Isabelle Lightwood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seveninchmotto) wrote2015-03-15 01:03 pm
seveninchmotto) wrote2015-03-15 01:03 pm
Entry tags:
The Demon Realm of Edom, Sunday, Sure
Isabelle had no idea how much time had passed. She wasn't aware of time at all, really. Consciousness ebbed back and forth and brought pain with it. Sometimes she thought she heard voices. Pleading, whispering, shouting. She couldn't make out any of it. She just wanted to sleep.
And suddenly her eyes opened. She couldn't comprehend what she was seeing, not right away. She saw Simon over her. She looked down and saw blood. Blood all over her leg, but –– it was dripping down instead of gushing out. It was flowing down from Simon's open wrist. Down his palm, over his fingers. Down onto her leg. There under the blood, new, pink skin was covering the torn mess of flesh. The skin that had been torn and shredded looked clean and pale, only a faint half-moon of neatly spaced white scars left to show where the demon's teeth had gone in. Simon's blood was still dripping slowly from his fingers, though the wound in his wrist had mostly healed. Simon looked pale, much paler than usual, and his veins were standing out blackly against his skin. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, his teeth bared —
"Simon, no!" Isabelle said, struggling to sit up against Alec, who was staring down at her with shocked blue eyes.
Clary caught Simon's wrist. "It's all right," she said, and pulled him away while Alec and Jace crowded around Isabelle. She could make sense of their words now. For a moment, anyway, before she settled down against Alec again. Exhausted. But alive.
-----
The next time, she woke up with an all too familiar scent in her nose. For a second, she thought she was back in Fandom, and she forgot all about her injury and the demon realm. But when she opened her eyes, no, she was in the cave they'd used for rest before. Someone had just wrapped Flick's hoodie around her. In fact, someone had wrapped a whole lot of other clothes and blankets around her, as well. She looked around. No one here but Simon.
"Simon." It was barely a whisper, but Simon propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. She turned onto her back and gazed up at him. "Are you all right?" he said. "Are you feverish?"
She shook her head and wiggled partway out of her cocoon of blankets. "Just warm. Who wrapped me up like a mummy?"
"Alec," Simon said. "I mean, maybe — you should stay in them."
"I'd rather not," Isabelle said, although the most of what she did was sit up and adjust her cocoon so that she felt like she could move her arms. She used that to slowly pull the hoodie on.
"You were asleep when we were talking about it, but we can't stay here," Simon said after some hesitation. "Clary put glamour runes on the entrances, but they won't hold that long, and we're running out of food. The atmosphere's making everyone sicker and weaker. And Sebastian will find us. We have to go to him — tomorrow — at the Gard."
"Okay," Isabelle replied. "Then that's what we'll do."
-----
Isabelle had to wonder how much time had passed in the outside world. She felt as if they'd been in Edom forever now, although perhaps having spent most of the previous day unconscious had something to do with it. But they were heading for the Dark Gard now. Or, Alec and Jace were checking it out while she, Clary, and Simon all stood and waited. Clary had her sketchpad and a pen out and was drawing runes. From the way she was shaking her head, tearing out the pages and crumpling them up in her hand, it wasn't going as well as she might have liked.
"Are you littering?" Jace demanded as he and Alec jogged to a stop beside the other three.
Clary gave him what was probably meant to be a withering look, but which came out fairly soppy. Jace returned it just as soppily. "Jace, this world has been burned to a cinder, and every living creature is dead," Clary said. "I'm fairly sure there's no one left to recycle."
"So what did you see?" Isabelle demanded. She hadn't been at all pleased to be left behind while Alec and Jace did recon, but Alec had insisted that she save her strength. She was listening to him more these days.
"Here." Jace pulled his stele from his pocket and knelt down, shrugging off his gear jacket. The muscles of his back moved under his shirt as he used the pointed tip of the stele to draw in the yellowish dirt. "Here's the Dark Gard. There's one way in, and that's through the gate in the outer wall. It's closed, but an Open rune should take care of that. The question is how to get to the gate. The most defensible positions are here, here, and here -" His stele made quick swipes in the dirt. "- so we go around and up the back. If the geography here is like it is in our Alicante, and it looks like it is, there's a natural pathway up the back of the hill. Once we get closer, we split here and here -" The stele made swirls and patterns as he drew, and a patch of sweat darkened between his shoulder blades. "- and we try to herd any demons or Endarkened toward the center." He sat back, worrying at his lip. "I can take out a lot of them, but I'll need you to keep them contained while I do it. Do you understand the plan?"
They all stared for a few silent moments. Then Simon pointed. "What's that wobbly thing?" he said. "Is it a tree?"
"Those are the gates," Jace said.
"Ohh," said Isabelle, pleased. "So what are the swirly bits? Is there a moat?"
"Those are trajectory lines — Honestly, am I the only person who's ever seen a strategy map?" Jace demanded, throwing his stele down and raking his hand through his blond hair. "Do you understand anything I just said?"
"No," Clary said. "Your strategy is probably awesome, but your drawing skills are terrible; all the Endarkened look like trees, and the fortress looks like a frog. There has to be a better way to explain."
Jace sank back on his heels and crossed his arms. "Well, I'd love to hear it."
"I have an idea," Simon said. "Remember how before, I was talking about Dungeons and Dragons?"
"Vividly," Jace said. "It was a dark time."
Simon ignored him. "All the Dark Shadowhunters dress in red gear," he said. "And they're not enormously bright or self-driven. Their wills seem to be subsumed, at least in part, by Sebastian's. Right?"
"Right," Isabelle said, and gave Jace a quelling look.
"In D&D, my first move, when you're dealing with an opposing army like that, would be to lure away a group of them — say five — and take their clothes."
"Is this so they have to go back to the fortress naked and their embarrassment will negatively affect morale?" said Jace. "Because that seems complicated."
"I'm pretty sure he means take their clothes and wear them as disguises," Clary said. "So that we can sneak up to the gates unobserved. If the other Endarkened aren't very perceptive, they might not notice." Jace looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. "It's in every movie, like, ever."
"We don't watch movies," said Alec.
"I think the question is whether Sebastian watches movies," said Isabelle. "Is our strategy when we actually see him still 'trust me,' by the way?"
"It's still 'trust me,' " Jace said.
"Oh, good," Isabelle said. "For a second there I was worried there was going to be an actual plan with, like, steps we could follow. You know, something reassuring."
"There is a plan." Jace slid his stele into his belt and rose fluidly to his feet. "Simon's idea for how we get into Sebastian's fortress. We're going to do it."
Simon stared at him. "Seriously?"
Jace retrieved his jacket. "It's a good idea."
