by R. W. Holmes
“I've never seen one either” admitted Artemis. “It would probably be best if we-,”
The sound of metal grating violently rang out through the air as Grim was suddenly ripped off the back of Kiki's car by an eight foot tall, long-legged, owl-faced bird of prey. A second crunch rang out as the troll was hurled onto a nearby town car in the next lane.
“GRIM!” Debra cried out fearfully as her troll companion's new ride nearly skidded off the highway, before the car's driver managed to compensate at the last second.
The woman driving the car screamed all the while, unsure of what to do, before deciding more screaming to be appropriate as a second owl swooped down at Grim.
Grim ducked, and the owl demon's talons ripped the top of the town car off and exposed the driver to the open air. When Grim dared to peek, he spied that the driver was now without possibly the most important piece of equipment needed to operate the vehicle correctly: her head.
“I WOULD APPRECIATE SOME ASSITANCE!” Grim cried as he hopped forward and seized the wheel.
Kiki slowed down and pulled up to the car, allowing Artemis to rip the poor, headless woman out of her vehicle and cast her aside as Debra clamored over and into the next car.
“Zinerva!” snapped Gael.
“I'm on it!” Zinerva snapped as she began hurling fireballs up into the air. “I really wish someone else could do something, though.”
Artemis stood up from his seat and raised his fists pitifully. “I do wish dearly that Angelica had invested some time into developing my abilities like Gael did yours.”
“Yes, on that note, I have some interesting news” Jacobs announced fearfully. “The first bit is that Sauriel will not be rejoining us, as Heaven is prepared to let the universe die.”
“Really?” Zinerva asked as she hurled another fireball. “Why am I not-, Ooh! I got one!”
The group winced as the demon fell, colliding with a truck behind them and causing it to sweep several of the other vehicles behind them up into a massive highway pileup.
“Oops...” Zinerva murmured guiltily.
“Yeah, I don't think it mattered” Gael said as he looked past the devastation, and out to the perilously close cloud of winged monstrosities nearly upon them instead. “What else are you getting, Jacobs?”
Father Jacobs furrowed his brow and focused.
“There's nothing to be done about the scroll, Father. I am sorry.”
“He says it's too late” said Jacobs. “Either we run from them forever, or we find some way to hide the scroll. There is no way to undo what has already begun.”
“If Sauriel isn't returning to us, then you may as well hand me his sword” said Artemis.
“No!”
“I don't think that's for the best” said Jacobs.
“Yeah, he said if a demon touched it it would kill them” added Zinerva.
The first few Stolas spawn that had arrived were joined by several more of their kind in the air directly overhead, prompting the group to stop its routine of avoiding Zinerva's fireballs, and instead begin looking for opportunities to dive once more.
“Damn it!” Artemis spat as he wrenched one out of the air and hurled it down at the rapidly moving pavement. “Would somebody else please find a weapon and help?”
Bang!
Everyone in the car jumped as Father Jacobs suddenly pointed the pistol he'd gotten from Debra earlier up into the air and shot one of owls mid-descent.
Gael stood up next then, his feet and legs happily anchored in the back seat where being tossed out was far more difficult, and raised a hand up to the sky.
“STOP!”
The growing horde of Stolas spawn overhead halted mid-flight, causing them to plummet, and allowing Kiki and Debra to speed off in their vehicles.
“OH MY GOD! When did you learn how to do that!?” Jacobs exclaimed in awe.
“When I was dealing with monsters the likes of which you can't even imagine” replied Gael. “And then we fought the R'lyehans afterward, too.”
“Hah!” Zinerva laughed.
On the other vehicle the group had accidentally commandeered, Debra succeeded in lifting her purse up to Grim.
“Throw some of the ammo in there over to Father Pacifism” she said to her troll companion. “I think he's finally ready to start shooting.”
Grim nodded and reached down into the purse, but just as he finished up gathering several spare magazines, he heard a peculiar sound.
“Hey!” Grim shouted.
The others in Kiki's car looked over just as he hurled the magazines to them.
