My flight was interrupted moments after I approached the wall. In the snowy, barren courtyard, arrayed to defend the main gate, was a motley group of demon cult forces, fronted by lesser demons. I saw all types of lesser demons—at least in variety of forms. Most were reminiscent of the ones that had attacked my friends and I during our training, but some bore strange features that matched no animal I knew.

More corrupt inquisition cultists and demons held the walls, and those were the ones who saw me first. With an organized shout, they threw magic my way, and the lesser demons moved to shield the fragile humans. Most spells came in the form of bolts of holy light, but magic of all types assailed me.

I dipped and twisted, dodging the worst of the magic even as I fired back. My own magic flared just above the courtyard, and weakened fire rained down, singeing rather than scorching. Runes lit up along the walls—some kind of massive ritual spell—and formed shield of light in a dome over the castle.

Below, a second volley was readied, even as the cultists—still dressed in the vestments they blasphemed—formed up behind improvised cover and their bound demons.

Worryingly—but perhaps a blessing in disguise—I saw no sign of the townsfolk. Everyone outside was trying to take me out of the sky.

They only know you can fly thanks to Lorelei, a small part of my mind took grim delight in reminding me of.

I thought of Seyari’s hand—of the near-disaster with Joisse when I was too hurt to help her.

This time, there would be no attempts to force surrender. No shouting a warning from the sky as holy magic battered my body.

I stayed aloft outside the walls, and the barrier. The forces arrayed below didn’t particularly concern me; they were slow and individually weak. Against any demon other than a powerful reaver or a sovereign, they would be sufficient.

It said much that I wasn’t so concerned about fighting them—more about how I fought them. I decided that if my magic was to be hampered by a barrier, then I would remove the barrier.

Even from my distance and height, my inhuman vision could pick out runes on the inside of the outer wall of the courtyard—the main wall of the castle. Rather than try to fly in through a hail of magical fire, and quite certain the walls were filled with stone and not townspeople, I knew immediately what I wanted to do.

The only question as I sped toward the wall, dipping low, was: Am I strong enough? Bouncing off would be embarrassing, but I wasn’t going to die from that.

I landed into a run just shy of the wall, kicking my shoes off into the snow to give my claws better grip. Dress swishing around my legs, I ran at the wall, winding up both of my right hands into fists.

For Seyari’s hand, for all my dumb mistakes, and for a chance at the future I felt slipping through my fingers, I realized in an instant that I really wanted to punch something. I never really had outlets for my anger—storing it up like a good Sovereign of Wrath.

Now, with a roar, I threw my weight forward, my form small against the great stone wall I was about to try to punch through.

My fist impacted with a bang that popped my ears. Bones in both my hands groaned and snapped under the impact, the shockwave traveling up my right arms and into my shoulders. The people atop the wall shouted again, this time in alarm and confusion.

In front of me, impossibly, the wall cratered inward. Cracks spiraled jaggedly outwards around a hole half a meter deep with two fist-prints dented into the rock. I felt giddy—momentarily blinded by just how fun that was.

I’ve never actually found the limits of my strength, have I?

Even as stones started to come loose and fall around me, I punched again, my fists already regenerated. The wall shook more violently, and a few of those on top fell down toward the snow below as a great vertical crack appeared.

Knock knock, I thought to myself.

One more punch, and the entire wall above me came down in a hail of fitted stone and loose fill. With it, came the rest of those on top of the wall who’d not run away. Claws tearing and tail smashing, I tore into them—human and demon alike. Up close with me, and dazed, injured, or dead from the fall, none but the demons posed any threat. My magic took care of them quickly, and when their claws or fangs found me, mine found them back and rent them apart.

Only moments after the wall came down, the runic shield flickered and died, and I lunged inside. Aura sight confirmed the barrier was almost entirely gone, and all that the lingering holy magic gave me was a tingling burn on the surface of my skin.

Roaring again, I smashed through loose rubble and into the courtyard. Facing me was a group of cultists and demons, already throwing magic and bodies forward. They were ringed by palisades of wood and stone, backed by the impressive-looking metal doors of the castle proper, shut firmly.

