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.

61. 2A: Eternal Darkness

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:

-I apologise for the late release, but this chapter needed extra work at editing and finishing

-I actually need help, my next chapter could use a Betareader to get it looked at by September 23rd. If you're interested, send me a PM

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My thoughts on Michael's persisting pacifism aside, I must confess that discovering a former soldier of our God now on Athena's side disturbs me. I went down to the Second Prison and requisitioned the Book of the Dead to search for her name. When Rune objected, I reminded him I was the direct mortal servant of the book's owner, that I outranked him twice and that I wasn't about to hear protocol garbage from him about the Hall of Judgement after what Minos pulled at Rodario.

Directly going to the pages reserved to souls under Lord Hades' command, I noticed all the neat ways that the names and status of all the Specters and Skeletons were assigned in their own set of pages. Even Gryphon Vermeer's False Specters were written next to the Surplices. I could even write in a Prison to send them to it if I so wished. When Rune asked for the book back, I wrote the 3rd Prison next to his name as a test and he was immediately whisked away. Interesting.

Looking through the skeletons with female names, it wasn't long before I found it listed as located at Sanctuary, without being a corpse, that is. I learned her name, rank, Prison and more, but only barely, because the entire information row seemed scorched through as if by a fiery pen. Did Minos do this? Or did that woman's transformation into the Phoenix Saint cause this to happen? I leaned towards the latter since Minos isn't the kind to suffer traitors with just a strict 'firing'.

… But if the name is still here, does Lord Hades know of her? His awareness is vast and beyond my scope, so that wouldn't be strange, but Alone didn't seem to react to her presence in any particular way. If he does understand who she is, why does he tolerate her existence? Why wasn't she struck dead to the ground the second Alone met her at Sanctuary? Is he… observing? Do Gods do this? Do they toy with our souls to see how far we stretch in allegiance? Is the Emperor expecting her to return to our ranks someday, or does he wish her to live a futile life as a Saint to then send her to Cocytus as she deserves?

More importantly, how far can this phenomenon go? Can a Prince be somehow corrupted by Athena into becoming a Saint? I picture Michael in such a position, as his personality is just the type that heart-stringer would prey on with lies about idealism and hope, but I'm convinced even him would need a very thorough brainwashing before ever thinking of changing sides.

-entry on Daemon Lucifer's journal, dated 1751, continued from chapter 57 quote

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The Past

Death Queen Island,

Volcano Cauldron

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"Athena's era is over! Now it's her turn to fall!"

The four Saints, Andromeda, Cygnus, Libra, and Phoenix, stood at the precipice of the cauldron's long protrusion, backed against it by the Specter Prince with the whirring, charging ball of cosmos in his hand aimed at the ground. Once he fired it, the ground they stood on would fall off and all four of them would drop to the boiling lava below that raged with enough heat to melt the strongest of armors.

Phoenix held the injured Libra close. "Wait!" Haisaku cried to Lucifer. "Please, Prince… a moment!"

Lucifer's silver brows tensed, affronted. "What?!"

Her head lowered humbly, teary eyes closing. "Please, I beg of you, … you are a proud warrior, Star of Pride, so by the dishonor of having seen my face, of an equally proud Amazon of Athena, grant me just one final wish!"

The Saints were stunned. "Saint Haisaku!"

"You must be joking! A traitor like you, asking for last wishes?!" The powerful Specter rightly mocked, focusing his aim again. "Why would I ever concede anything to you?!"

But Haisaku, a former Skeleton, knew Specters well and knew of their self-righteous cruelty. "It will give me a chance to pay for my sins to Hades while my feet still stand on the surface world."

This, surprisingly to the Saints, gave the Prince true pause, as the red-eyed man just stood there staring, trying to figure her out. Internally, a battle between his desire to annihilate them all and the inherent punishing nature of a Specter raged, making his teeth grit.

"Saint Haisaku, what are you doing?!" Cygnus demanded to know.

"You need time. While I distract him, power up your wings and use the opportunity to fly off. This is the only way. " she begged, not ceding an inch on her surrendering stance. Behind them all, the golden warmth of the armor inside the lava increased. "Prince, you may have been right in saying it was my weakness and envy that made me turn away from Hades, so please, just as the Phoenix once did, please give me a chance to cleanse my mind and spirit. I do not wish the Emperor to see me in the Underworld in my corrupt self."

The Saints, especially Dohko, winced in disgust at hearing the honorable Master refer to their hated enemy so respectfully, but the Libra Saint played along. "H-Haisaku, how could you say that?!"

She dropped his injured body upon the warm stone and walked towards the Prince, keeping her head low until she stood between him and the Saints. "This is the truth… I see it now. I couldn't make Kagaho see otherwise because of it."

Lucifer saw Dohko's face twist in pain. "What?!… So you're just going to surrender now to that hateful God?!"

Haisaku nodded. "Yes. I need to pay for my cowardice before I face the Emperor."

Doing his damndest to pretend she hadn't warned them about lying, Libra felt his heart sink and he let out the only thing he could say if these circumstances were real. " I… I hate you! I HATE YOU!"

The red-eyed Prince blinked, not having expected this. He tried to perceive if this was all a big theater, but the Saints were reacting pretty much accordingly to how he was raised to believe they would; feeling nothing but shock and anger at the prospect of anyone displaying the slightest regret for serving Athena.

"First you go off somewhere to search for a boat while I have to stay in Sanctuary and feel my best friend's heart stop beating in my arms-!" Dohko continued, referring to Suikyo "-and then you weren't even around when I had to raise his student and watch him be murdered by your bastard God right in front of me! WAS I JUST A BIG JOKE TO Y-YOU?!"

Haisaku measured her words carefully, knowing the Prince was intelligent and that displaying too much cruelty to Dohko now, all of a sudden, would simply tip the Pride Star off to something not being right. Instead, she had to speak as a Specter saw themselves as. "No, you weren't. But we all pay for our sins, Dohko. My time to do that has simply come."

Cygnus saw the Daemon hesitate even more, giving him the time he needed for his cosmos to power-up his wings even more.

The Prince indeed, albeit surprised at this turn of events, decided to give this just a little bit of leeway. "You really were a Skeleton… Only someone who intimately knows what kind of tortures the Underworld reserves to those who disrespect the Emperor would know to ask to expiate their sins before sullying his halls."

Haisaku gulped, wondering what kind of horrible punishment he would pick. "As part of my wish… I ask to atone immediately, Prince, " she requested. "I have become the Phoenix Saint. If you kill me without special circumstances, the Queen's horrible curse will just bring me back, barring me from salvation forever and ever."

Lucifer scoffed, noticing her red irises. "I know well of the evil afflicting this place! The curse sign in your eyes must originate from it. Perhaps such eternal cycles of punishment from both Lord Hades and the Queen, painfully defacing you from being the undead into being Mara and back and forth, is exactly what you deserve! However - " he conceded, bringing her a sigh of relief "- sacred in the Underworld is the law of the Book of the Dead, and the 4th Spell declares only Hades and his Specters may lay the punishment for your sins(*)! No false judge will judge the sinners, and that includes this cursed firebird! Very well! How would you like to die, then?"

(*) Chapter 27

While the Saints of Cygnus and Libra did their best to hide their relief and play up their roles of betrayal, Andromeda stared at this conversation worriedly. What were they speaking of, about the Phoenix Cloth and Death Queen Island? Was his older brother under these same cruel conditions?

Haisaku sweated, knowing the horror she was likely about to subject herself to. "If possible, Prince,… you must destroy me entirely, at body and mind, as the Virgo Saint would. My sixth sense must not exist intact at the moment of *death*, or the fires of the Phoenix will reignite."

But the Prince smirked, his aura shifted from its regular purple and red to a deep, jet black of raging shadows and he showed his left hand. "I have just the thing for you then!"

Haisaku gasped in horror. The Saints simply tensed in suspicion. In the Specter's dominant palm swirled a beautiful, yet terrifying orb of spiraling darkness about the size of a baseball which he had charged while she talked.

Andromeda recognized it. "That's… the blow Dark Angel used on Saint Sisyphus!"

Haisaku's face paled. "PRINCE, you must NOT!"

"QUIET, YOU LIAR!" he shouted, startling her further. "I must not?! Do you think I'm an idiot?! If you wished to destroy the grip of the Phoenix on you, you'd just jump off this precipice into the lava below! This is the filthy mouth of the Queen; that which spawned the cursed Cloth will destroy it as well!"

She backed away slowly as if the Prince held a powerful bomb. "I meant no offense-"

"No, you meant deceit and treason! Like a Saint would!" Lucifer spat, associating the two ideas like the two sides of a coin since the day the promise to protect his family was broken by Sanctuary. "But let's not waste a good idea, shall we?! I was going to let you drop to the lava with the rest, but perhaps I think you indeed should have your very mind punished beforehand! We wouldn't want to risk any filth arriving on the Emperor's doorstep, would we, Selena?!"

She gulped, recognizing the name. "… So my old name is still on the Book of the Dead."

"As it would always be! I made sure to go find you after our last encounter!" Lucifer confronted, confident that no one could escape the all-seeing eye of death, of Hades himself, even a lowly unimportant Skeleton! "I wouldn't want to miss the chance to know exactly whose treason I would punish!"

Her hands raised appealingly. "Prince… I beg of you! Do not cast that! The techniques of the Gods will do more than cause harm! They twist reality itself!"

He closed in on them slowly, raising the swelling orb for all the Saints to see. "I know! I made sure to learn it after Michael did…Unfortunately for you, I'm not as merciful as him. I'll make sure to cleanse all of you in preparation for your burials! An Eternal Darkness dome large enough to swallow this entire cauldron!"

The Andromeda Saint interfered, not just for their own sake, but for the Specter at Lucifer's heels that could very well be his brother. "Please, Kagaho will get caught as well! He's innocent!"

But the Prince scoffed, merciless. "The Celestial Violence Star will happily pay for his mistakes! He'll thank me for not letting Alone see him yet to be lashed! Unlike this woman, he's a real Specter, a chosen of the Emperor! He'd die before failing him!" He then rolled the ball onto his two fingers and raised it to the air with them. "Wingless shades of death, hear my command! Paint my world with the mark of shadows, rise from the abyss and corrupt my enemies!"

Seeing the Specter's aura rapidly charge the energy needed and making it swirl around the orb, swelling it, Cygnus found himself not even halfway to powering up. "Damn it! Everyone, give me your Cosmos! I'll rip whatever he throws at us to pieces!"

Andromeda, Dohko, and Haisaku immediately held his armor plates, burning their cosmos as well. The green-haired teenager sweated nervously. "That will be a powerful attack, like Thanatos' Terrible Providence. Will our Cosmos be enough?"

Cygnus gulped, watching Lucifer's attack swell to the size of a basketball. "I have no idea…"

Dohko, however, encouraged them. "W-we have seen this move before used on Sisyphus, Saints of Athena!" and he added his golden cosmos, burning their collective aura into an even bigger flare! "It MUST have a weakness! Keep your eyes open for it!"

"Shatter the soul, stab the heart, and let loose thy terror in their feeble minds!" Daemon finished chanting, before leaping back for safety and aiming the orb at all of them. "ETERNAL DARKNESS!"

As predicted, the bursting vortex of darkness cosmos swallowed up everything and everyone, encapsulating the entire bridgehead into an enclosing dome of thick, black material. The evil of the God of Sleep Hypnos was now unleashed upon the world and it bit down on five souls, promising a world of nightmares to them. A loud thunk, like a huge lead coffin being sealed shut, was heard as the last gaps in the dome vanished, locking them in, and Lucifer landed, observing the orb for flaws.

He smiled tiredly, feeling the strain of such a large dome being formed on his stamina but seeing the great results it yielded. A perfect capture. The battle was over. Nothing would come out of the spell but five mindless bodies, just like with Sisyphus, and Kagaho would indeed thank him for cleansing him of his failures. Soon their minds would be in the abyss of the terrifying world that Michael's master's powers existed in. Things couldn't have possibly gone any better.

Far below him, though, at the boiling lava pool, the same strange golden glow kept glowing on and off, waning and going….

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Chapter 61

Second Arc

Episode 23

Eternal Darkness

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Sanctuary, Golden Zodiac

Stairs to Scorpio

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The explosion in the sky startled the entire mountain, sending bright purple shockwaves everywhere that rattled those who crossed the stairs, uncovered by the Temples. The False Specters of Daemon Lucifer were close to reaching the Eighth Temple when they heard the sharp whirring sound of Dark Revenge Blast flying out of the House of Libra and knew well to drop to the floor before it detonated. The air quakes made their bones vibrate inside their muscles and the decorations of their armors rattled furiously. No one wanted to picture what being struck directly by the attack felt like.

Slowly, one-by-one, they raised their heads and bodies off the ground. Cait Sith Palug's feline eyes stared at the residual energy scar in the sky gradually fading away. It looked like a fleshy vein of cosmic wrongness. "Ptolemy's table, what made him fire that thing?!"

Sphinx Neferti, who led the group along with Golem Treble, had worse concerns. "And what made him miss?"

Golem Treble cracked his thick neck and looked down at Libra, fuming clouds of ash from Cancer Lance's fire-fueled battling. The stairs they had covered were littered with arrow-punctured Skeleton corpses. "I don't know what's going on down there, but it was good luck for us; Sagittarius was giving our grunts a beating and that blast made him stop!"

"Should we go back down?" asked Elf Rossalier. "Maybe the Prince is over his head."

Her head shook. "No, we had much worse to fear when the Prince battled Shaka of Virgo. Whoever he's fighting is nothing to him. Now let's go before Sagittarius starts firing at us again!"

The many Specters and Skeletons praised her words and nodded along. Having seen the Prince do the impossible multiple times just that week, they charged along with their leaders up the stairs to cross the last stretch of steps to their target.

It rose off the ground like a great border wall, covering one lateral end of the pass to the other, with a great rectangular entablature of towering flanks shaped like classical lighthouse lanterns and a pressed triangular center marked with the Scorpio zodiac. Its large gateway was fronted by two short welcoming sets of stairs of ascending width and the roof lanterns housed a single fire each of ominous blood red. Its gates were open, unlike most others that had been locked and reinforced from within.

