The next morning, Anatithenai was waiting for him on her knees with reddened, sad eyes that had obviously cried recently for no short amount of time. The incubus slowly pushed himself up and managed to scrounge around for his clothes before the great demon took him into her arms and crushed him against her curvaceous, semi-solid form.
"My daughter has become one being again," she said sadly, cradling Jack in her embrace as if he were and answer to her woe's fixing.
Jack sighed. "She finally left?" he asked solemnly.
"Yes. She bade me wish you luck, and then she said that if you two did not meet again, that you were her only, truest love, and that she would love you even after death did you part," relayed the demon to Jack sadly, tears streaming down her cheeks as darkened purple stains upon a shimmering, translucent blue face.
"If she's back there, then that means Anthony is with her. Anatithenai, there's not much to worry about now. If they're together, there's not much that can scratch them." The incubus pushed gently from the embrace and stared into the navy blue eyes of his future mother-in-law.
"You trust the human?"
"With my life," Jack replied without hesitation, and then stood. The slime, as she had referred herself to being the first, rose with him and gathered the remained of his clothing. She dressed him for battle, and very gently took his sheathed blade and placed it in his hands.
"If my daughter is fighting a war of her own, then we shall finish ours with all due haste and join her. Dalaria is going to serve as the object of her vengeance, and mine, and yours. I will make sure that Anathane is able to take part in her overdue demise."
The two left Jack's tent and met with the others. (excluding Grymir and Kadae, for the battle had begun before sunrise and they were on the march currently) They looked armed for the coming fight, and Jack had little to say to them besides that they should stay alive for the party that was going to be held at his wedding, which he promised would include an orgy that few could say they had seen the rival of, or would claim for the next thousand years.
After the relative pleasantries were exchanged, they marched on Dalaria's ring of defense, and when they arrived within bowshot of the walls, they found a place of carnage and death. Thousands lay dead on the ground before the mighty walls of black stone and mortar. Still, the defense held and the walls teemed with soldiers in Dalaria's service. Anatithenai made for the nearest tower, but Jack stopped her before the guards atop the wall took notice of her.
"Hold on!" he said.
"I am going to tear this wall down piece by piece to find that whore!" Anatithenai snarled.
"Well, at least let everyone get behind you. We need a plan before we can run up there. You see what they've done to Grymir's army so far. I don't want it to happen to us too," Jack said, hoping that his acting more confident would make up for Anathane's absence.
Anatithenai yielded, but only just so.
The group gathered, and the plan was laid out to penetrate the wall in a double attack. First, Anatithenai would move out alone and draw as much attention as she could before hugging the wall itself and avoiding the bolts of light arcing down from the towers and the storm of arrows from behind the wall.
Next, Volna and all the troops that could be mustered, would follow in suit and Anatithenai would pushed them atop the walls, where they would fan out and dismantle the defenses nearby by killing the warlocks using their magic from the safety of the towers.
Meanwhile, Anatithenai would be dismantling the wall herself and creating an entrance for the Army of Darkness, who for all its size and skill, was unable to mount or penetrate the wall as of yet in any place. The defenders simply had too many men too well entrenched in their defenses to yield easily. And speed was of the essence.
As soon as the plan was set, Anatithenai began, hurling herself forward with hundreds of members of the Army of Darkness at her flanks. A hail of arrows came down around her, decimating the shade-like warriors around her. The arrows passed through her liquid form like she wasn't even there, and she continued unfazed and enraged still.
Jack looked upon her like she was an avatar of death, a mighty angel send by God to smite those that had wronged the world of man in an epic storm of divine punishment and anger. She fit the description perfectly, for she didn't wait for Volna and the others to start moving before she began tearing at the walls, sinking her fingers into the very flesh of the stone, tearing it out in great chunks to spread on the ground around her. White flashes of light blasted craters in the ground behind her, but she paid less than no attention to them as she drove her hands into the stone, and yanked free more and more pieces at a time.
Her companions reached her with few casualties, and she wrapped them from the waist down in her own essence, raising them with tendrils of her body up to the top of the wall, where the defenders were ill-prepared to face them in close quarters.
Volna and Veshana were the first to enter the fray, and as soon as Veshana's huge blade caught flesh, the battle had been decided. She slew the defenders in droves, each sweep of her massive blade cleaving away more than half a man at a time. With a great roar, she impaled four archers on her blade, and tossed them over the wall to add to the blood and chaos below.
