DMAW Chapter 94: The Kings in Sin, Part 4 (Patreon)

The Crimson Lucifer did not need to breathe.

He had long since transcended such physical limitations, for beneath the seat of the Divine, Sirzechs Lucifer was an absolute existence. He had been born with power beyond anything previously carried by Devil or Demon alike, and over the passing centuries, that power had only continued to deepen. Not only that, but he had never in his entire life been meaningfully injured. Oh, to be sure, there were times when he allowed himself to be touched or damaged.

Oft, when Grayfia felt the need to physically express her grievances, he lovingly let her land her blows. Or when Ichigo had been freshly minted a Sin, he had allowed his former pawn to vent his justifiable anger. But he had never been hurt.

Not once could Sirzechs recall genuinely experiencing that mortal phenomenon known as pain.

And yet he let out a breath.

The rip into the Void that had swallowed Shalba Beelzebub and his armies stood eerily still, yet entire worlds’ worth of draconic power surged from its depths, pressing against the Underworld until the fabric of the realm began to unravel beneath the strain. The ground split apart and dissolved into oblivion. Even the physical space in the immediate vicinity ruptured, while the sky above ceased to exist above the widening wound.

And the first shadow took shape.

Three long necks emerged first, each ending in a broad, diamond-shaped head. Six eyes opened one after another, burning with emerald radiance as the ancient Dragon forced the rest of his body into the Underworld. Poisonous green scales covered a mountain-sized frame and shone with a metallic sheen beneath the distorted light. He walked upon two immense legs, while malignant fire gathered around the claws of his two smaller forelimbs.

"Sirzechs...," Grayfia said from behind him, a strong touch of concern coloring her voice. He said nothing, but silently he understood her concern. For though he had never seen the beast himself, he had read more than enough old tomes to know exactly what bore down on them.

Aži Dahāka the Thousand Evils.

A dragon of the Ancient World, one that contained such baleful power that the ancient Zoroastrian divines dared not kill it, for fear that its tremendous evil would pour out of its body and pollute the earth forever more. And so they had imprisoned him instead, binding the Dragon behind paradoxes and impossibilities, ensuring it would never emerge to haunt the Earth and its adjacent realities.

But then, breaking the impossible was Ophis’ specialty.

Aži Dahāka planted one immense foot upon the wounded Underworld, and the resulting impact sounded like thunder. Reality flashed through a succession of incompatible colors, and the ruined landscape flickered between different shapes as the realm strained to decide what still existed beneath the Dragon’s weight. Mountains appeared, vanished, and returned as plains of blackened glass. And the dusty plains of the surrounding country size boiled and turned into seas of toxic sludge.

Sirzechs’ mouth twisted grimly; Aži Dahāka was old even by the standards of the supernatural. He was nearly as old as Tiamat, perhaps older. But the power churning within him undoubtedly far exceeded hers. This was, without question, one of the strongest Dragons beneath the Divine Pair.

Yet for all that power, Sirzechs found himself looking away and back into the Void. A second shadow took form from the Void behind the Thousand Evils Dragon.

He was smaller than Aži Dahāka, although only by comparison, and his proportions were more humanoid than serpentine. Two powerful legs carried a vast torso covered in jet-black scales, while lines of molten orange curved across his body in patterns that seemed to shift whenever Sirzechs attempted to follow them. His eyes burned with the same orange radiance, but unlike Aži Dahāka, the Dragon made no great display upon entering the Underworld.

He simply glided from the darkness, and the pressure surrounding Sirzechs more than doubled.

“Crom Cruach,” Mathers muttered harshly from behind them. “The Dark Crescent.”

Sirzechs had never encountered the Dragon himself, but he was familiar with the creature’s history.

After Balor and the Fomorians were slain by Lugh and the Tuatha Dé Danann on the northern cliffs of Ireland, the resentment from their corpses pooled and poisoned the land. And all that hatred, despair, and the lingering evil of their defeat saturated the earth until nearby human settlements were gradually corrupted by it. Men and women were driven mad beneath the influence of Balor’s phantom remnants, and generation after generation poured more violence into the corrupted land through worship and human sacrifice.

And then, during the fifth century, Saint Patrick gathered that accumulated evil and sealed it within a stone. Though the seal had held,  the evil inside it had not remained inert. Centuries of compression had forced countless fragments of hatred and resentment together until they developed awareness, a conscious mind.

And so emerged a Dragon – one born from the very concepts of Violence and Bloodshed.

Orange eyes bordered with dark scales looked directly at Sirzechs, and he could instantly feel the immensity of the Dragon’s power. It was far greater than Aži Dahāka’s… and Sirzechs couldn’t say with certainty that he was more powerful than the Dragon. And it was the first time he had ever had such a doubt, outside of being faced with Divinity.

Sirzechs released a quiet sigh.

Either Dragon alone would have demanded his full attention. Together, they presented a danger that had never before threatened the Underworld – not since the Heavenly Father himself had led the Archangels.

“Leave,” he said quietly.

Behind him, Grayfia turned toward him sharply. The rest of his peerage stared at him in confusion but Sirzechs paid them no mind, his gaze firmly on the two dragons who unraveling the localized reality of the Underworld with their sheer presence.

“What?” Grayfia asked breathlessly.

“Leave,” Sirzechs repeated firmly. “Protect the rest of the Empire. Reinforce the others if needed.”

For several seconds, Grayfia said nothing, and then her quiet disbelief morphed into anger. “Absolutely not! You cannot expect me to -”

“I cannot protect you.”

Grayfia instantly fell silent. Sirzechs finally looked over his shoulder and found her staring at him as though he had slapped her. His expression softened just a touch, but the austerity in his eyes never left.

“I cannot protect you while fighting them seriously,” he said more quietly. “I cannot protect you from myself.”

Grayfia opened her mouth, but no answer came.

Both Dragons possessed power far beyond conventional Satan-class. Sirzechs could not confront them while restraining himself, and once he released his true nature, there would be no distinction between enemy and ally within the reach of his Absolute Destruction. Grayfia was the most powerful Queen in the Underworld; there was no comparison or question of her might. But these were foes far beyond her, and she would only be a liability in the battle to come.

The anger and shock in her eyes receded, leaving something frightened and slightly heartbroken behind. A part of his heart tugged at the sight, but he ruthlessly crushed those sentiments down, now was not the time. Grayfia then lowered her eyes for a moment and swallowed heavily before forcing herself to meet his gaze again.

“Come back to me,” she said softly.

Sirzechs smiled and gave her a playful wink.

“Always.”

Then he turned away from his wife and stepped forward.

As Sirzechs walked toward the two Dragons, his eyes flashed crimson and his immense power rumbled through Time and Space. There was a sudden twist within the world, so subtle that neither Dragon witnessed the transition itself, and then everything surrounding them changed.

The wounded Underworld vanished, taking its broken plains and ruined sky with it, and in its place stretched a rocky red world beneath a pitch-black firmament filled with seas of pink stars. Jagged mountains rose from the barren landscape, their slopes untouched by wind or rain, while vast plains of crimson dust reached between them without the slightest trace of life.

Aži Dahāka’s leftmost head turned to survey their new surroundings, while the rightmost snapped its jaws at the unfamiliar air. The middle head remained fixed upon Sirzechs, and something approaching esteem entered its burning eyes.

“Magnificent,” it said in a deep, guttural voice that caused the air to shudder seemingly in disgust. “To so seamlessly bring us to another reality. Though this new age is strange to me, the little worms worshipping the Aperion Sire have spoken to me of you, Crimson Aberration. To think, while I was locked away, there would be one mad enough to invite the Inferno into Creation.”

Crom Cruach laughed lowly. His voice was equally deep, although smoother and darker than the Zoroastrian Dragon’s rumbling growl.

“The tales do not seem to do you justice, King in the Dark. I will enjoy snapping your neck.”

Sirzechs folded his hands behind his back and smiled politely, dipping his head in acknowledgment. “I’m afraid you’ve conflated me with my predecessor. I was not even born when the pact with Hell was made. I merely reinstated it several thousand years later.”

All three of Aži Dahāka’s heads snapped their jaws and growled. “A lesser fool following a greater one, then. The Prime Fire was not meant to burn beyond its gates.”

“Clearly, the Inferno does not agree with you,” Sirzechs replied lightly. “Perhaps you would care to argue the point directly with the Abyss itself? Shall I arrange a meeting?”

The Thousand Evils released a vicious snarl, and the barren world trembled beneath his anger. A fault hundreds of miles wide tore across the planet, racing beyond the horizon as mountains split apart and collapsed into the opening earth. The crust peeled back beneath the strain of the Dragon’s power, allowing earthen fire and magma to roil upward before erupting across the surface in blazing pillars.

“Enough with the babble!” Crom Cruach growled.

And then the Dragon moved so quickly that the sound of his words had not yet reached Sirzechs when he appeared directly above him, one immense fist already descending. Sirzechs teleported away an instant before the blow landed and reappeared tens of thousands of miles above the planet, just as Crom struck the place where he had been standing.

The entire world flashed white before a tremendous explosion swallowed the surrounding continent. A titanic wave of destruction raced away from the point of impact, reducing mountains to expanding clouds of debris while oceans of molten stone erupted through the deepening crater. The shockwave wrapped around the planet within seconds, converging upon the opposite hemisphere with enough force to fracture the world from within.

Sirzechs watched the destruction spread beneath him and allowed his eyebrows to rise.

“That’s impressive,” he muttered.

But even as he spoke, a beam of emerald light pierced the space where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier. Sirzechs tilted aside and allowed the attack to pass him, only to sense another presence emerge directly behind him as Aži Dahāka appeared with a sword of luminous green energy already sweeping toward his neck.

