Lance's Role

by Thrudgelmir2333

A 'shonen' fic that sequels Next Dimension and Lost Canvas. In 1960, the Pope of Athena receives three prophecies from an old enemy that irremediably set the course of his reign over Sanctuary's tragic history and almost two decades later a Saint of Pegasus finds himself put through the unfolding of a new age of violence caused by the Pope's actions. Please enjoy and review.

46. 2A: The Lamb, the Twins and the Watchdog

Notable OCs: Pegasus Lance's Saint Generation, Civil War Saint Generation, World War Saint Generation, Daemon Lucifer's Specters, Maiden Elisa, Priam's Black Saints, Cyrulian Refugees

Notable Original Concepts: Mount Olympus Training Ground, Sanctuary Court, Teos Cloth, Athenian Empire mythology, Isle of Gardens; Stardust Prison, Hades' Dark Princes, Desert Beyond, Sanctuary Town Layout & Buildings

Recurring/Cameo OCs of Jenny DeVic: Mrs. Schafurwatt, Cyrus

Recurring/Cameo Concepts of Jenny DeVic: Great Bodyguard Legend, Golden Line Heritage, Sanctuary Orphanages, Andromeda Island's Geography & Tests, Sanctuary Nobility, 88 Knights Festival

Author Notes:

-May was a prolific month in terms of views, maintaining the 600 hits average the story has lately been plateauing at. Thank you for your continued support.

-I'd like to thank Siena from the SS Reddit Discord for being a consultant on the latter Andromeda Island scene. Also thanks to Jenny DeVic who has been diligently reviewing the chapters despite her busy schedule. Check out her stories right now.

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Please enjoy and review (^_^

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"Oh, the 'Stand Down' edict. Few commands from the Goddess have ever been so controversial. It is especially unpopular with Silver Saints and gold-ranked Bronze Saints. Where to begin with it?

Sanctuary's army is unique in the sense that, instead of branches, it has Orders going from Bronze to Gold in it, each with specific tasks set to them, like a monastic order from the human Dark Ages. They are designed to monopolize tasks of their proportional magnitude; Bronze Saints fight Bronze threats, Silver Saints fight Silver threats, and so on.

It is only for the sake of expediency and practicality that sometimes Saints fight 'unproportionally', like a Gold Saint being sent to wipe out a Bronze-rank Black Saint base, and this only ever happens 'punching downwards', never 'upwards'. It is quite helpful because not only does it increase the amount of battle practice our lower echelons get, since most day-to-day issues are Bronze-level threats, but it allows Sanctuary to put less on the line against bigger threats we know little about.

It basically brings the Roman Triplex Acies tactic into a wider strategic planning form; waving forward first the fresh Hastati recruits at the problem and only sending the experienced Triarii way at the end or critical situations. It helped create the Roman Empire, which spread Athena's faith throughout Europe, and, as one of my favorite human sayings goes, you don't fix what isn't broken.

However, this results in Holy Wars against Hades, Artemis, and such Gods that sometimes were fought entirely by the Gold Saints, to the detriment of the wishes of the other Orders who have to prove themselves to Athena. This is because said Gods rarely put their worst at the forefront of the battle, triggering Sanctuary's Stand Down routine to force us to do the same.

Even gold-ranked warriors without a Gold Cloth have often left aside as reserves. This is not a coincidence or case of favoritism, but rather a cohesive strategic choice, and one enforced by Athena herself. You can go back to several instances in the history of Athena's mortal coil issuing several orders for Bronze and Silver Saint prodigies to stand down during wars with Hades, even when they can achieve lightspeed.

Indirectly, it proves that our own Silver and Bronze Saint regulars probably have something to offer in these unbalanced conflicts, which is why I often hesitate to punish them for fighting 'out of order'."

-a paragraph from "Sanctuary Edicts", a study of Sanctuary law by Judge Meropis of Shamballah

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Andromeda Island

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It was night time on Andromeda Island. Everyone was at their huts trying to get important rest for the next day's studying and training.

Yawning, yet unable to go to sleep, Albiore was the exception. He scratched his blonde head on the pillow and kept thinking about what Master Shinta said, rolling in his cushion. It exhausted him to try to ignore all the bad thoughts he got, picturing Specters just walking into the island he was supposed to be safe at and staging a battle that Saint Shinta himself barely got out of alive. The master had guaranteed such a thing couldn't happen again, so why was his heart pounding?

The answer was obvious; because getting kidnapped out of his bed along with the rest of his family, not even imagining how much danger they were really in, kickstarted the horrible series of events that landed him in Saint Triangle Noah's hands.

Unable to keep his eyes closed, Albiore got out of bed, put on his coat, and went outside to the cold night. Maybe a breath of fresh air and a walk would make him forget about things. At the very least, maybe the very cold night air of the deserted island would make him stop thinking stupid things and get right under the blankets again.

He went to the meeting area, where the sitting rocks were all placed around a dead campfire. Ironically, seeing it empty automatically made him picture the whole group present, from Saint Shinta to the far side to Saint Cynthia to the other with Al' and El' in between. It made him look at the Master's hut. Saint Shinta would be upset if he found him up at that hour. The lights, however, were off, and a faint, high-pitched snoring was heard.

The blonde boy smirked confidently. Saint Shinta had always been a deep sleeper. He once said he managed to fall asleep on an island in his first mission with Saint Lance and that the Pegasus had managed to sneak out of their hiding spot, scout the enemy, and return without the pink-armored Saint ever even batting an eye.

The lips turned upside down, however, when he saw none other than Elda standing on a brick and peeking through Saint Shinta's window by the corner of the hut. He rolled his eyes and silently approached, "What are you doing now?"

The tomboy gasped and covered her mouth instinctively. "Geez, Al', you startled the heck outta me!"

"You're supposed to be asleep." he drily said.

She got off her brick. "So are you!"

He tucked his arms beneath his coat. "I couldn't… I was feeling like I would have nightmares again."

Elda took pause. She and Albiore didn't get to know each other too well at the orphanage, only growing closer in their misadventures at Sanctuary Town against the likes of Deathmask and Milo, but she had heard that the Argentinean was an emotional boy was often sent to the Maiden's room over his night terrors.

In a rare moment of softness, the tomboy conceded. "Ah, alright… sorry about that." she wished. "You still have those, huh?"

He eyed her. "Was I that well known for them at the 'Gift of Alone'?" he asked, referring to the orphanage they shared.

Her shoulders shrugged. "Yeah,… not to start anything, but I don't think you realize how much you drew attention to yourself,'" she recalled. It seemed every weekday or two the words 'blonde boy' and 'detention' were heard. "You were the screwed-up kid. Don't worry, though, there's always one in every herd."

Moving away from the hut so they wouldn't wake up the Andromeda Saint, Albiore rolled his eyes. "Wow, good to know…"

"Hey, it's true!" Elda insisted, following him and smirking. "One time, before I ever joined Sanctuary, back in my hometown, there was this one kid that banged his head on windows because he liked it! And before you came along I heard there was once a pair of trainees at the 'Heart of Sasha' that got into fights so hard every day that one of them got sent to Jason's Exile and the other to Death Queen Island!"

"Are you trying to make me feel better or weirder?!" Al' snipped, feeling compared to these maniacs.

Her hands cupped on her nape. "I don't know, which one do you prefer?" she asked, earning a tense stare. "No, seriously, I'm honest, Al'! Hey, if there's one thing I learned from playing soccer with the boys is that everyone likes stealing the ball to feel like they're special, so being a bit weird is like that?"

A gust of cold wind blew by, punctuating the awkward pause between the two and the look on Albiore's face just then.

The boy sighed. "Forget it."

The brown-haired girl watched him walk away towards the edge of the living area, puffing her cheeks. Boy, Al' was so hard to make happy sometimes.

Al' sometimes reminded Elda way too much of that one red-haired girl Marin, who was always too sad to do any serious training at the orphanage, asking all the time for her brother. While Al' had his own set of problems, but going through the Elysium Cliffs trial with him had forged a serious bond between them, and watching him humiliate Deathmask in the death circle officially made Al' her favorite person of the month.

With all that in mind, she decided to make an extra effort to cheer him up. "Hey! You wanna come to see why I sneaked out?"

He looked over. "…Uh...okay?"

She rubbed her nose confidently. "It's a super awesome thing I got! I didn't wanna show it to ya cause it's soooo cool, but I like staring at it every day when the Master isn't looking, like a ritual!"

The boy's curiosity was intrigued. What could she possibly have? He thought about her tastes. "It's not another bike magazine, is it?"

"WHAT? No, it's….um, it's slightly cooler than even that!" she calculated, suddenly unsure. "Look, It's something that's gonna help me make sure I leap-frog right over those stuck up Saintia training skunks like Katya! Can you believe that?!"

Albiore folded arms pensively. Elda tapped her foot anxiously at this; the Cassiopeia student was usually stuck hanging out with stuck-up girls like Katya or over competitive prodigies like Shaina and Geist. She had met all of them in a get-together that Sanctuary's three orphanages once organized. It was the day she learned how little she felt she had in common with most of the girls being trained. Hopefully Al wouldn't ruin an opportunity to have some fun by being is usual teacher pet self.

The Argentinean boy was definitely intrigued now. "Okay,… okay, I buy it. Where is it?"

Her eyes darted left and right and grabbed his wrist. "Come with me, and be quiet! Saint Shinta can't keep his mouth shut and Master Cynthia could get super mad if she found this out!" She practically yanked Albiore across the desert, heading for the one spot the Andromeda Saint wouldn't check for suspicious objects.

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Tibet,

Jamir Mountain Path

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Standing on the land bridge, the brown-haired, poorly shaven young doctor in a medical coat stared at the thick webbing of silky substance that covered the path before him. He had been moving through an increasingly dense amount of it for a while now, but now the road was completely covered in the irritating substance, to the point that it was dense as fabric and hard as steel. He lightly touched one of the threads and noticed a faint gold glow to it, hinting a component of stardust.

"Great… so it's not something you can normally just punch through," he concluded.

If this was part of one of Lord Mu's many hurdles to outsiders, then the blacksmith really wanted to send the message to Saints to take better care of their Cloths. Iaso found himself smirking, sympathizing with this idea. As a medic of the same obnoxious, headstrong people, he often wished he could headlock a patient or two for overestimating how much the Cosmos protected them. Hospital beds were precious after all.

However, Eurydice's health was his priority. He silently put down his Cloth Box and pulled the chain, causing it to open up and reveal a purple-colored Silver Cloth shaped like the upper body of a snake handler, who held the serpent, the creature that the ancient Greeks regarded as the revered symbol for health. It shucked loudly as it split apart in the air and dressed itself unto Iaso. His gloves were already wearing the gauntlets from his hiking, but now his knees became encased in protective pads, his waist was locked around by a protective belt, a second pair of pads docked over his med coat and locked around his neck into a metal collar and, finally, a simple protective metal plate went up the insides of his coat and strapped itself to his chest.

Iaso's least favorite part of the armor, the snake-head shaped helmet, then hovered around like a flying snake and placed itself on his head, as if biting down on it. It was by far the least elegant of the pieces, possessing aggressive-looking horns, a set of ruby eyes, and a tail running down the owner's back like a strand of braided metal hair.

A purple, toxic cosmos crackled all over the armored body. "Finally. Now let's do some real medical work." The cloth spoke, making poison run down its stardust veins into Iaso's fingertips.

The owner irked. Ophiuchus Iaso never liked his armor a whole lot, both visually and mentally. Not only did it have the personality of a disappointed doctor dad, but it made him look silly with the helmet. All the other pieces combined well with his clothes and even integrated his proud front-opened med coat, dressing into and around it, but Iaso felt like a total clown whenever the Cloth made it sound like this was their rightful shape as owner and armor.

His feet slid apart and his hand raised, focusing purple earth-elemental Mach 5 cosmos. The image of a vicious cobra was projected in the background. "GO! TOXIC THUNDER CLAW!" he shouted, lunging across the land bridge. The attack ravaged through the silk webbing with a devastating, corrosive charge that melted away the silk all while crossing him all the way through the land bridge with the momentum.

His feet screeched on the ground, halting his charge, as masses of webbing fell apart all around him, eaten away by a purple acid cosmos. The air itself would burn one's lungs, filled with venomous emanations from the splashed substances being eaten away, an ironic power to a Cloth meant for healing.

But while a huge chunk of silk was destroyed, he saw a whole LOT more webbing right in front of him, waiting to get braved through. "God damn it to hell! There's so much of this stuff left! What is this Lemurian, the Arachne Saint?!" he yelled, his voice echoing in the valley.

"Perhaps if you trained your techniques better-"

"My technique is fine. It's the sheer volume of this….woven crap." Iaso immediately interrupted. Unlike the Pegasus Saint and other more hot-headed youths in the army, Iaso was experienced enough to know when to ignore their armors' preaching. In fact, even as they spoke, his poison kept eating at the silk-like flame, melting it down to redundant protoplasm and clearing more way. He walked ahead to the rest of the silky mass and pulled at a string of it. "Seriously, this just looks bad for business."

As soon as his finger let go of the string, though, it recoiled back, shaking the rest of the incredible web covering his path. Iaso watched, amazed and alarmed, as the energy of his simple gesture signaled toward the interior of the blockade as if carrying a letter to whoever was inside.

His ear then perked, hearing far off sounds of thrashing. "This can't be good…" He touched his temple. "Hey, Nam, can you –"

*GSHHHH* -Nam- *GSHHH*

Iaso's brown eyes widened in alarm at the mental message blockading, turning back to the webbing. "Oh no…" he then immediately hid his cosmos.

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Jamir

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Papillion Ainsel happily hummed a tune as he flew around the tower, shooting more cobs of Silky Thread all around the Tibetan structure, covering its windows, roof tiles, and even the busted metal gate at the ground floor. Flapping his wings, he saw the Skeleton soldier reserve outside the building readying flaming crossbow bolts.

It made him smile. "Hmm, hmm, hide inside all you want, Saint Aries, because by the time I'm done, your tower will either be a cocoon or a burning grave." He then heard further thrashing on the second floor and flew down to it, peeking into the window. "What's taking so long? Get the kid before we lose our hostage bait."

The Skeleton Soldiers that chased the child up the tower continued to wrestle with the strange golem, which either blocked their scythe attacks or pushed off their punches with abnormal endurance and dexterity. "AGH! It's this goddamn… thing!" one complained, trying to tackle the golem only to get tossed out after a little scuffle.

Another Skeleton thrust a spear right into its side, but the adversary just took the blunt force of the impact. "We keep putting holes in it and it won't go down!!"

Mr. Mud grabbed the pole and snapped it with a sword slash, allowing the metal tip to stay skewered in his body like it was nothing. A scythe wielder tried to take advantage of the distraction to swing straight at his neck, but the golem dropped his sword, caught the Skeleton by the neck, lifted him up from the floor till his feet dangled in the air and then took the spear tip lodged in his body and shoved it right in the Skeleton's neck.

His buddies watched him get tossed to the ground, bleeding out of his air vent. "G-goddamn, he fights like a machine!"

Gritting his teeth, Sylph Willow shoved his men aside, body burning with cosmos. "ENOUGH!" he swung his fist at the golem. "NORTH WINDS!" and blasted the armored doll with a huge beam of purple cosmos, smashing him right against the wall, which only held up thanks to the massive amount of stardust-encrusted silk that covered it on the outside. "See?! This is how you do it, you idiots!"

The Skeletons cheered, seeing the golem on the ground twitching and unable to get up. "Y-yeah, take THAT, you freak!"

Willow pointed upwards. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE! GET THE DAMN KID!" he shouted, making the men rush up the stairs to the next floor. He then turned to the Papillion. "Lord Ainsel, don't worry, we will get the Lemurian boy and use him to lure the Aries Saint out. He HAS to be here!"

The blue-haired elite frowned. "Good, Willow…take care of it or I'll leave you in a cocoon for the rest of the Holy War." He then flapped upwards, intending to scan the entire tower with his antennae for the main target. "This Gold Saint is especially problematic… not only is he the fixer, but his mental abilities are second to none. I can't sense him anywhere even though that Gold Cloth should be as shiny as a lighthouse to my senses." He thought, making his telekinetic pulses survey the whole tower. "There must be something going on… perhaps a trick, or a dimensional loop in the stairs or-"

*tling tling*

Ainsel's eyes snapped back at the silk webbing he created along his path. Once more it was shaking, carrying a vibrating signal along its entire length, all the way down to the mountain road. He floated down to one of the loose strands and held it in his fingers, feeling the precise timbre of the vibration.

His antennae tingled, processing the information instantly. "Again? An unexpected reinforcement, huh? Well, if it was a Gold Rank, he'd already been here. Perhaps a Silver? Mmm…"

Inside the tower, the False Skeletons reached the third floor but saw nothing. In fact, they searched around and found the golem they just defeated laying right there on the floor, as if it had just climbed up from the ground.

One grasped his scythe infuriatingly. "Okay, what in the name of Giudecca is going on?!"

"It's some sort of trick! We're going in circles!" another concluded.

Sylph Willow saw the golem trying to get back up and blasted it again, silencing it for good. He pointed at one of his men. "You! Go up one floor!"

The Skeleton obeyed, rushing up to try to get to the third level again.

The whole group then stood there in shock when they heard him climbing the stairs behind them, and the skeleton dropped his jaw at already finding his friends at the floor he was ordered to climb into.

There was a knocking sound on the ceiling. "Hey, what's wrong? Are you LOST, Specters?! Can't you even climb a set of stairs to come to catch me?!" Mu's high-pitched voice screeched from above the floor roof. "Well guess what, you're never gonna get me and I will never tell you where the Aries Saint is!"

The distinctive sound of a child loudly blowing their tongue out in mockery was heard before a set of tippy toes rushed up to the fourth floor.

"What the flying hellish fuck?!" one of the Skeletons cursed, flipping a nearby table.

"FORGET THAT, we have to get that stupid kid before our leverage on the Aries Saint is GONE!" the first screamed.

Sylph Willow then turned to the window. "Lord Ainsel, some sort of loop is in place! When we use the stairs it just makes us reach the same floor we were back in! Can you get to the top floors from the air?"

