Chapter 11

~~Mia~~

Zel outright moaned. “It says war?”

Maybe Mia should have lied. The further they got into the book and the more of Lucifer’s words she read, the more the bushes in the cathedral burned, the louder and heavier the winds grew, and the brighter the runes became. She was scared.

“It ... did, yeah. But, these are weird words to write in a book, right? This sounds more like a speech you’d give before going out for a fight, not something written in a book for knowledge or something.”

“Indeed. But then, perhaps it is not written for knowledge, but something else, something more ... intimate, than simply words written on a page.”

“Intimate?”

Nodding, Zel turned the page. “Continue.”

Mia sucked in a breath. The cathedral reacted to the words she read, meaning if Mia pretended to read something now, lied about it, Zel would know. No choice but to keep reading.

The next page was a doozy.

“The nine spires are my bastion. My children will flood the world. My children will pour over the Heavens, and then the Earth. The nine islands will bow to me. The surface will bow to me. All will be mine, and my children will feed well. Vengeance will be wrought, my kin will be ash, and the creator of all will watch in terror, powerless, as I make this Great Tower kneel.” Jesus fucking christ, even if Zel wasn’t overtly horribly evil, Lucifer seemed to be. The cathedral roared, and both Zel and Mia looked around as something rumbled in the wind, something suspiciously close to a deep, vibrating voice. The final line. “Rise, Belial. Rise.”

Zel licked her lips in that slow, sensual way women did when they were thinking naughty thoughts. She turned the page.

“Uh...” Mia squinted at the new page, more tears in her eyes as the amber runes burned. “That’s a weird page.”

“I thought you might say so.” Zel ran a finger down the pillar drawing in the center of the page. At the top were nine symbols, circles, and at the bottom were nine more. “You confirm my suspicions. It is the Great Tower. At its base, the nine spires of Hell. At its peak, the nine floating islands of Heaven.” She tapped a claw on the small runes, written onto each of the eighteen circles, small things but legible. “Read.”

“I...” Hmm. Mia leaned in closer, squinting against the brightness. A little David showed through now, curiosity that demanded she read, even though she knew she shouldn’t. “I ... I’m not sure.” She half expected Zel to yell at her, but the demon queen sat there and waited, eyes sliding from Mia to the book, as Mia’s hand drifted toward the page. “It’s a ... a ... battle plan? These little runes on the side, little paragraphs, they’re talking about details, about things that’ll happen at False Gate. Lucifer and the nine Old Ones, they converged on False Gate, created the vortex, and then ... there was a battle. The archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, came down to Hell and fought. And...”

“Mmm?”

“Nothing. The plan describes the vortex worked, describes the battle started, and just ... stops. I guess Lucifer never got to write anything else.”

For the first time in a while, Zel frowned.

“A reasonable conclusion. What remains of our lord, no one truly knows. Perhaps they are trapped in the Forgotten Place. Perhaps they are dead, if such a being can even die.” She laughed, and her frown disappeared. “Whatever the case may be, the bones of the old world are ours to do with as we see fit. Mine, to do with as I see fit. Within the remains of what came before, secrets lie hidden. And—”

Zel’s voice disappeared under a humming choir in Mia’s head. A voice. A song. Music that wasn’t music. Something alien and cosmic pulled at her. With a mind of its own, Mia’s hand descended onto the page of dark stone, and touched one of the runes. A specific rune in one of the circles that beckoned, demanded, she touch it.

Her head snapped back. Pain shot through her finger, up her arm, through her neck and into her skull. Her eyes closed, but light from somewhere burned through her eyelids into her brain. Emblems, symbols, strange shapes assaulted her thoughts, and somewhere beneath it all, she knew she was screaming.

The pain passed. She yanked her hand free, gasping and panting, and stared at Satan’s book as the electric tingles continued up and down her arm. Zel hadn’t helped her. The damn woman had let Mia scream like she’d stuck a fork in an electric socket and couldn’t let go.

“Take your time,” Zel said, grinning at her. “I am sure the book showed you something.”

“It ... It did! How’d you know it’d do that!?”

“The tales speak of the ways the ancient language could communicate with more than the symbols themselves. Traces of wisdom, resonating within the writings themselves, the literal runes. I thought perhaps whoever wrote this book had instilled such power into these pages.” Zel plucked at her nipple chain as she ran claws over the stone pages. “What secrets did it place into your mind, young soul?”

