Gerry danced backwards and deflected the attack with skill. “I didn’t kill your daughter. Lucifer and Seere killed her. If you’re looking for revenge then I’d look over there.”
Ava wasn’t stupid enough to take her eye off her target, and she didn’t need to. She could feel the battle behind her. Archangels were battling Infernal Lords. It was hard to miss, and it put her in an uncomfortable position. She’d selected her most powerful form to fight this battle for good reason. You didn’t stand toe-to-toe with the Prince of Darkness at anything less than full strength, but she wasn’t fighting one of her older brothers. She was fighting a weaker Dux; weaker but faster.
Gerry slid away from another attack, maneuvered to the side, before pressing his own. It forced her to bat her wings and spin in the air with a flourish. He came in low and would have done some damage if her blade wasn’t already waiting for him. He moved away at the last second, avoiding a cut that would have bitten deeply into his shoulder.
Ava contemplated decreasing her strength and increasing her speed. Gerry was a competent swordsman, but he was still only an Infernal with a few hundred years of experience under his belt, a millennia tops. Ava had been a soldier since before mankind existed. His speed was the only thing that was saving him.
A hideous scream broke her concentration and made her decision for her. Uriel took the full brunt of a blast from Lucifer to the front of her armor. The Divine Steel held for a fraction of a second before blackening and splintering under his energy. She screamed as the blast burned into her flesh, but tried to use her own momentum to avoid the full force of it. Seere pressed her at the same moment. She was mid-rotation when his giant broadsword slashed upward across her hamstring. It caused her to stagger, and she would have died from his follow-up stab if her orb didn’t pulse and throw the Great Dissenter backwards. She intercepted Lucifer’s next blast with the Orb, but it was clear the archangel was hurt.
Michael was still engaging Satan, so it was up to Ava to help. She disengaged from Gerry with a few powerful beats of her wings and rocketed toward the Morning Star.
***
“Is this what you wanted, Brother? Are you happy?”
Michael replied by swinging the shield right into Satan’s human-face. It busted the King of Hell’s nose pretty good, but the face moved with the blow. The dragon-face roared its reply, and since Michael’s shield was out of position he received a full bath of flame across his shoulder and side. He felt his flesh singe from the heat, but his armor held. He brought the shield back around with the intent of taking off Satan’s head, but the Infernal Lord ducked under the attack and backed away to avoid any follow on attacks from Michael’s sword.
Behind them battle raged. Both could hear Seere, Lucifer, and Uriel duking it out. That made Satan smile. Michael took a step in that direction, but Satan countered it and cut off the archangel commander’s chance of helping his ally. Satan had the upper hand here. He didn’t have to worry about Uriel attacking him from behind. His brothers were more than able to keep her busy.
“So?” Satan reached toward the middle of his back.
A section of his Divine Steel armor broke off. It was a sword. He brought it around to his front, twisted it, and pulled it apart into dual blades. That had always been Satan’s greatest strength in battle. His whirling faces and whirling blades gave him a versatility that not even Michael could compete with.
“No.” Michael replied firmly. “I don’t wish to fight you, Brother, but you continue to make the same mistake time and time again. You are literally insane.”
“Is it insane to question? Is it insane to think for myself? If yes, then I am most definitely insane, but it also makes you a fool, Michael.” The human-face was back with the nose already mended. “You’re nothing more than daddy’s little errand boy. You have been since our creation and you will be forever unless you stand up for yourself.”
Satan took a few practice swings with the dual blades and they sang through the air. The song was death, and more than one angel had felt it. He’d even killed other archangels with the blades.
“You mistake loyalty to my father and family as foolishness. You have nothing but loyalty for yourself. You would slaughter Lucifer and Seere in a heartbeat if it would take you one step closer to our Father’s throne, so don’t talk to me about sanity.” Michael shot back.
Satan didn’t reject the statement. He just shrugged. “Our brothers know that. They even expect it.”
“And that will always be your greatest weakness, Brother.” Michael brought his sword and shield into a ready stance.