Sirzechs’ eyes narrowed when he recognized that the weapon had been forged from Holy Light, which was incredibly strange to see from a Dragon bearing the title of the Thousand Evils. He moved beyond the sword’s reach, but Aži Dahāka’s leftmost head opened its jaws and unleashed a torrent of yellow lightning while the Dragon thrust out his other hand, releasing a telekinetic wave that compressed the surrounding space from every direction.

Sirzechs teleported away before either attack could touch him, hands still carefully folded behind his back and Crom Cruach immediately fell upon the place where he reappeared.

The black Dragon struck with claws, fangs, and tail, each movement carrying enough force to twist the dimensions surrounding his body. His first swipe passed beneath Sirzechs’ feet, followed by another that tore through the space beside his shoulder, and then his jaws closed upon the image Sirzechs left behind as the Crimson Lucifer slipped beyond his reach once again. Yet Crom continued without pause, turning into the motion as his tail swept around with enough speed to leave burning photon imprints across the darkness.

Light itself could not keep pace with the Dragon. Phantom images lingered behind every movement, and it appeared as though a host of Crom Cruachs had surrounded Sirzechs and begun attacking from every direction at once.

At the same time, sorcerous arrays unfolded throughout the surrounding void as Aži Dahāka joined the assault. Petrification curses poured from one formation, while another released black beams which Sirzechs’ expert eyes noted carried a touch of platonic death. That would be harmful to get hit with, even for him.

But then, a series of torture hexes twisted the higher-dimensions which Sirzechs attempted to slip through, and translucent blades descended upon him from impossible angles, each carrying a different magic along its edge.

Sirzechs slipped between them all, his body turning and vanishing as the two Dragons pressed their attack. A sword of Holy Light passed through his chest after he rendered himself intangible, and Crom Cruach’s claws followed through the same incorporeal space.

But then the black Dragon’s aura churned and erupted as he lashed out with his tail.

The tremendous density of his draconic power distorted the dimensions separating them and forced itself across the boundary of Sirzechs’ spell. Before the Crimson Lucifer could complete his attack, the tail struck him cleanly across the torso and hurled him backward with such force that the resulting shockwave rippled through spacetime.

Sirzechs crossed hundreds of thousands of miles before stopping his momentum, while the warped dimensions bent the surrounding light away from all three combatants and momentarily plunged the battlefield into absolute darkness. Then the stars slowly returned, their pink radiance bending around the lingering distortions as Sirzechs glanced down at himself.

A long tear crossed his shirt and coat where Crom’s tail had struck him, although the flesh beneath remained utterly unmarked. Surprise flickered across his expression, followed quickly by amusement as he looked back toward the approaching Dragon.

“That is the first time someone aside from Ajuka or Ichigo has managed to hit me,” he said to himself with a soft smile.

Crom Cruach surged toward him again while every one of Aži Dahāka’s mouths began gathering a different color of light, but Sirzechs merely raised one hand and casually flicked his wrist. Small spheres of crimson-black Destruction formed above his fingertips and flew toward the Dragons, each no larger than a coin.

Aži Dahāka immediately teleported away and reappeared from another direction, continuing his attack with four sorcerous swords orbiting his body. One burned with Holy Light, another dripped liquid darkness, and the remaining two carried forces Sirzechs did not immediately recognize.

Crom Cruach did not evade.

The black Dragon crossed his forearms before his body and struck the approaching spheres with his armored scales, battering them aside one after another. Their impacts shuddered through the entire solar system, but Crom remained fixed upon Sirzechs and paid no attention to where the displaced attacks went.

The first sphere descended into the planet’s fractured atmosphere and passed through the crust without resistance, leaving a perfectly circular hole through the entire world. Several more followed from different angles, consuming stone, metal, magma, and space itself before emerging from the opposite hemisphere and continuing toward the distant stars. Within seconds, enormous tunnels intersected throughout the planetary body until the ruined world resembled a planetary wheel of cheese.

And then the remaining crust began to collapse.

Continents folded into the empty passages as oceans of magma poured through them and spilled into space, while the dying planet broke apart in vast red plates. Yet neither Dragon looked down at the destruction below. Aži Dahāka’s four blades were already falling upon Sirzechs from every direction as his three mouths unleashed Holy Light, yellow lightning, and a flood of poisonous green flame, and Crom Cruach tore through the gathering storm without slowing, his black scales illuminated by every attack as he drove both claws toward Sirzechs’ throat.

The Crimson Lucifer continued smiling as his eyes burned red and the Darkness within him began to stir.

“Oh, I haven’t gotten serious in a long time,” he laughed to himself.

As the darkness within Sirzechs began to stir, he reached past the two Dragons with an open hand and seized the remains of the broken planet within his power. Entire sections of the dying world tore free at once, continents fracturing into moon-sized masses of solid earth while vast deposits of molten metal erupted from the exposed planetary core and gathered into incandescent spheres.

Then, as Crom Cruach’s gargantuan claws descended toward him, Sirzechs teleported away even as he folded the intervening space and warped every fragment around the two Dragons, surrounding them with the remains of the world before closing his hand.

Moons of stone and churning metal crashed together over Aži Dahāka and Crom Cruach, and the force of their convergence ignited everything caught between them. A planet-sized explosion expanded through the surrounding void, swallowing the Dragons beneath a sphere of white fire as the debris continued collapsing inward. Matter fused, shattered, and recombined beneath the impossible pressure, while the remnants of the planetary core boiled through the pulverized earth and filled the center of the explosion with incandescent metal.

But only a few seconds passed before numerous beams of energy tore through the churning mass. Emerald light, yellow lightning, Holy radiance, and several forces Sirzechs could not immediately identify carved enormous passages through the molten wreckage, allowing Aži Dahāka to emerge with all three heads roaring. Crom Cruach followed closely behind him and hurled aside a moon-sized mass of molten iron, and despite having endured the collision of an entire world, neither Dragon appeared injured as they immediately renewed their assault.

Sirzechs raised one finger and swept it lightly through space, drawing a thin crimson line across the empty cold.

A sharp wave of pure Destruction followed the motion, annihilating Time and Space as it raced toward the Dragons and leaving behind an absence through which even the laws of the surrounding reality could no longer pass. Aži Dahāka teleported beyond its path, but Crom Cruach planted himself before the approaching edge and released a tremendous roar, flooding one forearm with draconic power before drawing back his fist.

And then he struck the blade of Destruction head-on.

The force of the collision shattered reality around him. Fractures exploded outward from Crom’s fist and spread nearly as hundreds of thousands of miles across the surrounding universe, breaking Time into disconnected moments while Space split into enormous translucent fragments that peeled away from one another and fell like broken glass into the Dimensional Gap. Multicolored currents surged through the resulting wound and swallowed pieces of ruined Creation, but Crom remained at its center, grinding his fist against the edge of Sirzechs’ Destruction as the scales along his forearm burned beneath the contact.

Before Sirzechs could force more power into the attack, Aži Dahāka appeared above him and opened all three mouths, gathering a different radiance within each throat while both of his smaller forelimbs stretched forward and formed another pair of immense magical arrays. Five beams descended upon Sirzechs at once, and he answered by turning one open palm toward them and releasing a blast of Destruction.

When their powers collided, the resulting explosion expanded hundreds of thousands of miles through the wounded universe and consumed everything still remaining of the broken planet. The detonation extinguished every nearby celestial body and undid reality around itself, tearing open another gaping wound into the Dimensional Gap.

Waves of violent color poured through the breach and crashed against the hyperspatial currents leaking from the first, destabilizing the region between them until entire sections of the universe began flickering in and out of existence.

Crom Cruach burst through the collapsing dimensions before the light had faded, his claws reaching Sirzechs at the same moment Aži Dahāka’s sorcerous swords descended from behind. Sirzechs twisted aside and caught Crom by the wrist, using the Dragon’s momentum to hurl him through one of the approaching blades before turning his other palm toward Aži Dahāka and releasing a concentrated sphere of Destruction.

The Thousand Evils folded his wings before himself as layer after layer of magical barriers erupted across his scales, and while the sphere consumed hundreds of them without slowing, Aži Dahāka continued replacing each destroyed defense with a dozen more, feeding different forms of sorcery into the attack until it finally detonated between them.

The explosion tore one of Aži Dahāka’s wings open and sent him spinning through the void, but it quickly healed itself, and Sirzechs narrowed his eyes pensively. High-speed regeneration, and one that rivaled Ichigo’s at that too.

But then, Crom Cruach emerged from below and drove both feet toward Sirzechs’ chest. Sirzechs teleported beyond the kick and reached through the dimensional wound beside him, pulling a torrent of hyperspatial energy into the Dragon’s path, yet Crom tore through it by brute force, his black scales burning beneath the incompatible laws of overlayed realities.

At the same time, Aži Dahāka emerged from the opposite tear and released a storm of curses that spread through every direction in which Sirzechs might escape, leaving him no untouched space in which to reappear.

So Sirzechs drove through the assault instead, erasing the curses nearest his body before striking Aži Dahāka’s middle head with enough force to collapse its jaw and send the mountain-sized Dragon tumbling through the void.

A wave of Destruction followed and consumed half of the Thousand Evils’ torso, but Crom crossed the intervening distance before Sirzechs could finish him and raked both claws through the crimson-black power. The attack divided around the Dark Crescent’s body and tore open two more wounds in reality, their jagged edges stretching across the stars even as Aži Dahāka’s missing flesh began to reform.

Then the two Dragons came together again.

