26. WEN

Azazel’s declaration spreads through my veins like an injection of sheer horror.

It seeps through my blood to spiral within my void, gathering force like a cyclone within its endlessness.

When it mushrooms out again, it does with the force of a thousand punches to the head. But one thing keeps me on my feet.

A rejection of equal violence.

“No, you won’t.”

My scream rings off the soaring walls, bounces off every monolith. I want it to smash into him, shatter him, then pulverize his every atom, and rid me and this whole world of the infection of his depraved existence.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop me.” Starting to glow, Azazel grows larger as he glares back at his subordinates, and booms, “Perform the Ligare.”

My rabid gaze searches out Astaroth’s, and my knees almost buckle when it only transmits an urgent warning. Or is it a plea? An apology?

I cling to his gaze, feeling as if he’s my only life raft in this storm of insanity. “W-what is that Ligare?”

Relinquishing my gaze, Astaroth looks back at Azazel. “She must be told what it is beforehand. It is the law.”

“You Hellworm and your Infernal laws,” Azazel snarls.

Astaroth only inclines his head, as if accepting the abuse. “These are your Celestial Laws. If you bypass them, the ritual will be for naught.”

A belching rumble of impatience escapes Azazel. “Get on with it then, you turd. Read her her rights.”

Astaroth turns to me, and his eyes are again fierce with that urgency, as if he wants me to understand something, do something. “Cadet White, Azazel is enforcing his right to you, as the one most suited to train you in weathering and utilizing your Null powers. The Ligare will tie you to him for as long as your training lasts.”

I shake my head, the very concept too atrocious to register. “But that Ligare wasn’t performed before, to make Godric my mentor.”

Astaroth nods. “It was unneeded, since the archangels’ collective decree is a force that supersedes all others. Without it, the Ligare must be performed, to secure the apprentice in obedience.”

But I was never obedient to Godric. The archangels’ decree never forced me to obey him.

“Do you mean this will wipe out my free will?” I rasp.

“Where Azazel is concerned, yes.”

“But free will is the one thing the archangels insisted is never compromised. This goes against the very basis of their fucking Celestial Laws!”

“Yes, unless they were supplanted by a clause in the Armistice Accords, which is the case here. Azazel has his own section, and the Ligare is one of the stipulations he has secured a right to.”

“This is like the Indenture!”

Astaroth nods again, his eyes still transmitting that message that can’t get through the panic tearing my brain apart. “Yes. The only difference is that it has an inbuilt expiration.”

An expiration I bet Azazel won’t let come to pass.

He’d claim my training isn’t complete, that I must continue under his tutelage forever. And from everyone’s reaction to the discovery of my power, no one would contest his claims, as long as he keeps me under control.

I would be a slave again. His slave for the rest of my life.

This would be worse than anything I suffered under Kondar’s lash. He is a cockroach compared to Azazel. And as a helpless human, the worst he forced me to do was doctor ledgers, steal artifacts and clean up vomit and shit.

If my powers are as catastrophic as Godric always claimed, even without access to the void, if Azazel makes me his mindless weapon …

In a fractured heartbeat, the suspicion becomes a conviction.

It was him.

Azazel was behind Godric’s disappearance!

He couldn’t break the archangel’s decree to perform his coup. Not as long as Godric was around, or even alive.

He got him out of the way so he could claim me.

An explosion of loss and rage goes off in my heart and soul as the Congress members gather around me.

Energy symbols separate from the ground, inflating until they’re briefcase-sized, floating before each. Like when the archangels first probed me, though their symbols were much larger, indicating their far superior power.

Within the maelstrom of blinding wrath and agony, I suddenly see them for what they are. Tiny beings surrounded by the Life Essences made for me to take, to devour. Azazel’s is the largest flame, terrible and corrupt, and the most tempting of all.

I can take it all, kill them all. Then I’ll step over their dead bodies, and go on a rampage in the Academy, avenging Godric, punishing them all for letting that monster take him from me …

The symbols begin to glow, snapping me out of the comforting delusion. And it is only that. I’m too weak to wreak such damage now. I can’t even access the void.

But they don’t know that. And from the look in all their eyes, they fear me. I must use that.

“You tell them to stay away from me, you son of a rabid Celestial bitch,” I screech. “Or I’m going to tear the Life Essence out of them and shove it up your worm-infested ass!”

Azazel has become twice his original size, and is now morphing into a new nightmare as he cackles. “Oh, I like it when they struggle. But you’re full of shit, my mortal maggot. You’re barely on your feet, and you’re an untrained mess. The worst you’ll do is knock out a couple before you drop yourself. Then I’ll get others to perform the Ligare. Your consciousness or consent are not required.”

“You underestimate me, you filthy waste of cosmic shit,” I roar, even more outraged that he diagnosed my state so accurately. “I will fucking strip everything out of you, until you’re a crumbling shell. Then I’ll kick you in that fucking monstrous mouth and shatter you to a million pieces!”

Azazel only claps in delight. “Ah, such violence, such viciousness. You are beyond my wildest expectations, Cadet White. I can’t even imagine the magnificent terror you’ll become under my whip. I can’t wait!”

He nods in glee to the others, and they close in on me, all but Astaroth, who hasn’t manifested a symbol. He stands back, his obsidian eyes igniting with a blaze of desperation.

But not even that is left in me. One thing is. One thought. One need. And it blasts out of me, along with all my being.

“Godric.”

The world explodes. A second or an eternity after my scream.

Destruction rains down as I stand defeated and depleted, my heart ruptured. I look up as ton-sized, frescoed chunks hurtle down, awaiting the moment they’d crush me, and end my torment.

But they hit some impenetrable shield high above me, bounce off and join the rubble that forced Azazel and the Congress to scatter, as a meteor crashes through the ceiling.

It hits the ground, and even in my invisible containment, the quake rocks me, and the terrible cracking of the floor sundering deafens me.

Then there’s silence. Stillness. I can see nothing among the billowing clouds of dust and smoke. Until they part, and my heart detonates all over again.

Swathed in crimson flames, massive, dark wings are spread like a shroud of doom, obsidian lightning raging all around them in a storm from the deepest reaches of Hell. They belong to the terrifying entity who’s crouching head bent, a knee and fist propped over the hill of destruction he’d wrought.

Godric.