Chapter 133: Divine Heart

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Denzel, closing his eyes as he raised his hand. “Hold up. They were doing what?”

James sat heavily on the bar stool and pointed at a whiskey bottle. Yadriel fetched it with neat alacrity and set to pouring him a glass. “They were having drinks, far as I could tell. Like some kind of lounge. Different kind of angels. One in the back looked more like a sun than anything else. There was this view. One of the walls was glass, or not there. Looked out over something like… I don’t even know. Paradise? If your idea of paradise is all waterfalls and floating rocks and jungle.”

“They’re having drinks?” Denzel dropped his hand. “Like, what, in a fancy VIP lounge while waiting for us to call on them?”

“He called you a ‘brazen little bitch’?” asked Serenity. “The angel did?”

“This is not sounding like angels I have heard about,” said Olaf heavily.

James nodded his thanks to Yadriel and took up his drink. Leaned back against the bar and considered his companions. “He was definitely pissed. Said we’d both be destroyed if the other angels found out.”

Everyone just stared at him.

Kerim coughed. “Far be it for me to guess at the appropriate behavior of angels, but it would seem… reasonable? That they would wait in comfort while awaiting their summons. How else should they behave?”

“I don’t know,” said Denzel, his outrage obvious. “Maybe fighting demons in some kind of angel-war thing? Being less at peace with what’s happening here? Something?”

“Perhaps they are as compelled as the demons,” said Kerim.

“He said something along those lines. But couldn’t reveal more.” James sipped the whisky. Was it real whisky? His body sure seemed to think so. “Maybe there’s a god responsible for all this, and the angels and demons are all pawns on his board.”

“Nah man.” Yadriel set the bottle down. “We’re the pawns. The demons and angels are the bishops and knights.”

“That still means there could be a king orchestrating all this,” said Denzel.

“Or queen,” said Serenity.

“Or queen,” said Denzel with an apologetic nod.

Nobody said anything for a spell.

“Well fuck.” Denzel rubbed at his hair furiously. “I don’t like any of this, but that’s nothing new. So what’s up with this castle?”

“Nine layers in one, yet all distinct,” said Kerim softly. “I suppose there’s one way to find out.”

Nobody looked enthused.

James knocked the whiskey back. “Whatever we face, it’s probably gonna be the next order of magnitude in difficulty. I don’t know how these layers were meant to be, challenge-wise, but I think it’s safe to say we’re catching up with whatever challenged a Lord of the Increate. Right?”

“Maybe.” Kerim pursed his lips. “From what you’ve described the Sinister Blockade wasn’t that difficult. Perhaps we are still far ahead of the grade.”

“One way to find out.” Serenity knocked her drink back and tossed her glass over her shoulder. “Ready, bitches?”

“Who you calling a bitch?” asked Yadriel.

“You, snookum’s,” said Serenity sweetly and turned to the exit. “Let’s go figure out this castle already.”

They filed back into the tower chamber and gazed at the portal that hovered in its center.

“How are we going to get Jessica and the Castrum through it?” asked Serenity.

James approached the swirling portal slowly and extended his hand to its golden fire. As he did so the walls of the chamber faded away, revealing the bleak exterior world. When his hand was an inch from the flames it seemed as if they all hovered in midair.

“Thank god,” Jessica said, her Somnia moving up close to tower over them. “I was beginning to think I had to hack my way in after you with my Divisor.”

“It’s been a fucked up time,” said Serenity. “You sure missed out. James went and partied with the angels.”

James quickly recounted his experience as the Wings flew themselves up to where they stood. Jessica listened attentively, the mech absolutely still.

“Sounds like some kind of backstage area. If we could use it without fear of the other angels, it’d be a hell of a shortcut.”

“Sure would,” said James. “But I’m not sure how kindly a Dominion or Throne would take our using it.”

“True. Good to keep in mind.”

“We all ready?” James looked at this companions. “Circles up, Armor, Shields, the usual.”

Everybody powered up and got on their Wings. Jelly re-inserted himself into the helm. Soon they were surrounded by the eight revolving bands of gold, clothed in glowing full-plate armor, and lit up by their own Empowering Light.

