POV: Rias Gremory
Rias felt horribly out of place before she had even crossed the entrance.
The corridor outside the meeting headquarter was quiet, almost unnaturally so, and the silence pressed against her suffocatingly and made every breath feel louder than it should have been.
She had been invited here by Lord Falbium and Zero himself, but the invitation did not erase the simple fact that she was unqualified to stand among the people gathered beyond those doors.
They were the minds and symbols of the rebellion, the ones who had defied the prince of hell when obedience would have been safer. Compared to such people, she felt painfully ordinary, a young devil whose accomplishments seemed thin and irrelevant beside the burdens these people carried as a matter of course.
Still, she entered.
The chamber was simple and functional, lit by pale magic suspended in the air above a long table where maps, reports, and spell diagrams had been spread out in an efficient manner. The atmosphere was tense enough that Rias felt it against her skin, a quiet intensity shared by those who had grown accustomed to planning the fates of millions.
Zero stood at the far end of the table, calm and still, his presence somehow greater than the space he occupied. He was the head and symbol of the revolution, the name that had become synonymous with defiance itself.
Rias found herself wondering, as she always did, who the man behind the mask truly was. She wanted to unravel the mystery and see what kind of person existed beneath all that theatrical performance. Then again, perhaps that desire misunderstood the very purpose of the mask. It existed so that the man ceased to matter and only the idea remained. Perhaps there was nothing behind it anymore beyond the symbol he had chosen to become. She felt suddenly that she had no right to pry into that secret. If he wished to be Zero and nothing else, then she would respect that choice.
Beside him stood Lord Falbium, the former Satan Asmodeus, now the chief strategist and practical mind behind much of the rebellion. He appeared half-asleep, broad and heavy and unhurried, his expression fixed in that dry melancholy which made it impossible to tell whether he was bored or amused.
Runeas Gremory lounged on her seat, her chin resting against her hand, her smile bright and inappropriate for the atmosphere of the room. She caught sight of Rias and winked playfully. Rias sighed inwardly at her ancestor's antics.
Her father, Zeoticus Gremory, sat apart from them with his hands folded before him. He looked older than she remembered him to be. His noble bearing remained, his face remained composed, yet Rias saw the tension in his shoulders and the faint pallor beneath his eyes. The fate of their house and Sirzechs' had been a heavy blow to him.
The Gremory holdings had been stripped away. Their house had been declared an enemy of the state. Everything that once surrounded them with security had become evidence of treason in the mouths of lesser men.
There were others too, commanders and trusted officers, among them a man Rias recognized immediately. Diehauser Belial offered her a kind smile as she entered, his graceful face pale beneath the torchlight, his gray hair falling neatly around features that seemed all too stern and tired. Rias felt an old admiration stir despite the grimness of the room.
He had been the Emperor of the Rating Game for as long as she could remember, the strongest champion of that world, a genius whose talent in the demonic arts had inspired countless young devils who dreamed of greatness.
Once, Rias had imagined standing in that same arena and surpassing even people like him, a childish ambition that now felt as though it belonged to another life. But what moved her now was not his reputation in the Rating Games, impressive though it was, but the fact that he had been one of the first to rebel against Rizevim, refusing to surrender his peerage when ordered to do so and joining Zero's young rebellion instead. Since then, he had fought to protect reincarnated devils wherever he could, and Rias admired him more in that moment than she ever had in the stadiums.
She realized, a moment too late, that she had entered in the middle of a discussion.
"I apologize," Rias said quickly, bowing her head as heat rose to her cheeks. "It seems I have interrupted something important. I can return at a later time."
"That will not be necessary," Zero said, his voice calm and refined, carrying across the room without being raised. "You were invited to be here, Lady Rias, and so here is where you must be."
Several eyes turned toward her, and a few brows rose slightly, yet no one objected. That somehow made her feel even more awkward.
"Come here, Riri," Runeas said lightly. "The table was beginning to look dreadfully overcrowded with testosterone and misery, and there are only so many old men speaking in grave tones that a girl can endure before she starts wishing for an earthquake."
The irony of her ancestor saying this was not lost on her, though Rias did not protest. She swallowed the unease gathering in her throat and moved quietly across the room, taking the empty seat beside her father and ancestor. Her father gave her no overt sign of concern, though one of his hands shifted slightly closer to hers upon the table. She noticed and was grateful for it. She kept her hands folded in her lap.
Lord Falbium returned his attention to the map. "As I was saying, Rizevim's recent declaration requiring all reincarnated devils to register and contribute to the war effort has given him legal cover for what is, in practice, mass enslavement."
Rias felt her stomach tighten. A map at the center of the table glowed faintly, projecting thirteen marked locations across the underworld. Each one was indicated by a tall black sigil shaped like a tower or tomb.
"The labor allocation has increased again," Falbium continued. "Our sources have confirmed that the next group is close to ten thousand reincarnated devils, taken from holding pens in Astaroth territory, and they are to be sent east."
The prince of hell had declared that all reincarnated devils were to register themselves and contribute to the war effort, though he had never specified what that effort was meant to be. Some had believed at first that they would be drafted as soldiers, others that they would be assigned labor proportional to their skills, but the truth had revealed itself much crueler. They were being used as slaves.
Rias had seen the mausoleums. She had seen the collars and the camps and the bodies. She still had nightmares of the huge hairless monster that had nearly caught her.
