Any day could be your last.
That is the ever present concern of living.
But maybe you'll be one of the lucky few who lives a full life. Maybe you'll get to choose your grave, surrounded by the comfort that you were loved.
Those odds plummet ever further into oblivion with the knowledge that the Devil lives in your world.
Omnipresent. Invincible. Unknown.
At any given moment it could choose to awaken and undo a lifetime of triumph.
The tides of war were only allowed to flow because something even worse had scared it.
Beforehand, it was contained to it's realm because something more stubborn barred it's path.
Both are gone now.
The world and it's skies shall remember what it's like to vomit the stench-filled filth born of Hell.
Today would be the most restless day of this planet's lifespan.
And it all begins...with a roar.
All across the world echoed a roar fused out of ten concordant wails.
Any underhanded motives in play or battles being fought ceased immediately. Everyone who had eyes turned to the brazen peaks raised to the far west corners of the planet and saw grimy brown and red tints bleeding into the morning sky.
For the first time in ages, Borealis Aurora left his palace, his soul shaken by this haunting sound.
All Titans rose from their slumber, Tremorterra's emotions felt in the trembling of the planet's crust.
Magmankey pointed his gaze to the advancing bleed in the sky and grit his teeth, "This ain't good..."
A massive shadow draped over the remains of the village of dragons and wyverns, where Rot Walkers had come to make their home.
Now the beasts rose in fealty to the wing flaps of the king over kings.
A being who existed on the same conceptual level as entropy, stretching 70 feet tall and molting, rotting wings a 100 feet wide. With thick bony legs and a gaping maw for it's stomach, it twisted the definition of it's namesake "Drago" into the most impure shape.
Ten heads plagued it's body. Years of research, nay, surviving by sheer luck, put a name to each face.
The Helm of the Dead King led the body forward. Devoid of eyes, pitch black rot spewing out of it's sockets and leaking down it's jaw to act as a slimy beard. It has horns grown in so far back that it digs into the neck's spine.
The Heart of Bloodied Souls was locked inside the chest mouth, severed veins weaving in and out of its eye socket and mouth, the bones beating like carnal flesh.
The Moan of the Famished replaced the stomach, having a mere half-broken jaw, and bone covered in feces and dirt.
The Right Hand of Beezlebub adorned the pits of one wing, the sockets half-devoured, appearing to have the compound eyes of a fly. Infinite flies buzzed inside it's locked jaw.
At the tip lay the Festering Reach of Boils, dangling from it, attached to multiple rotten sinew, bones boiling, bursting with pus filled boils.
The Left Hand of Darkness graced the other wing and was pitch black. Nothing else dare be spoken.
At the tip, another head dangled, the Devouring Shriek of Locusts, the mouth permanently stretched beyond recognition like it wanted to scream.
At the tip of the tail swung a head with a frog's skin rotting over the bones, named the Horned Tail of Heqet.
And finally, there was the last head: Lord of the Damned Firmament. None knows what it looks like, or what it does, only where it's located.
It shouldn't be necessary anyways. What even one head is capable of was a danger to any one of the Tribes.
And if for whatever reason it couldn't reach a target, it had hundreds of Rot Walkers gathering beneath it's shadow to fulfill it's missive.
The Devil, the Khull Drago, began it's slow march of a decay, letting out distorting groans and it's many heads rattled, acting as the bells of armageddon.
The sole two warriors quickest to get in it's path were also the bravest: Auris Aurora...and Sarajin Stratos.
Standing atop the pillar where his journey had began, Sarajin faced his one unanswered trauma with his hand rattling on the hilt of his sword, the Devil of the present reflecting in one eye while the terror of the past reflected in the other.
As a small bead of sweat ran down his cheek, he would have to put his fears aside...
Because he felt in his heart that the two of them were now the only chance this planet had of stopping the Devil.
Chapter -16: Festering Sin
"Why now...?" Sarajin whispered to himself, wanting all the blame to fall upon some factor he could comprehend.
Auris brandished sword and shield and activated her Aegis Dragoon Drive, tempering her lover's agitation by telling him, "I know how you feel, but we don't know what the Devil is capable of."
