They all looked to Bryce.
Alive and not-alive. Dead and undead. Bryce reached out a hand toward the stilled metal army below. Cold, awful power went through her. But her will was their will. Her will was everything.
Rise, Bryce said, blasting the thought out. Fight. Obey Isaiah Tiberian and Naomi Boreas. Hel is your ally—you fight beside them.
Only she could see the twinkling souls of the Fallen, drifting toward those suits from the nearby hilltop, alighting on them one by one by one.
The eyes of the suits blazed again. Bryce saw the nearest mech-suit lift its metal arm in front of its face. Watch its fingers wriggle with something like wonder.
Then it turned to the closest Asterian Guard and bashed the soldier’s head in.
“Holy gods,” Naomi breathed as the mech-suits, one after another, began to march away from the Asterian Guard.
The souls of the Fallen had waited for the moment the Asterian Guard and their mech-suits had begun to march toward the city below.
And the remaining souls of the Fallen that didn’t have a mech-suit to slip into … Well, there were plenty of dead demons and Asterian Guards with bodies intact enough for occupying. Twitching, as if adjusting to the new limbs, those corpses lurched to their feet. Came to stand beside their Fallen brethren in their mech-suit hosts.
“You’re up,” Hunt said to Isaiah and Naomi. “Time to get into the city.”
The angels bowed their heads. And with a great thrust of their wings, they launched skyward. Isaiah’s voice boomed out. “Fallen, you are now Risen! To the gates!”
Isaiah looked back at Hunt, his eyes brimming with pride and determination. The warrior touched his heart and flew off. Hunt lifted his arm in salute and farewell, as if beyond words.
It was indeed a sight beyond words—beyond any description. An army of the undead, of machines and demons, marched for the city walls.
“Incoming,” Hunt said. “Seems like that footage kept them distracted until now.”
“Right on time,” Aidas confirmed, as the glowing figures approached the battlefield spread before the northern gates of the Eternal City, come to exterminate this threat themselves.
The Asteri.
And walking toward them, the armies parting before him, was the Prince of the Ravine, with the Prince of the Pit trailing close behind.
90
Hunt refrained from heaving a sigh of relief, even if his helmet would have masked the sound.
Bryce had freed the souls of the Fallen from the throne room and placed them into those mech-suit bodies, but the hardest and most dangerous part of their plan started now. Hunt fought to keep his breathing steady, his focus on the unfolding battle and chaos. His helmet blared with alerts and assessments.
Aidas unsheathed a shining silver blade that seemed to glow with bluish light. “My turn,” the demon prince said, the dry breeze whipping his pale blond hair. He asked Bryce, “A ride?”
Hunt had only a moment to glimpse the worry, the fear in her eyes as she grabbed Aidas’s hand, then Hunt’s, and teleported them. With the power of Theia’s star, it barely took a moment. Barely seemed to drain her. But what arose around them as they reappeared on the battlefield was a scene straight from a nightmare.
Kristallos demons, deathstalkers, hounds like the Shepherd, and worse … the pets of Thanatos, all racing past the Asteri and into the city itself. Hunt’s helmet turned them all into distant figures, the world awash in red and black.
But the Asteri had bigger fish to fry: The three princes now before them. Especially Apollion, standing between his brothers.
There was no sign of Rigelus. He’d sent the other five Asteri to do his dirty work.
“You shall pay for marching on our city,” Polaris snapped at them.
Hunt unfurled his power, lightning bright even from behind the visor of his helmet. Beside him, Bryce had already peeled off the Mask. And beyond them, around them, the Fallen—his Fallen, now in bodies of metal and nightmares, all still bound by the command to follow Isaiah and Naomi—engaged the Asterian Guard. Swarmed them.
Miniature brimstone missiles launched from the mech-suits’ shoulder guns, fired at the Asterian Guard. Floating feathers and cinders were all that remained.
It had been Hunt’s idea to play on Rigelus’s arrogance. He thought them reckless and stupid—thought they’d be dumb enough to believe that they could somehow smuggle an army down from Nena and launch a surprise attack on the Eternal City. That they’d be dumb enough to leave Hel open and vulnerable.
So they’d let the Asteri split their Asterian Guard in two, sending half to Nena to conquer Hel … only to be slaughtered by a host of demons awaiting them there, under the command of one of Apollion’s captains.