"They could've used magic to build them," Diehauser Belial said tiredly. "A proper construction company and a competent ritual team could accomplish in weeks what they are forcing these people to do over months. Perhaps days, if Rizevim committed enough resources. Many of the reincarnated devils have no experience with labor of that kind."
"Which means," Falbium said, "that the inefficiency is the point. The mausoleums are being made by hands denied magic, by bodies pushed past endurance, by minds degraded and stripped of hope. The labor, the hunger, the fear, the deaths, the humiliation, the despair gathered around the sites, all of it appears to be ritually significant. He could have used magic, as you said, and accomplished it in a fraction of the time, yet he has chosen this method. The cruelty is likely the end goal."
"The stones remember hands," Runeas said lightly, almost sing-song, though her eyes were fixed upon the map. "Blood remembers where it falls. Pain is very good at remaining where it is placed. Crude little rituals are built with chalk and chanting, but the old ones, the nasty ones, the ones that demand a heavy price, those prefer sweat and bone and prayer and despair."
A magical projection shifted and showed a glimpse of the captives working upon the mausoleums. The reincarnated devils were fitted with collars that sealed their access to magic and killed them if they attempted escape. They were given almost no rest, little water, and food only when their overseers wished to preserve enough strength in them to continue working.
Many were made to haul stone and metal by hand until their muscles tore. Those who collapsed were beaten until they rose again, and those who could no longer rise were dragged aside and left where others could see them. The mausoleums were enormous and never seemed to end, their foundations sunk deep into the earth while their spires climbed to the heavens like the tower of babel.
Rias felt nausea coil within her. The people were stripped of rank, stripped of dignity, stripped even of the small mercies one might grant to livestock, driven beneath whips and spells to build monuments whose purpose they did not understand.
It evoked the ugliest parts of human and devil history alike, the great achievements raised upon the bent backs and broken bones of the powerless, the grandeur of tyrants made possible by the suffering of those whose names would never be carved into stone.
"The magic-suppressing collars are rather interesting," Falbium said. "Their function appears to be more than just ensuring the captives don't escape or retaliate. They measure distress, exhaustion, fear, and death throes. Our researchers have confirmed this."
Rias lifted her gaze sharply. "Record pain?" she asked before she could stop herself. "Why? What's the point?"
"Would that we knew," Falbium said. "Evidently they are part of whatever ritual Rizevim intends to complete. But what exactly does he plan to do once the mausoleums are finished? Knowing Rizevim, perhaps there is no further purpose at all. Perhaps all this suffering, all this cruelty, is itself the final objective."
Rias closed her fingers around the fabric of her skirt. She had known Rizevim was vile. She had known the old Satan faction despised reincarnated devils, seeing them as false devils, lesser beings, stains upon what they called pure blood and noble race.
She had heard the rhetoric before, the contempt for those who had once been human and were now expected to serve as tools for their betters. Yet knowing such hatred existed was different from seeing it shaped into policy, into collars, into hunger, into whips, into graves dug beside unfinished towers.
Her hands curled slowly in her lap. Whatever future waited beyond this war, if there was any future at all, she would not forget this. If she lived, if House Gremory survived, if the underworld itself survived, then she would do everything within her power to change the way reincarnated devils were treated. She did not know if she had the strength to overturn centuries of prejudice, yet she knew that silence would make her complicit.
"They plan to awaken the Malebranche," Rias said, her voice quieter now. "Zaorama Nebiros seemed obsessed with them. What are they? Did you manage to find out anything concrete about them?"
The room grew still at the mention of the name. Whatever these Malebranche were, they were no source of hope.
"Oh, that ugly little bedtime story," Runeas said, though her voice had lost its mischief. "I first heard whispers of it during the Great War, when every corridor in Lucifer's palace seemed to carry rumors of some final weapon that would end everything by morning. The Malebranche were mere legends even then, and I was one of Lucifer's chief commanders. Imagine that. I could command legions, burn nations to the ground, and still there were doors in that palace I was not permitted to open. The Satans trusted no one, not even us who bled for them.
"What we have gathered now, from my memories and from our little birds nested in Rizevim's circle, is that the [Malebranche] are living weapons created in secrecy by the original Four Great Satans. They were fashioned using the special crystals of Agreas and were meant to be to devils what Sacred Gears were to humans. Knowing Lord Lucifer, it was likely conceived as a mockery of his father. If Heaven could place miracles inside mortals, then Hell would craft conscious weapons that could exceed them."
Rias thought of the Longinus, Sacred Gears so powerful that each could alter the balance of the world, and then imagined devil-made equivalents with all that such a thought implied. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, at the brilliance of Lucifer, the father of devils. He had not been a god, yet he had created things capable of killing gods with impunity.
"The original Satans tested their masterpieces," Runeas said. "Then they sealed them away. That part was always common with myths during the war, of course. We were desperate then, eager to believe our masters were too brilliant, too mighty, too glorious to lose, and that they withheld victory only because it suited their wisdom. It was a comforting lie we fed one another to keep marching.
"The myth said the Malebranche were never deployed because the Satans feared that even if devils won the war, those creations would afterward turn upon their makers. One version of the story claimed Lucifer himself said they would kill their masters in their sleep. Another claimed Beelzebub called them soldiers who interpreted violence as their natural state."
"If the myth is indeed the truth," Diehauser said quietly, "if there exist weapons on the level of the Longinus that were deemed too dangerous even by Lucifer himself… then if Rizevim succeeds in awakening them there will be no hope of victory for us, nor for anyone else. Rizevim must know that as well, so why is he still trying to awaken them?"
