Chapter 10: Deserving
Fortuna Outskirts:
Persephone Killgore marched along, heels clicking against the stone in the wake of her, currently, three escorts. One, her friend/servant Deva, two, the demon hunter Dante, and third, a very irate Trish that was shooting her dirty glares every second step. She would feel a little more tense about that, if she weren't rather distracted by the incredibly irrational thought of 'Nero is in trouble!' Given the context she'd been given, "used to wake up giant demon statue," she had a whole slew of likely nonsensical depictions of what Nero was being put through. Admittedly she had no real concept of what that mess entailed, but that just sort of made things worse.
In the real world, a voice clearly addressed her, but, given her mental occupation, she failed to grasp the meaning. "Beg pardon? I didn't catch that."
The voice, Trish's, presumably repeated itself. "I said, what kind of crap did you pull to get Dante to agree with you on the Hell Gate?"
She glanced ahead, noting that Dante melodramatically rolled his head before moving a greater distance away from the both of them, and took the opportunity to smile sweetly. "Nothing particular. I just asked nicely. Why?"
The blonde gave her a nasty glare. "I have a hard time buying that."
Enjoying, and slightly grateful for, the distraction, she responded. "And, why is that? You've probably known him for a lot longer than I have. You know what buttons I could have pressed, if any." She smiled a little more. "I suppose you, what, think I just batted my eyelashes and leaned forward? Do you think I have no shame?"
That was a bit of an exaggeration. She would dance around on a stripper pole wearing fabric amounting to the coverage of a napkin if it kept her alive, and she was absolutely, completely UN-ashamed of that internal thought. Not that she would ever suggest that out loud, she was a lady, after all.
She continued. "Besides, I hardly think you of all women has the right to accuse me of trying to ply my looks to get an edge. What with your finest of intimate apparel on display." She grinned cheekily. "A skin-tight corset and leather pants? Are you that desperate for attention?" Trish took a step towards her, and she raised a hand. "Easy there, I realize that otherwise mortal wounds seem like more of an inconvenience to you at best, but they surely can't feel good. And I'm equally as certain that Deva would be more than happy to put a slug in your head if you openly threaten me again."
The blonde looked like she was going to say something more, but Dante chimed in from up ahead. "Leave it alone Trish, not worth it."
The other woman made a sound partway between a groan and a hiss, but that was the apparent end of it. Although, if she wanted to keep her mind off of Nero and whatever asinine situation he was snared in, she could certainly manage to pass the transit time, and amuse herself in the process.
She piped up again, broaching a prior topic. "But really, I do mean it, that outfit doesn't suit you at all." She pressed right ahead before Trish could irately bark at her again. "It's not just trashy, it's not flattering at all."
The other woman's face, mouth still open silently, drifted into 'confused' instead of outright angry. "What are you-"
She took a sidelong step closer as they kept walking, pointedly, and rather brashly, tugging once on Trish's corset. "I mean, starting with this for one. You're showing far too much skin. Have you never heard the term 'less is more?' You need to hint at your assets, not leave them bouncing in the breeze."
That got a reaction. "Fat lot of 'hinting' you were doing when we fought before!"
She smirked smugly. "Need I remind you I was alone? Well, till you so rudely intruded anyway. A lady is entitled to dress comfortably in the privacy of her own dwelling. But back to you…"
Trish's dialogue steadily grew more and more defensive as she verbally needled the blonde's fashion sense, suggesting undeniably more stylish choices. Even when Trish brought up the inevitable "I dress for combat, not glamor" argument, she made quite sure to point out that a good fashionista didn't need to choose one or the other. Doubly amusing, was how Dante kept casting a glance over his shoulder at the "bickering" two of them, a titillated smirk absolutely carved into his face. Maybe he fancied this demon woman, who knew? Also, who cared? Neither here nor there, she had bigger problems. She could smell sulfur and brimstone in the air, which gave her a really big hint that this trip was nearly over.
She held a dainty finger up in front of Trish. "Hold that thought, however wrong you are. We can pick this up in a minute." She glanced about and confirmed the scattered scraps of mining equipment, a sign that they had almost reached the site of her kerfuffle with that giant, flaming centaur/dog. "I trust the both of you realize there's another Hell Gate just ahead, right?"
Dante answered, ever present lilt to his voice. "I wouldn't be very good at my job if I didn't. Why? Does the princess want to sit this one out?"
