Devils fate, p.4
Devil's Fate, page 4
He pushed me forward, and we floated toward the Tower, though a lot faster than before. “I’m not sure what to think about you coming here again.”
“Well, I wanted to apply to your army, but Alnil wouldn’t have it.”
He snorted. “That sounded only as a half of a joke.”
“I’m actually serious. First, I will finish my business on Earth. Second, I will end the war between our realms, and third, I will apply for a position in your forces.”
“And what type of position would you imagine?”
I smirked. “Depends. If you only have an army, then the lowest rank a soldier can get. But I was once a private investigator, so something in law enforcement would do me well.”
Palai took a moment to respond. “Do you truly want to start a new life here?”
“As new as it can be.”
“What haunts you?”
“One does not become the right hand of Lucifer by living a life of virtue.” A smile has once again found its way to my lips. “Before I realized the error of my ways, my notoriety stopped me from correcting my course. Now, there is nothing I can do about it.”
“I see. To start a new, anonymous life, the right hand of Lucifer truly needs a new realm of existence. Very well. Do the first two deeds and be sure to be on the correct side of the Null Zone when the dust settles. I will prepare for you a job.”
“Thanks.” I was so going to get burned if my trust ended up being misplaced. The pull of the Void shifted, so we arrived at the Tower. “The attack on your realm will come soon, but it won’t be from Earth. Prepare yourselves to prove why you are called gods.”
Palai removed the bag from my head, and I could see we floated beyond the blockade already. He uncuffed me, and with a single beat of his flames-wreathed wings, he returned into his realm.
The blockade closed behind him.
I flew up the tower, heading toward Earth.
I gave it a while since they couldn’t see my soulstep since that was a power unique to Lucifer.
After half an hour, I checked for any spell-tracking me, and when I found nothing, I released my seals. Demonic power filled my veins, and I soulstepped back to the portals around Earth.
I promised Palai an attack.
Now, I had to organize one.
Lucas 3
I returned to my body, stretched, and soulstepped to Australia. Not long ago, I fished a demon princess out from the Dead God’s Tower and moved her and her people into the Outback.
I moved myself to the sky above the location, and as I started falling, I saw the elven city had grown, but not much. Massive treetops almost fully covered the white buildings the elves resided in.
Yes, I brought elves to Earth.
Sue me.
I spread out my detection field, expecting to find both demon princesses now residing on Earth, Selise, and Elsha.
Only one of them tripped my subconsciousness.
Selise lay on the branches in one of the treetops.
I soulstepped to her.
She looked the same as the last time, like a human with messy black hair, green eyes, a pretty face, an oversized hoodie, pants, and heavy boots, with about twenty amulets hanging around her neck, each bearing a symbol of a different religion.
She painted her lips and nails black, so they matched her outfit’s color. “What’s up?” she asked the moment I appeared on a branch near her.
I sat down next to her. “By my count, you should still be having Elsha as your pet for over two more months.”
“Yeah, I got bored of that after the first week. So, I’m saving it up for whenever I feel like it. But anyway, I hope you haven’t only come here looking for her. That would be disappointing, to say the least.”
“I seek you both.” I smiled. “How do you feel about launching a massive attack on the Mirrorrealm?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have enough of an army for that.”
“Well, I was imagining more of a joint operation. I bring my armies, and the four demon princesses each bring a part of their own. That’s five of us, versus six gods of the Mirrorrealm.”
She sat up. “Have the others agreed yet?” Excitement flooded out from her voice.
“You are the most dependable of the four of you,” I said. “So, I’ve come to you first. Are you in?”
“Obviously,” she snapped. “The whole gang getting together is going to be hilarious. I mean, you do remember that you cheated on each of us with another, right?”
Well, the four demon princesses were the previous Lucifer’s wives, making them my technical ex-wives. The marriages ended with his death. But I looked like him and had his memories, so yes, things were going to be awkward. “I do. Where can I find Alsha and Kallisto?”
“In the Void. If you imagine it like an infinitely stretching ball that’s cut in half by the Null Zone with Heaven at the top. Then, our side is the right-hand side, Earth lies on the bottom right of that half, and our realms are in the top part. Left to right, Elsha’s, mine, Kallisto’s, Alsha’s. So, go to my realm, and you will find the other two nearby.”
Hmph. I could actually use that. “Thanks. I’ll come pick you up when the time comes.” I soulstepped back to the Tokyo Tower, straight to Trisha’s office.
She was furiously typing on the keyboard, a half-empty bucket-sized coffee mug by the table’s side. Her gaze didn’t leave the monitor, and said, “Remind me, why do I do this for you, again?”
“Thanks to me, you are immortal. If the connection between us is ever severed, your soul will crumble to nothing within five seconds. But anyway, do we have any news from Vivian?”
“Nope. So, it’s not going well, because she would have been back by now if she got anything useful.”
Hmph. I was going to give her more time, and then head out myself. “All right.” I soulstepped down to the vault.
I had more work to do on my body. First, I verified my muscles were in all the correct places, and then I compressed them and stretched a new layer in the gained space.
