Chapter 13

Baltoh flew through the fiery galaxy of Tenebrous’ personal domain with enough power streaming from his sword to shatter a planet. Spinning like a top, he delivered a flurry of slashes to Tenebrous, but the Demon King blocked them all with his claymore of Hellfire. As Baltoh was about to deliver his hundredth attack in the second, he suddenly disappeared, teleporting and reappearing behind Tenebrous. Before his foe could react, Baltoh kicked him the ribs with catastrophic power, sending him zooming across the cosmos and crashing straight through a line of planets, turning them into crumbling rings of fire and stone.

“Demon Art: Apocalypse Eruption!” Tenebrous howled as Baltoh flew through the shattered planet cores faster than the speed of light. Putting Lucifer’s ultimate attack to shame, he fired a black and red beam of energy powerful enough to obliterate a solar system.

“Celestial Art: Wormhole Barrier!” Baltoh countered, refusing to alter his trajectory or slow down.

At the sound of his voice, a lake-sized vortex appeared in front of him and engulfed the blast, sending it to the void between dimensions where it could do no harm. Maneuvering around the screaming blast, Baltoh tackled Tenebrous, knocking through the final planet in the tiny pocket of space. With rubble and terrified monsters flying around them, the two fighters began attacking and blocking each other so quickly that they made light particles look like snails.

“Demon Art: Debt Retrieval!” Tenebrous cackled, having the time of his life.

Reaching out like a geyser from one of the “nearby” destroyed planets, a powerful arm with pulsing muscles and black scales stretched like rubber and grabbed Baltoh, reinforced with Tenebrous’ own divine power so that Baltoh couldn’t just break free of it without effort. Lunging forward, Tenebrous pierced Baltoh’s chest at the collarbone, driving straight through his chest. Tenebrous smiled at the sight of Baltoh coughing up blood, but lost it when Baltoh gained one of his own. Bending the light around it, Baltoh’s coat began to swirl and expand with the hand gripping Baltoh disappearing as his body seemingly dematerialized.

“Dammit!” Tenebrous swore as the undulating cape took form into a barrel-sized black hole, as strong and heavy as one that was full-sized.

Easily able to consume light itself, the black hole grabbed Tenebrous with its invisible claws and slammed him into it like a bear hug. Gnashing his teeth and swearing in frustration at the power of the quantum singularity, Tenebrous managed to turn his head enough to see Baltoh several millions of miles away with his hand raised.

“Celestial Art: Terrestrial Cataclysm!”

With a snarling roar, a burst of twisting fire and stone appeared above his head, taking form into a molten sphere that was as hot as the surface of the sun and large as a continent. Layers of bedrock appeared around the sphere, securing it tightly in countless layers until the heat could not be sensed on the surface. With a blue aura, the planet was supplied with oxygen and shook as oceans crashed on its surface upon their birth. Rising up from the soil, towering trees took root, looking for sunlight. The whole creation had taken only a handful of seconds to complete and was almost a perfect ecological equivalent to Earth.

His face contorted with focus, Baltoh threw the planet down at Tenebrous, who was still trying to overpower the gravitational pull of the black hole. Sending pulses of light across the cosmos, the planet slammed into Tenebrous dead on, crushing him with its weight and the power of the black hole as it was consumed. Baltoh watched as the planet wrapped around the black hole and was pulled into the darkness, waiting for Tenebrous to make his move.

The reply came with a booming laugh and a black supernova of shadow fire, erupting from between the crumbling planet and the black hole and destroying them both. The dark Hellfire surged across the solar system, obliterating the destroyed planets but being pushed aside before they reached Baltoh, unable to even come near him. In the center of the gyrating torrent of Hellfire, Tenebrous was laughing as loud as possible in joy at the battle. This was definitely going to be difficult.

Selene and Michael were flying through the labyrinth of stomachs and tracts of Baal, dodging the spikes of flesh and bone that were filling the corridors in an attempt to skewer and hold them down for digestion. They had already passed through dozens of stadium-sized chambers, filled with people being melted in lakes of stomach acid. While the sight sickened them and they wished they could help, their efforts would make no difference, and without Baltoh to create suits of armor and turn them into Crusaders, it would only slow them down. They had to get out and regroup before they continued to rescue souls.

