The Hammer of War, Chapter 52

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 0

STR – 47
DEX – 40
VIT – 161

—

Black feathers?

What the—

I twisted mid-air, the girl still limp across my shoulder, and craned my neck back toward the sky. My first thought was that I was hallucinating from lack of sleep. My second was that the world had once again decided it hated me.

Because there they were.

Two people. Hanging in the night air like they owned it.

The man looked like he’d just walked off the cover of a luxury magazine—sleek black tuxedo, not a wrinkle on it, and shoes polished to a mirror shine. His features were hard to pin down, but he seemed like the kind of guy who could pick up all the girls at a nightclub with just ten words or less, or the kind of guy who could sell you a watch you couldn’t afford with just a smile. Except he wasn’t smiling. He was hurling a spear made of pure, blinding light at the half-naked woman across from him.

And she? Well. She looked like she had crawled out of the centerfold of a playboy magazine–or a porn site. Black, see-through two-piece lingerie, stockings clinging to long legs, dark hair that would’ve taken three hours and two stylists to get right. She was beautiful in a very obvious sort of way, like a celebrity–or a stripper. Like the man, her features were hard to pin down to a specific phenotype, but her skin was pale and her eyelashes were long and dark, giving her the appearance of what my old friends would’ve referred to as a goth mommy. 

I wondered if she might’ve been embarrassed if she were anywhere else–probably not. Right now she was busy countering with her own glowing spear, wings spread wide, expression caught somewhere between fury and joy.

Oh yeah—wings.

Both of them had wings. Black-feathered, glossy in the streetlight, each slow beat stirring the air. They weren’t costumes. They weren’t props. I could feel the weight of them even from below.

And the two of them were trying to murder each other.

Sparks fell like fireworks every time their spears met, scattering across the dark like molten hail. The sound was sharp enough to make my teeth ache, each clash ringing louder than it had any right to. If anyone in the city happened to look up, they’d probably think a lightshow had been booked without their knowledge.

I hit the rooftop of the opposite building, boots scraping against tar, and slid into the shadow of a vent. The girl I’d knocked out shifted slightly on my shoulder, but didn’t wake.

My eyes went back up to the sky.

Fallen Angels, I thought. What else could they be?

Not that the idea was reassuring. Vampires and devils were one thing. But angels, fallen or otherwise, were something I’d never encountered before, despite knowing of their existence. I hated unknown variables. I didn’t know their weaknesses–if they had one at all. I didn’t know how they operated–if they fed on humanity or not. I knew nothing about them, save for the fact that Angels, Devils, and Fallen Angels were apparently at some kind of stalemate, according to the Great Slayer Granthi. Angels were harmless to humans, which meant I had no business with them. Fallen Angels were… well… I had no idea what their game was. 

“Woah,” I muttered under my breath. Because really, what else was I supposed to say? 

I could probably kill them both with a single, well-placed shot from the [Exitus Rifle]. Wouldn’t even be much of a challenge. One squeeze of the trigger and they’d both be nothing more than falling feathers and red mist. But that was the easy part. The hard part was knowing whether pulling that trigger was the smart play. And right now, I didn’t know a damn thing.

Too little information.

The last thing I needed was to stumble into someone else’s holy war without even knowing whose god was handing out orders. But I also wasn’t the type to just walk away blind. At the very least, I wanted to know what I was turning my back on. More importantly, I needed to be sure their little lightshow didn’t spill over and barbecue the locals.

Problem was, I still had a half-dead girl on my hands. That narrowed my options.

Fortunately, I had a simple solution. I summoned a [Drukhari Incubus]—all obsidian armor and a silence so deep it made the air seem thicker—and shoved the unconscious girl into its care with a single thought. The command was simple: get her somewhere safe, dry, and warm. The Incubus nodded once, then disappeared into the shadows without so much as a whisper. I’d picked it for that very reason. It could sneak through a riot and not stir a curtain.

That left me free to keep watching.

The fight above grew sharper. More savage. The woman pressed her advantage, her spear flashing brighter, her strikes faster, more vicious. For a moment it looked like she’d tear him apart piece by piece. But then the man answered with clean precision, never wasting a motion, never giving ground. His spear burned less brightly, but his skill carried him, the way a practiced hand can turn a dull blade into a killing edge.

It was a strange sort of balance—her raw power against his refined technique. They met again and again in the air, wings thrashing, feathers scattering into the night like ash from a burning pyre. Each strike bloomed in sudden bursts of light, but the arcs fizzled before they reached the streets, snuffed out by a ward that shimmered like heat-haze across the skyline. Magic. Subtle but absolute.

Their forms blurred. A beat later they tore apart, wings snapping wide, air rippling from the force. The woman’s hands flared, and in a blink she was ringed by dozens of spears, each one hanging in the air like frozen lightning. They spun behind her, arranging into a sharp halo that threw wild shadows across the clouds.

