Chapter 136: Exponential

They sped out over the desert, Jason flying alongside and easily keeping pace with his ongoing Flight. Jelly and the Castrum had remained behind to guard the castle in case of a rear attack; if so, Jelly would fly close enough to communicate telepathically with James who’d teleport everyone back.

Out they flew, forming a V with James at the tip of the spear. He hunched over the gleaming handlebars, shoulders tense, jaw set, staring through the whipping winds at the dusty horizon.

Serenity was to his left, riding her Wing like a surfboard, autocannons strapped, hair snapping in the wind like a flag in a storm.

Jason flew to his right, Superman style, resolute and silent.

James could sense the rest of their crew arrayed behind him. Everyone keeping tight formation, keeping pace, no jokes, nothing but deadly intent.

A dark line appeared on the horizon. Pencil thin. It swarmed as if with eddies of heat. Maybe eight miles away? It was nearly impossible to gauge distance out here on the endless sands.

They were several hundred feet up. James drew his pistol and activated Eye of the Needle.

His vision magnified as if he were staring down a sniper’s scope, even exceeding the power of Deadeye.

The line on the horizon leaped into focus.

It was a wall. A standing army. An endless line of demons standing shoulder to shoulder, still and quiescent. The first thirty ranks were identical and were composed of massively shouldered ogre-like brutes wearing piecemeal black iron armor. Their skin was pale ocher, their lantern jaws heavy, and each held a cruel weapon in their fist alongside a tower shield.

Beyond them? Another fifty or sixty ranks of a different kind of demon. These were gaunt and towered over even the ogres, but were wrapped in gauze as if cocooned while over their spindly bodies crawled thousands of spiders.

More stretched beyond. Ranks after ranks. Each spreading as far as he could see to the left and right.

They didn’t react to Crimson Hydra’s approach, and James stopped just a mile before their front ranks, easing up on the throttle and sitting back.

“Close enough, I think.” He checked in with the others. They looked sobered by the numbers arrayed before them. It wasn’t even the depths of the ranks, but the knowledge that the demons completely circumscribed the castle in such manner.

“Jesus wept,” said Serenity. “Even Eternal Fire’s not got enough bullets for that many suckers.”

“Which is why we’re gonna let the angels do the heavy lifting. Go ahead, everyone. Drop your Angelic Hosts on the ground below.”

James summoned his menu, focused on the angel section, and hit the Angelic Hosts options all seven remaining times.

Below them scores of golden portals formed, splitting the air and allowing elegant angels to emerge, their movements languid, assured, their smiles smug - right up until they saw the demonic host.

James willed his Wing to lower. “Afternoon, lads.”

The Angelic Hosts, some seventy of them, stared in horror at the millions of stoic demons. They all sought to respond as one, their voices forming a clamor, but then deferred by some unspoken instinct to one of their number who stood forth.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?”

James wished he had some gum to chew while talking to them. “You’ve been summoned to fight a few demons. What’s it look like?”

The Host glared at James in horrified fury, manage to tear his gaze away to glance at the demons, then stepped back again. “This is not agreed upon encounter. These are staging grounds. You can’t ask us to -”

“Listen, buddy.” James crossed his arms and leaned forward. “The contract we have with you is one summons per angel, and that you only completely one encounter before disappearing back to your lounge in the sky. Well. There’s your fucking encounter. Now get to it.”

“That is not an encounter, an encounter is any set conflict on either your home planet or level of the Pit in accordance with the natural process involved -”

“None of this is natural,” said James softly. “But this is the shitty hand we humans were dealt, and you know what? This is the hand you guys just got dealt. So either you break your contract with us, Lords of the Increate that we are, and refuse to fight demons when summoned, or you shut your traps and get to fucking work.”

“Such… such insolence,” hissed the angel. His fellows glowered up at James, their wounded hauteur momentarily erasing their fear of the demons, but then they turned to study their foes and shrank back once more.

“Well?” James checked his wrist. “Tick tock, motherfuckers.”

