Down the street, a woman was sprinting with her toddler in her arms and a Gargoyle chasing after her, running on all fours. Her face streaked with fearful tears, she ducked into an abandoned pizzeria, hoping that she could escape through the back or at least hide. Before she could even run across the dining area and reach the counter in the back of the room, the front window shattered as the creature leapt in. Laughing with acidic saliva dripping from its fangs, the Hell-spawned monstrosity closed in on the terrified mother and her crying child. The baby she was holding was the highest of delicacies, a once in a lifetime meal for Hell-spawn. About to pounce, the beast released a howl of pain as the severed end of its tail flew to the side. It turned around, only for Marcus to slash its throat with his blessed combat knife. It staggered back with black blood pouring from its wound like crude oil from a destroyed tanker, but in no way was the monster down for the count.

“Go! Get out of here while you can!”

His shout awoke her from her fear-induced paralysis and reminded her that she needed to escape. As the woman fled, the Gargoyle turned back to Marcus and opened its jaws, releasing a miniature Abyss Blast in his direction. He was quick to duck as the black laser beam cut through the front of the pizzeria and caused the building across the street to collapse. Recovering his posture, he grabbed a nearby table and threw it, knowing that it would cause no damage. The beast smacked the table aside like it was a sheet of paper, but found itself staring down the barrel of a loaded M1911. The trigger was pulled, igniting the gunpowder in the chambered round and launching the holy bullet. The slug punched the monster in the forehead and drilled through its skull. The Gargoyle fell to its knees and gagged in pain, unable to defend itself from the blade of the Green Beret’s knife piercing its cranium.

As the creature’s dead body sank to the floor, Marcus heard a cry of agony outside. He jumped into the street and saw a man in the process of being mauled by a twisted canine. While looking like a cross between a Rottweiler and a greyhound, it was certainly no pooch from Earth. It had six tails and a pair of goat horns behind its ears, while its eyes burned like lit coals. It was a Hellhound, a type of Gargoyle.

The Demonic dog grabbed the suited man’s arm, sinking its shark-like teeth into his flesh and ripping off his hand like it was the rotting branch off a dead tree. Marcus charged towards the Hellhound with his pistol raised, emptying half a clip into its ribcage. The holy bullets pierced its organs and shattered its ribs and spine, ending its undead life. Reaching the wounded man, Marcus pried his severed hand from the slain dog’s jaws and tossed it to him. An Angel could easily attach it.

“If you don’t want to bleed to death,” he said while checking the rounds in his magazine, “take off your belt and I’ll help you secure it to your arm. We need to get moving before more show up.”

 

In the central plaza of the city, the pavement opened up into a burning pit and eight Gargoyles streamed out, pulling a chariot of twisted iron with flaming wheels and rotting carcasses nailed to the sides. Dragged behind it were four long chains, secured to the rusted collars of slaves from Hell, each with rags for clothing, rail-thin bodies, bound arms, and iron masks. Riding in the chariot was a Demon with Japanese-style armor, a whip of black fire, and a serrated broadsword. He was not a Master of Torture, but his above-average power was equal to a Goliath. He began shouting out in Hellscript, making every human and Angel cringe as the unholy words ravaged their minds like bullet ants chewing on their eardrums.

“Conterst eorus ossit, lacertata eorus carnous, ot bibero eorus sanguoto! En mulierta voluntex clamazos unt nox xtrupros eoz! Un filiixeras voluntex clamacta unt nox dezorab eoz! En hominequs voluntex orsa enos mortest unt nox servaxor eoz! Fiaz eoz scirs cruziato, fiaze eoz scirs timosos, ex fiaz eoz scirs infernusam!” ‘Crush their bones, rip their flesh, and drink their blood! The women will scream as we rape them! The children will cry as we devour them! The men will beg for death as we enslave them! Let them know pain, let them know fear, and let them know Hell!’

The slave driver then cracked his whip. “Demon Art: Graveyard of the Damned!”

Upon the announcement of the spell, the street was ripped apart as hundreds of tombstones of all sizes and shapes burst out like groundhogs, coming up with enough power to flip cars. Following a dull roar, greenish-black skeletal hands began reaching out of the ground as the Sinners of the Inferno entered New York, each grave spitting them out like snakes from a pit. The skeletons laughed and cheered at the chance to finally bring carnage to a real human city after so many years in Hell. Truly evil souls, they had lost their flesh and blood in tandem with what little mercy they had when they were living, becoming the malicious undead and the foot soldiers of the Devil. In their hands were swords and other weapons, either brought to Hell by the arrival of damned souls or forged in the factories in the Circle of Greed.

Police cars and SWAT vans skidded to a halt at the end of the street as the skeletons marched down the road with militaristic synchronicity. Wasting no time in ordering the heartless souls to stop, the officers formed a barrier with their vehicles and all opened fire with pistols, shotguns, and machine guns. While they were weaker than Gargoyles in terms of power and they were made of only bones, they proved to be quite resilient to the blessed bullets. The skeletons were made of a far stronger material than mere calcium-rich cells, and unlike the Gargoyles that required organs to live, the Sinners could only be stopped through dismembering or obliteration of the skull.

The Sinners broke rank and charged towards the line of police officers, their swords above their heads while shouting swears and praising the Devil. The closer they got, the more damage they received from the rain of holy lead. Skulls were smashed, limbs were broken off, and spines were snapped. But while they were falling like dominos in the fray, their momentum was only being slowed. Inevitably, they reached the barrier of cars and went to work, stabbing, slashing, and butchering the police while screaming in sadistic enjoyment.

An elderly Archangel landed on the roof of one of the SWAT vans and clapped his hands together. “Angel Art: Heaven Lantern Summoning!”

Behind him, a fifty-foot-tall statue of a nude female Angel materialized, carved from marble and holding out a solid gold lantern. A bright flash sparked within the confines of the lantern, and in a vibrant display, the light of Heaven shone down from the sides and onto the army of the Sinners. The skeletons howled in agony and tried to shield themselves as the light set them ablaze like ants under a magnifying glass. The Demon commanding them covered his eyes as smoke billowed from his flesh, hissing from the burning pain. With a roar of frustration, he cracked his fiery whip, causing it to grow in length and dart forward like a tentacle. The flaming tether wrapped around the statue, and with a furious snarl, he yanked on the handle. The whip’s hold tightened and shattered the Angel, sending huge pieces of marble tumbling to the ground with the lantern now dark.

“Angel Art: Divine Smite!”

The Demon looked up, spotting the Archangel flying straight down towards him with his sword in hand. With a bellow of confidence, he brought down his blade with the weight of a battleship, pulverizing the chariot, reducing the Demon and his Gargoyles to bloody paste, and causing the buildings in the four surrounding city blocks to explode into clouds of dust and twisted metal.

Two streets over, a crowd of people was huddled in a church, praying for salvation while Sinners beat their hands against the doors. The pews were pushed back to form a barricade, but the men and women building the defenses met their grisly end. Bullets made of lead with copper jacketing from Hell turned the door into a dish sponge, fired by the impatient Sinners outside. They laughed in excitement as they fired their machine guns, smelted and manufactured in the Circle of Greed on assembly lines. Regardless of the onslaught, the weight of the barricade kept the wooden gateway standing.

“Blow it down!” the Sinner in command yelled.

A fellow soldier stepped forward with a Hell-crafted RPG. He took aim and fired the bomb straight at the front of the church. The barrier was ripped apart in a fiery thunderclap, sending the people inside screaming in fear and pain from scraps of wood flying like knives. Melted by the explosion, Hellcopper from the warhead was sent flying forward into the crowd of civilians. Those in front were mowed down, the hot splash burning through muscle and bone like their bodies were made of snow.

To the sound of babies and children crying and adults feverishly praying, the Sinners marched in unopposed. Being in the church did not affect them in the least and no one stopped them from opening fire, chopping the humans to bloody chunks with a storm of bullets.

A mile away, a vast Sinner army had been summoned and they were marching down the streets with a haunting rhythm. They shouted curses with swords and spears held high and thunderous footfalls. Any humans that dared cross their path were hacked to pieces without mercy. The wretched souls laughed and cheered at the carnage, splattering blood across every surface. However, their winning streak was soon to end, as a countering force of Baltoh’s legionaries had gathered to exterminate the evil.

The dark souls of the Inferno outnumbered the army of heroes, five hundred against five thousand. Their Demonic mounts hissed and snarled in frustration from the holy reins binding them and forcing them into submission. On the back of a Demonic tiger, the long-departed spirit of Hijikata Toshizo moved out of the front line. Originally a member of the Shinsengumi Police Force from the Tokugawa Period of Japan, his dedication to the eradication of evil was unfaltering. He wore a white and blue haori and dark gray hakama over his kimono, both stained with blood. Blessed by Baltoh, his katana was as sharp, pristine, and elegant as the day it was forged.

“In the name of justice!” he shouted in Japanese with his sword held high.

Their battle cries thunderous, men and woman from across time and from all lands snapped the reins of their mounts and charged towards their eternal enemies. In a ferocious tsunami, the army swarmed down the street towards the awaiting sea of skeletal Sinners. Like an axe striking a piece of firewood, Baltoh’s legion split the horde and dove straight into their midst. With their weapons blessed, the Damned Heroes hacked away every opponent that crossed their path and forced their way through the evil ranks. Katanas, claymores, sabers, spears, halberds, and even bayoneted muskets pierced and cut through the skulls and torsos of the howling Sinners. Behind them, deeper in the piercing blade of the army, more modern soldiers opened fire over the heads of their comrades, killing any Sinners that the first line of troops had been unable to reach. Smoke filled the air from muskets and black powder pistols firing off their single rounds, while automatic and semiautomatic guns rattled off hundreds of bullets, shattering the Sinner’s skulls like glass vases.

The legion of Damned Heroes dove deeper into the Sinner horde and reduced them to splinters of bone under the feet of their mounts, but enemy reinforcements were soon called in. Towering house-sized Gargoyles burst up from the street, crushing countless Sinners in the process. They were bound in chains and many had a commanding skeleton riding on the back of their neck. The beasts all released Abyss Blasts into Baltoh’s forces, tearing the ranks apart and destroying the street with lines of black explosions. Those that were killed in the process returned to Hell, bound by their hollow immortality. Normally this was their curse and was used to torture them endlessly, but now it allowed them to fight in every battle, no matter how many times they died in the process.

Originally the leader of a squad of German troops that had sold Nazi secrets to the Allied Forces, Hans Schneider had worked alongside the famous spy Fritz Kolbe to try and bring down the Third Reich from the inside. While his name was never known after his death in the field, he now had a second chance to stop another genocide.

He held out his arm to his fellow traitors, all faux Waffen-SS troops. “Blasen sie zurück in die Hölle! Tötet die Monster mit heiligem Feuer! Zerstört sie, so dass nicht einmal Asche bleiben ihre böse!” ‘Blow them back to Hell! Kill the monsters with holy fire! Destroy them, so that not even ashes remain their evil!’

Happy to obey, the German turncoats all raised their rocket launchers and unleashed their payloads. The blessed Panzerfaust bombs shot over the heads of the other Damned Heroes with burning tails before striking the Gargoyles in the chests. The explosions ripped apart their ribcages and splattered their organs in all directions. The creatures staggered back, gasping for air with their torsos carved open. The resurrected Germans then loaded their machine guns and opened fire, riddling the colossal Gargoyles with holy bullets and ending their lives. With the monsters slain, the Damned Heroes were able to reform their line and continue their charge.

 

Off in the distance, a thunderous screech cut through the air, following several ominous crashes. Pillars of smoke and dust were rising as buildings collapsed. A new threat had tunneled its way up: great skeletons that towered at a hundred feet in height. These dark-green bone behemoths were known as Bleaks, and they were the result of hundreds of Sinners joining together into one entity, similar to how Demons are born. Their size and bodies were due to the fact that the malice of the individual spirits that made them up was not purely concentrated. Unlike Demons, formed from the pure hatred of prisoners’ ashen remains, all the emotions and memories from the Sinners were included. The result was an inflated creature, not dense enough in its evil to gain a compacted Demon body. While they were not quite as durable as Demons and they lacked the ability to use spells, their power levels were equal and their full-sized Abyss Blasts and colossal bodies allowed them to cause vast amounts of destruction, though they lacked the energy density needed to have shackles.

With their red eyes gleaming, the three Bleaks opened their jaws and each released a devastatingly powerful Abyss Blast, launching the dense black lasers into the city. The blasts whiplashed across the ocean of buildings, blooming into massive explosions that sent rubble falling like rain and illuminated the battlefield with burning clouds.

An Archangel by the name of Adriel swooped over with his palms aimed at the beasts. “Angel Art: Roaring Clouds of Heaven!”

A focused tempest surged from his hands like a gas explosion while moving forward in a linear wave. It spun in a dense vortex with holy energy crackling through the folds of vapor like lightning. The burning flood washed over the Bleaks like a volcanic ash cloud, drawing howls of agony from the lumbering beasts as their bones crumbled like sand. Certain that he had ended their lives, Adriel cracked a confident grin and lessened the output of the spell to see his handiwork. His smile was lost, as with a charred outer surface, one of the skeletons lunged forward out of the blast with its mouth open. It offered the Archangel no time to dodge its jaws as they closed around him, squashing him like a grape.

Raphael zoomed to the scene as fast as his wings could carry him, charging his power in preparation to destroy the unholy abominations and avenge his fallen comrade. Spotting his approach, one of the Bleaks roared in fury and swung its arm at him like he was a fly. It missed the Archangel, but ripped away the roof of a tall apartment building and sent bricks and crumpled metal raining down into the street.

“Angel Art: Divine Smite!”

Reaching the Bleak’s face, he spun around and delivered a powerful kick. Upon contact, the giant’s skull turned into a claymore mine, spraying shrapnel in all directions and beheading the beast. Behind him, another Bleak charged an Abyss Blast.

“Angel Art: Gates of Heaven!”

The black beam surged out from between the skeleton’s jaws and was deflected by the golden gate behind Raphael, protecting him from harm.

“Angel Art: Divinity Ray!”

He turned around and fired an equally powerful laser of holy energy that obliterated the monster’s skull. The third Bleak reached out towards him, trying to swat him out of the air with its palm. Raphael sliced off its hand with a fluid swing of his blade. The skeleton roared in pain and shouted curses at him with a sphere of shadow power forming between his jaws. Before the blast could be launched, he shot up into the sky and then dove in an arch, burying his sword in the undead beast’s forehead. He carved his way down through the Bleak’s skull and split its body in half, slicing it all the way through its chest and spine as if the blade was twenty feet long. Upon breaking through the pelvis, he looked up as the severed parts of the skeleton began to separate, detonating the half-charged Abyss Blast and shattering the bone structure in the explosion.

Raphael looked back across the smoldering city at the Holy Grail, sealed in its towering obelisk form and being guarded by Gabriel and Michael. With swords soaked in Gargoyle blood and hands burning with divine energy, they and every surrounding Angel fought with all their strength. They hadn’t taken part in a battle like this in eons, and regretfully, they had to admit that they had gone soft during that time. Regardless, their original power was returning and their conviction to protect the city was keeping them going.

Twin Demons soared across the sky towards the marble obelisk, calling them out for a challenge. The two pairs of fighters each separated, Gabriel’s foe armed with bladed bone chains and Michael facing a Demon carrying a spiked shield.

“Angel Art: Divinity Ray!”

Michael aimed his hand at his foe and fired a wide beam of holy energy from his fingertip.

“Demon Art: Monster Slash!”

Spiraling through the air to avoid the blast, the Demon launched ten invisible blades from his claws, each sharp enough to slice off a mountain summit. Michael deflected the blades with his sword and then shot forward and delivered a second Divinity Ray at pointblank range. The Demon blocked with his shield and the laser washed over him like a flood, leaving him mostly unharmed but stuck where he was.

“Demon Art: Iron Whip!”

He sent his tail stretching like rubber while the bladed stinger gained a steely rigidity. The tail shot down and then curled, aiming for the back of Michael’s neck. Well aware of the incoming strike, he spun around and kicked the stinger aside before it could touch him, then retreated to dodge the lunging slash of the Demon. Pushing back against the air with his wings, Michael gave another attempt at close-range combat and began swinging his sword against the Demon’s shield. Even while made of bone, sparks sheared off with each collision of his holy sword.

“Demon Art: Black Thread Hex!”

The Demon backed off and fired the spikes from his shield like missiles, but all remained tethered by cords of dark energy.

“Angel Art: Halo Discus!”

Michael drew a long chain of halos from the one above his head and hurled them at the oncoming spikes. The rings of light sheared through the black tethers that controlled barrage. However, when they collided with the Demon’s shield, they only became lodged in its surface like thrown knives.

“Damn it,” Michael muttered, “that shield really is troublesome.”

A hundred meters away, Gabriel was having the same luck with his foe, but was managing to hold his own.

“Angel Art: Blessed Lightning!”

“Demon Art: Shade Shimmer!”

Increasing his speed to hypersonic levels, his opponent rocketed over to avoid the lightning and get in close for the kill. The Demon swung his chain with a booming laugh, wrapping it around Gabriel’s raised sword and starting the umpteenth tug of war between them. With a newfound grin, Gabriel grabbed the bladed chain and recast his spell, sending a charge of holy energy through it like a power line and frying the Demon. Seizing up from the agonizing shock, the beast let go and backed off. He summoned two more chains from his wrists and swung them both like whips. Refusing to be pushed back, Gabriel charged into the reach of the slithering chains. The writhing folds tried to tear away at him like biting piranhas, but his sword swings kept them at bay.

He reached the Demon and raised his weapon for a diagonal chop to the shoulder. “Angel Art: Burning Moon Slice!”

Upon the announcement of the spell, white flames began streaming from his blade, increasing the cutting power. A sudden Tombstone Shield cost him his slice, but he sheered through the Demon’s barrier like an inflatable mattress. Behind the split shield, the Demon crossed his arms and brought his chains together like a pair of pincers around Gabriel. He ducked down to avoid the chains, but with a laugh, the Demon pulled downward. Mindlessly obeying his will, both chains struck Gabriel’s shoulders like twin saw blades, ripping through his muscles and nearly robbing him of the use of his arms.

Gritting through the pain, he dropped out of the air to lessen the damage of the chains and then pointed his finger straight up at his foe. “Angel Art: Divinity Ray!”

The holy beam scorched the entire front of the Demon’s body. Blinded by the excruciating injury, he was helpless as Gabriel’s Rosary Restraints wrapped around him like a straightjacket. With a roar of exertion and blood spraying from his shoulders, he pulled hard on the chain and swung his foe like he was the head of a flail. Unable to break free of his restraints, the Demon crashed into his cohort and they switched places. The Demon with the shield was now facing Gabriel and the Demon with the chains was facing Michael.

“Angel Art: Divinity Ray!” Michael shouted.

“Angel Art: Blessed Lightning!” Gabriel called.

The two spells were launched simultaneously, aimed at the joined Demons between them. Michael’s Divinity Ray washed over the bound chain Demon and obliterated him, while the Demon with the shield had his defenses and torso pierced by the holy electricity, ending both of their lives and ensuring the safety of the Grail for a little bit longer.

 

Nearby, Baltoh was working together with the Archangels to fight the flood of Gargoyles coming up. The area they were rising from was a massive pit, spitting out the monsters by the thousands. All the Archangels were firing Divinity Rays into the dark storm while Baltoh used the Wing Arrow and Claw Bullet spells, turning his body into almost three-dozen Gatling guns. Due to the effects of his spells, blood and butchered body parts fell like waterfalls from the deluge of monsters and smoke filled the sky from the burning bodies that were incinerated by the shower of lasers. Hundreds of Gargoyles met their grisly end by the second, stifling the black geyser into a low-pressure fountain. As powerful as the forces of Heaven were, the legions of Hell outnumbered them in horrifying magnitudes, not just with Gargoyles and Sinners, but also with Demons. Every minute, one of the Archangels left to go face a Demon that had snuck through and was blowing up the city.

On the roof of a nearby building, Selene was battling individual Gargoyles that had managed to slip through the defenses. She was surrounded on all sides, but her confidence in her newly acquired fighting skills was high. Roaring how it planned on raping her to death, one of the monsters attacked with his claws barred. Selene turned around, wrapped in holy energy, and delivered her strongest punch to the Gargoyle’s face. His skull was destroyed like a watermelon under the blow of a hammer. A Gargoyle behind her pounced and she kicked its head off its shoulders with her foot glowing like an Archangel’s sword.

Two Gargoyles lunged at her from the left and right side, giving her no time to deliver counterattacks. Instead, she jumped forward and rolled, letting the twin monsters collide in midair like cartoon characters. The crowd around her reached down to end her life, but she spun like a ballerina, her feathers glowing with blessed power and her extended wings carving them all down like the blades of a helicopter.

At the edge of the roof with the swarm closing in, there wasn’t a single drop of fear in Selene’s heart and she was barely out of breath. Even in the midst of battle, she had a wide grin on her face from the physical exertion and the feeling of sweat on her face. This fighting was resonating with her, the true life or death challenge and the chance to be pushed to her limits were practically euphoric. She could barely contain her happiness at the pressure she could feel and the energy within her that was pushing back against this pressure. Every monster she killed strengthened her confidence that nothing could kill her, but she also wished something would come along and make her doubt that confidence.

This is it! This is what I was meant to do! To fight for my life is why I was born! Come on, you bastards! Come and get me! Make me fight harder! Make me give more! Make me reach my peak! Make my life worth more than the pain I must endure to keep it!

One of the Gargoyles leapt towards her, foaming at the mouth and howling. “Die, little bitch!”

With a swing of her arm, Selene sliced the creature in half right down the middle and sent the two parts flying past her and down into the street. Now it was her turn to strike. Her wings outstretched, she gave a mighty push against the air and threw herself forward, straight into the Gargoyle midst. The Hell beasts did not see this coming and were caught off guard, giving Selene the opportunity to begin hacking and slashing at them as if her hands had been replaced by two machetes. Even while gore filled the air and monsters surrounded her, her moves were unparalleled in elegance. The flawless rhythm of poses and strikes were like the unreachable dream of history’s greatest dancers. Baltoh fought with an almost barbaric drive, a rage-driven massacre with skills sharpened by eons of combat, but for Selene, her fight couldn’t even be called that. It was truly majesty in motion.

