by Tj Dixon
With my size returned to normal I look down at her and spot a strange water magic directly below her. There is a green orb floating in the moat with a constant flow of water through it that forms a sort of fountain. The water goes up inside the orb and comes out at the top middle, simply falling back down the outside of the orb and flowing back into the moat. It is directly below her. Coincidence? I doubt it.
My body has only just recovered when her next blast of soul stealer lightning hits me in the chest. I resist the pull of her magic and shake off the attack. She would have been better off using regular lightning. Perhaps realising this or maybe just alternating, her next attack is regular lightning but I dodge this time.
Rather than attacking her I swoop over her and then the wall, into the city. There are panicked humans everywhere. My favourite kind of meal! I scatter death feathers under me to absorb the souls of the human cattle below. This not only kills those that are hit, but adds to everyone’s terror.
There’s a huge floating rock above me. There are probably humans cowering inside it. I can crack the rock open and devour any humans in it later, but right now there are plenty of humans below me scurrying around in utter chaos and despair.
Really though, where is Azrael? He should be enjoying the feast or helping me kill this fire angel. Is he having trouble with their queen? Or do they have another fire angel in Portalis? And how is this one so powerful when she’s not even got the blue eyes of an arch angel? Why is an angel of Ikarus even here? Also where are the treacherous elves and their Envoys?
I avoid another blast of lightning from the fire angel, but it seems reluctant to leave that spot. I must be right. That green orb really is protecting her from my death magic. She can’t beat me or protect the city if she can’t move though. Sure she can continue to attack me but she’s too far away to get a hit on me unless I let down my guard.
I dart to and fro, zig zagging across the city, covering it with death. Some of the mages dare attack me with lightning, wind slices, ice shards, fireballs and metal shards. I just ignore their puny attacks and make sure to dodge the fire angel’s attacks. The human souls help strengthen me, so even if she doesn’t care about the people she’d be a fool to let me continue harvesting their souls.
I’m so busy dodging the fire angel’s attacks that I only realise the danger when a hail of ice shards hit my chest. If they were just normal ice shards I wouldn’t care, but these feel more like the attack from earlier. In shock and agony I fall from the sky, crashing into some little human buildings below.
Right in front of my left eye a human in green mage robes stands still in shock. I suck her soul out and she falls lifeless to the ground, but my distraction costs me again. A second hail of ice shards hits me this time in the left leg and the fire angel’s lightning burns a hole through my chest.
Roaring in agony and fury I jump back into the sky as my chest regenerates. Another lightning bolt reduces my right foot to ash before my chest is fully restored. I grin through the pain though, because the fire angel has flown just above me, leaving behind the safety of that orb in the water. I send a furious storm of death feathers at and around her.
Again the feathers turn white before they can reach her. Confused and angry I spit a fireball at her, before realising my mistake. She’s a fire angel… Swallowing my fireball and its mana she sends another lightning bolt at me, this time even more powerful than before and now she’s targeting my head. I barely dodge it in time and my left horn is reduced to ash.
Maybe we shouldn’t have been so greedy. If the others were here we could easily kill this fire angel even without death magic. Even if it was just Azrael with me it would be fine though. So where is he?
I dodge a hail of ice from below and a lightning bolt from above. The ice is coming from a human mage. She has short red hair, blue eyes and white skin. She looks young, but her soul is strong. Even though she doesn’t look like a Contractian, could she perhaps be their queen? I send a storm of death feathers at her but again they turn white.
Two enemies that can cancel my death magic! Could it be that one of them can simply cancel all of my death magic and that the other is neither responsible nor capable of countering my death magic? If they could cancel all of my death magic though, wouldn’t they have saved the humans that I’ve already slaughtered? It could be that they simply don’t care about the cattle that I killed earlier or even the mana I drained from them.
If death magic doesn’t work, then I’ll have to use elemental magic. I send a hail of my own ice at the fire angel above me. Rather than dodging or shielding she fires another lightning bolt at me, vaporising the ice that was heading her way. I manage to dodge her lightning but again find myself on the defensive.
I dodge another hail of ice from below, but cry out in agony as metal shards tear through both of my wings. I didn’t sense them until they hit but it seems she fired them at the same time as the ice. Worse my wings are only regenerating very slowly.
I sense venom entering my body through the wounds in my wings. They’re trying to poison a death angel! It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t for the fact that the venom is effective. If it wasn’t for my battle with the Sky Lord poison would be useless, but the poison is eating away at the healing magic used to restore me to health.
Desperate now I try to retreat. For a mere human and fire angel to force me to retreat is mortifying, but dying would be worse. I am the one meant to bring death to my enemies, not the other way around!
Retreating towards the city walls I dodge another lightning bolt but a hail of ice assaults me from the top of the city wall. I wildly dodge the ice shards but then another lightning bolt hits me in the upper back and blasts a hole through my chest. Waves of agony assault my entire body.
