Allen1996
patreon
Chapter 30: Sfeterismos
🕑 Added 2023-12-22 04:20:32 +0000 UTCI had finally left the comfort of my new bed. Honestly, I only wished to law around, all day, lose myself and my sense of time with Akeno and even though I knew my brother would allow it, I didn't want to make things harder for him.
Akeno had chosen to come with me. It was only the two of us walking in the castle. The other members of my peerage were still unconscious or sleeping. I had checked and I thought it would be too much of a sin to wake them up.
They deserved to rest. They deserved to lose themselves in the kingdom of Morpheus, the king of dreams. They deserved even if it was just for a few hours that the world didn't make any sense, that this world was cruel.
What could be called a veritable army of servants had been posted before my new room. They had wished to accompany me.
Apparently, Sirzechs had told them he wished to have breakfast and talk with me in his personal office when I would wake up.
It would have been easier to accept their assistance. This castle was a true labyrinth. It was something made of deceit and trickery but I had my essence. Each time I was exposed to something that could affect me, I only thrived and became better.
This is why it was only Akeno and me walking in the castle hands intertwined. My eyes were closed and it would be more accurate to say that I was guided by Akeno.
Akeno had told me that she already knew where my brother was. Her role was to make sure we wouldn't be too lost and in the case my essence is unable to improve my perception, to guide us in my brother.
I was flaring my authority, my demonic power trying to sense my brother, trying to peer through the alien complexity of this castle and it was working.
With each second that passed, I became more sure of my footing. With each second that passed, my awareness increased.
This labyrinth operated at many levels. It operated on a physical level and this is why you could move in it but what was tricky is can't it mostly didn't operate at this level.
We were devils, our imagination our weapon, our wills our brushes onto the white canvas that was the world.
Why would it be different with this place? My brother was right to say that this place was dangerous which is why I didn't try to poke deeper. Insight could be a curse after all.
This place mostly worked according to your will. You needed to be sure, to believe you were going a certain way. You had to believe the same way one believed Earth and the moon existed that your path was the right one.
It could be said that knowing or trying to know the original disposition of this place would only make things both worse and better for a person navigating this place.
If there was an inkling of doubt in your mind about this place, you were screwed. If you didn't know or forgot, you were screwed.
I guess that it could be possible to trump the rules if you were able to create around you something separating you both physically and metaphorically of this place while still being in it like a mini godly authority, a demonic bloodline inherited power or a replica/variant of a reality marble.
Anyway, this was this understanding gained through the work of my essence that we stepped and reappeared before I knew was the gate of the office of my brother.
“We’re there Rias. You succeeded, congratulations,” Akeno told me softly. I opened my eyes back my gaze fixed on what seemed to be a door made of black mahogany and an oily black stone. Imageries of Skeleteons and dark sadistic looking abominations with endless amounts of bleeding eyes, threads and tongues of fire were visible on it. When I focused on it, it almost seemed alive, speaking.
“It never ended.”
“This is just the beginning
“Why?”
“It hurts”
“Please someone help,” something begged.
“He fell with the powers and the dominions from above,” something whispered.
A soft hand moved my head and broke my attention. “Akeno?!” I called her name in surprise realizing she had been the one to snap me from my mental fugue.
I felt something wet running from my nose. Before I could confirm my fears, a handkerchief materialized in one of my Queen’s hands. Gently, she pressed it against my skin, removing the wet substance with two swipes before making the handkerchief disappear, fading out of reality in the form of sparks.
She came closer and kissed me on the corner of my mouth. It wasn't truly a kiss yet it made me blush “You have to be careful Rias,” she told me worry and love shining in her eyes.
“I would have been fine,” I told her honestly. I had my essence. Whatever damage would have happened would have been negated by my essence as long as it didn't destroy me completely at every level imaginable in an instant.
“Can you promise this to me though?” she asked and with the question, indignation rose in my heart.
Of course, I wanted to tell. I wanted to tell her it was useless to worry until I realized she didn't know about the essence. I'm sure that most knew there was something wrong, different with me but wasn’t supposed to know what was the cause.
Sharing my knowledge about my essence would only lead to questions about how I knew and I didn't want to talk about the fact that even though I was their Rias, I was at the same time not their Rias.
