Peter and the Rising Angels (War of Contractia Book 6)

by Tj Dixon

  Daylight dazzles me as my blindfold is removed. A moment later I can hear again too. It sounds like there’s fighting close by. I can hear thunder, the distinctive roar of fireballs and a hiss that may be acid. Perhaps there may be hope if the enemy are still fighting?

  My vision clears and terror fills my heart. I didn’t think anything could make me more afraid than I was just now, but this reptilian face with blue fire in place of eyes scares me even more than certain death. Surely I am about to be eaten, body and soul.

  “Yu Kii, I’ll get you out of here soon.” It says and I recognise that voice. That is without a doubt Peter’s voice, but is this really Peter? Is he using an illusion? His appearance seems so real that it’s hard to believe that this is an illusion, but with my magical senses still blocked I suppose any illusion would seem this real. Of course with my mouth effectively gagged I can’t respond or ask him why he looks like that.

  Peter or whoever is pretending to be Peter moves away from me. As he does so I can see a wooden pole above me that I seem to be tied to and more importantly I see the rest of his body. What I notice most though are his arms. They look just like Peter’s arms and seem totally out of place on a lizard. Other than his arms his entire body is exactly that of a genderless lizard person covered in scales instead of skin or clothing. If this is an illusion why leave his arms like that?

  “It’s too late for this one.” A terrifying cat voice says. That is definitely the Kuroneko, even if I can’t see her.

  “They’ll pay for this.” Peter whispers. Then he turns back to me and unties the gag. He then reaches inside my mouth and pulls out a dark blue disgusting slimy slug like… thing. He takes a vial of pale blue liquid and pours it down my mouth. The pain in my mouth instantly disappears.

  He quickly snaps the ropes that are tying my feet to the pole. They are thick ropes but he does so effortlessly and then lowers me gently to the ground. He then snaps the rope tying my chest to the pole, though there is still rope wrapped around my chest. As he does so I see Misty and the Kuroneko. There are other people close by but it is these two that have my full attention. Mostly Misty though, because she is lying on the ground with her eyes closed and is such a pale white that I fear the worst. Especially after the Kuroneko’s words.

  “Is she…?” I start to ask but I can’t bring myself to finish the question.

  “Yes. She’s dead.” Kuroneko tells me calmly. It’s not like I’d expect her to care about a human, but it still hurts to hear it said without even a trace of emotion.

  “What about Juliet?” I force myself to ask.

  “Juliet? Was she with you?” Peter asks.

  “Yes. The three of us were captured.” I tell him.

  “She’s not here. How long ago were you captured?” Peter asks.

  “I don’t know. I was unconscious.” I answer.

  “It was just the three of you?” Peter asks.

  “Yes.” I nod.

  “Kuro, annihilate the enemy attacking the entrance. With the academy shield damaged and the automatic defences down the teachers need all the help they can get, but avoid killing our allies. I’m going to find Juliet.” Peter says.

  “What about that one?” The Kuroneko says looking straight at me. My knees tremble.

  “She’s mine. You’re not getting her back. Her sister too.” Peter says. I half expect the Kuroneko to kill him for being so rude!

  “Fine.” The Kuroneko agrees without a word of protest. She turns towards the academy entrance where her followers are engaging the enemy in a fierce battle, but don’t even appear to have caught the attention of the enemy’s main force.

  The Kuroneko walks casually towards the enemy as if strolling through a park. A moment later she assumes the form of a large muscular cat about ten feet long and three feet tall. She’s capable of assuming a much larger form, but this is plenty scary even without knowing she’s a god.

  Peter kneels beside Misty and places his right hand on her forehead. She disappears. I assume he ported her though I still haven’t recovered my magical senses.

  “You had better come with me for now.” Peter says. He is Peter, right? I hope so.

  “Will you look for Juliet from the sky?” I ask with a tremble in my voice.

  “No. I sense dimensional magic. She was most likely ported. So I plan to follow the port.” Peter says.

  “You can do that?” I ask.