"But it's my idea," Simon said.
"And it was good, so we're doing it. Congratulations. We're going up the hill the way I outlined, and then we're going to enact your plan when we get toward the top. And when we get there..." He turned to Clary. "That thing you did in the Seelie Court. The way you jumped up and drew the rune on the wall; could you do it again?"
"I don't see why not," Clary said. "Why?"
Jace began to smile.
-----
Isabelle wasn't sure she'd ever been as covered in Marks as she was right now. She glanced over, and Jace's arms looked like a map: runes spread down onto his collarbones and chest, the backs of his hands. They toiled up the hill toward the Dark Gard: the road map of their bravery and hopes, their dreams and desires, marked clearly on their bodies. Shadowhunters weren't always the most forthcoming of people, but their skins were honest.
Jace's drawing skills might have been poor, but his strategy was faultless. They were making their way upward in a sort of zigzag formation, darting from one heap of blackened stone to another. With the foliage all gone, the stone was the only cover the hill provided. The hill was mostly stripped of trees, only a few dead stumps here and there. They had met only a single Endarkened, quickly dispatched, their blood soaking into the ashy earth.
The air was heavy and hot, as if the burned-orange sun were pressing down on them. They stopped behind a high cairn. They had refilled their bottles that morning from the lake in the cave, and Alec was sharing around some water, his grim face streaked with black dust. "This is the last of it," he said, and handed it to Isabelle. She took a tiny sip and passed it to Simon, who shook his head — he didn't need water — and passed it on to Clary.
Clary took a mouthful of water and passed the thermos to Jace, who tipped his head back and swallowed. "That's it," Jace said, and dropped the now empty thermos. They all watched it roll among the rocks. No more water. "One less thing to carry," he added, trying to sound light, but his voice came out sounding as dry as the dust around them.
His lips were cracked and bleeding slightly despite his iratzes. Alec had shadows under his eyes, and a nervous twitch in his left hand. Isabelle's eyes were red with dust, and she blinked and rubbed at them when she thought no one was watching.
"These are graves," Simon said suddenly.
Jace looked up. "What?"
"These rock piles. They're graves. Old ones. People fell in battle and they buried them by covering their bodies with stones."
"Shadowhunters," Alec said. "Who else would die defending Gard Hill?"
Jace touched the stones with a leather-gloved hand, and frowned. "We burn our dead."
"Maybe not in this world," Isabelle said. "Things are different. Maybe they didn't have time. Maybe it was their last stand —"
"Stop," Simon said. He had frozen, a look of intense concentration on his face. "Someone's coming. Someone human."
"How do you know they're human?" Clary dropped her voice.
"Blood," he said succinctly. "Demon blood smells different. These are people — Nephilim, but not."
Jace made a quick, quieting gesture with his hand, and they all fell silent. He pressed his back to the cairn and peered around the side. Clary saw his jaw tighten. "Endarkened," he said in a low voice. "Five of them."
"Perfect number," said Alec with a surprisingly wolfish grin. His bow was in his hands, and he stepped sideways, out of the shelter of the rocks, and let his arrow fly.
Jace looked surprised for a second, but then caught hold of one of the rocks of the cairn and flung himself up and over. Isabelle sprang after him like a cat, and Simon followed, fast and unerring, his hands bare. It was as if this world had been made for those who were already dead, and then there was a long gurgling cry, cut abruptly short. Four Shadowhunters dressed in red were looking around in shock and surprise. One of their company, a blond woman, was sprawled on the ground, her body pointing uphill, an arrow protruding from her throat.
Alec notched his bow again and sent another arrow flying. A second man, dark-haired and paunchy, staggered back with a yell, the arrow in his leg; Isabelle was on him in an instant, her whip slicing across his throat. (He's not human anymore, she told herself.) As the man went down, Jace leaped and rode his body to the ground, using the force of the fall to hurl his own body forward. His blades flashed with a scissoring motion, slicing the head off a bald man whose red gear was splotched with patches of dried blood. More blood fountained, drenching the scarlet gear with another layer of red as the headless corpse slid to the ground. There was a shriek, and the woman who had been standing behind him lifted a curved blade to slice at Jace; Clary whipped her dagger forward and let it fly. It buried itself in the woman's forehead and she folded silently to the ground without another cry.
The last of the Endarkened began to run, stumbling uphill. Simon flashed past them, a movement too swift to see, and sprang like a cat. The Endarkened man went down with a gasp of terror, and Simon reared up over him and strike like a snake. There was a sound like tearing paper.
They all looked away. After a few long moments Simon rose from the still body and came down the hill toward them. There was blood on his shirt, and blood on his hands and face. He turned his face to the side, coughed, and spat, looking sick.
"Bitter," he said. "The blood. It tastes like Sebastian's."
Isabelle looked ill, in a way she hadn't when she'd been cutting the Dark Shadowhunter's throat. "I hate him," she said suddenly. "Sebastian. What he's done to them, it's worse than murder. They're not even people anymore. When they die, they can't be buried in the Silent City. And no one will mourn for them. They've already been mourned for. If I loved someone and they were Turned like this — I'd be happy if they were dead."
She was breathing hard; no one said anything. Finally Jace looked up at the sky, gold eyes gleaming in his dirt-smudged face. "We'd better get moving — the sun's going down, and besides, someone might have heard us." They stripped the gear from the bodies, silently and quickly. There was something sickening about the work, something that hadn't seemed quite so horrible when Simon had described the strategy but that now seemed very horrible. There was something grim and butcher-like about stripping the clothes from the dead bodies of Shadowhunters, even those Marked with the runes of death and Hell.
Isabelle did the best she could not to look at any of their faces. She was lucky, and ended up with a set of red gear that actually fit her, although it was spotted with drying blood. The same with Jace. Clary had to shorten the sleeves and hems on hers with a knife, while Simon's gear was too tight and Alec's too bulky.
They hid the bodies behind the rock cairn and started their way back up the hill. Jace had been right, the sun was going down, bathing the realm in the colors of fire and blood. They fell into step with one another as they drew closer and closer to the great silhouette of the Dark Gard. The upward slope suddenly leveled out, and they were there, on a plateau in front of the fortress. It was like looking at one photo negative overlapping another. Isabelle remembered the Gard as it was in her world, the hill covered in trees and greenery, the gardens surrounding the keep, the glow of witchlight illuminating the whole place. The sun shining down on it during the day, and the stars at night. Here the top of the hill was barren and swept with wind cold enough to cut through the material of Isabelle's stolen jacket. The horizon was a red line like a slit throat. Everything was bathed in that bloody light, from the crowd of Endarkened who milled around the plateau, to the Dark Gard itself. Now that they were close, they could see the wall that surrounded it, and the sturdy gates.
