Demonic Devourer ch. 97 [BOOK 2 EPILOGUE]

Witness. Us.

The message ripples throughout the worlds, imbued by the undying bond between two dying proto-Titans.

Sapphire is halfway through dismantling a minor autocracy when she catches a glimpse of the words.

By the time it’s reached her, the signal has traveled over forty thousand miles, so it’s no surprise that it’s faint. It is, in fact, faint enough that none of the subdued army in front of her nor the archipelago’s despot senses it, even though the despot is nearly Category 4 and his army not far behind.

She, of course, does.

Her lips curl up into a vicious smile. To those in front of her, she must look like a madwoman. She supposes she is.

There are two of them now, and they’ve both been thrown into one of the single most lethal ordeals anyone can endure.

Adversity sculpts excellence.

If either of them somehow escape the hells alive, they may truly be fit to join Sapphire’s side. To become the seventeenth observed. In truth, the eighteenth.

“One day,” she whispers, chiding herself. It is too much to assume that either will fully ascend during their time in the hells. “One day.”

“What… are… you?” Alex—Alexi? Sapphire doesn’t pay attention to the names of those she doesn’t care about—groans, lying on the floor.

“Not you,” she replies, deigning to give him an answer. “And you, my friend, are pathetic. A waste of air.”

He’s level 394 in his primary class. Level 277 in his secondary. His concept, Divinity, should have been strong. His twin domains should have been an exercise to remove.

It took her all of three and a half seconds to dismantle everything he has. Everything he had. That power is gone now, forever.

Alexi is worse than pathetic, Sapphire decides. He’s boring.

Boring people don’t deserve our power.

“But… why?” he asks.

She scans the crowd of cowering soldiers and uses her Sight Beyond Sight to examine the residents hiding behind barred doors, underneath loose floorboards, inside hastily-emptied closets. She looks even further beyond, simultaneously admiring the scale of the breadth of Alexi’s research efforts. He’s brought together an entire population to fuel his efforts to break through the understandings of the world. Some of them are even doing it voluntarily.

A shame. Sapphire doesn’t particularly enjoy massacres, but she doesn’t abhor them either.

There are too many moving parts on this island. Anything but utter annihilation won’t be enough. The only way to eradicate an idea is to eradicate all who have had it.

Nobody here has impacted the world’s fabric enough to send their soul into a hell. There are no elves here. No demons.

Any death here will be final.

“Because,” Sapphire says, kneeling down to meet the dismembered shell of a man, “You learned too much. You sought the truth of the gods. You sought my truth. Interfere with divinity, and you will find that there are pieces of us ready to interfere back.”

At the end of everything, she can offer nothing but an explanation.

“What?” Alexi rasps. “I only wanted to—I can offer you everything. I can give you my people. My research. Just—“

“Boring,” Sapphire enunciates, stretching out the word. The weak ones always start to snivel at the end. Any second now—

Alexi’s limbs remanifest abruptly, tinted a dark, plague-ridden green, and he leaps for her.

“No,” Sapphire says. Alexi has enough time to register surprise before he crumples to the ground, the bonds between his body’s molecules failing. He makes a puddle when he splashes.

Someone screams.

There are 487,174 people on this archipelago, not including the already-dead Alexi.

When Sapphire steps away from it ten minutes later, there are zero.

There have always been zero.

There has never been an archipelago.

She closes her eyes, relishing the sensation of a job completed.

This is, of course, not the end.

Evelyn and Sierra have surprised her. Whether that surprise is pleasant… that is something Sapphire has yet to determine.

“Order from Overseer Clearwater concerning PT-32 and PT-33,” she says, knowing that her words will reach the ears it needs to, “All Titan response units capable of helldiving, dive. All angel response units, dive. Release all captive angels into the hells. Containment threshold: Permanently kill Evelyn Carnelian and Sierra Jade.”

Not that they’ll be able to. Most of them, anyway.

Her plans are already in disarray. Their early entry—along with the fact that both of them entered—was not accounted for.

Millions more will die in the process than she expected, and the result will be unpredictable. Alas, no plan survives contact with true resistance, and Sierra and Evelyn have deviated far off the path she initially plotted for them.

