[center][h1]Naseraph Sana and Bak Tsarevna
(Special Guests Samoth Maskono and Aram Secrue puppeted with his permission)
[/h1][/center]

The Demon copy didn't stand still because it was in Nasearph's grasp. Its momentary inaction was only out of surprise, a surprise that was broken by Nasearph's shout. Even as Aram began to move it relived that its arms were not bound, and it raised them up. Magic seals traced themselves into the air in front of its palms and from them shot two white hot beams of heat. Naseraph wrenched back, digging his knee into the small of her back and pulling her wings, and though there was a crack as the demon was pulled off course the circles hung in the air where they had originally formed. 

But as they flew at Aram they suddenly stopped in mid-air, held up by something invisible. Samoth was there, moving in Aram's shadow. By the time the beam hard burned through the psychic shield Aram had already moved, sidestepping the shield and coming into range of the demons exposed belly. He knelt and swung, the blade slicing through the air and across the hellspawns stomach, opening up a clean hole.

[i]BING[/i][b]
[/b]

He turned, beginning to swing the sword it a decapitating arc, but before the mighty [b][i]BONG[/i][/b] could ring out that was instead a disquieting sound like someone digging through a bag filled with grease. Aram let the sword drop to his side and just observed what was happening. Samoth either hadn't anticipated a second strike from Aram or hadn't wanted to waste time waiting for it. He had aimed for the hole and just shoved his arm all the way up inside its guts. Or, at least, what would have been its guts. It was strangely hollow inside this creature, solid all the way through and yet it felt like you were grasping at nothing. It was still hot though, brutally hot to the touch, and so distinctly wrong. Sick. It was like sticking your hand in a tub of fresh vomit.

Then the hellspawn, this copy of magic, fell to ash around his arm leaving only a pile of sooty dust and a smell of surfer in its wake. Though his arm was totally unblemished by the experience the wrongness pervaded it. It felt like it was going to take a while before it was clean again. 

As the demon dissolved Naseraph fell with it, then without missing a beat turned back to gaze across the roof at the battle against the true demon.

The only demon left in the fight was getting battered, by bullets and explosions and void energy, but was holding fast. It would take more than toy guns and pop rocks to budge it, and though she could feel the energy of the void seeping into her arm and eating away at her defenses she knew no human could harness that power for very long. She would whether this storm, let them wear themselves out, and then when they thought her weak she would rise in fiery vengeance and gouge the fleeting hope from their hearts. Writhing in agony mere inches from their goal was the only proper way for a human to die.

That's what she thought before suffering the indignity of being attacked with one of her own duplicates, the force of the impact and the unexpected direction it came from surprising her enough that it broke her guard and sent her stumbling. She could faintly catch, through projectile storm that continued to pelt her, the figure that had thrust such an indignity upon her. A figure wreathed in flame. An antithesis. A rejection of her very being. Something that she could not abide. 

With a snarl of rage she grabbed up the copy that had been tossed at her like garbage and dashed across the roof, out of the storm, toward her seal, and shoved the body into it. The seal accepted such a sacrifice and as the flames consumed the body they warped and twisted, coiling around one another and her arm. She pulled herself from the fire, and what came with her was a roiling mass of flame the size of a small car that blacked and deformed the arm that held it into near uselessness. She turned at the flaming figure and threw the entire thing.

As this mass of flaming evil spun toward her like the core of the Earth itself, Katherine could perceive its nature with a clarity that came from the depths of her soul. Faced with such absolute contrast there was no way for her not to see that there was a difference. A difference between this fire and hers. Hers was a fragment of the fire that burned at the heart of creation. Fire that burned for mankind. Fire could be unruly, this was true, but it could be used by humans when tamed. It provided them with hot food, warmed them against the cold, lit the night to reveal their dark enemies. It was a gift from on high, a tool for humans to use to fight back the night and thrive in the darkness. Even the flame that now pulsed through her being had welled up in order to protect someone she loved.

