⍭he ℱallen

Lauren watched Sal blow the dust away towards a single demon within a crowd of demons. It didn't go still like Tiia and Sven did, and she wasn't sure if it was reacting to it. She heard a slight grumble in the back of her head and continued watching the demon to see if there was any true change.

Lauren looked over at Sal and replied, "So... was that not what happe-"
YOU CAN'T USE THAT SMALL AMOUNT ON A DEMON AND EXPECT A RESULT.
Immediately at the sound of the loud voice in her head, she not only cut off what she was saying but she grabbed her head in enormous pain.

GOSH I HAVE HAD IT WITH YOU. I'VE BECOME IMPATIENT AND NOT SEEING DEMONS TEARING EACH OTHER APART IS MAKING ME UNSATISFIED.
"Ahriman what are you d-"

Her voice cut off again but this time she slowly let go of her head and stared over at the demons. She seemed to ignore Sal's existence, and she started walking towards the hoard. All of the demons were staring at her, and ready to lunge right at her. Lauren let out a chuckle and then whispered, "Watch and learn kid-brain."

What are you doing to me?

Lauren felt her hand flex out and she took a deep breath and whispered to herself in reply, "You have been releasing this power when in complete confusion or fear. Confusion releases it in a small amount, and fear is instinctual to protect yourself. You need to focus on these creatures in either anger or find pleasure in watching these things kill each other, and move your arm at a relatively fast pace. Don't go too fast, or you'll release too much, don't go too slow either, or you won't release enough."

Lauren, brought her arm to her chest and sent her arm towards the demons at a moderate pace. This sent out a clearly visible amount of dust, but not nearly as much as she sent out towards Sven.

When it engulfed the demons, the demons stood still and silent. "Now, run back over towards Zachariel now."

Lauren was released from Ahriman's control and tried to ask why, but still obeyed him and backed off. Slowly the demons began to move and after a few more seconds the demons began to tear at each other's throats, killing each other.

Lauren looked at Sal shaking and spoke, "I-I think I've got it, mate."​

 

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DAY 90​

Saturday, December 21, 2013
Sundown​

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What started as days slowly drifted to hours; from hours to minutes, and now a matter of seconds. Time seemed to stand still as the sun went down below the horizon. Everything was frozen in an endless suspense of time. No one dared to move or breathe. Hearts raced and the anticipation was sickening. The demons had gradually disappeared as the hour drew nigh. Fatigue set in and everyone had come to find themselves tired in one way or another.

The temperature seemed to drop drastically, even with the sun barely out of the sky. It was chilling to the bone and too cold for the desert at this time of day. Whatever happened next would make or break everything. Who would die? Who would live? Will the world have a favorable outcome, or will some barely live to tell the story of what their world once was?

The sky blackened and the ground began to shake. Screams could be heard in the distance as people from the village were unprepared for the sudden earthquake. The ground seemed to tear itself apart as a massive fault line split the desert in two. Monstrous hands clawed their way out as demon after demon climbed up to the surface. What had been roaming free so far was nothing compared to the true army of Hell. How many former allies were now aligned with the forces of Darkness and about to fight for the Morning Star's sake?

The Fallen were drastically outnumbered and had been worn down with every new wave of demons that came out of the woodwork in the days prior. Could any of them stand a chance in this war?

Lightning cracked in the sky, followed by the booming sound of thunder and a skeletal looking chariot was carried out of the ground, pulled by hellhounds. Two passengers were standing in the car -- the Prince of Hell and his brother, the Kraken. The hellhounds came to a stop not far from the fault line and hundreds of demons gathered around them. In the mix of it all were various fallen Dark Angels that had been by the Morning Star's side throughout it all and two particular angels the group of Fallen had come in contact with throughout their adventures.

Brothers and Sisters, the Morning Star's voice rang through their heads, I do not wish to fight my brethren. We must stand together and take back what is rightfully ours. We are one and should stay as one, however, if you resist joining us, then you are a threat and will be exterminated in the process of reclaiming Paradise. This is your last chance. There was a long eerie silence that swept over the land. No one moved. No one made a noise. It was just as agonizingly long as the wait for the Prince to rise. After a few moments of no one moving, it was clear what decisions were made.

Lucifer raised one hand up high into the air. He flicked his wrist and pointed straight ahead at the Gates. With that single motion, time seemed to suddenly move in fast forward. Demons and angels charged. The silence was broken. The war was beginning.​

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30

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Spoiler: How I Rose

Richard had finally made it to the bottom of the Ivory Palace. During these past few days since he had started the ordeal, he had been ebbing his way down the gauntlet, until finally he made it here. It was here that he would finally get the long held back explanation from Maalik. The room was pitch black, and devoid of all detail, save for Richard's existence. It was then that clapping emerged from somewhere within the darkness, and the angel in question emerged as if from seemingly nowhere. Richard waved to the figure, saying "yo."

Maalik returned the gesture as he said, "you did well to make it all the way down here. Though, it wasn't like I was expecting you to fail or anything." Maalik then looked around and sighed, "well I guess I should welcome you to my home." As Maalik outstretched his arms, detail suddenly filled the previously blank room. The ceiling was cavern like, with stalactites hanging from them. The rest was simply a wasteland of fire and brimstone. Demons could be seen running around, while the screams of the damned and restless echoed throughout the entirety of the area. There was a single word that could describe this place, and that word was- "Welcome, to Hell."

"Nice place you got here. So, what, didn't like Heaven or something?"

"As I said before, I've never been to Heaven before. That's because this is where I was born, and this is where I lived until I made my way into Earth." Maalik then sighed and said, "well I guess since I owe you a story, I might as well start at the beginning. As an angel, my job here was to monitor the overall status of Hell, keep demons in check, and punish sinners that found their way down here. This job was ingrained in me since my very birth down here, and it isn't like I hated it or anything, after all it was mostly my reason for existing.

"Now the thing that annoyed me, was all the other angels that existed. Them all living their posh lives in Heaven, doing very minor things and doing very little work. Though regular angels weren't the worst. That was the archangels. Those who seemed to be regarded as the most powerful amongst us, well, suffice to say they were also seen as the most revered of us. It's not like I particularly hated them at the time, it was just that there superiority over mine simply because of my living arrangements annoyed me. Though, my opinion dropped severely at the time of my fall.

"As I said before, my job was simply maintaining Hell. And I was a fairly powerful angel myself, so the demons posted virtually no threat at all. Hell, most angels weren't even a problem. But then there was angel that I obviously couldn't fight. After the grand rebellion against Heaven, guess who was sent down to Hell to be imprisoned? Well, dealing with the Morning Star himself wasn't the main issue, though it was a big one. It was the fact that he had brought with him an army of dark angels that had fought alongside him. It was more than I could handle. Unfortunately, because Lucifer then took over hell, I had essentially failed my original purpose. Let's just say that not everyone is so understanding, and one slip up that you couldn't control ends up getting you the boot. And so that's how I fell, or more ironically, rose to Earth. "

Richard stood there taking in everything that Maalik had told him. This certainly was a first. The cold angel that he had been with to this point had never really shared anything about himself, other than his name and duty. Though Richard could only exchange the only gesture that was known between these two. He sighed. "Well, I guess that finally explains the resentment I was feeling from you towards everyone. So, I guess that means that this finale is a bit of a grudge match for you then?"

"Not really. It's true, I hated all of them before. Hell, I hated humans more than anything because I only ever saw the worst of them before coming here. But, thanks to some hosts of mine, and a certain electrically charged guy, I finally found myself able to, at the very least, only strongly dislike instead of hate." Maalik then made an expression that Richard had never seen from him before. Maalik smirked. "Guess you weren't the worst of hosts I've had either."

Richard returned a smirk as he started to approach Maalik. "Weren't? Isn't it too early to be speaking like my time is already over. I'm not sure I'll be able to believe your comments about your strength if you talk like that."

"Right. Well then, I guess we got a grand finale to pull off here."

"Yeah. Let's go." With that, Richard and Maalik preformed one simple fist bump before the dream world that they were in faded out and ended.

Richard's eyes opened as the sound of the big bad himself resounded across the entirety of the city. Richard briefly thought about whether or not the country's government was actually going to do something about a giant tear in the earth, though, it'd probably useless if they did anyway. Regardless, he stood up and drew out his blade as the climax was now drawing upon them. The entirety of their journey, all the people that were met, all the places they had been, all the fighting they had done. It all lead up to this one point. Despite all the fighting they had done the past few days, for some reason, Richard felt better than he had ever before. The time for sleep was over, and Richard felt fully focused and ready to take on whatever would come their way.

Obviously the dark angels would be the key targets to take out, as the demons were essentially cannon fodder. The two targets in particular being Leviathan and Lucifer. With one being the destroyer to end all destroyers, one who's power was so feared that he was only managed to be shoved in a prison forged by some of Heaven's strongest. The other, being one of the most powerful angels to exist, the quintessential angel to have fallen from grace, and the leader of the rebellion of himself. And Richard wanted to bring them both down equally as much, as did Maalik. As the charge began, Richard had made up his mind. As much as he wanted to fight these things, fighting them alone was tantamount to suicide. And so Richard said to the rest of the group, "who wants to help me slay a squid?"

 

28

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Spoiler: The other day

"Hey uh Cal? something up? seems something been bothering you lately" Caius said walking up to the girl. They had been fighting on this land for quite the long time and even now during battle, he noticed something was up with Cal.

She ran a knife through the throat of the beast and wrenched her arm back, freeing the blade. Cal looked up to see Caius in front of her and wiped away the mixture of blood and sweat smeared across her face. "Oh, well um... Yes and no." Her red eyes caught another demon coming up behind him from over his shoulder. "Look out," she called before tossing the knife.

"Yes and no? well it sounds like its quite confusing" Caius said before dashing forward past Cal and slashed a demon behind her with his claw like hand. "man they just wont let up..." Caius said panting a bit standing behind Cal. The last few days had been rough on his body and the demonic side of himself did not sit well with midworld "If its confusing why not tell me? you can tell me whats up and we can clear it up" Caius said with a smile as he glanced over his shoulder at her before thrusting his palm forward to blast away a demon that attempted to attack him.

His smile was sweet and she came to a stop. Her hands fell limp at her sides and she watched as he fought. They had made for a good fighting duo. She could always trust her back to Caius. "I don't think now is the best time," she confided. They needed to stay focused and a jumble of emotions wouldn't help.

