Oathbreaker ch 9.37 - Heart-Thief (Patreon)

The cathedral’s attention was turned towards the city. Priests, monks, and armed temple guard rushed about, and the halls echoed with their voices, but I pressed on.

I guessed that Darras and the group with him had confronted Hamet on their own, without realizing the greater danger. I’d cut it very close indeed. Another few minutes, and I likely wouldn’t have been summoned and this whole plan would be botched. Everything happening outside, while of historic significance to the Harkresians, was ultimately an elaborate distraction for my purposes.

As it happened, the High Cathedral of the Falcon did not notice the infiltrator ghosting through its depths. They did not stop me when I opened the door for others.

I found a small chapel in an isolated wing of the palatial cathedral. It contained an image of the Silver Falcon, a towering bird carved of brilliant white wood with talons and beak gilded in silver. The altar before it was a simple podium draped in a white cloth, set with a glowing feather.

I wasted a minute staring at that bit of angelic dandruff. That cleric below wielded the Falcon’s power, I thought. He was no warlock.

I didn’t like it. I’d missed something.

But I’d committed, and I wasn’t going to face Samaoth and his entire cult alone.

“Break it,” I ordered.

Hamet shuffled past me. He’d followed me from the depths in a daze. Blood still trickled from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were glassy. He’d not gotten a large dose of my poison, but his will wasn’t particularly strong to begin with and my voice had been in his head for weeks.

He kicked the altar over. The wooden podium smashed, and the angel feather burst into argent fire that quickly spread, momentarily casting the nave into strange shades of monochromatic color. I beat my wings and exerted my own will, and the holy relic guttered out and the room fell into darkness.

Hamet stumbled over to a pillar, sunk against it, and began to sob. I ignored him and strode forward, staring up at the statue of the God-Saint.

“Where are you?” I asked it, “in this hour of your chosen people’s need?”

He’d abandoned them just like the golden goddess had fled her own subjects. In the end, all gods abandon their people. I felt vindictive satisfaction at the thought, and a deep, old anger.

I drew a summoning sign. I did not carve it with a dull knife and goat’s blood as Hamet had mine, but willed it into being. Abyssal fire carved itself across the floor of the nave, glowing lines cutting themselves over the mosaic marble in wide, sweeping arcs. The symbols were in a mixture of Kandaric and Nekhrean — destruction and inversion together, my preferred languages of sorcery.

When done, the sigil was twenty feet in diameter. It contained four overlapping circles with broken edges, leaving the interior contained by an abstract labyrinth rather than solid walls. Useless for binding, but my magic didn’t deal in binding or containment. Demonic Art wounds reality.

I pressed my hands together to form a sign. Copper and electrum-colored lightning danced around my outstretched wings and linked to the summoning sigil. It blazed with toxic light, bright enough to blind yet drinking in the chapel’s light, so everything except the circle became pitch black.

Somewhere in the depths of the High Cathedral, I felt a presence stir. Too late, I thought, and beat my wings once to send another surge of energy into the rune. My serpent tail coiled about my legs, and my two tongues flicked out in eager anticipation. The scadudemons hovered behind me, both mirroring my pose and murmuring ritual words so our voices overlapped in the gloom of the nave.

I swept my arms and my wings apart with a brief shout, and the circle roared with flames. The bonfire spread high, swirling, voices echoing in its depths as spaces were rent open and distances converged. Shapes sketched themselves within the fire. Hamet was crying out, shouting something, but I paid him no heed.

The flames receded, until they became little more than a flickering glow along the scorched floor that traced the lines of the summoning circle. Standing within was a dark shape, clad in long robes and a long cloak, a deep cowl pulled over their features.

As the energies of the transposition ritual faded and more natural light returned, the wizard stepped forward to clear the boundary of flames. His face was obscured by the hood, the darkness beneath it unnaturally deep. The voice, however, belonged to Didikas.

