The Eternal Assassin

With Audrey at their backs, Asher, Samantha, and Sefta flew a good bit slower than they had on their way over here. Sefta didn't want to risk losing the trail now that she had them, so they also stayed lower to the ground, only a few hundred feet up.

A height that Asher just might be able to survive falling from with his skills.

Despite her reassurance that she wasn't going to attack them just yet, that didn't mean he wasn't keeping an eye on the aggravated truthseeker. Asher made sure to keep himself between Samantha and the frost-covered woman, knowing at the very least he had a far greater chance at survival if she did decide to attack. He knew from experience that his Spatial Lock could block a full-powered strike from Bordan, and he didn't get the vibe that Audrey was quite as powerful blow-for-blow as the other truthseeker.

Though that didn't mean she wasn't just as dangerous.

"The plan is simple," Audrey called out, the four of them actually able to converse at the speed they were flying. "Eradicate the demons, but be sure to leave at least one of them alive. Once the battle is over, I'll interrogate it and figure out who sent it and why."

"You're planning to interrogate it?" Asher asked, taken aback. "...Is that even possible? The demons I've encountered didn't really act like they could go against their orders."

"Guilt is a powerful motivator," Audrey said simply, her face impassive. "Especially when forced upon a being that has never felt such emotion before."

Good lord, this woman is terrifying.

"We're getting close," Sefta announced, her pegasus drifting back a bit to be in line with theirs. "I doubt I have to inform you, seeing as you're a demon hunter and all. But regardless of what these monsters say, don't show them any mercy. They love nothing more than tormenting and slaughtering innocent people in this realm before they are killed and forced back to their own."

"Don't worry, we know," Asher said. Samantha nodded alongside him as she pulled out her first arrow and prepared her bow.

"Glad to hear! Because we're right above them," Sefta said, pointing toward the ground with her harpoon. The four of them had been flying over a dense forest for the last couple of minutes, and while the foliage blocked all sight from above, it didn't do a damn thing to prevent her keen senses. "Let's go!"

Yanking out his mithral and cold iron daggers, Asher prepared himself to direct his pegasus downward before Audrey beat him to the punch. But rather than dive on her griffin, the truthseeker took a rather unusual approach.

Swinging her legs over her saddle, she hopped off her mount, plummeted straight down to the ground.

"What the-" Asher gasped, his stomach doing a cartwheel as the woman fell at least three hundred feet straight down, vanishing in the canopy. The last he saw of her she had thick layers of ice rapidly spreading out across her entire body, and a determined look on her face. Before he could even ask Sefta what her plan was, there was a powerful boom that sent birds screeching from the treetops in all directions.

"Let's not let her have all the fun!" Sefta laughed, leaning forward and diving toward the ground herself. Samantha followed quickly after, actually letting out a whoop of joy as her pegasus shot downwards.

Taking a deep breath, Asher copied their motions, and his pegasus took care of the rest. At the very least, he managed to contain his scream as he suddenly felt himself staring nearly straight down and he plummeted toward certain death.

Asher prayed to whatever Gods were willing to listen as he broke through the treetops. The moment he did so, the battle came into view.

Audrey's landing spot was quite clear from the literal crater and ice shards that had perforated everything within thirty feet of her impact. Two demons and nearly half a dozen imps had been killed just from that alone it seemed, and she was rapidly adding to that tally as she strode forward. Her frost-covered armor effortlessly shrugged off even the lesser demon's powerful blows, actually cracking and flaking off with each strike, before growing right back. Her head was completely encased within a helmet of clear ice, and seeing as her skills had defense covered, her entire focus was on cleaving her way through the attacking demons with her jagged sword.

Sefta wasn't far behind her, the noblewoman flowing around the sea of imps and stabbing them one after another through their throats and chests. Asher had known she'd been holding back on him, but it was now clear she had far more tricks than just transforming into a giant serpent. Each thrust of her harpoon fired out an incredibly powerful blast of water that punched through flesh like it was made of paper, meaning she didn't even need to get close to stab straight through her opponents.

Samantha had nimbly leapt from her pegasus into a nearby tree, where the hunter then proceeded to do what she did best. Arrow after arrow pierced through the demons approaching Sefta from behind, or into imps using their jagged claws to dig into the wood in an attempt to climb their way up to her position. Realizing her quiver was already getting low, Asher quickly grabbed two spares they'd prepared ahead of time and dropped them on the branch beside her with a stretch of Distortion. With Samantha's ammunition taken care of, he was free to focus on his own battle.

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His heart pounding with excitement, Asher happily leapt off his pegasus and darted through a tunnel of compressed space straight into the nearest imps rushing toward the base of Samantha's tree. Their eyes bulged as he suddenly appeared before them, and the sight of his dagger plunging downward was the last thing they ever saw before their bodies fell to the ground. Letting out a laugh of pure exhilaration, Asher dove further into the bloodbath, spinning and slashing with near reckless abandon as he trusted in Samantha to keep him safe from anything sneaking up behind him.

It was hard to tell with everything going on, but from his original view from up above, he was pretty certain they were dealing with a little more than two dozen lesser demons and maybe three times that in imps. He hadn't spotted the greater demon just yet, but that didn't mean he wasn't skulking around somewhere.

