The Principality was mildly concerned when they saw the unfamiliar Green on Black Mech suit flying directly at them, but then they received word that their Princess was returning to them inside of a armour that she had stolen. It was quite good for two reasons, the first was that they had finally gotten their hands on the Winchesters latest model, and the second and more important reason was that they got the other princess back. For reasons they didn't know, no one has been able to get past getting into the cockpit of the armour, with the exception of Hertrude of course. No matter. The large Armour landed on the deck of the ship and opened briefly to let Hertrude out onto the ship before the armour immediately closed up again.
"Take me to my sister." Hertrude stated in a cold tone of voice.
"Princess the thing you have to realise is that-" Hertrude did not miss how the guard's eyes wandered behind her, to the giant monster that was attacking the shield, The God of the Earth.
"That is why I want to see my sister." Hertrude spoke like she was speaking to particularly slow children. There was no doubt in her mind right now what state Hertraude was in, revenge was one thing and she still wants it, but not at the cost of her sister's life. As she mused this she was listening to her adviser on her ear piece.
"If your sister has been playing that flute as much as you've been playing the Angel Flute, then she's in trouble." Leon did not mince words, Hertrude wanted to know only two things from him: what was happening to her sister and how to save her. "Every negative thought and emotion, everything remotely demonic has been pulled out of her already. That flute is sucking and sucking and it's not getting anything that it can work with, forget about eating her soul, at this rate it's quite likely to destroy it."
That was the bad news. This was the worst news.
"So alternatively. If the soul being fed through the flute was the opposite, say someone whose soul has been repeatedly subjected to the Angel Flute and had all of her Angelic influence removed, then that soul would make the transition over in one piece?" Hertrude whispered after taking a distance from her escort.
"Even if that was a good idea, you'll be tossed into a sea of demons and each of them will be stronger than you." Leon snapped in no uncertain terms. "But will the flute stop trying to take Traudy?" Hertrude asked in no uncertain terms.
"The Inferno is-" Leon made a sigh as if he gave up on trying to talk her out of this. "Yes."
Hertrude took out the ear piece and crushed it beneath her heel. Hertrude entered the room where her sister had been staying, where she was curled up in a ritual circle, around her at the ends of a four pointed star was a coin, a dagger, a chalice and a staff.
"Leave us!" Hertrude broke no argument as the guard's left her alone. Collapsing to her knees Hertrude took her sister's form into her arms, she was barely breathing, and what breath she did have was going into that damned flute. "HHHYYYAAAHHH!" Hertrude screamed, her voice carried a power that few can imagine, and instinctively everyone knew that it was her that was screaming. There was a reason why the Fanossian bloodline was the only one who use the two flutes of power, even if no one knew what that reason was, but perhaps Hertrude's outburst gave insight if nothing else. "Don't worry Traudy!" It was all the Princess could do to keep herself together as she picked up the Demon Flute and started playing it.
Even if you called 'The God of the Earth' by a singular title the fact of the matter remained that it wasn't just one single demon. It was several hundred Demons that had been stuck together with the glue like bodies of the Nightmares, what looked like attacks and stomping around was little more than a nest of demonic rats with their tails stuck together lashing around trying to get free before they died. It was only vaguely humanoid, and only from a distance, up close it was closer to a giant anemone made out of monsters that had rose from the ground and lashing about wildly. There would be more of the monster under ground, spread through the dungeon like the roots of a great tree. Luxion's weapons were still firing on the monster, however the various lighting affinity Demons and Fallen were absorbing the light and lightning and using it as a extra energy source. Leon would broadly divide the demons inside the mass into three categories: The ones who had accepted their fates and were waiting to die, the ones that were struggling to break free, and the ones who were trying take advantage of the situation. This was a ritual to empower a single demon and raise them as a Demon Lord through mass sacrifice, which Demon was going to come out ahead was yet to be decided.
"Well we just lost Hertrude." Leon let out a sigh. "Luxion."
