Chapter 25: Self
Ducal soldiers stood at the ready, all clad in demonic hazmat suits, awaiting the moment the sensors registered lowered levels of purifying energies. Each one glanced down at their sensors as the needles of their instruments abruptly snapped down to zero. The heavy blast-door bent inward, glowing red, then orange, then white all in an instant before it was sent smashing down the hallway by a surge of yellow lightning. Purified air rushed in, flickering and hissing as it reacted with the Hellish atmosphere as a tall, armored figure strode in, heedless of the corrosive atmosphere surrounding them, the holy energy kept at bay by their awesome demonic might.
"Captain Gallia?" Croaked one of the soldiers as the figure strode by. "A-are you alright?"
Captain Gallia paid no attention to the question, instead roughly shoving a small, metallic apple into the soldier's hands. "Get this to the lab."
She set off down the hall, beckoning the soldiers followed her. "All of you, arm yourselves and meet me in the courtyard."
"Captain, what's going on?"
She cocked her ear at his voice, recognizing it even through the bulky hazmat suit. "Hircus."
"Yes, sir?"
She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him in close, her voice a whispered hiss. "Where. Is. The Rapture?"
Gallia stormed down the hallway, part of her was proud, excited at how much more powerful she'd become since entering her Duke's–Sallos'–service. It had taken every ounce of willpower she had to merely survive the rogue artifact, and something more to tame it. But even her vast well of demonic power had its limits, and that limit had been reached sometime before she'd contained the shard.
She was exhausted.
She still had work to do, and for that, she needed… a pick-me-up.
Gallia approached the door to the lesser contraband locker, while not a vault like the Duke's personal locker, it was still a heavily secured affair, with entry allowed only through a time-consuming security screening process.
Fuck that.
The heavy, blessed steel door smashed into the far side of the locker with the force of a freight train. The spiky, armored demon marched and looked around at the endless cabinets and lockers. "Seir Locus."
Her eyes lit up pink with the Great Prince's power, she felt herself drawn to a specific steel cabinet, a faring energy outlining it as though it glowed from within. The flimsy steel offered no resistance and the lock snapped like a pretzel before her might. Within were rows upon rows of the containers, with various cartoon fruit on each one announcing the flavor of their contents.
'Orange is their best flavor,' the imp had said, her mouth watering to taste the awful, plasticky 'orange' flavoring, at once pungently bitter and revoltingly sweet. She craved it.
She grabbed the container of orange Rapture, snapping off the safety cap with a thumb and carelessly shaking out a half dozen of the lozenges. A moment's hesitation took hold, what was she doing? This was contraband! Dangerous, hideously addictive contraband of mysterious origins. Part of her snarled that she should just fight through the fatigue, that even depleted to such a degree, those vulgarian upstarts would be no match for her. Gallia's hand trembled, a tic pulling at the side of her face as her beige skin grew slick with sweat. With a snarl, she quaffed the pills, chewing openly like an animal, the glowing orange slime within dripping down her chin. She swallowed and stooped over, panting as she waited for it to take hold.
Heat.
Light.
Flashes behind her eyes like fireworks.
Gallia gasped and stood ramrod stiff as she felt her power return, her demonic essence restored in full and then some. Power welled within her, energy so intense she felt as though she might explode. Her aura flared uncontrollably, arcs of lighting hissed and cracked, carving molten scars into the metal cabinets, the floor around her feet melted and bubbled as the air rippled and surged away from her in a star-hot wave.
She felt… happy. Content. Warmth like she had never felt, a half-memory of the contentment she knew as a babe, suckling on the teat of the wet-nurse. Joy unlike the cruel, cold emotion she felt while crushing her enemies and accruing wealth, power, and respect. Joy the likes of which she only knew when… with him, the Duke. Her Duke. Her Sallos. It surged and swelled within her like the energy that threatened to rupture her body at the seams.
Gallia breathed deep and centered herself, grabbing ahold of the power and wrestling it under control, a gruesome grin spreading across her flawless face, her eyes small suns of demonic power. She tapped her gauntlet and opened a channel to the facility. "Proud warriors of the Ducal Guard, this is Captain Gallia. The relic has been contained and the holy contamination is dissipating. All available personnel are to report to the event site to locate and recover survivors and perform damage control. All units are to report to their pre-established muster points, and all unit commanders are to proceed at their own discretion. Combat Mage Group Alpha-Omega, report to the courtyard as soon as possible, this is a Dark-S-7 incursion, prepare appropriately."
Gallia closed the channel and made for the door, a cruel smirk on her face. "I'll meet you there, upstarts."
The door flew open and out sprinted 13 demons, spilling into the courtyard of the smoldering ziggurat before making a bee-line for the vast stairs leading down to the cityscape below. They hopped over and ran around chunks of scorched abyssal granite and warped, destroyed machinery, as well as the occasional burnt, twisted remains of a ducal guard.
"Does plan B involve anything besides 'run the fuck away'?" Octavia huffed as she ran alongside St. Anger, who was hovering with infuriating ease.
"Yes," replied St. Anger, smirking. "Plan B is as follows. Step 1: run the fuck away. Step 2: Don't get killed."
"I love this plan!" Blitzo said, smacking St. Anger on the rump. "I'm excited to be a part of it!"
"Me too!" Millie said, smiling.
