And here it is: part five. Again I had the bolding issue, so I hope that they fix that soon. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter, and thank you for reading my story.
The city of Usnaan was screaming. It bled magma and the empyreal blood of the abyss from scores of wounds gouged into it by coruscations of crimson lightning from the Tempest of Craving and bloody rents where greater demons had ripped open the thin walls between Sancturia and the City of Pleasure and the other world had haemorrhaged into this one with their coming.
It burned black where massive meteorites, some containing scores of insane hellish entities that were disgorged upon impact, carved blazing canyons through its streets that were already covered in viscera and the brutalised bodies of both sides of the savage conflict. The darkness caused by the Tempest of Craving was banished, and yet it was not, the massive and angry clouds blocking out any form of natural or holy light.
The storm roiling above the city was reaching a crescendo of destructive activity, spitting out massive bolts of unholy lightning that crashed into the burning city below and vomiting up fiery missiles that scratched painfully bright parabolas into the sky in an almost artful manner as they shed blazing debris over the entire capital of the New Empire of Passion.
The city of Usnaan was screaming, but it was not a death scream, nor the frightened wail of a terrified victim. It was a howl of rapture, a shriek of orgiastic pleasure as the massive city transformed in the Festival of Bloodshed which had been started by the Archdemon Rakdos, a frenzied cry of ecstasy given voice by those battling within the sprawling confines of the capital. It was the discordant cacophony of a foul metamorphosis, a tainted evolution as the city died, drowned in blood and fire, but in its ashes a new capital of carnal debauchery would emerge.
Plumes of fire rose up from the City of Pleasure, like the bloody fingers of a newborn child reaching towards the euphoric mother who had just given birth to them. The Tempest of Craving answered, crackling bolts of lighting carving buildings and streets apart as a gigantic meteor crashed into one of the three massive Towers of Ecstasy, the glittering monuments to greed and depravity no longer shining opulent gold but covered in the sticky crimson blood that rained down from the abused sky instead as the large building on the right was split in half by the thunderous impact, the boom that should have echoed across the city eclipsed by the shrieking of the unholy storm looming over Usnaan as the top half of the tower flattened extravagant sections of the Augur's Quarter in which it was located, wealth that could have collectively fed thousands of those innocent Welkalites in poverty destroyed in the shockwave that crashed out from the falling tower.
A seven pointed star was etched upon the heavens, the unholy heptagram formed from lines of burning hellfire glowing with dark malice as the ruinous sigil span at the same time as remaining still. Seven spires of obsidian that echoed ones which could just be seen if one looked to the centre of the city past the Palace of Desire rose up out of the ground at equidistant and yet chaotic points around the edges of the city, preparing it for the transformation it would undergo because of the malicious will of newly Summoned Rakdos within it. The Rain of Gore increased in intensity once again, massive gobbets of blood the size of balls in the forgotten Yentarian game of Tennise arcing down from the sky and splattering upon the streets and those who fought within them.
Demonic figures stalked through the city, some taking flight upon batlike wings within the air tainted by foul ash and blood and battling against shining angels, their luminous radiance dimmed by the hellish glow of the smouldering City of Pleasure as they clashed with their counterparts formed of darkness and the evil desires of humanity.
At the edge of the city, far enough away to be out of any of the violence but not too far as to be unaffected by the perpetual torrent of claret vitae from the blood red and black skies, stood a lone figure who seemed to be watching the destruction. A flash of lighting illuminated a mask in the shape of a fox's snout, covered in the rivulets of blood that poured down the figure and stained her kimono red, poking out from a hooded outfit that blended into the smog and the smoke surrounding the burning city even at this distance. Another flash lit up gleaming sea green eyes from within the eye holes of the mask, eyes that were fixed upon the city of Usnaan not too far away from the figure's position.
The woman – as that was unmistakable – held a long and elegant blade in her left hand, drawn at a ready position and covered in blood. That wasn't because of any violence she had committed, but due to the Rain of Gore, and fortunately there hadn't been the need for her sabre to kiss flesh upon this day. At any rate, it didn't hurt to be cautious, even though the woman's magic could probably dispatch most enemies before they even reached her blade.
To an eye not trained in such things, the mysterious woman would appear perfectly calm with the horrific scene of a huge city – one of the largest on the super-continent of Magnus-Primae – being turned into a hellscape of deprivation and destructive hedonism, but inside she was seething with internal tension. She hated watching this, hated all of this death that could have been avoided had the Welkalites not been turned to darkness – by members of her very own order, no less. She understood why, of course, but it didn't make the death any more bearable, no matter what it was in the name of. She was honestly shocked that some of her fellow Confederates could oversee massacres on a vast scale without batting an eyelid, but then again almost all of them had lost their humanity over the many thousands of years spent controlling events from the shadows.
But, more importantly than the fact that many were losing their lives in the brutal battles within the streets, was the reality that much of what the Confederacy had worked towards over the past century of unprecedented action could be undone by the chaotic events of this battle. However, there was nothing that Delta could do about it. She wished that she could, and the tension of only being able to watch gnawed at her from within as she beheld the burning city in all of its infernal glory. None of them could intervene, because if they did, if they helped those that they needed in the future to prosecute their plans, then they would automatically be considered unsuitable. No, they needed to overcome their trials on their own, otherwise they would not be worthy of the roles that they needed to play within the schemes of the Confederacy.
That didn't mean that Delta wasn't itching to launch herself into the city and make sure that those who needed to survive did not lose their lives, but she knew that doing that would make the situation even worse. If the important ones, the chosen ones, died within Usnaan against the hellish forces of the unholy Defiler, then the plans of those who worked in the shadows to ensure the safety of the world would be set back around half a century at the very least. They could ill afford a delay in these dark times as the forces of death and destruction grew, but what would be worse was if they went ahead with the plan with those too weak to fulfil what was needed of them because they had been coddled and preserved, because that would end in the entire world being consumed by the growing shadow.
That was why Delta was here, stood outside of the burning City of Pleasure and watching it die closely but unable to intervene. Her duty was to enact the second half of their plan which would save the world if this last part of the first half succeeded, to keep those who were essential to the success of the entire strategy safe should they prove themselves to be strong enough through this battle. This slaughter was awful, but it was nothing compared to the death and subsequent enslavement of the souls of those killed that would sweep the two joined worlds if they failed.
It was all for the greater good. No matter how many died here, many more would live on, Delta reminded herself, and she, if no one else, would remember the sacrifices made in the name of the greater good.
Everything they had ever done, it was all for the greater good.
It was always for the greater good.
.*.*.*.
Caiellis screamed. It was loud, all consuming, and he couldn't sense anything past the sound of his own mouth howling in anguish and pain as he surged to his feet, his body shaking with the violent energies coursing throughout it as he was surrounded by the images of everyone who he ever loved dying in front of his eyes with him powerless to do nothing about it.
He couldn't think properly; he barely knew what he was doing or what was happening, but as the shadows surrounded him and the darkness flooded throughout him, he knew what he needed to do. He knew that the Lord of Riots had to die for what it had done, and he held onto that dark wish as he was filled with hatred and power that filled his mind with darkness. His mind was still alight with the screaming of his comrades, family, friends and soldiers, and he was still terrified of it, but that terror was nothing compared to the hatred that was surging through his entire being and stopping him from thinking of anything else.
Spiralling dark flames of purple power burst out of the downed youth, annihilating the chains that had dragged him to the floor and choked him and destroying the orbs of crimson agony which had been inflicting pain onto him with the release of power mana, the Black Sun on his cheek shining with a dark power that was far stronger than anything else he had ever witnessed before, not that he could pay attention to that as he was almost insensate. The runes scratched into his skin by the will of the Defiler flared with a bright and violent scarlet light, sending waves of agony that Caiellis could no longer feel and no longer cared about throughout him before the flames of annihilation surrounding him purged the mark of the Archdemon from his small body.
While the fire may have destroyed the sigils of corruption and vile hedonism that had been etched upon his skinny limbs, face and chest, it did not heal him or repair the many wounds scattered across his entire body, but Caiellis was able to ignore them because of the intoxicating power running through him – although he was in no way addicted to it because he couldn't think straight, his mental functions compromised by the amount of pain and abuse they had suffered through, and he didn't even know what he was doing. All he could think of were those that had died in this war because of his own weakness, but moreso because of the foul presence of Rakdos who had turned this city into his own personal pleasure den and trampled it into his revel site, the bastard demon that needed to die or be forced to leave due to the destruction of its physical form thanks to what it had done.
He rose to his feet, swaying like a drunk or a reanimated zombie called from the grave by some necromancer, and the only thing holding him upright was the pure Black mana that rushed through him and out of his limbs, collecting around him in a shroud of darkness and haunting purple light which he had seen only once before. They were the flames that had come to him on the night of his mother's death, and they were the flames that he was going to use to banish the Lord of Riots from the world of man – or die trying. There was no time for cowering now. It was time to act, and stop hiding behind his fear and sadness.
"What is this?" Rakdos asked, half of his his rumbling and snarling voice which had had entire cultures throwing themselves at his feet and begging for the gift of sybaritic pleasure filled with sadistic curiosity at the sudden rise of solely Black mana in his youngest Lucerna opponent, and the other half tinted with concern because of this unprecedented development. He was sure that he had broken little Caiellis, he had sensed the boy's mind snapping under the strain as he finally gave up and surrendered to the overwhelming power of an Archdemon, but this would seem to suggest otherwise.
He leaned forwards, intrigued more than anything else at the moment – he had never seen the first Lucerna to have Black mana inside of him, and so he was unsure of how the power of the darkness interacted with those who served the holiest form of light, but he had fought Orzhova and nothing like this had ever happened before. The bloody heart in his left hand gave a wet cough and exploded thanks to the enchantments powering it which had fed upon and drawn sustenance from Caiellis's suffering being destroyed by this spontaneous eruption of Black energy, but Rakdos paid it no heed as he beheld the youngest member of the hated Lucerna line with coils of darkness wrapping around him and fire of pure annihilation leaping forth from his hands and ripping apart the ground that he was stood upon.
Pain flooded through Caiellis. It was everything that he was, apart from the hatred, the base desire to rid the world of this foul demon that had put everyone in the world in danger through its nefarious scheming and bloodthirsty revelling. It was burning, sapping away his life every second he channelled this amount of Black mana. It was killing him. But he did not care. Nothing was going to stop him from fulfilling his wish of hatred and wiping the taint of the Lord of Riots from this world. He could not think, and he could barely even control himself, but so long as he had the power, the need to banish Rakdos, then he didn't need to be in control.
He swayed as he stood to his full and unimpressive height of four feet and eleven inches, the only think allowing him to stand with his abused body the mana that was coursing through him and gifting him with the strength borne from his loathing of his current foe and his creations. The Sword of Glass was in his hand before he even knew it, the crystalline edge of the weapon dripping with tenebrous flames that emitted a dark purple light that spoke of annihilation and utter destruction.
The Lord of Riots did the same, rising to its massive height and spreading its huge leathery wings wide as it rose its arms as if challenging the boy to use this new power now that he had managed to escape from the fate that the Defiler had in store for him, the Tempest of Craving above flashing with massive coruscations of painfully bright lightning that lit up the demon as the sky formed a massive symbol of flame upon itself, the burning sigil the same as the seven pointed star of corruption that Rakdos had used to negate and protect himself from the Twilight Reprisal, and meteorites arced down from the crackling heavens towards the city below.
Darkness pooled within Cai's limbs and around them, the pure Black mana saturating the air around him and erasing the corruption of the Archdemon in a small area surrounding the youngest Lucerna as it flickered with the light of purple and ebony fire. The Black Sun on the boy's cheek that was the conformation of his royal blood and the favour of a First Sisterhood angel coruscated with purple and black lightning so different to the crimson and pink electricity of those who utilised Red and Black mana combined despite sharing what was essentially the same structure, and as the fingers of dark energy brushed the air in front of the boy a swirling vortex of shadow opened up in front of his left eye.
The thirteen year old shut the green orb that was reflecting internal purple light of both haunting sadness and hatred combined in a way which had only come to him once before, gifting him with power from deep within him, from a place that he could not consciously access, as if in reward for the strength of his emotions. When he re-opened his left eye, inky tenebrosity was filling the whole orb with a lacuna of darkness that had shadow revolving around it and pulled inwards due to its malevolent gravity. The tears that had been still pouring out of his wide eyes despite the fact that by now he should have squeezed every drop of moisture from inside of him from the amount that he had cried so far became black, running down his face like trails of midnight blood and crepitating with dark energy.
All he could see now was the Lord of Riots, his entire vision devoted to the Lens of Guilt which had been able to form within his left eye. The pain that it conjured was excruciating, agonising with the amount of guilt and evil that was focussed into a single point which seemed far too small for the amount of wickedness within it that was forever bursting out of the Archdemon and tainting everything around it, but Caiellis couldn't pay any attention to it even if he had wanted to because of the dark mana flowing through him.
Even though he could still see through his right eye, the iris still emerald green like his late mother's had been even though it shone with haunting illumination (the same colour of amethyst that the Black Sun birthmark shone with when his tears touched it and it reacted to his sorrow), the only thing that he was able to focus on with it was the physical representation of the Lord of Riots which was far less terrifying than the image that showed up in the Lens of Guilt despite the fact that it was still horrifying. The aura of the creature of pure, carnal evil and dark hedonism was the worst bit about it and could – and did – induce terror in even the most courageous individuals, and that was what the Lens of Guilt allowed the youngster to see.
However, even though he still felt the unnatural dread and terror within him, instead of letting it take over him and control or weaken him as he had allowed it to do before, Cai embraced that fear, using it to empower and mould his hatred into a powerful weapon which would allow him to remove the Defiler from this world in which it did not belong. The fact that the being was so evil merely strengthened Caiellis's loathing of it, making the mana that was rushing out of him even more powerful.
"COME THEN, CAIELLIS NOCTIS LUCERNA! SHOW ME THIS NEW POWER THAT YOU HAVE ACQUIRED! SHOW ME THE POWER OF THE DARKNESS WITHIN YOU, LUCERNA BRAT!" Rakdos roared at him, the power and volume of the frenzied and exultant howl almost sending the youngest Lucerna flying off of his feet in spite of the mana that was pulsing through him until he rammed his sword into the ground and held onto that, his lip curling into a snarl of hatred as more of it filled him with its intent to slay the blight on the world, the Lucaelian army and the Welkalite people that was the Lord of Riots.
As he focussed upon the demon with the Lens of Guilt now that he was able to actually use it and ignored the intense torment that seeing through it engendered, his mind alight with the need to remove the unholy darkness of the Archdemon that was desecrating the world with its tainted presence, he saw that within the seething maelstrom of chaos and carnal debauchery that was Rakdos, eclipsed and almost unnoticeable with the gigantic essence of the Archdemon surrounding it, there was a lone and chained figure inside of it radiating Black and Red mana and completely corrupted by the nearness to the monarch of sin and hell.
He fixed his eyes upon it, his mind forcing him to look deeper in spite of the massive amounts of agony that exploded through him that he no longer cared about in any way, and nodded mentally to himself. He should have seen that already, but now that he could employ the Lens of Guilt he was able to. Within the place where the beating heart of the Lord of Riots should have been had it followed normal body composition, there was the trapped form of Jarred Redhand, the Vessel of the Archdemon which had been eaten by him at the start of this battle.