"Thats fine" Caius said in a simple and direct response before staring over his shoulder at her once more "Just make sure you tell me when you feel like it, I'll be there to listen when you need me to" Caius said with a soft smile before preparing to fight again. "To be honest I am sick of all this killing...even with these demons, I just don't want to kill them either..." Caius said before sending a flurry of invisible shards to assault the demons. "I don't hate anyone...there were times I hated Manitos and my father, but even then that hatred has passed..." Caius said with a sigh. "is that...wrong?" Caius asked

Cal shook her heard and grabbed him by the hand. "there's nothing wrong with wanting a little bit of peace. You're a good person -- better than I am, and very forgiving." Cal started to run, tugging Caius along with her. "Let's go get some peace."

Caius' eyes widened the moment she took grasp of his hand and dragged him along. He was unsure of where exactly they were going, but he ran along with her in order to see just where they were going.

They stopped between some aluminum shacks away from all the fighting. "Much better," said Cal with a satisfied grin.

Leaning back against a wall, Caius let out a loud sigh of relief and smiled and stared back at Cal before reaching into the jacket he wore and pulled out a cloth and handed it over to Cal "Use this to clean your face, it looks like a mess" Caius said with a bright smile

"Thanks," she replied sheepishly, taking the cloth. Cal wiped at her face to buy time. Caius wanted to know what was wrong and she didn't know how to tell him. "Do you think we can actually do it?" She asked, handing the cloth back.

"Do it?" Caius asked a bit confused as he took the cloth and began to wipe his face. "if you mean facing off against the forces of hell then yes I believe so" Caius said as he lowered the cloth from his face "I can't tell myself we can't...that single hesitation can cost us and I just want all the killing to end" Caius said

She nodded her head slowly and smiled. He had a goal. He wanted this all to end. "Caius I need to ask you something."

"Whats that?" Caius asked staring over at her quite curious

"Um, well I ... I need to know how you feel about me." She told him, her face starting to turn red. "I mean I know, but I need you to say it. Because, well ... it's part of the situation."

Instantly Caius' eyes widened and his face immediately turned red. "I...ummm" Caius began to stutter before staring downwards and scratch the back of his head. "Its like I said before, I love you with all my heart. Everything I've been through, all the pain, just seeing you smile is all I care for" Caius said starring up at her meekly

Cal scratched the back of her neck awkwardly and mashed her lips together. "I know, I just ... I needed to hear you say it again, because Alistair said I need to talk to you ... and Soren. Because, well because I like you too Caius. But ... I also like him. The both of you mean so much to me for different reasons and I don't know what to do because I don't want to hurt either of you."

"I...see" Caius said closing his eyes and let out a sigh. After a mere second, Caius opened his eyes once more and stared at her with a soft smile. Reaching forward, Caius took hold of her hands and held them

"I understand, but I want you to know one thing and that is no matter who you choose, so long as you're happy I will be as well...your happiness is all that matters to me" Caius said closing his eyes with a bright grin

She sighed in frustration and narrowed her brows. "It's not fair though. I shouldn't get to be happy at the expense of someone else. I don't want either of you to hurt. I wish there was some way it could work out for everyone." With a defeated look on her face, she reached onto her tip toes to give Caius a kiss on the cheek. "I want everyone to be happy."

Once again Caius' eyes widened upon the sudden kiss to the cheek, but he did not wish to ruin the moment by letting out his timid side. Regardless, he couldn't help but release his grip on her hands and hold her gently in an embrace "I...wish for the same thing, for everyone to be happy..." Caius said. "it may not be fair, but you hold no blame in all this. The both of us, we chose to love you...it was our choice and we are prepared..." Caius said

"I hate this," she whispered into his chest. It wasn't fair. "I really hate this."

"I know...you have such a kind heart..." Caius said softly closing his eyes "There will be pain, but it will be momentary...something that will pass...even so I will love you no matter what choice you choose" Caius said

Mentor and student stood side by side, staring forward and steeling themselves for the bedlam that would occur. Caius was nervous, but he couldn't yield even now. Lucifer's forces had finally arrived and the gruesome battle started off in a mere instant. Demons and dark angels were all over the place, but even so, there was only two people that the pair merely acknowledge.

"So the observer steps forward...how amusing that it comes to this...Alistair..." Regulus spoke with arms crossed as stared at the two along with his doll standing by his side.

"Regulus...have you you found what you desired?..." Alistair said calmly as a blade formed from his arm. "Such a similar path, but at the same time these paths split and here we are fighting for different reasons...let us see where this path will lead..." Alistair said dashing forward towards Regulus instantly. Invisible shards shot forward at the red head, but Alistair was quick as he slashed at the incoming shards and continued forward. The gap between the two men was starting to shirk and as Alistair drew closer another member in the area took the moment to attack, catching Alistair off guard and caused him to stop. The faithful doll sprung forth and attack slashing towards Alistair, but before Alistair could react, the blow was intercepted by the demonic hand of Caius.

Knocking away the doll from Alistair Caius stood back against Alistair's as the two prepared to fight onward. Gritting his teeth, Caius narrowed his eyes and stared at the doll that stood before him, the very same doll that he had seen all his life. He knew so long as this doll was around it would mean more trouble caused by his father. Regulus put enough trust in it so it meant that that it was something they shouldn't underestimate. As if in a synchronized move, Regulus dashed straight at Alistair while the doll dashed towards Caius.

With an open palm, Regulus raised his arm upwards as his shards covered his hand and immediately swung downwards towards Alistair. In response, Alistair sidestepped as well and slash back at Regulus who managed to block the blow as well. An exchange of blows occured in which each member attempted to slash at one another's side.

 

16
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Samuel Riviera
DAY: 90 [FINAL] | DATE: December 21st, 2013 [Saturday] | LOCATION: The Gates in Al-Qurnah​

It hadn't been too long since He had finally showed up and all hell broke loose. It was utter chaos as countless fiends clamored to reach the gates they defended. Blood-curdling howls, spine-chilling roars, high-pitched screeching, and every inhuman sounds you could imagine filled the once quiet air of Al-Qurnah.

Bright crimson flames danced as Sam cut down crowds of demons. There was no way he was about to let them get through without a fight. All of the fatigue he had felt before the start of the battle had all but vanished. The rush of adrenaline shooting through his body made all of the weariness go away, along with any pain he might've felt before. It felt like pure strength coursing through him as he cut his way through the immense mob.

As he cut through all of them, only one though raced through his mind: It's kill or be killed.

 

15



{♚}Location: The Gates in Al-Qurnah {♚} Mood: {♚} OOC: {♚} ​

Here they were, standing before them was who he assumed to be Lucifer along with a legion of demons. Sure in theory Logan would be able to cook up a army of his shadow soldiers, but in actuality and through fighting the demons the previous days he learned that there were quite some drawbacks and limits to his powers other then collapsing due to over use. For example, they could only go so far away from him before they disappeared. Another one was while he could increase the durability of the shadows, the problem was it required concentration. So if out of 10 he made 1 stronger, then not only would the other nine get weaker, Logan would almost have to put all of his attention on the one he was strengthening.

So yeah, his army spawning ability had its usefulness and its drawbacks, though it was too late to be worrying about how to alter or work around those drawbacks. He would simply have to make due with what he knew and has always done.

"who wants to help me slay a squid?"

Hmm, the squid, the leader or the swarm of demons approaching us. Logan stood there for a bit weighing his options. Clearly fighting the leader was the first thing to get crossed off the list, which left either one powerful foe or a swarm of demon. Since there was a likely chance that the demons would be fought regardless of which he chose. "Sure, two heads are better than one as they say."

 

14


Adam had been making his way through the demon hordes to get around and see how the other side was doing. He ended up killing a couple of demons that he saw squirming away making unpleasant noises. They were better off dead anyway. He had finally managed to make it pretty close up, and saw Brandon just run through another demon with his blade, Brandon quickly turned around to go after another one, before his shoulder bumped into Adam. As he saw what he had bumped into, Brandon's eyes went wide for a second before calming back down. "Long time no see." His voice was quiet and lacking energy behind it.

Adam returned the stare for a moment, and was a little overwhelmed by Brandon's lack of energy before he just finally shook his head and raised his blade, "Sorry about this." and he swung it towards him in an attack.

Brandon's expression was filled with regret as he heard what he had said and saw just what his blade was doing. Turning his blade into a small buckler that wrapped onto his arm, Brandon his arm in the way to block the sword swing, and said, "guess El was right." With a look of dismay Brandon used his free hand to reach into his pocket. Having his expression become slightly annoyed, Brandon pulled an electrified tennis ball out of his pocket and threw it straight at Adam.

Adam quickly pulled away from Brandon in order to evade the tennis ball. He barely made it, and felt a small shock from it when it passed him. He looked back at him and started to form mist around his arm and sword, which after a second solidified into what looked almost like needles, then he shot them towards Brandon.

Creating a large electric net around himself, Brandon side stepped the attack, disintegrating the majority of the needles, with only one or two grazing his face. With the net coming down, Brandon fired two lightning bolts that arched towards Adam from either side.

Adam tried to back away to avoid the hit, but he only ended up closing himself in more. He took his sword and moved it towards his right side but it left his left side vulnerable to the attack. When the lightning hit him Adam nearly dropped his sword and grabbed his head to try and get his vision back. He purposefully surrounded himself with even more mist to help recover. He looked over towards a group of the demons and motioned for them to attack Brandon, which they willingly obeyed and charged at him.
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13

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Back to back the duo fought on, deflecting as much blows as they possibly could from Regulus and his doll. Though the two worked well together, their teamwork was not as fluid as their opponents. Arm slashed by Regulus, Alistair tsked as he took a step forward and swung towards Regulus, having his bladed arm clash against Regulus open shard covered hand. Alistair had a plan, though simple, he had hoped that Caius would at least understand where he was going with this.

Alistair continued to walk on and clash with Regulus, moving further and further away from him and the doll. Alistair glanced over his shoulder at his student and Caius began to realize what was going on. If the two were an unbeatable duo then surely separating them would only prove to be more advantageous. Dodging side to side, Caius begun to avoid each blow that was directed towards him. He needed an opening, one that would finish the doll off for good.

"Do you think it was wise to leave the boy to do battle alone?" Regulus asked with a smirk as he flicked his wrist sending shards towards Alistair who proceeded to slash them away.

"He's not weak, its him that has to endure it...learn from it...learn the truth" Alistair said dashing forward slashing towards Regulus. The blow was blocked by a shield and the shield burst into shards. The shards moved forth heading straight towards Alistair, but what caught Regulus off guard was the sheer fact that Alistair took the blow. The aristocrat grinned as he continued forward, taking the wounds that were brought by the shards and stepped forward reaching out towards Regulus and grasping his neck. Life began to slowly drift from Regulus and the destruction of his life began.