While Ainsel considered the idea, he calculated by now that some other sort of trap was probably in place. He looked once more at the trembling silk threads and then back at the problematic tower and formulated a plan. "You're probably a smart man, Aries, but I bet you'd let that other Saint through to help you." He floated up to Willow. "Stay where you are, a guest is soon to come. Bring the crossbowmen inside as well. You're going to let this Saint through the last of the land bridge and ambush him on your floor. I want him part of my cocoon and his stomach filled with butterfly eggs within the hour!"

Willow shivered with the idea of it but nodded. "Got it! But what about the Aries Saint?"

The blue-haired man looked at the top of Jamir and chuckled. "Leave him to me."

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Andromeda Island

Andromeda Temple

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Under the night stars, dressed in their cloaks so they wouldn't have to burn their cosmos against the cold desert air, the two kids rushed in-between the dunes towards the black dome in the distance.

Albiore looked back and saw how far away they were from the Living Area. "Elda, this isn't a good idea-"

"Oh shush, I do this all the time! I've walked all the way to the other end of the island at night once." Elda silenced. "Master Cynthia is very alert all the time, but when she isn't on the island only Saint Shinta is in charge and you know he always sleeps like a log."

They approached their destination, the dome-shaped edifice with a cavernous entrance where the Andromeda Cloth rested inside. It glowed pink, like a small campfire. "Okay, sure, but this is a lot of risk, and quite frankly I'm not convinced that what you have to show to me is worth it!"

Elda hid by the entrance and peeked inside. Immediately, the Andromeda Cloth, which seemed entertained by drawing something on the sand with its chains, turned its helmet at her, making her yelp. "EEP! She's awake! Okay, better not go inside!"

Albiore rolled his eyes. "So we came all the way down here for nothing?!"

She scoffed. "What? No, of course not, what do you take me for?! I wouldn't hide it inside the dome with that crazy Cloth, but after you were snooping around in my hut I had to improvise."

The blonde boy's mouth formed an 'o', remembering the incident. "So that's what we're here for?"

Elda tracked the scratches on the dome surface to identify the spot she buried it at. Albiore watched as the girl's hands dug up a small box by the side of the makeshift temple, blowing the sand off it.

She clutched it closely. "Okay, Al', before I show you this, you gotta promise me first to not go crazy!"

His arms folded. "Go crazy? Why in God's name would I do that?"

The physically superior fighter girl gulped, remembering Orpheé's arm being bent. "You know what I mean! Every now and then you see something that drives you nuts about Sanctuary and you snap at someone! Remember what you did to the Lyra Saint?! I didn't bring you here to get sent to the hospital cause you're so jealous of other people's success!"

Albiore was completely outraged. "What?! I'm not jealous! What happened there was different! I just didn't understand how a kid like him managed to…." He then saw the skeptic look on her face. "Look, it doesn't matter! You dragged me all the way out here in the cold, where we could get in trouble, so you owe me some answers!"

Her hand waved in appeasement. "I know, fair is fair, I'm just, you know, giving you some forewarning." She then caressed the small box. "I also need you to promise me to keep this a secret. I don't know how Saint Cynthia would react to this, especially when I intend to stick around for a little while longer."

The Argentinean boy's expression softened, sensing some hesitation and conflict within the usually sure-of-herself girl. His curiosity grew exponentially. "Okay, I promise… what is this, anyway?"

Her fingers clutched the lock. "You're gonna love it. It's a pi-" but she then screamed and pointed behind him. "AL, WATCH OUT!"

The boy looked over in alarm but wasn't in time to avoid the launching Andromeda chain from wrapping itself around his foot and lifting him up in the air upside down. "AAH! HELP ME!"

Elda put down the box and leaped up to reach him, but the Andromeda Cloth raised the boy higher, almost tauntingly. "LET HIM GO, YOU STUPID SKANK CLOTH!" The spear-tipped chain then also slithered out of the temple's entrance and pointed straight at her neck. "Ah, I mean, please put him down!"

Albiore struggled in the air, waving his leg and arms around. "Call for help! Go back and call Saint Shinta!"

"What?! NO, you want us to get caught?!"

The boy's face went red. "You think staying like THIS is better?! The Cloth plays literal hangman with intruders!" he shouted. "Saint Shinta owns this armor, he can get me down before I lose a game!"

Elda, however, just stood there, observing the offensive chain behaving rather strangely. Its tip turned from her to the direction of the far-off coastline over and over, as if the armor was trying to indicate something.

Al' couldn't be angrier. "ELDA!"

Her hands waved. "Wait, wait, I think she's trying to tell us something…Uh…" She carefully observed the chain movements. The offensive chain waved around vertically, like a water tide or a sound length, and kept turning its attention from her to the previous direction. Elda grabbed her head, feeling a migraine. "It's… I…"

The boy watched as Elda's eyes seemed to struggle to stay open. His own mind felt heavier all of a sudden. "What's…. what's going on…?"

"I don't know… I feel so tired." Elda muttered, resting a hand on the dome wall.

The offensive chain snapped into action, quickly circling around the whole temple before initiating a rapid, successive twirling motion, forming a chain pattern.

As their heads started feeling lighter, they recognized it. "It's Rolling Defense." Elda pointed out.

Albiore was unceremoniously dropped to the floor and dragged inside the temple with a yelp next to the armor. Taking the hint, Elda followed him, joining the Andromeda Cloth.

Both kids observed the armor as it burned its pink cosmos, switching chains to keep Rolling Defense around so it could draw something on the sand with the triangle end. They saw two heads and a skull, as well as a water wave, circled together with a sun.

Albiore blinked. "Two people and a dead person?" he guessed, but the armor shook its helmet, drawing a stick with a long arc at the tip with it, like a scythe. "Not a dead person. A… grim reaper?"

They looked at each other, paling as Master Shinta's story came to mind. Elda was the first to voice it. "…Specters at the beach?"

They then looked outside and saw very faint lines in the air that seemed to be clashing against the Rolling Defense.

Some sort of attack was being repelled.

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Deep Amphion and the Skeleton Soldier pulled the jet boat into the sandy coast. "Hurry up, we have to hide this!"

"Yes, sir!" the Skeleton obeyed, putting down the boat and shoveling a huge chunk of sand right over it with his cosmos-infused hands.

Bat Brune was already ahead, standing over one of the rocky cliffs that delineated that particular beach, casting his servant bats into the night sky. "One more time! Nightmare Sonar!" and another round of the sleep-inducing wave was launched in the form of cries from the flying mammals, spreading the curse everywhere on the island.

While their Damascus helmets protected them, the two companions still felt the subconscious need to cover their ears. "Why do it over and over?" asked the grunt. "I feel like this is what dogs hear from their whistles, it's annoying!"

"Lord Lucifer warned us to make sure." Deep answered. "You never know when these Saints do something insane like piercing their own earlobes or hide in a separate dimension. Also, remember at Crow's Nest? It took a while for the stronger Bronze ranks at the walls to fall asleep and superspeed lets you take advantage of those precious milliseconds you manage to stay awake." He then watched as Brune leaped off the cliff and joined them. "I think he's done."

"Pah, about as done as I could ever be anyway." The Bat False Specter spat. "I filled the island with so much sound that I could put a Virgo Saint to sleep. So let's review our plan?"

They nodded. "It's simple, we head straight for the Andromeda Temple, no detours! No going to the volcanoes or huts to look for more armors! That's how we lost Maia's team!" Deep reminded. "We go to the black dome in the desert, grab the pink Cloth, snap its chains off if need be and take it right back to Lucifer. If anyone managed to stay awake and stands in our way-" his fist then clenched and burned with a dark cosmos. "-we snap their stupid necks!"

Bat chuckled, feeling his canine teeth lengthening. "Sounds good to me!"

The Skeleton grunt scratched his head. He still didn't understand what was so important about a single Bronze Cloth that probably didn't have an owner, but Lord Lucifer had never led them astray. The trio then made their way out of the beach, heading straight for their objective.

Nearby, hiding by one of the cliffs, a man stood absolutely quiet. He saw his dog scratching its ears while whining heavily. Not wanting to take a chance of it being a high pitch audio attack, he took an old pen, broke it in half and melted the plastic so that it was soft and malleable like clay. Like Odysseus and the Sirens, he stuck them in his ears to block off the sound. He then petted Mr. Aguilon, who thankfully had fallen right asleep as soon as the Specter's attack commenced. The bloodhound always had the bad habit of ratting its owner out with its angry barks. Not only that, but it was a borderline miracle that he landed on the island just as these monsters did, unnoticed.

Not so good was the implications of what he just saw. Specters in Andromeda Island? Again? The grey-haired man clenched his chained weapons, carried and laid his bloodhound safely by a rock. He had to stalk the bastards as best he could and, if need be, put his life on the line as a Silver Saint to take them out.

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Chapter 46

Second Arc

Episode 11

The Lamb, the Twin and the Watchdog

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Tibet,

Shamballa District Colonies

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The fire-lit crossbow bolts kept whizzing through the air, setting roofs on fire and marking the attacked areas. Terrified Lemurians kept running out of the streets, protecting their women and children from the cruel and unprovoked Specter attack, running up to the higher ground where the local fief holder from Sanctuary resided at.

Deadly Beetle Gauromydas rested his hands on his hip, joined by his Worm False Specter comrade and admiring his handiwork. "Ha, ha, ha, look at them scurrying up the hill like ants…"

Worm Samuel watched the Lemurians bang at the gates of the far-off manor and argue with its guards while the whole village burned. "Something's wrong… they're not letting the Muvians inside the big house."

The giant Specter pointed at his men. "Keep torching the streets! Don't leave a single cottage unsmoked! I want as much chaos as possible!" he ordered, spurring his men into action, before turning to his comrade. "The Greek noble inside is probably scared of opening the doors. He can clearly see from his windows what we are doing to his little village."

The tentacled Specter raised a brow as he smashed an obstacle rock in their way apart with his weaponry's tendrils. "Not much of a Saint, huh?"

The Beetle's huge hand pushed over a whole house to the side, clearing the path for his Skeletons to move up the village's levels once the time was right. The bone-armored men rushed right through, taking position near building corners and leftover ruins.

"It's not a Saint at all, it's some fancy shmuck watching over the place!" Gauromydas explained to Samuel. "He's not gonna set a foot outside his manor, especially to protect those dotted freaks. Apparently, Sanctuary sends its good-for-nothing lords and barons to these Lemurian colonies to protect them militarily. These places are so out-of-the-way that the Greeks get away with sending their most incompetent highborn to get the area covered."

Worm Samuel scratched his jaw. "Ahh, I see!... so this place is totally defenseless because the guy in charge is useless! Hee, hee, hee!" he mocked, finally understanding just how soft a target this place was. "Which means that Lemurian Elder lady that the Prince wants dead won't have a choice but to show up and stop us herself!"

Deadly Beetle nodded. "And now he refuses to let the people he swore to protect it, just to buy himself a couple of minutes …. What a coward!" he criticized, remembering the lessons about humanity Hades once taught him. "Hades may have been lying to us about being the real Specters, but he was right about one thing; this planet is packed with the worst our rotten species has to offer!"

Sensing a faint sign of cosmos below, Worm lowered his hands then dug into the basement of a collapsed house to pull out a screaming, black-haired Lemurian woman from the rubble, who had been hiding underneath the ground. "AH, AH, AH, like this one! Does that apply to Muvians, Gauromydas?!"

She screamed to high-heaven, hovered upside down by the long tendril. "YAGHH! SOMEONE H-HELP ME!"

Gauromydas gestured his huge hand. "Well of course… all life on earth is twisted! Why should Lemurians be any different!" he argued. "Tell me, Muvian, do you think you're better than the rest of the profligates just because of some genetic malfunction?!

"N-NO!" her head shook, eyes drenched in tears. The pressure being slowly applied to her waist was crushing. "Please, DON'T KILL m-mee!"

Gauromydas cackled inside his mouthguard. "Exactly! They pollute this planet just as much with their presence as us! But things are going to change! When our new Lord takes power in Sanctuary, all these profligates, mortal or immortal, human, Lemurian, or Olympian, will see the dawn of a new age! An age where the world is set right under a true bringer of light! Not Athena, nor Hades, but the Celestial Star of Pride!" the Deadly Beetle proudly exclaimed. He turned the panicked woman over to look at the screaming relatives by the manor's door being rounded up by the hoplites. "Just look! Even your Sanctuary allies have abandoned you! They are leaving your people to die!"

"No,… I've just ordered them to take the people elsewhere."

Gauromydas and Samuel turned over. "Wha-"

And then, all in a fraction of a second, a caped body encased in golden armor rocketed its foot right into Gauromydas' side, drenched in a veil of golden cosmos, instantly kicking the gigantic Specter off his feet with a loud, guttural scream. He shot off towards the far-off rubble, trailing the ground, crashing into the rocks, cratering them and unleashing a large burst of dust that smoke-screened the street.

The earth shook with the impact. Samuel and the Skeletons shouted in alarm and the figure caught the Lemurian woman in his arms, gently holding her up.

Her panicked, teary face looked up, still breathing uncontrollably. The shine of his golden collar and the smile on his blue-haired face soothed her, but she also recognized the dressing. "Saint… Saint Gemini!"

Saga nodded to calm her down and helped her on her feet. "Go, run to the soldiers."

"T-thank you!" she wished before sprinting out of the area past the Skeletons, who all stood frozen at Saga's vigilant stare.

The rubble moved around and Gauromydas climbed out, scratched all over and furious. "W-what… who did that to me?!" It took him a bit to process this arrival. It was a blue-haired teenager whose glint on his golden armor immediately made them stagger, as well as the two-faced helmet he rested against his hip. "You… a Gold Saint?!"

Worm pointed at him. "IT'S THE GEMINI SAINT!"

Seeing introductions were unnecessary, the savior cut to the chase. "The hoplites here are laying down their lives to take the villagers somewhere else because once I start dealing with you people, I don't want to risk further collateral damage!"

The Skeletons all around them grasped their weapons. Standing right in the middle of them was indeed the third of the twelve Gold Saints, bold to the point of showing his face and hair despite the secrecy they were usually known for. Immediately a faint brimming of golden cosmos was seen in his armor and skin and the sensation that they were all tiny stars floating around a huge galactic core took over their black hearts.

Many of them panicked. "F-From where the hell did he come from?!"

Others aimed their crossbows at him. "IT DOESN'T MATTER! Keep your aims on him!"

The sound of crossbow strings tensing and scythe rubber grips being squeezed was heard by Saga from all directions. He had an answer to their question, though: Saga had been heading along towards Jamir to spend some time with Mu and get what Jaki said about Kanon off his mind when all of a sudden huge pockets of the area all over Asia became under the jamming radius of some telekinetic user. It was likely a Papillion Specter's power from what Saga remembered of his studies with Aiolos back home.

The Gemini Saint had even tried to signal Sanctuary only to find the ping unable to circumvent the planetary curve around the jamming domes. One of them was Jamir itself, and another had been Mount Rozan, further eastwards into China proper, but realizing that something terrible was likely going on and knowing there were Gold Saints present in each of these areas, Saga opted to come here, to the Lemurian colonies, the most vulnerable target.

Gemini Saga looked around, surveying his situation. Two Specters with the looks of being between Terrestrial and Celestial and at least two dozen Skeleton Soldiers, all fixated on him. The huge one, in particular, seemed concerned, stepping backward and tensing his body, hinting to the smart Gold Saint that he was the one responsible for handling this attack.

"Very well, then, I shall leave him for last," he strategized. Memories from the Bennu attack on Arcadia, which he put a stop to, came to the Gemini. "This is the second time I've found myself before a senseless Hades rampage on the surface in just a year or two. I will give you death cultists something to say as your last words before I wipe you off this quadra-!"

One of the bolder Skeletons went completely berserk, screaming and charging at him. "FUCK YOU, SAINT! DIE!" he frothed, raising his battle scythe. Several of his friends took aim to offer support fire.

Time slowed down.

Saga snorted, closed his eyes, pointed his finger at the grunt, and then the entire Skeleton squadron screamed in horror when the golden dart of light instantly fired off and blasted the attacker's nose so brutally that the head was blasted off its neck into red particles, the whole body flipped over and a shower of blood dust was smeared right against the nearby wall ruin.

Time sped up.

The men of Daemon Lucifer gasped and sweated as their friend's headless body landed on the ground, still in armor. A perfect blow.

The Gemini blew his firing fingertip like a smoking gun. "I hate getting interrupted."

The already pale group of men found a new shade of white on their faces and collectively stepped back. "W-wha-what… what the fuck?!"

The Gemini Saint's aura burned and he placed his helmet on, immersing him in an intimidating aura of power. "A lot of death has been caused here tonight, but no more. There will be no second Arcadia. Now you Specters will pay for your cruelty, but not before you tell me everything about your plan!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Andromeda Island

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Carrying the Andromeda Cloth Box across the desert, Elda and Albiore tried to keep the heavy object balanced as their footing struggled through the sandy dunes, their immature senses feeling the frightening cosmos of enemies coming their way.

The boy sweated, holding one end of the box from behind. Neither of them was strong enough to carry it the traditional way with the straps so they opted to haul it back to the Living Area with their hands. It was hard to move at a rush through the sand, though, especially with one hundred pounds of metal on their fingers, and if they tried to speed up with Cosmos or raise their strength, they'd be instantly detected by whoever was infiltrating the island.

"Come on, we have to get this to Master Shinta!" he urged, sweating in the terrible cold. "They could be right on our tails!"

Taking the front, Elda ranted as quietly as she could. "I'm going as fast as I can! If I trip because you keep rushing me, we'll slip on this stupid sand and fall off these dunes!"

By a far-off sand dune, a lone figure carrying a scythe popped its head out and pointed at them. "OVER THERE, I FOUND SOME KIDS!"

They both screamed and paled, rushing up the harsh terrain. They couldn't even see the huts in the distance yet. "Come on, COME ON!" Elda urged herself, her heart beating like crazy.

There was a supersonic booming shockwave across the desert depression, that burst right through the dunes and landed right next to them, sending sand everywhere so strongly that the two kids were instantly tossed aside, dropping the Andromeda box.

