“Let's dance then ass-hat.” Stella spat and readied her weapons.

The armoured stranger gripped the hilt of his sword using both hands and snorted in disgust. He charged towards her with a war cry, slashing with a heavy vertical swing. Stella matched his speed and met him in the middle. She threw the three needles she was holding at his face which bounced off harmlessly when they touched his skin. Unfazed, Stella swung her own sword in a motion similar to an uppercut, aiming for the base of her opponent's. He smiled confidently as she did and showed no signs of letting up. Their blades crossed and the man frowned as he felt a force similar to magnetic repulsion push against his attack. It was he who had recoiled back from the clash instead of her, despite their difference in size and apparent raw strength.

Stella then carried on with her assault. She continuously slashed at the flat of the base of his sword, hitting almost the same spot every time as he attempted to block or parry her strikes. Her aggressive actions made it difficult for him to counter, leaving him in a purely defensive position, watching horridly as the cracks in his blade spread. He clenched his teeth and put trust into his armour, holding his weapon out to his side and swiping with a wide, horizontal swing. Stella determined she had no time to block or parry so she jumped over and kicked off of it. She launched her self over his head and threw another set of needles at the back of his neck though they still simply bounced off.

Stella landed some feet behind him and he turned to face her again, his grip tightening on his hilt and a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Her eyes started to glow purple and the stranger peered over his shoulder at Aileen, noting that her irises had also started to sport an aqua green. Omen magic... he thought to himself bitterly. With his focus away from her, Stella lunged at him. She stabbed towards his neck, only to be stopped by a translucent wall of light. She hit it all full speed which caused her to stagger back and the stranger took another wide swing, his sword passing through the wall as though it wasn't there. Stella quickly regained her balance and planted both feet shoulder-width apart. She held her weapon up vertically, the flat of it presented towards the incoming blow and pressed her arm into the opposite side of it for support. Like before, despite what should have been an obvious difference in weight and strength, she blocked his strike without flinching. She jumped back and threw three more needles into the barrier while the man ignorantly readopted his stance. The wall of light shattered on contact and he winced as the three needles punctured his wrist. He immediately began to feel like he was on a boat in the middle of a hurricane, like he was rocking back and forth violently and his entire body felt tingly. He quickly slapped the darts out of his arm and his senses quickly returned.

He eyed them suspiciously once they dropped to the floor and silently compared them to the needles that Stella had thrown before. He noted that the first of the bunch was grey and the most recent was all black. Before he could think about it any longer, Stella was once again in his face. He attempted to block her attack but slipped on some debris from his entrance, knocking him off balance. She slashed at him diagonally, her blade cutting through his armour like a hot knife through butter and he cried out in pain. He took a quick step rearward and stabbed the tip of his weapon into the ground, creating a blinding flash of light as well as a strong shock wave. Stella was thrown up into the air while Aileen and the priest were thrown backward. Thomas hit his head off the floor and immediately fell unconscious from the blow. The avian demi-humans both released their wings, allowing them to stabilize themselves. The stranger's body collapsed into the flash of light and he instantly appeared behind Stella, taking another heavy swing at her waist in an attempt to cleave her in two. She once more presented the flat of her blade towards his weapon and used her body as a brace for it. Her quick thinking prevented her from getting cut but without a firm stance, the impact still launched her into the earth. The man chased her, sword raised over his head while she was still on her hands and knees. A strong gust of wind hit him and he was forced away, stopping on his feet just in front of the main doors. Aileen landed beside Stella and helped her back up, healing her wounds simultaneously and keeping one hand pointed towards their opponent.

The man smirked arrogantly. “It seems you aren't just so normal demi-humans after all.” He declared. “I was wondering why your weapons were able to hurt me and why my Uictor,” he lifted his weapon up in front of him, “was being repelled. That black metal, it was forged by that traitor, wasn't it?”

“Traitor?” Stella echoed and got into position again.

“Cain Cathasaigh, who raised his sword against my parents. He can't be forgiven for his transgressions, nor can his family.”

The pair both glared at him but it was Stella who charged forward. “He didn't betray you; you abandoned him and tried to make him a scapegoat!”

She threw another set of needles at him which he swatted out of the air, leaving his waist unguarded. She slashed at him again and he disappeared in a flash of light once more. Stella stopped in place and threw an additional cluster of needles towards Aileen who stayed perfectly still. The stranger appeared behind her and blocked as he was immediately pelted by the darts. Aileen pivoted on her heel and hit him with a force palm in the abdomen, right on the cut in his armour. A strong gust of wind emerged from her strike and he barrelled into the altar, smashing it to pieces.