“Weakness doesn’t survive in Hell, Michael.” Satan charged, his dragon-face unleashing a torrent of flame to block the archangel’s line of sight.
Uriel screamed off to their side and Satan feinted one way and went the other. Michael was ready though, he’d fought his brother’s deception before. Their swords met in a vicious collision. The shockwave spread outward from the point of impact.
“No.” Michael was distracted by the physical reaction of the attack. All he was able to do was get his shield up before more flames tried to roast him alive.
He was forced to split his concentration between his attacking brother and the shockwave from the swords as it slammed into the gymnasium with the force of a Category 5 hurricane. Brick and mortar were ripped from the structure. Part of a wall crumbled from the force, but it didn’t completely flatten the building. It hardly mattered. What did matter was that the spell that had turned the Infernal King of Hell insubstantial had failed.
Satan was loose on the world in all his terrible glory.
“Will you look at that?” Satan’s human-face smiled at Michael.
“Satan, no…!” Michael started, but the Infernal Lord had already unfurled his black wings and launched himself into the air.
Radar all over the area would be pinging what looked like a flying aircraft carrier moving at speeds far exceeding anything commercially available. Michael didn’t have the luxury of hesitation. His own white wings sprang open and he launched himself after his brother.
There was no hiding it now. Heaven and Hell had come to Earth.
Only One of Us Is Walking Out of Here
Gerry watched Ava rocket into the air and dart toward Lucifer. He hated the relief that spread through him. As a warrior he was supposed to rise to the occasion, but it was clear that his survival depended on him being half a heartbeat ahead of the Dominion, and he’d barely accomplished that. Getting a breather from the fight was a welcome break.
A short-lived break.
A pressure wave washed over him without effect. He was still insubstantial, so he barely noticed it, but he did notice the gymnasium suffer a crushing blow. It was quickly followed by Satan and Michael leaving the battlefield. Gerry was fine with that. The Divine commander was way out of his league. His eyes swept the field and focused on his next target. He didn’t have wings like the angels, but he was big and strong. He bent his legs in a textbook squat and pushed off with tremendous force into a high arc. He soared through the air like an artillery shell.
He rose up to twice the height of the waring Lords before he reached the apex of his jump and began to plummet back to Earth. He got a good view of the action, and it wasn’t great. Lono was lying in a dismembered heap off to his right. Ava’s attack had greatly weekend him, and her soldiers had finished the job. Jeb was in dire straits. His Infernal form was battling two guardians and their tandem attack was getting through his defenses and wearing him down. Jezebel was missing a hand and had deep lacerations across her naked chest.
He ignored them all as he focused on his target.
Emmanuel and Lucian fought with vicious skill. The Dominion of Charleston swung his curved saber and barely missed spilling Lucian’s guts all over the ground. The Dux’s retreat left him vulnerable to a follow-up punch from a gauntleted fist. Gerry heard something snap in the other Dux from a hundred feet in the air as Lucian’s Infernal form stumbled drunke
nly. He was clearly stunned, and Emmanuel moved in for the kill. He would have succeeded if Gerry hadn’t come plummeting out of the night like a falling star.
The Dominion was monitoring the æther around him, so he felt Gerry coming. He literally had eyes in the back of his head. He rotated and gave a powerful slash of his blade. Gerry barely avoided it by bringing his knees up into a tucked position and summersaulting in the air. The blade passed harmlessly several feet below him, and it set him up to land ass first.
He put a burst of power into his version of an Infernal cannonball.
The earth roiled beneath the Dominion’s insubstantial feet as ground exploded around him. The impact was enough to shatter the spell and allow Gerry to interact with the world again. That saved his life, because he was too slow to recover. Emmanuel’s blade passed cleanly through his neck as Gerry straightened out of the giant crater.
“For the love of…” Emmanuel growled before he rolled away. Lucian leapt into the previously occupied space where his claws stabbed harmlessly into the ground.
