An Angel’s Road to Hell

Cassandra Pendragon

She whirled around, surprise and hope sparkling in both of her whole, open eyes.

“Cassy,” she whispered, then louder: “Cassy!” Ignoring the mayhem just a few handful of metres away, she flung herself forward and threw her arms and tails around me. Despite my aching body, which protested quite heavily against the newest mistreatment, I had to smile. The faint scent of pine trees I could still smell beneath all the blood, calmed me down instantly and warmth spread through my limbs. For a tiny moment I could again believe that every thing would work out, in the end.

Unfortunately reality asserted its hold rather quickly, since I wasn’t able to support my weight, even on my knees, for longer than a few seconds. I collapsed in her embrace, her arms preventing my head from hitting the ground, hard. The hall spun around me and Ahri’s voice seemed to reach me from across a vast distance:

“Cassandra? By the Great Fox, Cassy, can you hear me? Please, talk to me…” my vision flickered and some of her words were drowned beneath a roaring that swallowed every other sound. I passed out briefly, the strain of healing her had obviously been greater than I had thought, or maybe I had just overexerted my body a tiny bit too much over the last days. When I managed to shove the rising waves of darkness away, I was lying in the arms of my mother, Ahri again standing vigilant above us, unyielding in her resolution to keep us safe, but it was tried.

Swarms of shadows were circling her, just out of range of Ahri’s blade and her wings. Glowing eyes, filled with pain and desperation turned into madness and hate, stared at us, ready to pounce. Above them, Isis hovered like a descended star, light pulsing form her eyes and skin in blinding waves. White fire was wreathed around her figure like an armour and in her hands she held an Ankh and one of the statuettes. As much as I appreciated that I finally knew where one of them had gone to, the building storm of energy within made me wish that I hadn’t found out.

The sheer amount of energy was worrying, not to mention the malevolent colour, a mixture of red and black, that shimmered from within.

To make matters worse, Shassa had finally managed to climb to her feet uninterrupted, my brother and the elves hadn’t reached her in time. Massive strands of energy were erupting from her spinnerets, forming a dark and frayed sphere around her. The thing pulsed in quick succession, firing off spear like torrents of shadow, half of them headed for us, the other half sinking into the walls and ceiling of the hall with nothing to show for their passage but lingering, black sparks.

Meanwhile Horus had taken to the air, fighting Viyara and Erya, the dragoness’ strength and the fey’s magic against his stolen power. As much a I didn’t want to admit the truth, they were no match for him. If it hadn’t been for the dwarfs below, continuously firing, throwing enchanted axes or lunging themselves at the fallen god as soon as he came into range, both of them would already have been overwhelmed, either cut down by his mighty blade or incinerated by his magic. Despite their valiant efforts, the floor below was already covered with their blood, small rivulets running through cracks in the stone. It was a battle of attrition and since every wound my friends managed to inflict on the Fallen closed faster than it had appeared, the outcome was certain.

Simply put, while Horus was holding back the dwarfs and Viyara, Isis was doing everything in her power to kill us off and Shassa, well, her magic surely was dangerous, each bolt that hit Ahri’s wings caused a ripple along the transcendent, fiery feathers, but I had no clue what she was trying to accomplish with the hall. Maybe she’d activate more of the enchantments, or she was accessing the last statuette, I simply didn’t know.

But I did know that something would have to change if we wanted to leave this cursed tomb again. As things stood, it was only a question of time before we’d be run over and I wasn’t up to do anything about it. Sure, I could kill the shadows that made the mistake of getting too close, maybe even one of the gods or Shassa herself if I got my wings on them, but right now I couldn’t even properly lift my head from my mom’s lap, never mind teleporting or flying around the hall. And somehow I doubted that they’d be kind enough to come close and hold still while I tried to strangle them. Well, maybe the corrupted souls would, but there were so many of them that annihilating a bunch wouldn’t change a thing. No, we needed someone who could possibly challenge their magic, or, if that was too much to ask for, at least tell us what we had to do to survive.

My voice was much weaker than I would have liked and hoarse, even in my own ears, but I still managed to whisper: “did one of you bring Mephisto’s emblem?”

Ahri’s ears twitched and my mom moved, her eyes going wide when she heard me talk but I forestalled her with a weakly raised hand. “Did you?”

