Mia wanted to say wait, hold on, stop before you give us away, but she wasn’t doing any better. As the angels slowly hovered down closer, and more of their army came into focus, the sight of Yosepha’s hanging, bloody face revealed itself. It was her, with her short curly hair, and blood dripping from her feet. The cross was made of gold, and the shiny things sticking out of her wrists and ankles had to be… silver nails.
What was that around her neck? A small, brown pouch on a string?
Heat lit through Mia’s blood, boiled through it, and she clenched her fists as she stared up at the bleeding angel. Please be alive.
“Avital, of Azoryev. I know you. You… crucified Yosepha?” Galon asked, voice a thousand times heavier than a jolly man’s voice should ever be. “She isn’t Ramiel. You can’t make up for past mistakes with this… brutality.”
The other angel hovered closer to Galon, shield up, spear out. Galon still didn’t draw his weapon.
“We cannot suffer another traitor, Galon, and that includes you. Bring us the unmarked.”
“You crucified Yosepha. Then you know she spoke the truth. The unmarked are–”
“She did not know any better! But we know of the evils the unmarked are capable of. Moriah barely survived her encounter with one, but Shaul and Tzipporah did not.” The rapholem pointed his spear at Galon. “And we now know you harbor that unmarked’s sister here within these mountains. Bring her to us, and your death shall be swift. Deny us, and you will be crucified and left to hang at the edge of the vortex for the next ten thousand millennia.”
Angels used the vortex to get between Heaven and Hell, since it cut through the sky to reach Heaven, but they couldn’t touch the vortex itself. They had to fly alongside it, or get burned. And the way Yosepha had described what happened if you touched it, had been chilling.
Wait. David killed two angels?
“Evils?” Galon asked.
“Evils. Moriah spoke of the boy twisting Hell herself!” Avital shook his head and made a sweeping gesture with his spear. “Surrender, Galon, before these unmarked destroy us all.”
Galon shook his head, and did not move, hovering way too close to his fellow angel but making no move to guard himself. Angels trusted each other too much, the opposite of demons.
“The council has ignored us!” Galon gestured out to the crowd, speaking in a loud voice that didn’t fit him at all. “You know the council has ignored the changes. The roaming remnants, the firestorms, hellbeasts hunting outside twilight. Hell has changed. Something is afoot, and the council has ignored it! Surely you must see that?” The gabriem spoke with the air of an ambassador speaking in front of a council of lords. “I pleaded with them, as did Yosepha, and we found folly with their indifference. The council does not tell us the truth of what is happening!”
“The council only speaks the truth!”
“They speak falsehoods! I came here to learn what the council refused to speak of, and found a great change befalling Hell. You must have seen the canyon! The darkness that lies beneath it! Something is coming, and the unmarked are connected it, but the council has told us to kill them without any explanation! We are forbidden to even speak to the unmarked, to ask them what they know! Surely you must see that something is wrong. Surely–”
Someone behind the rapholem flew forward, someone with a crooked wing. A woman, and mikalim judging from her sword and shield. And she was a blur of speed and fury.
“Shaul is dead!” She brought her sword down. “I need no other reason!”
It all happened so fast. Mia stood there, blinking, trying to put together what she’d just seen. Maybe a trick of light had lied to her? Maybe…
Galon didn’t dodge. Maybe he never expected an angel to attack him. Maybe he expected the rapholem he spoke with to honor the conversation. Maybe the woman was too fast? Maybe… Maybe he thought… maybe his sacrifice would convince the other angels. Whatever the reason, whatever possible, stupid, fucking unfathomable reason, the angel simply hovered there, and the screaming woman brought her sword down into the side of his neck.
His wings went limp as blood splattered, and red coated his white feathers as he fell. A moment later, he landed against the mountainside, and the ding of metal changed to the quiet thud of flesh as his armor vanished.
Mia froze. The angels froze. Whoever the woman was, she stared down at the angel a hundred feet below her, body prostrated on the mountainside, only partly visible to Mia along the jagged rocks of the mountain’s curves. That hadn’t just happened. There was no way that’d just happened.
She had to get to him, now. She had to do something.
Mia looked to Romakus. The giant demon stood hidden in the tunnel’s shadow, and his face boiled with rage. Every muscle clenched, threatening to burst the leather straps that held chunks of black metal to his skin. Vin looked almost calm, but his furrowed eyebrows were still in think mode.
But neither of them were doing anything. What could they do? Nothing. Literally nothing. Just like Mia. She could do literally… nothing…
Again. It’d happened again. Just like last time, someone came for Mia, someone else got in the way, and died. And this time it wasn’t some evil, scary bastard with two axes. It was angels. Angels had come to kill her, and they’d killed Galon.
Mia looked back up at the angels, all of them still frozen. Maybe they were in shock, or mourning, faces hidden inside their helmets. Whatever went through their minds, they continued to hold Yosepha’s cross, and the woman lifted her head enough to look down at Galon’s body.
Her lips moved, too far and quiet to hear. But she wept.
The sound of her distant, faint cries cut through Mia’s soul, and the fingers inside her struck the strings in reflex. She couldn’t stop them. She didn’t want to stop them. Her fingers hit the strings harder, until the buzzing vibration filled her, flowed into her fingers and toes, and through her skull. Until the vibration shook the world where no one else but her would feel it. The vibration pulled her down into… something, until it enveloped her, like she was underwater, and all she could hear or feel was the endless vibration carrying her along the current.
Play for me.
Use me.
Mold me.
I will dance for you.
Mia stepped out into the open, up onto a boulder, and looked up at the angels above. Hundreds of angels, over a thousand white wings enveloped in a gentle golden glow, all pivoted to look down at her.
Mia held out her hand to her side. The batlam rune ignited in her thoughts, and with mind and body deep in the flowing ocean tide, the rune felt light, like anything underwater might. The rune blazed, a red glow that covered her in her armor, and summoned her weapon.
She slammed the base of her staff against the rock beside her, and glared up at the angels.