This did not appease them. The Virgo gates had been easy to walk through too. Moreover, the open, dark innards of the Scorpio Temple oozed out a murderous air, like faint red hands reaching out to all of them from the inside, luring them in. They felt as if the second they stepped inside the eighth Temple, their throats would be slashed and their bodies strung upside down from the ceiling by their heels.

A collective sweat was felt by all of them, but this was no point to turn back from. They had their orders and their plan to confront Scorpio, and marched into the shadows of the Eighth Temple.

Their many metal boots on the dark-blue tainted Hall echoed loud and deep. They were at the Hall of Orion. Much like the Leo and Taurus Temple, the Scorpio House's Hall honored a mortal victimized by the birth of their Zodiac sign. In this case, Orion, which was also a powerful Silver Cloth, was killed in mythology by the scorpion under orders of the jealous Apollo.

What began as a determined rush, slowed down to a cautious walk and the men of Daemon began spreading out, searching for the enemy, the sense of unease growing in the back of their necks. They weren't sure what to expect of the Scorpio Gold Saint. They had reason to believe it was also a child, given the last Scorpio, the famous Paris, left as early as eight years before and the Eighth House had a history of passing its line down the same family, being easily one of the most aristocratic Zodiacs. However, if there was one thing the Virgo Temple taught them was that young age was no safeguard from being dangerous.

Yet, as they covered the dark halls and lightened torches on the pillars, nothing happened. A couple of Skeletons were startled when the light of their lanterns revealed startling carvings of huge scorpions seemingly crawling down the pillars, but a brief second was all it was needed for them to realize it was just decorative and their faces going red with embarrassment.

They reunited at the far center of the Hall, near the exit to Sagittarius, where Sphinx refused to accept the result of their search. "Are you all sure?! You didn't leave any doors closed?!"

"Lady Neferti, we are," Mandrake Nevil assured. "My group scoured the inner stairs to the roof and the upper rooms and everyone made it back."

"Ours found nothing in the side halls except paintings of old Scorpios, a pool, and locked servant rooms," added Elf Rossalier, who had to bust through all of them in search of the Gold Saint. "Can we leave now?! This empty place is creeping me out!"

Sphinx's eyes surveyed the group one more time, fearing a situation like back at Gemini where the Temple seemed empty but someone had been picking off their members in the dark one-by-one. But no matter how many times she counted grunt heads, it was all the same number as when they started.

Her eyes widened. "Wait, where's Golem?!"

"I'm here!" and the giant round figure came out from behind the pillars. He lost some time in the basement when he found that lever and uncovered a secret sex den belonging to previous Scorpios. "...I found a… art gallery corridor. Yeah."

She saw his eyes shift and narrowed hers. "...Well, this is an unexpected turnout, then. I really thought Scorpio would stand in our way."

"Maybe he took all the civvies up," Palug suggested.

This was unlikely in her opinion. "And leave a House empty when those civvies can walk on their own two feet?"

"Lord Ainsel's barrier is covering up to this Temple, right? Maybe he pulled back up to stay in contact with the ones past Sagittarius," offered Rossalier, who wanted nothing more than to leave, arrows or not.

She rubbed her jaw pensively. This was... possible. She expected the border of Ainsel's field to be somewhere in the next set of stairs, which meant that Scorpio didn't have to fall back too much from his home territory. It was easy to imagine him taking a quick trip up to discuss strategies with Sagittarius before rushing back down, especially if he saw the House of Virgo fall from here. Could they intercept him at the stairs, then, if they moved quickly enough? Getting into battle with Scorpio up there could be a unique opportunity to discourage Sagittarius from raining fire on them along the most dangerous killing field yet awaiting them.

Or maybe this was just hopeful thinking.

Seeing her hesitate, Golem took the initiative. "You heard the Prince, we have to rush the rest of these temples! The plan was for me to fight Scorpio anyway, so I'll stay here for a bit and guard your asses."

Sphinx, however, had a few concerns. "Before that big blast, he started sending new orders to hurry things up. I wonder what's going on?" she voiced, having no idea Lucifer was told by Ainsel that Corvus Cerah was in danger. "Maybe he's worried the Saints will notify the veterans at Romania and Germany."

"Well, what do we know about this Temple's Saint? Maybe he's a coward and moved on up!" Rossalier insisted.

Sphinx was hesitant to believe this. "Coward? No… Not if he's anything like the previous one. Saint Paris was a lot of things, but fearful he was not. He was sent by the Pope to destroy the religious sect I grew up in."

"Wait, hold on, you were in a sect?!" Mandrake Nevil asked.

She gestured with her hand to not pay attention to it. "Before I was a Specter, yes, but after what Virgo showed I bet we all have screwed up pasts that Hades preyed on us with!" she assured, eyeing them away from asking any further.

In fact, she still remembered the night that Paris stormed into the catacombs and started firing Scarlet Needles everywhere, killing the cult priests while the hoplites tore down the icons and sarcophagus. It was a terrible night when she experienced it, but considering the circumstances, it was perhaps for the best. She was too young to understand at the time that she was being severely abused. It wasn't until the Pyramid of Gluttony, where Hades put the lever to Cerberus' feeding pits on her hands, that she got to see the cultists for who they were and more importantly exact revenge upon them.

"My point is, ultimately, the Scorpio Saint is known as a sneaky assassin, but no one walks into a dark catacomb filled with dangerous cultists with Cosmos without a bout of courage. I'm not sure I can trust that his successor, child or not, is not here just because we outnumber him and can't see him."

Golem scoffed. "You're welcome to call the Prince up for instructions… if you want to get yelled at for delaying things!"

She gulped, fearing the wrath of the Prince! "R-right! We shall move on, then, to Sagittarius! Men, it's time for payback on that archer!"

The prospects of brutally tearing the guy that's been picking them apart since the battle at Aries was more than enough to make everyone forget they had one last hail to get through and the Skeletons cheered with raised fists!

Gathering their defensive cosmos together, the Skeletons were led out of the Hall of Orion towards the 9th Temple, covered in a common field of energetic defense and leaving only Golem Treble at the rearguard.

The giant man patiently waited for them to all leave. When the last Skeleton was out, he smirked, gently closed the gates, and pushed the closest pillars down on it, blocking it. He then walked all the way back to the front, whistling like a happy camper, and repeated the process with the front gates, entirely sealing the Hall of Orion in a dark, barricaded form, leaving Golem to the shadows.

Now they were equal. Now there was no escape.

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House of Libra

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The House of Libra was a war zone, filled with large open flames from Lance's strikes burning the ground and casting orange light on otherwise dark-blue marble. The two Saints of Athena fighting for their lives reeled back, feeling the impact of another merciless, mighty blow from the Specter, but they burned their golden and pink cosmos and rushed back in to put a stop to the enemy before them.

A huge, dark beam of a purple core which was, in reality, a dive kicking Daemon Lucifer collided with full force against two opposite forces, one pink and swirling with wind currents and another flaring in an orange fire with fists of golden thunder, forming a swelling core of accumulating impact force that then shockwave in all directions, pushing the fighters apart and cracking the floor.

Dragging his feet and fingers on the ground to halt his body, Daemon Lucifer's silver hair fluttered like a second cape and he spared his two Saint enemies only a single hateful glare before rushing back in with a flurry of speeding punches. The two Saints braced themselves, one casting Rolling Defense and another immersing his arms and hands with golden lightning, and the two took on the assault as best as they could, either shielding off the demonic blitz with metal links or parrying the blue thunder strikes with opposite current arm parries, creating a firework effect of blue, yellow and pink impacts.

While used to fighting multiple opponents at once, Daemon Lucifer was having difficulty pummeling these two particular foes. They fought with completely different fundamentals, one employing chains and the other employing a highly defensive hand-to-hand martial art style. The harder the Specter roared and pushed into their common defensive zone with his incredibly higher speed and force in an attempt to drive them apart, the more the two Saints changed the distance between them, the pattern of their combined blocks, and the pacing of their feet in two completely different patterns to the Daemon's left and right, respectively.

The experienced Daemon pretty quickly understood they were employing a form of two-manned elastic defense; knowing that they couldn't match him directly, their teamwork was invisibly establishing a reaction zone, where they would attempt to receive his attacks, a skirmish zone, where they would back away, delay and defend by splitting efforts to absorb his powerful combos, and finally, a counter-attack zone, where they would seize upon his over-investment with combined attacks. It was something that told the Specter they had a teamwork past, unlike most Gold Saints who operated alone, as this kind of union of efforts was only possible by knowing exactly how your partner would react to each situation and how he would help your attack and defense out.

As he adjusted his footing backward, Daemon suddenly found himself under that counter attack zone!

"THUNDER WAVE!" Andromeda unleashed the target-seeking chain strike, which Lucifer easily dodged with a body swerve on the first movement.

This was followed by a leap from Cancer Lance on his side that tried to hammer him down while he still dodged with a raised lightning fist. "LIGHTNING CHARGE-!" but the powerful swing was dodged by the faster Specter with a blitzing flash, letting Lance strike the ground while the Specter reappeared behind him! However, the Gold Saint's pinned fist was employed as a thruster when he blasted the ground and swung his leg back. "-KICK!"

Lucifer blocked the powerful blow with his arm side, but the force was still enough to push him back, making him gasp in surprise!

Andromeda Shinta was quick to capitalize on this and pulled for his Triangle End. "NEBULA CHAIN!" and Lucifer was struck with a multitude of pointy chain thrusts arraying arcs of pink lightning, striking him further away from his Cancer friend. The two Saints felt this success and beamed in happiness, especially as the powerful Specter landed against a crashing pillar and tumbled into a cloud of dust.

However, it wasn't long before the Specter's aura burst out and blasted all the rubble around him away, clearing the area and the dust to reveal a virtually undamaged warrior. In fact, the Saints gritted their teeth in frustration as another thunderbolt from the damaged atmosphere flashed the area and made his beautiful red and purple Surplice gleam its impeccable surface all over, with the exception of the damage Lucifer took beating off his own move earlier, further mocking their efforts.

Lance's gauntleted hands hurt. "Damn it! I feel like I'm punching a wall of chromed steel!"

Shinta nodded, heavy-hearted by how powerful their adversary was. "I know, but this is what we want right now. Our objective is to stall him, remember, Lance? We are doing a better job surviving and that's what matters!"

The Cancer, however, had a different perspective. "It won't matter how many Gold Saints we can give time to get down here if none of us can so much as put a smudge on him!"

The Daemon walked towards them. "You two seem concerned… is something the matter?" he asked, sarcastically. "Let me guess, you thought that if you got rid of my Revenge Blast, it would be easy from there, right?"

The Cancer Gold Saint gulped. What the Specter said wasn't false. Beating that damn attack did raise his hopes a bit, but all it did was lock the two of them into another form of humiliation by the Specter's hands; having their best-laid efforts to endure his assaults be proven ultimately fruitless except for getting a few more minutes on the Fire Clock. Lucifer didn't even seem tired! After fighting through all those Temples, even getting no healing or rest from the night before, and using his powerful moves over and over across multiple fights, wasn't the Specter at the very least winded?!

The reality was that Lucifer was winded, but not necessarily because of these two. Even someone as powerful as him had limits and getting through adversaries like Kanon and Shaka, despite their flawed ways, not to mention firing Dark Revenge Blast on multiple occasions, had drained him bit by bit. The reason he was able to stand as strong as he looked was nothing short of experience and self-pacing; he planned out this whole battle carefully and calculated how much of his own energy he should spend on each Temple so that he wouldn't get to the Pope's Halls and collapse from exhaustion at Shion's wrinkled old feet. This is what a tempered warrior needs to do so that when the unforeseen happens, like Michael showing up or Cerah getting wounded, he could reasonably adapt without exhausting himself.

Veins popped into his head as he thought about these two sudden emergencies… He specifically told her to stay put! Did she have a death wish?! Of course she did, considering the Cyrulian blood in her veins! But who hurt her?! And why?! No one but Ainsel knew she was around Sanctuary! He had to do something about it! Someone's head would roll for this! As such, he heightened his aura, igniting a miasma of purple that crackled with dark blue thunder!

The two Saints braced themselves for another skirmish! However, this metaphorical drawing slash came with a ferocity that even they couldn't predict, dashing at the Saints with a stepping force that cracked the ground.

The red on Lucifer's Surplice shined with bloodlust, and he aimed for Shinta, who whipped up his chains at him in another Nebula blow. The Specter, however, swirled his body through the link lashes and struck the Andromeda Saint before he could even react with a gut-wrenching elbow strike, stunning and shooting back the Bronze Saint.

This moment made the Specter's mind rush back. Michael always protected that area so poorly.

Time flowed slowly as he adapted to Lance's inevitable intervention, who lunged at the Specter with gold-laced fists, but the Daemon caught the crab's pincers in the air with monstrous shadow grips and directed Lance's jaw right down on his rising knee, making his mind go blank on collision before whirlwind-kicking the Saint so hard that he smashed him against a pillar, breaking it down. Lance gasped, coughing out something red, and tried to recover, but Lucifer's steel grips caught his collar and raised him up against what remained of the ceiling support, pinning him.

Cosmos began swelling in Lucifer's hands, burning Lance's neck and indicating an incoming blasting.

"Part of me wishes you still had the Pegasus Cloth on you, Cancer Lance… so I could recreate the moment I slew the Godslayer better!" Lucifer bragged before he tensed his left-hand fingers, forming an empty ball of cosmic force in it and smashing it on the Gold Saint's chest with a palm strike, shock waving him across multiple marble obstacles. "You wouldn't know, but Dohko's previous student was more than just a boy in horse armor. He was the one who directed his fist at the gods, the legendary Godslayer Saint! I was made Dark Prince in part to one day eliminate him."

Recovering, Lance tried to speed back to Shinta so they could rejoin forces, but Lucifer interjected between them, blocking a powerful blow from the Saint in the process before hurling a shower of Lightning Fang at Andromeda to keep the Bronze Saint busy dodging thunder. "SHINTA!"