"Ghh..." Sarajin held onto his hilt tighter and took a deep breath. The wave of Rot Walkers was drawing closer, having swept through the abandoned village entirely.
He then discerned the right course of action through his fears, drawing his blade with a sharp sound, "Let's try and force the horde out of the way first, see if we can get the Devil to react."
Auris hunched over, licked her smiling lips, and lit a fire in her soul, "You read my mind."
Weapons locked in hand, they plunged headfirst into the rotting flood.
Auris landed first and rammed her shield out, expanding a field of aura from it that knock a line through the horde.
Once caught in the middle she swung her sword out, filling this messy space with bright and beautiful waves of aquamarine light.
Sarajin acted in accordance with her movements and jumped at the flung beasts, sending them flying with nothing but the raw power off his blade.
Any beast that could endure the initial onslaught of the Rainbow Valkyrie pulled themselves together and jumped on top of her.
She knelt to the ground and hardened the aura around her shield, using it to propel herself out of their assault. She then flung the shield down where she was and let the aura burst, bowling the beasts over.
She then recalled the shield right as the Devil launched it's first attack from the chest mouth. A concentrated stream of blood hit her and kept applying pressure against her resistance until she was down on the ground, her heels dragging up trenches of dirt.
The blood droplets splashed over her protection and sizzled upon her flesh. The paint was worn off bits of her shield.
She lowered her shield and glared at the foul monster before jumping straight at it, spearing it through and emerging behind it.
There was a large crystal flash from it's chest, but it didn't seem to register this as damage.
She paused and took a moment to examine the beast's body with her heightened senses, and what she found was a maelstrom of wailing, screeching wisps consuming where the aura should be.
The tail became erect and the head fired off a stream of purple and black poisoned frogs her way.
With a series of flips and twirls she danced around them in the air before getting out of the beast's area and plummeting back to the ground, where she stood perfectly aligned with her husband's back.
The two attacked the horde in different directions simultaneously and then swapped positions to keep the momentum of their attacks going.
"The head on the neck spews acidic blood, the tail spews poisonous frogs." She said.
"Poison frogs?" Sarajin grit his teeth and looked up to see those gangly amphibians were raining off the sides of the Devil.
Sarajin diverted focus from the horde to stab his sword out and smite the frogs with a roaring bolt of lightning. A Rot Walker bit into his leg and he kicked it off, then a fog of poisonous mist fell towards them from the frog's remain.
Auris slid up against his back and forced him to bend forward so she could get her shield up to act as an umbrella. And this let Sarajin create a gale blast that burst out around the edges to push the mist away.
They then resumed standing proper and cut through the surrounding horde, noticing that the Devil continued to fly away.
Sarajin grit his teeth and remarked, "Can I leave them to you?"
"Stall it as best you can, Sarajin!" Auris said as she confidently cut a swathe through dozens of beasts set before her.
Sarajin nodded and then leaped through all the hordes wild flailing.
He flew close to the beast's underside and started slicing away until he reached the chest. He then made an evaside roll to the right to avoid acidic blood vomited his way.
He then whipped right back and slashed at the hanging maw three times in quick succession.
"No good..." The beast's hide was undamaged.
He immediately jumped to using the Light Conduit Form. The element itself was useless, but at least the power would make a difference...
Maybe...?
The moment he activated that form he was putting a timer on the battle.
"Not yet." He just needed to stay back and observe.
Pulling away sold just how titanic the nightmare was, with a single head dwarfing most humans.
He's stared in the face of death countless times, and it's taken many shapes and sizes.
But he could never surpass this feeling right now, the reminder that some nightmares will never go away.
As the beast rattled with vomit laced roars, Sarajin heard sounds mixing between the present and the past, making him struggle to want to attack.
But strike he must, for giving an inch now would let the Devil wreck untold havoc to all the Tribes.
There were too many options close by for it to pluck off. Canofloe and Cryofloe had finally gotten freedom from endless conflict. Tanglefae was flourishing like never before.
