Chapter 05.090

~~Day 146~~

~~Keziah~~

Mia was the same. Thank the Lord, Mia was the same as her brother.

One look into the young woman’s eyes would have been enough to convince any angel. If only Tzorael and the other generals had been willing. At least Amnon had, once he had realized the aliens were here to kill the unmarked, too, and not simply devour them.

How many angels had Keziah killed to fight her way back into Hell? And now two exarchs lay dead upon the clouds of Heaven, Ashkarial and Malchiel, guardians who had only wanted to stop Keziah, stop the general Sheela, and stop Othrael and Oriyah, from defying their leaders.

Memories blurred across Keziah’s mind, Ariyael’s memories, images of her spear stabbing past armor and into the eyes of comrades. Angels, dead, by the millions. And now Heaven’s civil war echoed the past.

As she hovered over the battlefield, Keziah looked at her spear and squeezed the long, silvery grip. With the help of the exarchs, she had struck down angels far more powerful than herself. But her own power was a surprise, too.

She was no first-rank rapholem. This was not her power. It was Ariyael’s.

Snapped back to the present by Othrael’s yell, Keziah hovered by Oriyah and skewered a flying alien. To fly was God’s gift, a precious gift that God had stripped from Lucifer when he had cast his first son to the fiery pits of Hell. And yet this invader flew, soared through the air in waves, adorned in black and purple robes, and launched strange orbs of destruction with the speed of a mikalim’s holy arcs of essence.

Keziah brought her greatshield to bear, and let old impulses guide her. Ariyael’s speed and strength took her, ensured each orb crashed against the metal, and she threw the spear with a true strike. The mirror blade sank into alien flesh, and with a moment’s effort, Keziah re-summoned the spear to her hand.

The larger aliens, hundred-foot-tall mammoths of weight, carried their masses up to the guardian Oriyah’s golden wall and smashed their hands against it, sending pulsing gold cracks along its surface. And the reaper Othrael’s next slice of pure annihilation split alien flesh, wounding the mighty alien fighting the Old One Molech within the chasm, but did not kill it.

Keziah flew low, joined a dozen mikalim on the warpath, and sank her spear into the head of a juggernaut trying to break the guardian angel’s shield. It shrieked up and swatted at her, as if she were some annoying bird attacking it for coming too close to its nest. But she bashed the colossal hands aside with her shield and forced the spear deeper. Again it tried to dislodge her, but the mikalim drove their swords into its arms, a dozen blades of perfect sharpness that cut through obsidian flesh and alien muscle filled with white blood. Its scream was not of this world, a strange sound that tore through Keziah’s mind even as it ripped sound from her ears and drowned her in silence. If she had been human, the dissonance would have wrenched the food from her stomach.

The creature fell with a mighty crash, and its bulk faded into nothingness in seconds. But the other juggernauts did not react. They crashed against Oriyah’s shield, and their strange, squid-like faces remained aimed at the tunnel and the parted sea. Hundreds of the smaller aliens did the same, throwing claws and tridents at the gold barrier, while their hovering brethren blanketed it in explosions, each orb a tiny black hole, bending light around it. And when the orbs exploded, Keziah’s breath caught short as tiny cracks in existence threatened to pull her gaze into the endless nothing beyond, where twinkling lights in the black were not stars at all, but hungry eyes.

She gritted her teeth and brought down a second alien. “Where is Tzorael? Amnon!?”

“Dead,” another angel said, a mikalim man joining her and cutting down one of the four-legged aliens rushing her. “As is Shezra.”

“All three generals of Yathael are dead?”

“Yes, Keziah.”

Tzorael, mikalim. Amnon, rapholem. And Shezra, gabriem. Many of their captains still lived, but the chain of command was broken.

God, forgive her.

“Then I am taking charge.”

The mikalim froze. “I am sorry, rapholem, but you are—”

“I am Ariyael, third-rank rapholem general of Yathael, and one of the first! I have seen God with my own eyes, young mikalim, and they would disown us for this insanity. I am taking charge, and with our might, we will see the alien destroyed.” She hovered in front of the mikalim and the others who had joined him, a dozen pairs of wings and eyes staring at her. “Do I make myself clear?”

For all the confusion her words wrought, the dozen men and women nodded.

The alien presence brought one boon: the storms were over. Without the power of the silent music, neither the Old Ones nor the unmarked could wield Hell’s environment against them. And for all Molech’s fire breath and the breath of the giant alien sharing its canyon, they were far more manageable than the firestorms of before.

She took to the sky, swooping left and right and spearing the heads and chests of the hovering aliens as she went. She found a gabriem, and she explained. She found another, and again, explained what was happening. With each moment, she found a new angel to recruit: captains looking for guidance, and squadrons with wounded and dying friends in their arms. She found groups who had organized themselves into strike forces, spearheading descents into the madness below. She found rapholem guarding gabriem, small pockets of defended territory where the gabriem could heal the hurt.

A thousand. Two thousand. Three. What was left of the armies, she brought together over Oriyah’s wall. There was no time to halt and speak; she spoke as they battled. Together they flocked and poured over the guardian angel’s defense, cut down the flying aliens before swooping low and cleaving through the juggernauts and the soldiers alike. A small reprieve for the guardian was all they had time for.

In the distance, Molech and Othrael were working together to keep the greatest of the aliens subdued, but for all their combined might, the creature still lived. She had to act quickly.

“We have one mission here,” she said to her growing army, mid-thrust of her spear. “Disagree if you like, but you will obey. Your duty is not to the council, nor to your generals. Your duty is to the Great Tower and to the souls within it! We will work together, fight together, and we will defend this forlorn tower against the oblivion that comes for us!” How naturally the words came to her. Without thought, without effort, her voice rose above the noise and guided the wings following behind her. “Come, warriors of Heaven! We will expel this alien, and make ready this Great Tower for God’s return!”

Would God ever return?

The thought summoned something bitter, and every muscle in Keziah’s body demanded she wince, demanded she let her voice falter. She did not let it. As the bitterness roiled in her gut, it reached her heart, and a coldness she had felt only in the deepest recesses of her mind stabbed into her bones. Weight drowned her, pulled her wings down, and only her resolve kept them up.

The dread.

She clenched her eyes shut for but a moment, screamed a battle cry, and charged the titans of the canyon.

Molech kept its attention on the alien beside it, ignoring Keziah and her contingent of angels. Even Othrael ignored the ancient enemy and focused his attacks on the alien invader. The reaper flew down into the canyon where both titans’ bodies writhed with unknowable limbs, and he brought his sword up against the alien’s tentacles. It screamed as the reaper sheared through a tentacle and sent the colossal limb down into the depths. Again, the reaper dashed to the side, a silver comet crackling with black lightning, and he cut a gash over what had to be the monster’s chest.

There was a body under that octopus-mantle of a head, hidden in the shadows. But it could not bring it up to meet them, not yet, thank the Lord.

The alien brought a tentacle down upon the reaper, and Othrael’s body disappeared into the black of the canyon.

“Othrael!” Keziah yelled.

“General,” the angel at her flank said. “What do we do now?”

She sucked in a breath, squeezed her spear, and pointed. “Charge!”

Together, her forces flowed in a beautiful stream of wings. Mikalim beams and gabriem arrows shot aliens out of the sky, while Rapholem shields guarded the army’s sides and underbelly. They moved together, a densely knit flock of white and gold, thousands of wings that blotted out the sky. The aliens looked up, black eyes staring as the flowing wave of white death soared over the battlefield and crashed upon the titan alien in the ravine.

It was wounded. Much of its body was burned and still burning, flickering hellfire flames dancing along the obsidian flesh, peeling it away, and revealing the white muscle underneath. The gashes Othrael had made along its mantle were enormous, and several had punctured the terrible eyes of the beast, though it still had a dozen left to watch Keziah and her army swarm it.

“Molech!” Keziah yelled. “Our battle is not with you this day! The alien must be defeated first!”

Molech. She was talking with Molech, the Old One she had seen in her memory, the dragon of many wings and many arms. It, he, had not been bound in the memory. He had roamed the battlefield of False Gate and used limb and music alike to slay angels by the uncountable. And here, now, his limited and broken body wrestled with the alien titan. He was their only ally.

“Angels,” the beast rumbled, titanic mouths layered upon each other whispering with the force of hellquakes. “Only now do you see reason?”

“Later, Old One! To battle!”