"You'd better pull your hood up," Jace said from behind Clary, taking hold of the item in question and drawing it up and over her head. "Your hair's recognizable."
"To the Endarkened?" said Simon.
"To Sebastian," said Jace shortly, and drew his own hood up. They had taken their weapons out: Isabelle's whip gleamed in the red light, and Alec's bow was in his hands. Jace was looking toward the Dark Gard. "We go to the gates," he said, and moved forward.
The dirt here was different. Unlike the rest of the sand of the desert world, it had been churned by the passage of feet. A red-clad warrior passed them then, a brown-skinned man, tall and muscular. He paid no attention to them. He appeared to be walking a beat, as were several of the rest of the Endarkened, a sort of assigned path back and forth. A white woman with graying hair was a few feet behind him. They passed on by.
The Gard was looming up in front of them now, the gates massive and made of iron. They were carved with a pattern of a hand holding a weapon — an orb-tipped skeptron. It was clear the gates had been subjected to years of desecration. Their surfaces were chipped and scarred, splashed here and there with ichor and what looked disturbingly like dried human blood.
Clary stepped up to place her stele against the gates, clearly ready with an Open rune already in her head — but the gates swung wide at her touch. She cast a surprised look back at the others. Jace was chewing his lip; she raised a questioning eyebrow at him, but he only shrugged, as if to say: We go forward. What else can we do?
They went. Past the gates was a bridge over a narrow ravine. Darkness roiled at the bottom of the chasm, thicker than fog or smoke. Isabelle crossed first, with her whip, and Alec took up the rear, facing behind them with his bow and arrow. Isabelle did not look down. Her whip lit the darkness so that when they arrived at the front doors of the keep, Jace was able to find the latch easily, and to swing the door open.
It opened on darkness. They all looked at one another, a brief paralysis none of them could break.
Clary stepped forward, into the darkness; the others followed, and then they were over the threshold, and light was all around them, blinding in its suddenness. There was a cold rush of air as the door slammed shut behind them. Isabelle raised her eyes. They were standing in an enormous entryway, the size of the inside of the Accords Hall. A massive double spiral stone staircase led upward, twisting and winding, two sets of stairs that interwove with each other but never met. Each was lined on either side by a stone balustrade, and Sebastian was leaning against one of the near balustrades, smiling down at them.
It was a positively feral smile: delighted and anticipatory. He wore spotless scarlet gear, and his hair shone like iron. He shook his head. "Clary, Clary," he said. "I really thought you were much smarter than this."
Clary cleared her throat. "Smarter than what?" she said, and looked like she wanted to wince at the echo of her own voice, bouncing off the bare stone walls. There were no tapestries, no paintings, nothing to soften the harshness. "We are here," she said. "Inside your fortress. There are five of us, and one of you."
"Oh, right," he said. "Am I supposed to look surprised?" He twisted his face up into a mocking grimace of false astonishment that made rage boil up inside Isabelle. "Who could believe it?" he said mockingly. "I mean, never mind that obviously I found out from the Queen that you'd come here, but since you've arrived, you've set an enormous fire, tried to steal a demon-protected artifact — I mean you've done everything other than put up an enormous flashing arrow pointing directly to your location." He sighed. "I've always known most of you were terribly stupid. Even Jace, well, you're pretty but not too bright, are you? Maybe if Valentine had had a few more years with you — but no, probably not even then. The Herondales have always been a family more prized for their jawlines than their intelligence. As for the Lightwoods, the less said the better. Generations of idiots. But Clary —"
"You forgot me," Simon said.
Sebastian dragged his gaze over to Simon, as if he were distasteful. "You do keep turning up like a bad penny," he said. "Tedious little vampire. I killed the one who made you, did you know that? I thought vampires were supposed to feel that sort of thing, but you seem indifferent. Terribly callous."
"Raphael," Simon whispered; beside him Alec had paled markedly.
"What about the others?" he demanded in a rough voice. "Magnus — Luke —"
"Our mother," Clary said. "Surely even you wouldn't hurt her."
Sebastian's smirk turned brittle. "She's not my mother," he said, and then shrugged with a sort of exaggerated exasperation. "She's alive," he said. "As for the warlock and the werewolf, I couldn't say. I haven't checked on them in a while. The warlock wasn't looking so well the last time I saw him," he added. "I don't think this dimension's been good for him. He might be dead by now. But you really can't expect me to have foreseen that."
Alec lifted his bow in a single swift motion. "Foresee this," he said, and let an arrow fly.
It shot straight toward Sebastian — who moved like lightning, plucking the arrow out of the air, fingers closing around it as it vibrated in his grasp. Isabelle gasped. Sebastian pointed the sharp end of the arrow toward Alec as if he were a teacher wielding a ruler, and made a clucking noise of disapproval. "Naughty," he said. "Try to harm me here in my own stronghold, will you, at the heart of my power? As I said, you're a fool. You all are fools." He made a sudden gesture, a twist of the wrist, and the arrow snapped, the sound like a gunshot.
The double doors at both ends of the entryway flew open, and demons poured in.
Isabelle had expected it, had braced herself, but there was no real bracing oneself for something like this. She had seen demons, quantities of them, and yet as the flood poured in from both sides—spider-creatures with fat, poisonous bodies; skinless humanoid monsters dripping blood; things with talons and teeth and claws, massive praying mantises with jaws that dropped open as if unhinged—her skin felt as if it wanted to crawl away from her body.
But Clary gazed up at her brother.
He raised his hand; snapped his fingers. "Stop," he said.
The demons froze, midmotion, on either side of then.
"My sister," Sebastian said. "Don't hurt her. Bring her to me here. Kill the others." He narrowed his eyes at Jace. "If you can."
The demons surged forward. Isabelle's Sensor pulsed wildly. They turned to hold the demons off. Clary sprang into action, to draw a rune, and while Isabelle didn't know what her plan was there, she would make damn sure nothing got in the way of it. She sliced a Ravener clean in hald.
And Clary opened a portal, and Jace hurtled by her and threw himself into it. Sebastian was screaming in an unfamiliar language. Simon grabbed Clary and dragged her back, just as the Portal swelled with a sudden, incredible light and Jace came through it.
Never had Jace looked so much like an avenging angel, hurtling through cloud and fire. His bright hair seemed to burn as he landed lightly and raised the weapon he was holding in his hand. It was Jonathan Shadowhunter's skeptron. The orb at the center was shining. Through the Portal behind Jace, just before it closed, Isabelle saw the dark shapes of flying demons, heard their shrieks of disappointment and rage as they arrived to find the weapon gone and the thief nowhere to be seen.
