[The Celestial Wars] Chapter 1.21

Long after he had finished explaining his choices, Avis found himself staring at the silk canopy ceiling of their bed. Clarise slept with her head on his pec like a pillow; a position that was quickly becoming one of his favourite locations for her. Naked and glued to his side. His mind went back over the conversation they’d had in and around making love; specifically, her blistering screech when he’d told her he’d been the one to suffer during Cora’s so-called ‘discipline’. The image of her surging into a sitting position that straddled his hips; her beautiful long dark hair falling around her luscious white skin while her face portrayed such anger … by the Twin Notes, he’d never been so turned on in his life!

He had to fight the urge to chuckle, for the movement would probably wake her. Instead, he focused on his breathing, drawing air slowly through his nose until he had himself back under control. If someone had told him a month ago that he could be this happy ….

… and whole.

Avis paused and suddenly frowned at that. I’m whole? He flexed his toes, then slowly rolled his ankles, tensing and testing the limits of each muscle in turn from his feet up to his neck, and out to his fingertips, finding no sense of debilitation anywhere. He really was whole. Properly whole. But how was that even possible, when merely hours ago he’d been in pieces at Sarvalis’ feet? The last time he’d done The Walk, he’d been bedridden for at least several days afterwards. So, why do I feel like I can take on all the Known Realms now?

Belial’s parting words then came back to him and the realisation that accompanied them had him gnashing his teeth furiously. That motherless sunova …! he snarled inwardly, rubbing the fingers of one hand against his pinched lips to keep himself from swearing out loud.

Belial was the master of everything physical—and Avis hadn’t remembered that shifting at that elevated level would also include absolute healing! Damn it all! Once Cora was done with him, he didn’t have to be taken back to the Walk and suffer the humiliation of being leashed like a fucking dog afterwards! Belial could’ve put him back together again right here in the room with a thought, and the sick fuck wanted to make him suffer one last time for little more than shits and giggles before healing him properly. Sunova bitch!

“What troubles you, beloved?”

Avis dropped his chin and saw the most gorgeous molten gold eyes staring back at him, though she hadn’t lifted her head from his chest. She reached up and traced his jawline with one exquisitely manicured nail. “You seem angry.”

He caught those fingers and kissed the tip of each, his eyes never leaving hers. “Sorry to wake you, sweetheart,” he murmured against the soft flesh. “But, since you’re awake, we do really need to get out of Hell. The sooner, the better.” He lifted his gaze to the curtain ceiling of their bed and sighed. “I swear, for a breed that has no mind benders, your family are masters at psychotic mind games and I’ve had an absolute gutful of them.”

Clarise suddenly sat up at his side, her dark hair falling around her shoulders to form a curtain over her bosom which rose and fell with increasing intensity. The gold in her eyes crystallised and the rich red of her lips thinned angrily. “Who is still bothering you?” she demanded in a vexed growl, and he could see how determined she was to make whoever it was pay dearly for that grievance. Maybe even angry enough to throw out another of those persona non-gratae things she’d tossed at Innis.

As he stared up at her, a multitude of emotions swept through him all at once. Surprise; because she’d made that stand based on his word alone without any forced coercion on her part. Fear; because if she ever figured out her father was behind his latest mind fuck, she’d take it to the supreme demon and cruel amusement; as he pictured just how floored Belial would be when she did. But none of them could match the elation that made him want to fist pump the whole realm. Or flip his middle fingers at every demon within it. That’s my girl!

He chuckled throatily with pride and hooked his hand around the nape of her neck, dragging her down to kiss her briefly. “No one you can deal with, beautiful,” he promised, lightly massaging the base of her skull until she relaxed against his body. “We just need to be gone, before my head gets done in for good. That’s all.”

Clarise stared into his eyes for a long moment, then she tilted her head and kissed him fully—forcefully—her tongue sliding past his lips and teeth to knot with his. The bold move caught Avis off-guard, though he quickly recovered and returned that kiss, coiling his other arm around her to hold her close. Cognitive thought went right out the nearest window as he drew her close in anticipation of what came next … especially if the last few hours were anything to go by.

“I love you.”

He barely heard her whisper the words after the kiss ended, and before he could fathom her mindset, she rolled her head under his restraining hand and twisted out of his grip. “I will begin the arrangements for our departure immediately,” she said, sliding off the bed to her feet even as he rolled to one side and reached for her. Each piece of her scattered uniform broke down into a collective mist which she drew towards her, reforming it around her petite frame until she was fully dressed. A stimulation wave then rippled through her body as he watched, removing all traces of sleep and fixing her hair and makeup as if she had spent hours on it, not seconds.