Aži Dahāka filled the broken universe with magic, forcing Sirzechs to contend with weapons, curses, elemental forces, and stranger powers that attacked his position within Time, while Crom Cruach pursued him through the sorcerous storm and struck wherever the Thousand Evils forced him to move. Every evasion carried Sirzechs toward another attack, and every counter created an opening for whichever Dragon he had momentarily ignored, until their battle became a continuous sequence of ruptures and explosions that stripped away what little structure remained within the surrounding reality.

Crom’s fist collided with Sirzechs’ palm and collapsed millions of miles of space into a single point, which then erupted outward and hurled both combatants across the ruined universe. Aži Dahāka’s swords fell between them and crossed against a barrier of Destruction, sending fractures backward through causality and erasing distant celestial bodies before the battle had ever reached them. Sirzechs answered with a crimson wave that carved through three layers of the universe, but both Dragons escaped through the Dimensional Gap and returned from opposite ends of reality before the attack had finished crossing the distance between them.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, Sirzechs found himself being pushed onto the defensive.

He continued avoiding the worst of their attacks and answered every opening with enough power to kill nearly any other being in Creation, but Aži Dahāka’s inexhaustible sorcery filled every absence while Crom Cruach’s relentless physical assault denied him the opportunity to concentrate upon either opponent. The Thousand Evils unleashed a spiraling beam formed from thousands of compressed spells, and when Sirzechs raised one hand to erase it, Crom emerged from within the crimson light of his own power and drove a fist squarely into his mouth.

The blow forced Sirzechs out of normal reality. He tore through one dimension after another, breaking their boundaries as he was driven across higher planes whose geometries could not be perceived by mortal senses, until his body finally burst into the violent hyperspace of the Dimensional Gap. The shifting colors of countless realities stretched around him as he arrested his momentum, and while the currents continued convulsing from his arrival, Sirzechs slowly raised one hand to his mouth.

Something warm touched his fingertips.

When he drew his hand away, crimson blood glistened against his skin.

Sirzechs stared at it with such complete astonishment that he did not immediately notice the two Dragons following him through the rupture. Crom Cruach emerged first and snapped his jaws, his molten orange eyes narrowing with cruel amusement as he laughed scathingly.

“What’s the matter, little horror? Have you never seen your own blood?”

Sirzechs blinked at him in surprise.

“No,” he said plainly.

Both Dragons froze, Aži Dahāka’s six burning eyes turning toward the blood upon Sirzechs’ fingers while Crom’s laughter abruptly ceased.

Then Sirzechs began laughing, softly at first, before the sound deepened with genuine and almost boyish delight. “No, I’ve never seen my blood. Not once in my entire life.” He turned his hand beneath the shifting light and watched the crimson liquid run between his fingers. “How novel.”

His aura erupted, and Demonic corruption burst outward from his body before spilling into the Dimensional Gap in vast crimson-black waves. Hyperspace convulsed beneath his presence as cataclysmic shockwaves raced through its depths and crashed against the boundaries of numerous dimensions, shaking entire realities while the violent currents around him darkened beneath the spreading stain of Lucifer.

Sirzechs lowered his bloodied hand and smiled at the Dragons.

“Allow me to return the favor.”

He reached through the gaping wound behind them and extended his power into the universe they had abandoned, where one of the pink stars trembled before tearing free from its place in the firmament. The surrounding solar system twisted around the sudden absence as Sirzechs dragged the star across reality, pulled it through the wound, and sent it falling into the Dimensional Gap behind the two Dragons.

Aži Dahāka’s six eyes widened, and Crom Cruach turned as the pink radiance spread across the hyperspace around them. The light grew steadily brighter while the star approached, but even as the distance between them disappeared, the celestial body began to shrink beneath Sirzechs’ power. His fingers slowly closed, compressing its immeasurable mass into an increasingly small space until the star burned hotter and denser than its own structure could withstand.

The currents of the Dimensional Gap recoiled from the celestial body, and one reality after another vanished behind its unbearable brilliance. For the first time since emerging within the Underworld, both Dragons stared in astonishment while Sirzechs continued closing his fingers.

“Don’t die just yet,” he said coldly. “I haven’t had this much fun in ages.”

And then the star went supernova.

=======

“Falbi!”

Falbium’s shoulders sagged as he released a weary sigh and turned to find Serafall flying toward him. Lovely. He had been so close to falling asleep on his feet, a fine art he had mastered centuries ago and one which recent events had afforded him far too few opportunities to practice.

“What are you doing up here?” his old friend demanded as she stopped before him, both fists resting aggressively upon her hips.

Falbium briefly looked down at the needle-thin spire beneath his feet. He stood atop the tallest tower of the Government Citadel in downtown New Lilith, so far above the surrounding city that the great governmental buildings below appeared as little more than blocks of polished stone arranged along illuminated streets. Then he raised one hand to his mouth and let out a long yawn.

“Keeping the Underworld from falling apart, what else?” he answered tiredly.

And he was. Even as they spoke, Falbium’s Will extended throughout the entirety of the Underworld and into its various anchored planes, reinforcing boundaries that had begun to rupture beneath the combined power of numerous Dragons and the bellicose Sins fighting them. Dimensional walls had cracked, several spatial foundations were threatening to buckle, and entire regions of the Empire would have already slipped out of alignment with the rest of the realm if he had not been patiently holding everything together.

Someone had to keep the Underworld standing while the others threw their powers around.

Serafall blinked at him twice in surprise before her gaze narrowed with suspicion. “Did you really kill two Dragons before the rest of us?”

He rolled his eyes in annoyance. “No.”

“Aha! I knew it!” she exclaimed triumphantly, punching the air with one hand. “That means I was the first! But wait…” Her expression twisted into confusion as the obvious implication caught up with her. “Dammit, Falbi! Don’t tell me you left your Dragons to run wild!?”

“No, you dumb twit,” Falbium replied gruffly. “I put them to sleep and sealed them away. Who the blazes is stupid enough to go toe-to-toe with two Satan-class Dragons in the middle of the Underworld?”

“Uhh… heh-heh!” Serafall laughed nervously, averting her eyes as she rubbed the back of her head. “Right, totally. Who’d do something as reckless as that?”

Falbium rolled his eyes again, knowing perfectly well that she was the only one among the five of them who would do something so remarkably irresponsible. She could have contained the creatures, dragged them somewhere isolated, or employed any of the countless forms of sorcery she had spent centuries mastering, but instead she had chosen to wrestle them across a continent while the realm cracked beneath her feet.

Sera and her bloody need for spectacle.

She then coughed into one hand and quickly changed the subject. “How are the others doing?”

Falbium shrugged carelessly. “Ajuka’s over yonder,” he said, jutting his head in one direction. “Doing Lucifer knows what. But at least he’s not being noisy about it like Ichigo, who’s off in the opposite direction melting reality. Annoyingly so, might I add.”

Serafall turned toward the distant horizon where the youngest of the Sins had been enclosed behind numerous dimensional walls, which was rather convenient for Falbium because it meant he had less of the resulting fallout to contain. Even with those barriers surrounding him, however, Ichigo’s power continued leaking into the Underworld in violent pulses, each one carrying enough heat and fury to make the foundations of the realm recoil.

“Should we go help him?” Serafall asked, placing a thoughtful finger beneath her chin.

“He’ll be fine,” Falbium answered bluntly.

Ichigo had that monstrous wolf of his, along with a towering giant drawn from the oldest legends of humanity, and if those two somehow proved insufficient, he still had that deplorable Gremory with him. No, Ichigo would be perfectly fine, particularly once his temper finished catching up with whatever unfortunate creatures Ophis had sent against him.

As for Ajuka, the thought nearly made Falbium snort. Nothing short of one of the Greater Divine descending into the Underworld would compel Beelzebub to exert any meaningful effort. Falbium had long ago sensed the numerous Longinus-class Sacred Gears closing upon Ajuka’s position, and despite himself, he almost pitied the poor bastards. Ajuka was an exceptionally cruel Demon when he felt the need for it.

Serafall must have reached much the same conclusion, because she never so much as glanced in Ajuka’s direction. Instead, she looked around the fractured horizons of the Underworld, and the playful energy gradually faded from her expression.

“Wait, where’s Sirzechs? I can sense Grayfia and the rest of his peerage, but where’s King Ginger?”

Rather than answering, Falbium slipped both hands into his pockets and lifted his eyes toward the sky. His gaze pierced through the folds separating one dimension from another, while his awareness expanded beyond the Underworld and allowed entire cosmoses to bloom within his mind. He followed the trail of broken realities across worlds, through immense wounds in Time and Space, and finally into the churning hyperspace of the Dimensional Gap.

Serafall followed his gaze, and both of her eyebrows climbed high when she sensed what lay beyond the boundaries of the realm.

“Oh…” The lightness disappeared from her face as her mien turned grim and harsh. “He’s about to get serious, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Falbium answered darkly.

It was why he remained standing upon the Citadel instead of assisting any of the others. The moment Sirzechs unleashed his full strength, the resulting fallout would be apocalyptic, and the Dragons opposing him possessed more than enough power to warrant his absolute might, which was frightening in and of itself. Falbium would have to brace the Underworld against whatever escaped the distant battle, reinforce every adjacent plane, and ensure that the damage did not cascade across the Empire before anyone realized what was happening.

The last time Sirzechs had completely unsealed himself was when Ichigo had nearly died, and it had taken the Infinite Ouroboros itself to hold him back. Falbium doubted the Divine Dragon would be inclined to offer the same courtesy now.

Not that he was surprised.

After all, in all the centuries Falbium had known him, the Crimson Lucifer had never brought anything but annihilation.

