I Wish Book 5: Chapter 30

 

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Author's note: Here's chapter 30 of book five of I Wish. I finally got over my block on this one. Thanks once again to my readers for their support, and to the Big Closet staff.

As soon as the others vanished from my teleportation spells and Michelle had used her own ability to join Lisa and Rebecca, I started gathering more of the foul magick energy around me to replace what I had just spent. I wanted to be prepared, and to be able to use my full power straight out of the gate. Only once I had completely topped up my stored magick energy, did I cast a teleportation spell that I had been preparing for myself.

The teleport spells had been guesswork at best, I had to eyeball them, but being in my Succubus form with its superior long-range vision helped with that. I was fairly certain that I had gotten the others at least close to their target locations but Baal, the Demon King himself, was likely going to be much harder to find. We were told that while the others tended to be at their respective gatehouses unless they had a specific assignment, Baal had a vast palace that took up the entire center of the rings beyond the innermost gatehouse.

He could be anywhere in that palace or on the estate at any given time, and he was likely to have slaves, guards, and/or attendants with him according to the limited information we had gotten from Kisha. There would be a lot of area to cover and plenty of people (possibly innocent slaves) who could spot me and report me, or just generally be in the way when I tried to make my move. That was a problem since I wanted to do this as stealthily as possible and hopefully take Baal out quickly.

As much as I loved stories and video games there the main hero is on a quest and storms the castle to proudly exclaim that they’re going to take the big bad down, resulting in an epic battle, this was real life. There were lives at risk here, and a war the likes of which humankind had never before seen if I didn’t end this here and now. It wasn’t just humans either, but also the nearly eradicated Faery, species who lived on other Planes, and even Demonkind.

Even back in Xuriel’s time, Baal was a tyrant and a warmonger who thirsted for conquest, and speaking with Kisha and others from her village showed me that he hadn’t changed with time. It had also shown me the abuses that he heaped upon his own kind in the name of his senseless war. The war wasn’t for land, wealth, or even about belief, it was because he was greedy and ambitious.

He ruled Heil with an iron fist, but it wasn’t enough, he wanted more. He wanted to conquer all other Planes, all for the sake of his ego. He was the very definition of a villain, so I guess that made me and my friends the heroes because we refused to let him win.

Being a hero is all well and good, but it was far better to be practical here. So, if I could assassinate him quick and dirty, I was pretty sure I’d still sleep just fine at night. With that in mind, I had two advantages in my favor to infiltrate this estate and find and kill Baal.

The first was that I didn’t have a Celestial aura, or its demonic counterpart, to give me away. This would allow me to slip through the palace and its grounds unseen if I was careful, and the worst-case scenario would be that if anyone did see me, they would likely just think I was just a normal Succubus with a very weak aura and abilities. The second advantage was that I could sense them. This would allow me to avoid people for the most part, and to track down Baal without having to search the whole palace.

I materialized high above Baal’s vast palace and immediately stretched out my wings to glide downward while I felt out the auras in the area below me. Even from a good two hundred feet above the highest rooftop of the palace, I could sense Baal’s suffocating aura. It was familiar, thanks to the memories that I had inherited from Xuriel, and easily the most powerful demonic aura that I had ever felt.

With most Demons, their auras felt nauseating, unsettling, and overbearing, kind of like social anxiety in a way. It’s like it’s trying to make you turn away, and you struggle to act while in terror of what might happen to you unless you know what’s causing it. This aura though, was on an entirely different level from anything I had ever felt before. It was so suffocating, malevolent, and overwhelming that I was sure that even those not sensitive to magic or auras could probably feel it.

Baal’s aura seemed to radiate through the entire palace and its grounds, and as I alighted on a sloped rooftop, I realized that he was going to be very difficult to track down by aura alone. I had thought that it would be as easy as following his aura to where the pull was the strongest, but his suffocating presence so permeated the grounds of this complex that it was like it was coming from everywhere, all at once. It looked like ‘follow his demonic aura’ wasn’t going to be a feasible plan here.