For the first time in centuries, Sapphire is not entirely sure what happens next. She cannot trace the path her experiments have chosen for themselves.

It is, she feels, an entirely uncomfortable sensation to be blind when she is so used to her sight.

If this pair succeeds, this could be it. This could finally mean victory for everyone that matters.

Less than three minutes after she releases the order, a soft, familiar voice speaks to her.

“Sapphire,” Marie Jade says, speaking from her private fragment. “You are pursuing my niece.”

“She is a candidate,” Sapphire replies, words ringing with power. “Of course I am.”

“Very well,” Marie says. She pauses, as if collecting herself. “I will dive. I have not visited the hells in too long.”

Sapphire smiles. She hoped for this, but even she can’t be sure of some of the people she employs.

“As you wish,” she says. “Do what you will.”

Once Marie stops speaking, Sapphire moves.

Her brethren are waiting, and for the first time in a long while, they are excited.

Sersui. Scintilla. The two of them are the most recent to emerge, and as such, the ones best suited to understand the potential that awaits them.

We are growing closer to completion.

—

Vernon is about to clock out from his shift when the world shifts. His affinity for magic isn’t very strong—that’s the reason he’s working a cushy job in the higher levels of Novarath rather than joining the cleaning squads in the still-developing situation on the lower levels.

He’s on his way out the door when the ripple hits.

Witness. Us.

The words carry images with them, and though Vernon can’t parse them all, he catches glimpses. He sees two girls, each of them flaring with arrogant determination. He sees the Titans walk through the planet.

He sees the burning hells.

He sees their intent to destroy it all.

Vernon shudders in fear, but the images disappear just as quickly as they came.

Around him, the rest of the office stands in confused, silent awe.

“Well,” he says, his voice cracking, “I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that.”

—

Witness. Us.

Angel 13’s senses are primed to catch any signature of the only species stronger than its own. The First Circle is a close enough hell to the material world that even a weaker member of the species can communicate through it, and Thirteen misses nothing.

The signature from above disappears. Moments later, the hells shift.

A dive. Those have become vanishingly rare. The last time a being of this kind entered the hells… Thirteen barely remembers. It has been eons.

Angel 13 has stood at the gates of the first hell for as long as its memory stretches back. Even now, it wars against the greatest demons, preventing the material world and the hells alike. Its eternal task protects living creatures of all kind, humans and dwellers and skyfolk and elves and angels.

It has not stopped once in its thousands of years.

“191,” it vocalizes, curling its hundred limbs inwards and taking the form of a humanoid. “Probe the divers. They carry the mark of the Titans. I wish to ascertain their true power.”

“As you wish,” the lesser angel replies, arranging its body in a fascimile of a kneel. “And should they prove to be worthy of the higher hells?”

“Execution,” 13 confirms. “Banish them beyond the cycle. This is to be prioritized beyond the extermination of demons. Cooperate with those we have subjugated.”

“It will be done.”

191 assembles itself and calls to its fellow angels. There are thousands of them in the hells, but 91 controls only two hundred.

It is, unfortunately, the most they can spare. The stronger ones remain, unwavering in their eternal duty.

191 will succeed. If it does not, then 13 already knows what will happen. The same desire grips all of the enemy’s kind.

The Titans will rise, and they will consume. They will destroy. It is in their very nature.

If they reach the gate, 13 will break them all.

Angel: 13

The 13th Ranked.

Category: 6

—

Witness. Us.

Adrian has only left his partners for five minutes when the message hits him, intense and bright. It’s full of love and hatred and violence and peace and bonds and above all else, a grim determination.

The impact hits him like a train. He can’t see everything that the Titan-speech imparts, but he sees enough. He sees the two of them, dead by each other’s hand.

Adrian isn’t even far from the site. He’s so close that not a single monster has even fought him, scared away by the demonic explosion that Evelyn caused when she ate a fucking quest.

He pauses as the message finishes processing, and he turns, bidden by some unknowable instinct deep within.

The full gravity of the situation doesn’t hit him until he sees their lifeless bodies, embracing each other even in death.

