Chapter 05.089

~~Day 146~~

~~Keziah~~

High upon a great tower in the Heavenly Island Sinev, Kelila guarded Keziah from angels who suspected her, as they entered the topmost floor. Several angels hovered outside, watching, but no one dared interfere with a muse.

Othrael and Oriyah sat together in the strange room, both with their hands set upon a gold orb. For a fleeting moment, the sight of the orb lit a memory of God within Keziah’s chest, and she set a hand on her sternum. Kelila guided her into the enormous, beautiful, terrifying room, and Keziah could not help but stare up at the ceiling.

The room, colossal as it was, pressed down on her, overwhelmed her, and Keziah’s wings drifted around her shoulders as shields. The walls, the ceiling, none of it held the usual gold metal, white stone, and white see-through silks of most of the gold cities. Instead, the walls flowed with images, with silvery edges that rippled.

Scrying pools.

Keziah stared at the wonders of the surface world displayed in roiling chaos across the curved walls and ceiling. Men and women fighting, copulating, stealing, dying. The images never held still, forever dancing across the liquid walls and morphing into new images.

“You have never seen the greater scrying room?” Kelila asked.

“No,” Keziah said. “I know the exarchs use them. We regular angels would never presume to risk interfering with an exarch’s business.” In truth, she and the other angels could not handle them. The madness above did not stop, humanity laid before her, not the past, but the present and all its glories and horrors. A small village in Japan. A bustling city in India. A shack in the Arctic. A basement in Canada. An empty home in Russia. A tree being climbed in Indonesia. A street driven in Australia. The images flowed into each other, seamless, with no breaks, demanding that any angel within the room either brace themselves against the unstoppable information of humanity, or absorb it.

Scrying pools, marvelous windows created by the Great Tower itself, were more than simple viewing windows. They showed the heart and soul of a moment. The truth. The power. All angels — and demons — knew that resonance existed, a strange energy that permeated everything, and was something souls collected while on the surface and brought to the afterlife. But the Great Tower and its scrying pools knew exactly where to look to grant the viewer a glimpse of that very resonance being collected. A crying baby being soothed by its parent. A dying soldier. The bliss of a musician flowing in the moment, or the agony of a musician struggling to master their craft.

Two exarchs sat in the room’s center upon chairs of flowing white, as if grown by white plants. Their eyes were open and staring into the gold orb, with both touching the orb; no, not quite touching it, but almost, their palms hovering an inch away from the strange ball. Kelila came closer, and Keziah risked a step closer herself to look into the orb. Within the soft gold glow, was yet another scrying pool, a reflection of the curved walls that surrounded them. Both exarchs were looking at all of humanity being displayed at high speed.

“Kelila,” Othrael said, and he stood up from the orb and nodded to the muse. “Hello.”

“Hello, Othrael. Oriyah.”

Oriyah took a slow breath, released herself from some hidden burden, stood up, and nodded.

Oriyah looked similar to Keziah in a way. Dark skin, but with short, curly black hair, and white eyes, gypsum eyes, that almost looked clear, as if Keziah could see through them and into her grace. And she was tall and muscular, as rapholem always were. But rapholem wore white silks, as all angels did. The exarchs wore unique potram runes, adjusted to fit the seat of their great power. Oriyah, with her cold and quiet glare, wore red silk.

Othrael was smaller than Oriyah, and Keziah for that matter, not shorter, but indeed a lighter man. He was deathly pale, with sunken eyes and a hint of black mascara and eyeliner his potram clothes gave him. Long, straight black hair fell to his shoulders. A thin physique, with muscle definition, but he looked a touch frail compared to other angels.

And his potram silks were blacker than the darkest night. His eyes, too.

Goth. Keziah had heard more than a few souls refer to the strange reaper as a ‘goth’, a tall, thin man with black silks and silver jewelry instead of the usual gold, and black tattoos instead of the usual gold. His wings were white, but if they had been black — unheard of — Keziah would not have been surprised. Though she was surprised by the number of women who found the sickly-looking man terribly attractive.

“Othrael, we are in need of your power,” Kelila said, stepping closer to the man.

Othrael raised a black brow and looked between the muse and Keziah. He spoke, voice soft, gentle, and flowing.

“Exarchs fight each other and have slaughtered thousands of angels. The rest of us stay our hand and do what we can to keep this civil war from destroying Heaven. You come to me and ask me to worsen this madness?”

Kelila shook her head. “The goal is not to worsen, reaper.”

“You know I cannot—”

“Please, Othrael, listen to my friend here. This has grown beyond a civil war.”

Othrael and Oriyah looked at Keziah, and waited. Two exarchs, eyes locked on her. What world had Keziah found herself in?

“I am Keziah, and—”

Oriyah tilted her head and aimed a wrist-flick at Othrael.

“Yes,” Othrael said. “Keziah. We know the council has used the greater rebirth ceremony upon you.”

Keziah fought the desire to wince. “How many know of this secret ceremony?”

“Not many, young rapholem. But we exarchs keep our eyes open. I am sorry to know the council tried to fight the dread in such a brutal fashion.”

“Brutal?”

The pale man blinked at her. “Yes, brutal. They killed you, Keziah. They tried to bury the memories of who you were, extract them, let the Great Tower absorb them, and free you of their burden. The council killed the woman you were.”

He was a reaper. He knew what the word meant more than she ever would.

“The council failed.”

Othrael sighed and nodded. “Your memories return?”

“Yes. I am Ariyael of Yathael, general, and one of the first.”

A whistling sound filled the room. The reaper whistled? Othrael took a step back, hooked a wing around his shoulder, and stroked it like a human man petting his cat.

“You are billions of years old, young rapholem,” he said. “You make the exarchs look young.”

Keziah laughed. A weak and sad little sound, but it felt better than silence.

“Ariyael was. I am me. Ariyael would not come here, begging you to stop the angels in Hell from killing the unmarked. She would lead the strike.”

“I see.” The reaper nodded and slowly paced in place. “For all our power, Keziah, we exarchs have a specific duty, more specific than that of normal angels. You know it is our place to affect the surface world, not Heaven or Hell.”

“I know,” Keziah said. “But I have seen the unmarked myself. Ezekiel was right. They — or at least David — do not deserve to be in Hell. If he is in the land of the damned, then there is something wrong with the Great Tower, exarch. Something is broken, and the council would rather see the unmarked killed than address the problem. They hide! They hide from this terrible truth and refuse to explain it to us.” Words bubbled out of her, driven, given voice and power by someone else. “I say again, the council is broken! You must see that. Even as we angels kill each other, the council does nothing.”

Othrael set his chin in his fingers and slowly walked around the greater scrying pool orb, eyes aimed up at nothing. “We know, Keziah. But what would you have us do? Ezekial is weakened. Six exarchs have gone to war since. Seven total exarchs are now depleted and will spend years recovering, and the surface world will suffer for their absence. The nine muses, bless their graces, will save as many angels as they can and not waste their power on shortsighted actions.”

“Shortsighted? Reaper, please, there is no time to simply watch. The alien is here. We must act.”

“We exarchs are young,” Othrael said. “The council is ancient. Do you trust your wisdom over theirs? Our power over theirs?”

“I refuse to be bound by mindless dogma, reaper! I will not let the Great Tower die because we cannot see past the failings of our leaders! Our duty is to Heaven, not the council!” Why could they not see that? How could they bow to the orders of rulers that said nothing and did nothing? Keziah grabbed the smaller man by his shoulders. “The time for sitting and watching is gone, Othrael. The Great Tower will change, whether we want it to or not. The alien is here, and they seek to destroy us. The council must be removed.”

The guardian Oriyah flared her wings, and Keziah froze. But no strike came. The silent woman matched Kelila’s sigh, stepped back, and lowered her head. Bowing, or in thought, Keziah could not tell.

Eternities ticked by until Othrael finally cast a sad glance at the muse. And Kelila, forever smiling, let her smile die as she nodded. What great history had death and art shared?

The reaper set his eyes back on Keziah. “What would you have us do?”

“Come with me to False Gate.”

“It will be a slaughter. The other exarchs will stop us.”

Kelila raised her right wing. “We will not bring the forces of the Heavenly Islands with us. It will be just us, reaper. You and Oriyah.”

But Othrael shook his head. “The others will stop us.”