As Jace raised the skeptron, the demons around them began to scuttle backward. Sebastian was leaning over the balustrade, his hands clenched on it, dead white. He was staring at Jace. "Jonathan," he said, and his voice rose and carried. "Jonathan, I forbid —"
Jace thrust the skeptron skyward, and the orb burst into flame. It was a brilliant, contained, icy flame, more light than heat, but a piercing light that shot through the whole room, limning everything in brilliance. The demons turned to flaming silhouettes before they shuddered and exploded into ash. The ones closest to Jace crumbled first, but the light ran through all of them like a fissure opening in the earth, and one by one they shrieked and dissolved, leaving a thick layer of gray-black ash on the floor.
The light intensified, burning brighter until Isabelle closed her eyes, still seeing the burst of last brilliance through them eyelids. When she opened them again, the entryway was almost empty. Only she and her companions remained. The demons were gone — and Sebastian was there, still, standing pale and shocked on the stairway.
"No," he ground out through clenched teeth.
Jace was still standing with the skeptron in his hand; the orb had turned black and dead, like a lightbulb that had burned out. He looked up at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling fast. "You thought we didn't know you were expecting us," he said. "But we were counting on it." He took a step forward. "I know you," he said, still breathlessly, his hair wild and his golden eyes blazing. "You took me over, took control of me, forced me to do whatever you wanted, but I learned from you. You were in my head, and I remember. I remember how you think, how you plan. I remember all of it. I knew you'd underestimate us, think we didn't guess it was a trap, think we wouldn't have planned for that. You forget I know you; down to the last corner of your arrogant little mind I know you —"
"Shut up," Sebastian hissed. He pointed at them with a shaking hand. "You will pay in blood for this," he said, and then he turned and ran up the steps, vanishing so quickly that even Alec's arrow, winging after him, couldn't catch him up. It hit the curve of the staircase instead and snapped on impact with the stone, then fell to the ground in two neat pieces.
"Jace," Clary said. She touched his arm. He seemed frozen in place. "Jace, when he says we'll pay in blood, he doesn't mean our blood. He means theirs. Luke and Magnus and Mom. We have to go find them."
"I agree." Alec had lowered his bow; his red gear jacket had been torn from him in the fight, and the bracer on his arm was stained with blood. "Each staircase leads to a different level. We're going to have to split up. Jace, Clary, you take the east staircase; the rest of us will take the other."
No one protested. If they had to separate, this was the only way to do it.
"Jace," Alec said, again, and this time the word seemed to snap Jace out of his fugue state. He tossed the dead skeptron aside, let it clatter to the ground, and looked up with a nod.
"Right," he said, and the door behind them burst open. Dark Shadowhunters in red gear began to pour into the room. Jace seized Clary's wrist and they ran, Isabelle and the others pounding along beside them until they reached the stairway and broke apart.
-----
Of course, they couldn't keep it to just the one split. They found Magnus and Luke in a cell, but the former was in no condition to run with them. Alec stayed back with him, despite Isabelle's protests. "Please, Iz, you'd do the same if it was him," that was all it took. She left him behind even though it hurt.
They found Jocelyn in a different cell, not too far away.
And then the entire place began to shake. Isabelle and Simon lost Luke and Jocelyn in one of the other corridors as a wall had split apart, shedding mortarless rocks like scales. Everything since then was a mad dash, dodging splintering wood and falling stones, and now chasms opening up in the ground. Isabelle shrieked as the ground opened up behind her; she threw herself forward just in time to avoid toppling into the chasm that was splitting the corridor apart. "Isabelle!" Simon shouted, and reached to catch her by the shoulders. He forgot, sometimes, the strength that his vampire blood flooded through his body. He wrenched Isabelle up with such force that they both toppled backward and Isabelle landed on top of him.
Isabelle sprang to her feet, pulling him up after.
"Don't," Isabelle said, breathless. Her dark hair was full of dust, her face bloody where flying rock had cut her skin.
"Don't what?" The ground heaved, and Simon half-ducked, half-fell forward into another corridor. It somehow seemed the fortress was herding them. There seemed a purpose to its dissolution, as if it were directing them somehow...
"Don't give up," she gasped, flinging herself against a set of doors as the corridor behind them began to crumble; the doors swung open, and she and Simon tumbled into the next room.
Isabelle sucked in a gasp, quickly cut off as the doors slammed behind them, shutting away the explosive noise of the keep. The ground under theur feet was steady and the walls weren't moving. But any relief they might have fel vanished when they saw where they were. They were in an enormous room, semicircular in shape, with a raised platform at the curved end half cast in shadow. The walls were lined with Endarkened warriors in red gear, like a row of scarlet teeth. The room stank like pitch and fire, sulfur and the unmistakable taint of demon blood. The body of a bloated demon lay sprawled against one wall, and near it was another body.
Jace.
Within a circle of glowing runes etched on the floor stood Sebastian. He grinned as Isabelle gave a cry, ran to Jace, and dropped down by his side. She put her fingers to his throat. She held her breath until she felt his pulse under her fingertip.s
"He's alive," Sebastian said, sounding bored. "Queen's orders."
Isabelle looked up. Some of the strands of her dark hair were stuck to her face with blood. "The Seelie Queen? When has she ever cared about Jace?"
Sebastian laughed. He seemed to be in an enormously good mood. "Not the Seelie Queen," he said. "The queen of this realm. You may know her."
With a flourish he gestured toward the platform at the far end of the room. Isabelle saw now that on it were two thrones, of ivory bone and melted gold, and on the right-hand throne sat Clary. Her red hair was incredibly vivid against the white and gold, like a banner of fire. Her face was pale and still, expressionless.
Simon took an involuntary step forward — and was immediately blocked by a dozen Endarkened warriors, Amatis at their center. She carried a massive spear and wore an expression of frightening venom. "Stop where you are, vampire," she said. "You will not approach the lady of this realm."
Simon staggered back. Isabelle was staring incredulously from Clary, to Sebastian, to him. "Clary!" he called; she didn't flinch or move, but Sebastian's face darkened like a thunderstorm.
"You will not say my sister's name," he hissed. "You thought she belonged to you; she belongs to me now, and I will not share."
"You're insane," Simon said.
"And you're dead," Sebastian said. "Does any of it matter now?" His eyes raked up and down Simon. "Dear sister," he said, pitching his voice loudly enough for the whole room to hear it. "Are you absolutely sure you want to keep this one intact?"
Before she could answer, the entryway to the room burst open and Magnus and Alec spilled in, followed by Luke and Jocelyn. The doors slammed behind them, and Sebastian clapped his hands together. One hand was bloody, and a drop of blood fell at his feet, and sizzled where it hit the glowing runes, like water sizzling on a hot skillet.
