Take Back Worlds (Diamond Universe: Sierra Walker #3)

Chapter 13

“ D id you get what you need?” Nariel asks me when I return to his side.

“Yeah,” I say, and cast.

Help.

Clarity.

A renewed commitment to not take bullshit from these guys.

I invited the most powerful to help first, and of course they didn’t, and that’s why taxes exist.

Lacking that—for now—we’re doing this another way.

The spell takes power, but Emmie’s not like me—she doesn’t just hammer harder to get her way. So on the scale of the power Nariel and I can bring to bear together, this is nothing.

I’ve been worrying about this for so long that it’s anticlimactic. I wonder if I should have asked her for help rescuing Nariel, but then again, if I hadn’t figured out how to reach him on my own, would she have been able to build on my work?

This is why we need more than one.

And that includes these fuckers.

When I release the spell, all thirteen demon princes of Dark Earth stand within the circle.

I feel the power of them, the weight, even more than the angels we faced in High Earth. Each of them holds an aura of power around them ready to explode at any moment.

The wind picks up, swirling around ominously.

Of course, these aren’t just normal spirits or angels. Each of them is on a level comparable to Nariel and Koshiel. The most powerful beings in the universe.

But it’s one thing to know that, and another to feel it.

If all of them banded together, what could they accomplish?

The cynical answer is my death—me and Nariel together can’t face twelve of them.

Nariel’s shadows whip out immediately to hold them in place, which, good thinking, of course they could otherwise just leave immediately. Shit. But now they’re going to think they’re trapped here, or that we tried, even though Nariel won’t be able to hold them long—

“What,” Casimir asks in a deadly voice, “is the meaning of this?”

“I brought you here to make you a bargain,” I say.

“Did you,” he says. “And if this is how you begin, skirting around other promises, then what is your word worth—“

“Substantially more if we all survive until tomorrow, which I expect you to take some self-interest in,” I interrupt him, talking fast. “Here’s the deal. You—each of you specifically, and whatever forces you can muster—help battle the angels, and by that I mean actual help, not making everyone’s lives harder for glory or whatever, we free Dark Earth from this seal once and for all, and then I’ll make sure no one can ever summon any of you again.”

Now that I’ve gotten that out, Nariel releases his shadows, only to form them into a wall as several of the demon princes fire on us immediately.

But not... not that strongly. More like a token protest against such base treatment.

So Nariel lets his shadow-shield fall, and he doesn’t raise another one and neither do I—though wow am I ready and twitching to—

“Oh, is that all?” Casimir mocks. “You already made me a similar promise—“

That’s not a magical attack, though I’m arguably more prepared to deal with the former.

“That only works in your castle, and has other effects on your realm.”

“So you admit you bargain in bad faith?”

Nariel remarks, “If she did, then you must admit she got the better of you and you were convinced by a bad bargain.”

A couple other demons laugh outright at that.

So... maybe not going to shoot me?

Then again, they’d probably laugh while shooting me, so I keep that shield spell very firmly in mind.

Casimir’s expression darkens.

“You can at least admit that the spell she promised you works exactly as specified, doesn’t it?” Nariel asks. As Casimir’s face twists in a snarl, Nariel smiles, “And there’s the endorsement.”

“This bargain is very simple,” I say. “Your help—“

“You had a lot of qualifications for that,” one demon remarks.

I let out a breath. “Fair. Specifically what I’m looking for is keeping fire off our troops on the ground when a host of angels shows up above. For the twelve of you, that should be totally manageable, and you’ll get to kill angels too and look like badasses to your people.”

“Twelve?” Casimir asks sharply, looking at Nariel.

“Sierra and I,” he says, “will be focused on the spell itself.”

“You want to use our power, and our people, to break their hold,” Casimir says flatly. “What will Dark Earth look like once you’re through with it?”

“Yeah, I do,” I say, “and I don’t know what it will look like, and I don’t think you do either, but what I do know is that you will have a lot more power available for the taking, and you will never have to deal with the indignity of being summoned ever again.”

“Why should we not bargain with High Earth, then? Why you?”

“Because I’m the one who knows how to make this happen, first of all, and I’m not from High Earth,” I say. “Secondly, because to do that you would have to all work together on something or agree on one of you to be in charge. I’m new here, so you tell me, how likely is that, exactly?”

To my surprise, Casimir laughs at that, and so do several demons.

Others watch Nariel warily.

“You are new,” Casimir agrees, walking up to tower over me. “So in the event that I agree to your bargain and it doesn’t work, understand that you’re inviting a death sentence.” He leans forward to whisper in my ear, “Spirits can go anywhere, after all.”

Creepy.

Also, no pressure.

“Thanks for making sure I was clear—OKAY aaand we are out of time.”

Ten angels appear in the sky.

Then ten more.

Fuck shit I am not ready yet.

“Nariel—“ I say.

“I’ve contacted Amir,” he says grimly.

“Okay all of you, in or out,” I say. “Help kick the angels or be known as a coward afterwards. And if you do, I’ll make sure you specifically, not just someone in your position, can never be summoned again.”

Casimir looks at me, as serious as I’ve seen him. “You’re sure you can do this.”

