Chapter 955: Whipped (Part One)
"How could you do this to your own people!"
Heila’s words of condemnation rang out across the top of the tower like a thunderclap, filled with a combination of horrified revulsion and righteous fury that momentarily made Loman take a step back from the diminutive witch.
Her words pierced his heart as effectively as his arrows pierced the flesh of his foes, striking directly at the vulnerability that he’d struggled to harden his heart against. He knew when he called for twelve arrows that some of them would snap under the strain of helping him to fight the demons, but he’d never imagined that it would be so many of them.
Just like he’d never dreamed that the rain of arrows would be so difficult to control once he’d completed the sacred rite to call down the Holy Lord of Light’s judgment. But just as it had been with the first arrow he fired from his glittering Bow of Stars, once the arrow had been loosed, it was impossible to call it back, no matter how much he hated the price the Holy Lord of Light demanded for receiving his divine intervention.
"You have no right to judge me, demon," Loman snapped as he raised his Bow of Stars and pulled back on the glittering bowstring to produce another luminous arrow. "Not when you brought an army to slaughter and pillage from the people of this town!"
"You know that’s not why we came," Heila said, standing unflinching before the black-robed disciple and his radiant bow. "The fight is over. The only people dying in the plaza are your own people! You’ve lost. Admit it, surrender, and stop this heinous sorcery before it claims any more lives," she pleaded.
Deep within Loman’s heart, there was a part of him that wanted to do exactly as the diminutive demon asked. To surrender and set down the heavy burden on his shoulders that only grew worse with each soldier or acolyte who died in battle. To dismiss the sacred rite and send the surviving acolytes home to their temple to live out what remained of their lives in the peace of a grateful Church.
He wanted to, but he knew that he couldn’t. There was no surrender and no retreat before evil, even if it claimed all of their lives. Exemplar Domas had taught him long ago that he would need to learn to clad his heart in radiant armor if he wanted to become an Exemplar in his own right one day. He couldn’t let his desire to spare people from a moment of suffering or tragedy lead them into several lifetimes of darkness and struggle to earn redemption for their failings.
"Stars above, guide my aim," Loman prayed softly as he made his decision. Half a heartbeat later, his fingers relaxed along with a steady, gentle exhale of breath as he loosed his radiant arrow at the diminutive demon witch.
Heila’s cloven hooves kicked off the stone roof of the tower with tremendous force the instant she heard his prayer, leaping directly over the radiant arrow as she uncoiled her Willow Whip from its palace on her hip.
-CRACK-
The first strike from her whip was awkward and rushed, but the braided willow wood of her whip came alive in her hands nonetheless, extending far beyond its natural length as Heila’s witchcraft flowed through the living weapon. Even though it snapped harmlessly in the air near Loman’s head, the seemingly impossible reach of her personal weapon made it clear that nowhere on the tower’s roof would be safe from her lash.
Loman backpedaled desperately, trying to interpose the bonfire at the center of the tower or the acolytes between himself and the diminutive demon, but Heila pressed forward with growing confidence. The Willow Whip responded to her will like an extension of her own arm, the supple wood bending and twisting in uncanny ways as it sought its target.
-CRACK- -CRACK-
The second strike caught Loman’s shoulder, the willow wood wrapping partially around his arm before snapping back with enough force to tear through the fine fabric of his black robes and leave a bloody welt across his bicep, but Heila didn’t even have to pull the whip all the way back to lash out again as the whip coiled like a striking snake in the air.
The third strike came from an entirely different angle, this time aiming at the hand that clutched his Bow of Stars. Loman hissed in pain but tightened his grip firmly on the mystical construct, even as blood flowed from a wound that wrapped all the way from the back of his hand around to his inner wrist.
Clearly, evading the demon’s whip was impossible, so Loman raised his Bow of Stars again, loosing arrow after arrow at the advancing witch. But each luminous arrow either shattered harmlessly against her thornback-leather long coat or was deflected by the wide brim of her armored War Hat.
Worse, as Heila’s fury mounted, a prickly aura began to radiate from both the witch and her armor, the very same protective energy that made Jacques’s gift nearly untouchable to anyone but the diminutive witch for whom it had been made.
The thorny sensation crept across Loman’s skin like thousands of tiny needles, pricking his flesh and making it increasingly difficult to maintain his focus. His enhanced vision, normally so precise in tracking opponents when he practiced under Exemplar Domas’s guidance in the Holy City, began to falter as the unholy irritation clouded his concentration.
"Stand still, unholy demon!" Loman snapped through gritted teeth as another arrow went wide, his aim disrupted by the growing discomfort that seemed to seep into his very bones. His generally mild and graceful manner felt as frayed and raw as his flesh under the witch’s demonic assault and her relentless capacity for torment.
If ever Loman had doubted that witches were creatures of malice and wickedness, his first encounter with one offered plenty of proof. She didn’t even seem to be trying to claim his life, even as he fought back with every ounce of strength and faith he possessed.
Rather, she was toying with him in a wanton display of cruelty... and if he couldn’t find a way to break through her defenses soon, the young disciple was afraid his body would succumb to her torment, even if his spirit never failed.
He could clad his heart in a radiant armor of faith that would never crack, he realized. But if she broke his body, all the faith in the world wouldn’t matter, and from the cold gleam in the witch’s eyes, she knew that just as well as he did!