Chapter 112: Party Time

James emerged from the demon symbol’s heart and stood, poised, upon the iron lip. Five hundred feet up he had an unparalleled view of the Yukon wilderness. Belanger’s homestead was a matchbox below, while endless conifer forest extended in every direction, dense and dark and snow laden.

The sky around the symbol was no longer fractured. Before the Light Eternal had ruptured the very physics of the place and formed a fractal staircase, but that was now gone.

Cold wind tore at James. Jelly hovered above his shoulder.

Five hundred feet up. Far below, Crimson Hydra stared up at him. Denzel pointed.

“All right Jelly. See you at the bottom.”

James stepped forward and dropped.

He plummeted. The wind shrieked around him. His gut plastered itself up against his diaphragm. James kept his gaze locked on the ground, heard shouts of alarm, heard Kimmie scream.

Down he fell, faster and faster and then he hit the ground at terminal velocity.

The frozen turf cratered beneath him. James bent his knees slightly to take the impact, then looked up at the others.

Falling hadn’t hurt in the least.

“What…?” Serenity’s eyes were wide. “How did you…?”

“Odin wept,” said Olaf, his voice a whisper. “What happen inside symbol?”

“Hey guys.” Despite himself James couldn’t resist. “I come bearing gifts.”

James stepped up out of the crater. The others began to cluster close, but James felt a dissonance manifest and half turned to look up at where the Monitor had appeared mid-air once more.

She no longer wore Jessica’s form. At long last Meladrix appeared in what might have been her true form. Twelve feet tall, she was spindly and emaciated, sexless and with the visage of a desiccated mummy. No nose, lips shriveled back from her teeth, ears little more than nubs, but with a full head of black hair that hung in a great cloud to her waist, shifting and stirring of its own accord. Her skin was withered, its hue somewhere between olive green and gray, but her eyes, they burned with all the vitality that had been stolen from her form.

“Heya Meladrix.” James turned to face her, the Reservoir Cubes nestled in both hands. “How’s tricks?”

“There was always a chance that this would come to pass, but it was vanishingly small. My kind never considered it a true possibility. But well done, James Kelly. Well done. You have exceeded all expectations. A pity.”

“A pity? For whom?”

“For your kind. You have earned those Cubes, and so may benefit from their power. Even if I wished to I cannot intervene directly. While I could summon greater forces, there is no point. The Light Eternal was always humanity’s trump card. You have played it well, and now we shall respond.”

James didn’t like the edge of amusement in her voice. “Respond how?”

“Observe.”

In his vision text appeared.

Nemesis 4 Released

Nemesis 5 Released

Nemesis 6 Released

Nemesis 7 Released

Nemesis 8 Released

The words hit James like an uppercut to the gut. He heard gasps and grunts of shock from those around him.

“What kind of fucking response is that?” he barked. “We just fought the Nem3’s yesterday!”

“You want unlimited power? Very well. It is granted, but in response we have accelerated our schedule. You had 61 days until the opening of the Pits. Now?”

New text appeared in James’s vision:

The Nemesis Gauntlet Has Ended

Global Pit Opening Initiated

24 Hours Remain till Complete

James staggered back as a huge tremor shook the ground. A basso profundo CRACK sounded as if massive boulders far beneath their feet had suddenly ruptured.

Serenity raised both Sigs and fired a dozen quick shots at the Monitor, who ignored the attack completely.

“So you see, James Kelly, you cannot act with impunity. If you wish to disrupt the order of things, disrupted they shall be.” Meladrix leaned forward, her ruined lips pulling into a sneer. “Consider this a personal ‘fuck you’, James. You should have played ball.”

“That so.” James flexed his hands then closed them into fists. “Turnabout’s fair play.”

So saying, he raised his palm and fired a massive beam of Diamond Aura at Meladrix.

Even as he employed Aura Mastery for the first time, however, an intuitive understanding flooded through him.

Using Benedictions as a Lord of the Increate was categorically different from when he’d been a mere Acolyte. Before each Benediction had cost a specific amount of Divine Power. Now he had mastery over the process, and could empower each usage to his heart’s desire. A Heavenly Assault could be fueled with a tiny fraction of his pool or all of it.

In that second James decided to empower his strike with half his pool, an ocean of power created by his 800 Arete.

