Burn The Ashes: Taking Action, Part 2

[Taking Action, Part 2]

The tower’s interior was full of corpses, and the accompanying stench made Tanya wrinkle her nose as they passed literal hills of bodies and rotting flesh. Sightless eyes stared at them as they made their way past, bereft of any semblance of life or, in fact, any animation at all.

​“Those are Gigi’s zombies,” Liltotto said, her voice tight as she scanned the piles of dead. She kicked a reaching arm with an unreadable expression.

​Tanya eyed a grey-skinned woman whose back seemed to have literally cracked in half at her point of death. Just a short while ago, she was probably up and moving despite her injury, but the necromantic magic that once kept her animated was long since gone, leaving her lifeless as the stone around them.

​“Do you see anyone you recognize?”

​Liltotto glanced around, taking in the carnage. After a moment, her shoulders loosened, just a fraction. “No. My friends aren’t here.”

​A small mercy then. Tanya led the way deeper into the tower, through crumbling halls and spiraling staircases. A din of power surrounded them, but they didn’t need to search blindly to find its source. It lied at the top, cascading down upon them and washing them in that slick, oily malice that had made Tanya’s skin itch the very first time she stepped foot into the Black City.

​They moved up and up, ascending the tower without a single soul willing or apparently able to stop them. Outside, through the veil of foreign death magic, Tanya could feel small flares of demonic power as her task force took to the task.

​She allowed herself a small notion of satisfaction that her forces weren’t as completely useless as she had once imagined. Certainly, the majority of the heavy lifting was being done by Falbium’s Knight, but the rest of them seemed to be putting up a fight. At least from what little Tanya could sense through the nearly overwhelming presence around them.

​A small while later, they crested yet another set of stairs onto a grand landing illuminated by torches framed in sconces all around the hall. Ahead, a massive pair of blackened doors loomed, darkening the room with their mere presence alone. A magical seal burned brightly upon its surface, casting a deep blue glow that outshined the torches. Yet it didn’t make the room any brighter for it.

​As they approached, the seal pulsed in warning. Magic built and Tanya stopped with a frown, eying the thing. As she watched, the seal glowed brightly before suddenly flickering as something interfered with the flow of magic. Piece by piece, the lock was eaten away as an unseen ailment seemed to take root within the magic itself.

​The doors groaned then shuddered, and the remnants of the seal dissolved into motes of fading light that scattered into the darkness.

​“Looks like he kept his word,” Liltotto said as the doors were laid bare.

​“So it seems.” Tanya extended a hand, magic building in her palm. “Lets not drag this out.”

​Tanya’s magic flared and the doors were thrown off their hinges by an invisible force, crashing inward to reveal a vast chamber just beyond.

​It seemed to take up the entirety of the upper floor, a cathedral of black stone with death lurking in every corner. Pillars rose from the floor and vanished only a few feet overhead, absorbed into the infinite blackness that seemed to leak from every square inch of this place. It was as if the abyss itself had been called into this plane of existance, held there  by the power of the being lurking in the inner rings of the chamber.

​Chernabog was enormous. Even crouched, his shadowy form seemed to dominate the chamber. His skin was as black as the abyss around them, baked in darkness and steaming shadow. Two great horns spiraled upward from a head that split into two faces, each one bearing a pair of glowing red eyes as he looked past his great wings toward them. His claws, each one the length of Tanya’s entire arm, gouged into the floor as he turned to them.

​And at his feet, surrounded by a pool of her own blood and looking very much like the zombies that she adored, was Giselle. She lay motionless on the ground, limbs splayed at unnatural angles and her head turned toward them, staring with wide, sightless eyes.

​Ah. Tanya turned at movement beside her. “Liltotto, we need—”

​A streak of golden light answered Tanya before the second syllable could even leave her lips. Liltotto’s arrow, so much larger than even the one she had used to destroy the barrier, burned itself into existence and was loosed in an instant, a crackling shaft of holy energy the size of a telephone pole screaming toward their equally massive foe.

​Chernabog could scarcely move before it struck him in the chest with a thunderous impact that echoed in Tanya’s ears. Their energies warred against one another, and Tanya watched as the jaws on the end of the shaft bit into shadow and seemed to recoil, as if spurned by the existence they were intent on fighting against. The arrow twisted and then cracked, shattering into tiny motes of light that were quickly absorbed by the darkness around them.