As she carved down the black creatures with her glowing wings, one of them managed to land five large cuts across her shoulder. While the pain stopped her momentum, the shivers it sent through her only made her smile tighten. “Good,” she purred with blood trickling down her arm, “it’s no fun without a little something to compensate for.”

The Gargoyle that had cut her licked her blood off its claws in relish and then lashed out with its tail, trying to skewer her. She caught the tail and yanked on it with all her strength, pulling the beast off its feet and swinging it around like a giant flail. As she knocked down the surrounding Gargoyles like bowling pins, her wounded arm ached from the exertion, but the endorphin rush it had triggered and the effort being used to combat the sting made Selene’s heart race in enjoyment. It was not a masochistic pleasure or a sense of joy from the pain, but an energetic satisfaction, like a runner’s high. It was a challenge that required her full focus and strength, disallowing the luxury of boredom. With an injury to hold her back, she now had to work even harder, and it was ecstasy. The closer they came to ending her life, the more her life was worth, and the better it felt to overcome those who wanted to take it from her.

The Gargoyle’s tail soon snapped under the strain, sending the creature hurtling off the building and robbing Selene of her balance. She continued to spin, unable to slow herself down and get a hold of herself. So dizzy that she could barely think, she fell back into the arms of Baltoh, who caught her as if they were dancing the Tango. Out of breath but smiling, they both leaned in and shared a long kiss while the battle around them raged.

Rosemary’s voice interrupted their joining, shouting over the nearly deafening chorus of screams, just loud enough so that only he would hear her. “Master, we need a way to stop his flood of Gargoyles! They’re taking up all of our attention!”

Baltoh chuckled and stood Selene back up, then turned to the beastly deluge and clapped his hands together. “Forbidden Angel Art: Rose Window Shield Summoning! Angel Art: Heaven Lantern Summon!”

Beside the Gargoyle geyser, the nude Angel statue materialized with the outstretched lantern. Brighter than the sun, the lantern assailed the Gargoyles with the light of Heaven, setting the entire flood of creatures ablaze. A rose window of gold and violet glass appeared above, casting a holographic image of itself down onto the hole that the Gargoyles were flying through. A flash shined from the window and the hologram solidified into a metaphysical barrier, sealing the opening while combining with the power of the statue’s lantern to incinerate any beasts that touched it.

“Good, now we can focus on other areas. I saw some Bleaks nearby. Let’s go, Master… Master?”

Her gaze shifted upwards and she became pale as she spotted him, hovering over the barrier. His four wings were pointed downwards and his halo was spinning between the tips.

“Are you crazy? You’ll destroy all of Hell and take us down with it!”

“Relax, I’m just using a fraction of its true power. Everyone hang on! This is really going to shake the city!”

Hearing his warning, the Archangels fled as fast as they could, moments before he unleashed the Ragnarök blast. The silver beam exploded from his halo like a gamma ray burst, shooting straight down and snuffing out the barrier blocking the Gargoyles. Baltoh’s calculations had been correct in the intensity of the blast, as its diameter was just shy of the diameter of the pit. The beam shot down into the rising sea of unholy beasts, carving through their horde like a jet of boiling water through snow. Several million Gargoyles were killed by the blast alone, and over a hundred Demons with them.

The Ragnarök drilled down through Purgatory, finally striking Hell and detonating. In an eruption that shook New York to near citywide destruction, an explosion was set off in Hell, equal to more than a million hydrogen bombs. An inferno ocean surged up the ladder connecting the two realms, engulfing every entity that had been trying to reach the city. They were killed like insects under the fury of a flamethrower, sending their death toll to ten digits. From the openings carved into the city, pillars of silver fire shot upwards like rocket thrusters, incinerating anyone close by and blinding whoever looked directly at them.

The scene became silent as the warriors and civilians tried to regain their mental bearings and figure out what they were supposed to do. Everyone was gazing at Baltoh in shock and awe as an ash cloud rose up from the pit below him.

“Now we can exterminate the rest,” he called out as his halo returned to the top of his head.

 

God from the Machine

 

Baltoh stood in the hallway of one of New York’s hospitals, tending to a man with a torn windpipe and jugular vein. His hands were glowing with green energy, repairing the damage faster than modern medicine ever could. To the humming of the generator in the basement, doctors and nurses struggled to keep people alive with dim lighting and disappearing resources. The hallways and rooms were stuffed with beds and the floor was wet with blood from poorly bandaged wounds. Those who had only minor injuries were left to deal with it themselves or hope they could find an Angel to help them. This was just one hospital, and that was only counting the people who had actually been brought in. The city was blanketed with the dead and wounded, with those needing immediate care being hauled in by the truckload.

As the dying and injured cried out in pain and need of help, the medical staff worked desperately to focus on their patients. It was an ordeal in itself not to ask the Angels questions while they helped tend to the wounded. For every doctor and nurse, there was one Angel using his or her power to heal someone, and the need to ask them about the afterlife, the secrets of the universe, or even personal questions was overpowering. Here they were, the source of the answers mankind had sought since the dawn of abstract thought.

They would open their mouths to speak, but a cry of pain from their patient or a sudden spray of blood would drag their attention back to the matters at hand. The linear splatters were a record of those moments of lost focus, streaks of gleaming red crossing the plaster like the tally marks carved into the wall of a madman’s prison cell.

The Angels had a similar nervousness around Baltoh, though they were filled with more fear than wonder. They had been told that he was one of the greatest threats to Heaven, a berserker that had defeated Archangels as if they were nothing. His Demon half and his unstoppable strength in battle made him a terror. His Archangel half and the rumors of his drive to slay evil made him almost an idol. In hindsight, he was glad that he hadn’t killed any soldiers from Heaven in the past. He would never have been able to hold even a glimmer of trust with his hands stained with the blood of Angels, but the stigma of his cooperation with the Demons would stay with him long after this whole mess was settled.

Once the wound in the man’s neck closed, Baltoh sighed and looked out the nearby window. Well over a hundred Angels were arriving to assist in the healing process, meaning that he could finally take a break. He was struggling to stay on his feet, having fired a Ragnarök and healed almost a thousand people without rest. Becoming intangible, he floated up to the roof of the hospital to clear his mind for a few minutes. He leaned against the side of the roof exit with his hand over his face, rubbing his temples. His heart was just as exhausted as his body.

This was a form of combat he had never known before. He was no stranger to fighting enemies in the human world, but the vast sea of casualties was a horror that even Hell lacked. At least in the Inferno, he could blow up miles of land without having to feel guilty for the damned souls caught in the middle. Here, he had to be careful with how he used his power, and no matter how many monsters he slew, there were innocent people always dying. Fighting armies was one thing, but protecting civilians was a whole new challenge.

“Baltoh…”

He turned and his eyes widened at the sight to Molly, standing with a nervous look on her face. For a moment, he was unsure of what to say to her.

“Molly, hey.”

“Can I talk to you about something, or is now a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine.”

She stepped over to him and leaned against the wall, hesitating before speaking. “Normally I would talk to Selene, but I can’t find her anywhere and she is probably as busy as you are. To be honest, there is no one else really to talk to. You’re the only other nonhuman that I know, and I don’t think a living person would understand me.”

“Molly, please, I’m your friend. You’ll never have to hide a burden from me.”

She turned away, fearful of showing him the tears she could no longer contain. “Oh God, this is so stupid. I’m bringing you my problems and yet…”

“Molly.” He said her name softly and kindly, but with such authority that she stopped in her tracks. “You still can’t completely come to terms with what happened to you and you’re afraid to talk about it because it will bring up all those memories and make it real. Molly… I have been in the exact same place as you, or parts of me have at least. Everything you experienced, my souls experienced as well. I know how it feels to be in your position.

Talk to me, I want to help you.”

Molly turned to him with a sad smile on her face. “Thank you.” She retook her place beside him and looked down at the gravel floor, taking a deep breath. “The problem is… I was too scared to fight. I ran away when the battle started. Everyone else fought against those monsters, but I was petrified.”

She then gazed up at the sky, wishing to see clouds instead of stone. “Even Selene jumped into the fray without hesitation, but when I thought back to what those Demons did to me, I froze up. I don’t even know why I was made an Angel in the first place, I don’t even know how I got into Heaven.”

“Molly, there is nothing wrong with being scared, especially for someone in your position. If Selene had gone through what you did, then she would have frozen as well. Not only is it ridiculous to expect you to be a fighter, but also to do so after what those bastards did to you… there is nothing for you to be ashamed of or apologize for. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I got you involved in this mess in the first place. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Baltoh brushed back a lock of her golden hair while he spoke. As his finger caressed her cheek, Molly burst into tears and sat down on the floor, wrapped in her wings. He crouched down and put his arm around her, holding her as she cried. He tried to think of something to say, something to make her feel better. He knew what it was like to suffer as she had suffered, but he didn’t know how to use that experience to help her.

“I’m afraid to close my eyes, because every time I do, I see all the Demons standing over me, laughing. Every time my mind wanders, I remember the pain I endured. They raped me! They tortured me! They took my life from me!”

In the corner of the roof, Rosemary landed while cloaked to be undetectable, as she was hoping to fetch Baltoh and not get swept up in the calamity of the hospital. She was there to tell him that there was a meeting going on, but now, she didn’t want to interrupt. With a smile of warm pride on her face, she stood back to let him help Molly.

Slowly, he reached out and cupped her cheek, ending her gasps. “Shhhh, it’s ok. I killed them all for you and for what they did to you. They can never hurt you again. All that happened to your old human body, but you’ve been reborn into a new body. I’m not saying that you should live in denial of what you experienced, but you have no scars in which to carry. Your body is completely untouched and nothing has been taken from you. The only traces of your pain lie in your own memories. All you have to do is walk forward into the future and bury the past. What happened to you happened, you can’t control your history, but you can control your life from here on. You are an Angel, not a victim. You have the greatest chance in the world to change everything and start from scratch.”

Molly’s sobbing slowed, but she was still unable to move, physically or emotionally. “How do you do it? How do keep fighting when it means suffering so much? How do you keep from losing hope?”

Baltoh got to his feet and took a few steps away from her, looking out over the city. Rosemary watched him intently, curious as to his answer.

“Like I told you before, I’m compelled by the souls that make me to fight evil. I want to fight, but it’s more than that. I fight… because my life has no meaning if I don’t. Those Demons made me suffer everything you suffered a thousand times over. Hell was my dungeon, the place where I was enslaved and tortured for endless eons. They took everything from me, but I want to stay and fight, and if I stopped fighting simply because I was afraid, that would mean giving them what I finally got the strength to take back: my freedom.”

Molly looked up, her teary eyes seeing Baltoh’s hand clench into fist.

“I want to fight, so because of that, I need to fight. If I don’t, no matter how far I run, I’ll still be a prisoner of Hell. If I let Iscariot or the Hell Princes scare me away, then I’ll have lost my freedom to them. The day you let fear stop you from doing what you want is the day you surrender your freedom. I could spend eternity in Hell, getting ripped apart and beaten in endless, bloody combat, but as long as that is my desire, then I have more freedom than anyone else alive.

It’s true, I know when to pick my battles and when to retreat, but I always return to Hell because life is meaningless without the freedom to live my life the way I want. Each and every one of us, we are all born free, and we must fight every day of our lives against those who want to take that freedom away! There will be times when you will face an opponent that you must run from. It is inevitable. But know that every foe you run from is one more obstacle separating you from freedom and every foe you defeat is one less obstacle keeping you from basking in the sun.” He turned around and held out his hand to her. “Even if your desire to fight is different from mine, you will come across entities that will want to hurt and kill you. If you can win, you must, or you’ll lose the greatest freedom of all: the freedom to live and to live without fear!”

At last, Molly smiled and Baltoh helped her to her feet. Rosemary gave a soft sigh of idolization, feeling her heart swell as she listened to him. “Master, it seems that Selene really was just what you needed…”

“Listen, take all the time you need, do whatever will bring you peace. If you decide you want to fight, feel free to join Selene and I for a sparring lesson. The next battle, we’ll fight right alongside you. If you feel like you can’t do it, then no one will judge you. You have all the time in the world to sort things out and you’ll always have our support.”

Instead of speaking, she pounced on him, wrapping her arms around his neck and crying onto his shoulder. Rosemary waited a few minutes, letting Molly vent her pain before finally retrieving Baltoh. She stepped forward and released her cloaking spells. “Master, I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“There is a meeting about to happen in City Hall. Follow me.”

She opened the door and walked down the stairs into the hospital. Molly reluctantly let go, and on her beautiful face was a smile and tears of gratitude. “Thank you, Baltoh. I really needed that.”

He pressed his forehead against hers. “Fighting evil is pointless if it’s not to protect what is important to me.”

He then followed Rosemary and stepped into the dark staircase where she was waiting. Something occurred to him after a few steps.

“If they’re all in City Hall, why are we going downstairs?”

“So that I could do this.”

She turned around and kissed him on the cheek.

“What was that for?”

The young Archangel giggled. “You’re so different from when you were my teacher. I’ve never seen such a cuddly and tender a side to you. It’s funny, I always remember you trying to hide your emotions and act like a soulless killing machine. It seems like Selene has brought out the heart you never knew existed. Besides, I wanted to do that, and if I didn’t, that would mean giving up my freedom, wouldn’t it? But… I’ve always been happy to give you my freedom.”

“That wasn’t… all you wanted to give me,” he said murmured, coming to a stop.

Rosemary glanced back at him, but never faced him directly. “I never knew you could be so sweet, I guess there isn’t as much hatred in you as you think. I just wish you had been like that when I was with you.”

The way she spoke was frigid, and without even seeing her face, Baltoh could tell that her original smile had disappeared.

“Rosemary.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You can’t lie to me, Rosemary. I know you too well.”

“I said it’s nothing!”

Baltoh grabbed her wrist and forced her to face him. “Then why do you sound so angry when a moment ago you were smiling?”

Rosemary didn’t respond.

“Answer me!”

“You were supposed to love me! I knew you first, I knew you the longest, and I knew you better than anyone! If you were going to fall in love with someone, it should have been me! Instead you just mounted the first human you saw and completely ignored me! If it was so easy for you to be intimate with someone, why couldn’t you be intimate with me?”

Baltoh hesitated. “I’m sorry, but I changed. I’m not the same person you met in Hell all those years ago.”

“Don’t give me that shit! Nothing in Hell ever changes!”

A scowl on his face, Baltoh grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall, leaving her stunned. His grip on her arms was so powerful, it left her feeling powerless against him, but in a way that made her blush.

“You left Hell twenty years ago, that was twenty years for you, but for me, it was well over seven thousand years. I’ve had time to grow, because whether you believe it or not, having you as a student changed me. You helped me mature and become a better person, it just wasn’t until I came here that I realized it. Things change, Rosemary. Things always change, including people.”

Their faces were inches apart, but she turned away from him with wet eyes. “It’s not fair! If you changed so much, then why couldn’t you change for me? What did that woman do to you in three weeks than I couldn’t do in three years?”

In response, Baltoh picked her up as if she was weightless and pinned her against the wall with their fingers intertwined and his claws digging into the concrete. Her hands bound above her head as if by shackles, she was forced to wrap her legs around his waist. Their bodies were pressed together, with only a few layers of fabric protecting Rosemary’s innocence.

So this is what it feels like…

“Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes,” she whimpered with her eyes closed.

After all the times he had protected her in Hell, kept her safe from the Demons that wanted to violate her, it was both fitting and ironic that he be the one to extinguish her purity. After all, he was her master. It would be so easy, a flick of his bladed tail to cut away their clothes and she would be at his mercy. There was no one around, nothing to interrupt him taking her right then and there. He could do whatever he wanted and no one could stop him. Her lust would never let her refuse his desires. She would obey his every command. She had fantasized about this since the day she met him. Their lips were so close–would he do it?

No.

Rosemary’s dream of her master’s affection was left unanswered, as he instead lowered her to the floor.

“I care about you, Rosemary, more than you know, but I am with Selene and I hope with all my heart and soul that it stays that way for the rest of eternity,” he said, walking away.

 

“That attack will definitely have bought us some time,” said Raphael. “Even in Hell, it will take a while for enough troops to be found to march on us again.”

The leaders of the defensive force were all standing in the mayor’s office, planning their next move. Selene was there, but Rosemary was late to arrive. She couldn’t face Baltoh until she collected herself.

“But at what cost?” Gabriel asked. “Baltoh, do you have any idea how much damage you may have just inflicted to Hell? If that realm became too damaged, it might collapse in on itself and then we would really be in trouble. Forget a hole between dimensions, that universe would fall into oblivion and drag the other two with it.”

“That’s why I kept the power usage low. That blast caused a lot less destruction than you think, as most of the energy was expelled through the upwards burst of the explosion. Not to mention that we don’t know if I even struck the planet Hell. We saw the explosion, but we don’t know if I really hit anything important.”

“How are the people of the city?” Selene asked.

Michael shook his head with his eyes bloodshot from stress and brushed back his mohawk. “We lost almost half a million people and more than three million were wounded. Even with Angels flooding the city, there were too many enemy forces to keep the humans safe. That’s not even counting the number of dead Angels we’re scraping off the pavement.”

Baltoh’s voice was ominous, making everyone in the room tremble. “I expected nothing less. I can’t imagine any of the residents of this city surviving this war. Most likely, whether we win or lose, everyone will be dead and the gutters will be overflowing with blood,”

“Have you guys figured out how to reverse all this yet?” the mayor asked, impatient.

“We have our best minds in Heaven running simulation after simulation and studying this anomaly from every angle,” Raphael sighed. “However, it is not nearly as simple as we thought it was. It seems that bastard Abaddon and his friends weren’t just lounging and eating people between their appearances. We’ve found signs of symbols scribbled across the city in human blood, and I’m not talking about the sites where those Inferno Abysses were summoned. This area is literally blanketed with symbols. As you can imagine, it is in Hellscript, and it obviously serves some purpose.”

“So? What does all this mean?” the commissioner yelled.

He was already on edge from the battle, the deaths, and the finger he had lost in the fighting.

Gabriel stepped forward. “It means that the ritual they used was much more intricate than six summons and human negativity. They basically wrote out all of the information in the Library of Congress in binary code. We’re trying to figure out the exact sequence of symbols required, but it’s longer than your DNA and finding even most of them and what order they went in is impossible. It’s like we’re trying to figure out the blueprints of a castle after finding just half a brick wall, and the fact that I need this many metaphors should tell you what kind of quagmire we’re dealing with. If we were to try to create a reversing formula from scratch, it would take thousands, if not tens of thousands of years—”

“Which the Demons have had thanks to the day-to-year time ratio of Hell,” Baltoh interrupted.

“So the situation is really that grim?” Selene asked.

“Even more so,” Michael swore. “Unless the geniuses in Heaven manage to draw out the correct sequence at random like a bunch of monkeys on typewriters printing out Hamlet, then we have no way to reverse the effects of this ritual.”

Raphael spoke next. “But there is some good news. We are beginning to understand the ritual better and how it actually works. The Demon Abaddon originally said that this city is like an ember sitting on the fabric of space and time. While this city is sealed off from the dimension of Cinereo, it is still technically within the confines of Cinereo, but that will change. It is true that this city will burn through Purgatory, but there is an important fact that Abaddon left out: we believe that the earth is playing a fundamental role in the process of the opening doorway, that the earth’s core is being used as a kind of power source for the ritual.”

Chewing on her thumbnail, Selene spoke up. “What if it’s not just being used as a power source? What if the core of the planet and the city are actually two parts of one mechanism? If I remember correctly, the city didn’t begin to sink until after the Holy Grail was activated. What if the reason why the city is sinking into the planet is because it has to join the core before it can actually break free of Cinereo, like a key entering a lock? You said it yourself, this city is no longer part of Cinereo, but it is still within Cinereo. Maybe with the Holy Grail in the way, the ritual isn’t powerful enough to actually pull us out of this dimension, so the Devil has to use the planet’s core not just as a power source, but a physical catalyst. Once they join, this city will completely break free of Cinereo and will begin tunneling through Purgatory.”

Her assumption drew looks of astonishment among the Archangels. They had originally considered Selene as a person of interest simply because she was in a relationship with Baltoh, but her sense for interdimensional physics could earn her the title of prodigy.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave us with a lot of options. It wouldn’t really count as saving the earth if we did it by destroying the core,” he sighed beside her.

“Can’t you guys call on God to help us?” the mayor asked.

The room was silent.

“Jehovah stopped caring about the goings on of the world a long time ago,” Baltoh growled.

“What if we snuck into Hell? I know you said it wouldn’t work, but now that we have carved down their numbers and thrown Hell into disarray, we might be able to destroy the Stone of Cain without them ever knowing we were there,” Selene suggested.

Baltoh sighed and sat down in a nearby chair. “No, Iscariot would never leave his post and Tenebrous himself may very well come after us.”

“Tenebrous?” the mayor asked.

“The true Devil. I’m sure you think that the Devil is actually Satan, who was originally the fallen Angel, Lucifer. That is incorrect. Satan and Lucifer are Princes of Hell, which is the highest level of Demon just below Tenebrous himself. You know how they say that Satan is the prince of darkness? Well Tenebrous is the king. As he is now, his powers are worlds apart from mine. I can’t even defeat the Hell Princes. I’m a powerful fighter and I can cause planetary devastation, but Tenebrous is a true god and his abilities lie on a universal scale. I’m a mosquito to him.”

Rosemary opened the door, finally arriving but knowing that the conversation had reached its unavoidable conclusion. “So we’re right back where we started: facing the end of the world with no way to stop or reverse it,” she said.

Everyone was silent and time passed by. One minute, two minutes… three. Baltoh had his chin resting on his tented fingers, deep in thought. “Deus Ex Machina,” he finally said.

Everyone turned to him, the Archangels with an especially anxious look on their faces.

