The Battle

The members of Western Carolina University's creative writing club were gathered around a campfire somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. It was gatting late in the night, and much poetry and prose had already been read in this idyllic setting.

It was now Richard's turn to read something. He announced, "I found something funny in the library a few weeks ago." He pulled out a large piece of paper from his red notebook and unfolded it. It was old, worn, stained, and scorched. In fact, it may not have been paper, but some kind of parchment or papyrus.

"I found this in the map collection when I was poking around, looking for geological data for a friend. It must have been misfiled. The library people had no clue what it was, so they just let me keep it. I bet I was the first person in years to even open the drawer it was in. I only opened that drawer because I was confused by the filing system. The stuff I was looking for was on the other side of the aisle. Anyway, it is a funny old rhyme that uses a lot of archaic language. It has a neat meter, though. Well, I think it will. I never read the whole thing aloud before."

And so he started to read the poem. It was an interesting bit of literature, and the normally boisterous group listened quietly as Richard read, almost as if the words had put them into a trance.

As Richard read the final syllable of the poem, the campfire roared, and the flames jumped ten feet into the air as they radiated infernal heat and a horrible red glow. Then they subsided, to reveal a large flaming demon. It had the head of a rabid dog, and its body resembled a floating squid that had been grafted and woven into a Bowflex exercise machine.

The demon began to speak a voice that tried to sound like a sephulcureal roar, but came out as a whiny squeak.

"Whoever dares to summon Boof
is due a very stern reproof.
For I am fell and puissant,
and you are but a pissant."

He surveyed the group before his gaze fell on Richard, who was trying desperately to cram the parchment back into his folder. The demon roared at him, and swung one of its metallic appendages in a downward-sweeping arc that took Richard's head clean off and sent it rolling into the forest. Green blood spewed from the severed artery.

The rest of the group had no time to notice this anatomical anomanly, for they were all trying desperately to flee the area. Boof had other plans, however. He intoned a few syllables in his horrible deep-squeaky voice, and all of the surrounding trees burst into flames, forming a large ring of fire that prevented any escape. Boof rounded up all of the club members, grabbing them one by one with a tentacle and placing them back on their seats. They tried to move again, but found that they were all paralysed from the neck down, and glued to their seats by sticky ichor besides.

"Escape from me you must not try,
for I must read my poetry."

said Boof. The writers cringed in horror.

But before the evil act could be committed, a great circle of light came down from the sky and illuminated Boof, as if a large silent invisible helicopter had trained its searchlight on the monster. It continued to move his mouth, but no sound emerged.

Boof floated quickly away from the campfire, but the light followed him. The demon seemed tense and alert now, as if waiting for something. After a few seconds, another beam of light came down form the sky. A man wearing a white shirt, a black hat, a large beard, and overalls descended from the heavens.

Boof raised a dozen of his razor-sharp metal and chitinous tentacles and charged the newcomer. Before he had floated two feet, however, the man held his hand out on front of him, palm outward. A beam of light flashed from his hand, smashing into Boof's face and shoving him back all the way into the ring of flame the demon had created earlier.

The Amish man then began to reite something in German. If any of the writers present had been multilingual, observant, and knowlegeable of the scripture, they would have recognised it as Ephesians 6, verses 14 through 17.

"So steht nun, eure Lenden umgürtet mit Wahrheit,"

Another beam of light came down from the heavens and surrounded the Amish man, and a belt made of the whitest cloth, with a silver buckle, appeared around his belt. Boof had by this time recovered slightly, and he spat at his assilant, hundreds of flecks of green spittle flying out of his horrid maw. An egg-shaped barrier seemingly composed of solid light surrounded the Amish in response to this, and where the spittle touched it it evaporated into greenish steam and melted away. The man continued his prayer.

"angetan mit dem Brustpanzer der Gerechtigkeit"

This time the beam caused the Amish man to be clothed in a breastplate, a shiny silver-steel piece of armor. Boof hurled a flaming log at the man, who shifted position slightly so that the log hit the armor. The projectile broke in half against the armor, and the two chunks flew away, having imparted no momentum or pain to their target, who was stull speaking.

"und beschuht an den Füßen mit der Bereitschaft [zur Verkündigung] des Evangeliums des Friedens."

