Chapter 47

~~David~~

Being a prisoner on the move, especially when he could do something about it but didn’t, was infuriating. It was like sitting in a chair while someone yelled at you, and you could punch them and shut them up, but you didn’t, because you knew it’d cause more problems than it solved. If Silvain and Laoko could help them cross the Scar, or at least reach its ruler without any incidents, that was a good thing.

Problem. A hundred demons surrounded David and the girls. If David had a good position and good awareness of the area, he might be able to play a song that’d take the demons out. He could do surgical attacks. He could do large-scale attacks. But both at the same time? Not so much. The better he got at playing the music, the more it felt like he was playing, and conducting. Playing songs that affected large areas was like playing in and conducting an entire symphony at once. Playing songs that affected smaller things directly, specifically, felt far more nuanced, full of depth.

Multitasking. He sucked at it compared to most people. He’d have to be a virtuoso prog metal drummer to handle the multi tasking to play a song that’d attack all demons around him on all sides, taking into account each specific demon, and the area as a whole.

If he got all the demons in front of him in a big group, it’d be so much better. Cast fireball. Boom, done.

They walked along in the fog, Caera, Jes, and Dao in front of him, the Las and Laoko — fifth honorary La — behind him. He glanced back, looked for giant cape-like wings, and found none. No Acelina. Those hoof clops were Laoko’s.

He looked at the ground in front of him, curled his fingers, played an unheard note, and pulled up a small spike of blackstone from the ground. He gestured with his left hand, gently backhanding the air, and the spike collapsed, crumbling. Every minute, he summoned another spike, tried a unique shape, and knocked it aside. He summoned some small tombstones, grew them from a foot under the ground where the white stone coalesced. Not as durable as blackstone. More like marble. It crumbled more easily.

“I thought,” Laoko said, coming up and standing beside him, “that manipulating Hell like this drained you?”

“It does.” He summoned a thin spike of blackstone, grabbed it, and played a note to crack it off at the base. Little notes, tiny things, gentle taps of a xylophone. “This is exhausting.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Because it’s important.” He tossed the spike aside. “And because I can tell I’m getting better at it. The more I do, the less energy it takes, and the more specific I can make things.” With a curl of his fingers, he summoned another spike, and curled it so it spiraled horizontally on the way up. A meter long, nothing special, but the spring shape was difficult to make. The point was the difficulty. “Next time I have to do something crazy, I don’t want to be overwhelmed. Only way to do that is practice.”

“Practice...”

“You never practiced something?”

She shook her head, and her absurdly long tendril hair bounced against her back and hips.

“Demons do not practice. We simply are. Skills we learn are honed by hunting and fighting.”

“You never think to practice something before you need it?”

“Hatchlings play fight, if they trust each other. But that is mostly it.” She nodded to the fog above. “Angels are the same. They have their skills, innate to them that they build through experience. But to practice to learn? That is a human trait. I doubt a demon could learn something beyond their innate skills.”

Daoka looked back, clicked twice, and kept walking.

Laoko raised a brow and glanced down at David. “She disagrees.”

David looked at Dao’s back and watched her walk. Clop clop, hooves much quieter than Laoko’s. What was her secret? Did it have something to do with a skill?

He almost asked, but the fog ahead darkened, and Silvain’s wings emerged. His weapon was drawn.

David and the girls came closer, and froze. Every demon Silvain had with him had stopped, weapons drawn, but none said a word, growled, roared, or so much as thudded a breastplate. They all stared ahead into the fog.

Oh no.

David walked forward, past Dao and Jes. Caera joined him, prowled beside him, and they both stopped at Silvain’s side.

No need to ask. They all felt it, the unusual aura that ripped through the air, invisible, unheard, felt on the soul and not the skin. It didn’t punch or stab like a demon’s sin aura. It didn’t vibrate through the world like David’s aura. No one’s aura was on except the rider’s, a shadow of red in the distance that gently trotted closer on his goort. And the closer he got, the more his aura enveloped them, a crashing wind of death in its harshest form. Hot or cold failed to describe it. There was hate, and rage, but it transcended them, became something David couldn’t put a word on. Rancor, malice, they all failed.

