Chapter VI

The school was shaking.

No, beyond Kuoh Academy itself, Sona felt as if the city itself was trembling and groaning beneath her feet. The air was thick and soiled, overwhelmed by so much mana that her skin prickled and her eyes burned, palms clammy with sweat as the normally cool headed young lady ran down the street and back towards her school.

When she'd felt something interfere with her wards earlier, Sona had warned Tsubaki and left to check on them herself. Being the one in charge of administering all Devil-related activities during the day, any and all causes for concern were to be handled by her group while Rias was the one in charge of nightly activities.

Splitting responsibilities like this was the only reason they didn't have to work around the clock and instead could devote part of their time to studying.

Something that would have been impossible otherwise.

But it was a fair price for their extended stay in the human world.

Or so she thought.

'What could be happening?'

Part way through the afternoon, a powerful blast of magical energy shook the city, carried by sonic waves that ruined a fourth of all windows in the area as well and sent half the population into a panic-induced stampede. Her peerage was running itself ragged, keeping the startled humans from hurting each other, as well as dispelling the frankly absurd amounts of mana that risked sending them to the hospital.

But that was only the beginning.

When a giant serpent was sighted near the city's center, Sona had left to investigate it immediately and diverted from her original plan. Whether it be some sort of creature left to rampage in her town or some mage's idea of a practical joke, she couldn't allow it to stand. If for no other reason than people were being hurt in the disorder.

What she found, however, was much more concerning.

'Massive constructs of enchanted stone in quantities well in excess of what should be possible to conjure without drawing far more attention. A destroyed street and signs of battle that made Kuoh look like the leftovers of a Rating Game.'

And now, something was happening at the school.

'These aren't coincidences.'

In fact, she would bet her chess set that these happenings were all being propagated by the same individual. And when she got her hands on whoever this was, she was going to make them rue the day they decided this was a good idea.

Of course, complications soon came up.

Namely the fact that whoever it was behind this somehow found a way to take over her barrier from the inside. The barrier she spent her whole first year painstakingly putting together for an eventuality where they needed to contain damage to the school, or as a safe bunker where she and Rias could hide while locking the enemy outside.

Unlike her friend, Sitri was painfully aware that they were targets of some importance and nowhere near capable enough to personally engage the truly dangerous enemies their siblings had.

It was her first task in adequately shoring up their defenses.

And now it was being used against her.

'They've somehow cut me off from the spell itself.' Never mind being unable to turn it off from the outside, the barrier looked like it had been strengthened further, layers upon layers of defensive magic that distorted the air itself and partially obscured what was happening inside.

Even if it was possible to see the school and the figures inside, Sona couldn't make out who they were or what they were doing.

'It looks like… someone is fighting them?'

She couldn't make out details but there were most certainly three figures inside. The giant serpent that had been reported was present, as well as a hooded figure and what looked like another person. Sona could at the very least follow their movements, though, and was tracking the battle as best as possible.

And then the barrier shook.

Or, rather, it rippled and flexed as a blast of the purest crimson slammed against it, a harsh gust of wind nearly blowing Sona off her feet as the skies above rumbled and thundered… before a massive flash of lightning rained down from darkened clouds with a deafening roar.

The barrier, however, stood firm, merely pulsing, millions of threads of light manifesting, shifting, and knitting themselves together once more. All as if to dissipate the damage.

And Sona would recognize those attacks anywhere.

"Rias!"

Taking flight, Sona approached the scorched section of the school. The aftermath of the Ruin Princess and her Queen's attack.

"Gasper's inside there!" The crimson haired Devil's voice was thick with emotions and tears were pricking at her eyes. "We've gotta rescue him!"

It was clear that she was on the verge of panic and, as a mass of energy so potent that Sona felt its raw pressure nearly push her to her knees, the Power of Destruction was unleashed once more. Waves of surging energy eating away at the pavement, turning trees and grass into less than ash, and unmaking light that tried to pierce the raw, manifested power of Un-Creation itself all proved that the immense wave of power was… nothing.

"Rias… stop."

