Chapter 200: The World in Gray

We didn’t make it far before the ash cloud lowered visibility to nothing. Worse, it carried faint traces of mana, rendering aura sight worthless. Even the shining crimson light from my wings reflected back at me, almost blinding.

By the time I’d put my magic together to blow the ash away, a blast of wind sent me into a cartwheel.

“MORDWELL!”

I felt Seyari’s wrath through the swirling ash and followed her echoing shout. Like jolting awake from a nightmare I emerged from the ash into a narrow column of clear sky. Further ahead, I caught a flash of crimson wings against the ash gray sky.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I took off after them, wondering why Sey had shouted.

I didn’t need to wonder long.

Dhias, how…

The creature, no, demon, pulling itself out of the shattered mountain was titanic. Taller than our castle—twice over—it looked almost humanoid. Which was honestly the worst part. If four arms were good and right and made for shoulders Seyari once called “dangerously attractive” then a few dozen arms certainly didn’t improve the look.

Nor did flesh that roiled with colors and textures and scales and feathers and fur and eyes and faces and—

I ripped my gaze away and shuddered, glad I couldn’t see its head through the ash cloud. Aura sight wasn’t needed to tell me this thing was terrifying, was more than anything I’d ever faced—more perhaps than Envy or Lilly. Fear and I were well acquainted, friends even.

Fear of being found out. Fear of having to kill. Fear of my loved ones dying.

This, though, was a primal fear, no less or more potent, but different. It came not just for others, but for me. For a too-long moment, I hung paralyzed in the thinning sky-trail left by Seyari. Flashbacks of all that I’d fought on my island. A titan scorpion in the Navanaean Desert. The demonic monstrosity in Lockmoth. Envy in Astrye.

Can I do this?

Can we do this?

Before I lost my chance to find out, I forced myself forward, gaining speed even as my hands clenched painfully around the axe I didn’t remember summoning.

I found Seyari at the end of the clear trail. Burning winds of cinders and embers were washing away the worst of the ash, revealing a horrific shadow, one leg already out of the mountain, its misshapen form pointed north.

Dhias, if it were to reach Astrye…

“He can’t be controlling it, right?” I shouted, my voice just barely audible over the wind and the incessant rumbling of the dying mountain.

Seyari’s lips were a thin line, her eyes wide and pupils pinpricks. “I hope. Can you stop it—stall it?”

I hefted the axe. Despite my fear, I couldn’t ignore all the fury boiling within me—not just my own either. Deep down, I wanted to fight this thing. To let loose in all the ways I just couldn’t around people. Unlike my other foes, this one I could fight with brute strength. Even from here, I could feel its fury: hot as magma and all-consuming.

A challenger.

I felt a hand wrap around one of the two I wasn’t using to hold my axe. “If anyone could see you now, they wouldn’t doubt for a moment what you are. And I mean that in the best way.”

When I turned to look at Seyari, my gaze had to pass through a wreath of crimson flames. She was smiling, more than a little viciously, but her eyes were kind. Sane. Pupils just a little wider, a little more aware.

She glanced down at the lee side of the mountain, at the small, dark hole of a cave sticking out amidst the ash-covered rocks. Then she looked back up at me, her smile lovely and pointed. “Shall we?”

Fear and anxiety melted into burning anticipation and I returned her smile with a razor-toothed one of my own. “Let’s.”

We spun away from each other, Seyari up toward the top of the ash cloud, and me down into a dive. Pulling my wings of flame in, I held my axe against my body, its blades by my ankles and under my trailing, burning tail.

I turned that limb to steer, and like a comet, I flew straight toward the tangled mass of galleon-sized limbs at such a speed that the air around me felt like molasses.

My axe, my fire, my claws?

No, I did have quite the habit of bumping my horns into things.

When I hit, it was like headbutting a mountain. And the mountain lost. Bone shattered, flesh splattered. Impact after impact after impact.

The mass tilted, and me along with it. Half-flayed muscles snapped to life; limbs reached for me even before a horrifying atonal roar split the air. It was like someone hitting all the keys of a massive, out-of-tune pipe organ. I swung my axe, kicked my legs, tore with my free claws and shoved off, back into the sky.

Only for something to grip my tail so hard I felt the bones snap. I whipped around with my wings, grimacing at the grinding from my broken tailbones. One misshapen hand raked at me, and I blocked it with my axe; another, larger than my childhood house, reached out to crush me.

Brilliant, blinding light erupted as Seyari’s magic tore through the limbs assaulting me. For a moment, my tail slipped free, and I took that chance. Up was a different direction, but I moved that way anyway, spinning midair to look at our foe.

It was falling. Topheavy and off-balance, it teetered outside the mountain.

