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.

55. 2A: House of the Dead - Part 2 of 2

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; Kido Mount;

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:

-Yesterday the story's project reached its 10th anniversary! Thank you so much to all who ever supported it, especially Jenny DeVic!

-To commemorate, new artwork has been done by Bluefeather/Balasdan! You can check it out on my tweet announcing the publication of this chapter, my profile and his Deviant Art account. It's the Dark Angel Michael piece. It's so good I might even make it my new story cover : )

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Please enjoy and review (^_^

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"When introducing Lance to his Cancer armor and warming him up to his new responsibilities, I suddenly felt the weight of the wager I was making with this boy again. One cannot choose his zodiac, but it was jarring to think how I would make someone who reminded me so much of Ikki and Shiryu into someone fit to carry on Deathtoll and Manigoldo's legacies, even if only until Hecate's second vision becomes true. Lance is hardworking and brave, but Karkinos is… particular. I worry about their long-term compatibility.

This isn't to say that every Gold Saint has been the same-old, same-old; Pisces Aeneas was remembered for the unorthodox approach he had to his techniques (his so-called Crystal Roses) which made him so brilliant and admired, while Akassius is noteworthy for employing his fiery element and combat skills as much as his dimensional powers, unlike the common Gemini Saint. It stopped neither from helping their generation to be the closest in several centuries to have mastered all their Gold Cloths.

However, it does help a lot in living a fruitful life as a Saint of Athena when you are in tune with your armor and I don't want Lance to have the burden on his shoulders that Daniel and his friends had. I can't walk around the fact that Lance doesn't have an aptitude for telekinesis, a vital component to learning the Underworld Wave. I fear Karkinos will have to find some miracle to teach Lance something completely outside his comfort zone just to fill the bare minimum of being Cancer.

If only Lance had been born a Leo. Not only would it fit much better his persona, but little Aiolia wouldn't be burdened so soon in his life with being the sole occupant of the 5th House.

…I would also not wrestle with this terror that he might one day snap and follow in his predecessor's footsteps."

-Pope Arles III, continuing his thoughts from the previous quote

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The Past - The Lost Canvas War

Death Queen Island, Volcano Furnace

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The sounds of battle echoed throughout the island of the Phoenix Cloth, from the foot of the volcanic mountain up to the cavern to the core furnace where Cloths were fixed. Accompanied by terrifying ground shakes that made it seem like fire and lava would spit out of the ground at any moment, Cygnus and Andromeda rushed inside the scar on the basalt rocks to enter the hot throat of the volcano. Steamy geysers were everywhere, resulting from Dohko's watery cosmos splashing throughout the battlefield behind them. The two Bronze Saints only saw an orange glare ahead of them, such as the intensity of the heat inside the natural oven.

"CORONA BLAST!"

"SHORYUHA!"

A massive tremor occurred with the impact of these two blows against one another, making the two Saints stumble. Andromeda was caught by Cygnus before he slipped to the side down a hole into what looked like a stream of lava.

"Come on, Shun!" he urged as he helped him up. "We need to find Saint Haisaku!"

The Andromeda nodded and rushed deeper into the volcanic throat. He felt the incredible temperature rising even more and felt terrible memories of his brother speaking of this place as worse than hell, the place Andromeda was supposed to have trained at, had Tatsumi have his way. Andromeda Island was obviously no picnic, but even the twin volcanoes of the Indian Ocean island didn't seem as bad as this one.

There was no respite, no Living Area to have a peaceful get-together with Master Daedalus, no demarcated roads between beautiful, if dangerous locations that told a history of a lost kingdom, and not even the kindness of others. Here it was lonely and there was always the threat melting rock falling on their faces at every second and rained acidic droplets.

This island had no set geography, constantly transforming from the never ending flowing lava like an open Pandora's Box.

It was just hell, twenty-four-seven, all around him, everywhere and anywhere.

Right now, they were at its most inner sanctum. The cavern was nothing but darkness and fire. Eventually, though, the Saints found faint demarcations they had not the time to analyze; vestiges of old walls, and pillars fused into the rocks that looked like they held the passage open thousands of years earlier, inscribed with runes similar to those found in Jamir. As the ground shook and the lava raged, spilling orange waves from below unto their passage, the two Saints abandoned the idea that anything could have ever survived as it seemed that without their fabled Cloths they would succumb to heat alone.

Cygnus suffered the worst, breathing heavily and burning his icy cosmos to maintain himself. The more he tried to stay in contact with his constellation, the more he heard the faint cries of the phoenix instead, the kind he would only hear when Andromeda's brother showed up, drowning out the graceful song of the swans in his mind. Not only that, but the heat seemed to contribute to an infernal sensation of claustrophobia that magnified the terror they both increasingly felt as the eyes of the phoenix glared down on them invisibly.

Yet, for all their suffering, as they reached the massive cauldron which opened up like a mouth of fire from the cavern, they found the orange-haired Saint of Phoenix at the very tip of the rock protruding out over the volcano's main lava pool, which raged with flames and waves of steam, with her bare knees on the scalding ground. Cygnus had the temptation to look down at the pool and had to squint his one good eye at the strong, hot orange light coming from it.

Haisaku was in prayer, as hinted by her kneeling, with her hands firmly clasped up and her forehead down on them. Her orange flame cosmos burned in the form of a thin aura around her body which made the rubies encrusted in her bracelets glow. The two Saints winced at the sight of her bare knees in contact with the scolding basalt ground of the protruding rock.

Cygnus stepped up, but Andromeda suddenly held him. "Wait, Hyoga, stay here." And he pointed at the ground by her feet, where her mask laid, making the Cygnus nod in realization. It was probably suffocating the aged lady inside that place.

Seemingly undisturbed, Haisaku still noticed their arrival through the cosmos. "Hyoga, Shun, this is it…" she announced, keeping her eyes closed and her cosmos burning. "From here I will summon the Cloth that will tip the tide of the war."

"You have to hurry, Saint Haisaku!" Hyoga urged. "Do you need help? Could we join our cosmos with yours to speed this along?"

Her head calmly shook. "It wouldn't help. You were not chosen by it. The Cloth wouldn't taste your Cosmos any better than you would grass."

Andromeda blinked, finding the expression strange. "Taste?" He looked at her clasped hands. Haisaku was in such concentration he could only imagine she was praying from something coming straight from the heart, something she would need to be absolutely in tune with her feelings for.

Cygnus glanced at him in suspicion. "We're thinking the same, aren't we?"

Feeling a responsibility to ascertain the truth himself, given who his brother was, Andromeda nodded at Cygnus and confronted the Phoenix. "Saint Haisaku,… if you don't mind me asking, who are you praying for?"

"My son, Dohko." she analogized, bearing no real blood ties.

This needed more answers. "Why?"

With her thoughts on her student and her student alone, Haisaku was able to answer this easily. She opened her eyes briefly, revealing irises made red by the Phoenix's curse. "Because, with this armor, I will be passing down a terrible burden unto him."

The volcano shook harder with this, as if the finishing of a particular prayer from the woman's part incited the wrath of the island itself. In reality, it was merely signaling that contact was finally established between the Sage and the armor.

Defteros' voice came into Haisaku's mind. "Mm-mm-mm, this is an interesting adversary you've sent me to stop, Phoenix. One or two more Galaxian Explosions and I'm sure I'll have to start improvising against him." Defteros commented, likely still battling Lucifer. "I now understand your intentions, coming here. Dohko would never defeat opponents like these with the feeble power you've trained in him. Only something like this would motivate a mother to send her 'son' to his death with that armor!"

"Thank you for coming, Defteros. Mankind will forever owe you this."

"On top of everything it already owes me." The fallen Gemini made sure to remind, bitter about his cruel fate. "I'm sure, though, that my former Libra colleague will be the one you will owe the most to, HA, HA, HA, HA!"

Feeling her heart stabbed by Kanon Island demon's cruel laughter, Haisaku began her second set of summoning prayers, destined to release the seals she placed on the lava-drowned object. "Athena, forgive me for my sins, but the hounds of war have been unleashed and the fate of mankind is once again at stake. The time for my final redemption has come."

Sensitive to the feelings of dread in her cosmos, Andromeda pressed his questioning harder. "Dohko sent us inside to protect you, but that's not all, is it? He wanted us to find out… what you're really doing."

The praying woman thought only of whom she loved. "This is not a burden that can be passed lightly. If I want Dohko to live, to forgive me for what I have done, and to not turn into the draconic monster Seiryu has, I have to ensure every tool is available to him to win this war for Athena… and prevent the death of more of his friends."

"That's foolish! That's what we are here for!" Cygnus interfered. He struggled not to make direct mentions of his God Cloth powers. "Sage Haisaku, me and Shun are not all-powerful, but…we arrived unto this war with Athena precisely to save those Hades has victimized!"

But the Sage's head shook and her following words made justice to her title of wisdom. "No, you won't. You're not allowed to."

Andromeda took a deep breath and gulped, fearing she figured out they were not from this time period. "… Why do you say that?"

A reflecting beat came before her next words. "Ever since I've met you two… I've noticed your goodwill and your strength. I think you two and Shiryu are wonderful Saints and you've already changed much in this war for the better. With the Princes out on the battlefield, I think that, without you, a lot more of us would be gone, and I see the change in Dohko's eyes when he speaks of Shiryu. The very presence of that boy seems to heal him of Suikyo's death." She elaborated. "But I've also noticed your hesitations, the looks you give one another, the looks Athena gives you, your euphemisms, and… your excuses."

"What do you mean?" Cygnus led, fearing the worst.

She turned her head slightly as if to glance over her shoulder at them but stopped herself before her face could be seen.

"You're barred from helping, aren't you? You three can only do so much." she confronted, paralyzing them. "I don't know yet who you really are… but I understand now that something is stopping you three from truly helping. You've been withholding information about yourselves and the war. You're way more powerful than you let on and you have some sort of commitment to Athena preventing you from doing your absolute best. If I were crazy, I'd guess Chronos did a complete reversal of his distaste for us and sent the three of you to help Sanctuary from the future."

The two Saints exchanged looks. Neither had the heart to lie to her directly. More stoic, Hyoga tried to. "Sage Haisaku, we-"

Her head shook and she interrupted him. "Saint Hyoga, I'm not one to blame you, but I also can't in good conscience put Dohko's life in your hands. We that are capable of acting have the responsibility to be the change we want to see in the world." And she stared down at the lava, where her greatest treasure for Dohko awaited. "And the change I want to see is my 'son' surviving these horrible Princes."

As she said this, the lava below suddenly began to glow strangely, exchanging the orange light in a large round spot of it into a golden one!

"Hyoga, look!" Andromeda called, gasping. "Do you feel that cosmos?!"

The white-armored Bronze Saint's jaw dropped, feeling the new heat of power below. He had never sensed anything like this!

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With his face soaked in blood, Kagaho roared and flew at Dohko with a raised fist immersed in blackfire, hammering it down on the Gold Saint's parrying shield to no avail. He shouted furiously as he tried to penetrate the Gold Saint's blocking with a series of lightning-fast jabs that scorched the shiny surfaces of the Libra Cloth, but the Gold Saint resisted the strikes with a disciplined forearm while slowly backing away, luring the Bennu into a trap. As predicted, the Bennu over swung his next punch and Dohko countered by bobbing under the strike, dragging his foot into the enemy's area, and delivered a devastating Rozan uppercut at the Specter that crushed his black cuirass against his stomach.

Kagaho screamed and backed away, holding his pained body, more blood dripping from his lips. He tried to maintain his blackfire aura, but Dohko was relentless, lunging at him like a tiger with a knee blow that bashed his head to the ground. Dohko then unleashed a penetrating tiger paw blow that Kagaho attempted to parry with an arm cross, but it burst right through his cosmos aura with its watery energy, further weakening the Specter. The Libra's next three strikes pinned the Bennu back, who couldn't even gather his fire cosmos properly, such was the disadvantage he had against this new Dohko. He furiously tried to kick the Gold Saint only to not only miss the attack over the tiger's head but expose himself to the Saint's next move.

"RYU SHO!" Dohko shouted, blasting the airborne Specter away with the forward-shooting dragon move, flying him back against the volcano's burning ground with a burst of water cosmos that broke the ground apart. The emerald energy of the move was bright and emanated strength, immersed in its owner's very lifeforce, and bit down on the victim's body as if the Surplice, the object of death, wasn't even there to defend the Bennu.

Dohko watched as basalt boulders collapsed on the adversary and panted. He was winning the fight, but putting lifeforce into his cosmos had consequences and he was suffering much more physical tiredness from battling than he usually would.

An explosion of flames ripped the rubble apart and Kagaho raged to the skies in its midst. He eyed Dohko hatefully. "H-HOW?! How are you so strong now?! Your cosmos is just the same!"

The tiger smirked nervously. "Hm, it figures a Specter would be completely numb to this kind of power, having made a deal with death as you have, Kagaho! Perhaps a lesson is in order!" And he dashed at the Specter. "ROZAN! -"

Kagaho staggered, fearing for himself for the first time in a battle against Dohko, and desperately tried to keep the Libra's off close-range fighting by shooting his widest attack. "C-CRUCIFY ANKH!"

The sharp tiger's eyes saw the five large darts of black fire flying right at him in complex patterns, but he was undeterred. He twisted his body in his dash to propel himself like a rifled cannonball, allowing him to angle his leap over through the narrowest gap between the fire stakes, reaching the distance he needed to attack!

Kagaho gasped and stepped back in sudden terror!

But the tiger had already closed in! "- SHORYUHA!"

The dragon's roar was heard, briefly turning the dark, burning air of Death Queen Island into a tinge of emerald, and the superpowered uppercut struck Kagaho's unprotected chin with a thunderous sound clap, projecting the image of a Chinese Dragon biting down on a large bird's neck. The Specter's body went numb. The impact's force cracked his armor all over, his blood sprayed out of his body as the rising force of the blow overwhelmed his whole self like a reversed waterfall. His body was sent flying before falling back down on the blackened volcanic ground with a dropping quake.

The obsidian clouds over the mountain cracked thunder in response to Dohko's triumph and began letting down their acid drizzle over the island. The Gold Saint's foot stomped down on the fallen Specter, signifying his win and pinning the dangerous adversary.

Kagaho grasped his boot frustratedly, but his body was so weakened he couldn't budge the hated Libra off him. His humiliated mind went through all possible scenarios of what could have gone wrong. In their last encounter, Dohko couldn't even take on Corona Blast with his strongest move. Now Dohko was seemingly winded but completely victorious. All Kagaho could think of other than this was how much he was letting Alone down.

The pain of it was unbearable. "D-Damn you… DAMN YOU!" he raged, causing his hands to ignite into burning palms that failed to harm the armored foot. "You injured Alone! You and that w-witch will pay, Dohko! Even if it's the last thing I do! This war won't end without me taking both of your heads!"

The Libra stared at the loser in contempt and awe at his blind rage. He could practically feel the anger in Kagaho's chest under his foot. "I-It's over, Kagaho, you've LOST! You tried to cause more pain to me and my friends and you failed!" the Libra ranted. Kagaho had half-blinded Rasgado and swore loyalty to Alone, the one who first murdered Tenma in Italy. "Have some dignity and admit defeat, or are you too much of a fallen soul to even do that?!"

"Y-you are the fallen souls!" Kagaho accused, spitting blood at the Libra. "You Saints are stopping Alone's paradise from coming true because you think everything that comes out of Athena's filthy mouth is wool spun into gold!"

"You keep saying Alone and never Hades, Kagaho! You think I haven't noticed?!" Dohko accused, remembering moments like Kagaho declaring he didn't identify with the other Specters or paid mind to what the Judges wanted. The fallen Asmita had also noticed Kagaho was different from the rest of the Specters in their battle after the 'Kageboshi incident'. "You've attached yourself to Alone and him specifically, unlike the other Specters! If you're trying to convince me you haven't lost faith in that murderous God yourself, you're barking up the wrong tree!"

The Bennu froze, feeling caught.

"You're not evil, or a nihilist, you're just an angry kid! Even Rasgado could see that!" He couldn't believe what he was doing, reasoning with a Specter. "You've fallen into the lies of people like Hades and those Princes! Don't you see that?"

The very notion of it revolted the Bennu. "Fuck you!"

