But again the sarkarin demon, an enormous shark beast with a dinosaur body, leapt upon the angel, and brought her to the ground. His eyeless, shark face caught a glint of the gold light of the angry angel woman’s grace, before he buried his teeth onto the woman’s sword arm. She screamed, a mix of rage and pain, and soon blood.
The sword and shield both disappeared in a small, gold flash, only for the sword to reappear in her free arm. And as the sarkarin, half on top of her and pinning her to the ground, tore up what he thought was her sword arm, she brought her sword down toward his back.
Mia reached out, but she was too slow, too late. Another demon wasn’t. Someone else joined the chaos, and with a swing of their black sword, knocked the angel’s sword aside.
The loud ping of metal on metal summoned the rapholem. They lowered their walls of gold, and with perfect grace and synchronization, turned and swooped upon their angel companion and the sarkarin and vratorin trying to kill her. Both demons rolled out of the way before angel spears stabbed the ground where they’d been, and gave the furious angel Moriah enough room to get up and take to the sky.
Kas? Adron?
Mia’s thoughts were too distant. They didn’t register. She yelled them down at herself through the surface of the ocean, but her other half was too deep. All she could feel from within the currents was the song, the song she’d started and wasn’t even playing herself anymore. Someone else was playing it, and it enveloped her.
The four angels took to the sky, but Mia wouldn’t let them try again. She pointed a hand up, and unleashed the song. Stab. She wanted to stab them, and she played notes that echoed that idea, sharp and penetrating. With staff at her side, she raised her open hand in front of her and drew it upward, as if the ground itself were an extension of her.
A spiraling spear of blackstone shot up from the ground, nearly as fast as an arrow, and it shot up at the mikalim. The three rapholem could live, but the mikalim woman needed to die. She’d struck Galon, may have killed him, and had tried to kill Mia more than any other angel. Stop her. Kill her.
Moriah turned around, summoned her shield, and blocked the enormous spear of black. It shattered against the silver metal, and sparks exploded outward, announced with a thundering crack before raining down harmlessly. How had she seen that coming?
David. She’d fought David before. Moriah must have run into Yosepha after encountering David, and some sort of exchange tipped her off? But that didn’t explain where the army had come from. Maybe… Azreal, Noah, and Shir? Were they in the army that burned on the mountainside?
Moriah hovered in the sky, glaring down at Mia with red eyes that cut through the shadow of her helmet. Rage could not describe what she saw in the angel’s eyes. What had David done to her? How important had those two angels he’d killed been to her?
“Death to all unmarked!” Moriah screamed. “I will destroy you! I will rain your blood upon all of Hell!” For a moment, she considered swooping down toward Mia again, even as an inferno raged around them, but the rapholem around her took her arms and pulled her skyward.
Her screams penetrated the unending roar of the calamity until, slowly, she disappeared into the distant ember clouds.
Mia looked to the demons in the tunnel. Livian, Julisa, and Romakus all stood there, staring at her. Vinicius had his eyes on the sky. The Damall behind Livian had open mouths with dropped jaws.
And Kasimiro and Adron, both covered in a host of blood that could have only come from fighting on the mountainside, approached her.
“Mia?” Adron asked.
Kas. Adron.
The hum of the song pulled at her. Heat poured, and lava leaked up from the geyser of hellfire to roll down the mountainside. The destroyed ground flattened, and the mountainside had become more of a cliff side, much of the rock broken by the tornadoes, the geyser, the summoned and shattered ramp, and the holy beams of light the mikalim had unleashed. The song felt it all.
New notes joined the song as the inferno raged on. Bones. Ashes. Blood and the red pigment it carried. All were decorations for her body. Hearts. Resonance. Essence. Food for her body, and she devoured them happily.
The song told its tale, rang in her head, soothed her, and pulled her deeper.
Slowly, Mia turned to face the inferno. The demons behind her didn’t matter. They were just the life that lived on her skin. But the feast before her was glorious, over a thousand corpses, many burned to cinder, others chopped into pieces for her to absorb. She could taste of them, if she came. If she went deeper, she could drink of them, come home, sit at the table by the fire, and–
Claws grabbed her shoulder and spun her.
“Mia!” a vratorin yelled in her face. Half his face was burned, but the wound was old. She knew this vratorin. Right, Adron.
She stared at him. Why was this vrat stopping her? Let her go so she could explore the feast.
The sarkarin joined the vratorin, and glared at her with his black shark face. No eyes, and two horns that came out of the sides of his flat shark head, past his dragon snout, and pointed at her. There was an enormous scar across his chest, under the slab of meera metal covering it.
That hadn’t been there before.
Right, because he’d been fighting the rider before, where Mia couldn’t see. When… When…
The memories buzzed against the surface of the ocean, blurry things in the distance.
“Mia!” Again the vratorin spoke up, and this time, he shook her. Hard. “Mia, what’re you–”
The child of Belial grabbed the vratorin and threw him back. The sarkarin… Kasimiro… Kas… jumped between the vratorin… Adron… jumped between Adron and the ragarin, and–
Glass shattered. Mia’s head broke through the surface of the ocean. Thoughts collided against her, cracked the beautiful, eternal song, and ripped her from its perfect embrace.
“Vin!” someone yelled. She yelled. She, her, her mouth, her voice. “Don’t hurt them. Don’t–” Batlam flashed in her skull, its weight increased, and it sent her mind straight down to the ground. She fell on her ass, and a quick flash of red light announced to everyone that her armor and staff were gone. “Holy… fuck…” At least she had her potram rune.
She was going to pass out. She was going to pass out. She was… nope, she was fine. Exhausted, and hungry, but fine. She tried to lean on the staff she didn’t have, nearly face-planted, and planted her palm down instead. Her inner fingers no longer played the song.
Then why the fuck was there still a raging inferno happening behind her? She turned around and looked down the mountainside, into the valley of destroyed ground she’d created, and sucked in a hard breath. The hellfire geyser wasn’t stopping. The ground continued to rumble, and the fire continued to swirl in a maelstrom, now revolving around the geyser. And along the outer edges of the vortex — oh god a vortex — new fire tornadoes touched down, spun up from the raging sky.
Adron and Kas got up, gave Vinicius a few growls, and helped Mia to her feet. Vin growled back down at them, but Mia gave him a quick glance, and he backed off.
Weight on her sandals again, she looked at Adron and Kas, and she smiled.
“You’re alive!” She threw her arms around Adron and squeezed him. Before he could say anything, she did the same for Kas, throwing her arms around his thick neck and giant shoulders, and did her best to hug him, too. “You’re ali–oh no!” Reality hit her like ice water, and she ran past them to Romakus and Julisa, and the two angels they held.