Holy Opposites 17

	“Are you worried?” Axio asked softly.

	I looked over at him.  He looked utterly untroubled.  His noble face was set in polite neutrality.

	“Yes,” I said.  I looked down, unable to meet his eyes.  “I’m suddenly very scared.  I’m not like a mortal, Axio; I may not get to be judged in heaven when I die.  What if Asmodeus has made some other mistake?  What if I just reincarnate as a High Succubus, over and over?”

	Axio’s hand tightened on his blade hilt.  “Then I’ll come find you.”

	“Really?  A rookie Paladin who hasn’t even taken her oath?” I asked drily.

	“It wouldn’t be the first time heroes rescued a Paladin in Hell,” Axio pointed out.

	“Well, that’s sweet of you,” I said, touched.  “But… I’ll just not die.  Can’t be that hard,” I chuckled weakly.

	He leaned over and caught my gaze again.  I stared into his gleaming blue eyes and felt his calm bleed into my unhappiness.  “You can survive the chaos of battle,” he said flatly, and he said it with the rock of total certainty that only the truly faithful can have.

	I blinked.  Suddenly, I wasn’t certain he was kidding when he said he’d come get me from Hell.  “Yes, sir,” I said, feeling incongruously like I was in the Planetar’s shadow again.

	Axio leaned back and smiled again, and I felt better.  How did he do it?  “All right.  Strap up.  We’re taking that store.”


Chapter Thirteen:


	Axio stood outside Lodhart’s, clad in his full battle regalia.  His magic armor shone with an inner gleam that seemed to amplify the light that struck it.  The whole street was clearing out around him, and had been since he had come to a halt.  Cavria stood nervously behind him, quite certainly happy to be not the center of attention.  Axio looked up at the empty store windows and saw no movement, but he wouldn’t trust his vision alone here.  He cast detect magic, and felt a few glimmers in the building, including behind the doors and behind the windows.

	“Traps in the doors,” he muttered.

	“I can see them,” Cavria said in the same tone.  “Springs, magic pins.  Nasty.”

	“Windows?”

	“Rigged, not magical.  Clamp trap.”

	“Back wall?”

	“Not sure,” Cavria admitted.

	“Then we check there.”  Without another word, Axio turned and walked between the store and the building next to it, pausing to tap the wall every few feet.  When they turned the corner to the back wall, he frowned.  “Hmm.  Another trap.”

	Cavria glanced over his shoulder.  Sure enough, there was a tripwire across the back window.  “Can’t see what it triggers.”

	“Then we go in here,” Axio said.  He reached down and tested the window.  It didn’t move.  “Locked.”

	“I’ll pick it,” Cavria said.

	“No need,” Axio said.  He pressed his armored fingers against the glass pane and pushed hard, and the old glass shattered around his fingers.  He withdrew his hands as fast as a viper, and a blast of light broke the window outwards in his face.  Cavria’s heart leaped, but Axio just grunted.

	“Bah.  A simple distraction,” he said.  He reached into the shattered window and grabbed the top and bottom of the frame.  The wood splintered in his grasp as he pulled, and simply ripped the entire frame out of the wall.


	I watched in awe as my senior partner simply removed the part of the building that stood in our way.  I had guessed he was very strong from the amazing upper body build he had shown when putting on his armor, but this was unreal.  The wooden frame fell aside, and he stooped to step through the hole.  I followed, glancing around to make sure we weren’t about to come under attack.  Axio straightened up inside room and looked around.  “Hmm… there,” he said, turning to point.  The door into the stairwell was rattling.  “Brace for enemies.”

	I moved beside him and raised my glaive to battle position.  It was time to fight.

	The door exploded inward.  A huge creature of stone and flesh tumbled through, reaching for us with grasping claws.  I felt adrenaline pound through me as I lunged forward with my glaive, skewering the gargoyle, but it shook me off with a shriek and a spurt of blood.  It slashed at me with its great claws, but Axio caught it with a shield block and stabbed deep with his sword.

	The stone beast heaved a gurgling noise out of its shredded throat and collapsed.  Axio stepped over it and bashed the swinging door behind it open with his shield.  It caught another gargoyle in the face, sending it back with a squawk.  I leaned in behind him and stabbed with my glaive, taking it in the chest.

	Axio crushed its chest with his armored boot.  “This is odd,” he said tightly.  “Gargoyles are naturally much tougher than this.”

