Demonic Devourer ch. 99

Two hours pass before the Communication Stone activates again. Two long, harrowing hours, where Adrian has nothing to do but gather souls and wonder if the person on the other end of the Communication Stone is alive.

Operator Kirin Uten, he thinks—and contrary to Sierra’s opinion, he can in fact do that, thank you very much. What’s your angle here?

The last Adrian saw of his fellow operator was in their apartment, just about thirty seconds before everything went to shit. Back then, it was obvious that Kirin was under the influence of something, and he was clearly missing time, given the sudden appearance.

Kirin is Category 3. Given that, Adrian reasons, he should be high enough in the UCC’s chain of command that he knows the litany of protocols any long-term operator is expected to be familiar with. The series of events that then transpired means that he a) came into a possession of an item that enabled someone else, presumably Sapphire Clearwater, to take over him and teleport him at will, and b) had a run-in with some kind of memory-erasing effect that kept (or keeps) him from remembering.

Now, though, he seems to have broken free of that. Presumably. That’s assuming he isn’t dead now, which, given the sudden silence, is not the safest assumption to make.

Adrian stews in his thoughts as he practices Hydrokinesis. He’s getting better with it, he realizes. Even in the short span of time since that fateful vow to take action back in an anomalous fragment owned by the Whitestar Kingdom, he’s improved. Since then, his fine control over his water has vastly improved. Now, he can transport himself overground with only a single gallon.

To be completely honest, he’s not sure why he’s grown. Yes, he’s been practicing, but practice alone shouldn’t create results this significant. Only a month ago, Adrian struggled with fine control to the extent that even a swimming pool of water was barely enough for him to keep people afloat, and now, he doesn’t even need to Dehydrate a single sapling to keep himself moving.

He suspects there’s a deeper reason behind this. The Adrian of last year would shrug, accept the boon, and move on.

Now, he wants to figure out the reason why. He has to.

But sitting around trying to introspect into the system that fuels him and most everyone else on this godsforsaken planet isn’t going to bring Sierra and Evelyn back, so Adrian moves, locating the edge of the devastation he’s wreaked upon the area around him and practicing with his items, grinding his Warrior class.

He decides to use the Soulshard Rifle to pick off his enemies. On this floor, a single-charge shot will severely wound or kill the lesser enemies, but it takes much more than that to kill the larger bosses, which spawn about once every half mile.

Adrian dearly wishes he had Evelyn’s trademark Devour. Being able to level up just by eating the corpses of the monsters that you kill must be so nice.

But instead, he’s stuck killing, refueling the rifle, and finding the area bosses. Those have objectives associated with them, each and every one of them, and that’s how he’s able to advance here.

When it comes to bosses, he doesn’t skimp out. The Soulshard Rifle is devastatingly powerful at higher charges, belying its Category 1 designation. Dweller tech tends to do that, right? Adrian can’t remember the lessons.

The target he’s selected most recently is a misshapen frog-like creature the size of a man, two hundred yards away. At this distance, he can barely see it through the thick, overbearing foliage. His shot, aided by Silver-tier Firearms, follows a narrow line through gaps less than an inch wide. Adrian uses twenty-five charges.

Firearms is a crutch that he sorely needs, and it pays off. The shot is perfect.

Dire Venom Frog defeated.

Firearms advanced to level 19!

Your Warrior class has advanced to level 48!

You have gained 1 stat point.

You have gained 5 skill points.

“—FUCK,” Kirin’s voice interrupts the level-up. “ADRIAN, ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU ALIVE?”

Level-up skill unlocked: Surefire Shot (Common)

If you are physically capable, your next shot with a ranged weapon will land. Cooldown: 1 hour. Maximum uses per day: 1.

“Broken gods,” Adrian hisses, not activating the stone.

Once his heartbeat is down to something resembling normal, he replies.

“I’m alive,” he says. “I’m here. Why are you screaming? Why does it sound like you’re inside a tornado?”