Another glow came from the heavens, and this time it did not receed, but remained trained upon the man. He was soon was wearing boots that appeared to be made of white eagle feathers woven together. Boof was by this time renewing his offensive in strength. He struck the ground with his tentacles, causing it to split open. Hellfire burst from the rend in the earth, and with frightening speed, the crack spread, heading directly toward the praying man and spreading as it did until it was fully three meters wide. But before he could be swallowed up, he leapt, and the feathers of his boots rustled. There was a burst of air, and the man soared all the way to the other end of the ring of fire, landing so gently that there was no pause in his recitation.

"Bei alledem ergreift den Schild des Glaubens, mit dem ihr alle feurigen Pfeile des Bösen auslöschen könnt."

A large shield, made of the same stuff as the aromor, appeared in the man's hand, just in time to deflect a rapid-fire stream of flaming ... things that Boof produced from some hitherto unseen orifice that resembled a cross between an elephant's trunk and a saxophone. This assualt was most relentless, and the Amish man was backed against the wall of fire as he worked to block all the projectiles while finishing his prayer.

"Nehmt auch den Helm des Heils"

A helmet appeared on the man's head, completing the suit of armor just in time to block a flaming glob that had slipped by the shield.

"und das Schwert des Geistes, das ist Gottes Wort."

With the completion of the verses, a sword appeared in the man's hand. It was a rather large rapier made of the same silvery steel as the rest of the outfit. The glow from the heavens faded away, but as it did so the sword began to glow, as if it was absorbing all of the light.

The man now switched from defense to offense. He charged forward, covering two meters at a step, using the glowing sword as well as the shield to block and parry the projectiles in a blur of motion. Boof quickly stopped producing his flaming shots, and raised his tentacle blades in a defensive posture, weaving them in and out in a confusing dance.

The man closed in, and from that time forward it was hard to see what was happening, as silver light and crimson hellfire danced a tango of death to an inauduble tune that was apparently being played at 120 rpm by a DJ on crack. But it was possible to see that, every couple seconds or so, one of the tentacles would fall to the ground and roll away.

Finally, the silver-clad man stepped back, and then leapt forward over Boof's head, somersaulting as he did so. The sword flashed silver in the night, bisecting Boof's mad-dog head and part of its fleshy squidlike body. A sound like a whoopee cushion was accompanied by a nixious stench as the lifeless body of the demon floated gently to the ground. The Amish man floated down to the ground as well, carried by his feather boots.

The effects of Boof's demonic magic then began to fade away. The fires in the trees began to go out, the crack in the earth began to close, and the paralysis of the writers began to wear off. But before the rift closed completely, the Amish man grabbed the remains of Boof by one of the cleaner metallic parts and hurled it down into the abyss. He then want swiftly around the battlefield, using his sword to pick up tantacles the same way that groundskeepers use those sharp poles to pick up pieces of paper. He shook these off his sword into the flaming pit just before it closed. Only when the ground was completely healed did the light from heaven that had been trained on the demon begin to fade away. The man's armor, sword, and accessories faded away at the same time, and soon he was as he had been when he arrived.

He walked over to the writers, some of whom were busy pulling themselves free of the sticky goop that still pinned them down, and some of whom were busy staring into space with vacant expressions. The Amish man spoke a few German words, and the goop evaporated away. He then addressed the writers in English.

"You folks should really be careful about reading strange old papers. Anything that doesn't come off a printing press can have magic power. You have unleashed a, well, not exactly a great evil, but an annoying low-grade evil, into the world. I have vanquished the demon's physical form, but it lives on as a disembodied spirit that will probably continue to haunt you in minor but tiresome ways."

He looked down at the headless body of Richard. "The boys at the lab are going to have to patch him up sometime in the next few days. He'll be all right, though, as long as we properly dispose of that." He pointed to the parchment. Then he knelt down and placed his hand on Richard, who vanished into a quiet beam of light that came from the heavens. Somewhere off in the night, there was a similar beam as his head was also transported.

"Oh, one more thing." said the Amish as he stood up. He took some sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on, and then held something else out in his hand. "Look at this." Such was the calm but commanding tone of his voice that everyone did so. There was a red flash. The man took off his sunglasses as he said, "Nothing unusual has happened. You have all been having a nice time in these peaceful woods. Richard had a schedule conflict and was not able to come tonight. Also, you will not see what is about to happen."

There was a final beam of light, which pulled the Amish man back into the heavens. The writers sat, blank-faced, for a couple more seconds before Tony Christopher said, "Well then, I do believe that it is my turn to read something."