ARC 7: CHAPTER 24: HE WHO BEHELD THE BURNING

The demon approached the steps of the cathedral. He ignored everyone, moving with a casual lack of hurry or care despite the distant sounds of battle and the armed mob sharing the square with him.

His legs bent back like a beast’s, and ended in taloned feet more like a reptile’s than a mammal. It gave him a strange gait, almost a swagger, and his armor clicked with every step. His gold-embroidered cape swished across the cobblestones, swinging back and forth in a hypnotic motion. A sigil was stitched onto the back of that red train, showing a stylized pair of broken doors surrounded by flames.

The Gatebreaker stopped at the bottom step of Lyda’s Cathedral, his gaze running across its outer walls. He let out a muted laugh and muttered something to himself.

Where had he come from? It didn’t matter. Move. I needed to move, to run… no, that was his power talking. He’d hit us with some kind of wavefront of terror, like a supernaturally potent version of the animal fear any predator uses against smaller prey. I needed to fight. He was a demon, not a god, and he could be slain.

I needed to give the others time to get away.

“Don’t. Move.” Vicar spoke very quietly. “You cannot overcome this foe, Hewer. That creature has supped on the blood of angels. You have no chance against him, not with your powers crippled and your axe broken.”

Someone among the armed pilgrims whimpered. None of them could move. The demon’s power weighed on us like a great weight of water. I could feel it buzzing in the air like flies, making my vision fuzzy, irritating my ears. His aura tasted like rotting meat and rancid blood, the musk of an unclean animal.

I concentrated and with a savage, silent effort I broke the restraining geas. I had to flare my magic to do it, causing golden flames to flicker around my body with an audible growl. It gave me more burn scars, and when done I gasped and stumbled forward, emitting trails of smoke.

The demon turned, probably noticing that I’d freed myself. The muscles of his scarred visage shifted as he raised his brow in a human gesture of mild interest that didn’t belong on that animal face. He had very small eyes, like tiny pinpricks of sickly light set too far apart. They were lopsided, and did not blink.

“Impressive,” the Gorelion said. He had a cultured voice, soft and deep at once with an almost sub-audible growl no human throat could produce. He inhaled deeply. “Ah, I know that smell! You are one of the faerie king’s thralls. Strange… I thought them all accounted for.”

“You…” I had to gasp for breath to get the words out. “You don’t know me? Yith said you wanted to kill me.”

“Yith did?” The lion tilted his head to one side. “Ah, yes! I do know you. I remember you from that day I came through the door into this world. You seemed so distraught at the time, I couldn’t bring myself to end you.”

I’d wanted him to kill me. He’d just walked right by, as though he barely noticed I was there. “This won’t be like last time.”

The demon’s jowls peeled back from long fangs. “Yes, perhaps! Last time you were but a fledgling flame, the cub of the Table. You have become more since then. I can smell it, that tang of blood, that febrile stench of butchery.”

He started to walk towards me. He did swagger. It wasn’t just his strangely shaped legs — everything about him exuded arrogance and pride. “You slew Yith. You destroyed Tormentsister and sent her spirit into the cages of the accursed Zosite. You even defeated Raath El Kur. Three of my comrades of old you have bested, Alder Knight, three who stood at my side during our righteous war on the Tyrant God of Onsolem!”

By the time his speech had ended, he was snarling with rage, his muzzle wrinkled, his eyes burning holes in the world. When he spoke the holy name of the Divine Kingdom, it burned him, and smoke billowed out of his maw as the stink of scorched flesh filled the air. He stopped and lifted his head high, making a choking sound. The gag became a chortling laugh.

“What sweet rancor you make me feel, mortal!” He took another step towards me, but just then something flashed from the sky. It struck the stonework of the square just in front of the demon lord, planting itself there and causing him to stop.

It was a polearm, an ornate halberd. Wispy tendrils of glowing mist curled from its golden designs. The Gorelion studied the shining halberd for a moment, looking bemused, before turning to face the cathedral again. He looked up. I followed his gaze, and there above the cathedral’s high spires and bell towers, framed by the brooding storm clouds still flickering with frequent lightning, appeared a bright light. It shone down over the streets of Tol like a silver star, chasing away the darkness of night. I felt it on my face, and though its color was somewhat forlorn, it made me feel warmer.