Caiellis had automatically assumed – although to be fair at the time he hadn't been able to think over the terror blossoming within him, a flower of fear spreading its pollen of horror and its sweet nectar of paralysis through the boy, at the entrance of the Archdemon – that the fact that the Protector had been consumed had meant that Rakdos had no need of a Summoner now that he had entered the City of Pleasure, but now he knew that while the Defiler could easily sustain himself out of Sancturia he needed a conduit, a way to remain within the world of humanity. That was where Cai would strike, arguably the most protected point of the demon, because otherwise nothing would be enough to banish it without the death of Redhand who was anchoring its massive power to the material realm.
Cai coughed without paying attention to it, blood spurting out of his mouth and trickling down his chin to be joined by the splattering of bloody droplets from the crimson rain above, and despite his wounds he felt the power within him, power that was utterly controlling him in tandem with his emotions in the same way that they had done nine years ago. He could still see the scenes of slaughter and darkness which had his friends, family and soldiers dying horrible deaths in front of his eyes, and he could still hear their accusatory screaming and cries for mercy, but within them was the sight of his beautiful mother with the demon's gleaming claws rammed through her stomach and her feet lifted off of the floor, right next to the sight of his precious older brother being killed by the brutish Master of Violence.
He was breathing heavily, but each one of the panting breaths was filled with his loathing of the demon and his broken, anguished sorrow at what had happened to him and those that he loved because of him, the emotions of rejection and sorrow blending together in a potent combination of hurt and sadness because of what his father who he had loved as much as his mother and brother had said and done to him, what had happened to Emili Noctis nine years ago, and what was happening now and had only just happened to the loyal soldiers and generals within the city of Usnaan that empowered his hatred of the being that had caused all of this even more.
"I … I am going to make you pay," Caiellis somehow managed to half snarl and half cry out, every word formed by his broken voice suffused with raw emotion and every syllable filled with anguished sorrow, but through all of them was an ominous undertone of powerful, tangible hatred that had the demon laughing and cackling in response to the words. The boy wasn't sure why he had said them, but then, he couldn't control himself, he couldn't think past the screaming images of the pain of those that he loved and who relied on him to deliver them, past the surge of hatred that was rushing through him and filling his limbs with the pure darkness of Black mana.
"I WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY, BOY! YOU CAN DO NOTHING TO ME, FOR I AM AN ARCHDEMON, ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL CREATURES IN THE TWO WORLDS, AND YOU ARE MERELY A PATHETIC CHILD WHO CAN'T EVEN CONTROL HIS OWN CRYING!" the Archdemon shouted at him, the sheer volume of his words that were spat in the foul demonic tongue of his kind echoing across the entire City of Pleasure, although only those who could understand the language of the abyss and Cai (who was afforded this honour by Rakdos so that he could tremble in fear) knew what the words meant.
The Lord of Riots flapped his wings, gathering up the raw power of the hedonistic empyrean within itself as it pointed its flaming scythe towards the sky, a circle of flame exploding around the courtyard hill and filling the sky around it with infernal hellfire that surged upwards around it. It was meant to intimidate Cai, but the boy couldn't even see it and with the power of the emotions running through him it wouldn't have fazed him even if he could. He was going to kill this Archdemon and avenge those who had died because of it so far, destroy its connection to this world so that no more could be hurt or killed while it still existed, because unlike when his mother had died this time he had been given the chance to end the being threatening those who still lived before all of them died, and even though many had already lost their lives this foul being was still causing the rest agonising pain.
The demon slammed the crude bottom of its savage scythe into the ground, smashing apart the obsidian rock underneath it and leaving a large crater of bubbling magma where he had done so, and the flaming wall surrounding them rose up to the height of the massive spires curling round towards the courtyard below it. They collected on the tips of the claws of igneous rock formed from no natural volcanic phenomena, and with a cry from the massive crimson demon stood within the hellish arena containing an Archdemon and the smallest Lucerna prince the fire forming circles of infernal conflagration around the pinnacles of the seven obsidian talons began to blast seven gouts of flames towards the small boy within the courtyard.
Caiellis stood his ground, glaring at the demon all the while with both his natural eye which shone with the purple light of annihilation and his one that had darkness pooled within it and was fully ebon. He raised his Sword of Glass that was filled with black fire that ran up and down the crystal blade, and snarled his hatred of the demon, knowing that despite the fact that he could barely formulate any semblance of coherent thought that he should save his strongest emotions until the time when he was attacking the demon.
A blinding scintillation of incandescent darkness, shadows with the light of annihilation within them bursting forth from the Sword of Glass and Caiellis's shining Lucerna birthmark. The darkness was blinding, like it was combined with White mana, but Cai knew that it was not – it was merely the impression of the magic of light moulding it without actually being present, the fact that White mana was a part of him imprinting itself onto his dark spells without him even using any light energy within them, and it rushed forth from him, a sphere of pure blackness that crackled with purple electricity and the power of a dying star of unlight surrounding the youngest prince as the fire impacted into him.
It was destroyed. The powerful Red mana within the flames was utterly annihilated by the shield of darkness and hatred that was protecting the littlest Lucerna, but Cai instinctively knew that it was only ever meant to test his defences, test the capabilities of the new mana that had risen up within his exhausted form, and even then he could feel the heat on his skin as it surged around him.
The fire dissipated, destroyed and warded off by his blast of Black mana that was more powerful individually than any type he had wielded before other than the power that he had used on the night of his beloved mother's death – but even then, this was stronger than that. He was older now, stronger, and had a much larger mana pool – both from his normal growth of such things (augmented by the fact that he was a Lucerna prince and as such had an ability to have a large amount of mana inside of him), and while no one out of the people who were the most precious in his life had died yet they were on the verge of doing so and that gifted him with desperate strength. He had already felt what it was like to lose someone immensely close to you and someone who you loved more than anyone else apart from his brother and father at the age of four years old, and so he knew what would happen should one of them die.
Besides, the Lord of Riots was his problem, his duty, and the longer he took the more people would die. There was no thought, no planning as Caiellis began to charge the massive demon at the other side of the courtyard to him, rushing out of the flames that flickered in the light of their extinguishing with no hesitation or concern for his own well-being any longer – which, despite what he might like to say or profess, was what had slowed him down earlier.
Caiellis blinked back tears of anguish as he watched his older brother begin to wake back up, evidently not yet unconscious and having been afflicted by some sort of curse or debilitating aura, and begin to try and paw at the hand around his throat desperately. The youngest Lucerna could empathise a lot with Alexander in that respect, and he knew that from his thrashing movements that the seventeen year old didn't have much air left, his face turning red and blue as he tried to get out, choking out Caiellis's name into his ear.
That was right next to the image of their mother dying in the arms of the foul and sadistically grinning demon that had killed her, and the boy didn't have a choice before his mind plunged him right back into the worst memory of his life, drawing more Black mana from his sadness and hatred from remembering what had happened to his perfect family and combining it with the current loathing and sorrow that was rushing through him to make him use his magic even stronger.
The Lord of Riots glared at him, ripping its talons that were surrounded by bloody mists of crimson power through the flesh of the world, launching another blast of fire at the youngest Lucerna who hacked it apart with his blade of shadows and darkness, running forwards to engage with Rakdos who roared at him again, not having expected much of a challenge but now enticed by the prospect of one, enticed by the possibility of feeling exquisite pain once again and having something that he could utilise his full power against.
Shadows drew circles of power around Caiellis's left eye, the inky black orb glowering back at the essence of the demon and the boy's new target of Jarred Redhand trapped within the Lord of Riots. Caiellis was no longer Caiellis in this moment.
Caiellis became something more and yet less than himself, became suffused by hatred and pain and unable to act other than fulfilling the wishes of his inner emotions that controlled his mind and forced his body forward, gifting him with immense power but removing his ability to feel anything other than these emotions. He could still see Uncle Tybalt fighting against the many armed archfiend of depravity that he had gazed upon before, he could still see Uncle Tristram using magic to create himself a temporary replacement for his arm so that he could hold his signature axe that had belonged to his father in the past and battle against the inhumanly powerful albino Master of Gluttony so that the stricken Leodred could free himself. He could still see thousands dying in agonising pain as they were ran down by devils and claimed, their souls added to the Tempest of Craving which in turn heightened the sacrilegious power of the Defiler, and as if Rakdos wanted to intimidate or stop him with this they pressed in against his unthinking mind at all sides.
Caiellis could see them, but he was no longer affected by them. His mind was consumed by hatred, rage and sorrow at what had been done, controlling him like nothing else had ever done before after the night of his mother's death, although maybe even more than that because of the fact that he had been only four years old at the time and barely able to think for himself – whereas now he was fully able to, but could not because of the power rushing through him and focussing all of his being on a singular goal, pushing every piece of him towards one single outcome.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
The youngest Lucerna, his body surrounded by purple and black flames that bled detestation and loathing and annihilated everything around them, did not stop his charge at the Defiler, who roared back in challenge once again, swinging his scythe down at the upstart child who would dare to fight against his supremacy. There was no holding back now, no using only a fraction of his power to torture the boy Summoner of Orzhova and slowly force him to submit after putting him through immense amounts of physical and mental agony which had broken him. It had destroyed Cai's courage and determination completely, but instead of the void in its place becoming filled with despair as was customary both the sorrow and the resolve of the child had been annihilated, replaced by undying hatred directed towards the demon.
Rakdos knew fully well how powerful his opponent was becoming – this Black mana was exquisite and pure, but at the same time completely inimical to the Archdemon despite the fact that he was one of the strongest creations of the magic of darkness and the abyss, pure darkness flowing out of the brat that was not something the Defiler had ever had the pleasure of experiencing before. Had he been more interested in such a thing as that, like some of his "brothers" were, the Lord of Riots might have wanted to capture or claim Caiellis to find out more of him at his own leisure, but the Red and Black Archdemon did not care and simply wanted his Festival of Bloodshed to continue now that he was finally able to bring it to the human world after so long.
Caiellis clearly wouldn't be broken, that was for certain, not mentally at least. Well, he was broken, but instead of that rendering him unable to act through the terror it seemed like the Black mana of Orzhova reacting with the boy's accursed Lucerna heritage was drawing strength from his emotions. It was a peculiar enigma, something that the Archdemon had never seen before, but ultimately it did not matter. He would tear this little princeling asunder, feast upon his soul if any of it still remained, and then turn upon the other surviving Lucernas. They were older, arguably more powerful, and would not scream as much, but he would still enjoy breaking them, especially after what he would show them of the baby of their family.
Although the father seemed to want to kill his son just as much as Rakdos did, but he was sure that the other Lucerna he sensed wielding damned Aurelia against his current favourite son, Zankranith, Alexander, would care about his brother. Even though they would be more resilient to the agony for a time, the Lord of Riots was looking forward to making them crack, and supposed that because they would be more confident in themselves and their abilities it would be even more fun to painfully highlight their folly. He arced his scythe through the air towards the onrushing prince, dark fire blossoming all around the human child, bursting into existence in a way that was not reminiscent of normal flames whatsoever as they swirled out of the air around him and rushed round him.
The scythe rushed towards the boy, but Cai wasn't even looking at that. He couldn't. All he could see were the images in his mind, the screaming anguish of himself and the others turning into more fuel for his mana and hatred as he watched his mother die again in front of him. Without thinking, he dove back into the horrible memories because of a part of this unconscious form of himself knew that would increase his power, and that was all that he wanted – power to kill the Archdemon who had done this.
-The older boy held him tight and close, wrapping one of his arms around his little brother as if to say that he wouldn't let anyone get close to Cai, and the youngest Lucerna made sure to keep his face pressed firmly into Alex's side because when he looked away for a moment he could see the shadows in the room wiggling and writhing in a malignant and spasmodic dance of their own, the flames flickering on the other side of the room seemingly shrouded by the intensification of the darkness-
Caiellis leapt upwards, a blade of pure shadow formed from the ever-burning flames of utter eradication slicing down through the tainted air below him from the tip of his sword and piercing into the Lord of Riots's scythe, hacking apart its own infernal edge formed from the flaming souls of those who had pledged their entire lives to spreading debauchery and destruction throughout the world of man with his dark power as the Defiler swung it upwards to accommodate his opponent's sudden surge in motion. There was no holding back now, from either side. Cai had no time to waste being on the defensive, and couldn't think enough to form a logical plan of finding out which sort of attacks would hurt the Defiler, whereas Rakdos was tired of this boy now that he hadn't broken properly and wanted to destroy him so that he could continue on with terrorizing the rest of the Lucaelians and enjoy his entrance into the world of humans.
- "Oh, you'll see, Emili Noctis, you'll see," Haldren growled intimidatingly, his face still rippling violently as the rest of his body began to join it, his arms extending and elongating as he became taller, the darkness on that side of the relatively large (for a bedroom at any rate) room rushed out of him. Emili knew instantly that something was horribly wrong, and she could sense the taint of corrupted Black mana that she had only detected once before in her life when she had been tasked with banishing a lesser nether creature by her master and mentor, the Hierarch of Scientia Mos.
She stayed in front of her young sons, allowing golden and warm light to spill out of her hands, playfully wrapping around her fingers as she stared defiantly up at the man. This is what she had feared would happen, that with Johnias's supposed betrayal there would be agents in the palace … but this was far, far worse than she ever could have anticipated. Emili wasn't a fighter, but she had to delay as long as possible for her husband and the others to get here. The queen sensed distinctly that the two beings in the nursery were no longer Jack and Haldren, if they had ever been in the first place. She could hear Caiellis whimpering in fright behind her, and wanted to turn around and comfort him, but she needed to keep her eyes on the things that had masqueraded as Lucerna praetorians here with them-
The Archdemon roared at him, fire bursting out of its open mouth in a bloody inferno of magic that scarred the air as it crashed through it to the prince, the rush of hellfire from the gut of the Lord of Riots accompanied by painful sigils that scratched themselves into the fabric of reality by the side of the Red and Black inferno and warped space around them. Caiellis snarled back, his magic and emotions that strengthened one another in a never ending cycle of empowerment as his hatred and sadness fuelled his Black mana and the rise of dark energy made him feel the loathing and sorrow all too keenly bursting out of him and meeting the fire that filled his vision with the dark flames of annihilation that he could not control and yet responded to his hatred.
The fire consumed the boy, but the Defiler was not so naïve as to wait until the explosion caused by the two conflagrations, both unnatural, meeting to see what had happened – besides, he could still sense the youngest Lucerna. He pulled his scythe back, the substance of souls that had been cut out of the blade soon repaired as more furious spirits replaced the ones that had been freed, the darkness and the bloody rain intensifying all around the massive demon because of the fact that it was drawing upon more and more power, the whole of Usnaan warping and writhing because of the presence of the Archdemon Rakdos expanding within it and truly beginning to corrupt it fully.
Caiellis was surrounded by fire that screamed and hissed at him, raking him with long claws of flame as the insane souls tried to tear his soul from his body so that he could join them in their psychotic and endless rapture of eternal pain, slavering jaws fixing themselves onto him before they were blasted apart and utterly annihilated by his emission of powerful magic. He automatically raised his arms in front of his face, still able to see through them with his left eye and look through the inferno rushing past him and burning him, more of his jacket shredded as the talons of fire burnt and cut when they clawed at him, but the pain was gone completely ignored and mostly the Black mana around him prevented him from being damaged too badly, providing him with a dark vitality and power in exchange for taking complete control.