As they watched, Chernabog rose to his full height. The chamber seemed to shrink away from him as his wings unfurled like great curtains. Two heads turned to Liltotto, seeming amused by her insolence. Liltotto’s eyes widened fractionally.

“Such a pitiful light you have brought into my domain,” Chernabog said, and his voice was that of a grinding mountain. “What insolence you humans are capable of.”

​“Shut the fuck up,” Liltotto growled, her voice painted with more anger than Tanya even thought she was capable of producing. She created another arrow just as large as the last one, if not bigger. Tanya’s skin sizzled where the holy light touched and she frowned, stepping back, before her eyes were drawn to movement in the darkness at the edge of the chamber.

​“Liltotto,” Tanya said sharply, drawing the girl’s attention.

​From the darkness at the edges of the chamber, three figures emerged, stumbling and staggering their way into the light. They were each young women appearing to be around Liltotto’s age. Tanya recognized them from Liltotto’s descriptions: one in a revealing outfit with lime green hair, another with round eyes and hair the color of bubblegum, and another with sharp eyes and raven hair that fell in waves around her face.

​They were dead, clearly, but there was a stiffness in their bearings that had been absent in Giselle’s zombies. They moved as if still getting used to their own skin, or as if a presence unfamiliar with their very beings had taken hold of them and was having trouble with the task of puppeting them. Had Giselle’s hold loosened with her death, or had someone in Chernabog’s retinue simply done a poor job of copying her?

​Tanya turned to Liltotto, who had stopped mid-draw to stare at her friends. Horror was written on her face, before it was washed away by a wave of cold fury.

​“You bastard,” she said, her voice deathly quiet. “You took them from her”

​“Indeed,” Chernabog rumbled. “The necromancer’s toys were so easily plucked from her grasp. She who fancies herself a master of death, yet could not prevent me from taking what was hers.”

​He smirked. “Her screams were most entertaining. She was like a child throwing a tantrum, clawing at the floor and begging me not to take her precious toys. I relished her screams almost as much as her final gasps of life.”

​Tanya watched the exchange, her eyes flicking between the towering deity, Liltotto, and the three dead girls shuffling in the dark. The fact that Chernabog had not attacked them yet spoke volumes of his priorities, and Tanya would be remiss to let this opportunity go to waste.

​Never interrupt your enemy while they’re making a mistake, as they say. Tanya subtly dispersed her magic, using her supreme control to hide her demonic energy within the malignant swell around her.

​While she worked, Tanya let her own gaze drift to the crumpled form at his feet. From a distance, Giselle had appeared just as dead as the corpses littering the floors below, but as Tanya examined her closely, she noticed something interesting. Death surrounded the girl, but its aura was different to the rest of the room. Though Giselle seemed dead, she was still producing and unconsciously expelling magic.

​Said magic continued its work, stubbornly persisting in its task of keeping something alive. Tanya watched for a moment longer and caught the barest flicker of movement, a twitch of Giselle’s finger, so slight it might have been imagined. She was hanging on, if barely. She might yet be savable.

​First thing was first though.

​Tanya turned her attention back to Chernabog who in turn, was completely fixated on Liltotto, clearly relishing the fury that radiated from the girl.

​“And now,” he rumbled, raising a clawed hand, “I shall demonstrate just how easily these toys are directed. Rejoice, human, for it is not every day I give fools the pleasure of dying at the hand of a friend.”

​The three girls lurched forward, and Liltotto’s fists clenched so tight her gloves creaked. She stepped forward, standing in front of Tanya.

​“I’ll handle them,” Liltotto said, her voice hard.

​Tanya glanced at her. “Are you sure?”

​“Yeah.” Liltotto’s eyes didn’t leave her friends, tracking their sloppy movements. “They aren’t moving right, but if he can make them use their powers, then you won’t be able to fight them without destroying them. That’s not happening.”

​“You still think we can save them?”

​“I won’t let him keep them like this.” Liltotto seemed to straighten in anticipation. “I can keep them busy for ten minutes. If I can’t beat them in that time, we might be in trouble. Can you handle him?”

​Tanya turned, examining Chernabog who seemed content to wait for them. He’d had ample opportunity to act, but all he had done was watch the proceedings with some amusement, like an emperor presiding over entertainment in his own personal coliseum.