The angel descended, eventually settling on the roof above the cathedral’s front doors. It dimmed just enough for me to make out the many-limbed and many-winged form within, the three faces set above an androgynous body, the misting chalice in one of six hands that was the symbol of the Saint of Blood.

“That’s all?” The Gorelion sounded disappointed. “Just one? That is no feast.”

“There will be no feast for you here, betrayer.” Chamael’s voice was calm, but his six eyes were hard as they fixed on the demon. “You misstepped by leaving the kingdom of bones and sycophants you fashioned in the east. It would have served you better to remain reclined on your trash heap.”

“Oh ho, is that you, Chamael?” The demon paced to one side, as though to get a better look at the winged figure atop the church. “I see you didn’t regrow the leg the Thanacora took from you. You know he keeps those bones as a trophy still? Sometimes he lets his slaves gnaw on them, I hear.”

Chamael did not reply to the demon’s goading. One of his three sets of eyes, the one belonging to his female face, found me. I heard words whisper in my mind, and my breath caught.

The angel spoke aloud to the demon. “You sully my queen’s realm with every step you take, Asteroth. It breaks my heart anew to see what you’ve become.”

“…Become?”

Ager Roth lifted his clawed fingers to eye level, studying them. He remained quiet for some time before speaking in a lower voice, almost a purr. “Have I changed, Chamael? Have I become something other? Our Father made us to be eternal, unchanging, and yet I have proven Him a liar. You speak the name He gave me as though it will wake something in my heart, as though it means anything to me.”

“He is gone,” the angel said. “You rebel against silence.”

“Perhaps.” Ager Roth closed his hand into a fist. “But His heir remains, and my work is not yet done. I will paint this land with such filth that the reek will carry to wherever your coward queen hides. Aureia will face me, or watch all that she has built be ruined.”

“Enough.” Chamael pushed off the cathedral roof and floated above the square. His wings spread out, and the light he exuded brightened. I could make out the halo of phantasmal power above his trinity of heads. “You did not come here to find Her. You came here because you are afraid, and you have begun your war early and poorly prepared. It was for naught. What you seek is no longer here, and you have exposed yourself for nothing.”

“Is it not?” The dark champion who’d broken Heaven’s gates turned his mad eyes to me, and he smiled. “I’m not so sure.”

I felt a thrill of terror, and impatience. Through this exchange, I’d felt ready to explode with nerves. I didn’t want to wait to see what happened. Dread over what this creature was here for, what he might do, filled my body with anxious energy. I recalled the rumors I’d heard, the evil omens and telltale stories of a lion-headed knight lurking near scenes of war and plague. I should have heeded them better, urged Markham to investigate when I had the chance.

Too late for that now, but what could I do in this moment? Vicar was right, but his wasn’t the only whispering voice in my ear compelling me to be patient.

Chamael’s halo brightened, becoming painful to look at. He folded his wings in, so only the shining light and his three heads peeked from the feathery cocoon. “Flee this place, abgrüdai. It is under the Choir’s protection.”

Ager Roth took a step towards the seraph, his voice gleeful. “Then try to protect it! I have waited for far too long to taste Heaven’s unspoiled blood once again.”

Chamael’s main set of eyes closed. “Then so be it.”

The ground beneath my feet rumbled. The Gorelion stopped, dropping his gaze to the cobblestones. His body tensed as he started to lower himself into a crouch.

Too late. The ground beneath the demon exploded, and the twisting branches and roots of an enormous black tree rose up around him. Grasping tendrils covered in thorns encircled his arms, his chest, his legs.

The trunk of the tree rose next, blurring with speed and causing fractures to erupt across the square. Several people lost their footing and fell. I nearly did as well, but managed to brace myself. My eyes tracked the tree’s path, watching it rise more than half as high as the towering cathedral before its feverish growth slowed. It kept growing, until it became near tall as the church’s tallest tower.

A Malison Oak, just like the one my axe could form but many times larger. Its body split, revealing a cavity filled with sharp protrusions like some kind of organic Iron Maiden. It began to pull the demon in.

The power of the demon faded over the crowd, and people started to shout in alarm and awe. I heard Luca say something, perhaps asking a question, but my attention was too fixed on the scene to pay him any mind. I took a step back and realized that Vicar had disappeared. I searched for him in the crowd, but saw no sign of the crowfriar. What was the devil up to?

