by K R Leikvoll
Raven was moving toward me, dodging his own puddles so he could finish me off.
No, it wasn’t going to end while I was on the ground useless. I wasn’t going to lose to that fucking prick. The black tendrils that I assumed came from Vince helped me back to my feet. The wooden shard lodged in my leg was ripped out by an invisible force and hovered above my left shoulder.
“Attack him. Now,” Vince commanded in my ears.
Despite the horrid pain I was in, I aimed my gun and fired several shots in his direction. He was forced to stumble between two pools, blocking each one with his purple barrier in front of him. The bloody wooden shard sailed through the air while he focused on the bullets. It arced diagonally at the last moment when he wasn’t expecting it, shooting sharply upward into his left shoulder. It knocked him slightly backward and off balance.
I was surprised to see a wide, crazy-eyed grin appear on his face. He cackled like a madman and propelled himself into the air. “Master! I did not believe you to be alive inside this pathetic little girl,” Raven yelled down to me on the ground.
A sickly green aura began to swirl around his hovering form. His charcoal-colored hair whipped around wildly as his spine started to spasm. I was thankful the ring was buzzing to heal me while he did his fancy tricks; my flesh was sizzling and smoking as it tried to reverse the acid’s damage. From each of Raven’s shoulder blades, bones burst from his skin and clothes. Letting out a mild cry of pain, two wings made entirely from white bone grew from his back. He flourished them in the sky, spraying black blood in all directions.
Like the naga from the desert so long ago, the wings cracked and splintered, sending bone shards through the air like knives. I could’ve blocked it, I’m sure of it, but it wasn’t the only thing he sent my way. On my side, the deadwood spikes shot outward trying to impale me. I was able to block the first wave, the second wave, the third wave. It felt never ending as the ring pulsed over and over to protect me. Finally, my fatigue was too much. Sharp debris cut me up on all sides, piercing through parts of my armor. My skin sizzled trying to heal through it, but some of it was embedded too deep. I couldn’t stop now.
The next wave was meant as a distraction. I burnt it away with flames as it reached me since I had no other choice, feeling the strain of needing to sacrifice. Raven took advantage of the break in my defense to soar my direction. His right wing came at me like a set of blades, nearly severing my spine. A quick step backward—clear intervention from Vince—helped me to narrowly avoid it.
“He can only block in one direction at a time,” Vince directed as he forced me to dodge the wings again.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I squeezed the trigger underneath Raven’s arm, shattering the huge panels of glass behind him. Thinking I was attempting to shoot him, he danced sideways out of the way, swinging Pestilence around him in a circle. He moved the scythe so fast that I was too slow to get out of the way entirely. It caught me across the chest, slicing all the way through my breast plate. It hurt less than the acid, but it definitely felt as though I had been cut almost in half. My own black blood stained his blade’s perfect silver exterior.
Thankfully, Vince was doing his part as well. The shards of shattered glass from across the room hovered in the air before they were sent at a bullet’s pace toward Raven. Almost every single one impaled him all over his backside; too bad it was one of our only successful blows to him.
He struck once more, bearing through the pain, almost catching me with the scythe again. Desperate thoughts filled my mind as he lifted it for another strike. The pain in my body was virtually enough to defeat me on its own.
As if the Imperium itself heard my desperation, a thick beam of white ruptured the obsidian castle’s ceiling. It seemed to be coming from the cosmos itself, crashing down between us like a holy intervention. Raven was forced to fling himself backward toward the acid pools to avoid being struck. His wings acted like an extension of his scythe, shooting bone-like shards at me as he dodged. Another wave of wooden spikes was launched as well in an attempt to knock me off my balance as much as he was.
To my surprise, I raised my left hand and stopped all the various shards midair. It was as if I had complete dominion over physical matter and it was invigorating. Vince’s abilities coursed through me, commanding the shards to fly back toward their sender. Raven’s eyes widened with shock, and he was required to block them with his purple barrier to avoid being impaled. I fired shots rapidly to follow them up, catching him in the chest a few times with glowing orbs of light.
