Chapter 7

Caelel woke to find herself once more herself – and, like a fleeting dream, the transcendental oneness, the knowledge that she was and could be more than ever dreamed, remained in her mind for just long enough to impress upon her the shape, the taste, the vanishing color, and not a single iota of the actual heft of the matter. It was, in short, the most infuriating, frustrating, taxing thing to awaken too, and managed to sour her mood, despite the fact she currently sprawled in the Realm’s most comfortable bed, her body entangled and held against a cliff-face of masculine perfection. Lord Arral’s arms were locked under her belly, and his bulk covered her entire back – a blazing heat that throbbed into her wings like the healing light of Heaven itself. She scowled at the wall despite this all, and clenched her fists, and tried to hold onto that feeling...

But it was gone.

She squirmed in Arral’s grasp. The Lord of Ruin lifted one arm to allow the angelic general to sit up, her hair tumbling along her shoulders. Her wings fluttered and she blinked at them, jerking her head so hard to the right she nearly hurt herself.

Her wings were once more blue-white, shimmering and pure.

“That’s just confounding,” she hissed.

“Ruti,” Lord Arral murmured.

Cae looked down at him – and saw that he was awake, his antlers dimpling the pillows around his head as he rolled onto his back.

“That was the last thing you said, before you fell to sleep – Ruti would understand transformations. Remarkably cogent for a woman who had made history and, also, was ... so...” He paused, playing words around on his tongue and in his mind before finally settling on: “Distracted.”

Cae snorted, loudly. She would have expected having graduated from Citri to his lord Arral would have shook her – but the opposite was true. It wasn’t simply that she was growing more inured to breaking her angelic vows. It was also everything she had learned about the true nature of the Realm of Ruin. The very idea remained ... heady. She wondered if she could get any angel to actually believe it ... and what did it mean? What did it truly mean for the war between Heaven and Hell.

She frowned. She didn’t know if she was ready, or even able, to answer that. There remained questions she couldn’t possibly-

The door to the bedchamber burst open. An infantrydemon with the faint sheen and rubbery skin of a member of Ruti’s domain entered into the chamber, spear clattering as he swung his arms in an ungainly jog. “My lord Arral! We must-” He stopped dead, his eyes bulging as he saw Cae, her bare body tucked next to the massive bulk of Arral. He turned on his heel, giving her his back and Cae felt a momentary, fluttering flash of shame. She took hold of the sheet, sweeping it up and over her chest, holding it there – and then felt her shame grow even brighter, as having her body only thinly covered by a nearly translucent caul of white fabric only accentuated her curves. The demon continued his report, though she could hear the strangled note in his tone. “Pestilence has marshaled an army – but he advances past the villages, ignoring them!”

Cae slid from the bed, modestly only partially forgotten. With one arm still holding sheet to her chest, she barked out: “How many forces can we call upon and how quickly?”

“The message stations you had built, uh, m’am ... Lady ... My ... my Lady?” The demon sounded unsure, confused.

“I fucked him, I haven’t married him!” Cae snapped, startling a snort of laughter from Arral. “General will do fine – what do we have?”

“Three platoons of infantry, two of archers, and a company of horse from Ruti’s domain, scant fliers,” the demon barked out.

Cae chewed her lower lip, modestly only entirely forgotten – with her arm not shifting to keep her makeshift covering about herself, it swept into a narrow column that exposed her hips and some of the sweep of her belly. She tucked her arm in tighter, frowning intently. “Who leads Pestilence’s armies...” She murmured, half to herself.

“Puzak,” Arral said, his voice growing grim. “The Baron of Panic.”

“Panic, Lies, Denial, it’s a strange purview considering they don’t have Rot...” Cae muttered.

“When plague spreads, those spread just as quickly. You’re fortunate that the Lord of Greed ripped Avarice from Pestilence’s fingers three years back,” Arral said, his voice grim. “Though, getting Avarice to equip even an allied Baron’s troops is nearly impossible, so they say.”

“But they’re all one in the same!” Cae turned to face him, scowling.

“Ah, and you’ve yet to meet a thought you could not order, an emotion you could not bridle, nor break?” Arral asked, grinning most wickedly as he sprawled back into the bed – his body a massive black shadow, rippling with muscle and promise. Cae’s cheeks flushed bright silver and her wings fluttered behind her back as she turned to face him. “For demons, a lot of what goes betwixt the ears in mortals and angels takes entire homes, bedrooms, and battlefields. It keeps Hell so interesting.”

