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.

62. 2A: Inner Demons

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:

-Just a warning; this chapter has not been Beta-read. I am currently in the process of finding someone to alternate with Jenny DeVic every two chapters to keep the production pace stable, because these things are getting so wordy that it requires two people back-to-back hunting for issues, at least in this phase. My friend from Discord Athena has volunteered to Beta-read chapter 64 (Jenny has told me she will take care of 63), but if you're interested in beta-reading, send me a PM

-The story has surpassed 25000 total hits! \owo/

-AND I've passed 1.3 million words! Whoo! Maybe I can get some reviews...?

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"There is more than a small number of techniques meant for mental assaults on the adversary in Sanctuary's tradition. One, the fabled Demon Emperor Fist, was so vile and powerful that it was recorded only in documents at Star Hill, like a nuclear secret. So effective and insidious it was, that it's still believed to be a technique from the War God Ares to incite war between nations. Others like the Phoenix Genma Ken are still at large, used by the Queen's demons to further torture those unfortunate enough to find themselves on her island. When a technique like this is taught, it's usually followed by a lesson in Saintly civics, such as not to use the Lamia Cobra Glare unless lives are at stake. This is in part due to Sanctuary's martial honor, but also because of the ethics involved.

For example; if you feed them enough of a simple illusion like, shall we say, by making their drawings look better to the artist by a factor of merely five percent, you could instill doubts in them that they were truly responsible for the thing they created without giving them the option of disproving it with their own eyes. The results of your work, after all, will look always disproportionately greater than the practice you put into it would suggest, or even how you see other people react to it. Over time this is enough to undermine their trust in their own perception and sense of self.

There are ethical applications to illusions, though; medics have suggested you can use mental techniques to alleviate physical pain, reduce depression or help heal nervous disorders. If you plant a suggestion into a photosensitive patient that would create the illusion of certain light patterns (like flashes) being different, it would in turn prevents cells from synchronizing in the visual cortex, blocking vulnerability to seizures. You would be hypnotized by the Genma Ken into only ever perceiving flashes as puffs of flowers…. in theory.

However, if you hand these techniques to someone with no scruples, or with a vendetta, there's no telling the harm they could cause to others. Families could be destroyed, lives would be ruined and souls lost forever to madness and guilt. To those that would misapply these abilities, especially when in possession of other more ethical tools to pursue their objectives, I can only pray for Athena's eyes to be on them so they either have the wisdom not to abuse their powers, or for her brilliant shield to reflect their misdeeds upon them should they transgress.

"

-citation from Saint Aquarius Odysseus (Malta) on Ophiuchus Iaso's mental health thesis, 1969

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The Past

Death Queen Island

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Speeding across the skies at the speed of light, the dark-winged Celestial Absolute Star was like a meteor of black fire, an ugly omen of destruction that made islanders gasp at the skies in fear in that Pacific afternoon. His red eyes finally detected his destination in the waters. Death Queen Island was immersed in a cloud of black smoke belched by its volcano that made it visible from afar, but volcanic islands were far from rare in the Ring of Fire, so it was actually the unnatural heat of Death Queen Island and the Cosmos he felt on its grounds that remarked the place to him.

Before he turned his sights to the main cauldron, the ember-blonde Specter saw a battlefield crater that resonated with sparks from Dark Revenge Blast. Angling down and landing with a burst of his aura into vanishing black embers, the Specter rushed across said crater, hoping to find his rival.

"I can't sense him! Did the fighting end? Hades save us, what has he done?!" Michael wondered, finding blood marks and spark scorches, but no sign of bodies.

A figure sitting at a rock nearby smirked its fanged mouth. "Mm, so you're the other one."

Michael's aura erupted as he quickly turned to the source, hand in chop to use the Flaming Sword, and he found himself standing before a man of heavily scarred and tanned skin.

His shoulders relaxed. "Defteros…"

The disgraced Gemini was even more disheveled than usual, covered with wounds and blood from his battle with Daemon Lucifer, and jumped out the rock. "So, you know of me? I'm honored! Both the Princes of Hades seem intimately familiar with me even though I never stepped into the Underworld… It makes me think!"

The Absolute Star was not intimidated by the implication of his tone. "A man who carries such a heavy load of sins hardly passes unknown to the Specters of Hades."

The demon of Kanon Island smirked. "Or, perhaps, my sins are the doing of Specters of Hades?" he hypothesized, telling Michael in no unclear terms that he likely suspected already of Mephistopheles Yoma's involvement.

As much as the Prince equally detested the strange top-hatted Specter who joined their ranks, he had priorities at the moment. "Where are the Saints?!"

Defteros unceremoniously pointed at the main cauldron. "Your Daemon friend headed there after blasting me across the island, looking quite bloodthirsty. Maybe you can find them there. It was right after the other Specter's cosmos disappeared…"

Michael's eyes widened at this and he rushed past the kinslayer in urgency, not even stopping to think why Defteros would just say this so kindly, already charging his cosmos to take up flight.

Defteros saw the spark in his cursed eyes. "Mm, mm, mm. I know that look!" he mocked as the Absolute Star shot towards the sky. "But remember, Specter, just like you people from the Underworld taught me…the bonds between brothers hold no candle to the cruelty of Hades' machinations."

Finally finding the cavern to the cauldron by tracing the lingering specks of Libra Dohko's cosmos on the battle debris right outside it, Michael ran inside the volcano's heart, welcomed by the hot breath of the Queen. Before long, he came across his rival, Daemon Lucifer, standing before the last thing Michael wanted to see; a giant dome of Eternal Darkness capturing the edge of the cauldron's overlook.

"LUCIAN!" he shouted, barely processing that Daemon was capable of Hypnos' spell. "What have you DONE?!"

The Pride Star looked over shoulder at him. "I've ended the battle. Two of Athena's Godslayers will now join Sisyphus in the depths of your Master's black dimension. You're too late to steal the credit this time, I'm afraid."

The Dark Angel couldn't believe the gall of this implication. "Steal the credit?! I came here to help you and Kagaho! Where is he?!" he then saw Lucifer chuckle and give the Eternal Darkness dome a sly look. Michael's face paled for a moment before scowling madly. "YOU… SPITEFUL BASTARD!"

But the silver-haired Specter wasn't intimidated. "Kagaho served poorly in today's fighting! He got what he deser-"

The fist of fire socked the Dark Prince straight across the face, blanking his mind and flooring him!

Michael roared, grabbed him by the collar and bashed him on the ground, pinning him. "WHAT HE DESERVED?! HOW DARE YOU?! DO YOU THINK ETERNAL DARKNESS IS SOME KIND OF TOY TO PUNISH PEOPLE WITH?!" he screamed, exploding his fist across Lucian's cheek again. "WHAT ABOUT WHAT YOU DESERVE, UH?!"

The third punch was caught and pushed back by Lucifer, who struggled against his equal. "I DESERVE VICTORY IN THIS BATTLE AGAINST THESE LIARS AND WEAKLINGS WHO STOLE MY DESTINY!" Blood dripped from his mouth as he dripped this poison and he slowly fought his way back on his feet. "And I also deserve to show a naïve sap like you that the Emperor's army is no place for playing soft with his enemies! Or reacquaint with family!"

The Dark Angel froze inside his soul. "Y…You…. How can you of all people say that?! You who does nothing but remind everyone of his lineage?!"

Now standing straight, Daemon let out the rest of the bile. "To be proud of my blood is one thing, but to hold attachment to someone else who shares it is another! I didn't become a Specter until all my earthly ties were destroyed… but you retained one, didn't you, Michael?! One last speck of sympathy for someone other than the Emperor that has made you adopt this champion of virtue attitude among us! But hopefully after this Eternal Darkness subsides, you'll learn to forget about it all for good! We have a Holy War to win, and if Bennu is to be sacrificed for the safety of Lord Hades, he shall be!"

A loud crashing sound was heard as the dome of Eternal Darkness burst to pieces like glass from the force of the shockwave of pure light striking it from within, blasting the two Dark Princes back and revealing the Cygnus and Andromeda Saints clad in resplendent winged Cloths of golden carvings brimming with cosmos. Their combined power waved out, battering the walls of the volcano mouth with cold and wind.

More importantly, to the shock of the two Princes, the Andromeda Saint held out his hand with the other in its wrist and burned his cosmos particularly high, causing the mirk of Eternal Darkness spread throughout the air to begin stirring and whirlpooling into his palm. Even though it should be impossible, the green-haired Bronze Saint took unto his body the evil of Hypnos' spell, gasping in pain as it invaded him like a cancerous toxin and darkening his skin.

The Daemon Specter was in disbelief. "NO, it can't BE!"

Dark Angel shared the shock. "How did he… he took Eternal Darkness unto himself?! What kind of human…?!"

The Andromeda God Saint lamented their cruel foolishness. "W-we are the Saints who once defeated Hypnos' Eternal Drowsiness. Y-You are strong, Daemon Lucifer, but you are not a God. You could barely reach a fraction of his terrible p-power. For the sake of my friends, I won't mind sealing the evil of the Underworld once more unto my body!"

The one-eyed Cygnus was in awe at his friend's feat. "Shun… how did you do that?!"

"I felt it… the attack was just like when Hades first possessed me at Giudecca and I nearly killed Seiya. Like a shadow took over my mind and body. I k-knew what to do, then…" The Andromeda metaphorized, before taking his chain. "GREAT CAPTURE!"

Bewildering his enemies, the Andromeda Saint casted his chains unto his own body, allowing them to snake around him in elliptic circles before tightening harshly on the metal of his body. Their now golden links burned with cosmos, fighting the shadows tainting the color of his body, and Shun gasped in pain as the evil of Eternal Darkness tortured him from the inside. He saw flashes of the most painful days of his life surround him, from the many near deaths of his brother to the terrible battles with Athena's own Saints, who he should have been able to call brothers in arms. The guilt of it all was as if true physical pain lashing him cruelly under the effects of Eternal Darkness, but the Saint endured.

It wasn't long before Michael observed the darkness being completely tamed and the normal color returning to the Bronze Saint's body, who collapsed unto his knees in exhaustion as his Cloth's God mode vanished away. "Incredible… Andromeda Shun, you would go that far?"

Meanwhile Daemon winced as he tried to enact the evil spell once more, but his palm merely crackled with his normal lightning cosmos, unable to recover the shadows he casted out. "S-shit… I can't use it anymore! What's going on?!1"

The Cygnus God Saint chuckled. "Your spell has been defeated, Daemon Lucifer, sealed inside the Andromeda Cloth!"

The Pride Star couldn't believe it. "Impossible!"

Haisaku, who had wisdom and insight into these matters, was also in shock. "That was a spell of Hypnos, in par with the great Underworld curses like Endless Eclipse and Osiris' Tomb… Shun, you're incredible!"

Dohko laughed and patted the green-head's back! "Ah, ah, great job, Shun! They were like this against Odysseus, too, Haisaku! These Princes don't stand a chance! I bet you could seal Hades himself with your chains!"

The very notion of this made Lucifer grit teeth in fury and manifest his aura in anger. "…Saints, how dare you blaspheme like that?! I'll recover my spell from that armor and make you pay for affronting me and the Emperor!"

But Michael's burning grip caught his shoulder and pulled him back. "STOP IT! Haven't you revealed enough of our secrets already?!"

The proud Specter backhanded his grip loose. "QUIET, MICHAEL! We have to crush them here and NOW! It's our only chance! If we pull back, they'll regroup and use their Godslayer armors to get in our teachers' way when they strike the Pope!"

The Saints gasped. "What?!"

Pride Star laughed, remembering they had no idea what was going on with Tenma at Veronika's swamp. "That's right! Even if you win here today, which you won't, Sanctuary will lose the bigger battle out there! As we speak, our teachers Thanatos and Hypnos are maneuvering their chess pieces against the rest of your assets" and he eyed Dohko in particular. "Starting with Pegasus, whom the God of Death has in his sight on!"

The tiger growled and stood up in fury. "Tenma?! What have you DONE?!" Dohko had to be held back by Shun and Haisaku from charging at the Daemon recklessly. "You cruel bastard! What has he done to you?!"

The Prince raised his chin proudly. "Absolutely nothing! It is Alone's mind that is at disarray for as long as that boy lives! He and his little party walked into Veronika's swamp of their own volition, but my master waits for them there… even if that Nasu is defeated, Thanatos, the God of Death, the man who taught me to destroy Gold Saints, will lay claim to Tenma's life for a second time this war!"

A powerful blizzard of an aura burst out as Cygnus charged his attack, projecting the swan of the north star in the air. "Then I guess we better not lose any more time here, then!" His beautiful wings flapped out, letting out currents of cooled down air, and the white cosmos focused on his coiled fist like a large star. He took aim at Lucifer and punched! "Feel the brilliance of the glacial wind! DIAMOND DUST!"

The Pride Star gasped, seeing a torrent of snowflakes of impossibly low temperatures coming right at him like vortex beam, firing over the heads of Haisaku and Dohko and countering the insane heat of the volcano. His 7th sense reeled, not comprehending the power level behind the move when backed by the Cygnus God Cloth.

Before he decided how to act, though, Michael had already made his decision and pushed him out of the way! "FIRE WEAVE ARMOR!" His Surplice burned its aura, releasing the might of Wind and Fire to forge the black flames of Dark Angel, and layers of finely woven flames dressed the gold-laced plates of his Surplice which took the impact of Diamond Dust.

The impact point released bright ellipsis of white light sizzling out of it, manifesting the thermal shock, and Michael screamed, falling to his knees. The Dark Angel Prince groaned in pain, feeling frost cling to his armor as large clouds of steam evaporated around himself. Fire Weave armor died out and the Specter felt like the cold hand of Lord Hades had reached around his heart, but he survived. He had taken Aurora Execution with this armor at Sanctuary, after all.

The Daemon Prince stared at the damage, knowing how powerful Michael's defensive move was. If Lucifer had taken that Diamond Dust…

Cygnus clicked his tongue, already burning cosmos for one more round. "I was aiming for the other one, but that's good too! Time to finish things! AhhhhHHH!" he roared, making his blonde aura wave and waves of cosmos focus again on his fist. "AURORA THUNDER… ATTA- GAH!" he gasped out, feeling the God mode of his armor suddenly turn off into specks of white light like an engine breaking down, leaving behind it's simple form.

Andromeda and Dohko caught him. "Hyoga! Your armor!"

"Cygnus, what happened?!" Libra demanded to know.

The swan Saint held his chest, feeling his reserves suddenly take a large dip. "I…burned it all away with just one a-attack?!..." he realized.

The Andromeda Saint helped his friend up and found the situation strange; even with them having a hard time tapping into their God Cloths at this point, Cygnus shouldn't be having this much trouble. It was likely the heat of Death Queen Island was forcing him to spend much more power on his moves to achieve normal results.

The Andromeda still tried to take advantage of this to achieve a peaceful way out and addressed the Princess. "Now you see what we are capable of, just like you did at Sanctuary! And you still have my Andromeda Cloth to contend with. Dark Angel and Bennu are hurt, Prince Daemon, and so is your honor! You should take them back to Pandora's Castle!"

Even if frightened by the power displayed against his rival, Daemon was too proud to surrender. "Or what?!"

Though pained, Michael held Lucifer's arm. "No, stop!" For some reason, Michael felt an odd sympathy with the Andromeda Saint, somehow sensing when they were both wavelength, perhaps because of their similar life objectives. "You s-saw the power they exerted when they fired Aurora Execution on Alone at Sanctuary! Must I save your life again-"

"W-what are you doing?! A-Attack them!" someone moaned out.

Michael and the Saints turned to Kagaho, who shook on the ground, covered with injuries from Haisaku's strike. "Bennu?"

The Celestial Violence Star crawled away from the Saints, half naked and barely able to move. "Y-You're the Princes! Why are you h-hesitating?! Powerful or not, blast them down this d-damn volcano before they can ever lay a finger on Alone again!"

Kneeling down, Michael took his wrist. "We will have time for that later, Violence Star. For now we are retre-"

The Bennu Specter shoved him off. "Don't you d-dare! We have them against the corner! It's our o-one chance to destroy all these outrageously powerful profligates! W-what did me and Prince Lucifer fight for if not to create this opportunity?!" he raged, disgusted by Absolute Star's attitude.

Michael widened his cursed eyes. "Are you insane, Violence Star?! Are you still loyal to Lucifer's foolishness after he almost locked you inside Eternal Darkness with them?!"

Kagaho rose his face in spite against this soft-heartedness. "To the very end! E-Even if I d-die, I will eliminate them! Even if I d-die, my brot-… Alone must prevail!... gah!"

