The soldiers had been left behind, unwilling to face the giant it seemed.
He wasn't moving at his fastest with only fumes left. Still he was easily keeping pace with the Nephilim as it marched, each heavy footstep crashing into the ground and leaving a light sheen of crystal in its wake.
And while it was large enough that each stride covered a vast distance it still seemed slow. Jerky movements, a statue that had to pour magic off of itself merely to move or it would be trapped in place forever.
From behind him within Eta's cloak Aurora chuckled. "Do you understand better now?"
"Cause and effect reversed. Crystals don't contain magic, but free magic inherently is crystallising all matter that exists around it." If he were to compare the scale of effect, it would be like when the Mist Dragon had plunged the world into darkness at the Bushin Festival.
The kind of thing you could only do if you had so much magic you didn't even bother to consider how best to use it. Where anyone who could sense it would wonder whether you could be called mortal or a god.
Which made this their Valiant One, the thing that Yuuka had said they all followed. Or at least she did considering the absence of the other two. "Yuuka killed the other two with you didn't she, ah well I suppose they truly wanted to rescue Nishino Akira in the end."
Aurora paused to look at him searching for something in his eyes. "You knew from the beginning then that he was meant to die?"
He let his stride lengthen as he watched off into the distance. "I did say he was a buffoon did I not? The kind of fool who entrusts his safety to those who only wish to do him harm."
"Master is always clear if you know what to look for." Eta supported him without hesitation. "All of it an attempt to draw out the titan so that we could uncover its secrets for ourselves."
"Everything is going according to plan." He nodded firmly. "For now we have a path to those who have truly embraced the magic flowing from the gate. It is there you understand that lies the true purpose of our visit."
Red, blue and orange so at least three of the Nephilim in the Alliance. But the JSDF knights had all been surrounded by a white glow, the crystal closer to diamond or malachite. "Aurora is the white crystal another person or a feature of pure untainted magic made from the gate."
"The first for certain. I felt her gaze watching me as I consumed it." A single finger was pulled from Eta's cloak and pointed off to the Northeast in the direction of Mt Jomon. "She is in that direction of that I am sure although how far is hard to tell."
He pondered back for a moment over her words. "They can see you when you eat the fragments, doesn't that mean that orange over there watched you eat a piece of him?"
The half-formed face of Aurora winced. "If I had known he was that close, I would not have eaten it. And that is why we retreated once he came to let Yuuka out."
He nodded in place. The crystals carried a tiny hint of their selves, in the same way that Aurora was still present even though only an arm had been located in the Sanctum originally. "Well I better go and introduce us properly then shouldn't I? Before he decides to come try and devour you."
She paused. "You don't think he might return the favour and try and eat us as well?"
HE pondered it for a moment and grinned. Because while he knew Aurora was not whole, and she did so as well. "The Valiant One has far bigger things to be concerned about I am sure I can convince him not to do so."
He let the shadows writhe around him as the suit twitched and became a monster in his own right. "So this is the fruits of Nishino Akira's crimes against humanity, one of the few survivors of his experiments come to take his revenge."
Yuuka herself remained in a bubble like forcefield, not quite touching the shoulder even as it held her in place despite the way she should have been shaken by its movement. "Did you have your fun with the JSDF?"
"They are so stuck in the past and so I gave them a gift, and all that remains is to see how they use it." He rested his arms behind the back of his head in quiet nonchalance even as he let sarcasm drift into his tone. "Oh Valiant one I see you have appeared in full, and yet I stand here merely representing a fragment of my lady while her true self rests beyond the gate. But then I think we would both rather she not need to confront you in full do you not?"
Yuuka let her hand rest on her God's shoulder for a moment then smiled. "Wouldn't it only be your loss if we were to come into conflict? The magic running through her is only a fraction of what we can bring to bear."
"Only until the moment my lady steps through." He let the magic flow through his cloak, the billowing mass of shadow growing out around him even as he let a quiet laugh out. "But if her full form was made manifest upon this world? If the light that tore an entire city asunder were to not exist as a glance but a truth walking the world once more? It is a kindness that we only approach you with a fragment."
Cid reached up to his right eye and plucked it out, presenting the organ to the giant. "The first time I gazed upon her full majesty there was only a white light everywhere and I could see nothing else but her. Perhaps to stand in such a place one might wonder if they'd gone insane and to subject you all to such an experience..."
The socket bubbled up as a new eye grew in its place. A perfect smile adorning his expression all the while. "For that reason, my lady has decided to reduce her presence and only sent a fragment to avoid driving you all to madness. I hope the small poke she did to get your attention didn't scare you too much. From how fast you recoiled she feared that she had poked you too hard and might have injured you."
Yuuka paused for a moment to consider it. No, her eyes were tracking the Valiant Ones arm and for a moment he caught the sign that passed between them. A slight wave of the hand that caused her to relax. "It is not something that needs forgiveness, such a minor poke may have surprised him but the Valiant One cannot be harmed by such trifles."
