Chapter 16 | The Fight, Belial Verse

They arrived in Romania on Friday night.

Colonel Dănilă met them at the military compound, confirmed the evacuation, and took them through the plan. He spoke about the cult's attacks without hesitating over the supernatural parts.

Matthias appreciated that. Nobody needed another explanation of why they were here.

Joseph asked his questions. The colonel answered them.

Then they rested.

At two forty-seven on Saturday afternoon, the artillery opened fire.

Matthias felt the first concussion through his chest. Smoke rose above the castle walls. An airstrike followed, and the gates disappeared behind dust and broken stone.

He tightened his grip on the Sun Blade.

Germany had been six people and their allies holding a line in the trees.

This was an army opening the way for them.

The bombardment lifted from the approach. At the signal, Romanian soldiers advanced through the breach and engaged the cultists spilling into the courtyard.

Joseph waved them forward.

The six crossed under the soldiers' cover, entered the castle, and found the stairs leading down.

Behind them, gunfire echoed between the walls.

Three passages opened at the bottom of the stairs.

Joseph checked the layout against his tablet.

"They lead to the mechanisms securing the way beyond. Three locks. We need all three released."

Matthias looked down the central passage.

Something drew his attention along it. He tried looking left, but the pull remained, faint and persistent.

"You feel that?" he asked.

"The passages respond to what you carry," Joseph said. "Your energy, your affinity. Follow the one that answers."

Belial turned toward the left passage.

"Left."

"Right," Astreal said beside her.

The twins exchanged a glance.

Matthias looked from one to the other.

"And I take the center."

"With us," Aki said.

Joseph nodded. Yuki drew Durendal and stepped toward the central entrance.

Matthias stayed a moment longer.

"Stay safe. Both of you."

Belial smiled at him.

"You too, Master."

Astreal inclined her head.

Then the twins turned away, and Belial entered the left passage alone.

Her staff lit the stone ahead.

The corridor narrowed beyond the first turn. Carvings ran along the walls beneath soot-darkened torches, their flames trembling whenever another impact sounded overhead.

Dust sifted from a joint in the ceiling.

Belial kept moving.

Her short sword rested at her hip. She checked its position with her free hand without looking down.

Joseph would have approved of the habit.

Make the change before you're forced to think about it.

She could hear his voice as clearly as if he were standing beside the training mat.

The passage bent once more, then opened into a hall.

Belial slowed at the threshold.

Statues stood around its edges, their heads rising into the shadows above the torchlight.

She knew the face on every one of them.

For a moment, she forgot the dust on her shoulders.

The sculptor had caught the shape of his jaw. The set of his eyes. A face she had seen across a table, beside her in bed, turning toward her when she called his name.

Three thousand years, and stone could still make her breath catch.

She lifted her gaze to the nearest statue.

So this is how they kept you.

Somewhere beyond the hall, Matthias was moving through another passage with his friends. He had asked her to stay safe, holding a sword that still puzzled all of them.

She wanted to hear him complain about tomorrow's early start.

A foot scraped against stone.

Belial turned her staff toward the sound.

A man stepped from behind the largest statue.

He was broad through the chest and shoulders, with a long-handled Dane axe in one hand. His other arm was dark metal, fitted at the shoulder and articulated through the elbow and fingers.

He flexed those fingers as he came forward.

Belial recognized him before he spoke.

"Rungon."

His mouth spread into a smile.

"Belial remembers."

"Yes."

She remembered a battlefield in Wallachia. Men breaking formation as he cut through them. Her staff raised, light crossing the space between them.

His arm had come away at the shoulder.

The replacement closed around the axe shaft.

"Rungon remembers too."

He lifted the metal arm slightly.

"Every day. Everything Belial took."

Her eyes moved from the arm to his chest.

A black necklace lay against his throat. Darkness gathered around its setting, then faded beneath his collar.

"Sylvia gave you that?"

His smile widened.

"Sylvia understood. She made Rungon her Left Guardian. Gave Rungon strength."

He lowered the axe until its head hovered above the floor.

