Work Text:
The wind was blowing hard enough to knock somebody down, if they weren't careful, and the sky, where not covered with dark clouds, was a vivid, terrifying yellow-green, so of course, everybody was outside, squinting into the wind. This tradition would continue long after the city's name was lost to history -- people would find out from the radio, or the television, or sirens, that there was an awful lot of wind outside, and then they would answer the call to go out and look, and say, "There's an awful lot of wind outside!" to each other, and sometimes they would lose their hats. But this stormy afternoon, the wind wasn't really what they were leaning out of their doorways keeping track of. They certainly watched for funnels, but they knew their city was protected by a powerful spirit, so they were pretty sure the storm wouldn't lay waste to it, unless, of course, she lost the fight.
So they were there to see what happened to her, if they could see her at all. And then, maybe, to hide in cellars.
Currently, there was not much to see, because Vehuel was not actually very powerful, as spirits went, and she knew it. She was running towards the great palisade wall around the city center, her wings tucked up into another dimension, clutching a long knife in one hand, and pausing to take shelter next to houses and trees when she saw her opponent circling in the sky. This must be how rabbits feel, she decided.
She didn't love her current plan; if Nisroc swept her up in the middle of the city, she might hurt the humans by accident, or destroy their structures on purpose. Still, she was tired of losing to Nisroc constantly, and the city would provide cover, and it was all she could think of at this point.
"Lot of weather today, huh?" said a man from his doorway, as Vehuel pressed herself against the wall of his house.
"Uh. Yeah. Maybe... you should go inside? Do you have a cellar or something?" Vehuel asked. She knew he recognized her, because she was glowing a little, but he was very politely not saying anything, and the least she could do was keep him from dying in a tornado.
"Oh, we have one, but don't worry, I'm sure it'll be fine," said the man, encouragingly. "You'll be fine. You could come in for a while and hide, if that would help."
"I'm... kinda busy," said Vehuel, glancing nervously up at the sky.
"Don't bother her, you know she's got that ogress to fight," a woman called from inside the house. "Come inside."
"It's fine, really," she said. "Thanks, um, for the offer. I'm... gonna go now." As she sprinted to the next house, Vehuel decided that she was entirely too awkward to live among humans, and it was a sign of God's mercy that Heaven kept sending her back here to protect them anyway.
"Good luck!" called the man from the other house.
"Come inside. Or do you like getting rained on?" his wife asked, sharply.
Going from building to building, Vehuel made her way as fast as she could to the wall, and found herself at the base of one of the wall's towers relatively quickly. From here, maybe she could hide and watch for Nisroc. Vehuel could even ambush her if she flew near enough, maybe. She flitted up to the tower and clambered inside before the wind could blow her off course. She braced herself for recognition, encouragement, or undeserved offers of aid from the man standing guard. "Hi, sorry, I don't mean to --"
"Vehuel! There you are!" said the guard, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach, because nobody here knew her by that name except for demons. She realized unhappily that she was now stuck with her other ex, the one who wasn't currently trying to kill her. Len had never successfully discorporated her, and rarely tried, but he was so loathsome that she genuinely preferred losing a fight with Nisroc.
"Fuck," she said, and almost flew back out into the storm, but the wind roared, and not that far away, she heard something else roar too. Okay, maybe she didn't prefer Nisroc to this. "Len, you asshole, what are you doing here?" she demanded. He lunged in for a kiss, but she pushed his face away, taking no care to keep her fingers away from his eyes.
"I was looking for you! It was so devious, how you got me to have myself sacrificed to that false god the last time," he said, enthusiastically. "I didn't know they were all right with false gods these days!"
"They're --" Vehuel stopped herself from explaining the difference between humans choosing who to worship, angels making suggestions, and demons being dicks about the whole thing, or commenting on Heaven's wildly different guidelines from continent to continent, or letting on that she had only ever skimmed the more doctrine-related office memos since well before BC had become AD. "Len, I'm very busy, I'm not going to waste any more time talking to you," she snapped. "Fuck entirely off." She made for the ladder down into the city, but Len kicked the trapdoor closed, and stood on it. "Len. Fuck's sake, let me out of here or I'll throw you into a goddamn tornado, see if I don't."
