The hybrids descended over them in an instant. Hulking shadows peeled away from the walls of the house, reappearing in front of Jace and the others, dozens of reflective eyes glowing dimly in the faraway light.

There was a moment of reprieve, then. Of unsolicited quietness. A second of chilling calm when nothing moved and no one reacted.

But that moment ended when one hybrid lunged. A blood curdling scream shattered the stillness and the moment dissolved in a fit of fangs and cries and the bodies of the dying lying upon the grounds of a dead city.

And Jace watched it all. In his movements to block and divvy each hybrid's moves and attacks, he couldn't close his ears off from the shrieks and the raging snarls that tore through the night. He couldn't close his eyes off to the silhouetted figures that stood in the distance, their stance defiant, courageous, even as the Hybrids cut them down. And they draped like the broken pillars, too.

Jace witnessed it, But he couldn't feel it. Or maybe he was feeling too much and the war he raged on the inside, was bleeding out to the one that surrounded him. He picked up a stone and smashed it between the eyes of a hybrid, and the beast went down But he felt no satisfaction. No victory. Not in the middle of so much death.

The death of his people.

He wasn't even thinking. Jace just moved with instinct, molding against it, applying it like a shield to everything that came against him. No stele, no blade. Just that raging instinct. He couldn't even tell if he had been bitten or cut because he felt nothing. There was just nothing.

Another kill. Another rock drenched of hybrid blood. But they weren't going to win a war by stones. They needed weapons, but that had been Sebastian's goal all along.

To ensure they had none.

If Jace was channeling his anger before, he pushed it into his combative strategy now, infusing it with every sentient of betrayal he bore. Each death around him only added to it, like a long chain, driving him deeper into the chaos. To the door. To Clary. To Sebastian. There was nothing else that existed.

"Love is weakness," the unbroken words of a dead man, came to him suddenly. But Jace understood. Those words had formed the foundation of Valentine's belief. But it wasn't from lack of evidence he used to support it. It was from lack of his own experience. Valentine never believed in the concept that love could enable a person to do impossible things, like fight through the middle of a war zone with rocks, not because he had never proven it, but because no one had proven it to him.

And for a split second, as the door to the huge mansion came into slivered view, he felt sorry for that man.

But then the door opened and the feeling disappeared as Clary stepped outside.

With Sebastian trailing behind her.

His chest suddenly felt as if it were being crushed, ripped apart from the inside. A hybrid lingering he sidestepped it and slammed his elbow under its jaw. The creature howled in pain and began rubbing at its snout, but Jace didn't care. His focus was trailed on one man and the girl who stood in front of him.

"What, no speech?" Jace snapped, his tone dark. Darker than he'd ever heard it.

A part of him had changed since the start of this war, but the fight he endured now sealed it.

He'd seen his people fight, yes, but hadn't witnessed a massacre like this and it shaped him, branded him in the hot coals of war, into something sharp and wicked he didn't recognize.

Any traces of past scars, of the boy broken by words and dead falcon was gone. In his place stood someone else; devoid of snappy remarks and conceited replies. A man standing in the pool of his people's blood.

"This is what you wanted, right?" He asked, half expecting his body to shake in rage, in relentless fury, but he was calm. Bone chilling calm as he stared at Sebastian, duly noting Clary's horrified expression as she watched the Shadowhunters die around them.

"A witness to your own war. The lowest of cowardly acts; can't even fight those you made defenseless."

"Someone's getting a little angry," Sebastian said, his lips lifting in the echo of a half smile. "You and Clarissa seem to think I have some moral compass directing me to engage, But for what? The park of being fair? If that were the case, There would never be cause for battle."

"No, But I'd assumed you'd have the pride of calling the credit for it."

Sebastian smirked. "Oh, I do. But don't be too concerned; I'm not missing out on all the fun." His ghost of a smile turned into a real grin then as he pulled a sword from the depths of his cloak, laced to the side of him Jace hadn't seen. "In fact, I'm going to enjoy killing you."

Sebastian made the first move. His blade, the tip made white by the fire, arching in an elegant and deadly slant towards Jace's throat.

Clary reacted instantly, throwing her weight into Sebastian, just as Jace rolled and the tip of the sword plunged into the earth. Sebastian turned swiftly to her and a burst of pain lanced up her face and she groped at the side of her head, hand coming away sticky with red. The distant flames from the lantern made her blood look black.

