~~David~~
The music pulled him into its embrace, a flowing river of vibration. He was in the lava and amber veins. He was in the blackstone and the bloodstained rock. He was in the statues that grew from the ground, the burning bushes, the bloodgrip, even the nests that birthed hellbeasts. He could feel them, hear them, hidden in the depths of the land, tiny echoes in the distance he could not hope to touch, not from here.
But the Hell around him, the cavern and the temple, that he could touch. That he could play the music for.
He swung his arm down, and a colossal spike of blackstone shot out from the high ceiling, straight down for the angel's head. But she was fast, and as much as she screamed fury at him, she paid enough attention to dodge the spike. It crashed into the ground, a foot wide, and at that length the blackstone cracked and crumbled with its own brittleness. That was fine. Hell had plenty more.
"What have you done!?" she screamed. David barely heard her. The vibration of the strings pulsed through him, like he'd put his ear up to the engine of a semi truck, and the hefty vibrations blocked out everything.
Play for me.
Use me.
Mold me.
I will dance for you.
The music sang to him. The fingers inside him played the strings, but something else played them too, mirroring his actions and hitting the strings a million times harder than he ever could. And now, each time he plucked the strings, they did more than create vibration. They changed things.
Glaring at the angel, he swung a hand out to the side. Another spike erupted from the cavern wall, horizontally this time, and it spiraled as it streaked across the open air. Again the angel dodged, but the spiraling rock and its terrible barbs hit her side, and she spun out of control.
David swung a hand up and summoned another. He crafted it, molded it the same way he did auras. Be sharp. Be covered in barbs. Bring agony. But the angel was fast, and she brought her shield down in front of her. The blackstone could not penetrate the strange metal of the shield and its mirror surface, and the tip shattered. The impact was powerful, though, and it threw the angel to the side.
Moriah gained control, aimed her sword at David, and her wings glowed with a radiant gold. She was going to shoot a beam of holy light at him, as she probably had several days before.
David aimed two hands down, and waited.
"Die, abomination!" she screamed. Like Shaul, she liked the sound of her own voice.
Her sword glowed, and David swung his hands upward. He didn't get to see the beam, only hear and feel it, as it crashed against the wall of blackstone David summoned. A massive wall, thick, wide enough to protect him and the girls who all now stood near him. They squealed, shrieked, and covered their heads and horns as the beam of light shook the cavern, and arcs of gold shot up and around the wall before dispersing. Even Acelina had reached them, and she kept her enormous form behind the wall as best she could.
His wall began to crumble.
David reached upward and pulled down. With deafening thunder, the cavern ceiling cracked, a mighty split to join the others, and rock and stone fell upon the angel's position. Summoning the hard blackstone was easier than cracking the entire colossal cavern, but he couldn't see her from behind his wall to aim a spike, and he wouldn't lower the barrier while the girls hid behind it. Easier to bring the cavern right down on her.
The beam stopped, and the angel screamed as something went crunch. The clang of rock banging on metal followed, and the angel's scream continued, pain and rage echoing off the walls. In another life, the sound would have made David vomit. Just ten minutes ago, the sound would have made him want to. Now, all he could feel was the rolling waves of the vibrations of something he'd latched onto, guiding him, steering him into the flowing waters.
He put his hands together and pulled them apart, ripping the wall he'd created in half so it fell away as two pillars, before crumbling into rock and pebble. Most of the rocks that'd fallen had missed his target, but the angel hadn't been able to dodge all several hundred of them. Clenching his jaw, he stepped between the two mounds and approached the angel, her damaged armor, her ripped wing, and the blood she leaked onto the Cainite corpses she lay upon.
"Monster," Moriah screamed up at him. "Monster! Abomination! Shaul was right. Azoryev was right! You should all die!"
Azoryev. One of the Heavenly Islands. It had sent her, and the madman Shaul? Did another angel of Azoryev kill the unmarked in his dream?
Cruel. Heartless.
David glared down at the angel, raised a hand, and--
A click sound stopped him.
