Chapter 71

~~Day 97~~

~~Mia~

The ground was split open, as was the ceiling, a giant gash through Angel’s Spine. And chunks of torn archangel flesh dangled from the cracked ceiling above, bleeding onto the crowd below. The blood lake drained down into the new ravine, and smaller demons screamed with rage and panic as the flowing crimson pulled them down into the canyon. Mia didn’t look. Maybe they’d find a ledge to grab onto, a tunnel or bone bridge or something in the ravine so they didn’t hit the bottom. Those that did hit the bottom, she knew what’d happen. They’d disintegrate the moment they touched the bottom of Hell, the same as they had in Death’s Grip.

Was it the void killing them, or Hell killing them before they reached the void?

“Cerberus!” she yelled. “Cerb—oh thank god.”

The hellhound stood up from the blood lake and jumped over the waves as the flowing liquid poured into the new ravine. Others demons did the same, jumping up and over the rushing blood to escape its pull. The lake drained quickly, and the unending bloodfalls from the archangel flesh above, pouring from the enormous crack in the ceiling Mia had made, ensured new blood replaced it. But the liquid receded until it was only a couple of inches deep, and everyone stood their ground, or tried to, as the continuing hellquake tore the ravine further apart.

Mia’s group was on one side, along with a few hundred demons. The spire, Dobasi, his tetrads, and most of his forces were on the other. The split through the ceiling, and now the split through the ground, ran straight across the cavern, missed the spire, and reached across Angel’s Spine as it cut its way toward James. It was like someone had slashed a giant cut through Angel’s Spine with a scalpel, and cut all the way through to the bottom.

Azreal, Noah, and Yosepha didn’t come back. Maybe they didn’t know what would happen. Maybe they thought Mia would be fine with Vin and the others to protect her. Maybe they understood how important it was to get to James and keep him alive.

“Dobasi!” Mia yelled from Vin’s back. “They’re coming! Get ready!”

Dobasi stood at the edge of the ravine, wings spread so the trembling ground wouldn’t knock him in.

“You! You have summoned—”

The blood, flowing into the ravine in an unending, gentle bloodfall, exploded up from the canyon like a geyser. Something from beneath shot up from the ravine and splattered the blood and knocked it aside, something invisible. The demons roared in confusion, drew their weapons, and stared at the raining blood dripping from strange, see-through shapes jutting from the ravine.

The invisible bodies gained color and shape, black, and dark, sinister shades of blue, green, and purple. Tentacles, each a half dozen meters thick where they pushed against the ravine edge, with literal suction cups. What the fuck.

“Vin,” she said. “Can you—”

“I see it,” he said, and he backed away from the ravine. “Get back.”

She hopped off Vin’s back and put some distance between herself and the inevitable.

Creatures climbed out of the ravine, human-like creatures with glistening, dark skin the color of the ocean depths. Tentacles dangled from where their mouths should have been, and their black eyes glistened. Not a single hair on their alien bodies, they swarmed up from the ravine like a black tide. Their feet looked like human hands.

Some ran on all fours, spines bending harshly for the posture. The air around their bodies bent and twisted, grew shadow, shimmered, and then disappeared, leaving the bent-over creatures wearing black and purple armor that covered their backs and their large heads. More armor shimmered into existence, pulled from nothing and given form, covering their wrists and ankles and chests, but with some strange spikes along them. Alien armor, for alien creatures.

The strange armor looked different on the next wave of aliens. The ones on all fours charged forward, relying on the strange, heavy black and purple armor to guard their heads and shoulders, but the aliens behind them, standing up with human posture, waited. They let the others rush forward into the demons and begin the battle, but the others walked behind them, and shifting shadows enveloped them and bestowed them armor, too. The same as the others, except more elegant, more beautiful, as if someone had carved flowing lines into black and purple seashells, cut out sections, and fashioned body armor for them.

The standing aliens reached out a hand, and from twinkling shadows that danced around their fingers, drew black, beautiful spears into existence.

Not spears. Tridents.

Thousands of the aliens flowed up from the ravine, met the demons, and the battle began. Whatever words Dobasi had for Mia, they disappeared under the clang of metal on metal, and claws on flesh. Roars drowned out everything, and splatters of white alien blood arced into the shallow red blood flowing past their feet. But the aliens didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop if they got injured, and when one died, they faded away like dust.