The shadows wrapped round his feet and up his back, flickering and impossibly dark wings of tenebrosity forming behind the boy but not actually attached to him like the Gift of Orzhova was, merely coalescing behind him and arcing upwards. He used the midnight edge of his Sword of Glass to cut through the fire, and was instantly met by massive spikes of fleshy obsidian that looked like they were half made from igneous rock and half comprised of bloody, throbbing organic matter that pulsated with unnatural blood through veins rippling within the rock. They ripped through the earth towards him as the fire faded, ramming into the boy's position at an immense speed.
-Cai felt and heard his mother's usage of mana, and the glow of the familiar magical energy made him feel more comfortable, but he could sense another dark power within the room with them, a dark and scary power that he had felt in his nightmares but never this bad before, and it made him want to scream and cry despite his mummy being here to protect him like she always had done.
Caiellis couldn't have gotten away from his big brother even if he had wanted to, the eight year old's arm wrapped tightly around him, and Alex sorely wished that he had his short sword with him. It was on the other side of the room, next to their beds, and without it he could only use his magic to help their mum. Cai felt in his mind Alexander conjuring up White and a bit of his brother's Red mana next to him, but even that feeling didn't help much. He risked a glance at the guards who had been nice to him before, peeking out from where he was stood slightly behind his brother, hoping that they had gone and that they were just imaginary like his nightmare that had stopped him from wanting to go back to sleep had been.
"Stay away from my children," mummy's voice rang out from the woman, strong and determined, and Cai knew that he had to stop being a wimp and help out his big brother and their mummy against these mean monsters that were true. He was luckily too young to pick up on the hint of fear for her children in her tone that she tried to hide from the little boys, but could still tell that she was worried. The man who had been Haldren (or "Haldwen" as pronounced by little Cai) smiled sadistically in a way that was twisted into an exaggerated frown by the mutation of his face as it warped-
Caiellis raised his free hand, void darkness collecting within it and forming a rough orb of Black mana, moving back from the spikes ramming up from the hellish ground towards him and hacking apart jetting sprays of lava from below with the spinning crescents of pure darkness that were launched in arcs of ebony from his left hand. The scythe rushed towards him again, Rakdos terrifyingly fast and agile despite its massive size, and without even thinking or using normal instincts the youngest Lucerna dove backwards quickly, turning his movement into a fast descent towards the desolate and volcanic ground as three massive spires of obsidian crashed up behind him, a bloody field of crimson electricitysparking into life behind it that would have hacked Cai apart should he have leapt back to avoid the Defiler's swing.
Normally he would have been adverse to approaching the ground, especially what with it erupting in sprays of lava that seemed to be made from melted rock from hell fused with superheated blood and the spikes originating from there, but there was no thought. There was only action, anguish and hatred borne from that sorrow as, in his abused and fractured mind, he was forced to bear witness to the worst things he had ever seen in his young life, his two most loved family members dying as his mind entered the memories and body of his four year old self and simultaneously watched the scenes that the Lord of Riots had shown him which had started this.
Caiellis's mind was in two places at once – one was within his tiny child body within the nursery of the Lucerna citadel, reliving his recollection of the night of Emili Noctis's death, whereas the other was on its knees and sobbing within the prison of his head as he was forced to watch his brother, the Uncles who had taken care of him for nine years, those that he knew within the army and those that he didn't beset on all sides by powerful and demonic enemies from the lowest pits of vile hell. None of the thirteen year old was controlling his body, although he was not possessed. His hatred created from his anguish was controlling him, emotions stronger than any he had possessed before rushing through him and directing him towards the goal of removing this Archdemon that was threatening all of the Lucaelians within Usnaan and ultimately the world.
As he descended at a swift rate towards the ground, fiery creatures vaguely resembling demons with horns and inhuman proportions pulled themselves out of the pools of bubbling magma as smaller figures formed from the bloody puddles splattered across the courtyard by the heavy Rain of Gore (that was becoming increasingly corrosive and powerful), like the souls condemned to eternal suffering obediently following their captors into the realm of the underworld.
They rushed towards Cai the second he got close, and there was a large explosion above him as the crude weapon of the Defiler smashed into the brimstone talons, large shards of rock raining down upon him as the creatures formed from the sheer power of the Archdemon that could infuse malevolent and psychotic life into anything around it charged towards the boy, their only purpose to slow him down so that their master could get a good strike in and murder the upstart Lucerna.
"I WILL DESTROY YOU! I WILL TEAR YOUR WEAKLING FORM ASUNDER AND DROWN YOUR PATHETIC SOUL IN AN ETERNITY OF AGONY AND TORMENT! YOU ARE TOO WEAK TO PROTECT YOUR FRIENDS! YOU ARE TOO WEAK TO PROTECT YOUR FAMILY! SO WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT YOU ARE NOT TOO WEAK TO CHALLENGE MY ARCHDEMONIC MIGHT?!" Rakdos bellowed, its voice like a million violently erupting volcanoes and massive storms of indiscriminately destructive power pledging their allegiance and servitude to the Lord of Riots. Cai didn't hear the words. He didn't hear or see anything any more within the world of reality, the world outside of his screaming and crying mind.
Instead of battling off the elementals rushing towards him and enduring the swiftly falling cloud of debris, the largest of which was an entire top half of one of the curling spikes larger than the Defiler itself falling towards the ground, the boy leapt upwards on his unmoving wings of darkness that were more like shards of pure blackness again, annihilating a stray rock in front of him that would have smashed him out of the sky as he jumped into the rain of black fragments which had once constitutes unnatural spikes.
- "Oh, but my gracious queen, I'm afraid that we can't do that," the man's smile was replaced by a malicious grin this time, his eyes that were changing colour and shape every second and rapidly darkening gazing past the medium sized woman and fixing upon her two young children. Cai shivered as a feeling of cold overcame him, like he was outside playing in the snow and his big brother had buried him in it (until their daddy came and pulled him out and they buried Alex instead), but he didn't feel cold. He wasn't yet old enough to understand that he was trembling because of the fear, as the man monster continued, "You see, Alexander and Caiellis are very important to the Kingdom of Light. It would be such a shame if anything happened to them..."
"Get behind me, Alexander," Emili told her eldest sternly without looking backwards, the eight year old having made his way to her side with magic flowing between his fingers, his brother still attached to his side. The scared boy complied, knowing that just from his mum's tone that he needed to listen to her, and Emili placed her two hands together, light blossoming out from them and accompanied by her Blue mana. Strangely enough, her Summoning was made of entirely White magic, but the mother of the princes could wield the magic of intellect and thought because it had always been inside of her even before her Sancturia creature had appeared to the infant her the day she had been born.
"Misthrendieyll," Caiellis's mum murmured, the White light that was flowing around her forming the shape of a spirit creature that the boy had seen before when his mummy had Summoned to show him it, the Summoning small enough to fit in the room easily and braying as it saw the hated enemies of the light against it. Misty, as Cai and Alex called the kirin, had let the two boys ride on its back when they had asked, and generally liked the two children of the queen, although while Emili had said to her youngest that she could talk to Misty through the mind the creature couldn't speak to Cai or Alex with its mouth.
The four year old thought that that was weird but cool, and Misty was really nice to touch, and he felt emboldened seeing the kirin of Sancturia that served the angels like the one inside of Caiellis. Misty would fight away all of the scary monsters and protect mummy, Alex and Cai from them. Despite the fact that an aura of gentle light rose up from the queen when she had Summoned and the kirin glowed with a force borne from White mana, the darkness still spread around them, and the youngest Lucerna couldn't stop himself from sniffling in fear when the smaller one of the men taunted, "And you think that this will stop us, my queen? You are not a Lucerna." -
Cai leapt onto one of the larger rocks, his wings not powerful enough to allow him to fly but augmenting the way that he propelled himself through the air, the eye suffused with the judgemental darkness of the Lens of Guilt blooming with concentric circles of blackness that expanded out from it, maintaining their circular shape up to the point where their outer edge met the Black Sun on his right cheek, dragged towards that by the dark gravity of the youngest Lucerna's rare birthmark and ripped out of its expansion, warping as it grew larger and began to swirl around the thirteen year old instead, billowing around him like it was affected by some sort of invisible wind that buffeted the rest of Cai's blood matted hair and pulled into the rest of the dark shapes surrounding the boy.
They added themselves to the flames that did not burn and were cold around the youngest Lucerna, who jumped swiftly between the rocks with a preternatural agility and speed gifted to him by the increase in his mana's strength and magical power, dodging the shards that were large enough to damage him but too small to use as propulsion as he leapt to and from the larger rocks, allowing the smallest obsidian fragments to smash into the shield of unadulterated darkness around him and be annihilated by that. The occasional one pierced through the shield, slashing at Cai and inflicting minor cuts that were merely added to the rest, though the boy couldn't sense the pain from deep within the darkest recesses within his young and tumultuous psyche.
The Lord of Riots scowled at his tactics, a gigantic bolt of blinding crimson lightning blasting down from the heavens and into the courtyard, or more precisely at the location of Cai as he leapt between the falling rocks towards the Defiler. Rakdos swung its scythe round one way and uppercutted with its massive free fist into the cloud of debris as the pillar of unholy electricity coruscated down from the Tempest of Craving that still had the diabolical sigil of the Archdemon Rakdos imprinted onto the roiling clouds that made the City of Pleasure constantly transform below it.
- Even without saying anything like he normally would have done in this sort of situation, Alex conveyed without words that everything would be alright to his little brother who still clung to him for comfort. Cai could sense in his brother's tense posture that the eight year old was scared as well despite not trying to show it, and in spite of his own fear he allowed himself to believe that everything would be ok – either mummy and Misty would fight off the scary monsters, or daddy would come and save them from the nightmare creatures.
"No. I am not a blessed Lucerna," Emili began, keeping her eyes on the things that the bodyguards who had only hours ago talked to her and her children and promised the two little boys that they would keep the youngsters safe, Misthrendieyll placing its hooves on the ground as its horse-like yet comforting body stood dutifully by the queen's side, "But I am a mother, and, whatever you are, you are not going to touch my children."
"We'll see about that, Emili Noctis. I do not quite think you know how much your brother in law has embraced the darkness," Haldren snickered maliciously as his face began to crack again, his arms and legs and spine extending and elongating in a sickening snapping of bone that chilled little Cai to the core. Bony protrusions like scything blades ripped out of the skin of his forearms, pushing the man monster's elbows out of the back of his forearms, and his nails began to grow longer. Two thick horns stabbed out of the being's head as its eyes changed colour, settling on malevolent pearls of gleaming ebony, as as its legs began to extend it rose up in height to even taller than it had been before, which was terrifying considering Haldren had been one of the tallest people the four year old knew.
Its skin greyed like it was dying, the pallor of death suffusing its form as massive claws extended out of the fingertips of its right hand, but what had Caiellis whimpering in fear was when the creature opened its mouth, the split in its face filled with jagged teeth that seemed to be grinning at the youngest prince and his older brother, who let his mana flow out of him even more in response to their combined fear. The other bodyguard, Jack, underwent a slightly less impressive but no less horrific transformation, becoming a creature that was a lesser version of the one that had been Haldren.
The word "demon" rose unbidden to the boy's young mind, even though he did not know exactly what a demon was. If he had been able to think past the freezing fear in his head, he might of recognised this foul monster as the one that had appeared in his horrible nightmare, but all he could think of was how scary it was. He wanted his brother and mummy to tell him that they would be safe, that the monsters wouldn't hurt them – or that they wouldn't let the monsters hurt them – but Alex and mummy were staying silent in the unnaturally dark nursery.
"Now, hand over the brats, and I might just spare your life," the demon said, though its eyes showed that it was only taunting the thirty one year old woman, its nefarious companion snorting in amusement and agreement like a playground miscreant and bully who would do anything to please the head of their gang. Emili didn't respond, she had no reason to and was channelling her mana to the fore in the hope that someone within the palace would notice if they hadn't already, so Alexander growled at them, "Mum won't let you take us, monster! And I won't let you hurt my little brother whilst I'm here!"
Cai would have said something to agree with his big brother but he was way too scared and didn't want the demon to look at him again, and its already impossibly wide smile seemed to widen even more as it replied, "Very well then. It seems that your spawn has spoken for you, my queen." -
Caiellis ripped his sword that was dripping with tenebrosity and infused with the black fire of hatred across the air in front of him, his unthinking mind only concerned about the death of the Archdemon's physical form and not his own safety, an arc of void darkness cut into the skin of reality that he called Black mana out of, the corrupt and evil magic of the abyssal darkness surrounding Lucael and the corresponding location in Sancturia (if they were not one and the same) harkening to his need for more power and fuelling his hatred and ambition to kill, anathema to his own Black mana that rumbled in loathing as it felt the magic of the infernal nether, but instead of using it to further his own dark energy he did not even touch it as he flung the shadows bled into reality from the void realm at the Defiler and the crashing bolt of red lightning.
He would have hesitated to do so had he had control of his mind, concerned by the implications of using magic from the most hated place in all of the two worlds in spite of not actually allowing it to touch him, especially wielding it against an Archdemon who by all means should have been able to control it, but in a violent expulsion of the stuff of the nether that was vomited out towards Rakdos the Lord of Riots screamed in rage as he sensed another, familiar power discreetly lending its aid towards Caiellis in the control of the tainted mana that should not have affected the other Archdemon at all.
The globules of darkness fountained upwards, and Cai paid no attention to it as it consumed the massive thunderbolt of impassioned Red and Black mana from the storm above, the electricity conducting into that as the shadows crackled with the volatile energy, and as the rift that the boy had created closed up it dragged the excess mana back into the abyss with it. To any observer it would simply look like Caiellis had used his own mana to do the deed, as there was little visual difference between the prince's shadows which he had used before and the darkness from the portal he had opened, but the Lord of Riots knew that one of his brothers had intervened and taken the crimson lightning meant for the youngest Lucerna.
That drove him into an even greater rage, especially since the brat wouldn't even truly know what had happened and would simply assume – if he could even think – that he had directed the force of the magic elsewhere instead of having it taken away by another being, and he roared as he swung his scythe horizontally at the boy who was still jumping between rocky debris and his fist upwards. The volume of the noise sent the rocks smashing into one another and moving back through the air, but that did not faze the hatred and anguish controlling Caiellis as he accommodated the sudden motion.
- The demon moved forwards at an impossibly fast speed, the almost solid gloom of the once inviting room wrapping around it and allowing it to bend the laws of motion to propel itself at the queen, dodging the bolt of swirling light that Emili shot at it that was lost within the writhing darkness that whispered maliciously at Cai, who was shrugged off gently but firmly by his brother. Caiellis knew why the eight year old had pushed him off, because his big brother needed to be able to move without him clinging to his leg and waist, but he instantly felt more unprotected without contact with his family members.
Emili cried out in shock when the grinning demon shot forwards, faster than her eye could track it, smashing its right hand into the kirin at her side's chest and lifting the now writhing creature off the floor. Misty let out a warbled shriek of pain, opening its mouth and blasting a stream of golden luminescence at the demon lifting it off of its hooves, but it did not do anything to the mean monster. It grabbed the creature around one of its shining horns with its left hand, wrenching its head to the side and snapping its neck extremely quickly as it screamed in the throes of its death.