"Because he is mad," Runeas said simply. "Lady Leviathan had always been wary of him, even during the Great War. She feared he would simply awaken one day and go into a nihilistic frenzy. I gave up long ago trying to understand why he does what he does. There is no reason beyond causing the greatest misery possible for everyone involved."
"What happened to the Malebranche after the end of the Great War?" her father asked calmly.
"After the Great War, knowledge of them was buried," Runeas said. "Their existence was never revealed to the public. Among those who knew the truth were the original Four Satans and the heads of the Six Houses of Lucifer. Lord Zaorama Nebiros also knew of them, though most others who possessed that knowledge have long since died."
Runeas's expression darkened, and for the first time Rias saw something like disbelief beneath the ancient woman's composure.
"Zaorama has not been seen since the civil war," Falbium said calmly. "Until he suddenly appeared beside Rizevim and began the construction of the mausoleums. I suspect he has spent all this time researching how to awaken the Malebranche."
The Agreas crystals are gone now, Rias thought, unease deepening. Agreas itself had been lost, the island and its treasures swallowed by the great catastrophe, and whatever method had created the Malebranche could likely never be reproduced in the same way. That made the sealed weapons even more valuable to Rizevim, and far more terrifying.
"If the mausoleums are tied to the Malebranche, then Rizevim may intend to awaken them using the reincarnated devils as sacrifices," Diehauser said, his voice composed yet edged with disgust. "The suffering gathered at each site, the deaths, the forced labor, the degradation, all of it may be fuel. He may intend to raise the Malebranche and use them to wage war upon Heaven once more."
War upon Heaven. War upon the world. Carnage on a scale too vast to imagine. And for what?
Rizevim's amusement. The old Satan faction's madness. A vision of devilkind so diseased by pride that it would burn every realm before accepting that those born outside old blood could possess worth.
If only her brother had been here. She was beginning to understand how important Sirzechs had been in preserving the fragile peace, and she admired him even more for having maintained it while men like Rizevim worked tirelessly to make all his efforts meaningless.
"All who gather here do so in answer to that shadow," Zero said, his voice refined and solemn. "We stand against Rizevim because he would drown the world in blood and call the crimson tide destiny. The fault, dear friends, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. If we permit this engine of misery to complete its turning, we become accomplices by inaction. Rizevim would set Heaven ablaze if only to warm his hands at the fire. Our task is plain, though its burden is heavy. We must prevent him from completing these mausoleums, we must rescue those condemned to build them, and we must deny him every instrument by which he seeks to magnify his power."
Rias realized then that they had been repeating parts of the discussion for her benefit. The thought brought a quiet gratitude she did not dare voice aloud.
Falbium gestured, and the projection shifted to show a route across the underworld. "Which brings us to today's agenda," he said. "A large group of reincarnated devils, numbering almost ten thousand, has been gathered in Astaroth territory. They are to be transported to the eastern mausoleum."
The map brightened, showing a long road across several territories.
"They could be teleported in smaller batches," Falbium said. "It would've certainly been more efficient, clean, and less likely to result in unnecessary loss of life. Naturally, Rizevim has ordered the opposite. They are to be stripped naked, shaved of their hair, fitted with suppressive collars, and forced to march hundreds of miles barefoot. Those who slow down will be whipped. Those who collapse will be executed or left behind, depending on the mood of the escort."
Rias felt sick again, this time with anger beneath the horror. The stripping of their clothes, the shaving of their hair, the forced march, all of it was deeply disturbing. It was the systematic destruction of personhood, the reduction of people into nameless bodies.
It reflected everything vile in the ideology of the old Satan faction, their belief that reincarnated devils were not true devils at all, that they were imitation creatures permitted to exist only when useful, beneath the pure-blooded families who claimed divine right over the underworld. She thought of Issei, Akeno, Kiba, Koneko, Gasper. Anyone doing that to them and the anger became something colder and steadier.
"The escort will be led by Bedez Abaddon and Egminas Paimon," Falbium said.
She recognized those names which left a bitter taste in the tongue. Bedez Abaddon and Egminas Paimon, ranked third and fifth among the top ten Rating Game players, were figures she had once admired from afar. She had looked up to them. Unlike Lord Diehauser, they had chosen instead to serve the great serpent.
I suppose one should be careful about meeting their heroes, she thought, disgust settling where admiration had once been.
"They and their servants will oversee the march, supported by soldiers loyal to Rizevim," Falbium continued. "They will move from Astaroth territory toward the eastern mausoleum, passing through what was once Gremory territory."
What was once Gremory territory. Her father's face remained composed, yet she saw the subtle tightening around his eyes. House Gremory had been dragged through the mud by a regime that rewarded obedience and punished conscience.
Falbium pointed toward a crossroads on the projected map. "We will intercept them here," he said. "The terrain limits formation width, and the old wards in the area can be manipulated to disrupt communication for a short period."
Rias felt hope stir despite herself. "You mean to rescue all of them?" she asked.
"That's the plan," Falbium said. "Nearly ten thousand, if our intelligence is accurate."
"How will you move them?" Rias asked, leaning forward before she realized it. "Even if the collars are removed, teleporting that many people would take time, and if the collars remain active, they may die during extraction. Have you found a way to disable them safely?"
Zero turned toward her, and there was a faint, almost theatrical inclination of his head.
