Chapter 23 - The Shifting Lands

The halberd swung through the air in a wide arc, silver metal a blur. Lazar still couldn’t see properly in the darkness, so he instead took advantage of the natural reach of his weapon to cover as big of an area as possible.

The seraph felt the blade cut through something soft and fleshy, and through the shaft of the weapon, he felt the demon lurch backwards. Blood squelched, and a warm liquid splattered across his face.

Clattering legs sounded from his left and he tensed, readying to dodge, but no attacks reached him. Instead, a shrill howl echoed throughout the cave, and he heard the sound of something being slammed into the wall and rocks falling.

Drawing his halberd back, Lazar thrusted the tip forward now that he had a sense of where the demon was. It was much larger than he’d originally thought, based on the faint movements that he could make out in the darkness, but it seemed slow. That was good. He was trying to keep most of the weight of the halberd on his uninjured arm, using the other primarily for extra support and balance, but he hadn’t built up the strength to fully wield it one handed again yet.

Lazar let himself fall into the rhythm of combat. He didn’t pause his strikes, pressing his advantage and refusing to give the demon an opening. He heard the sounds of Ciel’s own fight to his left, but he ignored it, trusting that the demon would be fine on her own. Still, he made sure to keep his swings concentrated on the right.

The seraph surged forward, pushing the demon back with his movements. He stepped into a puddle of blood. He’d hit it multiple times already, and yet the creature remained standing. It must have some sort of regeneration, he thought.

Lazar felt a gust of wind on his face and ducked just as something surged past his head. Flipping the halberd over, Lazar swept the end of the weapon over the general area the demon occupied. The action earned him another narrowly avoided strike, but without the blade slicing through flesh, he was able to get a much better sense of the demon’s overall form.

He felt the end brush against something harder than the rest of the body. His eyes narrowed.

Crouching low, Lazar adjusted his grip and lunged, slamming the halberd tip into that spot with all his strength. He heard a cracking sound, and then the weight of the demon fell backwards, crashing into the hard cave floor. Lazar’s shoulder throbbed, and he hoped he hadn’t reopened the wound in his arm. It was necessary, he told himself. He couldn’t risk being unable to pierce that section with only one hand.

Lazar exhaled and swung the halberd down again for good measure. He didn’t feel any movement, and after the fourth swing he stepped back, satisfied that the demon was truly dead.

His ears focused on the sounds of battle to his left. The second demon seemed much more mobile, and Lazar suspected he would’ve had a much more difficult time fighting it in this darkness. Based on the constant howls and screeches coming from the creature, however, Ciel seemed to have it handled.

A resounding crash shook the cave walls. Lazar heard rocks split, and in the next instance, a thin stream of light burst from the opposite wall, rising from a web of broken stone that bloomed outward until the entire wall crumbled.

Lazar jumped back, narrowly avoiding falling rocks. Light poured into the cave, reflecting off the stones until the walls were nearly blinding. Silhouetted against the white, he saw a long, narrow demon with a hard outer shell slump down onto the floor, that shell now as cracked and broken as the cave itself.

Backlit by the burning light, Ciel straightened, golden eyes seeming to glow. She grinned and rolled her shoulder, her arm covered in scratches and cuts from the demon that she didn’t seem remotely bothered by. Her eyes fell on Lazar, then on the demon lying dead in front of him.

In the light, he could see that the demon had indeed been rather large, even taller than Ciel, and had a soft, quivering body that now lay bloodied and sliced to pieces. The hard thing he’d felt had been an indigo core in the center of its body, which was now shattered into rough shards. The demon didn’t look completely formed, much of it still resembling the glowing mounds in the field. Lazar wondered if it was newly born; that would explain why he’d been able to defeat it so easily.

The seraph stared at the creature, eyes tracing the cuts. They were messy, bloody, and uneven. Once, he’d been known for his efficient, precise fighting style. Julius had called it robotic—surgical. Staring at the corpse now, he could barely recognize himself in those wounds.

“Nice job,” Ciel said. She strode over to the large demon, crouching down and poking it with a finger. “Good amount of flesh.”

“Thank you.” Lazar eyed the broken wall warily. Thankfully the cracks had stopped, leaving the cave ceiling intact. The light remained steady, so bright that he couldn’t make out any details beyond the opening. And yet, as he stood there, he could feel the pull in his soul reaching for it, tugging him in its direction.

It reminded him of the upper skies of Elysium, he realized. For a second he wondered if they’d actually reached the realm gate, but that was impossible given the distance they’d traveled.

Behind him, Lazar heard squelches and ripping sounds. He kept his eyes on that light, allowing his vision to grow used to its brightness.

“I can feel the pull leading in that direction,” he said slowly. “Do you know what the light is?”

“Nope, but it sure looks suspicious.” Ciel’s voice was a bit muffled as she ate.

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Lazar frowned and reached down for one of the broken stones. Eyeing the opening, he threw the rock through, then waited.

He couldn’t see the stone once the light engulfed it, but he could hear a distinctive clatter. There did seem to be something solid through that opening, then.

