Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Samael in his dragon form quickly cleared the last stretch of sky between us and the demon lord's throne. An unrealistic amount of empty space had suddenly divided the land from where we’d lifted off to where the demon was now, undoubtedly due his ability to edit reality. I was thankful to my pet for helping us get across the gap.

“Samael, when we get home, you're getting a nice big egg for this one.”

That inevitable reward sat well with him as he let out an energetic rumble from his mouth.

In a few seconds, we’d be right on top of the demon lord. Uncle gave the order for Samael to touch down just a few dozen meters away from the throne. As instructed, so Sammy did. The moment he landed, the two of us jumped off and started sprinting. Before leaving my pet behind, he shrank down to a bite sized dragon and coiled up in my hair.

“Right where you belong!” It’d been a while since he was in my hair, so his extra weight felt just right.

At last, we approached our adversary of the night. Nothing stood to impede our progress but the empty air between us. We could very clearly see his stone coloured skin… Those broody blood red eyes swimming in a sea of black sclera… And those terrible horns sticking out of his long unkempt hair. It all served as a reminder of how real and evil he was.

Beside him in the queen's throne was Yamin, who was unharmed, just as promised. Her expression was absent, not responding to us at all, but she seemed awake. I hadn’t noticed before, but she was clinging closely to something. Coveting what seemed to be a thick book of some kind. Her black wedding dress draping over it made it hard to tell what it was exactly.

“Checkmate!” I proudly shouted, tightening my grip on my shimmering spear.

He yawned in response, as if uncaring to my words.

"It took you long enough to reach me,” he mocked, telepathically. “Pitiful."

My blue blood boiled at how condescending he was. Truly a jerk of the highest caliber.

"Give us back Yamin!" I ordered. “Then get your lazy butt back to Heck!”

"This woman stays with me. I will protect her so that all your dreams may come true.”

“I hope you see the irony in that statement,” Uncle commented.

Belphegor had put us through nothing but nightmares. He had to be joking!

“Did I not offer your friend Marek a way out of his cursed history?” he asked, as if that was supposed to convince me. “I wanted to do the same with the other ones, but your rebellion against my will made it difficult.”

“Well, I’m glad I was a showstopper,” I said. “I don’t want people to live in a crazy world you made for them.”

“These are merely the birthing pangs of something greater,” he argued. ”Once my kingdom is realized, this universe will be whatever we want it to be. Haven’t you ever seen how dull this world is? How little creative opportunity it offers? It’s exhausting.”

I wasn’t going to argue that the world could suck sometimes, but the alternative he seemed to be going for would just be another extreme full of disorder. I couldn’t find it in me to support the delusions of someone who only showed a desire for chaos, no matter what their endgame was.

I had to admit one thing though, this journey had been anything but boring for me, if not extremely stressful. Certainly not what I’d call ‘dull.’

Uncle had something to add too. “It might be a more convincing message if you didn’t drain the life energy out of thousands of people,” he argued. "I'm sure that’s making their dreams come true."

“Pawns must be sacrificed for power. Chess cannot be won without them.”

It might have been true that a game of chess required pawns, but people under you were more than just pieces of ivory or wood. His words proved that he didn’t hold humans in a high regard, meaning he’d be a horrible king.

“If you lead troops, you shouldn’t ask them to do something you wouldn’t do yourself,” Uncle said.

The demon lord let out a sigh, allowing his head to fall back to his throne in frustration.

Once a few moments had passed, he stood from his seat, shoulders slouching down deeply. In a single quick motion, he cracked his back and was up straight and proper.

“Checkmate," Belphegor said, lifting up his hands.

Metal began growing over both his forearms. It looked like black shields with glowing red faces and curved spikes on them. At first I was waiting for Belphegor to bring out a weapon, but he didn’t. All he had were those shields. Did that mean this fight was going to be easy, or did he have some other tricks up his sleeve?

Whatever the answer was, I was prepared for the biggest battle of my life. The pressure of it all made my hands shake while clinging to my spear, but my body attempted to mechanically adjust itself for the fearful jitters.

Uncle was next to me, so I wasn’t alone. But most of this battle would depend on me to pull my weight, seeing as I was a source of stardust. Would that be enough though?

