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Chapter 24: Where It All Ends

The two hit the ground hard, cracking the solid stone under them and cratering the ground deep.

Antes had taken the least of the fall, slowing his descent with his wings and was able to roll and get straight back up with little injury. However, he was wounded from before. A large gash across his face welled with blood and another one across his arm was deep enough for bone to show.

Primarch’s wings were not fit for flight and he hit the ground hard, crushing the sole pit demon in the room, flattening him to the point that the demon was not recognizable at all. The crash shook the room enough to throw many off balance as they stared in awe.

“Primarch!” Malus roared with true anger, his eyes turning a deep violet and the demons nearest to him backing away in fear. “You were to deal with the angel. Instead I find you here now with the angel still alive.”

Primarch snorted deeply in frustration as he got up. “You were unable to kill him. Do not be so surprised that it takes me some time.” He glared at Malus and then turned to Antes who stood ready.

“You are truly a disappointment,” Antes said. “To be the corruption of an angel so close to perfection and to show nothing but flaw.”

Primarch gave a roar, wet spittle shooting from his mouth. “I will tear you in two and show you flaw.” He reached behind him, grasping two spines that were prominently displayed on his back like horns. He pulled on them, the spines slowly came out of Primarchs back, pulling and tearing away from the sinew that held them. Eventually they slid free with a wet gush of dark red blood and showed themselves to be two massive bone blades.

“That’s a new one,” Jason commented internally. “Disgusting and painful. Are all demons to ridiculously over the top.”

“Just the ones that can afford to be,” Antes replied and dashed forward, pushing off with his boots hard enough to leave prints in the stone.

Primarch braced with his new blades as Antes swept up at him. In any other situation, the bone blades would have been sliced apart, but demonic energy poured into them, stopping the ice blade a foot from the demon’s face. He grinned. “Not going to be so easy.”

“One can hope,” Antes said and disengaged the blades and back stepped out of Primarch’s swinging range.

As the two were fighting, Hercules took advantage of the distraction and began to push his men forward and towards Kieth and Gorston again. Enough of the demons were caught off guard that they made it most of the way before resistance slowed them to a crawl again.

Malus frowned in worry. His plan should have kept them at bay on the surface long enough for his spell. He was already receiving mental reports that vermin had tunneled into his citadel and the mortal armies were flanking his at every turn. He had dealt with the vermin’s under-empire and yet they were still the source of his failings. Rage built up and he quickly fled back to his cauldron where the precious magical liquid had stopped bubbling from inattention. Precious minutes had been lost. He had to hurry.

Kieth nearly collapsed once relief got to him. His limbs felt as if filled with lead and his body no longer responded.

Janice caught him as he slumped.

“How’d I do?” Kieth asked in a weak voice. Sleep was on the verge of taking over now.

“You did just fine,” Janice smiles down at him and let his hair. “Now get a bit of rest, we’ll take it from here.”

With permission given, Kieth’s eyes slipped shut and he fell into a deep sleep to restore his magical reserves that had nearly been completely drained.

Janice lowered his gently and placed her satchel under his head. She then stood up and looked out at the scene. It was still bleak. Antes and the massive thing that Malus called Primarch were fighting it out in the center of the room and still more demons were coming in to attack her group. Malus also back at his cauldron, hovering over it and chanting something. The pot was spouting out thick green smoke and it shook slightly as if excited.

Jason and Antes saw it too, but couldn’t move. The brutishly large Primarch was pressing his attack, making sweep after sweep with his bone blades, not a care in the world about the smaller demons he sliced into smaller bits of meat and bone.

“We have to do something,” Jason said. He felt a sense of panic coming in as he watched the boiling cauldron through Antes’ peripherals.

“Don’t worry yourself,” Antes replied with a deep sense of calm that helped Jason get his emotions under control.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

Antes easily blocked an attack with his wings, grunting as the sheer strength of it caused the metal to whine and stress. He then rolled between Primarch’s legs and made a cut with his blades, gouging a deep wound into the beast’s thigh.

“It is true that Vessius was near perfection,” Antes explained, able to see any attack incoming except for a small pinhole sized area on his back. He then began to speak aloud as well.

“To change Vessius in any way, to add strength, to add speed, anything,” he said and lifted himself up from the ground with his wings above Primarch who was still turning despite his wound. “Would to flaw that near perfection, enough so that he is easily beaten.”

Primarch snarled as he lifted the bone blade to throw it at the angel, but Antes was faster.

I’ve sword of ice changed shape even as Antes drew it back and threw it. It elongated into an perfectly smooth lance of ice.

Primarch didn’t see it, the lance was so thin that from directly from the front, it was invisible. Vessius would have seen it, Primarch did not.

There was no movement. Antes floated with his arm outstretched from the throw. Primarch with his arm back and ready to attack.

They stared at each other until a gurgling sound came from Primarch as a torrent of blood sprouted from a small hole in his neck. His eyes never left Antes.

“Impossible,” he managed to say. “I- I am perfection made true.”

Antes smiled. “Not even the Divine can create a truly perfect being. No way Malus could either.”

The demon collapsed onto his knees and with a cough that sent a cascade of blood down his front, he fell over.

“No!” Malus roared and the dark shroud around him became a massive fog that was sent out.

Antes quickly flew down to where the rest of his group was and he raised his hand to the ceiling where it began to glow.

The fog swallowed all of the smaller demons who were fleeing from the fog, but the darkness could not overcome that light that Antes had created to protect himself and the others.

Janice looked out and into the blackness that surrounded them and heard a terrifying noise. It was bones breaking and small imps screaming in terror as something happened. They cried out and begged for some sort of mercy to beings they did not believe in or had just been sworn to fight.

Figure appeared at the edge of the dark fog and Janice squinted to see it.

