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Hammerlocke Tower
How often evil from another era returns!
-Chairman Bronze Tercano, private journals
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Eternatus descended from the heavens, glowing scarlet. Its body became long and serpentine, forming a great coil that undulated and pulsed as a swirling vortex. Spines now covered its back, dripping venom. Now its head was like a dark hand of God, with fingers covered in plated black armor and riveted spikes. At the tip of each finger was a single glowing eye.
From that great height, the dark lord looked down on Rose Venport, the self-absorbed snake that had thought he could have used it. The once-powerful leader of Macro Cosmos seemed laughably insignificant. Great thickets of intangible demons brought Eternatus news of the world, what had transpired in his three thousand years of slumber. With this new counsel, Eternatus would have to set things in order. His old master was gone and defeated, from now till the end of time. Men had grown sloppy and imperfect with the lack of a higher Willpower guiding them.
"Let me tell you what I will do next," Eternatus boomed, its voice sounding like a god's. "I will implement a new mandate. The prophecy is true: I will change the universe. I declare myself the Second Dark Lord. None may oppose the Kingdom of Darkness reborn! I see now my destiny: as you all do."
Rocks and splinters of debris began to uproot themselves from Hammerlocke Tower, forming a churning whirlpool that hemmed the trainers away from the elevator. "It isn't going to let us leave!" Raihan said. "Keep it talking, then we'll attack!"
"Yes!" Eternatus continued. "My master made the path to Dominion. I will now reach the end, as he did not. The first step is to sweep away the old, mow down and do away with all that is unnecessary. I will clear a path for the new and perfect. That is a concept that all the Children of Arceus cannot embrace, I suppose."
"I fought your master fifty-two years ago, and defeated him," Bronze said. "You are but his servant, his cupbearer, likely of no account. You were not even great enough to warrant a mention in the Hisuian Coda. Look at the force we have assembled, demon! Your days are numbered, and your power is found wanting. I am a servant of the Original One, a bearer of his Hidden Flame! Go back to the Shadow!"
"I am more powerful than you are prepared to understand, Bronze Tercano," Eternatus jeered. "Grand Bashar, that is what they call you! I deem you dull, wooden king, lord of atrocity, coldhearted foe, murderous vagabond, commander of madmen, wielder of children as shields! And what is your force here but metal? And metal can burn and break!"
Eternatus moved its grand head, and beams of crimson light spewed from its eyes. The great bolts collided with the Association ballistas, destroying them. Rellus's ship was grazed, and the engine clipped off and exploded. The flaming ruin of the vessels fell over Hammerlocke, crushing buildings and soldiers and citizens in the streets. The remnants of the frigates retreated in alarm.
"Now, do you see? You cannot harm me. I am told that you have many terrible weapons that might wound me, but none of those you have here. And what force do you have here outside of your floating ships of steel? Ungrateful fosterlings," Eteratus looked at Bede. "Highway wanderers, women, children, and fools! Where is your true army, Tercano? Tell me!"
"Dragon Rush!" Raihan flew at Eternatus on Flygon, but was batted aside. "What have I said? You cannot assail me! Perish!"
A rain of meteors broke from the clouds, launching like screaming bombs at the spire. More beams of light emitted from Eternatus's eyes, felling Pokemon after Pokemon. The forces of Light ran for cover, but Eternatus was only playing with them. "Run, little ones! This fight was only demon-play before! It now has become demon-work! May thy blades chip and shatter!"
Soon not a single one of the trainer's Pokemon remained conscious. Leon stepped back in fear, forgetting the Litany he would say when consumed with terror. "Fall back and regroup! We need to hit it with something far stronger than just Pokemon attacks!"
"Fall back?" Piers said. "Doesn't look like we can. Think it'll let us go if we play dead? Maybe Kabu, Magnolia, and the others on the ground will figure something out."
"Play dead?" Eternatus howled. "Do you still think me an animal? Your allies are faithless. No help will come. You are alone, caught in my web. Soon you will be devoured like a dainty."
"Demon!" Jake shouted, waving his pulsesword. "You'll never defeat us in the end! We have too many armies, and weapons beyond your understanding! You'll go the way of your damned master!"
