Kimadantes groaned. The clouds were doing them some good for the moment, but the second she started opening the Rift, they Angels would be on them like bloodhounds. Granted, she could take the two of them to a spot close to her father's palace, but she knew that bringing an Angel Nephilim into Hell would warrant some explanation, no matter who he had worked for in the past.

"I won't need too long... Maybe five minutes, seven minutes tops." She said. "As long as you keep them off of me, I should be able to get this done pretty quickly." Jacob nodded, then drifted forward into the clouds. Kimadantes felt a little worried for the boy- it was a feat to take down a single Angel, but a regiment? If it was just her she would be dead already, and judging by the shouts they had discovered the body of their fallen comrade. "Focus!" She mentally scolded herself before turning to the task at hand. Taking a deep breath, she blew flames into her palm, where they sizzled and quickly turned a tarry shade of black. What was worse was the smell- sulpher and brimstone. The Angels would notice in no time, which left both her and Jacob in a precarious situation. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, and the fire began to spread, spider-webbing through the air and cutting across the clouds. Smoke began to swirl around her, and the very sky began to crack. Kimadantes pushed back- her part was done. But opening a Rift took more than just a little fancy flames- it took time. If she tried to open one directly inside her family home, the guards would prevent it from forming too quickly, so she aimed for a patch of land just outside of the palace walls. She could hear shouts and the sound of conflict behind her. If those Angels reached her, not only would she be dead, but they would have a clean shot into Hell, where they could potentially cause some serious damage. "Oh, come on!" she said, waving the flames on with large strokes of her wings. This Rift just couldn't open fast enough.

He gave a genuine smile and chuckled at the truth in Iris's words. "I suppose that's true enough!" Not as if I mind at all. he thought to himself, his face going a little pink. In reality, he'd been concerned with how she'd respond for almost a month now. Knowing that she was definitely on his side was a huge relief. After all, he was going to need all the help he could get, and he wasn't very good at making friends. He was prepared to push the door open to what would hopefully be a room full of unspoiled food stuffs, but he stopped suddenly as if frozen. "A rift... Is opening. Four miles southeast of here." Who would be stupid enough to open up a gate to hell in the middle of Europe without taking the time to at least draw out a protective circle? However, it could be an express ticket straight to the Hellgate. It would also bring the attention of every angel, demon, and those stuck in the middle, to one point at the same time. Either way, he wanted to be there.

"Let's not waste any time!" He ran for the elevator they came down in and was ready to close it the second as soon as Iris got in.

{Null}

Jacob felt the tingle of dark energy rush up his spine as Kimadantes began to open the Rift that would take them straight to Hell. He moved to the edge of the cloud bank, and gazed out. The Angels were milling about, preparing to attack. Jacob swore, and ducked back into the cloud bank. This wasn't good. He'd managed to take out the first Angel so easily only because he'd had the element of surprise. Had it been a straightforward fight, Jacob had no doubt that the Angel would've been able to hold out long enough for the rest of the regiment to arrive.

Against a full Angelic Regiment, Jacob didn't entertain any illusions of success. He might be able to take down a handful of soldiers, maybe a knight if he had all of the luck in the world. Then there was the fact that, as an Angel Nephilim, he probably wouldn't be taken as a prisoner. If he was lucky, they'd kill him on the spot. If not, he was sure that there was a special place in Purgatory just for "traitors" like him.

The Angels charged, moving into the cloud bank en masse. Jacob smirked. He darted into the thick of the Regiment as it entered the clouds, cut at a few of the soldiers, and retreated again. Chaos ensued as Angels, hindered by poor visibility, began to fight each other, the energies flowing from the opening Rift permeating everything with a twinge of demonic energy. Simply put, everything seemed like a Demon to the Angels, whose confusion would hopefully buy enough time to get Jacob and Kimadantes through the Rift.

A wave of power crashed through her,as she sensed an immense power wash over the room. Before she could talk though, Kass beat her too it. A rift? So it led to either hell or heaven. She shut her eyes, before scanning far and wide, sensing souls of everything. A demon, the same soul she had sensed earlier appeared to be doing it, along with a nephilim.