"Now Belial loses her arms. Then her legs."

Belial studied the space between them.

Open floor. Statues at the sides. Room to move, provided she didn't let him push her against a wall.

"You've had centuries to think about this," she said.

"Centuries."

"Then I suppose I shouldn't keep you waiting."

She raised her staff.

"You're welcome to try."

Rungon swung.

The axe swept across the space where her waist had been.

Belial rose on a burst of holy light, her feet clearing the blade. Before his swing finished, she angled the staff downward and fired.

The bolt struck his shoulder.

He staggered one step.

Only one.

She landed to his left and moved again.

The axe head struck the floor behind her, breaking a shallow groove into the stone.

More strength. More resistance.

Joseph's warning had been accurate.

Rungon pulled the axe free and charged.

Belial glided sideways, keeping the staff between them. Her next shot caught him across the chest.

His coat tore. Dark smoke rose from the impact.

He kept coming.

She sent a second bolt lower, into his leading thigh.

That checked his stride.

Enough.

Belial crossed toward the hall's center before he could trap her along the statues.

The necklace flickered beneath his torn collar.

For an instant, the darkness spread from it across the place her first shot had burned.

She watched his shoulders straighten.

There.

The power wasn't simply held inside him. It was still being supplied.

Rungon came after her more carefully.

He stopped charging straight through the light. When she raised her staff, he changed his approach, forcing her to turn before she could finish aiming.

The mechanical hand shifted along the axe shaft with a soft click.

She heard it again before his next swing.

Belial stepped back.

The blade missed her dress by inches.

Her staff flashed toward his face. He raised the metal arm, taking the bolt against it, and drove forward behind the glare.

She sent a wider burst across his path.

He stopped just short of it.

They faced each other through the fading light.

"Always running," he said.

Belial drew a quiet breath.

"You keep bringing the axe with you."

He didn't smile.

She hadn't expected him to.

Her next shot forced him toward a statue. She followed it with another, cutting off the route back to the center.

He struck the second bolt with the axe. Light broke across its head, scorching the shaft beneath his hand.

He grunted.

The damage was reaching him. It simply wasn't keeping him down.

Belial shifted her grip on the staff.

She could keep wearing him down, but every exchange gave him another chance to close. And beyond this room, five people were still fighting their own battles.

She looked again at the necklace.

To reach it, she would have to go where he wanted her.

Close.

He was watching her feet now.

Belial let her pace slow, then swept her staff toward his right side. Light spread low across the floor, leaving him space to move left.

He went right.

Straight into the edge of the burst.

Her shot burned across his coat, but his necklace flared black.

He accelerated.

Belial began to turn the staff.

Too late to bring its tip around.

Rungon shortened his grip and drove the butt of the axe toward her head.

Steel rang.

Her short sword was already between them.

She caught the strike at an angle and let it slide past her face. Pain ran from her wrist to her elbow, sharp enough to numb two fingers.

She moved with it, keeping her feet beneath her.

The axe haft struck empty air beside her shoulder.

Rungon's eyes dropped to the sword.

"Belial doesn't fight close."

"I do now."

She drove the heel of her staff into the floor.

Holy force burst upward between them.

Rungon was thrown back. He struck the wall beside a statue hard enough to shake dust from its shoulders.

His mechanical hand caught the edge of the plinth.

For a moment, he stayed there, bent forward, the axe dragging against the floor.

Belial flexed her sword hand.

The fingers answered.

Painfully, but they answered.

Thank you, Joseph.

Then she looked toward the necklace.

It had flared again when the shockwave hit. Darkness curled across Rungon's chest, and he began to straighten.

She couldn't afford to be satisfied with surviving one exchange.

Belial lowered the staff.

Its tip touched the floor.

Rungon watched her through the settling dust.

She could put distance between them again. He would follow. The necklace would keep feeding him, and sooner or later another burst of speed might cost her more than a sore wrist.

Instead, she let the staff dissolve.

Gold light slipped through her fingers.

Rungon's gaze followed it.

