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Talia
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“NOOO!” I was echoing the same scream that my mom had just recently let out. She had watched my dad get taken away, but I just watched my guard get stabbed, and possibly killed. Two men in my life that were important to me were either missing or hurt. And I didn't know what to do. “LEX!” I screamed for him again. He was right in front of me and therefore easiest for me to try to save. “YOU BASTARD!” I screamed at the man that still had his hand inside of him.
“I am no bastard.” He grinned at me, blood dripping from his elbow as Lex bled profusely onto him. “I am Olorud, King of the True Demons and the father of all evil. I am the one that will see you and all of your people destroyed.”
“NO!” I screamed at him. “YOU WILL DIE FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!” I was still screaming at him. And at the same time, I felt a searing pain that was coursing through me. I wasn't the only one that felt it either.
Angel, still in her elongated form, flew out of my body and shrieked in pain.
.....
“YEOW! Talia too hot. Talia too much magic.” She was large and purple as she looked at me. Large enough that I could use her as something to fly on if I wanted to. And at the moment, that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to straddle her back and have her fly toward that evil man and kill him.
“Talia?” I heard a voice that I knew calling out toward me, but I ignored it. “Talia!” Hades called me again, but I was too focused on the man that was in front of me.
“You will die, Olorud. You will pay for hurting my family.” I was including Lex in that family. He had been with me for eleven years, more than two thirds of my life, he was family by now.
“You cannot kill me, mongrel child. I am too powerful.” And it was then that the voices, still calling me, got the attention of Olorud.
“TALLY!”
“TALIA!”
“LISTEN TO US!”
“WAIT, TALIA!”
Startled, Olorud looked down at the owners of the voices. He knew who they were just the same as I did.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?” His angered and startled voice screeched in protest when he saw them.
All of the Gods that had shown up to help us were making their way toward me and Olorud, but I ignored them. I was filled with too much rage, and way too much power. I needed to end this. I needed to end him. This had to happen.
“Angel!” I called to her. “Let's fly!” She understood what I meant. We had had a mental connection since I was a child, and she knew that I needed to ride on her. She grew a little more as she flew in front of me and I jumped onto her back. I had my blade in my hand still, but I didn't think that I would use it to kill this man. I didn't want to make this too quick for him. I wanted him to feel the level of my power. He was telling me that he was too powerful for me, but he didn't know how strong my mother and I really were. And Rika as well, but she just didn't know how much power she held inside of her.
Angel rose up into the air so that I was about twenty feet above Olorud. He had been looking at the Gods of The Underworld, but his eyes were all for me now. He hadn't expected that his former rivals were here to help us, and he didn't think that I had a magical dragon that I could rely on. He was, as my mother would have said, woefully unprepared. He was going to lose, and I think he could see it, even if he wouldn't admit it to himself or anyone else.
As fast as a torpedo, Angel started to fly toward Olorud. She was like a bullet that I had just shot out of a gun, heading straight toward my target, my enemy.
“Attack me at all, I will finish off your friend here.” He pulled the claws of his hand from Lex's chest and wrapped them around his neck. He squeezed, just enough to hold onto him as he lifted Lex off of the bridge. “I will kill him here and now.” He was threatening me, and I felt a twinge inside of me that told me to stop and to save Lex, but I was too far gone now. I needed to keep going. I needed to save him and the others. But most of all I needed to kill Olorud for hurting my family.
Just as soon as the threat was out of that demon man's mouth, I leapt off of Angel and onto Olorud's back. I needed to be careful not to impale myself on his spikes, but I managed it. And I knew that I was right where I needed to be. At the same time, Angel kept on flying. She had even twisted so that she would avoid hitting the monster, me, or Lex. She was taking care not to hurt anyone.
I could see a light that was shining all around me. And I didn't understand it at first. I thought that it was coming from somewhere else, but when Olorud screamed in pain, I noticed that it was me that was glowing. It was a bright purple light that was illuminating the place that was around me. I knew that it was my anger and my desire to protect everyone all at the same time. And I knew what I needed to do with it, even if I didn't know how I knew it.
“It is time for you to pay, Olorud. You have hurt far too many people in your lifetime. I know that you have been around for a long time, but this is the end for you. You will not get the chance at a rebirth or any form of heaven in The Underworld. You are going straight to hell.” I wrapped my hands around the monster's center head, the one that he spoke from when he needed to spew that nonsense of his, and I let my magic flow.
I pushed a lot of my power into him. I knew that he wouldn't be able to handle it. I was too strong for him. It wasn't the way that he had thought at all.
“Die.” I whispered into his ear as I felt him beginning to burn from the inside out. “And know that it was the people that you called abominations that killed you.”
“NO!” He started to scream in fear. “THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!”
“It is.” I spoke with a deadly venom on my words. It was my anger, I knew that, but it tasted like it would be poison to this monster and anyone else that got in my way. “Your soul is mine.”
Getting a sudden idea, while the monster-man was flaming on the inside of his body, I took one hand away from his neck and put it in the space between his wings on his back. My hand pushed inside of him like he was made of nothing more than playdough, soft and squishy. I grabbed what I wanted right away. I felt it squirming in my fist as I pulled it out of him.
I had his soul in my fist as I pulled my hand out of his body. And the moment that it was out of him, he stopped his screaming. He stopped moving. He was dead.
The power that I had built up inside of him exploded then, but it didn't hurt me or those around me. It was a targeted explosion. It flew, as far as it needed to, so that it hit every single one of the monsters that were still alive. I watched and listened as they all screamed and dropped at the same time. They were dead. They had all been connected to Olorud, and now they were dead.
The battle was over. That was clear for me to see. The Gods had witnessed the end of it, and so had my mother. They had seen me, glowing purple and filled with rage while I took that monster's soul out of his hideous body.
“Talia?” Hades was looking at me in awe as he watched me. I was still glowing, and my anger had not yet dissipated.
“You truly are the one that is worthy of our collective thrones.” Lucifer said. He sounded like he was happy for me, but the look on his face was filled with another emotion. Was it fear? Was he and the other gods afraid of me now? I wouldn't blame them if they were.
“Talia?” Mom called to me. She was still standing there across the bridge and I saw the tears in her eyes. She was still worried about Dad, and so was I.
The battle was over, but there was still much more for us to do. We had wounded to tend to, missing people to find, and deaths to tally. I knew that I was not going to make it through this night without counting at least one person close to me as dead, but the chances of there being two on that list were very high.
I killed their leader, but at what cost? What had been taken from me?