  “Not as well as Sor could, but in my current form it is possible.” Peter says.

  “About that form…?” I start to ask but Peter interrupts me.

  “There’s no time to explain. Keep your senses open and be ready to fight.” Peter says. A moment later he ports us without needing to touch me, although it feels slightly different to a normal port.

  Chapter 5 (Peter)

  Following the dimensional magic I shift with Yu Kii. We shift into a cave deep below the surface of the world. It is pitch black in here but I can sense the whole of the cave, which is as big as the academy. I can also sense a vast tunnel network connected to it. Juliet is deep within the tunnel network and appears to be unconscious. I am relieved to find her alive.

  Porting is impossible in here and shifting would use a lot of energy due to powerful dimensional dampening magic. It is far more sophisticated and powerful than a simple port block. There aren’t many enemies here unless they are hidden even from my senses, but the enemies I do sense are truly powerful.

  “I can’t use my senses and I’m out of magic. I can’t even see my own hand right in front of my eyes.” Yu Kii whispers.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” I say and hold her right hand with my left hand. Yu Kii blushes. Was she embarrassed by my words or was it holding hands that she found embarrassing? I suppose it doesn’t matter. Right now I need to save Juliet. As I’m thinking that though, Juliet’s presence disappears. It doesn’t feel like she died or was ported or shifted. It feels more like her presence was simply hidden.

  “Can you sense Juliet?” Yu Kii asks.

  “I could but her presence was just hidden. It seems that the enemy know we’re here. It’s odd that they don’t hide their own presence too, but perhaps some of them are. We’ll need to be careful.” I say.

  “Should we come back with reinforcements?” Yu Kii asks.

  “No. We don’t have time or anyone else we can spare right now.” I say.

  There’s an enemy mage guarding the entrance but I’ll just have to kill him. We need to enter the tunnel entrance if we want to save Juliet. So I lift us up into the air and fly towards the tunnel network. I cover the distance between us in about three seconds and send a hundred strong wind slices at the enemy before he can react. He had a shield up but it wasn’t at full strength so both he and his shield are split in two cleanly down the middle. It is probably just as well that Yu Kii can’t see the sight in front of us.

  I race us down the main tunnel but am intercepted by two enemy mages before I can reach the side tunnel I need. One of them shields and his shield is at full strength so my wind slices aren’t going to be strong enough. The other mage sends barrages of fireballs, fifty at a time. They are so hot that the fire cannot be seen so they don’t provide any light. It doesn’t matter though. I simply use my senses and dodge them easily, flying at close to the speed of sound. The loud crashing and hissing sounds of their fireballs hitting the tunnel walls still reach us despite flying at close to the speed of sound though.

  “I feel weird.” Yu Kii gasps. I guess flying this fast even with my magic protecting her is a bit much for a human body. I need to end this quickly so I decide to just accept the high mana cost and shift a wind slice past their barrier. It cuts cleanly through their necks and sends their heads flying. Obviously the shield falls, because they are both dead.

  “Sorry, Yu Kii.” I apologise.

  “Is it safe to stop like this?” Yu Kii asks.

  “These two are dead, but we do need to continue.” I tell her.

  I’ll need to
have Hermes and Midori replenish my power. I’ve already used a lot of what they have given me. Of course even here the flow of their power still reaches me, but it is much stronger if we are close together. At the moment the flow of their power is barely enough to sustain my body so I am using my mana reserves to fight.

  I fly us along the main tunnel again until we reach the side tunnel we need. It is about two kilometres but I take it ‘slowly’ to save mana, covering the distance in ten seconds. I then fly us along the side tunnel and navigate the complex web of tunnels at the same speed.

  As expected we reach the final enemy between us and Juliet in just a few seconds. Her shield is up and too strong to easily penetrate. I really don’t want to waste power shifting another wind slice. The dimensional dampener just makes that too costly. So instead I send an overpowered wind slice at the roof of the tunnel.

