[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 97: In Which We Walk Into an Ambush

The portal spat us out into heat and firelight and the immediate understanding that we’d walked into exactly the trap we’d expected.

The throne room was massive.

I’m talking cathedral-massive, the kind of space that made you feel small on purpose. Obsidian walls stretched up at least sixty feet, polished black stone that reflected the infernal fire burning in brass fixtures mounted every ten feet. The floor was the same black stone, smooth enough to catch distorted reflections of everything above it.

And in the center, on a throne carved from volcanic glass that probably weighed more than a small building, sat Veyrith.

He looked like Azryth. Same dark hair, same sharp features, same amber eyes that caught the firelight. But where Azryth’s presence felt controlled and deliberate, Veyrith radiated casual cruelty like it was his resting state.

He was sitting completely relaxed, one leg crossed over the other, watching us materialize with the expression of someone who’d been waiting for an anticipated show to start.

"Brother," he said, his voice carrying across the throne room like he was standing right next to us. "Welcome home."

Beside me, Azryth went absolutely still.

Then his power manifested.

Amber fire blazed at his shoulders, brighter and hotter than I’d ever seen it, five hundred years of rage made visible in a single moment. The temperature in the immediate area around us spiked high enough that I felt it through the binding.

"Get off my throne," Azryth said quietly.

Veyrith smiled. "No, I don’t think I will."

That’s when I noticed the demons.

Fifty of them, easily. Maybe sixty. Positioned around the perimeter of the throne room in defensive formation, weapons already manifested, just waiting for the signal to move.

"Oh, fantastic," I muttered. "An ambush. How original."

Behind us, the portal was still open long enough for the coalition to pour through. Ryota first with his team, then Mara and Henrik, then the rest of the hunters, Kelvin and Serra and Kade coming through last.

The portal closed behind them with a sound like reality sighing in relief.

"That’s a lot of demons," Kelvin observed, taking in the room with the kind of casual assessment that suggested he was already calculating odds.

"We’ve handled worse," Kade said.

"When?"

"I’ll let you know if I think of something."

Veyrith shifted his posture on the throne, power manifesting around him like a cloak made of shadows, the ambient temperature in the room dropped about twenty degrees in three seconds.

"I’ve been waiting for this moment," he said, addressing Azryth but loud enough for everyone to hear. "Five hundred years, I’ve imagined what I’d say to you when you finally came crawling back."

"I’m not crawling," Azryth said.

"No, you brought an army. How very unlike you, brother. I remember when you preferred to handle problems personally."

"I remember when you preferred not to stab family members in the back," Azryth replied. "We’ve both changed."

Veyrith’s smile widened. "Fair point."

He gestured casually, and every demon in the room moved at once.

Fifty-plus elite demons, attacking simultaneously.

"Defensive positions!" Ryota shouted, his team responding instantly.

Coalition hunters formed up with the kind of coordination that only came from doing this too many times in too short a period. Seoul cell taking the left flank, Berlin cell on the right, Tokyo hunters holding the center with Ryota directing traffic like a very angry conductor.

The throne room erupted into chaos.

Demons everywhere, coalition hunters engaging them with a combination of warden techniques and pure desperation, the sound of combat echoing off obsidian walls and probably audible in whatever passed for neighboring rooms in this place.

Kelvin tore into the demon line on the left with the enthusiasm of someone who’d been waiting days for a proper fight. Serra and Kade flanked him, the three of them carving through demons with efficient violence.

Mara and Henrik fell back to a defensive position near what looked like a support pillar, Mara’s scanner going haywire trying to track everything at once.

And Azryth and I started cutting toward Veyrith.

A demon manifested in front of me, blade raised. I hit it with the spectral blade before it could complete the swing, cutting through its dimensional anchor. It dissipated with a sound like air escaping a punctured tire.

Two more replaced it immediately.

"They just keep coming," I said, blade moving through defensive patterns I’d practiced so many times they were muscle memory now.

"Veyrith always preferred overwhelming force to strategy," Azryth replied, incinerating three demons with a controlled blast of fire that somehow didn’t catch any of the coalition hunters in the radius.

We fought our way forward, getting maybe fifteen feet closer to the throne before the demon pressure pushed us back.

The throne room was huge, easily a hundred feet from the portal entrance to the throne, and every foot of it was now occupied by demons trying to kill us or coalition hunters trying to stop them.

Through the obsidian walls, which were apparently translucent from this angle, I could see the nexus chamber beyond.

Pulsing purple-black energy, reality already warping around it in ways that made my eyes hurt to look at directly. The entity was visible as a massive shadow pressing against dimensional barriers, trying to force its way through.

Ninety-five percent charged, maybe more.

We were running out of time.

"We need to close that thing!" I shouted over the combat.

A demon got past my guard, claws aimed for my throat. Azryth’s fire caught it mid-lunge, burning it to ash before it could reach me.

"Kill him first," Azryth said, and I felt through the binding that he meant it. Veyrith had to die before anything else happened, this was five hundred years of necessity finally coming to completion.

Fair enough.

We kept fighting forward.

Ryota’s team was holding the left flank but barely. Seoul cell had lost one hunter already, the body dissipating in the way that meant the demon had taken them back to the infernal realm for reasons I didn’t want to think about.

Berlin cell was holding better on the right, but three of them were wounded and falling back to Henrik’s position.

The center was chaos, Tokyo hunters fighting with practiced coordination but visibly tiring.

And Veyrith was still sitting on the throne, watching all of this with an expression of mild interest, like he was observing an entertaining play rather than a fight for his life.

We got another twenty feet closer.

A demon twice my size materialized directly in front of me, power radiating off it in waves. Elite guard, not standard enforcer.

"Oh, come on," I said.

It swung a blade made of condensed shadow.

I dodged left, brought my spectral blade up in a counter that should have cut through its anchor point.

The blade bounced off.

"It’s warded!" I shouted.

Azryth was there immediately, his fire wrapping around the demon’s defenses in a way that found the gaps in the warding. The demon screamed, high and terrible, then dissipated.

"They’re all warded," Azryth said, scanning the remaining demons with the expression of someone doing very unpleasant math. "Elite guards, properly warded against warden techniques. This is going to take longer."

"Damn! We don’t have longer!"

Through the translucent walls, the nexus pulsed again. Reality warped visibly, gravity flickering for half a second before stabilizing.

Veyrith stood from the throne finally, power manifesting fully around him. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. Frost started forming on the obsidian floor despite the infernal fire lighting.

"You’re still strong, brother," he called across the throne room. "The warden’s taught you new tricks."

"He’s taught me a lot of things," Azryth replied, fire blazing brighter.

"But not enough, apparently." Veyrith gestured, and more demons manifested from the shadows. Twenty more, elite guards, all of them moving to reinforce the line between us and the throne.

The coalition was being pushed back, step by step. Not breaking, not routing, but losing ground steadily against superior numbers and warding they weren’t equipped to handle.

We needed to end this, and we needed to end it now.

But Veyrith was watching us with the patience of someone who had all the time in the world, and the nexus was pulsing behind him like a cosmic countdown timer, and I was starting to understand why the arbiters had been so cryptic about this whole thing.

We’d walked into exactly the situation they’d set up.

The question was whether we could walk back out.