"I believe you, small mortal. But I have plans of my own to assemble a fighting force to deal with your own scattered armies. Your obstinance bores me. Let me be rid of you!"
Eternatus fired another blast. "Scatter, now!" Leon said. "It can't hit all of us!"
But it could. The beams shifted in midair, hitting a target and then moving on to the next. A Rorian Commando lept in front of Bronze, and was cleaved in twain. Piers revived his Malamar to protect Hop and Marnie with an energy shield, but Eternatus would pierce it with time. Tess was predicting the paths of the pillars of death, but knew that she could not run forever.
One laser dragged along the scarred ground toward Leon. He ran, but Eternatus had a fulcrum to move its weapons far swifter than the Champion could move. Leon felt the heat growing, the searing smell of approaching death.
And then the beam shattered, deflected by something that had, to Leon's eyes, leaped from the ground far below to the tower.
Another blur! Now two beings stood in the smoke. Eternatus hesitated, ceasing its attack. Then it loomed higher, proclaiming a challenge. "And here you two are! Late in the awakening, late in the arriving! How do you fancy me now, Servants of the Host of Heaven? Will I be a foe worthy of your precious time, Zacian and Zamazenta, the Crowned Sword and Crowned Shield?"
...
To the wonder of all, the two Elohim replied in unison.
"Leave this place," they said, softly, but then again, far louder. "Leave this place! It is not permitted for you to walk under the Sky ever since Dialga and Palkia and the Host of Logaria overthrew the towers of Dor Daedeloth. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Sheol! Go back to the fiery depths. We are masters of the White Fire. The Darkness cannot come this way."
Eternatus made no answer, moved forward, then halted again, facing them, and the shadow about it grew in strength until it seemed that it had two vast wings upon its head. Fire came from its body. But the Two Princes stood firm.
Out of the shadows, a red beam came flaming.
Fangs glittered white in answer.
There was a ringing clash and a stab of white fire. Eternatus fell back, one of its horns in molten fragments. The Two Princes swayed a bit, touching back on the span of the arena. "You cannot pass!"
Eternatus's body whirled and hissed. With a sudden bound in the air it hovered over the two, staring at them from the heavens. "They cannot stand alone!" Bronze cried, suddenly running back to the arena. "Arceus ai Elbererth! I am with you, Elohim!"
"Galar!" Leon cried, and leaped after him.
"They're here, Zacian and Zamazanta!" Casey said. "Henry, they won't be able to defeat Eternatus unless they have the Rusted Sword and Sheild! We have to give it to them!"
Through the battle, Henry had been laboring over the two relics, and now he sat over them, black against the glare of Eternatus's light, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone. Casey beckoned to him. "Henry, get up!"
Then Henry stirred and spoke in a clear voice, indeed more clearer and powerful than any Casey had ever heard him use, and it rose above the clash and tumult of the battle, ringing in the ground and the walls. A wild light flamed in his eyes, and he drew the two relics to his chest with gripping strength.
"I have come," he said, smiling wide. "But I do not choose to give the Rusted Sword and Sheild to those two Elohim! I will not do this deed. These are my weregild for the struggles I have gone through, and they were the only reason I wished to join the Gym Challenge! I have them now! I will give them to no one!"
...
Casey gasped, but she had no chance to cry out, for at that moment many things happened.
Eternatus screamed, and folded as if struck violently. The violent wind of debris was quelled. Zacian and Zamazenta turned, looked at Henry with golden eyes. Then a strange and terrible thing happened to Henry: he was lifted off his feet with the two relics, fighting like a mad thing with an unseen foe. Sordward and Sheilbert were laughing somewhere, high-pitched and hateful.
To and fro he swayed, lifted high and clutched to the Rusted Sword and Shield with overwhelming force. Eternatus's red fires awoke in anger, the red light blazed, and all the spire was filled with a great glare and heart. Suddenly Casey saw Henry being drawn upwards to Eternatus's mouth, the long white fangs of Zacian and Zamazenta glistening, and then their glorious charge at Eternatus's head.
Giga Impact!
The two Elohim leaped, shining as if wrought of living fire. Eternatus lifted up its eyes to focus on its new foes, quailed, wavered for a moment on the brink of retreat, and then with a shriek the blows collided with it. Out of the depths of a shining white blaze of color and light that tore darkness asunder came a final wail, and then Eternatus was gone.