“It ... hit me with ... more symbols. Dozens ... more. Oh god.” She clutched her skull and stared down at the book. Runes she couldn’t solidify flowed through her mind, like a hazy dream stacked on a dream stacked on a dream, overriding and overflowing her thoughts.

Lightning erupted from the book, glowing arcs that snapped out. Mia, barely able to keep her eyes open as her brain scrambled, stepped and almost slipped down the stairs, but Zel caught her with one of her extra hands. Even as more yellow lightning shot out of the book and crashed over the black bones surrounding them, Zel didn’t move. She held the book, made no effort to close it, and let what was happening happen, not afraid, but enraptured.

The lightning ignored Zel and Mia, and instead arced toward the walls, the ceiling, the floor, and the pillars. It danced over the black bones, drowned them in amber light, and crackled with hunger. It cut through the air and erupted, drawing lines that blinded and lasted in Mia’s eyes after she closed them, like a long-exposure picture of headlights at night.

She opened her eyes. The symbols were still there, the symbols in Mia’s mind. But now they also hovered in the air, drifted around the burning bushes, and more lightning struck out from the books directly onto them. Each amber lightning arc pushed the symbols, until they collided with a surface, either the pillars or the walls of the bone cathedral.

“Oh my,” Zel said, licking her lips. The lightning eventually came to a stop, and Zel looked at Mia as she licked her lips. “What a wondrous sight.”

With time, Mia’s mind unscrambled. Feeling came back to her fingers, and the symbols glowing against the bone surfaces stopped scalding her brain. Slowly, she looked back down at the book, and pointed with a shaky hand at one of the circles at the base of the tower.

“The first circle you touched,” Zel said, “is the circle of Death’s Grip.”

“It is? How do you know?”

“The symbol is written in various places, and my old lover Azailia has shown me the symbol of her spire.” She tapped on a claw on the next symbol, clockwise. “The Grave Valley.” She tapped on the circle in the opposite direction. “The Black Valley’s symbol. I have seen it before, on my crusades.”

Crusade was probably not an accurate word choice for the sort of shit Zel had been up to. Not vile enough.

Mia stepped off the stairs, checked to make sure Zel was okay with it, and drifted around the inside of the cathedral. Nine glowing runes, each as big as her entire body, circled the cathedral’s floor, and she started with the one she knew as Death’s Grip. Automatically, she went clockwise, to the Grave Valley symbol Zel had pointed out.

“The Grave Valley,” Mia said. Zel nodded. Mia continued on the same path around the whole damn cathedral. “The Scar. The Red Pits. The Navameere Fields.” Around around she went. “Um ... The Unholy Lands. Next is Heaven’s Tears.”

Zel held up a claw. “I do not recognize those names”

“That’s what it says. Next symbol is the Black Valley.” She walked to the center of the huge room, and gestured down at the floor, where the ninth symbol sat. “And this one says ... the Frozen Heart?”

Zel looked back down at the book still in her hands, smile borderline sinister.

“The Unholy Lands must be the original name for False Gate. Heaven’s Tears became Angel’s Spine, and the Frozen Heart became the Forgotten Place. How interesting. And the symbols above?”

Mia sucked in a slow breath as she looked up at the higher symbols now pinned to the bone walls. They weren’t perfectly arranged or aligned, and they weren’t directly over the symbols for the nine Hell spires either. It was almost like they’d been placed in free floating locations, like the islands Mia had seen on the stairs to Heaven.

“Avinoam. Ravid. Samael. Yathael. Tversia. Azaparad. Ayaloram. Sinev. Azoryev.”

Zel moaned. “The names of the Heavenly Islands have been lost to us since the First Age.” She grabbed a big bone on the floor, yanked it free, and took a moment to scratch some Estian runes on the black surface. Taking notes on some man’s femur, what a world.

How much information was Mia feeding into Zel’s inevitable war machine? Did she care? Demons killing demons didn’t seem to have any ethical dilemmas she could think of, but if she said something that let Zel do something crazy, like attack Earth, or Heaven, she’d never forgive herself.