The Bennu then lost consciousness again, sitting at the border between life and death. Dark Angel was left kneeling there in disbelief, clenching his fists in frustration and powerlessness. Libra Dohko also stared at the two, recognizing in Kagaho once again the fury and blindness from stories told to him about one of his mentors.

"So much anger…Haisaku," he asked. "Does he not remind you of Seiryu?"

She nodded, and seeing the sadness in Michael, Haisaku spoke. "I'm sorry, Prince Michael… but these are the dark feelings that Hades has heightened in all of us to give him absolute dominion over Specters. Specters are dying for the sake of creating more death, instead of preserving life and civilization. I tried to reason with Kagaho as well. It's hard to explain right now, but his deep sleep in those dark waters breaks my heart nearly as much as yours."

He rose his face at her, then noticing for the first time the Amazon was without her mask. His red eyes felt dead and looked like they searched for an answer.

So, she finalized her sentiment. "I'm afraid that, for as long as you serve Hades, your Evil Stars will always control you. Kagaho will never be his old self again until he breaks free of Violence."

Lucifer's cape began floating higher, as if about to give birth to wings, and he held out his hand to his rival. "Michael, do it NOW! Let go of your pathetic soft-heartedness and joy hands with me in destroying these savages! Together, we can annihilate the Godslayers once and for all! When Pride and Absolutism shine hand in hand, we are invincible! It's our duty, our third function!"

But the Prince simply took Kagaho unto his arms and carried him.

Lucifer stood there agape. "What are you doing?! Didn't you hear a word I said?!"

He eyed Pride Star venomously. "I did! And you're right! Deleting these evil doers from Hades' ideal world is our third function!... But leading the Specters and Skeletons and being the example of what we wish to see in them is our second! I will sacrifice myself 1000 times for Lord Hades for my duty, but never my own men! It's up to you if you want to put your injured ego above keeping your men safe!"

A vein of outrage popped in Daemon's temple. "What?!"

Michael simply walked out with Bennu in arms. "I'm taking Kagaho to safety. Do with the Godslayers what you wish."

Andromeda smiled, feeling both relieved that they weren't going to battle both Princes and also admiration for what the Specter just did. Perhaps the strange sympathy he felt for Dark Angel was not misplaced.

Daemon, on the other hand, was absolutely enraged! Completely humiliated in front of the Saints twice, the hot wash of shame made his already angry face twist into pure hatred and the dark aura oozing out of his body now flowed like water gates. He looked like he was about to explode and he eyed the Saints like they were at fault for everything that had ever gone wrong with his life.

His feet tensed on the ground like anchors and his hands crackled purple lightning. "…I shall! For everything Sanctuary has done to me, and for all the offenses to my pride, everyone in this mountain will be annihilated by my hand!"

Andromeda gritted teeth, charging cosmos into his divine chains defensively. "Everyone, take cover, I'll protect you!"

But while Cygnus and Libra stuck closer to Andromeda, the Phoenix stood tall before the Specter. "Haisaku!" Dohko shouted.

The wind currents raised by Lucifer's charging power up made her orange hair flow. "That's not enough… his attack will disrupt the Queen's furnace, filling this place with lava that can destroy even the Phoenix Cloth. This demon must be faced."

The black vortex of Dark Revenge Blast formed and Lucifer laughed. "AH, AH, AH, that's right, traitor. You must know my power well! I'd imagine that celestial armor of Shun's is quite powerful, but can he catch all of you before the hateful bird that lives in this lava eats them?! Perhaps with Cygnus helping out you'd stand a chance, but it's too late now!"

The mentioned Bronze Saint growled in frustration. If only Dark Angel hadn't taken the Diamond Dust blow for this bastard!

Her orange cosmos brightened and she held her sword by the scabbard. "No, Prince, the seals have unraveled by now… it's too late for you!"

The Prince widened his eyes, detecting a new power source. "What?!"

Dohko stared at her "… Mom, what are you doing?!"

"Have you forgotten, Saints, what we came here for?!" the former Skeleton soldier shouted, before raising her weapon to the air. "My armor… The Cloth of Hope, Teos!"

The yondo no yaiba then shined out as if reflecting a beam of light on its blade and Lucifer screamed with the flare. The volcano then shook and the lava below them erupted upwards, shaking the island and seemingly swallowing everything and everyone in golden light and molten rock!

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The Present

(Moments after Lucifer used Eternal Darkness on Lance)

House of Virgo

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Hiding by the doorway to the exit to Libra, Deathmask peaked out to the next Temple, seeing the flashes of light from fighting coming off of it had stopped. "I don't like this! That place has gone quiet!"

Aldebaran and Shaka were sitting not far away from him, both hurt in different ways. Taurus heard his comment. "It'd be too good to be true for that Daemon guy to have already been beaten, I think…"

Deathmask left the door. "You're telling me! Can't you sense what's going on up there, Shaka?"

The smaller blonde boy shook his head in response.

"Pfft, figures." Deathmask bit. "You're just useless at this point, uh?"

A vein popped in Aldebaran's square head "Shut up, you've been the most useless this entire battle! What have you even done tonight other than complain?!"

The Sicilian folded arms offendedly. "I've done my share of saving the day tonight, okay?! I'll have ya know I took part in taking back my House! Lance would be dead without me! AND I helped Saga carry you up these steps when you couldn't win your fight! You couldn't even hold your house with Aiolos shooting nuclear bomb arrows at ya enemies! So you shut up!" he struck, sick of everyone giving him a hard time about this crap. He was doing what he could with what he had.

"S-Stop it, you two!" Shaka asked. "This isn't the time for this! There are important battles going on across several temples right now and we all have to do the best we can until the night is over! We can bicker about who made mistakes in the morning…"

Aldebaran felt guilty. He didn't really mean to diminish what Mephisto had been doing, since his life was put at risk as well and he took the initiative to save the Cancer Cloth before the Specters ever got to the 4th Temple, but his attitude about it all was so crappy that it drove Aldebaran, who was raised to be enthusiastic about his duties, insane. In general, there were few people in Sanctuary other than Milo that got along well with Lance's protegé, and that was because Milo, despite being much better natured and easy going than Mephisto (or perhaps because of it), had some of the same mischievous vein, like when the two of them ran a stand selling swindled tickets to the Coliseum or when he got Aiolia in trouble with the paint incident that Lance busted.

Regardless of his feelings about these two, Most importantly, Aldebaran felt horrible just sitting there, and he stood up with a face that meant business.

"Hey, where are you going?" Deathmask asked.

The bull tried to move past them. "I'm going to Libra to fight!" he asserted. Shinta's safety had been on his mind the whole time. "My buddy is up there with goddess knows how many feet in the grave and I'm just sittin' doing nothing!"

Mephisto laughed. "Ah, ah, ah! Are you serious? If anyone has a foot in the grave around here, it's you! You don't even have all your horns left!" he commented, surveying the many bruises, injuries and armor cracks in Aldebaran. "What are you gonna do against that Specter when you get up there?"

The Brazilian clenched fist high in determination. "I'm paying back for the horn with everything I got! Even if I die!"

The purple-haired boy shook his head. "Your funeral."

Shaka, however, held him. "Aldebaran, your feelings are admirable, but please take pause." His high-pitched voice added. "Before you make a decision, think carefully about all the sacrifices everyone else made to save you, not just Orion's Ray, but Lance and Saga as well. Can you really keep fighting?"

It didn't surprise Aldebaran that Shaka would bring this perspective up; despite apparently losing his touch with Buddha, the Indian boy was still supremely concerned with the balance of everyone's actions.

However, Aldebaran had made up his mind. "I'm not sure, Shaka… but all I have to do is buy some more minutes! If what I do doesn't put a scratch on that Specter but gives Aiolos, Milo and the others a few more moments to defeat the others, it might make all the difference! And I can walk on my own again now! Besides, if they saved my life… then I just have all that more obligation to pay it back."

"He's crazy! That Specter will make cow beef out of him! Even the adults can't handle him well!" Deathmask accused.

Shaka lowered his head sadly. "If I still had my cosmos… I might have been able to use the Golden Touch to help you recover faster."

"We work with what life gives us, Shaka." Aldebaran argued. "You're the most powerful Saint of our generation! I'm sure hurting you like he did took a bit out of that Specter bastard too! We'll beat him, for sure!"

Small beads of tears formed in Shaka's eye corners, thankful for his kind words. "Very well, Aldebaran, I hope you suc-" but Shaka then was stunned in place, eyes widening in terror as he felt a burning shooting star fly across the heavens!

The two others stared at him. "Shaka? Is something wrong?"

The Indian boy stepped back, horrified. Even in his state, with his contact with Buddha lost, the evil and hatred of Mara's flames was perceptible to him? And it was coursing through the Cosmos as they spoke, headed… headed to the Libra Temple? Why?!

A familiar cackle that hid behind a toothy mask was heard by just him in the air, mocking the Virgo Saint's powerlessness.

Even Deathmask became concerned. The tanned white of Shaka's skin had gone phantom white. "Dude, you look like you walked into my House's basement! What's wrong?"

The boy gagged. For a moment, in an invisible plane overlapping their own, he felt the grip of the demon reaching for him as if about to punish him for his failure, only for it to instead carry on up the stairs "M… Mara! The bastard devil of that island! He's found his victim?!" he thought, meaning bastard in the traditional sense. "Aldebaran, Deathmask, something has gone horribly wrong in that battle for the Libra Temple! We MUST go up!"

"Oh, so NOW you're on his side?" Deathmask complained, folding arms.

"It's important! A threat nearly as big as Lucifer could cause even more destruction tonight, or at the very least destroy Lance's soul!" Shaka exclaimed, alarming all of them! "I must be there at the Libra Temple…"

Aldebaran sweated. "But Shaka… You're in no condition to use your powers. What are you going to do?"

The Virgo Saint gulped. With his powers gone, there was really no direct way he could stop Mara's avatar, but he was still Buddha's disciple. As such, perhaps he could exchange places somehow…

He kept that intention close to chest. "I'll help, somehow."

Aldebaran turned to Deathmask tensely.

The Cancer boy felt the eyes on him. "…. Well, crap, I'm not gonna stay here by myself! Fine, I'll go as well!"

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(?)

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In a strange, private world deep underneath the layers of karma and ego of a certain Saint, where the roots of the psyche manifested into perceivable objects and atmospheres, a snowstorm petered the glacier that Lance's mind had been locked inside of.

With cracked nails of fire and a ceramic maw bathed in fire, a firebird demon crashed unto the frozen mind of his victim, bashing its heated feet and hands on the glacier ground, causing boiled steam to sizzle everywhere on mere contact with the ice. With a ravenous roar, the broken avatar pounded his fists over and over on the sheets of frozen water, breaking and sublimating it into hot white clouds. Soon enough, a shadowed shape became visible to it in the ice and the demon dug its greedy fingers of flame deep into the hard ice, causing loud cracking noises and wrecking the thick glacier to pieces like a wolverine.

So vicious was this process that the entire field of ice virtually terraformed. The glacier broke down into smaller and smaller pieces and melted away, slowly revealing a hard ground of marble as the water and steam flushed out of the area. The shadow seen in the glacier was actually the body of a late teenage boy now sunk unto the marble. As the steam also evaporated, the true form of the world was revealed.

They stood in a huge, round, white marble disk platform centered by a command throne, which in turn rested on what looked like basalt rock field surrounded by open, black flames but, in reality, was magma that had been solidified by the coldness of Eternal Darkness' nightmare. The seat looked to be made of a black metal, not seeming particularly comfortable in any way, and had a star engraved on the central sharp tip of a set of five sharp tips, three of them large and two of them shorter2, on the chair's back top.

With the ice gone, the basalt now began to slowly heat back up and small bright ember lights began to be visible in its surface as the underlying magma's heat began to once again win out the fight for that mind's environment. However, said heat, which represented Lance's fire cosmos and psychological drive, would not awaken him in time, for now Guilty stood over the unconscious teenager triumphantly and ready to claim the Saint's sanity for himself.

He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Tsk, tsk, tsk… Lance, what happened to you? You look terrible! How many times did the Heart of Sasha Maidens say to us not to play in the cold?" he lamented, seeing his buddy pale as a ghost. He took hand to the air dramatically. "The look of hate in your eyes for me, the shake of the head, the lamentation!...All gone from you because of a little ice! Oh, if only I knew this was your weakness sooner,. I'd have shoved an icepick on your skull long ago!"

The Gold Saint on the ground remained unconscious and irresponsive, as he usually would in that place unless he was dreaming.

Guilty's masked face shook. "Tragic, tragic… And after all you shouted at me about being so much better than I am! Well, look at you know-" and he kicked Lance as hard as he could. "Good as dead! AH, AH, AH!"

The unconscious Lance squirmed, feeling the burning warmth of Guilty's foot.

This alarmed the demon, who gasped and lowered his head on Lance's chest. He felt a pulse, or, what in that world meant, a sign of self-awareness.

He rose back up in revolt. "What?! You're still not broken?! Why?! Must I put you on that ice again?! No, I got a better idea!" he hissed, taking Lance by the neck as blood began to stem from the marble cracks on the ground. His fingers tensed into a stabbing form, dressed in blood-red fire cosmos. "Don't worry, best friend, I'll take away that little fragile ego still left in you…and take good care of you in hell! Ha, ha, ha, HA!" and he lunged his claw down, aiming to rip the heart off!

A powerful, muscled grip caught his wrist in mid-air, stopping it instantly.

Guilty turned. "Wh-"

The other hand closed into a fist and hammered his mask face, exploding on his mask and powerfully knocking him off the human with the force of the world's strongest!

Guilty screamed, bled and held his broken mask, feeling specks of emerald cosmos painfully burning his cheek. "AAHGHH! N-NO, DAMN YOU! H-HE'S M-MINE!"

The gallant martial artist of slit green eyes, long black hair and muscled, half-naked body stepped protectively over the Gold Saint, his body drenched in watery energy flowing like calm waves. "You have no claim over Pegasus, puppet! He has turned away from your Queen's curses and sought protection under me, Seiryu, the Dragon!"

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Chapter 62

Second Arc

Episode 24

Inner Demons

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Guilty crawled away from the figure standing before him. It was Seiryu, the Dragon, Emperor of the East, adopting a human form inside Lance's psyche which looked eerily similar to depictions of the 18th century Dragon Saint. Manifested through the tattoo on Lance's back, the deity's green eyes expressed his characteristic sterness, beholding Guilty like the dirty blot on the Earth that he was.

The masked man stood up fearfully. "He's mine, …. MINE!" he repeated. "He has failed to live up to his vow to be my better! He doesn't deserve to be out here instead of me!"

"I'm well aware of the terms of your envious agreement, demon." Seiryu assured.

The masked man lunged again with hands immersed in fire. "Then let me HAVE HIM!"

Seiryu skillfully dodged the mad strikes, parried a jab with the back of his banded wrist and then stunned the bastard with a combo of impossibly fast blows aimed at certain spots on his body, causing Guilty to scream and lose control of his movements. With a soft, silent jump like a water drop landing on a pond, his draconic feet leaped high and his waist swung to land an almighty kick that practically exploded on the demon's neck, causing it to turn 180º!

Guilty gagged in pain and backed away in shock, his head facing the direction opposite of his chest! Slowly recovering his nervous control, he grabbed his own head and twisted it back into place, seemingly unconcerned with having his neck completely broken beyond the pain of it.

He coughed and cleaned the blood dripping off his mask's teeth. "E-eh, eh, eh, so that's how it's gonna be…" His body burned in cosmos. "Let the blood bath begin!"

But Seiryu scoffed and simply manifested his lifeforce, causing a silent shockwave of emerald forces that battered Guilty, dispelling the bastard's aura and projecting the terrifying visage of a gigantic dragon's green glare in the demon's mind, paralyzing him with fear.

The god turned his back on him dismissively. "Evil cretin…. Your powers are no match for me! You're nothing but the Queen's animal. A beast on a leash that used to be a man. Do you really think Lance has been defeated yet?" Seiryu criticized. "I have vowed to protect Dohko's disciple from your poison for as long as he earns it. The battle in the physical world isn't done yet!"

"LOOK AT HIM! HE'S COMATOSE!" Guilty screamed, gunning for Lance again with the dragon looking the other way. "He's no longer fit to sit in that chair!"

But the dragon warrior was unimpressed by the demon's lies and his fist casually rose in a strong back hammer blow that smashed Guilty's nose in, sending him into a screaming fit.

Picking up Lance, the dragon gently carried him to the command seat. "Don't twist the truth. You felt his lifeforce… his mind still lives. Hypnos' cruel spell tried to destroy him, but it was unable to access the most intimate details of his memories thanks to seal put on his memories by the Triangle Saint."