"Now everyone's here," he declared, his voice delighted. "It's a party!"
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! From City of Heavenly Fire. Warning for bloody stuff and violence.]
And suddenly her eyes opened. She couldn't comprehend what she was seeing, not right away. She saw Simon over her. She looked down and saw blood. Blood all over her leg, but –– it was dripping down instead of gushing out. It was flowing down from Simon's open wrist. Down his palm, over his fingers. Down onto her leg. There under the blood, new, pink skin was covering the torn mess of flesh. The skin that had been torn and shredded looked clean and pale, only a faint half-moon of neatly spaced white scars left to show where the demon's teeth had gone in. Simon's blood was still dripping slowly from his fingers, though the wound in his wrist had mostly healed. Simon looked pale, much paler than usual, and his veins were standing out blackly against his skin. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, his teeth bared —
"Simon, no!" Isabelle said, struggling to sit up against Alec, who was staring down at her with shocked blue eyes.
Clary caught Simon's wrist. "It's all right," she said, and pulled him away while Alec and Jace crowded around Isabelle. She could make sense of their words now. For a moment, anyway, before she settled down against Alec again. Exhausted. But alive.
The next time, she woke up with an all too familiar scent in her nose. For a second, she thought she was back in Fandom, and she forgot all about her injury and the demon realm. But when she opened her eyes, no, she was in the cave they'd used for rest before. Someone had just wrapped Flick's hoodie around her. In fact, someone had wrapped a whole lot of other clothes and blankets around her, as well. She looked around. No one here but Simon.
"Simon." It was barely a whisper, but Simon propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. She turned onto her back and gazed up at him. "Are you all right?" he said. "Are you feverish?"
She shook her head and wiggled partway out of her cocoon of blankets. "Just warm. Who wrapped me up like a mummy?"
"Alec," Simon said. "I mean, maybe — you should stay in them."
"I'd rather not," Isabelle said, although the most of what she did was sit up and adjust her cocoon so that she felt like she could move her arms. She used that to slowly pull the hoodie on.
"You were asleep when we were talking about it, but we can't stay here," Simon said after some hesitation. "Clary put glamour runes on the entrances, but they won't hold that long, and we're running out of food. The atmosphere's making everyone sicker and weaker. And Sebastian will find us. We have to go to him — tomorrow — at the Gard."
"Okay," Isabelle replied. "Then that's what we'll do."
Isabelle had to wonder how much time had passed in the outside world. She felt as if they'd been in Edom forever now, although perhaps having spent most of the previous day unconscious had something to do with it. But they were heading for the Dark Gard now. Or, Alec and Jace were checking it out while she, Clary, and Simon all stood and waited. Clary had her sketchpad and a pen out and was drawing runes. From the way she was shaking her head, tearing out the pages and crumpling them up in her hand, it wasn't going as well as she might have liked.
"Are you littering?" Jace demanded as he and Alec jogged to a stop beside the other three.
Clary gave him what was probably meant to be a withering look, but which came out fairly soppy. Jace returned it just as soppily. "Jace, this world has been burned to a cinder, and every living creature is dead," Clary said. "I'm fairly sure there's no one left to recycle."
"So what did you see?" Isabelle demanded. She hadn't been at all pleased to be left behind while Alec and Jace did recon, but Alec had insisted that she save her strength. She was listening to him more these days.
"Here." Jace pulled his stele from his pocket and knelt down, shrugging off his gear jacket. The muscles of his back moved under his shirt as he used the pointed tip of the stele to draw in the yellowish dirt. "Here's the Dark Gard. There's one way in, and that's through the gate in the outer wall. It's closed, but an Open rune should take care of that. The question is how to get to the gate. The most defensible positions are here, here, and here -" His stele made quick swipes in the dirt. "- so we go around and up the back. If the geography here is like it is in our Alicante, and it looks like it is, there's a natural pathway up the back of the hill. Once we get closer, we split here and here -" The stele made swirls and patterns as he drew, and a patch of sweat darkened between his shoulder blades. "- and we try to herd any demons or Endarkened toward the center." He sat back, worrying at his lip. "I can take out a lot of them, but I'll need you to keep them contained while I do it. Do you understand the plan?"
They all stared for a few silent moments. Then Simon pointed. "What's that wobbly thing?" he said. "Is it a tree?"
"Those are the gates," Jace said.
"Ohh," said Isabelle, pleased. "So what are the swirly bits? Is there a moat?"
"Those are trajectory lines — Honestly, am I the only person who's ever seen a strategy map?" Jace demanded, throwing his stele down and raking his hand through his blond hair. "Do you understand anything I just said?"
"No," Clary said. "Your strategy is probably awesome, but your drawing skills are terrible; all the Endarkened look like trees, and the fortress looks like a frog. There has to be a better way to explain."
Jace sank back on his heels and crossed his arms. "Well, I'd love to hear it."
"I have an idea," Simon said. "Remember how before, I was talking about Dungeons and Dragons?"
"Vividly," Jace said. "It was a dark time."
Simon ignored him. "All the Dark Shadowhunters dress in red gear," he said. "And they're not enormously bright or self-driven. Their wills seem to be subsumed, at least in part, by Sebastian's. Right?"
"Right," Isabelle said, and gave Jace a quelling look.
"In D&D, my first move, when you're dealing with an opposing army like that, would be to lure away a group of them — say five — and take their clothes."
"Is this so they have to go back to the fortress naked and their embarrassment will negatively affect morale?" said Jace. "Because that seems complicated."
"I'm pretty sure he means take their clothes and wear them as disguises," Clary said. "So that we can sneak up to the gates unobserved. If the other Endarkened aren't very perceptive, they might not notice." Jace looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. "It's in every movie, like, ever."
"We don't watch movies," said Alec.
"I think the question is whether Sebastian watches movies," said Isabelle. "Is our strategy when we actually see him still 'trust me,' by the way?"
"It's still 'trust me,' " Jace said.
"Oh, good," Isabelle said. "For a second there I was worried there was going to be an actual plan with, like, steps we could follow. You know, something reassuring."
"There is a plan." Jace slid his stele into his belt and rose fluidly to his feet. "Simon's idea for how we get into Sebastian's fortress. We're going to do it."
Simon stared at him. "Seriously?"
Jace retrieved his jacket. "It's a good idea."
"But it's my idea," Simon said.
"And it was good, so we're doing it. Congratulations. We're going up the hill the way I outlined, and then we're going to enact your plan when we get toward the top. And when we get there..." He turned to Clary. "That thing you did in the Seelie Court. The way you jumped up and drew the rune on the wall; could you do it again?"
