"What are those?" Sarraya asked as Tarrin stopped and turned around to get a better look at them.

"I can't tell, my eyes aren't that good in this form," he replied. In cat form, he had excellent night vision and the ability to make out shapes and see motion, but the clarity of his vision was poor. Small features blurred together or were lost. He could easily see a book in the dark, but he couldn't read what was on its pages if it were opened. He could make out the shapes of those creatures moving his way, but any details about them were lost on him. "And if I shapeshift, I'll give our position away."

"Hunker down, let's see what they do," the Faerie offered.

"Good idea," he agreed. He laid down on his belly in the tall grass, causing his form to disappear, and then he felt Sarraya use her Druidic magic. The grass around him shuddered, then pulled over him to form a tent of sorts to hide him from those above.

They waited in quiet tension for long moments, watching them get closer, until the ground shuddered as one of them landed about two hundred spans away. Even at that distance, he couldn't make out a great many features, but it was apparent that they were not even close to being human. They were ten spans tall, and they were strangely birdlike. As if they were crosses between humans and vultures. They had arms and legs, but their heads held a large hooked beak, and they had huge wings on their backs. They had those polearms in their hands, and they stood upon legs with backwards-jointed knees, just like birds. Not only that, they also had vulture feet. They were very ugly, even to his diminished vision.

He had no idea what they were, at least until the wind changed and caused their scents to wash over him. That made him nearly choke. They smelled as if they were made up of pure, unadulterated corruption and unnatural evil. They were Demons!

"Demons!" Tarrin hissed in shock. "Why would Demons be working with the Zakkites!"

"Hush!" Sarraya hissed very quietly, kicking him in the side with her heel to emphasize her command.

This was insane! Demons couldn't be summoned by mages anymore, not since the Blood War! How did two Demons come to be allied to the Zakkites? Maybe they were the same as Shiika had been, Demons that had somehow made it to Sennadar of their own free will. Shiika had not been summoned or conjured by anyone. She was free-willed, ruling the largest kingdom in the world from behind the scenes. He also had a suspicion that Shiika wasn't quite like other Demons. All the stories painted Demons as utterly evil, sadistic and monstrous. Shiika was no fair maiden, but she didn't seem to have those reputed qualities. She was evil, there was no doubt about that, but she wasn't sadistic. She was manipulative, but she wasn't monstrous. Her evil was more of an underlying quality, something that accented her personality rather than defined it. But he still didn't trust her. After all, she was a Demon. So were these two, and that made them a threat not to take lightly.

Tarrin's ears laid back as they moved towards them, obviously searching for them, but seemingly unable to locate him. They looked about carefully, moving step by deliberate step towards him, carefully examining the ground. "What's taking you so long!" a disembodied voice emanted from the air between them. "He has to be right there! We saw him lay down in the grass, and he couldn't crawl fast enough to get away by the time you got there!"

"Patience, human," a horrid voice came from one of them. "He cannot escape."

"Don't toy with me!" the voice replied hotly. "I can banish you just as easily as I conjured you! Would you like to go back to the Abyss without having your promised payment? Just find him, and remember that we need him alive!"

Conjure? How could he conjure a Demon? That was impossible! Even if he could conjure a Demon, he couldn't control it if it appeared!

But that meant little now. They knew where he was, and it was just a matter of time before they reached him. It was going to be a fight no matter what, so the warrior in him realized that it was best to start the fight on his terms rather than their terms. At least they would have to be careful, where he would not. They needed him alive. He wasn't working under such a restriction. It also meant that he had to bring those skyships down, or he'd never be able to get away. They were watching him, no doubt with magic, and he'd never be able to get away from them so long as they could see where he was.

"Sarraya, get down, carefully," he said in the manner of the Cat. He knew exactly what he had to do. The idea of battling a Demon didn't frighten him as much as it had before. He had the sword, and it could harm a Demon. He had fought one before, and he had won. And these two couldn't fight back with the same fury that he would fight them with. They were simply things, obstacles in his path, and it was his duty to deal with them and move on to the next obstacle. There was very little emotion involved in it anymore. There was very little emotion involving anything anymore. "I'm going to bolt right and get them lined up, then turn on them. If you could do something to distract the one on the left when I change shape, I'd appreciate it. I'd rather not have to fight both at once."

"Tarrin, are you crazy?" she hissed.

"Crazy or not, we won't go another step if we don't deal with them right now," he replied as both looked in the direction of Sarraya's tiny, whispered voice. Sarraya slid off of his back, and he tamped his feet to prepare to run. "Three, two, one," he counted silently, then he rose up and charged to the right, in an arc that would try to take him around the two Demons.

They instantly looked in his direction, but both cursed vehemently when the grass around them shuddered, and then literally came alive, growing from simple tall grass to huge tentacles of green plant fiber in the blink of an eye. Sarraya's Druidic magic had taken hold on the grass, causing it to grow from simple grass to writhing tentacles of vines in a heartbeat, and it lashed out against the Demon on her left like an octopus, ensnaring arms and legs and twining around its thin midsections and wings. Its strength easily broke the snaring vines, but it distracted it for a critical moment as Tarrin managed to get to where the two Demons were lined up before him. He slid to a halt and shapeshifted in an instant, returning to his impressive, intimidating humanoid form, then reached over his shoulder and drew his sword even as he rushed straight at the surprised Demon.

It did not consider him a threat. It smiled evilly at him and raised its polearm, but not to fend against the sword. It didn't know! It didn't know that his sword could harm a Demon! It was setting itself to swipe him to the ground regardless of what he intended to do with the sword. It couldn't sense that the sword was otherworldly, that it had the power to injure it!

Understanding that he'd only get one free shot on the first one, Tarrin ducked down as the distance between it and him vanished, slithering under the polearm's metal shaft as it tried to strike him to the ground with it. The Demon was three spans taller than him, but the sword was nearly six spans of blade on its own, so it gave him all the reach he needed. He ducked under the polearm and got inside the Demon's reach, then he drove the chisel-tip of the sword straight up the Demon's body. It nearly sliced its chest, so close was it to the Demon as it came up, but the chisel tip struck the Demon just under the beak. And the black metal blade of the sword continued, puncturing the weird joint between the end of the beak and the start of the neck, driving up through the beak, through the top of it and all the way up into the brain. Just as quickly as it impaled the brain, Tarrin snapped the blade out and spun around the Demon, hiding the blade behind his body as he charged the one pulling itself free of the vines. The one he'd stabbed was still standing, its body locked in a paralysis of death, unaware that the brain could no longer send it commands. The entwined Demon raised its polearm and tried to stab Tarrin with it when he came into its reach, but the Were-cat leaped up and out of its path, seeming to hover in the air before it. Tarrin's sword came around in a wide, whistling arc, black blood from the first Demon flying off the sword's tip as its edge homed in on the neck of the second, then neatly and quickly taking the ugly head right off its unnatural body.