Chapter 72: Rain of Blades (Patreon)

The angels descended as one, weapons glinting with moonlight despite the harsh glare of the sun overhead.

“Stick together!” I shouted, flinging a bolt of lightning skyward. It met a silver spear with the sound of boulder shattering. My eyes widened. 

Half a dozen angels broke towards us, batting aside the initial barrage of spells as if they were nothing more than gnats.

My brow furrowed. We’d need to break out the big guns.

Then they were on us.

The silver weapons cleaved through the first shield spell.

With a flick, my rapier fell into hand I reached out.

Rose’s shoulder was a sufficient handhold.

Ritz and I spun in tandem. 

“Have at you!”

Ritz was ever one for theatrics.

Where magic failed, steel would see us through.

The dance of blades has ever been like chimes on the wind to me. Swords rang out their own battlecries as Ritz and I weathered the storm of swords.

I caught the last spear head on, holding its twisted bident points a hairs breath from my chest. Above me, the angel leaned close, wings straining against the air as her face twisted into a rictus of rage.

“You are impure!” she cried. With a massive beat of her wings, I was driven back half a step, even as the rest of the host took back to the air. “And the impure will be purged!”

I bit out a savage grin. “My thoughts exactly.”

With a twist, her spear went wide.

Her eyes went wider.

My hand came up. And this time there was nothing to block my lightning.

The angel was thrown back, blue electricity arcing across her body. The spear sunk into the earth grounding the charge.

I bolted her again for good measure, and she ceased to move.

The host overhead screeched raucously. More worrying was the screams coming from inside the settlement. 

“They’re tough,” I said. “But we still need to move.”

Rose shook her hands out, a suit of armor materializing around her.

“I’ll handle the ones inside.” Her voice was tinny; I still found it almost comical. But the whine from the blasters mounted on her palm was much more promising.

Above, the ranks of the attackers formed up for another run. “Go on their next attack.” I could see the hatred in those angelic eyes. “They’ll be coming for me.”

“As if I’d let them,” Ritz said, sliding into place beside me.

“Raven?” I asked.

She shifted, cloak rustling against the ground. “I’m faster than they are,” she said. “Don’t die.”

I gave a smirk. “Then who would you have left to be annoyed with.”

Then the flight dove, and there was no more time for banter. 

“Go!” I shouted.

Rose and Raven broke as I dashed in the opposite direction.

Ritz leapt, sword flashing. One of the angels reeled, porcelain cheek stained red.

But there were still five more.

“Dammit Ritz!” I threw my hands wide. A wave of white light washed out of me, buffeting back their attack for a quick second.

The silvered weapons slashed, and the Angels followed Ritz back to the ground.

This time, I was there in person.

My arm blurred through the air: left, right, and center. Faster than even my own improved eyes could track. All I had to go off was a split second to see and dead reckoning.

It was a wash of pale faces and sharp blades.

I grunted as a spear sliced hot through my side. It had been too long since I’d needed a sword. 

But I’d yet to come up with enemies that neutralized my magic so effortlessly. Those weapons of silver…clearly, they’d been intended to put down foes like me.

If only there weren’t five of them.

“You’re hurt!”

“And you’d be dead,” I said, lips quirking in a frown. “So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t throw yourself onto their swords.”

Ritz shifted, pausing for a moment. “I knew you’d be there.”

I huffed. “Bet you didn’t know I’d be hurt. These things, they’re not the fastest flyers but…”

“They work together way too well.” I heard her let out a breath. “Think you can handle them in the air?

I twirled the rapier in my hand as the angels circled overhead like vultures. I could already see nicks in its edge. And even if I could summon another one, that would be a second in which I was defenseless, against a host of angels that struck faster than lightning.

Whom I would be in melee range of.

“Probably not, but…” My eyes tracked over the host again. “That one you scratched.” Out of the whole group, that one along held a long and narrow blade, instead of a twisted two-pronged spears or broadswords. “Think you can ground it, if I give you a window?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Can you give me one after getting stabbed.”

I wiped the back of my hand against the wound, revealing unblemished skin. “I’m only as real as I want to be,” I said. “Unfortunately, those weapons cut magic very well.”

Ritz readied her sword. “I won’t let you down.”

I nodded. “Let’s go then.”

I pulled back my hand, power pulsing dark and red in my palm.

“Let’s see if you can cut this.”

My spell screamed through the air in a torrent of chaotic mana. The angels broke, scattering in different directions.

Lets see their weapons deal with that.

In two steps, I launched myself into the air.

Wind rushed, as I lanced, blade first, towards my target.

The angel flicked her wings, spinning. I grimaced.

Blade me blade in a screeching chorus as I slid past, flipping. The angel forced my blade out of position, only for her eyes to widen as I kicked hard off her back. 

But what goes up…

I spun in the air, lances of glowing light arcing out from my form.

Must come down.