"I don't see why not," Clary said. "Why?"
Jace began to smile.
Isabelle wasn't sure she'd ever been as covered in Marks as she was right now. She glanced over, and Jace's arms looked like a map: runes spread down onto his collarbones and chest, the backs of his hands. They toiled up the hill toward the Dark Gard: the road map of their bravery and hopes, their dreams and desires, marked clearly on their bodies. Shadowhunters weren't always the most forthcoming of people, but their skins were honest.
Jace's drawing skills might have been poor, but his strategy was faultless. They were making their way upward in a sort of zigzag formation, darting from one heap of blackened stone to another. With the foliage all gone, the stone was the only cover the hill provided. The hill was mostly stripped of trees, only a few dead stumps here and there. They had met only a single Endarkened, quickly dispatched, their blood soaking into the ashy earth.
The air was heavy and hot, as if the burned-orange sun were pressing down on them. They stopped behind a high cairn. They had refilled their bottles that morning from the lake in the cave, and Alec was sharing around some water, his grim face streaked with black dust. "This is the last of it," he said, and handed it to Isabelle. She took a tiny sip and passed it to Simon, who shook his head — he didn't need water — and passed it on to Clary.
Clary took a mouthful of water and passed the thermos to Jace, who tipped his head back and swallowed. "That's it," Jace said, and dropped the now empty thermos. They all watched it roll among the rocks. No more water. "One less thing to carry," he added, trying to sound light, but his voice came out sounding as dry as the dust around them.
His lips were cracked and bleeding slightly despite his iratzes. Alec had shadows under his eyes, and a nervous twitch in his left hand. Isabelle's eyes were red with dust, and she blinked and rubbed at them when she thought no one was watching.
"These are graves," Simon said suddenly.
Jace looked up. "What?"
"These rock piles. They're graves. Old ones. People fell in battle and they buried them by covering their bodies with stones."
"Shadowhunters," Alec said. "Who else would die defending Gard Hill?"
Jace touched the stones with a leather-gloved hand, and frowned. "We burn our dead."
"Maybe not in this world," Isabelle said. "Things are different. Maybe they didn't have time. Maybe it was their last stand —"
"Stop," Simon said. He had frozen, a look of intense concentration on his face. "Someone's coming. Someone human."
"How do you know they're human?" Clary dropped her voice.
"Blood," he said succinctly. "Demon blood smells different. These are people — Nephilim, but not."
Jace made a quick, quieting gesture with his hand, and they all fell silent. He pressed his back to the cairn and peered around the side. Clary saw his jaw tighten. "Endarkened," he said in a low voice. "Five of them."
"Perfect number," said Alec with a surprisingly wolfish grin. His bow was in his hands, and he stepped sideways, out of the shelter of the rocks, and let his arrow fly.
Jace looked surprised for a second, but then caught hold of one of the rocks of the cairn and flung himself up and over. Isabelle sprang after him like a cat, and Simon followed, fast and unerring, his hands bare. It was as if this world had been made for those who were already dead, and then there was a long gurgling cry, cut abruptly short. Four Shadowhunters dressed in red were looking around in shock and surprise. One of their company, a blond woman, was sprawled on the ground, her body pointing uphill, an arrow protruding from her throat.
Alec notched his bow again and sent another arrow flying. A second man, dark-haired and paunchy, staggered back with a yell, the arrow in his leg; Isabelle was on him in an instant, her whip slicing across his throat. (He's not human anymore, she told herself.) As the man went down, Jace leaped and rode his body to the ground, using the force of the fall to hurl his own body forward. His blades flashed with a scissoring motion, slicing the head off a bald man whose red gear was splotched with patches of dried blood. More blood fountained, drenching the scarlet gear with another layer of red as the headless corpse slid to the ground. There was a shriek, and the woman who had been standing behind him lifted a curved blade to slice at Jace; Clary whipped her dagger forward and let it fly. It buried itself in the woman's forehead and she folded silently to the ground without another cry.
The last of the Endarkened began to run, stumbling uphill. Simon flashed past them, a movement too swift to see, and sprang like a cat. The Endarkened man went down with a gasp of terror, and Simon reared up over him and strike like a snake. There was a sound like tearing paper.
They all looked away. After a few long moments Simon rose from the still body and came down the hill toward them. There was blood on his shirt, and blood on his hands and face. He turned his face to the side, coughed, and spat, looking sick.
"Bitter," he said. "The blood. It tastes like Sebastian's."
Isabelle looked ill, in a way she hadn't when she'd been cutting the Dark Shadowhunter's throat. "I hate him," she said suddenly. "Sebastian. What he's done to them, it's worse than murder. They're not even people anymore. When they die, they can't be buried in the Silent City. And no one will mourn for them. They've already been mourned for. If I loved someone and they were Turned like this — I'd be happy if they were dead."
She was breathing hard; no one said anything. Finally Jace looked up at the sky, gold eyes gleaming in his dirt-smudged face. "We'd better get moving — the sun's going down, and besides, someone might have heard us." They stripped the gear from the bodies, silently and quickly. There was something sickening about the work, something that hadn't seemed quite so horrible when Simon had described the strategy but that now seemed very horrible. There was something grim and butcher-like about stripping the clothes from the dead bodies of Shadowhunters, even those Marked with the runes of death and Hell.
Isabelle did the best she could not to look at any of their faces. She was lucky, and ended up with a set of red gear that actually fit her, although it was spotted with drying blood. The same with Jace. Clary had to shorten the sleeves and hems on hers with a knife, while Simon's gear was too tight and Alec's too bulky.
They hid the bodies behind the rock cairn and started their way back up the hill. Jace had been right, the sun was going down, bathing the realm in the colors of fire and blood. They fell into step with one another as they drew closer and closer to the great silhouette of the Dark Gard. The upward slope suddenly leveled out, and they were there, on a plateau in front of the fortress. It was like looking at one photo negative overlapping another. Isabelle remembered the Gard as it was in her world, the hill covered in trees and greenery, the gardens surrounding the keep, the glow of witchlight illuminating the whole place. The sun shining down on it during the day, and the stars at night. Here the top of the hill was barren and swept with wind cold enough to cut through the material of Isabelle's stolen jacket. The horizon was a red line like a slit throat. Everything was bathed in that bloody light, from the crowd of Endarkened who milled around the plateau, to the Dark Gard itself. Now that they were close, they could see the wall that surrounded it, and the sturdy gates.
"You'd better pull your hood up," Jace said from behind Clary, taking hold of the item in question and drawing it up and over her head. "Your hair's recognizable."
"To the Endarkened?" said Simon.
