6. GODRIC

As tuquh crackles out of me, Asmodeus whips out his crimson handkerchief, and waves it, a literal red flag. “Hold your deathrays, darling. I’d rather not destroy my new threads.”

“I would worry more about the ‘filling,’ as you demons would say.”

He holds the handkerchief to his mouth as if overcome by emotion. “By the Infernal Heavens, you truly are spectacular. I love how you switched from forbearing to brutal in a literal heartbeat. But I assure you, you don’t need to attempt to murder me.”

“I don’t attempt.”

“There you go again, with the delight of your savage brevity. But let’s not pretend you can take me out.”

“Let’s find out.” My wings explode out of my back as I lunge at him in a blur.

A fraction of a second before I barrel into him, his own wings burst out and he hurtles away. Before we crack the sound barrier, I hear him cry, “The suit, my sweet. Don’t damage the suit!”

He’s fast, but I’m faster. I gain on him and he turns to face me, flying backward, waving at me to stop. I only intertwine a bolt of tuquh with my Elemental Grace, and shoot him down.

His plummets to the ground like a meteor and impacts it with the power of a meta bomb explosion, destroying a hundred feet of cliffside, and sending it crashing into the grey waves below.

The resilient bastard recovers immediately, and shoots up and away, but I knock him out of the air again and further inland. This time he’s ready, and lands on his feet.

But I infused Heavenly fire in the second barrage, and I know it weakened him. I don’t want to draw out this bloody shitty situation. I have to deliver a killing blow soon.

As I land with enough force to sunder the rest of the cliff face, I blast him down in the shockwave. His wings flash away and he excavates a mile-long trench into the craggy land with his shield-encased body.

The second he stops, I descend on him. He deflects my blasts, hitting back with his own. His Blights are as almost as powerful as my Graces, and his shields are withstanding anything I throw at him. That won’t last.

In spite of having prodigious physical powers, he’s ultimately a manipulator, not a warrior. His arena is bestowing boons like charisma, and inventing terms like influencer. He exists to seduce, not to devastate like me. I will tear his barriers down, then I will end him.

Aversion sinks unknown talons into my gut at the thought.

But I have to do this. He now realizes my new truth, had at last found a vulnerability to exploit.

That it is, and would always be, her.

Had this been about me, I could have let him live with the knowledge. But he’d taunted me during the Divination, about any “friend” of mine being welcome at Pandemonium, and at his non-existent mercy.

I deflected his ruinous interest, pretending I’d soon tire of her and throw her remains to him. That had him dismissing her at once. The whole point had been provoking and maneuvering me, after all.

But now he knows. My weakness for her, and her power over me. It will make her his new obsession, or worse.

I will not allow that.

With one last blast, I shatter his resistance and knock him flat on his back. Now only his last shield remains between Zawal and his throat.

As I come to stand over him, planting my boots on both sides of his hips, he lies beneath me, panting—and grinning. I didn’t expect pleas, but I also didn’t think he’d maintain his audacity while facing the end of his endless existence.

Lust is literally blazing in his Hellborn eyes as he croons, “I’ve been dreaming of tussling with you since the day I first laid eyes on you. I admit I fantasized about a dirty and passionate tumble, not this cold and contactless assault. But as I said, I’ll take it. It’s another step in the right direction.”

I don’t engage him. I don’t deliver pre-deathstrike monologues.

Turning my eyes and wings to inky executioner mode, I hold his gaze as I press Zawal down harder, pushing through the matrix of his demonic defenses, and his eyes widen.

He feels it now. They all feel it before it ends their existence. The Death-forged force powering my sword.

He tries to sit up. I knock him back again and lean down as Zawal sinks deeper into his shield. The moment it gives, one thrust will take his head off. It won’t grow back.

Something twists in my chest this time. It’s akin to the crushing regret I felt whenever I thought I might one day have to end her. Nothing as powerful, but it’s still something I never felt towards any other being I executed.

He raises both hands in surrender, worry finally slithering in his eyes and aura. “Okay, that was fun, and I finally got a rise from you, one for ‘the ages,’ as you put it, but you can stop now. I’ve expended my shields—to protect this suit. I had it made for our meeting, and it cost my favorite spinner ten years of its life!”

“And now said meeting will cost you the entirety of yours.”

Realization, that his immortal life could really end, dawns in his eyes as they go black and bottomless.

“You’re serious?” Then he exclaims, “But—why?”

I never spell out my motives, but I somehow feel I owe him an explanation. Maybe because he doesn’t sound terrified, but stunned.

Whatever the reason, I say, “I don’t abide threats.”

“Now I know you can’t be serious. You can’t be threatened by my pursuit …” He stops as understanding enters his gaze. “You think I’m a threat to her.”

I only press further.

“Stop!” he cries out as my sword starts slicing through the last layers of his shield. “Just think about it for a second, will you? If I were a threat, would I let you know it? Even if I did, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to call you here, to do it face-to-face, in this bloody world’s fucking blindspot.”

“Where your thralls can’t come to your rescue, or even find you if I decided to Sword-of-Heaven you? Nice try, but you didn’t know you had something to threaten me with in advance.”

“Of course I did, silly. Didn’t you just give that mini-lecture about my shrewdness? I already knew how you felt about her.”

My pressure halts just as the tip of my blade touches his neck. One more inch and he’d be no more.

The moment he feels my hesitation, he explodes from beneath me and shoots high in the air, his wings now a storm of black flames. I blast off after him, igniting my own wings.

Before I strike again, he holds a staying hand, his words rushing out. “I knew, dammit! I felt the incipient change in you at the Divination. It was a whisper to the thunder it is now, but I still felt it. It was glaring even then, since I never felt anything remotely like it from you before. Nothing explained it except that human. Yet, I couldn’t credit it at the time. It was only during that ambush that I became ninety-percent certain what your vehemence was about. That you just gave me the remaining ten percent, plus ten thousand, doesn’t change the fact that I already knew. And it hadn’t even occurred to me to threaten you or her with my knowledge.”

My tuquh reels back into my body of its own accord. As if it’s been looking for an excuse not to end him. I hate that further proof that I don’t have total control over it anymore. Or that he makes sense to me, and that I believe him.

But he does. And I do.

Now I can’t cut his head off.

His genitalia are still up for debate.