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Chapter 26: Phobetor
🕑 Added 2023-12-13 21:30:22 +0000 UTCWe moved through space and time with each step, through a corridor of Kaleidoscopic colours that shone with lights even with my sight were hard to perceive and understand.
Even with the memories I inherited, it was something different, that made me nervous, that I had never experienced before.
I knew before walking through this portal with my brother and thousands of devils in our back that Crossing the distance between the underworld and the Mortal plane could be done in three ways.
The first way which was also the most well-known and used way was to use a teleportation circle. A teleportation circle allowed you to cross through the metaphysical distance between Earth and The underworld. The only downside is that you knew precisely where you were going because the underworld was after all just the new name given to Hell, the place where sinners went after their death.
If you were not careful enough, you could end up in a place or a situation where you would wish for a merciful death that would never come.
The second way was to use some kind of magical transportation. The train that had been taken by the canonical me and her peerage in canon to reach the underworld was just a modern allocation of this concept.
It wasn’t rare for pure-blood nobles to enchant their luxury cars to be able to travel through the metaphysical distance between Hell and Earth. Some creatures like gryphons and Pegasi were also naturally able to cross the distance and at the same time give their rider protection against the possible effects of the travel between the Underworld and Earth. For those foolish or unlucky enough to fall victim to the effects of the void between Hell and Earth, well, there was a reason why it was said that Death was a mercy in the supernatural world.
The third way was to be lucky or unlucky enough to find on Earth or the underworld a spot that linked the two different realms together. Many were monitored by the Church and the new Satans. A long time ago in the past, before most supernatural creatures decided to leave humans in the dark about the truth of the world, they were more well-known and were given names like Hellmouths or Hellgates.
This new method, this corridor that had been open could I guess be called the fourth way to breach the distance between the Underworld and the Earth.
I didn't say that those were the only methods because I was sure that somewhere, somebody had found a way to breach the distance and hadn't wished to share their method.
I saw the shadow of something mind-boggling big, something that sent fear coursing in my heart before it disappeared from my sight, something that reminded me of it.
I took a deep breath more to centre myself than anything else. As if feeling my panic as it was his, the grip of Sirzechs’ hand over mine tightened a little bit as if to remind me that he was now here and that because of this, nothing would be able to hurt me.
I squeezed his hand tighter. ‘Don’t worry, don't fear. He's there now. Nothing wrong will happen,’ I tried to psych myself.
I turned toward my brother “You said to me before that something in the underworld stopped you from coming earlier,” I said to my brother. “What happened?”
I watched him sight and it felt as if he had grown centuries older just with the gesture. “Some reincarnated and low-class devils decided to rebel after learning what happened in Vatican City,” he told me.
I didn't make in my mind any illusion on the fact that my race at its origin wasn't evil. Some would say that everyone in a species could not be judged the same way, should not be judged the same way but does this assertion hold true when we were specifically created to be evil? When we were specially created to be a scourge on the universe?
I knew that most atrocities attributed to my race were probably downplayed. We all knew that our race had created its place through might and violence. The original Rias even though she had been sheltered from most things because her brother knew this.
My clan was an exception, not the rule when it came to treating their own servant. We made the bad legends about our race seem tame.
This is why I wasn't surprised by the fact that there was a rebellion that had to be put down by my brother and the other Satans.
It had even been the same case in canon. The Hero faction led by Cao Cao found a way to leak this information to all of the Underworld on how to attain a balance breaker more easily. The immediate reaction in canon by reincarnated devils to this action in canon had been rebellion. That said a lot about devils and our society.
In the same breath, it was mentioned as an afterthought that the revolt was put down by the Satans in canon and no one batted an eye.
The only reason why in canon, devils seemed like the good guys were because we were seeing the world through the eyes of the reincarnated pawn of a gremory born with the boosted gear in his soul who only cared about Boobs and a harem.
I was lucky to have been reincarnated as Rias because if I hadn’t been, I don't think I would have acted rationally or as calmly as I did now.
