The Frontlines

The sky above the ruined nave of the St. Jude Cathedral was bleeding. Streaks of magenta and noxious green magical artillery arced across the blackened clouds, illuminating the ash raining down on the battlefield.

Rhea knelt behind the shattered remains of a marble altar, her hands glowing with a soft, radiant white light. She pressed her palms against the shredded armor of an allied infantryman, knitting his ruptured flesh back together through sheer force of will. The metallic stench of blood and the sharp, electric tang of ozone burned her nostrils, but she shoved the sensory overload aside. In a war against a rogue demonic legion, distraction meant death. Attachment meant a broken heart. Rhea had long ago decided she would tolerate neither.

"Almost there," Rhea muttered, her voice tight with exertion as the soldier's breathing steadied.

A chilling, guttural hiss echoed over the sounds of the artillery.

Rhea’s head snapped up. Three shadow-fiends—twisted amalgamations of darkness and gnashing teeth—slithered over the desecrated pews, their hollow eyes locked on the wounded soldier. Rhea dropped her healing spell and instantly conjured a searing blade of hard-light in her right hand. She was cornered. There was no time to cast a defensive ward, and her magical reserves were dangerously low.

Before she could swing, the air above them superheated.

A figure dropped from the burning rafters, landing between Rhea and the fiends with the concussive force of a mortar shell. A shockwave of pure, crimson hellfire erupted outward, incinerating the shadow-fiends into harmless clouds of black ash.

As the smoke cleared, Caelum straightened his imposing, leather-clad frame. Even in the middle of a slaughter, the defected demon moved with a lethal, infuriating grace. He turned to look over his shoulder at Rhea, his obsidian horns catching the chaotic light of the sky. He smirked, a devastatingly handsome, arrogant curve of his lips.

"You know, medic," Caelum drawled, casually flicking a stray ember from his broad shoulder, "if you wanted my attention, you didn't have to throw yourself to the wolves. A simple dinner invitation would suffice."

"Watch your flank, you idiot!" Rhea snapped, her heart hammering an erratic rhythm that she absolutely refused to attribute to his smile.

Caelum laughed, a rich, dark sound, his golden eyes entirely focused on her face rather than the battlefield. It was a fatal mistake. A surviving shadow-fiend lunged from the peripheral gloom, its jagged blade slicing cleanly through the gap in Caelum’s side armor.

The demon grunted, swatting the creature away and incinerating it with a careless flick of his wrist, but the damage was done. Dark, ichorous blood began to seep through the leather at his ribs.

Rhea swore viciously, grabbed the stabilized human soldier by his harness, and shoved him toward a retreating squad. Then, she marched up to the towering demon, grabbed him by the collar of his ruined armor, and yanked him downward.

"You are a tactical nightmare," she hissed, dragging him toward the heavy iron doors that led beneath the cathedral. "Move."