Mia stood, solid, unmoving as the wind tossed her hair. With staff firm against the rock beneath her, she looked behind her. Julisa stood there, eyes wide. Romakus did the same, eyes locked on the chaos before him, the mountainside-turned-battlefield, and the rain of destruction above. Vinicius stood close to Mia, face scanning for any angels that might approach; the one he’d tossed aside was now locked in battle with several other demons.
“Go,” someone said. Mia said? “Julisa, get Galon. Romakus, get Yosepha.”
“How the fuck am I going to do that?” they said in unison.
Mia didn’t respond. She set her eyes back upon the death and madness she had wrought, and reached for the song her fingers played within. The ground was her. The sky was her. The song was her. And the demons that swam in her vibrating currents were guests within and upon her.
And this woman, this young girl with red hair, pale skin, and freckles. She was… Mia was…
Thoughts were lost to the flowing vibrations. Someone’s voice tried to reach her, but could not, muffled above the surface of the ocean song. Her voice? Her thoughts?
Julisa ran out across the mountainside along the edge of the battle, around the chaos and screams of death, and around angels that swooped in and about the dozens of nearby demons. Romakus did not go around, but through. He dashed down the mountainside toward the ramp, using his colossal wings to keep from breaking his limbs against the jagged rocks. And upon reaching the new ramp, now soaked in blood and covered in the corpses of demons, he sprinted up.
An angel got in his way, but Romakus did not waste time. He swung out his sword hard, the mikalim blocked, and the harsh ping of impact announced the strength of the tetrad’s might. The attack launched the angel back, and the tetrad continued past. A half dozen demons followed Romakus and dove at the angel, but she escaped with a flap of her glowing wings. Another angel swooped down, enormous shield at the front, but Romakus bulldozed into them, a full tackle that knocked the angel off the side of the small cliff.
Higher and higher he rose, not fighting the angels despite their attempts to kill him; he was the only tetrad in the fight, after all, and the biggest target. But it was obvious he’d earned his position as leader of this division of the Damall as even Heaven’s warriors could not stop him, and once he reached the height of the ramp, he dove off. Past Mia’s cliff, she could no longer see the tetrad, and could only hope he could reach Yosepha’s captors.
The tide of battle had yet to reach Mia, the song pulling the demons toward the fight along and down the mountainside just below her, and the ramp of rock she’d created. But battle was chaos, and the fighting drifted closer, shifting up along the mountain and closer to Mia every minute.
An angel dove at Mia, sword up. Again, Vinicius knocked them back. He wanted to catch and kill them, and he roared up at them as the warrior took to the sky again, but the angels were smart enough to not commit to a fight with a child of the Old Ones. Unfortunately for the angels, they were not used to the very winds themselves dancing with the unbridled lunacy of flame, and a random gust ripped the angel from their flight path and tossed them into the whirlpool of circling fire tornadoes.
Mia could not tell if they died or not. All was roars, screams, and insanity. A little piece of her, somewhere above the surface of the ocean, knew that she should feel horrible, and would feel horrible. But those thoughts couldn’t penetrate the vibrations that enveloped her. For now, there was only the song, and the battle.
Julisa returned, angel on her shoulder. Mia did not look. She aimed her staff out at the battle ahead, and plucked the strings inside her harder, until the depths of the ocean responded in kind, mirroring her song and amplifying it into the world around her. The winds crashed upon them all, and Mia slammed her staff down in front of her to keep from falling over. She ripped a dozen angels from the sky and sent them down into the awaiting claws, swords, and axes of the horde below.
“Romakus?” Julisa asked, spinning around after setting Galon’s body by the tunnel entrance near Livian.
“Not back yet,” Livian said.
The rest of the Damall again tried to join the battle. Livian and Vinicius stopped them. Only the child of the Old Ones and the powerful tetrads were strong enough to resist Mia’s song.
The battlefield raged, Hell raged, and death flowed. Essence and resonance both fell into the dirt, staining it red, and Hell drank it down. Mia could feel it, the two energies pouring into the depths of Hell, but she could not touch them. Something else was absorbing them. Someone else.
For all the madness Mia had summoned, the angels would not be so easily defeated. Weakened by time, burdened by millennia, they still ripped through the swaths of demons like paper, and almost all the blood that drowned the land was demon. The gabriem tended to their fellow angels, healing wounds as the rapholem defended them with grand walls of holy light, gold barriers no demon could break. Adapting to the gale winds, many of the mikalim took to the sky, and unleashed their beams of holy energy down onto the horde.
Some angels died. Demons died by the hundreds.
The angel with the crooked wing rose above the battle, aimed her sword at Mia, and screamed with pure fury as she poured her grace into the weapon. It glowed brightly, almost blinding against the swirling amber flames. And when she unleashed the beam, the battle disappeared under the deafening roar.
Mia brought up her staff, and summoned blackstone. A wall of onyx shot up from the ground in front of her, fifty feet tall and wide, and ten feet thick. The woman’s attack crashed against it, and a new roar of destruction buried the battlefield as her attack shook the mountain. But this was not the first time Mia had seen one of these attacks, and she built the wall thick. It stood strong.
The attack didn’t last forever, ten seconds of holy death that chipped away at Mia’s wall like a colossal drill, but could not penetrate it before the angel above desisted. But for all the angel’s crazed fury that made her stand out from the rest of Heaven’s warriors, other angels joined her, took different angles, and again unleashed beams of holy light. Mia aimed her staff to the ground, raised it, and summoned new walls on her left and right, each spread and arcing overhead until a half-complete dome covered her, Vinicius, Julisa, Livian, and the entrance to the cave the Damall stood within.
The battle continued outside, but more angels joined the assault on Mia, burying her and her demons in the roaring sound of their holy light. She was pinned.
“Julisa,” she said, “help Romakus. We must rescue Yosepha.”
Julisa snarled. “I–”
She snapped her eyes back at the tetrad, and the four-armed demoness grew silent. They stared at each other, Julisa looking for some weakness in Mia’s stance, but Mia stood her ground. Explaining her position would have been the logical thing, about how Livian was needed to keep the rest of the Damall from succumbing to the horde call, and how Vinicius was needed to keep Mia safe in case an angel came close. But demons didn’t respond well to logical explanations. They responded well to dominance.