Book 7: Chapter 4 - The Wings of the Goddess (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 4 - The Wings of the Goddess

To speak of the pain in one’s heart is to lessen it with each telling.

- An aphorism of the Empire.

It did not simply move, so much that it was born into this place, as the Angels and Devas had been before it, though in some twisted antithesis of their golden arrival. First came the unfurling of wings, vast and leathery, bat-like things that spread through the smoke and falling ash. Then came its roar, a great bellow of triumph that shook the ruined garden and seemed to press against the bones of the world.

I am here, it declared without words. I am.

It shook itself, and stone dust fell from its body like rain. A glorious mane framed its leonine head, wild and dark and matted with ash, while its eyes burned with a feline’s hatred and low cunning. Fur and scales covered it in uneven patches, as though several nightmares had been stitched together by a hand most interested in monstrous violence.

Behind it, a tail rose and coiled. Not a tail, not truly, but a great serpent’s head crowned its end, hissing as it tasted the air, its fangs wet with venom and hunger. This creature, this Chimera of things never meant to share one flesh, was not unknown to us. We had traded blows once, steel against scale. Against fang, venom, and acid. In my soul, in the midst of the numbers and names that were a testament to my power, I remembered it as it had become a part of our existence. 

It was a Manticore, or rather, it was the Manticore. And it had grown.

Manticore - [Chimarae lvl.37]

Health: 1859/1859

Stamina: 115/116

Mana: 13/13

Ereshkigal’s Toll (lvl.5)

Strike of the Seven Gates (lvl.5) 

Cuneiform Protection (lv.5)

A recast of Sage’s Sight confirmed what we had already felt in the marrow of our shared being. The skills and spells were unknown to us, things that were born from the language of ancient graves and older gods. Ereshkigal. Seven Gates. Cuneiform. Names with the weight of broken temples, burial pits, and kingdoms long since ground beneath time’s heel from a different world. More importantly, this beast was powerful.

We girded ourselves to fight yet another foe. But was this the aid Iasis had promised? Aid twisted into fresh mockery and insult? A rescue sharpened into yet another blade at our throat?

No matter, we thought. No matter.

For all our doubts, we found ourselves walking forward as the world around us slowed. The fused Angel still hung above the ruined garden, a many-winged obscenity of white flame and imperious judgment. Holy bolts continued to rain down upon us, but now they fell like rain against stone. Bright, loud, and insignificant, our Regeneration dealt with most of the damage. For the moment, at least.

This state would not last. Gifts from gods, even those bought at ruinous prices, were often fleeting things. A single breath of mercy before the debt came due.

So, we used Improved Dash. One moment, we stood amid scorched earth, blackened vegetation, and shattered stone. Then, the next, we were beside the creature.

We prepared for its attack, but none came.

Our hand found the Manticore’s hide, fingers sinking into a brutal mingling of fur, scale, and hard muscle. Heat rolled beneath its skin. Power too. Not the clean, sterile pressure of the Divine, but something older, bloodier, and more primal. A monster’s strength. A beast’s hatred. A thing born to bite, poison, claw, and rend.

Understanding came then, cold and certain. This was the aid we had been promised. These were to be our wings.

A part of us, a part of me, hated it. This was Deus Ex Machina, and this was cheating. However, the greater part of me just wanted to live, if only long enough to see my enemy before me fall.

We hauled ourselves onto the creature’s back, settling just behind its leonine head. The Manticore accepted our weight as though it had been made for that purpose, then threw back its mane and roared. The sound cracked across the ruined garden, scattering ash and ruin. It was not a noble cry. Not a song of heaven. It was raw hunger given a bestial voice.

Our armor shifted in answer. The Mimic spread subtle tendrils into the Manticore’s hide, not piercing, not wounding, but binding. A pact of flesh, monster, and will formed beneath us. We knew, with the certainty of instinct, that we would not fall while the creature still drew breath.

Then the normal pace of time resumed, and the holy barrage returned in full. So, we lifted Zariyah, the Dancing Blade, now crowned upon her shaft of solid air, and the Manticore’s batlike wings beat once with enough force to scour the ground beneath us.