"DARK REVENGE BLAST!"

Before they could continue to argue, the entire island shook and the air briefly went white with light, blinding them. The two warriors staggered and Dohko squinted, making sure to keep Kagaho pinned, but as air slowly darkened back down, he gasped when he saw the massive explosion dome receding down below at a far-off spot in the island's lower magma fields. It was a shrinking core of purple and dark with crackling blue sparks, like an almighty attack of Darkness and Lightning had just gone off. Dohko's 7th sense reeled in reaction to it.

Along with it, Defteros' cosmos was gone from the battlefield.

Kagaho laughed coarsely. "Y-you just ran out of time, D-Dohko!"

The Gold Saint's eyes shifted between the Bennu and the source of the light, unsure what move to make for a brief second. In that brief second, a cosmos spiked down below, like someone charging a large amount of energy in a concentrated point, before it went off in a snap.

All Dohko detected was a zipping, bullet-like missile going at him before Lucifer's dark foot struck his stomach so hard all the air left his lungs and the Gold Saint was harshly pinned against the volcano's side by the maddened demon, pressing into the mountain and collapsing its surface. The Gold Saint gasped, feeling his body shocked in contact with the Daemon Specter, and his dizzied eyes saw a furious, red-eyed prince glaring down on him with injuries all over from his battle with Defteros.

The Prince's hands grabbed the Libra and held him up harshly against the wall. The brother of Aspros' fate was uncertain now, but he had certainly done a number on the Prince, who presented several bleeding scratches and injuries in the uncovered parts of his body. Dohko grabbed the enemy's wrists, burning his cosmos, but even though it burned Lucifer's flesh, the Specter was so maddingly furious and frustrated that he barely even noticed.

"W-WHERE ARE THEY?!" Lucifer roared.

Dohko was appalled at this turn of the tide, but refused to give in. "What did you do to D-Defteros?!"

The Prince's hands ignited with blue electricity out of sheer rage, shocking the Saint. "YOU'LL JOIN HIM IN THE DEPTHS OF HELL IF YOU DON'T TALK!"

Kagaho struggled to get back up, holding his injured body. "T-They went inside the volcano, Prince! They're going to summon the armor!"

Dohko saw Lucifer's face turn away at Kagaho and took the chance! "R-RYU SHO!" he punched the Devil's face harder than he ever has. His new powers took the devil by surprise just enough to dislodge him off the Gold Saint, giving Dohko space to breathe and assume a fighting stance. He saw Lucifer recover right away and furiously face him back and the Saint would be lying if he didn't feel a chill down his spine. "Round two of today it is!" he tried to encourage himself.

Lucifer rubbed his bruised cheek and spat a bit of blood out before he saw his underlying trembling in pain behind him. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE! STOP THEM!" he roared, getting the Bennu to stagger and rush inside the volcano right away. The rattled Daemon then faced the tiger. "As for you… I'm making sure you and your Weapons are taken off this war's chessboard now! Prepare to join Sisyphus in hell, Dohko!"

The tiger stance was assumed, exposing Dohko's tense fingers in the air like feline claws. A true test to his new strength has arrived. "You're not getting inside that volcano!"

But Lucifer's main point of counter argue was the mere release of his cosmos in the form of an expanding sludge of darkness spreading in all directions from his feet, swamping the volcanic ground. A blood-red aura of killing intent was alight on the surface of the Specter's armor and the images of a dragon facing off an overwhelming, pitchfork-wielding demon emerged in the background.

Confident in his superiority, Lucifer smirked. "You're wrong, Dohko, not only will I enter there with ease-" and he stood up straight to accentuate his feeling of advantage. "-but by today's end, I'll kill you, those Godslayers will be dead, the armor in that volcano taken and Tenma reunited with death's cold embrace!"

Dohko staggered. "Tenma?... What did you do?!"

The Daemon's shoulders shook in laughter. "You've all gone too far… and my Master has gotten involved. He and Hypnos have taken control of the war from Alone and already death itself is moving its chess pieces against you! As we speak, your student is walking into the forests around Pandora's Castle with his stupid friends, and Lord Thanatos is watching his every move… very closely!"

Dohko's face went pale and his eyes widened. "NO!" and he expanded his aura, determined to punch through Lucifer to go save Tenma if he had to!

Lucifer's arm swept aside, barring passage. "IT'S TOO LATE! I'd worry about myself, if I were you!" he provoked. "No one will help you here now, Dohko! Not Athena, not Rasgado, not Asmita, not Sisyphus, and not even that Dragon Godslayer! You all made the ultimate mistake coming here, but don't worry… once the dead of Sanctuary reaches the roofs of your temples, I will gladly govern Hades' Empire on Earth for him from Sasha's seat! It will be an empire of death, the like of which would petrify even a Saint of Cancer, with all the weak and corrupt booted off the ship into the darkness of Tartarus, and the golden age of Sanctuary returned forever!"

The Gold Saint blinked. He no longer understood a single thing about this man. "Who… Who are you?!"

His red eyes squinted. "I am he who Athena owes a debt of destiny to!... And I've come to claim it!"

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The Present

The False Holy War

Sanctuary, Golden Zodiac,

Temple of Leo

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Alraune Lemon tapped his armored foot impatiently. "Where is it?!"

The scores of Skeletons gathered around and exchanged looks nervously. "…We've searched the Temple top to bottom. The Cloth of Leo isn't here."

"We have to move on." Sphinx Neferti argued. "If it isn't here, it isn't here. It's far more important that we take the temple itself. The sooner their defenses against lightspeed are wholly compromised, the sooner we can get our Specters to skip the rest of the temples."

"We are five temples deep and are yet to capture a single Gold Cloth!" Lemon then lashed out his plant tendril cutting off a large nearby pillar in a fit of frustration, loudly tumbling it to the ground. "And now the House of Aries has been broken into! Does that sound like something that couldn't be helped?!"

Neferti saw the men made increasingly nervous by Lemon's complaining. "Exactly, five deep! Do you know how much that is?! It's further than any of the real Specters got in the Lost Canvas War! And we still have most of our men with us! Now stop sounding like a scared girl and try to act like you have men in charge of!" she ranted, stunning the Alraune. She then looked at the Skeletons. "We are triumphing over Sanctuary, men. Taking over the Virgo Temple with our numbers is a foregone conclusion. Once we get more than six armors out of their Houses, it's checkmate for the Pope! Remember who leads you; the man who defied Hades!"

The Skeletons looked at each other and gradually nodded, recalling their past victories.

Squinting, the Alraune Specter quieted down. He got a measure of how fragile the men were getting and that's what he wanted. "The only thing that's going to encourage them is me cutting off Virgo's head, Neferti. Until then it's all a bunch of talk from Daemon."

Her hand waved at the exit to the next stairs. "By all means!"

They all then watched and followed Alraune Lemon out of the House. Sphinx stared at her False Specter brother-in-arms with dejection. He was making his intentions more than obvious, but no one, from Behemoth Torak down to Cait Sith Palug, would ever think of taking his side over someone who literally saved all of them from certain doom.

Yet, what was happening certainly concerned her. "Lord Lucifer, we are advancing to Virgo. The Cloth of Leo is out of its Temple. We're not sure where to."

The leader, which she presumed to be already at the Cancer House, responded quickly. "Fine, we can work with that for now. I'll be heading up there myself soon enough."

Neferti blinked, surprised at how calm the Prince was. "Lord Lucifer, are you not upset?"

"I am,… but I think that there's definitely something going on behind the scenes now. The attack on Aries was no coincidence. I'm sure this is all Shion's doing." He argued. "Sanctuary is full of hidden passages, but hiding the Cloths from us is far from enough to stop me. With every single one that they hide away from their Houses, the blessings of Athena to protect this place become weaker and weaker… Soon, just like Priam did at the festival, I will be able to strike the Pope's Halls directly."

Her concern rose to the surface. "Is Torak going to be okay?"

There was a short thinking pause. "Yes. Even if my calculations about the Gold Saints' intentions are incorrect, Behemoth is much stronger than he gets credit for. His regenerating Surplice will certainly render all their best efforts to weaken him pointless. Taurus will be secured sooner or later, and the Cancer Saint will be captured, either by him or by Ainsel."

Ainsel then interjected in the conversation. "Hopefully me."

Neferti headed for the exit. "One more thing, Prince… You've prepared us for these Gold Saints, but Virgo is still the one most feared in all the Underworld. Is there something we should keep in mind about him?"

The Prince spent a few moments collecting his thoughts before answering. The reality was that he had never faced a Virgo Saint in battle. They had been Michael's prerogative. "Don't attack foolishly. If possible, find a way to get the men past him while keeping him occupied. Depending on how experienced this generation already is, I may have to interfere myself."

"Understood." She then headed out, before musing to herself. "Damn you, Torak… why are you taking so long to get out of Taurus?!..."

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Taurus Temple

Entrance

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The unarmored Gold Saint of Cancer rushed up the stairs to Taurus, seeing the golden flashes coming from its innards. The tremors made him stumble on the steep steps.

"Hang on, Aldebaran! I'm almost there!" he shouted out, more to himself than anyone.

Finally reaching the entrance to the massive building, Lance irked worryingly upon seeing the shattered door lock and the massive gateway ajar. The interior was supposed to be dark, but instead, a big fissure in the ceiling let starlight in. Lance cautiously made his way inside, stepping over rubble and keeping his 7th sense active. He had to cross the starting corridors to reach the fabled Halls of Daedalus, where the fighting seemed to be going on at.

The place was a mess. "What… happened here?" he wondered. When Orion's Ray was fired by Aiolos, Lance was still back at the Green Valley, where he encountered Adriana, so he didn't see the attack landing on the Taurus Temple himself. Therefore, to him, it all looked like a result of the ongoing battle and Lance was extra cautious in crossing the final passage to the Halls, fearing that a Specter or Skeleton could be around to ambush him.

The tremors and flashes of golden light had suddenly stopped.

Lance's heart skipped a worrying beat.

Guilty's laughter echoed in his mind, sounding through Seiryu's seal with the force of his failure.

He rushed ahead at the big final doors. Suddenly, the wooden gates burst from the inside, startling Lance and landing a large, armored person right at his feet. The red-eyed youth gasped, seeing the tall, young Taurus trainee white-eyed and unresponsive. His helmet was cracked and missing one of the horns, while the rest of his armor was soaked in blood and fragments of rubble.

The Cancer Saint held the fallen Taurus and shook him carefully. "Aldebaran, NO, WAKE UP! WHO DID THIS?! ALDEBARAN!"

To answer him, a shadowy figure loudly landed before them, collapsing the ground under his feet and with a body still burning with the mighty cosmos that blasted the Taurus through the door. Lance gritted teeth furiously and stepped up at the threat, seeing it rise like a black-armored hulk.

Torak beheld the new adversary as he showcased his healing Surplice. "You're too late."

Immediately, golden fire roused all around Lance as his face twisted in anger, his fists cringing harshly. "Who the fuck are you and what did you do?!"

The warrior's chin rose proudly. "I am Torak, the Specter of Behemoth, Prince Lucifer's loyal champion!" He then pointed his finger at the intruder. "And I've just finished conquering this House for our master! SHADOW SEWING!"

Lance gasped and stepped back, seeing a vortex of shadows shooting out of the fingertip and closing in to swallow him!

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Chapter 55

Second Arc

Episode 18

The House of the Dead – Part 2 of 2

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The torrent of shadows screeched through the air and closed in on the burning Saint, who leaped back with an urgent flip, avoiding the sharp swings of the unknown attack! They pursued him, seeming as if trying to grab at his limbs, and his feet and hand scratched the marble ground with rock-melting cosmos as he gathered his thoughts and rage at the newfound threat, slowing his momentum.

Immediately upon coming to a halt, a ball of power formed in his hand, and his body slingshot right back towards Torak! "YOU BASTARD!" The Specter widened his eyes at the sight of the intruder dashing through the narrow gaps of Shadow Sewing and made a gesture of a closing fist, causing the attack to collapse unto the charging enemy. But Lance's body speed accelerated so suddenly and so high that the timing missed him and he slipped through still as his closed hand turned into a golden thunderbolt. "LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!"

The image of a knight on a winged horse with a thunder-tipped spear projected itself and Torak gritted his teeth, crossed his arms, and took the impact of the blow head-on! The air loudly clapped and his body was rammed back by the Saint, feet furiously dragging through the rumbling ground as he attempted to absorb the brutal amount of energy the attack carried. The behemoth felt his arm protection sinking with the force and his back rapidly closing against the uneven ground, where he would surely be dug into!

With a roar, the Specter pulled to the side as hard as he could, slipping out of the blow's vectorial force and letting Lance crash through the ground. The Specter was completely taken by surprise and his vision briefly trembled, recovering from the force he was just subjected to. , but he barely had time to process this threat before the defenseless fighter was already leaping right at him!

Lance's foot swung as hard as possible against the Specter's raised forearm, clanking his armor, and a maddened overhead punch ripped right through the Surplice's relatively small headpiece, smashing Torak against the ground with cratering force. Torak screamed, feeling his face burn with the strange force the invader was applying to his cosmos, unaware he was battling someone in the infancy of applying his life force into his moves, but he kept enough sense to roll away from the Specter before he got blasted by a ball of cosmos that Lance smashed against the floor, erupting it with a bursting dome of fire cosmos.

Torak collected himself and laughed at the sight of the enraged intruder surrounded by the flames of the blast.

"AH, AH, AH, yes! A real battle! Just when I thought I'd get bored of Saints after beating the life out of that Taurus!" he baited, and Lance promptly took it, blitzing right at Torak with a punch that the Specter saw coming a mile away and caught with his hand. Lance swung his other one but the much calmer adversary caught it too, arresting the Saint. "There, there…!"

Lance swung his knee up so hard that Torak's entire head recoiled back with the impact on the chin, making the Specter scream and release the Saint. A murderously mad elbow blow then swung right through Torak's guard and struck him right in the chest with meteor-like force, making the air go out of the Specter's lungs.

The hulking man shook and his foot stepped back, seemingly about to collapse under the damage he was being subjected to.

But his fist tightened all of a sudden and exploded on the unarmored Lance, who screamed as he got sent flying back at the Halls' walls, loudly denting them upon contact before rolling on the ground in pain.

Torak chuckled as he watched the armor-less intruder squirm and hold his injured body. "You're strong, but you're a fool to fight me without your armor, whoever you are. You must be the cosmos I felt tearing through our men at Aries just now, correct?"

Lance eyed him hatefully, having no intention to answer any of his questions.

The Specter staggered, noticing for the first time that he was marked by a curse just like the Prince was. It didn't matter though. As far as he knew, the Saint had red eyes because he pissed off some witch like Erika.

Torak pointed at him again. He had wasted enough time here with some fool without armor. "SHADOW SEWING!"

This time, the battered Saint was unprepared to react to the very shadow beneath his feet rising from the ground! "What THE- AGH!" he screamed as he felt hands of shadow clasp around his neck, wrists, heels, waist, and any other body part he could use to project physical force through. He struggled against it, but it felt like the more force he put into it, the harder the shadows would tighten. "D-DAMN IT! What the f-fuck is this?!"

"It's my way to get rid of the wastes of time like you," Torak explained. "Your Taurus friend broke out of them immediately, but I suppose you'd have to be a real Gold Saint to do it. So which are you, stranger? Some cocky silver who thought he could earn a promotion? I heard Sanctuary had some sort of edict against that…"

With his body completely arrested, Lance was forced to let his mind cool down from seeing Aldebaran potentially dead. He tried to remember what Adriana told him about getting baited so easily and analyzed his adversary. The confident Specter was sporting a rhinoceros-shaped Surplice which he assumed to be Behemoth, just out of the process of elimination of the big beast Underworld armors he had read of. He tried to think of what he knew about it, but the little he bothered to learn during peacetime escaped his memory.

Therefore, it was with much shock that he saw the cracks he caused on the Surplice's chest and forearm suddenly burn up with shadowy flames and mend back up, sizzling as the metallic wounds disappeared.

Like always, Torak enjoyed the look of shock and terror in his adversaries upon encountering Behemoth's healing hide. "So now you know my secret, Saint…" he mocked.

