Cassie looked at her team. She knew Rain well enough to recognize the cogs were turning in his head, but he was just a mortal from Ayther. Angelkin, sure, but he didn’t know about the forms of power like she did.
The biggest weakness of war form was its drain on mana, which was why most war form users went for size so that they could absorb more mana through their wings using a greater surface area. But the arena had introduced another weakness: it was enclosed to the point that almost no mana could enter or leave. Between Jassiel and Cassiel, the arena was almost entirely sucked dry of ambient mana at this point.
Jassiel had sidestepped both issues by collaring his Elevated in a way that let him use their mana gates, effectively tripling his generation rate.
Cassiel, anwhile, had focused greatly on improving her gate both before and after the crucible of the mana sauna had granted her the magiform she wore. Combined with her already large capacity, she figured she had another hour or so in her, but not if Jassiel was about to go all out with the power of three gates and an anti-magic sword that could permanently injure her team.
There was only one option to finish him before he overwheld the three of them.
"Ozzy, I want you to get your opponent next to Jassiel’s other teammate."
"Yes, angel!" Ozzy shouted enthusiastically before diving to obey.
"Rain, I need you to do sothing I know you aren’t going to like, but it looks like you already figured out how."
Rain opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it, his face falling into a near-frown beneath his puppy-dog eyes that hurt Cassie to the core.
"I’m going to hold off Jassiel. But I need you to stop their hearts," Cassie gestured below at the fallen Elevated. "There are dics nearby. They can-"
"Yes... angel," Rain said, his voice as flat as Cassie had ever heard it.
He arrived at the bottom of the arena just in ti to et Ozzy.
"Sparing your little pets?" Jassiel taunted as Cassie rose to his face level. "I think after this I’ll neuter them for you. Can’t have any more little bastards running around, like the one you almost made."
Sothing inside Cassiel snapped.
She didn’t wonder how he’d found out.
She didn’t respond with words, though her body all at once seed to freeze and shake with electric hatred.
It took all her focus not to scream. Not to rage and reach into her halo for a black sword to stab into Jassiel’s putrid little heart. Insulting her was one thing, but to insult her dead... Even naless...
"Hecatoncheires Aegaeon..." Cassie whispered.
A hundred hands burst into being behind her, and she sent them all streaming for Jassiel’s face.
Even as his black sword cut down many, the flock of hands punched and jabbed and clawed at every sensory organ she could reach. She didn’t care that his war form let him regenerate the minor damage, she only cared for hurting him. And to that end, she poured her mana into the spell, generating new hands to replace the lost.
The match wouldn’t end until he yielded or couldn’t fight... Fine. She would break him.
"Briarios." Cassie whispered as Jassiel shook his head free of the hundred hands. Above his head, however, the hands regrouped, forming into a giant hand that clenched itself onto Jassiel’s face.
With fury he cut at the massive fingers holding him, while flinging his morningstar wildly. As soon as he severed two fingers - enough to free himself - Cassie changed her spell once more.
"Aegaeon Centimane!"
The massive hand shattered into almost a hundred hands once more, only this ti, Cassiel sent out a single spell, multiplying it through each hand even though it greatly weakened the output.
"True fire."
Even in warform, pain existed. Cassie counted on it to punish Jassiel as she created fire from mana, the reaction clinging to his flesh and clothes as it burned him...
But it wasn’t enough.
Within seconds of being burned, Jassiel regenerated, snuffing the flas out with a hand as he dropped his morningstar, which shrank back to normal as soon as it left his grip.
"Is that all?" Jassiel smiled.
Cassiel was spent. She let go of her hundred hands and they disappeared into motes. A mont later, she dropped out of magiform.
She felt so tired, but she hefted her staff and prepared herself anyway.
Cassie remained silent, glaring every hatred she could think of into Jassiel.
Realizing she didn’t have the mana to block him, Jassiel raised his arms to the crowd, flourishing his black sword.