"You really should pay attention to me," he said, grinning his horrible hook-toothed grin, closing in on her. "What are you so afraid of, anyway? Not me, I hope."
There was a flash of lightning, followed by distant thunder. Vehuel wasn't sure, but she thought she also heard the wingbeats of something huge.
"Not you," she confirmed. She knew she could fight him off if she had to -- this body was strong, and Len had made helplessness into an art, so as long as she didn't let him sink his teeth into her for too long it would probably be fine -- but if he did manage to bite her, she'd be far too exhausted afterward to fight Nisroc off. So she lashed out at him with her knife, and a crimson line bled out across his face. "Doesn't mean I don't want you to fuck off."
"I don't know why you treat me so terribly when I still love you," said Len, looking like he was genuinely going to cry. He healed the cut across his face quickly, sucking air between his teeth in pain.
"Len, you never loved me, don't be fucking stupid," snapped Vehuel. "You broke up with me! You said I was clingy! You! Said that about me! And! And! You said that I was hampering your creative freedom, by, uh, let me think... reminding you how gravity works. To be fair it's basically the nicest thing you ever did for me. The only nice thing, really. So thanks for that, and also, I'm sorry to be so repetitive, but fuck off."
"Vehuel," he whined, pathetically. "You can't just pretend we didn't share --"
Vehuel never found out what she and Leonard shared, or didn't share, because the guard tower gave a great shudder, and a huge, taloned avian foot reached in through the window and squeezed Leonard until his head popped off. She hadn't realized heads did that. Maybe it was just because Leonard didn't really have bones? She hoped so. She rubbed her neck worriedly.
Something ripped the roof of the guard tower clean off, and as the rain began to soak Vehuel again, she looked up into a familiar, feathery face. Nisroc had taken more than a few strange forms in the past few centuries -- some were illusions, some she'd clearly managed to get special permission from Satan to use -- but the enormous fuck-off griffin shape she was using now was built into her very nature, and very handy in a fight.
"Babe! There you are," she said, pinning Vehuel to the remains of the wall with the point of one bloody talon. She glanced at the mess that had been her coworker's body. "This guy bothering you?"
Vehuel forced herself to meet Nisroc's eyes, to ignore the cruel beak, incongruously full of huge, sharp teeth. "I mean, I guess not anymore," she said, trying to keep the thankfulness out of her voice. "We gonna fight, or did you wanna show off some more?" She did not want Nisroc destroying any more architecture, although she at least seemed to see Vehuel's humans as off-limits.
(Other humans, though... rumors were she'd been working with Famine some winters, up north. Vehuel didn't want to find out they were true.)
There were... a lot of teeth in Nisroc's mouth. It was hard to ignore them when Nisroc laughed like that. Vehuel was definitely terrified, but also, a small and deeply stupid part of her still found it incredibly hot, and that was not helping. She had always liked the danger of being with Nisroc far too much, even when Nisroc hadn't been all that dangerous.
"Oh, we're going to fight," she told Vehuel. "Don't worry, though, I won't kill you as fast as I did him." She nodded to Len's remains. "It's going to be slow, and painful, and delicious."
Vehuel concluded that she was definitely not forgiven, definitely nowhere near to it, and definitely still depressingly into Nisroc. Was, in fact, definitely hoping that Nisroc would pin her down, strip her down with those claws, and eat her out, or maybe allow herself to be tied up and used by Vehuel, like they'd done in the old days. (That griffin body was kind of impractical for that, but Vehuel was nothing if not creative.) She hated everything about her unhelpful fantasies, but she especially loathed their timing. Had God put her together wrong, or was this something that she'd acquired after creation? And if so, was it her fault or Nisroc's? Either way, it was extremely stupid, and bad, and she was going to try and concentrate on stabbing Nisroc instead.
There was another flash of lighting, and in the distance she saw a dark finger of cloud coming down out of the sky, flirting with the ground. "Fine, then, let's fight!" she said, drawing her knife, leaping into the air, and spreading her wings. Then she turned sharply towards the funnel. "But you're gonna have to catch me first!"
If she was smart, and lucky, and ruthless, she could get Nisroc to fight a tornado instead. God willing.
On the outskirts of the city, people stood out on their doorsteps and watched the three-way fight between the shining woman, the great winged monster, and the wind. There was, they told each other, an awful lot of wind outside.