For the first time, I got a look at its head. Faces covered the misshapen lump at odd angles—hundreds of them, thousands maybe. And they were all looking directly at me, screaming in rage, as the monstrosity fell.

Cracks and crunches rent the air, new limbs shooting out from the mass around its torso and breaking the fall even as the old “legs” shrank and receded. My mind felt so ill that my body almost obliged it.

Almost.

With Seyari slinging magic from above, I dove into the fight with unrestrained glee. Hack and slash and dodge and block. Like the world’s scariest gnat fighting the world’s scariest bear. Not a great analogy, and terribly unfair to bears, but I was fighting limbs bigger around than most buildings were tall and I couldn’t exactly think of a better analogy.

Flames seemed to do little to the monstrosity, my axe not sizzling as my fury hoped it would. So I poured in more heat until flames wreathed me for meters around. Those worked, if barely, scorching skin and flesh alike. I didn’t dare touch its fury, because I could feel the roiling instability from here.

This was a reaver—a huge one. And killing it would do more to blast away the nearest few mountains than grant me power… probably.

For a blissful minute, the fight felt like a vindication of my pitiable performance against the monstrosity in Lockmoth. It was fast, but I was faster.

Until I wasn’t.

“Renna!” Sey shouted. “Get back!”

I didn’t hesitate, but I wasn’t fast enough.

Whatever power it’d been gathering, it had found, and a wall of pure mana shoved Sey and I back, reeling through the sky. A kaleidoscopic wall of aspects that burned with lightning and crushed with water and cut with wind and froze with ice. By the time I’d righted, I could feel my own magic sluggishly fixing myself.

Seyari was worse off, but before I could make my way to her, she lit up like a beacon and I watched her broken wings snap into place as she screamed in raw fury. Like a shot out of a cannon, she threw herself into the thick sludge of magic blocking our path, even as it began to recede.

I caught her when she bounced back. “What’s—”

“Look,” Sey hissed.

So I did.

What I hadn’t noticed during the fight was that what I’d been fighting hadn’t just been a mindless mass, it’d been forming into something. Through the haze, flesh flowed and bones twisted, warping impossibly into a distinct figure. From its back, horrid wings with feathers of flesh emerged, as the limbs shrunk to two long, clawed arms. With almost human legs and a torso, the effect was uncannily like that of an angel with red-orange skin.

If an angel was made by something that didn’t quite understand even human anatomy. Unfortunately, the faces on the head settled into three mostly human ones, with ragged hair flowing down to its back. Flames surrounding it flowed into a mockery of priestly robes and a dark red staff long enough to make even the tallest trees look like toothpicks.

Sey fired a holy lance into the receding magic, but it disintegrated. “Damnit. Renna, can you burn it?”

I recalled how resistant to fire it was. “Maybe—but it’s not gonna kill it, they, whatever this thing is, in one shot.”

She swore again and dragged me forward by my arm, wings flapping furiously. When I pulled a little of her anger, her wingbeats slowed, and Sey took a deep breath.

“Thanks. Head’s a little clearer.”

I looked at her and gave the most feral grin I could. “We can kill it.”

“No…”

“We totally—”

“No—Renna!” Her eyes were wide as saucers.

I snapped my head back toward the transformed demon. Behind them, through the magic-filled air, I could see a long, tall opening seemingly half buried in the smoking caldera. Red sand spewed out as if driven by a searing wind, and it didn’t take a genius to know where the portal led.

Even now, the shimmering edges were opening wider.

Sey’s fist squeezed down hard on mine. “We have to find him. Close it.’

Almost as if spurred on by her words, the titanic demon’s horrifying wings flapped, kicking up a plume of ash, and somehow sending the monstrosity skyward.

My heart plummeted as I watched them pivot to a flying position and take off toward the north. “Shit.”

Sey let go of my hand, her fingers trailing against mine. “Go after it.”

When I looked at her, she met my gaze with steady eyes. Though they glowed and I could feel the raw fury washing off her, the angel of wrath I married held no mania in her eyes.

“Alright.”

Her scowl lightened, but we didn’t let the moment linger. Time was not on our side; it never had been and wouldn’t ever be until Envy, not just Mordwell, was dead and gone.

Splitting apart, we took off in different directions, Sey toward the ruined mountain and me toward a demon so large that their wings could cast a city into shade.

Into that shadow was where I flew, a speck of burning crimson set against shades of gray. The ash here was thinner, swirling about in the wake of immense wingbeats.

Think, Renna. You need an actual plan for this! They weren’t immune to fire, or at least their other form wasn’t. But I doubted I could incinerate them, or that they’d let me try. Neck or heart then. Their armor looked just as real as my own, and dozens of times as thick, but the neck was uncovered.

