“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Why are you doing it?”
“It is necessary,” Colonel Spellstorm said without remorse—or any feeling at all, for that matter. “I require the magic released by your deaths to break the gods’ curse. The deaths of two immortal angels will equal a lot of magic. It would have taken me ages to collect that much magic, but then the two of you walked right into my hands, making this all too easy.”
“So the message at the wedding was a trick. You sent it to lure us to you,” I said.
“I did not send that message.” Colonel Spellstorm glanced up from the Magitech devices he was tinkering with, presumably the ones that would suck up all the magic our deaths would release.
“You told someone to send it then,” I said.
Confusion crinkled his brow. “I don’t know who sent the message.”
He wasn’t lying. Not this time. He didn’t have any reason to lie to us anymore. He had us right where he wanted us.
“How ironic that you would be trapped by a device of your own invention,” Colonel Spellstorm said, his face a picture of pure delight as he watched me for my response.
I’d been the one to figure out how to use Magitech generators to create magically-reenforced prison cells.
“You did such a thorough job of designing this magic prison that not even an angel could break free of it. Or even two angels,” he added, amused by his own cleverness.
He wasn’t half as clever as he thought he was.
“Use the Sapphire Tear,” I told Damiel. “Use the dagger to break us out of this magic snare.”
“You mean these daggers?” Colonel Spellstorm laughed, holding up two daggers in his hands.
The Diamond Tear. And the Sapphire Tear.
“I’m afraid escape will be quite impossible. I helped myself to the immortal daggers while you were busy fighting the rock monsters on the streets.”
And he’d left similar imposter daggers in their places. I looked down at the dagger in my scabbard.
“What do you want with the immortal daggers?” I asked him.
“I need the Sapphire Tear to break the gods’ curse on the demons. I’ll use the dagger to funnel the magic released from your deaths. Together your magic and the Sapphire Tear will break the curse. What was once unbreakable will soon be no more, thanks to you two.”
“And then, after you break the curse, you will use the Diamond Tear to open up passages for the demons,” said Damiel. “Here, everywhere, all over the Earth.”
“You know how I think, Dragonsire. Once the demons are here, they will fight the gods over this world that they both want so much.”
For some reason, both the gods and the demons believed the Earth was the key to dominance, that whoever held this world would have the upper hand in their Immortal War.
“And you want to tip the scales in the demons’ favor,” I said. “How many soldiers do they have waiting? How big is the army they’ll send to invade the Earth?”
“I honestly have no idea. I am not working for the demons.”
Damiel’s eyes narrowed. “Then who are you working for?”
“Myself,” declared the rogue angel. “I don’t care about either gods or demons.”
Damiel looked at me. “He wants them to wipe each other out.”
“Exactly,” Colonel Spellstorm said with a sharp nod. “We’re going to rid this world of them forever.”
“The last time the gods and demons fought on Earth, most of the world was left in ruins and millions died,” I pointed out. “If they do battle here again, there won’t be anything left of the Earth.”
“The war between gods and demons will weaken both,” Colonel Spellstorm said with confidence. “And with them weakened—with the two immortal daggers under my control—I can push them all out.”
He didn’t seem at all concerned about the collateral damage to the Earth and its people, the fallout of his ingenious plan. He was no better than the deities he berated, the deities he sought to eject. He didn’t want to free the Earth. He just wanted to take the gods’ place, to rule supreme on Earth just as the gods and demons ruled so many worlds.
He would label himself the Earth’s savior, but he was the one who’d bring the war between gods and demons back to Earth.
I always tried to see the good in people. I always strove to have faith. But there was nothing good about Spellstorm’s plan, nor redeeming about his intentions. They were evil, through and through.
He wasn’t breaking the gods’ spell for the greater good. He was doing it for himself. He had aspirations to be a deity, everyone else be damned.
My disgust at his actions crashed against the optimism I tried to maintain. I’d never believed that anything was impossible if you just put your mind to it, but this situation made me question that belief. It truly did seem impossible. We were trapped in a glyph, pinned down without our magic daggers, unable to stop a mad angel from unleashing hell on Earth—literally.
“You won’t be able to use the daggers,” I told him, my mind working to find a way out of this calamity.
“Why not? Because I’m not ‘chosen’?” He made a derisive noise.
I looked at him in surprise.
“Yes, I know all about your so-called Immortal Legacy.” A smile slowly curled his lips. “You’re wondering who else at the Legion knows.” The smile widened. “No one. They are all too blinded by their devotion to the false gods to see anything.”
“And you?”
“I am not blind.” His voice rang with pride. “And I have my sources.”
He didn’t elaborate, and I could tell he wasn’t going to. Honestly, I was surprised he’d told us as much as he had. It must have been his need to gloat—and the fact that he truly believed we would not survive this.
“I am not ‘special’ like you, but I can wield the daggers well enough,” Colonel Spellstorm said. “I need only direct the spell in the right direction. Your magic will do most of the work for me.”
The magic released by our deaths. Great.
“Do not despair. Take comfort in the knowledge that your deaths will free humanity from the deities who would destroy us with their Immortal War. These daggers will free you from life. They will free this world from the clutches of gods and demons. Your deaths—that is your immortal legacy. It is your fate to die by these daggers.”
Spoken like a true narcissist.
“You mean these daggers?” Damiel mirrored Colonel Spellstorm’s earlier words.
The rogue angel looked from the two daggers in Damiel’s hands, to the daggers in his own hands. The shock was apparent on his face.
Damiel slashed out with the Sapphire Tear. Blue streaks shot across the golden curtain of magic that trapped us. The nearby Magitech generator let out a loud groan, then went silent. The barrier fizzled out.
Damiel tossed me the Diamond Tear.
We jumped off the balcony, our wings bursting from our backs. We shot toward Colonel Spellstorm, surrounding him from either side.
Colonel Spellstorm shot a firestorm at me, a comet-like cocktail of flames mixed with high winds. It stank of ashes and rust.
I drew from the water in the flooded city, using it to form a water shield that consumed the comet’s fire.