Bladed continued to slash towards Caius, cutting flesh and air as it moved forward. Caius continued to move backwards, enduring each blow while deflecting each one he could. The blows were light nicks, but Caius couldn't afford to take much damage but even so he decided to place his gamble on his next move. Suddenly his foot slipped, falling backwards towards the ground as the doll charged forward with claw ready to take advantage and slash the opening. His moment had arrive and it was a do or die moment. "TIME!" Caius called out as time distorted for him and slowed down for him. It only lasted two seconds, but it was all he needed. In that time Caius managed to reel back his elbows.

With the doll taking the moment to attack the opening Caius took, Caius did the same and took the opportunity. He took chance and thrust both his open palms forward releasing a holy storm of shards to assault the doll. Trapped in the storm of shards of time, the doll was blasted upwards as the shards assaulted it. The long cloak it was was ripped asunder and the mask it wore fell off. Having felt it was enough Caius lowered his palms and panted a bit as he rose to his feet. The doll fell to the ground and Caius slowly begun to walk towards the doll. What he saw was a female figure, a body filled with stitches and metal, but the face, she was a beautiful one. Emotions swelled up as he saw the fallen form and the tears in his eyes suddenly began to run down his face. He had never met her, he had never known her, but even so he knew who this was, the similarities were uncanny. "...mother" Caius said. As if in a reaction from hearing his voice, the woman sprung from her bloodied state and slashed towards Caius.

 

12

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Alistair could tell something was wrong with his attack to Regulus. Regulus was certainly no pushover and even so there was no resistance as his death grip took affect. A chuckle escaped the lips of Regulus and Alistair's eyes immediately narrowed. "TIME!" Regulus called out as time distorted for him and slowed down. The duration was five seconds and Regulus found the opportunity for those five seconds. He rose his foot and kicked Alistair in the chest, pushing himself away from the angel of death's grip.

Time returned to its normal state and Alistair gritted his teeth once he realized that Regulus had escaped his grip. He needed to head forward and not let Regulus gain the chance to retaliate, but suddenly there was pain as his shoulder was cut by a newcomer. Going after Regulus was not his main target any more as he leap back to gain some space. "Docrates...Phaeton... " Alistair said as he held his bleeding shoulders "Typical that you would make this easy for me.." Alistair said with a smirk

"Come play with us death! It'll be fun to kill death" Docrates said with glee licking his blood covered claw. Phaeton merely took a step beside Docrates and stood prepared to battle. In a mere instance Docrates and Phaeton rushed forward as their battle with Alistair began.

The two demons dashed forward in perfect harmony and with their claws outstretched they lunged towards Alistair in an attempt stab at him. Closer and closer they drew and Alistair prepared as scale like blade covered his entire arms. Alistair took grasp of both claws that attempted to stab him, but both demons responded by raising their free arms and slashed towards Alistair. In a quick movement, Alistair tightened his grip on their arms and raised both legs before kicking them in the gut and away from him.

The demons were kicked back and Docrates let out a loud and crazed laughter as he kicked off the ground and dashed at Alistair once more alone. Alistair pointed his hand towards Docrates and few of the bladed scales covered around his arm began to be fired straight at Docrates, but this hardly delayed the demon any further. He was in a bloodlust and he continued to slash on. Alistair struggled dodging and deflecting each and every slash until Phaeton appeared behind. Immediately Alistair moved to block the blow from Phaeton, but this only left Alistair open to Docrates. Alistair leapt backwards, but do so repetitively could only solve so much. Alistair managed to dodge a fatal blow, but the right sigh of his face did not escape. Vision from his right eye was gone and Alistair began to pant. Thrusting his hands forwards he fired all the blades covering his arms, but Phaeton stood in front of Docrates and held out his hand as a barrier formed. The barrier faded and in a quick movement Docrates rushed forth and sent his fist forward, hitting Alistair's gut and sent him flying.

The two demons stared on at Alistair, Phaeton with his stoic face and Docrates with his gleeful and mocking stare. Alistair could only close his only working eye and chuckle silently to himself slowly rising to his feet "Its best I embrace my true self...right?...Azrael?" Alistair said taking grasp of the giant blade resting on his back. He was going to end this and move on. He drew the blade and immediately thrust it into the ground. With the mere move, the ground began to crack lightly and decompose. The demons immediately took this as a sign to attack and immediately dashed forward. As the two drew closer, the decaying ground erupted upwards and shot up a spiked pillar embedded with blades that impaled the two demons. Alistair quickly drew his blade from the ground and dashed forward while the demons broke free from their stone confinement and rushed forward.

Alistair was first to act once the two side drew close. He rose Arondight high and swung downwards. Phaeton stepped in front of Docrates and a barrier was formed causing the blade and shield to form. In such a state it only benefited the demon duo a great deal. If he wished to turn the tables he needed to destroy that barrier and the only way to do that was simply to increase his power. Wounds began to open and spread further and further, he sacrificed some of his life force in order to strengthen the death aspect of his attack. The barrier was corroding, fading, dying. With it weakened, slashing though it was possible. He swung his blade downwards and sliced through Phaeton. Even with his death the stoic look on his face never faded.

"PHAETON! YOU BASTARD I'LL KILL YOU" Docrates yelled in sheer rage as he rushed forward, lunging ahead in an attempt at mauling Alistair.

The attack from Docrates was sudden, but Alistair was prepared. Blood trickled down his mouth, but even so Alistair swung his blade upwards and severed Docrates' arm off his body. As the demon screamed in anguish, Alistair released his hold on Arondight and dashed forward opening both palms. Blades burst out of Alistair's palms and Alistair slashed Docrates' chest with both blades before impaling them into the body and lifting it upwards. From the blades he felt the life being drained from Docrates begin to fuel him. "SO WHOSE KILLING WHO NOW?!" Alistair yelled with a smirk as he drew energy. There was nothing more that needed to be done, the blades retracted back into his palms and a the body began to fall. In one swift movement Alistair used the blades on his arm and cleaved the body in half in order to finish the battle for good. "Quite the well fought battle..." Alistair said walking towards Arondight before falling to his knees "But even so, I can't fall here...heh...sorry Tempy...but I'm not giving you the satisfaction of watching me die so early..." Alistair said silently as he rose to his feet with Arondight in hand. "Man...looks like I won't be making fun of you anymore...Julius" Alistair said quietly as he placed his hand over his right eye.

 

10

​

Brandon's expression became annoyed as soon as the demon's started charging him. Gritting his teeth, he shouted "if you're going to fight me then why not do it yourself!?" Generating a large amount of electricity in his hand, Brandon flung a lightning bolt at a single demon. This was the new technique of his, chain lightning, in which a single bolt went towards a single target. Once the bolt hit its target, it more or less used them as a living battery and charged off them, before going towards a new target. The lightning started bouncing from demon to demon, killing them as it went until there were none left. Once the bolt left the final demon, it flew straight towards the recovering Adan.

Adam had finally gotten himself to stand up straight before the lightning went straight into his chest, Adam held it and let out a sharp cough before screaming, "Enough of this!" and he formed the mist again and had it form again, like the needles, but this time the size of daggers, but not nearly as many as the needles. When he threw them in Brandon's direction he fell to the ground.

When the daggers came towards Brandon, he turned Vis Vis back into a sword and electrified it. Slashing towards all the daggers coming towards he managed to knock a few out. However a few cut his torso, while one found itself in his leg. Gritting his teeth, Brandon electrified his leg to not only disintegrate the dagger, but also slightly burn his leg wound to close it. Looking at his collapsed foe, his anger went down a tad as he said, "are you done yet?"

Adam knew he couldn't just give up here, no matter how much he may have wanted to at that moment. He was getting hit pretty bad by Brandon and he really wished he had something more powerful than mist to counterattack. He used his sword to help himself stand up, before he pulled it out of the ground and transformed it into a throwing axe. He formed mist around it to form a grip, that way if it did miss, or if it hit him, he could pull it back. Adam threw with as much strength as he could muster towards Brandon, hoping he could do some damage.

As Adan got up wordlessly, he realized that this fight wasn't going to end until one of them went out like a light. With a calm expression on his face, Brandon sighed and started walking towards Adan with an electrified Vis Vis. As he hobbled his way over there with his bad leg, Adan threw his blade which was now in the form of an axe. Brandon couldn't really dodge it with his leg the way it was, and it just planted in the shoulder of his free arm. Grimacing a bit at the pain, Brandon's shoulder electrified, burning the mist on it and firing a pulse that knocked the axe out of his arm. As the electricity start to burn his shoulder wound close, Brandon continue walking with that same calm expression firing a small bolt of lightning from his blade towards the ground at Adan. The bolt was simply supposed to turn into a pulse that would do nothing more than knock Adan down.

Adam had gotten a firm grip on the axe just in the to use it to block the lightning. It was the first time something managed to time well during this fight for him and he was going to use that to his advantage for now. Adam transformed his axe back into a sword and ran up to Brandon and slashed down at his legs. At the very least he was going to try and go with the tactics that got him to win against Sal. Even if most of that fight was luck.

Brandon continued walking towards Adan, even with his foe charging him now. Brandon simply kept lmiping forward. Once Adan brought down his blade towards his legs, Brandon simply blocked the attack with his already damaged leg, grabbing the blade with his bad hand. Dropping his blade, as this happened, he jabbed forward with his hand, now fully electrified, straight at Adan's torso.

Adam moved slightly to the right, but wasn't able to move quite quick enough. He felt the hand go straight at him and he felt his heart skip a beat. He felt paralyzed and couldn't move and felt the feeling that this was the end of him. He lost his ability to move, although he remained conscious of everything going on.

As Brandon had seen his attack go through, Adan fell to the floor rather quickly. With a good deal of damage to himself, Brandon fell to the ground a bit himself, and tried to bring himself up. As he picked himself up, breathing heavily, he looked down at Adan, and saw that he wasn't moving anymore. "My my, it would appear you had everything under control Brandon." Brandon turned around to see just who the voice belonged to, only to see that it was El who had appeared before him. With his ever calm face on, El said, "nice work there, though you seem to be badly banged up yourself. So, is he dead?"

Brandon looked at Adan and shook his head. "He isn't, or at least, shouldn't be. I don't think I put enough power behind that last attack to kill him." Brandon was hoping right now that Adan was just unconscious.
Sal shrugged and said, "well guess there's only one way to be sure then." Sal drew out his blade and pointed it upwards. "It's a shame that you had to turn traitor against us Adam, but if this is the path you chose, then you should except the end it lead you to." With that, Sal brought the blade down towards the limp body only for it to be stopped by a golden blade. His eyes traced the blade to its source and saw that it belonged to Brandon, who had a pleading look on his face. "Even after all this, you'd still side with him, hm? Well, " Sal shrugged, "guess it can't be helped then." With that, Sal grabbed Brandon and hoisted him onto his shoulder. He turned to Adam and said, "yo, Semyaza. Even if your host is out, you should still be able to hear this. At this juncture, I'd recommend you stop where you are. Even if you have the strength to keep fighting, don't. In the case that hell wins, just go on with what you were doing before, it'll most likely be no different for you at all. In the case that we win, you should just run away from here as fast as possible. If you aren't a threat to us, we won't pursue you once this is all over. However, if you keep on fighting, your host will die, and it will be a completely pointless death. So stop where you are now."