Moxxie trotted alongside her, panting. "Is there a step three?"
"Step 4: Profit!" Willin' cheered, patting his pocket and reaching for a high-five.
Thriller cackled, not leaving the rat hanging. "Sooooo much profit!"
"Only if we adhere to step 2!" Blackbird snarled as he streaked by, skating on a sheet of ice. "Thriller, the first door you come across, try and get us back to homebase, that blasted halo-shard must have a range!"
"Got it!"
The group was halfway across the courtyard, the stairway achingly close, when a dull keening filled the air. The group skidded to a stop as glowing purple cracks spidered through the air around them, the sound like glass breaking underscored with the wails of the abyss.
"Thriller?!" Blackbird growled.
"It's not me!" The tengu cried. "Something… something's breaking in!"
They braced as the keening sound became an earsplitting wail, the air vibrating with terrible force. The cracks intersected and, with a thunderous sound, the mirror world shattered and fell away, revealing the real world and with it the three-dozen armored ducal guards. Six Combat Mages stood at the ready, their hands and eyes still glowing from the spell they had cast to wrest them from the mirror world.
"Shit," St. Anger growled, his eyes glowing as he rose higher off the ground. "Blackbird! Take Thriller, Truly, and Aoxomoxoa and get the Princess out of here! The rest of you, with me! We'll buy them some time!"
"Understood!" Blackbird said, clicking his heels together. "All of you, follow me!"
Octavia looked down, uttering a short, confused exclamation as a film of slick ice formed under her feet. She gasped in alarm and cold as an icy cryosuit grew over her body from the feet-up, the cold eventually giving way to a curiously stuffy warmth as her own body heat was reflected back at her. All around her the other members of Il Nove were similarly armored, a placid-faced Truly waving at her. "What the fuck is going on?!"
"I control the suits, it'll help you keep up with me!" Blackbird said, crouching down atop a pedestal of ice. "Do not resist its movements."
"What–"
"Roll out!"
Octavia squawked as the suit moved around her, propelling her forward at tremendous speed on its skates. She glanced over at the other gang members as they placidly raced forward on self-generating sheets of ice at over 150km/h, effortlessly weaving around and over debris.
"This is… such… bullshit!" Octavia screamed inside her helmet as she jerked around inside the suit.
"Speaking of bullshit…" Thriller said, pointing into the sky, his eyes wide and terrified.
They all looked up to see a shining, yellow meteor streaking overhead, a small, dark shape encased in brilliant glowing energy, leaving a trail of burning air in its wake.
Octavia's eyes widened as her powerful eyes focused on the oncoming ball of energy. "Is that…?"
The fiery ball smashed into the ground in front of them, Blackbird only barely managing to bring them to a stop. Standing in a molten crater before them was Captain Gallia, wreathed in glowing bands of demonic energy and incandescent ribbons of plasma.
"Shit."
Gallia roared and slashed the air in front with her claws, creating a powerful wave of crackling demonic energy surging towards them. The suits were scattered like leaves before a hurricane. Octavia grunted as she tumbled along the ground at highway speeds, large chunks of her armored suit crumbling away with each impact. Dazed, she shakily got to her feet, looking up to see Blackbird and Gallia exchange blasts in the distance, jets of cold entropic death mingling with star-hot lightning in brilliant flashes. She stepped away slowly before turning around to run, run away, run anywhere but here! She ran headlong into the arms of a pair of ducal guards, who wasted no time in attempting to restrain the demon princess.
"No!" Octavia screamed. "Let go!"
With a grunt she picked one guard up off her feet and flung her high into the air. The enraged owl demoness spun about on the other guard and brought her fist down hard atop his helmet. The steel crumpled with a crunch, his visor cracking and bursting outward, revealing a trio of mismatched eyes, one dripping black blood tears. The guard staggered away, cursing and growling as he attempted to remove his warped, askew helmet. A few meters away, the other guard plummeted to the courtyard, bouncing painfully off a granite boulder before thudding to the ground. The guard collected herself and snarled, charging headlong at the princess, hopping into the air in a compact front flip before bringing her heel down hard on the ground. Octavia turned around just in time to see a pillar of stone sprout from the demoness' heel, smashing into her chest. Octavia was sent tumbling backwards into the waiting arms of the other demon, his helmet discarded, his bloody, eel-like face split into a malicious grin. Octavia screamed in pain as hundreds of thousands of volts coursed through her body.
"Night-night, princess!" The eel-demon cackled. "Sweet dreams!"
"Knock her out already!" The geomancer barked. "We gotta get her out of here and back into custody!"
"I'm tryin'!" Zappy whined, nodding at the agonized but still struggling royal in his grasp. "This bitch is tough! A little help?"
"Ugh! Fine!" Rocky sighed and rolled her eyes, levitating a hunk of rock in front of her, the solid rock molding like clay into a huge, grey hand which squeezed into a fist. "Always wanted to sort one of these royal brats out!"
The huge rock fist streaked forward, bridging the meters between them in less than a blink of an eye. Zappy barely had time to lose his smile before dozens of kilograms of granite smashed into his flat, amphibian face with a squelch of teeth and blood, sending him sprawling backwards.
"Garfunkle!"
"Janis!" Garfunkle gurgled through a spray of blood and tooth shards. "Waddafug?!"
