The scars that covered her face covered the rest of her as well. Her body’s regeneration was rapidly fixing all the places Bex’s fire had melted, but it couldn’t touch the deep gouges that covered her metal body like corroded canyons. The old wounds still looked raw and painful, but War didn’t let that slow her down as she braced her exposed hooves—the same hooves all war demons had in their true forms—on the bloody ground and swung her giant sword like a bat at Bex’s head.
Even with her rage-fired speed, Bex knew immediately that she wouldn’t be able to dodge. War was too close, and Havok’s blade was too long. Even if she jumped straight back, the sword was going to hit something, so Bex did the only thing she could think of. She held up her right hand, tilting her palm at the perfect angle to catch the edge of Havok’s sword on the band of Drox’s ring.
The sound of the two swords clashing rang through the tower like the great crash of Gilgamesh’s bell. Bex hadn’t been sure it would work, but while Havok’s swing drove her back several inches, it didn’t knock her over, and it didn’t cut through her hand. His black blade had been totally stopped by the thickband of Drox’s sleeping form, and the moment Bex saw it, she knew what to do.
Moving fast as lightning, she clamped her hand down on Havok’s sword, using the width of Drox’s band to keep the blade’s sharp edge from actually cutting into her skin. The second she had a good grip, Bex darted forward, using War’s shock to get behind her. She dragged Havok with her as she went, forcing War to choose: Would she let go of her weapon, or would she let Bex wrench her arm behind her?
It turned out not to matter in the end. War was fast, but Bex was moving faster now than she ever had. By the time the disgraced queen realized she had to make a decision, Bex had already twisted her arm behind her back, using War’s grip on her own sword as leverage to snap the joint where her top right arm connected to her shoulder.
She’d only been aiming to dislocate her shoulder, but Bex must’ve been moving even faster than she realized because she ended up tearing the ligaments out completely. She could actually feel the moment War’s arm went slack in her grip as her muscles disconnected, and then her sword clattered to the ground.
Bex was on it in an instant. She literally dove at the ground to grab Havok’s hilt in her own burning grip. The sword fought back with all the violence she’d come to expect from him, but Bex was burning with the righteous fury of all the war demons who’d been forced to bow their horns to this traitor. Their rage had built her bonfire into something even the Blade of War could not overcome, and she got her way in the end, forcing the massive sword off the ground by pure burning strength until its black tip was pointed at its own queen’s throat.
“No!” War shrieked, clutching her useless arm, which was healing much slower than Bex expected. “You’re a crownless worm! A defeatedcoward! You can’t possibly use my—”
Bex swung before the queen could finish. The Blade of War did his best to spoil her shot, but Bex had fought Havok enough times now to know that he didn’t retreat. Where her practical, loyal Drox would’ve vanished back into his ring the second he realized he was up against an enemy he couldn’t overwhelm, Havok stayed stubbornly on the field, forcing the Queen of War to leap out of the way before she was beheaded by her own sword.
“Enough of this!” she cried as she landed on the broken stairs one spiral up from where Bex held the tower floor. “Demons of War, attack her!Defend your queen!”
The command came down like a hammer. Bex couldn’t feel it through the raging inferno of her wrath, but she saw the crowd of war demons watching from the tower’s edges shudder as one, which was a problem. Unlike her sister, Bex would never kill her fellow demons, which meant if they rushed her, she’d be trapped. She had to defeat the Queen of War before that happened, but as she struggled to force Havok into position for another strike, something incredible happened. Something she never would’ve expected in all her lives put together.
The war demons didn’t move.
“What are you doing?” the Queen of War shrieked, forgetting Bex for a moment as she whirled to stare in shock at her people. “I saidattack!”
Once again, the order slammed down, but once again, the watching demons did not respond. Now that Bex had time to look, she realized there were even more of them now than there’d been at the start. Most had been forced out when the Queen of War had brought the fight to the bottom of the staircase, but Bex could see huge crowds of bronze faces watching through the large doors that opened into the rest of the Hell outside the tower. She could see the pain resisting the order was causing them, but even though some demons wereclenching their fists so hard they drew their own black blood, not a single one of them moved. They stayed just as they were, standing in perfect, defiant stillness, and the longer it went on, the more furious the Queen of War became.