“What?” Selene asked.

“There might be a way to reverse the process. Deus Ex Machina, ‘god from the machine’.”

“Blasphemy! Speaking such words is sacrilege!” Michael hissed.

Baltoh repeated the phrase in Hellscript, his voice deepening in tone as he spoke the words. Everyone in the room cringed from the vileness of the dialect.

“What is Deus Ex Machina?” Selene asked.

“It is a theory dreamt up in Hell by pagan philosophers, one that insults everything we stand for!” Michael boomed.

“It is only insulting to a small mind like yours, one that has not lived for as long as I have and seen as much as I have seen. As I said, it means ‘god from the machine’, and it originally referred to Horace’s Ars Poetica, in which he warned poets to never solve the plots of their stories through the abrupt interference of a figure outside of the main cast of characters, namely gods. Machina refers to the cranes used in plays to lower the actors playing these gods dramatically onto the stage. However, it has a different yet similar meaning in this case.

Deus Ex Machina is the theory that it was not Jehovah in Heaven that created this universe and Hell, but Heaven and Hell splitting off from this universe upon its birth, in which you humans call the “Big Bang”. Basically, if Heaven and Hell are opposite weights on a scale, then this universe is the scale itself. As you know, this universe is known as Cinereo, which is Latin for ‘gray’, or essentially the combination of darkness and light.

The second part of the idea of Deus Ex Machina refers to the theory that Jehovah and Tenebrous were not always divine, but at one point were lesser beings, no greater than you or I. The belief is that there are three Thrones, each serving as the beating heart and matrix of a realm. Whether these are real thrones or symbolic ones, nobody is sure, but they say that whoever is able to take a Throne becomes a god of that universe. Tenebrous occupies the Throne of Hell, Jehovah occupies the Throne of Heaven, and the Throne of Cinereo is vacant and always has been. In this case, ‘god from the machine’ refers to the Thrones creating the gods.

This ties into our current situation as well. Everyone knows that the duty of Hell is to punish sinners, but it goes deeper than that. Evil is more than a choice or a mental defect. Evil is an abomination and an anomaly, an error in the entirety of creation that affects both matter and energy. It manifests in living things as the desire to kill, torture, and destroy. If unopposed, evil has the power to annihilate all three universes. Thus, as a defense mechanism, Hell and Heaven were born. Cinereo acts as the generator through which all energy is created, Hell is the garbage disposal that collects and removes the evil energy, and Heaven collects the rest of the energy and serves to balance the scale.

Before Tenebrous took control, Hell was where evil went to be destroyed. Dark spirits were sent there to burn, not fester. It was impossible for Demonic beings to come into existence since Hellfire incinerated everything instantly. No one knows how Tenebrous came to be, whether he was somehow formed from negative energy in some dark corner of Hell where there were no flames, or born in Cinereo and managed to cross over, but he was much stronger than your average Demon, and when he seized the Throne of Hell, he became a god and made Hell his domain.”

“So you’re saying that if we can take control of the Throne of Cinereo, then we can reverse all this?” Selene asked.

“Whoever takes a Throne becomes a god, those are the rules, and if you ask me, I think having a god on our side is our best bet.”

Michael stood before Baltoh, furious. “Listen, Baltoh. I said we would work together from now on, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends. You don’t get to pull these practical jokes!”

“The only reason why you are so against it is because it disagrees with the lies you’ve been told. With the theory of Deus Ex Machina, life originated in this universe instead of being created by God, meaning that evolution is true and you and your fellow Archangels were modeled after the humans on Earth.”

“Heresy!”

Rosemary on the other hand had her scowl focused on Michael. “Hold on, I think we should look into this. If it offers us a chance to save the city and Cinereo, we would be fools to ignore it.”

“Are you insane? Don’t you hear this? Don’t you hear the insult to our faith? The insult to the truth of the world?”

“What is the truth, Michael? What is the truth that we believe and follow? Jehovah certainly never explained the truth to me. Did he to you? We’re his Archangels, his messengers, and yet I can’t remember ever seeing or hearing Him! We know nothing about Jehovah, only what we have told each other. And here is Baltoh, the oldest and strongest of us, the only Demon-Archangel Hybrid to ever exist, the greatest anomaly in existence, and he knows the origin of the universe with more clarity than we do!”

Michael stood close to her, their faces inches apart. “He is NOT one of us.

“You’re right. I’m not one of you,” Baltoh growled, drawing back the Archangels’ attention as he stood up. “I’m better. Now you listen to me; you’re going to tell half of the Angels and Archangels in Heaven to stop their impossible mission to find a reversing spell and instead tell them to start searching for the Throne of Cinereo.”

Michael stepped over to Baltoh. “Are you ordering me?”

“No, I’m threatening. If you don’t do as I say, the next time I unleash Ragnarök on Hell, it will be at full power. I don’t care if it inadvertently destroys the whole realm and we go down with it, it’s one of our only considerable options. Find the Throne or blow up Hell, it’s your call.”

“Damn it,” the mayor shouted, “just do it already! I don’t care what it takes, save my city!”

“Fine, but if this all fails, it’s on you,” Michael cursed before storming out.

“Stubborn prick,” Baltoh muttered.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “Baltoh, you said it yourself that you don’t know if the Thrones are actual Thrones or if it’s a symbolic name. How can we find something without knowing what it is and what it looks like?”

“Not to mention that looking for it means searching the entire universe,” Raphael added.

“I know that, that’s why we need to look at it from a philosophical point of view,” Baltoh countered.

Gabriel sighed. “I’ll start the investigation. At least we have something to go on.”

Contrary to Gabriel’s cooperation, he was just as furious and insulted as Michael. The very idea of the Throne of Cinereo spat in the face of his beliefs and went against his faith in God, but to save the planet, he had to research every option.

“I digress, there is nothing we can do now but wait, but I’d much rather make a miracle than hope one happens,” Baltoh said before turning around and leaving with Selene trailing after him.

“So do you really think the Throne of Cinereo exists?” she asked, walking with him.

“I hope so. I started searching for it when I was ten thousand years old. Hell is the garbage disposal of the three universes, and if you know where to search, you can find vast amounts of information in garbage. I gave up when I realized that I simply didn’t have access to the resources I needed. Hopefully now, I can get the Archangels to search Heaven’s libraries for me. Maybe the secret is up there somewhere.”

Selene giggled. “I never imagined you were the kind of guy who would want to become a god. I’ve never gotten that vibe off you.”

“I am compelled by all the souls within me to destroy evil, but I need more power to do that. I’m barely a wasp compared to the true beasts that dwell in the darkness of Hell. Besides, with the Throne of Cinereo, I can accomplish one of my true goals.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Your true goals?”

Baltoh came to a stop in the hallway, his hands balled into fists and his voice cold. “God saved you and Molly, but that doesn’t even begin to make up for his sins and all the damage he has caused. If I can get the Throne of Cinereo, I will banish all of God’s influence from this realm, and perhaps even dethrone him from the Kingdom of Heaven. His servants may fight to destroy evil, but only the Original Seven Archangels and I know how evil God is. Even if I don’t kill him, I’ll free the world from his curse!”

 

Survival

 

Replacing the stone shaft, a swirling sea of molten rock churned around the city, as if New York were plopped right into the middle of a lava lamp. The city had burned through the earth’s crust and was passing through the mantle. All the humans were now forced to wear welding glasses from the surface or even just strips of cloth with holes cut in to protect their eyes from the blinding light, and even the Angels had a hard time functioning in such blinding light. The only thing that kept everyone from being vaporized was the fact that they were already technically separated from the physical universe of Cinereo.

Now that the battle was over and the wounded were healed or at least stabilized, it was time to deal with the dead. In a job that caused vomiting for everyone involved, the people of New York went out in cars and trucks to collect the thousands of corpses scattered like snowflakes. With a mournful silence crushing them, the survivors could truly see all the damage and pain that had been endured in the fighting. With mist from the blessed Hudson River pouring down onto the city, all of the spilled gore remained as wet and sticky as when it was first sprayed from the veins of its owners. It caught the light of the molten sea, looking like spilt gasoline burning with crimson flames. People not wearing waterproof footwear soon found their shoes soaked from the blood that caked the ground, often in puddles a few inches deep.

There wasn’t a single dead body that had gone with a peaceful look on its face. They all bore expressions of mind-numbing agony, as if caught in the middle of a scream. At least… the bodies with actual intact faces did. So many people had been ripped apart, butchered, shredded, dismembered, disemboweled, and tortured before death. Half the time, individual body parts and limbless or headless torsos were being thrown into the backs of trucks instead of full corpses, liquefied flesh tossed into buckets with snow shovels or just pushed down the street with plows. Anyone forced to work this job was unable to keep from spewing the contents of their stomach over and over until there was nothing left for them to expel.

Quite often, the cleanup crews were competing with local wildlife. Dogs and cats, having lost their owners and now facing starvation, found themselves surrounded by food. Still with their collars on and their tags jingling, dogs could be seen fighting over leftovers from the monsters that had been feeding earlier, their paws and mouths wet with human blood. Carrion birds screamed at each other while pecking out the eyes and innards of corpses. Their black wings, even while feathered, sent shivers through the onlookers as memories of the Demons and Gargoyles flashed through their minds. Even the seagulls were painted scarlet from feasting.

The rats soon followed, rising from the bowels of the city to stuff their faces. They flooded the streets, picking the corpses clean and leaving only bones. The paved roads rippled and shimmered like the churning ocean, a distortion created by the furry bodies of the rodents. They formed vast black carpets, moving across the bloody streets and soaking up the gore like sponges.

While the citizens removed the human bodies, Angels and Archangels went through the city and destroyed the remains of slain Demons and Gargoyles. Their flesh and blood was more toxic than radioactive battery acid. To leave them would make entire districts uninhabitable for decades from dark energy poisoning everything in range. Most of these Angels and Archangels had never even seen Demonic entities before coming to the city. It chilled their blood to gaze upon these incarnations of wrath and evil. Even after death, the fear they invoked was no less potent. Of the Demons that met their end through physical combat, rather than spells, only a minority bore the clean slices of Angelic swords. The vast majority had been ripped apart, their dismembered bodies displaying the shredding of a serrated, Hellsteel blade.

Once all the dead bodies were collected, everyone in the city gathered for the mass funeral. It was taking place out on the empty coastal floor, devoid of water and now just a barren desert. Amongst centuries of sunken garbage, the deceased were laid out in the most dignified manner possible. The silt, having an hour ago been dry as Saharan sands, was once again turned to mud, not by the tides, but by blood and tears.

Those who had been unable to find friends or family in the aftermath of the battle now walked between the endless rows of corpses, hoping that someone they cared about was not among the dead. As expected, the smoldering urban jungle was once again filled with the sounds of agonizing screams. These screams were not of physical pain, but of mourning and frustration. Whenever a slain family member or friend was discovered, those that knew the deceased would release howls of suffering. The loss of human life was one thing, but the sight of how horribly their loved ones had died was enough to drive anyone insane from grief.

Bodies that were identified were decorated with mementos and trinkets from the people who knew them, a token of offering to the departed, much like the gifts left in a coffin. Photographs, jewelry, old presents from better days, good luck charms, and any flowers that still held even a drop of life were sprinkled on the bodies by mourners. The identified remains were also given something with their name, be it a business card, a piece of paper written on with marker, an old name tag, or even a handmade cross with the name scribbled on.

It wasn’t only humans walking amongst the dead and shedding tears. Having both been alive just a few day ago, Selene and Molly walked with heavy hearts and wet eyes. Once or twice they kneeled beside the body of a friend they had known. They themselves were proof that the deceased could return to the mortal plane, but the sight of a loved one was always soul-piercingly sharp. Even worse was the pain and suffering they saw, the bodies used as blank canvases for Demonic cruelty. It was especially hard for Molly, having suffered the same horrific death.

God had saved the two of them, but in all likelihood, the inhabitants of New York would just be cast down into the Inferno like garbage along with everyone else. They weren’t the only Angels shedding tears. Hundreds of others who had lived in New York and died in years past, but because of God’s laws, only infants and children, too young to actually sin, were able to become Angels. They had grown into adulthood in Heaven, and despite having little to no memory of their families, they had volunteered to fight in this war for the chance to meet their kin, like orphans searching for their real parents. But that desired encounter was now the discovery of the unimaginable pain they had endured in death.

There were three groups of people up on the shoreline: the humans mourning, Baltoh’s troops from Hell who wanted to pay their respects, and the forces of Heaven. The Angels stood with their heads bowed while murmuring prayers, and the Archangels were all resting their hands on the pommels of their swords, which they held in front of them like grave markers. In the distance, sitting on the bow of a boat that was now high and dry on the sea floor, Baltoh watched the proceedings with a heavy heart, knowing how it felt to lose someone important.

He wasn’t sure why he was clutching his sword; perhaps he simply found it comforting after the thousands of years’ worth of battles in which he held onto the blood-soaked blade, or maybe he felt guilt and frustration because he had been unable to use that sword to save the people now lying dead before him, unable to prevent the formation of this sea of corpses and mourners.

At last, the word was given that the final part of the ceremony could begin, and all the sobbing people shuffled out of the riverbed. Taking a deep breath, Michael stepped forward as the top spiritual authority. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.

Angel Art: Holy Burn.”

A massive bonfire of white flames engulfed the field of corpses, cremating them with the intensity of burning thermite, but without producing any actual heat. With tear-streaked faces and bloodshot eyes, the people of New York stood by as the fire destroyed every trace of the dead. But the pain could not be erased.

 

With the battle over and the healing and mourning done, it was time to get to work. The fight had solidified the fact that selfish anarchy wasn’t going to accomplish anything, and if everyone wanted to survive, then they would have to cooperate. True, Angels were delivering blessed supplies constantly, but there was a lot that had to be done and the smartest minds had to be gathered to make sure everything went along smoothly.

Squad cars and civil service workers with bullhorns rode through New York, spreading the message that engineers, technicians, survivalists, members of the military, and anyone else who could help hold the city together had to report to City Hall for an organizational meeting. Likewise, anyone strong enough to work and take orders was to come and offer their services. In a community of several million, finding people who could help wasn’t a problem, but organizing them all was.

In the assembly chamber in City Hall was the mayor, addressing the intellectuals and banks of experience that the city had to offer. Waiting outside were the volunteers who would be assigned into groups to help fulfill the jobs that needed to be done. Near the mayor was Raphael, there to offer advice suggest strategies when it came to dealing with the forces of darkness.

“Now with all the cars in this city and gas stations, getting fuel for generators is not a problem, but we need that fuel quickly. The hospitals are running 24/7, and even if we do have the help of the Angels, we’ll be in a lot of trouble once those generators give out. I need people to go out and collect as much gas as possible and make sure that hospitals all have more than they need.”

In the crowd, one man stood up. “Jake Thomas, chief of the city towing company. If we get enough people to help us, we can start draining cars of gas and try to clear the streets a little.”

“Good, very good.”

The mayor walked to a dry erase board by his podium and wrote FUEL and CAR REMOVAL.

Next, a woman stood up. “Katherine Ellen, Water Treatment specialist. While we may be getting deliveries of water from the surface, we need far more in order to sustain the needs of the city.”

“What are you proposing?”

“We have clouds of mist pouring down from us from the Hudson River. If we were to gather as much plastic and metal sheeting as possible and arrange them on the roofs of all the buildings, we could collect a lot of water. Basically any clean waterproof material with a large, flat surface area would work to catch the condensation. Normally I’d say that we’d need to sterilize and filter the water, considering its source, but since it’s coming to us in an aerosolized form, it should be perfectly safe. We could also begin draining water from the pipes in the streets and buildings and anywhere else.”

“Good, I’ll put you in charge of that.”

The mayor wrote WATER COLLECTION and RESOURCES SEARCH up on the board.

“Now, who can offer any suggestions for protection?”

Raphael cleared his throat. “My comrade told me that the best place to hide the people who can’t fight is at the edges of the city, near the fence of Hellfire. As we have seen, the forces of Hell direct most of their attention to the Brooklyn area, as that is where they expect to find the most people and it is where we have the Holy Grail.”

In the crowd, another man stood up. “Staff Sergeant Chris Aims. Now these things may fly and shoot death rays, but give me a location and materials and I can build a bunker in ten minutes that can withstand a mortar barrage. Likewise, I suggest we fortify buildings all across the city, since we’re probably going to have people working all throughout New York when the next attack comes.”

“Ok, we’ll put most of our volunteers under your command. Do what you need to.”

The mayor wrote DEFENSE on the board.

“But what about electricity?” a woman asked. “All this stuff we’re doing is going to need power tools, and there sure as Hell aren’t enough generators in the city to keep every drill and buzz saw powered. What do we do?”

A man with glasses stood up. “I’m not a survivalist or an engineer, but I do watch the Discovery Channel and I know a way to solve that problem. All we need are the batteries and alternators from cars, power inverters, and some machine that runs on gas or anything that can spin a rotor. If you take any kind of motor or engine and hook up the part that spins to one or more alternators, then you generate an electric current. You use that to charge the batteries, and then with a power inverter, you convert the electricity from DC to AC, making it usable for electronics. I saw it on a TV show once.”

“Perfect, we’ll start having people going out and rounding them up.” ELECTRICITY went on the board. “We’re also going to need search parties to gather supplies, the rest of you can either join in the other projects or work on that.”

“Actually, I have an idea on one more thing that we could do to fight these things.” All eyes turned to the man in back. “Marcus Kurland, Green Beret. If it’s true that the center of the city is the likeliest target for those monsters, then that seems like the best place to set up some booby traps. We have the home field advantage. It’s only smart that we should use it.”

 

New York was filled with new life as the orders were distributed. By being given something to do, people felt less helpless, like they could do something to make a difference instead of just wait to die. Food, medical gear, and other supplies were gathered, pipes were drained of their water, and shelters were established should anyone be caught outside during a surprise attack. On the roofs and in parking lots, plastic sheeting, garbage bags, flat metal, and open containers were placed outside to try and catch the mist of holy water wafting down onto the city. Down below, cars were being moved out of the street to clear up as much space as possible, but not before being drained of gasoline and having their batteries and alternators removed.

While inverters certainly weren’t something you would normally find lying around, there were enough to set up power stations across the city. At each station, anything that could be turned into a motor, be it the rare lawn mower or chainsaw, a snow blower, a motorcycle, or even a car or truck up on blocks was hooked up to one or more salvaged alternators. An alternator was simply a magnetic rotor spinning within a conducting solenoid ring, producing an electric charge. With the “motor” spinning the rotor of the alternator, a large collection of car batteries were gathered up and wired together to share one charge. This battery bank was hooked up to the alternator to be continuously charged, as well as to an inverter to convert the DC current to AC current, thereby making it usable for common electronic devices.

With these stations set up, power tools could be used and repeatedly recharged. Carpenters and construction workers were able to build and reinforce survival shelters. If it could serve as a safe place for someone, it had plywood nailed on and sheet metal welded, all blessed to withstand Gargoyle Abyss Blasts, up to a point at least. Working side by side with the carpenters, Marcus and other survivalists and members of the military were busy setting up traps. There were even troops from Baltoh’s legions helping.

Supplies and weapons were being brought down from Earth by Angels and up from Hell by the Damned Heroes, giving Marcus and the others unlimited possibilities. Tripwire claymores and grenades were set up, pit falls were excavated, street lamps and power lines were rigged to topple over with either blades attached like a serrated guillotine or guns that would open fire with blessed rounds, buildings that wouldn’t be used for shelters were stuffed with explosives, gun turrets were set up on the roofs, holy wires were stretched across streets like spider webs to catch and slash any Gargoyles and Demons that flew by, and weapon and ammo caches were hidden around the city.

Shelters and traps were all marked with spray paint and the word was spread so that as much unnecessary chaos would be avoided as possible. On the edges of the city, buildings were being reinforced without standing out. Millions of people had to be hidden in the outer ring when the next attack came, so work was hurried to produce as much shelter as time would allow. Without the sky overhead or electricity in the power lines, the only way to tell time was through the clock on a cell phone or car or a wristwatch. Even if people knew the time, getting sleep was next to impossible. With the blinding light of the planet’s interior all around them, the circadian rhythms of everyone in New York was screwed up beyond recognition. Whether it was 3:00 am or pm on the surface made no difference to the people in the city. Night and day were gone.

While all this was happening, Angels, Archangels, Damned Heroes, and even Baltoh himself were teaching anyone able to hold a gun or a blade how to defend themselves. This was the hardest part, as Angels and spirits from Hell were endlessly questioned and all the Archangels got suckered up to. It was pretty hard to teach someone how to decapitate a Gargoyle when they were on their knees, praying for dear life. Baltoh was the teacher with the best results, not because mentoring Rosemary and leading his armies had taught him how to guide people, but because everyone kept their mouths shut and their guards raised when they were around him. They were afraid of him, afraid of what he was. After all, he was half-Demon.

 

“Ok, hold on, there’s something I want to try!”

Selene was in the middle of sparring with Baltoh out in one of New York’s parks. While they had started out serious, the lesson had tumbled into something rather silly, more like a playful wrestling match with her doing more laughing than fighting. Every time she would attack him, he would effortlessly reflect her and toss her back. Hitting the grass just made her laugh like she was riding a roller coaster. Even Baltoh found himself chuckling, simply by seeing how amused she was. But perhaps

“All right, come at me.”

Selene tried to take a deep breath and prepare herself to attack, but seeing the small, expectant smirk on his face made her bust out into a shrill cackle and fall over. It was no use trying. She was over-stimulated, like a child experiencing a sugar rush.

“Don’t do that face, you’re making me laugh!”

“I’m not making a face! Now come on, show me this move of yours.”

Selene got to her feet and forced her breathing and heart rate to settle. Calming down, she took a deep breath and then charged towards him. With two meters of space, she jumped into the air, tucked herself into a ball with one leg extended, and tried to bring her heel down onto Baltoh’s head. As usual, he caught her leg and tossed her back like she was weightless, but with unnatural agility, she stuck the landing and faced him again.