She would assume that by "Princess" he was teasing her. She also didn't care. Chiefly because, one, it was an accurate title. Two, she figured she had enough of a grasp on Dante's character to know he meant no true offense by it.
She responded. "The opposite actually. I want to get this inevitable fight out of the way as quickly as possible. You are going to showboat, and that takes up time I don't think Nero has to spare." She drew herself up a little, "Besides, I just happen to have already fought a giant demon from this very Gate. And, if it happens to be the same one, I know exactly how to kill it again."
This prompted a snide remark from Trish. "You killed a greater demon? And how'd you manage that?"
She smiled sweetly. "I threw lighting at it till it died, more or less, though leaning towards more."
Dante chuckled softly. "I can buy that. And hey, free show. I'm not gonna complain." True to those words, the moment their trio stepped outside Dante sidestepped, kicked his boots up on a conveniently placed rock, and crossed his arms behind his head. "Have at it princess, fireworks galore."
She moved forward, throwing a light wave behind her. "Always happy to entertain." She gestured with the same hand. "Deva, you go and perch up on the cliff there. I'll let you know if I need you."
She supposed there was merit to simply charging up a huge spell and demolishing the Hell Gate without bothering with the demon at all. But, this was her ego getting the better of her. As much as she wanted to spring Nero from whatever predicament he was in, she wasn't under the impression that he was in life-threatening trouble.
She paused, frozen for a second with a finger to her lower lip. "Gosh, I'm really, really fickle sometimes… One second I want to drop everything to save him, the next I'm 'oh he'll be fine." She felt her face start to flush. "Aaah, I'm going to be a horrible girlfriend!"
Her teeth bit down on the finger at her lips as her mind whirled. Not up till now had she even considered her half of the equation. Spoiled she might have been, she didn't think she was nearly narcissistic enough to force someone to be her significant other. And she had just enough self-awareness to realize that some people might be put off by her, entitled attitude? Oh, and this was even assuming the young man would even be open to the idea in the first place. She had still indirectly, not-on-purpose killed his prior girlfriend. Going out of her way, and she at least assumed Nero would be bright enough to realize that, to rescue him might not be enough…
A warm, dry wind blew into her, and she drew her gaze up to see the Hell Gate glowing red. "And of course, now we have to do this."
Erupting with a great gout of flames, none other than the exact same demon flew out and crashed down into the empty basin with her. Only, this time it was looking away from her as it landed. So, this could actually turn out pretty funny… She started charging a spell.
The demon, Berial if she recalled correctly, spoke aloud as it stomped towards the far end of the basin. "Ah, finally. With my strength restored the human realm will bow before me."
She grinned, spell at the ready, before whistling aloud. "Hellooo! Remember me?"
The demon had just enough time to about face and bellow 'you' before she set off her spell. Said spell, because cliché, was an enormous spire of ice bursting from the earth directly under the centaur-like body of the beast. She didn't care if it actually hurt the demon or not, all she wanted immediately was to get the bloody thing in the air.
Her grin widened. "If not, you're certainly going to remember this."
Just as the spire stopped pushing the demon up, in that brief moment of complete hang-time, she unleashed hell. It was like when she had tried to hit Dante, only in this instance the complete opposite happened. There was no extraneous destruction, every single little spell hit. Lighting, ice, absolutely everything she could throw at the damn thing except for the obvious thing to not, fire. And far be of her to feel any pity for the demon, but the poor thing was utterly helpless. Getting thrown hither and thither, back and forth while unable to do a single thing about it. Because, all while hurting the demon as much as she could, she spent just as much of her attention on keeping it airborne. Doomed from the outset really.
She spoke, mostly to herself and under her breath, as she tormented the demon. "And this, this is why you do not underestimate me, ever, if you value your life." She added at an even lower volume. "Unless you're some kind of god-slaying monster… Oh, how am I ever going to live that down?" Her gaze drifted back up to the suffering demon. "Speaking of, time bring you down."
She flipped the direction of her 'pushing' spells and hastened the fiery, screaming mass earthward. And with no amount of ceremony whatsoever Berial collided with the ground nose-first before blowing apart in a giant swath of flames. It was, rather anticlimactic. And to think, this thing had given her a touch of a hassle before. Just goes to show the power of surprise, she supposed.
She paused, noting something odd. "Wait…"
Then it hit her. The demon had just broken apart into flames last time she 'killed' it. It had just floated back into the Hell Gate and recuperated, leading to her pummeling of it just now. Bloody thing was probably trying to-
She tracked the sluggish streams of flame. "Not again you don't."