	“These are understrength?” I asked, looking around carefully.  We didn’t seem to be near any traps, but the good ones would be hard to spot.

	“Real ones, they have skin like stone and bones like iron,” Axio said curtly.  “These may be recent constructs.”  He leaped forward to dodge as another creature dropped out of the ceiling of the stairwell to try to pin him.  Axio drove his sword up to the hilt in the creature’s innards and twisted, then ripped the sword out laterally, cleaving the monster clean in half.

	“And you need me to hold your coat?” I quipped.  “I ask, because you’re a strong, growing boy, who eats his vegetables.”

	He gave a single terse laugh.  “Don’t overestimate me.”  He ducked his head into the stairwell and took a deep breath.  “Here we go.”  He charged up the stairs.  His heavy weight and the force of his legs shook the wood of the stairs as he rose.  I followed more quietly with my back turned, making sure nothing was following us up the stairs.

	There was a crash like a collapsing wagon at the top of the stairs as Axio slammed into the waiting creatures.  There were three that I could see, each waving big, ugly claws and snapping fang-filled mouths.  They seemed a little larger than the ones downstairs, but that didn’t stop me.

	I sprang from the stairwell already swinging.  I drove my glaive into one ugly beast, wounding it and driving it back.  Another swung its claws and they skittered off my chest with the awful sound of metal and stone grinding together.  I recoiled from the blow and brought the pommel up into its legs, sending it stumbling.

	Axio roared and swung his shining blade through one gargoyle, taking its arm off.  “Die, beast, for Lady Ryaire!”  The monster reeled, bleeding its odd grey blood from the stump, and honked feebly.  I finished off my first target with a stab, but had to let go of the glaive as the second one grabbed my head with its horrid claws.

	I screamed as pain knifed through my skin and cheeks.  The creature made its horrible noise as it sensed victory.

	Its notion was in error.  I drove my balled fists up into the elbows of the monster and broke its grip.  I hissed in pain as it took a piece of skin off with it, but I forced back my discomfort.  I gave it a quick combo of punches, just like the Paladins in the Arbor had shown me.  It lurched away a pace and I brought my knee up in its bony undercarriage, but it clanked off stone.

	The door to the back room opened, and a beast from a nightmare emerged.  It was enormous, easily twice my size, with ugly claws and huge fangs.  It was a gargoyle, or it looked like one, but it was far larger than the things we were fighting.  There was another figure behind it, a human by his looks, but the creature moved between us, and the battle rejoined.

	Axio finished off the decapitated gargoyle with a crushing stomp and charged at the larger beast.  “It’s a Margoyle!” he shouted.  He spoke words of power, invoking Ryaire’s might on his blade, and it glowed with divine favor.  I returned my attention to the beast I was fighting and had to spring back as it swept its claws at my knees.  I jabbed with the glaive, then juked to one side and slammed the flat into its shoulder, spinning it.  I drove the head of the glaive through its back before it could recover, killing it.  I cursed under my breath as I regained my balance.  A polearm indoors was a mistake.

	I checked on the three smaller gargoyles – all dead – then moved up to help Axio.  He was struggling.  The man behind the Margoyle was muttering incantations beneath his breath, rummaging through a spell components case with one hand and making gestures with the other.  A mage, then, possibly a wizard.  I charged up behind Axio and slammed my glaive into its stony midsection.  It growled and clocked me right in the face with one huge fist.  I stumbled back, clutching my weapon, as Axio slashed it across the torso.  It reeled but held its feet, and I snarled as I realized what was going on.  The wizard was bolstering it somehow.  He wasn’t healing its wounds, but he was fortifying it.

	Axio noticed too.  “Stop the wizard,” he snarled.  He drew back for a lunging strike which drove the Margoyle back a full five paces and sent it wheezing.  “Kill the bastard!”

	I sprang past the Margoyle and through the door.  The wizard – elf, male, black clothes, red tattoos on his face – threw the contents of his spell components in my face.  I screamed and fell back, clawing the burning powders and unguents out of my eyes.  I fell back through the door and slammed into the ground, rolling around in pain.

	“Cavria!” Axio bellowed.  He reached forward with his shield arm and grabbed the Margoyle, then pulled it onto his sword.  The weakened beast collapsed, and Axio barreled towards the mage.

	The wizard slammed the door in his face, and I heard the clank of a lock.  Axio rebounded off the door in a shower of sparks – it was warded.