I flipped my sword. Launched myself down like an arrow with my will.

The blade described a line down through the air, with the rest of me following behind in a blur. I heard the snicker snack of angelic blades, but they cut only the air behind me.

My target was not so fortunate.

She screamed as my rapier found it’s mark deep in her wing, new fresh blood flowing down into the stained plumage.

“Infidel!”

My eyes snapped open. Sword coming up. I threw myself to the side as a silvered blade lashed out. The angel plummeted.

But she left me with a sharp pain across my chest. I grit my teeth.

The angel grinned.

With a huff, I threw myself to the side. Readying another spell.

The second and third angel followed a wingbeat behind. My retaliation shattered on their spears.

If not for those weapons of theirs, I would have blasted the whole host right back to kingdom come. But then, maybe I’d grown too used to enemies that couldn’t stand up to my magic.

The remaining angels drove me back through the air. Quick strikes, flurries of feathers.

They’d learned not to let me make distance.

Not to let me form the larger spells. 

If I landed, they’d be on me like needles in a pincushion.

My blade danced through the air. I whirled like a dervish.

All to turn aside the next blade. To dodge the one after that.

I tasted blood on my lips when a haft buried deep in my stomach. 

Refresh.

My arm flashed out, batting aside a flat blade.

If I were flesh and blood, it would have broken my wrist.

But…

I was letting go of that.

I blurred, not just in speed but in space. I slipped through gaps between blades far too thin. I stretched out my own sword to divert attacks beyond my reach.

It was, as I danced as close to death as I’d ever been, freeing.

For so long I’d held onto the restraints of my physical body.

But no longer.

The angels learned, but I was learning too.

I moved faster, breaking the rhythm of the dance.

My blade flowed like the river, and it drew forth red waters.

It had been so long since I was forced to fight with my sword over my magic.

But there are some things you never truly forget.

The battle tore around me in a whirlwind of steel. Red stained wings beat against the wind and I jerked through it. Steel clashed with silver.

It sounded like church bells. 

I traded another wound on my arm for a deep cut on the lead angel’s wing.

Refresh again.

Only one of those two would stay. 

She squawked, jinking back awkwardly in the air.

But I couldn’t follow. The other angels covered her retreat.

Their snarling faces put the lie to their perfectly sculpted faces. For some reason, that made it easier for me.

Give me an honest demon any day.

With a cry, I lunged in the air. Twisting around spearpoints that should have found my flesh.

Tip first, my rapier met angelic breastplate. It screeched, like all those demons out of hell. Fear flashed in the angel’s eyes.

Then my weapon snapped halfway down its length.

The snap sent my arm wide. What might have still been a killing thrust instead found a home deep in the angel’s shoulder.

She screamed. 

I launched myself up and out, snarled curse half off my lips. 

A wave of force with one hand, in the other a new rapier—

Went flying as an angelic arm stole my hand at the wrist.

I bit back a scream of my own as the pain hit. Instead I spun in the air, throwing myself away from the follow on attack. I kicked off the haft of a spear, as stiff twitching fingers slowly formed back out of light.

But it wasn’t fast.

The angels shrieked and jittered, forms near blurring together as they winged around me. A sphere of wings and blood that I wouldn’t be able to escape.

Then they slowed, a promise of death in their eyes.

The lead angel, wounded arm hanging useless at her side, leveled her sword at me. The blade shimmered in the daylight.

“You will pay for transgressions with blood.”

I clenched my new hand tight. My eyes began to glow.

The angels drew back their weapons. My hands came up, a spell on every finger.

“Taylor!”

A moonsilver rapier cut the air like a spear.

It stabbed deep into the leader’s back. Her eyes widened in shock, in abject surprise, as her strength left. Their circle was broken.

I leaned forward, hand reaching out.

I spear took me in the thigh.

My fingers touched the falling hilt.

I felt two more blades in my back.

Then I pulled.

For a breath, I was only the blade, only it’s perfected strike, cleaving through the flesh of my foes in a way a mortal blade could never replicate.

And two more angels fell from the sky.

I coalesced, still bloodied, in the air across from the final angel. My blood was still on her spear, but I’d more than taken my due.

She watched her sisters fall from the sky, as they broke against the harsh ground below.

I flicked my new sword out. The touch of ensorcelled silver thrummed against my palm.

“And then there was one.”

It was a good blade.

With a scream of rage, the angel raised hers and charged, wings tearing against the air.

On air, I stepped to one side, then back. Her spear slipped silently past me, even as my arm curled back.

Even as my own blade found it’s mark deep inside the angel’s neck.

She jerked to a stop upon the sword, spear falling from nerveless fingers.

Arms reached up, eyes blinking rapidly, as if she could somehow pull the weapon from her throat. 

Last of all, her eyes, so clouded with rage, cleared. Her arms sank back down as she looked at me.

The last thing that angel did was offer me a bloodstained smile.

And then there were none.