Queen's Gambit Chapter 25

Chapter Index:
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Previous Chapters:
Draconic Fortune (Noelle)
1
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2
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3
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4
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5
https://pastebin.com/A3JdE5Fu
6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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11
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12
https://pastebin.com/RNpJC0Hi

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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 13

Embodiment of an Ebon Angel
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Witnessing the danger of a bulk of Susies getting dismantled so easily, raised their morale and spurred them on to nigh-march around the mountain. They expected a lot. But what they wound up seeing still left them astonished. Once the path opened up to their actual destination, they found themselves reading a wide-open landscape. A valley encased by mountain ranges so steep they might as well have been walls.

They reached as impossibly high as the walls at the edges of the last Dark Realm Kris had been to. It must have been about a mile wide. The ground was uneven everywhere, and covered in dust, gravel, rocks, and short weeds and strands of grass grew in spread-out places. The mountains that were the walls of Berdly's room. And it was as grey as everything on the way here.

"Wow, Kris! Look!" Noelle was surprised in a more positive way than Kris was and expected her to be. She pointed right into the starless sky. "You can see the moon!" High above them, a pale white crescent shone down upon them.

He tried reeling in her excitement. "It's the Dark World. There's not supposed to be a moon. At least not up there."

But there was one. Very clearly. And not just that. "Come on, just look at it! Can't you appreciate a sight like the moon being there?" She slowed down and took her hand away when she realized another celestial body floating above a corner opposite from the Moon. "...and...and the sun." A ball of golden light with clearly denoted rays, as if drawn rather than an actual burning gas giant, shone down along with the Moon.

"There's not supposed to be a sun either."

Dasher broke into their conversation. "I don't know what you mean. This is The Sun and The Moon as I have always known them."

As they made their way along the dusty surface, they noticed from the shifting angle that this Sun and Moon weren't actual celestial bodies either. "The real sun and moon - I mean the light world's sun and moon are...bigger. And further away."

When walking around the fields, and comparing the angle from one place to another, it became very clear that these celestial bodies weren't far away giants, they were objects of a much smaller size that floated at a much lower height above the fields to make up for it.

"There it is!", the archer shouted with newfound excitement. Once they came far enough into the valley to pass the cliff that blocked their sight of it, at last they saw - something. "The Chariot!" The sight of the thing he referred to as such, left both Kris and Noelle dumbstruck enough to stop, and by doing so, prompt the others to do the same.

It took a moment for Kris to wrap his head around it, but when he came to think of it...of course. Of course, what else was he supposed to expect? Considering everything he had seen up to this point? Of course if the Journeyman looked like an orange celebrity who always showed off his private jet, then of course the Journeyman's 'Chariot' - a vehicle he claimed could take them across the ocean, would be..."A plane?"

It was a plane. And at the same time, it wasn't just a plane. It was a giant plane. As if the valley they had reached wasn't dizzyingly wide enough as it was, it had to be to encompass the vehicle that had landed on its edge. A reasonable landing site would not have sufficed, it was the size of a regular jumbo jet many times over. The scale and wingspan were impossible to fathom unless you saw it with your own eyes.

They were only able to take in its size because of how far off to the side towards the coast it stood. With many propellers lining the front side of its wings and supports at the ends of it to help keep it in place on solid ground. "Not just any plane." Noelle broke their stupor by walking past him. And with her leading the way along with everyone else, he followed her as well.

"It's the Spruce Goose. It's a very special plane. A quirky businessman came up with the idea of making it. When he proposed it, the politicians he hoped to make deals with to help build it, laughed at him. They laughed at him because they were convinced no-one could build something like it. When he built it, they chuckled and said it could never fly. When it took off, they stopped laughing. It didn't fly for long, but it flew, that' what matters."

"It isn't much of a 'Chariot'."

His dry remark got a chuckle out of her. "It fit with being for - it fit the occasion. The Chariot stands for overcoming challenges and obstacles and braving through the impossible, so what better for a design for it? Their dismissing his idea and low expectations became an obstacle, and he overcame them with hard work and determination."

But something was wrong. And Headbanger was the first to realize that. In a very painful way, too. She banged straight into something headfirst.

"Are you all right?" When Dasher walked up to her, he bumped into something as well. Right where Banger had tried to go.

"I'm fine. But what the hell..." The now confused dragon reached forward with her open hand. And her palm did press against something. Kris, Ralsei and Noelle wanted to know what they were feeling up. When they caught up with Dasher and banger they stretched out their hands, and those that didn't wear metal gloves, could feel a smooth surface.

But there was none. They could see the open area with the plane right in front of them. There couldn't be, could it? Kris took his glove off and began feeling up this surface all around. Upwards, downwards off to the side. When he did, Noelle did as he did and came to the same conclusion. "It's some kind of invisible wall. Like in a video game, when you're not supposed to go to an area yet, because you've got some story to clear or a boss to beat."

Come to think of it, a wide-open area like this valley was a lot like an arena for something like that, too.

The prince had a different approach to it. He formed silhouettes of light and brushed them against the wall. He closed his eyes and after taking some time to pick up the sensation it gave him, he concluded: "It's magic. Not just that, I've felt it before. It's the same kind of magic that stopped me from moving my door around anywhere in the castle. But it can't be someone casting it everywhere at the same time, right? It's got to work on its own. Which means it's like an enchantment. It has to be bound to something."