“I AM CURRENTLY FLYING,” Kirin replies, still screaming at the top of his lungs. This item isn’t perfect, so some of the background noise makes it through. It does, in fact, sound like he is flying. The whistling wind dies down when he speaks again, and thankfully, his volume normalizes. “I am also injured. A group of subverted operators tried to contain me. It got bloody.”

If Adrian’s suspicions were raised before, they skyrocket now. He sorts through the jumble of his thoughts, trying to organize them into a simple, easy to parse list. There are so many things wrong with what Kirin just said, and if Adrian tries to express them all at once, he’ll stumble over himself.

1) Why is Kirin telling Adrian any of this? Although he was formerly an operator, Adrian hasn’t been directly involved with UCC operations in over a year now. He thought that was pretty clear. Does Kirin seriously have no contacts within the organization?

2) Is Kirin sane? The way he talks gives the impression that he’s been forced to kill someone. Someone trying to contain him. While Adrian hasn’t had the best experience with the Coalition recently, it’s still generally trying to keep the world safe, right? Right?

2a) Is Kirin lying? This story feels… incomplete. Part of that is because—

3) Why is Kirin alive? The last Adrian saw of him, he was wholly under the influence of an external force. If Sapphire wants him dead, couldn’t she just have torn his heart out or something? She certainly seems capable. And that, of course, leads right into—

4) This is definitely a plot. There’s too many improbabilities. Even Adrian is smart enough to know that that means something is amiss. Either Sapphire wants him to find Kirin, someone else does, or this isn’t Kirin. Whatever the case, responding to this is definitely asking for trouble.

What would Evelyn do?

“You’re talking to me over the stone, so you’re within a hundred miles of me,” Adrian says. “Are you safe?”

“Nobody is safe,” Kirin replies, calming himself. “Where are the others?”

“In the hells,” Adrian replies, equally serene. “Would you like to come meet me?”

A pause.

“What the fuck—“

Another, longer pause.

“Alright,” Kirin says, breathing heavily. “I’m coming to find you. If I’m right, Sierra and Evelyn are in much more danger than you think. It’s the hells. I need to get to you to speak safely.”

“Come find me, then,” Adrian says. “I’m on the sixteenth floor. Root’s Angelic Tower.”

Adrian can already tell that he’s walking straight into a mistake.

Somehow, he has a good feeling about this.

The Ninth Circle

Our combined nullspaces, bonded just as our souls are, extend just far enough to catch the first, unlucky angel. Unlike the demons, the angels actually sort of register on the system. This one is:

Angel: 718

The 718th Ranked.

Category: 2

A domain user. Young, but rising through the ranks.

I disassemble it, and I’m about to turn to face the rest of them when Sersui’s presence expands into and over our twinned nullspaces.

You are not yet strong enough to interpose, younglings.

My nullspace, still without a Path, is reinforced by Sierra’s. With it, we can annihilate anything. We can annihilate that which withstood the full force of a Titan, Devour it whole.

And all of that—divine and demonic and blood magic infused with their counterparts, made more than the sum of their parts—crackles away into nothing but harsh, burning sand.

I barely have time to react to the bloody intensity of my light and dark and Sierra’s soft blues and reds alike fade into the same relentless, shifting sands when the second angel strikes.

For the first time, I get a glimpse of an angel. It’s dozens of feet above us, I think, though the sand makes it hard to tell. I see wings—oh so many wings—and then one of them flickers and then all of them flicker and my instincts spike.

Mind (Speed) aids me in grabbing Sierra and falling into a dual Bloodpath, using my vastly increased power to dodge past the worst of it, but the scouring wings slash into my blood form, and though I’ve never taken damage while I’m like this, I can feel that something is different. This doesn’t just target the soul—it targets every bit of my very being. The concept that is Evelyn Carnelian.

When I rematerialize, kneeling on a searingly hot dune, I am missing both of my legs beneath the knees.

Blood flows forth freely, and it takes Hemokinesis to stop it. I can’t Shapeshift over the injury, nor can I Restore Self. Whatever effect Sersui has deployed over this entire hell is cutting down on my options severely.