Stella placed her palm on the ground and multiple, stiff, vine-like roots grew as high as the ceiling. Aileen held her hands out in front of her, forming an empty sphere in between them then retreated behind her partner. The man threw splinters of wood everywhere when he got up onto one knee but before he could get any higher, Stella swung down on him. He blocked it as best as he could but couldn't build the momentum necessary to parry her or push her aside, leaving him only struggling to prevent her blade from reaching his cranium. The edge of her sword dug into the flat of his. Uictor seemed to almost screech in pain, louder and louder as the cross carried on. A rune appeared at the man's feet and Stella was blown away by the same mysterious force, shadowed in a blinding flash, as had been done previously. Several walls of light appeared around her but they all shattered instantly when they came into contact with the black metal of her sword. The stranger flew up beside her again, aiming to kill her just as he tried already but she used her own wings to push herself away and began dodging around the vines she had summoned. Not as agile as she was, he stabilized in one spot and watched her movements, predicting where she would try to strike from next. She threw a much larger barrage of needles with a widespread, resulting in three of them missing. He laughed, thinking that perhaps she was getting tired and it was affecting her aim. Not long after he finished his thought, she grabbed onto one of the plants, put her feet in a circle around it and dangled off like she was hanging from a rope. The stranger grinned maliciously and charged towards her. She didn't react to his movements at all and out of nowhere, his body began to fight him just like when he was hit with the black needles. He halted in mid-flight where he finally noticed an empty spool attached to the bottom of Stella's left wrist. Strung between the vines was a metallic black thread and he had flown straight into a web of it. With him stunned, Stella brandished her blade and flew in a pattern similar to a zigzag, dodging additional wires she had set up along the way. She swiped at him again, aiming for his neck but he had managed to pull away from the thread just enough to get away with a simple scratch on his chin. Determining that fighting in the air would be too risky, he descended back down onto the ground. Stella pursued and landed right behind him. He turned and quickly tried yet again to cleave her in two with a vertical swing. She dashed in close to him, right under his arms resulting in him only burying the end of Uictor under the tile floor. Too close for him to counter, Stella grabbed his arm to make sure he kept it down, and swiftly severed his neck. Blood splattered around them and the man's body fell over with a deafening crash.

Stella panted softly, watching his corpse for a moment before sheathing her weapon. She turned her back on her defeated opponent and went to rejoin her partner.

“Look out!” Aileen shouted and Stella heard the sound of armoured joints moving rapidly, followed by the grounded, azure blade vanishing from the corner of her eye. She lunged forward and turned towards the man again but as she did, his weapon caught her in the stomach, cutting her armour and well into her skin. She stayed on both feet, one hand on the hilt again, the other clutching her midriff. She fell onto one knee from the pain after only a moment and her blood rapidly pooled around her boots. Aileen grabbed her by the shoulders and immediately began to treat the wound.

“Filthy beasts...” The armoured man grunted, rage seething in his voice. He raised an open hand towards them. “Perish in the flames of purgatory!” Several more runes appeared, floating behind him and from each one came another blinding flash of light. Aileen considered flying up to avoid the spell but heard a shallow cough behind her. At her back was the cop, still weakened from Stella's poison and in no position to get out of the way, nor did Aileen have the time to grab him as well. With no good options, Aileen shielded both her and Stella with her wings, where they were then engulfed in the blink of an eye. All was still, even after taking the blast and neither one felt any pain. Aileen chanced lowering her guard to determine what had just befallen them, immediately taken aback by a thick, steaming wall of purple ice between them and the stranger. Below her was the unconscious Priest.

The armoured man's mouth hung open for a split second, his gaze still fixated on the winged pair in front of him. Following a metallic thwack, he lurched forward, and as his head dipped, Aileen noticed a shadowy arrow sticking out of the back of his skull. A spark erupted from the wound, pushing the arrow out and onto the floor. He swiftly recovered and scanned the direction the shot was taken from, only to face a volley. They pierced his armour, nailed his feet to the floor, skewered his heart and punctured him right in between the eyes. Before the arrows could be removed from his body again, a dagger appeared at his throat. Holding it was a pale man with jet black hair, cloaked in an onyx mist. Behind him was a woman with similar features, though her hair was much longer. “Don't you have better things to be doing then harassing a couple of birds?” The newcomer asked mockingly.