Molech snarled at her, his head large enough to swallow her and a hundred of her comrades in a single bite. And he used those jaws on the alien. The dragon twisted against his opponent, wrestled claw and muscle against tentacle, and brought his multiple mouths down onto the alien’s body. Gargantuan teeth sank into alien skin, pierced the hide, and earned alien shrieks from the invader. It tried to dislodge Molech, brought its tentacles around the monster’s face and neck and pushed against him, but Molech held fast.

Keziah aimed her spear down at the greatest of the wounds Othrael had rendered to the invader’s octopus-like mantle. “There! Now!”

A thousand arcs of golden energy launched down at the invader, ignoring Molech entirely. A thousand arrows followed, each landing within a few centimeters of each other, all guided into the bleeding wound of the massive beast. Fresh waves of white blood gushed from the lesion, but they did not pierce deep enough.

Keziah flew in, and the army followed. With glowing wings, they landed on the giant mantle, stepped onto the exposed white muscle, and sank mirror blades into flesh. Spears and swords carved through meat, but to call it meat was wrong. It was all wrong. A facsimile of ancient fears, a creature of the deep whose body was not flesh or of the afterlife. It felt… false. And the strange, fake flesh resisted her spear’s tip. She screamed down at the alien monster, flared her wings, and sank her spear in deeper.

Tentacles swung out and crashed against her comrades, limbs of pure size and mass, many a dozen meters thick. Angels let out last roars of defiance, or yells of surprise, as the titanic limbs crushed them. Some escaped with only a broken limb. Many died instantly, batlam runes fading away, and their unarmored bodies rolled off the struggling creature’s head and down into the depths of the canyon.

Keziah closed her eyes, ears, and heart to the sounds, and drilled the spear in deeper. Deeper. She flared her wings again, poured her grace into every feather and inch of her muscles. Kill it! Her companions did the same, wings drowning the beast in gold as they drove their weapons into the wound Othrael had made. But the tentacles did not stop. The angels were barely more than flies, and the beast swatted them, each swipe of its tentacles breaking bones and taking lives.

Keziah did not stop, either. This could not all be for naught! She refused. She would not let the Great Tower die. Ariyael would not let it die.

Perhaps it was better this way. Even now, as she plunged her spear into the alien flesh, hacking and stabbing, exposing more of the fake white muscle below, the dread ate at her. Ice in her veins, in her grace. Ice that crept up her spine and made her limbs grow numb, even as her insides ached all the more. Ice that—

Keziah and her army jumped back as the alien’s white flesh exploded. A comet of silver, crackling with black lightning, erupted from the center of the great wound in the alien’s mantle, and it shot up into the sky.

Othrael. The reaper hovered over the angels, stared down at them, and held his sword out at his side. The mirror blade shone with silver, crackled with black death, and white blood dripped from every groove in the reaper’s armor.

The alien beast slowly went limp. A myriad of tentacles the size of city streets fell, crashing against the canyon side or Molech’s arms, and dangled loose below the mantle of the octopus-like alien. Its black eyes stared off at nothing as all motion ceased, until Molech finally released his bite.

It fell. The angels took to the sky and watched the alien titan sink into the canyon and disappear below the bottom of Hell. The literal bottom.

Keziah stared down into the depths, and was petrified. The invader sank into it like a drop of ink upon a black ocean. What of the Great Tower that hit the bottom, demon and angel, rock and lava, all evaporated, like ash from a fire. But the falling alien flesh sank beyond the borders of Hell, and into the dark eternity beyond. And the black ocean looked up at her.

Something moved within the water, something alive — or at least aware — and it flowed with the speed of icebergs as it locked its eye on Molech and the angels.

But nothing came.

Othrael fell.

“Reaper!” Keziah flew to his side and caught him, and the man relaxed against her, an arm over her shoulder.

“Or… Oriyah,” he whispered.

Keziah snapped her eyes back to the shoreline and the snake tunnel. The guardian angel’s barrier was gone.

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

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

~~Mia~~

Stay? Go? Help? Run? She had no idea, no clue, and no fucking plan. What would David do? He’d make a decision, any decision. He’d do something!

Mia looked behind her. The tunnel waited, a long snake skeleton forged of blackstone that ran along the ocean floor. Peeking between the ribs showed the ocean walls, ready to fall and kill anyone within the tunnel, if the song failed. And Mia’s group stood in its mouth.

Ahead of her, Oriyah, a literal guardian angel. Not just a rapholem, but an actual guardian angel! The shield she’d summoned could flatten a football field, a shining barrier of see-through gold. And on the other side, angels fought off the aliens as they rushed for Mia. Not for the angels. Not even for Molech. For her.

Azreal dangled over Noah’s shoulder beside her, flakes of his skin gone in a dozen places, wings ripped up, and blood dripping down his body. He lifted his head long enough to look at Mia, but he might as well have been lifting a mountain, and his head fell and drooped.

Mia looked at her arm, the one that’d reached for Azreal. Gulping, she looked back at the guardian angel.

“Maybe we can help the angels,” Mia said. “Maybe—”

Too late. The colossal shield wavered, cracked, and shattered. Like someone had finally found the weak spot on tempered glass, it fell apart in an almost beautiful array of shards, each landing on the black shoreline around the one-armed protector. And each shard let out a small golden glow as they withered away and died on the sand.

The aliens swarmed over the guardian. She tried to stop them, swung her shield with the strength of a behemoth, and crushed alien bodies. White blood exploded over her as each spin of her body brought metal against alien metal. Their bodies imploded on impact.

But the juggernauts found her, and crushed her. Three of the strange beasts brought their hands down on her, hammer blows, and Mia’s stomach lurched. Apes. They were like giant apes with squid faces. They squatted around the guardian angel, thirty-meter-tall monsters, and with wild swings of their arms, rained hammer blows down on her. The first four strikes, Oriyah blocked with her greatshield held overhead. The next dozen blows crashed down against her prone body, and Mia closed her eyes as the angel’s blood gushed over the beach.

The angel army fell upon the juggernauts and the thousand aliens that teemed past them, unleashing more bombardments, but there were too many. The alien forerunners ran across the beach at Mia on all fours, their strange, bent human bodies bounding over small ravines as they shrieked. And behind them charged the soldiers with their tridents.

“Go,” Noah said.

Mia stared. “What?”

The mikalim handed Azreal to Adron, spared a silent nod, and walked up the beach toward the oncoming horde.

“I will hold them off.”

Not this again! She grabbed Noah’s arm, but her fingers couldn’t get halfway around his bracer, and he slipped free.

“Noah! You dumbass! We’re not leaving yet! We don’t know if we can use the bridge safely yet or not! I don’t—”

He snapped his head around and glared at her. Silver eyes. They cut into her, and she froze solid.

“Mia,” he said. “I…”

Hesitation. From Noah? She took a step toward him, but he waved her back with a wing.

This wasn’t happening. These two! These two idiots! Were they trying to get themselves killed!?

“Noah, please. Just wait! Wait, okay! Just—”

The angel’s wings glowed gold, and he unleashed a burst of speed as he launched himself at the alien army.

He fell upon the invaders rushing down the beach and cut them down. Tridents crashed against his smaller shield, sending sparks through the air as sharp tips cut lines along the metal. Noah spun, cut the head off a soldier, and ducked under the trident of another. The aliens were the size of an angel, some bigger, some smaller, but Noah cut each down almost with ease, taking each one at a time.

He was the barrier in the tunnel.

An orb of bending light shot his way, and he knocked it aside with his shield. But he was no rapholem, and his shield wasn’t enough. The blast knocked him to the side, but he flew with it, used the momentum, and took to the air. For just a moment, gold engulfed him completely, and the angel became a comet like the reaper had before. Pure speed, the angel swung around like a diving falcon and caught the hovering alien who’d shot at him. Cleaved in half, from head to crotch and through the base of its robe.

A thrown trident hit his back, but the angle was bad and it bounced off. Noah turned, swung his sword down, and unleashed a golden arc of energy. It crashed against the helmet of the alien soldier and crushed it, bending the metal. The alien fell dead to its knees and faded away.

But the juggernauts, done with the guardian angel’s splattered and broken corpse, turned their attention to Mia, and marched her way. With slow, heavy steps, the titans came closer, hand-like feet sinking deep into the sand.

Noah landed like a meteor on the closest one’s head, and the giant fell. Its mouth tentacles smashed into the black sand, and it shrieked as Noah, wings radiating waves of gold, drove his sword deeper into its skull. But it didn’t die. Noah roared, sawing the blade from side to side, but it wouldn’t die.