"Misty..." Cai whispered in shock at the powerful creature being killed so quickly as the demon tossed its unmoving body to the side where grasping arms of shadow reached towards it. The dead creature dissipated into sparkling particles of light that were quickly consumed and drowned out by the shadow. Mummy placed her hands together, invoking her smart Blue mana as well as her White as she flung chains at the demon, who barked with laughter and smashed them aside contemptuously.
The four year old boy tore his eyes away from the monster, looking up at his mum's concerned features that were fixed on the creature threatening her sons, and when she felt both of her sons' gazes upon her she tried to make her face less worried so that they would not be frightened as much despite the direness of the situation.
That didn't do much to calm Caiellis's nerves, and he turned towards his big brother who was still at his side, Alex's eyes full of fear as well as anger at what had been done to poor Misty, as he raised his own hand. He launched his own beam of incandescence into the darkness, his less controlled than his mother's but with the hint of more raw power within it because of the fact that he was a Lucerna, hitting the monster in the shoulder as Cai held his breath, believing in his big brother who was so strong (though not as strong as daddy, or mummy for that matter, though mummy was usually more gentle), but the demon shrugged off that as well and grinned down at him. "You're going to pay for that, you little bastard."-
Caiellis dodged the scything blow that slashed through the air below him and burnt his feet when the few souls that reached towards him touched his shoes with their fiery hands, and instead of evading the uppercut – something that his unconscious somehow knew would leave him in a bad position for Rakdos to attack him from there – he coalesced his black fire more prominently underneath him as he let the massive fist smash into him from below. Two more of his ribs shattered in the thunderous impact that sent him flying upwards as the hand smashed through his shield of darkness and hatred, and the youngest Lucerna coughed up a spray of blood once more.
The pain did not affect him in any way. Even if he had been able to access all of this power consciously and only barely felt the agony, he still would have reacted instinctually, a moment of hesitation as his mind processed the newest injuries springing up that could have been fatal, but there was no delay in any shape or form as the magical power rushed through him.
He twisted mid air, the fact that more of his bones were broken proving to be irrelevant with the shadows infusing him with their dark vitality and strength, added to the reality that there was nowhere left in his mind dedicated to physical pain – it was instead consumed by what he had seen and what he was still witnessing in the rest of the city, Alexander pawing at the Master of Violence's corded forearm and his mum attempting to conjure up more spells to help them against the demon that the real him knew would kill her and end his perfect life, although the part of him trapped within the memories of his four year old existence could not even countenance that.
The darkness blossomed around him like flowers with petals of haunting purple flames growing underneath the light of a Black Sun, allowing him to manoeuvre himself through the air as tendrils of shadow fought against claws of flame that reached up towards him, the cold sweat of fear mixing with the perspiration caused by the immense heat of the courtyard coupled with the already hot climate of the Welkalite Empire and dripping down the young boy and he flipped, moving with the force of the demon's fist smashing into him that would have pulped his body had had not had this power rushing through him and would have done that irrespective of power if he hadn't of twisted his body with the impact and focussed the shield around him.
Caiellis opened his left hand, pointing the palm at the snarling Lord of Riots below him who was already priming another powerful spell to fling at the boy, the whirlpools of blood and souls that had been present at the Defiler's nullification of the Twilight Reprisal swirling around the courtyard once again as the iron circle of a star with seven points was ripped out from within the ground, although this time it was even bigger than before and was drenched in blood that fountained out of it, the tendrils of metal and flesh tearing themselves out of it like snakes made from blood that shot towards the boy.
There was a surge in Black mana from the insensate youngest Lucerna, dark fire surging forth from his outstretched hand, roaring in a mournful song mixed with the smallest prince's screams of despair and hatred as they rushed towards the Defiler, the first offensive attack in a while Cai had directed at the evil Archdemon of pleasure and carnal violence. Pulsing with an internal purple light that was the manifestation of the thirteen year old's inner feelings and powerful emotional torment, they grew every second as they annihilated everything in their path towards the Lord of Riots, who raised his arms to ward off the magic of darkness that was some of the most potent he had ever had the pleasure of witnessing before.
-The nursery exploded into violence after that, the grinning demon that had been Haldren rushing forwards once again, opening up its left fist as claws of shadow were formed from the dancing darkness within the room, reaching towards the Lucerna princes and their mother before Emili beat them back with golden shields of light that protected them from the movement of the gloom that had Caiellis wanting to curl up into a ball and hide. He was sure that his mummy or big brother would have told him to hide if it would have helped their situation, and he somehow knew that this being could smell his fear so hiding under the sheets on the other side of the room wouldn't do anything.
He was so, so scared, and he didn't know what he could do to help his family as his mummy blasted bolt after bolt after bolt at the mean grinning monster who had killed Misty, mummy's kirin Summoning, to seemingly little effect. It batted aside most of the beams of magic power from the woman, striding towards her every second as Emili did everything in her power to stop it.
Fear crept up the young boy's spine and Caiellis backed away before he felt something touch him from behind. It was a cold, sweaty touch, and a sickly sweet yet foetid and pungent scent filled his nostrils. He felt a hand on the back of his pyjama top, sharp claws digging into the fabric harshly but not tearing it open, and he shrieked in panic as he tried to run away from whatever had grabbed him. He kicked his legs in terror, and the soft bedtime socks that he was wearing strangely met no resistance.
"Mummy!" he cried, not knowing what else to say as he was lifted off of his little feet. He knew that the woman was concentrating on her own enemies, the larger of the two monsters that had killed poor Misty and sent her back to the Mind Realm. One thing that he had understood for a long time as a child was that sometimes not everyone could focus on him, that sometimes people had to do other things rather than tend to his needs constantly. Perhaps it was because his daddy spent so long doing his job as the king of Lucael, or maybe Cai was simply smart like that. But right now, apart from Alexander who was already here, he didn't know who else to call to come and help him.
"Caiellis!" was the responding shout, from Emili at the same as Alex, but it was the eight year old that responded first, a flaming fist of light blasted out from the big brother of the squirming Caiellis and smashed into the monster holding him, the Red and White mana within it not yet strong enough to burn the creature with cleansing fire but powerful enough to hurt it. Cai felt the nails dig into his back harder, and a terrifying snarl of annoyance the monster threw him away.
The boy tumbled through the air, remembering when Alex had once been way too rough with his wrestling moves and threw his little brother across the "arena" of two beds that they had created – Cai had landed on the floor and started crying, but had been nursed back to health by his suddenly gentle and contrite brother before any of their parents came in. An arm caught his fall, yanking his small body out of the air, but that didn't stop all of his forward momentum and he crashed into his older brother.
"Get behind me!" Alexander yelled at him, pulling the terrified younger boy off of him and trying not to show his own fear as he pushed his baby brother behind him. There wasn't enough time to check whether or not he had been hurt by the fall, and Alex and Cai both turned around in time to see the second demon pulling itself out of the shadows that it had grabbed Caiellis from and drag itself out of the gloom, its teeth glinting in the golden light from the magic being cast in the room, although when the illumination touched it it turned horrible and dark-
The flames exploded against the massive corded arms of the Defiler, utterly destroying the bracers that it had been wearing and even ripping apart some of its hard crimson flesh, though there was no blood because the way that the fire of annihilation destroyed simply tore the essence from the Archdemon instead of cutting it open or burning it, removing its physical form. Rakdos felt the delectable pain up and down his arms, the sensation of agony pulsing through the demon completely different to that a human could ever sense, and it laughed hysterically in masochistic psychopathy as it slammed its foot on the ground, the inferno of loathing increasing in intensity and eroding the Defiler's crossed arms even more.
They would regenerate eventually, particularly with the amount of souls that he had consumed so far, but for now the Archdemon's own Rain of Gore was stopping him from instantly repairing the damage with dark healing magic which would create new muscle and sinew to replace that which had been destroyed – and Rakdos wouldn't have it any other way. Healing was an ability used by cowards who had not discovered the true bliss in torment and pleasure within pain, and the Lord of Riots wanted everyone to fight without the power to simply undo damage inflicted unto them.
Caiellis's power was reaching a crescendo of mana generation that hurt his own fragile body with the dark magic that was surging throughout it, almost too much for even a Lucerna to handle but especially hard for one as young and frail as he was, not that he had any choice in the matter as he did not know or care what was happening outside of the scenes in his head. The Lord of Riots bled more mana into the air, the massive spinning and spiked circle of a star with seven point rising up into the air and making the tides of blood in the ocean of viscera and mad souls below that were joined by more every second in time with their deaths within Cai's mind, twirling maddeningly at such a rate that the fabric of the world was pulled apart and distorted by its spinning insanity as it rose up to the Defiler.
More flames rose to Cai's hands, the darkness forming them from his hatred and loathing and the anguish and emotional torment at seeing innocent people – particularly innocent people who he knew and who had given up so much for him and loved him – die infusing the dark fire with their melancholy purple glow that added even more destructive power to them. There was no technique, no long and complicated ritual in which a perfect balance of emotion and power had to be maintained. Caiellis screamed and cried within his head, and the darkness responded, gifting him power from within that he could not normally access to use in his mission of slaying Rakdos and freeing the City of Pleasure from its despotic masters.
Rakdos spoke words of dark intent and malicious noise that sounded more like the screams of a billion souls dying in unison to a billion different types of unique pain inflicted upon each one individually mixed with insatiably ravenous and lascivious demonic growls from the darkest of creatures than words, sounds that had Cai's ears bleeding once again despite the fact that he could not actually hear them they were that powerful, and pulled back from the onslaught of black and purple flames from his aerial opponent.
-It grinned maliciously at the two boys, Alex's hands roughly in the combat magic positions that he had been thought, though he had never expected to have to use them so early. Cai clutched at the back of his brother's pyjamas, before consciously forcing himself to pull away so that they could both move. He craved comfort, but even at four years old he understood the direness of their situation.
"Don't touch my little brother again!" Alexander shouted at it, more for Caiellis's benefit than his own, and although if the youngest Lucerna would have listened more intently he would have picked up on the note of fear in his brother's shaky yet defiant voice. Cai's terror overwhelmed that thought, and he believed in his big brother, not willing to think that if these monsters could kill Misty so easily then they would be able to do the same to them as well.
He was about to turn to mummy to see if she was alright before the demon tensed its large and muscular legs (inheriting that from the human Jack that it had inhabited) and springing towards them, Cai letting out another whimpering scream of panic and fear. Alex launched a weak fireball of light and flame at the monster, before trying to jump back and escape from the swipe of its large and clawed hands.
"Alex!" Cai cried, unaware that he had pronounced his brother's name perfectly for the first time without slurring the x within it in his panic as the large fingers of the demon wrapped around Alexander's head and dragged him forwards. The four year old's tough big brother instantly started fighting back, kicking and punching with small fists and feet (though they were not in Caiellis's sight since he was much smaller himself) surrounded by weak mana as he himself was lifted off of his feet, his ineffectual thrashing doing nothing from dissuading the monster who was inspecting him like one would inspect a good fishing catch before tossing it into the box containing the rest of the flailing aquatic animals.
There was a cry of panic and pain coming from the blonde youngster as he was pulled forwards, and it roused Caiellis's anger that something would dare to touch his invincible big brother who was almost as strong as mummy and daddy who would be here soon to beat up these mean demons. Alex couldn't see, his eyes and face hidden by the grey flesh of the smaller but still large monster, and the boy tried desperately to pull the fingers that were digging into his head and hurting him off, blinking back tears all the while.
The older boy's pain roused more fear within Cai, but also a form of dislike that he had never felt before, surpassing annoyance and even anger and becoming something else entirely, and the four year old knew that he had to help his big brother who was in danger-
Instead of allowing the Lord of Riots to complete his foul ritual, the slender adolescent launched himself forwards again, blasting fire out of his free hand and tenebrous Sword of Glass as the shadows pooling around him blasted out tendrils of pure blackness to smash aside anything that would prove detrimental to his airborne charge. More hatred filled him, hatred of this demon, everything that it represented and everything that it had done, and that was counterbalanced and enhanced by another surge of sorrow from deep within his head at what was happening within his mind, and the boy's black tears darkened his pale (where they weren't splattered with both unnaturally vibrant gore and his own blood) cheeks as they ran down him like ink, the birthmark on his right cheek glowing with its mournful purple light.
Waves of fire and blood were blasted at the boy, powerful attacks that might have individually killed him had they been launched at him earlier in this fight such was the amount of mana poured into them, crimson arcs slamming into him, but they were only ever delaying tactics that were supposed to hold him back and inflict as much damage as possible before the main event of the false god's crude and destructive spells that were equally as likely to kill foe or friend. He smashed through them, more bruising appearing on his weak body from the forces of the impact of launching himself through the attacks.
Rakdos snarled again, its growling voice the culmination of all atavistic hunger and anger combined, raising up its left fist as the spinning seven pointed circle of corruption and depravity rose up to his height, fleshy tentacles of metal much like the chains that had choked and restrained the boy before he had been broken into what he was now lashing towards the aerial prince and destroyed by blasts of pure hatred from the darkness exuded out of him.
Dark, pulsing and crude sigils of blood were etched into the air surrounding the demon once again, warping symbols of base debauchery and capriciously violent sadism imprinted onto the tainted skin of the material plane within Usnaan, empowering the raw magic of the demon that was made from all of these vile things and more as they surrounded him with their corrupted glow.
The savage emblems that had existed before the Kingdom of Light was founded and yet changed every second into a new form did not dissuade Cai, nor did the magic that was launched at him in an attempt to slow him down deter his speed or prevent him from closing in on the Lord of Riots, darkness rippling into life all around him as more of the dark fire of annihilation burst out of him. The black inferno was reaching obscene levels of power and size all focussed into a small area around Caiellis and occasionally blasted at the demon to damage it, though the hatred of the boy knew that it was not powerful enough to obliterate the Archdemon at this range and required him to get closer.
"Aww, I am sorry, little Caiellis. Did I hit a nerve by showing you all of your family, friends and soldiers dying in my Festival of Bloodshed below?!" Rakdos taunted, though it was unknown where it was aware or not that the youngest Lucerna could not hear his words over the screaming in his head. The circle of demonic power glowed with its crimson light, and the Lord of Riots thrust its massive left hand into it, grinning at the sensation of pain as the unholy metal of the sigil pierced into the skin of his lower hand with barbed spikes of abyssal iron/flesh, his sacrilegious black blood that could kill a weak Second Sisterhood angel merely by touching it flowing upwards onto the unholy seven pointed star that stopped its spinning, stabbing into Rakdos like some sort of strange bracelet as the demon's blood that was the definition of taint swirled up the barbs piercing into the massive being.
- Caiellis shouted in a mixture of fear and anger at the pain inflicted upon his big brother, feeling a strange rush from within him that he had only experienced a couple of times in the past when being taught about magic but never in this power before. He was familiar with White mana, having seen a few people use it before, but it was weird having it rise up from inside of him instead of being able to feel in in the air. The four year old finally felt that he could do something to help his big brother who had already saved him from the monster that was holding Alex now, and golden light spilled out of his palm as he fired it towards the nightmare creature holding a wriggling Alexander who was kicking the air wildly and trying to pull the hand around his eyes, nose and mouth off.