"Permit me the honor of explaining that matter to Lady Rias," he said. "Azazel, first among the Fallen, has chosen to aid us in secret. Lord Falbium sent him several collars recovered from prior engagements and inquired whether they might be opened without killing the poor souls wearing them. As fortune would have it, the devices were designed by Zaorama Nebiros, for whom Lord Azazel possesses a very spirited dislike."
A few faint smiles appeared around the table.
"He required less than two days to devise a countermeasure," Zero continued, with a trace of amusement in his tone. "He then sent us prototype magical keys capable of unlocking the collars, along with several alternative models in case Zaorama had tampered with the mechanism since. Our smiths and artificers have already begun mass producing them. Nothing motivates genius quite like spite."
Rias exhaled slowly, relieved that those accursed collars could indeed be bypassed. She wondered why Azazel would help them, wouldn't it be better for him if the devils fought? Then again, perhaps he understood the threat Rizevim posed to the world as whole.
"The plan, then," Falbium continued, "is to strike quickly, secure the captives, remove the collars, divide them into smaller groups, and teleport them to prepared hideouts."
"Will Rizevim not notice?" Rias asked. "Teleporting thousands of people will require time and power. If he or one of his inner circle realizes what is happening, they could intervene before the evacuation is complete."
"Good question," Falbium said, and there was a note of approval in his voice. "The rescue operation will be led by Diehauser Belial and Zero, each commanding elite units. Their forces will engage Bedez, Egminas, and the escort directly. As for Rizevim and his closest allies, Runeas and I will launch a simultaneous attack in the west. It will be loud and threatening enough to demand their attention. The plan is to force their response elsewhere while the rescue proceeds."
Rias absorbed that, feeling both awe and dread at the scale of it. She realized acutely as well how out of place she was among them.
"Why was I summoned here?" she asked, her voice quieter despite her effort to remain steady. "This seems like something far above my position."
Zero looked at her for a moment. "Because I wished to ask whether you would take part in the operation," he said.
Rias stared at him confused. For a heartbeat, she thought she had misheard. "Me?" she asked. "Why would you choose me?"
Falbium gave a dry chuckle. "You are rather special, Lady Rias. Ordinary devils don't escape Zaorama Nebiros unscathed."
Rias did not know what to say to that. She had never thought of it that way. In her mind, she had survived because chance had favored her, because fear and desperation had carried her feet faster than death could reach her. She did not understand what they saw when they looked at her.
"Rias," her father said, his voice careful, though she could hear the concern beneath it. "You don't have to accept it if you don't wish to. This will be extremely dangerous."
Rias looked at him, and for a moment she saw her father as he used to be, worried for his daughter and trying not to show it.
Then she thought of the reincarnated devils marching barefoot beneath whips. She thought of collars around their necks, of shaved heads and stolen names, of people reduced to offerings for a ritual built upon suffering. She thought of the peerage system, of all its beauty and all its ugliness, of the people who had trusted her enough to call her King.
Her answer settled inside her with quiet certainty.
"I will take part," Rias said calmly. "If I can help them and choose not to, I don't think my conscience will allow me to sleep."
…
…
…
She returned after speaking with her peerage, who had been far too eager to accompany her on this mission, and she found that she could not have been more proud of the team she had gathered around herself.
Issei had not hesitated for even a moment before loudly declaring that he would go wherever she went, and the others had followed soon after with the same steadfast resolve, each in their own manner offering loyalty without condition or complaint.
She had truly been blessed with dependable allies, and the thought of the wielder of the [Boosted Gear] standing at her side brought her a deep sense of reassurance that settled some of the unease within her heart.
As she approached, she overheard her mother's raised voice and immediately concealed her presence so that she might better hear what was transpiring. Her mother was a woman of extraordinary grace and composure, one whose calm demeanor rarely faltered, and Rias could count upon one hand the number of times she had ever heard her shout in anger.
"How could you allow my daughter to be sent on such a mission, Zeoticus?!" her mother cried, her voice trembling with outrage and fear. "She's our only child, and after how close she came to death during her last mission, after how near she was to being taken from us forever, how can you stand there so calmly? Don't you understand that she was nearly captured? Our only child, Zeoticus!"
"We're part of the rebels whether we like it or not," her father replied with weary calm. "I can hardly expect the children of others to die in battles that secure our peace while refusing to send my own daughter when the time comes. I will not live here as some pampered noble who enjoys the sacrifices of others while offering nothing in return, nor will I exploit the generosity of those who alone were willing to shelter us when all others turned away. You forget that they were the only ones who took us in."
"That doesn't mean Rias must pay the price for it," Venelana answered coldly.
"She's not paying any price," her father said. "You know our daughter well enough. Rias would never sit idle while others acted in her place. She agreed to take part in the operation of her own will."
"As if she could refuse when Zero himself asked it of her," her mother said bitterly. "You should never have placed her in such a position. Why was a child like her even permitted into that meeting?"
"I didn't know of it beforehand," her father answered. "Zero and Falbium invited her without my knowledge, and there was little I could say once it had already been done. In any case, I have absolute faith that Falbium would never place my Rias in true danger."
"You trust too easily," her mother retorted. "Even if Falbium can be trusted, there is no knowing what Zero is planning."
"As entertaining as it is to watch you scold my dear Zeoticus," Runes said with amusement, "he truly couldn't have changed anything even if he had known. Zero and Falbium are determined to use Rias for their own agenda."
