BLASPHEMIA 7

Blasphemia CHAPTER SEVEN

A cold silence filled the cathedral as Azagthoth walked among the unconscious thralls, his bare feet echoing against the tile floor. He looked around him dispassionately at Nico and Filia’s handiwork. His eyes lingered upon the Angels. “The marks actually worked on the Seraphim. How interesting. I was expecting they’d kill you both.”

Filia was still feeling nauseous from having her power drained, and was slow in getting to her feet. Her discomfort, however, paled in comparison to the growing hostility in her gut. “What are you playing at, old man?” she snarled.

Azagthoth smiled again. “Age is relative, my dear. And I am very old indeed.”

“Uh… what?”

Azagthoth made a come hither motion with his fingers, and Filia immediately felt her insides twist into knots. She dropped to her knees and clutched her stomach. Beside her, Nico groaned and writhed, his sweat smearing on the tile as his legs kicked.

Filia fought to raise her head through the unbearable nausea, looking Azagthoth in the eye. “What’s the meaning of this?” she asked again.

“It’s simply the demon way, is it not?” Azagthoth said, striding forward and stepped over her like she was a well-used doormat, the kind that would only sully your feet even more. “We rise, we tear each other down, and the cycle repeats. That’s the real reason we’re never going to get out of the Pit, you know.” He cast his eyes around the empty, high-vaulted ceiling of the church. “But Satan keeps it that way because it means nobody can ever get anywhere close to him. Well, until today that is.”

“Quit talking in riddles!” Filia snapped at him.

Azagthoth stood over the prone body of Lily, her newborn wings still lying limp across her shoulders. “Do you think I sent you to this place at random?” Azagthoth said. “I could’ve picked any religious college in the world – there are ones hidden away in the woods of Europe, full of far more luscious creatures than the ones to be found here. No, I sent you here for one specific reason. Her.” His wing dipped and brushed along Lily’s spine.

“Is she Nephilim?” Filia asked.

Azagthoth laughed. “This shell is no mere half-breed like the demon hunter buried in one of the fuck piles over there. No, she is something far greater. Something that Satan would dearly love to have at his side again. Don’t make me spell it out for you, dear Filia.”

Filia bared her teeth, then looked at Lily. She studied the two wings, the tail, the bare bits of naked flesh that she could see. “She’s a mutant, I don’t know.”

Azagthoth raised an eyebrow. “A what now?”

“A mutant. You know, like from the X-Men.” Filia managed a smug grin at Azagthoth’s look of bewilderment. “You should’ve come out of that castle more when we had movie night, old man.”

The fallen angel rolled his eyes. “You know what, after that, I’m not even going to tell you who she really is. I’m just going to take her and leave, and neither of you can do anything to stop me. She’s absorbed all of that power you spent these past few weeks so generously accruing for her, so thank you for that, by the way.”

“You prick!” Filia felt her hatred flow through her body, the rage burning like the core of a train engine. Her shadows wrapped around her, and she flapped her wings hard, crossing the space between her and Azagthoth in a heartbeat.

He swatted her as though she were a fly, as if he were brushing her off his shoulder. But his slap reversed Filia’s momentum in an instant, hurling her backwards into the space above the altar where the crucifix had hung. Masonry crumbled underneath her as her body compacted the stone several inches deep. Filia felt pain, but her fury was unabated.

And then it was bated as Azagthoth ripped a chunk of stone from the floor, super heated it into a sliver three feet long and an inch wide, then threw it at Filia and speared her through the midriff. Filia’s howl of pain echoed through the cathedral.

“Insolent little harpy,” Azagthoth said. He reached down and picked up Lily, throwing her over his shoulder like a burlap sack. “That should keep you put until… well.”

Filia’s hands closed around the rock spear, trying hurriedly to pull it out of her gut. “Until what?” she ground out, blood running from her mouth.

Azagthoth only laughed, not even bothering to turn his head around. He strode out the front doors of the cathedral as if he owned the place, and an ethereal, dark gateway coalesced into existence in front of him. The moment before he stepped through, Filia saw Lily raise her head. They locked eyes for a moment. And then both Azagthoth and Lily were gone.

