CHAPTER 11 #2
“Hey,” she whispered, her head turning frantically between the plaza outside and the prince in front of her, who stood with his fists clenched and his shoulders shaking like he wanted to scream. “Are you—”
“I have nothing more to say,” he informed her crisply. “Go ahead and find the others. I’d like a minute alone.”
Bex held up her hands at once, backing away from the former Prince of Sorrow like he was an unexploded bomb before she turned and hurried deeper down the gold-decorated hall that her grinning demons were gleefully tearing apart.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It didn’t take long to find Iggs and Adrian.
Bex only had to turn one corner and there they were, together in the middle of a huge hall that looked like a ballroom that had been set on fire.
Iggs was still in his big red form, lying on his back with Adrian right beside him and Boston floating above his head on Bran, keeping watch from above.
“Hey!” Bex shouted as she jogged over. “Man, am I glad to see…”
Her voice trailed off in horror as she got close enough to see what had been hidden by Adrian’s back.
“Iggs!” she screamed, sprinting the rest of the way to his side. “What happened to you?”
“I’m fine,” her demon croaked, opening one swollen eye to give Bex a gap-toothed grin. “It was only a few sorcerers.”
“A few?” Bex repeated, staring at his body, every inch of which was covered in third-degree burns, stab wounds, and foot-wide bruises. “You look like you got hit by an entire Anchor all at once!”
“The hallway was pretty packed,” Iggs admitted with a wince. “But I was already in a full rage by that point, so I just went for it.”
“He took them all on,” Nemini said, appearing out of the shadows behind the shattered door to Bex’s left. “The war demons were quite impressed.”
“Hells yeah, they were impressed,” Iggs said proudly, raising his battered arm. “The demons of Wrath are second to none when it comes to—”
“Stop moving,” Adrian snapped in his terse doctor voice, reaching up to snatch Iggs’s arm back down before returning to the green salve he’d been smearing frantically all over Iggs’s torso.
“Will he be okay?” Bex asked nervously.
“He’ll be fine if he stops moving,” the witch growled as he started rubbing the salve in with both hands like Iggs was a lump of bread dough.
“Believe it or not, this is already much better than he looked when I arrived. Demonic regeneration is truly a miracle. He should be back on his feet in two hours if he can just hold still and not interrupt the process.”
“And I keep telling you, we don’t have two hours,” Iggs growled back. “Look over there.”
He jerked his head toward the other end of the room, pointing with his horns, since he couldn’t move his hands. When Bex tore her eyes off his mesmerizingly horrific injuries long enough to see why, she spotted a huge stone staircase leading down.
“What’s that?”
“The entrance to the chains,” Iggs explained. “The sorcerers I fought were just the rear guard. By the time we made it into the palace, most of Heaven had already gone down the chains back to Earth.”
“So?” Bex said, failing to see the problem.
“I don’t care if they run. Fewer enemies is better for us, and the residents of Heaven have always been cowards.
” She frowned. “Honestly, I’m most shocked that Gilgamesh had allowed it.
I thought he’d order his followers to fight to the death, not buy them time to escape. ”
“They’re not escaping,” Adrian said, keeping his eyes on his work. “They’re the counterattack.”
He lifted one green-smeared finger to point at the enormous pile of empty golden chests lying along the burned room’s wall.
“Those boxes were filled with quintessence the last time I came through here. Normally, the residents of Heaven are too dependent on the magic of Paradise to leave it. With that much quintessence, though, they can do anything. Go anywhere.” He curled his salve-covered hand into a fist. “I can already feel them through my tree. They’re attacking the main Blackwood. ”
“What?” Bex said.
“Gilgamesh is attacking the Blackwood,” Adrian repeated, looking up at her with wild eyes.
“He didn’t just seal his palace to keep us out.
He was guarding his advance. Other than the sorcerers who stayed behind to support the Prince of Fear, this whole fortress is empty!
He used the time we spent getting ready to move his own people—the original army that conquered Heaven—into position to attack our forest! ”
“No,” Bex said, stumbling backward. “That can’t be right. Why would the witches be here if that was happening? Doesn’t your aunt see the future?”
“They’re here because they made a choice,” Nemini answered before Adrian could. “Gilgamesh’s primary goal is to stop us from interrupting him. That’s why he’s attacking the Blackwood after five thousand years of ignoring it. He’s trying to get us to turn around.”
“He’s doing a damn good job!” Bex yelled in a panic. “If what Adrian’s saying is true, I just sent all our wounded into a war zone!”