"But why?" her mother asked desperately. "That's what I can't understand. Rias is not like her brother, who was born possessing immense power. Why are they so fixated upon her?"
"The short version," Runes said casually, "is that they believe she is the key."
"The key? " her mother demanded sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, come now, Venelana, even you must have noticed," Runes said dryly. "Though then again, perhaps it is understandable that you did not."
"Stop speaking in riddles," Venelana said, raising her voice again. "What do you mean they believe Rias is the key?"
"Don't you find it strange," Runes said idly, "that Rias managed to evade capture by Zaoarma Nebiros simply by hiding in a closet within the very same room?"
"What are you implying, Runes?" Venelana asked.
"Nothing so dramatic," Runes replied calmly. "I'm stating a fact. It is impossible to hide from Zaoarma. I know him well for he is a great hunter. He should have found her the moment she concealed herself within the Agares heir's chambers."
"Are you saying...?" Venelana whispered, her voice faltering.
"There was a higher power at work," Runes said. "Someone powerful, someone who wished to keep Rias hidden, manipulated the flow of fortune itself so that she would remain undiscovered."
"You mean Him?!" both her mother and father asked at once, their voices shaking.
"Yes," Runes confirmed. "Falbium believes that Rias carries His blessing, and that this is one of the reasons fortune has favored her so often even in circumstances where death should have been certain. You have noticed her recent rise in power as well, haven't you? It's subtle, but her reserves of demonic energy are increasing at an unnatural pace."
Rias felt her blood run cold at those words. She had not noticed anything she would have called unnatural, though now that she reflected upon it, she had indeed been able to cast powerful spells without exhausting herself as she once would have, and the potency of her attacks had risen dramatically in recent months.
She had attributed it all to relentless training and necessity, yet her ancestor's words suggested something far more unsettling. Why would he make her his blessed, and when had such a thing occurred? She had not seen him since...
It was pointless to dwell upon him now. She had more pressing matters before her than trying to decipher the motives of a madman.
"I don't like this at all," her mother said. "He has already taken enough from us. I don't want His gaze upon my Rias as well. What have we done to deserve this?"
"It may yet prove useful to us," Runes said. "We don't know what He intends, though thus far his blessing appears only to make Rias stronger and more difficult to harm. He's keeping her safe if anything."
"There are always strings attached to gifts such as these," her father said with a sigh. "What exactly are Zero and Falbium planning?"
"They are attempting to gain His attention through Rias," Runes explained. "They believe he has a soft spot for her, if indeed she is his blessed. I imagine their scheme is to use him against Rizevim."
Rias left at once after hearing that, refusing to remain and listen further. It seemed that no matter how far she moved, no matter how fiercely she tried to step beyond it, she could not escape the shadow he cast over her life.
01010101010101010101010101010
The first collar opened with a sound so small that Rias almost hated it.
It clicked. Such a little sound for such a monstrous thing, a soft release of hidden teeth and spellwork, and then the black metal split at the seam and fell from the throat of a young woman who did not seem to understand, at first, that she was free to breathe as herself again.
She stood there naked and shivering beneath the torn cloak Akeno had thrown around her shoulders, her hair reduced to a rough, uneven stubble, her wrists raw from rope and restraint, her eyes wide and emptied by hunger. Then she touched her own neck. Only then did she begin to cry.
Rias had no time to comfort her properly. She wanted to. Her hands wanted to reach out and hold every one of them, to apologize for the underworld that had done this to them, to tell them that they were devils and people and not beasts to be driven by whip and collar.
Instead she placed a steady hand on the woman's shoulder and guided her toward the forming circle of survivors.
"Stay with that group," Rias said softly. "Please remain calm. Form groups of fifty and we will move you out in stages. Do not run. Do not separate from your assigned group."
The woman stared at her incomprehensibly.
Behind Rias, the crossroads had become a battlefield and a slaughterhouse of chains. The ambush had begun as soon as they reached the gap. Diehauser Belial's forces had struck from the northern ridge in a silver-black wave, and Zero's elite had descended upon the rear guard like lightning from the sky.
The escort line, stretched along the road beneath the purple underworld sky, had fractured under the first blow. Soldiers loyal to Rizevim shouted commands that no one obeyed for long. The collared captives, nearly ten thousand of them, moved in terrified surges and huddled knots, afraid to run because the collars had taught them that motion meant death and hope was merely a sharper instrument of punishment.
Rias had been assigned to the secondary team, tasked with freeing the captives and teleporting them in groups of fifty to the prepared hideouts. It was not glorious work, and she was grateful for that. There was no glory in what had been done here.
Akeno moved from collar to collar with unwavering focus, her usual smile absent, the magical keys floating beside her like little brass insects waiting for command. Kiba had taken a position near the outer edge of the freed groups, sword in hand, intercepting any soldier that broke through the rebel screen.
Koneko carried those too weak to walk, her small body moving with grave strength as she lifted grown devils as though they weighed nothing at all. Gasper stood pale and trembling beside a shadowed teleportation array, his sacred gear held in check with visible effort as he froze small disturbances in time just long enough for the circles to stabilize.
Issei worked at Rias's left, hands shaking in rage as he opened collars one after another. "Bastards!" he muttered, and there was no humor in him, none of the foolish warmth that usually left his face. "They did this to their own people. How could anyone be so cruel?"
