Isabelle Lightwood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seveninchmotto) wrote2015-03-14 08:06 pm
seveninchmotto) wrote2015-03-14 08:06 pm
Entry tags:
The Demon Realm of Edom, Saturday? Probably Yeah
Isabelle woke to a scream. By the time she was blinking her eyes open and pushing herself up from where she'd passed out by Simon's side, Clary was already on her feet. "Someone screamed," she said. "You two stay here — I'll go see what happened."
"No, no." Isabelle scrambled to her feet just as Alec burst into the chamber, panting hard.
"Jace," he said. "Something's happened — Clary, get your stele and come on." He turned around and darted back into the tunnel. Clary jammed her blade through her belt and raced after him. They disappeared. With a helpless look toward Simon, Isabelle took off after them.
The night was burning. The gray plateau of rocks tilted down toward the desert, and where the rocks met the sand there was fire — fire blasting up into the air, turning the sky gold, scorching the ground. Isabelle's arm shot out to keep Simon back. This was heavenly fire. She just knew. And somewhere within the flames was Jace, she was sure of it. But she had the sickening feeling that Sebastian was here, too. What else would have made Jace lose control of the fire like that?
She wasn't sure she even felt surprised when Clary ran down the slope. Into the flames.
But she had her arms around Simon, holding him back. She knew that if she let him go, he would tear down the slope to the fire, where Clary had disappeared, and throw himself into it. And he would go up like tinder, like gasoline-soaked tinder. He was a vampire. Isabelle held him, her hands clasped over his chest, and felt as if she could sense the hollowness under his ribs, the place where his heart didn't beat. Her own was racing. Her hair lifted and blew back in the hot wind from the immense fire burning at the foot of the plateau. Alec was halfway down the path, hovering; he was a black silhouette against the flames.
And the flames — they leaped toward the sky, blotting out the broken moon. Shifting and changing, a deadly beautiful wall of gold. As the flames trembled, Isabelle could make out shadows moving inside them — the shadow of someone kneeling, and then another, smaller shadow, bending and crawling. Clary, she thought, crawling toward Jace through the heart of the conflagration. She knew from a quick glimpse at Clary before she'd run that she had put a pyr rune on her arm, but Isabelle had never heard of a Fireproof rune that could withstand this kind of blaze.
"Iz," Simon whispered. "I don't —"
"Shh." She held him tighter, held him as if holding him would keep her from shattering apart herself. Jace was in there, in the heart of the fire, and she couldn't lose another brother, she couldn't — "They're all right," she said. "If Jace were hurt, Alec would know. And if he's all right, then Clary's all right."
"They'll burn to death," Simon said, sounding lost.
Isabelle cried out as the flames leaped suddenly higher. Alec took a halting step forward and then fell to his knees, put his hands in the dirt. The curve of his back was a bow of pain. The sky was whorls of fire, spinning and dizzying. Isabelle released Simon and bolted down the path to her brother. She bent over him, knotting her hands into the back of his jacket, hauling him upright. "Alec, Alec —"
Alec staggered to his feet, his face dead white except where it was smeared black with soot. He spun, turning his back to Isabelle, shrugging down his gear jacket. "My parabatai rune — can you see it?"
Isabelle felt her stomach drop; she thought for a moment she might faint. She grabbed at Alec's collar, pulled it down, and exhaled a hard breath of relief. "It's still there."
Alec shrugged his jacket back on. "I felt something change; it was like something in me twisted —" His voice rose. "I'm going down there."
"No!" Isabelle caught at his arm, and then Simon said sharply, from beside her: "Look."
He was pointing toward the fire. Isabelle gazed at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before realizing what he was indicating. The flames had begun to die down. She shook her head as if to clear it, her hand still on Alec's arm, but it wasn't an illusion. The fire was fading. The flames shrank down from towering orange pillars, fading to yellow, curling inward like fingers. She let go of Alec, and the three of them stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, as the fire dwindled, revealing a circle of slightly darkened earth where the flames had burned, and inside it, two figures. Clary and Jace.
Both were hard to see through the smoke and the red glow of the still-burning embers, but it was clear they were alive and unharmed. Clary was standing, Jace kneeling in front of her, his hands in hers, almost as if he were being knighted. There was something ritualistic about the position, something that spoke of a strange, old magic. As the smoke cleared, Isabelle could see the bright glint of Jace's hair as he rose to his feet. They both began walking up the path.
Isabelle, Simon, and Alec broke formation and hurtled down toward them. Isabelle threw herself at Jace, who caught her and hugged her, reaching past her to clasp Alec's hand even as he held Isabelle tightly. His skin was cool against hers, almost cold. His gear was without a single scorch or burn mark, just as the desert earth behind them showed no trace that moments ago, a massive conflagration had burned there. Isabelle turned her head against Jace's chest and saw Simon hugging Clary. He was holding her tightly, shaking his head.
She broke apart from Jace and flashed a smile at Clary, who smiled shyly back. Alec moved to hug Clary, and Simon and Jace eyed each other warily. Suddenly Simon grinned held his arms out toward Jace.
Jace shook his head. "I don't care if I did just set myself on fire," he said. "I'm not hugging you."
Simon sighed and dropped his arms. "Your loss," he said. "If you'd gone in, I would've let you, but honestly it would've been a pity hug."
Jace turned to Clary, who was no longer embracing Alec but standing looking amused, with her hand on the hilt of Heosphoros. It seemed to shimmer, as if it had caught some of the light of the fire. "Did you hear that?" Jace demanded. "A pity hug?"
