Characters: The Waiter / The Demon of Vanity / Riliane Lucifen d'Autriche; Irregular / The Master of the Heavenly Yard / Allen Avadonia; The Master of the Hellish Yard / The Demon of Wrath / Gumillia; The Gardener / Gammon Octo; MA / Elluka Clockworker; The Master of the Graveyard / The Demon of Gluttony / Banica Conchita, the MotG's Servants. Minor appearances by others.
Prompt: 'M.O.T.G and M.O.T.H.Y conspired against M.O.T.C, attempting to kill the newborn Irregular. M.O.T.C is being captured, and waiter is escape with Irregular. Gardener….. He's sacrificed himself, allowing Waiter and Irregular to escape…'
Warnings: Violence, death, and bittersweetness.
Fan Theories Used: "The Last Revolver" and "Waiting for a Response" are canon songs to the series, but "Blood-Stained Switch" is not. The human Vessels of Deadly Sin are also human forms of the demons associated with that sin but have absorbed the memories, personalities, and souls of the mortal sinners. The Master of the Heavenly Yard is an incarnation of Allen (is that canon yet? I could have sworn it was confirmed but I can't think of a source), while the Master of the Hellish Yard is an incarnation of Gumillia. (NOTE FROM 2017: ahahahahaha what even is canon anymore. Please just view this as a time capsule of what 2012 Evillious Fandom believed in.)
Yeah, this is almost half a year too late, but I found the story document while skimming through some old files and remembered that I never got around to posting it. I'm also not sure if I ever claimed credit for this? I'm hit-and-runner / tsunamiracle on Tumblr, and I still have some evidence of correspondence with the host of Merry Eldohmas from when I submitted the story.
Anyway, I wasn't sure at first how to interpret "newborn" in the prompt, so I took it to mean that Irregular was born as an infant. This story is edited from the original submission to include references to "Waiting for a Response", which is heavily hinted to be part of Story of Evil. I didn't add references to "Blood-Stained Switch", however, mainly because I have yet to see any real evidence that it's about Elluka and Irina sharing a body.
Yes, the cover artwork is my own drawing and not someone else's art, although I don't remember if I ever uploaded it anywere.
"It begins."
The Gardener's voice sounded hollow, as if his mind was miles away. The Waiter leaned closer to him for protection, clutching one of his long sleeves.
Standing before them was the male servant of the Master of the Graveyard — if he had a name, then it was completely meaningless to him, to his sister, and to his master. All that mattered to him was carrying out the wicked woman's desires, and that usually meant murdering someone.
But to kill the Demon of Greed himself…
Gear was sprawled on the ground at the entrance to the clocktower, a knife buried deep into his chest. He had been dead for perhaps a few hours now, but the servant had apparently not left his side the entire time, instead making a sick game out of his kill. His hands were stained with Gear's blood, and he had even been smearing words on the wall of the clocktower. 'Tonight, Pierrot dances again.' 'Kill the henchman, burn the witch.' 'Bow down to our great Conchita.'
When the servant noticed that he had been found, he knelt down, making a move to retrieve his knife, and instinctively the Gardener and the Waiter took off running. After gaining enough distance between them and the servant, who did not chase after them, they slowed to a walk as a sound rang throughout the premises, eventually freezing in their tracks. It was a woman's scream.
"The Doll," the Waiter gasped. The Clockwork Doll was supposed to bring him into this world today. All of the theater residents knew this, including the one who had just revealed herself to be a traitor.
They broke into a sprint once more, heading straight for the courthouse. The Waiter expected the worst, expected that the Master of the Hellish Yard was already here, that the Doll was being murdered right now, that she'd never get to see her brother again…
But when the Gardener rammed open the courthouse doors with a shoulder barge, the wrath he faced was merely that of the sorceress who had defied time itself just to see this day. And right now, she was playing midwife for the Clockwork Doll, who was quite obviously in the middle of labor.
"Dammit, Gammon! Will you stop galumphing around!? She doesn't need you making things worse!" Ma, as she insisted on calling herself these days, positioned herself between the newcomers and the Doll, who was slumped in the defendant's seat as she moaned in pain. The Doll barely even acknowledged the newcomers, moving around uncomfortably in her seat in her futile attempts to find a position that relieved the agony.