Smiling more like an animal’s challenge than a human’s joy, I rushed forward to meet them.

No words.

No taunts, or jibes.

Just the rushing thrill of combat.

I sprinted at full speed toward the densest concentration of foes, wreathing my claws, arms, and tail in shimmering crimson flames. In front of me, I threw up a hasty shield of fire, which served to block out the majority of the non-holy magic thrown my way.

For that, I used the lesser demons. Some—mostly the monstrous ones—hesitated, collars glowing. Fighting their sovereign went against their instincts and would result only in my power growing.

But the bond and its guarantee of death won out, and lesser demons of all sorts piled against me. Some tried magic, but with the majority being fire and entrancement, it washed over me without incident.

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The holy magic, however, was a problem. Already stinging from several places where I took glancing hits on the way in, I didn’t want to take more. One lucky shot could still potentially end me. So I used the charging demons as shields, gripping them with claws and thrusting them out in front, even as my tail swept more away to my sides.

Those of wrath that died not by my hand gave me nothing, but I wasn’t here for power—I had plenty of that for now. I needed to get inside—they were clearly here to stop me. If the cult had everyone from the city inside the castle, it wasn’t to protect them.

Some magic still pierced into me, and I threw bodies back through my wall of fire, hearing some satisfying shouts and crunches of impact. Still, the tide of bodies, now joined by demons from the wall, threatened to prove too much.

On top of that, more magic rained down at me from all sides. The fire did nothing, but the rest tore away at me, particularly the holy magic I was so vulnerable to.

Forming a familiar spell quickly with my four hands, thankful for the one chance I had at least to test it during our disastrous practice outing, I cast a smaller version of my sphere of flames. Only a meter or so around me, and away from my body to preserve my poor dress, I kept it small, but very hot.

Roars and shrieks of demons surrounding me, and the screams of those few cultists caught in the sphere of impossible heat, cut off quickly into the faint sound of flames, drowned out by the magic and shouts from above on the walls.

My claws sank into charred dirt and flowing, glowing stone both as I strode forward toward the doors. The sphere of heat moved with me, wind whipping my hair out of its braid to fly around in a wild black mane.

A holy bolt—a lucky shot through the swirling wall of flames—caught me in the shoulder and I hissed. No time for grandstanding, I whirled and dropped the spell. Up on the walls was a veritable firing squad. The last thing I wanted was to leave them there to shoot me in the back the moment I entered.

Summoning my wings again, I blasted skyward, flaming claws on my upper hands and jets of fire shooting from my lower ones. For the first time, I had enough presence of mind and time to register the fear in some of the eyes that met mine.

Others held nothing but grim determination. Even as they chipped away at me with hits that landed, I tore through them to the last fighter. None offered me the pain of denying surrender—and I didn’t check for any who may have hidden in the watchtowers or wall passages where slit windows only pointed outward.

With the townsfolk taken and in need of rescue, I was here for more than slaughter. So, I walked up to the front doors of the castle, raised a clawed foot, pushed my dress down with two hands to stay decent, and kicked one of the four-meter-tall doors down.

I’d expected to do it in one swift motion, but I underestimated the door’s craftsmanship, and it took two loud, knock-like bangs for the door’s fortifications to break and it to swing inward with a groan of protest.

Immediately, I rolled to the side, expecting a return volley. None came. I tentatively peeked around the corner, and barely dodged a halberd swung at me with inhuman speed, the tip lit with a holy glow. I tried to slash inside, but found my hand blocked by the haft of the weapon. Although it strained, the enchanted wood held against the glancing blow.

“You are strong,” a rough voice spat.

I looked at the greater demon for the first time. Gems studded her body, spires of shimmering blue crystal erupting from her shoulders. Eyes like emeralds set in coal glowed down at me.

And then I stood up, glaring down at her. Like the others, she wore a collar, but the glare of contempt she gave me was borne of no binding.