Alec held a hand up. Rather surprisingly, Jace fell silent.
"I recognize that we're all filled with the giddy joy of survival, thus explaining your current stupid behavior," Alec said. "But first -" He raised a finger. "- I think the three of us are entitled to an explanation. What happened? How did you lose control of the fire? Were you attacked?"
"It was a demon," Jace said after a pause. "It took the form of a woman I — of someone I hurt, when Sebastian possessed me. It goaded me until I lost command over the heavenly fire. Clary helped me get it back under control."
"And that's it? You're both okay?" Isabelle said, half-disbelieving. "I thought — when I saw what was going on — I thought it was Sebastian. That he'd come for us somehow. That you'd tried to burn him and that you'd burned yourself up..."
"That won't happen." Jace touched Isabelle's face gently. "I have the fire under control now. I know how to use it, and how not to use it. How to direct it."
"How?" Alec said, amazed.
Jace hesitated. His eyes flicked toward Clary, and seemed to grow darker, as if a shutter had come down over them. "You're just going to have to trust me."
"That's it?" Simon said in disbelief. "Just trust you?"
"Don't you?" Jace asked.
"I..." Simon looked at Isabelle, who glanced at her brother.
After a moment Alec nodded. "We trusted you enough to come here," he said. "We'll trust you to the end."
"Although it would be really awesome if you told us the plan, you know, a little before it," said Isabelle. "Before the end, I mean."
Alec raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged innocently.
"Just a little before," she said. "I like to have some preparation."
Her brother's eyes met hers and then, a little hoarsely — as if he'd almost forgotten how to do it — he started to laugh.
----
Isabelle and Alec took watch after the incident with the fire. There were no demons or Endarkened around their hideaway. Still, trudging along again now, they were all jittery, and none of them had had more than a few hours of sleep. Jace seemed to be running on nerves and adrenaline, following the thread of the tracking spell on the bracelet around his wrist, sometimes forgetting to pause and wait for the others in his mad dash toward Sebastian, until they shouted or ran to catch up with him.
And then Clary and Simon saw a city in the distance. Jace had already started running in the direction Clary had pointed even before she'd stopped speaking. Isabelle and Alec looked startled before bolting after him; Clary, with Simon at her side, followed.
They started down the slope, which was covered in loose scree, half-running and half-sliding, letting the unmoored pebbles carry them. They moved fast, clambering over rock cairns, hopping small rivulets of molten slag. They were heading toward a place where the desert seemed to drop away. A cliff. They didn't stop until they were on the very edge of it.
And then they stared down into the valley below as if they were staring into the grave of someone they had loved. In the valley were the ruins of a city. An old, old city that had once been built around a hillside. The top of the hillside was surrounded by gray clouds and fog. Heaps of rock were all that was left of the houses, and ash had settled over the streets and the jagged ruins of buildings. Tumbled among the ruins, like discarded matchsticks, were broken pillars made of shining pale stone, incongruously beautiful in this ruined land.
Isabelle knew this landscape well.
"Demon towers," Clary whispered.
Jace nodded grimly. "I don't know how," he said, "but somehow — this is Alicante."
-----
Clary, Simon, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle picked their way in silence through the eerie ruins of Alicante. For Jace had been right: It was Alicante, unmistakably so. They had passed too much that was familiar for it to be anything else. The walls around the city, now crumbled; the gates, corroded with the scars of acid rain. Cistern Square. The empty canals, filled with spongy black moss. The hill was blasted, a bare heap of rock. The marks where there had once been pathways were clearly visible like scars along the side. The Gard should be at the top of it, but if it still stood, it was invisible, hidden in gray fog.
At last they clambered over a high mound of rubble and found themselves in Angel Square. Though most of the buildings that had ringed it had fallen, the square was surprisingly unharmed, cobblestones stretching away in the yellowish light. The Hall of Accords was still standing. It wasn't white stone, though. In the human dimension, it looked like a Greek temple, but in this world it was lacquered metal. A tall square building, if something that looked like molten gold that had been poured out of the sky could be described as a building. Massive engravings ran around the structure, like ribbon wrapping a box; the whole thing glowed dully in the orange light.
"The Accords Hall." Isabelle stood with her whip coiled around her wrist, looking up at it. "Unbelievable."
They started up the steps, which were gold streaked with the black of ash and corrosion. At the top of the stairs, they paused to stare at the huge double doors. They were covered with squares of hammered metal. Each one was an engraved panel showing an image. "It's a story," Jace said, stepping closer and touching the engravings with a black-gloved finger. Writing in an unfamiliar language scrolled along the bottom of each illustration. He glanced over at Alec. "Can you read it?"
"Am I the only person who paid attention in language lessons?" Alec demanded wearily, but he stepped up to look more closely at the scrawl. "Well, first, the panels," he said. "They're a history." He pointed at the first one, which showed a group of people, barefoot and in robes, cowering as the clouds above them opened up and a clawed hand reached down toward them. "Humans lived here, or something like humans," Alec said, pointing at the figures. "They lived in peace, and then demons came. And then —" He broke off, his hand on a panel whose image was as familiar to Isabelle as the back of her own hand. The Angel Raziel, rising out of Lake Lyn, the Mortal Instruments in hand. "By the Angel."
"Literally," said Isabelle. "How — Is that our Angel? Our lake?"
