“I guess I did,” she said, “but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to save Galon and Yosepha.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah, guess. I… don’t know how I did it. But I can still… still hear the song. It’s what’s causing all that chaos outside. It’s… a song I created.”
Adron sucked in a breath. “Holy shit.”
“You were in a trance,” Kas said.
“I… I think you’re right,” she said. “I was in a trance. The song is… it wrapped me, and it felt so… comfortable. It felt like… like…” Home? “Thanks for stopping me. I don’t know what I was going to do.”
“Think you can do more of that stuff?” Adron asked. “If we’re going on a journey across Hell, those are some pretty useful abilities.”
“I don’t know. And if I get pulled into a trance doing it, I…” She rubbed her arms, and stepped a little closer to Adron. “I don’t know.”
“Being careful makes sense,” he said. “You must have killed dozens of angels, maybe hundreds. And far as I saw, nearly every demon that answered the horde.”
“I didn’t–” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Fuck. I didn’t know… I didn’t know any of that would happen. I mean, I did, and I didn’t. I just… I just played the song, and I knew what would happen when I did. But it was all… so in the moment. I didn’t realize… I didn’t…”
Adron mirrored her expression, and he looked down as he stroked a horn. They walked in silence for a bit, and even as they went deeper into the depths, the rumbling of tornadoes outside shook the mountain. The hellfire tornado that came up from the ground and merged with the sky wouldn’t hit the mountain, she knew. How she knew, she didn’t know, but she knew they were safe.
The three of them stepped into the giant cavern, and the Damall stared at her. Romakus stood to the side of the group, and he squatted down in front of Yosepha as the angel struggled to sit upright, back against a giant stalagmite. She’d live.
She was going to hate Mia for all the dead angels. All that, and Galon still died. All that, and Yosepha was still barred from Heaven. All that, and… nothing.
Livian gave her the heart and joined the rest of the group in a big circle. They waited for Romakus, and the gorujin shared a few quiet words with Yosepha before joining them, too.
Vinicius stood closest to the tunnel Mia had come from, set his dragon eyes on Kas and Adron, and growled quietly. Better than pouncing and killing them.
Romakus flared his wings, a signal for the group to quieten, and he paced in the center of the circle as he hooked them to his back.
“We’re leaving,” he said, “today.” No one said a thing, eyes flitting between him and Mia. “At first I wasn’t quite sure what to do, if we should really just believe this little girl and her crazy story. But…” He gestured up at the ceiling of the cavern. “I think it’s safe to say we should take this seriously. The angels think killing the unmarked is worth a fucking battalion, and now they’ll send more the next time they find an unmarked. I can’t blame them, considering what she did.”
“They didn’t know about her abilities,” Yosepha said, “when they gathered that army. Azoryev were looking for a reason, any reason, to come to Hell with violence. After the unmarked appeared, and the council decreed they were to be exterminated, it was only a matter of time before they decided scouting parties weren’t enough.” Even with big puncture holes through her ankles and wrists, Yosepha dragged herself around the stalagmite enough to face the group. Still in her potram clothes, she was a bloody mess, and it only grew worse as Galon’s heart sat in her palm. She’d taken a single bite.
“Azoryev do that a lot?” Julisa asked.
“They… did.” Yosepha looked down at the heart in her hand, and stared at it. “They’ve been looking for a battle to join for millennia. They thrived during the Second War, but since then, Heaven has done little in Hell. Even during the Spire War, we did little, and let the spires fight among themselves.”
“Except Belor,” Vinicius said. He didn’t bother looking the angel’s way.
“Except Belor,” Yosepha said, nodding. “But that was a small battle. If Heaven truly wanted, she could–”
“Could what?” After a quick snarl that yanked Yosepha’s head up, Vinicius marched toward her. Romakus got in his way, but Vinicius just looked over the ten-foot-tall tetrad’s head to glare down at the angel. “Heaven is a shell of her former self. You can’t summon the numbers you could.”
Yosepha glared up at the child of Belial with something dangerously close to hate in her eyes.
“You don’t understand Heaven, and I have no intention of explaining her to you.”
Vinicius snorted, straight down into Romakus’s face. It’d take more than that to scare Romakus though, especially with all his Damall ready to jump Vinicius if he stepped out of line. He stood his ground and snorted back up at the ragarin.
“The point is,” Romakus said, “that Heaven’s gone on the offensive, and they’re absolutely convinced the unmarked need to die. Azoryev may be quick on the draw, but after what happened here today, I’m guessing the other Heavenly Islands will join this witch hunt, and we’re going to have entire armies of angels pouring over Hell looking for the unmarked.”
“Not to mention Tacitus,” Adron said. “He’ll be on his way, with at least a few hundred demons, and not some random horde, either. His best. And Diogo might do the same.” Everyone looked his way, but Adron shrugged like he’d always been a member of the Damall. Men like him, who could just seamlessly merge into any group, were simultaneously infuriating and delightful.
“Diogo is just a devorjin, a brute,” Livian said. “He’s the weakest spire ruler in the history of Hell. Do we really fear him?”
“Don’t underestimate Diogo,” Kas said. And just when everyone went silent to listen to the shark dinosaur finally speak, he said nothing more.
“Either way,” Romakus said, “we’re leaving. Now. We got a few days before the angels that survived Mia’s horde and inferno get back to Heaven, but after that, who knows what the fuck will happen. Yosepha?”
The angel slowly nodded, eyes still locked on the angel heart in her palm.
“The council will have a meeting, but they will surely side with Azoryev. Each of the Heavenly Islands will send a battalion, and a thousand scouting parties, each. More, if they declare war. The scouts will fetch the armies the moment they know where an unmarked is, and they will raze the land.”
“Mia can do that on her own, apparently,” Romakus said. He gave Vinicius one last glare before he stepped around him and squatted in front of Mia. “Right?”
“I uh… I… don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” His tone was angry, and both Adron and Kas stepped a little closer. Romakus didn’t so much as glance at them, or behind him, despite how Vinicius slowly came up to stand near the tetrad’s tail.
“I don’t know. I did something, inside, and it pulled me under, and then things started responding to me. I’m not… under, right now, and I… don’t know how to do it again.”
Romakus stood up, growled at the three demons ready to jump him, and resumed pacing in the middle of the gathering. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, with more eyes falling on Mia each second, the tetrad squatted down in front of Yosepha again.
“We need to know what you told them.”
Yosepha didn’t respond, eyes locked on the heart.
“Yosepha,” Livian said. “We–”
Romakus flared a single wing in his fellow tetrad’s direction, and she shut up, lowering her head and backing away.
“Yosepha,” he said. “Talk to me.”
The tenderness in his voice struck the entire room more silent than his barks or roars did.
“You can’t resist the cross,” she said. “And… they asked me… what I knew.” She shook her head, cradled Galon’s heart in her two hands against her legs, and sucked in a hard breath. “They know the Damall will help Mia try to reach False Gate. They know the unmarked can use angel runes, if taught. They know they can create auras, and read the ancient language.”
Mia ran over to the angel and got on her knees in front of her. Broken. The poor woman looked broken.