Cece watched in silent relief as the angel chose to rush Eibon’s dead first. It was the likelier of its options, but still it wasn’t guaranteed that it wouldn’t go for her first. The second grimoire she unleashed made its way towards the action. She would have preferred to have used the strongest one she had, which she had made after her last fight with an angel, but unfortunately it wasn’t suited for group combat. An oversight she should have anticipated. She still didn’t know a lot about Eibon, but she was fairly sure he didn’t want phosphorous explosions within ten meters of him. Instead she relied on a weaker tin grimoire to deliver precise lightning strikes.
It did such, scorching a few feathers every second as the dead engaged it in combat. The three zombie warriors slashed at the angel’s limbs whenever they could, but they had been relegated to mostly dodging the angel’s deafening blows. The undead dodged nimbly and with a grace that didn’t suit their hulking forms. They moved almost faster than Cece could perceive, and she figured they were just as capable of using that force to attack, but still, they had to evade. Every swing of a gangly, pale arm, let out a sickening crash. The force with which the creature swung was terrifying, it could barely compare to the angel that Cece had fought.
Cece swallowed. Things weren’t looking good. She fired a few shots at the angel’s eyes again, succeeding in destroying five, but when it had at least a hundred she doubted it mattered. Her tin grimoire was still going, but the angel didn’t even bother trying to destroy it. Cece grimaced with disappointment as she realized how little damage it was doing. She allowed herself to feel some hope as the large feline form of one of Eibon’s dead pounced on the angel, its long iron fangs biting into the mass of feathers. Quickly however it found itself impaled on a long spindly arm. Eibon eyed his new friend nervously. He of course had more bodies, his storage had a veritable army of corpses in it, but he was still only one mage. He had a finite amount of strength to split between his undead, and even splitting all his power between only five bodies was barely keeping up with the angel.
It looked like Cece’s grimoires were suffering the same fate. They appeared to him to be powerful things and although he was unfamiliar with the form, he wasn’t unfamiliar with grimoires. They were terrifying things when used for war, but they were bulky and needed a team to transport them. Obviously Cece had used different techniques and although he was impressed by it, it seemed to not be faring any better than his zombies.
“Cece, I think we might have to run.” He said quietly to the girl floating several meters above him.
Cece gritted her teeth. She didn’t like their odds of trying to escape, she had seen how fast that thing could move and she didn’t think her fastest mercury grimoire could rival it.
“Two minutes.” She said simply. “Buy me two minutes and I’ll figure out what we should do.” She leveled a serious look at Eibon. He returned a grin.
“I’ll get you three.”
Eibon held out his hand and another feline form manifested in front of them, it’s iron claws extending as it took a vicious swipe at the angel. It roared like a melancholic harp, but was still blessedly distracted by the nimble zombies in front of him. Cece closed her eyes and concentrated as a game of cat and mouse ensued below her.
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She had to think. Strategies flicked through her mind quickly. She couldn’t just run. She would have to either kill it or distract it. A silver scroll? Or should she try to inscribe a grimoire on the spot?
“Faster.” She thought. “I need to think faster.”
She forced her daemonic mind to move quicker, to consider more, to branch and branch again. To consider every possible factor. She felt something in her shudder, as the vision faded from her left eye. A silver spell was unlikely to fully fool the angel, it had shown an ability to interact with magic that was atypical and she determined she should treat any spell as unreliable for ensuring her survival. She thought a better idea would be to throw the majority of her grimoires at it and hope it distracted it, but as she considered the thought, considered the spatial coordinates of her, Eibon, and the angel, considered her ammunition and abilities, and the likeliest actions of everyone involved, she realized she would die in around fifty percent of the possible situations. It was a vague and not fully formed estimate, but it wasn’t heartening.
Something was nagging at her though, something she hadn’t considered, something that was finally starting to make sense.
“Cover me.” She called below, before flying forwards. Eibon watched incredulously as she sank underneath the water at high speeds. The angel went to swipe at Cece as she passed by, the movement catching its many eyes, but Eibon’s brow furrowed and with a flex of will, a sword matched the angel’s claw before it could touch her. Cece ignored her body’s fear reaction as the zombies sword arm was torn off its body from the force of blocking the angel, and continued under the water. Luckily she faced no problems breathing under the warm waters, since her copper scroll was still active and on her.
Eibon looked at the angel before speaking. “None of that. It’s just you and me now.” As he spoke he held out his hand and the disarmed zombie disappeared, with a nigh identical one taking its place. Eibon put on a brave smile, but in reality he was scared. Not necessarily for himself, he was good at playing dead when he needed to, but he doubted Cece could perform the same trick. He almost hoped the girl was running away, but despite her logical personality he didn’t think she would. She was like him, she had far too much pride.
He watched through the eyes of his dead, coordinating them, letting them strike at the perfect time, dodge at the perfect time. It wasn’t enough. The angel was starting to get faster and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last. He cracked his knuckles and twirled his cane before flipping it over in his right hand.
“I guess I really can’t hold back. Die.” He said, leveling his cane at the angel.
Black sulfur magic, also known as necromancy, was fundamentally an inversion of regular sulfur magic. The magic of the soul, the magic that enhances the body. Black sulfur essentially does the same thing, but on a corpse. However it differs from sulfur magic in another respect. It allows you to burn up a soul.
It’s something that Eibon had only discovered recently in his career, but it was powerful. A beam of pale gray light launched itself from the skull atop his cane. For most creatures it would be enough to kill them. It was the inversion of the soul, pure death. For the angel though it merely burned a hole straight through it. The beast roared in cacophonous rage as Eibon gritted his teeth. His head ached at the noise, his heart palpitated, and he saw stars in the corners of his vision, but he resisted the urge to fall unconscious. He doubled over, glaring at the injured angel in front of him. That was his best shot, he had even burned through a few souls, and still nothing. He had nothing left to throw at the abomination, he had nearly given up any hope of victory, but then, the world burst into light.