Twisted Destiny

My life flashes in front of my eyes but right as I’m about to impale myself on the spear, the devil explodes in white light in front of me and I crash hard against a plate of metal, almost knocking me out completely but luckily I manage to barely stay conscious. 

“Push! Secure a perimeter!” It’s my sister’s voice that I hear followed by a battlecry of multiple other people. The sound of clashing steel starting to grow louder and louder. 

“Amicia!” I hear Sam’s voice as my body gets wrapped in her arms. 

“S-Sam? How?” I shake my head around as the blur in my vision fades and I see my girlfriend’s dirty face. It looks like she’s crawled through ash and sand to get here. 

“Not important right now.” She helps me up on my feet as I see Max and Carol next to me helping Sid and Gamma get to their feet as well. My sister and Veanya in the meantime are pushing the devils back together with a bunch of high-level looking adventurers as more and more of our world’s forces push through the portal. They all give me a nod of recognition before they put their full attention on the battle before us. “Where are the devils coming from?” My girlfriend pulls my mind back to reality. 

“Uh…” I almost stumble over my words as my mind is still racing to catch up to the quickly changed situation around me. “They are materializing from the latent miasma here. We can’t fight this as battle of attrition.” 

“Do you have a plan?” Max puts her hands on my shoulder, the smile on her face says she’s clearly happy to see me. 

“We do. Kind of. But I’ll need everyone here to cover me for a while.” As Sam and Max let go of me I summon my sword in my hand once more. “Short version. There’s a crystal buried beneath this structure that is a weapon against the devils so I’ll need to raise the earth to get to it.” 

Max turns around to look at my sister. “Élise!” 

“I heard!” My sister quickly shouts back and then infuses herself with her voice-enhancing magic. “Push and don’t let anything get past you!” 

Another battlecry rings out that grows even more with every single combatant that pushes through the portal. 

It invigorates as I feel more power flow through me than before. A useful thing for the act that I’m about to put into motion.  

With great strength I force my blade into the temple’s stone beneath me and I start to channel my mana into the ground. Envisioning the structure of the stone until I sense the spot where the crystal is buried beneath. The ground starts to rumble as I pour even more magical energy through my sword. 

A crack forms in the ground as I draw a circle around our perimeter with my mind. forcing the surrounding stone down while I lift up the area we are standing on ourselves. Some devils get pushed off the edge by our forces while others are squished in the crack as they slide down in between the grinding rock. 

I do feel my energy levels deplete rather swiftly, but luckily I soon feel that the crystal we are aiming for is within reach. 

With one more burst of magical energy I make the rock beneath us splinter outwards. Completely showering the immediate vicinity in sharp deadly fragments. Hundreds of devils just perishing in an instant as they get impaled by rock. With the added effect that I can feel the crystal now being on the surface. 

This is the signal for me to draw my sword out of the ground and collect the now exposed crystal. 

An explosion from one of Nikki’s fireballs blasts extra air in my wings as I shoot up into the sky and fly around our now elevated position to find a clear route towards the crystal. As the devils around our stoney outcrop were still recovering from my rock shard explosion this was easier than expected. The blue crystal, looking exactly like the image I had seen in the vision provided to me by our crystalline friends, embedded in the rock in front of me. I boost towards it with a powerful stroke of my wings and plunge my sword beside it. Using my leverage and some added earth magic to dislodge the crystal and take it in my left hand. Swiftly jumping off again and rising above the combat area. 

The crystal feels cold in my hand as I look for a way to activate it, though my intuition tells me that merely activating it with my body’s mana will do the trick. 

So I waste no time doing exactly that, pouring my magical power into the crystal. As a response, the crystal grows cold and colder by the second, painfully so. Although there is something in me that refuses to let go through the pain. As I continue the energy transfer, ice crystals start to form on my gauntlet and my breath is now clearly visible and it doesn’t look like the freeze is going to stop any time soon. 

My hand goes numb as my entire arm is starting to get encased in a layer of ice, but I somehow keep complete control over it even though the pain is now borderline excruciating. 

The pain starts to radiate into my chest when suddenly that stinging agony stops. I don’t have time to process that however, as a flash of blue light bursts from the crystal, followed by a shockwave that almost makes me lose control of my wings. 

As a result of that, the sound of clashing combat below stops. When I look down, the Diaboli forces look confused and in pain, as they all start grabbing their heads. Our own forces take the opportunity to slash down a couple of our opponents before a second, more powerful burst of light and pressure leaves the crystal I’m holding, knocking most of our own troops off their feet as well. 

The result on the enemy is a lot more dramatic than the first blast, now completely evaporating the devils below, though the bigger variants still remain, albeit completely stunned. 

The crystal in my hand starts humming ominously over the now quiet battlefield. The people below, most of them not even trying to get back on their feet, all start looking up to me. I can see my friends and family trying to get up and call out to me, but the humming has increased exponentially in its intensity that it overpowers anything. 

Its tone then sharply rises, leading me to brace myself, as the third, and hopefully final blast rings out of the crystal. This time also shattering the ice that has formed around my arm. I can feel my arm’s bones break as the air just gets knocked out of my chest as well. With my bones broken I can’t hold onto the crystal anymore as it falls down into the crowd of adventurers below. 

The excruciating pain has come back with a vengeance, almost making me lose consciousness yet again, the periphery of my field of vision getting black and strength leaving my wings. But luckily for me, my passive regeneration has started doing its work, already mending the broken bones in my arms and replenishing my strength slowly but surely. 

That wasn’t the only good news as the last blast had also gotten rid of the big devils. Even the lingering miasma appears to have dissipated. 

Slowly but surely our forces behold the silence in front of them and start replacing it with cautious and then continuously bolder sounding cries of victory. 

After observing the now empty battlefield for a couple of moments, I float down towards my friends and family who have been surrounded by a circle of soldiers and adventurers. I receive a thunderous applause as I descend. 

“Is your arm okay, sis?” My sister rushes towards me and stops herself from taking me into a hug, although I can see from her body language that she really wants to. 

“It hurts but it’s getting better.” Slowly I start to be able to move my fingers again as well. But holding anything will still be hard for the next couple of minutes. 

“Ami.” Sam turns me around and before I can greet her, she takes me in for a passionate kiss. “I’m so happy you are safe.” 

I smile at my girlfriend while I’m starting to get tears in my eyes. “Yeah… But luckily I had those two with me. Alone would have been a lot harder. But we managed to do it, somehow.” I looked over to Sid and Gamma who were both hugging Veanya who was just letting it happen. 

The jubilant atmosphere then suddenly shatters as an ominous laughter rings across the area. So loud that no one can ignore it. 

“Hahaha, using that old trick. Do you really think that was going to drive us out? It makes me happy to see that fools still exist. And you dare to call yourself gods.” The female sounding voice berates us. “Come on, godlings. Let’s see what you are really made of.”