Cassandra Pendragon
"I can see you," I whispered through an anticipatory grin, before my body turned into a beam of light and streaked across the sky. To me it seemed like the world dissolved into a puddle of mixing colours while the roars of space bending and breaking under my will thundered against my ears. I felt my heart beat once and the whirlpool of sights and sounds solidified like drying paint.
Above the gruesome ritual I manifested, my figure hidden behind a roiling veil of shadows, the light from my wings reduced to a smouldering, barely perceptible glow. The air hadn't stirred upon my arrival and not a sound had escaped my grasp. Against the dark, starless night and the thick, suffocating fog I was as good as invisible and for a moment I felt something akin to joy reverberate through my heart when I realised that the entire, macabre gathering… the entire valley had come under my control without anyone being the wiser. The tides had turned and I was looking forward to the mortified expressions I'd surely have a chance to savour, once their misguided aspirations of stolen power were going to crumble under my wings like sandcastles.
A deep crevice had been torn into one of the mountains, whether by nature, magic or the strength of human ingenuity I couldn't tell, and at its very end a basin, at least two miles in diameter, laid, surrounded by steep, insurmountable walls of polished obsidian on all sides. Only to the East did the cauldron open into the crevice and connect the ritual site to the distant main sect.
What I had taken for a hill was actually a mountain of decomposed corpses, discarded from the altar. Over years and years the rotten flesh and broken bones had formed a ridge and the polished slab of black stone had meticulously been placed at the very top of the nauseating monument of cruelty. The unmoving, heavy air, if you could even call it that, was laden with the sweet, disgusting smell of death and decay, the haze a suffocating vice I felt mercilessly closing around my throat. If I had still been a regular kitsune, I would have lost consciousness the very moment I had arrived.
Around the altar about thirty people stood, their sandalled feet sinking into the soft, mouldering ground, their faces hidden under hoods and masks made from bleached bones. They had their hands folded as if in prayer and an unnerving stream of alien words flowed endlessly from their hidden lips, the only sound in the heavy silence, except for Baihe's desperate, but waning struggles against her heavy, wrought iron chains. The white dragoness hadn't simply been tied down. The metal had been driven through her scales and deep into her body, severing the mighty tendons along her coils to prevent her from resisting. A barbed ball had also been forced into her snout, tearing open her cheeks and revealing her ivory fangs. Rivulets of steaming blood flowed from her wounds and down the altar, wetting the hill of bones with the precious liquid and adding an innocent, almost drowned out aftertaste to the suffocating miasma all around.
Close to her gagged head the two nightmares stood, their form resembling shadow clad, hunched over humans. By now their essence had hardened into long, viscous needles in their hands, which they caressingly moved back and forth along her jaws. A sound like chisels digging into marble followed and I saw the dragoness tremble and desperately fight against her shackles when the heinous instruments approached the festering, dark holes along her neck. A veritable surge of blood spilled form her mouth when she bit down on the cruel gag, but try as she might, she couldn't break her restraints, nor could she stop her assailants with magic. The abominable chains extinguished even the smallest spark of power as soon as it tried to form in her heart.
Any second now her two torturers were going to pierce her hide once again and the ominous streams of power I saw coagulating around the tips of the needles told me enough to figure out what they were up to. Piece by little piece they were turning her into one of them, they were corrupting her essence to break a dream and make it become a nightmare. Why they'd go to such lengths I couldn't say. I did have a vague idea or two, related to their burned realm and the chance to occupy another, but in the end I didn't really care. They weren't going to succeed. For the fraction of a moment I toyed with the idea of revealing myself, of granting them a few seconds of utter despair before their demise, simply to give them a small taste of what they had forced upon their victims, but ultimately it wouldn't change a thing. I'd only sully myself further.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow, I thought wryly as I raised my hands and spread my tails. A silent command returned my wings to their unveiled glory and suddenly the oppressive, suffocating darkness fled when a crackling sun of silver and blue appeared in the sky. Harsh light flooded the entire cauldron, the smell of ozone drowned out the lingering breath of death, the humans choked on their prayers and the reaching nightmares became insubstantial before they simply ceased to be in the blink of an eye. Nightmares had always feared the light.