“They’re not in danger yet,” Adrian said, determinedly staring at his work as his hands moved faster and faster.
“My roots connect to the center of the Blackwood, and I just felt the attack begin. Gilgamesh’s sorcerers will have to cut through twenty miles of old-growth forest before they reach the demons in the heart grove. ”
“And there are still witches in the Blackwood,” Boston added from his perch on Bran’s broomstick. “The Old Wives would never leave the forest completely unprotected. The Three probably brought just enough people here with them to safely cast the Witch’s Spite.”
“That’s still too many,” Adrian said as his hands started to shake. “We’re the biggest coven in the world, but we’re not an army. There can’t be more than a hundred witches left in the main grove.”
“There’s other things as well,” Boston argued. “I was wondering why the Old Wives didn’t bring the living dragons as well as the dead ones, but now I understand. They left them behind to counter the counter.”
“If the dragons were capable of defeating Gilgamesh, they wouldn’t be hiding in our forest,” Adrian countered grimly as he smeared the last of the salve under Iggs’s neck.
“Honestly, at this point, distance is our best defense. The main Blackwood spans hundreds of miles. Even stacked with quintessence, it’ll take Gilgamesh’s soldiers a while to cut through that much forest. I already talked to my mother, but she says they’re not going back.
Nemini is right. The Old Wives have already made their bet.
” He looked up at Bex. “We have to defeat Gilgamesh before his army reaches the forest’s heart. ”
“Okay,” Bex said as she processed all of that. “How long does that give us?”
“Depends on whether they have a prince with them or not,” Adrian said as he cleaned the last of the salve off his hands with a handkerchief from his coat of infinite pockets.
“Gilgamesh has gotta be running short on sons by now,” Iggs insisted. “I saw the Prince of Hate eat it with my own eyes, and Leander’s with us, so that’s two down.”
“I don’t think Greed is back, either,” Adrian said, thinking.
“At least, I didn’t see him during the week I was here.
Bex beat the Princess of War earlier, but she’s paired with Alexander.
He’s Gilgamesh’s Crown Prince, so he’s probably still active, but Lys killed the Prince of Lust, so that’s another one—”
“Wait, Lys killed a prince?” Bex interrupted. “When did that happen?!”
“Just a few minutes ago,” Adrian said. “I felt someone messing with my tree, so I asked them to check it out.”
Bex went still. “You sent Lys to fight a prince alone?”
“Not on purpose!” he cried, waving his hands. “I didn’t know it was a prince yet! And by the time I found out, Lys had already won.”
Her whole body was shaking by the time he finished. “So they didn’t… Lys is still…”
“Lys is still alive,” Adrian assured her with a smile. “They’ve got multiple Blade of Gilgamesh wounds now, but I’ve wrapped them in my roots to keep them stable. After we win here, I’ll go back and heal them fully, but they won’t die so long as my tree stands.”
Bex’s shoulders slumped in relief. “I was wondering why they hadn’t said anything over the comm in a while,” she muttered, rubbing her hands over her face. “I should have checked in on them sooner, should’ve been more careful. Lys could’ve died, and I wouldn’t even—”
“They didn’t want to distract you,” Adrian said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.
“They didn’t tell me what they were doing either.
By the time I realized the fight was happening, it was already over.
But everything turned out okay! Lys is going to be fine, and they won.
I’m still not sure what the Prince of Lust was trying to do, but I’m pretty sure Lys’s quick thinking saved my tree, and all of us. ”
“Of course they did,” Bex said, scrubbing her eyes. “Lys has always been a hero.”
“And it’s about time they added a prince to their trophy list,” Iggs added with a smile of his own. “You realize they’re going to be insufferable after this, right?”
“I can’t wait,” Bex said, grinning at her demon as she pushed back to her feet. “I got the Prince of Fear, by the way.”
Adrian blinked at her. “What?”
“For our prince count,” she clarified. “I killed Fear, and there never was a Prince of Pride, so if War’s prince is still in the palace, that only leaves Envy unaccounted for.”
“I don’t think he’d go to the Blackwood,” Adrian said, tapping his wooden pinky thoughtfully against the polished floor.
“Envy’s the prince who almost killed me when I stuck my head through the door at the bottom of the Seattle Anchor.
I’m pretty sure he’s in charge of the black desert where all the chains come together, and from the state of his armor, I don’t think he ever leaves it. ”