“Well done, Shyora.” He sounded pleased. “Very well done. This is the High Cathedral, I presume?”

At my nod, he let out a brief laugh. “I’ve never been, but I’ve heard that it’s wondrous. Look at the size! And this isn’t even the main sanctuary, I see. They do know how to build them in Bradivara, don’t they?”

“We should hurry,” I said. “We won’t have our distraction for long.”

I was still worried about the Knight-Regent. That exorcist might not have been a weakling, but Zifar Ludriq put my hackles up.

The wizard turned to me, and a smile played across his lips beneath the hood of his cloak. “I’m very grateful that you’ve given me this chance. Can you take me to my son?”

The warmth in his voice took me by surprise, and made me flush with pleasure. I’d not realized after all these months how eager I was to have someone appreciate my efforts. I’d done well here. Harkres stood amongst my finest performances. The citizens would remember me with hate, but only one would know that I’d done all this wickedness to save a soul.

I wanted to be acknowledged. The mage’s words cut me deep.

“Your son is in a sanctum deeper within,” I said. “The city is in revolt against the Curia, so most of the curates should be distracted. That won’t last.”

“Then let us waste no more time.” He held out a hand encased in a black glove. “Shall we, Lady Wurmwing?”

I hesitated a moment, but then took his hand. I will not deny that I felt a pull in that moment. I’d been attracted to this mortal when he was little more than a novice magician yet to come into his own. Now, seeing him as the archmage cloaked in a morass of power, I…

“I know the way,” I said. Part of my preparations the last two months had involved memorizing the layout of the High Cathedral, from a mixture of old maps and my minion’s mind.

We left the nave together, the shivering Hamet completely forgotten.

We met no resistance as we approached the doors of the inner sanctum. The doors themselves and the surrounding walls were painted with frescos showing the history of the Curia, beginning with the ninety-seven knights who rode to face the Wyrm of Bradivara to the two who survived, and their subsequent meeting with the God-Saint.

The two temple guards who were supposed to symbolically represent those two old champions were nowhere to be seen. I’d been prepared for them — they were supposed to be strong Art wielders — but I suppose the demon who’d supplanted their god had little use for paladins.

Didikas tightened his grip on his scepter and stared at the doors. He’d not removed his hood, and in his finery of deep blues and blacks he looked the very image of the Magi. I could feel the spells woven into every piece of jewelry and fabric on his body like electric currents against my skin.

I still wore my party dress and the ectoplasmic blood from the summoning circle. We made quite a pair. Those monks and lesser curates we had seen offered no resistance, most fleeing from us in terror.

“Something’s been bothering me,” I said before we went through.

“It’s been too quiet,” Didikas said, guessing my thoughts. “When all this started, half the continent felt something.”

“We don’t know what the cult’s been trying to do,” I said. “But some of these clerics still have power, and not just diabolic sorcery in disguise. For all my time getting us this far, I don’t know what we’ll find in there.”

“You and I are no pushovers, Shyora.”

I smiled. “You always were arrogant.”

Arrogant enough to try to court me. Arrogant enough to take revenge when I’d rejected him. Arrogant enough to return centuries later and try to repair the bridge. Arrogant enough to ask for my help.

Perhaps I liked arrogance.

Without another word, the wizard lifted his scepter and aimed it at the doors. There was no incantation, no flash of power, but they split and began to open. Beyond we found a large, dark room with walls that gently arched to form a long oval. There were pilasters along those walls, and between each a depiction of a saint or knight who’d died in service to the Falcon. A skylight allowed moonlight to shine down.

In the center of the room, where the sallow light of the Corpse Moon fell, stood a lone figure. He wore the white robes of a high curate, and a diadem of silver rested on his bald pate. In his left hand he gripped the stem of a silver feather the size of a sword.

It was a sword. The weapon emitted a soft light.

Didikas strode forward as the doors slammed closed behind us. The room had excellent acoustics, and his voice echoed well. “Son.”