It was a hell hound, ears back and tail tucked. It whispered as it slowly approached the light even though it was burning it, sending whispered of smoke up from its sickly and putrid hide.

Janice watched in gaped horror. The thing slowly got closer and closer, the smoke coming from it faster and faster until the fog around it seemingly enveloped it.

The hell hound cried out and yelped enough that Janice had to cup her ears and it woke Kieth from his regenerative slumber.

The shape of the hell hound, enveloped in the fog, began to thirst and swirl to a point that there was no way the hell hound could still be alive and yet it continued to screech and cry.

Just as quickly as it started, the sound went away. All the begging and yelling ceased at once and the fog began to fade.

The hell hound was nothing like before. A dark globular mass met them, a single shade of swirling matter that pulsates and ungulates as if dancing to an unheard song. Then there was two and then three and then a dozen. Hundreds upon hundreds of the masses dotted the room exactly where there had been a demon.

“What are they?” Hercules asked, spear raised and ready.

“Death incarnate,” Malus said in a grin tone and then pointed a finger at them. “Kill them.”

The globs emitted a synchronized hypersonic screech that cracked the stone walls before warping into the shapes of people, animals, demons, whatever and attacking.

“Shit,” Kieth muttered as he was helped up and onto his feet.

One of the Hercules men swung at a shape which warped around his blade and then wrapped itself around his wrist. The man screamed out in terror and then pain and his arm was instantly turned to jelly by an enormous force. The gelatinous being slowly began to creep up his arm and would have taken him if Hercules hadn’t stepped in and amputee the arm at the elbow.

“We can’t fight them!” Gorston cried out in shock as one of the things broke his axe that he had just tried to strike it with, having consumed the blade and breaking it with the same overwhelming force.

“Give me control,” Jason said suddenly, feeling something inside of him light up. It was the same feeling he had when he was being overwhelmed in Vimora, a power being granted to him once again.

Antes relinquished his control immediately and the angel drifted downwards, slowing changing back into the entirely normalcy looking canine.

Without saying anything, Jason former is usual ice blade and held it out in front of him where the ice turned a creamy white and began to glow.

“Stop him!” Malus screamed recognizing the energy of the Divine. “Stop him now.”

The grey blobs all quickly changed course and began to converge on Jason, who made no move to stop them.

The grey matter began to pile onto Jason.

“No! Jason!” Janice called out and tried to run towards here, but Kieth grabbed a hold of her. He wasn’t strong enough to physically stop her, but she did stop.

“Just watch,” Kieth said to her, watching as Jason was fully consumed by the things. “You weren’t at Vimora.”

Inside the mass of grey, Jason felt then trying to crush him, but the thinnest layer of the Divine’s power kept them from instantly pulping. He ignored it and instead focused on concentrating his energy into his blade which flowed brighter and hotter without melting.

Malus watched with an intensity that made it seem that he was staring through the mass of grey goo. He knew that it had been too late and so there was only one thing to do. If he couldn’t finish his spell, no one would live. He went to his cauldron and was ready to strike it with a powerful blast of demonic energy in the hope of destabilizing it just like the first time, however a shift in the mass of grey gave him pause.

Bubbles began to form in the mass which hissed and burped our plumes of smoke. The form shuddered and then bulged out further and further. The mass emitted a high pitched whine as it slowly began to catch fire and burn away.

A crack appeared in the bulging mass and a great light shone through which blinded everyone. More cracks began to appear and more brilliant light and then the mass simply evaporated away into ash and the whole room was enveloped in the light.

Malus blinked away the stars until he could see again.

Where the mass of grey forms had been was now a single individual, it wasn’t Jason, but Antes and he held out his sword which now had an orb imbedded into the hilt. A soul stone.

Malus’ eyes widened in shock and he filled with something he hadn’t felt in a very long time, terror.

“You will not have me!” Malus abandoned his cauldron and formed a blade of smoke and leapt at Antes from across the room.

Antes looked up. The attack was sloppy, desperate, easy to counter. He moved just enough to slip his blade past Malus’ and instead of stabbing into the demon, had the blade evaporate until there was just the stone, which he pushed into Malus’ chest.

Jason felt something go wrong. There was a tugging, but not physically.

“There was something I held back from you?” Antes said to Jason.

Jason looked through Antes’ eyes and watched as the demonic parts of Malus slowly began to fade. He also saw the angelic parts of him fade as well. The wings were simply evaporating and his armor was merely turning away in the wind.

“What’s going on?” Jason asked as he felt his connection of Antes weaken.

“Soul stones aren’t widely used, they dangerous,” Antes explained, his voice a whisper. “To use it requires the soul of the user and the target.”

“But-“ Jason was going to say, but he felt the words come out of his lips instead of as a thought. He could blink his own eyes. His thoughts were his own.

He looked down at the small orb he was holding. It swirled with white and black, each trying to conquer the other inside their tiny prison.

“Not even a goodbye,” Jason said as he felt a burning in his nose and tears welling up.

A movement in front of Jason made him look up and he saw for the first time in so many months, Anthony. He was pale, skinny and deathly, but it was Jason.

“J-Jason?” He said and then collapsed, but Jason caught him before he could hit the ground.

“It’s... It’s me,” Jason said as he knelt down and rest Anthony on his knee. “I’m here.” He wept.

Anthony gave a small smile, weak, but genuine. “I knew you’d come for me.”

“I promised,” Jason said and hugged Anthony. “I promised.”

Anthony patted Jason’s back. The fur was an unfamiliar feeling, but knowing who it belonged to, it was a welcoming one. “Squeezing too hard,” he croaked.

Jason loosened his grip. “Sorry.” He kissed the top of Anthony’s head. “It’s going to be alright now. Everything is going to be alright.”