As soon as the portal closed, Nico took a deep, shuddering breath, putting his hands on his stomach. “Fires, that was the actual worst,” he groaned.

“Nico, if you could yank this thing out of me that would be absolutely fucking grand,” Filia grunted. “Normally I like males sticking things into me, but this takes it a bit further than I’d like.”

The demon got to his feet and took a few shaky steps towards her. He did a little hop-skip, then yelped in surprise as he face planted on the altar carpet. “My wings are gone,” he said, as if his brain was taking stock of what he had and didn’t have in regards to limbs.

“Yeah, we’re back to where we started,” Filia said. She screamed as pain overwhelmed her, going limp. “Nico, seriously!”

“Coming, coming!” Nico looked around him wildly. “Fucking hell, I think we burned everything that I could use to get up to you.”

“Not your fault,” Filia said. She forced a grin. “We didn’t exactly plan for this.”

“Did we plan for anything?”

The stone was now slick with her blood, beads of it collecting and dripping down around Nico like crimson rain. “Not really, no,” she admitted.

Nico closed his eyes. “It was nice feeling invincible, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Filia lifted her head, looking out over the church. “Oh, Fires.”

Nico turned. He felt a chill shoot through his body.

The thralls were getting back up, but no rune burned bright on their skin, merely a small scar, soft pink against the rest of their flesh where the demon’s fingers had pressed the rune into their being. The humans were in a daze, blinking and looking at one another slowly as if waking from a dream.

But there were four that were already on their feet: three naked Angels, and one extremely pissed-off Nephilim demon hunter.

“If looks could kill,” Filia remarked, her voice thick with pain.

“Maybe don’t mention killing with her in earshot?” Nico suggested.

Judith’s hand snapped out, and her long dagger came whistling across the quad, through the open doors and into her hand. “Oho, I don’t need a reminder,” she said. “When I’m done with the pair of you there will be no amount of magic in Hell that can put you back together!”

Judith roared and sprinted towards them, her feet slapping on the tile floor. The Angel’s followed behind her, their holy weapons flashing into being. Nico summoned a sword and stood his ground, knowing there was nowhere left to run. In that moment, Filia realized two things.

One, they were both about to be smote from existence.

Two, she could hear a crow cawing.

A chunk of the ceiling imploded, making Judith and the Angels stop in their tracks. A humanoid figure dropped through the hole. He landed atop the rubble, then turned and surveyed the damage around him for a moment.

“Who was on the other side of that ceiling?” he asked. His voice was like a black snake, sinuous and oily. It was a stark contrast to his rather un-threatening outfit – denim jacket, blue jeans, a pair of worn black cowboy boots, sunglasses with thick frames. Slowly, he reached up and brushed some his shoulder-length black hair away from his face. “Was it the Archangel? I really hope it was the Archangel.”

A cry of abject terror went up from the Angels, who squawked and recoiled from the newcomer, their wings flaring wide as their eyes darted around the room in terror. Judith’s mouth dropped open, the dagger falling from her trembling fingers to clatter on the floor. “No…” she gasped. “It can’t be.”

The Infernals were confused. Then, after a moment, the rest of the figure arrived. It took the form of a presence that flitted through the hole in the ceiling like a loyal hound, splashing down over the man and bubbling outward like an ooze. Filia heard the screams of the damned, smelt the brimstone of Hell, a smell almost foreign to her now. Emotions washed over her – arrogance, indulgence, fury, and a pure, intense, visceral hatred, old and terrible. With that hatred came purpose, and, to Filia, clarity. She’d never seen him before, but she knew who he was.

The sunglasses came off, and two eyes looked back at her and Nico. Rather than human eyes, they were deep pits of shadow, ash, and fire, a kaleidoscope vision of Hell.

“Now then,” Satan said. “What am I going to do with the pair of you?”

To their credit, Judith and the Angels recovered rather quickly from the sight of their greatest enemy appearing before them. Five seconds after Satan asked his question, four thrown weapons split the air and pierced his body.

