"Well look at that," said the Pale Man. "They're going and killing each other. Convenient."

Souls...give me their souls...

"You've never known patience," he crossed his legs as he sat on his throne. "The first thing you should learn is that a conflict between your enemies is one of life's greatest fortunes."

S-Souls...

"And to think," said the Pale Man. "You were God, once."

Do not...mock, me. You do not understand the Hunger...you do not know...the all consuming gluttony. The endless thirst, bottomless, infinite. The moment. The solitary moment when a soul is consumed, and one feels the closest thing to satisfaction, for less than a moment. But never satisfaction. Never.

The Pale Man breathed deep, and lowered his head. "I was not mocking you. To never know satisfaction...? Yes. Yes I know it. I know this world. It doesn't have enough. It never will have enough."

Engulf it...all the souls. Every. Last. One.

"Indeed," The Pale Man nodded. "All of them."

Steel clashed with magic and fire.

Mephistopheles moved so quickly that he could hardly see her. The flames from Freke's hands blasted him and he was knocked off of his feet. He felt the heat against his armor, but there wasn't enough of it to burn his skin. Then, the old man was on top of him. He kicked outward, and Freke flew back, catching himself in the air, not even landing but flying, cackling with insanity.

He didn't have time to watch Freke, though. Mephistopheles' foot was on his neck and he couldn't get up. He saw the dagger in her boot plunging and bashed her ankle away with his shield. She staggered, and Freke took his opportunity. This time, the blast of magic tore through the stone around them. An explosion of shattered masonry, grey mist filled the air. Mephistopheles was gone. He scrambled to his feet.

Then she struck from behind. He felt the rapier jab into his back and he screamed. When he turned, she'd vanished again into the smoke. Freke was there, he swooped down screaming as black energy surrounded him. He held up his sword, to impale the wizard, but Freke swooped out of the way just enough for the sword to miss, but for the darkness surrounding him to melt away the edge of the Champion's helmet. The hole in it widened his peripheral vision, and he saw Mephistopheles, striking from the smoke again. He turned, and rushed her, striking three times, missing each, she dodged fluidly and perfectly, as if it were dance practiced and choreographed. Before he could strike a fourth time, the ground suddenly became hot.

Mephistopheles' mouth quivered, and then she rolled away. He turned, ran, and escaped just in time for pillars of fire to erupt behind him. He heard Freke's laughter, entertained, empowered.

"Mephistopheles!" He yelled to the smoke. "We need to work together to take down Freke, he's too strong."

No response.

"Mephistopheles!"

He felt an instinct. He narrowly turned in time to bash her wrist with his shield, knocking the dagger away. She cartwheeled backward, and grabbed it as her hands touched the ground, then was gone again.

If there was anyone with a disadvantage in this fight, it was him.

So he ran, out of the radius of the smoke, up the stairs. As he did, he saw her again from his side, but this time she was distracted. Freke was blasting from the sky again, the black fire that only Yuria had used before, raining down on them. Mephistopheles threw something sharp and metal that was gone before he could see it, and then Freke grabbed at his throat. Blood-blood that was still a human red, ran from his neck, and he fell from the sky.

One down. He thought, morbidly, trying not to remind himself that it was Freke, that he had known the man intimately. He turned around to see Mephistopheles running up the stairs behind him. Her eyes registered the loss of her element of surprise, but her momentum was too great to slow down.

He swung his sword, and this time, it hit its mark. Mephistopheles' mask was knocked from her face, and he saw it. The face of the same woman who had been weeping over her lost baby.

There was a moment of hesitance. She used it.

He blocked her rapier just in time, but her dagger came around, and when he put his arm out it stabbed into his wrist. He groaned through his teeth, and his other arm, his shield arm, grabbed her. He was too close for her rapier, her dagger was stuck, and she wasn't strong enough to escape his grasp.

"I know what happened to you," he whispered, directly into her ear. "I understand."

She didn't seem to react, she kept struggling the same as ever.

"They took your baby."

She froze.

"They took its soul, and they left behind...something else. I know that."

"I. Told. No one," she growled, furiously.

"But I know," he said. "Stop this. We need to put the Old One to sleep so that-"

"So that the Soul Arts can be discovered again. So that it can happen all over," she said.

He risked looking into her eyes. He expected anger. Sadness. Something.

They were empty.

"If we are to live in a world where that's possible, then I choose oblivion. I choose it for myself, and for everyone."

He could have negotiated with emotions. With desire or obvious rage. But her eyes were dead. And he realized that they hadn't just taken the soul of her child. Something from Mephistopheles was gone, something less supernatural, less tangible.

It was the perfect opportunity for her to wrench out the dagger and stab him again.

"So easily distracted," she said, as she watched his eyes waver. He fell to his knees.

Then the steps started crumbling, shards of stone exploded outward, and scratched across Mephistopheles face. He saw burns as well as cuts, he felt heat beneath him, but that didn't describe it. It felt like heat, yet ironically heatless. Dark energy.

And Freke came, screaming, blasts of darkness surging from his body. The Champion wasn't hit, but felt the energy surging through him, and convulsed onto the ground. Mephistopheles, on the other hand, was taken off her feet.