Hammerlocke was buried in soft silver radiance. And out of the top of that sphere of light the second Dark Lord came flying with a rending cry, in a last desperate race he flew, faster than the wind, than foldspace engines, than Salamance, and with a storm of howling it hurtled into the heavens, piercing stratosphere and ethereal vacuum, burning with red flame as it journeyed to the lifeless Moon.
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Hammerlocke Tower
Hatred is as dangerous an emotion as love. The capacity for hatred is the capacity for its opposite.
-Emrett Dialogues, compiled works
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The battle was over, so it seemed. Magnolia and Marvin arrived with the next elevator-load of soldiers, and found the trainers on the tower pinnacle to be unconscious, with no sign of Henry or the Two Princes.
"They're all still breathing," Milo said to the Rorian Commandos. "Get the army medical team and troop transports to the top of the plant, now! We've got thirty-six people in uncertain condition, including Emperor Bronze Tercano and Chairman Rose Venport! Is Hammerlocke Hospital still operational?"
"Should be," a Commando named Aziz said. "We didn't do much fighting there. You heard him! Get the Grand Bashar to safety, or I'll have your skins!"
...
Hammerlocke Hospital
The Darkest Day was over. The moon now glowed clear, and after the perilous night the sun was ready to rise again. Dynamaxed Pokemon shrunk and calmed. With Eternatus in retreat, the hordes of demons vanished into the waste places of the world once more. Still, wounds would have to be tended, and counting the casualties would take a very long time, and the lives lost would be mourned far longer than that. It would take years for everything in Galar to be repaired.
Bronze woke up first, tearing away the intravenous tubes and machines used to monitor his physical state. Thankful that hospital staff had not stripped him of his dark blue uniform, he found Magnolia and Marvin in the crowd of Association operatives working to maintain the Energy Plant. "Professor! Where are Henry and Casey? How are their injuries?"
"They recovered as well as you, sir," Marvin said. "But Henry is, ah, missing. Leon and most of the Gym Leaders are not doing well. They and a lot of your Commandos were exposed to Eternatus's poison, so they're still unconscious. Sordward, Sheilbert, and Rose are recovering in Association custody. Your soldiers also found Oleana, she's with them."
"What do you mean, 'Henry is missing?'" Bronze said.
"We never found him," Magnolia said. "Hop said that he saw him get caught between Zacian and Zamazenta's attacks and Eternatus's maw. The energy expanded, and there was a flash and a terrible shockwave. We don't know where he is. The two Elohim disappeared, along with Eternatus. We think it went to space, somehow."
Bronze sagged, and looked terribly old. "So he is dead, then. I should have never allowed you to give him a Pokedex, Magnolia!"
"Now, now," Magnolia chided. "We don't know that he's dead. If he is, then being disintegrated isn't all that bad of a way to go. Buck up! You have a lot of soldiers and people that need your guidance in recovering from this disaster. We have to grieve later."
"Yes, you're right," Bronze said, taking in a shuddering breath. "Have Casey check the footage of the event from my warships, maybe she can discern what happened. I must make an address, find Rellus and Moon." He walked away, outside the building.
...
"And here is the moment you are looking for," Tess said to Casey. "Right when Henry Sword was killed in an energy blast. This footage was gathered from the, hm, Zekrom Ascendancy R.S.S. Are you satisfied with this?"
"Stop saying he's dead!"
"Why not? Death is the Gift of Men. Do not be afraid, our fate cannot be taken from us. Rejoice for those that have gone to the Kingdom of Arceus."
"I'll get there when I get there!" Casey yelled, shifting through the images. There he was, holding the Rusted Sword and Shield. That waxen face of terror, those pale hands...! Zacian and Zamazenta made their charge, but when they struck Eternatus, Casey saw that Henry had already disappeared.
She reeled back the footage. Henry blurred, and then disappeared a fractional second before the two combined blows took down the dark lord. "See, he didn't disappear because of the blast! It was a little bit before that. He almost disappeared like an Abra."
"Teleportation, possibly," Tess said. "Or dislocation due to the tachyon storm. We might be able to find him, but I need to attend to Bronze. The disaster projections have crested and passed, but I feel more coming, as sure as an approaching storm. Eternatus is only healing from its wounds. Whatever lies next, I still fear for Galar's future."