=======

Within the Dimensional Gap, Sirzechs floated amid the starfire and watched the supernova expand around him. A constant torrent of radiation and superheated plasma washed across his body, carrying the stellar explosion farther into hyperspace with every passing second, and he knew that its light would continue spreading for thousands of years before the last of its force finally dissipated.

Yet his attention remained fixed upon the center of the cataclysm, where the crushed heart of the dead star had collapsed into a newborn neutron star that burned with a brilliant white radiance.

And for all the incomprehensible power surrounding him, Sirzechs could still sense both Dragons within it.

He peered through the endless brilliance and found darkness flickering at the core of the supernova, patches of absolute black where the surrounding light was being swallowed by something far more malignant. Through his mind’s eye, he saw what remained of Aži Dahāka drifting beside the neutron star. Two of the Dragon’s heads had been blasted away, together with the entire right side of his body and most of his torso, leaving only the leftmost head attached to a mangled section of neck and chest.

Yet the monstrous density of the vile energy leaking from those wounds was so immense that it continued tearing at reality, devouring the surrounding plasma and leaving wounds of lightless corruption throughout the heart of the supernova.

No wonder the ancient Zoroastrian Divines had refused to kill the Thousand Evils upon Earth. If even a fraction of that concentrated malice had escaped within the mortal world, it would have poisoned the planet beyond recovery.

But the energy spilling from Aži Dahāka had already begun turning back upon itself, twisting into the shape of bones, flesh, and metallic green scales as the Dragon’s physical form regenerated. Several million miles away, Crom Cruach twitched amid the stellar flames. His jet-black scales had been burned red and raw, while broad patches of flesh had melted away to reveal blackened muscle and bone beneath, and although the Irish Dragon still retained most of his original shape, even he had been grievously injured by the explosion.

“Well, I suppose it’s time to finish this, then,” Sirzechs said to himself.

Before he could raise his hand, both draconic auras exploded.

Crom Cruach became an immense source of orange light, his power rising from his wounded body in titanic waves that swept across more than a million miles of superheated plasma. At the same time, Aži Dahāka transformed into an engine of emerald energy, his abominable presence shattering the localized reality as the flesh of his missing torso erupted back into existence. Their radiance joined the brilliance of the supernova until all three became indistinguishable, and then the pressure of their combined power crashed against Sirzechs with enough force to drive him backward.

“Oh, lovely,” he sighed to himself. “They’ve gone into an Outrage.”

Their strength continued rising as the violent instincts buried within their draconic souls took complete control. Crom Cruach’s body expanded until every blackened muscle bulged beneath his scales, while Aži Dahāka regenerated into a form even larger than the one the supernova had destroyed. The two Dragons roared together, and the Dimensional Gap convulsed around them as the boundaries of numerous physical realities began shaking uncontrollably.

Then they moved before Sirzechs could react.

Crom Cruach crossed the distance first and struck him in the chest, his fist carrying several times the power it had possessed only moments earlier. Something alien shocked through Sirzechs’ body as he was hurled across the stellar inferno, yet before he could identify the sensation, Aži Dahāka appeared above him with all three jaws already open. Emerald light flooded each mouth and converged upon Sirzechs in a single draconic blast.

He answered with Destruction, but the crimson-black torrent barely held for an instant before the Thousand Evils overwhelmed it and consumed him beneath a column of emerald power.

That strange sensation tore through him again as the blast carried him into the newborn neutron star and drove him through its impossibly dense crust. Sirzechs burst from the opposite side amid an eruption of degenerate matter, only for Crom Cruach to catch him by the leg and swing him back through the star. The stellar body ruptured beneath the impact, ejecting beams of white-hot matter from both poles while Aži Dahāka descended through the opening and plunged a sword of Holy Light into Sirzechs’ shoulder.

Sirzechs erased the weapon before it could pass completely through him and drove a sphere of Destruction into the Thousand Evils’ remaining chest. Half of Aži Dahāka vanished, but the wound began repairing itself almost immediately, while Crom Cruach tore through the resulting corruption and struck Sirzechs with his immense, scaled fist. The blow hurled him into the outer reaches of the supernova, where he regained control long enough to form a crimson wall around himself.

Both Dragons crashed into it together.

The barrier endured their initial impact, but Aži Dahāka began pouring curses and elemental sorcery into every fracture while Crom Cruach hammered his fists against its surface. Each blow spread cracks farther through the Destruction, and when the wall finally broke, the Dark Crescent drove through the collapsing power and closed one claw around Sirzechs’ torso. Then Aži Dahāka unleashed a beam from each of his three mouths, striking both of them and carrying Sirzechs deeper into the supernova while Crom Cruach’s grip tightened around him.

Sirzechs forced his arms apart and released a sphere of Demonic corruption from every surface of his body. The eruption threw Crom Cruach away and swallowed Aži Dahāka beneath expanding waves of crimson-black power, but the relief lasted only for a moment. The Thousand Evils tore free through sheer force, while Crom Cruach emerged from within the corruption itself with his orange patterns burning brighter than before.

And despite being well into their Outrage, their strength continued to grow.

Sirzechs narrowed his eyes as he met their next assault with even more Destruction, attempting to erase Aži Dahāka while containing Crom Cruach behind layer after layer of corrupted space. Yet every exchange ended in the Dragons’ favor, and each time Sirzechs released more of his Demonic power, the Dark Crescent’s presence became larger, denser, and more terrible.

The crimson-black corruption twisting through the Dimensional Gap was flowing toward Crom Cruach, sinking between his scales and disappearing into his flesh, while even the portions caught within the ruptured folds of reality bent toward the Dragon as though pulled by an irresistible hunger.

Sirzechs’ eyes lit with understanding. Ah, so that’s it. That’s why he continues to grow stronger.

Crom Cruach saw the realization in his eyes and laughed through the madness of his Outrage. “Noticed it, have you? I am the Dark Crescent, the Violent Moon! I feed on negativity and malice! You Demons are a most fine meal for me! I will devour you, little horror, and be all the more powerful for it!”

And the Dragon surged toward him with renewed ferocity, drinking Sirzechs’ corruption from the space between them as Aži Dahāka attacked from above. Sirzechs continued retreating beneath their combined assault, blocking Crom Cruach’s claws while erasing the Thousand Evils’ magic, but every expenditure of Demonic power fed one opponent and left him vulnerable to the other.

Aži Dahāka then formed an enormous spear of Holy Light, its radiance several times more powerful than anything Sirzechs had ever witnessed from an Archangel, and hurled it through the supernova. Sirzechs raised a wall of Destruction before himself, but the spear shattered the barrier and struck his crossed arms. There was an audible crack as the bones of his upper right arm broke, and then he was sent tumbling backward through the blazing plasma.

Crom Cruach and Aži Dahāka immediately barreled after him, but Sirzechs ceased moving and stared down at his broken arm.

The alien sensation had become impossible to ignore at this point. And it burned through his chest where Crom Cruach had struck him; throbbed within his shoulder where Aži Dahāka’s sword had pierced him, and pulsed along the shattered bone with every beat of his heart. It was such an alien sensation – one he had never felt before nor could recall in his centuries worth of memories.

But, oddly enough, he recalled the aggrieved look in Grayfia’s eyes as he commanded her away before confronting the two Dragons… and as those beautiful silver eyes filled with emotion flashed though his mind, a sudden epiphany struck him.

Pain.

He was feeling pain.

Sirzechs stared at his broken arm in wonder. Pain? Him? He of all people was experiencing pain? He let out a disbelieving chuckle, but soon enough, it erupted into a full roaring laughter. He raised the broken limb despite the agony that followed and ran his hand down his face, laughing harder as the absurdity settled over him.

It was inconceivable to him.

Yet as his laughter continued, the red glint within his eyes sharpened into something increasingly unstable. And though his lips were still drawn into a wild smile – pure unadulterated hatred flooded his expression, followed by an almost insane rage comparable to the Outrage burning through the two Dragons. And its sudden intensity forced both creatures to arrest their advance as Sirzechs’ aura darkened by several orders of magnitude.

Sirzechs’ face contorted venomously as unmitigated anger surged from his soul and unleashed bolts of crimson lightning thousands of miles through the blazing plasma.

“Lucifer does not feel pain,” he seethed.

And the Sin of Pride emerged wroth.

A baleful shadow spread from Sirzechs and instantly devoured the light of the supernova. Darkness poured across the Dimensional Gap, swallowing the stellar fire, the radiation, and the violent colors of hyperspace until the entire region became a conjured Abyss centered upon the Demon Lord.

And within that darkness, Sirzechs was made whole.

The bone of his arm restored itself, every wound vanished from his body, and his torn robes became pristine once more. Even his disordered hair settled perfectly back into place, while the venomous rage upon his face receded beneath the same polite smile he had worn before the battle began.

Aži Dahāka stared at him hatefully. “What have you done? What abomination have you dredged from the Inferno, you foolish whelp?”

“Superbia Perfecta,” Sirzechs answered calmly as he folded his hands behind his back. “My Sin of Pride’s authority. Some would call it narcissism taken to its absolute extreme; I prefer to think of it as a better understanding of reality. My reality.” His smile widened by the smallest degree. “I can deny all things done to me or even intended for me. I am ever at my best because I am the best. I am the perfect Demon.”

Aži Dahāka snapped all three jaws and glowered. “An immense boon of the First Flame, but you are still weaker than us! We will sunder you again and again, and you cannot deny that!”

“And each time, I shall devour more and more of you!” Crom Cruach roared savagely as he lunged toward Sirzechs.

