And then again, when the Erlking appeared behind him. One of these illusions would be the true king, the rest merely reflections.
‘Trespasser.’
Lucifer let loose with waves of fire. He scorched holes into the hedges, only to watch them repair themselves at once.
‘Damn this place,’ he growled beneath the launch of further tongues of fire. His nail was now red as the heart of White Mountain itself. The vestige working hard to deal with the magnitude of his power.
Lokke’s illusions were of the highest order. They must be, to conceal the damage that Lucifer knew he was doing to this place. Lucifer threw off the Melusine cloak and discarded his own enchantments. Let them see plain as day who came for them. There was little point in concealment now anyway.
Lucifer charged at the thick weave of plantlife ahead of him, letting loose with a huge expulsion of fire. A massive hole was burned through the thickness of fae-touched shrubbery. Affording him a tantalising glimpse of the Archangel Gabriel, his outlandish coat removed, sky-blue satin sleeves rolled to the elbows, standing before an enormous oval mirror of jet-black obsidian framed with gold-gilded edges.
But Lucifer had eyes only for the simurgh.
A prisoner, trapped within a huge, elaborate birdcage that stood two-tiers high. Hexagonal in shape, of ebony wood, with ivory pillars and a needle-pointed broach spire at its top. The simurgh sought to spread its wings of blushing sunrise in the confined space. A terrible cry resounded and white sparks flew as its wingtips met the bars.
‘Stay still,’ Lucifer hissed beneath his breath. ‘Stay still, you foolish thing.’ His pulse was rampant, that tug at his ribs powerful. He stepped forward, utterly ready to throw himself at the angel without thought of what came next.
‘Gabriel, do not falter.’ The bellow was like thunder speaking, a rumble and crack that shook the Crystal Palace. And it came from the obsidian. From the reflection that was not the Archangel.
There, in the depths of the thickest slab of obsidian Lucifer had ever seen was the Exarch of Elyssiam, dressed plainly in a simple drape of white fabric.
‘Daemon King,’ Azazel’s hiss shook the conservatory, the glass panels rattling in their gleaming silver frames. ‘You are too late.’
The Exarch launched into the language of the angels, and Gabriel joined him. That flat monotony of Cultivation poured from them. It made the air spark, like the greatest of storms approached.
The wall of twisted, tight-woven branches Lucifer had blasted open now re-knit themselves. With something extra this time. Threads of divine magick were added to the tapestry that sought to keep Lucifer out. He could smell it upon the leaves, the branches, that faint hint of sulphur he’d always despised. It was a dulled silvery light amongst the greenery.
‘Trespasser.’ The Erlking darted at him, or at least the impression of him did. And not one but two, then four, then ten figures surrounded Lucifer, coming at him with their nothingness. Evaporating as his flame cut through them. Try as he might, he could not single out the true elf among them.
Distraction. All of it. But not feebly so.
The conflict of flame and fae magick was volatile. The heatwaves produced were enough to send Lucifer a step back each time illusion and fire met.
He was hardly in great peril, but he was slowed.
Because the angels wanted time. Lucifer’s mind worked quickly. The angelsneededtime. Gabriel had not retaliated, despite the attack. He’d not used his halo.
‘Fuck.’ Lucifer saw it then. The halo was intended for other things. ‘Fuck off, damn you.’
He shouted at Lokke’s bombardment of illusions. The Erlking, the trickster, revelled in what he had excelled at all these years. Hoodwinking those who got too close. Distracting everyone with his annoying ways, his glamorous nonsense, drawing their attention away from the sorcerers in his midst.
The Erlking crowded him with images, a conglomerate of bodies: elves, gnomes, bluecaps, asrai, leshy, sprites. He was churning his way through all the creatures of the natural world, gathering them so thickly that the moment Lucifer’s fire scorched them they returned; heatwaves buffeting, making Lucifer sweat, making him back-peddle when he wished to surge forward.
The Erlking even threw in the teratisms, the grotesquely-deformed creatures that once were human, the very ones that the Blight created and the ankou brought down endlessly.
Vassago appeared. On his knees. Grossly injured, a horrendous gash in his belly which showed hint of his guts.
‘Do not forsake me,’ the dying prince begged him as blood poured from his wound, spilling around Lucifer’s feet.
The surge of daemon flame Lucifer sent forth to destroy the prince’s apparition was so brilliant even he was forced to squint, blinded momentarily by his own fury.
Fury, and something far more bitter. A guilt he knew not how to handle.
The simurgh’s cry rose up and over the pleas of a dead daemon. A desolate call sent out by the last remnant of the angel who had stolen Lucifer’s appetite for solitude.
The cry dug into him, hooked talons into his heart and hauled with the ferocity of a thousand legions.
Lucifer made a noise as close to a whimper as he could ever manage. The Trumpeter burned against his chest.Now. Now. Now.He understood it as clearly as if the herald of the Lord’s Wrath actually spoke.