I looked at the wizard in surprise, then back to the man in white. He looked old, to the point of being harrowed by age, with loose gray flesh like paper and sparse white hair. He seemed to have trouble standing, and did so with a dramatic stoop. The hand holding the angel feather trembled.

“Father.” Ammatán’s voice was barely more than a whisper of labored air from his cracked lips.

“He’s been fed on,” I said to Didikas. “It looks like he’s suffered possession more than once. That relic in his hand is probably the only reason he’s not Woed.”

Didikas lifted a hand to his son and turned the palm up. “Come now, Ammatán. Let’s end this. I can help you.”

The old-young man in the sanctum said nothing to his father. His gaze drifted to me. “I know you.”

“We met briefly when you were a child,” I reminded him.

He nodded slowly. “I thought that was a dream for many years. I was scared to sleep without light because of it.”

“I wanted to be scary then,” I admitted. “Now I’m here to help you, because your father asked me to and he is… someone I’ve known for a very long time.”

I tried to make my voice gentle, but the blood and the wings might have ruined the effect a touch. Ammatán chewed on his lip a moment.

Something is wrong. I’d been thinking it for a while, but the conviction pressed down on me in that room. There was a power here, a gravity. From above? Or below? Or did it come from the oracle?

While I concentrated on the strange sensation of threat in the room, Ammatán finally acknowledged his father.

“You always said I was weak. Do you still think I’m weak, father?”

Didikas did not drop his proffered hand. “I think you are very tired, son. Drop that sword and I will help you.”

Ammatán lifted the sword. It seemed to take immense effort, and his arm trembled more violently, but he managed to get it to eye level. “You want me to leave this?”

“It’s hurting you,” Didikas insisted.

“It’s the only thing protecting him from Samaoth,” I said. My eyes were narrowed in thought, my mind putting all the various pieces of this puzzle together. I almost had it, but something still didn’t make sense.

“I thought I could bear it,” Ammatán said. His voice took on a raspy, strained quality. “It wasn’t so hard when it was just the one. He was strong, but you trained me for that much… everything was going so well, father, so well. But we missed it. So obvious…”

“Boy.” Didikas spoke more firmly. “I am here. Heed my voice.”

I took a step closer. “What did you miss, Ammatán?”

The old man — he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five — focused on me. “It was so obvious. We thought we had the demon in our power… we had the greater part of its name, the right offerings, performed all the correct rites and rituals… but we didn’t have the one thing it really wanted, did we? So simple, but we wouldn’t have even thought of it.” He frowned and his eyes, which were fogged and near white, stared past me. “I’m still trying to figure out when they made contact. Such a simple thing.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Didikas said. His voice seemed very cold.

“Liar.” Ammatán let out a rasping laugh. “I’ve frustrated you. There’s no greater sin…”

My mind raced over everything I knew. Ammatán had taken his father’s knowledge and gone rogue, joined a larger group of diabolists who held power over Samaoth. They’d infiltrated the Falcon Curia, and Samaoth replaced its god, or the Onsolain who posed as its god. The angel had vanished — been imprisoned or driven away, I’d assumed — leaving the city at the cult’s mercy.

Only, I’d not seen any cultists. Every cleric I’d encountered wielded angelic relics and possessed untainted aura. It hadn’t made any sense, especially since my first day in the city I’d watched Samaoth kill a whole group of dissenters using faux angel fire. The cathedral wasn’t suborned. The whole place remained hallowed, and if it hadn’t been for my abuse of Hamet, I’d never have gotten in alone.

“Who made contact?” I asked Ammatán. He just stared at me with dull, half-blind despair.

When this all started, the Magi across the known world had sensed a great movement of energies. Some kind of summoning, we’d assumed, or an escape attempt. It failed — if it hadn’t, the world would look very different.