Ahri grunted, whirling on the spot to shield us from another barrage of dark missiles, while simultaneously cutting through three shadow beasts that had snuck into her range. With a fluid motion she chucked the silver coin in our direction, never missing a step in her deadly dance.

I was much too slow to catch it and the sparkling emblem would have soared right above our heads if my mom hadn’t caught it deftly without even looking, her eyes still glued to my face.

“What do you want to do? He isn’t answering, we tried when you vanished.” Her voice was steady but for the faintest hint of a tremor. Somehow she still managed to convey enough to make me feel even worse for putting her through all of this, though. Right, of course it was my fault.

“Send the bastard a wake up call he can’t ignore,” I mumbled while I reached for the coin.

She hesitated for a moment, her hope that I could actually call for help clearly warring with her knowledge that I was going to do something risky again after just having woken up from an injury induced faint. Hesitantly she lowered her hand but still asked:

“Can’t I do it?” I wanted to roll my eyes, but I thought that would have been just a tad too much at the moment.

“Not unless you can suddenly grow a pair of wings similar to mine. I’ll be fine. We’ll get out of here. I promise.” Fuck, I hadn’t been thinking, I had just wanted to calm her down, but alas, the damage had been done and my core reacted. Another band of power circled around me and sank in, another tie, another chain but this time I wouldn’t have to live with the consequences if I couldn’t keep my word, I’d already be dead. At least it made my mom smile, maybe it had been worth it, after all.

“Could you get on with it? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m having a hard time right now,” Ahri panted. Even though we hadn’t wasted many seconds, the horde around us had swelled even further and the power Isis was draining from the statuette had formed a sickening miasma around her hand. Drops fell to the ground, spawning grotesquely disfigured abominations, vaguely similar to Seth’s and Sobek’s humanoid forms, but even larger. They were bulky and hunched, a perverted mirror image of what Isis’ children once had been. Towering over their smaller brethren, they emanated waves of bloodlust and undiluted hatred, focused on us.

The dwarfs and Viyara were also slowly being pushed back, glowing, split open armour on the ground, served as tombstones for every fallen dwarf. Already there were much to many, a good dozen of the bearded heroes had lost their life and Viyara was bleeding from a deep cut across her chest. Erya’s magic was circling around it, trying to repair and heal, but every time it came into contact with the wound, slithering, golden flames appeared and consumed her power. Consequentially, Viyara’s steaming blood was mixing freely with the dwarf’s, covering the dark stones with a slick blanket, which added to the oppressive smell of death all around. Once again, I couldn’t afford to fail or others would pay the price.

The metal felt cold in my hand and honestly, I didn’t have much of a plan. I knew he had spent most of his energies back on Shafeer’s island and since time had reversed, he hadn’t had the chance to refill them. My grand idea was to heal him, or rather push energy into his emblem without destroying the complex formations that kept him alive, an electrical shock to wake him up, if you so will. Before my wing had transformed I’d have called that impossible. Destruction, sure, but to actually nourish something had been far out of my reach. Now, I could at least try.

It was over in an instant, even though it seemed much longer to me. My wings swirled around the coin, close but never touching, a silvery web that covered me and my mom. The smell of ozone drowned out the miasma of blood and for a moment my world was reduced to the small space between the crackling torrents of energy. A small part of me had hoped that that might be enough, that Mephisto would be blue to take what he needed from the charged air around him, but it wasn’t. The emblem remained still and cold, a regular silver coin without any supernatural properties. I had expected as much, but I still had to swallow a slight pang of disappointment, of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

Next, I tried to connect to Mephisto’s presence, similarly to how I had healed Shassa and Ahri, but it wasn’t as straight forward as I had imagined. He didn’t have a body and I had trouble to even see his energy, never mind interacting or bolstering it. There were no natural pathways I could channel my energy into, nothing to open the door for me, only artificial constructs, mixed with a spark of something else I couldn’t quite place. In a way I was missing the connection that would allow me to support him with my power, the key to access his reservoirs.

Usually my preferred method to deal with a problem like this would be to simply use more energy, to flood him with everything I got, but that’d probably only result in fancy fireworks, maybe even annihilate the emblem, but I could not imagine that it’d help me in the slightest. If he couldn’t take in a sip, he wouldn’t be able to swallow a bucket. To stay within the metaphor, the best I could hope for was to drown him, not an outcome I wanted to achieve.

