by Rex Jameson
Part of the platform splintered underneath her as her trajectory arced over the strikers and shielders into the mountainside. Anne, sensing her own vulnerability, ran toward Jehovah and Gaea.
“Somebody, help!” Lucifer yelled. “Batarel, we need you!”
Above the Second Legion, a monstrous green-and-black cloud formed. It churned and pulsed as heat lightning traveled across its great billowy face. Lucifer blocked another striker assault and launched himself at Anne. Rabishu crashed into the ground where Anne had been and wing-walked toward her target.
Lucifer was focusing on his mate so intensely that he forgot the rest of the battle. A striker connected with his shoulder and sent him into a spin. Another hit him in the back, and he impacted the ground face first. His shoulder pads lay in pieces beside him, and he groggily crawled out of his crater.
Screams came from the center of the Second Legion. The cloud above them was raining down tornados that targeted the wizards. Hundreds of cloaked figures broke ranks and darted back toward Chaos, but the funnels found and consumed them.
Lucifer got to his feet and launched himself once more. The strikers left him alone as the Second Legion was now completely routed and in the process of stampeding the platform.
Eranos yelled at them to stay away, but they were too panicked to listen. He pointed at them, and they simply disintegrated. After that, the Second Legion gave the platform a wide berth, and Eranos took control of one of the striker regiments.
Michael’s angels opened fire on the wizards near the pavilion, and the roar of the magical bombardment sent lesser and greater demons fleeing in all directions.
“Stop, please!” Lucifer called to Rabishu, but he couldn’t tell if she could hear him over the roar of the battle.
He clawed at the earth and swung wings wildly at demons and angels that ventured into his path. But Eranos’s strikers launched a wing volley, and he was forced to veer between engaged combatants. He growled and snarled at friend and foe alike as they each impeded him from reaching Anne. Without his wings to protect her from magical assaults, she would be no match for a battle wizard.
“Get out of my way or die!” he screamed as he cracked a demon’s skull with the pommel of his sword.
A pair of angels rolled into Lucifer and knocked him off his feet. The demon they were wrestling with lifted a sword to strike one of the white-winged combatants, but Lucifer’s wings vaulted him back into the main body of the Second Legion. He regained his footing but was targeted again by strikers. He grunted as he tossed aside the wing-lock.
He ran on four wings and launched demons and angels aside with the others. When a surprised foot soldier raised a sword at him, Lucifer cut the immortal down. When a striker left his wing tendrils in an impact crater for too long, he was jerked into an upturned blade. As Lucifer bolted through and over soldiers, he left a bloody trail of carnage in his wake before punching into the air for a final lunge. He was so close.
“Anne!” Lucifer yelled. “Get to the trees! Save yourself!”
Rabishu turned on him and extended a clawed hand. Lucifer felt his body tense up, and his wings gave way underneath him. He crashed to the earth and flopped around like a ragdoll, unable to move a muscle.
He could see Anne, but he wouldn’t be able to reach her. Not until Rabishu let him go.
“Kill my lover, will you?” Rabishu snarled at Anne. “You little bitch!”
“He’s not dead,” Anne said. “He’s being reborn.”
“Then why isn’t he here?” she asked. “No … you killed him, and your life is forfeit.”
“Leave me alone!” Anne said as she got to her feet and picked up a discarded pike. She jabbed at Rabishu. “I loved my father. He was dying, Rabishu.”
Rabishu side-apparated the pike and grabbed it. She walked forward, but kept hold of it. The metal glowed red, and Anne screamed as she dropped it. Her hands were smoking.
“And now, it’s your turn to die, my dear,” Rabishu said.
Anne drew a dagger and hurled it at the witch, but Rabishu shielded and the blade thunked against the barrier and dropped into the dirt. Anne retreated with a short sword raised in front of her. As Rabishu’s green shield disappeared, Anne let the weapon fly and Rabishu disappeared into a hazy mist.
“Get away from me!” Anne said.
She held her belly as she leapt backward, and Rabishu materialized behind her. The witch clamped her hand down on Anne’s helmet and tossed it aside. Then, she vanished again.
Rabishu appeared to lose her magical grip on Lucifer, and he growled as he pushed into the ground once more. “I'm coming, baby.”
Anne dashed toward a thicket of small trees, but the mountainside ripped apart in front of her, and searing heat blew into her face. The melted rock splashed onto Anne’s armor and she threw aside an elbow guard and pauldron. As Rabishu’s fist materialized in front of her, she tucked and tumbled underneath it.
Lucifer grabbed Rabishu with a wing and threw her at a crag, but she disappeared before she hit the jagged rocks. He clawed at the ground with hands and wings and called to his pregnant fiancée. “To the trees, honey!”
Anne got to her feet and sprinted for the forest, but Rabishu appeared in front of her.
Lucifer struck her in the face with his wings, and the witch recoiled toward the forest.
“You wait your turn,” she said as she clawed at Lucifer again.
