CHAPTER 1 #2
She froze the moment they broke, smothering her fire so she could listen without the bonfire roaring in her ears.
She didn’t hear anything, though, which made no sense.
After saving the Queen of War, Gilgamesh had to know they were coming.
His army was probably just waiting for her to stick her head out so they could fill her face with arrows, so Bex led with her foot instead, easing the unlocked door open with the reinforced toe of her combat boot.
The first thing that came through was light.
The moment the door cracked, blinding-white radiance burst into the smoky, torchlit staircase like water from a fire hose, along with the scent of something sweet.
Bex had been down in the Hells for so long now, it took her several seconds to recognize the aroma as fresh air.
It entered her nose like a shot of pure nostalgia, reminding Bex that this was home.
No matter how much Gilgamesh had changed it, they were still in Paradise, the land she’d been made to protect, and the moment its cool, clean scent hit her brain, Bex yanked the door open with all her might.
The flash that followed whited out her vision. For several heartbeats, blinding light was all she could see. When she finally blinked the glare away, though, what her eyes saw next wasn’t any more informative.
“Wait, what?” she said, shielding her face against Heaven’s brilliance as she stepped through the black doorway into what appeared to be a completely empty square.
She was standing in the White City, where she’d fought the Queen of War only a week ago.
Back then, the streets had been filled with golden war constructs.
Now, though, there was nothing. The pale-blue sky was empty, the elegant white-stone buildings silent and still.
Bex didn’t even see any guards standing watch, which was almost scarier than finding an entire army.
“You’re seeing this, too, right?” she whispered to Adrian, who was hovering directly behind her, staring over her shoulder. “Is there actually nothing there, or is this a trick?”
“It looks real to me,” he whispered back before glancing at his feet. “Boston?”
Bex hadn’t even heard the cat jump down, but Boston was suddenly standing between her boots, poking his nose out as far as he could reach without actually stepping over the threshold.
“I smell a lot of sorcery,” he informed them after several seconds of intense sniffing. “But I don’t think there are any spells active in our immediate vicinity. Nothing big enough to hide an army or blow us up when we step on it, anyway.”
That was good to hear, but Bex still didn’t step forward.
“What is going on?” she asked instead, crossing her arms over her chest. “We just took over all Nine Hells. Why is there no response? What is Gilgamesh doing?”
“I have no idea,” Adrian confessed, pressing even closer as he tried to look around the door’s corners without actually crossing the line into the city. “This place was full of people when I passed through a few hours ago.”
“Well, they’re not here now,” Bex said, finally stepping through the gate into the apparently empty square.
She stopped the second she was through, but nothing happened.
There was no wind, no sound, no blasts of sorcery or creak of armor from a hidden ambush.
Her senses were admittedly duller since the loss of her horns, but so far as Bex could tell, they really were alone.
She took a few more steps into the open, just to be sure, but no sniper shots came out of the silent buildings to hit her in the head, so she went ahead and motioned for Adrian and Boston to come out.
They did so in a rush, hurrying to join her in front of the Hells’ gate, which, now that she was outside, Bex could see was shaped like a giant black cube.
Its surface was carved all over with reliefs of suffering demons and, of course, a giant image of Gilgamesh guarding the doors.
It looked just like the oversized hallway Lys had led them down when they’d first come here, but where that had been a tunnel through the ground, this was a monolith standing alone at the center of a huge, empty square.
The open space was clearly meant for staging troops, but the only security Bex saw at the moment were four white obelisks capped with Gilgamesh’s creepy golden eyes.
Those were watching them with the same intensity as the princesses, but Bex didn’t hear any alarm bells.
Just heavy, empty silence and the faint whine in her ears that always came when she knew she was walking into a trap.
“Okay, I officially hate this,” Bex announced, circling around Adrian as she tried to keep an eye on every direction at once. “Where in the Hells is everybody? Where are the warlocks? The sorcerers? Where’s the damn army?”
Rather than answering, Adrian pulled his broom off his back and hopped on.
Bex sat down behind him a second later, followed by Boston, who took his usual position on the broom’s tip.
When they were all aboard, Adrian kicked them into the air like a popping cork.