​Tanya sneered. “I can.”

​“Good. Then back up.” Tanya did so, and the holy magic around Liltotto suddenly spiked through the roof. Her wings and halo shine like miniature stars, and Tanya’s skin prickled against a wave of Light backed by something else.

​“Sklaverai.”

​The intonation was accompanied by a sudden explosion in Liltotto’s power. The shadows at the edge of the room were pushed back as the girl was engulfed in a pillar of her own energy.

​When it cleared, Tanya blinked spots out of her eyes, taking in the girl’s transformation.

​Liltotto had gained a second pair of wings under the first, positioned underneath the first pair and mirrored to face one another. Her wrists and ankles were adorned with spiked manacles, bands of condensed holy energy that glowed as brightly as the rest of her.

​She raised a hand, not towards her foes, but towards the nearby wall. “Spork.”

​The manacle on her wrist burst forth at blinding speed, carving a massive hole in the side of the tower. Liltotto turned, whipping her other arm through he air towards her friends. “Spife.”

​Her remaining manacle unraveled, the barbed edges wrapping around all three of her friends. With a jerk of her arm, Liltotto threw them through the hole in the wall before jumping after them.

​Tanya watched Liltotto disappear and turned back to Chernabog. The god seemed somewhat incensed at what had just happened, but unconcerned otherwise.

​Now that they were alone, his attention finally settled on Tanya. His great heads regarded her with open disdain and yet again, he didn’t make any moves to actually do anything.

​Tanya knew where was coming, even before his voice rumbled between them.

​“You must be curious,” he began, “as to why I have deigned to involve myself in the affairs of your kind. Your pitiful kind.”

​“Not especially,” was Tanya’s reply. It seemed to take him aback, as his eyes narrowed. Tanya smirked, folding her hands behind her back. “You’re surprised? It may disappoint you, but I’m not the type to ask the rats why they’ve taken up residence in my cellar. I just burn them out once I’ve located their source.”

​Chernabog’s eyes flared brighter and the shadows around him roiled with his irritation, the darkness itself seeming to bristle at the comparison.

​“But you should be curious,” Chernabog breathed, his claws gouging deeper into the floor as he shifted his weight. “If only to educate yourself on the annihilation that fast approaches your kind. With my own hands, I will rectify a mistake that has festered for far too long.”

​“Is that so?” Tanya kept her voice bored, dismissive, even as her mind and magic worked in the background. “Very well, I’ll humor you. Enlighten me.”

​“Enlighten is a good word. You see, you Devils presume to rule the Underworld. You’ve built your little kingdom; you scheme and plot and preen, forgetting the roots of your power, your very nature.” One of his heads huffed. “The Devils of old were grand—worthy opponents one and all. You have fallen far and it disgusts me to the very core of my being.”

​“I’d argue that the pursuit of civilization is more worthy than languishing in barbarism,” Tanya noted mildly. Both of Chernabog’s faces twisted.

​“Civilization. How I despise that word. Used to justify more heinous acts as if it were just a shield to hide behind.” Chernabog rose higher, his twin heads speaking in tandem now. “Your ancestors understood what they were, and by the time you are driven before me, you will know what you could have been.”

​He gestured to Giselle, laying at his feet. “She will be the instrument of your destruction. Her holy power, and that of her friends and all those like them. I will use it to crush you all.”

​He then extended a finger toward her, “But you, I think, I shall save for the last. I will grant you the privilege of seeing my will be done, the decimation of your people, your race. I will scour all of your kind from this world and those above, and you shall bear witness to it all.”

​His grand declaration rang in Tanya’s ears. She had to admit, it was a rather intimidating prospect, or at least it would be if she thought him at all capable of it. As it stood, she wasn’t very impressed, and she made sure it showed in her voice as she spoke.

​“My my, what a kind gesture.” She said, resisting the urge to clap theatrically. “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline, however. I’ve no intent on sitting through more of your pointless monologuing.”

​She looked into Chernabog’s grotesque face, and gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Though I have to say, it makes it much easier to sneak things beneath your notice. So thank you for that.”

​Tanya tapped a foot on the ground, sending out a wave of magic to take root, and the floor erupted.

​A ring of fire burst from beneath the god’s feet, a column of roaring flame that screamed upward and swallowed him whole. The blast was carefully shaped—a directed inferno that bent away from Giselle’s motionless form to spare the girl whatever semblance of unlife was still present within her.

