I did not know why but something within me, a deep subconscious instinct, told me that the Fallen had already committed a serious blunder. A fatal error that will cost them both their victory and their lives. They had decided to stand and fight but that was a mistake...
They should have ran.
...
I almost jumped in startlement as a scream of surprise rung throughout the courtyard. It was coming from my left and lasted only for a couple of seconds before it was abruptly cut off, leaving a foreboding silence its wake.
I turned to look but all I couldn't see anything but the backs of the Fallen that blocked my view. I didn't know why but I knew that this fight was something I need to see. So despite the my state I forced myself to stand, clenching my teeth tighter to silence the screams of pain that threated to spill as I felt the bones in my arm grind together.
Another scream rang out as was trying to stand, coming from the complete opposite direction of the first, which was soon followed by a third and a fourth. I had just barely gotten back on my feet in time to see what caused the fourth scream.
The yell came from a Fallen standing in the front rank. I had just caught sight of him before he disappeared, as something had pulled him off his feet and dragged him into the cloud. A heartbeat later his screams were abruptly silenced.
"Beneath us!" Another one of the Fallen yelled out as he leapt back, "To your feet, look to your feet!" Causing every eye to glance down.
It was then that I saw it.
They slithered around the ground like snakes, dozens upon dozens of them, crawling over and under one another in their haste to reach their prey. The light of the spears glinted off the smooth metallic surface of their thin bodies as they silently slid across the ground, quickly closing the gap between them and the feet of the Fallen.
Then without warning, like the vipers they resembled, they struck. When the vines of living steel touched the feet of the Fallen they leapt forward, blindingly fast, wrapping around the legs of their prey before pulling them down, off their feet, and dragging them screaming in the cloud that they emerged from.
The fallen line wavered and collapsed in an instant as they reacted instantly to sight. Some leaping back to escape the reach of the steel serpents causing them to slam in the Fallen behind them.
Other took off to the air in their haste to escape, as the metallic tentacles searched blindly for their missing prey.
Some were too slow to escape, the tip of their toes just brushing their steel skin as they leapt in the air. That however, was enough for them to know that they were there.
Like vipers striking at a bird, the leapt clear off the ground, wrapping themselves around the ankles of the Fallen before they could escape and pulling them back down to the ground and dragging them to their death like the others.
The braver or more aggressive among them attacked instead. They thrust their spears at the slithering steel serpents at their feet. Their spears of light would skid off their hardened skin and dig into the earth around them, scarring the ground with craters. And while their spears did not seem to damage the living steel much, it was enough to drive them back to where they came from.
However in their determination to harm the enemy at their feet they forgot about the enemy that stood before them.
Long thin blades of steel tore out of the cloud. They whipped forward tearing into the bodies of the distracted Fallen, piercing clear through the soft flesh of their chests and emerging out of their backs.
A heartbeat later thy withdrew back into the cloud, leaving behind their stunned victims. Most of the Fallen just looked down at the holes in their chest in confusion before collapsing like puppets deprived of their strings.
A small handful of the Fallen had simply lost their nerve and flung their spears into the heart of the cloud, forgetting about their comrades on the other side. Half the spears tore through the cloud, hitting nothing, before emerging on the other sides and slamming into their surprised comrades on the other side.
While some were able to block the spears in time many had not, too distracted by the writhing tentacles at their feet.
The other half of the spears did seem to hit something, however it did little better than the ones that tore clear through. The spears were somehow deflected, sending them clear up, where they were either blocked by the Fallen hovering above or went flying by them into the night sky.
What I could not understand was how spears that were deflected upwards emerged from completely different location in the cloud, as if there was more than a single person in there.
The yells and clamour of the dying and alarmed Fallen army ripped me away from my thoughts, causing me to look around. As my eye scanned the battlefield and the remains of what was an organized army, a startling realization hit me.
This was the Phalanx of Kokabiel's army, a formation that has carved its way into legend on the blood and bodies of the countless of Devils and Demons that tried to break through its spear wall only to be broken instead.
A tactic that till this day is taught to the exorcists of the Church, over a thousand years since it has at last been seen used in combat, due to its might in crushing Heaven's enemies.
And now that very Phalanx is falling apart at the seams, having been carved apart before my eyes by the power of a single Devil.
It took him ten seconds.
In ten measly seconds a legend was destroyed, crushed and ruined, and yet if felt like it had been hours. By the time it took me to take it all in, the cloud that hid the devil finally cleared enough to see through, revealing to all what was happening inside.
I couldn't have hidden my surprise even if I tried, "Irina! Isn't that-"
"That's my sword!" Irina yelled out, pushing herself upwards with one arm. Her eyes never leaving the swords the "That's Excalibur Mimic! Two of them!"
