James Davis: Circle of Skulls

"Aeril!" he shouted, turning a startled young officer around. "Grab one of those patrols and follow me." The man saluted and ran ahead of the arriving patrol, waving them to a stop. "Naaris, hold this line! Warden Tallmantle has more patrols en route from Worth Ward. And take one of these rabid derelicts alive if possible!"

"Now, lass," he said, turning back to Quessahn and striding north. "Commander Gravus Tavian at your service, at least until I find out what's going on, then I'm likely to have you arrested by morning. Sound fair?"

"Quessahn Uthraebor," she replied, "not 'lass,' and if we are alive by morning, I will count myself lucky to sleep for several days in one of your cells!"

Jinn felt a new strength flowing through his arms as he bashed Sathariel's sword aside and ripped a burning gash through the angel's breastplate. Sathariel roared in pain and drove the deva back, scoring a jagged cut on his arm. Jinn ignored the wound. Sathariel seemed weakened. Perhaps the stolen sword had evened the ground between them. He tumbled out of the path of the angel's blade and into a defensive crouch.

His body tensed like a spring as he jumped again, clashing with the angel in midair. He remembered things, envisioning the battles he had fought in the palaces of demon princes and on the scorched fields of lost Mulhorand. His thirst for vengeance was gone, and he embraced that quiet part of his heritage that had always urged him to fight, to the exclusion of all else, as a mortal angel drenched in the bloody business of a greater good. He had forgotten much of that, caught up in the daily lives and trials of mortals, and it had taken a mysterious blade stolen from his enemy to remind him.

It crashed against Sathariel's varnbrace, leaving scorch marks where it touched the silver armor and drawing wispy streams of ethereal blood in its wake. Though he exulted in the blade's power, a lingering suspicion of the blade made the steel feel strange in his hand. Though he felt he had stolen it of his own free will, he feared other forces were at work.

"Fool of dead gods," Sathariel rumbled as they traded blows relentlessly. "You have no idea what you have involved yourself in!"

The silver blade whistled by Jinn's ear, drawing sparks on the iron railing as he ducked and thrust at the angel's arm. Sathariel's quick blade slapped his strike aside.

"I've always been here. It was never my place to understand or question the desires of the gods," he replied, rolling away from the edge of the roof.

A silver blur followed him as Sathariel whirled, slashing in a wide arc. Jinn stopped and braced himself, sword raised to block the angel's blow and wincing at the force behind it.

"Then you are ignorant as well as a fool," the angel thundered, "and that blade you wield has suffered many such fools. They died well before drawing my blood, and they died gladly, I assure you."

Jinn glanced at the shining sword then cursed as Sathariel took advantage of his distraction, opening a deep cut in his side and reopening the wound he'd suffered from Lucian Dregg. The pain was fleeting, overcome by the stolen sword's curious hunger and old power. He pressed back, parrying the angel's blade and opening a sister wound in Sathariel, dragging the length of his sword through the angel's side. Steel crashed between them, but neither called out in pain, unwilling to give the other the satisfaction.

The sky was alive with dancing lights and rolling fire. Whispers and wails surrounded them even as the streets below echoed with battle. Dark clouds roiled in wide circles, thundering though the rain had stopped. Tremors rumbled from the abandoned house. Though he battled relentlessly, the stolen sword fought with a passion of its own. It squirmed in his grip, the sensation sickening, but he could not release it, did not dare try. He clung to the steel and prayed he had made the right decision, prayed for his very soul.

Striking low and spinning to his right, Jinn nimbly avoided a killing blow, but Sathariel rushed forward, slamming into the deva with his armored shoulder. Jinn stumbled back, deflecting another fatal slash but taking a deep cut across the back of his leg in return. He fell to one knee, gritting his teeth against the pain, and tried to rise but faltered, pain shooting up the side of his body like fire.

He watched helplessly as the angel drew close and stared at the blade as though it had betrayed him. Heart pounding in his chest, Jinn raised the sword, determined to fight from the ground if he had to, though the hopelessness of his resolve sat bitterly in his thoughts. He had experienced a thousand deaths, both spectacular and mundane, but as he looked into the twinkling blue lights of the angel's pitted eyes, he saw something different. His rage battled with a faint hope as he spoke.

"This sword… this choice I've made," Jinn said, gasping. "Will I die? Truly die?"

"None can know, deva. The contract has never been answered before," Sathariel replied, his sword rising.

"Contract?" Jinn asked, his eyes fixed on the silver blade over the angel's shoulder, his thoughts racing as a hundred battles came to mind, a hundred deaths flashing through his soul, each life fading with the same wish, for one more chance to relive the moment.

"No time for that now. Farewell, Jinnaoth. You should never have come to this world," Sathariel replied, his voice ominously gentle.

The silver sword fell, its arc mirroring that of a hundred others, an executioner's strike, clean and perfect.

NIGHTAL 22, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

The stolen blade shivered in his hand as he followed the stroke of the angel's sword, his death written on its edge. Though he had faced his ending a thousand times, instinct would not let him rest again so soon. The motions were reflex, written in hopeless thoughts on a battlefield whose name he could not recall. He had died that day with a glimmer of regret burned into his thoughts, a regret that moved his good leg and placed strength in his arm.

He hacked at Sathariel's blade, battering it aside as he lunged within the angel's guard and drove the steel of his stolen blade deep into Sathariel's chest. The shining sword screamed through the silvered armor. It burned and hissed through the angel as ethereal blood streamed from the injury.

Sathariel's sword clattered to the ground, and he gripped Jinn's shoulders, wings beating furiously in a panic to escape. The deva held on tightly, keeping the angel close as Sathariel howled in his ear, pulling him toward the iron railing. Glowing light poured from the wound as the angel's struggles slowed and grew sluggish. With a final beat of his massive wings, Sathariel fell.

Jinn collapsed at the edge of the roof, gripping the deep cut in his leg as the angel slumped upon the iron railing, his armor caught on rusted spikes, his wings stretched out, twitching as his life bled away. The deva held on to the hungry blade, clutching it fast and bearing witness to the long-sought death of his enemy.

"I do not envy you… deva," Sathariel rasped as ribbons of shadow bled from his body, drawn into the shining blade in his chest. "In victory I was to be rewarded… finished… a powerful vassal of a pleased god… but you… you must now go on…"

Jinn pulled close as the angel's voice grew weak, sparks of warm power racing through his sword arm.

"Why? What do you mean?" he asked.

"The contract… lies in your hand…," Sathariel replied, chuckling softly. "Forged when the world was young… a contract of steel… a bargain made between the forces of darkness and light… an invitation to Asmodeus…"

Jinn stared at the blade as it drank the angel's shadowy essence, devouring the darkness in his wings. It drew rivers of ethereal blood from the black pits of Sathariel's eyes. It glowed brighter with every strip of angelic flesh. Jinn released it and fell back, the horrid power still pulsing through his blood.