"To Sebastian," said Jace shortly, and drew his own hood up. They had taken their weapons out: Isabelle's whip gleamed in the red light, and Alec's bow was in his hands. Jace was looking toward the Dark Gard. "We go to the gates," he said, and moved forward.
The dirt here was different. Unlike the rest of the sand of the desert world, it had been churned by the passage of feet. A red-clad warrior passed them then, a brown-skinned man, tall and muscular. He paid no attention to them. He appeared to be walking a beat, as were several of the rest of the Endarkened, a sort of assigned path back and forth. A white woman with graying hair was a few feet behind him. They passed on by.
The Gard was looming up in front of them now, the gates massive and made of iron. They were carved with a pattern of a hand holding a weapon — an orb-tipped skeptron. It was clear the gates had been subjected to years of desecration. Their surfaces were chipped and scarred, splashed here and there with ichor and what looked disturbingly like dried human blood.
Clary stepped up to place her stele against the gates, clearly ready with an Open rune already in her head — but the gates swung wide at her touch. She cast a surprised look back at the others. Jace was chewing his lip; she raised a questioning eyebrow at him, but he only shrugged, as if to say: We go forward. What else can we do?
They went. Past the gates was a bridge over a narrow ravine. Darkness roiled at the bottom of the chasm, thicker than fog or smoke. Isabelle crossed first, with her whip, and Alec took up the rear, facing behind them with his bow and arrow. Isabelle did not look down. Her whip lit the darkness so that when they arrived at the front doors of the keep, Jace was able to find the latch easily, and to swing the door open.
It opened on darkness. They all looked at one another, a brief paralysis none of them could break.
Clary stepped forward, into the darkness; the others followed, and then they were over the threshold, and light was all around them, blinding in its suddenness. There was a cold rush of air as the door slammed shut behind them. Isabelle raised her eyes. They were standing in an enormous entryway, the size of the inside of the Accords Hall. A massive double spiral stone staircase led upward, twisting and winding, two sets of stairs that interwove with each other but never met. Each was lined on either side by a stone balustrade, and Sebastian was leaning against one of the near balustrades, smiling down at them.
It was a positively feral smile: delighted and anticipatory. He wore spotless scarlet gear, and his hair shone like iron. He shook his head. "Clary, Clary," he said. "I really thought you were much smarter than this."
Clary cleared her throat. "Smarter than what?" she said, and looked like she wanted to wince at the echo of her own voice, bouncing off the bare stone walls. There were no tapestries, no paintings, nothing to soften the harshness. "We are here," she said. "Inside your fortress. There are five of us, and one of you."
"Oh, right," he said. "Am I supposed to look surprised?" He twisted his face up into a mocking grimace of false astonishment that made rage boil up inside Isabelle. "Who could believe it?" he said mockingly. "I mean, never mind that obviously I found out from the Queen that you'd come here, but since you've arrived, you've set an enormous fire, tried to steal a demon-protected artifact — I mean you've done everything other than put up an enormous flashing arrow pointing directly to your location." He sighed. "I've always known most of you were terribly stupid. Even Jace, well, you're pretty but not too bright, are you? Maybe if Valentine had had a few more years with you — but no, probably not even then. The Herondales have always been a family more prized for their jawlines than their intelligence. As for the Lightwoods, the less said the better. Generations of idiots. But Clary —"
"You forgot me," Simon said.
Sebastian dragged his gaze over to Simon, as if he were distasteful. "You do keep turning up like a bad penny," he said. "Tedious little vampire. I killed the one who made you, did you know that? I thought vampires were supposed to feel that sort of thing, but you seem indifferent. Terribly callous."
"Raphael," Simon whispered; beside him Alec had paled markedly.
"What about the others?" he demanded in a rough voice. "Magnus — Luke —"
"Our mother," Clary said. "Surely even you wouldn't hurt her."
Sebastian's smirk turned brittle. "She's not my mother," he said, and then shrugged with a sort of exaggerated exasperation. "She's alive," he said. "As for the warlock and the werewolf, I couldn't say. I haven't checked on them in a while. The warlock wasn't looking so well the last time I saw him," he added. "I don't think this dimension's been good for him. He might be dead by now. But you really can't expect me to have foreseen that."
Alec lifted his bow in a single swift motion. "Foresee this," he said, and let an arrow fly.
It shot straight toward Sebastian — who moved like lightning, plucking the arrow out of the air, fingers closing around it as it vibrated in his grasp. Isabelle gasped. Sebastian pointed the sharp end of the arrow toward Alec as if he were a teacher wielding a ruler, and made a clucking noise of disapproval. "Naughty," he said. "Try to harm me here in my own stronghold, will you, at the heart of my power? As I said, you're a fool. You all are fools." He made a sudden gesture, a twist of the wrist, and the arrow snapped, the sound like a gunshot.
The double doors at both ends of the entryway flew open, and demons poured in.
Isabelle had expected it, had braced herself, but there was no real bracing oneself for something like this. She had seen demons, quantities of them, and yet as the flood poured in from both sides—spider-creatures with fat, poisonous bodies; skinless humanoid monsters dripping blood; things with talons and teeth and claws, massive praying mantises with jaws that dropped open as if unhinged—her skin felt as if it wanted to crawl away from her body.
But Clary gazed up at her brother.
He raised his hand; snapped his fingers. "Stop," he said.
The demons froze, midmotion, on either side of then.
"My sister," Sebastian said. "Don't hurt her. Bring her to me here. Kill the others." He narrowed his eyes at Jace. "If you can."
The demons surged forward. Isabelle's Sensor pulsed wildly. They turned to hold the demons off. Clary sprang into action, to draw a rune, and while Isabelle didn't know what her plan was there, she would make damn sure nothing got in the way of it. She sliced a Ravener clean in hald.
And Clary opened a portal, and Jace hurtled by her and threw himself into it. Sebastian was screaming in an unfamiliar language. Simon grabbed Clary and dragged her back, just as the Portal swelled with a sudden, incredible light and Jace came through it.
Never had Jace looked so much like an avenging angel, hurtling through cloud and fire. His bright hair seemed to burn as he landed lightly and raised the weapon he was holding in his hand. It was Jonathan Shadowhunter's skeptron. The orb at the center was shining. Through the Portal behind Jace, just before it closed, Isabelle saw the dark shapes of flying demons, heard their shrieks of disappointment and rage as they arrived to find the weapon gone and the thief nowhere to be seen.