“I put your theory to the test,” Ammatán was saying to his father. “You were right. We don’t have the right key… did you already know? I think you did. He says that you did.”

What it really wanted… want Samaoth truly wants.

Ah. Of course. No wonder they didn’t see it. No one would believe it of one of us.

“Didikas…” I started to speak a warning.

“Not now,” he snapped.

It was too late, anyway. The presence surged, and then descended. Above.

I moved on instinct, diving in front of the wizard and spreading my wings out to shield him. A bolt of silver fire struck me, and I only barely managed to turn it with a counterspell — so strong — and even just the barest touch of heat through my barrier from that divine fire elicited a gasp of pain.

It reeked of demon fire, but it burned like—

So obvious. I could have laughed at myself, had I not been in the midst of a great effort just then.

I was forced back several paces, and only Didikas’s gloved hand between my shoulderblades stopped me from going further. My whole body crackled with arcane runoff. A column of bright white flames erupted between us and the oracle, and in its center the shape of a massive dragonfly began to form.

“You will not touch him.”

“Samaoth,” I snarled as I began to weave my own attack. “You are beaten, whatever happens here! This city has turned against you.”

Samaoth-Burns-In-Silver rose up to their full height, insectile wings spreading out to match my own posture. The demon was huge, and strong, so strong…

Too strong. The argent flames rippling out from the spirit, lighting in the braziers and forming a ring about the edges of the sanctum, moved with too much intention.

“You’ve mastered it?” I asked in wonder.

Samaoth’s voice held no satisfaction. “With help.”

“You’ve ascended!” I felt on the verge of weeping. This was supposed to be impossible. So many had tried. I’d tried.

“Shyora!” Didikas shouted from behind me. I felt him drawing power, heard him incanting. I clapped my wings and flew straight up, clearing his sightline, and the wizard’s Art blasted through the room.

He cast a deep-blue thunderbolt of pure power. It struck the demon dead-on, hurling it across the sanctum and into the far wall, which held a great effigy of the Falcon. Samaoth hit it as a flashing comet of red-and-white energy, and smashed it to rubble. The whole cathedral trembled.

Ammatán was laughing. And weeping. “You knew! You knew, and you still… I was too weak. Even with the ceiling…

I alighted next to the wizard and folded my wings in. “That won’t be enough.”

Didikas was already preparing another Art. “I know.”

Across the room, Samaoth rose up on the same plinth the Falcon’s likeness had just occupied. His four metallic wings spread out wide, shining so brightly they formed a discus of argent light around him…

Just like a halo.

Didikas cast. His next Art was completely invisible to material senses, little more than a ripple in the fabric of reality that a human might perceive as a strange watery sensation in the air. It hit Samaoth, and the demon-saint immediately stiffened as reality itself bent and condensed around him. His form shrunk, and contorted, so it was like I suddenly looked at him through a funhouse mirror.

Didikas made a stabbing motion with his other hand, extending two fingers and shifting his entire body in the movement. The fractal-glass cage that’d encased Samaoth suddenly fractured into a thousand shards, which went spinning in every direction, embedding themselves into stone, tumbling across the floor.

A bead of sweat appeared on the wizard’s brow. That’d been a potent spell, and it cost him.

“He’ll reform,” I warned.

Already, the thousand fragments of glass were beginning to tremble.

“I’m aware,” the mage said tartly. “Secure my son, if you please.”

Ammatán was staring in open shock at the seemingly defeated demon, but when I flapped forward to land some paces away from him he lifted the feather and threatened me with it.

I held up my hands, wary of the thing. “I won’t hurt you.”

“You will,” he said in a forlorn voice. “You can’t do anything else.”

I gave him a sad smile, then bit him with my tail. The snake’s fangs sank through the material of his robe and into the meat of his right calf. He let out a cry and stumbled.

