Chapter 139: The three big D's

They emerged into the bailey.

Jelly immediately flew down, sword-arms whirling. And? We got a plan? What’s next?

You’re going to like it, Jelly,said James, but refused to elaborate.

They all mounted up. Jessica re-inserted her Omni into her Somnia, whose gaunt, elegant frame shuddered to life and raised its head.

“Listen, everyone.” It was Yadriel who spoke, seated on his Wing. “So I’m the number one guy here with the most experience doing demon shit. We gotta be purposeful about what we do out there. Demonic Form is as tight as the demon you copying. And we all know there’s one bad-ass motherlover out there who’s worth gettin’ close to.”

“By Odin’s spear,” said Olaf. “You really want -”

“Dude!” Yadriel grimaced. “Don’t nobody say ‘by Odin’s spear’. Get the fuck outta here.”

Olaf frowned. “Grugnir was the greatest weapon, and in the Icelandic sagas -”

Yadriel clucked his tongue dismissively. “I got a bigger spear than Odin, any day of the week. My point is, we gotta get close to that white kid and steal his form. All of us.”

“Shit, he’s right,” said Serenity. “I’ve never even used that Benediction. How do you, ah, imprint on a demon?”

Yadriel clucked his tongue again. “It’s easy. You just rock up to that bitch and activate the Benediction while thinking about taking his shape and powers. But it’s gotta be mano-a-mano range, you feel me? No shankin’ him from a mile away.”

“Agreed,” said James. “Good thinking, Yadriel. So here’s our plan. We’re gonna form a wedge and fly right at the demon kid. Keep high, drain infernum as we go, and then imprint on him before killing him. Don’t waste time. He’s not powerful enough to stop us, but there’s no need to get sloppy out there. Clear?”

Everyone nodded.

“I’ll provide support,” said Jessica. “I don’t have access to your Benedictions, so.”

“Sounds good.” James willed his Wing to rise. “Let’s go see how our angel buddies are doing.”

They lifted up over the castle wall and gazed out upon a spectacle.

From horizon to horizon golden portals were shimmering into existence and disgorging Host Angels. Millions were emerging at a time, a good four miles from the battlements, and feeding themselves into the back of an ocean of angels who were doing their damnedest to fight the forces opposing them.

Arrows darkened the air. Blades of fire flickered like starfields. But they’d activated the deeper ranks of the demons, forces even more powerful than the obsidian elementals, and these were wrecking their shit with impunity.

James urged his Wing to speed forward and activated Eye of the Needle as he did so. The battle leaped into close focus. He saw black-robed figures whose faces were hidden under large cowls unleashing torrents of green flame upon the angels, who died screaming and melting beneath the assaults. He saw black spheres the size of bowling balls that gleamed as if highly polished simply shooting through the angelic ranks and annihilating everything they touched as if they were made of antimatter. Hundreds of huge elementals strode through the ranks, while the remnants of the front ranks battled desperately against the millions of angels who stood like a mosh pit, crushed together by their own numbers.

“Circles, Shields, Light, Armor, Bucklers,” called out James. “Let’s gain some altitude.” He turned around. “Jessica! It’s too crazy out here for you. Stay in the castle with the Castrum!”

“Got it!” The Somnia had vaulted over the walls like a kid might a field fence, but now it backed away from the madness. “Good luck!”

James pushed for ever more height, climbing at a steep gradient, and soon wisps of cloud appeared beneath them, the details of the battle hard to make out without a Benediction. When they’d gained something like a thousand five hundred feet he leveled off.

“How do you know where the demon is?” shouted Jason, pulling up alongside.

“I don’t. He’ll find us once we go far enough.”

Jason nodded and dropped back into formation.

They flew on. War raged on below. Mile after mile of war. It was surreal. James had thought he’d seen slaughter on the streets of Earth, but what was unspooling below was… on a different scale altogether. It was so vast in scope that it felt more unreal than surreal, even, in that he couldn’t wrap his mind around what was taking place.

So he kept his gaze locked ahead, watching the shreds of cloud part and unfurl as he skimmed through them, searching, ever searching.

Till at last - there.

The demon kid was waiting. Hands linked behind his back, robes blowing in the wind, chin chucked.

Pallid and still like an apparition of death.

“Head’s up,” barked James. “Here we go!”

They closed the half mile quickly, but before they could quite get in range the child vanished.

James’s Spiritual Exaltation tracked his appearance above them and the suddenly earth-shattering amount of Infernum that the demon had wielded.

All in less than a second.

“Split!” he roared, doubting their Circles could absorb whatever strike was coming. He barrel rolled off to the left, the others around him immediately respond just as an Infernum variation on Heavenly Assault dropped into their center.

It was as wide as a house, veined in purple, its surface endlessly revolving like a drill bit as it roared past them, filling the air with the taste of battery acid and ozone.

But it didn’t disappear.

Instead it remained in place, a column of perpetual black fire.

James righted his Wing, drifting through a turn, and tracked the demon to where it had appeared a quarter mile away to their left.

Sensed another huge attack coming, dropping right on him. He willed the Wing to leap forward just as a second house-size bolt fell from the heavens.

But he’d been wrong about one key detail.

It wasn’t just one bolt that fell, but ten, maybe more. They blasted down from the sky to remain in place, forming a forest of roaring, living trees of black lightning, occasionally casting out tongues of electricity to each other.

In moments James was navigating between dozens of these monstrously huge assaults, the wind whipped into a fury between them so that his Wing suddenly felt like a rubber dingy flinging itself over white rapids.