The man gave no roar, no shout. Only a quiet tightening of his jaw as his spear dissolved into pure light. From that brilliance a shield blossomed, a pane of radiance that curved around him like a wall of glass. Its edge shimmered with geometric patterns—circles within circles, etched runes that crawled like ants across the surface before fixing into place.

The woman bared her teeth and hurled her arm forward.

The halo shattered into motion. A storm of lances cut the sky in an instant, streaking downward in a barrage that could have torn a gunship in half. The sound followed after, a crackling thunder that shook the glass beneath my boots. For a second the whole night looked like it was ending.

The man raised his shield and braced behind it. The first spears struck and splintered against the surface, scattering shards of white flame across the air. The shield quaked but did not break. More came down. Ten. Twenty. The light hammered him, tore the sky into ribbons. I could see the impact ripple through his stance, but he did not falter. Each strike bled energy across the surface of the shield, until the thing was glowing red at its seams.

And still he stood.

When the last spear struck, silence fell. Smoke hung between them. The woman spread her wings and waited for the shield to collapse, for him to tumble burning into the alleys below.

But the light curtain remained, cracked in places, glowing faint like coals at the bottom of a dying fire. Then the man lowered his arm. The shield peeled away into sparks, and he still floated there, breathing slow, his expression unreadable.

I almost laughed. She had expected him to fall. I had too, if I’m honest.

He didn’t.

And before the woman could gather herself again, he moved.

One beat of his wings sent him forward like a cannon round. He crossed the gap in less than a blink, spear reforming in his hand. The woman jerked back, tried to summon another weapon, but he was already inside her guard. His spear flickered, struck once, twice, three times in measured thrusts. She caught the first with her arm, barely twisted away from the second, but the third drew a line of blood across her shoulder. Feathers scattered.

The balance tipped.

The man seized her by the hair and wrenched her downward. The motion was brutal, sudden, not graceful at all, but it carried weight. Her wings faltered. He caught her arm and twisted—there was a sound, a wet tearing, and the joint gave way. The scream that broke from her throat was sharp, animal, but short-lived. His knee rose like a hammer, snapping into her face with such force that the crack of bone carried across the rooftops. Blood misted from her nose and mouth, catching the light of their weapons like red glass.

She reeled, wings flaring wild, but he did not relent. A spear of light burst to life in his hand, white fire solidifying in the space between heartbeats. He drove it forward into her stomach, the impact jerking her body tight against him, the glow burning through the silk of her lingerie and throwing wild reflections on her skin. She choked and clawed weakly at his arm, her fingers streaking blood across his wrist.

Not finished, he pulled the weapon free, let it dissolve, and conjured another, its edge sharper, brighter. He plunged this one into her chest. Her wings spasmed, feathers scattering like ash in the wind.

Still not done.

He released the spear and it stayed lodged in her body, hanging from her chest like a nailed flag. Then he kicked. One swift arc of his leg, clean and merciless. His heel struck her jaw and her head snapped back, hair whipping in a spray of blood.

The force sent her tumbling earthward, her body twisting through the air, wings flailing in vain against gravity. She smashed through the rooftop of a low building and slammed into the alley below, the sound sharp and final. Dust rose in a small gray cloud.

Above, the man hovered. His wings spread wide, black feathers trailing down in lazy spirals. He breathed slowly, no sign of strain, and watched the alley like a hawk staring into brush.

"You're a fool, Raynare." He said. After a moment, he flew off and disappeared into the sky. 

Well, what the shit. 

Luckily there wasn’t anyone around to witness the landing. I doubted their little glamour spell was designed to withstand the shockwave of someone being punted into the earth at terminal velocity. Cracked pavement tended to draw attention, after all.

Curiosity won out over common sense. I dropped from the rooftop and hit the street feet first, boots grinding against loose grit. A fall like that would’ve left a normal man in traction, but I was long past normal. With all the VIT I had, my knees didn’t even creak.

The alley stretched narrow between two brick walls, trash bags slumped in heaps against dented bins. At the center of it lay the woman. She hadn’t so much as  landed as cratered. The pavement was fractured in a spiderweb pattern beneath her body, dust still clinging to her hair. Her wings were gone, vanished into nothing the moment she lost consciousness. 

She was a mess. The wound in her stomach still leaked faintly, staining her pale white skin with crimson. The spear-hole in her chest bubbled red with each shallow breath. Her right arm was bent at an angle no arm should bend, elbow twisted, bone pressing against skin. Her face wasn’t much better. The nose was broken flat, two or three teeth missing from the front, lips swollen and slick with blood.

But she lived. Even broken, even stripped of those wings, there was still breath in her chest. Shallow. Weak. But there.

I stood over her for a moment, silent, the faint stink of iron filling the alley. I raised a brow and wondered if I should just finish her off here and now or…?