Last week she’d been spying on boys as a ghost in university while waiting for someone to do an autopsy on her corpse. Now she was actively trying to figure out if her words would trigger Armageddon. What the fuck.

Mia moved to the other symbols, these circling the cathedral pillars. So many, hundreds, thousands, of varying sizes.

“I ... don’t know if I can translate these,” she said, wincing.

But Zel didn’t raise her voice. She spoke calmly, with a hint of ice that scared Mia just as much.

“And why not?”

“I’m not sure. Some of them look like names, but it’s like ... like...” Mia touched one of the big runes, half expecting it to zap her, either with mystical knowledge or some pain. It did neither, and she tapped a finger on the warm surface glowing on the charred bones of hundreds of dead people. “It’s almost like it’s asking me to pronounce it with two tongues at the same time? Or two throats?”

Zel nodded, and gestured for Mia to continue. Say one thing for the demon queen, she had a head on her shoulders, and wasn’t the sort to kill or torture Mia just because she didn’t like what Mia had to say or was capable of.

Another rune waited to be read, and this one she managed. Potram. Another, royam. Another, batlam. Each her mind tried to digest, but it was like the other words, alien, and almost impossible to pronounce. But somehow, these stuck, as if demanding she figure out how to pronounce them completely.

She tried. “Batlam.” The word was electricity on her tongue, and images shot through her brain with blinding light. A sword. A spear. A shield. A bow, with a quiver and arrows. The blades and tips all held a gentle gold glow, and the material was perfectly reflective, like a pristine mirror held by wondrous gold. Armor followed, gold and silver, with flowing white silk between the joints.

Mia looked down at her hand. The rune, of its own power, threw an image in her mind of her hand covered in the most beautiful silver and gold armor, with flowing engravings that reminded her of the gates of Heaven. No, they reminded her of the armor she’d seen on the angels at the gates of Heaven. It was their armor. Angel armor. Angel weapons.

She moved on to the next rune.

“Potram.” The same sensation, but different images. Naked skin. Roman sandals. Jewelry, bracelets and necklaces, rings and belly chains, nipple piercings and wreath tiaras, gold and silver. Sheer white silk flowing over skin.

“Royam.” This one confused her. It was like the potram rune, but the clothes seemed far more official, lots of white silk, less jewelry, bits of armor, and less exposed skin. Assuming these runes had something to do with what angels wore, this rune was business clothes, and the potram rune was for casual Friday.

Why, or how, did the runes summon images of armor clothing into her mind? It was almost like pronouncing the runes required more than just her tongue, but her mind too, memories, thoughts, and something beyond.

Other runes asked her to pronounce them, but it was useless. Life and death, fire and water, up and down, the great tower, all half pronunciations that left out something key she had no chance of wrapping her mind or tongue around. They grew borderline cosmic and insane the more she found. The runes for existence and non-existence cut across her eyes like razors, and she looked away. Others weren’t so bad, but even harder to grasp, like trying to grab clouds. Runes for dreams, emotions, and ... soul?

“ ... don’t tell me.”

Zel grinned at her. “Do not tell you what?”

“There’s some sort of secret message written in the runes, and I have to go around Hell, touch each book, and absorb the message from each spire in order to decipher it?”

Zel laughed and laughed, and slowly closed the book. The burning bushes calmed to quiet flickers. The howling, roaring wind disappeared. The cathedral of the dead became a deadly silent place once again.

“I doubt it. For what purpose? Some absurd journey or adventure, left behind by our great lord as a pilgrimage for future demons? No. I suspect what now rests in your mind is a glimpse of the power Lucifer used to turn Death’s Grip into what it is. Perhaps power our lord used to create its spire, or perhaps, to create Belial?”

“Power? They’re just runes, right? Just symbols—” Mia grabbed her head as she stumbled, but Zel snapped out a hand and caught her. “Got a little lightheaded there.”

“Runes can be more than simply knowledge. In the Spires War, angels intervened, and I heard talk of the rune they used to empower themselves. Batlam, as you said.” Zel nodded. Mia gulped. “Now come. You are useless to me if damaged. There are other things to read, but they can wait.”

Batlam. The symbol jumped into Mia’s mind again, pulled up out of the muck of memory and the strange book’s haze that still infected her mind. She could envision it completely, sharp and clear in her thoughts, and it tingled, even as she failed to pronounce it.