Gasping, chest hurting, Sona called out to her friend - even Akeno had fallen to her knees, angel wings manifesting as her King's immense power agitated the half Fallen's other nature - and fought to reach her fellow.

"You won't… breach it."

Panting, heaving with sweat, the other girl fell on her ass, Akeno rushing to her side, and the flushed and dirty Devil looked like she was barely fighting back tears.

"They're gonna hurt him again. I barely avoided Gasper's family from tracking him. They're gonna hurt him because I screwed up."

"The others?" She questioned Akeno, who had herself landed nearby, hurriedly.

"Helping around town. That horrible sound from earlier is proving hard to dispel."

"Then we need to get through. Combine our powers at one of the keystones and-"

"What is the purpose of this intrusion?"

Death.

A cold feeling gripped her head, a harsh cutting wind blowing past Sona as the world seemed to darken and all light retreated as a small figure emerged from the sudden darkness of the barrier. To the undiscerning eye she might have appeared to be a simple girl with short silver hair, but in her eyes Sona saw nothing but a bottomless abyss that threatened to swallow her whole should she dare stare for a moment longer.

Wrong.

A scar in the world.

A living contradiction which caused natural order to buckle and shudder as the short girl stepped through the barrier as if it hadn't been there. The harsh cold which emanated from her confirmed that this must have been the source of the oppressive feeling Sona had been seeking.

But she never could have expected this.

"Heretic." Her body shivered, the word itself carrying a weight only those who understood it could feel.

How could she not? As a Devil, the faith of humans had always been weaponized against her kind, whether it be by the Holy Church and the Angels, or by pantheons and their religions across the globe. Human belief was a source of endless power for those who understood how to use it.

However, Heretic Gods were another matter entirely.

Beings spawned by unchecked, rampant human imagination. Their belief coalesced and gave shape to beings that warped the natural order and brought disaster wherever they went.

"This one won't repeat herself."

A monster that only the higher echelons of Devilkind could face.

And one was standing right in front of them.

"We should be the ones asking questions! What is the meaning of your intrusion, Heretic. What reason do you have to be in our territory?" Though Sona found herself paralyzed, Rias took point, striding forth fearlessly despite the unnatural cold.

The Heretic paused, looking at Rias as if she had just noticed her.

Those pit-like eyes didn't change. If anything they seemed to look through them.

As if they weren't real.

"I see, this town was under the control of Devils after all. How perplexing."

Sona cut in, working up the courage to speak. No matter how strong she and Rias were. Without the back up of their peerages, this wasn't a fight she was comfortable risking.

"Knowing that you have trespassed on our land, I request that you state your name and-"

"I decline."

Shot down, immediately.

The Heretic didn't seem interested in conversing with them, rather, she turned her back on them. Eyes fixed towards the barrier… no… the fight taking place within the barrier.

It was quite the spectacle.

Large marble vines sprouted from the ground, thorns covering their stems like the roses of a garden, the massive serpent winding and coiling around them even as it bled golden ichor and tore open new injuries along with its glittering scales. The hooded woman was more successful, yet less graceful, crushing the clinging vines with her forked spear, vaulting over the wrecked side of the old building.

There, she could spot it!

A small head of blonde hair, desperately trying to escape as the building collapsed around him, caught in the middle of that battle.

At any other given time, Sona would have suggested falling back, or at the very least trying to appease this Heretic. With the support of their combined servants, she might have risked it, too, but with the town in an uproar and just three of them here, their prospects were less than positive.

Unfortunately, the moment the servant of a Gremory was endangered, there was no other choice.

"One of my peerage is trapped inside. You must allow me to save him."

The redhead stepped closer, the goddess not even twitching at the proximity. Nor did she react to the ominous red light emanating from Rias' eyes. A baleful reminder of her fearsome power.

"You may retrieve them when this test is concluded."

And was immediately shot down.

Again.

"He won't survive if you don't let him out!"

"Irrelevant. All variables have been accounted for. Your servant won't alter the outcome. Allowing more elements past this point threatens the result." It was a heartless, clinical analysis. The sort Sona had listened to in the past when studying the nature of tactics.

Being on the other end of it, however, was something altogether.

"Then get out of my way!"

