Gabriel narrowed her eyes as she felt the weak demonic energy pulse over her armor. Forged by the Fae and further altered and enhanced by her Father, the pulse didn't even get close before being utterly obliterated.

"Report." She uttered, and an eight winged Angel whispered information in Enochin, the language of Heaven.

"No effects?" She asked, puzzled. For what reason did that devil send out such a weak, if broad pulse of energy? The Angel whispered again, this time with a theory.

"A challenge." Gabriel reverberated. "How typical of a devil." She muttered. Just as she was about to call her Divine Host to arms, all Angels turned their heads to a disturbance. In the direction of the devil's legion, a rather large circle of magic formed.

Gabriel, along with many of the more proficient members of Light Magic channeled the light energy into their eyes. As her vision zoned onto her target, she focused on the magic first. Sigils that she half recognized, and many she didn't, yet that wasn't what captured her attention. Characters of a Language that made her brain itch and soul ache floated around the floating magical circle, many even incorporated into the main formation itself.

More then willing to pull her attention away from the characters, only to find a figure that made her want to fly into a unexplainable rage.

The moment her eyes landed on The Devil, the first word that came to mind was Mage. The man dressed in a manner that professed mystery, intrigue, wisdom, and danger all at once. A thick black cloak inscribed with the same characters that irritated her, this time the feeling was far worse.

The cloak itself was clasped at the waist with a red belt and a silver buckle in the shape of a rams skull, its mouth open in a scream of rage or agony.

She could just see a pair of boots hanging under the cloak, their toe-tips curled upwards as the Devil was flying, ten wings spread out.

'What is his clothing made of?' It was spontaneous thought.

Her supernaturally enhanced eyes drifted to a nearby angel, and she felt her gut roll.

'Skin. Angelic Skin.' She felt sick just thinking that, but the proof before her was undeniable. Angelic skin made up the man's strange robe, stitched together and woven with foul runes and symbols that utterly corrupted her Father's divine work.

His head was covered in a massive hat, made of the same magically altered material for added stiffness, wide billowing brims that covered his eyes. The hat's conical tower had a detailed faces stitched into its structure, agony and woe decorating their stretched and violated features. His lower face was covered by a gleaming golden mask, her eyes just making out a gleaming frozen gold smile. Paired with gloves made of crudely stitched together skin tainted an abyssal black like the rest of his clothing, she didn't even know what his skin color was.

Held in those same gloves was a sword wreathed in black flames. Wracking her memory, she pulled a name from intelligence that this was Aim, a devil that used a power called Hellfire. Dangerous to the soul and body, a mockery of Uriel.

Releasing a breath of air through her nostrils, her helmet's air-filters briefly turning on to recycle the air, her face hardened as she analyzed the Devil Lord further. Beyond the strange emblems and runes that made had an odd mental effect on Angels, confirmed by her adjutants, the blade he wielded was held in a manner the belied competence, but not experience. Yet, as he whispered and gestured the blade grew darker and to her experienced eye, deadly.

Just as she was about to announce the attack in a attempt to disrupt the ritual, a black mist shot out and devoured the lives of several thousand devils. Connected to Heaven's system as she was, she saw as the ritual swallowed the souls of the devils, not even wasting their life force. She was jolted out of her horrified shock when the mass of devils, numbering in the millions bolted toward her Host in a ferment that caused many lesser winged Angels to retreat slightly. Now on the defensive, rather then the offensive, the angels started preparing defensive measures while Gabriel watched the ritual being prepare intently.

As the Devil pulled out a massive amount of Life Force, Gabriel's mind ran through any possible wards that she could use to defend against life force, but drew a blank.

"Prepare shields, incoming bombardment!" One of her Adjutants yelled.

The devil tossed the projectile half halfheartedly. The Angels projected their holy auras and divine protections, yet the projectile expanded from a small dark green orb, to a massive cloud of gas.

The gas fell over the left flank of the army, clouding them from any sight. Yet, sight wasn't needed to hear or feel.

Screams and gargled bellows rang out, the life force pooled in a dense population of Angels, permeating through their bodies and clouding them from sight. The Angels not caught up in the attack felt as the light of the afflicted's bodies warped and twisted, a reaction that they'd never before felt or seen, yet instinctually they all felt unbridled disgust.