After a small break, I compressed the new layer as well. Now, everything needed time to settle down.
I soulstepped to the portal underneath the Tokyo tower and walked through. The demon princesses were likely to have physical realms, so I needed to bring my body to be able to enter those.
The portal spat me out into the Void near Earth and I soulstepped deep into the Void.
I remembered the coordinates of Selise’s realm and moved to a side of that.
Emptiness.
Well, this was going to take a while. I soulstepped around and searched for one of the demon princess’s realms.
I found the one of Selise, where a giant mass of plants enveloped entire suns and worlds.
Wrong direction.
I went the other way and spent a few more hours moving myself around the Void. That was even less fun than driving on a highway. The highway at least had other cars. While the Void looked all impressive and mysterious upon the first look, it remained the same no matter where one went.
Finally, I stumbled upon a bright white sun surrounded by six pocket dimensions. Each one had a gateway into the Void fashioned as a gate made from white wings.
Now, this looked like Alsha’s realm.
We all fell from Heaven together but for different reasons. To be precise, we all thought we could do better than God, but each in our own way.
Alshaiel, the younger sister of Elshaiel, worshipped as Light Alexandra, always thought Heaven could be a whole lot purer.
Though I smirked at the legend of how the whole Light and Dark Alexandra names came around.
Both Alsha and Elsha gained worship independently, and they both chose the name Alexandra as the one under which they desired to be worshipped.
When they met, decades later, their worshippers started calling them Light and Dark to tell them apart.
I soulstepped to the largest pocket dimension and spread out the detection field. About half a billion souls lived in this dimension, making it rather large.
While the Void was infinite, and filled with countless dimensions inhabited by living souls, Earth was an absolute anomaly, the largest populated world on our side of the Void by a massive margin.
Even one billion souls living in a pocket dimension were downright an anomaly. Higher populations were only common in physical worlds, and so far, the only physical worlds I have seen were Earth and the worlds in Mirrorrealm. This dimension was no exception.
But as I looked over the dimension, I had to acknowledge that Alsha hadn’t lost her style.
Gardens and marble buildings filled the city above which I floated. Everything was perfectly symmetric, spotless, and beautiful.
Ivory statues filled the gardens, and among them, people moved, dressed in the style of antique nobility.
I spread out my detection field and found Alsha in a palace that looked as if half made of clouds, half-carved out of ivory.
I soulstepped to the room where I detected her, a throne room, where she sat upon a throne of gold and clouds.
She looked like Elsha, but she was blonde, had blue eyes rather than violet, and had a crown of thin horns, rather than two large ones. She wore a royal white dress, had golden rings on her horns, and white-feathered wings folded on her back.
The moment I appeared, she raised an eyebrow, and her six guards, all men in white armor with a pair of wings and horns, tensed.
I smiled. “It has been a while, Alshaiel.”
She studied me for a few seconds. “Fate certainly does plan peace for me. Welcome back among the everliving, Lucifer.” She waved with her hand, and the guards all flew away.
“Name’s Lucas,” I said. “But I do possess Lucifer’s memories, divinity, and power.”
“You differ from your previous self, true. And yet you are the same.” She smiled. “But I doubt you have come all this way only to greet me. Pray tell me, o’ First After God, what brings you to my realm?”
“I’ve made a pathway to Mirrorrealm, and I’m planning to use it to attack, and to take a part of their realm for ourselves. And by ourselves, I mean the entire old gang.”
She rose and spread her six wings. “Who else is on this?”
“Selise and Elsha. And I don’t think Kallisto will mind going to war. She was always into that.”
“Fly with me.” With a single beat of her wings, she lifted up into the sky.
I couldn’t fly, so I soulstepped to her and used more soulsteps to maintain matching altitude.
She stopped high above her realm. “I see flight still eludes you.”
“I have lost the right to that.”
“No one gets to decide who can fly and who cannot. Your limitation is self-imposed. But I digress. Do you know why my sister and I don’t get along?”
The order of how the previous Lucifer lived with his wives was Alsha, Elsha, Selise, Elsha again, Kallisto, and Elsha for the third time. “Because the previous Lucifer cheated on you with her?”
“No. After your demise, I struggled through my romantic life, or more precisely, the lack thereof. I didn’t mind, but my sister couldn’t stand the idea. So, she disguised herself as a man, infiltrated my realm, and proceeded to seduce me.”
Well. I didn’t know what to say about that.
“But she didn’t stop with a one-nighter. No, my dear sister dated me for years and then proposed to me. I accepted, and she kept it going until literally the night before our wedding. Only then, she turned back into herself, and rubbed in my face that the man I fell in love with was my sister all along.”
Oh. “I’m sorry about that.”
“That is not the end though. You see, my sister is worshipped as the demon goddess of sex for a good reason. Sex with her is addictive, and she railed me at least four times per day for over three decades. After I recovered from the heartbreak, it took decades before I recovered from the addiction and could have pleasurable sex with anyone other than her.”
Good that I haven’t shagged her. “You can’t get back on her if you never meet.”
“True.” She smirked. “But I will not be baited by the idea of revenge alone. You do have something to bargain with, don’t you?”