She abandoned all pretense of delicacy and fired off the same spell she'd used to clear a swath of the forest a little while ago. Aiming right for the center of the drifting flames, coincidentally smack dab in the center of the Hell Gate, she unleashed the arcane with none of the ceremony from before. She wasn't trying to be dramatic, she wasn't trying to be showy, she just wanted Berial to stay dead.
The glorious burst of light leapt forth, and there were two voices that loudly cried out. "SHIT!"
She paused, mildly abashed. "Oh, right, Dante and Trish were over there. I actually might have killed them with that." She paused to think about it. "I probably didn't, but I could have." She pursed her lips, concerned, before calling out. "You're not dead up there, right?"
After a moment of silence, during which her pulse picked up quite a bit, Dante emerged from the resulting cloud of dust, looking none the worse for wear, and propped a boot up on some of the rubble. "Might want to remember where your audience is, next time you put on a show, yeah?"
She was being chided, justified though it might be, by a man about as lackadaisical as her brother. How low was this misadventure of hers going to sink?
Keeping her face as straight as she could manage, she spoke. "And, Trish?"
Ever smirking, Dante cast a brief glance over his shoulder. "You managed to drop a rock on her head, she's fine." A loud groan punctuated the devil hunter's words. "And hey, otherwise great show. You win a prize." Dante slung something spherical, red, and mostly immaterial at her. "You killed it, you get to keep it. Seems fair to me." Her face must have shown confusion, because the devil hunter elaborated. "It's a Devil Arm, all that's left of that demon you killed. Great toy, I assume."
Up on the ledge Dante started dragging a rather physically abused Trish to her feet. She, for her part, immediately shunted the "Devil Arm" into the same little pocket dimension as the last one, assuming that they were the same thing. This one felt inert to her too, so she would assume there was some manner of limitation on who exactly could use them. Dante likely didn't know this, as he was obviously one of the people who could, and had never met someone who couldn't. Maybe the clause was as simple as demon blood? Well, that wasn't exactly a problem she could up and solve at any point in the near future, nor did she really feel that she would want to. Her weapon was her staff and her magic, no matter how fancy of a "toy" either two Devil Arms might be. Especially since she had some inkling of an assumption that the both of them were melee weapons. She'd call it female intuition.
She turned her head slightly at a noise, to find that Dante and Trish were approaching. The latter had a rather large, bloodied matt of hair on the left side of her head. So clearly, borderline immortal or not the blonde still bled. Wait, no, she already knew that. There had been a gigantic splat of blood when she'd dropped that mini glacier of Trish before.
She grinned cheekily at the other woman. "What was that about doubting that I could take down a greater demon?"
Trish sent her an irritated glare. "I am not in the mood for this."
It was juvenile, but she pursed her lips and quipped immediately. "She say that a lot, Dante?"
The devil hunter's smirk didn't waver at all. He just rolled his eyes in a melodramatic way.
Fun not happening, and more than a little internally concerned over her 'oh he'll be fine' thoughts, she spoke up. "Yes, well, if you're going to be helping her hobble along I think I'll just fly on ahead." She turned to the angelic figure already approaching. "Deva!"
Without needing to verbally explain her request, or waiting for either Dante or Trish to voice an objection, Deva swooped down and grabbed her around the top of her waist and behind her knees, tearing off into the shadowed skies with a mere two downwards swipes of her wings. Dante and Trish shrank into specks before she could count to three and the city of Fortuna almost immediately swelled into view, along with… a giant stone man floating over the city with an even larger halo floating behind it. She would assume this was the core of the problem, on account of the large chunks of debris floating around the creepy thing. She would normally go right for it and start hurling spells but, recent events had made her a touch shy about barreling into the unknown. For all she knew, that thing was some relic from the past that was both terrifyingly powerful and well out of her league. Well, technically those two things were one and the same, but, irrelevant.
She muttered to herself, almost not hearing her own words over the wind of her present altitude. "Maybe I'll poke around the city while Dante helps Trish hobble her way here. Couldn't hurt, might learn something…" A dim thought at the back of her mind prompted her to add a little more. "Daddy always says something about this sort of thing… and I never listened."
