AN: After countless delays the chapter arrive, I didn't mean it to be so late…
The lance rested gently as he felt the helicopter descend. Once again he had been called to war. Once again Kyoshiro had answered even if he wished it were under better circumstances.
The strongest knight had been a title worth having once, when the 2nd generation still had most of its hundred survivors. Now that they only had three left it was much less a name worth bearing.
Kyoshiro set his lance down as he stepped free to see the other two already here. "Chiba I see you're doing well."
Chiba bowed her head in greeting. "Sir Asahina is screwing with the locals with his old game again, can you rein him in?"
Could he yes.
But it was the one piece of normality they still had from better days so right now he'd rather encourage the brat.
For it was an old tradition that if they were hated by the gods, then you just had to fill it with so many curses that they didn't know which one to happen to you, and in their indecision perhaps none of them would. "So old Hachiko coming down from the mountain and stepping past the boundary is the first one on your list. Even if he normally stays on his leash there is no guarantee."
Asahina shrugged. "Second would have to be one of the Nephilim deciding to invade while we're off fighting this new Nyarlathotep." But that was a standard curse, and it rarely happened. Command had long gotten used to defusing it with words even with the followers of the alliance.
He thought. "Even if Leviathan has been silent for a few months, maybe that just means it left the Atlantic and swum round to come and find our door." It was never going to happen.
"Zombie Apocalypse." It came from a normal soldier standing next to Asahina.
He quirked an eyebrow at the kid. Then at Asahina to explain who he was, his friend grinning. "This is Urabe who supposedly met and spoke to Nyarlathotep in the first encounter, well he's a horror buff by the looks of things."
The kid saluted him at the words and he nodded to him. "So why zombies."
"The man, not the girl spoke to me a bit about the sealed buildings." Urabe scratched the back of his head. "And asked if we'd taken the effort to prevent them from being used… I didn't think it more than a joke at the time but well…"
Anything the enemy thought could be used was worth investigating. But then with all the drones flying over the city they would surely notice it pretty quickly. And with twelve knights including all three remaining members of the second generation. That was one knight for…
"How many people did Ishinomaki have by the way."
The three of them looked back at him awkwardly. Even as Urabe seemed to think it over. "About one hundred and ten thousand people were supposed to have been caught in the deluge at the time."
Ten thousand of them each per knight.
He hoped it had been a joke or maybe they would need the nuke.
It was a fact that they had an official policy to shoot him on sight.
It was also a fact that official policy only extended as far as people were willing to enforce it. That if only one person broke ranks and tried to reopen communications then he could use them. For organisations were not monoliths but made up of people.
And one of those people had begun talking to a piece of slime he'd left behind. "For even if they should forbid such things to be seen in the light of day, the darkness welcomes all who come to it."
Eta nodded her head as she followed him into the shadow of Sakurazaka highschool which stood as bright and pristine as the day that he'd left it. A quick press against the glass showing it still stood firm.
He hit it full force and felt the impact reverberate in his fist. A dull ache as his limb broke for an instant before he fixed it once again.
The window hadn't even cracked.
What was it that Eta had said before they'd left, that magic was intrinsically a part of life as something that couldn't be separated. In a way it was true, even his slime blades were made from blood and living creatures, while steel was something you had to actively pour magic into just to get the tiniest result.
If you were to posit differently to the academies of Midgar they would laugh in your face. Yet the evidence here was almost the opposite for there was no magic in the earth or the plants that grew. Only in the static buildings of concrete.
"The crystal was worth eating but Aurora has no reaction to the buildings, and the earth itself still changes not even caught in the effect as plants still grow in it. That alone is enough for a theory at least is it not?"
"A tendency against flowing, a desire to remain where it is." Eta considered looking over the mass. "But when it flows it does so all in one go, possibly a tendency to adhere to itself."
It would certainly explain why it seemed like it was all or nothing in the buildings.
"Eta a crystal is?"
She blinked at him. "A repeating structure with minimal chemical impurities, relatively dense and generally translucent to some degree."
He let his cloak billow around him. "And the structure of these buildings is concrete, which is consistent but also an amalgamation of multiple different chemicals. Dense yes, not translucent at all. But still built from a series of repeating chains even if it is more complex."
Eta followed on. "The Earth is a full mixture of microorganisms and utterly disorganised matter. Soil, mineral, water, plant life and animals mixed in. You think that's important."
"Where and how always are." He glimpsed the world around them and thought back. "Its incomplete for I would like to see those living things that survived the change as well, and there are two types of magic in this place to contend with, both that flowing into the world and that which has changed to match it."
