Angel Monarch

It was all going great. Cassandra kept up the stalemate with ease. One thing she was great at is survival, when she transformed no physical attack could land on her.

Her opponent would either have to stop her from making illusions, or they would have to use mind and soul attacks. Luckily neither transcended had such abilities, only the wasp woman had something against her illusions, but those were kind of useless as well.

But that wasn't all. While they could hit her with any attacks, she could hit them.

She was constantly summoning large spikes made of crystal, or bombs that would instantly explode. The damage they caused wasn't real, or at least wasn't physically real. They were mind attacks caused by her illusions.

The wounds they left would instantly heal, but they felt all the pain it caused. As the fight went on, they seemed to get more and more annoyed as well as more exhausted.

Cassandra was constantly appearing and disappearing using crystals to hurt the wasp. She could make any kind of material with her illusions, but for some reason crystals were the easiest to make.

One more interesting fact was that the longer the fight lasted, the better and more comfortable she was with her powers.

At first she could only summon one or two spikes, but now she could summon hundreds.

Her essence usage was more refined as well and the illusions became more believable. It was going great really, but then something strange happened.

In a crucial moment her power malfunctioned. It happened for less than a second, but it left her too stunned to react in time to the incoming attack.

The wasp was flying straight at Cassandra. It stopped trying to bite down on her since every time she exploded into shard, which got embedded into her mouth. The bear-wasp opted to attack with her gigantic insectoid legs, using them to pierce her.

She was about to move out of the way, leaving an illusionary copy there, but at that moment her illusion disappeared causing Cassandra to get pierced by the leg.

The insect's leg entered her stomach and exited behind her back. It was so wide that she nearly got broken in two.

The wasp seemed really surprised by this outcome, but the smoke bird did not hesitate.

While Cassandra was fighting with the pain she took deep breaths, but after an exhale suddenly there was no air around her. It was like she breathed in pure smoke.

She instantly began coughing causing her wound to greatly increase in pain. She was still impaled and slowly suffocated.

Her mind tried to scramble for a thought, something to help her, anything... But she came up empty-handed. In the last moments before losing consciousness her life went down before her eyes.

She closed her eyes and relived her happiest memories, which were mostly made-up of this last week. It was strange that the best part of her life was only beginning, but it would soon end.

Cassandra recalled everyone, stopping at one particular person... She was really looking forward to speaking with David in private, after the siege... But alas, life went in a different direction... Or so she thought.

Her body felt light, almost weightless. She didn't believe in an afterlife, so it was very strange to feel anything after death. What was even weirder was the heat. It was like she was swimming in a lake of lava.

As the heat increased she gained a bit more clarity. Her ears began to pick up sounds of shouting and large explosions. Her eyes were still closed, but small flashes of light still appeared.

Eventually she got enough strength to open her eyes, which stared at something unheard of. In the sky a lone angel fought against a giant cloud and a monstrous wasp. She was losing quite badly, but Sera didn't give up, and managed to make the wasp roar in pain.

Cassandra only passed out for a few seconds. Her wounds were already healed, but she was falling towards the battlefield below.

It took her another second to gather her remnant strength and leap towards the fight in the sky.

The bear head of the wasp bit down on Sera's white wing. She screamed in pain, but her movements stayed true and firm. With a quick turn she brought down her twenty meter long glaive ––made purely out of her whitish-gold flames–– on the wasp's legs.

They only reached two on her left side, but they cut them away with ease. It should've been harder to slash through them, but Sera was cunning. She aimed at the exact place where two joints met, the weakest point. The glaive went through without any issue.

The bear roared again and tried to bite at her wing, but with a quick roll, she only got burned by the flaming wings.

The smoke bird tried to attack too, but every time Sera just summoned a giant wall of fire, stopping the bird dead in its tracks. Her essence was decreasing by about a hundred each second, and she was already close to half strength.

The two would only have to keep attacking for one more minute, and her essence would fully run out.

Sera struggled for a few more seconds, then finally she spotted Cassandra barreling towards the fight with ever increasing speed. Her body shimmered and changed to the color of Sera's flames.

After seeing that Sera had to defend against another attack, so she missed what happened next.

A few more exchanges went down between Sera and the wasp, until she finally had a second of respite to look at Cassandra. At that point she had already disappeared, but it took no time for her to appear again.

Suddenly the whole cloud of smoke was surrounded by a huge wall of fire. It was similar to Sera's own, but she could see the difference. Luckily neither the smoke bird, nor the wasp knew that.

It was very similar, almost perfect. It even felt real since it made light and felt hot, but for Sera who lived with that flame, and saw it each day on her back, she saw through the mirage.

The illusion Cassandra made was clever, genius even, but it wouldn't last long. She bought Sera time to finish off the wasp, who was heading towards her in this very moment.

The bear head roared causing a huge headache to Sera, but unlike most people she felt pain differently. Her body stood still as a small trickle of blood flowed down from her nose. It instantly got evaporated from the heat exuding from her body.

The wasp was fifty or so meters away, moving with unnaturally fast speed. It would take her about two seconds to reach Sera. At least it would've if she stood still.

The wasp was moving her abdomen forward. She had a few meter long thin stinger at the end, which she already tried to attack Sera with.

Unlike the last few times, Sera didn't wait for her to arrive. With one wing-beat she moved at the surprised wasp. Around her a large funnel of pure fire appeared, its point aimed straight at the wasp's thorax.

The world seemed to freeze for a moment. Many people on the ground stopped fighting to stare up at the sky. Everything turned silent.

A few kilometers away in the sky Sera slammed into the wasp's most armored part. Up there the world exploded in a fiery ball. The funny part was that the sound travelled too slow and by the time it arrived everyone saw the result.

The sound of the explosion was so loud that it shattered eardrums and windows. The evolved fell to the ground clutching their heads, and even the ascended felt a lot of pain.

At the southeastern gate, the members of the Angelic Order didn't show any pain. They just bowed towards the explosion once, then resumed their killing spree.

David laughed at the sight. He felt a great pride towards both Sera, but mostly towards Cassandra. She grew a lot in the past week, which really showed in the fight between her and the other two transcended.

Jill looked at it as well. Below her mask a small smile appeared and she glanced towards Helena, who made a small bow towards the flames too, but she tried to make it less obvious. Jill chuckled soundlessly at the sight, then ordered her family to continue the killing.

At this point there was no reason for the murder, but an enemy army only stopped fighting after their moral breaks, or when all of them dies.

Most soldiers still stared at the sky, when the fire dissipated. The wasp looked stunned, but she soon began to plummet. She wasn't dead yet, but her chitin armor broke to pieces, revealing the organs below.

Sera wasted no time. Her head was pounding from pain and disorientation, but she still went and delivered a fatal blow to the wasp.

Her previous glaive turned into a spear, which pierced the transcended's heart, killing her before she even hit the ground.

In the sky Cassandra wasn't idle either. While Sera fought she began to decrease the size of the box, until it was only a few dozen meters in diameter.

She was concentrating as hard as she could, but the smoke bird had already figured out her trick and he used all his power to escape. Before he could do anything though, Sera came to stand next to Cassandra.

Using close to two thousand essence she made the inside of the box explode with her flames. It costed all her essence and the large expenditure caused her body to weaken, but it also killed the last transcended.

Sera didn't even recognize that. She suddenly felt dead tired, and if Cassandra didn't provide support, she would've already plummeted to the ground.

The box Cassandra made couldn't hold against all the concentrated energy inside, so they began moving away fast before it fell apart. They made it a kilometer when the walls finally broke.

The dark morning sky lit up above New Constantinople. This giant explosion marked the end of the siege!