Changing course, I soared up above the titanic demon, and flew from feet towards head. One immense eye from a face on the side of their head turned towards me, and the air ignited.

Flames much like my own roared and swirled and I’d imagine if I weren’t immune they’d burn me to a crisp. Unfortunately for them, all the attack did was impair my vision.

Which meant I didn’t notice them rolling until one fleshy wing was a meter from my face. I braced with my axe, the blade bit in, and I was sent careening toward the side of a mountain.

“UNWORTHY.”

The word of challenge boomed in triplicate, loud as an avalanche and twice as deep. It was the last thing I heard before my back hit rock hard enough to shatter my spine and form a crater a dozen meters wide.

Unworthy? After all I’ve done! And I didn’t even need to destroy the mountain to be rebirthed out of it!

Wrath called to me, and I listened. Let it suffuse me and when I opened my eyes, the world had gone from gray to crimson with one big, flying stain marring the canvas.

I was kicking off the cratered-in wall of rock before my spine had even snapped back into place. With a roar of challenge, I flew at them, axe first. They met me in the air, hovering like a twisted angel with six burning, crimson eyes.

“PATHETIC.” Behind their forced calm, their own wrath roared to meet my own, like a building storm.

The staff came down, like a falling tower, and I swung to meet it. My axe carved through, but its sheer size was something I couldn’t stop.

“INSECT.”

This time I didn’t hit the mountain. I rolled, instead. Tail as a counterweight and claws of my free hands for grip, I cartwheeled over and onto the flaming staff, holding on with my lower two hands and the claws of my feet.

Not a second later, a sky-obscuring hand reached toward me.

Six limbs or not, this is one insect you’re not going to crush.

Any other time I’d be scared. I’d look at that hand and think that I couldn’t possibly match its might. Here, now, with Seyari forced to fight Mordwell and Lorelei alone, and with my Wrath burning against the underling who dared to contest my right, I tossed my axe aside and braced.

With four limbs gripping the staff, I met the hand with my two upper arms, palms outstretched. The force hit me and my bones creaked. They should’ve broken, shattered, and left me nothing but a stain.

Instead, I pushed back, and up. My claws that must’ve felt to them like pinpricks burned and charred flesh, and I could see the green-tinged glow of my gem in the tiny space I’d made for myself.

If I can burn it…

I started channeling my mana, pulling on everything I had even as the titanic demon pressed harder, intent on squashing me. The spell didn’t need to kill them, just give me an opening.

Second felt like minutes as the power built and the spell formed around me.

“WORTHLESS.”

Yeah, like you’d get me with that. I’ve got loving friends and family and people who rely on me. I’m not some island of power too paranoid and weak to trust and delegate. I’m also not above matching egotistical pedantry like for like.

I am Zarenna Miller, Zerix’Arranthariel, Sovereign of Wrath, Wife, Mother, Sister, Marchioness, aspiring blacksmith, and brilliant artist of puns!

Through my hands and through my claws, the spell exploded outward.

And the demon screamed. Flesh burned to bone burned to ash, and the night sky above revealed the orange tint of sunrise through crimson flames. Mine were different—hotter. There was something else to my flames, and I didn’t stick around to study what it might be.

Tail like a spring, I kicked off the staff and launched skyward, aiming for the neck as wide as a city block. Behind me, the flames tore through the staff and ran up the arm that’d tried to crush me. From a glance, it was crumbling to ash.

And in the eyes above me, shining bright under the hatred they burned with, I thought I saw fear.

From three open, fang-lined maws spewed other kinds of magic. Not as strong as their fire, but a lot more dangerous. Lightning bolts grazed me as I dodged and rolled, ice froze the tip of my tail, and a spear of rock took me through the leg and sent me tumbling.

With the sound of tearing flesh, I watched, upside down, as their wings split into hundreds of tendrils. Wind the likes of which Seyari could barely produce welled up from below, keeping the titan airborne even as they reached for me with a dozen malformed limbs, their faces twisted into a rictus of fury and agony. Magic coated each limb, a dizzying array of bright flashes that forced me to end my aura sight.

Flaring my wings, I summoned my axe into my hands and dove to one side, only for the wind to batter me back into the line of fire. A sparking tendril grabbed my bad leg and the world went from gray to white. Muscles spasmed and locked; my scream faded into a hushed gasp.

Wide-eyed, I stared at the limbs coming for me, tipped with claws and fangs. Barely, I managed to drive them back with a burst of fire. Reprieve was only temporary, but it was enough to feel my arms again.

With claws and axe, I slashed down at the tendril holding my leg. Dark blood sprayed as it severed, and I threw my wings forward, skating back out of the way of another burst of magic.