Eta paused watching him. "An alternative, all magic can be held in crystals, and it is the nature of the physical world which enables it rather than the magical."
"We will have to test that with our own when we get back won't we?" He paused thinking about it. "Violet do you have an idea?"
Only her eyes peeked out of the cloak. "You both have cause and effect mixed up." The next moment she returned to slumber.
He paused thinking about it even as Eta stared at him. "Violet is connected to the magic here rather than our world isn't she? From where it flows or to this one?"
"The first, Violets connection is to the world from which magic flows and not to this world in any form." Because this had been a world without magic for as long as he'd known it. "But that means we have an ace up our sleeve as well."
"You think Aurora's power can be used like the lances to interact with the buildings even though they're frozen?"
"Exactly, if we just pour her power into a slime key it should interact just like we have the real one." He gestured to the door ahead and smiled. "Go ahead."
A few seconds later they were in and it was time to setup the school for his little meeting.
He stalked the darkened halls letting his presence creep out amongst the shadows, even as the husk he'd made let the soldier in. The same military uniform as those who hunted them and yet while there was fear in her.
There was no hesitation even as she saw the damaged lock and knew what it meant.
Instead there was an eagerness in her step, a quiet confidence even in the face of a disaster and that was all the more fun to play with.
He let the fragment of his power lead her through the halls to the school library, a place of books and knowledge yes. But also a place where he could hide amongst the bookshelves and the ever present shadows in the room were cast long.
His words echoing through the shelves like the monster he might be. "Welcome I see that not all of humanity are as afraid of me as your masters would hope. That there is still a desire for knowledge even if it is forbidden in the darkest of times."
"Kagenou Minoru." The lady paused briefly as she let the words settle in. "Does this place still hold some kind of significance for you to come back here."
"It is a place of learning for all those who seek knowledge, once made to mould the youth of tomorrow in the shape that their forebears wished of them. But knowledge never works like that and those who seek it truly will always question the words of those who come before and thus rail against the status quo until it breaks."
"Is there a more fitting place to discuss the collapse of your society than this?"
The blank face of a helmet stared back into the darkness at him. "Poetic as it might be introducing yourself as a harbinger of the end certainly isn't winning you many friends."
"It has already ended, you may no more ignore it then you may will the tides to turn back. But endings are also beginnings and now is the time to choose how you will march forward into the future. No force may stem the tides of magic but perhaps there is still hope some of you can survive enough to see a new world be born."
He let his cloak wrap up around the corners of the room, knowing full well the infrared goggles on her helmet would let her see them move.
The soldier watched him calmly eyes trailing the movements even as she ignored his main body for a moment. "For that you are correct, the choice to bury their heads in the sands is one thing I cannot abide. But then that is why I am not a member of the JSDF."
She paused watching for some kind of recognition on his face even as he kept it blank. For a traitor and a spy were much the same in how he could use them. "I am Yuuka in the service of the Valiant, part of the Alliance of the Nephilim."
He steepled his fingers and looked back at her radiating calm. "A God of conquest who takes from the weak, violent and capricious for all answer to the blade in time."
Nephilim, those fallen giants. Or at least something close to it had been the name the knight had used for him when he'd let himself grow.
She paused. "The Valiant would not take if they would give us other options. But we are long past the point where we can hear empty excuses, and they are long past caring. When the alternative is to be blind to their pleas of course he would choose to fight."
"We cannot deal with them peacefully." The lady nodded her head. "It is because they are ruled by spite of course, that they would destroy that which we need rather than let it fall into our hands. In the face of such all we can use is violence."
The words were just as easy to say regardless of who was right, but she still hadn't shot him which was the best they were going to get. Cid returned his hands to behind his head and watched her. "I always choose force anyway, it is true that you cannot negotiate with those who are unwilling. A massacre then? Or looting what is it that you requite of my services."
Idly he let a blade form in his hand.
She paused considering her words. "The thing we wish is not to destroy them as they stand, but a mission of rescue. They have locked up a scientist with all his research when the alliance has need of it. Destroying it would pose no problem but to infiltrate it, my lord is hardly a subtle one and so many of our number are unable to hide amidst the enemy."
It was a super-secret spy mission into enemy territory. That while he'd been gallivanting around outside and shown them the run around he was secretly in their base stealing their stuff and could jump out at the end and say he'd been there all along.
He was in. "You have such bold aspirations and I have such a thirst for knowledge. A trade then I will help you acquire it but in exchange I wish to do one small test of my own, and to have a chance to see the fruits of our labour as well."