"She has taken over the ritual to fuel the God of the Earth's manifestation." Luxion's voice in Leon's ear explained in simple terms what was happening. Hertrude was still wearing his slave collar, so Luxion was not only aware of everything that she was doing but also had a complete read out of her vital signs. "Her vital signs are growing fainter, she doesn't have much longer to live at this rate. I presume that's the 'soul sucking' in action?"
"Fantastic." Leon's tone of voice implied anything but. "Umbra we have a bunch of Chimera seeds from Viper in storage right?" After a few short moments, the Chimera Seeds were blasted all over the different parts of The God of the Earth, each of them had instructions to consume as many of the demons as possible but isolate and protect any human souls that they find. Normally, they wouldn't do so hot, but right now they were making out like bandits, the various struggling demons were exuding a powerful demonic aura, and absorbing that energy like crazy while feeding off of the various weakened demons for raw mass. "Start killing demons, try to avoid the Chimera seeds for now, aside from that if it's close enough to hit with your weapons, then hit them." Leon took to the air, dual machine guns slaughtering lesser demons.
Looking to each other and shrugging their shoulders Brad and Julius got to work, Julius slashing through the mass with his buzz axe combo and Brad shooting jets of blue flame to snipe specific targets. As a start dealing with the ones that were trying to eat the energy attacks seemed like a reasonable start.
Above the battlefield, from the relative safety of Purgatorio, three figures were sitting on the side looking down at the fight happening below.
"Hey sis, ain't those the Armours that Nick made for Leon?" The first of the figures was a black haired boy who was in the middle of eating pizza for lunch.
"They look like them." The Second of the figures was a young girl, sharing her brother's lunch.
"Then does that mean we're suppose to be killing the Nefasturris?"
"I dunno. Think we should help them?"
The two of them imagined going up to Leon to get help, first they imagined getting hit on the head for missing out on Mum's and Mom's send off party, then they imagined getting hit on the head again for putting themselves in danger.
""Absolutely not!"" The two resolutely agreed to stay out of this. "What do you think we should do Cheshire?"
Behind the pair was a flatly bizarre sight, a gigantic patch work stuffed toy made from different pieces of cloth in the image of a fat cat the size of an Armour. You would easily be forgiving for thinking this thing was the giant toy that it resembled, but it was snacking on whole pizzas like finger foods. After a few moments the great beast seemed to come upon an idea.
Cheshire: The Outcast Demon.
Within a mere day of being formed a demon of Wrath was summoned into Avalon forest by an apprentice Umbran Witch and bound to her toy, a stuffed cat made from scrap pieces of cloth and thread made of hair and given it's name: Cheshire.
The two travelled together for several days, Cheshire continuously growing stronger as he snacked on the Fae of Avalon forest and the dew of its raw magical power acquiring the powers to manipulate Plant life, Earth, Water and Fire in the process.
Eventually Cheshire was able to return to Inferno where he was born, only to learn the hard way what life in his homeland was really like.
Finding that he preferred the companionship of his witch allies and bullying faeries to fighting for his life in the eat or be eaten environment of Inferno Cheshire made his way back to the human world and into the body of his old stuffed rag toy where he has taken on a new duty as companion and protector to young Clansmen in training.
Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons
Normally, a Umbran would only get to taste this kind of power once every hundred years, the sheer amount of demonic energy coming off of the God of the Earth was palpable, even more power when you take into consideration that the energy cannon being fired at the damned thing was giving it even more power to work with, which it was pumping back underground after converting that into more magical power, which further increase the power that was being pumped into it in a vicious cycle. The pile of monsters was bleeding off anything that it couldn't keep, and Leon was pumping most of that to his own demons.
"Get out here you lot!" A massive clock tower it's face stuck at 11:25, five flaming beasts, a large Chimera, Two oversized black Panthers and the most recent addition a massive green serpentine dragon with a body made of vines. "Viper, keep us informed of the status of your offspring, let us know the moment that you lose control of them."
"Yes Master!" Is what the snake woman said, what she meant was 'Damn you you bastard you're killing my offspring!'