"Gluttony betrayed us!" the Waiter explained, slowly moving to the benches and sitting down. The Gardener took a seat next to her. "Her servant killed Gear!"
"I know that…" Ma ran a hand though her hair, then turned to focus her attention on the Doll. "Michaela's handling her right now. But we gotta hurry. Come on, Dolly, grit your teeth and go! Push!"
The Waiter covered her ears as the Doll's hurt voice sent an uncomfortable shiver down her body and right through her bones. Although the Doll wasn't capable of carrying out a human pregnancy and birth, the process of birthing a grown child from her body was no less agonizing and taxing. Even worse, her life had been linked with Gear's, and with him gone she had lost much of her energy and her tolerance for pain.
The clocktower still ran even with Gear's death, counting off the seconds with each beat from its hands. But these seconds seemed to stretch on to minutes and then hours as the Doll kept working through labor. With Ma coaching her through the ordeal, the Gardener and the Waiter could only sit back and hope for the best.
The Waiter was mid-prayer when a white light suddenly began filling the room, surprising even Ma, who cried out with a cuss. For a moment, it sounded as if the rhythm of the clocktower needle changed, creating a three-beat pattern that resonated through the Waiter's soul.
And when the light vanished, there was silence. Ma stood by the defendant's seat, staring down at the Doll, who had fainted from the exertion. The walls around the chair hid her and the child from the Waiter's view.
The first thing to break the silence was the cry of an infant.
For a fleeting moment, Ma's breathing stopped, her cold and snarky mask cracking with the horror etched in her expression. "…This isn't right… This can't be…! He wasn't supposed to be like this!"
"What's going on, Ma?" The Waiter stood from her seat. "What's wrong with him!?"
"I thought he was supposed to be older, but…" Ma leaned in, scooping up the newborn Master of the Heavenly Yard. Literally newborn, as he was in the form of a human baby. "How is he supposed to fight like this!?"
"Didn't I warn you, Lukana?" There was deep venom in the Gardener's voice when he addressed Ma this way, and he was standing now, ready to confront the sorceress face-to-face. "Didn't I say that we were doomed no matter what we did?"
"Shut up, Gammon!" Ma snarled, causing Irregular — he was quite obviously not the true master just yet — to cry even harder. "We're not screwed yet! If we can just get to Lucifenia and get him to the palace—"
The earth began to rumble underneath their feet, hushing all but Irregular once more. It was the only warning they had about the incoming intruders; the front door shattered into pieces as it was blasted off its hinges, one fragment nearly crushing the Waiter and the Gardener where they stood.
"It's partytime~!" came the playful voice of the Master of the Graveyard. She casually sauntered into the courthouse as if she was not guilty of dire crimes, immediately spotting Ma holding Irregular. "Oh? My, he's even tinier than I expected! He's so cute, I could just eat him up!"
"Patience, Conchita," a calm voice lightly chided. Walking in after the graveyard master was a masked woman with cold grey skin, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. Though the Waiter hadn't known what she looked like, the evil aura she sensed from this woman made it clear she was none other than the dreaded Master of the Hellish Yard. Behind her were the servants of the Master of the Graveyard, skipping gleefully over all the destruction their lady was causing.
"I know what you're doing here." Ma held Irregular tighter to herself; by now, he was too exhausted to continue crying, but he buried his face into her chest as if he was trying to shield himself from the intruders. "You won't lay a finger on him. I won't let you."
"You're outnumbered, Elluka; no one else on your side knows anything about fighting. And if it wasn't just you, you couldn't hope to defeat me. How can you beat someone who's already killed a god?" The Master of the Hellish Yard released her hands now, revealing that she had been clutching tree leaves. The leaves were the same signature teal color that the tree god Michaela used, but they disintegrated the moment they touched the floor.
The normally cocky Ma faltered at the implications of the dead leaves, and though the Waiter understood why, she was still surprised that Michaela's death could unbalance her, as she had always pretended that she stopped caring about losing friends a long time ago. After a few seconds, Ma broke into another extreme: anger. "How could you!? You were best friends for an entire millennium, ever since you two were created! You told me Michaela was dearer to you than even I was! What happened to you in Hell!? Why are you doing this, Gumillia!?"