She took a long, hard look at Fortuna. From the air she couldn't see any people. She could, on the other hand, see an unholy ton of demons loitering about everywhere. They didn't particularly worry her, given that she'd already proven that she could annihilate every single one without effort. But, frankly, killing demons en masse really didn't get her anything anymore. Well, she could win brownie points with Dante, convince the flippant devil hunter of her sincerity…
She muttered to herself again. "Then again, maybe if Nero hears how much I helped he won't hate me as much?" There was a pause as her brain mulled over her own words. "That is completely irrational of me. Not to mention simpering and… ugh…" She pointed towards the edge of the city, at the end of one of the roads. "Deva, put me down there. If nothing else, I can get a fair workout from cutting through the mess."
Deva performed a flyby set-down before gliding off and perching on a distant steeple, doing her job without being asked. At street level though, she was given a more direct inkling of what happened to all the people. The city stank, very literally like a slaughterhouse. Here and there she could see the bodies, men and women, largely indistinct from each other on account of the formless robes, primarily sprawled out with gaping wounds in their backs. And the concentration of the dead only grew the further towards the city center she looked.
She was, honestly, no stranger to massacre given the bloody, warrior Overlord her father was. But, those were battlefields. Everyone there presumably made the choice to be there, and subsequently get gutted by her father. Civilians like this, this did get to her, Evil be damned. Worse, where were these people going to run? The forest was filled with demons too. What crackpot logic was the Order operating on?
She drew in a short breath. "Ok, I guess that's reason enough." A thought floated through her head at the words about to exit her mouth, 'good gods what would daddy think?' "Time to be a hero." She let out a loud whistle. "Hey, over here all of you uglies!"
The demons, primarily of the scarecrow variety, sluggishly turned to vacantly stare her way. This lasted for all of three seconds before the entire mob practically started tripping over themselves to rush her position. Deva shot the heads off of two before they'd closed three meters.
She raised her left hand, purple lightning already playing around her fingers. "Of all the mad things I'd end up doing…"
One, two, three… The demons popped into stinking, rancid clouds of black ichor as her magic arced between one to another. Without even trying she made a chain of death roughly fifty five long. The grime smeared out across the ground, mixing with the human blood and multiplying the stench by an order of magnitude. It also spattered across the human dead, perhaps offering some manner of poetic justice for the deceased. The blades, seemingly the only truly tangible parts of the demons, were flung every which way upon every expiration. They buried themselves in buildings, other demons, flew off over buildings, two or three would have hit her, if she weren't prepared for that possibility.
The tide started to thin, and she had the time to quip. "Well, if this is as bad as it gets I have nothing to worry about."
Roughly thirty seconds later, she was proven right. The last of the visible demons were popped like the pus-filled blisters they amounted to. The street became eerily quiet after that, save the hauntingly convenient breeze that kicked up into to absence. Just her, the dead, and the colossus that hadn't deemed to notice her light show. She wasn't displeased with that.
Her head slowly turned, taking in what she could see. "Where to go now?" She slowly chewed her lower lip as she mentally fumbled for a direction. "Nngh, this is the problem when I don't have a plan…" Her eyes drifted to the Opera House. "Oh why not, that's as good a place as any to go." Her gaze flicked up to the giant statue. "And right in that thing's shadow. Might even be important." Before her feet started moving she glanced up to Deva. "Deva, you just, fly around and shoot demons. I'll let you know if I need you directly."
Her faithful servant took off without a word, soaring off on a wide arc away from the floating colossus. She figured Deva would be fine, mostly on account of the flying bit. She hadn't encountered a demon that could truly fly yet, so, yeah. Besides, she was going indoors. Deva's support would be rather less valuable inside a building.
She set off, levitating herself for both the insignificant reason of not wanting to get blood and bile on her shoes, and the practical one of her being simply faster while not entirely ground-bound. She was working on true magical flight, but she'd always prioritized pure destructive capacity… Maybe she was just lazy? Apocalypse From The Sky, her giant 'laser beams,' they were 'shoot once and go home' kind of spells.
About halfway through the streets towards the Opera House she grumbled to herself. "Didn't work very well with mister showboat…"
All of that destructive force, and Dante had just kept slipping through the slightest gaps in her spells. To say that it was frustrating was the mother of all understatements. Particularly since it seemed to show that her method was lacking. As low as her ultimate aspirations were, comparatively, she didn't want to be the wallflower that sat around doing nothing. She wanted to at least be comparatively competent next to her familial peers…
A simple thought occurred to her. "Maybe I'm just looking at this the wrong way. If Dante's able to slip through small gaps in my spells, then I just need to double down and make sure there are NO gaps period. I mean, it'd just be stupid trying to dodge through a fireball, right? I just wasn't going quite as hard at it as I should have."