He laughed. "Good, for our causes are aligned and so it would be a shame if we were to come into conflict over such a minor trifle. For when the gods fight, is it not the mortals that suffer?"
Yuuka paused to look at him. "Given the name you've chosen I would think you weren't truly concerned at all."
He let his gaze wander. "But I am of course always so interested in the plight of mortals. To see them fight and see them fall. To see them struggle for nothing at all. Will the knowledge you've taken be your salvation or a curse that drags you down isn't it such an amusing thing to ponder?"
The barrier around her flickered for a moment. And in response she leaned in and whispered his name to the giant which nodded lightly in response. Arm moving as though to say something before it stopped.
"Something you can't say in front of me I take it?"
Yuuka winced. "More like something that he lacks a word for right now, or would take too long to say."
He nodded and flicked through his pockets for the small crystals he'd stolen before and pulled out an orange one. Turning to Aurora even as he showed it lightly. "Go and have a chat with him to figure out what he wants."
She pondered him lightly even as the orange giant suddenly leaned over to look between them. "You're sure he thinks it's okay?" He gave a thumbs up, and the giant mimicked it a moment later.
"Memorise the sounds and I'll figure it out." He tossed the gem into her mouth and for a moment both she and the giant were silent.
A moment later Aurora nodded. "Woodant Azarthothe bee ah bettar nayme as one whoo is the lighte."
He grinned up at the titan. "Nyarlathotep is the one who brings down Atlantis is he not? And long ago when the city was at its height, before the gates were sealed away the scientists of Atlantis were much like Nishino Akira. So Nyarlathotep is the one experiment that rose up and slaughtered them, tore the walls of the city down and drowned them in their hubris."
"And yet still there is one who betrays the laws of old and wishes to return the world to such an atrocity." He let the shadows recede until he was merely wearing Shadows cloak. "A member of Atlantis has broken the seal my lady made so long ago in an attempt to restart the horrors of a thousand years ago. And I have come to drag them back screaming into the abyss."
If a tree falls down in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Standing at the pinnacle of the world looking up at the sky, as the moon started to fade away and light tinged upon the horizon. A moment where the sky itself was dyed in pinks and reds and orange, light filtering across the world for a single moment of beauty.
Beside him the giant halted as well the two of them taking a moment to admire the scenery, as four other such giants sat in the crater carved into the mountainside below. Red, blue, yellow and green each one as overwhelmingly powerful as the one beside him.
And then he lowered his eyes once again.
To the city of the damned, the first stages of magical overload wrought plain upon the features of the people below. Their flesh marked just like the buildings caught between human and monster as six shades of colour flickered across skin broken by marks as growths sprung up over them and still they lived their lives.
For to a government that wanted to show control, to take a hard stance and proclaim their success in protecting the citizens from the magic that scoured over the land. Who wanted to speak of success in the hopes of getting elected once more.
"How impressive of the citizens of Atlantis, rather than burning their unwanted they instead toss them away to die on the mountainsides. Truly one can look upon this act and understand the meaning of civilisation."
Aurora hung in the air above him. "It is going to break free of them like this and tear everything else down as it crashes down around it."
"True." He stood tall looking down. "They understand so much about the world, but it does not change the darkness in the human heart. Mere knowledge cast aside in favour of a more palatable lie as though the truth is something that will go away if you ignore it long enough."
"For even as humanity learned of fire and brought a torch to cast away the darkness. So too did we learn to cast everything that displeases us out into the darkness and call it evil."
And Eta stepped past her own arm bubbling up with the first traces of demonic possession as she forced magic through it. "The five of them are the newborn Diabolos of this world then. The first steps of a curse that would sweep over the world as it infects all who touch it."
She nodded. "Of course Master would come to fix something like this."
"You know me well Eta." He lied without a second thought. "From the moment I stepped into this world I have been plotting for how to find this place knowing it must exist and now that I am we will root out all the darkness trapped within."
He reached out and took her hand a pulse of magic turning it back to normal. And even if that couldn't work for the possessed down their yet the path couldn't be too different. "Even if Atlantis had tried to hide it from me I have lived in the darkness and all secrets hidden within are known to me."
"Come Eta." He moved into position seating himself just right as he let his own magic trail through the connection between where the slime suits met. Even with his depleted reserves he could still help with control.
And a moment later she responded, her own suit billowing up and lifting him off the ground. A monster of night and shadows stretching up to tower above the city.
Even as he sat calmly resting on her shoulder, in a mirror image to Yuuka and the Valiant one beside them. Waving lightly as he was carried into the city.
Even as in the distance the other four rose.
A red mass of crystalline blades sliding down from the furthest mountaintop as it let gravity take hold to fall as fast as possible.
Blue who pulled away from a wall of carved rock, the mountain itself having been reshaped by magic under their touch as they carved it into the shape of buildings.
