The angel on the left, the one wielding twin short swords, flapped her wings to jet forward towards me. However, Siora uttered the final word of a spell I had not noticed her readying. A cylinder of fog appeared in midair, directly in the angel’s path, swallowing up both her, and the leader, who Sanvi had called Haziel. “That is just a Solid Fog spell, so it won’t hold them long! But they won’t get to jump on us first!”

  “I’ll lock down Theliel,” Sanvi called out as she flew to get line of sight around the fog. Her spell conjured a ghostly hand the size of a horse, which appeared in front of the angel who wasn’t in the fog, and promptly closed about the angel, squeezing her in its fist. “I doubt that will actually damage her, but she should be easy enough to contain, for the moment.”

  Haziel grunted with effort as she struggled within the fog that had sprung up around her. “Damn you heretics and traitors! I will end you all!” I couldn’t see her through the fog, but she definitely sounded upset. Oh well, not my problem.

  “Mother, help me! I cannot break free of this damned hand!” I could hear Theliel’s struggle against Sanvi’s conjured hand. That battle clearly wasn’t going well for her. Which was good for me, since it meant that there was one fewer foe in the fight.

  Fartooth, too, flew around the side of the fog, and unleashed one of his mind arrows. From the sound of flesh being struck, and Haziel’s curse, I could tell that it had landed true. The kobold chittered happily as he flew on his cloak’s wings. “Don’t look for others to save you. They’re about to have bigger problems!”

  With a burst of speed from my own wings, I flew around the fog, and towards the leader of the angels. However, as I flew, I could see the power radiating off the paladn’s blade. That thing looked like bad news, since the blade looked to be made wholly of light, and both radiated holy power and had flames running along its length. Nothing about that blade said that it would be good news for me if I got hit with it.

  So, I changed my plan midflight. I had originally thought to use an area blast, to try and weaken them somewhat, but now I thought it best to get that blade out of commission sooner, rather than later. As I got close enough for Haziel to get within my aura and weaken her resistance, I reached out with my powers and spoke a single word of power. The next moment, all of Haziel’s clothing and gear fell to the ground, thirty feet below, and in the place where an angel had been only a moment ago was now a raven, flying in midair.

  Siora flew closer, and called out, “I’m going to add on to the stuff holding that rogue at bay. See how she likes this!” Shadows formed in her hand, and those shadows then became a cloud of green fog which intersected with the solid fog spell that was already in place. “

  “Well, not much I can do at the moment, so let’s just offer a prayer,” Vestele said, as she flew around the fog. “Oh, Malcanthet, profane mistress of sensual wonders, give us the power to smite these foolish angels!” A nice prayer. Of course, when a cleric offers up a prayer in battle, that actually had power to it, unlike prayers in my old world, which did nothing.

  “GAH! Fine then! We do this the hard way!” I heard the angel trapped in a double dose of fog cry out, probably from the acid burning her gear. The next moment, I saw her fall out of the sky, using gravity to pull her out of the twin spells, and then using her wings to glide safely to the ground, sixty feet below. I saw her glare up at me, with hate in her eyes. She was going to be a problem, and soon.

  Flying around the fog, Sanvi looked down at Anael, and said, “Can’t have you going and running off. So, be a good girl and stick around to meet your end, ok?” And then she unleashed a dimensional anchor spell, striking Anael, and keeping her from using any teleportation or other method of escaping this fight.

  The raven that had once been an angel flew down, away from me, trying to take shelter near the one remaining member of the angel trio who could put up a fight. Obviously looking for protection from her daughter. Too bad it wouldn’t help any.

  Theliel, meanwhile, continued to struggle against the grip of Sanvi’s spell. However, struggle as she might, she was too weak to escape, and there was no way that she could cast spells, or whatever it was that an artificer did, when she was trapped like that. So long as nothing happened, we should be able to ignore her, and focus on the rogue.

  Fartooth unleashed a flurry of psychic arrows at the rogue. The first two struck true, but the other four missed as the angel dodged out of the way. The kobold chittered, annoyed. “Doesn’t look like she is as lawful as the others, or the other enhancements would have activated.”

  Swooping down with my shadow blade wreathed in an even deeper darkness, I cut the rogue across her body, causing her to stagger backwards as the weight of the impact hit her. “Your sister is trapped, your mother forced into the shape of a bird. Once you’re handled, we’ll be able to move on and take out your coward of a master, who can’t even face people in a fight without sending in minions first.”

  “Ooh, a chance!” Siora called out, seeing that the angel was within my aura. As she flew down to the ground, she dismissed the two fog clouds, since they no longer served a purpose. Once settled on the solid ground, she cast a spell. But, as it washed over the rogue, nothing seemed to happen. “Damn, not quite enough.”

