"Fool of dead gods," Sathariel rumbled as they traded blows relentlessly. "You have no idea what you have involved yourself in!"
The silver blade whistled by Jinn's ear, drawing sparks on the iron railing as he ducked and thrust at the angel's arm. Sathariel's quick blade slapped his strike aside.
"I've always been here. It was never my place to understand or question the desires of the gods," he replied, rolling away from the edge of the roof.
A silver blur followed him as Sathariel whirled, slashing in a wide arc. Jinn stopped and braced himself, sword raised to block the angel's blow and wincing at the force behind it.
"Then you are ignorant as well as a fool," the angel thundered, "and that blade you wield has suffered many such fools. They died well before drawing my blood, and they died gladly, I assure you."
Jinn glanced at the shining sword then cursed as Sathariel took advantage of his distraction, opening a deep cut in his side and reopening the wound he'd suffered from Lucian Dregg. The pain was fleeting, overcome by the stolen sword's curious hunger and old power. He pressed back, parrying the angel's blade and opening a sister wound in Sathariel, dragging the length of his sword through the angel's side. Steel crashed between them, but neither called out in pain, unwilling to give the other the satisfaction.
The sky was alive with dancing lights and rolling fire. Whispers and wails surrounded them even as the streets below echoed with battle. Dark clouds roiled in wide circles, thundering though the rain had stopped. Tremors rumbled from the abandoned house. Though he battled relentlessly, the stolen sword fought with a passion of its own. It squirmed in his grip, the sensation sickening, but he could not release it, did not dare try. He clung to the steel and prayed he had made the right decision, prayed for his very soul.
Striking low and spinning to his right, Jinn nimbly avoided a killing blow, but Sathariel rushed forward, slamming into the deva with his armored shoulder. Jinn stumbled back, deflecting another fatal slash but taking a deep cut across the back of his leg in return. He fell to one knee, gritting his teeth against the pain, and tried to rise but faltered, pain shooting up the side of his body like fire.
He watched helplessly as the angel drew close and stared at the blade as though it had betrayed him. Heart pounding in his chest, Jinn raised the sword, determined to fight from the ground if he had to, though the hopelessness of his resolve sat bitterly in his thoughts. He had experienced a thousand deaths, both spectacular and mundane, but as he looked into the twinkling blue lights of the angel's pitted eyes, he saw something different. His rage battled with a faint hope as he spoke.
"This sword… this choice I've made," Jinn said, gasping. "Will I die? Truly die?"
"None can know, deva. The contract has never been answered before," Sathariel replied, his sword rising.
"Contract?" Jinn asked, his eyes fixed on the silver blade over the angel's shoulder, his thoughts racing as a hundred battles came to mind, a hundred deaths flashing through his soul, each life fading with the same wish, for one more chance to relive the moment.
"No time for that now. Farewell, Jinnaoth. You should never have come to this world," Sathariel replied, his voice ominously gentle.
The silver sword fell, its arc mirroring that of a hundred others, an executioner's strike, clean and perfect.
TWENTY-TWO
NIGHTAL 22, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)
The stolen blade shivered in his hand as he followed the stroke of the angel's sword, his death written on its edge. Though he had faced his ending a thousand times, instinct would not let him rest again so soon. The motions were reflex, written in hopeless thoughts on a battlefield whose name he could not recall. He had died that day with a glimmer of regret burned into his thoughts, a regret that moved his good leg and placed strength in his arm.
He hacked at Sathariel's blade, battering it aside as he lunged within the angel's guard and drove the steel of his stolen blade deep into Sathariel's chest. The shining sword screamed through the silvered armor. It burned and hissed through the angel as ethereal blood streamed from the injury.
Sathariel's sword clattered to the ground, and he gripped Jinn's shoulders, wings beating furiously in a panic to escape. The deva held on tightly, keeping the angel close as Sathariel howled in his ear, pulling him toward the iron railing. Glowing light poured from the wound as the angel's struggles slowed and grew sluggish. With a final beat of his massive wings, Sathariel fell.
Jinn collapsed at the edge of the roof, gripping the deep cut in his leg as the angel slumped upon the iron railing, his armor caught on rusted spikes, his wings stretched out, twitching as his life bled away. The deva held on to the hungry blade, clutching it fast and bearing witness to the long-sought death of his enemy.
"I do not envy you… deva," Sathariel rasped as ribbons of shadow bled from his body, drawn into the shining blade in his chest. "In victory I was to be rewarded… finished… a powerful vassal of a pleased god… but you… you must now go on…"
Jinn pulled close as the angel's voice grew weak, sparks of warm power racing through his sword arm.
"Why? What do you mean?" he asked.
"The contract… lies in your hand…," Sathariel replied, chuckling softly. "Forged when the world was young… a contract of steel… a bargain made between the forces of darkness and light… an invitation to Asmodeus…"
Jinn stared at the blade as it drank the angel's shadowy essence, devouring the darkness in his wings. It drew rivers of ethereal blood from the black pits of Sathariel's eyes. It glowed brighter with every strip of angelic flesh. Jinn released it and fell back, the horrid power still pulsing through his blood.
"You are now a balance… fulcrum between this world and a god's wrath…" Sathariel laughed again, writhing in pain. "Devils and angels will seek you out, deva! Your wars will never end! And every time… you must choose…"
The angel shook as he chuckled, weaker and weaker, his mighty wings shrinking to little more than feathered stumps of shadow. Jinnaoth felt the pain in his leg subside, the wound nearly closed by the sword's power, and a sickening hollow formed in his gut.
Nauseated, he looked away, staring into the crimson column of light and the burning clouds overhead, their fires already lessening as the angel died.
"Why do you tell me this?" he asked.
"Because… it pleases me to do so…," Sathariel answered. Then he shuddered violently, falling silent as his body fell apart, the remnants taken up by the wind in a cloud of ash, embers, and dissipating feathers.
The sword remained lodged in the silvered breastplate, and Jinn stared at it with a mixture of awe and terror. He touched its pommel once, and his mind was assaulted with a flash of power. It showed him images of the Astral Sea and a burning ocean of fire, veils of energy rippling across a spinning sphere of brilliant blues; rough browns; and drifting, white clouds-the very moment he had chosen to follow his gods into a world of flesh and blood.
He snatched his hand away from the sword, his wrist burning from the contact as he stood and limped away from the weapon. He clutched his arm close, cradling it as he retreated, leaving the sword behind and slowly descending a narrow stairway into the House of Thome.
Shattered glass crunched beneath their boots as Quessahn and Tavian ran up the length of Flint Street, slowing as they neared the House of Wonder and stopping short at the grisly scene that awaited them. Smaller tremors rumbled through the cobbles as they edged closer to the scattered bodies sprawled across the avenue, several grouped together near the mouth of Pharra's Alley. Quessahn counted almost two dozen, all of them in the dingy, stinking robes of the ahimazzi, their curved blades rattling on the ground as the street vibrated slightly then quickly ceased.