what price victory?

The Wasp Queen was pursuing me relentlessly. I could feel her shadow over me when the hellgate began to implode. Immediately she was ripped from her trajectory and drawn towards the collapsing crimson gate erupting plasma into the sky as it died. Then I noticed that she was still the same distance away...and the portal was getting closer!

Of course. Erebus and Vesprium were neighbors and enemies along the river Styx. My children by Sekhmet must have scattered far away by now, but I was now being drawn in along with my greatest foe!

Then I felt Xavael's arms hook under my shoulders. My wings were bending with such agony, as if I was made to fly while tied down with boulders. I felt like I was trapped on a wrack, and the angel was screaming along with me.

"I'll not let you go, Beloved! Not after searching a thousand years!"

I looked up at the angel's eyes, now bearing stormclouds behind the pupils, complete with twin flashes of lightning behind those shimmering orbs.

"This won't work, Beloved. This is killing the host. I won't sacrifice Jeremiah. One...one last kiss, Beloved?"

I felt hir tears roll down my cheek like warm drops of sunlight as their lips touched. I tried not to pay attention, but there were millennia of memories and wishes shared in that final, sweet moment of contact.

"Goodbye, my sweet Angel...Please care for..."

The horns snapped from my brow and the wings ripped from my shoulders Xavael keened as we watched Bloodwing's spirit solidify.

"I shall keep your homeland safe, Beloved! I SWEAR!"

In the portal, the Queen had been pulled in until only her head was visible. I saw my grandson Koen crouched on the top of the portal's rim, clutching some strange device for dear life and staring at the Founder's predicament in horror. Her jaws snapped angrily...

The sky erupted in dueling waves of absolute darkness and blinding ruby, that slowly withered away to an expanse of lue sky and golden sun. Koen hovered where the portal had been. Veins of darkness pulsed from the base of his alien staff back towards the Bloodwing's Revenge.

"Victory is ours..." said the angel in a voice with the beauty and anguish of a symphony in mourning.

queen of insects

I squinted from the expanse of crimson radiance simmering over the surface of the great portal.

"The portal only opens towards this world," I told Xavael. I noticed the shadow of another Vesprium airship from inside it, growing to the full size of the vessel just before its metal bow and honeycombed airbag pierced through the membrane of the hellgate. "If only we could send through something as bait for the queen..."

We darted as another liquid nitrogen projectile hurtled towards us to explode in a bloom of ice crystals.

"They loaded the cannon before they passed through! They could see us from the other side!" the angel replied as I quickly dispatched the ship with a firebolt to the airbag. "No matter can enter it from here" the Fallen One continued, "but light certainly can!"

I looked to Xavael and felt my hairs stand on end. "Let me hover behind you."

"And close your eyes, betrothed."

I turned my back to the angel, floating a distances away. I pressed my palms to my eyes.

"Proceed, Xavael!"

The flare was so bright that even with my back turned and my eyes closed shut I could see the light. I could feel the sting of the celestial light. A long, horrific screech rose to such a pitch that I considered sacrificing my eyes to cover my ears. That is, until the brilliance blinked out as quickly as it came.

Xavael's hand clenched mine, and I opened my eyes. Stormy eyes gazed back in alarm as the angel tugged at me. I turned my head to see what put terror in the eyes of one as ancient as Bloodwing.

The head of the Wasp Queen barely fit through the portal. Antennae the size of Tesla towers bent angrily in our direction. Huge mandibles scraped against each other furiously like damaged airship propellors ready to shatter and explode. Six colossal legs gripped around the circumference of the portal as it drew itself out.

She's larger that Steam Sky City, I thought to myself. And she was only halfway through.

extinguished

"ARMOR OF RAGE!"

Bloodwing's aura of flame swirled around me and coalesced into a spiked crimson carapace resembling the o-yoroi of the samurai of a lost age.

"GLAIVE OF VENGEANCE!"

Twin jets of white-hot flame erupted in opposite directions from the origin point of my connected fists, resembling a staff twenty feet long with jagged sword blades flaring angrily from each end, the Founder's preferred weapon for aerial meelee. I must have been the brightest object in the night sky, between the blooms of exploding hiveships.

While the Founder's fury cut a swath through the hive, I did my best to steer our shared body towards the huge portal glowing like a red flattened sun. It seemed too easy. And indeed it was.

I swatted at a cannonball that whistled as closed in my trajectory, and it exploded in a white cloud of liquid nitrogen that extinguished both my armor and weapon. This body that wore flames as a mantle felt burning agony from the cold as webs of frost spread across my unprotected wings. Ice collected in growing layers over my horns, blinding me momentarily as my heat was leeched from my body.

They know my weakness. These drones have a clever General...

I could do nothing but fight the blur of unconsciousness and watch the skies invert and spin from behind my faceplate.

An Anxious Answer, a Dreaded Discovery and a Vesprium Vendetta

Several moments of terror and exquisite agony, and the transformation was complete. I was as much Bloodwing as I was Jeremiah Mason. Imagine all of your emotions...pride, lust, wrath... amplified a thousandfold. That is the burden of sharing the soul of a fallen Demon Prince.

There was a question that lingered in the back of my mind that I dared not ask, but now all answers were laid bare.

If the family lore is true, how can a Sixth Son be a Host? Did the Founder lose track? Is there some secret...

