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Chapter 10: Power Within

Antes walked the wide paved streets of Vimora. It had been a city of decadence. Fine marble, granite and other stones adorned the walls of the buildings where slaves toiled to produces all kinds of finery that was sold and then appeared in the markets of all cities across the world. Those streets, once filled with the creaking wheels of merchant carts and the rattling of chains, were empty.

It had been like this once the defenses had been breached. Only a few thousand had stayed to defend the city and they had surrendered after the second day of siege, just long enough for the last of the masters to escape with their valuables and possessions.

Now the streets of the city were empty and quiet. It was impossible to imagine that one million people, slaves included, had once lived here. What it would have been like just a week ago.

Behind the darkened veil of the angel, Jason frantically looked for any sign of his friend and lover. Anything, even though there was nothing.

“Humans are very rare,” Antes said out loud. There was no one to listen to them and even if there was, it didn’t matter, their friends knew of their particular bond and enemies didn’t. “He would have been bought by the wealthiest slave owner here.”

Jason glanced upwards at the massive home near the center of the city. It towered over every other building and would have been visible from anywhere in the city and possibly some places outside of the city as well.

“My thoughts exactly,” Antes said and extended his metal wings.

With one thrust from the wings, Antes was a hundred feet in the air.

He glanced down at the city. It was spotless except for a few areas closer to the walls where a little fighting had broken out and the Templar army was still doing its block by block clearing of the city. It was going to be nasty business. The city may have fallen, but it wasn’t safe. Slave masters were spiteful beings and often left traps and beasts in their wake.

“It’s crazy to think that they all got away?” Jason said as he looked for any signs of life. He couldn’t even see any animals. No stray dogs or alley cats. Not even any birds.

It was strange, Antes admitted. No rout from a city was this complete. There was always something left behind and now that he focused on it, he felt off. It wasn’t just an easy feeling, it was as if the sensation came from outside of him, a presence. Demon.

Jason felt it the moment that Antes did. He shuddered even though he currently didn’t have a body to shudder with.

“I don’t like it,” Jason said. “I think it’s coming from the mansion.”

Antes agreed. The presence was becoming stronger and stronger as they got closer to the massive home. Could it be called a home? Not anymore. It was a lair for something very evil now and most likely the cause to the city’s emptiness.

“We better get the others first,” Jason suggested and sent out a call. It was another ability that had picked up. All angels had a limited ability to communicate with each other. It was with words, but general feelings that were easily translatable for the angels. Jason sent out a feeling for backup and he got a response back. Gabriel and Hermès were on their way. They’d bring Kieth with them as well.

Antes landed just in front of the main gates to the mansion without disturbing the dust around his boots.

Hermès arrived first. The smaller human angel wore armor akin to ancient Greeks and wielded a spear and a round metal shield. His small wings trembled slightly as he peered up at the mansion. “Can we just burn it down or something? Why do we always have to go inside?”

“Because we simply must,” Gabriel said, landing down right behind Hermès and setting Kieth down as well. “The evil we feel inside is something that I doubt a mere flame will kill.”

“We also need to keep a lookout for any signs of Jason’s companions,” Antes said and held out a hand. The gate began to frost heavily.

Kieth raised a hand timidly. “They’re my companions too.” No one seemed to notice much and he lowered his hand. He felt out of place among angels. What mortal wouldn’t?

Once the gate had essentially become a slab of ice, Gabriel stepped forward and reared back with his arm. The air seemed to still and all sound vanished for a moment. Then he punched the gate.

Antes had to cover his face as ice and steel flew everywhere. The entire gate had vanished under Gabriel’s punishing attack.

“Hot damn,” Kieth said and dusted some snow off of himself. “That was amazing.”

Gabriel flexed. “That was nothing,” he said, taking in the compliment with no class at all. “Watch me once we see this demon.”

Hermès rolled his eyes. “C’mon let’s get this over with.”

They entered the property, instantly aware that they were being watched.

While the outside of the mansion was impeccable. The inside was a horrifying mess.

The smell was what got them first. They had all smelled it a hundred yards from the main doors, an impressive set of dark wooded slabs that were twenty feet tall and two feet thick and yet opened with ease. It smelled of death. That was the only real way to describe it. It was a gagging sweetly smell that hung heavily in the air as a wet miasma. It clung to the insides of their lungs and made them feel fatigued.