Of course, there were certain extenuating circumstances that had prevented her from acting in that manner. Primarily, she hadn't wanted to annihilate her own castle. But with a different setting, with better timing, a location of her choosing… she might not have to call it quits on this world just yet. He couldn't regenerate if he were disintegrated, right? She'd put that train of thought on the back burner for now…
She arrived at the doors of the Opera House, paused, and a low key smile crossed her face. "Right back where I started this whole mess. Pft, with hindsight I should have just erased the building once that doddering pontiff was knocked off. Dante would be dead, Nero would be dead, and I wouldn't be crushing on a boy like some simpering schoolgirl." She felt a flush work its way into her cheeks while she shook her head in self-disappointment. "Ugh…" She brought her gaze up slowly, regarding the door in front of her. "Could start correcting history now. At least partially." She grinned slightly, "Start small."
Her 'start small' involved blasting the doors inwards with so much magical overkill the splinters splintered till they couldn't be seen even with a microscope. There was no elemental flair to it, just force, and to her surprise, the blast induced a humanoid shriek from the interior.
Surprised, and inspired to enact her familial prerogative to be Evil, she let herself down to the ground and proceeded into the Opera House with an exaggerated swagger to her hips. "Now, just who can get away with cowering about in the single biggest building in town?" She cracked a devious smile. "So many demons running around, you'd have to be in the Order to still be alive in this city. Unless you're me…" She noted the squirrely, white-garbed man on the stage, and pointed the top of her staff at him. "… Or an Order knight that had some work done." She made a show of giggling loudly. "What's you're breed of ugly, little man?"
Said 'little man' genuinely looked terrified. "You, you're the-"
Preemptively, she hurled a lightning bolt that erased a quarter of the stage. "If you call me a 'witch' I swear on every Hell across every multiverse that I will drag you kicking and screaming to my father's torture dungeon and I will not rest until every fiber of your body has been liquefied, reconstituted, and then vaporized as slowly as humanly possible."
The man, thoroughly terrified by her vicious diatribe, stumbled back a full three meters before finding his footing. "Y, you c, can't-"
She conjured a roughly watermelon-sized fireball in her hand. "Very, very wrong choice of words. I'm in a mood, and if all you're going to spout is pathetic, stuttering objections to my very existence then I have no time to entertain yours."
She drew her arm back and, completely ignoring the man's clear cry of 'wait,' she pegged the fireball square into the unidentified man's chest. The body started to fly apart in chunks, right up until the explosion caught up to those chunks and turned the whole mess into stinking ash. The fact that she blew a hole in the floor several meters deep and nearly as wide as the Opera House itself was a minor detail to her.
She made a glib remark. "Poor soul, he burned so brightly, but so fast…" She mulled it over for a moment, and shook her head slowly. "I think I'll leave the one-liners to father, his voice pulls it off better." Slowly, as it was really the reason she'd bother to come in here, she gazed about the interior. "Hey now, what's this?"
Her destruction had, unintentionally, revealed a staircase in the relative back of the building. A staircase headed down. And down was the direction she would assume someone would build if they had something to hide. Then again, that would lend a bit of sense to the Order stooge cooling his heels in this building to begin with. The Order knew about her, and Dante. The now ash-man was a guard, even if she had obliterated him before he could do any of the 'guarding.'
She advanced, levitating over the crater she had created. "Let's see where this goes…"
The answer was down, and down, and down some more. The stair spiraled around on itself enough that her pace made her mildly dizzy for a spell, after which she slowed down, just a little bit.
At the bottom when it opened up, she was forced to pause. "Wow, this, this is actually rather impressive."
The sight to make her think this was more or less the platform she now stood upon. It was suspended over an arcane vortex the likes of which she personally had never seen. Given her surroundings, and the army of demons, she didn't have to think very hard to determine that this was another Hell Gate, albeit a significantly larger and more passable one. It also seemed attuned to accept some kind of key, which she deemed irrelevant. She'd force this one closed, because why wouldn't she at this point? Key or no key, whatever it was, closing the stupid thing couldn't possibly be harder than trying to seize control over it. And once she did that… then she could go and rescue her would-be boyfriend.