The woman above swung her blade like it was a dance of brutality, and her ruby eyes matched her frown. The angel with the thicker armor and bigger shield stood their ground, blocking dozens of hits from the Cainites, even the imbued weapons and their fiery explosions, while simultaneously stabbing them from behind the safety of their shield. It was the perfect example of why spears were the best melee weapon, historically speaking, but no demon would ever consider combining offense and defense. The Cainites didn’t consider it, either.
“David!” Caera’s voice. She stood up from the crowd of Cainites and crashed through them, heading straight for him. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds, and one of her eyes was bleeding. Not just bleeding. Gone. Oh no.
“Moriah!” the angel in thicker armor called out, a woman’s voice.
Moriah flew down and crashed into the ground in front of David, sword up, and she glared at him as she brought it down. Their eyes met, and her ruby gaze struck him still.
She bowled over, crashing into his side and then to the ground as a giant tiger lady tackled her back. Everyone went down, and the angel’s sword and shield clinked loudly as they smashed into the stone. Cainites were everywhere, and they wasted no time jumping at the angel.
David picked himself up fast enough to look up and catch a glimpse of the Las, all four of them, soaring through the air. But, demons couldn’t fly? Jeskura, too! She landed on a Cainite, sword first, skewering them like she was a tossed javelin. Before another Cainite got the chance to retaliate, she threw herself back toward the cathedral with a flap of her wings, and scaled its walls of sharp grooves and hollowed-out windows. From up high, she threw herself toward the battle below again, gliding, but she didn’t get to land. The angel in the thicker armor dove up to meet her, and drove her spear straight for her chest.
She dodged by a single inch. Gliding wasn’t flying, but it was good enough, and she got around the spear and into the angel’s face. A mid-air collision knocked the sword out of Jes’s hands, but she got one set of her claws latched onto the angel’s huge shield, the other onto the side of the spear. The angel flapped her wings, preventing the two of them from falling, and it quickly became apparent the angel was far stronger. She swung the shield and spear left and right, trying to dislodge the gargoyle, and Jes shrieked in her face as she held on, barely, body flopping around in the air like a flying fish.
The Las avoided the angels, content to hop around, go for Cainite legs with their swords, climb up their backs, and jump into the air to glide around more. They screamed and shrieked, too, distracting but never committing to a fight. The fact they were in the chaos at all was insanity for an imp or grem, from what Jes and Caera had told him.
Even crazier was Acelina. She stood beside Daoka, and… was protecting her. Daoka’s clicks filled the giant cavern, somehow able to pierce the chorus of screaming Cainites, and she rammed her horns into the nearest marked soul. A moment later, Acelina brought her axe down on said soul, and they splattered. She cackled, the same way the angel in the cathedral had, and still was. It sounded fitting come from her. It sounded horrific coming from the other angel.
Caera and Moriah weren’t beside him anymore. He got to his feet and scampered around, only to trip over a nearby Cainite body. Rock and stone, blood and bones, they were everywhere and his brain couldn’t make heads or tails of it as he scanned the throng of bodies for Caera again. A giant tail knocked a Cainite aside, and a set of claws took down another. A glowing gold arc cut out from beside her, and Caera jumped high to get over it as it cut through a half dozen more souls.
The Cainites wanted the angels, but when they couldn’t reach them, they settled for the demons instead. Unfortunately for the Cainites, Caera and Jes knew battle inside and out, and Dao and Acelina were more than capable of defending themselves. The fight was chaos, but it was chaos the demons were comfortable in. The angels, not so much, and Jes made that clear as she crawled around the heavier angel’s shield, got around behind her, and started clawing at her wings, like some sort of badger, rage incarnate. She was the only reason the heavily armored angel wasn’t stabbing David right now.
And Caera was the only reason the Moriah angel hadn’t killed him. Again, the angel spotted David, and again she threw herself toward him with a flap of her wings, intent on going up and then down at him, only to get knocked out of the sky by Caera’s pounce. Efforts to pin the angel failed, and the smaller woman shoved the giant tiger off her with a single arm and shield. Caera turned over mid-air like a cat, landed on her feet, and pounced again, but Moriah flew high and out of the way.
The angel was covered in blood, and her armor had a dozen dents and claw marks in it. She seemed tired, panting, but uninjured, while all the demons were covered in cuts. Angels were deadly.
“Stop! Stop!” David waved his bloodied hands in the air. “I killed the other unmarked! Greg’s dead! Please, stop!”
The angel with the spear was too busy wrestling with Jeskura to hear, but Moriah stopped dead in the sky and stared down at him, hovering. She didn’t believe him.
“The quakes stopped!” David gestured at the cathedral and the two giant cracks that ran from its top to bottom. Not only had the quakes stopped, but the violence in the cathedral was dying down, less and less screams until only a few remained outside with David and them.
The nearest Cainite turned to look at David, and her eyes changed from shock to pure rage. But before she got to use her fury and beat him to death with the butt of her sword, Daoka charged forward, crashing through the few remnants that remained, and head-butted the Cainite in the back. The crack of bone was audible. Worse was the crack of a skull as Daoka jumped high, and drove a hoof down onto the woman’s head.
Down to only a few numbers, the Cainites didn’t care. And they weren’t just lost to their own bloodlust, either. An aura filled the room, one of rage and mindless aggression. It’d started softly at first, but grew as the fight went on.
Acelina. She was burying the cavern in an aura of violence, but not a powerful one. Not enough to break an angel’s will, or a demon’s, but enough to make the humans blissfully continue their mindless rioting, until they practically threw themselves on the girls’ weapons and claws. She’d snuck the aura up on them, so slowly and subtly, David hadn’t noticed until now, a lull in the fighting.