She rushed into the elevator, as it shut before going back up to the building. A free ticket to hell... she wondered how it would look like. As the elevator opened, she rushed out with Kass and winced a bit at the sunlight that shown into her red eyes. Iris closed her eyes, opening her senses. Shuddering, she could sense immense amount of angelic souls, and a single angelic Nephilim soul along with a demon's soul. A starnge combination.

In the distance, fluttering wings of the angel soldiers signaled that her soul sensing was correct. She glancedat Kass, before nodding and giving him a smirk.

"I'll meet you there Kassy~"

Her body shuddered, before black wings erupted from her back. As long as she didn't use that move she should be fine. Quickly, she jumped and her wings flapped greatly before heading over there.

Kimadantes swore, urging the Rift along with occasional bursts of flame from her fingertips. "Come on, faster!" She could hear fighting behind her, and lots of it, though she couldn't be sure who was coming out on top. Abandoning the Rift, she whirled about to see a shape approaching through the clouds. By the bulky armor and large wings, she knew it was an Angel. Cursing, she ducked into a particularly thick spot of cloud and waited, holding her breath. She had one defense- the fire that she could draw through the Rift. Hellfire could easily burn through the wings of an Angel, and if she managed to take those out, the soldier would fall to the ground below.

The Angel hovered in front of the Rift, his brow furrowed, and Kimadantes saw him lean closer. A Rift floating in midair was unusual enough, but its presence was enough to put him on high alert. Only those of Demonic blood could open doorways to Hell, and the sight of one was a dead giveaway that something hellish was nearby. As the Angel turned, Kimadantes reached out a hand and pulled with all her might, summoning the flames from the depth of the Rift. A blade of black fire shot from the tear, and sliced cleanly into the Angel's wing. He shouted, flapping frantically with his uninjured limb, but his efforts proved futile and he dropped like a stone through the clouds. Satisfied, Kimadantes returned to the Rift, feeling the hum in her bones that meant the door was ready.

"Jacob!" she shouted. The sound would give away her position, but with any luck the Nephilim was still alive, and they could slip through before the Angels caught up.

"Jacob!" That call was music to his ears. He'd begun fighting for real once the Angels had seen through the trick he'd pulled. Soldiers piled into him, and he struggled to keep up with their skill and number. He hadn't managed to kill any of them. He'd counted himself as lucky that he was still alive, though just barely. His armor was battered, his body bruised, and more than a few bones broken. A large cut ran the length of his chest plate, a shallow cut underneath that stung whenever he moved his arms.

He broke away from the Angels, and moved towards the Rift. What had started as a tingle was now an overwhelming presence that shook Jacob to his very soul. Beyond that Rift was Hell itself. He made it to the Rift, and saw Kimadantes waiting for him.

If he did this... If he went to Hell, there was no turning back. He could turn away now. Surrender to the Angels, be taken prisoner, wallow in Purgatory for a few thousand years, then find Heaven. But if he went through the Rift into Hell, Jacob could sit in Purgatory for all eternity, and it wouldn't make a difference.

He steeled his resolve. He would do it. He'd come too far now not to. Jacob dove into the Rift...

After what felt like hours they finally got outside the Vatican. Iris wasted no time in taking off towards the rift, raven black wings pushing her off the ground in a flurry of black feathers. Kass grinned as the ground around his feet cracked and ripped apart, red lightning streaking across the earth from his body. "As if I'd let you get there before me!" He crouched and kicked off the ground, the air where he once stood collapsing so quickly that the sound of thunder echoed in the small plaza. Suddenly he was in the air, his coat flapping in the wind. He felt them before he could see them. Angels, hundreds of them in that cloud bank. Kass' grin widened as his hand went the Armageddon blade. As he drew it, the handle lengthened and the blade shortened and warped, becoming a halberd.

