A cold silence filled the cathedral as Azagthoth walked among the unconscious thralls, his bare feet echoing against the tile floor. He looked around him dispassionately at Nico and Filia's handiwork. His eyes lingered upon the Angels. "The marks actually worked on the Seraphim. How interesting. I was expecting they'd kill you both."
Filia was still feeling nauseous from having her power drained, and was slow in getting to her feet. Her discomfort, however, paled in comparison to the growing hostility in her gut. "What are you playing at, old man?" she snarled.
Azagthoth smiled again. "Age is relative, my dear. And I am very old indeed."
"Uh... what?"
Azagthoth made a come hither motion with his fingers, and Filia immediately felt her insides twist into knots. She dropped to her knees and clutched her stomach. Beside her, Nico groaned and writhed, his sweat smearing on the tile as his legs kicked.
Filia fought to raise her head through the unbearable nausea, looking Azagthoth in the eye. "What's the meaning of this?" she asked again.
"It's simply the demon way, is it not?" Azagthoth said, striding forward and stepped over her like she was a well-used doormat, the kind that would only sully your feet even more. "We rise, we tear each other down, and the cycle repeats.
That's
the real reason we're never going to get out of the Pit, you know." He cast his eyes around the empty, high-vaulted ceiling of the church. "But Satan keeps it that way because it means nobody can ever get anywhere close to him. Well, until today that is."
"Quit talking in riddles!" Filia snapped at him.
Azagthoth stood over the prone body of Lily, her newborn wings still lying limp across her shoulders. "Do you think I sent you to this place at random?" Azagthoth said. "I could've picked any religious college in the world - there are ones hidden away in the woods of Europe, full of far more luscious creatures than the ones to be found here. No, I sent you here for one specific reason. Her." His wing dipped and brushed along Lily's spine.
"Is she Nephilim?" Filia asked.
Azagthoth laughed. "This shell is no mere half-breed like the demon hunter buried in one of the fuckpiles over there. No,
she
is something far greater. Something that Satan would dearly love to have at his side again. Don't make me spell it out for you, dear Filia."
Filia bared her teeth, then looked at Lily. She studied the two wings, the tail, the bare bits of naked flesh that she could see. "She's a mutant, I don't know."
Azagthoth raised an eyebrow. "A what now?"
"A mutant. You know, like from the X-Men." Filia managed a smug grin at Azagthoth's look of bewilderment. "You should've come out of that castle more when we had movie night, old man."
The fallen angel rolled his eyes. "You know what, after that, I'm not even going to tell you who she really is. I'm just going to take her and leave, and neither of you can do anything to stop me. She's absorbed all of that power you spent these past few weeks so generously accruing for her, so thank you for that, by the way."
"You prick!" Filia felt her hatred flow through her body, the rage burning like the core of a train engine. Her shadows wrapped around her, and she flapped her wings hard, crossing the space between her and Azagthoth in a heartbeat.
He swatted her as though she were a fly, as if he were brushing her off his shoulder. But his slap reversed Filia's momentum in an instant, hurling her backwards into the space above the altar where the crucifix had hung. Masonry crumbled underneath her as her body compacted the stone several inches deep. Filia felt pain, but her fury was unabated.
And then it was bated as Azagthoth ripped a chunk of stone from the floor, superheated it into a sliver three feet long and an inch wide, then threw it at Filia and speared her through the midriff. Filia's howl of pain echoed through the cathedral.
"Insolent little harpy," Azagthoth said. He reached down and picked up Lily, throwing her over his shoulder like a burlap sack. "That should keep you put until... well."
Filia's hands closed around the rock spear, trying hurriedly to pull it out of her gut. "Until what?" she ground out, blood running from her mouth.
Azagthoth only laughed, not even bothering to turn his head around. He strode out the front doors of the cathedral as if he owned the place, and an ethereal, dark gateway coalesced into existence in front of him. The moment before he stepped through, Filia saw Lily raise her head. They locked eyes for a moment. And then both Azagthoth and Lily were gone.
As soon as the portal closed, Nico took a deep, shuddering breath, putting his hands on his stomach. "Fires, that was the actual worst," he groaned.
"Nico, if you could yank this thing out of me that would be absolutely fucking grand," Filia grunted. "Normally I like males sticking things into me, but this takes it a bit further than I'd like."
The demon got to his feet and took a few shaky steps towards her. He did a little hop-skip, then yelped in surprise as he faceplanted on the altar carpet. "My wings are gone," he said, as if his brain was taking stock of what he had and didn't have in regards to limbs.
"Yeah, we're back to where we started," Filia said. She screamed as pain overwhelmed her, going limp. "Nico, seriously!"
"Coming, coming!" Nico looked around him wildly. "Fucking hell, I think we burned everything that I could use to get up to you."
"Not your fault," Filia said. She forced a grin. "We didn't exactly plan for this."