Ager Roth let out a lion’s roar, so loud and full of auratic might that it seemed to make the very air quake. The tree’s bark cracked and splintered, and smoke began to rise from it, but it did not stop dragging the demon in. He wrenched an arm, snapping several of the roots holding him, and got his claws into the sides of the open wound in the eldritch tree. He began to pull himself out, his eyes burning with rage, his muzzle pulled back from his yellow teeth. There were tendrils around his neck, his ankles and knees, some digging into the gaps of his armor to find the flesh beneath.

A light began to burn inside the demon’s open maw, as though he were preparing to breathe fire. I moved forward to stop him before he could free himself, but a hand on my wrist stopped me.

“That seal will not care who it devours,” a familiar voice hissed into my hear. I turned to see an old woman in the amber robes and chainmail of a war pilgrim, but the gold-slitted eyes and ancient face beneath the cowl were Urddha Curseweaver’s. No wonder Vicar scurried off. He must have sensed the Onsolain and not wanted to get caught in this.

“Save your strength, Headsman.” Urddha’s inhuman eyes drifted back to the struggling demon. “Let the tree do its work. We will have need of your arm soon enough.”

I forced myself to relax. She was right, of course. I wasn’t the hero of this piece, but I could do my job. Once bound, they would need an executioner to carry out the Gorelion’s sentence.

With one last mighty crackling of stretched wood and a howl of rage from the demon lord, the cavity in the Malison Oak snapped shut. It cut off that last roar, leaving a heavy silence in its wake.

“I didn’t know if you were still here,” I admitted to the Onsolain.

Urddha’s wrinkled face stretched into a ghoulish smile. “We cannot interfere in mortal wars, but Ager Roth is no mortal. He earned this doom long ago.”

“Was he really an angel once?” I asked.

Urddha nodded grimly. “The others don’t like to speak of it, to be reminded that they too can fall to the whispers of Abyss. He is Abgrüdai now, a demon. Remember that.”

Chamael drifted closer to the towering tree, which had grown into a corkscrew shape around its captive. He was still enclosed in his wings, so it looked as though he were just three conjoined and floating heads above a feathery cloak. Light flecks of ash and snow drifted down from the storm above, framing the eerie tableau. Within the overcast darkness of late night, it almost seemed like all the light in the world came from the angel and focused on the tree.

That was too easy, I thought. Ager Roth was a prideful creature, but he’d once bested all the angels of Heaven at the head of an abyssal host. He was one of the Great Adversaries, a figurehead of evil. For him to have walked into this trap and been taken by it…

I felt a terrible unease. “Are you sure that will hold him?”

Urddha remained quiet a moment before answering. “No. We are only trying to buy us time. Chamael has called his brethren. Heavensreach will send reinforcements, but for now we must—”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Before the demigoddess could finish, the sky opened and a bolt of sickly lightning struck the tree. It was so fierce and so loud that it stunned me, forcing me to throw a hand up and stumble back. The noise was deafening, enough to shake the very earth beneath my feet and make windows shatter in buildings around the square.

Almost as soon as the last echo of that bolt faded, another struck, and another. The tree groaned like a living thing in pain, and when I looked up and squinted through the fulgurous barrage I realized what was happening. There were more Storm Ogres in those low hanging clouds, and they were hurling lightning bolts down.

Not all of them were aimed at the tree. A rooftop erupted nearby, sending splinters raining down on us, and a Glorysworn was struck barely twenty feet from where I stood and left as a charred, smoking carcass on the square.

People started to scatter, to run. Urddha spat something I didn’t catch over the noise, and Chamael looked up into the clouds and without so much as a change of expression he lifted fast as an arrow in flight, almost instantly becoming a tiny star far above as he ascended to battle the spirits in the storm.

“Impulsive fool.” Urddha grumbled something in a language I didn’t recognize. I was busy watching the sky, trying to see where the beasts were aiming, though I knew I wasn’t faster than lightning.

“What can I do?” I asked the Onsolain.

Urddha considered me a moment, oddly calm despite the surrounding chaos. “You have a task already, Headsman. This is not a battle you can contribute to, not right now.”

I shook my head in denial. “You expect me to run away from this? I did that once before. I abandoned Seydis, and look what happened.”

“We were all forced to abandon Seydis,” Urddha said firmly. “Do not take the entire weight of this war on your shoulders, mortal. It is much older than you, and no man can lift the firmament.”

Poetic nonsense. There was an enemy in front of me, and I had a sword in my hand. I looked back at the tree, which smoldered with more than a score of fires. Branches snapped and fell burning to the ground, and once again it let out that groaning sound.