I’m alone now, he thinks. Really, truly alone.

Adrian can no longer slow his partners down. He will no longer risk their lives for his inadequacy.

And in the same vein, they will not be there to save him. All he has left is the items they gifted to him.

In death, they look… peaceful. Content. Nothing like what they were in life.

Adrian draws one of Sierra’s parting gifts—a sphere of Fortress, which will create a nigh-impenetrable barrier. They’ve never used it before because turning the item off destroys it, and the field can’t be moved.

“I made a promise,” he says to the only people he had left. “If you don’t come back to me, I’ll come to you. You best believe I’m making good on that.”

He sets it on the bloodsoaked dirt between their bodies, orders it to activate when he’s gone, and leaves.

Trouble finds him soon enough, arriving in the form of a dozen snakes each as large as three men put together.

Objective: Ascend

Become greater than what you are.

The objective is a reminder. Right now, he is only Adrian, the last surviving member of Probability Project 447. When he comes out of this tower, he will either be dead or he will be more. He will be someone worthy of his friends.

Adrian draws Evelyn’s Soulshard Rifle with one hand and his Channeling Blade in the other, his ever-present water formulating into a Tsunami.

“Come at me,” he says, his chest full of hot ambition and piercing loss. “You’re in my way.”

The snakes draw closer, and Adrian roars, leaping into action.

Not enough. I need to kill them faster. I need to be better.

He doesn’t know it yet, but he has taken the first step on the long, winding path to true power.

—

Savil, lord of the Varnian Keep, does not hear the Titans’ message, but he does sense two beings that are not fully demon enter. He thinks little of it—there are humans and elves and angels that enter the Ninth Circle from time to time, sometimes even crossing through from deeper hells, and they never bother him. They—just like the haughty pricks from the higher circles—believe Savil, a petty lord who commands a mere thousand demons, beneath their notice.

They usually change their minds around the time he peels their skin off.

One day, he thinks, he’ll show the higher circles. He’ll show them all. The very hells will shake when they hear his name.

So enraptured is he by this fantasy that he barely spares the two new presences a thought. He sends a pair of scouts and no more, ordering them to capture the new arrivals in at most three pieces.

This proves to be his last mistake.

“Why is this taking so long?” he demands, shattering his wine goblet in his fist. The black liquid within drips all over his throne, but nobody here has a death wish, so nobody points it out. “Guards! Go find them and—“

The doors to his throne room slam open, then crumple in on themselves.

A flood of gore follows, so torrential that Savil wonders if the entire circle is emptying itself into his throne room.

He stands, ready to fight—and he falls to his knees.

Moments later, every single guard falls too.

Death itself has knocked at his door, and he has no choice but to answer.

It comes in the form of two women, their very existence overwhelming. Hand-in-hand, they stroll through the gore-covered throne room, and with every step, the blood travels into them, feeding them. As they pass by guards, the guards wither away, explode into blood, or, in three cases, are struck down by a sudden beam of divine light.

They smell like demons, but they aren’t demons. They can’t be. No demon can be this much stronger than Savil, surely.

He watches in horror as one of them reaches a hand out, grasps a guard, and simply eats him whole, his body crumbling apart in her hands.

Special skill:

“Nope,” that same woman says cheerfully, thrusting a hand out. Savil’s magic disappears like so many wisps of smoke.

“Who…” he manages to say. “What god are you?”

“The name’s Carnelian,” she says, staring straight at Savil. “Evelyn Carnelian. Where are we?”

Savil opens his mouth and closes it.

“We’re right where we need to be,” the other says. Despite—or maybe because of—the massacre around them, the blue-eyed harbinger of death is—happy. She sounds exuberant. “With each other.”

Monster, Savil wants to say, but that word is not enough. It is the truth, but only in part. Harbinger. Anomaly.

The first woman sighs, leaning into the other killer. “True enough. We’ll get information out of the next guy. I think I broke this one.”

As midnight scarlet energy tears Savil’s body apart, feeding the red-eyed abomination, he finally settles on the right word.

It is the last thought he ever has.

Devourer.

____

Author's note: that's wraps on book 2! Hope you're all excited for the next one!