It seems their queen, if that’s what she is, ported ahead of me. Realising that I can port or shift too I try to shift to the backdoor, but I almost hit a dimensional whirlwind and have to cancel my shift before it’s too late. In doing so I am hit by yet another lightning bolt. This time it hits my lower back and incinerates my stomach. That’s still better than getting sucked into the trap they laid and spending eternity in the void between dimensions. To control a dimensional whirlwind though is not something humans or even fire angels should be capable of. Not even Azrael can do that!
I dodge another lightning bolt from behind and another hail of ice shards from the city wall, but my body has barely regenerated at all from those two lightning bolts that hit my back.
At this rate even retreating may prove impossible. The time taken to break a hole even in the weaker shield at the backdoor may prove fatal. Azrael did say that the shield was probably controlled at the mountain. Perhaps I can take the shield down entirely instead.
I soar up away from the enemies, evading another lightning bolt as I do so. Then I charge through the air towards the mountain, dodging two more lightning bolts. The fire angel doesn’t pursue me though. Strange… What is she planning?
I cover the mountain in death feathers to kill anyone defending it, but yet again the feathers turn white. Another hail of ice assaults me, this time from the mountain, but I manage to dodge. Again metal shards hit me, but this time in my painfully slowly regenerating chest. Unable to bear it any longer I shriek in pain and punch the mountain.
The mountain shakes. The whole city shakes. The human queen shakes. She shakes with fear for the first time. Perhaps if magic doesn’t work I may be able to kill her with my body. It’s embarrassing to resort to such crude methods, but victory and survival come before pride.
I draw back my right fist and punch her puny little body, but before my punch can land on her a hail of metal and ice assaults my fist. Then lightning fired from just beside her reduces my entire right arm to ash. The fire angel is now standing beside the queen with a smirk on her face.
“Curse you!” I scream and abandoning my senses I flood the air with death feathers. This time though most of them remain black. A white shield surrounds the
queen and fire angel blocking them from my sight, but the rest of the mountain is covered in death feathers. I can’t sense any dimensional magic so they must still be in there. Having finally gotten my enemy on the defensive I spit ice and metal of my own at the white shield. The shield holds but there is an ear splitting screech as my attacks assault the shield.
Maybe I can win this. Maybe I don’t have to leave here in humiliation, or worse not leave at all. Their queen is not invincible and neither is this fire angel that has given me so much trouble. I can kill them. I will kill them. I’ll tear their bodies to shreds and eat their souls. After all the trouble they have given me they’ll taste delicious. Forget the human cattle. The queen and fire angel’s souls will be my reward and a sweet reward they will be.
I approach closer and intensify my attack even more. The screeching of my attacks against their shield hurts my ears, but once I penetrate the shield the ones that will be in pain are the queen and fire angel. I can finally return the agony they have inflicted on me in this battle. I’m right on top of the enemy now and all they can do is keep shielding, but cracks are beginning to form in their shield. It will not hold for long.
(Juliet)
As the death angel approaches us I keep my senses on the earth shrine as well as watching him through the white light of the shield. The light makes it hard to see through from the inside, but from the outside it should be impossible to see or hear us. The earth shrine is a simple black stone slab on top of four small black stone columns. Each column is about two foot tall and the slab is only half a foot thick. Like the water shrine and air shrine it is protecting us from his death magic but its power is weakening. Cracks are forming at the base of one column of the shrine and so cracks are beginning to form in the shield too.
“Now?” Queen Emily asks.
“Not yet.” I answer.
“We can’t wait much longer.” Queen Emily warns.
“Not yet. Only one chance.” I tell her. The death angel is getting closer but he’s still too far away.
“We won’t even get that if we’re dead.” Queen Emily complains.
“Almost close enough.” I tell her.
“He seems close enough to me.” Queen Emily says as the death angel reaches out to touch the shield with his right hand.
“Now.” I say just before his hand touches the shield. I blast the slab on the earth shrine with my most powerful lightning. Queen Emily surrounds it with fire.
The slab crumbles and the shield emits a pulse of green light. It covers all of Portalis for the briefest of moments before hitting the great shield and vanishing. By the time it hits the great shield it is almost powerless, but when it hits the death angel the holy light is still at its strongest.
The light of the shield fades but the death feathers are now all white and harmless. The death angel is now formed of earth and his soul is completely destroyed. The face of the death angel is twisted in a grimace, showing the excruciating agony it must have faced at the last moment. Its body already had holes in the chest and stomach but the rest of the damage we inflicted had been regenerated. Now though the death angel’s face begins to crumble and then its head falls off. The arms fall into piles of earth and then the entire body collapses into one huge pile of earth.
Having seen the effect of the holy light on another angel that fell from heaven I am glad I was on the inside of the shield. Even at a distance the effects of the holy light would have been horrific. I might still have been killed and I doubt the little one inside me would have survived. To think that Contractia had such a powerful weapon. I had thought they were weak, but it seems I was not entirely right. The question is what other weapons they have and whether they might one day be used against us.
At the very least we would have no chance of conquering Portalis if we ever did end up as enemies. They have four more shrines and the earth shrine will regenerate in less than a decade. We have no idea what powers the other shrines have so there is no way we could take them into account in any plans. For now though we are allies not enemies.