No. The Legacy of the Seventh was a precaution on my part, not a binding rule of the Curse. I have wandered this Earth as an incubus for four thousand years. No chart of lineage could track how many Seventh Sons there are. A cousin ten times removed means nothing to mortals. Do you remember the incident when I resided in that Frenchwoman? Half the Steamlands could well be my spawn. And I would protect them all.

Reassuring, in some sense. We...I...remained long enough to close the ritual circle properly, thanking Papa Legba and delivering the sacrifices. The spirits (alcoholic) and the cigars (Dammit boy, that was my private stock!) vanished in a puff of smoke.

I stood guard over my son as glimmering clusters of eyes stared at us from the swamps. I knew Amarantis was on her way.

She landed with a reverent bow. I knelt beside her and gave her a fatherly embrace as I gestured for her to rise.

"There is no time for formalities. Darien will awaken soon. He is once again mortal. Under no circumstances is he to inject himself with the formula again."

I took a few steps back and spread my wings to hover. I invoked a spell to fold space around me. Darien, Ama, and the bayou of New Toulouse blurred away.

Sky surrounded me, clouds beneath me. These were the coordinates...

The buzzing of flying armies engulfed my ears. I saw the heat of the Vesprium soldiers swarming around me and their lines of airships stretching for miles from the vertex of the greatest portal even the Founder had ever seen. I spun in place scanning in every direction. Where was my ship?

A cluster of the drones were carrying scraps of airship salvage. I climbed steadily, spotting two soldiers flying slowly, straining to stay aloft while holding the weight of a tarred and curved planks between them.

I conjured a ball of flame in my hands, which startled the pair. Upon the removed ribs of the ship's planks I clearly read in an archaic font the word REVENGE.

"The Revenge is no more?"

And that is exactly the urge that overcame me as my flame enshrouded me in a white column of searing hellfire.

"Aleister? Qlippothic? Koen? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!"

I wrapped my arms around the planks, which immediately caught fire from the tar. The drones tugged in opposite directions, trying to retrieve their prize until the flames spread down either side and caught their wings, sending them tumbling to their doom. With a roar of unbridled rage I hurled the flaming fragment of the airship's hull into the airbag of the nearest Vesprium ship. The balloon erupted with the beauty a newborn star, drawing a bright trail in its wake as the sky-hive plummeted through the cloud to the open sea miles below.

The fools are using hydrogen to lift their ships! Far more combustible in this dimension than in the Underworld! Have they no alchemists? This will be too easy!

As the ships began to rotate towards me, the drones journeying on orders between ships halted in mid-flight and drew their shining weapons. The battle was joined.

"HAVE AT YOU!!!"

the Founder returns

I sat up and watched quietly as the crimson light erupting from my unconscious son's eyes and mouth coalesced into the translucent spirit of might floating above him. I knew the form all too well. The burning eyes and chalk-white skin striated with ancient black battle-scars. The distinctive facial markings of an Ereb'ai prince, copied by Japanese actors centuries ago in their plays. The arc of defiant horns. And of course the majestic red expanses of skin that stretched from his broad shoulders across batlike wings. The very being that wrapped his hand around my throat and, through those burning eyes, held up a mirror to my corrupted soul.

I swallowed, trying to gether the strength to address him. "Darien...he lives?"

"Yes," rumbled the demon, "he shall recover...and I am freed from his toxic prison."

I turned my gaze to the grassy soil of the marsh, which I expected would soon be a barren circle from my instant cremation.

"At least I did something right."

"Jeremiah," he said calmly. "Gaze upon me." Either he was getting larger or he was drifting towards me. "Yes, in your chemical madness you tried to conquer the world. As a vengeful ghost, you and the other Fallen of your kin tried again and failed. Twice resulting in the death of your own grandson."

"WE REMEMBER THAT!", shouted Vortex from the portal above the altar.

I nodded slowly. "That is true, Founder."

"However, you did save this world from the Fires of Apollo." He was referring the nuclear weapon I tried to disarm with Professor Antfarm. "In addition, you repaired this son after your other son stole his body."

"I remember that, too!", laughed the Vortex. I caught a telltale maniacal giggle in his voice.

"Marcus?" I turned to stare at the composite being leering at me from the depths of Hell. "What have you done?"

"Koen abandoned the Vortex collective, and Marcus took his place," Bloodwing explained with a note of disgust, "and in so doing defeated the Hydra. He...they...have earned the throne."

"Indeed we have, Father! And since you're not challenging our will to power I'm willing to invite you to..." Vortex paused as a buzzing drone grew in intensity from from his side of the portal. "Wait Poppa Legba what do you mean 'look behind me'? GYAAAAH!!" The portal instantly snapped shut in a flash of light and a lingering sound that pierced the eardrums as it slid beyond human range.

Bloodwing grimaced as he held his ears, continuing to suffer lightly from the broken portal. "What was that, Poppa Legba? A giant wasp, you say?"

I was startled again by the screech and squawk of the portable radio-wave receiver that lit up from where it lay on Darien's knapsack, placed just outside the summoning circle. Through the interference I could easily discern Qlippothic's slightly metallic voice, clear and measured even in her obvious distress.

"Mayday-mayday, invasion fleet intercepted at following coordinates..."