The lead Host extended his hand and a burning broadsword manifested in his fist. A shield appeared in the other. “It is because of our holy natures and divine adherence to the greater good that we shall see this perversion through. We take no responsibility for the repercussions for attacking a staging area, and will make no effort to shield you from the fallout should there be any. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” said James.

The seventy or so Host Angels turned to regard the millions of demons. The millions of demons seemed to stare right back at them, implacable, still as statues, diminishing into the distance in both directions.

“No need for tactics, gentlewings,” said the leader. “We face nothing but hours of slaughter here. Fight for glory, fight for the cosmos, fight for the joy of the Seraphim. Advance.”

James willed his Wing to rise back to where the others waited.

“You were a bit harsh with them, weren’t you?” asked Denzel. “I mean, we are sending them to die over and over again.”

“Fuck those guys,” said James.

“All right, yeah, classic James Kelly leadership style,” said Denzel. “Now I remember how Blue Light came together so quickly.”

The angels marched forward, their line thin and insubstantial compared to the ocean of demons that awaited them. Their blades burned brightly, looking like sparks so far below.

Still the demons didn’t react. Were they even awake? Aware? Or did they stand in some kind of stasis? Or were they so indifferent of so small a force they couldn’t be bothered to respond?

Fascinated, James watched.

The angels marched on. They were halfway there where the demons finally reacted. The ogres on the front ranks shifted, blinked their huge black eyes, rippled their fingers on their black steel weapons, and then snorted and focused on the approaching hosts.

“Fuck it,” James heard the lead Host angel say. “Charge!”

The seventy Hosts broke into a sprint, their burning blades slashing back and forth as they ran, and their war cries were thin and reedy from this distance.

The ogres eased into combat crouches, rolled their shoulders, grinned, waited.

At the last second they broke into a counter-charge and burst forth to meet the angels, their huge legs carrying them forth with shocking speed. The two lines crashed into each other, and though a good third of the ogres were hewn down, almost all the Hosts were mangled and hacked apart by those who survived.

“That was fast,” said Serenity.

The ogres laughed, stomped on the remains, then turned to amble back to their starting positions, leaving the dead behind.

New golden portals formed in the air.

A hundred and forty new Host Angels stepped forth. These knew what they were getting into and arrived with weapons and shields in hand.

The ogres stopped, looked over their shoulders. Their laughter died away. They rumbled in anger and charged again.

This time the fight was evenly matched. The Host Angels went toe to toe with the ogres, dancing and leaping aside, aiding each other in battle with consummate skill. They were adept in single combat, James saw, but their real strength shone through when they engaged in team tactics.

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They cut down the remaining fifty ogres, suffering half their number in renewed casualties, and the survivors simply stood there, panting, waiting, as another hundred and forty Host Angels arrived to bolster their numbers.

These two hundred plus angels raised their blades, roared, and charged at the ogres again.

The second rank stepped forward, filling the missing seventy or eighty spots, and more of the demons seemed to awaken up and down the line. Hundreds of them bellowed like bulls and moved forward to engage the angels, their wings moving up and around to flank the angelic force, closing around them like a fist.

The battle was bloody, brutal, and ended quickly. The angels were quenched like a snuffed candle.

But over four hundred of them stepped through golden portals some thirty seconds later.

“Shit,” said Yadriel rubbing his hands. “This is better than The Bachelor.”

James watched, fascinated, as this new host formed into a spear phalanx, four deep, hundred across at the front, and jogged forward in good order to engage the ogres once more. The demons’ frustration was starting to show; the ogres bellowed again and raced forward, but now a horrific number were impaled on the thirty-foot long spears. As the polearms shattered and were used, the angels cast them aside and manifested new swords.

More demons awoke. A good thousand ogres moved forward now, leaving the awaiting ranks, to once again wrap around the angelic force on the flanks. The slaughter took a good five minutes this time, the fighting furious, but once again the angels lay dead.

A thousand gold portals opened up.

“You’re right,” breathed Serenity. “This is better than The Bachelor.”

The new angelic army was composed of three phalanxes at the front, two long units of skirmishers to protect the flanks, and several hundred archers at the rear. One of their number had stepped through with a golden horn, and this he blew with such sweet fervor that the very air seemed to quaver, the note crystalline and beautiful.