"Worry about yourself! Or you'll follow Tenma to the grave!" Karkinos urged him.

Raging his cosmos high, Lance tried his best to get past the Daemon, but the Specter practically just leaned back defensively and used simple arm and torso movements to prey on the Dragon Style's lack of effective offense, blocking or dodging his heavy fist swings and over-arched kicks as he picked up on their highly telegraphed timings. Lance could practically feel himself as if putting his hand on a mousetrap, forced to continue the ineffective combo because pausing it would create a huge opening, but quickly realized he was way over his head and that inevitab-

The punch exploded on his cheek even quicker than anticipated, stunning him side to side, before his head was brought down to collide with Lucifer's rising knee, followed by a cascade of lightning-fast blows striking him all over his body and finally a dashing kick that shot Lance across the entire Temple, trailing on the marble floor until he hit the far end walls of the Hall of Balance.

Coughing, he got back up and his body blazed in gold cosmos, seeing Daemon on his way to him. He knew it; hard as it was two-on-one, going head-to-head with the Specter was pretty damn impossible without Shinta's help. Even if Dark Revenge Blast was dealt with, the Daemon was still a much more experienced and powerful fighter that pretty much surpassed him on every metric. He was also toying around way less, perhaps sensing that he was being stalled or really realizing that underestimating someone who nearly ran him over with his own strongest move was a mistake.

He then saw a discrete streak of jet-black cosmos emerging on the Specter's aura, something of a shape he hadn't witnessed in him before, thus alarming Lance. It was mostly traveling to his right arm as if the Specter was setting up a special move. Was this one of the special attacks Shaka warned him about? Lance braced himself for whatever it could possibly be!

But pale thunder charged on Lucifer's left fist and the Specter took two fingers to lash the air. "LIGHTNING FANG!" and an erupting ground shockwave of electrical cosmos burst towards the Saint, tearing through floor and pillar base alike.

"C-crap!" Lance hurled himself over as high as he could, stepping on the high side of the pillar to jump through a gap between the thunder arcs, letting the attack blast the wall behind him in a rising X pattern of blue light, exploding it. He tried to land himself with a dive kick on the bastard, but the powerful Specter was to his every move and simply manifested his aura, disrupting Lance's attack before catching his ankle and tossing him down on the floor with a roar. Lance screamed, bashed on the hard cracking ground.

"Ha, ha, ha! Despite what you did to my Blast, you're not much of a follow-up on him, are you?!" Lucifer mocked, meaning Tenma.

And Lance felt his leg pulled up again to be hurled once more, but a flash of fury came over him and he swung his body as much as he could the second fraction he was swung, allowing him to finally land a vengeful, cosmos-packed knee on Lucifer's head, stunning him. "GOT YOU! NOW -" and upon landing, he charged right back in "LIGHTNING STORM FIST!"

Firing off the move, Lance struck Lucifer's flying body with millions of sparking darts with punch-shaped heads that landed on him with the force of thunderbolt meteors, battering the softer body beneath the powerful Surplice Armor and blasting him straight towards Shinta, who was speeding back in!

Pink cosmos exploded, projecting the constellation of Andromeda. "GREAT CAPTURE!" Shinta commanded, dashing past the stunned Specter with spiraling chains and wrapping the stunned Specter in a tie of zapping chains. As Lucifer landed with a thud, Shinta pulled the links to tighten them, but he felt the resistance of the heavily armored Specter muscles struggle against his tug. Gold-ranked pink cosmos flowed through them, hardening the links and raising the voltage. "I got him, Lance!"

Screeching his feet on the ground to stop the momentum of his lightning storm attack, Lance turned to the result of their efforts. "Careful! It won't be so easy! Take my cosmos too!" and he fired golden thunder at Shinta's chains, further zapping the Specter, forming a frightening electrical discharge of gold and pink that flashed their faces.

However, said and done, Shinta felt the captured body forcing its arm muscles to try to push out the chains despite the intense electrical attack they were subjecting him to, releasing loud, creaking metal sounds! "Y-You won't get away so easily! The Chains of Andromeda are not easily broken!"

But the Specter wasn't impressed. He had fought a Godslayer level of these chains in the past. So he just laughed and manifested his own voltage, dispelling Shinta's with a brutish spark that detached the links off of him and carried a charge back at the pink Saint, who screamed and stepped off in pain, releasing the Specter.

They fell on the floor like limp, dead snakes as he got up, cringing their links. The jet-black cosmos Lucifer was charging was nearly done. He smiled, feeling the fear in them. "You two should be proud, though. You made a brave attempt to beat the record set by Dohko and Shion of surviving so long against me with just two people. Usually, I have their necks snapped by the end of the tenth second! But stalling me isn't going to work anymore."

The two Saints irked. They suspected Lucifer was already on to them, but this confirmed it.

Seeing Shinta bite his lip, Daemon chuckled confidently. "I have to wonder, though, what makes you think time is on your side!"

Lance still feigned ignorance, worried about the implications of what he just said. "W-What are you talking about?!"

"You're expecting Sagittarius and the others to make short work of my men, aren't you? You probably see them as a little different from Bennu Yakos or Basilisk Maia. I'm afraid it won't end like that!" Lucifer bit. The False Specters were disappointing at times, but the ones he named his Elites were another story entirely. Even though the roof blocked his sight, his red eyes angled briefly towards where the Fire Clock probably stood off to the west. "… and at this point, the 8th House must have already been reached."

Lance's teeth gritted, remembering the young boy guarding the next House, but he couldn't show weakness. "So what?!"

A small evil smirk showed. "I've prepared my men for this battle, just like I have for all the ones preceding it. One of my Specters is especially prepared to smash Paris' follow-up into paste."

Shinta gasped. "Milo!"

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

House of Scorpio

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

Strolling through the pitch-black hall, Golem ran his hand through the pillars to guide himself, now dead silent. His big troglodyte ears twitched every now and then like a fly landed on his tail.

He stopped, very quiet, and listened in.

He chuckled, half amused, half terrified, swearing that if he was back in the Underworld during his first days he would have thought a monstrous, heartless creature was stalking him. His hand felt the vibrations in the pillars of the small body softly moving through the ceiling, its members silently striking the upper segments of the supports as it followed every movement of Golem's big nape. His eyes instinctively looked up, even though it was all dark.

A lunging sound! Golem's eyes widened as his 7th sense felt the murderous intention he sensed all along brightening up like the red star of Antares!

"Scarlet Needle!"

The False Specter turned his huge body as fast as he could in the direction of the attack, his fist ready to swat it like a big golden fly and his mouth roaring. He screamed, though, when the bright flare of Antares on Milo's nail flaring up in the dark blinded him, his eyes pained and his body staggering, and fifteen perfect strikes penetrated his large body through and through in a dashing blow. The young Scorpio landed past him, feet grinding the ground and his exposed stinger nail dripping with blood.

The victorious smirk on his preteen face has reached the ends of his cheeks. "Antares!"

The delayed effect smoothly caught up with him and Golem screamed a heart-stopping screech as his fifteen wounds squirted out a liquid. The most feared poison on Earth had been injected into his body flawlessly, delivering ten times the pain of a bullet ant's bite on each spot, combined with all sorts of other horrifying effects, like his bleeding unable to stop, his senses vanishing in seconds and his heart literally bursting at the seams with the nearly-null intervals of each applied injection.

The temple was returned from the red glare of Milo's nail to the dark and all Milo heard was a huge metal body tumbling down on the ground behind him, shaking the floor. He then took a handkerchief and wiped whatever blood may have gotten on his finger.

"Oh, and just in case you were wondering -" he forgot, voicing in the dark. "-that was for Shaka and Aldebaran."

He then felt Golem's cosmos completely vanishing and walked away, unconcerned.

Heading for the wreck caused by that guy at his doors to clear it, Milo allowed this moment towards his destination to reflect on what the heck was going on; he went to bed early like the good little boy that Ms. Shafurwatt thinks he is, then he got up five minutes after she was gone from the Temple to go goof off at the weird basement rooms. He fell asleep again because it turned out he was actually tired from training that day, and then everyone started running through his temple, both civvies and Papal Guards, screaming about an attack, and all the quaking started happening.

The guardian of the Eighth House wasn't entirely sure when his Temple fell under the jamming field that was making his Seventh sense feel like static every time he tried to feel out of its invisible premises. He could tell he was capable of sending messages only a short distance away from where he stood before they got shredded into unreadable airborne signals by the jamming field, but he couldn't figure out what was projecting it exactly, because even though he killed a lot of those strange glowing moths infesting the mountain, the field seemed to be centrally maintained by someone, likely some powerful mental Specter.

As the hours passed by, he saw a lot of things from his gateway porch that made him want to just rush down the stairs and personally put a stop to what was going on. He saw the smoke coming out of Aries, the flashes and quakes from Taurus, the strange manifestations at Gemini, the burning and fighting at Cancer, the unabated storming and green arson of the Leo Temple, the shocking battle at Virgo, and finally the desecration of Libra, where a whole new battle was now happening that, from the looks of the earlier explosion in the sky, promised to be even more climatic than all the ones before.

When the Specters rolled into his doorstep, Milo could still hardly believe they were getting so far. He didn't expect his young friends to stop what looked like a massive invasion right on the first House, obviously, but the scale of what was happening startled him.

Well, Milo wasn't wearing a Gold Cloth for nothing! He would teach anyone who walked into his House a lesson!…. Unless of course, they showed up in the huge numbers they did, with two powerful looking leaders, and Milo could strategize around it, letting a few through while he hid at the Hall of Orion and see if any valuable target had the stupidity to think they could keep guard at his house.

They searched the place very thoroughly, but apparently, no one ever looked up.

Camus would probably criticize him for this and say he should have stood firm in the middle of the Hall like an idiot and stop as many as he possibly could, but who was the idiot now? Milo just took out one of their Elites in less than a second and now was in a prime position to offer critical help to either Aiolos or whoever was fighting at Libra! Frankly, humility aside, he should get a medal for this. Or at least a kiss on the cheek from the baking lady. In any case, he might as well go help Aiolos finish off those guys so they can all then turn around and amass unto Libra, where the big fight seemed to be taking place.

Searching in the dark by scratching bright friction off of the pillars with his nail, he found the ones pushed to the ground by the Golem on the exit to Sagittarius. As he rested his hand on the first ruined pillar, he wondered what was the big idea from the Golem anyway? If he noticed Milo was somewhere around, why didn't he call his friends? Was he that arrogant that he thought he could take a Gold Saint by himself? Unfortunately, he had little time to regret the choice, as Antares made short work of him.

Wanting to blast the wreckage apart, he burned his cosmos, causing his golden aura to ignite.

It's bright yellow light illuminated the Hall and Milo froze when he saw the round hulking shadow with its arms swinging from the side to punch him!

WHAM!

….

Milo found himself twirling in the air, the side of his armor pressed against his small punched ribs and an immense pain awakening in his body. The impact was big and landed on the entire height of his left torso side. He gasped, screamed, and tumbled down rolling on the floor, far away from the exits, and held his side, squirming and shaking.

Loud steps were heard following him as the Hall of Orion was returned to darkness. "My spirit is clay!"

Milo shook in pain and got on his hands, his 7th Sense searching all over the Hall but finding nothing! He lowered the Scorpio helmet's visor on his eyes to burn cosmos through them that would give him night vision back. The enemy had his cosmos masked. Who was it?!

Milo turned up and saw the Hall in blurry green and a massive, round shape of a man coming out of the pillars with his eyes white-bright like a cat in the dark from the visor's image intensification. He stood before the small youth with huge fists locked into hammers. "My hands… the punishment of the GODS!"

He gasped, not believing his night vision! The Golem?!

As if to confirm, the dark, earthly cosmos of the Specter burned out of nowhere to power his move and the uppercut exploded on the Scorpio's stomach in a powerful swing that knocked the air out of his small lungs and hurled his light body up in the air, spiraling against a pillar before falling back down again!

Golem gave chase once more, aiming to smash the youth's head under a rock. "And my Cosmos...is a shadow in itself! Morphing to execute the evil of this Surplice's Star!" His energy signature disappeared once more as if it had been nothing but a brief mirage, a thought given form for a small moment before whisked away by reality.

Although his brain was tumbling, his adrenaline began to finally pump and the Gold Saint blitzed away before he got caught again, wincing with his injuries. Pressing against a hidden corner of a corridor wall, he peeked over and saw the round Specter looking around.

"SCORPIO!" he roared, searching in the darkness and seemingly vanishing once more.

Sliding onto his butt, Milo breathed out deeply. What the heck was going on?! He struck that Specter with the fifteen stings of Antares! He even made sure to account for the large body size and armor when aiming for the Scorpio stars' placement on the target! Nothing on Earth could survive that!

In fact, before he vanished in the dark, Milo saw that Golem's armor was indeed punctured in the correct spots, and blood had jutted out of his body, the most visible symptom of the poison's effect. Having lost track of the enemy, Milo sped around as stealthily as he could, keeping his cosmos to a minimum, and headed towards the spot he thought Golem had been shot down at, keeping to the heights of the pillars by leaping from one side to the other.

Landing at his destination, he saw with his visor a puddle of blood on the floor, as it should, but not nearly as much as Scarlet Needle would make you bleed out. He didn't understand. Did he strike an after-image? A body double? Did the guy have mirrored organs like some books about his House's tradition with Scarlet Needle warned him of?

He blinked, finding what seemed to be a crumpled paper on the ground. It was covered with disgusting puke, probably expelled when Golem's body violently reacted to the poison. Milo reached in with the tip of his foot and kicked it to reveal its scribbles.

The Needle's sting shall be

as if a sip of wine to thee!

"And my body is a humble receptacle of the Lord's commands!" a voice behind him sounded, making him turn to see the wall of Damascus and muscle right in front of him. "Hello, Scorpio… do you have more of that tasty poison?!"

Milo screamed and jumped back, startled, but his feet stopped his fallback and he bravely lunged at the Golem. "SCARLET NEEDL-!"