The hellish master dropped her stoic façade, and what was visible of her face contorted in rage. "Don't call me by that name! Gumillia is dead, all because of you! You and your silly fantasies about making a Utopia for you and your boyfriend, while the people I love just get sacrificed and thrown aside!"
She charged forward, her left hand glowing with black energy. Ma did not have enough time to dodge, instead turning her body so that she took the full blow instead of Irregular, who was jolted out of her arms by the impact.
The Waiter leapt onto and off of the table in front of her and dove to the ground, catching Irregular. The Gardener took this as a cue to help her get back on her feet and try escorting her and her brother out of the room.
However, while the Master of the Hellish Yard was enraged with her former teacher, her priority was still trying to kill Irregular. "Riliane!" The mere utterance of this name brought a wave of nausea over the Waiter, because it reminded her of guillotines and genocides and everything about the Daughter of Evil. "You and I have a score to settle! For Elphegort!"
Vanity was the sort of sin that preferred to stay on the sidelines and let others do the dirty work, while Wrath had the sheer strength to get things done. And so it was no surprise to the Waiter that, no matter how fast she sprinted, the Master of the Hellish Yard was still able to catch up to her, grabbing one of her arms in an attempt to pry Irregular away from her. A horrible burning sensation radiated from the contact, the hellish magic burning through her sleeves and deep down into her bones, and yet the Waiter only held on tighter to Irregular, trying to struggle out of the grasp.
The Gardener came to her aid once more, kicking at the hellish master's legs. Though she didn't fall to the ground, it distracted her just long enough for the Waiter to break free. She continued running for the front entrance, the Gardener close behind her.
"Keep running, you two! Get to Lucifenia!" The Waiter glanced back, watching Ma struggle back to her feet, her chest heaving from the agony of getting a direct hit of the evil magic. The sorceress then spoke to the hellish master. "And if you got any problems with that, you address them to me, Gumillia!"
The Master of the Hellish Yard flew into another rage directed at Ma, just as she had hoped for, and Ma rose to the challenge of fighting against her former student. The atmosphere in the room was hissing with powerful magic, and the Waiter and the Gardener were very lucky to exit the building when they did, for one of the witches had just cast a massive immolation spell, flames roaring through the room.
The Waiter stared at this for a few seconds. The Clockwork Doll had still been unconscious in the defendant's seat, and she had already burned to death once before; a lump formed in her throat as she realized that she was very likely to be caught in the crossfire of the battle, if she wasn't burning already. And while the Master of the Graveyard had betrayed them, the thought that she too would perish in the battle was also distressing, for she had once been on friendly terms with the Waiter.
The Gardener grabbed her shoulder, guiding her further away from the burning courthouse. "Forget them! We have to get out of here!"
"Why bother?" the Waiter grumbled, even though she went with him. Irregular uneasily shifted in her arms as she ran, but was still too tired to do more than coo and fuss unhappily. "You said it yourself that we're doomed."
He bit his lip, trying to think of an acceptable response. "Maybe we are doomed. But I don't want to just sit down and wait to die. Waiter… When I came to this forest, I thought I was a goner, so I was ready to just lie back and let them execute me."
They were running through the cemetery now, surrounded by the gravestones of numerous other travelers who had met their ends at the theater.
"But you weren't willing to let me die without a fight. You went against everyone, even though no mortal had ever been spared before, and I lived because of you. I… I am in your debt, and I'll follow you to Lucifenia to help your brother. I'll follow you to the end of the world."
The Waiter stopped walking, prompting the Gardener to do the same, and she looked up and locked eyes with him. "I… Thank you, Gardener, I—"
"To the end of the world? Then you won't have to wait long, dears."
The Waiter barely suppressed a scream, holding Irregular tighter to her and looking around for the speaker. She began to mentally berate herself for running through the graveyard, because it meant that she was right in the middle of the traitor's territory.