The prince searched around a little more, and eventually called for them. "There! That's got to be it!" When they hastily followed him quite a stretch further to the right, what he was pointing at, was an idol on the other side of the wall. A little effigy of a bearded rat monster, dressed in a plain, loosely hanging robe, nailed to a wooden cross by his hands and feet.

"This is it." He cast some spell to test something out. "Yes, this is definitely it. It's a ward. Wards are magic, but they don't just magically appear out of nowhere. It has to have been cast and put up by someone."

"It was put up by me!" With audible winces between breaths when she ran their way, a familiar looking purple dragon came their way. What once was a devout nun's robe, covering her up as it should, now only hung as loose strips off her arms and legs, hanging onto her by the most solid threads.

You could see in her step that she was weakened by the visible, bleeding wounds that littered her arms and legs. In fact, her left arm was injured so badly, she kept it covered with her right hand. "And I am not taking it down, lightners!" Faith had somehow woken up again and broken free.

"How do you keep resisting my pacify spell?"

This only made her blurt out her answer. "I warded off an entire continent and a castle the size of a country from your portal sorcery. You think I don't know to protect myself against some measly sleeping tricks?"

"That was you? That was all you?" Going by how much the prince was taken aback, Kris could only surmise that this was a feat he didn't expect.

The nun shook her head. Half the time, her hair got between them and her face, and the last stripe of cloth that was once part of a full coif, fell of her head in the process. "The Knight showed me how to imbue my crosses with the wards that do that. I just did the work once I knew. Sorry, but it's the end of the line for you. Even killing me won't take them down. You are stuck here until I dispel them, and I will do no such thing until the Knight arrives."

The prince stepped forward. "Why are you helping him?"

Headbanger took that as her cue to follow up. "Yeah, you could just join us, ya know. Seal the fountain, save the world and all that jazz."

An animalistic hiss burst out of Faith and she opened her mouth to point her sharp teeth their way as she did it. "Don't make me laugh! You're a bunch of deviants! You could never be real opposition to the malicious forces out there."

Kris felt he had to step in here. "So because we can't be real opposition against those 'malicious forces', you have to help those 'malicious forces' stop us? Why not just let us try?"

That only made the dragon's furious gaze turn his way. "What do you mean?"

He stuttered for a moment. "I mean - isn't that exactly what the Knight is?"

She raised her head. "Is he? Because you're a bunch of deviants! For all I know, you could be the real malicious forces!"

Now Dasher came closer, leaned against Headbanger and flashed the roughed-up nun a wink. "If it's deviants you're against, isn't the Knight the last person to help?" He waited until he was sure he had her attention before he went on. "I've seen the guy's armor. He's got taste, but if depravity is a deal breaker with us, why isn't it one with him?"

"And Temptress.", Kris added. "You keep calling us deviants, but isn't she the biggest one out there?"

"What?"

"He's got a point." Headbanger moved on and leaned over Kris' shoulder with one arm like a - well, like a school bully. "She had everything going for her. Good boyfriend, friends that love her, a big home, she had it all. But she threw it away, just because she craved that Knight's codpiece so damn much. If sex stuff controls her life choices like this, don't you think she's gone way, way off the deep end?"

The rage accumulated from all the backtalk was boiling over in faith. So much so, her clenched fists trembled, and when she heard Headbanger judge Temptress like that, she screamed: "ENOUGH! I will stop you for good, here and now!" She ran away - at least at first they expected her to, but she ran closer to the centre of the area in this valley that they actually could move around in.

And there she stopped, faced them, closed her eyes and put her hands together. A sad sight, seeing a dragon with even more ruffled up hair than normal, praying with barely anything of her robe left and cuts everywhere.

"Angel that thou dwelleth in thy Heaven! I speak to you in search of strength in these trying times! I beseech you to recognize these deviants as the threat they are. Imbue me with the power to defeat them!"

In the upper corner of his eye, Kris noticed something moving. The Sun and The Moon were shifting around to different, more evenly aligned corners of the valley. "I beseech you to strike them down with lightning, enrage the seas they seek and sunder the earth beneath them." Both the Sun and the Moon each began casting a slowly extending ray of light straight down to the nun praying between them.

"Father ours who thou art in Heaven. I beg you to see them for the threat they are, for they pursue the legend. Thy Kingdom will not come, thy will will not be done, so long as the legend runs risk at passing! In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, THEY MUST BE DESTROYED!" When she opened her eyes, they were glowing from the inside with golden light.

In a very involuntary-looking contortion, she was made to stand up and spread her arms left and right as though she was the one crucified rather than her idol. As from her pose, a golden cross began shining out, an unseemly ringing hailed from above, as fashioned from that same golden light, two symbols glided from the Sun and the Moon through their rays that met on the nun.

From the Moon came a crescent and a star. From the sun, an encircled star of David. The cross left her and floated at one side of her. The crescent and star took place at the other. And like a ruler lording over its subjects, the star of David took position above both of them.

Inexplicable currents of wind surged around her as the party, exempting Starlet, came closer. "What is all this shit?", the rock star asked.

"It's the symbols of every religion that believes in angels as celestial guardians. Every religion that has at least one sect or school dedicated to the Angel!"