The Golem's raising hand was faster. "ROCK CANDLE BLIGHT!" and his palm burst out a shower of green light blasts shaped like small rocks that pummeled the Scorpio Saint's body, countering his move and thrusting him across the Hall. "HA, HA, HA… come here, little scorpion! We're just beginning to pick your legs off!"

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

House of Libra

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

"What did you do to Milo?!"

While Lucian saw the stoic Cancer remain taciturn, it seemed Michael's new form couldn't resist showing off his concern for others. He didn't know much about the new Scorpio, but the look on Shinta's face told the Pride Star that it was likely another child.

"I've been assured the Eighth House would be taken as smoothly as this one, Andromeda." the Celestial Pride Star answered. "Your Scorpio Gold Saint, Milo is it, is going to do what most Saints do; rely on his signature move. And it's not going to work! And he's going to die!"

Shinta shook with preoccupation and rage. "H-how could you do this?! Just to get a couple of armors and rule over Sanctuary?! Things are not going to end the way you want! They never have for people like you!"

"A convincing point-" Lucifer openly mocked. "-but Scorpio's defeat is inevitable, my point being that stalling me here is only giving my men the time they need to destroy yours. The Golem Specter has incredible powers when used properly and I made sure to keep him well off target from Aquarius, whose ice powers would have handled him better! You can't poison a man whose body functions on commands!"

"Commands?!" Lance questioned.

A chuckle began Lucifer's explanation. "He may not be a True Specter, but the Evil Stars still incarnate the Surplices, and the powers of the Celestial Horned Star give Treble's Surplice the ability to assume command from overlords fed to him on a paper in preparation for battle, just like the myth figure. The more precise and realistic the command, the greater its clay-like power to fulfill it! Say, for example, if the only command I give him is… to be completely immune to an extremely specific poison?"

The two Saints paled, picturing Scorpio Milo going up against someone who happily took in his Scarlet Needle as if the worst it could do was make them itchy. All Milo ever did in a fight was threaten you with that needle attack!

"Now, granted, I doubt it's his only move… but let's be honest, it's Scorpio, and some of you Saints are pretty helpless without your primary attacks! And then you add his probable age and inexperience..." the Pride Star confronted, smirking. "...By the Stars, I almost feel bad at this point."

The callousness in saying this made Lance sharpen his red eyes in hateful focus. "You bastard! He's just eight years old! What kind of twisted fuck just talks of killing kids as if it's nothing like you do?!"

This confirmed Lucifer's theory, which he immediately used to deflect blame. "So Shion has condemned another small boy to death! First Shaka and now Scorpio. What a shame! An old man hiding behind children!"

"SHAME?! Fuck you, you blood-soaked hypocrite! You started this shit! Don't blame your cruelty on Arles' fuck ups! Holy War with Hades wouldn't begin for another fifteen years if it weren't for you! And your men are going to pay for what you did to us!" Lance asserted, refusing to acknowledge the Specter had the upper hand and still remembering the stories Iaso told him about what happened with Mu at Jamir, not to mention Papillion Ainsel's provocations about it. "No matter what grudge you have against my Master or the Pope, no matter what stupid claims you think you have to this place, nothing forgives the choices you've made to put everyone in Sanctuary in danger!"

At this moment, the Specter gave him a strange, knowing look. "Don't be so judgmental, Cancer… not just yet. You're still too young to know how sharp the knife Sanctuary stabs backs with is," he argued. He felt like bringing up Priam and how Shion turned him into an enemy as well, but Lucifer had little sympathy for his ally's motivations other than the common enemy, given the former Sagittarius' naiveté and idealism.

Shinta consulted with his partner. "What do we do, Lance?! If Milo is at a disadvantage, then stalling won't help us anymore!"

Seeing his sensitive friend scared, Lance kept his strong visage. "We will weaken him with a decisive combination attack, then, just the two of us! And then I'll strike him with Hyaku Ryu Ha as Roshi said! The move is very powerful and effective against Specter armor, but I need a clear shot!"

The Andromeda found this hesitation strange. "A clear shot? You can't use it right away?"

The Gold Saint's head lowered subtly, trying to hide nervousness. The truth was, just like against Cepheus Guardnia, the more he used Rozan moves, the more drawbacks there seemed to be, with an open injury even opening on his body when he used a powerful move the most recently outside of Seiryu's bloodstream (*) and he'd been using them pretty liberally for the past twelve hours. He hadn't told Shinta this, but when he launched himself at Shaka's roof, he didn't just risk himself shooting off to the skies but also landing an altered or injured man.

(*) Chapters 26 and 45

He had more than a few concerns about firing off what was essentially an angrier, nastier version of the same move over and over. "I want to make sure we hit him, it's not something I get to use more than once a fight easily."

The Andromeda knew exactly what his friend was asking for without further words. "I understand! Just like at Cancer, then!" and he charged his pink aura.

Sparks coursed down Lucifer's left arm and he leaned over to counter-attack. "AH, AH! Let's see what you got, then! DARK SPE-"

"COURSE THROUGH THE GALAXY! SPIRAL CASCADE!" a higher-pitched voice shouted from the side, launching the Triangle End in curves over the air towards Lucifer, outrunning Lance and splitting into countless chain thrusts raining down on the Specter with pink electrical arcs.

The Specter staggered and hesitated, recognizing the move from Michael's attack patterns, and defended himself with ultra-fast dodging, but the strikes deliberately targeted the area around him to limit his movement, forcing him to cross his arms defensively and gasp with the powerful electrical shocks zapping in from all directions, preventing him from after-imaging away.

This made him vulnerable to Lance, who reached his top speed and hammered him right in the cheek with his signature move. "LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!" It struck the Specter with an Olympian gold bolt punch, stunning and bashing him out of Shinta's cage to drag through the floor. "KEEP THE TIMING!"

"Right! SPIRAL DUCT!" And the Andromeda Saint launched both Triangle and Round Chain, tying up the projected Specter perfectly before swinging his momentum straight back in Lance's direction. "There!"

Summoning the power of Seiryu and switching to a watery aura, Lance leaped towards the Specter and landed a meteoric kick on him, setting his target up for his follow-up. "ROZAN SHORYUHA!" The dragon's roar was heard and Lance's powerful uppercut struck the Specter's stomach, this time triggering a pained gasp and a slight sinking of his Surplice, which caught Lance's attention for a brief nano-second, but the Saint finished his arm movement, launching the chained bastard straight up against the ceiling with frightening force. "He felt that! The strategy can work!"

"Then I'll set up the finisher! Thunder WAVE!" And Shinta struck the pinned Lucifer by releasing Spiral Duct and viciously bombarding him with countless target-seeking chain thrusts patterned after thunderbolts, petering the Hall of Balance's ceiling with storming force until that section collapsed down on the ground along with the Specter, who absorbed the blows with pained gasps.

Not letting up, the Cancer Saint pinned him to the ground with a fire-laced dive kick and, joined by Shinta, formed a ring of fire in his hand that he smashed down on the Specter. "NOW! ERUPTION!"

Shinta's Andromeda armor released its hinges off of him, unleashing his boundless cosmos. Shinta's body shined out in dark pink, summoning the fierce winds unto his palm "NEBULA!"

And the two sounded out the move at the same time, combining their elements and techniques into one! "FIRESTORM SPIRAL!"

A shearing sound of compatible energies combining was heard and the furnace of their hands ignited instantly, swallowing Daemon Lucifer under a bursting shine of heat that sunned out the ground and flared out in all directions with swirling arms of super-hot flames, mimicking a galaxy. Fanned, fed, and forwarded by Nebula Storm, the Eruption attack multiplied several times in temperature, concentration, and intensity, blasting out a dome of orange cosmos like a great, cataclysmic explosion that filled the Hall of Balance, finishing off the combo and shaking the ground with such magnitude that vibrations were felt up to Scorpio and down to Virgo.

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

House of Leo

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

Clad in his armor and cape and in heavy hurry downwards to seek the Papillon and Behemoth Specters, Gemini Saga stumbled on his way out of Aiolia's Temple when the tremors of the powerful attack delivered on Daemon Lucifer at Libra made half the mountain shake. Embarrassed and bewildered, he looked up to see an intense orange light coming out of the far-off Libra Temple's gate and could swear he felt the cold temperature of the late autumn night rising for a bit.

He sweated. "That is the second major environmental effect that battle has had since it began. First, that earlier ball that exploded in the air, and now this. I hope the Specters are on the receiving end of these, instead of Lance and Shinta. Still… that looks like an impressive attack. I'm sure even the enemy leader would be seriously damaged by it." Saga calculated, only possessing passing knowledge about Daemon Lucifer's resilience from Lance and Kanon's testimonies.

He then looked down on the Temples below, particularly his own, from where he felt the familiar sensation of the Labyrinth trapping enemies within. Could it be?

The Third Gold Saint closed his eyes and concentrated. One of the teachings of his House was the ability to commune with the Labyrinth from a distance. He had to stay still and focus incredibly hard, not to mention Saga was still only a few years into growing this ability. But much like Kanon had been able to call the Gemini Cloth to himself through the union in their hearts, Saga was able to stream unto his consciousness the great dimensional trap that defended his House when Gemini was absent.

Soon enough he began to feel it in his mind; the light and darkness coursing through the Third Temple to project its illusions. This also allowed him to feel out groups trapped inside of it and, just like the thought, two figures of dark Cosmos were coursing through the temple's innards, tearing a way through its illusions via the powerful mental abilities of one of them.

"Athena bless me, Kanon hasn't tried anything on them!" Saga sighed in relief. The younger twin was injured and tired from his battle with the Specter Prince and getting found out by these two Specter Elites could get him killed. "At least him being there has helped the Temple recover from the damage Daemon caused to its dimensional loops, but the House won't detain the enemy for long. I must hurry and stop them!"

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

House of Libra

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

Surrounded by fire, Shinta screamed, feeling his feet sink into cracking ground breaking apart beneath him, but Lance caught him by the shoulder beneath the armor pad and pulled him out of the heat and light they caused. "A-are you okay?!"

The Andromeda nodded. The super-hot flames still burned at the Hall's center, making them sweat. "Y-yeah! I set up the Great Capture trap! Are you ready?"

Lance's lingering burning aura began shifting to a calmer green, preparing the One Hundred Dragons. "Y-yeah, but after that landed, there's no way he'll get back up so soo-" The shearing heat shrieked out, sending fire waves everywhere that Lance protected Shinta from with his cosmos-laced cape as if something deep inside the furnace stirred it. The Gold Saint gritted teeth and saw the shadow rising inside the bright light of the fires. "S-Shit, what is he made of?! That would have taken out anyone in the Zodiac!"

Obsidian forces bellowed out from inside the fires, eating at it or, perhaps more accurately, letting the burning be smothered by the infinite blackness of the Darkness Cosmos, where nothing but mankind's dark emotions existed. Eventually, such ebony power cut out the fire up the middle with abyssal hunger, allowing the Specter to step out.

He was rattled and breathing out more heavily. Scratches and burns covered his armor, but nowhere nearly as damaged as the two of them predicted. He eyed the Saints in lecture. "You deluded cubs… do you really think fire can beat me?!"

As his green aura charged further, igniting the tattoo on his back, Lance felt his body possessed by the wrath of Seiryu. It was now or never! Either their plan worked or they'd get killed long before reinforcements arrived! He now regretted a bit having accepted to let Saga go to intercept Behemoth…

The Specter stepped towards them, keeping the cosmos in his arms focused. "My greatest rival was a fire user! A more powerful one than you'll ever be, Cancer Lance!" he recalled, remembering the many battles that hardened his skin and hide against Michael's black fires.

"Then try water instead! ROZAN!" Lance's aura then erupted, inviting the power of Seiryu upon him and clenching both hands at waist length!

The Specter widened his eyes in sudden terror, recognizing the swelling in lifeforce in his adversary as the attack that once buried him into Tartarus! This wasn't going to be the weak Shoryuha! "What?! Did Dohko already-?!"

Seeing the Specter stepping away, right into the trigger area, Shinta made his move. "GREAT CAPTURE: GROUND BELLOW!"

The cracked floor beneath Lucifer's feet then came alight with pink cosmos, blinding him briefly as it formed a ritual pattern shaped like a spiral-armed galaxy. It first zapped him intensely and then it bursts upwards with the force of the two hidden chains coming out of the underground and wrapping around the powerful Specter's arm, legs, waist, shoulders, and neck. The Pride Star panicked and struggled ferociously, but the bondage this time not only targeted his joints but tied his resisting limbs to other parts of his constraints, creating a much mightier chain lock than before.

The Andromeda tugged his links, feeling the Specter's incredible physical force against this variant he created to combat Saint Daniel. "N-Now!"

Gauging the emerald cosmos of the dragon at a much higher level than Shoryuha, but not enough to activate the suicidal Koryuha, Lance felt his arms invaded by powerful strings of watery energy that made his blood pump faster and his muscles bulge. With a star of emerald light forming in each hand, he called out his attack and thrust forward. "Feel the power of the world's strongest! HYAKU RYU HA!"

The stars burst into the launching of dozens of huge dragons of cosmos at the speed of light, all aiming their fangs at the arrested Specter, who felt taken back to two hundred and fifty years earlier. "It can't be!" His arms crossed and his body erupted purple cosmos!

The blows impacted on him with the biting power of life itself just as Andromeda Chain's detached, cutting his thoughts short, running him over across the cracked, burned ground, burning at his Surplice and swallowing up in a bombardment of emerald cosmos that continued across the length of the Hall of Balance until all the mixing domes of light immersed the Temple in an explosion of water cosmos. The Saints guarded themselves as Shinta reeled back his chains, shielding their eyes from the light.

Eventually, the pale green flare dissipated, leaving behind a steam-filled trail on the ground with all the fires put out. Shinta cautiously looked up but felt no trace of Daemon. "We… W-we did it!" he then gasped when he saw Lance collapse to his hands and legs. "L-Lance!"

The Cancer Gold Saint panted, exhausted, beads of blood and sweat dripped to the floor from his jaw. His body hurt all over not just from the wounds and strains Daemon put him under, but also from launching so many powerful techniques in a row at full force. There was always a price to pay.

