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Again the ornate pistol clutched in Remy’s hand begged to be used. It showed him how deadly it could be: multiple blasts of gunfire, multiple victims falling to the weapon’s voice.
So many victims.
“So many lies,” Uriel bellowed, tugging his blade free. “We believed it was over—the indignity perpetrated upon us by one of our own—but it was all a lie.”
The warden charged with a roar, the blade in his grasp sizzling as it cut the air in search of Remy.
Remy leapt above the sword, his wings taking him up toward the cathedral-high ceiling. From the corner of his eyes, he saw projected upon the wall of the chamber the final act to the most disturbing of dramas, the powerful Morningstar brought down by the legions loyal to the Almighty.
He saw Lucifer driven to his knees, wings shackled in restraints of gold. There was a calmness in the features of God’s adversary, an expression of peace that spoke nothing of defeat.
Of surrender.
Uriel had taken to the air, his blood-colored wings pounding as he erratically came at Remy.
“How could we have been so blind?” the warden wailed. “So complacent? Did we learn nothing?”
The burning blade descended. Reflexively, Remy lifted his gun hand, halting the sword’s arc with the barrel of the old-fashioned pistol. The weapons collided with a blinding flash, and Remy was thrown back by the powerful concussion.
Landing in a roll, he quickly got to his feet, blinking his eyes furiously, attempting to clear away the sunbursts that blossomed there, obscuring his sight. He was ready for Uriel’s next attack, but the warden was nowhere to be found. As his vision began to clear, he saw that he had been knocked into another area of the prison by the force of the blast.
He was in an enormous chamber composed of the same icy material that formed the structure of Tartarus itself. It reminded him of the inside of a hive, the walls honeycombed with circular cells. He was dwarfed by the vastness of it all, and it made him feel incredibly small.
As he was drawn farther into the room, Remy could see inside the honeycomb-like apertures. He could not help but stare in rapt amazement at the frozen shapes of the fallen angels within. Some of the chambers were open, what had once been contained inside having been freed.
How many have the Nomads managed to release? the Seraphim wondered, nearly overwhelmed by the sheer number of cells that dotted the walls. This was an awful place, and Remy now understood why Uriel had not followed him in here.
The fallen were very much alive within their icy cells, reliving their moment of betrayal over and over again for an eternity.
Or for as long as He deemed fit.
Standing there, surrounded by all this pain and sorrow, Remy again questioned the concept of a loving God. And cursed how far Lucifer had caused them all to fall.
The voice of the warden drifted out from somewhere in the room, and Remy realized that he no longer held a weapon, the Pitiless pistol having been lost in the explosion that had propelled him into the prison chamber.
Uriel flowed from the darkness, his Heavenly sword poised to strike.
Remy whirled to meet the attack, his hands catching Uriel’s wrist, preventing the burning blade from falling.
The warden was screaming, insane ramblings of a mind shattered by the magnitude of his failure. What had happened here would affect all reality, all the way from Earth to the gates of Heaven itself.
Wings beating mercilessly in combat, the two took to the air.
The Seraphim wanted to destroy its foe, to vanquish anyone who dared stand between it and the task that it had taken on.
The Morningstar ca
Perhaps it was his humanity that still held on by a thread, but Remy could not bring himself to fully succumb to the angelic nature’s thirst for death. He found himself holding back, acting only in defense against Uriel’s shrieking onslaught.
The angels flew up and backward, their struggling bodies colliding with one of the cells, the impact so great that it shattered the icy covering that sealed the fallen angel inside. The fallen came suddenly awake with a scream.
The disgraced creature of Heaven wailed its displeasure as it pushed away the shattered fragments of its prison to grab at them. With ragged, clawed hands it reached out, grabbing hold of Remy’s wings, attempting to pull him inside the cell to share in his misery.
Remy beat his wings furiously while attempting to fend off Uriel’s attempts to kill him.
The warden took advantage of this distraction, freeing his hand long enough to thrust his sword, the burning tip penetrating the breastplate of Remy’s Heavenly armor with a flash and the stink of ozone. Remy roared, driving an elbow back into the face of the Tartarus prisoner, and with his wings freed, furling them tightly against his body, allowing himself to drop like a stone.
The pain was incredible, a burning sensation spreading across the flesh beneath his armor. Disoriented, Remy spread his wings to slow his descent, but landed hard, rolling across the icy surface.
The pain beneath the armor intensified. On his knees he tore at the straps holding the armor in place. It came away in two pieces, clattering to the ground. Remy gazed at the wound, the flesh around the point of penetration angry, a mottled redness starting to spread across his shoulder and down onto his chest. If not taken care of, the infection caused by the wound could prove deadly.
But this was the least of his problems at the moment, listening to the sounds of flapping wings growing closer.
The warden was coming.
He sensed the angel bearing down on him, and spun around to confront the latest attack.
Uriel dropped, gore-spattered wings fa
Remy tensed, isolating the pain in his shoulder, hoping that he had what it would take to survive this moment.
Two gunshots rang out, tearing away a portion of the angelic warden’s face, a third removing the top of his head.
The angel dropped down atop him, dead weight driving him to the ground. Remy struggled out from beneath the corpse of the warden, his hand searching for the sword Uriel had dropped. He found it, shrugging away the angel’s body as he rose in a crouch to deal with this latest obstacle.
The fallen angel Madach stood in the shadows, a strange golden light emanating from the Pitiless pistol in one hand, and from the Japanese sword clutched in the other, forming a kind of halo around his bedraggled form.
“If we want to get this done, you better follow me,” the fallen angel responsible for setting this chain of events in motion said.
Remy gripped Uriel’s sword tighter as he watched Madach turn away to be swallowed up by the darkness of Tartarus.
He had no choice but to follow.
Come to find out, not only did Madach now have the Pitiless sword and the Colt, but as Remy followed him into the inky blackness, he saw that the fallen angel had—sticking out of the back pockets of his blood-soaked jeans—the twin daggers as well.
“How?” Remy called after him.
They were descending a winding path made of ancient yellowed ice. The walls around them—these too were peppered with the honeycomb cells, some with prisoners still intact, others shattered and empty.
Madach stopped briefly, turning around to speak.
“It’s weird,” he said with a laugh. “Seeing you that way.”
He pointed at him with the barrel of the gun.
“This place changes you,” Remy said, painfully aware of his angelic form. His shoulder throbbed, the infection caused by the sword wound continuing to spread. “And not for the better.”
Remy wanted to be human again, but he wasn’t sure if that could ever be possible again.