The rider’s aura felt like murder incarnate. And the bastard had gotten ahead of them and cut them off.

“So much for him being a mindless dog,” Caera said. “The fuck do we do?”

David squinted at the man as he came fully into view. A slightly large man in massive, heavy armor, but still tiny compared to demons. But every demon took a few steps back, Silvain included, as the rider came closer. Thick, full body armor made of red, gold, and bronze. A skull-shaped helmet that hid his face in the shadow of a T-slit opening. Two axes of the same color hung on his back, with blades glowing amber along their edges.

Silvain rumbled in his chest and dug at the ground with his foot claws.

“Stop,” he said.

The rider came closer, but came to a stop at the edge of the fog. The demons traded glances. Did the rider just listen to Silvain?

The rider reached behind him and drew both axes.

“Kill the unmarked or die,” he said. Every demon except the imps and grems was bigger than him. A goliath of a man was still just a man, compared to the entities of Heaven and Hell. But the man and his dull, boring voice came closer, and towered over everyone anyway.

“No,” Silvain said. With a heavy snarl, he flared his wings and drew a line in the ground with his sword. “I have a hundred demons with me. Many are Azailia’s best.” He nodded toward Laoko. “Two tetrads.” He nodded toward David. “And the unmarked himself. Do you really think you can fight us all? Alone?”

The rider didn’t move. On his goort, he was basically a statue, and only the occasional shift of the giant horse’s head broke the illusion.

David braced for the inevitable ‘I’m not alone’ line. None came. He was alone. The rider sat unmoving, axes at his sides in hand, skull helmet and its t-slit opening showing nothing of the man within. Just darkness.

The goort charged forward, and the demons charged to meet him. A tide of red and black skin, wings, hooves, and claws flowed in from the sides. Some rushed past David and Silvain. Some charged in from the edge of the fog from behind the rider; they’d snuck around. Every demon Silvain had brought with him charged the rider.

Silvain didn’t. He and Laoko stayed with David, and the woman slowly drew her four swords.

“The rider defeated a squadron of angels,” Laoko said. “Alone.”

Silvain snorted. “Unmarked. Azailia assures me you will help.”

“She did?”

He snorted again.

Fuck. The rider getting ahead of them and cutting them off hadn’t been part of the plan, but apparently Azailia was convinced David would jump in and help them if he had to? The fuck kind of plan was that? Fucking demons.

“I’ll try,” he said, “but get your demons out of the way.”

Silvain bellowed and slammed his sword against the ground, shattering chunks of white stone. Every demon came to a grinding halt and looked back at Silvain with angry eyes. They wanted to be in the attack, a suicidal attack against a man no one had ever beaten in combat.

The rider didn’t so much as look their way, his shadowed gaze pointed straight ahead, directly at David. And he’d reach him in seconds.

Hopefully, no angels above would see this fight through the fog.

David summoned his armor. Demons shrieked and jumped back as a red light engulfed him, and black and red metal replaced his red silks. Body armored, staff in hand, he aimed the ember jewel at the rider and played a simple song.

The ground cracked open, a canyon that split wide and straight in front of David down the line to the rider. The goort jumped, put deer to shame, soared seven meters up, high over everyone, and landed behind David and the girls.

David spun. The rider spun, goort’s hooves digging and skidding along the gravel-like ground, and he charged David again. The Las squealed and dove out of the way, and Laoko and Caera turned and tried to put themselves between him and the rider in time. Even Moriah was surprised, and threw herself to the side, out of the way of the goort and its armor.

The rider wanted to get close asap. What good was a wizard when the fighter gets in his face and cuts off his head with an axe?

David grit his teeth, aimed his staff again, and played another song. Blackstone erupted from the ground around the rider, all sides, and shot up, and up, and up. A barrier ten meters high, a meter thick. A cage in the shape of a tube.

If he couldn’t pull the rider under the ground again, he’d trap him another way.

“What’s the plan!?” he yelled, and shot a glare at Silvain and the hundred demons standing around at the fog’s edge. “This won’t hold him for long!”

Silvain looked up at the circular wall surrounding the rider, squeezed his sword’s grip, and tapped its tip against the ground again.

“Wound the rider. Stop him from following. Reach Tarkissa.”

