Ennanis flew up to meet her. She was still glowering, but she seemed to regain her composure. She bowed her head and acquiesced, “It was… certainly a party. I wonder just how you managed to invite so many guests.”

“Oh, they were quite eager to come,” the Cockatrice tittered agreeably. “I hardly had to say a word.”

“I’m sure. But it must’ve been hard getting them here.”

“Maybe via carriage?” she suggested. “It is the most common way to get to parties.”

“And of course a carriage would’ve been able to bulldoze through one hundred kilometres of rock.”

“Technology is just so advanced these days,” the Cockatrice said absently, stroking the pixiu’s mane. Meanwhile, the angels below watched in confusion as their commander and the Beast exchanged words they could not hear. But they dared not even breathe at this moment, much less interrupt. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes,” Ennanis said, “I would. This is part of your plan, isn’t it?”

“Oh?” the Cockatrice tilted her head. Her hand on the pixiu’s head ceased its motions. She pressed on it, sitting herself up. “You know, it’s not like you to be so forward. You usually try a little harder to piece the puzzle together yourself.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think, either.”

“Maybe not,” she crooned. “But don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to do, sunshine. You never listen to my prattle this much. Your precious little ring is running low, isn’t it? You’re stalling for time. Waiting for the sunrise, so that we’d all have to flee?”

Ennanis didn’t answer.

“You know my every trick,” the Beast hissed, “and I every one of yours. And this I know: you’re all out.”

For the first time that night, panic spread across Ennanis’ face. “Shut your eyes, everyone!” she barked through the communication charm. But it was too late. The Beasts had specifically rehearsed this fight, and had corralled all the angels such that they faced where the Cockatrice was. Even if the angels had wanted to shut or shield their eyes, it was a choice between dying to the Eye, or dying to the Beast right in front of them.

Not much of a choice at all.

The Cockatrice was done messing around. Her hand went to her mask again, lightning-fast. One side lifted, and the iris of her left eye shone like the moon. That was all the warning anyone got before a horrible, crackling sound reverberated through the air. Following right after was a chorus of screams from the crowd below. Others dove to the ground, pulling their comrades on top of them.

In a millisecond, several of the front lines had stopped moving entirely: they were encased in icy white stone, petrified where they stood.

The freeze spread rapidly outward through the Division like a silver tidal wave.

But before it could go further past that… a soft sizzling sound could be heard.

Then—

KRAAAAKAKAKAKAKAKAKRAAAA BOOOOOOM!

A massive gold explosion rocked the sky. The winds blasted apart, throwing the pixiu the Cockatrice sat upon into a tailspin. In utter confusion, the lionlike creature roared and fluttered its huge wings madly, attempting to restabilise itself.

The air heated like a furnace. The clouds glowed coral-pink, as if the sun had finally risen—except the big circle at the summit of Mount Casca was nowhere to be seen. Ripping through the wind, the golden shockwave swept across the battlefield, and the attacking Beasts toppled like dominoes, their feathers and fur smoking and charred. Meanwhile, the surviving angels found, curiously enough, that their bodies were no longer shivering. Then they looked up, and their flummoxed expressions turned to horror. Meanwhile, the Cockatrice’s unmasked eyes were wide, with what looked a mixture of amazement and disbelief.

Dead-centre of this sweltering heat, Ennanis Zoleil hovered.

It was as if the woman herself had been set ablaze, the light crackling all over her skin was so bright that her figure could barely be made out. Below the angel’s elbow, the armbrace that used to cover her right forearm was gone, lost to the undercloud winds. The line of exposed skin was barely even visible under the sheer amount of Soleki pouring from her wrist, thunderous light streaming through Lienna on her finger.

“I promised,” she roared over the sound of the flames, “that tonight, I would win!”

“Wow,” the Cockatrice uttered faintly. “She’s lost it.”

Ennanis swept out her right arm. Immediately, the Cockatrice and her ride was flung down the mountain in a volley of flames, helpless to stop it. Next, Ennanis turned for the shadow that she could still sense in the mountain.

But then, suddenly… Ennanis found that she couldn’t move.

The heat that was flooding through her veins had become unbearable. She was heaving and panting, sweat rolling down her skin in rivers. Black blots clung persistently to her vision.

Soleki was overloading her system, and fast. The flaps of her heavy wings got slower and limper, causing her to spiral downwards.

Gritting her teeth, she angled her body so that she crashed onto a tiny ledge on the side of a cliff. She bumped and rolled to a halt. The gold light surrounding her fizzled out with a pop. Lienna, too, had went dark at last. Her right forearm convulsed; she clutched it tightly.

At long last, the Graveyard Commander was down. And though the ledge was too far down for any of the Beasts gathered on the fourth peak to reach, they were not out of options.

A silver arrow came whizzing down, silent but deadly. Ennanis barely managed to dodge it. Her wings weren’t working, hanging jelly-like by her sides. More came at her, and in the tiny space of the ledge, there wasn’t much room for Ennanis to move. It wasn’t long before an arrow had planted into her leg.

The Beasts were aiming for a specific spot: her exposed right wrist. Another shower of arrows rained down upon her; the Commander twisted herself, squashing her wrist below her skull so the flurry of arrows embedded her torso instead. With her braced left hand, she pulled out the arrows and flung them aside. But as more and more arrows sank into her body, she grew visibly weaker, her movements slower.

Jerkily, she pulled out another arrow, only to be replaced by three more in the head, neck and shoulder. She tried to roll onto another side, still keeping her wrist below her, but the action only pressed the arrows already in her deeper, causing her to cry out in anguish.

None came to the commander’s aid. No one could reach where she was in time, and not a single one of them tried to. They all had their own battles to fight, up on the mountainous peaks. And this one was hers.

Finally, Ennanis lay prone, completely still in a growing pool of her own blood. Her chest heaved shallowly; her head on her side, she stared at her own right hand: upturned, palm-up, the skin over her wrist thin and purpled from cold.

An arrow whistled from above. Ennanis didn’t have to look to know that it would be the last. She closed her eyes.

But then—

Thunder clapped the air. Ennanis opened her eyes again in time to see a bolt of black lightning streaking across the brightening sky. A figure was riding upon it, surfing upon a tidal wave of black energy.

It looked almost like…

And then, a familiar masked woman was draped in Ennanis’ arms.

The face of the Cockatrice was still soot-stained, her clothes tattered and singed. There was a wild look in her eyes. In eight years of fighting, Ennanis had never seen her wear a look like that.

Then a second later, there was a crunch—though it was so soft, Ennanis was the only one in the world who could’ve heard it.

A single arrow protruded from the pale throat of the Cockatrice.

The Beast did not have even the chance to cry out. Her head merely lolled, and her form crumpled against that of the bloody, battered angel. Her mask hung askew. Her Eye was still open, but the silver light had long faded from it, dark and unseeing.

Strange, Ennanis found herself thinking in a daze, how warm she is.

In a blink, the body evaporated into a cloud of steam, and her worst enemy was no more. The steam settled over Ennanis, a mist like fine snow. A droplet ran down the side of the wide-eyed angel’s cheek, splashing into the blood underneath them.

High up above, the stars shimmered.

~~~