Pain struck across his body and Lance grasped his chest, gasping and screaming out loud. Dropping his head onto the ground, Lance felt the tattoo on his back burning painfully, making him feel like it would rip in two!

Andromeda paled in distraught "Goddess, Lance! What's w-wrong?!" he saw his friend convulsing and crawling and had no idea what to do, merely holding him. "T-talk to me!"

But what he then saw happening to his friend did nothing short of terrifying the Andromeda; Lance's entire body tensed up and shook as his cosmos seemed to go completely out of control and burn with an emerald color that was only seen when he charges his dragon moves to the max. The Saint tried to fight against this, crossing his arms unto his chest and pressing his forehead on the ground, but something seemed to be trying to take over his flesh as he felt terrible pain thundering down to his very fingertips and mouth as if his nails and teeth wanted to burst out of their confines.

His eyes struggled to remain open, and he saw the quaking sight of his sweat pooling the ground while everything seemed to be flashing between their true colors and a version of the world tainted in green. Holding him, Shinta even saw the round pupils in his red eyes seemingly slit for an instant he wasn't sure was real and the canines in his hard breathing mouth sharpen downwards into a more feral shape!

Were these the consequences of his deal with Seiryu finally manifesting themselves?

THOOM!

Time slowed down as Shinta staggered, stepping away in startle from the sight of Lance's body pulsing back and gasping out blood and lung air with the force of the lightning punch landed on his stomach by the large, dark armored person that just light-boomed out of the smoke clouds. The Cancer cuirass cracked even more, sinking in, and Lucifer slowly dug his fist in spitefully, transmitting blue shocks of electrical cosmos alongside a hateful red-eye glare. The Gold Saint's body was lifted by the fist before getting blasted down by a powerful overhead swing before Lucifer's foot harshly pinned on the Cancer's neck, making him scream out in pain before the pressure closing his throat silenced him.

Horrified, Shinta stepped up to help by pulling for his chain "N-NO! NEBU-"

Lucifer aimed his hand at Shinta with a large dark ball of cosmos already charged, whirring loudly in a warning. "One more step and I'll blast you out of the Hall and crush his throat!"

The green-haired Bronze Saint halted, hesitating, despite his Saint instincts telling him to do his duty for Athena.

"What are you doing?! Just dodge the blast and take him!" the Andromeda Cloth urged, unconcerned with the Cancer Saint.

Shinta, however, wasn't sure he could out-speed the Specter, not after all he's seen this fight. "I… I can't!"

The Celestial Star of Pride shook his head, lamenting his foe's stupidity. "Oh, Lance, you didn't think it would be that simple, did you?! I've seen that move before more times than you have!"

Lance's hands tried to move Lucifer's foot, but the greave was firmly planted, with much more powerful muscles pushing down. "S-Shit, I should have tried the v-variant instead!" Lance thought, meaning the unified beam version he fired during practice.

Confusion and frustration inundated Lance. The young warrior was sure the Specter was caught off guard. Everything about his body language said so before the moment of impact. Moreover, Lance knew some of the first dragon beams struck home and Lucifer was damaged by them, as some additional marks and the newfound fury in the Specter demonstrated. The lifeforce-powered technique was working as Roshi intended as far as penetrating the bastard's powerful Surplice defense went.

"D-Damn you! HOW!" he demanded to know. "I hit you head o-on!"

Lucifer chuckled. "I have a certain secret card that I can pull in times like these! It's called Greatest Caution! You'd know it to be Wyvern Rhadamanthys' move if you studied history well. Let me give you another taste of it!" His body then, without any casting movement, unleashed a purple shockwave of cosmos that fustigated the Saint underneath his foot.

Lance screamed, impacted by the force of several piercing demonic bites, making him gasp out in pain and his body smoke.

"Libra Dohko made me suffer hell under that Hyaku Ryu Ha, blasting me down to the Prison of the Titans deep underground in the Underworld! The first thing I did when I climbed out of Tartarus was to learn a strategy to decisively defeat it!" the Specter explained, resentful bile practically dripping from his mouth at this. "As much as I hate Rhadamanthys… his move was the most adequate."

Greatest Caution, much like Great Horn, was the fastest and most flexible attack in the Underworld; the fact that it was shaped out of your aura instead of fired from your internal cosmos allowed it to react to situations much faster and be shaped into various functional attack forms, be they series of rays, a resounding three-sixty shockwave, or a powerful beam stream of cosmos shaped like your spirit beast. As such, it was ideal to counter the One Hundred Dragons, adapting its shape to the wild, overwhelming attack pattern of Dohko's move with its ability to split or coalesce at will like plasticine.

The demon had beaten the dragon, as he should!

And now its foot pressed hard on its neck.

"Your eyes are red, but you're just some nobody, aren't you?!" he sneered, as if the idea that someone not destined to be one of Athena's great Gold or Godslayer Saints had deceived and injured him so much, much less aligned with Michael. Why the curse, though? "Maybe the Phoenix made you another nameless victim among dozens sent every year to that island before those constellation maidens in Sanctuary caught you first and saved you with Pegasus! Gods know Athena loves rescuing poor little boys from that volcanic cunt!"

Lance's eyes widened with how much Lucifer was zeroing in on him with so little info to go on, especially right in front of his friend. "S-Shut up!"

Accusations continued. "I bet he felt sorry for you, that Shion! Another poor little boy was angry at the Cosmos that he could rescue. I'd wager he just started pushing you in just the right directions… A little interest here, a little mission there to teach you to love Athena… Must have inherited that kindness from Sage and Hakurei! Am I right?!"

This sent Lance overboard, struggling against the boot on his neck. "W-WHAT THE HELL DO YOU C-CARE?!" he shouted. In reality, it was beginning to frighten him how much what Lucifer was saying was hitting precisely the notes of his early relationship with the Pope.

The coarse, pressed-throat shout didn't impress the jaded Specter. The memory was vague from how long ago it was, but some things never go away from your mind. Some things shape a person forever.

"A passing interest, to be sure… for when I encounter another victim of such tactics from Sanctuary like I was, I often feel a brief feeling of empathy."

The two Saints' eyes reeled at the implications of this. "W-What?!"

The Specter pressed his weight harder on Lance, cutting the conversation short. "But knowing that it was your plan all along to use the One Hundred Dragons quite easily crushes that empathy...and convinces me further that your offenses won't stop until I utterly annihilate you, Cancer Lance… with the only move that will definitely and put an end to you at this point!" and his dark ooze of an aura began flowing threateningly in a shape that Lance didn't recognize. The jet-black energies in his right arm were then shown to him in the form of a charging orb of evil floating in his palm. "The ultimate of nightmares: Eternal Darkness!"

The two Saints paled, feeling horrible, frightening sensations creeping to their core from just looking at the breathing sphere of darkness in the Specter's hand, their senses funneling on it like a lion had stepped into the room. Even though they had only Shaka's testimony of it, they but felt as if suddenly in the hand of the God Hypnos himself, ready to be lulled to sleep into a world ruled by the evil of his long-dead dream children ready to torture you.

Shinta would have none of it and reached for the two of them with a launching chain. "NO, LEAVE HIM ALONE! THUNDER WAVE!"

"STAND ASIDE! LIGHTNING FANG!" and Lucifer swept his left arm with a whip of thunder that matched the pattern of the Saint's attack perfectly, coursing straight into the caster himself and shocking him to his core, the force of the lightning lash blasting Shinta far away. "I'll get to you in a minute!"

"S-SHINTA! You b-bastard!" Lance coughed out, struggling even more against the pinning foot, but burning his fire aura as he might, the darkness cosmos in the greave stepping down on his collar and neck. Its energies' densifying effect made it feel like he had an elephant's foot on him instead.

Lucifer laughed and presented the orb to him with maleficent glee. "I've driven many beyond the brink with this, Lance… Your friend Shaka, for example! Such a powerful Gold Saint he was, easily multiple times more dangerous than you! Yet look at what this little bit of shadows has done to him; rendered nearly catatonic, unable to burn even a little bit of cosmos from how broken he was! Can you imagine what will happen to you?!"

The Saint sweated, remembering how broken down the once mighty and confident student of Buddha was when Lance found him, unable to resist even a weak Specter that Lance easily dispatched once within reach of his Blade.

The Specter's shoulder pads shook with laughter. "Let's find out, then! I'll make the chant brief! I've got it memorized from torturing so many Saints over the eras! Wingless shades of death, hear my command! Paint my world with the mark of shadows, rise from the abyss and corrupt my enemies!" With this call, the jet-black cosmos swelled even larger and rolled onto his two pointing fingers, aimed at Lance. "Shatter the soul, stab the heart, and let loose thy terror in their feeble minds! ETERNAL DARKNESS!"

Lance gasped out loud, seeing nothing but a vortex-shaped burst of darkness swallowing him whole, and covered himself with his arms defensively, raising his defensive cosmos to the max!

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

The Saint gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, expecting the worst!

…

He felt Lucifer's foot off of him and opened his eyes, blinking to find himself in a hallway of wooden tile floor and light blue paint walls.

He blinked. This wasn't what he expected based on his experience in the past with Genma Ken.

The Saint stood up from the ground, dusting himself. Clearly this was an illusion since he was supposed to be at Sanctuary. Instead, he stood in what seemed like some elementary school hall. The walls were covered with cork pin boards showing bulletins and grades, as well as paper art of little children holding hands with teachers, parents, and friends, fire escape maps, and religious crosses.

The place felt cold.

He frowned. "World of nightmares indeed,… I'm back in that stupid orphanage!" he realized, cynical. He looked down and saw himself still clad in his Gold Cloth and knocked on its cuirass. "Hey, Karkinos! Pinch me or something! We have to get me out of this illusion before that bastard kills me or Shinta."

The armor didn't respond.

The Saint became alarmed. Back at Death Queen Island his connection with Pegasus wasn't so strong to the point he could converse with it, but at this point, he should be more than aware enough of an armor's consciousness that a mere illusion wouldn't cut them off from one another. "Karkinos?! Did you hear me? Are you there?!"

Rather than respond, the hinges and locks of the armor suddenly became loose and the Gold Cloth of Cancer fell right off Lance's body to the floor, causing a loud cacophony of metal dropping on scrubbed wood tiles, leaving behind the Pegasus Bronze Cloth on his body.

This was bewildering, to say the least, but it only convinced Lance he was inside some cheap illusion. "...If this is your idea of making me lose my grip on reality, then you're doing a shit job, Daemon Lucifer!" and he walked on, ignoring the fact that he was wearing the completely wrong armor.

The Cancer Gold Cloth pieces left behind melted into the floor, which sprouted flowers of ice...

Exploring the school in search of an exit, Lance crossed large doorways separating corridors that he had vague memories of having trouble opening on his own once. Thanks to Noah, he barely remembered anything about this place. Another dumpy religious school. The new hallway looked taller than the previous one despite having the same layout, though, which gave him a headache.

The floor left behind by his marching Pegasus boots darkened and boiled up, forming blood-soaked veins. Handprints of red began appearing at the bottom of the walls, dragged across their length, stalking the Saint and begging him to help…

The air grew colder and colder...

And then the shoulder pads of his Pegasus Cloth also fell off! Stunned, the Saint knelt to get them, but as soon as he did the rest of his armor collapsed off his body as well, leaving behind only his battle-damaged clothes! "Okay, what the heck is-"

Murderer!

Lance lost his breath, widened his eyes, and turned all around in search of the voice, feeling startled by the sight of countless black hands briefly rushing at his face before he blinked them away into nothing! He stepped back, finding himself alone in the hallway, yet seeing the building much larger in scale than when he started.

"W-what?!" his voice came out, sounding strangely higher. This made him look at the reflection of one of the door windows and he screamed when he saw himself half his normal size and development. He was shrinking?! Getting younger?! "What is g-going on?!"

Stepping back, he tripped on one of the Pegasus Cloth parts and fell to the floor. At this moment, he saw the red-eyed horse helmet staring at him, its ruby gems dripping blood to the ground. "I'm dead because of you… You don't deserve me… T-Tenma would never have done the things you did!"

"P-Pegasus?!" the boy gawked.

The pool of blood beneath the parts grew larger. "...You never deserved me… not ANY of us! You should have died in Mount Olympus! MURDERER!" and the background behind Pegasus became swallowed in darkness, out of which hands of flesh and veins coursed through the walls, aimed at Lance!

Screaming at the top of his lungs, the child got up and ran as fast as his little legs could, flinging arms wildly through the corridors, searching for the exit. The classrooms went by him quickly, hiding in their shadows strange scenarios that he only caught fleeting glances of but still penetrated his mind like hot daggers; headless naked children made to scrub floors bursting with excrement in punishment in one, adults carefully laying others unto scalding beds of coals shaped after crosses in others, all manifesting psychotic delusions of things told to him as a child. Things told to frighten and bully him, but which his subconscious never forgot.

Rushing past the corridor with windows facing the fenced graveyard, his crying eyes saw a version of himself just standing there by the big mausoleum. His skin was grey and he was bleeding from the head and his hand reached out, asking for help, before many hands like the ones chasing him burst from the ground like worms and ate him.

Turning the corner in panicked screams, he finally found the doors to the churchyard grounds; a big pair of wooden doors like a church's gate that he would usually find barred in his childhood. They were ajar, so he rushed for them, wanting to flee the things chasing him as fast as he could.

As he burst out the door, though, he stopped, confronted by his worst nightmare.

All around him, towards an ever-stretching distance, the grounds surrounding the church were covered in snow. Howling winds were heard from everywhere, battering his body with biting snow bits, and his hands went nearly immediately numb in contact with the frosted grounds.

Panicking and screaming, he instinctively back up towards the door but the churched disappeared from behind him, making him fall on the snow instead. He rolled around in terror and tried to run out of there, towards the walls, trees or anything that would get him away from the snow, but the layers of soft coldness kept encroaching and piling, covering gate bars, branches, paths and landmarks, drowning the area.

It was at that moment when he searched for the endings of the grounds that he looked upon the horizon and, instead of seeing the streets of Athens, he saw it… at the center of the horizon, the light of a far-off triangular shape poked through the mist of the snow, calling at him.

