Drawing deeply from within himself, Ambriel summoned the power to push the lightning back to match Richard's attack. Two bolts arced together in between them. The pure energy danced around itself, forming a ball of plasma that burned a bright blue that illuminated the entire room. The grimoire suddenly vanished from Richard’s right hand, much to Aerin’s horror. She watched as it burned up, disappearing from sight. With his hand free again, he grabbed the staff with both hands and pushed his weight down upon it to compensate for Ambriel’s newfound counterattack. He grunted hard and pushed the staff forward, giving it his all.
“I gave you a chance!” Ambriel shouted. “I wanted you to prove me wrong! But you were weak!”
“Weak?!” Richard fired back. “You think this is weak?!” He screamed as lightning surged around him. “You only want to hold me back!”
"Richard!" Ambriel shouted. "You have to stop this! The spirits inside the relics, they're controlling you!"
"No!" Richard exclaimed. "I am the one in control! Can't you see that?!"
"Aerin!" Ambriel turned his head and shouted toward her. "I can't move! You have to hit him for me!"
Aerin had barely kept up with the fight in front of her. She was too tired, but hearing her name called out like that filled her with enough strength to force herself to her feet. She braced herself against the wall to keep from falling back down and raised her left hand toward Richard.
"No!" Richard cried out. "He wants to keep the power contained! Locked away! Useless!"
"I'm only doing what's best for humanity!" Ambriel screamed over the loud crackling.
"What's best for humanity?!" Richard repeated. "Is that a joke?!" Rage filled his voice as he shouted. "We have the power to change the world!"
"You can't control it!" Ambriel cried out, hoping to reach the boy.
"You don't know that! Aerin!" Richard suddenly shouted to her. "We could keep what happened to us from ever happening to anyone else! We could change the world!"
Aerin rolled the thought around her mind for a moment. Her thoughts raced back to that day, to her family, to Isaiah. She saw their smiling happy faces, and then they faded away into the obscurity of her mind. Slowly, she raised her right hand toward Ambriel.
"Aerin!" Ambriel shouted. "Think about Isaiah! Everything he fought for! What did he die for?! Not for this! Don't let it be in vain!"
Ambriel had said exactly what she needed to hear, and she knew he was right. No matter how tempting the offer, how much good she could do, or what she could change, she had made a promise. She brought both hands together into a clap that generated multiple cyphers around her, more than she had ever managed. They spun around between her palms like a gyro, and she readied the spell to throw.
"I'm sorry." The words escaped her mouth as she hurled the spell toward Richard.
"As am I."
The staff vaporized from Richard's hands in the blink of an eye. He took hold of the lightning with his left hand and caught Aerin's attack with his right. Time seemed to slow for him as he held the explosive spell in his hand. Aerin watched on in horror as he gazed at the intricacies of it, it's spinning parts, and its pulsing blue disks. Suddenly, he hurled it toward Ambriel. The spell barreled through the torrent of raw plasma and struck Ambriel's defensive spell. The attack exploded in a massive flash that sent Ambriel backward into a large stone wall. With his defense gone, the lightning sped forward, quickly following suit. It struck him in the chest and electrified every part of his body. He convulsed as his body cooked. When Richard finally relented, Ambriel slid slowly out of the crater his body had formed and collapsed into a crumpled mess on the floor.
“No!” Aerin screamed as she dropped to her knees.
She raised her hands and brought them together once more, but nothing happened. Her attack had drained her of all strength, and she could only watch helplessly as Ambriel's once beautiful white wings turned to black ashes by his sides.
"It's a shame."
Aerin's mind locked up at the sound of Richard's voice beside her. As he spoke, cold beads of sweat trickled down her neck and her heart began skipping beats, filling her chest with intense pain.
“We could have been something, you and I. We could have changed the world. But you chose wrong.”