Before entering, Hermès pulled out a scroll form a satchel he had around his shoulders.. “I know a wicking spell when I smell one. Saps your strength slowly so that when the fight comes, you can barely defend yourself. I have the thing just for this.”

He unrolled the scroll which was covered in a series of markings that neither Jason or Antes could read. The markings were arranged in a series of small circles which then made a larger circled. They glowed a slight blue.

Hermès looked up and then set his hands down on the markings. They glowed brighter for a moment and then faded away. It was just a piece of paper.

“It won’t last forever and that was my only one,” Hermès said and stowed the blank scroll away.

Kieth breathed in. It still smell bad, but it wasn’t seemingly sticking to his insides anymore. “Can’t you just scribble another one out?”

Hermès shook his head smiled a little. “If you ever get a hippogryph unicorn’s horn, let me know. I’ll be able to make a few more then.”

Kieth blinked a few times and Hermès laughed before turning away to face the now opened doors. There was darkness inside waiting for them.

The foyer was made to impress the highest classes of society. What wasn’t marble was gold. What wasn’t gold was platinum. What wasn’t that was covered in jewels. That was what it was supposed to be. Today, it was covered in a film of brownish slime and tendrils of green vines. Large fleshy lumps covered the floor at uneven intervals. They pulsates and twitched, seemingly shying away from the angels as they passed.

“Haven’t seen this before,” Antes said, approaching one of the lumps. He had his sword drawn and ready just in case. “Something similar once on Bellimiet Island, but that had been Ghordesian Dragons.” The sac quivered as Antes got close and emitted a very faint noise that Jason compared to tiny people screaming. “I highly doubt these are dragon eggs.”

“Careful there,” Gabriel cautioned. His fists were clenched and ready to smite anything that may come at them. “Nothing good can come from these if they’re demon spawn.”

Thing was, Jason had been a curious person before and it was affecting Antes without either of them realizing.

Antes reaches out with an armored hand and just before he touched the sac, it began to groan with a very animalistic noise. His wings spread out and launched Antes back several feet as everyone looked in horror.

The sac gurgled and the top split open in four directions, vomiting steaming grey liquid that had chunks of sponges material. Then a paw shot up and out of it, skin peeled back and raw muscle exposed.

“Oh, Jesus,” Kieth said and covered his mouth.

“He can’t help us here,” Hermès said, not understanding the very human saying.

The paw slapped down onto the flesh of the sac and where it touched, the sac peeled back more and more until it shriveled and tore, revealing the rest of the creature.

“Those that didn’t escape,” Antes said. “Were brought here.”

The creature wore fine silks and a set of golden ear rings, but it was far from being the resident of Vimora she used to be. Her breasts sagged under the weight of mysterious fluid, her fur was in patches where the skin still cling to her and eyeless sockets of the bear stared at the group.

“Help me!” She pleases in a broken, raspy voice. Her teeth were mostly gone and half a tongue hung out of a hole in the bottom of her jaw. “Please.”

“No help but death,” Hermès said and lifted his shield. “A mercy at this point.”

The creature, demon spawn, lifted her hands at them and charged.

Antes cut her down easily with a single stroke of her blade. She came apart into a series of small bits. Whatever demonic power that held her, was broken, the rotted meat no longer able to hold form.

The other sacs began to tremble and emit their own unique noises akin to whatever was inside.

“Should have brought Jesus with us,” Gabriel said.

“Yeah, that would have been something,” Kieth nodded and lifted both hands in front of him. Small flames appeared just in front of each of his finger tips and slowly grew in size. “But we’ll just have to kill them with fire.”

“And my fists,” Said Gabriel. He left at the nearest unopened pod and hit it with his fists. It came apart easily, spraying the room with bile and bits of whatever was inside. “Get to it!”

With a single quick movement, Kieth sent out the fireballs, one at each pod. The balls exploded into a fiery whirlwind, incinerating the pods and anything nearby.

Antes held out his blade at a grouping of pods and the ground shook under them for a moment. A pod opened up and a dozen rat men began to ooze from it just as a massive set of shards of ice erupted from the ground under them, spearing through the soft, rotted flesh.

Hermès zipped through the room at a speed that couldn’t be followed by the eye. He stabbed with his spear and bashed with his shield and moved onto the next creature and then the next before the first had a chance to fall to the ground.

The four of them destroyed hundreds in minutes, but the desecrated creatures were thousands strong.