My own wind was barely able to hold off against the titan’s magic, and my fire magic sputtered. I wasn’t tapped out yet, but I was close.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to come up with a plan, as I had to either dodge or be ripped apart. Still, I took hits, and even though I gave as good as I got, slashing a dozen tendrils didn’t do much against a hundred.

And I only had four arms.

Carefully, I tried to push my way forward, to barrel through the thicket of sharp-tipped flesh toward my prize. They either couldn’t shift their body enough to cover their neck, or this was all a feint and I might actually die.

I can’t let this thing take my title.

Still fighting, I thought back to my island, to the ancient chapel where I’d gotten my name. Some Sovereign of Wrath had tried to make a proper life there, for them and for others, and they’d chosen me somehow. What I was doing in Astrye mirrored that, Carvalon’s leash or not.

With one last surge of magic, I breathed out a line of flames, as hot as I could make them. Tendrils burned to cinders and I crashed through like a boulder through a wooden wall.

The neck! I’m through!

I surged forward, only to be stopped dead when something grabbed my tail. Spikes pierced up and down its length, and I could feel the warped limb reaching up toward my torso spike by spike.

In front, the head lowered and crimson eyes full of fury and hate bored into me, even as a fanged maw with far too many rows of teeth opened below.

I didn’t have more than a moment to think, and I knew what had to happen. Shit, this is gonna hurt.

Closing my eyes and clenching my jaw, I brought my axe around and behind me even as I put everything I had into pushing forward toward the open mouth. I was a little proud that my tail gave the blade some resistance, that it almost caught on my spine before cleaving through.

My scream died behind clenched teeth and against a wall of air as I shot forward so fast that the air boomed out in protest. Past rows of teeth as tall as I was I flew down, into a throat that was far from humanoid.

Why are there teeth in here!

In a panic, I swung for the side of the throat and my axe caught. Just below me, down where my tail would have been, the throat clenched and sharp teeth gleamed wickedly in the light of my fire. They shivered at each splatter of my blood that hit them

Turning away, I tore into the throat wall with a raw sort of fury, axe and claws flashing. Blood sprayed like a broken dam.

“NO!” They shouted, the word filled with anguish and loud enough to rattle my bones as it rushed past me.

“Yes!” I roared back, leaving the “Renna” before the word unsaid.

Swing, blood, swing, blood. The flesh around me warped, reaching for me, forming spikes of bone to cut me. But it wasn’t enough, wasn’t fast enough. I cut off protrusions, tore out forming teeth, burned and scorched where my dwindling mana could. The flesh tried to knit closed around me, but everywhere I’d torn into was charred and blackened. I was butcher and lumberjack, hacking away until I’d severed everything.

The next swing hit an artery, and the spray of blood nearly shoved me back out into the throat. At the last second, my wind magic managed to shove the spray to one side. We were falling now, it felt like, but I couldn’t tell at what angle.

A scream rattled the walls and my skull. The throat slammed forward like it’d been hit. Are they hitting themselves to try to crush me?

Unfortunately, it worked. My legs were pinned, one arm broken.

The next strike hit tendons, then bone.

They slammed me again, and my wind magic lost cohesion. Blood fountained up, quickly filling the space, and another arm snapped to dangle uselessly. Blackness crept into the edges of my vision as I felt mana exhaustion only a few seconds away.

Not yet!

Two arms were still free, and I didn’t need to brace if I was already held like wood in a vise. In front of me, the demon’s exposed spine was immense. I’d long run out of metaphors, but it was a lot wider than I was tall and I had to make that less true and that was all I needed to know.

From here, it ceased to be a fight. It wasn’t a gnat versus a titan. It was a big, angry woman with an axe chopping down a macabre analogy of a tree while the tree tore all its roots out trying to stop its end.

My last swing was with a single, partially broken arm, fueled by my last breath before blood covered my face.

When my axe struck home, I felt the snap across my whole battered body and the flesh around me loosened. Their screams stopped, and I was too tired to pick up where they’d left off even if the pain made it tough to think about anything else.

This thing’s soul, their aura, had been a churning, sickly mass of half-congealed souls. Which meant that when they died, a good chunk of the power that should have been mine by right became a violent eruption at least as strong as what had destroyed the mountain.

I knew it’d happen, but I hadn't had the luxury of changing tack to anticipate it.

From my last swing to looking at the sunrise seconds later, my memory was missing. All of my remaining limbs were broken, my axe and armor had gone when my magic fizzled out, everything was covered in half-burned blood, and the sky was a fine mist of out-of-control magic and meat chunks.

I hit the ground before I could figure out my wings, and the power hit me a moment later, agony forcing me awake. From one eye, I could see the mountain, still smoking, and the portal to the demonic plane, still shimmering.

Sey needs me.

With my one half-good arm, I started dragging myself back toward the mountain.