Rias attacked, quickly and with extraordinary aggression.

Taking two steps forward, the crimson haired master of the Power of Destruction threw a sloppy, wide punch, but the blow delivered an immediate surge of magical energy directly to the girl's chest.

Any human would have had their upper body immediately disintegrated.

Any low class Devil or Angel would have died in a messy but less all consuming manner.

A high class Devil would have had pretty serious burns and likely been knocked back.

This girl simply lost about half of her top - exposing the strap of her bra, but no more.

There wasn't even a scar or a scratch on the Heretic's skin!

Sona immediately began conjuring water elementals, even as Rias began delivering more point blank range attacks. This time, though, the silver haired spirit stepped into the attempted punches and delivered a single, strong palm strike directly to Rias's solar-plexus. Akeno immediately reacted and cast multiple, spiraling bolts of lighting at the goddess, even as she caught her mistress and immediately flew to the cover of Sona's summons.

"The punishment for defiance of this one's will would usually be most severe, however, in consideration of my host's wishes I shall instead entertain you until the test is concluded."

Beneath the girl's feet, her shadow seemingly distorted and warped, rippling and flickering as it stretched and contorted itself before a massive chitinous leg surged from the projected image.

Followed by seven more.

"A taste of the finest of tapestries shall suffice for mere Daemons."

Whoever said fighting monsters looked like a fun exciting thing to do had never actually fought with one.

"Stand still and die, brat!"

And Issei was starting to think that the button mashers he liked playing had actually lied to him about how easy it was to kill one of the damn things.

"I apologize, but die now!"

'Can I sue over this?'

It wasn't like those came with a 'don't try this at home' sign.

Because who would go out to fight actual monsters after playing the game!?

"I'm not gonna just let you two lunatics eat me!"

Well, as it so turned out, an idiot by the name of Issei Hyoudou was one such idiot that, when faced with a psychopath lady with a spear and her giant oversized snake of a sister, decided that, instead of running, he would try his luck at not dying.

Leaping to the side, he rolled when he hit the ground, but instead of picking up half a dozen scrapes and bruises he only damaged his clothes more. Indeed, his school shirt was all but scraps, and his pants were only doing a little better… but he was only sporting a few, thankfully shallow, slash and scratch marks.

Issei was actually doing better than expected.

'I'm not dead yet at least! Woah there!'

Coming to a hard stop, he fell backwards and did everything he could to avoid being impaled, stomped, smashed, or crushed.

"Stand! Still! Brat!" The angry blonde snapped, spear tip slashing at air as Issei ducked and rolled. Still, the monster's attack disrupted enough air that it lashed against the wall of an old building behind him. She even continued thrusting and lunging at the teenager as he rolled from place to place, frantically throwing his hand up and summoning a massive, thorned vine of marble.

Bursting through the ground, nearly skewering the hooded woman as it coiled at thin air, and all too soon growing still.

It was more than enough to give him the time to start putting distance between himself and the two monster… goddesses… thingies.

He was still trying to process that.

Fighting them on open ground wasn't working out for him. Before, when there were buildings and a narrow street, all he had to do was create a bunch of thorn statues because there wasn't room to dodge.

And it wouldn't have worked if the oversized garden snake hadn't given herself and her angry sister a healing potion.

'With more room to move, they are dangerous.'

And it wasn't like he could just catch them. Because as it turned out, after creating one of his marble statues, they just stayed the way they formed. If they were an actual thing he could control there wouldn't be nearly as much trouble for him as there was.

"Catch him, Stheno!"

"On it, sister!"

The massive serpent circled around the building, armored maw wide open as she tried to swallow him - only to squeal in surprise as a chunk of stone grew out of the wall, bashing against the side of her head with just enough time for Issei to slide under it.

Now don't get him wrong!

He loved his powers. They were awesome.

But there was a hell of a difference between controlling stone and creating stone. And unfortunately for Issei, he actually didn't have the ability to move the stuff he made, only choose the shape they took and where they came from.

Overlapping them with the ground or a wall just came with the handy side effect of them being 'pushed out'. After a whole month of learning and experimenting that was the most he could do without physically grabbing one of the statues and taking a swing at them with it.