The Master of the Graveyard walked out from behind a row of tombstones. Though she usually handled herself with an impish but elegant poise, her footsteps were heavy with a bad limp in her left leg, a sign that even though the only visible damage on her was her tattered skirt, she had taken on injuries. Further reinforcing this was how she was accompanied by only one servant, the girl, who was staring blankly back at the courthouse.
Her twin had apparently not been lucky enough to escape the battle, and the Waiter felt a pang of guilt, because she also understood what it was like to lose her other half. She and the maid had the same face and similar jobs, and had the maid not been so obsessed with her master, they could have become best friends.
Still, she couldn't wallow in pity for long: If she let her guard down around the Master of the Graveyard, she would very easily become her next meal. "Why did you do this, Gluttony?" the Waiter asked with a trembling voice.
"I can't stand boredom. Say that we get into Utopia… Then what?" The Master of the Graveyard was unusually contemplative, looking away for a moment as she crossed her arms. "Nothing will change there. No one gets old, no one dies, no one gets born. One day, I'll have met all the people in Utopia, loved everyone I could ever want to love, sampled all the meals that exist there… And I'll still have the rest of eternity to look forward to." It seemed that the thought of being left with nothing new to do had seriously unsettled the indulgent woman.
"It's Utopia. The very point of this place is that you'll never want anything again. Even if you do run out of new things to do, you'll still be happy!"
"Are you sure that will happen? You were so sure that your brother would be your age already when he was born. How can you be sure that Utopia will be just like you hope it will? How can you be sure that us demons, the very embodiments of the sins that ravaged this world, will even be allowed entry? What if it's even worse than we expected and we're left behind on a dead, empty world while every other person is in Utopia?"
The Waiter had no response for that. Indeed, speculation had defined her entire life for the past ten years. Everyone had their own predictions, and already so many of them had been thrown out by the events of this day. No one could claim to truly know what Utopia was really like or who would be able to enter it.
"I can't take that chance. I'd rather welcome oblivion. Arrivederci, Vanity."
The maid suddenly lunged forth, torn from her mournful reverie by this simple cue from her master. The Waiter had not expected her to react at all, so lost in her grief that she had appeared, and by the time she processed what had happened, she could see the glint of moonlight shining off the maid's dagger…
Just as suddenly, the Gardener roughly grabbed her once again, pulling her out of the way so that the servant ran past them instead. Hands still on her shoulders, he turned her so that she was facing the direction they had been fleeing in. "Go! Get him out of here!"
"But you—!"
Seeing that the servant had turned to strike again, the Gardener shoved the Waiter out of the way, forcing her to take a few stumbling steps forward. The maid's knife connected with him instead, and a ragged wheeze tore out of his throat as the blade pierced between his ribs.
"Gammon, no!" The Waiter stepped toward him to try and help him, realizing that he was only hurt because she stood around too long. "Please, Gammon, don't—!"
"Leave! Leave, and open the gates to Uto—argh!" The maid pulled the dagger out and stabbed again, getting a direct hit into his chest.
Swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat once again, the Waiter turned and sprinted once more, the sound of her labored breathing failing to drown out the Gardener's screams and the maid's cackling as she stabbed him again and again. She didn't dare look back, not wanting to watch the life bleed out of him.
While she had always existed as the Demon of Vanity, the memories and personality of her incarnation, a mortal princess named Riliane, had shaped her so fundamentally that she was essentially Riliane reborn. And that meant that this was the second time someone sacrificed his life so that she could escape and live on. Though the Waiter usually had a cheerful and confident attitude, the realization that once again someone had died for her was tearing her apart inside.
The edge of the graveyard marked the beginning of the forest, where even the theater residents rarely ventured. The Waiter braved the overgrown brambles and charged on through into the forest, knowing that stopping now would mean certain death for her, for the world, and for her brother. It would mean that the Gardener died for nothing.
-0-
As the Waiter pressed on, she saw for the first time just what kind of damage the two masters had spread. With Michaela dead, the forest spirits that relied on her for safety were all beginning to fade away, leaving behind mindless, lifeless shells of the animals that had once served as their bodies.