Nodding, Zel got up, put the book back on the hilariously huge pulpit, and gestured toward the cathedral door.

“As much as I would love to think Lucifer left great power hidden inside these ancient relics for Hell’s children to use, it is a ridiculous notion, something pulled of moronic fantasy stories. No, Lucifer and the Old Ones used every tool they had in their war against Heaven and the other archangels. Only the echoes of the battle remain.” Zel set a hand on Mia’s shoulder, and her three others pushed open the cathedral door. “But, knowledge is a power of its own. Something has happened, something that has led to your arrival, and perhaps the arrival of others. Knowledge will be how I mold these events to my benefit.” Nodding, she guided Mia to the tunnel door, opened it, and Kas and Adron turned around immediately with small bows. “This is but one shadow of the old world, little soul. My spire holds others, and you will read their contents to me. But no more today. Go, rest. Tomorrow, we will try something different.”

Different. Mia looked up at the bolstara tetrad, and risked an accusing squint, which filled Zel with all sorts of playful giggles. Oh boy.

~~David~~

None of the other demons got away. They didn’t even try. With a screech and roar, they threw themselves at the rider, and the rider cut them down like cattle. Like chopping blocks of wood. The rider was fast, and direct. No elegance to the movements, no finesse, he moved with the same extreme bluntness as the demons, just faster and harder.

He chopped the demons apart, hitting a massive brute in the skull hard enough his axe went through their head, down through their chest, and out through their crotch. The axe hit the stone, and a splash of fire erupted outward, flowing over the rider and harmlessly off his full plate bronze armor. The other brute he cut in half horizontally.

And then he was alone. No more demons, just a pile of burning flesh.

David somehow managed to tear his eyes away and look to his three demon protectors, but all three stared out over the distance to the rider, and all three trembled. The rider was far away, and the four of them were well hidden, flat against their rock, a good hundred feet up with only the tips of their heads — and horns — sticking out over the little cliff edge. The sky was getting darker. The four of them were completely silent. There was no chance the rider could see them, or even hear them when they whispered.

But they didn’t say a word, just stared, as the goliath of a man hooked his blood-soaked axes on his back, got down on a knee, plunged his gauntlet into one of the dead demon’s chest, and ripped out the heart. Seamless. Even Caera struggled to harvest a heart; breaking bones and ripping a heart free of binding muscle wasn’t exactly easy. But the rider had zero trouble, and fed the heart to his giant goort mount. Oh god the horse had sharp teeth. That was fucking weird.

David looked Caera’s way again, but before he could say anything she nodded back toward the rider.

“He might remove his helmet to eat,” she whispered. “We have to see that.”

Caera didn’t sound like she was watching some powerful demon she feared. She sounded like she was in total awe of a god, or a mystical figure from history. Even Dao and Jes were awestruck and hypnotized.

The rider did gather another heart, this one from the giant korgejin. Such a titan of a demon, something from nightmares, a classic example of a terrifying brutal juggernaut complete with the wings, hooves, and horns. And the rider had brought him down in moments, without saying a word, without even a grunt.

He used an axe, and chopped down into the tetrad demon’s chest. The breastplate managed to resist the blow, barely, and the clang echoed like a mini explosion as the black metal bent. It wouldn’t have taken all that much effort to slide it aside, or cut the straps holding the asymmetrical slab of bent metal to the demon’s chest, but the rider didn’t bother. He chopped again, and his axe erupted with red sparks that showered the area in embers and dancing flames.

The armor broke apart, and fell to the sides of the demon’s enormous chest. Big as the rider was, the demon had to be ten feet tall, and cutting into his chest made a mess of splashing blood that soaked the area. But again, the rider ripped the giant heart free of the titan without issue, held it in his hand, and stared at it from behind his skull-like great helm.

Caera pushed David flat to the stone, just as the rider turned, and faced them. Oh fuck.

“We go,” Caera whispered, even quieter than before, “now.”

“Now? He’s looking in our direction.”

“Exactly. He spotted us. Let’s go before he thinks we’re a threat.” She sounded terrified. She looked terrified.

Slowly, David nodded. He turned his head back toward the rider, but they were too low to the stone to see over the lip, and that was the only reason they were able to slip away.