Richard's footsteps faded into the distance behind her, and she was left in silence. She mustered every bit of strength she could manage just to crawl to Ambriel's side. He was motionless, and Aerin's eyes dropped to his chest to look for any hints of breath. All signs of life had faded from his face, and she reached up and touched his cheek in disbelief. Suddenly, the pendant snapped from around her neck. The small cross fell into the sand below her. She reached down and slowly scooped it up, but as she did it seemed to fall apart in her hand, falling like sand between her fingers. She scrambled frantically to catch it, but it was gone.
Without any hint of warning, Aerin’s mind went white as she experienced the worst pain of her life. She doubled over and grabbed hold of her sides as she let out a blood curdling scream. Her shoulder blades burned as the flesh ripped and tore behind her. Her essence twisted, her very being rewritten into something new. She felt the powers she had before vanish as they were replaced with something different. Two wings shot up from her back and extended toward the ceiling before falling down by her sides in a bloody clump. The sand clung heavily against the blood matted wings, and Aerin fell down face first into the dirt. She breathed heavily as her body went limp from the mind numbing pain.
The desert around her was an endless expanse of sand. The ridge that she had traveled over was nowhere in sight. The wind had begun to blow around her, and it swirled sand into the air, cutting off all visibility. Her new wings, filthy from their birth, drug behind her in the dirt, leaving identical troughs on both sides in their wake. Her foot twisted abruptly in the sand, and Aerin yelped as she fell forward. She was done. Her strength was gone, her will was gone, everyone was gone. As the sand slowly began to cover her, her consciousness faded in and out. Before finally succumbing to the darkness, she could hear the faint sounds of voices in the distance.
"Over here!" One voice, a man’s, called out.
“Oh no!” Another cried. This one was younger, belonging to a girl. “She’s really hurt… Poor thing.”
“What should we do?” The man asked.
“Bring her. Something bad happened here, she’ll tell us what.”
“Right.”
Aerin suddenly felt herself moving again as something picked her up.
“B-Be careful, Sammy!” The young girl called out. “Don’t hurt her!”
Chapter Twenty One
John sat quietly as he stared down at the red leather bound book in his hands. The white space around him was silent and Meredith sat beside him without making as much as a peep. She watched him, his gaze focused on the book in his hands as beads of sweat formed on his forehead and neck. They rolled down, dripping onto the white floor below. John moved his right hand up and ran it through his hair which was damp with sweat. The memories were beginning to take a toll on his body. He sighed and leaned back against the bookshelf behind him before speaking.
“So that’s how it happened then, huh?”
“Yes.” Meredith agreed with a little nod.
“So…” Meredith could see the questions swirling about John’s head as he attempted to disseminate the overload of information he had absorbed. “If the Angel dies, the Slayer, they’ll become an Angel?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Meredith affirmed. “The Angel must be preserved. New Slayers can always be made through pacts, but we can’t create new Angels.” She sighed at her words as she could tell they sounded heavy. “That’s just how it works.”
“I see.” John closed his eyes as he mulled the thought over in his mind. “So that was you, then. Wasn’t it? In the desert, I mean.”
“It was.” She answered. “Ambriel was a dear friend of mine. We had planned to meet at the temple after he returned the relic...
But when Sammy and I arrived, Aerin was all we could find.”
“So you took her in?”
“Of course!” Meredith seemed rather shocked at his question. “I couldn’t just leave her there!”
“Right, right.” John shook his head, having realized how dumb his question had been. “So what happened after that?”
“We nursed her back to health and she told us everything.” Meredith explained. “It was hard for her at first, but eventually she opened up. With us she had something she had lost a long time ago, a family.” A nostalgic smile crept up on the small girl’s face. “She didn’t have anywhere to go, so she stayed with us. I taught her almost everything she knows today, you know.”
“Well, it shows.” John remarked, garnering a small blush from Meredith, but she quickly shook it off.
“For the next few hundred years we did everything we could to fight against the same group you faced today.” Meredith stated.