In the blink of an eye, they’d cleared the roofs of the white residential buildings that lined the empty square, and the Holy City came into view.
It looked just like Bex remembered: a perfect circle of elegant white buildings surrounded by a towering white wall.
The melted carcasses of the lion cannons were still glimmering on top of the battlements, but everything else was gone.
There were no construct soldiers, no white-robed warlocks, not even any demon slaves peeking through the curtained windows.
The entire city looked like it had been emptied, but it wasn’t until Bex’s eyes made it over to the palace at Heaven’s center that she saw why.
“Aw, crap.”
Gilgamesh’s entire multi-tower fortress was covered in a shimmering golden shield.
It hadn’t been visible down in the square, but now that she was above the rooftops, Bex could see that the glittering spell went all the way from the castle’s white-paved courtyard to the tip of the tallest golden tower.
It was the biggest barrier spell she’d ever seen on anything, but other than blocking access to the palace, it didn’t seem to be a threat, which meant Bex was now very confused.
“Wait,” she said, leaning so far over that Adrian had to stick his arm out to keep her from falling off the broom. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Bad,” Adrian replied at once. “The chains we need to get back to Earth are in there.”
“That’s a long-term problem,” Bex argued. “Our biggest immediate worry was retaliation, but it seriously looks like Gilgamesh evacuated his city and retreated into his fortress.” A smile spread across her face. “If he’s in there and we’re out here, does that mean we’re safe?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Boston warned. “Just because he put up a barrier doesn’t mean he can’t take it down again.”
“We’re not safe until we’re out,” Adrian agreed, pulling his witch hat out of his coat and placing it back on his head to shield his eyes against Heaven’s eternal glare.
“Gilgamesh is absolutely not defeated. He probably just pulled back because a palace is easier to defend than an entire city, and because he knew we wouldn’t be able to get in.
It’s a lot bigger this time, but that barrier looks exactly like the one I saw over the entrance to the chain back when I infiltrated the Boston Anchor.
Malik claimed it could only be crossed by those in Gilgamesh’s favor.
That could’ve been another lie, of course, but I’m sure it won’t be easy to break. ”
He glanced over his shoulder for Bex’s reaction, but she just blinked at him.
“You infiltrated the Boston Anchor?”
“I did a lot of stupid things while we were apart,” he confessed, turning back to the glittering palace.
“That said, I think you’re right in the short term.
The barrier is cutting us off from the chains, but it also means that our biggest immediate worry is solved.
If Gilgamesh has retreated into his fortress and the city really is as empty as it seems, then—”
“We can evacuate into it!” Bex finished with a grin, reaching up to tap the comm in her ear. “Lys? Iggs?”
“We’re here,” Lys’s voice crackled over the connection. “Iggs is standing right next to me. What’s the bad news?”
Bex’s grin got wider. “Believe it or not, it’s good news this time. Heaven is clear. Go ahead and start moving everyone up.”
“Wait, did you say Heaven is clear?” Iggs demanded.
“Clear how?” Lys asked at the same time. “Did you already beat the army or—”
“There was no army,” Bex interrupted, looking down at all the giant empty buildings with a new eye. “Gilgamesh has abandoned the city and retreated into his palace. I don’t know if he’ll stay in there, but for the time being at least, it looks like the whole place is ours.”
“You’re kidding,” Iggs said excitedly. “That’s great!”
“It’s suspicious,” Lys argued. “How do you know this isn’t a trap?”
“I don’t,” Bex confessed, sliding her arm around Adrian’s waist as he flew them back down to the ground. “If it is a trap, though, it hasn’t gone off yet, and I don’t intend to wait around until it does. Just come on up. Whatever Gilgamesh has in store for us, it’s gotta be better than the Hells.”
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Iggs muttered. “But if you say it’s safe, that’s good enough for me.”
“We’re on our way,” Lys confirmed. “See you in a minute.”
Bex nodded and released the button, leaping off the broom the moment it got within safe jumping distance of the ground to go meet her people.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It took a little over six hours to evacuate everyone out of the Hells. Part of that was because the former slaves were starved and exhausted, especially Bex’s wrath demons. Mostly, though, it was simply a matter of throughput.