47. GODRIC

Sound thunders its affront as I shatter through its barrier.

Pushing twice beyond its speed, creating a sonic carpet beneath my trajectory, I blaze across the night sky, caring nothing about drawing attention or causing speculation.

I only care about riding the overpowering urge to hurtle far away from her, from what she makes me feel.

From what she said.

I need to keep going until I have nowhere else to go, even if I end up in Imperium. Maybe that would smother my cravings, and dreads, those created by, and are now personified in that irresistible, inconceivable being.

Suddenly, I slow down, then stop. Looking down, I realize why. My uncharted flight has taken me over Fallen Crater.

As the second place on Earth outside of Terrestrial and Celestial Ley lines, it has always called to me. But instead of serenity, the thirty-mile wide, three-mile deep expanse languishes in the quietness of despair. It’s what appeals to me most. Or what used to.

It’s ironic, this diametric change in my response. After all the times I inflicted desperation on others, for that morsel of a human anomaly to make me suffer its inescapability.

After my own proverbial fall from grace in the cavern, it’s also poetic finding myself here, where Heaven allegedly discards its nonconforming denizens. I’ve never witnessed an official falling, and I tend not to believe anything I haven’t experienced firsthand. I’ve never been one for faith.

But even the updated Codex Celestia insists this place has been created and continues to expand by the impact of angelic bodies in the first fury of disgrace. It also claims it’s just the surface symptom of their fall, that the real damage of their condemnation keeps carving a more profound blemish in the fabric of Existence.

It’s all so dramatic. So overwrought. Not to mention, so pointless and behind the times. This bloody righteousness, this blasted hypocrisy.

The indoctrination has always been that the Fallen are worse than the demons, yet, when Heaven ignited the Apocalypse, its generals still considered them part of their army.

Now we have the Accords that assure that they roam amongst us, flaunting their equal rights, their special clauses, and occasional higher standings. When everyone knows they won’t rest until Heaven is theirs, and theirs alone.

If I ever made my thoughts known to my “superiors” I would have told them that no benefit could come from keeping your enemies that close. But for too many years, I’ve abided by their decrees, mostly because it served my purposes. I did everything I could to put out any spark of the civil war the Fallen had been hankering to ignite.

Then she happened.

Now I’ve given them more than one excuse to play their favorite game; the strategy Infernals have always accused Celestials of adhering to.

Struck first and lamented foul.

But since everyone considers me the thrall of the archangels and the goon of Heaven—the image I’ve carefully cultivated—they can claim all my actions were under their direct orders, or to carry out their general will.

I wouldn’t rectify that belief even if I could. The alternative is that everyone becomes certain I keep fanning the embers of conflict because, and for, her.

Yet, no matter what everyone believes, one fact remains. That I’ve handed them the perfect excuse to rally all those who hate Heaven and the archangels. I might have stopped Azazel from striking back, but he can use even my shackles against me. And we do still have the Concordia’s mutual leash.

He’s biding his time before pulling on his end of it. No doubt to make sure whatever he demands of me is to his best advantage, and—no matter the stipulations I have in place—to my worst damage.

For now, one thing allows me to relegate the whole thing to the back burner. That Azazel is more like me than I appreciate.

The tactical pile of fallen shite knows he’s not in a position to start something he can’t finish—yet. He will be, eventually, when he gets to enough of those who’ve been burned, like him, by Heaven. He’s certainly far better than the archangels in inspiring allegiance. Not to mention being a master at inflaming grievances.

It’s amazing how many remain in Afterworld, on all sides, who would fall for his ploys. Who would still do anything to be proven “right.” When there is no right and wrong, good or evil. Only the path of least devastation.

For me, the distinction between these doctrines had been blurred with my very first breath. Ever since, only the end mattered. Until it is achieved, there’s only the game—the long, winding chess match. That used to be what painted existence with purpose, imparted it with sense, with order. Control has always been what made everything else bearable.

Now, like she said, everything has changed, and nothing means what it used to anymore.

For the first time, I’m faced with a dilemma I can’t resolve. Every path open to me is worse than the last. And that was before I succumbed to her siege. Before I touched, then tasted, her, and her power. Before she had done the same to me.

Now, there’s no going back. Or forth. I’m stuck in this inexorable position.

Walking away from her, as far as my own leash would allow, is what remains.

And it is taxing. Everything concerning her has been getting exponentially more so. Not even the Purge had ever demanded that much of me. Not even that last excruciating time. Nowhere close.

I hadn’t even realized how right I was when I told her she ruined me.

