"Dear Diary,

I really think he's the one! I love his smile, and his horns, and the way his eyes light up when he eats my cooking~

I think we should have kids. At least a dozen. Maybe two dozen! Can a demon and an imp have kids? Eh, I'm sure we'll make it work. At the very least I can pester that nerdy fish into making something work~

Oh, also, I wrote some more of my Angel Dust x Husker fanfic. It's getting spiiiiicy~~~

Yours truly,

Niffty"

- A private diary entry from the records collected after The King's love, Niffty, passed away following the Radio Demon's demise. The journal, alongside several hundred pages of erotic fanfiction, doodles, rough drafts, and other assorted papers, were collected and put into deep storage by Baxter, of his own initiative; the immense grief felt by his closest friend meant that Ego wouldn't even step within five meters of the room of the one he loved so dearly.

None of the papers were ever read by King Ego, who took to his fruitless attempts at suicide in the following months; Baxter, for his part, began research into allowing Sinner and Hellborne interbreeding, to honor the late demoness.

Ego had never had a mother. Either in the emotional, or the literal sense, given that he was created in a laboratory. Any memories of a family or life before living in refuse were manufactured. He believed in his heart that the demons he met at the Hazbin Hotel were as close to a family as he could ever hope for, but even then he was unsure if any of them were a maternal figure to him. Maybe Charlie, who was the first to take him in? Even then the power dynamics at play were convoluted at best. He couldn't see himself calling her 'mom', at any rate.

This is what occupied the Sanguine King's mind as he and The Doom Slayer prepared themselves against the colossal All-Mother before them. Shub-Niggurath was, technically, his mother in the sense that she had created his soul… or at least the souls that were combined to make his soul? He wasn't entirely sure, but considering he had to beat her down to continue down The Spiral, it was for the best that he did not dwell on it too much.

The rancid, curdled afterbirth around them continued to bubble and writhe, as unseen shapes began to slither ever closer. The Slayer leveled his shotgun at the shapes, finger lingering over the trigger for a clean shot, while Ego stayed airborn a few feet above the rank ooze. The angelic tendril from his arm was slick with his own boiling blood, which dripped down and vaporized some of the afterbirth. The All-Mother screeched from a hundred thousand mouths, and following her command, the shapes burst forth, revealing their true forms: malformed, translucent-black skin stretched over a network of pulsating veins, which took the form of a vaguely quadrupedal mass. A pair of jagged horns erupted from what was presumably the head, and below them a singular glassy eye viewed the two intruders with ravenous bloodlust.

Neither warrior wasted any time. The smell of freshly spent gunpowder mixed with the pungency of the afterbirth as the Hellwalker unloaded both barrels into a half-dozen of the spawn that leapt at him. Ego, for his part, launched forth his tendril, skewering just as many while boiling blood reduced them to nothing more than gelatinous viscera. Yet still more leapt forth from the slurry. Shouting to be heard over the gunfire, screeching and sloshing, Ego yelled down to the book he cradled with his free hand.

"Nick, do you happen to know what the hell these things are?!" A splattering of gore nearly struck the King in the face while Nick replied.

"Oh, sure. These are Zygoats. Basically they're stillborn souls. See, Shub occasionally stumbles when making a mortal soul, causing them to mutate and become too heavy to rise up from the Void. She carefully looks after these misfits and raises them as her own close offspring." Roughly ten more Zygoats sprung upwards, some stabbing into Ego's legs. He screamed in pain, but the blood from his new wounds both melted the creatures and sealed his injuries. Looking to his side, the Sanguine King witnessed the beautiful carnage of The Doom Slayer in action. A flurry of blades and bullets flew through the air, mincing and mangling anything that came near. Nevertheless, the horde seemed endless, and Ego furrowed his brow as he fought back.

"Well, that's just wonderful, mommy's legion of special boys. Do you happen to have any sort of, I dunno, spell for this sort of thing? Maybe 'Fetus Deletus'?" Nick scoffed and wriggled slightly out of the way of more goatblood.

"What do I look like, kid, Magic For Dummies? The arcane hexes I contain are enough to break the mind of a mere mortal, sunder entire continents, and bring forth-"

"Just a no would have worked." Ego interjected, wrapping his tentacle around a Zygoat, coating it in blood before hurling it into a gaggle of its brethren. The book harrumphed.

