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.

64. 2A: The Archdevil of Despair

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

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

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

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

Author Notes:

-I have good news and bad news; the good is that the arc finale is finished and only a good beta away from being post ready, so we are set to be on schedule for the December 25th release (which is V1's original birthday). The bad news is that all 3 chapters ended up too big, averaging 30,000 words among themselves, so I've decided to spread their combined content across 4 chapters instead, meaning the chapters will be shorter (22k average) but may also have a different pacing than what you're used to and the original cliffhangers out of order with it (you'll see what I mean in the story's climax)

The last chapter of the Arc will still be published on Dec 25th, though, but the next release date (originaly Dec 12th), will instead be two smaller releases like this one on the 9th and 16th

-Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers \owo

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I traveled far and wide. I was born when the territory of Germany was still known as the Holy Roman Empire, so, technically, you could say that I'm that empire's last survivor. I spent more than 400 years watching the world transform itself faster and faster. Steam engines, electricity, and even galleons …I'm older than all of that. I pass by the mirror and I see myself young and perfect, wondering what my appearance would truly be like if my age had not been frozen by my Surplice.

I read that story about Dorian Gray's painting and found kinship in it. I always liked books and this one seemed to speak of a rot I felt inside my soul. Fortunately, there's a difference between myself and Oscar Wilde's narcissistic immortal: I can shut my eternal youth off.

I figured out how to do this in my 'youth' when I still dealt with the humiliation of losing the Dark Angel Surplice to Michael. By doing so, my Surplice's power gets redirected to other areas, causing it to even grow wings, and, for a brief moment, I feel human again.

Despite the temporary anchoring that releasing my powers gives me, as I enter the second half of my fourth century I now find myself once again at the crossroad between sanity and the abyss. Ten times older than my father at the pyre, yet half his bodily age, I look in the mirror and increasingly see a body deeply unsynchronized with my spirit.

It's clear then; even if Hades hadn't lied to me all these years, I can't continue being a Specter. I must seize my place in heaven or forever let my soul rot in hell. But what God would have me now under their wing, a voiced descendant of the most hated human? Sanctuary was my family's home after the Millennium Wars, for better or worse, and Hades' Faustian deals it's only alternative. Now both are gone. And without armor, I may as well be nothing in this world.

Except… for that one Cloth!... Would I dare aspire to it? Perhaps it could be the last unbiased garment left on the Earth.

It's decided then… I shall wear these powerful Specter wings for as long as I still can, even if its black emotions rot me further. Then I shall don the Cloth of Hope and cleanse myself of the Gods' armor contracts forever.

-Lucifer's thoughts detailed in his second to last journal, dated 04/02/1965

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The Past – Lost Canvas War

Sanctuary Hospital Camp

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The Altar Silver Saint assisted the Dragon Saint as he made his way out of the tent, guiding him and taking objects out of the way. As Alone's sword wound made its work and worsened his sight over time, the Dragon would have to get used to move around on his own.

"You'll take some time to recover, Shiryu, but I have faith in your strength. I want you to accompany me to the frontline at Pandora's Castle." Hakurei invited. "Regulus and Shion are already heading there. Once Sage is done with his half of our plan… we'll need every strong Saint we can gather to storm that fortress."

The teenager nodded, although the grim implications he sensed about Pope Sage's mission worried him... "Of course, Lord Hakurei."

Beholding the rest of the camp, Hakurei was alarmed at the labyrinthic proportion it was growing into. "A lot of refugees from the war are arriving here. Alone's campaign of terror across Italy made many people in Sanctuary's villages there flock to Greece for safety… before he made the peninsula fly into the sky."

The half-Chinese warrior detected surprise in him. "You fought in the previous war, didn't you, Lord Hakurei?"

Folding his arms, the Lemurian snorted. "Yes, but it never got quite this bad. I suppose it's because the last vessel wasn't going around randomly murdering people by painting them or sending his Judges and Celestials to raze entire villages. No… the last conflict was very much down-to-business." he revealed. "Before the eclipse was even over, Hades and his two little assistants were knocking at our door. The rest was a bunch of straight up hand-to-hand combat."

This was intriguing to the Dragon, as the war he fought back in the present was also relatively contained. "I wonder what changed in Hades from then to now…"

Hakurei eyed him weirdly. "Isn't it obvious? You guys did." He half-accused, earning a worried look from Dragon. "Sorry, Shiryu, what I mean is that you Bronze boys have been strategic to our success. It's possible that Alone, upon seeing what you've done with Odysseus and Suikyo, decided to pursue a more aggressive strategy."

A concerned pause was given to the Bronze Saint. While Lord Hakurei had nothing but the best intentions in saying this, it did raise a good point. Was the appearance of the Princes in history as well as the continuation of the conflict with Odysseus into this new Lost Canvas War a direct result of Saori and themselves interfering with the past? Would the war have ended with Odysseus without the presence of him and his friends?

"Lord Hakurei-" he asked, cutting to the chase. "Who is Daemon?"

A grave look overcame Hakurei's face. "… I wasn't entirely sure when I first felt his cosmos attacking Sanctuary and fighting Rasgado, but after hearing my brother's testimony I have increasingly less doubt. Yes, I know who Daemon Lucifer used to be. A long time ago, just a few years after the 16th Century War began, I was tasked along with my brother with a very specific role. With tensions rising with the Underworld, we were sent to Bavaria, in the Reich, to watch over a family of interest from Sanctuary that was exiled to the area."

The Dragon perked up in interest. "A… family of interest?"

Hakurei sighed nostalgically. "We thought it might have been a bunch of human Sanctuary aristocrats… Someone responsible for supplying the Pope with money and skilled Saint candidates. It's common in Holy Wars to send lesser Saints to escort them out of the area because those rich bags will just settle anywhere in peacetime so long as it looks pretty, even if it's at the doorstep of Pandora's castle."

A contradiction was sensed. "But?"

Hakurei looked away in guilt. "It was… worse. Something far more important. Something Sanctuary owed a duty towards. Looking back on it, I'm shocked the Pope trusted the two of us with such a… group of interest. We were not ready. He should have sent someone better, more experienced, to handle this matter."

It was rare, if it ever happened, to see Lord Hakurei sad or reflect on a mistake. As far as Dragon was concerned, the wise Lemurian Altar Saint was borderline flawless. "Who was this family?"

Darkness came over his visage. "The only branch directly descendant of Sanctuary's most important Pope in the last 1000 years; an exiled line of innocent people looked upon by those around them as the heirs of not only a great legacy, but a great debt of blood. Their lives were guaranteed by Sanctuary after the Emperor's fall, an oath signed with Athena's own blood in exchange for them spending generation after generation of repentance towards the Goddess for their forefather's sins… Sage and I were tasked with protecting them… not only from Specters, Berserkers, or Mariners but also from ourselves." His eyes closed in shame. "And we failed…"

Though little was explained further, Dragon could guess the rest thanks to the education given to him by Roshi. There weren't many people in history that fit this description, after all, but the implications regarding the Daemon Specter were monumental.

"How did Hades get his hands on this person?" he asked.

Reopening his eyes, Hakurei confessed his mistake. "That was part of our failure, Shiryu. You must understand, I promised that boy I would protect him… but by the time we arrived in Bavaria, Hades had already infiltrated his liaison in their midst to spread the seeds of tragedy. You might know her from books as Pandora."

The Dragon Saint held his tongue. He knew this woman and her capabilities more than Hakurei thought.

The Silver Saint's story continued. "… We should have foreseen it, but Hades' machinations ran deeper than we assumed. Pandora spread her poison to the locals, revealing the identity of the exiled family and blaming them for the Gods' attacks. When Sage and I were done fighting the Judges off, the torches and pitchforks were raised by the people of Sanctuary and Daemon Lucifer's house burned… along with his parents."

"I see…he must have been corrupted afterward. This all explains his intense grudge on Sanctuary." Dragon concluded. "Do you think Hades specifically sent her out to get him?"

Hakurei took a sudden pause. His eyes were transfixed in the horizon, where he saw a burning house and felt the desperate, pleading grasp of a child around his neck, begging in tears for a miracle, both illusory sensations from the deep past that have haunted him for two centuries.

"…Saint Hakurei?"

The old Lemurian's eyes dazed away. "I don't know, Shiryu… even though I spent so many days of my long life thinking about that night… I can only guess what cruel intentions Hades had."

Dragon stormed off. "Then I must go to Death Queen Island and warn my friends!"

Hakurei practically knocked him in the head. "Don't be a fool, Shiryu, you're still recovering!" he warned, getting the warrior to immediately relax. "I have a feeling Sage Haisaku understands a bit of this truth already, given her past as a soldier of Hades. Perhaps by seeking the Cloth hidden in it she seeks to give Athena the proper counter to the Dark Princes."

"But what can the Phoenix Cloth do against those two?!" Dragon demanded, remembering their power. "At the slightest sealing capability, it will no longer be able to revive itself against them."

Hakurei smirked. "Who says she went to get Phoenix?"

Dragon paused. "What? But… if then… what other armor could…"

And the aged warrior's smile widened with optimism. "What else could it be?! The only armor whose light shines bright in the darkest of nights! The hide of heroes, which sends itself to bless those who accomplish great deeds! The Cloth of Hope, Teos!"

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The Present

Romania - Siege of Crow's Nest Fortress

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It was very dark in the encampment at this deep nightly hour, but the vigilant torches lit all over the Greek and Norse tents showed the way amidst the working soldiers.

Standing taller than many tents around him, the former Gold Saint of Taurus, Daniel of Crete, as he was now called in retirement, made his way back to the main war tent. It was a wider, taller one at the center of the southwest siege encampment they were in, placed in a cleared mound from where it could look out towards the imposing Cyrulian fortress they were encircling. He was greeted by saluting hoplites who opened the tent's curtain door over its roof to accommodate the passage of the giant man.

He could hear arguing before even stepping inside.

"By Athena, why can't you help more?! What use are you people here if you're just going to stand around?!" a hoplite lieutenant standing by Akassius shouted, banging his fist on the table with the fortress map. "These are Specters we are talking about, it affects all of us!"

The red-haired man sitting at the other end of the table and surrounded by the many strong-looking Norsemen kept his cool. "Of course, lieutenant, and his majesty understands that."

The simpleness in this response only aggravated the lieutenant further. "So much for Viking bravery!"

The black-haired Gemini in the chair eyed him apprehensively. "Lieutenant, please do not disrespect our allies," he requested. Unfortunately, this was one of Kirin's old units and they tended to be aggressive.

"I couldn't stop Aguilon. He went looking for Ophiuchus Iaso in Asia," Daniel whispered.

Akassius sighed through his nose. "It can't be helped. He's even more stubborn than you and Aldebaran put together. If you had tried to hold him, he would have certainly started a fight."

"So have you convinced these guys to help with a serious offensive or…?"

The former Gemini scoffed amusedly. "You know we haven't." but the champion of Sanctuary tried again, pointing at the battle plan on the table. "Nidhogg Falken, your presence in the battlefield is as always a cooling plate to even the harshest of plans, but I wish you'd reconsider your hesitation. I personally drew up this maneuver and believe we can take the fortress swiftly if we combine our forces."

The bandana-wearing commander nodded. "Yes, a great plan worthy of you, Akassius; I read it thoroughly," he assured. "Using Another Dimension to sever the communication between the different levels of the castle, a grand battery bombardment of Gold Saint attacks on the fortress' aged southern wall, followed by a spearpoint assault through the breakpoint into the inner bailey to avoid the Cyrulian traps at the battlements… except that you need quick shock troops to storm the main castle building and get your hostages, correct?"

The former Gemini nodded. "Yes, we believe Fort Commander Lacaille is inside along with other survivors. We'd need to blast through both wall circles to get to the main building, but it could open a chance to rescue them if we coordinate things well enough. Our hoplites will be too busy fighting the defenders. We need an agile squadron."

The Norseman's sharp green eyes shone. "Ah, so you're trying to have it both ways! On one hand, utterly annihilating these Specters with the full might of Athena's champions so that not a trace of the danger they represent is left, while sweeping it under the rug as if her brow barely rose from her sleep at these flies. Swiftly take over the fortress AND rescue the hostages. Column A stacked over Column B…. Isn't that a bit much?"

"It's merely my nature as a Gemini, Falken, to seek the best of both options," Akassius assured. "Please remember the lives we lost in Arcadia and Ismara already. Will you help?"

Falken nodded. "… Very well. The armies of Asgard have an oath to you, and we shall honor it, so long as the purpose is honorable. King Thorkell's men will not die to keep rich Greek pockets full, but they will risk their lives to keep peace in Europe." And he stood up to shake Akassius' hand. "Let us fight Hades' scourge!"

The Gemini smiled and reached over the table as well. "Thank you, my f-"

A star shot through the cosmos, filled with malice and pride!

All the eyes sensitive to the cosmos in the room collectively enlarged, horrified by the sudden mass of darkness they felt towards the south!

Turning over his chair as he got up, Daniel faced the direction of Sanctuary. "W-WHAT?!"

Akassius paled, feeling all those signatures spread across the Houses. "Is that… Sanctuary?!"

With hand instinctively on the sword, Falken sweated. "Akassius…Why does Athena's land feel like it's swarmed with Specters?!"

Daniel rushed out of the tent, pushing hoplites out of the way. "ALDEBARAN!" Standing outdoors, he looked at Crow's Nest, where atop the walls he could see Skeletons and Specters scurrying around in a panic with their cover blown. He could only feel a handful of cosmos there now. "There… THERE ARE ONLY A FEW PISSANTS THERE WITH ZOMBIES! WE WERE TRICKED!"

Following the Ironclad Bull before he did something rash, Akassius couldn't help but also fume to himself as his 7th sense told him a whole new situation from five minutes before.

"Akassius, what is going on?!" Falken asked them. The three high-profile pictures shouting in the outdoors were starting to draw the attention of the soldiers. "Are we really feeling this?!"

A stern look that many learned to fear flashed across the Gemini's face. "Yes, we are! Hades has deceived us somehow! I now feel the same cosmos at Sanctuary that I did from that one powerful Specter who killed Lycaon! There must be a way out of this encirclement from the fortress that we are not aware of!"

The Nidhogg paled, imagining tunnels hidden underground by the old Cyrulians. "Which means…"

Fire sprouted around the Gold Saint's fist with threatening heat, manifesting his fury. How did he not see this?! "This fortress was never a springboard! It was a decoy!"

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A few moments earlier

Sanctuary

House of Sagittarius

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Outside, worn down but bloodthirsty, the False Specters stood before the imponent ninth Temple's visage, headed by Sphinx Neferti. After climbing countless steps under the constant bombardment of the damned archer, they finally reached the source of their torment, an imponent building with a statue of Chiron standing over its entablature but with support pillars heavily damaged by the vicious counter-bombardment of both Golem Treble and Daemon Lucifer. An intimidating aura similar to when they first entered Scorpio breathed out of the shadowed gate as if warning them against taking any step further, but something was off.

"Where is he?! Where is Sagittarius?!" Elf Rossalier demanded to know. "He was standing here shooting arrows at us all night and now he went inside?!"

The mix of confusion and outrage was widespread. They were reduced to just four False Specters, namely Sphinx, Elf, Cait Sith, and Mandrake, and a handful of Skeletons, compared to the almost two hundred that began the assault. They could still take the final temples if they used their numbers wisely. They also had instructions from Daemon Lucifer about which Specter to pair against which guardian Gold Saint, but the slightest mistake could end their rampage's prospects of reaching the Pope.

"He must have gone inside just before we took the final stair turn," Mandrake concluded, scratched on his face with cracks around his armor by the darts that grazed him. "Ah, he must be afraid now that he doesn't have the long-distance advantage!"

Feeling the clock ticking against them ever since Lord Lucifer's cosmos vanished, Sphinx ordered the assault. "Break down that door! I want Sagittarius captured now!"

His eyes went to the horizon worrying, fearing the arrival of daylight. Had they spent that much time climbing steps?

