The Demon did not need to accelerate. He simply erased the distance. A beat of the immense membranous wings generated a hurricane of fetid wind that blew away the corpses of the surrounding militiamen. The Scythe of Ruin, a curved blade as long as a mainmast and black as a nightmare, descended on Geneviève.
It was not a sword strike. It was an atmospheric event. The air screamed as it was cleft. The sonic pressure alone would have burst the eardrums of a normal man.
Geneviève did not raise her sword to parry. It would have been madness. Against a mass of that magnitude, even the strength of a dragon would not have sufficed for a static block. Geneviève did what the Swordmaster does when the sky falls: she became water.
In the exact instant the scythe blade touched the ground where she had been a millisecond before, Geneviève was already elsewhere. The impact of the scythe shattered the paving of the square. Stones as big as wagons were hurled into the air, pulverized. A crater three meters deep opened in the center of the clearing. But Geneviève was not dead. She had slipped under the shaft of the scythe during the descent, moving low to the ground with a fluidity impossible for a creature in full armor.
While the Demon tried to recover the weapon from the crater, Geneviève dashed. She didn't run. She floated on the wake of her own speed. Vesper's Light traced an ascending arc. She aimed for the monster's wrist, thick as a marble column.
ZZINNG.
The holy sword struck the skin of obsidian and magma. It didn't cut the bone—the density of the Daemon Prince was comparable to diamond—but it opened a superficial wound. The demon's blood was not red; it was liquid smoke and purple light. When the blessed blade touched the corrupt flesh, there was an explosion of holy steam.
The Daemon Prince roared, not in pain, but in annoyance. Like a man stung by a wasp. He pulled his arm back with a violent jerk, freeing the scythe from the rock, and with the same movement delivered a backward kick. The goat-like hoof, big as an anvil, grazed Geneviève. Even though she managed to rotate her torso to absorb the impact, the kinetic force launched her away like a projectile.
Geneviève flew for twenty meters. She smashed through the wall of a burning house, crossed the living room, and smashed through the opposite wall, landing in the next street in a cloud of rubble and dust.
"Sir Gilles!" screamed Tristan from the walls, terrified.
But from the dust emerged an azure light. Geneviève stood up slowly. The Gromril armor had a dent on the side, but the Blessing of the Lady had absorbed the internal damage, protecting her ribs and organs from liquefaction. She spat blood mixed with golden light. "You hit hard," she muttered, rolling her shoulders to loosen the tension. "But you are slow."
The Demon, seeing that brute force hadn't squashed her, changed tactics. The portal above him pulsed. The Daemon Prince opened his free hand. He did not summon fire. He summoned the Void. Spheres of concentrated darkness, miniature black holes that distorted the light around them, materialized and shot toward Geneviève like darts.
Geneviève couldn't dodge these. They were homing. She planted herself on the ground, legs wide. She gripped the sword with the point aiming at the demon. She closed her physical eyes and opened the Mind's Eye.
The spheres hit her aura. The impact was silent but terrifying. Light and Shadow canceled each other out. Geneviève's azure aura sizzled, bending under the entropic pressure, but it did not break. She gritted her teeth, feeling the cold of the void trying to freeze her soul. She pushed back with Faith.
"I. DO. NOT. YIELD."
With a shout of effort, Geneviève struck the air in front of her with a slash of pure energy. The slash cut the magic spheres in half, causing them to dissolve into harmless grey smoke.
The Demon looked at her with new interest in his empty eyes. "You resist the touch of the Warp," gurgled the voice in everyone's mind. "Your soul is... dense. Perhaps I won't kill you immediately. Perhaps I will make you my new weapon."
He spread his wings and took flight, covering the sun. He glided toward her, scythe ready to reap. But this time Geneviève did not wait on the ground.
Using the rubble of the destroyed house as a springboard, Geneviève jumped. Not a human jump. A jump enhanced by monastic discipline and elven grace. She launched herself to meet the Demon in mid-air, five meters off the ground. It was an ant jumping at the throat of an eagle.
The Demon was surprised by the audacity. He tried to grab her with his free hand. Geneviève rotated in mid-air. Vesper's Light became a vortex. She cut off two fingers of the demon's hand. She landed on the monster's shoulder, clinging to the obsidian scales with one hand, while with the other she drove the sword into the base of the bull-like neck.
The blade penetrated thirty centimeters. The Demon screamed, a sound that shattered the windows of all Carcassonne. Purple blood sprayed like a geyser, burning Geneviève's armor with its acidity, but she did not let go.
The Daemon Prince began to shake violently, flying wildly against the towers of the city to try and shake off that lethal flea of white metal. They crashed into a bell tower, shattering the stone. Geneviève was thrown off by the impact, falling toward the square below.
She landed on her feet, sliding backward for ten meters, leaving deep furrows in the ground with her boots. The Demon landed in front of her, bleeding, furious, but far from dead. The wound on his neck smoked, but was already closing thanks to Chaos magic.
The two opponents stared at each other. The first exchange was over. Geneviève had proven she could hurt him. The Demon had proven to be nearly indestructible.
The Daemon Prince spat purple blood on the pavement, where the stone melted with a hiss. "Good," said the dark voice, and this time there was no arrogance, only pure hate. "Now I will stop playing."
The Scythe ignited with black flames. Geneviève gripped the hilt, her heart beating in unison with the holy stone. The real battle had just begun.