An angel’s road to hell

103. Of defences, doubts and a little bit of stands

Ahri Arete

Her knees buckled, her wings vanished and she fell. I was barely fast enough to catch her before she hit the ground but with a few frantic wingbeats I managed to sling my arms around her lithe body before she could add another injury to her growing collection.

I was still angry, nay, furious and maybe a little shocked but when her soft curves came to rest against my chest and her fluffy tails circled around my middle reflexively I couldn’t help it, my anger melted like snow under the midday sun and I was simply happy to hold her again, dirty and mangled as she was. She wasn’t wounded anymore, as far as I could tell but her skin had a feverish colour and heat radiated off of her as if she was still fighting for her life, spasms making her muscles twitch against me constantly.

Her body was liberally coated with the remains of her rampage, but the few untarnished spots showed the same alabaster hue I had come to know so well but now there was distinct sheen of silver to it, similar to the lines that had covered her meridians before. She felt nearly weightless, lighter than a feather and the remaining sparks of transcendent energy that were still roaming through her body, like stars in a galaxy, were visible as tiny motes of light that flickered across her skin.

Caressingly I brushed the dirt form her cheeks and removed a few stray strands of hair from around her eyes before I lowered my head and gently kissed her lips.

“I’ve missed you. Please, don’t do that again,” I breathed against her mouth.

“Is she alright? Does she look any different?” Mephisto’s voice projected a distanced air but I heard the faint tremor underneath his cool demeanour. Somewhere along the way he had started to truly care for her, hell, maybe for all of us. The demon with the golden heart. Or we had just grown on him, like mould.

“I don’t think so. She’s hot to the touch, though. Any ideas?” I said while I faced our weary group. None of us had sustained a serious injury but I saw minor cuts and bruises nearly everywhere and exhaustion was written plainly across their faces.

“The stupid angel just rewrote her own life force and jumped head over heels into the next fight she could find. I’d be more concerned if there wasn’t anything strange going on in her body. But if she isn’t combusting and her heart’s still beating she’ll be fine, I think. Heaven, I’ve never before seen a still developing immortal attempt what she did. How should I know?”

“Because you’re the only one who…” I didn’t get to finish my sentence. A tormented scream ripped from Reia’s throat and she collapsed where she stood beside Mordred who reacted quickly enough to catch her below the shoulders on her way down. I was just about to make my way over to them with my precious burden when she fell silent again with a pained groan and the hall shook with a mounting tremor.

Streaks of energy curled across the floor and along the pillars, touching every slain corpse and destroyed golem they came across. A crackling lightning storm of power built up around us, the statue we had tried to reach at its centre. It had moved, its legs piercing ever deeper into Shassa’s original body, ripping her power out of her. Not even the distance she had created by taking over Reia was enough to protect her from the waves of agony that were coursing through her now. For a split second I wondered how she he even managed to stay alive over the aeons, subjected to a torture like this every day of her miserable existence. The girl was tough as nails, I had to give her that.

Unfortunately the scene between me and the statue cut my musings short. Arrows of light pierced through stone, metal and corpses, fresh and nearly decayed ones alike. With every bolt of energy that was torn from Shassa’s form, wounds healed, cut limbs crept, zombie like, back to where they had come from and crumbled heaps of rock shimmered and rose to realign, forming the dreaded golems once again. Before my eyes Cassandra’s work became undone, nearly as fast as she had cut through the horde. If we waited only a minute longer, we would be back where we had started.

“Move,” I screamed. “Mordred, grab Reia and run! We have to destroy that statue or we’re all going to die down here! This time, there’s no one coming for us.” I threw Cassy across my shoulder and didn’t wait to see if the others would follow. I jumped as high as I could and rose into the air on the current of superheated air my wings provided. I circled once to gain altitude and rushed for the far end of the hall as fast as my wings could carry me. It was simple, really. Either we’d be able to shut down the damned thing or we’d die trying, there was no middle ground. We had no chance in hell to face the army again, should it truly rise. We had been hard pressed to hold our ground the first time around and now, we were exhausted and there was no one left who could come to our aid. It was now or never.

