The group of Saints led by Dohko and Shion walked the road to the Italian castle town where Tenma and Sasha had come from. The sun had just set, and the darkness of the night was starting to envelop the land. The forest road was quiet, perhaps too quiet. There were no signs of specters yet, but then again, there were no signs of anyone or anything at all. Not animals, not civilians, nothing.
The pegasus saint felt quite nostalgic being back in his homeland, but this quiet made him feel very uncomfortable. He'd been out on those roads frequently when he was a kid, and they were never this silent. A chill went down his spine as he worried for the safety of those he swore to protect.
As they finally left the forest, the group was met with a sight that made Tenma feel like he'd just taken a massive punch to the gut.
…
The castle town had been reduced to a complete ruin. It had been totally destroyed, and there were no signs of human life.
"Alone!" Tenma yelled, rushing to the outskirts in the direction of his old orphanage.
"Hey, where the hell are you going!?" Asked Yato, surprisingly the more prudent one of the two.
"Let him, we'll catch up." The calm and collected Shion ordered as he frowned, already suspecting what was the cause of that disaster.
-x-
Tenma went house by house looking for people, but all he found were corpses, most of them already unrecognizable. It seems like they'd lost their lives quite a while back, but that didn't stop the rugged saint from holding out a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, his family had survived and they were hiding in one of the abandoned houses.
He searched for a long time, but couldn't find anything.
"Damnit!" Tenma pressed on clearing the houses in the outskirts, saving the orphanage for last. Eventually, however, he knew he'd have to look there.
And once he did, he immediately fell down to his knees. There were bodies everywhere, and while he couldn't recognize the faces, he knew who was who due to the clothing they wore. Tenma had finally found his family, but it couldn't have been under worse circumstances.
He was bewildered, unable to express any reaction other than give the bodies a blank stare. The grief was overwhelming him, and his brain was almost shutting down. The only reason why he didn't collapse on the spot was because he couldn't find Alone's body.
There was still hope.
Maybe his best friend was still alive, maybe Tenma wasn't a complete failure who broke his promise to Sasha and let his entire family get brutally murdered.
But before he could go looking, someone kicked the front door to the orphanage.
A man wearing black armor and wielding a black scythe entered the room, snickering at the pegasus saint.
"Look what we have here, another saint." He started walking towards Tenma. "I guess this means that those silver saint traitors failed. Well, no matter, you'll soon join them." The specter raised his weapon.
"I'll sacrifice you in the name of my Lord Hades!"
"Was it you?" Tenma asked, bluntly.
"Huh?"
"Did you kill the townsfolk?" The saint elaborated.
…
"Yes, we gave this town our Lord's blessing to celebrate his glorious return!" The specter had a big maniacal grin on his face. "But don't worry, soon you'll receive that exact same blessing of death!"
The specter swung his mighty scythe, but Tenma quickly stopped it by holding the blade with his gauntlet. The pegasus saint was back on his feet, and now that he had a target, his immense grief was quickly morphing into unyielding, unbridled rage.
"I don't give a crap about your Lord Hades." He answered, his demeanor a time bomb just waiting to explode.
"Right now, the only thing I care about is sending you straight to hell!" A shining blue aura started to emanate from Tenma as he elevated his cosmos, preparing himself to lay down on the specter as revenge for his family.
Intimidated, the soldier of Hades tried to pull back his weapon, but the bronze saint's grip was way too strong.
"Pegasus Meteor Fist!"
As Tenma yelled the name of his technique, he struck his enemy with a barrage of lightning fast, cosmos infused, punches that looked more like a massive meteor shower striking the specter all over his body. The blows, which came at the speed of sound, quickly made short work of the specter's black armor, sending him flying a couple feet back, dead.
As the body of the specter lay flat on the ground, Tenma left the destroyed building, still not satisfied.
"Hades… I will never forgive you!"
With renewed determination, this time born out of a desire to destroy rather than protect, Tenma rushed into the keep, believing that he'd find who was looking for there, in the highest part of the town.
-x-
As he crossed the castle's gates, Tenma saw Yato and the other low ranking saints on the ground unconscious, he couldn't be sure if they were still alive or not. And in front of them, was none other than the pegasus saint's childhood friend.
Alone, however, wasn't by himself. He had that black haired woman with him, and behind them, waited a big group of men in all kinds of black armor, specters, all of them. Those however, didn't seem as weak as the last one, and were probably the group that eliminated the silver saint scouting party before.
Tenma was left once again speechless at that sight. His hair was of a different color and a cloud of dark miasma emanated from his body, but the man standing in front of him was undoubtedly his friend Alone, the flower bangle on his wrist being what gave it away. And he didn't look distressed at all, in fact, if anything, he seemed quite happy.
"Welcome home Tenma, or should I say… Pegasus Tenma." Alone spoke, with a sinister tone of voice, very uncharacteristic of the young painter.
"Alone's, no, my friend." A hint of mockery permeated the painter's voice in that last sentence.
Tenma was quiet for a couple moments, struggling to figure out what to say now that he was finally back.
"What the hell happened here, Alone!?" He asked.
"Don't tell me…" The saint struggled.
"Don't tell me that *you're* Hades!"
Before anyone else could say anything, Dohko and Shion arrived there just in time to listen to Tenma's words.
"There's no way! The human chosen to become Hades' vessel was Tenma's friend!?" He asked, almost as shocked as his pupil.
"What a cruel twist of fate." Shion commented, gripping his fists.
"No way!" Tenma yelled.
