Ch 4 : Brimstone

Dawning confidence, just after we'd defeated a nasty heck spawn, we turned our gaze up to see the return of Janus!

"I was banking on her not knowing stardust yet, but I guess that didn't work out." Janus started to hover down on his wings. He had the meanest scowl I'd ever seen. "Stupid me, thinking an angel wouldn't know how to weaponize light."

He threw off his robe as his feet touched the floor, revealing armour underneath. His armour was red and had a decorative spikes rising on each arm and thigh. It looked like it only covered vital spots. It was glowing in a few areas with a hot orange mesh too.

Under the armour he had a dark grey skin tight suit. It had fancy looking patterns on it that looked like orange fire.

The scary part was that he had a crystal heart embedded into his chest, like me! His crystal was red though, not blue, and chipped and cracked all over. It really didn’t look like it was supposed to keep functioning in that state, but it somehow was.

“Where did you get that heart?!” Uncle shouted.

“It was a gift from my patriarch.” He gave an evil smile. “Relics like these are handed out to the most powerful in my family.”

That meant there were more crystal hearts out there, but only Exceed were supposed to have them! How did this meanie's family get those?

Now I think I understand why he had such high levels of access here, because he had the authority of an Exceed with that crystal heart. But still, I would've thought that I'd have higher access than him. How did he get more authority?

Maybe his ability was to hack things. He already showed he could use his powers to jam and confuse signals, so that had to be it.

I asked Uncle if that was possible, but Janus answered first.

“Smart, kid. You figured out I’m a hacker," Janus exclaimed. "But those smarts will only get you so far.”

Uncle stood forward with confidence. “Knowing our enemy is the first step to beating him.”

He said something so cool. I have the coolest uncle!

“Knowing won’t win you this battle if you can’t catch me.” Janus stepped backwards into a wall of shadowy gunk, and disappeared.

What the…?!

Moments later, Janus popped out of an identical shadow wall behind Uncle and kicked him down.

He kept diving in and out of those shadow portals and attacking Uncle using his claws and kicks.

"Oh no!" I cried.

Uncle wouldn't last long like this!

Something literally smelled stinky as Janus was diving in and out of those portals, like rotten eggs. There was a residue left in the air for a few seconds after he'd used a portal. Come to think of it, I could smell the same thing from the gunk on the wall after the demon exploded. What was this stuff, anyways?

I took hold of some of the shadow gunk and analyzed it with my hand scanners.

The only thing in this mixture on the periodic table was sulfur and carbon. Everything else was in a so-called Occulat Element category. That was for weird elements that didn’t exist without magic.

Sulfur must have been what I was smelling. Every time one of those portals were about to appear, that smell also popped up.

I synced up my nose with my eyes and specifically tried to detect where the sulfur would burst out in the air first.

Everything turned greyscale, helping colour contrast better. The moment something appeared, I'd see it.

There it was! A big stinky cloud of green!

“Uncle, behind you!”

With my callout, uncle was able to slash in the air and cut Janus before he fully stepped from his portal.

“What?!” Both Janus’s voices exclaimed as he fell to the ground.

He tried teleporting again, but I called out his position and Uncle got a critical strike to his chest, right on the crystal heart! The cracks in it grew twice as large, causing red energy to spit out of it in waves.

Crystal hearts should be indestructible, but his wasn't apparently. It must have been a fake!

Janus flew backwards and landed on the ground, convulsing like he was having a heart attack.

This might have been it! Uncle could deal a coup d'etat and finish this!

But the crafty villain wasn't done. He summoned shadowy arms from the black gunk on the walls and smacked Uncle away from him.

The arms waved around in the air until dissipating away into a dark haze.

"Good hit, but I'm not done yet." Janus stood up, clenching at his crystal heart. "I'm not sure how the kid figured out my teleporting, but she's a lot more dangerous than I thought."

Little black stitches filled the cracks of his heart and did a very unique repair to the damage. It must have been more of his dark energy at work.

He shouted, "Time for things to get serious!"

Something crazy started to happen. An aura of fire flickered to life around him, then flattened on his claws, making them look like fireballs.

After that, those orange patterns on his undersuit turned yellow, then they looked like lightning bolts. A new aura appeared with electricity. Static sparked around him every few seconds.

I think I knew what was happening, and it wasn’t good. This was some kind of elemental magic. Fire and lightning, to be precise.

There were a lot of things I hadn’t learned about elemental magic yet, but it was very dangerous in the wrong hands. Uncle definitely needed to be careful.

Uncle's brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed with frustration.

“Your family, who are they?” He asked. “Why'd they send you?”