“We have no choice,” Keziah said. “If it will be a battle between only the exarchs, then… what else can we do? We must save as many lives as possible, but saving the Great Tower comes first.”

Keziah would never have done this. Like a good, young rapholem, Keziah would have stayed on her wall and guarded Heaven. She would have listened to her general and fought to stop the angels of Avinoam and Ravid. Who was she to usurp anyone? A first-rank rapholem, barely fifty years old?

The answer stabbed her in the chest, and burned.

“Keziah,” Othrael said. “Or… Ariyael.” The knife twisted deeper. “You ask Oriyah and I to spend our power in this battle. But we both work the surface more than any other guardian or reaper. Do you understand that what you ask will affect more than Heaven and Hell?”

Keziah clenched her eyes shut. “I… I am saying living souls will die before their time. I know. But this must be done.”

“It will be a battle, Keziah, no matter what. We cannot enter Hell without shedding blood. And you say other angels will not take part, but they will.”

“I have only one idea, reaper. It may see me damned, but we must see it done.”

Othrael looked into her eyes, the black depth of them tearing into her grace, like a deadly poet with a knife for a quill. What did hers look to him? What did it mean to look into the eyes of an angel who had seen God?

Before she could speak, Kelila raised a wing.

“Keziah,” the muse said. “You know what Othrael and Oriyah were doing before—”

“I know, Kelila. But what choice do we have?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The flight back to the vortex did not go as planned.

A hundred battalions awaited her, mostly mikalim and rapholem. A hundred thousand pairs of wings flying toward the vortex whirlpool. This far from the Heavenly Islands, only clouds awaited them below.

“Halt,” the general said, a rapholem herself.

Keziah did as ordered and hovered up to her. “I am Keziah, first-rank rapholem of Yathael. I am heading toward the vortex.”

The general tilted her head and looked at the three exarchs. Even wearing their batlam runes, there was no hiding that her three companions were a reaper, guardian, and muse.

The general sneered. “I am Sheela, rapholem general of Sinev. You shall not pass.”

Keziah blinked. Oriyah snorted.

“Sinev joins the battle?” Keziah asked.

“We must. The council is silent, and the Great Tower is under threat. We can no longer stand idly by while our impotent leaders let everything come to ruin. We will stop—”

“We are not here to kill the unmarked,” Keziah said, unable to hold back a small smile. “We are here to help them.”

Sheela looked past her to the exarchs, and her eyes widened with recognition. “Othrael! Oriyah. If you’re here…”

“This is important,” Othrael said. “And Keziah has convinced us. We can stay our hands no longer.”

From surprised to overjoyed to deathly concerned, Sheela winced, turned, and looked to the distant whirlpool of the vortex, and the awaiting angel armies there. A blockade. They had not been there before.

Othrael was right. The other angels were getting involved. This would be a slaughter.

“It has only been a day,” General Sheela said, “since the last battle between Avinoam, Ravid, and Yathael and Azoryev. As you know, Yathael and Azoryev won, and their forces scour False Gate as we speak, attempting to kill the unmarked. And those waiting for us”—she gestured to the new angel forces hovering over the vortex whirlpool—“are forces from Ayaloram. Somehow, they convinced the guardians Ashkariel and Malchiel to stand guard. I suspect they hope to stop another battle.”

Keziah flew closer and touched her fellow rapholem’s shoulder. “You were going to attack, knowing two exarchs were there to stop you?”

Sheela met her eyes again. Emotion gone, the general became a pillar of stone, as all rapholem should.

“Our lives are meaningless compared to the existence of the Great Tower. It must be saved.”

“Then…” Keziah hesitated. Ariyael would not have. The first angel would have told Sheela to fly into battle, and to embrace their holy duty. What could Keziah say? “We… must save the unmarked. No matter the cost.”

And as if she had known Keziah her entire life, Sheela held out her hand. “To battle, then, Keziah of Yathael.”

Keziah took the hand. “To battle.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Mia~~

The great bridge wasn’t a bridge at all. She’s seen the shape before, in some tunnels that connected to spires, walls lined with white snake ribs. No head, just a long ribcage and spine. And black instead of white, made of blackstone and other minerals in Hell Mia did not have the skill to manipulate yet. A snake skeleton tunnel.

With the amount of spikes and strange statues growing out of the black ribs, she almost expected to find ‘Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here’ written at the top of the strange archway of black bones. Human skeletons, again made of blackstone, grew from it, lined the ribs, hugged them, each with open-mouthed skulls, silently screaming into the void.

The strange tunnel of ribs lined the ocean floor, leading from the beach, across the depths, and supposedly to the Forgotten Place at the other end. Too far for Mia to see, sixth sense or not.

It was big, but not super big. The opening was a hundred meters tall, and wide. An Old One wouldn’t be able to fit, but if she guessed right, they’d be able to change the shape of the tunnel with music.

The Red Sea remained parted, two titanic waves of red water that reached high into the sky. The defy rune kept the water from falling upon the tunnel, and good thing, because a snake’s skeleton wasn’t exactly airtight.

A heavy blast of heat yanked Mia around. She turned, jaw dropping as Molech slammed half a dozen hands into the edges of his canyon and roared up at the sky.

An aura. The Old One had been using an aura before, but this was different. It crashed over the battle, drowned it in the thick hunger of it, a need for violence and death. More than a demon aura, the new aura grabbed every angel, every demon, and silently screamed at them, demanding they partake in the bloodlust. Not a spire aura; those permeated the world around them like an earthquake, and like Mia’s. Not a demon aura; those were like attacks on the mind, direct punches.

But Mia had felt this aura before, multiple times. Last time, a man in full plate aera armor had come for her, wielding hellfire-imbued, bronze-colored axes. This was that aura, a howling hurricane that filled the air and overwhelmed everything. And like moths to a flame, the angels came for Molech, threw themselves at him, and the giant roared with glee as it swiped them out of the sky.

How was Molech using Cain’s aura?

Azreal lowered his shield and took a step toward the battle. Behind him, Mia, the beach, and the snake tunnel. Before him, Molech, thousands of dead betrayers, and tens of thousands of dead, dying, fighting angels.

“Azreal!” she yelled. “Don’t! We have to run! And James! We need to get James and—”

The ground ripped open, but not from underneath Mia. Her sixth sense showed her, long stretches of jagged ravines that exploded in Molech’s canyon out of sight. The dragon let out a high-pitched shriek and its multiple mouths engulfed the battle in ear-splitting agony. The angels above, dodging fire from only James now, took advantage and unleashed a new bombardment on everything below them.

Molech drowned in holy energy, gold beams, gold arcs, and arrows that shone like mirrors and exploded like grenades on impact. But the dragon could not be killed. It could barely be wounded. It snarled up at the sky, reached out several dozen invisible hands with invisible fingers, and plucked the invisible strings of existence.

Nothing.

The sky settled. The firestorms, red lightning, the massive waves that’d reached from the flames like an angry ocean, the oppressive bloodlust aura clouding Mia’s mind, it all died away, silenced, as the depths of Hell cracked open, and the alien reached up from oblivion.

Azreal stumbled back, looking around, and his eyes widened on spotting Mia.

“Mia? What… What happened. I was—”

“Molech’s aura got you! But the alien’s here! We have to—”

False Gate trembled. The hellquake tore through the beach, scattered sand to the air, and toppled nearby ruins. What was left of structures, piles of rubble and debris, fell under their weight as new tremors turned the province into a vibration plate of rock and stone. New splits ripped the ground apart, and the edges of the fresh canyons fell into the nothingness below as a hundred ravines splintered across the landscape like cracked glass. Corpses fell into the depths of Hell, disappearing from Mia’s sight, and even Molech stumbled and sank deeper into his canyon as a strange alien scream followed the quakes.

Shrieks that made no sense. Sound, but no sound. High-pitched and deadly, like a banshee’s cry, but something underneath it crashed into her mind, gave her vertigo, and she clutched her stomach as she stumbled back. Like someone had weaponized silence and stabbed her with it, her inner-ears flipped and made her eyes roll.

Azreal was on her in an instant, kneeling beside her and catching her.

“Mia, we—”

The raised walls of water crashed onto the snake tunnel with a million metric tonnes of weight, and for just a moment, Molech’s roars of rage and the alien shrieks of invasion disappeared under the apocalyptic crash of water hitting water. Mia screamed, but there was no sound, only waves of red water smashing into her, Azreal, and Cerberus. The world tumbled, and white wings surrounded her as momentum spared no favorites and sent her and the angel rolling over the beach.