Finesse or a good idea would go a long way, but both were out of reach in my current state, I was even lacking in the brute force department at the moment and I was running out of time. Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. I slung my wings around the coin and threw it towards Shassa, praying to anyone who would listen that Mephisto had the strength to make use of her energy and wouldn’t succumb or run out of juice like he had when we had faced Galathon.

The emblem sailed through the air in a straight line, over the turning heads of the beasts and towards Shassa’s conjured sphere of darkness and I panicked. Fuck. My plan had been pretty simple, get the emblem into the thickest fog of magic nearby and hope that he’d be able to take it in. Combined with the presence of a malevolent spider, I had been rather sure that he’d wake up. I had simply forgotten a minor detail. He could use unbound energy but everything in this hall was filled with purpose or even channeled into formations, not a drop of it was freely accessible.

I’d have to somehow destroy Shassa’s spell so Mephisto could feed on the residual magic that was sure to remain, magic of this magnitude didn’t simply vanish.

If I’d been rested, I’d have smiled at the prospect, tearing a spell apart was one of the things I was really good at, after all. Unfortunately I wasn’t and the few metres that separated Shassa’s sphere from the tip of my wings seemed like an unsurmountable obstacle. Running was out of the question, even if I had been able to, I’d never have made it in time. Teleportation was dubious, to say the least. My concentration was about as sharp as a rubber pencil and my thoughts felt sluggish, even with the ample amount of energy I was still circling through my body and thus my brain. I could risk it, but I might just as well end up in a wall or not move at all and I would have preferred to avoid that. I just wasn’t able to come up with a promising alternative.

“Sorry, gotta go,” I whispered and collapsed into a shower of sparks on my mother’s lap.

I had been wrong. Neither the transition nor finding the right path through the silvery world were problematic. I manifested smoothly somewhere between the spider and Isis, fully prepared to attack her for good measure while I attempted to rip Shassa’s spell apart. As soon as the real world reasserted itself, I spread my wings wide and that was when trouble found me.

First of, as tiresome as it was, a fresh wave of pain raced through my body, every cell protesting violently against the dematerialisation shortly after it had finally healed. Imagine gluing something together and then shaking it until it almost breaks apart again, repeatedly. In my case, a few weak points might even have shattered, I couldn’t say for certain but it sure as hell felt like it. My muscles cramped and I was more than thankful that my wings were mainly controlled by my thoughts but that posed the second problem. Those weren’t nearly as fast as I was used to and both Shassa and Isis had time to react.

They did, violently. There was no way to tell what kind of spells they threw at me, a disorientating display of blinding light and suffocating darkness surrounded me and I was flung away like a puppet. Even though their magic couldn’t harm me, it still packed a punch, literally and I didn’t have the strength to hold my position. No matter, as long as I managed to accomplish my task, I’d worry about the landing later.

Scraping together every last ounce of willpower I could muster, I sent my wings slithering towards the spot I assumed Shassa to be in. I thought I felt some form of resistance which immediately shattered but I was catapulted out of range too fast to know for sure. Not until a scaly, golden paw fished me out of thin air with a mental “gotcha” and I stopped spinning, was I able to tell what happened.

I stared after the emblem and hoped. Without a sound or trace it vanished behind the curtain of pulsing energy and I held my breath. Either I had just doomed us all and handed Shassa another weapon on a silver platter, or… the sphere imploded. As if a giant drain had suddenly opened up at the centre, the black swaths of energy began to move, circling for the fracture of a second before they were pulled back, vanishing neatly into the now glowing coin.

A sob of relief escaped me and I relaxed against Viyara’s claws when I could finally glimpse behind the lifting curtain. Shassa had dropped to the ground, two of her legs slung around her head while the rest twitched and quivered uncontrollably. She was obviously in pain, the backlash from her failing spell had fried her neves and overloaded her brain. The receding darkness clung to Mephisto’s outline for a moment longer before it disappeared completely, revealing his snarling face. He wasn’t restored but neither did he resemble the ghost like apparition I had met in the volcano. He was somewhere in between, the lines of his body and face were clear and he seemed much more solid, but his form was pulsing with a malevolent light, as if he had been poisoned by the energy he had taken in. With as much contempt as I had ever seen in his eyes he surveyed the scene to finally stare at the fallen gods.