Kass burst into the could bank, running the halberd through the first angel he saw. His eyes flared with a mad glee as the felt his weapon tear armor and flesh with equal amounts of ease. He kicked the angel off his blade and watched it vanish into a cloud of gold dust. Kass wasted no time, and neither did the angels. They attempted to surround him but Kass simply lengthened the halberd and cleaved through three of them with one swing.

Weak. To weak. Kass made his way for the rift, cleaving through, shooting or stabbing any angel that got in his way. It also left a nice clean path for Iris to get to the rift.

Kimadantes watched as Jacob vanished, the Hellfire blazing around him as he slipped through the Rift. Something else was there, something other than the Angels, and whatever it was seemed to be giving them quite a hard time. She could feel the boiling in her gut, her stomach flipping, telling her that there was no time to waste, that she should run and close the Rift behind her. But curiosity got the better of her. Whatever it was, this strange new creature was fighting the Angels- which meant that, by default, it was on her side. Unless, of course, it was killing for fun and would take out anything and everything that it saw.

"Who's there?" she shouted over the sounds of battle as the Angels waged war against their new attackers. Jacob was still behind her, she hadn't forgotten him. Leaving him alone to wander through Hell all by himself was a bad idea, especially with him being the son of an Angel. But whatever was out there, she wanted to know. " I said, who's there?" Kimadantes shouted again. This time, she saw movement through the clouds; something was streaking towards her, winged and large. Could it be an Angel? Sure didn't feel like one. She bared her fangs in a snarl and drew her knife as the thing burst through the clouds, and Kimadantes found herself staring into a pair of red eyes.

{Ignore]

Well, instead of charging into the mass of angels and killing them like a certain man did, she decided to take a lower and honestly less bloody way of doing things.

Though a few did stay in her path, she easily paralyzed them with the spirits that surronded them, and watched as the spirits wrapped around them like a snake. She smirked to herself, as knives flew out of her hands, easily cracking the skulls of the angels and turning them to gold dust.

She took the path Kass had made for her, and soon a black blade emerged in her hand. She streaked through the crowd, and soon heard a woman's voice. It demanded for her to identify herself. Sensing her, her crimson eyes locked with the owner of the voice. Her soul... was familier. The demon soul that had lurked around the Vatican! How ironic that this was the demon.

She landed on the ground, and her wings were soon shrinking as it went back into her body. Iris blinked, before offering a smile at the demon. "Macha. It looks like you needed a bit of help there!" She said, as she giggled a bit at the end. She pointed to the falling angels thanks to Kass. "We decided to jump in and help you out! Though Kassy can get a bit excited about battling as you can see!"

Her black sword soon dissolved back into the skull tattoo on her palm. If anything, she just had to get this woman to trust her, at least not see her as a threat.

She didn't quite know what to make of the newcomer- she was undoubtedly the girl she had seen earlier at the Vatican. Everything about her screamed 'Nephilim' and all of Kimadantes' instincts told her that she should just dive into the Rift and close it behind her. Which she would do... If she wasn't so certain that this new girl would catch her faster than she could turn around.

"Well... Thanks for the help I suppose." She said, still not relinquishing her hold on the hilt of her dagger. The girl had said that there was another, and it was true that Angels were dropping like flies. Admittedly, she felt the need to give whoever was killing them a good, firm pat on the back; she and Jacob wouldn't have stood a chance. The Angel Nephilim was undoubtedly waiting for her, and would be wondering where she had got to, but the last thing she needed was for him to be poking his head back out of the Rift. "Who are you? It isn't exactly safe to be hovering around a Rift- The Angels take it pretty seriously. That regiment might not be the only one, so I suggest you two high-tail it." Kimadantes wanted to go, but her curiosity was overwhelming. How had these two known that she and Jacob were out here? Had this girl and her friend really just wanted to help, or was there some other reason?

Jacob really, really didn't feel well. Aside from his injuries from the battle, he'd just popped out of the Rift and right into Hell. Being part-Angel and part-human really didn't help matters any. Despite the fact that his surroundings were nowhere near as ugly as the fire and brimstone setting that popular Earth culture liked to portray Hell as -- he might have even called the volcanic landscape beautiful -- Jacob still felt like his entire body was on fire. His wings, especially, felt ablaze as Hell's very essence burned away at his soul, his mother's Angelic blood the only thing that kept his soul from being stripped away.