The water pulled away, and Mia got to her knees. Nothing broken, and Azreal lay on his back, his arms and wings slowly spreading out as Mia patted his soaked chest.

“I’m fine! You fine?” she asked, giving his helmet a few slaps. “Cerberus!” She spun her head. Cerberus lay not far off, getting to his feet on shaking legs. Before Mia could sigh with relief, her eyes caught the shape of something black sticking out of the crashing waves of the settling Red Sea.

The snake tunnel was still there! But the split down the Red Sea was fighting against the alien presence. The bridge runes were still resonating, pushing through the silence, and pushing the water back up and exposing the tunnel’s depths again, but only barely.

Mia wasn’t strong enough to play music through the alien presence, and James wasn’t either.

Mother Hell, the warm presence in the invisible ocean of music, plucked at the runes, made them resonate, and the Red Sea frothed as it fought to stay split apart and keep the tunnel free of water.

Success! Sort of. Now all Mia had to do was to get it. Get into the tunnel, run, and—Vin! Kas! Romakus and Julisa and Belor. They were still—

A comet of yellow light shot past her and into the dark tunnel of black bone. Mia stared, and the angel stared back at her for just long enough for her to see what was happening.

Yosepha! And she had a man in her arms, someone wearing black armor and wielding a black staff. James. They disappeared into the depths of the tunnel in seconds.

But the flyby was too much. That single moment of closeness made James and Mia resonate, their background songs of existence pinging off each other and growing louder just for being near each other. Loud enough to punch through the alien shrieks and the silence they brought. Like a radar blip saying ‘here I am,’ and with the alien already so close, they had no trouble locking on.

The alien shrieks rose to a crescendo. Summoned by her resonating presence, the ground beneath Mia tore apart. Every crack and splinter in the area came for her, twisting and zigzagging through the rock and sand until it opened underneath her.

“Cerberus! Run! Tunnel!” She pointed to the enormous, circular opening sticking up from the water and sitting on the shoreline.

Cerberus froze, staring at her

Azreal clicked in his mouth and throat. Mia barely heard it, her head only inches from Azreal’s as the angel scooped her up in his arms. It was enough for Cerb. The hellhound bolted for the tunnel, jumping over widening cracks, dopey-head looking back at her and whining, while serious-head and boss-head guided the hellbeast into the dark after Yosepha.

A black, glistening tentacle as thick as a bus shot up from the cracks, swiping for Azreal. The angel swerved, took one look at their demon friends still hiding under the corpse of the dead alligator creature, and flew toward the tunnel instead, Mia in his arms.

“Azreal, don’t you dare!” she screamed. “We have to save the others!”

“No. We have to get you to the Forgotten Place.”

“No! We have to—”

A hundred white wings fell on them. Azreal swung Mia over his shoulder, and she squeaked as she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as the rapholem brought up his shield. Dozens of arrows crashed into the huge slab of metal, and a dozen beams of gold energy followed, each a crashing impact that forced Azreal back from his goal.

“Azreal of Ravid!” an angel said, a man hovering in front of the others. The angels formed a wall of bodies between them and the tunnel. “Traitor! You will stand down and submit to judgment, and the death of the unmarked! You will—”

A dozen more tentacles shot up from the cracks in Hell, her poor body split apart and bleeding liquid amber into the depths, while the strange alien reached up and swiped at anything alive. Azreal had been looking for it. The other angels hadn’t, eyes locked on Mia and her guardian. A dozen holy warriors fell to the ground, some crushed by the tendrils as the alien grabbed them out of the air, squeezed, and pulled them down into the black.

Azreal flew higher, and Mia squealed as a tentacle brushed past her legs.

“Azreal,” she said, “we have to get the others! The aliens are going to…”

The strange alien invaders poured up from dozens of enormous canyons, and Mia wanted to scream. She couldn’t. She stared down, eyes wide at the strange work of art that False Gate had become. For several kilometers in all directions, the province was broken, like a shattered clay pot, with a million black ants pouring through the seams.

The invader vanguard. First, the aliens that ran on all fours, with the strange black and purple armor that covered their too-human bodies and onyx, glistening skin. Their squid faces were exposed, tentacles dangling over their mouths, and they aimed their black eyes up at Mia, Molech, and the angels.

Second came the warriors, standing upright and wielding glorious tridents. They walked like humans, fully upright, heads turning and scanning for their target. And their full body armor was almost as bulky as a rapholem’s, made of the strangely beautiful black and purple metals that flowed with the strange architecture of a seashell.

Third, the mages, if that was what they were. They wore no helmets, and instead of armor, wore long black and royal purple robes. They hovered, defying God’s law, and joined the angels in the sky.

Even through their helmets, Mia saw the angels stare in surprise as the human-like aliens soared up toward them. And she saw the shock when the aliens launched strange orbs at them, each only maybe a meter wide, and half invisible, distorting the surrounding air. The orbs hit the angels and ripped through them, shattering bodies, breaking off limbs and wings, and sending the angels to the ground.

“You bring this doom to us!” Molech yelled. Not at Mia. At the angels. “The unmarked are how we stop this invader, and you seek to destroy them!”

Having an Old One on her side, sorta, was probably not a point in Mia’s corner, but at least the angels were distracted. Molech reached up for them again, but with the hellstorms gone, the angels were free to stay out of his range. And before the titan could breathe waves of hellfire up at them, a dozen vast tentacles reached up from around Molech, slithering up from the blackness of his own canyon, and wrapped their lengths around his limbs.

Molech would not be denied. The monster faced down, aimed his mouths at the very canyon he was trapped within, and unleashed red death. For all the aliens’ strange powers, hellfire burned them, worked its way through their skin, peeled it to reveal white blood beneath, and melted them. The tentacles fell away, but new ones replaced them, bigger ones, as thick as buildings and far longer. They wrapped around Molech’s throat, snout, horns, wings, arms and legs—everything.

They pulled the wriggling titan down into the depths of his canyon, and their battle raged.

Aliens poured up from Molech’s domain. A thousand. Ten thousand. Numbers Mia couldn’t wrap her mind around. They blanketed the ground beneath her and blocked out the red and black dirt, a teeming wave of onyx flesh and shiny ocean armor. Most of them went for Molech; the obvious target if their goal was to kill anyone who played the music. They jumped into the canyon, ran up the tentacles, climbed onto Molech’s body, and began tearing into him with black claws, tridents, and their strange orbs of destruction.

Worse followed. Larger aliens climbed up the ravines to join their kin, each as big as the biggest dinosaur, each a lumbering mass of unarmored obsidian flesh. Its feet looked like human hands, each step practically grabbing the ground rather than walking on it, as it marched across the paths of ground between ravines.

Below, some red things dashed over the ditches and between the flowing bodies. Vin and Belor, with Romakus, Julisa, and Kas right behind them. They tore through the aliens, ripped them apart and sent their white blood splattering in all directions. They were running toward the beach and the tunnel entrance.

Mia looked down the beach to where James had been. The aliens were everywhere. Angels flew overhead and unleashed their holy beams and arrows, and the rapholem blocked alien orbs of death, futile efforts to put a dent in the swarm. Azreal didn’t hold still, kept dodging and weaving as either a gold arc flew by, missing by inches, or a strange alien orb did the same. One orb passed Mia by inches, and for just a brief moment, she heard absolutely nothing, like she’d held her ear up to a vacuum that was trying to suck her brain out through it.

Azreal spun, flew straight down, and Mia failed to scream as her lungs betrayed her. But upside down meant she got a glimpse of more moving bodies dashing across the beach. That had to be Adron, with James’s half of the crew: the tetrad Livian, the four incubus boys, Yulia the bat girl and her unnamed, mute brute, and the tiger Silvina. And Noah! The angel led the charge, sword flashing bright as the holy warrior carved a path through the aliens.

Everyone was alive.

Mia reached out with her mind and plucked a string. Nothing. She plucked as hard as her aching soul could manage. Nothing. The three bridge runes were wavering.

Last time, the rider had shown up, pulled some giant sercano hellbeast out of his ass, ridden it, attacked Beelzebub, and given Mia the opportunity to escape. Cain wasn’t here this time. Even if he were, what could he do against these numbers?