“What are you waiting for?” Belphegor taunted us. “My arms grow weary.”

-WARNING! Threat sighted! IFF tags; Active-

-Uncle tagged; Friendly-

-Yamin tagged; Friendly-

-Demon Lord Belphegor tagged; Foe-

-Combat Mode : Active-

Belphegor highlighted in a red outline, while my allies took on a green one. With my target painted, I blasted in at full speed, prompting the Lord of Slumber to sluggishly raise his shields to prepare for my attack.

*CRINK!*

My spear clashed against the metal protecting his arms. A shockwave of energy burst at the tip of my weapon, traveling down the shaft and cracking it into crystal pieces.

*VWOOOW!*

*BOOM!*

The energy continued to flow up into my arm, then it exploded in my stomach, forcing me back.

“Gah!” I grunted in pain. A big tear opened up in my battle dress, and I felt like I’d just been impaled in the gut. “What was that…?”

Uncle was already heading in to retaliate, but his longsword was blocked too. A similar burst of energy slashed across him and sent him flying.

“Uh!” He landed next to me.

“Uncle!” I checked up on him. His armour had a huge gash in it and he looked hurt.

He was getting back up in seconds though, holding a hand over his wound. “I feel like I just chopped myself in half…” he grunted.

We’d barely even started this fight, and both of us were hit with some pretty heavy stuff right off the bat. How powerful was this demon lord that he could just hurt us without even attacking?

“Uncle… I…I don’t know if we can do this…” I shouldn’t have said that, especially since I was the one who needed to be the strongest on the battlefield. But my fear pushed the words out against my own will.

Uncle sighed, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Come on. This fight's just getting started,” he smirked. “You wouldn’t give up this quickly in a video game, would you? I’ve seen how tenaciously you throw your character at those enemies until they’re down.”

The difference between real life and a video game was that I couldn’t feel the pain of the character who I was playing, nor could I just restart from a checkpoint. That wasn’t even to speak about how unbalanced real life was developed to be.

But I had to have faith. If I really believed it was my duty to challenge the darkness on behalf of humanity, I would need to keep throwing myself at these demons until they went down. But if I kept doing that aimlessly though, I’d waste too much of my own strength and take way too much damage.

It was time to theory craft. Belphegor probably had a lot of powers and abilities, and I needed to know them all so I could plan against them. Unfortunately for me, I’d have to do that on the fly.

“Thanks, Uncle.” I smiled back. “We can do this.”

“Right,” he nodded.

Instead of jumping in without a goal, I repaired my spear with stardust and cautiously flew back toward the demon lord’s position. In all that time, he hadn’t budged a millimeter.

The damage we both originally took came after we attacked. That meant that whatever it was must have triggered when we came into contact with him. Or at least, I think so.

As a test of my theory, I struck my spear down at him again. His reaction time was terrifically fast, almost as if he’d predicted exactly where I was going to hit, and I wasn’t trying to make it obvious.

Another bout of crackling energy ran down my weapon. Instead of holding it, I tossed it to the side. The spear exploded, but a bolt of energy struck out from the debris and hit me once again with dreadful force.

“Gah!” I shouted as I once more was shot backwards. This time though, the pain was worth it, because I figured out what was going on. “Thornes…”

Thornes was a type of mirror enchantment in games that reflected any damage dealt back to the offender. They’re very annoying to deal with, especially against enemies with a high defense value, which Belphegor assumedly had.

Sadly, those were some of the only enemies in RPG’s I would brute force my way through. I’d have a hefty supply of health potions and healing powers that would recover my health after a duel, but I hadn’t prepared that well here.

As a small confession, I wasn’t actually above hacking a little to occasionally get items to get around mirror enchantments. But this was a real life battle and I couldn’t just hack into reality and give myself an advantage.

“Uncle, you know what’s going on, right?”

“Yes. He’s reflecting our damage back at us. It’s an ingenious strategy.”

Belphegor tiredly let out another yawn. “It’s too much work to fight a boring battle like this. I’d rather you both just defeat yourselves.”

I’d expect nothing less from this lazy lord!

This battle was going to quickly hit a standstill if we couldn’t deal damage. He wasn’t going to attack and we didn’t have anything to actually break through his mirror enchantment.