“Michael, we’ve been flying in circles. That’s the third time we passed that pile of skeletons.”

“I know; I’m trying to figure out the anatomy of this creature and find the esophagus so that we will have a straight shot to the mouth, but I don’t think it’s that simple. None of these stomachs seem to be linked synergistically like a cow, these corridors seem to provide only space for the damned and allow for the easy movement of those parasites. I think damned souls are deposited here some other way, possibly through passages hidden within the folds of these walls, and I doubt we would be allowed to use them.”

“Basically you’re saying this is all a closed circuit, but what if he tried to move through it outside of the gastric tract?”

“What are you proposing?”

“A Demon like this must have colossal blood vessels, right? Possibly large enough for us to move through? If we can manage to burn through a wall of these intestines and break into an artery, then we can use it to get to the heart. Once there, we destroy the organ and hopefully weaken this monster enough to make our escape.” She said, smiling with confidence.

“That could work, but we have no way to cut through it. Whether it is some sort of mucus membrane or spell, these walls are completely protected from physical and energy attacks.”

“True, but we may be able to remove that barrier if we stress the tissue behind it. I have an idea.” They came to a stop at an intersection with a ventilation shaft-sized artery in the ceiling and Selene drew a blue lens in the air. “Celestial Art: Crystal Ice Ray!”

The released beam of light sprayed the ceiling like a high-pressure hose and immediately began to create a chandelier of ice, while almost doubling its size every second. Selene and Gabriel stepped back as she continued to fill the chamber with a growing iceberg. After reaching the point where it had blocked off all the passageways, a groan echoed through the tunnel and the interior walls began to shiver.

“It’s working! Even if the ice can’t directly touch the flesh, it still reacts to weight and impacts, and now the weight of ice is hurting it. Once the cold starts seeping through, then we’ll really be set.”

True to her words, the flesh around the perimeter of the ice began to swell and bruise as the weight cut off circulation through the capillaries, wearing down the protective membrane and allowing for the frigid cold to get to work. With its frigid sting, the ice killed all the flesh it touched and left it vulnerable to attack. Drawing his sword, Michael shattered the ice with a single swing, then jumped into the air and severed the artery.

A waterfall of blood poured down into the chamber, but knowing that the wound could close and heal itself at any second, they jumped up and climbed inside. Ignoring their squeamishness, they crawled through the river of Demon blood, working their way through Baal’s body. Going against the current, they crawled for what felt like hours through the artery. After an unknown amount of time, the steady flow of the blood became a pulsing surge, slamming into them with all the power of a flash flood and forcing them back. Even with their strength, they could not fight the powerful beats of the nearby heart and were forced to carve their way out. Landing in the chest cavity, Selene and Michael raised their power levels to burn off the blood and then turned around, facing the heart of Baal.

The pulsating organ was the size of a warehouse and had a much different design than a human’s or even most animals’. It had veins reaching out almost randomly across its surface to distribute blood through the body and well over a dozen chambers that were expanding and contracting on their own.

“I doubt it’s protected like the walls of Baal’s stomach. Would you care to do the honors?”

With a smile, Michael drew his flaming sword. “It would be my pleasure.”

Leaping like a grasshopper, he pounced on Baal’s heart with a downward slash of his sword, carving through the thick muscle without too much difficulty and causing a flood of gore to spray out like a tsunami, filling the entire chamber and forcing Selene to take to the air to avoid getting snatched by the waves.

“Alright, now let’s see if we can now find our way out,” Selene said as the blood-flow slowed to a trickle.

“Oh no, you need not even bother,” a deep voice laughed.

Selene and Michael both looked up as a mouth of dripping fangs appeared up above the heart, smiling and laughing.

“Baal, so you aren’t as mindless as I thought,” Michael cursed before giving a sideways slash across the heart out of spite. This only drew another taunting laugh.

“Cut at it all you want; a heart is as useless to a Demon as teeth to a creature that does not eat. And no, I am in no way mindless. I just wanted to see how far you could get. At any time, I could have killed you without any trouble, but you proved to be very interesting. But now the show is over and I look forward to digesting you both. But you girl, I might just eat you up all over again, as you were the most delicious,” he cackled as a tongue reached out and licked the fat lips that bordered the pit of teeth.