The six-pointed star and its outer circle expanded itself, as the currents of wind began spinning around the nun and lifting her off the ground, with the Sun and Moon's spotlight following her on every inch. This continued until the six-pointed star's inner corners still spanned around the nun without touching her, and once she was in position in the middle of it, it began to spin.

The cross and the crescent both began floating up as well. Each one stretched and spanned itself out, deformed and reformed as giant wings to both sides of the circled star around the nun. Spanning as wide as both edges of the valley.

A pyramid of three golden triangles appeared beneath Faith and the lower ones made way for the upper one turning itself upside down and switching places, the middle one settling at the bottom with its pointy end downwards and the other two pointing up from above between it and the rest. Using the spinning star of David as the circle in the centre, the shapes of golden light completed an enormous Delta Rune.

Now with her hands free, Faith held one in front of her with its palm pointing down. Beneath it, the same oversized bible they had seen her summon before, appeared in the air. Open from the get-go. But from below, they could see that the letters on its cover were glowing the same way so much else around her was.

She began reading from it, with a voice so loud, they could hear her from down here as if she was right here. It echoed their way the same way as the voice of a pastor within the acoustics of a church. "Sun and Moon stood still in the glint of your flying arrows." The moment she said that, a hail of arrows soared up into the sky behind her, turned and began moving straight to Kris and the others.

"Arrows! Dodge!" He urged them to move aside and shortly after they did, the ground where they had stood before, lit up and the arrows rained down and dug their arrowheads into the ground.

But once they escaped the hail of arrows, Faith continued: "...at the lightning of your flashing spear!" Above Faith, dark clouds appeared and grew thicker and thicker. In front of her, a spear appeared and realigned itself to point straight at Noelle. A voltage so high coursed through the spear, you could see little jitters of blue lightning flare up throughout it. Kris grabbed Noelle and when the spear began charging down her way, pulled her to the side.

They escaped the spear itself, but with the charged spearhead dug into the ground, the attack wasn't over. A little off to the side from everyone, a lightning struck the ground, and they were made all the more vividly aware of how close it struck by how there was no delay between seeing and hearing it.

Then, quite a little further behind them, another lightning struck the ground. It wasn't over, the spear must have somehow charged the ground and these lightning strikes were discharges, of which there were going to be more. They were going to get hit, unless... "Noelle!" He kept his grip on her upper arms as tight as before and shook her. "Noelle, Tendervines! I need you to make vines! Make them tall! And not near us!"

She was as panicked as the situation warranted. Squeaking with an open mouth, she raised her staff and what he asked for, followed. Thorned tendrils grew out of the ground around them. But they weren't tall enough to reach more than maybe a few feet above them. She tried again and put more force into the magic that grew the vines. A shift in the lighting around them distracted her.

The Sun and Moon stopped shining onto Faith as she had already drawn all the power she needed. The spotlights vanished and the Moon began shifting again. It positioned itself in a different corner from where it was before, and shone a new spotlight, right onto Noelle. She could feel the magical energy coursing through the light. She could feel it fill her, she could feel how minimal effort on her part exerted strong magic currents.

The moon was often associated with fertility, and the growth of plants. Many people made offerings to their lunar deities hoping that it helped grow crops. It seemed this 'Moon' was blessing her now as well, as when she next tried to grow vines, the results bursting out of the ground were of a multitude of her regular vines' size. The one stalk she grew was wider than a fully grown tree. And that was just its tip. The rest, if she had made it grow further, would have been even wider.

In different places around their party, thorned, brown vinegrowths burst out of the grey, dusty ground and extended themselves up into the sky. One was hit by a lightning and almost immediately caught fire. And the further up in the sky the others reached, the sooner the same happened to them. One after the other raised itself up only to be struck by lightning, slowly transforming the landscape into a forest of burning stalks.

To their relief, there was a limit to it though. Eventually, the thunder stopped, the storm waned. "Wait!" Kris immediately saw a reason to let go of Noelle and rush to the others. Dasher had already taken position with his bow and was about to nock an arrow to aim for Faith. "Wait, we still need her to take down the ward! We can't kill her!" Ralsei was releasing his pistol as well, but took it down when he heard what Kris said.

This drew understandable anger from the archer being denied his one chance at living up to the title. "Then what's your plan?"

Kris paused and checked back on the nun. She floated above them, as curious about his idea as Dasher was. "Sinwielder said you have a ring. Show it to her."

He was taken aback by his out of no-where suggestion, but the archer obliged. He pulled out a little box wrapped in smooth cloth sewn onto it with a precision not possible by older means, opened it and presented it to the nun while Kris turned to her. "Look at this!" He pointed at the box. "Dasher had a ring! An engagement ring! They were well on their way to getting married, to forming a holy bond!"

The omnipresent character her voice took on didn't make the way the nun responded any less fierce. It did the opposite. "That bond was not yet formed! It doesn't count!"

"As far as their trust for each other went, they already were married, and she broke his trust. In all but formalities, she broke a holy bond. Faith! Someone living up to your name would either want us to stone her to death like the old testament says to, or offer her forgiveness like the new one does. But we can't do either if you don't let us get to her!"