"Umbra, act as a lightning rod to divert some of that electrical power, see if we can slow down the rate of that energy flow a bit." Leon ignored his newest slave's distaste for the situation and continued giving orders. "Left, Right dig, but don't breach into the dungeon proper, and avoid getting stuck in that tar, even if it means losing your hands and feet." At once the two Panthers nodded as they leapt into the ground, spinning in a whirl wind of blades as a make-shift drill. "Chimera, Baskerville Attack. Target any electrical types that you see but focus on eliminating any demons that you see that don't look like they're struggling."
The fight to take over the Nefasturris was one of will, the more that you struggled to break free, the more mental fatigue that wears you down for the 'real battle.' At once Umbra re-positioned itself to intercept the energy attacks of Luxion's Blast Frequency Guns with the needle located at the top of the tower. The shingle tiles that made up Umbra's roof suddenly flipped open, revealing spouts that began poring out hundreds of balls of plasma, acting as conductors of the electricity, before they directly crashed into the parts of the demons that were not suited to blocking or eating electrical attacks.
In the mean time Chimera's three heads took ice, turned it into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity, and then released it as a flame thrower attack with the middle head.
The Baskerville hounds on the other hand started shooting their skulls off in bigger blasts than they ever did before, and regenerating the heads in question at an accelerated rate.
The demons weren't taking this lying down either, several of them firing off retaliatory strikes as their lives were being threatened.
"Stop!" The Bell of the Clock tower rang, a purple field went over the area as time stopped, Leon reached up with his shadows to grab the incoming magic attacks and swallowed them up, when time resumed again the one sided slaughter continued.
"This is progressing oddly smoothly." Luxion's drone appeared off to the side. "According to Captain's report the God of The Earth would regenerate infinitely no matter what Holfort's army threw at it."
"There's no such thing as infinite regeneration." Leon countered bluntly. "What you were really seeing was likely more demons trying to escape that thing and break free."
"And instead adding their mass to the equation once they reach the surface." Luxion finished Leon's explanation.
"Even still we won't be able to keep this up forever too." Leon stated as he kept an eye on his various demons.
"Are they in danger?" Luxion asked as he looked around the area at the various different demons.
"Food and exercise are important for demons growth." Leon explained as he looked up into the air. "Just getting some isn't enough to kill them, but they will have to stop eventually."
"Because they will tire?" Luxion asked making his concerns known.
"Because they will enter a coma while their bodies catch up to their food and exercise." The twenty questions routine was getting old for Leon. He understood the Drone's concern, Leon knew for a fact what would give out first. "Even if we do succeed in killing the Nefasturris we'll still have to deal with the true 'God of the Earth' that'll come afterwards, in other words a demon lord." With that disturbing train of thought in Mind Leon got another call.
"Leon. I've seized control of the ship." Jilk's voice had come from the ear piece, no doubt with more good news.
Seizing control of the ship was actually pretty easy, no one even knew he was there until he stepped out of Purgatorio. The Rusalka apparently knew a cheap spell that let it produce huge quantities of water to wash away problems, in this case right off the deck of the ship or sending them straight into walls. That just left Jilk the task of finding the sisters.
"This is rather suspect." Jilk stated as he looked down at the floor of the room. Ancient artefacts abound, with both of the princesses unconscious on the floor, one of them still playing the flute. "I found Hertrude and Hertraude. They're in the middle of a ritual circle, and there's several bizarre artefacts around them. A Goblet, a Dagger, a Staff-"
"And a coin." Leon finished for Jilk, who indeed saw that at the end of the last point of the star was an ancient coin.
"How did you-"
"It's called the Arcana. They were part of an ancient seal placed on a particularly nasty demon Lord named Argosax the Chaos. One who should be dead for centuries." Leon's voice had a note of suspicion at the situation.
"Is that who they're trying to summon?" Jilk needed information to deal with this mess. If Leon knew a way of dealing with it-
"No. Or if they are trying they won't succeed. A more likely explanation is that they're using the seal to control the flow of demonic energy. Without it this much magical power would've destroyed the entire fleet by now." It was possible that the Principality didn't just want to wreck Holfort, if their mad ambitions extended beyond Holfort's borders then they could want their 'god' to attack more than one location. "Don't disturb anything." Leon stated in simple terms. "Drive the ship over to where Rodin and the others are, surrender it to them, and let them dismantle the thing." Jilk nodded his head in agreement to what Leon was saying, in the meantime Angelica came over the coms with her own situation that needed to be addressed.