The most horrific destruction had been in the area immediately surrounding Michaela. Not a single tree stood, all having been felled by a large blast of magic. Splinters of wood carpeted the ground, and the forest was completely silent, as any wildlife nearby had been snuffed out by this attack.
Even the mighty Thousand-Year Tree – only five centuries into her new life – had been broken under the hellish master's power, torn out by her very roots and split apart into many pieces at the trunk. No matter how hard the Waiter concentrated, she could not feel the divine aura that the tree was supposed to radiate.
"…Michaela." The Waiter knew that she would not get a response, but her name came to her lips anyway. "Michaela, please talk to me… I need your guidance."
The silence in the clearing was overpowering. The Master of the Hellish Yard had not been bluffing when she said she had killed a god. With that kind of power, what hope would her heavenly counterpart have to defeat her, especially if he wasn't at full strength?
Irregular had been fairly quiet ever since exhausting himself crying at the courthouse, but he had regained enough energy by this point to start voicing his displeasure again, starting with soft whines and building up into louder wails.
"Shh. Shhhh, please, stop." The Waiter was certain that the evil masters were searching for her, and Irregular would be easily heard in the dead forest.
Irregular only cried harder, a hand straying to the yellow ribbon at her neck and pulling on it. The Waiter felt completely useless; she had no food and no toys to give to her own brother. And adding to this sense of helplessness, back in the theater, Ma and the Gardener let themselves get hurt or killed so that the Waiter could escape.
What would she do if she was attacked now? Even if she knew how to fight, her arms were occupied with holding Irregular, who was currently resisting her attempts to rock him and comfort him. She could still make it to Lucifenia by morning if she kept going, but she had no idea what to do once she delivered him to his destination.
Sitting by the stump of the Thousand-Year Tree, taking just enough care not to poke herself with splintered wood, the Waiter finally broke down and cried.
I'm sorry, everyone. I don't think I can protect him.
Everyone was sacrificing themselves for a cause that was doomed to fail. The odds were now nigh-impossible for the Waiter to work with, with Ma being the only powerful person left on their side, and that was assuming she wasn't dead already. And if Irregular stayed an infant, then there was no hope at all.
The Waiter's sobbing did not go unnoticed by Irregular, who wailed louder and louder to match her. Balancing him with one arm, the Waiter plugged one of her ears with her free hand in an unsuccessful attempt to block out the noise.
She shut her eyes and concentrated hard, wishing that she was back home at the theater in happier times, when the Doll was still asleep and the Master of the Graveyard was still their ally. The Waiter didn't enjoy her job then, either, but she lived blissfully in the naïve belief that everything would get better when her brother came back. To get her mind off the stress of being a servant in the theater, she would go into the clocktower often and listen to the beat of its gears, playing with words until she made up a song to go with the rhythm.
"Ru ri ra, ru ri ra, this singing voice…" Now at the end of her rope, the Waiter kept trying to return to those carefree days, singing the songs she made up then. Truthfully, she believed that she had heard the song somewhere long ago, but whatever memories it had been associated with were buried too deeply in her soul for her to recover, so she found it easier to claim she had made it up herself. "I wonder, who will it end up reaching? Obtaining the key known as words, I will open the door to the unknown…"
It took her a while before she realized that Irregular had quieted down. He was staring up at her with what she could only imagine was fascination. She could see his lips puckering and moving, short babbles passing through them. Was he trying to match her beat? She was pretty sure newborns didn't have that kind of awareness. Perhaps if he understood this much about his surroundings…
Filled with a renewed resolve to keep her brother safe, the Waiter stood again, breaking into a run once more. When she became too exhausted to run, she would simply walk, and between her gasps for breath, she would sing her lullaby again, ru ri ra, ru ri ra, just to keep Irregular happy. Even if the entire world was against her and her brother, she would keep running.
-0-
The Waiter arrived in Lucifenia – that is, she arrived in the state known as Lucifenia, which covered the same territory that the old country Lucifenia did. From here, it was easy for her to enter a town and get prepared for the rest of her journey.
To her horror, she learned quickly that the actions of the Master of the Hellish Yard were beginning to impact the humans. Coins were crumbling into dust, crops and livestock were suddenly withering and dying, and there were already reports of rioting in some of the larger cities. She knew that something needed to be done soon.