Rias opened another collar and felt the suppression spell inside it squirm against the key, a vile little mechanism. The collar fell. An old man collapsed to his knees, sobbing without sound.
"Keep going," she said, to him and to herself. "We keep going."
They had freed two hundred in the first rush, then four hundred, then more. The groups formed slowly because terror made order difficult, and hunger made obedience to new instructions slower than any of them could afford. Some captives clung to one another and refused to be separated. Some could not stand. Some kept touching the place where the collars had been, certain that death would still come. Every moment spent calming them was necessary. Every necessary moment was dangerous.
The man before her gasped as magic returned to him in a thin flicker and then vanished again beneath exhaustion. He tried to bow. His knees failed.
"Don't bow," Rias said gently, catching him before he struck the ground. "Save your strength."
"My lady," he whispered, his voice hoarse like he hadn't drank water for ages.
She passed him into the care of another freed captive and turned to the next. Fifty at a time. That was all the array could safely bear in the terrain they had prepared. Fifty, then a flash of crimson light, then the next fifty placed upon the sigil where the last had stood. Too slow. It was all too slow.
The battle at the front raged on, and though Zero and Diehauser had drawn the strongest enemies away as planned, the road was long and chaos had many cracks through which death could enter.
Then Rias felt it. A subtle shift in the air. It came as a cold pressure at the edge of perception, the distinct wrongness of power gathering for a strike. She turned before anyone shouted.
Above the broken western barricade, a lance of golden demonic energy tore through the smoke toward the cluster of freed captives waiting at the teleportation circle.
Rias raised her hand. [Destruction] bloomed from her palm in a compact sphere no larger than an apple, crimson-black and silent, and she sent it upward with a flick of her fingers. It met the golden lance in midair and erased the front of the attack cleanly. The remainder warped, split, and scattered as harmless sparks that died before reaching the ground.
Akeno looked over sharply. "Buchou?"
"Continue freeing them," Rias said, her gaze fixed through the smoke. "Don't stop for anything unless I fall."
"Buchou," Issei began.
"That's an order," she said sternly. "I'll deal with him."
The smoke parted. A figure emerged from the smoke beyond the half-collapsed escort wagons, walking with unhurried grace across ground littered with broken chains and dead soldiers. He was a handsome young man with soft blond hair and a gentle face that might have seemed almost saintly to those who didn't know him.
His clothing was expensive despite the battlefield, tailored and immaculate save for a line of dust across one sleeve, and his golden eyes were nearly closed, curved in that familiar expression of serene politeness that had once made him welcome in many halls.
Diodora Astaroth smiled at her. "Lady Rias," he said, bowing gracefully. "How nostalgic. I confess I did hope you would be here. One hears rumors in war, and I have always preferred seeing beautiful things with my own eyes."
"It has been a while, Diodora," she said softly.
"How I have missed the sight of that crimson hair of yours," he said calmly. "I had often imagined it dripping with my cum."
"That fantasy must have become harder to pursue once you chose to become Rizevim's bedwarmer," she said, disgust sharpening her voice. "Not that there was ever any chance of us ending up together, mind you. I have better taste than that."
"Do you know why I chose him?" he asked again. "He promised me what your brother denied us for so long. The right to freedom, as is our destiny. We are kindred spirits, he and I. He is one of the few devils honest enough to admit what we are. No more pretending that morality binds us. No more sermons about restraint from those who keep servants in jeweled cages and call it family. No more lowering ourselves before reincarnated trash and pretending that a human given a piece is our equal."
A flash of crimson gathered around Rias's fingers.
"How far we have fallen," she said. "That a snake like you now presumes to judge who is superior and who is inferior."
"They are slaves," he replied, his voice still courteous. "Labor, fuel, entertainment, instruments. Some are lovely enough for other uses, of course. I have always believed waste to be a sin, if devils may speak of sin."
Rias felt the captives behind her flinch at his words. Her power stirred in answer to her anger. "You speak of sin too easily for someone so drenched in filth," she said.
Diodora opened his eyes a little more, and the gold within them brightened.
"There it is," he said. "That Gremory righteousness. That lovely, nauseating certainty. The beloved princess who thought herself kinder than her peers because her brother was strong enough to make her kindness fashionable."
Her breath stilled, and his smile widened.
"Ah," he said. "Does the wound still bleed? Sirzechs Lucifer, the great and radiant shield of your life. Dead now. Gone. How frightening the world must seem without him standing between you and consequence."
Akeno's lightning cracked behind her, but Rias lifted one hand without looking back.
Diodora's gaze traveled down her body in a slow and deliberate manner.
"I used to wonder what it would take," he said. "What it would take to make you kneel. Your brother's name protected you. Your family's pride protected you. Your own little circle of devoted pets protected you. Now all of that has thinned. The world has become far more honest, and in honest worlds, beautiful things belong to those strong enough to seize them."
"You are less impressive than I remember," she said.
For the first time, his smile faltered. "You should be careful."
"No," she said. "You mistook my disgust for fear. That is a common mistake among men like you. Men who think being cruel makes them strong."
"A sharp tongue," he said. "I have always liked that in a woman. It makes breaking them more satisfying."
"You will not touch me," Rias said looking at the disgusting prick looking at her.
"Oh, I will," Diodora said softly, and the gentleness fell from him like a discarded mask, revealing the feverish hunger beneath. "I have wanted to possess you for a very long time. The proud Rias Gremory, reduced to a thing that kneels when called. I will put a collar on that lovely neck and teach you the proper use of noble blood. Perhaps I will let you watch while your servants are dragged back to the mausoleum. Perhaps I will let them watch while I fuck you like the little whore you are."