“The Family of Sai. I’m here on orders of our patriarch to secure all the mana energy in this place. Then bring it back to him in the form of that lovely demon you destroyed.”

"It seems your plans now lay splattered on the walls. You failed, so leave.”

He chuckled, flaring his teeth out in a grinching smile. "Nah, not without the kid." He tilted his head toward my direction. "I think bringing home a little angel might be a good apology."

I didn’t want to be kidnaped!

Uncle's eyes narrowed even further on Janus, realizing more of the threat we were up against. He let out a sigh and clenched his free hand until his knuckles cracked.

His fist lifted up into the air and his suit turned bright blue, then it transformed into crystal armour, something like a knight might wear, but slimmer and sharper. His hat changed into something that looked a little like a cross between a helmet and music headset.

He also had his glassy bee-like wings appear behind him. I didn't know he could use those in his human form.

The strangest thing was, he also had a crystal heart. It must have normally been covered by his tie. I guess his human form needed to use it for power.

Then Uncle said, “I see how it is. So, your patriarch was the one who installed that heart in you?”

“He gave it to me, but didn't install it.” Janus put a hand over his heart. He took a deep breath, like he was struggling to breathe. “That was the work of some guy named Dr. Asamo.”

I shivered at the name. That was my last name. No way was I related to anyone who would have given him that heart.

It definitely couldn’t have been daddy either, because he wasn’t evil, like Janus! And he was a scientist, not a doctor. Doctors were the people who checked your temperature and did surgery. Scientists invented things and made life easier. Clearly a difference.

So, who was it? Maybe a distant relative, or another Exceed we didn’t know about? Maybe I had a sister…or a brother? I always dreamed of having a brother personally, but not if he was a bad guy!

“I was afraid of this development.” Uncle mumbled to himself, then he turned back to me. “Yalda, you need to find shelter.”

There weren’t many places for me to go. I could hide inside that crevice in the wall again, but I had a bad feeling that wouldn’t protect me from the crazy battle they were about to start.

“Kid, go in the vents.” Janus wirelessly opened up one of the air vents on the lower part of the wall. It was big enough for me to crawl in. “Get out of my hair, let us adults talk in peace.”

He had a very evil smirk on his first face. His second face looked more alive than before too, like it was woken from a nap and all energized up.

At first I thought he was being nice, but I think the reason he wanted me to leave was because I was smart and might figure out how to beat him. What a jerk.

Either way, it was safer for me to flee this fight.

I snuck into the vent and crawled a few meters in. The grate slammed shut with a crash, then I heard him and Uncle talking a bit more. I couldn’t hear what they were saying over the hum of the vent.

Curiosity made me want to look back. I twisted my way back around and peeked through the vent grate. I tried to push it forward, but a forcefield spawned and kept it from opening.

"...then I thank you for this information," Uncle said. "It is most pleasing to know he's still alive."

Who was still alive? What were they talking about? It couldn't have been about da...

"Whatever! I'm sick of you! let's get this battle on."

BOOM!

The air exploded behind Janus! Loud thunder crackled through my ears! He moved so sonically fast that he broke the sound barrier!

BOOM!

Uncle did the same thing!

When they clashed, blue lightning and fire scattered all around the room.

After their first clash, Uncle and Janus both moved at sonic speeds, attacking each other several more times. They were just blurs, crashing into each other repeatedly. I could barely keep up with their movements.

"Wow…"

They were making fireworks everywhere. It might have been pretty if it wasn’t life or death.

Samael was getting scared by all the noise, he hid his head under my hair. I gave him a few good head pats hoping he'd calm down.

Well, I see why I needed to leave. They were fighting in a way that I could barely even comprehend. It was like a fantasy movie or a video game, but unlike those I couldn't tell what was going on, and you could get hurt here.

I started to crawl deeper into the vent, trying to find somewhere I could stand up and explore a little.

My hope was that maybe I could manually get the tower defenses back online. Janus should have been attacked by hundreds of bees, but he must have hacked the system and shut down the defense mechanisms. There had to be a central computer somewhere that I could access for that.

I was going to need to find a map of the tower, otherwise I’d be going around without a clue. I tried my luck at connecting to the tower to download the schematics…

-Download complete. Updating memory-

What's this? I was able to download it? I thought all signals were being jammed.

I tried again to connect to the tower, but this time I was jammed out. I’m not really sure what happened. I tried one more time to access the system, but no dice.

Wait a minute, is it possible that Janus's jammer powers were weakening for a moment since his crystal heart was damaged? That was just a hunch for now, but something to keep in mind.