Satan looked down at the pointy bits protruding from his form, then turned. “Good throws all around!” he said. “Excellent marksmanship!”

Judith’s mouth dropped open.

Satan yanked her dagger out and tossed it back to her, and the Nephilim caught it out of reflex. “Not the time for it, though, I’ll get to you lot in a minute,” Satan said. He shattered the hafts of the holy lances with a sweep of his arm, yanking the bladed parts out the other side of himself with crunching noises before he crushed them in his palm. “Just need to get my own ducks in a row first.”

The Angels were nothing short of flabbergasted.

Filia tried again in vain to yank the rock spear out of her body. Satan snapped his fingers, and the spear ripped itself out of the wall, taking Filia with it. She shrieked in pain again before gravity did it’s job and she fell into Nico’s waiting arms. “My hero,” she muttered, looking down at the gaping hole in her belly.

Satan’s boots crunched on crumbled masonry as he walked down the pile towards the two of them. His hands were half in the pockets of his jeans, his thumbs hooked through the belt loops. Dimly, Filia realized his belt buckle was a grinning skull. How absolutely tacky.

“You know,” Satan said. “The two of you pissed me off at first. When you left Hell, I was livid that you’d disobeyed my orders.”

“You knew?” Nico asked.

“Of course I knew!” Satan actually looked offended at the idea. “You think anyone passes wind down there and I don’t know about it? That realm has been mine ever since it’s genesis, there is nothing that can be hidden from me there. It’s-”

He stopped talking as the silver blade of Judith’s dagger burst from his chest in a spray of black ichor, and looked down at the blade as if it were a minor annoyance rather than a wound that would be lethal to most other Infernals. He sighed. “You’re not getting it back this time, Nephilim.”

“Like you could keep it from me!” Judith’s hand snapped out to call her blade back.

Satan bent the dagger at a right angle right along the middle of the blade, so that as the weapon tried to go back to it’s mistress it simply strained against Satan’s body, then stopped it’s recall. “You can have your little poking stick back when you behave,” he said, as if scolding a child.

“You mock me!” Judith sounded equal parts confused, terrified, and furious.

“Just stay still for a few minutes,” Satan said, finally deigning to turn around and look at them. “Much as it kills me to admit it I’m probably going to need your help for something.”

“I…” Judith trailed off. “What?”

“If you just let me explain, Christ,” Satan said. “Anyways, you two.” He turned back to the Infernals. “You two pissed me off at first, but then you started actually getting somewhere up here. Gotta admit, the fact that you two weren’t completely overwhelmed by Azagthoth’s loaned power and were able to bend it to your own use is rather impressive.”

Filia’s wound was starting to heal slowly, the flesh of her gut pulling itself back together. “And why’s that?”

“Because he’s much, much older than you both,” Satan said. “His power should’ve overwhelmed your own, twisted you into creatures that answered to him, yet the both of you seem well in control of your own selves.” He reached up and drew his sunglasses down a little so they could see the swirling, ashen pits of his eyes. “For the both of you to use the power of the Fallen to amplify your own abilities is very curious indeed. Maybe Azagthoth’s losing his potency.”

“But what about Lily?” Nico asked. “What happened when we… how did she grow the wings and the tail? Why did Azagthoth take her?”

“Oh come on, you two, it’s really freaking obvious,” Judith said, still holding out her hand to try to get the dagger to come back to her. “She’s Nephilim.”

“Not quite,” Satan said. “Also, you can do that until the heat death of the universe, the dagger is not coming back.”

“I’m very stubborn,” Judith snarled.

Satan laughed. “No wonder you were able to fight through the thrall rune.”

“Lord Satan!” Filia said. She tapped Nico on the shoulder, and he set her on her feet. “Why. Did he take. Lily?”

Satan pushed his glasses up his nose. “Because that girl holds an ancient soul within her, one I hadn’t caught a whiff of in millennia because she was lost to me.” He craned his head back and looked out the hole in the church ceiling. “Lilith.”

“Mother of Demons?” Nico asked.

“Yep.”