Some of the humans did regard her with suspicion and derision, as they assumed her to be a teenage mother seeking a quick fix for her problems, but others were able to spare her the barest rations of water and bread and give her directions to the former capital of Lucifenia.
Long ago, the state of Lucifenia was a nation of unparalleled power. But the day that the child queen Riliane Lucifen d'Autriche ascended to the throne, its power began to decline. While Lucifenia recovered from the famines, civil wars, and foreign occupations that followed, it never regained its former glory. As for the palace where the Daughter of Evil once lived, it had been briefly repurposed into a storage building for supplies before eventually being abandoned.
With no maintenance for the past four centuries, the palace had started to crumble under the weight of the growing plants that forced their way between bricks and warped the walls until they broke apart. It was this location that Irregular was to call his home.
The Waiter passed through the empty gateway that was once able to keep intruders out, walking along the stone pathways that were splitting from the weeds growing underfoot. It didn't take long for her to reach the fabled Heavenly Yard. Once, it was the most beautiful courtyard in the whole world, maintained every day by dozens of servants who gave their all in pleasing Princess Riliane (though only because she would have their heads chopped off if she saw even one dirty smudge on her fountains). And even though it had been worn down by time and nature, the Waiter believed it was still beautiful today.
But now what? Ma never told her just what exactly Irregular was supposed to do here. Sighing heavily, she set Irregular down on the side of an old fountain, smiling a tiny bit when he grasped at her ribbon as she did this.
She knelt to the ground and undid her ribbon, placing it in Irregular's hands. It would have been too generous to call it a toy, but it seemed to work well enough calm the baby, who was yanking on it lightly and enjoying the silky texture.
He was definitely showing signs that he had more awareness and strength than a human baby should have, and this was encouraging. "At this rate, you'll be able to start talking," the Waiter joked.
But for a moment, she had to wonder what he would say if he could talk. Did he have any recollection of his past lives? The Waiter's own past lives felt like distant memories, but she could clearly remember the strong emotions. She could remember the sacrifices Irregular's past self had made for her, and she could remember being so horrified at how she had abused his kindness that she wrote a letter begging for his forgiveness and cast it into the sea.
Was he ever able to read that letter? The false response from one of her orphan wards had given her comfort in her dying moments as Riliane, but ever since she was reborn as the Waiter, she had been plagued with worry over what his true response would be. It would be easy to say that someone as self-sacrificing as her brother would easily forgive her.
But deep down she still had fears that maybe he didn't accept his death as calmly as it appeared, and maybe he even resented her for putting him in that position and inadvertently pushing him into his heavenly duty. She even held the belief that him forgiving her would mean that a higher power had forgiven all of her sins – and that his refusal would mean she was condemned to damnation. The mortals all believed that Riliane burned eternally in Hell, and sometimes the Waiter believed that was where she belonged after all.
Irregular was starting to whimper. Although as Riliane she spent her entire adult life atoning for her sins against humanity, she hadn't yet atoned for the personal crimes against her brother. The Waiter figured that she might as well do what little she could now, starting with feeding him. She placed a bag that a villager had given her on the ground and opened it, searching for a flask of water.
She then froze, her hands hovering over the bag. A chill had suddenly overtaken her soul.
"I knew you would come here, Riliane."
"H-How long have you been waiting?" Of course. She was a fool to believe that the Master of the Hellish Yard wouldn't know about this sacred location. The Waiter stood, immediately scooping Irregular into her arms. He too was aware of the evil aura now permeating throughout the area and had intensified his whines.
The Waiter looked around, finally spotting the hellish woman, who stood next to a nearby stone fence. One of her hands was covering the top half of her face, however, and it seemed that she was not wearing a mask anymore. "Far too long. I hate you for this, you know. You dragged me all the way out here into the humans' world. Do you know how long it's been since I've seen the sun? Why couldn't you have just ended your suffering at the theater and joined your dear Gardener there?"
The reminder of her friend's death made the Waiter's blood boil with rage. "Stop it! I know you talked about yourself back there, said something about losing your loved ones… But you can't make the rest of the world go through that pain!"