"I don't know. This says the demons came, and the Shadowhunters were created to battle them," Alec went on, moving along the wall as the panels progressed. He jabbed his finger at the scrawl. "This word, here, it means 'Nephilim.' But the Shadowhunters rejected the help of Downworlders. The warlocks and the Fair Folk joined with their infernal parents. They sided with the demons. The Nephilim were defeated, and slaughtered. In their last days they created a weapon that was meant to hold the demons off." He indicated a panel showing a woman holding up a sort of iron rod with a burning stone set into the end of it. "They didn't have seraph blades; they hadn't developed them. It doesn't look like they had Iron Sisters or Silent Brothers, either. They had blacksmiths, and they developed some sort of weapon, something they thought might help them. The word here is 'skeptron,' but it doesn't mean anything to me. Anyway, the skeptron wasn't enough." He moved to the next panel, which showed destruction: the Nephilim lying dead, the woman with the iron rod crumpled on the ground, the rod itself cast aside. "The demons — they're called asmodei here — burned away the sun and filled the sky with ash and clouds. They ripped fire from the earth and razed the cities to the ground. They killed everything that moved and breathed air. They drained the seas until everything in the water was dead too."
A world without Shadowhunters. A world where they'd failed. Not for the first time during this journey, Isabelle felt sick to her stomach.
"Asmodei," echoed Clary. "I've heard that before. It was something Lilith said, about Sebastian. Before he was born. 'The child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater Demons of the abysses between the worlds. He will be more mighty than the asmodei.'"
"Asmodeus is one of the Greater Demons of the abysses between worlds," said Jace, meeting Clary's gaze.
"Like Abbadon?" Simon inquired. "He was a Greater Demon."
"Far more powerful than that. Asmodeus is a Prince of Hell — there are nine of them. The Fati. Shadowhunters cannot hope to defeat them. They can destroy angels in combat. They can remake worlds," said Jace.
"The asmodei are Asmodeus's children. Powerful demons. They drained this world dry and then left it for other, weaker demons to scavenge." Alec sounded sick. "This isn't the Accords Hall anymore. It's a tomb. A tomb for the life of this world."
"But is this our world?" Isabelle's voice rose. "Did we go forward in time? If the Queen tricked us —"
"She didn't. At least, not about where we are," said Jace. "We didn't go forward in time; we went sideways. This is a mirror dimension of our world. A place where history went slightly differently." He hooked his thumbs into his belt and glanced around. "A world with no Shadowhunters."
"It's like Planet of the Apes," said Simon. "Except that was the future."
"Yeah, well, this could be our future, if Sebastian gets what he wants," Jace said. He tapped the panel of the woman holding up the burning skeptron, and frowned, then pushed hard on the door. It swung open with a shriek of hinges that cut the air like a knife. Jace drew his sword and peered cautiously through the gap in the door. There was a room beyond, filled with a grayish light. He shouldered the door open farther and slipped through the gap, gesturing for the others to wait.
Isabelle, Alec, Clary, and Simon exchanged glances, and without a word spoken, went after him immediately. Alec went first, bow drawn; then Isabelle with her whip, Clary with her sword, and Simon, eyes gleaming like a cat's in the dimness.
The inside of the Accords Hall was both familiar and unfamiliar. The floor was marble, cracked and broken. In many places great black blots spread across the stone, the remnants of ancient bloodstains. The roof above, which in their Alicante was glass, was long gone, only shards remaining, like clear knives against the sky. The room itself was empty, save for a statue in the center. The place was filled with sickly yellow-gray light. Jace, standing facing the statue, whirled as they approached.
"I told you to wait," he snapped at Alec. "Don't you ever do anything I tell you to?"
"Technically you didn't actually say anything," Clary said. "You just gestured."
"Gesturing counts," Jace said. "I gesture very expressively."
"You're not in charge," Alec said, lowering his bow. Some of the tension had gone out of his posture. There were clearly no demons hiding in the shadows: Nothing blocked their view of the corroded walls, and nothing but the statue remained standing in the room. "You don't need to protect us."
Isabelle rolled her eyes at both of them and stepped closer to the statue, craning her head back. It was the statue of a man in armor; his feet, in mail boots, rested on a golden plinth. He wore an intricate hauberk of linked stone circlets, decorated with a motif of angel wings across the chest. In his hand he carried an iron replica of a skeptron, tipped by a circular metal ornament, into which a red jewel had been set. Whoever had carved the statue had been skilled. The face was handsome, square-jawed, with a distant, clear gaze. But they had captured more than good looks: There was a certain harshness to the set of his eyes and jaw, a twist to his mouth that spoke of selfishness and cruelty.
There were words written on the plinth, and though they were not in English.
JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER. FIRST AND LAST OF THE NEPHILIM.
"First and last," Isabelle whispered. "This place is a tomb."
Alec crouched down. There were more words on the plinth, under Jonathan Shadowhunter's name. He read them out: "'And he who overcomes, and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and I will give him the Morning Star.'"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Simon asked.
"I think Jonathan Shadowhunter got cocky," said Alec. "I think he thought this skeptron thing would not just save them, but it would let him rule over the world."
" 'And I will give him the Morning Star,' " said Clary. "That's from the Bible. Our Bible. And 'Morgenstern' means 'morning star.' "
" 'The morning star' means a lot of things," said Alec. "It can mean 'the brightest star in the sky,' or it can mean 'heavenly fire,' or it can mean 'the fire that falls with angels when they're cast down out of Heaven.' It's also the name of Lucifer, the light-bringer, the demon of pride." He straightened up.
"Either way, it means that thing the statue is holding is a real weapon," said Jace. "Like in the door engravings. You said the skeptron is what they developed here, instead of seraph blades, to hold off the demons. Look at the marks on the handle. It's been in battle."