"A seal?!" Guilty protested, though the excuse did jut some memories about his own conflicts with Lance, including a technique he tried on the Pegasus that didn't work so well.

"That's right." Seiryu pointed out. "The Daemon Specter's attempt to bring about a world of nightmares on him wasn't totally effective. A spark of ego remains on him."

But the demon was unsatisfied by this. "As far as I'm concerned, that's good enough for ME! He hasn't earned surviving that attack, then!"

But Seiryu was wiser than this. "Neither did you earn to still be breathing today… Or have you forgotten the debt you owe this man?3" He pointed out as he rested Lance on the seat. The masked, tanned man's only response was growling in frustration. "Mm, your lenience with the truth shows your character, demon. It doesn't shock me you've fallen under the Queen's wings. You owe Lance your life, yet you do nothing but hound him every step of his, tormenting him with perceived failures and guilt. Your name suits you well… You want nothing but Lance's destruction out of spite."

Guilty rubbed his pained chin. "He, he…Well… what does that make you?" he accused, pointing his blood-caked finger at him. "Some deal to protect him you've made; I'll give you my techniques, dear Lance, and protect you at night from the big bad wolf-Guilty…and in exchange I'll slowly turn you into an angry lizard freak like me!4"

These words gave the God pause; just before being struck with Eternal Darkness, Lance began manifesting the first serious signs of their contract's drawbacks. His repeated use of Shoryuha, Koryuha and now even the Hyaku Ryu Ha required him trading off his natural cosmos with Seiryu's in order to compensate for his lack of ability to tap into the Water element naturally. This made the dragon's power flow through Lance painfully, much like at Andromeda Island, and if overused like tonight, it could have horrible transformative effects on the human.

From the way Seiryu saw it, though, it was still a far more just agreement than the one Guilty was trying to impose. "Perhaps, but that was his choice; he accepted the risks, unlike you, who imposed yours on him. (*)" Seiryu simply reminded him. "In either case, you won't have your prize today, demon! This night is one where warriors will shine in defense of their principles, not fall into the same pit of decadence as you!"

(*) Chapter 14

The white-haired monster of Death Queen Island folded arms. "Is that so? It looks to me like a night of Specter raiding, eh, eh, eh… Maybe it would have been kinder of you to let me have him and burn Sanctuary to the ground, than let the Specters do it instead."

Seiryu turned back on this notion. "Kindness for Sanctuary? I care not for its well-being. Athena's ideals and domain are hers to protect."

"Yet, you interfere!" Guilty snarled, stalking the two of them, looking for another angle to strike through despite his already heavily damaged face and mask.

The deity was completely unbothered. "Yes,… because I detest Specters and Hades even more, and I will not let honorable warriors die in disgrace under the boot of their dark tricks. Those that despise the very concept of life do not deserve dominion over the Earth. Moreover, Daemon Lucifer has utilized a spell of the Gods to claim his victory more easily. I will not tolerate such hypocrisy from a man claiming to be the rightful ruler of mankind against the Heavens."

The masked demon perked up at this. Would he still get a chance at what he wanted? "… What do you intend to do?!"

The dragon looked up at the star on throne concernedly. "Isn't it obvious? I'm going to do what I've been born to do; let nature's cruel justice take its course. It's up to Lance if he deserves to open his eyes once more. As for you -" And Seiryu's body burst with a raging aura of emerald green. His eyes shined in reptilian slits and he turned to Guilty with a hand filled with the Dragon's cosmic wrath. "-I'm sending you BACK to where you belong! RYU SHO!"

Seiryu thrust his palm and, more than a mere dash punch like the technique would have indicated, a massive shockwave of emerald light was fired, so powerful that it ate away at Guilty's flesh and incinerated his psychotic presence down to the bone before blowing it all to ash.

He then took care of Lance, holding his shoulder appealingly. "You may still be weak, but you're coming along a promising path, Pegasus Lance, but now you must push yourself once more if you want to rejoin the battlefield. More and more I see that you don't deserve to have your inner shadow exploited by Mara. I will keep my end of our bargain and keep that masked demon away, but, beyond that, perfecting yourself as a warrior and defeating the shadows of your path is a path you must walk on yourself…"

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Death Queen Island

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The corpse's face ignited into orange flames, which condensed into solid ceramic material to reform Guilty's demonic mask, and life breathed back into the body, which regained its brown coloring and vitality in the form of a pained gasp. The demon coughed and got up on his hands, finding himself back home only to hammer his fists on the ground in rage, making the ground crack and the volcano rumble more.

He howled to the skies in fury at the dragon god, but soon enough, the certainty he felt in his brutal, nihilistic view of the world consoled him. "Go AHEAD! Take him! He won't survive the night anyway! HA, HA, Ha, ha!... He's too weak! I'll have his soul soon enough…" He then turned to the volcano, which had a trail going up at it where a small group of Troll Grendel's party was visible. "Until that happens, I'll keep entertained with the rest of these new friends!..."

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Sanctuary,

House of Sagittarius

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In the skies of Sanctuary, a small winged creatures glided silently. Known as Athene Noctua, the little owl was a species common to the warmer, more temperate parts of Eurasia from Greece to Korea. It had brown feathers, a flat-topped head with a frowning expression adorned by yellow eyes, a short feather tail and no more than 9 inches big, but it was good enough a predator to inhabit even the mountains of Athena's sanctum. This one, however, was flying uncharacteristically close to the Golden Zodiac mount, whose blessed aura designed to prevent asymmetrical assaults on the fortress staved off even small birds aiming to bombard its beautiful temples with their excrement. Perhaps this was a sign of Sanctuary's weakening blessings, which, in Athena's absence, relied on its 12 armors to maintain them and, for every Gold Cloth outside of its House, became increasingly uncapable of suppressing flight, teleportation, high jumps or walking around a House that failed to cover the stair pass side-to-side.5

Whatever the reason, it concerned Aiolos, whose keen hunter eyes spotted the bird high in the air despite the dark of the night and the silence of its wings. He aimed his bow and fired another suppressing rain of arrows, which slowed down the incoming invaders, and then proceeded to pull down some of the damaged pillars unto the stairs to block the access to the gates before loudly closing them behind him and lowering the reinforcement bar.

He then turned to the servants and soldiers still making their way out of the Temple. "GO, hurry UP! They are closing in! Get to Capricorn before they can target you!"

Part of the group that split from Lance, Shinta and Agapethos at Leo was now here at Sagittarius. They had met Shaka and Milo the way up and now recently arrived at Aiolos' Temple to inform him of everything they witnessed, namely, meeting Saints Saga and Shinta, taking Aiolia to safety and deciding with them to split the group up in two to lure Daemon Lucifer inside Leo so that the two Saints could join the Cancer Gold Saint's battle with Papillion Ainsel.

The soldiers inside the 9th temple tried to hurry the servants that had been fleeing up the Houses all night, but short of carrying them themselves, they couldn't simply get civilians to move that fast. "Lord Sagittarius, there are many of them yet, you should come as well and join forces with your fellow Gold Saints!"

Aiolos frowned. Even if he agreed with abandoning his home, he was concerned about Saga's theory about the mountain's blessings. "No, this is my House. I'm staying. Worry about your lives, not mine."

The Papal Guard watched the others signaling him to come as well but couldn't decide. "We should stay here and avenge our comrades…"

But the Sagittarius Gold Saint insisted. "I'm sorry, but you wouldn't be much help. I will simply be fighting too quickly for any of you to not just be in the way." He thought to himself, but he had to rephrase it respectfully. "Athena will look upon your bravery with love and kindness, men,… and I also appreciate you all saving the life of the Leo House's occupant. However, I worry about the cruelty they would inflict upon you in battle and my wrath against these murderers is great, so I shall pommel the thunderbolts of Zeus on them myself! Leave now!"

Seeing the determined look on the Gold Saint's eyes, the Papal Guard shook in nervousness and nodded, quickly heading up.

Aiolos' fingers gripped his bow handle tightly, cringing its finger cushioning. His mind rushed through all the atrocities and anxieties they endured that night thanks to these bastards. No matter how many of them reached the House, he would be sure to have their names on each of his arrows.

"Let us join forces in combat once again, young Aiolos." Chiron voiced in his head, being the spirit of his armor. "With bravery, determination and wisdom, defending my Hall and prevailing against these savages is inevitable!"

And the archer's aura burned brightly and warmly as their wills synched. One of Aiolos' best attributes as a Gold Saint was the high degree of compatibility he already had with his Gold Cloth, compared to his generation mates, which he owed to Chiron's earnest and genuine sense of justice and wisdom. Their teamwork would shine tonight and teach the Specters a harsh lesson about not raising their hands on innocent people under Athena's watch!

His blue eyes sparked with the mark of the lightning element and the stars of his constellation burned in the air. As he heard many steps amassing outside, he nocked his arrow unto his bow and aimed at the lock on the far-off gate, which would surely be broken through first. His eyes narrowed like an eagle's. "Come and get me, you murderers! This will be for all the innocent people and Saints you've made suffer tonight! Even if my blood bathes my temple, I will die punching my light through the darkness!""

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Sanctuary Town,

Golden Zodiac Entrance

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Ophiuchus Iaso was not typically a man of prayer, but after what just happened he could call out to every God in Olympus to help him keep his senses.

Still rattled to his core by what he just witnessed, the medic rushed through the shades towards the Golden Zodiac, half a mind of helping save lives and another half wanting to ask what the hell was going on that night! Between a Specter invasion, a Papillion Specter wanting to turn him into a bug-infested corpse, meeting Saint Dohko of Libra, climbing Twin Peaks Mountain to get the Waters of Life, 'Kiki' teleport him halfway across the world, running into an entirely unconscious Sanctuary, getting punched in the face by Cynthia, dodging a potential slasher and seeing a young woman immolate herself with her own cosmos right after murdering her parents, the doctor has had a wild night to say the least and a LOT of questions to ask the higher ups that he'd surely get no answer for.

At the time he was mostly startled out of his trance and reminded of what he was doing in Sanctuary by the big explosion in the sky resulted from, unbeknownst to him, Dark Revenge Blast detonating.

Coming across the last road path to the Golden Zodiac, he beheld the huge mountain where the thirteen most powerful men in Sanctuary lived at and gasped. The Temple of Aries, where 'Kiki's teacher' resided, was a massacre zone in its stairs, with blood running down the steps, and the building itself was aflame on the inside as a result of Lance's storming. Meanwhile half the remaining Houses up to Libra were visibly damaged, ransacked or even on fire.

Iaso gulped, knowing now that the Fire Clock wasn't wrong about how far the enemy has gotten already.

He was about to rush right inside and search for survivors when his brown eyes saw a figure coming out of the western forest to Aretias. "Uh? Is that- ?"

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Returning to the entry of the stairs to the Aries House, Adriana's hooded head looked up at the Temples, seeing the orange flares coming out of the House of Libra, from where the earlier blast also came out of. The first purple explosion in the sky woke up a lot of people put to sleep by the Specters and now she could see lights turning on in several houses in Sanctuary Town. Following that there was the bright orange furnace lights of Firestorm Spiral, which startled her with its brightness, and now a large emerald glow was seen before an absolute belch of darkness spewed out of the Libra Temple, laying it to a silent rest.

A darkness and silence that lingered.

Her silver-ringed hand tightened on the rein she had been pulling along and she frowned tensely, recognizing the color of the energies coming off of Libra. The thought crossed her mind of a rash Gold Saint emboldened by the suffering of his friends to bite off more than he could chew...

"Don't die, alright?…" She then heard fidgeting on Sophia's saddle and turned. "Your name is Cerah, correct? I know you're not comfortable, but don't move so much. You're pretty light, but you don't want to find out how much falling off a horse can hurt."

The pale-blonde girl rested over the animal's back quieted down, even though the black feather she secretly carried burned against her skin, reacting, unbeknownst to them, to Shinta's confrontation with Lucifer at the Libra Temple. The noblewoman took the chance to check up on her again, still a bit stunned at what she had found on her.

First of all, when the Skeletons at Aries said that Lance's Gold Saint friends went down west on the mountain's curved perimeter into the woods, she had expected to encounter a secret passage of some sort or maybe the Andromeda Saint that the Cancer was concerned about. Adriana made no secret that she had trouble connecting with people outside her circle without it being some sort of business association, but she knew Lance shared that difficulty from the moment she met him sitting by himself at Akassius' manor and she was curious to see what kind of friend made him go ballistic on those Specters over. She did not expect to encounter, instead, what looked like a heavily injured civilian girl sleeping against the mountainside trees.

Second of all, the girl, or whoever was casting it, tried to hide it, but when turning the corner on her Adriana's keen senses picked up on the large flare of Light cosmos that instantly receded into the obsidian pendant on Cerah's neck. A pendant that as soon as the noblewoman tried to inspect it, the half-way unconscious girl reacted to stop her rather harshly.

Adriana didn't need even more obvious hints; she had an injured Cyrulian remnant in her hands, improbable as that was, and now they both ran risk for their lives just based on that fact. The pendant was likely a Light-crafted gemstone and the girl was probably surveying the events of the conflict from a distance before getting into serious trouble with either the Specters or the Amazons at Aretias. In the brief moment she saw and touched it, Adriana recognized in it perfect gemstone cutting that was only possible with microscopically precise fabrication. She had seen examples on the black market and even on her mother's jewelry box back in the days before the war.

If the blonde girl was found out, she'd likely be called a spy and be subjected to all sorts of terrible treatments by people who at this point could only look at remnants as potential terrorists, avengers or agents. And anyone caught helping her or harboring her would suffer similar consequences.

While her circles imposed certain interests on her, like politics and history, Adriana didn't feel like letting a teenage girl who hurt no one die in the woods get subjected to this was justified by old resentful grudges from interest groups of the court. Adriana still had to get help for her… even if she had to risk showing her to a doctor in Sanctuary Town. The hospital was not far by -

"Hey! Are you okay?" Ophiuchus Iaso shouted at her, rushing to the three of them. "What's going on here, who are you?!"

Adriana was startled at finding what looked like none other than the Ophiuchus Saint, based on the purple armor plates, just as when she was wondering how she would go about finding medical help.

"You're… the Ophiuchus Silver Saint, correct? Hermes is on our side, then. My name is-" she then wondered if she should give out her name. Two decades of being raised and brought up in her crossroad of business and aristocratic environments made her hesitate to give details about herself to a stranger when unnecessary, even a doctor… but especially a Saint of today's Sanctuary.

He eyed her expectantly, brow raised. "Well?"

She felt a weight on her head that made her gulp in the form of a recent comment from a certain someone about her not caring about others. If she didn't identify herself properly, Cerah would get help later rather than sooner. "I am Adriana Ghisi. I have someone here who needs medical help. Can you give it?"

The doctor hesitated, recognizing the name. Ghisi? Wasn't that the family of those sick, abusive aristocrats in Néa Delphi who landed that poor maid in the hospital aft-...?

His face became grave, his thoughts interrupted as a dark realization dawned him, but the need to prioritize helping the needed made him swallow his concerns for now. "I see. I hope that person behind you, for your sake, isn't another victim, then. Let me take a look."

Adriana then helped him lay Cerah down on the ground from Sophia, who neighed and clopped away. As they worked together, Iaso got a better look under the moonlight and indeed saw the ring on her finger marking her social status, confirming her words. Either she was completely shameless in revealing who she was to someone who likely saw a lot of her family's handiwork, or the person they were helping was too important to hide.

But when he saw who the sick person was, the camel's back of his patience broke right in half. "What?! Cerah Helóise?!" He held Adriana's arm aside harshly when rage replaced his usual focus on healing for a moment. "What did you people do to her?!"

The noblewoman gritted her teeth, understanding his suspicion perfectly, although she didn't expect him to know her. "I a-assure you, I've done nothing! I found her like this!"

The doctor scoffed, enraged. "A likely story! I know this girl! She would never get involved in all this fighting! I watched over her for over a year and I know she's been getting jobs for people in your cliques!" Iaso roared, having been aware of it because of that time he caught her coming home with expensive cutlery she seemed to have stolen.(*) Was this revenge on their part for that?!

(*) Chapter 44

Adriana stepped away defensively. "Saint Ophiuchus, I've met her tonight, I haven't laid a finger on her other than to help!"

But the doctor had treated too many of their victims over the years. In fact, Cetus of Lalibela was closer to being their role model than Athena. "Why should I believe you?! Considering all the screwed-up things you people and the Saints you put in the army do to the poor folk in Sanctuary?! Is there no limits to who won't become your little playthings?! Not even someone who just walked out of a coma?! Did you and the Solos have fun yanking her out from the street to one of your parties and then get caught by surprise when SPECTERS INVADED?!"

