"Why should I waste my time on you?" A cloaked man asked the shivering child before him. "Who will care if you go missing, if you never emerge from the Undercity? You wouldn't be the first."
"No one." The child breathed out in fear. "Please. I have nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do. I-I need this."
Leaning down over the child, the man started chuckling. "Do I look like I care what you need, shitstain? I'll tell you what, I'm in a forgiving mood. If you start running right now, I won't come after you. If you don't, I'll pull your arms apart until they tear off. Now scram!"
The shivering child looked over his shoulder back the way he'd come from. It was dark; so dark that he could barely see the outline of the walls. Swallowing his fear, the child made his choice. He turned back to the man and stared defiantly up at him, spitting on the man's boots.
The man's brows creased in fury as he reared his arm back to strike. "Why you little-"
A shadow fell upon the man, swallowing him whole. The child reflexively jumped back, searching the darkness for any sign of the man or what had taken him.
"Yes, you will do well."
The child spun around and found himself staring up at a dark-skinned woman in a black cloak. Her eyes were a piercing red; her smile wide as she looked down at the boy before her, revealing two sharpened fangs at the corner of her mouth.
The woman knelt down before the boy and held out her arm. "Come, child. Come with me and be reborn."
Once more, the boy swallowed his fear. He reached out and took the woman's hand.
X
"Hang on!" I called over my shoulder. Someone was knocking on my door at a very inopportune time.
Being careful not to drop the extremely volatile, glowing blue stone held between my tweezers, I set the gem in the silver housing I'd prepared before starting my work on the stone. Exhaling in relief, I waved my hand over the housing, activating the latent magic woven into its frame and causing it to seal over the stone.
Three months of toil finally worth it. This thing had nearly given me a hernia but the final product was worth it.
Laying on my desk before me was a gleaming, mithril bracer. Bands of silver wrapped around the armor piece in a web-like pattern, coming together right behind where the wearer's wrist would be. The web came together around the housing that now secured the gem that I'd spent over a week forcing enchantments into. I'd honestly not expected to be able to accomplish this, but I did it.
Smiling in victory, I slid the silver bracer over my right forearm. My smile grew even wider as I felt the silver bands constrict around my arm, locking the bracer into place. This thing was so worth the effort, and I hadn't even used it yet.
"Alright. Come on in." I called over my shoulder, finally remembering there was someone there.
The door creaked open as Azazel popped his head in. "Hey, kid. I was just…" he trailed off as his eyes fell to my arm. "You finished it!" he screamed in excitement as he suddenly appeared right next to me. I barely even noticed him move.
Azazel was meticulously lifting my arm and holding it at various angles to look at my creation. A slew of spell circles appeared as he cast various appraising magics to ascertain just what I'd managed to make here.
"Hello, Azazel. It's good to see you, too. I'm doing well. Thanks for asking." I said dryly as my arm was tugged every which way.
"Kid, this is amazing." Azazel said, completely ignoring my droning. "How the hell did you manage to get the duplication enchantment to set?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the parts of the blue gem visible from within its housing.
"A shitload of energy." I said plainly. "I had to drain a few specters to even prime the thing, let alone actually setting it."
Azazel raised an impressed eyebrow at me. "You brute forced it? Not bad, but how do you know it will hold?"
"I don't have the finesse you do." I said with a shrug as I pulled the bracer away from him to point out the silver lines weaving away from the gem's housing. "It will hold because these branches make a closed loop. They will feed any spent energy back into the housing."
Azazel's focus immediately shifted to the silver and a whole host of new analysis magic sparked around his fingers. "Can I borrow this?" he said, distractedly. "I think this may help with something I've been stuck on for decades." I'd spent enough time around Azazel by now to know when the gears in his head were turning, and he had that look about him.
So much for testing my new toy. Channeling a small amount of magic into the gauntlet to make it release my arm, I slid it off and held it up to him. "I haven't tested it yet, so take everything you see here with a grain of salt."
