Page 71 of Crimson Skies

Woody’s wrath flooded the air with an explosion of bloodcursed magic.

“Eden!” Galliad bellowed.

The Dryad mage dove, Elwyn and the others in his wake.

Vines brimming with the divine power of nature closed on Elios’s dark shackle before they could reach her. Myrdin’s eyes flared gold as he cut her loose.

Elios’s incoherent protest faded to nothingness, his eyes black pits of fury as he glared at them.

The portal closed on him.

Eden’s heart thundered where she levitated within a red sphere next to the seven mages, her breaths coming in shallow pants.

“I can’t believe we did it!” she mumbled.

Woody made a smug sound.

“Shit.” Yuan looked like he was going to throw up. “I never want to go to that infernal place again.”

He shuddered.

“You and me both,” Ortega declared, pale-faced. “I’m going to stop gambling and join the priesthood.”

“I’m right there with you, dude,” Yuan said fervently.

Wallace and Strickland eyed them skeptically.

Galliad turned to Eden. “I’m pretty sure that was a Lucifugous swearword I heard you shout out before that portal opened.”

She wrinkled her nose at his mildly accusing tone. “He deserved it.”

“She’s not wrong,” Elwyn observed.

Wallace observed the spot where Elios had disappeared with a troubled frown. “How long is that going to hold him off for? With how powerful that guy is, he’s bound to find a way back to Earth soon.”

“He will. Atropos saw him open the Abyss here, after all.” Eden lowered her brows. “But he’ll have to get through Theo’s shield first.”

“Which gives us time to cull his army,” Myrdin said.

Eden smiled fiercely. “Precisely.”

* * *

Theo skewereda war demon through the skull with the Spear of Light and blinded the one leaping toward him with a seraphic beam. He kicked the monster in the gut, the power of his attack tearing a hole straight through its body.

A Cyclops appeared behind the war demons as they fell. It opened its mouth.

Theo’s pulse stuttered. “Shield!”

His golden guard blocked the Cyclops’s paralyzing scream.

Scarlet flared in the monster’s eye. Theo moved, as swift as light, and slashed its throat. The glow growing in the creature’s pupil faded, cutting off the deadly ray about to shoot out of its head. Theo looked down as it pitched toward the ground, his heart racing.

A swarm of hellbeasts, Cyclops, and Nephilim had surrounded the Reaper God and Loki some two hundred feet below. Crimson and gold brightened the God of Death’s pupils as he disposed of a Nephil with a swing of his scythe. Loki cut down two hellbeasts with the Eternity Key and punched a Cyclops in the eye before it could blast him with its beam.

Divine power boomed far below. The Furies were rising from the main battlefield to assist them, King Rizen and a group of Reapers led by Mortis in their wake.

Theo closed his wings and dove. The hairs rose on his nape a second later. Instinct had him swooping behind the tumbling Cyclops he had killed.