Adriana stared at him in guilt, not because she was responsible for what happened to Cerah, but because she knew the doctor had very good reason to react like this. She couldn't blame him for suspecting these things, not with the kind of family she had.

But Adriana stayed out of those things and the truth was different this time. "...I'm sure you want to help her first, and then talk about what happened after, right, doctor? We can debate my innocence later."

The Ophiuchus Saint nodded in agreement. He knew she was manipulating him, but his oath to Hippocrates wasn't going anywhere and demanded duty before passion, and as such he focused on the patient, all while keeping the corner of his eye on the person who brought Cerah to him.

He tapped her face lightly, testing her reaction, but Cerah only shivered a bit. "Incredible, she's still alive… but the injury looks nasty. I have something with me that might help, but I need to get her out of here to somewhere with supplies."

Adriana pointed at the Aries Temple. "I'll help you get her up there. I know for a fact that the Temple is retaken. The Pegasus Saint cleared it out earlier."

He gave her a stunned look. "He what?! How did that short-fuser recover an entire House full of Specters by himself?!

Her response was measured so as to protect Lance's identity as the Cancer Gold Saint. "There were only Skeletons there. All the dangerous Specters are fighting further up the Zodiac, so for a Silver-rank like him, it wasn't that difficult."

In a certain way, this made too much sense. "Ah, how do you even know that? Did you walk him up the stairs?"

"Yes."

This immediately sunk the doctor's inflated chest. This aristocrat had gotten her hands dirty and helped some random Bronze Saint? Either some other lie was behind this, or he just treated the most benevolent person in all of Sanctuary's court like dirt.

Since there was no time to get answers for this, he focused on Cerah. Would she drop into another coma? He doubted it, but sometimes the cosmos did that as a way to save the user. The doctor minded the canteen full of Water of Life he collected at Twin Peaks Mountain. "Don't worry, Cerah, this won't be another tragedy in your life! I promised it to Eurydice and I swear it as a doctor; I won't let you fall asleep to not wake up again!"

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(?)

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

Dazedly opening his red eyes in the marble-floored room, Lance found himself unable to fully retain consciousness or understand where he was, half-naked and filled with battle injuries. Lost in a dream-state, he felt himself on a chair surrounded by black flames raging all around him, as if trapped in a forest fire. Wind howled through the branches of the dead, burning trees, worsening the inferno, and he felt the heat rising so highly he thought he would suffocate.

Motivated by his survival instinct, he threw himself unto his hands and feet and crawled away. He couldn't remember anything; just the sight of a demonic Specter shooting a vortex of shadows at him that swallowed the Cancer Saint up. The black fires began moving behind him, converging unto a single spot. Hearing its loud sizzle, Lance looked over and watched, eyes weakly widening, as the black flames rose into a humanoid shape with long arms, stretchy fingers and skeletal wings, all made of nothing but burning darkness.

A strange star burned brightly in the sky above its head6. Lance then felt his heart beat loudly when it took a step towards Lance, hand reaching out! Screaming, he crawled away as fast as he could, instinctively sent into a panic by the sensation of someone much older and stronger than himself reaching for him while he was weak and vulnerable, but he felt like on top of how weak he was, his body crawled through a world of static and entropy where he had to struggle twice as hard to move half as far.

Feeling the air grow hotter and hotter as the grip approached, Lance turned over to find the figure lunging at him and closing fingers around his throat, silently squeezing his trachea and burning his neck. Pressed down by its weight, the Saint struggled against the arms, feeling his sight darkening as he was chocked to death, and his red eyes only saw a face on the monster with two red burning orbs in it like his own that furiously wanted him dead.

He felt his thoughts vanishing as the air left him, but still coursing through memories otherwise inaccessible to him.

No.

He made promises in his life.

Promises that he was shy to speak of or acknowledge, but that he deeply believed in.

One to Noah that he'd unlock his Cosmos and become a great heroic Saint like him.

One to Guilty that he wouldn't steep into the same swamps of hatred as he did.

And one to Dohko that, if he died, that he'd do so fighting these bastards with everything he had!

With unnatural strength surging from deep within, natural to only those like him who had felt throughout their lives the steep price of breaking promises or failing others and himself, Lance's fingers locked tensely on the fire creature's arms and squeezed harshly until its fiery wrists snapped, destroying its hands and releasing the chokehold! The winged monster screamed both in pain and frustration and Lance did the only thing that he thought of; wrestling it down to the side and shoving his hands brimming with bright cosmos on its face, fighting fire with fire.

The monster oppressing the soul room screamed and began disintegrating into beams of light, causing the black flames around Lance to recede and recede. Eventually the whole room burst into a flash and Lance's consciousness was uplifted out of that place, rising to take control of his body.

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House of Libra

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Even the dim light of the Libra Temple invaded his eyes like flare glares when he gradually opened them 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.." the Pride Star's voice sounded, facing away from Lance.

Stirred by Daemon Lucifer's voice, the Gold Saint rolled over and held his head, which felt heavy and fogged like he just woke up from the deepest sleep of his life.

"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."

Hearing his teacher's name being spoken only awoke Lance further, who remembered he was just fighting the biggest battle of his life and his senses sparked to full awakening. He then gasped, seeing a trailing crater on the ground of the Libra Temple where a defeated Shinta laid at.

His armor was disintegrated… and Lucifer was closing in on him with a look of someone who was going to do something horrible! Cosmos burned in Lance's body and flowed through his blood to every inch of his skin. He then saw Lucifer raising his fist at his best friend and that cosmos exploded, powering a zipping motion in which his hand reached out as he dashed at the Specter!

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!"

The punch collided on the Specter's stomach with impossible force for Lance's usual power level, crunching the Surplice plates with the thunderous impact and blasting the Pride Star across the Temple, crashing him through several pillars unto the trailing ground and into a loud, smoke-bursting crash. The Gold Saint's body was injured, but burning with a fire that hinged between a dark orange and outright reddish black.

He immediately tended to Shinta, helping him up. "Are you o-okay?"

The green-haired blinked, tears of disbelief in his eyes, and held the Saint's arm like he didn't think he was real. "I…L-Lance I should ask you t-that! Athena, I thought you were dead or w… I'm so h-happy you're awake!" he breathed out, before it dawned upon him that this wasn't normal. "…I'm… having a hard time moving, but…. Lance, why are you awake? What's w-wrong with your cosmos?"

The Saint paused, realizing he had no idea why Eternal Darkness, which caused so much grief to Shaka. "I don't know… I really don't remember. I was… dreaming? But after that everything's gone." He confessed. As for his cosmos, a similar thing had happened in Death Queen Island so he didn't worry too much about it. "We'll worry about that later, right now we have to deal with-"

A burst of angry lightning released Lucifer out of the rubble and the Specter leaped back unto the battlefield with a bright red glare. "W-WHY ARE YOU AWAKE?!"

Lance brushed Shinta aside and adopted a defensive posture, burning his dark orange energy brighter. "M-maybe you fucked up your stupid technique! Or maybe it doesn't work on anyone older than six! How should I k-know?!"

"THEN I'LL CRUSH YOU AGAIN!"

Enraged, the Specter dashed at him and collided hands with the Gold Saint, starting a power struggle that burned in the form of bright spheres of cosmos crackling with blue and golden lightning in their hands. Lucifer pushed on, but not only was Lance awakened, but his cosmos seemed stronger than before, so the Gold Saint managed to resist the Specter's push!

Shinta's back landed against a pillar, pushed by the shockwaves of their impact, and he tried to step in to help. However, his body was half numb from the Oblivion blast Lucifer fired at him and his Cloth was gone, reduced to a myriad of pink shrapnel on the Libra Temple's floor, so the Saint found himself too weak to step in. "L-Lance, be careful!"

Seeing he was somehow not physically overwhelming Lance, the Daemon Specter released the hold and unleashed a skillful barrage of punches that battered Lance's cross-guard with thunderous booms, blasting him back. His leg swooped in with an electrical strike but Lance dodged with a side bob before pushing the Specter back with a powerful uppercut that grazed his chest. Provoked by this, Lucifer unleashed his terrifying speed and assaulted Lance with an unfollowable combo of blows, but the Gold Saint unexpectedly went toe-to-toe with this with his own combo, causing the two opponents to vanish out of perceivable observation and turn into a cavalcade of shockwaves bursting across the length of the Hall of Balance, caused by the impact of their more powerful blow clashes.

However, Pride Star still seemed to have the advantage in experience and the physical as he managed to eventually take advantage of a swing that Lance missed to land a powerful axe kick on Lance's shoulder pad, breaking its tip off and crashing him on the floor. Giving chase, he collided his elbow blow on Lance's, releasing fierce sparks of gold and blue all over the field.

The two red pairs of eyes met and growling teeth were shown by Pride Star. "B-Blasted Sanctuary Gold Saints!,.. Why are you s-stronger now?!"

Lance had no idea, but he would milk this as much as he could. "M-maybe you're just finally wearing down after all the carnage you spent the n-night causing!7 Did you think you were i-invincible?! That you'd get to spend the night murdering and not have to give a d-damn about consequences?!" He roared, feeling even more infuriated as he recalled everything the Specter put them through, making his aura burn even brighter.

Lucifer swiped him away with a clash of cosmos, putting distance between themselves that he then capitalized on with a short mid-range barrage. "Let's see you dodge at this distance! DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!"

The dark blue sparks sizzled out and shot the battery of spear-shaped bolts. Dragging his heels from his momentum, however, the Saint called out his counter attack "BLADE!" and charged straight at the barrage with a fire-dressed chop, methodically slicing through the patterned blasts like parrying real spear tosses.

Holding his firing fist up, the Specter widened his eyes. "He improved his countermeasure?!"

Slicing a path through to the Specter, Lance leaped at him and came down with a vertical slice strike, forcing Lucifer to parry it with the little cosmos left from the Barrage, causing fire and thunder to sear outwards loudly from the grinding point. Their cosmos flared and the constellation of Cancer burned brightly, projecting the image of a faceless knight clashing his sword with a devil's spear.

There was nothing but anger in Lance's eyes as he pushed his blade down on Lucifer's energized gauntlet. "I'm not g-gonna let you get away with all the shit you've done t-tonight! From Arcadia, to Andromeda Island, to this fucking i-invasion, to almost killing me, my teacher and my best friend… I'll make you p-pay!" Charging cosmos into his free fist, he formed a bright ball of orange in it. "Even if I have to burn all of my cosmos to DO IT! CANCER… FLAME ATTACK!"

And the Specter was then blasted on the chest at near point-blank range by the torrent of cosmic fire colored dark red, shooting him off across the Hall with a scream and smashing them on the floor with a powerful explosion that raised black smoke into the sky.

After this, Lance felt his cosmos breaking down, causing his aura to falter, and the strength in his body seemed to vanish for a bit. "D-damn it, not now! B-BURN, damn you!" he urged to himself, causing his aura to re-ignite. "I have to be careful… whatever this second wind is, I bet it won't last long!"

Claws of darkness swiped the air and the black smoke was battered away, revealed a rattled Daemon Lucifer, whose cape was heavily torn and Surplice was exhibiting more light damage marks. Even if his armor resisted, his body felt the strength of these attacks.

While in the smoke, he felt the sudden drop on Lance's energy through the 7th sense, though. "H-he, he, he… I see now… You must have mentally locked reserves of some nature. That won't save you from me, Cancer Lance!" he mocked, still making sure to stress the lies behind Lance's identity. "Especially because if it's a battle of Cosmos, I have you more than beaten!... As I'm about to show you and Michael."

Lance's ears perked up at the name. "W-what?!"

Holding his hurting injuries, Shinta's green eyes reeled at this. "L-Lance, whatever he says, don't listen to him! He's saying these insane things about his dead friend and me!"

Rather than keep provoking Shinta with his insane accusations about being a Specter, Lucifer instead clenched fists, spread his feet apart and tensed his body in a cosmos charging pose, roaring in focus and rouse. Immediately, his natural lightning and darkness began manifesting as purple sparks coursing through his body and the ground began to shake as the Daemon's will shaped the cosmic forces. Expecting even more battle, Lance prepared himself to defend against whatever lightning or darkness move he had in store.

However, Lucifer's aura then took an even darker twist, becoming jet black just like when he first casted Eternal Darkness.

Shinta's 7th sense spiked. He tried to move but his body was too weak still from the blast he took. "He's going to do it again! B-BE CAREFUL!"

The Pride Star cackled at the look on Michael's face. "HA, HA, HA! Your armor's old owner tried to seal this move away in himself, Andromeda, which was the first time I was so impressed by its powers, but he released it to make room to try to seal Hades' soul out of Alone!8 Thanks to Andromeda Shun, I have one of your greatest weapons still in my hand, a spell that will decimate those who offend me the most from the inside out!"

But Lance was prepared this time and merely took a bracing pose. "Come and get me!" And he glanced at his friend. "Shinta, be ready for my signal!"

The Andromeda wasn't sure what he meant, but he burned his cosmos, nodding.

Lucifer laughed confidently and took the cosmos he was charging all to his two fingers once more. "I m-must admit, I was surprised it didn't work the first time, but now that I know the reason, I'll just exhaust whatever reserve you had until you can't stop Hypnos' nightmare world from turning you into a blasted vegetable! Wingless shades of death, hear my ill command!"

As Lucifer recited the rest of his incantation, Lance gritted teeth and charged as much cosmos he could in that time. He recalled Shaka's advice on how to repel it and, comparing it to the strange dream he had, he focused on all the thoughts and sentiments of determination that allowed him to prevail over that winged enemy of shadows.

The time came when the Specter finished his incantation and aimed his fingers at Lance. "… and let loose thy terror in their feeble minds! ETERNAL DARKNESS!"

Shinta screamed at the sight of Lance being cast over by the spiraling vortex of shadows, fearing a return to his previous coma that he'd not wake up from, but Lance simply charged his cosmos to the max, roared and allowed the coffin of darkness to be sealed around him with a loud lock sound that reverberated through the Hall of Balance like a condemnation from the Gods.

Lucifer continued to manifest his dark energy and making sure every speck of darkness pressed hard on the target. "This time, you won't wake up! I'll destroy every bit of ego inside of you, powering this spell with my own cosmos until you're reduced to a pile of drool and braindead cells!" he vowed, crunching his hand as if it made the dome close further around Lance. "FALL IN THE PITS OF DARKNESS, CANCER LANCE!"

But a loud, quaking force struck the dome from within, seemingly very hot and forceful, like an eruption, judging by the orange flare briefly visible from the inside that pounded at the dome's interior walls, transmitting a signal of resistance to Lucifer's body that made him shake.

Shinta beamed up. "He's… doing it!"

"CANCER ERUPTION!" Lance roared from inside, pounding the ground once more with a fire-cosmos punch that blasted energy in all directions, purging away the darkness with the intense light of the flames and punching out the darkness dome, shattering it like it was made of glass.

Lucifer glared in shock. "NO! It can't be!"

Lance panted as mist clouds of darkness flowed around him. "It's just a bunch of n-nightmares! Do you think that will stop me?! The element of fire has its own light!"

Lucifer tried to refocus the spell, burning purple sparks of lightning in his palms and causing the disparate masses of curse to refocus. "N-no! I can still… Eternal Darkness, obey me! Destroy my opponent's spirit NOW!"

Shinta then stepped in, using the little movement he was capable off to aim his hand. "Burst out! Nebula Stream!" and the powerful whirlwind spiraled out, vacuuming the darkness speck into a twister around Lance, preventing it from being reutilized.

The Specter reached out in panic. "NO! STOP INTERFERING!..." he formed spears of lightning in his hands and prepared to impale Michael with them if he had to.

"A-alright, it worked!" Lance gasped, seeing Shinta spin the darkness around like dirt. "Now shoot it far away!"

But the green-head hesitated; as he held the spell's fragments in the wind currents, he felt strange, like he could feel exactly how the curse's cosmos worked. It scared him as to why, but somehow Shinta felt… familiarity with the energy of it, like a strange memory from long ago stirred his very arm cells as he projected the winds on Eternal Darkness.

Was it possible? His face paled at the notion of it…

But he shook these fears away and squinted at the Pride Star. "No… I think I can… Lance, take cover!" he shouted. The Gold Saint wasn't sure why, but he obeyed, hitting the dirt, and Shinta tossed his hand in Lucifer's direction, burning cosmos as hot as he could. "NEBULA STORM – ETERNAL DARKNESS!"

The Celestial Star of Pride stepped back in horror, realizing what he had neglected to consider, and barely had time to gasp and raise his arms defensively before the powerful twister aimed down, paralyzing him in place with its peripheral currents before carrying the dark mass of cosmos belonging to his own spell back at him. "N-NO!"