I lock eyes with him.

“Sure enough to risk my life,” I say. “And Nariel’s, and my baby sister’s, and everybody in three worlds. We can absolutely do this, because we’re going to use Bright Earth’s own power against them. But we have to do it now. ”

And to my absolute shock, he’s the first one to say, “In,” and vanish.

Into the sky, to face the angels. Looking like a lone outnumbered hero as in groups our own troops start popping onto the field.

Argh. So much for no grandstanding.

But then another demon prince joins him, and another. And at least a couple of them had troops ready—were they just waiting to get something out of me? goddammit—because masses of different kinds of spirits than I’ve seen in Nariel’s realm appear, too, dotting the obsidian walls around us.

Then one of the last demon princes, a huge, scarred man with wild red hair, says, “No.”

Nariel looks him. “Ryaz, this is about all of us.”

“There is no ‘us’,” he says flatly. “No spirits have helped me. I do not fight for them.”

He vanishes.

And it’s not into the sky—he’s just gone.

Then I notice the wind has vanished, too, and it isn’t until that moment I realize it was entirely generated by just that one demon prince. Ryaz. A lack of control, or overwhelming power?

Another demon prince mutters, “Typical gutter trash,” and then disappears, too, but he joins the other demons in the sky.

I have a flash of insight into why this demon prince might not want anything to do with the others, but—

I look at Nariel. His jaw is tight, but he nods.

Okay. Okay, he thinks we can still do this with eleven, but if we lose another one...

We don’t.

I can barely believe it.

Nariel, fortunately, doesn’t wait for me to process, just grabs me and dissolves us into shadow.

There’s another place we need to be, and fast.

T he demon princes of Dark Earth go to war.

And so do we.

On Nariel’s command, our people begin portalling in. Spirits had brought and placed the anchors already, but I hadn’t prepared the spell.

I’d known we were on a clock, but I thought we’d still have days.

Nariel must sense my panic, because he grabs me by the arm and looks me dead in the eye.

“If they’re here already, it means one or both of two things. Either the power has already started to erode Bright Earth—“

“Meaning it’s an extra big bomb that can destroy us, since we’ve conveniently gathering all the highest-powered people who can stand up to them—“

“ Meaning they are desperate and unprepared,“ Nariel tells me. “Or they fear that if they give us time, we can beat them. So let us show them, Sierra, that it is not they who have lured us here. It is we who have lured them .“ He grips my chin and kisses me fiercely, then grins. “And their greed is no match for us.”

No match for our solidarity.

And no match for my resolve.

Just like that, Nariel has centered me, and I feel my thoughts falling into place, the focused flow state settling on me.

“Keep them off my back for a few minutes, if you would be so kind,” I say to Nariel, gripping his hand once, tightly. He knows the plan. “I’ll be taking this moment to shove some power up their horrible asses until it burns them.”

Nariel’s gaze is hot on mine. “With pleasure, my love,” he murmurs.

He dissolves into shadow, leaving me on my own.

I’m ready.

I’m always ready, but now... now, I am filled with a kind of clarified wrath.

Conscience clean. Claws sharp.

Battle swirls around me, but it doesn’t touch me.

All my focus, untouched by the chaos everywhere, is on the spell I am setting up in the center of Bright Earth’s.

I’m not taking it down. I could, but that would require a huge amount of magic from me, and I wouldn’t be able to stop them from putting it back up again once we’d exhausted ourselves.

But: they set up a channel to send magic to Bright Earth.

A world that is currently so greedily overwhelmed with magic that it is beginning to collapse on itself.

I am going to take their poisonous labor and choke them with it.

When the spell is ready, I emerge from my light trance state just as a giant staff—and by giant I mean like, forty feet long, what the shit—whacks an angel out of the sky just above me.

I swing around to see Brook standing just outside the circle as spirits bearing artifacts rapidly appear and disappear around her.

My calm shatters in an instant.

“ What are you doing here? “ I scream at her.

“Yell at me later, you need all hands on deck,” she screams back.

Gods. I do , but that was never supposed to include her in the middle of literally the most dangerous place in the whole universe to be right now—

But if I fail, nowhere else will be safe for her for long.

I take a deep breath, shoving away my brain supplying images of my parents screaming at me.

Shadows bloom above us—Nariel keeping a less tangible attack off of us.

I promised to keep her safe.

I will do just that.

Casting my senses out, I check how many artifacts Brook and the spirits have gotten placed so far. It’s a lot—they’re working fast.

But.

“We don’t have enough power yet,” I tell Brook, crossing to her.

“I’m working on it,” she snaps. “It would help if there were fewer fucking angels dive-bombing —“

“That was a good swing, before,” I note.

She turns her head to me. “Thank you.”

We look at each other for a second.

Then I grin. “What a shame, I guess I’d better go fuck some angels up for you.”

Seriously, my little sister says, “I’ll be waiting.”

My chest aches, for all the time we lost.

“Not for long,” I swear to her.

And then I fly up to lightning-punch straight through an angel’s chest cavity.

Not today, motherfuckers.

Lightning crackles around me, like a shield covering my skin, like an aura, like a manifestation of my power just bursting to get out.