"It's still 5 am?" Mandrake Nevil heard the ticking of the Fire Clock and saw its physical hands reach the hour of Scorpio (5), even though its fires were still down to Libra. "We still have time to cross these Temples. What's the rush? This is a sniper Gold Saint, if we just storm inside he'll ambush us for sure."

While she didn't disagree with this, she didn't want her men to get so absent-minded from the fighting that they'd notice the Prince's disappearance. "Break that door before he moves up another House and you spend another flight of stairs dodging death! Or do you want him to send another nuclear arrow flying down on us like back at Ta-"

THROOOOOoooommmm!

The Specters and Skeletons gasped and screamed, holding onto their weapons and the stairsteps as the quake rattled them. The Aries House blinded the night with the bright flash and the erupting cloud of smoke reaching up to the stars. While the mountain had suffered worse shocks that night, the loud, bright explosion coming off the Aries Temple way below sent the building's roof flying right off into large, shattering pieces, causing boulders to come tumbling down the Herculean Path road.

The Skeletons scurried around. "H-Holy SHIT!"

Cait Sith's hair stood up and his yellow eyes bulged out. "W-Was that A-Aries?!"

But while the sight of the dust cloud was stunning, Sphinx rose her sight in horror as she began sensing Gold Saints successfully communicating back and forth. "Dear mother of Persephone…! The jamming barriers are…! Ainsel, did you get defeated?! FOOL!" She then screamed and guarded herself when a second explosion, this one coming from the Libra House battlefield, blasted upwards like a thrusting spear of purple cosmos, indicating the Prince was back and releasing the limiter on his Surplice. "Pride Star!"

The men laughed and cheered. "Aha, that's the Prince!"

Cait Sith Palug climbed onto a high rock to behold it. "Nye-he! He's at his full power! We're going to win this battle!"

Seeing her underlings raising their arms in cheer, Neferti was a pile of conflicting emotions. "Fools, don't they notice the barriers are gone?! All of Sanctuary and its allies, not just this mountain, now know that we are here! Things just got even more dangerous for all of us!" but she couldn't break their spirit of optimism and instead tried to redirect it, blasting the doors with such force to both get their attention on it and weaken its barricade. "GET YOUR HEADS ON YOUR MISSION AND BREAK DOWN THIS DOOR! THE BATTLE IS FAR FROM OVER!"

Charging in unison at the door, they bashed their fists and weapons made of Damascus on the large gate doors, making them creak loudly. Neferti sweated as she watched this, expecting an ambush at any second. Backing away, the Skeletons charged a second time with twice the enthusiasm, this time crashing their armored bodies through the lock, not breaking the interior bar but still forming a large hole that the ram got stuck in.

"D-damn it! ONE MORE TIME! Unjam i-" A sizzling sound crossed the air at the speed of light and the arrow came out through the small hole, puncturing his throat and falling him. "GAAGhht—t!"

The others shouted and roused the ramming. "HE'S INSIDE, BREAKTHROUGH!"

With one final might push, the battalion through and broke down what was left of the gate, but the second they stepped inside with just the impetus of their push, the core of the Temple brightened up in golden light and a thundering sound was heard. "ATOMIC… THUNDERBOLT!"

An authentic lightning storm of golden bolts shot out from deep within the ninth House, petering, stabbing, shooting, and punching holes through the scores of Skeletons, instantly killing many of them and bombarding the entry floor.

Golden sparks of electricity crackled around the Temple's innards, left behind by the force of the archer's punch. "Welcome, Specters of Hades… to the Hall of Chiron! I am Aiolos of Sagittarius, and by the light of Athena, my arrows will punish every one of you for the malice you thrust upon our Temples!"

The surviving Skeletons and the False Specters gawked at the force of the blow that just ran through them. "D-damn him! Attack! ATTACK!" they shouted, shooting crossbow bolts that simply passed through Aiolos' body like a hologram, which in reality was him dodging at the speed of light.

The False Specters charged through and Mandrake Nevil in particular took the initiative, jumping and uncovering his chest plate mask. "STRANGLE SHRILL!"

The powerful sonic blast filled the temple, filling it with an ear-piercing sound that cracked the floor of the Hall of Chiron almost throughout its entirety, as well as making its pillars vibrate dangerously. Aiolos merely crossed his arms and burned his aura, allowing the metal of his Cloth to absorb the resonation, and dodged the punch that came from Nevil that cratered the weakened ground with a jump before landing on him with a kick to the nape that caused the Mandrake to puke out blood.

Cait Sith slingshot himself through the pillars, his claws lengthened into energy nails. "Keep the pressure on him! VANISHING CLAWS!" and he crossed the air with his fingers, releasing a series of crescent-shaped Cosmos beams at the speed of light that seemingly appeared and disappeared out of the air, confusing its target.

Aiolos clicked his tongue and detected the curving patterns and timed a series of leaps, bobs, and rolls to dodge the carving blows which sliced in a deadly manner through the ground around him. He counterattacked with a swing of his fist across the air. "THUNDERCLOUD CLAP!" and a series of thunderbolts patterned along the arm's movement crossed the air as well, zapping Cait Sith, as well as several Skeletons, with a devastating blast of electricity.

They all fell to the ground, their armors leaving a heavy trail of smoke.

Aiolos turned his attention to Elf Rossalier as he staggered a bit. His fist charged another powerful blow. "You're next!" he vowed, swinging his fist. "FEEL THE ARROW OF CHIRON! LIGHTNING BOLT!"

The air was struck by his knuckles, forcing his thunderous powers to focus into a single capsule of power that shot straight through the battlefield, aiming to annihilate the screaming Elf Specter.

A shadow leaped between the Specter and the bolt, pressing her hands onto the ground with a brim of bright cosmos. "OSIRIS' TOMB!"

Aiolos staggered, covering his eyes when the white brim of energy erupted, giving form out of the ground's mass unto a large, thick slab of rock filled with Egyptian hieroglyphs and the sun carving which rose high and took on the Lightning Bolt like a massive shield. The impact was loud, harsh, and powerful, shaking the entire temple, but even though the tomb was broken apart by the almighty bolt, the energy of Aiolos's strike was either conducted down to the ground or ricochet in all directions, blasting pillars and walls of the Hall of Chiron.

Specks of energy erupted into small domes of light that illuminated Neferti's face as she glared up at the Gold Saint. "We finally reach you, Sagittarius. I am Neferti of the Sphinx, one of Lord Lucifer's Five Elites!"

Aiolos squinted tensely, having expected their elite to show up at some point. "I have chosen my adversary, your Holiness."

"Very well, Aiolos. Shura has messaged me that the last few civilians need a little more time to reach his sword's range of protection. You know what to do now. Be careful."

Nodding to himself, the archer then focused his attention on his adversary. So, more time was needed? No problem. Educated as he was, though, Aiolos understood he was up against the Sphinx Specter, a guardian of the Second Prison's Pyramid of Gluttony, so this would be far from an easy fight. He was surprised to see it was a woman, as these were uncommon in the records of Specters, but that would not get in the way of doing his duty to his friends.

He started by stalling a little bit and getting some info out of his opponent. "Lightning Bolt is a powerful blow. I'm surprised your little technique survived that."

The Sphinx was not. "Lightning is said to be the most powerful element, used by Zeus himself, but the element of earth has always been good at nullifying thunder, Gold Saint." She reminded him, before burning her cosmos to summon her harp into battle. "It also will not save you from the feather of Ma'at!"

The remaining False Specters got themselves together and Cait Sith saw the Gold Saint distracted. "Lady N-Neferti is going to battle Sagittarius! Let's make our way up the rest of these Temp-!" An arrow instantly flew across the field and landed on the floor between his legs. "N-NYAH! NO!"

The archer lowered his bow and his sharp blue eyes pinned them in place. "If you wish to move past me, Specters, you have to kill me first!"

Neferti's cosmos burned and her fingers played the opening of her tune. Aiolos staggered, hearing the low-tone tunes infiltrate his ears and feeling his body gripped by the paralyzing force of being suspended unto a strange, overlapping world. He saw Egyptian glyphs flying all around him and a scale emerging between himself and Neferti.

Knowing what this meant, he struggled against this paralyzing force, shaking his arms and legs but unable to move as if he had shackles on his wrists and ankles. "N-no, damn it! If she casts that on me…-!"

"It's no use struggling, archer. Even the Virgo Saint could not be released until he passed the test!" she bragged, though the fact Shaka did end up passing still rattled her. Neferti turned to her men. "Go, NOW! Kill Capricorn and take the tenth House!" and she focused on her prey. "I'll join you soon enough."

The men of Lucifer picked themselves up and nodded in obedience. "Y-Yes, Lady Neferti!"

Aiolos cursed himself as he felt every one of them move past him. "Damn it! Athena forgive me…!" and he tried messaging his allies. "Shura! Be careful! There are enemies headed your- !"

Feeling a message trying to make its way out of her musical hold, Sphinx raised her hand and burned her cosmos, punishing the Sagittarius with a painful shock of energy created by the entropy of the dimension he was trapped in.

She saw him fall to his knees, arms kept raised by its invisible restraints. "Even though Ainsel is gone, we still have our individual ways to suppress your communication, Sagittarius. I would focus on passing the test awaiting you… not that you have much of a chance!" She then finished her enchantment. "Anubis, I beseech thee! Judge this sinner's heart!"

The Gold Saint sweated in nervousness, watching as the pure white feather appeared alongside a projection of Aiolos' heart on each of the scales. Moreover, an illusion of the Egyptian jackal god held its hands above both scales as if about to release their safety lock. If Aiolos didn't pass the test, his heart would be ripped out, killing him instantly.

"You won't get away with this, Specter!" he warned. "Countless innocent people who never raised a finger against you were hurt t-tonight! Even if you kill me…-!"

But Neferti's brown orbs eyed him with disgust. "Innocent? No one is innocent, Sagittarius."

Of course she would believe this. "Your God f-filled your head with lies! Even if people sin, they simply do so by living their lives under his impossible standards! Who would be innocent in the eyes of Hades?" Aiolos argued, having studied Hades' historical accusations back and forth.

But the limited understanding he had of their condition as False Specters undermined his ability to reach out to her. "It's not Hades' standards that are applying here, Saint. It's our own… as Specters of Lord Lucifer." She revealed, surprising him. "The way we see it, nothing about this damn world that has tossed us back and forth between liars and opportunists deserves anything but to live under the iron grip of our master."

He had no way to understand this. "W-what?! If not for that monster, then what has the world possibly done to you to justify this bloodshed, then?!"

"The world has betrayed us, Aiolos of Sagittarius! Originally, our lives on earth were destroyed so that Hades would brainwash us into becoming Specters, but that was a lie unto itself! We were nothing to him but temporary slaves, toiling in the Prisons, slowly breaking our minds by enacting his laws on man, woman, and child alike! We are here to right our destiny, because no other God will give us anything else, after all, we've done!" she revealed. "Under Lord Daemon's guidance, the Specters of the Pride Star will become the masters of this planet. We will forget about the false promises made to us by Gods like Hades and forge a new world with our Surplices and Sanctuary's treasures!"

This sickened the youth! "Then you're nothing but another bunch of selfish cultists! You simply switched Hades for this Daemon Specter! What about all the people you're willing to step over and murder to keep that dreamland for yourself and no one else, then?! What about the unfairness to them?!"

The Sphinx refused to address this. The way she saw it, after all the millions of people she had to punish at the Second Prison in just a few years she thought herself a legitimate Specter, the death and pain they would cause on the surface was next to nothing. "They shall all be judged under the law of Lucifer's strength, just like you now shall be under the feather of Ma'at! BALANCE OF CURSE!"

Anubis' hands lowered, causing the feather and the heart to lower unto the scales. Upon touching them, the scale trembled a bit…

…and almost immediately the heart began weighing down, raising the feather up.

Aiolos gasped and screamed, feeling as if the very muscles and veins of his body were tightening a grip around his core. Powerful, panicked heartbeats resonated from inside his chest.

Neferti lowered her eyes somberly. "I see… so for all your talk, your heart is heavy with sin as well." She concluded. It wasn't long before the weight inside the heart became readable to her. "Aiolos of Sagittarius, you committed many grave acts throughout your life. As a hunter, you took many lives of other creatures of nature. As a Saint, you injured and wounded many of your fellow warriors, and even took many lives in tasks done for Athena. Finally, as a brother,…"

Aiolos winced and panted heavily, feeling his chest pulsating in harsher heartbeats for every sin she read, and his paralyzed arms struggled even more, attempting to reach out to her to prevent her from reading the final part.

The beating was getting louder and louder…

Her eyes rose judgmentally as the information became revealed to her, explaining a lot of interesting things about the Leo Temple she crossed with the others. "…As a brother, you failed your sibling, the cub you've sentenced to live at the 5th House. You imposed a life of loneliness on him, believing it would grant him at least the protection of the Leo House from poverty and destituteness, but instead the House was swarmed by the warriors of Lucifer. Truly, as one who has abandoned his brother… you deserve to die the most painful of deaths!"

Her hand then projected the power of Balance of Curse even more harshly on him and Aiolos screamed louder than he ever had in his life, feeling his chest plate cracking under the force of his heart trying to beat its way out of his body.

Yet, in this darkest of moments, as he felt like he was losing his mind with guilt, he felt in his tightening hand the evidence he needed to stay afloat. "N-no… my brother lives!"

Her hand tensed in resistance projected onto her body by the Gold Saint. "What are you doing?! Surrender to the curse or your heart will explode!"

But the Saint struggled instead and even began to slowly be able to push his arms against the paralysis. All he could think about was the soft lotus petals inscribed with Shaka's message in his hand, which burned in his armored palm as if to remind him of their words.

"Aiolia LIVES!" and his aura began to burn gold, causing his arm to shine.

Golden sparks appeared around her hand, making her wince. "A-AGH! No, it can't be!"

"Burn your cosmos higher, young Gold Saint! And believe in your ideals!" Chiron urged Aiolos.

The young Gold Saint did so and his aura became a bonfire in the darkness of Anubis, causing his heart to lighten more and more on the scale until the two plates balanced each other perfectly.

"S-Sphinx Neferti… even if you endlessly accuse the world of being unfair and try to drown me and Sanctuary in the darkness of your bile and spite, people won't stop fighting to live their lives and prevail over their f-fears… Not everyone will just lose hope as you have!"

She stepped back, increasingly alarmed by the voltage she felt in her hand and tucked her instrument to reinforce her curse. "Y-you… you can't be doing this!"

"B-Burn, my cosmos! Make my fist cross the infinity of darkness!" Aiolos roared passionately, spreading his wings in the darkness and projecting his golden shine in all directions, repelling the telekinetic hold. His fist then thrust. "LIGHTNING PLASMA!"

A shower of lasers fired off in the form of a spreading net of rays of light fired off, overwhelming Neferti with its countless firing angles before she could summon Osiris Tomb. The rays converged onto a single point in her Damascus harp, shattering it into two pieces with a loud bang and a bright flash.

The darkness went away, returning them to the Sagittarius Temple, and Neferti stood in shock at the sight of her destroyed instrument. "A… miracle?!"

The winged Gold Saint stood gallantly, his armor sparking with electricity as he let the lotus petals blow off his hand, thanking Shaka for the gesture once more. "T-the battle is only beginning, Sphinx Neferti. Let's see how you do without the black chants of the Second Prison!"

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Sanctuary

House of Cancer

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The Fourth House of Sanctuary was tense as knives as two strangers to it faced each other for control over this pivotal Temple to the greater battle going on. Burning their cosmos high and projecting their cosmic spirits, the Saint of Gemini and the Specter of Behemoth clenched their gloved fists and assumed their poses, studying each other for weakness.

Only the faint moans of the dead echoing through that necropolis of the House were heard.

That was, of course, until the big shake coming from three Houses below and Saga's 7th sense spoke, telling him of all the energies popping up all over Sanctuary that he was cut off from previously! He detected Aiolos' energy, the Pope's, and even all the people at Rodario and beyond. For the first time that night, Sanctuary wasn't isolated from the outside world by Lucifer's intricate network of communication jammers.