The ball that now filled her vision was not any of that. You couldn't use this to cook, or warm yourself, or light your way. The fire would eat your meal itself, the scalding heat would always find a way to burn you, the leaping flames would always find a way to escape and take everything you hold dear. This was fire stripped of its compassion, stripped of all things that impeded its ability to consume, destroy, and grow from it. It was only meant to destroy. It was fire that burned to destroy mankind, and had discarding its compassion for the sake of burning hotter and leaping higher to scorch the feet of the gods. It would consume Katherine, everything she was, down to the immortal soul and the spark of the divine that had been nestled within it.

Or at least it might have were it not for her sisters actions. 

The cold wind whirled around Christine, growing stronger and stronger, battering the hellfire dome Clara and the others were trapped in, and as she prayed she felt something. A hand, cold. No, not cold. It was pleasant. Pleasantly cool, like the underside of a pillow. She felt another one, both of them resting on her shoulders, and somehow she felt a smile on a face she could not see and yet intimately knew. The wind whipped faster, grew colder, as she felt power pour into her. Frost formed on the concrete, melting and refreezing again as it battled with the evil heat, until an expanding layer of ice crawled across the roof and fell into the cracks and scars left by the battle. 

But still it wasn't enough. She could feel herself approaching her absolute limit, cold flowing from her like it never had before, but that limit wasn't high enough. Her strength wasn't sufficient to channel enough cold to do anything but make the HellFire Seal waver in the wind. Her fervent prayer, however, to save even someone like Clara in the face of this hellspawn was enough to prompt at least a small miracle. 

There was a cracking sound across the roof. The ice and the cold had nestled up to the hot stones of the roof, which had gotten progressively hotter as they absorbed the heat given off by the Seal. The ice that had filled in the wounds in the roof continued to melt and then re-freeze, growing larger and larger and putting more and more pressure on. Then, suddenly, with one last definitive shutter, the roof gave way. Centered on the Seal the room collapsed inward, opening up a sinkhole that rapidly spread out and dumped everyone onto the floor below, Katherine being carried out of the way of the fireball as it passed overhead and flew over the edge of the roof. The only places left standing from the destruction were Aram's extremely well fortified bunker, the door to the stairwell, and the area surrounding the two. Samoth, Aram, and Naseraph were left standing at the edge of a crater, looking down on the flattened floor below. Above them the Hellfire Seal still hung like the sun in the sky, held in place by its magic and shining its evil light onto the combatants below.

The floor they had landed in had been completely flattened by the rain of debris. Uneven rubble and ice where everywhere, which only heightened the glare of that horrid artificial sun by reflecting it. Kicked up dust and the mist of melting ice mixed together to shroud the area in a bloom of fog. Bak Tsarevna groggily pushed herself up of the ground, fortunate to have landed on her stomach this time. She was sick and tired of falling today, that was for sure. The air was hot in here, a result of the orb sitting on the roof heating the floor underneath it no doubt, and now thick with the sort of humidity that made you feel grimy. She looked around. Rurik and Yuuto were still near enough to see, and she could definitely make out the blazing form of Katherine. Then, she saw only because the movement was so fast as to leave a trail in the mist, she saw the demon making a mad sprint toward Katherine. 

"Look out prisoner!" Bak screamed, popping open her missile pod and firing a full volley at where she thought the charging demon was. Again though, as though it could feel them coming, it back-dashed away from the missile as they came for it. The missiles tried to course correct but the turn they had to make was two tight. They sailed around the demon and impacted the far wall, exploding, One, TWO, [b]THREE[/b]! Wait, three?

Bak grimaced in a panic as one of her own missiles, snatched out of the air as it tried to turn, tumbled out of the fog at her and, by extension, Yuuto and Rurik. The demon, for its part, had not even turned to look. It had thrown the missile as though discarding a piece of unwanted trash and resumed its charge as though it hadn't even broken stride. It wanted Katherine dead. 

[hr]

On his way up the building Gilliam had to stop and marvel as gigantic fireball sailed from the top of the building. He let go with one hand so he could turn and follow its descent down into the parking lot, where it dropped directly onto a limousine. There was a massive explosion as the car went up in flames that shot high into the sky and seemed, to him, to eye the world hungrily. Then they descended and set about consuming the limousine in ts entirety.

He watched, bemused, as the other limo observed this for a moment or two then as calmly as possible reversed out of the apartment parking lot and drove backwards all the way into the basketball court across the street. 

"Better pick up the pace." he said to himself, redoubling his efforts. 

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