This world was a death world maybe as bad if not worse than the one created by Wildbow. It is just that the misery and the cruelty were unable to be seen because it was wrapped in a pink box.
What I didn't understand was why there would be a revolt because of what happened in the Vatican. I would have expected it to be because they saw this as the perfect time to strike due to the incoming war or because they had had enough of the bad treatment given to them by their high-class masters.
“Because of what happened in the Vatican? I could understand if most reincarnated devils were followers before being turned into devils but it is not the case,” I told him.
His eyes looked sad and tired “They are scared Rias and scared people will do stupid things especially if they think those things will keep them safe. It all began because of a rumour. The thing with rumours is if they are not controlled quickly, they become, thoughts ideas, ideologies and ideologies can be immortal Rias.”
“What kind of rumour could push them to mutiny?” I wondered out loud. That was like with mortals where numbers only could be enough for people to overthrow a ruling class.
Supernatural beings had power, real unaltered power that could be wielded against all threats. In this world, you don't need others to be strong. You didn't need political, monetary, or societal power to be strong. To be strong, you needed to be capable of imposing your will on the world, to make it bend.
This is something I don't think most mortals could understand. The feeling, the certainty in knowing the world was literally your oyster, yours to shape if you wished to do so.
It didn't matter if you had at your back billions. If none of those were strong enough, you would lose. This would be like ants trying to fight the sun itself.
There had been revolts and rebellions in the Underworld in the past in and after the reign of Helel. The only one that succeeded was the one of my brother. All the others failed, crushed under the might of stronger beings.
Might literally made right in this world and lower-class devils were more aware of it than anyone else in our society with the way they were treated so choosing to rebel because of a rumour was either very foolish of them or very dangerous for us. It meant that they believed with all their souls that they would gain more in rebelling.
“What was the rumour?” I asked my brother. We finally reached the other end of the corridor. What could have pushed them to rebel?
The gaze of my brother locked with mine “The Tetragrammaton is coming back to us. Soon, he'll wake up from between Life and Death changed. Seven years after this, he'll regain completely his powers. In six days, he will conquer back what is his and on the seventh day, he will rest as intended.”
I felt as if a bucket full of cold water had been poured on my head. What most Devils thought and knew was that even though Lucifer failed in killing his father, he was able to injure him so much that the deity was as good as dead. I knew that the truth was that he died but the leaders of the different factions of the Abrahamic pantheon had chosen to maintain the lie as it served as a deterrent against other factions thinking about attacking us.
There was just a major flaw with what I thought was true. The world I was living in only partially adhered to the cosmology of the Highschool DxD anime. I was also living in the world of The Sandman and Lucifer comics.
A world where the Abrahamic god or in other words, the presence could not truly die. The presence could only change, and be technically inherited but it could not be completely destroyed.
Helel was supposed to be alive but he wasn't so I had thought that maybe he had succeeded following the cosmology of DxD in slaying his father before dying. This rumour made me question everything I thought I knew. It made me scared. I understood why it was imperative for my brother and the other Satans to crush it.
“Don't worry Rias. I am the strongest devil. As long as I am at your side, I won't let anything hurt you,” Sirzechs told me.
‘You could not promise this brother,’ I wanted to tell him. He hadn't been there protecting me against Riser. He had only come after the fight with Kagutsuchi had ended. Good intentions didn't always equal good actions. That was something I was painfully aware of but I kept those thoughts inside my mind.
I squeezed Sirzechs’ hand harder in comfort as if it were a lifeline. Together, we crossed the other end of the corridor and arrived at the ancestral home of the devils, Hell.
A purple sky, a scarlet scenery, a smell of sulfur and a bridge made of white Diamonds greeted me back. Home, sweet home. Hell originally hadn't been called such. It hadn't originally even been designed to be the place where sinner souls went after their Death.
According to the books and what I knew, Hell had originally been called the Chaosplasm. It had been an empty chaotic realm and this had been where Helel had fallen when he rebelled against Heaven alone the first time.
Helel would shape this realm, build it into his image and create a replica of the mortal plane he had been ejected from by his father. The only difference would be the lack of Oceans and the fact that using his divine might, he had been able to create layers, nine layers, mini pockets dimensions of the same size superposed on each other.