Anatithenai nearly threw Jack up with the others when it came to be his turn to ascend. Once the stones were beneath his feet, he was ducking for cover and had his sword drawn. Apparently, the archers behind the wall were now picking them off from where they stood. Jack and the others served an easy target, as they had no cover from the deadly accuracy of their foes.
Jack met up with Ekana, who shouted insults down at the archers below, fangs and claws bared in anger. She threatened them with some things that made Jack's blood run cold just to hear. Two arrows passed through one of her wings and she shuddered violently.
"Having fun?" Jack asked.
"You have no idea how much that turned me on, Jack. But fuck, if one really gets me, then I could be done for. If I could tear their fucking throats out from here, I would do it in a heartbeat."
"Then let's go. We can jump down, right?" Jack offered, watching the expression on the succubus' face change to a sly grin.
"You really wanna try throwing your life away like that?" she asked, even though she flared her wings and motioned for several others to come over. "Well, looks like she found ourselves a daring leader here."
"Doesn't look it," said Jaelani, winking at Jack.
"Whatever. Let's just go before more of them get here," Jack said, leaping off the wall with his blade raised over his head. His eyes erupted into white flames, and his wings sprouted from his back in an instant. He let out an incoherent roar and slammed feet-first into an archer whose expression was between fear and sheer disbelief that a human meteor was falling out of the sky toward him.
Jack cleaved an arm off and blood splashed over his leather jerkin. He was so scared that he could hardly think straight beyond instinct, and barely dodged the short blades swung at him. More of his allies packed around him, Ekana especially staying near his side and slashing anyone willing to enter her long, deadly reach.
Jack parried a blow from an armored soldier with a two-handed sword and full armor. The incubus realized suddenly, that this man had seen an infinite number of battles more than Jack had, and he was an excellent swordsman because of it.
He barely managed to dodge and squirm out of the way of every lighting-quick blow, striving just to stay away from the sharp point and edge of his opponent's blade. He made no offensive move, and soon found himself unable to keep his body out of harm's way. The soldier slashed his arm and Jack yelped in pain.
A pair of wounds appeared on his side, and luckily, the chainmail took most of the impact for him, but still left him with blood seeping through the links. Jack gave an animalistic cry and sliced his foe's blade in half, cutting through armor and flesh as well. The demon's eyes rolled back in his head and he fell, coughing up blood. Jack stabbed down through his stomach and finished him off. He felt lucky that his blade was sharp enough to cut anything he hit hard enough. He'd have to thank Anathane again later for that.
He cleaved a bow in half and kicked its owner in the knees, sending the archer to the ground. Jack slashed his side and Ekana leapt upon the poor demon, tearing him to pieces in seconds. She raised a howl in satisfaction and bounded into another archer nocking an arrow on his bow.
Suddenly, a swell of warriors pushed past Jack and the others and swarmed among the archers and the approaching soldiers with great swiftness and ease. Jack relaxed his defense a little in the wake of the Army of Darkness' advance, and Ekana backed away from the fore of the battle toward him, taking up the role of Anathane's clones for the time being.
"Well, it was fun while it lasted," she muttered. "I haven't had an excuse to kill anyone in a great long while, so this was good for me."
"I'm just glad you could get your frustration out like this," Jack said, alluding to something he's been subject to in the recent past.
Ekana gave him a sideward glance. "Don't think I won't ever try again, pussy. I can roll all over you and you'll just let me like always. Because I'm the only one who'll go through with her idle threats," the said, tracing the underside of his jaw with a single bloody claw in the most seductive manner she could.
"Not while he's under my care," said a powerful voice.
Both Ekana and Jack turned to see Anatithenai approaching, her giant fists shrinking back to their normal sizes now that the wall was breached and the Army of Darkness taking up the task of dismantling the wall further to allow greater access to the hinterlands of the Sanctuary of the Underworld.
"Well, aren't you late to getting up there? I thought you were gonna stay at the front the whole time until we found Dalaria?" Jack said, confused.
Anatithenai looked down at him and smiled. "Anathane made me promise to protect you, and so I'm going to do that now. I could split myself into pieces, but then I wouldn't be me anymore."
"You mean like Anathane?" Ekana asked, licking the blood off her hands between words.
"No. Anathane can absorb the parts back into the whole after they split. If I split, then it is permanent and there is an entirely new being independent of my will. I could do that, but I fear that she would not be so...sensitive to my precious flower's wishes for me not to further divide her fiancé's attention."