The capital was in Chaos, the appearance of the Principalities forces was one thing, but a large portion of middle ranked nobles living in the capital were turning tail and fleeing as quickly as possible along with their families and whatever servants they cared to bring, perhaps traitors part of Frampton's faction, or equally likely simply cowards fleeing a sinking ship. The effect of this blatant cowardice was having it's effect on the civilian populace, and there was panic in the streets as a result.
Others were manning armours, preparing to exit through the hole being prepared by the lightning mages to fight the God of the Earth. Sadly they wouldn't have to go that far.
Various demons were already breaching through the streets from Luxion's sewer network. Obviously Luxion didn't connect together the sewers and the dungeons, however the walls that separated the two, even after being reinforced by Luxion's nano-technology, were ultimately no match for the God of the Earth.
"There's another one!" Olivia and Angelica were tackling the shutes of the God of the Earth as they came across them, Olivia was using the Effects of Dr. Faust to drain the blood from as many of the shutes as possible. They weren't the only ones acting. Angelica's various followers had taken to the streets alongside their new fiances, most of whom were either experienced civilian born adventurers or Rusalka who skilfully used water, fire and ice to cut down the chutes whole.
"Looks like things are covered." Angelica was driving the Phoenix with Olivia as her co-passenger and were flying straight towards the royal Palace.
"Personally, I see no reason to go along with the Blackmore's plans to harvest the monster." Luxion stated bluntly. "I would rather just take the monster apart."
"We will follow Leon's lead." Angelica agreed with Luxion's opinions on the matter, and for that matter knew that Leon did as well. She heard over the coms that her cousins had done something stupid, Leon apparently had an idea to try and save them but... they brought this on themselves. Angelica wouldn't let any more of her country men die to this foolishness.
"We're arriving at the palace." The Royal Guard had already been dispatched in the city streets, joining forces with Angelica's followers and the Adventurers in the Capital. Angelica already made out Mylene who was on horseback, using an Angelic weapon to strike a blow against one of the shutes. Angelica landed next to Mylene, with Olivia's hat soon attaching itself to the shutes that she had been fighting.
"Good evening your majesty." Olivia was already sucking the blood out of the shute. "It's good to see you well, despite the circumstances." Angelica's Armour bowed to the Queen as she spoke.
"As well as can be expected." Mylene stated by way of reply. The government was running away, her idiot husband has sabotaged the army, and the enemy was flooding in from underneath.
"We need the airship." Angelica stated in no uncertain terms.
"Even if we could get it working we can't get to it." Mylene stated in no uncertain terms. "The Royal Dockyard is inside the dungeon, which has been taken over by that creature." They need the airship to kill the God of the Earth and they need to kill the God of the Earth to get to the airship.
"Leon's fighting the God of the Earth." Angelica stated bluntly.
"Even he can't kill that thing." Mylene countered bluntly.
"I'm aware, but one of his most recent acquisitions happens to specialise in controlling other demons." At that, one of the Chimera burst through to the surface, flailing tentacles around before it receded into the Earth.
"Not a great idea, but we don't have a lot of good ones." And so Mylene gave the order to escort Angelica and Olivia to the castle.
"Sorry I can't help much Angie." Olivia was limited to sitting on Angelica's lap while she managed their attacks.
"You're doing plenty Livia." Olivia had already 'capped' all of the shutes in the capital, each part of them was now bleeding orbs enmasse as the demons that were attached to them had started to die off and be absorbed, that was on top of using barriers to block attacks and cast healing magic as they went by. Suddenly the sound of a loud explosion echoed out from outside of the barrier, somehow getting through the explicitly sound proof barrier.
"You're kidding me!" After enduring concentrated attacks of fire and lightning the Black Knight suddenly exploded, apparently having released all the energy that was being pumped into into his armour all at once.