I wasn't really sure how it happened. Even my foreknowledge was faulty on this. Some books said that Helel was the one through his powers to create a system where he would able to snatch human souls from the hands of his father for his own designs and spite him.
Others said that it was a duty, a mantle forced on Helel by his father, that it was the true punishment of Helel, a mockery, to be the ruler of a kingdom of suffering and ruin. I thought that this reasoning would probably be more accurate if the Helel of this world took more from the one created by Vertigo than from DxD but I would never truly know with him being dead here.
The Underworld could be said to be organized in layers. There was the surface where most pure-blood nobles liked to have their main residences built for them to live in with their peerage and their servants.
Middle-class devils if they were lucky and strong enough could have the permission to do so. This circle, the one that I only personally knew because of the memories I inherited from the original Rias had been called Limbo. This was the paradise of the Underworld.
Limbo was the only circle devoid of sinners. Most of it was owned by pure-blood clans. A minority of it was owned by the government of the new Satans but when the government was controlled and directed by pure-blood noble devils, was it wrong for many to think that this layer was owned by the 72 original clans of the Ars Goetia?
The other circles were called lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. Dante mostly hadn't been wrong about the things he saw here and wrote in his book.
Well, he lied about some of whom he saw because of course given a mission by the Abrahamic god, the first thing he did was modify it to push an agenda. The Hell he had visited had become his abode after his Death. He was still here under my feet suffering and being tortured in the heresy layer.
The current Satans reigned each personally as the supreme power over a layer of the Underworld. My brother had taken the mantle of Lucifer, the prince of treachery. It was only evident for him to rule it.
Serafall, Sona’s sister ruled the violence circle. The Satan Beelzebub ruled the greed layer and the Satan Asmodeus ruled over lust even though the devil was so lazy that it was literally asexual.
The other circles were divided between Pureblood clans that jockeyed for power and influence in those even to this day but no one had and could truly claim it like my brother and his friends did.
Ruling a circle of Hell, becoming a Satan wasn't just as simple as deciding to, as just calling himself Lucifer. To do this, you needed to enforce your will, you might on the circle you wanted to claim and make it yours. Doing it wasn't safe. If you failed, you would be consumed by the Underworld itself, twisted by the energies of the circle of Hell you tried to control. Two pure-blood clans had gone extinct when one of their members had tried to do so. There were things worse than Death and Hell was alive.
My gaze fell on an army of devils dressed as soldiers, butlers and maids that seemed to have been waiting for us on the bridge.
At their heads, sitting on Obsidian thrones were four devils. I recognized them immediately. How could I not when Sona and I looked so much like them?
Zeoticus Gremory, my father was dressed in what seemed to be a white Italian suit. He looked like what you would expect to see the protagonist of a Shoujo manga about the Mafia to look like. He had the appearance of a middle-aged, handsome-looking man with long crimson hair that was tied in a loose ponytail with a black hairband. He also had a short, red beard with protrusions similar to fangs or horns. He was listening to what Sona’s father was saying. A little smile had bloomed on the side of his mouth as if he was both fond and amused.
At his side, sitting drinking a red liquid, too red to be and thick to be wine from an expensive-looking cup that shone like a thousand suns was my mother, Venelana Gremory previously Bael. She looked more like my twin than my sister. The only difference between us was the colour of our hair and our eyes.
In front of them were the current Lord and Lady of the Sitri clan, Styrmir and his wife Alphelandra Sitri née Haborym.
There was a type of man that when they became more masculine, instead of being more handsome, weirdly became more pretty like a Stark Bastard and a final fantasy protagonist that turned into a biblically accurate demon when his emotions were heightened. Styrmir, Sona’s father fell into this category. A body that could be seen as decently muscular even though he wore what was clearly an oversized white hoodie and pyjama pants of the same colour, back shoulder-length wavy hair that was swept back, strong and symmetrical features accompanied by lashes and Amethyst coloured eyes that most women would kill for and that his daughters had clearly inherited from him.