Green sitting in the centre of the city as a mass of crystal raced up to the sky like a giant tree holding up the mountain above from collapsing into the hole they'd made and protecting them from the sky and the elements above.
Yellow flickering raising a hand to the sky as a great burst of light almost as bright as the sun carved itself out, a giant firework blasting up into the sky as collapsing into a thousand tiny lights the lit the city from all sides.
And the people below answered the signal, the entire crowd pouring in towards the centre that was their destination.
Eta's voice came from the giant beside him. "They are like the possessed."
A simple magic overload problem tearing their bodies apart piece by piece. "Day by day the magic the Nephilim release is killing them, and yet they cannot leave for they have been abandoned by society."
Well Eta had been like that once too so she might well empathise with them.
"That is only almost right." Aurora's voice was calm true, but also devoid of any warmth. "They would die quicker if the Nephilim left because being complete they can act as a stabilising force. If they were to go just a bit further they might even live, although they would be giving up their humanity."
There was a series of six raised pillars of crystal settled in the centre of the city. Each one more than ten meters in height and towering over the plaza below. And while there was no visible method to reach them it was obvious enough the intended purpose as he stretched his legs and slid down his own giants arm to settle onto the white pillar.
Eta piloting it to hover over behind him a moment later even as she struggled to keep the mass of slime from collapsing with only her own control.
But even if it was impractical as a way to fight, the spectacle of it was more than enough. The masses watching below even as the crowds cleared paths through their ranks for the other approaching titans, like ants teeming beneath him awaiting the bounty to come.
Carefully segregating themselves into five colours even as the ones marked by white crystal were interspersed throughout. The only ones who seemed to be allowed to mingle between the five other groups that made up the alliance.
He pondered it, special treatment or the problem of lacking a home to return to? He let it slip away because either way meant he could find a use for them later on. And more importantly they were the background before the main cast.
For while Yuuka had settled down onto the orange podium the other four monsters were filtering in.
A dozen blue orbs floating ever so lightly above the ground, an almost invisible current of magic twisting through the air to hold them in place, even as Blue waltzed through as they settled at the edge of the arena. The central space magnified on each of them like giant screens hanging in the air. Even as a man in a lab coat with glasses stood up from on top of its head. "The voice of the Watcher." And as Blue lowered him down he watched for the blue crystal spreading out like a fungus around the man's eyes.
Like leaves filling the sky a flood of tiny green crystals spun in the air around them. He plucked one from the air even as he flicked it off into his collection even as the rest spun up into the image of a flower. The Green titan walking beneath it even as one hand deposited an old man his arm covered in bulbous green crystal growths down onto the pillar. A moment later it stepped back, arms crossing behind its back as it settled into place. "The voice of the Serene one."
The ringing of a thousand bells, or wind chimes ringing echoed through the world. Magic itself coalescing inside the yellow titan such that even as it didn't leak the radiant yellow light produced shone throughout the clearing. And the teenage girl standing atop it, dressed in a yellow sundress and dancing. Streaks of yellow crystal etched down the lengths of her arms and a smile on her face that never left it. "The voice of the Resplendent one arrives."
And after a moment the last, a series of massive blades twirling around the arena for a brief moment each the colour of blood and swinging down to just above the crowds head. A moment later they pulled back swinging around into a halo of swords resting like a crown upon the last giants head. A teenage boy resting at the apex of the crown with hands of red crystal shaped into blades jumping down to the last pillar. "The voice of the Forge, to shape the world to our whims for the future."
They were his kind of people caught in the moment of a festival of fun. A show and a charade because it had all been parlour tricks made to look fancy without a sense of danger or urgency and it was all the more glorious because of it.
All six pillars were full, like they were wizards conducting some arcane ritual no mortal could hope to understand as he drank in the atmosphere and let the feeling of power flow through him.
The greatest of rituals as magic flowed through the world around them, arcane secrets settled on every tongue waiting to be spoken. Every part of it was a match for his aesthetic every chance built for his desire.
As the others each settled into place and began…
Horror coursed through every fibre of his being as he looked around the other five of them doing such wretched tasks as taking out notebooks.
The scratch of a pen being put to paper. The sound of a recording device being set up.
He'd come for theatrics and bombastic fun and accidentally walked his way into a meeting and now all he could do was look for a suitable chance to disappear before anyone noticed.
He let his eyes dart around between the five titans that had settled in to watch wondering if he should just pick a fight there and then and be done with things. Blue was too calm, Yellow gazing up at the sun. Green as rigid as a statue and Orange resting lightly in place.
But Red, Red was watching him intently so he raised his head and grinned back even as his mind flickered to how to escape. Anything to get away from however many hours of drudgery they had planned in this obscene and vile place.
A giant red hand crashed down beside him and he preened posing dramatically as the titan lowered itself enough to get a good look at him. His own eyes roaming over the face in return.
A mouth too rigid and shaped wrong to properly make human sounds, not enough magic control to emulate the effect either. They were mute then, and with a face that couldn't move trying to read facial expressions must be difficult as well.
