~~Day 137~~

~~David~~

Thousands of auras of violence saturated the air. David summoned his armor and staff, and prepared for war.

Laoko drew her swords and stood in front of David, a few meters down the subtle slope. The other girls in his crew stayed behind him, weapons at the ready. They didn't join the flowing waves of bodies, much as they wanted to. Tails twitching, wings flapping, fangs bared, the nine demons in his crew stared on and let the hundreds, thousands of other demons rush past them toward the enemy. Only Moriah and Tsila didn't look tempted, and they squeezed their meera swords, Moriah at David's side, Tsila close by.

Every instinct David had screamed at him. This was wrong. Not the war part; that was inevitable. But doing things so ridiculously off the cuff, without preparation. Where the fuck were the battle plans? Khazeer had shown him the map, but even then, the conversation had boiled down to 'we run them down here instead of there' and that was it.

It wasn't as if demons weren't smart. Maybe not human-smart, but still, this was absurd. The demons just didn't care about proper tactics, as if there were no point to winning a war if it couldn't be done through pure brutal violence. Like it was written into their genes that they had to do things bloody, with broken bones and torn flesh.

It wasn't about making sense, not in the way humans made sense. Territory? No, it was about entitlement; they thought they were owed the spires they fought over. Food? Demons killing demons meant more souls per demon, no matter how the demons died; killing each other meant more food for you. Life? Most demons didn't care about who lived or died, and getting a kill meant a skull they could collect as a trophy; killing meant respect.

They wanted to slaughter each other. All David could do was ride the tide.

The two demon armies poured toward each other, and the shallow valley disappeared under roaring bodies. The giant spider in the distance twitched, huge legs poking left and right at the ground, eager to charge forward with the armies from Navameere Fields, but it didn't. The woman on its back didn't let it. She simply sat on her giant spider and watched the tide go forth.

David summoned a tune upon the spider.

Something crushed it. Flattened it. Muted it.

A tune emerged from the distance and came for him, a tiny, rumbling thing. Cellos working up from the background of existence. They were coming from the other unmarked.

David flattened her song. Easy, as long as he looked for it.

The distant unmarked tried another song, and he crushed it. He tried a song, and she crushed it. The silent music was just that, music, vibration, pulsing waves that altered existence. Any changes from the normal she made, he could squash. But it took everything in his mind to do it, every bit of his focus he'd built for playing music.

He summoned a song. As the two armies crashed into each other and the roar of battle drowned the province, David reached deep and plucked the strings as hard as he could. Too hard. Hard enough to maybe summon the presence of Hell herself.

The other woman reached out and grabbed the strings, but she wasn't prepared. The notes smashed through, and the battlefield ripped open.

A dozen colossal black spikes shot up from the ground, and only a little forethought kept them from erupting straight up under Khazeer's forces. The tetrad stood beside him, wide-eyed at the sight of spikes sticking up from the churned earth on Navameere's side of the battle. Like guerrilla warfare, a dozen demons had stepped onto spike straps that'd shot up and turned them into skewered corpses.

"Impressive," Khazeer said at David's side. He had to yell for his voice to break through the sound of battle.

"I was aiming for a hundred. That other unmarked is crushing my music."

Snorting, Khazeer spun his axes in his hands and flared his wings. He was itching for battle.

"Why isn't she attacking?" he asked.

David shrugged. "She knows she's not allowed to get close to me. If she does, it might attract the alien."

Khazeer shot his glare at David. "That's who you meant by attention? I thought you meant the angels."

"Them, too. And I didn't know if I could trust you."

Of all the reactions David expected, Khazeer laughing was not one of them.

"You still don't know."

David smiled at the battle-hungry, enormous demon. "I think we're good."

A song erupted from the ground nearby, and David crushed it again. The other unmarked tried again, smashed fingers on the keys of a cathedral pipe organ, and David blocked the flow of air. All inaccurate metaphors, but it was the only way his mind could understand it. Instruments, and the mental effort and skill required to play them. And conduct them.

Whoever the girl was, she had no finesse. Her giant spider mount screeched, and its voice matched the rhythm of drums no one else could hear but David and the unmarked. And Pegasus. David spun as his pet slammed a hoof against the hard ground in sync with the drums, even as David did his best to flatten the beat until it was nothing more than muffled thuds.

But muffled thuds were enough to stir the ground, and David stepped back and leaned his weight on his staff as a hellquake vibrated through Khazeer's forces. Waves of rock erupted upward, not sharp, but heavy and powerful, launching demons into the air like they'd been hit by grenades. While David used spikes, the other unmarked used raw kinetic explosions.

David slammed his staff down and flattened the song again, and the earthquake faded away. Okay, she had no finesse, but whoever this woman was, she had power.

David played a quiet tune underneath himself, and both he and Khazeer rose a couple of meters up on a slow slab of stone. A raised platform of rock high enough to let them both stare out over the battlefield.

"Angels?" David asked, looking down over his platform's edge.

"Nothing so far," Moriah said.

As long as David and the girl didn't summon any firestorms or tear the province in half, they were probably in the clear. Maybe. Hopefully.

Standing a couple of meters higher changed everything. Now David could see clearly over every demon head, and instead of the chaos of rushing bodies sprinting past him, the battle now looked like crashing waves of red and black rivers. Funny how bodies moved almost like water when they sprinted at each other, complete with literal waves as the impact of two forces hitting meant some bodies went down, and others climbed over them.

To his left, a couple thousand demons crashed into a couple thousand more. To his right, the same. If he could just reach out and summon more spikes, or maybe summon a vein of amber and burst its contents out on the field, he could kill so many demons. But each attempt led to the same thing: the other unmarked crushed his song to almost nothing. Any time he got a song through, it was a pale copy of what he'd aimed for, a few spikes instead of a few hundred, a small ditch instead of a ravine, and a tiny splash of lava that was lucky to hit a couple demons.

The other unmarked slammed him with her own songs. She didn't like spikes. She liked blasts. More hellquakes ripped through the ground underneath them, and David crushed her song as best he could. But the song was massive, flirting with being too loud, and rocks ripped up in distant, random areas, as if demons were stepping on random landmines.

If David were a real wizard, he could summon a fireball from his staff and shoot it straight at the girl. But both he and the girl were limited by a hard rule: they could only alter the body of Hell with the music. And it had to be music, which meant anyone else who could hear and play it, could silence it.

He squinted hard across the battlefield. The woman wasn't wearing armor, not like his. She didn't have a batlam rune. Or rather, she hadn't awakened it. An angel had never taught her. And without the aid of the staff, controlling the music was difficult in chaos like this. He had an advantage.

David smiled, pointed his staff across the battlefield, and started a song. Just a little thing, meant to summon a specific, single spike under the spider. The unmarked squashed the song. He spun up another song, a recorder playing a quick, dancing melody. She plugged the instrument. He started another song, a flying violin. He started another, dings on the musical triangle. Quick melodies he hopped through, from one instrument to the next.

He couldn't overpower her. But he could outplay her.

He danced through a dozen instruments, playing different strings for only a few seconds. She couldn't keep up. The woman stood up from her throne upon the giant spider's back, and screamed rage as a melody snuck past her, and a spike shot up beside her, narrowly missing her mount. Another got by, and cracked the ground under the spider's front right leg, nearly toppling it. Another song summoned a splinter of lava, and the glowing blood of Hell splashed onto a tetrad beside her. Maybe a bailiff, maybe a bodyguard. The demon died burning, and their scream tore through the battle.

The unmarked's scream followed, a high-pitched banshee scream, and David shivered. That was not the kind of scream a normal person made.

"You are making progress?" Khazeer asked.

"Barely, but I'm getting somewhere." David ignored the sweat dripping down his face, and the growing ache in his fingers and chest. "I still can't reach her directly. She's not as good as me, but good enough. She--"

The spider shrieked again, matching its owner's crazed scream, and charged forward.

"What the fuck, what the fuck." David slammed his staff in front of him and summoned spikes under the spider, but the unmarked girl flattened his song. So much for harassing her to death with small melodies. "She knows she can't win this fight with music. She's... going to attack!"

Khazeer snarled. "You said if she gets too close, the alien will interfere?"

"Yeah, they will. And they'll rip the province in half doing it."

The spire ruler nodded, took a deep breath, and looked at the axes in his hand.

"Can you keep the unmarked from using her magic on us? On me?"

