Bad Day for a Bad Cow... hand...

The hell hand had gotten free of me. Scrambling out, he got a few steps away, saying that Rowtag and I weren't on his list of targets ... right now. I got the message, I was making it onto his list. He also said something about "between him and his ghost". Was he haunted? Not sure. I didn't want to bother Yathue, she was resting.
 
There was a demon in that Hell Hand and it was riding him hard. We needed to rip that demon out... somehow. I asked Jessie for a rose wafer but he was out. So was Sephia. Lee? He was nowhere to be seen.
 
Looks like I had to do this the hard way.
 
Bracing my stance and Rowtag bracing his on my shoulder, I let the hell hand know where I stood. I told that demon it was time it was time to get outta town ... or drink honey. My hand flew down in the fastest draw I'd ever made. In one motion, I yanked that jar of holy honey out and charged the Hell Hand. He cut loose with a hex bolt that I took in the chest... but I kept going.
 
Landing on the man, I slammed him to the ground, telling the demon to get the hell out. It was right then that Yathue appeared, pointing frantically to her holy symbol. Of course! It might could get the demon out! Holding the man down, I told Rowtag to grab the holy symbol. He did.
 
I set the jar aside as Rowtag dropped the symbol of Dkar Po into my hand. At that point, I just kept talking to the demon. Telling it that it was time to get the hell out of town... one way or the other. The instant slapped the holy symbol against the man's chest there was an instant reaction. He shook, trying to yell as smoke poured out his ears. The same reaction when the Hesters took the rose wafers.
 
It was the demon.
 
Calling out to Jessie to grab a bottle, I held on. Jessie found two from my pack and put them to the hell hand's ears to catch the demon. Meanwhile his dire bee was warming up with some wax to seal the demon in. All we had to do was hold on. Once gone, we'll get the man some healing and I'll apologize.
 
After a few seconds, Jessie had the demon bottled. The horns on the hell hand, the former hell hand, started cracking and falling off. It was a damn good thing the man was out cold otherwise, he'd feel that. He had taken a beating from me. I pulled out my kit and set to binding his wounds. Hopefully, this will get him stable.
 
Looking around, there didn't seem to be much left. Jessie suggested we catching up with the rest. Right then I get a magical message in a bottle... an ominous one about if he dies that I promise to release the dead stormborn in Morodar. Too many problems at a time. First, I needed to get this ranch hand to someplace to heal. Second, track down the others - specifically Miro - and find out what's gone wrong.
 
We headed south across the mess of weeds and growth Jessie kicked up and found some gray slime. Nothing alive just... gray slime. No idea where it came from or really what it was. Jessie grabbed rocks and other things to make a path we could walk on. That helped since I was carrying the unconscious ranch hand. There was some yelling off to the north but nothing that seemed bad. It was more cheering than anything else. Not something to deal with now. Jessie and I kept moving.
 
Close to the barn, we found Miro and two more hands. Justice and Mystery Mullins. The Mullins had yet to be cured of their demon problem. Miro had promised them I could take care of it...mostly through getting Yathue to do it. I wasn't sure about how Miro was phrasing that, it made me a little uncomfortable. But I probably could use her holy symbol again. Probably with the staff, too. I did at least learn the name of the ranch hand I had clobbered. It was Faith Harrol. I had to get Faith to someplace to rest.
 
Before the Mullins ran off to deal with a scared sheep, probably demon-possessed, I told them I'll come back to help them. I hoped I wouldn't have to fight them. That blast from Faith hurt like hell.
 
The cat in the barn? It turned out to be a rendercoon. Damn rendercoon. At least it wasn't demon possessed. I took it as a positive. Once I tucked Faith in the barn, next to Ranger Horn actually, I talked the rendercoon into leaving the barn. Mostly by explaining the hell cows were gone. At least they looked gone to me. In any case, that rendercoon ran out of the barn. Which should make Chef, a young goblin lady, really anyone in the barn happy. That animal looked to have a mean streak a mile wide.
 
My chest hurt. That hex bolt burned bad. I knew I had to do something about it soon.
 
Outside the barn, Jessie waved us over. He had a couple of bottles we could use for the demon trapping. Mystery pointed out the sheep. Yep, demon possessed and ticked off. Jessie and the others kept shooting at it, I ambushed it and slapped Yathue's symbol against the sheep. The demon instantly started pouring out.
 
But the demon in Mystery took her all the way over and unloaded against Justice Mullins at that moment. Thinking back, it made sense. The demon was watching me do that and knew it was next. As the demon left the sheep, it shrank back to what it should be. A sheep. Scared but a sheep. Jessie raced off back to the others. A fight had broken out with Mystery and Justice wasn't far behind.
 
Talking softly to it, I quickly stripped the armor off the sheep to get it feeling back to 'normal'. But the problems hadn't solved themselves. It looked like a stand off with the Mullins. Giving the sheep a pet or two, I slipped off and charged the Mullins. Slamming into them from behind, I held them down while Yathue did her work. Jessie caught the demons that boiled out.
 
I was exhausted. In pain and exhausted. But there was more work to do.
 
The Mullins I escorted to the barn. They could get their head together and check on Faith. I got some of the rollups Chef had been making, then stepped out of the barn to look for more hell hands or this Ghost person. I found no sign after looking around the barn. At least I had time to bandage up that burn from the hex blast.
 
At the barn I found Lee Chung trying to move the abyssal weapons, which were aggravating some curse he had caught. I tried to figure a way to move them, but Yathue shooed me away. I gave the others some idea how to move them and agreed with Miro. They needed to be tossed into volcano.
 
That left Ghost. I searched the bunkhouse with Miro. He showed me where he left Ghost, or what he thought was Ghost. I found sign of everything but her. Where ever she was, she wasn't here. Jesse helped Chica, Princess and the others back to the bunkhouse. We stayed there for the night. It was some rest. Enough to keep going the next day.
 
There was a lot of rebuilding to do, both with the ranches and farms.
 
After that? I needed to take Yathue back home. Then get me home.