The men dressed in dark-green armor, with a wing-shaped skirt and a heavily segmented chest plate, smiled maliciously, cornering them. "Where do you think you two are going, huh?" His foot, encased in a greave with a curving foot tip, balanced itself on the dune and approached them.

The kids screamed, crawling backward on the desert ground and kicking sand up at the Specter. "STAY BACK!" Albiore shouted. "DON'T YOU TOUCH US!"

"W-WE'll kick your stupid ass, Specter!" Elda threatened, the panic in her face denouncing her terror. "Lay one finger on us and-"

Bat Brune, the False Specter of Lucifer, laughed. "What? I don't want anything to do with you. At least not right now." he promised, licking his fingers. His eyes surveyed the Cloth Box they dropped.

The Deep Specter and the Skeleton Soldier also then caught up with their own supersonic blitz, further cratering the dunes and panicking the kids.

Now there were three Specters right on top of them.

Elda crawled back but felt her back hit the dune, trembling all over. "Al, what do we DO?!" she spoke through the cosmos.

The blonde boy saw the three encroaching them. Together they probably couldn't even kill the Skeleton that tagged along, much less the two full-blown Specters. "I… I don't know!" he spoke through the cosmos back. He noticed they seemed more interested in the box. "Maybe we can distract them somehow… toss the box straight out of here near the Master!"

Elda gritted her teeth. "These are Specters! They can easily run fast enough to catch the damn thing before the Master reaches it! Plus neither of us knows how to aim!"

"F-FINE, then what the hell do we do, uh?! Just sit here and get killed?!" Albiore confronted, terrified.

Elda trembled, feeling tears in her eyes. If only they had stayed in their huts. "I… I don't know!"

Albiore also cried in frustration, drenching his cheeks. "YOU don't like my ideas, but YOU don't know what to do either!?"

Elda grabbed her hot head, wanting Miss Cynthia back. "I KNOW! I'm s-sorry, I'm SORRY!"

Deep Amphion carefully approached the box, fascinated. "Is this it?... The symbol on the side…" It's lid then opened up, startling the aquatic-armored Specter, and a spear-tipped chain snaked out in warning. "Wow! It really is Andromeda!"

The Skeleton laughed and reached for it. "Great! Let's get it and get the hell outta he-" his fingers then got zapped with pink electricity as soon as he touched the links. "MOTHERFUCKER! It zapped me!" he cursed, jumping around.

Deep pushed him aside. "Don't act like an idiot, the armor is alive! Off course it's going to defend itself!" he ranted, stomping the box's lid close on the chain. It tried to zap him anyway, but the Bronze Cloth's pathetic little power, meant for Mach 1 users, didn't even faze him. He took the struggling chain like nothing and viciously wrapped it around the box. "See?! Just like Ainsel did with Octans! This is how you hijack Cloths; you stick it in its stupid box and lock it!"

Bat cackled as it watched the princess armor thrash around inside, unable to unloosen its own chain. "Look at it go! It must have one mean personality! I guess I would too if my dad tied me to a rock to be eaten!" He then seemed reminded of something that made him turn to the two kids. "Hey… speaking of meals…"

The two kids immediately gasped and screamed, but they were too terrified to take their eyes off the threats, much less turn their backs on them to run.

Deep Amphion shook his head. "You're a sicko, Brune, just like Erika!"

The bat snapped at him. "What's your damn problem?! I'm thirsty! My bats need to feed, too! The whole damn island is put to sleep, who's gonna get in our way?! It's just a pair of kids!"

The Deep Specter stood up to his brother in arms, eyeing him straight in the orbs. "My problem is that I'm dressed in a Surplice about a goddamn sea monster from Lovecraft's fever dreams but you don't see me dragging maidens off to the water to rape them. So, get a goddamn hold of your impulses!" he ranted. "This entire island is cursed and I want us out of here ASAP! We are not stopping in the sand because you let your Surplice take over your head!"

The Skeleton Soldier picked up the Cloth box, wrapping it around his back. "Yeah, I'm with Sir Amphion, I wanna get out of here too… You guys are strong, but I'm just a grunt. I don't want to stick around the place Maia and Guen died in!"

Bat Brune was incessant, gritting his fanged teeth and shoving past Amphion. "Then go, you cowards! But I'm gonna have my meal!" he decried, looming over the two screaming children. His eye slits were sharp like a feline's and he raised his long-nailed finger at them. "Let's see, eeny, meeny, miny-"

Amphion growled in fury and pushed the Skeleton Soldier along in the midst of all the loud noise. He wasn't going to let Brune get him killed. "Come on, let's get out of here. If this idiot gets caught, it's his fault!"

The False Bat Specter's finger landed on Albiore. "-MOE!" he then screeched and yanked the screaming blonde boy out of the ground, raising him high in the air and baring his fangs. Bats began flying around the area in anticipation of being fed. "AH, AH, you first then!"

"AHH, HELP ME!" Al screamed, crying.

Elda tackled Bat's greaved leg but didn't even budge it. "LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU ASSHOLE!" her blue cosmos burned but the enemy didn't even budge.

Rather he raised her up too, presenting the children to the flying creatures. "OH, a volunteer! I love it!" he elated. The screeches of the winged mammals were now just as loud as the children's struggling cries. "Both at once it is, the-"

*THOOOM*

The loud, blunt shockwave seemingly froze time to their super senses, sending everyone to full alert. Brune's eyes widened with the hole in the mass of bats above them, cleared by the unexpected wind attack. A slim shadow coursed through it, diving down through between the fleeing critters.

It landed its foot right on the False Specter's face, kicking him straight off the two children and sending him crashing and rolling through the dunes. Amphion and the Skeleton gasped, bracing themselves, and Shinta caught the two children as he landed with a kneel.

It took a second for the two crying kids to realize they were rescued. "SAINT SH-INTA!" Elda screamed.

"M-MASTER!" Albiore joined.

The green-haired Saint was then immediately hugged around his body and neck so tightly that it nearly squeezed all the air in his lungs out. He gasped a bit and their weeping heads buried into his green trainer, wetting it with tears. "Al', Elda, are you two okay? My Goddess, I'm so sorry!"

Amphion was agape. "It's the Master of this place!" he turned to the Bat, who got up, sand covering the blood gushing out his nose. "YOU IDIOT! SEE WHAT YOU DID?! What have you been casting that stupid Nightmare Sonar for?!"

Bat was incessant, eyeing the youth of green, curly hair struggling not to be suffocated by the two kids with a murderous rage "Y-YOU… HOW DID YOU ESCAPE MY SONAR?!"

Shinta got up, returning the fierce gaze. "I see, so that was some kind of soundwave attack of yours. You caught me without my chains and I nearly dozed off."

"I filled this whole island with it! You should be in a coma!" Bat protested, letting his nose gush freely and tightened his fists.

The master let the two kids down gently and represented himself. A second Specter attack on his home within less than a year horrified Shinta, but it was time to show why he was the new King of the island, for all intents and purposes.

Thus, he explained himself as sternly as his soft voice allowed him too. "Students of Taurus Gold Saints don't go down so easily, Specters. Your bat screeches were nothing compared to his shouts engraved in my head. It has been a tradition of the House to resist such cowardly attacks since Taurus Teneo!" The pacifist claimed, proudly inflating his slim chest. "The memory of Lord Taurus' voice kept me going through your hex… if it weren't for him, I'd have probably stayed asleep."

Amphion was revolted. "SEE WHAT YOU DID, BRUNE?! Now we have to kill this guy, too, when we could have gotten a clean getaway!" he lambasted.

"BULLSHIT!" Bat decried, pointing his finger at the Saint. "Even if you did resist for a while, I've used my technique for way too long! You could have been a Taurus himself and collapsed on the floor!"

The Saint then showed off the practice chain he took from Albiore's hut, smiling gently. "You're correct, Bat. The rest was a matter of getting my hands on a good chain before time was up." He then burned his pink cosmos through it and executed a lash in a vein similar to Rolling Defense's initial cast, doubling as a warning shot. "You now have a simple choice! Surrender now and I won't hurt you, but continue to resist and I won't have a choice but to defeat you three."

Elda raised her fist. "YEAH, kick their butts!" she rooted, wiping the tears off her face.

"GO MASTER!" Albiore cheered, smiling widely.

Deep Amphion cackled at the ultimatum. "Hee, hee, hee. Are you joking, Bronze Saint? That was an impressive stunt you pulled, I'll admit it, but it doesn't mean we'll just lay down our arms!" he began already burning his cosmos, which took the form of black watery substance like the depth of the ocean. He then turned to the Skeleton. "GO, TAKE THAT CLOTH OUT OF HERE!"

The Skeleton nodded. "Yes, sir-"

"NOT SO FAST!" Shinta shouted, tossing the two kids away from the battlefield and light-speed leaping across the Specters. The practice chain he took from Albiore snapped at the Skeleton and cut the two straps, releasing the box off his body. As he landed, Shinta then executed a follow-up twirl and skillfully undid the knot on the Andromeda chains, freeing its lid. "Come to me, ANDROMEDA!"

The cube opened up completely, releasing a wide pink flare that blinded the three men of Lucifer. Metallic parts came flying off it towards the Saint, landing on his body parts with locking clinks and clanks. Tossing Albiore's chain aside, Shinta allowed the gauntlets to fill his arms, connecting his cosmos to the chains of Princess Andromeda, and a menacing electrical flare immediately sparked, uniting the Princess' vicious and vengeful intentions with the owner's desire to protect his home.

His green eyes turned to the two kids. "Albiore, Elda, run to the safety zones! I will handle this."

The two kids nodded almost mechanically. "Yes, Saint Shinta!" they answered in unison, speeding out of the battlefield.

Deep's clawed hands summoned two orbs of darkness. "Oh no, you DON'-"

The metallic links of Andromeda's defensive chain wrapped around his left wrist and pulled strongly, arresting him. Shinta's eyes narrowed. "Put your eyes on me, Specters! I'm your opponent!"

The three dark opponents gritted their teeth furiously, but accepted the challenge, tightening their gauntlets and slowly surrounding the Bronze Saint. "Alright… fine by me!" Amphion responded.

The Skeleton held his scythe over his shoulder, a standard fighting pose. "We'll cut your head off that Cloth and go after those kids next!" he then exchanged a look with Bat.

Bat winked back, indicating approval for their unspoken plan. He then licked his own blood off his lips and bared his long nails out like claws. "And you'll regret not having stayed asleep, hee, hee, hee!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Jamir

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Gasping for air, the Lemurian five-year-old finally climbed up to the top floor of the Jamir tower, a place he usually kept some of his completed projects at. This was the last time he would leave the Aries Cloth on the top floor. Even if it was a good place to keep it out of the way of his work and the Specters were too stupid to figure out the tower's floor looping puzzle, this attack had clearly taught him that Jamir tower wasn't completely safe.

Along the way up the building, Mu had time to wonder what exactly was going on. Why an attack at all? He was still a kid, but he knew from the conversations his Master that Specters were supposed to be all sealed up in a mountain in China, making their attacks on the surface highly limited and usually confined to the human countries of Germany and Austria in Europe, where the Sanctuary fortress of Peloponesia would keep them in check.

It made him wonder for a moment if Lord Dohko and Lance were okay in China, where the physical aspect of the seal was located at. After all that was said and done, he ought to teleport there and check on them.

He stopped when he stepped on something that sounded squishy. Looking down, he saw more of the silky fabric with a faint gold shine that he had detected along the way growing more and more on the building's windows, infiltrating it. Looking around, he realized that the top floor was full of the silky matter, covering the tool tables, the windows, and even the ceiling. It seemed harmless by itself and didn't even glue his feet to it.

He loosened his foot off it as if he had stepped in mud. "Ew… EW! YUCK! What is this stuff?!" he complained, feeling grossed out by having to walk over the soft weaving. It felt like stepping on a huge spider nest and that thousands of tiny arachnids could at any moment crawl up his body. He looked up and smiled, though, when he saw the golden box with the ram head on it. "There it is! AH-AH!" and then rushed towards it, ignoring the substance.

Another smiled formed in the shadows of the silk-covered ceiling.

Mu's hand happily reached for the box's handle when, all of a sudden, his foot sunk way deeper into the silk on the ground, trapping him. The lilac-haired boy screamed and another thread shot from above and wrapped up his other leg, pulling for it harshly and lifting him up the air upside down, arms flailing for the Aries Gold Cloth box. "NO! AHH, LET ME GO!"

Papillion Ainsel leaped off the ceiling to the floor, revealing himself. The blue-haired Specter chuckled with the sight of the child strung up. "Mm-mm, hook, line, and sinker. Don't you look cute when you're not running around like a sugar demon." he complimented. He saw the shocked look on Mu's face and chuckled. "Your tower has some interesting defenses, young man, but I think you forgot to account for Specters who can fly."

The five-year-old thrashed and thrashed as he was held up by the ankle, but all he did was fruitlessly swing around in the air. "Let me go! When the Aries Saint finds me like this he's gonna blast you all the way to India!"

Ainsel scratched his jaw. "We wouldn't want that, would we? Why don't you tell me where he is and I will grant you a quick death."

Mu just looked him right in the eye and blew his tongue out loudly.

The Papillion frowned annoyedly and cleaned his cheeks with a handkerchief. "Rude…! You keep that up and I might leave you here to starve."

Although he planned to bravely resist as long as he could, the five-year-old recognized with a worried sweat that he was in a real pickle. He could count on Jamir's floor loops to hold back the rest of the Specter group downstairs for a while, but this one had circumvented it all together and seemed to be projecting strong telekinetic fields that rivaled the ones he could generate. Mu could tell this because he kept mental-calling the Cloth box to open up on its own and the signals were being blocked out, just like the ones he had tried to send to call for help earlier. Even at this close distance, the moth-armored Specter had him mentally outclassed.

He was also worried about what the others might do to Mr. Mud and Mu needed a way to get his hands on his armor. The boy was much less of a trained fighter than Shura or even Aiolia, the latter being ironically even younger than the Lemurian. Without his Aries armor, the lilac-head didn't stand a chance.

Then Ainsel's dark cosmos began burning, causing the silk filling up the room to start thickening. New threads began climbing down the one holding Mu up and soon enough, Silky Threading started covering his legs.

"Oh, would you look at that, it seems you're turning into a cocoon." Ainsel mused. A moth made of pure golden light landed on his orange shoulder pad. "It seems these little guys want to make you into their new home."

Mu screamed and struggled, but the threads were strangely strong, perhaps containing stardust in them. "What are you doing to me?! Let me go, you blue-haired, bug-obsessed freakazoid! I will never tell you anything!"

"When I am done, you will be singing like a canary! I refuse to believe that the Aries Saint is a kid like you who can't even free himself from this," Papillion suggested. The threads began reaching down to the boy's knees and forming circular, thick patterns. "I'd hurry up if I were you. When it reaches your mouth, it puts eggs inside."

The terrified lilac-haired boy covered his gaping mouth. This was really bad. "I don't KNOW! Go ask the Zodiac instead!" he lied.

The Specter folded his arms and chuckled. "Do you think I'm a fool? My specialty is to gather information. See this little guy on my shoulder?" he pointed at the butterfly of light. "He and his friends sneak around for me and tell me people's secrets. They told me two big, strong cosmos were here recently, which confirms what my boss said about this place; Master and student toil together at the cloths, passing down a tradition of stardust artisanship."

Mu's face paled. The Specter didn't realize this, but the second big cosmos the butterflies detected was likely Lance's, which had just been at the tower before going off to Lord Dohko. On one hand, it played into his bigger ruse of Mu not being the Aries Gold Saint, but on the other, it probably made the Specter angrier for catching lies instead of ignorance out of the boy.

Ainsel shook his head lamentingly. "It's a shame, really… He's probably gonna abandon you here, you know, because Aries Gold Saints are so precious. He probably won't even come back for his armor. You were put in harm's way just so that the First Temple could stay guarded," he taunted, smirking maliciously. "How does that make you feel about your teacher?"

Mu's eyes got wet, teeth-gritting. "M-master Shion, h-help me!" he wished, knowing deep down he had to get out of this on his own.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Shamballa Colony

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Deadly Beetle Gauromydas got off the rubble and waved his huge arm at his men. "Don't just stand there stupid, SHOOT HIM DOWN!"

There was a succession of obeying grunts and shouts as Gemini Saga saw the many Skeletons squeezing their crossbow triggers, wheezing their poisonous and fire-lit bolts at him. He scoffed as the projectiles went right through his body, hitting the ground, as he used lightspeed to dodge at such a level that it looked like he was phasing in and out, standing still. One of the melee fighters took the chance to rush at him with a scythe swing, which Saga dodged with a mere head bob and then took the chance to slam his leg against the foe's chest, smashing his lungs and sending him against the rocks at the end of the street.

His attention was then drawn to Worm Samuel, who leaped high into the air and made his tentacles spin around his own body until it sped like a drill. With a gymnastic loop, Worm then allowed himself to fall on the ground head first, boring right through the mountainous village ground as if it were butter. Saga considered stopping him with a stalking blast, but Worm soon became out of reach when the hole he created filled itself with sand.

Moreover, Gauromydas loomed on him at the speed of light, shadowing Saga and descending his big hands on him. "STAND BY-" but Gemini Saga leaped right over the giant, escaping his hug, and struck his kick down on the huge armored nape, flooring the Specter leader once again. "U-UGH, damn you!"

Landing from his leap, Saga's hand already burned with the cosmos of his next attack. "You shouldn't have come here, Specters! Time for you to leave!" They crackled with electricity resultant not from any element of his, but from the cracking of the fabric of space, and his hands thrust themselves at his opponents. "BEGONE!"

There was a loud shattering sound and the Skeleton company shouted, wavered and generally panicked. "What's GOING ON?!" one screamed.

Another felt his feet slip forward on the ground and fell to his back, screaming and being pulled towards Saga. "AAH! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"

The remainder were pulled off their rooftops, corner covers, and street positions, shouting alarmed calls for help and being helplessly pulled towards the teenager in golden armor. Saga's shining curled fist rose to the air, causing the pull to accelerate. "Now you will know the terrors of the Gemini Temple!" he declared, opening the hand and letting out a huge flare of golden cosmos "ANOTHER DIMENSION!"

