A/N: Chapter 11, comin' right up! Abyssion's been disposed of by the combined power of Lloyd and Sheena (with a handy assist from Kratos) and everything looks to be back to normal, right? Wrong! Abyssion may be "toast" as Sheena so eloquently put it, but the weapons and the book are just fine. What's in store for our heroes now?

Now for review comments:

VeRius, not VeLius: Oops. I'll keep that in mind.

Falcon's Crest: Don't know much about the PS2 "remake". Sorry.

Kratos' wound: Don't worry. It was to the heart area and not the heart itself. He'll be ok.

Another Sheloyd scene: Yup, and I hope to make it even more mushy than last time.

With that, enjoy the new chapter!

-

Chapter 11: Armageddon

The Devil Arms slowly lifted into the air along with the Necronomicron. The soft light initially emanating from these objects gradually grew in luminescence until it caught the attention of the trio of heroes.

"Eh? What the heck is going on?" asked Lloyd.

Sheena shook her head, obviously concerned about this sudden turn of events. "The Devil Arms? But we destroyed Abyssion! How can they still be active?"

Kratos immediately took his hand out of his pocket and dashed towards the book and the weapons. "No! We must destroy the weapons befo-"

A bright flash illuminated the entire room. Once the blinding light subsided, a white demon standing nearly nine feet tall loomed over the three heroes, taking the place where weapons and book once were. "Before anything else bad happens?" it bellowed. A roar of laughter erupted from the powerful looking demon as it threw its arms outward. "Too late! You had your chance, and now you shall pay for your carelessness!"

Lloyd and Sheena took a few steps back as Kratos froze in his tracks. "Impossible…" Kratos whispered. "We defeated Abyssion! How can you still be standing before us, and in such a powerful form?"

"Foolish angel," the demon said. "Abyssion was merely a catalyst. You could say that he was "warming up" the Devil Arms for me. Once he was done with you insects, I was simply going to… "take over" and go about my merry way. As it turns out, you actually managed to beat him with that weakling Verius, but he did manage to reawaken enough power with the Devil Arms for me to come back with."

Stronger than Abyssion? Was that even possible? The though ran through Sheena's mind but, if it were true, how could they ever hope to defeat this thing, whatever it was. "Who… who are you?" she asked in a low, fear-struck tone.

The great demon smirked and folded his arms. "Heh. I thought it was rather obvious, but I guess my legend has been lost since my last appearance so many millennia ago. Hell, I'm from before even that angel's time!"

Kratos said nothing in response as the demon continued. "I am Nebilim, lord of the devils and of Niflheim, a world of fantastic horror created with my own powers. It has long been sealed away in an ancient book by a very powerful Exsphere. From what I understand, those meddlesome elves had it last, but I hear that they lost their ancient book and some foolish scholar picked it up. Heh… should be easy to find."

Lloyd leaned over to Sheena and whispered, "Ancient book? I wonder if he's talking about that weird book we saw in Sybak about a year ago."

Nebilim gazed at the young couple and his smile widened. "I heard that, and I thank you for narrowing down my search."

Kratos wheeled around to face Lloyd and Sheena and yelled, "Lloyd!"

Lloyd covered his mouth, despite knowing that it was too late. "Oops."

"Heh. Don't worry kid. All you did was save me a mere few minutes of my time. Don't feel so bad." Nebilim roared with laughter, causing both Sheena and Lloyd to cringe in fear.

Kratos ignored the pain he was feeling from his wound from earlier and drew his blade. "We have to destroy him now! The weapons were not fully charged when he came into existence, so there's a chance that he may be weaker than Abyssion now!" He extended his wings and flew at Nebilim with great speed, who didn't even flinch as he watched the angel rush him.

"Well done angel…" said Nebilim as Kratos swung his blade full-force at him. However, before the blow could connect, Nebilim disappeared. The heroes looked all-around them only to find that Nebilim was now standing at the bottom of the stairs leading upward.

Nebilim spoke again. "But it matters not. It is true that, for the moment, I am weaker than that fool Abyssion was. However, once Niflheim becomes manifest upon Symphonia, Abyssion will be remembered as nothing more than a sickly rodent when compared to me. It is for this reason that I shall fight you here. In a few minutes, I'll have all the time in the world to kill you. Farewell for now, imbeciles!" With an echoing laugh, his body turned into a ball of pure energy and moved at near-impossible speeds as it made its way up the stairs and out of the temple.

Not one of the heroes spoke for a moment. They knew that they should do something but didn't… they couldn't. What could they do? At the speed he was moving, they would never catch him and Sybak was a long way off from where they were. Even if they used the Rheiards, they wouldn't make it in time. One course of action became apparent to Kratos: if they couldn't prevent what was going to happen from happening, the best that they could do was try to survive.

