Page 56 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires

“You think you can fight me?” Lilith waved away the feathers, the fires, the furious wind. “The gall.”

Wally pivoted his feet in a way I’d seen a thousand times over in our trainings. It meant he intended to fall back and flee, which would be wise. But he hunched forward, funneling essence through his tiny wings in a way that suggested he meant to rage in combat. The shadows of his horns twisted in ominous horrors, painting portraits of the anguish he sought to unleash, the torture he plotted, the darkness of his essence.

“You truly think you can fight me alone?”

“Nope,” Wally muttered, then clamped his jaw tight.

I wanted to help him, to prove he wasn’t alone, yet the threads of his splintered tail acted as barbed wire that held Corson and me in place—protected and immobilized. Not certain Wally fully thought out his shield technique.

“You don’t have to face her alone. Wally, let me—”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he said, containing the wrath of his horns. “Also, wasn’t planning on risking you.”

“You wish to do this the hard way, fine by me.” Lilith lunged forward, her body crumpling apart as she slithered faster, wings expanding, teeth glistening, and spikes swelling.

She hissed, ready to pounce and strike Wally, when the walls of the room burst wide open, and a giant hand snatched Lilith up like a worm instead of a serpent.

“You were so fixated on me, you didn’t even feel Beelzebub thrashing at the barrier you’d placed around the temple.” Wally leapt away from the next hand that swept into the room. “Then again, I suppose essence is a tricky thing to sense, and the chaos cast across the entire dimension probably made it impossible for you to pinpoint his next target.”

But it wasn’t difficult for Wally to track, not with a piece of Beelzebub inside him. Perhaps we could win this thing.

Lilith shrieked, furious and frightened. Her body transformed more and more the longer she remained in Beelzebub’s grasp. Soon, it took all four of his arms to contain her as she coiled around his limbs and fought back.

The temple trembled as both devils took full form. Beelzebub towered over the lands as a behemoth of a being who snatched up demons in waves to crush between his fingers before hurling their shattered essence at Lilith. She shrugged off the remnants of her children used as fodder against her and coiled around Beelzebub. Her wings stretched far, carrying freezing flames and crackling earth in each gust.

Beelzebub snatched Lilith by the razor-taloned blades of her wing tips and snapped off one of the seven to use as a weapon. Her mouths of a thousand tendrils squeezed his arm tight until he released her broken form and then proceeded to redirect her strike to choke him.

Unveiling their purest form shredded the very fabric of Hell’s walls, twisting and tearing pieces of reality as their very perfection reflected against the sky.

Wally grabbed my hand. “We need to get the hell outta Hell.”

17

Wally

The devils waged a fierce battle. A flick of Beelzebub’s wrist set the land as far as the eye could see on fire. And my eyes saw tens of thousands of demons caught in the raging inferno from every direction. I analyzed their agony, shivering at the piercing pain.

Lilith didn’t ignore their deaths; each of her tendrilled mouths wailed a symphony at the faltering essence. An absence that washed away the delicate layers Lilith and her team had designed for my banquet. The starry sky faded into abstract shapes of cosmic radiance. Tendrilled mouths snatched up those starlit geometric shapes and devoured the literal atmosphere of the dimension.

Suddenly, Lilith spat fiery comets from her mouths, each gullet burning bright as the tendrils released a steam that cloaked Lilith and Beelzebub. A mist meant to join in Lilith’s stranglehold over Beelzebub, but he gripped the steam, literally tearing the gas into shredded physical form. Chunks of steamcrashed onto land and exploded, unleashing tidal waves of boiling water that sizzled with everything it collided with, scorching the earth as it washed away Beelzebub’s flames.

Was this what devils were truly capable of? What kind of magic could even come close to the onslaught they cast?

I knew devils were powerful. I’d listened to definitions of their strength. I understood the accuracy of the statement that Lilith would destroy my dimension if I didn’t attend the banquet. Well, the potential for it. But to actually see the carnage unfold, though…

Bez squeezed my bicep, pulling my attention away from the catastrophic battle, the duel between gods, the death of a world.

“We need to leave this area before the warding falls.” Bez eyed the sigils hidden beneath the rubble of the temple.

No wonder this place hadn’t been swept away by the destruction. It remained a tiny haven, an island surrounded by a sea of death and destruction.

“Where would we even go?” My eyes darted around, scanning further than any human could, probably further than most demons, as my essence helped study the land for miles in every direction.

Scalding water.

Flames reborn.

Crackling earth.

---