The man in brass armour was shocked and tried to back away as every fibre of his being instructed him to run. No sooner had the arrows been removed from his feet did he leap all the way to the glacial wall. “You're... Styx?” He stammered then with difficulty, steeled himself. “Father warned me about you, but you're supposed to be in the underworld right now.”

Styx began to twirl his dagger on the end of one finger, relaxed his stance and looked away from his foe. “I get bored of seeing the same scenery all the time, you know. Besides, I decided to come irritate my niece some more and caught wind of some feathery prick causing trouble nearby. I thought it was just Stella originally but apparently, I nabbed three feathery pricks. Well, that being said,” his expression turned serious and he stopped playing with his dagger. Veins bulged in his face, leading towards his eyes which began to glow and he growled, “It's time for you to fuck off, Sandalphon.” As he finished speaking, two skeletons wielding great-swords appeared just in front of the stranger, Sandalphon, and slashed him simultaneously in a cross pattern.

He stepped back slightly from the impact and set his sights on Shaffra, who was being covered by Styx. He gritted his teeth and lunged forward, ignoring the undead on either side of him. Styx blocked his path and the man attempted to cut him down. Shadow surrounded Styx's hand and he caught the attack out of the air, holding the blade in between his index finger and thumb. Sandalphon tried to tear his sword out of Styx's hand but it held fast. The cracks in the weapon expanded bit by bit with every passing second. “My father's will is absolute and just,” Sandalphon barked and groaned as he pulled on Uictor. “I won't lose to you, or anyone who would stand against him!”

Styx smirked with a hint of annoyance. “Just, you say? And absolute? Tough talk from a mere counterfeit, a bad knock off of the real angels.” The azure sword snapped in two and Styx threw its blade off to the side. He grabbed Sandalphon by the throat and lifted him into up at arm's length. Shaffra flicked her wrist and the counterfeit screamed in agony as the skeletons lobbed off all four of his wings in one swift motion. Styx continued, “You're nothing more than a tool created so that your father, that useless, worthless, dumb ass God, doesn't have to get his hands dirty. You want to talk about being just?” With his free hand, he stabbed a dagger into the “angel's” elbow and ran it down the length of his forearm. His bracer peeled off with a groan and fell to the floor, revealing eight white spheres on his wrist. “Why don't you ask your precious daddy where these extra lives come from? You think you're just magically granted extra chances without any sort of consequence?” As Styx got louder, the ground around him began to freeze. Frost started to coat Sandalphon's armour as well as the stained glass along the church's walls. The sudden drop in temperature caused them to crack, the largest of the windows, centred at the back of the church, cracked in between the eyes of a man with near shoulder-length brown hair. “I'm not much of a family man either, but it's still an indisputable fact that you people tore my family apart. Ran my mother into the ground, executed my father and sicked us, the children, on each other all for sport. You think you or your precious father are the heroes, dickhead?”

He then dropped the angel and severed his neck in rapid succession, dropping the sphere count from eight to seven, and kicked him in the stomach. Sandalphon landed on his back, just in front of the wall of ice, stunned as his wings reattached to his body. Shaffra raised one hand in the air and two undead fox demi-humans appeared from a cluster of shadows. They both reached towards the angel without moving from their spots and Sandalphon saw a glow out of the corner of his eye. In a triangle around him was the three needles Stella had missed with before and they all shone in a pale blue. He gritted his teeth and his body started to glisten though stopped no more than a second later. He cursed to himself and the triangle of needles turned into a twister holding him in place. He attempted to fight the gale and disperse it with a shock wave but once he got his hands up over his head, they stopped responding to his commands. His blood felt like it was pulling his arms in the opposite direction as he intended. He could just barely make out Shaffra making motions with her arms through the spinning dust all around him, his own arms moved in accordance with her motions. The layer of frost on his armour grew thicker and colder, briskly turning into layers of purple ice. He almost immediately lost feeling in his extremities and then his arms and legs very shortly after. His vision was starting to be blocked as even his sclera was starting to freeze. One by one, the sphere's on his wrist vanished. The twister didn't disperse until he was down to his last one. His limbs still stiff, he couldn't defend himself as Styx cut away his tendons, disabling his movement. He fell onto his knees, unable to even lift his head.

“That's a troublesome technique you tried to use,” Styx commented, “The ultimate trump card of light magic; moving at the speed of light. Looks like you didn't account for its major drawback though. It is a mana hog. Cain used to have to break an scíth both during the usage of the actual spell and immediately after just to prevent himself from being mana fatigued, and that was with perfect control of it. Stopping right where he wanted to and not having to keep it active any longer. You on the other hand, despite most likely having a much larger pool, almost infinitely larger, than Cain, had it fail on what, the third activation? Let me guess, you never practiced and couldn't stop right where you intended to, so you had to continuously circle the room until you were comfortable enough with the speed? That would explain why Stella's throw reached Aileen before you did anyway. Well, not that it matters.”