Writing was possible of course, but only if you wanted to carve it into a mountainside for there was no way they could hold pens. Was that why the humans were here? To count as representatives and relay in a shorter time what they had already agreed with their patrons?
A moment later the monstrous head pulled itself back into the sky to tower over them all. A raw wave of sound cackling out of it as it did so. A single massive finger pointing between him and the white crystal of the pillar on which he stood, and then moving over to point at the Valiant one and Yuuka.
If he were a more social person it might take effort to guess. But with a friendship group you could count on your thumbs he already knew the identity of the last titan. "It is true that I was quite close to Akane all those years ago."
The finger across the neck was just as easy to read and he let his own chuckle echo out at the motion. "I got better."
A second voice came out. "As amusing as all this is I believe we were here to discuss something important." The old man on the green pillar spoke. "And as much as I am glad to see you return I note I don't see an Akira coming back with you."
"We tried our best." A forlorn expression crossed Yuuka's face. "By the time we reached him it was too late and the guards had shot him. While it will be difficult, we still managed to save his work and thus it falls to those of us left behind to try and understand it."
Nine out of ten, if he hadn't seen her watching Akira get eaten he might even have believed it. He turned his eyes to the other representatives.
An awkward fear, relief and quiet consternation looking back across the divide. The old man in green was happy, blue was quietly accepting, the lady in a yellow sundress smiling sweetly through it all as she spoke. "Well it can't be helped in the end can it? We always knew they held all the cards in his imprisonment."
The teenager cloaked In red barked a laugh. "And that will make a difference if you have to beg the guardian for forgiveness? When she's unreasonable at the best of times."
"If the Guardian really decides to take revenge then I can assure you, the two of us will take responsibility and accept her anger." Yuuka looked forlorn there, a quiet resignation on her face. "But I hope she will understand we tried our best and won't hold too much of a grudge."
"If such a time comes you will have my sword, so there is no need to worry." He let the shadows draw in and flourished a weapon. "I am the one who went to drag him out so you can blame it all on me."
"The qualifications I possess, how to put it." He gave a flourish, letting his cloak billow as the slime making it up stretched out around him, even as he extended a hand to Eta. "I am a servant of Nyarlathotep the messenger from beyond the Outer Gate. So I offer you knowledge of impossible things, miracles from which you cannot be saved and dreams that will never die."
The old man stared at him with just as much confusion. "Anyone know if that is anything but gibberish?"
"Tis the highschooler from beyond the stars, or the office lady depending on what you were watching I guess." Watcher guy pushed up his glasses. "A terrible force that can overturn the whole world if she wanted to."
Sundress smiled sweetly. "A girl who is forever eighteen but really eight thousand."
"With a mystical makeup routine that'll make you think time forgot her." Cid deadpanned the words without the slightest hint of a joke. Even as the old man looked more confused. "My lady is one of the Nephilim left over when the gates opened an age ago, who sealed Atlantis at the dawn of time to protect the world. For even as they have reopened when the stars aligned it is not like this is the first time it has happened."
He nodded firmly now more sure of his plan. "Though long have we stood apart from the trials of mortals it seems that with the gate now open it is time for us to speak to you once more. Although first it appears you have some business to discuss amidst yourselves, and the affairs of mortals have little interest for her. Naturally I shall return later on but for now I must take my leave."
He reached up a hand to take the giant beside him, grasping control of the slimesuit as he let it collapse back down until only Eta remained stepping onto the pillar beside him. And then in one smooth motion he swept her up and stepped off rocketing out of the accursed meeting place before it could even truly begin.
Safe and away to true freedom.
At the edge of the city they met up, to look down on the bastion of coloured glass even as he whistled softly to himself step by step. For as much as they used the word alliance in their name the truth it seemed was not so simple.
The stark lines between factions, the tension between the leaders. It was not an alliance of equals, nor an alliance of those in common cause. Merely an alliance of those who feared the enemy more than they feared each other.
"Even as they shine with such light, the shadows run thick with the murk between them till the whole city stands waiting to be devoured."
With a wave of his hand he gestured down towards them all and smiled.
And from the darkness a pair of eyes sprouted as Aurora pulled herself free of Eta's shadow to look at him closer again. "You can feel it too then, the fracture in the world waiting to be unleashed and still choose to stay?"
He took a moment to think even as his gaze turned to the sky. A look of perfect control and understanding carved into his face to hide his ignorance. "Is there anyone else in this world that knows the rot seeping within better than I? Anyone who has stepped more betwixt the real and the realm of the gods? Such a thing is plain as day before my eyes so how could I not realise it?"
He let a knowing smirk cover his face, the kind that made it seem like he knew everything.
Aurora relented and shook her head. "I suppose you truly did work with my power more than anyone else. The fact that you can feel the fragments of a sanctum beginning to take form is to be expected." She paused as Eta looked at her quizzically and expanded. "The city itself has begun to shift out of the laws of the real world and will soon be devoured into a place of dreams. And the residents are unlikely to survive it."