His crying eyes widened in caution. "N-Noah? NOAH!" he screamed until his throat hurt, running forward. It looked so far off, behind miles and miles of tundra. As he moved on, pushing through the colder and colder wind which made his uncovered fingers and nose numb, his vision began to blur and redden at the sides. "H-help me… Noah!"

In his search's haste, his foot collided with something hard on the snow floor and he lost balance over a deep slope. His dizzy body sledged down the strange valley now before him until he hit flatter snow grounds again, but his body ran through strange litter that he didn't recognize at first. His sight was unblurred to show the child the wrinkled, boney face of someone staring back at him on the snow.

The child gagged in horror, understanding now the dead contents beneath him. He was on a pile of frozen corpses, their heads and hands poking out of the snow, half-eaten, their ages varied. His foot and hand were stuck in frost, not snow, and he was unable to pull out.

Still, he tried, feeling the heat in his body rapidly disappearing. "N-Noah!"

"This is what those who turn their back on God deserve; to have the warmth of life squeezed out of them and laid to be forgotten in the ice…"

The terror of his situation made tears stream out of his eyes that frosted instantly. Something in his stuck leg snapped very painfully and the child cried as his leg broke off its frozen foot, causing his body to sink deeper into the unnatural cold. Something dropped off of his face and he could no longer feel his nose or lips. "N-Noah, help me! S-save me. Please!"

The snow piled on him more and more, burying him in a silent white grave, far from everything and everyone. His mind began to lose all capacity to do anything but feel the sheer panic and helplessness in himself and he felt like his body was turning into dust from his fingers and toes up to his torso, crumbling to pieces.

The light of the far-off triangle was gone and even the sound of the wind disappeared.

Thoughts became cold and trapped in Mount Olympus, this time for eternity.

His eyes closed on the eternal darkness he was sinking into.

The rest of his body broke to pieces under the cold...

Guilty's laughter echoed in the cruel blackness….

His comrades would be murdered...

His best friend would be dead….

He wasn't going to wake up….

Sanctuary would fall…

Guilty proven right….

His teacher killed….

Adriana hanged….

Shion tortured...

Rozan burned…

Noah failed…

…

..

.

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

Death Queen Island

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

The Skeleton Soldier ran across the black valley filled with magma holes, screaming in terror. He had been cut off from the rest of Troll Grendel's battalion when they were ordered to spread out to search for the road to the main cauldron and he took the wrong turn down a magma-carved crater trail path.

Now he was being chased; stalked like a wild deer by a ferocious hunter who calmly stepped behind him as he leaped, slid or even trip down the basalt cringes of the island's terrain towards the island's core, hoping to find his brothers in arms.

"W-where are you guys?! Lord Troll! He's… He's alive!" he screamed out, feeling like the island kept morphing around him, cyclically guiding his path away from where he was supposed to go. His chaser, on the other hand, sounded his steps with terrifying determination as he could tell each and every pebble that changed on their way.

Something long and sharp flew across the air, hurled with cruel aim. It hit him in the back of the thigh, penetrating through flesh and out of the upper thigh skin with a blood-soaked tip, making him fall. The Skeleton screamed in pain and rolled on the ground, holding the rusted steel bar in his hand as it shook with the force of his leg muscles trying to accept its presence. He looked up in horror, face drenched in sweat and heart beating fast. The shadow was turning the corner.

"A-hunting we go, a-hunting we go…" Guilty hissed, encountering his fallen prey, holding a set of poorly-sharpened steel bars in his hand.

"You w-were supposed to be dead!" The Skeleton panicked, pressing back against a basalt boulder as Guilty's shadow swallowed him. "Ah, AH, NOO, GET A-AWAY!"

Dropping the bars, the master of the island took him by the head and rose him to the air "We'll catch a little mouse and put him on a house!"

"Ahh! N-NO! DON'T!"

The hands pressed on the head "And never-!"

His cranium felt pressure all around from the fingers. "GYAAHH!"

"-let him-!"

A gross, crushing sound was heard and Guilty's palms met in the middle!

His face was smeared in pink and a thud of the body dropping to the floor was heard. His hands suddenly held nothing in them but blood, bone and brains. "….- go!... hm!... Rude!"

The grunt was accompanied by a rumble of the far-off main volcano and a rise in heat.

"SHUT UP! I'm playing! I'll attend you in a minute…" Guilty roared, bothered.

He cleaned his hands on his new friend's cadaver and started dragging him out of the fire fields the fool trapped himself in to go join the rest of the corpses. After a while, he found the big pile he had close to his hut where the game began and he hurled the Skeleton over the rest of his buddies, were flies buzzed loudly and a pleasant smell of death lingered. He held his chin pensively and counted the bodies with his finger.

"Mm… thirteen, fourteen…. Minus the skin to make the gloves, and the bones to make the bats…" What was he missing for his game of Corpseball? He hammered fist in palm in realization and looked towards where the survivors led by the Troll Specter headed "That's right! I need players! And shoes! Well, they don't need their feet since I'll do all the home runs, mm, mm, mm."

He then saw the volcano belch out more bright orange lava, sending fingers of fire to the clouded skies that rained down like meteors on the island.

"What IS IT?! I said to give me a minute!" he shouted, sick of her complaining. "I'll toss a few of these down your filthy throat soon, but for now, let me entertain-"

But then a searing flash of orange, undoubtedly given by her, burned right through his locked 7th sense, alerting him to a cosmic occurrence. Guilty halted in his tracks, mesmerized by it, trying to determine its familiar and promising meaning as volcanic embers dropped from the sky like snow. He took one to his thick, scarred hand and beheld its weak existence. The ember tried to live, sucking up oxygen in that island's strangled air, but then burnt away like the rest.

Hungry saliva dripped from his mouth, soaking the inside of his mask, and his head turned to the ground where, on the other side of the planet, Sanctuary laid. A place where a person whom Guilty was connected to just fell into Eternal Darkness, destroying their grip on reality. Better yet, Gautama's boy's interference was nowhere to be felt.

The road to the prize he wanted couldn't be clearer! "My friend!..." he realized, his cosmos of fire beginning to burn in a bright orange outline.

His mask then ignited into flames and burned away into nothing, leaving behind his body that fell to the ground, seemingly dead.

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

Sanctuary

House of Libra

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

Finally fighting his way through the lightning storm thrown at him, the Andromeda Saint ran to the frightening dome of black cosmos that was now breaking apart to the floor like puzzle pieces, leaving behind an unconscious Cancer Lance.

Practically sliding down to his friend, he called out his name in tears. "L-Lance! LANCE! W-WAKE UP!"

Daemon Lucifer watched the pathetic scene he has caused numerous times in his life, the last being when he used this spell on Shion, and Shinta now took Dohko's place as the cradling, desperate partner. Lance was perfectly awake. He simply lost all ability to notice it.

Making a mental note to later pick up the spirits the Cancer captured, the Specter took two fingers to his temple to focus a mental call. "Ainsel, I've taken care of the Cancer Gold Saint."

"Excellent, Prince! I knew you'd succeed. I'll broadcast it to everyone right away! This will certainly boost morale. Erika will be especially relieved."

"Now that the situation is a bit better for us, I want you to go down and check on Cerah, understood?"

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

House of Gemini

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

As the purple, green-blistered nest eggs sticking to the walls burst open, Ainsel's newest batch of moths filled the air, flapping their golden wings of light throughout the Labyrinth of Gemini, creating a path through the darkness of the Temple. The trick was simple; since the illusion of the Labyrinth relied on isolating the trespasser's senses, maintaining a chain of moths along with it the same way the False Specters attempted to use steel cords the first time they crossed the building would allow Torak to find his way to the other hand without the building ever fooling him into making a U-turn.

The black-haired warriors let out a gruff snort. "Mm, this better work, or I'll blast a way through the roof to leave here if I have to." he then turned to Ainsel and saw him pressing fingers on his temple in mental communication. "What's going on? Does the Prince have new orders?"

The blue-haired Papillon sweated, knowing it was a bad idea to let Torak know that the Prince changed his mind. "Pride Star, are you certain of this? This will move the center of the jamming field down a Temple or two."

"It's fine provided that messages can't get from Shion down the Temples to the gates of Aries and back. I took care of the job you should have, so you have nothing to fear now, do you, Ainsel?" Lucifer pressed, reminding him of his defeat at the hands of Cancer.

"What if others get in the way and find me? I'm fairly certain there is a second Silv-"

"What do you THINK?! Kill them!" Lucifer ordered. He preferred to preserve future servants, but if Sanctuary Town buzzards got in the way, then they'd get shot down without hesitation. Moreover, in addition to Cerah's well-being, there were things in her Lucifer wished to recover. "And when you secure Cerah, search her possessions; leave her cloth-stone be, but take a certain black feather that I'm sure she has used to try to follow me! I want it delivered to me soon. Be expedient, and I will pardon the setbacks you were responsible for!"

The prospect of being forgiven for his failures bettered his disposition. "Yes, Prince! Of course!"

Seeing him gesture an end to his call, Torak shrugged his arms impatiently. "Well?!"

Ainsel eyed him anxiously and pretended to smile. "…. Good news! The Prince has defeated the Cancer Gold Saint. We have taken another step in subduing this cesspool!"

Torak scoffed. "As expected. I knew just from looking at him that Cancer stood no chance! Next is Gemini!"

He then saw that his babies finished forming a path of lamps across the House. "You should hurry up then, we don't want Gemini to bring his armor back down to his House. That would delay the Prince's plans. Cross the path while you can. I'll stay here and make sure no one breaks the chain of Underworld moths." he saw Torak depart immediately, but then something occurred to him. "Torak, just one thing!"

The Behemoth screeched to a halt and turned to him. "What is it? Be quick!"

The Papillion judged his disposition. It didn't seem Behemoth suspected for now that the Prince wanted him to go fetch the girl, which was a good thing. In any case, the False Specter brought up what he wanted to speak of.

"In light of you going to face the Gemini Saint… Do you know what the Labyrinth of Gemini used to be called before just being 'the Labyrinth', Torak?"

The Behemoth gave him a weird look meant to ask what the hell did it matter. "No."

"The Hall of Sparta," Ainsel revealed. "You know what that means, correct?"

A chill went down Torak's spine, inspired by the nascent sentiments, not in himself, but his Surplice. There was only one faction that the Underworld, and the Specters, in particular, feared and hated as much as Athena's Sanctuary… A faction that had the power to not only raise the values of war to a pedestal but not let a silly thing like Hades' curses subvert its deadly results.

"Mortuorum Mortuorum Maneat… The dead stay dead." Ainsel added. "We are hardly immortal anymore, Torak, but that lineage is feared just as much for its martial abilities as its blood-curling madness. Do not underestimate Gemini Saga..."

The tall False Specter hesitated for a second but ultimately raised his chin. "I'm not scared of war worshipers, unlike our so-called True betters. I have broken Taurus, and we shall become the real warriors of this world!"

The insectoid Specter nodded. "Very well, it was simply a fair warning. I pray for your success."

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

House of Libra

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

"Please, w-wake up! W-WAKE UP!" the green-haired Saint pleaded, pressing his forehead with Lance's in a desperate string of mental calls. His green eyes then slowly narrowed like daggers in anger and he looked to the culprit. "W-What did you DO to him?!"

The Specter leaned in. "Let me paint you a picture if you can't for yourself; imagine the fingers of Hypnos himself reaching deep into your gray matter in the form of dark, all-knowing tendrils, poking and probing until they find your deepest phobia, the thing that makes you turn in your bed over and over in a panic, the thing you tell yourself when you're awake that you're safe from!" he described. "Then imagine it all ripped out of your brain and made into the world you live and breathe in! A dome of black mirrors to your frailest, ugliest self for you to forever exist in, terrorized for all eternity… or so it feels to you."

Shinta's face, for the first time in his life since perhaps the dreadful attacks on Andromeda Island, twisted into a glare of hate!

Above all, he hated the glee with which the Specter spoke of this. "What is wrong with you?!… How can you just talk about destroying someone's whole life like this?!"

But the Specter scoffed. "Why don't you tell me? I'm echoing your words, back when you first explained it to me."

The Bronze Saint gently lowered his friend, confused. "W-what?!"

"I've put him in your teacher's nightmare world… your real teacher!" the Celestial Star of Pride stressed. He then clicked a spot on his forearm plate that made the gem on it slide off, letting out the Absolute Star bead unto the Specter's fingers, which he showed to Shinta. "Saint Andromeda… No, the Celestial Absolute Star, Dark Angel Michael; now that we have some privacy, I think it's time you and I have a conversation."

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

Underworld,

Giudecca Palace

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

Pandora brought the tea set onto the table and served the two deities as eyes glanced at the mirror displaying Daemon Lucifer showing the Bronze Saint the bead. The Specter was telling Andromeda all about his suspicion, and the Andromeda was reacting in gawk, not believing what he was hearing.

She couldn't blame him for the incredulity. "That boy… is Dark Angel Michael, the fallen Prince?"

"Are you disappointed?" asked Hypnos, drinking his tea.

"H-Hmm…" she hesitated, taken aback. Hypnos' eyes were studying her reaction closely at this and she felt she was being tested. "Are we sure about this?… He looks,… unremarkable. If anything, I expected the other one-"

Hypnos scoffed. "That Cancer brute? My dear, you must truly not remember what my student was like; Michael wasn't a raging bomb like that Gold Saint, but the perfect picture of our Emperor's ideals. The Celestial Absolute Star, which most believes in Lord Hades' vision." and he waved his finger at the Andromeda. "A believer in true peace, just like that Andromeda Saint."

"But-" she struggled to put words to why she hesitated to believe this before two powerful gods that were certainly all-knowing. "But he's a Saint!"

Hypnos chuckled. "Pandora… where do you think we got the Princes from originally?" he asked. "They came from Athena's lands!"

"And the fact that he has been reborn as an Andromeda Saint is quite brilliant, I'd say. That armor's sealing abilities must have kept his bellowing powers repressed from Sanctuary's senses all these years." Hades himself commented. "I wish I had thought of that for Alone, Hypnos. He was almost found out by Libra Dohko after merely ten years."