His body writhed in agony while he watched Anne rolling to avoid another chaos bolt. He impacted the ground hard and flopped out of his impact crater. He could see her desperate eyes pleading for him to get up, but he couldn't move.
Run, Anne, he thought, Get up and go. To the forest.
As if listening to his mind, she tucked once more and somersaulted into the clearing. Twenty feet to the trees. Another chaos bolt, but Anne dodged it. Five feet. Lucifer teared up as he watched Anne disappear into the woods.
But his hope was dashed in an instant.
Rabishu emerged from the trees, holding Anne by her hair and lifting her off her feet. Anne scratched the witch's face and kicked her assailant in the chest. Rabishu turned Anne to face Lucifer.
“Please don’t!” Lucifer yelled. “She’s carrying my son!”
Rabishu jerked her hand across Anne’s jaw line, and Lucifer fell forward as her magical hold was released. He clawed at the dirt and rock of the mountain as he prepared to strike with his wings. But Rabishu was gone. He stumbled to Anne and cradled her in his arms as he tried to staunch the bleeding from the gaping wound in her neck, but the gash was so deep and long that he didn’t know where to start. He sobbed as he pressed his hands against her mangled veins and windpipe.
“You’re going to be OK, Anne” he said. “Just hold on. Medic!” Lucifer screamed. “I need someone. We need help!” He rocked her back and forth and caressed her stomach. “Think of the baby, honey. Stay with me.”
Anne choked on her blood and put one of her hands to her neck and the other on her stomach. Lucifer kissed every inch of her face. He breathed in the fragrance of her hair and waited for Rabishu to strike.
“What have you done?” a deep voice yelled. “You insipid, stupid woman!”
Lucifer turned to see a red creature strangling Rabishu high above the ground. She grasped at the wings around her neck and her eyes bulged as she looked upon the terrible form of Batarel.
The tornados lifted from the plateau below, and the First Legion corralled the routed Second, guiding them back to Chaos.
A lone figure cursed at them from the platform. He raised his remaining hand in front of him and channeled a chaos bolt that roared up the mountainside.
“Eranos can wait back at the Courts,” Batarel said as he flicked his wrist, and the bolt disappeared along with the conjurer.
Anne formed the word “Father”, but the air escaped through her neck. Tears flowed down Batarel’s crimson face.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Jehovah wouldn’t release me from the Halls. I
got here as fast as I could.”
Lucifer snarled at his cousin, who was watching them. Gaea was beside him with her hand to her mouth, sobbing uncontrollably.
“How could you?” she asked her husband.
“This is Rabishu’s doing.”
“You called off Sal and his guards!” Lucifer accused him.
“They were needed elsewhere,” Jehovah said.
Rabishu’s strangled protests came down, and Batarel growled. He brought his hands together and then slowly spread them apart. Above him, Rabishu screamed.
Lucifer looked up just in time to see the blades coming out of her skin. Her grafted flesh and bone followed along with them. Despite what she had done, Lucifer didn’t want to watch her final moments. He looked at his uncle instead.
Batarel opened his palms and crossed his hands over each other and a rain of gore came down. He picked up his adopted daughter from Lucifer’s lap, and she coughed as she put her arms around his neck.
“I’m bringing her and the baby back to Order to be reborn,” Batarel said.
“No you’re not,” Jehovah said. “You’re leaving her right here. She wouldn’t make it, anyway.”
“Jehovah!” Gaea yelled. “Stop this madness!”
“That child will be the end of Order.”
“Worry about me,” Batarel said.
He flicked his wrist and Jehovah disappeared. He turned to Gaea. “You tell your husband that if he blocks my nephew’s rebirth, he’ll answer to me.”
And with that, Batarel and Anne disappeared.
Lucifer looked down the mountain toward the pavilion and saw Sariel making his way up the slope. He put his palms to his eyes and wiped away his tears. Gaea came over to comfort him, but he waved her off.
“I need to be alone,” Lucifer said. “Your husband has killed me here just as surely as he has killed my fiancée. Like any other dying animal, I just want to find a soft thicket somewhere to lie down in.”
“You are not dying,” she said. “And besides, you still have someone to live for. Your son will be reborn. I’ll do everything in my power to bring him back to you.”
He stumbled to his feet and Gaea caught him before he fell back to the earth. His head swam, and he turned from her to vomit. After expunging the contents of his stomach, he noticed a shiny trinket in the grass. Amongst the mayhem and murder of the afternoon, the anur quppu, a device powerful enough to lay waste to entire universes, lay forgotten on the mountainside.
“Destroy this,” he said, passing it to Gaea.
She tossed the anur quppu into the air and directed a bolt of energy at it. The metal frame melted as it fell to the earth before sizzling into the blood, metal, and mud of the mountainside.
“You’ve suffered a terrible loss,” Gaea said, shouldering him again. “But everything will work out.”
She guided him toward his brother, who was wing-walking to them.
“You’ll see,” she said.