“The Serpent Queen?” Filia asked.

“Bingo.”

“First wife of Adam?” Judith asked.

“First wife, and first adulteress too,” Satan snickered. “Adam was a right prick and wanted her to be subservient to him, and she fucked right off after that. She was one of my oldest allies during the Genesis period, helped me out a lot until Gabriel and Michael finally tracked her down and smote her. They managed to make it so that her soul never passed into Hell, and I’ve been trying to track it down ever since in between all the other plots I’ve got going.” He tapped the side of his head. “Got a lot of moving parts in the Great War to keep track of. But you two plowing her seemed to wake up the dormant soul. Problem is, Azagthoth beat me to it.”

“How did he beat you here?” Nico asked.

“Let’s just say he’s a tricky bastard and leave it at that,” Satan said, sounding like he was avoiding the question. “Kinda is a defining thing down in Hell, you know?”

“So why does he need her?”

“Well, presumably he’s going to do unspeakable things to her unconscious body and probably try to siphon her power into his own being so he’ll finally measure up to me in a fight.” Satan ran a hand through his hair. “And frankly, I’m not about to budge off the throne of Hell anytime soon. If anyone’s winning the Long War, it’s going to be me. God is mine to overthrow, and nobody else’s.”

“Like Hell,” Judith said, planting her feet. Satan let out a small snicker. “You think you can just appear before us, Great Enemy, and we’re just going to let you leave?”

Satan arched an eyebrow. “You do realize I could kill you in half the time and twice the effort it takes to sneeze, correct? And the only reason I’m not is because even that sounds like an effort I’m not willing to expend?”

“I care not for your reasons,” Judith said, thrusting out her chin defiantly. “I swore an oath to combat you, and here you stand before me. My path is clear!”

Satan stared at the demon hunter for a solid five seconds, and Nico and Filia braced themselves, thinking that the church floor was about to get a new coat of Judith inside-colored paint. But, to their shock, Satan broke into a fit of deep laughter. “And that’s your demon pride coming to the fore, well done, little Nephilim, well done indeed! Tell you what.”

He ripped Judith’s silver dagger from his body with a sickening wet crunch. A quick shake sent the black ichor flying off the weapon, and he bent it back into it’s straight shape with his bare hands. He ran a finger over an unblemished spot of the blade near where it met the cross guard, smoke rising from the metal where his finger touched. With a flick of his wrist he tossed it back to Judith. “I won’t smite you and the three little baby birds over there right now, and in exchange, you get to help me put down Azagthoth. Sound fair?”

Judith studied the dagger for a few moments, then fixed her eyes on Satan. “Gee, coming from the Lord of Lies, I’m not so sure,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Look, you have the holy weapons that will really fuck him up, okay?” Satan said, sounding tired. “Me and the two sexpots over here can kill him the old fashioned way, but you’d make the job incredibly easier, and I’m all for working smarter instead of harder. Plus…” He held out a hand to them, palm up. “You help me with this, I’ll owe you a favor. And a favor from me is nothing to sneeze at.”

“Absolutely not!” Hyperia and Calliope chorused.

“Nay!” cried Galimian.

To Filia’s surprise, Judith’s answer was a begrudged, “Alright.”

The Angels turned to her. “Hunter,” Hyperia said. “You cannot be serious.”

“I already know what my fate will be,” Judith said. “I’ve got one foot in Hell already by virtue of my blood, what’s another toe or two by taking his offer? Besides.” She tested the dagger’s edge against her palm. “I’m in a bad mood. I mean a really bad mood. And I don’t think I’m going to be allowed to kill the sexpots over there.”

“Nah, kinda need ’em,” Satan said.

“Exactly. So killing Azagthoth, one of the foremost of the Fallen, will have to do. Besides, a dead demon is a dead demon” She fixed her gaze on the lenses of Satan’s glasses. “I’m in.”

“Is it weird that I’m incredibly turned on by her right now?” Filia whispered to Nico. The demon tried and failed to suppress a snort of laughter at Judith’s abject disgust.