The God of Sleep chuckled and his eyes narrowed slyly. "Well, my Lord, we are still in time to arrange that."

Her body stiffened at this in sudden disgust; the two Specters most powerful and closest to the Emperor were Sanctuary seconds? So all that time she had consorted with Daemon Lucifer, she stood next to a former ailed from the land of decadence?! No wonder he betrayed her brother!

Her purple eyes watched the battle with renewed interest.

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

Sanctuary,

House of Libra

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

The Specter followed the Andromeda as the Bronze Saint backed away from Lance in disgust and terror, not understanding the Pride Star's accusations and grasping his chains in warning. "W-what are you s-saying?! Stay BACK!"

The Specter practically shoved the bead in his face. "I'm saying that you are NOT who you think you are! I'm saying you're like me! A Dark Prince of Hades! You are his Right Arm and I am his Left! The Celestial Absolute Star of this bead!" he shouted. "Listen to me carefully, Andromeda,… because I'm not sure how much of this is Hypnos playing all of us for fools or another one of Athena's selfish tricks! A long time ago, at the end of the last war, you raised your sword against Hades, and even though I should have realized the truth and raised my spear alongside it, I stopped you! Dohko must have told you all that much!"

But the Andromeda shook his head. "Are you insane?! Why would I ever choose, in any life, to be anything like a Specter?! How could I possibly be that person?!"

The silver-haired man rose chin superiorly as if the answer was obvious to anyone who thought about it. "Your little pacifist philosophy is precisely what Hades pretends to act like. That's how! You both believe in making the world a place of peace and quietness… Elysium on Earth. But his way of looking at it means Elysium without humans." Lucifer stored the bead in its safe spot again, seeing Shinta wasn't reacting to it, and gritted teeth, also confused and infuriated. "I… I killed you! I executed you with Hades' Sword that curses all souls to annihilation! You being here doesn't make any sense to me either!"

Shinta narrowed his eyes. "S-See?! Then you're just being a l-lunatic! I…" the Saint then began shaking. Between the terrible night they were going through, what just happened to Lance, and these horrible statements, he felt like he was about to burst.

He held his head, which felt like it was full of lead, thinking of his dead teacher, tears rolling down his face.

Feeling the horrors of that loss remade in Lance, his aura began burning in pink. "I c-can't forgive you…!"

Lucifer observed his Cosmos at this moment, even though it was an impending threat, and that's when he saw it; the heat of the underlying wrath of a yet-to-unlock fire user, another important piece to the puzzle. He had seen it many times, like in Kagaho, but especially in Michael. Through reincarnation cycles, people inherited the same Cosmos, so they inherited the same elements unless severe personality changes took place. Dark Angel Michael famously employed black flames in battle, but that was actually a combination of his primary element of wind and his secondary of fire. When charging his cosmos, Michael would combine the two into a unique, hyper hot flame that consumed everything like the shadows of Hades himself, and Shinta had already demonstrated to be a primarily a wind user by employing Shun's Nebula Storm to power the Firestorm Spiral.

Fire users typically unlocked their element in conditions of anger, hatred, and desires to punish or destroy. He imagined that at some point in his life, some event caused Cancer Lance to feel intense fury and unlock the same element (*). This was natural because the Cosmos was so tied to one's emotions. Cerah had unlocked her Light element by both Cyrulian genes and staying true to the hope of seeing Daese again while living in the horrors of the Underworld.

(*) Chapter 8

So were the elements in Shinta another piece of evidence to his theory? Was it far-fetched to believe that this boy's secondary fire element has been repressed all these years by his pacifist personality (another detail true to Michael) and wearing Shun's Andromeda Cloth, which Lucifer came to know to have been used by the pink Godslayer to lock powerful buried forces like Nebula Storm? Should he push the boy further to let it out? Would this unlock more of Michael's self in him?

But… why was he even here at all? Lucifer swung Hades' blade down on his neck with the explicit purpose to prevent reincarnation! How could the most painful event in his life since the death of his parents have no meaning?! Why didn't the blade work-

His red eyes widened. Unless… did the Godslayers succeed in their mission to neutralize Hades' sword somehow?

While he took important part in it, Daemon Lucifer was not omnipresent to witness every single one of the final events of the previous war. What did this mean for the Underworld? Did Hades realize it? Hypnos was locked away in Pandora's Box at the time of the most crucial events, so he had to be in the dark for sure until he and Hades had that strange private conversation the day the Twin Gods returned to the Underworld. Lucifer remembered the look of shock on the Twin Gods faces when he told them what happened to Michael. There were too many questions to ask, and nowhere near enough time.

So he got to the most important ones. "Do you remember me at all? Do you ever dream of the Underworld?"

Shinta's teary green eyes just stared with growing, silent fury, his pink aura rising…

Seeing that he was not emotionally responding, the villainous Specter asked the most dangerous question. "Has Hypnos contacted you at all? Have you ever met anyone with pale blond hair, glasses, and a look on their faces like they can tell your future? Someone who seemed oddly interested in you out of nowhere?"

At this point, Shinta hesitated, making his aura falter, as these words did spark a memory in him from about a year earlier.

This was all Lucifer needed. The Specter then reached inside his Surplice's collar and pulled out the silver chain necklace he carried with him everywhere, letting the star dance in the air. He let the words inscribed on it shine on the glow of Lance's fires to be readable.

'Yours Ever'

And Shinta's face froze into pure distraught, like someone he loved deeply just drove a deep stake into his bare chest. At this point, his aura completely collapsed into vanishing specks of pink light.

Lucifer's eyes closed somberly. "Mm, so he got to you already…" he lamented, before extending his hand "But it isn't too late for you, Andromeda! Drop that armor and embrace your real identity as the reincarnation of my one true rival. You've seen the pendants! We were fated to meet today! Under Hades, the two of us once struck fear into the armies of the Olympian Gods! Outside of his leash, with the treasures of Sanctuary in our hands, we'll be unstoppable! Join me, Michael!"

Shinta shook his head in horror and backed away. "N-no…!"

The Daemon pressed on, closing fist on the pendant star. "Join me! And together, the Stars of Pride and Absolutism will rule this wretched planet forever!"

Shinta's hand tucked his chest plate tightly as if to grasp his pendant through it. Tears rolled down his face. "… It was my mom's…"

This perked the Specter up. "… What?!"

The pink aura reignited with twice the strength. "YOU'RE L-LYING! IT WAS MY MOTHER'S!"

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

Giudecca

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

"I was stunned to find out he already had the pendant," Hypnos confessed, finishing his tea as he recounted his trip to Sanctuary (*). "There I was, sent by the Emperor for this purpose, under the blasted hot sun of Greece and over Athena's burning soil blessed against enemies of her like myself, and I encountered my student, reborn… already wearing the symbol of his dedication to me."

(*) Chapter 14

Pandora nodded in understanding. "I see, so that is why you insisted to deal with this matter yourself, my lord, instead of sending me who usually gives the pendants. I always wondered about that…What did you do to the ones I crafted, then?"

Hypnos took out one of the Yours Ever pendants he brought along for his little 'book salesman' adventure and dangled it like a yo-yo in his fingers.

"Well, not to belittle your duties, but considering they are merely trinkets for channeling influence, I decided to sell one of them to the Cancer Saint to avoid raising suspicion and went on my way," he explained, before turning to Hades. "Emperor, considering me and Pandora weren't around to give Michael's earthly progenitor that pendant… did you perhaps have a hand in that?"

The puppet sat silently, sipping from his tea and uninterested in answering.

Hypnos took his silence worryingly. How strange; the Emperor had been pretty direct with him in everything else, but he never elaborated on this little detail. Perhaps some mistake had been made when Michael was reborn and the Emperor was embarrassed to admit it. The interesting thing about it, though, is that by Hypnos calculations, at the time of Michael's birth, the only agents available to the Emperor to give the boy's mother the pendant were either Lucifer, who lacked the Emperor's trust and had no hint Michael reincarnated, or one of the False Specters serving from way back, whom Hypnos doubted would earn the Emperor's confidence on such an important task.

The Sleep God cast these concerns aside. "Well, in any case, I'm elated my Prince is back!" Hypnos confessed. "He was the only one of the two who earned the job, to begin with, after all… And once he's on my side once more, we'll begin laboring towards a world of silence once aga-"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, YOU MISERABLE RAT?" someone shouted right outside the room as more crashes and clashes were heard "HOW DARE YOU SPY ON OUR LORDS! I'LL RIP YOUR LEGS OFF AND FRY THEM FOR THE AFFRONT!"

The three were utterly shocked. Pandora in particular was outraged. "What in Giudecca is going on out there?!"

"I-I wasn't doing anything, my Lord!" a squeaky voice then followed "I was merely-

There was a disgusting snapping sound!

"-GAHH!"

The door swung open. Wyvern Rhadamanthys entered the room, toting Frog Zelos high in the air by the neck, the Wyvern's golden eyes filled with wrath. Pandora noticed and was disgusted that his Surplice still had marks of blood from the battle with the intruder at the 7th Prison that he was brought inside the room.

It was hard to ignore the screaming Zelos with his snapped froggy legs being tossed onto the floor and stepped on by the dragon, though.

"My Lord, Hades!" the Judge said, containing his wrath. "I apologize sincerely for barging inside in such a rude manner, but I caught this WORM, this FILTHY INSULT TO YOUR STARS…" he said, squeezing his foot on Zelos' neck as he said this last word "…outside spying on you all! How would you like him punished?"

As Frog whimpered in the Norse Dragon's paw, the two Gods remained adamant about the commotion they were causing. Rhadamanthys' wrath started eroding a little and he wondered if he went a little too far, and lowered his head humbly at the God of the Underworld who never moved his eyes from the mirror's image.

"Send him to work in triple shifts repairing the prisons that Lucifer sabotaged," Hades muttered.

Frog Zelos widened his eyes. "B-but, b-but, but, that's a replacement's duty! Or a Skeleton's! Please, my Lord, the cauldrons are so very hot, they make my skin boi-" but his very soul froze when the hooded puppet's pale eyes turned to him. "EEK!"

"If you have time to eavesdrop, then surely you have time to clean up the mess the replacements left us with." Hades hissed. "I want my Prisons operating. NOW!"

"Yes, my lord!" Rhadamanthys obeyed, standing up and nodding his head in a symbolic bow. "I apologize once more for bothering you. AND YOU, GET MOVING! YOU'LL WALK ON YOUR HANDS IF YOU HAVE TO!" He then kicked Frog Zelos straight out of the room, turned around and headed towards the door.

When Rhadamanthys was about to leave, Hades's voice returned "Wait… Rhadamanthys, send Skeletons to escort Zelos and stay here for a little while."

Wyvern stopped instantly "My Lord?" he asked. Maybe he really went too far with all the commotion he caused. But the sight of Zelos' eye almost popping out and entering the keyhole of the door to that room filled him with immense rage! He wondered if he, too, would be punished. He narrowed his eyes in determination! So be it! It was the price to pay for his foolishness.

"Rhadamanthys…" whispered Hades "…Why don't you take a seat?"

Wyvern and Pandora both opened their eyes in shock. "My Lord?" they both asked at the same time.

"Better yet, I'm sure Zelos will gladly report to Basilisk by himself…After all, he wouldn't like to have his already unpleasant punishment be…severely augmented."

Frog Zelos's buggy eyes shot open and he began to squirm around, trying to free himself with the urge to follow his God's suggestion. Rhadamanthys eventually obliged him and allowed the Frog to leap away, hissing curses at the blonde teenager.

Rhadamanthys ignored Zelos' putrid tongue and turned to his Lord. "Lord Hades, surely I-"

"I merely want you to join us in witnessing the events in the mirror," said Hades. "Please oblige, Wyvern."

"Yes, my Lord!" Rhadamanthys obeyed, sitting next to Pandora.

Pandora watched as Wyvern looked at the mirror, hatred, and fury began to fill his golden eyes.

The Wyvern's teeth gritted. "Daemon Lucifer!"

Hades observed his anger. "That's right, Rhadamanthys… pay special attention to this battle, and also to the Andromeda Saint. This will all be very important to you soon."

"Is he testing Rhadamanthys somehow?" she wondered to herself. "Why would he allow a mortal besides me, even a Judge, to sit at the same table as his and witness this battle?"

Finding no answer to her brother's bizarre behavior, Pandora looked back to the mirror and watched as the confrontation between the Princes unfolded.

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

House of Libra

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

Lucifer gritted his teeth. "I don't have time for this! I know you're him! That pendant is evidence enough! And if you won't get in line with this the good way-" he then charged a large ball of Cosmos and aimed it at the fallen Cancer Gold Saint "-then I'll get you to listen HARD WAY!"

THOOM!

The flash of pink hit him with scalding heat. Lucifer dragged through the ground, blasted right in the chest, and coughed out loud, smoke trailing from his path. He looked up hatefully at the Bronze Saint, whose hand smoked cosmos from the firing.

Did he just…? "W-Why you little punk bastard!"

Shinta's pink aura heightened all around him, turning into a hot furnace and causing winds at the Hall of Balance to rise in strength. "Get away from him!"

The red-eyed Specter stood back up, staring at him annoyedly, reminded how this was something Shun often did! "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

The Andromeda Saint stepped between him and Lance. "I'm protecting him! LEAVE him alone! If you lay a single finger on him ever again..."

Growling in frustration, the Specter let out his dark aura, swamping the temple into a catacomb of Specter evil. This time, the Andromeda didn't even flinch at the massive strength of the Specter, facing the evil dragon head-on by burning his own even higher, squaring off the devil and the chained maiden in the air above them.

"You're still the same! Still a bleeding heart! Even after all this time, all we've been through, you still think the world is something that can be saved along with ourselves!" Lucifer ranted, seeing everything that infuriated him about the Absolute Star in this one gesture of his to help Lance.

Burning his cosmos, he prepared to fire off an attack on the Andromeda's face as soon as he pulled him at blank range by the chain. "But maybe you just forgot everything we've been through! Maybe you need to be reminded of the pain Hades inflicted on us!"