And if she didn't accept that price he would just have to go lower until he found one she did.
There was steel there as Yuuka faced him. "What kind of test?"
"You intend to lead me past the sensors that detect magic do you not? But you have not touched it yourself and so I will bestow a fragment of power upon you. If you are truthful it will cause you no harm to do so, and if you are lying it will ruin your life."
It was a chance for him to do science on a subject that deserved it.
She tensed and stared back. Then slowly removed the helmet to reveal a woman in her early thirties staring back at him. "To keep the infiltration working I must ask you keep any side effects away from where they will be visible."
There was a barely concealed panic on her face but that was fine.
"A single drop is all you will need." He let a single drop of blood fall from his hand and letting it rest in midair in front of her. If she lived it would be an interesting experiment to see and feel how the world changed it in front of him. And if she died well she was a traitor anyway so nothing of value was lost.
She drank it easily enough.
And then… nothing happened. It was the same as with Panza, Faustus and Elaine. Just a drop of his power unchanged as it pulsated through her flesh and revitalised her body. A perfectly normal result for a perfectly normal experiment.
He kept his face calm and smiled. "As you can see my power is fully under my control and not a single line on your face has been changed by it." Idly he leaned back and thought.
"Eta write down that pouring my magic into a human doesn't cause them to change. They are just as surprised as I am." He nodded calmly as he thought it over. "Then prepare yourself for we venture into the lair of the beast itself."
Was it because a human only retained magic that flowed like life, and only the parts that didn't change would remain. Or something more basic. For it had been his world too once and if he carried a trace of that with him then his magic would already be aligned with the world.
He drew his shadows back into himself until he looked almost completely human in front of her. "Well then it seems today we shall be allies,
Eta stood with the lance resting over her shoulder, and an almost eager hunger in her eyes. "Looting and plunder?"
He nodded firmly in confidence. "While there is much loot to be had, the best things are always kept in the deepest vaults hidden from prying eyes. We will be stealthy first until everything becomes clear."
And then take everything not nailed down on the way out.
"She can't come like that." Yuuka was almost hesitant as she said it.
He looked back between them and understood the tragedy. He looked over the prize. "What if we only take the crystal core and forget everything else? It's not like Eta needs that when she can do it herself."
Walking into the enemy base with the lance over her shoulder would give them away.
Yuuka winced. "That too, but more importantly her ears, unless you have a way to hide them."
Eta looked between them confused. He translated for her and after a moment she reached down and started pulling out a slime container for the disguise slime.
"It seems we have a solution."
Yuuka nodded. "They're detachable then."
"Of course." He exuded a tiny blade of slime in front of her eyes. "Everything is detachable when you have a knife."
And Eta was like him, so a bit of body modification in the name of science was fine. They just needed to cut off the tips and mould some simple rounded ears and everything would be fine.
Dun dun da dun dun, dun dun da dun.
They'd picked up two more people and gotten into a military uniform of his own and now he stalked the halls like the spy he was. Stealth was the art of being unseen, and even as the eyes watched around them it did not matter for they passed over them without seeing the truth.
Whatever sensors attached to the wall doing nothing as he walked right through them.
It took willpower. It took resolve. But he managed to avoid humming any old spy movies out loud and kept all the background music inside his head as they marched on. Like any other soldiers returning from the ongoing investigations, fake details and a calm smile.
"The next checkpoint unfortunately cannot be passed so easily. For not only is every person checked against a list from high command and multiple panic buttons. Cameras watched from a room further down the way. We'll be relying on you heavily from this point."
He nodded in response and grinned. "I just need to take out everyone at once and everything will be fine." Turning to Eta and waving. "Just follow me in."
It was a long corridor with no rooms to step off into. The kind that meant you could be seen the whole way down with a fully armoured checkpoint at the end. Ten men at the end, two more halfway down to halt him in his tracks.
He sauntered along anyway the image of confidence. "I think we're slightly early but well."
The two guards in his way kept their guns ready pointed just off of him. Even as a man further back moved his hands to the computer to look through records. "Name."
He moved past them instead.
Brute force tearing through the barricade even as a dozen whips of slime tossed men around him like ragdolls.
Every person in his reach downed in the split second before they had a chance to even think even as he raced on. A room further along door heavily entrenched into the walls like you would expect. Steel and impenetrable to any mere human who tried to breach it.
He leaned in and crashed through in the blink of an eye.
Expanding outwards into a horror that filled the room even as the guards had barely registered his presence even as they were dragged back out away from any panic buttons and silenced before they could speak.