Balancing himself from the quake, Saga understood this could only mean one thing!

Torak clicked his tongue disappointedly, looking around as dust was shaken off the pillars. "Tsk… Ainsel… you got yourself killed, didn't you?"

A triumphant smile filled the Gemini's lips. "Ah, looks like your plans are crumbling down after all. It won't be long before Sanctuary's full might bears down on this mountain. This battle is as good as over!"

The Behemoth, however, met his gaze as he would that of a child who understood nothing.

The youth sterned his eyes in response to this skepticism. "You think you can defeat all of Athena's army, Behemoth? We are not the only Gold-Ranks willing to die for the Goddess. That would be arrogant to assume even for your Prince."

But the tall warrior laughed. "Ah, ah, ah, ah! The False Specters of Lucifer aren't frightened by a bunch of retired warriors, Gemini. We faced the wrath of Hades himself to get where we are!"

The Gold Saint's memory rang at this. "Yes,… your little sob story of being that God's puppets. I understand from Shaka's stories that you derive all your deluded senses of pride, strength, and morality out of having fallen for the obvious lies of an evil God," he provoked. "Do you think laboring in the Underworld gives you the right to subvert justice on the surface, Specter?"

The enemy's smirk only widened. "No… but this does!"

Then, before Saga could even react, the enormous man blasted off from were stood with a single dash burst, instantly covering the distance between them with a darkness-immersed gauntlet and the backgrounding illusion of a bellowing rhino. The startled Gold Saint only had time to raise his armored guard before the mighty punch of darkness sunk his forearm guard into his blocking elbow, pinning him into a burnt pillar with a painful crash of his caped back.

The collision of auras caused air-rippling forces to manifest themselves. The Gold Saint struggled, burning his energies to their maximum to keep the Specter off!

"That is what gives me the right; the strength gained in the most miserable of dimensions in the Cosmos! For if the punishments of Hades' Underworld are to purify the sinful dead and make them worthy of a better lot…" and the Behemoth then drove it to its twisted, purposely un-self-aware conclusion with a knowing smirk. "… are we the caretakers, who suffered the most in it, not deserving of our own Elysium?"

The vicious indulgence in these arguments made Saga sick. "Are you JOKING?!" and he blasted the behemoth off with a powerful swipe before he concentrated the charged cosmos unto his raised hands, which he then tossed, setting the air on fire with golden bursts. "Feel the might of the universe's depths! COSMIC METEOR SHOWER!"

The Behemoth gasped, seeing large meteors of gold energy form in the air and rain down on him. He leaped towards the shower, twirling his body to dodge the flight of these large blasts which bombarded and cratered the floor, setting it ablaze with domes of exploding force that shook the mountain.

Aiming his feet down, the Specter roared and set it ablaze with dark blue flames, dropping down on the Gemini. "BRUTAL REAL!"

Saga barely dodged with a backflip, before landing away from the stomp's blast radius. Out of the smokescreen came the Specter with a speeding uppercut that the Gemini parried with a crossguard. The impact point shook loudly like he took the force of a charging rhino's horn, and Saga gritted teeth nervously.

"Not bad! Not everyone can dodge my kicks!" Torak complimented. "But even the Taurus Saint could only struggle for so long before I had him on his knees!"

Watching the dark blue cosmos flames at the ground cracks, Saga now understood what kind of evil had kept Aldebaran in the battle for so long; he was dealing not only with a Specter drunk in the Underworld's dangerous delusions regarding life and death, but also a genuine self-avenger, someone whose sense of morality had been completely twisted by both the punishments he underwent and the strength he gained through them.

However, just as he pondered this,Saga's body froze with the cosmic signature that flashed through his 7th sense!

What?! Why was he sensing this vast power at the Libra Temple?!

The cosmos he and Shinta had sensed when Daemon Lucifer passed them by at the Leo Temple was now much, much higher all of a sudden. It was like there was a black, winged mass of gigantic proportions at the Seventh House; a balrog of demonic energy standing before four or five much lesser powers, except those lesser powers were gold-rank forces of varying levels like Lance, Aldebaran, Shinta, and Deathmask!

The look on his face must have been easy to pick up on. "AH, AH, AH, AH! Do you feel that, Gemini?! That is the true power of the Prince! It's so great that Garuda Aiacos and Gryphon Minos combined couldn't stop him! His wings are out, and the Pope's minutes are counted!" Torak gloated. There was no other human he could serve but one that reached this insane level. "Ainsel's death does not matter, and neither do the arguments of the weak! The final argument for triumph in this world will always be the cannon of the cosmos!"

Feeling his friends in danger, Saga felt the instinct of trying to Another Dimension his way back to Libra, even if Athena's defenses made him land on some crazy dimension of torture and despair. Instead, he kept his cool and faced the danger he vowed to stop!

The sudden panicked look on the teenager made Torak very happy. "You thought your little plans would work, didn't you? You'd get an idea of how strong the Prince was, send just enough Gold Saints to keep him busy, and then spread the rest of yourselves thin to cover all the bases that we, his Elites, were striking. But you fucked up! He's much stronger than he lets himself appear and now the heart of Sanctuary is within our reach! I'd be a fool not to serve someone as strong as him!" he then charged his dark blue aura, ready for round two. "The Archdevil of Despair has descended on the battlefield! And now… Gemini Saga… we're going to become the first force to ever conquer Sanctuary!"

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Chapter 64

Second Arc

Episode 26 – Finale

Part 1 of 3

The Archdevil of Despair

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House of Libra

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The last few remnants of the green flames of Hyaku Ryu Ha subsided as the Celestial Star of Pride opened his bright red eyes on the battlefield, surrounded by horrified Gold Saint faces. The scaled, draconic wings that replaced his black cape on his Surplice unfurled to expose its blood-red membranes, and the new sets of plates of his shoulders, faults, arms, and knees coursed cosmos down its carvings like an awakening force of nature. His hands, now encased in segmented claws, opened and closed as if to exercise long-dormant muscles and energies before swiping the air, carving the ground from a distance with a loud shearing sound, leaving behind animalistic scars on an already ruined Temple.

Pulling the terrified Deathmask unto himself with his shielded arms, Lance stared at the Damascus monstrosity with revolt and confusion stamped on his face. "W-what the fuck is going on?! I…Y-You're…"

The questions stuck on his enemy's throat made Lucifer chuckle. This was the best part about springing this particular surprise on his enemies. "Mm, mm, mm, n-no, Lance, I'm not dead. You made a good attempt, though."

It was hard for any of them to conjure thoughts in reaction to this. After all the fighting, all the strategies, and all the immense effort to take this bastard down, not only was he back on his feet but also stronger than ever before?! Adorned in a dress of obsidian evil unlike anything they had ever seen, the Gold Saints of Athena couldn't help but feel face to face with the Star of Pride itself, as in the stellar object of the Underworld's sky in all its evil shine, as if its arcane power crafted by Hades himself had been summoned unto the battlefield in its raw form.

Since when could Surplices transform?!

Wiping the blood and sweat off his face, the Specter always delighted in explaining it. "I spent my life under my rival's shadow, punished for failing Judgement Day by being the devil to Michael's angel. Even my Surplice, Daemon, was crafted to be slightly weaker than his, another way for Hades to remind me that, even though we were both his Princes, I was not his favorite." He hissed. "But I'm not the type to just spend my life with a desire for payback and not do anything about it. Surplices have incredible abilities, the least of which that the youth of the Specter is frozen like the passage of time in hell… the rest was a matter of rerouting! Mm, mm, mm!"

Shaka, despite his powers being out of reach at the moment, was the one most in tune with the nature of death and the Underworld and thus understood the fastest. "You… exchanged your Specter immortality for power?!"

"Ah, ah, ah, yes, and it feels great to breathe and age like a human again! But fun and power aren't the only reason! I've also got a third gift!" As if to remind them of the obvious, Lucifer spread out his vast wings, releasing enough force to batter all of them back. "The ability most dreamt by all men who wish to defy the Gods! FLIGHT!"

As if kicking up a true typhon, the wind blasts blew away the rubble around Lucifer and bashed the younger Gold Saints into the air. Aldebaran rushed in immediately and caught Shaka, setting him aside from the battlefield. "Stay here, buddy! Things just got even more dangerous!"

The powerless blonde boy nodded. "B-be careful!"

Crossing his arms against the wind, Shinta tried to charge his power but felt exhausted. The Libra Nunchunks shined out, giving him the strength to resist. "L-Lance, we have to do something! If the mountain's blessings go down for even a minute-!"

The Cancer Gold Saint pictured the result. "I know!... He'll fly straight to Shion!" and he tapped into the Libra Shield's power to help him charge his aura as well, causing his flames to ignite around his feet.

"I am merely drawing into the might that is rightfully mine! This is the true strength of my Evil Star, the animalistic form of the Specter's spirit!" Lucifer ranted, raising his hand dramatically and making cosmos charge in it. "Every one of the Evil Stars could accomplish this if they set their mind to it… which just proves I'm the only one who ever deserved to conquer Sanctuary!"

Picking up a Libra Trident, Aldebaran held it low and charged his bellowing aura. "B-Bullcrap! You're just an arrogant douche bent on making others suffer for his problems!"

The Specter chuckled as they grasped Dohko's weapons. "Do you think those will save you?! You're making the same mistake those two old men made!"

While Shinta and Aldebaran encircled the Daemon, Lance held Deathmask's wrist tightly. "Mephisto, take these spirits and go take cover with Shaka!"

Lance's face as the Gold Saint refocused on the enemy. "W-wait… why are you giving them to me after all this time?!... You're not gonna…"

Lance gulped as he sensed the cosmos in their adversary still rising and rising. He honestly didn't know if he'd make it now. "Just GO!"

Seeing his three adversaries ignite their auras into gold with the Libra Weapons, Lucifer laughed. "Oh my, if I were up against real Gold Saints, I'd start worrying about Athena Exclamation!"

Aldebaran lost his patience and exploded his aura. "HEY, we told you to SHUT UP!" and he thrust the Libra Trident forward in a dash stab. "GREAT…. HORN!"

The shine of the fastest attack in all of Sanctuary, enhanced by the strongest spear, announced the start of the battle with the manifestation of a giant bull charging at the Specter with cataclysmic force.

The Saints beamed hopefully, admiring Aldebaran's strength as the blow collided forcefully on the Specter's defending wing, pushing him back. "Ah, you did it!"

"SLOTH WING GUARD!"

Suddenly, the defending wing brimmed with blood red cosmos and flapped out, repelling the massive beam with a blaming sound that echoed across the air, stunning the Gold Saints. Lucifer laughed and the Saints awed as curtains of gold descended on the mountain, exploding into cascading mushrooms of light that quaked the earth.

Smoke fumed off his fingers and wing scales as he eyed them challengingly. "Please try harder than that. Much harder."

Steeling their resolve and channeling the strength of their Libra Weapons to keep their stamina up, the three Gold-rank fighters burst off the ground and assaulted the Specter simultaneously with a succession of combo strikes, disappearing all four of them into a series of lightning-fast impacts.

The other two boys covered their heads as the air turned into golden and dark purple fireworks. "AH-H! Did you see that?! We're gonna d-die!"

"No, we're not, pull yourself together!" Shaka demanded, ashamed of his second downstairs neighbor. Mephisto acted like he was the one 3 years younger who also lost his powers. "Listen, I need you to focus… I saw what Lance gave you just now!"

Deathmask screamed when a deflected kick resounded quite close to them, blasting the air with a shockwave that nearly blew their hiding spot. "W-what of it?!"

"I have an idea how we can use it, but I can't do anything on my own!" Shaka then also recoiled when cosmos blasts exploded in the air brightly as the fighting grew more intense. "They're way over their heads and if we don't do something, then we really are all going to die! Are you going to help or what?!"

Mephisto had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded anyway, just wanting the frightening battle to end.

Meanwhile, the three Gold Rankers fought desperately to land a blow unto the Daemon, who seemed to be practically dancing between their punches, kicks, and blasts, which despite looking like authentic rays of light with the force provided to them by Dohko's weapons. Objects and surfaces struck by the force of their attacks erupted into small golden domes of exploding light while the air itself seemed to cut in twain by their lightspeed strikes. Yet the man clad in Damascus was moving so fast they felt they were striking an illusion refusing to stay still.

Frustrated, Lance pulled even more cosmos out of his shields and rose his knee up in a clinching strike, which Lucifer merely blocked with the side of his arm. Upon contact, though, the martial artist swung his shield sideways to bash the demon. Lucifer rolled to the side before striking the Cancer's open stomach with a resounding kick that nearly punctured his body, slamming him into the ground. Coming in from the side with a polearm swing, Aldebaran tried to hit the Specter, but Lucifer parried the Trident's edges with his pointy elbow guard, making cosmos sparks fly brightly.

The silver-haired warrior smirked dominantly and pushed the weapon's tip aside to lock eyes with the Gold Saint. "You should have stayed downstairs, Taurus boy… Don't think I forgot you're the reason I got hit by that dragon blast!"

Even though he was using all of his considerable strength, the bull found himself getting pushed back gradually. "Ugh…. And keep getting kicked in the head by your goon?! No, thank you! I'll let Saga handle the rest of the garbage you call your underlings!"

"STAR CHAIN!" shouted Shinta, launching the chained Nunchuck from above like he would a lash of the Andromeda chain. Flapping his wings, Lucifer bashed Aldebaran away with an arm swipe and took to the air to dodge the ground-fracturing chunk blow. Spinning the weapons, Andromeda didn't let up and swung them in the air. "GREAT CAPTURE!"

Seeing the chucks shoot at him like harpoon guns, the Specter twirled his body overhead to dodge the wrapping of its golden links, flying perfectly around the loops and hoops of the technique before charging a single ball of cosmos which then smashed with its claws to fire it like energy shrapnel on them. "DODGE THIS!"

The three Saints gasped and leaped out of the way to escape the bombardment zone, letting the storm of cosmos punish the Temple further with erupting domes of energy. Shinta was struck by the blunt shockwave of it before being caught by Lance.

Landing nearby, the three regroup and charge their energies. "D-Damn it, we're going nowhere fast!" Lance growled to himself.

In his head the situation couldn't possibly get any worse; their entire plan hinged on them being able to take the guy down with the Hyaku Ryu Ha or fighting long enough to get Gold Saints to reinforce them. Now not only did the bastard survive the technique twice already, including a direct hit, but it was looking increasingly likely that only every single one of the Gold Saints gathering at the Libra Temple would put a stop to this madness.

Seeing the face of worry on his friend, Shinta guessed his thoughts. "This isn't over yet! So long as w-we have the Weapons we can still fight and think of a plan!"

"M-maybe, but we need an actual idea." Aldebaran pointed out, watching the Daemon fly over the subsiding explosions. "…He's keeping his flight height low, ain't he?"

Lance had noticed it as well. "There's either a limit to it or we haven't lost the blessings yet! Which means…" and then he lacked the courage to voice his next thoughts to himself, for these involved perhaps forcing the enemy into the path of the blessings with Koryuha. They were running out of ways to genuinely injure the bastard, after all!

Lucifer's fist tightened, feeling the hand increasingly forced into trying something truly radical! Thunder then cracked down loudly from the air, startling them. "I rarely get to remove my limiter to rid myself of my enemies… Have you thought of a plan to defeat me yet, Saints? I hope so! Because nothing fills me more with joy than ruining your little strategies with the full power of this Surplice!"

Wary of the attack being charged, the three Saints assumed combat poses. "Don't you get tired of the theatrical yapping?! We'll let you know of our plan when we spring it on you!" Lance provoked.

A snort followed as Pride Star rose two fingers, through which the vast currents of dark blue electricity coursed down, focusing into a star of purple lightning. "Cutting to the chase, then? Very well… With the Daemon Surplice's true form released, I can also show you the apex form of my techniques! Let me show you, then, the real face of Lightning Fang!"