Sona’s mother when it came to her looked good but in a forgettable way like an attractive person you would see once in a crowd and forget about later. With the ways most supernatural beings were more than beautiful, it made her look plain. What distinguished her, made her noticeable was the intelligence brewing so clearly in her eyes. We all knew that Sona inherited her cleverness from her mother.
The Haborym clan traits were a mix of Pyrokinesis and knowledge. The Demon Haborym before his demise was known to set cities, castles and great places on fire, make men witty in all ways, and give true answers concerning private matters. Explained like this their ability sounded lame until you knew that the members of her clan could and did due to the cleverness they inherited predict the future accurately.
The mother of Sona wasn't the most proficient with her bloodline and this is one reason we all knew it had been more than easy for her to marry Sona’s fatter.
That didn't change the fact that I was sure that Sirzechs hadn't told them where we would be coming from to the underworld. The frown that now marred his face was proof of this.
I had told my brother that I didn't want to talk or see our parents for now. I could not forget that they were the reason why I had been married to Riser, why I and the original Rias had been so desperate.
I don't think that I would be able to hide the anger and the bitterness I felt toward them. Sometimes, distance was better both for healing and going forward. Forced closeness could worsen things even if they were already bad.
My mother's gaze went on me and I felt like a frozen deer. In a gracious movement, she moved standing up graciously. The others turned in the direction she was looking and saw us. They followed her out of their seats.
“I am there Rias,” my brother whispered to me at my side. “Don't forget that you are not alone.”
“Thanks, brother,” I told him softly. The distance between my parents and me was crossed too quickly for me.
The servants around us began to move doing the tasks that were probably given to them before we even came. “I didn't expect to see any of you here, Mother, Father, Uncle and Aunt,” my brother spoke.
The eyes of Sona's mother shone with amusement. “Few things can be hidden from me when I wish to know something, dear Sirzechs. If you hadn’t been so hasty when you left the Underworld, maybe It would have been harder for me to know.”
Sona’s father moved stopping before my brother. The both of them looked at each other in what seemed a silent conversation before Styrmir's arms opened. My brother placed delicately Sona in the arms of her father who with a nod to my brother retreated away from him and disappeared in a flash of blue with his daughter. Around us, devils wearing the Sitri crest on their clothes did the same probably following their lords.
“You've changed,” my mother spoke bringing back my attention toward her. She didn't look like her parent who had learned that they could have lost their child. She didn't look scared, angry or relieved.
I felt her gaze travel toward the protruding horn that I had grown in the fight against Kagutsuchi and that I hadn't yet tried to hide. She looked at me with what seemed to be pride.
The problem was the pride I could see with my eyes in her heart wasn't the kind of pride you felt toward a child, that you felt toward a loved one, at least not completely.
This was the kind of pride you felt when you owned something when you saw something incredibly rare or precious in the objects in your possession.
My mother according to the memories I had inherited had never looked at me like this or maybe she did and the original Rias had not been able to see it.
“I had to if I wanted to survive, to live,” I told her coldly. I couldn’t act as if nothing was wrong. Maybe I would have tried if she had appeared as a loving over affectionate parent but what I saw only pissed me more.
I knew She detected the coldness in my voice and it seems that both my father and Sona’s mother did the same. My father looked worried while Sona’s mother looked as if she was before a juicy melodrama she didn't want to miss.
“You just came out of the battlefield. It is normal for you to be on a hair trigger,” she said softly at first before her voice became colder “but don't forget that you're talking to your mother.”
Memories of similar words appeared in my mind, memories of feelings of powerlessness and exhaustion. Those memories brought something from my heart to the surface, they brought hatred.
I had to restrain my power of destruction that acted as if I was attacked and wanted to devour the one in its mind who dared to do such a thing.
“Welcome home Rias,” my father said before hugging me. I kept on squeezing the hand of Sirzechs. I didn't reciprocate his hug.
He retreated from me with a frown drawn on his face. I ignored the guilt it made me feel. “Thank you, Father,” I answered him. I tried to smile at him but I knew that anyone looking at me probably knew that it was a false one.