I’d meant to knock him out with a spell, but that sword would have protected him from almost any Art I knew. I turned to tell Didikas that the oracle was secure, but just then I felt another presence enter the room. It came as a mist that seeped through the doors, and a darkening of the moonlight through the skylight above. My breath misted in the murky air.

I turned to find Didikas standing very still, with the gleaming blade of a Bradivaran saif at his neck. A tall, gaunt man in a fine cape held the sword.

“Knight-Regent,” I greeted the vampire. “I take it my entertainment wasn’t to your liking, then?”

The man looked irritated, and his words were clipped. “Step away from the oracle, demon, or I shall take your master’s head.”

“And why do you think I care?” I lifted an eyebrow. “If he is my master, would I not want you to kill him and free me?”

I was being pedantic. This wasn’t the time for it, but I’d played tutor in the Ember Campanile for so long that it was second nature. Didikas gave me a look of sheer frustration.

I sighed. “Very well. Please don’t kill him.”

I stepped away from Ammatán, who was already incapacitated and mumbling from my venom. Zifar Ludriq took that in, and the shivering fragments of glass that had been the demon Samaoth.

“I know who you are,” I said.

Zifar Ludriq lifted his chin. He still hadn’t taken the sword from Didikas’s throat. “You are stalling.”

I smiled. “You are Shabhor, High Captain of Ahark and a great prince of the Harkri tribes. You fought Eudora of Torslowe nine centuries ago.”

His own smile was cold. “And lost. I fear I do not have your proper name, lady.”

“I am the demon, Shyora. Some know me as Tormentsister.” I gestured to Didikas. “That is mine. Please remove your metal.”

His hand didn’t so much as waver. Zifar Ludriq glanced at the wizard. “So, you are the fox. I should cut off your head.”

Didikas made a very slight motion, almost a shrug. The hood of his cloak made his expression hard to read, but I caught the glint of one copper-brown eye as it shifted towards the vampire. “You will suffer my death curse.”

“I’ve killed Magi before,” Zifar Ludriq said. Still, he hesitated.

“The fallen hero of Ahark and a failed demon-saint, partnered in a city ruled by a warrior of Heaven in hiding.” I spoke in a tone that dripped with mockery, though my thoughts were racing. “It’s rather droll for something so storybook. But tell me, Knight-Regent, for I’m so curious — where is the God-Saint? Where is the Falcon of Harkres?”

Beneath me, Ammatán let out a small sound that might have either been a laugh or a whimper. “He’s close. I was so close…”

I glanced down at him. He was already lost in the fever my poison induced, his eyes rolled up into his head and his face plastered with sweat.

Was I wrong?

“You’re protecting him,” I said aloud. “You and Samaoth.”

Zifar took his attention from the wizard, a look of surprise on his face. I was still looking at Ammatán, and at the angelic sword he still hadn’t let go of.

“‘The one thing he wanted,’” I said, repeating the oracle’s words. “The only thing Samaoth ever wanted was to stop suffering. The God-Saint healed them, didn’t he?”

The cult wasn’t here because they were all dead. The Falcon of Harkres freed Samaoth and the two made an alliance. And Zifar Ludriq, once Shabhor, had always been this land’s protector.

Zifar’s surprise confirmed my suspicion. And it distracted him long enough for Didikas to cast.

The cloaked Magi seemed to splinter, a very similar effect to the cage of phantasmal glass he’d trapped Samaoth in. One became five, and when Zifar dragged his sword to cut the mage’s throat, he only destroyed one of the mimics. The rest scattered, tumbling and spinning in a scatter of gleaming two-dimensional images.

Didikas laughed with many voices — a high, fey sound like some woodland trickster. I caught sight of the real one rising high up, cloak billowing out like dark wings and the jewel-headed scepter blazing with arcane light. The scatter of phantom glass and fractal copies formed a strange and sinister constellation around the wizard.

“Good, Shyora!” Didikas laughed. “Very good! I would not have guessed it myself, not so quickly.”