Vin pounced on an angel and tore into her like a monster. Mia closed her eyes. Cain and Vin. All that was left of Cain was violence. Vin? She dared another peek, and nausea flooded her as Vin tore the angel’s head off, tossed it aside, and charged forward into the aliens blocking his path.

If violence was all that was left of Vin… No. No, Vin was not Cain.

“Azreal,” she said. “I see Noah and the others. Maybe we can—”

“The angels and aliens both know we seek the tunnel.”

Mia’s sixth sense was a blurry mess now, the alien shrieks covering it like she was wearing glasses out in the rain. But it didn’t feel like there were any canyons or ravines tearing up the ground underneath the snake tunnel. Effect of the rune, maybe? Effect of the River Styx? It meant they were in the clear to use the tunnel… if the runes didn’t give out. If the runes went silent, whoever was in the tunnel was going to get crushed by the depths of the ocean. The ribs of the tunnel were packed closely enough to guard against attacks from above, but not from the ocean itself.

Several tentacles stuck up from ravines near the tunnel, some large, some absurdly large, swiping left and right in random directions. The angels had abandoned hovering low to the ground, but they weren’t gone, a hundred of them flying directly overhead and unleashing their attacks at both the alien by the tunnel, and Azreal. His shield sang with the unending impact of dozens of attacks crashing into the metal, each a jolt of inertia that went through his body and into Mia’s.

Mia was useless! She couldn’t play the music, not with the aliens blocking her. Not even Molech could play any songs. The bridge runes were dying. The aliens were swarming toward her friends, and the angels were attacking everything! She had to do something. She had to—

David. David had transformed into something, something almost as big as an Old One! A giant, gross thing that looked like an archangel without the feathers, a fleshy mass that made no sense, limbs and bones growing out of each other in almost random directions until he’d looked like a titanic centipede. Maybe she could do that. Maybe…

She reached out toward the tentacles blocking the tunnel. Nothing. The tentacles wrapped around the giant structure, like a kraken wrapping its limbs around a tanker that refused to sink. Mia tried again, hand out, aimed toward the alien limbs blocking her path. Nothing.

How did David do it? He’d been so angry! Angrier than she’d ever seen David. Her brother got angry at things all the time, but always the little things, never the big things. When big things hit him, he internalized them, didn’t let them out, didn’t let anyone see the ball of hate and rage building inside him.

Mia wasn’t like that. She didn’t have that.

The angels above turned their attention to a floating alien, larger than the others, and with a longer robe that drifted around its legs, whipping about in a wind that did not exist. The new alien held a staff in one hand, long and black, with a shiny obsidian orb held in its tip by dark claws. All too similar to Mia’s staff. The creature looked around, aimed its alien eyes at the thousands of angels bombarding the area, the battle between Molech and tentacles the size of streets, and then at Mia, holding on for dear life as Azreal brought his shield to bear. Mia met the monster’s gaze, and it met hers.

There was nothing in those eyes. It was the same emptiness Mia had seen before, when the alien had broken through into Hell. The canyons it’d ripped open to break into the afterlife, she’d looked down into them and saw the moving, hunting nothingness below. It was the same as the alien’s eyes glaring at her right now.

The creature pointed its staff at her, and shrieked, the tentacles hanging over its mouth flaring and exposing the strange, sharp beak-mouth within. And on cue, every alien and tentacle changed targets. Molech didn’t matter. The angels didn’t matter. The tentacles and aliens abandoned their hunt and launched everything at Mia.

Azreal flared his wings. “Hold on!”

He nose-dived. Mia’s stomach shot into her ass as Azreal’s wings glowed gold, and like he’d strapped on a jet engine, the angel accelerated and nearly tore her arms from their sockets. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t get air into her lungs, the wind pressure fighting her attempts to breathe. All she could do was squeeze the man’s neck as he went low, nearly hit the ground, and pulled up at the last second. Mia’s stomach churned and threatened to a hole through her, and she clenched every muscle tight as her legs bounced around behind her, Azreal zooming over the ground.

Did the angels see? Did they realize the aliens were out to get Mia, too? Fucking understand! Why would the alien be trying to kill her? Think you stupid fucking holy warrior assholes! Think!

A hundred orbs of distorted reality shot past her, and they exploded. The air ripped open, cracks in the seams of existence showing, for a split second, the blackness between, like black cracks cutting across her vision. Each explosion was only a few meters wide, but each nipped at her heels, clipped bits of her armor, always with a pulse of cold and pure silence that told her what would happen if they hit her. They’d destroy her. They’d unmake her. They’d find cracks in reality, force them open, and shatter her like a piece of glass.

She spared a peek up. The angels stopped their bombardment. She couldn’t see through their helmets, not at this speed, but the angels were yelling something, and some words punched through the alien shrieks.

“The invader tries to kill the unmarked?”

“Ezekiel was right?”

“Why would the invader—”

“—thought they were trying to capture her. Devour her and take her power. But—”

“The council said—”

“—is here to destroy the Great Tower, and they try to destroy the unmarked! There is no other conclusion!”

Half of what remained of the tens of thousands of angels descended onto the battlefield and threw themselves at the aliens. And hundreds of them put themselves between Azreal, Mia, and the incoming fire.

Thank Jesus fucking Christ! For once. For mother fucking once, something turned around for her! Angel shields big and small caught the explosions, each creating a resounding ping that pulsed between sound and deadly silence. The rapholem took the brunt of the attacks, their massive shields shining gold light beyond their edges and halting the alien explosions. A great wall of beautiful, golden salvation, hundreds of greatshields coming down to save Mia.

Soon the air filled with white wings and gold shields. What was a hundred was now a thousand. More. Rapholem descended from the shocked droves above, abandoned their comrades, and came to Mia and Azreal. Armor, wings, giant walls of pure golden energy, they surrounded Mia until all she saw was a sea of golden lights.

They’d been looking for a reason, any reason, to help her instead of fight her. Half of the angels still watched, flying up and out of the way of the aliens and their focused attack on Mia, and they did nothing; at least they’d stopped attacking. But the other half of the angel army, or what was left of it, fell upon the battlefield in an organized flock between Mia and the invader.

Azreal came up behind another rapholem. “General. Azreal, third-rank rapholem of Ravid.”

“Yes, we all know who you are, Azreal,” the general said. “You and your friend Noah have caused quite a stir, to say nothing of Yosepha, Galon, Moriah, and those of Azoryev who witnessed Ezekiel do battle with the alien.” The huge man turned and faced Azreal with a small nod. “Amnon, rapholem general of Yathael.”

“You!” Mia yelled over Azreal’s shoulder. “Help! I’m not trying to destroy the world, okay!? I’m trying to save it! I need to get to the Forgotten Place to do that, and you guys keep trying to stop me, and the aliens keep trying to kill me, and the Old Ones keep trying to eat me, and all I want to do is use my power to stop the alien from destroying everything! Help!”

The angel general stared at her, eyes all but hidden in his helmet, the barest hint of silver coming through. And she glared at them. One thing she’d learned from Azreal and Noah, the angels felt a human’s eye contact more than anything.

“Heaven balances on a knife’s edge,” Amnon said. “You must understand. But explanations can wait. We have no choice now. We… go to war.”

Mia blinked. Go to war? What were—

He meant civil war. He meant fighting other angels. Rock in her throat, Mia stared up at the angels above, the ones who were probably wrestling with their desire to help Mia with the truth of the situation slapping them in the face, and their duty to the council.

“I’ll fix everything,” Mia said. “I’ll fix it! Just protect me and my friends while I get to the tunnel.”

“If the angels are no longer attacking us,” Azreal said, “maybe we risk the storms of the Forgotten Place, and fly?”

Amnon shook his head. “Other angels will come that are still duty-bound, Azreal. And to enter the Forgotten Place is a deadly affair by air. Lucifer created the passage for a reason. No, I am afraid you must take the tunnel. And we will do what we can to see it done. Go, before the others try to stop you.”

Before Mia could scream, say something, say anything about how sorry she was so many angels had died, Azreal dove back toward the ground, and the angel flock adapted instantly. So many of them, the distant ones looked like golden fireflies, and the closer ones were golden comets, streaking through the air and blocking incoming explosions. Trumpets! The warm sound of trumpets announced the charge, and a thousand voices sang hymns Mia couldn’t understand, as the angels attacked the aliens in Mia’s path.