"But-but I wasn't-I didn't–" Janis said, sweeping her arms out wide as hundreds of pieces of debris shot into the air around her, the abyssal granite
whittled away until only a swarm of deadly flechettes remained. "What the fuck is happening?!"
With a wave of her arms, Janis sent the deadly needles streaking towards Captain Gallia as she battled Blackbird and his puppets. The diamond-hard needles splashed harmlessly off her armor and natural scales, obliterating a nearby puppet suit in the crossfire. Gallia turned around and glared at the offending guard.
"C-Captain! It wasn't-I didn't! I–" Joplin stammered before looking into the mirror-polished finish of her armor gauntlets. "What?"
In her reflection, she saw a tallish raven-demon standing behind her, wrapped all around her limbs and body were glowing, pulsing vines. She snarled and channeled her demonic essence away from her own powers, her eyes glowing crimson. "Potentia Flauros!"
The demons in the reflection reacted with silent screams of pain as they began to smolder and singe. The raven-demon and the vines vanished and the pair reappeared in the real world.
"Ahh! What the fuck!" Truly growled, slapping at the patches of smoking bark on his body. "I thought she wasn't powerful enough to reach us in there!"
"I had to make the veil thin for you to control her!" Thriller said, examining his charred outfit. "Fuck me, this was gonna be my 'saved a princess' memento suit!"
"Filthy commoners!" Janis roared, summoning a scorpion tail of abyssal granite behind her. "How dare you weaklings sully my honor with your feeble powers!"
"True enough, we're pretty basic," Thriller said, smiling wolfishly as he raised a closed hand. "But that's what grenades are for."
He opened his hand and out poured a cascade of pins. Janis's eyes snapped open and she looked down, seeing dozens of grenades affixed to her body with sticky wads of sap. A second later and the ducal guard vanished in a storm light, flame, and body parts.
"Hey! Dipthits!" Came a slurred voice.
They turned around to see Garfunkle, his face a ruin of black blood and macerated tissue, in one hand was Octavia and in the other a Seraphim steel dagger, pressed to her throat. "Nao yoo thuckin' pethenths bettuh bacc th'thuck oftph or the pritheth bekumth a peth-dethpether!"
Thriller leaned over to Truly. "Did you get any of that?"
"Not a word." Truly shook his head. "Sounded like two streaks slapping together."
"I thed–" Garfunkle began to say when his crumpled helmet hovered over and set down on his head. "Ey?"
The helmet imploded with a sharp metallic crunch, reducing the guard's head to a high-pressure jet of black goo. The body toppled over backwards and the two rushed over to a blood-splattered Octavia, looking over as St. Anger levitated over to them.
"What are you waiting for?!" St. Anger roared, surrounded by all manner of Seraphic weapons. "Get the girl to her father and make this legal! We'll hold out as long as we can!"
The jester demon pinched his immense magnetic field and reflected a blast of hellfire and took off back into the fray.
"As much as I hate to say it, boss-man's right," Thriller said, looking around at his team-mates as they squared off against Hell's elites. "If we can get out of here, we can get her to her dad, get paid, and this whole thing blows over!"
"You can if you want!" Truly said, sprinting for the scrum. "I'm not leaving Deeply!"
"Romantic idiot…" Thriller said, turning to Octavia. "Alright, babe, let's bou–AAAAARRRRRRRRGH!"
Thriller went stiff as rod as his body was wracked with yellow lightning, his flesh charring and starting to disintegrate. Across the courtyard was Gallia, the lighting streaming from one hand as she choked one of Blackbird's suits with the other. "Get away from her, filth!"
"No!" Octavia cried, leaping towards Thriller, taking his hand in hers. "Stop!"
The demonic lightning surged into her body, wracking her nerves with agony. Octavia bit back a scream as her more durable, royal essence pulled the brunt of the attack away from her would-be rescuer. Her eyes snapped open, glowing tyrian purple as she seized the energy coursing through her, wrestling it before willing it into submission. The demon princess extended her other hand toward Gallia, two talons extended like gun barrels, and unleashed a concentrated beam of tyrian lightning at the attacking demoness. Captain Gallia barely had time to brace before the bolt of her own energy blended with the potent essence of a demon royal smashed into her breastplate, detonating in a small nova of razing purple light. The Captain was ejected out the other side of the blaze, wreathed in star-hot plasma and hellfire, tumbling down the still-crowded stairs of the palace, carving molten gashes into the abyssal granite.
Octavia panted, eyes baleful glowing pits. She blinked, snapping out of her bloodlust in time to catch the smoldering raven-demon. She lowered him to the ground, nose curling at the smell of charred feathers and clothing.
"Nice moves, Starfire," Thriller croaked, his remaining eye locking with hers. "Figures it'd turn out like this… all I wanted was to… save a princess like… St. George or Perseus… And get paid for it! Heh hehhh…"
Thriller's eye went distant and his head slumped off to the side, Octavia hurriedly set her fingers to his neck, sighing in relief as the rest of Il Nove ran over. The air went still and arctic as a massive dome of ice grew up around them. A tendril of ice crept up next to her, a cryosuit grew out of it, its empty faceplate filling with whirling gas, two eyes and a toothy rictus scowl forming within it.
