Devils fate, p.1
Devil's Fate, page 1
Devil’s Fate
by
Thomas Green
http://thomasgreen.info
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Version 1_2023.10.26
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Contents
Prologue – Lillith
Lucas 1
Lillith 1
Lucas 2
Lucas 3
Lillith 2
Lucas 4
Lillith 3
Lucas 5
Lillith 4
Lucas 6
Lillith 5
Lucas 7
Lillith 6
Lucas 8
Lucas 9
Lillith 7
Lucas 10
Lillith 8
Lucas 11
Epilogue
Prologue – Lillith
A top-priority notification flashed on Lillith’s laptop screen. She clicked on it and saw the message.
An unidentified object entered Earth’s atmosphere and landed in a small town in Texas.
She frowned. How did any object get through all the anti-missile and anti-meteorite defense and detection systems the US Army had?
She looked at the GPS coordinates in the message, memorized them, and turned herself into pure light. She beamed out through the office’s window and beamed to Dallas.
While she did try to practice it, she couldn’t navigate by GPS coordinates over long distances. Not yet.
But she had been to Dallas more than a few times.
No matter how fast anyone else’s response was, she was going to be faster. Since she moved at the speed of light, the trip to Texas took her a fraction of a second. She rematerialized high above Dallas and spread out her wings of pure light.
She had long since mastered how to take out her wings without breaking her shirt and suit. As she floated, she put the GPS coordinates into her phone to used it to navigate.
Once the GPS gave her a direction, she turned into light again and beamed in the general direction.
A few corrections later, she flew above a small town. The place felt familiar, though she couldn’t think of why.
Screams filled the air, and a crater gaped at the city’s edge. She focused on her sight and saw alien, giant-bug-like creatures crawling out from the crater.
What in the heavens happened here?
The screaming came from people running from the monsters.
“Temple of steel,” Lillith whispered and stretched out her detection field. All life in the city popped into her subconsciousness. Seventeen hundred people, and twelve alien bugs.
Upon a concentrated thought, Lillith released a pulse of pure power.
That knocked all the people in the town unconscious. Within a split second after that, Lillith targeted the nine bugs that had crawled outside the crater. She released blasts of light from her wings, one at each of them.
The alien insectoids exploded when the light touched them, incinerated in a split second.
She turned into pure light, beamed down into the crater, and reformed into her body.
Three bugs remained, each the size of a mastiff but with long limbs. Well, calling them bugs was an oversimplification.
They had limbs, some with multiple claws, others with just one, but the creatures lacked heads.
Yet all three of them turned toward her, and charged, moving in an absurd yet efficient mess of limbs.
When she was young, she imagined experiencing her first contact with a non-human alien species.
This failed to meet even her lowest expectations.
Since she disintegrated the bugs outside the crater, she needed to take these for her scientists to study.
The first bug reached her, slashing the with claw-tipped limbs.
She weaved away from the strikes. How was she going to catch these?
She didn’t feel any magic from them, and they moved too slowly to be any threat to her.
Then again, not many beings posed a threat to her, a member of the Hand of God, the archangel of light. She strengthened herself with magic, and let the bug hit her hand.
The claws bounced off her shields.
As expected.
She caught the claw and lightly threw the alien at the crater’s wall. A shockwave thundered upon the impact, and the body smashed into bits.
Well, they weren’t very tough. Her people were going to have to scrape that off.
She waited for the second bug to get to her. Once it approached, she grabbed its leg and threw it in the air. As a beam of light, she moved to the last one, caught it, and threw it in the air at the previous one.
She flew up and formed a cube of magically solidified light around the two bugs, trapping them inside.
That would have to do.
She flew down to the crater’s center.
Inside lay a metallic casket with an open end. The bugs clearly emerged from its entrails. She needed her scientists for this.
Lillith pulled out her phone and called her assistant, also the administrative leader of the Vatican Inquisition, Eve.
She picked up in an instant, and said, “Lillith, good that you’re calling. We have a potential emergency.”
“I know,” Lillith said. “We have secured the alien object that has landed in Texas. Twelve alien bugs crawled out. Nine have been disintegrated, one has unfortunately been smashed on the ground, and two are captured alive, caught in my spell. All the people in the town are safely unconscious. I need a military platoon, a trauma team, a cover-up team, and whatever scientist teams we have for alien life forms and objects.”
“Reliable as ever. I will take care of it. Military ETA is fifteen minutes, the other teams will follow.”
“I’ll wait for them.” Lillith hung up. Now, why did the place feel familiar?
She flew up again. Indeed, the town felt familiar.