“She is mine!” Molech. The Old One ripped itself free of a dozen tentacles, his own many limbs scrabbling for control against the canyon walls. He bit and tore the tentacles open, splattering waves of white blood over the red blood that soaked the battlefield. The white faded away in moments, followed by the evaporating tentacle limbs the Old One ripped free of their owners.

The old dragon reached for Mia, and the angels unleashed their beams, arrows, and spears on his arms. Molech roared with agony but did not retreat, lifting more of its body from the widening canyon as it came closer and closer, each slow stride covering half a football field.

Mia looked down from Azreal’s back. Past the rapholem gold shield walls, past the weird alien explosions and black cracks within, and past the aliens themselves, tiny red dots moved through the alien hordes along the shore and pushed for the black tunnel and churning waters. The lower Azreal got, the more they came into focus, and Mia’s heart soared at the sight of them. Noah, Adron, and the others.

Still alive! Her friends were all alive.

A flash of memory cut across her soul and sent ice through her spine. David, standing over Caera — it had to be Caera — and letting the rage pour out of him Mia knew was there, but never got to see.

Was that it? Was that what let David change?

She’d rather die.

Noah cut a path through the aliens, his approach from the side of the battle giving him enough leeway to push forward fast. He was basically a sneak attack, hitting the aliens from the side while they were completely focused on her. If she could see the man’s face, she’d bet the ever-serious angel was struggling to hold back a smile at the sight of his comrades finally helping.

Molech’s roar changed pitch, and the monster fell to the side, multiple shoulders crashing against the canyon wall as something pushed up from the canyon depths beside him. Something titanic.

Mia squinted, staring through the golden walls, and her lungs froze. The longer the alien attacked, the worse the canyons and ravines got, like someone trying to break bullet-proof glass with a hammer and slowly making progress. And Molech’s crack in False Gate was a mess, crumbling walls and geysers of amber liquid crashing and gushing over the Old One’s flesh, and the twisting tentacles within.

Something else joined Molech. A beast wormed its way up from Molech’s canyon, a hulking monstrosity of black, shining skin, and tentacles. Slowly, it bubbled up from the obsidian, endless depths below, fought for room against the Old One, and shoved Molech aside. An octopus or squid, no arms or legs, no torso, but a huge sac of a body with tendrils grabbing onto every jagged edge of rock it could find.

Eyes. There were dozens of eyes on the giant octopus-like body, each as empty as the nothingness below it. The stars in the depths of its gaze were like twisted mirrors, facsimiles, cruel reflections of real stars, and they twinkled with malice.

It was as big as Molech, and it overpowered the Old One. Tentacles writhed and wrapped the old monster, bound its limbs and wings, bound its jaw, and thrust it against the canyon wall to make more room for its own bulk. The enormous mass pulled more and more of itself up from oblivion, and more massive tentacles clutched at the cracked ground, reaching across to grab other ravines and use them for purchase.

It tilted its bulk backward and exposed an array of shorter, thinner tentacles on its front, a weird face similar to the other aliens, with a giant mantle for a head and body. A mutated octopus creature, and it revealed the harsh beak from around its flaring mouth tentacles.

It screamed, and the nails-on-chalkboard sound forced flinches from the angels and demons still left. It opened its mouth and aimed it at Mia.

“Azreal!” Mia screamed. “Everyone! Move!”

Azreal moved, but the angel armies put themselves between Mia and the creature, shields up, and created a wall of bodies against the beam attack the alien unleashed from its throat. The air twisted, bent, like light moving around a black hole. Around the bending light, black lightning danced, not lightning but cracks in reality, and again the tiny stars in the dark glittered with abject cruelty, as the beam of pure nothingness smashed into the angels.

Hundreds of shields shattered, their gold walls breaking apart, and the angel behind them a moment later. Bodies exploded, ripped apart, and the attack spared nothing. It was as if a grenade had gone off inside whatever the giant alien’s breath beam hit. The angels exploded, body parts and armor scattering in all directions. Their armor poofed out of existence, but their bodies did not, and feathers and blood rained on the aliens waiting below.

The angels above, the ones still debating what to do, had a new target. They flew over Molech and drowned the Old One and the giant alien beside it in golden energy. Finally. Daring angels flew low, their charge joined by trumpeting gabriem and singing voices as they sank their blades into the giant creature’s hide. They may as well have been trying to kill an elephant with thumbtacks. But at least now both halves of the angel army were involved.

The alien monster’s shrieks brought fresh waves of silence, each high-pitched shriek blanketing the song only Mia and Molech — and the aliens — could hear. The runes of the great bridge were dying, and the Red Sea’s raised water was dying with it.

Yosepha was in there, with James. And a peek down showed Vin and the others had reached the tunnel and were fighting their way in, ripping and tearing through alien flesh until they were coated in the thin white blood. If they ran in there, and the runes died…

Aliens were dropping like flies, but so were the angels. Mia couldn’t wrap her mind around the numbers. James and Molech had killed so many, and still the angel wings filled the air, darting around in flowing waves, flocking in perfect sync. And when the new alien unleashed another beam up at them, they spread out in random directions, giving the alien no obvious target.

But that didn’t stop it. It screamed up at them and poured death from its mouth, an unending fountain of destruction as each screech was joined by a beam of broken reality. Twisting and turning, it mowed through the angels attacking it directly, and with each turn of its mantle and mouth, hundreds of angels fell to the ground in pieces.

The floating alien with the staff, maybe the general, shrieked again and aimed its weapon at Mia. Not an attack. Guidance. The colossal alien in the canyon gave up killing the angels above and re-aimed its beak straight at Mia.

From the side, a gold comet shot across the alien general’s front, and split the invader in half. A mikalim, and he turned and faced Mia with a pointed sword.

“Go!” Noah yelled, spinning, body covered in a fresh layer of alien blood. “Go!”

The giant alien’s beam shot wide, missing Noah, Mia, and Azreal by meters, and ripping a valley of death through the sky.

Azreal nosedived for the tunnel again, and Mia’s lungs flattened against her spine as she held on tight.

Massive tentacles blocked her path. Not the smaller ones, wriggling inside dozens of ravines. The bigger ones, the ones that belonged to the big alien fighting Molech. Maybe it had tendrils sneaking through the ground? How big was it?

Vin, Belor, Romakus, Julisa, and Kas tore at the base of the tentacles where they jutted up from the sand, risking their necks with every step as the ground ripped open underneath them. But the tentacles were huge, knocked Belor and Vin aside, and the others jumped clear, path barred.

Adron and the others were getting closer. Only a minute away, tearing through the aliens in their path, but they didn’t have as many heavy hitters as Mia’s group.

“Noah!” Mia yelled. “Noah, help Adron! Please!”

Noah glared back at her, his intense eyes cutting a hole into her gut. Mia met his glare. Help them. Don’t let them die just for her.

Noah nosedived, landed in a splash of gold in front of Adron, and the vrat jumped back. Whatever they said was lost under the endless shrieking of the aliens, but Noah resumed his forward march, cleaving a path through the invaders with the tetrad Livian beside him.

“Azreal,” Mia yelled. “We have to stop the aliens!”

“We can barely survive them!”

“We have to stop them. They’re silencing the bridge song. That ocean is going to come crumbling down, and then we’re all dead anyway!”

Azreal, hovering over the tunnel entrance and their friends trying to hack their way in, turned back toward the canyon that threatened to split False Gate in half. The ravine nearly reached the tunnel, exposing the void below, and Molech and the big creature’s writhing bodies fighting within. For just a moment, Molech got a hand up and free from the alien’s tentacles and slammed his claws against its face, forcing its beak down and back into the shadows. A moment’s respite.

But the aliens kept coming. Maybe it was because of what James did, attacking the angels with his powerful songs. Or Mia, playing the bridge song that even now Mother Hell struggled to keep resonating. Or maybe just a few seconds of Mia and James being so close together when Yosepha had shot past with the man in her arms. But the sight was all too familiar.

Hell trembled, and a hundred little ravines connected, expanding the canyon further and further down the length of False Gate. Floating high and holding Azreal’s shoulders, Mia stared out at the province as the crack reached further, and further, sending hundreds of buildings into the depths. Forests of crosses fell with them, and God only knew how many demons. The province was cracking in half.