Not wanting me to gain any sort of footing, Raven leapt back into the air. Face wrought with concentration, he used a mixture of his gravitational spells and his skeletal wings to blow me backward.
I did everything I could to gain my footing. I consciously summoned the shadowy tendrils, but there was nothing for me to grasp. My hands clawed at the stone ground, frantically trying to find something—anything—to keep me from being thrown out the window. Kirin, what the hell are you doing?
My fingers barely grasped the edge of the windowpane as the rest of my body was flung outside. The black sea crashed beneath me. Levia’s cries could be heard in the distance. I wished desperately that she knew where I was so she could assist me. The shadows of Raven’s skeletal wings were getting closer.
When I thought I couldn’t hang on for another second, multiple shadowy tendrils wrapped their way around the window’s frame. My nerves couldn’t help igniting from how much demonic power I was having to use. With as much force as I could, I tossed myself back into the air.
Raven was waiting for me when I leapt over him. My fingers pulled down over and over trying to hit him from different directions around his barrier. He took them all in exchange for catching me with his right wing. The blade-like ligaments stabbed through the left side of my body, skewering me entirely. His other wing caught us as he forced us to land. “I’ve missed this!” Raven yelled over my screams of pain. His left wing impaled my right side, trapping me in his embrace.
My body wasn’t capable of handling any more pain than it was already subjected to. I was numb by the time Raven ripped my armor off with his free hand and tore into my shoulder with his teeth. I tried to writhe away from him, but it was impossible to move any direction without spearing myself more.
I closed my eyes and pleaded desperately for something to happen. For Kirin to win his fight, for Vince to incinerate Raven, for Levia to fly in and eat him. I couldn’t beat him by myself. Even if I did win, those injuries felt like a death sentence. My numbness was a blessing, but it didn’t stop the horrid, overwhelming chill. My hand clenched the ring tightly, focusing on the light. I had to defeat Nakarius, I had to beat them all. Don’t let me die after all I’ve had to endure for this stupid ring.
Another beam of white crashed down from the red, misty sky on top of us. Despite it being summoned by the ring, it still seared my flesh as much as it burned into Raven. It was the heaviest thing I had ever experienced, slamming itself down on my shoulders. Raven had no other choice but to detach himself entirely to get out of the ray of light. It was too dense for us to move and I couldn’t consciously stop it even though I wanted to. The ring projected a weak barrier just in time so I could roll away. Raven lifted Pestilence against the beam of light with a cascade of shadows. It was enough for him to avoid the light though he couldn’t escape the radius completely.
I took his bad positioning to my advantage and fired a few shots of light at him. It tugged on the last of my strength, causing my gun to shimmer and vanish as if it never existed at all. My limbs were shaking so bad I couldn’t pull myself up anymore. The torrent of light ended. Rubble from the castle fell into the massive library nearly crushing us as we both struggled to stand.
Raven knocked everything around him away and rose back into the air. He was still functioning after all of that! How was I supposed to beat him? The deadwood spikes cutting Kirin and I off splintered in my direction. The bone shards were sent in
a flurry right toward me at the same time. I covered my face instinctually, not knowing what else to do. I looked up in time to see a weak barrier fading away.
With an explosion of rubble, Raven landed on the ground a few feet away. I could see him raising Pestilence in the air to behead me. I braced myself and clenched the ring as hard as I could, waiting for death.
As he raised his scythe to bring it down on me, a silver crescent-shaped blade passed through his chest like a ghost. Raven froze, eyes twitching. A moment later, sharp shadows cut through his flesh in a blast of black blood. He fell to his knees, clutching his chest.
“So… that’s what it feels like,” he whispered, reaching out toward me. His hand grasped my wrist as his energy was ripped to the Void, perhaps to have one last touch with Vince.