It struck him like a black tsunami, washing over the Specter against marble rubble and drowning him in black cosmic sludge. The cursed mass of magic wrapped him up like funerary bandages as the Pride Star physically struggled to get out, his hands reaching for the air in screams and gasps.

The two Saints anxiously observed it. "W-we… you did it! Shinta, you tossed it back!" Lance realized, half stunned, half happy. "How?!"

The Andromeda lowered hands, cooling down his cosmos and looking at his own hands in confusion and fear. "I'm…I don't know…" he confessed to himself, terrified of voicing these thoughts. He didn't even have his Andromeda Cloth on him anymore to help protect himself from Lucifer's spell. By all accounts, the best he should be able to do would be arresting the spell in a centrifugal force prison while Lance kicked the Specter or something out of projecting it.

Instead, Shinta succeeded in grasping the dark matter and sending it back to its owner with just his Wind element's force. Did… this mean…?

Lance saw a shape fighting its way out of the receding swamp of blackness. "W-watch out! It's not over yet!"

The Pride Star clawed himself out of the murky swamp, his face paling even more than normal as Eternal Darkness' evil penetrated his body, refluxing into his mind. He shook in the pain of it and tried to stand up, but the world around him alternated between reality and fiction as the spell began to take control of his mind.

Of course, how could he be so foolish! The Eternal Darkness he could cast was originally mastered by Michael. His version was just a copy of observation which couldn't even defeat the Godslayer Andromeda Shun! Casting it again with Michael here and now slowly reawakening himself was an invitation to disaster. How did he not foresee this?!

He made a mistake…! He should have thoroughly knocked Michael out!...

The world shook around him, swinging from nighttime to pitch darkness. Oh gods, no!

The Andromeda Saint blinked, seeing the Specter tremble and cover his face. "What's happening?..."

Lance narrowed his eyes. "He's tasting his own medicine, that's what!"

The Pride Star screamed, sinking face into palms. When he opened his eyes, he saw flashes of old moments in his life. Shinta and Lance were replaced back and forth with images of Pandora standing in front of his childhood house burning up with his parents inside, the moment she first revealed herself as Hades' liaison and invited him into the Underworld. He saw flashes of Thanatos and Michael glaring him down for failing Judgement Day, a brief moment in his life when he truly thought he would be annihilated despite all his sacrifices. He then saw over four hundred years of horrors, humiliation, suffering and betrayal in the Underworld all compressed in a single point of time, striking his heart like a full speed locomotive of memories.

Worst of all, he felt the lingering specks of swampy darkness on the floor gaining life, taking the shape of hands, then arms, then shoulders growing out of the ground. Lucifer stepped away, gasping, but fingers suddenly gripped at his legs, waist and torso. The cool night of Greece transformed into the skies of the Underworld and the ground then practically erupted with the bodies of the dead all reaching up at him, wrapping their thin, frail limbs over his neck, arms and shoulders to pull him down!

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(?)

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They were in the Third Prison, at the final battle of the Lost Canvas War.

He struck Dohko's nose with his armored elbow, flooring the exhausted Saint. Tightening his grip around the stolen Libra Spear, Daemon Lucifer charged towards the Saint with a roar and murderous intent. Dohko growled, stood back up and swung back with his teacher's yondo no yaiba in hand, parrying its damaged edge against the teeth of the trident in a burst of cosmos. The Gold Saint twisted his grip, making the spear slide down the blade's length to the ground, and a tiger roar was heard as Dohko's golden aura exploded and the Libra Saint delivered a powerful shockwave slash at the Devil. His sword was parried but he slashed forward a couple more times before raising it high in the air and bringing it down. Lucifer side-stepped to dodge the maddened downward slash which crushed the floor before slamming the Libra Spear's pole against Libra's stomach, forcing the air out of the Saint's lungs, before kicking him so hard the Libra Saint was hurled back into the rubble of the Third Prison.

Large, purple wings with draconic shapes opened up and flapped once to place himself above Dohko. Blood dripped from his body. He was exhausted from all the fighting, but, by Hades, he would finish it all himself! "It's over, Dohko!" he snarled "I will kill you! As Hades is my witness, I will slaughter you and the rest of the profligates fleeing in that ship all for what you've done! I can't…" he stuttered, his lips trembling as he remembered the countless offenses these Sanctuary dogs commited against the Specters that war. "…I WON'T FORGIVE YOU! I WON'T FORGIVE ANY OF YOU! Not you, not your Gold Saint friend and especially not those Godslayers! All of you scum! YOU'RE DEAD!"

Libra Dohko's arm moved away the rubble on top of him, his body trembling with exhaustion. His eyes moved over to his only ally in that terrible battle, who had been defeated by Eternal Darkness. "S-Shion! C-come on, wake up!"

But the Aries Saint didn't react to his call, lost in the world of nightmares.

The Libra didn't let despair defeat him. He stabbed the ground with the sword and supported himself on its handle as he tried to look up to the Archdevil above him, vowing retribution with a mere glare.

"Go! Cry to your Goddess! Beg her for help!" invited Lucifer, his wings flapping ever so slightly to keep himself airborne. "She won't save you! You're in Hell, Dohko, and she won't even look over her shoulder to you! She let all the other Gold Saints die, and who does she pick to be on the Argo and survive this war? Those useless Bronzes who couldn't even fight anymore! Well, you and Shion are next! And I will take my time personally dragging your rotting corpses through every torture of every Prison in the Underworld for the next two hundred years Lord Hades will have to sleep through! Just like Tenma!"

Dohko's eyes opened up with the mention of his student's name, recalling the latest and most horrible deed that his opponent had committed.

Tenma was dead. Daemon ripped his heart out and ate it just to make Dohko suffer.

"So I ask of you, Dohko…Where's your Goddess NOW?" asked Lucifer "Hades is there for us. He revives us all after each of our failures, such infinity is his love! Where is she when you suffer? Where is she when you cry? Where is she…when you fall into Despair?" Lucifer then descended on the Libra Saint, spear in hand.

Dohko's senses started growing weaker and his reason fading away…

Before something wild took over him! A tiger's roar sounded out and his golden aura burned.

Stopped in his flight by a blunt shockwave, Lucifer widened his eyes as he saw something feral emerge inside Dohko, who roared and picked up the sword in front of him. He grasped its handle with both hands and pointed the tip of the blade straight towards his front.

Lucifer didn't recognize the pose. "What is he doing?!"

Dohko's hair flowed upwards and he felt the wildness inside him pass on to the sword, flowing through it in the shape of golden cosmos. The cosmos then reached the tip of the blade and escaped through it, retreating backwards until it swallowed up Dohko. Having been turned into an orb of golden, spinning cosmos, the Gold Saint roared before golden claws opened up the orb in half from inside out!

A huge, golden, transparent tiger, twice as large as Dohko, came out of the orb, coating the Gold Saint's body with a slightly humanoid form and roaring at Lucifer with emerald eyes. The Gold Saint himself had his hair flowing and his eyes having gained a golden color and his pupil's having thinned into a feline's, seemingly possessed.

Dohko pounced towards the Devil; reaching an astonishing speed! Lucifer span the Spear above him to gather momentum in it before aiming its tip towards Dohko. Dohko, suddenly, thrust the serrated edge of his sword between the corrupted Libra Weapon's prongs. Feeling his hand burn with pain, Lucifer suddenly screamed when Dohko's aura infiltrated the Libra Weapon, purified it and caused it to burn Daemon's hands. Having been disarmed, a punch then exploded on Lucifer's face.

"She's with me!" Dohko answered as he chased the flying Lucifer. He then clapped his hands together loudly and all twelve Libra Weapons surrounded him in mid-air. "She's in the heart of this golden TIGER!"

Dohko grabbed the Tong-Fas and rushed pass Lucifer, instantly striking him with them several times, causing cracks to appear all over his Surplice, with every single blow being surrounded and empowered by the Tiger Aura's golden claws. Lucifer tried to react but, all of a sudden, Dohko just turned into a golden blur that slashed him countless times. Dohko's ears then heard the Chainsticks spinning and felt his body battered countless times inside a hurricane.

The Specter was spat out of it with such force he couldn't even move. "G-ah… Is this… Byako's power?!"

A final golden flash was seen, announcing a new switching of weapons, and the Specter was slammed harshly with the Libra Staffs, shooting him back to the ground. He landed on his back, pursuit by Dohko, and the Specter collided on him with a meteoric kick before unleashing an authentic tornado of Libra Spear stabs pierced him repeatedly, forcing him to scream with agony as his Surplice was finally torn to shreds!

Pieces of red and purple shattered and fell all over the floor, destroying the majority of the Daemon Surplice. Before Pride Star could even register this, his hands where then stabbed and pinned against the mountain side by the two thrown Libra Spears, pinning the Specter.

Landing, Dohko fell to his hand, his tiger aura still raging wildly and his pupils having gained a feline-like slitted shape. The Gold Saint almost couldn't take any more, pushed to the brink of mental and physical breaking point.

The Specter struggled against his pinning, feeling blood jutting out his wounds. "W-what? What the hell…j-just happened? Did he just use…a speed closer to light than mine?!" eyes then opened wide when he realized that Dohko was preparing an attack "T-that pose!"

Dohko's fingers curled into tiger claws. His hand moved up, while his other one lowered itself before they moved past each other, switching position. With this, Dohko hummed and his tiger aura tripled in size and strength until, finally, it became like a feline, spectral being of transparent golden fire around Dohko. "With this, it all ends now! This terrible Holy War shall end!"

"D-Damn you!" Lucifer roared as his hand pushed itself free and pulled the other Libra Spear out of his other hand. Blood squirted out from them as he attacked

"This is for Rasgado, Haisaku, Tenma and every other innocent person you've ever made suffer!" recited Libra.

Lucifer's hands transformed into two massive orbs of white thunder-fire and he charged towards Dohko "DIE, LIBRA!"

Everything around Dohko and Lucifer felt completely silent and became incredibly slow. All the memories of the Holy War rushed past Dohko's eyes. "ROZAN…" he shouted, before throwing his hand forward "…HIAKU RYU HA!"

Lucifer roared as Dohko's hands and weretiger aura both exploded into what seemed like a thousand, rather than just one hundred, dragons of Cosmos that completely filled his sight. "NO! I won't let you!" he screamed, thinking of Pandora and Michael before his fists punched forward "DARK REVENGE FIST!"

Before the tide of emerald light that then fired out, the power of Lucifer's attacks was completely overwhelmed and Lucifer's cosmos shattered to pieces! The Dark Prince screamed as the dragons run him over, feeling each biting down on him and pure energy burning his body before, suddenly, it stopped burning.

"What? What happened?" he asked out loud, opening his eyes and realizing that Dohko, the 3rd Prison and the dragons were gone! In their place, darkness was all over him as well as a huge army of undead surrounding him. Dead hands grabbed him, clawed him and scratched him as he found himself slowly drowning in a sea of dead "W-what? NO! This… it can't be real!" he screamed, blasting everything around him "DIE, you miserable undead! DIE, DIE, DIE!" he ordered as the undead were obliterated all around him by pure energy.

Lucifer panted repeatedly as his senses went to full alert. Not detecting undead around him, sweat still fell down his temples as he took several steps back.

"Lucifer," someone called.

Lucifer turned around and confronted the person. He saw Hades sitting on his throne with Michael, Rhadamanthys and Pandora by his side "Lord Hades! It's you! I'm glad you're okay! I…I'll destroy Dohko for this! I will yet bring the utopia to the surface we all dream of!"

Hades narrowed his eyes. "Enough, Lucifer! I am absolutely exhausted of your attitude and failures!"

Lucifer gulped as he heard these words "What? What do you mean?"

"You've heard him!" said Pandora. "Lord Hades no longer wishes you to serve him! You've failed time after time and, now, you shall face the consequences! Ah, a descendant of the Athenian Emperor…" she mocked. "You don't even deserve to be called a Specter!"

"P-Pandora…What are you saying?" Lucifer then turned to Michael. "Michael, what the hell is going on?!"

Michael sighed and shook his head. "I've tried, Lucifer. I really did. I gave the Emperor my word that you'd learn and prove to be a worthy ruler of his new world…" He then narrowed his eyes. "Don't you see? He spared you after I beat you to the Dark Angel Surplice merely because I asked him to… and you couldn't even honor my faith in you. It's best if Wyvern just takes your place…"

Lucifer took a nervous step back. "Why? Why is Michael saying those words? He hates Rhadamanthys!Athena has corrupted him! She MUST HAVE!"

"Have you not heard Lord Hades?" shouted Rhadamanthys. "You failed to become a worthwhile Specter. Leave this place or give me the pleasure to force you out! The sight of you groveling at His feet disgusts me!" he then smiled "Don't worry, for I'll make sure to be a truly useful Left Hand to our Lord."

"Shut up! I don't care what you think!" snarled Lucifer, but then he widened his eyes when he saw the image of the four of them moving away. "What? W-wait! Stop!"

"Goodbye, Lucifer." wished Hades, who then smirked slightly. "You were a fun puppet. I'll miss pulling your strings but, unlike Michael, you've lost your usefulness."

"B-but…but…Stop!" commanded Lucifer, who started chasing after them "Come back!" However, the figures he chased vanished in the background and, suddenly, Lucifer found himself knee-deep inside an ocean of dead people. "Get away from me, you dead freaks!" he shouted

But the hands started grabbing him and pulling him down. "W-weak…" they moaned, hungry.

"R-Revenge!..." another demanded, likely an old victim of Lucifer's.

The prince tried to struggle but his limbs were strangely heavy, as if he never wielded cosmos in his life. "NO! This is not real! This can't be real! I will not fall! I will not! I WILL NOT!"

With this, the dead ceased their movement and a person appeared before Lucifer. "Don't you see? You have already fallen."

Lucifer blinked, confused. He started detecting more traits in the person, namely long blonde hair. "W-what?"

The person sighed. "They say the devil was a fallen angel, right? You fell, Lucifer, by Michael's hand, because you couldn't see past your own pride, and then you spent the rest of your life in his shadow, chasing your old family's dreams….but, the whole time, Michael looked up at you with reverence."

Lucifer stared, amazed, as he recognized the person. "…Eurydice?!"

"I prayed so many times that you'd see that… but you had nothing but envy and bitterness in your heart. It drove you insane that someone you looked down on so cruelly would surpass you. And then…" her head lowered in sadness. "…You wanted to punish everyone around you instead of learning to let go… Even Rhadamanthys learned that before he died; he threw himself between Pandora and Alone rather than let someone he cared about suffer… and yet you couldn't."

"I-It's…. it's not like that!" Daemon shouted, reaching out to her. Of all the people that could be saying these words, hearing them coming out of the Nymph was the worst. "I just wanted to…"

She listened patiently, knowing he had no real continuation to this. "To what?"

The red-eyed Specter's arm lowered, suddenly at loss for words. "I wanted to set things right… for myself….I didn't want to be the fallen angel Hades mocked me to be with this Surplice…"

The world of darkness around them grew thicker and Eurydice began to vanish, leaving him alone with the dead. Her eyes wept for him. "…What made you so s-selfish?! What did the world do to you?"

The Specter gazed away in shame, feeling the dead pull him further into their midst. "E-Eurydice…"

The nymph wiped her tears. "I think… that you've fallen a long, long time ago, Lucian. You've been trapped into a spiral of despair and hopelessness since the moment you came to the Underworld. Aren't you tired? Of all this anger and hate? Of living all these years just to serve your obsession? Just…" and she turned her back. "…just let go…and let history fall so heavily on top of you that you shatter into tiny pieces and vanish without a trace!"

With this, a thousand moans and ghouls were where heard and a thousand hands burst from the corpses, grabbed Lucifer and pulled him down! Crushed by the nymph's words, Lucifer suddenly felt on top of them the weight of the years he had endured as a Specter, as if the Nymph's affection had been the only dam stemming the tide of cynicism and exhaustion so far in his life.

Maybe he really should just die?

His heart felt weaker than ever as his determination was replaced with a hole inside him. Yet, as he saw dark, rotting hands fill his sights and dead teeth biting down on his flesh, he growled and his hand reached out for the person that was leaving him behind in that hell!

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

House of Libra

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Back in reality, the two Saints of Athena backed away in stunned silence at the sight of the silver-haired Specter screaming and trashing around, holding his sweat-drenched face like his eyes wanted to jump out of their skull. These screams were punctuated by the rousing of his dark aura, as if he fought a foe they could not see, and the devil hammered his fists on the floor, pounding the pain of the mental assault away the best he could, cratering it more and more with quake-inducing force.

Then the firing of blasts came; charging balls of energy into his hand, the maddened Specter started blasting invisible opponents all around him. Lance and Shinta jumped out of the way, dodging impact points that erupted into exploding cosmic domes, spreading purple and blue light everywhere and further wrecking the Hall of Balance.