“Can you and Chamael defeat him?” I had to shout over the noise of the barrage the ogres were unleashing.

Urddha shook her head. “I cannot. My power lies in curses and omens, not in battle. Chamael is a veteran of the last war against that creature, and he may fair better. There are few in the Choir stronger than him save for Umareon and Eanor.”

Almost as though to prove her point, a Storm Ogre fell from the sky like a meteor, landing on a building at the edge of the square and crushing it down to its foundations. Burning chunks of wood and shattered stone flew through the air.

There were figures entering the square, I realized. Cyril’s garrison, many of them mounted knights on those flame spitting chimera, though they drew up in awe and confusion at the scene before them.

I couldn’t blame them. A small armageddon had visited Tol.

I didn’t bother trying to find the Stork. No clue where Vicar went, either. The ogre that’d fallen from the sky was dead, its shape already dissipating into cloud fumes. There were wounds across its body that glowed with a pale light. Thunder rumbled far above as Chamael hunted.

I felt useless. Worse than useless. “How long before reinforcements arrive from the mountain?” I asked Urddha.

She didn’t reply. I was about to ask again, but realized that she’d vanished too. I cursed, then turned and started shouting at the pilgrims and knights who’d followed me to flee. Most of them already had, perhaps realizing their swords and arrows couldn’t contribute to this. I found Luca, who was trying to help an injured man to his feet, and got his attention.

“There’s nothing any of you can do here!” I shouted at him. “Get them all out.”

“What about you?” He asked.

“There’s nothing I can do, either.”

A piercing crack drew my attention back to the tree. The trunk had split open, revealing crawling lines of fire inside the tortured bark. From those flames, the demon lord emerged. His taloned foot planted itself on the broken stones of the square, and his bright eyes took in the sight of the newly arrived knights flooding in. Many of them stopped and let out exclamations of surprise and horror when they saw the thing emerging from the tree.

The Storm Ogres had helped him. Just as I’d feared, he’d found a way to master them somehow. Or was it more of an alliance? When had he accomplished that, confined inside Elfgrave all these years?

Ildeban, and the Council of Cael. Hasur Vyke had been a warlock, a madman who filled his castle with demons. He must have helped plant these seeds.

From the clouds, I caught a bright flash that wasn’t lightning. It hit the demon lord dead on. Ager Roth grunted as he was forced back toward the tree, his talons digging into the stone and leaving long furrows before he halted. Chamael, smaller than him by more than a head but burning with so much power it would have been visible to the most spiritually deadened mortal eyes, grappled with him. They struggled like two titans in a piece of mythical art, hands locked together, legs braced as they worked to overpower their opponent.

Though they fought hand to hand, every single flex of muscle and vocalized grunt was gravid with phantasm. They wielded Art like a normal man wields angry words, lashing at each other with energies I struggled to perceive.

Chamael had more limbs, and he used them. A dagger of exquisite craft appeared in one of his free hands, and he drove it up in an attempt to sink the blade into Ager Roth’s armpit. The demon suddenly twisted and lifted his smaller foe, raising him up before slamming him into the ground hard enough to crack more of the already abused street. The beautiful dagger went flying. When it landed on the cobblestones, it shattered as though made of the most delicate glass.

The knights and crusader pilgrims gathering in the square let out a cry of despair almost as one entity at the sight. No one moved forward to help the angel. None of them could make a difference in this, or even get close without being crushed or burned by phantasm.

But perhaps I could. I tried to move forward, thinking there must be something I could do to help, but hesitated. What could I do? I might be stronger and more durable than most, but I was mortal. These were gods.

Chamael batted his wings, sending out a flash of eye-searing light that made Ager Roth snarl and back away, throwing a vambrace up to shield his eyes. This gave the angel time to lift himself up. Two of his hands formed a bow and arrow of light. He strung it and took aim, the string producing a musical note that keened mournfully off the city’s walls.

He fired. Ager Roth caught the arrow. His hand snapped up, grasping the burning streak Chamael shot at him out of the air. The phantasmal arrow vibrated and blurred in his hand, burning him, but he just squeezed and broke it.

“Such anger there is in you, Chamael.” Ager Roth’s murmuring voice seemed to emerge from every shadow and crack in the cathedral square. “Such resentment. Such doubt. How do you hold it all in? Doesn’t it hurt?”

