BANG.
The shot thundered through the chapel ceiling, a punctuation mark on the silence.
For half a second, the world held its breath.
Then, hell erupted.
The reaper demons shrieked, a discordant choir of the damned as they surged forward.
A tidal wave of black cloaks and jagged metal flooded across the shattered stone.
Diana grinned, her eyes glinting with a dangerous, electric light.
“That’s more like it.”
She kicked off the handle of her embedded sword, soaring backward just as three massive scythes whistled through the space her head had occupied a heartbeat before.
CLANG.
Steel screamed against steel.
Diana twisted in mid-air, a blur of white and motion, and pressed her pistol against the skull of the nearest reaper.
BANG.
The demon’s head detonated into a cloud of black sand.
She landed on one hand, her white coat flaring like a cape as another reaper lunged from her blind spot.
Without turning, she fired.
BANG.
A bullet tore through the creature’s eye socket.
It collapsed, its scythe clattering uselessly against the stone.
“Seriously,” Diana muttered, spinning her pistol around her finger with practiced, arrogant ease.
“Does nobody in hell believe in personal space?”
A massive shadow blotted out the light.
The executioner had arrived.
Its gigantic cleaver-scythe slammed into the altar with enough force to spiderweb the stone for yards.
BOOOOM.
Debris shrapnel tore through the air.
The rescued woman screamed, cowering beneath the altar.
Diana didn’t flinch; she slid beneath the sweeping arc of the blade, her boots sparking against the ground as she carved a path through the dust.
“Oh, look at you,” she purred.
“The big guy.”
The executioner roared, a sound of grinding tectonic plates.
It vanished—a blur of impossible speed.
The floor shattered where it had stood.
CLANG.
A shockwave rattled the very foundations of the chapel.
Diana had blocked the strike, her massive blade acting as an iron shield inches from her face.
The force of the impact skidded her backward, carving deep furrows into the floor.
Her smile widened.
“Okay,” she breathed, the thrill of the hunt igniting in her chest.
“Now we’re dancing.”
The executioner swung again, a vertical cleave meant to bisect her.
Diana ducked, stepped lightly onto the flat of the demon’s blade, and emptied both pistols into its face.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Black flesh sloughed off the demon’s skull.
It staggered, bellowing in rage.
Diana backflipped away, snatching her heavy sword out of the air before landing atop a broken pillar.
She looked down.
The remaining reapers were circling her, their confidence replaced by a primal, shaking caution.
“Come on,” she teased, tilting her head.
“You were all sounding real confident five minutes ago.”
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, like a bone snapping.
The massive demonic statue behind the altar began to fissure.
Deep, rhythmic pulses of crimson light bled from the cracks—it was breathing.
Diana glanced back, her amusement curdling into annoyance.
“…Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
As the statue’s face shattered, spilling thick, oily smoke, the smaller demons retreated.
They were terrified.
Diana tightened her grip on her hilt.
A faint red current flickered along the steel, dancing like trapped lightning.
“You idiots were trying to summon some oversized hell-reject into the human world?” She rolled her shoulder, her joints popping.
“Sorry, but standing around while the big bad guy finishes his dramatic entrance?
Yeah.
Not my style.”
The red lightning roared to life.
CRACK.
The floor beneath her exploded.
Diana vanished.
BOOOOM.
She slammed into the executioner, the impact unleashing a localized storm of crimson lightning.
It jumped from her blade to the air itself, vaporizing the smaller demons caught in the periphery.
They didn’t even have time to scream before they were reduced to ash.
Diana was a storm of steel and cordite.
She pirouetted through the carnage, her sword painting glowing crimson arcs in the dark.
BANG.
A torso vanished.
CRACK.
Lightning arced through three more targets.
BANG.
BANG.
Two heads burst into vapor.
A reaper lunged blindly from behind.
Diana flipped over its head, planted a boot on its crown, and drove a bullet downward into its spine.
It detonated in a spray of black soot.
She landed smoothly, her white coat flowing like wings.
The executioner lunged, its scythe trailing black, furnace-like smoke.
Diana met it head-on.
CLANG.
The resulting shockwave blew the remaining pillars apart.
The executioner loomed over her, its jaws twitching, its hate palpable.
“You—”
BANG.
Diana jammed her pistol into its open maw and pulled the trigger.
The demon stumbled back, clutching its ruined face.
Before it could recover, she spun, the crimson lightning coiling around her arm like a living serpent, and drove her sword through its chest.
CRACK.
The lightning surged through the wound, racing up the demon’s veins like a virus of pure destruction.
The executioner froze, looking down at its own glowing, fractured body.
Diana leaned in close, her eyes cold.
“Night night.”
BOOOOOM.
The detonation was absolute.
A shockwave of ash and crimson sparks ripped through the chapel, vaporizing every remaining demon in the room.
When the dust settled, the silence was deafening.
The statue behind the altar had gone dark.
Diana stood alone in the center of the ruins, the red lightning bleeding away into nothingness.
She checked her pistol, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.
Police sirens wailed in the distance, cutting through the rainy night.
Diana glanced at the entrance, then back at the trembling woman.
“Perfect timing,” she said, holstering her weapon.
She started walking toward the woman, her gait casual, as if she’d just finished a light jog.
“Come on.
Unless you want to explain the demon cults to the cops by yourself.”