"There's no way I'll believe that you massacred the townspeople and…" Tenma's eyes were already filled with tears at that point. "Did… did that atrocity in our orphanage! Our home!" The pegasus was in denial, his emotions speaking louder than reason.
"Say something, Alone!" The pegasus saint sobbed, equally saddened as he was angry.
…
"You haven't changed Tenma." Said Alone. Eerily, his tone of voice had in an instant switched back to his old self, a sweet smile was on his face as he approached the saint without a hint of apparent malice.
"I'm happy that you managed to fulfill your promise of coming back home as a full fledged saint, truly I am." As Tenma heard those words, he didn't know what to think anymore. It was like he'd never left the village, his old friend Alone was exactly as he was before.
"I also did my best to become a great artist, do you remember this?" Alone asked, taking a canvas from one of his followers and showing it to the saint. It was the portrait of Tenma the painter had started to make before he went to the sanctuary, but could never finish it.
"I also made a promise back then, to finish this portrait once you came back." He continued.
"And now, I've finally found the tone of red that I hadn't been able to create before."
Alone took a paintbrush from his pockets and pressed it against the ground, the ground that was filled with the blood of the saints that'd just been defeated.
"This is the true red."
Suddenly, Alone's face and tone changed again, back into the ominous and sinister grin he had on at first.
"Tenma, get away from him NOW!"
Dohko yelled, rushing towards his protege, feeling the murderous intent coming from Hades. His arm, however, was held back by Shion.
"We can't take on a god and this many specters on our own, if you go in we all die!" Shion's tone was calm, but it was clear that he was very distressed. This situation was pretty much the worst case scenario, not only there were specters here, but some were very high ranking and even Hades himself was present.
It took Dohko every bit of his willpower to not attack the emperor of the underworld, he gritted his teeth, almost unable to watch without doing anything.
With his paintbrush soaked in blood, Alone swiftly drew a big red "x" on the portrait, and almost instantly, Tenma fell to his knees.
The pegasus saint started throwing up blood, his sacred cloth cracked and shattered out of nowhere and his heart was in immense pain.
"Alone…"
That was the last thing Tenma managed to say before falling face first into the blood soaked floor, losing consciousness almost immediately, a victim of Hades' sadistic game. Tenma's last thoughts before collapsing were of Sasha, who he wished he was able to tell how he really felt.
It was clear that the enemy was far beyond the realm of what even saints were capable of, after all, he was a true god, one very ancient who had mastered every ins and outs of cosmos. An entity that could never even be killed. A being that could kill a person without even laying a finger on them.
Dohko, however, did not care for any of that.
Blinded by anger, he freed himself from Shion's grasp and rushed Hades. His fists raised, ready to take the entity on for having killed his pupil.
But before the libra golden saint could get any close, a wall of fire suddenly rose from the ground, separating him from his target, forcing Dohko to stop on his tracks.
"What the hell!?"
One of the specters stepped forward, traversing the flames without being harmed by them. It was clear that he was the one who created that wall. His armor was a lot more elaborate than that of the previous specters Dohko had encountered, its design resembling some kind of eagle or hawk, even having a pair of dark wings on the back.
"I won't allow you to keep bothering my Lord Hades." The specter spoke, staring at Dohko like a falcon stalking his prey. "I, Bennu Kagaho, the Star of Violence, will be your opponent."
Bennu was a legendary bird from ancient egypt, pretty much the egyptian version of the legendary phoenix. Each specter represented one of the 108 stars of destiny, and in Kagaho's case, it was the star of violence.
"Get out of my way!" Still furious, Dohko elevated his golden cosmos, determined to not let Hades escape. The golden saint raised his fist, preparing to launch a cosmos infused energy blast right to the specter's chest.
Kagaho responded in kind, raising his hand and throwing a torrent of flames to meet Dohko's blast. As the techniques clashed, a massive shockwave formed around the fighters, spreading the flames to the nearby building and rooftops, quickly starting a fire that didn't take too long to spread across the entire castle town.
Eventually though, both moves canceled out, meaning that both fighters were on the same level, which only further angered Dohko.
"You might be as strong as a golden saint, but I won't leave this place as long as I take down every last one of you!" His determination looked like it couldn't be stopped, and Dohko just once again elevated his powerful golden aura, readying himself to strike again. Kagaho did the same, not fazed at all by his opponents words.
Shion, however, wasn't having it. He calmly placed his hand on Dohko's shoulder.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Dohko." He said, looking to calm down his ally. "We might not be able to win this battle, but that doesn't mean the war is lost."
"Shion, didn't you see what they did to our comrades? Our subordinates!?" Dohko snapped back.
"I know!" The aries saint raised his voice, something he really didn't do frequently. "Use your head. If we die here, what will that accomplish?" Slowly, he managed to get through to his comrade. "We'll live to fight another day, and when the time comes, we'll get our chance to avenge Tenma and the others."
Dohko looked crestfallen, but he understood and agreed with the aries saint.
"Let's go!" Shion and Dohko then turned tail, running away back to the village's exit. The specters tried to give pursuit, but weren't as fast as those two and they eventually slipped away.
Defeated, the duo of golden saints made their way back to the sanctuary, already dreading having to tell Athena about what had taken place in that little italian castle town where she'd come from.
…
-x-
The next morning, the fire in the ruined town had been put out by rain, and now the place looked even more wrecked. Hades and his specters had moved on to the cathedral in the forest, leaving the town a complete wasteland of rubble, ash, dead bodies and dried blood.
Except for a mysterious cloaked feminine figure, who stood over a pile of rubble, looking at the unconscious bodies of Yato and Tenma.
"Well, looks like the Pegasus and the Unicorn can still be saved."