“What the fuck was that?” David asked, thirty minutes later with plenty of rock and stone between them and the slaughter. Even with all the space they put between them and the rider, he kept his voice low.

Caera didn’t answer though, and trembles still worked up and down her tail and spine. She walked on all fours, low to the ground, and she gestured to David to stay low. She didn’t have to do so for Jes and Dao, both ladies crouching with every step, Jes sometimes going on all fours too. They had to drift around the mountain, deeper into its ravines, and in the opposite direction of the cave they’d been sleeping in, before Caera spoke.

“The rider,” she whispered, “is ... no one knows.”

“No one knows? You said he’s shown up before.”

“He has, but he’s just a ghost story. A human-shaped person, probably a man, who shows up so rarely he ... he’s just a fucking myth.”

“Not exactly a myth,” David said. “You’re sure it’s the rider?”

The three demon ladies looked at him, until Dao eventually clicked once, and they got all marching again.

“Stupid question, my bad. That goort was huge, too.”

“If it’s even a goort,” Jes said. “I’ve never seen a goort that big, or with skin that black.”

Caera came to a stop beside a big boulder, the four of them in a small ditch between two mountains, and she took a breather as she sat down. A break then, before going back to their cave. He didn’t bother asking why they weren’t heading back to their cave immediately, either. Caera wanted to avoid going straight there, in case they were being followed. If they were, going around the mountain first meant time for them to notice.

Dao, Jes, and David sat beside her, each taking some time to let the ache soothe. Crouching and sneaking so long across jagged rocks, climbing up and scaling down, was fucking hard.

“Is he even human?” he asked.

Caera shrugged. “No idea. First time I’ve seen him.”

Dao clicked a few times.

“Right,” Jes said, “if he’s even a he. That armor was ... thick.”

“Aera armor,” Caera said, pulling her tail in front of her and rubbing it. A nervous tick. “I’ve seen fragments of it. Adron’s got a few. But a full suit? One made to perfectly fit the body?” With a shaky hand, the tiger stroked the spikes along the back of her tail. “That armor was made probably specifically for him in False Gate, thousands of years ago when demons still knew how to use the forge.”

“Thousands of years,” he said. “That’s ... That’s ... The fuck does that have to do with me? Why is he here? I mean yeah, we assume he’s here for me, or Mia, but he’s just some ... guy, who’s been wandering around for thousands of years?”

The ladies all shrugged.

“He killed Gorlus,” Jes said, “like he was fucking nothing. Yeah, Gorlus was always an arrogant asshole, and part of the reason I left the spire, but I didn’t think he was that stupid.”

Dao clicked a few times.”

“Could be an aura, yeah,” Caera said. “We were too far. But if he’s human, no way it was an aura.”

David held up a hand. “Hello?”

The tiger shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on, David, but there’s no reason to think the rider is unmarked like you.”

“And you’re sure no one’s ever seen his face?”

“Not that I know.”

“Then I’m putting it on the possibilities list.” Nodding, he got up.

And dropped back down. The four of them stopped talking, stopped moving, stopped breathing, and let the silence of the empty mountains fill their ears.

Clop clop. Clop clop.

Caera held up a low hand, and squished herself down against the rock they hid behind. All of them did, down to the ground, with their backs and sides against the wall of stone of the mountain that was between them and where they’d seen the rider.

Clop clop. Clop clop. The sound of a walking horse on horseshoes. Goorts weren’t horses, and they didn’t have horseshoes, but anything that heavy was bound to make noise with each step. More noise gently echoed through the mountains, the clopping grew louder, and was joined by the quiet clink and clank of metal on metal, armor rubbing against itself.

David snapped his eyes to Caera, but she shook her head, pointed at him and pointed at the ground underneath her. Don’t go anywhere. He gulped hard, nodded, and tilted his head up.

A shadow cast over the stone, along the ground beside them, maybe a hundred feet away. There was a path above them, an outcropping of rock path that was flat enough you could walk on it, and Caera had taken them below and around it instead of on it. Too risky being exposed like that, if they were being followed. A damn smart plan. The four of them stared out to the shadow the sky of fire cast, and watched it grow closer and closer, as the rider slowly rode the path over their heads.