Sarajin ripped up a small island worth of rock from the ground and crashed it into the beast's body. The scattering boulders decayed to a rotting mist upon it's body, and it's main heads pierced through it, the wings casting it off with a disruptive, storm-like flap.
Sarajin was forced away and then shoved forward, impaling his blade beneath the main head and slicing down until at the gut, where he rolled off away from the blood vomit.
His spiral descent positioned him under the wings, where he gathered his strength to strike the decaying fibers with a projectile.
Aura filled his blade thanks to Auris, creating a bright, translucent slash that merely flinched the nerves.
The Devil shoved him downward with another flap of it's wings and he decided to drop to the ground and rejoin his wife in fending off the horde.
The numbers had been thinned but it felt like new beasts were running in to replace them.
He locked his arm around one of hers and then she hopped, where he swung her around to slice in a circular motion. He then let go and send her flying over the top of the horde.
She ran atop them and sliced them down to clear a path for his escape, then leaped off the end and slashed the Devil's underside with a crescent backwards flip.
The energy lingered and released a shattering glass noise once she landed on the other side.
She flipped around, dug her heels in, and leaped to attack the same spot.
Sarajin matched her advances and they slashed together, splitting open the Devil's insides and making excess rot spill out.
The Devil lost altitude briefly and then let out a series of roars, it's wound sealing right back up.
It then deposited more frogs from it's tail with the leg strength in them to leap straight to the two warriors in a single bound.
But their positions were fortuitous, as Auris didn't have to care about the bites and scratches of the Rot Walkers while backing up to avoid the poison mist from the frogs she cuts down.
Sarajin sliced through his swarm with a single wind blade and then left Auris in good faith that she could hold out.
The Devil kept moving without any consideration for what was beneath it. It was the ultimate force of nature, and despite their best efforts so far they haven't been able to make it yield an inch.
Sarajin was grabbing hold of his blade as more flashes of nightmares past were tempting him to fight harder.
Auris roared out through her conflict, "It's still too soon! We have yet to see all it's capable of!"
She spoke what he believed, but his body was starting to betray his caution.
He took deeper breaths, fighting to ignore the cold sweat coming off his brows.
He bombarded the Devil's back with a line of lightning from the sky while jumping up to slash the underside of the wings with all his strength.
He then tried attacking the wing from above so fast that any damage, however miniscule, wouldn't have a chance to heal.
The moldy sinew broke then snapped back together.
He was quickly getting frustrated, which was a toxic brew when mixed with his fear.
What did it matter if they could hold off the horde when the one leading it was unstoppable?
But if he let himself believe that fully, then all the Tribes were doomed. All the hard work him and his wife and all their friends put would be for nothing.
It was a quick reaction, faster than a thought could be process, but before Auris could shout in response to his rising power Sarajin activated the Light Conduit Form.
And finally, the Devil reacted differently to this blazing, blinding light radiating out from it's side.
The skies shivered as the bleeding effect came to a sudden halt. The Devil's many maws roared in unison as a mutated aura of black, brown and grimy green rose around it's decaying flesh.
Sarajin wasted no time gathering as much strength and speed as he could to zip around the beast and slash into it.
The first visible scars formed across it's body faster than it could heal itself. It continued to move forward, it's aura rising larger until it formed the shape of a skull with it's hung wings shaped like it's eyes and the body like a snout and mouth.
It then set the aura to burst, shredding through the air around it. When the effect snagged Sarajin, it held him there to be bombarded by cuts and then deliver a resounding, thunderous punch that sent him a mile in front of the beast.
The broken sky bled fresh rot into the ground, giving birth to new Rot Walkers that barred Auris' attempt to catch up with him.
Sarajin slammed his sword into the ground and fissured much of the stone before he had a chance to stand.
The Devil vomited blood all the way towards him in an instant and he cut it down with both hands, the acidic properties splashing around to burn into his armor.
When the next attack was vomited out he lunged forward, taking the shape of an arrow of light to pierce through.
He moved so blistering fast that he couldn't hear his own roar blitzing his eardrums, and at the end of his flight he grabbed hold of his blade in both hands and dug it into the center of the Devil's flesh.
