, she hurtled forward, whipping her fork around at the monster’s head. With triumph, she saw the demon block the blow with its stinger. She had time to marvel at the strength and—solidity—of the creature, before she brought her flail whipping around at the demon’s peds in the same blow which had crippled the others.
But to her astonishment, the demon avoided the blow by—flying? No, he leapt. Straight up, lifting his peds over the whistling flails, and back down on the ground. Still perfectly poised.