“That’s it!? That’s your plan!?”

Loud thuds resonated in the barrier, again and again. Each shook the wall, the ground David had grown it from, and resonated in the chamber like a cellmate smashing their bars with a sledgehammer, but sharper. Each sound pierced his ears and brain. The rider was using his axes to chop the rock apart.

Silvain shot his red glare down at David. “He was not supposed to be ahead of us.”

“You think!? I—”

The blackstone barrier shattered. It crumbled around the rider, slabs of stone, each weighing a ton, but he raised his axes and brushed off the ridiculous weight. Still on his mount, the goort stood strong and let the falling rubble smash against its armor. None created so much as a dent, and if the aera armor scratched, David couldn’t see it.

David swung his staff forward and summoned a spike from the ground, but the goort hopped to the side. He summoned a dozen more, each spike as tall as Silvain, each a dense, sharp barb of blackstone, each aimed at an angle from the ground up toward the rider and his mount, but the goort hopped left and right around each. This wasn’t like last time. The rider was learning.

Another swing of the staff, and David summoned a host of jagged spikes, nine at once, each covered in harsh barbs that jutted out in random directions. And they were massive, each spike a couple meters thick, and they grew twenty meters long. The rider couldn’t dodge all of them, and one collided with the goort’s underside. The armor was impenetrable, and the goort flew back and landed on its side.

The rider did not land on his side. He hopped off as the goort flew back, landed on his feet, and charged straight at David, the weight of his armor announced with each heavy step.

Too close. The man was too damn close for David to do anything big. He summoned another array of spikes, but the rider push forward. A spike collided with his chest and sent him back, but the rider turned, and sparks erupted from his armor as the black spike scrapped across it. He landed a few paces back and charged forward again.

More. David reached down, found a heavier song, and heavier chord, and launched it upward with an ascending scale, driving the music up to a screeching high. The ground erupted from underneath them, sent everyone to their knees, and David drove his staff into the ground. A platform of white stone shot up from the ground and drove up through the air and backward. A giant tombstone. He had to be careful to not pierce the fog too high and signal nearby angels, but he had to push the rider back and get him away.

The rider flew back. David couldn’t see through the white stone wall, but the sound of metal hitting metal told him he’d succeeded. He waved his staff and brought the giant tombstone down, crumbling it and sending it back into the dirt so he could see his enemy.

The rider got up, surrounded by rubble and raining dirt, and marched David’s way. Not running this time. He walked slow, each step heavy, and the man didn’t so much as glance at the demons that surrounded him on all sides. They wanted to jump him, fight him, tear into him, take his heart and power, take his skull as a trophy, anything. They were idiots.

David glanced down at Caera. She looked angry, and ready to fight. He looked up at Laoko. Same thing, if more reserved. Dao and Jes stood beside Caera, both flexing their fingers, ready to brawl, no matter how scared they were. Only the Las looked outright scared, but he knew them. They’d fight, too, if it came to it. Demons were inhuman.

And Moriah. Moriah had bigger reason to fight the rider than anyone, and standing with the demons, she stared at the man in aera armor as he walked past her. Not a glance, not a shrug, not a single sign of recognition from the rider. He kept his skull-shaped bronze and red helmet pointed at David, and marched.

And David was getting tired.

“Get back!” David yelled.

The rider kept walking.

“Uh, David,” Caera said. “I don’t think—”

“All of you! Get back!” He wasn’t talking to the rider.

The demons shot their gazes his way, finally getting it. They hopped back, and hop turned to dive when lava burst from the ground.

Even without the goort, the rider could jump, so David summoned lava with the same sneaking death of a sinkhole. No rumbling. No explosive geyser that might summon angels. Just a hole that slowly opened, and lava bubbled up from. Ground softened, blackstone, dirt, and white stone turned dust, all to get swallowed up by the blood of Hell.

David aimed his staff, ruby aimed at the rider, and ruined the ground underneath the man’s boots. The rider tried to jump, but with the ground turned soft underneath him, he had nothing to jump from. Quicksand and lava. Lava itself wasn’t simply lava in Hell, but something different, something like Hellfire, something that boiled and clashed resonance and essence together, melting them down into liquid that glowed amber, and burned all who touched it. The runes glowed in his mind, told him what hellfire was, what the lava was, how it was a part of Hell and her flesh, how her flesh absorbed resonance and essence.