The closest titan whirled its arm out in a wide, reckless swing. Its hand was almost as big as the angel, and the impact ruined him. Something twisted out of place, and Noah plummeted to the shoreline. His right wing and leg were backward.

The angel groaned, pushed himself up from the sand, and on his good knee, faced the two titans coming his way. Behind the titans, the battle raged, the angel forces falling upon other juggernauts and swarming them with blade and feather. But they weren’t close enough to help him. And the one Noah had wounded writhed, clutching its skull as it slowly got back to its feet.

“Go!” Noah yelled, again snapping his eyes back at Mia. But the seriousness in them was gone. The constant vigilance. The calm-but-intense glare. All gone.

He looked sad.

Mia looked at Vin, but he was already stepping deeper into the tunnel. Of all the times for the big bad child of the Old Ones to take a step back from the fighting, he chose now?

“Come,” Kas said, and tugged on her shoulder. “We can’t defeat those.” He pointed his horns at the incoming bigger aliens.

“Vin!” she yelled. “Belor! We—”

“Mia,” Belor said, panting, bleeding. “Kasimiro is right. We must leave.”

She shoved Kas’s hand free. “No! I’m sick of this! It’s always these two! Azreal and Noah! Always these two morons who… who…” She swallowed down the urge to cry and glared at the angel in Adron’s arms. Azreal was unconscious, a bleeding mess, and without his enormous armor, he looked so small compared to even Adron. Seven feet tall, but just a human man with wings. Broken, bleeding wings. She glared. “No.”

Vin snorted, squatting nearby, dragon eye aimed at her. “The angel sacrifices his life. Do not waste—”

“I said no!” She threw her staff to the side, and it vanished in a puff of red light. The crown went next, a Gothic thing covered in black spikes and red jewels.

Kas came up around and in front of her. “Mia, we must leave!”

“I’m not leaving!” She took a deep breath and let go of the batlam rune entirely, leaving her naked. It was a heavy rune, encompassing her mind in its protective shell, and the guided power it brought, just as it did for angels. But the thing squirming around in her limbs couldn’t wear it.

“Mia!” Romakus yelled. “The fuck are you doing?”

Mia looked back. Everyone was staring at her, eyes wide. Even Julisa looked confused.

“I am doing something!” She forced her eyes back out onto the shoreline covered in the dead, feathers, and crimson. Ravines and ditches broke and fell away, or formed into new patterns as fresh hellquakes ripped the ground apart. And the angels above threw themselves down at the aliens rushing toward Mia. Toward Noah. But there were too many.

She wasn’t going to let what happened to David happen to her. She wasn’t. She wasn’t!

Something crawled under her skin.

“Mia?” Adron asked.

She didn’t look back. She stepped forward. The sand gave way under her naked feet—even the potram rune didn’t fit her anymore. Without armor or clothes, she walked toward Noah, and the titans around him ignored the angel as they walked toward her instead.

David. She couldn’t get his face out of her head. David never looked that way. Ever! Never ever. The agony in his face when he’d started to change. She could never… but…

Her skin prickled. Her bones ached. Her soul burned. Something pierced through her back, but from the inside, and her crew gasped behind her.

And then it stopped.

A strange shriek ripped through the battlefield, and the alien titans coming at her paused. They looked behind, and something rippled through them as the weird alien sound left a ringing silence in its wake. Even from a distance and over the battle, Mia could see the giant alien Molech had been fighting start to fall.

Gold comets shot at Mia like bullets from a gun, and a thousand angels fell upon the juggernauts on the shoreline.

Keziah again.

“Go!” Keziah yelled. “Grab your man and go!” The angel landed on the beach beside Noah, and like Noah had done for Azreal, she got his arm over her shoulder and flew him to Kas.

A moment’s hesitation, before the angel gave another angel to a demon. But Kas just nodded, stood up straight, towered over Keziah, and took the half-broken man into his arms.

The whiplash was going to break Mia’s spine at this rate. Keziah, back again? Angels helping, not helping, dying, helping, what was going on!? Potram slid back onto her mind, a reflex, and the weightless rune gave Mia her red silks and sandals back.

Mia spoke up. “But I can—”

The angel shook her head and faced the battlefield again. “Molech still lives and will fight to secure you. And more angels come from the vortex! I can only assume they will kill you if they can, if only to stop Molech from devouring you. Othrael is drained and cannot help us any longer. The others will—”

Right on cue, a fresh wave of trumpets filled the air. In the distance, high against the ember sky, tiny white dots came their way.

“Unmarked!” Molech’s voice. “The unmarked will be mine!”

Molech was still looking to brawl, and more angels were coming. Shit.

“Go,” Keziah said. “Maybe, someday, Heaven will come to your aid again. But not today. Go!”

Mia’s legs twisted halfway as she got stuck between turning and running, and standing her ground. “Oriyah, she—”

“Go!”

What remained of the aliens were dying by the second as Keziah’s forces mopped them up. With Molech’s help. He swung his limbs out over the canyons and slaughtered aliens by the hundreds. And with each dead alien, more and more of the music came back to Mia. And to Molech.

And he set his eyes on her. As tens of thousands of new wings filled sky, Molech ignored them, and his dozens of eyes stared over the battleground, straight into Mia.

“But what about you?” Mia asked Keziah.

“I am… I am your ally, here in this moment, Mia. No matter what I may say or do in the future, please understand that right now, I pray that you will succeed.”

“What? I—” Hands grabbed her, big ones. Romakus!? “Let me go! I’ll—”

“Shut up, Mia.” He glared down at her, and ran down the tunnel. The crew ran with him, Livian taking Azreal from Adron, and Julisa taking Noah from Kas; big ladies with four arms had an easier time handling passengers.

“But I can help them! I can help stop Molech, and—”

“Mia!” Romakus yelled, and he glared down at her, eyes stabbing her like Noah’s and Azreal’s had so many times before. She gulped. “You want to save the Great Tower? Then learn when to let people die!”

He might as well have stabbed her in the heart. With her tucked under his arm like an unruly child, she looked back at the beach disappearing from sight, and the sound of trumpets and Molech’s roars of frustration growing louder, and louder. And then quieter, and quieter, as the shoreline disappeared from view.

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Mia sighed. The group slowed to a walk, and followed the only path: the black snake tunnel’s insides, and Cerberus’s footprints. No one else’s, though. Yosepha was probably still flying with James in her arms.

“I can walk now,” she said. “Asshole.”

Romakus grumbled. She’d expected a chuckle. But he set her down at least, and she massaged where his arm had rubbed her skin raw along her ribcage.

The Red Sea trembled just outside the black tunnel’s ribs. There was only a half-meter of space between each rib, but that’d be more than enough for the ocean to flood in and drown them if the song died, or crush them to death if they got deep enough.

“The bridge song,” Julisa said. “You can play it?”

Mia nodded, planted her feet, and held up her hands. It didn’t take much, now that the alien invasion had been mostly squashed and behind them. A touch of guidance from Mia, and Mother Hell kept the bridge runes ringing and resonating. Which was a scary thought. Could the alien see Mother Hell doing that? Track her down and attack her when she did stuff like help Mia play music? Or was Mia an oddly colored fish, swimming with a school of normal-colored fish. The predators would get her first because she stuck out like a sore thumb when she played too loudly.

The Red Sea calmed, no new aliens showed up, and Mia risked a peek between the black ribs.

A sea. A literal sea. The massive wall of red water rose far overhead, and it’d only get higher the further they went down the tunnel, each step a gentle slope along the sea floor. And much as the water was red, it wasn’t blood. Part blood, maybe, but red water that was see-through enough to look into.

There were things lurking in the water: distant shapes, strange shapes, big shapes.

“Are we… safe?” Mia asked. “The song creates the tunnel, so no one’s attacking us from above.” She gestured up at the spinal cord and ribs of the tunnel, a veritable fortress. “I think we’re safe from angels, but, uh… there’s stuff out there.” Another gesture toward the water.

“How the fuck would we know?” Romakus asked. “All demons avoid the River Styx, for a damn good reason. That hellbeast on the beach today? That’s small! Tiny compared to the shit in the water.”

“I think we’re safe,” Faustinus said. “Those other creatures never leave the water.”

Mia nodded, forcing herself to breathe deeply as she stared into the endless red depths, and the dark silhouettes swimming within. Maybe she had thalassophobia?

And now that she had a moment to think, she spun and marched up to Livian and Julisa. The two tetrad ladies towered over her, but it wasn’t them she had a few rants lined up for.