As the opaque mist fell away, the host was struck with horror.

All Angels had fallen from the sky, wings no longer able to support them, supernatural abilities or not. The Angels that had contact with the gas were now massive blobs of tumorous flesh, bubbles of blood and boils popping from their torn skin. Tissue and flesh spilled out in a disgusting display and mutated bone spikes deformed their previously perfect forms.

The Angels were quick to act, slinging spells of light and healing at their mutated kin, only for the life force to spike up dramatically and cause even more growth. Cancer spread further consuming and feeding off the light, before continuing to fight for more resources to fuel its growth. The screams of the Angels were mere wheezes of what was left of their lungs or the whistling of a windpipe filled with growth.

Angels quickly dropped to their mutated friend's sides, confusion and prayer being mumbled for God to help them deal with this abominable scene. Their prayers would go unanswered.

Gabriel watched this all with a horrified gaze, ripping her eyes away and turning her attention to the Devil that caused this all.

She paused in disbelief.

"No, no, nononono. They don't deserve that! What did they do to deserve such a fate!" She screamed with hysteria as she watched the Devil to turn his fellow's souls into shattered shards.

As the devil gathered the souls into his palm, a twisted curiosity welled inside her mind.

"What is he doing?" What indeed.

There were no fancy incantations, no display of spell craft that would terrify an observer with its complexity and sophistication.

He took hold of the souls, beat them into submission with his will and mind alone. Then he packed a massive amount of mental force, what one could consider Will, or perhaps Psionic Energy, and chuckled them at the Angels. This time aiming at the right flank.

"Brace!" Gabriel screamed in panic.

Yet, it was too little too late. Spiritual attacks are always difficult to defend against.

The fragments of souls, guided like homing missiles moving at light-speed by Aim's infused will slammed into thousands of Angels. The fragmented souls dug into the Angels' souls like shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade. Each fragment hit a single Angel, before being guided to the next. There were thousands of fragments, around a hundred fifty in fact. Each found a new home.

For a moment of time, each Angel impacted by a fragment simply floated. Their eyes were blank, but every once and a while they would twitch. Finally, one broke.

"Heheh. Heeehehehehheh. KKEKHKehkeko. FiherE." A four winged Angel blabbered. Drool leaked from his lips as foam frothed at the corners of his mouth. Hands clawed at his face as he flapped around in space, his wings flashing black, then white, then black again, repeating over and over again.

First it was one, then ten, then a thousand. Eventually all one hundred fifty thousand thereabouts were infected. Each a blabbering fool one second, the next a blood thirst Devil hungry for blood and divine flesh. Then the original would pop out, begging for forgiveness from their father, then the fool, then the devil, then the angel, and again.

The Angels stared.

"What do we do? What do we do?!" An Angel screamed, utterly terrified by the surroundings and cracking under pressure. Several Angels started muttering, flinching at every sight. The oncoming Devil Legion, the masses of flesh that they once called kin, or the blabbering possessed fools that just had their souls eviscerated in a spiritual shrapnel attack.

Gabriel didn't have an answer. Confusion, panic, the pressure, the expectations. She started cracking.

"I.. I.." Her hands shook around her Divine Lance of Light. Sadly, she wouldn't get to have an answer.

It'd be forced on her.

"Steal My Heart, Bisect Me Daddy, Gut Me, Kill Me, End Our Suffering!" The horde chorused.

Out of the thousands if not millions of war cries, one stood out. "Remember Me!" A desperate voice screamed as they dove towards the Host.

Thousands of Devils darted down from the air, flying at speeds utterly unreasonable, spears and blades of demonic nature poised for death and destruction recklessly swung. Bloodlust and suicidal action drove them as they rushed the angels without concern.

The Angels, shook, afraid, and moral low raised their spears and light weapons. The two armies met.

The devils blabbered nonsensical lines and litanies, begging for the release of death. Each devil themselves didn't look any bit like the proud race that her brother had created. Instead, they were dressed in rags, skin carved with scars forming runes and Sigils. Some were patchwork abominations with legs and arms too big or too small, others deformed or malformed from defects and experiments gone too wrong, and yet so very right.

