There was only one way to find out.
I looked down at the hole in the ground. “There’s no ladder, no steps, no grips of any kind. It’s just a straight, sheer drop.”
“It’s too narrow for us to fly down,” said Damiel.
“Ok.” I stretched out my legs. “Then we’ll just have to go back to basics.”
Before we’d possessed wings, we’d had to just jump down large drops—and trust to our residence, boosted by our acquired magic, that we wouldn’t break our legs.
I gazed into the dark hole. I couldn’t even see the bottom. “Someone has cast a shifting spell on this hole, shrouding it in darkness.”
“If we break the spell, it might set off an alarm.”
“Yeah, if it were my hideout, I’d tie an alarm into the spell.”
Damiel nodded. “As would I.”
“Ok, then. The best way forward is down.” I stepped up to the edge of the opening. “I hope the cavern is down there.”
“It’s there,” Damiel said with perfect confidence.
I balanced my toes on the edge of the hole. I’d done a lot of crazy things in my life, even before I’d joined the Legion and gained the magic to reliably survive my own madness. So I’d had to depend on more than magic for a long time already. When you were crazy, you had to be smart too.
On the other hand, I apparently had at least a little Immortal blood in me, so hadn’t I possessed magic all along?
That was a question for another time.
I jumped into the hole. After a long drop, my feet hit hard rock. I cast a spell on my sword, igniting flames across the blade.
A moment later, Damiel landed beside me. Then he busied himself weaving spells over the opening in the ceiling.
I’ve warded the exit, he spoke in my mind.
You hid your wards well, I replied.
I couldn’t even see his spells, nor could I feel the distinctive ripple of magic in the air that wards often caused.
The interwoven field of psychic spells will bounce back anyone who tries to leave this cavern, he said.
“It’s a long way up again,” I spoke, aloud now. “We’re going to have to jump back up.”
“Worried?”
“No, I can do it. And if this takes too long, if this cavern fills with water again, we can anyway just swim up to the top of the hole.”
“You always see the silver lining in any situation.”
“Here’s another silver lining for you: we can both breathe underwater. Back before I could breathe underwater, my father used to trap me in flooded caverns to train my body, develop my problem-solving skills, and improve my performance under pressure.”
“And they call me cruel and sadistic,” said Damiel. “General Silverstar has a special talent for those qualities.”
We passed into another cave chamber. This place was bigger than it looked from the top.
We looked for signs of Colonel Spellstorm. Or of anyone at all. We’d made it through three chambers when we heard the sizzle of someone smacking into Damiel’s magic barrier—and the subsequent thump of a body hitting the ground.
“It sounds like someone got caught in your web,” I said.
We ran back to the first chamber. There, lying on the ground right below the overhead exit to the cavern, we found a colossal man, dressed in the Legion’s earth-toned wilderness uniform.
“And now we have Colonel Spellstorm,” Damiel declared darkly.
6
Colonel Spellstorm
With his piercing blue eyes, long-flowing black hair, and enormous height, Colonel Spellstorm looked more like a model in costume—the kind you found on an angel calendar—than he looked like a military commander in the gods’ army. But he was an angel, through and through. He had a reputation for battlefield success. His area of expertise was driving back monsters. He’d led several successful campaigns to reclaim small parts of the Earth from the monsters. He was known to be competent, efficient, and highly intelligent. And according to my father, Colonel Spellstorm fully lived up to his reputation.
Damiel and I secured the dazed angel with silver handcuffs. They were no ordinary handcuffs. They were Magitech handcuffs that blocked magic, and they were powerful enough to subdue even an angel. I knew this because I’d been the one to invent them during my extended assignment in a Magitech lab.
Colonel Spellstorm blinked a few times and looked at us, already recovered from the shock of hitting Damiel’s magic ward.
“My captors,” he said drily. “Colonel Damiel Dragonsire.” His gaze slid over to me. “And Lt. Colonel Cadence Lightbringer. The Legion’s very own angel husband-and-wife dynamic duo.”
“Restrain his body,” Damiel told me.
Colonel Spellstorm was already cuffed, but that only prevented him from accessing his magic. So I drew on my elemental earth magic, growing the rocks on the wall. Like rocky vines, they slithered across the angel’s body, looping over his chest, arms, and legs. Stone bands snapped around his ankles and wrists.
Once Colonel Spellstorm was bound to the wall, Damiel began his interrogation.
“Colonel Spellstorm, you are accused of treason,” he said.
“You went to my office. Interrogated my soldiers.” Colonel Spellstorm’s gaze flickered to me, then snapped back to Damiel. “You hurt them.”
“They will recover,” Damiel said, without a hint of emotion.
“A body heals, but a soul is not so easily mended. You broke their minds with your magic. You enslaved their will. You violated the sanctum of their soul. That’s not something so easy to bounce back from.”
Damiel was clearly unmoved. “Poetic words will not save you.”
“No, nothing will save me. Not once Damiel Dragonsire has me caught in the crosshairs of his investigation. At that point, the truth no longer matters.” He glanced at me again. “My innocence no longer matters.”
Damiel.
He is trying to play on your sympathies, he replied, then said aloud to Colonel Spellstorm, “Why did you run away if you are innocent?”
“I did not run away. I was out of the office when you arrived.”
“Why were you out here? And why didn’t you tell anyone where you were?”
“What does it matter? You’ve already decided that I’m guilty, so nothing I say is relevant. Don’t forget that I have worked with you, Dragonsire. We both know this interrogation is merely a formality. You already ‘know’ I’m guilty, and the Master Interrogator is never wrong.”
“Just because we have worked together, don’t presume that you understand me.” Damiel’s tone was as icy as a winter breeze. “How did you know we were at your office?”
“It was hard to miss. You are hardly subtle, Dragonsire. As always, you made a grand, spectacular entrance worthy of the Fury of the Legion.”
“Did one of your soldiers contact you to warn you that we were there?” Damiel asked him.
“No. I’ve known you were suspicious of me for a while. After I heard of the ominous apparition that appeared at your wedding—and that you and Lightbringer were going on a mission—I put two and two together.”