"You don't have to fear, Ms. Woodhall," Casey said. "Remember, I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer, the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear and permit it to pass over me. When the fear has gone I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Then only I will remain."
"The Litany Against Fear! Well done, Casey Sheild. But the fear of a Bibliographer is different than the fear of a mundane citizen. Ours is the fear of nations and avenues of probability, not animalistic and shortsighted blindness caused by uncertainty. Men go to great lengths to avoid what they fear rather than try to reach for what they wish to attain."
Tess turned away, engrossed in her calculations. "We have secured Rose Tower, or what remains of it. Beneath the building there is a supercomputer, full of data that Macro Cosmos has gathered. You may use it if you wish, when the time comes, to try to find Henry Sword with my assistance. As for Henry Sword," Tess chuckled. "He was certainly acting strange, no?"
"Yes, he was," Casey replied. "Henry's the person who would go the extra mile to help fulfill the wishes of folks he just met, but when it comes to fixing gear, he loses sight of the people and Pokemon around him. I'm not defending his obsessive behavior, but there was just something quite different about him then. But if that's how he really felt, he would have left me back in the Slumbering Weald a year ago just to search for the Rusted Sword and Shield! That's why I think that Henry wouldn't prioritize his own wants over the crisis in Galar."
"Believe what you will, young human," Opal said, stepping into the room. "But there is another menace we must deal with. Come with me to the emergency ward."
...
Instead of a place of healing, the emergency ward was a charnel house.
Although not miserable nor crowded with their few dozen occupants, a select group of patients was experiencing horrific symptoms: Raihan, Piers, Leon, Nessa, Melony, Sordward and Sheilbert, and many other Rorian soldiers. Some lay injured in an incomprehensible rash of ruptured tendons like broken dolls, wracked with burning fever and delirium. Doctors went about them dressed in clearplaz suits, administering Chansey eggs and gelpackets filled with supercooled gas to the patient's pores to alleviate the fever.
Casey felt sick, but she saw Bronze, Hop, and Magnolia standing above the critically ill Leon. "They all came into contact with Eternatus's poison," Opal explained. "We're searching for an antidote, but these symptoms of ruptured tendons, fever, and psychosis are resisting all of our best treatments. We'll have to get more researchers if we want to find a cure."
"My wife was once known as 'Miss Poison,'" Bronze said. "I've consulted her, and she will be right over from Sinnosui, away from her family. If anyone can find a cure for this toxin, it'll be her."
Suddenly, Piers twitched, gagged, and fell unconscious. "That's good," an attendant doctor said. "If he's asleep, there isn't any risk of him hurting himself or others. The worst of his symptoms seemed to have already passed, but I'm worried about his tendons breaking."
"Right!" Raihan said from his cot, seemingly lucid. "Adaman says that we ought to put the most serious symptoms first. I tried to use a Full Heal on myself, but I guess that was just for Pokemon! Cheery-o, Tercano! The Darkest Day is over! Hullo, hullo? Wherefore have you come? The seaward road runs south, but you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey sea's mouth!"
"Adaman?" Bronze said, confused. "Something feels wrong. He must be making a mental-projection for himself, adhering to standard Jungian archetypes of protection and wisdom. The Saint of Combat and a member of the Golden Company fits that well."
"The current plan is to remove the toxin," the doctor said, "which we have named Compound X, from their livers and muscles until a permanent cure can be found. It should keep them alive, although if their tendons start to decay," She gestured at the crippled Rorian soldiers. "There won't be anything we can do."
"Good, at least for now," Bronze said. "The situation in the rest of Galar is not going well, however. My soldiers have been conscripted to help with rebuilding efforts. Hop, the Challenge Cup will be delayed until further notice. It might be months before the people are willing to host such things. I will not hear a word of complaint! You have survived a Typhoon Struggle in its own right. All that remains to destroy Eternatus."
"We could use atomics," Tess said. "But it would use the Moon as cover. I still feel a dreadful menace about that white orb, but it might just be now because Eterantus dwells there. Sir, we ought to find Zacian and Zamazenta again, with the Rusted Sheild and Rusted Sword. Then we can put a more permanent end to this crisis."
