Hell's Ascendant (Mantles of Power Book 3) Page 30

  With earth-shattering cracking sounds, the village and land it’d been on was pulverized and consumed by the vortex, which spun for a minute or two more, then collapsed on itself. At the same time, it felt almost like the very world itself was convulsing around Ordath, making it hard to breathe at times, and he gasped, his stomach shuddering with every passing moment.

  Ordath stared downward, then turned toward Yimael, who was now as pale as a sheet. He suppressed the urge to grab her by the collar and shake the woman as his anger surged higher, as he couldn’t anyway, not while flying. Instead he snarled loudly, not bothering to hide his shock and rage. “Yimael, what in the name of the ever-burning sun was that?”

  “I… I don’t know! That wasn’t supposed to happen, the device shouldn’t have hit our portal at all! It was closed, and it was designed to destroy the portal it fell into!” Yimael protested, looking at him with wild eyes. “It was supposed to direct all the damage into the hells! It might’ve hurt the mortal world, but it wasn’t supposed to affect us!”

  “Well, obviously you were wrong! Now a section of the heavens has been destroyed, and—” Ordath began, then stopped, cursing under his breath as he saw flecks of white beginning to rise into the sky in the distance. The other angels would be investigating, so he hissed, then ordered as the convulsing sensation began settling down. “Other angels are coming! It’s time to get out of here, Yimael, but this isn’t over! We need a proper explanation, not excuses!”

  Yimael gritted her teeth but nodded, her voice unhappy as she replied. “Yes, of course. Come on, all of you! We need to go!”

  The group quickly flew back toward their headquarters, keeping low to try to avoid being spotted. They didn’t have time to take a roundabout route, unfortunately, and Ordath simply hoped no one would notice them, as he suppressed his aura once more.

  Christopher’s eyes were fixed on the angels he saw fly overhead, his stomach still settling after the horrifying sensation, one which had felt like the world itself was in pain. More important, though, were the six angels barely flying over the top of the trees, the only ones he’d seen who were flying away from the area which had been devastated.

  That made him suspicious to begin with, but he’d also seen a glow like the power of an archangel from the direction not long before. Coupled with the messages he’d received from Estalia’s agents over the previous couple of weeks, he wondered if these might be the ones they were looking for.

  So he looked at Irene and smiled at her nervously, murmuring, “I think those might be members of the group Our Lady is looking for. I’ll follow, you try and let others know? Whatever’s happened, I think she was right.”

  “Of course,” Irene said, smiling warmly. His wife was one of the handful of converts to Estalia’s beliefs that Christopher had recruited over the years since he’d been repatriated to the heavens, and he trusted her absolutely. She gave him a quick kiss and spoke sternly. “Be safe, though. She’d want you to be.”

  “Yes, dear, I will be,” Christopher promised, and he quickly took flight. Fortunately for him, he obviously knew the area better than the suspicious group who’d just passed by, so he was sure he could tail them safely, at least for a while.

  In the meantime, he had to wonder what had just happened. The rumbling in the distance, lurching of the ground, and the feeling of the world itself in pain did not bode well.

  Chapter 39

  “What in the name of all the stars was that?” Rose asked, wiping the bile away from her mouth and looking distinctly unhappy.

  Kitania couldn’t blame Rose, since there’d been multiple crashes from outside, almost instantly following the sensation like the world itself had spasmed around them. Worse, it’d happened just after Rose woke up, and her friend’s stomach wasn’t settled, though at least she hadn’t had anything in her stomach to throw up.

  “I’m not sure,” Kitania replied, breathing in and out slowly. Anna had left the room before the incident, which made Kitania nervous, to say the least, and only Eziel, Isalla, and Vinara were present. They’d made the decision to leave Maura and Yain out of this, which was why they weren’t here, but everyone else had their weapons and armor.

  “I can guess,” Vinara said, looking far more haggard than she normally did, and her skin was pale. “That was the ley lines, I could tell that much… something must have damaged them on a massive scale. I couldn’t say what, though.”