“Interesting!” Cae scoffed. “Yes, I sure do enjoy launching a major land campaign to get my left foot to step after my right!” She turned back to the infantrydemon, who had risked turning back around and gotten a full view of her heavenly sculpted ass. This had reduced the poor creature to a trembling, blushing pile of armor, scales and two quite stiff spears. The one that Cae could actually see was all that supported him, considering his other spear had robbed his knees of their solidity. “Send word to Laeushale to get my armor and gather her fellow fire spirits. I want them to carry Citri and Degi away from here. Send for Ruti himself, we’ll be meeting the enemy on his territory.”

“Yes my lady, uh, General!” The demon snapped up a salute, then turned and scampered off.

Cae took a moment to think through the angles, spinning in her head like war-angels. She pursed her lips.

Arral, still reclining in bed, watched her intently.

“You look just like her,” he murmured, quietly. “When you’re thinking?”

“Hmm?” Cae looked at him, blinking as the final battle plan came into focus in her mind. “ ... Alia?”

“You have been reading her journal,” Arral said, quietly. “I’ve yet to open it. Too ... painful.” He paused. “Is there...” His hesitation held the needle thin thread of purest hope, whose note was utter agony to hear. Cae felt that war in herself, that battlefield that demons made so awfully literal. But in the end, honesty won out. Whatever she could do for this mighty, strange Lord of Ruin, it could not be built on lies. She looked away.

“I am not the reincarnation of your Lady, my Lord,” she said, quietly. “She did not become an angel – she may be mortal, still, up there...” She lifted her gaze upwards – even if modern theoastrography had firmly determined that the shape of the Realms bore no relation to suns and skies, deep caves and cthonic trenches. The mortal realms were no more above the Hells than Heaven was. Still, she looked at the ceiling, at the rococo splendor that had been left to decay and peel, gold glinting among the dust and the cobwebs. She sighed, quietly. Last night, she had had a perfect view of it – but in that haze of lust and passion, her eyes had been focused too much on Arral’s face. His chiseled jaw. The cut-scars that glowed with the inner light of his vast, vast soul. She shook her head, focusing once more. “I’m sorry.”

Arral sighed. “You’re still very alike. I must have a terrible taste in women.” His lips quirked up. “Both of you shine far brighter than I.”

“Isn’t that the nature of a Ruin?” Cae asked, her voice coy.

The door to the room opened and shambling mass of golden armor and magical runes came stomping in – Shale, carrying her panoply in her flame red arms. “Congratulations, Cae!” she exclaimed around the pile. “Can I get the juicy details now, or-” she peeked around the pile. “ ... he’s still here.”

“That I am,” Arral said, showing no sign of leaving.

“I will simply, ahem, entomb myself in the lower catacombs...” Shale muttered as she shifted the armor in her grasp, hiding her face behind it. “Brick myself up. Yes. Should do that.”

Clad in gold and silver, bearing a flaming sword, Cae took to the air with an escort of flame spirits and sought the enemy. The Baron of Panic did not seek to make it difficult. His army marched under the fluttering banners of the House of Pestilence – an Ouroboros snake of green on a black field, a wurm that managed to glower at the world as it engaged in the ancient act of eternal self cannibalism. They had no fliers to ward off scouts, but made up for it with their ranging cavalry: Demons astride beasts with flaming hooves and horse-skull heads that flickered and flashed.

“Nightmares,” Shale said, her wings beating in counterpoint to Cae as they both hovered. “Those are Panic’s specialty. But see those?”

She pointed with one finger and Cae followed it. The infantry companies at the head of the march were all green scaled, yellow bellied snake women. Their tails slithered along the grounds as their chests were protected by hammered iron cuirasses, and they carried swords and shields sheathed on their backs. They had wide cobra hoods around their triangular heads, and their eyes glowed bright enough to be visible even from a distance.

“Those aren’t demons,” Shale said, her voice grim. “Pestilence has hired ssviath mercenaries.”

Cae felt the awful realization hit her like a bucket of cold water. It was the worst feeling in the realms. The feeling of realizing the bloody obvious. As a war-angel of Heaven, she had never needed to worry about or concern herself with mercenaries ... but she had still studied them. She had learned about them. She had put all that information into the context of her old profession as a General of Heaven. And then she had not thought to extrapolate it out to this strange new place she held in the depths of Hell itself: Angels might disdain mercenaries and the Hosts of Heaven might not see the distinction between them and the mortal auxiliaries they could call to service or compel through sheer power ... but she was fighting the Barons of Panic, Denial and Lies. The last two could weave a pretty tale and even without Avarice within their purview, Pestilance had wealth enough to pull in mortal sellswords from across the Realms.

