Azazel peered down at the battlefield and saw what he thought at first was a strange golem with muddy wings.

But then flames leapt from the palm of its hand.

Malkira!

Azazel beat his wings to propel himself toward his foe, then closed them on his back and thrust forth his sword to dive-bomb him. Wind whipped around Azazel, blasting his hair straight back and pulling a cold tear from his eye. Arrows zipped past Azazel, and those which did draw close burned up in the white flames around his body.

The Demon King, whose body was engulfed in stone, turned to look up, just before the tip of Azazel’s blade struck his chest.

Sparks flew, the tip scraped along the stone armor, and the blade soared from Azazel’s hand.

Malkira raised his fist and bashed Azazel in the chest. The angelic king’s ribs cracked, the air abandoned his lungs, and he collapsed onto the ground beside Malkira.

The white flames burned out.

Azazel’s world spun around him, and he gasped and choked to recover his breath.

Malkira’s hard foot pressed down on Azazel’s head, forcing him face-down onto the ground. While Azazel spat dirt from his lips and struggled to breathe, the Demon King forced his foot down harder.

. . .

Calimei’s armored carriage crested the top of the hill.

From within, she aimed her wand out the window and cast spells at Malkira’s minions. The air rippled as sonic waves blasted the archers from their perches on the mountainsides.

Through the window slits she spotted a figure wrapped in a covering of rocks, and under its foot a struggling victim. She squinted in an attempt to see who it was, and gasped when she noticed the wings upon his back.

Azazel!

She aimed her wand at the figure covered in stone and sent a sonic wave barreling through the air like a charging bull. The blast smote the stone-covered figure in the chest and threw him off of Azazel.

King Ozz rose to his feet, his hand holding his solar plexus.

He’s hurt!

Calimei waved her wand at him and even amidst all the noise of the battle all around her she heard his sharp intake of air. He coughed over and over, and rose to his feet.

Behind him, the stone-covered figure rose again, with some of his rock armor now missing. Though Calimei had never seen him before, she recognized Malkira from the many stories told about him.

She waited as three cavaliers rode by, assaulting whatever demons drew near, then cast another sonic wave at Malkira.

But Malkira raised his hand and another sonic wave rippled from his hand. It blew through Calimei’s spell, and she braced herself just before the blast crashed into the side of her armored carriage. The carriage rolled over, first onto its side, then onto its roof. Calimei bounced around within, her armored dress banging against the walls, until she came to a sudden stop flat on her back, on the carriage’s ceiling.

Four gunshots. Holes appeared in the carriage’s underside. Calimei looked down to see four musket balls lying on the carriage’s ceiling, smoke still rising from the heat.

Calimei struggled to get to her feet, which proved especially difficult, given that her armored dress weighed her down and restricted her flexibility. Once she was up, she staggered over to the window and peered out at the battle raging on. A flurry of knights on horseback galloped by. Azazel’s infantry had surrounded the demons guarding the jidra garden, with walls of shields both in the front to protect from the demons near the garden and in back to protect from arrows and musket fire.

And her eyes fell upon Malkira’s hateful gaze. Blood streaked down the Demon King’s face, from his eyes, his mouth, his nose, and his forehead. All around him lay incinerated or pulverized corpses, some with their armor still intact.

Is that one Azazel’s body?

Malkira raised both his hands at Calimei’s carriage, and the lady fell on her face as the box in which she was trapped took flight from the ground. Calimei held fast to a bar on the inside of the door, barely managing to stay upright as the carriage hurtled through the air. Through the window she saw the world turning head over heels. Sky beneath her feet, land above her. Clouds on her right, mountains on her left. The world outside the box became swirling madness.

Panicked, all she could think about was getting out of the carriage before it crashed onto a mountainside and crushed her into paste. She threw open the door and threw herself out from within the tumbling box.

It was only as she escaped into the open air that she realized just how high up she truly was. Cold air currents whipped her skin and beat against the armored dress. The armored plates became like sails, blowing her far away from the tumbling carriage. She tumbled and tousled through through the air, her red hair streaming behind her in tangled waves.

Calimei held out her wand and tried to redirect the air currents to slow her fall, but the wind snapped it in half in her hands, and the other half blew away from her.

Without the wand’s enhancement, she wasn’t sure she had enough power to redirect the air and save herself, but she held a seleni coin in one hand and her other palm open in an attempt, however vain, to rescue herself.