  “The ley lines? I didn’t know anything could damage them!” Eziel said, her eyebrows rising as she looked at Vinara in horror.

  “Oh, they can. It was a practice banned by both sides millennia ago, since it led to a few barren areas,” Vinara said grimly, shaking her head firmly. “No, this feels worse than even the descriptions I read about in books. I have no idea what the society did, but it’s not good.”

  “You can say that again,” Anna said, opening the door as she looked at them unhappily, her eyes dark. “The portal to the heavens just spat out huge chunks of debris across the city, some of them dozens of feet across, and the temple and many other areas have been damaged. The temple is in chaos, especially since the mangled bodies of a few angels were found in the wreckage, and they’re investigating what in all the hells just happened. Worse, Cyclone’s intercepted messages that something terrible happened to the south and took off. If anyone can figure it out quickly, it’ll be him, and—”

  Anna’s voice cut off as a tiny bird of blue flame appeared before her, putting Kitania’s teeth on edge, considering how dangerous sending a message like that here was for them. Estalia wouldn’t have done it without reason, though, so she listened, bracing herself.

  “Anna, I have no idea what they did, but the results are obvious enough. The world just tried to shred itself, and there’s a black cloud to the north like nothing I’ve seen in my life, so Veldoran scryed for the source.” Estalia’s voice was flat with anger. “Black Mountain and all the nations around it are gone, Anna. The portal is gone as well, and there’s an expanding lake of lava over ten miles across where the mountain used to be. I don’t think anything’s alive within fifty miles of the explosion, so I think we know what their little demonstration was. I’ll inform you if I get any more information.”

  The bird vanished, and Kitania felt like someone had punched her in the stomach with all the strength they could muster. Vinara’s horror was obvious as well, and Anna pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes as she slowly breathed out. Only Isalla and Rose looked relatively bewildered, though still horrified.

  “What’s Black Mountain?” Rose asked, her voice soft.

  “Remember Hellmount? Black Mountain is the mountain that leads to Dolia,” Kitania said flatly, and both women abruptly paled.

  “Oh, no, you can’t possibly… they destroyed the portal?” Isalla asked, her eyes going huge, horror dawning on her face fully. “I didn’t think that was possible!”

  “They destroyed the portal and every living thing within a massive distance of it,” Vinara corrected, her voice almost a snarl as her nails bit into her palms. “It shouldn’t be possible, and to even do so is madness! Those idiots don’t realize how interconnected the ley lines are, and the portals are part of the network! If anything, they’re core parts of the ley lines, and if those are destroyed, I can’t even imagine the consequences!”

  “Which is why I dread learning what else it is they’ve done,” Anna said, her voice surprisingly soft and calm, and she looked at Rose coolly, then the others. Despite her apparent calm, the look in Anna’s eyes sent a chill down Kitania’s spine, and she couldn’t help straightening as Anna spoke again. “Kitania, would you help me with my armor? I’d ask the rest of you to help Rose into hers as well, as I want all of us ready to move. I think it’s time and past for us to have a rather pointed discussion with Janel and Rathien. The time for subtlety is past.”

  “As you wish,” Kitania agreed, her stomach tightening still more, which didn’t quite feel possible, but at the same time her h
orror was quickly being replaced by anger.

  Those who were behind this would pay for what they’d done.

  “What happened?” Alserah asked, resisting the urge to rush over to Gandar. The other deities weren’t present, as each were contacting their own homelands, all but Sidina, who had quietly withdrawn to practice in private.

  Gandar stood in the middle of the plaza where he’d teleported in, looking grim as could be, even as he stepped toward her unhappily, his voice blunt. “The Pit is gone, as is pretty much everything important within twenty miles, including some of my people. It’s worse in Phenal, since they owned most of the territory around it, but what I’ve seen is quite bad enough. The portal is completely gone, and the land… mana is suffusing everything, and I think it’s almost half as bad as Rosken.”