Chapter 29 (Kael)
As the sun begins to set behind him Azrael shrouds himself in darkness. We hide our presence too and follow our Envoy. Though it doesn’t know it, its host is the king’s sister.
The young body is small and frail, only thirty years old, but the power inside is dark and terrifying. Like everyone in our tribe she has pale green eyes, short light brown hair and pale skin with a faint hint of silver. Being host to the envoy she wears the leaf woven shirt, shorts and shoes that are our heritage whilst we wear plain grey shorts, shirts and brown leather shoes.
I pray that Dairon truly does have a way to expel the Envoy from her body. If so we may soon be free, though defeating the Envoy once it has taken corporeal form will be difficult. Certainly many of us will die.
The Envoy stops just in front of the city shield. It senses a gap and floats through the shield about fifty feet above the ground. We quickly fly through after it. The Envoy hovers over the moat, seeming confused. There’s no sign of Azrael so he must still be hidden. I hadn’t expected him to wait for us to enter the city and I don’t think the Envoy did either. It definitely seems confused.
I sense unnatural magic port us from just inside the city shield. Since we were hiding our presence we couldn’t use unnatural magic to create a port barrier or port block. We appear in a natural but sinister underground environment. There is now a port block up and port barriers, but they are not ours.
The roof glows green allowing us to see our surroundings. Under our feet is an uneven dark stone floor and all around us are low growing blue vines, though the green light from the roof distorts their colour giving them a strong green tint. In the air there’s a sweet smell. Ahead of us is a plant with long red tendrils each a little thicker than my arm that cover the whole area around it. The plant’s flower is red too with seven open petals, each twice as tall as I am. It just oozes with a sense of danger, but there’s a powerful shield around it.
Behind us and to both our left and right are hundreds of human mages all wearing identical black robes. The Envoy twists around in fury and unleashes a whirlwind crackling with lightning at the human mages. The elves in the way fly to either side but the humans shield and somehow their shield holds. The storm dissipates but the Envoy’s wrath does not. It prepares to hurl another whirlwind, even stronger this time.
As the Envoy prepares its attack there’s a gentle whistling noise and suddenly the Envoy falls to the ground face down. Just as soon as the Envoy’s host hits the ground the Envoy appears in corporeal form standing above its now former host. The former host, Dairon’s sister, is ported away despite the port block and barriers. Seeing the Envoy’s true form for the first time is terrifying, but it seems Dairon’s plan is working.
The Envoy is huge at twenty feet tall. It has dark leathery wings lined with death feathers. It’s more or less the same shape and size as a twenty foot tall elf. Unlike an elf though, the arms, legs and body are formed of molten lava with hands and feet formed of green gems merged into the rough shape of hands and feet, minus the fingers and toes. Each foot and hand has a silvery metal talon. The neck and head are formed of the same silvery metal as the talons. It has no hair, eyes, mouth or nose.
Without needing to exchange words we all fly away from the Envoy and barrage it with lightning both from above and around it. The thunder is deafening. The only directions it is not getting attacked from are below and behind it, but that creepy plant is behind it. The Envoy sends a flurry of death feathers into the air around it where they stay as a swirling barrier, so we retreat further but keep up our attacks.
The human mages use lightning of their own but it’s weak. Even our lightning must seem weak to the Envoy. A gust of wind sends death feathers at the human mages. The humans’ shields flicker and collapse. Dozens of humans fall to the ground as they are instantly killed by a swarm of death feathers. Evading the death feathers is essential, because even getting gra
zed by a single death feather is fatal. It would take longer to die, but death would be no less certain.
Another gust of wind blows and a swarm of death feathers hurtles towards me and the others around me. I dance around the feathers as do all of my comrades in the deadly path of those feathers, often evading death by less than a finger’s width. The feathers blow past us and hitting the roof they fall back to the ground as the wind dissipates. They settle, but against the dark stony ground they are an almost invisible leafy carpet of death.
Three of my elven comrades are grimacing in the feathers’ death embrace, but to my pride not a single elf falls to the ground. No matter how many of us die, we must hold out. Even once our death is assured, we must fight on. No matter what happens we must have faith in Dairon, our king.
A huge bolt of lightning strikes at my comrades on the other side of the Envoy. Five elves fall to the ground as blackened corpses. Death feathers can be dodged, but lightning that powerful can neither be dodged nor shielded against.
A stone spike shoots up from below the Envoy between its legs but the spike shatters as it hits the Envoy, who doesn’t even react. A cloud of acid covers the Envoy and the death feathers that are still surrounding it. The acid hisses, but again the Envoy doesn’t react and the death feathers are unaffected too.
The Envoy jumps straight up flapping its black wings to increase speed and spinning wildly it slices the elves directly above it into a bloody pulp. As the Envoy hits the roof head first there is a tremendous crash that shakes the roof, the walls and the ground. Most of the humans fall to the ground and the elves in the air closest to the roof are hit like a hammer by the roof. Some manage to shield in time but others fall to the ground dead or dying.