Avis sat up with a sigh and dragged his right heel up the mattress towards him. It gave his right elbow something solid to lean on and hid his erection in the folds of the gathered sheet. There were a lot of women back home who were going to be hugely jealous of that trick. “It didn’t have to be that immediate,” he griped sulkily, patting the empty space on the bed beside him.

Her eyes followed the gesture, and when she noticed what his raised knee was unsuccessfully trying to hide, her lips twisted into a sultry smile. “Hold that thought, beloved,” she said and blew him a kiss that ended in a fingertip wave. “I will return shortly.” Without another word, she swept from the room. The servants appeared to shut the double doors behind her.

Unimpressed by her decision to leave, Avis huffed and rested his chin on the heel of his hand, drumming his fingers against his cheek. He stared at the doors for a few seconds in the veiled hope that she would change her mind and come back, but after a while he had to grudgingly admit that getting ready to leave was probably for the best after all. It just wasn’t what he wanted to do right then …

… or whom.

His lips curled lewdly to one side and his eyes skewered the doors again, already envisioning what she’d be doing to make this wait worth his while.

Chuckling with heady desire, he rubbed the back of his neck and cleared his throat. If he didn’t derail that train of thought soon, his imagination would have him humiliating himself long before she returned to take care of business for him. He was already hard enough to be used as a battering ram.

To distract himself, he thought about the lengthy conversation they’d had about Cora’s dual capability and why the girl was so very Mystallian in his eyes. She’d taken the news better than he’d hoped, but he suspected that was mainly because they were merging the two already accepted concepts where celestial powers were concerned.

Likewise, when he’d moved on to the more difficult subject of Columbine’s power, he’d started with the familiarity of a pictorial memory and went on to explain how it had been a gift from Belial. He’d been surprised by her comment of “Well, that explains a few things” but he hadn’t pried into what those things were. Truth be told, he’d been too busy trying to work out how he’d broach the next two topics; Columbine’s emotional knowledge and her ultimate shapeshifting mastery.

Once again, he chose familiarity as the safer option.

Columbine had already possessed the shapeshifting prowess of one of Belial’s children due to his anointment at her birth, limiting Clarise’s range over her to mere touch control. So, when Avis explained that their daughter’s mastery now superseded Clarise (and everyone else who wasn’t Belial) Clarise was understandably … upset. “Why would he do that?” she had demanded, sitting up in horror.

Not wanting to lie, but definitely not wanting to delve into the emotional array that Columbine seemed to have within her that defied every power they had, Avis hunted desperately for an alternative reply. “I’m still getting my head around it, sweetheart,” he said honestly, sitting up alongside her. “Your father said something about her needing to be able to protect herself from everyone and how he was partially to blame for that … don’t ask me,” he quickly threw out, when she opened her mouth to do just that. “But your father wanted her to be able to defend herself against anyone who touched her without her permission.”

“But we are her parents! We have every right to discipline her any way we see—”

Avis gently caught her by the cheeks and forced her to look up at him. “Clarise … sweetheart. Calm down and hear me out. That’s why he got me to hide the memory, so we could raise her as normal. This is a move for the future, when she no longer answers to us as a child. Isn’t there a point where demon lords stop answering to their mothers?”

“Twenty-five,” Clarise agreed, though her expression was far from happy.

Avis could work with that benchmark. “Twenty-five, then. When she turns twenty-five, I’ll pull down my memory block and let her remember the conversation with your father explaining all the changes. At least, that’s my plan at the moment.”

And it had been a sound one. Even now, as he leaned back on his pillows and cupped his hands behind his head, his gaze returning to the silk canopy overhead, he felt it was the right thing to do. Not that he could see her exploiting them, but shifting around everyone else was bad enough without … OH, FUCK!

A horrendous thought suddenly dawned on him, and he threw himself into a sitting position with a hand covering his mouth.

Screw her advanced shapeshifting possibilities! Because she’d been poisoned by tefsla, she wasn’t able to shapeshift at all! And while it was true that her native demonic form might’ve been more predatory than her Mystallian one, a single shape with no mind-bending abilities to speak of was never going to keep her safe, let alone reach adulthood. The one thing Belial had been very adamant about.

Avis considered the journey ahead of them and shook his head. He was under no illusion as to how rough this sprint to Olympus was going to be. Once they left Chaos, there were at least four other realms they had to get through and almost all of them had a bone or fifty to pick with him. After his own family had turned their backs on him because of his treatment of Clarise, he’d felt he’d nothing to lose. Nothing at all.

It took the Hellions three years to corner him and during that time he’d been a shocking example of a celest—worse than any combination that had ever come before. Thinking nothing could stop him, he’d gone out of control. Women had been raped, minds destroyed, and worshippers converted. Hate had been his only companion back then, and the two had gone on a rampage that left scars and enemies everywhere.