"Yeah, mostly. What--"

With another snarl, Khazeer hopped down from the platform. Wings spread, he caught air and glided forward, landing in a run between his personal guard. His bailiffs Sazillia and Zaavras rushed after him. Fifteen demons wearing aera armor, three tetrads and twelve brutes wielding aera weapons, bronze and red and gold, the only demons wearing such beautiful, durable gear in a sea of red and black.

Even from a kilometer away, the platform gave David the vantage to see where the two lines of armies met, and where Khazeer crashed into them, straight in the path of the colossal spider.

It was like a scene out of a monster movie, and the demons weren't the monsters. The colossal spider swung its arms out and smashed demons back, breaking bones and sending them flying. Bodies upon bodies, demons crashed into each other, but no one stopped to help a fallen comrade. Each injured demon who couldn't get back up was used as a stepping stone for other demons to launch themselves.

A tiger threw herself at the spider's side. The unmarked played a song, too small, specific, and distant for David to crush. A chunk of rock shot up from the ground and smashed into the tiger, knocking her down. Another demon jumped for the spider's head, but instead of reeling back, the spider ran forward and caught the demon with spiky arms that jutted forward from around its head. It ripped the demon in half.

The spider got closer.

A swarm of vrats threw themselves at the spider's legs, chopping and swinging, but demons from the Navameere Fields interfered. The spider didn't care. It swung its legs out at any that got close and sent them through the air, friend and foe. The demons didn't care. More demons replaced them, some defending the spider, others trying to chop its legs down, like cutting down trees that fought back.

"David?" Laoko asked, standing in front of his platform. "What do we do?"

David stared out at the giant spider heading their way. He hadn't expected her to be able to simply crush his songs like this. If he had a day to work at it, he could get past her defenses, but she'd figured that out and was now rushing straight at him.

And the closer she got, the more he could feel something. A buzz in the music. Things getting louder. Not melodies or harmonies, not even single notes or chords. Existence had its own background sound, and as the other unmarked got louder, the background sound grew louder, like holding up a conch to his ear.

They were resonating. Him, and the girl.

Someone jumped up onto David's platform, and he half spun with his staff, but Daoka clicked at him as she stood beside him, replacing Khazeer. Axe in hand, she took a deep breath and nodded, ready, waiting, eyeless gaze set out toward the oncoming army spearheaded by the giant spider. The demons from Navameere Fields were making ground.

"Dao!" he yelled. "Get somewhere safe! Get--"

Dao shook her head and stayed where she was, stance braced.

Jeskura climbed up the platform and joined her lover, standing with her sword drawn and wings spread and ready.

"We'll keep you covered from up here," Jes said. "And the others will cover you from below."

David took a breath and peeked down. Laoko was still directly in front of him, and Moriah and Tsila had stepped out to stand with her. Caera stood beside the platform on her hind legs and nodded up at David as she flexed her claws. Acelina and the Las were in the back with Pegasus, ready and waiting as Khazeer's army continued to rush past them.

This wasn't going at all how he'd planned. He'd thought maybe he'd have a distant wizard-off with the other unmarked, not spend every moment crushing her songs. He'd thought Khazeer would have stayed by his side, doling out battle orders, not join the fray. The fight between the two lines was a bloody meat grinder, with barely any way to tell which demon came from which side except the direction they were facing. Demons killing demons, and hundreds of them threw themselves at the colossal spider.

The spider couldn't tell who was who either. The girl on its back barked orders, something about 'kill kill kill', and the spider responded, swinging out its colossal legs as it got closer. If not for the armies blocking its path, it would have reached David in moments, but Khazeer and his best stood their ground in front of it.

Khazeer pulled his head back, and several of his back spikes glowed amber for a quick moment, before the spire ruler unleashed hellfire. The spider shrieked, backing away and flailing its eight legs and two arms as the deadly fire engulfed the battle. Demons ducked to the sides and around the waves of flame, only for the bailiffs Zaavras and Sazillia to step up to Khazeer's sides and do the same. Three tetrads, each breathing flame from their mouths onto the field and incinerating all demons in front of them. Khazeer's forces were quick to get out of the way. Morgana's were a bit too slow and burned to ash.

The spider monster stepped back, each leg skittering and covering ground quickly. The flame could not reach it, not with how fast it was, and how easily it stepped over demons. It didn't care where its legs landed, and it moved to the side easily. Something that big should not be allowed to skitter.

The girl upon her spider played a song, her hands pointed down at the demons in front of her. But she was closer now, less than a kilometer, and David crushed it easily. She shrieked with rage and tried again, but David had her now, had his grip on her sound, and she was close enough to--

The background hum grew louder. He wouldn't have heard it if he wasn't looking for it, if he hadn't spent every day for months now experimenting with the music. But it was there, just a little louder, and Hell responded. No, not Hell. The thing below Hell responded and reached out from the ethereal endlessness of the black below.

Hell shook, hard, and ten thousand demons fell over as the quake ripped through the ground. Pits, remnants crushed by demons running over them, awoke. Crimson shot up from the red pits as cracks ripped through them, geysers of blood that squirted high. Another pit, and another. The small holes with remnants inside broke apart into craters, each reaching deep into Hell, and each unleashing floods of blood straight up, high into the air. It came back down as red rain.

David waved his free hand and screamed at the top of his lungs. "Unmarked! Get back! You'll kill us all!"

Either she didn't hear, or didn't care. Her spider sidestepped like a crab, moving around the waves of hellfire heading its way. The three tetrads re-aimed, but the spider was absurdly fast, skittering turning into a sprint as it got closer. Their hellfire died away, the three tetrads unable to maintain waves of pure destruction for very long. A few hundred demons had died to their flames, black ash turning to mush under the blood rain, and the giant spider's front legs were on fire. It screamed animal sounds, high-pitched and alien, but it didn't stop moving either. It rubbed its legs against the wet ground, tearing off pieces of exoskeleton and black spikes, but putting out the fire, too.

Demons poured over Khazeer like ants swarming over an invading caterpillar. For a moment, the three tetrads disappeared under a sea of red and black bodies, but twelve brutes rushed in and did something brutes never did. They used weapons, and tactics. For the first time, demons swung their swords out with a restrained hand, careful strikes that avoided friendly fire. They formed a perimeter, carving through Morgana's forces and protecting their bosses.

Morgana, the spire ruler of Navameere Fields, was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she'd sent the unmarked girl on the warpath and sat back and watched? Maybe she just refused to go beyond her territory. But Khazeer was all too happy to get his hands dirty, and the moment his honor guard freed him of the swarm of vrats and gargoyles who'd covered him, he went on the slaughter. The group moved together, hacking their way through the oncoming rush of smaller demons, and David winced every time they cut down a girl demon; old views died hard. Khazeer didn't so much as hesitate. He chopped his way toward the spider again, and again, the unmarked girl tried to play a song aimed straight at him.

David crushed it with one invisible hand, while his other reached out and flattened the growing hum in the background. He might as well have been trying to hold back a moving car with his bodyweight, single-handedly. Better than nothing. He pressed his second hand against the vibration harder, until white spots danced in his vision, and the growing hum flattened a little. Not enough, but quieter than it was before.

"Unmarked, stop!" he yelled. "You must retreat! You'll summon the alien!"

She was close enough now. She'd heard him. Not close enough for him to see her face, but the body language was clear. She held onto her throne of bone, strapped tight to the spider's back by a dozen leather straps, and she pointed a hand straight at David.

The spider sprinted past Khazeer and his honor guard. Some brutes rushed past the armies and crashed into the spider's back legs, and it collapsed forward, stomach sliding across the blood-soaked battlefield. A dozen demons jumped for its face, but the spider got back to its feet and struck them down, tearing some apart with its two arms and pulling their bodies between its mouth. It was not a spider's mouth, but something worse, full of teeth in a sideways maw, with a dozen giant fangs grabbing and pulling squirming meat into its awaiting depths.

It kicked Khazeer's forces away again, but Khazeer himself jumped over his demons. With spread wings, he glided just enough to land on a leg, and chop the thing's back leg off.

More alien shrieks pierced the air as waves of blood gushed from the hacked-off leg. Another leg struck out, crashed into Khazeer, and sent the demon to the ground, only for the spider to turn and bring another leg down onto the tetrad's right wing, narrowly missing his chest. Khazeer roared as the giant limb tore a gash through it, but David couldn't see more past the rushing bodies.