"Wow. You fight a few unfathomable abominations, and suddenly you get a crummy attitude. Okay, how about I ask you a question: what exactly is your plan here? Unlike the Sphinx you can't just take out Shub-Niggurath and go on your way. That would be basically killing all future lives and afterlives, forever." Ego scowled, considering the option of using the Necronomicon to bash a few goats for being sassy. Still, he knew he was right; brute force wasn't going to work here. At the same time, taking the bribe of Niffty and Daisy wasn't going to stop the invasion of Hell by Hastur's forces. They needed another solution.

Time in the Void works in mysterious ways, when it chooses to work at all. Ego had lost track of how long he and the Slayer had been fighting the Zygoat swarm; anywhere from ten minutes to a decade seemed like a good guess. The Slayer was up to his waist in corpses, many of them sawed in half to replenish his ammunition. Ego was exhausted, practically moving on autopilot as he was gashed, healed, and re-wounded. Over the years, the King had learned to fight in such a way as to compartmentalize his brain: a ceaseless rage kept his blood boiling while his higher brain functions ticked along. For the duration of the battle, the half-blood imp had been trying to think of any sort of way to break the stalemate they had found themselves in. Shub-Niggurath seemed no closer to running out of her children, while the Doom Slayer and himself could seemingly fight in perpetuity. More pressingly, Ego had no idea what the situation up in Hell was; for all he knew, they had already been in the Second Echelon too long and the battle above was already lost.

Eventually Ego had had enough. Letting out a scream that nearly overshadowed the ceaseless din erupting from the Elder God's mouths, he launched himself further into the air before careening headfirst into the massive pillar of gore. The All-Mother shrieked as Ego's tendril gouged into her repeatedly, heated blood foaming in his mouth.

"LET! US! PAST!" He bellowed with each thrust, his blood mixing with the bile of eons past. In return, Shub-Niggurath bit down on each of his limbs with a separate mouth, digging into his flesh with crooked teeth.

"Bad ssssssson! Go to time out!" The pillar bellowed. Yet the more it bit into him, the more gushing blood spilt forth, cauterizing the gaping maws shut as it trickled down. The remaining mouths screeched in terror. "Noooo! I mussssssth make more soulttttth!" She dropped Ego in shock, who fell onto the pile of corpses below. Unable to move while his arms and legs regenerated, The King could only stare up in fury.

"Either let us go to the next level, or I will close every mouth you have, Mom. My scientists have the technology to recycle souls; we'd make you obsolete!" A half-bluff. Shortly after the discovery of the Void, Ego had tasked Baxter with trying to construct a way to circumvent the sinking of 'spent' souls back down into the darkness below. Results were middling; souls caught after an angel or demon died fought violently to return back to the Void, seemingly called by some unknown power, and rarely stayed put for long. Still, it was obvious that Shub-Niggurath valued making her 'children' above all else, so lying about his ability to make her useless was his best bet at negotiations.

The tower went silent for the first time in what felt like ages, clearly contemplating the threat. The Zygoats all ceased their attacks, beginning to whimper in their fluids.

"...You're really do tttttttthat to your Mommy?" The Old God asked. Ego just furrowed his brow, and the Slayer let out a defiant grunt, wiping umbilical fluid off of his visor. A hundred thousand mouths all sighed in defeat, making a rather odd noise, before noticeably wilting. The writhing, twisting flesh of the tower began to contort and warp at the base, as a large doorway of slick tentacles took form. "Jusssstttthh… when you meet my darling Hassssthur… don't stttthay I didn't try to ssssthop you, deariesssssth."

The remaining Zygoats rescinded back down into the goo, while Ego got up on his newly-healed legs. He glanced over to the Hellwalker, who just responded with a firm nod, then down to Nick, who just silently raised an eyebrow.

"Uhhh… okay… Mommy. Sorry for the trouble… I guess?" The trio moved towards the door to the next Echelon. The Slayer pushed it open with the bug of his gun cautiously before continuing King paused briefly on the precipice, and turned to look above at the Black Goat. "Hey, uh, if I don't die I'll send you a Mother's Day card as thanks." With that he continued through, though he could swear he saw a few dozen toothy grins as the door shut behind him.