And Rage's roar was one of triumph as he raced through the army, crushing endless hellions under his feet, springing up impossibly high to snap up yet another infernal citadel within his vast maw, rupturing it in an explosion of stone and death just as he had the first, a moon's worth of shattered rubble crashing down upon the writhing legions, now dying under the same curse of stone they had thought to crush Malek and his friends under, but moments before.
"Well done, Hound. Shelter our pack, then kill all who dare oppose," commended the creature once known as Midnight, having fully embraced his true form, seeming to stretch in unspeakable dimensions, a massive feline shaped shadow that covered the vast armies opposing them in utter darkness not even their infernal sight could pierce. Confusion quickly turned to panic as they found that all their dread magics, all their bitterly learned curses and fiercest weapons could do nothing against a foe that held dominion over entropy itself, even as they began to disappear from the field of battle, slipping through the cracks between space and time.
First by the dozens, then by the hundreds and thousands, the terrible legions of Hell choked and gasped their last in the cold black reaches of space, crying futile curses as their eyes burst and lungs ruptured in a universe alien to all their dread magics, joining entire civilizations of shattered buildings and frozen souls in a vast ring of frozen death about a single lonely star in a sky of endless night.
“By all that’s holy!” Lucienda watched the terrible melee below with a look of awe.
Alacabar slowly nodded his agreement. “Cat and Hound. Together. Taking on what looks to be all the forces of Hell.”
The siren shivered “Jessica’s familiar. And our Malek. Vast and mighty as the horizons themselves. Like ancient gods, I think. No, Morlekai?”
Morlekai nodded. "Truer words than you realize. Those three took on all the forces of an infernal realm, once before. They fell in that battle, but were victorious, in the end." He looked up at the skies, locked upon the sight of an ancient god leaping across the horizon as if space meant nothing, doing battle with an entire armada of moon-like fortresses floating across starry skies unseen in this forsaken realm for untold eons, until now.
Alacabar whistled. "Really! By my ancestor's beard, I haven't heard that tale before. What realm of Hell is this?"
Morlekai gazed sadly at both of his companions. “'Tis a realm of Hell no longer. You know that world as Dawn, the place you both call home. And now, while cat and Hound wreak havoc among Lilith’s armies, our Jess must fight for the survival of all we have ever held dear.”
63
Flying. She laughed with the beauteous wonder of it all as she soared to impossible heights, diving through endless planes of existence both wondrous and terrible, catching sight of cities of impossible beauty shining under the light of twin suns, forests of trees that rose like giants, caressing the midnight skies under the chorus of a million gentle faeries frolicking within the branches in endless dance and song, felt their massive arboreal minds reach out to her in solemn greeting, Jess lost in a moment of pure bliss even as she felt her heart and soul rising to an unspeakable crescendo as she crashed into existence once more.
To behold a sight to crush her very soul.
David. Beloved David of the gently reproving eyes, ever forgiving heart, the gentle boy who had first shown an uncertain young queen the power of redemption. Of hope. A boy who had seen the seeds of nobility within her, carefully nurturing them until a paladin worthy of the name had sprung forth, willing to fight on behalf of an entire realm of fallen souls, to forge the path towards their salvation, and her own.
David. Shaking in inconceivable torment.
Heart torn free. And yet still, somehow, he lived.
Massive gaping hole in his chest. Cracked ribs. Heaving lungs cruelly damaged, desperately gasping, visible for Jess’s terrified eyes to see.
Gentle, unspeakably beautiful eyes, all colors of the rainbow, his true nature revealed at last, gazing deeply into her own.
Mouthing words silently, even as he died, at last, before her very eyes.
Stunned, speechless, only peripherally aware of the two massive sentinels and her madly cackling mother of seven thousand years ago. Jess shook.
David’s last mouthed words burning into her psyche with all their desperate hope and pain.
"I give myself to you." Whispered so softly, his lips alone uttered that doom, and then he was no more.
And Jess screamed.