"Sure, sure." Azazel said dismissively as he started out of my workshop with his eyes trained on the bracer. "Will do. Thanks, Xarion."
"Um, Azazel?" I stopped him as he was closing the door behind him. "Didn't you come here for a reason?"
Azazel froze in the doorway, and turned around with a timid smile on his face. He looked like a kid that just got caught stealing from the cookie jar. "Oops. Sorry, I kinda got distracted."
"I noticed." I said in amusement. "Now what's up?"
"I've got a job for you. Come on, I'll explain on the way." He waved me after him and left, leaving the door open behind him.
Pulling off my apron, gloves and goggles, I quickly went through the motions of stowing all my equipment.
When I first arrived here a little over a year ago, I hadn't expected Azazel to give me this much rope. Not only did he give me my own lab with all the equipment and materials I could ask for, but he wasn't kidding about the training.
I had been through some pretty serious training even before I got sucked into this hellish universe by methods beyond my understanding, but Azazel kicked everything up to eleven. When he asked how I wanted to do things, I'd honestly told him I wanted him to pull out all the stops, and he had.
My spell library had nearly doubled in size. I was now nearing good with a blade as opposed to just being competent. And every so often he'd let me sit in on his projects while he was working. Every experience was making me more capable, but I still had a ways to go. I was in the universe of Highschool DXD afterall.
Crazy, right? How did I end up in a fictional boob anime? Probably the same way I wound up in that first hellscape. Not that I'm really complaining, though. I've had opportunities I never would have otherwise, and it wasn't like people would miss me.
Though I did need to become strong enough that a strong breeze wouldn't kill me. Both this world and the one I was reborn into had power scaling that went from base-line human to omni deity bent on the destruction of all of creation. As I was currently, I would have trouble facing a lot of street-level opponents, let alone universe breakers. I had a lot of ground to cover.
Following Azazel into the hall, I was, not for the first time, assaulted by the sheer opulence of everything. The floor was lined with an elegant red carpet with gold trim. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling every four or so feet to provide illumination. And the walls were made from pure marble. If you asked me, it was a bit of a waste, but Azazel loved it and it was his base, so I kept my mouth shut.
"So what's this job?" I said to Azazel in an attempt to get him to pull his eyes away from my bracer. The bracer that I still hadn't got a chance to test. I wasn't bitter about that or anything.
Azazel's attention snapped back to me. "Ahem. So you know that guy I was telling you about? The one I wanted to see if you could work with?"
"Azazel, you do know that the last time you tried to set me up with a teammate he ran away screaming, right?" That was honestly kind of funny. The magician Azazel brought in hadn't been informed that I was a necromancer so he shrieked like a three year old girl when I pulled an intangible specter out of the ground. I hadn't seen him since.
"This guy is more your style. It's a question of whether or not he'll be willing to socialise."
"So your solution to my antisocialness is to set me up with someone else who doesn't like talking to people?"
"Yep!" Azazel said, a proud smile on his face.
I just let out a long sigh. The sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could get back to work. Wait, Azazel still had my bracer. What was I supposed to do instead? Actually, that was an easy question. Training it was.
Azazel led me through a door into one of the many sitting rooms in this base. There was already someone there waiting for us.
Standing with his back to us and his hands in his pockets was a young man. He had hair as silver as the bracer Azazel was still drooling over and wore a dark grey coat over a plain pair of jeans. He seemed familiar.
"Vali, Xarion. Xarion, this is Vali." Azazel hastily introduced us as he pulled a notebook out of nowhere and started scribbling notes, his eyes whipping back and forth between my bracer and the page before him.
The teenager, Vali, turned around and gave me a once over, appraising me.
I returned the look as I recalled why I felt like I knew him. Because I did; in a certain manner of speaking anyway. This was Vali Lucifer. Descendant of Lucifer and wielder of Divine Dividing. Growing up in a completely separate world before arriving in this one didn't do my foreknowledge any favors, especially considering the hell I'd been put through in said world, but I still remembered most of the major events and players, and he was definitely one of them.
