“She’s dead! We’re free!”

I was still in the rock, swimming through the dirt as easily as a fish does water, but the other two beings did not. They were digging with physical bodies, albeit supernaturally empowered ones, even though I had seen those kinds of creatures phase in and out of reality as well as teleport. Looked like they were trying to take their time in freeing their mistress. Both of them had stopped their digging the instant I compacted the witch though, Enera celebrating while the Maalik seemed to test the air.

“If we’re free, then why are we still here?” he murmured. His blazing eyes turned towards me, and then to what I held in my hand. “Not yet we’re not.”

“Not completely free,” Enera clarified, shaking her assets as close as she could get to Maalik, “But free to fuckin party!”

“The chain is still there, but there is no will behind it. Mortal.” Maalik called, “Would you care to talk to us, I know you can hear me. That gem you hold is the remnant of one we would see truly meet the Endless Wheel.”

Not trusting either of them, I used my magic to push myself even deeper into the earth until my powers were straining to keep me alive down here. The amount of power at this kind of pressure was simply incredible and my instincts were saying that I was safe at least for the time being.

“Dead but not gone,” Enera said, licking her lips and rubbing her hands together like a pirate who found the ultimate treasure. “Just the right kind of freedom.”

Their focus never wavered from the compressed platinum and witch that stayed in my hand, but something wasn’t exactly right with it.

“Yes mortal, not gone. She may not be alive, but her spirit is still there. Mother Earth recognizes abominations and actively tries to confine them when they’re brought to her, but that one will never stop trying to return.”

Phasing through the rock, Enera came within twenty feet of me and spoke, her presence filling my magical senses like a thick dark cloud. “You can stay down here forever keeping her trapped, or you can give her to me. I promise to make sure that her soul will be well taken care of.”

Maalik’s presence joined Enera’s, buffeting her darkness like a sunbeam. “Or . . you can give her to me and she can return to her own.”

“Oooohhhh!” Enera squealed as she clapped her hands together. “That’s even more evil! My, how I love it when your sense of justice twists just a teensy bit.”

“Her soul will face justice as the hands of the Hags. The Heavens need not get involved, and Hell has enough toys.”

I’m way out of my weight class here. On one hand, I seriously kicked some ass due to my armor acting as a perfect disguise in hiding my true magical power. On the other hand, I was right about the Higher and Lower beings not being allowed to interfere outright with mortals. The biggest danger was twofold, properly disposing of this compressed magical construct filled with a raging witch’s soul, and making sure that no one knows who I am. Also, to me, this thing in my hand reeks of necromancy, something that is the antithesis of my nature and could also garner the attention of said Higher and Lower beings. As I thought about it, I noticed that the tip of Enera’s tail was turning corporeal and scratching strange runes in the rock while she whistled absentmindedly.

As I watched, a super-fast packet of information smacked into my mental shields along with a message, “Carve it into the prison dumbass!” While the tone was insulting, my mental sorcery instantly broke down the information that unrolled like a scroll. Wasting no time, I used earth sorcery to imprint the runes her tail drew into the squished witch’s prison.

Maalik’s eyes grew huge as his surprise exploded along with his burning aura. Swinging his flaming swords at Enera, he almost managed to take her head off. “Damn filth! The moment you get just a speck of freedom you commit the worst of sins!?”

Dancing away with an evil grace, Enera spun and twirled and twerked her devilish ass again and again out of his reach. “Whatever do you mean my self-righteous cocksucker? I didn’t make him do anything, mortals do what they will.” Her wings extended at perfect, almost pre-planned, moments and diverted sword thrusts that she couldn’t dodge. “Besides you bitter man, knowledge isn’t a sin.”

“It is if it takes away Choice!”

“He doesn’t have to give it to you or I,” she spat when Maalik realized that his rage was futile. It was literally like trying to hit smoke. “There are many places on this wretched planet he could take it where she’d be imprisoned for eternity. He could even shove it to the core if he was willing to die, or he could find a way to the Aelves. They love playing with witches.” Her cackle in and of itself evoked the feeling that I would have nightmares tonight.

Feeling that there was way too much going on, I stepped in by pushing my body closer to the Earth’s surface and speaking up. “I just wanted my brother. She got in the way. Now all I want is for this thing and you two to be gone AND, I want you both to never talk about me or what happened here. How do I make that happen?”

The runes given to me made the prison stop its squirming. I couldn’t feel any kind of mental pressure coming out of it and it just looked like a cool space rock that some kid drew on.

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“Morai does have plenty of enemies,” Enera mused.

Putting away his swords, Maalik stopped glaring at her and turned to me. “That would work.”

“What would work? What is it with you people and not answering questions, or talking in half-sentences? I’ve got half a mind to send this off into a realm of madness and Chaos if I can find one.”

“NO!” They both shouted.

“Witches thrive on both you insipid child!” Getting real close to my face, Enera’s fangs became real apparent. “We’re trying to help you and you joke about making her even more powerful?!”

There is just no pleasing these people, or spirits, or whatever the fuck they really are. They seem to fit the standard visual expectations of Judeo-Christian mythology, but is mythology even the correct term if they’re standing right in front of me? If only high school and college degrees covered shit like this, how to handle an angelic/demonic encounter? It really ticked me off because even the church didn’t handle that very well. All they did was burn witches and touch children and then take our money while telling the sheep how evil they are. Not that the Aztecs were much better, with their human sacrifices and cannibalism, or even the Statists who just loved how human governments routinely slaughtered their own people century after century. Are we, humans, the problem? Maybe, as a valid point could be made for both the highs and lows of human accomplishment. All I really wanted was to fucking chill with some nachos, my hot wife, and maybe a goddamn roll in the hay. Fuck.