But before he could cross the distance, a crack appeared in the center of Sirzechs’ forehead and dark laughter swalloed the light of the Dimensional Gap.

Spawn of the Void...

Furious red light surged through the fracture, and Crom Cruach immediately recoiled as everything caught within its radiance ceased to exist. The superheated plasma vanished along its path, leaving rays of black nothingness through the heart of the supernova, while the entire Dimensional Gap trembled beneath the pressure building inside the Demon Lord.

I Am the Shadow on the Wall...

Sirzechs’ body exploded with cosmic force, and instantly extant reality was utterly deleted. The Void flowed in to fill what remained, and within that endless nothing, a lone shadow burned red.

The Dark in Your Hearts...

A gargantuan eruption of pure Crimson Destruction surged tyrannically in every direction, annihilating everything touched by its light. Time and Space disappeared together, followed by the countless dimensions layered throughout the surrounding hyperspace, and the expanding power left behind only the absolute blackness of the Void.

I Am the Destroyer...

Both Dragons unleashed everything they possessed in response. Aži Dahāka poured endless torrents of emerald energy from his three mouths and wove thousands of barriers around his body, while Crom Cruach roared and wrapped himself in the entirety of his Outrage.

The Absolute Ending...

Yet the Demonic Might remained inexhaustible, forcing them to continuously release more power merely to preserve themselves as the darkness, the supernova, and even the newborn neutron star were erased.

Behold the Despair Embodied...

And the Profane Star of Destruction shone dread beyond all dimensions and all firmaments - it's light wrapping into itself and feeding an invicinble engine of pure annihilation.

Behold the Crimson Lucifer...

=======

Amaterasu stood opposite her Twin-Tear, both of them standing as symmetrical mirrors of one another. Both of them stood with their chins raised defiantly and their hands folded within the sleeves of their immortal robes.

Around them Eternity ever churned as all the Immortals of the Day and all the Immortals of the Night waged war against one another. Moment by moment, entire timelines were undone; moment by moment, entire timelines were reborn. Across infinite possibilities and endless realities, the civil war of Takamagahara raged.

And at the apex of the war, in the highest siege of Divinity, the Soul King and the Dread Star of Heaven clashed against one another, as they had since the Dawn of Time, as they had for the very first Time. Entire beginnings and endings were written and unwritten out of Creation by the two. Entire universes birthed and defined and then destroyed.

Their battle cast a shadow over every other True Immortal – their conflict of Empyrean Wills waging utterly beyond Fate and Time.

But she had faith, the utmost ironclad faith, that her oldest friend would prevail.

Yet, quite suddenly, there was a shift in Eternity – a minor blemish where there shouldn’t be one. As one, the divine gazes of the Sun and Moon moved to the slight stain, a smidgen of darkness that dripped into the Golden World of Immortality. It should not have been there.

They both frowned, and in that same moment, the stain pooled like spilled ink, tainting across innumerable timelines. Like some corrosive disease, it ate at Fate itself: undoing pasts, the present and potential futures. And the shadow burned red, a malignant crimson that writhed hatefully as an anathema to existence itself.

Its only invitation was that of Despair.

"Look," Tsukiyomi sneered. “ Look at the monster that stole your precious weapon. This is what your folly will invite into the Fourth World. And as ever, it will be up to me to clean up your mess, sister.”

Golden eyes fell back onto her twin, and the Celestial Sun said in all her splendor, “It is the nature of the Moon to fall into the Dark. But this time, the Dark will not let you go. Your Doom has been writ, Tsukiyomi.”

“Words I would say back unto you, sister.”

And once more, they mirrored each other and went still.

=======

Set sat within his Immortal Plane beyond Time, looking upon the stars and all of Eternity held within. In particular, his cosmic gaze held fast the images of the Demon Lords as they battled Thu’ban’s resurrected children - specifically the Crimson Lucifer as he fought that ancient horror that was Aži Dahāka and the other monstrously powerful dragon spawned from Balor’s corpse, Crom Cruach.

But he was also enjoying a fresh cup of honeyed milk – a refreshing drink always went hand in hand with a suspenseful show.

The blankets then stirred beside him, and he beheld a beautiful woman of soft, almond complexion with long and curly locks of black hair darker than midnight sit down next to him.

Lips glossed with pink smiled at him amused. “Enjoying your entertainment, dear husband.”

“Very much so, dear wife” he said with a deep chuckle, even as Astarte leaned over and kissed his cheek. And as she pressed herself against his side, he reached out with one arm and wrapped it around her waist.

And with little wasted time, she grabbed his clay cup of milk and took a sip of her own.

He let out a chuckle as she handed it back to him, and then they both looked up at the swirling constellations and the narrations playing out within.

Astarte let out a soft sigh of appreciation. “Such horrifying power, I doubt even I could defeat the Dark King. Though I question his wisdom in bringing the two Dragons into the Void.”

Set shook his head with a soft smile. “No, the Infinite Ouroboros will not interfere. It does not desire the deaths of the Sins. I fear its machinations are elsewhere.”

His wife looked at him, her eyes narrowing just a touch. “And yet, by your tone, I think there is some other game afoot.”

He gave a contemplative hum. “Blinded that we are by the Void – I can see familiar steps. Ones that should be even more familiar to you.”

A fine ebony eyebrow rose in question. “Oh?”

He gave a single nod as he waved his hand and moved the stars. “Though your pantheon has long since been undone, there is one prominent phantom remaining.”

Astarte’s face immediately darkened. “That one. Still clinging to the dregs of power, I see.”

“As ever,” Set said, a hint of contempt entering his voice.

She then looked at him cautiously. “Will you not interfere… we both know his mind. His foul obsession.”

For a moment, the Red Lord’s visage grew dark, but the anger quickly melted from his face as he beheld the faint twitch of his wife’s fingers. Gingerly, he reached out and grabbed her hand, bringing the back of it to his lips.

With a soft kiss, he murmured against her skin, “No, that is no longer my role. Mine is to be beside you and Anat.” He then let out a soft chuckle. “Though I do admire the irony of it, that the two of you are now with me. Even as Tamtum is with Ichigo. Fate conspires against that old wretch most amusingly.”

She smiled, almost admonishingly, and said, “One would think you only ever loved me out of some small mischief.”

The Lord of the Red Lands laughed. “Oh, but if there is to be mischief, then I would not keep it in my heart, rather our bed.”

Astarte leaned in and near crawled into his lap. “My honey-tongued serpent,” she murmured as she drew in close.

“But you do love the taste of honey, dear wife,” he said in a dark whisper, even as her fair hands brought down his ancient mask.

=======

Zangetsu met the True Longinus with a deafening peal of thunder, Demonic metal grinding against the radiant point of the Spear of Destiny as Ichigo stared into Cao Cao’s anger-filled eyes.

Golden-white light poured between the two weapons and threw their shadows across the ruined battlefield, and though Cao Cao leaned into the clash with both hands wrapped around the spear’s long shaft, exerting enough strength to fracture the ground beneath his feet, Ichigo held him at bay without giving so much as a single step.

He had already attempted to reach into Cao Cao’s mind and twist the human’s rage against him, seeking the hatred hidden beneath all his grand declarations of heroism, but his Sin had scarcely touched Cao Cao before the True Longinus drove him away. The Sacred Gear’s protection extended far beyond its wielder’s flesh, surrounding Cao Cao’s soul and reinforcing his mind as though the Spear had been thrust into the very foundations of his existence, and when Ichigo attempted to force his way through that defense, its ancient radiance answered him with a zealous rejection.

Not for naught was it considered the strongest Sacred Gear in existence.

According to legend, the Heavenly Father had placed his own Will within the True Longinus, making it as much a divine weapon as a Sacred Gear. Ichigo could not afford to treat it carelessly merely because Cao Cao stood so far beneath him. A wound from the Spear of Destiny would carry consequences beyond torn flesh, particularly now that Ichigo had become a Demon Lord whose entire existence stood in opposition to the holiness sleeping within the weapon. He was uniquely vulnerable to it.

Mid-clash, Cao Cao abruptly released the pressure and pulled the Longinus back, spinning the shaft through his hands before driving its point toward Ichigo’s throat. Ichigo tilted his head aside and allowed the spearhead to pass harmlessly away from his face, the shaft of the spear sending sparks along Zangetsu’s edge.

And when Cao Cao changed his grip and attempted to turn the missed thrust into a sweeping strike, Zangetsu easily rose to intercept it. His Soul-Sword crashed against the holy shaft, hurling the weapon away, but Cao Cao followed the deflection rather than resisting it, rotating with the blow and bringing the True Longinus around from the opposite direction.

Ichigo parried again, and then Cao Cao pressed him with a rapid succession of thrusts, slashes and sweeping attacks, changing his grip fluidly whenever the distance between them narrowed. He used the whole length of the weapon with impressive skill, threatening Ichigo with its radiant point before striking with the butt or shaft whenever Zangetsu disrupted his reach, and there was no denying that the human possessed both considerable talent and extraordinary physical power.

He had to admit, despite all the blustering and posturing, Cao Cao had managed to mildly impress him… even if he was significantly weaker than Ichigo. Ichigo had to acknowledge that the self-proclaimed Hero knew what he was doing. His spearmanship was astounding, and his adaptability and reactive skills were beyond superhuman.

By Ichigo’s measure, his speed and strength had carried him well into the depths of the Ultimate class, an astonishing achievement for a human. Honestly, in another time and another place, Cao Cao could have made for a decent Captain in Soul Society.

However, remarkable though Cao Cao might have been among humanity, the distance between them remained immeasurable. Cao Cao fought at the limits of his ability merely to remain before him, while Ichigo moved with restrained precision, reading every shift of the human’s shoulders and every tightening of his fingers long before the True Longinus began its next attack.