"You're the necromancer." Vali said. It was more an observation than a question, and I couldn't determine if he saw that as a good or bad thing.
"Among other things." Why did people always lead with that? I was barely able to call myself mid-tier on the necromancy scale I was familiar with. "I've heard about you, too. I thought you worked alone." Everything I'd heard about Vali from the few weekly interactions I had with Grigori members other than Azazel has led me to believe Vali is only set on high priority missions that needed an overwhelming show of force. With that in mind….
I turned to face Azazel who was now sitting on a velvet couch still scribbling in his notebook. "If this job needs someone like Vali, then I'll only be in the way. I can't keep up with a Longinus wielder." Some people were too prideful to admit when they were over their heads. I was the exact opposite. It had been drilled into me that if you were out of your league, you run. Simple as that. Dying needlessly just resulted in a waste of resources.
"You won't have to. It's not that kind of job." Azazel waved me off. "I'm going to send you two to meet with some devils for negotiations."
"That is a horrible idea." I said instantly. "I have no diplomatic training at all. Granted, Vali might, but that begs the question why I even need to be there."
"Because I'm not going to send him alone. And because I'm showing you off." Azazel easily answered.
His words caught me off guard. "Care to explain why you'd want to show me off?"
"Done." Azazel snapped his notebook closed and tossed me back my bracer, his notebook disappearing to wherever it came from. "Thanks for that. I've got a good idea how to replicate what you did. Anyway, I want to show you off because it sends a message to anyone looking to start something that I have access to a neverending army as well as a skilled enchanter."
"Artificer." I corrected him for the hundredth time.
"Whatever. The point is you're scary. While undead can be dealt with fairly easily by the angels, the devils will need to go out of their way to create counters. And since they don't know how strong you are, they'll interpret me sending you as me saying that I can send undead dragons at them. There are a lot of devils trying to start the war back up. I'm hoping rubbing their faces in the fact that I have a necromancer and the White Dragon Emperor on my side will sufficiently cow them."
"Do you have any idea how much heat you're going to drop on me with this stunt?" I said. "I'm decent, but I'm not good enough to survive a specially trained devil hit squad. And you're severely overestimating my necromantic prowess."
Azazel reclined on the sofa, kicking his legs up on the coffee table and crossing his arms behind his head. "I think you're underestimating yourself, Xarion. You've yet to fight a devil. They're not as tough as they claim. And I have never met a necromancer, sane or otherwise, that could control half the horde you can. You're gonna be a star."
Actually, I had fought a devil. Or rather, run away from one; just not one of these ones. I was using that one as a gauge for this world's hellspawn, and if they were roughly equal, I didn't have so much as a prayer of winning a fight against one.
To the point of me being the best necromancer he'd met, that was just plain sad. How pathetic was this world's necromancy that a novice like me was in the upper echelons? Maybe that was why he was sending me. Because no one, himself included, knew what a fully realized necromancer could do.
I did know what one could accomplish, and I wanted to stay far away from any that had reached that pinnacle.
"What do you want me to negotiate?" Vali, apparently tired of the discussion, cut in.
"A few peerages have 'accidentally' wound up in our territory and harassed my people which really screwed some stuff up. If it were once or twice I wouldn't be able to say it was organized, but I have proof of seven different groups at various points in time. I need you to make sure this stops." Azazel said lazily. "Xarion will be there to back you up."
Vali's eyes narrowed as he inspected me once more.
Shrugging, I turned to face him. "You'll probably have to handle most of the talking, but I will back you up if you need it."
Seeming to find whatever he was looking for, Vali gave me a curt nod. "When do we leave?"
Azazel rolled his head back to look at a clock on the far wall. "You need to be there in fifteen minutes, so probably right now."
"You couldn't have given me enough time to, I don't know, change out of my crappy work clothes?" I said in irritation. I was still covered in silver dust and ash. I wasn't a cleanliness fanatic by any stretch of the imagination, but that didn't mean I wanted to walk around covered in ash.
"There's a bathroom across the hall with a change of clothes ready for you. Just hurry up." Azazel waved me away.