"Check your fire, brat!" Blackbird barked, jabbing a finger at Octavia and then to himself. "You almost vaporized me with that blast! Next time, you–"
"Enough, Blackbird!" A voice said from above, it was St. Anger. "Focus on maintaining the ice barrier, I'll deflect whatever I can."
On cue, the ground shook as a tremendous explosion thudded outside the dome, the ice keened and cracked, instantly sealed. The commotion outside grew and bolts of energy and hellfire smashed into the icy fortress, all manner of projectile and spell screamed with arcane power as the warriors attempted to batter down their defenses. Blackbird threw up his hands and stormed off, sitting cross-legged as he focused his power. St. Anger set down on the ground, kneeling beside them.
"Thriller!" St. Anger exclaimed, setting a hand on his chest. "Is he…?"
"Out cold, thankfully," Octavia said, getting to her feet. "No one needs to die because of me. Not even you assholes."
St. Anger sighed and got to his feet, extending his hand to her. "Well, if we can avoid it, we will. But for now, we have to survive. Can I rely on you to fight?"
"Do I have a choice?" Octavia said, her tone flat.
"Surrender and definitely die," said St. Anger, his red-within-black eyes as cold and unyielding as Seraphim steel. "Or fight and perhaps live. Do you have anything to live for, Princess? Anyone?"
Octavia's eyes went wide before narrowing into a determined, steely glare. "Yes."
"Then fight." St. Anger turned back to Il Nove and IMPa. "Thriller's alive but out of commission. If we're going to leave here, it'll be over their cold, dead bodies. Show no mercy, because you'll get none. We've spat in the Duke's eye today."
Willin' tapped Thriller, shrinking him down and placing him into a Seraphim steel armored cigarette case. He put the case into his pocket and got to his feet, resizing a blessing-tipped M-60, a snarl on his face. "So let's spit in his other eye and run like Hell!"
The ducal guards surrounded the dome, each one dealing out their own punishment. Stones and bricks were hurled at hypersonic speed, Seraphim steel weapons were telekinetically set against the ice, all manner of hellfire, lightning, and necroplasm were flung at the dome, seemingly to no avail. The powerful forcefields generated by the ice demon and jester-demon reflected much of the bombardment back at the attackers, and whatever made it through was stopped dead by the unfathomable cold of the cryonic field, any ice blasted away was nigh-instantaneously regenerated.
Six battle mages standing in formation, five chanting in a defiled Babylonian dialect long dead on Earth, the sixth and most decorated mage stood at the focal point of the formation, the fulcrum of the spell. When the incantation reached its climax, the pentaverate unleashed their collective might onto the lead mage in a torrent of searing demonic power. The fulcrum's eyes and mouth exuded beams of light as she performed a series of arcane gestures before holding her hands out in front of her, roaring in pain and fury. The courtyard shook as the energy wave impacted the dome, shattering the ice utterly before flash-vaporizing it and the surrounding courtyard in a thunderous explosion of steam and heat. The guards gathered around the glowing, molten crater, barely visible through the dense clouds of steam and outgassing rock, mixing to form a noxious fume that stuck stubbornly to the ground.
"Did we get 'em?"
A shrill, buzzing scream cut through the air as a Seraphim steel bell burst from a fog bank, cratering the guard's faceplate with a dull, meaty crunch. The guard gurgled and tumbled backwards as another rushed to his aid, only to have a cryosuit emerge from the fog itself and grab his wrist, icicles of blood erupting from all over his body an instant later. The guards all looked up to see the interlopers and the princess hovering overhead.
"Il Nove, I.M.P…" St. Anger raised his hand up and, like a referee commencing a brawl, brought it down. "Attack!"
The demons fell among the loosely scattered guards like rain. Playlist disassembled into cubes, merging into the ground, he wove in and around a trio of guards before popping back up, a switch in his hand and a cruel leer on his face. He depressed the switch and the ground underneath the guards crumbled away, revealing the spinning, chewing teeth of an industrial shredder. As two fell screaming into the ravenous maw, the third leapt into the air, levitating above the sickening sight, her eyes wide and horrified. She felt something moving on her leg and looked down, grunting in horror and confusion as her left boot shifted and broke apart into cubes. The cubes undulated and reconfigured into what appeared to be a powerful rocket turbine affixed to her leg.
"I like my job," Playlist crooned, pressing the switch again.
The guard screamed in terror as the rocket engine roared to life, spinning her about mid-air like a top, streaking in random directions hither and thither before slamming her and itself into the ground with a low, thudding explosion of metal shards and burning kerosene fuel.
Millie deked to the left just in time to avoid the exploding rocket-demon before cartwheeling to the right to avoid a blast of necroplasm. The nimble little imp pulled into a forward somersault, her tail lashing out with the added momentum, hurling the Seraphic dagger it held. The blade streaked towards a ducal guard, who swatted the blade out of the air and retorted with another blast of green necroplasm. Millie barely dodged the blast and stumbled, tripping over some rubble. Seeing her opening, the ducal guard prepared to unleash a two-handed blast when a sharp whistle drew her attention.
"Get away from her, you bitch!"
The guard turned around just in time to catch a FRAG-12 micro-grenade on her breastplate, staggering the powerful demon. Moxxie stepped forward, in his claws a stylized AA-12 done up in I.M.P.'s colors. The little imp roared as he held down the trigger, the assault shotgun bellowed as it poured round after round of fin-stabilized high-explosive shells at the stunned demonic guard, blasting off chunks of armor. Moxxie took the pressure off the trigger and waited for the column of smoke to dissipate.