“Well, now that things are all hunky dory, we should get out of here,” Satan said. He snapped his fingers. The rubble from the ceiling lifted into the air and stacked itself into the rough approximation of a gateway. Dark shadows flickered to life within it’s frame. “The humans are going to be waking up soon and I’m really awkward about explaining things.”

“Where are we going?” Nico asked.

“Purgatory!” Satan said cheerily.

Judith stomped up the altar to stand with them, glaring daggers at Filia. The succubus licked her lips, and Judith sighed. “God, I already regret this decision.”

“Too late!” Satan snapped his fingers again, and three lengths of shadow tinged with embers whipped out of the gateway and wrapped around Judith’s waist. Her curse was cut off sharply as she was yanked into the miasma. “After you!”

Nico and Filia looked at each other. “You know, this is not how I imagined today going,” Filia said.

“Me too,” Nico agreed. “But you know… we wanted something to happen, right?”

“Yeah. Just didn’t expect this, really.”

“Oy.” Satan was half inside the gateway. “You two coming?” He grinned. “Well, more than you have been over the past few days, I mean.”

Nico touched Filia’s shoulders. “Let’s go get her back. I was getting rather fond of her.”

“Sure you don’t loooove her?” Filia teased as they walked into the shadows.

“No!” Nico protested. But his tone told a different story. Filia didn’t understand love as an emotion, only lust. She fed off it, after all. However, she wasn’t stupid. There was obviously an attachment there on the demon’s part, and honestly, Filia couldn’t blame him. Lily had been a fine assistant in their corruption of Saint Bethany’s. They owed it to her to save her, at the very least.

They stepped through the shadow gateway into the smokey, monochrome realm of Purgatory. Judith was already there, the flat of her dagger resting on her shoulder. She had made no move to put clothes on, and Filia’s eyes lingered on her bare ass, hip hitched just so. “So,” she said. “What’s the plan for killing Azagthoth?”

“Real simple,” Satan said, his boots making muted thuds as he strode forward out of the church. “I get in his face and keep him busy, then you three stick sharp objects in him repeatedly until he’s erased from existence. Easy peasy, and then I send you on your way, Nephilim.”

“And what about us?” Nico asked.

Satan looked back over his shoulder. Dimly, Filia could see orange light simmering behind the lenses of his glasses. “We’ll get to that,” he said, his voice tight.

“Save the demon drama for later, please,” Judith said. “Where’s Azagthoth?”

“Well, see, Purgatory’s kind of a fun place if you know how it works,” Satan said as they walked out onto the quad. “It’s a dimension between dimensions for starters, but there’s so many other little pocket dimensions scattered around that exist solely within its confines. And if I were a betting Infernal, and I most certainly am, I’m willing to wager he tried to slip away into one of those.”

“How many are there?” Filia asked.

“Oh, at least a few hundred.”

Nico made a strangled noise. “How are we supposed to search them all in time?”

Even though Nico couldn’t see Satan’s eyes behind the dark glasses, he knew those ashen eyes were narrowed in a flat, disappointed look. “Come on. Give me some credit. I can narrow the field down a bit, and it’s not like we have to search the length and breadth of each of them.”

Satan swept his hand through the air, his fingers curling as he did. There was a sound like tearing paper. Before their eyes, the Lord of Hell ripped the fabric of reality asunder, parting it as if it were a curtain. Through the rippling hole, they gazed across a barren, desolate wasteland, dotted with dunes with sand blowing across the vast and empty space.

“The moment I open up the one that Azagthoth went to, I’ll smell him,” Satan said. “Demons outside of Paradise, Hell, Earth and here tend to stink up a realm massively no matter how hard they try. It’ll just be a second.” He swept his hand back across the hole, and the tear smoothed over as if it had never existed at all. With his other hand, he made the same motion again, tearing open another hole. This one opened onto a sprawling realm where the sky was red and the grass blue. “Just gotta keep opening doors.”

As Satan worked, the other three watched, bearing witness to brief glimpses of realities beyond their own. They saw foliage of all colors and shapes, places where water was air in place of the sky and where planets had cores that resided outside their boundaries. “What are all these places?” Judith asked. Her voice was genuinely curious, as if the sights had robbed her of her rage for a moment.