“Something is wrong!” shouted Grim. “I hear something.”
“What?” asked Artemis.
“Hooves” replied Grim. “Should we be worried?”
“I would be worried if you were hearing something that wasn't there” said Artemis. “But I think I hear it too.”
“I'm going to go ahead and point out the obvious fact that they are the horsemen of the apocalypse” Kiki chimed in fearfully. “Also I'm pretty sure I see mean green Pestilence coming up on us in my right side mirror.”
All eyes snapped to the road behind, and sure enough, the greenest of the horsemen approached on a tidal wave of wilting grass and the already rotting corpses of drivers unlucky enough to be caught in his wake.
“Can you stop him too?” Jacobs asked Gael hopefully.
“I could barely stop an elder thing” Gael replied pessimistically. “And doing much more than stopping one outright killed me.”
“That green fuck is gaining on us!” Grim called over from the other car. “What's our plan?”
“We could throw Zinerva at him” said Gael.
“No, you idiot, we can't!” Zinerva replied frantically. “If you try to summon me you come back where you left, and that means the cars will have already moved on.”
“Let's take a page out of Artemis's book and try the obvious first” Father Jacobs said as he maneuvered to perch his arms on the back end of Kiki's car. He took a first optimistic shot at Pestilence, and failed miserably to get anywhere even near the horseman with it.
“Okay, let's just ask Debra to do that” Zinerva said as Father Jacobs fired another two shots. “You're never going to-,”
Father Jacobs's fourth shot struck Pestilence dead in the forehead then, but it did little more than make him flinch in surprise.
“Anyone else have any bright ideas?” Grim called once more.
“Actually, I have a really stupid idea that might work” said Zinerva. “I don't know though, it kind of relies on the concept that God might not have thought of something.”
“God thinks of everything” replied Jacobs. “Including imps coming up with hair brained ideas when the world is ending before its time is due. He works in mysterious ways.”
“I think that means you should just try it” said Gael.
“I'm not doing a thing” replied Zinerva. “I was just thinking that maybe the horse isn't as powerful as Pestilence.”
Gael stared back at Zinerva for a moment as he tried to think of the exact reason for her idea being as ridiculous as it sounded, but couldn't. Looking back once more, and realizing Pestilence would very well be within earshot in just a few moments, he couldn't help but agree. The horseman's actual horse was, while just as green, rotting, and clad in ornate armor as Pestilence, still just a demonic horse.
“STOP!” he yelled at it.
And then Pestilence was flying. Not because he wanted to, but because his horse had just come to the dead stop commanded of it after galloping at an otherworldly two hundred miles per hour.
“Oh...” Zinerva moaned as Pestilence collided with the pavement. “Oh, that is so, so satisfying.”
Pestilence continued to roll for a moment longer, and for a second everyone wondered if such a simple technique had killed him, until the horseman reached out with one hand and bored straight through the concrete of the highway.
“Well, it slowed him down...” Artemis lamen
ted. “But now the owls are nearly upon us once more, and he'll be back after us in just a moment.”
Debra screamed then and swerved her car directly towards Kiki's own vehicle. Kiki reacted quickly, swerving away just enough to avoid a collision as she and the others looked over and spied a second, gaunt, frail-looking horseman already riding alongside their own vehicle.
“ST-,” Gael started, before finding Artemis pulling his head down seconds before a Stolas spawn could relieve him of it.
“Zinerva, do something!” Artemis bellowed at the imp.
“I AM!” Zinerva screamed as she sent enormous plumes of multicolored flames out in every direction. “There's too many of them! I can barely protect the cars!”
Crash!
Kiki screamed in both horror and anguish as Debra's swerving caused them to collide, and took the initiative to push back so that neither of them would be run off of the highway.
“Artemis!” she called out fearfully. “You have to do something!”
Artemis looked about himself grimly, and then out to Pestilence. The horseman was rapidly approaching again, and this time he had War with him. With all of the commotion still raging around the lowly, ordinary Baphomet spawn, he realized that Sauriel's things had gone untouched.