"Silence! I will not have someone such as you talk to me like that! It seems I need to go back to the beginning!" She turned the pages back, way back, and continued to read from it. "And god said onto Noah: 'The end of all life has come before me - for its creatures filled it with violence. I will now destroy them, along with the earth itself! So build a wooden Ark! Make it with..."

She continued, but both lightners recognized what this was. If she could summon arrows, spears and lightning, then she could summon the great flood, too. And right on cue, the clouds above them renewed themselves and turned much more voluminous, to the point where they covered the entire sky in all directions. The human turned to his classmate again. "Your Tendervines are a lot like wood, they might float in the water!"

When she shook her head, it had already begun to rain. "I can't just magic up an entire ark!"

He grabbed her again. "It doesn't have to be an ark, just big enough to hold us. I'll guide you!" He drew his sword and pointed at a spot on the ground between the still burning stalks. When a vine began sprouting from there and following the movements of his sword with its growth, he quickly formed a small but ever expanding outward spiral and towards the middle of its planned height, drew it so wide he had to run a circle just to reach to the width with his sword.

He gave it an arc in the front that allowed to support an entrance, and then, because he purposefully drew it wide enough, made her make additional, orthogonal strands that held it together and prevented the spiral from just falling apart. "Quick! Everyone get in!" By the time its completion had come far enough for him to say so, in spite of how wide and open in several directions this valley was, the water already stood all the way up their ankles.

Noelle waited until everyone including Starlet was done climbing into the claustrophobia-inducing, and uncomfortable interior. Then she closed off the entrance and from the base of the same, singular stalk she made their vessel with, grew a mountain-high support structure that held and lifted their carriage up further and further. She even added a second one to better hold up the 'Ark' and keep it from breaking off the stalk it grew from. A feat like this left her feeling weak.

It seemed there was a limit to how far the Moon's blessing lasted. The rest could only watch what was happening through the few cracks between the vines that there were. The valley filled up with water. The invisible wall shutting them off from the Chariot didn't let it through either, it acted as a dam.

In the worst case, Kris expected it to vanish or them to be swept right over and past it, in which case there was still a chance that they would end up on the ocean and could use it as an actual boat instead of the Chariot.

But it didn't get this far. By the time the actual flood somehow came rushing through the entrance from the path above the coast, Noelle's wooden tower already stood so high, even the peaks of the mountains corresponding to the walls in Kris' room didn't look that unreachable any more. As he guessed, most of the force the wave would unleash only affected things that were further below.

By the time it rushed over the mountains to the west high enough to reach and rip Noelle's makeshift boat off its support structure, most of the water had already crushed against the ward and it only launched them against it with a fraction of the strength Kris worried it would have. It crashed them against the apparently infinitely high invisible wall, before the water already began running down. With them floating on top of it, the lowering water level also lowered their cocoon much more gently than it could have.

At last, back on the ground, Headbanger saw an opportunity to take that axe they bought for her off her back and put it to use, chopping at the vines covering the hole. Outside, Noelle's previous stalks were no longer on fire. Most were still intact, some were pulled out of the ground with their roots and crushed against the ward blocking their way. In what places there once had been grass or other plants, the earth was ripped open and the plant life strewn around between the puddles that covered the surrounding area.

With her head raised in a display of her arrogance, Faith towered over them with all the components of the Delta Rune shining as brightly as before. "So what now? I don't think you should be this judgmental about Temptress."

Kris twitched. This was the common denominator. Judging Temptress was what really struck a chord Faith. This was the way to get through to her. He made sure that everyone was okay and out of Noelle's successful mini-ark and then stepped forward and pointed up at Faith again.

"Faith! Temptress is guilty as sin and you know it! Her greed for power made her listen to the Knight. Her lust turned her away from the man she loved. And who loved her back tenfold! She isn't even doing what the Knight says, I heard Axe say that! Her mental sloth is keeping her from being diligent even when she's betraying everyone. And worst of all is her pride. Her unwarranted pride. She didn't betray everyone who loved and trusted her, just because she wanted to rule a Dark Realm. She did it because she thinks she's out of Dasher's league. She thinks she's better than all of them. She thinks she's above everyone else. She thinks she is above being judged! And apparently, so do you! If this isn't the worst kind of pride, then I don't know what is."

"BE QUIET!" She snapped at him. With a force in her voice strong enough to make everyone including him pull together. "I will need something a little more targeted." She flipped the pages forward, far, forward. "And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet and I saw a star fall from heaven onto the earth, and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit!"

As expected, far away from where they stood, at an edge of the valley, the winged figure she described appeared and what was probably the key, soared down from the sky and hit the ground like a meteorite. "Fifth angel -trumpet - Revelation! It's the book of Revelation. She's summoning locusts. We can't let a single one of them get to us! We need fire. They're not normal locusts but they're still insects! Fire will help!"

Noelle was getting visibly tired, but she was aware of the situation, so she just pushed herself to make them a ring of vines and even made it into a little wall for Headbanger to begin setting on fire.

When the angel in the distance turned the key, a crater opened up and black smoke rose up from within. Not long later, so did swarms over swarms of insects. When they came, everything they could do was hope Headbanger cover the incoming hordes in fire. Here and there, Kris and Dasher used their sword and epee to cut down the few of them that got through before they could sting anyone.

But with this threat averted, the nun didn't give him time to think of something to tell her. "Perhaps it needs something more autonomous to deal with you!" She went right back to flipping pages. "The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up. And he let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground. And all..."