Then he let it fade falling back into the visage of a human as he calmly walked back out of the door to see Eta done with the two he'd left.
And the three others hesitantly following after her even as she looked through the guns she'd taken from them and casually tore them apart. "Loot away."
To the soldiers he gave a different stance. "Stealth is the art of not being seen, and I assure you there was no one left to see it." He preened as he said it and let his swagger return rather than the more disciplined stride he used as a soldier. "I take it there are no complaints?"
"Quite." Yuuka had the sense not to show weakness even as the other two watched him nervously as they walked past.
And as he rifled through their pockets. One sapphire, one ruby, and four orange crystals almost like topaz glared back at him which didn't look at all like the weapons he'd expected. But there was magic in them, and thick magic even as it refused to respond to his touch, and he grinned showing them off to Eta. "Aurora are these worth eating?"
Eta's cloak rippled and as Aurora grew up he could trace her eyes and knew they were. "Yes."
Four orange so he popped one up and tossed it to her, watching as she devoured it in moments without a second thought. The spark of magic inside it being swallowed instantly.
Eta paused watching it. "She can absorb my magic, and the magic from the crystals easier than your own then?"
"Such a thing is only natural."
Then pushed on to follow after the erstwhile allies into the labs themselves.
A computer set up for holding the archives they wanted, air gapped away from any real operating system so no one could access it. "How long do you expect to take to get in, or are we dragging the computers out first and cracking them elsewhere?"
If it was the latter he would head out first and start looting himself. "If we can break in quickly we will, if not then we're setting up to hold this point until the Valiant arrives understood?"
He nodded and walked over to one of the computers connected to it himself, looking over the keyboard attached and the login screen.
Using upper case, lower case and numbers, between eight and 20 characters. The lowest possible number of permutations was sixty two to the power of eight, the higher to the power of twenty. Two hundred trillion on the lower end it was an impossible task.
But he could see the smudge on the keyboard, and it was horrifying to even contemplate. But then they were only human as he put in the password and clicked enter. "I'm in." He blinked and turned to their accomplice. "I'm in."
Eta nodded as though it was obvious that he could do it.
The others stared at him for a moment before the man with glasses shrugged. "They left it on and logged in didn't they?"
He nodded calmly even if it was a lie. Telling the truth would only brutally murder whoever ran this terminal in the eyes of the world.
Qwerty123
"Kensuke can you run a signal from here and broadcast it back?" The man already had a laptop out and was attaching it up. "It'll be up and running in a minute. Like this we might not even get noticed if things hold up."
He tuned them out because it was boring until he knew actually what they were taking out.
Eta had sidled up beside him and stood watching them work. "While the knowledge on the computers is not for you, there is much else hidden in this room you can glean knowledge from."
Eta turned and slipped him a piece of paper. A coded message in dots and dashes when Midgardian would be enough for anyone except Aurora. He thought for a moment and pictured the message in his mind.
'She is Diabolos.'
"Eta you are such a smart girl aren't you." He patted her gently on the head and felt as she leaned into it. "Coming to the right answer so easily with only the barest of hints."
Eta rested watching him intently, a silent question hanging in the air. For she was always curious and devoted to learning so how to answer without diminishing it. "Then it seems we have a choice, would you trust in my character that I know what I'm doing, or in the words granted to you through a thousand years of history when we already know our enemies wrote it."
"You." No hesitation at all. "Then you think even the most basic truths given to us are lies."
He nodded sagely. "Has it not always been so? The present can be seen and experienced and so all lies made in it must be small enough to slip through the cracks. The past is infinite, it covers thousands of years and only a trace of the events might remain. When the truth is lost to the mists of time who knows what lies might be placed amongst them."
Certainly enough he built his best lies on things he knew no one would ever check.
"Does Alpha know?"
Cid paused. "Are you familiar with the fact that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission." It was not an admission of guilt no matter how you looked at it.
Eta smiled conspiratorially and pushed off. "Then I won't tell her either."
His thoughts were pulled away as a siren screamed in the night. An endless blaring coming from every direction. The others in the room jumping to attention even as hands went to weapons that were no longer there. "It seems we have finally been noticed, shall I take my leave to get our scientist friend free?"
One of the men eyed him warily. "Will you give us the weapons you seem to have borrowed first?"
"You have nothing else on you then?" He let the words hang between them for a moment as the shadows danced around him. "But you need not fear for I shall not kill you and Eta is more than enough to handle any of the knights they might bring."