The impact could be heard from miles out, as this immeasurible power faced the unstoppable force...and MADE it stop.
The Devil roared viciously in resistance as Sarajin burned like a pure white comet, gritting his teeth through every muscle throbbing in pain to try and cut through.
The Devil craned it's head back and went silent as a loud, visceral sound split through it horizontally.
Sarajin went crashing and tumbling across the ground, creating multiple large craters in the process, but the Devil fell with him now split in twine.
Sarajin stabbed his sword into the ground but lost his grip and continued tumbling a little more. When he called his sword back to try again, he finally stopped.
He panted and stood triumphantly as the Devil's top half slid towards the ground.
"D-Did I...?" A brief glimmer of hope shone in his eyes, before despair emerged from the beast's body in multiple rotting strands, quickly pulling the beast's halves back together.
His heart sank as he watched the Devil stab it's bones into the ground and propel back into the air moving exactly the same as it had before.
What was he thinking?
It didn't matter how strong he had grown physically and mentally since that day.
Some things are simply beyond the reach of power.
But what saved this time spent from irrelevancy was that despite how much his heart shook in frustration and fear, he chose to keep fighting.
A less mature version of him would have cowered on the ground.
He walked past that shadow of himself and then picked up the pace regardless of how much his legs hurt. It didn't take long for him to catch up with his wife and blow past the Rot Walkers giving her trouble.
She bit her lower lip and wanted to chide him for his recklessness. He gazed at her past the side of his face and gave a sincere, "Sorry..."
Before telling her with his blade pointed up at the Devil, "There has to be some way to at least make it retreat."
Auris turned around and cut down more of the horde while telling him in a mild tone of concern, "Will we have enough time now?"
Sarajin reached for her shoulder and told her in confidence, "We will MAKE time."
She glanced over her shoulder and nodded, "Very well."
They then strode a couple steps forward, casually cutting down the Rot Walkers that jumped them. She raised her shield hand to brush her hair away from her eyes, "I will attack the left side, you go for the right. We should avoid attacking from the front."
Sarajin tossed a glance at her to ask, "And behind us?"
Auris bumped her shield backwards and summoned a massive wall of aura that the flood of Rot Walkers melded together into trying to get to them, "Lets not worry about them for the moment."
The two linked their thoughts with one more nod and then grabbed hold of their sword and began their next strike.
Auris targeted one of the dangling heads and used her Drive to spear through it. It rattled around but showed no visible damage. She then landed on an aura wall and poised herself towards the head for a second strike.
Suddenly the vision in her left eye was consumed in pitch black, owing to the gaze of the black skull beneath the wing.
Then it rip its jaw open to let out a scream only she could hear, tearing apart her eardrum and causing internal bleeding in her head.
She smirked through the pain and then lunged at her initial target, stabbing through the sinew.
She continued to bounce back and forth, her body healing any damage the black skull inflicted. But she noticed something odd midway through her assault.
"It's taking longer to recover..." Was this an effect of the head she was attacking, or something else entirely?
She was certain her attacks were damaging the skull with how it's strange aura reacted, but perhaps it was wiser to retreat to give her body more time to heal.
For how much she panicked over Sarajin's reckless assault, it did force the Devil to restart quite a ways back, and every second bought was as precious as every life saved by it.
From the ground she could still attack by slicing her sword along the ground to create a line of aura that eventually rose to spear the Devil from below.
Sarajin focused his attacks on the wing, only now realizing that this is what he should have been trying from the start.
But now he could strike with even more confidence knowing that his blade was capable of tearing into the rotted flesh.
It was unnerving to not know what the two heads on this side were able to do, and made his blade hesitate for precious few milliseconds at a time.
After cutting away for a while as his wife attacked from below, he was able to deliver a powerful rending slice to the connective tissue on the wing that split it in twine.
This tilted the beast's flight and sent it on a collision course with the ground, with it's rotting nerves scrambling to stitch the wing back on.