The boy's magic was formless, having not been taught much about magical technique in wielding spells to harm baddies because of his very young age and the fact that even though he was a Lucerna he could barely channel any mana at all, and as such it was not moulded into any effective form as it spiralled towards the demon. It crashed into it, splitting apart like a spray of water and splashing golden mana all around the creature-
The demon flapped its massive and terrifying wings, buffeting air, ash and blood all around it as it rose up above the ground a few metres itself, rising to Caiellis's height instead of the boy being quite far above the Lord of Riots and making the boy look immensely small once again, the emblems of darkness and hedonism tearing holes in the world as they rose up with their master as he crashed through the air towards the boy.
The circle of ultimate excess and dark passion around the lower palm of the Defiler's left hand was emitting huge amounts of power that made everything glow dark crimson, a voracious colour that symbolised an eternal and insatiable need for more and more pleasure. Caiellis did not care, and nothing would stop him now from completing his desire to banish the Lord of Riots from this world in which it did not belong, to make it pay for all of the pain and death it had inflicted upon the Lucaelians attempting to save the New Empire of Passion from death at its own hands through its despotic masters' indulgence and exploitation of those below them.
Pulsing red lines, like veins etched into the air, spread out from the Archdemon Rakdos, moving like a cancer or infection towards the youngest Lucerna as they travelled throughout the air, carrying large amounts of combined Black and Red mana within them that had them flashing spasmodically with many different but all evil and obtrusive colours. Caiellis slashed his Sword of Glass that was burning like some of Alexander's, and, by extension, Aurelia's blades when they used their red mana, though instead of flames of zeal and passion the crystalline weapon was alight with an inferno of hatred and pure annihilation, across the air in front of him when the web-like pattern of magic that had a similar structure to the corded veins of those muscled brutes in which the blood vessels were obvious.
Darkness burst out of the blade, turning the crimson air around it black as it washed over the attacking magic. One moment, the pulsating corruption was there, reaching towards Caiellis and hoping to taint the boy with its malevolent infection. The next it was gone. It was undone by the boy's powerful magic that simply erased it from existence, removing it from the face of the world seemingly effortlessly as the thirteen year old kept his eyes fixed upon the demon, or more precisely Jarred Redhand used as a conduit within the demon, ignoring everything else around him in the extremely distracting carnival of colours and depraved magic flashing around the two as he still jumped between rocks which had started to float upwards instead of fall towards the floor.
It was as if the Archdemon wanted them to stay here so that he could meet his opponent face to face instead of staring down at him, and Cai was more than happy to oblige as the mere auras of their magic strained against each other for supremacy. Rakdos owned everything apart from the small circle around Caiellis, its spiteful emanation covering everything with a hungering shadow that was far larger than the shade the demon's massive physical form should have taken up. Blinding flashes of lightning scoured lines of destruction through the earth, ripping through the courtyard below them as more than a little of them smashed into Cai, sending jolting bolts of electricity arcing through his nervous system when they managed to penetrate through the dark inferno coalescing around him.
-But the magic didn't do anything to the monster. The spray of light merely bounced off of it before being quickly absorbed by the intense shadows in the room that made it feel much more claustrophobic and cloying than it usually was. Cai's young and large green eyes that were already welling with tears of fear and sadness because of what had happened to Misty widened even more in shock and worry for his big brother when his magic had no effect, and he stared in terror at the demon holding the struggling eight year old.
Fright rooted him to the spot as Alex's muffled yells of anger and yelps of pain reached his young ears, and Caiellis snapped himself out of it. Alex and mummy were in danger, which meant that he had to help them instead of standing around doing nothing. Alexander had helped the baby him when the older prince had been his age, as though Cai couldn't remember it he just knew it in his heart, the tiny heart that was pounding in his head and filled with the need to help those who loved him and made him happy and were protecting him from meanie monsters who wanted him and his big brother.
He began to run at the demon creature holding Alexander, not reacting as the young boy's fists impacted multiple times onto its wrist and fingers in spite of the fact that they were surrounded by bits of mana, and shouted his precious sibling's name as he copied his brother's own technique, surrounding his tiny hand with golden mana and charging at the monster hurting Alex. It turned round to him, gleaming black eyes fixated on the running and yelling four year old as if only noticing him for the first time, and the malicious pearls set into its monstrous face narrowed as it growled.
Caiellis swung his small fist, but before it connected with the creature a large hand out of nowhere smashed him in the face, claws cutting at the soft skin above his eyes on his forehead as a hand-shaped bruise instantly imprinted itself onto his cheek as he was flung backwards. The young boy yelped in pain as he tumbled across the room again, scraping the knees of his pyjama trousers on the floor as tears began to drip out of his eyes. The pain was immense, the strength of the demon hurting the boy immensely as his young and fragile body was thrust into agony, and he skidded across the floor.
He pulled himself up to look back at his brother, but couldn't see anything through the haze of pain and the stinging tears blurring his vision, as well as the blood that was dripping into his left eye that was more than just a trickle of crimson.
"Cai!" he heard the muffled voice of his big brother, hearing his baby brother in pain despite not being able to look over at him or having seen it, and he honed in on the noise as he couldn't stop himself from crying, too young at four to be suffering through this fear and pain. How much Alexander loved him was apparent though, as well as how brave the eight year old was, as he seemed more worried for Caiellis than he was for himself despite the fact that he was in more danger at the moment-
Rakdos raised the scythe in his right hand, the flaming blade of the infernal weapon blazing with more fire than ever before as the screaming of souls and the sounds of the destruction of the entire city melded into one howling and discordant cacophony of malevolence and chaos. He swung it at the boy once again, leaving a trail of gigantic embers that were like extinguished lives behind it as the scythe rushed towards Cai, who had no choice but to block it on his sword this time.
The Sword of Glass rose to meet the massive weapon of the demon, the crystalline blade that should not have been able to absorb the force of the impact taking it fully as Caiellis used that to thrust himself forwards, utilising the momentum of the demon's scything strike to suicidally launch himself further at the Defiler with his black sword in front of him and held in two hands. The scythe burnt him, leaving trails of red on his back where parts of his last remaining and shredded clothes were incinerated as he once again carved a path through the soulfire blade of the savage weapon, paying no heed to the burning pain of more wounds being inflicted onto him. It was a given by now that he would not be able to move without the mana that was flowing throughout him.
He emerged on the other side of the flames, his eyes still fixed upon the position of the Lord of Riots because of the fact that the black orb of the Lens of Guilt suffusing his left eye in darkness could see it through anything, and Rakdos squeezed its fingers into the savage emblem of hedonism wrapped round his left wrist, contaminated black blood cascading out of them as massive rifts opened up around Cai, red blotches on the tainted air of the City of Pleasure that glowed like volcanoes about to erupt in sprays of boiling lava appearing around the boy as he got closer, the scythe swinging round from behind and forcing him to continue on with his attack.
Mental images assailed the youngsters in a relentless onslaught of violence and slaughter, but apparently the prince of pleasure had made a potentially fatal mistake in forcing the young teenager to watch what was happening within the city despite the fact that it was the only think that would have broken his last vestiges of determination which he had clung to with an almost unbreakable grip, as now none of its sensational assaults had any effect on the Lucerna brat that was still leaping towards the Archdemon through the air.
"YOU DARE TO CHALLENGE MY MIGHT, CHILD?! YOU DARE TO ATTEMPT TO INTERRUPT MY REBIRTH?! YOU DO NOT KNOW THE STRENGTH OF WHAT YOU ARE DEALING WITH, CAIELLIS NOCTIS LUCERNA, AND WHEN I AM FINISHED WITH YOU I WILL ENJOY TEARING YOUR PRECIOUS FAMILY AND ARMY TO SHREDS! I THINK I WILL START WITH DEAR BIG BROTHER ALEXANDER, AND AFTER I HAVE CLAIMED YOUR SOUL I WILL FORCE YOU TO BE THE ONE THAT INFLICTS TORTURE AFTER TORTURE UPON YOUR SIBLING!" furious and frustrated rage encapsulated the being's words, passionate fury that could melt the world in endless fire and drive even the most disciplined and peaceful monks into a psychotic frenzy drowning every syllable in an endless tide of blood as the circles of power around Caiellis exploded in massive pillars of crimson and black destruction that slammed into him.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
-Emili spun around after managing to detain the largest of the two demons with binding Blue and White mana from her lawmage capabilities, knowing that the other one had used the shadows to appear behind her and threaten her children but having been unable to turn around with what Haldren had become so close to her because it would have meant instant death. It was still immensely risky to do this, but she needed to because her children that meant everything to her were in danger.
Cai could barely see through the tears welling up in his puffy, exhausted and scared wide green eyes, but he brushed his hand violently over them to try and clear his vision and have another go at helping his big brother who was still calling out his name in a mixture of an involuntary cry for help and in concern for the younger boy, who, for all he knew, had been knocked unconscious by the other hand of the demon that was holding onto him.
The four year old saw his older brother being turned around, yanked closer to the demon's tall but hunched body that was still larger in height than the eight year old it head. Alex was allowed to see again, fire flickering in his eyes as the wisps that had been controlling the small fire that Emili had lit to make the room warmer for her children were greedily devoured by the expanding shadow.
The frightened blue eyes of the eight year old met the welling green orbs of his baby brother, and Cai was not reassured by what he saw as the demon's leathery hand was pressed down on his brother's mouth and squeezed his nose shut.
It whispered to Alexander, words that Cai couldn't understand but nevertheless hurt his ears like someone had stuck a knife into them repeated by the cloying shadows around them that made all movement difficult, as the blonde youngster thrashed in its suffocating grip, his eyes widening as he tried to escape and looked pleadingly at Caiellis for any form of help and in concern for the younger boy who was losing a lot of blood through the brutal gash on his forehead that cascaded down his face-
The explosions ripped into the boy, but he merely spread his arms out wide and howled in anguish as his own darkness blasted and discharged out of him, the raw Red and Black corruption that was crashing into him met by the flames of annihilation that were only increasing in power as his broken yet undying emotions got stronger and stronger every second. His skin was burnt and cut, but the magic of the demon was overcome despite the overwhelming force that was behind it, the huge quantities of mana poured into it from one of the strongest beings of the two worlds and the massive amount of damage that it dealt as more of Cai's blood whipped into the air from cuts and lacerations.
The crimson fluid turned black the second it touched the darkness pooling around him and forming strange and indescribable shapes round the boy as it roughly orbited him before being turned into fire at his extremities and by his will of hatred and vengeance, and Cai kept going in spite of the injuries that his fragile and unhealthily light young form was sustaining in his charge, his hatred and anguish preventing him from stopping or giving any of his actions pause as he did not consider them, aiming his body like a missile towards the blot in the Archdemon that was the Welkalite Protector who had deposed the old tyrants only to allow new ones to rise to the occasion when he was trapped within his aggrieved mourning.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
- The demon said some more things to Alex that Cai couldn't understand as he staggered to his feet, almost dropping to the ground again because of the pain in his head from the contact and the fall, another bruise developing behind his locks of brown hair on the back of his small head from when he had whacked it on the floor after being driven away from his older brother. Alex kicked impotently back at the creature who was still wearing scraps of Jack's ornate armour that he had always taken great pride in, his thrashing becoming weaker because of the lack of air, before the hand was removed just enough to allow him to breathe.
Caiellis almost tumbled over again, thrusting his tiny hands out to stop his fall, his need to help his brave big brother and mother the only thing preventing him from curling up into a foetal ball and crying his eyes out because of the pain and fear. He saw his brother gasp in a lungful of air, his eyes flicking to the side and fixing upon something other than Cai, before the demon's hand began to be saturated with darkness and it placed it close to the boy's mouth again.
Alex heightened his desperate struggling as the darkness began to go up his nose slowly, panic making the eight year old's motions frantic as the demon's left hand almost gently stroked his short blonde hair, resolutely clamping his mouth shut and shaking his head from side to side to try and stop the thing that looked like smoke from entering his nostrils and through his mouth. The noxious and grey gas-esque magic was slowly getting into his nose, but his twisting and turning and the fact that he had his mouth shut prevented much of it from entering his lungs and doing whatever it would do whilst within there.
The creature's thumb and forefinger squeezed his nose shut once again as the grip of its left hand on his head became iron and implacable, preventing it from moving as Cai could tell that his brother was trying to keep his mouth shut for as long as possible so that he didn't have to breathe in whatever was around the monster's hand.
Alex could hold in his breath for a long time, Caiellis had found out in one of their many competitions that had started recently now that he was old enough (though he could remember doing races with his brother and other things like that as far as his memory stretched back) as while he had tried really hard not to lose he had eventually been forced to suck a breath in to replenish his starved lungs, conceding to his big brother again. Emili had gently admonished them, telling them that it was unfair that Alex had done that since his lungs were much bigger and older, commenting on the way that Cai's cheeks had gone red because of how hard he had tried to win against his older brother, but that hadn't stopped Alexander gently teasing Cai about it and walking with a slightly triumphant swagger for the rest of the day, much to the four year old's displeasure.
Now he could see that his brother was desperately trying to replicate the same tactics that had had him win their breath holding competition, but his struggles were growing weaker but more frantic. Cai tried to conjure up the light again even though it had been useless, but nothing was coming to his hands, so he resolved to try and run to his brother to help the four years older boy. He found that he couldn't move, tendrils of shadow wrapping around his childishly chubby (due to his age) yet still thin legs and holding him down in spite of his resistance-
Spears of darkness and black flame shot out from the darkness around Cai, impacting onto the demon's own defences of occult magic from the most vile of sources, dark spell-casting that was the epitome of corruption and unrestrainedcarnage that would have instantly shattered Caiellis's sanity and broken apart his mind into a thousand pieces had he been able to hear it. Words whispered into his ear, rapturous screams echoing in the empty spaces between the Black mana of hatred and sorrow that was around him, but none had any affect apart from increasing the flow of blood out of his ears, mouth and nose, as the crimson liquid that would be spilling out of his eyes as well turned midnight pitch as it touched his tears and the Lens of Guilt on his left eye.
Caiellis kept going, and the intensity of the magic that was flung against him that would have killed him a million times over without this mana increased. There were explosions of fire, blasts of crimson and black lightning, a rain of blades made from the sharpened bones of demons that were coated in potent hallucinogenic venoms, unspeakable symbols that danced against his eyes and tried to mutate his body into something inhuman and fleshy tendrils of iron that shot towards him from below from the screaming pit of souls of blood that wanted nothing more than to drag him under and drown him so that he could spend an eternity of torment with them.
Avatars of discord rose up from the shadow of the Lord of Riots around him, screaming in an extremely high pitched chorus of horrisonant noise as they flew towards the boy, chittering and howling as they reached towards him with their claws. They screamed as the fire melted their essence from their bones, rendering their unnatural bodies diffuse as it snapped their tether that was giving them unholy life through the cruel power of the Defiler infusing his shadow with malevolent sentience and debased existence.
Sigils of dark power and taint were periodically etched onto the boy's skin by the huge increase in mana from the Lord of Riots who was still roaring and bellowing his hatred of the Lucerna line that would seek to unseat him from this power that he had gained within Usnaan and disrupt the Festival of Bloodshed with their regards to morality and restraint, ripping through Cai's pale skin like they had done before but much more violently and destructively, marking the boy with the darkness of the Defiler before waves of purple and black fire washed over them and burnt them off, though they were quickly replaced by more that were scratched onto Caiellis's young flesh and branding him with the darkness of the Archdemon Rakdos.