“Don’t make me do this,” she warned through clenched teeth. “I swear on Gilgamesh’s name, you’ll all suffer for centuries if you make me do this!”
When the silent demons still didn’t respond, the queen threw up her three remaining functional arms.
“On your heads be it, then!” she roared. “By my own sacred name, I, Dalanea the Fortress, Queen of War and Shield of Ishtar, command you to strike down the Coward Queen! Do it now or slit your own throats in shame!”
Just like when Nemini had invoked her name earlier, the force of the queen’s command shook the Hells to their foundation. Even Bex was knocked sideways, losing her grip on the Blade of War, who immediately flew back to his queen. War caught her sword with a triumphant look, cradling her still-healing top right arm to her bronze chest as she waited for her people to tackle Bex to the ground, but it didn’t happen. The tower was still rattling with the force of her command, but the war demons made no move to attack or to slit their own throats. They turned away from their queen instead, giving her their backs so she couldn’t see whose mouth was moving when one of them said, “No.”
It sounded like it had taken everything the demon had to force that one word out, but War’s pitted bronze face still snapped toward the sound like a hunting snake. “Who said that?” she demanded, her mismatched eyes shining in murderous fury as they darted around the room. “What blasphemous soon-to-be-corpsedares defy their queen?”
“You’re no queen of ours,” growled a different war demon, one who sounded much closer this time.
“You have no crown,” added another. “You gave up your horns to Gilgamesh!”
“We’re all slaves because of you!” cried a third.
“You made us traitors!” yelled a towering demon, who actually turned around, meeting his queen face-to-furious-face as he bared his flat teeth. “All the other demons hate us, and for what? We still have to slave for the gods-dammed warlocks!”
That must have been the final straw. They’d had to force the words out at the start, but now that they were going, every demon in the tower was suddenly shouting at the top of their lungs. The Queen of War shouted back, but for the first time, her voice was not the loudest, because she was no longer their only queen. Bex was still burning like a welding torch with the power of the rage they’d offered to her, and while she had no horns to raise or name to invoke, she was still a daughter of Ishtar. One the demons of War respected far more than the traitor who’d sold them to their greatest enemy.
Bex wasn’t sure which of those factors was the tipping point, but the balance of power was definitely swinging. The more openly the war demons defied her, and the longer the Queen of War was unable to make them stop, the weaker she became.
It was something that never should have happened to a queen, but like the war demons themselves had just said, shewasn’ta queen anymore. She still had her original body and name, but there was no crown atop her wavy bronze hair. The powers she’d used in the fight came from her own innate ability as Ishtar’s greatest soldier just as Bex’s flames belonged to her alone, but the authority to command demons was different.Thatcame only from Ishtar herself, and since she’d already given up her horns to Gilgamesh, War was forced to borrow her own sovereignty back from him.
That made her little better than a warlock, and, just like a warlock, there seemed to be a limit to how many demons she could command. One or two were easy to crush, but a whole military unit in rebellion was more than her secondhand authority could handle. Bex could actually see her bronze body shaking in fear as a squad of fearsome-looking war demons broke off from the main crowd and stomped up the stairs to grab their former queen.
Bex was happy to get out of their way. It was obvious by now that this was no longer her fight. Even her flames were settling down as the war demons reclaimed their wrath for themselves. Shewasworried when they got within range of Havok’s sword—no matter how weak a daughter of Ishtar became, Enki’s blades could still bite—but War didn’t even take a swing. Before a single demon actually got close enough to make a grab for her, the defeated queen thrust her still-healing right hand into the air.
“Gilgamesh!” she cried in a terrified voice. “Great King, save your loyal servant!”
Bex jumped to stop her the second she saw what was happening, but she was already too late. Gilgamesh’s teleport ban must not have extended to himself, because the moment the disgraced Queen of War yelled his name, an enormous golden bell rang out like a bomb blast.
