“It pikin’ needs to swallow me!” Aurelianus roared.
It was the first and last time Duffy would hear those words in a suitable context. Duffy stopped, mid-swing, and did a double take. He had heard some strange requests in his life, but this was the strangest. He struggled to remove the image rattling around in his brain in time to deflect the spawn’s advance, and took another tentacle to the chest for his trouble.
“Can you repeat that?” he wheezed.
He pushed himself upright. He conjured his katana back to his grip in a peal of white light with a grunt. He observed the writhing, pulsating creature with dulled curiosity. He was beyond caring what, by now. All he cared about was how to make it go away.
“Get it to eat me!” The tiefling corrected his request with a wry, bloodied smile. He ducked under a swing. He raised, pummelled outwards with his daggers, and continued to dance his merry dance. “I don’t dun care how cutter!”
Duffy shrugged. He lashed, he spiralled, and he cut upwards. His blade severed the tentacle as it tried feebly to pierce his defences. He was awake now. He was no longer bumbling from the cold. He was also decidedly not shocked by the man’s strange, crass, and unnerving ways. The bard saw that as a problem with his own personality, and not the tiefling’s ways. He was starting to think like the quilled cavalier, as well.
He sighed.
“You are a strange little fucker Aurelianus,” he said to himself, His list of questions for Luned Bleddyn continued to grow, and he was certain there would be many more come sunrise. “On the other hand…,” he erred. He ducked as a flick of flame tore through where his lithe form had been seconds before. “I am happy to oblige.”
He had no difficulty following the request. That did not mean it was going to be easy, however. Whatever the daemonic monstrosity was, it was too preoccupied with barbecuing, gutting, and piercing them with spikes to want to eat the tiefling.
With grace, virtue, and a lot of grunting, Duffy raised his blade and advanced. He drove forwards towards the spawn that barred his path to the ‘mother’ creature. She would have to wait. He deftly rebuked tentacle and trap. He ducked, danced, and devilishly smiled through the calamity the spawn exuded. He began to sing, contrary to convention, and channelled all the energy, rage, and cold in his bones into every syllable.
“There was a red arse called Aurelianus, who came, saw, and swore at us,” he sang. The rhyming was loose, and the vocals marred by fatigue, but they served a purpose.
The katana began to vibrate with such intensity it could have sliced through gold, diamonds, and heaven itself.
“He danced, pranced, and rocked and rolled, all in the name of being consumed.” Duffy sliced through he spawn’s skull with ease. There was no fanfare. He simply continued through the tumbling, flickering flames that had been its body, and stepped through the manifesting slime of its corpse.
“I admired his plucky spirit, I admired his every shunt, but the thing I admire about him most, is that he’s a massive cu-.”
Before his profanity could rock the foundations of the holy ground, the katana drove down in a cleaving arc, struck the melting snow, and jettisoned its power through the clearing. It hit the demon, but instead of hurting it, it swelled in the crackling spell song’s power. Duffy had thought of goading, hateful thoughts towards the tiefling as he had sung. He put every bit of hatred and self-loathing into his rhyme, and now, the demon felt it too.
The clearing fell silent. The witch stopped jabbering. The screaming drifted into snow-tinged nothingness. The demon turned, maws gaping, and leered at Aurelianus.
“You did ask to be eaten, right cutter?” Duffy quipped sarcastically. He peered around the growing form of their enemy, and shrugged. Whatever the tiefling had planned, the bard guessed his curiosity would be satisfied soon enough. He sheathed his blade, conjured his short swords, and turned to the third spawn.
He was far from done yet. His face, despite the cold, beaded with sweat and blood. It was trickling from his browbeaten forehead. They were still in danger, and he was running out things to rhyme with female genitalia.
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