There were malicious and barbed heptagrams that imprinted themselves onto his chest and left cheek before being annihilated off by the pure darkness flowing out of him, chaotic glyphs reminiscent of demonic skulls that were cut into his skin by invisible blades and sent agonising Red and Black mana coursing through his bloodstream and nervous system, but the darkness of all-consuming anguish and hatred refused to let go of the skinny teenager and it did not allow any of the demon's magic to obtain a hold upon him and corrupt him into following the Archdemon's commands as he cried and whimpered and screamed in opposition of the menagerie of sounds and noises that the magic of Rakdos was filling the air with.
Cai's young voice was broken and raw from all of the screaming and strangling that had shredded the inside of his throat, tormented by the emotional agony that he had gone through and was drowning in within his own head that fuelled his hatred of the thing that had caused all of that, the magic around him overflowing with his hatred and destroying everything around the boy as he kept advancing.
Rakdos was blasting massive amounts of mana at the child, invoking magic darker than had ever been seen before in the city of Usnaan or even the entirety of Welkas and flinging it at the boy, each one enough to kill millions of souls and crush the most powerful civilisations into dust as their subjects were corrupted and turned to enter the eternal revel of bloodthirst and violence and excess that the demon was the unholy master of. None seemed to have any effect, breaking apart on the unrelenting surges of pure hatred and despair from the youngest Lucerna, the darkness roaring with a mournful song that made it ridiculously powerful as they mixed with the current Caiellis's screams of despair and hatred and the anguished crying of the four year old him that punctuated everything and could not be eclipsed by any of the other noise, deafening hymnals of raw emotion and unadulterated sadness that crashed through and destroyed even the Archdemon's unholy spells.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
-Alex's eyes began to flutter as he tried desperately not to breath in the fumes, his brother falling to his knees as he put everything that he had in moving towards his big brother, but the shadows lashed around him and dragged him to the ground, grabbing at him like they had done in some of his nightmares and stopping him from going anywhere. Eventually, the eight year old opened his mouth, gasping in a lungful of air since that was the only way that he could breathe with his nose held shut, and ingested the strange magic of the monster holding him.
A spiralling beam of warm luminescence shot out from the side of the demon, blasting it in the side of the head as it snarled and yanked Alex round as if to use him as a human shield, the boy's eyelids drooping and his limbs becoming lead as his struggles stopped. Lullabies of the children of the darkness sang into both boys' ears, making them feel unnaturally tired and exacerbating the exhaustion they both felt because of the fact that it was around one in the morning at the very least and Caiellis hadn't slept much at all, and Alexander's eyes shut as he leaned back into the foetid embrace of the demon that was feeding him that dark magic.
Another beam of incandescence crashed into the being, causing it to mewl in pain and holding Alexander even more in front of him so that the one attacking it would have no choice but to go through the boy to get to it. Caiellis, with tears falling ashamedly down his face because of the pain and the fear and the fact that his big brother had been forced to fall asleep which meant that he was in lots of danger coupled with the reality that he hadn't been able to do anything to help the brave and strong older boy who had protected him and stopped the mean and scary monster from doing the same to the four year old, looked over at the source of the light magic.
He saw his mummy striding towards them, golden light collecting around her outstretched palms as she primed another attack on the creature that had forced her eldest son into a restless and unnatural sleep and cut open her youngest's forehead as well as smashed him across the room. Mummy looked more angry than Cai had ever seen before, and that scared him a lot because of the fact that he had barely ever seen the woman angry, but even though he knew that the anger wasn't directed against him it still frightened the four year old as it reminded him of the direness of the situation. He couldn't help but think that mummy was angry at him because he hadn't helped his big brother.
"Let go of my son!" the woman shouted, her soft and comforting voice loud and defiant as her mana reacted to her baby boys' peril, and Cai wasn't able to stop himself from crying out, "Mummy!" even though she already knew that they were in danger. He was only four years old, and he didn't know what to do, and he could feel the pouring of warm blood down his face in a way that scared him.
A shadow flickered at the corner of Cai's vision-
"WHAT IS THIS POWER?!" the Lord of Riots demanded and shouted, his demonic voice suffused with outrage and fury mixed with a kind of sadistic wonder at the sudden strength of this young child who had failed to even scratch him before and had been forced to use large amounts of his Lucerna mana to deflect even the weakest attacks of the Archdemon but was now almost completely unaffected by the strongest.
To all intents and purposes the boy should not be moving, with four of his fragile ribs broken and the rest heavily bruised, his own blood cascading down him from countless wounds and much of his pale skin shredded, his throat covered in bruising in the shape of finger and thumb marks as well as scratches from the chains that had been wrapped round it, his left leg looking like it was broken as well because of the angle at which it was dangling down from him, but Cai was moving faster than he had done in the entire battle. Rakdos felt a pulse of something that he had inflicted upon numberless hordes of others but never felt himself tingling at the base of his Archdemonic spine, something that was exquisite but also completely uncomfortable and an unwanted sensation.
The child should not have been able to hold this much mana inside of him without dying instantly, much less wield it like he was doing, although the demon knew that the Caiellis he had been fighting against – well, torturing – had completely gone, no matter that he was a Lucerna – he could not have been much older than thirteen at the very most, but even if Caiellis had been an adult most Lucernas could not wield this amount of power. Then again, all other Lucernas did not have access to Black mana, and that meant that this little brat was different, as he had access to magic that rewarded abuse and losing control and would gain power from his hatred.
Rakdos roared again, howling his atavistic desire to destroy and consume the world in a never-ending orgy of blood and destruction at the sky, and he gathered Black and Red mana into his fist as he swung it at the boy with immense speed, tainted magic surrounding the massive and sharp knuckles as it thundered through the air towards Caiellis.
The boy screamed back, his shredded vocal cords making the noise haunted and mournful as well as desperate and anguished as the darkness billowed around him in a maelstrom of black flames and ruinous shadows as the Sword of Glass shone with the dark energy collected into it that was already warping and extending the crystalline blade that channelled the huge amounts of Black mana into it. Red and Black mana crashed into him constantly, demonic magic that tore apart his skin when it got through his shield and drowned his mind in blood and vile images that he couldn't pay attention to, his mental self locked into gazing at those who he had failed and half of him reliving the night of his mother's death.
Next to his face and above the pulsating Black Sun on his cheek that shone with a scintillation of incandescent darkness, the flames pulsed and collected, moulded together by his loathing of the demon that had caused this anguish to him and many others and filled the world with darkness and pain that he wanted nothing more than to brutally extinguish, and they began to form one of the six tenets of White and Black mana that made up the holy Circle of Orzhova utilised in Caiellis's most powerful rituals in front of his right cheek. It shone with a pure darkness tinted purple by sorrow but mostly black and full of darkness and annihilating power.
It was Hatred, and it had formed from Caiellis's power and come to wipe the stain of the Defiler from this world in which it did not belong. When the sigil of darkness appeared, a jagged symbol that belied magisterial excellence as well as the haunting power to consume and destroy everything, the flames of annihilation and the death of souls rose in power, screaming out their song of destruction into the air to match the haunting melody of the youngest Lucerna's crying and sobbing and howls of broken grief, the shattering of innocence mixing with the death of perfection and happiness in a haunting and terrifying verse that promised the utter eradication of Rakdos itself.
Hatred increased Caiellis's power, the unstable magic inside of him rising to new levels of strength, and as the massive fist covered in hellfire and darkness from the deepest pits of deprivation sped towards the small thirteen year old, Cai flipped in the air, an elegant somersault that allowed him to sliced the thrumming Sword of Glass into the demon's closed fist, hacking through the magic that surrounded it and slicing into the Archdemon's crimson flesh as he dragged it along its fingers. Rakdos howled in anger and pain as his huge fingers, thicker than Caiellis's waist and arcing towards the boy who was moving fast, were eviscerated, severed off by the blade of crystal filled with the prince's darkness and hatred.
An explosion of black and tainted blood surrounded Caiellis as Rakdos swept his now fingerless hand into him, nonplussed by the pain of having his fingers chopped off because he could regenerate them later once he had dealt with this brat, but the boy merely screamed back and blasted a destructive wave of black fire that pulsed with an inner purple light of heartbreak into the hand that destroyed the flesh and erased the fist from existence as Hatred grew in size and moved round in front of the boy, providing a medium which the youngster could use to amplify and channel his Black mana through.
That had the demon shouted loudly and screaming curses even louder, making the boy's teeth rattled together as his skull shook within his head and his bones vibrated, harming his broken ribs even more, though that would not stop the youngest Lucerna now, not now that he had this much power flowing through him as empyreal matter surrounded him and tried to drag him into the hell of Sancturia where he would be subjected to every torture that had ever existed for all eternity. He launched himself towards the demon, the black viscera that poured over him turned to nothing by his flames of undoing as he shot through the air, his sword outstretched and pointing squarely towards the degenerate heart of the Archdemon where Jarred Redhand was trapped.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
- and Cai was filled with a surge of fear as he saw a large figure shooting through the coalescing and dancing darkness behind his mother as she advanced on the monster holding Alexander and lulling him into a twisted sleep, the boy unable to see what was happening because he had lost consciousness, the dark substance still drifting languidly into the eight year old's mouth and nose-
As he launched himself towards the demon, all of the Lord of Riots's magic was railed against him, gigantic meteorites crashing down from the sky above as seven titanic thunderbolts of crimson and pink lightning crashed into the spot where he was. Spinning seven pointed circles formed from blood and iron that tore through the fabric of the world and let out a tide of deviant savagery into reality and ripped through the air as they shot towards Caiellis, reaching towards him with thousands of iron tendrils of flesh and muscle that snapped and lashed towards the boy. Numerous barbaric blades and wicked torture implements, too many to count, rained down upon him, made of corrupted iron and bone, but Caiellis was not kept away by any of the magic that was bombarding his fragile form with savage power that should have torn him apart and ripped him into a thousand parts, each one subjected to a different type of encapsulating pain.
The sigil of Hatred pulsed in time with the song of its namesake, the weeping chorus of sadness and loathing directed at the ones who would cause such anguish and sorrow, and the magical attacks were warded off by an impossibly powerful shield as the boy got closer, shooting through the air like a missile of darkness towards the heart of the demon.
Rakdos tried to batter him away with his massive wings, the pinions of darkness folding inwards quickly and then outwards, an expanding shield that smashed into Caiellis and juddered his bones before he used his sword that annihilated the essence of whatever it touched because of the amount of Black mana focussed into the glassy edge to hack his way through the leathery and thick wings. He cut through the skin and the bone of the next one without diverting his course or moving his sword at all, the blade pointing at the conduit of the demon to this world and slicing large holes through the being's wings as he charged towards it, ripping through the bloody and occult ritual circles that span into life in front of him and shot lightning into him as he passed through them.
The Lord of Riots bellowed at him, opening its gaping maw wide, and within that there could be heard a momentous din of thousands of thundering footfalls like a storm of movement from within the Defiler as his Red and Black mana was focussed into the youngest Lucerna. A creature emerged from the fire that was pouring out of the Archdemon's mouth that was thronged with teeth, the vague shape of a massive skeletal horse with its proportions massively distorted and becoming more vicious, like some sort of carnival steed from hell that had two heads and howled at Caiellis in anger as it spotted him. It was surrounded in fire, and at least twice as tall as the body as it ran within the inferno blasted towards the youngest Lucerna, but there was not just one.
Soon thousands of tempestuous hoof beats could be heard, and many more of the flaming horses were formed out of the breath fire of the Lord of Riots, screaming their hatred of the boy as they ran through the air towards him as he cut a path towards the massive Defiler who was swinging his brutalised scythe at him from behind, the din of the fireherd drowning out everything else and filling his vision with blazing fire from hell as they charged towards the attacking Lucaelian youth.
The boy didn't look away from his target as the Archdemon also moved to intercept him, still vomiting up more demonic elemental horses from within him and spitting them at Cai as he raised the stump of his left wrist, a bituminous blast of oily and sticky black blood fountaining at the littlest Lucaelian within Usnaan in tandem with the blazing herd of carnival hellsteeds, the infernal sparks of their hooves crashing into the air setting the tar like vital fluids of the Archdemon alight and flooding the air with fire.
The ritual circle was still stabbing into the demon's now bare wrist as the blast fulminated towards Caiellis, a new hand formed from darkness and blood spilt in a million rapturous sacrifices to the Lord of Riots ripped itself out of his wrist, covered in demonic sigils as it reached towards Caiellis, lightning still blasting down from the sky and the rumbling Tempest of Craving in an onslaught of Red and Black mana in every form crashing into Cai.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
-and forcing Alexander to sleep through this battle, his eyes moving between his shut lids. Cai was not looking at his brother, however, but at the shadow that was swiftly moving behind their mummy as she focussed on dissuading the smaller demon from hurting the eight year old prince. He tried to move, but the shadows were still holding him down, and when he was about to call out to his mummy that something was behind her a clammy tendril snaked shut around his mouth, muffling his warning cries as his hands tried to rip it off.
The darkness was strong, and it was cold, and merely touching it sent shivers of fear trembling up and down the boy's body as the palpitations of his heart echoed within his head. He tried to scream out again, but the darkness which was being animated by an evil will was holding him down and stopping him from making any sounds apart from high-pitched and smothered grunts as his eyes widened even more in spite of the blood dripping into them and the tears spilling out of them-
Caiellis placed his free left hand upon his Sword of Glass, the powerful emblem of Hatred that was far stronger than Retribution had ever been with everything focussed into just it moving in tandem with his hand, mana that was killing the boy rising up within him and following the path of the sigil formed from the thirteen year old's darkness. A pulse of annihilating flames blasted out from within him, the darkness surrounding him rippling with the explosion and adding its power to the detonation, like the violent destruction of a star of darkness that absorbed everything around it in its death throes and undulated outwards from him.
The first of the flaming elementals that were the physical forms of the nightmares of raving lunatics was touched by the wave of unlight purple, its blackened bones disintegrating into particles of ash that were quickly destroyed and consumed by the hatred pouring out of the youth, and soon the rest of them joined them in its fate, the fire and the tar blood of the demon erased from the world with the pulse of pure loathing given form by the anguish of the boy that would not be satiated by lifetimes of endless crying, sadness that could not be satisfied even when the world was drowned in oceans of tears.
"BASTARD CHILD! YOU THINK THAT YOU CAN DEFEAT ME?! YOU THINK THAT YOU CAN DAMAGE ME, LITTLE CAIELLIS?!" the demon screamed, the only one to bear witness to its words that echoed across the whole of Usnaan in the language of the Archdemonic not even understood by the greater demon lieutenants of the Defiler who were fighting and winning elsewhere in the Welkalite capital city which had been the site of immense violence that the Yentarian Republic would find shocking when they discovered it. Its rage was absolute, all-consuming, inspiring every single servant of it within the city and more into a violent and frenzied rage, filling them with the desire to take as many lives as possible before they died and entered the hell that their Archdemonic patron had waiting for them.
Caiellis didn't hear them. He couldn't hear the taunts or the insults, the rage or the frustrated screaming of the Lord of Riots over the howling within his head, the crying and sobbing that drowned everything else out as his physical form surrendered to the emotions that were controlling it and giving him power as he cut and annihilated his way through everything that was obstructing him from the heart of the demon, the trapped form of Jarred Redhand that was allowing it to stay here.