“Trial runs,” Satan said, closing up another tear and reaching to open another. “What? You think God got things right on the first try? Creation went through quite a few revisions before He settled on what we have today. And since destroying energy is actually much harder than creating it, God simply packed the dud realities into little dimensions in Purgatory.”

He yanked open another dimensional tear. They gazed out upon a twisted landscape of red and gray, with what appeared to be thin, leafless trees sticking up from the ground. The bark of the trees was twisted into what looked like human faces, along with what appeared to be breasts with knots in the wood where the nipples would be.

“Huh,” Satan said. “Hadn’t thought about that one for a while.”

“What in His name is that place?” Filia asked.

“Prototype version of Hell,” Satan answered, closing the tear. “Got rejected for being a bit too on the nose.”

“As opposed to the burning hellscape that it is?” Judith snarled.

“Hey, you wanna discuss design aesthetics, take it up with God when you die,” Satan said, going back to tearing open dimensions. “Side note, little Nephilim, you’re the first person I’ve met in actual eons who’s willing to backs-ass me.” He wagged a finger at her. “I like you more and more.”

Judith made a noise and looked away into the distance of Purgatory. “Just hurry it up, would you?”

“Can’t rush something like this,” Satan said. The next realm he tore open was a deep black void that seemed to absorb light. “Oh. Right.”

A massive eye opened right in front of the void tear, easily as big as Filia was with a deep pupil that made her head hurt to look at. She felt something in her mind come loose, like a tendon snapping, as well as a deeper, unfathomable agony that grew stronger with each instant she was transfixed by the gaze of the eye.

“Nope nope nope, go back to sleep, big guy,” Satan said, hurriedly closing the realm tear.

“Wait, hold on, what the fuck was that?” Nico yelled.

“What was what?” Satan said, hurriedly tearing open more realms. He stopped and sniffed audibly. “Aha! There he is!”

“Wait, hold on, you can’t just-”

“I can and I will, we found Azagthoth, forget about that, focus on this now.” Satan’s tone left no room for argument as he ripped the tear wider with his hands. “Inside, now!”

Nico, Filia, and Judith all exchanged a long look, then did as Satan bade. The three of them stepped through the tear in the reality of Purgatory into…

“Wait, where the Hell are we?” Nico asked. The realm they had stepped into looked identical to Purgatory, except instead of a light grey monochrome, everything around them was a darker gray monochrome, as if someone had taken the world’s color slider and moved it towards black while leaving nothing else unchanged. They were even in the same spot, smack in the middle of the Saint Bethany’s campus.

“Dunno if the Big Man Upstairs ever named this one,” Satan said as he stepped through behind them. “I think this was supposed to be the original Purgatory, but it was decided that it was too drab and gray and got canned. I guess you could call it proto-Purgatory?” Satan stroked his chin. “Prototory? Yeah, let’s go with Prototory.”

“So, where are they here in… ” Judith groaned. “Prototory?”

Satan snickered. “Give me a minute.” He tilted his head back, his long black hair spilling down over his shoulders as he sniffed the air.

The motion actually made Filia flush a little. She’d heard from the older Harpies that Satan, even in his monstrous true visage that nobody had glimpsed since the Fall, was rather handsome no matter what face he wore, and that statement was proven true by the quickening between her thighs as she just watched him smell the air. “Lord Satan, sir,” she said, her wings giving a little flutter in time with her heart. “Might I ask why you look like that?”

“Just because I’m Lord of the Pit doesn’t mean I can’t look good,” Satan said. “And this form is based off one of my most flattering depictions.”

“Which one is that?” Nico asked.

Judith stared at him for a moment, then grinned. “Ohoho, I get it now. I’m gonna call you Randall from now on.”

“More points for the demon hunter!” Satan said. He turned and fixed her with a glare that managed to be imperious from behind his sunglasses. “Though I promise you I will do unspeakable things to your soul if you call me that.” Judith’s response was to flip him off.

