CARVES DEATH AES.

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carvesdeath​:

“I’ll go,” said Isabelle loudly, in a commanding tone. Her voice rang through the room. Even the Jiangshi stopped moving for a moment. “Isabelle, you can’t —” Alec started. “I’m going,” Isabelle said. “I’m going, and I’m going to find Simon. I swear I will.” She turned and held her arms out to the Jiangshi. A sort of sigh swept through them, like an exhale of relief. They ceased pouring through the doorway. “She has chosen,” said the Hua Zhong Xian. Jace whirled to face Alec. “They’ll kill her—” “No,” said Magnus in a tense, low voice. “This is already a place of the dead. They assume she’s dead. Whatever they do, it won’t be killing her.” Tears ran down Clary’s face. She didn’t even try to wipe them away. “Isabelle, no.” “Let her go,” said the painted woman. “Her choice is irrevocable. Should you try to take her back now, worse will come than the Jiangshi.” “You stay out of this,” Alec snapped at her. He started toward Isabelle, but it was no use—in the blink of an eye, three of the demons had seized his sister. She put up no resistance. Her eyes were fixed on Alec as the Jiangshi marched her toward one of the doors they had come through. Don’t follow me, her gaze said. I love you, but don’t follow me. “Isabelle,” Alec said desperately, “don’t do this. Please. We’ll find Simon—” Magnus caught hold of Alec’s shoulder. Isabelle was almost at the door. Jace was gripping the spear in his hand so tightly his fingers had gone white. Clary appeared to be in shock. “Remember, Lightwood girl,” said the Hua Zhong Xian. “Go to your torment with your head held high.” Isabelle turned and regarded her. “I swear upon the power of the Angel,” she said in a clear voice, “that I will return. I will return, and we will tear down this place. We will scatter the undead to the winds. And I will, personally, tear you into ribbons.” Then she was gone.

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“They’re Elytra demons,” called Simon. “I think.” “Any further insights to share about them?” said Jace, drawing his flail. “Other than their name? Greetings, Elytra demons! Welcome to our dimension. Your time here will be instructive but short.” “I have an insight,” said Isabelle. She swiftly gave a kick to the nearest beetle. When it flipped onto its back, she plunged a blade into the soft body under its hard carapace. “Kick ’em over.” “Roger that,” said Jace. He spun his flail and, after a moment’s winding up, smashed it into the side of an Elytra, which promptly crumpled and vanished. “That also works, by the way. If you’ve got a flail with you.” “Ha! I told you it was a flail!” yelled Alec, kicking over a beetle of his own.

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He looked around. “You understand, I thought I would take advantage of the situation. I was allowed into Diyu and began to learn its layout, its structure, its rules. I thought, at least this could be useful to me, if I ever find a way out of this trap.” 

“It was useful,” said Isabelle. Alec looked at her, and she looked back, her dark eyes clear and shining. Simon, who was leaning his head on her shoulder, smiled up at her. “The Jiangshi took me through to yet another court, and there was an old guy there with kind of a melted face? He yelled at me in Mandarin for a while, and when I didn’t say anything, he opened a panel in the wall and sent me through.” 

“Which hell did they send you to?” said Alec. 

“The Hell of Silences,” Isabelle said. 

“Could be worse,” Jace said. Alec thought of the Hell of Boiling Soup with Human Dumplings. 

“It was the top of a tower, a little platform surrounded on all sides by a thousand-foot drop onto metal spikes,” Isabelle said conversationally. “They hung me from a chain and strapped a metal rod around my neck, with spiked forks at both ends. One end poked into my throat, the other into my chest, so if I spoke, or even nodded my head, I would be impaled on both. Demons watched over me and laughed while I struggled.” 

“Oh,” said Jace. 

Simon drew Isabelle even tighter to him. 

When Alec had first met Simon, he would have laughed uproariously at the suggestion that his sister would someday hold on to him tightly, that she and Simon would find affection and reassurance in each other. Of course, at that time he would have laughed at the suggestion that he and Magnus Bane would be raising a child together too. They had all changed so much, in such a short time. 

“I was only there for a few minutes,” Isabelle went on. “Tian found me. The demons watching over me let him get close, and then, uh, then a giant tiger showed up and killed them.” 

“Once Sammael’s eye was no longer on me, I called upon Hu Shen for assistance freeing Isabelle,” Tian put in. 

“That must have been so cool,” murmured Simon. 