Luckily Cassy had burned away the webs between the pillars, otherwise I wouldn’t have had a prayer to get anywhere in time. As it was, it didn’t take me longer than a handful of seconds before I closed in on the statue, Viyara hot on my tails. The thing was a work of art, no doubt about it, smooth surfaces and intricate details that seemed much more alive than they had any right to be made it appear like some sort of spider goddess had descendent to devour the prey beneath her legs.

A chilly aura became stronger the closer I got until it felt like I was bodily pushed back by a wall of cold, the same kind of cold we had already encountered in the last room. Shassa had explained that it was a phenomenon which occurred when a lot of energy was channeled into a spell, the raging torrents would inadvertently leech more and more power from the surroundings, freezing them in the process. Unfortunately knowing why didn’t help in the slightest in overcoming the side effects, the heat from my wing the only thing that kept my skin from freezing.

I pressed one arm tighter against Cassy’s body and wrapped it through her tails for good measure. She wouldn’t fall, at least of that I could make sure while I covered the remaining distance in the blink of an eye.

The looming shadow before me seemed even larger up close and for a moment, despair raced through me like an electric jolt. How should we even damage something that larger, never mind completely destroy it before it had finished its task? Not much to do but try, I reasoned.

Blades or my negligible strength wouldn’t make a dent in the enchanted granite, of that I had no doubt, so the only thing I could try, besides waiting for the raging, golden colossus behind me, was using my wings, similarly to what Cassandra always did. A pity mine weren’t nearly as useful when it came to any form of whole scale destruction. I could easily melt metal or stone but it took time, time we didn’t have. The only way I saw, was to damage some integral part of the enchantments, burn away one formation and hope the rest would crumble on the weakened base and for that to work I needed to gain at least a rudimentary understanding of how the spells operated.

The spider’s legs were wrapped around and had cut through a shrivelled up body but I could still see the similarities between the two: eight legs, mandibles instead of a mouth, closed and dried up eyes on the top of the head. It was Shassa’s body alright but even as I watched, it withered away further, sparks of energy drawn form it’s core and along the stony limbs to disperse through the statue and feed the resurrection spell that was making the army come back to life. Each leg served as an individual conductor for Shassa’s power, feeding the hungry swarm that was struggling back to life with the dull clanks of realigning bones and reassembled stone.

The statue was glowing faintly by now, the amount of energy channeled throw it sufficient to manifest as eerily blinking lights that ran long the legs, swirled around the body and disappeared I side the enormous stone head. The closed eyes were glazed over with a film of power and forwarded the stolen sparks towards the invigorated horde.

“Viyara, try to snap the legs! I’ll go for the enchantments on the head.” Probably not the best idea one could come up with, but the most reasonable thing that came to my mind in the heat of the moment.

I didn’t wait for a reply and adjusted my angle, soaring even higher into the air until I was level with the enormous stone face. I knew it wasn’t alive but coming within a few meters of a near perfect depiction of  ravenous spider, its every feature radiating pure bliss while it devoured the life of someone else gave me the creeps. No wonder Shassa had been prepared to do whatever it’d take to get out of her predicament. If I was honest, I couldn’t say for sure if I’d even have survived for a single year under similar circumstances. Whatever she had done in her past, and the few hints, well, she had been rather outspoken on the topic, she had paid the price manifold.

Silently I landed on top of the head. As soon as my feet my contact with the stone, I felt the crushing force that was making its way through the channels, embedded deeply in the statue. I could feel my own energy react, attracted by the churning maelstrom below and I had to immediately clamp down on my core tightly to prevent it from spreading through my body and burning me to cinders in the process.

Wearily I took a second to check on Cassy, afraid she might have reacted similarly and unable to do anything about it in her unconscious state, but she seemed unperturbed. Her skin had even cooled a little and she was fiddling with one of my tails lazily. A small smile had crept across her face and for a moment I again saw the little girl in her, which had had to grow up much too quickly. I’d have loved to just look at her for a while but that would probably have been the last mistake I was ever going to make. I could swoon as much as I wanted to, once we were safe, or at least not in mortal peril anymore. Sighing I pushed her further up on my shoulder and turned my attention towards the swirling, glowing patterns beneath my feet.