"Easily distracted...? How about the underestimation of those who are practically Archdemons? That sounds like the bigger mistake."

As he twitched, he saw Freke and Mephistopheles in the air. She was jittering, convulsing just like he did, and bleeding from her eyes and mouth, but she kept stabbing Freke, over and over and over again.

Then he heard the roar.

He heard it just as Freke screamed and let go. As Mephistopheles began to fall.

He heard it coming closer. As she clawed at the air, for something to grab onto, the sound transformed. It's voice disappeared. It was now a gigantic intake of air.

He felt his legs still, he moved them, it wasn't fast enough.

Fire exploded out of the sky, and behind it a gaping maw, dripping orange liquid, putrid with the scent of burnt humanity. The dragon soared down the stairs, spewing fire as it went. He did the only thing he could. He held his shield over his head, and felt the flames licking it, running past it, heating the stone for the second time in the past thirty seconds.

And when he looked back up, he heard it growling in pain. Mephistopheles, with her dagger, had hooked onto its body. It turned back around, and he got up, he started running. At the top of the stairs was a gate, if he made it, he could get cover.

But, again, he'd forgotten about Freke.

"Running away again, really?"

The stairs came up, and started rolling like a carpet. He ran faster, and saw Freke floating above him, laughing. Blood was dripping from the man's robes, down his face. He had no further than ten stab wounds, but there he stood.

Then, he realized that as he went up the stairs, the vertical distance to Freke was not so great.

He pulled in the strength of every demon soul he had, he reached into them, pried them open, absorbed them all over again. Then he jumped, in his heavy armor, twenty feet in the air. And grabbed Freke out of the sky.

Freke had held up Mephistopheles, but she hadn't been carrying twice her bodyweight in steel. He could feel the magic, desperately trying to keep him aloft, but it wasn't enough, and they crashed down toward the stairs, which had suddenly stopped rolling up-

But they didn't hit them.

In fact, Freke's attempts at flight saved their lives. The dragon, coming back, timed its bite so that it would snatch anything falling at a normal speed from the air. But it didn't anticipate their stunted fall, and instead, they landed on its neck, almost rolling off of it. Nameless, however, shoved his sword into its flank. Freke waved his hands, and suddenly, it was as if there were no air resistance acting on him at all. He stood up.

The Champion tried to move, but his body wobbled as the dragon tried to shake him off. He shoved his sword in deeper and held on. Freke cackled, and energy ran through his body, about to explode from his hands-

But the Dragon made a swift turn, and while Freke's body wasn't thrown off, his aim was, The black beam shot into the dragon's skin, and penetrated it. They heard a scream, and felt an even stronger writhing. Suddenly, they were upside down, and he was dangling from his sword. He looked and saw Mephistopheles there. She swung her legs up and started climbing across the dragon's scales like a sloth, silently. As Freke, still standing upside down, prepared his next blast, she cut at his ankle.

And right through it.

Freke looked down at his missing foot, and screamed, the dragon turned again, and Nameless fell onto his body. He drew his sword from the dragon's skin, eliciting another roar from it, and charged Freke and Mephistopheles. Somehow, he stayed on, though his footing felt wobbly at best. He swung his sword into Freke and kicked Mephistopheles in her now exposed flank.

Freke, distracted by his foot, didn't see the sword coming into his neck. It struck him there, not decapitating him, but halfway through, touching his throat.

Freke grabbed at the wound, and gasped. Trying to say something, anything. He mouthed words, hoping they would come to him, and even in those frantic moments. Nameless could read some of them from his lips. No...not now. I need...more. Need. More...

But his face went pale, and he flopped over onto the side of the dragon. With the spell gone, his body tumbled off, falling into the city below.

It was only now that Nameless realized that wasn't very far below.

His eyes shot to the charred hole Freke had made. It went through the dragon's body. Out the other side. The powerful wings hadn't flapped in a while, and still weren't.

They were headed for a building.

He ran backward, climbed over scales, scrambled away from the front of the dragon, but it didn't save him from being knocked off on impact.

They crashed into the front wall of the castle. Which, it turned out, had been specifically commissioned to be able to withstand the force of a charging dragon. It performed its task beautifully.

Nameless went flying, and crashed into the wall. He felt stuck there, for a moment, with all the force pushing him into that spot. Then he fell forward, limply, onto the dragon's body. All things considered, it didn't hurt as bad as it could have. He didn't feel anything crack. The pain, after dying over forty times, didn't even register.

When he got up, coughing, the first thing he saw was the dragon's skull, smashed into the wall. Its wings were torn, its scales were bent or broken, and it was completely still.

Then, he saw Mephistopheles.

She hadn't been wearing armor, like him. One of her legs was bent. Not the way it was supposed to be. There was a bone sticking out. Blood was leaking from her mouth. Her eyes turned to him. Silently and without the help of her head. He didn't think she could move.

Then, she did.

Silently, she turned over, and started crawling toward him. She wrenched her dagger free from the dragon. Her rapier was gone. He saw her entire face squint every time she landed on her bad leg, but she kept coming.