“If shit gets difficult, don’t hesitate to summon an Archangel,” James said. “If things get real bad, I’ll teleport us out. Count of three. One. Two. Three!”

James urged his Wing forward. He sensed his companions gliding forth alongside him, and they hit the portal in a wedge formation, the Somnia reaching down to insert its Divisor blade after them.

For a moment all was aureate flame, and then James felt himself pass through into another realm and appeared in the air high above the castle.

It was a vast and sprawling building, a fairy tale of high cream walls and blue roofing tiles, turrets and towers, courtyards and colonnaded galleries. It wasn’t so much a castle as a monumental palace, a surreal dream of architecture and luxury, of ruin and destruction. Here and there huge plinths a hundred feet high rose like ribs around the estate, but between them was little more than rubble and destruction.

Ruin had passed its skeletal hand over the building. It looked abandoned, left to fall apart for a century, windows hollowed out and without glass, towers collapsed, columns shattered where they’d fallen across courtyards.

Beyond it stretched an ashen desert, rolling dunes that reached in every direction and met the gray skies.

You have entered Layer 10, Blackfall

Protect the Divine Heart for 6 Hours

To Unlock the Next Level

“Wait, what?” Jason’s confusion was frank. “I thought we had 24 hours per level.”

“Time’s grown short.” In his vision of the lower level he’d seen an endless army of demons assaulting the castle. He frowned at the horizon. Was it teeming? It looked like a heat shimmer. “We’d better find this Divine Heart.”

“Odds are its in the center of the castle,” said Serenity, turning her Wing toward the huge edifice. “Let’s check it out.”

They flew down through the acrid air. The Castrum Mortis was trudging its way to the huge yet ruined gatehouse, a pair of towers nearly as tall as it was that flanked a fallen gate. The Somnia had taken off at a graceful, long-legged lope around the perimeter, trailing its Divisor sword behind it.

They flew down into the central courtyard. It was a deceptively complex space; there were obvious sublayers accessed here by ramps that revealed at least three stories below ground level.

“Jelly, head out and search for the Divine Heart,” commanded James as he leaped off the Wing. Jelly detached himself from the craft’s front and wordlessly flew forth, sword-arms blurring as he disappeared into a second-story window.

Huge blocks of masonry lay scattered around them. The castle had once been impossibly grand, a fairytale dream of cream stone and dusty ocean-blue tiles. Now holes yawned in the walls, stained glass shards glittered across the rubble, and the wind moaned as it blew through the archways and windows.

“This is a bad castle,” said Olaf. “Impossible to defend. Windows on the outside? Terrible. No way to defend the perimeter.”

“We have to work with what we got,” said James. “Don’t let your guard down. Split off in groups of two. Serenity and Yadriel, head down these ramps and see what’s at the bottom. Jason and Miriam, Denzel and Kerim, explore the ground floor of the main keep and work your way up. Olaf, you’re with me. We’ll look at the other buildings attached to the walls.”

Everyone took off at full speed, blurring and disappearing. Olaf hefted his axe and scanned the courtyard. “This would be called the bailey. Gate house there. No barbican outside. Too bad. No stables. No well. The keep is strange. Should be one strong building, like a fist. But it wraps around three sides of the bailey, like European palace. I don’t like calling this a castle.”

“Your objection to the terminology is noted.” James frowned at the walls that flanked the gatehouse. They looked more like Parisian rowhouses, five stories tall, complete with ornate balconies and large windows that looked into the bailey. “But yeah, screw whoever designed this place. C’mon. Let’s check out the front wall.”

The Castrum loomed reassuringly before the shattered gate, still and silent as it gazed out over the desert. James loped forward, pretty sure that the Divine Heart wouldn’t be in the forward wall, but then again, it’d be just like the demons to screw them in that way.

There were a half-dozen large towers capped with conical blue roofs trimmed in gold, each several hundred feet tall. Each had a lighthouse lensroom at the top, a delicate chamber of massive glass walls, most of them cracked, and complex mass of interwoven golden circles within. James couldn’t make out what they were meant to be. Byzantine machinery, like one of those medieval planet orrerries.