Like lyrics, to a song.

The rider trudged forward. No more jump attempts, he walked forward, even as the lava pushed up to his waist. It wasn’t a lava-proof wetsuit. It was full plate armor, with a thousand places in its many joints for lava to sneak into. And black smoke leaked out from the rider’s joints.

He kept coming, and plodded up the slope out of the sinkhole. He paused only long enough to stomp one foot, then the other, sending heavy globs of lava off his armor to the ground.

Oh fuck.

“A little help?” David asked, stepping back.

Silvain snorted, thudded his sword against the ground, and the demons swarmed. In a harmonious battle cry, the tide of red and black skin poured over the blackstone spikes and debris, and fell upon the rider.

A dozen went for the goort, but the creature was too fast and evaded them. The rider was not, and disappeared behind a veil of muscle, claws, and wings. Some demons were thrown back into the lava as it trickled around and spread like veins. Others split in half under the rider’s axes, and their bodies erupted into flame. None of them backed off, or fled, or so much as looked in a different direction to consider options.

A brute got his hands on the rider’s right arm and lifted. Another brute caught his left arm’s axe by the shaft. While dangling in the air, the rider pulled his arms in, and both brutes got pulled in with them. They crashed against each other, let go of the rider, and the armored man landed on his sabatons with a resounding thud. He spun, slashed one brute in the stomach deep enough to hit his spine, spun the opposite direction, and cut off the arm of the other brute trying to take advantage of the situation.

A tiger jumped on his back, but for all her weight, she didn’t knock him over. She clawed at his helmet, tried to get it off, but it remained, unmoving, and the rider did not topple. He turned, and her long body half twisted around close enough he brought his axe down, and chopped through her tail; it was too thick to cut off in a single swing, and the tregeera shrieked. She fell, and died a second later, axe through her throat, and head now burning on the ground.

Other demons fell into replace those that died without hesitation. They roared at their target, screamed with hunger and rage of their own. Many of them turned on their auras and drowned the area in the boiling heat of their desire. Blood drunk, the demons buried the rider in their mass, and he cut through them like an explorer cutting through vines in a jungle with his machete. Their bodies fell, and they burned.

Between the demon limbs and wings, the rider’s shadowed gaze found David, and he pushed toward him.

“David,” Caera said, “we have to get out of here.”

Silvain shot her a glare. “If we cannot kill him, we have to wound him first.”

“He’s got lava burning him alive inside his armor,” David said, gasping. “The fuck else can we do?” Sweat dripped across his eyes. His lungs burned. He stumbled back and Laoko caught his shoulder.

A deafening crack silenced them all. Half a dozen demons imploded, bodies collapsing inward at the impact spot of the gold beam of light that cut across their bodies. The horizontal arc of golden energy smashed into the pile of demons fighting the rider, cut many in two, and crashed against the rider’s armor. It shattered into gold specs and beautiful flakes that fell harmlessly to the ground.

The rider turned his head long enough to look at Moriah, and get another gold beam of energy against his body. Moriah stepped closer, eyes glaring from behind her helmet. In the chaos, no one had even noticed the angel don her armor and summon her weapon. She wielded her sword with two hands, swung it again, and again summoned a golden arc of energy that shot from the weapon and crashed into the rider, hard. The gold explosion was small, but the impact of the energy was not, each like thunder, and the rider stumbled slightly to one side.

She unleashed another. What demons had survived her first attack had jumped clear, and they stared at the angel as much as the rider as Moriah unleashed another beam, and another. Each crashed into the rider’s armor and exploded, gold shards falling uselessly to the ground. Again, the rider stumbled to the side with each impact, announced by shattering glass. More, and more, until Moriah fell to a knee, gasping, sword stuck in the ground and her single wing hanging limp behind her.

It was day, and the fog was white. Maybe the angels above hadn’t seen Moriah’s display? Fucking big maybe.

The rider slowly turned his gaze to David and again walked his way.