"Samuel?" It could have been the book of Samuel. But where was she going with this? "Oh no..." When she went on to bring up he Philistines and opposite from them, a portal into a desert-looking area opened up, it was clear what she was doing.

Headbanger couldn't help but ask: "What the hell are those?" Through the portal came unusually short, bearded monsters with bandages for shoes, skirts and crude leather chestpieces covering only the centre of their chests, hanging off their shoulders by leather bands so narrow, they might as well be suspenders.

Up until now, it wasn't a regular battle, so he had to reconsider their situation. Those Philistines were a magic attack. They weren't real, not even in the sense of being a darkner. "They're the Philistines. The rightful owners of the holy land. We'll have to just fight them. David killed one by shooting him in the head with a slingshot, so they're not invincible."

He figured the best decision was to at the very least injure and pacify them, if not straight up kill them. He got down to giving everyone instructions like he used to with Berdly and Susie. "Ralsei, keep your chocolate cakes on-hand and come with me. Dasher, get to shooting them. Headbanger, take that axe and come with us. When I say 'fire', you breathe fire. Noelle..."

He paused, and then he just patted a nearby vine pillar that somehow hadn't caught fire from the ring of vines. "Stay back. We'll handle this somehow." Even he could tell the temporary burst of power on the panting deer's part was letting up. She was running low on energy, so she was to stay behind with Starlet.

With Dasher following with some distance, he led Ralsei and Headbanger down a deliberate route where they almost always had one of Noelle's vine stalks between them and the one archer their enemy had. The moment they were close enough to engage the enemy, he shouted: "Fire!" With the enemy still standing in a row, the bursts of flames coming from the dragon they brought hit all of them and after a few seconds, they caught fire.

She did this at a price though. While Kris and Ralsei were busy charging at the first two and Dasher aiming for the third one, the archer had the time and distance he needed to shoot her. She fell down and the moment he saw what happened, Dasher put the bow away and ran for her.

Kris didn't waste a second in exploiting how thin and ineffective their armor was by burying his sword in one of them, pushing him aside and doing the same with the other. The third of the four Philistines lay on the ground with an arrow in his head, but the archer was still untouched. With the first two pacified, with one move of his hand, Kris pushed Ralsei their friends' way with enough force to signal for him to help them.

His whole body contorted with pain when a point blank shot from the enemy archer, piercing the chestpiece of his armor, almost brought him down as well. But he forced himself through the pain, charged right at the last Philistine standing and hacked away at his arms, too.

The prince pulled the arrow out of the dragon. By the time he came back to Kris, the last of their enemies was already on the ground, all he had to do was use his pacify spell and then tend to Kris' wound as well. As soon as the last of Faith's summoned soldiers lay defeated, they dispersed into smoke, as though they had never existed. They all made it through in one piece. Glad that this was over, they came walking back to Noelle and Starlet. Seeing them still standing made the winged dragon seethe with rage. "Faith! Listen."

"NO!" She screamed down at him. The angrier she got, the faster the star of David around her spun its circle. "I was on the right track! I need something autonomous, but I need to go bigger!" She seemed to have a clear idea of which page she was looking for this time. "Here it is. 'The land we passed in our search devours its inhabitants! Everyone was huge! We saw the Nephilim - the descendants of Anak come from them. We seemed like locusts compared to them - and as such they saw us!' "

In the distance, in another edge of the valley, as far away as one of her wings reached, another portal opened, but a much bigger one. Through it stepped someone in very light, crude leather armor similar to that of the Philistines. A 'human' with bright skin but long black hair and an equally messy beard. Except that 'human' was over fourty foot tall. He dwarfed even most of Noelle's vine stalks. A biblical giant. Known as a Nephilim. Kris didn't have much time.

He had to come up with something to deal with this one. Arrows and swords weren't going to do much, he was too big. He looked around in search for an idea. And he found something. "Everyone follow!" The largest of Noelle's vines, the support structure for their 'boat', was tilted by the great flood, but for the most part, it was still standing. If he could bring it down on the giant somehow, this would give them a chance to take him out. He tapped Dasher's shoulder. "I need you to shoot him."

"That won't do anything."

"I just need you to keep his attention. You don't have to hit him, just make him follow you!" While Dasher ran off to distract the giant, Kris tapped Headbanger's shoulder and asked her to help him cut a wedge into the supporting stalk that kept this thing from falling over. She had an axe after all, it made sense to make her chop down something that resembled a tree. The fact that she could just set it on fire to help burn their way into the fibre helped as well.

They both got to chopping and burning as quickly as they could, but his plan wasn't working out the way he hoped. Their progress in cutting the supporting stalk was much slower than Dasher's progress in luring the giant around it and where he had to stand for it all to work. "Faster! Faster!"

But it wasn't enough. By the time the Nephilim stood under the structure, they were nowhere near done. What he didn't expect, was that despite working miracles and exhausting herself to this point, Noelle still managed to muster the strength to help them.

She made another unusually wide stalk burst out of the ground and grow in a curve to press itself against the already close-to-falling-over spiral of talks and pressed them down, until the part they were chopping away at broke and the entire thing collapsed right on top of the Nephilim. Dragging him down onto the ground as it did so. Now came the precarious part. The giant was pinned down with both his arms and couldn't get back up.