  Vestele, too, landed. In her hand she held a javelin, Kiss of Malcanthet, with its head of brilliant energy. “Then maybe a more direct approach!” As she spoke, she threw the javelin, which shot forth like a laser beam, trailing light as it flew. But unfortunately, the rogue managed to dodge out of the way in time.

  “Handle me? I’m more than enough to beat you, bitch!” The angel snarled back at me, before unleashing a flurry of piercing strikes with her twin blades. Immediately, I knew I was in a bad position. I couldn’t dodge the blows as easily as I should have been bale to, since the blades had a haze that seemed to run over them, making them blurry, and impossible to predict. And each strike sapped my strength and vitality. Even so, I managed to dodge most of the hits. “I missed? I never miss!” The shocked tone in her voice suaged my wounded ego, if not my wounded body, since I wasn’t used to getting hit that much. I knew that if I had been alone, I would have lost this fight right then.

  But I was not alone, something that was made abundantly clear the very next moment, as a bolt of black lightning struck the rogue. That was not a spell I had ever seen before. But, clearly, it was not good for an angel’s health, as the rogue cried out in pain. From above and behind me, I heard a cold voice, saying, “You shall not touch my Mistress, whore of Zadkiel!”

  “Anael, quit playing around! This isn’t a duel! Free me, so we can kill them together!” The artificer, still stuck in the grip of the crushing hand, half-yelled, half-whined, trying to get her sister to see reason, or at least her version of it.

  “No, let her play,” Fartooth said as he unleashed another barrage of arrows, striking the rogue twice. “She’s much easier to hit when she’s standing there being stupid taking on the toughest member of our team. Honestly, I’m surprised she even hit Melinda.”

  Of course, I wasn’t really thinking about any of that. I hadn’t been hurt like this in a long time, and I was not going to just sit back and take it. Lashing out with my shadow blade, I cut the angel deeply with two strokes. “I’m not done yet! I didn’t come so far by just giving up when things looked bad. I still have Zadkiel to kill, and if Torm goes and sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong, I’ll do more than just let his precious altar blow up his face! I will never back down! So says the Queen of Frostreach!”

  Siora laughed. “Well said, Mel! Now, let’s see how well this rogue does stabbing people in the dark!” The beguiler uttered a word of power, and shadows filled the angel’s eyes, cutting them off from the light. “She’s blind, but only temporarily! Make the best use you can of the gap!”

  Vestele flew up to the angel, with her hand glowing with black energy, not unlike what I had coated my blade with. She touched the angel’s side, and she screamed in pain, as the spell ripped its way through her. “Not quite enough,” Vestele frowned. “But she’s almost down. One more good burst should do it!”

  “No! Not like this!” The angel screamed. “I have to at least take you down with me!” Her blades lashed out furiously in her blindness. A couple times, they came close to scoring dangerous wounds, but I was lucky. Only one blade hit me, and it did not have the precision that the former strikes had had.

  Sanvi shook her head. “I will waste no more spells on you, ‘sister’. You are dead already, and do not even know it.” She turned to look at the angel still trapped in the crushing grip of her spell. “And as for you. I have an idea. Siora, Vestele, if you could assist me with some of your magic? I think we can turn this angel into something far more useful.”

  “No, no, no. This can’t be! Anael, you bitch! Quit faking it and hurry up and kill them! I don’t want Sanvi running one of her ‘experiments’ on me!” Clearly, the angel had some idea of what Sanvi had planned. And it terrified her.

  An arrow stilled the rogue’s desperate flailing, as Fartooth got the killing blow, dropping her to the ground. “Well, now I’m most interested in hearing what this experiment is going to be! I hope it makes her scream!”

  Seeing that the final combatant capable of fighting was down, I took a deep breath, and spread my wings. As I flew up to where the last angel was still held in mid-air, close enough to catch it in my aura, I called out, “Siora, Vestele, if you have the magic to spare, I want to see what Sanvi has planned.”

  Siora looked at her sister, and they both grinned matching wicked grins. Flying up next to Sanvi, they nodded as one. “Show us what you need, Sanvi. You’ve earned that much trust, at least.”

  “This is a spell of my own creation, beyond the realm of mortal magic. I will create a confluence point. Simply cast one of your spells of the Eighth Level into that confluence, and it will take that magic to complete the spell.”

  Seeing that the sisters understood, Sanvi held a hand up, and a golden light formed in the air. Theliel thrashed and screamed, but could not escape the grip of the hand. As the sisters added their magic to the mix, the golden orb pulsed, and then became a ray, striking the angel, and enveloping her.

  I ignored the message from the Voice of the World as I watched Theliel’s gear fall to the ground, her screams silenced as her body began warping and changing in the golden light. Then, the golden glow was gone, and so was the angel. All that remained was a silver ring with a glowing red gem set upon it. The ring hovered in the air for a moment, and I quickly plucked it out of the air before gravity took hold.

  All our eyes turned to Sanvi, in wonder, but I was the first to speak. “Sanvi, what did you do?”

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