The amount of Infernum being unleashed at a constant rate was staggering. It clouded James’s Spiritual sense, and twisting about he realized that he couldn’t even see most of his companions any longer - they’d been scattered by the bolts.

The demon child appeared alongside him, hands yet linked behind his back, eyes blazing, hair whipping about its face as it flew sideways to keep track of James’s Wing. “I told you your companions would suffer. That begins now.”

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James activated Demonic Form just before the child teleported away, snagging his imprint. But where had he gone?

Fear clutched James’s guts. He sped around a huge black bolt, Wing rising up like a bobsleigh up the side of an ice track, and saw Denzel and Kerim ahead, gazing about themselves in panic.

No sign of the demon youth.

James went faster. Came around and saw Serenity raising both autocannons as she screamed her defiance at the demon who hovered over her, one finger pointing at her face.

James’s reaction was immediate.

He drew and raised his pistol and fired an Eye of the Needle with the entirety of his divine pool dropped into the attack.

The crack of the gun was lost in the madness, but James gasped as he channeled his entire divine pool into that one shot, his vision expanding into supreme close-up focus, the bolt of white fire speeding forth faster than thought.

A black sphere appeared at the demon’s fingertip just before its head burst sideways as James’s shot took it through the skull. Three layers of concentric protective green flame had appeared around the demon, but James’s shot had pierced clear through.

The child didn’t fall.

The contents of its head, the bone, the ruined hair - all of it frozen mid-air in a foot-long cone whose apex was the bullet.

Even as James raced closer the demon reached up to place a fingertip on the bullet and pushed it back into its head. The brains and blood returned as well, as if the demon reversing time, until its finger was pressed to its healed left temple, the bullet emerging from the now undamaged right.

James’s eyes widened.

The demon grinned at James over his shoulder and unleashed the black sphere a Serenity who’d been firing her autocannons at its protective spheres all the while.

The sphere was the size of a softball. It punched clear through Serenity’s head, shearing through armor and her Protective Circle with ease.

James activated Martyr’s Cry. Pain blinded him, his head suddenly feeling like it was cloven in two, but Healing Grace washed away the pain a second later.

James blinked. The demon was gone, but Serenity was back, scowling and twisting about as she sought their prey.

“The fuck?!” she shouted as he drew closer. “This thing is way tougher!”

James simply sped past her, knowing she’d fall in with him. Rounded another lightning bolt and saw Olaf falling through the sky toward them, his head gone, blood gouting out into the wind.

James was too late to trigger Martyr’s Cry - this would take a Resurrection - but then Olaf’s head re-appeared, his expression shocked as gold light faded away, and James recalled the big man’s Animus Sola was in his Wing with its ability to heal him.

The battle field was fucked. There were too many massive black lightning bolts just littering up the place, breaking line of sight, making it impossible to get a sense of what was going on. If James could find the demon youth he’d drop him again, but the bastard was flitting around the battle field with teleport faster than he could keep track, and with his Spiritual Exaltation sense befouled -

One of the huge black lightning bolts fell apart, bolts of electricity fizzing out into the air to reveal an Archangel.

Like the first he was some ten feet tall, his frame Olympic in muscular perfection, bare chested with a massively corded neck. His wings of sooty black beat powerfully against the storm winds, and his mane of black hair blew about him fitfully.

His striking visage betrayed satisfaction as he finished tearing the lightning bolt apart, and for a moment his gaze met James’s. The Archangel nodded and turned to the next bolt.

But more angels were appearing.

Archangels by the dozens, hurling their Herculean forms against the lightning bolts. As the lightning bolts collapsed, the air cleared, and James saw the demon youth drawing back, eyes wide at the sight of so many Archangels at work.

Here and there James saw his companions - they were scattered through the sky, some nursing damaged Wings, Jason having abandoned his altogether in favor of his own flight.

The demon youth raised one palm toward the sky and it filled rapidly with a black sphere that grew until it was the size of a beachball, its surface crackling with purple bolts, and then four more appeared above it, forming an inverted pyramid, then sixteen more atop those.

The Archangels ceased their work and turned to regard the demon with dour expressions.

With a cry the child hurled his attack, and James felt a hurricane blast of Infernum blast past them all in a shockwave of raw power.

The Archangels as one closed their sooty wings about themselves, hiding their forms completely, and spheres of translucent gold appeared about their forms.

The black spheres sped forth and slammed into the angels. The golden auras exploded violently as the spheres punched through and the Archangels perished, their forms wracked with pain as the blackness sank into them as if their bodies were water and the spheres made of lead.

As one they disappeared, destroyed.

“Ha,” breathed the demon youth, chest heaving, black blood running from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. “Ha.”

“We good?” shouted James. “We get the imprints?”

“Not yet!” shouted Kerim. Denzel also shook his head.

“We summon more?” yelled Olaf from the far side.

The demon youth smacked both palms together. His eyes began to bug out, his hair to blow like a rippling halo about his head, and then his form began to distend, as if his skin were made of rubber and a dozen new demon kids were suddenly trying to climb up on out of him.

“Yeah,” croaked Serenity, staring at the bulging, writhing monstrosity. “Let’s summon some more.”

James took a deep breath. “Let’s each call a Dominion. Actually -”

He cut off as Denzel gave a cry and flew at the demon child, Kerim right behind them. They were clearly intent on getting just close enough to imprint, a score of yards, but James’s gut clenched with a terrible premonition.

“Everyone on me! Summon Dominions, go!”

Each of them could summon three of the big D’s, but James had just time to invoke one when the demon child exploded.

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