So many things could go wrong and after gaining almost everything, I didn't wish to lose this new life, this new everything. Maybe it wasn't morally right but when did being morally right make you thrive In this world?
It didn't matter if something was wrong or right in the eyes of the world if something was devoid or dull of complexity. What mattered in the end was what was taken as the truth, as what was right even if it could not be right morally. What mattered was what people thought righteousness was.
Akeno didn't know this. In her eyes and in her understanding, the woman she loved just began bleeding from her nose after looking too much at the door of the office of Satan, of Lucifer himself.
“I'll try to be more careful,” I told her to placate her. “I don't want to be hurt.”
Mirth replaced the worry in her eyes and I felt some uneasiness I hadn’t detected before fade. “Are you sure?” she spoke her voice full of a teasing tone. “It didn't seem this way yesterday night.”
“How dare you? What if my brother hears us?” I told her both shocked and appalled.
A giggle escaped her beautiful lips “He's the devil Rias. I'm sure he heard, did and saw worse,” she told me “and you didn't deny me.”
My answer to her was to bust the door of my brother open with a flick of demonic energy “This is such a shame. This was an enlightening conversation but It seemed my brother could not wait any longer for us to enter,” I told her before entering.
“You know you can’t escape me forever right?” she playfully said behind me.
“The word can't define a lack of skill, an enormous amount of skill issues Akeno.”
I turned quickly watching her come toward me, words ready to be said back to me. I stopped her by kissing her on the right side of her face “Thank you for everything Akeno,” I told her before opening and turning toward the second door I knew would lead me to my brother.
“I never had a chance, Did I?” I heard her whisper softly before I opened the second door and stepped into another world.
*scene*
I entered a room that seemed to be more of a universe in itself than anything else. It shouldn't be possible for something so big, so impossible to exist behind the door of a castle no matter how big the castle was.
I stepped on the grass with an amethyst colour as if I had entered a foreign realm and landed on an alien planet.
A cold breeze was blowing and kissing everything in this alien world with its icy yet comforting touch.
There was a sky over us. A sky made of crimson clouds, a sky of scarlet colour. Beyond it, at the edge of this other world, I could see a star that was clearly based on the one Earth revolved around.
They differed in the fact that this one was dark with a hue of crimson. I knew just by looking at this haunting star that it was made from what slumbered deep in my soul, from what my maternal family and I inherited Olethros, the power of Destruction.
A giant platform floated in the sky, one that seemed as long and vast as a big island. I didn't know if it was because of magic, technology or a mix of the two I didn't understand.
On it, I could see tables made of the dark wood that recovered the door of the office of my brother. I knew my brother was over there.
I didn't try to fly or call for him or even try to manipulate this beautiful yet alien world, putting it under my will to construct something that would be able to reach the platform. I didn't try to jump either. I was cultured after all.
I simply looked at the giant platform and walked toward the edge of it. When I was younger, I had marvelled at doing impossible things but with time I grew and learned that the impossible only stayed in dreams, in fiction.
Logic, physics and universal laws ruled the world. You could not take a step on the air itself and go up as the air itself was made of invisible stairs. This was unless you were a devil.
I grasped my demonic energy and walked. I wished to go up and I simply did. With each step, I rose, my feet feeling firm. I walked until I reached the edge of the platform and took a step on it.
I heard Akeno step behind me like I did. I turned to look at her. She looked almost bored. Where I had to use my demonic energy, Akeno even in a subdimension in the Underworld didn't have to. I changed the world to my will. The world changed to her will because of what she was. It almost made me jealous until I remembered that I had my essence and that I cared too much for her to envy her regarding something so little.
I turned back, my gaze searching and finding my brother. Fear was the strongest and oldest feeling for humanity. Transmigrating in this world hadn't gotten rid of it. This is why at that moment, my soul begged me, screamed at me to flee away.
I felt my essence turn from active to passive as if I was before an existence-ending threat when in reality, I was before my brother. I knew who my brother was. I knew he was a super devil. I knew he was a being deemed as an anomaly, who shouldn’t be so strong.
The original Lucifer had died with the other Satans around 1000 A.D. My brother had been a child, not even a teenager when it happened.
He was a devil who entered not even five years ago his second millennium of living. For a race who couldn’t meet Death naturally unless someone forced it on them, for a race where some of our progenitors were as old as this planet, my brother was painfully young.