  Alserah flinched at the description, as to her knowledge Rosken was still half-molten in the center of the crater. Plenty of magi had tried to come up with a way of repairing the damage, but nothing had worked as of yet. She paused, then replied, her voice about as blunt as his was.

  “I see. You got the better of things, from what I’ve heard. Estalia contacted me, and her magister scryed on the area in the hells. They lost about fifty miles at a minimum, and the mountain is entirely gone,” Alserah said, and Gandar almost froze, a flash of incredulousness crossing his face as he stared at her.

  “They what? I thought that the surface was bad enough, but they unleashed something like that? Are they out of their feather-brained minds?” Gandar snarled, his anger mounting quickly enough to worry Alserah. “Where are the bastards, anyway?! I want to crush these traitorous, arrogant, shit-eating angels in person!”

  “I don’t know, not yet. But this? This could easily lead to open war. Hopefully they’ll figure out what happened, and soon,” Alserah said, and grimaced as she looked at him, then admitted, “I’ve set up the beacon Estalia sent us. After that, we need all the help we can get.”

  “Fine. I just hope that she gets off her little throne and does something useful. I lost more people than I care to think about today,” Gandar said, storming off toward the building.

  Alserah followed him, her emotions like ice now. Despite everything, even the angels’ willingness to sacrifice her and her people, she’d never expected them to do something like this. It was so far beyond the pale she had to wonder why even their members would be willing to put up with it.

  Chapter 40

  The sound of shouting caused Ordath to pause, looking at Yimael with a scowl, but he didn’t say anything. The other members of the council were obviously displeased, and he figured it was probably her fault, at least in part. Not that he could truly blame her now that he’d had time to think more, it wasn’t as though they’d had a chance to test the gatecrushers before this, so there’d been no way to know what the consequences would truly be.

  Taking a breath, Ordath opened the door, and the angry shouting suddenly stopped as the others looked at him and Yimael, the frustration on their faces obvious. What surprised him more was the traces of fear he saw as well.

  “So, just how badly did your task go? We felt the continent shudder from here, Ordath,” Zithar stated, his deep voice unusually unhappy.

  “It worked!” Yimael protested, crossing her arms defensively as she looked away, hesitating before she admitted, “Some things worked differently than expected, but it worked… I think.”

  “You think. Absolutely wonderful, as if we needed another disaster on our hands,” Sereth said caustically, slamming her hands on the table, to Ordath’s surprise and worry. Anything that could discomfort the other archangel worried him.

  “What do you mean, another disaster?” Ordath asked, frowning heavily.

  “First, what happened, Ordath? Not you, Yimael,” Ethan said, shaking his head slowly.

  “The gatecrusher was dropped as planned, and it appeared to do as it was intended to. However, something about the design appears to have been… flawed. It caused severe destruction in the mortal world and felt dangerous enough I ordered the portal closed,” Ordath said, crossing his arms as he hesitated, then continued unhappily. “The explosion came through the closed portal anyway and ripped off a section of the continent several miles across and consumed it, somehow. Not all of us escaped in time, unfortunately, and we quickly vacated the area, hopefully avoiding anyone spotting us.”

  “Light preserve us… no wonder we felt it,” Ethan said, rubbing his forehead.

  “What’s happened here?” Ordath asked, looking around the room. “Initially I thought you were upset because of what happened with us, but now it seems like something else has happened.”

  “You might say that,” Sereth said, her smile almost mocking. “The Holy Council is dead. All of them.”

  “What? But the plan was to—” Ordath began, but Zithar interrupted.

  “To kill enough to give us a majority, we know! The problem is that the explosions were too powerful, and Ethan received messages that the incineration stones for dealing with the commanders of the Order of the Eagle and the Order of the Phoenix were missing when the agents got there,” Zithar said, scowling as he shook his head. “Our best guess is that the idiot who planted the stones in the council chambers used all of them, three times what was needed! Last we heard, the council chambers collapsed and the leadership of the heavenly orders are fully on their guard!”