"It is only natural." Natural that he hadn't figured that out in the slightest even as Eta seemed to be caught between wanting to say something. "But it seems you only managed to figure out half of what I know so let's see if Eta caught the other half."
Eta focused fully at that. "The distribution of the possessed here is wrong. The magic radiating off from the Nephilim is simultaneously stabilising their condition and crystallising it as they change further. But with that being the case they should only be changing with respect to the five present, but there are six variants amongst their possessed."
He thought back over it, checking against his memories, and then looked back down at the city below them. Even as Aurora had stopped to look down at Eta. "She is correct, and the reason for both of these things is the same. For the gates of this world have not opened by chance, the cult itself has deliberately opened them in the hopes of plundering the resources of another world."
"Having offered their hand to one of the Nephilim they have sown dissent amongst the factions here, knowing that if they break the people will be helpless to stand against them when they turn them all into more test subjects to be devoured by the designs."
Eta had a sparkle in her eyes. "So we have come to steal everything they have built, at the moment of their glory and turn it against them."
He steepled his hands in front of his face and looked down on the city below. "Is that not the best moment to take everything from them? For it is a monster without equal that stands against us, an arrogance without match. But it is that certainty that they stand beyond reach that has left our opponent lax, that has opened the door for a counterattack."
Eta nodded lightly in place a quiet faith in him as she watched. Aurora though pursed her lips and stared back. "Do you really see? For it is not a city that stands before you but a fortress with their magic permeating every inch of its construction. The people, the buildings and the very ground itself in this place belongs to them and you would face them here?"
"Can a candle be seen before the sun? It is because this is their place that they are blinded by their own brilliance. Because they have spread themselves thin that they can be toppled, and because they know they are strong that they have let down their guard. Rather than a fortress it is a cage and they are trapped in here with me."
"A fortress does not fall because the walls are toppled, but because they have already opened the doors to let us inside." Eta nodded confidently beside him.
"It is that simple." He stepped up to the edge of the precipice. "They know they can feel their magic around them and can use it to alter the world. But they have no experience facing their equals nor of manipulating it in full. If they were to choose one of the titans present then it would surely be felt by the one they impersonated. But if they were to use their own then all of the evidence would point back to them and it would be obvious."
"But Akane is not here, she sits on the mountaintop far away and struggles to see across the divide. So as long as they only use her power even if one of the others suspects nothing can be proven. Meanwhile Akane herself is driven ever further away by suspicion and the feeling of its destruction and knows her old allies have fallen into disrepute."
Aurora grimaced as she matched his gaze over the city below. "That sounds like the choice we should be taking as well then."
"When they have carved such an easy path to my victory? For what Akane has set down I shall pick up and through that the path to my victory is assured." He wrapped himself in the shadows. "It is the role of a monster to teach the gods the folly of their hubris. That even as they sit and lord over their world there are worms seeping through the cracks in their plans ready to bring it all to an end."
Aurora let her form flicker as she started to retreat back into the shadows. "The five of them are all stronger than you."
He gazed out over the city. "Strength without skill is nothing more than a delusion waiting to be crushed once I take the field. All the pieces are in place so I merely need to turn their own strength against them and walk triumphant over the ruins."
Aurora doubted him and that was fine. Because Eta had a full look of confidence, and he'd already got a couple of plans to make up the rest.
"Have you at least come up with a plan when you cannot even touch the magic growing into their flesh like you can my own?"
Minor technicalities. "When a problem you cannot solve appears you must merely change the game until it becomes a problem you already know how to solve. These are not the same possessed I know true but that is only a momentary correction away."
Eta nodded her head behind him, a soft smile on her face. "Then we're going forward with human experimentation."
He looked down on all the residents of the city. "And now we have six groups daring to play with the lives of mortals, and all they can hope for is our mercy."
"If there is no one here to save them, if they are abandoned and helpless before the storm. Then surely no one will notice if I take them into my care."
Yuuka had a clinic. Although community centre and morgue both fit to name the place just as well. For everyone was sick and needed treatment, and the worst off were soon to die no matter what.
He flickered past the corpses, and the dying without a second glance, ghosting his way through the facility to her own private office. Sealed off from the wards as a last refuge for no one could spend every moment trying to change it.
A computer whirring as she glanced over what must have been the research they'd stolen. Compared against hundreds of spreadsheets of what must have been patients who'd died. He sat and watched in total silence, not even breathing as she worked through it.
"An alliance perhaps, but of desperation rather than comfort. Tugging at the threads the bind you ever in the fear that one last pull with make it fray and everything you built will be torn asunder. But then that is the nature of humanity wouldn't you agree?"
Yuuka smiled softly back. "It is close enough you will find. And anything you deign to share with me I will share with the others, there is no division worth exploiting."