"Then we must locate Pokedex Holder Henry," Bronze sighed. "Woodhall, you're my finest Bibliographer. Use whatever methods you want, but find him and those two relics! I have duties in Galar, though. I would like to speak with Rose in prison."
"Hurrah!" Raihan said. "Another adventure! We'll get to see Elohim and all!" Then he slumped backward, unconscious.
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Hammerlocke Secure Medical Ward
The intellect cannot reach the assumption that humans and Pokemon live in a fixed universe with no variable change unless it ignores the fact that society is organism-like in nature.
-the Bibiliographer's Creed
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Escaping the secure ward had been far easier than Sordward and Sheilbert were expecting.
Moved away from the rest of the patients, only a single soldier remained to watch over them. Although very ill from the effects of the poison, they had recovered very quickly, although both saw the wisdom in pretending to remain unconscious. The restraining straps wore away with a slight but gradual strain over the hours, and soon, the brothers were ready to make their escape.
Sordward reached, and then vomited on the ground, an easy task given his residual nausea. The soldier grumbled, and came over with a Chansey egg. "Hold your sick, I'll give you something for it."
Once in Sordward's reach, the soldier stooped over the crush the egg into a paste. Sordward rolled off the metal cot, grabbed the edges, and hit the man across the face. Blinded, he reach for his Poke Balls, but Sheilbert was ready. With an unexpected kick to the legs, the man fell, and Sordward broke his neck with the aid of the sudden inertia of the twisting motion.
The man lay dead, and the two brothers dressed in his clothes. Sordward wore his military exosuit, while Sheilbert donned his underclothes. "You'll chafe something awful in that uniform, brother," Sheilbert said. "Now, our hair is rather recognizable. I dare say that we shall have to cut it off."
"All in good time, Sheilbert," Sordward said. "Now, we must flee the region. Tercano has many enemies; we will take refuge with them."
"For what?" Sheilbert asked, gripping his head to stay a sudden headache. "Our hopes of restoring the royal house are null. Are you suggesting that we might find some sort of revenge against Tercano in the future among his foes?"
"That, and I propose that we either have children, or clone ourselves," Sordward said. "Then, once all is forgotten in eras far in the future, our descendants more worthy of the Rusted Sword and the Rusted Sheild will come to the throne. We must be as patient as a thinking machine. Now, let us steal a Rorian skycopter and go to Kalos, where we will find the most opposition to Tercano."
Hastily letting down their hair, the two brothers left the hospital and entered the city beyond. The sight of a man in military garb taking a parked skycopter on the rubble-covered streets, to anyone who noticed, was not conspicuous at all. The vessel activated, sending Sordward and Sheilbert into the north.
...
It had only been a half-hour of automated flight until Sheilbert's headache became worse. Actually, he collapsed, moaning and writhing in the back seat of the skycopter.
Sordward soon followed him, slipping out of the pilot's seat and onto the floor. The autonavigation carried on without them, untroubled. The agony welled up like a hideous tide, delving into every cell of their brains and cutting them into a billion, billion shards of pure agony.
Then the tide split into innumerable faces. Each demanding being pressed up against their vision centers, a cloud of ego-memories. Eternatus's poison had activated their genetic triggers, and now they were rapidly on the route to possession by an ego-memory in the gene pool. These remnants of humanity presented mange-spotted skin, sooty eye sockets, or mouths like red lozenges. The pressure and pain washed over the brothers in a current that demanded that they float free and plunge into them, to give into the poison's exotic effects.
"No...no...no..."
Sordward tried to sit, but could not, still whispering denial. The tide contained to rise against him and his brother. They felt attuned to the slightest show of attention, but alert for every word from that host of mouths that clamored within them. "Me! Me! No, me!"
"No..."
Other voices wove in their mind. "I, Ghetsis, demand an audience!"
"Not a chance! I am Lysandre, and you must speak with me!"
"To hell with the others! My name is Colress, and your attention is what I require!"
"Don't listen to them! This is Pokedex Holder Blue! Quickly, get out of this trance while you still have time!"
Sheilbert pressed his hands against the sides of his head, until the flesh answered with pain. An insane cackle within his head asked: "What became of Ovid? Simple! He's Eric Bulter's ibid!"