“Yes, I’m familiar with that move. I strongly advise against it. The flip will disorient you and make it impossible to measure distances while in the air. You were lucky you hit me with your foot, because you could have just as easily come six inches short or knocked me on the shoulder with the back of your knee. Not to mention you leave yourself totally exposed, either because your body falls downwards or you can’t unravel fast enough to block an attack. Demonic entities also have those pesky horns. A nice attempt, but too flashy.”

“No, I’m sure I can get it right. I just need to work the kinks out. I’ll just practice on Sinners.”

“Fine… but only if they are unarmed and alone. Don’t try that move in a crowd with guns pointed at you.”

The sound of wing beats interrupted their conversation and Baltoh and Selene looked up to see Molly floating down to them, her blonde hair fluttering like the feathers of her wings.

“Molly…” Selene gasped.

While the two friends had both been at the funeral, they hadn’t talked much since they came back as Angels. Baltoh said nothing, but his expression was lighthearted. The blonde Angel stepped down onto the grass and took several deep breaths before speaking, and even then, her voice was barely audible. “I want to fight. In the next battle… I want to fight with you two.”

“Molly, are you sure? Are you really up to it?” Selene asked with worry.

While unable to meet her gaze, Molly nodded. “I want to get stronger so that nobody ever makes me a victim again. And I want to do my part to make sure that nobody else has to suffer the same fate I did. I can’t let this go on if there is something I can do to stop it. I don’t want to have any more regrets.”

Her eyes widened, as in the blink of an eye, Selene rushed over and embraced her. “I’m so glad to have you back, Molly. When you died, I thought I would never see you again. I don’t want to ever be separated from you like that. I love you too much. We’ll stick together forever,” she murmured, holding her friend.

Molly tried to keep back tears and simply nodded, not trusting her voice.

“So, Molly, would you like to get started?” Baltoh asked with a kind smile.

She again nodded, smiling like he was with her confidence having returned.

“Like Selene, you should have been reborn with the natural knowledge of hand-to-hand fighting. I’m not teaching you how to fight, so much as giving you a chance to experiment with that knowledge and get used to it. Think of me as a reactive punching bag. I won’t attack you for real, but I will deflect you so that you learn to spot your own openings and learn how to keep your cool, as well as teach you how Gargoyles move. Now come at me with your best shot.”

Selene stepped back and Molly charged towards him, reaching into her subconscious and grabbing at whatever instinct flared up first. Snatching that mental thread, she jumped into the air for a double kick, trying to hit Baltoh with both feet at once. Easily avoiding her, he grabbed her by the ankles, spun around, and tossed her fifteen feet away. She hit the ground with a thud that knocked the air from her lungs, but got to her feet with her eyes studying Baltoh from head to toe, trying to find a weakness.

She had a new look on her face, much like the one he had seen on Selene when they first started sparring. It was focused determination, a nearly obsessive narrowing of her mind on her opponent. Her fear had vanished from her heart, replaced with the curious and frustrated drive to succeed and overcome the challenge before her. As long as there was something she hadn’t yet tried, she would keep getting up time and time again.

She charged a second time, throwing punches as fast as she could at Baltoh. At the same time, Selene leapt through the air to try and kick him in the side of the head. Grabbing Molly’s wrist and Selene’s ankle, he spun around and threw the two women in opposite directions. Hitting the ground once again, the tension and focus that had manifested for only a minute disappeared like the fear it originally had replaced. Lying on the ground, she started giggling, along with Selene.

With the two women laughing in childish amusement, Baltoh chuckled to himself. “Damn, what in the world am I supposed to do with you two?”

 

Excuses

 

Gather in Yankee Stadium, immediately.

The order was given through the Saint Beckon spell, telepathically addressing all of the Archangels in New York. What was unusual was that the voice was recognized as belonging to Baltoh. Was another battle about to start? So soon? The last one had ended less than a day ago, but they all followed the instruction, even the original seven, finding Baltoh standing on the pitcher’s mound in the stadium. His arms were crossed and there was a look of clear frustration on his face.

Once everyone had touched down, he began to speak. “It has come to my attention that you all are shamefully weak.” They all glanced at each other, sneering from the insult. Michael was already simmering. “As Archangels, you are all born with energy reserves greater than that of Demons. I was hoping that that advantage would help us to overcome the Demons’ greater numbers. I was wrong, embarrassingly so. The first battle weeded out the weakest of you, but something tells me that many of you are no stronger than they were and won’t last much longer.

Since God has not seen fit to boost your strength himself or create more Archangels, it seems I must take matters into my own hands. I’m going to train all of you to fight like actual warriors. I am going to be a cold-hearted, sadistic bastard and make all of you suffer Hell itself, and in exchange, hopefully I can jam some steel in your spines.”

“You got a lot of nerve thinking you can order us around like this!” an Archangel shouted from in the crowd.

His name was Remiel, one of the original seven, just like Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. His demeanor unchanging, Baltoh strode forward and entered the crowd, all the Archangels getting out of his way as he approached Remiel. Without the slightest warning, Baltoh pulled back his fist and punched the Archangel in the face, breaking his nose and sending him sprawling. His comrades all gasped in horror, but ignoring them, Baltoh got on top of Remiel and began beating him savagely. He wore a poker face, but his arm moved like a piston. His fist soon became bloody, but the blood wasn’t his own. The other Archangels tried to pull him off, but he knocked them all back with his tail.

“Damn it, Baltoh! You’ll kill him!” Michael yelled, coming at him with his sword.

Baltoh turned, caught the blade with his hand, then ripped it out of Gabriel’s grip and smacked him upside the head with the handle. At the very least, he stopped beating Remiel, who was groaning in agony with his face looking like raw hamburger meat. Baltoh stood up and tossed the sword aside. All the Archangels stared at him, terrified of what he would do next, and furious for the pain of their comrade.

“See? You’re all weak. What happens when we get close enough to Hell that the really strong Demons start attacking? When you’re all staring at a Titan or a Master of Torture? He won’t stop hitting until you’re dead. I don’t have the time or the patience to hold your hands and carry you through this. You all need to get your act together. I would prefer to get you down into Hell where we would have more time and space, but everything is too chaotic down there right now and we’d be noticed immediately. That means that I am going to have to work you even harder to make up for lost time.

From this moment forward, you don’t get to refuse me, you don’t get to make excuses, and you don’t get to fail. If you so much as try to run, I will punish you for wasting my time.”

“And what makes you think you can order all of us?” Michael challenged.

“Good point. Tell you what: if all of you together can beat me in a fight, right now, you’ll have proved me wrong and I’ll let you all go. I’ll even make it easy on you. I’ll fight with both hands behind my back, no sword and no spells.”

Michael didn’t need to say another word. Summoning his sword, he charged towards Baltoh with a lion’s roar. Following their commander’s lead, all the Archangels did the same. His face portraying boredom, Baltoh dodged Michael’s downward swing and jumped into the air, kicking him in the side of the head. Touching back down, he gave another leap before the Archangels could close in on him, shooting over their heads to the edge of the crowd. Before landing, he kicked an Archangel square in the nose, sending him to the ground with a few broken teeth and a lot of blood.

His demeanor calm, Baltoh lashed out with his tail and knocked his nearby foes off their feet. Uriel, another one of the originals, came at him for a horizontal slash at the neck. Baltoh ducked down and then got him with a headbutt. He then charged into the fray, kicking every Archangel that stood before him. A lot of the work he did with his tail, wildly swinging the bladed end to slash at anyone who got too close. He didn’t even need his wings, nor did he want them. They would have only gotten in his way.

In the stands, Selene, Molly, and Marcus watched the fight progress like it was a baseball game. Both women were glad they had followed the Archangels, and Marcus was glad they brought him with them.

“So, was Green Beret training ever like this?” Selene asked her brother.

“Hell no. I mean, once or twice, someone would get fed up and attack whoever was giving the orders, but it never got this bad.”

“Were you one of those guys?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Goddamn, it’s completely one-sided!” Molly snickered.

“I know, right? I can’t believe these guys are supposed to be our superiors. At least they keep getting up.”

Down below, everyone had already been brought down once and was going at Baltoh for another try. Minutes passed, Baltoh never missing a step or failing to take out his opponent. The longer the fight went on, the more brutal he became, using his horns to gouge his enemies, stabbing them with his tail, or even taking their swords and wielding them with his teeth. It wasn’t even an hour before everyone gave up, facedown in the dirt and groaning from their injuries. Rosemary hadn’t even bothered to fight. Like Baltoh, the first battle had showed her how weak the Archangels were, and that strength difference could not be allowed to exist. She was sitting on the grass, reading her bible to kill time.

Baltoh cricked his neck and sighed in disappointment. “You think this will be your story? You think that this siege will end in victory with the humans carrying you on their shoulders? You think that they’ll spend the next thousand years praising you and God and singing of your accomplishments? You’re wrong. You are not the heroes of this war. You are merely the bystanders, too weak to do anything else but watch on the sidelines. Go ahead and fight the Demons and Bleaks in your little one-on-one struggles, try to keep up with me. When the true horrors of Hell arrive, you’ll realize how insignificant you really are. You’ll realize that in the grand scheme, you Archangels, you mighty warriors, have been left behind.

You are all trapped in the past, abandoned by evolution, while the Devil has bred greater and greater monstrosities. Goliaths alone outnumber you, and the only Archangel capable of fighting one is the youngest.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Baltoh turned, seeing Michael on his feet. “You’re one to talk for someone who got beaten by Iscariot.”

“Yet I’m still stronger than you. Alone, I was able to take you all down. You claim you have God on your side, but the strength he gives you is nothing. Think, Michael! Tenebrous has Seven Hell Princes! Do you have any idea how you compare to them? Against the Seven Hell Princes, the Original Seven Archangels are lower than insects!”

Baltoh then stormed over and grabbed him by the collar and Michael tried to wrench himself free.

“I do have God on my side!”

“Then beg your God for strength! Beg him for power, and see how alone you really are! Do you want to know why he won’t give you the power to fight the wraths of Hell? Because he’s afraid that those who are given power will question him! That they’ll gain the confidence to voice their own opinions and judge him for all that he has done! That they’ll finally realize what an unfit ruler he is and betray him like Lucifer! You want proof? Look at your wrists! To break those rosaries is supposed to be your choice, but he took it away from you! That power is a right that predates God and you can’t even use it!

It would be so easy for God to make you strong enough to obliterate me, to leave me in the dust and enter a new era of power, so why won’t he do it? You, you alone could stop this whole mess if that bastard in the clouds wasn’t so paranoid and would give you the power that we need! How does it feel to know that the Devil trusts his subordinates more than God trusts you?”

Michael didn’t respond. That last question had struck a nerve and left him unable to think up any words.

Cursing, Baltoh tossed him aside and addressed the crowd of Archangels. “Everyone on your feet! Since God won’t make you stronger, I’ll have to!”

 

Civilians watched in confusion as every Archangel trudged down the empty street, forced by Baltoh to run laps around the city. This was no normal jog, as they all carried Ultimate Penitence crosses on their backs like Christ on his way to be crucified. The enchanted lumber was heavy enough as it was, but imbedded in every cross was a Hellsteel bullet, further adding to the weight. The faces of the warriors were contorted in agony as they struggled under the crosses.

This was certainly not the first time Rosemary had performed this exercise. Baltoh used to make her do it for days at a time back when she was his student. But even she was having a hard time, having lost her edge in the twenty years since then. She had started out way ahead of everyone, but her strength soon dried up. She was still in the lead, but sweat was pouring down her face. One thing she was certain of, Baltoh was being a lot harsher now to everyone than he had ever been on her when it was just the two of them. It seemed he really was worried about the people he was supposed to rely on in this war.

“Move it, weaklings! People are depending on you!” Baltoh shouted.

He was walking behind the crowd, using his tail to whip any Archangels that fell behind. Resting on his shoulder was his sword, a reminder to anyone who would look back at him of just how weak they were in comparison.

 

In a street cleared of cars, Baltoh ordered everyone to do push-ups, still with the crosses on their backs. The pavement became drenched with the sweat and tears of Archangels, several even vomiting from the exertion. Baltoh showed mercy to no one, using Blessed Lightning to electrocute anyone who stopped. Michael seemed like the only one not drowning in misery, wanting to prove Baltoh wrong and show how powerful he really was.

“You think this is bad? This is nothing compared to what you would suffer in Hell! How do you hope to survive this war if you can’t even survive training?”

Baltoh heard a loud thud as one of the Archangels got out from under her cross and stood up. Pale skin with short black hair, she was practically shooting daggers from her eyes. She charged towards him, sword in hand. “You son of a bitch!” she shrieked.

Summoning his own blade, Baltoh shattered her weapon with a lazy swing and punched her in the gut. Coughing up blood, she fell to the ground and he rested his sword on her back, exposing her to a mere fraction of the weight. She gagged in pain as her ribs and spine were fractured from that light press.

“Getting frustrated and throwing a temper tantrum won’t protect anyone and it sure as Hell won’t save you.” He looked out to the Archangels, staring at him. “Are you angry at me? Do you hate me? Then kill me! Show me you have the strength to bring me down! Beg your God for power! You can either get stronger or you can die!”

 

Deciding to give everyone a break to rest their bodies, Baltoh summoned a line of Inferno Abyss cauldrons, filling up the street with the volcanoes of Hellfire. Their exercise was to float above the cauldrons while Baltoh pushed down on them with his energy. He floated over the ruins of a destroyed office building, the air around him shimmering from the oppressive weight of his power. It was this ethereal weight that had sent the office building crumbling.

In front of him, the Archangels were struggling to maintain their altitude, all of them gasping for air from exhaustion and desperately flapping their wings to stay in position. It was just like when Baltoh used Ragnarök, when they had all been pinned to the ground. Below them, the flames of Hell burned like powdered thermite, a strong incentive for them not to fall. Would Baltoh stop this exercise if one of them died? Surely, he would show some mercy and try to keep as many of them alive as possible, right?

 

“Forbidden Demon Art: Dungeon Rampart!”

The contact of Baltoh’s hand to the ground brought about violent tremors throughout the city, as a great mass was added to the stone island. A gargantuan wall appeared, a kilometer in height and width and a hundred meters in thickness. The wall was made from bricks of Hellonyx, brought forth from the Underworld and stronger than any material on Earth, one of the few materials that could withstand a Hellsteel attack. In the center, a massive Demon’s face had been inscribed with a drawbridge serving as its mouth, the bridge being as sturdy and resilient as the wall around it. It was the most powerful defensive spell in the arsenal of Demons, equal to the Rose Window Shield, which was able to hold back Hell’s armies.

He turned to the Archangels, all wondering what sort of horrible trial they would endure. “Behind this wall could be a million people about to be mauled by Demons, and if you don’t break it down, they’ll all die horribly. That scenario perfectly describes our situation right now, because your weakness is costing the lives of millions of people. Whoever can make the biggest mark on this thing gets to sit out the next exercise.”

Like caged animals clawing at their doors, all of the Archangels began hacking away at the wall with everything they had. These exercises Baltoh was putting them through were nothing short of a death march, so to have a reprieve from the next trial was tantamount to winning the prize of life itself. Driven by desperation and fear, the Archangels bombarded the Dungeon Rampart with every drop of energy they had.

Divinity Rays, bolts of lightning, tongues of white fire, and all other offensive spells erupted across the wall’s surface, but even against all their strength, they were unable to even put a dent in it. Their swords shattered against it uselessly, and no explosion, no matter how powerful, could even chip the Hellonyx.

Frustration turned to terror, countless Archangels beginning to sob in terror at the prospect of failure. They became completely hysterical, banging their broken swords against the wall to try and create some kind of damage. They would turn back to Baltoh, hoping for some sign of approval, some hint of mercy to suggest he might let them off easy. Instead they would see his scowl and the hatred he bore, the hatred of their weakness, his crimson sclera burning like the flames of Hell. They would scream in terror like they had just seen the Devil and begin clawing at the Hellonyx with their fingernails.

As expected, Rosemary won the challenge. She used the Burning Moon Slice spell to deliver a cut across the drawbridge, a hundred feet long and a foot deep. It was the best she could do. Baltoh decided to just end it there. No one was able to continue, so he had to call it a day.

 

The Crashing Tides of War

 

With Selene held in his protective embrace, Baltoh rolled to the side and flipped the bed as a stray blast struck the balcony of the hotel room where the two lovers had been sleeping. Outside, a battle had started and the forces of Hell were once again advancing on New York in search of food.

“Selene, are you hurt?” he asked, pushing the mattress off them with his tail.

She shook her head, jittery from the sudden shock. He stood up, still clutching her against his bare chest. “Good, then let’s get our clothes. It’s time to fight once more.”

After getting dressed, the Hybrid and Angel flew out of the destroyed hotel room and looked across the city. Already, Archangels and Demons were zooming between the buildings while their blades and spells clashed, massive torrents of Gargoyles were bursting out of the ground like geysers of oil, and Bleaks and Sinners were marching down the roads, battling the residents of New York. In the streets, Baltoh’s troops were fighting alongside citizens and helping to evacuate the noncombatants into established shelters.

Baltoh shot off towards the nearest deluge of Gargoyles with Selene following him and Molly soon after. “Angel Art: Wings of the Crusader! Demon Art: Blades of Darkness!”

Two tempered auras of white light radiated from his Angel wings while two steel-like fins of dark energy stretched from his Demon wings. Spinning like a top, Baltoh dove into the Gargoyle horde and began carving a massive gap in their numbers. With his powered wings, he sliced through the forces of Hell as if they were pieces of meat dropped into a food processor. Misty clouds of blood sprayed out from the rising pillar of Gargoyles and shredded body parts blanketed the surrounding area like sleet.

The sound of gunfire pulled Selene and Molly’s attention away from him and drew it downwards, where a van was speeding down the street with the driver recklessly running over the Sinners and Gargoyles on foot. A blessed vehicle, it shattered the skeletons of the foot soldiers and ripped apart the beasts like pieces of fruit. While the van plowed through the dark forces that filled the street, glass rained down from the office building to their right as Sinners leapt from the windows, howling curses with their swords in hand.

Selene swooped down to protect the van. “Molly, try to hold them off!”

Having learned to overcome her fear and fight against the forces of darkness, her friend countered with fire in her heart and determination in her eyes, “Leave it to me!”

Her hand pointed at the raining skeletons, Molly launched a narrow Divinity Ray, like the miniature Abyss Blasts that Gargoyles fired. The blast whiplashed across the building, and while not powerful enough to slice it in half like a full-sized Divinity Ray, it easily obliterated the Sinners. With broken and charred bones falling but more Sinners continuing to drop like paratroopers, Selene took drastic action. Standing on the roof of the vehicle, she spun around like a ballerina while crouched with her wings extended, almost making the van look like a helicopter with its rotor spinning. Any skeletons that tried to land instead collided with Selene’s wings, which were glowing with holy energy. On contact, the bones shattered like glass and were charred as if sprayed with blowtorches, hitting the ground as ash.

Below her, the passengers inside the van were firing their guns at the Gargoyles and Sinners that were chasing them like lions after an elephant. Blessed by Angels, their bullets were quite effective against the dark legions, shattering the Sinners’ skeletons and blasting gory holes straight through the Gargoyles like deer slugs through wild boars. Up ahead, Molly landed on the roof of a city bus which had an interior caked with blood and aimed her hands at the hordes of godless monsters and wretched souls. With a roar of fury, she launched two beams of golden energy from her palms, sending them streaking past the van and carving through the dark forces. With each enemy she cut down, five more would take its place, drawn by the commotion. No matter how many showed up, she refused to stop or even lower her output.

The thrill of battle and sight of the Gargoyles and Sinners were bringing back memories of the pain and humiliation she suffered at the hands of the Demons, but that pain was turning into rage and determination, and the steely resolve to avenge her own death and fight back against the unholy spawn that had raped and tortured her. Every flash of a memory from her death made her blood burn in her veins like molten metal and sent angry tears streaming down her face. The twin lasers shooting from her hands increased in size and power, almost turning into actual Divinity Rays. With a loud shriek, she doubled her output, making the ground shake and the windows of the bus shatter. The beams of light obliterated the Sinners and monsters, finally allowing the passengers in the van to get some semblance of safety.

The van came to a momentary stop and Selene stepped down with the driver’s window open. “Get to outskirts of the city. That’s where everyone is being guarded.”

Once the van left, Selene flew over to Molly, who was wiping away her tears. She brushed back a lock of Molly’s blonde hair, just as Baltoh had done, and cupped her cheek. “Hey, are you ok?”

Molly took a deep breath. “Yeah, fighting is helping me get over some issues.”

With a tender smile, Selene leaned forward and hugged her. Their consolation was cut short as the building behind them exploded into a tidal wave of rubble from a Bleak clawing its way up from Hell. Selene and Molly raised their hands and each fired a beam of holy energy at the evil conglomerate, managing to singe its body, but only inflicting as much damage as a pair of magnifying glasses on a tree trunk. The beast snarled and shielded its face from the lasers, causing two narrow pillars of smoke to rise up from its hand. The Bleak grabbed the two women and held them up, squeezing them in its powerful grip.

Crying out in the pain of the vise-like strength of the monster’s skeletal hands, Selene and Molly both aimed their hands at its face and fired beams of light into its eyes, blinding the creature with smoke pouring from its sockets. The beast reared back and howled in agony, tightening its grip on the Angels until they were coughing up blood. With its vision blurry, the Bleak opened its jaws and began charging an Abyss Blast. A kilometer away, Baltoh was facing five Demons with their powers enhanced by feeding on human flesh and they were proving to be a bit of a challenge to him.

A momentary glance, he spotted his lover and his friend in the Bleak’s grip. “Selene! Molly!”

With him distracted, one of the Demons managed a lucky shot, plunging her bone katana into his chest and piercing his heart. Ignoring the injury, Baltoh threw his sword at the colossal Bleak, striking it in the temple and ripping off the upper portion of its face and much of its cranium with the pure kinetic force of the impact. The skeleton staggered back and tried to stay alive and on its feet, allowing Selene and Molly to slip free of its grip. Before Baltoh could breathe a sigh of relief, one of the Demons attacked from behind him and managed to stab him the neck with a pickaxe made of leg and arm bones.