A shriek so terrible her gloating mother, a horror of bloodstained beauty smiling so warmly even as she approached a stunned Jess with her dread blade raised, stumbled back, hissing, a single guttural command and the two giants warded by Lilith's dread magics reached down to viciously grab Jess's still fluttering wings and yank them taught.
Only to stumble back, mangled fingers falling in bloody heaps after touching feathers hard as mithril, sharp as diamond. Wings of war. Jess roared and gave them no time to recover, her blade lashing out with fast snapping Zwerchhau strikes, her monstrous scaled foes collapsing to the ground in shuddering heaps as their hot intestines spilled forth, Jess viciously hewing off their heads in but a flash of a second even as she spun to face her madly laughing mother, blade in Ochs, point unerringly aimed at her mother's bloody smile. Jess held her buckler low, off angle, its shimmering surface slanted away from her mother's devious eyes.
Lilith. Succubus of the rosebud lips and unspeakable beauty, hair and eyes shimmering like embers, and Jess could deny the horror no longer. Her arch-nemesis, the most feared and desired succubus in all the Abyss, was the mirror image of herself. The face she saw every time she had ever looked back at her own reflection.
How many boys and girls had gazed at her with such desperate, needful hunger over endless lifetimes? Mad infatuations she had always been purposely blind to. She had been incredibly lucky, those few times she had actually found love as Jess the baron's daughter, so ashamed she was of the blood running through her veins, even when she remembered nothing.
Her soul still knew. A side of her nature she long denied, save when compelled by an ache for love or balm for loneliness. And here before her she faced a being that was the epitome of everything Jess had ever denied about herself. Her darkest cruelties, most debased desires. Radiating hot waves of sensual need and hunger, yet for Jess alone her gaze was one of inconceivable fury.
Lilith flashed a single vicious smile, David's heart blood dribbling still from her lips as she raised her dread blade. Soulreaver. How many hapless souls had Jess witnessed shrieking their last in the forging of that blade? An artifact of foulest darkness and nightmare which Jess recognized, waking up to the horror of so many atrocities witnessed in that den of nightmares she had been raised in, so many thousands of years ago.
She shook with it, her mind screaming, drowning in a dozens of voices before instantly stilling. A score of warriors within her focusing in concert, instantly sacrificing their awareness to be consumed by, and live once more through Jess alone.
There was only this moment. There was only the now. No past. No future beyond the dread battle to come. Nothing else mattered, only the contest of blade and wills. The one true art void of all deception in the Courts of Hell. All disputes finally resolved. All artifice at last cleaved free. To strike and counter, void and parry, cleaving through her foe’s darkest magics so that her blade may strike true. Magic, gifted as she once had been, had only ever been her shield. Her weapon had always been her blade. Warding was the only abyssal art she had ever truly mastered. The only one she had ever needed.
The past, in all its beauty and horror, the shining moments, the aching regrets, children forgotten, loves lost, none of that mattered. All that mattered was surviving this moment, as her mother slowly approached her, Soulreaver circling in lazy moulinets, the air shrieking with its passage. As if the opening moves of an ancient dance, mother and daughter circled one another, eyeing each other's every movement, striving to read the tell-tale signs of an a
ttack about to be launched, to spot an opening, to seize the Vor. And Lilith began to laugh.
"Oh my dear, dear daughter! So long did you hide from me, shelled away in your perfect little world." Her expression turned mocking. "Did you really think you could wash your hands of me so easily, child? I, who have survived countless millennia of intrigue and treachery deep within the very bowels of Hell? I, a queen of the Abyssal Courts?"
Her nostrils flared with direst rage. "Did you truly think I was vanquished, pathetic excuse for a daughter whose damnable curse plagued me for millennia? For a thousand years I had to hide and rebuild myself in the vilest pools of ichor! To gouge out the last scraps of power from castoff chattel long since consigned to oblivion! For a thousand years I had to bide my time until the last of your foul tree's taint left your mother's flesh, and only then could I begin my campaign anew!"