Caiellis's skin was picking up more cuts and burns by the second as he endured the storm of utter and unadulterated destruction the Lord of Riots was conjuring up in front of him with his new iron hand of darkness and violence, and as the sigil of Hatred made its way to his left hand, causing immense pain in the fingers and the palm that was more focussed than anywhere else on his body, he placed it within his Sword of Glass that was already filled with mana. He unflinchingly forced it within the blade, the crystal structure of the weapon warping with the huge quantities of Black mana held within it as the emblem of Hatred entered the relic weapon that was four hundred years old, rumbling and singing with the broken voice of the youngest prince as it did so, the blade pulsing with dark purple and black that filled it.
The screaming, indescribable mass of destruction that was created by the Lord of Riots, powerful enough to kill a fellow Archdemon (as it had done), a maelstrom of Black and Red mana that combined in endlessly chaotic ways, swirled around the boy, trying to tear him asunder but failing as his pure Black mana overwhelmed it and destroyed it, the song of hatred rising in volume to the point where it was getting louder than the atavistic and furious howling of Rakdos as he snarled at the rapidly approaching youngest Lucerna.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
-that blurred his vision and made it extremely hard to see. He thrashed desperately, harder than he had ever done before because he knew that even though he was only four he was a big boy now, not a baby any more, and that his family depended upon him to help them so that they could survive until daddy came and saved them from the evil monsters. The shadows were almost gentle with him, only holding him down and enclosing around his mouth to the point where he couldn't make much of a sound.
His wriggling and squirming accomplished nothing, and he was reminded of when his big brother called him a wimp because he wasn't very strong and couldn't pick up the box that his toys were in, relying upon Alex to move them. The words had cut deeply (even though Alexander had only been teasing his baby brother gently, something that little Cai had not picked up on), and he knew that they were true. He was a wimp, a weakling, a baby, because he couldn't help his mummy or his big brother.
One of the spiralling contrails of light shot out from his mother's outstretched hands reacted to the plight of her youngest son as well, Emili's maternal instinct extending to both of her precious little boys that meant the world to her and her husband who she dearly hoped would be coming soon. It warmed the unnatural chill of the darkness off of the four year old, though it didn't take away the cold pit at the bottom of his little stomach, and as the light washed over him it burnt the shadows holding him still and stopping him from speaking or shouting away. The boy instantly yelled, "Mummy!"-
Caiellis shot forwards, smashing into the Lord of Riots and landing on its gigantic pectorals with his Sword of Glass instantly smashing into its bloated heart underneath him, darkness pulsing into the blade as it hacked into the Defiler that howled in agonised pain and instantly batted at the boy who had smashed his sword into him, his whole form rippling as distorting with the darkness of hatred that was poured into him from the crystalline blade rammed into his heart.
The skin of the demon instantly started disintegrating around the darkness of the youngest Lucerna and his sword that shone with the midnight blackness of Hatred, ripping through layers of flesh and muscle as the boy screamed his loathing of this unholy being that was the manifestation of everything he hated, the avatar of everything that he stood against, the shadows and the purple and black flames burning away its flesh as it tore through the essence of the Archdemon.
Black blood sprayed over the boy, eating at his skin and solidifying upon him, but the youngest Lucerna did not have the mental capacity at the current time to be able to pay attention to that or give the pain that it caused any heed – and if he did then there would be much worse agony everywhere on his young form because of the wounds he had sustained and the mana that was killing him rushing through him.
Layer after layer of the foul substance of Rakdos was destroyed as the demon screamed in the pain it was in, its hand smashing into Caiellis's shield as its scythe crashed into it from the other side, but the boy was unaffected by what amounted to desperate thrashing as his sword hacked through the demon's body. He could see the vague form of what had once been a lean human man but had been corrupted and defiled beyond recognition by being used as a Summoner by Rakdos, matching what he was able to perceive in the Lens of Guilt but in an even more sorry state than what he had seen there. Demonic perversions ofveins were moulded into the man, extracting blood from him every second and replacing it with the vital fluids of the demon
Had Cai had control of his body and mental functions, he might have felt sympathy for the poor Protector, and definitely revulsion at what had happened to him, but since he did not all this thing trapped within the Defiler happened to be was a target to be hated and destroyed so that the Archdemon could be too.
All of his darkness began to be pulled into the Sword of Glass, the sigil of pure Hatred within it greedily dragging the flames of annihilation and the Black mana that had not taken form within it and with it more damage was inflicted to the Lord of Riots, lines of darkness etching themselves onto its skin around the relatively large cavity Cai had eradicated from the being and tearing apart the essence of whatever debased and vile thing it had that would be considered a soul piece by piece, heavily disrupting its connection to the hellish realm within Sancturia that it originated from.
The boy's sword had hacked into the heart of the Protector as well, the glass blade that was filled with darkness and black fire killing the man in spite of the mana pouring through him and the dark vitality and unnatural resilience given to him by the Archdemon which had used him to enter this world, and the unfortunate thing that Jarred Redhand had become mewled pathetically as it died, its essence withered away as its tether to its own soul was cut, the darkness of the littlest Lucerna destroying his body as it ripped apart his soul. The man reached towards him with a clawed hand, seven fingers (including the thumb) with seven joints brushing against Caiellis's cheek almost tenderly as the man died, as if thanking him for what he had done in freeing him from the embrace of the heart of Rakdos.
The hand, even as its flesh was eroded away and annihilated in layers from touching the left cheek of the boy, suddenly became harsh, stabbing its nails into the already cut flesh of his face and dragging it down the pale cheek, feebly grabbing the boy's throat in an attempt to kill him as the unnatural will of the Defiler overcame any base gratitude the thing who had once been Redhand, the leader of the revolution against the Last Tyrant, had possessed, latching onto his bruised neck with his fingers that were only skeletal bones now but ultimately achieving absolutely nothing as even they were dissolved away by the darkness.
The man died silently, though the screams of the Lord of Riots more than made up for that as they were overwhelmed by the crescendo of noise from Caiellis's emotive but insensate choir that drowned out the howling of the Archdemon as the darkness of the boy spread through it. The demon's flesh and essence was being destroyed in huge amounts as it tried to claw at the boy as the darkness pulsed into his sword now that the connection between the demon and this realm had been sliced apart and destroyed, pulsating globules of anguished fire and Black mana that were heightened and amplified by Hatred using the wound carved into the Lord of Riots from by the Sword of Glass to enter the demon past all of its magical defences as it screamed, shouting its rage and thrashing, beginning to fall back to the ground as its wings lost their uniform movement and moved spasmodically.
But the demon was not dying, it was not being banished from the material plane to the hell in which it belonged, despite the fact that its Summoner had finally been killed and Archdemons could not exist in the physical world without one. Caiellis was heavily damaging it, ripping apart its flesh and annihilating its malicious essence, but Usnaan was too far gone to be considered solely of the material realm any longer.
The hells of Sancturia had superimposed too strongly over the City of Pleasure, allowing the Archdemon to remain within it without a Summoner but weaker until the transformation of the Welkalite capital was completed, but that meant that Rakdos could not be simply banished from the world even with the annihilating power of Hatred that was being poured into it that was causing the whole demon and Caiellis to shake violently and all of the darkness around Cai to be sucked into the Sword of Glass with Hatred within it. Even as the demon was being destroyed, it was not being banished, but since Caiellis could not think he could not even consider stopping now as more power rushed out of him.
The Archdemon crashed into the ground, its back flattening everything in the courtyard but luckily missing the king of Lucael still unconscious in the cage of his son's vitrified blood as a massive shockwave spread out from it, Caiellis still on top of the demon's massive chest with his sword shining with darkness still plunged into its heart. But it was not being banished.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
-The woman heard her youngest son's screamed warning, and Cai scrambled quickly to his feet as he shouted it now that the darkness holding him down was removed, and her green eyes that were a reflection of Caiellis's own opened wide in concern and shock again when the voice reached her. She was about to turn around, mummy was about to turn around, before it happened.
Large, gleaming and white talons dripping with a noxious black substance rammed through her stomach in a slicing stab, Emili's blood spraying out across the room and covering her youngest son in its crimson liquid. Her eyes widened again, in shock and horror, and she let out a gasping scream of pain as the sadistic claws thrust through her lower abdomen lifted her off of her feet, blood dripping down her mouth.
Caiellis's mind froze in anguish and terror as his beloved mother's blood dripped down him, and the sight of his mummy with the talons protruding from her stomach would stay with him for as long as he lived.
"Got you," the demon whispered sadistically in the woman's ear as she was lifted off the floor, mummy coughing up blood as she choked out shrieks of agonised pain.
MUMMY!-
Caiellis screamed in pure hatred and pain, his voice a howling shriek of anger, hatred, anguish, sadness, rejection, pain, torment, defiance and loathing. The fire of darkness blossomed into life in even greater quantities, rushing through his Sword of Glass and into the demon that it was stabbed into, the massive discharge of Black mana in conjunction with the four year old in his head forced to watch his perfect and compassionate mother die in front of him once again, empowering his Black mana to insane levels of power that flooded through the demon.
But it was not enough. It was not enough to kill it.
Then, suddenly, more mana rose up within the boy. It was no longer the magic of darkness, however, which was still endlessly rushing out of him, but the magic of light that rushed out of Caiellis and blossomed into incandescent existence within him at the death of his mother, powered by his need to deliver judgement upon this immense demon for all that it had done to the innocents of the world. Light surged up and out of him, the sudden and blinding luminescence flooding out of the left side of the boy as the shining Lens of Innocence wrapped around his right eye, the light within it rising to levels to meet the overwhelming levels of dark magic that was flooding out of him, golden destruction rising up alongside purple flames of annihilation.
Next to the left side of his face, another sigil was conjured into existence, a twin to Hatred but formed of much more desire for judgement and vindication than its dark brother, curving lines of radiance written onto the darkness in front of the Lens of Guilt in the opposite manner to how Hatred had been drawn. It was Justice, and it had come to deliver punishment upon the Lord of Riots that deserved to be utterly obliterated from this world.
The levels of White mana within the boy that were usually much more stable than his Black, not liable to rise or fall as much as the magic of darkness, began to rise to the same obscene levels of power as the tenebrosity around him, beginning to form a balance of Hatred and Justice between the two and mixing Caiellis's anguish and desire to destroy those who had caused it and would inflict it upon more with his intrinsic need to deliver judgement and death upon the evil whose crimes had rendered them beyond redemption.
The sigil of Justice was pulled into his thrumming and rumbling Sword of Glass as well as the chorus of screaming and haunting song got even louder, blinding light flowing into the blade alongside more darkness and annihilating flames as the White mana matched his Black and combined with it. It was blinding darkness, shining shadows, dark radiance, scintillating destruction in all of its pure forms of light and darkness mixed together, and it was blasted into the Lord of Riots through the Sword of Glass as the demon screamed in agony as its entire essence was attacked by double the mana than before – but far more than double the power, as the strength of light and darkness, Justice and Hatred, mixed was far more than the power of its individual elements.
Caiellis howled in his anguish and hatred, the fire of annihilation infused with blinding light as a massive pillar of pure White and Black mana rose up around him, flowing into his crystalline sword that shook with the amount of power within it that was being pulsed into the Lord of Riots. Stars of darklight rose up around the boy, exploding and adding their own energy to his power as the blinding darkness and tenebrous incandescence became lighter and darker every second Cai screamed.
KILL THE LORD OF RIOTS!
The Sword of Glass exploded.
The power that had been channelled within it to the point where the ancient blade shattered crashed into the shrieking Archdemon, a gigantic column of dark luminescence and shining shadow mixing together to form blinding and haunting purple twilight rising up above the boy that pierced through the howling Tempest of Craving, tearing apart the heptagram of flames etched onto the heavens as it consumed the Lord of Riots and the youngest Lucerna sat atop it. The flesh of the roaring demon was turning to glass at a rapid rate, crystallising because of the gigantic amounts of light and darkness rushing through its foul body, a crescendo of power and a zenith of destruction from the combination of Justice and Hatred slamming down into the stricken Archdemon as its body vitrified at an increasing speed.
It screamed in agonising pain, a rare form of pain that it did not enjoy, frustration and fear, and Caiellis screamed along with it, his unnaturally loud voice that was echoed by his magic infused with an otherworldly resonance by the amount of mana that was discharged out of his fragile form but nevertheless all to human with the emotions that were within it, amplified by his mana and the alternate energies combining within the Lucerna.
The demon thrashed, trying to move and stop the glassification of its entire being, its magical essence trapped within its physical form because of how much Sancturia had overlapped with the material plane in the City of Pleasure – it had meant that it could not be simply banished back to Sancturia because Sancturia was not here, but it also meant that if enough power was used to destroy it the Archdemon Rakdos would truly die.
Red and Black mana in huge amounts invoked forbidden spells in a desperate attempt to murder the thirteen year old wielding the power of his Lucerna heritage and seethed through the air, but they were utterly annihilated by the White and Black mana combined together that flooded the courtyard and was tearing apart everything within it.
Each of the glass fragments that were the Archdemon were overflowing with light and darkness in equal measures, and as the strength of the blinding darklight rose even higher, consuming everything within it and making the world shake with its power to the point where even Caiellis within his mind was seeing the light of the darkness, the Lord of Riots gave one final, undulating death scream as it died, light and darkness filling everything as it was turned into shining crystal that was brimming with White and Black energy.
Caiellis's vision within his head was consumed by the night and the radiance, the sight of all of the people depending upon him in danger and the scene of his mother dying in front of him overwhelmed by the power crashing through all of him, and as the demon exploded twilight drowned everything else out. Rakdos shattered into a million pieces all filled with power that exploded again in bursts of midnight incandescence and shining darkness, like a billion miniature suns detonating all at once all across the universe of the courtyard as the song of light and darkness reached its apotheosis.
Cai's vision shattered, his mind filled with white light and dark shadow as everything around him imploded and fractured into endless numbers of glass fragments that poured to the floor around him.
He couldn't feel, and he couldn't think. A kind of numbness overcame his spent form as the Archdemon Rakdos died in the world around him, and as the power left the boy's mind he willingly fell into the abyss of bliss around him.
.*.*.*.
Cai coughed painfully, chapped lips opening up as another dry croak came to his ears, agony flooding through the darkness that had cocooned him, and opened his eyes. The pounding in his skull that had risen up as soon as he was dragged out of unconsciousness was exacerbated by the light of the world outside of his mind; it seemed to burn into his retinas like a laser or a beam of holy incineration, scorching every nerve ending in its path.
"Nuuuuhhhhgggguuhhh..." Caiellis winced and moaned, rolling slowly and agonisingly onto his side, as his mouth continued to make sounds of pain, trying to shield himself from this new enemy. He felt exhausted, his eyelids already drooping down and wanting to shut themselves so that he could fall back into the realm of sleep, but the boy knew that for some reason he had to stay awake. The rock that he was laid on certainly wasn't the comfortable mattress of his bed, or any bed, that was for certain. He honestly hadn't remembered the outside world being so bright, even though he could tell that wherever he was it was still grey.
Jagged, broken ribs inside of the thirteen year old's chest slipped and ground together with the movement, and the boy was forced to smother an outright scream of pure agony because of the pain, worse than he had ever experienced before, that he was in.
