by Ella Summers
Had he been here, he would have said something to the effect of: You are an angel, not a chicken. Stop flapping your arms around uselessly. You’ll never fly that way.
Damiel shot out of the hole in the ground and landed beside me, Colonel Spellstorm balanced over his shoulder. He set the angel down, and not too gently. But Colonel Spellstorm didn’t fall, and he didn’t flap around his arms for balance either.
Both he and Damiel had many more years as an angel under their belts than I did.
Colonel Spellstorm looked across the bubbling sea. “The monsters are awake and hungry.” He glanced at the sword in Damiel’s hand. “Our chances of survival would increase drastically if I had a weapon.” He gave his bound hands a shake. “And if my magic weren’t silenced.”
“Your chances of escaping would also increase drastically,” replied Damiel.
Colonel Spellstorm looked at him like he wanted to say something, but instead he just turned and began walking. He must have realized there was no point in trying to sway Damiel.
As I took a step, the ground rumbled under my feet. The island began to shake violently. I could hardly stay upright. The ground was rocking so hard, I thought the island might split apart, breaking into a million tiny pieces.
I looked around, trying to find the source of the disturbance.
“It’s coming from the monsters,” Colonel Spellstorm told me. He pointed his cuffed fists at the sea.
It was bubbling. Tall jets of water, several hundred feet tall each, shot up high into the sky like gargantuan geysers.
“Your presence, the culmination of all this magic in a single place, has boosted the monsters’ appetite,” Colonel Spellstorm told us. “And that’s made them agitated.”
So it was the monsters’ mealtime, and this island was on the menu.
“We must fly,” Damiel told me. “Now.”
I glanced at Colonel Spellstorm. “What about him? He can’t fly without magic.”
“I’ll carry him.”
Colonel Spellstorm shot Damiel a wry smile. “Don’t get all sentimental on me now, Dragonsire.”
“You must have hit your head hard when you bounced off my psychic barrier,” Damiel said coolly. “I owe you nothing, least of all your life. The only reason I am bringing you with us is if you are wrong about this, if you are the traitor, the one who sold out this world to the demons, I will strap you to my interrogation chair until I get to the bottom of this.”
With that promise made, Damiel’s dark wings materialized on his back. Spreading his feathers wide, he grabbed the angel and took off into the sky. I flew after him. Ahead of me, Damiel angled toward the City of Islands.
The sea below was wild and unsettled. Waves rocked the surface. Monster claws and tentacles, formed from rocks and scales, shot out of the water. One of the tentacles swatted at me.
I evaded. “Didn’t you already learn your lesson when you got tangled up in your own tentacles?” I snapped at the sea monster.
It roared in response. I had no idea if it was remembering our last encounter, or if it was simply roaring to make a big show. Actually, I wasn’t convinced a bundle of rocks that had taken the shape of a monster even possessed the collective intelligence necessary to understand speech.
The rock monster swiped at me again. I flew aside. A piece of the tentacle broke off from the rest. It reshaped into the form of a dragon—a giant rock dragon. It opened its mouth, and a river of flames shot straight at me.
Correction: it was a giant, fire-breathing rock dragon. The beast was more agile than the tentacles. It turned and slammed into me. The impact knocked me out of the air. I hit the water and sank into the sea.
A big rock monster was waiting for me below the surface. Bits of the beast broke off the main body, reforming into many smaller, more agile monsters, and shot toward me.
I swam between the stony fish monsters, thankful that my father had subjected me to regular underwater battles. The sea was truly an overlooked training arena. Most soldiers concentrated on land battle, but the ability to fight underwater was essential for any Legion soldier. You never knew what threats you would have to face.
Come to think of it, improving my aerial battle skills would be useful too, now that I could fly. Later, I’d have to ask Damiel to include aerial attacks in his flight technique lessons. I obviously needed the training. Being knocked out of the air was something I’d definitely like to avoid in the future.
The small monsters circled around me. I blasted them with my psychic magic. Several shattered, but the bulk of the force continued to close in, their circle growing ever tighter. I slashed at them with my sword. Fast as I was underwater, I still moved more slowly than I could on land. A few of the little monsters remained intact. I used my shifting magic to morph them into boulders. Robbed of any way to propel themselves, they sank to the bottom.
Enraged, the big monster opened its mouth wide and roared. Jets of water smashed into me.
The monster took chase of me. My magic alone was not sufficient to take down something so big and powerful, so I drew on the power of the sea. I twisted and turned the waves to push the monster away from me.
My control over the sea was only partial here. The lands—and seas—of monsters lay outside the laws of nature, which meant my dominion over water and ice was less absolute than in the places not overrun by monsters. Even so, my power was sufficient to push the monster out of range and give me time to get away.
I didn’t make it far.
The second monster, the Beast of the West, was waiting. Before I could react, it slapped me hard with one of its tentacles. As I blacked out, the last thing I saw was the monster opening up the gravelly jaws of its mouth to swallow me.
8
City of Islands
I faded groggily into consciousness. Damiel was there, looking down on me. A slight tingle rippled across my body. It felt like residual magic, like he’d used a spell to coax me out of unconsciousness.
