Page 84 of Legacy of Chaos

But there were always consequences. One of those, the Third Servile War, had ended in Spartacus’s defeat, the crucifixion of six thousand men, and a dozen angels being expelled from Heaven.

“Greetings, Gabriel.”

Instinctively, Gabriel summoned a fireball in his right hand as he wheeled around to the owner of the voice.

“Hutriel?”

He didn’t extinguish the fireball.

Hutriel, angel of punishment and the Prime Celestial Enforcer, hovered a couple of feet above him, his great lavender wings spread wide, their tips buffeted by the wind.

“I won’t let you take me,” Gabriel said, holding his power at the ready, prepared to lob Hut out of the sky if necessary. “I haven’t finished my mission.”

“I’m not here to return you to Heofon,” he said, using the ancient pronunciation for Heaven. The Adonis-faced angel was an Old Celestial…not necessarily because of his age but because he, like many of the stuffiest of angels, clung to the traditionalways and had spent little time in the human realm. “Yet. I’m here because we determined that the Gehennaportal is located beneath the very oil rig you’ve been circling. I’m here to assist.”

“One, I already knew that. And two, I don’t need assistance.”

“That is not your call to make.” Hutriel’s salt-and-pepper hair ruffled, seemingly as annoyed as Hutriel. “The situation in Heofon has changed. A minion of Hell entered through the Gaiaportal.”

Gabriel couldn’t contain a shocked gasp, his fireball fizzling out. “There was a demon…in Heaven?”

“It was a water fiend, and it died before it fully emerged, but now you see the import of our situation. We must destroy the Gehennaportal.” He cleared his throat imperiously. “The Forsaken One,” he said, using one of many antiquated nicknames for Azagoth—and doing so with a sneer. “Did he disclose how to do the deed?”

“He did. And then we reminisced about how he stole Lilliana from you and kicked your pompous ass so hard you were pulling your feathers out of it for a month. Anything else you want to know?”

Hutriel’s periwinkle eyes nearly bugged out of his head. A storm cloud formed behind him, and Gabriel dared the bastard to try zapping him with a lightning bolt. But a moment later, the cloud dissipated. Smart move.

“If Azagoth told you how to destroy the portal,” Hut ground out, “why haven’t you done it already?”

It was a good question and one he’d been asking himself. At least he had a believable answer, even if it wasn’t thewholeanswer.

“Because I’ve been planning the best approach angle through the fog.”

“Fog? What fog?”

Gesturing for him to follow, Gabriel shot toward the platform, Hutriel keeping pace with ease. Within seconds, the massive, seething cloud of darkness surrounding the platform became visible. He slowed at the edge of it, every angelic sense he had screaming a warning.

This was bad. Really, really bad.

“I don’t like this.” Hutriel hung back, regarding the phenomenon with wary eyes. “The evil emanating from it…it’s like nothing I’ve felt before.”

Gabriel agreed. And he’d been inside Hell once or twice.

“Different parts of Sheoul contain different concentrations of evil,” he said. “There are places we can’t enter because of it. This…abomination must have seeped into this realm from one of those areas of concentrated evil.”

Hutriel shrank back a little more. “I’m having a very strong reaction to it.”

A very strong reaction to it? The idea of penetrating that inky storm put dread in the very pit of Gabriel’s soul. His gut churned, and every drop of self-preservation warned him that the mist was something akin to poison.

“The one thing we have in our favor is that the dome isn’t very thick,” he said. “The platform is close.”

Hut looked at him. “What if it is not a dome? What if it has engulfed the platform? We cannot survive in that kind of environment for long.”

Yeah, that would be a problem. Hopefully, Stryke had done something to push the shit back. Gabriel’s armor should provide a measure of protection, but Hut-boy was on his own.

“See why I haven’t been really anxious to dive in?” He looked at the writhing mass of evil, the sounds of suffering ringing in his ears, and then he shrugged.

What the hell?

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