Isabelle pointed to the glimmer of red on the skeptron. "And the red stone. It looks like it's made from the same stuff as my necklace."
Jace nodded. "I think it is the same stone." Clary knew what he was going to say next before he said it. "That weapon. I want it."
"Well, you can't have it," Alec said. "It's attached to the statue."
"It's not." Jace pointed. "Look, the statue's gripping it, but they're actually two totally separate pieces. They carved the statue and then they put the scepter into its hands. It's supposed to be removable."
"I'm not sure that's exactly true —" Clary began, but Jace was already putting a foot up onto the plinth, preparing to climb. He had the glint in his eye she both loved and dreaded, the one that said, I do what I want, and damn the consequences.
"Wait!" Simon darted to block Jace from climbing farther. "I'm sorry, but does anyone else see what's going on here?"
"Nooo," Jace drawled. "Why don't you tell us all about it? I mean, we've got nothing but time."
Simon crossed his arms over his chest. "I've been in a lot of campaigns —"
"Campaigns?" Isabelle echoed, bewildered.
"He means Dungeons and Dragons games," Clary explained.
"Games?" Alec echoed in disbelief. "In case you haven't noticed, this is no game."
"That's not the point," Simon said. "The point is that when you're playing D&D and your group comes across a heap of treasure, or a big sparkly gem, or a magical golden skull, you should never take it. It's always a trap." He uncrossed his arms and waved them wildly. "This is a trap."
Jace was silent. He was looking at Simon thoughtfully, as if he'd never seen him before, or at least never considered him so closely. "Come here," he said.
Simon moved toward him, his eyebrows raised. "What — oof!"
Jace had dropped his sword into Simon's hands. "Hold this for me while I climb," Jace said, and leaped up onto the plinth. Simon's protests were drowned out by the sound of Jace's boots knocking against the stone as he scrambled up the statue, pulling himself up hand over hand. He reached the middle of the statue, where the carved hauberk offered footholds, and braced himself, reaching across the stone to close his hand around the handle of the skeptron.
The red stone flared up suddenly; Jace jerked back, but the room was already full of an earsplitting noise, the terrible combination of a fire alarm and a human scream, going on and on and on.
"Jace!" Clary raced to the statue; he had already dropped from it to the ground, wincing at the awful noise. The light of the red stone was increasing, filling the room with a bloody illumination.
"Goddamn it," Jace shouted over the noise. "I hate it when Simon is right."
With a glare Simon shoved Jace's sword back at him; Jace took it, his gaze darting around warily. Alec had raised his bow again; Isabelle stood ready with her whip. Clary drew a dagger from her belt.
"We'd better get out of here," Alec called. "It could be nothing, but —"
Isabelle cried out, and clapped her hand over where the Sensor was in her pocket. "Demons!" she cried, just as the sky filled with flying things. And they were things — they had heavy round bodies, like huge pale grubs, pocked with rows of suckers. They had no faces: Both ends of them terminated in massive pink circular mouths rimmed with sharks' teeth. Rows of stubby wings lined their bodies, each wing tipped with a dagger-sharp talon. And there were a lot of them.
Even Jace paled. "By the Angel — run!"
They ran, but the creatures, despite their girth, were faster: They were landing all around them, with ugly wet sounds. The light pouring from the skeptron had vanished the moment they'd appeared, and the room was now bathed in the ugly yellowish glow of the sky.
Clary!" Jace shouted as one of the creatures heaved itself toward her, its circular mouth open. Ropes of yellow drool hung from it.
Thump. An arrow embedded itself in the roof of the demon's mouth. The creature reared back, spitting black blood. Alec seized another arrow, fit it, let it fly. Another demon reeled back, and then Isabelle was on it, her whip slashing back and forth, slicing it to ribbons. Simon had seized another demon and was holding it, his hands sinking into its fleshy gray body, and Jace plunged his sword into it. The demon collapsed, knocking Simon back to the floor: he landed on his backpack. There was a sound like breaking glass, but a moment later Simon was back up on his feet, Jace steadying him with a hand to the shoulder before they both turned back to the fight.
Alec was backing up, steadily letting arrow after arrow fly, sending the demons reeling back, wounded. As they struggled, Jace and Isabelle fell on them, slashing them to pieces with sword and whip. Clary followed their lead, leaping on another wounded demon, sawing away at the soft band of flesh under its mouth, her hand, coated in oily demon blood, slipping on the hilt of her dagger. The demon collapsed in on itself with a hiss, sending her crashing to the ground. The blade skittered out of her hand, and she threw herself after it, seized it up, and rolled to the side just as another demon lunged with an uncoiling of its powerful body.
It hit the space where she'd just been lying, and curled itself around, hissing, so that Clary found herself facing two open, gaping mouths. She readied her blade to let it fly, when there was a flash of silver-gold and Isabelle's whip came down, slicing the thing in half.
It fell apart in two pieces, a jumbled mess of steaming internal organs pouring out. Demons usually died and vanished before you saw much of their insides. This one was still writhing, even in two pieces, twitching forward and back. Isabelle grimaced and raised her whip again — and the twitch turned into a sudden, violent jerk as half the monster twisted backward and sank its teeth into Isabelle's leg.
Isabelle screamed, slashing down with the whip, and it released her; she fell back, her leg going out from under her. Everything began to go black. She was numbly aware of Clary rushing to her side, but all voices sounded like they were coming at her through several feet of water. She couldn't make sense of anything but the pain in her leg – except it didn't feel like it was just her leg. It was her whole body. She was gasping. Or at least she thought she was. It seemed to go on forever.