“You’re pissing me off!”

Even while bleeding profusely, Baltoh showed no signs of pain or weakness. He snapped the katana and shoved the pickaxe aside, then lunged towards the five Demons with a furious snarl. First reaching the she-beast that had stabbed him, he pulled his hand back and plunged it straight into the center of her ribcage, piercing her chest with his claws and ripping out bloody strips of her heart and left lung. The Demon vomited blood and tried to draw another katana from the back of her neck, but Baltoh finished her off with a slash to the face, busting open her skull with his claws.

The other four Demons attacked at once with their weapons enhanced by black flames. His sword flashing into his hand, Baltoh blocked the pickaxe strike of the second Demon, used his right wings to block the skull-headed hammer impact of the third Demon, used his left wings to block the serrated jousting lance of the fourth Demon, and used his tail to strike back against the cleaver-wielding fifth Demon. Baltoh cringed at the pain of the hammer breaking the bones in his right Angel wing and the lance piercing his left Demon wing, but he was able to deflect the attacks of the second and fifth and his wounds from the previous altercation were already healing.

Spinning around, Baltoh struck down the second Demon with his tail and the third and fourth with his sword, carving all three in half. He shifted his eyes down, about to slay the fifth, but the Demon had escaped and was flying towards Selene and Molly. They were on a nearby roof, tending to each other’s injuries with a nameless healing power. The Demon raised his blood-soaked cleaver above his head and laughed as he approached.

“Damn it!”

Watching from a distance, the microseconds seemed to be moving in slow motion for Rosemary. Her Archangel instincts were telling her to intervene and stop the Demon, but something inside her heart was telling her to wait. Selene was her enemy, the one who had taken what she always wanted from her master. Wouldn’t it be better if she were out of the picture? And if Selene were to disappear, then she could make her move on Baltoh while he was emotionally vulnerable.

Maybe it’s better she dies, then when he’s done mourning her, he’ll accept me. When he’s done mourning, he’ll be all mine.

But as the venomous words rang through her consciousness, a memory flashed across her mind’s eye. She remembered her master’s howl of agony when Selene died the first time. She remembered his energy flooding her body like poison and invoking the same emotions he was feeling. She remembered the sight of his tears and the sound of his voice, like a wolf’s howl.

A lone tear budded from her eye as guilt suddenly stabbed her through the heart. No, what the Hell am I thinking? What kind of monster am I to even think of putting him through that pain again? How can I say I love him if I’ll put my happiness ahead of his? I don’t deserve to be at his side if it means I have to hurt him! And I can’t let two innocent people die just because I’m jealous! God, have mercy on my soul for my lust, my greed, and my envy. Master… Baltoh… forgive me for even considering hurting you for my own gain. If Selene makes you happy, then I will protect your happiness! I’d rather die than see you like that again!

Wiping away the angry tears, Rosemary shot over to Selene and Molly with her hand aimed at the oncoming Demon. “I’ll never let you touch them! Angel Art: Spear of Longinus!”

From her palm, a golden voulge blade shot forth, made solely of light and as large as a car, but also being as thin as paper and moving as fast as lightning. The giant spear slipped through the Demon’s sense of detection and struck it without it even knowing what was coming, slicing the beast in half right down the middle. As the two halves of the slain monster fell out of the sky, several more Demons attacked. Normally, overcoming a stalemate was difficult when fighting even a single Demon, but having trained in the pits of Hell with Baltoh as her teacher, such a challenge was child’s play.

With a confident grin and her body wrapped in holy energy, she crouched down and slammed her hands on the roof of the building. “Now, now, boys, don’t worry! You’ll all get your turn! Angel Art: Ultimate Penitence!”

A barrage of large wooden crosses bombarded the oncoming Demon swarm, raining from the sky like a volley of arrows. Contrary to their size, each cross weighed more than the building beneath Rosemary and struck the Demons with bone-breaking force. Many were sent crashing to the ground with shattered skeletons, but several more managed to avoid the assault.

“Angel Art: Holy Burn! Angel Art: Wing Arrows!”

The first spell turned the street in front of her into a massive white pyre, further wounding the Demons that she had knocked out of the air, while she used the second spell on the Demons all approaching. With the power of armor-piercing rounds, her feathers struck the incoming beasts and forced them to stop and cast defensive spells.

“Angel Art: Crusading Canter!”

Using the speed-boost spell to hide her movements, she appeared behind each barrier and attacked the Demons with a deadly slash. A few managed to block or evade her attacks just in time, but the rest were banished into the inferno down below.

“Angel Art: Roaring Clouds of Heaven!”

She filled the air with a silver storm of holy mist, leaving the Demons coughing on the blinding vapors and trying to heal their burning flesh. Rosemary made another swipe through the floating stragglers, delivering a powerful sword slash to each and knocking them down with all the others.

With all the Demons trapped in the lake of holy flames below, she raised her hand above her head and her voice sang out. “Angel Art: Divinity Ray!”

She dropped her hand and released a thunderous blast of golden energy straight down onto the burning Demons from the sky above. The blast was more than powerful enough to drill a hole through the rock island New York was sitting on and annihilate any Demons caught within its light. She moved the Divinity Ray in all directions, making sure she didn’t miss a single inch of ground or a surviving Demon.

Once she was sure they were all dead, Rosemary returned to Selene and Molly while trying to conceal her envy. “Are you two all right? I know my master would be worried if you were harmed.”

Selene gave her a smile of gratitude, “we’re ok, thank you so much.”

 

They came up from the streets, bathed in flames and made of cursed steel. Tanks, built in Hell and driven by Sinners howling in bloodlust; they spelled further trouble for the humans and Damned Heroes on the ground. Rolling up to the surface, their turrets swiveled in the direction of the tallest buildings and opened fire. The launched shells pierced sides of the New York skyscrapers and detonated, blasting out the windows with black flames. All those with the Chrysler Building in their sights focused on that one target and fired.

Round after round impacted against the massive tower, sending lines of explosions crawling all the way up the sides and threatening to split it open. With each impact, office furniture and dead bodies were hurled out of the destroyed windows, along with countless tons of rubble. The building’s skeleton gave way under the hellish barrage and a terrifying groan echoed through the city. With steel girders and metal supports roaring from the pressure, the tower began to collapse, moving slowly as it was brought down like a felled tree. The sound it made when it landed was eerily quiet, a mere endless rumble, and the cloud of dust and smoke it threw up was like that of a nuclear explosion, encompassing the whole area around where the tower had once stood and sealing everyone in a dry fog.

With the gray clouds hiding their movements, a group of Damned Heroes ran across the roofs of the buildings alongside a line of tanks. They were US soldiers who had died in Desert Storm, and as fate would so have it, the Sinners down below them were all former members of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Taking advantage of the high ground, the troops all aimed their rocket launchers down at the tanks below. Of course, their rocket launchers weren’t standard issue for US soldiers; most of them had been scavenged from throughout Hell from other sources. Many were Russian RPGs, and a few of them were even made by Sinners before being stolen.

“Blast them back to Hell!”

Upon the squad commander’s order, the triggers were pulled and the rockets were launched with tails of fire. Even while made of cursed steel, the tanks held no advantage against the blessed bombs. They all exploded into towering infernos, incinerating the Sinner drivers and helping clear away some of the dust.

A short distance away, a Sinner was manning the machine gun turret of a tank, laughing as he mowed down a cluster of civilians rushing towards a shelter built inside a diner. Seeing where they were headed, the Sinner barked an order to his comrade operating the main cannon. The weapon swiveled in the direction of the diner and a brave group of humans in the kitchen opened fire, offering themselves up for sacrifice to let the others escape through the back. Their bravery was unrewarded, as when the round was launched, it soared straight through the kitchen window and detonated with enough power to lift the entire building off its foundations and kill everyone inside and on the run, their blood soaking the rubble and stinking of metal.

The skull of the Sinner manning the machine gun shattered, having been struck in the temple with a well-placed musket round. Charles Blackwood, the British officer who had fired it, raised his hand as a signal to his comrade behind him, a Japanese soldier from WWII by the name of Akira Matsumoto. Machinegun in hand, the young man sprinted towards the tank with the inhabitants now aware of the presence of the two Damned Heroes. The turret swiveled in the direction of oncoming Japanese soldier, but before the round could be fired, a second musket shot zipped over the soldier’s head, passed through the small sight window below the turret, and killed the Sinner before he could fire. Unlike other officers back from his time period, Charles had earned his rank, a true expert marksman.

Akira leapt up onto the top of the tank, activated a stick grenade, and dropped it down into the cabin. He ducked into an alley before the bomb exploded and ripped the tank open from the inside, making it resemble a peeled banana. Just as Akira was about to come out from his hiding spot, a hail of gunfire from down the street peppered the corner of the building where he was hiding. At the intersection was a line of Sinners, all with assault rifles.

His musket reloaded, Charles glanced down the street and saw the spray paint marking of a booby trap on the side of one of the buildings between him and the Sinners. Right in front of them was a power line pole stocked with guns, all with wire-tied triggers that would go off if the pole fell, and at its base was the small explosive that would send it toppling over. The officer pulled back the lever of the flintlock rifle and took aim down the street. This was quite literally a long shot, but there was no wind and he had used this gun long enough to know how to compensate for its inaccuracies. His target sighted, he pulled the trigger and launched the lead ball with a puff of smoke.

The round struck the explosive at the base of the pole, setting it off and bringing the small tower down. As it fell, the wire secured to the guns tightened on their triggers. All at once, the assault rifles opened fire on full automatic, spraying the Sinners with blessed rounds and turning the walking skeletons into piles of splintered bone. Before a sigh of relief could be given, the sound of heavy footfalls echoed from the other end of the street. It was another group of Sinners, these ones armed with swords.

In their respective alleys, the British officer and Japanese soldier both chuckled to themselves and proceeded to step out into the open. Walking out into the middle of the street and standing side by side, they shouldered their firearms and pulled out their swords. The officer drew his saber and the soldier revealed a military-issued wakizashi. With confident grins on their faces, both men charged.

Several miles away, in a slightly quieter area of the city, the long-dead cowboy Riley was drumming his fingers on his lap with fearful impatience as civilians who had been out scavenging were herded onto a bus to be driven to the outskirts. “Come on, come on! We’re sitting ducks out here!”

“That’s it, they’re all inside!”

Up on the roof of the bus sat a knight from the Second Crusade by the name of Ricardo, executed in Jerusalem for rescuing Muslim civilians from the blades of other crusaders. Next to him was a man named Bart, a former guard from back when Smith & Wesson was a bank, much like Riley. He was armed with a double-barrel shotgun and stretched across his chest was an ammo belt of 12-gauge slugs, each of which tipped with a cluster of holy nails for added devastation. Both were staying secured with makeshift harnesses, allowing them to remain on the roof of the vehicle and not fall off, though they would probably need to sever their binds when the fighting started. The knight knocked on one of the windows, telling the driver it was safe to go.

“Heads up boys, we’ve been spotted!” Bart hollered as the bus began chugging forward.

Up above them, a swarm of Gargoyles was swooping in, having picked up the smell of humans. Riley drew his repeating rifle and chambering a shell of blessed lead from the inferno. “Move this heap of metal as fast as possible!”

He took aim at the approaching flock of beasts and fired, staying just within the weapon’s lethality range. The small round struck one of the Gargoyles in the side of the chest, puncturing a lung. As the beast spiraled through the air and struggled to stabilize itself, the bus was brought up to its maximum speed and roared down the bloodstained street.

“Ha!”

He kicked his Hell-spawn horse in the ribs and yanked on its reins. Grudgingly obeying, the undead stallion released a bone-chilling scream and took off in a gallop after the bus. Turning around in his saddle, the cowboy chambered another round in his rifle and fired, this time managing to strike a Gargoyle in the forehead and rip away half of its unholy life. In retaliation, the remaining Gargoyles all opened their jaws and released a storm of Abyss Blasts, ripping the street apart a few inches shy of the bus’s back wheels and the hooves of Riley’s horse.

Trying not to fall off the bus, Bart raised his shotgun with two of his special slugs already loaded. He took aim at the Gargoyle with the most prominent blast and fired the first round. Propelled by a compressed explosion, the load of buckshot and the cluster of nails shot out with tremendous power, retaining just enough proximity to each other that when they struck the Gargoyle’s face, their combined strength was enough to rip its head open and kill it. Bart switched to the next Gargoyle that seemed the most dangerous out of the group and fired again, this time blasting a hole in its chest.

As Riley and Bart thinned the heard with their bullets, the bus swerved and screeched through the streets of New York. The roads had barely been cleared of abandoned cars and getting this far into the city had been more than rough. Now the metal giant was crashing into everything on the road, throwing off Bart’s aim. Behind them, any vehicles that had not been drained of gas were tossed sky high in fiery eruptions as the Abyss Blasts of the Gargoyles cleaved them in half and ignited their fuel tanks.

His rifle empty, Riley gave a curse and rode up alongside the bus and knocked on one of the windows. The window was opened and he handed the woman inside his rifle and hat. “I need you to reload for me!”

The woman nodded and Riley grabbed the reins of his steed. Yanking yard on the holy binds, he got the Demonic horse to turn around and jump up onto the abandoned cars lining the street. “Ha!”

He gave his mount a hard kick, setting it off in another gallop. The horse worked tirelessly as Riley drew his pistols, leaping from hood to trunk to hood of each car. As he and the flock of Gargoyles passed each other, he raised his revolvers and opened fire into the densest pocket of the group. He planted twelve bullets into the herd, managing to paralyze three beasts and knock them out of the air before he was far behind them. With his horse galloping through the destroyed street, he reloaded and again shot as fast as his thumbs would let him draw back the hammers of his guns. This time, he focused his shots on one Gargoyle, bringing it down and killing it with a few bullets to spare.

The Gargoyles began moving back and forth and changing their altitude, while a few even hung back and opened fire on him. Up ahead, the rear window of the bus was smashed and a SWAT officer looked out with his M4 carbine. In quick, careful bursts, he clipped away at the horde. Out of bullets, Riley took advantage of the distraction the SWAT officer was serving as and raced back up alongside the bus. On cue, one of the windows was opened and his rifle and hat were handed back to him. He swung the rifle around his hand to chamber the first round, then aimed back and shot the last Gargoyle in the forehead, managing to end its life.

Up ahead, the street gave way to the riverside with the towers of a suspension bridge in view. Coming out between two buildings, the bus nearly flipped from the sharpness of the turn, now driving parallel to the dry riverbed. The bus took a left turn onto the bridge, once again making Bart and Ricardo feel grateful that they had been secured to the roof. As they hurtled down the bridge, fresh Gargoyle screams could be heard from up ahead. It was a new flock, smaller than the first one but approaching fast.

Bart, Riley, and the SWAT officer in the bus all reloaded their weapons and opened fire in unison. Bart’s loads of buckshot and nails ripped away the life of any Gargoyle they struck in a bloody mess, Riley’s well placed shots skewered the hearts and brains of the beasts and knocked them out of the air, and the SWAT officer’s carbine riddled them with holes and turned them into Swiss cheese. As the bus reached the midway point of the bridge, the Gargoyles managed to overcome the raining lead and several landed on the roof with their talons digging into the steel, but with many more trying to grab hold but sliding off. With the fight now switching to close-range combat, the Ricardo stood up and drew his blessed sword and shield.

He swung at the closest Gargoyle with his shield, knowing that it would block the attack. Just as he predicted, the Gargoyle deflected with its arm, opening up its defenses and letting him pierce it through the chest with his sword. The beast snarled and hissed in pain as the holy blade ripped its heart, and with a roar of exertion, Ricardo cut straight up through its head. Shoving the slain monster aside, he pounced on the next Gargoyle and brought his sword down upon its shoulder, slicing it diagonally across the torso with enough force to rip its ribcage open like a piece of fruit. He then dispatched it with a solid strike to the side of the head with his shield.

Ten feet away, one of the Gargoyles opened its jaws and launched an Abyss Blast, forcing Ricardo to duck behind his shield. The black laser splashed off the metal barrier like water on rock, threatening to break it, but never succeeding. Just as he was going to sever the line to his harness and try to advance on the Gargoyle, a load of nails and buckshot from Bart’s shotgun blasted it in the face and ripped off its skull. A roar of fury in its throat, a Gargoyle leapt forward and pierced him through the chest with its tail. Fatally wounded but knowing he would resurface in Hell, Bart drew his hunting knife and stabbed the creature in the side of the neck. As its toxic blood spilled out and filled the beast’s throat, he pulled the knife back out and then imbedded it in the monster’s forehead, killing it.

With Bart disappearing in a flash of Hellfire, Ricardo turned to the three remaining Gargoyles. A storm of bullets from inside was fired upwards, shredding the roof before the fight could start. The blessed rounds tore through the Gargoyles’ flesh with ease, crippling them and granting him the chance to deliver the finishing blow.

“How close are we to the hideout?” Riley hollered. The cries of monsters answered his question before the humans could. “Damn it! Make a right turn at the third street from here!”

Following his instructions, the driver sped past two street entrances with a third flock of Gargoyles chasing after him. At the third street, the tires screeched from its steel frame flexing under the pressure of the tight turn. The Gargoyles followed suit, but upon entering the airspace above the road, they were slaughtered. Like flies in a spider web, they became caught in a net of holy wires stretched across the urban valley. The blessed cords cut through the Gargoyles’ flesh like a knife, leaving the creatures stranded in the air to bleed to death with their severed limbs falling into the street below.

Riley wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but he knew that escape in this case was little more than moving from one dangerous area to another and hoping for different results. The city had not yet reached Hell but the rules were already the same.

 

Rise

 

There were over a hundred of them, ferocious Demons chanting in excitement and closing in on Baltoh’s location. Hovering over the buildings with Selene at his side, he cricked his neck with a calm expression, but his voice was stern. “Selene, remember that rule about how we always had to be able to see each other? This is the exception. I want you to find Molly and retreat to some far-off corner of the city. Hide somewhere and don’t come out until the battle ends.”

“Will you be all right against this many?”

Baltoh summoned his sword and gun. “I’ve fought armies like this before. Now go!”

Selene flew down to the street, where Molly was hiding in an alley and tending to a large cut on her arm. “Come on, we have to go. Baltoh wants us out of this area before the chaos starts.”

Molly nodded and stood up, spreading her wings to take off. Before her feet could leave the pavement, bladed chains reached out from the other end of the alley and wrapped around her like bandages around a mummy. “Selene!” she screamed as she was pulled back like a yo-yo.

“Molly!” her friend called, chasing after her with her heart sinking into her stomach.

A cold sweat budding on his skin, Baltoh heard the women’s voices and turned back to see the tips of Selene’s wings as she sprinted after Molly. Something had happened. Something terrible had slipped past his guard and attacked them. If Molly had just been grabbed by a Demon, then her chances of survival were next to none, not to mention her death would not come peacefully. He had to save them!

A barrage of Claw Bullets forced him to turn his attention back to the airborne army of Demons, so close that he could see their glinting fangs and burning eyes. The projectiles lodged themselves in his flesh like bee stings, a painful attack, but one that wouldn’t slow him down.

“Damn it! I don’t have time for you!”

He leveled his pistol and emptied the cylinder into the army with no pauses between shots. The Hellsteel bullets drilled through the ranks, robbing Demons of their limbs simply through their proximity and the shockwave and blowing open their torsos when making direct hits.

“Angel Art: Wing Arrows! Angel Art: Holy Burn! Demon Art: Claw Bullets! Demon Art: Incineration Flood!”

From his fingers, hundreds of projectile talons were launched by the second, each one burning with black flames, while from his wings, feathers were shot while wrapped in divine fire. The storm of spells chipped away at the oncoming army in a storm of fire and blood, stopping the Demons midflight with those in front being forced back by their injuries.

“Demon Art: Abyss Blast!”

A volley of black lasers was set loose from the horde, their combined strength equal to a megaton of TNT. There were too many to block and dodging would mean allowing the blasts to hit the city. Hoping that he was skilled enough to perform the spell, Baltoh raised his hand. “Damn it all! Forbidden Demon Art: Weight of Despair!”

Above his hand appeared a black hole, a portal connecting the space above his hand to the deepest flames of Hell, and carrying a crushing gravitational pull on anything containing ethereal energy. Unlike Endara, he was limiting its power by skipping the Hellscript incantation and using it only in its first stage, not supplementing its strength with added mass. The oncoming Abyss Blasts swirled like streamers as they were pulled into the darkness, while below the sphere, Baltoh snarled in exertion and pain, trying to overcome the pull. So close to the quantum singularity, he could feel his skin being peeled away and his blood breaking free of his veins. He could see clouds of his cells leaving his body and being pulled into the gluttonous darkness.

“Release!”

With the Abyss Blasts used up, Baltoh ended the spell, causing the black hole to sputter out of existence. He was surrounded on all sides by Demons, each of them ravenous with the desire to end his life. Fear was running through his veins like blood, fear for the safety of the two Angels. Selene, Molly… please be okay.

Yet as the Demons began their onslaught, determination and rage purged his system of that fear. “Come and get me, you sons of bitches! I’LL SLAUGHTER ALL OF YOU!”

 

With each turn of the chains, Molly was sent crashing into a wall or skidding across the pavement. Anything she hit was broken from the strength of the impact, and while her Angel body allowed her to endure things she never could have as a human, the damage she was receiving was inching closer and closer to fatal levels with the breaking of her bones and the ripping of her flesh. Selene was in pursuit, flying as fast as her wings would carry her. She had lost track of Molly almost as soon as she was taken, now following the craters and broken walls left in her wake, trying to ignore the blood and strips of shredded clothes at each scene.

At last, Molly was dragged out into an empty street and crashed into a parked car, with the chains finally releasing her. Most of her bones were broken, she was covered in deep cuts from the bladed chain links, and her clothes were mere bloody scraps clinging to her exposed body, having been ripped away by everything she hit. Barely alive and struggling to stay awake, she began healing herself and cast a Repairing Barrier to mend her clothes. Second to her Demonic torture, this ordeal was the most painful experience of her life. Most of her skeleton looked like gravel and she didn’t even want to know how much blood she had lost.