It was chaos.

Mia clenched her eyes and reached for the music, but nothing happened. She plucked the strings, but nothing happened. She plucked harder, plucked until her soul bled, but nothing happened.

The aliens screamed, and she clenched her head in her gauntlets, palms to her ears, but it did nothing. The sound hit everyone with its shrillness, but there was a second layer only she could hear. Silence. A cold, empty silence stabbed her through the heart, and she stumbled back, desperate to block it out but unable to do a damn thing.

“Mia?” Kas asked.

“We have to kill them. Kill the tentacles. Kill them.”

Kas nodded, and that was that. He charged forward and slammed into the closest alien. The others were already in the fight, Romakus and Julisa swinging their swords, but they were on the defensive. An alien on all fours got between them, caught them off guard, but Kas stabbed forward with his horns and skewered the creature up through its exposed neck. White blood gushed over his black head, and Kas tossed the body aside with a swing of his skull.

Dobasi’s demons didn’t fare as well, and were cut down in droves. Mia’s team was really elite, with Romakus and Kas having a crazy amount of experience. And Julisa had been around for a while, too. Even in front of something this insane, with rows upon rows of six-and-seven-foot-tall aliens armed with armor and wielding tridents, they adapted instantly. They blocked the three-tipped spears of the aliens and cut down the other aliens running on all-fours like Kas did. But despite their prowess, Mia’s team took steps back, pushed back by the alien tide.

Vin was a different animal. He charged forward and tore through the aliens like he was chopping through tall grass with a machete. Some aliens were smart enough to dodge or block, but like ants, they swarmed toward Vin with no regard for their own lives.

The demons weren’t much different. They roared into the faces of the invaders, even as they died to tridents stabbing their throats or stomachs, or the clawed fingers of the hunched aliens on all-fours. And when a heavy groan rumbled up through the ravine, the enormous tentacles sticking up from the black within pushed against the ravine walls, and Hell shook as the ravine opened wider.

Dobasi was good. He, and his tetrads Anianus and Cillia, caught on quick, cut through the invaders, small compared to them, and they made their way toward the colossal tentacles. But they didn’t reach them. From the shadows, more aliens rose, wearing black and purple robes instead of armor, and no helmets.

They hovered. They literally hovered, floating while upright.

Only angels could fly. That was the rule. In Hell, no demon, no matter how light, no matter how big their wings, could not fly, while angels had God’s gift and could soar. The aliens didn’t care. While thousands of their comrades poured up from the ravine and engaged the demons, a dozen of the strange mind-flayer wannabes floated over the battle, mouth tentacles dangling as they scanned it.

They spotted Mia, and held out their hands toward her.

Mia reached for the music, screamed for it, but she couldn’t find it in the drowning silence. The music was gone. She froze, staring up at the creatures as they prepared some sort of attack. No one had expected flying aliens. Vin, Kas, Romakus, Julisa, they’d all engaged the aliens in front of them and were doing a good job keeping them from reaching her. But the flying aliens ignored them, hovered a few dozen meters in the air, and the ember sky burned above them.

They unleashed something from their hands, a swirling orb that bent light around it. For a fraction of a second, Mia spotted a tiny black dot inside each swirling mass. Black holes? A real black hole of that size would destroy an entire planet in moments. But that didn’t change that it looked like the strange aliens shot black holes at her, with the swirling colors and shimmering, bending light around them all too similar to an event horizon.

And Mia couldn’t do a thing. She held up her staff and screamed.

Gold erupted around her, and she screamed again under the sound of explosions crashing against something hard. White spread in front of her. Wings. And a colossal, gold, see-through wall protected her.

“Azreal!”

Cerberus rumbled beside her, hopped side to side, and gently clawed at the back of Azreal’s right greave.

The angel looked back at her and spared only a quick nod.

“Yosepha and Noah continued on, but when the ground split open, we knew you had to be defended.”

“I told you—”

“We will save you both, but...” He pointed his spear up at the hovering aliens. “This is a problem.”

“Dobasi!” Romakus yelled. “Get some demons up there!”

Dobasi roared across the ravine. “And how do you propose I do that!?”

“The spire! Get some gorgalas up the spire and get them to jump! Fucking christ, do I have to think of everything!?” Romakus swung his sword down, both hands, and cleaved through a standing alien, shoulder to crotch.