With that, Sal started walking away from the body and hadn't looked back. Once he got back to the others, he simply put Brandon down and turned to Vincent, "it would appear the boy got himself a tad too injured for the time being, so if you could heal up first that'd be wonderful." Sal then turned to see that Henrik and Soren had already decided to charge Lucifer on their own. Not to mention, Samuel had been going on a rampant demon killing spree, and was focusing more on the demons than anything. Then there was Alistair, who seemed to be heavily wounded and not finished with his opponent yet. Who to help first? Regardless, Sal decided that he needed someone to send a message. "June."

The young girl walked over to where the Portuguese man was and said, "yes?"

"I have a favor to ask of you. Could you please tell Samuel, the big Mexican man with the flames over there, to stop wasting time on the demons and instead move on to the bigger targets like Lucifer or Leviathan?"

"Mhm." With that the girl drew her giant blade and started walking forward towards Sam in order to give him the message.

 

09

​

It was far too unfair, too cruel for him. Caius staggered backwards in a pitiful attempt to dodge the multiple slashes that came from the woman that he called mother. The woman held not a shred of emotion on her face as she swung her claws at him. Though her body of metal and flesh was heavily damaged and bleeding severely, it did not stop her in the slightest. To her she only needed to do one thing and that was to finish off her opponent.

In such a state it was easy to destroy her, but Caius could not bring himself to even do so. Through all his life he always believed that his mother was a kind hearted person. There was nothing that ever led to that belief except for hope, hope that at least one of his parents were somebody he could love, somebody who he could probably say loved him. He knew it was a disillusion and told himself he may never be able to figure out if this was true or not. He told himself his mother was dead and this allowed him to believe what he wanted, that he would never learn the truth, but this mere revelation shattered that thought. The woman was always near to him, aiding Regulus in his endeavors. He steeled himself to fight Regulus but this was another story. The tears ran as he desperately tried blocking off each blow. Even knowing she was the doll, he still could not shake off the love he deluded himself into believing.

"Why do you not fight back..." Regulus said walking up to the scene with his arms crossed, staring on at the scene. The tears running down the boy's face, the desperation on his face, it was all intriguing to that of Regulus. He closed his eyes and let out a chuckle, "its only typical...like I told that girl Calamitosum...love is such a pathetic thing, one that is only a burden..." Regulus said calmly "This is what I've observed...I suggest that you distance yourself from him" Regulus said.

Each word Regulus spoke made thing even more difficult for him to even hold himself against the woman. Each blow cut deeper and deeper as time moved on. Doubt began to fill his mind, he did not wish to believe such a thing, but even so it hurt so bad. Was love really worth holding on to? would it only bring pain like he was feeling at the moment. He was in a weak and pathetic but he could not believe such a thing. His body did not wish to move, it had enough and await its end. It would end with his own mother piercing his chest. He had given up, but even so he stared over at the woman and stared deep into her emotionless eyes and smile softly as he said one thing.

"Mama..."

It was as if everything froze, there was no more bloodshed and Caius' life had not come to a halt. "Impossible..." Regulus said unfolding his arms. "Finish him" Regulus said, but the command fell on dead ear. The doll that had always followed the will of Regulus did not move. Her body shivered in resistance as it remained frozen in one spot, unable to attack further.

Caius was taken back by the sudden halt in movement, but there was no hesitation, his mind was steeled but his heart was in pain. He thrust his own demonic claw and pierced through the chest of his mother.

Spoiler: Katrina Astar

She was a woman who had lost everything, a woman that held so much love and care, but was only used and tossed aside like trash. She was broken in pieces, but one man saved her and allowed her to express that love she held. All she wanted to do was express her love and to be loved in return. Regulus Astar, who had abandoned his family strict laws chose to claim her as his bride. She was truly fooled into believing the man loved her. She was happy, she was content. She told himself that even though Regulus never showed his emotions, deep down there was still love. It did not matter that he did not return her feelings, but that she was able to love him was all that mattered. Her world was filled with light once she got word of her pregnancy. Regulus was gone, but she still had her child. She would love this child and in return she would finally be given love back. She would endure the pain she felt, so that she could see her child's precious smile.

The body collapsed on to Caius as he removed the claw from the chest. Even though everything was over, he still held the body as it braced against his body. He felt liquid drip face, but he could not tell whether this was blood or tears. He could not bear to look at his face. It was not a grand form of proof, but it was good enough for him. She loved him, this was something he concluded. He hesitated with all her being to attack him. As she rested against him and as he held her, this was closest time he could ever say that he ever embraced one of his parents. He held on to her, not wishing to let go as the tears ran, but soon enough those tears faded and the body dropped as he released her. Everything was silent, but Caius glanced over his shoulder and stared over at the man staring over at him. The tears had ended and what was left was a tear stained face.

"I cannot fathom why she paused mid attack..what it affection? how interesting" Regulus said walking forward towards Caius. "What is it that fuels you? do you feel anger? sorrow? or perhaps happiness? do tell me boy" Regulus asked.

"...I pity you, father" Caius said turning to face the man. "An empty man that cannot understand true emotions. You seeking out others and attempt to learn, but never can comprehend it..." Caius said as blackened demonic wings spread from his back. His body was weakened, but he needed more strength. He called upon the demonic essence that was a part of him and prepared himself "It is time I ended your pursuit..." Caius said.

 

08

​

Lauren had been using her powder strategy to her advantage for most of this long fight. It wasn't draining her as much as she felt it would. She kept using it and getting the demons to fight one another, and she would use it on groups of demons. It kept her from really having to kill anything herself, and it laid out a clear field for people to fight on. One particular fight she kept glancing back to see, it was between the apple guy and the lightning guy. From what she could see, lightning guy had won, so she didn't feel the need to run in there and see.

It was at one point when she was extending her hand to use more of the red dust she felt something swing at her and she quickly shifted. When she turned while drawing her sword she looked to see one of the dark angels directly in front of her, making a tsking noise.

"Ahriman, you shouldn't be on their side. So what are you doing there?"
Lauren shook her head and felt Ahriman speak, "Maybe, but my host is not on your side. I will fight with her until the end for what she believes in. And she believes you should be gone from here."

After the words were exchanged, the dark angel laughed and attacked her. Lauren blocked with her sword and then turned it into a hammer. She held it firmly and slashed at the angel's head. It hit her, and then it slashed back while Lauren was recovering to her get leg. Lauren quickly leaned forward and moved her injured foot with it, causing for the earth to crack under the dark angel. The angel disappeared into the crevice as Lauren slashed at the mist to make it disappear for the time being until she felt some tighten around her legs and hold her still. The dark angel flew up from the hole and took the spear in it's hand, aiming straight for Lauren's chest.

Lauren closed her eyes in fear before she saw something quickly knock the spear out of the angel's hand. Their eyes widened and then something hit it's head and freeze the right side of the head. The mist weakened around Lauren's ankles and she stabbed the angel in the chest. It let out a scream before falling back and turning into the black mist and disappearing altogether.

Lauren looked over in the direction the water came from and smiled upon seeing Tiia who yelled towards her, "You looked like you needed some help!" Lauren nodded and saw more demons heading back towards her. She used the powder again but this time she started to feel the drain. Tiia ran over and spoke, "Sit down for a second and keep the demons away with the dust. I'll heal your leg."

Lauren lowered herself to the ground and Tiia formed her water and placed it on Lauren's leg. She let out a small yelp in pain as Tiia held it there, but slowly the wound began it's healing process. Tiia shook her head and spoke, "I can't fully heal it, I'm sorry. But the best I can do is at least have it sealed. If it gets really bad find Vincent, okay?"

Lauren nodded and looked behind Tiia and shouted, "Look out!" and pushed her out of the way while a second dark angel shot something at them. It hit Lauren in the leg Tiia had just took time to heal and Lauren let out a yell and tried to stand up. The angel laughed as it spoke, "You both looked like you were relaxing too much~"

"You son of a bitch!" Tiia screamed as she pulled out her blade and transformed it into a bardiche and she retaliated. The angel kept dodging playfully as it continued to laugh and speak tauntingly, "Your host has no experience Raguel. This greatly amuses me."

Tiia continued slashing at her before the angel pulled out a dagger made of the black mist and stabbed Tiia in the abdomen, "She isn't worthy of dying by my hand. So I hope she likes being food for the demons." She then threw Tiia to the side, twirling the dagger and coming up to Lauren and saying, "Prove to be more entertaining than Raguel, Ahriman. It'd be quite a shame if all of you are equivalent to pigs."

Lauren quickly stood up in full anger and slashed at this angel who grabbed the hammer and yawned, "You don't need to warm up lets just kick this off Ahriman."

Lauren moved her hurt leg and forced the ground around his legs. She then grabbed his head and pushed him down into the ground. His face was unamused up until Lauren held up the hammer. Where he suddenly felt a sense of urgency and Lauren yelled, "Alright mole, time to be whacked!"

With a quick motion towards the head. The angel seemed to go deeper into the ground. She peaked in to see and saw him stick his head pop out and he let out a laugh, "Really Ahriman? You've resorted to kid gam-"

The angel watched the hammer go down again, he disappeared into mist and came out of the ground and formed behind Lauren and aimed the dagger at her back. She grabbed his hand and the dagger from behind her and spoke, "Did you think that would work?" Lauren then twisted his arm and turned around. She transformed the hammer into a sword and stabbed into his abdomen and spoke, "I hope you enjoy being eaten alive by the demons." Lauren shifted him to push him and held his dagger go into her chest as he spoke, "The same to you."

Lauren pushed him into the demons and used the red dust on the horde and waited for the demons to eat him alive. Lauren grabbed her chest and walked over to Tiia and tried to act as calm as possible. She pretended not to be injured in order to keep herself moving. She picked up Tiia and brought her over to Vincent and told him, "She needs to be checked out fast."

Lauren did not even consider the fact that she was probably worse of then Tiia. She didn't even know she was bleeding because she was wearing a black shirt. But something felt off and she could feel it. Lauren ran back into the mob and started fighting again, but she started to feel weak although she was still helping.​

 

7
​

As the battle went on and more and more demons continued to run towards him, Allen continued to slash at the ones that got too close to him. Fortunately there was nothing too difficult for him to face as he struck down another demon. The only ones that came to mind as something to avoid no matter what were Lucifer and his brother. Even Nuriel was oppose to the idea of him fighting them since for one instead of the usual opened ended advice or answers he gave, he actually warned him not to attempt it.