“Azreal!”

The dark-haired angel’s eyes opened. Barely.

Mia glared. “Noah!”

The angel had already twisted his wing and leg back into place, but they both hung limp and far too loose.

“Mia,” Noah said. “We—”

“Shut up! You fucking shut up!” She stomped her feet, and the crew came to a stop. “You two! You two… You… fucking…”

Azreal coughed, and a splatter of blood soaked his lips. Those weird alien orbs hadn’t been like angel attacks, breaking through stuff with force. They’d shattered anything they collided with, practically from the inside out.

But he was alive.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Sorry!? You can’t just be sorry, Azreal! You almost died.”

Kas stepped up and nudged her. “The angel saved our lives. And Noah gave us a chance to escape.”

“I know! I know, okay?” She pushed Kas’s giant hand away, and jabbed her finger into Azreal and Noah’s chest; the two tetrads lowered them enough for Mia to get in some good jabbing. “That’s not the point. The point is these two didn’t even ask if there was another way. They just did it!”

Julisa shrugged. “Seemed smart to me.”

Romakus matched the shrug. “I thought they were just being fast on the draw.”

Mia glared at each of them. They didn’t see it, didn’t notice the pattern. It was infuriating.

“Azreal, Noah,” she said. “Just…” Fuck. Fuck! The fuck could say she? She had no good argument. They’d done what needed to be done, but the fact they’d done it without hesitation, put themselves in harm’s way without so much as a flinch, pissed her off. They’d get themselves killed before this was all done.

Maybe that was what they wanted, but it wasn’t what she wanted.

“Mia does have a point,” Adron said, flicking his tail. “You two angels are her best bet for making it to the goal. Maybe don’t be so quick on the draw? We still need you.”

Mia hugged Adron and gently bopped her forehead against his side. Finally, someone with some sense.

After a few heavy breaths, she and the group resumed marching down the long tunnel. For about five minutes.

Belor stopped, gave his wings a single flap, and half-turned. “This is where I take my leave.”

“What?” Mia asked. “You’re leaving?”

“I took you to the bridge. That was the plan. Now I have to go back.”

James’s half of the group raised eyebrows.

“We haven’t been introduced,” Faustinus said, and the incubus walked up to the huge demon. “You’re really Belor?”

Belor smiled, as much as a demon with a short dragon snout could, and gently tapped the small, glowing amber horn sticking out of his forehead.

“I am, and my province is in an even worse state than it was just yesterday. For two millennia, my forces were bound by Molech’s — my — spire seal, accomplishing nothing but running around like deranged animals.”

“Rabies,” Romakus said. “Hell of a thing.”

Belor raised an eyebrow, and Romakus smiled without saying another word.

“My freedom gave them freedom,” Belor continued, “and before they knew it, they were slaughtered by angels. And what few were nearby are now long dead to aliens. The province itself is broken! Mia says Death’s Grip tore in half, literally.”

Mia raised a hand. “I don’t think this was as bad as that… but close.”

“I must go back. I have a million things to fix. I will make False Gate whole again, and mine again, one way or another.”

It was a wonder Belor hadn’t used his spire connection to summon the horde. When the alien showed up, that’d been taken off the table, no music allowed, even spire music. But before that? Maybe Belor just didn’t want to kill what few demons remained in the province. The question was why. Because he needed every soldier he could, so he could rise to the throne of a tyrant again, or because he gave a shit?

Mia looked at the crew. James’s half just shrugged. Her half looked at her, waiting for her to decide, as if she had any clue what Belor would do.

She looked at Romakus and gestured, but the tetrad shrugged like the others.

“Belor has always put False Gate first,” he said. “But fuck if I know if we can trust him.”

Belor chuckled, rubbing at some of his closing wounds. “Of course you can trust me.” Said with the dramatic flair of someone who knew that everyone else knew he was, very much, not trustworthy. “The alien comes for us. There’s no denying that now. I will make the province ready, find some zotiva eggs, and have the spire birth eggs faster than usual. For all an angel’s power, they breed slowly. We do not.”

That was true. If spire mothers were less picky, many more eggs would be born, and maybe even skip the hatching pit phase, too. An army of young and all-too-eager demons, ready to take on the aliens, like Zel had been slowly working her way toward, before she’d even known aliens were coming.

“Maybe,” Mia said, “we won’t need that? If Lilith is right, maybe James and I can fix everything?”

Belor snorted. “You think things will go that well?”

“I… suppose not.”

Wings out, Belor bowed. Deeply at that. Mia blinked, and Belor’s smile morphed into a serious look as he righted himself.

“When the time comes,” he said, “call for me. I’ll be there. Farewell Mia, and thank you for freeing me.” And before Mia could respond, Belor’s smile snuck right back in there, and he winked at her. And licked his fangs. Flirt.

“W-Wait,” she said. “Belor, the whole place is a battlefield. If those angels—”

Belor chuckled. “You care for me? How sweet.”

“That’s not what I meant! I just meant… you could die, trying to do this.”

“That I could. That I could. Goodbye, Mia.” He nodded and raised his right wing. “Romakus, I won’t say I’m happy you ran the moment things went poorly for us, back in the day. But I’d never have taken you under my wing if you weren’t the smart, conniving little demon you were. Farewell, old friend.”

Romakus smirked. “Farewell, giant pain in my ass.”

Belor nodded again, turned, and faced Vinicius. Vin had put himself between Belor and the path back, four arms slightly raised at his sides, and claws slowly grasping the air.

Vin shook his head. “No.”

“Vinicius,” Kas said. “Belor—”

“No.” Vin slammed his tail against the sand. “I have heard these speeches before from this serpent. He will betray us.”

Belor flared his wings and grounded himself. He had no tail, unlike Vin, and instead of clawed feet, he stood on massive hooves that sank into the sandy ocean floor.

“Get out of my way, Vinicius.”

“No.”

“Vin,” Mia said. “I know you don’t trust Belor, but—”

“You do not understand.” Vin snapped his glare around Belor’s wing and set his dragon eyes on Mia. She took a half-step back. “His pretty words mean nothing. I know him, better than even his closest.” The titan nodded at Romakus. “I know this vile creature.”

Belor stepped to the side. Vin stepped with him.

“Your memories,” Belor said, “are as blurry as my own.”

“But they seeded my knowing. A hundred. A thousand memories. We killed each other for scraps from our fathers. You, manipulating, controlling, and scheming. You, conqueror, with no line you would not cross.” Vin stepped toward Belor, talons sinking deep into the ocean muck. “Deceiver.”

For a moment, Mia thought Belor would try and get around Vin again. He had a country to run.

But he didn’t. He matched Vinicius’s step with his own, flared his wings wider, and held out his arms in a warrior’s invitation. And like a match to gasoline, their auras poured through the tunnel, heat and rage and hunger mixed into a shot glass and forced down everyone’s throat.

“Is this how it’s going to be, Vinny?” Belor asked. “I have to kill you to take back what’s mine?”

“It was never yours.”

Belor raised his arms, and the playful voice vanished. “It has always been mine!” The voice of a king, and a dictator, powerful, full of bass and gravel and conviction.

“Vin!” Mia yelled. “Let him go! If he betrays us, fine, we deal with it then. But—”

“Not if,” Vin said, taking another step toward the spire ruler of the Unholy Lands. “When.”

Belor snarled. “You speak as if you did not build a bridge of bodies of your own, ravager.”

“I never lied about who I was.”

“You haven’t the mind to even conceive of lying! If you had any intelligence, destroyer, you would have betrayed and schemed your way to victory as often as I did. But you cannot make me feel shame for destroying our brothers and sisters. They were as mindless as you, chasing their need for blood and skulls above all else. Even the other spire rulers were shortsighted fools, growing fat on death with no thought for anything but indulging themselves! I fought for something greater, Vinicius. I fought to lift Hell above its past, above this debased eternity as a piss pot for the Great Tower’s unworthy. I was trying to change the world! But you, despoiler, you left nothing but ashes in your wake. You may not lie, but you have never explained to your new friends the depths of your depravity. If they knew how truly vile you were, Vinicius, they would wonder how the father of murder could stand at your side for five minutes without vomiting! Butcher.”

Mia took a step toward them, but Adron got his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back.

“Adron! I need to—”

Too late.

The massive demons threw themselves at each other. Vin had an advantage: four arms and no wings meant he was free to pounce at Belor with no concern for fragile membranes. But Belor flapped his wings once, hard, and with a powerful jump, launched into the air and over Vin’s back. On the other side of his fellow child of the Old Ones, Belor paused for a second, and looked back to the path back to the shoreline and False Gate.