She spared a peek down at Belor, but the demon was busy, wrapped up in bloodlust and desperation as he tore tentacles open. But the path was barred, and the colossal limbs knocked him back again.

The huge octopus freed itself of Molech, and unleashed its breath upon the sky, twisting light and reality around it. Where was Cain when you needed him!? Mia scanned, but there was nothing but chaos, angels dying by the droves even as they butchered the aliens. And the aliens were endless, pouring up from the canyon and replacing their dead, while the angels dwindled.

“What do we do, Mia?” Azreal asked.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. What could they do? Finally, the angels were helping, and it wasn’t enough. Finally, she’d made the bridge, and it wasn’t enough.

“We… have to help Molech,” she said.

Azreal grunted and faced the giant demon below. “How?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to do! I can’t play any music! Even if I could, it’d be so loud it’d probably summon more aliens! I don’t… I don’t know!”

Azreal swerved, dodging several orbs launched by the hovering aliens. Shield up, he blocked a dozen more, and the angel grunted as they pushed him back. But he was getting slower.

“We cannot defeat that creature,” Azreal said.

“Then… Then we run! We get out of here. We come back later when the alien is gone, and—” And then James and maybe Yosepha would die under the Red Sea. Or the alien would never leave. Maybe this was enough for them to get a foothold in the province, into Hell, and start a full-on invasion. “I don’t know! I don’t—”

Azreal swept low, coming close to their group at the mouth of the tunnel, and a hint of gleaming metal paralyzed Mia to the core. A trident, launched at her.

Belor jumped in the way. The huge creature flapped his wings once and leapt high, hand stuck out, and the trident sank into his forearm, lodging into his black and red flesh. Mia stared down at the titan and caught the glimmer of a grin on his demon face, before he ripped the trident free. It dissolved into black, dripping goop, and reformed in the hand of the alien who’d thrown it. Just like a rapholem’s would if they threw their spear.

The aliens hadn’t been like this before. Now they had frontal troops that ran on all fours and wore armor, soldiers with tridents who wore full plate armor, and hovering aliens wearing robes. They had unarmored juggernauts as big as blue whales marching around, and now they had a creature the size of Molech, fighting Molech, and basically serving as… artillery. They even had a general a minute ago.

They’d evolved.

Azreal landed on the ground in a shallow ditch near the tunnel entrance and put a wall of rock between him and the alien forces. Giant tentacles still barred the way into the tunnel, but the hellquakes had ripped up ground and slammed ravines together at odd angles, creating a barrier of stone Azreal could hide in for a moment. The groups joined him in seconds.

As the battle raged past the wall, the group had only moments, and Mia used them. She hopped off Azreal’s back, ran up to Noah, hugged him, hugged Adron, and smiled at the rest of the group. All alive, even little Yulia, still on her brute’s shoulders.

“Mia!” Yulia said. “Mia, what do we do!?”

“I don’t know! I—”

Romakus and the other group joined her in the ditch, and he huffed and puffed with exaggerated annoyance as he crouched beside her.

“Well, ain’t this a shitstorm!”

“We have to kill the alien!” she yelled. “Or at least slow them down! Last time, Beelzebub beat them for us. This time…”

Vin and Belor were the last to join the group, slaughtering the aliens that rushed their way. And when they had a moment to join her, they didn’t take it. The two children stayed outside the half-ditch, taking the waves of aliens rushing at them with their bare hands, ripping the four-legged ones into pieces, ripping tridents out of alien hands, and stabbing them into their faces before the weapons dissolved.

Both demons were smiling. The alien presence had crushed all auras, but the two tetrads were still smiling.

Mia looked away. “If we all work together, we can push through the tentacles and reach the tunnel.”

“Is it safe?” the incubus Faustinus asked. “The rest of False Gate is falling apart.”

“I think it is! I can still kinda sorta see Hell, and the ground under the Red Sea seems fine. Something’s holding the tunnel together.”

“Then we rush for it,” Locutus said. “And we leave this battle behind.”

“The alien is making the bridge fail,” Mia said. “Its presence silences the music, and music is what’s keeping the bridge together and that ocean from collapsing on it!”

Romakus grabbed Mia’s shoulder and turned her. “Yosepha’s down there.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I know! And Cerberus is with them! If we stop the alien, I can keep the bridge going for sure. But right now I can’t play a note! And—” A severed alien limb splattered against her shoulder armor, and she squeaked. The limb dissolved in moments. “And the angels are losing!”

“The angels are helping us now,” Kasimiro said, and gestured to Azreal and Noah. “Are you sure you cannot fly us to the Forgotten Place?”

Azreal opened his mouth, but Noah spoke first. “We could try, but no angel has landed on the province by air since the First War. During Cain’s War, the child Felezar reached it. By the very bridge you summoned, Mia, I imagine. We must use it.”

“What happened to Felezar?” she asked, half expecting Belor to step in and say something. If another child of the Old Ones reached the Forgotten Place before he ever did, maybe the titan knew? But Belor just roared, shredding through any alien that tried to get close. He and Vin might as well have been getting energy from the violence itself, from how they refused to stop ripping, tearing, and smiling.

“No one knows,” Azreal said, panting. Out of everyone, the poor rapholem looked the most tired, his absurdly bulky armor unable to hide his slouch and drooping wings.

Mia sucked down a breath. “So we have two choices. Somehow get past the alien and into the tunnel, and maybe if I get some distance, I can keep the bridge going. Or we… stop the alien?”

She turned, climbed up Romakus’s leg, stood on his knee, and peeked over the edge of the ditch and uneven ground. The only reason the giant alien wasn’t blasting at her right now was Molech, the multi-mouthed dragon sinking its teeth into the octopus until white blood soaked its maw. And the alien armies were engaged with the angels, many pushing toward Mia, only to get stopped by gold bombardments.

Mia looked at her group. Belor and Vin were the strongest of her crew by a large margin, and even together, the two of them would struggle to beat one of the giant aliens, the unarmored juggernaut ones, hulking around the battlefield and swatting at any angel that came close. And there had to be at least a dozen of those.

They were fucked.

“Okay,” Mia said. “We get into the tunnel, get some distance, and I keep the bridge song going. Or I can’t, and we all die with Yosepha and James and Cerberus. Sound good?”

The demons winced and traded glances. Noah and Azreal didn’t so much as blink.

“Yosepha’s in there,” Romakus said. “So I’m going in there.” No waver or wince, the tetrad spoke flat and serious, daring anyone to challenge him.

It was the two angels who traded glances this time, raising eyebrows.

“Alright,” Mia said. “We go. I can’t do anything, so I guess I’ll just stay low? Vin! Belor! We’re making for the tunnel!”

Her voice somehow punched through the war noise, and the two titans aimed their slaughter for the shoreline again. Inch by inch, the group stayed as low as they could, hiding behind boulders that’d pushed up from the ground by the ravines opening up all over the place; ground shifting around had to create space somehow.

But the aliens knew where she was, and as the seconds dragged by, they pushed the angels and Molech back. The aliens rushed her again, and Mia hid behind Azreal for the millionth time as the waves of black and purple armor and gleaming, black eyes came for her.

Azreal and Noah kept their bodies between her and the invader. The demons, not so much, killing everything that came their way with a roar like hunting dogs let off their leashes. Even little Yulia screamed like an angry banshee as she tore an alien’s eyes out.

There was a reason they were all in the Damall: they were really good. The four incubi cleaved through nearby aliens like dancers. Livian and Julisa worked together, hacking with their four arms like a pair of lawnmowers on the warpath. Far more agile, the tregeera Silvina stayed close to Yulia and her brute, and quickly pounced and killed any alien that shot at them from a distance. By comparison, Romakus was a brute, outright roaring and swinging with far more directness than usual.

Molech let out a heavy roar, fell to the side, and slipped. Most of his form disappeared under the canyon, and what little remained was quickly wrapped in tentacles and pinned again. And the giant octopus set its eyes on the shoreline, and on Mia.

Oh shit.

“Get down!” Azreal yelled, and brought up his shield.

Mia threw herself to the ground. The group got on their stomachs, even Vin and Belor. Azreal didn’t. The angel slammed the bottom of his greatshield against the black sand underneath him, and gold walls extended outward from its edges.

Mia screamed. “Azreal!”