Instead of forming new legs, I use Phantom Shape to replace them temporarily, chancing a glance at our newest assailant.

It’s painful to look at directly. There’s something that might be faintly humanoid in the center, but it’s covered by wings. So many wings.

Dimly, I recall that angels are designed to slay demons. To slay us.

Angel: 412

The 412th Ranked.

Category: 3

Possesses the same original concept every angel of its power or higher does: Scour. Its progress has stalled.

“With me,” Sierra tells me, pulling me close.

Angel 412’s wings draw back, glowing with divine light that shimmers even through the blinding dust storm.

In the distance, four more angels glow with the same power.

They’re so blindingly fast that even I can’t track the progress of their wings, but Sierra is faster. As our world ignites with pure, angelic light, Sierra draws a marble from her Personal Space, which must be unaffected by Sersui’s nullspace override, and she pops it.

Soft blue light ripples over the two of us as she pulls me into a tight embrace. I feel a telltale lurch in my stomach as the skill removes us from the battlefield—no, not removes. We’re still here, inside a bubble barely large enough to fit the two of us.

I recognize this skill. Time Dilation. Sierra used it back in Ravendale, and there it nearly killed her.

Now, the effect is smaller, more contained—but the color has not drained from her face. She is as warm now as she was a moment before.

Outside, Angel 412’s wing is still approaching us.

What was it that Sierra said about this bubble?

“An hour in here for every tenth of a second out there, right?” I ask.

Sierra shrugs, letting go of me. “When I first used this, I told you it was from a powerful monster. I wasn’t lying. I picked up Time Dilation two years ago. Five charges of it, that is. I had one left after Ravendale. This was it. My Blue Mage class is no hard science—I overloaded this skill, so either the dilation should be harsher or the duration longer, but…”

She turns, and I know we’re thinking the same thing.

Though I can’t tell if the other angels are as fast as 412, its wing is still perceptibly moving. Assuming that the rate of dilation is the same as before, the outside world should be progressing roughly 36,000 times than we are here.

Then how fast is that wing?

Fast enough I couldn’t see it, I think. Fast enough I couldn’t tell when it hit me.

“They can’t do that every time,” Sierra says. “Or there’s a tradeoff. Speed for power. Something like that, at least, because otherwise we’d be dead.”

Both of us continue to eye the incoming wing; the feeling that passes between us isn’t exactly agitation, but something more like commitment.

“We need to act,” I say, just as Sierra says, “Let’s plan and execute as soon as possible.”

Just eyeballing it, I think we have under a minute before the wing impacts our bubble, and I have no illusions that the field will hold. This skill alters time; it does not protect.

“Without our nullspaces, I’m an abnormally powerful Category 1 and you’re a powerful Category 2,” I say. “That means we need to get them back up, or we’re fucked. In that direction, a question: is it Sersui physically stopping us, or—“

“—Or is it a property of the Ninth Circle,” Sierra completes. The soul bond is useful. Intent transfers, and she gets the idea of what I’m going to say before I’m doing saying it.

The two of us think for a long, tense moment. Outside, the wing continues approaching. It’s a source of light in itself, so bright it would outshine the sun if this hell had one of those.

Sierra gets it first, squinting against the glare of the scouring wing.

“The sands don’t harm us when we’re in the area our keep controls, so long as we have the keystone,” she reasons. “That might include the nullspace override.”

I’m not entirely sure if that’s it, but we don’t have any better ideas, and we’re rapidly running out of time. “Okay. Retreat to our territory. How do we do that?”

The wing is within striking distance, and I don’t need an Appraise to tell me that I shouldn’t try to fight this.

I use it anyway.

Angel 412 is using a very simple skill—Wing Strike. Unfortunately for us, it has apparently imbued itself with the same brand of magic Callen tried to use at the very end.

A concept, actualized. Scour.

We’re out of time. The wing is about to make contact with the bubble, and when it does, it’s going to shatter.

“You’ve always been good at improvising,” Sierra says. “I will assist whatever you do.”

I curse silently, looking through my list of options, and then the wing is right next to the bubble and I have to do something, anything.