  The crash of wind on stone hurts even my ears so I feel really sorry for Yu Kii but it brings the roof down on the enemy. With her shield entirely focused on blocking the tunnel she is unprotected from the falling rocks. A boulder crushes the enemy mage, killing her instantly and so her shield goes down. Dodging falling rock I manage to slip us past once her shield is down before the tunnel is completely blocked.

  I enter the room where I sensed Juliet after another ten seconds without encountering any more enemies. In those ten seconds I covered about three kilometres. There aren’t any enemies as far as I can tell but the room is filled with large pots.

  Of course large is a bit of an understatement. This room is even larger than the one we first entered. The pots are all different sizes but the largest are hundreds of metres tall. Each pot is made from white clay and has a white clay lid with a round nob sticking up in the centre of the lid like a handle.

  There’s a tiny pot just large enough to contain a human adult exactly where I sensed Juliet. It is by far the smallest in this room. The next smallest is the size of a small house. I fly us over to the tiny human sized pot and lift the lid with wind magic. Inside Juliet is snoring.

  I lift Juliet out of the pot with magic and lay her on the floor. There is powerful sleeping magic on her that I dare not even attempt to remove. Doing so carelessly would kill her.

  Without leaving Juliet’s side I lift the lids of the other pots one at a time, putting the lid on the ground beside the pot. Inside each pot I sense an angel sleeping. Most of them are fire angels but I also sense five lesser angels, two snow angels and one angel of love. The angel of love is less than two feet tall, but she is so dangerous that she is still in a house sized pot to allow room for a ridiculous amount of enchantments. Seeing the young fire angel Hercules here makes me think of my date with Hermes just after I thought he was killed.

  The lesser angels must serve a lesser god similar to serving me or the Kuroneko. It is the other angels that worry me the most though. To leave this many powerful angels here at the mercy of the enemy is not an option. So I silently apologise in advance to Hermes and Midori, and then use most of my remaining power to shift Yu Kii, Juliet, the angels and of course myself back to the temple grounds. The more powerful angels being hundreds of feet tall and of similar proportions to a human are of course far too big to fit inside the temple itself.

  Kuro and her followers are already back. Kuro shifts to my side and mentally orders her followers out here. She looks beside me and laughs. I look beside me and see that Yu Kii is standing there with her head literally spinning and her eyes entirely out of focus.

  “How dignified…” Kuro laughs. Yu Kii doesn’t seem able to hear us.

  “Any human would have had a hard time with what I just put her through. Yu Kii went through a lot before that too. Not fainting is impressive.” I say and then see Midori and Hermes running towards me. Their power flows to me much quicker now that they are so close.

  “So what do we do with these angels?” Kuro asks.

  “More importantly, what happened at the academy?” I ask.

  “The enemy were defeated and the teachers managed to repair the shield. The automatic defences are lost though and the shield will fall in days even if the enemy don’t attack again.” Kuro tells me. “But surely the angels are more important than some school?”

  “My friends are at that school.” I remind Kuro.

  “We can save them when the shield falls. Now, what do we do with these angels?” Kuro asks lipping her lips.

  “Create somewhere under the temple to keep them for now. We should wake them, but we’ll need to be careful. I think Rin’s mother is the best person to look into doing this.” I say.

  “That seems such a waste. They’re so defenceless that nobody could complain if we ate them.” Kuro says.

  “I think Hades and father would both have something to say about that.” I remind Kuro.

  “I doubt they have time to worry about anything down here.” Kuro laughs.

  “That’s all the more reason we need to send these angels back where they belong.” I tell her.

  “Do you have any idea how much mana we could gain by eating these angels? We could beat whatever comes through that gate easily with this much power.” Kuro complains.

  “You have no idea how powerful the enemies on the other side of that gate are, but if this much power was enough why do you think the angels still up there are having such a hard time?” I ask.

  “Because they have the wrong element.” Kuro says, which is true but not the whole truth.

  “Anyway, no eating the angels.” I tell her firmly.

  “Fine, fine.” Kuro says.

  “Kuro, we can talk later. Right now I need to talk to Rin’s mother. Hermes and Midori, help Yu Kii walk. She’s a bit unsteady at the moment.” I say.