The unmarked reached out with a hand, and again, David crushed her song. She was way too close. The nearer she came, the more easily he crushed her songs, but the louder the background hum grew.

Another quake ripped through Hell. A dozen small ravines tore through the rock, and blood oozed up from the cracks. No song made that damage. What David's sixth sense could see told him the ground was filled with flowing rock, hundreds of veins, but he hadn't realized they were filled with remnant blood. And as something below tried to pierce up through Hell's belly, a hundred more cracks ripped through the ground, each unleashing more blood, some gushing out in rivers, and others squirting into the air to join the red rain.

"She's coming," Laoko said.

"I'm trying to block us resonating," David yelled down at her. "As long as I do that, the aliens won't break in!"

Jes gestured down at the cracks splitting the surrounding ground. "You're not doing a very good job! This looks way too familiar!"

"I'm fucking trying! She--"

The spider broke through the tide, and dashed straight for David. The girl on its back didn't care about Khazeer or the others, and as she came into focus, her hard glare aimed straight at David. She wore brown leather over her entire body except for her head. Long blonde hair, and blue eyes. Beautiful. Psychopathic. She didn't even look as old as David. Sixteen, maybe seventeen?

The spider lunged forward, but it let out another scream as something hacked at its back legs. Sazillia, laughing so loud it reached over the battle and the blood rain. Four swords out, the fujara tetrad was completely covered in blood and fresh cuts, but that only seemed to spur her on. She got through one spider leg, bringing the hellbeast arachnid down long enough for her to run, jump, and aim for another leg.

A spider leg kicked back and hit her in the head. Her skull snapped back, and the tetrad disappeared under the rising blood and stomping talons and hooves of the armies swarming the spider.

But the damage was enough. It stumbled. Laoko jumped forward and unleashed hellfire. The demons in front of her recognized the signs and jumped to the side, creating a clear path between the bolstara tetrad and the giant spider trying and failing to get back up on its remaining legs. Hellfire gushed over it, and the spider skittered to the side. Too slow. Two limbs disappeared under the flames, and the spider screamed as it struck out. Two long legs crashed into Laoko's breastplate, and the tetrad flew back hard, crashing into David's platform. Her head and horns collided with the rock. She didn't get back up.

Without David saying a word, the girls charged. David snapped his eyes back in a panic, but Acelina stayed put, huge axe out, all four Las with her and Pegasus behind them. But Moriah and Tsila rushed forward, running instead of flying, still in leather instead of proper angel armor. He almost told them to use batlam right then and there. Not yet. They didn't reach the spider, anyway. A horde of demons from the Navameere Fields rushed around the spider and hellfire, and poured over them with mad roars of hunger. In moments, the two angels were surrounded, but any demon who got close lost a limb.

Caera ran in. David sucked in a breath and squeezed his staff, ready to summon a song. But he couldn't. As the tiger ran left and right, dodging around the chaos, the patches of hellfire on flaming legs, David reached out and crushed the unmarked's song again, while his other hand crushed the background hum as best he could. He couldn't play any music to help his friends. This had to end now.

Daoka and Jes ran in. Words rushed up David's throat, ready to stop them, but he bit them down. Every minute this went on, the more exhaustion grabbed him. Every breath burned. His muscles ached. He squeezed his staff until his knuckles cracked, and let the first two demons who'd ever talked to him, throw themselves at the enormous spider with a growing kill tally.

Jes glided straight onto the colossal spider's face. The woman on the throne almost fell back in her seat, eyes staring. Shocked. She hadn't expected that. The unmarked reached out, screaming, tears in her eyes as she summoned a song aimed directly at Jes, a massive song that touched the sky. But David crushed it again.

The spider screamed and swung for Jes with its arms, but she dodged to the side as she stabbed the exoskeleton skull. She didn't get deep, but the spider panicked and swatted at her faster, striking her as much as itself, crushing her against its own body, and blood erupted from Jes's mouth as she fell to the ground. But before the spider could pick her up with its spiked arms, Daoka leapt high, satyr legs launching her straight up, and she brought the axe down onto the spider's left arm. Full body momentum drove the axe through the huge limb, and it fell to the ground.

Caera jumped over the spider's remaining arm, muscles launching her high and straight up onto where Jes had pierced the spider's face. She ripped into it with her bare hands. The unmarked girl screamed death at her as Caera's sharp claws hacked through exoskeleton and blanketed the tiger in fresh waves of red. Like a blender, Caera ripped and tore, and the spider's body opened up, revealing the flesh within. Caera shredded the insides, tossing chunks of brain matter aside, and the spider went still as it collapsed onto its belly.

No more twitching. No more screaming. The spider lay dead on the battlefield, and its few remaining legs curled up on itself.

"You!" the young girl screamed. "You killed Arachne! You fucker! You fucker! I'll kill you! I'll kill--"

Caera stood up from the bloody mess on the dead spider's head, and pounced at the screaming, crying unmarked on her throne.

The young girl swung her arm out, and Caera's waist and legs fell away from her torso. The two halves tumbled off the dead spider, onto the blood-drenched ground.

David froze. His grip on the background hum stopped. Just background noise, shaking existence and announcing their location to the aliens. That didn't matter. He stared down from his platform of rock at Jes, coughing up blood, and Dao pulling her to safety. Laoko struggled to get back up, lying on her back below him, but she erupted into a coughing fit, her own blood spilling onto her chest. Acelina and the Las pushed past nearby demons, grabbed Laoko, and pulled her back. No one went for Caera.

And Caera was in two pieces on the ground.

"Tsila!" David screamed. "Tsila! Help her! Caera! Help--"

Tsila erupted in gold light and vaulted straight up from the mob of demons fighting her, like a shining beacon. Her leather wraps disappeared, incinerated by the angel armor that replaced them. She dove for Caera, her gold armor and white wings blanketing the area in a powerful flare. The glow did not stop. It drowned the area in light, and in a seamless motion, the gabriem scooped up both halves of Caera and brought them up onto the platform.

"No you don't!" the unmarked girl screamed. She walked forward off her dead pet, and as she walked, her legs grew long, and sharp, piercing through her leather armor. Her arms did, too, skin elongating over growing bones. And several eyes grew from the girl's face as she stalked toward them, growing taller every meter. "You killed Arachne! You killed--"

Moriah exploded in gold, summoned her gold and silver armor and weapons, sent the nearby demon mob to their feet, and slashed the air with her sword, eyes aimed at the unmarked girl. A gold arc launched from the blade and crashed into her side, and blood exploded from the young girl's leg as it nearly came off her body. Nearly. The young woman turned, scream unending as the blood rain mixed with her tears, and she struck out at Moriah. The angel blocked with her shield, but the unmarked summoned new arms, four of them, each grotesque amalgamations of flesh and bone. It was as if the girl was becoming a giant spider herself, made of sharp bone and human flesh. Each stabbed at the angel, and Moriah went from offensive to defensive, falling to her knees and holding her shield up. The stabbing legs crashed into her again and again, pushing her back with each strike.

That didn't matter. Caera. The tiger's two halves lay on David's platform, the rock only barely wide enough for him, Caera, and Tsila. The angel was on her knees in a moment, pulling the larger woman's two halves together, and setting two glowing hands on her.

David just stared. His hidden hands stopped everything, no longer suppressing the rising, resonating hum in the background. Even as the other unmarked grew closer, shrieking with pure rage and striking at Moriah, David did nothing. He played no music. He let the background hum grow louder. His body couldn't move. His mind couldn't move.

Caera was in half. He didn't look at the middle part. Couldn't. Things were coming out of her, and he couldn't look at them.

"Tsila," Caera said, blood leaking from her mouth. With a trembling head, she looked up at David. "David."

Tsila's face was locked in a grimace, and her hands grew bloodier as she grabbed chunks of flesh and pushed them back together. Hands glowing brighter by the moment, the angel trembled more than Caera, and her wings spread wide, glowing too, as if bracing against some unknowable weight. Flesh mended, skin binding to skin, and chunks of meat moved.

But they weren't moving fast enough.