"Three… two…"
"Pathetic imp!" The guard roared, stepping out of the haze, armor shattered, skin burned and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. "Did you really think you could harm a ducal guard with such feeble, common weaponry?!"
Moxxie smirked, shouldering the auto-shotgon. "No."
"Wha–"
Millie leapt up from behind the guard, pulling into a twirling front flip before setting down with her back to the demon with a serene triumphant smirk, a shining Seraphim steel kukri in each hand. The guard's eyes rolled up in their sockets as she fell over backwards, her head tumbling from her shoulders. Millie streaked over to Moxxie and kissed him full on the lips, their tails intertwining.
"Nice shootin', hun!" She said, pinching his cheeks.
"Great decapitation, Mils," said Moxxie, "That delayed reaction? Perfection! You're really getting the hang of it!"
"Practice makes perfect!"
A ducal guard shot up from beneath the ground atop a pillar of magma, his hands alight with living hellfire. "DIE PEASANT FILTH!"
Moxxie and Millie dove out of the way, nimbly gaining distance. Moxxie spun about and leveled his weapon at their assailant. The guard roared and wound up to unleash a blast of hellfire when his arm halted mid throw. He grunted in confusion and glanced over at his hand: jutting from his left palm, phased through his armored gauntlet, was a hook on a pink, fleshy line. The line went taut, wrenching his arm around, the guard roared in pain, reaching over to grab the hook when another hook dug into his right wrist, pulling his arms apart. The guard screamed in agony as countless more hooks snared his limbs, his flesh, pulling and tugging him in all directions, suspending him in mid-air, his limbs and body pulled to their absolute limit.
"Jesus…" The guard said, blood sputtering from between his gritted teeth. "…Wept."
With a final jerk, the guard was torn into dozens of pieces, each hook yanking the sections and limbs away and scattering them in all directions. The imps followed the various lines to their source, a towering monstrous angler-fish demon, its eyes glowing lanterns above hundreds of needlelike teeth.
"Good Vibrations!" Millie exclaimed, grinning. "Hardcore! When'd y'all learn to do that?"
"Uh…" the monstrous demon grunted, his voice deep and flanging. "Now-ish?"
"Millie's right, that was very impressive," Moxxie said, switching out his drum magazine.
"Aw shucks you guys!"
A trio of ducal guards leapt into view, channeling their power into the middle demon before unleashing a massive blast of necroplasm. A wall of ice grew up from the ground and intercepted the blast in a surge of steam.
"Focus, morons!" Blackbird snarled as he skated by at high speeds.
Rising up from within the steam was a mass of tentacles festoon with glowing purple eyes, the central mass, vaguely humanoid and also covered in eyes, rose up, and up, and up, obscured by a column of steam and his own gaseous excretions.
"Strike at my brothers and taste my wrath," it said, its voice a nightmare of clotted consonants and ear-violating bass. "Know the touch of decay and rot."
"Aoxomoxoa?!" Moxxie cried, horrified.
"Whoa!" Millie said, eyes shining. "He looks way cooler in his unleashed form!"
"Hard to fit through doors, though," muttered Good Vibrations.
Vile, eye-ridden tentacles lashed out from the cloud, reaching out and limply slapping the armored breastplates of the ducal guards, leaving a steaming smear of gelatinous mucus before retreating back into the cloud surrounding the enormous demon.
"The fuck was that?" One of the guards chuckled, stepping forward, hands ablaze. "I barely felt that love taaaapgh~"
The demon's jaw sloughed off mid-sentence, splattering on the ground into a putrid puddle of unspeakably foul effluence. With what wasn't so much a scream as a wet explosion of gasses, the offending demon collapsed into a puddle of rotten filth, their bones sticking up from the puddle for a moment before dissolving away into spongy masses of whitish foam floating atop the greenish puddle. The other demons, similarly defiled by Aoxomoxoa's touch, followed suit, decaying into puddles of loose organic elements, their proud armor tarnishing and rusting at a similar rate of decay.
Millie pat Moxxie's back as the imp stooped over a puddle of fresh vomit, Good Vibrations chuckled bashfully. "Also, it's really hard on the housecleaning."
A battle mage peered out from behind a chunk of rubble and smirked, the undisciplined interlopers were distracted! She chanted aloud and clapped her hands together, index fingers extended as she marshaled her demonic essence into a single blast; if this blast landed, it'd wipe out anyone in its path! She just had to focus. The battle mage held her hands out in front of her, her hands forming a crude aperture, allowing her to focus on her targets and nothing else: within the targeting reticule was two imps and two sinners, a respectable headcount!