Her eyes blazed. “And ever have I been plagued by its bitter thorns, thanks to you, foul wench torn from my loins! You who dared to oppose me! You who dared to defy me! Your mother. Your ruler. Your queen!”
Lilith roared and charged, her vile blade tearing through the air in a blistering series of cuts.
Jess backpedaling desperately, buckler and shield working in concert to block the terrible onslaught of her mother's assault; powerful Oberhau blows crashing down from above, mutated instantly into Zwerchhau double strikes, blade arching viciously fast side to side, a deadly fulcrum as Lilith's sword was masterfully pivoted in short, tight arcs questing hungrily, desperately, for her daughter's lifeblood.
At last they broke off, Jess panting despite the fearsome energies roaring through her.
Her mother favored her with a mocking smile. Playing with her prey.
“Buckler and shield. Pathetic! A poor choice for ones such as you and I. You lack the power and leverage of a two handed grip, strong as you no doubt are even now, with my blood flowing through your veins.”
Lilith's laughter was cruel and mocking. “But such is the price you pay, having consented to mortality, most foolish of all my daughters! Your memories broken, fragmented, consenting to allow your soul to shatter and die, over and over, before being reborn. Helpless, vulnerable, stupid as a newborn babe!” She shook her head in contempt. “Damned fool.”
Lilith gave no warning, lashing out with a vicious Scheitelhau cut. A short, tight arc, snapping the blade forth for a quick brutal slash to her daughter's forehead, a maneuver Jess desperately parried with her buckler, her own mithril blade lunging forth to score a quick cut to her mother's thigh. Yet for all that her mithril blade was able to pierce her mother's dread mail, forged of a thousand tormented souls, her mother pivoted back with such inhuman speed that Jess's blade barely scratched her mother's flesh, earning her but a drop of blood for her efforts.
Lilith gave the slightest nod, one warrior to another, despite the hatred radiating from her gaze. "An interesting buckler, child. Soulreaver has yet to cleave it in twain, and I know it is not forged from the bones or scales of a Darkwing." Her lip curled into a sneer. "It will be a fine prize to claim over your corpse, as I tear your soul from your body and force you to watch as I devour your realm entire!"
She smiled then, cruel and pitiless. "I sense it holds darker secrets still, daughter. No doubt an artifact with powers you hoped would prevail against one who has fought and battled in the depths of Hades for eons? Foolish child!" She laughed then, stepping back, presenting with a teasing flourish a sight that caused Jess to shudder, her spine freezing at the sight before her. A lock of hair shimmering an odd silver gold hue. So ancient it flaked and broke even as her mother gently waved the faded lock, still bound with a child's braids, that Jess suddenly remembered being nipped from her head in her mother's massive dark palace, endless lifetimes ago. She blinked, shaking herself free of the terrible disorientation she felt, knowing distraction could well equal death in the middle of battle.
Lilith never released her daughter from her icy gaze. "Do you recognize it, my child? A lock of hair. Your own." Her smile was a cold, terrible thing. "It is a link, like blood. A link to you. Resonating with who we are to each other. What we are to each other. An arcane connection. Two halves of a whole!"
“You cannot beat me, daughter!” Lilith laughed. “No spell you cast can possibly bind me. No artifact you wield can break my wards. For they are fused and bonded by the very power of your hair, your flesh. Inviolate to you!”
Lilith the mad queen charged forth, lashing out once more, and it was all Jess could do to survive the insane onslaught; overhand blows morphing into lightning fast cuts, neck high, slamming into Jess's desperately held buckler, fluidly flowing into vicious lunges to knee and gut. Jess countered with a fierce, terrible intensity as dread blade rang against sword and buckler at a blistering beat, the two snapping back, circling one another, before crashing forth once more, and each exchange Jess found herself ever more shaken, felt the stinging burn of numerous slashes, Soulreaver having kissed her flesh numerous times, so terrible it had even managed to burst links of mithril, each prick an exquisite agony. Only her superhuman reflexes, so like her mother's, had kept the wounds from being deep enough to cripple or kill her. Only her mithril sword resonating with the dread powers of the Void, and her buckler, gift of the Faerie Queen herself, withstood the onslaught without damage.