“Irileth.” John said as he remembered the small girl; a pale, cold parallel to the bubbly angel beside him.
“Yes. She, together with Richard and William, has made it their goal to see our world destroyed.” Meredith leaned back against the bookshelf as she rested her hands on her knees. “It’s always been one setback after another, you saw that today.” She sighed heavily, sounding almost defeated.
John glanced up to the white void above him as he remembered everything that had happened earlier. The attack from the Throne, the return of the first Demon he ever faced, losing so many squads, almost losing Lazarus, the destruction of HUNTER, the pain he had seen in Aerin’s eyes, and the tears Meredith had cried. There was almost too much to process. Too much had been lost, too many people had died. Suddenly Meredith’s voice brought him back from his daze.
“This next book.” She held out her hand and a small black journal appeared. It looked worn, the spine was cracked, and many smaller notes had been stuck within it. “It’s a record of our greatest setback.” She stated. “I can feel Aerin’s presence. I was worried she’d be here.”
“Why this one?” John asked as he took hold of it, but found that Meredith wouldn’t let go. When he raised an eyebrow she spoke.
“A lot happens in this book, so we’ll be reading from my copy. I’ve stitched a lot of memories together to give you a better understanding.” An emotion was on her face that John couldn’t quite put his finger on. “You’ll need the context, this one is too important.”
“Okay.” John nodded his head in agreement. He slipped his thumb under the cover and flipped it open. “Let’s go find her.”
The pages beneath John’s hand were warm to the touch, almost like they were alive. They felt familiar, yet unknown at the same time. As he flipped through the first few pages, he could feel his consciousness slipping away. Memories hit him like a rush of wind as his vision blacked out. He felt his body getting cold as a sense of vertigo filled him. Soon, he was transported once more into a mind that was not his own.
Aerin sat forward in the hard metal seat, keeping her back away from the cold wall of the helicopter behind her. The thick fur coat she wore hardly did anything to keep the chill off her bones. She yawned and stretched as she glanced out the window beside her, thankful for the thin layer separating her from the frigid wasteland on the other side. It was far too early to be on a mission; then again, this mission was far too important to wait.
She glanced around the chopper, everyone was silent. Hardly a peep had been made since taking off from the carrier an hour or so before. She looked at the two marines sitting across from her; she could see the fear in their eyes. Some of them had been on missions with Leviathan before, but nothing like this. They weren’t ready, no one really was. Never before, at least as long as Aerin had been around, had they faced something like this before. Morale was at an all-time low.
“Good morning Leviathan!” The voice was hard to hear over the droning of the helicopter’s blades overhead but it came through everyone’s communicator that they wore on their wrist. “It’s 10:30am and currently cold as shit!”
Aerin let out a small laugh at the man’s assessment. It had done well to take her mind off of her things, but her gaze soon returned to the window. She watched the frozen treetops disappear below as the helicopter quickly flew over them. The man across from her, his gaze pointed toward the window, ran his fingers through his short blonde hair as he quickly glanced over to Aerin before he spoke again.
“Better bundle up if you’re planning on going outside today!” He smiled as he spoke with great inflection. “There’s snow in the forecast today along with an 85% chance of badass! Also on the menu-“
“I thought I said to cut the chatter.” Samuel’s voice suddenly rang out in everyone’s ear, cutting off the man.
“You did.” The man replied with a smile, a small glint in his bright blue eyes. “But I chose to ignore you.” He said, garnering a few smiles from the men beside him and surely from the others in the helicopters that flew in formation around them. “Look around you.” He made an exaggerated motion with his hand as if Samuel could see. “These people need something to listen to or they’re gonna go crazy, right Aerin?” He said, turning to her.
“Hey, don’t you drag me into this. Samuel’s your problem.” Aerin said with a shake of her head.
