~~Mia~~
This wasn't happening.
She scanned her horizon. Back on the surface of the Black Valley, remnant innards flowed past her, slowly making their way to the canyon she'd created, and they poured from its edge into the depths below. The demons and angels had crashed nearby, some too far to see as more than blurs, some very close, half buried in the muck. She hadn't been able to aim the rising platforms she'd created anymore than someone trying to aim throwing a baseball onto a rooftop. But they were out of the canyon and alive, tossed into the black swamp, and now they had to deal with Asmodeus.
They wouldn't stay alive much longer. Asmodeus roared down at them as he approached, and reached out with a dozen limbs, some holding the canyon wall, the larger limbs coming for Mia and the group.
A flash of gold lit up the black fog, and Asmodeus roared as one of his titanic hands came to a dead stop against the gold barrier. Azreal. A rapholem. He'd summoned his armor, his spear, his great shield, and he slammed the shield down and created his barrier of gold, bright enough it lit up the black fog like a flare.
It shattered against the colossal arm, and the angel fell to his side. Asmodeus set his other hands down to support his long, heavy body, and the titan pointed his many eyes at the angel who'd stopped him.
Only half of Asmodeus's body had escaped, lower half dangling in the canyon, and the similarities between demon and abomination centipede were now too clear. But he was wounded, had been wounded for who knew how long, and trapped underground. And even now, the creature burned, hellfire from the canyon depths coating his arms, his belly, and who knew what else that churned below.
It, he, didn't care that he was literally on fire. Asmodeus roared down at them, two mouths opening wide and hot air drowning them in the smell of blood.
"The song will be mine. She will listen to me, once I have devoured you, unmarked. I will make Heaven weep!" He swung out again.
Mia slammed her staff down through the guts up to her knees, and sank deeper into the song. Thoughts drifted above the current, pulled away from her. She could see down through the surface of the ocean, to the little ginger girl disappearing into the flowing waves. She could see up at herself, the little ginger girl, floating at the top, unable to follow.
Save her demon friends. Save the angels. Save her egg. Kill Asmodeus.
Asmodeus was the size of several neighborhood blocks, and even as hellfire burned on his body, he didn't stop. She could not fathom the song that would kill him. But she could fathom the song to bury him again.
For all his limbs, the creature couldn't multitask. Noah, the mikalim back in his armor again, ran past his comrade, raised his glowing sword high, and swung it at the creature. A gold arc of holy energy shot out from the blade and crashed into the demon's face, and Asmodeus reared back and shrieked down at them. A hint of blood trickled from a fresh wound, nothing more than a paper cut.
Mia found the strings and played as hard as she could. Somewhere in the muck, her friends were injured. Somewhere in the muck, her egg lay, exposed and vulnerable. Images shot through her mind of the Old One crushing Adron, crushing Kas, crushing Vin, and lava burst through her veins. Images of the titan squashing her egg and the precious, innocent life inside sent heat into her eyes, and she slammed her staff down again. And the presence in the ocean spoke.
I will help you, young one.
The presence in the ocean didn't just copy Mia's song or dance to it. It emphasized. Empowered. Completed a song too grand and epic for Mia to play. What was a simple tune in Mia's mind became a full orchestral piece.
The canyon began to close.
"No! The music is mine! I will not be denied!" The verbose, stupid creature swung out again, and again the rapholem got up in time and summoned a gold wall for him and his companion. But the titan shattered the barrier, and this time his arm kept going, crashing into the two angels. The arm's wrist was thicker than they were tall, and both angels disappeared under it, broken bodies crushed and pushed down into the muck.
He was distracted. Mia hit the notes again, and readied herself against the oncoming hellquake, both hands wrapped around the staff. Legs spread and knees bent, somewhere the girl above the ocean currents screamed in pain. Mia didn't feel it. She barely felt the vibration as it shook the swamp and turned the endless streams of black ooze into churning, bubbling rapids.
"No!" Asmodeus latched onto the canyon edge, like a bug holding onto a wall, and struck the strings, as well.
She expected a punch. With how big his two larger arms were, killing her would have been easier than squashing a grape. No punch came. Maybe she'd have summoned some blackstone around her to guard herself, like she had against the angels. Maybe she'd have thrusted stone up toward the creature's face, and buried his eyes in black ooze. But Asmodeus did not crush her. He wanted her alive, so he could eat her alive.
Her song stopped, buried under the invisible weight of the Old One's grip. Mia froze and stared down at the swamp around her knees. It no longer boiled. The canyon no longer closed. And the burning Old One roared a laugh and leaned down toward her as he pulled more of his body out of the depths. He'd muted her song.
"Her song. I can hear it, unmarked. She plays your song!" Laughing, he crawled closer, half on his belly, and reached for her. "She will play my songs. She will dance to my music, unmarked. She will--"
The ocean currents twisted and twanged, and the entity flowing in the ocean of strings erupted. Mia didn't ask it to. She didn't play a note telling it to. Something shot up from the ocean depths, deep in the vibrating currents she could not see or hear or feel, until it crashed up against the notes. A symphony, an explosion of silent sound, shattered Asmodeus's grip, and the Old One shrieked with a pain no living or dead thing could imagine.
He slipped. Several of his hands sank gargantuan claws into the muck, but the creature's weight pulled on them, and his colossal mass dragged him back down into the canyon. Partly.