The sight of the Pride Star going berserk was as terrifying as unexpected. Unbeknownst to them, the incorrect administration of the spell's power was having improper effects, for without its isolating dome, Lucifer was experiencing the rawness of Hypnos' technique in an imperfect manner, heightening the pain of it without fully immersing the Specter in it. Not chambered in the world of dreams and yet forced to experience its nightmares, Lucifer reacted in the physical world against it and now threatened to destroy half the Zodiac.

Lance caught Shinta as he stumbled with these tremors. When Shinta deflected the Eternal Darkness back at the Specter, he hoped it would knock the guy out like it had done with Lance, but this was worse. "S-shit, he'll destroy the Libra Temple at this rate! I have to stop him!"

The Andromeda winced as he laid down on the side. Casting Nebula Storm after being injured so badly had depleted even his strength. "Be c-careful!"

Lance nodded. "You got it!" and he then faced the trashing Daemon with rousing energy. He was still unsure where this second wind came from, but he had to capitalize on it while Lucifer seemingly lost his grip on reality. Charging his cosmos, he roared and sped like a bullet at the Specter, aiming his foot at him. "CANCER…LIGHTNING CHARGE KICK!" Striking the bastard's body with a powerful thunderbolt dash kick, Lance sent him flying through several pillars and rolling through the floor.

The shaking Specter got up, breathing harshly. His sight dazed between darkness and reality and his cosmos flowed uncontrollably. He couldn't tell if he was in the real world or in a dark pit full of undead people ripping him to pieces.

The Cancer Saint only saw this as a chance for justice and his body tensed with the sound of Chinese drums projected by his rousing energy. "I'll charge the energy I need with the uppercut and stun him in the air… and then strike with Hyaku!"and he clenched his fist. "ROZAN…!"

These sounds reverberated in the Specter's mind, who stumblingly stood up as blood rushed to his brain in recognition. "D-Dohko!..." And his aura began darkening.

Lance closed in and aimed his move, uppercutting the air to launch the rising dragon. "SHORYUHA!"

Time slowed down in their perception and a meteor of red flashed through Lucifer's 7th sense, triggering a lightning fast reaction! The bead hidden in his armor slot shook with resonating force and his aura became jet black, summoning Michael's strength, and his left arm burned up in a black fire that startled Lance! Roaring, Lucifer span with a thunderous set-up stomp and rose his arm in chop, which projected a long blade of black fire. "DARK ANGEL… FLAMING SWORD!"

The image of Seiryu erupting upwards was struck by Lucifer in a rising whirlwind slash, clashing fire with it's supposed weakpoint water element, but rather than quenching these flames, the blade cut the dragon apart in an upwards spiral. The technique launched by Lance burst into showers of boiled water, making Lance gasp, and Lucifer landed behind him, drenched in shoulder and arm in black fire.

Shinta froze in place, feeling that his very spirit resonated with the sight of this strange move. He then saw Lucifer turn to swing the sword at Lance and sped into battle. "W-Watch OUT!"

The maddened Specter swung his blade at Dohko's neck! "DIE, GOLD SAINT!"

All Lance felt was Shinta's pink-drenched body collided on him and push him to the ground to dodge the powerful horizontal slash that spread its black fire across the Hall of Balance at blinding speeds, sizzling viciously across the horizon at a slight downward angle. The two Saints found themselves at the mercy of Daemon Specter, standing now before them with a left arm made into a black Excalibur, eyes maddened in rage, and not sure how they'd tackle this new challenge.

Then the rumbling began.

Lance gasped, realizing what was going on as he saw the remaining scores of pillars sliding off their base at perfect consecutive angles, as well as the eye-jarring sight of the wall bricks growing uneven with eachother. "It…can't be!"

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Aldebaran, Shaka and Deathmask rushed up the stairs towards Libra, but the young Sicilian was incensed at what he just heard from their Virgo contemporary.

"What do you mean, you 'stopped hearing Mara'?!" Deathmask screeched. "Who even is this Mara dude?!"

The blonde boy could barely explain it. "It's one of the names of the demon of Death Queen Island. I lost my link to Buddha, but I'm sure he still just mocked me for my powerlessness earlier and then headed up to Libra,… but something or someone drove him off."

"You mean we came all this way up for nothin'?!" he complained, though they kept moving up. "Let's go back down, then!"

"If Shaka is worried, then I think we should still take a look. Lance and Shinta could be in danger." Aldebaran argued. "We just have to get close enough to get a sense of what's going on!"

But Deathmask stopped ahead of them. "No way! Screw that! You guys can go kill yourselves if you want to, but I'm not stupid! You'll sooner catch me showing my butt to a live Coliseum audience before sharing a roof with a Specter as powerful as that-"

THRRRROOOOMMM!

The frightening sound silenced the runt and made Aldebaran and Shaka gasp up at the 7th House. All three inhabitants of the Golden Zodiac then, to their awe, saw the entire upper half of the Libra House sliding off of its supports, somehow cut off from its foundations.

And it was going down in their direction!

Mephisto was pale. "…Oh shit!"

Aldebaran grabbed both of them and dragged them to the side. "TAKE COVER!"

In a sight unseen in many eras of Sanctuary, the upperfloor and roof of Libra, which was a gigantic section of hard, heavy marble as it was, detached from its ground floor and came tumbling down the stairsteps. The crashing cacophony that followed was deafening and continuous as ton after ton after ton of white rock broke apart on crashing and tumbled down the stairs in a huge rock slide, erupting white dust everywhere and absolutely wrecking every step left on their path up to Libra. Aldebaran gritted his teeth as he used his armored body as a shield against any ricocheting, sliding or splintering boulder for the two terrified kids, who saw half a House of Sanctuary demolishing down the stairs.

It was still a while before the quaking, rumbling and rolling stopped, much less before the dust cloud subsided. The three kids coughed, barely able to see anything other than a white mist at nighttime.

"A-Are you okay?!" Aldebaran asked, checking them over in the dust cloud.

Shaka nodded. "Y-yes, thank you. Athena bless us, what h-happened?!"

Deathmask coughed and put his tongue out, covered in marble soot. "Gah! I got dust down my throat! Blegh! I can't see anything!"

"I'll get rid of it!" Aldebaran assured, burning his cosmos to cause a light shockwave that battered the dust away without harming the other two. As the dust was swept off, the sight remaining was appalling. "B-By the Taurus Cloth!"

The road ahead of them was a catastrophic sight; the kind you'd see after a powerful earthquake in an heavily built city. The wide stair steps were cracked and buried under gigantic rock pieces of blue-tinted marble littered with further fragments of objects that had been stored or built into the Libra House's upper floor, from chests, to wardrobes, to beds to even plumbing. The garden of the Libra House's upper floor, carefully maintained by the Golden Zodiac's staff, was now smashed between the boulders in piles of dirt, ceramic and pools of mud and dead plants. Most of all, the sense of dread at seeing one of the twelve bedrocks of the Golden Zodiac cut in half and broken down the staircase was as disheartening as it was shocking. Far above, the rest of the Temple still stood, visible in the form of a lower half of walls and pillars rising only to be stopped short at a perfectly sliced angled surface, exposing the Hall of Balance to the night sky.

The three exchanged looks. It was going to take an extra while to get through to the other side now.

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House of Aries

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What was left of the broken gateway of the Aries Temple was pushed out of the way by Adriana, who made way for Saint Iaso to carry the wounded Cerah inside the House, away from the prying eyes of the awakening people of Sanctuary Town.

After setting Cerah down in an improvised mattress, Iaso rushed to the side rooms to get the equipment he needed. "Watch over her for a second!"

The noblewoman nodded, left alone with Cerah, and her almond eyes surveyed the Temple, having not expected to return there so soon. They were at one of Sanctuary's great temple halls, this one named after another important aspect of the House's Zodiac. "The Hall of Jason…"

The aforementioned main hall of the House of Aries was as much an absolute wreck as back when she last saw it; not only there was a trailing crater going from the broken door to the middle of the Hall caused by Lance's draconic Enraged Charge Fist, but there were Skeleton bodies everywhere, littering the floor, hanging from the upper balconies, pinned to broken pillars by punch indentations and even a couple of ones that had been bisected by a very angry Pegasus Saint.

These details weren't lost to Ophiuchus Iaso as he returned from what was, unbeknownst to him, Kiki's workshop with a set of emergency medical tools and shivered at the sight of the carnage. "Apollo's chariot… that kid did some brutal work!"

Ghisi lightened a lantern he handed to her. "He thought they had killed and violated his friend." she coldly informed him, as if the darkness in the sentence didn't particularly bother her. She held the light over Cerah. "They're not exactly the subtlest provocateurs."

He applied soothing green cosmos on the red-stained side of Cerah's shirt before carefully exposing the skin underneath. He talked while working on Cerah. "I can't say I blame him… I have a hateful passion for Specters, too."

"Because you're a Saint?"

"And because I'm a doctor. I also ran into a nasty one back in Tibet tonight that tried to feed me to his bugs. Please hold the light closer." He asked of her.

But as the light exposed the details on the fabric wrapped around Cerah's wound, his brown eyes when he saw the strange fabric covering Cerah's wound, recognizing its nature, not only because of his personal knowledge, but also due to its similarity to the webbing created by Papillion Ainsel in Jamir's caverns.

He glanced at Adriana, who had a knowing look on her face. "Ghisi… you are…!"

Her eyes narrowed. "We don't have much time, doctor. Please just do what you can."

A golden cosmos suddenly shot through the Cosmos, alerting their dormant 7th senses!

They both gasped and forgot about Cerah for a second. "What was that?!" Iaso gasped.

Adriana looked out to Sanctuary Town. "It felt…what's that incredible cosmos?!"

Just as she finished voicing this, their dormant 7th senses burned again in their minds painfully, making them wince. Adriana held herself up on a crashed boulder and looked out. Whoever it was, it was speeding in at tremendous speeds, almost like it was about to meteor the Aries Temple with no regard for whoever was inside. Then, with the broken doors of Aries blasted off their hinges for good by the air currents, the two of them screamed in fright and sensorial pain as a giant flash of gold came right through the Temple, briefly turning night into day before rushing past them, blowing away debris around them. The wind currents raised by this were immense and Iaso protected Cerah with a basic barrier around them, repelling rocks and dust.

"B-by the Gods?!" Adriana gasped.

Iaso gritted teeth. "It couldn't have been… a Gold Saint?! But they're all upstairs, except for…?!"

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House of Cancer

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At the fourth House of the Zodiac, whose marble was already tinted red as it was, the mighty Behemoth Specter rushed through the Hall of the Dead and came across a charred spectacle of burnt cocoons, linking it to the events of Ainsel's defeat at the hands of the Cancer Saint.

"So, this is the Cancer Temple… Mm, I can feel in the air the stench of the dead, much like back in the Underworld. To think that there is a Temple in Sanctuary that breathes the same miasma as Hades' Prisons, yet that Saint that passed by me did not seem even remotely like a Specter." He noticed, having operated at the Cauldrons of Blood back when he still served Hades. The black-haired warrior then widened his blue eyes when his 7th sense burned up, sensing something powerful coming up from behind him. "What?!"

The Cancer House brightened up in the night like a train crossing through a tunnel and the Specter rolled to the side, dodging the large meteor of gold that blazed right through the 4th House!

Rolling right back on his hands, the Behemoth saw it trail away towards the next set of stairs. "Was that… a Gold Saint?!"

"No, but I am!" a voice sounded.

Behemoth stood up with clenched fists and on his guard as a line of golden light rose from the floor to the air before opening up like a zipper of cosmos, revealing a passage to Another Dimension. Brimming with burning golden light, none other than Gemini Saga came out, holding helmet in hand and letting his blue cape flutter with the forces whipped up by his cosmos.

The Gold Saint faced off the Specter with a stern look, remembering their last encounter, as the passage behind him zipped back up into nothing. "We meet again, Behemoth Torak. Lance will have to forgive me for wrecking his House even further, but I simply had to make sure I came to stamp you out for good before you cause more devastation to the Zodiac."

The tall warrior wasn't intimidated by the appearance of the teenager. If anything, he smiled in satisfaction. "So, you've come down to meet me. Good! I was meaning to chase you down the Pope's skirt if I had to after what you did! I'll take it from your warping that Sanctuary's blessings are beginning to crumble down?"

The blue-haired teenager snorted concerningly; this comment confirmed that these False Specters, as Shaka described them, not only agreed with the idea that the protections on the Zodiac hinged on the Cloths being at their Temples, but were deliberately targeting them in a strategy to weaken the mountain's defenses. For this reason, Saga had tried to intercept him at Gemini, but, unfortunately, he wasn't quick enough. He should perhaps be glad that he was just one temple away from returning his armor and strengthening the Zodiac.

In the meantime, he would give the Specters no assurance of progress. "Perhaps. Or perhaps I am that powerful that I can go wherever I desire even on Athena's great mountain."

Considering the difficulties that the Gold Saints were clearly suffering in stopping their invasion, Torak could only unleash a mocking scoff at this. "Ah, of course you can! Where is Taurus Aldebaran?!"

Walking between Torak and the way out to the Leo Temple, the Gold Saint sharpened his gaze. "You should forget about Aldebaran, whatever your grudge against him is. I'll give you far more to worry about. Why do you wish to harm him so, anyway?"

The Specter charged his black cosmos. "An idol of his murdered someone I used to respect, but quite frankly, I can look over that nowadays. Killing him has become more of a matter of being thorough with my job in this invasion. I don't appreciate having my energy and time wasted for someone who then gets carried out of a battle before we can end it." And as his energies began to wave around in brutish shapes, a smile crept up on the blue-armored warriors face. "With you, however, Gemini Saga, I can satisfy another grudge, though…"

The Gold Saint was taciturn, placing his helmet on head and preparing for battle. "Is that so?...Does it infuriate you that much that I interfered in your battle with my neighbor?"

The Behemoth then revealed something unexpected to him. "No… but I owe your predecessor for a recent humiliation! …The time hasn't come yet for us to deal with Gemini Akassius, though,… so instead I'll content myself for now by beating your face to a pulp on the pavement!"

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House of Libra

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The cloud of blue-tinted marble dust filled the night air, smoke-screening the now roofless Hall of Balance. Its large size towered over even the next two neighboring Houses, causing its settling to be slow and messy over the chaos of rubble now sitting at the floor.

Eventually it did so, though, especially when. With a whirring beam of golden cosmos, the Cancer Gold Saint blasted the rubble off of top of him and Lance pulled his best friend out of the rocks. "S-Shinta?! Are you okay?!"

The unarmored Andromeda Saint groaned, holding his green head. "Y-yeah!" The Andromeda looked around, realizing the stars were now visible to them. "Incredible… he cut the temple's top off its foundations with a single slash. That was the technique Shaka warned us about…!"

Pulling him to the side, Lance's red eyes surveyed the battlefield. "Where is he?! Where's that bastar-"

The armored foot came rushing in out of the side and harshly dive kicked Lance right through the rubble into a broken pillar base, pinning him painfully and harshly.

"I'm here, Cancer!" Lucifer growled, a maddened look in his eyes. He caught Lance completely by surprise by turning off the Flaming Sword to hide his cosmos, but his left arm now reignited again. "DIE!"

Lance gasped, seeing the Specter aim the fire blade to thrust it right at his chest!

The weakened Shinta reached out. "N-NO! STOP!"

Suddenly, Lucifer did stop, feeling his vision shake and Michael's fires in his arm flickering. Not only was Eternal Darkness still afflicting him, making the sight of Lance shift to the image of a pleading Cerah, but the cosmos of his long-lost friend in his arm was struggling at the mere sound of Shinta's voice, further proving the connection between them but also its inconvenience in the present situation.

The Specter shook in effort, trying to drive the blazingly hot sword right through the cursed Cancer's body. "A-Agh! B-Blast it! This isn't h-happening! She isn't here!" the Pride Star roared out, constantly swearing his eyes saw his adopted student in Lance's place, preying on the blame he had over her present predicament. Summoning all his cruelty as a Specter and as all his ruthlessness as the Emperor's descendant, Lucian shouted out and lunged the blade at Cerah, overpowering the sound of Michael's voice.

While registering this insanity in the Specter dazzled him, the Saint still took advantage to squeeze himself free of Lucifer's pinning foot to dodge the blade that instead flawlessly carved through the Hall's flooring, fissuring all the way across to the end of the temple until furious black fire shot off the mountain side. He didn't know what was going on but he needed to keep defending himself. "B-BLADE!"