The world disappeared under a torrent of nothingness. The beam of oblivion distorted reality around it, bending light over its edges, and the black cracks that danced within gave Mia a peek at the oblivion beyond. The beam itself was wide, a couple dozen meters at least, and it flew overhead, missing her by a meter at most, and even the demons went silent as oblivion missed their larger bodies by centimeters.

Azreal knelt in the beam’s path, gold wall still up, and the beam crashed against it. He was a piece of glass fighting against a hurricane, and it washed over him, cracked him, splintered his armor and shield alike. The beam of death would have struck lower, torn a ditch through the ground, and ripped Mia and the others to bits. But Azreal blocked it, guided its path up at an angle, a tiny, fractured stone guiding the hurricane winds to pass overhead.

Cracks formed in the golden walls. Azreal’s wings bled, feathers falling away. He dismissed his spear, drove his second forearm into his shield with the other, and pressed against it. He was yelling, but his voice was a tiny thing buried under the thunder that flew over Mia’s head, and squashed by the unnatural silence that followed.

Mia stared on as more of the angel fell apart. Pieces of armor fell away, exposing the white silk cloth underneath. His helmet split in half and flew off, revealing his messy dark hair that just barely reached his ears, now flapping wildly around his head as it grew soaked with his blood. Bits of tan skin flaked off, and strips of his silk came with them, caught in the blast's windstorm and torn to shreds.

“Azreal!” Mia reached out as the man came undone. His shield cracked. “Azreal! Move! Get out of there! Please! Don’t! Don’t you fucking do it!” His right arm fell to his side. “Azreal!” His right wing slumped behind him, caught in the wind like a scarf hanging out of the window of a moving car, and feathers peeled away.

Mia’s arm grew longer. Flesh broke through her armor, exposing her pale skin and freckles underneath. Mouths and eyes grew along her skin, and—

A flash of golden light blinded her, and she clenched her eyes shut. The sound stopped. Like someone had put a wall between her and the war beyond, the sound just stopped, or at least softened enough that she could hear normally again. And the blinding light faded.

She opened her eyes.

A woman stood in front of Azreal, an angel. All angels had gold and silver armor, with bits of white cloth underneath and in the joints. This woman’s armor was different, pure gold, with different embossments that looked less like the flowing lines of angel armor, and more like shields and walls. And hints of red silk lined her joints.

She looked back at Mia and met her gaze. A council angel? No, council angels were giants, as big as children of the Old Ones, with six wings. Whoever this angel was, she looked angel-sized, seven feet tall with two wings.

And one arm. Her right arm was gone; no spear to be had. The shoulder socket bled openly, but the woman stood tall and strong behind her colossal wall of gold.

The golden wall left Mia breathless. It was massive. Whoever the angel was, she held a greatshield in front of her, her left arm hooked to straps behind the metal, same as Azreal, but the gold energy that flowed out of its edges made Azreal’s protective barriers look tiny. Mia looked left and right, trying to find the edges. A hundred meters? Two? Left, right, and up.

The woman said nothing, but her eyes pierced Mia and struck her cold. ‘You better be worth it’, the angel’s eyes said.

Mia looked down. Her arm! It was normal again, but the armor was gone, shattered by flesh and in her mind, as if the batlam rune didn’t fit that arm anymore. But with a little mental focus, the rune came back, armor with it, and it was normal again.

Was that… what David had felt?

“Azreal!” She ran up to the kneeling angel and hugged his side. The moment she had her arms around him, his greatshield vanished, batlam rune broken, and he collapsed onto her. Only a quick Noah kept the big man from squashing her.

“Oriyah?” Noah asked. “What… What are you doing here? What happened to your arm? No invader did that.”

Mia stared up at her mikalim bodyguard. Noah looked dumbstruck.

Oriyah sighed and looked up. The battle continued above and beyond her great wall, the smaller aliens doing battle with the angel armies. But the colossal alien in the canyon with Molech again unleashed a beam of unreality at Mia and the group, and the guardian angel grunted as it smashed against her shield. It held.

Two new angels flew down to meet them. One looked like a classic rapholem, and she took off her helmet, revealing dark skin, beautiful white hair half done in cornrows — very modern style — and blue azure eyes. She walked up to Mia and the others as she dismissed her shield and spear, too.

The second angel looked nothing like her. A man, wearing his own brand of strange angel armor, silver, no gold, with more than a few pieces of black silk hanging from artful places. A few embossed skulls decorated him, too. Where were the almost elfish, flowing lines, like vines from a garden that all angels had? No angel had armor like this man.

The one-armed woman was a guardian angel, had to be, and the smaller man with pale skin and dark eyes — mascara and eyeliner too — was a reaper. Mia trembled.

“Mia?” the rapholem asked.

“Y… Yes.”

“I am Keziah, first-rank rapholem of Yathael. Your brother sends his regards. He journeys across the Red Pits, and has likely entered the Navameere Fields now. I—”

Mia ran up and hugged the tall woman. The angel half stumbled back and froze, but that didn’t stop Mia from squeezing her as hard as she could. Squeezing a giant suit of thick plate armor was fruitless, but she tried anyway.

“You couldn’t bring him here?” Mia asked.

“No. I see that Tzorael here has finally decided to help you—”

“I doubt it,” Noah said, helping Azreal to his feet, arm hooked over his shoulder. God, Azreal was bleeding from a dozen missing chunks, but was still awake, eyes half opened, drifting between Mia, the guardian and reaper, and the ground. “General Tzorael is likely holding back the decision to attack an unmarked, and focusing his efforts on what he knows is a threat. I imagine he is undecided about what to do with Mia, now that he sees the alien is trying to kill her as well.”

“He is a fool,” the reaper said, dismissing his helmet in a puff of silver light. Wow. The man was beautiful, in a strange, poetic, look-at-me-I-read-poetry-in-a-cemetery kind of way. A farmer’s scythe in-hand would not have been out of place.

“Amnon is helping us,” Mia said. “He showed up and said so.”

Keziah nodded. “There are many divisions in Heaven, unmarked. Amnon and Tzorael are generals of Yathael, and even they disagree. I fear I must agree with Noah. You cannot trust the angels yet.”

Mia winced and ran back to Azreal’s side. “What happened to Oriyah’s arm? Oh, and um… hi.” She gave her best smile to the reaper, waiting.

“Othrael,” he said, nodding to her. “And we had to fight two guardians, and a few dozen battalions, to come here. That is how she lost her arm.”

Mia stared, jaw dropping.

“We have little time,” Keziah said. As if to underscore her words, a myriad of explosions crashed against Oriyah’s wall. The barrier was wide and tall enough that it kept the battle outside, but that advantage was quickly fading as more aliens hovered overhead or ran to the sides. They’d be swarmed in minutes.

“Keziah,” Noah said. “Oriyah lost her arm to other exarchs? How—”

Keziah held up a palm. “The civil war is worse than you know, Noah of Ravid. Angels kill angels in numbers not seen since the First War. Half refuse to admit the council is broken, and will die for their duty.”

Mia wanted to scream. How could people be so dumb? They’d die for someone that refused to even talk to them!?

You’re the dumb one, Mia. Human history was filled with people dying in droves for more ridiculous reasons, to rulers who didn’t give a shit about them, or for gods who never once spoke to them. Some of these angels had diligently worked for the council for millions of years, longer, convinced they were doing God’s will. As it turned out, God was very real. That any of them were willing to ‘betray Heaven’ was the bigger surprise.

“Sheela, general of Sinev,” Keziah said, “helped me, Othrael, and Oriyah push past the exarchs Ashkariel and Malchiel. She perished. Many angels died. Sheela, and Ashkariel and Malchiel.”

Noah took a step back, eyes wide. “Two exarchs are dead?”

Oriyah, who might as well have been carved out of stone for all her body language, lowered her head. And Othrael, looked down as he closed his eyes.

Keziah nodded. “With Othrael and Oriyah’s might, we brought them low, but they refused to submit. They destroyed Sheela’s forces, and…” Trembling with what had to be barely contained rage, Keziah summoned her shield, her spear, and her helmet once more. “Mia. What do you need of us?”

Mia stared, eyes drifting between the three new arrivals. They wanted her to give orders?

Because they’d come to save her. To help her. Oh God…

“Um… I managed to get the bridge summoned, but the runes are wavering. The alien presence silences the song, so as long as the aliens are here, the bridge might fail. If I can get into the tunnel and put some distance between me and the alien, I can maybe play some music and keep the bridge up, but that’s a big maybe.”