But he wasn't dispersing into clouds of smoke like the Philistines. They still had to go in for the kill. Noelle understood what they needed and created a smaller stalk. Kris, Dasher, Ralsei and Headbanger, they got on top of it, before she made it grow and extend itself over the giant's body, so they could jump down onto his chest and run for his head. he was struggling and made standing on him a struggle of its own through the only surface they had to stand on, quaking about.

But with a few well-aimed shots at key moments when he stopped moving, their archer was able to lodge an arrow right into each of the giant's eyeballs. Headbanger tried reaching far enough to hit his skull, but she came nowhere near that. Kris at first struck randomly, then called for Banger to help him. Together, they got onto a more secure position on the giant's upper chest and began cutting into his neck.

It was an ordeal that took balance, patience, and all the strength they had. An endless struggle to strike at his neck, move back and forth to not lose balance and get shaken off. At least not until there were wide-open wounds on his neck. Once they were gaping wide with streams of blood already having flown out and only thin strings of skin separating them, the dragon among them readjusted her sunglasses and shouted: "Hey! Check this out!"

She leaped straight onto the neck buried her axe inside the wound on one end of it, and ran down its length pulling her axe through the cuts on the surface. Tearing them all into one huge gashing wound. This was it. They had dealt as much damage as they could from here. The giant's neck was already wide open and he was still roaring and struggling. They jumped off of him on the opposite side from the dragon.

And from both sides, they began attacking his neck. Him, Headbanger, Dasher, each kept the giant from focusing on anyone of them for too long. Whenever he turned to Headbanger, Kris would bury his sword in the back of the giant's neck, and vice versa, when he turned his attention to him, she would do the same.

They had been left wondering how much this creature could take, when finally, it and the blood that had spilled around from its wounds, turned into smoke, rose up and vanished. Without him in the way, the vinestalks crashed down, shaking the ground enough to make everyone stumble.

This time, when approaching the shapes of golden light, he didn't give her any time to continue her tantrum. He spoke immediately, and with a growing impatience in his voice. "A real faithful nun would do what she can to make Temptress repent for her sins, and here you are, helping her indulge them!"

"Quiet! Shut up! It's like I said! A bunch of deviants like you could never truly oppose her!"

"Then why are you so afraid of letting us try?"

Her snarls grew all the louder. "That's it! It seems I have to take a page out of the lord's book on how to handle deviants!" She flipped back to a part close to the beginning, but this time she announced what it was ahead of time. "Ah, there we are, the culling of Sodom and Gomorrah!"

"Sodom and Gomorrah - Everyone, close your eyes. There will be flashes of light and if you see a single one, you'll turn into a salt pillar!" He held off on doing so and turned to Noelle, grabbing her by both shoulders again. He was out of ideas to solve this without her help. "We need your special attack one more time."

She was panting, still catching her breath from how much summoning these giant vine stalks up to this point wore her out. She was so weak she struggled to even stand. She was driven so much to desperation, she had tears in her eyes and a trembling voice. In fact, all of her was trembling. She shook her head. "I can't do this any more, it's too much. Please..."

"I don't know what else to do! She's going to make sulfur - well, something that burns rain on us. The boat isn't going to be enough. I need you to make a ceiling out of vines, and a new one before that one burns up, and a new one before that one burns up."

"No...No, I can't..." Under helpless bibbering, she kept begging him to reconsider, but he wouldn't let up. "It's too much, it's - huh?" Her eyes widened and whatever caught her attention also distracted her enough for her to stop crying.

She was looking straight at a light, and apparently, Kris was the source. From within his chest, a bright red heart symbol began shining against the darkness around them. It was happening again. Shimmering waves of red light extended themselves out of him and connected to her hands and staff. The same red light glowing from him, began shining out of her eyes. "What is...it's so much...what is this?"

"It's happened before. With Berdly and Susie." Their time was running out. New clouds covered the already black sky, shielding away even the light of the Sun and Moon. The sound of thunders from above announced that it would soon be too late. He just had to hope this was somehow a way for him to give her new strength. "Noelle..."

He pulled her closer, closed his eyes and lifted her up a bit so he could ease the burden of standing, while he held her in a tight embrace with his arms wound under hers. A real hug. Not a Kris-hug. A normal-person-hug. Only when in the flickering lights of an impending doom, she actually felt it, she became very aware of how in all those years growing up together, this was a first. Affection in public AND open to physical contact like a normal person. A second first today.

"...I'm sorry for not trusting you. I know it really upsets you and I'm sorry. You did everything you could to deserve my trust. I never trusted anyone because I was afraid." Now he was the one trembling. Even though Kris knew he could start over if he died, this death somehow got to him. In part, because he was long grasping at straws and couldn't believe they made it this far without dying in the first place. "But you're the only one who can do this. I trust that you can. I trust you with my life."

"I'm scared."

"I know it's possible. You just have to try."

She hesitated. But when another, louder thunder from above spurred her out of her stupor, she panicked. She clenched her eyes shut too, raised her staff with both hands, slammed its bottom end onto the ground, and screamed off the top of her lungs. As she did, an earthquake shook the ground all around them, as giant tendrils - already as wide as cars only a metre into their length - sped out of the ground and surged into the air.