And all she could think was that she was glad she'd sent that fire message.
And then she thought nothing at all.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! CoHF. Two more monster posts coming up tomorrow! Warning for violence and heavy injury.]
"No, no." Isabelle scrambled to her feet just as Alec burst into the chamber, panting hard.
"Jace," he said. "Something's happened — Clary, get your stele and come on." He turned around and darted back into the tunnel. Clary jammed her blade through her belt and raced after him. They disappeared. With a helpless look toward Simon, Isabelle took off after them.
The night was burning. The gray plateau of rocks tilted down toward the desert, and where the rocks met the sand there was fire — fire blasting up into the air, turning the sky gold, scorching the ground. Isabelle's arm shot out to keep Simon back. This was heavenly fire. She just knew. And somewhere within the flames was Jace, she was sure of it. But she had the sickening feeling that Sebastian was here, too. What else would have made Jace lose control of the fire like that?
She wasn't sure she even felt surprised when Clary ran down the slope. Into the flames.
But she had her arms around Simon, holding him back. She knew that if she let him go, he would tear down the slope to the fire, where Clary had disappeared, and throw himself into it. And he would go up like tinder, like gasoline-soaked tinder. He was a vampire. Isabelle held him, her hands clasped over his chest, and felt as if she could sense the hollowness under his ribs, the place where his heart didn't beat. Her own was racing. Her hair lifted and blew back in the hot wind from the immense fire burning at the foot of the plateau. Alec was halfway down the path, hovering; he was a black silhouette against the flames.
And the flames — they leaped toward the sky, blotting out the broken moon. Shifting and changing, a deadly beautiful wall of gold. As the flames trembled, Isabelle could make out shadows moving inside them — the shadow of someone kneeling, and then another, smaller shadow, bending and crawling. Clary, she thought, crawling toward Jace through the heart of the conflagration. She knew from a quick glimpse at Clary before she'd run that she had put a pyr rune on her arm, but Isabelle had never heard of a Fireproof rune that could withstand this kind of blaze.
"Iz," Simon whispered. "I don't —"
"Shh." She held him tighter, held him as if holding him would keep her from shattering apart herself. Jace was in there, in the heart of the fire, and she couldn't lose another brother, she couldn't — "They're all right," she said. "If Jace were hurt, Alec would know. And if he's all right, then Clary's all right."
"They'll burn to death," Simon said, sounding lost.
Isabelle cried out as the flames leaped suddenly higher. Alec took a halting step forward and then fell to his knees, put his hands in the dirt. The curve of his back was a bow of pain. The sky was whorls of fire, spinning and dizzying. Isabelle released Simon and bolted down the path to her brother. She bent over him, knotting her hands into the back of his jacket, hauling him upright. "Alec, Alec —"
Alec staggered to his feet, his face dead white except where it was smeared black with soot. He spun, turning his back to Isabelle, shrugging down his gear jacket. "My parabatai rune — can you see it?"
Isabelle felt her stomach drop; she thought for a moment she might faint. She grabbed at Alec's collar, pulled it down, and exhaled a hard breath of relief. "It's still there."
Alec shrugged his jacket back on. "I felt something change; it was like something in me twisted —" His voice rose. "I'm going down there."
"No!" Isabelle caught at his arm, and then Simon said sharply, from beside her: "Look."
He was pointing toward the fire. Isabelle gazed at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before realizing what he was indicating. The flames had begun to die down. She shook her head as if to clear it, her hand still on Alec's arm, but it wasn't an illusion. The fire was fading. The flames shrank down from towering orange pillars, fading to yellow, curling inward like fingers. She let go of Alec, and the three of them stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, as the fire dwindled, revealing a circle of slightly darkened earth where the flames had burned, and inside it, two figures. Clary and Jace.
Both were hard to see through the smoke and the red glow of the still-burning embers, but it was clear they were alive and unharmed. Clary was standing, Jace kneeling in front of her, his hands in hers, almost as if he were being knighted. There was something ritualistic about the position, something that spoke of a strange, old magic. As the smoke cleared, Isabelle could see the bright glint of Jace's hair as he rose to his feet. They both began walking up the path.
Isabelle, Simon, and Alec broke formation and hurtled down toward them. Isabelle threw herself at Jace, who caught her and hugged her, reaching past her to clasp Alec's hand even as he held Isabelle tightly. His skin was cool against hers, almost cold. His gear was without a single scorch or burn mark, just as the desert earth behind them showed no trace that moments ago, a massive conflagration had burned there. Isabelle turned her head against Jace's chest and saw Simon hugging Clary. He was holding her tightly, shaking his head.
She broke apart from Jace and flashed a smile at Clary, who smiled shyly back. Alec moved to hug Clary, and Simon and Jace eyed each other warily. Suddenly Simon grinned held his arms out toward Jace.
Jace shook his head. "I don't care if I did just set myself on fire," he said. "I'm not hugging you."
Simon sighed and dropped his arms. "Your loss," he said. "If you'd gone in, I would've let you, but honestly it would've been a pity hug."
Jace turned to Clary, who was no longer embracing Alec but standing looking amused, with her hand on the hilt of Heosphoros. It seemed to shimmer, as if it had caught some of the light of the fire. "Did you hear that?" Jace demanded. "A pity hug?"
Alec held a hand up. Rather surprisingly, Jace fell silent.
"I recognize that we're all filled with the giddy joy of survival, thus explaining your current stupid behavior," Alec said. "But first -" He raised a finger. "- I think the three of us are entitled to an explanation. What happened? How did you lose control of the fire? Were you attacked?"