The seraph heard footsteps and turned around. Ciel had straightened and stepped over, casually wiping her mouth with her arm and leaving a few lingering crimson streaks. The demon raised her wounded hand, tearing off the bandages without a care.

Lazar watched in fascination as those crooked, broken fingers shook, white bones jerking and morphing back into place. The surrounding flesh, bloodied and torn, bubbled and stretched across the bone, wrapping around and around until the hand looked as good as new. The same process occurred around her cuts, and soon there was no sign of any wounds on the flesh eater.

Once the skin settled down again, Ciel flexed and clenched her fingers. The bones cracked, but they moved as normal, as if they’d never been injured. The flesh eater sighed, satisfied.

“Much better.” She nodded her head at the light. “Well? We heading through that thing or what?”

“There does seem to be a path on the other side,” Lazar confirmed. His eyes fell on the demon corpse, and he saw that there was still quite a bit of it left. The second one was entirely untouched. He frowned. “Are you not going to eat the rest?”

“Oh I’d love to, but I figured we should get going. Probably not the best idea to stop in the middle of a tunnel for a meal.”

Lazar hummed, eyes shifting between the two corpses.

On one hand, he agreed that stopping for so long in the caves wasn’t ideal. Still, they couldn’t be certain how many more opportunities the demon would have to “eat,” and Lazar knew their chances of survival were significantly higher when the flesh eater had access to her abilities.

Grey eyes scanned the two bodies assessingly, his mind distant and cold.

“We could bring some pieces for later,” he finally suggested.

Ciel raised an eyebrow, and she chuckled lowly. “Not a bad idea, seraph.” Lazar couldn’t read the emotion that flashed in those golden eyes.

“Well? Are you slicing them or do I get the honors?”

“I can do it.” It would be easier with his halberd, and he’d been the one to propose the idea.

Lazar stepped over to the two fallen bodies. He exhaled, eyeing the corpses once more, tracing their features and still forms. He reeled the halberd back, and after a moment’s pause, the seraph brought the blade down.

These new cuts were clean and precise.

—

They wrapped the pieces in what was left of Lazar’s surcoat. Much of it had been torn to create bandages already, and at that point it was so tattered and bloodied that it was barely recognizable.

Even sliced up, they couldn’t carry all of the bodies. The remaining parts were left in a pile beside the broken stones and rubble. Remembering the mountain, Lazar plucked a few black flowers from the cave walls and rested them on the ground, muttering the passing prayer as he did so.

When he turned around, he once again met Ciel’s piercing gaze. He shifted his weight.

“Yes?”

At first the demon didn’t answer, simply continuing to watch him, and Lazar found himself growing increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, the flesh eater shrugged and broke that uncanny stare.

“Just thinking about some stuff. Nothing for you to worry about.”

Lazar nodded slowly, still a bit unsettled. He forced himself to focus on the opening. The light hadn’t paused at all, nor had he noticed any movement within. At this point, the pulling on his soul had grown strong enough that it was becoming difficult to ignore.

Ciel shifted the makeshift bag made from the surcoat so that it hung off one shoulder, then stepped forward until she was just outside the opening. Raising one hand, the flesh on her palm warped. A golden eye blinked open, much like the ones on her face, and she stuck her hand through.

Lazar waited, tense with anticipation as he studied the demon’s reaction, but her expression betrayed nothing.

Finally, she pulled her hand back, and the skin of her palm smoothed back over.

“Well, there’s definitely a path alright. No demons around either.” She shrugged. “Might be a bit of an obstacle course, though.” Her eyes gleamed. “The path’s more than a bit winding, you could say.”

Lazar eyed the opening. The description didn’t inspire much confidence, but at the very least the existence of a road meant they could indeed continue forward. It would be better to see for himself what the demon meant, he decided, and after a moment of pause, he strode forward.

For a brief second as he passed through, the light engulfed everything, leaving him in a white void. There was no ceiling or ground, no other life or presence. There was only that radiance and his own body, floating free of his surroundings.

Then his feet touched solid stone. When his vision cleared, the seraph found himself on the other side. Lazar’s eyes widened.

Rather than a continuation of the tunnels, the cave system opened into a wide cavern not unlike the one in the mountains. But besides the expansive space, the similarities stopped there.

Tall pillars of black stone rose from the seemingly endless depths below, rising and falling in uneven patterns. Drifting platforms, gleaming like mirrors, swirled in a vortex around the center of the cavern. The walls, made of that same reflective stone, shone white from the light pouring in through cracks and condensed smears of light that lay scattered in the air like rips in the fabric of the atmosphere itself.

The stone road ahead undulated, lurching back and forth like a string caught in the wind. As Lazar watched, a section of a pillar was torn away, drawn into that swirling storm of debris. More paths rose and fell from the walls. They stretched across and suddenly retracted. They stopped, hesitated, and started again. The cavern was void of any demons, and yet it looked and felt alive.

As Lazar strode closer to the edge of those shifting pillars and bridges, he felt that pull again. There was no mistaking it now. It was coming from the very center of the cavern.