"N̽̈ä̈́d̄ȓ̊̃ͧ̊a̾ ̊̉n̏̀ͧ͌oͤ̉́̂ͪ̚p͊ͥ̋͗̑š́̃ͧ̌̔u̓͊̓̍̈́tu͌͐̏̈́̿̚ ̑d͋̚ä́̐̎̈́̚n̓̀ā̆͗̓͗ͯ̌n̐̄aͮ ̍̐̚a̍ͨg̀ͬͫ̏̒û!ͧ́̾"
Energy surged, coalesced, condensed, building to the point where nothing could hold it back, ready to fire. At the last second a pair of motes on her shoulder rapidly expanded in size, revealing an imp and a mouse-demon. Blitzo descended on her with a battlecry, a pair of Seraphic stilettos in his hands. The keen edges plunged into the eyeholes of the mage's helmet, blood and steam squirting out in return. The battle mage stumbled and struggled briefly before going limp. Blitzo steered the standing corpse away from his compatriots, the last of the mage's lifeforce exploding outward from her hands, catching a nearby guard as he prepared to attack a distracted Octavia, the force of the blast stripping away all of his armor and much of his flesh, leaving a tattered, partially-muscled skeleton in his place.
Blitzo sprinted over to Moxxie and Millie and clacked their skulls together. "Heads in the game, lovebirds! Or do you wanna rope this high-tide-lookin' motherfucker into a threesome too?!"
Good Vibrations blushed and rubbed the back of his neck as Moxxie and Millie awkwardly coughed.
Blitzo rolled his eyes and turned to Willin', pointing to the group of guards trying to sneak up on them. "Make some room, will you, brother?"
Willin' nodded and reached into his pocket, producing a pale capsule the size of a tab of aspirin. "An oil tanker for you, fuckers!"
He tossed the tablet, which resized into a massive, 45,000 liter tank truck. Moxxie spun about with a deliberate flare and placed a single grenade in the center of the fuel tank, igniting the tons of fuel within in a thudding explosion, sending a flaming torrent of liquid fire and red-hot metal raining down on the guards.
"Stylish!" Cheered Willin' offering Moxxie a high-five, which the imp took him up on. "You guys were made for this business!"
"I don't like to toot my own horn…" Moxxie said, blushing.
"Hurts his neck," said Blitzo, punching Moxxie on the arm before winking at Willin'. "But not as much as you'd think!"
A row of screams drew their attention, a massive demon composed of roots, vines, and raw flesh threshed a trio of guards, the fused entity of Truly and Deeply, Truly Madly Deeply, scythes on fleshy vines reaping terrible suffering on their enemies. One slash stole the hardness of a guard's armor, leaving them open to a penetrating attack to the chest. Another slash took the density of the guard's neutron-mace and applied it to another's head, causing her to smash her skull against a chunk of rock in a bloody splatter. A weave of vines formed on their back and, using the durability stolen from the armor, withstood a fusillade of necroplasm.
"TMD!" Willin' called out, grabbing a handful of debris. "Duck!"
Truly Madly Deeply dove to the ground as Willin' hurled the handful of pebbles, re-sizing them midflight into a mid-air rush of boulders. The airborne rockslide streaked over their shoulders and scattered the group of guards behind them before they could launch another volley.
A mass of vines and raw meat slithered up to Willin' reforming into Truly Madly Deeply. "Thanks, Willin'! We were getting a little bogged down there!"
"You crazy kids can fuck about all you like!" Willin' said, winking. "Just don't expect mouse-daddy to pull your junk outta the fire every time!"
"It's times like this I understand why Truly's hot for you."
Willin' blinked in surprise. "What."
"Speaking of hot," Millie crooned, pointing.
A few meters away Octavia was strolling towards a guard, a cold look on her exquisite face. The guard grit his teeth and held his hands out in front of him, a small, hyper-concentrated demonic essence blazed before them, roaring like a jet turbine. With a roar he pressed forward, the tiny sphere blasting a massive pillar of flame, completely consuming the demon royal. The guard poured on the firepower, sweat dripping out from beneath his helmet, the air in front of him rippling with brutal heat. A large, taloned hand reached out of the inferno and grabbed the demonic soldier by the head. With what looked to be a fey, casual flick of the wrist, the guard's head was wrenched backwards with a meaty crunch, the back of his skull touching between his shoulder blades, his neck elongating grotesquely.
"Girl has talent," Aoxomoxoa rumbled appreciatively.
"Ooh shit…" Blitzo said, looking up. "Angie's getting serious."
"Your Highness!" Moxxie called out to her. "Over here! Quick!"
Octavia looked up, her eyes widening, and ran over to the group. Overhead hovered St. Anger, his eyes glowing. His taut, muscular form elongated, becoming gaunt and inhuman, his handsome features sharpening, extending into a hideous harlequin caricature. Light bent and broke upon his magnetic field, a glowing, incandecent aurora pulsed and undulated at his poles, hanging over his head like a blasphemous halo. His Seraphim steel bells spinning at the speed of light, warping into glowing discs, pilfered ducal weapons vibrated until white-hot, their thrumming a demented chorus of death, glowing blue-white with plasma.
"Blackbird!" He called out, his voice humming with power. "Let's put these royalists on ice!"
Blackbird's cleaved a guard's head in twain with an ice-skate axekick, looking up to St. Anger with a ferocious grin. "With pleasure."
The icy cat-demon's cryosuit cracked open and his true, gaseous form burst forth like steam from a ruptured pipe, climbing through the air towards his chief. The whirling silver essence followed after the glowing angelic weapons, which were pushing through the air with such force and speed the gasses broke down into white-hot plasma, the atoms themselves breaking down into a subatomic slurry kept in place by Blackbird's impossibly cold cryonic field, the components not so much as vibrating. The absolute-zero plasma danced along St. Anger's magnetic field before blasting outward in a torrent. The remaining ducal guards broke and ran as he hosed the courtyard with cold fire. Guards were flash-frozen in an instant, the nimbler among them managing to jump away, but not others still were not fast enough, the hellishly cold plasma freezing their legs solid, causing them to shatter the second they hit the ground.