Raising his fingers, Lucifer's entire armor then unleashed rays of lightning which arched towards the focal point, creating a terrifying star of thunder at his fingertips. The overlapping image of the Daemon manifested itself with a burning world in the palm of its hand and all of Lucifer's ambition to conquer mankind was infused into this thunderous star, causing it to ignite with sheer power hunger.

Their collective 7th senses then spiked in alarm, detecting a truly frightening amount of power. Lance in particular gasped, being especially capable of measuring it thanks to also being a lightning user. "WATCH OUT!"

His wings spread out in mid-air, letting its red membranes shine like power panels, and he rose the star of thunder to the skies. "Scream before the lash of Hell, Gold Saints!" and he whipped the air with the two fingers, setting this new Lightning Fang loose. "GREED LIGHTNING!"

Shooting a massive beam of purple thunder, the ruins of the Libra Temple were then assaulted by a lightning storm of cataclysmic proportions; a Thunder Element attack on a scale none of them had ever seen before, even from the hands of Aiolos. Bolts the size of a God's all-reaching arm seemed to descend on them from the sky in ridiculous numbers and utterly blast the battlefield to pieces, launching entire slabs off the floor into the air, and the Gold Saints screamed as they tried to take cover, sensorily assaulted in such violent manner that they were unsure if they had already been struck down and killed or not.

Violent as the storm attack was, it eventually ended with a final shockwave of sparks, sending black clouds of destruction up the air from the impact zones like an air raid had just gone by.

Lance shook in involuntary fear as he held Shinta down protectively and coughed in the middle of the fumes, but sighed in relief at seeing his friend alright. "A-Are you okay?!"

Shinta nodded, also trembling. "Y-yes… My goddess, that attack! I never felt anything like it!" he swore, unsure how they survived. "SHAKA, MEPHISTO!"

"We're here! I-Is it over?!" the Sicilian boy responded to the ping.

They both sighed in relief again. "Good, the kids are alright. I don't know how we escaped all that. Where's that bastard?!" Lance demanded to know, searching for the flying devil with his eyes. However, he soon paled when he saw the shadow emerging among the fumes.

Shinta also widened his eyes as the fumes dissipated, revealing the reason they all escaped that chaos. "A… A-ALDEBARAN!"

The Gold Saint of Taurus breathed out, his arms spread out as much as possible, like an imposing, protective statue come to life at the sound of Shinta's voice, but his body fumed all over from the countless thunder impacts he took to protect his allies. Having used the Libra Trident as a lightning rod, the young Saint took the brunt of the terrible attack unto himself so his unarmored allies wouldn't be hit.

Wind currents were once again kicked up by Lucifer's wings to clear the smoke and the Specter laughed triumphantly at the sight of his defeated adversary. "So, you sacrificed yourself, Aldebaran! I'm impressed!"

Refusing to go down on his knees, the Gold Saint used every bit of strength to seem strong. "Y-you Specter piece of shit!... W-What's there to be impressed by?! I'm… the Gold Saint of Taurus! Of course I'd use my body to save my c-comrades!"

Shinta's eyes wept at the sight of this and he sneered at the person responsible. "D-Damn you! W-Why are you doing this?!"

The silver-haired devil scoffed arrogantly. "Ah, isn't revenge enough?!"

"REVENGE FOR WHAT?! What have any of us ever done to you?!" Lance roared. "What happened between you and my teacher was a quarter of a millennium ago! None of us living in Sanctuary have anything to do with it!"

"Save for one person, does it not?!" the winged Specter punctured, pointing at the far-off Pope Chambers. "One person who insulted me gravely and happens to hold all of you quite dear to heart! No, I'm afraid this night won't end until all that Aries Shion has spent a lifetime protecting crumbles around him, just like he has done to me!"

The shield-bearing Gold Saint charged his cosmos. "Great, so we're dealing with an insane murderer holding grudges from the times of George fucking Washington!"

The flapping of wings slowed and the red eyes sterned, as if something about this comment made Lucifer lament Lance's ignorance. "Perhaps you're correct,… but what if I told you it goes deeper than even that? Do you count losing your family and home as a mere grudge, Cancer Lance? And being lied to in the most terrible of ways? Priam surely did… he started a whole war against that Lemurian coward over it."

"W-what are you talking about?! You spent the night ranting about conquering this place!" Shinta demanded to know. "And now you're trying to justify yourself by saying we've done something wrong?!"

At this point, the Celestial Star of Pride felt his eyes turn to glass, lost in old moments. Perhaps it was the residual effects of Eternal Darkness, or perhaps something about reawakening his Surplice's energies was making old memories come to the surface, but now more than ever that night he felt in his blood the anger he carried for half a millennium against those Lemurians…

That anger had a form; that of a burning home surrounded by the mob throwing torches at it, while he was carried off by an Altar Silver Saint with a dotted forehead to Sanctuary, a person who had promised him the safety of his family and failed in the most terrible manner imaginable. Moments later, that Silver Saint would get intercepted by Pandora and her Specters, and Lucian would get taken off the Saint's arms into the Underworld to spend five centuries being lied to by another God.

"Shion has gained much from his teacher. That includes the weight of his sins. More than denying me my triumph at the Lost Canvas War, more than letting my ancestor's kingdom fall into disrepair, Aries Shion will pay for the negligence of his Master! Just like you, Lance will pay for the affronts of yours!" Lucifer voiced, merely confusing the Saints even further. He then turned sight on Aldebaran. "Through the Cosmos, we all inherit great gifts from our teachers, ancestors, and past selves, do we not?... Let's start then, with Rasgado's sins against me!"

Aldebaran's heroism was then rewarded with a brutal dive kick from the Specter that smashed the young Gold Saint onto the temple pavement, painfully pinning him.

The Gold Saints rushed at them! "ALDEBARAN!"

Grinding his foot down on the bull, the Specter chuckled. The Eternal Darkness visions were getting better, but he was still seeing occasional flashes of Rasgado in Aldebaran's place "How heroic of you of taking the full might of Greed Lightning, ah, ah! I wish I could ask you at this point what it feels like to be murdered twice in a row by the same man, but you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?!"

Before the boy could properly react to this strange comment, the sight of this drove Lance insane, who sped at the Specter. "GET OFF OF HIM! CHARGE KICK!" and he tried to slam his leg on the Specter, but his unarmored body suffered more pain than it delivered when his overhead kick was parried by Lucifer's swiping arm.

Moving backward while effortlessly blocking Lance's successive punch combos, the Specter shook his head lamentingly at the Saint's foolishness. "IDIOT! You couldn't take me on with your Gold Cloth still intact! Do you think you can still do anything?! You obviously need to learn your lesson again!" and he then slammed his crowned, horned forehead on Lance's face, stunning the teenager, before delivering a cascade of punches all over Lance's body, pummeling.

The Gold Saint dropped back, bruised and bleeding all over, but most of all frustrated at the powerlessness he felt against the Specter's new titanic strength. Charging his cosmos to the max, he struck back with a thrusting punch. "F-FLAME ATTACK!" and the torrent of fire shot out with a distinctive golden lacing in it, empowered by the Libra Shields.

The Pride Star was unmoved, however, and Lance had to watch in horror as the invading bastard simply shielded himself with his wing, like holding off a water gun with his hand. With a forceful flap, the flames were wiped aside, sent to land has napalm bombardment all around the battlefield.

The Saint could only sweat in terror at the sight of this, backgrounded by fiery explosions. Even with the Weapons' help, their strongest attacks were having no effect. How outclassed were they?!

Said strength of the Specter then began focusing once more into purple lightning, this time all over the Specter's fist. This time, the Specter's bloodlust for murdering his enemies was the evil in his heart magnified by his Surplice, coursing down his arm like filaments of crimson that made the purple coloring of his lightning charge grow even darker.

"I told you…. You have to try way harder than that! Let's put those shields to a real test, shall we?! DARK LUST BARRAGE!" and the usual bombardment of armor-piercing Dark Spears this time was unleashed like an authentic downpour of electrified javelins. With blood gushing out his nose, the Gold Saint instinctively rose his two golden shields but found even these mighty defenses hammered mercilessly by the blows' strengths, blasting him backward over and over and threatening to flip the Saint over with the impact force.

Shinta, however, interfered, catching the recoiled Saint and adding the strength of his trailing heels to resisting the javelin firing. "I g-got you! ROLLING DEFENSE!" and the Libra Nunchuck was cast in the usual pillar shielding, which this time sparkled with the shine of stardust thanks to the golden links of the Weapon and combined with the shields to stop the blow entirely.

But the Specter merely laughed and joined his other hand together, transforming his attack entirely! "DARK REVENGE BLAST; OBLIVION!" and what was previously a shower of javelins now fired out in the form of the feared, pressurized streaming beam of darkness and lightning.

As if responding to this threat, the Libra Weapons shined out and manifested their joint strength, forming a dome barrier of shining energy that encapsulated the two Saints and shielded them from the massive beam, which tore at the ground all over its perimeter and filled their sight with dark purple light. Their bodies rattled to the bone, still feeling the force thrust unto the barrier projected unto them, making them scream, and for a second it felt like the entire world would be turned upside down by the force of this beam, which coursed out around them and fired off into the distance like a tidal disaster, exploding all around them and tossing the two Saints back.

With his lowering clawed hands fuming from the beam, Lucifer studied the damage he caused. The two Saints clearly lived, floored as they were, making him curse Dohko for sending these blasted Weapons, but he still felt dominant in the fight. The tiredness he was increasingly feeling from fighting so long was postponed by the Surplice's released reserves of energy and he felt his already superior strength and speed augmented well beyond any of the Saints' reach.

He only had to wrap things up here. With the three more dangerous Saints around down, he took the chance to reassess the battlefield by contacting his two most important Elites. "Neferti, Torak, report!"

It wasn't long before they answered, starting with Behemoth. "It's good to hear from you, Prince. I'm at Cancer, battling Gemini Saga. It won't take too long, though."

"And I have Sagittarius at his House," Neferti added from her end. "…I ran into a bit of trouble with him after he broke my harp, but I got the men past him."

After a quick mental calculus, Lucifer's grin expanded. "Excellent, Neferti, that will keep Capricorn and the others busy then. Keep your trump card at hand for when I give you the signal! This battle is as good as won!"

While the Specter's confidence filled them with morale, Neferti had to ask. "Prince… what about Ainsel? He's… gone! And so are his barriers! Won't this…?"

The Specter looked down the mountain, seeing the smoke coming out of the collapsed Aries Temple. The bug-armored man's cosmos was radiating all across the mountain from it, hinting that he was responsible for the detonation as his last act on this Earth. All signs pointed towards Papillon having been defeated by someone and using some kind of suicide attack to take his opponents out.

His silver brows tensed. Cerah was down there! He had sent Ainsel specifically to get her! While he trained her well, there was no way on Earth or the Underworld that the young girl could have killed an Elite of his, that much her battle with Gryphon Urial demonstrated. Who could have possibly interfered?! And what happened to his student?!

He put this aside, understanding the concerns of his Elites. "We have penetrated far too deep into the mountain for reinforcements to stop me. It's a shame to have lost the tactical edge of the jamming, but its overall strategic goal has been accomplished. Soon I'll have Shion under my boot! Torak, Neferti, keep me posted on the progress of your battles! And don't underestimate Sagittarius and Gemini!"

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

House of Sagittarius

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

Resisting the temptation to put her fingers on her temple to help the conversation signal focus, Neferti limited herself to obeying orders. "Yes, Prince! Long Live the Pride Star!"

Panting from the exertion he subjected himself to and holding the Sphinx Specter at arrow point after shattering her main weapon, Aiolos's sharp eyes noticed the strange movement in her orbs. "I hope you're telling your boss you're surrendering!"

While impressed by his perception, she snorted. "Why in the Underworld should I do that?"

"Your magical instrument is gone, Sphinx Neferti. Without it, you can no longer enact Balance of Curse. I don't wish to harm a harmless opponent."

The brown-skinned woman sighed in resignation, seeing the two shattered pieces of her harp break down into black ash that was then blown in the wind. "Incredible… With Shaka of Virgo, the Feather of Ma'at had deemed him innocent, but you were condemned by it. The power to destroy my harp like that should only have been possible to someone who could tap into the miraculous nature of the cosmos. I didn't think there still lived Saints capable of that…"

"There's no miracle in me loving my brother, Sphinx."

She shook her head. "You shouldn't lower your feat by evoking them, Saint Aiolos. After all,…" and her cosmos began burning, causing her brown eyes to ignite with an unnerving shine. "… you might make me decide not to give you a quick death!"

Aiolos's wings riled and his eyes tensed. Cosmos began to charge in his fingers into his arrow, sharpening its tip. "You're not giving up?!"

Her hands rose in a battle pose as the Egyptian sphinx was projected in the background, creating the illusion they stood in the desert at night. "You truly think I'm powerless without my instrument, don't you? Let me teach you a valuable lesson about the Specters of the Pride Star, Saint Aiolos…" and then her fingers shaped feline claws before they became inflamed with black cosmos. "One that you will never forget! Hieracosphinx STORM!"

The air was then ripped down by them in a cross pattern, firing off crescent waves of black energy trailing towards Aiolos, who bent his legs to dodge. However, the black shockwaves suddenly rose and intertwined like air currents, quickly rising into an enormous black hurricane of slashing cosmos waves that tore the Hall of Chiron apart. Gasping, the Sagittarius Saint burned his cosmos and flapped out of the way, letting the devastating tornado wreck its way across the building into a cacophony of breaking marble.

Landing with a body roll, he aimed his arrow, made it alight with sizzling golden cosmos, and fired! "I warned you!" The missile crossed the length between them nearly instantly, aimed for the woman's headpiece.

But she had another trick in her sleeve and slammed her cosmos-immersed hands into the ground, causing a ritual of energy to form. "OSIRIS' TOMB!" the ritual then geysered its light upwards, causing the ground to birth out an enormous slab of rock inscribed with the sun that took the blow of the golden arrow of Sagittarius, which impacted and compressed its energy against it in a brief nanosecond before bursting outwards, cracking the slab down to pieces but nullifying the blow.

The Sagittarius Saint was flabbergasted. "It can't be!"

Cosmically shockwaving the tomb's rubble away from around herself, the Sphinx Specter caught the Saint with his guard down and thrust her hand at him in this moment of hesitation, "GUARDIAN RIDDLE!" causing a telekinetic grip to catch the Saint by the throat, firmly locking him in place.

Aiolos gasped, feeling his air-restricted and his feet lifted off the floor.

"You strike me as slightly different from the rest of these Saints, Sagittarius Aiolos." She confessed, her burning hand shaking with the telekinetic force her technique was exerting. "You clearly possess great willpower and a remarkable fighting spirit for having achieved a miracle with your cosmos, no matter how briefly. However, we are not ordinary Specters, either. Especially not me."

With the limit of her technique approaching, Neferti then used the grip to slam Aiolos across the Hall and into the ground, through the ground marble plates. Guardian Riddle was powerful, but its strength was sourced in the Sphinx's mythical incantation, which meant the strong telekinetic grip came under the condition of actually asking a riddle in exchange for continuing to arrest them. If she sparse it out, however, she could use it as a temporary way to control her adversary.

Coughing and wrestling out of the marble rubble, Aiolos' grip on his bow remained firm. "I-I see… I clearly underestimated you, then, Sphinx Neferti!"

There was a good reason for this. "I was told by the Dark Prince that, in the previous war, Sphinx Pharaoh fell to your predecessor, Sisyphus. I wouldn't come here unprepared."

But the sharp youth narrowed his eyes. "No, it's more than that! I think I now understand what you said earlier about Hades plucking you out of your lives." He accused. "You're not just a Specter, are you? T-This expertise with the Earth cosmos…You must have been part of the Cult of Ra!"

The Egyptian-themed Specter scoffed. "Well, it didn't take you forever to figure that out, did it?"