The clang of bone on metal filled the background. Moriah screamed and unleashed another golden arc of energy from her sword, and the beam crashed into the unmarked girl once again. Same result, the beam ripping through flesh but not severing any of the girl's limbs. And the girl was a hydra, more limbs erupting from her body, naked human flesh tearing open from within so new limbs could grow. Two dozen giant spider legs, hairless, tipped with sharp bone. The girl's mouth broke apart and a dozen enormous fangs pushed out, growing her mouth from the inside out. Her skull peeled apart, growths pushing from within until it was ten times as large as before, and completely covered in manic, human eyes. She wasn't playing music anymore either, and shrieked longer than human lungs would allow.

David didn't care. He stared down at his girlfriend, and his eyes betrayed him, flicking to her waist where Tsila's golden bracers pressed on exposed flesh and bone.

Words bubbled out of his mouth. "I... I should... I should have... told the angels to... to use batlam earlier. I should have... I should have..."

Caera reached up for him.

He fell to his knees, metal armor colliding hard against the rock. He clutched Caera's huge hand in his black gauntlet, and warm blood soaked in through the knuckles. Somewhere behind him, he heard Acelina roar, the Las hiss and scream, and the panicked neighing of Pegasus followed. He didn't look back.

Caera was shivering.

"David," she said. "I got the fassila, right? The hellbeast? Now it's just the girl."

"Y-Yeah. You got the spider."

With a heavy sigh, she nodded and let her head go limp on the rock. "Good."

"No! No." Finally, his fucking brain got working again, and his mouth followed suit. He got a hand under her head and lifted it. "Stay awake! Do not fall asleep!" He locked gazes with Tsila through her silver helmet, its front wide enough for him to see her clenched jaw and furrowed eyes. And the energy draining from them every moment. "Tsila!"

"I'm trying," she said. "This... wound is grave."

He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to grab the gabriem and shake her and scream at her until his throat tore apart. But Caera squeezed his hand, and his eyes fell to her. Don't look at the wound. Don't think about it. The doctor is doing what she can, and it's your responsibility to stay out of the way and let her work. That's what always happened in the TV shows. And then the doctor and the nurses save the patient's life, and everyone cries happy tears. That's how things went.

Caera squeezed his hand again, her single eye half-closed. "Hey..."

David just stared.

She squeezed again. "Hey... closer."

Somewhere, something in his mind had enough awareness to make him lean forward. And when Caera's next words gargled under blood, failing to come out, he leaned in closer, eyes wide.

"You're going to be fine," he said. "You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. You're--"

Caera lifted her head, licked his cheek, and smiled.

No words. Nothing to say. She just smiled at him, closed her eye, set her head down, and went to sleep. A breathless sleep.

David stared down at her, squeezed her hand, and lifted her head, shaking it lightly. Her short dreadlocks shifted. She didn't move.

"Caera?" David whispered. "Wake up." Tom had said those exact words, whispers that'd been too loud, and everyone had heard them. "Wake up. Please wake up. We... We were going to go exploring together, right? You wanted to see what all the old places might say, right? The old caves and tombs and--"

Tsila's hands stopped glowing. Standing up on trembling legs, she met David's eyes long enough to shake her head, draw her bow, and take to the skies. Beyond her, a battle raged, and some giant, fleshy monster spider thing was ripping through demons, despite another angel's attempts to stop her.

David didn't help her. The background hum of silent song grew louder. David didn't move.

"Caera, come on. Wake up. You were... We were... I wanted to..."

She didn't move either. With a hint of a smile still on her frozen face, the tiger didn't move a muscle. Tsila hadn't managed to put her two halves back together, and the blood mixed in with the blood-rain that fell on the battlefield, remnant blood squirting up as geysers from the cracking ground. Each moment that passed, the cracks in the ground grew worse, and the province quaked.

But Caera didn't move. He shook her head again, grabbed and shoved her strong shoulder, but the beautiful tiger's upper half only shifted as much as he pushed her.

A scream ripped his eyes up from Caera's body, onto the battlefield in front of him. Daoka. The satyr lay on the ground, Jes beside her, Moriah kneeling over them both, shield up and blocking titanic limbs of flesh that crashed down on her, each driving the angel's greaves deeper into the bloody ground. Daoka's side bled, a deep gash revealing insides, and her blood mixed into the rain. Tsila's arrows crashed onto the unmarked monster, each unleashing a small explosion of gold, but the unmarked didn't care.

Another limb crashed down on Moriah's shield, and Daoka screamed, some mix of fear and rage in her lovely voice as she tried and failed to stand back up.

Daoka. Screaming.

David set Caera's head back down, stood up, and let the spring coiled up in his insides unleash. It'd been there for so long, since Tom had screamed at him, poured his anger and misery and sadness onto a fucking child. It snapped out and ripped a hole straight out through David's guts.

The batlam rune shattered. It no longer fit his mind, a hat a thousand sizes too small. The red and black armor broke, cracked, and fell away. The staff fell from his hand and splintered into a million shards before it hit the rocky ground. It all disappeared in a puff of red light, meaningless against the endless red rain, and David's body.

The rock platform collapsed under his growing weight. Stone crumbled. He stepped forward, made sure not to step on Caera, and brought his form over Moriah, Daoka, and Jes. The other unmarked stared up at him with her hundred eyes, arranged in random spots on her spider-like head. And she screamed in terror.

Moriah turned and stared up at him. Daoka did the same, mouth falling open. Jes wasn't moving. Tsila, hovering off to the side, flew back and out of his way before diving and grabbing Daoka and Jes and handing them to the Las. The little ladies immediately started dragging Jes out of the line of fire, back toward Acelina and Laoko, but they stared up at him too, wide eyes locked on his limbs.

Flesh poured out of David's body, muscle ripping through skin to reveal more layers of skin underneath. Bone erupted, sharp limbs of it that curled in segments and crashed into the ground before layers of muscle and skin grew over them. Eyes grew from extra skulls sticking out from his myriad of shoulders. A dozen. A hundred. A thousand sights drowned his mind. He could see Acelina now, standing over Caera, Pegasus with her. The goort pawed at Caera, nudged her again and again, waiting for her to get back up.

Fresh veins of boiling rage shot up through David's spine, and new limbs erupted from his growing body. A dozen bones shot out from his back, each the length of a bus, and each grew muscle, skin, and membrane. Wings of discolored pink flesh. Hundreds of human mouths grew from his chest, each gnashing and gnawing at the air. He walked on a hundred legs, each taller than a house. No longer walking. Crawling. Like a winged centipede, covered in human faces, each with wide human eyes and roaring human mouths.

The other unmarked, a giant spider in her own right, was smaller than him, and getting smaller. No, he was getting bigger. Things inside him cracked, and new bone or flesh grew to replace them, bigger than before. Blood flowed inside, adapting to new shapes, filling out limbs and making new muscle flex and function. Bigger, and taller. There was no center point to his focus, no head. A myriad of eyes and ears fed him stimulus, explaining the world around him in detail he could never have known before.

When David had been too young for it, he'd seen the movie Akira, and the images of Tetsuo's transformation had stuck with him all his life. Even now, as his many eyes looked at his own growing body, now dwarfing the other unmarked and a portion of the battlefield itself, David couldn't help but think of the waves of flesh growing, unhindered by reality.

And none of it mattered. All that mattered was the small spider-woman underneath him.

David's mind, body, and soul aligned with a single thought: destroy.

"You!" the woman screamed from a hundred mouths. "You--"

David lifted a dozen arms. They changed from spider-like limbs, to human-like limbs. Bone spikes stuck out of their elbows and knuckles, and the arms were a dozen meters long each. But they were human, strangely human on a body that made no sense, that had no front or back. Limbs, jutting out of a strange, evolving mass of flesh and bone.

He brought the dozen arms down on the other unmarked, each fist tight, and he rained hammer blows down on her. Her body broke immediately, legs cracking, a spider with dozens of limbs splattered flat to the bloody ground, a flesh-colored mirror to the black and red spider that lay dead next to her. Demons ran away in droves, caught between roars of excitement and screams of fear. Demons never ran in fear. That couldn't even understand the concept. But David's thousands of eyes showed him exactly that.

They didn't matter. He brought his fists down on the thing that'd killed Caera, again and again, until her bones broke and her insides ruptured.

There was no music here. Even as the background hum of existence continued to resonate loudly, potentially summoning the alien to their location, he played no music. She played no music. Music did not alter their bodies like this. They were instruments, and the instruments were being altered. Cellos bent and twisted. Flutes elongated. Drums warped, and the conductor's wand had malformed into a lacerated whip. He couldn't play music right now even if he wanted to. He didn't want to. He wanted to smash this killer with his bare hands.

