The Foe of Heaven

John was not a man of faith.

His mind wasn't changed when the Game used familiar, religious labels: Fairy and Lily were demons, after all, and Moira’s father had Hate bounties from some number of mythological figures that John recognized. But whatever the Abyss offered, none of it added up to scripture; whatever a guardian angel was, John was sure it would be a tough warrior, probably with flight, who could harry the dragon long enough to save everyone else. If it was divine, it would be in some strange, video game sense or else in the way Tricia had defined the Abyss. It would not be proof of anything more.

The scent of iron or blood was the first sign. He struggled to look to Moira and the rest after casting the spell; he had to blink away tears. He was crying, though about what he couldn't say. So was Moira. So were the Almiraj, Vok, and Tricia... and though Fairy didn't seem to cry, she also proved to no longer be present. Her face, wide-eyed and twisted with hate, faded like a mirage.

Fairy has been banished! She will reappear at the Temple in 24 hours.

John didn't have time to panic about her; the second sign came. An azure triangle, like a sharp-edged halo of light, suddenly grew over Tricia's head. Two grew and intersected to form the Seal of Solomon over the Warden's crown. John found no such halo over his head or those of his summons; he stopped considering opening a tunnel for an impromptu mirror...

... because the third sign reached from the asphalt of the open street into the darkness above. A lip of reality peeled back like a surgeon's wound, and exhaling from that pocket came a presence that washed John with a sense of shame.

The being stepped forward with a toeless foot or boot coated in the same flawless gray skin as the rest of its body. The heel imploded the front half of the car in front of them, and from there, the journey of John's eyes began. Following an emaciated calf up, John found that the mid-stride pose revealed that the creature was almost human and bore the slit of her sex between thin thighs. Countable ribs and the swell of heavy breasts with ashen nipples stood some thirty feet overhead. John could only count them by how massive she was; he could only see them because her mere presence radiated a soft white glow that washed out all the orange glow of nearby fires without stinging his eyes.

But this was all that was human of the horror John had summoned. The torso swayed with massive shoulders that hosted three arms on either side of her. These six arms, ending in long, feminine fingers, came to rest on six golden hilts of broadswords that floated carelessly around her. Her back was obfuscated by what first seemed like wings; those "wings" proved to be hundreds of long, spider-like limbs, each with a dozen joints, that ended in human hands holding ivory knives. John's sight drifted from this creature's "feathered" wings to look up to the head that reached fifty feet into the air. Could it be called a head? Thick, soot-colored lips remained sealed in a humorless frown, and a button nose flared over them... but this creature had no eyes, no ears, and no hair to speak of; the rest of her head was replaced with the four towers of a four-walled fortress. The castle sitting atop her body featured sheer, brickless walls made from her skin and diamond-shaped battlements that, with the pointed spires, formed the monster's crown. That crown was completed by what rose out from the center of the fortress: the sharp tip of a pyramid of blue diamond or sapphire that glowed like the sun. Above this, the angel's halo: a dodecagram, a compound of four triangles, perfectly balanced and rapidly spinning as if to mark her eagerness to leave this fetid place.

John was not a man of faith. But this was an angel... and though the being arrived facing the oncoming dragon, she turned to look upon John with her eyeless gaze, and John nearly fell to his knees by her attention alone. He looked over her head... and finally did.

Assiyalos
<The Seventh Revelation for the Wandering Prophet, Sung to 777 Virgins Before the Day of Judgement, of the Seraphim Radiant of the Eighth Choir>
Level 778 Angel of Blades
HP: 9,224,850/9,224,850
MP: 8,543,924/8,543,924
Stats: Str 980, Agi 890, End 956, Int 622, Wis 790, Cha 906, Lib 0
Status Effects: Absolutism, Aura of Purity, Benediction Superior, Eyes of Justice, Limited Avatar, Mortal's Beckoning
Qualities: Angel, Guardian of Humanity, King of Celestivīgintī, Reaper of Guilt, Sanctified, Seraph, Throne Breaker
The Second Among the Ten Guardians of Humanity; the Seraph the Oracles Named Assiyalos; the Nemesis of The Shouted Truth of Mortal Sin, Whispered With the Tearing of the Hymen to Men of Petty Lust, of the Archdevils of the Second Circle; Protector of 777,777 souls on Earth; Champion of the Bladed Seraphim; King of Celestivīgintī, the 20th Heaven; Unrepentant Breaker of Thrones Found Wanting. Assiyalos has been since before the moon was born. She took the mantle of Guardian to push back the demons who would claim mortal men in an effort to follow the wisdom of Raphael, her superior, but finds justice in the suffering of those she guards. As such, Assiyalos is a distant protector until she cannot afford to be so. Assiyalos is aligned with few mortal entities but, like all Guardians, communes with those agents who would guide humanity to righteousness.

