Baelgor's head lowered. He inhaled.
Steam bulged from his mouth and rolled fast and low.
Azaelia met it with a Seraph Ash Wing, but the ash didn't bite as hard this time. The fog slipped in around the edges, seeking mouths, noses, eyes.
Azaelia leapt and slicked and leapt again. The ground under Alex spider-webbed.
Baelgor misjudged her, just once. He snapped for where Alex had been, predicting a panic step. But Alex had stepped small and left. The jaws took glass and steam instead of a girl.
He noticed.
'Good,' his voice purred in Alex's head. 'Learn to live. It makes your flesh much sweeter.'
Azaelia struck the opening.
Velvet Crucible: Sovereign Kiss
She didn't strike the beast. She struck the chain knuckle that controlled the jaw's snap. The kiss flared, detonated inward, and locked the joint for half a heartbeat. The glaive slipped in and carved a line across the soft seam where throat met chest. Molten blood spilled like a geyser.
Baelgor tried to gorge the wound and choked.
Azaelia had marked it with Rapture Brand. The gorge met a brand that burned inward, and the beast recoiled with real pain.
Another Ironhowl tore through the realm.
The shockwave skinned Azaelia's veil. Glass panes along the horizon exploded like a row of windows punched by an invisible fist. The vents all exhaled at once in a choir of hissing lungs.
Azaelia slid.
Baelgor hesitated.
Azaelia rose, slow and certain. Her armor drank her flame, almost being rejuvenated by it and becoming brighter. The fissures along her vambrace sealed; the visor flared full. She had forged with her breath and her sin and the heat of the Flats.
Her voice rolled like a bell.
Velvet Sovereign
She took three steps. The glaive trailed a line in the glass. Everywhere it touched, the Flats softened to a satin-dark sheen, a runway of her making. She pivoted. The line arced. The arc closed. The circle burned.
"Crucible, close." She whispered once she finished engraving a circle around Baelgor in the glass of the blackwater flats.
The circle drew up like a noose, then collapsed inward as a dome. Not to hold Baelgor, he would tear it, but to define the field on her terms. Steam that tried to roll in sagged to the dome's lip and dripped off like sweat. Chains that licked the boundary slowed, as if they questioned their own hunger.
Azaelia stepped into the center of her circle, and for a breath, she was a fallen seraph in a dress of flame and steel.
Baelgor despised it.
He charged.
Azaelia met him head-on.
The moment the paw landed inside the circle, her glaive struck the ground.
Every petal she had spun, every ember of her wings, every brand she had laid, answered. Kiss-marks flared along chain joints, on knuckles, at the hinge of the jaw, in the seam of the throat. Not enough to kill him. Enough to stagger. Enough to slow down the momentum.
Baelgor stumbled one step. Two.
Azaelia's wings crossed. Aegis bloomed. It shattered, but it sent the redirected chain lining into another. They tangled. She cut them free, and they went skittering.
She took her opening.
Eros Ember
The glaive's tip kissed the highest rib just under the furnace-like eye. The blue line in the blade flared. For the first time, Baelgor roared like an animal that had been hurt.
He tore backward out of the circle, then pivoted with nightmare grace.
He didn't retreat. He redirected.
The chains that had scattered into the steam dove as one and vanished under the glass. The flats went very still, as if holding their breath. Azaelia's helm tracked right, then left, then stilled entirely.
"Alex," she said, soft as falling ash, "Feather step back. Now!"
Alex moved.
The glass blew open beneath her like a sprung trap. A chain came up from the earth with such speed that the air snapped around it. It looped Alex's ankle mid-step and wrenched. She went down hard, breath punched out, the grimoire flying from her hands and skittering across the Flats.
The chain yanked.
Alex clawed at the link and hissed as the heat bit her palms and ankle.
Azaelia was already moving. The glaive turned in her hands, a baton of midnight with a razor smile. She sprinted along the line of the chain, used its tension as a rail, and struck downward.
Petal Reave
The blade shaved the barbs from the link around Alex's ankle. The chain tightened instantly to compensate. Azaelia stabbed the haft between the chain loop and skin and levered, buying a breath of space.
"Remember, Alex. Don't breathe in his steam."
