Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

The best place for a battle would be the hangar bay. Not only was it the most spacious place with a little cover from crates and walls, but I also had firsthand experience with battle in one. The only drawback was that our enemy could fly, but we had a few plans in place to help with that. This tower had plenty of defenses that would lift us up to his level, literally.

The problem was that there was only so much power in the tower to be distributed at the moment. So picking which things to turn on for our benefit was a little tricky. We'd be able to change things on the go if we needed to though.

Just when it felt like we had a little more time, I started getting that dreadful feeling again. He was close, definitely heading this way. Looks like the tower attracted him just like we’d thought.

It would just be Indena and I fighting him, backed up by the tower itself. With our home field advantage, we had the best odds of winning. But it wasn't a sure thing, so keeping our guard up was crucial.

Things were quiet. Only the hum of machinery in the walls gave a little ambiance to our wait. We knew what was coming, and the silent anticipation didn't help the anxiety. This was round two with a demon that was so powerful that he could steal souls by just passing over them. Truly a foe worthy of the title Grim Reaper.

The dread increased, meaning our foe would be on us any second.

Just to make sure he came our way, I went into the center of the room and began the firing sequence of the mana cannon. A burst of mana filled the air, then collected back into my heart when the firing sequence failed.

-Mana cannon, powering down-

“That should get his attention,” I said, a worried smirk on my face.

As if on cue, he phased through the walls with all his ghastly glory. As he entered, he quickly spotted us.

With skeletal arms stretched out, a black fog spread from his gnarly cloak.

But we had this part covered!

“Activate the light translocators!”

Hexagonal plates on the wall lifted from their ancient resting place. A shimmering light was radiating under each of them. The plates spun, causing the shimmering lights to loosen, scattering them through the air like solar snowflakes.

These bits of light sprinkled around the air and fought against the demonic fog. He tried to spawn more to counter it, but it was futile.

The Reaper looked upon the glowing dust with a literal lifeless gaze. It wasn't anymore then embers sparking off a campfire, singeing his already decrepit cloak.

It took a little work to get the tower powered up with stardust, but it was worth it to be able to see what we were doing. He had complete domain over the dark valley once that fog set in, but now it was the opposite.

What’s even better was that stardust filled the walls, so he couldn’t phase through them if he wanted to!

He let out an ungodly sounding drone. Before raising his scythe and slashing it downward aggressively, sending out a gust of darkness that aimed for us.

Indena and I dodged out of the way in time. He used the confusion to head my way.

“Anti-gravity time!” I announced.

My wings sprouted out of my back and I jumped into the air. Everything became instantly weightless in the room. I couldn’t fly yet, but I could definitely glide in zero G!

Evading his slash was easy at that point.

Indena rocketed Herself around with her fire. As she passed over the Reaper, she hit him with a flamethrower!

*Eeeeeooooaa!*

He screeched in pain as he was set ablaze by twinkling fire.

She was powered up by the stardust aura spell, so that sparkly flamethrower attack had the Reaper on the backfoot.

The Reaper got some distance, shaking off the fire. Two new hands appeared from under his cloak.

Between his bone palms grew a shadow ball. Dark electricity sparked all around it as the very shadows in the room were sucked into a singular point.

This shadow ball had a lensing effect around it, then suddenly anything in the room not bolted down started to shift toward it, including us.

“Oh no!” I shouted. “Black hole!”

He could manipulate gravity too, it seemed.

We were getting pulled in at fast speeds. Nothing was being devoured by the black hole, rather just spinning around it.

Just when I thought we’d be joining that accretion disk, he took the orb and launched it at me.

I braced myself by holding up my arms in a guarding position.

BOOM!

The orb exploded just in front of my body and sent all kinds of junk everywhere!

Indena and I were launched into the air. We were in bad shape when we hit the wall. That explosion was rough.

I recovered quickly, then glided toward Indena, casting a healing spell on her.

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man! I’ll heal you up as fast as I can!”

The light entered her body and her wounds recovered a bit.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she grunted, lifting her head up. “Let’s finish this guy off already.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Both of us got our heads back in the game and bolted off in different directions, splitting the Reapers focus.

Indena sent a twinkly fireball at the Reaper, causing an explosion that forced him to dodge backwards.

Little did he know, I was right behind him!

“Hyah!”

I lunged forward, poking him in the back, but barely grazing his shoulder with the tip of my spear.

*Eeeeeooooaa!*

His sirens blared as he panicked from the stardust damage.

“Yeah! That'll hurt him!” I cheered.

“Look out!” Indena shouted.

I thought the Reaper was about to retaliate or something, but then Indena’s and my own head collided mid air.

Bonk!

“Ouch!” we both uttered as we rubbed our skulls to ease the pain.