Belial transferred the short sword to her uninjured hand and settled her feet.

For weeks, she'd stood like this in the basement while Astreal corrected her distance and Joseph made her repeat the transition.

Against Aki's spear, she'd learned how little room a long weapon needed to become dangerous again.

Against Matthias, she'd learned not to assume the next attack would be the one she expected.

None of that made Rungon harmless.

It gave her something to use.

"You should have updated your information," she said.

He pulled away from the wall.

"A little sword."

"It's quite useful."

His metal fingers tightened around the axe shaft.

Belial let him look at the empty hand where her staff had been.

He had spent centuries wanting to get past that staff. Now she was standing within a short rush of him, offering exactly the fight he'd expected her to lose.

His lips drew back from his teeth.

He came at her.

Belial watched his hands.

The mechanical one slid lower along the shaft. His shoulders rose. The axe lifted above his head.

A committed swing.

She waited until it started down.

Then she stepped diagonally toward him.

The blade passed beside her shoulder and struck stone.

Fragments stung her ankle.

She was inside its reach.

Rungon tried to wrench the weapon across her path, but she was already against his forward arm. Her left hand pressed the shaft outward while her right drove the sword's pommel beneath his breastbone.

She put holy power behind the blow.

His breath left him in a broken gasp.

The necklace flashed.

Belial struck again before he could draw air.

His knees buckled.

The axe clattered to the floor.

She stayed close, keeping the sword between his free hand and her body.

"Less convenient at this distance, isn't it?"

His metal hand snapped toward her throat.

Belial turned outside its grasp. The fingers closed on empty air, and her short blade caught his wrist, driving it down long enough for her other hand to reach his collar.

The necklace was cold against her fingers.

Beneath that cold, something pulled.

Dark energy pressed against her skin, searching for a way through.

She closed her fist around the setting.

Rungon's eyes widened.

"No."

For the first time, he wasn't looking at her sword.

He was looking at her hand.

Belial pulled.

The chain snapped.

Darkness spilled from beneath his collar.

Rungon lurched toward the necklace, his mechanical fingers reaching past her arm.

They began to come apart before they touched it.

Black mist streamed between the joints. His shoulder lost its shape, followed by the edge of his face.

His scream echoed once against the ceiling.

Belial stepped back.

The body collapsed inward, dissolving before it reached the floor. The axe broke into the same dark vapor, its long shaft vanishing from one end to the other.

Within moments, nothing remained where he had knelt.

The hall was quiet.

Belial stood with the broken necklace in her hand.

So it had been sustaining more than his strength.

She looked at the place where his metal fingers had reached for her.

He had waited centuries for this encounter. She had changed her morning routine, accepted help, and learned to carry a second weapon.

He'd noticed the sword too late.

Belial let out a slow breath.

Her wrist throbbed.

She looked down and found blood where a stone chip had cut her ankle.

Nothing that would keep her from walking.

She sheathed the sword, then wrapped the necklace in a spare cloth before putting it away. Joseph could examine what remained of Sylvia's work once they were clear of the castle.

For now, there was still a lock to open.

She found the key at the far end of the hall.

It rested in a recess in an altar-like plinth. Beside it, a narrow slot had been cut into the wall, its outline matching the key's heavy head.

Belial looked back once.

No movement. No gathering darkness.

She picked up the key and fitted it into the slot.

For a moment, it resisted.

She tightened her grip and turned.

Something shifted deep inside the stone.

A heavy clunk traveled through the wall, followed by the slow scrape of a mechanism withdrawing.

The left lock had released.

One of three.

Belial rested her uninjured hand against the plinth and listened.

Beyond the walls came a distant impact. Then another.

The others were still fighting.

She turned toward the passage.

The statues watched her cross the hall. Near the entrance, she paused beneath the face that had caught her attention when she arrived.

There was dust on its cheek now.

She remembered loving that face. She always would.

But Matthias was somewhere ahead of her, and she had promised him she would come back.

Belial summoned her staff into her good hand.

Its light reached into the corridor.

She went to find him.