Four whole rows of the ogres awoke, each some five hundred wide but for the missing core of the recently dead in the center. The demons roared their fury, raised their black weapons on high in defiance, and lumbered forward into a charge.

The battle took over ten minutes. James watched, horrified, mesmerized, unable to tear his eyes away from the combat. He saw moments of epic heroism, he saw futile acts of bravery, attempts at maneuvering, the deadly efficacy of the archer’s longbows, the selfless ways the angels fought as one against the massive enemies.

There was no doubting the outcome, however. Ten minutes later all were dead, crushed, torn apart, and the desert sand was a crimson slurry shot through with coilings of liquid gold.

Two thousand portals opened.

This time the first rank of the horrifically cocooned demons awoke. Even as the ogres in the vicinity readied themselves for combat once more the second tier stirred to life. Fifteen feet tall and hidden within their cocoons they slashed their way free with a flurry of bladed limbs.

They looked like centaurs, if instead of human torsos you had giant killer centipedes and instead of a horse body you had that of a tarantula. Their fronts undulated with blades like beds of kelp underwater, and they scurried forward with terrible speed.

The two thousand angels rushed to fall into position, to form up their blocks and regiments. Horns blew, archers drew, and then the battle was met.

This one was shockingly swift.

The centipede tarantula centaurs wiped out the angels. Their bladed fronts shredded everything they came in contact with, be it blade, spear, or flesh. Those who were killed exploded and released thousands of palm-sized spiders whose bites caused instant rot to consume their victims.

Three minutes later the angels were dead.

Nausea roiled James’s gut. Their deaths had been horrific.

Four thousand golden portals opened up.

“I… I’m not sure I want to see that again,” said Miriam.

“This isn’t going to stop,” said Jason. “We might as well return to the castle till James is ready to call our assault. Want me to escort you back?”

They both looked to James. “Yeah. Sure. I can teleport back to collect you when the time comes. And it’s better not to leave the diamond unguarded for too long.”

“I will head back as well,” said Kerim. “Denzel?”

“Same. Thanks.”

“I’ll stay,” said Yadriel. “Shit’s just getting good!”

“Same,” said Olaf. “I feel like I am watching battle of Ragnarök. Twilight of the gods. Would not miss this for the world.”

“I’ll head back, too.” Jessica’s Omni bobbed. “Might as well continue figuring out how the castle works, all things considered.”

“Sounds good, y’all. Stay safe. I’ll let you know when it’s time to fight.”

The five of them sped back toward the castle.

James looked back at the massive battle that was taking place below. The angels had returned with a different balance of weaponry; half their force now consisted of archers with the rest forming a shield wall before them. The yard-long arrows fell like burning rain upon the centipede centaurs, and though it took scores of arrows to drop one, thousands were falling ever second.

The carnage was brutal.

More ogres from the wings and deeper ranks of centipede centaurs piled into the battle. They were fighting atop bodies now, the number of the dead underfoot numbering in the thousands upon thousands.

The angels fought valiantly, but when the enemy came at their flanks they were destroyed once more.

Eight thousand golden portals opened.

“Any of you fools bring popcorn?” asked Yadriel. “And you sure we can’t help ‘em out a bit?”

“No popcorn,” said Olaf gravely.

“And no helping them.” James’s voice was sharp. “For all we know that could trigger the whole lot of them to wake up at once. Let the Host angels do what they do best.”

“What?” asked Yadriel with a grin. “Die?”

The eight thousand moved with precision and purpose, as if they’d trained for this fight for all eternity. Deep phalanxes formed in a large U, the air before them bristling with layer upon layer of thirty-foot long spears. In the center a thousand archers immediately got to work.

More of the demon army awoke.

Several thousand of the enemy were dead now, and their battle front looked like a huge bite had been taken out of it.

But several thousand were a drop in the bucket compared to what yet stared stoically ahead.

“Fuck me,” whispered James as he watched a thousand centipede centaurs race forward on their eight hairy legs. “And this is only getting started.”

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