Posted by Meg
I am just so floored by how many entries we are getting! It’s so exciting to read about new demons being spawned daily! Check out this new one from Logan.
An Account of the so-called Blight Demon by Logan Spangler
It came in the days after the mountain erupted in fire, ash, and death. They thought the destruction was through. They had begun the work of burying their dead and rebuilding what they could. The rotten stench of sulfur still hung in the air. The cracks in the ground still hissed fetid steam. Ash had covered everything. The wards were the first things they had cleared, at least what they could. Ash was everywhere.
The first night the volcano lay quiet, it came. They flowed up from the core among the crags of cooling molten stone in a grim reminiscence of the volcano that nearly destroyed the town days ago. They were black swaths against the moonlight. Strangely, the vapors did not coalesce like the other demons did as they rose from the core. They poured into the sky. The still lingering stench of sulfur increased ten fold. Even within the wards, the townsfolk began to cough and wheeze.
The clouds hung high in the air looking down on the small village, and then they began to coalesce. They became a single darkness that blotted out the light of the moon. Then, the semblance of eyes and a great gaping maw took shape in the cloud. The demon began its descent toward the village. Some said it was nothing more than a dark cloud drifting in the night sky, but others swore that it flew down on black wings.
The cloud drifted across the trees on the outskirts of the village. The trees it touched began to wither and then die. The grass beneath it shriveled. The fields full of crops turned to dust in its wake. The cattle, the wards protecting them still obscured by ash, began to choke, gasp, and then they too succumed to the demons’ blight. The townsfolk huddled together hoping that their homes and their wards would hold as the demon closed in on the town.
The demon crashed into the town’s wardnet, bellowing with frustration. The demon cloud spread over the wardnet searching for a weakness. The ash was thick and the wards of middling quality. The demon seeped through the wardnet. In a roar of triumph, the demon spread itself thin and began to engulf the town.
The first house’s wardnet failed and the demon plunged the home into complete darkness, smothering those inside. Blank dead stares and expressions of pain mixed with horror watched the demon go. It continued on, drifting across each home, testing the wards as it went. The people’s screams were cut off as their lives were extinguished like candles under a snuffer.
Under the looming miasma of the demon, the town’s warder fought to repair what wards he could. As he dashed from ward to ward redrawing and brushing away ashes, he remembered the story of the Warded Man and the demon they called One Arm. He ran toward the demon cloud, already planning as he went. It just might work, he thought.
The demon watched from the air above the houses as a single being stood alone before the demon as if daring it to take his life. The demon roared. It drifted down towards the lone figure. The warder ran. The demon nearly kept pace, grasping at the warders heels. The demon was slow, but not as slow as the warder had hoped.
The warder came to halt standing within a warded circle. The demon cloud was brought to a halt as it crashed violently against the wardnet. The magic of the wards crackled across its surface like lightning. It shrank back in annoyance. Undaunted, the demon searched and probed for a crack in the wardnet. The warder stood watching, studying the demon, and waiting. The demon found a single hole. The warder steeled himself and took one last deep breath. The demon began to fill the inside of the wardnet and choke the life from the warder.
The sulfur stench was overpowering as it filled the warders nostrils. His eyes began to burn and his thought felt as if it caught fire. The miasma filled his lungs. He retched as he fell to his knees. In desperation and with fading strength, he crawled for the outside of the wardnet. With his last bit of strength, he brushed away the ash he had placed over a single ward. The wardnet became whole again as the warder collapsed within the circle.
The demon shrieked with rage and bashed furiously against the wardnet. It was trapped. The warder’s plan had worked, but at what cost. The town, what was left of it at least, had been saved. The demon bashed against the wardnet until dawn. As the sun rose, the demon simply faded away like ash blowing away in the breeze, it shrieks lost in the wind.
Where volcano’s fury days before was random and indifferent, the demon cloud was cruel, exact, and wrathful. It was as if the demon had waited, waited for the volcano to erupt and for ash to cover the town. The townsfolk would never know. What remained of them left the town, and the shadow of the volcano that very day carrying with them a tale. They hoped to warn others of the demons that plague the lands near volcanoes. It was a blight on the land, they said, and so they called it the Blight Demon.
Thanks to Logan for sending in the Blight Demon, a truly terrifying creature. I love how it seemed to emerge only because the volcano had erupted. Great job!
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 8:00 am by megelizabeth
Filed under Contests, Create a Coreling, Daylight War, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Meg, Warded Man
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