I could see Kirin’s bloody, exhausted form standing behind Raven with relief written on his face.
Pestilence dispersed into shadows and began to float into the air. It twisted into a strange onyx crescent that could’ve fit in my palm. I wanted to call to Kirin to grab it; thankfully he had the same thought as I.
As he went to seize it, a black figure soared across the room. A loud shriek, so loud it made the rubble vibrate around us, erupted from the shadow. Lazarus clutched the Essentia to her chest and rolled into her fall on the other side of the spiked wall. I couldn’t help wondering if she had been watching the fight the entire time… wait, was it me wondering that, or was it Vince?
Before I could even bear to think of standing, she tore off down one of the side hallways. I opened my mouth to beg Kirin to chase her, but he kneeled next to me with a finger on his lips, signaling for me to be quiet.
“She’s fleeing to the throne room,” he said, taking off his dagger. He grabbed Raven’s limp arm and cut through his elegant robes and into this flesh.
His black blood poured out instantly. Kirin gently rolled me over to my back despite my cries of pain and put Raven’s bleeding wrist to my mouth. I understood what I needed to do without needing to be told. Honestly, it was more Vince than me that clung on instantaneously to heal and relieve the flames of sacrifice. It tasted odder than any other blood I had had so far. It was familiar, though I knew it wasn’t familiar to me. His blood was sour like a tart fruit, not as enjoyable as Kirin’s. I suppose his alcoholism was good for something.
Kirin was working on my wounds and armor while I became consumed with soothing the burning and my pain. The world was drifting away and I was perfectly okay with that. Even a few moments of rest before Lazarus was a blessing. I didn’t care that Vince wasn’t fading away. In truth, I knew I was going to need him for the rest of the battle, and I didn’t want to have to fight to get him back.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to drink an entire body’s worth of blood, but I did it. When I opened my eyes, Raven’s body lay near mine, shriveled. Vince used my arm to reach out and brush his face. I felt the tinge of a heartache coming on, overcome by a mixture of feeling betrayed and fulfilled. My lips pressed against his wrist. I didn’t really want to leave his corpse’s side.
“Valentine?” Kirin said cautiously. There was no doubting that he could sense Vince’s active presence. His hands cupped my cheeks and he stared into my eyes trying to find me, but I wasn’t sure where Val really was. She was in there, wedged somewhere between Vince and all of the other Divines.
My body was weak, but I still managed to get into a sitting position. Kirin wiped the blood off my face with a hesitant hand. I wrapped my arms around him and climbed to my feet. Somehow, even though I hadn’t dealt the final blow, I had beaten one of Vince’s disciples.
One down, one more to go…
Chapter Thirty-Five
We managed to make it through a half-crushed doorway on the opposite side. I seemed to know the castle’s layout better than Kirin as we rushed down the massive, open hallways. My entire mind and body was numb. Raven’s blood had healed me and provided a boost I knew I was going to need, but I didn’t feel comfortable sharing with Vince as much as I thought initially. His emotions, which I had never experienced, were overwhelming, and I had to focus on my echoing footsteps to maintain some sort of sanity. I don’t think he was trying to take over; it was hard enough to preserve myself against half of him.
Vince led us through the maze of hallways in the darkness with no issues. My heart was throbbing viciously in my chest when I started to recognize where we were at. It was eerily familiar. I had run the same steps with Eve in my vision before she was captured. At least Kirin was with me and I wasn’t entirely alone.
I thought we were going to go straight to the throne room, but we took a detour up a spiral staircase. Kirin was unsure where we were going and clenched my arm to pull me back. Vince and I had to jointly tow him behind us until we reached a peculiar door. It was made entirely of dark metal and had no handle. The lines twisted chaotically like an alien puzzle.
“What are we doing? The throne room is downstairs,” Kirin said, trying to tug me back again.
I put my left hand up to a strange groove in the metal where I would have thought a handle should’ve been. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on something Vince seemed to know. Shadows flowed gently from my fingertips. They danced around the strange, outlandish lines, darting in different directions to solve the door’s enigma.