More and more quakes, more and more giant stalks burst upwards. Formed entire walls and curved themselves to the side to give everyone shelter. Wherever the vines didn't cover the ground, fire rained from above, drying and eventually setting the remaining stalks ablaze all over again.

She never stopped screaming. She just kept conjuring wave after wave after wave of vines, each bigger than the last. Channeling all this newfound power she suddenly had into turning their surroundings into a burning thicket - almost a jungle grown entirely out of thorned vines. When the middle of one 'ceiling' fell off above their heads, she created a smaller wall to catch it and make it roll off further away where none of them were standing.

This went on for god knew how long. Kris just held on for dear life, and in her own way, so did Noelle. Eventually, she ran out of breath, and with that, her wordless outcry died down. But this newfound strength coming from the red light seemed limitless and so the vines kept coming. "It's okay, I'm here." Kris was already giving up on it and expecting to soon find himself back at the light before any of this started.

"I think...I think I can do this." When he let go of her in his confusion, this connection between them was as strong as ever. She could feel it filling her with more power than the moon did. The entire valley must have been spilling over with layers of branches as big as the tunnels of underground train stations and still, her strength wasn't running out. The red light kept replenishing it. "I think - I think I can keep this up! I really can! We're going to make it!" She raised her staff and continued summoning more vines to cover the ones already covering them.

This attack lasted longer than every one before it, but even this one didn't last forever.

It ended, and they could tell, because the flashes of light were so bright, they noticed each one even with their eyes closed, and they also noticed when they stopped happening. Everyone remained still, even after the burning rain and the flashes ended. With her staff raised, and a continuous stream of new vines more than replacing the last burning ones, she led them out of the crammy spot they had stayed in for so long, to an equally crammy area closer to the mockery of an Angel that Faith had become.

After covering even Faith with a wall of vines, instead of leaving it that, she made it retract itself by the vertical end, pulling the wall further and further down onto Faith. In this impenetrable thicket she had turned the valley into, there were no open areas anymore. Just wound thorned walls everywhere.

But from here, they could see the nun, allowing Noelle to summon an entire wall of vines, raise it up right behind Faith's back, wind it over her, and eventually striking and dragging dragging her down until she could have them hold and constrict her on the ground. The shapes of light around her just followed the nun's movements and phased through ground and vine walls alike.

Desperate and frantic over them having gotten to her like this, Faith struggled to try to break free, but the grip of the plants wrapping themselves around her was too strong. "No! No, no, no, no ENOUGH! CEASE!" She raised her bible, pointed at it with one index finger, and from it shot a lightning bolt that set the holy book on fire. She lifted it up and tried throwing it at Noelle, but this was when Kris and Ralsei stepped in to block the way. With a swipe of his shield, he slammed it to the side. "GOD DAMN YOU DEVIANTS, YOU'LL PAY FOR YOUR INSOLENCE!"

With a scream of her own, the shapes of light that still shone through the burning wood around them, shrunk together and concentrated themselves until all there was left was a pair of normal-sized, but blindingly bright wings extending themselves from both sides of her back.

She summoned something that looked like a dagger, made out of that same golden light, but in solid form, held it in her hand and buried its pointy end in one of the vines holding her. Under a disturbing crackling sound, the vine dissolved right before their eyes. And this started a chain reaction of the same thing happening, rushing across the insurmountable cluster of them that had grown around them by now.

The vines, the flames - in a matter of maybe twenty seconds, it all vanished and dissolved into nothing, until they were back to being nothing but a few people on a wide open landscape. Except that their battle, the rain, the flood, the fire, it had left behind puddles that even the fires didn't completely remove, patches of charred earth and stone were everywhere and there were holes and unnatural shapes in the ground where once the vines had grown from. Their battle had taken its toll on their surroundings.

"I'm tired of you treating this like a game, human! Face the wrath of the Angel!" With a speed so tremendous, it made following her movements impossible, she shot right to him and gave Kris a powerful kick, launching him several metres away from everyone else. With a grin, she came closer and pointed the same index finger he had seen shoot a lightning bolt at the bible before, at him. And electric currents flickered at its tip already. "DIE, HUMAN, DIE!" she screamed, strengthening the gesture pointed at him.

Then she froze. "I SAID DIE!" She shook her index finger again. The flickering currents were gone. And she seemed confused at the acute lack of electricity shooting from her finger. "I said...what's going on? Why isn't - argh!"

A ray of light so faint, everyone had seen it but no-one believed it was there, gained enough intensity for them to register that it was really there. It was cast onto Faith and as it grew stronger, she began writhing around in place under audible aches. So much so, she collapsed in place, struggled to get back up and failed. All her muscles trembled. She was in pain, excruciating pain. Enough so for everyone, even Kris to understand.

The light was being cast by a large hooded figure, dressed in a white cloak and gloves. A grown woman floated in the air a little away from both him and the others, ten feet above the ground. Very warm-looking, stuffed boots were wrapped around her already wide feet and legs, and equally thick gloves with royal blue stripes at their wrist were wrapped around her large hands, as she stretched one of them out shooting the same ray that had Faith drenched in physical pain.

"No! What is...no!" The same light that was tormenting Faith, forcibly raised her back up as if ghost hands were holding and moving her about against her will. Her wings and the circled star that had vanished inside her, grew again and removed themselves from her body, while she was struggling to free herself from the wider woman's grip. The wings turned back into a cross and a crescent with its star.