"It's him!" he heard one of the lesser demons shout, their black eyes growing wide as they took him in. "The Interloper is here!"

Asher's grin widened as the demons finally realized they'd found who they were looking for all this time. Figuring their focus would shift to him now that he'd been spotted, he prepared himself for them all to rush him at once.

Which made it all the more jarring when, as one, every single lesser demon that had been desperately trying to tear them to shreds only moments ago turned and ran for their lives.

Asher nearly had his stomach ripped open by an opportunistic imp as he faltered, caught completely off guard by the sudden display of cowardice. Thankfully, a familiar arrow smashed through the imp's head at the last minute, dropping it to the ground and saving him having to waste one of his limited potions. Sefta looked just as confused as he was, and even Audrey simply stood there, ignoring three imps desperately trying to claw their way through her armor as she stared in shock at the retreating demons.

"What the hell?!" Sefta shouted, aimlessly stabbing her harpoon through a screaming imp as she glanced toward him. "You're a demon expert, right? What in the realms would cause them to act like that? And did they call you an 'interloper?'"

"We'll ask the one I interrogate," Audrey finally said, shaking herself out of her stupor before swinging her blade around her in a wide circle, cleaving through the imps failing to make any headway through her frost armor. "The plan hasn't changed. Keep one alive, kill the rest!"

Following her own advice, Audrey took off after the demons, conjuring a chunk of ice and lobbing it ahead of her. The chunk slammed into the closest demon's feet before growing three times in size, freezing the demon's lower legs completely solid and causing it to stumble and smash into the ground. While it tried to right itself, Audrey's blade sliced clean through its neck. Before the head had even hit the ground, she was running deeper into the forest.

"Let's go!" Sefta decided, dousing herself with water from a waterskin and sprinting in a different direction.

"Stick together?" Samantha asked, dropping out of her tree and somehow sliding down the flat trunk as though she were holding a rope. Asher knew she had a skill from her Forest element that allowed her to move about nature in some weird ways, but it was still strange to see when he wasn't expecting it.

"I think that'd be wise," Asher nodded, still unsure what was going on. "After recognizing me, the demons should be stopping at nothing to capture me… I don't know what's going on, and that never tends to lead toward anything good."

"Let's leave the questions to the truthseeker," Samantha said, nocking another arrow with a slightly feral smile. "After you!"

Laughing, Asher picked yet another direction and ran after the few demons he'd seen flee in it. The demons were deadly, but not particularly fast. With his Distortion and Samantha's Wet Warrior, they were able to catch up with the fleeing demons in no time.

"It's him!" he heard shouted again, and the panic on the fleeing demon's faces seemed to grow even more pronounced as they redoubled their efforts to get away, smashing through trees and tripping over their own feet.

What it going on? Frowning, Asher darted forward, catching up to the slowest one and lunging to the side. Ducking under a reflexive slash of its claws, he thrust upwards with Crescent, his mithral dagger gleaming in the low light of the forest as it slashed through the demon's neck like it wasn't even there.

As the first demon's head hit the ground, followed shortly by the rest of the body, the other four demons actually screamed in terror. Three of them continued running, but the fourth turned and lunged desperately at Samantha. Having stayed back, the hunter easily fired an arrow straight through the demon's forehead with an enchanted shot, and it wasn't until Asher spotted the look of relief on the demon's face that he began to suspect what was going on.

"Oh my god… I think I'm killing them," he finally realized, glancing at the look of horror on the face of the demon he'd decapitated versus the expression on the one Samantha had just shot. "Audrey mentioned when demons die, they are sent back to their own realm. I don't have the faintest idea how that works, but I think my Sever the Thread skill kills them for good. They must have realized it after I killed the ones at Horntho village!"

"So the demons, who are used to their time on the material realm being like an all you can kill and eat vacation, suddenly have something to lose up here," Samantha surmised, frowning as she nudged the relieved demon she'd killed with her foot. "Well then, isn't that interesting."

"Come on," Asher said, his grin coming back in full force as the weight of his realization finally settled in. "I don't know how many demons The Council of Death has to draw from with their summoning rituals, but I'm willing to bet the more of them I kill, the less that will be willing to accept their summons in the first place!"

The two of them took off after the remaining three demons and quickly caught back up. With their new understanding of his skill, Samantha focused exclusively on hitting their legs, halting their movements and ensuring she didn't get the killing blow. Asher almost expected them to beg for their lives, but it seemed even with the threat of their impending and true death approaching, demons were either incapable of, or simply refused to sink quite that low. With horrified looks on their faces, they desperately tried to rip him to shreds with their claws after Samantha had literally kneecapped them from range.

Asher danced through the astral, dodging their attacks like child's play before sending one demon after the other into the void. He briefly contemplated keeping one alive for Audrey's questioning, but he had a good feeling the truthseeker would take care of that for them.

"Well, that's three more demons that will never get the chance to hurt anyone ever again," he said, smiling as he wiped the blood off his new dagger and turned to find Samantha retrieving her arrows. "Why don't we go find out what their actual plan was?"