The pods in the foyer were quickly destroyed, but the rotted army marched in from every opening in a never ending swarm. They were coming in faster than they could be destroyed.

As it turned out, very few had actually escaped the city. Only the defenders on the walls had remained ignorantly safe at their posts.

The group slowly gave ground and were nearly back at the main doors when the flood came in from outside as well.

All across the city in basements and sewers, from the cemeteries and morgues, the dead rose in their pestilence and attacked the Templar army.

Jason could only watch in horror as they were surrounded. He couldn’t do anything and he felt like a cripple, unable to do anything to help. The group was surrounded and giving ground. He looked to Kieth, who was in the middle. The angels had surrounded him since he was the most vulnerable. The mortal human was struggling. Every fireball sapped from his strength. He wouldn’t last under this strain much longer and then the angels would eventually go down afterwards.

“I need to help,” Jason said and then found himself in the Lobby. He was facing Antes.

The angel looked worrisome as well, especially since he appeared as a human here. The older man had a deep frown and massive bags under his eyes. The fight was taking its toll even here.

“Nothing you can do,” Antes said, a hint of sympathy. “Not much I can do either.”

They both looked at the white void and then beyond it where the swarm of bodies slowly moved in on them inch by inch even as they fell by the hundreds.

“Is this how it ends?” Jason asked. “It can’t end yet. We have to find Jason. We have to find Malus.”

Antes didn’t say anything at first. The man sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I would never have imagined that I would fall like this either, not when we had so much purpose to our cause.”

“What happens next?” Jason asked and then added, “after we die?”

“Not even I know that,” Antes shrugged.

“I’m not ready to find out,” Jason said to both Antes and himself. He balled his hands and tears welled up at the corners of his eyes. “I have to find Jason. I have to find Janice. I can’t fail. I can’t.”

Antes was about to console him on the reality of it all, but the Lobby began to tremble and Antes realized that control of the body was no longer his. He looked beyond the void and saw what Jason was doing.

Jason stood there for a moment. He was himself, not the angel. No wings or fancy halo. It was just him in the Templar armor provided to him. It was heavy, but seemingly lighter than when he had donned it. He had his ice blade as well, the small bit of power he borrowed from Antes. He felt another power inside of him though and he reached for it. This all happened in just a single moment.

Kieth had to shield his eyes. One moment there had been Antes, the next there had been Jason just standing there and then there was light.

The undead closest to the group simply vanished. The light had been simply too strong and too hot that they skipped combustion and simply vaporized. Those beyond them caught fire, a fire that spread fast across the creatures while not touching the building or Jason’s friends. It went through the whole building and then the whole city, destroying all the undead within.

Kieth blinked the stars away once it was dim enough to see again, as did Hermès and Gabriel. They saw Jason. He was just standing there and he looked at them.

“I don’t know what I just did.”

“Divine’s Right,” Gabriel said and walked over to Jason. He leaned forward.

“Uhhh, what?” Jason asked. He took a step back and away from the scrutinization of the angel.

“Such power,” Gabriel didn’t seem to be talking to Jason anymore. “You still there Antes?”

Jason felt a nudge from inside and he released control.

Antes didn’t bother changing form, so instead his eyes glowed a whitish-blue and the voice changed. “I’m here, old friend. It was quite-“ Antes shrugged. He was at a loss of words.

“Divine right?” Kieth looked at the ashes surrounding them. “Is that some super power?

Hermès explained. “Divine’s Right. Not divine right. All angels gather power from the world, whether it be fire, rock, water or anything bound to this world, but we all also gather some power from Divine, the grand being of Heaven. He is what grants us our true strengths and abilities.”

“God, then?” Kieth raised an eyebrow and looked over to Jason... Antes.

“Not entirely accurate, but close enough to the truth.” Gabriel crossed his arms and then nodded to Hermès to continue.

“Every so often, Divine grants a being more power. This individual becomes extraordinarily powerful, far beyond any mere angel.”

“Can you access it, Antes?” Gabriel asked Antes.

“No. Only Jason. I feel it, but it’s kept from me.” Antes reached inside. It was beyond anything he had felt before except maybe for when Malus’ spell ignited.

“We may need him then.” Hermès could still feel a strong demonic presence in the mansion, though weakened. Whatever had killed the city, was still alive despite the massive surge of the Divine’s power that had swept over the city. If he felt it, the others did as well. This close, even Kieth would have an uneasy sense of danger.