The Skeletons and Gauromydas then watched in horror as a huge rift in space was opened up in the air above Saga, bordered by what looked like grid-shaped layers of light, which then cascaded widely like the opening of a great breathing tunnel. A massive vacuum force then sucked the crowd of Skeletons, lifting them off the ground and spiraling them with horrified screams into the rift, never to be seen again. Many of their armors shattered upon passing the gate, unable to withstand the bizarreness of the reality they now encountered themselves in, while others' bodies simply twisted into impossible lengths like light pulled into a collapsing black hole.

Digging his huge hands into the ground and burning his dark cosmos, Gauromydas resisted the pulling force.

Saga watched as the mass of the Specter's body was made as if denser by the burning of the dark element, subverting the gravitational pull. It genuinely impressed him, making him smirk. "Not bad, Specter." His hand then burned with golden cosmos, shining like countless stars about to burst. "But I'm afraid I'll just dislodge you by force. METEOR SHOWER!"

The terror of the few Skeletons that managed to hold on, the stars forming in the Saint's hand then burst into a barrage of vicious, meteor-shaped light speed blasts that bombarded everything in front of him, cratering the entire street with domes of exploding light.

The Deadly Beetle squinted and burned his cosmos to the max. "BIG WALL!"

Saga's attack devastated the battlefield, dislodging all the remaining Skeletons with the force of the explosions so they would get sucked up, screaming, into the Another Dimension hole. Gauromydas' Surplice shined like chiton under the moonlight and hardened just in time to be struck over and over by the barrage. The light blasts hit him all over his huge body as well as the ground around him, but the huge man's darkness cosmos, once again to Saga's surprise, tanked the force of his technique, massively boosting his defensive capabilities.

Gauromydas cackled, watching Saga cease his fire when realizing he wasn't even scratching the Surplice. "Hm, hm, did you think I'd make it that easy?" he asked, eyeing the Saint menacingly. "My beetle surplice can harden itself like an insectoid exoskeleton! Together with the density swelling of the cosmos of Darkness, I can make myself nearly invulnerable! Your pea shooting techniques won't work on me, GEMINI!"

Saga lowered his hand. While Meteor Shower was mostly a minor move in his arsenal, something he came up with to spar with Aiolos and counter the archer's propensity for rapid-fire attacks, it was still a high-caliber enough attack to shatter a Celestial's Surplice to pieces. "Oh… not bad. Are you some kind of elite?"

The giant shook his head. "No… you have no idea what awaits your friends, Gemini. They will die at the hands of monsters that will make what I'll do to you look merciful!"

Saga scoffed. "Then I better make short work of you then." He raised his hands above his head. Galax-"

Beetle transmitted a signal to the ground through his cosmos. "GET HIM NOW, SAMUEL!"

"WORM'S BIND!"

THROOM! THROOM, THROOM!

Saga gasped when the ground beneath him crumbled and huge tentacles with several types of heads, some fanged and some with needles, came lashing out of the ground to wrap and tighten around his body, constricting the Saint with such force that his lungs gasped out for air even with the Cloth's protection. More and more metal limbs came scurrying out, grabbing his legs, holding his wrists, and finally rushing around his neck, strangling him.

A cackle was heard from the underground and a tentacle with a glass eye hovered over Saga's face. "I got you now, Saint! You're gonna choke on your own blood until that technique of yours closes!" the False Worm Specter bragged through a mental message, staying beneath the dirt so to not get pulled to Another Dimension.

The third guardian of the zodiac struggled for air, grabbing the tentacles. The Another Dimension hole started closing as his concentration was broken. Upon feeling resistance, Samuel tightened his limbs, confident that he would snap the teenager's neck off before long. They had lost all their men and would likely not have the manpower to draw out Yuzuriha, but at least they'd present Lucifer with the head of the Gemini Temple's guardian.

His body began burning his Gold Saint cosmos, though, immersing itself in a waving bonfire. Samuel felt his tentacles struggling to stay tight around the victim's body. "W-what?!"

Gauromydas' bug wings raised up and his cosmos burned out of them like exhaust fire. "Don't let go of him! ROCKET BEETLE!" yelled Deadly Beetle from within his mask, aiming his stag horns at Saga and rocketing off his position straight at the blue-haired teenager. "Die, Saint of Athena!"

With a mighty roar, the Gemini Saint then wrestled himself free, shattering Samuel's tentacles with an eruption of yellow light, shocking the underground False Specter. He wasn't in time, though, and Gauromydas' huge body crashed straight against him, canceling out Another Dimension. Saga screamed with the impact and the Specter's stag horns pincered on the Saint's waist protection, tightening the flesh underneath it before raising him high in the air.

The metal horns applied a pneumatic-like pressure, threatening to tear the Gold Saint in two. Gauromydas laughed, seeing the Gold Saint lose his cocky smirks. "Nothing to say now, Gold Saint?! No quips?! Prepare to be cut in half! Then you'll look like a real Gemini Saint, HA, HA, HA!"

Worm dug out of the ground, seeing his tentacles destroyed. "He… He wrecked my Surplice's limbs!" he hissed, furious. "KILL HIM, Gauro'! Don't give him a chance to get free!"

The enormous man's energy burned, strengthening his tweezing horns, forcing screams of pain out of Saga. He couldn't wait to shower himself with his blood.

Saga tried to move the horns that were crushing his waist with his hands, but the strength of Deadly Beetle's armor was massive and this proved impossible. Instead, Saga charged cosmos into his right foot and slammed it's heel against Deadly Beetle's face as hard as he could, breaking his mask, taking a scream out of him and forcing Deadly Beetle to drop him. As soon as Saga dropped to the floor, he performed a rolling kick that tripped the giant, forcing him to fall to the side so hard that ground dust screened the area.

Crawling away, Saga tried to get back on his feet, still shaken by how the Specters almost got the drop on him, but once more the ruthless killers proved to be right on top of the fight when Worm Samuel's remaining tentacles immediately swung over him and harshly pinned his legs and wrists to the ground.

"Where do you think you're going?!" Samuel hissed. His last remaining tentacle hovered the pinned Gold Saint, who tried to wrestle himself free but had almost no leverage. With his stomach to the floor, it sprouted a long, bloodied needle which he had been using to murder villagers. It aimed itself at the Gold Saint's exposed neck. "That Gold Cloth of yours is pretty hard… but I bet your skull isn't!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Andromeda Island Desert

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Surrounding the Andromeda Saint, the three men of Lucifer exchanged glances and nods to initiate their battle plan. Deep Amphion charged his cosmos, created two spheres of black water in his hands and tossed them at Shinta. "GHAST GRENADES!"

Shinta immediately reacted. "ROLLING DEFENSE!" he cast, creating the swirling pillar of chain links. The tossed objects burst upon hitting the floor, spreading a stinking moor of dark cosmos mass everywhere in the sand. It failed to penetrate the chain links, creating a safe space for the pink-armored master from the toxic substance.

Amphion gasped. "It's blocking out the gas?! They're just chain links!"

The Bronze Saint sensed his surprise, smirked, and in a daring move pulled for the defensive chain to lower his own defenses before lashing out his offensive one. "NEBULA CHAIN!" the spear-tipped chain swept across the area at the speed of light, whipping the black mass of grounded poison with such force it got whipped away into nothing, further shocking Amphion. "Sorry… but you're not the first Specter with that kind of move that I battled!"

The trio was amazed, especially Amphion, who collected himself and recharged his strength. "Then try this on for size! DEEP FRAG-"

But Shinta snapped into action, catching the Specter's casting hand with his offensive chain, zapping the Specter, before pulling himself unto the Specter by it and landing a knee blow right on Amphion's face, flooring him onto the sand with a scream.

The other two snapped into action. "GO! GET THE KIDS!" Bat messaged the Skeleton, who rushed after Albiore and Elda. He then joined the fight against Andromeda, leaping over him with a spread of his bat-wing faulds, his hand tensing its fingers with a blood-red layer of cosmos. "Take this! BLOOD SLASHER!"

But the Andromeda Saint dodged the hand thrust with a body slide to the side, letting it crash on the ground with an eruption of sand. Bat Brune winced and swung his attack back around, but Shinta kept stepping back and dodging the swings and stabs like no one's business.

He parried an angrier, aimless thrust with the back of his hand and eyed the Specter tensely. "I will give you this chance to stop! Lay down your arms and tell me what this is about, and I won't kill you!"

Brune laughed. "What?! Are you joking?! HA, HA!" he dislodged his blood blade from the Andromeda gauntlet and got ready for another stab. "We are gonna kill you and drink your blood!" and then he went straight for the jugular! Shinta, however, didn't even use his chains, merely catching the blow by the wrist with his hand. Blood dripped from the Saint's fingers from grazing the razor-sharp edge of the technique. "D-damn it…"

The Andromeda squinted. The Specter's move was far too similar to Lance's Blade to work on him. His green eyes caught sight of the other Specter recovering so he bashed the Bat's leg with a kick, kneeling him, and pulled for his chains. "NEBULA CHAIN!"

Bat screamed, being struck and lashed by what looked like countless blows from the same single chain, cracking his armor all over and shooting him off against the dune. Pink sparks of electricity coursed everywhere.

Deep rushed over to him and raised him up. "Come on, get back on your feet! This guy is clearly dangerous!"

Bat coughed out sand. "W-what the fuck… he's just a Bronze Saint!"

Deep Amphion eyed the Andromeda tensely, doing some mental calculus. "Don't underestimate him… I think he might have been the one to kill Maia." he deduced, shocking Bat Brune. "He said he's encountered Specter attacks like mine before… I can only think of Maia's Annihilation Flap!"

Burning his pink cosmos in preparation for a bigger move, Shinta was clearly incessant. "You hurt and scared my students, not to mention you tried to Cloth-rob my island! I don't know what any of this is about, but I won't let you Specters put the people I love in danger anymore! Surrender now, or you'll suffer the same fate the last Specters did!"

Bat widened his eyes. "SHIT, you're right, he IS the one who killed them!"

Deep gritted his teeth and charged his aura. "We have no choice but to suppress him together! Get ready to use your Sonar." He then hummed, raising his energy level and not losing sight of the Saint. "DEEP FRAGRANCE!" he cast, thrusting his hands forward to fill the sand crevice with a green, toxic smell that could kill a Taurus.

To compound his comrade's move, Bat hovered in the air and swung his arms. "NIGHTMARE SONAR!" and bats made of cosmos flew out of his faulds and unleashed the screeching sound waves once more.

"ROLLING DEFENSE!" he cried, pulling for his defensive chain and once more creating the spiraling protection. The links rotated so perfectly that they stopped the fragrance like a wave crashing on rocks and repelled away from the sleep-inducing sound waves at the same time.

Deep Amphion kept his attack going, but couldn't help but be amazed. "Incredible,… ours are two completely different kinds of offensives, but his chain movement pattern is flawlessly blocking both of them at once! Is this why Lord Lucifer wants that armor?!" he commented.

"Who cares?! Just don't let it up, Amphion, we have to keep him this way!" Bat mentally yelled.

Keeping up his shielding, Shinta got immediately suspicious. Both Specters could tell that they couldn't harm him this way anymore and were leaving themselves open to a massive counterattack once they exhausted themselves, so why were they pressing so hard on testing his Rolling Defense? It reminded him of his battle with Maia, where the Basilisk Specter was secretly sneaking in nanoscopic poison particles with his wind blast through Shinta's chains, but the Andromeda had gotten much better in his techniques, especially after unlocking the 7th sense. He was absolutely sure none of the soundwaves or poison was getting through, with as fast as his links were moving.

So what was the point of this? Grasping his offensive chain, Shinta prepared to counter-attack. The two Specters were looking tired, breathing heavily as they burned their cosmos, so a careful lash should finish them both at the same time.

A metal boot was heard stepping on the sand behind him. "Alright, drop your chains, Andromeda!" the Skeleton soldier demanded.

Shinta's blood froze. He forgot about the grunt.

Amphion and Brune smiled in delight.

Standing over the mass of darkness and cacophony of bat screeches that wouldn't harm someone with a Damascus armor, the Skeleton had pressed against his chest the bodies of the two collapsed children, Elda and Albiore, who had fallen asleep midway to the effects of the renewed Nightmare Sonar. "Want me to say that again, Saint?! Drop the fancy chain trick and take off your armor!"

"AH-AH, we got him!" Brune squealed.

Shinta refused to move, feeling cold inside. Albiore and Elda's lives weighed on his head like an anvil, crushing his judgment. How could he screw up like this?! He was so focused on the two much more dangerous Specters that he forgot to take into account of the grunt! He had to do something!

"Who cares?! Just kill the Specters, Shinta!" Andromeda argued to his ear, her voice panicked. "You'll get new students, better students! Just don't you dare let these freaks lay a finger on me!"

"LET THEM GO! They did nothing wrong to you!" Shinta demanded, outraged, not dropping his technique.

Bat shrugged his shoulders. "We can do that, just drop your chains, hee hee!"

Shinta gritted teeth. "Why?! What are you even doing here?! Why are you putting the ones I love in danger again just because of my Cloth?!"

The two Specters exchanged glances as if they wonder if they should tell him. "You wouldn't understand, Andromeda, it's an old story from our boss that we don't know much about ourselves." Amphion worded. "So drop the indignant glare and just surrender. Those two aren't getting out of it this time!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

1751, The Lost Canvas War

Author Note: for the purpose of simplicity and given that these flashback scenes have become a bigger part of the story, I have decided to drop the italic-centered format and from now on the TLC flashbacks will be written just in centered format

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Those two couldn't get out of this mess this time, they couldn't! They absolutely had to be destroyed! "ROZAN, RYU SHO!"

This is what Libra Dohko thought as he clashed his dragon dash punch with Lucifer's gauntlet, giving Sisyphus, Andromeda, and Cygnus time to burn their collective cosmos, faced with the two Princes of Hades. The combined energy of deep, dark emotions worthy of the most powerful Specters clashed with the sheer hope shining out of the cosmos of Athena's bravest Saints.

Pandora giggled and lazily pointed at the Gold Saints. "Destroy them. I want nothing left after you're done."

Michael nodded obediently and Lucifer spared a click of the tongue, as if he didn't need to be told. Their black fire and purple sparks, respectively, swelled around their auras as they charged their terrifying cosmos to the max. They then shared a competitive glance and rocketed off towards the Saints like two black shooting stars. The Saints braced themselves. Lucifer leaned towards Dohko and Andromeda, thirsty for finishing the job he started with Rasgado, while Michael aimed for the Sagittarius and Cygnus, wishing to measure their determination against his own.

The impact between the two bodies of energy was immense, booming the floating platform so loudly that it almost deafened the onlookers, spreading multicolored specks of cosmos everywhere. Alone was barely affected by it, stepping towards the carriage.

Amidst the chaos of the battling at the center of the platform, Tenma saw this and stepped up to him. "ALONE, where are you going?!"

The painter sighed. "… I told you, Tenma, I've done what I've come for. The Lost Canvas is announced, and soon you will all become a part of it, no matter what you do," he argued. "Why should I waste my time with you anymore?"

Tenma tried to walk towards him amidst the chaos, but the powerful impacts of the fighting made the platform shake repeatedly, sending the Dragon Saint into fits of agony in Haisaku's arms and making Sasha and the Pegasus lose their balance, unable to pursue properly. "D-damn it! ALONE!" he screamed.

Sasha's cosmos burned and she raised her staff, igniting the area with the unmatched brilliance of her energy, inspiring the Saints. "Hyoga, Shun, do your best! We will stop Alone!"

Exchanging punches and kicks with the powerful Dark Angel, whose Surplice felt like a burning furnace even to his icy touch, the one-eyed Saint nodded, moralized by Athena's mere words. "SURE! We can handle these monsters!"

Michael's overhead punch struck his head, flooring the Saint. "Don't turn away, Cygnus!" But he then had to raise his forearms to block Sisyphus' meteoric dive kick, which pushed him off and crushed him against the platform's stairsteps.

Sagittarius leaped away and raised Hyoga from the floor. "Come on, Hyoga! He's powerful but we can do th-"

An explosion of black fire erupted from the rubble, freeing the black-winged Specter, who spread out its flying limbs to cause his aura to slice everywhere, forcing the Saints to dodge around them. The Celestial Absolute Star took to the air and flapped his wings. "INFERNAL CASCADE!" They shot countless feather darts encased in the black fire, raining death on the Saints.

Hyoga's cosmos burned and his fist shot upwards. "AURORA THUNDER ATTACK!" he countered, launching a rising torrent of icy air. The clash between the two attacks instantly caused a smokescreen of steam, but the darts were so impossibly hot that they crossed through it and forced the Bronze on the defensive, having only barely been hampered. The Cygnus leaped around to avoid getting skewered by missiles that burst the ground and melted through the platform. "Damn it… it feels like fighting Ikki, but with Shun's crazy cosmos!"

Gliding through the air as well, Sisyphus clashed with the Dark Prince, who blocked his attack much better this time and engaged him in a series of lightspeed exchanges to keep him occupied. It didn't matter if he would prevail, what mattered was protecting Sasha and getting a shot at Alone.

Nearby, Lucifer roared and crashed his muscled fist on Dohko's shield, making Libra's whole body shake. The two then gripped hands together in a power hold and burned their cosmos, competing for supremacy.

The Daemon laughed, feeling the maddened tiger getting pushed back but resisting bravely. "Oh, you're a bit stronger now, aren't you?!"

The Libra Saint nodded angrily, feeling his strength swell with the anger over Rasgado and the inspiring presence of Sasha. "You BET! And I won't let you get away this time!"

Gradually pushing the tiger back, the devil made his cosmos burn, painfully zapping the tiger's paws. "You better have, Libra… unless you want another Gold Saint friend of yours to die for you! HA, HA, HA!"

Being reminded of the Taurus made Dohko's teeth grit in fury and, with a skillful martial step in, he tried to take advantage of the power hold to plant his knee on the Daemon's chin. The Specter, however, was more than experienced enough to see through this trick and headbutted the Libra, a crude blow that stunned Dohko and left him vulnerable to have his throat caught by the Pride Star.