The fragments of glass that contained Samaoth’s scattered pieces were trembling harder. They would reform soon. Zifar cursed and wheeled on the wizard, his saif flashing as he began to transform into mist. Across the sanctum, fragments of arcane glass tumbled like bodies in an astral void. Each one was an entire world, a universe Didikas had created and copied a thousand times, and in each one a simulacrum of his will worked potent castings. Those fractal universes orbited the great mage as he rose up in a storm of flapping dark cloth and power.

I’d suspected him to be strong. Now, he seemed almost godlike, and I—

I am what I am, as I have said, and that is a covetous creature that leans towards power. Then and for some time after, I felt devotion. It blinded me to truths that should have been clear as accursed daylight.

Didikas thrust out one hand, two fingers and a thumb extended, and a spell even I could not perceive struck the very center of the room like an invisible hammer. It went beyond the merely physical, striking a great number of hidden locks and barriers and breaking all of them.

A Chthonian Nail, I thought. He just expended a very valuable thing for this.

And to dramatic effect. The beautiful marble floor, itself a treasure of the cathedral more than five centuries old, cracked and broke in a great webbing ruin. Flecks of stone flew everywhere in a reverse rain, many striking me and slicing skin. Other chunks of the floor fell away, and revealed it to be hollow.

Somewhere far below, a mass of white wings that were all curled into a ball throbbed like a feathery heart. And it curled further in on itself and shivered, afraid.

“There you are,” Didikas said. “I’ve found you, Artureon.”

I’d leapt back, using my wings to clear distance and get away from the rapidly growing hole in the center of the oracle’s sanctum. At the same time that Didikas had his attention fixed on the angel hiding underground, Zifar Ludriq reformed from mist on one of the columns, sword still in hand, and hurled his weapon at the wizard. The blade flashed like an arrow, thrown with inhuman accuracy. It must have been magicked, for it broke through several layers of wards and destroyed more than a dozen of the glass phantasms.

It missed its target, but it distracted Didikas and carved a deep gash across his right shoulder as he turned. He flinched, swept his scepter to take aim at the vampire.

As those two dueled, Samaoth reformed. The great dragonfly looked mercurial, like liquid silver. I turned and spread my wings in a hostile display. My tail hissed and spat venom.

Samaoth turned from me, and in that liquid mercury form, shot towards the half-conscious Ammatán. The demon flowed into the prematurely aged man, into his open mouth, his wide eyes, his ears. The oracle didn’t even have time to scream.

The demon rose, wearing Didikas’s son like clothes. Silver fire spilled from Ammatán’s skull. He should have been dead, but the violence of the possession and the mighty sword in his hand trapped his soul in that tortured flesh.

The angel feather should have expelled Samaoth from him, only… my kinsman held that same power, had bathed in it.

The thing underneath us taught them to use it.

“Traitor,” I spat. “They are our oppressors.”

Samaoth spoke through Ammatán’s mouth. “We oppress ourselves. I will be free of it.”

Rage like I’d not felt since we swarmed the walls of Heaven rose up to choke me, and then spilled out. The past millennium meant nothing. My hate was as fresh in that instant as it had been then. My body was often cold — I was cold-blooded — but that hate became heat, and I breathed it out as poisonous green fire.

The possessed mortal swung the angel feather and sent out a blast of void cold, the traditional weapon of the Onsolain, to douse the flames. That cold compacted into a line less than the width of a hair, a blade made from both ice and light. It severed me from scalp to pelvis, slicing me in half and freezing both halves into blocks of ice that shattered on the fracturing marble.

I died.

Or one of my shadows did. I’d used one of the scadudemons layered over my true form as a decoy. It was destroyed, but it redirected Samaoth’s attention. Even in the midst of wrath, I’d not forgotten my purpose.

The thoughts kept tumbling through my mind. Save the son. Save him, make the wizard grateful, make the wizard yours. Make him so grateful that he holds you like that priest held you when he thought you were his wife.