Encapsulating not his hand, but his entire arm in the technique, Lance tried to parry Lucifer's next swing; which came in the form of an angry downward bash, used more like a club by the insane Specter than a finely-sharpened blade. Cosmos sparked out terrifyingly at the point of contact and Lance felt the burning heat of the black fire through not only Blade's coating, but the Cancer Cloth's arm plate itself. At this point Lance realized the Specter was keeping his eyes closed, guiding himself to Lance by his 7th sense alone so as to stop seeing Cerah or anyone else that'd make him hesitate in the shoes of Dohko's student.

The Specter's foot struck Lance's stomach plate, pushing him off the sword grind, and he re-aimed his blade. "Say g-goodbye to that Gold Cloth!"

Feeling the strange dual cosmos in the Specter spiking, Lance burned his own and tried to prepare a counter attack. "ROZA… AGH!" he screamed, feeling exhaustion catch up with him once more and his cosmos aura disappearing.

Daemon executed a preparatory step-in and then dash-slashed "FLAMING SWORD!"

All Lance could must was burning his last specks of energy in defensive cosmos, cross his arms in blocking and have faith in his Gold Cloth's defensive powers. The Specter's dash came like a trailing blaze of light, crossing past him instantly with a spectacle of black ember slashwaves striking his cloth. Lance gasped, feeling the impact in all of these, and the Specter landed past him with a braking foot.

The Gold Saint stumbled, battered by the force of the dash, but otherwise still standing with his armor intact. He gasped in relief. "Oh thank goodness, Karkinos, you held that-"

Crack!

The two Saints in the battle froze in place, realizing what just happened. Bright lines of burning began emerging all throughout the Cancer Gold Cloth, from its greaves, to its faults, to its smooth cuirass, to its remaining shoulder plate and arms…

And in a shattering cacophony, the Cancer Gold Cloth then broke into perfectly slashed pieces, collapsing off Lance's body to the floor like an unhinged armor, exposing Lance's ragged red shirt and jeans.

Shinta froze at the sight of this, seeing his friend vulnerable like a deer in the headlights. "He… he cut a Gold Cloth apart?!"

Holding the technique aside like a rested rapier, the Specter stood up straight from his braking. The bulging veins in his head were tinted dark with Eternal Darkness' magic. "T-This is the power of the Dark Princes! We were born to fight the Godslayers! Gold Saints are nothing to us! All Saints of Athena who resist me tonight will feel equal and greater terrors before the sun rises on my crowned head! And you t-two in particular will pay!"

Lance stepped back, overwhelmed by the jarring reality of this. He felt in the skin many times how powerful a Gold Cloth was. How could a cosmic sword technique other than Excalibur itself be so powerful that it would slice like butter through it? Could the Specter have done this all along if he wished? How would he even begin to think of how to negate such a move?

"Y-yes, you will pay for forcing me with your offences to draw this blade at you, the blade entrusted to me by Michael to destroy those who betrayed us alone!" the Daemon roared, still keeping his eyes closed. So far only these two Saints and Shaka's barrier had forced him to use it. He aimed its tip once more. "Starting with YOU, Cancer Lance… or should I now reduce your sorry armorless self to just your worthless name?!"

The Gold Saint put two and two together, remembering Shaka's description of the dual cosmos inside Lucifer. "If Lance gets hit now…!"

A message came through up the stairs to the Daemon Specter from Ainsel. "L-Lord Lucifer, a powerful cosmos is passing the Temples by! It's heading your way!"

But the Specter heard something entirely different, influenced by Eternal Darkness. "And it will prove you a failure all over again. A Prince? Ah!" Ainsel's distorted voice sounded in his mind, filtered into a malicious version of itself. "A prince to whom?! Only the burnt ground where your family's home once stood on, and these pathetic, powerless placeholders for real Specters. All things considered, does an Evil Star even really make you a real one?"

"Q-QUIET!" Lucifer roared, holding his silver-haired head with his free hand, his eyes bulging in madness and his sword flinging dangerously in the air. The ever-darkening veins in his body made his pale skin get gradually shadowed. "I'm not hearing this! I'm NOT! All I have to do is finish this damn battle once and for all!"

The disarmed Gold Saint stepped away, trying to think of anything he could do to stop something that cut through a damn Gold Cloth. Trying to charge his cosmos to perhaps fire Hyaku Ryu Ha while the Specter trashed around, the Saint felt himself pain all over his muscles from trying to draw strength out of Seiryu. Was his contract with the Dragon God nearing its limit? "Come on, burn cosmos! Let me defeat this g-guy!"

The warm sensation alerted Lucifer's 7th sense, who pinned Lance with his eyes. "P-Pegasus Lance!" he growled, feeling Eternal Darkness now shift the illusion of Cerah into Pegasus Tenma. This was terrible news for Lance, as it made the Specter focus his hatred right on him. He stepped menacingly towards him, dragging the cosmic tip of the Flaming Sword on the ground, making it briefly boil into bright lava veins. "No…P-Pegasus… Godslayer!"

Shinta practically crawled on the ground towards them, wanting to save Lance. "N-No. LANCE, G-GET AWAY!"

The exhausted Gold Saint tried, but without his Gold Cloth amplifying his cosmos, his reserves hit their limit sooner than they should and instead he stumbled back against a broken pillar. "S-shit! COME ON, COSMOS!" he shouted, trying to burn his energies only for his natural white aura to flicker on and off like an engine refusing to start. The pain only increased with every failed attempt.

"I'm a real S-Specter! I'm the Celestial Star of Pride! And it's my mission… to destroy the G-Godslayers!" At this point, Lucifer only saw Tenma in Lance. The fact that Lance had dark red eyes cursed by the Phoenix much like Tenma's old eyes cursed by Yoma's machinations and his own cursed by his Dark Prince condition only made the illusion of Eternal Darkness even more powerful, adding an element of truth to it. This made his bloodlust heat to its maximum and the Specter aimed the blade to slice the heart right out of the Gold Saint. "D-DIE!"

Trying his damn hardest to burn his cosmos in this moment of desperation, lance instinctively closed his eyes when he saw the black fire edge descend down upon him!

All their 7th senses then spiked!

A loud shattering noise was heard and the solid segment of the blade of black fire broke, smashed against the powerful golden surface, and Lucifer screamed with the pain in his eyes brought by the bright golden flare of light.

Shinta gasped in amazement! "The… Gold Cloth! It's the Libra Gold Cloth!"

Lance opened his eyes and breathed in shock as well, finding the glorious sight of his master's armor standing there before them in its rest form, shining like a sun in that Temple. One of its shields was hoisted up and it had blocked the Flaming Sword with its unequaled defensive power.

The Gold Saint of Cancer blinked. "Roshi?!"

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The Underworld

Giudecca Palace

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The four dwellers of the Underworld sat at the table watching the battle for the Libra Temple, comfortable in their seats, when, all of a sudden, a bright golden flash of light was seen and then the mirror showing the images went dark.

Pandora widened her eyes. "What happened?! The image is gone!"

Crudely interpreting the problem, the Wyvern Specter shook the mirror's side in an attempt to make it work again. "Work, you blasted thing! I want to witness Daemon's destruction!"

The God of Sleep rolled his eyes at this. "It's no use, Judge Wyvern. This isn't an electronic device that you can just club into operating." He condescendingly commented, finding the typical human instinct to resort to violence truly barbaric. "Clearly that golden flash must have been the Gold Cloth belonging to the Libra House. It's return to the Zodiac reinforced Athena's blessings and cut off our ability to see into what's happening."

The blonde Judge sat back down, frustrated, but he didn't wish to insult one of the Emperor's fellow deities by talking back with fury, so he measured his words. "Lord Hypnos, with all due respect, are we supposed to wait for another armor to get off their House, then?! We must learn as much as we can about the enemy!"

Hypnos nodded. "I'm afraid so. The Emperor appreciates your drive to study his foes, as he just asked you-" the God of Sleep spoke for the puppet, which still sat right there next to them. "-but if you're concerned about how much Lucifer suffers, rest assured, even if wins, he's already paying the price for his sins."

Pandora perked up at this. "Is that so?"

Hypnos then smiled devilishly. "That Andromeda Saint struck him cleverly… but also with unplanned cruelty. By injecting the power of my technique of nightmares, Eternal Darkness, into its victim in such a crude way, he has robbed Pride Star of the distinction between dreams and reality. Even I am not sure if he can recover from it. Andromeda Shinta may have just cursed Daemon Lucifer with forever living at the border between the world of the sleeping and the world of the awake. Nothing that I shouldn't expect from my dear student, he who truly earned the Dark Prince Surplice, Dark Angel Michael."

"He always did have unexpectedly greater wisdom in punishing sinners than Lucifer." Hades commented. "Personally, I always thought his request to me of sparing Lucian after Judgement Day and make him the Daemon Specter was far more punitive than any death I could have given him. It was the day I realized that breeding the Dark Princes was truly worth it, mm mm."

"Well, brother, Lord Hypnos does say he modeled himself after you." Pandora flattered. "It must because your wisdom inspired his own."

Wyvern Rhadamanthys sat uncomfortably at these words. In his opinion, the Emperor needed no one but him and his personally trusted Specters, like Basilisk Sylphid, but he would not dare voice disagreement with Lord Hades, especially after Lucifer embarrassed him with the Alps affair and the Exodus.

Hypnos continued. "We simply must be patient. Despite his failures, Lucifer is a force to be reckoned with. He will easily cause more Gold Saints to move off their Houses in time."

The red-haired puppet sterned its gaze on the mirror. "Unless this interference from Libra proves to be his undoing."

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Sanctuary

House of Libra

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With the golden armor of Libra shining in the temple like a blazing sun, the two Saints of Athena felt reinvigorated, their hopes in victory renewed. "Roshi, you sent your armor?!"

"Young Saints of Athena!" spoke Dohko, though in reality it was the Libra Cloth transmitting a message left to it by the old master. "Even if I, Libra Dohko, must stand at the waterfall of Rozan to watch over the Specter seal, I am not indifferent to the cruelty and destruction that Daemon Lucifer can cause. Moreover, his powers are far beyond even a single Gold Saint, as I'm sure the battles have shown you so far! He has become a threat to justice and, as such, in these trying times, I send you the little help I can! Behold, the Libra Weapons!"

With this command, the armor rested on the floor and sent out its weaponry, dressing Lance's arms in the round Libra Shields and arming Shinta with its golden Nun-chunks. Their brimming energies reinvigorated the two physically, allowing them to stand on their feet once more.

The student was speechless at the kindness of this. He could feel the strength of his teacher relieving his pain and returning his stamina. "Roshi,… you're saving my life!" and his hands clenched on the Weapons. "I won't let you down! This time, I'm finishing this guy off!"

Daemon Lucifer shook in fury at this. "D-Dohko… Libra Dohko! YET AGAIN, you interfere!" he hissed, charging his dark aura on pure fury, causing the Flaming Sword to reignite and reform its edge as he dashed at Lance with ultra speed. "But I'm not alone either, this time! I'll rip your student's heart out all over again!"

But Lance was stalwart, raising his two shields in time to parry the blade of fire all over again in a cross jam. Though the Specter pressed the sword hard, the edge could not cut through the extremely strong bucklers, which could deflect the power of comets and shooting stars. The Specter was still much stronger, though, and Lance felt his feet drag back under the weight pressed down on him, even if the shields themselves were unharmed.

He resisted as hard as he could, but the tip of the sword began slowly angling down at his head. "I told you… I'm not T-Tenma!" And then the cosmos from the Libra Weapons filled his body, empowering his next move. "Rozan! RYU SHO!" Striking his foot unto the Specter's chest as hard as he could with a draconically empowered kick, Lance blasted the screaming Specter off of him, putting a dent on his stomach plate with the lifeforce-boosted move. He then leaped away and began charging cosmos. "S-Shinta, I need you to stall him a bit!"

The Andromeda nodded and stepped in. "Right! Go, Libra Nunchunks! NEBULA CHAIN!" and he swung the chained stick, which shot out of its pair with extending links like the Andromeda Chains themselves. As he braked his flight with his heels, Lucifer then found himself in the path of this and was further struck with powerful golden blows unto his body, making him scream and damaging his armor significantly with further indentations from the comet-like impacts.

Meanwhile, as the Specter was buried into collapsing rubble, Lance formed sphere of golden cosmos in his hands that he danced in the shape of the dragon constellation in the air, humming a charging chant as the sound of drums was projected. These spheres pulsated, forming more and more layers of emerald color, but then the hard part of coalescing them into Lance's variant came. His body sweated with both the effort involved and the tension of the situation. The Libra weapons were only giving him just enough cosmos for one more attempt at the One Hundred Dragons…

Blasting out of the rubble with a thunderous cosmos burst, Daemon Lucifer screeched out and slammed the Flaming Sword down on Shinta, who parried it with the stretch of chains of the Libra Nunchunks. Pink and dark cosmos aura flared out and battled as the two struggled.

"M-Michael!..." Lucifer roared, feeling Eternal Darkness making him see blonde hair and a winged angel Surplice on Shinta in on and off flashes. "Why are you fighting me?! We should join forces! We should turn Sanctuary and Hades into blood-drenched ruin t-together!"

But Shinta resisted. "Y-You lost your grip on reality, Daemon Lucifer! A-All you see is your delusions and your cruel vendettas. Why s-should I help someone like you?!" He accused, pushing the Specter back with unexpected success. Every word he voiced out made the Flaming Sword harder for Lucifer to maintain, as if it couldn't fight its original owner quite as well. "You have done nothing but hurt my loved ones and threaten everyone in Sanctuary! And they've done nothing wrong to you! You just want what's not yours! So I will burn every last speck of my cosmos to defeat y-you!"

And Shinta then wrapped the other nun chunk around the blade and used all of his strength to pull it aside, diverting Lucifer's mad push to the ground, causing the firesword to carve into the floor before swinking the chunks as hard as he could up unto the Specter's chestplate, blasting him with a golden impact containing the force of exploding stars, making the Specter scream.

The pride Star gasped, feeling his Flaming Sword dissipate into nothing. "It can't be… Michael's cosmos is… disappearing from me?!" he realized.

The blessing from his friend that had stayed on his arm for nearly two centuries was suddenly growing weaker the more he fought Shinta. While this was worrying, the rage in him caused by it made his blood boil and he swung his gauntlets fist right back at the Andromeda, knocking him back before charging a large ball of cosmos into his hand. As he balanced himself from the blow, Shinta saw a large, bright sphere already aimed at his face and froze. "DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!"

Struck at point blank range, Shinta could barely burn the rest of the nunchunks cosmos into defense as he was struck by bursting javelins of electricity, ripping his unprotected shirt to shreds.

Lance called out to him as the Andromeda got pinned and struck by the spears unto the ground. "S-SHINTA!" but he gritted his teeth and focused, joining his hands together to press the two spheres of cosmos together. "No, I have to focus! I don't have Roshi here with me to help me forge the attack like before! But if he attacks me now…!"

Lucifer coughed, still feeling the damage from the Libra weapon blow inflicted on him, but at least the last obstacle to killing Lance (or was he Tenma?) was dealt with. At this point, he noticed his fingers look greyer and greyer as Eternal Darkness's mirk infiltrated his bloodstream more and more. He had no idea what would happen, he had never seen the technique be administered so haphazardly.

As such, he had to make sure he killed Lance before he injured Daemon any further. He saw the Saint charging the Hyaku Ryu Ha and laughed. "That won't s-save you, not anymore!"

Lance sweated, seeing the Specter approach him with cosmos charging in his hands.

The Specter's rant continued as thunder focused on his fingers. He felt memories of the last attack he suffered during the Lost Canvas War return to him. "N-Never again shall I be buried into Tartarus by that move! DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!" and he shot the barrage of deadly spears.

The Gold Saint gasped, unable to move the shields into position while he tried to smoosh the two charging spheres of cosmos together!

But nevertheless, and armored, golden figure zipped in front of him, blinding both fighters with the glint of its defensive cosmos, and the spears coalesced on a single, solid target that shielded Lance with a braced defences, allowing Dark Spear Barrage to blast it from head to toe. The ground cracked and broke apart, bursting into smoke, and Lucifer's sparking cosmos zapped everywhere, refracted.

Lucifer lowered his fist, not sure if he was seeing things right. This scene was so familiar and Eternal Darkness made him mix reality with fiction even further, making him hesitate at the sight of the Gold Saint he once cruelly murdered. "R-Rasgado?! No, this isn't…"

But the braced, horned silhouette in the smoke seemingly confirmed the illusion, lowered its arms and its cracked chestplate flared out, dispelling the cloud with shining burst of energy. Its palm then thrust outwards as its golden eyes picked a target! "GREAT…. HORN!"

