Thomas Sniegoski - Walking In the Midst of Fire

A chance for the children to survive.

Simeon frowned. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

“Yes, we’re going.” Simeon turned his attention to the demon that had already begun to weave the arcane magicks of his kind to take them from this place. The two other demons that also served the forever man stepped closer.

“Where to?” Beleeze questioned.

“Rome,” Simeon replied. “I need to speak with some old friends.”

Castle Hallow

1349

Simeon rose from where he’d been thrown, eyes unable to move from the scene unfolding before him.

The angel stood there in the gloom of Castle Hallow, his holy radiance burning as if a miniature sun had suddenly taken up residence in its shadow-filled halls.

“It is the time of your reckoning, necromancer,” the angel’s voice boomed.

Simeon could not take his eyes from the being; this was a servant of the God who had rejected him, and he wanted to remember every detail about him.

He would remember this one. He would remember all of them, and he would rejoice as they fell, their God unable to help them.

The angel advanced toward Simeon’s ancient master. He was tempted to go and stand closer to him, but a brief glance from Hallow froze him where he stood.

As a being who believed nothing could harm him, there was a cockiness in the angel’s stride. But Simeon knew that if nothing else, Ignatius Hallow was full of surprises.

The necromancer raised his hand, adorned with the sigil of Solomon, and called forth the demons that were compelled by the ring to serve him. They swarmed to their master’s side and attacked en masse.

The angel was a sight to behold, his sword of fire cutting deadly swathes through the air as he battled the nightmare beasts. The demons fell dead at his feet, sometimes two and three at a time, but still they came, driven by the commands of their master. Simeon could not believe the number; most he had never laid eyes on. He imagined that they had been stored away somewhere deep beneath the castle, waiting for such a time as this.

The demons died one after the other, their wails of pain filling the cavernous entryway, as the angel advanced upon Hallow.

Simeon wanted to tell his ancient master to run, but Ignatius Hallow held his ground, arms extended, continuing to command the demonic beasts that were forced to serve his every whim, even if it meant their deaths. The angel did not slow, his golden armor stained black with the blood of his vanquished foes.

Simeon desperately wanted to go to the necromancer’s aid, but he had been warned not to interfere. In fact, he had been ordered to escape the castle through one of the secret underground passages that had been tunneled by demonic hands. Still, the forever man could not turn away.

He had to witness the power that could strike down one such as Hallow. For it would be power such as this that he would face when his plans for the future reached fruition.

Through a wall of burning demons the angel exploded, the creatures’ pathetic attempts at protecting their master failing horribly. Hallow still held his ground, staring defiantly into the face of the force that could so easily wipe him from the earth. The angel bore down upon him, but the necromancer did not flinch before the terrifying visage of the thing from Heaven.

“Do you know why you hate me, angel?” Hallow asked as the angel raised his mighty sword.

It took a moment, but the question seemed to permeate, the sword of fire hovering in the air.

More of the demonic surged into the entryway, and the angel spun toward them.

“Hold!” the necromancer commanded, and the demons did as they were told.

The angel looked back to him with eyes that burned with rage, but there was a question there as well.

“You are compelled to slay me, but I am certain that if you ask yourself the reason, you’ll find nothing to justify such an insatiable hunger for my death.”

The necromancer’s words appeared to be having some physical effect upon the angel. He blinked rapidly, then tried to raise his fiery sword, only to have it drop harmlessly to his side.

“You are bewitched, angel,” the necromancer stated, lifting his withered hand to show him the sigil ring upon it. “By the sibling of this very ring, created by the powerful magicks of Solomon.”

Simeon could not believe what he was seeing. His master was actually having some success in taming the fiery power of Heaven sent to destroy him. He emerged from his hiding place, desperate to bear witness to the unimaginable events transpiring.

“My ring gives me sway over the demonic, while its sister—”

The lance pierced the oily smoke wafting up from the bodies of the burning demons. It impaled the necromancer through the chest, exiting from his back in a hissing spray of crimson.

“No!” Simeon cried, as his master these past years fell limply to one side. He ran out into the open, dropping to his knees on the stone floor beside the injured man.

Hallow was still alive, but barely, eyes fixed upon the angel of God, the churning smoke behind him, and the figures that now emerged.

“Where is it?” demanded a figure clothed in the elaborate garb of the Pope of Christendom. “Where is the ring?”

The Pope’s cold, reptilian eyes touched upon the fallen necromancer.

“Remiel,” he growled. “Kill him for me.”

The angel immediately rushed forward to do as he was bidden.

But why?

He did not stop, but continued to question his own actions as he advanced upon the prone body of his enemy. The necromancer had been trying to convince him that he was somehow not in control of his actions.

But how?

Wings of crackling, Heavenly fire spread wide upon his back, the angel Remiel loomed above the necromancer, preparing to strike him dead.

The man did not appear afraid.

A servant bravely leapt to his master’s defense, standing between Remiel and his quarry.

“I curse you and all that you stand for,” the young man pronounced. “There will come a day when I see you, your brethren, and Heaven itself fall into ruin.”

“Do not waste my time!” Pope Tyranus commanded, eager for his Heavenly servant to complete his task.

Servant?

Remiel slapped the young man aside, feeling the bones in his face turn to paste with the ferocity of the blow.

“Kill him,” Tyranus ordered. “Kill him now so I may claim my prize!”

Remiel reached for the dying man, who continued to cling to life, gazing up at him defiantly.

“This ring . . . this ring controls the demonic,” the necromancer managed, rich arterial blood oozing up from his destroyed innards, flowing over the sides of his mouth. He plucked the ring from his finger, and strange wails rose up from the demons to echo through the castle halls.

Remiel reached down to close his burning hand around the man’s throat, and began to squeeze.

“Its sister controls that of Heaven,” the necromancer struggled.

“The angelic . . . A second ring controls the angelic.”

The words sank in, permeating the thick fog that had seemed to encase Remiel’s brain since . . . since first encountering the pope, Tyranus.

The old man was burning in the angel’s grasp, skin bubbling to fluid-filled blisters.

“Take it,” the necromancer croaked, pressing the ring against him. “Take it . . . take it and break the other’s hold upon you.”

“Kill him and allow me my prize!” Tyranus shouted from somewhere behind him.

Remiel continued to gaze into the necromancer’s eyes as the life left him. He could feel the ring pressed against his own armored chest-plate, as if it were attempting to melt through the metal forged in Heaven to the divine flesh beneath.