“I’ll give you credit, Baal,” Selene laughed. “The only thing that kept Baltoh from killing you Hell Princes was your ability to dodge his rage blast. The fact that you still live means either you have an army of Masters of Torture and Titans guarding you or you’re just so large that he couldn’t even tell you were below him when he flew. But it’s also pathetic, you lived for over 40,000 years in fear of his shadow.”

“Know your place, girl. You have already met your end. All that’s left is for you to melt in my stomach. The only reason why you were able to climb into my artery is because I let you out of interest! There is nothing you can do to harm me! There is no escape for you!”

“Not if I succeed where Baltoh failed,” Selene said with a maniacal grin.

Michael looked at her quizzically and Baal gave a booming laugh. Like a bull lowering its horns, Selene pointed the tips of her liquid metal wings at Baal’s mouth. The mini solar system above her head that had replaced her halo moved between the wings, with the tiny planets now orbiting around the sun more like electrons around an atomic nucleus.

‘It can’t be, is it even possible for her to use that technique?!’ Michael thought in disbelief as the sun’s light grew in intensity.

Shining as brightly as a star, a tongue of molten gold and silver shot up from the depths of the volcano, taking shape and solidifying. A demonic skeleton of pure sterling Hellsilver took form with long claws extending from the fingertips and a pair of bull-like horns reaching up from the grinning human-like face. The skeleton was then wrapped in a cloak of shifting Hellgold, becoming both the muscles and clothes of the Hell Prince, while the face remained without flesh. His eyes glowing brightly, Mammon opened his jaws and gave a booming laugh, terrifying Molly and Gabriel. He then raised his hand and a ring of fire surged up from the mountains around junkyard, like the Hellfire fence that had originally been erected around New York.

“Do you think we have any chance of being able to escape?” Molly asked.

“Not a chance. I doubt even our spells will let us break through that barrier, so our only hope is to fight him and hope for the best,” the Archangel replied.

“All of us combined barely put a dent in Leviathan, what the Hell can the two of us alone do?!” Molly cursed as the power of the Prince of Greed weighed down on her like a heavy backpack.

“Well then all we can do is try and live long enough for help to come! Watch out, he’s going to attack!”

Laughing maniacally, Mammon swung his arm and hurled a tsunami of Hellfire at the two warriors, setting the junkyard ablaze and barely giving them time to dodge. Knowing that there was nothing they could do to change the situation, the fighters resolved to just buy as much time as they could and try to survive.

“Angel Art: Spear of Destiny!” Gabriel shouted, firing a cascade of voulges from his hand.

“Celestial Art: Lightning Obliteration!” Molly called, launching a colossal beam of blue electricity. Being like ants fighting an elephant in terms of size and strength, their spells had little affect on the Hell Prince, causing only a stinging wound on the arm that he used to block.

“Do you really think you can kill me with such pitiful attacks?! You’re out of your league!” he cackled as he launched a blast of crimson fire, barely missing Gabriel but causing his armor to warp and melt from the proximity to the blast. His whole right side badly burned and his wing incinerated, Gabriel was unable to stay in the air.

“Celestial Art: Meteor Obliteration!” Molly shouted in frustration, forcing herself to look away from Gabriel and focus on the battle.

Having drawn a car-sized block of gold from the junkyard below, Molly took aim at Mammon and fired, causing the heavy projectile to shoot forward fast enough to break the sound barrier and cause a sonic boom. The block of gold slammed Mammon in the chest, nearly causing him to fall back out of the volcano like a released jack-in-the-box and making him roar in pain. This was the opportunity of a lifetime!

“Celestial Art: Carving Sandstorm!” she cast, hoping that the attack would lessen Mammon’s power.

With each grain impacting with enough strength to drive through a tank, Molly sprayed Mammon with a jet of dust, trying to lessen his heat and power like a fire being extinguished. Blinded by the sand and feeling it seal his power back into his body, Mammon swung his arm wildly to get her to back off and stood back up in the mouth of the volcano. Snarling in annoyance, Mammon opened his mouth and fired a glob of liquid Hellsteel, hitting Molly dead on and knocking her out of the sky, struggling to free herself from the hot gooey prison.