His aggression earned him an attack from another alien, and a trident stabbed past his armor and into his side. He fell, swung his sword to the side, and cut the alien in half, only for one of the four-legged invaders to pounce him.

“Cerberus!” Mia yelled. Please please please please don’t die. “Get ‘em!”

Cerberus launched forward like a bullet. The fact he’d stayed at Mia’s side at all throughout this was insane enough. That he went directly for whom Mia pointed at was even more insane. He tackled the alien off Romakus, and the fight quickly turned into a battle of the beasts, hellhound versus hunched squid human. And Cerberus had the advantage. He dove in, clawing and swiping, and while the alien’s armor blocked much of it, Cerberus had three heads and he used them, biting and gnashing. He got a couple sets of teeth around the creature’s neck and shoulders, and ripped them open, drenching his three heads in white blood.

Romakus got to his feet, groaning and using his sword for balance. He spared only a short nod for Cerb, turned, and cleaved another alien coming for them.

Cerberus turned and faced the alien Romakus slayed, past it, and to the battle raging around them. Roaring, the hellhound ran past Romakus and Julisa, and disappeared into the fray.

“Cerberus!” Mia yelled and stepped around Azreal, but the angel stuck his wing out and blocked her.

“Stay behind me!”

“But—”

The gold barrier emanating from Azreal’s shield erupted with the sound of explosions, and Mia fell back as the waves of impact pushed through everything, sending splashes of the ground’s flowing blood up over her body. Another bombardment. She sat up and stared at the gold wall shaking, like bullet-proof glass struggling to withstand RPGs. Azreal grunted and slid back, body pushed back despite him leaning forward into his enormous shield, each explosion pushing him as if he were on ice. The gold wall of his shield held.

The explosions stopped. The aliens unleashed their strange, shrieking screams, and Mia forced herself to her feet. Through Azreal’s gold, see-through wall, emanating from his colossal shield, Mia watched the hovering aliens spread out and surround Azreal and Mia from all angles. Mindless creatures wouldn’t do that.

“Azreal,” she said. “They’re—”

Azreal’s wings glowed gold, and Mia squinted against the blinding light as the angel stepped back closer to her. He lifted his enormous shield into the air over him, and the gold wall went horizontal with it, a massive disc of gold energy. And again, the aliens unleashed a bombardment from above.

Mia stayed as close to Azreal as she could, but with the gold disc only a few feet overhead, each explosion hit her with a sizable chunk of whatever strange, kinetic force they unleashed, through the shield, and shook her to her bones. And each explosion sucked the sound out of the air, like she’d gone deaf, and sound came with a dizzying snap each time.

A vrat ran over, jumped onto the shield, and jumped up toward the aliens above. Mia stared up through the gold wall, only to whip her eyes away when one of the strange mini black holes hit the demon, and detonated him. He didn’t just explode. He shattered. Limbs ripped from his body, and pieces of him went everywhere. Some pieces stopped existing entirely. And his blood coated the gold wall.

Some of the hovering aliens floated lower to the ground and tried to shoot Mia and Azreal from their exposed sides, but that low, demons had no trouble catching them. A dozen aliens found themselves blindsided by demons who turned and came to Mia’s aid; maybe not so much to Mia’s aid as an opportunity to kill the thing suddenly attacking their home. A couple dozen vrats and brutes charged the aliens, pinned them to the ground, and tore them apart with glee.

But there were still another dozen in the air, and they shot at nothing but Azreal, a relentless bombardment that boiled the blood river around them. They wanted Mia. They wanted to kill her. All this, just to kill her. And maybe James. Fuck, if she got James killed with this, she’d jump off a cliff. Fuck, if she hadn’t done this, he’d be dead anyway! Fuck fuck fuck.

A new wave of shrieks filled the cavern, but not alien. From above, higher than the hovering aliens, a hundred wings descended on them. Gorgalas and dilojas. Gargoyles, and bat girls. The ladies glided down from the cavern ceiling and fell on the distracted aliens. The explosions came to a halt, and bodies fell from above, many of them landing straight on Azreal’s shield with heavy thunks. They rolled off the massive gold wall over Mia’s head, hit the ground, and the demons and aliens ripped into each other. Even the hovering aliens with their fancy, black and purple robes still had claws.