"Come on!" yelled Kratos as he ran upstairs. "We have to get out of here, now!"

Despite being confused with what all was going on, Sheena and Lloyd offered no argument as they silently but rapidly followed Kratos.

-

Quick Jump: Sybak

In the middle of what could be considered the town square, a strange ball of dark light seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Several curious souls overcame their initial fear and confusion to get a better look at this anomaly.

"Wow!" exclaimed a young lady. "What is this?"

A young man standing close to her expressed his own theory. "Maybe it's a summon spirit!"

An older man wearing a long white coat and thick glasses scratched his bushy chin and pondered this. "If that's the case, then this must be Shadow. Observe the dark hues of the light. It could be none other than he."

A flash of light flooded the square without warning and, once everyone could see again, they were horrified to find out that, in the light's place, was an incredibly powerful looking demon. The students and professors could do naught but stare in wonder and fear at this being. This, sadly enough, was to be short-lived.

Nebilim smirked. "You're wrong, boys and girls. Summon Spirits are generally rational beings." His body glowed softly with a dark aura as he extended his arms to either side of himself. "I, however, am not."

Before anyone could react to what he had just said, all of the bystanders' bodies exploded internally, killing them instantly and spraying maddening amounts of gore everywhere. "Hmph. Humans..." mumbled the demon to himself as he closed his eyes and slowly spun around. As he did this, farther-off bystanders screamed in absolute horror as they watched their friends get killed in such a brutal manner and many fled in a panic as they did so.

After a moment, he completely stopped and opened his eyes. The faint aura exuded by the imprisoned world of Niflheim could be felt through the walls of the great library of Sybak. He smirked. "Gotcha." He walked towards the library, fully ready to unleash a new era of terror and strife upon the peaceful world of Symphonia.

-

Quick Jump: Temple of Darkness

The three heroes emerged from the entrance of the temple, breathing heavily as they did so. They had no clear idea of what they were doing other than trying to survive. Survive against what, though? Lloyd and Sheena only had a vague understanding of what was going on and, although he didn't much more than they did, he did seem to understand that they somehow had to get to safety.

"Dad! What are we supposed to do now?" asked Lloyd.

Before he could reply, a massive explosion could be seen in the direction of Sybak. Kratos could only assume the worst.

"No!" he cried. "He's already found the book!"

Sheena shivered in fear as she clung to Lloyd. "W-what does this mean?"

Cold beads of sweat dripped down Kratos' face. Whatever it meant, it seemed as if they were about to find out, much to his own dismay. "I… I don't know."

Once the explosion died down, the sky slowly lost its own hues of blue and changed to a crimson hue of red. Several large wisps of white, black, and red energy flew skyward from the source of the explosion and hideous sounds could be heard echoing across the horizon. The screams, howls, and maniacal fits of laughter filled the hearts of the party with immeasurable amounts of dread.

Kratos swallowed a very large lump in his throat. "This… must be Niflheim- ah!" He fell to his knees and clutched the fairly deep wound near his heart. From it pulsated a sickly green and black aura. "The Devil Arms… their effects still linger." He fell over on his side and moaned in pain.

"Da-augh!" Lloyd fell over as well as the several wounds he had suffered from the Devil Arms glowed with the same energy that Kratos' did. All he could do was roll around in agony as the light emanating from the wounds grew and grew.

"Lloyd! Kratos!" She immediately realized that she had been wounded by one of the Devil Arms when she received that large and very nasty bruise in the stomach caused by Disaster. Her stomach began to ache tremendously and it took everything she had just remain upright. She knew that it was no good though. Soon, she would succumb to the dark energies that now plagued Lloyd and Kratos. Her vision now blurring, she looked off in the distance and saw what appeared to be large half-globes of energy emanating from where the temples were supposed to be.

"Wh-… what's going on?" she whispered as she stumbled back and forth. She finally fell to her knees with tears of pain and sadness streaming down her face. "Is this it? Have we really lost?" She threw her arms upward and cried, "Verius! Please, help us!" She then fell over and blacked out, unable to bear the pain any longer.

-

Lloyd slowly opened his eyes and, much to his surprise, found that he was in a relatively small but very comfortable room that looked very familiar to him. "Where am I? Was it all just a dream?" he wondered to himself. He blinked a few times and began to slowly tilt his head as he examined the room. He was even more surprised when he saw Zelos sitting silently in a chair next to the bed. This caused him to sit up immediately and say, "Zelos! What are you doing here?"