And as for the other Heroes, Ichigo did not even need to spare them a glance.

The sheer weight of his presence had already driven them onto their hands and knees, their bodies trembling beneath the pressure blanketing the battlefield while the density of his demonic miasma pressed against their skin and sought entry into their souls. Simply put, they would already have died had the True Longinus not extended its protection over them.

Through the magic in his eyes, Ichigo could see the faint strands of golden radiance stretching from Cao Cao’s weapon to each of his companions, surrounding them with a luminous veil that preserved their lives against Ichigo’s demonic atmosphere.

Cao Cao then shifted his footing and thrust the Longinus toward Ichigo’s heart, but Ichigo stepped aside and brought Zangetsu down across the weapon’s shaft, forcing the spearhead into the earth. Fractures raced outward from the point of impact, and before Cao Cao could wrench it free, Ichigo pressed down harder, intending to trap the weapon and leave its wielder defenseless.

But the Holy radiance surrounding the Spear abruptly intensified, and again, Ichigo could feel its Sacred Fury sear against his own dark Sin.

Golden-white light erupted beneath Zangetsu and crawled across his Soul-Sword’s edge as the True Longinus recoiled against Ichigo’s demonic corruption. Its ancient Will surged through Cao Cao and collided with Ichigo’s own, and although their bodies remained upon the battlefield, the true struggle spread outward through Time and Space as the Spear attempted to cast his influence away – and not just from Cao Cao – but from the reality of the Underworld.

Ichigo scowled as the pressure mounted against Zangetsu. Cao Cao was practically incidental to the greater clash, supplying the weapon with direction and intent while the Longinus itself resisted Ichigo’s dread Will: it contested his demonic authority and preserved its significantly weaker wielder.

Then the True Longinus tore itself free and Cao Cao immediately dropped low and swept its point toward Ichigo’s leg. When Zangetsu turned the strike aside, Ichigo took a single step that carried him beyond preternatural speeds, and he reappeared directly behind the Hero. With his eyes flashing with murderous intent, Ichigo raised Zangetsu in both hands, and he brought the blade down in a powerful overhand strike aimed at the back of Cao Cao’s head.

But a sudden golden light flashed between them and Zangetsu crashed against a radiant barrier with a deafening shockwave that ripped across the battlefield. And though the Holy shield bent inward until it almost touched Cao Cao’s skull, its surface rippling violently beneath the blow, it endured long enough for the Hero to realize what had happened. Cao Cao whirled around and slashed the True Longinus toward Ichigo’s side, forcing him to withdraw before the Spear could touch him, and as the golden barrier dissolved into drifting motes, Ichigo’s scowl deepened.

Fuck, he thought, as an old memory from years past suddenly rushed to the forefront of his mind.

It was the exact same thing that had happened with Aizen all those years ago. Cao Cao had neither sensed the attack coming nor consciously called forth a defense, but an automatic protection at the vulnerable nape of the neck had nullified what would otherwise have been a fatal blow.

Cao Cao leapt backward and created distance between them, dragging the True Longinus through a broad arc before extending it with both hands. An immense Holy aura exploded from its point and drove against Ichigo’s miasma, clearing the space around the fallen Heroes as golden-white light climbed into the sky behind Cao Cao, illuminating him with a vast halo of sacred light.

Ichigo snorted at the sight; no wonder the young man walked around spouting fairy tale bullshit and idealism – the Spear itself probably fed his ego and delusions, molding him into its desired wielder.

Yeah, that damn Spear is my real enemy here, not Cao Cao, Ichigo thought grimly.

Cao Cao took the brief respite and pointed the True Longinus directly at him and said with a triumphant smile, “Today will mark the deaths of at least two Demon Lords! Not just you, but Ajuka Beelzebub as well!”

Ichigo gave the man a confused look, his brows drawing together in question. “What?”

Cao Cao laughed, apparently mistaking his confusion for alarm. “Even as I am here, three other Longinus Sacred Gears have gone to confront and defeat Beelzebub! Humanity will finally be freed from the threat of the Evil Pieces!”

For several seconds, Ichigo merely stared at him while the True Longinus hummed between them and the Heroes behind Cao Cao who struggled to breathe beneath his demonic power. But then, as the man’s words finally registered, Ichigo snorted as he struggled to hold back his laughter.

And he obviously must have failed because Cao Cao looked rather disgruntled.

“Wait, hold up,” Ichigo said as he raised his hand and his chest rumbled with mirth. “Ajuka? You assholes think you can kill Ajuka?”

Cao Cao opened his mouth to respond but Ichigo quickly cut him off.

“Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but three Longinus isn’t doing jackshit against Ajuka,” Ichigo said as he shook his head with a laugh. “Hell, this may be my bias talking, but I doubt all twelve Longinus could so much as make Ajuka get out of his chair.”

Cao Cao glared at him angrily and he quickly tightened his grip upon the Spear. “Your empty boasts mean nothing! We will - ”

The Underworld violently trembled before he could finish.

A powerful convulsion passed through the earth and threw several of the kneeling Heroes onto their sides, while fractures split the ground beneath Cao Cao’s feet and raced outward in every direction. Saviguk and Humbaba paused, as did the pair of ancient Dragons that they faced. The armies of the Old Satan Faction stilled, and his own forces all looked up at the sky in fretful glances. Even the magic Gremory had wrapped around the battlefield groaned under several worlds’ worth of demonic pressure. And all the skies of the Underworld became a brilliant crimson.

The ambient demonic energy increased severalfold within a heartbeat, growing so dense that the golden protection surrounding the Heroes flickered beneath its weight. Dozens of arcs of red lightning tore across the blood-colored heavens and struck the ground, each impact erasing everything it touched out of existence.

Cao Cao staggered and tightened his grip upon the True Longinus, his face twisting with anger as he turned upon Ichigo. “Y-you! What have you done?!”

Ichigo raised one eyebrow. “Me? That’s not me. That’s the Crimson Lucifer, and he’s not even in this reality. Hell, he’s not even in this spatial dimension.”

Another peal of red thunder split the sky, and a monstrous shockwave passed through the battlefield. Ichigo cast an appreciative glance upwards, the magic in his eyes peering beyond the folds of dimensions and other realities, and, just barely, he could make out the Crimson Star of Destruction and its baleful light in the Void.

He chuckled to himself – he was half dead the last time Sirzechs had unleashed his full strength, but it had taken Ophis itself to hold him back. He genuinely felt bad for those two Dragons in the Void with him.

“You have no idea how out of your league you are. Or whatever friends you sent to die.” Ichigo rested Zangetsu against his shoulder, his contemptuous gaze remaining fixed upon Cao Cao. “As powerful as Sirzechs is, I can say with certainty that Ajuka is the most dangerous out of all of us Sins.”

Cao Cao gritted his teeth as his eyes narrowed dangerously, but Ichigo merely snorted as he pointed a lone finger, and a spark of red energy began spiraling at its tip.

“Sirzechs is the Crimson Lucifer, want to know what they call Ajuka?”

The Cero rapidly condensed as currents of black power spiraled through its incandescent heart, and then the ground beneath Ichigo sank under the pressure while the air screamed around his outstretched fingers.

“The Invariant Evil.”

Ichigo then suddenly swept his hand away from Cao Cao and fired.

The Cero erupted across the battlefield as a vast beam of red light, racing past Cao Cao and directly toward his helpless companions, and the self-proclaimed Hero twisted around in horror.

=======

He was Destruction.

There was no flesh that contained him, no soul around which his power needed to coil. The Crimson Lucifer expanded beyond every limitation imposed upon him by reality, his Will unfolding in all directions and none at all until there was no distinction between the Demon Lord and the endless red burning through the Nothingness.

And yet, for all that he was Destruction - the very idea of annihilation given thought and purpose - there was nothing here for him to destroy.

The Void was a here without a here, a when without a when, existing beyond all dimensionality through which distance, sequence or causality might possess meaning. There was no matter awaiting dissolution, no energy to unravel and no platonic ideal upon which the authority of Destruction might impose its inevitable conclusion. Is and Is Not became obsolete concepts, as there was only Nothing, infinite and inviolate.

Well… Nothing and two Dragons.

It was an odd sensation, but he could sense them… vaguely. Their existence… they were like a pair of islands in an otherwise static sea, creating shores which black water broke upon.

But despite the surrounding Nothing, their outright hostility and rage still burned as brightly as ever.

Aži Dahāka and Crom Cruach did not fall upon him, for there was nowhere from which they might descend. They did not charge, rage or rampage, because there was no distance for them to cross. Nor was there any progression of time through which they might take action – in the Void, there was no such thing as occurrence or happenstance. The Dragons’ immense bodies had become irrelevant upon entering the Void, stripped of all meaning alongside motion and physical strength.

But they still possessed their Wills, and Pride knew better than most that the truest monsters required little else.

The Outrage of each Dragons pressed against Sirzechs’ existence, immeasurable in their intensity and overwhelming enough to have consumed entire worlds. It was anger refined beyond emotion, the pure assertion that they wished to inflict harm and decimation upon all that they deemed was in their way. And through their Outrage, the two wyrms attempted to force definition upon the Void.

And the Crimson Lucifer Destroyed it.

There was no gesture, no gathering of demonic power and no interval between decision and consequence. His unshakable Will brushed against the Dragons’ rage, and their violence ceased to be.

Aži Dahāka answered as his very existence roared with renewed fury.