I had studied the basics of enchantments and runes meticulously but I knew with the first glance that I was way out of my depth. First of, I couldn’t see the formations as a whole, I could only trace the path the motes of light took before my eyes and try to imagine how the construct would have appeared in its entirety. The second problem was the sheer complexity. I felt like a child who had successfully built its first sand castle and was now staring at the blueprint of a magical tower. Completely baffled in other words. Luckily I didn’t have to dissect it, all I had to do was find a lynchpin and pull it out.

I took a deep breath and gradually allowed the chaos of the hall to fade away. The tremors that shook the statue when Viyara charged into its legs went away as well as the groaning and rumbling of our approaching doom until the glowing patterns were the only thing that filled my vision. I didn’t try to understand them anymore, like an artist I searched for parts of the composition that glued the rest together, like the final drops of colour that turned a lifeless picture into a masterwork. In my minds eye I traced the convoluted formations with my thoughts, searching for the capstone, some form of confluence which could be altered to destabilise the structure.

Unbelievably that part went rather smoothly. In a world of light and shadow I could easily locate the nodes where several veins of energy converged, they simply shimmered brighter than the rest. The real challenge was that I still didn’t have any sort of idea on how to meddle with them. I couldn’t use my magic anymore and my wings weren’t suited to pierce through inches of stone and cut through the enchantments. I could maybe try to melt a way through the rock and burn the magic underneath somehow but considering how sturdy the statue was that seemed outlandish at the very least. Maybe I could…

“Need a hand?” Mephisto’s voice tickled my ear and nearly made me jump. I didn’t know when he had retreated into the coin and manifested again but I was more than glad to see him.

“Desperately. Can you think of a way to stop the spell?” His eyes lost focus as he apparently concentrated on the energy structures he could see and I used the few seconds he’d take to quickly glance around the hall.

Instead of rubble, discarded bones and shredded corpses, the silhouettes of golems and the discernible shapes of restored chimeras staggered to their feet. Originally they had been spawned from the sacrifice of blood we had had to leave in the previous room but now I thought we had triggered another defence mechanism that linked them directly to Shassa’s energy, a final cruelty that would assure she couldn’t be freed. Either the guardians would rip through the invader or she’d be consumed entirely in an attempt to hold them off. Vile but clever.

Viyara was circling the legs below us, throwing everything she had in terms of spells, fire and even brute force against the enchanted granite but her exertions and shook the statue, they didn’t damage it. Mordred had hauled Reia over to Shassa’s origin, body and was standing guard over them, his face turned towards the twitching horde with grim determination edged across his features. As much as I hated the idea of a last stand, he definitely looked the part.

“I have an idea,” the hesitation in Mephisto’s words didn’t inspire much confidence in me.

“We can’t shut it down, not in time but I should be able to reverse the flow of energy, with a little time. Instead of sucking Shassa dry, it’ll rip the constructs apart to feed her. She just has to stay alive long enough and you have to give me a couple of minutes to tinker without interruptions. Think you can manage that?” Probably not, but what choice was there? I clenched my teeth.

“Sure, how long do you need?” I imagined my voice held firm but his understanding gaze made me think otherwise.

“10 minutes? Give or take? Leave Cassy with me. I think I can use her blood, it should be quite potent by now. I’d say we have about 2 minutes until the transfer is complete and you’re up to your neck in enemies. Good luck, Ahri. And just for the record, I never regretted trusting you.”

Somehow I knew that he wasn’t talking about anything recent but his words still made me feel better, as if burden I hadn’t even know about had been lifted off my chest.

“Thanks. Take good care of her.” I heaved Cassy from my shoulder and lowered her gently to the ground. A quick kiss for her and a nod for Mephisto later I was back up in the air, wondering where I had gone wrong that I was now defending a demon to the last breath while he prepared to use the blood of my love to invoke some strange ritual he had told me nothing about after rushing into the depths of the earth on the behest of a spidery, self proclaimed evil sorceress. If I got out of this alive, I’d have to revaluate some of my life choices. But then again, I’d probably be dragged into the next mess before I’d have the chance to. At least it was never boring. Aurora hadn’t promised too much when she had told me that my life would be very interesting.