But then he looked back at Vinicius, roared, and charged. Vin rolled to his feet, scattering clumps of sand and rocks as the soft ground struggled to handle his weight. He ducked low and threw himself at Belor at the last moment, and his right shoulder crashed into Belor’s gut and chest. Spikes pressed against dark red skin, almost piercing, but Belor pressed against Vin’s shoulders and halted the pounce. His hooves left thick tracks through the fine sand, but came to a slow halt as the two demons wrestled.

It wasn’t like watching most demons fight. Even devorjin brutes, nine-foot-tall juggernauts of pure muscle, had a certain brevity to how they fought. Quick clashes, slashing off body parts — or ripping them off — and then hurrying on. Belor and Vin were different. They were twelve-foot-tall goliaths, and each crash of their bodies sent vibrations through the ground. Ripples pulsed through small puddles, before an errant tail or hoof ripped a new trough through the sea floor.

“Stop them!” Mia yelled.

Everyone looked at her, back to Vin and Belor, and shook their heads. No one said a word.

Belor and Vin were too strong.

Vin got two hands around Belor’s right arm and threw him. The ground didn’t agree with him, the mud and fine sand sliding out from under his claws, and Vin fell to a knee. But he’d put enough force into Belor to send him half flying, half stumbling to the side, and his back crashed against several of the black rib pillars; he was too big to fit through them.

Mia squirmed in Adron’s grip. “Vin! Belor! Stop!”

Belor didn’t so much as look her way. His aura exploded, and Mia reached out with her invisible hands to squash it. She kept it from running over the group, but that didn’t stop it from bubbling inside Belor and Vin both as they came at each other again.

Mia looked back at the others. James’s half of the crew were dumbfounded. Julisa looked torn between scared, worried, and aroused. Romakus was staring. Adron was snarling. Even Kas, an eyeless shark with forward-pointing horns, looked wary as he slowly reached out a hand, and helped Adron pull Mia back from the two behemoths.

Belor fell, and Vin was on him in an instant. He roared down at him, using his four arms to pin Belor’s two, and his spikes glowed amber.

“Vin!” Mia screamed. Nothing.

Belor’s right wing swung forward and dragged a thumb claw down Vin’s face, splitting skin over the eye socket and sending blood pouring down Vin’s cheek and jaw. Vin stepped back, twisting his head from side to side and painting the black sand red as he covered his eye. It wasn’t ruptured, but his forehead, eyebrow ridge, and cheek were split to the bone.

Belor wasted no time. He ran at Vin, but dodged to the side at the last second and flapped both wings down at Vin’s face. Vin raised two hands and guarded his eyes, blocking his vision, but Belor kicked instead, drilling a hoof into Vin’s gut. Vin fell back to a knee, and Belor pounced him, drilling Vin to the ground instead.

Their wounds reopened. A hundred cuts from swords, spears, tridents, and claws spilled thick red until it leaked down their arms and legs. Small holes in Belor’s wings opened wider. It didn’t matter. Belor fell on top of Vin and clawed at him with both hands, ripping at Vin’s forearms, while Belor’s wing claws scraped at the demon’s head, trying to tear out his eyes again.

Vin’s two lower hands raked at Belor’s guts, shredding his skin. But one claw snuck past skin, sank into meat, and Belor’s roar rose an octave as he grabbed the hand and pulled the offending claw out of his insides. Mistake. Vin’s other three hands clawed at Belor’s chest and arms, and the other titan had to jump back to keep from getting ripped open. A thick tail smashed against a hoof, and Belor fell to a knee, enough time for Vin to pounce at the man again and send him to the ground.

Vin tore at him, roared death at him as he mounted him and clawed at his opponent’s face. Belor blocked with his forearms and tried to use his wings again, but Vin was ready for it and caught the two wing claws coming his way with his spare hands. He was free to rip at Belor from on top.

Adron’s grip loosened, his widening eyes locked on the barbaric sight. Kas’s arm fell. They were hypnotized.

Mia wasn’t. She broke free and ran at the two giants.

“Vin! Vinicius! Please stop! Please! You have to stop! I don’t want to use the leash. Please don’t make me! Belor could help us! We need—”

Vin raised an arm and slashed at Mia. She froze.

The leash kicked in on its own, and Vin’s arm stopped mid-air. Giant claws hovered centimeters over her head, and she stared at them as the titan’s body lit up with red pulses. Like tiny bolts of red lightning, amber and red waves shot out from her necklace, down an invisible leash, and into Vin’s body. Pain. The rune built into the leash was pain, and it played that very simple song with the implanted power of the Death’s Grip spire. The leash would hurt Vin on its own if he tried to remove his collar, tried to flee from Mia, or… tried to hurt her.

Vin’s roar of bloodlust turned into a roar of agony as he fell over, crashed onto his side in front of Mia, and spasmed on the sand. His four arms, two legs, and tail turned into a twitching mess, and he sank his claws into the mud to stabilize himself as his muscles fought against him. But the leash poured pain into him, and for all Vin’s strength, he couldn’t help but tremble on the sea floor as red electricity crackled along his body.

Mia stared down at the demon, then at Belor. Belor got up, looked down at Vin, took one step toward his writhing body, and stopped when Mia pointed a finger at him.

“Touch him,” Mia said, “and you’ll wish I let Vin kill you.”

Belor locked eyes with her, his breathing ragged, and blood flowing from his new wound. But each breath softened his gaze, water on a fire, and he took a step back and clutched his punctured gut.

Mia touched her necklace, held the small amber jewel in her palm, and silenced it. The pain rune quietened to nothing, and Vin’s twitching body came to a stop, still on his side in the muck.

“Go, Belor,” Mia said.

“Mia, I—”

“Go.”

The spire ruler met her eyes again, but her gaze was on Vin now, and she dared not look away as Belor walked off in her peripheral vision. He spared a few glances back, maybe wanted to say something, maybe apologize for continuing the fight when he’d had the opportunity to go. He kept his mouth shut and left.

Minutes went by. Vin slowly got to his knees, panting and bloodied. The fine sand and muck of the sea floor spread beneath his weight. His tail was still, like a dead log on the ground. And finally, he lifted his head and looked straight at Mia.

He said nothing. No apology. No desperate plea for his case. He just stared at her, waiting.

“I thought for sure,” she said, “after all these months, after all the… moments… that you’d changed, Vin. Maybe. Just a little. I thought maybe you liked me. I thought maybe you even…” She bit down the urge to cry, and looked back at the group. They were all staring.

Vin said nothing.

She continued, gulping down the burn in her throat. “I know the children of the Old Ones have a desire to fight each other. I get that. But not this. This wasn’t just that. This was you, being exactly what Belor said you were.”

He said nothing.

“I guess I was just being a stupid little girl, thinking you’d change for…” Her voice wavered, and she breathed deep, forcing herself to stop trembling. Tears fought to escape, and she clenched her eyes shut until they stopped. “I gave you so many chances. I reached out to you so many times. So many times!” The wavering came back, and she couldn’t stop it this time. “I liked you, Vin! I thought you were just a mad dog at first, but then I saw more to you! I thought maybe you were more than you seemed, especially after what Kas told me. But then you just… just… kept going back to this!” She gestured around at the enormous ditches the two titans had ripped out of the ground.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her face boiled. She clenched her hands at her sides and glared through blurry eyes at the bastard, waiting for some kind of response.

Vin said nothing.

“I… don’t need you anymore. I can protect myself now.” She forced down another breath, ignored the pain in her lungs, and grabbed her leash necklace. Vin flinched, but she didn’t activate it. She slipped the necklace off and threw it in the sand in front of the titan. “I can use the music now. And I have friends. They can protect me if something gets too close. And they would never attack me! I can trust them. I can’t trust you. Belor was right! You’ll never change. You’ll never… change…” She was sobbing now, and she didn’t care. “So go! Get out of here! Fuck you! Go!”

Vin stared down at the leash, a tiny thing compared to the thin black chain circling his neck. Slowly, he slid his claws around the necklace, picked it up, and stared at it, mesmerized. A symbol of his enslavement, or freedom. And the only thing that left Mia feeling safe enough to let her guard down around him.

Not anymore.

She turned around and walked away, hands in fists at her sides, shoulders shaking, drops of salt water falling from her chin. The group continued to stare at her, but Mia didn’t look at them. Eyes straight ahead, she walked, followed Cerb’s footprints, and everyone’s heads turned to follow her as she moved past them and took the lead.