“What happened?” I asked.
Honestly, I was surprised that I hadn’t awoken inside the belly of a monster.
“After the monster knocked you into the sea, we dove in after you,” Damiel told me. “Spellstorm grabbed you, while I kept the two beasts busy.”
“How did you stop them?”
“I blew them up.”
My eyes widened. “You blew them up? Both entire beasts?”
“For now. They will eventually reassemble. But it will take awhile before they can attack anyone else.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone blowing up the whole Beast of the West and the whole Beast of the East. What spell did you use?” I asked him.
“One of yours.”
I followed his gaze to Colonel Spellstorm. His handcuffs were gone.
“I needed something with enough charge to blow up the monsters,” Damiel said.
“The cuffs.”
That’s what he’d meant by one of my spells. I’d designed the handcuffs. I’d made them work.
“They have a mini Magitech generator,” Damiel said. “Small but powerful. I overloaded it and threw it at the monsters.”
“That’s pretty ingenious.”
“I know.”
It hurt to laugh, so I subdued the urge. Damiel wouldn’t have approved of laughter anyway, not with Colonel Spellstorm here.
Damiel had removed his handcuffs to save me. Colonel Spellstorm now had full use of his magic, which meant it would be difficult to secure him if he decided to escape. That should have worried me, even though I believed his story.
But I wasn’t worried. No, my mind was tying itself up in knots over the fact that Damiel Dragonsire had given up our only way of restraining the angel.
For me. He’d done it to save me. He had chosen me over securing a prisoner.
More importantly, he’d chosen to be himself, Damiel, over being Colonel Dragonsire. There was hope for him yet, and that made me happier than I dared express.
I wanted to throw my arm
s around him and hug him to me. But that wouldn’t be appropriate. Not now. Not with others around. Not with another angel here. Not when the fate of the world hung in the balance.
I looked around at the ruined old buildings and fallen bridges around us. “So we made it to the City of Islands.”
“Yes,” said Colonel Spellstorm. “And the church where the demons’ agents plan to break the spell is just down the street.”
“Then let’s go.”
“You hit your head hard. Are you all right?” Damiel offered me his hand.
I took it and rose to my feet. “I’m fine.”
Colonel Spellstorm watched us closely. “Interesting.”
“Keep your commentary to yourself,” Damiel told him shortly.
But Colonel Spellstorm didn’t listen. “I know General Silverstar has instructed you on how vital it is that each and every Legion soldier does not betray any weakness, especially when that soldier is an angel,” he said to me, then turned to Damiel. “And you. Offering her your hand. What if she used your moment of kindness to stab you through the chest?”
“Be silent,” Damiel hissed.
As Colonel Spellstorm looked at us, his forehead crinkled up. “You two actually care about each other. Like each other. You even trust each other.” He shook his head slowly at Damiel. “You swore you didn’t trust a soul on this world or on any other.”
“I told you to be silent.” Damiel’s voice was powerful and hard, each word packed with magic.
Colonel Spellstorm chuckled darkly, as though he were filing away that information, the knowledge that Damiel cared about me, for future use. Angels were pragmatic like that. My father had taught me that too.
We followed the street. Ruin and decay reigned in the City of Islands. Water lines stained what remained of the buildings’ walls. At high tide, this whole place was flooded. Even now, at low tide, puddles of water lay on the streets.
In the distance, something let out an ominous creak. Probably one of the buildings. The city was one hearty sneeze shy of absolute destruction.
“This whole place, everything about it, feels like a ghost town, haunted by the spirits of the past,” I commented.
“That’s a very bizarre notion for an angel to have,” said Colonel Spellstorm.
“I’m an angel with a highly-developed imagination.”
“Well, you’re not wrong. This city does possess an ominous aura. But that is more likely the stench of demonic schemes than it is the postmortem wanderings of vengeful spirits.” Colonel Spellstorm glanced at Damiel. “It has the feel of Chicago, twenty years ago.”
Damiel nodded. “Indeed.”
“What happened in Chicago twenty years ago?” I asked.
“A multitude of simultaneous natural and supernatural disasters,” replied Colonel Spellstorm. “These disasters kept the Legion occupied for days. Almost every Legion soldier stationed in Chicago was out in the city, busy fighting one disaster or another. The situation was completely out of control, so the First Angel sent in Dragonsire and me to assist.”
“We soon learned the Dark Force was behind it,” Damiel added. “They’d created these disasters to draw as many Legion soldiers out of our Chicago office as they could. Very few remained behind to man the building.”
“That’s when the Dark Force stormed the office?” I guessed.
“Yes. Led by two dark angels,” Colonel Spellstorm confirmed.
“They killed most of the remaining soldiers that were in the office,” said Damiel. “A few they left alive, those they deemed worthy of interrogation. The Legion hadn’t yet developed small Magitech generators that could envelop a prison cell. So the Dark Force nailed their prisoners to the walls.”