"You of all people should know what it's like when your other half is missing. You feel empty, like every breath you take isn't enough to stave off the feeling of suffocation. Like you're being punished and put to the irons for crimes you didn't even commit. Like you want to bite out your own tongue because you can never again tell that person how much you love them."
Just as the Master of the Graveyard had been uncharacteristically quiet when addressing her deepest fears, the Master of the Hellish Yard was very calm when baring her emotions to the Waiter. For the briefest moment, the Waiter pitied her. Every last person in the theater, aside from Gammon Octo the unfortunate human, had committed horrible crimes, and most were the embodiment of sin. But they could still feel emotions just like humans: Joy, sorrow, outrage, loneliness, fear.
"You can't be happy again, not without your brother, not with him being little more than a sniveling baby. I can't be happy again without my beloved, either. And if I can't be happy, why should I allow these undeserving mortals, who birthed this madness themselves in their selfish attempts to create gods, have their own happiness?"
And the Waiter was immediately reminded of why pity would be wasted on the hellish master. "That isn't right. Do you think that your friends would have wanted this? Would they have wanted to see you condemn everything to oblivion?"
"Michaela stopped being my friend the moment she tried to stop me. And my beloved… Do you know what he did that night when I pointed that gun right at him? He smiled." The master began to chuckle sadly. "He smiled. He didn't try to stop me from shooting him. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was encouraging me to kill him." She began to laugh harder, her body trembling with gasps for air that sounded almost like sobs, and she finally moved her hand off her face. "He was encouraging me to destroy him and destroy myself!"
Her eyes opened, and the Waiter backed away in revulsion at the sight before her, almost falling over when she hit the side of the fountain. The Master of the Hellish Yard was apparently serious when she complained about being dragged out into this world, and her eyes were heavily mottled with black and red blood, as if the sun had nearly burned them out. In spite of these injuries, the master was still able to see the Waiter, and her horrific gaze was set squarely on her as she began to lurch toward her.
"Everyone turned on me! Him, Michaela, Elluka, Eldoh… I even had to off Conchita! She was dangerous and she only cared about her own indulgence, so I killed her before she could even try to kill me!"
She must have been talking about the Master of the Graveyard. Another Demon of Deadly Sin, dead. And there was still no sight of Lust or Envy's awakened forms, meaning that all that remained was Vanity and Sloth. "Where is the Clockwork Doll!?"
"Imprisoned at the gates to Hell. It's funny, really. She wanted to see her so-called father again so badly, and he gave up everything for her… Now they're both trapped on opposite sides of the gate. He can see her bound head to toe in red-hot chains, she can hear him get tortured by the inhabitants of Hell. And this is how they'll be stuck until the end of everything."
Bile was rising up into the Waiter's throat; she and the Doll never quite got along, but no one deserved that terrible fate. "Release them. Release everyone you have trapped in Hell."
"Oh? And who's going to make me? The sorceress of time, who's currently too busy searching in vain for the unawakened sin vessels? Or perhaps the fragile Demon of Vanity and her little baby brother?"
"He is not just a baby! He is the Master of the Heavenly Yard and he will stop you!"
"Not if I can kill him now!"
The Master of the Hellish Yard lunged forward, reaching for her neck, but the Waiter was on alert now, dodging out of the way and taking off running. When she looked back, she saw that the master's hands smashed through the fountain like it was paper, a sign that she was not trying to toy with the Waiter but instead wanted her dead as soon as possible. The fountain shattered as she broke her hands free from it.
"Fine, you want to scurry about like a rat? You want to run and hide like you did all those years ago, hide behind your brother and let him take your lumps for you? If you want to be with him so badly, then be with him in death!"
The very atmosphere around the hellish master grew dark with evil energy, and the Waiter ran faster and faced forward, heading for an open doorway that led into what remained of the palace. But the shimmering black magic was creeping toward her faster and faster, the loose stones all over the ground rattling with an unearthly noise.
Irregular was crying now, screaming, as if he was begging the Waiter to save him. But her legs felt painfully stiff from all her running, and she could feel the intense chill of the spell as the gap closed fast.