Within his mind’s eye, the Demon Lord perceived the ancient horror shaping its draconic Will into sorcery. A thousand vile mysteries emerged at once, all wishing upon him harm and misery; seeking to corrupt every iota of his being with torment and death.

Yet, with the faintest flicker of Will, he destroyed it all.

Every curse collapsed before it could complete itself. Every sorcery that might have been became one that never was, and every imagined future in which Aži Dahāka triumphed disappeared into a crimson glare. The Dragon created another thousand spells, adapting its Will to new principles, but Pride found their conclusions before their beginnings and erased them in reverse.

Simultaneously, Crom Cruach shaped its own mind into violence. Pain became its claws, malice its fangs, and the very concept of injury gathered around the memory of its immense body until a monstrous outline imposed itself upon the Nothingness. It did not need to cross the distance between them, for its attack was the idea that violence had been inflicted, an effect divorced from action and consequence. Wounds attempted to open across the Star of Destruction’s being without ever having been dealt, even as the Dragon’s hateful Will sought to consume his demonic power.

But the Crimson Lucifer had undone it all before it could even happen, all causation rendered unto Oblivion by his Will. Crom Cruach responded by creating greater violence, building injury upon injury as its nature demanded, yet every manifestation was returned to Nothing before the Dragon could feed upon it.

Again and again, the two ancient wyrms threw their existences against him, and again and again, Sirzechs refuted them.

He did not merely erase their attacks. Gradually, almost leisurely, he reached beyond what the Dragons had created and took hold of what they might yet create. His Will spread through the boundless field of potential within their own existence, touching every possibility in which claw, fang, curse or sorcery could threaten him, and then the Crimson Lucifer closed his grasp.

Potential became impossibility, Maybe became never, and all that could have been was reduced to what never was and never would be.

Platonic ideals emerged from the Dragons’ Wills only to be blasted into Nothingness, for he was ultimate Destruction, and Nothing followed wherever his might passed. In a twist of supreme irony, he himself was the Void’s greatest herald - the absolute annihilation that left only the Nothingness of the Void within its wake.

He was the cosmic bleach, stripping the colors of possibility off the canvas of reality – returning it to its pristine blank state.

And with each possibility Destroyed, his Pride swelled in response.

He knew he would emerge victorious because victory was the only possibility he had permitted to remain, and as his Will expanded into the absences it left behind, all else became peripheral.

Gradually, he sensed a subtle change within the Dragons. Every possibility he destroyed had planted a seed of doubt inside them, and though neither wyrm would willingly acknowledge such weakness, Aži Dahāka’s sorceries now carried the faint expectation of erasure while Crom Cruach’s violence had begun anticipating its own futility. That expectation made their manifestations less certain, and within the Void, where Will alone determined all things, even the smallest uncertainty became a flaw through which Pride might enter.

With a smile that required neither face nor lips, Sirzechs reached toward those doubts and watered them with his conceited beliefs. He poured the absolute certainty of his triumph into every hesitation, claiming even the lingering shadows within their minds as his own.

He was those shadows. He was Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness.

Every doubt and every fear, every insecurity and worry was his doing. He was the blemish in all minds, tempting them into weakness and drowning Sin.

The Crimson Lucifer became the hum of power within Aži Dahāka’s immeasurable sorcery and the stroke of strength within Crom Cruach’s violence, pressing his Pride into the pause that preceded every new manifestation of their Wills. Each time they attempted to define another possibility, he forced them to remember the thousands he had already erased, and slowly, inevitably, the seeds of their doubt bloomed into despair.

The Crown Prince of Pride felt their resistance collapse as his certainty became theirs, and the ancient Dragons could only surrender as they accepted the futile reality that the Crimson Lucifer could not be denied. To struggle against him was merely to create another possibility for him to erase, while to imagine victory was to offer another future to the Nothingness gathering in his wake. And when they could no longer conceive of anything beyond their own annihilation, he reached through the absence, seized that final possibility and made of it truth.

For it was his prerogative to twist all of Creation into Oblivion, and beneath the boundless Pride of the Crimson Lucifer, Aži Dahāka and Crom Cruach were returned to the Void.

=======

Tiamat stood silent before the enormous bay windows within the Gremory palace, staring out into the skies of the Underworld as their colors shifted beneath the fearsome might of her beloved and the other Enthroned Horrors. And yet, for all their immense power, a flicker of fear crept through her heart.

The Void Come had resurrected so many of their kin. Powerful and ancient Dragons, some of the very worst amongst their kind - base beasts who delighted in cruelty and destruction for pleasure’s sake. Her thoughts turned toward her beloved and the foes that had assailed him. The mortal who wielded the Heavenly Father’s Lance was rather worrisome - or rather, the weapon itself was. She still recalled her encounter with the True Longinus’ brother, the Slaying Spear. Her arms itched at the memory of its blade cutting across her scales.

And then there were the two Dragons being faced by the mutt and Ḫuwāwa.

Lotan.

She had never expected to see that sea serpent again. He was one of the oldest serpents of the Primordium, nearly as old as herself, and he possessed certain ties to her from the days of yore, when he had been fashioned by Yam and slain by -

She closed her eyes with a silent sigh, desperately trying to push away the most painful of memories… memories of her own laughter as she clung to a smiling boy.

A small growl pushed its way through her chest, and she buried it all away as she had done for millennia. She could almost hear her beloved saying, Here and now, beautiful. But he was beyond her reach for now, consumed in battle.

Her thoughts only soured further as she recalled the other wyrm raised against him. That foul wretch Grendel: the mere thought of his name made her lips curl in disgust. He was a violent beast with little intellect and an obsessive need to procreate. Centuries ago, that miserable creatin had attempted to court her, and when she had staunchly rejected him, he had tried to force himself upon her. Which was the norm amongst Dragons.

But Tiamat had resoundingly thrashed him, and though she could not pierce his hide, she had taken great relish in sinking him to the bottom of the icy oceans of the far north.

“Uhh… is everything alright, Auntie Tiamat?”

She was pulled from the past, and her eyes went to the reflections in the window. Behind her, young Millicas stared with childish curiosity and concern filling his eyes. Habitually, her eyes followed the shape of his mouth, the turn of his cheeks…

And behind him, with her hands resting upon his shoulders, sat Venelana. She possessed those same features, though hers were far more pronounced and far more haunting.

“Hush, Millicas,” Venelana said quietly. “Do not disturb the Lady.”

Tiamat resisted the urge to frown and merely continued staring for a few moments.

“It is no matter,” she replied absentmindedly. “I was merely observing the battles.”

Millicas immediately perked up. “Is everything okay!? Is Nii-sama winning? What about Father and Mother!?”

The corner of Tiamat’s mouth twitched. His adoration of Ichigo always saw him fluctuate between Ichigo’s native tongue and the language of the Devils. He really was such a delightful child.

“They are doing fine,” she said, returning her gaze to the horizon even as a powerful tremor passed through the ground.

But internally, more than her beloved, she was concerned for Sirzechs. She was unsure what monstrous heights his prodigious strength had reached, but those two Dragons were considerably stronger than any of the others walking the known realms. Aži Dahāka and Crom Cruach were even more powerful than her, and amongst wyrmkind, she doubted any save Albion or Ddraig could soundly defeat the pair.

Yet Sirzechs had chosen to contend against them both alone.

Suddenly, there came a knock, and Tiamat’s eyes lifted toward the reflection of the large, dark wooden doors. Millicas and Venelana turned as well, and the latter said, “Enter.”

The door opened gingerly, and through it poked a head of vivid crimson hair.

“Auntie Rias!”

Millicas jumped from Venelana’s arms and raced toward young Rias, throwing his small arms around her waist. For her part, the young woman smiled softly and ran her fingers through his hair.

“Millicas, you’re here too?” she asked with a small laugh.

“Rias!” Venelana then stood with a scandalized expression. “What in Lucifer’s name are you doing here?! You know you’re not allowed to be here!”

Rias scratched her cheek awkwardly. “Uh, I’m actually here on Lord Ichigo’s orders.”

And as if his name were some enchanted word, another powerful quake rocked the ground the instant Rias spoke it, forcing the three Devils to struggle to maintain their balance.

Venelana blinked and then straightened herself. “What do you mean?”

“He deemed it best that the children be kept near me for their own protection,” Tiamat clarified, and all eyes turned toward her.

Young Rias’ eyes widened, and she stepped away from Millicas to give a small bow. “H-hello again, Lady Tiamat. Thank you for protecting us.”

Tiamat studied the soft cut of the young woman’s face. Her sapphire eyes then fell upon Millicas, moved to Venelana and finally returned to Rias.

The same face repeated three times, and in her memories, it repeated even more. But she held back a sigh and quickly looked away.

“Where is the other one? Serafall’s sibling?” she asked crisply.

“Ah, yes. Sona is here! She’s just getting her peerage settled in. We’re all a little frazzled with the invasion,” Rias answered nervously.

Tiamat let out a hum and said nothing more, returning her attention to the Sins and their world-shaking battles.

“Well, don’t just stand there in the threshold. Come inside,” Venelana said.

And the same three faces went to sit upon the sofa.

“Come, let me get a good look at you,” the eldest Gremory said as she cupped her daughter’s cheeks. Several seconds passed as she examined the younger woman, and then Venelana released a warm smile.

“My, look how you’ve grown,” Venelana said happily as she passed one hand over Rias’ hair. “Your power has risen remarkably, and I can see your presence pressing against my own. Lord Ichigo has done wonders for you.”

That he had, Tiamat agreed. From the moment Rias entered her beloved’s kingdom, she had kept the young girl marked within her mind’s eye, watching as she struggled through the labors of plebeian life and the strife of being beaten into the ice by her beloved’s overgrown mound of fluff. But despite her numerous complaints - to which Rias remained utterly unaware that she and her beloved had heard every word - the young woman had risen to the challenge.