The woman was right to be sarcastic; while the religion of Ancient Egypt was mostly dead, this was no different from Hellenism and Sanctuary had a long and rich history of fighting its equivalent of Athena's sanctum, the Secret Kingdom. The Specter was employing techniques inspired by its lore. However, history also taught the dwellers of Sanctuary that the Secret Kingdom was destroyed in the brutal Millennium War; the 11th century period of hostility between the Sanctuary, ruled by Arles I, and it's many enemy factions that also employed cosmos, most notably Asgard.

In the modern period, the Secret Kingdom was a distant memory, as its capital was razed and salted like Carthage in the Millennium Wars while its Pharaonic tombs, which were the source of its religion and a tool to boost the power of the Priests of Ra, were put under the watch of the Lalibela king in Ethiopia, putting a violent end to 3000 years of rivalry between the two main religions of the Ancient Mediterranean.

Stepping out of the rubble, Aiolos was sure of his accusation, but it paradoxically made no sense to him. "Why is a Priest of Ra wearing a Surplice?! The apostles of the Pharaohs believe in the preservation of the dead and the journey to the afterlife! Hades does nothing but desecration!"

She gave him a strange smile, like she was suppressing painful memories. "I owe being left in the hands of Hates to Scorpio Paris… but also indirectly to the Pope, Gemini Akassius and Sagittarius Priam."

The Saint staggered, assaulted by the hypothetical idea of Neferti taking A feeling indirectly called out, Aiolos only grew more intrigued. "My… predecessor? You mean the guy who tried to murder the Pope?!"

She nodded. "Before Priam walked out on Arles, Sanctuary probably didn't know my particular little cell existed; another one in a string of hundreds in Egypt that had been born and died along the last 1000 years in those hot sands. It was common of Silver Saints to ignore such sand weeds… That is why I always wondered what exactly caused that night raid when I woke up in my room to the sound of my brethren being slaughtered by Scarlet Needle bullets."

The cogs began turning in Aiolos' mind. "Now I see. She's a collateral victim of that war Priam caused."

Humans being humans, they continued to seek power throughout time, especially when they unlocked the cosmos by themselves as it occasionally happened. Suddenly an incredible power was born in you after a traumatic event and people naturally sought explanations in what stories they knew. All it took was one charismatic guy that could burn a little bit of Cosmos and set a bush on fire and you could get a whole new religion started.

As a result, countless cults that sought to revive the Secret Kingdom naturally sprung in Egypt and Sudan throughout the second millennium, forcing the Gold Saints to occasionally intervene. The Third World didn't lack opportunities for people to experience extreme emotional traumas that could unlock the Cosmos, and Gemini Akassius declaring war on Black Sainthood all over the world probably lead to overzealous inquisitions that targeted communities like Neferti's.

No more words needed to be spoken by the Specter for the Sagittarius to piece the rest together; with Sanctuary panicking to react to the war, the Gold Saints likely began targeting and destroying any sort of unregulated cell of Cosmos-savvy factions that the Black Saint Priam could have counted on for help, which in turn meant classifying even more people as Black Saints. This cycle of crackdowns and antagonization was one of the factors that helped the war with the Cyrulian Knights boil up the way it did. Sphinx Neferti was perhaps only the first of many ghosts Sanctuary would have to deal with in the future as a consequence of those events.

"I was a disciple, one of many children taught the lost traditions of the Secret Kingdom." Neferti continued. "Sanctuary was only concerned with destroying the ones that could use cosmos, so I was left in the villages to starve afterwards, since I was no longer in danger of becoming a Black Saint ally. But it's never that simple, Gold Saint… Hades found me, like he finds every dark soul, and preyed on my feelings of loss. He told me death was not meant for me yet and gave me this Surplice to wear. He wanted me to use my background from the cult to become a powerful Sphinx Specter. In exchange, he'd give me closure, and eventually paradise….All lies, of course. I instead spent the next decade made to violate everything the Priests taught me and being tormented by Pandora!"

In other circumstances, Aiolos would likely feel sorry for her. However, he was now head-to-head with an enemy invader wearing a Surplice.

"Maybe the Houses of Sanctuary made mistakes, yet you've gone down a path of even deeper resentment! If you know suffering, why do you seek to cause it to others with what you have left of your life?!"

The Sphinx, however, disagreed with the way Aiolos framed it. "I don't seek suffering; I seek to rewrite the world and it's injustices" She recalled, remembering well the moment she got to feed those bastard Priests to Cerberus. "Hades twisted me. I spent years doing horrible things, punishing others who bore no fault in what happened to me. Innocent people, whose worst sin was eating the cooked flesh of a dead animal to survive. Hades called it Gluttony… but even children paying for the sin of drinking their mother's milk were handed to me to take to Cerberus."

The Saint staggered, assaulted by the hypothetical idea of Neferti taking Aiolia by the hand to be fed to a monstrous three-headed dog.

She began burning her cosmos again in preparation for more fighting. "Hades will have his turn on the chopping table, but this would never have happened if you Gold Saints didn't start murdering each other and everyone that abetted your enemies! I don't just blame Sanctuary destroying my community.… but also for leaving me in the grasp of that lying, sadistic Olympian God and for failing to have the strength to kill him sooner!"

"No, you're wrong!" Aiolos protested, swiping his hand. "Perhaps the Gold Saints weren't in a position to help you afterward, and for that, we are sorry-"

"- Only because it has now made you an enemy, Sagittarius!" she interrupted, stepping towards him with her cosmos menacingly rising. "An enemy that tonight will destroy everything these Temples stand for!"

But the Sagittarius was adamant. "No, we are sorry because even Gold Saints aren't omnipotent, as much as people think otherwise! I should know!" he stressed. "When you used Balance of Curse, you claim you saw the guilt I feel about Aiolia, but you must have also seen everything we've done and still do to make up for our powerlessness!"

This made the woman suddenly pause and irk.

Aiolos narrowed his eyes, knowing he was homing in on something she was deliberately trying to ignore. "Sphinx Neferti, you're making the same mistake as the God you claim to no longer serve; Hades blames humans for not being all-knowing and all-powerful, for stepping on insects they cannot notice while playing with their children in the grass and for pressing themselves unto nature when they can't help but feel hungry and cold. Do you truly believe in your heart that Scorpio Paris could have gone further to save you?! And if you do, what does a single man's mistake prove about the entirety of humankind?!"

This time, the Sphinx hesitated for real, manifesting her frustration in the offended grinding of teeth and the chaotic burning of her black aura. Long lost feelings of confusion she felt growing up as she tried to understand how she got to where she was resurfaced, muddling the waters of her beliefs.

"But, most importantly, what does you coming back to help murder all our men and women in the name of one Specter's ambition show about yourself?!" Aiolos pressed on. "Did my brother deserve to be terrorized tonight, or Aldebaran threatened? Or did those Guards who died defending the Aries House deserve the massacre you subjected them to?!"

She had enough, raising her hands to cast her technique. "ALL will be done to help the Prince set the course of destiny right for us! The Specters of Lucifer refuse to be the only ones sacrificed in the name of the Gods' justice! Perhaps you did not deserve the Feather of Ma'at, Sagittarius Aiolos,… but your uncaring Goddess does!" and her fist thrust at him. "Androsphinx KNOCK!"

The image of the giant sphinx emerged behind her, its eyes shining hypnotically, and a large, blunt shockwave of dark cosmos fired out, assaulting Aiolos' whole body with the force of the guardian's Sphinx's powerful rejection, which denies access into the sacred lands to all trespassers, from where she stood and blasting him back into the rubble.

Having knocked him down, her rant continued. "Although I guarded only the Second Prison, in the Underworld, I've heard stories of Cocytos, where dead Saints lie for raising their fists at the Gods, but did you know, Aiolos, that Specters also speak of those who Athena blesses with reincarnation?" she asked. "So if she so wished, the very law of the Book of the Dead could be subverted, but Athena gives her blessings to those of use to her while letting injustice rule supreme for everyone else. So don't speak to me of Sanctuary's honor, Sagittarius! Guardian RIDDLE!"

Once again gripping the Gold Saint's body with the powerful paralyzing technique, pressing his armored thorax and lifting him into the air.

"You have misjudged the strength of my background, Aiolos of Sagittarius! Sphinx Pharaoh may be the real Celestial Beast Star, but by the power of Anubis, the spirit of the sect of Ra still lives on in my blood! Just like the Athenian Emperor lives on in the Prince's!"

Aiolos widened his eyes, suspended in mid-air. "W-What?!"

Confidence returned to her. "As you can see, there is much you don't know yet, Saint Aiolos! Long ago, the spirits of the Sphinx and the Bennu may have been stolen by Hades from Egypt to form his army of Evil Stars, but the army of Daemon Lucifer will defeat him, Athena, and any other God that has raped mankind's soul without reprisal!"

The Saint struggled, picturing in his head the ruthless chaos these insane Specters wished to cause. "H-have you gone mad?! You want to destroy the peace on Earth with the Gods that Athena has fought to gain?!"

Her lips curved upwards. "What peace is that, that gets broken whenever Poseidon escapes his urn or Hades returns from his sleep? They're only armistices waiting for humans to get soft! Hear the words of a False Specter well before you fall, Aiolos; the Gods wish nothing but our permanent shackling and destruction. The Prince has the only answer to this, the same ancestor his ancestor had; to take the fight to them!"

The Saint grabbed his neck as if fighting against someone strangling him invisibly. "Y-your ambition will drag countless innocent people who only wish for happiness and peace into danger… and prove the Gods right about our barbarity! I… I r-refuse to let that HAPPEN!"

But Sphinx Neferti's grip was powerful and her spirit and trust in the Prince's plan unshakeable. "That's right… we can all trust in the Prince's plan! We've all wagered our lives and souls on it! He will take over Sanctuary, become the Emperor, and with the help of the Godslayer armors, put a permanent stop to the Olympian lies! Andromeda, Pegasus, Dragon, Cygnus… and even Phoenix will serve us! They must!"

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

House of Capricorn

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

With less than a dozen men remaining, Mandrake Nevil, Elf Rossalier, and Cait Sith Palug crossed the sets of stairs leading in an upwards zigzag towards the tenth Temple. With Sagittarius' arrows no longer raining down on them, there was a sense of renewed optimism in the force of ghastly warriors, but also caution in the knowledge they no longer had the Prince and his Elites leading their charge. Still, with only three Gold Saints of dubitable experience left to go against them and with their battle strategies carefully prepared ahead of time by the Prince, they all distinctly felt only a final push of courage was needed to accomplish what no one ever has; becoming the first non-Saints to reach the Colossus.

Coming before the Temple, they awed at the sight of the building; its triangular entablature was narrower than Sagittarius, with only the width of the gate and the six supporting pillars beneath it, but adorned by the statue of the sea goat and engravings of swordsmen on the flanking walls reaching towards the mountain road ends made it look threatening beyond its size.

They came before its doors. "Alright, we've done it! The tenth temple of Sanctuary!" Elf Rossalier cheered.

As a cold night breeze flew by, Cait Sith Palug couldn't help but look down at all the stair steps they crossed and immediately felt dizzy, seeing an unending snake of marble going through several Temples either sporting the Pride Star's flag of conquest or being ruined to the ground.

"W-We're up so high! I feel like I could fall rolling down these stairs any second!" he complained. "Why are the jamming barriers gone?! Did Lord Ainsel die?!"

Elf sweated inside his helmet. "Most likely… which means the Gold Saints are going to start communicating with one another… and telling how many of us are left."

This comment triggered a wave of nervousness in the small group, who exchanged looks of anxiety and fear. They had started with over one hundred fiercely armed skeletons and almost a dozen Specters, including the Prince and four Elites. They had come incredibly far from standing at Giudecca pretending to honor that lying bastard Hades, but at one point it was impossible to ignore how much they had shrunk in size trying to get past all these stubborn Gold Saints.

Kicking the doors open with such force that the lock was blasted across the building, Mandrake Nevil waved his command with his arm. "If you're afraid, then stop lounging and attack! The sooner we get to the pope, the sooner you can direct your complaints at the Prince! If you dare!"

The battalion carefully walked inside, welcomed by floors and pillars of green-tinted marble. The Skeletons kept their scythes, crossbows, and siege equipment in hand. Despite Mandrake's rallying, they were all acutely aware of where they stood and who guarded this House; one of the most feared Gold Saints in the Underworld other than Virgo and wielder of the hated sacred sword Excalibur, the Capricorn Gold Saint.

Expecting blades of light to come flying off the air, bursting from the ground or shot across the horizon of the Hall, they eventually reached its inner sanctum, upon which the fabled statue of Athena handing a sword to a warrior was erected.

"A statue in the middle of a House?"

"Isn't this a place of battle?" asked another Skeleton.

"Yes, but temples to the Goddess of War have as much room to honor her in art as they do in a duel!" someone voiced, stepping out from behind the artifice. "Welcome, Specters, to the Hall of Cyrul! In this place named after the first wielder of Excalibur, your dreams of defiling Sanctuary will come to an end!"

They all braced their weapons. "WATCH OUT!"

"IT'S THE GOLD SAINT!" a crossbowman shouted, aiming his weapon. "Get on your knees, Gold Saint!"

Fearing a warrior not unlike the legendary Legionnaire of Light, Capricorn Achilles (or as he was now known as Kirin), the False Specters of Lucifer were surprised to find a relatively short person, a teenager perhaps, of green eyes and wild black hair under a horned helmet emerging with a fluttering cape.

Shura scoffed at the demand, and turned an especially spiteful eye at the grime they dragged inside his pristine House with their boots. "So, you're the rabble that has attacked us… the one that made all the innocent servants of Sanctuary flee up to my Temple. Vile fiends…" and he slowly raised his tense hand. "You'll be cut off your feet and blasted off my temple before you hit the ground!"

Cait Sith stepped forward. "We'll see about tha-!"

"EXCALIBUR!"

The feline Specter yelped in fright as the thin space between horizontal tiles right in front of his foot suddenly geysered out a wall of shining light, slicing through the tiny tip of his clawed boot and touching the ceiling before falling back down like the water of a park fountain.

Falling on his ass, the slit-eyed Specter gawked in terror at the sight of his fuming toe.

The teenager rested his blade arm horizontally, warning them. "I told you, Specters… this is where your invasion stops! As Athena watches me from that statue, not one of you will step out of this temple."

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

House of Cancer

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

Launched across the Hall of the Dead, Saga crossed his arms defensively just in time to stop the massive pursuing punch, which impacted him with enough force to hammer him back to the ground, gasping out blood. Tumbling over to dodge an ax kick, Saga rose back up to fire the biggest blast he could charge in this short chance, striking the Behemoth back with the scalding strength of a crashing meteor. Dragging his heels back on the ground, the rhino warrior flexed his huge arm and bashed the blast off of him, making it wreck across the Hall's pillars.

With a martial shout, he then engaged the Saint in midair in melee, launching powerful punches and kicks that put the significantly weaker Gold Saint on the defensive. Saga backed away with the force of each grazing parry, eventually landing on his heels. But the assaulting Specter comboed ruthlessly against him, exploring his defenses for weaknesses. Suddenly backed against a pillar, he gasped and saw a giant fist coming towards his face!

But the fist went through nothing, or rather a Saga vanishing into strange grids of light, and it collided with the pillar harmlessly! The Specter widened his eyes in alarm. Time slowed down as the grid reformed right next to him, materializing Saga out of Another Dimension with a ball of cosmos in his hand that he smashed against the Specter's stomach, blasting him back.

Braking with his heels, the Specter coughed and fired a blast back at the charging Saint, but it got deflected with an arm block. The Behemoth stood up and shot multiple rays of black light over and over, but Saga's body seemed to phase in and out of reality as if he was striking a ghost.

Frustrated, the Specter blocked Saga's powerful cosmos punch with his armored elbow, feeling the impact shake his skeleton. "Ah ah… that's b-better! You look so prissy, but you're even stronger than Taurus, aren't you?!"