"You had time to set up a change of clothes and a bathroom but not to give me more than fifteen minutes notice?"
"Something like that." Azazel said with a mischievous glint in his eye.
With a sigh of exasperation, I left the room and entered the bathroom. I took a quick shower and pulled on the clothes Azazel set out, excuse me, that Azazel had one of his servants set out for me. When I looked at my reflection I couldn't help but groan. I looked like an angsty cosplay enthusiast.
Nearly the entire outfit was the same shadowy black as my hair. There was a cloak fastened by a skull pin that fell to just below my knees but opened to reveal the rest of my clothes; a heavy leather jerkin with silver accents and a pair of thick black pants. The black boots finished the ensemble.
I felt like a weeb.
Walking back into the sitting room, I fixed Azazel with a glare. "Please tell me that this was just one big joke to get me in this ridiculous getup."
"Hey!" Azazel yelled, affronted. "I worked hard to design that. It looks badass!"
"Azazel, this entire…. theme screams angsty evil overlord. I am not just a necromancer. As a matter of fact, it isn't even what I'm best at." I reasoned.
"Sure, but the devils don't know that." Azazel said. "Besides, the idea is to get them to see you as a variable capable of throwing monstrous undead at them. If you showed up looking like an enchanter no one would give a shit."
"Artificer." I automatically corrected him.
"Right. Regardless, I need you to really ham up the evil overlord vibe. Like as much as you can. You're good with illusions, so let me see what you got."
Holding in a sigh of frustration, I acquiesced - the man was paying for my meals after all. The least I could do was scare some literal devils from literal hell for him. This was going to go great.
Forcing everything else out of my mind, I started crafting an illusion to meet Azazel's expectations. My magic pulled the hood of the cloak up, and I melded the shadow of the cloak into my hair so it looked like it originated from me. Then I blacked out my eyes leaving two glowing, green pinpoints in a sea of black. The shadows then leaked out of my eyes so it looked like I was crying darkness. My skin took on a deathly pale tint as blackened, corrupted veins swelled from underneath my skin.
"There. Are you happy?" I asked as I spun around to give him a good look.
"Perfect." Azazel said victoriously. "Your demeanor is really killing the aesthetic though. How good of an actor are you?"
"Good enough." I croaked as I hunched over myself, using magic to distort my voice, giving it an otherworldly echo. As if a dozen other, far-off voices were speaking in time with me.
"That." Azazel pointed at me. "That right there. Keep that up and let Vali do the talking. That should scare 'em straight."
I turned to look at Vali. "If there's a camera waiting to take pictures of us when we arrive, you are my witness that cruel and unusual things shall happen to Azazel."
The stoic half-devil actually smirked. "Understood. Are you ready? Azazel gave me the location while you were cleaning up."
I nodded. "Let's go."
Vali walked up to me and a mandala expanded out from beneath his feet to envelop me. There was a flash of light and we were elsewhere.
"I need to figure out how to do that." I idly said to myself.
"It was devil teleportation. You are incapable of using it." Vali said matter-of-factly.
"Unfortunate." I said, truly starting to adopt my necromancer persona. The devils could have someone watching the area, so it was important to act as if they did. "The things I could accomplish with such an ability…"
Having gotten over the rapid shift of the teleportation, I took a look around the area.
We were in a stone courtyard surrounded on all sides by large, densely packed, four-story buildings. It was early morning wherever in the world Vali's teleportation placed us, so there was a large number of people moving through or simply milling around the area. A quick pulse of sensory magic told me that everyone with us presently was mundane; the devils had yet to arrive.
I pulled my hood further over my head and eyes to obscure my illusory appearance from the normals in the area and tucked my pale arms under the cloak. Looking around once more, I saw a fountain in the very center of the courtyard and started making my way over to it. I sat down on the edge of the fountain and watched the water.
"What are you doing?" Vali's voice asked from behind me. He did not sound accusatory, just curious.