Unfortunately though, while he was distracted in his thoughts a demon had managed to get in close and swipe his sword out of his hand. The attack had left a claw mark on the hand that was holding the weapon and while it did hurt, he could still use it to fight. Though now he had to deal with the demon before him unarmed.

Step back!

Hearing Nuriel's voice in his head Allen did as he was instructed, just in time to watch his left hand move forward and punch the demon in the head. If it wasn't for the fact that the fist was also cloaked in flames the attack probably would've have been as effective, proven as how the demon was now unmoving on the before him, slightly burning due to the attack.

Told you I'd step in if needed

Its true, he did say that.

Anyway, I think its time to help some of your friends out.

Allen didn't quite get what he meant by that. He was too focused on the demon that had knocked his sword, which he did need to get back before another one took advantage of him being unarmed, away. Nevertheless, he started to look around the battlefield. What he saw was Lauren had left Tiia with Vincent and was heading back to fight the demons, but something about her seemed off.

From what he could tell at this distance, she wasn't fighting like she was in top form and she seemed to be grabbing at her chest. Allen may not have been a doctor, nor did he have any desire to be one, but it didn't take a genius to tell that something was wrong. So he went over to his sword and picked it up, there was still some pain due to the wound on his hand, but he paid it no mind. Instead he changed the sword into a dagger and headed over to where Lauren was.

Due to their being a mob around her, there was plenty of hacking, slashing and burning to be done as he fought his way to where Laruen was, but eventually he made it there and asked. "Are you okay?"

 

04


♪
​

Shards were sent flying towards each other, clashing against each in an attempt at besting the other and causing harm. The wings of Caius were spread and immediately he kicked off the ground and slashed his claw towards Regulus. In an immediate response Regulus rose up his palm and swung it towards Caius as the shards formed around the palm and turned the palm into something quite similar to that of a sword.

"So you would call upon the demonic essence that you've shunned all your life?" Regulus said pushing Caius away from him and took a step forward "Have you grown that desperate? or have you accepted your fate to sink and become no different than those mindless demons? or will you die trying to kill me?" Regulus asked swing his palm towards Caius. He had hoped the doll would have preformed more, but even so Jehoel's remnants did provide her enough power to cause serious harm and Caius was in a damaged state.

Raising his demonic hand, Caius used the back of his hand to block the incomming palm and though it cut lightly into the skin, Caius held his stance with narrowed eyes. "Im not dying here nor will I fall to that of a demon. She'll cry..." Caius said pushing forward. "If I can help it I will not sacrifice my life at all, its not something she would want...I'll move forward and work to create a better land. I'll over come my demon side and I won't dare ever make it affect me" Caius said pushing Regulus flying back. Flapping his wings he dashed straight towards his father stretching his arm outwards at him.

"In a land filled with such selfishness, is what you seek impossible? anger, love, happiness, sadness...it is all selfish natures of man" Regulus said getting better footing on the ground as he rose his hand forward and formed a shield that Caius' claw clashed against. "In such a selfish world there will always be strife as people continue to move forward to satisfy their own goals." Regulus said calmly.

"Yes...living by emotions is selfish, but its selfless all the same. I cannot guarantee a bright future, but to live without emotions...its like not living at all!" Caius said as the shield shattered allowing Caius to step forward and slash at Regulus. Regulus took a step backwards but Caius' claw at least managed to graze Regulus' chest and knock off his mask.

Blood trickled down his face and Regulus held his palm over it before he glanced over at Caius. "To not live at all..." Regulus said panting a bit. At first he believed he had the advantage with the wounds Caius took from his mother, but the drain of life from Alistair was now beginning to take it's toll on Regulus. Caius jumped up into the air and began to dash straight towards him at a great speed. Raising his palms forward giant shards began to fly and soar straight towards Caius, but Caius weaved and turned avoiding and destroying some of the shards that occurred. It was clear that his moves were not going to hit in such a distance and as he desired the best outcome he reeled both arms back. As if mimicking his father, Caius did the exact same thing having thought of the same thing. Caius grew closer and closer and once in range, both men thrust their palms forward sending a flurry of shards. Through the storm the two were sent flying back, torn apart slightly by the storm, but still in fighting form.

Slowly he arose to his feet and stood up starring over at Caius as he did the same. Regulus was more adapt when it came to his powers and he could output them at a better strength, but Caius had his demonic essence to help with that handicap. They were both worn out and fatigued so it was only fitting that it ended now. Regulus' ability over time was greater than that of Caius, he would use it to his advantage. 6 seconds is the max he could distort time for, he knew that Caius could only only distort time for a maximum time of 3 seconds. He would use that amount of time to his advantage. He kicked off the ground and dashed straight towards Caius "TIME!" Regulus shouted as time began to distort. In the two seconds he closed the gap between then and prepared to strike Caius.

Under the influence of time Caius was in a desperate state that in needed to block. He knew Regulus' time distortion was still active, but if he did not activate his own then he would die from Regulus' blow. "TIME!" Caius called out as he was freed from the distortion. He had 2 seconds while Regulus had 3, Regulus had it all planned and Caius could do was block the blow in those 2 seconds. The first second passed and the blow was blocked, after the next seconds Regulus was free to attack. The next second was used to push Regulus slightly away, but with his weakened wounds he wasn't able to push Regulus further. He refused for it to end like this he wouldn't let Regulus walk away free, he wasn't going to die. Even if his body was slow he would still try and continue on.

One second left, it was all Regulus needed to finish off Caius. As he was pushed away he anticipated the boy to return to the affects of the distorted time, but his eyes widened. As Regulus proceeded to make another attack in his last second it was blocked by Caius. "Impossible...he managed to break his limit?!" Regulus said in disbelief. His second past and but it was now Regulus who was under the affects of the disortion

"FATHER!" Caius called out as he sent his claw forward and pierced through the chest of Regulus. In those two seconds he did not know what happened. His desire to live clouded his mind and brought forth a miracle. 4 seconds had passed since Caius activated his time distortion and the affects now faded.

"Impressive...truly...impressive..." Regulus said as the blood began to spill from his mouth. Cold eyes stared forward as the arm still rested through his chest. "this world...truly is filled with mysteries...ignorance is what drove me to find this..." Regulus said closing his eyes. "I do wonder...if I...Sariel...will ever truly find the meaning of this life...I will see...though the threads of eternity" Regulus said as his body slumped. "Until we meet again...child......" Regulus said.

Spoiler: Nothingness

A shivering emptiness,

A cold foreign world,

An unknown perception,

He was nothing but a boy who knew so little, his past not even close to that of a blur. Where was he? How did he get there? Who exactly was he? He knew how to speak, he knew how to walk and he knew how to breathe, but there was nothing else in his mind. An empty slate, he had no memories on which to build emotion upon and was just a husk. Dim lit streets were spread out for him. The boy walked down the streets and aimlessly he stared around with vacant eyes, looking for meaning. It was a simple street, but for one with nothing this whole entire place was just a foreign world to him.

His footstep that had pushed him forward had finally stopped by the command of his mind. Before him he noticed it, a strange being no different than him lying on the ground. The red splattered all over his body, the gigantic cavity that ran down from the chest down to the abdomen. For him this was the first human he had ever met in his life and the vision before him enticed him. Ignorance begets curiosity and for the boy who knew nothing, he desired to learn as much as he could about it. It was the only desire he held, the desire to learn who or what he was. He dropped to his knees and reached forward into the man’s chest, wrenching out the heart that he had managed to take grasp of and stared at it. Merely staring at it only brought forth more questions as to what this person was. Why wouldn’t this person move? Why didn’t he seek answers like himself? Simple questions like those were just too alien to him.

The boy chose to dig deeper in order to find out more. The body held a strange sense of warmth, but even so this warmth was fading away. He wanted to find more, but there was a sense of fatigue that plagued his body. As things began to blur a bright and powerful light shone towards him. Among side the light were figures heading towards him. The boy desired to learn more about those figures, but the fatigue was too much and so he fell into a slumber. If there was one thing that the boy would carry about his entire life, it would be that single memory of the bloodied body. For him, this was his first memory.

The men that called themselves “Policemen” took the boy in, in order to keep an eye on the child. Though they did not charge him for the crime of murder, they chose to hold the boy that played with a corpse. The people shunned him, thinking him as a freak, but one family chose to use that for their advantage. The power hungry family only felt to increase their reputation and by taming the boy and making him a great successor would they only show how great they were.

Regulus,

A name that meant “Rule”. It was the name that the Astar family gave their new child in hopes that they would bring forth a heir that would rule the weak. He made himself a name, he became widely famed, but the man who started with nothing could never truly comprehend what people thought. His powers were formed and his desires only grew. He felt emptiness…something that he wished to be filled. He traversed the lands in order to find out more, but even so he could never comprehend that that empty feeling was what was breaking him. Through his empty mind there was one thing that had always stayed with him…why did the name Caius stay so prominent in his mind?

There was nothing, his face was near stoic, but even so the tears fell down his face. The blood of his mother and father rested now on his hands and he loathed it. He wanted to scream, shout and cry out, but he could not do so. All that was left was for him to end this stupid war and end all the blood shed. He staggered on moving towards his next battle.

 

03

The Serpent's Unholy Wrath Pt I

​

"I-I'm fine, mate." Lauren responded with a grin to try and persuade him otherwise. She figured at this point she would be better off running and killing some of the bigger guys, rather than be fighting the demons again. Lauren used her red dust to get the demons to fight one another and she looked around for something else to do. "Alright alright... where to go..."

Walking through the field of demons before him, white mist started skewering demons every which way. Despite the fact that Richard and Logan had decided to fight Leviathan by themselves, there was still a large wall of flesh between them and their target. It was then that Richard got an idea as to how to get a crazed battle freak's attention. He then turned to see that Allen and Lauren were close by and called out to them. "Hey, you two. If you could help us out against Leviathan, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'd suggest leaving since things are about to get a little crazy here." Gathering his mist into a large a white spear, Richard aimed it at the Kraken, and fired it straight at him.

Without missing a beat, Leviathan caught the large spear with his hands. "Neat trick," he quipped as he deflected it into a nearby crowd of demons. Laughing maniacally, he spread his wings out and flew high into the air and dove towards the one who threw the spear at him. "So it was you, huh? You've certainly got a lot of nerve!" He landed right in front of him, his feet digging into the ground below him. "I hope you make this exciting!"