As her body mended itself and her dress was reformed to protect her modesty, a dark laugh echoed through the street. “So lovely. What a sweet Angel you’ve become.”

Still in the process of healing herself, Molly slowly pushed herself up and looked around. Down the street was a Demon, laughing with the chains still dangling from his shackles. His horns pointed forward past his face and his personal weapon was a set of large bony protrusions on the backs of his fingers and hands. They were like a cross between vertebrae and brass knuckles.

“Molly Jones, your name is known throughout Hell as an accomplice to that traitor. We Demons even have sort of a bounty on your head. Whoever catches you gets bragging rights and ownership of your body, to do whatever we want with until you die–and after.”

The sight of the beautiful Angel made him lick his lips in lust and hunger. Seeing the tall figure, the light of the earth’s interior gleaming off his scaly black hide, his sharp wings extended, and his tail coiled around him, it turned Molly’s bones to ice and her blood to slurry.

The Demon held out his hand and a new chain extended from his shackle, this one with a large metal collar at the end. “I am Ziraal, your new owner. From this day forth, you are my slave. Demon Art: Predator Stare.”

The moment she met the Demon’s gaze, Molly released a silent scream of agony as she was assailed by his bloodlust. A hurricane of razor blades, that’s what it felt like, each rusty edge ripping through her flesh and tearing her to pieces as if she was being skinned alive. Not a single drop of actual blood was shed, yet the pain made her retch and her body go limp.

The Demon began walking towards her, swinging the chain back and forth and humming himself. Molly lay helpless on the ground, the agony from Ziraal’s spell leaving her paralyzed. She was in tears, not just from the monster’s spell, but from his words. She couldn’t take it! This couldn’t be real! She couldn’t let them do that to her again! She’d rather die than be subjected to that horror! To be raped and tortured all over again by the most sadistic of creatures, it was Hell in its most sickening definition! Yet even with terror turning her pulse into a chaotic mess, her body refused to move. She couldn’t get up, she couldn’t fight, and she couldn’t even breathe.

“Don’t you dare touch her!”

Dropping from the sky, Selene spun around and delivered a kick to the back of Ziraal’s head, but he dodged the attack and she landed between him and Molly. Her wings burning with holy energy, the rage on Selene’s face was terrifying. “I’ll never let you bastards touch even a hair on her head! Never again!”

“And if it isn’t Baltoh’s whore? This really is my lucky day. I was originally considering just taking the blonde one and brutalizing her to death, but that would be too quick. I’ll drag you both down to Hell in chains and twist your minds until you’re both begging for my seed. I can pit you against each other in a fight to the death over who gets the honor of being violated first!”

“You’ll need chains just to hold yourself together!”

Selene zoomed towards him with her fist pulled back. Forgive me, Baltoh, she thought as she sent her fist rocketing towards the Demon’s face. I have to break one of your rules.

With a grin, Ziraal dodged the attack and countered with a punch to the stomach, ripping her flesh with the bony protrusions on his hand and crushing her organs.

“Selene…” Molly gasped, watching in horror as her friend was sent hurtling back while spurting blood.

Barely managing to stick the landing, Selene roared at the top of her lungs and sent her strongest Divinity Ray. As if flashing from existence, Ziraal moved back and forth to dodge the gold laser and appeared behind Selene, kicking her in the back and sending her flying down the street and crashing into the front of a building. Vomiting more blood, she put her hand on her stomach and began healing her wounds, all while Ziraal laughed.

“It seems I must break you first before you will submit to me. I’ll take great pleasure in beating you until you beg for mercy and call me your master.”

Molly struggled to get up, but her body still refused to move. If she were to fight, Ziraal would beat her to within an inch of her life with ease. But Selene, she couldn’t abandon her friend!

Ziraal walked over and grabbed Selene by the throat, choking her and licking his lips at the sight of anguish on her face. “You have pride, I like that. Your fall from grace will be all the more spectacular.”

With a booming laugh, he delivered a devastating punch to her stomach, once again making her vomit blood. A second punch struck her in the cheek, shredding her face and cracking her skull. With tears pouring from her eyes, Molly could do nothing but watch as Selene was beaten with inhuman savagery. Ziraal’s spiked knuckles ripped through her flesh like it was wet tissue and her bones snapped under the impacts like they were made of dry spaghetti. Watching her best friend being ripped apart was even more painful than Ziraal’s Predator Satre. Blood sprayed with each strike and Selene’s cries of pain became silent.

At last, Ziraal grabbed her by the throat, studied her briefly, and then threw her over to Molly and released her paralysis. “You, slave, heal her so that I can break her soul like I did her body.”

Crying hysterically, Molly rushed over to Selene and began healing her with every drop of strength she had. Her face and body were a pulverized mess, but she was still breathing. With Molly’s power, Selene regained her beauty and her wounds were taken care of, but without further treatment, her bones and flesh would be more fragile than before.

Selene’s life had been saved, but Molly’s tears continued to rain down on her face. “Oh God, Selene! I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault this is happening! I’m helpless and pathetic! I deserve to be enslaved by these monsters. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! I don’t know what I can do! Please, give me some kind of instruction.”

Selene’s lips parted. “Run…”

Molly’s eyes widened as she heard the word, and clearly still in pain, Selene rolled over and pushed herself to her feet. “Run,” she said again, struggling for every breath.

“No! I can’t leave you to die! You run, just let him take me!”

Selene began to laugh as stood up. “Congratulations, you just became a living ‘dumb blonde’ joke. You idiot, there is no way I can die here and no way I’ll let him take you. My life won’t end simply because this guy is stronger. Either one of us will beat him or we’ll get help, but he’s the only one who will die today! I will protect you, Molly, no matter what pain I have to endure!”

With a flap of her wings, Selene launched herself towards Ziraal and tried to deliver a swinging kick to the face. He blocked the attack with his fist, nearly breaking both bones in her shin. Crying out in pain but refusing to give up, Selene landed on her feet and began hurling desperate punches at the Demon.

“How… How can you do it?” Molly whispered. “How can you believe you’ll win when there isn’t any hope? How can you possibly keep going?”

She could do nothing but continue to cry as Ziraal returned the onslaught, beating Selene to within an inch of her life with brutal punches. As if answering her own question, her mind flashed back to her conversation with Baltoh on the roof of the hospital with his words echoing through every fiber of her being.

I want to fight, so because of that, I need to fight. If I don’t, no matter how far I run, I’ll still be a prisoner of Hell. If I let Iscariot or the Hell Princes scare me away, then I’ll have lost my freedom to them. The day you let fear stop you from doing what you want is the day you surrender your freedom. I could spend eternity in Hell, getting ripped apart and beaten in endless, bloody combat, but as long as that is my desire, then I have more freedom than anyone else alive.

Selene was again tossed back and Molly began healing her, but she stared at her friend with her eyes wide instead of shedding tears. Selene isn’t a victim in this… she’s choosing her path. She’s not fighting because she believes she can win or even to buy time. She’s fighting simply because she wants to. If she stops fighting because she’s afraid or because there isn’t any hope, she really will lose her freedom to him. It doesn’t matter how much pain she suffers. It doesn’t matter how much stronger he is. It doesn’t matter that we’re guaranteed to lose against him. It doesn’t even matter what happens if we lose. She wants to fight. All that is important is that she doesn’t give in to fear. As long as she is willing to give it another attempt… she is free.

She lifted Selene and held her tightly, no longer trembling. “If we lose to our enemy, we become slaves, but if we lose to our fear, we are already slaves.”

The healing energy from Molly came to a stop, purposefully leaving Selene with her wounds taken care of but her body too exhausted to move. Unable to get up, she watched as Molly stepped between her and Ziraal. “Molly… what are you doing?”

“I just decided that I was sick of losing. I’ve decided I want to win, and life without success isn’t worth living. Selene, you take a break. It’s my turn to protect you.”

Ziraal laughed at her words. “Looks like the sniveling brat has some fire still in her. I can’t tell you how much I’ll enjoy extinguishing it and licking up your tears.”

Releasing a shout of determination, Molly used her wings to shoot herself at him with her fist pulled back. “I’ll either die here or walk away victorious! Either way, I’ll never let you take my freedom from me!”

With a hawk’s cry and an eagle’s talons, the dove that had fallen, now soared.

 

Baltoh’s vest and shirt were gone and he was covered in blood, but the ferocious look on his face displayed no weakness. All around him, Demon spells were falling like hurricane hailstones, but he was too preoccupied to care about the injuries he received. Moving through the storm of enemies, he slashed and shot at every black wing that fell within the line of his icy eyes.

“Demon Art: Monster Slash!”

One of his foes slashed the air and launched five invisible blades of energy at him. Baltoh countered with a Tombstone Shield, ducking behind it to escape the blast and swooping out from under it and attacking the caster. Summoning his pistol, he put the gun to the Demon’s head and ripped his skull off with a pointblank round. Behind him, an enemy swung at him with a bone hacksaw, but the Hybrid blocked it with his tail and then sliced the Demon into pieces with slashes of his wings.

“Demon Art: Iron Whip!”

Swinging his sword, he deflected the stinger of a Demon’s extending tail. Grabbing the appendage, he pulled his victim over and ended his life with a bone-crushing kick. Snatching the war hammer in the slain monster’s grip with his own tail, he turned and threw it at another Demon, knocking him out of the air like a shot bird. His eyes darting back and forth, he saw half a dozen Demons close in with their weapons ready to kill. Flapping his wings, he propelled himself straight up to avoid the onslaught and then dispatched five of them with the remaining bullets in his gun. The sixth, he killed with a bolt of holy lightning.

With more opponents closing in on him, he took off, attacking as he flew. “Angel Art: Divinity Ray!” Flipping through the air, he blasted all the foes above and below him. “Angel Art: Halo Discuss!” Straightening himself in the air, he looked back and hurled a volley of halos at the monsters pursuing him. “Demon Art: Iron Whip!” His tail stretching like rubber, he pierced a nearby Demon through the stomach, pulled her over, and used her as a shield from a storm of Claw Bullets. “Angel Art: Holy Burn!” His hands outstretched, he unleashed a volcanic eruption of white flames, setting the sky ablaze and torching all the Demons within his view.

“Demon Art: Blood Rage!”

A nameless opponent swooped down, his physical strength increasing until well surpassing Baltoh’s.

“Angel Art: Divine Smite!”

The two enemies swung their swords and a window-shattering shockwave was spawned from the colliding forces, powerful enough to disorient the surrounding Demons. The bone sword shattered against the Hellsteel blade and Baltoh sliced him in half diagonally across the chest. As his opponent fell, Baltoh was stabbed in the back by a cluster of spears, the blades being lodged in his tough muscle. His eyes glowing with fury, he turned around to the Demons that had dared attack him and blasted them with streams of Blessed Lightning.

The Demons were all closing in, knowing that they couldn’t kill Baltoh if they went one at a time. They had to all attack at once and leave him with no room to maneuver. Half of them were approaching for a physical strike and half were firing their spells in a pincer formation. Both enemies and spells approaching, Baltoh rolled his head back and roared at the top of his lungs, using his voice to expel his energy in an omnidirectional attack. The explosion of light and darkness deflected the oncoming spells easily like water on rock and the Demons it struck had their skeletons broken and their flesh burned away.

With some space cleared up, Baltoh began zigzagging through the crowd as fast as lightning, delivering heartless slashes of his sword that reduced the Demons to confetti. He couldn’t even be seen, and by the time his opponents even realized that they had been cut through, he had succeeded in carving down two more. Regardless of how many or how fast he killed them, more Demons were joining the original army to try and take him down. It didn’t matter how many came; he would slaughter them all. As long as he avoided any injuries that would slow him down or drain him of his strength, his energy and stamina would allow him to continue fighting at this level of ferocity for months without ever needing to catch his breath. As long as his body remained intact, the power of his spirit was unsurpassable.

Following the flow of Demons, Rosemary paled when she saw the flying black mass over the city, holding well over a hundred of the malicious beasts. She could sense her master in the heart of the storm, and while his power remained strong, it was the nature of it that was making her fearful. Frustration had replaced confidence, rabid anger taking the place of dedication. The harder they were forcing him to fight, the more brutal his moves were becoming.

She had seen this happen multiple times in the past, always during the fiercest battles in Hell. She couldn’t even sense him casting any spells, meaning that he was relying on his most basic combat instincts. She had to get him out of there before he did something truly reckless!

About to launch a Divinity Ray into the Demon army, Rosemary gasped at the sight of Baltoh bursting out of the top of the black storm. The Demons were reaching out to him with their clawed hands, almost looking like an inverted maelstrom. Staring at him, she gasped in terror as she realized that something was happening to his body. His lips and cheeks had vanished, revealing his shark-like teeth, his eyes were glowing like spotlights, and his hands appeared to be crusting over with hard bone, enlarging his claws so that his fingers looked more like scythe blades. His burning halo was now a bonfire, a flaming mane shared by no other entity. Rather than blood, holy and dark fire were streaming from his wounds. A subtle yet nefarious detail, his sword was not in his hands, meaning that he was instead using his sinister talons to exterminate his foes.

This was different from anything she had ever seen! His rage had never gotten this intense! He was… transforming?

Baltoh leaned his head back and unleashed a roar unlike any other, a call so loud that Rosemary had to cover her ears to keep the drums from rupturing. It lacked all humanity or kindness, both monstrous and machine-like. He dove back into the Demon horde, using only his claws, tail, and wings to mow down his foes. With a single strike of one of the bone razors, Baltoh delivered enough power to pop Demon bodies like balloons. A sweep of his hand obliterated over a dozen enemies simply through the energy and pressure in the air. He didn’t need to be in reach to touch them.

His enemies couldn’t even see him, let alone hurt him. They were mowed down effortlessly and without mercy. Rosemary could see him from outside the battle, or more accurately, she could see the river of blood he was leaving in his wake. Below the airborne army, pulverized body parts rained down into the streets and formed mountains almost as tall as the buildings.

A bright flash was seen and a tsunami of black and white flames flared out from the center of the storm. Instead of using his hand, the inferno was shooting out from between Baltoh’s jaws. Rosemary shuddered as she saw him, saw the flames streaming past his jagged teeth, saw the heartless glow in his eyes, saw the blood running from his talons, and heard the unspeakable roar he then unleashed. To her, he was no longer a man. He had become some kind of horrific dragon! She had to bring him back before it became permanent!

Baltoh burst out of the Demon army, turned around, and blasted the black horde with a twisted storm of dark and light energy. Almost the entire swarm was set ablaze, looking like a giant wasp nest being hit with a flamethrower. The combined flames were burning faster than the Demons could respond, turning their bodies into ash in seconds. Realizing they were facing something well beyond their comprehension, the survivors tried to flee, but still blood-drunk, Baltoh hunted them all down. At speeds surpassing the Crusading Canter or Shade Shimmer, he caught up to the running beasts and executed them like prisoners of war.

The army slain and the streets buried under butchered body parts, Baltoh roared one final time… then turned his gaze on Rosemary. Seeing his eyes and the nothingness within them, she felt her heart drop into her stomach. Did he even recognize her? Was he about to attack her next? She summoned her sword out of fear, but in the literal blink of an eye, Baltoh appeared before her with mere inches between their faces. She could see his mouth watering, polishing his exposed fangs, and could feel his breath on her face, passing with a primal growl in his throat. In his presence, she was paralyzed, her body capable of only shivering and letting her sword fall out of her unraveling grip.

“M-Master…” she murmured in terror, desperate for any sign that he was still in there.

Baltoh raised his hand and gently dragged the talon of his middle finger up her throat and under her chin. His fingers had been replaced with inflexible blades, like scythes, sharp enough to cut through any substance. She could feel the point against her soft skin, capable of ending her life with the slightest movement, yet not even the faintest of scratches was made. Her chin resting on the tip of his claw, he lifted her face towards his.

Rosemary was blushing with a red as deep as her hair and her eyes were swimming. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been so afraid, felt so helpless, but strangely, that fear was almost comforting. Her heart was like that of a racehorse about to cross the finish line and she wanted to run for her life, but a part of her was content. It was as if she had resigned herself to her fate at the hands of Baltoh, whatever it was.

“Master…” she gasped again.

She closed her eyes and awaited the monster’s decision of whether or not to spare this weak creature before him or kill her like an insect. The sound of cracking opened her eyes, as beneath her chin, the bone exoskeleton that had encased Baltoh’s hands crumbled like it was made of ash, revealing his fingers and original claws. Above his head, his halo returned to normal, while on his face, his cheeks and lips reappeared, hiding away his Demon fangs with his eyes returning to that of a man.

He looked at her with a tired expression. “The day this started, we were forced to fight, but never again will I hurt you, Rosemary. I swear.”

 

Molly crashed into the street lamp with enough force to crumple it like a straw. While blood was filling her mouth, she stood back up and charged towards Ziraal and tried to deliver a kick to the temple. As he had time and time again, he blocked her attack and countered with a rib-crunching punch that sent her flying. Hitting the ground, she covered her wounds with her glowing hand and tried to come up with a strategy. As she healed herself, Selene took another turn at him, keeping her distance and attacking with her wings. Ziraal lost his smile and dodged her attacks instead of blocking them. While Selene was only an Angel, her holy feathers were as harmful to him as a Gargoyle’s talons to an Archangel.

“Demon Art: Incineration Flood!”

With a wave of his hand, Ziraal summoned a deluge of black flames that washed over Selene. While she still cried out from the burns, she was able to protect her body with her wings and let the blast simply push her back.

He growled in annoyance as Selene healed her wings. “Just give up already, this is getting old.”

As if he had eyes in the back of the head, Ziraal made his body intangible as Molly charged from behind with a cinderblock in her hand. The gray brick passed through his body like he was a hologram, before he solidified and swung at her. She ducked down just as Baltoh had taught her when facing a Gargoyle, dodging the counterattack and skidding through the dust. Before she could feel some semblance of satisfaction, he stomped on her with enough strength crush her shoulder like a piece of pottery and then kicked her, sending her hurtling through the air to Selene.

“I would prefer my toys not be broken before I get to properly play with them. The more you resist, the more I’ll just have to punish you once I make you my pets.”

Molly got to her feet, combining her powers with Selene to help mend her shoulder. She reached down and picked up a length of rebar from the ground, spinning it around her fingers like her cheerleading baton from high school. “Yeah, and I would prefer you Demons be crushed under my heel. The difference is that my wish will come true!”

Holding the rebar in her hands, Molly zoomed down the street like a launched arrow, her wings perfectly directing the air so that she could fly faster than any bird. With the blonde Angel careening towards him like a car with cut brake lines, Ziraal reached out with his tail to stop her. However, before the bladed stinger could make contact, she gave a mighty flap of her wings, rocketing herself straight up and causing all the dust at Ziraal’s feet to be blown upwards into his face. As soon as the sand touched him, he knew that something was wrong. Every particle was searing his skin, he was unable to breath, and his burning eyes left him barely able to see, while the thickness of the dust cloud fully removed that sense.

That bitch! She blessed the dust when she slid under me!

With a warrior’s instinct, he turned around and blocked the sneak attack from Molly. In both their hands was the rebar she had grabbed, stopped before it could touch him.

“I’ll credit you for hurting me, but did you really think a simple distraction would work?”

Molly grinned. “Yeah, considering I was the distraction!”

Before Ziraal could respond, he gagged as he was pierced from behind. A spike of holy rebar was driven through his heart and burst through his sternum.

Behind him was Selene, a savage grin on her face like Molly. “Intangibility won’t help you escape that, asshole.”

He looked back and forth between the rebar in Molly’s hand and the one in his chest, realizing that the former was shorter than he remembered. So that’s it. She cut the steel while I was blinded and gave it to her friend!

As the thought shot through his mind, Molly’s hands glowed and the rebar she was holding suddenly felt more like the fuel rod from a nuclear reactor, forcing Ziraal to let go. Now blessed, Molly lunged forward and jammed the steel into Ziraal’s mouth, driving it through the back of his throat until it broke out of his neck.

“Choke on it,” she hissed.

Gargling his blood, Ziraal struggled to stand, but ultimately dropped to the ground. The Demon defeated, Selene fell to her knees, with Molly having just enough strength to walk over and join her. Gasping for air, the two women held each other, succumbing to relief.

“Baltoh will be so pissed off at us when he finds out we fought a Demon,” Selene chuckled.

“Considering that we won, I don’t think he’ll be too upset.”

“We should get going, there is still a battle going on. Let’s find somewhere safe to rest and join back up with him.”

“Fine, but you’re going to have to carry me.”

Acting as her crutch, Selene helped Molly to her feet and both women started walking, lacking the strength to fly.

“I’m really proud of you, Molly,” Selene hummed. “You were absolutely amazing.”

“Oh please,” her friend laughed, “let’s not act like you aren’t the queen badass of the two of us.”

“Two lost little girls, so ignorant of the horror yet to come…”

The deep voice was almost powerful enough to make the Angels vomit in terror. With a splash of blood, Selene’s stomach was ripped open from Ziraal’s tail running her through.

“Selene!” Molly screamed as her friend was torn away from her and hurled down the street like a tennis ball.

As she hit the ground, he appeared above her and stomped on her with both feet, opening a crater beneath her and spraying over a liter of her blood into the air. While Molly sobbed in horror, Ziraal turned to her, the rebar spikes removed from his chest and throat and his wounds fully healed. He had lost his air of confidence and his grotesque face was twisted with inhuman rage.

“You stupid little bitch! Did you really think that some holy steel would be able to kill me? Me? I’m a goddamn Demon! Your little tricks may work on Gargoyles, but it’s a thousand years too early for you to think anything you do will end my life!”

Moving faster than Molly’s eyes could perceive, Ziraal zoomed over to her and stopped with barely a foot between them. Growling, he backhanded her across the face, leaving several deep cuts across her porcelain cheek and sending her crashing through the front window of an abandoned bakery. Lying amongst shards of broken glass, Molly was about to groan in pain, but Ziraal’s hand around her throat silenced her.