“Are you following any of this?” Nico whispered to Filia.

Satan clicked his teeth. “Maybe instead of movie night you should have book night from now…” He trailed off, sniffing deep. Then he raised a hand and pointed. “Azagthoth is in there.”

He was pointing right at the dorm room where Nico and Filia had holed up while they were corrupting the campus. Or, rather, the Prototory reflection of it.

“Seems fitting,” Nico commented as they walked towards it. He rolled his shoulders, then summoned what little power he had left to create a simple sword. It was the most he could do anymore, owing to his power being stripped away. “You know, I already miss having the ability to light this thing on fire.”

Satan snapped his fingers, and the sword became wreathed in black fire. “Donezo.”

Filia had a little bit more freedom, forming her shadows into a spear. “So, what’s the plan? Do we sneak up on him, or…?”

“Impossible,” Satan said. “He likely already knows we’re here.”

Judith immediately dropped into a fighting crouch. “You could’ve warned us!”

The air around them started to spike in temperature, and Satan raised his left arm. “Oh, relax. You’re with me, you’ll be fine.” A vortex of bright red hellfire coalesced in the center of his palm.

“As the Serpent whispered to Eve,” Judith muttered. Then she blinked. “Wait a minute.”

Satan cackled. “I’m a man of varied tastes. Sometimes I prefer subtlety, sowing the seeds of things for them to pay off hundreds, maybe thousands of years later. Other times…” He lifted his arm into the air, and the small vortex of hellfire immediately ballooned to a thousand times its size, as big as a hot air balloon. Nico, Filia, and Judith were all flattened by the force of the heat. “Subtlety can suck a fat one!”

He hurled the massive fireball at the dorm building like a pitcher on the mound. For a moment, there was silence as the projectile crossed the distance. Then it slammed into the side of the building and obliterated it in a blaze of heat and light.

“Are you crazy?” Nico yelled. “You’ll hurt Lily!”

“Please,” Satan said. “That was, like, five percent power, max.”

“What does a hundred percent power look like?” Judith asked tentatively.

Satan only grinned. “Dunno. Saving finding the answer to that one for Armageddon.”

The explosion hurled wood and masonry all around the quad like confetti, including a large chunk that came down right on Satan’s head only to split like an egg and fall to his sides. He strode forward. “Come on, my lovelies.” His eyes glowed cherry red behind his glasses. “Let’s go kill a Fallen Angel, shall we?”

He strode forward with an almost jaunty spring in his step, leaving the others to only shake their heads in bewilderment and follow along. As they drew close, the smoke cleared and they saw the destruction that Satan’s attack had wrought. The fireball had completely blown up the top two floors of the dorm building, leaving only the first floor as a burnt-out husk of what it once was. Curiously, the rooms were empty, with no evidence of destroyed furniture of any kind, as if the realm only copied buildings and not what was inside them.

The door was still on it’s hinges, somehow. Satan planted his booted foot against it and shoved hard. The door fell over with a heavy creak. “Lucy, I’m home!” Satan yelled.

A massive length of shadow a thick as a truck smashed into Satan, knocking him back as if he’d been fired by a cannon. He rolled over and over, cratering the ground where he hit until he stopped about halfway down the quad.

“Lord Satan!” Filia cried.

“Filia!” Nico yelled. She turned.

In the center of the common area, smoke rising from his charred but rapidly healing wings, was Azagthoth. He lifted his head, and fixed them in his gaze. “Cursed interlopers, interrupting me at my moment of triumph!”

Judith wasted no time. “Deus vult!” she roared, springing off the ground far higher than any mortal could. She led with her dagger as she dropped down.

“Ingrate!” Azagthoth rose and batted Judith out of the air with a sweep of his wing, sending Judith careening through the remains of a nearby wall. As he did, Nico and Filia realized that Azagthoth had shielded Lily from the blast with his body, her prone body lying naked underneath his.

Before Nico or Filia could react, Satan streaked by them in a blaze of fire and punched Azagthoth right in the face. Azagthoth flew backwards, hitting a low wall with a sickening crunch.