I frowned as I felt another faint sensation of pain from my empathic link with Ziralin. My Familiar was having a tough time with her battle it seemed, something had hit her hard almost as soon as she appeared in the location I sent her to, and it felt like she was having a rough time of it. I was fairly sure that she hadn’t been seriously injured yet, but this didn’t bode well for her, and if the others were having similar troubles…

No. I needed to have faith in them, and I couldn’t afford to second guess this plan now. Mason thought that this was the best way for us all to come out of this alive and to defeat the Generals and Baal, and I trusted his psychic intuition. Hitting them all at once was a solid plan and it would limit any interference when I found and fought Baal.

“Focus, Shannon,” I mentally chided myself. “Stop second-guessing yourself and focus on how you’re going to find Baal. If following the strength of his aura isn’t going to work, then how else do I find him in a complex this large?”

I could always follow some of those abundant servants down there and hope their tasks brought them to him, but that was a shot in the dark at best, and there was no guarantee that he had any kind of regular contact with the compound’s various slaves and servants. Finding a lone male servant and seducing him could work, but I would risk showing myself to others and there was no guarantee that he would be able to take me to Baal either. Then the thought came to me. “Why go searching for Baal, when I can bring him to me?”

I would have expected that my teleport would have gotten his attention when I first arrived, but it wasn’t a particularly powerful or flashy spell compared to a portal spell and I could sense some of the Demons in the compound using minor spells for other things, so it could have just been ignored because of the other magic going on. The version that I had used wasn’t a Celestial spell either, but my own improvised version. A Celestial spell, brimming with holy magic would definitely have gotten his attention. I couldn’t help but smile as a plan came to me.

It took longer than I would have liked to set up my plan. First, I had to find a place for my ambush and a good spot to conceal myself, where I would have a good enough view of the area to react quickly when the time came to attack. For the ambush spot, I chose some sort of large courtyard that had a massive stone statue of Baal, the Demon King himself.

The statue looked just like him, or at least the memories of him that I had received from Xuriel, though grander in size. While the statue was made of black stone, I remembered his skin being a bright crimson and his hair black, but they had captured his likeness well. He had an almost human face with long hair, large horns jutting from his forehead and sweeping back over his head, and bone spikes along the underside of his jaw.

His build looked as powerful as it was in Xuriel’s memories. Again, it was almost human save for the tail, much like my own, and the great size of the statue, which was clearly exaggerated. This statue stood almost thirty feet tall, while the memories I had from Xuriel would have placed him between seven and eight feet.

As for my hiding spot, I chose a spot atop one of the courtyard walls, where I concealed myself in the shadows as I worked on my first spell. It was while I was doing that, I felt a series of sharp, agonizing pains and panic from Ziralin that brought me to my knees and had me worrying about my love. Moments later they stopped. She was still alive, and from the emotions I was feeling from her, she had probably won her battle. She was moving toward me now as well, though slowly.

I had a feeling that this courtyard was close to the nearest gatehouse because I was sensing magic faintly from what was probably Sarah’s battle at the edge of my magick sense. When I managed to catch my breath after the unexpected assault of Ziralin’s agony, the sense of magick that I was feeling faded and became less chaotic. They were finished their battles, and I was running out of time to finish mine before they arrived. I needed to hurry and get back to work.

I willed into existence a scythe blade of holy magick, enough that it would surely get Baal’s attention, and I used that holy scythe blade to sever the giant statue’s head from its shoulders. The stone head crashed to the ground, where it immediately shattered into hundreds of jagged shards of black stone. Those looked sharp, was that obsidian?

I couldn’t waste the time thinking about it so instead, I concentrated on drawing in more magick energy, purifying it, and working on my next four spells. I needed to hurry. Not only did I figure that Baal would be arriving very soon, probably with company, but I was on a timer now before Sarah and Ziralin arrived as well.