Jess inhaled sharply, realizing something then, in those terrible moments time seemed to slow as her combat senses took hold. Her mother, taunting her with cruel laughter was faster. Faster than she had ever been before, even in their climactic battle so many eons ago, when Jess had fought for the very survival of her newly forged world.
Something had changed within her mother. Something terrible.
“Mother. You are aging.”
Lilith hissed, shaken, leaping back, blade raised high. She snarled furiously at her daughter. "Yes, I am, curse you! You, true child of infinity who have forsaken your gift, your potential to unleash an engine of destruction that could shake the cosmos to its very foundations! You, who shamed me in front of the Abyssal Court entire, and my sire, lord and master of us all!" She hissed and spat, the ground sparking and burning as if scorched by raw sulfur, so black was her mother's fury.
“Yet in the end, victory shall be mine, harlot! For my sire has consented to gift me with but a shadow of that terrible power that was your birthright. For the moment I age, even as I blaze forth with a might sufficient to claim Dominion over the entire realm of Hell your companions struggle within below.” Her eyes lit with fear as well as hate. “A raging fire within which will cease, immortality restored, the moment I bring your head to my sire, reclaiming your realm for my own!”
Her mother shrieked and spat gobs of scorching hot bile which Jess rather deliberately blocked with buckler even as it left her infinitesimally off balance for her mother’s furious onslaught, the barrage of blows so terrible Jess had to fight with every scrap of knowledge of a dozen lifetimes to survive the inhuman speed and fury she faced.
Parry. Void. Block and counter. An endless exchange of savage strikes and desperate parries, Jess lucky even to scrape her blade against her mother’s armor before Lilith dodged clear, laughing, taunting her daughter to try harder. To fight like she meant it.
Jess grimaced, knowing at last that it was time.
She charged then, even as David’s final words burned through her soul.
Buckler parrying high even as she slid her blade under her mother’s attempt to bind, knowing that against a two handed grip she would always lose without buckler equally in play. So, in that moment, she did her utmost to seize the Vor. To do what was utterly unexpected, crashing into her mother, buckler smacking blade high even as she slicked her blade against her mother’s armored side, knowing that in such quarters, with no force behind the blow, a draw cut, slicing the blade against her mother’s side and pulling away was the least effective of blows.
Her mother's eyes widened with only momentary surprise, a contemptuous sneer for her daughter's paltr
y efforts even as Lilith immediately back-stepped and lashed forth with a series of crippling Zornhau strikes, punishing Jess for her foolish gambit. Jess stumbled back under the fury of the blows barely blocked in time. She coughed and hissed as they darted back, circling each other once more. Her blade was wet with her mother's blood, but only just. Her draw cut having only lightly sliced into her mother's hip after cutting through the soulforged mail.
Jess blinked and wheezed, spitting up pink frothy foam, realizing in that moment how terribly deep her mother’s parting thrust had pierced her. Grimacing fiercely, she forced herself to stand tall.
It was then that the terrible temptation she had suppressed so long and hard finally struck. The haunting, seductive call of Voidal winds crooned to her as never before.
She could feel the most awful part of her nature promising her power and fury undreamed of in all the worlds she had ever glimpsed, if she did but surrender to it. With a single act she could wash away all pain and injury, for eternity. If she dared to rekindle the most terrible of magics, plunging the essence of her soul deep into the maw of the eternal Void itself, that massive black hole in the heart of their galaxy of stars, its power would roar through her once more with a terror and potency caressing the infinite.
A power so terrible, it would allow her to dance through all the endless Heavens as a peerless mistress of destruction for two score years before death finally claimed her. Two score years, wherein every instant she could stretch into a miniature eternity, with power sufficient to lay low any king, rupture any mountain, even destroy any world entire, igniting its core in an explosion of inconceivable force, fusing its atoms instantly with but the clench of her mighty fist.
Gods of Shadow and Flame Page 66