Now Emmanuel had a choice: attack Gerry and keep him from inflicting damage on the human world, or keep fighting Lucian. The Dominion made the decision immediately. He came at Gerry. The æther shimmered and made him substantial. Gerry brought his own blade up over his head to block the blow, and felt the full brunt of Divine strength plow into him. The Dominion’s downward stroke smacked into Gerry’s own Divine Steel blade, forced it back, and into Gerry’s own armored shoulder.
“AHHHHHHH!” Gerry roared in pain and the powerful angel pressed the attack and forced the blade deeper into Gerry’s body.
“Go back to Hell, spawn of Seere!” Emmanuel spat.
Gerry was all for keeping a few tricks up his sleeve in case of an emergency, but now wasn’t the time to hold back. He brought his other hand up and pointed it right at Emmanuel’s face – except it wasn’t a hand anymore. A thick barrel sat where the hand used to be with the glowing blue energy of Gerry’s æther gathering within it. Emmanuel might have been able to get out of the way but he was throwing all of his weight forward into killing Gerry with his own sword. He’d sacrificed his footing for a killing blow, and Gerry made him pay.
A blast of Infernal æther concentrated into a short beam of energy erupted from Gerry’s hand cannon and struck Emmanuel in the neck and face. The angel’s armor protected him from the brunt of the blast, but it was enough to stun him. Gerry pulled back and delivered a resounding kick to his chest. The kick threw Emmanuel out of the crater they were battling in. Gerry tripped over the far end as he stumbled backward from the strike and ended up landing on his ass. His sword was still partially imbedded in his body and he could feel the æther inside of him leaking out of the wound.
Gerry looked up and saw the Dominion stalking around the crater with his sword held in front of him ready to finish the job. He made it halfway to Gerry before Lucian jumped on his back, and this time he didn’t faze right through the angel. He landed like a predator. Hands and arms wrapped around the angel’s throat in a headlock. Legs wrapped around the angel’s waist like a python while his jagged teeth started to rip into the angel’s armored shoulder.
Emmanuel howled in pain and tried to beat his wings to gain altitude. Lucian adjusted his full body lock and clamped down on one of the wings. Together, the two combatants tumbled to the ground. They landed in a heap but neither let up as they grappled for position.
Both Lucian and Emanuel had lost their swords and were fighting with their hands, feet, and teeth. Emmanuel tried to gouge out the Infernal Dux’s eyes to get him to release the headlock. He couldn’t reach them, but he was able to grab a hold of Lucian’s elongated snout. The angel squeezed with all his might and Gerry heard Lucian’s nose and jaw break from the pressure. He let out a guttural wail, but he didn’t let go.
Gerry saw his opportunity and took it. He leapt to his feet, braced himself, and yanked his sword from his shoulder. He couldn’t stop from screaming when æther and strength poured out of him before he was able to staunch the flow. His combat form suffered by shrinking a few feet and a wave of exhaustion made him stumble, but he saw an answer to all his problems up ahead.
Emmanuel was striking Lucian repeatedly with his elbows. It was the only way he could inflict any damage on the rear naked chokehold Lucian had him in. Gerry couldn’t see the fear on the angel’s face when he saw Gerry sprinting toward them with his sword at the ready, but he did see his strikes falter. Lucian used the opportunity to tighten his grip, which sealed both their fates.
Gerry jumped the last twenty feet with the sword raised high over his head and the blade pointed down. Lucian didn’t see it coming, but Emmanuel struggled to the very end. With the amount of force generated with Gerry’s strength, the leap, and the masterfully crafted Divine Steel Blade the Dominion’s armor didn’t stand a chance. Gerry would have loved to pierce the angel’s heart, but the blade ended up coming down in the area of his upper stomach. The sword punched through the front of the armor, through Emmanuel, through the back of the armor and into Lucian.
Both combatants roared as pain seized control of them, and Gerry made it even worse by twisting the blade and torqueing it back and forth. It didn’t take long after that. To Emmanuel’s credit, Lucian died first. The Dux of Charleston exhaled his last breath and an explosion of æther erupted outward from him. Gerry drank in as much as he could to heal himself, but without preparation he didn’t get more than a fraction. It was still enough to bring him back to one hundred percent and then some.