Then we rose. Up from the cratered garden. Up through smoke, ash, and falling petals of black. Up toward the fused Angel that had thought the sky belonged to heaven. We soared to challenge it for dominion of the air.

It was a joyful feeling, and blood sang in our veins.

The sky opened around us, a vast and blue and pitiless blue. And for the first time since the Devas had taken flight, we were no longer a thing, trapped below, crawling upon the ground. My new mount beat its wings beneath us, each stroke powerful enough to make the air shudder. Muscle rolled under our armored thighs. Fur and scale shifted beneath the Mimic’s binding tendrils, and every movement of the beast passed into us as instinct. It did not fly like a bird. It flew like a thrown spear with wings, all hunger, violence, and spiteful purpose.

Something flashed across my inner eye.

You have learned Improved Riding (lvl.2).

You have gained 1 Luck.

Then, a moment later, as we executed a barrel roll, the world twisting and turning all around me.

You have learned Improved Riding (lvl.3).

You have gained 1 Dexterity.

We laughed, for this world was truly like a game. A game whose rules I was finally beginning to understand.

Almost as if in response to our aerial maneuvers, the many-winged Angel changed its tune.

The bolts of light no longer fell like rain. They came now in focused lances, bright lines of murder that split the air with surgical precision. We were forced to weave through them, the Manticore twisting, diving, and climbing with brutal grace. Holy fire passed close enough that we could feel its hateful heat. 

But evasion was always a game of chance, and we were hit more than once. One lance clipped the creature’s left wing, burning through leather and flesh. Another struck our shoulder and burst against the Mimic’s living plate, sending pain through us in a hot, shared pulse.

The Manticore and we bled together, our wounds closing rapidly, but not rapidly enough to outpace the damage being poured upon us. Regeneration dragged torn flesh back into place. The Mimic sealed cracks and hardened fresh plates over ruined ones. The Manticore’s burned wing stitched itself mid-beat with ugly, stubborn life. Yet each hit took its due. Each impact scoured away more and more Health. Each blade of holy light reminded us that the sky had not become safe merely because we had stolen entry into it.

You have learned Advanced Heavy Armor (lvl.2).

You have learned Improved Medium Armor (lvl.4).

You have gained 1 Constitution.

Again, I laughed at this small prize. Who would have thought that fighting heaven would be so rewarding? Did Lucifer, in times forgotten, turn upon God because he wanted more experience points? To improve his skills?

The Angel hovered above, vast and terrible, its many wings layered behind it. Its threefold face watched us with the serene disgust. Around it, circles of light turned within circles, each one inscribed with burning script that hurt to look upon. It lifted six hands at once, and the air between them filled with spears of fresh gold.

We drove the Manticore lower just as the volley came.

The lances screamed over our head, close enough that the heat of them scorched our helm and shaved yet more points from our Health. Then the Manticore folded its wings and dropped, and the broken garden rushed up beneath us. The Angel’s next barrage followed, curving downward at impossible angles.

“Faster!” we snarled.

The Manticore answered with a roar, and together we slipped the fresh assault by a hair’s breadth, skimming low across the surface as light tore the air behind us. But evasion alone would only delay the inevitable. We needed to strike back, or at the very least, find a way to weather the storm.

Its tail rose behind us, the serpent-head at its end hissing into the wind. A pattern of dark cuneiform script flared along the beast’s hide, old signs burning beneath its monstrous hide.

A lance of light struck an unseen barrier and shattered into golden rain. A second punched through, weakened but not stopped, and carved a molten line across our dark armor. Then a third struck the Manticore’s flank, and the beast snarled.

The Angel descended after us.

Good, I thought. 

Anything that closed the distance between us was good. Perhaps it did not know that a mortal thing can sometimes grow sharper when cornered. It seemed that Heaven did not teach its servants the habits of rats, wolves, or desperate men.

The Manticore snapped its wings open a breath above the broken garden. The force of it flattened ash outward in a black ring. Then we rose again, almost vertical, climbing back through the air as we turned to face our foe.

The Deva turned its infuriatingly serene gaze upon us and raised a hand as if to cast us down.

But it was too late. The Manticore accelerated with a speed it had not possessed before, as if some unseen hand had driven a spur into its flesh and closed the distance. Perhaps it had activated a skill akin to my own Improved Dash—some monstrous equivalent? In that singular moment, it simply did not matter.