The noises grew louder again, the weight of the rider immense and making any sort of stealth for him impossible. Could the goort gallop with someone like the rider on their back? Could the rider run? Was all this hiding even necessary?

Definitely necessary. Caera was petrified. She barely breathed, her tail didn’t move an inch, and all three ladies made sure their horns were pressed back against the wall of stone. Clop clop. Dao’s lip trembled, and Jes’s usual angry expression was gone, replaced with wide eyes like a horrified cat. Clop clop.

Eighty feet. Seventy. Sixty. Heat surged up through David’s body. The hair on his arms stood up. Electricity danced through his fingers, and he clenched them tight, trying to suppress the strange sensation. More heat flooded over him, until his eyes threatened to tear up. His muscles tightened. His heart rate soared until he felt the war drums in his veins.

He grabbed the useless sword hilt he had hooked inside the strap of his skirt, and slowly slid it out and held it in front of him. He didn’t know why. Something told him to. Something told him to grab the sword, and use it. Something burned in his blood and told him to fight, to stab, to cut, to attack the rider. Attack anything.

Fight. Kill. Destroy.

Caera snapped a hand out and grabbed his. He almost sucked in a breath, a noise that might have meant their doom, but Caera’s panicked eyes hit him like a bucket of ice water. He managed a weak nod, and relaxed his muscles until his hand lowered. Only then did Caera let him go.

The rider stopped. David held his breath. The shadow, a steady and solid mass of black casting over the dark red stone, shifted only slightly as the rider looked out toward the mountain opposite of him. If he came closer to the edge and looked down, he’d see the four of them. They’d have to run or fight, and Jes and Dao were in no condition to do either.

Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Every fiber of his being demanded he do the opposite. Something hot and searing poured over him, like rapids of lava, invisible and untouchable, but in full force and drowning him in something he could not fully explain. Rage? The animal urge to fight and defend food or territory? The urge to battle over a mate? Something scalding that shot up through his center into his heart and out into his limbs until they shook with adrenaline. His afterlife body had adrenaline? Apparently, and it flooded him until his clenching fists were sweating and his teeth ground so hard he heard them.

The rider didn’t. After a few more quiet eternal seconds, the rider moved on. No snap of the reins or jamming of the heels, the goort just decided to move on, and the rider didn’t argue. Either the two of them knew each other better than best friends, or the rider gave an order David couldn’t hear or see in the shadow. Clop clop, clop clop, the metal armor of rider and goort clinked quietly, and the shadow moved on.

The four of them didn’t move a muscle until they knew the rider had hit the curve of the mountain and had gone around it. Caera held a finger up to her lips, got on all fours, and prowled in the opposite direction. They followed.

Something had stirred the hornet’s nest. More demons drifted around the mountains, and a lot of gliders jumped from cliff edge to cliff edge, perch to perch. They were looking for something. The rider? If they were on a suicide mission, sure. Whatever it was, life got a whole lot more difficult, and Caera had to take detours deep into canyons and ditches to avoid getting spotted.

If this continued into tomorrow, they had no chance of monitoring the tower, let alone approaching it. Shit.

They all collapsed inside their little cave. It was a decent hiding spot, out of the way, somewhat deep between two mountains, and in their shadow. No one would notice it unless they came through the ravine randomly, like David and them had after the invisible monster attack. No sign of any demon activity yet, or giant invisible monsters, or Cainites, down in the little canyon. They felt safe in the cave, a little, enough they all pressed their backs to the back wall inside around the curve, out of view of the entrance.

“Holy fucking shit what the fuck was that,” David asked.

“The rider,” Jes said.

“I meant that ... that ... aura.”

Caera managed to push off the wall, and lay on her stomach in front of the three of them, perpendicular.

“There’s not much information out there about the rider, David. He’s a ghost story demons like to tell each other sometimes, when sitting around a burning bush. No one knows shit about him. No one knows where he came from, why he does what he does, where he goes, what he’s up to, nothing. He just shows up, and everything goes to shit. He slaughters demons, and moves on.”

Dao clicked a few times and made some gestures.

“Dao’s got a point,” Jes said. “That aura, I’ve never felt an aura that strong, and I’ve been in Diogo’s fight aura before. I almost bit my tail off.”