Demios

Chapter 8 "Protectors"

Demios did not expect the reaction of everyone, he thought that he would be running out of Willow Dale with Ophelia flying away and pitch forks at his heels. After the announcement Demios went home to rest, after getting a ear full from his mother about hiding things from her but then proceeding to sacrifice Ophelia to hugs and snuggling with his mother so he could sleep. When Demios got up he went outside with Ophelia for the first time without hiding her, this resulted in about 20 people crowding around him asking questions and certain things. Ophelia snorted I'm the star here and they don't even recognize me . This made Demios chuckle as he walked out the crowd and went into the village to look around, the crowd was respectful and let him on his way. Whilst walking through the village he first went to the black smith as the mayor had talked to him before the speech and offered him a shield to go with his sword. He went to the blacksmith to get it and it found himself a pointed long shield, this would go well with a long sword so shield walls and putting on his back as it covered a lot of his body. The black smith also offered to make a weapon to help Ophelia, Demios had no clue what he ment but Ophelia wanted to see and so they let him. The weapon would be done in several days but Demios was ok with that.

The same day Demios went to the library in Willow Dale and the owner allowed Demios to search for any book that could help with magic, he sat in the library for several hours and found three useful books, he sat down a read a book called Explanation On Magic And Spirits. In the book it showed many things, when Demios broke it down it read something like this. "In this world magic is only possible through two known ways, the first being which all human spell casters use is the help of a spirit nearby, the way this happens is the human lets the spirits energy flow through them and then the spirit will tell the human the words to say in a certain way and this will allow the energy be released and the spell casted. The main problems with this way would be that if the spirit uses a spell that is to much for the human then the human will die. The same can be said if the human wishes to use a spell that will take to much energy that the spirit does not have, leading to the spirits death, if both the spirit and human is out of there league then the spirit will use its own soul as a spell to allow the spell to go through the humans body, by fuelling it with the humans flesh. This has only happened twice in recorded history, the first lead to a spell that made a miniature sun that burned the western coast. Creating the desert. The other occasion lead to the lands of the dragons being created as they are today." Demios thought about this for some time and then questioned himself as he had no spirit with him, he knew from the book that spirits did not have physical bodies but they had a spectral ones that only other spirits could touch, this meant that if he could cast spells it wouldn't be through the help of Ophelia, yet the dragon he met said he would be able to. He read on "The other way that magic can be used, which is mainly through the elves and dragons is by having the body and spirit be one, this is why elves can cast spells without the help of the spirits and why dragons can breach minds and breath fire. A elf can use which ever spell they wish but are know to be frail when it came to spiritual energy, but strong physically. Dragons on the other hand have tremendous spiritual power alone, and there physical strength even though it is stronger than any other races can not even measure up to there spirit. This is why they can only do only simple forms of magic and nothing else. Some question why they still cannot use other spells other than the two mentioned and the hypothesis is that if they tried then the spell's strength would be like no others and the dragons body would not be able to hold it. No record of anything like this has ever happened though."  Demios read on curious to find out anything else but the only good thing he found other than that is that people can use weapons to pass spirit energy through.

After about three hours Demios began to get tired so he was about to head back to the cabin when he heard a loud horn go off, Demios looked around to see what was going on and he saw many of the men from the town and carvan were running to the western part of the village. He heard screams coming from that way as others ran away from it and one person shouted "Sand Bandits are attacking! Get the children to safty!" Demios heard this and bolted to where the others had gone to defend the village.

When he got to where the fighting was he saw that Fernal was already fighting as he orgonized the men of the village into a shield wall and got the carvan guards to make a wedge formation behind them as the push the enemy back once they hit into the shield wall. Demios knew this as Fernal had taught it to him when he was helping him train in formations and battles. He also taught him this as to prepare him if they ever got attacked, Demios though quickly about what he said for him to do, Demios moved to the caravan guards and found Ophelia there with Fernal (she had gone with him after Demios went to the library.) 

"Demios get over here we are about to counter charge! I want you to push with Rokal and Sigval." Fernal pointed at two younger caravan guards who Demios had trained with once or twice. Demios looked at Fernal confused and then said. "What about Ophelia?" Demios questioned, Fernal said sternly "Ophelia has offered to survey the area and report to me how the enemy is moving, now get moving quick!" Demios looked at Ophelia and felt a wave of emotion over him from her telling him to go. He listened and moved next to the two other guards as he grabbed his shield from his back and drew his sword. 

Perspective switch!  Ophelia looked as Demios move away with the two other humans, she knew he would be safe, if though he did not have claws he fought like a dragon and would be ok against the enemy she hoped, Fernal told her to get up high and then report how the enemies moved and how to counter there movements. Ophelia flew quickly and got about 300 feet up and then began to relay information to Fernal about the attacks. She sawed graciously until the barbarian humans because to shoot pointy sticks at her. She snarled at this and weaved left to right as she rose up and saw the one thing Fernal had wanted to happen, as the enemies had no luck against the shield wall and began to loose numbers quickly they began to move back and regroup for a counter charge at the shield wall. Ophelia saw this and signalled to Fernal, and  as the enemies ran at the shield wall the towns folk broke to open a wedge of men lead by Fernal (about 50 men) who counter charged the enemy with quick speed like a razor through butter with the enemies line easily was separated into groups of about 30 on either side allowing the townsfolk to out number them 3 to 1 not including the enemy being flanked by 25 men on either side from the wedge. 

Perspective switch! Demios rushed with the other guards through the enemies, as he had been at the back of the wedge he did not kill anyone but he did slice one mans leg and another's sword arm, rendering them both unable to fight in the battle without major disadvantages. As they cut the two groups in half Demios and the other two guards with him linked up with some towns folk to fight a group of about 6, Rokal and Sigval went into single combat with two others and the towns folk (around 5 men) took on 3 others cautiously, that left Demios to take on the last one, Demios looked at the enemy and they locked eyes as the took stances and prepared to fight. Demios took every piece of training from Fernal into account from there height, weapons, stance, clothing and eyes, the eyes were the most important. The enemy was about 4'8 a smaller enemy (Demios could not say much as he was only 5'3 about), they had two daggers in their hands that Demios presumed they would flank his side with, there stance was on foot dug in to the dirt up front and another allowed to move which Demios estimated was going to be used to move side to side when attacking. When looking at the enemies cloths they wore a mask which Demios presumed was because they were desert people and a cloak around them to stop from sand getting everywhere, they had no shoes and little other clothing that Demios could see making him cautious. Then came the enemy's eyes, Demios almost lost his footing when he met eyes and studied them, they were dull and blank the most dangerous type of enemy. After studying the enemy for about 2 seconds he finally made his move and lunged.

Demios went for a quick front attack at first trying to jab forward at the enemy with his shield in front of him to avoid a counter attack, it didn't matter, when he reached his desired place there was no impact with the blade the enemy had gotten behind him somehow and was moving one of their daggers towards his lower gut. Demios was able to parry with his sword just in time but he forgot about the other dagger which the enemy sliced his leg with making him kneel on the ground and yelp, he dug his shield into the ground and propped himself with it as he swung his sword towards the enemy, they evaded quickly and kicked Demios's shield hard probably bruising Demios's arm. Demios stood and pulled his shield out of the ground quickly and proceeded to charge towards the enemy, as they were of balance from kicking Demios's shield Demios took the opportunity pushing his shield into the enemy which made them fall back, Demios kept pushing and placed his shield on top of them as he held them down on the ground. The enemy struggled a lot but eventually Demios had enough and knocked them out.