Jessica climbed around one of the towers, coming into view. The heavy masonry supported her weight, and she scaled up to one of the lensrooms to peer inside.

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Olaf led the way into the tower that flanked the gatehouse on the left. All was dark and still, but enough sere light came in through the windows that they could move about without difficulty. Old, desiccated furniture. Chairs toppled over. Ancient skeletons on the ground, clothed in dusty rags.

James crouched by a skeleton. Humanoid but not human. The rib cages were too spare, the figure elongated, the skull subtly more elegant and smaller. Everything looked more birdlike, complete with what could have been wings extending from behind the scapula’s, little more than bones and ancient feathers now.

Olaf glowered at him, his displeasure over the front-facing bay windows making him even grumpier, and then together they climbed the curling staircase. There were five floors. Each with its load of dead. They finally broke out onto the rooftop. The floor was uneven, the flagstones pitching, the merlons that lined the battlements battered and broken.

“Flag was here,” said Olaf, gesturing with the pommel of his axe at a splintered pole that rose from a rusted metal socket.

James moved to the battlements and gazed out over the desert.

The horizon no longer merely teemed. An army was rushing toward them. His gut clenched and his throat tightened.

Not just an army. A whole world. The approaching force lined the horizon. They were perhaps ten miles away - it was hard to tell - but they were coming in fast. No flying units, luckily, but there had to be tens of thousands of demons coming at an all out sprint, if not millions.

“Mother of god,” said Olaf, stepping up alongside him.

“I thought you preferred Thor.”

“Mother Mary is sacred in my heart,” said Olaf. “Thor is more drinking companion. But how are we to stop so many?”

“Not by hiding behind these walls,” said James grimly. “They’ll flow right through the windows and the huge gaps. It’ll be like trying to stop army ants. We’ll need to form a holdout around the Divine Heart and keep them at bay there. Let’s keep looking.”

James leaped across the gate to the far tower and landed on the matching roof. He ran swiftly down the identical floors and out into the courtyard. Then turned back and returned inside.

There. Under some corpses.

A trapdoor.

He heaved it open, bones rattling and falling aside, and revealed a narrow staircase of steep steps. He frowned. A magic light would be useful. But before he could go about fashioning a torch he heard a shout from the bailey.

“Found it!”

Olaf led the way outside. Denzel and Kerim had emerged onto a balcony on the main keep’s second floor. The kind of space from which a lord might address his knights gathered below.

“Found the Heart!” Denzel grinned. “It’s in a special room behind what we think was the throne room.”

The Somnia leaped down from the high tower to land lightly in the bailey. “I’ll make my way around the back in case there are windows to it that need protecting.”

“No windows, but there are other rooms behind it, yeah.”

“Castrum!” James pitched his voice to carry. “Get inside the bailey - protect the front of the keep here.”

“Target acquired,” boomed the Castrum and turned to plow through the shattered gate, its sides scraping against the guard towers, dislodging stone blocks and sending curtains of dust into the air. Massive as the Castrum was, its head only reached two thirds of the way up the huge keep and the blue tiled roofs that sloped down from the towers.

James paused at one of the ramps leading below. “Serenity! Yadriel! We found it!”

Then he ran forward and leaped up onto Denzel’s balcony. The pair led him and Olaf inside. Faded tapestries hung on the grand walls. The ceiling was twenty feet up. This place had once been grand. An angel’s palace? Or just a set piece, with no past, just an ever-bloody present as a testing ground?

Kerim and Denzel led them along echoing hallways and into a grand hall. Columns lined the sides, fronting covered walkways, with balconies above. Ancient flags and other signs of past victories in battle lined the walls, but the focus was on the throne, a great chair carved from a single block of lapis lazuli and inlaid with gold. It was resplendent, the top flaring out like a peaking geyser, but Denzel led past it to the back, where a huge iron door hung off one hinge to reveal a circular chamber beyond.