Zelos looked up from his thoughts and faced Lloyd. "Lloyd! So you're ok. That's good to know. We were getting a worried that you'd never wake up."

Although pleased to see Zelos, a great amount of fear struck him as he remembered his companions. "Sheena! Where is she! Please tell me she's alright Zelos!"

Zelos put his good arm on Lloyd's quivering shoulder and said, "Relax bud, she's okay. She's upstairs sleeping right now. Colette's watching over her."

Lloyd tilted his head. "Colette's here too?"

Zelos nodded. "Of course. This is her house after-all."

"So we're in Iselia…but how did we get here?" Lloyd wondered to himself. He shook his head and asked, "Dad! Where's Kratos?"

"He's fine. He's been up and about for a few days now. He's pretty tough, it seems." Zelos took his hand off of Lloyd's shoulder.

Lloyd took a moment to put all of this together. He was glad to hear that, not only were they all okay, but they were also in Iselia. One question now remained. "Zelos… what happened? Urk…" Lloyd grouped one of his still healing wounds and laid back down.

"Take it easy," said Zelos. "You got the worst beating out of the three of you. You're still gonna need some rest. Get some more sleep, and I'll tell you later."

Lloyd wanted to protest but just couldn't. He was too hurt… too tired. Without saying another word, he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

-

"Lloyd!" screamed Sheena as she sat up in her bed, her face dripping with cold beads of sweat.

Colette turned to her and gave her trademark heart-warming smile. "Sheena! Thank goodness you're ok! We were so worried about you! And don't worry; Lloyd's okay. He's sleeping downstairs."

Sheena took a few deep breaths. It was comforting to see that Colette was here and that Lloyd was okay but she wondered where she was. Also, where was Kratos? What happened to them?

"Colette, is Kratos okay too? And where are we?" she asked.

Colette stood up and walked over to a small table upon which a tea pot and two small cups rested. "He's okay too. He recovered from his wounds really quickly. He's very strong. Oh, and you're in my house in Iselia."

"Iselia?" said Sheena. "How did we get here?"

Colette shrugged as she brought a cup of warm tea to Sheena. "I'm not sure. One of the priests of Verius' Temple said that he found all three of you lying next to the altar. All of you had suffered terrible wounds from… something, we didn't know what. We brought you to my house and, well, tried to fix you up."

Sheena closed her eyes and lowered her head. "Thank you Verius. You've saved us once again."

Colette leaned in a bit closer. "Hmm? Did you say something Sheena?"

Sheena quickly shook her head. "Oh, uh, nothing. Just talking to myself." She opened her eyes and looked back at Colette. "Colette… what's going on? The things I saw before I blacked out, I… I… I had never been so scared in my life."

Colette leaned fully over and hugged Sheena. "Don't worry about that now. You need some rest. After you're better, you can tell us your story and we can tell you what we know. Okay?"

Sheena nodded slowly and sipped on her tea. "I'm feeling much better than before, but I guess I could use some more sleep."

Colette nodded. "It's getting late. I'll leave you be and check up on Kratos. He sure is stubborn." She giggled.

Sheena couldn't help but smile. "Yeah… he sure is."

Colette walked toward the door and turned back once more. "Good night Sheena! I hope you feel better tomorrow morning!" She turned off the lights and closed the door.

Feeling a bit restless, Sheena turned on a very dim lamp and walked over to a nearby mirror. She wanted to see how bad the bruise on her stomach was. Just by touching it, she could ell that it had already healed quite significantly. She took off her large ribbon and vest-like kimono and examined her stomach in front of the mirror.

"Huh… could be worse," she said as she poked the bruise. She winced slightly. "A lot worse…"

The room was filled with a very dim glow as she examined the bruise. She looked up slowly and saw that something on her was the source of the light. When she discovered the source, she screamed loudly and fell to the ground.

The light quickly died as Colette ran back into the room and turned on a light only to find a heavily breathing Sheena lying on the floor. "Sheena, are you ok? I thought I heard a scream."

Sheena smiled nervously. "A-ah, I'm sorry. I thought I saw a mouse."

Colette giggled. "I didn't know you were afraid of mice, Sheena. That's pretty funny."

Sheena laughed back. "Yeah, it is, isn't it?"

Colette turned the light off once more and bid Sheena a good-night once more as she closed the door.

Sheena stood back up and walked back to the mirror. The glow returned and filled Sheena with great confusion. "How did this happen to me? I didn't ever… I wonder if…"

-

What has happened to the world? Has Niflheim really become manifest upon the world? And what's wrong with Sheena? All this and more will be answered in the next chapter, sp please keep reading and reviewing! Also, if I spelled Nebilim or Niflheim wrong, please correct me.