“Aw, what the Hell...” he muttered with a wry snicker. “It's not like it'd make things any worse, right?”
“Wait, what!?” Kiki exclaimed as she watched Artemis reach down into the back seat out of the corner of her eye. “Artemis, what are you doing?”
Artemis retrieved Sauriel's belt and sword and raised it up.
“If I didn't know any better, I'd say I was praying for a miracle” Artemis said as he drew the sword.
In the middle of a highway leading out of the Mars city of Eiffel, a beautiful and beat up classic roadster raced on alongside a beat up, half-wrecked town car as all of Hell chased after them. Grim swiped at swooping owl demons as Debra swerved this way and that to avoid Famine's terribly powerful sword swings, and Kiki sacrificed her dearest possession to ram against Debra and keep the two of them from being forced off the road. Father Jacobs fired wildly into the air alongside Zinerva as she tried to clear away the hordes of owl demons going specifically after her summoner, while Gael kicked, clawed, and scrambled across every vacant inch of the car in an attempt to avoid the demons, while also throwing out whatever feeble, verbal commands at the ones nearest him he could.
Then, Artemis burst into brilliant, white hot, luminescent flame. So bright was his sudden ignition that the lesser demons were repelled momentarily, clearing the skies in the process, and leaving only Famine and the other two rapidly approaching horsemen nearby.
“ARTEMIS, NO!” Father Jacobs screamed despite himself. “YOU CAN'T! SAURIEL SAYS THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT!”
“That's... fine...” Artemis growled weakly.
The flames intensified then, and Artemis was forced to drop forward and grab at his seat's headrest to stay standing. Despite the holy fire burning his body away, Artemis suddenly seemed very calm and unburdened.
“I just want to say, it has been a privilege to fight alongside you all” said Artemis. “I was born a creature that wanted nothing but the thrill of battle, and it was thanks to you all that it ended up being so much more.”
“Artemis, no-,” Kiki started, before a sudden flare up in the holy flames completely consumed Artemis's form and reduced him to little more than a burning statue. Even as Sauriel's armor manifested around him, it was clear that all but the very last traces of Artemis had already burned away.
Gael, though, spotted the moment before him for what it was. Standing up from his hiding place in the back of the car, he threw his hands out at the horsemen's horses and screamed “STOP!”
Famine flipped back off of her horse at the last minute to skid along the road, and Pestilence, who'd seen it all before, let himself be thrown through the air before cleanly landing atop his feet with ease.
War, though, was far smarter about it. Calling to the Stolas spawn overhead, he embraced his horse's sudden stop and leaped with it, allowing a trio of owl demons to carry him forward. With a heavy thud that nearly caused Kiki to lose control of her vehicle, he landed atop the back of the roadster with ease.
War identified the scroll in Father Jacobs's hand, and then raised his enormous, glowing, vermilion greatsword high into the air. “Apologies, priest” he said casually.
Father Jacobs closed his eyes in response, resigning himself to his fate as War brought his blade crashing down.
And caught steel.
A hoarse, but vibrant rasping emanated out from within a heavy, brilliantly orange helmet as black smoke poured out through the T-shaped opening on its front. Stepping forward, the smoldering, angelic figure that wreaked of brimstone and was wreathed in orange, primal flame hovered over Father Jacobs on equally orange, flaming wings that smoldered and spewed more black smoke, and forcefully shoved War's greatsword away.
War narrowed his eyes at the figure incredulously. “You” he growled. “The coward who folded before Death, doing this? How? What's even left of... Artemis, was it?”
“Courage” Artemis replied proudly. “Valor” he continued as he raised his sword up high and it, too, burst into flame, expelled black smoke, and wreaked of brimstone. “HONOR!”
War parried the blade as it came down, but didn't anticipate what the poor quality of his footing would do. The trunk of Kiki's vehicle gave out, and War tumbled back onto the road. Within moments though, and with a haphazard snap of the horseman's fingers, a wreath of flames bubbled up from the pavement as his steed rose out of the ground and caught him.