He ripped off her limbs. She shrieked from her many mouths, and David delighted in the sound. He tossed her spiky, spider-like arms aside. They disintegrated into ash in seconds, just like Greg's body had, and the dust of her remains mixed into the growing blood mud. He tore off more, even as his other hands smashed down harder on her body, forcing crimson to squirt out from bursting pockets of flesh. More limbs, and more, forcing the monster to gargle on her blood from her many mouths.

He pulled some of her limbs into his larger mouths and bit into them, ripping chunks out of her. Bone crunched in his biggest mouth, like fish bones, and the stringier chunks of meat resisted chewing, like beef heart. He chewed through the flesh anyway, pulling with his mouth and pushing her with his hands until the flesh ripped free. Satisfaction was short-lived, as each chunk immediately turned to soot and dust. But her screams made it worth it.

Soon, she couldn't scream anymore, but she wasn't dead yet either, and he slammed all his hands down on her torso -- or the closest thing to a torso -- until sacks of muscle and bone within popped, dozens of eyes fell free of their sockets, dangling from optic nerves, and some mess of organs gushed out from her mouths. He smashed on her harder, turning her flesh into mulch and paste.

More. Give him more.

In moments, her body turned to ash underneath him, leaving behind only bones. Colossal, monstrous bones, no longer held in place by skin, muscle, and tendons, fell to the ground. He half expected them to warp back into the shape of a small woman's skeleton again. They did not.

The background hum of existence quietened to its normal sound. And in the new, gentle hum only he could hear, he heard something else, something everyone could hear. Silence.

He turned, a hundred long, sharp limbs rotating his centipede-like body, and he rested his massive arms and hands on the ground as he looked at the battlefield through a thousand sets of eyes. Morgana's forces had run away back to their side of the field, and past it, in full retreat. Khazeer's forces gave David plenty of space, staring up at him. How tall was he now? He knew he was shaped like some sort of giant centipede, with at least a hundred sharp legs, and a dozen human arms in various places. And along his body, were faces. Human faces, of varying shapes and sizes.

He aimed a dozen eyes down at Moriah and Daoka, a dozen more at Jes, Acelina, and the Las, now grouped together. He looked at Tsila, who flew around and did her best with Dao, then Jes, then Laoko, healing them with glowing hands, despite her shaking body. And Pegasus, who stayed at Caera's side, head hanging down and nudging against her shoulder. She didn't move.

And David had no one else to kill.

But God had a wonderful sense of humor. The silence broke, and quakes tore through the ground. The resonance was gone, but it'd done the damage. They'd found him. Good.

A canyon ripped through the ground, connecting other small ditches and craters that squirted blood into the air. Distant tears slowly ceased spewing crimson, while the new canyon opened up directly underneath the battle, exposing rock walls that flowed with the blood of a billion remnants that crashed onto an endless nothingness below. Deeper in the new canyon, lava spewed, squirting from the deepest tunnels down into the void, and like the blood, it crashed upon some invisible barrier at the bottom.

Whatever hit the invisible barrier between the bottom of Hell and the great beyond evaporated instantly, dispersing into the air but not lost to the void. A brutal failsafe, maybe, a way to keep what existed from entering the void and being lost forever.

If David's fight with the unmarked girl had gone on any longer, the canyon might have ripped straight across the province from end to end, from the distant River Styx, to the outer edge of Hell herself. But that didn't stop the canyon from dwarfing the battlefield, cutting across it in a zigzagging line that split Khazeer's army from Morgana's. Was Khazeer even alive? Sazillia?

Thoughts, lost under searing pain and boiling heat. Every attempt to think clearly, every attempt to speak, maybe call out to his friends, were all lost under the blinding need that drove him, that made new faces form on his bulging mass of a body, and set a new pair of eyes on the growing canyon. Too many eyes. Too much awareness. No matter which way he turned, he saw everyone and everything around him. The canyon before him. Caera behind him, Pegasus nudging her harder.

Caera didn't move.

"David!" someone screamed. He aimed a thousand eyes down at Laoko, the tetrad struggling to stay upright and clutching her breastplate.

David snarled. Ten thousand throats hidden beneath the layers of skin sent the rumble through ten thousand mouths, and the land vibrated with the sound of his voice.

"Stay back," he said.

Laoko stared at him, eyes wide. She'd never looked at him that way, ever. She'd never looked at anything that way.

David approached the vast canyon still tearing its way across the landscape. The gap pushed wider, the province shaking as things within the dark reached up and crashed limbs against the rock. Tentacles.

David rumbled. "Let them come."

A strange sense of relief washed across his grotesque body. Finally. Finally, he could let it out. Finally, the coiling in his gut, always buried, always suppressed, always held at bay, was free to let out. It didn't matter if it changed him. It didn't matter if the girls were now terrified of him, eyes wide and roaming his ten thousand faces. It didn't matter.

Destroy. The thought and desire surged through his limbs.

He had no idea how large he was. A football field? Too many limbs, many with joints in strange places. Pale beige skin pulled taut across alien muscle and bone, so his flesh center mass, long and winding, weighed on many legs. If he had a front half, it sported his dozen human-like titanic arms, and his hands had too many fingers. The flesh wings sticking out of his back could not fly, and new limbs jutted from his back to join them, sharp, curved mantis limbs.

Never in his life had he simply let the rage pour into him like this. It tingled along his skin, boiled in his fingers, and burned in his guts. But never in his life had he felt this alive.

A tentacle emerged from the canyon, several meters thick. Another and another, hundreds, spread out over a couple of kilometers. Black skin with hints of purple, gleaming smooth like an octopus's, complete with suction cups that latched onto the blood-soaked dirt. They pushed hard, spreading the canyon wider, shaking Hell down to her core as they ripped open a wound in her flesh.

Aliens poured up from the canyon. First, the ones on all-fours, black and purple armor on their limbs, but not enough to hinder their movement. Why did they look so human? So strangely human, just warped, bent, twisted, with large skulls, black eyes, and mouths hidden behind dangling tentacles. They weren't much bigger than humans either. The forerunners to their army.

The aliens' proper soldiers followed, standing upright, wearing full body armor of gleaming onyx and shining purple, and wielding tridents, three-pointed spears. Black weapons, blacker than meera, and glimmering with the cosmic background of stars and galaxies.

Behind them came their ranged fighters, floating sorcerers in black and purple robes. The ones that could shoot orbs that bent light around them, and decimated whatever they came into contact with.

The aliens used tactics, and they came by the thousands.

Good.

David aimed as many faces as he could toward the canyon and the rushing tide of void creatures. They showed no fear. They showed no hesitation. They poured toward David and the staring army of demons left standing. Thousands of demons were still alive after the battle, left to watch David change into what he had, and watch the canyon open before them. They stood on the corpses of their comrades-in-arms and waved their weapons in the air as they prepared to meet a foe they had never seen before.

David opened thousands of mouths, and unleashed hellfire.

Resonance, what was gained from a life on the surface, crashed against essence, the outward expression of action. Deep in his guts, a fission reaction occurred, bypassing the natural flow and unleashing pure destruction in a language only Hell understood. It wasn't true destruction, like the void probably brought. It was destruction in the way existence itself understood, rearranging that existence in the most violent way possible.

A thousand beams of compressed hellfire launched from his mouths, and blanketed the canyon in burning death. The screams of thousands of aliens cut the air, and all music was silenced. David played no music. He needed no music. His own body, his resonance, his essence, it obeyed him. He compressed on the hellfire and shot it from open, roaring mouths that lined his sides and stomach, and drowned the canyon and the air above it in red lasers.

The angels would see this. They'd come. He'd have to fight them, too. He didn't care.

He walked along the canyon edge, and Khazeer's demons backed away, running for their lives as the ground drowned in fire. Each laser he unleashed uncompressed as it reached distance, turning into flowing walls of flame instead, but for unlucky aliens closest to him, the hellfire was a searing beam that cut through their bodies, only to set what was left of them on fire. Each of his heads aimed up at the sky, bringing down the flying aliens as much as they shot across the ground and sliced through the waves of aliens coming for him.

For all his size, he couldn't reach the two ends of the canyon. That was fine. Khazeer's forces could fight and die for all he cared, dealing with the aliens beyond his sight. Right now, just let him revel in the slaughter.