She forced the sense of recrimination and self-blame to the back of her mind. Most Angels wouldn’t have been able to tell mortal humans from mortal ssviath, despite their obvious differences. She, though, had done enough reading to know that the ssviath were a people that preferred deserts, could fight in anything but heavy snow, and served as some of the finest heavy infantry in the world. They had a trick of slithering forward or backwards while not changing the facing of their bodies, and in the press of close combat, she had heard legends that any ssviath that couldn’t cut a man down could crush them in their snake tails.

“At least the stories of the petrification gaze is nothing but lies,” Cae muttered.

“Petrification!?” Shale exclaimed.

“It’s a myth,” Cae hissed, leaning in close, a double sense of idiocy hitting her. “If none of the troops have heard of it, please do not enlighten them. The last thing we need is a panic.”

She went back to counting hoods. “Two companies of mercenaries, four companies of infantrydemons, four companies of archers ... no fliers ... but they’re dragging wagons.” She shook her head. “That means war machines.”

“Why not simply summon them with mana?” Shale asked. Then she snapped her fingers. “The villages!”

“Exactly,” Cae said, turning and winging back towards her mustering forces. “If we let them get into range of the Manor, they’ll reduce it and ... well, I doubt Arral would enjoy that.” Her wings cupped behind her back and she dropped down, landing with a crunch before the companies she had called together. The halberdiers from Ruti’s forces, and the archers from Degi, were familiar. But Ruti had brought forth his cavalry...

Cae blinked.

She blinked a third time.

“Shale...” She said, slowly. “I was told that Ruti had cavalry demons at his disposal. Armed with lances.”

“They do. And are.” Shale said, nodding.

“Shale, those are butterflies,” Cae said, her voice soft.

The cavalry demons were, in fact, astride large butterflies. Their beautifully patterned and deeply somber orange and black wings were wide enough to cover the length of a horse, making them wider than any cavalry that Cae had seen on the field of battle. Their wings did not beat, but rather slowly undulated, and so, kept the butterfly aloft off the ground, neither rising nor falling above or below the height of an average horse. The demons themselves were clad in armor that looked like charred glass, wrenched and shaped through the crudest means, from lightning struck desert. It clung to their spindly bodies in the same way the armor of an ant or beetle clung to their spindly limbs, and their lances were long stalks of reed-like plants, woven together into a spindly, drooping tip – drooping, like a wilting flower. Only Cae’s attentive eyes, able to take in every detail despite her shock, took note that the butterflies did wear barding of leather harness and curious, metal blades that attached to the edges of their wings, adding a sinister aspect to their somber fur and sleek wings.

“They’re death monarchs,” Shale said, her voice amused. “Bearing leechlances from the depths of the Poison Swamp.” She slapped Cae’s armored shoulder, pauldron clacking under the impact. “They’ll do!”

Cae grunted, quietly. She turned back and regarded the territory she would be working with. The army had mustered as swiftly as it could and marched to a point where they’d have time enough to prepare the ground somewhat. This had somewhat constricted her choices – she would have preferred most to force the enemy army to have to choose between withdrawing or engaging with a swamp at their backs ... but that was not to be. Instead, they were in a fairly clear area between two low hills made of the skulls of vast, cyclopean entities that were half buried and half covered in moss. The far end of the field slowly broke apart into the scattered floating islands that sometimes wrenched themselves from the ground in the Hellish realms, while a broad road wound between them, carved of hardened stone. That road was where the enemies would cross from...

“Those islands, they can be corralled, yes?” Cae asked.

“Yes, sadly, or we’d have an excellent choke point there,” Shale murmured.

Cae nodded, then turned to her. She smiled. “One more question, Shale.”

Shale arched an eyebrow.

Cae asked her question.

Shale’s smile was gentle. “No, I do not believe they do.”

Cae nodded and turned back to the landscape. “Give the order.”

When Panic’s army arrived, it arrived in full and impressive order. With their magicians and their willworkers threaded throughout the two wings of their infantry companies, they were able to force the floating islands down, to grind and crunch their ways back into the vast crevasse they had been wrenched from. The result was uneven but usable ground flanking the obsidian road. That road held the wagons and the mercenaries – the snake-women glittered like emeralds and gold coins in the distance, and the odd sound of their scaled bellies writhing along the ground was a strange undercurrent to the stamping hoof-beats of hundreds of demons on the march. Glittering spear points flickered with a yellowish flame, wrapped around their jagged tips and giving them an unsettling air. Cae fought down the impression, her wings mantling up as she watched the infantry come off the suppressed islands.