A diamond as large as a basketball hung in the air glowing a gentle blue. Ripples of light shimmered over the walls as if reflected off a pool, and the air thrummed with power.

“Damn,” said James as he drew close. “This thing is potent.” He could sense with his Spiritual Exaltation just how potent it was - it burned so brightly in his mind’s eye with Aeviternum that it could have probably powered a host of Castrums all by itself.

Olaf immediately set to walking the room’s perimeter. “This is better. Only one door. Nine sides.” He tapped the walls with his axe as he went. “Walls thick. Very good. Much better.”

“How many entrances to the hall?” James stepped back out to answer the question himself. Denzel and Kerim followed, one leaping up to the left balcony that ran the length of the room, another to the right. The double doors were the easiest point of entry at the hall’s end, but James scowled at the sight of two more doors, one on either side behind the throne.

James, the demons will be on us in ten minutes. Maybe less. They’re coming in fast.

“Shit. Olaf, check that door. I’ll look at this one.” Jelly, get Serenity and Yadriel up to the main keep pronto. We need to all be together.

James ran through the door and saw a short corridor that terminated in a circular stairwell. A couple of rooms led off the corridor. What might have once been a library, the shelves sagging, the books spilling out and layering the floor in ancient pages. The next room had a nine-sided table in its center, a large window in the back wall. An old meeting room?

James leaned out the window. Just a thirty foot drop to the desert outside. Fuck. A window leading out to the world? What kind of idiot designed this place?

He ran out, swiftly as he could, and to the stairwell. It both climbed and descended. Grimacing James stepped back. Demons could come from the steps and the window, then. Not secure at all.

He returned to the throne hall and saw Jason and Miriam entering through the double doors.

“There’s all kinds of weird shit in this place,” said Jason. “The walls have collapsed in some places revealing gears and pistons.”

“Other spots revealed, like, veins of diamond,” said Miriam, raking her hair out of her face. She looked flushed, her eyes bright, her breath coming quickly. She glanced nervously at Jason.

James waved the information away. “We’ll have to check that out once we’re done defending the diamond. He summoned the countdown.

Protect the Divine Heart for 5 Hours 37 Minutes

To Unlock the Next Level

Yadriel slowed as he ran into the room, Serenity behind him. “Dude, it’s like a zerg rush out there. 360, yo. And not just one type.”

“We got a ton coming our way,” confirmed Serenity. “Fast, smaller ones like the demons in Hollow Hill. More than I could make out.”

“This side is no good,” said Kerim, appearing at the balcony. “Three doors leading to a variety of places. Servant quarters, guest rooms, main chamber.”

Olaf appeared in the other doorway. “This also lead to many places. Kitchens, mostly. This hall must have served feasts, once. Big table down middle.”

“Olaf, dude, we all know you love this castle-shit, but we don’t need the tour, you know?” said Yadriel.

Denzel appeared on the opposite balcony. “No good -”

“Listen up, everyone.” James cut him off. “Our main advantage is that there’s one entrance to the diamond chamber. Which means we hold the door. The demons will come at us from all the entrances to this hall. We’ll stay inside the chamber, layer Shields over the entrance, layer our Circles of Protection, and then flare Nova and use Aura Mastery to keep the pressure from building up too high.”

“What about Jessica?” asked Serenity.

“She’s nimble. I’ll have her set up atop a tower and blast the enemy as they come. When they swarm up to her, she can just jump to another tower.”

Jason raised a hand. “Is it worth for a couple of us to stay outside on Wings? Strafing runs, thin out the ranks?”

“No. We don’t know if flyers won’t show up. We stand together. We don’t need to kill all the demons. We just need to keep the diamond safe.”

Jason nodded.

They’re on us, said Jelly. James, they’re going to hit us in less than a minute.

Tell Jessica to take to the towers and keep moving to stay safe. We’re going to hole up in the diamond room.

“And the Castrum?” asked Miriam quietly. “He’s out there alone.”

“Jessica’s got his back.” James pulled his golden skeggox from its sheathe. “But yeah. He’s got a hell of a lot of demons coming his way. Let’s just pray he can hold for the next five hours.”

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