New bodies poured up from the ravine. He mowed them down. New heads grew on his mass, and his centipede body, an abomination of limbs and warping flesh, grew longer to fit them. More weight, and more strength. Bigger. Thousands of heads now, hairless, muscles locked in permanent screams, unleashed more lasers of red death upon the canyon.

Larger aliens reached up from the abyss, the titanic ones, each twenty or thirty meters tall. Naked juggernauts. They lumbered with slow, heavy movements, and came for him.

They were small compared to David, dolls, and he reached out and grabbed four of them with his human-like hands. Each of David's hands had a dozen fingers and two thumbs, but he didn't mind. More fingers for squeezing. The aliens were too slow to dodge, weighed down by whatever rules of reality they'd subscribed themselves to.

David swung his arms down faster than he should have been able to. He lifted the titans into the air, and slammed them into the ground, like a child holding their toy by its legs and smashing it into the floor over and over, testing its durability. The aliens were far from indestructible. Their flesh tore apart, insides ruptured, and waves of white blood splattered over the red-soaked battlefield. The white blood vanished in seconds, but for a fleeting moment, David was happy. More. Give him more.

Something chirped in the background, underneath the explosions, the fire, the shrieking aliens that cut off the music he no longer needed. He ignored it.

More titan aliens climbed up from the depths to meet him, and he buried them in laser fire. A fireworks display of red beams crashing against their bodies, each beam individually too weak to penetrate, but with thousands of the lasers searing into them, they crumbled. Limbs flew off, burning. Tentacles fell from their mouths, exposing the back beak within, before the head fell off, too. Hands, feet, legs, arms, the red beams worked together to saw the titans into pieces as they tried to reach him.

And David just kept walking. He guided his centipede body along the side of the ravine, and like shooting fish in a barrel, he mowed down the aliens that climbed up from it. They were storming the beaches of Normandy, and he was unleashing machine-gun fire they could not hope to match. Whenever a titan climbed up to meet him and somehow survived the first volley of death, David grabbed it and either slammed it against the ground until it imploded, or he tore its limbs off, more slowly than necessary.

He grabbed one tentacle from within the canyon and easily ripped its suction grip off the ground. Other tentacles burned, resisting as long as they could before the hellfire worked through their strange black bodies and into the white blood within. But not all, and he grabbed a tentacle and pulled with all his might. It fought back, pulling against him, and for the first time, David's mass teetered toward the canyon.

He drilled a hundred--no, two hundred massive legs on sharp feet into the ground, and pulled harder. Whatever lay below did not move, too heavy. He might as well have been lifting the Earth, for all he could make it budge. But the tentacle itself was nothing so grand, and it ripped in half. The long, wriggling appendage melted in his grip, falling apart and fading away. No dust. No ash. Into absolute nothingness.

More chirps and clicks in the background. He ignored them.

"David!"

Several hundred of his eyes looked to the voice.

Laoko again, standing beside the others and still clutching her breastplate. Daoka stood with her, clicking as loudly as she could. She held her side, but was no longer bleeding. Jeskura lay beside her, Moriah too, the angel a panting mess. Tsila knelt over the gargoyle, hands glowing, panting even worse.

They all stood near Caera. The tiger lay still, Pegasus over her, wings spread, and the Las stood around her, weapons drawn. They were protecting her.

"David." Another voice. Acelina. The spire mother stood in front of Caera, axe at her side, and she spread her enormous wings, like a red flag drawing his eyes. "End this!"

He didn't want to end this. He didn't want to stop and deal with the things that'd come after. He wanted to keep going, keep slaughtering, keep drowning in the sound of alien death. This was their fault! It was all their fault! Everything that was happening, everything that'd happened, it was their fault! Everything...

Daoka clicked louder, a ping in his chest, and he screamed. He screamed out loud, all mouths joining in the wailing chorus until the blood boiled under his sharp feet and every demon clutched their ears.

David turned his attention on the canyon itself, and unleashed hellfire, this time aiming directly for the tentacles forcing it open. He drowned the canyon itself in destruction, mouths aimed from one end to the other. A couple kilometers? A few? It didn't seem so large a distance anymore. He'd grown.

He poured hellfire into the deep abyss and set the insides of the canyon alight. He stepped back, strange body inching away on crawling legs, and more eyes than he knew he had watched it burn. What aliens that still tried to crawl up from the depths melted before they reached the top. Tentacle after tentacle fell back into the black, joining the alien shrieks below, until their howls finally stopped.

Until there was nothing left but emptiness.

David reached out with an invisible hand, and plucked a string. It felt weird. Too many hands, tripping over each other. He couldn't play the music this way.

And the rage was gone. He reached for it, looked for it, tried to infuse it into every part of his body again. But it was gone. All that was left was a black emptiness, a sick mirror of the empty canyon below.

He shrank. Flesh flowed into flesh, curling on itself. Extra faces dissolved back into his long body. Extra limbs merged. The wings and mantis arms sticking out of his back flowed into him, disappearing. Weight, mass, it didn't matter. It all combined back into himself, matching what was left of his thoughts and emotions.

Transformation, gone. Power, gone. The deathly silence that followed punched him in the gut, and he fell to his knees. The bloody ground splashed, dirt mixed with enough crimson it'd become red muck.

He stared out at the ravine in front of him, listened, and waited. Nothing. No alien shrieks. No flowing waves of invading creatures from the ocean depths. Whatever force they'd sent at him and the other unmarked, he'd defeated or halted. For now.

Not good enough. Groaning on aching muscles, David pushed himself back to his feet. Naked, but he didn't care. He reached out with both arms, and with his invisible hands, crashed his fingers down onto the hidden strings. Not loud enough to summon Hell's presence, which meant he could only do so much. With only his own, tired power, he pulled at the canyon, shaking the ground as he drew rock closer to rock and tried to seal the tear. A single fucking centimeter, across a chasm that was over twenty meters wide.

"David," someone said. Moriah. The angel stopped at his side, limping, and she put a hand on his shoulder.

"I need to close the canyon," he said.

"David, the alien has stopped. We can relax for a moment, surely."

"The canyon is still open, and you know angels saw that fight. They're on their way, and--"

"I see no angels above, David." She shook his shoulder. "I know not what Heaven does, but while they surely saw your... transformation, they do not approach. They--"

"The canyon is still open!" He threw her hand off and glared at her. Mouth open, he readied some poisonous barbs at her, but the words caught in his throat. He choked on them. Sighing, he turned back to the canyon, and crashed his hidden fingers on the strings again. Like hitting a punching bag when his knuckles were already bleeding.

The canyon shifted another centimeter. He stood there, still naked, batlam and potram refusing to fit cleanly onto his mind yet. That was fine. He didn't need them. He swung his hand out, and squeezed the air. The ground shook for a kilometer, and the two canyon sides shifted closer. By a single centimeter. Sweat dripped down his body, some cutting across his forehead and over the bridge of his nose. He ignored the drops and squeezed his fist hard until his real muscles ached as much as his inner fingers did.

Others stepped up to his sides, and he spared them a glance. Jes, her arms hooked over Dao and Tsila's shoulders. Acelina, with the Las hiding behind her legs. Laoko came the closest, four swords sheathed, and she coughed up a drop of blood.

"David," the tetrad said. "You can--"

David hit the strings again, and pulled the canyon walls closer, forcing the ground to tremble under them. It didn't knock anyone over, but it made enough noise to shut people up.

A quick glance back showed Pegasus slowly trotting up to join the group, but David looked away, clenched his eyes shut, and summoned more quakes. Close the canyon, and do it under your own power. You can do this. If you use Hell's help, you might just summon the alien again. Do it yourself. If you can't save everyone, at least you can do this one thing. You can at least do one thing fucking right. Just one fucking thing!

More demons. Khazeer, wings filled with holes, and one a mangled, worthless mess. His bailiff Zaavras, wings in better condition, but missing half the fingers on his left hand. Sazillia, one of the horns snapped short, and a colossal gash down her face, straight between the eyes. Lucky.

They stared at him. He ignored them. He played the music as loud as he dared, relied on his own strength, and forced the enormous canyon closed. It took hours, and everyone watched, silent. Better this than dealing with... what was behind him. Only the rumbling ground and cracking rocks made a sound.