"Big finish!" Blackbird cackled. "Revolution Ice 9!"
The ball of icy, spinning plasma streaked down to the ground before exploding outward into massive swirling blizzard that consumed the entire courtyard, the air freezing solid, filled with razor sharp shards of oxygen-ice. Ducal guards froze solid as thin filaments of gelid plasma streaked past them, carrying with them clouds of cryogenic essence. The last of the super-cooled matter dissipated as Blackbird eased off his control, warm air rushing back in, evaporating the solid and liquified gasses into massive clouds as snow and ice fell to the ground. Blackbird's essence reformed into a vaguely humanoid shape before a cryosuit formed around him, an exceedingly self-satisfied smirk on his face as he admired his work.
St. Anger set down next to him, reverting back into his normal form, his hands on his hips. "Revolution Ice 9?"
"Yes," Blackbird said, nodding. "You see, it's a reference to Ice-9, a fictional isotope of ice that–"
"I know what it is," St. Anger broke in, rubbing his brow. "We're not calling it that."
Blackbird huffed and crossed his arms. "Well, I'm open to suggestions!"
St. Anger tapped his chin. "Trapped Under Ice?"
"Too on the nose," Blackbird said, waving him off before snapping his fingers. "Happiness is a Cold Gun?"
"Better, but clunky." St. Anger contemplated this for a moment before smirking. "Ecstasy of Cold?"
Blackbird cackled, nodding. "Ecstasy of Cold!"
St. Anger looked around at the dead, arctic landscape of frozen corpses and debris. "You did remember to not freeze our team mates and client, yes?"
"Hm? Oh, yes, of course." Blackbird waved a hand at a large lump some meters away, it melted away, revealing the huddled, trembling mass of demons. "See? Barely even freezer burned."
"Holy f-fuckin' shrinkage! M-m-my d-dick has retracted into my b-body!" Blitzo said, shivering violently. "I need s-s-six hot towels and a pair of t-t-tongs!"
"A little heads up would be nice the next time you're going to pull a stunt like that!" Octavia said, rubbing her arms.
"Oh, yes, Your Majesty," Blackbird sneered, bowing deeply. "Next time we shall alert both you and our honored enemies of our entire plan of attack! Or perhaps you would prefer a play-by-play pamphlet? Some hot cocoa in a thermos?"
"That's enough, Blackbird," said St. Anger, turning to the group. "That should be the last of them. Come, let's get out of here before they thaw ou–"
St. Anger jerked forward as a Seraphim steel gauntlet erupted from his chest with a wet, crackling sound. Il Nove and IMP gasped in shock, Blackbird recoiling in horror.
"I have to say, I'm impressed," came a voice from behind the impaled jester, another gauntlet clamping down on his shoulder. "You've proven yourselves worthy to die by my hand."
St. Anger screamed, blood gushing from his mouth, as the gauntlet twisted within him, his flesh tearing and sizzling as the holy metal purified his demonic essence. Captain Gallia reared up behind the agonized demon and glanced over at Blackbird. "Hello."
Her hand shattered the sound barrier instantly as she struck, her taloned fingers punching through Blackbird's ice armor. With a hissing crack she unleashed a massive surge of demonic lightning into the interior of the cryosuit. Blackbird barely had time to scream in agony before the suit was atomized, his gaseous, ephemeral essence spilling out onto the ground in a barely humanoid puddle. "Goodbye."
Gallia withdrew her fist from St. Anger and cast him aside, strolling up to the remaining demons, beckoning them. "Next."
"Il Nove!" Willin' roared, reaching into his pocket and drawing a Oerlikon 20mm Autocannon. "Waste this bitch!"
As he lay down a withering barrage of holy metal-plated death down range at the towering demoness, the remaining members of Il Nove moved in on her flanks.
"For a second, I thought you'd turn tail and run, but I guess I was wrong" said Gallia, swatting the bullets out of the air. "Good."
Ducking tracers, putrefying smog, and blasts of lightning, I.M.P. sprinted over to their felled comrades. Blitzo knelt next to St. Anger, his eyes wide. "Angie? Brother? St. Anger?! Talk to me!"
"Blitzo…" St. Anger croaked, his eyes distant, half-lidded. "The debt is… is paid. I always thought you were a buffoon, a delusional fool with too many ambitions and too little sense. An abject clown–"
"Angie," Blito said, flatly.
"But you're not." St. Anger shook his head. "I was wrong. You have… a gangster's grit, and the heart of a warrior. You have the strength, the will, and the cunning to make it far, Blitzo. You can have it all, you just have to take it."
"A-Angie…" Blitzo sniffled, tears welling up in his eyes.
"It's been… an honor." St. Anger coughed, fresh blood spilling down his chin. "Buona fortuna, fratello."
St. Anger's head lolled off to the side, limply. Blitzo shook his head as tears streamed down his face, a low whimper building in his throat. He felt a large, strong hand settle on his shoulder, a familiar, comforting cologne wafting on the cold, courtyard air.
"It's alright, my friend," said a deep, handsome voice. "I'm here."