  “Yes, Peter!” Midori says as energetic as always. Hermes just nods with a gentle smile. They both put an arm under Yu Kii’s arms and guide her forward. She still seems totally out of it, so she doesn’t greet them despite not having seen each other in so long.

  I pick up Juliet in my arms and carry her. We head towards the entrance of the temple and once inside we go down the grey corridor to the immediate left of the entrance until we reach Rin and her mother’s alchemy lab. The door and wall are both made from strong black stone rather than wood or the grey stone that the rest of the corridor is made from. This is to help protect the lab and surrounding temple in case of any accidents and to protect the lab in the event it is attacked from outside.

  “Hermes! Midori!” Yu Kii exclaims having finally woken up from her dazed trancelike state. I knock on the door. It opens instantly revealing Rin standing directly behind it. Rin is wearing white mage robes and some sort of protective transparent helmet that covers her whole head including over her eyes. She can only still breathe and talk thanks to the enchantment on it. “Rin!”

  “Yu Kii!” Rin exclaims moving towards Yu Kii and closing the door behind her. Then she notices the rest of us. “Wait, what happened to Juliet?”

  “She’s under a powerful sleep enchantment, but I can’t remove it because it’s trapped. She’ll die if I try to remove it.” I tell Rin.

  “I don’t see any traps on the enchantment.” Rin says staring intently at Juliet.

  “Could we come in?” I ask.

  “Not at the moment. Mother is in the middle of some very tricky and dangerous work. Could you wait a few minutes?” Rin asks.

  “Sure. Does your mother need your help?” I ask.

  “No, I’ve done my part. She’ll come out as soon as she’s able to.” Rin answers.

  “I’m glad you’re all ok, but what happened to Peter?” Yu Kii asks Rin.

  “He died and became an angel or a god. Well both, I suppose. I still can’t really believe it.” Rin says shaking her head.

  “Oh and Rin died too. I brought her back to life. Anyway I didn’t become an angel, I just remembered that I was one. Since my god abandoned me a long time ago though, I decided to become a god myself so I could recover and grow my power. Without enough power it’s imp
ossible to defeat Azrael and his followers.” I say.

  “If you brought Rin back to life can’t you bring Misty back to life too?” Yu Kii asks.

  “Misty is dead?” Rin asks in shock.

  “Yes she is and no I can’t.” I say sadly. “There are two problems. Firstly I don’t have enough power left. Secondly her soul is gone so even if I brought her body back to life she would just be a soulless zombie.”

  “Is there nothing that can be done, even with two gods?” Yu Kii asks desperately.

  “Sorry Yu Kii, but without her soul it truly is hopeless.” I answer.

  “Where is her soul?” Yu Kii asks.

  “Most likely resting somewhere safe. If so she will eventually reincarnate, but she won’t be Misty when she does.” I answer.

  “But if we found her soul you could bring her back as Misty, right?” Yu Kii asks.

  “I don’t have enough power though.” I remind Yu Kii.

  “So how do you get more power?” Yu Kii asks.

  “Hermes and Midori became my miko and are helping me increase my power. They’re doing a great job, but the power required for resurrection magic is on a completely different level. Also if I do recover enough power and use it on another resurrection I may throw away a chance to defeat Azrael.” I tell Yu Kii.

  “If I became your miko might you have enough power to resurrect Misty?” Yu Kii asks.

  “No and even if I did there’s no way to find her soul. You must have become good friends, but you should give up. Death isn’t something that can be conveniently reversed even by the gods. I only managed to save Rin because her soul was still there and by using the last of my power as an arch angel of fire. The longer this war drags on the more people will die. We need to focus on ending this war by defeating Azrael.” I tell her.

  “I wasn’t really good friends with Misty, but I was the leader. I was responsible for her and I failed to protect her.” Yu Kii tells me with tears in her eyes.

  “The rest of our friends are all still in danger. If failing to protect Misty hurts now, imagine how it would feel to fail to protect everyone else as well.” I warn Yu Kii.