The Gemini Gold Saint clicked his tongue as he pressed the fist onwards, pushing back the Specter. "You were just stupid enough to try rapid-fire attacks on me; Sagittarius Aiolos has more than trained me for that kind of attack!"

"How about heavy artillery, then?!" and the Specter swung his other fist at the point-blank range target, only to go through Saga again and smash the floor.

Saga smirked, reappearing in mid-air above the vulnerable Specter with wrists already crossed above head. "Got you! Time to end this! Galaxian -!" And the annihilating energies from another reality were summoned at the crossroad between his hands before Saga aimed down his palms, targeting Behemoth.

But the Specter suddenly exploded in darkness! Or rather the ground he pinned his fist on erupted with lunging shadows around the Behemoth, reaching upwards like a terrifying array of reaching hands!

Slivers of black fabric wrapped around Saga's fingers, then his palms, wrists, and forearms before tightening harshly "-EXPLO- Gah!"

Behemoth laughed and closed his hand burning in cosmos, causing the fabrics of shadows to further sliver their way up and around Saga's body, wrapping him up like a present! He then freed his arm and flung it overhead, causing Saga to get tossed against the ground harshly by the fabric, which began taking the shape of black chains.

The massive Specter's hand shook as it projected the technique. "Do you feel it, Gemini? The hands of the dead choking the breath out of you? Shadow Sewing!"

The blue-haired teenager gasped out, feeling the hands of black fabric course up his body and armor-like shadows on his skin, slowly wrapping around his neck.

The Behemoth had to barely burn his energies to cause this. "I bet you thought you caught me at a disadvantage, Gemini Saga,… after battling such a stubborn Taurus Saint, anyone would be winded, right?" Torak bragged. "But you forgot something… I am strong, and Aldebaran is not! Besides, look around you!"

Though he could barely turn on the ground, Saga's eyes did search his surroundings, and that's when he saw them! All over the ground, shadows much like the ones that spawned these chains were oozing off the floor! "The Cancer House…!"

"The Hall of the Dead, is what they call this place, right?" Torak asked. "This is the worst battlefield you could have picked to intercept me on, Gemini. This House reeks of the dead. Here, rather than in Athena's land, I feel like I'm back in the Underworld, toiling away in Hades' Fifth Prison like the fool I was! You'd be better off waiting at Leo for me to find you."

Charging his dimensional powers, Saga escaped the grip of the shadows. "A-ANOTHER DIMENSION!" Using the technique to replace the reality of his body with another, he seemingly dropped through the gripping shadows before solidifying himself back into their shared world, letting him roll off the floor away from the pursuing chains of darkness rather than sink to the Earth's core.

Paying attention to his tricks and its weaknesses, Torak prepared a heavier charge of cosmos in his free hand while commanding Shadow Sewing with the other. As soon as Saga got enough distance from the lashing shadows, Torak made them shoot out at him like harpoon firing, forcing the Gemini on the defensive in the form of even more elaborate and acrobatic dodges. After a particularly impressive jump across twelve different shadow tentacles that collided with one another, Torak predicted Saga's landing and smashed the cosmos onto the floor "TITANIC STOMP!"

Saga gasped, realizing he landed on a trap as the floor beneath him was set alight, and he braced himself to take the explosion of cosmos that shockwaved out the floor, sending him spiraling through the air along with a landing roll.

Behemoth lowered his hand and casually pursued the downed Gemini. "So maybe Shadow Sewing won't work so well on you, but your dimensional tricks won't be used when you're landing, will they? We don't want to end up half-stuck on the ground. That's a nice blind spot for me to exploit."

Grunting, the blue-haired teenager rose to meet his foe with more than a few injuries. He should have known the guy that delivered such a beating on Aldebaran wouldn't be easy. Clearly more than strength, the Behemoth had observational skills on par with that of a Saint. This in turn meant that he'd likely only get a few shots of Galaxian Explosion in before the enemy uncovered a weak spot. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that his early attempt to use it in a non-critical moment meant he still had his trump card to use.

However, Saga could feel how critical things were getting at Libra; Aldebaran's cosmos was practically gone and he could barely feel Lance and Shinta's anymore, while Daemon Lucifer felt like an all-towering beacon of burning evil eyeing down all of them. He had to get rid of this guy as soon as possible so he could quickly Another-Dimension back to Libra, even running the risk of going against the blessings. Sanctuary's survival depended on him!

He charged a bright ball of cosmos in his hand as if he was going to beam it at the enemy. He was only going to get one shot at this strategy. "I didn't think the Underworld had such hard-trained warriors."

"It doesn't. I'm a rare exception." Torak confessed. "Traditionally Specters abhor the grime of battling and war since it opposes Hades' pacifist ideals. It's partly why our strength is given to us by the Surplices; so that we do not become the violent lovers that the Underworld God abhors."

Saga saw an opening for a provocation. "Ah, I was always taught it was because it was easier to just inherit the strength you already had in previous wars! Why work for what you already had, after all?"

Torak's eyes were sterned. "That is the other part of why… Even my strength is partially owed to the efforts of Behemoth Violate memorized into her Surplice. I cannot deny that."

The Gemini Saint was a bit surprised about why the Specter would openly talk of not being the REAL Behemoth. "So, no pretensions of being the real thing anymore, uh?"

"The others told me that Virgo figured it out. With Ainsel gone and the barriers dropped, it's pointless of me to expect you Gold Saints not to be talking with each other about it." Torak rationalized. "But hey, that makes us equal, does it not?"

Saga blinked. "What?"

And the Specter chuckled. "Don't you agree? You Gemini Saints are kind of the same as us in a small way. Among the Saints, you exist in perpetual self-justification of your presence, trying to pretend you don't have the stink of your god's spite on you while training and studying to rise above all the legitimate Golds as a compensation mechanism."

A short beat of nervous silence followed from Saga, not liking the way this conversation was heading. "What the hell do you think you know about me?!"

Sensing he hit a raw nerve, Behemoth continued. "Ainsel told me about your Temple's original name. The 'Hall of Sparta'… Tell me, Gemini, how does it feel to know you were born under a cursed star sign, bound to a cursed dagger and forever condemned as a Saint to prove you're not just a mindless Berserker that Athena took pity on?!"

With his mane of blue riled up and his eyes frozen in anger, Saga's aura erupted furiously, causing the orb of cosmos he had already charged to swell. He didn't take this kind of talk from Kanon, and neither he would from this ignorant Specter. "You will be quiet now…"

Torak presented his side in a battle pose, smirking.

Blasting off from where he stood, Saga rose the orb high, seemingly with intentions of blasting the Specter to dust. Anticipating this, Torak's dark blue aura burned, summoning the powerful weaving of Shadow Sewing to capture this Gold Saint. What a fool. To think the army most feared in the Underworld other than Athena's were these war-worshipping cavemen.

Targeting the arc of Saga's flight, Torak sprung his trap. "SHADOW SEWI-!" But Saga suddenly made the orb he charged burst out without firing it, painfully blinding the Specter and flash-banging the entire temple, wiping out the shadows he was attempting to manipulate. "AGH!"

With the Hall of the Dead swallowed in white, the Gemini Gold Saint swung his leg as hard as he could, striking the Specter's neck with enough force to break that of any weaker man's, stunning the Behemoth and spinning him around. With wrists crossing above head, Saga's cosmos peaked and he preyed on the huge opening, shattering the border between dimensions to unleash the energies the anchored the universe itself to space and time. "GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!"

The powers that washed over the recoiling Specter then struck him unlike any other blow ever had. More powerful than Great Horn and more violent than Gigantic Feather Flap, the destructive currents of light ran him through over and over, blasting chunks of his Surplice off and exposing his mortal body to the gargantuan forces that chained entire solar systems to their cosmic patterns. Torak screamed, crushed between worlds of light and darkness, and Saga landed triumphantly to watch the flashbang dissipate and reveal a Specter spiraled by a hurricane of cosmos into an explosion of golden power that shook the entire Cancer Temple, sending red-tinted marble everywhere.

Saga dropped to his hands in tiredness, having placed way more power into that attack than usual and trying to absorb the reverberating shake of the Temple.

Has he done it?!

The ground then began shaking.

Saga staggered, seeing everything move up and down. "Damn it, another earthquake?! What's going on in this Temple?!"

From the moment Torak was smashed by the unrestricted cosmic attack, the Cancer Temple begun reacting in a frightening manner, fluctuating the reddish tone of its marble, seemingly twisting its otherwise leveled flooring into dizzying paths and generally alternating between reality and an Escherian nightmare. The flames and rubble moved up and down like tidal waves without actually changing their physical relationship with the floor. The pillars twirled into serpentine forms without dropping the damaged ceiling and Saga felt himself losing balance on a ground that seemed to swing left and right, forcing him to hold on to the floor in an effort not to drop to the side.

More worryingly, the darkness of the night seemed to be intensifying and the air grew even colder as the spirits of the damned rose off the ground in the form of green will-o-wisps. Had he somehow taken a step into the Underworld?

Amid this chaos, Saga gasped when he found himself in the middle of a time-compression event and the barrier of reality was being distorted, conflicting with another time, in this case, the stale time flow of the Underworld. Events from the Temple's future and its past began flowing in, showing him strange sights he could not comprehend of future and past Gold Saints, their context influenced by the Hall's role as Sanctuary's connection to the Yomotsu Hirasaka!

He saw the coffins of Deathtoll littering the ground in a strange battle before vanishing away like a distant memory.

Then he saw what seemed like an adult Deathmask being confronted by a Dragon Saint?! This, in particular, stunned him, for not only had this Bronze Cloth not been earned by anyone in ages, but the walls of the Hall looked morbidly decorated with countless human faces! This confusion, however, quickly was replaced with a painful migraine as time bounced back into the past and the memory of looking into the future receded off the Gemini like a snapping rubber band.

In a closer rebound to the past, Saga landed before a lone Cancer Saint, probably the one immediately preceding Lance, sitting in the middle of the Hall, staring at Karkinos in its rest form with pale blue wisps dancing in his palm. Darkness surrounded the young man, likely that of a night much like Saga's present, and a multitude of enormous, cerulean spirits that burned like large, flying fires surrounded him, whispering words into his ears as he lay isolated from his friends.

The blue-haired Gemini felt his chest tighten terribly as if he could somehow tell that, of this moment, one of Sanctuary's most tragic and violent betrayals would occur.

"This moment… I know this!" The Gold Saint raised his head, freezing Saga with his mad, soul-chilling eyes!" The Gemini screamed and tried to move, but felt pulled by the currents of relapsing time "He can see me?! I-Impossible!"

Fool!

Nothing is impossible!

And the Gold Saint's hand reached out, turning into a five-fingered burst of ectoplasmic flames that would burn Saga's soul to a crisp!

Just as it was about to wash over Saga with familiar screeches from beyond the grave, including that which felt insanely close to that of his mother and brother pushing him out, time rebounded back, violently tossing Saga back into the present, where he landed with a harsh roll back in Cancer Lance's era in that House!

He was bewildered, to say the least, and felt a coldness piercing his chest into his heart like everything he held sacred had been violated! The things he saw in the future were gone, but the ones from the past stayed very vividly, filling his head with questions. "What just happened? How did I…. see through time? And was that… the murderer of Sanctuary?! H-how… how could he see me back?! That should have…"

The pile of rubble at the end of the attack's path began being moved off and, to Saga's frustration, a surviving Behemoth Torak rose from the ruin, pushing aside a large slab of rock. He bled from top to bottom and much of his Surplice was cracked or gone. "N-Now you've done it, Gold Saint…"

Seeing the Specter also struggling to balance himself, Saga took mild comfort in the knowledge it wasn't him going nuts. "W-What is going on?! Did you do this?!"

The Behemoth scoffed. "M-me? W-What did you think would happen, Gemini, when you fired an attack that can tear through the fabric of realities in a Temple so closely connected to the Underworld Well? Now this House is even more like a Prison…!"

Assuming a battle stance, Saga charged his cosmos to finish this guy off. "Allow me to put an end to the source of tonight's chaos, then, Specter!" And he blitzed at the Behemoth, targeting his exposed body parts with a fist carrying the power of intersected dimensions. "GALAXIAN-"

Shadows erupted from beneath Torak's feat, enveloping him, and his hand rushed up at unprecedented speeds, catching Saga's wrist in mid-air.

The Gold Saint gasped, halted, the cosmos in his hand cut off. He paled as he saw Torak's armor completely repaired in real-time.

"You fool, have you forgotten?" the tall warrior mocked, smirking. "The realm of the dead is my domain! BRUTAL REAL!"

The foot empowered with blue flames then blasted Saga, kicking him into the ever-expanding vortex tearing between the Cancer Temple and the Underworld!

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

House of Libra

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

Deathmask peeked above the rubble mound and saw nothing but a battlefield of black smoke hovered by the cackling Specter. He sweated all over, realizing the extent of the danger he was in. "H-Holy shit, I think he nuked them! I can't sense any of their cosmos"

"Get down from there!" Shaka demanded, practically pulling him off the mound by the shirt before Lucifer spotted them. He held the Sicilian's wrist tightly, which was burning a bright white due to the spirits Lance passed unto Mephisto. "You need to focus on these or we're all dead!"

The purple-haired boy was a little skeptical. "W-what the hell do you want me to do?! Did you see what kinda attack that guy fired?! And he ripped the Cancer Cloth to shreds! These souls aren't gonna do crap against him!"

The younger boy frankly felt like slapping Deathmask, but he doubted that would get him to listen to reason. "That's not true. The majority of these are grunts that Lance collected on the way, that is true, but there is one exception; counting among them is one of Lucifer's elites, Alraune Lemon!"

This time, Deathmask stopped panicking for a bit to listen. "… Okay… so what?!"

Shaka's eyes were sterned. "So, we are going to balance that murderer's karma a little bit!"

Meanwhile, back at the smoke-screened crater that was the Hall of Balance, Lance's world shook in the clouds of smoke lifted up by the Oblivion beam. His entire body hurt and he was spread across the ground, feeling sparks coursing out his limbs into the floor. He tried to grip a rock to lift himself but felt as heavy as the shields on his arms.

Shinta crawled over nearby. "L-Lance, are you alive?!" he cried out mentally, having clearly felt the Cancer Saint taking the brunt of the blow for him. "P-Please answer!"

With a grit of his teeth, the Saint rolled over. "(I… I a-am! Keep your talk shielded!)" though the last thing he remembered was trying to tank the attack with his shield and wishing under the excruciating shock and smashing that he was dead.

God, what just happened?! They were combining the power of their Libra Weapons to resist Lucifer's attack, and then the barrier shattered with the force of the beam, and Lance felt no choice but to hold up his shields and pray. Now it was nothing but smoke all around them and everyone could be dead for all he knew.

He tried pulling more energy out of the mystical objects, but when he felt only half the power coming out. He looked down to see the main shield that took the beam, the right one, was half-melted and starting to scald towards his arm.

He dropped it in a panic with a loud clang before the molten metal burned him. "(F-fuck! He's really not kidding around! He took out one of my Shields!)" He then widened his eyes when the obvious implication of the sound he just made hit him. "SHIT!"

Rolling to the side as fast as he could and hiding his cosmos, Lance dodged with the width of a hair the shearing javelin of purple thunder that then blew past the smoke clouds and blasted the ground, shaking the ruins.

Laughing and summoning another with a simple spark, Lucifer's red eyes searched the smoking chaos from the air. "Ah, ah, ah… go ahead, make another sound!" he provoked, fully intending to just blow away the smoke with his wings as soon as he felt too stalled. He spotted a shadow dashing along the edge of the smoke clouds and span the javelin menacingly before hurling it "THERE YOU ARE!"

Blowing past the clouds of smoke, the empowered Dark Spear struck through metal, blasting the discarded Taurus Cloth across the ruined Hall!

Lucifer widened his eyes!