"Don't. Touch. Her," each word Jace spoke was like steel. It rang with strength and a hatred that was both cool and burning. Clary blinked away the pain and turned to see Jace, who was now trying to get a hit to Sebastian, But he was ready. He dodged the attempt with ease and sliced his weapon downward, across Jace's shin. She gasped as he staggered once But didn't fall, and he whirled again, sending a hand gripped around a stone to Sebastian's back. It smacked him between the shoulder blades but if it hurt him, he didn't show it, and he roared back with a vengeance, blade slicing ribbons of air, about of silver as it landed true, in an ugly shallow mark down Jace's chest.

Clary was helpless. The more she tried to help, the more reckless she made Jace and that was the one thing he could not afford to be.

She watched, feeling almost detached as they sparred. At least Sebastian sparred, Jace combating his strikes with the weapons of the earth, using stones to block the swings, and taking the pain of it when they didn't.

Meanwhile, far away, in some distant part of her brain, Sebastian's words still echoed, "it can only cease with that of who it began with. And it began with you."

And it began with you.

She tried vainly to shut out his voice, but at the heart of battle, surrounded by a monotony of shouts and snarls, a symphony composed of the dying, it repeated quietly, like a broken record.

"I should have killed you when I had the chance," Jace spat, a drop of blood oozing from the corner of his lip. His eyes burned and Clary could almost read the thoughts that stoked his rage.

"I should have burned your body. Should have thrown your ashes in Lake Lyn. I'll always wish I had."

"We all have our regrets," Sebastian chided, sending another arching strike down on Jace. He blocked it, a loud chinking noise bouncing off as metal collided with stone. "I regret not drawing out Alec's death. He was so easy to coerce. It was practically comical."

Jace didn't take the bait. He eluded the next attack, and using a sharp piece of rock, met it against the soft tissue of skin hidden beneath Sebastian's cloak. He hissed.

"I regret sparing the life of that Lightwood girl. Having not killed her on the spot and left her to burn with her brother."

Another slash. This one made contact, carving a crude line down Jace's forearm. Clary heard a short groan, but he wasted no time on himself. Jace was driven by pain. By everything he felt. And the anger only helped in masking pieces of it, a buffer to each blow; lending him the strength to take another.

"Do you see where the heroics get you?" Sebastian raised his voice, kicking away a nearby stone before Jace had the chance to reach it."Do you see what deal you end up when being the good guy?"

Jace sneered at him. "At least I'll die with dignity."

"But you will die," Sebastian said, slashing his blade across Jace's stomach. The hint of red bloomed, blossoming along the folds of his shirt. "But I this won't be quick. You've had your vendetta against me. And I have one against you."

"You've done enough!" Clary shouted at his back, desperate to stop his advance. To do something. She had no weapon. No pencil. And because of it, she would have to watch the boy she loved, die in front of her.

Again.

"You've taken too much," she snapped. "There's nothing you could possibly hold against him. Nothing that would amount to what you've destroyed."

She hated how chastising she sounded, but if it would add moments; aid Jace in any way, she'd deliver. The girl who'd always used paper was now handed only words.

Sebastian leveled his blade as Jace rose, facing the man with no trace of fear.

"He got in my way."

Clary's body reacted before anything else, and she swung herself around, in front of Jace, the blade pointed at her heart. She saw the tip of it waver, just for a moment, but her attention was caught onto something beyond him.

A quiver in the satin air of it tore free, like a twisted certain, and two things happened at once. The first, she noticed, was the sweep of dark hair coming from the Portal, blending in the darkness, a person still clad in gear, eyes shining as brightly as Jace's.

Isabelle.

And the second, the entire image disspated and Clary was gone, swept away from between life and death, The sword no longer pointed to her. Instead, she looked up to see Simon, and could barely register him, his arms wrapped around her waist, both of them a distance from the battle she'd just been in the center of.

Then she got sight of a sparkly being, one that could only be Magnus. Her elation of seeing him was short lived as a new air of relief flooded her.

Tied to Magnus, from head to toe, Was a vast variety of swords and knives; even a few bows and one very familiar whip. Had this been under different circumstances, the sight would have been ridiculous.

But his eyes belied the ebullient edge of his exterior, and they glittered with a quiet malice. "Which one would you like?"