"It was a demon," Jace said after a pause. "It took the form of a woman I — of someone I hurt, when Sebastian possessed me. It goaded me until I lost command over the heavenly fire. Clary helped me get it back under control."
"And that's it? You're both okay?" Isabelle said, half-disbelieving. "I thought — when I saw what was going on — I thought it was Sebastian. That he'd come for us somehow. That you'd tried to burn him and that you'd burned yourself up..."
"That won't happen." Jace touched Isabelle's face gently. "I have the fire under control now. I know how to use it, and how not to use it. How to direct it."
"How?" Alec said, amazed.
Jace hesitated. His eyes flicked toward Clary, and seemed to grow darker, as if a shutter had come down over them. "You're just going to have to trust me."
"That's it?" Simon said in disbelief. "Just trust you?"
"Don't you?" Jace asked.
"I..." Simon looked at Isabelle, who glanced at her brother.
After a moment Alec nodded. "We trusted you enough to come here," he said. "We'll trust you to the end."
"Although it would be really awesome if you told us the plan, you know, a little before it," said Isabelle. "Before the end, I mean."
Alec raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged innocently.
"Just a little before," she said. "I like to have some preparation."
Her brother's eyes met hers and then, a little hoarsely — as if he'd almost forgotten how to do it — he started to laugh.
Isabelle and Alec took watch after the incident with the fire. There were no demons or Endarkened around their hideaway. Still, trudging along again now, they were all jittery, and none of them had had more than a few hours of sleep. Jace seemed to be running on nerves and adrenaline, following the thread of the tracking spell on the bracelet around his wrist, sometimes forgetting to pause and wait for the others in his mad dash toward Sebastian, until they shouted or ran to catch up with him.
And then Clary and Simon saw a city in the distance. Jace had already started running in the direction Clary had pointed even before she'd stopped speaking. Isabelle and Alec looked startled before bolting after him; Clary, with Simon at her side, followed.
They started down the slope, which was covered in loose scree, half-running and half-sliding, letting the unmoored pebbles carry them. They moved fast, clambering over rock cairns, hopping small rivulets of molten slag. They were heading toward a place where the desert seemed to drop away. A cliff. They didn't stop until they were on the very edge of it.
And then they stared down into the valley below as if they were staring into the grave of someone they had loved. In the valley were the ruins of a city. An old, old city that had once been built around a hillside. The top of the hillside was surrounded by gray clouds and fog. Heaps of rock were all that was left of the houses, and ash had settled over the streets and the jagged ruins of buildings. Tumbled among the ruins, like discarded matchsticks, were broken pillars made of shining pale stone, incongruously beautiful in this ruined land.
Isabelle knew this landscape well.
"Demon towers," Clary whispered.
Jace nodded grimly. "I don't know how," he said, "but somehow — this is Alicante."
Clary, Simon, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle picked their way in silence through the eerie ruins of Alicante. For Jace had been right: It was Alicante, unmistakably so. They had passed too much that was familiar for it to be anything else. The walls around the city, now crumbled; the gates, corroded with the scars of acid rain. Cistern Square. The empty canals, filled with spongy black moss. The hill was blasted, a bare heap of rock. The marks where there had once been pathways were clearly visible like scars along the side. The Gard should be at the top of it, but if it still stood, it was invisible, hidden in gray fog.
At last they clambered over a high mound of rubble and found themselves in Angel Square. Though most of the buildings that had ringed it had fallen, the square was surprisingly unharmed, cobblestones stretching away in the yellowish light. The Hall of Accords was still standing. It wasn't white stone, though. In the human dimension, it looked like a Greek temple, but in this world it was lacquered metal. A tall square building, if something that looked like molten gold that had been poured out of the sky could be described as a building. Massive engravings ran around the structure, like ribbon wrapping a box; the whole thing glowed dully in the orange light.
"The Accords Hall." Isabelle stood with her whip coiled around her wrist, looking up at it. "Unbelievable."
They started up the steps, which were gold streaked with the black of ash and corrosion. At the top of the stairs, they paused to stare at the huge double doors. They were covered with squares of hammered metal. Each one was an engraved panel showing an image. "It's a story," Jace said, stepping closer and touching the engravings with a black-gloved finger. Writing in an unfamiliar language scrolled along the bottom of each illustration. He glanced over at Alec. "Can you read it?"
"Am I the only person who paid attention in language lessons?" Alec demanded wearily, but he stepped up to look more closely at the scrawl. "Well, first, the panels," he said. "They're a history." He pointed at the first one, which showed a group of people, barefoot and in robes, cowering as the clouds above them opened up and a clawed hand reached down toward them. "Humans lived here, or something like humans," Alec said, pointing at the figures. "They lived in peace, and then demons came. And then —" He broke off, his hand on a panel whose image was as familiar to Isabelle as the back of her own hand. The Angel Raziel, rising out of Lake Lyn, the Mortal Instruments in hand. "By the Angel."
"Literally," said Isabelle. "How — Is that our Angel? Our lake?"