And when the two edges of the canyon finally pressed together, he fell to his knees, gasping. Daoka joined him in an instant, both hands on his shoulders, and she leaned in over him and chirped in his ear.

He almost threw her off the same way he had Moriah. He didn't. Not Daoka. The satyr held him, hugged him, and rubbed her closest ram horn against his hair.

He said nothing.

"David," Moriah said. "Are you..."

He said nothing.

The quiet clop of four hooves announced Pegasus's approach. He nudged his nose against David's shoulder, and slowly, David turned and looked at his pet. No hellbeast would behave this way. A normal hellbeast would be enjoying the free meals that surrounded them, corpses piled on corpses, many demons with exposed innards. But here the goort stood, nudging his nose into David's shoulder again and again with the persistence of a child.

With a shaking breath, David reached out and set a hand on his pet's snout. "I'm... okay, Pegasus. I'm okay."

Maybe it was finally speaking again. Maybe it was the proximity to his friends. Maybe it was Pegasus. Something aligned back into its normal shape in David's mind, and like taking a breath, the potram rune fit onto him. A one-shoulder red toga formed from thin air, draped over his body, with black gladiator sandals and several pieces of black jewelry. As if nothing had happened.

"You are victorious," Khazeer said. His breaths were shaky, too, blood trickling from his mouth. "We are victorious! Hell shall grow monuments to this battle. We will be remembered for eternity! You, unmarked. You will be remembered above all!" The tetrad raised his axe, and thousands of survivors roared with joy.

David stared up at the tetrad, and slowly, as if Khazeer didn't understand what he was looking at, the demon lowered his axe. Of course he didn't understand. He was a demon. He was--

That wasn't fair. As David turned around, he met the eyes of his girls, and his heart sank. Even Daoka, eyeless, looked at him with weight dragging her shoulders down.

Acelina stepped forward, and the other girls looked at her, eyebrows raised. "David, I..."

David glared up at the spire mother. What could she want to say? What could the fucking sarcastic, cynical, domineering bitch have to say? He took a step toward her, fists clenched, and she took a step back.

But Tsila held up a hand, gathering everyone's attention. "We've lost someone precious to us, Khazeer. This may be a time of celebration for you, but for us, even the demons in our group, it is not. Save the festivities for later." And like only they knew the meaning of their words, both Tsila and Moriah walked away from the group, and back toward Caera.

Tsila knew. A gabriem would understand. She'd said it earlier that gabriem understood how human minds worked, academically, and she met his eyes long enough to nod.

David didn't nod back, but she didn't need him to. The super-fun, jovial, bouncy, ever-smiling angel smiled no longer, revealing a bit of that wisdom he'd seen before. She dismissed her armor, flared out a wing, and sent nearby demons away as they approached Caera. An easy meal, a demon already split open. But no one had touched her yet.

David went into autopilot. He had enough self-awareness to realize he was doing it, but that was it. Just like that time after the funeral, his insides coiled back into a tight spring and locked there. His mouth refused to work. His eyes stared at the ground in front of him, and he followed his girls, just like he'd followed Mia that one time.

Laoko and Acelina took point, kicking away the corpses of other demons. Offensive in any other world, but in Hell, Khazeer's army took it as an invitation to indulge, and they pounced on the bodies of their dead comrades. Some of the dead were probably from Khazeer's side of the fence, but it didn't matter to his forces, or probably him. They cheered and roared with joy as they devoured the hearts of enemies and comrades alike.

The blood geysers had stopped, the ground no longer getting crushed by an alien squid opening it from below. But every step on the ground was still red, wet, and squishy, and David's black sandals left shallow prints in the mud. Demons stayed out of his way.

He looked back. Khazeer, Sazillia, and Zaavras joined in the feasting, but both Khazeer and Sazillia spared a glance for David. They didn't understand. To their credit, it looked like they wanted to ask. To their credit, they didn't, and gave him his space.

The girls took him to the last place he wanted to be.

Caera. The tregeera lay there, still wearing a hint of a smile. Tsila took a moment to arrange the two halves so she looked... better. Once done, everyone surrounded Caera, creating a wall with their bodies against the armies in the background. Anyone with wings spread them, blocking out some of the sound, too.

Pegasus nudged up against David's side, and somehow, David found enough awareness to lift his arm and set it on the goort's back.

"Fuck," Jes said, staring down at her old friend. "Fuck. Fuck! Fuck..." She flared her wings, and regretted it, clutching her chest where Tsila had worked her magic. Still wounded. "God fucking damn it!"

Daoka stood beside her lover, clutching her own side, and leaned into Jes, clicking softly.

Tsila and Moriah traded glances, eyes flicking between each other, and Daoka and Jeskura. They looked surprised.

"We all knew this would happen," Laoko said. "But... it is different this time, isn't it?"

"Yes," Acelina said. "It is."

Acelina's tone did not sound like Acelina. No bitter bite or cold snap. Just somberness.

The Las were quiet, huge eyes aimed down at Caera, at... the body. They each stepped forward, squatted by her horns, leaned in, and kissed her forehead.

"Saw in scrying pools," Lasca said, nodding. "We have no gift. We have no words. Las have... nothing. We--"

Daoka joined them, squatting down and giving Caera's forehead a small kiss. Again, Moriah and Tsila stared, blinking. And it wasn't long before every demon followed Lasca's example, squatting or kneeling down by Caera's head, and put a kiss on her forehead.

Moriah and Tsila knelt and did the same. It was the demons' turn to be surprised.

"May we speak?" Tsila asked.

Everyone looked at David. Autopilot nodded.

"I am an angel," Tsila said, standing and placing a hand on her chest. "I am no demon. I cannot ever truly understand how a demon thinks or feels. But... But Caera was the first demon I had ever heard of who cared about things like learning, and gathering knowledge. I have never known a demon to grow excited with the possibility of exploring the past so it may be learned by the present and future. Caera was... She was special."

The angel lowered her head, and Moriah raised hers, putting her hand on her chest instead.

"I took her eye, and not once did she so much as look at me with blame. And today, she attacked a monster straight-on, not only showing courage, but intelligence. She rose above the mindless call to slaughter, and focused on attacking what had to be defeated instead. She was better than a warrior." Nodding, Moriah lowered her head, her hand, and let the silence drag on.

All eyes looked to David.

David said nothing.

Pegasus took a step toward Caera, stopped, and came back to David's side. He'd given up trying to wake her.

David listened. He delved through the music of existence, the background hum he'd only become truly aware of today, and looked for something. Anything. Could he hear the music of lives? Creatures in the afterlife? Could he hear souls, or graces or sins? Could he reach into Hell herself, pluck Caera's sin out from whatever path it was taking on its way to the Great Tower?

There was nothing. All David's awareness, his sixth sense, his special and strange body and abilities, all it could hear or feel or affect, was Hell. The creatures within it were not in his power to affect. He couldn't do a fucking thing.

"David," Jeskura said. "Say something."

David stared down at Caera, arms limp at his sides, eyes dry.

Snarling, the gargoyle marched up to him and shook his shoulder. "David! Say something! She's dead! Fucking say something! Touch her! Kiss her goodbye! Anything!"

David did not move, and said nothing.

Tsila brushed a feathered wing against Jeskura's red wing. "Let him be, Jeskura."

"But he's--"

"Let him be."

Jes flashed her glare between him and Tsila, snapped her tail like a whip behind her, and walked off.

Everyone watched David for a while, waiting for him to respond. Part of him knew he should, but nothing came. He wanted to react, say something, but every word got trapped in his throat. And no tears came.

Jes glared at him like she wanted to rip his throat out. She snarled and stormed off, and Daoka followed, glancing back over her shoulder at David several times as she joined her lover. The Las didn't understand, but they followed, too, looking back at Caera as much as David. Acelina and Laoko left last, both casting looks back at him as they guided Pegasus away. Not brief glances, but long, drawn-out looks, as if waiting for him to respond. Or maybe trying to understand. But in the end, they walked away, too.

Moriah and Tsila did not leave. Guardians, in case he needed protection from a hungry demon who saw him with his guard down. Or maybe they understood what was happening to him right then, better than he did.

They said nothing, wings down and snug against their backs. They simply stood there, looking down at the body, waiting. For two hours.

Khazeer approached, and David snapped a glare at the man.

"Go. The fuck. Away." Finally, words, and they rippled in his neck and into his limbs. For a fleeting moment, his fingers grew longer.

