The angel with David in his sights lined up another arrow, but a brute charged him over. A seven-foot angel in light armor, relative to his companions, while the brute was over eight feet tall, all muscle and dark skin. But the angel spun with the tackle, grabbed the arrow, and stabbed the brute in the shoulder with it. The demon roared but didn’t relent, and the two went down.
Remnants swarmed them. The zombies fell on them, pushed through the teeming mass of dead remnants around their feet, and others crawled up from the ground and got their bleeding fingers around the angel’s and demon’s limbs. They weren’t strong enough to give the angel and demon more than a moment’s delay, but that was enough for more demons to jump the angel and rip and tear.
The angel burst out from underneath four demons, set his wings alight with a gold glow, and rained arrows from above. Each arrow glowed gold, almost blinding bright, and the arrows cut through flesh before exploding with small pops on the ground.
It wasn’t going much better elsewhere. An angel with a great shield stabbed a demon in the chest with her spear. Another angel did the same with hers. The angels with swords were more aggressive, and they threw themselves at the demons, all on a charging path toward David.
A mikalim broke free of the chaos and dove for David. Her wings glowed, and she swung her sword. An arc of yellow energy shot from it, and David’s stomach flattened into his gut as Caera jumped over the shining beam.
She landed behind a broken tombstone, dashed around it, and came up behind an angel approaching Acelina. Somehow running silent, she bound off another tombstone, landed on the angel’s back, and tore into the man’s wings. A roar of pain mixed into the unending screams of the remnants, and the angel spun, only for Acelina to bring her axe down on him.
The angel was too smart for that. He brought his shield up, and stabbed forward at Caera with his sword, forcing her to back off. The man was small compared to Acelina, but he knocked her axe aside, spun, and took another swing at her. Caera stopped him, biting at his wings again.
Acelina saved. Mission successful. The angel spun yet again and came for Caera, and Caera ran off, bouncing off broken tombstones and weaving circles in the chaos. All David could do was hold on and ignore the chaffing against his thighs.
He squeezed her back spikes as hard as he could.
“We have to get out of here!”
“I know, but we can’t do that if Laoko’s demons are dead! The angels will run us down!”
Fuck. Fuck fuck! How’d the angels even find them?
This was David’s fault. Fighting the rider and causing insane amounts of damage, probably visible to angels scanning the fog. Then the remnants now, screaming as a thousand-man choir, drew the already nearby angels.
If they survived this, David couldn’t use his powers again, not like before, not if they wanted to survive. But surviving the moment was a little more important.
He struck the strings inside him, and bit down a scream. It was like sticking his real fingers into a fire, and the searing pain shot out through his limbs. Attempts to focus backfired, and he clenched his eyes shut as he squeezed on Caera’s spikes.
He did it again. Again, the pain hit him. He hit the strings again, and the pain wracked his body. Like playing the guitar when the fingertips were literally worn down to the bone, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t play them loudly, but he could play them.
Two of the angels with bows broke free of the fight, aimed their bows at David, and fired. He summoned a wall. No voice within the ocean of vibration heard him this time. He didn’t even reach the ocean this time. He might as well have been a stone skipping on the surface of a small lake. But there were ripples in the water, and that was enough for something small.
A tombstone shot up from the ground, smaller than the others, thinner, but it was enough. The two arrows collided with the white stone, and shattered it with small explosions of gold. More arrows followed, and David summoned another tombstone. Making the strings vibrate enough to affect the world under his own strength meant he had to play hard every single pluck, every single pick.
It didn’t matter how much it hurt. Twelve angels were slaughtering remnants and demons alike, and the only angel that was having any trouble was Moriah with Laoko. And Laoko was on the defensive. The ten-foot-tall bolstara tetrad hopped back, hooves sliding over white stone as she swung her four blades down at the angel rapid fire, only for the angel to block each one of them. Moriah was faster. Moriah was stronger. She screamed up at the demon, and used her white wings to drive herself forward, each flap pushing her up into Laoko’s close range, and forcing the demon back more.
There weren’t many demons left. Mikalim tore through them as if they didn’t exist, swords slicing through flesh and claws with no trouble. Their swords didn’t cut through demon armor, but whenever a mikalim’s sword bounced off meera metal, it glowed gold, and their next cut had no trouble dismembering every demon in their path, armor or no armor.
The demons threw themselves at the angels, but this was no battle. David and the others pulled back from the fight as best they could, collapsing on the same position with some big tombstones between them and most of the carnage, but the fight was almost over. All the demons were dead or dying.
No, Ericia was still alive, Laoko’s bat girl, and she threw herself at Moriah’s back.
In a single blink, Moriah turned and cut her in half. The little bat woman split apart, head to crotch, and her blood coated the angel’s wings.
“No!” Laoko shrieked at the angel and brought all four swords down, but the drenched angel was unphased. She blocked and pushed herself back into close range, and again forced the much bigger woman back into the defensive.
And the other angels closed in. They took their time, spears pointed at Laoko, but several pointed David’s way as well, and the three free mikalim flew up, over, and behind David and the group in seconds. Trapped. Acelina and Jes turned and snarled at the angels, but just the presence of Heaven’s warriors was enough to force them back until David and the girls were all grouped up. The Las hissed and snarled, but stayed behind the spread wings of Jes and Acelina, axes and swords aimed at the angels. They were trembling.
David played the song as hard as he could. It was barely enough to summon a couple tombstones around the group.
“Don’t… make me kill you,” he said, glaring at the angels.
They raised their swords, took a step toward the pitiful barrier, and stopped. They looked behind them. The remnants stopped screaming long enough to glance the same way. A quiet clink in the distance filled the sudden silence, and most of the angels spun and faced the sound.