With another surge in the demonic energy swirling around him, James picks up the smaller demons that had approached him from behind, lifting them up into the air before sending them crashing down towards the wall with terrible force. They let out shrieks and howls of pain at the impact, and struggled weakly to move afterwards. With a faint breath, James scooped them up up once again and flung them off the wall one more time. At least this time, they shouldn't be able to crawl back up so quickly.
Unfortunately, this effort did little to help him. The demons had followed up from behind him, and while he now had a clear path of retreat towards the glowing holy orb, James had no intention of backtracking. It would be far more likely that the swirl of demonic energy around him would simply extinguish the holy orb, which would undo the work he was trying to complete.
His progress forward was still solidly blocked by the large demon, who had half scrambled up onto the wall and was now turning an angry glare in his direction. Even more concerning, James was easily able to make out the figure of the large demoness wading through the city in his direction.
A burst of glowing orange flame appeared in the center of James' hand, a small torrent of flame energy that would definitely cause the demon enough pain to distract it long enough for James to run past. However, before he can get close enough to the demon to actually do any damage, the swirling mass of demonic energy disrupts the spell, causing the small piece of flame to gutter and then go dark.
Growling silently to himself, James resigns himself to the fact that he's not going to be able to use any magic to attack the demon. While the small bursts of wind energy James had used to propel himself forward were options, anything more complicated than a burst of energy would be obliterated by the storm of demonic energy around him.
"Just going to have to run for it, then," James muttered to himself, before putting that plan into action.
He shot forward like water off the edge of a cliff, before jumping to the air. Bursts of grey mist gathered around his feet as he flew towards the demon. Behind him, the mass of demonic energy seemed to pulse for a moment before flying after him, looking far more like it intended to swallow him than gather around him.
The demon roared in satisfaction, and swiped a massive, clawed hand towards the airborne target. However, just before the blow was about to connect, another burst of wind energy gathered around James, pulling him out of the way of the demons attack. With a few quick steps James ran up its arm, before jumping over its shoulder and down onto the wall again. Before he'd even fully landed, James moved forward again.
The demon let out an indignant roar, smashing a hand down towards the wall. James was already out of his reach, but the shaking of the wall still caused him to nearly stumble.
Pausing slightly to recollect himself and regain his hold on the growing tornado of demonic energy, James glanced backwards in time to see the large demon crouch and gather itself to jump after him. However, while it was flying towards him, a massive hand suddenly appeared at the edges of James' vision, snagging the demon out of the air.
"Shit!" James yelped, as he turned again and saw the massive demoness standing next to him. James flung himself further down the wall with another burst of wind energy, barely dodging the demoness' second hand. He righted himself and prepared to start running again, when something that looked like faint, glowing embers filled the air near him. It took James barely a second to realize that they were coming from the corpses of the nearby demons, and flying towards the large demoness.
That wasn't the only thing that was moving towards the demoness. With a sudden lurch, James felt the demonic energy under his control grow even more turbulent, as it tried to tug away from him, moving towards the large demoness. Several tendrils of energy even completely broke away from him as they brushed against the demoness' skin, no matter how much James tried to pull them back.
Reluctant to let any of the energy go, especially to a demon, James forcefully tightens his control over the swirling energy, compressing the maelstrom even tighter around him.
With the demoness apparently distracted killing the other demons for their energy, James took that moment to flee, racing off further down the wall.
Several minutes later, James burst his way through the next collection of obstructing demons, and passed by another holy orb. The crumpled bodies of the mages around the orb stir slightly as James races away, before two of them slowly sat up to reignite the holy orb.
This was the third orb that had been illuminated since James' near miss with the large demoness, and she continued to trail after him, clawing almost casually at any demon that drew too close to her. However, as James continued to run towards the next orb, he noticed that the usual hordes of lesser demons that blocked his path were unexpectedly absent. Peering further ahead through the obstruction of the dense demonic energy around him, James can barely make out what appears to be a holy shield, somewhere along the wall ahead of him. All along the unlit portion of the wall, the occasional bursts of spells flashed through the purple night.
It didn't take James long to recognize the figures of the city guard. Apparently the paladins and knights had decided to clear him a path, before dropping off the wall to avoid the mass of demonic energy that surrounded him.
With a small burst of gratitude growing in his heart, James picks up the pace again, bursts of grey mist exploding outwards every time his feet touched the ground, hurling him forward far faster than he could ever run.
With the obstructions out of his way, and the large demoness falling further behind him as he picks up the speed, it didn't take James more than another set of minutes to make it most of the way around the wall. All but a small portion of the city was now covered by the glowing radiance of the holy net, and James was able to hear the shrieks of the lesser demons down in the streets, as they were burned by the glowing light. At one point, he even felt a sudden rumble shake the ground, and he glanced over his shoulder to see that the net had finally forced the large demoness out of the city.
However, perhaps due to the sudden absence of any other demons around her for her to kill, the demoness' gaze finally turns towards James. Even as he glanced in her direction, James could see her suddenly start rushing along the outer wall, before all but crashing into the wall in front of him.