The reaper raised his eyes, sighed, summoned his silvery sword, and gave the blade a lackadaisical flourish.

“I will kill the alien,” he said. “Thy will be done.”

“Molech can’t do that!” Mia yelled. “You—”

“I can do it. I will not be of any help to you in the future, but if that is your will, Keziah’s will, I will see it done.”

“W-What?”

Keziah nodded and gestured down the shoreline to where the snake tunnel emerged. The beach was littered with angel corpses, the alien corpses already dissolved and gone. By now, most of the betrayer corpses had either fallen into ravines or had been stomped into mulch. And thick crimson streams flowed down the black sand to join the Red Sea.

“We will kill the alien,” Keziah said, “and we will stop any angels who try to follow you. Will you be able to defend yourself once you can play the music again?”

“In that tunnel?” Mia said. “Yeah, easily. Angels won’t be flying around, right? They’d have to fly in to get me, and in the tunnel, I’m sure I could deal with them. But I don’t want to hurt—”

“Very good,” Keziah said. “Then we march. Oriyah, stay with Mia until she is in the tunnel. Mia, we will do all we can to ensure your safety, but we must stay here and see this battle done.”

“But—”

“You said yourself, the alien threatens the bridge. It does more than that. It may use this place for a full-scale incursion. For all the infighting among angels, we will all work today to see the alien stopped.” Keziah thudded her hand against her breastplate, and Noah did the same. Azreal raised his good hand and gently pressed it to his chest. “Othrael, clear a path for the unmarked.”

“Yes, first one.” Othrael nodded, summoned his helmet and shield, and took to the air. First one?

By this time, everyone was standing nearby, either gawking at the insane wall the guardian angel had created, or at the reaper with wariness. The guardian and reaper didn’t so much as look at them. But they did look at Mia, studying her, and she squirmed. Vin got close, growling over Mia’s shoulder at the angels, but the two exarchs ignored him. They were scary.

“Uh, just know,” Mia said, “the alien hunts the vibration of music users, so they want to kill the Old Ones too—mostly us unmarked, though. And if you’ve been around one, like me, the alien will smell it on you. That happened to Azreal and Noah, months ago.”

Keziah nodded. “They will bring the battle to us, then. Good. And thank you, Mia, for doing what you can to save the Great Tower. I know not all unmarked would try.” Before Mia could ask, the rapholem took to the sky and followed in Othrael’s wake.

“Wait!” Mia yelled. “I need to know about David! What—”

“Mia,” Keziah said, looking back. “You are like your brother, that much is clear. So I must prepare you. Do not feel guilt for the souls of the surface. It is not your cross to bear. It is mine.”

Surface? Cross?

Keziah followed Othrael only so far and gave the reaper plenty of space as the man turned into a silver comet and flew perpendicular to the tunnel entrance.

Silver lightning erupted from the reaper, and the colossal tentacles blocking the path fell apart. The angel’s blade didn’t cut them off at the base so much as ripped through them with the force of a cannonball at close range. The tentacles exploded where the angel flew past, and white blood and obsidian skin showered the battlefield. Sound followed, a blast wave that hit everyone and knocked Yulia off her brute’s back. Mia stared.

Oriyah looked back and nodded toward the now clear path along the broken shoreline to the tunnel’s entrance.

“You heard the lady,” Romakus said. “Come on.”

A thousand questions raced through Mia’s mind, and she couldn’t get answers to any of them. David was still alive, but she knew that. What’d just happened to her arm? It was back to normal now. Did Keziah see that happen to David? What else did David have to say? He’d looked so angry in the vision. Was he feeling better now?

The group got moving, and Oriyah moved with them. A fresh beam of destruction smashed into her shield, making it ripple as the beam tore a fresh ditch through the ground, splintering rock down into pebbles. The shield held. Mia jumped onto Kas’s back as Vin and Belor rushed ahead and met the tide of aliens who’d run around the shield, and the two children roared with elation as they sank their claws and teeth into alien flesh again. Both were bleeding, leaving trails of blood in their wake, and they didn’t mind at all.

The explosions were unending. Tridents, claws, and orbs of destruction crashed against Oriyah’s shield. Floating aliens hovered overhead and tried to shoot down at Mia, but a hundred angels swooped down and cut them off, slaughtering them; for all the aliens’ numbers, angels were a great deal stronger. But more aliens kept coming, flowing up from other ravines that reached the bottom of Hell, like swarms of rats.

It was the juggernaut aliens that were the biggest immediate problem. They threw their titanic weight against the shield, goliaths that had to be twenty or thirty meters tall, and they brought their too-human hands against the shield with hammer blows. They moved almost like apes, betraying their squid-like faces as they drove their hands and shoulders into the gold barrier. Angels descended on them, stabbed them, shot arrows into their obsidian flesh, and angel fly-bys cut their legs and tendons. If they had tendons.

The juggernauts were forced to face the angel army, and the guardian angel took a needed breath as they left her shield alone.

The reaper flew up, over Oriyah’s shield, and brought his attention down on the great alien still pinning Molech against the canyon wall. Mia stared through Oriya’s shield at the thin reaper, her eyes locked. Othrael swung his sword down at the alien titan in the canyon, and unleashed a silver arc of energy that crackled with black lightning with a silver core, beautiful and chaotic. The following thunder flattened Mia’s ears to her skull.

The silver energy arc grew larger and larger as it flew, crashed into the alien, split its skin, and earned a geyser of white blood. The alien screamed. Its body trembled. Its tentacles spasmed, let go of Molech, and grabbed any random boulder or nearby half-formed ravine it could to avoid falling. But it was still alive.

Mia’s group got closer to the tunnel, Belor and Vin at the front joined by Noah and the tetrads. The guardian stuck with them every step of the way, keeping her shield up and between them and the battle. Aliens were hot on their tail, getting around the barrier’s back edge and running up the shore after them, only for Adron and the rest of the Damall to cut them down while walking backward.

Othrael launched another beam down at the big alien, more silver energy cutting the air apart and crashing into the giant monster. The silver and black lightning ripped the ground apart, zigzagging over it in random patterns, and turning the bloodied, broken landscape into a work of art.

Othrael looked tired. The distance and the see-through gold wall between Mia and the reaper wasn’t enough to hide his drooping wings, or his sword and shield hanging a little lower than they should have. But again the reaper unleashed a beam of his strange, silver energy, the destructive force tearing a fresh seam across the massive alien’s octopus-like body, and drawing fresh oceans of white blood.

The angels flying above took their cue from the exarchs, and forced their fire on either the giant octopus, or the alien juggernauts trying to get through Oriyah’s shield. Golden explosions littered the shoreline between Mia and the tunnel, like guided mortar fire, and alien bodies ripped apart under gold bursts.

But they reached it.

“In in get in!” Mia yelled.

Kas grunted back at her and rushed into the immense tunnel. She’d been right. The black ribs of the snake-like structure were forged, something made, and not by Mother Hell. They had the same feeling as the spires, some weird terrain her sixth sense could feel but not grasp, and likely that her music could touch but not sculpt. And the ribs were close enough that no one flying above the tunnel could get in, but not tight enough to stop a literal sea of water from flooding between the metal bones if the defy rune failed.

Everyone poured in, and Mia counted them off: Romakus, Noah, Adron now carrying Azreal, Julisa and Livian, Faust and the boys, Silvina, Yulia, and her brute friend.

Belor and Vin stayed behind, killing aliens that snuck past the angel bombardment, and their roars were half laughter, even as fresh cuts dripped crimson down their naked bodies.

“Vin! Belor! Get in here!” Damn it. The two boys could have backed off and run in already, but they took their sweet time, ripping aliens in half and taking bites out of them, only for the alien flesh to dissolve between their teeth before they could eat them. But that didn’t stop them from trying.

“That was no first-rank rapholem,” Noah said, adjusting his friend draped over his shoulders. “She was strong. Very strong. And Othrael called her a ‘first one’?”

Azreal grunted. “There are no first ones left, not anymore.”

Mia squeezed Kas’s back spikes and stared out at the battlefield from the — relative — safety of the tunnel. “What do we do n—”

Othrael let out a scream and launched himself down at the alien, a silver comet plummeting toward writhing obsidian.