“You broke my glasses,” Satan growled. His bare eye sockets were full of flames, and unless FIlia and Nico were seeing things, his body seemed to be warped and twisted in places, becoming more demonic. “Those were Luis Vittons. Actual Luis Vittons!”

“I’m okay, thanks for asking,” Judith groaned, picking herself up from where she’d been hurled.

“Remember the plan!” Satan yelled. He blurred through the air and hurled himself upon Azagthoth, punching and kicking wildly. Judith was on his heels in moments, yelling another Latin war cry.

Nico and FIlia hurried over to Lily’s prone form. Nico cupped her cheek and cocked an ear to listen to her heartbeat. “Still breathing,” he said.

“Look out!”

Both Infernals moved as Judith flipped end over end through the space they’d occupied. The Nephilim landed hard, but picked herself up quick and spat out a mouthful of blood. She made an incoherent noise of rage and charged past them.

“Talk about stubborn,” Filia said. She slapped Lily lightly. “Oy! Lily, wake up! We need your help!”

“She will stay right where she is!” Azagthoth yelled. His wings flapped and a rain of razor-sharp feathers hailed down on the Infernals, slicing them open like thrown knives.

Satan jumped in front of them, the feathers bouncing off his body with loud pinging noises. “What did I say about the plan?” he grunted.

“We’re changing the plan!” Nico said defiantly. “If we can wake Lily up, she can fight with us! If she’s really the soul of Lilith, she’ll give us the power to kill him!”

“We don’t know who’s going to answer if you wake her up!” Satan said. He thrust out his palm, and a wave of hellfire erupted from his body and flowed forward, engulfing Azagthoth. “Could be your sweet, sexy friend Lily, or it could be the Queen of the fucking Damned. Do you really want to take that risk on the battlefield?’

“Do we have a choice?” Filia said, pointing.

Azagthoth stalked through the tsunami of fire, pure hatred stamped on his face.

“You know what?” Satan said, sounding genuinely shocked that Azagthoth was still standing. “Good point. Let’s wake her up!”

“How?” Nico yelled.

“Well, first we have to-”

“No, I mean how is he still standing?” Nico asked. “Shouldn’t you be annihilating him from the fires?”

Azagthoth grinned wide. “Because, little demon, I remember. I remember who I am, what I am!” Before their eyes, his form began to warp and twist, his demon muscles bulging outward and splitting, blood running in rivers down his body. “And this… pathetic creature that the humans fear so cannot do anything to me now that I remember.” Within one of the gaps in his muscle, a massive, unblinking eye opened and stared out at them. Nico felt a chill run up his spine, like he was looking at something wrong on all basic levels.

“Ah, fuckbaskets,” Satan muttered. “This ain’t good.”

Nico looked at Filia. The succubus stared wide-eyed at Azagthoth’s body, which continued to writhe and mutate. His wings fell off, fluttering to the ground like discarded feathers, and tentacles burst from his back where they’d been. With every step, a part of Azagthoth broke loose, leaving a trail of bits behind him. His leering grin became rictus, then was no more as his mouth split wide and a tentacle lined with eyes burst forth. “I am the crawling chaos!” he roared. “And I will be constrained by this form no longer!”

Judith stared, her eyes wide. “What is that?”

The two Infernals stared at one another, then down at Lily. She looked peaceful, serene despite the mayhem swirling around her. Then, for a moment, they saw her lips purse.

As one, they bent down and kissed her.

The world shook.

All of them were blasted backwards like paper in a gale, scattered across the phantom quad of this dimension’s Saint Bethany’s. Nico hit the ground hard, the impact jarring his shoulder. He groaned, but clamped down on the pain and rolled over.

Lily floated in mid-air, her naked body surrounded by a halo of light and shadow. Her wings flapped steadily, holding her aloft as her tail whipped and coiled like a live power line. Light suffused her gaze, heterochromic in hue. Slowly, she looked down at herself, twisting and turning to look at her front and backsides.

“Huh,” she said, her voice thrumming with power. “Was my ass always this big?”

THE END OF CHAPTER SEVEN