The names were usually meaningless. He wanted to scream out against them, but could not find his own voice. Sordward's awareness was caught by shrieks of singing: "Merry old birds are we, hurrah!" The voices echoed inside his skull and he thought, I am going insane. I'm losing my mind to the poison.
Suddenly, one inner ego-memory overpowered all the rest in Sordward's head. "Well, well, well...it seems that I've found a window, at last! Every incident of creation represents a catastrophe, at least to one viewpoint." It was a deep, calculating voice that rumbled against his eyes, and he heard it chuckle, as if the ego-memory was deriding its own pontifications. "Surrender, boy. I can help you, but you must give me your body in return."
Another thing seemed to happen to Sheilbert. Against the swelling background racket, a thin, reedy voice echoed. "Ah-h-h-h-h, this is quite the prize. And seems that the Lord has found another! Destiny has such a strange way of turning things in our favor."
Imprinted on the brother's awareness were two faces. In Sordward's mind, he saw a handsome man in a dark suit, with sharp, angular features and raven hair, with burning eyes of violet. Sheilbert beheld a sallow-skinned, effeminate man with flowing back hair that reached down to his shoulders, dressed in a linen robe and with a look on his face that screamed: Killer!
"You see," Sordward's avatar rumbled. "I am Jonathan Rowell Cypress, Lord of the Eclipse Alliance. The man inside your brother's head is named Emrett. Well met, boy!"
"But..." Sordward muttered. "You're...you're dead! You both were killed fifty-two years ago!"
"Why, most of us here are dead!" Cypress cried. "Of course, we have died in the upper world! How clever of Eternatus...making sure to infect you and counting on us to find a way out? Ingenious! We are imprints of our counterpart's consciousness, preserved in ego-space. Lucky for you, we are here to help. None of the others really understand you."
"Go away!" Sheilbert said. "Oh, please go away!"
"But you need our help to survive," Emrett cackled. "We've overpowered all the others. They'll overwhelm you at our command. Like so!"
Again the other ego-memories lifted in a clamor. The tide threatened to drown the two brothers, and they heard their mother's voice screeching.
"Shut up!" Cypress bellowed.
Sordward and Sheilbert felt their own desires reinforcing that command, and the river of lost souls faded. They realized only too late that such an acceptance of the wishes of these two wicked men gave them a window into total intrusion: possession by an ego-memory.
The two brothers screamed as Cypress and Emrett leaped with fangs bared, and seized their nervous systems. Both jerked, twitched, and laid still as Emrett and Cypress overrode their amygdala's biological programming and stopped their hearts. Sordward and Sheilbert lay slack-jawed, dead.
...
Soon, the eyes of both corpses opened in synchrony. They stood, and examined their bodies with stiff, crudely articulated motions, as if moving their limbs for the first time. Then they stood and walked about the narrow skycopter cabin, looked at the controls and the Galarian landscape.
"We're back, aren't we?" Emrett-Sheilbert said with a grin.
"Yes, we are," Cypress-Sordward said, sneering. "A new master awaits us! Can you not feel his call?"
Emrett-Sheilbert closed his eyes, pondering Cypress's words. "Yes. Eternatus wishes for our service. But first, we must learn what is going on in the world. How much time has passed since our untimely death?"
"Fifty-two years," Cypress said, pointing to the date on a holocube embedded within the console's controls. "I expect much to have transpired since our passing. But unfortunately, foolish humans still exist, along with Pokemon. This landscape looks nothing like I have ever seen." He checked the navicube again. "We are in a region known as Galar, in the west of the world. Never heard of it."
"Those answers will come in time," Emrett said, flitting through information relating to him on the Omninet-connected holocube. "But now we are given an opportunity to prove that our defeat at the Demon's Tomb was merely a setback! We must seek out any allies who would join our cause and then reveal ourselves to the public, who above all are easily fooled." He chuckled, seeing a copy of the Emrett Dialogues under the Shopping tab for his name. "I see that they published my memoirs."
Eternatus's words rang in their heads through the ego-linkage they had with the demon lord, resulting from the forced nature of their possession. "You two will be assets and great generals for my cause. In the name of the Mbelekoro, and as his successor, I command you to build me an army worthy of a Dark Lord!"
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End of Part I