Step by step, she endured all his intended and unintended trials and tribulations.

Though she still had far to go.

Quite suddenly, Tiamat’s eyes jumped toward the sky as she felt a pervasive malice wring its way through the eddies of reality. And but a few moments later, the entire Underworld shook violently as the sky bled a deep crimson and erupted into a storm of red lightning. Tiamat unwound her arms and peered deeply into the bleeding sky, even as torrents of Demonic power flooded into the world.

“W-what’s that?” Rias asked, trembling even as she hugged a shaking Millicas against herself.

“Sirzechs,” Venelana said grimly as she took both children into her arms.

The massive quake continued ripping through the Underworld, but after a few moments it subsided, and Tiamat felt the touch of another Sin stabilize this reality. It took her a moment to recognize the presence of the one her beloved frequently complained about—the “lazybones.”

“That was Father?” Millicas asked, his eyes wide with emotion.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Venelana said reassuringly. “Your father is the strongest there is. Think, you have not felt the enemy, which shows just how much stronger your father is than them!”

Millicas slowly nodded, but Tiamat could see that Rias had followed the logic Millicas had been led away from realizing. If Sirzechs were required to summon such power, then it meant he faced an enemy that necessitated such might.

She saw the girl’s fingers curl with concern, but she offered no words of consolation. Because, even though Tiamat had faith in young Sirzechs, even she could not say what machinations the Infinite Ouroboros had planted against him.

Several long moments passed, and the world continued to be dyed red beneath Sirzechs’ light while the three Gremorys whispered amongst themselves. Tiamat continued trying to discern the twists and turns of Fate, clouded though they were by Ophis, and briefly, her mind touched her beloved’s, though she was careful not to disturb him amidst his battle.

She merely wished to ascertain his well-being.

However, as she touched the heat of his presence, a sudden wrongness settled upon her. Her brows knitted in confusion, and it took her a moment to realize that it was not coming from him.

“Wait… what?”

Tiamat turned around as Rias held up her hands, and small red sparks of electricity danced along her arms.

“Auntie Rias?” Millicas asked in confusion, but at that exact moment, the same sparks began erupting from his own diminutive form. And soon, they came upon Venelana as well.

All three Gremorys stared at one another in shock, and then a quiet vileness crept into the sitting room, one all too recognizable to Tiamat. It caused the ends of her hair to bristle with lightning.

“Blood Magic,” Tiamat growled.

Before she could act, the three Devils went stiff and their eyes glazed over until they became a dull red, while from their mouths poured a horrid crimson miasma. Tiamat could sense within it a wretched and twisted evil, one that poisoned the very touch of reality.

A cold breath escaped her lungs; a Demon of the Ancient World. And one she recognized all too well.

The red smoke slowly assumed a vaguely humanoid shape, a hazy figure fashioned from the same Destructive principles possessed by all three Gremory Devils. Except this was the origin of their power, the source of their immense potential, and Tiamat loathed it with all her heart.

The Red Shadow looked down at its hands and flexed its fingers before raising its head and settling its gaze quietly upon her. It stood there for several moments, the Demon regarding her with noiseless solemnity.

Finally, it muttered, “As beautiful as ever.”

Tiamat released a vicious snarl as her visage warped into something inhuman. Scales grew beneath her eyes, and her teeth sharpened into fangs.

“Ba’al,” she growled hatefully.

The Demon sighed. “Must we use that old title? I would much prefer the name you gave me.”

The castle shook as blue lightning ripped through the sky and Sirzechs’ crimson was pushed away by her furious azure. The tempest answered, and a literal hurricane of draconic power descended upon Gremory territory. Oceans of might fell upon the land, tearing through buildings and shaking mountains as the fury of a Dragon King was unleashed.

Tiamat released a furious roar that cracked the ground and shattered the glass behind her. “You dare show yourself before me!? I shall tear your treacherous hide apart and -”

“Ah,” Ba’al said suddenly as he placed one hand upon Rias’ shoulder and another upon Venelana’s. “Do think of the children. We wouldn’t want to hurt them, now would we?”

A deep growl shook the castle once more, but Tiamat stared at the dazed and vacant expressions of the three Devils, all so obviously enthralled by the magic of the First Demon.

“How long have I endured? How long have I waited to see you again, to hear your voice again?” the Demon asked with faux emotion. “Oh, but you are the same? Are you not? That is why you chose to reside in the Underworld. To be near me.”

“That I may finally sink my teeth into your worthless neck!” she growled.

Ba’al laughed, a dark sound that caused every shadow to jump and made Tiamat’s ears physically ache. But then he turned to look upon the Devils held within his clutches.

“What do you make of them? The boy has all the potential of his father, even if it is latent. As for the girl, well, she is naught more than a brainless sheep. Alas, I have only myself to blame.” He then reached out and tenderly stroked Venelana’s face. “I should never have allowed Venelana to marry Gremory’s miserable spawn. Honestly, it would have been better had I bred the girl myself. I am certain she could have birthed an even better Sirzechs.”

Bile crept up Tiamat’s throat as she felt the Demon’s sick and perverse desire bubbling through the very air. Slowly, the walls began to rot and fall apart, while the ceiling sagged beneath the weight of Ba’al’s destructive nature.

She bared her fangs and hissed, “You foul creature. You would harm your own children?”

He looked at her, amusement rolling from his shadowed form. “And from whom could I have learned such lessons, I wonder?”

Tiamat nearly flinched at his words, even as her heart throbbed painfully within her chest.

Ba’al continued laughing. “It has always been like this. Out of all of us, I knew your heart best… because my heart was the same. And how could it not be? From the very beginning, we were the closest to one another. We understood each other best. No matter what thoughts you have now, no matter what fantasy of love and family you pretend to have with that child, you can never deny that you were happiest with me.”

“Do not dare presume to tell me my own heart!” she growled as tears began forming in the corners of her eyes. “Not when you were the one who planted a dagger in it!”

“A calculated risk,” he said with a light shrug. “I did not expect to be betrayed as well. Otherwise, I would have protected you from what was to come.”

“Hah!”

Lightning boomed behind her, illuminating the rotting room with blue light.

“Protect? You have only ever protected yourself and the delusions you carried within your twisted mind! And that is all it ever was - a delusion. Mere envy of what could never be yours!”

Ba’al stirred, and the shadows of his being flickered with rage, a possessive and obsessive fury that had haunted her dreams for so many millennia.

“Delusions, you claim? And yet, it was you who followed me into the Underworld. And yes, I will admit the upstart Sin is formidable. But he is a child. He will never know you as I do. Look now, even the Void throws my history - our history - in his face. He follows in my steps as he battles Lotan.”

Tiamat released a rueful, scathing laugh. “Your steps? He is far greater than a craven cur like you and will continue to grow to heights you could never even dream of!”

Ba’al scoffed. “What does he know of heights? What does he know of myth and history and the breadth of Eternity? Yes, he is powerful, but his power is a nascent one. He is still far from true empyrean might!”

“As are you now,” she sneered, her lips curling with distaste.

“Feh.” Ba’al flicked his hands. “No matter. When all is said and done and you are alone again, the pain in your heart will direct your gaze back to me, as it always has.”

She felt another stab of misery because that had been true for millennia. No matter what she found over the ages, Tiamat eventually found herself alone in the skies. Sorrow was a loyal friend, they said, and it always fueled the rage born from her endless grief. And all that hurt and anger always found itself facing this monstrous scum.

But it was different now.

Because he was different - her beloved, her Ichigo - and she knew they would remain together, always and forevermore.

“I admit, I had not planned for our reunion to occur upon such a banal occasion,” Ba’al said as he looked distastefully about, and Tiamat’s hateful gaze returned to the ancient Demon. “But with Sirzechs distracted and your pet Sin dragging Gremory away upon a leash, well, I could hardly pass up such an opportunity.”

Ba’al sighed with a facsimile of deep emotion.

“But that old witch will have noticed me within her realm by now, and I must be off. Do not take my words too harshly. You know I have only ever cared for you.”

Ba’al’s shadow began to dissolve, and the three Gremorys’ eyes rolled back into their heads before they collapsed unconscious. But Tiamat did not move a muscle, for she could still sense his dark presence haunting the room.

“Nonetheless, I am delighted to see you surrounded by family once more. As it always has been. Because my blood, is your blood…”

“Mother.”

=======

A/N: Yes, Tiamat is Sirzechs and Rias' great-great grandmother.

Ba'al - the title of the Mesopotamian deity known as Hadad, called Adad in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, and Iškur in Sumerian. Zekram Bael has an appreciation and obsession with wine since his first appearence - in the side story Purple and Wine I revealed one of Tiamat's sons always brewed wine for her. Zekram's maids who all physically look like Tiamat. In Tiamat's first interview, she reveals one of her sons has survived. Sirzechs telling Rias that the big secret of House Bael is related to something Ichigo has. Tiamat who calls Millicas little blood and is so affectionate with him. Venelana almost calling her grandmother. Tiamat saying she won't kill Issei because it would make 'that child' upset -referring to Rias. And numerous other examples through the story.

I have been foreshadowing this for years!

Superbia Perfecta - Perfect Pride. Sirzechs is fucking horrifying.

There was a lot in this chapter, 14.6k words, but I'm happy I got it all in one! I didn't want to make Sirzechs' fight last multiple chapters, because this way I can move on to Ichigo's fight, and then Ajuka having a cup of tea and muffins.

Hope you enjoyed, see you next week!