If it had been true then their forces wouldn't have been afraid to mingle. Would have come together rather than filtering themselves apart from the beginning. "Would you like me to pretend I believe that lie? If you believed it you would never have felt the need to lie about killing Akira. Anyway I have a different purpose for this visit." He leant over and grabbed a sheath of medical files and pretended to look through them.
She paused for a moment and then nodded. "Shall I save you the trouble, there is no one from Ishinomaki left here in the camps. Most of the people here came from other cities after they were infected later."
"I know." And he didn't really see why that would be relevant in the first place. There wasn't really anyone who he knew in the first place. "If I were intending to meet someone I assure you I would have left a trail for them to follow."
"It is the sudden and the unexplained deaths that I am here to look into as I have said. For I have seen the mark of the traitor to Atlantis written all over this place and I am now convinced they are here. Is that not why you were so desperate to get more data to work with? Because you know your allies grow impatient and begin to experiment on your own subjects, though you cannot find the experiments you have seen their mark upon the populace."
She averted her eyes even as she reached back for her own documents. "You think you can see through things so easily do you?"
"It is obvious to everyone who thinks to look."
He glanced over the data for a while even as he already knew what the answer he was going to give. "If it would help part of the reason you are wrong is because you keep trying to fit it to a pattern. As though there would be some clue that would tie all the victims together and tell you how they're being chosen."
Yuuka levelled a deadpan glare at him. "Even when humans try and produce random patterns they're bad at it. And choosing to just hope that I catch them in the act clearly wasn't working either."
He laughed. "Of course there is a pattern." He leaned back against the desk with ease casually tossing the sheets back. "But not one that ties it all together, for you have two separate traitors conducting research on your subjects and neither of them has consulted the other."
After a frantic moment snatching them back up she looked down at them. Searching for what he had seen and left only confusion. "That… do you have something to back up that claim?"
So he took the lead. "Of course, while you have the victims I have the method by which the malady spreads. And like that it was always obvious to me, as plain as day when you think about it."
He laughed at her annoyance. "The first is breaking the shards of power Akane left behind and letting her magic run rampant throughout the world around us. The second has crafted a dreamworld in the space beyond the world and touches at the hearts of humanity in their sleep. I did tell you when we first met that I had all the answers didn't I?"
"I have already figured out the identity of one of them so all that matters is to find the other." He pulled out a file of his own and tossed it onto the desk in front of her. "Here lies the key to your salvation, a truth if your Valiant One would merely look then he would see how the disaster unfolds."
Yuuka bit her lip and started reading even as she glared back at him. "You realise I would have to take time to get the Valiant one to check against this. It is the first I have heard such a thing would even be possible, never mind that it had been setup beneath our notice."
"I hope you do." Because the evidence supported him. "Their Sanctum is based upon the one my lady made once long ago. Tied to the very nature of how Atlantis resides within the gates. I would know it as easily as the back of my hand and thus I offer you a guide to tell you how to breach the dream that you may walk amidst its power as easily as they do. For you are both tied to this city in ways you cannot change."
She nodded. "So, you could set up all the evidence to support your argument in advance and all I could do is take your word for it."
"If I could carve an entire world beneath your nose in a manner of hours then how could you ever hope to step beyond dancing on the palm of my hand?" He rose calmly approaching the door. "Although I will admit, even if this is not a place where my lady is strong, I am still here. Even if you choose not to use it I will still be taking action."
"Regardless our time is short, the Sanctum stands on the edge of existence so please look into it as quickly as possible. Lest our enemies choose to act first and all you can do is stand helpless before the tide."
Light glimmered from the crystal spires surrounding him. A soft glow that failed to illuminate the darkness within his cloak even as he stood like a stain upon the city corrupting it. "The growths on his arms come from trying to coverup the white from exposure to Akane's magic. Nothing more than trying to hide a parlour trick in front of a master."
"Ah." The man watched him carefully before shrugging slowly. "True though they all look so similar to the eye, once you feel them with magic they are more like night and day. In that same way you cannot really cure us either because what works for your own patron cannot even begin to touch upon our own magic. Do you think I am crueller for trying? Or you for giving them false hope?"
He thought back to a little shack and a mass of rotting flesh he'd toyed with long ago. "You cannot escape the consequences of such an act and so I am here to have you take responsibility."
The old man let himself deflate in place without resistance. "Then I shall say I worked alone and can you kindly get on with it."
He stared deep into the man's soul. "You are not afraid of dying then?"
"I am eighty-six." A quirk of a smile was offered back. "Five years seems like it was probably pushing things for me anyway and even one more might well be pushing it. What does it matter then if I get caught up until the end?"
A memory stick was thrown towards him. "I doubt anything on there is very useful but in case it was the password is written on it."
A sword formed in his hand for a moment as he contemplated the man. "Do you think dying and letting the blood wash of will grant you forgiveness?" He laughed. "We are both monsters here, so it is time to carry on to the very end. Bring me one of your volunteers, or your miscreants and let us see whether the hope I grant is only a dream."