“Watch it!” she grumbled, glaring at me with grit teeth.

“Sorry…” I felt around my hair. “Samael, you good up there?” I asked my snake.

“Sss,” he hissed, positively.

Anyways, we had momentum now, despite the friendly fire incident.

Indena quickly turned herself toward the Reaper and her hand exploded with flame, swallowing the Reaper up in a vortex of fire. His scythe simply cut through the plasma and sent a shockwave of dark fire her way.

I jumped in the way and cut the dark flame with my spear!

SWOOV!

BOOM!

The parted dark flames touched the walls and exploded with great force! Indena was sent flying, and touched down harder than before.

As she laid on the ground, tossing and turning in pain, the Reaper swooped in to cut straight down on her.

I had mere seconds to put my spear in his path, locking with his scythe.

CLINK!

“Crap…!” I uttered, realizing my plan worked a little too well.

I was facing down the Reaper. All my strength wouldn’t have been able to hold him back if he really was pushing, but something captivated him more than this battle. His skull lowered down, looking closely at my heart.

One of his extra hands reached out. A boney finger pointed at the crystal that gave me life.

My heart started lighting up as his finger approached, sending minor shockwaves of energy out. His hand hovered over my heart for a moment, trying to capture the energy as if it were a heat source on a cold night.

This was my moment to attack. I swung my spear down and shoved aside his scythe, but as I did, the darn thing fell out of my hands!

My spear started rolling away. I had to scurry to it before it rolled to the other end of the hangar bay.

“No no no! Spear, come back!”

Some crates were seated on a metal pallet with a gap under it. Of course, the spear just happened to roll underneath that.

“Gahh! Just great…”

Meanwhile, the Reaper swooped in and made a cut at me, but missed. The cut carved right through the crates.

BOOM!

The crates were full of fusion coils! A huge explosion sent me flying.

Using my wings, I was able to just barely catch myself midair in the low gravity environment.

-Solar Turret; ready for use-

Ohh! Good timing!

A turret materialized in the room. Pure energy spun at its core until the material began to glow like a little star.

Capturing the artificial solar energy, the turrets fired waves of hot plasma through the air at the Reaper like solar flares.

“EEEEeaaaoooooo!”

His siren started blaring out uncontrollably as he was sprayed by supercharged energy.

Star light was a demon's worst nightmare, so it did some major damage! Not enough to take him out, but plenty to get him wounded.

He went down on his hands and knees, a mere melty looking skeleton with ghastly blue eyes. Black sludge like liquid was dripping off of him like sweat.

Wait! This was my chance to finish him off!

“Okay…okay…where did my spear go?” I looked around, trying to find it…but it wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Blast it, literally! Maybe it was destroyed when the crate exploded?

With a little math and playing back the explosion in my memory, I triangulated that the spear might have just got blasted to the other side of the room. But if I went there, would there be time to return and finish this guy off?

No time to worry about that. I jumped in the air and glided quickly to the other wall. My spear was there, but completely shattered in half.

The pointy end was obviously the most useful part, so I grabbed it and glided back to him.

“Gotcha!” I said to the spear. “Don’t roll away from me, I gotta’ use you for…”

The Reaper started to gain back his strength as he sat idle. His damaged body was regenerating, this time it looked like some spiky looking armour was growing around his chest and shoulders.

“Oh crud! No no! Don’t do that now!”

Phase 2 of this fight would be a nightmare if I didn’t finish him off quickly. I ran at him as fast as I could, brandishing my spear, ready to poke it right through his heart!

“Hyaah!” I closed my eyes and launched the remnants of my spear in the air like a javelin! The spear hit the Reaper in the head, but he just looked a little dazed. That wasn't where I wanted to hit! He stopped evolving for a second, but crud!

I grabbed the spear the second I landed, then shoved the blade into his chest! It cut through like hot butter!

“It’s over!” I announced.

The demon screeched fiercely, then light shot out of him in every direction and he exploded to bits of ash and dust!

The force was enough to blast me backwards and onto my back. The spear disintegrated too.

When I recovered, I noticed a black orb was floating where the Reaper had once been. It got all squidgy looking and formed into a weird looking star thing.

“Uh-oh…”

The squidgy star flew right through the window of the hangar bay door, then into the sky. The clouds funneled in around it and red lightning shot all over.

Indena started waking up.

“Indena!” I shook her, accelerating the wake up process. “Get up! Come on! The Reaper isn’t done yet!”

“Stop shaken’ me…” she slapped my hands away. “What do you mean he’s not done? What happened?”

I told her about how the battle ended, and how after the Reaper was defeated he flew up into the sky and was preparing for phase 2 of the fight.

“No idea what phase 2 means...but...” Indena shot up, “looks like we’ve gotta get outside and find out.”