Just then, rocks fell around their figures, as the ceiling above them came undone.
“Get your hands off my Artens.”
Immediately a brilliant fire of gold and violet blazed across the darkness and ruptured the tentacles that held the kismets, flinging them sideways and away from the maw of the demon-beast...
And a figure caught them all as soon as they began to fall, and split the sky like a comet with them on her shoulder, racing away. On her was a fragrance of a flower they knew so well.
It was Professor Aionia.
“Glad I got to you in time. Can you breathe?”
She set them down safely behind an intact column, giving them a vial of ambrosia to drink. Then she raced back, hurtling past the underground river and the torn-up roads, white cape billowing, pulling the winds with the strength of a galestorm, coming face to face with the demon in the sky just a few yards away.
“How dishonorable of you to hunt them here,” Professor Aionia declared, raising her golden staff towards its direction, with an expression of fury that her students never once saw.
“Your next opponent, shall be us.”
“US?”
A silver staff of wolfram shot from the ceiling like a rod from the heavens, whistling the wind, and punctured the demon in its arthropodal belly with a mighty crunch, missing the heart by only a few inches. The staff cleared the entirety of its flesh and flew out the back as if the shell was no more than tissue, and latched onto the palm of Headmaster Abraxas.
“I missed. Helen?”
As soon as Professor Aionia had taken a leap back a titanic blast of red flame engulfed the demon-beast, forcing it to recoil.
Professor Helen somersaulted from the ceiling, issuing a drop-kick into the maw of the beast, the soles of her boots shooting out rockets of fire. The beast avoided it just barely, making Professor Helen curse; the demon slapped her hard across her armor and sent her flying, but not even a second into being flung she’d oriented herself and was flying full force again, this time into its belly.
Professor William landed like a meteor upon the basalt, making a crater with his impact, rounding up his arm to regather his might, for he and Professor Aionia had just drilled through several hundred feet of rock. He stomped upon the basalt and several gauntlets rose up fully formed; he tossed them towards Professor Helen, who caught them, heated them all until they became lava, and swung it like orbs around the demon in a series of punches with pulverizing velocity. Shaping some more basalt thrown from Professor William into molten spears, Professor Helen thrust and skewered and cut away the demon’s carapaces in a dancephrase utterly terrifying and beautiful, each strike shearing space and leaving the air incandescent; under the relentless assault of the Master of Fire, thirty-seven of the demon’s tenebris scales came undone, and before it had any time to respond long weaves of water had bound the length of its beastly body in several places, and the real Professor Thales, with a single yank, forced the entire length of the demon down from its haughty rest in the sky.
In those brief seconds, a figure of turquoise green weaved about the lengthwise of the hall, and students found themselves being lifted by some ten thousand strands of air, carried by the currents to a safe corner of the map.
Professor Irina looked upon Elwin’s fading conscious form and began her aid immediately, unraveling the thick bandages and frayed weaves of the battle uniform that obscured his wound.
Numerous spider-like webs of purple had protruded in multiple directions, and the injury was beginning to sap not blood but tar.
It was worse than she imagined.
“This is beyond my reach to heal. We must get you to Utopia at once, as speedily as the falcon flies.”
Seeing that others weren’t as dire a situation as Elwin was, Professor Irina signaled Professor Aionia to take her place, and lifted him by the belly.
“UTUNNIAE VIS TERA, FRAHRUNA ARTAIA,
MELOS, NOS SOLARIAE, SUPRA TERRANIA –
CINNE MEHD AIOLIAE, GEFYR SUR CELESTION!
The air of the entire hall, and even the molecules stuck between the gaps in the tiles of basalt, seemed to pool together at their feet. With a mighty BANG Professor Irina and Elwin on her back rocketed upwards; but just as they were about to exit through that passage in the ceiling, a giant quill fired by the demon bisected the entrance and burst into shards, prompting her to dodge. The impact crumbled the thin passageway they’d drilled, and the quake propagated up, collapsing the skyward path in its length, the free-moving air to the surface now absent in the vision of the Master of Air – now, the only way out was to drill or to remove the Tenebriton on the subterranean roads. Both could not be done with haste as long as the demon stood.
Professor Irina, incensed, flew her way with Elwin still on her shoulder to just above the demon, which was attempting to coil and dodge – and with a singular enunciation of ‘UTUMMION!’ smashed the demon’s cobra head into the basalt, cratering it with such monstrous force that it produced an earthquake.
But just before Professor Helen could deliver the final blow, the demon wrapped itself in shadow and melted into the walls and pillars, slithering away –
“We have an umbral runner,” swore Professor Helen, readjusting her Quan.
Without wasting a beat, standing next to the Master of Fire, the Master of Light issued her commands, commands which they needed.