If those enemies ever discovered how important Clarise and the girls were to him, their status as Highborn Hellions would be their only chance of survival, and it was a protection Cora no longer had. On top of that, even if they reached Olympus, he still didn’t know for certain if the Mystallians would take him back, let alone if it was possible to change a powerbase on this scale to reflect his new life as a family man. Mystal wasn’t exactly a pocket realm.

A mystallion flying at full speed through the realm could cover a dozen galaxies in the space of a heartbeat, yet it took their sacred beasts almost a day to traverse Mystal from end to end and only if one of the pantheon were with them to use their attunement to temporarily fold large sections of mortal space in on itself. If his family wouldn’t or couldn’t change his powerbase, he’d have to ask—no, beg Clarise for the chance to start a new life together in the Unknown Realms. Far from the reach of his enemies.

That thought chilled him to the core, for he remembered how hard those first few millennia had been after he and his siblings had escaped the Nexus. Without an establishment field to feed their power or even a basic attunement to a mortal realm, they’d had to fend for themselves. His wife and daughters were too delicate for that level of rough living.

But he was getting way ahead of himself. First step was to get them all to Olympus. He had no doubt Zeus would give him sanctuary once there, despite his recent bout of … inappropriate behaviour. They had too much history for him not to. From there, he would reach out to his family and endure whatever they wanted to shout at him, provided they agreed to changing his powerbase thrall so he could bring his precious family home.

His mind moved on to Cora, whose chances of surviving this journey grew less likely with every passing second. That poor kid was stuck in a maimed Mystallian five-year-old’s body with barely an inkling of her mental powers. In other words, virtually defenceless. It was worse than cruel, but Belial was the only one who could rectify that. Fear the repercussions.

Avis pulled ran his thumbnail across his bottom lip, mulling over those ominous words. He needed to bring the girls’ situations to Belial’s attention, but there was no denying he was absolutely terrified of doing so. Just because he’d gotten away with it once, didn’t mean—

FOR FUCK’S SAKE! STOP BEING SUCH A GUTLESS FUCKING CHICKEN-SHIT!

Avis cursed at the subconscious thought that breezed through his mind, reiterating his own feelings on the matter. He was being a coward, and if he kept it up, his family would pay the ultimate price for it. Once admitted, the word coward taunted him from every corner of his mind until he could stand it no more.

He threw his hand away from his face and punched the mattress beside him, surging to his feet. No fucking way. The Mystallian God of Life who got his siblings out of the Nexus and went on to forge one of the biggest realms in existence was not about to wimp out now.

He stood up and dressed quickly. “Belial,” he called once that was done, rolling his hand in a half circle to complete the link. When no response was forthcoming, he tried again. Still no answer. “Sunova bitch,” he snarled under his breath.

There was no way the supreme demon didn’t know someone was trying to reach him. Avis secretly suspected he already knew who it was and was deliberately ignoring him. Bastard. And since he wouldn’t accept the blood-link, Avis would have to leave the safety of the room and go find him. Great.

Tensing his arms, Avis rolled his shoulders and loosened the muscles in his neck. Fine. They could hate him as much as they liked. They were still going to hear what he had to say. He left the apartment with his cloak swirling around his heels and the echo of his boots in the cavern around them. The heat of the place was incredible, made worse by his black leathers, but he refused to acknowledge it. He was on a mission now: as a Mystallian.

The problem was, every tunnel and cavern in the Well looked practically the same. How could anyone distinguish one rock wall from the next, when they were all just … rocks … piled on top of more rocks!

There were no specific reference points to guide him through the glowing caverns, and every time he found himself hopelessly lost, he also lost a little more of his temper. A sign post … or better yet, a fucking ‘you are here’ directory poster to give visitors some bearings would be really useful! But no …!

Fed up with this insanity, Avis glared at the very next Hellion he came across and mentally latched on to it. Take me to Hell’s High Court*,* he commanded, for that and the conservatory were the only two places outside of Clarise’s rooms and the guest wing (where he and his family had stayed years earlier) that he knew of, and the chances of finding Belial in a garden or the guest wing were … slim.

He followed the crawling creature through the cavernous maze, unintimidated by the heated glares of the Highborn Lords who crossed his path. Instead, he met their glares dead on; all but daring them to try something. He wasn’t prepared to start anything, but if they wanted to dance, he had no problem with that. Word must have spread of Innis’ demoted status though, for all they did was glare hatefully.

Well, fuck ’em all! If he so much as stumbled because they changed the stonework under his feet, it’d be on. Lethally. He wasn’t one of the Damned anymore, and they’d all do well to remember that.

It took a few minutes, but eventually he recognised the outer walls of Hell’s High Court and released his mental hold on the hapless servant (who squeaked in surprise at its location and quickly scurried away). All things considered, it was a little hard to miss the enormous, double arched opening that had the upside down five-pointed star glowing over the apex.