"For I promise I will make it a reality."
A lightless city, a dream of what could have been empty and silent.
It was here he had first met her; in the time he had believed she was a mere memory. And here that she had been waiting every time he had needed guidance. "I had thought you no longer had a body at all, I almost gave you away in my shock."
She was once again carving an endlessly intricate series of diagrams that he didn't understand in the slightest, but that was fine. Because she was perhaps the only person he could still interact with as a human. Slowly she set the stylus she was working with down and glanced back at him. "What are you talking about?"
He blinked. "You came with your master wreathed in the same magic as always. I've seen it enough times that I think I can recognise the power of Diabolos when confronted with it. Although I had thought from your words that you'd given up a physical form entirely for whatever lies beyond the gate."
Her face didn't change, remaining blank as always. "My form is gone, and my Master could not walk into your city so easily. Then it must be another Rounds but did Master call them… describe the figure."
He paused thinking. "A young man, black hair wrapped in clothes that seemed to be made of magic and darkness. Exceptionally good control of his magic, on a level none of my students could ever hope to match, he really does seem like one of yours."
"Wreathed in the shadows." She rose up until she towered above him, the world itself bending as the shadows were dragged under her command and filled the city. "I know who it is that has come, and you need not worry. For he is not an enemy, merely an observer who wishes to see the last moments before the city dies and perhaps to play a song to send it off."
He raised his head to look up at her, a twisted nightmare carved from the darkness itself. "Then I should try to make friends with him as well, one of the elders of this little cult I take it?"
She nodded. "One of the Rounds, perhaps master even invited him to watch the carnage. But the baseline is too different and even if he wanted to act to stop you it is too late. You Nephilim are too different from our second Diabolos having never touched our world in the same way that the dragons were, and such creatures always vexed him in the end."
Again the alarms blared inside the JSDF base, again and again as the sensors that detected magic screamed to life as another member of the base walked through them.
Every soldier who had been touched by Nyarlothotep now set them off. And while there was no sign of mutation that could be picked up from their bodies, it went without saying that they had been irreversibly changed.
And as the preeminent expert on magic, and the most experienced in its use Colonel Kyoshiro Toudou, one of the last remaining knights of the second generation found himself seated across from the head of the base.
Just the two of them for a private debriefing.
He steeled himself and made his position clear once again. "Those touched by Nyarlathotep will clearly die if we do nothing, the alarms say as much. Let me take them up the mountain and at least see if she can save them."
General Fuyutsuki stared back across the table. "I know you wish to but there is so much we cannot know, and our foe even admitted he left them alive for a reason. To bring them before the only Nephilim that still works alongside us would be the natural choice. Have you considered that they are bombs designed to take down the gate's greatest defender?"
"I have." If it were true then things were going to go to hell in one brutal moment. "But if Nyarlathotep can use people as a vector to infect one of the Nephilim then his departure to join the Alliance is all the more concerning."
"Granted." The general steepled his hands and watched him back. "To be blunt Toudou high command will not approve such a mission, you know that as well as I do."
"We were to be the last of the second generation I know. But the circumstances have changed and she still brings us weapons crafted from her own power to replace and make the new lances does she not?" Even if the girl he'd met so long ago had lost everything else. The glowing white light that had replaced her still held on to a fragment of her humanity.
General Fuyutsuki lowered his head. "She hands them to Hachiko to bring down the mountain it is true. But she has not come down the mountain in eight years and we do not know why, and the world around it has changed. Whether due to her influence or the gate is hard to tell. Even drones can only take pictures from far away because the world around the gate has entirely corroded into a mountain of white crystal."
"Hachiko can make the trip and we know that Nishino still makes allowances for it when it climbs the mountain."
"Hachiko is closer to being another Nephilim than it ever was to being a second generation knight."
Toudou braced himself in his seat. "You do know what will happen if you just defer this don't you?"
Fuyutsuki nodded his head calmly. "It is common for those without treatment and directly exposed for the first time to die within two weeks. It is a problem that will solve itself so there is no need to make a decision."
He bowed his head in silence for a moment. "Is that high commands decision or your own?"
"I have given you my answer already Colonel so you may go back and think on it. You are dismissed to look after them until they die, I hope you understand but I must ask you to leave." His old friend waved his hand and gestured to the door.
He left, because that in itself was truly an answer. For if the General had wanted to stop him he would have left someone else in charge. And had several soldiers escort him away from the premises.
Acknowledging the rules and making no attempt to enforce them was as good as an acceptance that he would head off. Now just to go and fetch Asahina and Chiba before he went off.
Klaxons sounded once more. Ripping him from his reverie and back to the present even as the corridor filled with panic once more. He strode through it heedless even as his armour blazed to life and the tiny pulse of magic at his core burned to life. Stepping out into the light of day to blaze as brilliant as the sun.