Lance squinted in realization. He began charging his energy discreetly in his hand. "So that's how you beat Aldebaran! I knew no one would just walk out a battle with him untouched like that!"

"You have a lot of faith in your friend, but I'm afraid it wouldn't make a difference, Saint," Torak assured. He then turned his shoulder over and showed off the spot where the Orion Ray had impacted on, which had a sharp scratch on it. The injury looked serious, but didn't seem to bother the Specter in the slightest. "You see, I didn't train myself with the expectation of having this armor cover for me. Its regeneration has limits like everything does, and the body of a weakling like that who relies on his armor wouldn't have survived Sagittarius' cowardly attack on us, much less crushed Taurus this thoroughly."

Formulating a plan to get rid of his restraints, Lance tensed his hand and bided for a bit more time. "Give me a break! I have a hard time imagining a worthwhile warrior picking the side of these lunatics!"

Torak found the accusation strange. Was the Saint pretending to be dumb? "Oh, I suppose you're assuming all of us just inherited our strength from our Surplices, like Specters usually do, but you couldn't be more wrong," he bragged. "The Specters of Lord Lucifer, and me in particular, have tempered their might in the harshness of our fate in the Underworld. Make no mistake, Saint; I am mightier than Violate herself."

Even if this name meant anything to Lance, he wouldn't care. "So fucking what?! You think that makes you any different than the crazy murderers I took out at Aries?!" he confronted. "How will that make you sleep better at night, you murderer?!"

But the Specter was adamant. "…You Saints ought to know, you intruded into our affairs first."

Lance staggered with the outrageous swerve. "What?!"

Torak's brows tensed, recalling the night he let the Crow Saint escape with Eurydice, the night Griffon Urial was murdered by Herakles when retrieving them. "I lost the one person I still genuinely admired in this world because of Saints who sought to have their way in Specter lands, so spare me the tears about casualties, kid. There's no fairness to be had in war."

The Cancer Saint paused in reflection. "I don't know what you're talking about… but even if you weren't full of shit, that still-"

"I agree, it's in the past." Torak interrupted, surprising Lance, and he proudly lifted his chin as he conveyed his discovery. "I came here with half a mind of serving my new Master and half a mind of getting revenge. But after defeating your friend, I've found I've taken very little satisfaction of it, despite his loose association with Herakles. Instead, I've taken comfort in something else."

Lance wasn't at all interested in entertaining the Specter's delusions, but he needed to drop the tall bastard's guard a bit more. "In what?"

Behemoth expanded his smirk. "In that, I'm now stronger than Urial… and don't need to be in his shadow anymore. I've defeated the Taurus Saint with barely an effort, and I feel ready to take on several more Gold Saints on the way up!" he confessed, shaking his shoulders in chuckling. Lance saw him relaxing with this and tensed his hand into a chop. "I've discovered that, with this new strong leader and me surpassing Gryphon's strength, that I don't need to feel so lost anymore, and can now revel in the destruction of this decadent place. Something purer will replace it… a Sanctuary of strength!"

"BLADE!" Lance shouted, purposely overcharging the technique, blinding the Specter with the large golden flash created by the technique's energy and slicing through Shadow Sewing's grip.

Behemoth recoiled back, grunting and covering his eyes in strain before lunging towards the struggling Saint. "Y-You-!" but Lance dodged the huge overhead punch and raised his cosmos weapon in an upwards slice that cut through the man's chest plate, digging into his flesh. "A-AGH!"

Putting his weight unto the large adversary with the force of his lunge, Lance tumbled him down to the ground and tried to dig his hand deeper into the Specter! Torak grabbed his wrist and fought against it, trying to kick him off. "I don't have time to lose here! I'm taking you out and then your stupid new Master!"

Torak winced and used his superior strength to push him off. "You ignorant fool! You don't know who you're screw-!"

"I KNOW FUCKING WELL! And I'm sick of that line from you people!"

"You just made a big mistake! S-SHADOW SEWING!" Torak recalled, causing the shadows behind Lance to reform and wave up at him.

But the Saint was prepared and his charged blue fire into his other hand. "Time to go home, asshole! PRAESEPE UNDERWORLD WAVE!"

Torak gasped in shock at the revelation of who he was fighting and he immediately felt the gate to the Underworld being opened above them, ready to pull them in! "N-NO!" In a desperate effort, he made the Shadow Sewing shades envelop both of them and take in the effect of the waves of power casted by Lance.

To the Cancer Saint's surprise, he looked up and saw Shadow Sewing being sucked into a crack in the air to the Underworld Wave, practically clogging it up. "W-what?!"

Torak then roared and punched the Saint across the face as hard as he could, sending him flying right off of him and taking the hand blade off his new wound with a pained groan from the False Specter. The shadows screeched as they filled up the passage to Presaepe and the gate collapsed unto himself, unsupported by its stunned caster and unable to process the dark spectral matter.

The two warriors both slowly recovered and got up, exchanging looks of equal hate and confusion.

"What… what the fuck?!" Lance exclaimed.

"You're the Cancer Saint?!" Torak finally recognized.

Collecting himself, the Saint began noticing a pattern. "That's right… and you Specters sure seem worried about getting sent back to the Well! Anything we should know about that?!"

The rhino-armored man refused to respond. Letting the Saints know of their nature as False Specters could expose some kind of vital weakness or, worse, make them pull forces away from Pandora's Castle towards Crow's Nest. However, they had to take this guy out before he interrupted Erika's work further or sent one of them straight into Pandora's hands.

He held his chest wound which bled over the crack in his armor. Thanks to the Surplice, the hand didn't manage to pierce deep enough to reach vital organs, but a wound was a wound. "U-UGH!..."

Lance squinted at the incremental restoration. "His armor isn't regenerating that opening as quickly? Why?" He then realized the only different factor, as far as he could tell, was that he sent those shadows away. "Was he using Shadow Sewing's shades as fuel for the Surplice's healing?"

He held his ear and searched for Papillion. "Ainsel, I've found the Cancer Saint, he's here with me at Taurus! Tell Daemon immediately!"

Lance could tell from the obvious body language he was contacting his friends, but the way his wave was countered was equally worrying. So that's what that technique is made of… the shadows of the dead! Fitting for a fucking Specter. Suddenly, he gasped when the ground suddenly shook and the shadows of the pillars and their bodies gripped Lance's legs, pulling them back to trip him down on the floor.

Torak walked up to him. "I can control any shadow! Not just of those I've killed and kept in my Surplice's cosmos!" Torak revealed. "They're not as good, but they'll do the trick until I send you flying up to Ainsel with your bones broken!"

The Saint struggled against the flimsy grips, releasing himself of some with much more ease only for them to get swarmed by countless other makeshift hands. "S-Son of a bitch! Get off me!"

Torak squinted. "You insulted my Surplice, Saint, so let me show you…the move with the strength of the colossal beast!" he then clasped his hands and formed a strange shape with them, joining his index and pinky fingers up to form horns and stretching his thumbs outwards to allude to ears. Upon making them burn with cosmos, Lance realized it was the shape of a rhino head. "MOUNTAINOUS CHAOS!"

The roar of the ferocious beast that withstood the bolts of Zeus was heard and Lance was awed by the projected sight of a shadowy rhinoceros monster surrounding Torak, whose hands then fired off a massive shockwave of ripping dark energy waves. His 7th sense reeled, feeling a force powerful enough to destroy the entire temple about to run him over like an oncoming train.

Yet, the ground shook once more and a dense figure leaped over Lance to collide with the attack, stopping it in its tracks with a forceful shower of gold that made Torak's attack explode!

Torak recoiled, guarded his eyes against the blast, and widened them. "What?! It can't be!"

Lance was agape. "A… Aldebaran!"

The mighty Saint of Taurus held out his arms and roared, holding back Mountainous Chaos with the sheer shockwave of his aura, his loud bellow echoing through the halls. His hands then came down on the core of the energy attack, grabbing it like a bull's horns, and the bloodied guardian of the second House made use of his unmatched strength to pull the blow away from his upstairs neighbor, tossing it at the walls of the Hall of Daedalus before it exploded.

The Behemoth Torak stared at his adversary as the light faded, seeing the half-dead Taurus panting as if he didn't believe he pulled that off. "So you'd rather die hard…"

Lance was in disbelief. "Aldebaran…"

"Where the hell is Mu?!" The Taurus complained. He pointed at his broken horn. "See this? He's supposed to be guarding the first House, for Athena's sake!"

The fake outrage managed to uplift Lance slightly, reassuring him of Aldebaran's spirits still being solid. "I left him with Saint Ophiuchus. He had a scare with the Papillion Specter, but he's okay. I'd say he's more worried about you right now than you are of him."

The Specter gritted teeth and burned his cosmos. "I don't know how you're still alive, but this time I'll be sure to kick your head off your shoulders if I have to!"

The two Saints saw the enraged aura of shadows summoned by the Specter. He clearly meant to stop messing around. Lance glanced at Taurus worryingly. "We can take him out quicker if we work together, Aldebaran!"

The youth nodded. "Agreed. The faster I rid my house of this guy, the better. I'd have done it by now if I could just get a good attack through that thick Surplice of his!"

After storming all the way from Twin Peaks Mountain in Nepal to Sanctuary in time to help him, Lance wasn't about to just take this. "He's got that annoying healing, but I'm pretty sure my Underworld Wave neutralized it somehow just now. If we combine our efforts, I'm sure we can take him out in just a few blows now!"

The Taurus rubbed his nose cockily. "…Is that so?"

Meanwhile, the Behemoth Specter finished gathering his strength and planned in his head how to teach these two Golds a lesson. If they thought he would be beaten by sheer numbers, they were absolutely wrong, and would learn the terror of a False Specter's stren-

"Torak?" Ainsel called, sternly.

The black-haired warrior irked, frustrated.

"You know what you've been ordered to, Torak." Ainsel reminded him. "Are you going to jeopardize the Prince's battle plan? Get that Gold up to me now."

The huge Specter's body shook in infighting. His rage told him to crush these two Saints under his foot, but the idea of facing the Prince's wrath bore a lot of weight.

And to the Saint's surprise, his aura canceled out and his body relaxed.

Torak eyed the red-eyed Gold. "You should go on ahead, Cancer… before I change my mind!"

The teenager scoffed. "Who cares what you think?!"

Torak didn't like having to do this, either, but the Prince's authority was supreme. "I'm sure those little brats up the stairs do… Or are you going to let them die for you?"

Lance staggered, reminded of the danger Aiolia and Mephisto were in. He wasn't sure if this Specter knew about them specifically, but if the Fire Clock was anything to go by, the enemy was storming through their temples as he stood there. However, he also couldn't just leave Aldebaran to his fight after coming all this way.

The Taurus, however, seeing the conflict in his face, intervened. "I can handle this. You should go up."

The Cancer didn't even entertain this. "Forget it, I didn't come all this way to-"

The younger Taurus stood up to him, though. "I'm trained in my armor, Aiolia is not! I can fight a darn Specter, Mephisto cannot!" he mentally reasoned with him. "Me, Camus and Shura had teachers to prepare us for these moments. Those guys up the stairs, on the other hand, were never supposed to be in a fight!"

"Don't be a brat! I walked in here with you unconscious!" Lance bit back.

The horned Gold Saint, however, looked away in a sweat. "It was a strategy." he lied. The problem was, neither of them were sure their friends were being evacuated in time, especially with how stubborn their Gold Cloths were being that night about staying in their houses.

"You're just as young as they are and barely experienced. You think I'm just going to leave you here to get killed by this guy?!"

This was a mistake.

Feeling his pride as a Taurus bellow up inside him, Aldebaran roused his aura and folded his arms, releasing a startling amount of energy and ready to monopolize the fight with Torak. "Experience?... Master Daniel taught me to be the guard of the second house! It's a position where one has to be ready for everything, experience or not, eight years old or eighty! A position where you let no one get through, too strong for you or not! Do you see these walls around you?" he remarked, referring to the engravings on the Halls of Daedalus. "They are marked with all kinds of warriors that faced unsurmountable odds and prevailed! I'm not about to be the first one to shy away from it!"

Lance was revolted. "Why the hell would you subject yourself to that risk?!"

He glanced back. "Because if I do that, you can go up there and save more lives…! This Behemoth is not the only dangerous one!" Aldebaran pointed out, having seen the entirety of the enemy force pass by him. "I already let all those guys through against everything my house stands for! Please, let me make up for it!"

The red-eyed Cancer Saint was stunned. Was it really that important to Aldebaran for him to do this?

Seeing his friend unconvinced, Aldebaran drove his final argument. "Besides… I was mostly having trouble with all that armor regeneration. Thank you for taking care of that. I can handle the rest."

Lance hesitantly stepped past him. He stared at the bull-horned Saint, searching for something to appeal to. "…Are you sure you can take him on?"

Aldebaran huffed like an angry bull and observed the Specter adversary. While he was unconscious for those brief minutes, his powerful battle instincts had actually allowed him to notice a couple of details of Lance's battle with him, the same way he awoke in response to the presence of Specters earlier against the magic of Nightmare Sonar. They now knew how the Behemoth Surplice regeneration worked and Aldebaran countered the Mountainous Chaos on his first try.

So of course he could take the arrogant Specter on! "Hell, yeah!"

The teenager swallowed hard, feeling the weight of the risk he was taking. "…Don't you dare be wrong about this!" and he rushed across the Halls of Daedalus.

Torak gave Lance a poisonous look as he did. "You won't get past Ainsel… and even if you do, I'll go up there after getting rid of Taurus and snap your neck, Cancer!"

"Fuck you, too, Jaws!" Lance wished back as he made his way out to the stairs.

The Specter stared with bewilderment.

"I think he means the James Bond Jaws, not the shark." Aldebaran explained. "We watched the movie together a while back. Teachers always think I'm older than I am. I'll be honest, you kind of remind me of him, too."

Torak gritted teeth loudly and charged his next attack. "BRUTAL REAL!" he roared, lunging at the Taurus.

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Leo Temple,

Entrance

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Hidden by the cave to the secret passage off to the right side of the Leo Temple, Shinta's group awaited and observed the movements of the Specters, trying to find the right opportunity to make their entry into the conflict. Aiolia tugged the Leo box closely as if his life depended on it and Saga patted his head comfortingly. It wasn't easy to just wait when everyone they knew and love was in direct danger, and the cub understood that Shaka was next on the chopping block.

Deathmask saw the flame of the Cancer House extinguishing itself and he gulped, feeling a strange tug he couldn't identify in himself. "Oh shit… they left our Temple, Shinta."

Saga narrowed his eyes. "That must mean the enemy leader will come through here soon."

The foot soldiers looked at one another. "So fast…I didn't realize the timing between the enemy groups was so short."

One of them turned to Shinta. "Saint Andromeda, you made the right call. We would have gotten massacred if we didn't stick to staying here."

The green-haired Saint felt flushed at the praise. "It's nothing, I was just being cautious." He then looked down at the Houses and saw the faint light of flames at Aries. "That must have been Lance, right?"

Saga stood up from next to Aiolia. "All signs point towards it. The message you left behind was directed at him and he's the only fire-user who could have interfered at this point."

A sigh of relief and happiness came over the Andromeda. "Thank Athena…"

"We're not out of the woods yet, Shinta. There's still a lot of fighting to do." Saga reminded him. He then heard the sound of loud steps. "Everyone, take cover!"

The group all either went inside the passage or took peeking positions behind the rocks overlooking the entrance to the Leo House. It was then that the enemy center group finally reached the last stair turn to the Leo Temple and emerged, led by a caped man of silver hair sided by a large Golem Specter.

Daemon Lucifer, the Celestial Star of Pride, slowed down as he reached the wide welcoming step, beholding the House of Leo. It was one of the nicest looking Houses, in his opinion. The building completely covered the mountain climb pass, for once, unlike some of the lower temples such as Cancer, and had two imposing lion statues flanking the main entry stairs leading to the ground floor. The word 'LEO' was marked on its frieze above the zodiacal symbol itself and below a narrow triangular pediment. It was overall one of the most traditional designs for a Hellenic edifice of worship, a simplicity that personally appeals to those of martial inclination and pride in their role as defenders of Sanctuary.

Cait Sith Palug and Mandrake Nevil came out of it, bowing at the man. "Welcome, Prince Daemon Lucifer."