“See.” The man made another exaggerated motion. “This is exactly what I’m talking about…”
“You know, Isaac.” Meredith’s voice filled everyone’s earpiece. “We were relying on the element of surprise. I’m sure everyone from here to Moscow knows where we are.”
Aerin almost bit her tongue as she began to laugh. The man across from her, Isaac, crossed his arms and shook his head in defeat before leaning back against the chopper’s cold metal wall. It was always like this, every time, ever since Aerin had met him all those years ago. Though his personality was an acquired taste, and usually drove others away, she wouldn’t trade it for anything. After all, she was stuck with him; he was her Slayer.
“Coming up on the valley now.” Another voice spoke into everyone’s ear. “Hang on; it might get a little bumpy.”
The dozen or so helicopters grouped together tighter as they descended quickly towards the ground. Aerin held onto the seat as the helicopter rocked from side to side. The choppers bobbed and weaved tightly around the jagged rock faces that lined the mountain walls around them until they finally came out the other side. Aerin released her grip and relaxed as much as she could into the chair once the chopper leveled off again.
“Everyone.” Samuel’s voice rang out from their wrists again. “If you’re nervous, that’s fine.” He stated. “We all are, to some extent. We’ve never faced something like this before.” A heavy feeling filled the helicopter as his words settled in. “Our very existence depends on how we perform out there today.” The helicopter, and all others for that matter, fell silent. “Watch yourselves out there. Keep each other covered and, above all else, remember why we’re here.”
“Roger that.” Isaac said as he ran his fingers through his hair again.
As the helicopters crested a large hill, a bright light filled the cabin. Aerin, and many others in the other helicopters, moved closer to the window to see. In the distance, a glowing dome sat in the valley ahead. It was massive, much larger than any Aerin had ever seen before, and looked to cover about a square mile. Whispers of disbelief filled the helicopters as they drew closer to the magical wall.
“That’s it.” Meredith’s spoke over the communicators, her voice trailing off. “It has to be…” She suddenly spoke aloud again. “The Blood Stone is definitely in there.”
"Roger that, ma'am." A voice spoke. "All teams, this is Overwatch, we’re going in."
A few chopper’s, Aerin’s included, began to descend rapidly towards the ground. Isaac yawned and stretched as the marines in the cabin checked their gear and weapons once more before standing. Isaac stood and took hold of a bar above his head with one hand before using the oth
er to open the large sliding door. The frigid Russian wind rushed in as the chopper settled onto the ground just outside of a small village half separated by the massive barrier that sat before them. One by one, the soldiers filed out onto the ground, weapons in hand.
“Hey!” Aerin called out over the rotors just before Isaac jumped down as well. Hearing her, he stopped and turned on his heels to face her. “I…” She stopped herself short before finding her words. “Just be careful out there, will you?” She asked. “Don’t do anything stupid!”
“You know me.” He winked before jumping down into the snow and rushing off to follow the others.
With the first drop complete, the chopper quickly lifted back up into the air. As it gained altitude, other helicopters, which had performed similar drops, joined it in formation. As they got closer, Aerin could really feel how strong the barrier was. It pulsed and radiated raw energy that no mere mage could’ve conjured up alone. If there was a Bloodstone in this frozen wasteland, it would be inside there.
“Dragons, this is Overwatch.” The same voice from before called out. “Everyone is in position, bring down the fire."
Aerin remembered the Dragons from her mission briefing earlier on the ship. She moved to the threshold of the helicopter's door and gazed up into the sky to get a better look. High above the barrier, two silver bird-like structures circled overhead in perfect synchronization. Bright lights flashed from the sides of the planes as a mighty stream of red hot, high caliber fire rained down onto the barrier. The bullets impacted into the dome, causing hundreds of thousands of ripples across the surface. The fire continued coming down, long sweeping strands of metal that made the barrier pulse and shake, but to no avail.
"Dragons!" Meredith called out over the communicator. "Hold your fire! It’s not doing anything!"
Slayer: A Demon Hunter's Tale Page 40