“S-Sauriel?” Father Jacobs queried to the heavens. “What just happened.”
“I'm sorry, I can't respond right now” Sauriel's disembodied voice replied shakily. “The entire barracks just lost its mind.”
Zinerva hopped up off of the car and onto one of Artemis's shoulders and flexed her own demonic might to will her crown into being.
“Come on!” she snapped at Artemis. “Let's show them what we're made of!”
Artemis responded by swinging his sword upward, releasing an arc of smoldering light that carved the sky in twain and felled a dozen owl demons instantly. Zinerva followed up with several, creeping jets of various colored flames that surged back along the highway road and swept the horsemen's horse's hooves out from under them.
“My God! Could it be!?” Father Jacobs exclaimed jubilantly. “They're holding them back!”
Gael gazed out beyond the fight Artemis and Zinerva were winning and locked eyes on the ever-growing horde of creatures coming their way in the distance, as well as the near-ruined city of Eiffel on the horizon.
“No” said Gael. “They've just bought us time. We need a plan, or they're just going to be overrun in a few minutes when more demons show up. Or worse.”
“And what do you suggest?” asked Jacobs.
Gael frowned and shook his head. “I have no idea” he said honestly. “A teleporter would be nice, but that doesn't even exist unless the conspiracy theorists are right about the government being able to jump from planet to planet instantly.”
“Elves can teleport” said Kiki. “Not with an artifact like the scroll, though. Also, I'm going to run out of gas in about twenty minutes if we're not caught first anyway.”
“Then what are we to do?” asked Jacobs. “We can't give up the scroll.”
“We could give it to Artemis and tell him to fly towards someone with a ship” said Gael. “We all die, but I think the universe lives another day. Honestly, I'm just terrified of what happens after all seven seals are opened at this point. Things are already really bad.”
In the middle of the road, where Artemis flew alongside the Debra's and Kiki's cars, Zinerva continued her all out bombardment on the ever-growing horde of demons rushing after them. As brilliant as it was to see the colorful display of destruction raining down on her enemies, she couldn't deny a certain wearines
s growing within her.
“Artemis...” she murmured.
“Yes?” replied Artemis, his voice now hollow and vibrating like a wind chime.
“There isn't a version of this where we get out alive, is there?” she asked, despite already knowing the answer. “It would be a miracle if even one of us survived.”
“It would be a miracle if the world survived” Artemis admitted grimly.
Zinerva nodded solemnly and stopped her assault, if only to better look at what would surely be hers and the others' end.
“Do you think this makes up for any of it?” she wondered. “For being what we are?”
“We were not made to apologize for our existence, Zinerva” Artemis replied coldly. “We were made to destroy, to ruin, and to spread malady. If there is anything to apologize for, it is turning our back on our purpose.”
“And are you going to apologize for that?” asked Zinerva.
“No” Artemis said gruffly. “I'm going to stand here and fight to the bitter end with all of you. It is better to die with friends than to live with nothing.”
“You sound very sure of yourself” mused Zinerva.
Artemis held up his sword and said, “The part of me that was capable of lying has been extinguished.”
Zinerva smirked as she let out a deep, saddened sigh.
“What do you think Cypress is up to?” she asked.
“He's watching the news” said Artemis. “With Kennedy and Angelica.”
“That means Angelica is watching you right now” Zinerva said with a mischievous smile. “I bet she's proud of you.”
“I could care le-,” Artemis started, before finding very quickly that he really couldn't lie, and earning an uproarious laugh from Zinerva for it. “There's no way to know for sure.”
“You two are so alike” Zinerva mused next. “Hot-headed, easily manipulated, feisty troublemakers. Kennedy and Cypress are likable scoundrels, and Gael and I are a pair of mischievous cats hellbent on getting killed by our own curiosity. How lucky are we that of all the demons in Hell, it was us that got to be summoned?”
Artemis would have felt his eyes water up if the constant, burning fire that comprised his body would allow for it, but the sense of duty he'd inherited from Sauriel's blade insisted upon something else anyway.