Having recovered from his burns, Gabriel once again took to the sky to replace Molly, after summoning four Hope Beacons to boost his strength even further. “Let’s see how you like fighting fire with fire: Angel Art: Burning Moon Slice!” he bellowed with a tornado of holy flames surging from his raised sword.

As his elevation increased, the storm of fire grew in size and intensity, washing across the junkyard and shoving against the Hellfire that was still burning. He swung his sword in circles, further spinning the flames as he tried to get the blast to its maximum power. Roaring in determination, he finally slashed the air and launched the firestorm down at Mammon with the flames compressed into a massive crescent blade, the size of a sports stadium.

Mammon raised his arm and caught the blast with his hand, but instantly shuddered as the blast hit him with much more strength than he had expected. Struggling to fight the power of the blade, he released a powerful snarl to counteract the shaking of his body. Knowing that this was his one chance to inflict some heavy damage, Gabriel shot forward and slashed Mammon’s hand with all of his strength, turning it into a two-fold attack that overpowered Mammon. The Hell Prince roared in agony as the blast cut through his hand, sheered off his arm, and left a huge gash across his chest that managed to break through his robes and muscles of gold and break through five silver ribs.

“Molly, now!” Gabriel shouted, counting the seconds of their window of opportunity.

“Celestial Art: Crushing Ocean!” Molly beckoned from high in the sky.

Mammon had just enough time to look up before a waterfall that dwarfed the Niagara and the Victoria poured down onto his molten ore body and his volcano, causing more steam and smoke to spew up than the volcanoes of Hawaii in a year. He howled in pain as his body was suddenly hardened by the cooling affect of the water and began to shatter. The deluge of saltwater coursed down the sides of the volcano, flooding the fortresses before washing across the miles of junk piles like a tsunami, managing even to extinguish the Hellfire.

The spell soon ended and Molly landed on the ground beside Gabriel, both panting heavily as they looked at the smoking shards of gold and silver that poured down the side of the volcano like an avalanche. The volcano itself had several large cracks running through it with molten ore oozing from it like thick syrupy blood.

Molly had a large smile on her face at the accomplishment. “We did it, we defeated a Hell Prince all on our own.”

Gabriel remained skeptical. “Don’t be so sure,” he warned as an ominous laugh echoed from the volcano.

Just like the first time, a gargantuan deluge of Hellgold and Hellsilver erupted from the volcano, taking shape into a skeletal golem with muscles and flesh of ore.

“You fools, did you really think you could beat me with such a pitiful attack?!” he cackled as he summoned a dome-like wall of solid gold around his volcano.

“Damn it, we haven’t gotten anywhere and there is no time to recover our energy or flee.”

Molly stepped forward, squinting at Mammon. “Wait, I think I have an idea.”

“What are you talking about?” “Have you noticed? He’s smaller than before and splattering gold with each movement. Before, he was larger and held together perfectly. See what I mean? Every attack we had meant nothing to him, but something changed.” She said.

“I see it, but what is different?”

“The volcano, that’s the source of his power! That monster we’ve been fighting is basically a hologram being projected by the mountain! He’s not coming out of the volcano; he is the volcano itself! Look, he even summoned that shield around it to protect it from damage!”

Gabriel grinned. “Alright, so if we destroy the volcano, then we destroy him.” ‘Baltoh, you sure trained these girls right,’ he thought to himself, embarrassed that he had not seen it first.

“Right, there is no point in fighting that thing coming out of it. It’s just a distraction.”

“Yeah, but we still have the problem of power. None of our long distance spells are strong enough to break through that shield, let alone obliterate the volcano, and if we get in close, he’ll realize what we’re doing and kill us.”

Molly just grinned and spread her wings before pointing them both at Mammon. She then lowered her face, looking between them like a set of crosshairs as the miniature solar system revolving above her head moved between the tips.

“No way,” Gabriel whispered, realizing what she was about to do.