Deathmask raised his head to take a better look. "That's him? That's the guy!"

Saga immediately pulled him down and pressed a finger on his mouth before his stupid purple mane was spotted. "SHH! Quiet! Talk with short-range pings!"

Deathmask groaned and put his hands in his pocket frustratedly. The Gemini Saint himself also couldn't resist taking a curious, but more discrete peek at the enemy leader. He had to know more about the man that Lance and Dohko said such concerning things about and invaded his Temple, most certainly having battled Kanon. It was tough to make out details on the enemy's armors at night, but the blue-haired youth could get more-or-less a better picture of Daemon thanks to the blood-red colorings on his Surplice, especially on the big wings of the headpiece.

He could confidently say he not only did not identify it with any of the Surplices he had read about but also sensed terrifyingly strong energy from it, supporting Dohko's testament about him being an extraordinary example of a Specter. More concerningly, for someone who battled Kanon donning the Gemini Cloth, the man looked barely injured. This caused a gulp to involuntarily form in Saga's throat. And all of this was after surviving a bombardment on his head of Aiolos' Orion's Ray and battling Lance at Mount Rozan.

The possibility that Saga had been secretly feeding in his mind of ambushing the enemy leader along with Shinta quickly evaporated off his head. Dohko was right; they had to strategize around encircling him with a bigger numeric advantage than just two-to-one.

Sweating, he glanced at Shinta. "Things are going to be a lot harder than we thought." He then realized that Shinta looked even more upset, staring at the enemy with a transfixed look. "Saint Shinta?"

The green-haired boy seemed to completely ignore Saga. His eyes were firmly locked on the Daemon Specter, sensing dark energy off of him that made something go cold inside the teenager's chest. It was worse than what he felt in the battles against Bennu Yakos or Minotaurus Guen when the evil in their dark powers robbed his heart of hope. Instead, it was a sensation more familiar to when the Deep Specter used his technique on him at Andromeda Island earlier that night and the Saint could swear he was hearing his mother call to him in the shadows.

Even Aiolia noticed he looked abnormal and tugged at his leg. "Saint Shinta, are you okay?"

Then, to everyone's shock, the boy got up and walked towards the stairs! "SHINTA!" Saga shouted.

Deathmask rushed up at him and dragged the green-haired boy back along with Saga! "What the heck, you fairy-dancing prick! Do you want to feed us all to those guys?!"

Daemon Lucifer's head turned in their direction, alarmed, and the Saints practically shoved Shinta into the cavern, furious with their friend.

The Andromeda blinked as he got pushed against the wall, realizing all of a sudden what he had almost done. "I…Oh gosh, I'm sorry everyone."

"What the heck is wrong with you?!" Deathmask 'screamed'.

The green-haired boy had no excuse. "…I… started feeling something weird. I thought a friend was calling me to the Specters…. I think the Deep Specter messed with my head earlier."

They all stared at one another, worried they might have a liability in their hands.

Meanwhile, at the stairs, the Specters noticed their leader seemed distracted. "Lord Lucifer?" Mandrake called.

The Pride Star shook his head. "Mm…. it can't be. It's just my imagination. It must be the feather I left with Cerah. That thing has been calling out to me all night. Either that or Virgo is playing some trick on my mind already." He turned to his men. "Well, let's get this Temple done with, already."

The Specter then guided Lucifer inside the Leo House. The second his foot stepped inside the building, Saga saw the fifth flame on the Fire Clock beginning to flicker and he turned to Aiolia, who began to shiver again. "It's okay, Aiolia, the worst part is over. We'll kick them out of your House soon!"

The brown-haired cub tugged himself next to the Leo Cloth box. "Is Shaka going to be okay?"

Saga smiled and nodded. "Of course. He's one of the strongest among us. Aldebaran has lasted this long, too, remember?"

"He could still die, you know?" Deathmask pointed out, earning a glare from Gemini. "What?! I'm just being realistic!"

"You still don't say things like th-"

"He's right." Shinta mentally said, all of a sudden. He stood up and collected his thoughts, ashamed at his earlier weakness. "Saga, we can't help Shaka for now, but we've been waiting for Daemon to reach Leo for a reason. We should now move downwards to meet up with the others, help Aldebaran and get everyone ready to fight that Daemon person! The more we wait around after this point, the less we can help our friends."

The strategically-minded Gemini, however, had some concerns. "I agree, but there is a matter of timing to this. Going out there now is an invitation for Daemon to spot us right away." He then hugged Aiolia, who seemed to be crying again with the awful feelings of failure projected onto him by the Leo Temple. "I hate to do this to Aiolia, and I want to get my armor and your Triangle End back, too, but we need to wait just a bit more. I can't say I'll be a comfort to do this until the Leo flame goes out…Then I'll be the first to vouch climbing down the stairs."

The Andromeda Saint couldn't help but feel checkmated by this. He resigned himself and rested back against the cavern wall, feeling powerless. This was exactly why he detested the idea of war; because innocent people would be forced into situations like these where they'd have to allocate who, how, and when to save. He looked down at the Houses already conquered, wondering when Lance would get up these countless stairs.

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Gemini Temple

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Lance ran up the stairs as fast as he could towards the Third Temple! He felt the quakes behind him at the Taurus House resume, indicating Aldebaran was already battling the Specter Behemoth Torak.

"Damn it, these damn steps are too long!" he wheezed out, rushing around a turn. He then heard a faint sizzling sound in the distance and paused to look at the Fire Clock. His eyes widened at the Leo flame, indicating he was still three Houses away from his objective, and would likely not catch up until the enemy reached Shaka.

It was then that he looked up and saw Aiolos' arrows raining down at the entrance of Virgo on a small, dark force of the Underworld. "It's already too late for that House…" he realized. His fist clenched in frustration. "Damn it! Why did I waste so much time in Twin Peaks?! What happened to Aiolia and Deathmask?!"

With this in mind, the fourth Gold Saint of the Zodiac ran up the last set of stairs to reach the Gemini House. Once again, he found a broken wooden gate and a foreboding sensation of emptiness welcoming him. He carefully made his way into the building's darkness. Unlike Taurus, the building's ceiling was intact. Lance had to cast a small fire of cosmos around his hand to act as a torch. He made his way into the main hall and his red eyes widened.

The Third House looked like an abandoned battlefield. Gigantic pillars had been knocked down, fissures in the ground had been opened and there were faint marks of blood near the center of the room as if someone had tried to stop the enemy from crossing. However, unlike at Aries, there were no corpses of hoplites left behind.

Moreover, the Gemini Cloth was just standing there in its rest form! The last time Lance had seen it was at Mount Rozan on Saga's body. "The Cloth!... Why is it here?!?"

The Saint, who possessed decent tracking skills thanks to his past in Mount Olympus, searched the ground as he progressed through the Temple but he found no indication other than the blood marks of who could have been battling here. His theory was that Saga and Shinta had somehow skipped the Aries Temple and made it into the Golden Zodiac, likely through the hoplite passage as indicated by the Skeletons testimony earlier. But why would Saga climb back down to Gemini as things were?

He saw a glint on the ground by the Cloth and approached it. It was a dagger. Its winged guard and carved edge made it look menacing and purposeful. Lance picked it up and looked it over, having never seen the object. It wasn't bloodied, but Lance doubted it would just be here if it hadn't been used.

He stared at it for a little bit. He didn't think Saga was the type to collect such a thing. Was it a family heirloom or something? He felt like holding it in a reverse grip for some reason, maybe to get a better angle on his torchlight. When he looked at it this way, it sort of resembled some creepy sacrifice tool, the kind you'd carve on someone's chest to rip their heart out. It was too fancy-looking to be used in combat.

The Gemini Cloth suddenly burned up its cosmos, calling Lance's attention.

The Saint tried to address it. "Hey, what happened here? What's with the carving utensil?" But the armor, being Gemini and not Karkinos, did not respond. Instead, one of its hands laid out. "…You want it?"

Lance handed it over and the Cloth burned up some more, heightening its powers. The knife was then telepathically moved to carve a writing on the ground. It was similar to the way the Andromeda Cloth sometimes communicates with people other than Shinta, drawing in the sand and such. Lance lowered his torch hand to read better.

I came to defend my House.

Lance blinked, not realizing that armors were capable of such adventurous behaviors. "Is Saga okay?" and the armor quickly responded by carving the first letter of a Greek 'yes'. "I'm surprised those lunatics didn't take you, but I'm guessing it's easy for you to hide in some dark dimension. Look, we need to get you back to Saga, so can you help me take you ba-"

Before the Cancer could finish his sentence, the Gemini Cloth loudly and obnoxiously fell apart to the ground in a cacophony of clunks and clinks that echoed in the halls, startling the human.

Lance stared at the mess of golden parts on the ground and realized for the first time that Karkinos wasn't the only jerk among the Gold Cloths. "… What the fuck?! How does that help us?!"

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

Virgo Temple,

Entrance

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

The vanguard of the False Specter army led by Alraune Lemon and Sphinx Neferti advanced unto the welcoming field outside the Virgo House, hoisting Lucifer's banner. They saw another glint from far above.

They collectively burned their cosmos, forming a dark bonfire. "INCOMING!" a lieutenant shouted.

The battalion raised their shield wall, reinforced by the cosmos shared with the two Elites, and took on Aiolos' rain of golden missiles. They grunted and irked in effort and pain as they felt their feet pressed on the ground and their shield arms quake under the force of the impacts and cosmos bursts. One of their weaker members had their shield pierced through and he screamed in pain with the arrow that went through arm, chest, and ankle, long as a spear. The formation quickly reconsolidated and attempted to march through the last distance till the building cover, but their morale shook. It seemed like the more they climbed, the stronger the Sagittarius' arrows were getting.

Neferti swiped her arm with a shout, causing a dark wave to blast one of the waves of arrows, giving them a brief opening. "QUICK, NOW, HURRY IT UP!" she commanded, waving her arm at the last set of stairs.

The battalion groaned and rushed up the final ramp, finally reaching a spot where the arrows were hitting the temple's roof instead, hiding there as if from the common rain. They looked down and saw the two or three Skeletons that fell along the way, the golden shafts of energy disappearing off their bodies and leaving spurts of blood in their place.

A lieutenant shook his fist. "D-Damn Sagittarius!... We can't keep going like this! If we cross the stairs to Scorpio and Libra this way, he'll start picking us by the dozen!"

Neferti got an 'I told you so' look from Lemon that made her cringe in frustration. She didn't like admitting it, but a strategy review was probably in order. "Lord Lucifer, we've reached the Virgo House. We will take it over, but after killing its guardian I would like to await the converging of our men before crossing to Libra. Our shield walls are getting weaker and weaker."

"… Very well." Lucifer accepted. He could feel the increasing losses of Skeletons in the cosmos to Sagittarius. "And once I get to the Ninth House, I'm personally shoving a spear through that archer's face!"

Neferti sighed in relief. The good thing about Lucifer was that he was reasonable, provided you didn't lie to him and had important concerns. He wouldn't just whip you all the time into ever more impossible odds just for the sake of acting relentlessly.

The men of the Underworld took the chance to behold the fabled sixth House, home to the most feared of all Gold Saints. It was one of the larger temples and considerably more ornate than the austere Leo and Cancer Houses, possessing grander columns and two big statues flanking the large gateway, namely one of Astraea, Goddess of Justice, and Buddha, the religious leader, both symbols of the Virgo constellation in Sanctuary culture. While the structure was mostly symmetrical, the Specters noticed that there seemed to be one large wing of the building spreading into the left side of it, which, unbeknownst to them, housed the legendary Twin Sala Garden.

This time, the large wooden doors were open. In the air, they could feel currents coming in from the inside that carried soft pink petals, as well as the faint smell of incense.

The plantoid False Specter was nauseated. "What is this place, some kind of hippie commune?" Lemon insulted.

"Supposedly it's the house of Sanctuary's most dangerous Gold Saint," Neferti warned. She glanced at the men. "But don't be afraid! Erika is keeping care of our fallen brothers and once we take over this House, half of Sanctuary will have fallen."

They nodded their heads at one another. "Yeah, she's right!"

One raised his scythe in the air. "Let's kill the tree-sitter and plant his head in the ground!"

"Stay behind me and Lemon. The enemy must be confident in their powers if they didn't even bother to barricade the door like the others," she warned.

Lemon just walked inside like he owned the place. "Let's just get this over with!" he confidently exclaimed. "I'll get Virgo's head before Lucifer ever reaches this house! Then we'll see who's worthy of the cloth of hope! The False Specters will yet be ruled by Lemon of Alraune!"

A sense of dread began to fill the False Specters as they came inside

The place was way too empty.

Headed by the two elites, the scythe-totters tucked their weapons close and looked all over, sensing threats in the dark. They marched over the impeccable marble floors, from where their steps echoed in all directions, and tall, thick pillars surrounded them. A peaceful green tint was present in the stone of the interior, contrasting with the blood-red of Cancer, and the small fires held up on the pillars crackled almost silently, as if afraid to disturb the House's master.

As the starlight from outside was left behind and the Specters entered deeper into the House, they felt as if a pair of eyes were watching and that the huge shadows enveloped them, robbing them of escape from the Virgo Temple.

Lemon sweated as he made his battle tendrils poke the air as if searching for traps. His walk was tense and determined, but his head was down. "I will kill him… mount his head for all to see!" he vowed. "I will become king! ME!"

Neferti noticed he seemed anxious. "Lemon?"

Her ears then picked up a heavy breath from one of the Skeletons and she looked over her shoulder. The men seemed mostly fine, but they were sticking closer to each other. Some held their stomachs and mouths. Others groaned with every step they took, as if in pain.

She looked around worryingly, but felt no menace in the air, quite the contrary. She was oddly at peace. The silence in the temple was a contrast to the constant whizzing of Aiolos' arrows and the quakes of Torak's attacks. It was as if the innards of the Virgo House cared not for the battle going on outside. She touched her harp, which allowed her to feel the hearts around her. While she immediately felt those of her comrades, she couldn't find Virgo at all.

The group persisted, heading onwards as they had at Gemini. If they kept heading forward, they had to reach something or someone.

Yet, their steps felt as if they were walking in an endless hall.

They went on and on.

The pillars widened around them.

The more they walked, the further away they seemed to be.

The Specters felt as if they could keep going forever until the darkness of the House swallowed them all. Then, all of a sudden, what sounded like a small tin bell was rung.

Their heads tilted up. "What was that?" one asked.

Another beat followed, and this time, a faint gold glint could be seen in the dark horizon. The Specters raised their guard, tucking their weaponry and burning their cosmos. "SHOW YOURSELF!" Alraune demanded.

The silence was returned, but the light of the held-up candles seemed to gradually heighten and illuminated more of the temple's innards.

A louder bell was heard and many Skeletons widened their eyes. "Alert! Go back against back!" a lieutenant ordered and each Skeleton found a pair to press against.

Alraune and Neferti also raised their guards, burning their powerful cosmos and searching everywhere with their Surplice weapons ready to strike! "Where are you?!"

The golden glint they saw earlier gradually grew before them in the silence of the room. The men of the underworld realized it was coming from behind a human shape, silhouetting it like a cosmos aura, and the person was sitting in meditation, completely at peace despite the presence of the dirty, heavily armored men.

A faint smile was seen beneath its shadowed features. Its hand then pulled up what looked like a bead necklace and countless bells were heard ringing. The Specters screamed, feeling the noise invade their minds as if they stood inside a gigantic church tower, and they howled in despair, even more, when they felt their bodies dragged into the air and twisted into squeezing, spiraling worlds of fantasy.

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

Leo Temple,

Outskirts

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

Deathmask yawned as he leaned against the rock wall. "I'm bored…How long do we have to wait?"

Saga and Shinta kept watching over the Leo House and the Fire Clock. "Until the timing is right," Saga said.

The rascal scoffed and kicked a pebble. He turned to Aiolia, who sat on the Leo Cloth box. "You know it won't make a difference if you just leave that there, right?"

Aiolia pointed at the one with the crab by his feet, "You brought yours."

"Only because Lance will kill me otherwise, duh!" the older boy argued. "Though, if you ask me, it's ridiculous I have to be responsible for his armor."