“Enough waiting, enough playing around! I’ll make you my property right here and now! You’ll think God making you an Angel had just been a dream and you went straight to Hell.” He leaned down and licked the blood from her face. “For the rest of eternity, you are mine.”

He then reached down to her waist, trying to grab ahold of her dress.

“No, get off me! Get away!”

“You speak like someone with freedom! Seems I must rip that away as well your innocence!”

His words struck her heart like a needle of adrenaline. Channeling her very life force into her hand, she reached up and slammed Ziraal in the face with her strongest Divinity Ray, compacted into a bomb. In an explosion like that of a miniature supernova, the bakery was filled with a blinding light and he was tossed out like a ragdoll. Sent flying across the street, he crashed into a parked car with much of his body covered in burns and half of his face reduced to a cinder.

“You bitch!” he growled, only able to use one side of his mouth and one eye.

Molly stepped out of the destroyed bakery, covered in blood, her clothes torn, and more exhausted than ever in her life, but a look of ferocious determination on her face. “Listen, you bastard! I’ll either die here or walk away victorious, but I will never let you take my freedom from me! I don’t care if I have to fight you for a million years, I’ll stop you! I will never fall! You’re going to die without ever getting what you want, I’ll make… sure… of… it.”

While her spirit was willing, her body was giving out. She had used up all her energy and could feel her mind receding into darkness. Her eyelids felt so heavy, and just maintaining her balance was the hardest trial of her life. Her legs finally gave out and she began to fall.

Aw fuck…

“Well said, Molly.”

She felt a powerful arm wrap around her and her eyes bolted open. Beside her was Baltoh, as bloody as she was and holding her against him, his right hand outstretched towards Ziraal.

“Baltoh? What are you doing here? What about Selene?”

“I already healed her, and don’t worry, I’ll help you. I’ll never let you fall.”

Hearing the promise spoken with his deep voice while held by him, Molly let out a small squeak as a noticeable blush appeared on her face.

At the other end of the street, Ziraal was both terrified and furious. Getting to his feet, he spread his wings to take off. “Goddammit, I’ve got to learn to stop playing with my food. Fine, traitor, take back your whores! There are plenty of other people for me to toy with.”

“Not so fast. Angel Art: Halo Shackles!”

With a snap of Baltoh’s fingers, rings of light appeared around Ziraal’s limbs, holding him in place as if they were hooked onto the fabric of space and time. Snarling, he pulled at the binds with all of his strength, but was unable to break free. In Baltoh’s outstretched hand, his pistol appeared, but his index finger was not on the trigger.

“Go ahead, Molly. You’ve earned it.”

Shaken back to reality, Molly reached out and grasped the handle of the gun, her fingers overlapping Baltoh’s and the trigger in her grip. Even with him holding it, she could feel how heavy the weapon was, the weight of each bullet beyond her imagination. Leaning in against Baltoh, she looked down the sights of the gun, seeing Ziraal now trying to chew off his limbs like a coyote and escape. “How does it feel to lose your freedom?”

She pulled the trigger and launched the Hellsteel slug. In a thunderclap loud enough to shake Molly’s skeleton and bring down the half-destroyed bakery behind them, the bullet shot from the barrel and struck Ziraal in the center of his chest, vaporizing his entire body into a bloody cloud and destroying every building behind him.

With the Demon truly gone, Molly took a deep breath, and even in this battlefield, it was the sweetest breath of her life, for she now truly felt the bliss of freedom. “Thank you, Baltoh.”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you… for everything,” she whispered before becoming limp in his arms.

Giving a sigh but wearing a small smile, he began healing her, starting first with the cuts on her face, then the half-mended wounds throughout her body. He finished by restoring her energy levels, though it would still be a long time before she’d wake up. But even while covered in dirt and blood, she did look peaceful. Picking her up, he flew to the end of the street, where Selene was waiting and looking like she was suffering the world’s worst hangover.

“That was just so cute, what you did for her,” she said with a wry smile.

Baltoh chuckled and snapped his fingers, opening up a portal to Earth. “Well since you two couldn’t help but break my rule about not fighting Demons, I have new rules. You are to take Molly up to Earth and find an empty hotel room. You’re both going to take two very long showers and you’re each going to sleep for a very long time. You are forbidden from coming back here until you are both fully rested. I need to finish this battle and I can’t do it if I’m worrying about you two.”

“Trust me, babe, that is one order we’ll happily follow. And Baltoh? Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done. You’ve helped her more than I possibly could and I truly grateful.” She murmured the words with a tender smile, proceeding then to lean forward and kiss him. She began to laugh when their lips separated. “But be careful,” she then joked. “She’ll end up falling for you at this rate. When she first saw you, she did suggest a threesome.”

 

Through the Darkness

 

Marcus walked down the street with a tactical shotgun in hand, a belt of ammo across his chest, his M1911 holstered, his pockets stuffed with extra magazines, and his knife already dusty with the crushed bones of Sinners. Tied around his head was a bandana with two narrow eye slits to protect his vision. The ocean of molten rock churning around New York was blinding to unshielded eyes. Down the street, he spotted a group of evil souls stringing up the butchered carcass of a woman from a lamppost. Marcus raised his shotgun and fired the first buckshot round at the Sinner directly in front of him. The holy ball bearings pulverized the spirit’s spine and ribcage like they were made of hollow glass.

The rest of the Sinners all turned to him as he discharged the smoking shell casing and drew their own weapons, both swords and guns manufactured in Hell. Holding the shotgun with one hand and pulling out his pistol with the other, he opened fire with a barrage of quick but well-placed shots. The next chambered shell struck a machete-wielding Sinner in the throat, shattering his skull and crushing his upper ribcage, while the rounds from his M1911 pierced the skeletons’ foreheads and blew out the backs of their craniums.

Bone fragments falling to the ground, a new threat crawled out of a nearby alley. It was a scorpion, the size of a sedan and with the light of the molten rock gleaming off its hard shell. Seeing fresh meat, it scuttled towards Marcus with acid dripping from its fangs. He took aim with his shotgun and fired an experimental round, unsurprised when the buckshot only winged it and bounced off with no damage delivered. Even when blessed, the ball bearings couldn’t break through that hard exoskeleton, meaning that Marcus was in trouble.

With its pincers trying to grab his legs, he jumped up onto a parked car and evaluated his options. He scanned the street, trying to look through the slits of his bandana and spot anything he could use. His eyes fell to a paint can on the sidewalk, used earlier to mark directions to a shelter. The scorpion hoisted itself onto the feeble obstacle with little effort and sent him running. Reaching the can, he gave it a shake and smiled when he felt the heavy fullness. Screaming like an unoiled engine, the scorpion leapt off the car Marcus had climbed on and began charging an Abyss Blast at the end of its barbed stinger.

Marcus hurled the can, splashing the monster in the face and coating its eyes in paint. Screeching in fury, the scorpion tried to restore its vision, all while he got behind it. He grabbed the scorpion’s tail and pulled it over his shoulder, using his body as a pivot. Realizing what was going on, the beast dug its feet into the pavement and tried to pull itself forward, out of Marcus’s grip. The screeching continued as he moved down the length with adrenaline-enhanced strength. His body ready to give under the monster’s incredible weight, he drew his pistol and fired half a dozen rounds into the underside of the base of its tail, now elevated and exposed. Heavily wounded, the monster cried out in pain and staggered forward, its rear legs no longer functioning, leaving it unable to turn itself around.

Marcus watched it and snickered. “Huh, I may be the first black guy who actually popped a cap in someone’s ass.”

His good mood was lost however, as one of the buildings up ahead exploded into a surge of black flames and a far more powerful threat stepped forth. It was a Goliath, larger than a two-story house and resembling a troll. Spikes ran through its body at different places like piercings, its head was sealed in a metal canister, and two large bone scimitars had replaced its hands. The beast turned to Marcus and gave a deep machine-like moan, somehow able to spot him even with its face covered. It marched over, stomping on the wounded scorpion in the process.

A shiver of fear crawled up Marcus’s spine, deflating his confidence in the face of such a fearsome abomination. Releasing a second heartless moan, the troll swung one of its bladed arms and brought it down like the edge of a guillotine. Marcus jumped to the side just in time, the fear of the incoming strike having returned his mobility, but barely. A fresh shell ready, he sighted in the troll, but did not fire. From its morbidly obese gut to its powerful limbs to its iron-encased head, he could not see any weak point or area that would suffer heavy damage from a 12-gauge blast. No, he had to run. This was a battle he could not win.

Marcus sprinted away from the troll as fast as he could, hoping that it was not an agile beast. Once again moaning, it leaned forward and a sphere of black energy appeared in front of its encased head. With a ground-shaking hum, it exploded into a medium-sized Abyss Blast, whipping across the street ahead of Marcus. Immediately, half a city block was sent skyward in an explosion of black flames. He was thrown back like a ragdoll by the shockwave, his hearing temporarily impaired. Hitting the ground hard, he spat out a glob of blood and slowly got to his feet.

The area before him had been obliterated, leaving an expansive pit. He rolled to the side and was again tossed through the air as the troll gave a second attempt at a lethal cleave, pulverizing the street even further and opening a gaping fissure. Marcus evaluated his options while getting to his feet and muttering swears. If he tried to run away, this monster would fire another Abyss Blast and obliterate him in the explosion. If he stayed and fought, he would just end up wasting his ammo and be left defenseless. Wait, maybe if he could cripple its mobility and minimize its field of vision, he could make an escape, or at least last long enough for help to arrive!

As the troll pulled back its arm for a horizontal slash, he bolted towards it and leaped between its fat, stocky legs. Spotting the line of cartilage protruding from the backs of each ankle, his raised his shotgun and fired, striking the Achilles tendon of the troll’s left foot. The troll released a dull roar of pain and spun around, kicking Marcus with enough force to send him flying. He hit the side of a building and coughed up a mouthful of blood, knowing that at least two of his ribs were broken.

Slumping to the ground, he looked up and shuddered at the sight of the troll charging another Abyss Blast. He raised his shotgun and fired a fresh shell at the troll’s face. The load of holy lead destabilized the growing sphere of Demonic energy, causing it to prematurely release in an erratic beam upwards across the city. Taking advantage of the distracted beast, he shot again and struck it in the collarbone, where its defense appeared relatively weak, this time with a solid slug. While doing far less damage than he had hoped, the round still did still punch through the monster’s flesh and draw a fountain of blood.

Snarling, the troll lunged forward and brought down one of its bladed arms onto the building that Marcus had slammed into, destroying it like a house of cards and again throwing the Green Beret through the air. Aching all over, he chambered another shell and fired, aiming at the beast’s right Achilles tendon. The blast was off by a few inches, but succeeded in severing the line of cartilage. The troll staggered in pain, having to use its blades as crutches to say on its feet. It tried swinging at him a couple times, putting all its weight on one arm, but emitting another hollow machine-like moan, the beast pulled itself over towards Marcus and began charging a third Abyss Blast.

“Oh shit!”

He cocked his shotgun and fired at the sphere of black energy, but this time, the destabilized blast was released in his direction. Weakened and erratic, the Abyss Blast struck the ground between Marcus and the troll, and the resulting explosion was the last thing he saw before he blacked out.

 

Blood. Marcus could taste blood. His whole body ached more than ever in his life. He felt like all of his bones had been smashed and his muscles torn, but he was at least alive. The ground he was lying on was far from comfortable and there was a particularly sharp piece of rubble digging into his back. Groaning and cursing, he sat up and scanned his surroundings, but found only darkness. With his arm feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds, he reached up and pulled his bandana off his head, gaining some relief from just the removal of that pressure. There was a flashlight in his pocket, but he knew from the sound of crinkling glass that was broken. He had a lighter with him, but he dared no use it, for while he could not see, he could smell gasoline. Wherever he was, there was a destroyed car nearby.

Wait, his shotgun! It had a tiny barrel-mounted light, maybe still intact! Scrambling around and hoping and praying that he found it, he searched the surrounding rubble for his gun. He uncovered it a few feet away, undamaged from what he could feel, and with a deep breath, he activated the light at the end of the barrel. The beam it released was utterly blinding upon its activation, forcing Marcus to cover his eyes and wait for them to adjust to the brightness. Once the stinging faded, he checked the area around him.

Bright as it was, the light was not strong enough to show him his location, but he was able to at least see the ground around him, the car he had sensed before, and two walls, one directly behind him. He was sitting atop a pile of rubble, with the wall behind him consisting of nothing more than a larger mountain. Fifty feet away was the car, smashed and crumpled with gas dripping from its exposed tank, and behind it was the second wall. It was not made of concrete or brick, but of simple carved stone. Ah, a tunnel, that’s where he was. Marcus picked up a piece of rubble and threw it into the impenetrable darkness, hearing a piercing echo that bounced deeper and deeper into the abyss. So there was some room…

Once again muttering curses, he slowly got to his feet and checked himself. Save for a nasty gash to his head, bruises all over his body, and painful throbbing around his broken ribs, he was unhurt, at least in the sense that he could still move and maybe fight. He had to find a way out, and there was no way he could navigate a cave system with such a puny light. Feeling his mind clearing up the more he thought and moved, he walked over to the destroyed car and inspected it. It had not lost much gas as far as he could tell, and with it flipped on its side, he had full access to the tank. Time to get to work.

Flashlight in hand, he climbed into the car and pressed the hood release switch. Once the front had popped open, he pulled out the car battery and removed the one intact headlight and its wiring. After several minutes of fiddling with the wires, he managed to hook up the headlight directly to the battery and illuminate the tunnel. The passage was the size of a subway line, with a consistent diameter from what Marcus could see. It was manmade, though he could not tell by who, when it was made, or how deep below the city it was. It seemed the Abyss Blast of that troll had blown a hole straight down into New York’s dank basement. One direction of the tunnel was blocked off by rubble, and the other continued onward into darkness, hopefully leading to a way out. He couldn’t leave yet, not when there were things in this car that he could use.

Now that he had light, Marcus began scavenging anything useful from the car. True, the battery and headlight were bright enough for anything he wanted to do, but they were far too heavy. He would need a different form of illumination, and if Hollywood had taught him anything, it was that the best solution was a torch. He peeled away the seat covers and floor mats to use for fuel and wrapped them around the ends some lengths of rebar he had found in the rubble. Once he soaked them in gas from the tank, they would be ready for lighting.

From the car, he took the rearview mirror, the seatbelts to be used for rope, a screwdriver and tire iron from the back, an empty water bottle he could use to carry gas, some of the seat cushions for soaking up the blood of any injuries he might receive, wires from the electrical system, and a coat from the backseat that he was able to turn into a crude backpack. With nothing else to take, he moved to the underside of the car with the screwdriver and a piece of rubble in hand. He pierced the bottom corner of the gas tank with the screwdriver, using the rock to hammer it in. As the brown liquid began to stream out, Marcus held up the water bottle to collect it for later.

Once it was filled, he doused the ends of the four torches he had made with the fluid still in the tank. Most of the gas would evaporate by the time he got to the third torch, but it was better to use as much as he could while keeping the water bottle’s worth as extra. Having done all that he needed to do, he lit up the first torch and started walking. He had to admit, part of him was enjoying this. There wasn’t a man alive who hadn’t always dreamed of making a genuine torch and exploring a mysterious tunnel.

 

There had been a battle here, relatively recently. Marcus was crouched in another manmade tunnel with his second torch burning, examining some empty shell casings and blood splatters. The casings were devoid of dust, the blood had not yet oxidized, and the stone ground was littered with scratch marks. The passage appeared well used, with bits of garbage scattered about and old light fixtures nailed to the wall. It seemed he had stumbled across the fabled underground community of New York, and he certainly wasn’t the first. Whether it was when the doorway process was first initiated, the first battle, or sometime in the aftermath, Gargoyles had arrived and infested the tunnels, possibly getting lost while trying to reach the surface or keeping their heads down while they hunted the people in the darkness.

This was a mixed blessing, as there could still be people around or at least a way out, but it also meant that the system was probably infested with Gargoyles. As the thought passed his mind, a familiar growl reached his ears. Raising his torch, he found himself staring into the burning eyes of a Hellhound. With acidic saliva dripping from its fangs, the beast of the Inferno crouched down in preparation for its attack. Marcus raised his shotgun, thinking back to make sure it was loaded. With an unearthly snarl, the dog pounced and he pulled the trigger, blasting off its head with a load of holy buckshot.

As the corpse fell to the ground, a chorus of growls reached Marcus’ ears. Like lit candles, the burning eyes of more beasts of Hell appeared in the darkness. Hellhounds, lions with sideways jaws, Gargoyles, man-sized trolls like the one Marcus had fought up on the surface, and other creeds of abominable monsters were closing in. Behind him, a section of the tunnel wall exploded from the release of an Abyss Blast. More beasts slithered out to find the source of the gunshot they had heard. Knowing that he couldn’t put down his torch, Marcus shouldered his shotgun and drew his knife. Working quickly with some of the wire he had scavenged from the car, he tied the knife to the other end of the torch. It was unlikely these things had any fear or even weakness to fire, but he could at least keep both hands armed without giving up the light.

With two waves of creatures moving towards him from either direction, Marcus drew his pistol and tossed it into the air, turned around while holding the shotgun backwards over his shoulder, and fired his one chambered round into the first group. There was nothing for him if he went back and he had no idea what lay through the hole that the Gargoyles had created. His only chance was to fight his way through and keep moving forward. The buckshot wasn’t aimed at any beast in particular, but it winged a Hellhound and a Gargoyle and forced the other beasts to jump back.

Catching his pistol, Marcus fired four rounds into the two wounded opponents, striking the Hellhound in the head and chest and the planting a pair of bullets into the Gargoyle’s forehead. Sprinting into the horde, he began firing shots into any attacking monsters on his right side, and stabbing and slashing any creatures within the range of his left side. He knew it was foolish to try and take them all out. He had to clear a path and get behind them, and only then could he start picking them off. As he charged through the swarm, claws and teeth reached out and slashed at his body, but his coat managed to weaken the cutting power of his opponents and he had a Kevlar vest on underneath to protect his organs.

Waving his torch out in front of him and refusing to slow down, Marcus discarded his second empty magazine and drew a fresh one from his pocket. Holding the bottom between his teeth, he slipped the end into the handle of the gun, then slammed it in and used his teeth again to pull back the slide. The action was completed just in time, as ten feet in front of him, a troll opened the jaws of its fat, bloated face and began charging an Abyss Blast. Raising his M1911, Marcus fired two rounds straight into the sphere of black energy, the first to destabilize the sphere and make it explode like a grenade, and the second to go through the beast’s open mouth and strike the back of its throat and pierce its spine.

Having been disrupted by the holy bullet, the charging Abyss Blast erupted into a surge of black flames that filled the space around the troll, forcing Marcus to duck down and shield his head. Rolling across the ground to avoid being burned, he bolted back to his feet and took advantage of the distracted Hell beasts by delivering a wide flurry of slashes with his knife, hacking and stabbing at their flesh with the blessed blade and forcing them to scatter in pain. Up ahead, the way was clear. He was so close!

Emptying his clip into the last few monsters, Marcus burst out into the open tunnel. Turning around, he loaded in a fresh magazine into his pistol and planted every bullet in the nearest creatures, but not without taking careful aim to make sure each round was either fatal or debilitating. With the dead and wounded now acting as a speed bump, the rest of the beasts were prolonged in their chase, giving Marcus the perfect opportunity to run away with the remaining strength in his battered body. An Abyss Blast flew right over his head and struck the ceiling of the cavern.

“Oh shit!”

He ducked down as the black explosion flared outwards and caused a cave-in, bringing down a new mountain of rubble. His hearing slightly impaired by the blast, he got up and looked around. As he had thought, the attack brought down the tunnel ceiling, but the resulting destruction had created a stairway of smashed stone up to the next level. Without a second thought, he started climbing.

 

Marcus was not in a good mood. He had used the foam from the car seat cushions to stop the bleeding from his cuts and then tossed them down into a steep shaft to throw the monsters off his scent. In order to ensure he didn’t drip more blood on the ground and draw them to his position, he had to cauterize his injuries. That was not fun. Even worse, he was down to his last torch and it would only last another five minutes at the most, with no sign of an exit. He didn’t even know where he was going. He was following what he thought had been the echo of gunshots and some old footprints in the dirt.

By now, any and all adrenaline and endorphins in his system had run out, and as well as his whole body being in throbbing agony, he was dead on his feet and struggling to keep his eyes open. But that sound and smell, the two sensations that seemingly came out of nowhere, they woke him up with a rush of pure fear. It was the splashing of his foot stepping in a puddle, and looking down and seeing the red hue glisten under the light of his torch, his interpretation of the aroma of blood had been correct. The entire floor of the tunnel was hidden beneath a shallow pond of gore, with objects and body parts scattered throughout.

“Oh my God…”

Along with pieces of flesh, some spilled organs, lost digits, and even an eyeball, there were the personal effects of the people killed in that area. He found three shotguns, seven pistols, a few knives and other melee weapons, clothes, belts, boots, jewelry, flashlights, and even a bottle of water. This was the kind of score he needed, especially with all the weapons and ammo probably blessed. It came at a heavy cost though, since on the other side of the puddle were drag marks leading into the darkness.

After drinking half of the bottled water and pouring the rest on his head to wash away the dirt and blood from his injury and clear his mind, he took a second examination at the footprints that had been following. They were all spread apart, not the pairs, but each individual footprint, meaning that the people who had made them had been taking long strides. They were running, most likely from something fearsome.

I’ve been walking this path for over two miles and haven’t seen any indication of a way out. These people were probably running in the direction of the exit when something grabbed them. Whatever it was, it dragged them in the direction that they were going. Could this be the territory of some new horror?

Whether it was or it wasn’t, it seemed like the only way out. Before departing, he gathered all of the knives, ammo, and flashlights he could get his hands on. The largest light he tied to his shoulder to free his hands, another to the barrel of his shotgun, and a third to his pistol. Now he was ready.