Others were dressed in masochistic gear, nails driven into flesh, skin ripped apart and flayed open to reveal muscle.

Some of these devils were bewitched to feel nothing but pain and suffering, others could feel nothing but pleasure, and some didn't feel at all.

As the first devils met their angelic foes, the difference between the armies became clear.

The Devil's were more skilled. The robotic legions of perfected martial superiority faltered against a foe that seemingly twisted and contorted, adapted and reacted at speeds that were unreal and impossible without their unnatural biologies.

In an impossible twist of fate or fact, the Devils were those that could wield a blade far better than an Angel that had trained for centuries. Their mania and screams filled the battles, spears of light impaling devils half a dozen times over as they kept fighting on. Impossibly so as their souls screamed in utmost agony, as their bodies were rended to ash, as they were ripped apart at a conceptaual level; they kept fighting.

The first devil died and breathed her last, she let out a dying cry that would be echoed one too many times in the battle that would come.

"I AM FREE, AIM! FREE! AT! LAST!" The maimed devil glowed in a brilliant light of crimson light, her demonic energy running rampant. The devil had lost a arm, a leg, and was currently impaled on a spear of light, a cowering angel staring up at the ranting Devil.

As she screamed, her energies expanded. Life-Force and Demonic Energy flared and exploded forth with unnatural growth. Bones grew rapidly, flesh turned sallow, muscles and tissue being consumed and life force transmuted for more power.

She exploded.

There was no fire, no blast of energy, no that would be too kind.

She blew up in a blast of cursed bone fragments and acidic blood. The shrapnel of bones cut deep in surrounding fight, some even killing fellow devils, yet they repeated the cry of freedom as they too exploded, rushing toward an angelic host to deal more damage.

The blood splashed everywhere. It was thin and not coagulating like it should have been, a side effect of the dozens of drugs and combat stimulants injected into their bloodstream prior to the battle. One of those drugs was the acidic effect of the blood, while another activated during the activation stage.

This drug was called an 'Alchemical Duplicity Reagent' in which it 'duplicated' a solution and added volume and mass to the solution it was added to.

Thus, what was once four liters of blood inside a body, was now around twelve to twenty, causing the devils to pop like a ball of skin filled with a small pool of blood and bone spurs.

Then there were what Aim half-heartedly called his 'Elite' Units.

Seducers for females and Dominators for males. Sadists instead of masochists like the rest of his army, these Elite units were equipped with the best of the best gear that he made on occasion. Gear that was designed to break, beat, and torture.

Battles on this scale were massive, and usually lasted for a week, more if reinforcements came.

This meant that 'fronts' would be created, when actuality they were where one side really wanted to push forward, yet the other side was too tough to break through. It created meatgrinders and choke points carved out of the bodies of the dead.

His Elite units were the brains that managed these points and were his 'officer class'. He used that term loosely as they more or less gathered a faction of submissives, dominated them, and used their lives like coins. Some spent them wisely and others not so much.

At the center of the clash between Heaven and Hell, Gabriel and her officers were mulching through a small and ever growing lake of blood that burned at their wards. The devils strangely fought on the ground, using Earth magic to burrow underneath dirt and stone only to blast sonars of demonic energy to locate flying foes and pop up to eliminate them with artillery spells. Titanic blasts of force, fire, necrotic energies, and ice exploded in the skies; raining the death and fire on those who fought on.

Flying quickly became a death sentence for the lower ranked angels as Aim drilled his entire army in marksmanship and high-powered penetrating spells. Stormtrooper aim was not tolerated.

With the lower ranked Angels dropping like flies in the sky, the battle became one on the ground and slowly transitioned the entire hierarchy of the angelic host. This was due to ritual rooms being carved underground, angels captured, mutilated, butchered, and promptly sacrificed to power spells beyond their rank of low and mid-class.

Guerrilla Warfare mid-battle on an open wasteland. Magic was amazing wasn't it?

The battle continued on, and as angels dropped rapidly Aim watched as Gabriel struggled to maintain a calm demeanor as more and more Angels died.

"How many lives do I have to spend to make you break, I wonder?" Aim wondered with a wide smile hidden under his golden mask.