"You sure?" Allen questioned. While the grin was somewhat reassuring he still had some doubts about her well being. Since she could still use her red dust to make the demons fight one another, she wasn't in too bad shape. It was then that he heard what Richard had said. To fight Leviathan or not. Even though he had wanted to avoid it all together, considering the enemy that they were up against, it would be very beneficial to have more than two people fight. "Well, what do you think?" Not too long after he asked, Leviathan had landed right in front of Richard and and Logan had two of his shadows rush towards the angel.

The Kraken smirked as shadows rushed towards them. They were nothing more than buzzing flies to him, it would take more to affect him than that. Much, much more. Though, the idea of another joining in was titillating. More and more people to fight would definitely make things more fun. He wanted to fight them all. No, not fight. He wanted to destroy them. He wanted to make them rue the day they were even born. "Let's see how you like this!" After cratering the ground beneath him even more, he pulled both of his arms back and launched them towards the angel directly in front of him.

When the beast landed, Richard simply smirked at him and replied by saying, "Only if you're willing to do the same." It was then that Leviathan started to pull back both of his arms and the ground itself started to break underneath him. Well, he was certainly the strong one. Richard knew what was coming next, and that's why he was able to side hop out of the way of the attack in time, though the force generated from the fists was still tremendous. Getting pushed back by said force, Richard then fired three hellfire spears at Leviathan, followed up with creating one that shot itself from the ground at him.

Unfortunate for the two shadows that had rushed in, the sheer force of Leviathan's attack towards Richard was more than enough to blow away the two shadows. However Logan had expected his shadows to not last too long against him. Instead he simply sent four more after him. Even if it was only for a second, if he could distract Leviathan from his current target, then they might be able to deal some damage. If i came down to it, then Logan would have to join in along side the shadows and Richard.

From the corner of his eye, he spied a few shadows rushing at him. In that moment of distraction, the spears that flew at him dug into his body and forced him to stagger backwards. Pain rushed through his entire body as he forced out all of the spears. That did much more damage than he anticipated. He couldn't help but get excited at this. Someone who could put up a decent enough fight. With a thunderous roar, he charged at the person who had thrown the spears at him. "Good, good! More, give me more excitement!" He dragged his leg through the ground and kicked at him with great force.

Lauren felt unbalanced as soon as the ground cratered in, but she managed to secure herself into the ground to prevent any more possible movement. She then changed her sword back into a hammer and waited for an opening. While he dragged his leg to kick, she leaped up into the air and put all of her energy into swinging the hammer straight at his head.

As he tried to kick the spear thrower, a girl with a hammer tried to attack him. With a swift twisting motion, he turned his body around and slammed the back of his fist straight into the hammer, his body still moving to go for the kick.

After witnessing the crater made with Leviathans power, Allen knew full well that he would avoid any up close and personal encounters with him. Instead he chose to attack from a range since he was already preoccupied with fighting Richard and Logan was provided some distractions. So he held out his hand towards Leviathan and fired off a fireball towards him.

So many damn distractions, so many people to destroy. He had to focus on getting rid of one so that it would go by quicker. It was a nice gesture from them to try and distract him, but that would only make their deaths all the more painful. First the girl with the hammer, now shadow boy thinks he can throw him off with a fireball. Amusing, but it wasn't good enough. He rotated his body even more and deflected the fireball.

Lauren landed on the ground and found a better grip on the hammer and pulled it away from Leviathan's fist. She let out a cough but made sure to not continue because her insides felt like they were on fire. She turned around to see one of the more powerful demons behind her. Lauren grabbed it while it wasn't looking and used the dust and whispered, "Hey mate, mind helping me out?" and she pushed it in Leviathan's direction, where it ran in for a form of attack. Lauren ran over and quickly moved Richard out of the way because he seemed to not be responsive despite being in right in front of the Kraken.

Even with all their efforts to at least distract Leviathan, they'd only managed to get one successful hit in on him. All of the others attempts were either dodged or deflected away. Geez what was it going to take to land another hit on him, an all out attack? If it wasn't for how he managed to avoid all of their other effort and the fact that he'd probably end if not severely hurt them if they attempted it Allen simply fired off some more fireballs in his direction.

They kept being persistent in trying to distract him. The girl from earlier threw a demon at him, but that was nothing. He ripped through the demon in time to get blasted by several fireballs. One of them hit him in the face, blinding him and forcing him to stop and readjust himself. Their tenacity was impressive, to be sure, but they would all share the same fate. He would make sure of that. When he could finally see again, the girl had already moved the spear thrower somewhere else. "I see, so you're volunteering yourself to be first, huh? I've got no problem with that!" With lightning speed, he charged at her and aimed his foot at her head.

Lauren did not mean for that to be a volunteer moment, but she sure as hell did not want Richard to die, however what she was not expecting was his incredible speed. Lauren moved her hammer to deflect but the odds were not in her favor and the hammer actually went back and hit her head. Lauren tried to regain her footing but she felt the incredible pain in her chest seem to worsen. She involuntarily placed her hand against her chest and her eyes slightly widened when she felt how wet her dark shirt had become, and she knew suddenly that it was not sweat. She needed to try her best to get out of there before she was dead.

Lauren slide her foot across the ground and a large chunk of the ground went up in the air. To force it in Leviathan's direction she hit it with the hammer and watched it fly.

Leviathan caught the chunk of ground with his hand and scoffed at her. "You're gonna need to do better than that if you want to hurt me!" He leapt into the air and threw the ground right back at her, following right after it.

Lauren used the hammer and managed to break the earth in half and go around her, but a huge portion of it still rebounded back to her. It was horrible for her, and she let out a sharp cough this time releasing an insane amount of blood. She looked over at Allen and Logan hoping they could get there in time, but she knew Leviathan was going to be right there.

Alice I'm sorry, love

It seemed that Leviathan had changed his target from Richard to Lauren, which would be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that she didn't see to be doing all that well against him. It seemed like it was finally time for Logan to get physically involved. First he changed his sword into a scythe, since the angel he was hosting was seen as the Grim Reaper to some people, it seemed like a fitting weapon choice. Next he called forth another two shadows. Since he was focusing more on distracting as oppose to fighting, constantly re-summoning them wasn't taking much out of him as it normally would. Using the cover of his shadows, he charged towards Leviathan, hoping that his plan would work.

The girl broke the chunk of earth with her hammer, the breaking pieces hitting her. His hand wrapped around her throat as he forced her into the ground. "This is the end for you," the Kraken whispered as he lifted her back up and forcefully slammed her into the ground behind him. His foot rose up and slammed down on her head, blood flying from it. Repeatedly, he stomped on her as he laughed gleefully. When he finally stopped, there was nothing left of her head save for a few shards of her skull and a heap of blood. When he realized that one of the others was charging at him, he grabbed her lifeless corpse and flung it at the charging angel.

It was in that instant that most of Logan's plan fell apart. What he was hopping would happen was that Leviathan would swipe away the shadows himself, leaving him with the perfect chance to strike. What he got instead was the lifeless and headless corpse of Lauren being tossed at him, which went through the shadows and crashed into him, knocking him to the ground. This was bad, being on the ground definitely wasn't the best place to be against Leviathan, so he did what he did best and used his shadows to by time. Hopefully it would be enough time for him to get back on his feet.

Maniacal laughter sounded as he charged at the fool that controlled shadows. "Looks like you're next in line!" He launched himself off of the ground and dove straight for him, rearing his fist back to punch him.

And then suddenly, and possibly seeming out of nowhere, a flaming whip came and attempted to wrap around Leviathan's arm.

Taking notice of the flames around his arm, he quickly changed directions and looked to see where it was coming from. "Another one of you gnats trying to distract me?"

Having no idea where the whip came from or who it belong to, Logan didn't dwell on that part too much as he too this chance to get on his feet and put some distance between Leviathan and himself.

Sven held his sword in one hand and had the flames wrapped around his other. He was clearly pissed off, as he had just witnessed Lauren's death, someone who had become a good friend to him. He used more power to intensify the flames and caused the flames around Leviathan's arm to tighten as he shouted, "I'm going to turn you into calamari you son of a bitch!"

"Is that right? You want to kill me like this, huh? You? A small fry like you? Don't make me laugh you insignificant worm!" The flaming whip burned at his arm, but that kind of pain was easy to deal with. "Let's see how long you can hold on!" With that, he took off straight into the sky, flying higher and higher to see just how persistent his flames would be.

Sven spat at him calling him a small fry, the taunt was not making him any angrier as he allowed the flames to unravel around his arm, making the whip longer and longer although the flames still remained potent. He didn't want to be lifted up into the air like a marionette. He remained as focused as he could to make sure nothing ended horribly. If he got too far out of range, he would cut off the whip. But he knew this could end badly once he lost attachment.​

 

02



The Serpent's Unholy Wrath Pt II

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Leviathan flew higher and higher into the sky. The higher he went, the smaller everyone else looked. Looking down at everyone at that height, it seemed appropriate that they all looked like ants. Tiny, insignificant creatures that he could crush underfoot. He had already made an example of that girl, but it looked like he had to make more to show them how pointless the struggle really was. How much higher would he have to go to show him that he won't be able to hold on?

Sven was finally starting to reach his limit, but only in how long he could make the whip. Sven set his footing in order to attempt to pull him down. He grabbed onto the whip which, fortunately because they were his own flames were not hurting him as much as they could be. He began to tug down with all of his strength.

The tugging at his arm told him that it was probably getting close to the limit of his reach. Admittedly he was impressed. He didn't think he'd be able to keep this up for this long. But now, the struggle of power had begun. One that he had the clear advantage to. He let him tug and tug at his arm before starting to rise further up into the sky. "C'mon, just try to make me come down, just try it!"

Sven let out a quick grunt in annoyance before whispering, "Alright fine then." and he came up with a plan he wasn't entirely sure would work. He stopped tugging at Leviathan and instead gathered up as much fire as he could before he shot it off down the whip. He used his sword to cut himself off from the rest of the whip and the flames kept gathering more and more up the whip heading straight towards Leviathan.

The tugging had stopped, and he soon realized that a large mass of fire was headed for him through the whip. When the fireball finally hit him, there was a large explosion. A few coughs escaped him as the smoke around him cleared away. "Not bad, not bad. That one actually hurt," he muttered to himself before flying back down at top speed. Leviathan landed with a loud boom and an insane smile plastered across his face. "That was good, that was good! I actually felt it, small fry! Now it's my turn!" With fist reared back, he lunged at the whip wielder.

Sven quickly stepped back and used his flames to make a shield which he used to help to block Leviathan's punch, although he still felt as if he had recoiled a bit. Sven used fire to flame up his sword and he stabbed at Leviathan's abdomen hoping to do some damage.