Closing my eyes, I struggle to slow my heart. Like everything else, I had long mastered it, setting it the bare minimum rhythm needed to circulate my blood and Grace magic. I’d settled on twenty tranquil beats a minute. Now, like everything in my body and being, it had escaped my dictates, hammering without my permission. Always on account of her.

Clamping down on its deafening clamor, I almost stop it, before realizing that only makes it worse. Every boom feels like a knell of doom, a torturous countdown to?—

The shockwave lashes at me from above.

It should be impossible that I hadn’t felt it coming. But I only register it just as it hits me, a blast of heat that can vaporize steel.

Flaring my runes in the last fraction of a second, I barely block most of its brunt as my gaze snaps up, the identity of my attacker flashing in my mind.

But the colossal silhouette dive-bombing at me isn’t him.

As the immense form decimates the distance between us, jet-black scales glisten under the dim, pervasive light of the magical cloud cover. I always felt they reflected the depths of the Abyss from whence it emerged. Now its webbed, gigantic wings tuck tight on a back spiked with obsidian spines sharp enough to tear through realms. Then it opens a mouth twice my size, and spews the fire of all the levels of Hell.

This time, when the flames engulf me, even through my natuq, they burn off most of my indestructible clothes and singe all my feathers.

In response, I ignite my wings fully, and launch myself at it.

The boom of my speed and our collision detonates across the crater below, widening and deepening it. I’m certain the whole region felt this quake.

At my brutal punch to its massive snout, arms corded in Infernal muscles and wrapped in a hide that would withstand a solar flare snap around me. It snarls down at me as it attempts to sink foot-long claws into my wings, its onyx eyes bleeding ice-blue flames. I land another blow, snapping its horned head to the side, and forcing it to let go of me. I follow up with a two-fisted missile to its chest, as I continue my rise, flying us ever higher into the stratosphere.

The dragon opens its maw again and I see into the depths of its gullet, as hot and bright as the heart of a blue-white star.

I’ve seen his flares scorching angels beyond their eternal regeneration ability that they had to be euthanized. Another blast this close will damage even me for days. I know that from agonizing experience. The last time, I had to regenerate a whole arm, and had to do without wings for a week.

As the devastating volley brews deep in its lorry-sized chest, I growl, “Not this time, Hellbane.”

I blast it first, with a surge of tuquh, almost on the most devastatingsetting. This should give it a taste of its own scorching medicine. I’m not in the mood to prolong this skirmish.

The Helldragon’s roar of pain traverses the realms as its scales and spines crackle and crack under my power. It would have been music to my ears, if that bellow weren’t almost crushing my skull, and hadn’t already blown out my eardrums.

My lips still twist in satisfaction, and though I can’t hear myself, I say, “Serves you right thinking you can ambush me, you mountain of Hellbound scab.”

It shoves me away with its clawed feet and opens its mouth. But this time I see the rows of the pristine diamond blades it has for teeth through flickering flames. Just what I was after. At this altitude, Infernal magic is so far from its source, it’s rarefied. Its Dragonflame is practically useless here.

But that isn’t its only weapon, just the most dramatic. It has far more lethal powers in its arsenal. It had once turned my internal organs to mush with the power of its Aackel, the very force of its mind.

I’m wondering which it would resort to as it circles me, its lips curling in a sinister grin. Seems it’s trying to decide how best to damage me now the element of surprise has been expended.

I take a moment to appreciate the tableau the magnificent beast is presenting me. With my deafness it feels like an image from a silent horror movie or a muted nightmare. The gargantuan body casting me in its haunting shadow, made from the vicious material of the Pit. The titanic wings stretched out like harbingers of doom, with each beat sending tremors through Existence itself. The perfect scene to stir terror in any monster’s heart.

Not mine though. I’ve never known fear. Never for myself. Now I know it, live and breathe it. For her?—

A more violent flap of its wings hurls me back, tearing me out of my morbid musings. It answers my snarl, its scaly lips tugging into what looks like exasperation, even as the otherworldly intelligence in its eyes tinge with disappointment.

Before I can consider any retaliation, it dives at me. As I brace for the impact I’ve seen blasting both angels and demons to smithereens, it shoots past me.

It leaves me behind in the wake of a sonic boom I only feel in my bones. I hang within the shockwave of its departure, watching its form melt into the darkness that birthed it, and wonder. Why it attacked me in the first place, and why it had cut the battle short.

That was probably the whole point. It wants me to pursue it.

Even knowing that it’s luring me into the trap of its wily intentions, my need for distraction is so great, I oblige it.