It made me realize how he wasn’t taking us seriously. The power he had was so far beyond us that a simple mirror enchantment would be enough to do the job. It really wasn’t fair. This was the ultimate turtle strategy.

“Time’s running out,” he reminded us. “What will you do?”

The sands of the hourglass in the sky were dangerously close to depleting. We probably only had about eight minutes left.

Stalling had been his whole strategy since the beginning. Even if we made it this far, he’d controlled our progress the entire way. In a sense, he allowed us to get here and challenge him. I’d never felt more powerless. But I couldn’t forget how many obstacles we overcame, and he was going to be one of them.

There had to be some way of dealing with his enchantment. Perhaps there was an opening we could exploit in his defenses. To try and look for it, I put more power into my combat mode. My personality drained as a result, but it was worth the extra brain power and muscle strength.

Uncle and I both flew in, sword and spear respectively, attempting to hit the demon lord. All our attacks had varying degrees of accuracy and strength. None of them were intended to actually inflict major damage, rather see what he was able to do when pressured.

For as lethargic as he was, his flexibility was astounding. Whenever Uncle and I coordinated just right so that Belphegor couldn’t block with his shields, he’d twist his body with incredible motions to avoid being hit.

But no matter how much pressure we put on him, he still refused to retaliate. His shields were doing all the work for him.

With what meager knowledge we learned from our assault, we planned to enact an actual coordinated attack, one with the intention of causing some visible damage.

“Yalda, get around him!”

“Affirmative!”

Uncle swung his sword right over the demon's head, causing him to instinctively dodge.

I rushed in and jabbed my spear forward. His shield rose up to meet my weapon. But then I missed on purpose, aiming for a different part of his body. Belphegor already had his other shield up and blocked

Now Uncle had an opening, seeing as both shields were trained on me. He used the momentum from his first attack to swing down on the demon, just barely getting one good nick on him.

*SLASH!*

“Got you!” Uncle announced, cutting right through Belphegor's robes.

Unfortunately the demon didn’t seem phased in the slightest by the hit…

…at least not until the white flames of stardust started burning across the blade!

Twinkling fire lit across Belphegor's shoulders and he let out a minor grunt of pain. A small burn across his gray skin was a mark of our efforts, but it only lasted for a few seconds before dark energy threaded it back to normal.

A blast of darkness forced us both back, giving the demon lord a moment to recover. Even with all the work we put into getting one hit, he seemed to get over it quickly.

“Is that all? I expect more creativity out of you,” he said to me. “How long must I wait for your mind to shine?”

What was he talking about? That cryptic speech was strange…but specific.

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re thinking like a dreamless adult. Even the way you talk now disgusts me with how dry it is.”

“Dreamless adult…?”

Something about those words felt like a hint at what he wanted me to do. If that’s correct, he had an odd way of leading to his own demise.

Or perhaps, he wanted a challenge. It wasn’t unusual for opponents to seek out skilled individuals for competition.

But still, why?

“So long as you're here,” he glared at Uncle, “she will rely too much on you to do the heavy lifting.”

A shadow suddenly tangled upwards around Uncle, circling in to capture him. He quickly flew out, but it still coalesced nonetheless.

Once it came together, it formed the shape of a slim looking shadow woman with red eyes. Cloths grew over her, appearing very maid-like in design, but with hints of armour added in certain key spots.

She reached into her stomach and pulled forth a rod with a morning star attached to the end of it by way of a chain. I believed the jingly weapon was called a flail.

-WARNING! New threat sighted!-

-Identifying demon…demon identified-

-Greater Nephilim tagged; Foe-

“Greater Nephilim?” I uttered.

“So, you're the second bishop,” Uncle smirked, raising his sword, but not hearing a response from the nephilim. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

The slim nephilim girl paid no mind to his words. Instead she jumped in at incredible speeds toward Uncle and sent down her flail, causing a massive explosion of debris on the checkerboard field that forced Uncle back.

“Keep him busy,” ordered Belphegor. “I’d like to challenge this fake angel on my own.”

Belphegor’s eyes locked with mine as he tossed away the torn upper part of his robes. From here on, this fight would be one on one.

-The Little Angel VS. The Slothful Demon-