Hatred, fear, and longing are powerful emotions to all feel with such intensity at once, and they are like combustive powder to Kandaric sorcery. I began to weave something strong — not so strong as the wizard’s dimension-shattering Art, but still very potent.

The demonhost lifted the shining sword, aimed it like a baton, and power began to gather in it. I understood then that the reason for the angel’s apparent weakness must lie in that weapon. It had hidden itself and given its guardian a powerful tool using much of its strength, and then allowed Samaoth to masquerade as it all this time.

Because they were both alone. They were both afraid.

Neither angels nor demons are above those things.

They were both, essentially, Ammatán’s jailers. An ironic punishment for the one who’d intended to command them both.

Behind me, Didikas subdued Zifar Ludriq. My second set of eyes caught the end of the battle, watching the wizard knock his opponent into a column with a blast of power and then turn the stone to liquid, so the vampire sunk into it and then became trapped as the material turned solid again. A very old trick, and one he’d used to surprise me before, only turned from camouflage into a weapon.

I reformed on the other side of the new hole in the center of the sanctum. Ammatán-Samaoth stood at its edge, and Didikas near the entrance, so the demonhost stood a near equal distance between me and the wizard just as he turned and — seeing his son possessed — prepared another working.

I readied my own attack, but held it. Samaoth would be weakened from reforming, and once they emerged from their stolen body I would hit them with the strongest death curse I knew. An old favorite, and one I hadn’t used in a very long time. I’d even taken one of my names from it.

Demons do not have souls, and a soul is required to produce aura. We draw much of our strength by stealing it. Eat more and become stronger. Eat less and starve. The greatest demons keep larders of souls.

I’d not had a proper meal in many years. It would have made Harmodius uncomfortable about my employment. But I am a connoisseur, and I can sip fine wines and taste delicate fruits without killing my plants outright. I’d hoarded my strength for some time.

I shaped my Art, and waited for its target to come within my sight. Didikas was in perfect sync with me. He cast just as I finished my own shaping, thrusting his casting implement forward in a symbolic gesture, a mighty shove of will that would hurl Samaoth from their host. It was a complex and powerful technique, but it looked crude, and manifested as an outrush of air, a rolling disturbance of unsettled dust fast closing on its target.

All sorcery must have a physical incarnation. A vessel to carry the metaphor. A blade. An arrow. The more limitations an adept places on their magic, the more powerful they’re able to make the effect. Didikas made a deceptively slow wind. Ammatán’s feather-sword of light became a javelin of light, which he — which Samaoth — aimed at his father. The demohost had grown a mantle of insectile wings that shone like bleak starlight.

I made a cut between my breasts with one nail, reached inside, and close a hand around the cold lump of stone there. My other hand drew back.

The angel in the vault below reached up with its own power. It sucked the air in the sanctum down into the pit in a great cyclone of wind and killed Didikas’s banishment. Ammatán made the motion to throw.

I only had a split second to react. A moment, barely more than a single beat of a living heart. No ward or counterspell could have stopped that shining spear. It was nearly all of the angel’s power in one of its most ancient and direct forms. I’d like to say I deliberated, agonized, but it would be a foolish justification. There was no time to do any such thing.

Even still, a scream did escape my lips — one of sheer frustration, of rage at being thwarted. But I’d known Ammatán all of ten minutes of my millennia of existence. It wasn’t much of a choice.

I cast Heart-Thief. Ammatán’s heart was ripped from inside his chest and appeared in my outstretched hand. It wasn’t a flashy or impressive death. He just died. His throw went off course and missed Didikas by half the width of an arm. Blood bubbled out of his lips, the silver glow in his eyes winked out, and he went limp, falling into a heap at the edge of the pit.

I defeated a great demon and foiled a fallen angel’s plot.

I saved Didikas’s life.

I killed his son.

I failed.