“The Dark Force had the office securely locked down,” said Colonel Spellstorm. “They weren’t leaving, and we couldn’t get in.”
“What did they want?” I asked.
“They were trying to find something in the office,” Damiel told me.
“Dragonsire and I used a little-known back way into the Legion’s Chicago office. We made our way through the dark halls. We managed to capture one of the dark angels, one of the traitors to the Legion, but the other evaded us. He escaped into the library archives.”
“It was Leon Ironfist,” Damiel told me. “Or Leon Hellfire, as he’s been known since his defection.”
“We did battle with Hellfire, but he was armed with several immortal weapons and he’d set many magic snares. Dragonsire stopped me before I fell into one. He saved my life.”
“And you took enemy fire for me, shielding me with your body,” Damiel countered.
When they spoke, they looked at each other with mutual respect in their eyes. After all their bickering, that surprised me.
“Hellfire escaped, we retook the Legion office, and so our mission ended,” said Colonel Spellstorm. “After the battle with the dark angel, the library was a mess. At the time, we didn’t know which book he’d taken, but we soon found out.”
“And that is how the demons learned how to give dark magic to humans,” Damiel said. “They modified the secret, special formula, using Venom rather than Nectar to level up humans’ magic, one power at a time.”
My mind worked through their story. “Up until that point, every member of the Dark Force, those two dark angels included, had been turned, not made. They’d all once been Legion soldiers, and the demons had inverted their magic, turning it from light to dark. They’d developed the technique long ago, but they hadn’t yet figured out how to give magic to humans. That’s why they needed to steal the knowledge from the Legion. They modified the gods’ methods to work for their dark magic.”
“And it was so that they grew their Dark Force.” Colonel Spellstorm’s eyes fell on the daggers that Damiel and I carried. “And yet neither gods nor demons are as powerful as the Immortals from so long ago—nor as the weapons they left behind.”
Several small boulders, each one as large as a wolf, rolled down the street toward us.
“Remainder parts from one of the monsters you blew up,” I said to Damiel as I drew my sword.
He shot the rolling boulder monsters a scathing look. “These sea monsters are more persistent than other beasts.”
“We should return them to the sea before that monster puts more of itself back together,” said Colonel Spellstorm.
The three of us went to meet the boulder beasts. The battle didn’t last long. The monsters had attacked us too soon, before they’d had a chance to reassemble properly. Their bodies might have appeared to be solid rock, but our weapons cut right through them like they were made of soft, wet sand.
“And here we are,” said Colonel Spellstorm.
We stood before a cathedral. Like the sea monster, it had once been grand too, but years at the mercy of the wild lands had taken its toll.
Shattered glass domes sat upon thick towers. Faded paintings decayed within cracked arches. Seaweed dripped from the cathedral’s tall spires. Some of those spires were cracked, or even completely broken off. One spire looked like a big mouth had taken a very substantial bite out of it. Apparently, the monsters were equal-opportunity consumers. They didn’t only eat the land; they also consumed manmade structures.
The large concrete bricks that made up the wide, open path to the cathedral had turned green due to being regularly submerged in water. Sea weeds grew between the bricks. Small pools of water collected in recessed potholes, home to little microcosms of sea life—tide pools waiting for the sea to rush back in and consume the city once more.
We passed under one of the faded, cracked archways to enter the building. Inside, the ceiling extended many levels up. Along either side of the cavernous chamber, balcony alcoves were set into the walls.
These walls were painted too. And faded. I could just make out the rough outline of a figure with wings. An angel.
Most of the windows were broken, and some of the columns that held up the ceiling had holes in them. It was questionable how long thi
s cathedral would remain standing. It was no more than a shadow of its former glory, a work of art fallen from grace, a victim of a civilized world turned savage.
Being here, I felt like I was standing in a tomb. It was so quiet that every breath we took roared like an avalanche.
Light danced across the pictures, like a flame casting shadows on a wall. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. All the walls were blinking, like we were in the middle of a shadow play.
I pointed up to one of the balconies.
Damiel responded with a silent hand gesture, signaling that he and I would fly up there, each entering the balcony from an open archway on a different side to surround the enemy.
We flew up and landed on the balcony.
No one was there. All we found was a single torch, enchanted with magic to put out more light than a normal, mundane torch ever could. A glyph flared up on the floor, and streams of magic shot across all sides of the balcony, trapping us inside the stone box.
I glanced at the glowing barrier. “Magitech. This ward is powered by Magitech.”
“Which means it can withstand anything either of you could throw at it,” Colonel Spellstorm said.
He was hovering before the encased balcony, his wings beating steadily, victory burning in his eyes. He was the traitor after all—and he now had us completely trapped.
9
The Earth’s Savior
Colonel Spellstorm hovered in place, his bright red wings treading air.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Why are you doing it?”
“It is necessary,” Colonel Spellstorm said without remorse—or any feeling at all, for that matter. “I require the magic released by your deaths to break the gods’ curse. The deaths of two immortal angels will equal a lot of magic. It would have taken me ages to collect that much magic, but then the two of you walked right into my hands, making this all too easy.”