“I made sure we brought the tiger,” Isabelle said. “I knew you’d be disappointed if you missed it.” 

Simon kissed her on the cheek. She blushed a little—very unlike Isabelle, Alec thought with amusement. Very unlike Isabelle most of the time, anyway.

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Through a Portal of storm clouds and rain had come Isabelle. She carried a blazing whip in one hand, and was riding on the back of a tiger. A very large tiger, even by tiger standards. Magnus had to admit that even he was surprised. The orange flame had been Isabelle’s: as Magnus watched, she reared back and struck again with the whip, whose length burst with fire. Isabelle whooped a warrior’s cry as the gigantic tiger landed in the clearing and gave a roar that shook the very foundations of the cave. She dismounted from the tiger and ran toward the spot where Simon knelt, Clary beside him. She immediately joined Clary in trying to free Simon’s wrists and ankles from their shackles.

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“You are not just some mundane,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “You are a Shadowhunter. You have a duty. A responsibility. You have a high and holy purpose, do you understand me?” He paused like he was waiting for an answer. Tian opened his mouth after a moment, and Magnus immediately spoke again. “You are the protector,” he said, “of our world. Ordained by the Angel. Instilled with his fire. Given the gifts of Heaven!” He grabbed Tian’s arm and glared into his eyes. “I know Shadowhunters, Tian. I’ve known them for centuries. I’ve seen them at their best, and at their worst. But I’ve known others, too, Downworlders, mundanes, and if there is one thing that Shadowhunters must understand, it is that they are not like other people. “They love, they build, they covet wealth—when there is time. When the duty—the solemn duty, the only duty, the barrier dividing the living creatures of Earth from oblivion at the hands of literal, actual pure evil—” Sammael waved jauntily. “—allows them to. All love is important. Your love is important. And for some people, their love can be the single most important thing, more important than even the whole world. “But not for Shadowhunters. Because keeping the whole world safe is not everyone’s reason for being, but it absolutely is yours.”

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Isabelle looked stricken. “He didn’t want to come,” she said. “To Shanghai, I mean. He thought something terrible would happen. I told him he was being ridiculous.” She pushed her tangled dark hair away from her face, her lips trembling. “Iz,” said Alec. “We’ll find him.” “We’ll have to figure out how to get back home ourselves,” said Jace. “And we have no idea how to do that, either.” “And we can’t leave without the Book of the White,” put in Alec. “And we have to save you,” he added to Magnus.

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Isabelle, meanwhile, had gotten pushed back toward a striped canvas tent by a group of the spider demons. She had only a single seraph blade and no parabatai to keep an eye on her. The spiders, sensing her to be vulnerable, leaped. Isabelle spun and kicked one out of the air, but doing so unbalanced her, and she went tumbling back into the tent, which collapsed around her and the spiders. 

Magnus cried out and ran toward her, but he needn’t have worried. The body of one of the spider demons suddenly emerged from the mess, impaled like a kebab on the end of a steel strut, part of the structure of the collapsed tent. Isabelle appeared, wielding the strut like a quarterstaff, and knocked two more spiders away. Now she held it ahead of her, keeping the spiders at bay, and with her free hand plucked her seraph blade from its sheath and yelled, “Nuriel!” 

The seraph blade blazed. Isabelle spun and turned the attack on the spiders, pushing them back, when Alec appeared, slicing away with Black Impermanence. Ichor flew.

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“Simon and Isabelle are supposed to be looking into the whereabouts of the Diyu Portal,” said Clary. They all looked over at where they’d last seen the two of them. A stern-looking goblin in rimless spectacles appeared to be angrily lecturing Simon, who was making apologetic gestures. Behind them it appeared that they’d upset a reading circle of toddler-aged hobgoblins. Isabelle saw the others and came over, a stack of books under her arm. She put them down with a sigh. “Can we come back when we have time to browse? Local history isn’t really my thing.” “Did you find anything about the location of the old Portal?” said Alec. “Not really. Simon was writing down the list of places mentioned, but it just reads like a tourist guide to the city.” Isabelle sounded frustrated. “It’s like every famous place is rumored to be the site of the Portal.”

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He had been worried that they would have a hard time finding their friends in such a large place, but he caught sight of them almost immediately. Isabelle was perched high up on a ladder, moving easily despite towering heels, his sister fearless about heights as she was about most things. She called down to Simon to move the ladder very fast to the section on blood curses, and screamed, “Whee!” when he did.

