WARRIORS OF LIGHT

Justin was in full battle mode, he was fighting with a mid-level demon. A demon that was old enough to know who he was, but young enough not to listen to the voice of reason especially when his judgment was clouded with anger. That voice of reason, would have informed the demon of some vital knowledge. Knowledge that may have caused the demon to make different choices and decision, knowledge that was all but lost to him now. Justin fed the demon’s anger, Justin knew that the calmer he was the angrier the demon would get and Justin was extremely calm. This was not the reaction that most humans exhibited, when faced with a demon. Justin looked the demon straight in the eyes, this was another clue that the demon should have picked up on. Demons have a hypnotic stare which causes most humans to react like a baby bird looking into the eyes of a snake. Yet nothing in Justin’s movements or stance gave any indication that the demon’s hypnotic stare was working on him. All of these things and more, the demons should have noticed, would have noticed, if intense anger was not clouding his judgment. Justin was monitoring the demon’s frustration levels through the amount of wild gestures the demon was employing, gesture which were in stark contrast to Justin’s economy of movements. Justin also noticed an increase of flames in the demon’s eyes, just before he launched another attack (younger demons, to a greater degree and mid-level demons to a lesser degree, usually gave away there intentions with some gesture or habit which indicated the change from thought to action). Only an older demon hid any indication of his intentions, like any good poker player. Of even more importance, Justin was monitoring the demon’s energy levels. Justin knew that the demon’s attacks would correspond directly with his energy reserve. At a forty percent energy capacity, younger to mid-level demons moved into desperation mode. This meant that the demon would make one strategic attack, using twenty percent of his remaining energy reserve. If the strategic attack did not work, the demon would use his remaining twenty percent of his energy to cut his losses and to get away from the battle as soon as possible. Justin judged that his demon was at about fifty percent energy capacity. This meant that the demon would continue fighting in general, while he formulated his strategic attack. Ten minutes later, Justin noticed the flames leap in the demon’s eyes just at the point when his energy reserve dropped to forty percent. The demon faked to the left then whirled around to attack from the right. The demon used an attack strategy that worked extremely well, ninety-five percent of the time on humans. The attack consisted of an emotional attack first; the demon sent out waves of thoughts of overwhelming fear and loss to the human. Then the demon sent the sincere belief that if the human would stop defending himself and begged for mercy, the demon would spare him. The final thought the demon sent out was that the human’s only chance to survive was to following the action he had outlined. Most humans receiving the above message would be momentarily unsure which would cause them to pause or hesitate and in that moment of uncertainty the demon would strike, following up the emotional blow with a physical one. The problem for this particular demon was that Justin was not human! As the demon sent out the negative emotional thought attack, Justin’s shields flashed as they deflected the negative thought back to the demon. It was only then that the demon, was taken momentarily off guard, as he noticed Justin’s shields (for the first time) right before the mental attack was sent back to him. As the demon tried to adjust to this unexpected turn of events and before he could, the situation had created an opening and Justin struck swift and clean. Justin snatched out the demon’s vocal cords first, for two reasons: one, the sound of demon screams hurt his ears and two, to prevent the demon from calling for reinforcements. The next blow went right between the demon’s eyes. This blow stunned the demon and disoriented his memory. This prevented the demon from remembering that he did not need vocal cords to call for help, he could do it with his thoughts, assuming that he could still think. The two blows were so rapid and each blow flowed so smoothly into the next one, they almost looked like one action. Next Justin pulled out his sword and cut the demon’s head off. Justin watched as lines began to appear on the demon’s body. The demon’s own energy was acting like a laser knife following the lines of the pattern which just appeared on the demon’s body. The demon’s body began slowly to break apart into pieces. Pieces that would be transported back to hell where hungry shades, Shades that were not permitted to hunt for food, would fight over the much needed food the demon’s body would provide. They would grab the pieces from the sky before they hit the ground and eat them. Justin knew that the demon, a few feet away from him, would feel each and every bite as well as the long slow digestive period inside the shades that consumed him……… for a very long time to come. Justin also knew that this extremely slow digestion period, was a cycle of punishment that the demon would be forced to endure for decades, until every last piece of him was eliminated from the shades that consumed him. After his body broke up into pieces, the demon would re-assemble as a shade and be permitted to forge on the streets of hell, waiting for the next demon to fail to capture his prey. Until then the ex-demon/new shades hunger would eat at him growing stronger each and every day. The only hope of ease would come when another demon failed and their flesh provided nourishment for any starving shades strong enough and lucky enough to get a piece and eat it before another demon tried to take it away. After all, one never knew when or where food would fall to from the sky. Failure was not an option in hell and the punishment for failure was severe. Once a shade was given hunting rights and demon status again, few demons ever failed twice. Justin watched as the energy flowed from the demon and pieces of him began to break away from him body as pain radiated through out the demon’s body. Justin heard a faint voice that said,”What are you?” Justin dropped his illusion and showed his true self to the demon, knowing that a few seconds after the demon saw him he would not believe or remember what he saw. The demon screamed,”this is not fair!” Justin replied,”few things in hell are.” The demon’s last thoughts, as his body completed the separation process and the broken pieces began to rain down in to different sections of hell was “this is impossible……….you do not exist!” The demon let out one final frustrated scream, which quickly turned to a scream of pain as the last pieces of his flesh fell off his body and he felt the first bite, as a dammed shade began to consume his flesh!