She looked back. She didn’t want to. Told herself not to do it. But she couldn’t help it. She wiped away her tears, looked back long enough to see Vin still kneeling, and staring. Not staring at the necklace anymore, but her. Too far to see his facial expressions, but his face was aimed directly at her, the leash necklace in hand.

Her muscles fought to turn around, demanded she run back to him and try and make things right. Apologize. Ask him to apologize. Do something, anything to make things go back to the way they were a month ago, when Vin had held her in his hands. And if Vin had started running back to her, she knew her stupid heart would have welcomed him with open arms.

He didn’t move.

She clenched her eyes shut again, walked on, and the crew fell in behind her.

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

Even in the depths of the sea, they could tell when twilight came. Tiny amber veins lined the black ribs of their tunnel, pulsing with the slow heartbeat of Mother Hell, growing dimmer.

As the crew slowed, Mia found a couple of ribs to stand between, and she stared out at the giant wall of red water held up by the song. She’d never played a song capable of manipulating water before. She wasn’t sure she could do it even now. But damn, it was surreal, the titanic wall of see-through red just meters from her face, with dark silhouettes lurking within. She touched it, traced her fingers along it, and marvelled at how the water spilled over her fingers like breaking the surface of a stream.

Adron and Kas joined her.

“You alright?” Adron asked.

“I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

She choked on a little laugh and peeked back past Adron to the others. Everyone sat in a circle, Livian — and even Julisa — taking special care to help Azreal and Noah sit comfortably. Everything was wet, the ocean floor a weird cross between fine sand and mud, but that was comfortable by Hell’s standards.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Vin…”

“Vinicius,” Kas said, squatting beside her and leaning against a black rib, “was at war with himself.”

“Yeah?” Mia asked. She knew what he was going to say, but she wanted to hear it, anyway.

“He was torn between remaining who he was, and embracing the change you offered, Mia.” Kas clicked twice in his throat, nodded, and nudged his giant shoulder into hers. “But being around Belor was too much.”

“Like a sober addict falling back in with old friends, and the addiction comes right back with them.” She sighed, leaned into Kas’s big arm, his knuckles on the sand, and she pressed her forehead against him. “Why can’t more demons be like you, Kas?”

“Some are.” He nodded his shark head to Adron.

Adron laughed and shook his head. “Nah. I’m a schemer. Give me power and I’d happily rule all of Hell with it.”

Mia laughed, hugged Kas’s giant arm, and gave Adron the tightest hug around the waist she could manage.

“You’re not so bad,” she said. And he knew it, too. Like an incubus, Adron shrugged, rolled his eyes, and hugged her back. “You know where I’d be without you two?” she asked. “Probably still Zel’s puppet, trying to master weird auras to break Vin.”

Kas shook his head. “No.”

“No? Think I could have—”

“Dead. The rider would have found and killed you.”

She facepalmed, punched the big demon in the arm, and joined the others. It felt good to smile.

“Molech can sink this bridge, right?” Romakus asked, gesturing around as he sat with the others.

“Maybe,” Mia said. “But he seemed pretty adamant on making sure he caught me, not killed me. I’m guessing he went back into the caverns below, after the aliens were stopped. I bet the angels started fighting him.” And maybe each other. Keziah might be dead. Like Oriyah. Another angel who’d helped her and paid the price.

Mia sighed.

Livian shook her head. “You trust Molech not to simply kill you if he cannot have you?”

It felt weird to hear Livian’s voice again, joining in the conversation. Hadn’t really heard her talk since the group got split up in the Black Valley, a lifetime ago.

Mia shrugged. “Maybe? I can play music now and defend us. Plus, it’s not me playing the bridge song now, it’s Hell. If Molech tries to stop it, I can interfere. And to keep the song going is actually pretty easy, with Hell helping.”

“Mia’s strong,” the little bat girl Yulia said. She perched atop her brute’s shoulder, nodding as she looked back and down the path they’d walked and the hellhound footprints. “We’re sure James is ahead?”

“He better be,” Romakus said. “James and Yos.”

“And Cerberus,” Mia added. “I bet he stuck with Yosepha and James, and they’re staying ahead so James and I don’t get too close and—oh damn it.” With a slap to her forehead, she got to her feet and rubbed her hands together.

“Mia?” Noah asked.

“Just telling James we’re good.” And with a little focus, she pulsed the ground with some far-reaching vibrations. Dun dadadun dun.

And right on cue, gentle vibrations pulsed back. Dun dun.

“We’re good!” she said. “We’re all good. Everything is good. Everything is fine.” She sat back down in the muck, threw away the awful memories eating at her, and got comfortable, like a trip to the beach.

Everyone looked at her, waiting.

“What?”

Julisa snorted. “Mia, we saw strange flesh grow from your body. You took off your armor, walked toward the battle, and started to change.”

“It was terrifying,” Yulia said with a squeak.

“Intriguing,” Faustinus said.

The other incubi chimed in.

“Interesting.” Locutus.

“Unusual.” Oudoceus.

“Fascinating.” Gallius.

Mia winced, pulled her knees up to her chest, and played a song. Out here in the sea, there were apparently no remnants, and Mia had to reach far to draw on the trace amounts of resonance and essence remnants bled into Hell. The forbidden tree grew slowly, a tiny bud of dark, withered wood that poked up from under the black sand in the middle of the group.

“It’s like in that dream,” she said. “The vision I had, where I saw Caera dead.” Adron hissed, and she offered him a sad smile for his dead friend. “David transformed, into a giant thing, gross and… and biblical. And when Azreal — and then Noah, you two dumbasses — nearly got themselves killed, I felt it coming out of me. It was like… it was different. It wasn’t music. It was tingling through my skin and burning in my veins, like it had to get out, and it just… did.”

“Cerebral,” the tregeera Silvina said. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. I like to think. Picked it up from my brother.” She gave the tiger a half-hearted glare. “I was getting desperate, and sad, and angry, and it all happened so quickly, and I just knew that I could do something! Even with the alien silencing all music, I could still use it, whatever ‘it’ is.”

Azreal sighed, sitting beside Noah, though more half-collapsed against his fellow angel than sitting.

“You should have run,” he said.

“I’m sick of running.”

“Oriyah,” Noah said. “She died so you could run.”

Mia glared. “Don’t! Don’t give me that shit, Noah. It was a battle, and no one knew what was happening with the angels switching sides randomly and Molech fighting then helping then probably fighting us again, and… and… I wasn’t about to lose you! Either of you!” She pointed at the two angels, scrunching up her nose. “For all you know, I’ll need you two in the future even more, so you shut up and stop throwing yourselves headfirst into every fight we get into. Okay? We had enough of that with Vinicius!”

The words tasted bitter. Maybe Noah hadn’t needed to risk his life at the end there, but Azreal had. If he hadn’t jumped in the way of the alien blast, they’d all be dead.

Mia sighed, opened her mouth, and closed it. Even as she squirmed in place, trying to find the words to somehow simultaneously punish and apologize to the two angels, Azreal and Noah met her gaze.

A moment of silence. A single moment turned into an eternity, Azreal’s amethyst eyes, and Noah’s silver and howlite eyes gazing into her soul.

Those two would die for her, no questions asked. And she had no idea how to feel about that.

“The other rapholem,” Kas said. “She said something about the souls on the surface?”

“Oh, right,” Mia said. “Um… she said… I shouldn’t blame myself. I don’t know what she meant.” Mia plucked a tiny fruit from the budding forbidden tree and tossed it to Noah, and Noah gave it to Azreal.

“Three guardians are dead,” Noah said, “if Keziah is to be believed. And the reaper Othrael is either drained, or also dead. For an exarch to use their power in battle is almost unheard of, and I can only imagine it will take years for one to recover. And during that time, they cannot do their duty: affecting the surface world. And with three guardians dead, especially Oriyah—”

“What was special about Oriyah?” Mia asked.

Azreal and Noah looked at each other, wincing.

“Oriyah and Othrael,” Noah continued, “have spent the past century the most active of the reapers and guardians, affecting the surface. They…” His voice trailed away. Mia waited, but neither he nor Azreal filled in the blanks.

She frowned and played another song. Beside the growing tree, a solid base of metal emerged, a wide bowl, and silvery liquid filled it. She half expected Noah and Azreal to tell her to stop, but they said nothing, sad eyes locked on the scrying pool as Mia’s song birthed it from the sand.