Then all three religious symbols floated above her. The star of David and the circle around it barely changed at all, they only grew in size. The cross' vertical bar shortened itself, while the horizontal one shifted itself over to the centre and doubled in length. The crescent lost its star.

Then they rearranged themselves. The stretched-wide cross occupied the middle between the star of David and the crescent. The crescent attached itself to the opposite flat end of the cross and shrunk in size. The golden glow emanating from those symbols faded. A discomfort-inducing dark-purple one took its place.

Once the three symbols had merged into a new, completely different one, which realigned itself to point diagonally upwards with the small crescent at its end, its final form looked vaguely like a 'female' symbol but pointed to the upper right instead of downwards. It then turned completely black and that purple glow filled the air around it.

Then, the symbol began to move. It raised itself further into the air, and off to Faith's side. With a little distance to work with, it surged down to her, gaining more momentum along the way, and smashed itself onto her shoulder.

When it arrived on it, the dragon screamed in pain as her soon removed hand revealed that it was burning itself through the shredded fabric, deeply into the flesh of her shoulder. It did this so aggressively, you could see the orange glow from the heat on her shoulder and hear the hissing of the evaporating liquids within the shoulder it was burning.

Then, the symbol's own corporeal form and the glow it emitted, vanished. But it left behind its mark, its form branded onto the dragon's skin in a way no-one could ignore or even overlook. After that, everything fell silent. Their unknown saviour floated further up into the sky and away, without a word. Giving them no opportunity to thank her for her help, or ask her who that was or who she was.

The sounds of battle, the crackling of burning wood, the sounds of earth shifting and making way for giant plants to grow out of them, everything had faded and made way for the howling wind that coursed through this valley.

Having long gotten back up, Kris walked closer to the barely covered nun until he couldn't walk any closer without stepping on her. He stared at her, and apparently, she could feel it. Seeing as she raised her head with a contemptuous look on her face and spoke only through her clenched teeth. "Go ahead, lightner, do your worst!"

She was still writhing in pain, her right hand grasping her left shoulder. And it hurt so much, it contorted into a claw. He stared at her for a while, until she gave up on giving him that look and dropped her head back onto the ground. "You know." He finally began. "I never wanted to 'do my worst'. I tried talking about this from the beginning."

"Ugh. As if that matters. You unrepentant degenerate will never be true opposition!"

He walked to her side and sat down on the ground with his legs folded up. "You keep saying that. But I don't think so."

"Hm?"

"Look, let's say everything you think about me is true. So what if I'm not perfect? What if no-one here is perfect? So what if nothing and no-one is perfect? I want to make it through all this. Maybe improve things along the way, we all do. And Temptress doesn't. That's what matters. If you're going to try to stop everyone who isn't perfect from improving anything, doesn't that just mean that because no-one can improve without you getting in the way, no-one will ever be perfect enough for you? Just because this or that person isn't perfect enough for you AS OF YET?"

"Come again?"

"You want everyone to be perfect. I get that. But if you try to stop anyone who isn't perfect from improving anything or anyone, no-one will ever be."

"Really? To add insult to injury you accuse my struggle of being self-defeating?"

"I guess."

She wasn't attacking him any more, but she did find the strength to push herself back up enough to sit on her knees again. "Why do you think I made all this effort then?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I think you're afraid."

Her look was as tired and annoyed as ever. "Afraid of what?"

"You have this idea that everyone has to be perfect - free of sin. So if someone who isn't perfect was to go after Temptress and seal the fountain, and succeed, it would mean that whole idea about how everyone has to be devout and free of sin to accomplish anything would be wrong. You're afraid because if that idea is wrong, you think it means your faith and religious devotion - it was all for nothing."

"And I'm guessing you're going to rationalize how that doesn't follow."

He leaned back and supported himself by his arms, staring up at the Sun and Moon, still right where they were when this whole fight began. "What if both is true?"

"How?"

"What if all this stuff, religious devotion, self-discipline, not overindulging, that all makes succeeding easier, but it's still possible to succeed without it? Even more if you do have some of it." He got back up and offered her a hand to help her up. "Here's an idea. You come with us and we test out whether I'm right - together."

Still wincing whenever she made a wrong move, holding the strange branding with one hand, the nun followed him as he walked back to the others. "Do I even have a choice?"

"Yes."

She stopped for a moment, stared at him with narrowed eyes, and then turned towards the giant plane waiting for its new passengers and crew. She still wasn't sure whether he was actually intending to give her a choice, but after being given several opportunities to, he wasn't threatening her or doing anything else she expected him to. "Whatever, let's go. I'll take down the ward."

They stood by watching her approach the little wooden cross on the other side of the invisible wall and - still under pain whenever she tried using magic, casting something onto it. With this mark on her shoulder, she couldn't use magic without immediate twinges of pain, but she appeared to be able to pull off enough of it to cast something onto the idol.

And upon testing, it appeared it worked. The invisible wall was gone. With everyone back together and glad the danger was over, Dasher patted Kris on the shoulder. "How come you know so much about the bible?"

"She mostly picked the more popular parts. But generally, if you grow up in a family like mine, you have to know those things."