Aura Mastery activated. The three-yard-wide beam burst forth. It hit Meladrix before she could react, though with his preternaturally heightened Mental Dominion he sensed her attempt to activate a power and disappear.

The Monitor shrieked, the sound pure hatred incarnate, and then fell silent.

James cut off the beam.

Ashes filtered down to the ground only to be caught up by a breeze and swept away across the forest.

“Fuck me,” whispered Jason. “Did you just…”

A new figure appeared before James, slender and tall, beautiful and focused utterly on him. In his peripheral vision James saw the other members of Crimson Hydra startle as if visited by their own new arrival, though James could only intuit spiritual manifestations before them without seeing the details.

Your Nemesis 4 Has Manifested

The demon was mostly human in appearance, but with lizard-like eyes and twin horns poking out through her black hair. She radiated confidence and locked her gaze on James, tapping a pen against a clipboard.

“Hello James Kelly. All humans who rank in the top 10% of current power levels will be made the same offer, acceptance of which will in no way be detectable by anyone else -”

James blasted her with a stream of Diamond Aura as thick as his arm. Punched it right through her head, vaporizing her skull and knocking her clear off her feet.

Crimson Hydra was reacting in different ways: Serenity raised her Sigs and had opened fire on the invisible spiritual resonance before her, while Yadriel was shifting up into his Nem3 form. The others were listening, eyes wide, expressions ranging from disbelief to shock to fascinated horror.

“Enough of this,” muttered James, and poured a sixth of his divine pool into Nova. Diamond aura expanded out from him in a growing hemisphere, rapidly encompassing his team, then the log cabin, then expanding all the way out to flood over the snowmobiles and then the trees that encircled the clearing.

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James sensed more than felt the other eight Nem4’s wink out of existence.

“Oh dude,” said Jason, eyes wide as he stared up and around at the sheer scale of the Nova which was collapsing into a million diamond motes around them. “How did you…?”

“That was very, very bad,” said Kerim, voice shaking. “They’re targeting our most powerful fighters across the world. If even a few accept their terms -”

As a member of the global top 1% power rankers,

You have been targeted by a Nemesis 5.

The hunt begins now.

“You guys see that one?” asked James.

“Yeah,” said Denzel, voice shaking. “Nice that I’m ranked so high, but what the fuck does it mean?”

“Assassination demons?” Serenity turned in a slow circle. “Nothing’s leaping out at us.”

Olaf rubbed the base of his palm into one eye. “If they are good assassins, they will wait for right time. Not attack like idiot.”

Movement exploded all around them. Nine demonic figures appeared out of nowhere. Each was eight feet tall and looked like an H.R. Giger creation in virulent crimson. Their skulls were elongated and flanked by spiraling black horns, their faces were bestial and striking, with impossibly harsh cheekbones, aquiline noses, raised brows, and burning yellow eyes like miniature suns. Muscle-bound like Mr. Universe contestants, they sprang forward on goat legs, raking out with black talons whose edges burned with black fire.

“Fuck!” shouted James and went Nova again. His divine pool had quickly regenerated; in less than a minute he’d used over half, but with its Ruby Rank regeneration speed it was already two-thirds full once more.

Diamond light flared out as he poured a third of his power into the attack, and immediately the crimson demons were engulfed and destroyed.

“Gah!” yelled Miriam, falling onto her ass. Kerim had leaped back, arms raised to defend himself, and Olaf had summoned a Circle of Protection. They all froze as the demons disintegrated.

“Jesus, dude!” Denzel stared at James. “What happened to you in that symbol?”

Already James’s power was regenerating. He turned slowly, not only watching for the next Nemeses, but trying to use his spiritual sense, the Spiritual Exaltation that allowed him to feel the texture of the world around him.

Another nine figures appeared in a circle around them. These hovered off the ground, their lower halves clothed in tattered crimson robes with gray metallic plates running down over their thighs. Their torsos were exquisitely muscled, not obscenely so like the last wave, but more in line with the Ancient Greek visions of male physical perfection. Paldrons of living black flame cloaked their shoulders, and great curved horns burst forth from their temples, huge and weighty. Their faces were monstrous, their eyes burning in specks of crimson, their hair falling down their back in living flame.

But it was their fists that caught James’s attention. One burned with black fire, the other with purple.

The second the nine of them appeared, they all stared at James in utter horror.

