It was too late. The rider brought his other axe down in a chopping motion, as if he’d expected the angel to lunge at him once he’d destroyed the tombstone. It sank into her shoulder and into her torso, and her arm erupted in flame.
But it didn’t stop her, and she drove her glowing sword up through the armor under the armpit, into his flesh, and the rider’s arm lost its strength. She fell away, screaming as hellfire ate her armor and shoulder alike, and the rider stood there, unmoving, angel’s sword still lodged in his arm, and blood flowed down the mirror blade.
What the fuck was wrong with this damn angel? This woman was suicidal.
David summoned more tombstones. It was all he could do. He could feel the hellfire beneath them, the veins of lava. He could feel the burning sky. He could feel the thousands of hard, sharp trees nearby. But the song needed to move them would take an orchestra, and he was a single man barely able to play a ukelele at the moment. Summoning a couple thin tombstones six feet into the air was enough to have his insides clenching as if someone was taking cheese graters to his fingertips. But he summoned them directly under the rider’s arms, and lifted him a foot into the air, both tombstones lodged under his armpits. The angel blade pushed up into his shoulder, not hard enough to push it out the other side, but a fountain of blood gushed from the wound, regardless.
Laoko rushed in, grabbed the angel by her remaining wing, and threw her toward David. Tetrads were strong, and the armored woman borderline flew, single wing catching air and turning her until she crashed on her good shoulder at David’s feet.
“I’m trying to help you!” He reached down and grabbed her good arm, and she jerked it away, glaring at him.
“You–”
He grabbed her arm again. “Come on! I’m trying to–”
Her eyes half closed, and her armor pulsed gold. It faded away, replaced with nothing but white silks, exposing her broken, bleeding body. She snarled and summoned her armor again, enveloping her body in gold, but it lasted two seconds before it faded away. Moriah’s head slumped, and she groaned as her eyes half closed.
But she was alive. Alive, and each pulse of her armor she failed to summon sent electricity into David’s brain. Lightning spiked through the runes in his skull. Batlam and potram lit up like Christmas trees, aligned with angel, and Heaven, and grace.
He didn’t get to process any of it. An explosion deafened him, and he covered his eyes as a wave of heat crashed against his face. Fire scorched the air and drowned the area in red flame.
Laoko stood in front of the rider, and fire and lava dripped from her mouth. The ground burned in front of her, and the tombstones holding the rider crumbled and melted away. The rider fell to a knee, angel sword gone. And he was on fire.
“The fuck?” Jes said from the edge of the fog.
Daoka clicked. Caera stared. The Las gasped. Only Acelina didn’t react.
“I think,” Laoko said, panting, “that… perhaps…” Her eyes opened wide.
Slowly, the rider got back up. Fire flowed along his armor, and bits of the ember flakes within danced away and fell to the ground, the telltale sign of hellfire. It didn’t matter.
Nothing they did mattered.
With both axes in hand, he aimed his skull helmet at the enormous demon looking down at him, and came for her.
Laoko stumbled back, blood trickling down her side and leg, and she turned with a scramble. But the rider was fast, fire wings propelling him, and he swung his axes sideways at the back of her legs.
A much larger axe collided with his back, and the rider fell to a knee again. The larger axe bounced off, landed in the dirt, and a korgejin running out of the fog scooped it up and used two axes on the rider’s shoulders. Titanic axes hit metal shoulders, and the rider fell to both knees. Not because he was wounded, but because the ten-foot tetrad behind him was just that heavy.
“Teleius!?” Laoko said, spinning around.
The titan brought both his axes down on the rider’s back, and the rider fell forward, palms to the ground. Teleius didn’t stop. Again and again he smashed his axes against the rider, missing a wing, missing a chunk of his leg, missing a chunk of his side, burn wounds across his face and chest, but that didn’t stop him. The korgejin hit the rider hard enough it summoned sparks.
The rider’s fire wings burned the demon, but Teleius didn’t stop.
“Go!”
Laoko hissed. “Teleius, we–”
“Go!”
David knew where this was going. Even from a distance, he could see the look in Laoko’s eyes. She didn’t want Teleius to die.
Teleius had a giant hole in his side, big enough to kill a demon. But the rage burning in his eyes and erupting from his voice had other plans.
“Dao, take the angel,” David said. “Acelina, Jes, get Laoko and drag her. We need her, and Teleius is giving us–”
“Maybe we can take the rider!” Jes said. “He’s down and–”
David shot her a glare, and the gargoyle recoiled. How quickly they’d reversed positions.
“Get Laoko and run!”
Acelina ran in first. No complaints. No hisses or growls at David. The spire mother grabbed Laoko by the shoulder and yanked her away from Teleius and the downed rider. Jes joined her and grabbed one of Laoko’s lower arms before she could fight back, and the two demons dragged Laoko back toward the group.
Only when they dragged her far enough the battle disappeared behind fog did Laoko finally give in and run under her own power.
Moriah, still conscious, groaned at the satyr carrying her, but Daoka had no trouble lifting her. The angel didn’t even have her armor anymore, and demons were strong.
The problem was the running. Running fast was difficult when David was holding onto Caera’s spikes for dear life, Laoko couldn’t sprint with blood leaking down her side, and Dao was forced to carry an angel. And because problems liked to come in groups, remnants barred their path, and the group had to mow through them.
The sound of battle echoed behind them, and roars. They kept running. Teleius was lasting longer than the angels did.
“Now we run?” Jes asked. “Before–”
Caera snarled. “Before, if we ran, we’d have this angel bitch we’re towing on our ass! I am in full favor of running from the rider.”
Laoko didn’t look convinced. She stared down at the ground, hooves hitting the white stone shards lighter than someone her size should have; she’d run this ground before. Another roar from behind drew her eyes back, but she didn’t stop.
“Don’t kill anymore remnants,” David said. “We’re leaving a trail. Just push them over or something.”
They did as asked. A trail of corpses was easy to follow, even if it only lasted a few hours. Problem was, remnants had hands, and they grabbed at the girls and David endlessly, like zombies. Each time, the girls hissed and bit back a desire to snarl or squeal, and they pushed the remnants down and ran over them.