This brought up something that deeply bothered the five-year-old. "How come you can carry it already?"

The thief smirked. "Cause I'm not a huge disappointment? I earned my place at the Temple, while you piggy-backed off your brother so you wouldn't starve."

Standing up from the box, the child challenged this notion. "Liar! You don't even want to be at the Zodiac! Milo told me so!"

The Sicilian scoffed. "Pfft, that rat…You can't trust Scorpios for shit."

The unjust accusations continued. "Milo also says Lance has to constantly apologize for the bad things you do and that you never pay attention to anyone! Why would the Cancer Cloth like you?!"

"Hey, that's enough!" Saga shouted at them, silencing the two. "What is wrong with you two?! There's a war going on! People are dying and the enemy is outside!"

Aiolia's face went red and he looked down. "I'm sorry, Saga…"

But the Cancer boy insisted. "I'm not! This little punk started it!" he lied. "The bad things I say is just me being real about life! And another thing! Lance took me bec-"

Before Deathmask could finish, Shinta slapped him straight across the face!

Everyone went quiet, even Saga.

The green-haired Saint glared at the boy like he had never been seen doing. "You may not appreciate it, Mephisto, but Lance didn't just take you out of the streets, he saved you! Do you think he would like you saying those things?!"

Mephisto tried to utter some words. "I…Um…"

A self-cooling exhale came out of the fuming Andromeda. "Don't you ever even think something like that again!" He then went back to watching over the Leo Temple, trying to hide how hurt he was that such a young boy could already have such cynicism in him. He didn't want to hear apologies at this moment or deal with more lack of faith from others. He was too worried about everyone else.

Saga saw Deathmask coil up against the wall like a snail into its shell, humiliated, and joined Shinta. "I wasn't expecting that."

The Andromeda sterned. Everyone always thought he was incapable of being tough when he had to. "Don't… say what everyone usually says."

The analytical Gemini observed the pained expression on his face as he heard these mental words. For someone implying they had a longer fuse, he snapped at Deathmask pretty strongly. "I see…"

The entire group perked up when they spotted movement on the back end of the Leo Temple. "The Specters!" Shinta called.

Aiolia felt cold and he looked up at the Fire Clock. "Look! The Leo flame!" he pointed out. A far-off sizzling sound was heard and the fire shrunk to nothing. "It died out!"

Just as this happened, Saga spotted the unmistakable silver-head of the Leader entering the stairs to Virgo. "I was right… the Pope is having the Fire Clock tracking the enemy's strongest cosmos! Five fires out, seven to go."

"Everyone stay down!" Shinta warned, pushing the kids' heads below the rocks' level.

Down at the Temple, as Lucifer left the Fifth House, he did a quick mental calculation that told him that up to four Cloths of Gold were off their Houses, namely Aries, Cancer, Leo, and Libra. Priam had proven with his assault on the Pope's Halls during the summer that six armors were needed to be off their Houses during Athena's absence from Earth for the Zodiac's defense blessings to be crippled, allowing skipping tactics like flight, lightspeed at the stairs and teleportation. Assuming that Kanon's brother was on his way to recover the Gemini Cloth and Torak was working to defeat Taurus as they spoke, the chances that enough armors would be displaced within the next two hours or so was very high.

All he needed to do to ensure this is deal with Virgo. In the meantime, he had to make sure the Leo Cloth would not be returned to its House, wherever it was hiding.

Lucifer turned his head to see some Specter troops waiting inside. "Everyone, come with me," Lucifer ordered.

They did as they were told, but one ran over and kelt in front of his Commander. "Prince, are we leaving no troops at Leo?"

"No, I have other intentions for this House. TREBLE!"

The Golem Specter presented himself. "Yes, Prince?" He was pointed to Aiolia's House, triggering a knowing smile of excitement. "Right AWAY!"

The observing Saints blinked intrigued as the huge, round-looking Golem warned everyone to stay back. "What is that Specter doing?" Shinta asked.

Once everyone was a safe distance up the stairs, Golem beheld the House of Leo on his own, burning his purple cosmos and calling upon the powers of the Golem Surplice, summoning the strength of the Earth and Dark elements. The night got even darker in contrast with the growing, purple outline of energy in his horned, round armor and he lowered his fist unto the ground as if about to sprint. Taking in a deep breath, the Specter then enacted his massive physical power into his legs, lifting up dust with the force he exerted on the ground before springing his gigantic body up to the sky with a war shout!

The Saints stood back, alarmed! They saw the shadowed silhouette of his body under the stars seemingly be immersed in purple cosmos flames before he coiled himself into an armored ball of a body!

Detecting the Specter's intentions, Saga rushed to the kids and held them. "EVERYONE, GET DOWN!"

"LET THE FIRES OF HELL ENGULF THEE!" The round metal ball descended unto the Leo House like a dropping meteor of darkness. "CATACLYSM CLAY!" he roared as he rapidly approached the impact point!

THRROOOOMM!

The shock of the object crashing through the roof was immense, and then increased tenfold when it hit the ground deep within, quaking the entire mountain with the force of the crash before erupting into an explosion of purple and blue flames. The Saints screamed and held their ears as rock and dust exploded into the night sky with terrifying force and a shockwave battered the temple's walls from within, shattering them in one go before crashing into the flanking mountain pass walls like gigantic tidal waves of dark Cosmos.

Shinta held Aiolia tightly as the boy screamed and cried, assaulted by horrible sensations of letting his House be ravaged. The dust clouds were immense and spread everywhere, covering everyone and everything in marble dust and soot, leaving behind a belching green inferno over the rock ruins.

Said inferno towered high, shaped and colored like the flames often seen surrounding Pandora's Castle. They were the burning energies of Hell that oft blocked enemies from striking at her walls, and the Specter's technique seemed to have alite them inside Aiolia's House.

Daemon Lucifer laughed from the stairs. "HA, HA, HA, HA, HA! And thus the cavern of the Nemean Lion is blocked! Excellent work, Golem!"

The Golem Specter returned from the burning interior of the House, seemingly unharmed, and bowed. "I live to serve you, Prince!"

The red-eyed Prince gazed at the flames. In a way he missed them a bit from Pandora's castle. "I was hoping to save this trick of yours for later, but all these Cloths disappearing has forced my hand. If the Saints think taking Aries back made any difference, they are wrong! I will ensure they are helpless to save their comrades from the sixth House up until I'm crowned Emperor of this place!"

The Specters and Skeletons lifted their fists and weapons. "LONG LIVE THE PRINCE!"

Mandrake Nevil sounded the scream of the mandrake like a horn and pointed at the next House. "ONWARD, SPECTERS! TO VIRGO!"

The red-eyed Specter smiled to himself. "I know you're on your way, too, brother of Kanon…but you won't save Virgo! And when you reach us… Gauromydas and Samuel will be avenged."

Laughter and shouts for the death of the Saints were heard as the dark mass of enemies marched up the stairs. Shinta, Saga, Aiolia, and Deathmask took the chance to leave their hideout and behold the chaos.

Aiolia cried again, staring at the big green fire consuming the place he slept at. "My House! W-What did they do to it?!"

Saga approached the entrance, feeling the heat of the flames. He burned protective cosmos in his hand so he could try to touch the flames.

Deathmask widened his eyes and caught Saga's wrist. "HEY, don't touch that!" he shouted. "Those aren't regular fires… they're green flames of the Underworld, the same type that you find around Hades' castle. They will hurt you, cosmos or not!"

"We have to get across somehow or we can't help Shaka after we meet with Lance! ANOTHER DIMENSION!" Saga argued. Like at Aries and the secret pass, a zipper line descended in the air, opening a gate through a bridge of light into a world of stars, but, to Saga's shock, the green flames were present in this overlapping dimension as well. The Gemini Gold Saint punched a fallen column in frustration. "CURSES!..."

Shinta was also surprised. "They're there, as well?"

Deathmask shook his head. "Are you deft? I told you, these aren't normal flames. They rip right through dimensions! It's how they keep people from infiltrating their Earthly Castle! They did this on purpose to stop you, Saga. Only a trained Cancer Saint is going to exorcise these out of here!"

Shinta stepped up "Then we need Lance! Saga, we should move down to Cancer!"

The hoplites looked at the Bronze Saint expectantly. "Saint Shinta, what should we do?"

The greenhead was quick to decide. "Please protect Aiolia and the Leo Cloth. We will be doing our best to join our friends in the meantime."

Pulling himself together, Saga gave Shinta his two cents. "This is… quite frustrating, but the enemy is giving us no choice, is he? I agree with you, Shinta. We should move down to Cancer." He concurred. "However… I sense a powerful presence in it."

Shinta's green eyes descended unto the Fourth House. He knew what Saga spoke of. Even with communications down, the 7th senses still felt a unique signature of strength back at the fabled House of the Dead. Daemon Lucifer definitely left one of his strongest Specters to guard it. Whatever awaited them down there was therefore very dangerous.

Shinta had to make a call though. "… Aiolia, Deathmask, stay with the guards up here. Saga and I are going to Cancer. I don't think the enemy expects an attack from above right now."

Deathmask widened his eyes. "What?! You're leaving us alone with these losers?! What if those dangerous guys come back down?!"

"Aiolos would kill me if I let Aiolia stay around danger any longer," Saga argued. "Besides, you two are way too untrained to be of any help right now.

But Deathmask took the Cancer Cloth box unto his back. "If you think I'm staying anywhere near all those Specters when I can just get to Lance at my House, you're crazy! What if they see what you're doing and come back down?! I don't trust these guards to protect me! If Aiolia does, that's his problem!"

Shinta hummed, trying to think of how to convince the boy. "It could be just as dangerous to bring you close to that Specter down there!"

But the boy was resolute. "I'm safest at my House, next to a Gold Cloth of my zodiacand the sooner I get to Lance, the better! I'm going!"

"Please be careful, Shinta." Aiolia wished, having much more faith in the friendly Andromeda, especially after he slapped Mephisto straight.

The Andromeda and Gemini Saint got together and nodded in accordance. "Let's do this. We might not be able to help Shaka yet, but I sense the jamming coming from that Specter downstairs." Saga added. "If we take him out, it will be a significant strategic turn."

"Right!" Shinta nodded, determined. He still looked away wonderingly. "Lance, where are you?... We'll be going to your House now. I hope you find us there."

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

Cancer House

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

The master of the Cancer House panted as he hurried up the stairs to his own Temple. He was still furious with what happened at the Gemini House, since he was hoping the armor would have given him more answers or a way to get it to Saga immediately. Instead, the armor dumped to the ground unceremoniously, refused to react in any way and even burned its cosmos in resistance at Lance's attempts to pick it up to get it up the stairs!

So now he headed to his own House, which probably was crawling with Specters, with no protection and forced to leave the Gemini Cloth behind for Saga to pick it up later! He had a creeping feeling this had something to do with the weird theory Saga had about the Cloths guarding the mountain against teleportation and flight, but once he got to Saga he had to make sure to question him really thoroughly on what the hell was this heavy piece of interdimensional junk doing sitting at the Third Temple when it was supposed to be on his shoulders!

Looking up, he saw himself arriving at his own House, finally. Lance wiped the sweat off his brow and looked it over. The door had been broken into and the floor was drenched in cold water, likely from the frost he's been finding all over the place.

Lance noticed there was also a gross, sticky substance like thick silky webbing covering the entrance entirely. He spread his feet and burned his cosmos, manifesting a threatening flame aura as he eyed the webbing. It was clearly some sort of ambush and he wasn't about to stick his hand into a mousetrap. He made the energy flow down his arm into his right fist, creating a swirling torch of power.

The star of Pegasus burned in the sky as he punched the air. "FLAME ATTACK!" and the torrent of fire shot out like cosmos blasting, tearing through the suspicious material with an exploding force and sound. Lance waited carefully for the fire to spread, eating at the substance, but its thickness and resistance was considerable. "Just what I needed, those Specters left another obstacle! Fine! You murderers just wait! I'll tear through this even if I have to firebomb the entire temple!"

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

On the other side of the structure, descending down the stairs, Shinta, Saga, and Deathmask arrived at the backdoor of the Cancer House. They stopped when an intense heat was felt in the air along with a resounding sound of a firestorm.

Shinta perked up, recognizing the cosmos. "That's Lance! He's here!"

Saga smirked. "Good! We can finally reunite our forces!"

Deathmask, however, cringed when he approached the open backdoor, carrying the Cancer Cloth on his back. "What is this stuff? It looks like… ew, like one of those gross caterpillar trails!"

The two older Saints approached it. The entire backdoor was covered top to bottom with thick threading that neither of them recognized.

"This looks like the work of the Papillion Specter," Saga concluded, recalling his studies. "He might be inside."

Shinta gasped. "We have to warn Lance! He's going in!"

Saga hunched down and tried to move the substance apart with his hands, but could only spread a small pass open. "D-damn it! It's full of stardust!" when he released it in frustration, the slapping of the threads resonated.

The Saints watched, alarmed, as the vibration carried through into the interior threads, spreading the signal of what Saga had just done.

The blue-haired Gemini irked. "This is bad… he knows we are here now. All this stardust is going to suck up the cosmos I put into Another Dimension, but we have to do something!"

"Well, don't you have any corrosive or burning techniques strong enough for it?" Deathmask asked.

The Andromeda and Gemini Saints folded arms pensively.

It made Mephisto sweat exasperatedly. He stepped forward and hunched down on the threads. Scuffing around, the thief parted the threading as much as he could and looked in. "It's really dark… but I think I'm small enough to get through."

Shinta was immediately alarmed. "Mephisto, that's dangerous, you shouldn't do that! We'll think of something else! If I climb unto the ceiling, I might-"

Deathmask eyed him weirdly. "Do you know how long that will take? We either get the armor through the backdoor now or Lance will walk into a trap without it!" He seemed nervous himself, but he didn't see much of a choice. "I can't believe I'm suggesting this crap…Just want to go to bed."

The two teenagers exchanged glances, wondering what to do. Seeing that Saga was unsure himself, Andromeda Shinta took his remaining chain. "Mephisto, are you sure?"

The Sicilian boy dropped the armor box to the ground. "…I've fit into tighter holes back home. If I pull this thing along, I can probably drag it inside as I squeeze through… then I just have to dodge the Specter until I get to Lance."

Shinta, however, wouldn't just let him go. He took his defensive chain and wrapped it around Deathmask's waist. "Here, this will help us pull you back if you get in danger and help you transmit signals through all this jamming."

The boy paled. "Won't this thing shock me?!"

Shinta smiled and shook his head. "Only if you're a threat to me, and you're really not. Remember, tug twice if you're in danger."

Deathmask let out a deep breath. "Alright… here I go, then!" and he dove his hands into the threading, spreading it apart as much as he could to squeeze inside.

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

"FLAME ATTACK!" Lance blasted again, tearing through another layer of webbing and spreading more fires around. This time, it ate enough into the cocooning substance that he could walk into the main halls of the Cancer House. Upon doing so, Lance covered his face with his arms when a swarm of bright, golden moths of the underworld flew right at his face! He cursed angrily and swatted the air, instinctively fearing an attack, but the insects simply flew out the opening he burned into the Temple into the night sky. "AGH, stupid butterflies!.. I'm sure now, whoever's been jamming Sanctuary is here!"

Once past the swarm, the Cancer Saint dusted himself and walked further in. Immediately he felt his feet sink into the sticky ground and Lance realized the wet floor was covered in more webbing. His red eyes surveyed the darkness.

"Alright, you creepy fuck! WHERE ARE YOU?! COME OUT!" he shouted out. His 7th sense was on such high alert he might as well have grown eyes on the back of his head. "I know what you did at Jamir and I bet you're responsible for more than a few deaths I've found along the way here! So show up and fight me like a man, or are you only good to gang up on little kids?!"

There was no response, only echoes. Lance was one hundred percent sure that the freak was somewhere inside and likely waiting for the right opportunity to sweep down on him.

Suddenly, a familiar metallic sound of chains was heard from deep inside the house before an even more familiar scream! "AHH! SHIT! H-HELP ME!"

Lance's red eyes widened. "Mephisto?! MEPHISTO!" he shouted, running towards the direction of the scream. "WHERE ARE YO-AGH!" Lance screamed when a sudden force struck his chest and he fell to his knees. He was dizzy for a second but when he tried to get up, he found his limbs and head completely arrested by an unseen force. "What… What the hell?!"