​As the flames consumed Chernabog, Tanya stepped forward, wind magic curling in her palms which she then sent forth. It twisted around the column of fire, stoking it and guiding the flames into a whirling vortex that lifted Chernabog from his feet and sent him hurtling across the grand chamber. The deity crashed into the far wall with a thunderous impact that sent cracks spidering through black stone, and Tanya pressed forward, hands already weaving another layer of spells.

​Despite the incredible amount of incompetence that he had shown, it was clear that Chernabog was not a threat to he taken lightly, and Tanya wasn’t of the habit of underestimating her opponents.

​He’s a threat. Treat him as such.

She layered binding spells into the inferno: chains of compressed flame and spirals of wind that would tighten and constrict even as they fed the fire around them. The vortex roared in Tanya’s ears, the heat more than enough to melt the stone just around it into slag.

​Unfortunately, it turned out that her caution was well warranted as Chernabog erupted from the vortex with a roar that split the air. The spirals of flame were scattered into nothing, and Tanya’s eyes widened fractionally as the god barreled toward her, skin scorched but still very much a threat.

​Of course. Because why would anything be easy.

​She threw herself to the side as a clawed hand swept through the space she’d occupied a heartbeat before. The stone floor where she had stood erupted into a shower of debris, and Tanya rolled, coming up in a crouch as she hurled a concentrated lance of fire at his retreating form. The flame struck true, splashing across his shoulder and chest, but it did little more than scorch his surface.

“Pathetic,” Chernabog snarled. “Is this the full extent of Devilkind’s vaunted power? Fire that cannot burn, light that cannot drive back my shadow?”

Tanya didn’t grace him with a response as she darted forward, her wings carrying her low and fast across the chamber floor. Shadows clawed at her as she moved and she spiraled upwards, twisting with the motion and sending a curtain of fireflies in his direction. Chernabog swiped a hand through them, only to roar as they erupted upon contact, scorching his skin.

The burns seemed to irritate him more than actually wound him, but it was enough to buy Tanya a few precious seconds of space. She used them to put distance between them, skidding across the stone floor to come to rest near Giselle’s prone form.

​Fire alone wouldn’t do the trick, she realized. The god’s hide was far too thick to be damaged by concentrated flames. She’d have to aim to pierce rather than burn.

​She held her hand out and her fingers clenched around a crackling spear of fire. Molded by wind magic, it burned far more intense than her usual flames, the tip a bright white fading into blue.

​Heat rolled from her spear, distortiing the air around it, and Chernabog paused, gazing on her with a begrudging amount of respect.

​“Your flames are impressive, little Devil, far greater than any I have seen from your clan since even before the Great War. It is a shame. In time, you may have been a force to be reckoned with.”

Tanya’s eyes narrowed, “I still intend to be."

​Chernabog ’s heads tilted in unison, both pairs of eyes gleaming with something that might have been amusement on a being capable of such a thing. He raised a single clawed hand, almost languid in its motion.

​“Bold words,” he rumbled. “But have you forgotten whose home you stand in?”

​Tanya’s was moving before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, lunging backwards as the shadows around her roiled and struck out. A blade of shadow sliced through the air where her neck had been moments before, and it was not the last of its kind to do so.

​Tanya threw herself backward, wings flaring as she twisted mid-air. Flames followed her path like flares, spiraling around her body as she lunged away from the shadows that sought to carve her to pieces.

​More and more they came. She felt them graze her side, her leg, her cheek—thin lines of pain that told her she’d been a heartbeat too slow. She twisted, rolling through the air as more lances of shadow punched through the space she’d occupied.

​Abandoning her earlier thoughts of attack, Tanya knew that she’d have to fend off this assault before she could even think of going on the offensive. To that end, she concentrated, the spear still clutched in her hand morphing and shrinking until it was a single ball of white-hot flame that burned so intensely that it cast a glow on the far wall, several meters away.

​The shadows seemed to recoil at the sight, slowing just a fraction before resuming their assault. That gave her just the opportunity she needed and Tanya turned, letting the orb fall out of her hand to the ground.

​The spell burst open and the world became fire and light for a single moment. Tanya felt a sharp pain in her right arm but was otherwise unscathed as she stopped, blinking spots out of her eyes from her improvised flashbang.