The angel spoke with words like the crackle of lightning, and the absolute black of the sky brightened briefly with every utterance.

"Ulafeesheel. Dolonos vala kelulosima."

John couldn't know what she meant... but dread filled his heart, and his body refused to move even as he maintained his control. His mouth felt sealed; his throat felt so dry he would ****. His lungs burned, the smell of blood seemed his own, and seemingly far away now was the rumble of the approaching dragon. John needed to save everyone. He just needed to open a tunnel to another part of the Complex. He just needed to stop suffering that eyeless glare and at least save everyone else, even if he was ultimately doomed. She wants to kill me. John felt it in his bones; somehow, in that silent, unmoving, eyeless gaze, he knew it to be true. She's going to kill me... no, she is here to kill me. She must kill me. I'm going to die-

"Kuuvakanan. Ishanatos!" A battered form leaped before him, the Seal of Solomon glowing over its head, and John blinked to realize that the voice he had heard was Moira's. Her voice had changed. There was an authority, but a humility; he didn't understand her words but felt obligated to listen to her every utterance. His paragon mind shunted these effects, one after the other, but still their suggestions felt right to him. Covered in drying blood, some of hers and so much of her enemies', and holding her warhammer to the floor and shield to her side, Moira looked... graceful, John decided. Even from behind, she looked like a proper paladin.

If the angel had paused to consider the petty mortal between her and her summoner, it was lost by way of interruption by the red blur that had taken to the air just above and behind her. With the mad cry for her children, Yunikal the Red opened her mouth as orange flames turned white, and the blessings of flame and scales appeared on her status effects. John rose from kneeling, wide-eyed and terrified, ready to open a tunnel for his friends, perhaps one for the angel, if only-

Yunikal the Red deals 6,492 unaspected damage to Assiyalos!

The white flames bathed the truth in lies. The truth remained and, only after the lies had passed, turned.

Yunikal descended upon the angel, nearly matching the enemy in her outstretched length, with claws stretched out. The angel suddenly jolted upward to meet the dragon mid-air and gripping the beast's four legs with her four lowest arms. The dragon screeched and flapped its wings with all her fury. John nearly toppled over; his summons and Tricia fell to the ground. Moira stood and watched through wincing eyes.

The angel was unmoved. Furious, Yunikal breathed her pure destruction into the seraph's face at point-blank range... to not so much as mar her fortress skull with anything more than the token damage she had already done. The remaining two hands reached up towards Yunikal's face, and the dragon bit at the offered fingers until her fangs rang like steel against the undisturbed skin of her enemy. Softly, the hands reached for the lower jaw of the dragon... and cradled it. Yunikal's fire turned to screaming, turned to grumbling... and turned to whimpering as the dragon cried tears of lava. The eyeless angel looked upon her without a word. The two remained there in the air, motionless. John watched in stunned silence. The floating broadswords backed away from the two, and John found another wave of dread building inside of him. Why? She's... she's comforting the dragon. Isn't... she?

John's gaze went down as Moira, still shedding tears, turned away from the scene. Her lips were pressed thin. John looked back up... and saw the dragon's eyes grow wide. With a sudden, violent thrust downward, Yunikal was launched into the houses below and threw everyone back down to their feet with the earthquake of her landing. Thousands of pounds of scales and sinewy muscle tumbled in an effort to stand, but Assiyalos was already upon her, her feet planted firmly at the center of Yunikal's back. Yunikal scraped desperately at the floor, and her fiery breath raged in bursts as she howled for mercy, but no amount of her struggling managed to budge the divine weight upon her back. Vok shouted in hate and fury, but none could take notice. Instead, each watched as the angel bent down, gripped the wings near the base with three hands to each... and slowly stood upright. The sound of towels being ripped apart filled the air, and fiery blood, like magma bubbling to the surface, began to spray in every direction the mother dragon shrieked. The angel did not stop, her ample chest surging outward as she applied merciless ****, and with a final pop removed both wings from the dragon. A damage indicator rang out on John's interface; he could not see it, even with his wide, terrified eyes fixated upon the scene.

Assiyalos stepped off the creature, and said creature immediately attempted to flee. The angel's movements were almost too fast to follow; one moment she was upright, and the next she had bent down to get a hand on the fleeing mother's hind leg. Yunikal bent her head back to blast the divine enemy again, to try and do anything to get loose, but quit the moment she was pulled in and flipped onto her back. The greater foe took to her knees to pin the pitiful lizard on her underbelly; Yunikal could no more shove her off than deny the will of God.