Raphael sprinted up the outer staircase running up the central tower. His armor kept him mostly protected from the Lust Lightning that constantly crawled up the spire like fire up a chimney shaft and with his wings retracted, the wind and water of the furious gale storm above the castle was not strong enough to lift him off his feet, though the huge bay windows did not fully protect him from the sabotaging blast that made each step several times more difficult. Like the rest of the castle, the pillars between each window was a petrified human, standing up nude while the freezing wind and water battered their bodies. Raphael ran past and even stepped on more damned souls than he could count, men begging him for help and women offering to pleasure him in any way possible if he freed them. He regretfully ignored their please, knowing that his friend was in the most danger and that getting others involved would only slow him down.

Down below him, the wall and other buildings surrounding the main towers of the castle were piles of burning rubble, with Demon body parts scattered everyone and blood splattered across every surface. While their numbers had been great and their combined power was well past his own, he had quickly learned to just take them on one at a time. While it was a slow process and the uncertainty of his ally’s fate made it difficult, he survived with little damage or energy loss.

Without warning, a long black tail broke through the ceiling and smashed through the staircase, opening it up to the storm. Raphael looked out into the typhoon as a colossal Gargoyle rose up alongside the tower, hovering at his level despite the wind and rain. The Gargoyle released a loud shriek and reached out with one of its clawed hands, nearly slamming Raphael into the wall. As a surge of Lust Lightning crawled up the tower and illuminated it with violet light, Raphael gave a thunderous roar and leapt off the destroyed staircase, pouncing on the Gargoyle and knocking it back into the storm. The beast grabbed its foe, holding Raphael out from its body. Refusing to back down, Raphael hacked off the beast’s hand, freeing himself from its grip and making it howl in agony.

Falling through the air, Raphael grabbed its tail and was flung up behind it, where he delivered a flaming slash to the creature’s neck, decapitating it. As he and the creature began to fall, Raphael pointed his hand back at the tower and launched a rosary chain, using it like a grappling hook to grab onto one of the human pillars holding up the roof of the stairwell and pulling himself back up and out of the storm.

After pausing to catch his breath, he stood up and continued sprinting up the staircase, hoping that he wouldn’t arrive too late to save Rosemary. Along the way, he encountered a group of Demons on the stairwell, raping a few damned souls that had managed to unfreeze themselves and break free from the palace structure. Without slowing down, Raphael beheaded the beasts with four quick slashes and kept running.

“Angel Art: Crusading Canter!” he called, instantly becoming faster than a bullet and zooming all the way up the staircase in only a second.

Raphael smashed through the wall of Asmodeus’ bedchamber, flooding it with the dim light from outside. The ruler of the Circle of Lust was nowhere to be found but his eyes immediately fell upon Rosemary’s naked unmoving body on the floor in the center of the room.

“Rosemary!” he shouted, running over to her.

Before he could even get down on one knee, Asmodeus appeared beside him in a cloud of black smoke and kicked him in the chest, easily sending him flying across the room and crashing into a marble statue. Raphael slowly raised his head to the sound of Asmodeus’ laughing as she stood beside Rosemary, nudging her body with her foot.

“You bitch, what the Hell have you done?! Why do you look like Rosemary?!” Raphael demanded, drawing his flaming sword.

“I took her soul. I am Asmodeus the Shape-Shifter, ruler of the Circle of Lust. I simply fell in love with this girl’s body and decided to experiment with it as I literally sucked her dry,” she laughed, ripping the breath from Raphael’s lungs.

“For killing my friend, you shall suffer a fate worse than the most pitiful souls in this world!”

Asmodeus’ face transformed, her cheeks splitting open to reveal long needle-like teeth, her eyes becoming jet-black and almost reaching the size of fists, and her long black hair writhing like snakes. Clapping her hands together with a hiss, she placed a hex upon Raphael, making his whole body jerk and causing his sword to fall out of his hands. He tumbled to the ground, unable to move as the power of Asmodeus assailed his mind like a nightmarish drug.

“Did you really think you could face someone like me?! Even with that armor of yours, a lowly Archangel could never dream of having a chance against a ruler of Hell!”

“Then how about a Valkyrie? Celestial Art: Elemental Bonds!” Rosemary shouted as she jumped to her feet.