In the meanwhile it's chest face vomited blood to keep him on edge. Quick pauses to reposition himself proved effective in letting him strike in and then back out without taking hits.
His next powerful slash was disrupted by the beast regaining verticality and ramming him in the gut with the ingrown horns on it's main head.
This sent him tumbling before the blood head.
Auris leaped between it and her husband and block the vomit with her shield, propelling them both hundreds of feet away.
Upon landing Sarajin bounced off beside her and they slid together, with him tossing a nod and her replying in kind.
He then gathered light into his blade and focused directly on the beast's bony chest cavity.
His eyes dillated as he swung, cleaving the thick blade of light straight into the ground until the tip could reach and inflict a deep scar into the beast's body.
Auris then jumped at the scar with her Drive, spearing it with a spiral flourish of aura coming out of her blade.
The two energies fused into a blinding cross and then shattered, taking out most of the bones protecting the blood head.
And it appeared this damage was much harder to recover from.
Auris then used the projectile blood to get launched back, but a slight delay caused her to suffer more acid to the skin than she liked.
Her jaw bone was exposed to her husband and he reached out subtly with concern, but she brushed her hand up and shook her head.
By the time it lowered, at least her flesh was growing back to cover the teeth.
The Devil still moved forward with only "light" roaring to show what the damage meant to it. The horde of Rot Walkers had learned to get around the wall and were flooding after the shadow of their king of kings.
Auris gave her sword a twirl and she marched in unison with Sarajin, "Striking together seems to damage the beast."
"Yeah, the Rot's ability to be immune to elements doesn't seem to matter when your aura's in mix," Sarajin then prepared to draw his sword out at the beast, "Lets keep-"
He then felt a clutch around his heart and dropped one knee forward.
Auris' broke into concern and shouted, "Sarajin!"
He dropped out of his Light Conduit Form completely exhausted, panting heavier than he ever had in this state of vulnerability.
It was there, with the light from the Wellspring no longer blurring his aura with radiance, that Auris could see through to his core and how in disarray it was.
The intense fear he felt had an adverse affect on his control over Light, and thus, burnt through his time limit.
There was little time to manage the state of his body with the Devil breathing over their heads. She positioned herself in front of him, locking her heels deep into the ground, and then swung at the blood vomitted her way.
The Rot Walker horde swarmed upon her and she was forced to attack them relentlessly, but shielding her husband limited the range of her attacks.
She grit her teeth with ferocity as for every Rot Walker she cast aside, more were pushing in closer.
This was the price to pay for standing against the Devil. Eventually...it's sins become too oppressive for even the bravest soul to stand against.
The Rot Walkers' gargling roars filled Auris' ears as they fell upon her...
Only for a series of blades to rain down from the skies and pin the beasts to the ground.
Then, with a mighty roar, Ezekiel Gaia ran up and swung his hammer to clear the beasts out to the right of her, while Cecilia thrust her lance to force them away to the left of her using a spiral of ice.
Ezekiel then swung his weapon over his shoulder and the pair glanced back. Ezekiel grinned, "Sorry to keep ya waitin', Auris."
She was surprised but their presence was easily explainable, the blades not-so-much.
They pulled free from the ground and flew up to Nimus' back to form his wings. He then levitated overhead, while Ezekiel slanted his brows at him and grumbled, "As ya can see, we got some unwanted back-up..."
Nimus gestured out with a chuckle, "Excuse me, I think I was the one who told you to get your asses over here?"
He then casually closed his eyes and snapped his fingers, swinging the blade wings at the Rot Walkers that lunged up at him.
He then opened his eyes and remarked, "Oh, but we didn't come alone."
Turning to face the Devil, the small group watched as Solaris was seen jumping straight at the beast without caution, pleased to test his mettle against the greatest fear this planet had ever known.
"EAT THE MIGHT OF THE SUN, DEVIL!" He slashed straight down the center of the beast's neck with enough force to halve it's verticality and leave a scar burst with solar flames.
"RAAAAH!" Vermilion soon followed up, a crimson streak in the sky that moved fast enough to stretch out her image until her kick impacted.