“You do not walk away from me!” Moriah yelled, stood, and again swung her sword in the rider’s direction. Another beam, same result. It smashed into the rider’s side, made him stumble a few inches, but didn’t slow him down. “How dare you! I said—”

“No!” Lasca shrieked, and she pulled on Moriah’s leg. “Stay back!”

The Las joined her, and two imps and two grems overpowered the mighty angel and dragged her away from the rider. She fought them, kicked at them, but the moment she took her weight off a foot, her armor and weapon disappeared in a small gold flash. She fell. Four sets of hands and wings caught her, and the little ladies pulled the exhausted woman from the battle.

Silvain tilted his head toward David. “He is distracted. Bury him.”

David shook his head. “He’s looking right at me.”

“He—”

Thundering hoofs and claws drew everyone’s eyes. Only the rider didn’t notice, or didn’t care, body pointed at David, but the demons glanced back the way they came at the sound of oncoming demons. More roars, more battle cries, and cheering?

Forty demons burst from the fog, and they charged in formation, Timaeus in front. With a big, joyful grin on the gorujin tetrad’s face, he jumped over the lava pool, and crashed onto the rider’s back. A gorujin had to weigh three or four times what a tiger did, and the rider collapsed to a single knee. It was enough. Timaeus flapped his wings hard, jumped back, and narrowly avoided an axe to the chest. The rider had turned to face the tetrad, and was again buried in a fresh batch of hungry, deluded demons.

“Now!” Silvain whispered.

“Now? But Timaeus...” He looked up at Laoko.

Laoko glared hard at Silvain, but spoke to David. “Do it.”

He gulped down hard. Maybe it was because of the rider’s aura, the aura of the demons throwing their lives away, but it was easier to find that part of him that wanted to fight. Some piece of him was okay with killing a few dozen demons, all for the chance to put a splinter in the rider’s foot. He hated that feeling.

He aimed his staff, and played his first song again, faster, louder, and the ground erupted. Some demons were fast enough to jump away, but some were not, locked in battle with the rider and trying and failing to stop the swings of his axes. But they were enough to keep him from noticing, and the ground opened up around them. A hellquake ripped through the area, shattered tombstones, sent rocks scattering in all directions, and ripped a seam through the dirt. Lava splashed and demons screamed as it melted through their bodies, but their cries died away, disappearing into shadow, as the rider and a dozen demons fell into the black.

David stood over the crack, glared down into it, and watched. Lava trickled into the canyon from cracks and ridges in its walls, and deep down, sharp rocks awaited everyone who fell in. Some demons got their claws on the walls and began the climb to escape, but most fell into the depths of Hell, some colliding with lava and hellfire on the way down.

It wasn’t enough. As he knew the rider would, the man in armor summoned his wings of fire, and guided himself into the canyon wall. With wings flapping, pushing him into the stone for leverage, he slammed his axes into the rock and climbed, like an ice climber with two picks.

David looked at the demons climbing the canyon walls too, swallowed down the bile in his throat, and waved his staff. A powerful, heavy song was needed, something like an explosion in music form. He played it, a monumental climax that shook the walls of his mind. The two canyon walls slammed together, and rocks erupted up from the seam, scattering over the ground and the demons above. Everyone fell, even Caera, the ground almost twisting underneath them to smash the two canyon walls together.

The goort was gone. It hadn’t fallen into the hole. Maybe it’d come back to find the rider? Because there was no way he was dead. Buried, again, but not dead.

Timaeus climbed back to his feet and stared down at where the canyon once was.

“You killed him?” he asked.

“He’s survived similar before,” David said. “Your demons...”

Whatever care Timaeus had for his demons, dead to the rider’s axes, dead to Moriah’s beams, or dead to David’s music, he didn’t let it show beyond a quick, angry glance thrown David’s way, and Moriah’s. It wasn’t only his demons that’d died. About fifty remained in total, two thirds of which worked for Silvain and Laoko, a small sum compared to the original hundred they had, and the forty Timaeus had brought.

“Why are you here?” Laoko asked.

“Azailia sent us to follow you,” Timaeus said. “She thought this might happen.”

“Then why didn’t you join us earlier?”

Timaeus shrugged. “So the rider wouldn’t see it coming.”

David winced and looked up at Laoko. Surprise cut across her face, and anger, but she bit it down and turned. Her boss hadn’t told her everything, and she hadn’t liked that.