"Did we plan for anything?"
The stone was now slick with her blood, beads of it collecting and dripping down around Nico like crimson rain. "Not really, no," she admitted.
Nico closed his eyes. "It was nice feeling invincible, wasn't it?"
"Yeah." Filia lifted her head, looking out over the church. "Oh, Fires."
Nico turned. He felt a chill shoot through his body.
The thralls were getting back up, but no rune burned bright on their skin, merely a small scar, soft pink against the rest of their flesh where the demon's fingers had pressed the rune into their being. The humans were in a daze, blinking and looking at one another slowly as if waking from a dream.
But there were four that were already on their feet: three naked Angels, and one extremely pissed-off Nephilim demon hunter.
"If looks could kill," Filia remarked, her voice thick with pain.
"Maybe don't mention killing with her in earshot?" Nico suggested.
Judith's hand snapped out, and her long dagger came whistling across the quad, through the open doors and into her hand. "Oho, I don't need a reminder," she said. "When I'm done with the pair of you there will be no amount of magic in Hell that can put you back together!"
Judith roared and sprinted towards them, her feet slapping on the tile floor. The Angel's followed behind her, their holy weapons flashing into being. Nico summoned a sword and stood his ground, knowing there was nowhere left to run. In that moment, FIlia realized two things.
One, they were both about to be smote from existence.
Two, she could hear a crow cawing.
A chunk of the ceiling imploded, making Judith and the Angels stop in their tracks. A humanoid figure dropped through the hole. He landed atop the rubble, then turned and surveyed the damage around him for a moment.
"Who was on the other side of that ceiling?" he asked. His voice was like a black snake, sinuous and oily. It was a stark contrast to his rather unthreatening outfit - denim jacket, blue jeans, a pair of worn black cowboy boots, sunglasses with thick frames. Slowly, he reached up and brushed some his shoulder-length black hair away from his face. "Was it the Archangel? I
really
hope it was the Archangel."
A cry of abject terror went up from the Angels, who squawked and recoiled from the newcomer, their wings flaring wide as their eyes darted around the room in terror. Judith's mouth dropped open, the dagger falling from her trembling fingers to clatter on the floor. "No..." she gasped. "It can't be."
The Infernals were confused. Then, after a moment, the rest of the figure arrived. It took the form of a
presence
that flitted through the hole in the ceiling like a loyal hound, splashing down over the man and bubbling outward like an ooze. Filia heard the screams of the damned, smelt the brimstone of Hell, a smell almost foreign to her now. Emotions washed over her - arrogance, indulgence, fury, and a pure, intense, visceral hatred, old and terrible. With that hatred came purpose, and, to Filia, clarity. She'd never seen him before, but she knew who he was.
The sunglasses came off, and two eyes looked back at her and Nico. Rather than human eyes, they were deep pits of shadow, ash, and fire, a kaleidoscope vision of Hell.
"Now then," Satan said. "What am I going to do with the pair of
you?
"
To their credit, Judith and the Angels recovered rather quickly from the sight of their greatest enemy appearing before them. Five seconds after Satan asked his question, four thrown weapons split the air and pierced his body.
Satan looked down at the pointy bits protruding from his form, then turned. "Good throws all around!" he said. "Excellent marksmanship!"
Judith's mouth dropped open.
Satan yanked her dagger out and tossed it back to her, and the Nephilim caught it out of reflex. "Not the time for it, though, I'll get to you lot in a minute," Satan said. He shattered the hafts of the holy lances with a sweep of his arm, yanking the bladed parts out the other side of himself with crunching noises before he crushed them in his palm. "Just need to get my own ducks in a row first."
The Angels were nothing short of flabbergasted.
Filia tried again in vain to yank the rock spear out of her body. Satan snapped his fingers, and the spear ripped itself out of the wall, taking Filia with it. She shrieked in pain again before gravity did it's job and she fell into Nico's waiting arms. "My hero," she muttered, looking down at the gaping hole in her belly.
Satan's boots crunched on crumbled masonry as he walked down the pile towards the two of them. His hands were half in the pockets of his jeans, his thumbs hooked through the belt loops. Dimly, Filia realized his belt buckle was a grinning skull.
How absolutely tacky.
"You know," Satan said. "The two of you pissed me off at first. When you left Hell, I was livid that you'd disobeyed my orders."
"You knew?" Nico asked.
"Of course I knew!" Satan actually looked offended at the idea. "You think anyone passes wind down there and I don't know about it? That realm has been mine ever since it's genesis, there is nothing that can be hidden from me there. It's-"
He stopped talking as the silver blade of Judith's dagger burst from his chest in a spray of black ichor, and looked down at the blade as if it were a minor annoyance rather than a wound that would be lethal to most other Infernals. He sighed. "You're not getting it back this time, Nephilim."