Styx grabbed Sandalphon by the chin and lifted his face so that their eyes locked. Sandalphon could barely make out the vampire's features through the translucency of the ice. “I'm not going to kill you just yet,” Styx explained with a sly grin. “I have some questions for you, though somehow I doubt you'll be willing to talk. Since you're the same concept as a familiar, I can't make you a thrall either. So I guess I'll have to hold on to you until she learns how to extract memories. That's alright though. A lot of the other vampires at the castle have never tasted angel blood before. I hope you'll keep them entertained for the days, months or even years until she's ready to go. Oh, and hey...” he leaned in closer and whispered into Sandalphon's ear, “I'll make sure you get a front-row seat to when she skins your father alive and feeds him to her wolves. Isn't that exciting?”

Without warning, Shaffra grabbed Styx by the shoulder and pulled him away, dropping the angel in the process. At that moment, several translucent, yellow javelins landed in between Styx and Sandalphon where Styx had just been standing, preventing either one from closing in on the other. Another angel donned in brassy armour, his face covered, appeared and held a spear vertically in front of him. With a quick flash, the two angels disappeared from sight. Styx clicked his tongue, “God damn fakers.”

The wall of ice changed to a natural colour and melted away, the resultant water evaporated almost instantaneously. Stella got to her feet with help from Aileen. Shaffra approached them and asked, “How's her condition?”

“The wound was deep, though I managed to heal it for the most part. That sword of his cancels my magic to an extent, so she'll need to rest for a day or two while it heals the rest of the way. It'll leave a pretty good scar too.” Aileen answered.

“Just another one for the collection.” Stella chuckled, ignoring the urge to wince.

“Pretending to be a mother has made you soft.” Styx declared, a hint of frustration in his voice and put his hands in his pockets. Aileen and Stella both tensed up and watched him uncomfortably. “Sixteen years ago you never would have made such a dumb ass move as turning your back on someone with an affinity for light magic. You both worked with Cain for a good amount of time, so it should have been common knowledge to you that he most certainly had some kind of resurrection spell in effect. Honestly, letting your guard down and almost getting your stomach carved right out of your torso. Pathetic. You should have been able to take his first life before he even had the chance to finish his swing.”

“Styx!” Shaffra hushed him. “I'm sure they've already realized their mistakes. You don't need to add insult to injury.”

He looked to his wife for a brief moment, closed his eyes and walked past all of them. “If either one of you dies, Luna will be upset. We all know what will happen if that turns into anger. Get serious before you lose the chance to.” He swung the doors open to the church where Nao quickly flew in. Relief washed over her face as she saw everyone on their feet, more or less by their own power. Noticing the tension in the air though, she kept quiet.

Shaffra bowed her head slightly towards Stella and Aileen. “I'm terribly sorry about that. He means well but he can be overly blunt with his thoughts on certain issues.”

If only you and your people weren't so pathetic, a voice laughed in Stella's head, all of you could have prevented this from happening. You had your chance, now just do what you're told and be a good little girl. All you need to do is sit back and open your legs. Stella shook her head to silence the voice. “No need to apologize. He is right. That was sloppy of me.” Her grip on Aileen's shoulder tightened and she kept her eyes low, avoiding eye contact. Nao grabbed her other hand and held it gently. Without looking, Stella exclaimed, “I'm alright. Once Luna and I are both back to a hundred percent, I'll invite her out to some sparring like I used to do with Lilly. It might be a good opportunity to teach her how to use spirit as well so that she has an alternative to magic when her internal mana supply is low.”

Aileen smiled meekly. “That sounds like a plan. Why don't we head back for now and check in on her? It's not too late at night, so maybe we can pick up some Popsicles as a gift.”

Stella stayed silent for a moment and after a quiet but deep breath simply said, “Yeah, let's do that.”

“What about them?” Nao asked and pointed at the unconscious humans.

Aileen thought for a moment then said, “We've already put this much effort into keeping them alive, so I don't think killing them now to keep them quiet is an option. Sending them to the hospital could result in a lot of attention coming our way in the near future though. That priest might stay quiet until next time, but that cop definitely wouldn't.” She sighed. “It's a waste of spirit, but I'll make sure they at least survive until they wake up. They can figure it out for themselves once that time comes.”