After defending himself, the fool stabbed his sword at him to try to hurt him. Like a fly, he swatted the blade away and reared his head back to headbutt the whip wielder.

Sven's eyes widened as he looked over at his blade now away from him. He quickly moved his fire shield up and forced it towards Leviathan to deflect the headbutt while he shouted, "A little help would be great rather than you all just standing there!"

Now that Leviathan was back on the ground, Allen didn't have to worry about accurately aiming his attacks at him. So he took this chance to again fire at the angel.

As he pulled his head away from the flaming shield, he was hit from the back by a few fireballs from behind. "I grow tired of your antics, gnat!" He turned around and flew towards the distraction at high speeds, ready to slam his foot into his face.

Sven watched the speed at which Leviathan ran towards Allen and ran over to grab his sword. He then created his whip again but instead of trying to get a grip on him, he flew the whip at full speed at Leviathan's back.

This was exactly the kind of thing he was hoping to avoid, getting up close and personal with Leviathan. He did notice Sven's whip, but didn't put all his faith in it so he attempted to move out of Leviathans way.

As he approached the shadow controlling gnat, a flaming whip trailed behind him. It wrapped around his foot as he sharply changed direction. "Damn persistent brat!"

Sven quickly pulled the whip back and aimed it to hit Leviathan, it twisted in the air and he wasn't entirely sure if he could get it to move fast enough, but when he felt it gained enough momentum, he forced it down to flog him.

The whip cracked down and hit him, pain shooting through his body. "You pitiful, little shit, don't think you can win this!" He flew straight for him and tried to grab him.

It seemed that luck was on Allen's side as Leviathan went after Sven once more, leaving him open to yet another attack.

Sven tried his best to back up and shrink the sword into a dagger quick enough but within the time it took for him to do all of this he felt Leviathan grab him and whispered, "Oh fuck."

Logan, who had finally managed to get back into the fight, had noticed the predicament that Sven was in and ran over to help. No shadows this time, mainly due to how the constant summoning was starting to effecting him. No this time he was going to attack him with his weapon and just hope that he would be able to land a solid hit on him.

After grabbing him, he lifted him into the air and dropped him onto his knee. The tip of his knee connected with his ribs, breaking a few of them in the process. As he lay there writhing on the floor, he stomped on his leg repeatedly, breaking it in several places. "That should keep you in line for a while." He turned to face the annoyingly distracting gnat and launched himself to attack him.

Sven felt in horrible pain but he knew he couldn't just lay around on the ground. He turned his sword back into it's full length and propped himself up with it. He almost let out a cry but kept himself fro, doing so by mumbling a small prayer under his breath. He then transformed the sword back into a dagger and attached it to what looked like a rope of fire that he began to form, and he threw the dagger straight at Leviathan's back, doing his best to keep himself from falling.

Now that the short window of opportunity that he had was gone, the threat of Logan charging in increased, but it was too late to turn back now. So instead he started to swing the scythe horizontally towards Leviathan.

The scythe blade caught his arm, but it couldn't go all the way through it. It only made a small cut into the arm. "You should've stuck to distractions, gnat." He reared his head back and moved to headbutt him.

Richard, for the most part, had been stunned during the fight. Leviathan's raw presence was enough to shatter parts of the Earth, and though Richard had managed to damage him with his first attack, all that paled in comparison to what he had done. As Lauren had been crushed by the Kraken and her corpse tossed around like a rag doll, Richard felt something weird. He wasn't angry at all. In fact, he felt strangely calm. Something inside him had clicked, something triggered by Lauren's death, and letting out a deep sigh he muttered, "Dumbass, you didn't have to go and die like that."

He saw everyone else, including Sven coming into the scene, take on Leviathan in an attempt to bring him down. He felt like he had done practically nothing this entire time, and was going to fix that. "We'll be sure to make up for our lost time here. For everyone's sake. Especially her's. You ready Richard?" Maalik had appeared by Richard's side, with his ever serious expression.

"Yeah, let's do this." With that, Maalik had turned into mist that covered Richard and slowly dissipated. When Richard opened his eyes next, they had become a darker blue color and had trails of white mist coming from them. Richard and Maalik were now in perfect sync. When Leviathan went to headbutt Logan, Richard created a large white hellfire mist arm that shot towards Leviathan's head, grabbed at it , and pulled back. "Unfortunately for you, he seemed to distract you quite enough."

"Shit, this is gonna hurt." With no where to go, Logan was expecting a potential skull shattering blow. What instead happened was a white misty arm came and grabbed Leviathans head, preventing him from completing his attack. Logan took this chance to forcefully free his scythe and take some steps back.

A giant scowl crept across his face as a large, white hand grabbed his head. "You worthless, arrogant, insignificant cretins!" He forced himself to stand his ground. With a raging howl, energy seemed to dissipate, the knife that was flying at him was knocked away, and the ground beneath him cratered. "You're putting up much more of a fight than I expected, but this is beginning to become tedious! You should learn that all of your efforts are useless! Useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless!" He made a mad dash towards the retreating shadow user and grabbed at him.

Sven pulled the dagger back and moved it up in the air and closed his eyes and whispered for the blade to change, it listened to his command and changed into an axe while connected to the rope. He quickly brought it down aimed at Leviathan once more and shouted, "Don't be so cocky when you're not doing so hot!"

Leviathan was quick, and he was getting pissed, which only meant he was going to actually start trying more. While that was going to make things more difficult, it actually meant that they were making progress. However, Richard was not going to allow Leviathan to just ignore him and kill Logan as well. So instead he did something that was probably going to be considered the most reckless thing he's done. He started running straight towards Leviathan, running at a rate faster than he had ever gone before. As he saw Sven use his blade axe to attack Leviathan, he followed up with three more spears of much more concentrated mist than the last ones and fired them at the beast as he continued running towards him, waiting for his response.

Seeing everyone get serious in this fight lead to Logan doing the same. First off he called forth three more shadows, however these three were different from the previous ones that he'd summoned. Showed by how one of the arms on each of them were more blade like, these were made specifically for fighting. That also meant that they would last a little bit longer than the previous ones did. Logan took a moment to heft the scythe on his back before the three shadows charged at Leviathan, with Logan following behind them.

An axe dug into his back and that was the last straw. A thundering roar sent the axe flying away, the shadows scattered, spears were deflected. He spread his wings wide as he slowly levitated off of the rapidly cratering ground. "I see. You will not learn until you experience it. I had thought that this form would suffice in facing you, but clearly I was wrong. You have proven yourselves more than worthy to see it." Rising higher and higher, his eyes began to change, his wings began to grow, his body started shifting. "I will show you the oblivion of death!" Leviathan's body stretched and contorted, his skin became scaly and a brilliant white as he turned into his giant draconic form. A boisterous cry sounded as he ascended higher into the sky before it dove back down, energy gathering in its gaping maw.

Sven was staring in absolute horror at the sky and barely paid attention to the fact the ground was cratering. He slid into the crater to retrieve his axe and he looked at the three in absolute pain and spoke, "D-do any of you know how to heal?" he looked up in the sky at the dragon and yelled, "I have to say I'm disappointed! I was expecting something more powerful or more menacing!" He looked over back at the three and whispered, "Have you guys ever fought a dragon before?" he changed his sword back into a dagger and summoned out the whip of fire yet again and replied, "Because this sure as hell is not common for me."

"Shit, what the hell do we do now?" An angel that could easily kill them was one thing, but a freaking dragon is an entirely different story. Unfortunately there was no way that he knew how to fight one, nor did his powers did anything to help in this situation. He took a moment to shift his scythe back into a sword, seeing as how they were fighting a dragon a sword seemed more appropriate. "Anyone got any ideas?"

Richard hadn't thought that this was what was going to happen. Though he remembered that in almost every media outlet ever that Leviathan had appeared in, it was as a giant dragon serpent. The beast came crashing down, and looked ready to blow them up at an instant with some sort of energy attack. Richard then heard Sven and said, "Sorry, healing isn't anything I can do. And as for Dragon Slaying, can't say I've done it either." Mist started exploding off of Richard and started to gather in a large amount in front of Richard, who was straight from the dragon beast. "If this is going to work, I'm going to need you all to get back, because I'm not quite sure what's going to happen next." Sheesh, Bahamut was the one with Mega Flare, what did this dragon serpent think he was doing?

"If you say so." Logan replied. He had little intention of behind in the blast zone of whatever would happened when the two forces clashed together. So he started to make his way back whatever distance he felt would be good enough, though it was pretty hard to tell how far was safe.

Sven nodded and listened to Richard's advice and he limped back to where Logan had gone and nearly collapsed on site.

Allen too had moved away to where Logan had went upon seeing Leviathan turn into a dragon

The energy gathering in its mouth compressed into a tiny ball before firing off a torrent of energy with a deafening roar. As it fired its unrelenting stream of energy, he coiled around himself, its tail touching its own body.

When the beast let out its roar, Richard simply flicked his hand to create a giant portal made of hellfire mist. "Someone once told me, that the only one who could beat him was him. Let's see if that saying remains true for you as well." Suddenly, a new portal opened on Leviathan's side, carrying the entire torrent of energy was let out straight at the beast.

A wailing cry of pain came from the dragon as its own energy was sent back at it. The flow of energy stopped as it severed the dragon's body. It was ludicrous, absolutely ridiculous. The parts of its body that was falling to the ground began to transform back into his human form. Heavy thuds marked the landing of his severed body parts. His upper body was separated from his legs, one of his arms was missing, and a large chunk of one of his wings was gone. Leviathan writhed on the ground in abhorrent agony. Though the majority of his body was separated from him, he still smashed the ground around him, screaming all the while. "THIS CAN'T BE! I DON'T BELIEVE IT!" Blood splattered across the ground as he thrashed about. "IT HURTS! AAAAAAAAAH! IT HUUUUUUURTS!" Slowly, the squirming calmed, his voice receded. "I can't... believe this... This... is... impossible... Brother..." His final breath escaped him as what was left of his body fell limp.

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01

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After having cleared their way through the demons, Henrik and Soren found themselves facing Lucifer. Henrik drew his obsidian dagger while Soren summoned two blades of mist. Together they attacked at once, Soren teleported to Lucifer's side and brought one blade down at the angel keeping the other ready for defense while Henrik charged straight for Lucifer ready to stab him in the gut.

The obsidian wings wrapped tightly around his body like a shield, easily protecting him from the attacks. Lucifer stood straight, fully extending them with a blast of wind, knocking those around him to the ground. You're a fool if you believe you can beat me head on.