"Huh?" Blitzo looked up to the source of the voice.
Nothing. There was no-one.
A shrill scream drew his attention over his shoulder, to where Blackbird lay. Moxxie and Millie were at his side, the gaseous demon writhed and kicked on the ground with renewed life, standing over them was a large, muscular demon clad head to toe in the star spangled banner. Blitzo's eyes shone in recognition when a sharp gasp and cry of pain drew his attention back to his comrade. St. Anger lay where he had been, but the purified, ragged hole in his chest had grown, its edges clean-cut and immaculate, the tissue uncorrupted by holy energy.
"I have displaced the purified tissues," said the interloper. "They should heal cleanly. Keep an eye on them, my friend, I'll be back momentarily."
"Is It really you?" Blitzo said, relieved tears streaming down his face.
The demon smirked as a plume of smoke rose up from beneath his feet, obscuring him from view. The smoke blew away in a stiff breeze and he was gone.
Willin' unloaded the last of his ammunition into the approaching Captain, the coated rounds bounding harmlessly off her solid Seraphim steel breastplate, clutched in her hand was one of Truly Madly Deeply's arms, its long, razor-sharp talons dragging on the ground. As fast as he could, Willin' resized another ammo-drum and prepared to reload.
Not fast enough.
Gallia grabbed the barrel of the autocannon and wrenched it out of his hands, bringing the 90kg mass of steel crashing down on his head. The hardened steel exploded into shards as the rat-demon was driven into the ground like a tentpole, his teeth rattling.
"You're pretty tough, for a little guy," Gallia said, grinning toothily. "Let's see how tough."
She raised the arm over her head, seizing the muscles with an electric jolt, drawing the claws taut. Gallia cackled and brought the arm down in an arc aimed at the rat-demon's neck, the talons whistling through the air. Willin' flinched as a bouquet of roses bopped his snout.
Gallia blinked and examined the roses, confounded. "What the–?"
A tap on her shoulder caused her to whirl around, electrifying the air before her.
Nothing.
"What the Hell is going on?!" She growled, turning back to the rat-demon. "Peasant! What trickery is th–"
A huge fist smashed into Gallia's face with gargantuan force, sending the armored captain flying backwards, skidding and tumbling off the debris and corpse-ridden ground. Willin' blinked, dazedly, as a large hand grabbed him by the scruff and plucked him out of the ground, setting him down on his feet. He looked up at his would-be savior, a tall, powerfully-built rabbit demon dressed in a garish magician's get-up complete with top-hat and cape, which was itself an altered star-spangled banner.
"Who're you?"
The crackle and roar of thunder and lightning drew his attention across the courtyard, where an infuriated Captain Gallia stood, electricity flashing from her in huge spitting bolts.
"Overlord Danger!" She bellowed, wiping the blood from her freshly split lip. "I heard you'd gotten free of that hutch the humans stuck you in, but I was personally hoping you were dead."
"Sorry to disappoint, Overlord Gallia-oh, wait, Captain Gallia." Danger scoffed and crossed his arms. "From a self-made demon to a monarchist lackey for a cabal of tyrants? I'd say I expected better from you, but honesty is a virtue I treasure."
"Posture and deride all you like, peasant, I have achieved a power you can scarcely imagine!" Gallia snarled, lightning dancing from her fingertips. "Hell does not need to conform to your politics or mediocre sensibilities! Power is all that matters! By way of 'for instance' with my newfound power I'm going to make myself a new pair of bunny slippers for my lavatory! Those tiles get awful cold."
"Oh, you misjudge me, Gallia," Danger said, doffing his cap. "Truly, I'm happy for you and your new vocation. Here, a demonstration."
Danger held out his star-spangled top-hat in front of him, from the dark, unseen depths of the top-hat issued a bright, burning flare the size of a basket ball, shrieking and screaming as it streaked into the sky, exploding in a shower of multi-colored sparks and flares, the shape of a winking rabbit giving the finger glowed against the thick backdrop of thick, greasy smoke left behind by the firework.
Gallia watched the light show in bemusement, shaking her head and scoffing. "Well… uh, thank you? You Americans sure to love your spectacle, don't you?"
"Americans love many things, Captain. Freedom, spectacle…" He put his hat back on, a malicious glint in his eye. "Oil."
"What are you–"
Danger vanished in a puff of smoke. No sooner than he had a great bellowing sounded from overhead, a ship's horn. Gallia's head snapped up to the still-thick smoke cloud overhead, out of it came a shape, a massive shape. From within the cloud plummeted a General Purpose oil tanker, streaking nose-first towards the courtyard, towards Gallia, standing at the bow was Danger, a placid smile on his face as he waved jauntily at her before wrapping his cape around himself completely. The cape collapsed and blew away as the tanker streaked towards her, Danger was gone. Gallia braced for impact as ten thousand tons of steel and oil smashed into her, crumpling like a tin can before exploding into an enormous fireball that lit up the sky. A huge, orange and red mushroom cloud rose up from the top of Duke Sallos' already smoldering palace, the entire courtyard a sea of flaming crude.
Gallia exploded from the rubble with a roar, casting aside huge red-hot bulkheads like they weighed nothing, the burning oil coating her dispelled with a simple flex of her aura. She scanned the wreckage, the debris.
Danger was gone.
The interlopers were gone.
The princess was gone.
She had failed.