"Not as easy as you thought, huh?!" Purple sparks crackled up Lucifer's arm, shocking Dohko into fits of screaming. Pride Star's left hand, his dominant one, then burned with dark cosmos in preparation for impalement. "I'm afraid I don't share Michael's curiosity, Libra… I can tell you're getting better and better, and I prefer to get rid of nuisances right away before they come back to haunt me!" His red eyes then snapped sideways when he sensed the chain coming at him, letting go of Dohko, who fell to the floor gasping.

Though his attack missed, Andromeda pulled for his chains for a renewed offensive. "GO, GREAT CAPTURE!"

As his feet landed, Lucifer countered. "DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!" he shot the piercing javelins of electricity.

But Andromeda gave his move a twist. "SPIDER NET!" and the links assumed a new formation, creating a web- shaped wall that absorbed the powerful impacts, the metal protected by Andromeda's abnormally powerful cosmos. The green-haired looked over and saw Cygnus struggling as well, trying to give Sisyphus support fire by shooting at the speeding Dark Angel.

He messaged his friend. "HYOGA, this won't do! I've fought these two before! We have to power up to that level!"

Cygnus took a shocked pause. "What?! Are you sure?"

Andromeda nodded determinedly, already pushing his cosmos to new levels as they spoke. "Yes, it's the only way! We have to help Sisyphus get a shot at Alone! It helped knock Poseidon out of Julian, remember?!" he recalled, referring to their battles in Atlantis back home. "But we need enough firepower to get a shot at it or these two won't let us!"

The white-armored Saint fired more rounds of Diamond Dust, but the Dark Angel Specter would just slap the cold wind blasts away with flicks of his large wings while occasionally fighting off Sagittarius' lightning assaults.

He gritted in frustration. "Alright then, but we better make the best of it! I think I have a plan, too!" he then turned to Dohko, who desperately tried to parry off Lucifer's lightning assaults. "Saint Dohko, when I give you the signal, I need you to combine your strongest attack with mine! Our elements are similar so I think we can cause serious damage to the flying one! Shun will then keep your guy chained and we'll snipe Alone!"

Roaring like a beast as he landed a fruitless kick on Pride Star's thick vambrace, Dohko barely had enough sense to acknowledge the message, but he trusted the Bronze Saints who hadn't failed them so far. "I understand, just hurry up with it!" he urged, taking another massive blow from the Prince, unsure of how long he could last.

Cygnus and Andromeda stepped back a bit from the fighting and charged their energies as hot as they could, closing their eyes in focus. They thought back to their battles against Thanatos and Hypnos, the last moment they fully managed to tap into their heavenly Cloths.

Sensing what her Bronze Saints were doing, Sasha glanced at them and burned her cosmos as well, holding her staff tensely. "Shun, Hyoga…I'm entrusting those Specters to you!" she wished, blessing them with a silent prayer.

Meanwhile, Pandora observed how strange it was that the two Bronze Saints were taking a sideline, just burning their energies senselessly. "Have your men given up so quickly, Athena?"

Sasha just eyed her tensely. There was little she could do for Pandora right then, if she wished to preserve the future.

The woman who brought evil upon the Earth was unimpressed by her silence. "Mmm, mmm, I'll take that as a 'yes'?"

"You wouldn't understand this right now, Pandora -" Pope Sage interjected, already sensing the Bronze Saints' true power coming to the surface. "-but the warriors of Sanctuary aren't the kind to abandon hope. It was your last gift to us all, after all."

This seemed to catch Alone's attention, who halted himself by the carriage.

Cait Sith Cheshire giggled. "They look to me like they just stopped, your Holiness." The lowly Specter teased. "And your Gold Saints can't even stand up to our Princes!"

As the feline man said this, a shattering sound was heard when Dark Angel exploded his knee onto Sisyphus' armored stomach and bashed him back down to the ground with a backhand blow, while Lucifer dodged a draconic uppercut from Dohko and landed a straight kick on his stomach that shot him towards the platform's edge, burying the tiger in the rubble. Every blow accentuated the disadvantage and made the battlefield shake.

Seeing this, the Cheshire cat provoked the Pope further. "You seemed so confident against the Emperor with your Talisman Cage, and now you won't even turn it to Prince Michael and Lucifer, nye-eh. Are you just a frail old man relying on the past Athena's goodbye gifts?"

Sage sweated. It was true that he had weakened Alone with his technique, but while he had a stock of more sealing paper tags, he had to keep his plan to defeat Thanatos in mind. His resources could not be wasted on Specters, even two as powerful as these new ones.

Still, a bluff couldn't hurt. He took out another paper tag marked with Athena's name on it. It made Cheshire hiss and hide behind Pandora, bringing a smile to the old Lemurian's lips. "Perhaps you're right, Beast Star… or perhaps I will just seal all FIVE of you in this mountain right now."

Sensing Sage's intentions, Sasha stood by her Pope, staff held up high as if promising swift results. "And end this war right now!"

Pandora faced her and hovered her trident down, causing a cascade of lightning to shower the platform, colliding with the binding forces of the Talisman Cage that was already in place. It instantly staggered the goddess herself, the shock of forces between Sage and Pandora being so strong that it gave the two Princes pause in their battle. Everyone present felt like the evils unleashed by the woman's box suddenly flashed through their minds, smashing the hope that Athena inspired in her fighters.

White sparks crackled through the air into nothingness as the ring and trident on Pandora's hand shined menacingly. "You will do no such thing, Athena… not while I protect my brother."

Alone saw the two Bronze Saints turn into bonfires, fascinated and right now, Pandora's confrontation with Athena was nothing to him.

Oblivious to this, Pandora spoke on, pointing her weapon at the Goddess. "In FACT, you will face the punishment from the Gods you've deserved for eons, for reducing yourself to this filthy mortal form!"

Michael landed by Lucifer, sweating, red eyes locked on the two Bronze Saints. "Do you see what I'm seeing, Lucifer?!"

Daemon's fist clenched angrily. "What the hell is going on with those two?!"

Dohko and Sisyphus recovered themselves from the rubble and gasped, seeing Cygnus and Andromeda seemingly pulsating with strength, their cosmos at first flowing like circling waves but then solidifying into their armors, giving them strange silhouettes.

Haisaku felt the light of it on her mask. "Those two… Shiryu, your friends are amazing!" she remarked.

The Sagittarius smiled, blood dripping from his lips. "I-Incredible!"

The two Princes gritted their teeth angrily, feeling threatened for the first time in the battle. Lucifer in particular summoned his murky penumbra of a cosmos aura, ready to do battle. "Whatever the fuck is going on, I will put a stop to it!" he raised his hands and started charging an attack with arcs of electricity. "DARK REVEN-!"

"PEGASUS! RYU SEI KEN!" Tenma screamed, shooting the barrage of light-elemental fists at the two Specters! Michael flew away, dodging it, but Lucifer was struck by it with unexpected force, interrupting his attack.

The Daemon stumbled back, the unstable orb he managed to charge exploding right on him, damaging him further. "G-GAH! You Bronze Saint son of a bi-!"

But Tenma dashed right on the Daemon, not letting up. "I won't let you touch my friends! SUI SEI KEN!" he shouted, swinging his comet punch right at the Prince's cheek, punching across it with enough force to stumble him back some more.

Michael gasped in the air, seeing his rival actually damaged. This was the strength in Pegasus that Asmita had told him about?!

Before he even balanced himself back up, though, Lucifer's fist already closed itself and he swung right back at Tenma, bashing his head so hard that the Bronze saint's headpiece was shattered and he was hurled across the battlefield.

"TENMA!" Dohko screamed, lunging at his student and catching him. He dropped the white-armored Bronze Saint and charged his cosmos. "IDIOT, stay out of this!"

"DARK ANGEL FLAMING SWORD!" Michael summoned, igniting his right arm into the longsword of black fire, which sizzled with terrifying force. Instantly the temperature in the area felt raised by the mere presence of the technique. He messaged his rival. "LUCIFER, the Emperor is in danger! I'll cut off their hearts before they can power up! Keep Pegasus away!" and then he dove down on Cygnus. "BEGONE, BRONZE SAINTS!"

Sasha and Tenma screamed for their names. Sage gritted teeth, trying to reform the sealing strength of Talisman Cage. The winged prince, however, descended on the distracted Cygnus with a lightning-fast blade lunge which hammered down on the Bronze's ice-cold aura, seemingly unstoppable. The sword of fire struck the Cloth's neck guard, bursting into the light!

The shock of force filled the area, blinding everyone but Alone, whose amazing eyes saw the shattering of stars as his mightiest champion collided like a meteor against this strange new danger.

Dark Angel Michael was shot away from the light source, falling by Pandora's feet, completely repulsed. She gasped. "Dark Angel!"

Daemon roared. "It can't be!" he started charging his cosmos and raised his hand, allowing it to become the beacon for several white lightning bolts, forming his Dark Revenge Fist. "Michael, you fool, you let them power-up!" But a golden chain suddenly flew out of the beaming light source, catching his incendiary hand. "What?!"

Sasha and Tenma's smiles beamed as the light dissipated.

Standing before the two groups were two Saints wrapped in resplendent, winged versions of their Bronze Cloths, both adorned with many carvings of gold patterns. Their aura raged like two bonfires of energy so pure that it directly defied the empty void that the blackhearts of the Princes inspired in everyone's heads. Shun's free chain dropped heavily to the ground, now colored in a shining yellow light while Hyoga's fist was clenched, armed with such cold energy that the entire platform's surface began whitening with a faint icy layer.

Lucifer pulled for his arrested arm, his strongest melee technique completely locked by the chain and his feet caught in a spreading frost. "I can't… I can't free myself!" he had a flashback to the battle with Rasgado. "This was what he was gonna pull on me back then?!"

The sight of the two God Bronze Cloths inspired Dohko and Sisyphus like never before, who joined Cygnus in battle. "Alright, Hyoga, Shun, I'm taking this as your signal!" Dohko affirmed, waving his hands and aiming at the down Dark Angel. "ROZAN!"

Cygnus hands clasped above head, summoning the image not of a bird, but of a woman holding an amphora. "AURORA-!"

Lucifer widened his red eyes and turned to his equal. "MICHAEL, WATCH OUT!"

The Dark Angel gasped, standing back up and burning his aura. The Sagittarius readied his bow and burned his aura as well, ready for his part!

Dohko threw his arms. "HYAKU RYU HA!" thrusting countless, roaring dragons of watery cosmos.

All while Hyoga hammered down his clasped fingers. "-EXECUTION!" shooting a massive beam of golden, aurora-casting light that froze everything around it to Absolute Zero.

Cheshire screamed and Pandora gasped for her brother. "LORD HADES, NO!"

The Dark Angel exploded his black fire aura, red eyes widened in shock, and spread out his arms to shield his Emperor. The two attacks converged on him, forming a dragon-head wrapped beam of fused water cosmos that struck him like an exploding freezing steam all over the battlefield and releasing a deafening, shattering sound through the skies.

Everyone screamed, losing their balance as the ground went sideways. Haisaku grabbed on to the shielded Saint, carving her katana on the ground to keep the two of them in place. "Hold on to me, DRAGON!"

Pope Sage protected Sasha with a telekinetic barrier. Cheshire merely leaped at the flying carriage while the rest of the present warriors stumbled around in various ways, totally losing control of the battlefield.

The only one sharp enough to act was Sisyphus, who took off to the air to be screened by the cloud of hot steam and drew his bow and saw Alone himself startled by all of this, losing concentration. "There's my chance!"

"DON'T WASTE YOUR SHOT!" Cygnus mentally shouted. "GET ALONE NOW!"

The Sagittarius Gold Saint didn't need to hear it twice, burning his energy to the max and shooting off the arrow. "I'm sorry, Alone, goodbye!" and he saw the mightiest weapon in all the zodiac fly across the battlefield with the cosmic-travelling blitz, punching a hole through the steam clouds and going right at the painter's forehead.

Alone only had time to raise his shocked eyes at it, seeing golden death going right at his face.

*SWHOOSH*

The painter's hair waved with the force picked up by the gesture, sweating like he hadn't since he had taken Hades into himself. Pandora was a face of pure horror in her face, seeing the tip of the missile an inch away from Alone's forehead. The steam was still everywhere and Lucifer was still grappling against Andromeda, but every soul in the battlefield had their eyes on the arrow.

As well as on the gauntleted hand that caught it mid-air.

Sisyphus sweated hard. "Im… impossible!"

The steam screening began to furiously dissipate away when a massive wind force ripped it apart from the inside, clearing the area, revealing the perpetrator. The Saints, and even the Specters, couldn't believe the look on any of their eyes when they saw the black-winged, red-eyed blonde angel holding the arrow in his hand.

Lucifer gritted teeth, unsure to feel relieved or embarrassed by his rival's feet. "By Apollo's cock!... He DID it!"

Alone's heart slowly calmed itself. When the platform was struck, the force of Cygnus' attack was so strangely godly that even he felt shockingly unable to react at the arrow that just tried to skewer his head. He glared at the Andromeda and Cygnus Saints in horror, who themselves looked like they couldn't believe their bad luck.

For a moment, a brief nanosecond, the painter truly thought his dream was at an end. "Michael…" he muttered as the Dark Angel got the arrow out of his sight. "You saved me!"

The Celestial Absolute Star smiled warmly, tossing the arrow away. His armor and wings were encased in threads of burning aura of black like none of the Saints had ever seen before, as if they had been responsible for him resisting the combined attack and reacting in time to the arrow.

Cygnus and Dohko cursed their luck and punched the ground. "NO! We struck him with everything we had! Even these two couldn't have taken an attack like this!" Cygnus protested "That fire cosmos of his should have been completely DEFEATED!"

Andromeda stared at the Dark Angel, observing his aura. He saw something familiar in it. "Hyoga… I think we underestimated that one…" he called attention to Dark Angel. Memories of the dragons of Rozan striking the Specter over and over at Jamir came to him. "He did this against Shiryu, too!"

The one-eyed Cygnus looked up to his friend. "What do you mean, Shun?"

The green-haired tried to stay calm. The elements of the cosmos were never as simple as a mere rock paper scissors game, but the chain-user detected something even more particular to this.

"The pattern in the waving of the black flames… it's too deliberate." he mentally messaged. "I've never seen a fire user who burned his aura like this so calmly. It makes me think something layered is at play. Master Daedalus once told me about something… he said that some Saints were so well trained in their elements that they could weave them together to form new, incredible kinds of power."

Cygnus stared at Michael and compared his aura to the battle he had with Centaur Babel. While Babel raged his energy around like crazy, this guy's black fire really did seem somehow simultaneously far more powerful and 'controlled' than it should be for the element, waving with the grace of water like a form of pure all-consuming energy. The one-eyed blonde had to agree with the princess Saint; something was done to it, for sure.

The Godslayers had still appalled the Specters of Hades, though. Michael lowered his head humbly. "Emperor, I implore you, you must return to Giudecca. Pandora will escort you." he urged. "If you stay here… there's no telling any more of how else they will try to hurt you."

While a small sting of humiliation, the painter was not stupid. "Very well… In light of your brave gesture, I will go." He conceded, stepping into the carriage with Cheshire.

Pandora exchanged glances with Michael as she joined her brother. "You will be greatly rewarded for this."

He shook his head. "There's no need for it, Pandora, just make sure he doesn't do this again… or else our Masters will show up."

The veiled reference to Hypnos and Thanatos was enough to hurry Pandora along.

Tenma's first instinct was to give chase. "No, ALONE, WAIT!" but he felt a drop in his friend's cosmos and turned in time to see, the light around the Cloths of Cygnus and Andromeda dissipated as their strength depleted, powering down their armors back to their base levels. "Shun, Hyoga, your armors…!"

The two Bronze Saints breathed heavily and leaned on one another. "Damn it!" Cygnus cursed. "Why is it so hard to maintain them here?! I don't get it!"

The Pride Star took the normalized chain off his wrist and snapped it off. He was visibly furious, eyeing Andromeda with whole new eyes. "What devilry was that?!"

Michael joined him in concern. "Even for a moment, his chains were able to stop you completely…"

"I KNOW!"

Michael eyed him with urging. "I don't mean to belittle you! Calm yourself and think! You felt the strength of that Aurora Execution, right? I was lucky because of my Fire Weave Armor, but it was an attack that could have killed Alone!" he reasoned, getting Lucifer's attention. "If that golden chain of Andromeda's was anywhere near the same class…"

Lucifer was then allowed to finish the train of thought. "…Are you implying that boy could seal Hades all by himself?!"

Michael sweated, eyeing the two Bronze Saints. "I don't know… but Asmita was right about one thing; in Shurakai, he told me these Bronzes were Godslayers of their own right, that they would be our death! I thought he was lying…"

"But those power-ups prove otherwise, right?" The Pride Star concluded, his intelligence weighing the seriousness of this revelation against his more vengeful instincts. His red eyes looked at the Bronze Saints in a completely different way. "So they are just as dangerous as Pegasus Tenma could become?"

Michael nodded. "Perhaps more, since we know so little about them. We have to eliminate them, Lucifer… it falls into our third duty….to slay the Godslayer." He reminded, referring to their 'functions'. "If not tonight, then as soon as we can!"

The idea of it bewildered the Pride Star. "Yeah, but now it's two against four, not one!" His fist clenched frustratingly.

Thankfully, Dragon seemed down for the count for then. However, to think that there was a Saint that could potentially forego Athena's blasted seals entirely as a way to rid the world of Emperor Hades was a gross affront to his sensitivities. The person who got their hands on this Andromeda Cloth was too dangerous for the Underworld. An existential threat like this could not be allowed to live. The armor itself could not go unchecked.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Andromeda Shinta stood there with casted chains, rotating his defenses, gawking at the Specters seeming lack of reason for being so cruel. "You don't even know why you're here, why you want my armor?! How could you hurt others without reason, talk about taking their lives?!" he demanded from them.

"As Brune said, I suggest you forget our reasons because you have bigger concerns right now." Deep Amphion remarked. "For this isn't the first time we've come after your Cloth, Bronze Saint, and even if by some miracle and cowardice you escaped tonight, we'd just go after you again. So surrender your armor or pick which of your kids you want to die first!"