I didn't even realise that my lips were forming words until I heard my voice, velvety and cold, thunder through the basin: "a lake of fire and brimstone. For the fallen sons of humanity, there is no punishment more fitting." A sweet, carefree laugh escaped me. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, but the work will be done by the Devil. Judgment Day… your time has come." Maybe it was because Constantine had been on my mind one way or the other ever since I had traipsed into his former home, maybe it was just the flame of anger I felt singing my insides, whatever the reason the biblical curses I had once detested rolled off my tongue without a second thought.
An unfelt wind played with my hair and a corona of light erupted around me. My spear appeared in the air above my head, spinning slowly, and my wings swelled until it seemed like I was standing still in front of a shattered reality, the silver cracks spreading all around me. One by one the humans below fell to their knees, their robes went up inflames and their masks disintegrated when my aura surged and devoured the paltry remains of their magic. Like children they wailed on the ground, their composure eradicated under the pressure of an immortal presence, but neither snot nor tears were going to change their fate. Mercy… had they shown it before, I would have granted it now, but it was too late. God might have forgiven them for their sins, but I was no god.
My spear came to rest, its tip pointed downwards, surrounded by my crackling wings, and the smell of ozone became strong enough to singe the mortals' throats. "Fire," I declared and drew heavily on my connection to Ahri to add a bit of finesse to my strength. Silence fell, absolute and deadly, and then the gates to hell opened wide. "And brimstone," I added menacingly.
The ground trembled, the mountains groaned and the very air seemed to recoil when reality yielded to my will. The crevice collapsed with an ear shattering roar to seal us in hermetically, the very soil erupted with anger when it regurgitated the filth and horrors it had been forced to swallow over decades and the altar on the hill of rotten corpses imploded into nothingness. The white dragoness was lifted up on torrents of pure power, her shackles falling away from her limbs like nightmares on the cusp of dawn, her blood wetting the upturned, desperate faces of her jailers like a burning rain of vengeance. A single, tortured cry reached me when one overwhelmed human, alone among flying entrails and splinters of bone that had pierced his body like spikes, hollered his despair and fear to the distant heavens, but, as always, they didn't care. On the contrary, this was only a prelude.
Once the thunderstorm of decayed flesh had died down the hill was almost gone, reduced to an ugly heap of ravaged earth, sprinkled with jaws and ribs and skulls. Then it began to glow and so did the entire ground throughout the cauldron. Heat followed a moment later. When their sandals began to smoke and the hems of their robes caught on fire, scarring their skin, the rest of the devastated gathering finally found their voices again. Desperate pleas and laughable threats reached me from far away, but I didn't care. My thoughts were adamantly focused on two tasks. Keeping the dragoness at my side alive and making good on my promise. Before I was going to leave, I'd turn the entire basin into a lake of fire and brimstone. Then I'd pulverise the dam the destroyed crevice had become and allow the fires of hell to devour their entire, pitiful sect.
As if a primordial beast had wakened from its slumber, the ground trembled and rose. Steam shot from the spreading cracks with a threatening hiss and the hapless, mortified acolytes who were caught in the superheated torrents burned to a crisp in the blink of an eye. Those were the lucky ones. The others could only watch in helpless terror as the soil underneath their feat wiggled and flowed like water when the blood of the earth forced its way to the surface. Lava roared deafeningly from holes and newly formed fissures like red hot tears, cleansing the cruelty of the past and lamenting the atrocities that had held the land in a suffocating grip for far too long.
Once the flimsy protection of the ground had been broken it was over in a flash. In mere seconds the glowing, crimson tide surged and filled the basin to the brink. Like soup in an infernal cauldron it bubbled and hissed, the traces of the ritual, of the altar, of the basin itself long since reduced to ashes under the wrathful assault of nature unleashed. Of the acolytes, the nightmares and their vile magic nothing remained, but painful memories.
My glowing eyes darted to the crevice, where lava thundered against broken rocks and pulverised pebbles. I commanded Aiglos into my hand and extended my spear towards the blockage that sat in the way of the looming reckoning like a cork in a bottle. My aura expanded, blowing away the miasma as if a giant's breath had suddenly cleansed the air. Then the light coalesced around Aiglos' tip into a single, angry, silver spark. Without hesitation I pointed and the wrath of an immortal ground the flimsy barrier of stone to dust in the blink of an eye.