Mia crawled forward, knelt in front of it, and stared down into the silver. “Scrying pool, show me…” Time to test out how omnipotent scrying pools were. “Show me what’s happening, because some exarch angels are no longer affecting the surface world.”

The image in the silver liquid changed and flowed, showing the entire planet at large. Well, damn, it was actually doing something. The image flowed downward toward the United States, straight down into it.

The air was filled with ash. Great columns of it climbed into the sky, attacking the clouds and hiding them behind layers of gray. Forests burned and hillsides collapsed. Lakes churned with mud and more ash, some raging and overflowing, others disappearing as their contents drained into fresh ravines tearing through the Earth from underneath.

The land was coming apart.

Fissures tore the world open, some narrow, some as wide as roads that opened into vast chasms. Mountainsides fell, avalanches tearing them down and bringing forests with them. Rivers disappeared under rubble or poured their guts into the same cracks that killed the lakes.

At the center of it all, the ground began to sink. For kilometers in all directions, the ground was sinking.

“Did… Did the aliens… reach the surface world?” she asked. She tried to swallow, but her throat had run dry.

The image in the bowl zoomed in closer to the ground. Mia tried to stop it, to say something and make the scrying pool cease, but her lips froze as the image raced over the land. Ravines ripped the ground like old wood splitting with age.

“I know where that is,” Noah said.

“Geography isn’t my strong suit,” Mia said. “W-Where?”

“That’s Yellowstone.”

“Ye—The Yellowstone Caldera? That—” Mia covered her mouth and watched as the flowing image flew over towns and cities. Forest fires raged and tore across the land, surrounding towns and blocking off streets. Homes fell, tilted weight ripping them from their struts, or were consumed by the hungry flames.

People were screaming. People were dying. And the scrying pool was merciless. The image showed another city, and another, some where no activity was happening at all, but thousands gathered on the streets and stared up at the darkening sky, filling with heavy gray clouds billowing up from the distant land. Not distant enough.

The sun disappeared.

“Mia looked away, body shaking, fingers gone cold. “Oh my God. I… What? What happened?”

Noah and Azreal traded glances again, and she almost screamed. If they didn’t answer, she’d—

“Exarchs,” Noah said, “guard humanity, the guardians most of all. Sometimes that means affecting individuals, or stopping a disease from killing the entire race, or nudging a distant meteor aside until someday when humans can defend themselves. Or...” He gestured to the scrying pool.

Mia forced down the tears. She’d just finished crying. No more.

“And Othrael?” she asked. “The reaper?”

Noah frowned and shook his head. “I suspect it will take longer to see the effects of his absence. But sometimes… people need to die.”

She got up, waved a hand, and dismissed the bowl with a simple tune, melting it back into the ground.

It wasn’t her fault. That’s what Keziah had said. The rapholem had taken the initiative, recruited some exarchs, and forcibly affected the war in the afterlife. And she’d done that, knowing the surface would suffer for it.

“I thought exarchs only did little stuff!” Mia yelled. “I thought guardian angels did stuff like nudge a person out of the way of an oncoming car, and reapers might do the opposite. And muses give some artists or engineers inspiring dreams! I thought…” Only the two colossal walls of seawater rumbling with quiet bass filled the following silence, and gentle white noise, like putting her ear to a conch.

“I assume that is often the case,” Azreal said at last. The poor guy coughed, but when Mia came toward him, he dismissed her with a small wave. At least he didn’t cough up blood this time.

She wanted to hug him. Hug, squeeze him, bury her face in him and thank him for being such a stupid asshole. Best she could do for the stoic dick was pluck another fruit from her tree and give it to him.

He continued. “We angels are mostly ignorant of what they do. They keep to themselves, and do as they will.”

“And exarchs just showed up out of nowhere?” Mia asked. “I mean, in history.”

Noah gestured with a wing. “We know they were born when humanity reached a point of development where they started coming to Heaven and Hell. As if the Great Tower had finally truly awoken, the great cycle began, and souls at last filled the afterlife. Only then were the exarchs born. A couple of million years ago, perhaps ten? We cannot remember. Before then, the nature of the Great Tower was different, but the details are long lost to us.”

David would have had a field day with this, trying to figure out exactly what caused the birth of the exarchs. Humans reaching sentience, apparently, but what the fuck did sentience even mean? No one had an answer for that, on the surface. The Great Tower knew, though.

Mia paced from side to side and across the wide tunnel, from one rib to another. The surface world was suffering. Was that a bad thing? She was trying to save the Great Tower, and to her, the afterlife was life. Was the surface world even something to care about anymore, if everyone who died went to Heaven or Hell?

Yes. Yes it fucking was. But she hadn’t made the call. Keziah had.

“Keziah,” Mia said. “What do you know about her? She’s met David, apparently, and parted on good terms.”

“Nothing,” Noah said. “She said she was a first-rank rapholem, but there is no chance of that. She was as strong as we.”

“Stronger,” Azreal said.

Noah nodded. “Stronger. But I have never heard her name.”

A mystery woman. She’d been so beautiful, and just like Noah and Azreal, she’d worn an invisible weight around her shoulders. The dread, maybe?

Mia shivered.

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

~~Day 149~~

A couple of days later, an unfortunate reality set in: walking in a straight line with zero visual change of any kind, was fucking boring. The second day on the seafloor, she’d been damn thankful for absolutely nothing to think about or worry about, just walking. By the third, she prayed to stumble onto a boulder or something to spice up the journey.

Alas, the seafloor was mostly just sand, sand, and more sand, extremely fine and full of muck. People’s claws and hooves sank in it, making walking slow, and her mind wandered. She hoped Cerb was okay, and Yosepha, and James.

Come night, she sat around a scrying pool while the others slept, and she stared down at the growing deaths in her world.

Azreal and Noah were awake. The mikalim looked mostly fine, still favoring his bad leg and wing, so no flying, but Livian had let him ride on her back a few times; a seven-foot-tall, muscular, masculine man he may be, but he was just a child compared to a ten-foot tetrad.

Julisa had carried Azreal every step of the way, and she’d delighted in being a total bitch about it. But then, her word hadn’t had the usual bite it did. Maybe she was sad Vinicius was gone? Was the bitch even capable of sadness?

“Mia,” Noah said, gesturing to the scrying pool with his good wing. “You will watch yourself into a stupor.”

“That’s the Gen Z life, Noah,” she said. “Doomscrolling.” He raised an eyebrow, and she couldn’t help but giggle. “I know, I know. I just… still feel bad. I never expected this war would get living people killed. But at the same time, those living people almost feel like they don’t really exist to me anymore, you know? They die, and then they just… come here, or go to Heaven. And it’s been so long since I was up there.”

“Not long. But you have changed much.”

She groaned, crawled around the pool, and sat between Noah and Azreal. Azreal raised an eyebrow, and she stuck her tongue out at him and leaned against Noah’s side. Much as the ground was kinda gross, it was also warm and comfortable. She relaxed, and with Noah and Azreal on their butts, she was free to get comfy with them.

“I… have changed, a lot.”

Azreal nodded. “You give orders now.”

“Well, I mean… It’s not like I wouldn’t take orders too. But when shit hits the fan, you all keep looking at me to make decisions.”

“Apologies,” Noah said, eyes staring out at the scrying pool only a few feet from them.

“Scrying pool,” Mia said. “Show me a nice bonfire, please. Something quiet, with lots of crackling.”

And in the darkness of the tunnel, with its dimmed amber veins barely providing any light at all, the scrying pool joined in with its own subtle amber, oranges, yellows, and flickering reds. The crackle of burning wood was like balm on a wound in her head.

“Vinicius,” Noah said. She flinched. “You let him go.”

“I did.” Wound re-opened.

“You could have killed him. Used the leash to incapacitate him, and any of us would have killed him for you.”

She sighed. “Julisa might have taken issue with that.”

The angel looked at the giant woman sleeping nearby. “Perhaps. Or she would have been delighted at the chance to eat his heart.”

Mia snorted and reached for Cerb—and he wasn’t there. Whining, she traced lines in the sand where he should have been napping in front of her, heads fighting for space on her lap. Yosepha would take care of him, James too, she was sure.

“Vin,” she said. The word tasted bitter. “I gave him so many chances, and I thought for sure…”

“Stupid,” Azreal said.

She scrunched up her nose and glared at the man, but all that did was pull a tiny smile out of the stoic asshole.