The ancient lizard mewled and shrieked, but without result; Assiyalos managed to grab a hand onto each of the powerful, meaty legs of the dragon. With an effortless squeeze, she sank the tips of her fingers through the scales and into the muscle, spewing more blood as Yunikal bucked with the agony of her torment. With four limbs so grappled, the seraph's topmost arms reached up to grip the fronts of the dragon's snout and lower jaw, and the ancient creature blasted more of her useless white fire over the angel, bending her face in the iron vice of angelic fingers to try and coat the enemy's entire body.

But the seraph maintained her grip... and moved her hands farther apart. Yunikal's maw was opened to its maximum, and ever more fire was barfed urgently. Her limbs were stretched out to near their maximums even as the messenger's long arms remained generously bent. The stumps of wings twitched uselessly against the ground. Her body surged and jolted from around to try and get loose. The angel's humorless frown remained unchanged. She spread all of her arms wider. The flames from Yunikal's mouth cut off to be replaced by a ****, terrified screeching. Vok, still with tears flowing from his eyes, shrieked, "[Mother!]" John's mind crawled as the events unfolded, and his mouth opened without words. This was horrible. This wasn't what he wanted. He tried to will the spell to an end; it had no such function. This had to sto-

TEAR.

Before their eyes, the heavenly being had stretched all of her arms out to her sides. Each held a prize from the dragon, be it most of a leg... or one-half of Yunikal's head.

Assiyalos CRITS her grapple, dealing 98,950 damage to Yunikal the Red!
Yunikal the Red has been slain!
Congratulations! You've completed your first Complex!

The rest of the messages were blurred in John's eyes. Vok howled his horror. Tricia covered her mouth and screwed her eyes shut as she tried not to vomit. The once-proud torso of the dragon spewed fiery blood from five hideous stumps as it spasmed its **** throes. The holy messenger planted a foot on the creature's chest, squeezing more viscera from every new opening, to then stand tall upon the beast. Carelessly, the angel tossed the torn bits of her enemy to the ground, and in two large steps returned to face Moira who, through it all, had her back turned. Only now did the Warden turn to face the Angel... and if the background bloodbath had bothered her, it did not show in her poise. She waited, silently, for the angel to respond.

"Kos, Valavas. Nu jukeanalos kuuva nos."

What... What the Hell? What... John had killed before, but this cruelty... Despite everything, John quickly recovered from the stunned horror the angel had left him in. He tried to focus on the meaningless words she spoke; somehow, he knew she was talking about him. I... I can't let that happen to anyone else. I have to get everyone out of here. The door to leave the Complex had unlocked, and an escape from whatever this horrifying "angel" wanted seemed at least plausible. I just have to pray she can't somehow read my mind... no, don't pray...

<Leafdie, Skythumper... get everyone out of here besides Moira and myself. Everyone is to be as quiet as can be as you leave, and keep the door ajar. Be ready to close the door the moment we're teleported into the living room.>

John didn't dare try to warn Tricia; he had to hope she could just be led back home as the Warden and messenger spoke.

"Greluuvakten; tananos juupap," Moira seemed to plead. Slowly, with dried tears, the Almiraj opened the way out and led Tricia out. Vok, his shocked face stuck on the ruined body of his mother, simply stood and watched until Skythumper's hand gripped his arm. John's orders finally sunk into the last Flamescale. Quietly, the warrior followed, his eyes still wide, his grief still in shock. The angel did not seem to move or respond to their exit; it was only John she wanted, he decided.

"Poloshinos."

John thought to speak; somehow Moira must've known, because she gave him a worried look.

Quickly, Moira looked back up to the angel. The latter's swords began to float closer. John was too many paces away from Moira to get within arm's reach without alarming the angel. As John stewed in worry, Moira continued. "Vanatunos?"

"Gala shenukos."

Assiyalos hands had not yet reached for her swords, but the spell keeping her here was almost at an end. John had three more rounds to contemplate it... but the swords were almost at the angel's waiting, relaxed hands. He looked at the creature's agility score. What was Yarrick's? It couldn't have been that high... and he moved near the speed of light. But she didn't really move THAT fast... well, maybe she was holding back- damn it! I don't know enough! I... I can't do this... she'll catch us before I can get Moira out...

"Gunukos selevan poloshi?" Moira's tone was almost arrogant; the seraph seemed to take note of it. The swords suddenly came to rest against Assiyalos' waiting hands, though nothing more showed of her aggression.

"Honosel gala, Honosel poloshi. Dakules tel. Dakules tol."

The spell keeping Assiyalos here had two rounds left. John sensed he would not live if they stayed a round longer. With a sigh, he tunneled his finger against the back of Moira's neck and, with a tap, quickcasted blink to get them both out through the almost-closed door-

... and they were in the living room. Skythumper slammed the door shut. The Summon Angel spell ended. The Complex door vanished.

It was... over. So why did John's dread remain? Slowly, wide-eyed, Moira turned to look at John. Her halo had vanished; her poise had gone with it. Her voice shook as she asked him a very simple question.