With the power of my grove and my bond and myself, power radiates out of me, and I am not just its channel, but its director.

This is more complicated than it sounds.

On one hand, sure, it’s point at a target, shoot, move on.

But it’s also:

Magic moving faster than I can see. My power building with no target, then a sudden target, then an ally in my way, then an explosion from someone else’s magic that I have to dodge and then lose my target and then see a group of spirits or mages or wizards in danger and fly to help and then someone else has had the same idea and we’re in each other’s way while another angel attacks elsewhere and it’s constant motion, constant attacks and defense and flying, always flying, and always, always, firing magic into the crimson sky.

I have lost count of the number of angels I’ve hit, and killed.

I only know by the magic that continues to fill me.

But my evasive maneuvers can’t compare to an angel’s, so even though I have killed several at this level this isn’t the best place for me; I’m interrupting the teamwork of the people I’ve gathered.

So I fly higher.

I fly to the demon princes’ level and find that they, too, like with Dark Earth, have divided the sky into territory, occupying the most powerful of the angels so they can’t descend.

So I fly higher still.

To where the angels are still dropping into the sky as if from above us.

I don’t see their spell. I can’t even feel it, nor the building pile of artifacts below—I have to believe Brook or a spirit will figure out how to get word to me from Nariel.

And with that, I’m free to act.

If I can keep angels from dropping even lower, that takes the pressure off everyone below.

So I fire at will.

This isn’t the time for fancy tactics.

This is all about keeping the pressure on, and never, ever letting up.

Let Bright Earth—and the grand magi, and the demon princes, and every other person who has ever doubted me—finally see that they have bitten off more than they can chew.

Angels pop into existence only to find my lightning waiting for them, and some take it, and some dodge, but it weakens them all or makes them flee or hits direct and finishes them, and my power keeps coming.

Until a power appears so massive that it cascades over my sense of everything else, smothering it, and that, I do feel.

The whole universe seems to pause, like a black hole sucking all our attention, or gravity, toward the sky.

Where Koshiel, finally, has arrived.

She is golden in the sky as though she were truly divine, and I barely even see her, because for once in my life I am completely, fully overwhelmed by magic.

That would be terrifying enough on its own, but the fact that I can be overwhelmed like this—even after channeling the full power of Low Earth, even after surviving bonding with a fallen angel— that is what fills me with fear.

I knew today would be more magic than I had ever dealt with in my life.

Now the demon princes’ skepticism, the grand magi’s, all of it makes sense.

In the scheme of the universe I am a child playing with forces beyond my control, which, what else is new, but now I have promised I can deal with this.

And I know, in my bones and in my soul, that I definitely, definitely cannot deal with this.

The amount of magic we’ve been gathering is frankly so laughable in comparison to this that it’s obscene. Koshiel has done no more than arrive, and I’m already lost.

Nariel appears beside me in a burst of shadows.

That’s enough to shatter the trance this power had drawn me into, to halt the spiral of despair, to look my death in the face.

A ball of glowing white floats between Koshiel’s hands.

It’s maybe the size of a soccer ball. Not huge. I’ve fired magic that looked just like that.

But this is denser and more concentrated magic than anything I have felt in my entire life.

This unassuming sphere is a bomb that can destroy the universe as we know it.

Next to me, Nariel murmurs, “The spell doesn’t have enough power. It won’t.”

“I know,” I whisper in return, looking at him desperately.

I had so, so wanted this to go differently.

There never would have been enough time.

Koshiel lowers herself through the sky, almost to us, so she can look down from above.

“You poor, selfish fools,” Koshiel croons. “Look what you’ve made me do.”

I stare at her.

And feel my resolve flooding back in on a wave of rage.

You know what? This time, I absolutely did make her do it.

I , a fool, pressured her mighty self and her whole world into such desperation that the only way she can be rid of me is with the fucking nuclear option.

And maybe I am selfish, and a fool.

But that’s exactly why she should be scared of me.

Of us.

I ignore her, because fuck her, and ask Nariel, “Can we use it?”

His eyes widen, then darken, as they always do with strong emotion.

This time, though, I know it’s fear.

I feel it too.

I squeeze his hand. “I’ve got you,” I say hoarsely, “if you’ve got me.”

Koshiel laughs, and there’s an edge there, a little crazed, a little drunk.

How much effort it must have taken her to create this bomb, to even hold it, even without channeling.

She won’t be able to hold it much longer.

“How sweet, the lovers plan to go down with their ship!” Koshiel mocks.

Nariel’s eyes are still black, but because I know him in my soul, I sense the change in him.

And he gives me a wild, feral grin, the grin that says, “you’re amazing and impossible and I am with you“ and “you are mine , and I am keeping you and everything else,“ and “let’s see how far we can go, together.”

This time, I kiss him.

And then as one, we turn to Koshiel.

“Do your worst,” Nariel says to her, “and I will show you our best.”

Her expression twists into a snarl, that even now, facing her, facing this , we won’t cower before her.

“Then die,” Koshiel says flatly, “like the insignificant dust you are.”

And with a bellow of all her might, she heaves the bomb of High Earth’s magic at us.