"You cannot feel them, then? The souls trapped within the ripples?" I said aloud, while simultaneously reaching out with my mind magic to speak to him telepathically.
Ignore my verbal bloviating. I said in his mind. I sensed the devils. They're coming up behind you and I felt like playing up the insane necromancer vibes.
Vali, either rolling with my voice in his head or having been briefed on my myriad abilities, internally said, How many are there? How strong do they feel?
I can't get a good reading on strength without letting them know I'm prodding their power, but I can tell you there are three of them. Fifteen meters and closing. I said back.
Vali gave me a shallow nod, and turned to greet our guests while I reached a hand into the water to gently brush it back and forth. This whole pretending to be an evil, insane, maniac thing was actually kind of fun.
I heard footsteps close towards us, but I kept my body facing the fountain.
"You are the delegation sent by the fallen angels?" an authoritative female voice said.
"We are." Vali said simply. "To whom are we speaking?"
"I am Sona Sitri. This is my queen Tsubaki Shinra and my rook Tsubasa Yura. May I ask who we are addressing?"
This woman was very proper. Her name was also vaguely familiar, but if I didn't remember it she probably wasn't one of the main cast, or if she was she wasn't always in the thick of things. There was also the possibility that she was incredibly important and I'd just forgotten about her. I wouldn't put it past myself. Remembering random pieces of pointless fiction stopped mattering when you were constantly thrown into death games.
"I am Vali and this is Xarion. We were sent to ensure your organized attacks to stall our people's efforts ceased immediately." Vali cut right to the point. I was starting to like him.
I felt something in the ground far below us, and got a devilish idea. It took all my discipline to control my smile. Insane, evil necromancers didn't smile.
"Do you possess any proof to verify this absurd claim?" the same girl said, affronted. "If there is no-"
"Sh." I held up a hand to interrupt her as my voice echoed around the area. Slowly, I turned to face them, allowing them to see my face for the first time. The shock present in all of them, and the outright fear I could see in the blue haired girl's eyes were hilarious, but I stayed in character. "You're disrupting her."
I motioned upwards with my hand, and the spirit I felt below the courtyard rose up under my command.
The blue-haired girl gasped and took a frightened step back before one of her companions grabbed her arm to keep her in place, though I noticed her hand was shaking even as it held her compatriot in place.
"Hello, my sweet." I greeted the spirit before me. The spectral skin of her face was pulled taut against nonexistent bones as her jaw hung open in a silent, eternal scream. "What melodious music I shall make with you."
"Xarion, have your fun later. We are here on business." Vali said with steel, as if giving an order, but I could sense the amusement wafting off of him. My mental connection was still lingering in his mind.
I gave Vali a long, silent look before dismissing the spirit back into the ground. "Very well. Let us finish and be done with this." I turned my full attention to the girl in the lead. "You have slighted us. We demand compensation."
The girl audibly swallowed before schooling her expression. This was fun.
"You have no proof of these alleged misdeeds. Should you provide any we will-"
"You will recall any and all assaults on our people." Vali cut in. "We have been generous. None of our people have been killed, so we have yet to fully retaliate. Should another attack occur, we will not be so generous."
Turning to Vali with my head tilted, I said, "May I finally play with the corpses of the hellspawn?"
"Yes." Vali answered me, his eyes still locked on the devil across from us. "You will stop the attacks. Or we will stop them. That is the end of it. Xarion? We are done here." he turned and walked away from the devils without another word.
I moved to follow him, but paused. I was supposed to leave an impression right?
Answering my call, the spirit rose from the ground once more.
I gently brushed the hair out of her face, my fingers finding purchase on her incorporeal body. "Thank you for your sacrifice, darling." I dug my fingers into the specter's head eliciting an audible, pained shriek from the woman. Slowly, her visage faded away as I absorbed her strength.