"Unfortunately for you after the last battle we started experimenting with magic counter measures. Point of interest Black things actually absorb heat and light very well." The Black Knight blocked another electrical attack with his bare hand. "It's the same principle that lets me supplement my Armour's mana reserves with shadow magic and devouring the mana in the air. Unlike with mana I do have to release the built up energy regularly though. What did you lot call it? Natural laws?" As the Black Knight gave his lecture he swung his sword again, Greg of course moved out of the way of the strike, and for his efforts the blade suddenly split into multiple copies of itself, and all of them were electrified.
"Damn it!" Suddenly it rained on the Black Knight's Parade. Literally.
"Point of interest." A familiar Green on Black Armour was standing off to the side, holding a pair of turquoise blue Lantern clubs. "I don't think you quite realise that blathering on about your weaknesses on the field of battle is a bad idea!" Where was the battle taking place? Over the Ocean. What do Rusalka do really well? Manipulate water. A huge mass of water was pulled out of the ocean and to Jilk's side.
"Oh?" Vandel gave a vaguely interested noise in this new situation. "What will it be? Water streams strong enough to punch through steel? Slashing blades? Will you freeze me in a block of ice?" But so what? Vandel's killed thousands of arrogant mages who assumed that being able to seemingly out-range the swordsman meant that they could kill him.
"I know your tricks Vandel!" Jilk fired off several of the steel puncturing shots that Vandel dismissed, and rightfully so, because his armour dual layered with abyssal and Gilgamesh metals easily blocked such a weak attack without even doing anything.
"Know my tricks? Are you insinuating that you are only now realising the extent of my tactics of using Shadow magic to nullify magic attacks and then moving into melee to finish the enemy off?" Vandel sounded genuinely surprised as if the other party was only now learning some incredibly obvious facts. "My butchering of your countrymen has been more thorough than I thought. On the subject of which." Vandel swung his sword. The Black blade dramatically increased in size, summoned copies to increase it's range of offensive power, and began tearing through his enemies starting with Jilk, followed up by Greg, and finally after extending to a huge size and eating more of the lightning attack, Chris.
Three more buzzing flies defeated the Black Knight decided to resume his objective of wiping out the threats to the destruction of Holfort.
Greg, Chris and Jilk on the other hand, floating in the air and watching their opponent flying off without them, they were wondering what precisely happened.
"Are we dead?" If they were dead then it left open the question of why they were hanging from these bed sheets instead of haunting their Armours.
"Unfortunately." Umbra's voice echoed out from Greg's harness. "As part of the emergency protocols the three of you were ejected into Purgatorio at the last moment. So you three still live." It took longer for Greg to process the insult than it did for Umbra to give the young Knight his next set of instructions. "No one has time to drag you idiots back to Midgard. The Handles hanging from either side of your parachutes will help you steer yourselves onto dry land. If you'd rather wash away your shame of defeat and losing the armours given to you by my masters, please continue descending into the ocean to drown, or better yet, pull the cord on your harnesses and sever your chutes to enter free fall."
"Leon's right." Greg chose to follow the first set of instructions as he started experimenting with the handles. "You are an ass."
Viper's offspring made it all the way to the tunnels, each of them growing at an accelerated rate as they fought to assume control. They were still plant matter, which made it easy for Angelica to burn. Through that process the three of them, Angelica, Mylene and Olivia made it into the hidden docks.
"Looks like the demons haven't been able to run wild here." Angelica stated as she approached the Airship in question, though she did question the huge oval shape of it, she also didn't have time to care either. "We need to get those doors open." Angelica noted as Mylene ran to the console.
"Not that being here hasn't been great and all Angie but..." Olivia's legs were falling asleep. "Agreed." The two girls quickly approached the heart shaped doors that connected to the Airship and stepped onto it's corresponding platform, both of them naturally standing on the heart shaped symbols that were on the floor.