"I don't know. This says the demons came, and the Shadowhunters were created to battle them," Alec went on, moving along the wall as the panels progressed. He jabbed his finger at the scrawl. "This word, here, it means 'Nephilim.' But the Shadowhunters rejected the help of Downworlders. The warlocks and the Fair Folk joined with their infernal parents. They sided with the demons. The Nephilim were defeated, and slaughtered. In their last days they created a weapon that was meant to hold the demons off." He indicated a panel showing a woman holding up a sort of iron rod with a burning stone set into the end of it. "They didn't have seraph blades; they hadn't developed them. It doesn't look like they had Iron Sisters or Silent Brothers, either. They had blacksmiths, and they developed some sort of weapon, something they thought might help them. The word here is 'skeptron,' but it doesn't mean anything to me. Anyway, the skeptron wasn't enough." He moved to the next panel, which showed destruction: the Nephilim lying dead, the woman with the iron rod crumpled on the ground, the rod itself cast aside. "The demons — they're called asmodei here — burned away the sun and filled the sky with ash and clouds. They ripped fire from the earth and razed the cities to the ground. They killed everything that moved and breathed air. They drained the seas until everything in the water was dead too."
A world without Shadowhunters. A world where they'd failed. Not for the first time during this journey, Isabelle felt sick to her stomach.
"Asmodei," echoed Clary. "I've heard that before. It was something Lilith said, about Sebastian. Before he was born. 'The child born with this blood in him will exceed in power the Greater Demons of the abysses between the worlds. He will be more mighty than the asmodei.'"
"Asmodeus is one of the Greater Demons of the abysses between worlds," said Jace, meeting Clary's gaze.
"Like Abbadon?" Simon inquired. "He was a Greater Demon."
"Far more powerful than that. Asmodeus is a Prince of Hell — there are nine of them. The Fati. Shadowhunters cannot hope to defeat them. They can destroy angels in combat. They can remake worlds," said Jace.
"The asmodei are Asmodeus's children. Powerful demons. They drained this world dry and then left it for other, weaker demons to scavenge." Alec sounded sick. "This isn't the Accords Hall anymore. It's a tomb. A tomb for the life of this world."
"But is this our world?" Isabelle's voice rose. "Did we go forward in time? If the Queen tricked us —"
"She didn't. At least, not about where we are," said Jace. "We didn't go forward in time; we went sideways. This is a mirror dimension of our world. A place where history went slightly differently." He hooked his thumbs into his belt and glanced around. "A world with no Shadowhunters."
"It's like Planet of the Apes," said Simon. "Except that was the future."
"Yeah, well, this could be our future, if Sebastian gets what he wants," Jace said. He tapped the panel of the woman holding up the burning skeptron, and frowned, then pushed hard on the door. It swung open with a shriek of hinges that cut the air like a knife. Jace drew his sword and peered cautiously through the gap in the door. There was a room beyond, filled with a grayish light. He shouldered the door open farther and slipped through the gap, gesturing for the others to wait.
Isabelle, Alec, Clary, and Simon exchanged glances, and without a word spoken, went after him immediately. Alec went first, bow drawn; then Isabelle with her whip, Clary with her sword, and Simon, eyes gleaming like a cat's in the dimness.
The inside of the Accords Hall was both familiar and unfamiliar. The floor was marble, cracked and broken. In many places great black blots spread across the stone, the remnants of ancient bloodstains. The roof above, which in their Alicante was glass, was long gone, only shards remaining, like clear knives against the sky. The room itself was empty, save for a statue in the center. The place was filled with sickly yellow-gray light. Jace, standing facing the statue, whirled as they approached.
"I told you to wait," he snapped at Alec. "Don't you ever do anything I tell you to?"
"Technically you didn't actually say anything," Clary said. "You just gestured."
"Gesturing counts," Jace said. "I gesture very expressively."
"You're not in charge," Alec said, lowering his bow. Some of the tension had gone out of his posture. There were clearly no demons hiding in the shadows: Nothing blocked their view of the corroded walls, and nothing but the statue remained standing in the room. "You don't need to protect us."
Isabelle rolled her eyes at both of them and stepped closer to the statue, craning her head back. It was the statue of a man in armor; his feet, in mail boots, rested on a golden plinth. He wore an intricate hauberk of linked stone circlets, decorated with a motif of angel wings across the chest. In his hand he carried an iron replica of a skeptron, tipped by a circular metal ornament, into which a red jewel had been set. Whoever had carved the statue had been skilled. The face was handsome, square-jawed, with a distant, clear gaze. But they had captured more than good looks: There was a certain harshness to the set of his eyes and jaw, a twist to his mouth that spoke of selfishness and cruelty.
There were words written on the plinth, and though they were not in English.
JONATHAN SHADOWHUNTER. FIRST AND LAST OF THE NEPHILIM.
"First and last," Isabelle whispered. "This place is a tomb."
Alec crouched down. There were more words on the plinth, under Jonathan Shadowhunter's name. He read them out: "'And he who overcomes, and he who keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and I will give him the Morning Star.'"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Simon asked.
"I think Jonathan Shadowhunter got cocky," said Alec. "I think he thought this skeptron thing would not just save them, but it would let him rule over the world."
" 'And I will give him the Morning Star,' " said Clary. "That's from the Bible. Our Bible. And 'Morgenstern' means 'morning star.' "
" 'The morning star' means a lot of things," said Alec. "It can mean 'the brightest star in the sky,' or it can mean 'heavenly fire,' or it can mean 'the fire that falls with angels when they're cast down out of Heaven.' It's also the name of Lucifer, the light-bringer, the demon of pride." He straightened up.
"Either way, it means that thing the statue is holding is a real weapon," said Jace. "Like in the door engravings. You said the skeptron is what they developed here, instead of seraph blades, to hold off the demons. Look at the marks on the handle. It's been in battle."
Isabelle pointed to the glimmer of red on the skeptron. "And the red stone. It looks like it's made from the same stuff as my necklace."
Jace nodded. "I think it is the same stone." Clary knew what he was going to say next before he said it. "That weapon. I want it."