Eta watched between them in the tension and let a blade erupt from her own hand to point at the three of them. But that wasn't the true goal for what he wanted was for the man to draw the other blade he could feel pulsing in his back pocket.
To let him see just how the crystal would work in the hands of someone who could use it.
"Kenji Stop." Yuuka stepped between them. "You have another weapon anyway and we need his help until the Valiant arrives." And they believed they wouldn't need it once he did. "And you know that picking a fight now won't help any of us so stop pretending."
"Fine well then I'll be on my way." He turned and looked back over his shoulder. "Eta if they threaten you you're free to kill them all, but as long as they're friends you can protect them."
He sauntered off past Kenta by the door and waving as he slipped out. Even as he felt the man pull another crystal and place it against the door once he'd passed through.
A moment later he felt magic bloom on the other side of the door, it's existence transforming as it changed into a barrier of blue crystal standing between them. "That is interesting isn't it."
The cell itself was simple enough, locked and sealed but only to a human. While the door itself was solid it was child's play to rip it off its hinges and march through. A walking mass of shadows and darkness that anyone would be afraid of.
"Kagenou Minoru."
The man in the cell smiled at his entrance and after just a moment he placed him. "Nishino Akira."
And that was that maybe it was better to just leave him here. He could just say that the guards had shot him and be done with it. Oh no how tragic it was but nothing of value would be lost.
"The last time we met there was anger between us. For I considered you a fool dragging my sister down with you into a pit of obscurity where she would never live up to her potential." The stern look on his face gave way to a smile. "It seems I should have trusted her more for she saw in you what I could not. A true kindred spirit walking along the path of enlightenment like so many fools were unable to do so."
He tapped his fingers against the frame of the second cage. A prison within a prison, within a prison. As though you had to be cleared to see him, cleared further to speak and no one would ever let him out. "I would say I gazed into the abyss and made my home in the shadows, with a thousand secrets hidden from humanity dancing at my fingertips."
"Truly?" Akira paused as though lost in thought. "The one who spoke to you seemed wreathed in shadows as well, while it was always like a light to me." Akira spread his hands a faint glow emanating from them even as his fingers seemed stiff. "Is it the nature of magic that changes beyond the gate, or a reflex that those living beyond it must change themselves to not be annihilated by that light?"
He'd never seen it so he had no answer for that. "Can one that cannot change truly be said to be alive rather than furniture? To be unchanging in this world is to die and be forgotten by time."
"Philosophy truly deep thought befits us both." Akira nodded happily along at his answer.
Even as he'd just said whatever nonsense had come to his mind. He stared at the controls once more and thought. If he really did let him out then there was still time to kill him later. Perhaps at the moment he revealed himself as a worthless cretin he could smile and say he had known it all along.
Killing him here was a waste when he could face a more poetic death later. "It seems mercy smiles upon you today and I will be able to free you from this cage." Against all the parts of him saying it was a bad idea he would let him live until proven guilty.
The gate gave way a moment later under brute force. Nishino Akira stepping out a moment later to take a place beside him. "A weapon if you've brought one I can use."
He tossed one of the orange crystals up and watched as Akira caught it. A faint orange light reaching out as it crawled up his arm and wrapped itself like a gauntlet before hardening. "Shinji is running this rescue operation then good to know. He always did stand by his friends."
It still had the same impermeable nature as the white lances the knight had used. But was it a skill difference or a nature difference. Either way his curiosity was written all over his face it seemed.
"You don't have the crystals on your side do you, the way the magic stagnates only ever something that happened after it flowed through." Akira certainly was smug about his answer.
He gave one of his own. "There is certainly a power behind strength but it is so limited in other ways that you struggle to use its true power to enhance your own form." His own form wavering as the army uniform was torn away to his own cloaked magnificence.
"Quite so." The scientist in him clearly envious. "The way it cost me such fine motor control a true tragedy, and Akane lost even more before she turned. And even this only holds it's form for a single moment without control before it starts to fade away."
"May I suggest a trade, a chance to test and experiment together."
It was a slow walk back.
When they reached the gates Nishino was able to open the door with the help of the blue sapphire.
Nishino paused. "Can you tell her I am a scientist, a man who seeks to understand the wonders of this world and one day I hope she can show me the light beyond the gate."
He bowed, extending an arm. "This is buffoon, he is ignorant and stupid and hopes that in your great wisdom you don't hold it against him. Alas he has no redeeming features and is a tragic character who can only lament his low station and suffer at the whims of his betters."
Aurora laughed. "I take it you are his better then?"
"If it is so plain to see how could I reject it." He turned back to Nishino with a smile on his face. "She is impressed by your enquiring mind and dedication to the pursuit of magic having seen its mark upon you."