“Welcome back, bud,” Keith said as Jason came back to them. “Got them pope powers now.”

“Maybe,” Jason said and looked down at his hands. He felt it. The power was there, but slippery. He wasn’t sure if he could do it again without his life being in imminent danger. “We’ll see and I work on it.”

“You do that,” Gabriel said and wiped the gunk off of his hands onto his not-so-white clothes. He then used a small dagger to pick his finger nails. “We need to keep pushing towards the source of this presence. We’ll cover you.”

That was that. They kept moving into the mansion and after the Divine’s wrath, there was no opposition.

During that time, Jason worked on getting a better understanding of this Divine’s Right. Antes lended what help he could, but it was ultimately up to Jason to try and grasp it, but every time he tried, it seemingly slipped through his mental fingers. How had he done it before? Jason tried to remember, but it had simply been reflexive. He had used it in the moment with no understanding of how he did it.

A strong surge of demonic presence snapped Jason from his concentration. During that time, they had delved into the bowels of the mansion where luxury gave way to the true face of where wealth came from in Vimora. It was essentially a dungeon for textiles and other manufactured goods and the facilities to ensure that the slaves worked round the clock.

Kieth covered his nose with his sleeve while he held up his other hand, a small flame hovered there and illuminated their way. He didn’t need directions on where to go, the evil was like a magnet, except it was trying to repel them. The demon was scared now that it’s army had been so easily wiped away.

Each step was more of a burden and Hermès let them know that his scroll to counter the sapping spell was dissipating fast. They would need to finish this fast or even this weakened demon would be a challenge for them all.

Jason felt himself becoming weaker. The armor he was wearing was dragging him down more and more. He desperately needed to access this power.

The others were tiring as well. Gabriel, massive and brutish, was sweating and his arms almost dragged behind him. Hermès had let his shield drop away, it faded away before hitting the ground. Kieth seemed more okay. Maybe the spell was targeted towards angels or those with angels in them.

“Help me,” he said internally, but not to Antes. He had asked the Divine. It was a plea of desperation.

“Not so hard, is it, child?” Who else could it be but this mystical Divine. “Hell takes by force. Do not aim to mirror them when aid can be asked for.” The voice was soft and hard at the same time. Low and high. It was every kind of voice at once without being overwhelming. “Use this power, my power, to stop Malus. Do not let him escape this world to yours. He will bring destruction to all and break the natural order of Heaven and Hell. Do this and you will find that there will be a chance to save your loved ones.”

The voice faded away. Divine had come down from where ever he sat and watched the world, spoken and now left, but he had said all that he had to and now Jason felt that power again. It wasn’t just the Divine’s power now, it was his.

Jason stopped walking and the others did too. By the looks of the other angels, they wouldn’t be able to keep walking again. That was fine, Jason knew how to fix that.

Without explaining what had just happened to himself, Jason said a single word, “gone.” With that word, the spell lifted, unable to stay any longer in the presence of Jason’s overwhelming strength.

He felt better now. All the strength that had left him, came back, but it was mere drops in the vast ocean he had to his use now.

It wasn’t hard to get to the demon after that.

When it was all said and done, the demon slain and it’s influence no longer dominating the air, Jason felt something. It was a slight pull. Not another demon. He excused himself from the others.

“I know this,” Antes said as Jason navigated through the halls of the manor. “It’s- It’s hard to explain, but this pull is to something you’d care for. It sounds...” Antes thought of the right word and ended up pulling one from Jason’s vocabulary. “It sounds cheesy, but I can tell you that Anthony was here at some point and I think he may have left or forgotten something.”

So, Jason followed the pull which became stronger and stronger. It led him to a small room. It had mostly been undisturbed and was tidy, if not too barren to be a mess. There was a cot or bed of some sort. Made Jason’s neck hurt just looking at it, but off in the corner was something that stood out.

“It’s his phone,” Jason knelt down and picked up the small piece of plastic. The screen was cracked in several places and it didn’t turn on. Jason had lost his when the rat had stolen his pants when he was out of action.

The phone was securely stored away, wrapped in some linen and then Jason left. The others were waiting for him outside. They didn’t ask what he found, the look on his face was pure determination.

“We’ll find him,” Antes told Jason. I promised that I would help you with that.

Jason looked off to the horizon, over the burning city. “We will. He’s out there somewhere in this mess and we’ll find him.”