He lunged suddenly without waiting for response. His hand moved in a blur, golden power coiling around his fingers, and the ground between them ruptured as a spear of force drove toward her.
Rias released three bullets of [Destruction]. They flew in a staggered pattern, one toward the spear, two toward him. The first erased the head of his attack, but the other two slowed as they approached him, their movement dragging as if they had entered thick syrup.
Their crimson surfaces trembled, progressing less and less through the air until they hung a handspan from his body, burning without arriving.
Diodora reached out and touched one with a fingertip, only for it to collapse as though it had been made of paper.
"Flux," he said, with the satisfaction of a teacher unveiling a principle to a slow student. "Our house's technique is rather abstract. We're not born with a simple inheritable power like the power of destruction. No, ours actually demands effort to create and master. Each member of House Astaroth develops a specialized formula tied to calculation.
"My cousin Ajuka shaped the [Kankara Formula]. I created [Flux]. I drew inspiration from derivatives, from the mathematics of change itself. A derivative measures the rate at which a thing alters across time, and I gave that principle demonic form. Your Power of Destruction is formidable, Lady Rias, but even destruction must move, expand, propagate, and all things that move possess a rate that may be governed."
Rias shifted aside as he accelerated. One moment he stood several paces away. The next he was beside her, his hand reaching for her throat, fingers gleaming with spellwork. She threw herself backward and compressed Destruction beneath her heel, erasing a shallow crescent of the ground to drop herself below his grasp. His hand passed over her face close enough that she felt the wind of it.
"~ Good. You're prettier when frightened,~" He said, laughing softly.
"I'm not scared of you," Rias said.
She swept her arm upward and sent a fan of [Destruction] shards toward him, each no larger than a fingernail and curved like broken glass. Diodora's [Flux] caught the first wave. Half slowed. Some stalled. But the pattern was too irregular for all of them to be read at once, and one shard reached his sleeve, erasing cloth and a narrow line of skin beneath.
His expression tightened ever so slightly, a reaction Rias immediately noticed, prompting a small smile to cross her lips. So that's how it works. There is no such thing as a technique without a weakness after all. His control required precision.
Diodora raised both hands, and the air fractured with golden sigils. The stones around Rias jerked upward, then accelerated downward at impossible speed, their falling rate spiked until they became black meteors. She did not bother dodging, instead raising a thin veil of [Destruction] above herself like armor, causing the stones to disintegrate the instant they touched it before dust rained around her as she calmly stepped through.
Diodora flicked his wrist, and her next motion almost failed. The movement of her right arm slowed halfway through its arc, the acceleration bleeding away until her fingers crawled through the air. He had altered the change in her movement, reducing the action before it could become complete. A moment later he was in front of her again, his palm driving into her abdomen.
Pain burst through her, and she skidded backward across the road, boots cutting lines through dust and blood. Koneko moved instinctively toward her, but Rias forced herself upright.
"Don't stop," she said.
Koneko froze for the smallest instant, then returned to the captives, her face pale with anger.
"~Hmm, so bossy,~" he purred. "There is some devil in you after all. I will enjoy undoing it."
Rias wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. "Look, a dead man is talking," She said coldly.
She changed tactics. Instead of throwing [Destruction] at him, she released it into the ground in small seeds, each one buried beneath dust and broken stone. Diodora watched her hands, expecting projectiles.
Rias moved left, then sent a visible sphere toward his face. As expected, the sphere slowed near him, its rate of change forced toward zero.
The buried seeds opened beneath his feet. Five small circles of ground vanished at once, erasing the support his stance depended upon. His balance shifted. [Flux] could slow motion, invert acceleration, cancel progression, but it could not restore ground already erased without a separate spell.
For a single instant his control was divided between the visible sphere and the collapse beneath him. Rias used that instant. She shaped [Destruction] into a thread. It was thin, almost invisible, a red-black filament drawn between two fingers. She snapped it forward like a whip.
Diodora twisted away, accelerating his own body so quickly that the thread only grazed his shoulder, but where it touched, flesh and fabric disappeared in a clean diagonal line.
His golden eyes opened fully now. "You arrogant little bitch," he said, the gentleness thinning at last.
"There you are," Rias replied. "I wondered how long you'd keep that pathetic attempt at civility and reveal the sniveling coward beneath it."
His power surged. The world around her began to distort in layered waves as her hair lifted and then slowed, dust hanging motionless in the air. The sparks from distant lightning froze halfway through their dying. A fallen spear twisted upon itself as its tip continued moving while its shaft lagged behind, metal shrieking under temporal shear.
Diodora came at her through that warped field, faster than before, his regeneration already knitting the wound on his shoulder.
Rias let him come. She could not outpace every [Flux] alteration, and she did not need to. His ability governed change. His weakness was that his ability relies on his ability to perceive things. He could prevent an attack from becoming impact if he perceived its transition. He could slow a projectile, stall a blast, shear a construct. So she removed the need for travel.
She gathered [Destruction] into her palm and compressed it smaller than she had ever dared in combat. It became a bead, then a pinprick, then something almost conceptual, a point of erasure so dense it made the air around her hand whimper.
Diodora hesitated, and Rias answered with a faint smile before opening her hand toward herself. The [Destruction] spread across her own aura, coating it with the principle of erasure. A mantle of crimson-black silence wrapped around her like a second skin.