Steam spread across the glass like a low tide. It hugged the floor and lapped at Alex's skin like a sauna. Alex immediately held her breath as Azaelia tried to release her from the chains' grasp.
"On my count," Azaelia said calmly. "Three. Two—,"
The glaive blazed to life with blue flames. Azaelia levered her haft more, assisted by the blue flames. This allowed the loop around Alex's ankle to loosen just enough for her foot to come through.
Alex lurched to her knees and then to her feet, ignoring the burning sensation around her ankle and hand. She continued to hold her breath as steam was still surrounding them and attempted to Feather step out. However, when she attempted the technique, she stumbled due to the burn on her ankle.
Azaelia's palm hit the center of her back and steadied Alex.
Azaelia quickly enveloped her and Alex in bluish black flames and teleported just enough to be out of the range of steam. This allowed Alex to inhale deeply, gasping for air that her lungs desperately needed now that it was safe to do so.
Baelgor erupted from the steam towering over both Azaelia and Alex. However, he just bypassed them and didn't even attack. Until Alex saw the grimoire, which she dropped when she was yanked by the chain.
Alex realized with the clarity of terror what he was doing, causing her eyes to widen.
"He wants the book. I think he's planning on eating the light at its source."
Azaelia appeared in front of Baelgor in a burst of flames and threw her glaive like a javelin towards Baelgor, striking him in the eye. She then outstretched her hand towards her weapon, causing it to be called back.
Unfortunately, one of Baelgor's chains intercepted it mid-flight towards Azaelia's hands with a slap. The weapon sailed off into the hazy steam and vanished somewhere in there.
Azaelia didn't even swear at the loss of her weapon and dashed towards Baelgor with bare fists. Hidden wing blades snapped free from the sides of her forearms like hidden blades of an Assassin.
She then met a paw the size of a carriage with crossed bracers and slid back as their attacks canceled each other out. Her hidden weapons held, but hairline fissures started to appear on them.
"Alex!" Azaelia shouted, "The book!"
The grimoire began to pulse.
Alex didn't think, as it felt like everything began to slow down.
She Feather stepped with a flap of her wings for an added boost and grabbed the grimoire with her hands when she was close to it.
Baelgor's voice filled Alex's head
'Bring the book to me, little lantern.'
Of course, Alex didn't obey and just turned and ran with the grimoire in her hands.
Baelgor roared at Alex and whipped a chain towards her back.
A blur fell across Alex as Azaelia threw herself between Alex and the chain, taking the blow on the edge of two of her right wings. Azaelia wanted to scream from the pain that hit her, but no sound escaped from her mouth.
Azaelia tightened her jaw and released a defensive technique.
Firmament's Kiss
A dome of black fire crashed down around the two of them and the book. Chains struck it and skated; steam hit it and guttered; the Flats beneath it softened to satin, then hardened to obsidian again as the dome rotated like a slow wheel.
Baelgor hit the dome like a war god, and the dome buckled but held, kiss marks flaring where every chain dared to touch.
The dome trembled with each impact, and Alex knew that it wouldn't last for much longer.
'Little lantern,' Baelgor whispered through the glare, gentler than he had ever been, which made it worse, 'don't you see how weak she has become. It won't be long until you're both dead.'
Alex stared at Azaelia. At the cracks in the armor. At the blood that had threaded from under the helm and drawn a clean line through soot along her cheek.
"Run when it breaks," Azaelia said. "Don't look back."
The dome flickered, and something in Alex's chest broke open.
The grimoire burned in her hands. The page edges glowed from within like smoldering coals and snapped open as words once again appeared on the pages, while she also heard its voice in her head
Decide, Zivarel.
The voice said again, not loud, not begging. Simply present.
Or else, you and Azaelia will perish.
A crack appeared on the dome directly above them. Steam spilled through it in a thin white knife.
Alex lifted the book.
She didn't know if she would accept the seal. She didn't know if she would refuse. She didn't know if choosing now would damn them both or save the day or paint a target big enough for the Monarchs to see from their thrones.
She only knew the dome was breaking, Baelgor was at its edge, and Azaelia was already paying the price to keep her alive.
Alex opened her mouth to speak her decision as the dome shattered.
"Fine…I accept." Alex whispered as Baelgor's carriage-sized demonic paw descended upon Alex and Azaelia.