'I'm fit, not a bodybuilder!"

Another statue, this one vaguely shaped like a fish, popped out of the ground just in time to block one of the blonde's stabs from catching him in the back.

'But I don't have to be.'

Before a second, larger stone fish appeared dropped on top of her from above. As if it had been airdropped, the fact of the matter was that there wasn't anything above her one moment and then on the other, a mass of white stone had appeared before gravity did its thing and pulled it down.

"Euryale, look out!"

Only for the snake to pull her out of the way at the last second; the mass of rock crushing the space the hooded lady had been standing on with an earth-shaking thud.

'Man I didn't sign up to play a handicap match.'

Duck.

Weave.

Run.

Although he'd stated earlier his intention to stop them, Issei was still just one guy fighting against two. Without the handicap of an enclosed space, they could surround him and attack before he could put up a fight. He was just lucky that neither of them seemed to have the ability to attack from afar.

Or else he'd been dead already.

'Come on, come on… there's gotta be a door nearby.'

The windows were too high up and if he tried climbing them the two monsters would for sure stab him from behind. More than that, neither were stupid or blind. He may, slightly, have a better sense of the school than either, but both were just as capable of seeing any options he could.

And there was only one thing he could think to do.

'They better have some insurance.'

Sprinting flat out, Issei charged directly towards the corner of the front of the school. Stumbling, barely able to keep to his feet, he raced towards the one place he thought he might be able to find some cover.

Sure, he'd seen it just like everyone else when they were having orientation. But it wasn't like he'd really anticipated heading into the Old Building like this.

Sneakers pounding against grass, the sounds and snarls of his enemies behind him, heartbeat pounding in his ears, palms sweaty, lungs puffing, arms pumping, the brown haired boy sprinted as hard as he'd ever run.

Just as fast as when he'd been trying to escape Medusa.

Fleeing from her sisters he reached that same level of near frenzied flight and aimed straight at the ornate, wooden door of the European styled out-building.

Apparently it was mostly clubs and study groups who used it, while classes were held in the new building and other activities took place in the gymnasium.

Slamming shoulder first into his target, the young man willed himself through the wood and brass and into the building beyond.

There was a loud crash and a sudden splintering as shards of wood went everywhere. Glad for his powers once again, he felt no pain, perhaps a sudden pressure and tugging at his other injuries, and continued on past… straight into the wall beyond.

Bouncing off of it, he nearly lost his balance, but managed to right himself - a large table and several valuable looking bits and pieces falling to the ground below.

Issei didn't linger to take in the area around him, but turned immediately and began racing down a random hallway. The most important thing was to push deeper into the building and to restrict his opponents! That would let him limit his enemy's ability to maneu-

CRASH!

BOOM!

Black scales smashed down, bisecting the building, bright lights, twisting colors, and even a flash of shimmering darkness swirled around him. And it was in that moment of confusion and overwhelming otherworldliness something clicked. His gut, raw instinct and nothing else, screamed at the boy to jump, so he did. Like that a burst of white-red-black lashed out, tearing through walls, table and chairs, and with that single flick of a tail, the giant serpent ripped out half the building… just as it had bisected the whole place.

Debris fell around him as Issei crashed to the ground, footing utterly lost, and the blonde cackled as she strolled behind her sister.

"Man, you really have some legs on you, a pity you chose to close yourself off in here."

Readying her spear, the woman gave him a cruel smile, but then, as her weapon was raised, Issei unable to find his footing amongst the rubble, a scream rang out.

It was high pitched, girlish, and nothing but all consuming panic. Raw and pure and ugly and from a place of terror undiluted by any sort of strength or pride. For a moment, the two of them stood shocked as a figure burst through the rubble, a feeling of wrongness spreading through the area before bursting like a bubble before it could touch them.

'What was that-'

Then he saw her.

Another student. Younger than him with pale skin, the kind who looked like they had never seen a day of sun in their life, a head of short blonde hair and teary pink, almost red eyes blown wide open in fear. Wearing the Kuoh middle schooler uniform, although torn and dusty in places, the student looked at the group in abject terror.