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... the rope Tian was whirling suddenly burst forward, at an angle, and Alec saw that at the end of the rope was a diamond-shaped blade of adamas, which lopped the head off one of said Xiangliu. “The clouds are Ala, they’re mostly annoying.” “Oh man,” said Isabelle, running to Tian, a slender staff in her hand. “What is that weapon? It’s awesome.” Tian looked pleased. “Rope dart.” Expertly he spun the returning rope around his body, catching it near the blade to regain control. “I want one,” said Isabelle. She whipped the end of the staff and a long curved blade, like a scimitar, unfolded and snapped into place at its end. Simon had dropped his bow and drawn two seraph blades, which glowed in his hands like beacons in the unnatural dark. “Is that a guisarme?” he called to Isabelle. Isabelle impaled a skeleton on the end of the weapon, then whipped it around and impaled a second skeleton before the first had even fallen. “It’s a glaive,” she said, with a wicked grin at Simon. “God, I love you,” said Simon. “Can someone throw some water on those two?” said Magnus. 

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“We’re not here to interfere with the way you do your Shadowhunting,” Alec clarified, by way of reassurance. Tian’s brow furrowed. “Do you say that in English? ‘Shadowhunting’?” “No,” said Isabelle. “No one says that.” “Well, maybe we should start,” returned Alec. Isabelle stuck out her tongue at him. 

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“Are you Alec Lightwood?” he asked, in accentless English. Alec raised his eyebrows in surprise. Isabelle said, “Oh no, Alec’s famous now.” The man turned to look at her. “And you must be Isabelle, his sister. Come,” he said, waving them inside. “All of you are expected.”

[beclynn-herondale]

This entire scene had me:

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AS SOON AS THE PORTAL opened and the wind began to whistle, Alec knew demons were coming. He drew his bow and yelled, “It’s a trap!” at the open front door. 

Isabelle was first to arrive, her whip at the ready. “Of course it’s a trap,” she said. 

“Of course we didn’t put on combat runes,” Jace said, joining her. 

Demons began to fall into the room through the Portal. These were demons Alec hadn’t seen before, massive snakes with shiny black scales and silent screaming human faces. As soon as they appeared, he began to shoot. Simon entered, an arrow nocked in his bow, looking more alarmed than Alec would have expected. Clary came in laying about her with glowing seraph blades. 

It was a strange fight. Rumnus had crawled under a table and was scrunched up with his eyes closed as though he wished it all would just go away. Magnus had one hand extended, and sparks were haphazardly flying from it, sometimes hitting demons and sometimes leaving little scorch marks on the walls and the furniture. His other hand was at his temple and his eyes were squinted closed; he looked like he was fighting through a migraine, though Magnus was not known to get migraines. Alec wanted to go to him, but the room had become an overcrowded mess of snake demons and sharp objects. 

Whatever was causing the snakes to appear, it wasn’t pursuing any kind of battlefield strategy. They continued to fall into the room as if dropped haphazardly by a giant unseen hand. Some landed upright, but others sprawled into a tangled mess or came down on their own heads, leaving them open for easy kills. Clary went around the room delivering those kills gleefully. 

Alec spun to avoid a demon’s bite and found Jace, arms pinned by two of the snakes. He quickly put arrows in both of them, and the second Jace was free, he leaped forward and buried a seraph blade in the face of the demon that Alec had spun away from, which had been coming up behind him. 

They exchanged a quick look, each confirming the other was all right, and turned back to the battle. 

It was over quickly, considering the number of demons and the Shadowhunters’ lack of preparation for a fight. From Alec’s perspective there were lots of snakes, and then there were no snakes, only his own heavy panting and that of his friends as they caught their breath, no longer in immediate danger. 

Abruptly a gigantic version of the screaming human face of the snakes, this one easily ten feet across, appeared in the Portal. It opened its distended mouth and screeched, its eyes searching. It caught sight of Magnus, who was still clutching his head, his teeth gritted, his fingers sparking at the end of his outstretched hand, but not to any noticeable effect. 

Simon fired an arrow into the Portal; it passed through the face and vanished into nothing. He looked at Alec with a panicked expression. Alec shrugged. 

And just as suddenly as it had appeared, the demon face vanished. The Portal, too, quickly faded away, leaving only the bare, cracked ceiling of the apartment and the sound of Alec’s own heartbeat in his ears.