​The shadows had retreated back to the edge of the room, cowering there like an abused animal while their master himself seemed to recoil. Tanya noted his thick flesh was sizzling far more than it had against her assault earlier and narrowed her eyes in thought, before blinking as she noticed something strange.

​She turned to her right and... Ah.

​Not as unscathed as I assumed. Tanya thought irritably as she took in the space where her right arm had once been. She glanced across the room and found the limb laying in a bloody heap right next to Giselle.

​Chernabog’s rumbling laughter filled the chamber.

​“Ah,” he breathed, savoring the moment like a connoisseur sampling a fine wine. “How easily the flesh of Devils parts from the bone. You come into my domain, armed with your little tricks and your weak fire, and you are unmade so effortlessly.”

​He rose to his full height, wings spreading wide as if to embrace the entirety of the chamber. Tanya’s blood dripped from the shadows that had severed her, sizzling against the dark surfaces they clung to.

​“Perhaps now you begin to understand the gulf between us. You are a child playing at war, and I am the reason wars were ever waged. I existed before your kind had a name for the dark, before—”

​Tanya shut him up by way of using an truly infinitesimal amount of effort and magic to regenerate her arm. Golden fire enveloped the stump and extended into a fully limb, fading away to reveal her arm had returned, good as new

​“That was a fairly expensive suit you just ruined,” Tanya said, rolling her wrist irritably. “My mother is not going to let me hear the end of it.”

​Chernabog growled at her lackadaisical attitude, gathering his power to attack again, but both combatants paused as a strange sound rang throughout the chamber.

​Sluuurp

​They turned as one to find that Giselle had moved several feet and was now face-down in the pool of Tanya’s blood that had formed around her severed arm. They watched as the girl gulped down the liquid with loud slurps that only grew louder with every passing second.

​After a moment, the girl’s body suddenly shot up. A satisfied look painted her bloody face and she licked some off of her chin, smacking her lips. “Hmm... Spicy.”

​Chernabog’s eyes narrowed, anger and confusion warring on his face as the girl he’d brought to the brink of death suddenly pulled herself away from that brink. Giselle, for her part, simply sat there on her knees in the middle of the blood pool, looking around the chamber with a lidded expression.

​She suddenly turned, and Tanya was somewhat taken aback by the darkly intense look she sported on her face despite having just healed herself.

​“Where are they?” She asked, staring at Tanya with hollow pits for eyes. Tanya merely pointed with her newly regenerated hand towards the large hole in the side of the chamber, through which the sounds of fighting emanated.

​“Liltotto is fending off your friends,” Tanya explained as Giselle tilted her head. “I’m sure she could use your help.”

​Giselle’s expression shifted, the hollow intensity giving way to something colder. She looked toward the hole in the wall, then climbed to her feet sluggishly.

​“I’ll be right back,” she said, her voice stripped of its usual cheerful lilt.

​She rose unsteadily to her feet, swaying once before catching herself. Tanya watched with a raised brow as the necromancer staggered toward the rather than the convenient hole Liltotto had made, her gait eerily similar to that of her zombies.

​Without ceremony or even so much as a backward glance, Giselle pitched herself through the opening and vanished from sight. A beat of silence passed, then a flare of holy energy erupted from outside. A moment later, a streak of blue shot past the hole in the wall, presumably toward the ongoing battle.

​Tanya tracked the light until it disappeared, then turned back to Chernabog. The god’s expression had painted with anger.

​“It seems your plan has hit a snag,” Tanya observed. “Your instrument of destruction just flew out into the night without so much as a by your leave. Perhaps next time, you might want to do something to prevent that.”

​Chernabog’s heads swiveled back to her, all four eyes burning with fury. The shadows around him deepened, expanding outward as the edges of the room bristled like an angered wolf.

​He roared, and the room roared with him. Shadows converged, but Tanya had figured out his weakness. Her wings, which had dimmed in their resting state, suddenly grew intensely bright as if someone had attached a heaping helping of active thermite to her back.

​The shadows recoiled, as did Chernabog himself. Intense light. That was his weakness. Tanya felt somewhat silly for not figuring it out before, but now that she had, she fully intended to exploit it maliciously.

​Her spear reappeared in her hands in a whirl of flames, the entire thing glowing white from shaft to tip.

“Now then,” she said, spreading her wings just as he had done. “Let’s try this again.”