Nishino kept his face calm. "The laughter itself was a good sign."
If that was what he thought. He turned back to Eta and asked quietly. "How much trouble has been here while we were away?"
Eta paused. "None."
He nodded calmly even as every ten or so minutes another siren blared to show they were still on high alert. "Then I guess I need to find out what did set it off."
Cid sat on top of the buildings watching down at the chaos below. It had not been them setting off the alarms it seemed, for the entire base was turned outwards as guns blazed from behind barricades and a dozen of the lances carved away at a tide that never seemed to end.
A zombie invasion.
His very own zombie invasion to play around with, he sighed in bliss at the thought of it as he could slaughter his way through the armies without a care.
They were not real zombies, he could feel it from here. A mist flowing out from their mouths as they moved, contained the real magic moving them. But in a way that was worse for the people below who were worrying about being bitten.
When breathing in at the wrong moment was enough to infect them.
He watched a moment longer, as bullets fell uselessly bouncing free of the flesh. But the railguns carried by the drones tore through and killed them. And the lances were wreaking a tally that could only be stopped by drowning them in a tide of corpses.
And what a tide it was as tens of thousands of them poured through the streets towards them.
They had refused his offer to help. But such a thing didn't matter as he fixed a dozen crystals to the end of his slime. A mace he could swing around with abandon and crush their heads easily enough. He hadn't found a way to use the magic within, even if Nishino had let him try moving it once it was released.
But there was a better thing he now understood. For just like the windows they were harder than anything else in this world. A perfect bludgeon to crush and maim his enemies with.
The walls below began to bulge, an opening they would struggle to close at the best of times.
He took to the skies like a silent shadow drifting down through the night. The cries of the hopeless, the screams of the damned. The unbroken screech as metal tore and the flood poured in.
The crack of bone and the whirlwind itself as he appeared among them, pulping blood and bone and tearing the horde apart around him in a single moment of utter violence as he heard their screams.
Poison spewing in his face and it felt like a thousand ants trying to tear their way into his flesh. Pouring into his veins like fire as it sought to get a hold on him and tried to drink deep.
He poured his own magic out to meet it and it was gone. Even as he stepped forward through the crack, letting his fingers swing to the sound of the drumbeat as they died before his might. "Mortals you may wish to close it back up while I pick up your knights."
Silence met his statement as rather than fight the soldiers behind him turned. The bodies twisting ever so slightly as the mist seeped into their flesh.
He crossed his arms behind his back like a general inspecting his troops. "Such a disgrace soldiers I turn away for one moment and you can hardly contain your thirst for vengeance."
As one they moaned back even as he let a small pool of blood flowing free of his veins. For even if they were his enemies for the moment they were sort of innocent.
As one they charged even as he forced open their mouths and forced blood down their throats. His own magic seeping through their flesh and forcing the mist back out. "Privates that was such a disgrace I can hardly believe you ever left bootcamp."
The moans that followed were only slightly more coherent than the zombies. Cid drummed his fingers for a while to give them time to recover for his show.
Their eyes turned to his back where a few slime whips continued to pummel the zombies trying to get in. The corpses themselves piling high until it became a mountain blocking the entrance. "Do you know who I am?"
Three of them responded by pissing themselves so he guessed they did. "Such a warm reception of the men of Japan have given me on this day, perhaps I should leave you all to die."
He marched up onto the pile of corpses letting laughter spill from his lips even as he looked down upon the soldiers present. "Rejoice though mortals, for even though you are treacherous and wretched. Spineless and insignificant worms barely deserving to crawl upon this earth. Your survival today will serve my purposes more than death ever could."
"Enjoy your respite while it lasts for soon you shall see the truth of this world."
For strength was everything and he had plenty to spare. Eyes flickering over the knights in the distance. Ahead of the gates where they could swing without reserve twelve of them had stood.
Nine had fallen. Unable to prevent the mist seeping through their flesh without any magic of their own.
The other three were special. Built different from the very beginning as he could feel magic flowing through them. It did not move like his own did, more like a thin film of white light imbued into the flesh and bodies that had already started to leave humanity behind.
He took flight soaring over the battlefield for an instant once more. Eyeing the nine who were fallen as they were hollowed out from the inside. Still alive if only a flicker resting within.
Or perhaps kept that way to keep the lances burning as nine blades turned to face him as one. He ducked under the first a droplet of power crashing through its owner as the arm holding it broke. The mist in the centre crashing out as he expelled it.