"TITAN NOVA!" an injured Aldebaran roared from the other side of the Temple, holding the Trident high before stabbing the ground with everything he had. Fissures of light broke in all directions as the unarmored Taurus collapsed in exhaustion, before the energy geysered violently, erupting the entire battleground's floor into the skies.

Struck by the air quakes, the flying demon rattled, nearly losing his flight balance, and found himself in the path of several flying boulders. "Why, you deceitful little-… DARK LUST BARRAGE!" and his fist fired the enormous ballistae rain of dark punches, obliterating the bombardment of rock to pieces in fast succession.

Amidst the dark thunderstorm, however, a larger boulder shone with the barrier cast on it deflecting the spear blasts, catching Daemon's attention, who immediately realized someone was hiding behind it.

"Do you think you can fool me?! I'll riddle you with Dark Spears!" And once more he launched the powered-up technique, this time focusing on this boulder clearly protected by the strength of a Libra Weapon, but although the massive object was blown to smithereens by the colliding heads of thunder that blinded the air, Lucifer was once again stunned to find it void of enemies behind it! "What?!"

Golden thunder emerged from above! "L-LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!" and Lance's joined hands hammered the Libra Shield down on him right in the unprotected rear of his head, finally landing the first blow on the empowered Lucifer and sending him spiraling back down. The tiered distraction worked!

Landing on his hands and knees with a tumble, the Specter groaned and held his head, furious and feeling the world-shaking, but had to quickly roll around to dodge the collapsing bedrock that Aldebaran had sent flying. Already forming a spear of lightning, he was about to hurl it at the airborne Lance but found himself in the path of a Libra Nunchunk's chained end being shot at him in the core of a large energy beam from Shinta. "STARDUST CHAIN!"

Charging his aura, Lucifer quickly stabbed the ground with the thunder javelin at an angle to parry the incoming blast with the ground's anchoring force, before deflecting the huge beam aside with a skillful twirl of the energy pole construct, landing the tip of the chained blow far off aside. Lucifer then grabbed the retracting golden links and hurled it up with a roar, launching Shinta off the floor with a scream and slapping the falling Lance with the Andromeda Saint, crashing them both onto the floor.

The two Saints irked and lifted each other up. "D-Damn it, even the Libra Weapons aren't doing shit anymore!"

Shinta gasped, seeing Lucifer charge two balls of cosmos, and rushed Lance out of the way. "WATCH OUT!"

With a cackle, the Specter then fired the cosmos off his hands in rapid succession, sending a furious machine firing of blasts at them that the Saints were forced to escape from by dashing along the far side of the battlefield, trying to outrun the collision bursts. With a trail of destruction covering the horizon sending the two Saints flying, the Daemon basked in its evil light, letting Shinta and Lance land before him with exhausted screams. "AH, AH, AH! RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS, DOHKO'S STUDENT?!"

The pained shield warrior gritted teeth and refused to stay down, lifting himself at least on his feet to face the Specter.

The Specter smirked. "It's time to end this, isn't it?"

Meanwhile, Deathmask tried to follow Shaka's instructions, concentrating the ectoplasm into his palm. "Look, I know what you're planning, Shaka! I've seen this move once at Cancer after I read it off the manuals, but this was used, like, one time with all the ghosts of a Holy War!" he protested in a whisper, not seeing the use of it. "And it didn't even kill the other guy!"

"The other guy was a GOD, that should tell you all you need to know, and Lucifer is very much human! It's going to work!" Shaka insisted, trying to keep his voice down. He looked over the battlefield and felt his chest tighten at the sight of the collapsed Aldebaran and the downed Shinta and Lance. With a gulp, he eyed Deathmask like he'd kill him if he didn't stop complaining. "We're not trying to seal Hades or anything, just hit someone with a move! Lucifer is about to kill your mentor!"

"B-but, but-!"

"No BUTS! We have to do something and no one is going to be able to slip a cosmos attack by that guy's 7th sense at this point, so we need a technique he can't detect! Do you want your guardian to die?!"

Irking, the Sicilian boy felt his objections melt into cold shame. Rationalizing that he could at least finish charging the move, he held his wrist with the other hand and made the spirits twirl in ever tighter patterns until the ectoplasm condensed and drew out Deathmask's cosmos, causing his hand's white shine to flare out and emerge as a sphere of energy about the size of a handball.

He blinked. "That's it?! I thought-"

Before he could utter another word, the raging spirits of the men manipulated by Lucifer to further his goals, who suffered the despair of the False Specter condition and died committing ever graver sins against humanity that forever doomed their souls, blackened like a cancer emerging from their hearts and the sphere suddenly swelled into the size of a person, making the boy gasp in fright and almost drop it!

The two boys awed in both admiration and horror, seeing tortured faces of the cursed occasionally pressed against the surface of the ball from within. "H-huh… maybe this will work!"

Lance sweated in fear at the sight of the Specter standing a foot away in all his winged terror, seeing the lines of red in his Surplice already brimming strength into whatever nasty surprise of a punched-up technique the Daemon would pull next. He raised his remaining shield, but after what the Oblivion beam did to the other one, he didn't have much faith that this would save him.

And Lucifer knew it. "Dohko tried to use those against me in the final battle, even after Tenma died… He and Shion were sure no human could stand their might. I don't blame them; those things could break the pillars of the Oceans in the right hands. However, much like you, he and Tenma didn't expect me to be capable of birthing these wings of power."

Lance found himself stepping back against his will, such as the confidence projected by the adversary. If only he could get his hands on a replacement!

The Specter's shoulders suddenly shook in amusement. "Eh, eh, eh. I wonder why he didn't warn you about this! Maybe he thought there was a chance that if you took me out fast enough with the one hundred dragons, he and Shion could keep another little secret from the war after all the ones I already ruined for you kids! He'll carry the weight of another dead Pegasus student because of his hubris."

The Gold Saint then flinched when Lucifer raised his hand, expecting some terrifying attack, but the Specter simply held it up, as if he expected thunder to come down from the heavens to dress it.

And, sure enough, the skies rumbled…

With a burst of cosmic force coming out of Lucifer's armored body, all of the Specter's concentration and mastery over the Lightning element were summoned, and the very ground beneath the Pride Star's feet was set alight with emerging strength as if coming from the depths of hell. His aura raged upwards furiously, dark and oppressive, and the image of the demon represented by his armor emerged like a spawned monster, overlapping his arm with its cruel phantom spear. Lance stood defensively before this, feeling brought back to when he first witnessed the charging of Dark Revenge Blast, but this time the spectacle of power was different. Rather than feeling in the midst of a world-ending storm, a soul-chilling darkness came over him, as if the Specter's wide wings trapped him in a narrow corridor with a monster, and the cold shine of the Celestial Star of Pride emerged in the skies above Lucifer, projected by his twisted spirit.

Then the aura picked up, swirling around and around the Specter, summoning the darkness of the night around them all further down unto the battlefield. It was all in a silence uncharacteristic of the usually rageful energies of Cosmos which further lulled all of them into a numbing sense of dread.

Then, the silence shattered! The entire world seemed to flash white and thunder came crashing down from all directions unto Lucifer's raised hand, striking it over and over like Zeus himself had angrily ordered the annihilation of this man's clawed fingers upon nature! More electricity than seemed possible to process even by a Gold Cloth concentrated violently on this single point and the mountain felt like it quaked with the power being born before them.

With a warshout, the winged Specter then stretched his wings, making his aura cease the summoning of power, and all the voltage and energy captured now enveloped the clawed gauntlet in the form of a searing flame of pale white, mimicking the shine of the Pride Star itself perfectly! Somehow, just by witnessing it, all Saints knew they were before something born to destroy all they held as the bedrock to their ideals. Somehow, just by feeling its Cosmos, all enemies of the Archdevil felt the deep despair of having no shield, armor, or faith that could stop the spear aimed at their hearts.

Lowering and gazing down on this palm of murderous thunder, the Specter's red eyes reflected pure kinship with the energy in it. "In my hand rests my strongest melee technique; the incarnation of my Surplice Star given form! With this blow, I murdered murdered Pegasus God Tenma, the Godslayer himself! And now I shall end you as well, Cancer Lance!"

Paling with the readings given to him by his 7th sense, Lance shook involuntarily, unsure how he was going to dodge an attack clearly powered by a degree of thunder far beyond the one he could use.

Lucifer saw him keeping his shield raised. "Go ahead! Try and block! I want everyone here to witness it; the powerlessness of the Gold Saint's strongest weapons against my Star! Now, Lance…" Closing his fist and bracing it, Lucifer burned his cosmos to the max and launched his attack. "Witness… the unshakeable spirit of the Devil! DARK PRIDE FIST!"

Burning his cosmos to the max into the shield, Lance's red eyes followed the lightning-fast lunge that then followed and raised the protection with both hands at it, placing his faith in the object capable of stopping the crashing of the stars themselves! The point of contact between the strike and the gold surface was a blinding explosion of power, clashing the intense malice behind the birth of the Daemon Surplice with the relentless sense of justice with which the Weapons had been forged, born to stop all evil.

The ground cratered and was blown apart as waves of power radiated out and Shinta screamed as he got up to witness this. "L-LANCE!"

The light gave away to a blunt shockwave, striking the Bronze Saint back, leaving behind the image of the devil spearing the mighty tiger of Libra. Blood splashed out along with the sound of cracking metal.

Cancer Lance gasped and screamed, feeling the intense pain in his shielded arm. As more pieces of dense gold fell to the floor with little clinks, the Saints all felt the horrible reverberations of the Cosmos accompanying the sight of Lucifer's electrically burning gauntlet deeply lodged through the burst Libra Shield, as if a law of nature had been viciously ravaged by the destruction of the object.

Pulling out his fist, Lucifer cackled at the sight of the collapsing Lance, who held his broken arm and beheld the dislodging, punctured Shield with disbelief. Melting the edges of the first one with a massive beam was one thing… but piercing right through the dense center of the second with a punch was another entirely different story!

Lance crawled back, refusing to show fear but running out of ideas of what to do against this guy!

The Daemon rose the still-ignited punch. "Now your heart!"

The exhausted Shinta spread arms protectively between Lance and Daemon. "D-Don't you dare touch him!"

The red-eyed Specter paused, irritated, more out of concern for repeating his most recent mistake against this guy that landed a tidal wave of Eternal Darkness back at him than any lingering concern for Michael's reincarnation. "Or what?!"

A hesitant tremble of fear came off the Andromeda, but soon enough the faint brim of whatever pathetic amount of cosmos he still had left began shining. "Or… or I will k-kill you!"

This was the best joke the Specter heard all night, so much that it sent him into a loud fit of laughter.

Meanwhile, doing his best to keep the big ball of ectoplasm hidden, Deathmask scurried along the edge of the battlefield searching for a good angle to throw the attack at the enemy leader. However, tried as he might, he couldn't find a spot that simultaneously gave him a good angle and kept him off the Specter's sight. In fact, he was pretty sure the only reason he hadn't been found was that, as Shaka said, the 7th sense didn't detect Underworld arts.

Peeking over a collapsed pillar with the burning sphere in hand, he blessed the damn green-head pacifist standing in front of the Specter and distract him, but launching the attack like this would likely bomb all three of them. "No, just get Lance out of there, you pansy!"

"AH, AH, AH! Kill me?! YOU?!" Daemon questioned, "Even if you had the strength, would you have the balls to do it?!"

Stretching the Libra Nunchuck defensively, Shinta met the Specter's gaze with a fire in his eyes.

Holding the electrified hand at chest height, Lucifer smirked. "Eh, I can always just get your soul later! How about I shish-kebab you both, then?!" And he lunged at the two Saints. "DIE!"

Shaka gasped. "DEATHMASK, DO IT NOW!"

Thunder crackled and the clawed hand aimed at Shinta's heart. "DARK PRIDE FI-!" Lucifer suddenly staggered and his technique was interrupted, the lightning dispelling itself. He grunted with pain and the Saints widened their eyes as they saw a thin, red beam of light bursting a hole in the upper-left part of his chest before a thin streak of blood came out of it. "W-what?"

Deathmask gasped. "Holy s-shit!"

Lance and Shinta blinked and were awed at this turn of events. "M-MILO!"

The Gold Saint standing behind the Specter panted as his finger stopped pressing itself against Lucifer's back. "Step away from my friends, you murderer!"

Holding the first serious wound on him since his transformation, the Pride Star inhaled harshly, feeling the burning poison of Antares coursing through his veins and calculating that the Gold Saint must have concentrated all his strength just to land this first sting through his Surplice.

What went wrong?! "Y-you… you're supposed to be dead! G-Golem-"

"Golem Treble has fallen, crushed by his own boulders at the Hall of Orion! Your plan to defeat me failed!" the young Scorpio announced, charging blood-red cosmos already. "And a-as soon as the jamming dropped, I rushed down here to STOP YOU, TOO!"

Horrible, mind-twisting pain and damage invading the Specter. "Y-you…b-brat!" he muttered, falling to his knees and hands.

The two older Saints were amazed; Milo was clearly very hurt by his battle, bruised from top to bottom and with his armor cracked by the crushing boots of Golem Treble, yet he arrives like the cavalry in the nick of time to save them and lands a serious blow on Lucifer.

Milo watched as Daemon trembled and crawled away from Scorpio. "What's wrong? L-leaving… so soon?" he asked, tired and wound but enraged. "Did you think you could just walk over here, inside our temples, trample over our pride and simply get away with it? We may be children, but we are Saints of Gold! And now, Specter, there will be only two roads for you out of this: insanity or death!"

Refusing to surrender, the Specter's aura burned.

His 7th Sense then felt Lucifer gathering electrical cosmos in his right hand but Milo was on his guard. He witnessed the Specter's insane speed but would not let himself be caught by a counter. "I won't let you charge another attack! This War ends now!" he said, raising his finger to deliver the remaining blows. "Scarlet Needle…"

Lance saw blue light forming beneath Lucifer's hand. He then widened his eyes as he saw Lucifer smiling! "No, Milo, DON'T!"

"…Antares!" yelled Milo, charging forward.

Suddenly, Lucifer roared and smashed the ball of lightning he created against the floor, "GREED LIGHTNING!" releasing a powerful electrical shockwave that hit Shinta's legs. The Andromeda Saint screamed and fell to his knees and hands, paralyzed. Lucifer then stood up and charged at hyper-speed towards him as soon as Milo reached the point where he would be unable to stop his attack. This moment happened when Milo decided to shoot his 14 remaining Needles…

As a result, Milo widened his eyes as he saw Lucifer vanishing like an after-image in front of him, leaving an alarmed, stunned Shinta in the path of his attack. He then gasped, his eyes widening in shock, as he saw 3 of the 14 lasers striking Andromeda and piercing his body.

The boy gasped. "Oh s-shit! SHINTA!"

The Andromeda Saint gagged, feeling painful poison spreading throughout his bloodstream, making whatever strength he had left disappear. "A-Agh!... M-Milo!" With his consciousness rapidly subsiding, his hand reached out in alarm. "W-watch OUT!"

The dark, armored presence blitzed behind the Scorpio Saint, ball of cosmos in hand, and his heavy boot slammed the Gold Saint's back, pinning him harshly on the ground. "GREATEST ENVY!"

Firing the twisted, powered-up version of Wyvern Rhadamanthys' technique, Lucifer's aura merged with the ball of cosmos to burst into a shockwave of darkness that crushed Scorpio Milo against the floor, blasting him over and over with wave after wave of cosmos shaped like his Evil Star's beast, culminating in a burst dome that sunk the ground even further down the crater it already was and smashing clouds of dust in all directions.

With only a pair of hands to catch Shinta, Lance dragged his best friend out of the impact zone before the ground sunk both of them in. He tried tapping the Bronze Saint's face, but Andromeda wasn't responding this time. "S-Shinta!"

Wiping away the smoke with his flapping wings, Lucifer pressed his foot down hard, keeping the Scorpio Saint under control. "He, He, He, He!... HA, HA, HA, HA!"

The amusement in the Specter drove Lance mad. "Goddamn you! WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?!"