Diodora's hand struck her shoulder. The spell he meant to inject into her failed where it touched her aura. His fingers did not vanish, because she had restrained the field to the outermost edge, but the golden Flux around his hand was erased before it could alter her movement.
His eyes widened in alarm as Rias stepped inside his reach and drove her palm into his chest, [Destruction] blooming directly against the scar he had displayed so proudly. He screamed and flung himself backward, accelerating his retreat with such force that the air cracked. A portion of his chest was gone, though she could tell it wasn't enough to kill him. Still it was enough that even his accelerated regeneration struggled to interpret what had been removed.
"You were born with a silver spoon up your ass," he snarled, one hand pressed to the wound. "You think this makes you better than me? You have never had to fight for anything in your life. Every scrap of power you possess was handed to you before you ever lifted a finger."
Rias walked toward him, her aura flickering with controlled ruin.
"Perhaps not," she said. "It doesn't matter how you gain power, it's how you use it that matters. You chose to spend yours tormenting the defenseless. At least in that, I am better than you. Although frankly, that's a low bar."
He screamed again, this time in fury, and unleashed [Flux] across the whole field. The countless battles unfolding around them warped strangely as a rebel's sword slowed moments before striking its target while a stone accelerated until it became powder. One of Rias's own Destruction bullets, launched as a feint, reversed toward her.
She erased it with a glance and a small motion of her hand. Diodora's control was widening, and with width came imperfection. Rias unleashed twelve bullets in different rhythms, one curving through the air, another pulsing, a third deliberately decaying as it traveled, a fourth halting at her command before resuming its flight, a fifth burrowing into shadow, and a sixth existing as little more than a shell surrounding an empty center.
[Flux] caught some, warped others, reversed two. Three reached him. He dodged one, slowed another, and took the third through the thigh. His leg vanished below the hip and he fell. For a moment he stared at the emptiness where his legs used to be and seemed to not comprehend what had happened. Then he tried to regenerate by increasing the rate of his natural healing speed.
Rias closed her fist. A ring of [Destruction] formed around the wound and erased every attempt at regrowth as it began. His flesh tried to return and disappeared. Tried again and disappeared. The rate of biological change meant nothing if each new formation was denied at inception.
Diodora's face twisted with panic. "Stop!" he said.
Rias continued walking.
"Lady Rias," he said, and the gentleness returned in a broken and pleading imitation of itself. "You wouldn't kill a noble prisoner. You're not that kind of woman."
"You don't know what kind of woman I am," she said.
"Please," he begged with tears in his eyes. "I can be useful. I can tell you of Rizevim's plans. You want to know don't you? I can help you…please."
"You were useful already," she replied. "You reminded me what must end."
His expression curdled. His remaining hand rose, gathering every thread of [Flux] he could muster into a final event cancellation aimed at her heart, a spell meant to reduce the beat within her chest to zero and hold it there forever.
Rias felt the attack begin and made no attempt to dodge. She reached into it with [Destruction] refined to a needle and erased the change he was attempting to impose, cutting through the spell's governing principle before it could complete. Flux unraveled like silk burned in flame.
Diodora stared up at her in terror as Rias stood above him. Behind her, another teleportation circle flared, carrying fifty freed captives into safety. Then another group began forming. Her peerage had not stopped. They had trusted her.
Diodora looked past her toward them, hatred raw in his eyes. "You will all lose," he whispered. "Rizevim will not let you live, all your efforts will be pointless in the end. I've seen the true end. HAHAHAH!"
"Then, I will erase that end as well and make a new one," she said calmly.
She raised her hand. For an instant, Diodora Astaroth looked like what he had always been beneath the clothing, the manners, the beauty, and the name. A frightened, vicious thing that lashed at anything he deemed weak.
"W-wait," he begged.
His pleas fell on deaf ears. Rias released her power. Destruction descended in a single compressed sphere and passed through him from brow to heart. And Diodora Astaroth ceased to exist.
For a few seconds Rias remained still, her hand lowered, her breathing quiet and controlled. The dust moved again. The battle resumed its ordinary violence. The cries of the wounded and the freed returned to her ears.
Then Issei shouted from behind her. "Buchou, we have another fifty ready."
Rias turned. The captives were watching her, some with terror, some with awe, some with a fragile hope that hurt more than either. Akeno met her gaze, and in her eyes there was worry and pride braided together. Kiba gave her a brief nod. Koneko carried a child toward the circle. Gasper, pale and shaking, held the teleportation shadow open.
Rias walked back to them.
"Continue," she said softly, kneeling before the next collar and fitting the key into place. "We continue until every last one of them is free."
AN: For the first time since I began writing, I experienced writer's block. I had so many ideas for how this chapter would go, but when I sat down to write, nothing came out, just a complete blackout. That had never happened to me before.
So, to amend this, I simply started writing. I didn't know what the hell I was writing. I just needed to get something on the page, and the result was this chapter. I'm not satisfied with it at all. It felt dry and kind of boring, tbh, and the thing I originally wanted to happen didn't even happen.
Anyway, yeah, Rias killed Diodora. That was fun, I think. I even gave him maths as a power just to make it more satisfying to beat the shit out of him.
Advanced chapters are available on my Patreon. If you want to read ahead, vote on which story gets updated each week, or simply support my writing so I can focus more on it, you can check it out here: /abeltargaryen?