“Circle of Damnation!” one cried, and they flew toward each other, crossing their arms before their chests. Their reaction speed was incredible; James had barely registered their arrival before they were collecting together and a great circle of purple flames appeared around them, an unholy version of Olaf’s own Circle. Blasphemous symbols burned around the diameter as the circle rose to form a hemisphere of raging purple fire.

James raised his hand and clenched it into a fist, summoning a Heavenly Assault into which he poured half his power.

The heavens exploded with a cacophonous BOOMas a lightning bolt as broad as the homestead dropped upon the Circle of Damnation. Great streaks of Gloria ran through it, each as massive as his previous Heavenly Assaults.

The blast hit the demonic protective bubble and crushed it, extinguishing it completely and consuming the demons within utterly.

The world returned to normal, the flare of silver and gold light fading, and everybody gaped at the seared circle where the demons had stood.

“Those must have been the Nemesis 7’s,” said James, voice shaky as he tried to come to terms with his own power. “One round left to go.”

His divine pool was already refilling at a tremendous rate.

“I, uh…” Yadriel was staring at James.

Nine more figures appeared around them, but at a remove; they manifested just within the tree line, huge leathery wings beating slowly as they hovered in place.

And these looked like classic demons in truth. Nine feet tall and with wingspans easily a dozen yards across, they had burgundy colored skin stretched taut over their muscled frames, but with black volcanic rock like obsidian erupting from their shoulders in great spikes that matched the huge horn-like growths that burst from their chins and up along their jaws to crown their heads. Their fists were encased in this black rock, spikes of which swept up their forearms to emerge from their elbows in huge spikes, while their feet were eagle-talons of obsidian that rose in more spikes to encase their knees.

But it was their faces that set them apart from all that had come before; in their horrific, pinched visages burned a terrible intelligence, a ferocious hatred, an all-consuming rage that was tightly reined in by wicked awareness.

The last Nemeses that humanity would have faced two months hence.

Nemesis 8.

James activated Seraphic Web. Thick tendrils of Diamon Aura burst forth, filling the clearing with hundreds of glittering strands as thick as his thigh.

The Nemeses flickered out of existence. For a second James thought he had killed them, but then his new senses urged him to look up just in time to see the nine demons merge into one.

James dropped his Reservoir Cubes to the ground between his feet and summoned his Angelus Armor and Aureate Buckler. Both blazed to life around him, clothing him in glory even as the shield flew to interpose itself between James and the demon, which had swelled in size to some fifteen feet in height.

It didn’t waste any time. Infernum flowed forth from its core, and its crimson body was encased in black plate armor in whose surface crimson symbols were emblazed. A sphere of black energy appeared around it even as it stretched a hand toward James, about to unleash a third power.

James unleashed a stream of Diamond mana at it, a beam broad enough to encompass the entirety of the black sphere.

The Nem8 flicker flashed to the left, seeking to avoid the blast, but with Agility 274 it was child’s play to track its movement. The Diamond beam hit the sphere and utterly shattered it.

The Nem8 disappeared.

James raised his other hand, sensing with his Spiritual Exaltation that it had appeared thirty yards behind him and loosed a second beam.

The Diamond aura hit the Nem8 square in the chest and punched through its armor to emerge behind it. James twitched his hand and the beam cut the demon in half, shearing it across the chest.

The Nem8 roared in fury as it fell into two pieces and died.

The pieces fell to the grass and quickly began to melt.

James pursed his lips and studied their environment with Spiritual Exaltation. No more demons, but…

“Fuck,” said James, staring at the ground. Which, as if on cue, rumbled and dropped a yard as huge cracks fissured the grass and frozen dirt.

“What’s happening?” asked Kimmie, eyes wide as she clutched Olaf’s arm.

“A Pit.” James glared. The diameter would be enormous. The Infernum roiling deep below them was ponderous and felt unstoppable. “Big enough to consume the house, this clearing, everything.”

“Not a coincidence, surely, that we’re under a symbol,” said Kerim, voice faint.

“Not a coincidence.” James grimaced. “That means thirty-four Pits are going to open in New York City alone.”

Serenity’s eyes were wide. “What’s going to come out of them?”

James dismissed his Angelus Armor and Buckler. “Fuck if I know. But we’ll find out in twenty-three hours. But first.” He crouched, picked up the Cubes, and extended them to his friends. “You guys need to level up a little.”

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