He lay, panting, on the rough ground for a few minutes, his eyes scrunched shut, waiting out the torment that was thundering through him, willing away the pain that swept in waves of torture throughout his small body. He felt like he had been run over by one of the large and heavy monorail trains and then been drowned in a vat of corrosive acid. It was an exercise in futility, because every movement, large or infinitesimally small, carried the same result of brutal spikes of pain and Caiellis had to resign himself to living with it, resolving to move himself. Otherwise it meant spending angels knew how long lying on this ground until his father or brother or Uncles found him...
Oh angels!
Caiellis juddered forwards with a jolt, and this time he didn't bother even trying to hold back the scream of pain that was ripped from his lips. White bolts of agony knifed like daggers of nerve-shredding pain through his head, his chest … not one single part of him seemed to escape the torture, and within his skull was the pounding drumbeat of his heart that made him wonder briefly if he was having a migraine or not.
Oh angels! Make it stop!
Caiellis clamped a hand around his mouth but the fresh vomit from the meal he had eaten this morning, flecked with no small amount of crimson blood, spilled out over it, dripping down his chin and onto his t-shirt … or what was left of it, and the boy felt the disgusting sensation of the sick touching the bare skin of his chest and causing little fingers of stinging suffering to dance along his open cuts, of which there seemed to be many.
He managed to rip off some of the frayed fabric, intending to use it to clean himself up, but the second that the material touched the skin he pulled it away with a hiss of world around him spun and the few things that could have been ruins or buildings morphed into swollen, black holes that threatened to swallow the boy within them until he clamped his eyes shut once again.
Cai had to force them open when the pain subsided to a level in which he could function. His ribs were broken, that much was certain, and when the boy looked down at his body in front of him he gasped in shock, something that sent more shudders of agony throughout him. Angels above, he was messed up, and that was not even counting the wounds that he couldn't see and that he felt on him, as well as any potential internal damage.
He needed to think of a way to start moving. Memories were coming back to him, not very fast, but enough so that he knew where he was – which happened to be in enemy territory, the Welkalite capital of Usnaan to be precise. He tried to move again, gasping in agony, but he was stuck down to the floor, some sort of solidified and sticky substance holding him down. Even though he normally wasn't very strong without his magic, of which he had absolutely none and was one of the main contributors to his torment as his whole body flared with the amount that he had used, he would have probably been able to force himself out of this strange tar like matter holding him down and trapping his brutalised body on the ground, the amount of wounds that he had picked up made it almost impossible to pull himself out.
His head pounded, and each breath, no matter how little, sent sharp pains through his chest and his throat. The black substance that was sticking to him, probably infecting his wounds but at the very least making them much more painful as he tried to move, would not budge even as he tore at it with his hands, trying not to panic as he imagined some Welkalite enemies finding him here and easily killing him, or even worse, using the fact that he was restrained and exhausted and heavily wounded to torture or capture him and use him as a bargaining chip like they had done before.
Eventually, he let his head fall back in defeat, painful sobs wracking him as more and more of his memories were rising up within his head, the pain that was running through him too much to deal with. His hands fell down at his sides, useless in freeing himself from what he was going to assume was some form of magical or unnatural tar, and as he gasped in breaths that he tried to make as painless as possible, he saw something gleaming in his tear blurred vision with his bleeding head laid out on the ground and his eyes looking behind him. The boy twisted, craning his neck and trying to ignore that pain that rose up in his throat from a number of bruises upon it, and he saw a knife of Lucaelian make on the ground behind him.
He tried to to get a better look at it because the entire world was still spinning and blurry and he couldn't tell how far away it actually was, grimacing all the while and whimpering in pain from all of the movements. One part of him just wanted to lay here and wait until someone came and saved him, but another knew that that was just pathetic, that the Welkalites might find him and use him against his family again and even if he didn't move he was still in agony, so the thirteen year old who was in the process of having several fragmented images that he found extremely disturbing coming back to him turned his body round.
The dagger was there, straight Lucaelian steel glinting out at him in the wan orange light of flickering flames further away in the City of Pleasure, just within reach if Cai was able to stretch his arm out. Caiellis wasn't keen on the idea of having to move his arm round and reach out towards the knife that he might be able to use to cut himself free, but his tense mind protested otherwise. Besides, he had a vague recollection of something happening to the Sword of Glass, and he was no longer connected to the magical tether of it, so it would be good to have some form of protection in the form of a self-defence knife, surprisingly enough the same make as the one that he had been given in the civil war.
Cai turned round, panting out pained breaths, and reached out his skinny and bleeding arm towards the knife that was less than a metre away from him. The agony was instantaneous and blinding, white slices of torture all across the limb and his chest and his lungs when he sucked in more breaths. Working through the pain, his fingers slipped against the hilt of the dagger, but instead of grasping round it and pulling the small weapon back his slippery fingers that were covered in claret vitae missed by around a millimetre and the knife slid backwards across the ground.
He was too exhausted and hurt to even mutter a curse of exasperation and frustration, letting out the breath that he hadn't realised he was holding and wanting to curl up into a ball, but with the black tar thing on his legs and waist he couldn't even do that. Besides, it would be far too painful on his broken ribs. Then he noticed that the knife had hardly been pushed far away at all by the weak contact with his thin fingers, a faint glimmer of hope rising up in his mind that he was too tired and wounded to push away with reason and logic.
He didn't even know if the blade could cut the seemingly solid tar that was stopping him from moving his legs, or if he would even be able to move after he had freed himself from this sticky prison, not least what he was going to do in this state. Caiellis had to think in tiny steps, such as how he was going to obtain the knife. He would deal with problems as he approached them.
The boy's mind began to settle into the survival routine that had been drilled into him by Uncle Tristram and to a lesser extent Uncle Tybalt as well as the instincts that he had developed through years of living through desperate situations even though he would barely be on his own in them and if he was something was going horribly wrong for his brother to be separated from Cai. He would solve each problem as it came, remembering the lessons that his mentors had taught him to stay alive, although none really covered what to do when he was this wounded.
He was aware that his wounds needed binding and seeing to and could easily be heavily infected, and while the thought of that made him shudder he methodically culled it from his mind, knowing that he could do nothing for his injuries whilst he was trapped here and unable to access his full range of mobility.
Caiellis wondered whether or not he could reach the knife if he sat up, something that would be extremely painful as his ribs ground together, and decided that there was no point in not trying – yes, it would save him from more pain, but survival was more important than comfort at the moment. Taking a deep breath in that hurt his neck and chest, the boy located a shard of rock next to him that he could hold onto to help himself up, grabbing it with his left hand and the jagged fragment cut into his already lacerated fingers.
He grasped it tightly his life depended on it, which it may well do, his arms wobbling like they didn't belong to him and threatening to fall lifelessly by his sides at any moments, tears and blood from cuts on his forehead misting up his vision before he brushed them away and fixed his vision on the dagger behind him. Sniffling miserably and whimpering in pain, he used all of his strength to pull himself so that he was sat upright. The movement nearly sent his chest and head crashing back to the ground; more pain rolled through his frail young body as he reached out to the dagger from a more upright position, his fingers digging into the rock he was using as leverage to keep himself like this, and white light burst behind the boy's eyes.
He grasped onto the handle of the dagger with all of his might, yanking it closer before he could pass out.
"Th-thank th-the a-angels!" the youngster gasped out, letting go of the rock that had been holding him up and allowing his body to lay back down again as the agony shuddered through him, clutching the knife to his chest like it was a soft toy and would protect him from the horrors of the bedtime world. Breathe through it! Just breathe through it …
The smallest and youngest Lucerna was breathing a little too fast, shaking a little too much, but he had got the weapon. That was stage one done, at the very least, though the amount of pain that he had gone through to get it had almost killed him.
He raised the dagger to his face, some part of him wanting to look at the prize that it had taken him so much effort to acquire and a kind of curiosity entering his head that made him want to find out who the knife would belong to (as usually the family name of the person, their initials or a symbol associated with them would be engraved into the hilt so that the weapon could be returned or, more frequently, the deceased could be identified as every soldier was issued one of these, though this specimen was more ornate than most), but he never got there.
Shock awaited him when he gazed in the reflection that had been waiting for him in the straight blade of the knife. He had known he was in a bad state, had seen the horrible patchwork of wounds on his small chest and could feel the bruising and cuts on his face, but somehow seeing his own face like this made everything worse than before. His entire face was covered in blood, but more predominantly the left side where most of the physical pain was coming from (as the Black Sun Lucerna birthmark was aching with a torment that was not physical).
Most of it was dried, but lots of fresh crimson was leaking from a deep gash on his forehead and numerous cuts in his left cheek that hadn't sealed up or scabbed over, meaning that it could only have been mere minutes since they had been inflicted – although his Lucerna regeneration would be occupied with simply keeping him alive and without that his fragile body took a long time to heal.
His bottom lip (and his top, but much less noticeably) was also full, swollen and bleeding, and there were numerous dark bruises and cuts scattered across his pale and soft flesh. His eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed from the tears, and on his throat there was what was definitely bruises in the shape of large fingers as well as some form of less obvious rope burn like he had been cut down from a hanging. The boy stared at his reflection in horror for a few seconds, utterly taken aback by how bad his face looked, especially the pain in his eyes that was far more than even what he was feeling now, before a thought came to him.
At least I don't look as bad as Alexander did when I left Aksua alone with him …
The fuzzy images of pain, violence and anger that were already entering his mind suddenly exploded into excruciating clarity within the boy's head, and instead of taking a sauntering walk down Memory Lane the youngest Lucerna was thrust head first into Remembrance Ocean. And it wasn't pretty.
He could see his big brother convulsing in a pool of his own blood, with a large and bloody gap in the middle of his chest as he coughed up sticky black and corrupted fluid and the Hierarchs Tybalt and Aretis desperately tried to heal him, a memory that, while relatively recent, was long enough ago to not be as concerning to him as the others that were flooding back to him in agonising clearness.
Alexander, dangling in the grip of Arendus Draal and not moving at all. The Archdemon Rakdos, laughing, screaming and howling in tempestuous delight, smirking sadistically at the boy as he destroyed Orzhova with his massive scythe and battered aside Caiellis's Twilight Reprisal. The boy's dad, shouting, angry, furious, sneering, his face up close and personal, yelling in rage, throwing Cai across the courtyard, punching him the face, lifting him off of his feet and strangling him with the intent to kill.
Cai gulped and shivered in distress, his stomach churning again like a ship in a storm, and he wrapped his free left arm around his broken ribs as he looked away from the sight of his face, although that didn't make the horrible memories go away. He leaned to the side, and, sensing an outlet, his gut rebelled again, leaving the thirteen year old gagging and retching helplessly even though all that he was throwing up by now was blood.
It hurt so damn much, but what hurt even more was the knowledge of who had done most of this to him. A tiny ray of light and hope tried to fight its way through the roiling whirlpool of despair that was Caiellis's mind, it wasn't … it couldn't have been him … dad would never hurt you like that, but it was quickly swallowed up by the blackness of depression and dejection that came from a broken heart and an abused body. A part of his psyche reminded him that his father hadn't been psychotically angry like the victims of the Lord of Riots's unnatural bloodthirst were, that he had known full well what he had been doing, presenting him with the horrible words that his dad had said as it to evidence that truth.
Worthless little shit …
The boy whimpered in pain, bending over and sobbing his heart out when the retching stopped as more images and words assaulted him, placing his hands around his ears like they would block out the mental accusations thrown at him by the memories of his dad.
You left your older brother, my eldest son, to die while you pranced around in happy fantasy land!
You don't pay attention, you never listen, and I'm fed up with all of your questions! You're incapable of obeying orders and that puts other people at risk! I fucking warned you … I told you that some day you were going to get one of us killed!
The blows were emotional, but the pain that they caused was very physical, and the boy curled up with his arms around him, though he was still unable to move his legs, and began to cry his eyes out. Through the haze of tears and pain, he stared at the knife on the floor when it clattered to the ground as he let go of it and he remembered that he had it again.
A few slices on the tar that was holding his legs to the floor. That was all that he needed.
He touched the knife with his hands, slowly sliding it around the bloody ground with his extended index finger like a toddler playing with his food, tears streaming down his cheeks all the while.
To think that Emili, your mother, my perfect wife, died to save you...
A few slices on the tar that was holding his legs to the floor. That was all that he needed.
But the boy kept staring at the self-defence dagger, in too much pain and emotional distress to notice that the beautiful engraving on the elaborate and elegant hilt read C.N.L. and was enclosed by majestic angel wings.
His pain wasn't just physical now. It ran soul deep, and he remembered what had rushed through his mind before whatever had happened that had rendered him unconscious for a time...
I should have just left you there to die along with her...
Blinking back the tears, Cai picked up the knife, the same size as the one that he had possessed before unlocking Orzhova at the Scholaria Magnus, clutching it to his chest like he had done so many times after meeting his father for the first time after the ending of the civil war that had torn apart his perfect life and defined the rest of his existence. The vulnerable thirteen year old brought it up higher so that he could look at his distorted reflection within the blade.
"Maybe … it's for the best," he whispered. He was alone, as he deserved, no one to care or to even notice that he was gone. And everyone who would have cared was in danger because of him.
The boy raised the dagger up to his throat, placing it next to the pulsing carotid artery in his neck like he had done many times in the past, the transparent tears that were spilling down his cheeks dripping from his chin and onto the clean blade. It would be painless, almost instant if he did it right and stopped his trembling.
No one would know. They would all think it was the Archdemon that had ended him just as he had ended it, that he had died slaying the beast and destroying the Lord of Riots. It was a good, honourable end.
Caiellis just wanted to get away from it all, get away from his father's hate and the broken life that he was living. And if he did it now, then he wouldn't bring shame upon his family either, wouldn't make the people think that they were weak.
"A hero's death," he murmured, softly, the words accompanied by a stifled sob of a broken heart. That's what they would think. A hero's death. One that I don't deserve, and one that is not true.
He tried to stay dignified, if for nothing than his own little fragments of pride, but he couldn't. Breath hitching in misery, Cai cried silently, the tears rolling down his bruised and bloodied face and onto the knife that he held at his throat. Caiellis felt weak, disgraced, a shamed heart in a cowards body, and he had to bite his lower lip to stop himself from bursting into tears and trembling too much. He just wanted to escape from the pain.
The boy took a deep breath, just as one, final memory came back to haunt him.
Why don't you do us all a favour, and just die?
He steadied his hand holding the weapon, closing his eyes as the tears slipped silently out of them and the melancholy glow of the Black Sun could been seen behind his eyelids.
I'm so sorry, Uncle Tristram, Uncle Tybalt … I can't go on ...
I'm so sorry, Alexander … but I can't take this any more … I love you, big brother … Thank you so much for everything ...
There was no more hesitation. Everything that had to be thought had been thought. He visualised his brother's happy smile as he hugged or teased his younger sibling, pushing aside his father's hatred for now so that he could have one last look at the little happiness present in his shattered life.
It was almost enough to stop him. Almost, but not quite, and that happiness was tainted by what had happened to his big brother because of him.
Crying silently, Caiellis drew the dagger across his throat, and the world fell into darkness.
New Summonings and Creatures in this chapter:
Rakdos's Carnival: Carnival Hellsteed