An echoing chuckle and the flapping of wings from above was heard as Papillion Ainsel descended upon the Hall from the ceiling. "Ah, ah, ah, ah! Welcome, Saint Cancer! I was expecting you since Torak told us you were coming."

Lance tried to struggle more, but he couldn't even look up. He recognized the sensation from the times Shion did the same to him in the past. "What is this?! Tele…kinesis?! UGH!"

The orange-armored man folded arms confidently. "Correct answer. I'd give you bonus points if you also guessed that I sent my moths to give the boy over there a little scare to make you drop your guard, not that I needed to. I've had enough of fires for one night…You've caused us some trouble, you know?"

The teenager found himself now stunned against the ground. "I-I'm fucking glad!" he sneered.

Ainsel chuckled at his defiance and listed the offenses with his fingers. "First you kill all our men at Aries, in a rather loud manner if you ask me, then you interrupted Erika's vital work collecting our brothers' souls and now you burned most of my new batch of moths… Tell me, do you realize how many of your guard corpses went into growing these?"

The Saint's face twisted in revolt and disgust, realizing for the first time that there were armored skeletons stuck in the threads at the side ends of the Temple. The little flesh left on them was being eaten by repulsive-looking worms with segmented purple skin whose flesh pulsated as they consumed. The Skeletons must have dragged these poor men into his House to be used by the Papillion to breed more moths.

He couldn't be angrier at the defilement. "You sick fuck!... I'll charr your fucking corpse to ash once I get out!"

Ainsel was frankly surprised, blinking. "Mm, I honestly thought you would be more understanding. You're the Cancer Saint, correct?... Aren't you usually the odd ones with no scruples about the dead?"

"SCRUPLES?!" The Saint's whole body fought with so much anger against the telekinetic shackling upon hearing this that Ainsel had to drop a couple more tons of force into it. "I'LL SHOW YOU SCRUPLES ONCE I PUNCH YOUR STUPID SKULL INTO THE GROUND, YOU CORPSE-FUCKING FAIRY! I've seen what you fucking do! What did Arcadia and Ismara have to do with your stupid salvation, huh?! TELL ME!" Lance confronted, furious. The memory of the killings and the tears on Alexis' face had never left him. "What did that girl's village do to you people and your precious fucking vision of a sterile world?! What thin-fucking-line on the ground did they cross?! Did they step on too many ants on their way to work?!"

Ainsel rubbed his chin. This was taking him back quite a bit. "I see, so you were there at Yakos' attack…"

"I was there and I STOPPED your two murderous friends, just like I will stop you!" Lance swore.

The Papillion's shoulders shook amusedly. "Very unlikely… Bennu Yakos and Shaman Kairos were lesser Specters convinced of their invincibility. A pack of Silver Saints could have stopped their temper tantrum. Shaman even named himself after a fallen time god, arrogant as that drum-beater was."

Suddenly, Ainsel had just noticed the color of his eyes. "A curse, just like Lord Lucifer. This poor fool…No wonder he can't tell reality from fiction." He thought to himself. He then contacted his Lord. "(Prince, I've encountered and captured the Cancer Gold Saint. He is rather reckless and thought he could come in without his armor."

Unbeknownst to him, the Celestial Pride Star laughed in satisfaction, way up above at the stairs to Virgo. "(Excellent! The Cancer Cloth is not there and its guardian is in our hands.)"

"(I'm afraid he refuses to cooperate, Prince.)" Ainsel then thought if he should share the detail about the eyes with him, but for all, he knew Cancer got it just from having to deal with the Well of the Dead in such a poor manner. Curse marks were ultimately not that uncommon.

Lucifer scoffed. "(Then kill him. Once I become Lord of this place, Karkinos will raise me a new one eventually. Besides, there's more than one way back to the Underworld.)"

Ainsel nodded and shut the communication off. He smirked down on the armorless Saint. "Well, Cancer, I have to say you know how to make a terrible first impression."

Lance burned the energy in his smooched hand as discreetly as he could and smirked back, reminded of his history with Shion and the Gold Saints. "So I've been told!"

"Perhaps in another life, where you would be more cooperative to the Prince and less foolish, you'd make a good replacement for Yakos." Ainsel mused, picturing this anger-addicted teenager as an excellent Bennu. He sharpened his hand with cosmos into a gladius edge of rainbow-colored energy. "But I'm afraid the Prince has ordered me to permanently reject you from our forces. Any last words?"

It was then that something began to glow under the Saint's collapsed body. "Yeah! Just one!" and then he made his cosmos build-up known as his aura manifested itself. "ERUPTION!"

Ainsel screamed and jumped back, startled, only for the Saint's body to literally erupt with fire cosmos in a spectacular explosion of golden flames that violently ripped through and incinerated everything around him! Cosmos showered everywhere, blasting a hole through the temple's roof!

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

"AGH, GET OFF ME, you stupid bugs!" Mephisto screamed, swatting away the swarm of underworld moths trying to envelop him. He tugged the chain around his waist as hard as he could. "A LITTLE HELP, PLEASE!"

A screeching sound was heard in his head, making him cringe! Unbeknownst to him, it was a result of Papillion's jamming being briefly interrupted by the scalding of Lance's attack. A sudden mental ping echoed in the room. "TAKE COVER!"

The boy recognized the mental voice as Lance's and looked up. A resounding sound was heard and the entire temple shook! Mephisto then widened his eyes and yelped in fear when he saw the golden fire wave coming at him! With only brief fractions of seconds to decide, he pushed the Cancer Cloth box forward, and ducked right behind it, guarding himself further with his arms when the huge blaze ripped right through the rear halls.

He heard Saga screaming his name from outside, beyond the silk wall. "MEPHISTO!"

The flames of Eruption ran over everything across the central hall to the rear exit. They burned up against Karkinos' container, but the glinting golden metal reacted positively to its owner's cosmos, reacting with a strong shine that protected Mephisto from its owner's attack. The underworld moths released high-pitched screeches before sizzling into ash and the walls of steel-hard silk were burned up, disintegrating in the inferno. The flames eventually passed off before rising in the air, reaching the peak of their explosive outburst.

As the fire waves receded, the boy peeked up over the Cloth Box. He saw everything charred around him, including the ground. "H-holy crap!"

Saga and Shinta made their way through the burned silk, pushing off thick membranes of blackened tissue. "Ugh… that was… Eruption!" Shinta recognized. He looked up ahead and rushed inside the Temple. "LANCE!"

Saga tried to follow. "Wait, HOLD UP!" he turned to Deathmask. "Come on, Mephisto, bring that box!"

"D-darn it, alright, I'm going!" the boy obeyed, picking the heavy box he dragged inside back up and not wanting Shinta to get mad at him again.

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

Ainsel screamed, scalded by the fire waves of Eruption, and pushed off the Saint by the force of the huge blast! "A-AAAGH!"

Lance seized the opportunity, released from the telekinetic hold, and leaped right off the ground with a fist full of thunder. "L-LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!" But the fist swung right through the air, hitting nothing as Ainsel's whole body zipped away with a flash of white light, leaving only a trail of golden sparks. Lance's feet grounded themselves and he looked around panicked, searching for the enemy. "That was.. teleportation?! It was just like what Mu did!"

Reappearing behind Lance, the Papillion expanded his mental powers, strengthening the jamming before any long-range Saint messages got through, and cut the air with his chop hand. "FAIRY THRONGING!" and release the curtains of rainbow cosmos! Using his 7th sense, though, Lance detected the threat and rolled to the side to dodge the blasts, which fissured through the temple's charred ground. "Y-you will pay for that, Saint! Your real final words will be screams for mercy!"

The red-eyed Saint saw the Specter furious. "Ah ah, did I interrupt something you were doing? You are the one that's been fucking with everyone's conversations, aren't you?! Guess once I take you out, it will be much easier to surround your deluded boss!"

Ainsel eyed the Saint angrily. The flames had mostly caused superficial burns, but a rather significant set of chunks off the edges of his wings were blackened and burned, making his flight wobbly. He exhaled deeply to cool down, knowing this was just an arrogant brat who thought he got under his skin.

The cunning Specter was confident in the Saint's destruction. "Do you think that just because you freed yourself for these few seconds that you stand a chance?"

"It will be rather annoying to catch you with that teleportation of yours, yes." Lance acknowledged. "I didn't realize that on top of flying like a fairy you could vanish like one, too!"

The proud False Specter raised his chin. "Short-range teleportation… a rather rare talent, is it not? It comes to those of high mental-acuity… It doesn't matter how fast you think you are with lightspeed when instantaneous movement will make the absolute difference when it matters. It pales in comparison to what Sagittarius Priam can do, yes.. but I think that to dodge your silly attacks it will be more than enough."

The name made an alarm bell ring in Lance's head. Why did the Specter mention that Black Saint? And in that manner, too?

"How do you know that guy?! Tell ME!" he demanded.

Ainsel chuckled, realizing their ignorance. "That's true… you younger Saints are completely in the dark. You didn't even know that we took Crow Nest in Romania until this coward of a Pope had us at his throat here in Greece."

Lance gritted teeth frustratedly. The only thing that made it worse that these murderers had made it there to Sanctuary was that Shion could have helped them stop it if he wasn't pulling his usual secretive shenanigans.

Said frustration was visible to Ainsel, who pressed onto it. "It must truly anger you that your Pope acts like that. If you must know, ….there is a sort of very loose alliance between us and Priam's Black Saints."

Pieces began to fall into Lance's head about the nature of what was going on. "Great, so on top of a Specter invasion, there's some bitter former Gold Saint behind this attack? No wonder these murderers got so far!"

Ainsel chuckled at the look on Lance's face. "You're probably thinking badly of Priam, but the reality is, it's all your Pope's fault. He's the one that pushed those Gold Saints off. He's the one that robbed the Prince of his destiny and he's the one who betrayed you tonight, withholding information from his most trusted Saints about our attacks… because he's an old coward, haunted by his past."

The Cancer Gold Saint searched his mind for something to retort, refusing to buy into Specter's rhetoric. Unfortunately, Shion didn't give him a lot of reasons to disagree with what the Papillion claimed, as far as his strange decisions went. Lance did feel mad that they could have been warned of what was going on much sooner.

Seeing the cat bit the Saint's tongue, Ainsel continued to torment him. "That's why the Prince will be a much better ruler of these lands. Can't you just wait for that fossil to be replaced by someone of proper destiny?"

"From what I'm told, your stupid boss is at least twice as old as Arles is!" Lance countered, remembering Dohko's words. "And even if he weren't, you people are still nothing but a bunch of deluded, power-hungry murderers who will pay for all the lives you took the second you left Pandora's Castle!"

The blue-haired False Specter roared, burned his dark cosmos, and, in a sudden white flash that scoured through his damaged wings, they were completely rematerialized to full capacity.

Lance irked. "Damn…" But the clouds rumbled as he summoned the powers of his new element and thunder struck his hand, turning it into a sizzling torch of sparks. "Fine! I'll just beat the crap out of you till you can't get up anymore! MULTIPLE CHARG-"

"QUIET!" Ainsel shouted, thrusting his hand and striking Lance once more with his telekinetic powers, staggering and stunning him in his place. A brief pause in the battle allowed Ainsel to fully calm down. As it should, they were back at the start, with the Specter in complete control of the battle. "What's the matter, Saint? I thought the same trick wouldn't work twice on you? Or does this type of move just fly over your head?"

Lance wasn't even that panicked this time, just frustrated at the ease this guy paralyzed him with. "Get a little closer and I'll show you how I break out again."

Ainsel chuckled. "Not this time… I learned my lesson." He then closed his hand, causing a very uncomfortable invisible grip to tighten Lance's throat from where the Specter stood. "It's why I'm the only one who got the job of neutralizing the disparate Gold Saints done."

Lance narrowed his eyes. If Mephisto was here, he wouldn't come alone. When he fired Eruption, he did so in a manner that would try to spread as much fire through the temple as possible, to get rid of as much obstructing silk crap this Specter spread around as the Cancer could. He wouldn't be surprised if there was still some leftover junk delaying whoever was out there.

He had to stall a bit more, then. The future of the entire battle for the Zodiac depended on taking out this Papillion guy. "If you knew how to pick your battles, you and your Specter friends would never have stepped inside Aries to begin with! What makes Hades think he can win this time, uh? Just because that goddess is absent?!"

Ainsel widened his eyes at the manner with which the Saint addressed Athena. "Ah, ah. 'That Goddess'?... How impersonal for a Saint. I suppose, though, that I can relate."

The red-eyed youth frowned. "…What the hell do you mean?"

Ainsel chuckled. "Let's just say that Hades has even less love for us than you might think he does."

The Cancer Saint stood quiet, recalling the strange reaction the Skeleton at Aries and the Behemoth at Taurus had when shown the gate to the Well. "What the fuck is going on?! Who are you people?! Are you even Specters to begin with?!"

"We certainly wear the part, don't we?" Ainsel pointed out, waving a hand at the orange Surplice on his body. He then pointed his finger at Lance, which shone with a burning cosmos light at the tip. "But you don't need to concern yourself with that anymore. My Own Self!"

The Saint staggered, feeling something invisible puncturing his forehead. It was a familiar sensation, bringing back to him a brief memory of Guilty's Genma Ken, with no burning dart of cosmos involved. Instead, his paralyzed body was untouched, feeling a soothing sensation washing over his mind like a hot shower. His red eyes wavered, feeling drowsy, and his sight span around the room dizzyingly.

Lightening the paralysis a little bit, Ainsel guided Lance's body down to a kneeling position with the mere pointing at him, like a magical maestro. "There you go…"

The Saint sweated. "What… what did you do to me?!..."

The Specter's cosmos burned, heightening the effect of his technique on the defenseless Gold Saint. It made his body drowsier and drowsier, like lulling a defiant child to sleep. "It's okay. You just have to close your eyes."

But the youth's natural anger resisted against this sensation; Lance fought against the strange weakness he felt in his limbs, which seemed fine, but it was as if his mind was refusing to keep them strong and alert. He was allowed to rub his eyes by the Papillion, who just enjoyed the sheer theatrics of watching people trying to fight this move, and soon enough the Gold Saint felt his lids heavier and darkness swelling in the corner of his eyes.

Once it was done, the Saint would be ready to be feasted on. "Silky Threading!" Ainsel casted, using his other hand to flick up a signal of cosmos that caused threads to shoot off the floor and wrap up around the Saint's body, arresting him. "Do you feel it, Saint? The tiredness of the night?"

Lance sweated, fighting with all he could against this sensation. He barely could register Ainsel's words. "Why… w-why am I so…"

"It's that ever-present side of yours, your old self, Cancer… the one you used to be." Ainsel alluded.

Such was the evilness of 'My Own Self', turning the victim's body's own sleeping instincts against them. Next to Lord Lucifer's Eternal Darkness and the ballad of Sphinx Neferti, it was one of the most enchanting spells of the Underworld.

"You will recall the innocence of your past… and be assured a good night's sleep. Don't you miss it?" the Specter asked, smirking. "Those days of carefree yonder?"

The Saint groaned, feeling his limbs sink into the growing threads around his body. "No!"

The Specter laughed. "No?"

Amid the darkness filling up his sight, Lance felt familiar flashes of his time as a child. He felt taken back to it even, being induced by the sensation that his body was much smaller than it already really was and that everything around him was enormous and unreachable. He felt the eyes of the statues of that convent in Athens on him again. He felt his feet on the muddy ground of the cemetery he got locked inside.

An instinct, likely another part of Ainsel's bewitchment, told him to explore those memories, but he felt a strange wall in front of him. "I… I can't…remember!"

The Specter cupped Lance's head in his hands and he channeled the enchantment directly. "Of course you can. Our memories are always there! Show me your nightmares…"

Lance's eyes widened, feeling memories rush up to him!

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

S..p it, ..ed!

How dare yo… Do you….w where you are?!

T…re fire everywhere!

AGHH! H..lp ME!

M…erer!

H… name is… A…ne.

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

Lance irked, feeling a high-pitched screech inside his skull, startling the Specter.