“Who said I want that?!” I yelled back, “Who said anything about doing stupid things? I just want to be done with this shit. Which one of you insufferable douches will take this thing far away from me, deal with it so that she’s gone for good, and never return?”

They both started talking at once.

“That’s not helpful!” I felt like the small child who had locked himself inside the turned on car in the Wal-mart parking lot with both parents arguing as to how to get the door open, the mean mother screaming threats of punishments with the easy going father kind of laughing at the whole thing and saying to just open the door and we’ll go get some ice cream.

“And what did you mean when you said return to her own?” I asked, “You said that like it was some kind of wicked punishment, and that I might benefit in some way.”

“You yourself wouldn’t benefit directly,” Maalik clarified. “We would deliver the remnant of the Witch Morai to her enemies, and they would release us and Centauri soldiers. Witches hold grudges and would do anything to satisfy such. You killed Morai’s slave, the one called Casparai. She would have hunted you by proxy for eternity if she had survived. Many would gladly perform some onerous task for a simple chance at revenge, and Morai has done wrong to many.”

Enera giggled. “Oh it would be beautiful! They might even let me play with her soul for a bit too! No one would care about the random lost Centauri soldiers on a fringe world that just rejoined the fold.” Her eyes bulged out of her head. “You could take over our brand!”

There was simply no helping it at this point. When else am I going to have an opportunity to milk beings like this for information and actually get some results? I knew what she was getting at, that I could be their new master, not that I wanted that headache, but there were some definite upsides to it, information being the key one. Not dismissing it out of hand, I pulled myself up to the surface and conjured a block of stone to sit on. If I were near a ley line or was full up on power, I would take the time to carefully coat this entire prison in at least six inches of runed platinum just to make sure that there was no escaping, but again, I really don’t know if that would work.

As Enera was dancing for joy at her imagined transfer of ownership that hadn’t even happened yet, Maalik was standing imperiously in front of me, his hands resting on the pommel of his swords as their points were in the dirt.

“Most would jump at such an opportunity mortal.” For once, the slight snobbishness was gone. “Do you not care for such power?”

“Not really, but I’m not gonna answer that further,” I replied, staring down at the now inert lump of metal. “Why would she rather be transferred than free?”

“Power.”

“The kind of power where she eats my soul or the kind of power that being on the mortal plane sort of upgrades her, like the elementals?”

“A bit of both really. Devils and demons certainly grow stronger by eating souls, but mortal energy has a much different flavor than what they produce allowing them to grow differently than what a normal devil would.”

A bit surprised at his candor, I pressed. “So how do angels get stronger?”

“We are either given Grace, bestowed relics of power, or allowed to grow more wings. Hunting demons and the Eldritch bolsters our abilities while tribulations harden our souls. Mortal magic does not help us grow in power, but at times it does allow us to gain different abilities,” he mused. “Some of the archangels have kept their status due to being changed by sorcerers of old. Merlin was very fond of Gav’riel long ago, and the Herald now can almost rival Mikhael.”

Tossing the prison up lightly and catching, I watched his eyes track it. “What would you do with this if I gave it to you? She seems to think that she’d have a lot of fun with it, but what would you gain?”

“Freedom,” he answered. “I could take the soul of a Vile One to the Host and they would either purify it, returning her to the Wheel, or give her to Justices of Sheol. They would gladly balance the scales for one who has evaded death for so long.”

“And what would you give me?”

Pressing down on his swords, Maalik pushed them a foot each into the earth and stepped back, gesturing at them.

“These. I would gain much for performing a deed of such weight, that losing these would mean nothing to me. Take them. Learn from them. The undead cannot stand Heaven’s flame.”

Holy shit. Too damn good to be true. Flesh sorcery to forcefully keep my poker face, and . . . bluff.

“That’s not enough,” I stated. “I’m trying to avoid being noticed. I can’t walk around with two swords from a freaking angel, especially with a crazy demon walking around. Hell no. That will draw all the wrong kinds of attention, and I don’t need that. What I do need is for you and her to be gone, nobody to know about me, this damn witch gone for good, and knowledge of how to effectively fight demons and angels and the undead.”

“Agreed.”

Reaching forward, he pulled his swords from the ground and a flash of light momentarily blinded me. His weapons were gone and in his hands was a small lump of something grey. Touching it to the tip of Gungnir, the speartip took on a streak of solid-iron grey that grew down the rest of the spear.

“You call it star-iron, our word is too harmonious for human ears. This can alter the magic from your weapon so that it is inimical to all manner of unclean. You can also store items in your weapon at will. The star-iron can hold things on a different octave of reality than what you touch and bring them back by changing the frequency of the molecular structure. Inside, I have placed a familiar spirit, one who’s sole focus is the acquisition, storage, and distribution of knowledge. Commune with it to learn more.”

A flash of light strobed out many times brighter and faster than the last one, stunning me where I sat. When I came to from where I fell behind the stone block, the prison was gone. Using flesh sorcery to heal the pounding headache and afterimages, I saw that the evidence of the battle, the entire thing, had been swept clean. No devils, no angels, no witches, no giant pit or smashed anything. The Centauri were out of the earth lying unconscious and my dog was sleeping where the corpse of the Fugly used to be.

Everything was quiet except for my pounding heart. Picking my butt up off the ground, I ran from soldier to soldier, checking their pulse and their faces. None of them were injured, not even a scratch on them. Finally, I got back to where Spot was laying, my brother’s body propped up against him. Breathing out a sigh of relief that he was still here, I double checked him. Pulse felt good, nothing to indicate any kind of damage. Sitting down next to him, I leaned up against Spot and finally let myself relax, several tears of relief streaming down my cheeks. I had done it, finally.