 

He had been so happy when he saw those stairs, the first true sign of human activity. They brought him up into some whole new complex, one that left him baffled. It was a secret building, deep below the city, with tiled floors, fluorescent light fixtures, plastered walls, and endless rooms. It was like someone had taken a hospital and buried it under New York. There was something about this place, something eerie that sent shivers up Marcus’s spine with each step he took. It wasn’t the darkness or the potential for danger. He felt true evil in every brick and nail.

“Mother of God.”

Hanging before him was a man, strung up with barbed wire running through his limbs and torso with his skin peeled off. The wire was integrated into his body like veins, sewn into his muscles with a pool of blood forming beneath him. The worst part was that he was somehow still alive, trembling and gurgling with his eyes blank and useless after overexposure to the air. This was not the work of humans, Marcus knew that, as no human could possibly skin another and then pierce him through so many times with the serrated cord without cutting a single artery or major vein. Even machines were incapable of such horrifying skill.

Not knowing what else to do, Marcus drew his knife and planted it in the man’s chest, piercing his heart. This poor soul was beyond saving, even by an Angel or Archangel. The only thing that could be done was give him merciful death. As the blade was pulled free, a small spray of blood was released, prompting the Green Beret to vomit onto the floor. This horror transcended human description, equaled only by what he had seen the Demons do to Molly.

A hissing drew his attention away from the corpse, and with his shotgun raised, he turned to his new opponent. Thirty feet away stood a spider, the size of an oil drum. Its legs looked like long human spines, its abdomen was encased in a ribcage, it had a vertical mouth like a lamprey surrounded by clawed fingers, and deep within its throat, a burning eye was visible. The creature gave a second hiss, and from its spinneret, several long strands of barbed wire began to slither out in place of webbing. As if controlled by magnetic waves, all the wires curled and stood up on end, their needle-sharp tips pointed at Marcus.

“Fuck this shit.”

He pulled the trigger of his shotgun and blasted the creature’s head off. The beast fell dead and the wires became slack, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, a loud cracking broke the silence and the spider’s corpse began to quiver. Swirling bumps could be seen forming and receding beneath the surface of its abdomen, and with a splash, its body was torn open from the inside and a horde of newborn spiders burst out, all hissing and hungry for human flesh.

“Fuck this shit!”

He took off in a sprint as the tiny carnivores rushed over to the dangling corpse and began feasting on the exposed muscle. Having heard the sound of Marcus’s gunshot, the whole building was coming alive, with spiders of all sizes crawling out of air ducts, rooms, and from above ceiling panels. Putting his shotgun away and replacing it with his pistol, Marcus began firing at every arachnid that came into his view. Behind him crawled a hissing wave of death, each spider trailing several strands of barbed wire to be used on him. Sprinting down a hallway, he shined his light ahead of him and spotted a doorway with a staircase sign next to it. Finally, some luck!

As he reached out to push through the door, one of the spiders leapt through the air and landed on his back, hitting him with enough weight to nearly send him falling over. With its long legs wrapped around him, the spider dug into his back with the clawed fingers around its mouth. Marcus howled in pain as its mouth prolapsed with its teeth digging through his coat, his shirt, and even his Kevlar. Grabbing his knife, he reached back and stabbed the spider in the top of its head, ending its life before it could start cutting through his muscles.

He pushed his way through the door and into the stairway chamber, drawing one of the lengths of rebar he had used for his torches and securing it through the handle of the doorway and bracing it to the frame. It wouldn’t hold them back for long, especially if they could use Abyss Blasts, but it would hopefully buy him enough time to get away. He ran up the stairs and reached the second level. He tried to think of a way to lock the door, this one different from the other. An idea came to him, and with renewed vigor, Marcus took out the seatbelts and the tire iron he had taken from the car in the tunnel and tied them together into one long rope, secured around the center of the x-shaped tire iron.

He used the metal cross to bust through a small wire-reinforced window above the handle of the door. Breaking away the wire, he pushed the tire iron through and then pulled on the rope of seatbelts, securing it like a grappling hook. Looking around for a solid base, he took the other end of the rope and tied it around a nearby support beam. Now if the spiders tried to pull the door open, the rope would tighten against the tire iron, holding it in place.

Flashlight and pistol in hand, he ran down the halls as fast as he could, but now found himself face to face with clear evidence of the spiders’ presence. Every surface was covered in a web of barbed wire, sticky like the silk of real arachnids, but with razor-sharp edges. Tied up in these webs were countless people, all having been skinned alive and strung up, many in a crucifixion form against the walls with barbed wire running through their bodies like veins. Unlike the man Marcus had seen down below, these people were all long-since dead, many of them now serving as the feast for billions of tiny newborn spiders.

He passed room after room, many filled with cots and bunk beds, all with corpses wrapped up in barbed wire cocoons to be feasted upon by the young. Other rooms had people strung up like the usual victims, hanging like sides of beef in a meat locker. But just as he was starting to become numb to the sights and smells of this dungeon, he saw something in the corner of his eye that made him stop and instilled fresh fear in him. He was not afraid of what he had seen, but of the implications it might mean if he truly saw what he thought he saw.

Coming back, he peered into the room and cursed in anger, then stepped inside and closed the door so that he could examine it without being bothered. It was another body, far older than the others he had seen, and strung up differently. Instead of hanging crucifixion style, the body was bent backwards with the hands and feet bound together and hogtied with a tether of barbed wire securing them to the floor like shackles. The body itself was suspended by multiple braided strands of barbed wire, coming straight down from the ceiling and penetrating the gut before being looped around the lower spine. But the wire was different from the kind the spiders produced; theirs was seamless, like the thorns on a vine. This was more like ranchers’ wire. The body was shaped almost like a parachute.

What was truly strange was that the body was not skinned. The flesh had instead served as a canvas, in which endless lines of symbols in a mysterious language had been carved out with a blade. It had been shaved of any and all hair, its chest was badly charred to remove the pectorals or breasts, and its genitals had been surgically removed. In all honesty, Marcus didn’t know if it was a man or woman, but maybe that was the point. As for the face, both the cheeks and eyelids had been cut off and a pair of nails had been driven in through the pupils. This thing barely looked human anymore…

What had caught Marcus’s attention was on the ground: a pentagram drawn on the floor in human blood and inscribed with the same symbols as the corpse. The pentagram had its corners marked with five candles. Sensing a sharp odor emanating from the body, Marcus walked over to the far wall and picked up an abandoned jar, dusty only from its environment, as it was clear it had been used at least a month or two ago.

“Embalming fluid…”

He turned back to the corpse, knowing that chemicals had been applied to preserve it, and from the look and smell, it had been done recently, maybe four or five weeks back. Gargoyles or spiders from Hell hadn’t created this. This was the work of humans, performed before the whole mess started. This person, whoever it was, had they volunteered or were they picked off the street? What was going on?

A scuttling outside the door reminded Marcus of his surroundings, and after checking to make sure all his weapons were fully loaded and ready, he charged towards the door and forced it open, knocking aside the spiders that had clustered behind it. Lowering his shotgun, he fired a blast of buckshot straight into the swarm of tiny Hell beasts and took off into a sprint down the hall. The underground building was filled with countless more rooms like the one Marcus had left, all loaded with corpses decorated in similar positions after death, stuffed like a mannequin warehouse.

There were bodies contorted into gruesome formations, some with their limbs broken and twisted until they were turned inside out, their skin removed and the muscles underneath flayed and split into their individual strands, their innards spilled out and arranged on the floor or suspended with wires in intricate patterns around them, or even their bones yanked out from the inside to resemble quills. Even worse, the corpses varied of all ages, including children and even infants, all murdered and arranged into these horrendous stills. It was a total mystery whether their current forms were what caused their death, or if they had all simply been killed and then had their remains desecrated afterwards.

There was an almost artistic variance between the bodies, but they all shared the common traits of the symbols carved into their skin, muscles, organs, or even bones, the nails implanted in their eyes, the complete and utter obliteration of any sign of their gender, their eyelids removed, the decorated pentagram beneath them, and the use of embalming fluids to preserve their bodies. Also, the spiders touched none of the corpses. While the earlier corpses Marcus had seen were clearly the work of arachnids as a means of torture and preparation for their young, these human-made figurines were left untouched, and he doubted that it was just because the monsters didn’t like the taste of preservatives.

After climbing up a second staircase, Marcus crossed the third floor of the underground complex, having to shoot his way through waves of spiders and once again pass lines of rooms filled with scenes of death. However, unlike the first two floors, this level was occupied mostly with giant freezers or meat lockers. Could… could they all be stuffed with bodies? Marcus was only crossing through one hallway of each floor, there had to be hundreds of corpses in this building alone! But as he reached the door to the third staircase chamber, he heard something that pushed that thought from his mind. Laughing, he heard laughing.

Looking down the other corridor that led to the staircase, he saw a person, all the way at the end of the hall. Even with his flashlight pointed at him, Marcus could only see the man’s silhouette, but he could hear his cackle. It was a dry and dark laugh, the laugh of a sadist.

“Who are you?” Marcus demanded, pointing his gun at the man.

Continuing to laugh, the man raised his arm with his hand held up by his face. Leaning forward, he bit into his wrist at full strength, allowing even Marcus to hear the sound of blood splattering and flesh being torn. Crouching down, he started doodling on the ground with his blood.

“You should start running,” the man called.

Marcus wasn’t sure why, but he knew that it was better to do as the man said and leave while he still had the chance. As he opened the door and stepped into the staircase chamber, he heard the man slam his hand down on the ground and shout something. It was in a language that Marcus didn’t understand, but he immediately felt a nauseating sensation all throughout his body. It was like someone had punched him in the stomach, stabbed his eardrums with icicles, and replaced his blood with mercury. It had been a single sentence, but it was enough to bring him to his knees and make him throw up.

Marcus spun around, watching as bolts of black lightning began writhing through the walls like serpent ghosts, while both above and below him, he heard screams that chilled his blood beyond anything he had ever experienced. These screams were different from the monstrous calls the Gargoyles and other Hell-spawn released. They sounded human, and yet they were devoid of any sort of life or humanity. They sounded like the inside of the brain of a madman! Forcing himself to move, he climbed up the stairs as fast as he could. He had to get out of this building!

Coming out onto the fourth floor, he found that the screams had faded, and were now replaced with the sound of falling stone. With a gauntlet of rooms on either side of the hallway, he raised his gun and moved forward, prepared for the worst-case scenario. But he was alone. These rooms were plastered with pentagrams of blood and different apparatuses of torture and desecration, but the bodies were gone. In their places, large holes had been dug into the ceiling with rocks falling out. The corpses, or whatever they were, had tunneled out of the building and into the level above.

His heart beating almost painfully, Marcus ran to the next staircase, waiting for some new horror to ambush him. Reaching the stairs, he climbed up as fast as his legs would carry him and threw himself against the door. Upon his first shove, the door didn’t open, but it did shift a little. Fear, he was filled with so much fear that he could taste it, but he didn’t know why. He had been trained in the Green Berets to ignore pain and terror, but now he felt like the icy fingers of death were closing around his throat. Frantic, practically hysterical, he began slamming himself against the wall with all the strength in his battered body, nearly on the verge of screaming.

Finally, the door gave way and Marcus pushed through, coming out into a new tunnel and falling to the ground. Normally he would start cursing in frustration from still being in the dark, but the fact that there was a subway track beneath his hand did fill him with relief. He was so close to the surface. He just had to reach the next terminal and he would get out! Looking around, he didn’t see or hear any signs of the bodies from the underground building, but he knew they were in the area. He turned back to the door, realizing that the reason why it was so hard to open was because the exterior was coated in a layer of bricks. The door was camouflaged against the side of the subway tunnel!

Not wanting to wait and be found, he took off in a run for the nearest exit.

 

They were more horrible than Marcus had dared assume, at least thirty of them, all standing between him and the subway terminal up ahead. They were some of the dead bodies from the underground building, but upon their resurrection, they had transformed into grotesque monsters beyond description.

There was one creature, its body split in half from its pelvis to its ribcage, the two halves becoming its extended legs now curled up over itself with its head now under its body, as if it were trying to roll itself up into a ring. Its arms were bent backwards to become hind legs and two long spikes of bone protruded from the soles of its feet, extending its reach and allowing it to hold its torso off the ground.

There was another monster, whose ribcage had transformed into a huge mouth, filled with grinding teeth that would shred anything that got caught within. A third beast had its torso compacted with its arms and legs now sharing the same joints, and its spine having burst out of its back and now standing on end like the tail of a scorpion with a jagged blade of bone.

A fourth creature crawled on all fours like many of the others, but its entire lower body had been twisted around so that its knees bent backward, allowing it to run unlike any human. Its spine had grown into a spiky ridge of blades running down its back and it had gained a second lower jaw, its original lower jaw having split in half and folded back to the sides, giving it four jaws in total, all with razor-sharp teeth. The fifth had its organs on the outside of its body, all inflated while flames leaked out of the creature’s mouth, obviously sustained by the flammable gases its innards were producing.

The sixth had its fingers replaced with bone machetes while its legs were extended to make it eight feet in height. The seventh was completely without skin, with all the muscles underneath separated into the individual strands, making it look like a giant human-shaped doll made of loose yarn. The eighth was merely a head, surrounded by a huge mass of tentacles, made of strips of its own body, including muscles, organs, and bones. The rest were a vast array of different mutations and transformations, all more horrible and terrifying than the last.

These were not Gargoyles or animals from Hell, but something else. They were all standing in Marcus’s way, and if he were to have any hope of getting out alive, he had to fight his way through them. As the monsters prepared to make their move, Marcus gathered his M1911 magazines into one pocket for easy access, all the knives he had taken from the puddle of blood into another, and his remaining shotgun shells into a single line in the ammo belt across his chest. This was the final round. He either escaped or he died.

With nothing left to do, Marcus gave a wild roar and charged towards the crowd of beasts. They answered his challenge with a chorus of snarls and bloodcurdling screams. His shotgun raised, he pulled the trigger and blasted the closest monster, blowing a hole through its chest and sending it sprawling back, but failing to incapacitate it. Even if he was able to run past it, it managed to deliver a huge slash across his back, cutting through his Kevlar like it was paper.

Discharging the spent casing, he shot the next beast, this time ripping off half of its skull, but again failing to kill it. With its spine hanging out of its mouth like a long, spiked tongue, it lashed out and struck the back of Marcus’s leg.

“Goddammit! Why won’t you die?”

He fired two more times, putting a round in a pair of monsters directly ahead of him. The buckshot ripped away their flesh, crushed their bones, and splattered blood in all directions, but it did not seem to affect them. They showed more tolerance to the blessed rounds than Gargoyles. Regardless, they were at least knocked back long enough for Marcus to run past them. Even though he had two more shells left to fire, he shouldered his shotgun and began reloading with one hand, while drawing his pistol and pumping round after round into the next group. Aiming for the chest and head failed to end them, so this time he focused on their limbs and joints. The attack seemed to slow them down a little, but he had to use up two mags just to make them stop completely.

His shotgun fully loaded, he picked up speed and began firing at the abominations in his path, using the blasts more to knock them back and disorient rather than actually hurt them. Even after taking a load of holy buckshot, the monsters would attack with unrelenting fury. Marcus was able to dodge their attacks and get past them, but only barely, and his body was minutes away from giving out. Dredging up the last of his strength, he further increased his speed and threw everything he had into the gauntlet of beasts. When his shotgun was out of shells, he cast it aside and began throwing knives with one hand while shooting his pistol with the other.

At last, when he was down to his last magazine and his personal combat knife, he broke free of the horde with the subway terminal directly ahead. Turning back, he fired the last of his bullets into the crowd of beasts. With his lungs feeling like they were going through a flaming garbage disposal, he hauled himself up the emergency ladder onto the platform and sprinted towards the nearest stairs, using his fear of the chasing creatures as his motivation to keep running. Every stair he climbed felt like a marathon, but with the blinding light of the surface shining on him, he ran out into the street.

Shielding his eyes from the light of the earth’s mantle around the city, he ducked into the nearest alley and collapsed beside a dumpster, laughing with disbelief that he had survived and managed to get away. He had never been so happy to smell old garbage and feel pavement against his face. He could hear the battle still going on around him with no clue as to how long it had been raging since he faced the giant troll. If he could find an Angel to heal him, he would be fine. Smiling, he sat up, pulled his bloody bandana out of his pocket, and tied it around his head, limiting the amount of light reaching his eyes.

Knife in hand, he glanced over to the subway exit, but didn’t see any of the monsters coming up from the darkness. Getting to his feet, he staggered into the next street and looked around, feeling his heart drop into his stomach. Before him were over a dozen Demons, feeding on a field of Angels and Archangels that they had just massacred.

Spotting Marcus, one of the Demons dropped the severed forearm he had been chewing on and began to laugh. “Look, boys. It seems we have a latecomer to the show! I don’t know about you, but I’ll get an upset stomach if I eat all this Angel meat without adding some human to the mix!”

The Demons stood up, snickering and overjoyed at the chance to kill another civilian.

Well, this was it. There was no way he could run away from this and he was out of ammo with nothing but his blade. He might as well go out with some glory and die fighting. Holding out his knife, he started walking towards them with his arms outstretched. “Come and get me, motherfuckers! I’ll make all of you my bitches!”

“I love it when my food is spicy!” one of the Demons cackled.

Their laughing died as the sound of a sonic boom reached them. All the Demons looked back at a speck in the distance, growing larger and larger with energy wrapped around it as it hurtled towards them. It was Baltoh, sword in one hand and gun in the other with a focused snarl on his face, but no sign of fatigue and the only damage being his destroyed vest and hooded shirt. All across the city, Archangels were dropping like flies from exhaustion, having never fought in a battle for such a long time. For him, this siege was little more than a pre-workout stretch.

Reaching the other end of the street, he touched down and shot towards the Demons while making almost no contact with the road. Around his feet, the blood of the slain Angels and Archangels was flying up like sparks as he zoomed across the ground. Coming upon the first Demon, he delivered a downward cleave with his sword, slicing him in half straight down the middle. Skidding past, he turned around and aimed his gun another Demon and ripped her head and upper torso off with a Hellsteel slug. As if skating through the blood of his slain comrades, Baltoh turned around again and stabbed a Demon through the head, skewering her brain and then ripping her skull apart with the removal of the blade.

Making another rotation, he emptied the cylinder of his gun into five more Demons, causing them all to combust into fountains of blood from the force of the impacts. He flipped the gun open and discarded the empty shells, and while summoning six more bullets, he cleaved two Demons in half and beheaded a third with his tail. One Demon pointed his finger at him and launched a full power Abyss Blast, but showing no signs of injury, Baltoh burst out of the surge of shadow energy and clipped the Demon horizontally across the gut, severing his upper and lower body. As he shot past him, he turned around and blasted the bifurcated opponent with an Abyss Blast of his own.

Facing forward while he moved, Baltoh picked off two more Demons with a pair of shots from his pistol, then cast the Burning Moon Slice spell and dispatched any of the Demons out of reach to the side. Having crossed through the mob, he turned back to all the Demons he had missed and annihilated them with twin Divinity Rays from both hands, when a normal Divinity Ray from an Archangel would only singe their flesh. Coming to a stop, Baltoh took a few deep breaths and then turned to Marcus.

“I could have taken them, you didn’t have to swoop in and take the glory,” Marcus joked, not knowing what else to say.

Baltoh gave a quick smirk. “Yeah, I know. Where have you been? I came over as soon as I caught your scent. You’ve been missing for hours.”

“I was stuck underground. Listen, Baltoh, there is a whole other world beneath this city and it’s completely infested with monsters. There is this huge operation happening down there. I don’t know who did it, but humans have been performing all these crazy rituals and corpse desecrations. It’s the creepiest shit I have ever seen. Baltoh… I think humans were responsible for all this, not just the Demons.”

Baltoh’s face contorted into a concerned scowl. “Ok, I’ll patch you up and put an end to this battle. Once everything is calmed down, I want you to take me back to whatever place you saw.”

 

Abomination

 

This battle had been far longer than the previous one, with the death toll even higher and more of city left in ruins. Once again, the concrete jungle was searched and as many dead bodies as possible were retrieved, to be brought to the dry seabed for a mass funeral and cremation. The Archangels and Angels were struggling to tend to the wounded, as they themselves had suffered horrific casualties and they barely had enough energy to heal their own injuries or even stand on their feet. Impatient, Baltoh gave the order for all the injured to be brought to him.

Gathered in Yankee Stadium with thousands of people, he extended his Angel wings to their full length with every feather sparking with holy energy like white-hot steel. “Forbidden Angel Art: Healing Rain.”

Upon the spell’s announcement, Baltoh’s wings glowed with a blue-gold radiance, and from his feathers, thousands of wisps of light began to shoot up into the sky and fail back down like a storm of arrows. Raining down onto the wounded people of New York, these energy streaks restored anyone they touched, with every wound closing more and more as the light poured down upon them like manna from Heaven.

This spell was one of the Trinity Rites, the three most powerful spells in an Archangel’s arsenal. The Trinity Rites consisted of the Final Crucifixion for offense, the Rose Window Shield for defense, and the Healing Rain for large-scale rejuvenation of others. Just casting one of these spells once would exhaust a normal Archangel and last only a few seconds.

Baltoh kept the spell going for several minutes before ceasing the flow of power. Everyone was, for the most part, healed, and anyone else who still needed help would receive it through the usual Laying on of Hands technique. Once he was done, he turned to Michael. “Ok, you all attend the funeral. I’ll take Marcus and Raphael and head down into the tunnels beneath New York. When we get back, we’ll have a meeting in the mayor’s office.”

 

“I must be crazy to be coming back down here. I don’t know if I can ever go into a dark room again without having flashbacks,” Marcus cursed.

He was walking with Baltoh and Raphael down in the subway terminal. He had been fully healed and was armed to the teeth, and even though the presence of the Hybrid and Archangel was enough to illuminate the subway system, he was carrying as many flashlights as he could.

“Relax, none of these things will get you as long as we’re here,” Baltoh said, jumping down onto the track.

Raphael jumped with him while Marcus took the ladder he had frantically scrambled up just an hour ago.