"Well, you can't have it," Alec said. "It's attached to the statue."
"It's not." Jace pointed. "Look, the statue's gripping it, but they're actually two totally separate pieces. They carved the statue and then they put the scepter into its hands. It's supposed to be removable."
"I'm not sure that's exactly true —" Clary began, but Jace was already putting a foot up onto the plinth, preparing to climb. He had the glint in his eye she both loved and dreaded, the one that said, I do what I want, and damn the consequences.
"Wait!" Simon darted to block Jace from climbing farther. "I'm sorry, but does anyone else see what's going on here?"
"Nooo," Jace drawled. "Why don't you tell us all about it? I mean, we've got nothing but time."
Simon crossed his arms over his chest. "I've been in a lot of campaigns —"
"Campaigns?" Isabelle echoed, bewildered.
"He means Dungeons and Dragons games," Clary explained.
"Games?" Alec echoed in disbelief. "In case you haven't noticed, this is no game."
"That's not the point," Simon said. "The point is that when you're playing D&D and your group comes across a heap of treasure, or a big sparkly gem, or a magical golden skull, you should never take it. It's always a trap." He uncrossed his arms and waved them wildly. "This is a trap."
Jace was silent. He was looking at Simon thoughtfully, as if he'd never seen him before, or at least never considered him so closely. "Come here," he said.
Simon moved toward him, his eyebrows raised. "What — oof!"
Jace had dropped his sword into Simon's hands. "Hold this for me while I climb," Jace said, and leaped up onto the plinth. Simon's protests were drowned out by the sound of Jace's boots knocking against the stone as he scrambled up the statue, pulling himself up hand over hand. He reached the middle of the statue, where the carved hauberk offered footholds, and braced himself, reaching across the stone to close his hand around the handle of the skeptron.
The red stone flared up suddenly; Jace jerked back, but the room was already full of an earsplitting noise, the terrible combination of a fire alarm and a human scream, going on and on and on.
"Jace!" Clary raced to the statue; he had already dropped from it to the ground, wincing at the awful noise. The light of the red stone was increasing, filling the room with a bloody illumination.
"Goddamn it," Jace shouted over the noise. "I hate it when Simon is right."
With a glare Simon shoved Jace's sword back at him; Jace took it, his gaze darting around warily. Alec had raised his bow again; Isabelle stood ready with her whip. Clary drew a dagger from her belt.
"We'd better get out of here," Alec called. "It could be nothing, but —"
Isabelle cried out, and clapped her hand over where the Sensor was in her pocket. "Demons!" she cried, just as the sky filled with flying things. And they were things — they had heavy round bodies, like huge pale grubs, pocked with rows of suckers. They had no faces: Both ends of them terminated in massive pink circular mouths rimmed with sharks' teeth. Rows of stubby wings lined their bodies, each wing tipped with a dagger-sharp talon. And there were a lot of them.
Even Jace paled. "By the Angel — run!"
They ran, but the creatures, despite their girth, were faster: They were landing all around them, with ugly wet sounds. The light pouring from the skeptron had vanished the moment they'd appeared, and the room was now bathed in the ugly yellowish glow of the sky.
Clary!" Jace shouted as one of the creatures heaved itself toward her, its circular mouth open. Ropes of yellow drool hung from it.
Thump. An arrow embedded itself in the roof of the demon's mouth. The creature reared back, spitting black blood. Alec seized another arrow, fit it, let it fly. Another demon reeled back, and then Isabelle was on it, her whip slashing back and forth, slicing it to ribbons. Simon had seized another demon and was holding it, his hands sinking into its fleshy gray body, and Jace plunged his sword into it. The demon collapsed, knocking Simon back to the floor: he landed on his backpack. There was a sound like breaking glass, but a moment later Simon was back up on his feet, Jace steadying him with a hand to the shoulder before they both turned back to the fight.
Alec was backing up, steadily letting arrow after arrow fly, sending the demons reeling back, wounded. As they struggled, Jace and Isabelle fell on them, slashing them to pieces with sword and whip. Clary followed their lead, leaping on another wounded demon, sawing away at the soft band of flesh under its mouth, her hand, coated in oily demon blood, slipping on the hilt of her dagger. The demon collapsed in on itself with a hiss, sending her crashing to the ground. The blade skittered out of her hand, and she threw herself after it, seized it up, and rolled to the side just as another demon lunged with an uncoiling of its powerful body.
It hit the space where she'd just been lying, and curled itself around, hissing, so that Clary found herself facing two open, gaping mouths. She readied her blade to let it fly, when there was a flash of silver-gold and Isabelle's whip came down, slicing the thing in half.
It fell apart in two pieces, a jumbled mess of steaming internal organs pouring out. Demons usually died and vanished before you saw much of their insides. This one was still writhing, even in two pieces, twitching forward and back. Isabelle grimaced and raised her whip again — and the twitch turned into a sudden, violent jerk as half the monster twisted backward and sank its teeth into Isabelle's leg.
Isabelle screamed, slashing down with the whip, and it released her; she fell back, her leg going out from under her. Everything began to go black. She was numbly aware of Clary rushing to her side, but all voices sounded like they were coming at her through several feet of water. She couldn't make sense of anything but the pain in her leg – except it didn't feel like it was just her leg. It was her whole body. She was gasping. Or at least she thought she was. It seemed to go on forever.
And all she could think was that she was glad she'd sent that fire message.
And then she thought nothing at all.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! CoHF. Two more monster posts coming up tomorrow! Warning for violence and heavy injury.]