Wanted to upload this last Friday but I was still recovering from the good old 24-hour shifts. Somehow I was given three in eight days and I spent the whole week taking 5-hour naps at the most random times. Anyway, hang on tight, we're in the midst of a demon invasion!
Warning: Violence
Do you know why a Nephilim's glory is stronger than a Seraphim's?
Lucifer had once asked.
You feel more than we do.
The silver wasn't a demon blade but glory. Edvardiel was on his feet, silver thundering around him like a hurricane. The blue in his veins warred with the gold, and for now, the gold was winning. New symbols written in blood glowed on his skin, limiting the spread.
A bolt of lightning struck the demon ice behind Jacob, smashing it into a million glittering pieces. Tanya's corpse bubbled and melted from the sheer heat. Another powerful burst carved a path through the shrieking demons to the stairs.
As the silver flashed before Issa's eyes, a memory returned to her.
Eden's luminescent eyes as she wrapped Issa's small, bleeding fingers in a meadow of beautiful flowers. "You are too sweet for what they made you, little one. Too full of love."
Issa saw the same liquid fire in her angel's eyes.
"Run," he said. "I've got this."
Issa looked at the path he'd cleared for her. The most rational thing to do now was run. She had to stop the Apocalypse. Her life was the product of centuries of tears and sacrifices.
You understand how ridiculous it would be if you died here, Lucifer's words echoed.
She did. She truly did.
She tried to move. She tried to reach for her ocean.
"Issa." Edvardiel's voice sounded like it came from very far away.
Her ocean rushed in her ears, the waves far from her reach. Her fingertips only felt dryness like the sand on the beach where she'd first met her angel.
Issa gripped her blades and steadied herself, her breath misting in Hell's dungeon. The biting cold felt like Heaven before her father moved it closer to the sun.
It does not matter that you cannot bear the cold. It does not matter that your blood is human. But if you wish to reside here, you must never bleed. Do you understand?
She understood that too.
She touched the dried blood staining her cheeks. Stared at the fresh red trickling down her angel's skin.
In the end, her heart was a weak, human one.
"I'll run if you run first, Edvardiel."
With that, she plunged her dagger into the nearest demon.
All Hell broke loose.
Issa's body moved, stabbing and slashing the way she had for a hundred years. No voice compelled her. No flashbacks haunted her. She felt no despair this time, just the cold, empty stillness of knowing that she was going to die, and the grim determination that she was going to take down as much of Lilith's army with her as she could.
Behind her, her angel was fighting for his life. His limp, broken wings dragged with his every movement, the splintered bones scratching her spine.
"You should run," Edvardiel bit out, his voice strained. "I'll clear another path—"
One of the demons grabbed his left wing, twisting a dagger through the mass of bleeding flesh. Edvardiel's entire body seized from the pain.
Issa skewered the demon but the damage was done. Blood spurted uncontrollably through the severed artery at the base of her angel's wing and even as Issa tried to staunch it with one hand while fending the demons off with the other, she knew she couldn't stop the bleeding.
A clawed arm closed around her neck, dragging her backwards. In the corner, Jacob was screaming as the demons punished him. The others closed in around Edvardiel.
It was the end of them.
It was—
With a battle roar, Edvardiel sliced off his bleeding wing with lightning. The battered flesh landed on the ground with a horrible wet thud and the remaining stump on his shoulder blade smoked gruesomely. He staggered to his feet yet again.
Do you know why a Nephilim's glory is stronger than a Seraphim's? You feel more than we do.
Thunder boomed in the present and the past.
Michael's loose white-gold hair shone like the sun. A litter of Nephilim bodies were strewn behind him. As Heaven's king moved to plunge his sword into Lucifer's heart, lightning cracked in the air, striking his heavenly armour. It broke and he careened backwards, his blood splattering like a burst of gold rain. The clouds rumbled as lightning began to gather once more.
Issa's child self stared up in horror.
In a flash, she was up in the air, hurtling towards the fire, the lightning, and the warring angels.
"Papa!"
Eden jerked back her lightning.
In the present, a crack of silver incinerated the demons choking her. The clawed hand crumbled to dust and Edvardiel turned to Jacob, his glory burning the demons torturing him.
Eden stood in the ashes of her Garden. "Your father may be the King of the Heavens," she murmured. "But if it weren't for you, I'd have ended him."
Eden held out a hand to her enemy's daughter.
"After all," she murmured, "what's more powerful than love?"
Edvardiel was single-handedly fighting the demons.
And he was winning.
Another blast left a wide berth between them and the demons. The next one cracked open a hole to the surface, revealing blue skies interrupted by storm clouds—ones that had been summoned by her angel.
A ring of protective angelfire circled the three of them. Above, his thunder rumbled threateningly. The demons hissed and spat, but miraculously, they withdrew.
For several minutes, neither of them moved, Edvardiel with his angelfire burning high, and her with her blades drawn on the ready.
The demons didn't return.
Jacob moaned where he laid curled on the ground, clutching his eyes. Beside her, Edvardiel was doing his damnedest to hide it but he was trembling with exhaustion.
"They're… They're being summoned back," Jacob gasped weakly, still holding his face. He was missing several fingers. "Lucifer… He did it. He destroyed the talisman. Their key. Lilith won't be opening any more portals." Blood dribbled down his face and Issa couldn't look away from the gory sight of the nerves and ligaments spilling out from where his eyes used to be.
How many times had she seen the same sight in Hell? And how surreal and shocking it was to see it again.
Edvardiel tried to heal Jacob. The bleeding slowed but his missing parts seemed gone for good.
"What do we do now?" Issa asked numbly.
Blood and pieces of flesh slid off her blades and the dungeons smelled of sweat, piss and death. Nothing Jacob said made any sense but she was lucid enough to understand that they'd barely managed to survive, let alone win.
"You have to close the gates to Hell," Jacob said. "You're the only one who can."
"My glory isn't working," she said.
Jacob cradled his hands against his chest. "Not glory. The power of Life. Eve was Earth's guardian—she must've taught you how to seal Hell's gates." His glow was gone with his eyes, but his powers remained. "I can't… I can't access that knowledge for you. That knowledge belongs to Earth alone."
Issa racked her stupid, lost memories but while Michael was a fire burning front and centre with his hate and his disgust, Eve was cold as ice.
"I don't remember," she said, hating her helplessness.
Was her mother even the type to confide in anyone? The only time she'd remembered Eve express any emotion but boredom was with Lucifer—and even then, it had been out of sheer necessity.
And then she froze.
Lucifer.
Of course.
From whatever she'd managed to understand, Lucifer hadn't abandoned them. And maybe, just maybe, he might have even stayed to help.
She straightened.
"But I know someone who might know something."
A seraph who was on their side. A seraph who might care, just a tiny bit.
After everything, it seemed too good to be true.
Issa fervently hoped that she wasn't being delusional out of desperation.