Luckily, I manage to jerk the scythe up, making the straight bottom blade pierce right through his chest, ashing him on contact. I look over my shoulder at my wings. “Let’s go!”
The purple feathered appendages immediately spread out, and I am so damn grateful for them in this moment as my feet leave the ground. They flap, and I internally promise them that I will never say another bad thing about them if they can just get me in the air.
I pick up my feet, pressing my knees to my chest, dodging the demons on the ground who are trying to make a grab for me. I get ready to shove my scythe between my legs and straddle it broomstick style, but before I can really start to soar, a winged demon crashes into me from behind.
I’m barely ten feet off the ground as the demon latches onto my back, and the sudden weight throws me off balance, so I go pitching forward, nearly doing a flip.
“No flying for you,” the demon hisses in my ear, and the next thing I know, it’s grabbing the top of my right wing in its hands and snapping.
I scream as I plummet to the ground, the pain so overwhelming that I can’t see or think.
The only good thing is that I land on my back, crushing the skull of the demon still attached to me.
Vomit is at the back of my throat, my stomach lurching from the intense, shocking pain of not only my broken wing, but also my entire body from the fall.
Get up, Delta, I tell myself, but the agony is making me see double, so fierce that I can’t even draw in a full breath. I know that if I get pinned down again, I won’t be getting back up of my own volition.
I clutch the smooth wood of the scythe, force myself to roll over, spitting up bile as I go. My right wing sags crookedly at my back, the other one pulling in tight against my spine, like it wants to bury itself beneath my skin and hide.
I use Jerif’s earlier push when we were running to the graveyard to ground me. I push aside the pain and focus on his words to move it, dig deeper, don’t stop.
With tears blurring my vision and acid eating away at my bile-coated throat, I spin, letting my body’s momentum and the scythe do the work. Puffs of gray dust surround me as the blade cuts through the demons circling me, until they’re nothing but a pile of ash.
While I nearly spin myself to the ground, another winged fucker above me attacks, going right for my weak spot. The demon kicks my broken wing, making me scream out in pain.
The demons carrying the net take full advantage of my inertia. Faster than I can even blink, the net is tossed over my body. I get knocked down to my knees with the force of it, but I don’t have time to try to get up, because I’m being plucked up by the giant, held upside down by the ends of the net. My body goes rolling, and I feel my arm and cheek get scraped up as my limbs get tangled inside the netting, my wing practically shrieking in torment.
I untangle my scythe enough from the rough, unyielding bindings of the net, gripping it so hard that my fingers ache as I try to breathe through the agony as the giant starts to carry me away. Sweat drips down my face as I try to hack at the material of the netting to cut a hole for myself, every movement jarring more pain to my crippled wing. But the demons obviously planned for this, because my blades do nothing. I don’t even make a nick in the hard ropes of whatever this thing is made out of.
I grip one square of the netting, trying with all my might to pull it open or weaken it somehow, but it doesn’t budge. Panic pushes me like a bully on the playground, demanding attention. I scream for the guys, but no one can hear me, or if they can, they can’t get to me.
When something hits the giant, I go crashing down as it loses its hold on me. The net drops to the ground, jolting me and making me cry out from the force of my landing, my poor wing getting battered, so much hurt radiating from it that I’m not even sure if it’s just one break or many.
The giant quickly regains his hold and starts dragging the net through the carnage of the graveyard, heading straight to the mausoleum where I’ll no doubt be yanked through the Hell portal to join this fucking Ophidian person and whatever he has planned for me.
But then I hear a strange noise, and when I whip my head around to look through the hole in the net, I see something I never thought I’d see in a million years.
With a battle cry that eerily resembles my own Xena: Warrior Princess call, I see Nefta, in all her Colonel Legion glory, and right there with her is Tazreel, in all his arrogant grandeur.
They’re fighting back-to-back, one with a gleaming white sword and scythe, and the other with two stone-black double short swords. They fight fluidly, with a grace and precision that you can only have with a millennia of experience.
It becomes clear that these two aren’t just any old angel and demon. They’re more. It’s as if they’re the embodiment of Heaven and Hell, and all their might.
One breath, one swing, and they’ve slaughtered a dozen. Another swing, and demons are flying back, injured and reeling to get out of the trajectory of the two lethal forces. Demons crumble and wither like raisins, without Taz even making contact with them. One raised arm, and blinding light is shooting out of the sword Nefta holds, making demons disintegrate