The doorway was right there, and even though she knew better she wanted desperately to believe that if she entered the palace, everything would be okay, she was be safe from the spell and her brother, her other half, would be with her. Or maybe it would all turn out to be a long nightmare and she'd wake up as a princess protected by sturdy palace walls and loyal guards, with her brother sleeping safe and sound in the room right across the hall—
I'm sorry I'm gonna get you killed again I'm going to let you die again and it's my fault it was always my fault Allen please forgive me I couldn't save you
Her legs gave out under the strain, and the Waiter tripped forward, right at the threshold of the doorway. The coldness suddenly left her body and the rattling suddenly stopped. Then there was a loud explosion, the sound and force blasting consciousness right out of her.
-0-
The dark energy had contracted for one moment, then expanded again, exploding with raw power that toppled the remains of the palace. This was undeniably the same kind of power used to uproot the god of the forest.
But upon crossing the threshold into the home he once shared with his sister, the Master of the Heavenly Yard gained access to a few tricks that even the Thousand-Year Tree couldn't use, especially of the protective variety, and ultimately he sustained no injuries even when the entire palace collapsed on top of him.
Most importantly, he was finally on equal ground with his hellish counterpart, his awakened magic changing his mind and body to that of a fourteen-year-old boy. The rubble that now littered the ground was blasted away from the inside out, a white shield of magic being immediately put up as a precaution in case they were attacked again.
From within the protective bubble, the Master of the Heavenly Yard took a few seconds to gain his bearings. No longer limited by an infant mind, countless thoughts raced through his head: Divine whisperings of the duty that he was to carry out very soon, memories of past lives where he lived and died as a mortal human, and realization that it was the danger his sister was in that had awakened his true potential.
He looked down at her broken body. His bulk of his magic had protected him alone, for he had acted only on instinct, and the force of the explosion and the collapse of the building had overcome even her superhuman resistances. Her breathing was very shallow, and blood was seeping through parts of her suit, hinting at horrific fractures that were hidden by her clothes.
He knelt down by her, gently cupping her cheek in his hand. His touch sparked some life into her, and she woke up and opened her eyes, staring up at him. Even though ragged gasps kept croaking out of her throat, she managed a soft smile. "…You came back…"
"I promised myself long ago that I would protect you, even if every creature in the world hated you."
The memories of another life kept flickering through his mind, memories of growing up with his sister, of digging up treasures with her, of serving her and fighting for her and dying for her and loving her. And though it had been centuries since he last saw her, he knew that this incarnation of sin held her memories and personality. Just as he was able to love the Daughter of Evil, he would hold onto the Demon of Vanity until her final moments, for she was his sister and no force in the universe would change that.
"Allen…" The mere utterance of this name sent a wave of chills through his body, because it reminded him of brioche and twilight and everything about himself and his sister. "Allen, I—" She convulsed, hacking up blood.
His voice cracked when he spoke; for all of his powers and all of his responsibilities, he was still a child with deep emotions. "Please don't leave me."
But she would. She had little time remaining, and it wasn't fair at all. They had been apart for five centuries, but they only had this brief minute together before they had to be torn apart again. There was so much he wanted to say to her. Yes, he had gotten her letter. Yes, he could hear her voice even when he was alone in the dark room. Yes, he still loved her no matter what she had done to him and to everyone else. Yes, she will find salvation in Utopia.
"Please don't leave me, please. I missed you. Meeting you again was the only thing I looked forward to, and—"
"Shh. Shhhh." The Waiter closed her eyes, softly pressing her cheek into his hand. "…If I can be re— …No, when I'm reborn, I…"
She shuddered again, her coughing culminating into a single retch of blood, and then the Waiter, the girl who waited, moved no more.
The shield dissolved into the air, revealing to the Master of the Hellish Yard the sight of her adversary sobbing over the corpse of his sister. It was now his turn to mourn the loss of his other half.
But the moment she took a step forward, preparing to attack him, the Master of the Heavenly Yard snapped into action and stood up. The air around him crackled with divine fury; all hesitation he had about fulfilling his duty had been transformed into a determination that knew no limits. He would see this through to the very end if it meant finally living in peace with his sister.
And so began the duel for Utopia.