Kirin and I watched in similar awe as the entryway began to shift and move into different pieces. One by one, triangular cuts of the metal peeled away allowing us entry into the room. I walked in the vault with extreme caution. Even with demonic sight, everything was so dark. Black as a color choice for everything was a definite design flaw, in my opinion.
The room was filled with different weapons in glass cases. They were set on their own private pedestals like trophies. Each platform had a name and event scrawled into the stone. After reading a few it became apparent that they weren’t just taken from enemies; I spied Sendrys’ name on a jagged dagger still covered with dried blood from who knows how long ago. At the very end, a silver sword adorned with glinting red gems hung on a stand. Beneath it, the name “James Ryder: Mercy” was etched into the pedestal. My fingers traced his name for a moment before I reached to pull it off the stand.
“What are you going to do with that?” Kirin asked curiously.
Honestly, I didn’t know myself. I had never held a sword with intent to harm in my life. Nobody had bothered to teach me.
My left hand wrapped around the hilt and tugged it from the pedestal’s grip. It took a bit of strength to get it out, like it hadn’t been touched in forever. I held it out, unsure for a moment. It was incredibly heavy, but Vince’s grip was determined to use it one-handed. Maybe his arm had been strong enough for something like that, but mine wasn’t. I tried to ignore the flashes of James barraging my mind as I dragged Kirin out of the vault behind me.
“There’s a balcony to the throne room down the hall,” I whispered clenching Kirin’s fist in my hand. “You can fly… let me go in and distract her. If you’re there, she might try to get you first, and I don’t think I can beat her by myself.”
Kirin shook his head no in response. “I’m not going to let you run in and get yourself killed.”
“I’ll be fine. Just hurry once she’s distracted,” I replied, unsure of what my plan was. “Maybe if we can get one of the other Essentia pieces, we can win.”
Kirin looked instantly sickened by the idea of having to hold another shard, but he nodded stiffly. I knew he didn’t want me to fight alone. If she hadn’t absorbed Death by then, we would have a chance at beating her. One scratch is all we needed.
I left Kirin without glancing back or saying goodbye. It wasn’t goodbye. I would beat that crazy bitch back to hell and we would go to Earth together. I wouldn’t submit to the doubt building in my mind. Having Vince’s drive was the only thing that kept my legs steady as I climbed down the stairs. He wanted to kill her more than I did. I supposed it was revenge for him. It was revenge for me, too.
/> The throne room door looked more menacing than any monster as I stared up at it. I reached my shaking hand out to create a barrier behind me. Is that how Eve felt? I couldn’t help wondering. Despite my weakness, the ring expelled a shimmering shield of light, barring the rest of the castle off. Hopefully it would keep any lesser demons from entering if they got that far.
Holding my breath, I pushed the heavy double doors open.
The storm of fire and magic outside lit up the entire massive room with a hazy red glow. It was just enough for me to see Lazarus’ hunched form sitting in front of the throne on the other side of the room. She was clutching the white skull she had hanging from her belt in her hands. In the middle of the battle outside, her hair had been cut loose from its braids. It covered her like a dark blanket, making it hard to see her physical body. I could tell immediately that she had absorbed Pestilence. An acidic green smoke was vaguely circling the air around her feet.
My heart fluttered with slight relief when my eyes caught a black blade at the top of the throne.
When I pictured Death in my mind, it never looked as it actually did. I thought it might have been some sort of true Grim Reaper scythe with skulls, but it wasn’t. It was a sword, yet that’s only roughly how it could be described. Death appeared as though it was carved from some sort of cosmic black rock. It was split down the middle and barbed on both sides with jagged edges. The hilt looked like it would be impossible to hold based on how many tiny shards seemed to be encircling it. The strange shadowy aura of Vince was incredibly similar to the darkness surrounding the blade.
