Chapter 17: A Gift From Above

"Child, your turn has come."

"No! Leave her be!" Rose screamed while being subdued by half a dozen nuns.

"Hollow Rose, I did not forget that you had a relationship with this girl. I thought it of no consequence. But you really dared to go against the Church, no, against me. Did you forget the pact you made?"

"N-no, Abbess, but I can't let you kill her", conflicting emotions reflected on Roses' face, "I already hurt her because of my obligation to the Church."

Obligation? What does that mean?

"So what? What makes her special? You did not protest the hundreds of other sacrifices," the old woman's mood shifted, amusement changed to annoyance.

"Because she is my friend", Rose stated bluntly.

"Well, I considered our friendship over the day you cost me my arm", I mumbled stubbornly.

"Song, shut up for a moment, okay?" Rose admonished me, "Abbess Blackheart I swore an oath to the Church, no, to my friends that I will never go against them as long as my heart is with them. I swore that I will help you make this world a better place. But all I can see are delusions of grandeur and a once prideful cultivator corrupted by her own ambitions!"

The head nun chuckled: "You accumulated a lot of grievances, huh, hollow Rose? Too bad that neither I nor any other of the clerics are interested in your human-centric idealism. We followed you to bring salvation to the earth not to do incremental change. We need to destroy everything to truly begin anew. Why do you not get it? We became companions on a path of destruction. But your betrayal destroyed our friendship instead."

"People change…" Rose whispered.

"And that is exactly the problem! Humans are as fickle as their weak flesh! But we thought you were superior. We were wrong. I was wrong. And that's why I made it my mission to revive the Heavenly Demon. Now that it's shed its humanity only pure salvation remains!"

She grabbed my throat and effortlessly carried me back to fulfill my role as a sacrifice. The huntress Zoey paid back Rose's surprise attack with a mean punch to the kidney.

"Enough talk. Hollow thing, you won't change anything. You will remain a powerless spectator as long as this heart remains in my care. And you young lady", the fanatic woman's head rotated unnaturally fast, "you will die understanding that it's for the good of mankind."

Her kind smile returned which heralded the last moments of my life. I reached into the deepest parts to channel any power remaining to free myself. I was expecting nothing to happen but golden lightning emerged from my left arm. It did not shoot out like a gun-bound Thunderbird instead it enveloped the whole metal arm. Not knowing what it would do I tried to extract myself from her grip. The golden lightning severed the nun's mechanical hand with unexpected ease. I fell to the ground snapping for air.

The Abbess's eyes widened in disbelief. "How…?" She began to ask but a sudden massive earthquake toppled everyone standing on the slippery floor. Parts of the rickety church started to come down. A wooden beam struck Cale. Luckily, he didn't seem hurt too badly but he was stuck nonetheless. The leather bag, as well as the metal suitcase, slipped towards the demonic heart. Zoey hurried to her brother to help him out of the fallen rubble. She is not entirely heartless, I guess.

"What was that?'' asked the head nun into the room. The answer came from the outside. The doors were smashed by a rust-brown mecha-beast. One of the nuns tackled it as soon as it got in eyesight denying it even the entrance to these halls.

"Do not let any mecha-beast get into the vicinity of the heart you hear me? If you do we are all doomed!" The Abbess got into full battle mode. She undressed one-handedly and once more I was in awe of her strange whole-body interface. If she hadn't shown such quick hostility against the mecha beast I'd assumed they were on the same side. A metal demoness and a metal beast, where exactly was the difference?

The earth shook once more. This time a small army of mecha-beasts invaded this underground sanctum. The church was being attacked from all sides. Hydraulic jaws bit through the thin lumber like crackers. How did they even get here? Mecha beasts were very rarely seen in the city but getting into the underground should have been even harder.

"What are the authorities doing?" Zoey asked without getting an answer.

"Are we going to be okay?" Cale's big eyes displayed his fear.

"I don't know. But Abbess Blackheart surely …"

A third earthquake, the strongest of the three, was followed by a deafening thump and a devastating shockwave which blasted me nearly into the disgusting heart. The impact was harder than the beating I received in the Taiji Arcades. This time not only rubble came down, no, half of the church, including my captor Zoey and her brother Cale, was flattened by a massive red-scaled mechanical body.

"Son of a washing machine! I never was happier to see you again!"