Chapter 9

Sue's firewall worked very well against this particular bunch of goat-men. She must have really juiced up her abilities, because it only took two of the firewalls to eliminate every one of the goat-men in the chamber. That raised the question of whether or not her other spells were also that much stronger. Well, the only way to know for sure was to test them in combat.

They left the room and walked down the corridor away from Diablo, but where more of his minions could be found. They came to some of the poison spitting dogs, but these seemed to be so powerful that they should be rated as hell-hounds. The Unconquerable had no convenient defense against their spit, so he stood back as Jack attacked and Sue healed him whenever she saw that he needed it. Sue might well have wiped out these hell-hounds by herself, but Jack wanted to test himself against this more powerful version. They decided that The Unconquerable would go after the next batch of hell-hounds with Sue to back him up. The hell-hounds were the only creatures that The Unconquerable had encountered that really gave him a problem. Even Diablo was not able to overcome The Unconquerable without the help of the hell-hounds.

Their next encounter was with some rather odd looking individuals. They closely resembled wizards with their long white hair and their fancy robes, but they floated through the air, rather than walking on the ground. Their strength was in the fire or lightning balls they shot from their hands following an arcane gesture. These pseudo wizards were immune to Sue's firewall or exploding fireballs, but were affected by her ice balls. They were not killed, but they were slowed down by the cold, so that they were easily dispatched by Jack's sword. The Unconquerable had no trouble with these pseudo wizards, since the fire and lightning balls did not do a significant damage to his scales. His fighting technique was simplicity itself: he walked in among the creatures and snatched them out of the air with his tentacles. The next step was either to tighten the tentacle enough to crush the creature or to wrap another tentacle around the same creature and pull him into two pieces. Either strategy appeared to be effective, if a little bloody.

They walked around from chamber to chamber, killing monsters as soon as they could find them. The word must have finally gotten to Diablo, because the three friends heard a Thump-Thump-Thump sound of a very heavy creature walking toward them. The Unconquerable listened for a moment and confirmed that the noise was, indeed, the sound made as Diablo walked over the ground.

Before long, they caught sight of a truly ugly, but impressive, monster approaching them at a steady pace somewhat like a mighty juggernaut. Diablo was over 15 feet tall, mostly red in color, and covered with scales. He had a long tail with spikes on the end, each spike looked to be around two feet long. He had two giant wings, though it was not obvious what they might be good for, since, even with the aid of magic, it was difficult to believe that he could use them to fly. Maybe he could wrap them around his body as a shield of some sort.

His face was like that of a dragon, but with a short jaw line. He had long fangs projecting from both the top and the lower jaw. Those fangs looked to be counterproductive, since it was hard to see how he could get his mouth open far enough to bite anything with them.

Diablo walked on two legs and had two arms which projected at least six feet from his body. It was hard to tell for sure under all those scales, but it looked like he had a wrist and an elbow similar to what humans had. His hands and feet ended with three-inch claws projecting from each finger and toe.

All of this was impressive, but, according to The Unconquerable, his main weapon was a breath that looked like fire, but actually functioned like lightning. Therefore, fire resistance did no good in protecting one from Diablo, what you needed was lightning resistance. That sent Sue into a quick huddle with Hat. Sue turned back to her friends a couple of minutes later with the statement, "I may have a great surprise for Diablo the first time he tries to attack us with his breath."

The first step in the confrontation with Diablo was kind of mild. Diablo asked, "Why have you two invaded my realm? You have no business here. Leave immediately!"

Sue answered, "Diablo, you are the one who is out of place! This is the world of physical creatures, not abominations like you. Why have you come to plague us?"

"I am here because I am strong enough to be here. I don't have to answer to any lesser force. My strength gives me the right to go anywhere I wish and do anything I wish. Only a stronger being can gainsay me, and there is no stronger being in all the multitude of universes."

"There may not be one being strong enough to thwart you, but a combination of beings can do it. And you are facing that combination right know. Leave this plane immediately, or you will regret your foolishness."

"I'LL SHOW YOU HOW FOOLISH I AM!" Diablo turned to face Sue directly and unleashed a blast directly at her which looked like a stream of intense fire, almost plasma. The blast hit some sort of invisible barrier and was directed down toward the ground, but it didn't stop there. It traveled along the ground until it reached Diablo and struck him between his legs, where his penis would be if he was a man.

He reacted like any man would when attacked in the balls. Diablo tried to escape. By doing this, his beam of energy was twisted away from Sue and flashed of harmlessly in the distance. This broke the chain of energy back to Diablo, and he was relieved of the discomfort. Diablo got a most peculiar look of discomfort and disbelief on his face, but this quickly turned to absolute rage as the three companions began to laugh at him.

He didn't breathe any more energy blasts at them, but he did resort to throwing exploding fire balls. Sue returned the favor, and there was quite a fireworks display being put on by the two combatants. While this was going on, Jack jumped to Diablo's rear and tried to stab him with his sword. This sword was supposed to pierce virtually anything, but it only slid along the surface of his scales.

Diablo felt the sword and tried to hit Jack with his spiked tail, but Jack easily avoided it. However, the spikes did come uncomfortably close, so Jack took a swing at the spikes, not really expecting much success. To his surprise, the sword cut right through one of the spikes and buried itself partway in another. Diablo let out a roar of pain and turned his back on Sue to concentrate on Jack.

This complete loss of concentration by Diablo was enough to draw The Unconquerable into the fight. Quite unexpectedly, he jumped at Diablo's head and crashed into him with all of his considerable weight. This knocked Diablo tail over tea kettle, and he rolled away from the fight. In the process, the sword was jerked out of Jack's hand so that he was momentarily left weaponless.

From the look on Sue's face, she took the opportunity to change to another spell which she cast at Diablo. Meanwhile, Jack drew from his magic weapon pouch an ax that was charmed never to get dull. He used this to attack Diablo's tail spikes. Meanwhile, The Unconquerable jumped on Diablo again, pinning him to the ground and wrapping him in a multitude of tentacles, which he proceeded to tighten.

Diablo tried to retaliate with his strange breathe beam, but gave it up with a loud roar of pain almost before he got it going. He whipped about and twisted back and forth trying to escape The Unconquerable's clutches and the chopping of Jack's ax.

It took only a few powerful swings of Jack's ax to remove the last of the spikes from Diablo's tail and Diablo was obviously suffering from the pressure being exerted by those powerful tentacles. In only a few minutes, he was begging for mercy.

Not being spiteful characters, all three friends backed off and let Diablo get to his feet. "OK, you have won this battle. I will admit defeat and return to Hell. But, you, Sue Ulna, must remove the spell from me which keeps me from using my special weapon.

"No, not until we settle a few things. You must leave this plane of existence and swear never to return. I know that even you cannot break your sworn word. Furthermore, you must take all of your minions with you. No more walking skeletons or zombies or vampires. No more goat-men or hell-hounds or demons. When you have done that, I will remove the spell."