Tensing his legs and tugging the chain back, the Andromeda resisted defiantly. "I don't need to remember anything! I KNOW who I am!"

This sent the Specter over the edge. "NO, YOU DON'T! YOU WOULDN'T! THAT'S THE CRUELTY OF WHAT ATHENA HAS DONE TO YOU! SHE'S DESTROYED EVERYTHING YOU WERE… TO MAKE YOU… THIS!" Lucifer roared suddenly, disgusted with the sight of Shun's armor on his friend's shoulders. "Everything you ever conquered; from when you beat me at Judgement Day to the moment you threw your fist against Hades; GONE! You're no longer a warrior! You're just another Sanctuary slave!"

The Saint frowned at this. "I have no idea what you're talking about! I told you, already, I'm not your friend! I am Andromeda Shinta Akiyama, a Saint of Athena!" and he clenched his chains. "Athena didn't force me to become a Saint, I battled through six long years to earn my armor, passing trial after trial under my own choices, unlike Specters who make deals with Hades so they can enact their murderous cruelty! Is that what you think slavery is?! What about what you want to do to us?!"

The Prince practically growled at this, not simply because he hated this kind of speech, but also because after finding out about Hades' true nature, he couldn't rebut this. His entire crusade hinged on the lies behind the Specter condition.

The Saint's tears dried, replaced with fury. "When Shaka told us there was something different about you Specters from the normal ones, I thought that at least some of you could be reasoned with… but I was being a fool, wasn't I? I forgot you were still the same ones that killed all those people in Austria and that attacked my island over and over. And now you throw this story at me as if it changes anything!" His head lowered as his aura rose to unprecedented levels. "I...I simply can't possibly f-forgive this!"

The Celestial Pride Star scoffed, confident in his superiority, and charged his lightning whip on his fingers. "Fine! You can't do anything on your own anyway! You two together couldn't stop me, so I'll just stomp you like the mule you are and talk some sense into you later! LIGHTNING FANG!"

But the same move wouldn't work on the Saint again and the counterattack came instantly. "THUNDER WAVE!" and Shinta whipped up his Round Chain in an upwards diagonal angle. The lightspeed strike struck the blue bolt between them as if swords crossing in the air, bursting it and sending bright sparks everywhere that flashed pain into the Specter's eyes, making him stagger. "COURSE THROUGH THE GALAXY! NEBULA CHAIN!"

A shower of electrically charged chain strikes then grazed all over the Specter's body with strength yet to be witnessed in the Andromeda, their combined force thrusting him against a pillar painfully. Collapsing into his hands, the Daemon growled and punched the ground, sending a floor shockwave of purple cosmos geysers at the Andromeda, who predictably leaped into the air. With a blast ready in his other hand, the Specter prepared to shoot him off the skies. "DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!"

But Shinta twirled his body and launched his Round Chain. "ROLLING DEFENSE!" Adding his body's centrifugal force to the chains, the rapidly rotating shielding moved twice as furiously and its pink-charged surface repelled all the powerful, piercing javelins!

The Specter gasped. "It can't be!"

The Saint then landed a powerful knee dive on his head, knocking the Specter onto the ground before casting his follow-up. "SPIRAL CASCADE!"

The spreading rain of downward chain thrusts came at the Specter, but he remembered their pattern and he rolled away, dodging the powerful floor-shattering blows until ending on his hands and feet. "Uh! So you're fighting better now without that guy?!"

But Shinta didn't entertain his provocation and thrust his hand, casting his chains into an even more ferocious move. "NEBULA STREAM!" And his powerful wind element burst out along with his zapping chains in all directions towards the Specter.

The Specter braced himself, stepping back at the unexpected move, but he found himself missed by both chains and wind currents, which all merely went around him. "What?!" His surprise was short-lived, though, because the enveloping bodies then closed around him with the chain's coursing electrical halos, stunning him into place.

Shinta's body tensed and sweated, both feeling his target locked into place but also the strain on his reserves as the spinning of the chains and the casting of this new advanced move bit at him. The move was a more powerful version of Nebula Stream that allowed him to simulate some of its strength with the Andromeda Chains, which was useful in a way because it meant he didn't have to release his armor to use the paralyzing move but also meant he had to charge storm right afterward.

The Specter blinked, unable to move from where he stood. "Ah, a variant of that p-paralyzing move?! I suppose you felt a regular Nebula Stream wasn't enough?!"And he began immediately struggling with the charge of his dark cosmos.

Shinta held the wrist of the hand casting the move, feeling as if an indirect tug of war was being played. The Specter's strength was massive! "I'll s-stop you, whatever it takes!"

The Specter laughed out loud as he burned his cosmos even more. "Ah. so you've returned to this mindset! For a second I thought I had something to worry about, but I suppose I was wrong after all!"

The Saint's arm shook and bulged, feeling the force of the Specter's rising strength. He'd need to use Storm soon. "What are you t-talking about?!"

"Do I need to say it out loud?! You may have always been a pacifist, Michael, but at least when you were a Specter, Hades found a way to route those sentiments towards something useful!" he spat, referring to Dark Angel's desires influenced by the Underworld God to quieten the world's violence. "You used to want to eliminate all your enemies as a way to achieve that peace! Now you don't even have that!"

Charging his cosmos to the next level, Shinta narrowed his eyes. "Don't think I'll hesitate to stop y-"

"Stop me?! If you really wanted to put an end to this war, you should be wanting to KILL ME! You used to have that grim will inside you! There was no hesitation when you drove your sword into Asmita's heart! But you've been neutered like all of Athena's other dogs! She would ride you fake men like horses down the street if she could!" Lucifer roared, beginning to focus his aura on what would be his next move. "Your new Goddess robs that from her Saints…their dignity and pride!" his hands then released his power, forming the familiar orb of blackness being immersed in Lucifer's evil energies. "I will spare you from that fate, though… with Dark Revenge Blast!"

The ball swelled into its large size and enacted its disruptive powers, shattering the stream of chains and shocking Shinta with the whiplash. Raising the ball to the air, Lucifer's hands unleashed the currents of electrical cosmos that charged it even more to its full size and held the vortex sphere at a low height, aiming carefully.

Shinta got up with effort, seeing the terrifying move ready to blast him! He had to do something! Maybe if he employs Lance's strategy somehow, he can also deflect it!

But a burning instinct rose in him, fueled by all the terrible things Lucifer and his men had done that night and over the years. All he could think about were his two scared students back in Andromeda Island and the lack of concern the Specter repeatedly showed for all the suffering he caused.

This made his cosmos burn higher than ever before. "The S-Saints who make sacrifices for Athena don't care about your stupid pretensions to glory and dominion over others! We believe in doing what's right and creating a better world!"

"AH! Through Sanctuary?!" Lucifer laughed. "You don't know where you're living, do you?!"

But the green-haired Saint recognized this criticism well, from the terrible things Cetus made him do and the tests Cynthia put him through. Stronger currents began emanating from his body and the Andromeda Cloth loosened on him. "Maybe I don't! But even if there are a thousand monsters in its closet, even if it's the most horrible place on Earth, it's better than just killing everyone, and I'll fight to make it better yet! Burst OUT! NEBULA STORM!"

The outburst of powerful currents fired off through Galactic Stream's funnel, focused entirely on Lucifer, who gasped at seeing Shun's old move focused to such a precise point; himself! Its force struck his stunned body and he was projected back in screams. The Pride Star was spun around, run through marble pillars, raised high towards the ceiling before arching back down to the ground, where the Specter harshly smashed on, cracking several spots on his Surplice.

Shinta's vision shook from exhaustion, feeling the surge of cosmos that came to him dying down, and his aura collapsed, causing him to fall to his knee, breathing hard. Strange thoughts coursed through his brain, confusing him as adrenaline died down. The Specter's cruel accusations lingered in his thoughts, making him question his sanity, and Shinta held on to the memory that he always owned the Yours Ever pendant since his mom and the Specter owning another was either a coincidence or...or what?

At least it was over. He was going to take Lance out of there and help him. Hopefully, Saint Shaka could do something, given he survived the attack that afflicted his friend. Even those three powerful Specters that attacked his island were all killed by Nebula St-

A pained growl from the crater was heard and Lucifer emerged clawing his way out, freezing Shinta's soul.

Standing with shaking legs out of the hole, the Specter glared at the Saint. "D-Did you think that'd wipe me out?!" he growled.

The Bronze Saint gawked. The force of Nebula Storm was enough to kill a Gold Saint instantly if properly used. "W-What?! H-How?!"

"I'm afraid I've been struck with that Storm before, Andromeda! Y-You should stop relying on Shun's tricks!" Daemon spat out venomously, even though Shinta should have no idea who he was. Reducing the strength of the attack down to insignificant levels wasn't possible, but experience could still be used to brace himself. He then brought out the attack he was charging earlier. "DARK REVENGE BLAST:...-!" he shouted, before projecting barriers on the sides, top and bottom of the sphere and then punching the ball on his end with lightning-charged hands in Athena Exclamation's poses as hard as he could, triggering a vicious reaction from the volatile attack that fired off the power of the ball not as a slinging, guided sphere, but as a large, terrifying black beam caked in layers of purple and blood-red sparks. "-...OBLIVION!"

The Saint screamed and crossed his arms! The blast ran him over and coursed through, filling their ears with its blaming sound and firing off through the Libra Temple's wall, blasting it to pieces as it wrecked nearby pillars with its air displacement force and destroying everything in its path and flying off with abandon. Slowly thinning down as the charged sphere's power ran out.

The power flared out, reacting with oxygen to generate blinding flares of white light and deafening sonic booms!

…!

…!

…

The massive beam of thunder and darkness slowly dissipated and sizzled as its charged reserve exhausted itself, leaving behind a long, trailing crater filled with smoke.

Lucifer carefully lowered his hands, observing the vanishing smoke and panting slightly, but calmed his breath. This was the third or fourth Revenge Blast he's fired that night… and Oblivion mode was no less draining. If anything, casting the barreling barriers to give it the beam shape drained him slightly more. A similar trick was employed by Aquarius Saints to fire the Aurora Execution and it allowed Lucifer to use the Blast as a beam in situations where it could be more useful or he wanted to focus his destructive powers on someone.

Eventually, the smoke did dissipate, revealing Shinta on the ground with his arms crossed over his face, armor destroyed. Andromeda, the armor, was dead at the very least, and the Saint himself was in no good shape. Upon closer inspection, he saw Shinta drawing breath, but he was taken out otherwise, barely able to move.

Lucifer snorted triumphantly. Excellent. With this, the Libra House was secure.

Wiping the blood off his face from his injuries, he approached the fallen Bronze Saint. Even if he was in denial, it was still Michael, and Lucifer had to restrain him for now. He found a large stretch of chain that hadn't disintegrated and walked down the crater to tie Shinta up until the battle was over.

He turned the Saint over and crossed his wrists to tie him up. "I understand you don't accept the truth, and that reincarnation isn't the same as fucking amnesia or whatever else could be equivalent to this situation, but your Cosmos is Michael's, so as far as I'm concerned, you are him...Just as much as it is inevitable I will make Shion pay for trying to use you against me. I'm sure he recognized you, after all… The two of us made sure he and Dohko would never forget our faces."

Severely wounded, the Bronze Saint could barely move, much less resist the Specter as he wrapped the chains around his body. The beam completely overwhelmed him, turning his world into a horrific tunnel of shock and cosmos that practically blew his armor to smithereens and almost entirely stunned his body. Someone of a weaker cosmos would surely have been disintegrated.

Breaking the Andromeda Cloth put a dent in his plan since Lucifer wished to capture the armor, but rather than having it being used against him in this battle for Sanctuary, maybe it was easier to have it in pieces, then later get a Lemurian smith and make someone drip their blood all over it to revive the armor. There was time to secure Shun's Godslayer Cloth after the battle was won. Lucian didn't expect to get Phoenix and Teos easily either.

Detecting that the Saint was still barely conscious, Lucifer rose his fist to prepare to knock him out. After this, he' go carve out Lance's heart and put it in the first freezer he could find, secure the rest of the Houses, deal with Shion, and claim the triumph he deserved.

A strong grip grabbed the wrist and the Specter was startled. "Who th-"

The cosmos screamed in his 7th sense like a shooting star cutting through the night and the fire-clad punch socked him straight across the face with explosive force, sending him rolling to the side away from Shinta.

Lance stepped over Shinta. "G-Get the f-fuck away from my friend!"

The Specter gasped, eyes widened in shock. "WHAT?! How are you back on your feet?!"

Shinta couldn't believe his eyes. "L-LANCE?!"

The Saint's aura burned in bright orange hotter than ever before and his fists clenched menacingly at the Specter, a furious spark of hate flashing in his red eyes. "D-Daemon Lucifer, your selfish rampage ends n-now!" The fire cosmos swirled down his arm, reshaping into a fist of pure lightning, and Lance launched at Daemon with astonishing speed. "LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!"

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

Chapter End

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

Next Chapter: Chapter 62 – Episode 24 – Inner Demons

Description: The battle at the House of Libra rages on, but what exactly allowed Lance to overcome the evil of Eternal Darkness? At the same time, Behemoth arrives at the Cancer House to be stopped by Gemini Saga, who has a bone to pick with the Specter that so badly beat Aldebaran, while Adriana and Iaso believe they can safely tend for Cerah when a cruel threat looms over them...

Deadline: September 25th

Author's Notes: The story is becoming tough to manage at this point in the arc, with so many concurrent plot threads, but I can safely say we are only 4-5 chapters away from the arc's finale. I just have to do as my beta-reader says and keep my eye on the funneling effect the story must have at this point, otherwise the chapters will keep getting off-topic or bloated. 24k words is actually a pretty good size for what this originally was. I even managed to pull some stuff from the next chapter to here when, after the Finishings stage cuts, I was left with little over 21k, but this size would have left the reader feeling it was a bit too short.

My current work schedule is pretty generous with autonomy and stuff, which means I get plenty of hours I can write without distractions, so productivity for the story is up... to the the point I need a second Beta-Reader to help Jenny, hence the starting note.

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.

Guilty: Muhahahaha, See ya next time, children! )OwO(

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