This…

He didn't expect any of this!

'Athena said the place should have been empty.' He remembered that much when they talked.

The hooded sister shook her head, as if stunned by something. He didn't understand why she looked that freaked out, eyes slit in fury as they zeroed in not on Issei… but on the girl.

He didn't like where this was going.

"Stheno! Squash that thing! Before it does that again!" Blood freezing in his veins, Issei saw the massive snake stiffen for a second before slithering away.

"As for you-"

The world around them exploded, rough spears of stone shooting from the walls, ceiling, the floor, crisscrossing as they locked the hooded woman's arm into the place, one of the spears running through the side of her leg. A screech of pain rattled his bones as the force of it blew Issei out of the building and into the air like a cannonball.

Hitting a broken upper floor sent him ankles over head, flipping and hard stopping by face planting into a waterlogged carpet.

Groaning, body actually aching, the young man forced himself to move.

"That girl is in danger."

Each word came out somewhat strained, a sort of cold weight finally starting to settle into his bones.

Still, there was no time to wait. To hesitate. To fear.

Only act.

The two monsters were rallied, the wounded blonde clinging to her sister's back, as the giant snake zeroed in on the blonde student. Issei was two floors up and at an angle to both - closer to his enemies than the other student. So he simply raised his hands and pushed a wall of marble in front of them.

It wasn't enough to stop their attack, but both of them had rallied, another burst of golden dust obscuring their forms and undoubtedly healing any injuries they might have.

But it also meant he was free to act unobserved, too.

Dropping straight down, advancing on neither friend nor foe, Issei brought himself parallel to the duo and began launching vines, spears, and thorns throughout the building in a wide cone.

Each attack was relatively weak, the hastily conjured stone too fragile to do anything but probe and direct and guide, but, every so often, he'd change the angle for a single volley. A huge dumbbell from above, a marble book snapping closed from behind, a mouse trap whose great block of cheese fractured into a rain of fist sized lumps of stone. It was a barrage of blows and strikes meant to tire, distract, and misdirect.

And it had managed to, finally, draw a shuddering gasp from a sweat drenched Issei.

For the first time all day it hurt to breathe, his ribs sore, his lungs burning, his skin clammy. But his absolute barrage of stone hail had not only ruined the far side of the building, tearing massive holes in its structure, but allowed him to raise a single marble staircase up to where the other student was cowering.

Still frozen with fear.

The blonde girl was confused, eyes screwed shut, shaking and in shock.

So he decided he wasn't done.

Pressing the palm of his hands against the scattered marble pieces that littered the floor. The stone beneath his hand grew malleable and clay-like, spreading over the rest of the other pieces that covered the walls and ceiling as it surged upwards like a geyser of liquid stone.

Issei let go with a groan, reaching for the side of his torso in pain.

He'd… completely forgotten about that with the mad rush to escape them.

But if the surprised gasps and rasped curses were anything to go by, his little trick managed to catch the two by surprise as the mass of now solid stone curled around them, sticking them against the hallway with an ugly lump of unworked marble.

"It's not gonna stop them for long. We gotta go!"

Running up the staircase, Issei felt himself walk through another 'bubble' of something. As if the air itself had frozen around him before it returned to normal. The teenager stumbled over to the girl, taking her hand and dashing down the hallway, the blonde unable to resist.

'That weird feeling again.'

There was no time to wonder what it was, he had to get her away before they.

"L-Look out!"

The blonde shouted the warning but it was too late.

An explosion of pain rocked his side!

The force of the impact almost threw Issei off his feet as a long, sharp tip erupted from the side of his stomach, a second prong barely grazing him. Yet the shock was enough to paralyze the boy, a thin blood splatter spraying his clothes, the floor, and the blonde girl beside him, who looked just as freaked out as he was, grabbed him and tried to push him away from the attacker.

For a moment the world slowed down and he saw his own blood, saw the cruise ship, saw his arm and leg shredded. And then there was his stomach, pierced through on one side, and his own blood.

And yet… it didn't hurt as much as it had with Medusa.

Even as he began to fall to the ground, the taste of blood and poison thick on his tongue.