An enraged beast of fire, flames and brimstone charged its way through the narrow gap, annihilating rocks and magic in its wake. Faster and faster it swirled until it made contact with the strong enchantments around the core of the sect. A breathtaking display of light and power followed, illuminating the ravaged valley, but I didn't stick around to watch. I reached out and gently wrapped my tails around every part of the stupefied dragoness I could reach. "It's time to go home. Mei's waiting for you. Your nightmare has come to an end." Then we vanished in a flash of silver light that streaked towards the mountains in the East. A minute. It had taken me a minute to get her back. Hopefully the two women were awake by now. Sitting around with the two dragonesses, waiting for their companions to open their eyes sounded unbelievably awkward.
Unfortunately I had no such luck. The moment I materialised and the smells of nature and the sounds of the mountain poured into me again I only heard an earsplitting shout. Then I was sent flying, my tiny body catapulted through the air by a massive, tree sized club of glittering rubies and sapphires. As soon as Yueji had seen the trembling dragoness she had lunged forward with entire disregard for the undersized angel in her way. That's going to hurt, was the last thought that fluttered through my mind before my back made intimate contact with one of the courtyard's walls. Luckily the fired bricks were the ones to give, instead of my often mistreated spine.
I coughed softly, surrounded by an impenetrable cloud of reddish dust. The world seemed to spin and a disorientating, ringing sound filled my ears after the impact. Before I could get my bearings, though, a massive, scaled arm with equally massive, crystalline talons reached through the floating debris and closed around my ankle. Oh boy. Befuddled as I was, I honestly wondered if she was going to use me as a snack for her niece to recover. "I'm not a piece of jerky," I complained confusedly, "although I bet I'd be tasty." Then my mind managed to catch up.
True enough, by now Yueji had caught me in a hold I'd have called gentle, if her claws hadn't been poking my tender skin painfully. Her expression was hard to read, but the tears, running freely from her gemlike eyes, and the obsessive strength with which she had curled herself around the younger dragoness in front of her were pretty easy to interpret. "You," she croaked. "How…?" I blinked and took a moment to take in my surroundings.
Of the erstwhile pristine courtyard not much remained. It hadn't been our arrival, per se, that had caused the destruction, but when I had disappeared the red and blue dragoness had apparently needed something to chew on. Literally. Every larger tree had been uprooted and reduced to splinters and of the beautiful pond only trampled mud and a few, shallow puddles remain. The air smelled of crushed leaves and broken wood, but the gate was still closed and the walls intact, except for a decidedly Cassandra shaped dent close by. Also, judging from the agitated shouts outside, Yueji's fear had spread, but our guards weren't stupid enough to go near, never mind antagonise an enraged dragoness. Add the sudden appearance of another creature about as heavy as a medium sized freight train to the mix and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the serene sanctuary of meditation had become a devastated battlefield.
"Told you I can get her back," I slurred and swallowed a mouthful of blood. I had bitten through my tongue without realising. A trickle of energy surged from my core and sealed the superficial cuts on my back and the deep tear in my tongue. It also cleared up the last cobwebs my short apprenticeship as a dull nail had left behind.
If I had expected a reply, I would have been sorely disappointed. The dragoness was much too busy nuzzling her kin, while she contorted her snakelike body indescribably to keep at least one of her coils wrapped around the two human girls and me safely in her palm. The target of most of her affection was still in a daze, though, and hardly reacted to her touch, never mind the constant stream of only half worded questions that flowed from Yueji's mouth like water. I understood how she felt. I had been there often enough and the last thing one needed, when trying to puzzle out which way was up and why the sky was blue, was an overprotective friend asking questions without answers.
"Let the girl breathe," I said much more resolutely and gently pressed against her talons until she loosened her grip. "Just hold her for a minute. Everything you need to know I can tell you. Someone took her, I took her back. Killed some dozens of humans and two nightmares on the way. They kept her in a pretty dark place due west from here. Somewhere in the middle of a smelly swamp. Anything else?" With a sound like the crack of whip her long, slender neck whirled around and her huge, burning eyes focused on me. The stammer that followed didn't match her fierce expression:
"I… but… how?" I sighed. Luckily I had managed to patch Baihe up on the way. Except for her vacant expression she seemed almost fine, with a slight shaving of shock. If I hadn't, there was no telling how panicked her worrywart of an elder would have become.
"About that… I'm not exactly a fox spirit, nor a dragoness," I began while I wiggled around until my tails didn't feel squeezed anymore. How come I always ended up consoling or at least calming down one monster or the other? "I'm an angel… which probably means nothing to you. Long story short, I'm a benevolent guardian of creation with an uncanny habit of getting involved when I really shouldn't." I even managed to state the first part with a straight face. More or less.