Ainsel blinked. "How strange… he is losing his alertness as he should, but something is blocking his childhood memories. A trauma, perhaps?" he theorized. For all he knew, these neanderthal Saints wiped out half of their memories in training due to concussions. Coursing his cosmos into the victim, he felt a softer spot in the mind he could peruse. "Let's try reviving some earlier memories…"

As his powers went through the stretch of Lance's life, he felt his attempts suddenly blocked. He blinked, no longer believing this to be a mere mental trauma. Pressing his hand on the Saint's forehead, Ainsel closed his eyes and felt metaphorically pulled into a mental image of his victim's memories. Before him, in the darkness, he saw something surprising; a seal disk of bright, white cosmos drawn with a central triangle pattern marked with several sealing runes made of Ancient Greek letters.

The Papillion was frankly surprised. "A three-pointed crest…? Judging by what it's hiding, it's at least a decade old." he theorized to himself. Recalling what he knew about Sanctuary, Ainsel remembered that Silver Saints were usually the ones to recruit trainees. "The Triangle Saint, maybe?"

The Specter had encountered these before. Seals on people's memories made out of the cosmos were not uncommon. Some applied them as a way to heal psychological issues. In fact, he had encountered this type of incantation on the minds of the False Specters themselves. In their case, it had been made by Hades upon turning them into replacements for his real Specters. It was an easy way to reduce their long term their suspicions about his real intentions for them.

In this case, Ainsel felt the need to get past this annoying barrier or My Own Self wouldn't work properly. He didn't have to unravel the whole thing, but unearthing a couple of painful memories would do the trick in disrupting the Gold Saint's use of cosmos.

Besides, this guy was asking for it, scalding Ainsel as he did!

Pressing his hand against the energy crest, the Papillion made its secrets come to the surface!

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

Twelve years earlier, 1964

Greece, Athens,

St. Michael Convent

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

The nameless four-year-old boy panted heavily as he ran across the convent's patio, his heart beating fast within his chest and his red eyes wide-opened with fear. Heavy rain poured all around him loudly and ominously, soaking him completely from top to bottom. He saw the gate of the graveyard open and hesitated in terror, not wanting to go inside.

The sound of footsteps behind him got louder, though. "There he is!"

"Get him! Get the freak!"

Panic flooded him and he made a reckless choice, fleeing inside the fenced graveyard. The paved ground was slippery from the rain and his swift foot clashed with something laying on the ground, making him fall and scrape his knees and hands wide open. Adrenaline forced him to get up as fast as possible and run to try and compensate for the sudden setback, but still, the others were already catching up with him.

The frantic child's heart skipped a beat when he realized just how close they were to get him. He had to hide! Everywhere he looked, he saw only short tombstones and scary statues of angels and gargoyles. He yelped in pain when a thrown rock hit the back of the head, causing him to fall face-first in a puddle. He turned on his back and covered his head as more rocks were thrown at him, trying to protect himself. He cried, even more, when he saw the blood on his open injuries.

The other children finally caught up with him, backing him against the graveyard's fence.

He crawled away against a big mausoleum and felt his back hit its wall. "S-stop it!" the child sobbed, his hurt leg throbbed with pain. "L-leave me a-alone!"

"Look at him, he's a monster! His eyes are red and scary!" accused one of the older kids.

"S-STOP IT!" the red-eyed child shouted at the top of his lungs "STOP CALLING ME A MONSTER!"

More pebbles, sticks, and insults were thrown at him in response.

"SHUT UP, monster! You scared those adopters away from the convent!"

"We told you to stay in the corner away from everyone!"

The red-eyed boy practically tucked himself like a turtle in a desperate attempt to protect his face from the rocks. "NO! LEAVE ME ALO-O-ONE!"

"I bet his parents were also freaks with red eyes!" one child suggested, eyes narrowed in anger and disgust as he watched him crawling between the puddles. "Only the Devil has eyes like that! That's what the Sisters say!"

The child tried to back away so hard that he wished he could fuse with the mausoleum's wall, terrified. He looked around and tried to crawl away, but the kids stepped in front of him and kicked him down. Then his eyes saw, in the distance, a staff member carrying a dirty shovel, apparently just watching the whole scene. "HELP ME!" the child shouted. However, to his horror, the staff just ignored his plight and took off, leaving him at the mercy of the children. "What? H-HEY, STOP! Where are you going? What are you DOING? HELP ME, PLEASE!"

After hearing no reply, he then had to forget about the man and turn his attention to the infant mob closing on him. The oldest kid, who seemed more like a teenager due to his size, took the front of the group. He cracked his knuckles as he prepared to attack the child!

"YEAH!" one cheered, "BEAT HIM UP!"

"KILL THE DEVIL!"

"POKE HIS WEIRD EYES OUT!"

The child screamed in terror. "AAAHHH! NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"NO! LEAVE ME ALONE! GO AWAY! JUST GO AWAY!" his hand blindingly searched for something and threw it as hard as he could!

One of the boys screamed when the stone brick hit him right in the head, flooring him.

The older boys saw their friend floored, stunned. They turned to the smaller boy. "Hey, what the heck is wrong with you?!"

"He's not waking up!"

The mob simply stared at the child, the sight of the nameless boy with his face covered in his victim's blood.

"YOU KILLED HIM!"

"MURDERER!"

The child awakened from his trance, his attention returning to the mob as he gasped with the sudden realization of what had just happened.

"MURDERER! MURDERER, MURDERER!" the children all chanted, all of their fingers pointing at the bloody, soaked child.

This finally seemed to get the attention of an adult passing by the graveyard, attracted by the noise. "HEY, WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOING THERE?!"

"N…N-N-No!" the child muttered, before shouting "NO!" he then grabbed his head with both hands and snapped into a screaming fit! "HAAAAAH! NO! I DIDN'T WANT TO! I DIDN'T WANT TO! NAAAAHHH!"

They all yelled, picking up more rocks, punch, and kicking. "BEAT HIM UP! KILL HIM!" the children then all pounced on him, ready to make him pay for his horrendous crime and his red eyes!

All the younger boy felt was non-stop blunt impacts on his whole body. "N-NO! S-STOP!" he desperately screamed. A mixture of terror, anger, and horror completely filled him up and everything in the world stopped making sense to him. He had no idea who things got to this point, what he had done to deserve this, or how to get out of it.

In the darkness of this ignorance and the extremeness of the punishment he was being subjected to, something in his mind went blank, perhaps from another punch or kick to his skull, and a painful, blank sensation flooded his brain. Then, though his eyes were closed, he saw a bright white star at the distance… like a twinkle in the depths of the abyss.

His hand reached out and grasped it, almost as if to flee from that graveyard, from that mob of cruel kids while dark energy flowed beneath him.

…He just wanted them all to DIE!

With nothing but terror and hate in his heart, the star exploded inside his hand, burning it up in a hot flame, and the cry of the firebird was heard across the dark world he was in before it painfully recoiled back into reality, where his whole body burst in the middle of all those kids surrounding him with a shower of black fire, instantly incinerating everything around him and blasting the cemetery into a crater.

No one survived.

No one even screamed.

In an instant, the black cosmos had transformed into waves of fire which consumed everyone.

And all that survived was a crying, red-eyed child looking at his own, blood-soaked hands amid a sea of flames, contemplating his massacre.

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

In the material world of the present, there was a pained gasp from the Gold Saint and Ainsel saw Lance finally succumb to My Own Self, at last in tune with a childhood memory strong enough to infantilize his mind. Taking into consideration the kind of childhood memories that seemed to be behind this seal, Ainsel quickly put together that what likely happened was that Triangle had the kindness to block these painful events.

"Mm… you poor child. It really must have been mental trauma. That's quite a way to find out about the cosmos."

Lance was unresponsive, but the pain of these memories made his eyes flicker wildly.

Ainsel smirked. "I have to say I didn't expect to defeat the Phoenix Saint so early. Lord Lucifer will be very happy." The Specter mocked. Anyone with fundamental knowledge of the constellations would recognize the firebird's cry heard in the memory of the trauma. "When Lord Lucifer sent Troll to Death Queen Island, he expected to encounter you, but I suppose a powerful Bronze Saint like that would reach Gold Cloth status rather quickly."

"P-Phoenix?!" Lance muttered, utterly confused. He knew the real Phoenix, and it wasn't him. "W-what are you talking about, I'm not the Phoenix Saint!"

"Ah, ah, ah, don't lie! I like it almost as much as my Prince. I saw your trauma. Your first cosmos burned with the Phoenix's cry." Ainsel confronted. "I suppose it doesn't matter anymore, cause at this point you won't be able to burn it again, much less revive yourself."

"What… what did you do to m-me?!" Feeling the silk reaching up to his face and threatening to cocoon him entirely, Lance tried to burn his cosmos, but he felt it strangely out of reach, as his head somehow failed to grasp the fundamentals of how to keep body, mind, and soul as one. Strange tears of fear from his trauma swelled in his eyes.

"That's the whole point of My Own Self, to interfere with your ability to summon your cosmos. Now-" and Ainsel then stretched his wings as much as he could, attracting new swarms of Underworld moths that had survived Eruption's burning. "-say goodbye!"

Lance sweated, feeling himself enclosed in silk. He was about to get eaten by bugs and made into an egg patch!

"NEBULA CHAIN!"

Ainsel gasped and flapped away at the speed of light, dodging the round-tipped chain that flew at him in odd, thunder patterns. "What?!"

Saint Andromeda Shinta leaped unto the battlefield from the charred ruins of the fallen pillars, lashing out his remaining chain. His armor burned with pink cosmos.

"LANCE!" the green-haired teenager announced. He saw his friend almost completely enclosed in silk and the Specter flying above them. "What did you do to him?!"

"Ugh, nuisance!" Ainsel complained. "(Lord Lucifer, I have important news! The Andromeda Saint has shown up at Cancer!)"

"(Excellent! Soon that Cloth will be mine! Ainsel, avenge the deaths of Guen, Maia, and Pell and capture that armor for me!)"

The blue-haired elite nodded. "Right away!" and he descended on the Bronze Saint like a hawk, landing a light speed stomp unto his blocking defense chain that pushed the Bronze Saint back. "You made a mistake coming here, Andromeda! You'll join your friend in the nest of the moths! UGLY ERUPTION!"

Shinta gasped, seeing the Specter shoot from his hand a shower of green goo that he instinctively dodged by rolling to the side! It splashed all over the floor and began eating away at it, frightening the Bronze Saint with its threatening acid!

Ainsel in the air laughed. "This is no place for those without Gold Cloth, Bronze Saint!"

Shinta narrowed his eyes, truly furious. "And this is no Bronze Saint whose friends you should threaten!" he announced, standing up straight.

The Elite widened his eyes. "Are you serious? What do you intend to do with Mach speed and only one chain?!" But in response, the aura around Shinta's aura just grew and grew, hotter and hotter. Ainsel was insulted at the mere notion of this punk standing up against him. His cosmos burned and he swept the air with shockwaves! "Fine, join your friend! FAIRY THRONGING!"

Shinta saw the waves of rainbow cosmos and tossed his defense chain into the air. "GO! ROLLING DEFENSE!" The tip then descended unto him in a spinning pattern that formed a perfect rotating barrier, absorbing the shock of the blasts with but a dragging of Shinta's feet at the impact force!

Ainsel gasped!

With the False Specter distracted, Lance slowly felt his mind returning to him and the memories of his seal trauma going away again. Immensely dizzy, he began struggling against the silk around him, but there was so much that he could barely move. Instead, his kneeling body broke the base of the silk, causing him to fall to his side, still wrapped in it. "S-SHIT! I need to do something! Shinta needs help!" And his hands deep inside the silk wrapping began fidgeting as much as possible, searching for what he brought up the temples in his pocket.

The winged Specter roared and bashed against Shinta's barrier with a body drenched in darkness, breaking through Rolling Defense and tackling back the Bronze Saint, hurting him. "I see! So you're no Bronze-rank at all! You used lightspeed to defeat Amphion!"

Shinta winced and held his own, standing right back up. "W-Why did you people attack my island?! What could possibly be worth the life of innocent kids like Albiore and Elda to you?!"

The Specter thrust his hands out, shooting geysers of acid "UGLY ERUPTION!" it splashed all over Shinta's defending chain and pieces of his Cloth, eating away at him. "You will know more soon, Andromeda, once you're kneeling to Lucifer's demands!"

Shinta backed away and heard the Princess scream with pain in his mind. "Andromeda, hold on!" he urged.

The Cloth's cosmos burned in unison with his own, fusing their strength deeper. "J-Just squash this ugly bug, he disgusts me!"

Ainsel laughed and called forth his moths, which flapped around Shinta, surrounding him. With a flicker of his helmet antennae, Ainsel then projected the full power of his telekinesis unto the Saint, using the moths as relayers to strike at him from every angle with it.

Detecting the threat, Rolling Defense was immediately recast and Shinta felt the colossal, unseen force bash unto him from every angle, like machinery pressing. He screamed, feeling the brute force transmitted unto his body, but burned his cosmos to fight back against it, spinning the chains furiously.

"What a magnificent defense! I can see how my techniques wouldn't penetrate that chain!" Ainsel compliment. "But what can you do against the power of telekinetic weight, Saint? You'll be crushed inside that barrier of links like a tin can!"

Indeed, Shinta began feeling the width and speed of the defensive pillar receding unto him! He had to do something or the Specter would turn him into a fountain of flesh and blood!

On the ground, Lance struggled as hard as he could and his hand squeezed down just enough for his fingers to feel the cold touch of the Triangle End in his pocket. It shocked him at the touch, reacting instinctively against the contact with a stranger, but the dizzy Saint tried as hard as he could to burn even just a small amount of cosmos. The more he did, though, the more the stardust-infused silk sucked it away. He had to burn enough to give merit to his Gold Saint status or he wouldn't break free!

"Lance!"

His red eyes widened, feeling a familiar call. "K…. Karkinos?! You're finally close to me?!"

"What are you doing, you failure?!" its deep voice called out. "Get up and fight!"

Emboldened, the Saint tried to, but the Specter had wrapped him up like a mummy and all he could do was squirm like a silkworm on the ground. "I'm trying, but my cosmos-!"

Karkinos roared. "Your cosmos?! Have you forgotten who we are?!"

Lance blinked, stunned at his own stupidity. He gritted teeth effort and called out the one move he could still use! "PRAESEPE UNDERWORLD WAVE!" and his left hand released the shockwave of purple energy, capturing his own soul and sending it straight to the Well of the Underworld

The Gold Saint fell unto the blackened ground of the passageway to the dead, feeling in his face the lack of air in the place and the uniquely creepy coldness of Yomotsu Hirasaka. Most importantly, he was free from his restraints, having left all that damn silk behind in the material world with his body.

His red eyes looked up. Mephisto was awaiting him with the Cancer Gold Box right in front of him. "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!" the boy ranted.

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Saga rushed inside the main plaza, finally catching up with Shinta. He came across the scene of the Bronze Saint inside his Rolling Defense, which was being slowly crushed unto the Bronze by the powerful False Specter and his moths. "ANDROMEDA!"

Shinta looked over his shoulder. "SAGA, stay back! It's dangerous to fight this one without a Cloth!"

Ainsel groaned. "UGH, more Saints?!" He squinted, though, when he saw this one was unarmored, too. "What is it with tonight and me having to fight all these low-rankers and these kids without Cloths!? Enough of this!" The False Specter's cosmos then began to heat up wildly, releasing miasmas of darkness. "It's time I show you all the destructive power of the Papillion Surplice!"

The Gemini burned his golden cosmos and faced off against the Specter, fearing what he was doing.

The Specter then applied his telekinesis combined with his Darkness Cosmos. "KALEIDOSCOPE TERROR!" he cast, and his wings projected frightening patterns of light onto the walls.

This, however, was just intimidation. The real attack came when the air sheared with the unseen forces of the Specter and the ground split apart with geysers of cosmos that produced shockwaves in every direction, zigzagging in seemingly random trajectories. They blasted away rubble and Shinta and Saga back, who barely protected themselves with their Rolling Defense and cosmos, respectively.

The two Saints fell back, but the releasing of shockwaves from the shining aura of the Specter continued! Thunderous sounds of tiles being torn to pieces were heard. The two briefly feared that the entire edifice would fall on their heads if this continued, but the mighty temples resisted.