"Mephistopheles, it's over," he said.

She kept crawling.

"Stop," he said.

She spat a wad of blood and spit, then kept coming.

"The Soul Arts...are vile...they...corrupt all. They destroy all, masking it as creation. They...they remove the meanings of our lives."

This was too formal. She was repeating a scripture, or an oath. Something.

"I am the last member...of the soul society...sworn to protect the purity of humanity..."

She reached him. He kicked the dagger from her hand, and it flew away easily. He reached for his sword, then realized, with alarm, that it had tumbled off with Freke. Then, he noticed something else. A light, shining from her belt. At first, he thought it was an augite...but no, it was something else.

"I am the last member...of the soul society..."

It was a lit fuse.

"...And fuck you."

He turned around and sprinted. The explosion knocked him from his feet, and he felt it. Hot tar melted through his armor, incinerated it, burned his back. Fire was on him, burning scorching fire. The other deaths didn't matter, because this was fire. There was nothing like fire. It burned and suffocated at the same time. It sent overload levels of pain into your system, and then destroyed the nerves that telegraphed that pain. He saw Mephistopheles, burning alive, cackling like a madwoman, showing more emotion than he'd ever seen, perhaps only to mask the screaming she would have done otherwise.

He screamed.

Finally, he rolled around, desperately extinguishing the fire, but the tar still clung to him. He had no choice but to lie there, roaring painfully as it cooled, waiting for it to stop, he reached into his pack, and pulled out moon-grass.

He looked over at Mephistopheles' dead eyes. The only part of her that wasn't charred black. They still watched him.

"We're here," Ostrava said, as they emerged from the tunnel. "This is it. Now we just have to go up those stairs and-"

He looked up.

They were staring down a red-eyed knight face to face. Behind him were a large group made up of Ministers and other knights.

"Well," Biorr said.

The demons charged. Ostrava swung his sword and cut one of them down, but there were more. Soon, blades were swinging everywhere, and there was chaos.

"Shoulda known we wouldn't'a gotten out of the woods easily, lad," Biorr yelled. "There's more of em here than the ones we left, and stronger."

"It's okay, Biorr, if we work together, we can-"

And then he saw a large group of archers exit the castle gate, and ready their crossbows.

"Ye were saying?" Ostrava looked at Biorr, why was he smiling?

"We need to get out of here," Ostrava said.

"Wrong, lad, we can't. They'll just follow," said Biorr, as he cleaved another Red Knight's head from its shoulders. He nodded toward the archers. "Charge them. I'll take care of these bastards, but I could really use ye getting rid of the ranged support." He stabbed a minister through, listened to its disturbing chuckles, then swung it off his sword.

"Got it," Ostrava charged.

"Oh, and once ye take em out, keep goin!"

"What?" Ostrava turned around. It was a mistake. An arrow narrowly missed him.

"We don't have time, lad, keep going!" Biorr yelled.

Ostrava wanted to argue, he wanted to protest and yell and take time to help Biorr consider his actions.

But if he did, they were both dead.

He sprinted to the archers and started cutting through them one by one. They tried to draw daggers, but only one of them got his out in time, and by then Ostrava was already swinging his sword at him.

"Biorr!" Ostrava yelled.

"God damn it, lad!" Biorr yelled as he held a knight off with each sword. "I said go!"

Ostrava grimaced.

"Good luck."

"Good luck yerself," yelled Biorr, with a sardonic grin. "I'm fine here!"

Ostrava begged himself to stay, but Biorr really did seem fine, for now. And it was best to leave him while he did, because that might not last.

He turned, and ran into the castle.

Surprisingly, the entryway was empty, the rooms were all empty. There was only one place where the Archdemon could be. Only one place from where it would choose to rule over its given domain.

He ran to the elevator that led to the top of the throne room tower, and pulled the lever.

The wait seemed ridiculous, after all the charging and the violence.

Finally, though, it hit the top floor, and he stepped out. He held up his sword, and his shield, and stepped into the gigantic room. What had once been a gigantic stained glass window was now a hole in the wall. The throne was empty. Standing in front of the hole was a figure, his back turned to him.

Ostrava took some time to reflect on this room, how it had been his father's. How it would have been his. He grew up here, in this castle, and it felt so bizarre to enter such a hostile environment when it had once been his home.

He had to take it back.

"You! Archdemon!" He yelled.

The figure turned slightly, still not completely.

"Yes, you!" He yelled. "I have gone by the name of Ostrava, but now...now I'll tell you my real one...I am Prince Ariona Allant! The rightful heir to the throne you have usurped! I have come here to slay you, yes, to stop the old one, yes, but more than that, I come to demand the return of this throne to me, and to my family! Turn, and face me!"

The demon stood for a while, then spoke. "You are wrong, Ariona, I did not usurp this throne. It is mine. By right, by law, and, recently, ordained so by God Himself."

"I have no idea what you are-"

But then the demon turned, and began to walk closer. With every step, its face became clearer. Ostrava's tight grip loosened. His armor suddenly felt very heavy. His jaw, once firm, was now shaking.

The Archdemon standing before him calmly drew its sword. "Hello, son."