Anyways, it looked like at the very top level of the tower I could access the tower control center. That would give me manual access to all systems, bypassing Janus's jammer. The vents could lead me up there.

I made it to a small chamber in the vents. It was lit up a red colour, as opposed to the mostly dim lighting. A really big fan was on one of the walls.

There was some wooshy sound behind me. I thought it was just the fan starting up, but it didn’t feel right. Something was giving me an icky feeling in my stomach.

It happened again. But when I turned to see what it was, nothing was there.

“What the heck…?”

This was super spooky. Staying here was making me all shaky.

Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow rushed across the walls. I barely saw its ghastly red pupils.

Then I saw another one, and another, and another!

-WARNING! THREATS SIGHTED!-

-Shadow Glider Demons tagged; Foe-

-Enemy count = (4)-

They looked like dark ghosts, all swarming around me. One jumped off the wall and made a snatch at me!

I started running across the chamber and crawled back into a vent to evade!

They were able to glide through the shadows to reach me a lot easier, so the darkness of the vent only worked in their favour. I barely escaped each of their grabs by sliding down slopes and manually closing emergency grates.

I bought myself some time after closing a flat metal grate. Somehow even with those barriers they’d always find a way past them and cut off my escapes.

I had an idea to light up the walls so they wouldn’t be able to use the shadows to move. That's what shadow gliding meant, right? That would explain how they always managed to get past the grates, since they'd just slip through the dark slits in the metal.

My only option was to blind the area with stardust light. Since they were demons, that had to be the only way.

Twinkling haze formed around my hands again, this time it covered my hand in a thin layer of crystal. Rays of light shot through the dark air and brightened up all the shadows around me.

Just as I did that, those demons were turning around a corner. They got caught in the light.

Stardust wasn’t just making the place brighter, it was actually destroying the little demons. When one of them got too close, they would just dry out and turn to ash.

A few of them took the hint and tried to avoid me altogether. My light was scaring them off.

“Yes!” I cheered. “Fear me, evil ghosts!”

“Sssssss…” Samael was cheering too.

Now since there weren’t any more demons after me, I could get back to finding my way up the tower.

-☆☆☆-

Going up the tower might have been easier if there weren’t tons of steep slopes I kept sliding down by accident.

"Weee!" It was kinda fun, but not very productive. “I guess I have to find another way around.”

Actually, maybe I didn’t. I had the ability to magnetize my hands and feet, letting me stick to metal surfaces.

It worked pretty well. I was able to move up steep slopes without any troubles.

I was making my way up one of the slopes when I suddenly heard some beeping and the sound of wind. Then the whole vent lit up green.

As I peeked my head over the top of the slope, I saw a big fan start up and spin stupidly fast.

Gusts of air overpowered my magnets and sent me flying back down, right into a grate leading to the outdoors. I slammed into it so hard that the grate came loose and nearly fell out.

“Uh-oh!”

The wind was hitting me hard, hot air too. This must have been a heat ventilation shaft.

My body was durable against extreme heat and cold, so I didn't have any issues.

Samael was doing alright on my head. The heat didn’t bother him as much either, since he was a snake, but I couldn’t let him take that heat forever.

I couldn’t really move too much since the wind was barrelling at me, but I had to come up with a way to escape this mess. I still didn’t have the full ability to access the tower's systems, so shutting off the fan wasn’t possible.

There was another option, I could get out from the grate behind me. It was already loose, so a few good kicks would get it knocked out. I just had to make sure I didn’t kick it off and go flying out from the wind along with it.

“Here we go…”

I positioned myself so I could both kick the grate with my right foot, and stay put with my magnetized left foot planted firmly. My hands were holding little pipes on the sides.

“Now!”

KICK!

KICK!

It was coming loose, but not enough for me to get through.

“Okay, put everything you’ve got into it!”

I reeled back my foot and gave it one heck of a hit!

KICK!

CLANK!

Half the grate flew off the tower! A huge opening to the outdoors was made.

"YEAH!"

You could see forever from up here. Well, at least to the other side of the inverted planet, that is. I had to be a ton of stories high.

Since my hands and feet were magnetized, I could latch onto the side of the tower and start climbing up it. I did that, escaping the ventilation shaft for good. It was a shaky time trying to climb out of the opening, especially with the wind still blowing, but I managed it.

What would be great is if I could fly. That would be awesome. People kept calling me an angel, so why can’t an angel fly?

Oh well. Not like I could just grow wings or anything.

Any-who, I crawled my way up the side of the tower, trying not to look down at the fifty plus stories below me. Yikes, that would be a fall.

Finally I reached a hallway that wrapped around the tower and had an open window. I climbed in through there and raced to find a way to the top.