This was more a shock and awe tactic than anything inherently useful. Draining spirits gave you a temporary mana pool to pull from, but if you didn't sever the connection you ended up legitimately looking like my illusory form; I had to pull inspiration from my appearance from somewhere afterall. I'd seen a few casters go down that road and it never led anywhere nice. There were very few instances where you could absorb power from the undead without negative consequences, and even fewer where doing so would give you a permanent boost that was actually worth it. Luckily, the devils obviously had no idea how pointless this was because even the leader had gone pale. Worth it.
When there was nothing left to drain, and after I sent a parting mental command to more hidden spirits, I walked after Vali, not sparing a parting glance towards the devils. They could deal with wiping the memories of any normals that noticed my little display. Their mental magic was laughably weak compared to what I could do, but they were able to accomplish that much.
The moment I was next to him, Vali's teleportation circle appeared and we vanished from the courtyard.
We reappeared in the same sitting room we left and I let all of my illusions drop. Turning to Vali, I said, "Too much?"
"Just enough." He walked from the room without another word.
Huh. I was pretty sure that was a compliment.
Looking around, I realized Azazel was nowhere to be seen. He was probably in his lab.
Exiting the sitting room, I made for Azazel's lab.
As I got closer to his door the sounds of him working grew louder and louder. Once at the door, I knocked twice. "Azazel? We're back from that political thing. You know I hate politics, right?"
The banging and shuffling of tools ceased and a moment later the door swung open revealing a grinning Fallen.
"Nice. How'd it go?"
Shrugging, I said, "Not too bad. They think I'm a demon; which coming from devils I'll take as a compliment. And Vali made it clear that anyone who screws with any more of our stuff won't be making it home. If that doesn't get them to back off, it at least gives us the ability to say they were warned."
"Nice. Is that everything?"
"Yep. Do you need anything else or can I go get started on a new project?"
Azazel reached out and grabbed me by the clasp of my cloak, tugging me into the room. "I need your help. I was going over my notes on the looped energy circuit but I couldn't…."
Looked like I wasn't going to be able to start up a new project. On the plus side, helping Azazel with Sacred Gear research! One of these days I'd crack how to make those things, and on that fortuitous day, I would celebrate.
X
Sona Sitri
As the Grigori's delegation teleported away, I felt a shaky hand touch my shoulder.
"Buchou?" Tsubasa said in a shaky voice. "What was that?"
"A necromancer." Tsubaki answered for me. Though she was doing a much better job of hiding it, I could still hear the slight tremor in her voice. It was a surprise I was able to stay as collected as I was after feeling that man tear apart a soul. That Tsubaki was this composed was just the most recent reminder that I had chosen my queen well.
"We need to report to the Satans." I said, trying to force my subordinate's to focus on something else. "They need to be informed of the details of this meeting as well as the presence of the necromancer."
When my sister had sent me on this mission, I was thankful. By sending me, she was showing the whole of devil society that I was capable which would open opportunities for me down the line.
Now though, I was worried. How did the Grigori manage to recruit a necromancer? They were as rare as they were crazy, yet the one I'd just met held a dangerous intelligence behind his blackened eyes. This could be bad.
"Everyone to the train." I ordered, both to get us moving and to tear my thoughts away from the myriad problems that could arise from this meeting. I was about to become very busy.
X
"Get up." a dispassionate voice said from above the boy. "Our enemies will not be so kind to you as I."
With a roar of fury and frustration the child leapt to his feet, his blade reared back to strike.
Not a moment later the boy was back on the ground, his sword clattering to the stone floor.
"Sloppy." the same woman said coldly as she stared down at the child. "Maintain your focus at all times. Do not allow your emotions to compromise your judgement. Get. Up."
The boy snatched his sword off the ground and clambered to his feet; though this time his eyes were focused. He watched the woman's movements, seeking an opening.
The woman took a step forward, and the boy acted. He stepped in close and slashed downwards. At the same time the woman swept his legs out from under him and slammed her palm into his chest, knocking him once more to the ground.
With a pained groan, the boy shifted to look up at the woman. A victorious smile spread across his face as he looked at her face.
The woman dabbed a finger against her cheek and brought it before her eyes. There was a drop of blood on it. "Good." she said as she returned her attention to the boy. "Again."