He was so painfully young yet looking at him, gazing into the eyes of my Brother, I saw the monster he hid behind a smile. I didn't see Sirzechs Gremory. I saw the devil and he was hungry for destruction.
It may have lasted less than an instant or maybe an eternity. I wasn't sure of how long I looked into his eyes but I saw how the hatred, the hunger, the sin and the destruction were all hidden, replaced with joy and love.
It made me wonder if anyone truly knew him. It made me wonder if I truly knew him. It made me wonder for less than a second if his love was truly real before I realized that the monster before my eyes was Sirzechs, my brother.
He stood up from his throne made of bones and rubies intricately woven and fused together in some places. I guess that it looked the way George R.R. Martin would imagine one to be in his mind.
I didn't try to ask him what was that. I didn't run fleeing away from the slumbering abomination before me. I walked toward him and hugged him “Morning, Brother,” I spoke softly in his ear.
“Morning Rias,” he greeted me before hugging me back. I didn't question why his hug felt tighter than before. I didn't ask him why even ten seconds later, he continued to hug me.
Slowly, he retreated away from me as if he was doing something reluctantly, something he wished he would not have to do.
I could still feel Akeno behind me. She stood behind me quietly. “Is everything alright?” I finally asked my brother.
“Not that you are here, it is the case,” my brother answered me. That didn't lessen my worries.
He turned toward an empty space and as if reality was rebooted, a glass table with three chair-like thrones full of food materialized.
“I would prefer if we talk of this while eating. It's been too long since we shared together a meal,” he told me as he sat on one of the chairs.
Akeno and I followed him each of us taking a seat on the two other chairs that were side by side and facing him.
My gaze lost itself on the food he conjured and I felt myself salivate. I hadn't really been hungry since I reincarnated into this world. I guess it was logical for a race explicitly created as weapons to battle the Abrahamic god and his angels to not feel, to not be impeded by hunger.
It didn't mean that I would restrain myself from profiting from the feast Sirzechs had created, meals originating from the underworld. Devils could eat what humans did but it didn't mean our cuisine was exactly like theirs.
I could see a well-cooked steak of manticore on a silver plate. The manticore had been cooked enough that it wasn't truly bloody but not too much that you would not be able to taste blood when biting into the flesh of the dead monster.
I could see bottles made of purified hellfire. They looked as if they contained shiny blood. I knew that unlike the hellfire a devil could bring forth, this bottle was purified and transformed so that it would be harmless and even strengthening for devils of at least high class.
The salad was a mix of purple and literal gold. The gold had been grounded into a fine mist and covered the purple salad like freckles on a face.
I could see demonic basilic eggs. Some of them had been hard-boiled and others had been turned into runny omelettes.
I could see jars of what I knew with certainty was minotaurus-harvested milk. Five almost steamy French baguettes were in the middle of the table as if they had just come from an oven.
To finish, on a last silver plate were eyes, gorgon eyes. Originally, Medusa and her sisters were technically the only Gorgons. That was until the son of the original Stolas was able to capture one of them in a feud between our pantheon and the Greek pantheon. The devil had used his magic to break the mind of the minor deity before experimenting on her brain-dead body. One of the results of those experiments was the mass production of Gorgon's eyes.
Gorgon’s eyes who be could be used to create enchantment, curses, weapons or could simply be eaten.
The human part of me balk at this. This was more than cruelty. This was disgusting in itself. This was something clearly inhumane. The Rias part of me didn't understand the disgust. For her, this was only normal. For her, she only wished to eat the Gorgon’s eyes since she had been unable to do so when she was in Japan.
I served myself hiding, trying to crush the disgust I could feel inside. Rias Gremory wasn’t supposed to hate this.
I took my fork and stabbed and cut in two one of the eyes in my plate. It felt so easy, so simple, so wrong.
I brought the piece of Gorgon’s eye with my fork and put it in my mouth. Disappointment welled in me when I realized I loved this. How could something so wrong, born for suffering taste so good?
I stabbed another piece and ate it. I continued to do so. I cut with a flick of my will some of the bread that reappeared in a free hand. I deposed a cut part of one of the Omelettes on it and ate it.
I knew Akeno and my Brother had followed suit to my actions joining me in this macabre feast. It was never clearer that I was a devil.