Zariyah pulsed in our hand. The shaft of solid air hummed, invisible except where it bent the light, and the dagger at its head seemed almost eager. We lowered the lance beneath our arm, bracing it against the living plate of our side. The Mimic understood before thought had finished forming. Armor thickened along our ribs and shoulder, locking weapon, rider, and beast into one killing line.

The Manticore’s wings beat once, then twice, as the world narrowed.

There was no goddess laughing behind us, whispering hateful words. No dead men in halls of stone waiting to rot. No Werewolves with flashing fangs and claws. No House de Savant with all of its treachery. No Cardinal. No false promises of heaven. There was only the Angel above and the point of Zariyah aimed at its center.

The Angel raised another hand, and golden shields unfolded before it in perfect hexagonal panes that layered upon each other. The geometry was beautiful in the way that a killing equation was beautiful. Waves of gold and the raw stuff of the Entropy battled against each other we came ever closer. Behind the struggle, the three faces of the fused Deva stared down without fear.

Then we struck, and Zariyah’s hunger met the shield with the full force of several tons of monstrous hate behind her.

The world screamed as golden panes cracked outward from the point of impact, fractures racing through divine law. The lance of solid air shuddered in our grip, but it did not break. The Manticore roared beneath us, driving forward with all its monstrous momentum. The Mimic locked our hand in place. Our muscles tore, healed, and tore again. 

The shield held for one impossible heartbeat. Then it failed absolutely as Zariyah punched through the first golden lattice in an explosion of light and broken script. Then the next, then the next. The shock of it nearly tore the weapon from our grasp, but the Mimic tightened around our gauntlet, fusing flesh, armor, and will into one refusal. We drove onward to the most inevitable of all conclusions.

The Vessel Weapon struck the Angel in the chest.

You have gained 1 Strength.

For the first time, the thing did not merely recoil. It opened like a ripe fruit as it parted in layers of gold, white fire, and impossible anatomy. Zariyah sank deep, her blade vanishing into the fused Deva’s breast while the shaft of solid air carried the force of our charge after it. Light burst around the wound in furious torrents. It poured over our arms, across our helm, into the seams of the Mimic’s armor, burning as it went.

The Angel shrieked, and the sound was not pain alone. It was the sound of a commandment-breaking. It was the outrage of something that had believed itself above the reach of mud-born hands and had discovered, too late, that the creeping things’ talons could reach it.

We held on as the Manticore slammed bodily into the Angel, claws digging into living gold. Its serpent-tail struck again and again, spewing forth corrosive bile, its fangs scraping sparks from divine armor before finding a seam beneath one of the shifting faces. Venom hissed against holy light. The Angel’s many wings thrashed around us, feathers edged with burning script cutting through air, our armor, and our flesh alike. Our Health dropped, and the Manticore’s Health dropped with it. 

Still, we drove Zariyah deeper even as the Angel seized the shaft of the lance with four hands. Its fingers closed around solid air and somehow found purchase, divine strength grinding against the impossible weapon. The three faces shifted, one screaming, one silent, one staring at us with a hatred that was almost human.

Then the central face spoke, though no mortal tongue shaped the words, “Kneel”.

The meaning entered us like a nail.

For a moment, gravity changed. The command struck harder than any mace. The sky itself seemed to turn against us. The Manticore faltered. The Mimic’s plates compressed. Our bones bent beneath invisible pressure. Below, the ruined garden waited like an open grave.

We laughed into the Angel’s face. It was not a sane sound, for it was not meant to be. Was this what it was to be defeated?

Then, from below, a single black, impossible bolt hissed across the sky and struck one of the Angel’s faces. It screamed again, fresh, shrill, and wounded. The sound tore through the air like nails across slate.

“Wrong prayer,” we rasped as we then twisted the lance.

Zariyah answered with wicked delight, biting and twisting at the end of the lance and the wound widened. White fire and black shadow burst from the Angel’s back. Its wings spasmed, losing rhythm. The divine pressure shattered around us, and the Manticore beat its wings hard, dragging the impaled Angel sideways through the air.

Now, heaven was not above us, but on the end of our spear.