Special skill: Soulpyre. In combination with a Soulblade to feed the fire, blue flame consumes the entirety of the bubble’s oxygen in seconds.

Sierra slams her Amplification into my skill as the raw force of the demonic flame blows us out of the bubble.

Finally, I drape an Antimemetic Cloak over us. I don’t know how well it’ll fool an angel, but it’s worth a shot.

Time abruptly returns to its normal speed, and the world fills with bright light.

A number of events occur in such quick succession that it is only in retrospect that I am able to fully process what happens, dissecting each individual fragment of memory moment by moment.

First, the bubble shatters like cheap glass under an anvil. Whether this is because of my Soulpyre, the angel’s empowered Wing Strike, or Sierra just ending the skill is up to debate. The end result of this is that Sierra and I are tossed out of the bubble at a velocity high enough to turn a lesser being into a bloody paste.

Second, 412’s wing actually hits the Soulpyre, not realizing that the two of us aren’t there anymore. I don’t realize this until a distant memory from my amalgam finally surfaces, but the angel-demon weakness does not only go one way. Demons take increased damage from angels not because they are inherently stronger, but because the two put together are volatile.

Third, everything is fire. Though my Soulpyre doesn’t put 412 down thanks to its concept actualization, it reacts violently, detonating with the same force as a low-yield nuclear bomb. This hits quite literally everything in the area; angel, sand, Sierra, me.

Fourth, the force of the attack finally registers. Soulpyre reacts with angelic matter, and the burning pieces of my soul implode, forcibly ejecting every participant of the battle.

Not that I realize any of this in the moment. In the moment, I let Sierra spread her shielding spell over me, and then my entire world is fire and light and pain and wind and sand.

The white-and-blue dance of angelic light burning with demonic flame singes my eyes and fills my ears with a constant, unending peal of thunder louder than anything I’ve ever heard before.

I don’t even realize we’re flying until I stop, smashing straight through a vaguely familiar building. Sierra uses her Personal Telekinesis, trying to slow us down, and we eventually tumble to a stop, hovering in the air inside the castle we’ve just ruined.

My sense of pain is dulled enough that I barely realize that my body is down to half a torso and a head until Sierra screams. At least, I think she’s screaming, based on what I see—my eardrums don’t work.

Except, I realize, she’s not screaming because I’m nearly dead—we are both still on fire, and she doesn’t have the same Wraithfire Resistance that I do. She has better innate defenses, and so she barely shows signs of the physical impact.

She is, however, burning. Not that she’ll let that stop her.

Miraculously, we are both still alive, and we’re in the right place.

And despite the excruciating pain she has to be in, Sierra activates the keystone.

Restore Self, I command, and my body answers. The skill shoots up a couple levels as it regenerates almost my entire body from scratch in moments.

She was right.

I take her burning hand in mine, igniting my freshly generated, pink skin alongside her and I yell, “Take my resistance! Do it now!”

I don’t know if she hears me, but the screams of pain decrease in volume as magic flows through and out of me. I can barely feel the Soulpyre with my ridiculously high resistances. Even a fraction of that soothes Sierra enough for her to try speaking.

“—coming,” she coughs, evidently unused to talking while on fire. Curious. She’ll have to train that up. “They’re still coming.”

Unfortunately for us, 412 did not die in the explosion, though it is now entirely on fire, illuminating it even from hundreds of feet away.

“That they are,” I say, still holding her tite. The Soulpyre is insatiable, and blue flame frames the both of us as it ignites every last part of us, blackening and burning our skin. “Except this time—“

“—This time,” Sierra says, her voice low and raspy like she hasn’t used it in years, “They’re in our territory.”

Objective: Angelicide

You’ve earned a miracle. Now create one by killing those who grant them.

Angels killed: [1/6]

Reward: Our furthered interest. Your secondary class will gain 9 levels.

“Manifest,” we declare again, and this time, we do it right.

We are going to break you all.

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Author's note: hope you all are enjoying the start of the Hells arc! As always, I'm open to feedback and predictions :)