The Devil was forced out of the sky set ablaze, making its roar turn into shrieks until a flap of it's wings forced the flames off.
As it healed it's molten flesh, the tail flicked a swarm of frogs over it's head to go after the fiery warriors.
Solaris hauled his sword behind his back and scoffed at the side of his master, "Pffft, is this a joke?"
Vermilion's eye widened, "Just more ashes for the battlefield...!"
But they wouldn't get to have the joy of the hunt, as deep recesses of water appeared in the ground to catch the frogs.
One of them was frozen solid, the other saw the frogs being plunged into an abyss by deep pressure, and the final saw a massive growth of wood spearing the frogs and stabbing the beast's main head from below.
Vermilion swallowed her excitement and turned to her right to see Torren, Carolina, Brine and Carmine in their own group.
"Tsk...! Oh great, it's a gathering of wimps..." She bemoaned.
Auris looked up and saw Darnia descending from the sky as well, bringing with him their son, ready to fight.
"Mom! I'm here!" Zeno shouted, being let go to check up on his parents.
"Dad!" He shouted, hanging close to his shoulder.
He was too exhausted to even say a word, or look him in the eyes.
Nimus had an observation about what was going on and relayed it to the group gathered here in his usual carefree tone, "Sarajin's soul is too shaken up to help his body stabilize. You need to get him away from here and help him recover, princess."
Seeing all these people gathered here and fighting against the Devil and it's horde made her cry out in disagreement, "No! Sarajin and I together are the only ones who can even wound the beast!"
Part of the horde of Rot Walkers split off in response to her worries, only for their way to be barred by the shield of the mighty Stonestein, who calmly explained to her, "That is why your survival is important."
Nimus whipped his hand out and chuckled, "Relax, you see how many tough guys we got gathered here?"
Auris looked out and she saw so many people, and though she could not see them, she sensed that even the likes of Pitori and Adderbolt were waiting off in the distance for their chance to help out.
There were only two absences that mattered to her, and of them, it grated her the most that even NOW her father chooses to cower...
Nimus grabbed hold of his helm and tilted it to cover his eyes, "Right now, we can at least fight for our planet. But victory means nothing if our little cotton puff is blown away."
He then gave her a knowing look and whispered, "You know what you have to do, right?"
Auris nodded without hesitation, then grabbed her husband and picked her up onto her shoulder. She then looked to Darnia and pleaded to him, "Do everything you can to hold out...father."
A smile grew on the old man's face, and with a humble bow he drew his scythe out and brandished it at the Devil.
As Auris took off with his son in tow, Darnia marched alongside this small group, roaring in defiance of the Devil and its horde, "Today, we take this nightmare's heads...!"
Every fighter gathered here lined up in a row standing before their enemy, a united wall more powerful than anything the Devil had been forced to overcome before.
As it rose back into the sky, Ezekiel punched his fist into his hand and cracked his neck, "Never thought I'd be allying myself with anymore of ya Sages."
Vermilion scoffed, "Feh, just stay out of my way...!"
Brine held Torren's hand and looked her in the eyes, "Ya nervous?"
Torren nodded, "But with you, I feel strong."
They smiled against the danger before them, with Carolina fluttering her wings in relief behind them.
Carmine had to deal with the shivering of Ividae's vine on his shoulder, and in the last free time he had left to pet it he told his friend, "We will make it through this."
But the vine had more than one reason to act this way, as one more figure snuck into the battlefield...Glade.
Carmine slowly turned to face him, the man eyeballing him back with a collected focus.
After a brief staredown, the two parted looks and stared at the beast, Glade drawing the tips of his sickles out past his sleeves.
"I do not intend to stay long." He remarked.
"Whatever you're plotting here, I will stop you afterwards." Carmine vowed, before raising his hand towards the Devil, eyes brimming with determination.
"Hmph..." Uttered Glade, dripping poison onto his blades.
The burden of sin may be impossible for one to bear.
But together, these brave souls would shoulder this burden, for the sake of fulfilling their individual ideals.
Paradise...was not yet lost.
Next Time: The Devil's Motives