Chamael held his bow and two more arrows in three hands, his halbered balanced in another two, but he paused. I saw his eyes widen just before his whole body went tense.

“What…” His clarion voice was choked with disbelief. “But… I am not mortal. You can’t…”

“That was always the trouble with you and Umareon,” Ager Roth said. “You both think you’re free of sin, but no one is.”

One of Chamael’s heads, the old man, suddenly started twitching and working its jaw in silent screams. The angel’s spine arched forward, then back, and the head exploded. The gore drenched features of a lion emerged from the wound, roaring and snapping.

“See?” Ager Roth said, his small eyes full of malice. “I told you. We’re all beasts underneath it all.”

Chamael was still alive. His main eyes narrowed in concentration, and with a sweep of his halberd he severed the leonine head that’d grown out of him like a parasite. It tumbled in a slosh of molten blood to the ground, still snapping and writhing in a blind rage.

“You once used that power to make champions,” he hissed at the demon. “You once brought out the courage in mortals, the strength!”

“Dress up a beast, and it is still a beast. It is the same for all these zealous heroes you’ve been grooming.” Ager Roth parted his jaws and exhaled a slow breath. A foul wind swept through the town, emanating out from him.

When that evil breath touched me, I felt something move inside my chest. It felt like the onset of sudden anger, and like a loose bone. I gasped, clutching my chest.

Chamael, now with only two heads, brought up his bow to shoot another arrow, but Ager Roth let out a bellowing roar and lunged forward, slapping him back down. Stone cracked with the impact and the seraph bounced once against the ground.

“See how your gods bleed?” Ager Roth said as he approached the stunned angel. He stalked forward, more a hunching beast now than the regal figure he’d presented earlier. His long cape trailed along the ground, producing a serpentine hiss.

Chamael bled molten silver from the gaping wound in his chest and from where the demon’s claws had marked him. He tried to stand, placing two of his six palms against the ground and pushing his body up. Ager Roth placed his reptilian foot down on the seraph’s back and slammed him down.

Damn everyone’s warnings. I didn’t particularly like Chamael, but we were on the same side and I wouldn’t stand by and watch him get butchered by a monster. Flicking my borrowed sword to one side, I started forward at a run.

I got about a dozen paces before a prickling sense of static and a warning from my instincts made me dive aside. I barely avoided the enormous fist that slammed down. I rolled into the fall, turned, and looked up as the Storm Ogre lifted its crackling fist from the crater it’d made in the square.

“Get out of my way!” I snarled. Behind the ogre, Ager Roth knelt to grasp Chamael with one clawed hand and lift the angel’s limp form up.

No time. Instead of finding the inner sense of balance and speaking my Oath like a prayer, I tried to wrestle my magic into submission through sheer force of will. There’s evil in front of us, the thing you were made to fight, now obey!

I felt no change. There were more ogres landing, each one falling like a meteor and doing more damage to the town. They battled Tol’s defenders. Phantasm and steel flashed across the edges of the square, and lightning continued to flicker across the clouds high above. There might have been more irks and Woed in there too, but in the infrequent light it was difficult to tell. The air boiled with energies.

It was Seydis again.

The ogre that’d attacked me tried to smash me again, but I dodged and swiped the blade across its wrist. Its half-real flesh parted. It drew the limb back with a furious growl.

The sword in my hand crawled with flames, but I couldn’t shape it into anything. The power wouldn’t respond, wouldn’t obey. It just lashed out, at me and everything else it could reach. I’d broken it.

It hadn’t been this bad before I’d expelled the scadudemon from my mind. Something it’d told me once came back in that moment. I’ve protected you. Without me, the dead would have driven you insane after the loss of your elven ring.

Was every choice I made doomed to be the wrong one?

Even as this thought slithered through the back of my mind, I kept moving forward. The ogre was forming a sword of lightning, but I got under it and cut at the back of its left leg, hamstringing it.

Whatever force let it ride clouds, it still took a humanoid shape. Slicing its tendons was more symbolic than anything, but that is the way with sorcerous entities. It lost its balance and fell to a knee. I kept moving without bothering to finish it off, trying to reach the two immortals.

Ager Roth had lifted Chamael high, his huge fist enclosing the unnaturally thick neck that supported the seraph’s multiple heads. The two remaining faces looked disoriented. Two Storm Ogres lurked on the periphery of the Onsolain’s radius of light, clinging to the sides of the cathedral like enormous gargoyles. Their forms were only distinguishable in the night as black silhouettes with round white eyes that watched the scene unfold with blank hunger. Though they dwarfed the demon and the angel in physical size, they were just spectators to that duel, accessories.

