Midnight #2
A sick pleasure gleams in his expression, then he yanks the loop and the creature’s head pops off.
Black globs of liquid billow out of its decapitated throat.
Acid licks bitter and tart on my tongue as I stare at the body crashing to the cobbles.
A thunderous clash slices through the campus. The resonance makes my chest vibrate and the ground tremble. In the distance, there are so. Many. Screams.
Professors launch into battle. Societas members fling ribbons of magic and swords alike. I’m pushed to the ground as Ignatius steps in front of me to stab a serrated thread of magic through the centre of one of Interitus’s member’s robes and into their chest.
A dribble of rouge foam bubbles at the corner of his mouth before he drops dead.
Ignatius gives me his hand and hauls me up. He shoves a metal blade into my grip. “Stick to shit you have mastered.”
Rude. But also fair, I move much easier like this. The scythe slices soul, the blade through body.
I eviscerate three wraiths and a Societas member before I’m knocked off my feet, a blade biting through my triceps.
A howl bursts out. Claret pours down my elbow.
Ignatius rips a slither of magic from the nearest building and flings it at me.
It wraps around my wound, halting the bleeding.
A large shadow descends on me. I spin out of the way and swipe both blades through the object—a wraith—splitting it from head to groin.
The two halves quiver then part shrivelling into a desiccated mess.
The remaining professors regroup, swarming together to pull hundreds of threads of magic from the campus.
Each ribbon more gnarled than the last. The tower isn’t fixed yet; bricks are still levitating from the ground and slotting back into place.
But Architecti and Interitus continue to throw violent hits at each other.
And while she’s battling her sister, the campus goes unfixed.
I doubt that anyone’s magic will be foolproof until it’s healed.
But we’re making progress.
My scythe is warm in my hand, tired and vibrating with use.
I give it a rest and reach out to the campus again. The threads come even faster than before. It’s thicker and more aggressive than the campus used to be. It has to be Lucy’s magic. It whorls inside me, untamed, uncontrolled, chomping to be free.
Ignatius lands blow after blow. Severing limb from torso and head from body.
All I can do is wonder if he can tell. If he recognises what lingers under the surface, threaded in my cells as if it were mine all along.
It feels like mine, but is it? Surely demonic magic isn’t that fickle, just drifting from owner to owner.
Fuck it, I’ll take any advantage over him I can, harbour it and use it to save myself.
“LEX,” I bellow, as a wraith comes out of nowhere. Bastien stabs at it and it crashes to the floor.
Aurelia is near them; she is covered in blood and hunched over but still fighting. We’re getting slaughtered.
The ground trembles again and again. Each time more vicious as Interitus’s wings collide with the side of Finis Tower, missing Architecti by a feather. Bricks explode and almost as quickly, float back into place dropping back where they were so roughly yanked out. The angels fight alongside us.
The tower is almost healed, save for the shrinking maw in the middle. A dark void that’s still spewing out wraiths and ashspawn from the underworld.
Architecti lunges for Interitus, but a wraith is caught in the middle of them. Architecti goes flying, knocked off axis, and spins out. Her wings save her, correcting enough to rebalance her body.
Interitus leaps for her, smashing into her back and crumpling one of her sister’s wings. A serrated feather tip notches under Architecti’s neck.
Interitus laughs, dry, peppered and full of malice. “Finally. Now, where is my moth?”
Architecti doesn’t miss a beat, she snarls and opens her robes. Thousands of moths swarm out from under her robes. All of them Architect moths.
This isn’t over.
The last moth that emerges is far larger. I swallow down a shiver. One side has serrated wing tips like Interitus, only they appear as dark as obsidian. The other wing is made of constellations, delicate and glistening like dewy webs.
Interitus stalls mid-air. She screams. Tears fall from her cheeks. Her cries shatter all the windows in the vicinity.
She calls to what was her moth, or at least the half that used to be her moth, but it doesn’t move. It hovers around Architecti’s head. The smile that creeps across Architecti’s face is feral, victorious, as if she planned this all along. “Your move, Interitus…”
“What the hell did you do?” Interitus growls.
“I told you I’d stop you… So I took your power and merged it with mine. And now…? It’s all mine.”
Interitus shivers, an oscillation filled with rage rises over her cheeks. She sucks in a breath and screams. A holler that shatters the tower windows and makes everybody, including the wraiths, drop to the ground and cover their ears.
On and on she roars.
Bricks crumble; bodies roll. Searing heat rings in my ears as her fury fills the campus. It creeps over my arms and neck like slime and ants’ feet and maggots. It burrows under pores and feasts on my innards until I’m writhing on the floor and begging for death.
The Architect moth swarm surges towards Interitus, pushing her back, back, back.
But Interitus is wrathful. And for the first time, I see her and truly understand the venom that lurks beneath her skin and feathers.
She will not cease.
This is not over. Her head snaps towards me, isolating me out of the crowd.
Shit.
I scramble up and stumble. But it’s too late, she soars through the air, her wings open and flapping, sending wraiths and bodies gusting away. She swoops down, grabbing me by the collar and lifting me up into the air.
“Did you reap her?” she asks.
I hesitate but see no reason to lie. After all, Architecti is here because I reaped Lucy. “Yes.”
Interitus closes her eyes, inhaling a slow, agonising breath.
When she opens them, her golden eye glints with a poison I drown in, her blue one cold as the depths of the Lantis Ocean.
She carries the same determination I do.
We’re thirty feet above the ground now, my toes prickle, my stomach churns.
“Good, Midnight. That’s very good. I spent forty years here waiting for this moment.”
“Lucy’s dead. You can’t hurt her anymore.” I don’t know why I’m trying to protect her. I’m fucking livid with her.
Interitus smiles at me, her eyes soft and full of pity. “And if you think that’s enough to stop me, you’re more pathetic than I realised.”
“Let her rest in peace.”
She snorts at me, grips hold of my jacket tighter and soars higher into the air.
Her head jerks to Architecti. “You might have my moth, but this isn’t over.”
Architecti, gripping the side of the tower, stills. The only movement is the flexing of her jaw.
“Without the moth, you are powerless.”
Interitus tuts three times. “You thought stealing my moth was enough to stop me?”
Architecti’s smile falters.
Interitus laughs. “There’s always another source.” She flies right for the tower’s shrinking void. I wriggle harder, trying to get out of her grip.
Interitus snarls, “Catch me if you can, sister…”
She drops me.
I fall fast as she zips through the air, her wings narrowing as she dives headfirst into the void and vanishes into the underworld.
“Interitus!” I shriek, but it’s too fucking late. She’s gone and I’m plummeting towards the earth.