I gouged myself on the food as if it would be the last time I would ever eat again. I ate it as if I was a devout believer and it was an act of communion with my god. I drank from the hellfire as if it were divine blood as if this moment was the consecration of a liturgy.
I lost track of time, of my surroundings but when I finished eating, when I felt satisfied enough to stop, most of the silvers were empty, devoured.
I straightened myself trying to look more like a civilized person than the barbarian I must have looked like. Akeno at my side had also finished. She looked proper and pristine like a proper highborn lady.
My brother was still eating. His fork and his knife moved with precision and elegance as they cut viciously into meat, into flesh. I watched as my brother cruelly crushed bones and meat into nothing with his teeth. He took a final bite and deposed on his plate his fork and his knife.
“Thank you for the meal,” I told him. “I loved him,” I spoke honestly even though I didn't really like what it said about me. Would my notions of right and wrong change? Did it already change without me noticing it? Could it even be said to be changing when I was just the amalgam of two different existences each with its own sets of values?
“Thank you lord Sirzechs,” Akeno said at my side. “It was more than delicious.”
His demeanour changed from serious to shy?! Was he blushing?! “I couldn’t sleep yesterday and I didn't want to think about everything going on so I decided to take my time cooking this for you Rias. I'm happy you like it.”
Most would not believe me even if they knew I was the younger sister of Lucifer. Who would believe that the devil himself took his time to cook and bake for his sister to relax? It sounded too mundane, too kind, too human to be an action taken by the prince of lies himself.
Each and every action Sirzechs took reminded me that before being Lucifer, he was my brother. It won't matter to me if he is the most despicable being in existence. I don’t care he probably did more atrocities than a moustache man himself. He was my brother and he was the only one I could count on to always back me up. Wasn’t it fair for me to do the same?
“It came from you. Of course, I liked it,” I told him.
I saw a small smile bloom on his face before it disappeared leaving a neutral face behind. His posture and his mannerisms changed. Reality changed around him. The air stopped moving. The scarlet sky seemed deemed and the sun in the sky laughed. I knew I was not before my brother anymore but before Lucifer “I need to know coming from your own mouth what happened Rias Gremory,” he spoke.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before opening them back up “We were attacked by three divine beings of Shinto origin. The one who led the attack was the God called Kagutsuchi. Our fight led the two of us to leave Kuoh and continue in the cosmos. I won and after defeating him, I…ate the god, absorbing his essence inside of me and making it mine. I used my newly gained authority to damage the link Japanese gods shared with their subjects and blessed the Japanese people with the capability of growing in strength as long as they could face and win the supernatural challenges they face in the future. I came back to a destroyed Kuoh and the two remaining gods having been felled by my peerage members,” I told him.
I didn't know why but I didn't wish to speak of my encounter with the darkness. I didn't want to talk about my encounter with Olethros at least for now. One of Akeno’s hands touched my right hand before intertwining our fingers. I gripped it as if it were my lifeline. It was a reminder that I hadn't been alone, that I wouldn’t be alone anymore.
“The Shinto gods’ actions had consequences,” my brother told us. “Maybe if it had happened to someone else, the consequences would have been less drastic for them.”
Drastic? I wonder what it meant by that “What happened?” I asked him.
“Satan Serafall Leviathan, the Satan of foreign affairs decided to destroy Takagamahara and kill all of its inhabitants,” he spoke as shock spread throughout my body. I heard Akeno gasp at my side.
I imagined, destroying a pantheon of hundreds of gods, composed of dozens of gods around the same amount of strength if not stronger than Kagutsuchi.
I thought that I was strong when in reality I was all this time a little fish who had been the biggest of its little pond. There were monsters existing in this world whose might was unimaginable.
“We have enemies everywhere. Most of our bases and foothold on Earth are destroyed or being destroyed.”
A toothed grin split savagely the face of my brother “This is why It was decided that Takagamahara was now a new devil territory, our new foothold in the east and who else could be better to receive it as a gift that those who lost theirs because of the now destroyed Shinto pantheon?”
Was he really saying what I thought he was saying? “Are you serious?” I asked him.
A satisfied gleam appeared in his eyes “What kind of siblings would we be if we didn't give gifts to our little sisters? Rias Gremory, co-administrator of new Babylon. It does have a nice ring don’t you think?”
