The demon chuckled. “But you can play the strings, can’t you? You walk on them, move through them, but you can play them as I can.”
“I… um…”
Two more arms raised up from the pit. One was skin and bone, but the other was a muscled thing, and he set both hands against the outer cavern walls. Each hand was bigger than a bus.
“The battle in Death’s Grip. The carnage. The song. I can hear it, little vibrations that tingle through my sin, miles and miles away. A song of terrible power. Did you craft it? Did you compose it?”
“I… did.”
Again, the kaiju chuckled. “You did not.”
“What?”
“You can touch the strings. You can play the music of the world, unmarked creature. But you are but a ripple in an ocean. No, you did not play the song, not completely. You summoned Her, didn’t you?” Gulp. “You summoned Her. She listened to your song.” Asmodeus raised his head and came closer, forcing Mia to look straight up. “She listened to your song, but not mine?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what–”
“She listened to you, some unmarked abomination! She listens to your music, but not mine!?”
The Old One roared, and Mia screamed and covered her ears. Asmodeus’s smaller hand threw the angels aside, and their limp bodies crashed into nearby pillars and fell to the ground. His two much, much larger hands moved down from the distant walls and found ground nearby to plant his weight, and the titan moved forward.
Mia’s bone hill could take no more. The vibration turned the skulls into rolling pebbles, and everything fell, Mia included. Her screams might as well have not existed against the roar of the Old One, and gravity lost all meaning as she rolled with tens of millions of skulls.
Something slightly softer than the ground caught her. She opened her eyes and stared up at the big chest and arms of a demon who hadn’t been very nice to her lately.
“Vin, I–”
Vin turned and ran. The others turned and ran, and Mia sucked in a breath and looked around for her egg. Adron had it.
“Unmarked!” Asmodeus yelled, and again she covered her ears. “I will devour you, unmarked! I will consume your soul, your sin, your grace, whatever powers an abomination such as you, and your song will be mine!”
The betrayers scattered. They tripped over rocks and skulls, and many broke bones with impact. None of them screamed, even as they disappeared under the rolling waves of bone. Not enough weight to crush them. More than enough weight to trap them.
Pillars ahead of them crumbled, and the shadow of the Old One moved above, burying them in new shades of blackness. Head, neck, torso, it was all a blur, lost in shades of black as amber veins disappeared under clouds of dust and crumbling pillars.
The demons ran, hopping left and right, over rocks, around tumbling mounds of skulls, and past the worshiping souls. Some of the poor fools reached out, as if they could catch a demon. Julisa was not kind, and she took lead and cut the souls into pieces with her four swords without a sound. Everyone was in run mode.
Mia was in panic mode. She held Vin’s chest as best she could, but all she could do was stare up at the Old One trying to eat her. It lumbered over them, movements slow and heavy, but still somehow faster than the pack of demons scurrying along the ground like ants. The Godzilla comparison was too apt.
Mia looked back. Azreal, and Noah, where were they? They’d come to talk to her? Broke away from the army? Did they want to kill her, like everyone did apparently, or did they actually want to speak with her?
They were going to die if she left them down here.
“The song, unmarked!” A giant arm slammed down in front of them, and scooped across the ground toward them, smashing through pillars, destroying bone piles and burning bushes, and squashing souls beneath its dark red skin. “Your song will be mine. Your power will be mine. You and all the unmarked!”
The arm was too big. Vin and the rest of them tried to get over it, but it came at them like a truck, and hit them as hard. Everything went black. The only sensation she could wrap her brain around was said brain colliding and ricocheting inside her skull. Gravity took them. The ground took them next.
Something wrapped her body, far harder and bigger than Vin’s grip. Seeing stars in the dark, her head lulled side to side, and gravity found her again. Pain found her a second later, a screaming headache that ripped through her mind, and from her arm.
Broken. Her arm was broken. And a hand bigger than the one that’d held two angels now held her, with far too many fingers.
“Understand, unmarked. With your power, She will bend to me. I shall play a symphony, and She will answer. Hell will be mine. The vortex will be mine. Heaven will be mine. The Great Tower shall be mine. And all will bow before the psalm of Asmodeus!” Hate, rage, and pure condescension rolled from the monster’s broken mouth like he’d spoken the words a million times before.
Was this the origin of overly verbose villains? She half smiled between the waves of pain. David would have liked that joke.
She opened her eyes. The monster had pulled back to his pit, leaning over where the mountain of skulls had once been. Now the ground was covered in bones, and hundreds of souls lay buried underneath them. Some pushed themselves up from the mess, most did not, and even with broken limbs, they again resumed their work, pushing skulls back into piles.
“These others you have brought will be food for my betrayers. But you, unmarked, I will know you. I can smell Her on you. I can hear Her in your veins. And I will know the depths of you, in the way only She can.”
Know?
Roars and snarls forced her head up from the heavy darkness trying to pull it down. Vin and Julisa. Adron and Kas. They struggled in the monster’s grip, and Vin and Kas both bit on what flesh they could, but their teeth couldn’t penetrate the nigh black skin of the Old One.
Where were the incubi?
“A ragarin,” Asmodeus said, and he lifted Vin up closer to his colossal head. “How few of the children still live. Fewer still are born. And it is a child of Belial that stumbles onto my doorstep?” The beast laughed, and the cavern laughed with him, trembling bass ripping the ground out from under the slaving souls beneath. “Failures. All failures. Our flock. Our soldiers. But when we were struck down, what did you do? You did not free us. You did not help us recover from our wounds. You fought amongst yourselves for Lucifer’s spires. And you!” He squeezed, and Vin’s roar rose an octave. That was almost a scream. “Belial can rot for all eternity for all I care. I will take pleasure in torturing his children wherever I find them.”
Belial was alive? Another half roar, half scream tore through the cavern, and Asmodeus squeezed.
Mia forced her eyes away, and they fell on Adron. He didn’t have the egg.
No. No no no. Mia ground her teeth and clenched her eyes until her face ached. Dark weight pulled at her eyelids, brain throbbing in her skull, but she pushed against it and set her glare on the old monster. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She had to do something.
She reached for the strings inside her–