Powerful in its simplicity. The enormity of the doorway almost defied logic. Three—maybe four storeys tall and just as many again wide. The sheer magnitude of it reminded him of standing at the edge of the emotional abyss in Columbine’s essence, though he could well understand the need for such an entrance.

The Highborn Hellion Lords had enormous numbers to their ranks, so it stood to reason that unless they wanted to spend days entering and leaving the court via a small bottleneck, such a massive opening would exist.

No voices came from within the great room, so at the very least he wouldn’t be interrupting anything. He looked up at the house sigil again and swallowed hard. Now that the moment was upon him, mixed emotions vied for control. He needed his father-by-marriage to be in there for the girls’ sake, but he was just as hopeful for his absence. He couldn’t help it. When the supreme Lord of Hell said, Fear the repercussions, only a fool ignored it. Avis wasn’t a fool. Not anymore.

Gathering his courage, he took a deep breath and forced his foot across the threshold.

The cavern was indeed as empty as he presumed, but a coldness lingered in the air that didn’t belong in the Well. A very familiar subzero chill—and this time there were no witnesses to what came next. Avis’ heart hammered as he recognised that icy sensation and his first instinct was to flee. Still, he planted his feet … took a deep breath … held it … and pressed on.

“I need the tefsla removed from the girls,” he said, lifting his eyes firstly to the massive empty throne directly in front of him, then across to the equally empty stone perches that went as far as he could see in both directions. He’s in here somewhere. When heavy silence met his demand, he wondered where and in what form his father-by-marriage would appear in, if he did at all. “Inhibited by it, they’ll be defenceless against anything that attacks us.”

“Is that not your job as their sire to protect them from such circumstances?” Belial suddenly asked, and when Avis snapped his gaze back to the dais, the supreme demon filled his throne.

Avis felt the savagery of that gaze raking across him, though he never looked higher than Belial’s chest. As the great demon slowly stroked the armrests, he sliced through the souls with his claws, causing the throne arms to shudder and whimper under the calm but brutal ministrations. Avis knew the cruel display was being done as a warning for him to tread with great care. Great, great care.

Message very much received, you ass.

Avis slid his gloved hands behind his back under his cloak and wrapped them around the other wrist, locking them together. He squeezed them tightly to prevent his body from trembling. He could do this. Despite the fact Belial was scaring the ever-loving shit out of him, he was going to do this.

“It was you who spoke of the importance of Columbine reaching adulthood, M’lord. I will be doing everything in my power to make that happen, but at the end of the day, things can often come down to one’s own personal capabilities. You wanted Columbine to be able to defend herself from all, which is not something she can do while she remains locked as a single-formed demon indefinitely. Cora fares no better, since she barely knows what to do with her mental attributes and her physical ones have been hobbled to the point of lunacy..”

Avis endured Belial’s gaze for what felt like an eternity, until the Mystallian thought he would pass out from failure to breathe if he didn’t say something soon.

“Beelzebub. To me.”

The Military Commander appeared at Belial’s side as if he had been waiting just inside the mortal realm for the summons. “Milord,” he said, dipping his horned head reverently.

“Clarise and her family will be leaving in a few hours. Send four Highborn Hellion Guards with them as a protective escort. They will return to Hell only after the family has reached the safety of Mystal.”

For a moment, Beelzebub’s eyes widened in surprise and Avis felt a second fiery gaze sweep across him. But then it was gone, and the Military Commander bowed formally at the shoulder. “It shall be as you wish, Milord.”

Avis was too busy battling his own shock at the proclamation to dwell on Beelzebub’s reaction. Brute squad fighters, as they were better known throughout the realms, were rarely ever seen outside of Hell without a realm-wide bloodbath being declared.

Yet Avis and his family were going to be getting four! It was almost too much to comprehend! But his father-by-marriage still hadn’t agreed to free the girls from their disciplines, and that was what he wanted—what he had risked coming into the High Court for. Was he really going to back off now?

Not fucking likely.

“Will you give Cora back her arm at least, M’lord?”

Belial lifted one hand and flicked two talons dismissively at his son-by-marriage.

Before Avis could react, he was snatched off the ground by an unseen force and tossed through the oversized opening like a leaf in a hurricane. Surprise surged through the Mystallian as he was dumped unceremoniously outside, but at least he had the wherewithal to keep his feet under him as he dropped, instead of looking like a complete idiot who had been thrown out on his ass.

“I’ll take that as a ‘No’,” he murmured under his breath as he straightened, knowing better than to try and force his way back into the High Court. He looked in both directions along the tunnel he stood in, trying to remember which way he’d come. Jerk.

​

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

​

For more of my work: r/Angel466