Forced to skid to a halt or risk running into the demoness herself, James suddenly feels the energy under his control growing turbulent again. Just like before, the gathered energy began to stretch against his grip, tugging and pulling towards the demoness. A frown crossed his lips as his eyes narrowed in frustration, before he tugs back on the energy with a grunt of effort. Gradually, he gathers a majority of the energy firmly back under his control.
But, with so much energy under his control, even James couldn't fully resist the demoness' tugging. A split second later, several tendrils break away from his control before rapidly flowing into her body.
James couldn't help but stare as the energy flowed into the demoness' body. He couldn't, for the life of him, understand what she hoped to gain from this. Of course, demons need demonic energy to survive. But after having been in the human world for such a short amount of time, there shouldn't have been any reason for a demon to actively seek out and absorb demonic energy. There simply shouldn't have been any benefit for them.
But it was impossible to deny that this obviously wasn't the case for the demoness. Only a second after the river of energy she'd stolen from James sunk under her skin, her eyes began to glow a brighter red. She leered at him, almost as though proud of herself, before suddenly vanishing in a burst of light and blur of motion.
James flinched backwards from her sudden movement, and by the time his eyes open again she'd all but vanished.
"What the fuck…?" James mumbled, but shook his head a moment later, forcefully dislodging his confusion. He didn't have times to try and unravel the all but incomprehensible behavior of a demon, not when there were only a few orbs left unlit in front of him.
With only a few short bursts of magic, James had jumped over the hole in the wall in front of him, and once more resumed his dash forward. Only a few short moments later, and James passed by the last of the unlit orbs. As it flickered to life behind him under the promptings of its exhausted and wounded mages, the city is finally fully covered in the glowing net of holy energy. The slowly rolling clouds of demonic energy that had filled the city seem to shiver for a moment, before they are suddenly drawn upwards, flung out of the city in a series of misty geysers.
From within the city, there seemed to almost be a collective release of breath. The demons that hadn't already escaped the city let out shrieks, blending indignation at their sudden captivity, and pain from the growing assault of holy energy.
Even though his run around the wall was now finished, James didn't slow. As soon as he reached the middle of the wall between the two glowing orbs, James turned sharply to the side, leaping off the edge of the wall. Before he could begin to fall, grey mist gathered around him, violently throwing him up into the air.
As he all but flew through the air towards the middle of the city, the clouds of demonic energy that had gathered over the holy net began to stir, moving towards him. For a moment, the energy that had gathered around James seemed to disperse slightly, stretching over the city like a veil, but James abruptly pulled it back in just as it seemed like it was about to break out of his control.
As James neared the top of his jump, the demonic energy around him grew denser and denser, compressed in towards his body. At the top of his arc James seemed to almost pause for a moment, and his gaze turned up towards the burgundy rift that split through the middle of the air. The angry purple-red gash was smaller than when it had first appeared over the city, but not by much. James fully intended to change that now.
With a grunt, the energy around him begins to swirl faster, all but lifting James into the air, catapulting him up towards the rift again. The maw of the rift seems to grow wider and wider around him, but just before he would pass beyond the edge of the tear James separates himself from the energy and flings it upwards. The force of his throw sends the gathered demonic energy flying back through the center of the rift, even as it hurls James back towards the ground with equal speed. As the energy passed beyond the edge of the rift, a terrible shrieking noise filled the air, like nails being dragged down a blackboard. In the sky, the rift was shaking, its edges pulling together like a moth being sewn closed.
Only moments before James reached the end of his collision course with a damaged roof, another burst of grey wind energy gathered around him, slowing his descent enough to allow him to land heavily, but safely. James quickly turned his gaze back towards the sky, focusing on the rapidly shrinking rift.
Whatever natural force it was that allowed these massive rifts to open in the human realm, it clearly wasn't willing to let go without a fight. The dreadful screaming noise still filled the air, as tiny tendrils reached out from within the rift like snake tongues, pressing out against the rapidly closing rift. These small tendrils were clearly trying to take the place of the numerous pillars of demonic energy that James had just shoved back through the portal. However, while those large masses might have been able to resist against the continual closure of the portal, these small tendrils were having no such luck. The portal continued to rapidly shrink, until the last of the demonic energy was forced back through to the demonic realm, and the sky above Tophia returned to a normal night.
Barely a split second later, the city almost shook with the roar of triumph that came from countless human mouths. Even though the battle was not over, the rift closing was the turning point. Tophia's victory was only a matter of time.
However, even with his massive contribution now complete, James couldn't entirely relax. With quick steps, James raced across the city's rooftops towards the broken section of wall, jumping onto the fallen stone. His gaze quickly turns out outside the city, eyes scanning across the hillsides.
Gone.
No matter which way he looked James could not see a trace of the demoness, and with her size she should have been impossible to miss. A frown spread across his face.
"That has got to be the strangest demon I've ever seen in my life," James protested to the empty air, shaking his head. However, only silence met his objection, and James eventually dropped back down from the wall into the city, before vanishing into the shadows of a nearby alley.
There were still plenty of demons left in the city, and while James was confident that the guard would be able to handle the fight from this point, James had already committed himself to this fight. Besides, he wasn't about to object to skinning a few demons.