After a couple painful minutes of watching the titan quietly wrestle with his rage, like watching a ticking time bomb about to go any minute, Vinicius rumbled softly and nodded. His flexing muscles eased, and the glowing amber of his spikes died down until it was gone. His talons released the rock beneath him, his four arms fell at his sides, and his tail rested on the ground as he stood more upright.
“Let’s go,” he said, and walked ahead.
She forced herself to match pace, but stayed behind him, a few feet between her and his giant tail swaying with his steps a foot off the ground. Staring down at it, she let it distract her from the trembling in her limbs. Vinicius hadn’t bothered with a sin aura. If he had, it’d have made her angry and violent, too. No, he’d just stood there and boiled in his rage, and her fingers had gone numb.
“You’re scary,” she said.
He looked over his shoulder, past the huge spike there, and rumbled some more. Of course, he wouldn’t say anything.
“You–”
“I am a child of Belial.” Oh, he was going to say something. “The tetrad demons are scary. Angels are scary. I am more.” And it was to boast, of course. But, watching his giant, wide back as he continued on, Mia couldn’t help but absorb his words. It didn’t sound like boasting. It sounded like someone stating an essential fact to spare her the embarrassment of making a horrible mistake.
“Angels are scary?” Summoning a little courage, she jogged up and walked beside him. Well, half beside, half behind him. She still wanted him in front in case another wurm or something attacked.
“The mikalim and rapholem can be. The gabriem are pests.”
Mikalim, rapholem, and gabriem. Those sounded familiar.
“Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel?”
He grunted and nodded.
“These angels, they’re… kinds of angels? Like demon types?”
Another nod.
“Did the archangels exist, too?”
“They did.”
“Oh, wow. Did you ever meet them?”
“Only their corpses.”
“Their… corpses…” She gulped and shivered. Okay, that was probably one of the most depressing things she’d ever heard. “The angels are dead?”
“The archangels. I don’t know about Lucifer. And the council of angels remain.”
“Council of angels?”
“Larger than other angels. Much more deadly.”
She’d seen one of those angels, at the gate of Heaven. They’d been pretty horrifying, yeah.
“Have you… ever killed an angel?”
“Yes.”
More shivers danced up her spine.
“Ever… eaten one?”
“No. Angels are rarely alone, and they do not leave their dead behind.”
How patriotic. But at least Vin was talking now. Maybe letting out a bit of rage was all he needed? Maybe–
Shifting rocks in the darkness snapped her around. To the left, in the dark of the giant cavern and its literal piles of bones, something moved. A lot of things moved, and they came straight at Mia and Vinicius.
A brute, a couple vratorins, and a couple gargoyles leapt from the shadow, straight at the two of them. Their feet kicked up the skeletons that littered the floor, and the once silent cave filled with the noise of rattling bones and roaring demons. One of the vrats came for Mia, but the other four demons went for Vinicius. And the vrat coming at Mia, very much not Adron, swung a giant sword straight down at her.
Vinicius blocked it. The giant charged through the chaos, taking claws along his sides and legs, and blocked the vrat’s sword with the spikes along the back of his forearm. The spikes didn’t stop the sword from sliding down the black surface into the giant’s skin and muscle, though, and a splatter of red hit Mia in the face. Vin’s blood.
She stood there. Didn’t move, didn’t scream, didn’t do anything. She just stood there and watched as Vinicius twisted the arm, grabbed the vrat by the throat and face, and crushed it into mulch. The sound of breaking bone, and the expulsion of blood and gore from the vrat’s face and its new holes shattered Mia’s petrification.
She dove for cover, literally into the bones that covered the ground. Not exactly protection, and not deep enough for her to hide under, but enough that the gargoyle that ran around Vinicius and came for Mia didn’t cut her open when she swiped at her. Bones went flying as the gargoyle slashed and slashed, and Mia kept backing up into more bones.
Symbols flashed through her eyes, and again one specific rune blazed in her thoughts until it almost blinded her. Batlam. Sword. Shield. Spear. Bow. Battle. Fight. Defend.
Her hand wrapped something. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of the things on the list in her head, but it was better than nothing. A big demon bone, maybe a femur. Whatever kind of bone it was, it was shaped like a club, and Mia swung it at the gargoyle woman. Clunk. She hit the demon lady on the top of the head, right between the horns. It was enough to stun the gargoyle for a whole second.
Long enough for Vinicius to grab the gargoyle with his two lower hands, and yank her back hard enough she flew, spun around, and crashed into a distant pile of bones. Vinicius didn’t have time to kill her, not with the other vrat in a free hand, the brute in the other, and the remaining gargoyle on his right shoulder and tearing into him.
The demons fighting him didn’t care, and didn’t stop. As blood flowed down Vinicius’s neck, chest, and down his legs as the gargoyle on his shoulder ripped open his trapezoid, sin auras flowed over the area. Heat, the bad kind, the sort that made your insides hurt and boil, spiked adrenaline until your limbs shook, and blinded you to anything other than breaking whatever was in front of you. It poured out of Vinicius, and it poured out of every demon.
None of them cared if they lived or died anymore. Even as Vinicius killed them, they didn’t stop.
The brute escaped, freed by the gargoyle ripping into Vin’s arm that held him. Vinicius spun. His tail hit the brute hard. The huge demon, almost nine feet tall, was just a child compared to Vinicius, and while he didn’t go flying, he fell and rolled into the bones. That gave Vinicius enough time to get more hands onto the remaining vratorin, and rip him into several pieces. The gargoyle clawing his shoulder open came next, Vinicius grabbing them with his only free hand. Her chest imploded in his palm, like he’d squeezed a raw egg.
A disgusting mix of blood and other things squirted out between his fingers as he squeezed the demon woman. Some of it hit Mia’s chest. It was warm.
“Vin! Behind–”
Vinicius snapped his glare to Mia, and she froze. But, even as he glared at her with rage and murder in his eyes, he spun, and caught the remaining gargoyle that leapt for his back. She died in pieces, and Vinicius roared.
And laughed. He roared and laughed with the joy of someone brimming with satisfaction and pride.
Vinicius turned and faced the brute, the only remaining demon. It got up from the sea of bones and launched itself at Vinicius, a full on leap. Big as Vinicius was, he was horribly injured, and couldn’t bring his hands up in time. The brute’s colossal weight smashed into his upper half, and Vinicius fell onto his back with a booming thud. Bones shattered and flowed outward almost like a ripple in water.
The brute mounted Vinicius’s face and tore into the giant monster’s throat with his claws.
“Vinicius!” Oh god. Oh shit oh god. Vinicius wasn’t stopping him. The giant monster half roared half growled, but it was an exhausted mess, and full of gargling blood. The brute was going for the weak spot, his throat, and tearing at him with mindless ferocity, until Vin’s blood soaked the brute’s face and chest.
Even as the sin auras demanded she stop thinking and simply pounce and give into her rage and bloodlust, she didn’t. She would not let the aura consume her, she couldn’t. Being stupid and mindlessly violent wouldn’t save her bodyguard.
Mia looked around, grabbed one of the shattered bones with a sharp tip, and ran around. The brute didn’t look her way, wholly absorbed in his bloodlust and need to kill the much bigger demon. She had to do something, or she was next.
She had to do something, because seeing the four-armed demon gargle on his own blood was killing her, too.
She jumped up onto the brute’s back. No point in trying to stab him there. Like Diogo, brutes had very thick skin, almost pure black, but they had soft spots where everyone had them.