“I can make permanent portals through the Void.”
Her eyes lit up, hunger for power dripping from her. “How fast, how many, and over what distance? If I am allowed to be blunt, then I am willing to spare precisely as many troops as I get compensated for beforehand.”
She hasn’t changed one bit. I liked the consistency. “Let’s try a few and see how that goes.”
Alsha dove down. I soulstepped after her. She flew to the edge of the city and stopped above a meadow. “Show me a design of your portal.”
I pulled on the Void energies and had them form into my usual portal, a thick steel disc with runes embedded into its frame.
Alsha shook her head and waved her hand, and the portal dissolved into mist. “I will not stand having something this unsightly in my realm.”
Mist flooded from her wings and shaped the dimension around us. The meadow turned into a square, a road formed to connect it to the city, and then the mist created the portals.
Each formed as a marble arch with ivory decorations, the ornaments displaying what I guessed to be a symbolic representation of the target realms. Runes were etched into each arch, and her familiarity with the coordinate system became obvious.
And the portals looked perfect as if a master artist carved each of them.
“The coordinates are in the frames,” she said in case I didn’t notice.
I nodded and remembered the coordinates. “I will need to move us to the first target location.” I touched her arm to move us and focused on the spell.
She rejected the soulstep attempt, so we remained in place. She glared at me. “Do you seriously expect to grab me by an arm and just move me around like a sack of potatoes?”
Well, yes. “How should I move you then?”
“With elegance and grace.” She flew closer to me. “Catch my back with your right arm between the second and the third pair of wings, and use your left arm to lift my legs from underneath the end of my thighs. Hold me gently, but tightly, as if you would never want to let me go.”
I stopped myself from rolling my eyes and followed the instructions.
After I raised her, she caught her arms around my neck. “Keep your back straight. This looks terrible if you bend.”
I straightened my back.
“Hold me three inches higher, and twelve percent tighter.”
I adjusted my hold.
“Much better.” She smiled. “Remember this position. This is how you will carry me around as we move. Also, you let me go by loosening the grip on my legs and only letting go of my back after I straighten myself.
I soulstepped us to the first location, an edge of another pocket dimension.
This one reminded me of medieval India, with all buildings and terrain crafted to match the colorful, highly ornate style, all people and demons living inside wore perfectly appropriate clothes.
I let her go as instructed.
Once again, mist flooded from her wings, and created portal frames. This time, five of them.
I connected the first portal to the matching gate in the main dimension. This was going to take a while. Then again, I didn’t mind all that much.
Her worlds were each a wonderful piece of art, and I wanted to see them all.
Lillith 2
In the newly established command center in area fifty-seven, Lillith sat at a large, oval table with the other three members of the Hand of God: Lucielle, Linn, and Gilgamesh.
Everyone wore suit-style clothing and kept looking at the four screens in front of them. Two ran the imagery of experiments done on the subjects, and two the outputs of the scientific teams working on them.
Lillith tried to act as if she followed, but she wasn’t terribly smart from it.
Both Lucielle and Linn focused on the information stream about the alien organisms since they preferred biology. Gilgamesh focused solely on the metallurgy aspect of the casket analysis, and Lillith sat near him, pretending she did as well.
Truth be told, she had no idea what the stuff on the screens meant. Her education was in religion and combat magic.
This involved neither.
Gilgamesh didn’t seem to suffer from the same problem, focused on the screen. In a modern-day business suit, with perfectly cut, brown hair and arranged beard, the thousands of years old man looked like a middle-aged Instagram model. “Do you know what this means?” he suddenly asked and pointed at the bottom of the left screen.
Lillith formed an awkward smile. “No,” she admitted. “I’m reading the summary on the left screen, and I understand half of it.”
“Don’t feel bad about it.” His tone sounded compassionate, comforting, and friendly. “You are in about the same position as Linn. While she has spent her entire life studying martial arts and inventing ways to apply magic to them, she is now looking at a biological study of an alien organism while sitting next to Lucielle, the woman who spent six hundred years inventing a way to create a fully artificial living human being, at which she succeeded.”
That made Lillith chuckle. “I take it you know metallurgy well.”
“The application of metallurgy began in my empire as an imitation of my path of magic. I stayed in touch with the study throughout my entire life.” He glanced at the other two, checking if they weren’t eavesdropping. “Do you know why Lucielle likes to call me a goatfucker?”
Lillith snorted. She heard that from Lucielle at least twice per month. “No.”
“Back in the Sumerian empire. I was a young prince and Lucielle the chieftain of the barbarians raiding our cities. The king, my father, organized a feast to attempt to settle our disputes. Later in the evening, my friend motioned toward Lucielle and asked me if I would… hit that. I said I would rather fuck a goat, and she heard that.”
Lillith caught her mouth with her hands. “Wasn’t that thousands of years ago?”
“She is still not over it.” Gilgamesh pointed at the screen. “But to the matter at hand. To summarize, the metal has curious properties. In particular, it is hard, ductile, not heat or electricity conductive, and chemically unreactive to everything.”