The force of the fastest move in all of Sanctuary firing at full force burst the smoke outwards, revealing the shining Gold Saint of Taurus damaged top to bottom striking the Specter with a solid beam of golden cosmos right in the stomach. The image of a demon struck in the stomach by the bull's horns was projected and an outer layer of Damascus cracked!

Daemon Lucifer was blasted back away from Lance, screaming in pain and buried into marble rubble. The older Gold Saint widened his eyes. "A-Aldebaran!"

The young Saint bled and fell to his hand, punctured by the Dark Spears. "G-GO! F-FIRE THAT THING!" and he straightened his back, as if to flatten it like a platform.

Seeing their adversaries get buried in rubble, but already struggling to get out, lance understood the idea. "R-Right!" and this precise point, he finally managed to push the two spheres together, creating a large, basket-sized ball of emerald energy swirling between his hands. Lance then ran towards Aldebaran, stepped on his back and leaped high into the air!

Shockwaving out of the rubble, Lucifer roared, furious. "B-Blasted Gold Saints, interfering one after the other! N-NO MORE!" and he swirled energy down unto his hand, charginga powerful attack. "I'll nuke this entire TEMPLE!"

But the Specter then saw a bright emerald light shining above him and he paled when he saw Lance with his attack in hand about to fire. "ROZAN…!"

The Specter widened his eyes and stepped back. "S-Shit!"

Thrusting his hands down at his target and aided by the force of gravity, Lance unleashed his variant. "HYAKU RYU HA!"

And then the cosmos in Lucifer's hand was fired back upwards the only move he had time to use. "GREATEST CAUTION!"

The two cosmos attacks flared out and fired off their hands; Lucifer's was a spreading array of demon-shaped beams going in all directions, threatening to swallow up Lance, but the explosion of pale emerald light came down upon it not as a shower of dragons, but as a coalescing, streaming beam of energy that came down on Lucifer's rays with the force of a giant crashing dragon, crushing the air at the contact point between the two moves and trapping the Daemon under a dome of struggling attacks!

The Specter felt the weight of this in his casting arm, seeing nothing above him but warring light. His feet cracked through the floor.

"I-I'm the Dark Prince of Hades, descendant of the Athenian Emperor!" he hissed, powering his move further to push against Lance's, confident in his proud lineage. "I've spent my LIFE proving my supremacy over Gold Saints! It's my destiny to conquer this place and make Athena bend to my will! Do you think you can overpower me with just a variant of that move?! Who the hell do you think you are, Lance?! WHO?!"

This wrath made the two pressed beams of light shine out, manifesting in the air two very distinct dragons, one western and demonic and the other eastern and tranquil, wrapping around each other and roaring in struggle. It made the ruins of the Temple shine out like a large spectacle in the night. Stuck in the air, Lance just focused on putting his last energy remnants into the beam, converting them into lifeforce-drenched cosmos that cut through the darkness of Greatest Caution.

"I-I'm the one entrusted by the guy who beat you to put a stop to you all over again!" Lance stuttered, feeling his body go numb. The waves firing out of his palms made the air reverberate loudly around him, forcing him to shout this out. "You think you've already won because you're fighting Gold Saints?! That you know everything you need about us?! Or that you're some sort of goddamn king of Sanctuary?! Maybe you are! But you're still human! And we can make you go down!"

With this, the Specter then felt something weaken in his Surplice's plates. He looked down and gasped as he saw a crack inflicted on it by Aldebaran when the Taurus struck the exact same point an earlier Shoryuha did. The delayed effect of Great Horn began boiling up, light shined from underneath the cracks and Lucifer screamed in pain when a chunk of his stomach plate blasted out, littering the floor with Daemon Surplice pieces.

Lance felt his adversary's cosmos take a dip, while the shields in his wrists shined out with more power! "Hear the roar of the dragon! HYAKU RYU HA!" and he reinforced his beam with an overlayering golden burst with cosmos straight out of the Libra Weapons, widening it in size to momentarily press down on the Daemon while he was still afflicted.

The Celestial Pride Star gasped and felt Greatest Caution dissipate. Darkness firmly gripped his mind at this point and he felt himself taken back in time once more, to the moment Dohko blasted him down to the very depths of Tartarus, as the huge draconic beam punched through his cosmos and came down on his body like a punishing hammer.

It struck him so, with the smashing impact of a gargantuan foot stepping down on him, and the Prince screamed, smashed against the floor. His Surplice burned in his body, bit down by Seiryu's jaws, and the huge influx of energy swelled around on the ground in a rising dome of crackling emerald energy. Though he reached out to the air cursing Dohko one last time, the Specter was lost in the sea of hot green cosmos swallowing him and carrying him down the depth of the mountain, seemingly back to Tartarus!

The dome erupted back up, violently shooting energy everywhere, and Lance screamed as well, hit by the repulsing shockwave. Caught by Aldebaran and Shinta, the Gold Saint of Cancer then watched as the cosmos he put out in the move kept swelling until it loudly flared out like a wild furnace fire, consuming their adversary and turning night briefly into day once more.

The three sat there watching, breathing anxiously and unsure what this meant. None of them wanted to make the mistake of thinking things were over when they were not.

But, this time, instead of busting out like he always did, Lucifer did not emerge. Instead, the green, cratering fires simply raged on for well over a minute, casting vanishing images of Seiryu's gaze in the sky.

"I… think its over!..." Shinta cautiously breathed out. "I think we r-really beat him!"

Lance was helped up by his two friends. Pretty much the only strength he had left was the one radiating off the golden shields he wore. He was the most pessimistic of the three and even he was starting to think Shinta was right. The original plan was to use the move and expect it only to injure the Specter until everyone else was done dealing with the rest of his army, but the bonfire was so still, even as it slowly diminished, that they couldn't help but conclude that Daemon Lucifer was rotting in hell once again.

Lance then turned to the Libra Cloth, which still just rested there in the midst of the chaos unbesmeared. "Roshi, you saved my life. If you hadn't sent your Cloth, I'd be dead and that guy would still be rampaging in Sanctuary. Thank you!..." he then addressed the other Gold Saint that stepped into the challenge. "Aldebaran,… I don't weather to be mad at you or happy that you showed up…!"

The very hurt Taurus gave him a thumbs up and pointed at his own broken horn. "H-Hey, sem problema. Besides, I told that guy that the Bat Specter was just the first Specter I'd get! And I meant it!" he bragged.

Shinta smiled happily. "… Thank you! I owe you so much! You risked your life to help us even though you're so hurt." and he hugged the Brazilian boy. "I'll never forget this, Aldie!"

The young bull laughed and patted his sparring mate's back "H-He, he, he! Just take me to another vacation to Andromeda Island after this!"

At this point, Shaka and Deathmask reached the temple, catching up with Aldebaran. The Sicilian boy stepped over the last obstacles and saw the big burning green fire. "Whow!... Is the fighting over? Is it safe to walk here?"

Lance saw the two of them and was furious. "Aldebaran I can understand, but w-what the hell are you two doing here?!"

Shaka presented himself, lowering his head in blame. "I apologize, Saint Lance… but I insisted on coming up. After that burst of darkness coming out of this temple, Mara came through me for a moment and then towards here. I deduced that you fell into Eternal Darkness… despite my warnings."

Lance blinked. "By Mara you mean Guilty, right? That's strange, even when I was knocked out, I don't remember having dreams about him again. But I guess that's normal since I got this tattoo." He then pointed at the dragon on his back.

Mephisto shoved everyone else aside to walk through. "Whow, whow, wait a minute! Why do you have that awesome thing on your back?!"

The mentor's eyes sterned. "I've told you about it a million times!"

"I thought you were lying, or that it looked like an ugly snake thing! You're too lame to get a real tattoo!" the Sicilian protested, pointing at him. "But that thing looks amazing! Where ca-"

"You're NOT getting one!"

"W-wait!" Shinta interfered, concerned. "You raised a good question, Lance, what did you dream about? Why didn't that technique work on you?! It definitely worked on Daemon and I just tossed back a small bunch of it at him!" his eyes then grew humid. "I… I thought you were in a coma or worse!"

Lance scratched his head, trying really hard to think about it, but the majority of the dream of being back in the orphanage at Athens was gone, just like when Papillion Ainsel used his 'My Own Self' technique on him. The only thing he remembered was following the light of the triangle constellation in the horizon.

"I think… my adopter's seal may have helped." He concluded. It likely barred off the spell from accessing the full depth of his most terrible traumas. Wow, as far as role models went between Noah and Dohko, Lance really felt like had nothing but reasons to detest how neglectful Kastiel had been. "Noah, what you did for me saved me yet again. First Greece, then Death Queen Island and now the biggest battle of my life… I wish I knew where you were so I could thank you…"

Shaka rubbed his chin. "A memory seal? I see… I should have thought of that. Perhaps if I inflicted amnesia on myself beforehand, the spell of Hypnos would have not worked so well on me."

"Shaka, that's a terrible idea! You'd probably cancel your own powers if you did that! " Lance pointed out.

"Well, that happened anyway, so he might as well have!" Deathmask pointed out, merciless, earning another slap to the back of the head by Aldebaran. "OW, STOP THAT!"

At this point, tremors were felt all throughout Sanctuary, especially further up the stairs, alerting the Saints at the House of Libra back to reality.

Shinta saw flashes coming out of Sagittarius and the Scorpio Temple shaking from the inside. "L-Look, the others are still in danger. The battle isn't over yet."

Lance held his head. "S-shit, I forgot! With all the fighting here I didn't even think of that! How many are there left?!"

Aldebaran counted on his fingers based off what he remembered from the ones passing his Temple and what the others shared with him of the events back at Virgo. "Other than those nasty Skeletons… I'd say about six or seven Specters are still rampaging. Papillion, that Behemoth asshole, the Sphinx lady, a huge Golem and three minor ones."

"Oh, that's it? That doesn't sound like much. Let Aiolos and the others finish them off!" Mephisto asked. But he then saw everyone look worried. "Right?..."

Shinta sweated. "Seven Specters are more than the Houses between ourselves and the Pope."

Lance disagreed as well. "Not only that, but three of those are Daemon's elites and they're quite strong. I don't think this invasion would begin if they didn't think these numbers were more than enough. We probably caused them a couple more losses than they expected, and there's a couple downstairs instead of upstairs, but a handful of Specters being past the halfway point here can still be enough to strike at the Pope from here if they spread their numbers enough. How many armors are off their Houses?"

Shaka was the one to answer this. "Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer. Only four, thanks to Libra returning to its House. Leo and Virgo are back at their Houses and Aries is still in Tibet, last time I felt it."

Lance groaned. "Damn it! Why didn't Mu bring his own back?! Everyone forgot about that, even me!"

"Lance, we weren't going to bring Mu to a warzone anyway and he's the only one who can carry it! We're lucky enough Saint Iaso rescued him off Jamir." Shinta added

"And hey, if your theory is right, that still means we can keep our armors plus two more off their Houses!" Aldebaran countered, preferring to count their blessings instead. "Then we should ask Camus and Aphrodite to come downstairs and help!"

The option was tantalizing, as it meant they could finally amass their forces on the invaders, just like they always planned, but Lance stared at the green fires he caused apprehensively. He was exhausted and his armor was ruined, but it still didn't feel real that they had beaten Daemon Lucifer. Yet, no cosmos was felt coming out of flames. The Specter wouldn't just lie there waiting and burning, would he? Especially with the injuries now inflicted on him and his Surplice damaged for the first time?

But there was a problem. "As long as Papillion is still around, we can't communicate with anyone past his jamming reach, and I don't know where he went after he flew off." He sat on the ground, feeling his body numb. "Well, in any case. I don't think I'm in any condition to help for now. I feel like every muscle in my body is about to burst. I wouldn't even be able to fire that thing without the Libra Weapons help."

Shinta, whose armor had also been destroyed, held his own arms vulnerably. He had been literally suffered some terrible electrical shocks at the hands of the Specter and he wasn't sure how he was still standing up after going face to face with that Flaming Sword of his.

Shaka approached them. "You all should take a rest, like we did at Virgo while you fought. It's the least you deserve. You, Aldebaran and Saint Shinta have all done more than enough." He then looked worryingly up. "As for the others…I wish we could help, but perhaps the valor of each Gold Saint may have to be proven tonight just yet, just like you have."

The four Sanctuary dwellers then contemplated the open nightsky anxiously, joined by the shine of the Libra Gold Cloth and the glare of the diminishing green bonfire

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Pope's Hall

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At the final temple of Sanctuary, Captain Maximus looked down the stairs with his binoculars and he saw scores of servants being escorted towards the Capricorn House by the lower Temple papal Guard divisions, which had been falling back the entire battle. Further below, his aged jaw clenched tensely when he saw three black-armored figures and at least a whole company of Skeletons leaving Sagittarius and giving chase.

He lowered the binoculars and communicated with the 11th House. "Lord Capricorn, the servants of Sanctuary are heading your way! The enemy is right behind them, catching up step by step!"

Shura's young voice messaged back right away as he sharpened his arm's cosmic edge. "Worry not! Every Specter that walks into my House or dares lay a finger on the innocent will be cut down!"

The captain nodded and turned to the Pope. "We've reached a critical point of the battle, Your Holiness. Once we secure the innocent servants and the vulnerable guards, we can send our Gold Saints down and crush the enemy. Shall we send the evacuated down the Pisces Temple's shortcut to the Star Hill Forest grounds?9"

The masked Lemurian nodded. "Yes, the sooner they are out of harm's way, the better. I don't trust even that my house might not be breached tonight." He then turned to the aged woman next to him. "Ms. Shafurwatt, you should head downstairs to Aphrodite's House as well, and join the evacuation. My Halls aren't safe."

Her head shook, eyes fixed on the Scorpio Temple. "Not until the children are out, your Holiness."

Shion sterned his lip behind his mask, knowing that she included the children Gold Saints in her vow and that this wouldn't happen until the fighting was over.

"I can't believe the entire Libra House was sliced open like a can of tuna. I hope the fire at Libra means the enemy leader has been defeated." Maximus suggested. The wreckage down at the 7th House was so big it was visible from where they stood, and even though they were blocked off by the jamming field from every Temple between Aries and Scorpio, the quaking from Libra had stopped.

But the Pope of Sanctuary looked at the Fire Clock. "No, this isn't over yet. The danger created by Daemon Lucifer to Sanctuary lives on!"

The two of them questioned this. "What? How do you know that, your Holiness?! How can that be?!

"The Celestial Star of Pride isn't so easily defeated, for his men still fight to take over Sanctuary. And look!" he pointed at the far-off Fire Clock. "The flames of the clock tower burn on, counting the Temples he has claimed. This is a sign from Athena that we must not let our guard down yet."

The middle-aged lady gasped. "Then that means…"

"The Saints of Gold are in grave danger yet. They must prevail over these malicious Specters, or night could still forever fall on Athena's land."

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Chapter End

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Next Chapter: Chapter 63 – Episode 25 – Arachnophobia

Description: Daemon Lucifer appears to have been dealt a decisive blow, if not outright defeated, but even though the force invading Sanctuary has lost its head, it still retains its strength and determination to punish the world for their anger. Papillon Ainsel and Golem Treble in particular have found their next victims and seek to secure the False Specters advantage against the Saints once and for all. Can the Gold Saints put a stop to the False Holy War for good?

Deadline: October 25th

Author's Notes:

One thing I should mention in these notes to explain how the people in the Temples are evacuating is what I call the Marin Shortcut; this refers to the passageway used by Eagle Marin in Sanctuary Arc to get all the way from outside the Golden Zodiac to the Pisces Temple, bypassing all the other ones. I'm putting it here cause this passageway, despite being canon IIRC, is so rarely used in the story that a lot of characters forget it exists and assume the only way to get to Aphrodite's Temple is through the front door of Mu's.

Another thing that is probably worthwhile mentioning is what's going on with Lance and Eternal Darkness; since the chapter hasn't been Beta-read, I'm not sure if it's unclear from a reader's perspective, but what happened was that Lance was struck with ED last chapter, the seal that Triangle Noah placed on him as a child mitigated what should have been mentally fatal results, Seiryu stopped Guilty from making things even worse and the rest was just the character of Lance overcoming the effects of the technique on his own. I mention it because Version 2 readers may be under the impression that the 'shadow-person' scene contradicts the change between that Version and this current one since Lance is no longer Michael reincarnated.

Or maybe I got something planned lol

ANYWAY, please make sure to share the story, review it, like it on Twitter/Tumblr and generally support this project if you enjoy it. I've just reached 25000 hits, which is nuts for a Saint Seiya OC story and I'm happy, but in the grand scheme of fanfics this isn't all that impressive so please don't stop giving feedback, especially at this stage where the story is escalating and the hard work is only increasing.

Also, nake 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.

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