Darkthorn’s Blog

He stood at the brink of the gate with his eyes closed and a look of concentration on his face. The bridge retracted so slowly, and the forces of darkness were uncomfortably close. Even as I watched, a goblin took a leap towards the end of the bridge, barely missing. I knew the Devil would have no such problem.

The gates were trying to shut, and the fragile bridge was splintering. There was nothing to be done, we could not return that way. Nor would we want to, the darkness and flames were stretching out across the abyss. I could feel the heat on my face, the dark whisperings in my soul crying out. The pieces dropped quickly out of sight, the glowing shards lighting the dark expanse briefly before they flickered out of sight.

Damion turned, exhausted. I caught him in my arms, and dragged him away with the rest of our retreating army. No! Not retreating! We were strategically withdrawing, that’s what he had called it. And of course, Damion was always right. His pale green eyes focused on mine, pleading with me. He thought that I would be able to save them. To me, it seemed as if all had been fixed already. The now broken bridge was the only way to access this part of the world.

I scooped up Damion and continued walking away, not daring to look back. The wrath of hell was reaching out and sending shivers down everyone’s spines. A couple of the lesser angels seemed ready to break away. I spoke for their own good, they would only fall now.

“Stay together.” My voice boomed and shook. “We have won. They cannot pass.”

His face blurred and seemed to melt away. Damion was giving up, his strength too depleted to go on. Now that the threat had passed, he was allowing himself to slip away. Channelling the forces of God exhausted an ordinary person, and extended use wore away at your soul. The advantage of that was that no matter what you had done, your soul could find rest, no chance of it going to hell when the weak body it was housed in fell apart.

“No,” I whispered. “I need you. You can’t leave me.”

Without him, I was nothing. I needed him to hold, to love, to tell him that everything would be ok. He gave me the strength to carry on myself. The battle never seemed to end, the Devil would never give up until he had the whole world as I knew it in his grasp.