The second swung horizontally and he let it pass over him, a simple whip latching on and dragging the arm holding it in as he pushed his blood into its flesh and tore the mist out.
The third and fourth hit each other for a brief moment sparks clashing out as they recoiled. And he stepped in and crushed them both.
One by one he sent them crashing onto the rooftops, perhaps a little too hard. Unworthy to be even considered his opponents.
Only the final three remained. And even if they were not his enemies it seemed they hadn't realised it yet. He swung, a whip crashing in from the side as a blow to tear off the first head.
A wall of white light met it as it bounced off harmlessly and his grinned. Stepping in from the other side when they were so slow. His hand crashing down on the back of the man's neck within a moment.
The second duelled him. The blade flashing around to follow him even as she drew tiny little shields in the path of his own blows. Perhaps she was slow, perhaps she was weak but at this distance she needed to move so much less to block him.
Both of them killed the horde like flies and danced around one another. His own feet carrying him around the battlefield even as she stepped back and gave ground to keep her distance.
Until they'd circled one another completely and she stood on the trap he'd left behind. A single droplet of slime exploding beneath her foot sending her spiralling off balance as he crashed forward and drove her into unconsciousness.
"You didn't kill them." One final swing tore everything around them both as more than two hundred of the lifeless zombies died. "Did you?"
He stepped through into the gap and stood back-to-back with the knight. "Did I ever say I would? I only said you needed to bring worthy champions and now look your armies stand poised to be eaten by the abyss. Had you heeded my warnings perhaps you would not falter so."
The man shifted uncomfortably amidst the slaughter, and he laughed. "Do you regret that it has come to this to see everything you fought for driven to ruin?"
"I knew it already." A grim fatalism met his words. "What of it that you have come merely to laugh."
"Laugh?" Well, he was certainly enjoying the battlefield. "When I have come to make you an offer you cannot refuse. That I can save your subordinates if only you ask me to. For this demon is only a small one and it is no match for my might."
Tension ran through the man. A reluctance to say it.
"Very well even if you do not ask it does not matter. For I am the crawling chaos itself and today you get to live mortals." He grabbed the man by the back of his armour and dragged him back up into the sky, a slime whip reaching out and dragging all eleven of the others after him.
Crashing back towards the military base itself even as the walls heaved under the weight of the tide. As the walls cracked under the weight and everything seemed like it might be lost.
"Pour your magic forward. It will be enough."
The knight shrugged in defeat, slamming his hands into the ground as it flowed out not like a sword, but a wall rising up in front of them. Impenetrable even as it looked ethereal. Yet barely big enough to plug the gap and soon the tide of thousands would merely walk around it.
"I hope you have more of a plan than this to last until the nuke arrives."
Wait for a nuke. "When you already have one here."
Maniacal laughter spilled from his lips even as he let the magic flow. Using a trick he'd devised with Nishino and dragging the wall from the knight beside him as he mixed it with his own magic for just an instant. Before it had the time to revert to the world itself and changed it. A single point of pure destruction forming on the tip of his finger as he turned to the hordes and the mist surrounding it. For Shadow the word would be atomic, but these people here already knew it and there was no equivalent in Midgardian.
"Annihilate."
For an instant there was light.
Like a miniature sun bursting out into the world.
A hundred thousand corpses. The buildings in the city itself.
Everything ceased to exist before his eyes.
The city where he was born and razed.
"This is the light beyond the gate, and the truth of this world."
By the time he'd turned back every blade and gun was pointed towards him. Nervous twitching fingers trembling even as he stared back down at them enjoying the game for what it was. "Haven't you already tried bullets against me?"
Perhaps they might have answered but it was lost amidst the hail of bullets and even the few drones firing. He only bothered to dodge the latter letting a few swings cleave them from the sky.
"To kill you all." He idly tossed his head one way and the other as though considering it. "Now hardly seems the time to do so when I have found a much more fun toy to play with." He gestured to the base behind them.
The fifteen-meter-tall mass of orange crystal looked almost human. It probably had been once as it towered over the back of the base. A single arm outstretched as it tore the entire building in half and reached down.
Yuuka pulled from the wreckage as it brought her up slowly to rest on its shoulder. A megaphone pulled up as she spoke from its shoulder. "I am the voice of the Valiant and we have gotten what we came for. JSDF soldiers you have two choices now. You can allow us to leave uncontested or be slaughtered wholesale."
The knight behind him tensed but well they could both feel the massive magical power pouring out of it. Like the tide swamping the world even as the buildings around it were slowly deforming, turning to more crystal as a result of its presence. "You see they offered me a better deal and now I feel it is time to take my leave, the curtain has fallen until we meet again."