Lillith flew to the town’s border to look at the sign.
Van Horn.
Oh.
Lillith pulled out her phone and called Eve.
She picked up immediately. “Chief?”
“Cancel everyone’s vacations and mobilize the upper tiers of the inquisition. For tomorrow, call the emergency cabinet of the Pentagon, and the inquisition’s leadership meeting. All angels are to report to the inquisition headquarters as soon as possible. Mobilize area fifty-seven and direct all scientists you can to move there for a massive project.”
“What’s happening?”
“Just, do it.”
Lucas 1
I FINISHED remodeling the nuclear bunker underneath the Tokyo Tower into my new laboratory.
That took forever.
Normally, I would have had my organization do the work. But this time, I did everything myself.
I had the materials bought first into India and delivered to a depot on the outskirts of New Delhi. There, I set up a portal location and moved all the materials myself by soulstepping to the depot, taking things, and soulstepping back to the construction site.
A very human-like way to build something, but I didn’t feel the need to pretend my ability to move through space had any reasonable limits.
For security, I welded the vault door shut and broke the opening mechanism. I could move myself in at will, and no one else was going to see this place.
To stop magical interference, I sealed shut all ventilation shafts and mechanisms and placed protective wards all around the vault’s walls.
Since I needn’t breathe, air inflow wasn’t an issue.
The whole thing took me two months, and now, I looked over the result. In the main vault chamber, I had a surgical steel bed surrounded by four full, glass tanks.
The tanks contained human blood, demon blood, demon flesh, and assorted souls. By the wall, I had a library of all the books I found on blood magic.
I’ve skimmed through all of them and mastered the basic patterns for what I needed.
My goal was simple.
I was going to fake my death and exile myself from Earth to the Mirrorrealm, the dimension I discovered a few months ago.
To execute the plan, I had to leave behind a corpse after faking my death. Or well, more precisely, I had to leave behind the corpse of my current self.
Yet I still needed a body to move around in my new life, so I was going to create myself a new body in this very vault.
Now, I had the secure location, the needed materials, and most of the necessary knowledge. And I was going to fill the last few gaps soon.
I soulstepped up to my personal chambers atop the Tokyo Tower and sat behind my laptop.
The last bits of blood magic art I needed weren’t on Earth, but before I went to the Void, I had to check everything was all right on this end.
I unlocked my laptop and saw red no
Damn it. I hadn’t the mood for that at all.
I opened the message and read: ‘Emergency meeting at my office. Tier-1 leadership only, priority red-0. Trisha’
Trisha, my right hand, the one I wiped my ass with. I checked the time on the notification. Two minutes ago. I could attend.
I focused and soulstepped to her office, vanishing from my chambers only to reappear in her office in the same second.
Trisha sat behind her desk in her standard form, twelve feet tall with massive horns, fur-covered legs, and hooves in place of her feet. She wore her usual business outfit of a jacket, a shirt, and a short skirt.
The entire office made me feel small because of the simple nature of everything being custom-made for her size and weight.
Aside from Trisha, two of my other commanders were present.
Saito, the commander of my military stood by Trisha’s table’s side. He wore a black suit nearly identical to mine, a white shirt, and a black tie, and had a standard short haircut, the face of a middle-aged Japanese man, and a katana sheathed by his waist.
On the table next to the keyboard sat Vivian, my residential vampire. She wore a sleek black dress, her skin deathly white, eyes sapphire blue and shining, hair long, jet black, lips the color of blood.
Indeed, my entire high command on Earth.
Vivian spotted me first and graced me with a vicious smile, her jewelry glistening in the moonlight. “My, my, look who has come to the management meeting. That is the first time, I believe. Right, Lucifer?”
“Lucas,” I corrected her. “And don’t get used to it.” I returned the smile. “What’s the alert about?”
Saito bowed slightly, and Trisha grunted. “Most likely nothing,” she said. “At least it looks like nothing to me, but intelligence services gave it the importance score one point short of a nuclear attack. Come take a look.”
We all walked to her side. She maximized a report over one monitor and started scrolling through. Analytics filled the screen, which showed an object, marked blue, that appeared in Earth’s geostationary orbit with no trace of entry.
The object flew through the stratosphere, remaining blue the entire time, and crashed into Earth, landing in Texas, United States. More analytics popped up, showing measurements of the object, which was roughly the size and shape of a coffin.
“How old is this?” I asked.
“Six hours,” Vivian said. “I recognize that area. What are the GPS coordinates of the impact site?”
Trisha scrolled through the report and found them. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“Well…” Vivian clicked her tongue. “Fuck me dead.” She looked at me. “You know where that is, don’t you?”