As Jace raised the skeptron, the demons around them began to scuttle backward. Sebastian was leaning over the balustrade, his hands clenched on it, dead white. He was staring at Jace. "Jonathan," he said, and his voice rose and carried. "Jonathan, I forbid —"
Jace thrust the skeptron skyward, and the orb burst into flame. It was a brilliant, contained, icy flame, more light than heat, but a piercing light that shot through the whole room, limning everything in brilliance. The demons turned to flaming silhouettes before they shuddered and exploded into ash. The ones closest to Jace crumbled first, but the light ran through all of them like a fissure opening in the earth, and one by one they shrieked and dissolved, leaving a thick layer of gray-black ash on the floor.
The light intensified, burning brighter until Isabelle closed her eyes, still seeing the burst of last brilliance through them eyelids. When she opened them again, the entryway was almost empty. Only she and her companions remained. The demons were gone — and Sebastian was there, still, standing pale and shocked on the stairway.
"No," he ground out through clenched teeth.
Jace was still standing with the skeptron in his hand; the orb had turned black and dead, like a lightbulb that had burned out. He looked up at Sebastian, his chest rising and falling fast. "You thought we didn't know you were expecting us," he said. "But we were counting on it." He took a step forward. "I know you," he said, still breathlessly, his hair wild and his golden eyes blazing. "You took me over, took control of me, forced me to do whatever you wanted, but I learned from you. You were in my head, and I remember. I remember how you think, how you plan. I remember all of it. I knew you'd underestimate us, think we didn't guess it was a trap, think we wouldn't have planned for that. You forget I know you; down to the last corner of your arrogant little mind I know you —"
"Shut up," Sebastian hissed. He pointed at them with a shaking hand. "You will pay in blood for this," he said, and then he turned and ran up the steps, vanishing so quickly that even Alec's arrow, winging after him, couldn't catch him up. It hit the curve of the staircase instead and snapped on impact with the stone, then fell to the ground in two neat pieces.
"Jace," Clary said. She touched his arm. He seemed frozen in place. "Jace, when he says we'll pay in blood, he doesn't mean our blood. He means theirs. Luke and Magnus and Mom. We have to go find them."
"I agree." Alec had lowered his bow; his red gear jacket had been torn from him in the fight, and the bracer on his arm was stained with blood. "Each staircase leads to a different level. We're going to have to split up. Jace, Clary, you take the east staircase; the rest of us will take the other."
No one protested. If they had to separate, this was the only way to do it.
"Jace," Alec said, again, and this time the word seemed to snap Jace out of his fugue state. He tossed the dead skeptron aside, let it clatter to the ground, and looked up with a nod.
"Right," he said, and the door behind them burst open. Dark Shadowhunters in red gear began to pour into the room. Jace seized Clary's wrist and they ran, Isabelle and the others pounding along beside them until they reached the stairway and broke apart.
Of course, they couldn't keep it to just the one split. They found Magnus and Luke in a cell, but the former was in no condition to run with them. Alec stayed back with him, despite Isabelle's protests. "Please, Iz, you'd do the same if it was him," that was all it took. She left him behind even though it hurt.
They found Jocelyn in a different cell, not too far away.
And then the entire place began to shake. Isabelle and Simon lost Luke and Jocelyn in one of the other corridors as a wall had split apart, shedding mortarless rocks like scales. Everything since then was a mad dash, dodging splintering wood and falling stones, and now chasms opening up in the ground. Isabelle shrieked as the ground opened up behind her; she threw herself forward just in time to avoid toppling into the chasm that was splitting the corridor apart. "Isabelle!" Simon shouted, and reached to catch her by the shoulders. He forgot, sometimes, the strength that his vampire blood flooded through his body. He wrenched Isabelle up with such force that they both toppled backward and Isabelle landed on top of him.
Isabelle sprang to her feet, pulling him up after.
"Don't," Isabelle said, breathless. Her dark hair was full of dust, her face bloody where flying rock had cut her skin.
"Don't what?" The ground heaved, and Simon half-ducked, half-fell forward into another corridor. It somehow seemed the fortress was herding them. There seemed a purpose to its dissolution, as if it were directing them somehow...
"Don't give up," she gasped, flinging herself against a set of doors as the corridor behind them began to crumble; the doors swung open, and she and Simon tumbled into the next room.
Isabelle sucked in a gasp, quickly cut off as the doors slammed behind them, shutting away the explosive noise of the keep. The ground under theur feet was steady and the walls weren't moving. But any relief they might have fel vanished when they saw where they were. They were in an enormous room, semicircular in shape, with a raised platform at the curved end half cast in shadow. The walls were lined with Endarkened warriors in red gear, like a row of scarlet teeth. The room stank like pitch and fire, sulfur and the unmistakable taint of demon blood. The body of a bloated demon lay sprawled against one wall, and near it was another body.
Jace.
Within a circle of glowing runes etched on the floor stood Sebastian. He grinned as Isabelle gave a cry, ran to Jace, and dropped down by his side. She put her fingers to his throat. She held her breath until she felt his pulse under her fingertip.s
"He's alive," Sebastian said, sounding bored. "Queen's orders."
Isabelle looked up. Some of the strands of her dark hair were stuck to her face with blood. "The Seelie Queen? When has she ever cared about Jace?"
Sebastian laughed. He seemed to be in an enormously good mood. "Not the Seelie Queen," he said. "The queen of this realm. You may know her."
With a flourish he gestured toward the platform at the far end of the room. Isabelle saw now that on it were two thrones, of ivory bone and melted gold, and on the right-hand throne sat Clary. Her red hair was incredibly vivid against the white and gold, like a banner of fire. Her face was pale and still, expressionless.
Simon took an involuntary step forward — and was immediately blocked by a dozen Endarkened warriors, Amatis at their center. She carried a massive spear and wore an expression of frightening venom. "Stop where you are, vampire," she said. "You will not approach the lady of this realm."
Simon staggered back. Isabelle was staring incredulously from Clary, to Sebastian, to him. "Clary!" he called; she didn't flinch or move, but Sebastian's face darkened like a thunderstorm.
"You will not say my sister's name," he hissed. "You thought she belonged to you; she belongs to me now, and I will not share."
"You're insane," Simon said.
"And you're dead," Sebastian said. "Does any of it matter now?" His eyes raked up and down Simon. "Dear sister," he said, pitching his voice loudly enough for the whole room to hear it. "Are you absolutely sure you want to keep this one intact?"
Before she could answer, the entryway to the room burst open and Magnus and Alec spilled in, followed by Luke and Jocelyn. The doors slammed behind them, and Sebastian clapped his hands together. One hand was bloody, and a drop of blood fell at his feet, and sizzled where it hit the glowing runes, like water sizzling on a hot skillet.
"Now everyone's here," he declared, his voice delighted. "It's a party!"
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! From City of Heavenly Fire. Warning for bloody stuff and violence.]