He hopped over pushing himself towards Eta who was coming towards him. Even as he watched the giant itself pull Nishino Akira who was still smiling up towards it as well. The man smiling for a moment as he exchanged words with it.
The crystalline monstrosity looked back, the place where a face should have been splitting as it seemed to smile back at the man.
Then it popped him in, screams echoing as it devoured him alive.
Zeta stood alone amidst the darkness.
The last two books sat on the table in front of her. Older and darker still even than the ten she'd handed over to Gamma. Each one special in its own right for they did not speak about the gate or even about magic primarily.
She'd struggled with parts of it, but the first book was clear.
The second though was the true gem. Proof itself that her Lord had already begun to look into such paths himself, that he was still unhappy with his mortality and craved a path beyond it. For the last book spoke on the nature of how to fuse a human with a demon.
Theoreticals of course, and practicals. The results of hundreds of experiments from the smallest of demons to the very greatest. "Come."
Six more shadows filled the room. A cloaked figure standing by the window. A pair of watching eyes from her place standing on the ceiling. Two girls sitting playing a game of chess as they watched on silently. An ever-vigilant guard waiting by the doorway.
Victoria as the seventh member of her own shadows serving her master in the night.
"Another gate in Vegalta, one more in the elven lands. Vaf and Jorum must have one either each or between them lest they have chosen to obtain one of the existing ones via murder." She looked over the next page where it continued.
"Hiran has another though he plays coy about which one. Yet there are twelve foreign rules we have identified in total, the number of seats of the Round made to match them, and we do not possess twelve gates."
She looked up from the book to her own shades. Awaiting their thoughts on the matter.
From above the first voice spoke. "If the information was contained within the words of normal society then the Cult would have found it."
From the window. "Artic and Antarctic, the bottom of the ocean and the insides of volcanoes. There is no guarantee that the gates must be located in a place a human can reach normally." Even as she began taking notes that would surely be about how to try and reach them.
From the chessboard one of the players spoke. "Uther could be wrong on the number of gates they control. If one member had two or perhaps more kept secretly it would explain it."
The other followed on. "But that lie goes both ways, just because Uther was privy to twelve forms of magic doesn't in any way limit the world to those twelve. There could be even more gates discovered since, or still locked away."
A minimum of twelve gates then. "If we can find one of the unused gates then we may not even need to resurrect Diabolos. Using the power of a demon pulled from the gate as enough to fulfil our purposes. For those of you leaving Alexandria be on the lookout for anything that might lead us to one of the missing gates. For you." She turned to the gatekeeper who would remain.
"Alexandria itself has one, the Mist Dragon chose this place for a reason and what else could it be? The mist has always been thick, the shadows long and we have attributed it to the Mist Dragon itself."
But if the Mist Dragon had gained such power studying the gate, had attuned itself to a feature that was already present. She nodded in understanding looking out over the streets of Alexandria itself even as it was filled with people now. "Then we will find the gate here."
AN: Very late, ah well. If you are still here then thank you. I struggled with this chapter for all sorts of reasons best not to dwell on them.
On the flipside to get the writing going when I was having issues with it I started a new story, which I see some of you already noticed. A EiS Fate crossover called Fate Delusional Apotheosis yay go me. Cid summons Aurora and then decides he wants to play the servant rather than the master.
I will be updating that and this going forward. It did not postpone this chapter I will point out, and more is a symptom that I had spare time while struggling to write this that I used to write something else.
Alas if your password for anything is Qwerty123 please change it. Same if your password is password I guess, some things should never be used in the name of information security.
Aniisomeone: 16 years the same amount of time in on Earth as it was in Midgar.
Yay glad the fluff is setting off well. Hopefully the crystal makes some more sense now that you have more information.
Eta being curious is what I am aiming for.
Fateful Twilight: Aurora cannot be out too much. The laws of this world are not kind to her current state.
Tragically I have no less jarring plan for the bold text, tis a complicated thing to try and mark in a way that separates the two speech types so it is obvious but not too overbearing. Well, no one else has made other suggestions and it is a curse I have laid upon myself.
Hopefully the rest of the Earth Arc shall also live up to your expectations.
Drak4806: Sherry is a sweet girl who hasn't gotten into the whole villain aesthetic everyone else is rocking, how tragic for her.
Yes soon a nuke will come crashing down. Believe in the nuke that will one day come.
I will confirm, that in this the mountain Cid died on is the same one that got devoured into the gate.