Those among the defenders who weren’t busy fighting monsters were also watching. They could all see the holy warrior who’d come to defend them being beaten. I could feel their hope fraying.

There wasn’t anything left in my way, just a clear stretch before I reached the cackling demon. Even if I could just distract him a moment, it might give Chamael time to recover.

I started to sprint, pounding across the square and gathering all my strength for one blow. No matter how mighty, no Thing Of Darkness could shrug off the Alder’s fire.

Laertes did.

No time for doubts. Doubts would get me killed.

Something slammed into me from the side. I went rolling, hit the ground hard, took too long to get back up. The first thing I did was retrieve my sword, fumbling blindly before rising up into a guard I’d learned at seventeen and my muscles never forgot.

I stared in confusion as Luca of Bragg stumbled toward me. I couldn’t see his face beneath his boar mask, but he was saying something. It sounded like a string of curses… no, of pleas.

The man he’d been trying to help was dead, lying nearby with a skull smashed against a broken piece of masonry.

Luca jerked to a halt, let out a shout of pain, then fell to his knees. He was trying to get his armor off, clawing at the straps.

Before he could get it off, Luca’s breastplate bulged. He let out a horrible scream, part fear and part abject agony. Leather snapped. Metal deformed, and two ivory tusks punched through the man’s breastplate, coming from within. I could see the man’s eyes within the slits of his helm. They were wide, bloodshot, glinting with tears. His breastplate fell off him, and…

And I’ve seen many terrible things, but what was happening to the knight made my stomach turn over.

There’s a beast in all of us, the demon had said.

The deformed and cancerously bloated head of a wild boar emerged from the knight’s chest. A gelatinous eye fixed on me, and it squealed. Luca’s muffled voice came out of his helmet. “Oh God, oh God, please, no no no, it hurts—”

Even as he pleaded, the beast that’d ripped out of his body seemed to have taken control of his limbs. He hitched forward, his hammer raised in preparation to swing.

Not far away, the demon opened its jaws wide and clamped them down on Chamael’s womanly head. With a vicious jerk, he ripped the head off. Angelic blood splattered across the face of the cathedral.

Too late. I was always too damn late.

There were more of the defenders changing across the square, beast shapes erupting from them like living cancers. Not all, but enough to cause bedlam. It was effecting the ogres too. They were becoming larger, more feral in appearance, crackling with toxic looking lightning. Snapping maws began to form on their bodies.

Again, something shifted inside my chest.

How were we supposed to beat this?

Strong, sharp digits closed around my shoulders, talons clicking against my armor as they clamped down. I jerked and struggled, but was ripped up off the ground just as Luca let out a howl that merged with the scream of the boar parasite and charged. Large wings flapped around my head, beating me with blasts of air as the possessed knight grew smaller in my vision.

“Settle! You do not want to be dropped from this height.”

“Put me down, Vicar!” I continued to struggle, ignoring his warning. I would survive a long fall, but not if we got much higher.

“So you can die? I will not waste you.” He’d taken the shape of some enormous bat thing, but his voice was similar to the one he used in his hellhound form. He was taking me toward the castle.

“I won’t be a coward! Damn it, the lord of all the demons in Urn is right there. We can end this war before it really starts!”

“He is not their lord. He is as much a pawn as Yith was, and he is here for the same reason we are. Think, fool! And look up.”

Confused, I did as he said and lifted my eyes to the storm clouds still roiling above the town. I realized that not all the lights flashing in them were lightning. There were pale stars burning there, and more. I could make out shadowy images of bestial shapes, more ogres, and they were fighting in the sky as well as on the ground. There were other forms there, smaller and winged, briefly visible in the lightning flashes.

“Reinforcements from Heavensreach,” Vicar said. “The Onsolain have come.”

I twisted in the devil’s grip to try and get a look at the square. I could still see Chamael and Ager Roth. The angel was a dimly glowing figure in the darker form’s grip, indistinct from this distance. His light seemed to be fading. Those wounds would have been mortal to anyone else, but he was not mortal.

“I could have helped him.”

“Perhaps,” Vicar said ruthlessly. “But we have work to do. We know where Lias has gone, and how to reach him.”

[https://i.imgur.com/djBcGHm.jpeg]