Yeah, I knew these coordinates. I was literally born on them.
Who even knew those coordinates?
My deadbeat father, Vivian, and Lillith, my daughter, whom I once took there to show her where I grew up. “Trisha,” I said. “Is there any information about where the object in question came from?”
“Nope. The intelligence insists it appeared out of nowhere.”
Which was exactly how my soulsteps worked. Save for an impossible level of coincidence, the explanation at hand was that I sent this object to myself.
Or, more precisely, my future self sent it back through time to my present self.
I drew my phone and rang up Lillith.
She let it beep for half a minute before she picked it up. “Dad?” she asked innocently.
Good acting. Really good. “Lillith,” I said with a smile. “I suppose you have already secured whatever landed in Texas.”
“It’s in my territory, so it’s in my jurisdiction, and thus the object is mine.”
“What is the object, precisely?”
“I don’t know,” Lillith said in a voice that sounded awfully evasive. “My people are working on it. Once I have the results, if they are significant, I will summon a meeting of the Hand of God.”
I sighed. “Don’t do this, Daughter. You know where that fell, and what it means. Tell me what it is, or this will turn very ugly very fast.”
“I really don’t know. When I do, I will call you, and we can talk about it. All right?”
“Sure. See you then.” I hung up.
I looked over my three commanders. “Don’t say it.”
“Don’t say what?” Vivian’s smile turned into a smirk. “Lillith has gotten rather proficient at handling you. Right now, she completely shut you down in what, three sentences? Impressive. On her part that is. Pathetic, on yours.”
I rolled my eyes. Yes, I could do little else than wait now. “Start the preparations for a large-scale military operation,” I said. “But keep things hidden. Organize the forces separately in each location where we have a portal. Vivian, infiltrate Lillith’s facilities, and find what the object is.”
Vivian’s smirk vanished from her face. “I am not sure I will be able to do that. Lillith knows my powers well thanks to Casey.”
Ah, yes, my vampire daughter, the one Vivian made from my blood. I never quite took her in as a daughter, but Lillith accepted her as her sister. “Try anyway.”
“All right.” She smiled. “By the way, I have stumbled upon a depot in New Delhi where someone has been gathering high-tech supplies before they vanish from the depot. Do you know anything about that?”
That was my depot. “I do, and I strongly suggest you not look into that any further.” I looked over the room. “That goes for the two of you as well. There are things you needn’t know, and this is one of them.”
All three of them nodded. I trusted Trisha and Saito to be reasonable. But I couldn’t say the same about Vivian. “Keep me posted if we get any intel about the object.” I soulstepped into my chambers upstairs.
I jumped into bed and flew with my spirit out of my body. Time to handle things in Hell.
I moved through the layers of existence until I got into the Void. That happened to be the last spiritual layer of existence, where souls reached their final destination.
The realm looked a bit like space, except that billions of bubbles surrounded Earth, the soul chambers of people living on the planet. Currents of dark energies filled the endless emptiness.
In place of space stations, my portals filled the planet’s orbit. They were circular gateways with just enough protection for others to not see them.
I wasn’t sure who the others were, given almost nobody came flying around the Void anyway. Those who could come flying around knew better than to mess with my stuff. But, just in case, I had protections on everything.
Though the portals didn’t look like much next to the Tower of the Fallen God.
The structure started in the middle of the Indian Ocean, stretched into the Void, and continued unreasonably far up into the emptiness, where it pierced into the Null Zone between the realms, through which it led all the way to the Mirrorrealm.
Originally, the tower housed millions of souls and traveled from one world to another.
Now, a burnt husk remained, the souls torched by my flames, the god that built it dead by my hand. His visit to Earth did not go as he planned.
I moved myself to the tower to check on my demons. I had millions of them swarm the tower and defend our side of existence.
No attack from the Mirrorrealm had yet come.
However, that was only a matter of time.
The gods of Mirrorrealm most likely never had any of them die, so killing one forced them to proceed with caution.
That bought me time, but not an infinite amount of it.
Since I started the war with the Mirrorrealm, I also had to resolve it.
But with a touch of luck, that could wait for a few days.
I focused and moved myself into one of the active portals that led into Hell.
The dark energies drew me in and then spat me out at the heart of my domain.
Hell spread everywhere I could see, a vast metropolis, now mostly empty. Some of my demons were on Earth, but most of them were defending the tower.
With the next soulstep, I moved into Alyssa’s tower, straight into her library.
She was probably the most dependable of my high demons and a practicing blood mage. But not even she was allowed to know about my body, so I searched her library by myself.