Khazeer nodded and did as ordered.

The army spread out, giving David more space. He half expected angels to show up to ruin the silence, but Moriah and Tsila looked up and found nothing. No angel army interfered. And avoiding detection was the reason he'd told Moriah and Tsila to stay incognito. A mistake.

"I should have asked you to put on batlam earlier," he said, eyes still locked on Caera. "If you'd been wearing your armor and using your weapons, maybe you could have--"

"Don't think like that," Tsila said. "We had no way of knowing."

Moriah nodded. "Tsila's right. Every time we do something to gain attention, it's a gamble, and we've nearly died several times now to angel interference. We -- and you -- had no way of knowing Heaven wasn't watching."

The gabriem fluttered her wings. "Or were watching. If the exarch angels are interfering, it is for the first time in all of history. No one knows what is happening, David. We must do all we can to avoid their detection."

The words rolled off him. It didn't matter that they made sense. One word, one order, and the two angels could have been out in full force and given the other unmarked a proper fight. Caera would have lived. She'd--

Reading his mind, Tsila spoke up. "You do not delve into 'what ifs', David. You are too smart for that."

David clenched his jaw, but kept his eyes aimed at Caera.

"Caera," Moriah said. "What do you wish to do with her body? And her heart?"

"No one fucking touches her body or her heart." The words came out on their own, and he had to bite down the next ones; nothing but vitriol.

"Are you sure?" Tsila asked. "It is the way of Hell for demons to feast on their dead."

"Caera wasn't like other demons. She deserves something different. She deserves..."

Caera loved tombs. She loved old mausoleums. She loved exploring anything that was a monument to history, that survived the test of time, and held secrets. She'd love to be buried in something like that.

David held out his hands. His inner fingers hurt. His real muscles hurt. His stomach groaned, begging for food. Background noise. He plucked strings with his aching fingers, and summoned blackstone up from the ground, a lot of it. He compressed it, forged it into the sturdiest slabs of rock he could, and grew it up, over, and around Caera.

For now, a simple coffin, something to protect her while her body melted away and rejoined Hell. David stared at her body, at her wonderful, cat-like smile, and waited for tears. None came. He ground his teeth until his jaw hurt, and sank the coffin into the ground, walls so thick no one was getting into that without a demolition crew.

Not good enough.

He summoned a tombstone, like the ones he'd seen in the Grave Valley, big enough for giants. Crafting a statue was beyond his skill; dice with little grooves for the numbers had been extremely difficult. But he didn't need to do something elaborate or artful, just strong. He raised the massive tombstone, ten meters wide and tall. He made it thick, a few meters thick, and deep into the ground. It wasn't going anywhere.

A blank slab of stone.

Not good enough.

"Tsila," David said. "Give me something to write about Caera. Pithy. Meaningful." His voice was cold and steady, and Tsila's face dissolved into moroseness as she looked at him.

"Here lies Caera, tregeera. A warrior with the heart of an explorer. Valiant to the end against an unmarked. Her deeds will live on."

David nodded. That was good, words that would transcend time and any personal context. No matter who found these runes, they'd understand.

Slowly, carefully, he carved the Estian runes across the tombstone with the music, each rune as big as his hand. Message complete, he wrote the runes again, in the old language this time. It didn't matter that only he could read them. Caera would like her name living on in the first language, too.

Tsila sucked in a little breath, choking on a sob, and a tear ran down her cheek. Crying for him, maybe, since he wasn't?

Nodding, David stepped back, and gestured to the two angels back with him. He raised his hands, and summoned more blackstone, immense walls that dwarfed the tombstone and encompassed it all, roof included. He left a door, an archway, so that any who wished could come and read about Caera. Maybe she'd develop a name? Like Navameere? Maybe someone would name a section of a province after her. Maybe...

David stepped back from his work. A giant black building that could withstand a nuke, with a giant's tombstone within, and a coffin with no seams buried in the bloody ground.

"Her body will fade back into Hell in a few days," Moriah said. "But... But her memory will live on."

"Yes," David said. "Yes, she will." If Hell had a heart, she'd change it with time, make the mausoleum better, and maybe grow a statue of Caera inside.

Like a lifeless doll, he walked into the darkness of his creation and sat down, back to the tombstone. With the archway ahead of him, the light cut into the darkness like a knife. The two angels peeked in long enough to see him, nodded, and walked away. They'd stay nearby, eyes on the mausoleum in case someone came. But for now, he was alone.

He didn't want to be here. Every part of him screamed at him to get up and run away from a second funeral.

But this was important. He had to deal with this now. He could bottle it up, hold on to it, suppress it until it eventually snapped and broke him from the inside. But how many times had Mia screamed at him, told him to let out his emotions before they detonated and ruined him? So here he sat, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did. He rested his arms across his knees, leaned back, pressed the back of his head to the giant tombstone, and stared up at the darkness above.

"Maybe I should try talking," he whispered to no one. "Maybe I should get out of my own head for two seconds and just... be? That's what Mia always told me. I intellectualize and hold everything at an emotional distance. I don't process anything emotionally. So I guess... I guess I'm trying to do that now."

He clenched his hands into fists and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Caera. I fucked up. I fucked up and now you're... and... I could have tried harder. Played the music faster. Learned how to use this body faster. All those 'what ifs' Tsila told me not to think about, but here I am, doing exactly that. I fucked up, and now..."

He shook his head. "I meant it, you know? I'd love to have taken you to the surface, so we could go exploring old ruins and stuff. I hate hiking, but it'd have been fun with you. And fuck me, it would have been fun to roleplay as Lara Croft and shit. And... And then we could have just hung out on my couch, and... and..."

Words. All just stupid, meaningless words. None of it resonated. None of it tapped into some mystical sense of emotional release. The only release he'd felt was giving into rage and transforming into a fucking monster, and that was gone.

He buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I... I'm fucking sorry! I'm fucking sorry I'm fucking sorry I'm fucking sorry! I fucked up and now you're dead and it's my fault and... and..." He got up, kicked his tombstone creation, and started yelling. "And this! This means nothing! I fucked up and now you're gone and I can't hold you anymore or kiss you or talk to you about anything! It's all fucking gone and you're gone and your voice is gone and it's all. Fucking! Gone!" He slammed his palms against the tombstone hard, and jolts of pain erupted down his hands and into his shoulders and chest.

"I fucked up." The words came out shaking. "I fucked up, Caera. I fucked up. No one was supposed to die! No one! Especially not you! I fucked up and now you're dead and--"

Someone touched his shoulder. He spun, ready to drive a spike up through the fucker stupid enough to--

Daoka stood there, hand on her side, wearing a sad little smile on her lips. She was alone. They were alone.

"She was happy," Dao said. "She died happy. No one could have asked for a better gift, David. No one."

David's body trembled, and his muscles betrayed him. Weight pulled him down, but Dao grabbed him, got her arms under his, and pulled him into a hug. He pushed against her, but she didn't let go.

Something broke. A quiet snap where no one could hear. He pressed his face into Dao's shoulder, and wet warmth dripped down his face. Shudders worked through him, and pained sobs lodged in his throat, forcing their way out and burning his eyes each time.

He cried, and Dao rubbed his back as she held him.

No more words. The words didn't matter. He held Dao, squeezed, sobbed into her shoulder, and she rubbed his back and combed his hair with her fingers as the quiet noises worked through him.

No one intervened, not even Jes. Maybe Moriah and Tsila were stopping her from joining, but for now, it was just the two of them in the darkness. David let a few more tears go before finally pulling back. Dao was a blurry mess, and David managed a small chuckle as he wiped away his tears.

"I must look pathetic," he said. "Demons die all the time, right? You guys said it yourselves, it--"

Dao shook her head and kissed him, a quick little thing. "We die all the time, but not like this. Never like this."

Her words trembled, the same as David's did. Was she crying, too? The eyeless demon couldn't shed tears, but a little sob worked through her, a quiet click, and she took his hand and held it.

"I... I'm ready, I think," he whispered. "Let's go."

Dao smiled and chirped at him.

"Wait." He held up a hand. "Just a sec. Need to do one last thing."

Dao tilted her head, but David just smiled at her, and squatted by the giant tombstone.

In smaller letters, he wrote in Estian in the corner near the tombstone's bottom: "I love you, Caera. David."