The ground rumbled. Everyone stared at the seam in the dirt, before looking at David, but he shook his head.

“It’s the rider,” he said. “Let’s go, before he gets out.”

“He can survive that?” a demon asked.

“I stabbed him in the face, once,” Moriah said. “We do not know how to kill him.”

The demons stared at her, at David, back down at the seam, and followed. Silvain marched. Laoko glanced back at Timaeus, and Timaeus shared an angry glance with her. Angry about all the dead demons, or angry about Azailia not telling her the truth about Timaeus, or angry David just killed a bunch of demons, or that many had died as nothing more than fodder to slow the rider down, or—

David stumbled forward. His armor disappeared, potram replaced it, and he landed on his palms.

“David!” Caera came in close on all fours and stood in front of him. “David, you’re bleeding.”

“Bleeding? The rider—” He touched his face. Blood trickled from his nose. A droning sound buzzed in his skull, and blackness flickered on the edge of his vision. Hunger came next, a deep, gnawing hunger that dragged him down and down.

Caera nudged against him. “You’re exhausted. Get on.”

He put his hands on her, but someone else got their hands on him. Titanic fingers wrapped around his throat, picked him up, and turned him. Silvain’s hand.

“Silvain!” Caera yelled and turned to face him.

A tide of demons came their way and threw themselves at the girls. David didn’t get to see it. Silvain held him up, squeezed his neck, and the buzzing in David’s head grew louder. Blackness took him.

~~Unknown~~

A man standing on slabs of white feather and silk, draped over mountains. Feather and silk, white, impervious to the blood that stained the land, or the burning sky above. The man stared down at the drop behind him, a colossal fall from the odd mountain of soft curves and its white surface. Ahead of him, the woman in aera armor had summoned her wings of flame, and fought off a dozen angels.

An angel with a sword and shield got past her, came for the man, and cut off his head.

For a few seconds, the world tumbled. Right. The man’s head, rolling down the hill of white flesh.

~~Day 68~~

~~David~~

He woke up the next day. He knew it was the next day because of Hell’s weird approach to sleep, mechanical, no dreaming, his brain just switched on or off when he wanted it to. It also meant no confusion, or rush of awareness. He woke up knowing exactly what had happened.

Silvain had choked him out. Getting knocked unconscious was bad for the brain, very bad, whether it be from a hard knock to the temple, or lack of oxygen because some fucker knew where to squeeze on the neck to block blood flow. Why a demon would even know how to do that, David didn’t know; demons rarely bothered knocking souls unconscious. Hopefully, brain damage from oxygen deprivation wasn’t a thing in Hell.

It hadn’t been entirely dreamless, though. Another vision. Another dead unmarked the woman in armor had failed to protect.

That’d been a strange place. A white mountain, with soft skin? And giant white feathers?

Angel’s Spine.

“He’s awake,” a voice said. He didn’t recognize it. Probably just some random demon asshole.

The world was blurry. Was his head still tumbling down a mountainside, separated from his body? No. That’d been the vision. Then why was the world still moving and bumping?

Someone was holding him. Silvain.

“This is absurd.” That was a voice he did recognize. Laoko. “Let the boy go.”

“No.” Silvain’s voice.

David forced his eyes open and fought against the blurs. If it wasn’t his head rolling down a white hill, then there was no reason for the world to continue moving, but it was. Sensation came back. Silvain had a hand around his waist, and was literally carrying him. Not exactly gentle about it, either. That explained the world constantly moving up and down. He was being carried like a handbag.

“You saw what happened,” Laoko said. “He is drained. He is no threat.”

“Of course he’s a threat. He might summon a drop of strength and escape.”

Laoko snarled. “You’re hurting him.”

“He will be fine.”

David looked around. The girls. Where were the girls? There were a good fifty demons left from his fight with the rider, and all of them circled David, Silvain, and Laoko. Timaeus? He walked behind Silvain. David couldn’t see his face.

“David,” Laoko said. “I am sorry. Please understand, we—”

“Caera.” He put his hands on Silvain’s fingers, straightened his body as best he could, and glared up at Laoko. “The girls. Where are they?”