Thankfully, Baal was as prompt as I’d hoped he’d be after my use of so much holy magick in the heart of his domain. A demonic portal opened in the courtyard below and out stepped the Demon King himself, just as he was in Xuriel’s memories, flanked by a dozen other Demons that felt strong on their own but paled before the strength of their leader. They were barely stepping out of the portal before I began my assault.

Sarah sat amongst the rubble of the now-destroyed gatehouse, carefully absorbing and purifying the foul magick energy that Heil provided. She wanted to be ready for a fight and to hurry to help her sister. She wasn’t about to let Shannon fight the Demon King alone and have history repeat itself. Fighting alone was the reason that Xuriel lost, though from what Shannon said, her mortal body kept her from using her full power as well.

It didn’t matter; she was going to be there to watch her sister’s back. Once she topped up her magick reserves she would return to her Celestial form to heal her wing so she could get there faster. She was almost ready when she sensed a Celestial aura, and it was getting closer. Moments later, she heard wingbeats as well and Annie landed, holding Ziralin in her arms.

They had both been through a tough fight from the looks of it. Annie was sporting bruises all over that sexy body of hers and Ziralin wasn’t looking any better. The Fae wasn’t using her Celestial form and visibly winced when Annie gently placed her on the ground. She had her old bow and swords out too and, while both swords and arrowheads were coated in silver, they would not be as efficient at slaying Demons as the weapons that could summon in her Celestial form.

The former cop explained, “I found her running along rooftops, trying to avoid the fighting between the resistance and those loyal to Baal. She’s in rough shape, but she says she can fight.”

“Of course, I can fight,” Ziralin snapped. “I may not be able to use my wings right now, but my place is at Shannon’s side. A few cracked ribs aren’t going to stop me. She just started fighting, I can feel it.”

“Hey, calm down kiddo,” Annie soothed. “I know you want to get to Shannon and help her, we all do, but we should take an inventory first. I’m just about out of juice here, and if you two are in your normal forms, I guess you’re not much better.”

“Actually, I’m much better off than I probably look,” Sarah told the pair with a faint smile. “I was just gathering magick energy to heal a broken wing, but I can fight like this if I need to. I’ve got my magick back.”

“No way!” Ziralin sputtered as she looked at her with wide eyes. “I thought you were burnt out.”

“I was, but I got my magick back when I was on the ropes and had to change back to my normal form. I’m almost fully charged now and ready to back my sister up, and anyone who gets in my way will regret it.”

“You’re not going to help her without us,” a familiar voice stated as Rebecca landed with Elsaishe cradled in her arms. They had company too, six adult faery and two Fae, one who looked to be around four years old and another who was probably a preteen.

From what Ellie said, the Fae were being held captive by one of the Generals, a Hradok, as a food source until she defeated him and found them with Rebecca’s help. Rebecca then quickly explained that she, Michelle, and Lisa had managed to kill Khinara, but that Michelle had been badly injured, so she and Lisa went home using their bug-out bracelets. She saw signs from the air that Jennifer and Mason had won their battles as well but had probably gone home as well since she saw no sign of them on her way to help Elsaishe.

It seemed like it would just be the five of them going to help Shannon then. The Faeries had been through a lot and they weren’t fighters, so Sarah encouraged them to hide in her portable bunker where it would be safe after casting a spell to create fresh air in there over the next few hours while they took care of the fighting. Sarah was a little concerned about her sister’s fiancée trying to fight in the shape she was in though.

That was a matter easily handled though between Ziralin and Elsaishe. It turned out that Ziralin still had a fully charged Okka crystal, which was enough for Ellie to heal her fellow Fae, Annie, and Sarah while in their Celestial forms. Except for Sarah, they would all be fighting while low on magick energy, but they were in a lot better shape than before. Sarah had managed to top off her magick reserves while Ellie was doing the healing, and at least they all had weapons and could use their wings to get there faster.

Ziralin led the way, following her bond with Shannon, and the others followed her with all the speed they could muster. None of them wanted to waste another moment after being healed since every moment was another minute that Shannon was fighting the Demon King on her own. It wasn’t long before they could all hear the sounds of a battle in the distance.