Henrik hit the ground hard but was quick to recover. His son was even faster, having jumped back at the powerful gust Lucifer sent at them. "Can't blame us for trying." Henrik spoke. "Aretstikapha." At his word the surroundings began to shift and deform, lights, sounds, and space itself were no longer constant. The senses of would be assaulted by the sheer magnitude of the shifts. This was the World of Distortion. Both he and Soren would be immune to its effects. Hopefully, this would be enough to give them the edge if Lucifer could no longer predict their movements by sight or hearing. This time, Henrik stabbed his blade into the ground causing an explosive eruption of earth to explode beneath Lucifer's feet.

The world seemed to shift and take on a new form. He was aware of this trick, but had never been on the receiving end before. The Morning Star looked to the little Nephilim child and then back over to his father. They were disgustingly alike. The man ran his blade into the ground and the chariot fell from under him. The hellhounds broke loose of their restraints, running in the direction of the two. Giant wings flapped in the air and sandy earth knocked at his feet. He directed his hand at the boy, a brilliant ball of light building up. The muscles in his arm tensed and the blast errupted from him.

"I've got the hounds!" Henrik shouted towards Soren who had just narrowly evaded being struck by Lucifer's attack. It was a good thing Soren wasn't stupid enough to try tanking the bolt. Soren led the beasts his father's way to allow him to fight the beasts while he prepared an attack of his own. Letting the blades of mist vanish Soren mustered an enormous amount of mist into his hands. It began to condense until it was about the size of his own head. A blue glow began to surround Soren as he called upon his own telekinetic abilities as well to aid the attack. The hellhounds were already upon them and Henrik was doing his best to hold them off. Soren released the attack on Lucifer leaving a cloud of dust in the wake of its shockwave. It was then that Henrik tossed the obsidian dagger into Soren's hands, entrusting him to deliver the final blow should they survive.

The blast connected; hitting him in the chest. Lucifer was knocked out of the air, landing on his back. Dirt dug into the bare skin, scraping the flesh. He pulled himself to his feet, glancing down at the burn across his chest. Golden eyes blazed in the direction of the child. A wall of bones erupted out of the ground on his side, allowing him to face Araquiel with ease. The man was just finishing off the hellhounds when he turned to him. Lucifer prepared another blast -- larger this time -- and sent it straight for the angel. Even with the distortion, this blast of immense raw power was too much to evade. The blast connected. With the explosion of light, everything seemed to go bright for a moment. When it cleared. There was no man left standing in the blast zone.

The distortion broke.

Tiia had finally just been healed, and had been heading back in primarily to fight demons until she was sure things were healed better, but the sheer blast of energy from the direction where Soren and Henrik were fighting was too distracting to ignore. She ran over to see the damage that had occurred only to see Henrik was no longer there. But she didn't have time to process any more. Tiia summoned out water and kept it still for a moment, allowing it to freeze up. She sent the ice shards in the direction on Lucifer, aimed towards his chest and neck, while constantly looking in other directions to make sure something wouldn't jump at her.

He sent up another skeletal wall to block the onslaught of ice shards. There was a tapping noise as each one connected with bone, but none passed through. A dark smile crept across his lips and the wall fell. I prefer playing fair. We'll need to add a few more to even the numbers. There was a rumbling before a translucent blast shot from the ground. Ghoulish spirits were released from their prisons. Control them, he ordered before sending another dangerous ball of light -- this one towards the girl.

Despite Tiia having managed to avoid the ball of light, something immediately took hold of her. She felt detached from her own body, and she tried to do her best to regain control, but it was gone. It was almost as if she was pulled to the back of her own mind, like when Raguel possessed her, but Raguel wasn't in control either. She could feel the difference.

Within a few more moments she felt herself repeat the exact same thing she had done a minute before. She formed water and turned it into icicle shards, but this time while she aimed it at Lucifer, she immediately changed direction and had it aim straight for Soren.

Soren stared at the spot where his father had once been. Nothing remained and he knew his father had passed on from this world when the distortion lifted. One moment he was with him and the next...gone. His mind hadn't registered that some girl had joined the fight nor that he had managed to wound Lucifer. The next moment spirits were upon them and a dull pain ran through his right arm. On instinct he tried to dodge the rest, not having realized the girl had been possessed. His distraction cost him as several shards cut through his sides. If he had been any slower they would have gutted him.

Now was not the time for mourning nor feeling guilty. Lucifer had to die. Soren touched a hand to his side watching as blood spilled to the ground. The wounds on his side were not as deep as the gash on his arm. He would be unable to use it at full strength. Mist gathered around the obsidian blade causing it to appear to grow in length until he discharged it in a wide arc at the possessed girl. It wouldn't be enough to kill her if it hit, but he needed her out of the picture if he was to face Lucifer.

Tiia watched the mist coming towards her and she let out a quiet hiss before she caused her water to circle around her to help barrier her from the mist. When things settled down, she evaporated the water and pulled out her sword. Whatever was possessing her wasn't stupid enough to have her run over and try to engage in a sword fight. So instead she did something similar to what Soren had done with the mist, but instead with water. She didn't try to do anything involving ice this time, instead she increased the heat of the water to a boiling temperature, then shot it off in Soren's direction.

Lucifer was the cause of all this pain and death. William was truly sick of it all and loathed being so useless. He didn't care anymore about his life and he tossed away the fear he held. His childish body was breaking apart from using his powers, but even so he needed to fight. Tiia was taken over and Soren was dealing with her. For now he would take the opportunity to attack the mastermind controlling her. Rushing forwards, flames began to surround his arm and formed a giant sphere. Jumping up, William placed as much strength as he could muster in the sphere of flame and swung his arm, shooting the sphere straight at Lucifer.

The fire ball clipped the Morning Star's shoulder. Skin scorched from the heat and he turned his attention on Will -- paying no mind to the other two that were fighting. They were no longer of any importance. The spirit possessing the girl was keeping the Nephilim boy easily distracted. His focus was entirely directed on the one that attacked him. Hellfire shot up from beneath the boy, lapping at him like flames. Lucifer had the desire to painfully maim this one, rather than outright kill him.

Soren growled when the girl blocked his attack. He had held back too much and it kept him from cutting the fight short. As the boiling water hurled straight at him he vanished for an instant. A moment later he reappeared right on the burnt out area where his father had perished. With his wounded arm he picked up the singed blade. He couldn't waste more strength fighting this girl and it might have been too troublesome for him to find the right amount of power needed to knock her out so instead he summoned several rock pillars to surround Tiia hoping it would be enough to keep her there until she took hold of her senses.​

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00
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The battle seemed as if it would never be over. Back and forth the angels and demons fought. Lucifer was well in control of those opposing him. The chances of their survival were slim. No one seemed to be standing a decent shot against him. A blast of his power was misdirected, striking the one hosting Dumah and hitting the Gates. The doors rattled and all eyes turned in the direction of the rivers.

Golden light poured out as they began to creep open. Every sound was silenced and eyes of varying shapes, colors, and sizes widened as two shadowy figures began to step out of the Gates. The light was too blinding to distinguish faces and features. The shapes stepped down onto the watery staircase and four more followed suit. The doors closed, and with them the light.

Everyone blinked, adjusting to the previous darkness that roamed the land. The shapes were coming into focus now. They stood in pairs on the solid watery steps. The two in front seemed to radiate and aura of strength, light, and goodness. Giant gold and ivory wings stretched out behind their backs, blocking the view of the other four. A man and woman -- one with golden hair and blue eyes, while the other chestnut hair and green eyes -- had their swords drawn and aimed down at the masses below.

"Brother, it is time for this madness to end." There was nothing warm left in his voice. It was powerful and commanding, hard to refuse.

Michael, Gabriel, how nice of you to join. the Morning Star replied. He stood straight, his obsidian wings outstretched. Oh, and you brought others. He stepped forward and crossed hundreds of feet in one fluid motion, stopping directly in front of the rivers. Ithurial, Nakir -- it has been awhile. And who do you have in the back? Ambriel and oh ... well this is a surprise. I guess we now know what happens when one is struck with obsidian. How long have you been keeping this secret, considering both Ambriel and Harbonah were dead?

The white haired angel stepped out and around the others. They gave her a wary glance, but did not stop her. She moved in front of the Morning Star, staff in hand, and looked up at the man towering over her. "I was given a choice, and I chose differently from before. I have repented and am fully restored in my powers. As the Angel of Annihilation, I ask that you step down before I have to force you to. That is my courtesy to you, for taking care of me all these years." Blue eyes held gold as they stared one another down. Lucifer took a step back and relief flooded Harbonah's face. The muscles in her shoulders relaxed briefly, until spears of mist came flying towards her. A shield was created by Ambriel, saving her just in time. Six pairs of eyes looked hard at the black winged - man and with a silent nod from the Angel of Annihilation, Michael lept forward.

I would never give myself up so easily, Lucifer cried out. Michael landed directly in front of his holy brother and the Morning Star lunged forward with his Sword of Darkness. From underneath, the Light Bringer's Sword of Light was thrust upwards through Lucifer's body.

With the final blow, Lucifer fell to his knees. The air was thick with death. Piles of ash were strewn about the ground -- markers of the demons that died there. The clouds in the sky began to thin and tensions seemed to ease. Mist swirled everywhere, consuming the remainder of the demons and Dark Angels, leaving only the Prince of Hell left. He lifted his head, meeting Michael's gaze. The Archangel had pity in his eyes as he shook his head. "You should have taken Harbonah's offer. It would have been far less embarrassing for you." The Morning Star scoffed before disappearing into a whirlwind of Mist as well.

Michael turned to the group of survivors and his companions stood shoulder to shoulder beside him, Gabriel to his right. "The fruits of your labor will not go unnoticed. You will all be given an option when your current host reaches their end. You may come back home, or stay here; but this is a one - time offer. If you reject Paradise, just as you turned away from it before, you will not be allowed to return. Take this lifetime to make your decision. I hope to see my brethren return home -- except for Xathanael, who has already made her decision." He turned back to the Gates, all but one following after.

Harbonah moved to Adam's side and knelt down beside the blond - haired boy. She smiled sweetly at him and pressed her lips to his forehead, breaking the paralysis. "I can't stay, but I'll come visit you soon. I am on probation, I guess would be the best word to describe it. When things calm down I will come see you. Take care of yourself Puppet." The white - haired angel turned back towards the Gates and leaped from the ground to catch up with the others.

The doors opened briefly, allowing the six to return, then shut once more. Slowly, it began to descend into the water where it came from. All traces of the divine spirits were gone with it, leaving only the remaining fallen angels and Nephilim. Everyone slowly turned to face one another. They were alive, but not without a few casualties. Hana stood gripping her arm that was virtually severed in two, only connected by some skin. She looked to the others with tears in her eyes and nodded in the direction of the bodies. "We should build a funeral pyre. The sooner the better." She glanced at Sam and sighed deeply. "I'm ready to go home."​

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