“Why are you working with them?” I asked.

In response, she brought the halberd around at me, blade blurring. I blocked the haft with one forearm, another swiping in underneath.

She danced back out of the way of my claws, but my tail clipped her legs, making her stumble. She immediately recovered, but I leapt forward. Her halberd cut a nasty gash down my thigh, but I took her to the ground.

Around her, crystals coalesced, sharp and deadly, before diving into my body. I grunted in pain, and grabbed her hands. Once inside me, the gems expanded erratically, cutting and shredding. I coughed and felt blood pass my lips to drip on her face.

A fanged smile formed. She started to speak, but I moved my lower arms to slash, and her eyes widened at the limbs she’d forgotten I possessed.

I tore through her throat, even as I felt sharp barbs burrowing toward my heart. Blood sprayed, and she tried to gurgle something. I struck again, harder, pouring all my fury into fire that wreathed my claws. I felt bone and sinew, and, like so many of my other kills, her head came off.

Boiling black blood sprayed out from the stump of her neck, and her body twitched once before it and the magic both went still. Without the taunting bargain of the envy demon that I had killed north of Linthel, no power transferred from her to me.

Instead, I coursed my magic through my body. White hot pain erupted from behind my eyes as the crystals of her magic broke apart, dissipating back into the air. Immediately, I changed my focus to regeneration.

My eyes caught a flash of blue and a bolt of lightning thrown from one of the towers. I rolled, grunting in pain from the soup of my organs rolling around inside me. When I came up, I tossed my own magic back, so distracted by pain that I put a little too much force into it. The tower exploded into a rain of stones and mortar.

Eyes scanning, I struggled to my feet, feeling my mana depleting rapidly as it repaired what should have been excessively fatal injuries. My intact heart, however, thumped loud and strong.

I didn’t have time to lay about, so the moment I was healed enough to do more than hobble, I ran with a limp inside, grimacing even as the pain started to dull.

I have to find them.

***

What on Varra were they meddling with?

What sort of horrible force of wrath had they called down upon themselves?

Like the others, Jerrand had no questions about the righteousness of their actions. Fighting fire with fire, as High Inquisitor Mordwell had said. When he and the others had rendezvoused with the falsely-persecuted Inquisitor Finley, he thought their choice of location genius.

Out of the way of the weak-willed men of the Church’s other factions, they could practice here in peace. They could develop ways to harness the power of demons against their own kind and for the betterment of humanity using the binding techniques learned from Navanaean and Lost Era texts.

He remembered being chastised for carousing with the locals upon arrival—him and his mates. Were they not entitled to celebration? Was it truly wrong to spread the good word to receptive ears?

Perhaps they were, as soon the local populace turned against them, fearful of the power they wielded and unable to truly understand the value of what the Inquisition, in its new form, could offer.

Freedom from fear, was what Mordwell had said.

Why then, was Jerrand so afraid?

More than that, Jerrand held a creeping dread—a heretical doubt. Why would a protecting force care to offer the people of this city as a sacrifice to the greater good? He knew some of them. Strange folk—especially the lupines—but good folk.

His neighbors, the owners of the farm next to where Jerrand had grown up in southern Edath, had been a mixed human-lupael family. Though he found it odd that the woman of the house did most of the field work, she had been a wonderful mother to both of her own sons, and to him when he’d needed a place away from his father’s shouting.

The things some of his mates had said about the people here—the humans too—had rattled Jerrand. Something, dimly, shone through the cracks in the wall that had been built around his mind. He remembered warm elderberry pie, a bushy tail to hug, and he remembered wondering why he couldn’t see his friends anymore.

He wondered why he’d fired that last bolt of lightning at the demon woman as she lay dying on the steps to the castle. Wondered why he’d chosen that moment to stop hiding.

His hand went to his side, coming away damp. But Jerrand felt warm, staring up at the white-gray sky from a pile of ruined rocks and stone.

What if, he thought as his eyelids grew heavy and his vision dark, what if we were wrong?