The devastation left behind when the city was wiped out hadn't covered the entire length. The far eastern side of the city which Hachiko destroyed each day remained as ruins.
And in spite of this the monster had still stepped past the cordon. Crossing over through the last reaches to approach the newfound crater that was filling with water and wagging its tail. A monster of white and golden crystal that towered over any building and shattered the world where it passed.
Their eyes met.
And it surged forward into the waters splashing its way across the water towards them. Even as the klaxons sounded even louder this time and he readied his own lance, the pure white blade extending outwards as an unstoppable force.
He swung his lance the moment it reached the shore. The pure white blade streaking through as bright as the sun as it shattered before a single paw.
A maw covering the sky as it descended around him…
Hachiko stopped sniffing the air lightly above him for a moment. Before what remained of its tongue flicked out and licked him happily, even as it moved on to the next knight and sniffed him as well. Each one touched for only a moment before its eyes flicked to the next, even as weapons were shattered with but a glance.
A few breaths later the beast settled down in front of them and roared. Magic pouring out with the noise and thundering through the base as he felt his own power washed away by the endless torrent it possessed. The tiny spark of magic that Akane had embedded within him rising up in response entirely out of his control as the beast eyed him.
With a howl the monster dragged it back in and carrying them off into the darkness, up the mountain with its own leaping strides. Heedless of the destruction it caused.
Waking to the darkness, a room with no light even as he struggled against bindings he couldn't see. The last memories before he'd fallen unconscious flooding back as he remembered walking down the street like a normal day.
But the darkness wrapped around him was unnatural. Every place in their promised land was lit by one colour of crystal or another. He drove back the panic though, because even if he was somewhere unknown that didn't mean he was powerless.
A moment later and a flicker of his own magic pulsed out and white light flowed into the world around him even as he struggled to move.
The next and a voice came from the far corner. "You are awake I see, so the experiment can begin." Two teenagers wrapped in lab coats, a boy and a girl watching him carefully even as they each held their own notebooks, a quiet professionalism that might set one at ease despite his youth.
If not for the shadow that hung over them both. A monster caught between humanity and the night that was hanging above them watching intently.
"You are quite the wretched person so I'm afraid you'll have to accept I've volunteered you."
The pit in his stomach grew. "For what?"
"For science." The man answered.
The girl spoke, a strange language unlike any he had ever heard before. And the man patted her gently on the head in return. "She has asked how you feel, for it is best if you feel fine right now wouldn't you agree."
She was concerned about him? A flicker of humanity where before he'd thought there was none. "Other than the not being able to move I'm fine."
The man nodded and smiled gleefully. "How wonderful then because we must establish a baseline. The fact that your fine now gives us something to compare to in a moment when you won't be any longer."
A hand came to rest on his shoulder, the fingers on it too long for any human even as they seemed to twist. And once it was removed the flesh on his body was blackened and broken, a foreign magic festering inside of it as his flesh became an open wound.
"You see you have already been marked by your gods, and they have laid claim to you. And now just as easily you get the chance to experience demonic possession how lucky you are."
He made to speak but something filled his lungs even as the darkness grew and his own flesh began to twist into a monster. And the next, the shadows wrapped around the room descended and devoured him.
AN: A gap so long that all of my foreshadowing will have been forgotten.
A chapter written over such a length of time arrrrgh well here is to hoping it doesn't happen again.
But it is out, and never mind these things happen not the worst setback by far. Rise from your grave fic, rise I say.
To put some other words than frustration down. If the Alliance of the Nephilim is made up of the possessed, then the 2nd generation knights would be Akane's vampire equivalent.
And on the Nephilim, if you consider the image of humanity to be in how human you look they have lost much.
And if you consider the image of humanity as within laughter and sorrow. To be able to be angry with the world and to love it still, to stand within kindness and mercy as much as malice and malevolence.
They have lost nothing.
Fateful Twilight: Well some more information on our crystal monsters for you to work with. So guesses can move towards the truth at least, and I do like hearing theories even if they end up being wrong.
Aniisomeone: Akira is… well he truly was a figure who could have fit in with the Cult, both in canon and in this world. Which well Cid disliked him before he died, and then to find him locked up decided eh maybe it was for a good reason.
It was for a good reason for Akira here is just as monstrous as his canon position of being the one who caused Akane to go berserk and slaughter and then decided to continue with those experiments.
Kian Xki: Well Beta was using Loki to out and track a large number of other Cult members so she could clean house and execute the lot of them rather than just one person.
Still a mistake, but it is a mistake where she thought they'd found a message runner rather than the mastermind and was trying to bait the mastermind out.
And well they all believe the Shadow is real Shadow and that Cid is just temporary as he steps up to become the ruler of all. So they just don't really believe that last conflict exists.
Anyway I digress.
Shadow Garden does need Cid to win, just as Cid needs Shadow Garden to ensure his victory isn't left ruling over the ashes of civilisation.
Tis how this story is intended in full so uh I guess success on getting across what I wanted.