Though blood dripped from his sting wound and painful shocks to his nervous system still assaulted him, the rattled Specter couldn't help but be happy. "HA, HA, HA! YES! I HAVE WON! Thank you, Scorpio! Not only did you deal with Michael's interference, but you handed me the Pope's head on a platter!"

Shaka, Lance, and Deathmask all blinked worriedly at this declaration. Gently dropping Shinta, the Cancer Saint stood as bravely as he could given the circumstances! "W-what the fuck are you saying, you insane bastard?! Did the poison drive you over the edge?! I'm still here to fight you!"

But Lucifer shook his head at the sheer ignorance in this and simply touched his temple to help concentrate a mental message. "(Neferti! It's time!)"

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

House of Sagittarius

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

Struck by Aiolos' flying kick after a missed attack, Neferti was shot across the air, gasping and screaming as her armored body slammed through pillars and trailed through the marble flooring. She coughed and beheld with shaking sight the winged Gold Saint descending gently from the air after their latest exchange. "I-Incredible, Sagittarius Aiolos… You truly carry the most powerful of Sanctuary's Gold Cloths!"

With a fierce slap of his wings, the lingering sandstorms summoned by his enemy were rendered null. "I do owe much to Lord Chiron, but make no mistake, Specter,…your setbacks are caused just as much by your blindness as by my punches."

Getting out of the trailing crater, the woman held her fighting pose with fingers tensed down like the Sphinx's paws. "He even nullified my Hieracosphinx… Although he looks like a young man, he may be just as dangerous as any of us Elites of the Pri-"

Suddenly the Prince's words came buzzing in through the cosmos. The Gold Saints have made the fatal mistake I've forced them into! Quit holding back and rid this mountain of Priam's successor!)"

She perked up, realizing the meaning of this. "(Prince! Do you mean… victory is at hand?!... Yes, Lord Lucifer! I'll carry out my mission right away!)"

Aiolos didn't like the sudden smile on his adversary's face one bit. "What are you planning?!"

Dark cosmos brimmed around her and she concentrated. If there was one task of hers she could not fail, it was this one! "To remove you from the Prince's sight, Sagittarius Aiolos! SHIFTING SANDS!"

Seemingly bursting her body into a hurricane of silica, Aiolos widened his eyes by the disappearance of his opponent, but he soon found himself with more than enough to worry about when the particles, accelerated to the speed of light, surrounded him and coalesced!

Fearing an omnidirectional technique, Aiolos cast a barrier around himself, but he found himself pulled into the sandstorm's focus point, rather than attacked. "This pattern… she isn't attacking! She is-!"

With currents of sand forming limbs from below that reached around the Gold Saint's wings, Aiolos found himself grabbed from behind by the Specter woman as tightly as she could. "-Capturing you!"

Slammed into the floor by the currents' final blowing, Aiolos struggled against the grappler, charging cosmos to burn her and prepare blasts on his hands. "W-what…?! Sphinx, stop this! From this position, I can-!"

"Blast me all you want! Pierce me with your wings' feathers! Raise your cosmos until the very touch of you sets my hands on fire! It won't matter!" she claimed, preparing the next step of her combo by harnessing atmospheric cosmos. "You won't have time to stop the power of Anubis' blessed, Sagittarius Aiolos! Now, Osiris, open the gate to the next world! FINAL PASSAGE!"

A quadratic pattern of cosmos as gold as the sun itself burned on the floor surrounding them before lifting upwards, meeting in a single point above the two to form a pyramid of cosmos. The last thing Aiolos saw before the two warriors were blinked away in a flash of energy was the darkness of the netherworld descending on him!

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

House of Capricorn

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

At the Hall of Cyrul, where the most devoted warriors of Athena were honored, the horned, tenth Gold Saint stood between the horde of Specters and the statue of the Goddess bestowing Excalibur upon humanity. Led by Elf Rossalier, Mandrake Nevil and Cait Sith Palug, the force was tired, but resolute, knowing they only had this youth plus two other Temples to get through before reaching the Holy Father

But Shura was not intimidated and raised his hand. "Prepare to be sliced in twain, Specters of Hades!"

A crossbow trigger was squeezed and a poisonous bolt flew off, missing the raising hand by a breath and striking the base of the statue. "KEEP THAT HAND LOW!"

The three leading False Specters slowly encircled the Gold Saint. "You will not so much as raise that hidden sword of yours, Capricorn. We know of Excalibur quite well…" Mandrake Nevil hissed.

Intrigued by their insight into his abilities, Shura pretended to obey, letting scythemen flank him with their pole arms. "Oh!... Am I caught at a disadvantage?"

"Get the stardust shackles!" Mandrake ordered, causing one of the Skeletons to search their supplies for a set of black wrist cuffs with silver-colored stardust circuitry on the inner side. "We're going to take no chances! Keep your crossbows aimed while I arrest him!"

Shura observed them all carefully; they looked like a battered group, just like he expected of a bunch of foolish defilers who thought they could get past nine temples of constant bombardment from Aiolos, not to mention the Great Horn of Aldebaran and the techniques of Shaka. They had reached so far, proving their resilience, and had Specters forewarned of how to handle him in particular. This meant that this was indeed no foolish raid and that a careful plan of attack preceded this invasion.

Annihilating them, however, would be child's play.

Mandrake carefully approached him with the shackles. "Extend them!" he ordered, making Shura show his joined wrists. The Specter sweated with the stare Shura gave him the whole time he locked the shackles around his wrists, not feeling secure till he heard the clicking noise. "Ah, there! Not so bad now, are we?"

The Spanish boy snorted deflating, already feeling cosmos coursing through his arms being sapped dry. "Oh well, I guess I've been outsmarted. Without my hands, I can't possibly wield Excalibur… How could I resist?"

Stepping back with the full intention of ordering the Gold Saint shot to death, Mandrake laughed. "That's right! Just like with Scorpio, the Prince knew how to nullify you one-trick ponie-"

With a sudden golden blitz, his foot then struck the Mandrake right in the chest mask, crushing it against the magical caster face within, stunning the screaming Specter, and then flipping him over into the air! "JUMPING STONE!"

As Mandrake crashed against the ceiling, the other Specters panicked. "AHH! OPEN FIRE! ATTACK!" and the many crossbows unleashed their toxic bolts while the scythemen swung their weapons.

But Shura's other leg flared with cosmos and enacted his teacher's technique. "TEMPEST SWORD!" and he whipped the air with such force that a golden shockwave struck across the crossbowmen, blasting them back in every direction. Sensing an approaching scythe, he rose his shackled arms to parry the sharp object's edge with the middle of the restraints. With a sudden arm-twist, the scythe was forced to break the restrains in two, releasing the Capricorn's arms. "Mm, thanks!"

The scytheman stumbled back, staring at his work. "S… shit!"

Elf was beside himself. "YOU STUPID FUCK!"

"Don't blame him too much." With a single lightspeed thrust, Shura then dug his tensed chop hand right into the scytheman's chest before pulling it aside, bisecting the killer into a fountain of blood. "You lot just never stood that much of a chance!"

Landing from his flight, Mandrake coughed and got up, holding his injured chest. "W-What are you WAITING FOR?! RUSH HIM! FOR THE PRINCE!"

Shura widened his eyes as the morale of the enemy was instantly restored at the mere mention of their leader and he found himself assaulted from all sides by a crowd of enemies. He stepped back, already charging cosmos into cross arms. "Fools! Your ends will be that much more inglorious! CALIBURN!"

The airborne blue-armored Elf Specter suddenly thrust his hands down at him. "EARTHQUAKE MIXER!" and an empty shockwave fired out, rattling Shura to his bone but otherwise unable to harm him.

The Gold Saint stepped back in fright, expecting some sort of harm, but instead, the ground beneath him began to grumble, fracture, and then elevate, throwing his attack off course. A pair of Skeletons still got sliced to bits by the heat blades of Caliburn, but most of the others escaped the erratic attack pattern, and the Elf Specter struck the gold Saint with his claw-padded shoulder, tossing him down.

As he held the Gold Saint down, he shouted at his brethren. "GO TO AQUARIUS, NOW!"

The Specters nodded and rushed out the Capricorn Temple. "GOOD LUCK, BROTHER!"

The Capricorn was baffled at this sacrificial gesture and reached out at the escaping Specters. "NO!" He struggled against the Specter holding him down, but the Elf was putting a surprising amount of weight on him. "D-Darn you! Get OFF ME! EXCALIBUR!"

The slicing came seemingly out of nowhere as if summoned by Shura's very fighting spirit, and Elf screamed as his body was struck top to bottom.

Shura closed his eyes, expecting an explosion of blood.

Elf, however, merely split in twain like a snapped photograph and vanished like a mirage, reappearing several feet away. "Eh… won't be that easy to get me, Capricorn! I was handpicked to fight you!"

Getting up, Shura immediately understood the challenge at hand. "I see, an afterimage master?"

"NATURAL TERROR!" Burning his blue cosmos, Elf crossed arms before sweeping the air with them, casting out countless after images around Shura executing a variety of leaps, somersaults, and attack maneuvers. "Ah, AH, AH! That's right! I, Elf Rossalier, have the unique ability to make my body move with the Cosmos itself, such is my attuning with the 7th sense! Try all you want, Capricorn! Slash your temple to shreds if you have to! Even if your slice waves hit me correctly, I'll just after-image away!"

The many hands of the many Elfs then aimed at Shura and began blasting cosmos away! Alarmed, Shura crossed his arms defensively and took the bombardment of blows with a parrying blade-arms, but the ground shook with the force of the beams striking all around, rattling him to the bone.

Meanwhile, Earthquake Mixer's effects kept going, tumbling down pillars and, most importantly, making the central statue of Athena begin to creek sideways. Spotting this, Shura slammed his back against it and burned his cosmos, lifting its ground plate to the leveled ground, but this left him exposed to Elf's many energy blasts, which pummeled his body top to bottom.

With the enormous statue pushed away, the many Elfs watched in glee as the foolish Gold Saint was consumed by the attacks' erupting dome, illuminated by its explosion. "Ah, ah, ah! Dying for a statue of that fake War Goddess?! Truly you are the biggest cunt-licker of the twelve, Capricorn! Take solace in hell that you protected that piece of marble from getting soot on i-"

The beam of gold fired off the erupting smoke cloud, completely overwhelming the Specter's reflexes with its speed, and ran the real Elf through the stomach, pinning him across the Hall of Cyrul into a wall and violently splashing his blood over it before Rossalier could even react.

The False Specter hung there in disbelief as his clones vanished, realizing he had a giant spear of Excalibur impaling him. Its cosmos retracted and the False Specter was allowed to drop miserably to the floor. "G-gah…I…"

The smoke clouds dissipated to reveal the source of the impaling beam, an injured Shura with his arm held out. "You got a little too trigger-happy, Elf… the light of your attacks clearly showed which one of you had no shadow."

Gasping, the False Specter was in shock at having dropped his guard so stupidly. "L-Long Live…Lord L-"

A second long-distance slash-cut him short, quite literally, ripping Elf's body to pieces. "This is a sacred House of worship, Specter. I'll have no enemy of Athena praised here." He then held his temple. "Camus, I dispatched the Elf Specter, but a bunch of the bastards got past me with a dirty trick! Can you handle them?"

"…Yes, that was the Pope's plan from the beginning, Shura. Did you try to take them all out?!"

"Of course! I know what His Holiness said, but I was taught by Master Kirin to uproot all evil if I had the chance!" he argued, seeing nothing wrong with it.

"What if… You know, that's alright, I'll tell the Pope they tried to gang up on you and you had no choice."

Rushing out his House, Shura saw with disdain that the Specters had made a decent way up already towards Camus. "We have to finish these bastards off once and for all, though. I don't like the energies I'm feeling downstairs."

"That and Aiolos has just disappeared."

Shura widened his eyes. "WHAT?!"

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

House of Aquarius

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

Standing guard at the entrance of the Hall of Ganymede, Camus rushed the fleeing servants in. "Go on, quick! To the Pisces House! Use the passage there to leave the mountain!"

The many maids, gardeners, disciples, and surviving guards were moving slowly though. "I'm sorry, Lord Aquarius… the civilians are exhausted. Some have been evacuating since down at the Taurus Temple." A Papal Guard excused.

The Gold Saint, wearing his black sock mask to hide his face, insisted. "I know, but we don't have a choice. You're soldiers of the Zodiac, so carry them on your back if you have to. There's barely half a temple stair set between you and their vanguard. I'll buy you time, but since we don't know how many powerful members they still count among them, we can't take the chance of having you stay here."

As the Papal Guard nodded, Shura's shocked inquiry continued. "What do you mean, Aiolos is gone?!"

The teal-haired boy sweated. "Precisely that; his cosmos vanished off the Hall of Chiron just now along with that of his adversary. Given the low energy signatures left behind, I doubt it was a suicidal attack like at Aries. It feels more to me like when he and Saga spar and Another Dimension is used."

Camus could see the faint silhouette of Capricorn Shura stopping in hesitation at the start of the stairs way down below, past the Specters. "Then…. Blast, should I go downstairs, then?! He could be in danger!"

Aquarius gulped. Even though they just took out the enemy jammer somehow, between Aiolos going missing, Saga's cosmos weakening, and the terrifying energies they all felt at Libra, it seemed like the battle's favor was slipping right off their fingers again. He looked at the Fire Clock and saw the Libra flame still alive, but something told him that might end soon.

"FREEZING COFFIN!" he cast, blockading the entrance of the Aquarius Temple with the incredibly powerful slab of ice. Going inside to prepare for the arrival of the Specters, he gave Shura some final advice. "Go search for Aiolos. It's not okay that one of our strongest Gold Saints disappears off the battle for no reason. As for the Specters… leave them to me!"

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

Papal Chambers

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

The Pope rose his head in alarm, feeling a cry in the cosmos and his Sagittarius Saint's cosmos disappearing! "Aiolos!"

The two accompanying him noticed the sudden disturbance in the Holy Father, but before Shion could even put words to what happened, a terrible feeling, like the darkness following a sudden electric power out, spread across the Twelve Temples, casting despair over all of the Golden Zodiac. The air itself seemed heavier and birds began to be seen landing on the mount side, unhampered by any barrier or divine retribution.

"Your Holiness, what's wrong?!" ms. Shafurwatt asked. "The night suddenly got so much darker."

The Holy Father lowered head grimly. "Something happened to Sagittarius. The armor is no longer in its House. This is the sixth one."

Captain Maximus' aged face paled. "But that means…."

The masked man nodded and glanced at the Colossus. "Athena's blessings… have dropped. Her inner sanctum, and the safety of humanity in turn, are now at risk."

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

Chapter End

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

Next Chapter: Second Arc - Chapter 65 – Episode 26 – Part 2 of 4 - Pride Cometh

Release Date: December 9th

Description: With Aiolos missing, the path to the Pope and Athena's Colossus is open for the Specters. The Daemon Specter's vengeance is a lash of his thunderbolts away! Moreover, the Gold Saints of Athena cast into the shadows face their own enemy devils, proving that the loss of Ainsel has not hampered the False Specters' momentum one bit.

Author's Notes:

Back in January I set it as my goal this year that I would finish the Lucifer Arc but also post 13 chapters, one more than the previous year. With the completion of this (originally) three-parter, I achieved that goal, but also created a 90000 word monster at a time where I'm seriously trying to trim wordcount down after the last 5 chapters or so. As such, the 3-parter became a 4 parter and this will set my mind at ease and give me a little bit more freedom to indulge in thread-tying scenes in the last chapter of the Arc.

No False Specters were harmed in the making of this chapter, but the Arc is closing up so today we'll talk etymology anyway. This time it's Elf Rossalier, who is named after the elf from the Valkyrie Profile game series (the only one named, IIRC)

On the attacks that Shinta uses in this chapter, these aren't new techniques, Shinta is just pronouncing the attacks differently because he's employing the Weapons instead of the Andromeda Chains, and the show puts some emphasis on their power to "crush stars".

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