He looked back. Daoka sat there, and Jes and Acelina both wrapped her waist with leather they'd ripped from the dead. Acelina was unreadable, but Jes was desperate, eyes locked on her lover, tears on her cheeks. Caera stood between the mounds of rumble David had created, and the Las ran around in a panic, literally, arms up and tiny waves flapping as they squealed.
But it was Daoka, eyeless gaze aimed at David, softly clicking at him, that cut through the deep waves of vibration that flowed through his skull.
He let go. Like he'd been holding onto the fin of a giant whale speeding through the ocean, he let go, and the wall of still water crashed into him. He fell back on his ass. The sound vanished. The vibrations died to almost nothing until again all he could feel was the gentle strings that flowed through him as usual.
The angel stared at him, and he stared back. The power was gone, and his thoughts bubbled to the surface again. Holy shit, he could think again.
Holy shit, what happened?
"I'm... not... your enemy," he said. "Why are you attacking us?"
"Not my enemy!? You killed Shaul! Tzipporah!"
"In self defense!" He forced himself to his feet and stumbled back away from the angel. "I don't want to hurt anyone! Why are you attacking us? Me!?"
She paused, as if the very act of talking to him defied her reality, as if unmarked were obviously not capable of a conversation, and yet here he was trying to have one. But he'd killed her friends. Rage replaced her surprise.
"The unmarked must die. The council has decreed it!"
"Why!?"
The angel slammed her sword down against the ground, its tip sank a couple inches into the bloodied rock, and she rested on it as she aimed her ruby eyes as if she could incinerate him with a glare. She pushed out her damaged wing and fought to straighten it. Considering all the enormous, broken rocks that surrounded her and the dozen large dents in her armor, several boulders had hit her, big enough to kill a demon. That armor was strong.
She didn't answer.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," David said. "I'm... just trying to help."
"Help? An abomination would--"
"I am not an abomination! And that other unmarked with all these Cainites under his thumb? I killed him! Not Shaul!" He swung his arm around and pointed it at her. She flinched, expecting a spike up the gut, but whatever weird thing that'd let him control the environment was gone. Not that it mattered. He hadn't tried to summon another spike, anyway.
Daoka clicked a few more times, earning some growls from Jes.
"Don't listen to Dao," Jes said. "Kill the bitch."
Dao shook her head and gestured to the two dead angels. Bits of the woman rapholem Tzipporah were everywhere, ripped to shreds, some pieces of her insides still on the broken barbs of the first spike David had summoned. Her armor, giant shield, and long spear were gone, poofed out of existence. The male mikalim Shaul still sat on the other spike, dead, crotch and lower abdomen split open, legs dangling and cooking in the lava that continued to leak out of his sizzling guts. His upper half wasn't much better, with chunks of flesh melting off as more lava trickled up into his insides.
He looked worse off than a remnant.
David looked back at Dao, and she continued to look at him with her eyeless gaze, mouth trembling, blood flowing down her stomach and legs. The sword had gone through her. She was going to die if they didn't do something now.
"Just... get out of here," he said.
"What?" Jes, Acelina, Caera, and the angel said.
David gestured up at one of the high tunnel exits. "I don't want Heaven as an enemy! And I don't want to hurt anyone I don't have to! I'm just trying to... to help." Fuck. How to explain this without telling the angel what his plans were? "I don't know about the other unmarked, but I'm not like that Greg guy, okay? I just want to help. So, please, just go."
"David!" Caera prowled over to them, limping with every step. "She tried to kill us. Tried to kill you! She took my eye!"
David winced. "Can you... regrow an eye?"
"Only if the wound was minor." She aimed her ruined eye at him. It was not minor. Moriah had cut the tregeera across the face, a line that ran from the top of her forehead, down her eye, and down her cheek. He could almost see the bone past the blood. It'd make for a big scar, and a lifetime problem.
Daoka clicked louder, and gestured to the David and Caera, but her arm fell, some blood leaked from between her lips, and her head lulled to the side. Still alive, breathing, but fading fast.