"No!" He set his eyes on Mia and roared. Buried in the sound, he hit the strings, and the Black Valley erupted. The ground shot up around Mia and her demons, giant black pillars that pierced up through the ooze, and they came by the hundreds, monumental pieces of rock and stone that shook the ground. The pillars twisted in the black muck, and from underneath them an explosion of rock pushed up and toward Asmodeus, but from behind Mia and the group. A tsunami of death rushed their way, and Mia stared back at the boiling wave of remnant guts and bones crashing toward them. If that hit them, they'd get sucked along with it and straight into Asmodeus's awaiting maw.
He did all that with his own song. He didn't summon the entity in the ocean currents. He played the strings himself, plucked them, crashed upon them, and an orchestra of doom buried Mia's ears. But it wasn't as loud as the gentle voice that spoke to Mia.
Bury him.
Mia summoned stone of her own. Walls, many of them, as thick as she could muster. Blackstone erupted from under the muck, the same as Asmodeus's pillars, but lower, wider, thicker, and she swallowed herself, her friends, and the angels in the wall. A half circle a hundred meters wide, something they threw themselves against, and Mia stood with her back to it as the tidal wave crashed over them. Black ooze poured over the wall, over and past her, and crashed into the swamp before her, a waterfall of obsidian grossness, and it rushed into the canyon Asmodeus still struggled to escape from.
He tried to use a tidal wave to pull her and the others toward him. He failed.
She slammed her staff. It pierced the muck, crashed into the stone below, and summoned the song. Another crack shot through the rock, a splintering canyon of shattered glass, veins of destruction that flowed out through the swamp in front of her and toward Asmodeus, cracks hidden under the muck. For all his strength, the Old One was injured, and had been trapped in a hole in the ground for millions of years. He could barely handle his own weight. And once the cracks reached him and his canyon wall, the canyon couldn't hold his weight either.
Bury him, young one. Bury him.
"Unmarked!" The creature screamed at her, two mouths drowning Hell in rumbling bass that rattled her aching brain in her skull. But his fury didn't help him. The canyon wall he'd latched onto broke away, rocks peeling, boulders falling, and the centipede monster sank into the canyon. "I will have you, unmarked! You shall be my meal! The song will obey me! She will obey me!"
Mia slammed her staff again, and sent another lightning crack through the ground. It wasn't as strong as a tidal wave, but it didn't have to be. The canyon wall crumbled, and for all his frantic scraping of his many sets of claws, the Old One sank back into the black. It almost looked like slow motion, the creature's size disguising how fast he was truly falling. He disappeared past the edge, and it was an eternity before the thud of impact resonated through the canyon and swamp.
Mia pointed her staff. Vision blurred. Pain sneaked back into her mind, radiated from her arm and leg, and she almost screamed. But the ocean currents washed it away, the song took her, and again she played the note. She found the scale she'd used to open the canyon, and played it in reverse, high to low, a sinking sound that conveyed the swallowing of depth and existence.
The canyon closed, burying the land in a hellquake as rocks ripped each other apart, until the two sides of the crevice fit to each other and crushed all between into powder and mulch. Asmodeus's voice disappeared.
She looked around and leaned on her black staff. Her demons were missing. Her egg was missing. The angels were missing.
"Vin!" She stabbed her staff into the muck, took a step forward, and fell.
The ocean quietened. She floated upward. The closer her mind grew to the surface, the heavier everything became. She'd heard about how the human body actually sinks instead of floats at around fifteen meters deep in water, and when she'd played the song, it'd been like that. Wearing the batlam rune had been easy, deep down in the ocean depths. But as her mind broke through the surface, the weight of the rune hit her, and knocked the wind out of her.
She fell on her ass. Batlam disappeared, potram replaced it, and agony slapped her in the face.
Her arm and leg. She stared at them and the unnatural bends in their shape, and a scream bubbled up in her throat. She bit it down.
"Adron!? Kas!? Someone!"
"Here," Kas said, and he climbed up out of the muck. "Adron?"
"Here." The vrat pushed himself up, too, not too far from his friend, and dragged himself back to his feet. "Mia, you okay?"
"I... I'm..." She stared at her arm and leg again. Broken. Seeing other people, remnants especially, with broken limbs, had become a normal part of everyday life. Seeing her own flesh bend where the bone wasn't aligned anymore was a different thing entirely. The screaming pain pouring from each break was the only thing keeping her from fainting. "Puppers! Where's my egg!?"
Adron stared at her with his single eye before laughing and looking around. If the fact they'd just fought a literal Old One bothered him, he didn't show it.
Slowly but surely, everyone climbed up out of the ooze. The incubi seemed mostly uninjured. Julisa popped up, hissing and snarling, one of her arms dangling, and she gave it a hard yank. Pop. Mia cringed, and clenching muscles tightened and sent more pain pulses through her brain. Don't cringe. Cringing bad. Moving of any kind bad.
Something black and white climbed out of the muck next. The angels. Azreal stood with Noah's arm over his shoulders, and the angel locked his purple eyes on the rest of them. Noah looked barely conscious, silver eyes half open and head lulled to the side. Both wore their potram clothes, armor and weapons nowhere to be found. Their wings were mangled beyond recognition.