The two Specters, their morale renewed, strengthened their moves, filling the area with more soundwaves and poison. They watched the green-head refuse to make a decision, just standing there looking stupid. "The cat's got your tongue, Saint? AH, AH!" Brune mocked. "What are you going to do now?!"

Shinta's eyes closed in contemplation. "No, I refuse!"

"What?!" Brune asked, outraged.

The Master looked at them once more. "I don't trust you! You're lying to me! The second I drop these chains you will murder my students AND me!" he argued. His years with Lance had taught him this much, that Black Saints and Specters were not below going back on their word. "You already tried to harm them for no reason! You targeted them before me! I… I can't trust you!"

"I'M FUCKING SERIOUS, YOU ATHENA CUNT-LICKER!" the Skeleton threatened, pressing his sword against the kids. "DROP YOUR CHAINS OR I'LL SLIT THEIR THROATS!"

The Saint, however, was determined. "You're going to do that anyway." he called out. It tore him to pieces to imagine what was about to happen, to even picture a finger being laid on Albiore and Elda's heads, but what choice did he have? His heart filled itself with bravery and Shinta confronted the Specters, grasping his offensive chain within Rolling Defense's encirclement. "And when you do… I will wipe you all off the face of the Earth!"

The three men of Lucifer recoiled, seriously stunned by the Saint's decision.

"He's… he's mad!" Amphion accused. The look and tone he had reminded him of some of Lucifer's insane boasts, from back when the Prince promised to break the will of Hades himself.

Shinta, however, had separate intentions. "They're disconcerted! I'll lower the chains and take out the Skeleton to save them… and then…No, Nebula Storm might hit the kids, too!" he calculated. He didn't see a way out of this that wouldn't involve him breathing in the deadly Deep Fragrance toxins. His teeth gritted. "I'll just take the poison and use my chains! It doesn't matter! This is what sacrifice is!"

The False Specters then saw the pink armor shine even more strongly on Shinta, syncing its ideals with its owners. Bat Brune had enough of it and looked at the Skeleton. "DO IT! Make their throats gush their stupid blood out! MAKE HIM REGRET HIS WORDS!"

Shinta's hands gripped his chains in frustration and his eyes closed in regret. "Athena forgive me!... Al, Elda!...Here goes nothi-."

Time slowed down.

A huge, spiked sphere flung across the air at Mach 5 speed and struck the Skeleton's head, instantly smashing it off its shoulders!

Shinta gasped, sensing the entrance of a new cosmos.

The Specters gawked, seeing their comrade taken out and the hostages fall to the ground.

Time sped up.

A supersonic boom rushed across the field, encased in a defensive chain twirl to block out Nightmare Sonar, caught the two kids before carrying them back up the dune, escaping Deep Fragrance's reach and clearing the miasma from around Shinta. The three onlookers looked up and saw Kastiel of Kerberos, the grey-haired Silver Saint, panting in panic and exhaustion from burning his cosmos like crazy, holding the kids safely in his arms.

Immediately, the resting of his mace chains caused Nightmare Sonar to start making him fall asleep. The Silver Saint dropped to his knees, struggling to stay awake. "W-what are you waiting for, T-TAKE THEM OUT!"

Shinta gasped. "Saint Kastiel!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Jamir

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

The Skeletons pressed their triggers, shooting more poisoned bolts at the golem, who simply took the shots and charged right at them again.

Sylph Willow gritted teeth in alarm, stepped back, and charged his attack once more. "Goddamnit! NORTH WIND!" he blasted the rock soldier even harder, this time ripping his basic armor apart and smashing it against the wall, spreading limbs everywhere. He panted, having already fired his technique several times. "W-what the hell is that thing?!"

Another soldier poked it with his scythe. "It looks like some sort of clay person. A golem like Treble's Surplice, perhaps?"

The crossbowman lowered his gun. "Well, that explains a LOT! If this thing isn't alive then there's no point in trying to poison it!" his head turned left when he saw a shadow zipping by the wall. "Uh? What the-" A fanged hand then engulfed his face!

Sylph walked up to the dismembered object and saw the limbs slowly and gradually trembling and shaking towards the torso as if attracted to it. "It must be made of Symplegades, the reforming rocks of the Bosporus." he concluded, unaware of his archer getting lifted up to the ceiling behind them all. "Is this what the fucking Lemurians can do for Sanctuary now?! They make mud robots for them?!"

The scythe man rested weapon in the shoulder. "At least it can't use any cosmos, that's good… It's just a bit harder to take down." The swordsman right behind them was silently tackled and dragged away by the purple shadow, isolating him. "Lord Willow, maybe we should just keep trying to go up?"

Sylph summoned a ball of purple cosmos and ignited the silk in the room, setting it on fire. "No, our priority is to destroy this place. I can sense Lord Ainsel upstairs already," he explained, just as his last man was zipped away with a muffled scream at Mach 5 speed. "We don't have to worry about getting Aries anymore, let's just burn this place to the ground!"

The sound of three corpses loudly dropping from the ceiling behind him then alerted the Specter, widening his eyes.

Purple metal boots stepped behind him. "Then why don't you worry about me?"

Sylph stood perfectly still, his metal wings tensing. "Uh… you must be the Saint that Lord Ainsel detected. You got here… sooner than expected." he guessed, not turning around.

Doctor Ophiuchus Iaso tensed his clawed gauntleted fingers, which were drenched in silk and Skeleton blood, his med coat waving under the currents of cosmos. "Your boss got unlucky. I have a special procedure just for this garbage wool he's been weaving all over." The necks of the Skeletons around him started decaying to the bone, drenched in acid, and the confident Silver Saint smiled. "You're probably here for Aries, aren't you? You Specters always forget about us Silver Saints."

The False Specter cackled and, to Iaso's alarm, the medium-sized metal plates that formed the membranes of his wings sharpened themselves with shiny silver cosmos. "I'll remedy that for him!" he then turned around at stunning speed, his wings shooting waves of cutting air cosmos, "MOUNTAIN SYLPH GALE!"

The Silver Saint irked and leaped backward at supersonic speed, giving him just enough distance to react in time to the length and pattern of the slash waves, flipping his body back to allow the strikes to fly beneath and above his body, ripping the silk-ridden wall apart instead.

His claws dug into the ground, stopping his backward momentum, and he blitzed right back forward. "TOXIC THUNDER CLAW!" he yelled, fist drenched in bubbling purple cosmos.

Sylph Willow laughed, dodged the punch, and caught its wrist with his hand. "AH! IS THAT ALL?! Ah, ah!" he mocked, twisting the doctor's arm to the side, making the Silver Saint scream. "You fool! You got yourself into a hornet's nest! You should have turned back and let us kill the Saint and his damn ki-"

There was a martial shout and the medic then launched his body upwards, exploding his armored knee right on the Specter's nose, letting blood and a scream out of him, before a follow-up air kick struck the Damascus-covered stomach, launching the Specter back.

Iaso landed from it, breathing deeply and tensing his arms. "I should have run? You're kidding right?" he sneered. Professionally speaking, there was nothing in the world he detested more than the men of Hades. "More than just a Saint, Specter, I am a man of medicine, sworn to Athena, AND Apollo! It's not something a death cultist would understand, but by fist or curing I WILL save lives!"

Sylph got up, cleaning the blood off his nose, eyes locked furiously on the medic. "You have no clue who you're fucking with!" he hissed, burning his wind cosmos once more into a silver aura, a rare color in a Specter. He then launched at the man. "PLAYWRIGHT DANCE!"

Performing a set-up step, the doctor's muscled arm lunged forward, but his reinforced knuckles went right through Sylph Willow, who disappeared into phantasms! Iaso stepped back in alarm and looked around, senses on high alert.

He detected faint encircling movements. "It's some sort of illusion attack!"

Soon enough, fairy winged people seemed to be flapping around him in a surrounding manner and Sylph's voice came through from all directions.

"I didn't expect a doctor to be this strong…Is this how Sanctuary heals its patients, with force? I thought Athena was about caring…"

The brown-haired men's eyes darted left and right, trying to detect the source. "A little from column A, a little from column B… sometimes an arrogant foot soldier needs a good punch to the face to take his pills." His body became increasingly tense in direct proportion to the proximity of the dancing fairies, which could turn into the Specter at any moment, from any direction. "To you, I'll prescribe my least popular treatment; euthanasia!"

"Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm… question is, good doctor, will it be in time to save the kid upstairs?"

Iaso irked. Time was indeed ticking. He had to take a chance! Turning 180 degrees, he charged his cosmos and aimed his tense fingers in the air at the fairy right behind him. "LAMIA COBRA GLARE!" The image of a giant hissing cobra-woman, serpentine from the waist down but human from the waist up, bared its teeth and shining golden eyes, showering sparks of Cosmos everywhere.

Amidst his own illusion, Willow gasped at the sight of it, being reminded of Garuda Aiacos' Galactic Illusion, but the doctor's claw attack flung right through the phantasms! "WRONG! SYLPH GALE!" Willow shouted, swinging his wings from the left and, in a smooth motion, slicing off the Silver Saint's left arm!

Blood showered everywhere and Iaso screamed, his limb dropping loosely on the ground with a thud. He dropped to his knee, his body shaking. "AGHH… d-damn it!"

The Sylph Specter laughed and stepped on the dismembered limb. "One down, three to go!" he provoked, baring his wings. "Or maybe I'll just blast you straight to pieces with North Wind? Which do you prefer? I'll give you the option, good doctor since you were so kind to me."

The panicked Silver Saint sweated bullets but calmed his breath. "hah…. hah, hah…hah, hah, hah!"

Willow squinted. "You're laughing? You're about to die!"

His green eyes looked up at his. "No, you are."

And then, before Willow could do anything, his torso was punched spine-first from behind, a hand wrapped in acidic cosmos bursting right out of his chest, splashing blood all over Iaso, forcing the air of the Specter's lungs out his mouth with a second gush of red. The servant of Lucifer looked down, seeing the hand he severed growing out of his exploded chest plate.

He blinked in utter confusion, looked at the doctor, and then saw that his blood had splashed right through the dismembered man as if he weren't there.

A mouth approached his ear. "See? This is why you should listen to your doctor." The 'Iaso' in front of him then vanished like a mirage, the hypnosis dispelled, and the Silver Saint then kicked the Specter off his arm, his body completely intact.

Floored, Sylph breathed desperately for air. He saw the unarmed Saint standing over him and realized what happened. "Son of a… how c-could I have fallen… for another lie?!" he lamented, memories of life under Hades' pretenses flashing through his eyes. His hand reached out. "Lord Ainsel… Lord Luci… kill them…. K-kill all the l-liars!"

Ophiuchus Iaso then watched the Specter's arm lose its life in it and collapse, silencing the room. "Ugh… good riddance! They never look away from the Lamia… must be something about her tits." He dismissed. It always took a lot of energy for him to cast the hypnosis technique, so he thanked Apollo for his opponents always being too stupid to close their eyes. The adrenaline rushed down and his hand instinctively reached for a smoke but he didn't find anything in his pocket. Frustrated, he kicked the Specter instead. "Goddamn Aiolos and his stupid emphysema concerns! I'm gonna kill that scrub for making me quit!"

The sounds of screeching and crumbling caught the doctor's attention, who saw the golem piece itself up slowly thanks to the magic of its magnetic rocks. It could still barely move, having only reattached its head, arms, and one leg, but it looked humanoid enough to concern the doctor. The fires that Willow started were also now spreading across the floor, eating at the silk and exacerbated by the oxygen currents he caused with his attacks. With a shake of the structure, it felt like the whole of Jamir was about to collapse.

Iaso took the golem's arm and helped it get up. He then saw its blank face. "GAHH! What the heck are you?!" he shouted, but the golem didn't respond. Piecing things together, Iaso assumed it was some sort of freak defender that the Lemurians had built since it didn't seem aggressive to the Silver Saint. "Okay, so you can't talk… this whole place is on fire, though, we have to get out of here."

The golem, however, seemingly unconcerned with its own well-being, ignored the doctor, and walked up the stairs as soon as his leg pieced itself together.

Iaso's jaw dropped. "Hey, can't you hear me?!" he shouted, following the clay doll as the flames spread more furiously. "Where are you going?! We shouldn't be going upstairs, we have to get to the Aries Saint! He's probably teleported outside long ago!"

But when the golem shook his head in denial and started rushing upstairs, its clay feet powering through the threads covering the building, the Silver Saint realized something was going on.

He then saw the flames consuming the 'silk'. "This shit all over this place… The dying guy mentioned his boss. Something must be going on further upstairs. Some other stronger Specter is probably still around." He then rushed after the doll. "HEY, WAIT UP FOR ME!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Shamballa Colony

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Pinning Saga against the ground, Worm Samuel hovered his one free tentacle over the teenager's head, making its glass eye open up to sprout out a menacing-looking spike, drenched in the blood of the Lemurian villagers he had killed.

He felt the Gold Saint struggling against his Surplice's grip and cackled. "HEE, HEE, what's wrong?! Feeling weak?!"

Saga gritted in frustration, feeling as if his wrists and ankles were being stabbed with needles by the metal grips on them. He tried to flow his cosmos to his hands to blast the ground below him, but the energy just got sucked into the Surplice's parts. "What's going on?!" he thought, feeling like his Cosmos was being cut off.

"It's no use! My Rawl's Blood will take all that power to me!" Samuel revealed.

Saga looked at his wrists and gasped. He saw black veins burning upon his gauntlet as if his Cosmos itself was being hijacked. He tried charging Galaxian Explosion but it just made the veins get thicker and longer as if it fed on anything he coursed down his arms and legs.

"Even now you're bleeding it out from your wrists before it ever reaches your fingers! Try casting those techniques of yours, I dare you!" the Specter dared.

Deadly Beetle got up from the rubble he was kicked into. "Don't waste time! KILL HIM NOW!"

"GIVE ME A SECOND, alright?! I'll get it done!" Samuel screeched in anger, tensing his armed tendril and aiming its spike right at Saga's brain. "Time to say goodbye, pretty boy!" the grey-skinned man then lunged the spike down!

The Saint's cosmos burned all over his torso. "Here goes nothing! Another Dimension!" Saga casted out aimlessly. A shattering sound was heard in his mind and space was ripped open right below him like a fissure, sinking his body through!

The weight beneath Samuel suddenly disappeared and his tentacles all lunged over, the force they were applying on Saga slipping harshly on the floor, the spiked tentacle spearing nothing but rock. Samuel gawked. "WHAT? WHERE DID HE GO?!"

"SEE?! HE GOT AWAY!" Beetle roared. His hands clasped together. "Moonlight Jewel!" and his huge body camouflaged itself in the burning village's background.

The Worm Specter looked around. "Gauromydas, what are you doing?! Help me find him!" but the deadly beetle didn't respond. The shorter False Specter hissed furiously and opened up the teeth of his tentacles, aiming them around like sensors. "Alright, where are you, Gold Saint?! Go, Death Worm Sonar!"

The disguised Beetle watched as his brother in arms pulsed-wave after wave of various frequencies out of his tentacles, searching everywhere for signs of the Gold Saint. It was a sensory technique that the Specter often used to find prey while underground and it had helped them locate the Lemurian village that was very well hidden in the Tibetan Plateau.

The giant sweated. It didn't look like Samuel was having any luck, but he had to count on him to sniff out the Gemini.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Saga screamed, feeling torn apart by the vastness of the cosmos.

Seemingly speeding across the galaxies, the Gemini Saint was afloat in a rift between dimensions, a harsh consequence of firing Another Dimension without weaving, aiming, or manifesting it manually. It wasn't the first time he had done this. Aiolos attacked so quickly that even the experienced trainee Saga of Gemini was often found at inescapable corners, like being about to be blasted from all directions by Infinity Break, so he had to learn to travel out of trouble by casting Another Dimension on himself.

However, he usually wasn't being drained out of his own powers like he was being by the Specter. The consequence was now that he had no idea what kind of subspace he opened a gate into, but it had sucked his body into itself as intended and now the Gemini felt crushed between walls of space and time that entirely rejected his presence like he was a microbe in a body highly allergic to him.

In the midst of his armor and body being squeezed and exposed to hyperspace-like devastation, being struck with the hotness of a sun, his mind searched out for something, anything he could use to aim himself back to Earth. He should be somewhere overlapping the battlefield he just left, but he couldn't sense any cosmos. This wasn't odd in and of itself, as the 7th sense had limitations in sensing things across dimensional membranes, which was why Another Dimension was such a dangerous and useful move to begin with.

But now he needed a beacon, a lighthouse, any sign of anything close to home, or he could disappear into the unknown vastness he entered for Goddess knew how long.

It was then that a ping was heard.

It sounded like a radar or sonar, or better yet a palpitation that would make an earthquake sensor suddenly spin left and right. Someone or something was spreading vibrations everywhere, with a power that was capable of touching dimensions darker than the ones Saga hailed from.

His eyes opened as his mind made up the shape of the Worm Specter. His cosmos of darkness was empowering his sonar, probably a function he would usually make use of in the Underworld, which was a dimension of its own right separate from Earth.

His hand reached out towards the Specter's signal source, stretching wildly like his body made no sense. All it mattered was that he grazed it, anchored on to it, so he could pull himself back home. Screaming loudly as the dimensions threatened to crush him, Saga closed his eyes and rocketed himself across the cosmos!

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Worm Samuel's radar tentacle suddenly turned, alerting its owner. "I picked up something!"

The air in the direction it faces suddenly opened up down the middle like a massive gate, tearing light out and spitting out Gemini Saga, who landed on his feet and legs, coughing and wheezing.

Samuel wasted no time. "You won't escape again!" WORM BIND!" The tentacles flung at the seemingly exhausted Gold Saint. But the fighter raised his arms, catching all four grippers in his hands. His body burned with golden light, empowering him, and Saga stood up, face filled with rage! "W-What?! NO!" he then tried to fling his spiked one.

Gemini Saga roared, his blue hair seemingly whitening from how bright his energy soared, and his aura burst outwards tearing the grippers to pieces and aiming his hand at the Specter. "COSMIC METEOR SHOWER!"