Asmodeus jerked as four spheres of energy, each having consumed her extremities, suddenly pulled on her limbs. Her left foot locked in a sphere of water, her right foot in a sphere of stone, her right hand burning in a flaming orb, and her left hand trapped in a orb of glowing air. A bolt of crackling electricity stretched between the orbs and formed a ring.

“Celestial Art: Sealing Ice!”

Stretching up from the ground, a sheet of ice wrapped around Asmodeus’ naked body, further securing her. Stronger than steel and imbued with the power to drain energy, it sealed her in place so that not even her midsection could move.

“How?! How is it possible?! I stole your soul!” Asmodeus shrieked, struggling to break free of her prison.

“Simple, you stole ONE of my souls. I guess you never bothered to do any research, because if you had, you would have known that while I was originally an Archangel, I was created through the fusion of an army of Angel souls instead of given life by Jehovah. True, you managed to steal a piece of me, but it’s nothing I can’t do without.”

“But the ritual, I felt it drain everything from you! You gave into the illusion!”

“No, I just infused that soul with my energy so that you would think it was my true spirit. I used it as a decoy to keep you from noticing my other spirits. And the illusion? Well, I just gave into that because I can never ignore a chance for some kinky fun,” Rosemary said, wishing that there were more people around to see her accomplishment. Alas, the only one there to watch was the astonished Raphael, staring at her with wide eyes. “And don’t even bother trying to break free of those spells, because while you were failing to study me, I closely examined you. Your strength doesn’t come from sheer destructive power like the other Hell Princes. Instead, you force your enemies into submission with mind-bending illusions. However, after all the time I spent linked to you through that hallucination, I studied your powers and developed a mental immunity. In truth, you are weaker than the Masters of Torture in terms of raw power, but your illusions are strong enough to subdue the other Hell Princes.

However, being that you are still a Hell Prince, I will still take you out with my most powerful spell to make sure that you don’t survive. Raphael, I suggest you move,” she said as her armor appeared.

The illusionary paralysis broken, Raphael shakily retrieved his sword and got to his feet, staggering away from Asmodeus as Rosemary pointed her wings as her with her miniature solar system gyrating between the tips.

‘Is that even possible?’ Raphael thought to himself in disbelief.

“This is the technique first created by Baltoh, the man I love...” Selene began as the marble-sized planets between her wings began to orbit around the sun at tremendous speeds.

“It was an incomplete technique, but one that is more powerful than any Archangel or Demon spell...” Molly said as an atmosphere of energy formed around her own cosmic halo, turning it into an orb of light.

“But he bestowed it upon us, his lovers and loyal followers. It is his gift, the power to shape fate itself,” Rosemary finished as the castle began to shake from the insurmountable power radiating from her body as she charged the blast. Baal, Mammon, and Asmodeus all became terrified as they realized what the women were doing and what the results would be.

“This is the completed Resolute Cataclysm, powered by our desire and dedication to fighting for Baltoh! We love him and he loves us too much for you to interfere! Not even the Hell Princes can stand up to our loyalty and strength!” sll three women shouted before releasing their blasts.

All of Hell shook as the beams were released, each giving off as much power as an atomic explosion upon their initial flash. Firing at an angle with only a fraction of the true power, Selene’s focused neon blast carved through Baal’s interior like a blowtorch through snow, boring a shaft straight up to his mouth. Bursting out through Baal’s closed jaws, the ray of light expanded as it shot up into the sky, casting a vibrant light upon the surrounding mountain ranges.

With a hole blasted open and Baal in too much agony to stop them, she grabbed Michael’s hand and turned around. With her back to the shaft, she fired again, this time into the depths of the Hell Prince’s torso cavity. Unleashing all the power she had held back with the first blast, Selene and Michael were rocketed through the air by the recoil of the blast and shot out of Baal’s mouth. As they careened through the sky, they looked down at the giant scaly mountain that was the Demon.

Baal had the body of a morbidly obese stegosaurus with demonic characteristics. His stumpy atrophied legs were armed with long claws, his head had no nose and was instead (originally) a pit of teeth surrounded by eyes, his humped back was covered in sandstone from the hardened dust that the wind had slammed against him, and his tail looked like a rocky ridge that had existed since the birth of the mountains around him.