"No, there are more!" Griselda no longer looking beaten but as focused and serious as I had ever seen her. Her face was set in a mask of concentration as she eyed the Devil. "Six, no I count at least eight of them."
It was like a net of living steel. The wire thin metal threads that formed it whipped through the air like the tentacles of some monstrous sea beast. Constantly shifting and moving the threads came together into a shape of a sphere, no it was a hollow dome.
Hundreds of slithering metal branches covered the floor, hiding it from view. The way the countless featureless metallic serpents slithered on the ground, clawing over and under one another reminded me of a snake pit, and I involuntary took a wobbly step back at the sight of them.
I could see the corpses of the Fallen that were dragged in. Their limbs would occasionally stick out from beneath the slithering mass as gaps in their numbers revealed them to the open air before they were gone, sinking back into the writhing mass as if it were a bottomless sea.
And there, standing in the middle of the sea of living metal, was the Devil.
He had his eyes close, head slightly-tilted back as his red hair fluttered in the wind created by the whipping steel. Thick cords of steal climbed up his legs and ending at both of his hands where he held the shrunken hilts of Excalibur Mimic between each of his fingers.
Slowly he opened his eyes, revealing the spheres of gold to the world once again, as he released the words;
"Knowing only Victory
Tainted with bitter Defeat"
Just as the words cleared his lips streaks of white shot down from the sky as several of the Fallen fired their spears at the now unhidden Devil.
He didn't bother to even look towards them. He didn't need to.
Just as the spear tip of the touched one of the fragile strings that made up the sphere that surrounded him, a thick tentacle shot out of the ground and whipped across the spear. It bashed it aside, deflecting it and sending the spear flying off to the side.
The scene was repeated a dozen time over in the next handful of seconds as again and again the spears were knocked to the side with an almost unbelievable ease. The attacks only stopping when the whipping steel began to accurately send the spears flying into the remaining Fallen that surrounded it.
It was when the attacks tapered down as the fallen tried to work out what to do that he struck back. Without warning, the entire mass of withering steel shot straight up in the air like geyser. It enveloped the Fallen that hovered too close, entangling then drowning them in its writhing metallic mass.
The mass of steel kept rising higher and higher in the air, forcing me to tilt my head back to keep it in my sight. It also kept getting bigger as more of the serpents from the sea of metal joined and fusion with the rising column. The sea of steel near my feet was drawn back like a tide, revealing the paved ground that was hidden beneath it.
When the upsurge of steel had finally reached its peak, dozens of yards upwards, the mass seemed to pause of a single moment, as if it were a giant beast pondering its next action, before it reversed its course and came surging back down into the earth.
Like the sprouting water from a fountain, it split as it reached its peak and fell down around. The once united mass of metal divided into hundreds of branches, thick pillars of steel, as it came shooting back down into the ground.
The Fallen tried to move, tried to run but they had not where to go. The skies above them was filled with living steel, and while those that tried to escape on the ground kept running and tripping over the mass of their fellow Fallen around them, having gathered up too close together.
Pillars of steel slammed into the ground by the hundreds, tearing through the bodies of the Fallen with ease. They filled every conceivable stretch of space, leaving no room to sand without touching one.
Dozens if not hundreds of Fallen were slain in that moment. Almost every Fallen on the ground that stood anywhere near to the Maou's Queen died. The only ones that survived the attack were those that stood even vaguely near to either the others Devils or even Irina, Griselda and myself. The attack avoided us by a large margin, leaving wide circles of open space around us.
I felt my eyes water, irritated by the dirt in the air, when a thin cloud of dust washed over me and I barley withheld the urge to break out coughing as I was forced to breathe it in. I looked around and instantly felt grateful that the air around me wasn't as bad as it was elsewhere.
The rest of the ground was filled with a thick clouds of dust and debris, having been knocked in the by the attack. When the hundreds of steel bars slammed into the paved courtyard it shattered the bricks beneath it, sending up its fragmented remains into the air.
It was thick too, preventing me from seeing anything more than a few yards away and I realized that this was probably what the Devil had intended. This was exactly the same situation that the Fallen had to face at the start. He had completely reset the battlefield back to beginning, only worse because this time over half the courtyards was clouded. He could be anywhere.
"Enough!" An angered voice called out. A six-winged Fallen quickly soared high up into the sky, before halting his ascent and glaring down at the field bellow.
"Everyone to me!" He ordered, "Take to the skies and bombarded him until he's dead." His eyes were filled with an unholy mixture of hatred and fury as he scowled at the veil of dust that hid the Devil.
"And If he fires another one of his swords," A streak of light flashed into his hands as he conjured a spear of light, "just shoot it down before it gets anywhere near us."