“Helen, and Mr. President, make as bright a fire as possible to rip the shadow from the wall. Director Thales, freeze the canal-river. William, drum the floors and walls of this entire hall so that it can’t attach itself back to the basalt. Irina, herd the students into a safe place, far away from here. We will force the Mora into being right ahead of us, and cleave it where it stands.” Professor Aionia delivered her words with utter conviction.
“Acknowledged!” they answered at once, dividing into their roles.
Professor Helen chased the slithering shadow from pillar to pillar, tile to tile, until she met Headmaster Abraxas approaching from across; with a coordinated dancephrase, far beyond what the Fradihta knew, they brought forth brilliant flames of orange and violet into being, barraging the wall and the shadow upon it, forcing it off the wall in pained grunts back into the shape of the cobra-headed centipede.
It desperately glissaded in an escape to the river, but the canal that was hundreds of yards of length was frozen with a firmness it could not hope to assail; it tried to melt into the gaps of basalt like a writhing mass of snakes, but the earth had begun to repel it with melodies of an earthquake, Professor William pulsing the melody of his Quan into the ground.
Professor Irina, having gathered the students out of harm’s way, joined Professor Helen and Headmaster Abraxas in driving the demon towards the unobstructed section of the road, in sight of Professor Aionia.
Seeing the Master of Light, the demon regathered its composure, and recoiled its tail and numerous legs, rearing up to the sky. It was not going to die like a coward – it would face her, try its hardest, though what chance it stood it knew not.
“ENCARNACION...!” it hissed.
Professor Aionia pounded the shaft of her staff onto the ground, unbeholden to its need.
“I KNOW WHY YOU SPRING FROM THE NIGHT,” the Master of Light declared, in a voice that sounded as if the divinities spake.
“AND WHAT INJUSTICE HAVE BEEN DEALT THAT TURNED YOU INTO A MORA. BUT YOU’VE BARED YOUR FANGS AT MY INNOCENT ARTENS, MAIMED THEM, SOUGHT THEM TO DEATH!”
The centipede-demon retorted, pointing one of its many legs at its arbiter. “HA! HAHA! HAHAHA! YOU SPEAK WITH SUCH HIGH AIRS WHEN YOU’RE RAISING THEM TO STRETCH THE SUFFERING OF THE WORLD! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT, NO RIGHT TO IMPOUND ME!”
“IMPOUND YOU, I NEED NOT. THAT IS NO JUSTICE TO THE LITANY OF BLOOD YOU’VE SPILLED UPON THIS WORLD FOR THE PURPOSE OF YOUR GAIN, FOR PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES YOU’VE ROBBED AND THEIR HOPES ENSNARED,” she announced, giving her judgment, her Quan beginning to glow. “YOUR VERDICT SHALL BE IN PROPORTION TO YOUR ACTS. IN THE WITNESS OF DEIA AETERNITAS, IN THE WITNESS OF MITHRA, ASTINEL, AND ALL THOSE BEFORE ME, COME, MORA, SERVANT OF MAHANAI, I SHALL CLEAVE YOU DOWN TO THE VERY LAST ATOM!”
At her words the centipede-demon heaved in an infernal roar and hurled itself towards the Master of Light, opening its tenebris jaws, miasma crackling and spitting from its tongue –
“MAIOR FORTIOR.”
A brilliant cross of light rent the dark, and Professor Aionia disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Without the air permitted to catch the sound, nor even feel the thunder of her advance, she became a golden blade, a lightning’s edge, cleaving the space in her wake. With the radiance of her Kaha pressed into light, she tore into the heart of the demon amidst the gale of its advance; and with a single swing of her arm as a scythe upon grass she cleaved the atoms of the demonheart into a trillion constituents, appearing into being again behind the demon, landing softly atop a broken half of a pillar with a single knee raised, extinguishing her Quan with a ray of cross.
The roof of the subterranean city juddered with the force of her strike as the sounds burst into existence, shattering the demon for good, thunderclaps rocking the upper deep.
The demon screamed, its miasmic form vaporizing into thin air, blowing as dust in the wind, wailing the last of its portent into the minds of everyone still conscious.
“YOU – YOU! ENCARNACION AND HER CLIQUE!
THE DAY SHALL COME WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER TIDE,
THE SINS OF MANKIND WITH ONLY A BROOM IN YOUR GRASP!
DESTINY AWAITS YOU, WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT,
BRACE FOR ITS DOOM – THE SERPENT AND THE DRAGON,
AND CURSE YOU TO ETERNITY,
ENCARNACION! – ENCARNACION! – ENCARNACION!”
Its wails and screams followed the walls and surfaces in discordant harmony.
And after its fifth roundabout, it faded in the deep into muted silence, into nothingness once again. Peace once more embraced the city below the earth, the fires put out in soothing dark. Professor Aionia faced away from her comrades, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, vaporizing her own blood to a powder of dust so no one could see.
Unbeknownst to the students, her lungs had begun to bleed again; but climb to the surface she must for them all, just as her soul had done for two-thousand years.