"I’d say ’See you in the Executioners,’ but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to join when I’m done with you," Jassiel grinned.
With a mighty flap of the wings, he surged forward, black blade reaching toward Cassie, its silent passing eerie compared to the way a real blade cut the air...
... and then he missed.
"What?!"
Jassiel had begun to shrink. His reach had disappeared enough that by the ti he closed with Cassiel, his sword missed her by a full asure. A mont later, the black blade disappeared as he lost the mana needed to sustain it - his body prioritizing his war form, even as it began to lt back into his form.
"What did you... what did you do?!"
Cassie looked down, Jassiel’s Elevated were looking very pale, and blue around the lips.
Without his sword or morningstar, Jassiel was disard.
"I did what I had to," Cassie growled, realizing as she tasted salt that a tear had crawled its way past her lips. A mont later, Rain restarted their hearts, but the link remained broken.
Cassie didn’t cry for Jassiel, as she closed the distance, beating him with her staff as she forced him to the ground, before kicking him in the ribs hard enough to break one and proceeding to beat him so more.
Nor did she cry for the Elevated she’d had Rain... temporarily terminate.
She cried for the naless child of an ill-fated relationship; miscarried and buried and forgotten.
And she did not offer Jassiel the chance to surrender.
*
In the end, it was only once Jassiel managed to crawl away from Cassie, shouting his forfeit, that the match ended.
Cassie had been about to strike him from behind but held back, rembering where she was when the signal went up that the match was over.
While the crowd cheered, she looked down at her staff. At her hands, which had torn open at the palms and fingertips without her realizing.
A little magic, and she summoned new cells to the surface, speeding the rate at which they grew and died until her skin was restored to full, but with a slight roughness to them that suggested she might form calluses.
She couldn’t care less.
She could still hear Jassiel’s mockery.
She wanted to hurt him as badly as he’d threatened to hurt her, Rain, and Ozzy.
The crowd cheered.
They’ll cheer for anything... Cassiel realized.
Even though the outside had been muted, every aspect of what happened inside the arena was recorded. By tomorrow, those who knew would tell those who didn’t, and Cassiel would have one more sin laid bare for the vultures amidst the angels to pick over.
"Cassie, are you alright?" Rain asked.
She looked up at him, at a face that had softened itself to et her pain.
Behind him, Jassiel’s Elevated were being helped shakily onto stretchers, clearly just revived by the dics.
They should have entered the field as soon as Rain ki- took care of them... instead of waiting for to win.
"I’m... fine..." Cassie said, forcing her back to straighten, her wings to fold into a more noble position than drooped in exhaustion.
The host ca down to greet her soon after, and a great feast was declared for the choir to attend on the morrow, but Cassie was too tired to do much more than smile and nod and accept what was given to her.
And when she was finally allowed to return to Manor Eros, late at night, she collapsed onto her bed face first, having tossed the trophy she’d been given onto the table where it wobbled and fell onto one of its crystalline facets.
"Cassie..."
Rain’s voice from the door stirred her enough to turn and look up at him.
"Yes, Rain?" she asked, forcing a bit of curiosity into her voice despite feeling none. "So you know, I’m not in the mood for anything."
"I... wasn’t going to ask about anything like that. I just wanted to say that if you need to talk..."
"I don’t need to talk. I need to turn back fucking ti and beat the shit out of Jassiel before he airs my dirty fucking laundry to the world. I need to kick him in the fucking balls again and again until I fucking castrate him. And then I need to forget that no matter what I’ll do, I’ll just be so dumb whore who couldn’t even have a baby right!"
Rain’s face softened even more as understanding dawned in his eyes.
He sat on the bed and pulled Cassie into a hug.
"You don’t have to tell what happened," Rain said as he rubbed her back.
Cassie cried into his shoulder.
Until at last she fell asleep.
Reviews
All reviews (0)