“I see that you're throwing a tantrum like a child,” my mother spoke. “I took my time to come to welcome you when I could have been doing something else and that's how you thank me.”
‘I didn't ask you to come,’ I wanted to tell her. ‘I shouldn't even have to be grateful for you coming. You are my mother, this is how he should naturally be,’ I wanted to scream at her but I knew that my words would fall on deaf ears and only create more problems along the road.
The anger I felt was replaced by tiredness. I just wanted whatever this interaction was to end as soon as possible.
“I'm sure she is happy you are there honey,” my father spoke. “She went through a lot. Let's go home and let her rest. I'm sure that things will be better after.”
“Mother, Father,” the voice of Sirzechs pierced the air. Our parents’ gaze turned toward him “I had asked Rias if she could come live with me for a while before and unlike the other times, she accepted.” he told them.
In other words, he was telling them that I would be coming with him. He made it seem as if he had been the one asking for it at least this time because I had inherited memories of Sirzechs begging me to come live with him before when Millicas was born when in reality I had been the one this time to do so. He wanted to take the possible brunt of the anger and the disappointment of our parents.
Sirzechs has many flaws. He wasn’t perfect. He made errors and mistakes. Many would call him evil and they would be objectively right to do so but Sirzechs may have been a bad person but he sure was a good brother and in the end, wasn’t this the only thing that mattered?
I squeezed his hand tighter in comfort and at the same time to thank him. My brother was the golden child. A part of the original Rias had known this and had been even jealous before realizing she loved her brother too much to feel something negative toward him for more than ten minutes.
My brother was the child our parents wanted. He was the proof of their love and everything a pure-blood devil wished their heir could be. He was born strong, charismatic and a natural-born leader.
I don't think that they would have had another child if Sirzechs hadn’t had to reject his title of Gremory heir when he took the mantle of Lucifer.
I was the second choice, the child they had to have now that their perfect heir could not be their heir anymore. That is how the original Rias had partially felt. That has been the feelings I inherited from her. I wasn't born an ultimate class devil at birth. I wasn’t as charismatic as my brother. My parents would probably never be as proud or love me as much as they did with Sirzechs.
If my mother knew that I was the one to ask, I knew she would have done her best so that it would not happen but because it was her golden boy who did ask, she agreed immediately.
The way the eyes of Alphelandra switched between my parents and us and with her bloodline, she probably already knew all of this.
“I'll leave you in the care of your brother sweetheart,” my father told me before kissing the crown of my head.
“Take care Rias,” my mother told me before hugging me. I felt as if I was in the deadly embrace of a contractor Boa but I tried to repress my nervousness and hugged her back.
I had obtained what I wanted. It was better to do this now even though I hated it and not to do it and incur the risk of losing this possibility.
My parents were the heads of my clan. More than that, with my eyes, even though I had grown in strength and breached most of the distance between them and me when it came to power, I could still see with my eyes that they were still stronger than me.
Might Make Right was the unofficial motto of the Underworld. The only way to disobey an order from the head of your clan would be to be stronger than them. If my father wished right now for me to choke even though It shouldn’t be possible anymore due to my essence, I would because of the immaterial laws of the underworld that governed the relationships between clan members and the head of their clans.
She retreated away from me. I felt A crimson teleportation circle with the demonic signature of my brother appear under us. I sent a false smile to our parents. I didn't know how I knew it came from her but I felt the weight of the regard of Akeno on my back.
I took a deep breath and let myself be blinded by the light of the circle, to be whisked away from them to another sky more eery, more orphic.
A megastructure appeared before me. One that made the Eiffel Tower look insignificant in height. It was a gothic castle that looked even from afar both luxurious and menacing, both divine and deadly. I could see written over the door an inscription in Latin that said lasciate ogni sperantza voi chi entrate Qui.
I immediately recognized the quote. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. Could Sirzechs be more stereotypical? The door opened before us at our approach. Sirzechs looked at me with a smile that if I felt my lips mirror before together, we entered his castle.