“It’s not stupid,” she said. “You guys weren’t there at the start, okay? When I first started working with Vin, he tried to attack me once. He was terrifying. But after a while, we learned to get along, and I… I could…” She pulled her knees up to her chest, hugged them tight with one arm, and drew more lines in the sand with the other. “There were times when he’d be gentle. Times when he’d just sit there, hold me, and I could tell he was trying to find… I don’t know. I don’t know, okay? There was something there, and even Kas said…”

Noah nudged her back with his wing; feathers were so soft. “What did Kasimiro say?”

“That… back when Livian and the others rescued James in the Black Valley, Vin stuck around to fight, and he would have stayed until he’d died. That’s what he’d wanted. He only followed Kas and escaped when Kas told him that he… that I… that maybe…” Why was this so hard! Her eyes started burning again, and she rubbed them until she saw spots. “Vin walked away from that fight for me. Vin, the ravager, the butcher, the demon you’d fought before we’d ever met!” She aimed a finger at Azreal and Noah. “That guy who wandered Hell with Cain, just so he could kill as many demons, souls, and angels as he could, was trying to change. I don’t know if he was trying to change just for me, or if he felt there was something in him that wanted to. Maybe he saw Kas, and thought he could be like him?”

The three looked at the sleeping shark-dinosaur, lying on his side beside Adron.

“Kas had been a grumpy asshole from the start,” she said. “But I learned he was different from other demons. He’d seen stuff, on the surface, that’d changed him. That was the first clue! That told me demons weren’t just mindless killing machines, you know?”

Azreal snorted, and she jammed him in the leg with her thumb, right on a wound. His purple eyes shot wide open, and he clenched his teeth as he glared swords straight at her.

“Think what you want, angel,” she said. She ground her teeth and met his glare with her own. “But Kas and Adron care about me, each other, and others. And Romakus loves Yosepha. Yulia really liked Galon, maybe even loved him, I don’t know. And I thought maybe Vin was fighting against that demony part of him, and some other part of him was coming out. If he’d changed for me, that’d be really… something, you know? Maybe kind of fucked up, a twisted and dumb fantasy, but also kinda… special.”

“You thought this through,” Noah said.

“Yes. Yes I did. Because I am a psychologist. A hypothetical psychologist, but still! I wanted to help him, and for a while there, I thought I even liked him. And maybe he liked me. But then Belor showed up, and everything went to shit.” Sighing, she leaned into Noah’s side, head against his arm, and stared down into the flames in the scrying pool. “I watched too many old Disney movies growing up.”

“You did,” Azreal said, nodding. She glared at him, but the angel looked at the bonfire in the silvery liquid too, eyes lost in the dancing flames like any man’s would. Her, too.

Slowly, words crept up her throat. They burned every centimeter of the way, and she wiped her eyes again as the fire blurred.

“I feel… alone.”

“Alone?” Noah asked.

“Yeah. Romantically, I mean. I thought maybe Vin…”

Noah gestured to Adron and Kas with his good wing. “And those two?”

“Adron is my friend. My fuck-buddy friend, I guess. I like him a lot, love him even, but not really like that. And I’m not sure he even realizes how much Hannah’s death hurt him. And Kas is… I don’t know.” ‘I don’t know.’ She’d said those words how many times the past few days? Maybe she really wasn’t cut out for this psychology gig. “I love Kas too, but he’s never looked at me that way before, you know? I think he thinks of me as someone precious who needs protecting, but never romantically.”

Azreal squinted. “He has no eyes.”

“You know what I mean!” She groaned and wiped away a tear. “I look at Romakus and how much he loves Yosepha, and it makes me ache. And Yosepha loves him back. She tries to hide it, but I see the way she melts when Romakus holds her. It’s more than just sex.” Though Romakus, the kinky bastard, had apparently found an equally kinky, anal-obsessed lover in Yosepha. “I’m so lonely. Which is pathetic, I know. I can have an orgy whenever I want. And we’re on a quest to save the universe. I don’t have time to feel lonely. But I can’t help it. I—”

Noah took her chin, turned her head, and met her eyes. She blinked up at him, but there was little she could do against the intense gaze of the angel and his silver eyes.

He was so damn handsome. Long, dark-blonde hair. A short beard, so short it was barely more than stubble. He could have walked out of an ad for cologne that smelled of pine.

He held her chin and stared into her soul. Minutes sneaked by, and Mia didn’t move a muscle, melting into the gaze of the soldier’s inhuman, perfect eyes. It was simply not fair how dreamy angels were, handsomeness so perfect, they looked less human than they did sculptures, carved by a master.

The first time she’d met those eyes, they’d been trying to kill her. And that one encounter had affected them so much, they’d fled Heaven, literally betraying their home, so they could help her. If the angels ever captured them, they’d probably get their own thirty pieces of silver before having their heads cut off.

Another set of fingers on a large hand gently turned her head, and she took a slow breath as her trembling body faced Azreal. Same thing, all over again. She plummeted into his amethyst eyes, and let the minutes go by. Azreal had tan skin and dark, messy hair that stopped shy of his ears. Clean-shaven, too, letting her see every pore in his flawless skin, and the hard chisel of his jaw.

“You,” Azreal whispered, “are… infuriating. Even now, I bet you think of Vinicius, and worry for him. You cared for him.”

She wanted to get mad, but she couldn’t look away or even blink, as another tear welled in her eyes.

“I can’t help it,” she said.

Azreal nodded, slowly letting her chin go, but didn’t look away. She didn’t either.

“And that is why we care for you,” he said.

She gulped, and when Noah turned her back to him, she drifted on a cloud until she met his gaze again.

“We don’t know what the future holds,” Noah said. “I suspect Azreal and I will die on this quest, Mia.”

“But—”

“But that is not the goal. The goal is to protect you. And it is not a burden.”

Finally, she blinked. “Not a burden? You nearly died! You both—”

“You are one of the kindest souls I have ever known, Mia. And you are wonderful.”

She stopped breathing. “Wonderful?” she mouthed.

“You are not a burden. Even if you were not an unmarked soul, Azreal and I would do as we have done again, because you are… special, to us. To me.”

“I am?” Her fingers tingled.

He nodded. “We enjoy your loud rants.”

“H-Hey…”

Azreal coughed. “And your obnoxious prying.”

“Hey!”

Noah held her gaze. “And your desire to give everyone a second, or third, or fourth chance, even when they do not deserve it. You are a mischievous, rambunctious, libidinous, volatile—”

She frowned. “I’m not sure I’m liking all these words.”

“—empathetic and compassionate soul. And that is why we care for you, more than we should. Even Azreal.”

She swallowed a boulder and looked back at the rapholem. Sure enough, he was looking at her with the same, quiet intensity, and the tingle in her fingers moved up into her chest and turned into fluttering.

“You too?” she asked.

Azreal nodded.

“B-But… I’m not like Odette. I remember what you told me about her, and—”

The rapholem reached out, wiped his thumb across her cheek, taking a tear with it, and lowered his hand.

“You deserve better than us,” he said. “That is part of why Noah and I left to feed on demon hearts. We didn’t… want you to see us that way.”

Noah’s wing nudged against her back, cradling her and her thin red silk in softness. “You are… captivating, Mia.”

“Captivating?”

“Yes. We enjoy listening to you speak. We enjoy your words, and the depth of your passion for your interests. We enjoy your silliness. We even enjoy your absurd sexual appetite, or rather, how comfortable you are with it.”

From hypnotized to embarrassed, she looked away and failed to stop the blush from taking over her body.

“I mean, I didn’t—”

“If we were in Heaven,” Noah said, “and Azreal and I had come to know you, as we know you now, we would have spent every moment of your afterlife with you, until the day you moved on to the Great Tower.”

“Every… moment?” she asked, slowly turning to Azreal, whole body blushing.

Azreal nodded, never wavering or looking away, just meeting her gaze like he could hold her eyes for eternity.

She was still upset, and sad, and lonely, and feeling vulnerable. She knew it, too. But these two. These two! These… damn… idiots…

Sighing, she leaned up against Noah, and kissed him. His eyes widened, and he froze. Well, good! Finally, she had the upper hand. She nudged her nose into his cheek, pressed her lips against his, set a hand against his chest, and kissed him. Her eyes drifted half-closed. His stayed wide, deer in headlights.

Human lips. The angels had human lips. Soft. Inviting.

She turned, and careful not to put her weight on the wounded man, she leaned up to Azreal, and kissed his lips, too. And just like Noah, he stared at her, dumbstruck.

“Morons,” she said, and snuggled into Noah’s side.