Samuel's mouth dropped as his tendrils were torn apart to shreds by comet-shaped blasts shooting out of the Gemini's aura, which exploded all over the distance between them like an artillery barrage until the Specter himself, screaming for help, was swallowed up by several shells of cosmos barraging where he stood. The Worm Surplice was broken to pieces and a dome of accumulated light exploded, sending Samuel's dismembered arms flying.

Saga panted, aura calming down, seeing the little pieces of what was left of Worm scattering around. His eyes looked around. "There was the big one… where did he go?!" His body tensed and his senses heightened. "He can't have left the area… Where is he?!"

The street was quiet, with the exception of the roofs burning and the distant sounds of the soldiers escorting the Lemurian villagers out of the area. The Gold Saint walked around carefully. How could a Specter the size of Deadly Beetle just vanish without a trace? Even his advanced 7th sense wasn't picking anything, indicating that the enemy was likely suppressing his cosmos in addition to whatever trick he was employing.

Refusing to let his guard down, Saga tried something different, perhaps inspired by the enemy he just defeated. "Even if he's hiding and suppressing his energy, his body must still be lurking around." He took his finger, which formed a ball of cosmos, and concentrated hard. "With a mental ping channeled through this… I could improvise a sonar of my own." He then raised it to the air and made the ball of light snap like a bubble, sending faint waves of cosmos everywhere.

Saga then quietly listened with his 7th sense. As predicted, the cosmos ignored the houses and the topography, as they possessed no significant cosmos of their own, and detected faint worms in the ground and even Samuel's corpse, whose energy burned down.

The echoes returned, shaping a figure standing right behind him!

Saga turned around and saw a transparent hand hurling at him! "STAND BY ME!"

Once more, the startled Gemini was caught, lifted above the ground by an invisible giant. Its huge fingers were wrapped around his waist and left arm gripped him intensely, paralyzing his movements and making him scream.

The transparent figure then miraged itself back to a visible shape, revealed the huge Specter. His mouthpiece had been shattered by Saga's earlier blow, revealing a pale, hairless face with a bleeding mouth and a tense smile. "You're not going anywhere! Now you DIE!"

"GAHH!" Saga screamed. His free hand lowered unto the Specter. "COSMIC METEOR SHOWER!"

"BIG WALL!" The Beetle cast, hardening his Surplice and body once again to such a level that the technique once more ricocheted off him, spreading destruction everywhere but on the Specter himself. After the quaking was done, Gauromydas laughed. "HAH, HAH, HAH, you don't have the FIREPOWER to kill me, Saint!"

The Gold Saint cursed his bad luck! He had to use Galaxian Explosion, but trying to balance its catastrophic force with only one hand would likely cause it to explode on them both, damaging Saga far more than the Specter. "D-damn you...!"

The Specter gripped him harder. "You did well against Samuel… that took me by surprise. But you shouldn't have come here tonight, Saint! This is a night of death!"

Saga's brain rushed confusingly. Nothing about this attack made sense. Specters had never targeted Lemurian villages like this, only Jamir itself. "W-what do you mean?! What's going on?! Who sent you here? Thanatos, Hypnos, one of the Judges?! Which killer was it?!"

Deadly Beetle's eyes tense. "The very worst of them all!... And he knows everything about you Saints. How you fight, how you plan, even who is behind the Pope's mask!" Gauromydas revealed, shocking the Gemini. The look of horror on the teenager's face delighted him. "He even knows the source of your power…. The way you motivate yourselves with causes of justice! But this time… oh, oh, this time…justice is on our side!"

Saga's free hand struggled against the huge fingers, which burned with darkness cosmos that strengthened them to no end. "Justice?!... JUSTICE?!... You t-talk about that when you've murdered innocent people?! When you've destroyed their lives pointlessly?!" He protested. The Specter seemed to want to crush him with his words, which perhaps could buy the Gemini some time. "What have they ever done to you?! There's no justice in any of this, no culprit!"

"The WHOLE WORLD is the culprit, Gemini! It cast us out to damnation!" Gauromydas countered, making no damn sense to the Gold Saint. "We were lied to, you know?! Fed dreams of paradise just like the ones Athena feeds you Saints, but even worse, those dreams weren't even intended for us! So we will make the world pay and carve out of it what we deserve!"

Now, this truly bewildered the Saint. Lied to? Same as Athena? Was this some kind of Specter revolt? "Y-you… If you're not fighting under Hades…?!"

The giant cackled. "Ha, ha, ha! I wonder, Gold Saint, did it ever cross your mind that humans could fight a Holy War by themselves, mimicking the goals of Gods?!" the Beetle provoked. "Maybe you were raised with such a spoon in your mouth, everyone talking about how you're gonna be a hero, that it was like you were in a dream!... But what do you even need Athena for? You killed Yakos all by yourself, didn't you?!"

Burning his cosmos to stay alive, the Gemini tried to come with a plan. Maybe he should fire Galaxian Explosion regardless, damning the consequences. The Specter words confused him, though, especially the mention of Yakos, whom Saga remembered to be the Bennu Specter that was the author of the Arcadia attacks, which were to that night as mysterious as the one he was currently trying to stop.

The math was made in Saga's brain. Gauromydas was likely a comrade of the deceased Bennu and Shaman Specters and seemed to be implying that whoever was leading them, was doing so without Hades' guidance, which matched the strange circumstances of the attack in Austria and how dismissive Pandora was to Ionia about it right afterward.

And in their world, fighting a Holy War without a God by your side was suicide, especially against Sanctuary. It was so inconceivable, so unimaginable, that it truly gave Saga pause.

"What are you doing, Gemini? Why aren't you fighting?!" a voice asked.

Saga's eyes widened in alertness. Who spoke just now?

Gauromydas helmet horns burned with cyan blue cosmos, tensing like pincers. "I'll eviscerate you, for my Lord!"

"SHOSEN KYAKU!" a coarse female voice shouted as a leg in robe wrapped in telekinetic padding exploded itself on the Beetle's exposed face, kicking him off and releasing Saga to the ground, the crying of a crane echoing in the background. Yuzuriha stood up, her long whitened hair waving with her spin. "NOW, finish him off!"

The giant stumbled back, grabbing his broken jaw. "ARGH! Y-you… you bitch!" he looked up, though, and saw Saga crossing wrists above the head, his aura burning so largely that the night was turned to day. His eyes widened. "… S-shit!…"

Saga thrust his hands forward. "GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!" and the cataclysm of exploding planets was cast, firing out huge shockwaves of cosmos across the battlefield that trembled reality itself!

The Beetle Specter stared at the coming wave of death, his body illuminated by it. His 7th sense measured the strength of it immediately and he realized that casting Big Wall wouldn't make a difference.

He was going to take the blow, and he was going to die.

Knowing that this wasn't the end, for even if their Surplices were lost, their souls would surely be saved by Nasu Erika, Gauromydas smirked bloodily. At least he had fought back. At least he had thrown as much anger at this lying world as he could have. There was nothing more to do but to accept his fate and await the day his new master would resurrect him.

And by then, Sanctuary and the Underworld would know Pride Star's wrath.

"Long live Lord Lucifer!" Gauromydas decried, reaching his arms out as if to embrace Saga's attack.

The Gemini Saint and the Lemurian Elder then watched as the enemy took wave after wave of dimensional catastrophe unto his body, tearing his armor and body to pieces and shredding the remains down the length of the village, culminating in a multi-colored explosion of bright light that boomed upwards like a nuclear blast.

Gusts of winds filled the area, emanating from the deadly explosion, and clouds of dust filled the night sky. Yuzuriha raised a telekinetic wall, shielding the two of them, the ground shaking beneath their feet. She could see why the youth hesitated to use this at close range now.

Saga panted, lowering his aura down to vanishing specks of light. As quietness filled the battlefield again, he assessed the battle to be over and turned to the arrival. "Elder Yuzuriha… thank you."

The Lemurian guard that usually accompanied the Elder finally caught up with her, holding curve-tipped spears similar to Japanese naginatas. "Milady!"

Her hand waved gently at them. "It's alright, the threat has been eliminated. Focus on making sure everyone is safe." She then eyed the Saint, who seemed bewildered by something. "Saint Saga, I should thank you. Sanctuary upheld its side of our alliance tonight… Is everything alright?"

Saga didn't even hear her. His adrenaline was still lowering and his brain was still processing everything. First the Bennu and Shaman Specters and now Deadly Beetle and Worm. The coincidence between the attacks made dots in his brain connect, painting a picture that defied what he knew about the Underworld. More importantly, the giant's revolted words and seeming peace with his end sent his world upside down even further.

What in the name of Nike's Staff was going on? He then recalled a similarly strange attack had occurred on Andromeda Island not too long before, adding to the list. He would get to the bottom of this, even if he had to question Pandora herself.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Andromeda Island

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

"DON'T JUST STAND THERE!" Kastiel roared, about to collapse. "Strike them NOW!"

The Specters gawked, unprepared for this sudden intervention, still stunned by losing their Skeleton aide. "Who is that GUY?!" Brune protested.

Shinta responded with a determined nod and lowered his Rolling Defense. "YES! GO, NEBULA CHAIN!" he shouted, launching the weapon at Amphion, striking him with lashes that interrupted his Deep Fragrance exhuming. Amphion screamed, feeling his body whipped, zapped, and grazed by the chain links while Bat Brune leaped out of the way, also canceling his Nightmare Sonar.

The two Specter scurried around, disorganized. "DAMN IT. Why is everything going wrong tonight?!" Brune protested, getting off the floor.

Amphion coughed and wheezed, feeling armor parts fall off him. "W-We can't stop, Brune! We can't FAIL! Lord Lucifer is counting on us!" he burned his cosmos once again, the thought of his master filling his head.

Brune shook his head. "No, SCREW THIS! I'm OUTTA HERE before some Gold Saint shows up, too!" he then flapped his wings and got out of there, speeding out of the island regardless of discretion.

"COWARD! C-COME BACK HERE!" Amphion roared, before turning his sights on Andromeda. His clawed gauntlets shone in the moonlight, alight with dark cosmos. He charged straight at the green head. "This isn't over, A-Andromeda Saint! I'll take that armor if it's the last thing I do! LONG LIVE THE PRIDE STAR! CTHULHU CLAW!"

Shinta then saw the Specter's Surplice claws extend themselves with pure cosmos like long, razor-sharp tentacles that swung down on him. The image of a dark creature of undefined shape from the depths of the oceans, like a gargantuan image of the unspeakable shape and extruding tentacles dancing in the dark, projected in the background. Sensing that the Specter would die before giving in, Shinta swung his body forward, dodging the lashes, and bashed his elbow straight on the lunging Specter's body, smashing his chest place.

The Specter, however, through a gasp of pain, clinched Shinta with his arms, seemingly possessed. "I won't… I won't fail!" he hissed at the greenhead's ear, grabbing the Bronze's armor edges.

Bewildered, the Andromeda Saint tried to shove him off, but even his powerful pink cosmos seemed to struggle against the False Specter's maddened strength. The image of the projected creature started making him feel dizzy, especially as the claws dug into him. What was going on? He feared having to kill this man. "No, STOP! Nothing will come of this!" Shinta appealed, struggling against him.

Getting his bearings from nearly being put to sleep, the Kerberos Silver Saint stood up and saw the scene of them wrestling. "OI, SHINTA, just blast him! BLAST HIM NOW before he does something crazy!"

"NO, I'll drag you down to hell, Andromeda!" Deep Amphion screamed, his claw tentacles of cosmos snaking down Shinta's body and slowly vining his armor and exposed skin like an organic vein.

Immediately, the clash of cosmos was felt. Between the maddening darkness that the Specter's attack exuded and the shiny brilliance of Andromeda, a twisted sensation of losing one's balance was felt by the Saint. Shinta felt the man's elongated claws burning against his Andromeda armor pieces and reinforced the weak metal with his energy. But the world felt blurry to him and he saw strange visions of a sea monster glaring back at him, appealing to his darker senses and biggest fears. It was like the unknown itself was echoing in the cosmos, calling him.

"Shinta… Shinta! Come to me! Take my hands!"

The Andromeda shook. Nothing of it made sense, but the dark, undefined figure had a familiar female voice. "(Mom…?!)" he found himself muttering in Japanese. His head shook in denial. "No, N-NO, this isn't real!" his hand pressed against Amphion's chest, burning with a faint pink flare. "LET ME GO! YOU'RE NOT REAL!"

The Deep Specter laughed triumphantly, sinking his claws deeper into the Saint, not even noticing what the boy was about to do to him. "I won't!... I can feel you slipping! Go to it, Bronze Saint, go to the voice!"

The figure stretched its arms out. "I love you, Shinta…I missed you so much! Let me touch you!"

The Andromeda Saint screamed, his heart split in two, causing his aura to burn out of control. It felt like, instead of hands, the figure was reaching out with horrible appendices that would wrap him like chains and drag him down a deep ocean. He felt insane, seeing images of his past life blurring out of control, confusing moments as intense as his battle with the Bennu Specter with ones as simple as when he purchased his Silver Star pendant from the blonde man at Sanctuary. For a moment, he didn't even know who he was anymore, feeling like a boy grasped by a terrible monster about to devour him in his state of confusion!

He had to do something. "Stop… Stop it!" he thought, charging his cosmos into his hand, making it whirr loudly. The world felt like it spiraled out of control, descending into chaos, something abhorrent to his peaceful sensitivities. "I TOLD YOU TO STOP!"

A booming sound was then heard when the palm fired the blast.

*THOOM!*

Kastiel gasped and covered his eyes, startled by the cosmos uproar, and Deep Amphion jaw dropped.

Amphion recoiled, feeling lighter and stumbling backward. "W-what?!" He looked down and saw the gaping hole in his chest and the Specter's upper body was then blasted right through by a firing beam of pink energy. Small specks of pink embers still singed his organs and flesh on the inside. He seemed in disbelief, touching the blood dripping down from the hole. "That…"

The pacifist was equally stunned, just snapping out of the visions as the dark tentacles of cosmos vanished off him. He saw the damage he just caused and didn't recognize himself in it. "I'm… I didn't mean to…"

Amphion's hand reached up to his shoulder pad, grabbing it desperately, his body feeling death coming. His Surplice, worthy of a Celestial Star's, had been nothing to a Bronze Saint's simple energy blast? And while he was under the spell of his Cthulhu Claw, too? "Y-you… Bronze… w-who are you?!"

He then collapsed on the Bronze Saint, dragging the blood trails from his finger down Shinta's chest.

The wind blew across the island desert, with neither the Bronze nor the Silver Saint able to make heads or tails of what just happened for a brief moment.

Kastiel climbed down the sand dune, finding himself more alert now. It felt like the effects of Nightmare Sonar were gone for good. He approached the Andromeda Saint a bit carefully, seeing him in shock at what happened. "Oi, kid, are you okay? What the heck was he doing to you?"

Shinta took a bid but nodded frantically. "I am…thank you, Saint Kastiel." He started off. He owed his life to the Silver Saint now. Shinta was ready to risk it to get Elda and Albiore out of harm's way, but thanks to the Silver Saint's timely appearance, everything was resolved as best as possible. "I'm not sure what he was doing… It was some kind of illusion attack. I felt that if I took its bait, something terrible would happen."

The Silver Saint saw that he was a bit out of it. "It looks like you lost control of yourself a bit there. I was under the impression you were some sort of pacifist, but I guess Guardnia left you some fangs, huh? I didn't actually expect you to blast right through this guy." But not even mentioning Shinta's deceased teacher seemed to snap him out of it, which truly alarmed Kastiel. "Oi, SHINTA, are you really alright?!"

The green-haired Saint blinked. "I'm…I am. Sorry, it's just…" he muttered, feeling the remnants of the Specter's evil cosmos inside him still dissipating. "Elda and Albiore, are they okay?"

His thumb pointed at the two snoring kids. "They're alright, don't worry. It's probably for the best that they were put to sleep, cause Goddess knows I will have a hard time doing it tonight after this. Speaking of which-" His senses searched for the Bat Specter. "Artemis fuck me, I think the other one got away!"

"Bowowow! Bow-wow!", the bloodhound barked, showing up from around the dune and rushing up at its owner.

Kastiel smirked and allowed it to lick his hand. "You're a bit too late, buddy…I guess you've been napping till now."

The presence of the friendly animal helped Shinta realize where he was again. Looking down, they saw the Surplice on Amphion crumbling to dust and getting carried away by a strange wind gust, leaving behind the holed corpse.

Shinta leaned back against the high sand dune, rubbing his face. "Two attacks in little more than a year… this is horrible." Kastiel picked up the two sleeping kids and brought them over to Shinta. The bloodhound licked their cheeks but they wouldn't wake up. The Master hugged the two of them closely, taking comfort in their unharmed breaths. "Thank Goddess everything is okay…"

Kastiel scratched his lightly bearded chin. He hadn't been around for the fabled invasion by the Basilisk Specter on Andromeda Island, but Guardnia and Cynthia had told him some things about it back in the day. "We got lucky… I happened to come in late and saw the bastards docking by the beach. I have no clue how they didn't spot me… Shinta, what in the Goddess' name did they want?!"

His green eyes looked up at him from the kids' heads. "The same as before… they wanted to Cloth-rob the island… I don't know why, but they're fixated on Andromeda, which just makes me think they'll be back someday."

The Andromeda Cloth raised its chain coyly. "Well, why wouldn't they want me for themselves, Shinta?" she demanded to know, full of herself. She lightly tapped his cheek to calm him down. "I'm a princess, after all… it's only natural for me to get kidnapped. You have to get used to protecting me from dragons if you want to keep being my owner."

The Kerberos Saint folded arms, incredulous. "Do you mind taking a guess at why they would want your Cloth out of all the ones here? For Athena's sake, all they have to do to take Cepheus is collect it from the Castle. It doesn't even have that many traps compared to the Cassiopeia Labyrinth!" he argued, savvy on them after the tragic battle with Guardnia.

Shinta shook his head. "I seriously have no idea why, Saint Kerberos… maybe they just want revenge from last time. It's all these people think about!" he let out, frustrated. Normally he wouldn't say such a thing, but as he grew older, the ugliness of what people did made him lose more and more patience. "Lance and I once stopped an attack of theirs at Arcadia in Austria… As far as I know, it could be a grudge from that day."