  “Tears of heaven,” Ordath murmured, reaching up to rub his eyes, shocked at the disaster that had occurred.

  The entire point of decapitating the command structure of the two orders they didn’t have full control of was so the remainder of the Holy Council could appoint the society’s members as new successors. That would have allowed them to declare war and crusade against the hells properly, and they might have even managed to blame the destruction of part of the continent on the hells, too.

  “You see the problem, obviously,” Ethan said, his voice deadpan as he shook his head. “We came all this way, only to screw up now. Still, the heavens are in chaos. We still have a chance to spin things the way we want, and should be able to drum up enough support from the populace if we act—”

  The angel was interrupted by pounding on the door, as a man called out. “Lady Yimael, Lady Yimael! Come quick, it’s urgent!”

  No one spoke, and Ordath’s sense of foreboding simply grew worse as he looked at Yimael, who growled, then turned and threw open the doors, snapping, “What is it?”

  The angel on the other side of the doors was sweating and had a wild look in his eyes, his hair looking almost stringy and his clothing smudged with dirt. He looked at Yimael in relief as he spoke quickly. “It’s the artificers, milady! Things were going fine until they heard what happened over on the continent rim, and an argument broke out! I don’t know who started it, but it turned into a fight, and when the dust settled, we realized that a bunch of them ran with the completed artifacts!”

  “They what? Where were they going?” Yimael demanded, seizing the angel by the collar as she picked him up, her face turning almost purple with rage.

  “I’m not sure, a couple of the other guards went after them, but they were heading east, and that means—” the man began, only for Zithar to cut him off.

  “The headquarters of the Order of the Eagle. Damnable cowards!” Zithar said, straightening as he looked at the others and spoke bluntly. “I think the time for subtlety has passed. We can blame them for the destruction of the Holy Council, but we have to keep word about our role from getting out! Who’s with me?”

  Ethan swore under his breath but nodded grimly, looking at Yimael unhappily as he said. “Agreed, for all the good it’ll do. I think we need as much assistance as we can get, though.”

  “It’s good that we warned the faithful to be ready today, isn’t it?” Sereth said, smiling thinly as she nodded. “I’ll send a message to the Adamant Pinnacle and other major forces for reinforcements, but I think we’ll need more than that. Ordath, shall we contact the Lord of Light? I
f there was ever a time for him to intervene, I believe it’s now.”

  Ordath hesitated only for a moment before nodding, taking a deep breath before he spoke softly. “You’re right, I suppose. His light will illuminate and purge the darkness. Let’s do this, then.”

  The others all nodded as Yimael dropped the angel, speaking bluntly. “Prepare for battle! It’s time for us to lead the heavens to a glorious new dawn!”

  “Yes, milady!” the angel said, relief evident on his face as he turned to run down the hallway.

  The other council members nodded grimly to Ordath and Sereth, then they headed out at a brisk pace, each probably to get their own gear. As they left, Sereth looked at Ordath and asked, “Do you think the others are ready?”

  “They have to be. As Zithar said, it’s time to act more openly,” Ordath said, his jaw tightening slightly as he shook his head. “I just hope our preparations were enough.”

  “We’ll see,” Sereth said, and she quickly headed into the back of the compound, while Ordath followed.

  If nothing else, Ordath was confident that no one was prepared for the Lord of Light. The only question was whether or not he’d be enough.

  Chapter 41

  The guard’s eyes were wide with shock and fear as he held the halberd in front of the doorway, his hands visibly trembling. “I-I’m sorry, Your Excellency, but we’re in a state of emergency, and everyone is to be denied entrance, no matter who—”

  “Young man, you can either move out of my way or I will move you. I’ve been patient before this, but no more,” Anna interrupted, and Kitania winced at the icy tone to her voice, pitying the poor member of the Order of the Dragon. He obviously wasn’t prepared to deny an archangel entrance into the fortress.