Saga burned cosmos into his hand, "GALAXIAN… EXPLOSION!" and the shockwave of destructive forces from Another Dimension was fired, aimed at the Specter!

In a flash of white light, however, Ainsel teleported out of the way, letting the attack fly right off the temple! Reappearing close by, his aura flowing was entirely uninterrupted and Kaleidoscope Terror continued!

Ainsel laughed at the look of shock on Saga's face. "AH, AH, AH! Thank you for revealing yourself, Gemini! I'm afraid though, that catching me with my pants down will be far harder than you th-"

Saga's hands waved to the side, as if twisting the air. "ANOTHER DIMENSION!"

Lance's wrapped up body suddenly burst with golden light, tearing the silk apart! "CANCER-!"

Ainsel's startled face turned towards the combined attacks and he readied his short teleport!

"-LIGHTNING STORM FIST!" The renamed 'Multiple Charge Fist' fired out a shower of thunder dart punches wrapped in golden metal right at the Specter!

"It's no USE!" Ainsel bragged, flashing his body into white light and escaping both the darts and the dimensional wave that tried to catch him! He reappeared in the sky above both and laughed as he saw Cancer's attack being sucked up into Gemini's. "AH, AH, AH I can do this all day-"

"AGAIN! DIMENSION!" Saga roared, tossing hand once more and opening the rift immediately above Ainsel's head!

The Specter barely had time to look up to see the shower of captured Lightning Storm Fists coming down on him! It blasted his body mercilessly, punching him down to the ground, shattering his cheek guard, meteoring the rest of his body, and finally bursting with an electric shockwave that tossed Ainsel right across the Temple's Hall, canceling out his Kaleidoscope Terror attack aura!

Ainsel screamed, bashed against the ground and feeling his entire body shocked by painful golden sparks, convulsing him.

Shinta gasped at his friend's reapperance. "LANCE!"

The gallant Gold Saint of Cancer stood there before them, wrapped in the one Gold Cloth that could switch back and forth the Yomotsu Hirasaka as a Surplice would be brought to him thereby Mephisto. He tossed Shinta's chain to him. "Here, CATCH!"

The elite False Specter shook his head and raised himself as quickly as the sparks emanated off of him, equally mad! He saw the Gold Saint of Cancer finally armored and feared for his mission for the first time. "D-Damn you! FAIRY THRONGING!"

The Gold Saint's red eyes shone as he saw the rainbow curtains shoot at him, detecting their pattern! His caped body shot forward at the speed of light, taking the form of a golden ray, and refracted off the ground in an ultra-fast rolling motion that dodged the movements of the Specter's attack, closing in distance!

Leaping up at the wall by the Specter, his foot stepped and jumped off it to power a resounding side kick to the Specter's side drenched in a layer of golden cosmos, instantly cracking his orange surplice and blasting him into the air! "SHINTA, NOW!"

In the same instant, Shinta stretched out his broken chain into the air, which snapped into the Triangle End tossed at him. A jolt of lightning coursed through his armor and body as the links instantly mended together, reuniting Andromeda with its missing piece, and the Bronze Saint was quickly to launch his attack "NEBULA CHAIN!"

The stunned, flying Specter was then assaulted by the lashing and lancing of seemingly countless chain strikes around his body and armor, tearing through metal and shocking his body, sending Ainsel into a screaming fit before he even hit the ground!

Lance dashed at the fallen Specter with a foot slide!

The Specter teleported away into the air, escaping the attack and burning his cosmos. He tried to thrust his hand at the Saint! "D-DIE-!"

But Lance's body rolled over to face him once more and to allow his hand to slice the air upwards. "BLADE!" and the chop of fire cut through the Specter with the blazing force of the air slash, ripping out his shoulder guard.

Shinta leaped over the stunned Specter and launched his defensive chain. "GREAT CAPTURE!" It wrapped around the Specter's wings, legs, and arms, arresting him, before Shinta pulled his own body through the chain unto him with a cosmos reinforced knee blow that hammered the Specter's back, shooting him at the ground just as Lance's aura switched from fire to thunder!

The Cancer Gold Saint shot back right at the falling Specter. "LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!" he roared, turning into a huge beam of thunder that struck the Specter like a locomotive right as Shinta's blow put him on his path, brutally shooting the Specter off to the ends of the Hall, still wrapped in chains.

Shinta dropped down to Lance's side, burning his pink aura as the Papillion Specter crashed into rubble. Pieces of his armor fell off his body on command, loudly clanking on the ground and unsealing his most powerful move. "NOW! NEBULA STORM!"

Feeling his friend picking up the mighty currents of wind around both of them, Lance's aura switched back again to fire, which swelled up with never seen force in combination with the combustion element! "FLAME ATTACK!"

The constellations of Andromeda and Cancer were projected in the air, uniting their strength, and an authentic firestorm of fused elements was launched at the chained Specter, drowning him in a superheated inferno that exploded on the rubble! The supports of the temple collapsed further, dropping large plates of marble from the sky down on the fire and the ruins, burying the enemy, and whatever was left of the Silky Threading caught on fire with the sheer heat of these incredible flames.

Having returned from Yomotsu Hirasaka down to the material world, Mephisto entered the combat zone, guarding himself with his arm from the heat. "Is it done?!"

Saga held him at bay from the fires protectively, feeling the cosmos of the enemy waning rapidly amidst the destruction in front of them. "Stay here!"

The four peers of Sanctuary beheld the burning attentively, expecting anything to come out of it. The combined attack was powerful, as the element of Wind was a mighty fuel for the fire, but for as long as their 7th sense detected the foe's strength, they all doubted it was that easy to defeat one of the enemies' elites, especially considering Aldebaran was still grappling with his after at least two hours of fighting.

As expected, the burning rubble was cut apart by Fairy Thronging before an angry, acidic shower of Ugly Eruption blasted it all away from the Specter, who emerged with chained arms spread out as much as they still could, startling them!

However, Ainsel immediately fell to his hands and knees, his Surplice heavily damage and dropping large broken segments of its orange metal to the ground, charred. Pink shocks from the Andromeda chains assaulted him, draining his dwindling bits of strength remaining. His skin showed heavy burn marks and he bled all over from the impact of his body against the ground from the Saints blows and the rocks that nearly smashed him to pieces if it weren't for his cosmos. His wings had also been burned away, completely this time, punctuating the massive extent of the damage he took. He panted frightenedly and looked up, seeing the four threats.

Saga, Lance, and Shinta immediately raised guard, ready to finish him off, while Mephisto yelped and hid behind them.

The Specter sweated, unsure how to deal with this!

But a voice booming in his head made him pale even more! "You better be just hiding that weakening cosmos of yours, Ainsel!"

The blue-haired Specter gasped. "My Prince, I… The enemy has conglomerated on the Cancer Temple! I'm outnumbered four-to-one and the Cancer Saint has his Gold Clo-"

"I don't want excuses, I want my battleplan secured!" Lucifer roared. He could feel from where he stood the large drop of his elite's strength, indicating the losing battle. "You are the most important of my four elites, and you seem to be the first one dropping the ball against these children!"

The Cancer Gold Saint saw the look of terror in the Specter's face and the subtle involuntary mouth movements characteristic of someone having a mental conversation. "I guess your boss realized you fucked up, huh?!"

Ainsel gritted teeth. He was a False Specter. To him, securing a new future was paramount! Standing up, he burned his cosmos once more, making sure his jamming was uninterrupted, and the wing sockets on the back of his armor flashed white as they sprouted a new set of wings at the expense of his remaining strength. "I will be a boon to your designs, Prince, not a hinder! I swear it!" Ainsel vowed.

Shinta tugged his chains, getting the wrapped Specter's attention. "Give up! If you surrender quietly, we won't kill you!"

Mephisto stared at him dumbfounded. "What?! Screw that, take him out NOW!"

Shinta shook his head. "They've done a lot of bad things, but there are stardust shackles we can use to capture foes while we battle the rest. For as long as we can do that, I won't let any of these Specters be killed."

Saga was also stunned. "This… is not a good strategy, Shinta. They are not Black Saints, they're powerful Specters."

Lance folded his arms. "Don't bother, you won't convince him. Shinta will just say that we need to find out how it came to all of this later when we have the chance to interrogate them."

The green-haired Saint turned to his friend. "You say that as if you wouldn't agree."

Ainsel chuckled at this amidst the shocks. "Eh, eh… a merciful one? Did you think because I worship Hades that will m-make me admire that in you, Andromeda?"

Shinta's eyes were stern at him. "Not at all. I don't care about getting your admiration. I just don't agree with killing you when there's no obligation for it. It's not about strategy or morality… it's my principle."

The Papillion raised its chin at him. "Fool… what makes you think you can keep me captured?!" And a white cosmos began burning.

Lance recognized the signal and ignited his cosmos, dashing at the Specter with Blade. "NO, YOU DON'T-!"

But as the Saint's arm swung, Ainsel's body flashed, blinding their eyes, and the Andromeda Chains dropped to the ground, empty of their prey.

"Damn it! YOU COWARD!" Lance roared. He readied himself to leap at the Specter, but his body suddenly felt frail and his mind went off sync again, causing him to lose the sensation of his cosmos. Dropping to his knee, the Cancer Saint winced.

Shinta saw this and rushed to him. "Are you okay?! Lance?!"

The Cancer rubbed his eyes. As he did so, flashes of the memories awakened earlier by Ainsel's attack came to him in the darkness, before a faint image of a burning triangle took them away, Triangle Noah's greatest gift to him. "I'm… D-damn…He did something to me earlier…"

Saga held Lance's shoulder, who looked like he could leap out of the roof in pursuit. "He won't make it far. The Zodiac's defenses don't exactly tolerate enemies skipping the Temples with flight and warping. He's also so damaged that I doubt he'll be a threat to anyone with lightspeed."

Lance punched a wall in frustration, cratering it. "That was their jammer! Taking him out was important…"

"He would never let you do that. He's too important to their leader. With his capabilities, he likely had a backdoor plan from the start." Saga argued. "But this is not an empty victory. We have finally reunited after China and, by fighting that guy off, we crippled one of the enemies' elites and we took back Gemini, Cancer, Aries, and soon enough Leo."

Lance cooled down, seeing the sense in Saga's words. "… That's true." And he looked them over. "I'm glad you're all okay. I'm sorry I'm late. Mu and Iaso rushed me back as quickly as they could."

Shinta smiled back. "Of course, I'm just happy you're here! Thank you for bringing my chain back."

"No problem. You did great back there, Shinta." Lance complimented. It made Shinta's heart skip a beat. "You saved me-"

Shinta leaned in and hugged his friend. "Thank you! I'm so happy to see you."

"Alright, alright, get off, for fuck's sake!" the Cancer Gold Saint pushed. Geez, he couldn't extend one compliment without the Andromeda melting like butter. What kind of man was he? "As for the chain, I took it from some assholes at Aries who tried to convince me they killed you. We don't need to worry about them anymore, though."

Young Deathmask rolled his eyes and gestured a sickened motion by pointing at his laid out tongue. "Ugh, I'm not! Do you have any idea the dangers I had to brave to protect your Cloth?!"

Considering the circumstances, Lance decided to ignore Mephisto's brattiness. Instead, he ruffled his hair. "You did a good job. That was a great idea to bring the Cancer Cloth to the Underworld so you could pass it to me."

Saga walked over to the entrance of the House, from where he could see the lower temples, namely his own. He felt the cosmos of his armor there, confirming his suspicions of how it went to help Kanon.

Lance saw him standing there and approached him. "I found your armor down there. I tried to take it up with me but it wasn't collaborating."

The blue-haired teenager nodded. "I figured as much. Aiolia's was the same. You're gonna have your work cut out for you at the Leo Temple, so I can go down there quickly in the meantime to get it."

"My Cloth! Oh, thank Athena, now we don't have to get it back from my House…Are these my carpets?" After quickly confirming it was all there, the Gemini Saint asked Lance "How did you bring it up? All the armors are refusing to leave their houses during this attack."

"The thing just shut itself off and forced me to carry all the dormant pieces up!" the Cancer Saint bitched. Lance glanced at Saga suspiciously. "Do you mind telling me how that thing landed at your Temple?"

Surprisingly, Shinta was the one to explain it. "We were making our way up the soldier pass, Lance. It started glowing all of a sudden and just vanished off Saga's body. I was really surprised."

Sweating, Saga played it off as innocently as he could as he began equipping his armor back on. "Perhaps our Cloths are even more mysterious than we thought…" he diverted, pretending he knew nothing about any secret twin with a unique bond to him.

The red-eyed youth squinted. "Sure…" he skeptically accepted. With the group collected, though, Lance felt the need to readdress the invasion. He felt good about taking his Temple back and reuniting with these three, but the attack was still on. "Listen, guys, I ran into a friend on the way here, who helped me get past all of Daemon's stupid scouts without me raising any alarms. We noticed some weird things about these Specters along the way that might be important."

"You can explain it to us while we get back to Aiolia up at the Fifth, Lance. Shaka needs us, and we need you at Leo after what that damn Golem Specter did. We'll also let you know what we learned so far." Shinta suggested.

Deathmask laid against the wall lazily. "Good, good. I'm staying HERE… to guard the place, you know?"

Leading the walk back to the stairs to Leo, the Gemini still felt Lance's eyes on him. Saga manned up and confessed. "Also… we got a look at the Daemon Specter. He passed us by at Leo."

Recalling their dispute at Dohko's house, Lance's interest was piqued. "I guess you got a good look at his cosmos, then?..."

The proud, introverted teenager sighed. "….Fine, you were right, okay?! I don't know how he'd managed it, but that guy is super strong and I'm now wondering how you survived even five minutes without your Gold Cloth! Happy?!" he admitted, hating to lose, whether it was to Aiolos or anyone else. The signature he felt, though, was higher than anything he had ever seen.

A satisfying sense of revindication came over the Saint, who hid his smirk. "You can leave the fifty."

His blue eyes looked away in deject, but he accepted, smacking the drachmas on top of one of the ruined Temple's tables as they headed out. He shouldn't have made that wager at Dohko's house. It was fine, though. Anything but an 'I told you so' or, worse, letting Aiolos know Saga lost a judgment bet.

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Chapter End

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Next Chapter: Chapter 56 - Episode 19 – The One Closest to God – Part 1

Description: Daemon Lucifer is incensed with Ainsel's loss and commands his troops up the house towards the sixth temple to join Sphinx and Alraune's forces. There, however, the most mysterious and dangerous of his Gold Saint adversaries awaits.

Author's Notes: I apologize for missing the February 13th deadline, the first anniversary I go without publishing a chapter, and the tenth to boot, but some important correcting work needed to go into it. In any case, the fic celebrates ten years and 20,000 hits and that's still a cause for celebration. Jenny DeVic commented to me personally as if it was tough to believe it, and it really is. I intend to keep working hard on this story and even finish the False Holy War within 2021.

This chapter ended up going into Beta with 30,000 words, but got cut down there and in finishings to 26,000. The main reason is that some scenes were transplanted to future chapters and a significant chunk got cut and deleted for fluidity sake.

Papillion Ainsel is still very much alive, but I figured I'd do his etymology now; Ainsel literally means "My Own Self" in the Northumbrian novel by Joseph Jacobs, the tale which his character and moves are based on. It's therefore not a contrast to Myu but a reinterpretation of the Papillion Surplice as more of a fairy creature, rather than a butterfly or moth, which is partly why this False Specter is written as targeting child characters like Mu and Deathmask so often, the other reason being the applicability of his powers.

Next we're going into the "One Closest to God" storyline, which was the first storyline from Version 2 that was directly betaread by Jenny DeVic. Prior to that, she would only review my chapters and advise/encourage me on the side.

Speaking of which, her new story, More than Gold, is approaching the end, so you should check it out, as well!

You should also absolutely check out Balasdan's new artwork for the story, btw. I will put up a link to it on my profile as soon as I can and

Anyway, make sure to check out the Saint Seiya Reddit Discord server, where I'm currently one of the co-admins. Other writers like Jenny DeVic also can be found in it. You can hang out with the rest of the English-speaking SS community and we host several weekly events, like episode streams, games and now a whole new Horror Let's Play themed after the Underworld.

See ya O.O

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