Kastiel touched his temples to focus. "Shit… everything's a buzz!" he lingo-ed, meaning that jamming barriers were up. "I can't contact anyone like this. Andromeda, I don't care how much lightspeed you got, we're not staying here for more to show up."

Shinta nodded in obedience. "Yes, of course, Saint Kastiel." Even if Shinta was a gold-rank now, Kastiel was a Silver Saint so he was still his superior.

Kastiel took the two kids again. "I'll get Elda and Albiore to New Lalibela… I don't like that place, but it's safer than taking the long trip to Greece and the Specters wouldn't dare follow us up Cetus' city. What about you?"

The Andromeda Saint paused, truly unsure. "Well… I don't know…I guess…" Something then urgent occurred to him. "Oh NO, Saint Kastiel, do you think they would go to China too?!"

The grey-haired adult blinked. "What?!... No, why in hell would they do that?! People say the Libra Saint lives there!"

Shinta bit his lip, feeling Lance's safety in mind but he knew that Kastiel wasn't privy to the Golden Zodiac's secrets. Gulping, he made up a story. "I have friends there from my time under Lord Daniel. I think they might be in danger, especially if we are all cut off from each other!"

Kastiel squinted skeptically. Why was Andromeda, who usually babbled about everything, being so deliberately vague? "If you are, then go straight to one of the Gold Saints there. Go to Jamir first, cause you're sure to at least find Aries," he emphasized to let Shinta already know where the first guardian was at. "Remember, Shinta, they are after your Cloth! Don't dally around!"

He nodded determinedly and prepared himself to depart. He stopped, though, facing the Silver Saint. "Wait, before I go… thank you, again." He wished, truly out of the bottom of his heart. "I had no intention to let them touch Albiore and Elda, but you showing up made everything better."

The Silver Saint felt flattered. "Oh… it's alright. Us Silvers get forgotten in these matters, but we can do our part, too." He grumbled, as if not used to compliments. He carted the kids under one arm and his dog in the other. "Anyway, Athena be with you, Andromeda. I'll keep the kids safe, don't worry. Go do your duty."

"Bowhoooo!" the bloodhound howled as if wishing goodbye.

Shinta smiled as he watched the Cerberus boom out of the area at Mach 5 speed, shock waving gusts everywhere. Kastiel wasn't such a bad person. It was still awful that he abandoned his dear friend, Lance, in the past. But at the very least Kerberos seemed changed nowadays, which was why the Andromeda hoped one day he could be a bridge between the two for reconciliation.

This wasn't the time to think about this, though. Terrible things could be happening all over Sanctuary right now especially if the Specters were so bold to attack Andromeda Island with a force weaker than last time. His 7th sense focused on the east and he detected two areas where he couldn't feel any cosmos at all from, not even that of cities and animals.

The first was Jamir and the second was Mount Rozan.

His heart sunk as his fears were concerned. Lance wouldn't want him to worry too much and instead think coldly about the best route, though. The Andromeda, therefore, set his mind to head for Jamir and make sure Mu was alright. He could then keep going eastwards and search for Lance.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Jamir

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Threads of silk now covered all of Mu's torso and encroached on his neck. The crying Lemurian boy shook his head over and over. "Let me go! LET ME GO, LET ME GO, LET ME GO!"

"Don't worry, I will! As soon as you talk about the Aries Saint," Papillion Ainsel calmly assured. He then sniffed the air. "Mm, I smell ash and smoke... and all my silk downstairs is burning. I think my men have already started tearing up your place. How impatient. You better decide fast, little boy."

Sniveling, the Lemurian boy indeed felt the tower getting hotter and saw black smoke rising up the stairs that led up to their floor. What was he gonna do? If he confessed to being Aries, the Specter would kill him then and there and take the Cloth away, but Mu had stalled for tons of time and no one, not even Master Shion, had shown up! He felt the silk strings wrap around his tiny neck and began to breathe faster, panicking. He couldn't even teleport or sense what was going on around Jamir, as strongly as Ainsel was jamming the place.

His sharp Lemurian eyes saw one of the shiny butterflies that Ainsel spread around getting snuffed out as it flew by the stairs. Was someone here? Maybe Mr. Mud? But the Golem wouldn't know how to be sneaky.

His rebelliousness returned. "You can go suck a big pie of sugar, Specter!" he lamely insulted. "I'm not gonna tell you anything! In fact, I'm gonna tell you less than nothing, I will LIE TO YOU!"

Ainsel folded his arms. Even his patience was growing thin by now. He sighed, "you don't learn do you?"

Mu carefully watched as the smoke filled the room and the butterflies were smashed one after the other. "YEAH, that's RIGHT! Here's a lie; you are a good, upstanding beautiful person who doesn't smell at all!" he started, making the Specter rub his eyes. His smart Lemurian brain measured his reaction and tried something more daring. "You liked that?! How about another one?! I am in fact the real Aries Saint and you've been wasting your time ALL ALONG!"

The False Specter elite rolled his eyes. "This is getting so ridiculous… So you're the Aries Saint, huh? So Sanctuary rests the faith of his First house… on a five-year-old boy who can't fight?" Ainsel had processed a lot of deliberate misinformation while spying on Priam's Black Saints for Lucifer, but this boy had no skill in it. "When you lie, you have to actually try to convince people."

The little boy grinned. "I'm telling the truth! I AM the Aries Saint, and you know what?!... There's someone standing right behind you!"

Ainsel rested a hand on him, so exasperated he didn't even notice his butterflies weren't feeding him info. "Alright, that's enough nonsense! That one is so cliché it hurts my hea-"

"TOXIC THUNDER CLAW!" Iaso shouted, swinging his technique at the Specter. But the light-speed fast Elite instantly dodged the blow with a blitz, letting the attack go right through an after image. The doctor's eyes widened "S-SHIT!"

Ainsel reappeared above him. "You people…" and his foot meteored on the Silver Saint, crashing and pinning him right through the cement ground, smashing the Ophiuchus against the lower floor. The entire tower shook with the impact. "… you're so predictable, I swear!"

Iaso coughed out blood, pinned.

Ainsel looked around. Fire surrounded them everywhere and the support beams of Jamir were beginning to fall off. His telekinetic senses searched for his men. "So you killed Willow and the others, huh? Congratulations, Silver Saint. This is useful information. I'll make sure to let my Master know we will pay as much attention to uncelebrated Silver Saints as to the Gold Saints. Now-" His hand then formed a chop. "-since Aries won't show up, I'll just get rid of the two of you and leave with the Cloth. How's that?"

Through a fair degree of pain, Iaso responded with a coarse voice. "T-too late, you fairy faggot!" he then thumbed up at the hole they made in the ceiling.

Ainsel looked up. He saw the cocoon Mu was in had been torn open by acid splashed from Thunder Claw. "You-!" Mu's hand grabbed the handle of the Aries Cloth Box and pulled the chain as hard as he could, opening it up and letting out a blinding golden flare that made Ainsel cover his eyes. "NO!"

The sound of metal parts flying the air and mounting themselves on a body was heard. The cosmos of the Aries Zodiac flared, brimming with the lush of the golden fleece itself. The ceiling crashed forward as the light blared out and both Ainsel and Iaso squinted to see a tall, imposing figure lowering itself telekinetically on them.

Ophiuchus gasped. "L-lord Aries?!"

Ainsel gritted teeth, feeling the incredible power before him. "Damnations! So you were here!"

The light dissipated a little, allowing the Gold Saint's outline to become more visible, but keeping his face shadowed. On the final floor, Mu's eyes were closed and his hands stretched out, guiding the golem wearing his Cloth through this bluff. "You've caused enough damage to my tower, Specter." He transmitted mentally, projecting an adult voice. As long as he was close, his telepathy should work.

Ainsel laughed, aiming his hand. "Are you kidding me?! We have just met! We need to introduce ourselves PROPERLY! FAIRY-" his hand then slashed the air, unleashing bidimensional, rainbow-colored shockwaves that crossed the battlefield "-THRONGING!"

Mu's nose began to bleed as his brain tensed in concentration. "CRYSTAL WALL!" he cast, transmitting the attack through Mr. Mud, who raised its hands and created the transparent shielding.

Ainsel floated back, his prediction coming true, and watched as the technique perfectly reflected his attack right back at him, missing the Specter thanks to his pre-emptive move and slicing the support beams of the floor instead, compromising the building further.

'Aries Mud' took the chance to zip next to Iaso protectively and looked up at the floating enemy. "As you can see your attacks are pointless! Leave now, or I will bury you under the blasts of Stardust Revolution itself!"

Assuming this was a truce call, Ainsel smirked. "Mm, mm, I believe you. My master told me all about your powers. I think I've completed what I've come here to do. All your equipment is destroyed and your tower is about to collapse!" he gloated as the support beams on the walls began to break and creak. The moth Specter gestured his two fingers on his forehead as a goodbye. "So I will then see you on the battlefield soon enough, Aries… if you're timely enough to save your friends, that is!"

Mu then waited for the Specter to blast his way out of the tower and fly off, slowly taking his jamming barrier with him. He looked around and saw that Jamir, between the fires and the structural damage, was indeed about to fall apart.

He leaped down to Iaso. "Mr. Mud, pick him up! We gotta get outta here!"

Iaso stared bewildered at the golem dressed in the Aries Cloth. "WAIT, what the hell is going on here?! Where's Saint Aries?!" but the golem just grabbed him and Mu and jumped out the hole Ainsel left behind.

Landing by the land bridge access, Mr. Mud dumped Iaso on the floor carelessly. Mu watched together with the Ophiuchus Saint as his beloved tower's floors began creaking over, sliding off their structure and collapsing down the mountain to the spike-filled crevices, crashing into its depths. The rest burned away, destroying materials, melting stardust, and generally wiping away whatever Mu could use to fix or revive Cloths in the near future.

He shed a small tear. "Noo…. All my projects…" He looked up at the golem dressed in gold. "At least you're okay, Mr. Mud!"

The faceless golem just nodded silently.

"HEY, can I get a little attention here?!" Iaso roared. He was going to be okay from the kick he got and he realized the seriousness of the situation, but his conspiracy theories hadn't predicted this. "Can you tell me where the hell the REAL Aries Saint is?! Why did we have to get rescued by this doll in his armor?! Has he been the one standing by the First Temple all this time?! And what the fuck is going on that Jamir just got burned to the ground by Specters?!"

Mu lowered his head as the lower floors of what was left of Jamir began crumbling as well. This was bad. He scratched his lilac-hair. In the flur of the moment, he had to save them somehow, and this was the best plan he had, to bluff Ainsel away by pretending Aries Mud was the real Aries Mu. "Well, you see… the fact of the matter is… umm…"

The doctor ran his hands through his brown hair, his head processing the implications of all this. "I came up here to ask you about the Waters of Life… if I hadn't…"

"Oh, yes, thank you, by the way!" Mu derailed, seeing a chance in the confused doctor's rambling to not have to talk about Sanctuary's secrets. His small hands shook the Silver Saint's very firmly. "You did a great service today, Saint Ophiuchus! Lord Aries will greatly reward you for this. You can ask for anything you want!"

Dusting himself, the injured doctor stood up, towering over the boy. "Alright, FINE, then how about some ANSWERS?!"

Mu's little Muvian head shook. "You can ask for almost anything you want."

The Ophiuchus Saint gawked at him, hearing the first floor of Jamir now join the rest in ruin as its walls fell to the sides. As the blood began pumping more calmly, the jaded adult rubbed his tired eyes and recovered some of his reason. "Okay, okay… I get it. We will be rational about this. You're just a kid, you probably know as little as me."

Mu's head shook. "Oh, no, I'm privy to a LOT of stu-" he then covered his mouth. The look on the doctor's face rivaled Lance's in meanness. "I mean…umm… say, would you like to meet Saint Libra?! I'm sure he will answer aaaalll of your questions."

"Okay, alright, a weird Lemurian kid turns out to be living here, of course, he's gonna be totally bonkers…" Iaso rationalized, expecting nothing out of the situation anymore as he detected signs of a sugar rush in the Mu's behavior. Lemurians never seemed to process it as well as humans do. The worst part was that no one back in Sanctuary Town would take him seriously over this. Mu's offer intrigued him, though. "You can really take me to Libra? We need to report what happened ASAP and if you're just lying to get out of this-"

Mu's hands waved. "NO, no, no, I'm totally telling you the truth! I can guide you to him! He's a purple old man who lives by a waterfall!"

The doctor squinted, folding his muscled arms tensely like a patient just asked him for a drug fix.

The smart boy sensed the skepticism. "Wait, I'm serious, look –" his eyes then looked away. "I'm actually really worried about my friend. I can't sense his cosmos! He could be really hurt right now if there are more Specters around and you're the Ophiuchus Saint. If you do this… I'll tell you anything you want about the Waters of Life."

This softened the adult's expression. All signs seemed to point at a genuine concern on the boy's part. "Okay, alright, you don't need to promise me anything. I'll help your friend. I'm a doctor, after all…" he guaranteed.

"YES, thank you, thank you!" Mu screeched, hugging him.

Saint Iaso smiled a bit. He would never admit it to Aiolos, but this was the part of his job that he loved, bringing people hope. He also imagined some student of the Libra Saint was in danger, likely a Gold Rank they would need for against the Specters, so he saw a chance to take a peek at the Zodiac's secrets. "Can you tell me his name? Maybe I know him."

The lilac head nodded. "Sure! It's Lance, Pegasus Lance!"

The doctor's green eyes widened like windows. "Wait, WHO?!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Shamballa Colony

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Saga knelt down and looked at what was left of Worm Samuel's right arm. The Surplice piece on it was turning to dust and being blown away, leaving the body part behind. These were similar to what had happened to the Bennu and Shaman Surplices and, while the Minotaur, Basilisk, and Gorgon Specters were blown away by Andromeda Shinta into the ocean, he imagined the same had happened to their armor.

It was a bit creepy and sad that these people were possessed by dark ghosts that now abandoned them that their bodies were broken.

He watched, heartbroken, as the villagers were guided to what was left of their streets and wailed at the sight of their destroyed homes, fruits of a lifetime of labor of a race already in danger of extinction. Shion would surely help them, but nothing would wipe from their memories the terrors they endured or the relatives they lost.

Looking upwards, he felt the night sky still shielded by jamming.

Elder Yuzuriha saw his intrigued look. "You feel it as well, don't you?"

The Gemini nodded. "Yes. Even now, the communications are cut off, which implies either other attacks are occurring, or that someone is keeping track of this site in particular," he deduced. "In either case, it means this isn't over."

The lady nodded. Added to the looks, Saga was just as smart as Aspros and Defteros. The question was, which of the twins was he a reincarnation of? "It's a happy coincidence that you were here. When I finally sensed something vile happening, I feared that Pope Arles' excuse for caretakers would lead my people to their deaths in this. You should be proud of what you've done. Lemurians have a long memory, especially for good deeds."

This made Saga blush a bit and scratch his nose, smiling awkwardly. "It was nothing."

"You seem to have a streak of saving people in the nick of time," Yuzuriha recalled, having read that Saga had stopped a similar event in Austria. "Perhaps you could continue to help me tonight?"

He nodded "Of course, Elder. What can Sanctuary do for you?"

Her hand scratched her chin preoccupied. The memory of a devil chasing her dearest friends through the Underworld flashed in her old mind. "I recognize this stratagem, Saint Saga… it brings a faint fear in my heart about who might be responsible for it," she admitted, intriguing the Gold Saint. "I will leave my men here to help my people and accompany you to your next destination."

Saga's eyebrow raised. Elder Yuzuriha, one of the Seven Allies, was offering to join him? "I was going to Jamir next, but something tells me you have a different idea."

Again, quite perceptive for his age. "Yes, we're going to see an old friend of mine, someone I once aspired to greatness. Someone who deserves a good ear-pulling." she worded. Two centuries had been more than enough to stop seeing this person as her superior. She then realized something and smiled slyly at him. "I believe Saga, that it will be a first time for you to meet your neighbor, four Houses over, the Master of Mount Rozan, Libra Dohko?"

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Chapter End

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Next Chapter: Chapter 47 - Second Arc – Episode 12 - Memories of Pain

Writing Deadline: Chapter is complete and beta-read. Will be released in mid-to-late July

Description: The victims of the Specter attacks gather at Rozan to consult the Master. Meanwhile, nightmares assault the Pegasus Saint, triggered by the pain of his defeat.

Author's Note:

This was a fairly long chapter, going up to 28 thousand words, which is why it followed a cyclical structure between the three different settings of Jamir, Andromeda Island and Tibet to make it easier for readers to enjoy it. Originally in V2 the chapter was much shorter (around 8-10k) and Saga's fight against the Deadly Beetle and Worm Specters took place in an island off the Greek coast, in the Aegean Sea. The fights were also fairly straightforward and uninspired and Cepheus Guardnia was still alive in Andromeda Island.

In this chapter's notes, I will explain the Deadly Beetle, Worm and Deep False Specters' name origin. While most False Specters are named in direct contrast to their True counterparts (see Worm below), Deadly Beetle Gauromydas is named after a species of giant fly living in South America, mostly Brazil, which imitate the behavior of aggressive wasps. The reason for this is because the original Beetle Specter, named Stand, has his entire repertoire made up of references to the band Beatles and their songs, which isn't easy to contrast with (though some of Gauromydas moves like Midnight Jewel are song references)

As for Worm Samuel, he is named after Samuel Reim, to whom the Kurumada Specter Worm Reim is also named after. It's a fairly simple reference. Finally, Amphion is named after King Amphion of Thebes, also a reference to the naming Kurumada gave his Deep Specter, who is named after another Thebes King called Niobe.

Finally, make sure to check out Hitagi Gahara's SKD scanlations of Next Dimension, Saintia Sho and others. The writer of this fanfic is proofreader of Saint Seiya Next Dimension's English releases and they're your current top source for high-quality scanlations in English.

Also, if you're interested, contact me through PM and get an invitation to the new SKD Discord server or the Saint Seiya Reddit server, where you can get updates on Sho and ND directly, not to mention chat with me and many other English-speaking SS fans.