"Welcome to the Love-O-Meter!" Angelica didn't know what it was, but the voice irritated her. "It's time to measure our contestants feelings for each other!" Leon despised the entire concept of the 'Love-O-Meter' a relationship between two people broken down to a number. How would it measure Olivia comforting Angelica's break up with Julius? How would it measure Angelica and Leon defending Olivia from her bullies? How would it measure Leon's anxieties about his future with the two? The mere idea that their relationship could be broken down to a number was beyond insulting. She was actually glad he wasn't here, Angelica would fully expect Leon to destroy the platform, force open the door, and then shove a demon inside of the ship to hot-wire it. "120 and 120! Congrrraaatulations!"
The irritating platform besides the point the two entered the ship quickly.
"I don't think Mylene is managing with the door very well." Olivia pointed out as Mylene seemed to be getting increasingly frustrated with the console.
"Take off is taking longer than expected too." Angelica stated as she fidgeted with the controls. The ship didn't have any float stone. Near as she could tell from reading the manual in the ancient language the entire thing was operating off of the large balloon that normally would need air and a large amount of material to burn to produce hot air. In fact if Angelica's calculations were correct, most of this airship was the balloon and if she had to divide its volume from largest to least she would say balloon, engine, Mana amplifier and cockpit. The ancient ship didn't seem to have any fuel left to burn, but they did have a determined fire mage on board.
"What's the hold up over there?" Luxion's voice echoed from inside of Olivia's ear piece.
"This isn't float stone, the ship can't just get up and go." Olivia stated bluntly as she kept looking through the manual. "Angie is trying to inflate the balloon it's hanging from."
"Of all the changes they made to the script!" Of course the ancient ship of old man kind wasn't a modern airship, it was a zeppelin! At this point they were lucky it wasn't a sea ship! If he had known that they would be so limited he would've broken into the docks and extracted the infernal machine himself! "Redgrave. I will walk you through the process of getting the ship Mobile again." Luxion didn't bother to hide his annoyance.
At that moment the ancient doors of the dockyard started to grind to life. Then a familiar black blade inserted itself into the gap between the doors.
"I was wondering if there was a secret way out of the capital." The Masamune was used as a giant crow bar as the Black Knight forced the door open. "It figures that any force cowardly enough to hide behind a barrier would also have a way out from behind the barrier when it falls and all the defenders are dead." A demonic hand started pulling on the door trying to rip it from its slot, bending the doors open further as the Black Knight attempted to force his way inside. "But a way out is a way in as well. Your blatant paranoia will-" The Black Knight's rant was interrupted by another figure slamming into him from above, a Navy Blue and White armour, striking with enough force to tear the armour off of the door.
"I'm not going to complain." To be clear Mylene wanted to complain about her dirt bag Husband with his head shoved so far up his ass that he could see out of his mouth, she also wanted to complain about him expecting thanks for doing his job and defending his people, and then bellyaching about people complaining about him not showing up because he, for reasons she still doesn't understand, chose to put on a mask before he fights for personal glory, and she really wanted to complain about the fact that they're only in this situation because he sabotage their offensive at a critical point in time. Unfortunately she has more important things that need to be done now, more important things that will have to be done after this battle was over and more important things that will have to be done once she is done those things. That said, Right after preventing the destruction of her home, the slaughter of her subjects, and the collapse of Holfort as a political entity, she was going to neutralise her husband as a threat to the Kingdom once and for all.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Agreed. Fantasy is called fantasy for a reason, anything is possible so long as the writer wants it to happen.
RedRat8: I can assure you his competence as a combatant besides no one is going to listen to a single thing the King has to say after this is over.
hnh058513: Yes. Yes he did.
desropter: The King is going to get no less than he deserves when all is said and done.
KadoyaOkami: Hope I don't disappoint.
guest: The Royal Family will probably blame the sabotage on Frampton, the recording of his final words will probably be the nail in the coffin of any reputation or good will the Framptons have left at this point, and for those who don't know the King's personality it's the more logical explanation considering Frampton was both a traitor and minister of defence.
Dakota Bruder: Personal Glory. 'But doesn't he fight in a mask?' you ask? Yes. Yes he does. For all of his bellyaching Julius is but a amateur in the art of mental gymnastics, Roland in the mean time is a grand master capable of justifying to himself any act of stupidity that he commits no matter how many people are killed as a result or how badly he sabotages himself, sadly he is the only one he can justify his idiocy to.