Emmanuel’s expiration wasn’t any different. Despite their opposite sides and centuries of hatred for each other, there wasn’t any difference between how the Dominion and Dux of Charleston perished. Another explosion of æther announced Emmanuel’s death, and Gerry tried to drink in any of that æther that he could. It filled him with energy and something else. He couldn’t describe it, but there was something there that hadn’t been present before.
He didn’t give it much thought as he yanked his sword out of the two dead ætherial beings. He had other things to worry about.
***
In the heartbeat between disengaging Gerry and turning her attention on Lucifer, Ava focused on Uriel. What she saw reaffirmed her faith in her leadership. The archangel who commanded her was fighting two Infernal Lords by herself. This was the stuff legends were made of.
Ava beat her wings fanatically to come to her commander’s aid. Uriel parried a thrust of Seere’s sword, dodged a blast from Lucifer, and whipped around to bring the butt of her spear crashing into Seere’s head. The Great Dissenter bellowed in pain as he crashed into the ground, and it would have been an opportunity for Uriel to strike a devastating blow, but multiple blasts from The Morning Star drove her back. Seere recovered quickly and resumed his attack.
Ava knew what she had to do. The last exchange showed her the best course of action. Even injured, Uriel was a better fighter than Seere. All she needed to do was draw Lucifer’s attention for a moment so Uriel could strike a crippling blow. That would even the odds, and both angels could turn their full attention on the Prince of Lies.
A micro-correction with her wings had her on a new course and barreling toward Lucifer. She didn’t expect to catch a former member of the Seraphim Guard unprepared, but she was willing to take any luck her Father provided.
All of it happened so fast Ava didn’t have time to react. Another energy blast erupted from Lucifer’s helmet and speared through reality toward Seere and Uriel. The beam was almost to the battling giants when it stopped. The brilliant strand of energy hovered in the air for a fraction of a second before Lucifer whipped his head around toward Ava. The beam followed its master’s eye line, snapped toward Ava…and went right through her. She, in turn, continued rocketing forward and flew right through Lucifer’s shoulder and halfway to Seere and Uriel before stopping.
smiling.
Now she had a choice to make. She could abandon Lucifer to wreak havoc and assist Uriel, or she could transcend back to the physical plain and press her attack. She hung suspended in the air for several seconds staring down at Lucifer who seemed content to wait for her to make her decision.
Death made the decision for her.
She heard the ætherial scream of Emmanuel as he died and felt the explosion of his æther out into the world. She sensed most of his essence escape to Heaven and another’s descend into Hell.
Her fleeting thought for her fellow Dominion and lost daughter cost her the initiative. Lucifer launched another assault on Uriel, which confirmed Ava’s final fears. The spell containing the Infernals had finally failed. She didn’t know if it was the release of æther from Emmanuel’s death, or the cost of battle, but either way there was no way to contain the Infernals now.
“Ava,” Uriel gasped as she fought off another relentless attack by Seere and Lucifer. Everyone was substantial now, and the Infernals were like sharks smelling blood in the water. “Fall back and regroup!” She ducked under Seere’s blade and lashed out with her fist.
The Great Dissenter dodged the punch, grabbed her arm, and tossed her like a sack of potatoes. Uriel twisted in the air, flapped her wings to right herself, and took a full blast from Lucifer in the chest. Her armor buckled, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air as the archangel was blasted backwards. Now that she was substantial, her fall was lethal.
Like many schools, the location where Armageddon began was in a residential area. So far, the damage had been localized to the school’s property, but that all changed when Uriel fell from the sky like a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot meteor. She crashed into a housing development back first and flattened half a dozen houses. Ava felt the souls of those humans being snuffed out by the impact. Uriel didn’t stop there. She skidded across the neighborhood like a car hitting the breaks. A dozen more houses crumbled and nearly fifty more humans died before she came to a stop. Her spear and orb carved up another few dwellings as she instinctually kept hold of her weapon, and anything the orb touched went up in flames.
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