Jacob took a few steps away from the opening of the Rift. He felt light-headed, dizzy from the pain. Was this what happened to true humans when they entered Hell? No, he decided. A true human would only deal with the agony for a few instants before having the soul ripped away. Jacob's half-Angel descent kept his soul intact, but didn't keep Hell from trying to take it anyways. A tug-of-war on a much more painful scale.

Jacob fell to his knees, and heaved, throwing up the fish he'd had earlier, alarmed to find a fair amount of blood in his vomit. A massive wave of pain rolled through him, and it was all Jacob could do to not collapse in his own vomit. His field of vision began to recede, black taking over his sight. The last thought that went through his mind before his consciousness left him was an idle musing: If he died right now, what would happen to him?

There, just a few meters ahead was the rift, along with the demon who'd created. Somehow Iris had gotten there ahead of him, but that mattered little. Kass... was having to much fun to care. He cackled as he parried with a long sword and sliced as it became a katana. Laughed as bright red bullets rended holes the size of fists in the armor, flesh and wings of angels until finally, he was alone in the sky. He grunted and adjusted his glasses before making his way down to the rift, landing beside Iris.

The demon in front of them was, without a doubt, a succubus of high rank, not really hard to figure that out at a glance. The Armageddon blade glowed as he returned it to its scabbard, at which point Kass finally relaxed.

"I needed that! Been to long since a really had to put some effort into a fight. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like!"

Iris winced inwardly as she heard Kass' psychotic cackle. She had almost forgot about his little...blood lust problem.

Well...not so little.

Her focus returned to the succubus, and her questions. "..Well...That leads to hell right? We were looking for a path to it for awhile." She said simply with a shrug. "We were...looking to join the demon side at the moment. The angels pissed us off awhile ago, which is why Kassy over there is going on a rampage."

As soon as the last lie came out of her mouth, Kass landed beside her. It seems the current problem was dealed with, much to her delight. "So we were wondering if we could hitch a ride with you, since we unfortunately can't make a fine rift like this!" She said, with another giggle thrown in at the end to keep her personality constant.

More screams of war cries were heard in the distance, as more of the angels came toward the rift. Drawn by the rift, or maybe the battle noise that Kass had called, she didn't know.

"So, I suggest we make a break for it right now, since more might be coming!"

Kimadantes wasn't really sure what to make of this. One Nephilim was bad enough, but now she had two more to deal with? Then again, they had really helped, and those who fought on the side of the Angels generally didn't kill their own comrades. Besides, if what the girl said was true, these two could prove to be valuable assets.

"Fine. Just follow me." she said, turning to face the Rift. "Once all of us are through I can close it from the other side. But be careful- I doubt that the rest of my fellows will take too kindly to an intrusion like this." With another backwards glance, she folded her wings and shot through the Rift, reveling in the Hellfire as it wrapped welcomingly around her. The smell of smoke and sulpher made her smile- she was home. Jacob was already there, waiting, perched on a large stone outcropping. He seemed to be slightly mesmerized by the sight in front of him. "It's pretty amazing, huh?" Kimadantes said as she landed next to him. Before them lay an immense lake of fire, boiling and writhing in a million shades of orange, red, and black. Across the lake, a large fortress lay nestled amongst the rocks, its spires reaching for the blood-red sky above. That was her father's compound, and even from here she could see guards patrolling along the walls. She wasn't worried about them- they would let her pass no matter who she was with. But her father, well, that was another story all together. He was expecting her to return with information, and instead she had brought back three Nephilim. The two newcomers came tumbling down to join them, and Kimadantes raised her hand, clenching her fist. The Rift hissed and closed rapidly, tendrils of flame stitching together like thread.
"Welcome to Hell." she said simply, a it amused by the shocked expressions on all of their faces. "Best not to keep my father waiting."